What Is Permaculture?

NikiAnne Feinberg — Tue, 18 May 2021 19:46:19 +0000

Our world is always looking for things to be boiled down to a soundbite. Sometimes complex things can’t be conveyed in a summary or a sentence. I recently found a phrase from an article entitled The Indigenous Science of Permaculture by Rohini Walker that, for me, conveys the essence of Permaculture:

“An indigenous science of working in partnership with cycles of nature.”

The wisdom of this sentence is so important.

Two reasons we’re offering the upcoming Decolonizing Permaculture series are:

To emphasize that permaculture’s origins emerge from indigenous technologies and practice. Permaculture has not been great at accentuating that important point, which can often look like appropriation, extraction, and arrogance.
To acknowledge that sometimes when disconnected folks embrace permaculture, they can implement it with a colonized mindset. This can often look like encouraging perfection, black and white thinking, and systems that are not fully in integrity.

During the workshop series, which runs for five Saturdays from May 22 to June 19, we’ll explore the permaculture principles through an equity lens with three amazing instructors. You can meet two of the them — Amakiasu Turpin-Howze and Tyson Sampson — in this interview:

Sera Deva interviewing Amakiasu Turpin-Howze and Tyson Sampson

Please check out the workshop description and instructor bios of Amakiasu, Tyson, and Lee on our website. We’re so excited to be offering this series.

Martin Prechtel is a mentor and dear teacher to several people at Earthaven. He says:

“Every individual in the world, regardless of cultural background or race, has an indigenous soul struggling to survive in an increasingly hostile environment created by that individual’s mind. A modern person’s body has become a battleground between the rationalist mind — which subscribes to the values of the machine age — and the native soul. This battle is the cause of a great deal of spiritual and physical illness.”

Blessings on all of our journeys to wellbeing. Whatever path we are walking.

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My Experiences With Permaculture

NikiAnne Feinberg — Sat, 08 May 2021 18:15:47 +0000

My training with land and culture repair has fallen in the realms of deep ecology, nature connection, mentoring with the wild, wilderness awareness, and racial equity realms. Huge shout out to some of my mentors in these wisdom ways:

Sobonfu Somé
Warren Brush and the whole Quail Springs Crew
Jon Young and the beautiful network stemming from The 8 Shields Institute
Lia Grippo and the entire Academy of Forest Kindergarten Teachers
Lee Warren, Susan Hough, and Doug Elliott
Sharon Tollefson and my beloved Wilderness Youth Project community
James Stark and Christopher Kuntzsch, with so much gratitude for The Ecology of Leadership
Nadia Chaney with Partners for Youth Empowerment
All the teachers I’ve had through the Racial Equity Institute

Thank you. (There’s so many others who I’m forever grateful to as well.)

I discovered permaculture in 2007 when I arrived at Earthaven for the first time.

When I came to Earthaven, I was immediately immersed in permaculture because I was living within a village built from its principles and within a community whose residents were daily practitioners. Permaculture principles carry important messages that encourage us toward right-awareness, right-relationship, and right-consciousness with both the human and more-than-human worlds.

However, something I’ve come to understand more recently is that the permaculture movement has fallen short on the inclusion of black and brown voices, on addressing systemic injustices, and on acknowledging where most of its land-based wisdom originated.

In an effort to explore the permaculture principles through a more equitable lens we are offering a five-part workshop series entitled Decolonizing Permaculture starting Saturday, May 22.

I am super excited about it because it features three fabulous people: Amakiasu Turpin-Howze, Tyson Sampson, and Lee Warren.

Amakiasu Turpin-Howze, Tyson Sampson, and Lee Warren

If you would like to know more about this five-week series, check out the FREE information session on Tuesday, May 11 at 7 pm Eastern time. Click this link to register. Even if you can’t make that time, register anyway and we’ll send you a link to the recording.

The post My Experiences With Permaculture appeared first on Earthaven Ecovillage.

Amakiasu Turpin-Howze Archives - Earthaven Ecovillage

What Is Permaculture?

My Experiences With Permaculture