The Question about Invasives

As people move around the earth, either through their  own volition or through force, they carry things from the places they originated. Customs, language, genetics, as well as animal materials.  Like the people that traveled the world, some animals traveled with their human overseers in search of greener pastures. Others, like the rat and mouse, stowed away and came voluntarily in the cargo and ships of merchants and nomads. Still other animals were subdued and transported as chattel to new lands, like the equine, bovine, and swine to the Americas.

Plants too traveled with human beings.  Where people moved so did plant materials and the knowledge of what they were used for. People often carefully wrapped seeds for transport as a reminder of home to plant in the a new land.  Sometimes, plants hitched rides on people's clothing or in the human waste. These were survival tactics of both humans and plants. The neolithic revolution's domestication of plants from wheat to corn has proved the symbiotic relationship between our evolution.

Over the years we've been exposed to a lot of talk about invasives - both animal and plant based. Through the wild edibles class we took at IU and attending the free SNAYL (Sustaining Nature and Your Land) Day events we learned how to identify plants, we learned about indigenous plants, and the top 10 invasive plants. The invasives have been causing great ecological changes for the past few hundred years, especially with the importation of aesthetically pleasing species to recreate a particular ideal landscape or supposedly useful plants. In the United States the ubiquitous dandelion was brought over as a food, but has mostly become the bane of lawn keeper's existence.  Similarly, broad leaf or plantain is found in all but the most chemically treated green space.  The name supposedly comes from the Latin word for foot because as Shakespeare said "Where ever the white man stepped the plant would crop up!" Like its counterpart the dandelion, the plantain's medicinal and edible use has all but slipped from the general public's knowledge.


The fact that a plant or animal is invasive does not make them inherentaly bad. Because one could argue they lack the consciousness to actively take charge of breeding the native species out.  It is not necessarily their fault that humans transported them over.  However,their passivity should not be confused with weakness. Take the Japanese and/or Asian Honey Suckle that propagates quickly through runners and seed.  Not only do they spread more quickly than their American counterparts, but they provide less nutrition to the birds that help spread their seed around. Likewise, the feral pig escaped its confines as any caged creature is want of freedom. Currently, its distribution runs from the south (especially Texas into Florida) up to the north as far as the Great Lakes and is even present as west as California! Additionally, the recent importation of large reptiles such as boa constrictors and Burmese python snakes have become a problem in the Florida wetlands due to people releasing their "pets" into the wilds because they can no longer maintain the animal. They cause millions of dollars worth of damage to foul breeders and because of their lack of natural predators reproduce at a pace that cannot keep up with their ravenous appetites.

The list of invasives could go on and on.  But not all imported life forms become invasive or are threats to indigenous life forms.  Many cannot propagate without human intervention, or many propagate slowly so that they are not in competition with the native species.  Others find a certain ecological niche and create a symbiotic relationship with aboriginal life forms which maintains ecological balance.   When we look around the world we see (though we may not know it) species that have been introduced.  Sometimes the lifeforms have adapted so well the term that identifies them is "naturalized."

 What then about human beings?  Whenever, we have been in a conversation about house sparrows, starlings, Japanese Knotweed, or the Tree of Heaven, not once have the White people speaking about them mentioned the irony of their own presence in the United States or Africa, or Asia.  I remember walking on the Durban beach one evening with my cousin and some Zulu friends.  We passed by a fisherman of English descent. We had a small exchange with the fisherman about the aquatic life and his closing was "I know my ocean!" To which one of our Zulu friends became quite upset and responded "You're Ocean?" challenging the colonial mindset of the white man. Often however, the White man is not challenged.  He maintains his superiority and dominion over nature with knowledge and classification systems, much like Carl Linnaeus.

In a sense the people speaking about native or invasive plants or animals seem to ignore that they too might be considered an invasive species. This is not a statement to say that all humans beings that have genetics other than that of the indigenous people's of any land are invasive. However, when those people fail to address the concerns of the indigenous people of where they are living, when they fail to learn about the histories and customs of the lands where they reside that goes beyond the limited scope of the history books and classes, or history channel they are guilty of acting like an invasive species by disregarding the Natives of the land and competing to the point where the indigenous peoples and cultures can not thrive.


So while it is great to plant indigenous species in your garden and it's wonderful to learn about the indigenous cultures, it's even better to connect with the aboriginal peoples and communities and to work together for the betterment of individuals and society in general.  It is not okay though to misappropriate culture, knowledge, and customs without permission or credit.  Let us all work together on this planet to eradicate invasive species by caring for each other, eliminating the need for competition, and helping each other thrive!

References:


http://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/animals/wildboar.shtml

https://www.fort.usgs.gov/flconstrictors

"SNAYL Day" online at: http://www.mc-iris.org/sustaining-nature-and-your-land-day.html

"National Feral Swine Mapping System" online at: http://www.wildpigconference.com/proceedings09/corn.pdf

"Giant Constrictor Snakes in Florida: A Sizeable Research Challenge" online at: https://www.fort.usgs.gov/flconstrictors

http://www.linnean.org/Education+Resources/who_was_linnaeus

“We have kept our shares of the treaties, and we are here to ask that you keep yours. The little amount of calico [the treaty cloth] for which the money is appropriated each year by this Congress doesn’t amount to very much per person, but it is the significance of that calico which means something to all of us.” Alice Lee Jemison, 1948 Senate Hearings

Alice Lee Jemison

Alice is on the lower left corner.

We tend to forget how we arrive at the places we do. Most of the time we arrive at our current stations through the actions of others. This can be good or bad... depends on how you consider all of the variables involved. I read a lot about New York Indians, New York-Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) relations, biographies, and so on. I am always amazed by how much the Iroquois have influenced Native thought, social consciousness, and related legislation across the globe. This list of Iroquois input is difficult to compile for readers. Instead, periodically we will highlight significant moments and contributions to our current discussions on indigeneity, race, history, politics, and social movements.

Recently, I read about the Seneca journalist and activist, Alice Lee Jemison. Laurence Hauptman’s slim chapter on her life painted an interesting portrait of this astonishing person. Reading her biography I became interested in how indigenous women redefined their role in the American social landscape. Throughout most of recorded North American history indigenous women have resided on the backburner of history. Even though, most indigenous people are aware that all members in a community have a role in the direction of the community-based decisions. Unfortunately, women, elders, young people, third genders, and adopted members are usually ignored or downplayed by historians. This is why I became interested in Alice, because she reminded me of those who occupy liminal spaces in contemporary history were not necessarily powerless during their respective times.

Alice was born in 1901 at Silver Creek, New York near the Seneca Cattaraugus Reservation. Her mother was Seneca and her father was Cherokee descent. After graduating high school she married Le Verne Leonard Jemison. Nine years later she left him because of his alcoholism. During the 1920s she took care of her children and mother. She worked a variety of jobs. Almost anything to care for her family. In 1929 Alice became secretary to Seneca Nation President Ray Jimerson. In 1929 she conducted research for the U.S. Census Bureau. This opportunity appears to have changed the course of her life.

Quickly Alice Lee Jemison learned and realized about the paternalistic relationship the U.S. tried to hold over indigenous communities within her borders. She turned her attention to the John Collier, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), and Indian Reorganization Act (IRA).  According to Hauptman, Alice believed that U.S. bureaucracy only benefited government employees and not Native communities. As a Seneca woman she understood that U.S. government was not interested in honoring treaties, but influencing Native individuals and communities to assimilate into American mainstream society and open up their territories to corporations and real estate developers. 

Her true awakening was how she witnessed first-hand how the U.S. government and society violated indigenous lifeways and disparaged their belief systems. The first incident that invigorated her activism was Congress, which bypassed the federal trade and intercourse acts and the Senate. This bypassing gave New York State jurisdiction over some Seneca land on the Oil Spring Territory.  The second incident was the trial of two Indian women accused of killing the wife of famous artist Jules Henri Marchand in which the native defendants, and all Native people, were disparaged in court. Alice, along with local Native leaders, sought assistance from the government to ensure that the women received a fair trial. The women were convicted, but later freed. It was then that she began a career in Native rights activism and journalism.

By 1934, Alice moved to Washington DC to write for the Washington Star, lobbied for the Seneca Nation, and worked for the American Indian Federation (AIF).  Throughout most of the 30s she fervently lobbied against the IRA and the levels of unnecessary complexity for Native Nations. She openly called for the abolition of government programs. Alice noticed that most of these policies continued to erode the sovereignty of native people. Beginning in 1930s the US government tried to discredit her often branding her as some sort of Indian Nazi or a commie. The sad irony is her Iroquoian worldview and perspectives may have influenced many of the Termination policies from the 1950s to 1970s to turn communities into nonentities and create thousands of displaced peoples.

One of the things that drew me close to Alice was her call to abolish the Bureau of Indian Affairs. For many native peoples this call does not garner much support. Most US native communities have become accustomed to working with the BIA to resolve issues, receive monetary support, and so on. Her bravery to stand up and be heard with considerable opposition  from the non-Native community. In the 1940s Alice questioned the Roosevelt administration and John Collier (head of the BIA and the architect of the Indian New Deal). From this condemnation she organized the American Indian Federation, which called for the abolition of the BIA. She knew that these programs would weigh down Native communities to function traditionally and pressure many to leave their home lands and assimilate into the American landscape.  

What brought me closer to Alice was how she made me aware of the contradictory nature of American patriarchy. For most of the treaty making period all three branches of government continuously declared Native nations were sovereign, but dependent on U.S. aid. It also became glaring that any act of Congress could figuratively erase a living community off the map.   It is important remember those who aided to where we now reside in the spaces created for us. We must continuously thank people like Alice Lee Jemison.

 Women continue to be the Mothers of all of our Nations.  

decolonize your lawn, decolonize your diet

So I've been working on this instructional guide for an ecological anthropology reader. I love the topics they cover, everything from relocating people because of mega dam projects, how stereotypes affect peoples' ideas about the ecological and environmental racism to globalization, water branding, and indigenous peoples struggles for self-narratives and environmental sovereignty.

I could go in and on about my personal journey with each topic but the one most dear to my heart currently, is the American lawn. While doing research for activities I came across an article written by Michael Pollan discussing lawns. Making me reflect upon my own lawn experiences. I never really thought about lawns too much until I moved from inner-city NYC to an Indiana suburb. One of the first things I purchased was a push mower because I knew that as a resident of this subdivision I had a responsibility to keep my yard tidy. It was my responsibility to my neighbors, but it was also the law. I looked at this work as a form of exercise. As an avid weight lifter, bicycle commuter, and lover of the outdoors I enjoyed my time outside. But after a while the lawn became a daunting task. I began to resent the grass and questioned its worth. Grassy Lawns produced nothing and they ate up time. God forbid I used a motorized mower, I would be spending money on diesel while polluting the local air and quiet space. I was in a minority in my hood. Everyone else surrounding me had mechanized everything. I chose to rebel and use my muscles; burn some calories rather than fossil fuels. My husband, Joe and I began talking about doing away with the grass in our yard. The first year we tried to establish a small plot in our back and front yards. Our dogs prevented any substantial progress in the back but the front grass began to give way too more and more flowers. 

A lazy winter evening,

In May 2010, Joe and I went to do doctoral field work. We had an acquaintance rent our place while we were away. Just before returning to the States we found out that our renter stopped paying us rent and was moving out earlier than agreed. A day it two after landing in NYC we drove to Indiana to check in our house. Out tenant left the day we landed. When we arrived we were pleasantly surprised to find everything intact and fairly clean. The only issue was that we had a warning issued from the city staying that we had to cut our lawn immediately lest we get fined $50! The grass was about a foot and a half long in the back. One of our next door neighbors who we were friendly with mowed the front for us to keep us out if trouble. We suspected our across the street neighbors, who kept an immaculate lawn filled with all manners of pesticides and herbicides, but not one weed, called the city on us. Our neighbors agreed to take care of our lawn until we returned from NY where Joe was competing his research focusing on Tuscarora environmentalism and connection to nature. During our time on Tuscarora, between working as a waitress at the local restaurant, I spent a lot of time doing yoga and roaming the paths through the rez looking at the plants and learning what I could.

Backyard garden looking at the house.

When we returned to Indiana, January 2012, I was determined to do away with the large tract of grass in the front and replace it with flowers and a veggie garden. We also gated a larger portion of the back to prevent our dogs from entering and destroying the cultivation. I germinated seeds indoors and after the last frost relocated the bursting seeds to their places in the earth. The front housed popcorn, squash, sunflowers, snap peas, lettuce, and okra. Not to mention flowers, sage, and lilac bushes. The back was home to Tuscarora white corn and bear beans from Joe's uncle, pinto beans given to me by my granny in South Africa and a plethora if heirloom seeds we purchased from IUB's Wiley House.

July 2013, here there was once grass is replaced with flowers and greens.

Soon after I discovered freecycle.org and began using Craig's list to find free plants and garden items. One woman a few miles away was giving away eastern prickly pear. I found mums from an older archaeology professor at IUB. In the fall Joe and I audited a wild edible class with Lucille Bertuccio. 

2012, last hike of the Wild Edible class. Lucille standing in the right, Joe far left, me to Joe's right.

We learned to identify the different parts of plants and how to do ids using Newcomb ‘s Wildflower Guide. We learned about harvesting acorns and beechnuts, stir frying sedum, making sumac tea, and making salad from lambs quarters. At the end of the class we had a group cooking session using harvested wild edibles. I made beechnut, pawpaw (Indian banana) muffins that I harvested.  We sampled some dandelion wine, indulged in persimmon pie, and feasted upon other delicious edible wonders from the wilds. Later, that fall Joe and I harvested white oak and bur oak acorns. My daughter and I broke outer shells with stones, feeling a little like our primate relations, busting open nuts. The nuts were placed in plastic mesh bags and left in the clean water of the toilet tanks to wash out the tannins, making them edible and digestible with every flush. That winter we developed a taste for delicious crunchy acorn muffins and still eat them to this day. 

This winter I have been reading a lot on the American Justice System. My explorations have covered the gambit from the abrogation of treaties with Native communities to the questionable imprisonment of poor and non-White individuals. The more I read, the more I realize that the American Dream was never intended for non-property owning individuals, egalitarian peoples, women, people with mixed or non-European heritage. Over the course of the last hundred years we have seen women and disenfranchised Americans struggle to retain the same civil rights as their founding fathers – rich, property owning White men. As much as I have seen positive changes for all people born or who have resettled in the United States there continue to be as many examples of individuals and small communities railroaded by the Federal and State governments. I notice when those communities make progress the status quo make new laws to further our disenfranchisement. If you doubt my thought consider the struggles of felons and GLBT peoples.

The foundation of the United States is not based on justice, liberty, and freedom, but on real estate. From the early colonies to the first thirteen states those institutions sought ways to convince Native communities to relinquish lands to colonial, state, and federal government. The American Revolution did not change property relations, but allowed new paths for investors to acquire Native territory and multiple their fortunes.

Watch this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJxrTzfG2bo

In the speech, "The Jubilee of the Constitution”, delivered at New York, April 30, 1839, before the New York Historical Society" John Q. Adams is very open about the American right to Native lands. In his praise of the Pilgrims, he says,

“No European settlement ever formed upon this continent has been more distinguished for undeviating kindness and equity toward the savages. There are, indeed, moralists who have questioned the right of the Europeans to intrude upon the possessions of the aboriginals in any case, and under any limitations whatsoever. But have they maturely considered the whole subject? The Indian right of possession itself stands, with regard to the greater part of the country, upon a questionable foundation. Their cultivated fields; their constructed habitations; a space of ample sufficiency for their subsistence, and whatever they had annexed to themselves by personal labor, was undoubtedly, by the laws of nature, theirs. But what is the right of a huntsman to the forest of a thousand miles over which he has accidentally ranged in quest of prey? Shall the liberal bounties of Providence to the race of man be monopolized by one of ten thousand for whom they were created? Shall the exuberant bosom of the common mother, amply adequate to the nourishment of millions, be claimed exclusively by a few hundreds of her offspring? Shall the lordly savage not only disdain the virtues and enjoyments of civilization himself, but shall he control the civilization of a world? Shall he forbid the wilderness to blossom like a rose? Shall he forbid the oaks of the forest to fall before the axe of industry, and to rise again, transformed into the habitations of ease and elegance? [S]hall he doom an immense region of the globe to perpetual desolation, and to hear the howlings of the tiger and the wolf silence forever the voice of human gladness? Shall the fields and the valleys, which a beneficent God has formed to teem with the life of innumerable multitudes, be condemned to everlasting barrenness? Shall the mighty rivers, poured out by the hand of nature, as channels of communication between numerous nations, roll their waters in sullen silence and eternal solitude of the deep? Have hundreds of commodious harbors, a thousand leagues of coast, and a boundless ocean, been spread in the front of this land, and shall every purpose of utility to which they could apply be prohibited by the tenant of the woods? No, generous philanthropists! Heaven has not been thus inconsistent in the works of its hands. Heaven has not thus placed at irreconcilable strife its moral laws with its physical creation. The Pilgrims of Plymouth obtained their right of possession to the territory on which they settled, by titles as fair and unequivocal as any human property can be held. By their voluntary association they recognized their allegiance to the government of Britain, and in process of time received whatever powers and authorities could be conferred upon them by a charter from their sovereign. The spot on which they fixed had belonged to an Indian tribe, totally extirpated by that devouring pestilence which had swept the country shortly before their arrival. The territory, thus free from all exclusive possession, they might have taken by the natural right of occupancy. Desirous, however, of giving amply satisfaction to every pretence [pretense] of prior right, by formal and solemn conventions with the chiefs of the neighboring tribes, they acquired the further security of a purchase. At their hands the children of the desert had no cause of complaint. On the great day of retribution, what thousands, what millions of the American race will appear at the bar of judgment to arraign their European invading conquerors! Let us humbly hope that the fathers of the Plymouth Colony will then appear in the whiteness of innocence. Let us indulge in the belief that they will not only be free from all accusation of injustice to these unfortunate sons of nature, but that the testimonials of their acts of kindness and benevolence toward them will plead the cause of their virtues, as they are now authenticated by the record of history upon earth.”

Adams’ quote is lengthy, but it aptly outlines the American view of aboriginal title and the European God given right of conquest of Turtle Island. Passages from this speech have been used in numerous court cases concerning Euro-American right to Native lands, as if Adams’ eloquence serves as the justification for one of the greatest land swindles in human history. It is almost if these words simultaneously serve as a rally cry for westward expansion, to depopulate the lands before them, and to embed the Pilgrim as America’s chosen peoples. Adams’ speech used in an earlier argument in front of the Supreme Court, Fletcher v. Peck, 6 Cranch 87. [10 U.S. 87, 3 L.Ed. 162 (1810)], in which Adams concludes his argument “what is Indian title? It is mere occupancy for the purpose for hunting. It is not like our tenures; they have no idea of a title to the soil itself. It is overrun by them, rather than inhabited. It is not a true and legal possession.” He says these knowing Native people existing here for many millennium before their arrival.

Many eastern Native nations under duress and pressures transformed their enclaves into European-style governments or protected their holdings into the form of title continued to lose their arguments in American legislative, judicial, electoral spheres. No matter how closely Native people followed the letter of American law, Americans always found ways to extricate aboriginal possession. In a last example, the Tuscarora Indian Nation of New York living for over 150 years on gifted and purchased land protected as fee simple title became the target for a reservoir in the 1950s. The Federal government could have imminent domain and claimed any large tract of land that would be suitable for a reservoir, but they settled on Tuscarora Land. The Feds did the same thing again with the Seneca and their Alleghany territory. The people of the Tuscarora Indian Nation did everything they could to stop the confiscation of their territory from monkeywrenching construction equipment to taking their case to the U.S. Supreme Court. In Federal Power Commission v. Tuscarora Indian Nation, 362 U.S. 99 (1960), the Court declared that all reservation land was owned by the Federal government. Ultimately, the Tuscarora lost 1/8th of their territory to Federal Power Authority. Dissenting Justice Black tried to explain Native attachment to space and place. He said,

“It may be hard for us to understand why these Indians cling so tenaciously to their lands and traditional tribal way of life. The record does not leave the impression that the lands of their reservation are the most fertile, the landscape most beautiful or their homes the most splendid specimens of architecture. But this is their home – their ancestral home. There, they, their children, and forebears were born. They, too, have their memories and their loves. Some things are worth more than money and the costs of a new enterprise. There may be instances in which Congress has broken faith with the Indians, although examples of such action have not been pointed out to us. Whether it has done so before now or not, however, I am not convinced that it has done so here. I regret that this Court is to be the governmental agency that breaks faith with this dependent people. Great nations, like great men, should keep their word.”

The more I read, the more I realize that the idea and practice of the justice system is inherently unjust. Basically, the idea that Native people, non-property owning, poor, Black, Latino, women, and other unwilling minorities did not share in the consensus in continuing this Western tradition of law with the formation of the United States. We have been pulled into this entangled mesh of law and money that hopelessly traps most of us without ever providing us with justice. I like to end with a truncated quote by Michel Foucault. He says, “Power is war, a war continued by other means….The role of political power…is perpetually to reinscribe this relation through a form of unspoken warfare; to reinscribe it in social institution, in economic inequalities, in language, in the bodies themselves of each and everyone of us.” Michel Foucault, Two Lectures in Power/Knowledge 90 (1980).