I Been Tagged...We Are All Slaves...

TIRED OF MOVING STONES?







WALK AWAY.


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Thanks Tweetey for tagging me!

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

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7 Random Things About Moi...

1.)Are you sure you want to know seven random things about me? I am a difficult person to know. One of the main reasons I am a difficult person to know is because my beliefs and attitudes towards life are not part of the mainstream dominant culture I live in.

I never believed in this system I grew up in. I was always an outsider because I was always intuitively suspicious of the culture I grew up in...something was wrong with it. Why work when food was free?

When it came to the North American game of children of "Cowboys and Indians" I always played the Indian. They dressed better and lived way cooler. I knew that since a small small child. I grew up near and with Reservation kids and they were often my best friends. In grade seven I spent my days with my Kwakiutl friend and we would go to the beach and catch fish and eat raw oysters and look at the Petroglyphs on the beach on Quadra Island. All day.

No one who knows me is not without the knowledge that I do not believe in the totalitarian agricultural economy that dominates the planet.

It is the nature of believing that we can control food and food production and distribution that deludes us into thinking we can control other people...and we are superior to other people. Farmers believe their way of life is superior and better than other ways of making a living.

The most powerful urban myth on the planet is that our recent turn to agriculture was a "revolution".

Our turn to agriculture was a desperate survival attempt due to dwindling resources when all of the human population were hunters and gatherers.

Once we started controlling food production by cultivating plants and seeds we also began to have class and gender clashes. There developed a separation between the slaves who had to grow food and the peope who distributed the food. Since then we have believed we were superior to other ways and cultures of making a living.

This week...I can not help but fondly think of the friends I played or went to school with in Northern Ontario at my family's summer annual camping trips and on Quadra Island and Kitimat B.C.

I can not help but think of all the Native Canadians who never thought I was crazy because I rejected agriculture and farming...with my Native Canadian peers I was never a crazy person...but someone who understood ...maybe just a little...the magic and power of diversity. Diversity in food, language and economy.

Maybe this week some of us can truly grasp in Canada and the world...how important the economies of hunters and gatherers are to future survival. Hopefully by apologizing to Aboriginals we can learn to study and respect a different way of living and making a living...I believe recognizing the diversity of getting food is a clue on how to heal and co-operate between communities and the world.

I never thought I would post a video of Prime Minister Harper speaking here...but for the first time in his political career I am pleased with his actions and his stand.

I am also very proud of Jack Layton, who I voted for and who met with Harper and convinced him of the importance of the following apologies.

If you want to know a little bit about me and my passion...then the following videos will express something dear dear to my heart and existence.

Here first, is Jack Layton:






2.)

Part 1 of Canada's formal apology to First Nations and aboriginal peoples and Native Canadians...

3.)

This is part 2 of the formal apology.
4.)

This video is the formal response of Chief Phil Fontaine...some other random fact about me...I wept while watching these broadcasts.

5.) There are two radically different ways for members of a society to satisfy all their needs: by
producing a lot, as in Western societies, or by not wanting a lot, as in those the American
anthropologist Marshall Sahlins has called "Zen" societies. The "Zen" way chosen by
hunter-gatherer societies is to stop producing food as soon as they consider that the quantity in hand
has reached a level sufficient for their needs.

It has been shown, and statistically confirmed, that, contrary to a widespread misconception,
population groups who live by hunting, fishing and gathering do not live in utter privation, nor are
they constantly in search of permanently inadequate food. On the contrary, they may be said to have
created "the first affluent society", spending only a few hours a day on meeting their material needs
and keeping the rest of their time free for recreational and social activities. from aAn Economy of Sharing by Marie Roue

The Original Affluent Society...I double dog dare you to read this...it will take time, but it is a random fact about me...click here

6.) There is a secret...it is a difficult secret...but at the end of the day...we are all Aboriginals. And those of us who were raised within agricultural economies have forgotten...we are all programed to believe that farming is the best way to make a living.

The secret is that for hundreds of thousands of years we were all hunter and gatherers. We did not make a living by growing food, locking it up and then selling it back to ourselves. We shared food.

I realize that we have such dwindling resources on earth and a huge population that we have become an animal that competes for food with our neighbours, our friends and between continents.

We were capable of sharing and hunting for food for 2 million years. We have only been using food as a source of power for 10,000 years.

If we can apologize to hunter and gatherers for forcing them to go to agricultural schools to learn the belief system of farmers......can't we apologize to ourselves for believing in a sham...an urban myth that farming is superior?

We are still teaching children what we wrongly believe ourselves: that farming is needed and is a superior way to make a living.

Can the profound apology offered by our mainstream Canadian government become a metaphor for our own brainwashing and the brainwashing of our children to believe in the dominant culture of the planet...?

I realize that to feed all the worlds population we may have to continue to grow food...but we need to start to look at how and where we grow food. Organic, subsistence farming may be the only way we can survive and not damage the world with gas emissions transporting our addiction to farming...and using up wilderness to grow food. We also need to consider only growing and eating food that is high and rich in nutrients. Ask yourself...why should we grow wheat for bread and noodles when it is a waste of land...instead grow brocoli and squash and leafy green vegetables that actually have nutrients naturally supplied?

7.)And back by popular demand:

In the 1940's, a farm magazine had a contest for a 100 word analysis of a photo of a deserted farmhouse in a badly gullied feild. This was 1st prize:




Picture show white man crazy. Cut down trees, make big teepee. Plough hill. Water mash. Wind blow soil. Grass gone. Door gone. Whole place gone. Money gone. Papoose gone. Squaw too. No chuckaway. No pigs. No cow. No plough. No hay. No pony. Indian no plough land. Keep grass. Buffalo eat grass. Indian eat buffalo. Hides make teepee. Make moccasin. Indian no make terrace. No make dam. All time eat. No hunt job. No hitch hike. No ask relief. No shoot pig. Great spirit make grass. Indian no waste anything. Indian no work. White man crazy.