Permaculture

OUR SOLUTIONS ARE IN THE FOOTPRINTS OF THE NATIVES

By: Tony Elswick

"It was like a shift in my brain, and suddenly I couldn't write it down fast enough. I felt like there was a roll of carpet tied up with string at my feet. Once I had cut the string, it just unrolled to the horizon and I could see forever, and nothing that has happened since has ever surprised me."

-Bill Mollison (When discovering what you are about to read)

The second law of thermodynamics tells us that order is only possible within closed systems, where a structural limit is set to control the conditions within the system. The law also tells us that in open systems, order is impossible and all things spontaneously proceed into chaos. This principle has most certainly transcended into the realm of politics as governments provide the order deemed necessary to prevent such stateless anarchical chaos. With that, the collective conscious of society has changed to accept the needs of governments and closed systems in all fields from agriculture to economics. As progressive as this law may seem in the modern psyche, ancients have not only proven the authenticity of this law to be incorrect, they have warned us about the implications of imposing such a system.

Through a series of publications in the 1970’s, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren were able to contrive an intricate ecological field of design called “Permaculture” meaning “Permanent Culture”. This field relates heavily to ancient knowledge and practice of sustainability. Bill Mollison began developing “Permaculture” in Tasmania, Australia, while living and learning from a long surviving aboriginal tribe. This tribe taught Bill that the great oval of our design represents the egg of life in which quantities of life cannot be created nor destroyed, but from within this egg all things that live are expressed. Within the egg is coiled the rainbow snake, the earth-shaper of Australian & American aboriginal peoples. Within the body of the Rainbow Serpent is contained the Tree of Life. Its roots are in earth, and its crown in rain, sunlight, and wind. They told Bill that this rainbow is a snake, their God, and that when the egg of life is to be harmed the rainbow serpent will save all tribes. Below is a magnificent illustration symbolizing these concepts created by Andrew Jeeves:

(Andrew Jeeves artwork; symbol for egg of life)

Bill took this to heart and began to study how everything is interrelated. Through his studies, he noticed how everything has its own niche, space, and time or pattern. In other words, every animal had its own schedule within nature. Feeding, mating, sleeping, and many other activities were not at random, but done in coordinated patterns which corresponded to the schedules of all other inhabitants. By making these connections he could fit a human role in the ecosystem that would cause no discrepancy in these natural patterns. He found that by placing compatible niches in unison to recycle energy from eight layers of an ecosystem, one can produce an unlimited supply of food, water, energy, and materials with minimal work, simply harvest and be done with it. Through a process called “Zoning” one can establish the most compatible niches furthest away from the farm and the less compatible niches closer to the farm, the farmer could hold labor exclusive to only the resources closest to their house, such as bee farms, or herb spirals which may require a few minutes of care a day. By refining this method on a smaller scale Bill could even design a permaculture farm that is completely sustainable and will provide t food, hot or cold water, shelter, and energy for a family of four on only a quarter acre of land.

Bill learned that farming was a practice comparable to that of an architect, for which a foundation was engineers to insure an individual, a family, or a community to live free of the welfare system that currently subsides. What Bill was finding out was what the ancients already knew.

Nearly all natives world-wide would explore the wilderness alone to gain wisdom. They would observe the courage of the Blue Jay, fighting off owls away from its nests which were hundreds of times its size. They learned the cleverness of a cow, the discretion of a fox, the patience of an owl; they sat alone and learned the language and reason of Mother Nature. With this they could fill the void in their stomachs and in their reason with how life must be lived. With the wisdom of the Great Spirit many Native Americans invented sustainable ways to harvest and traveled to the Illinois area where the Iroquois lived to trade their surplus. This was the beginning of a free market system base solely off of production for sustainable development in harmony with nature. As the native economy flourished with exponential resources, native cultures mirrored their economies by integrating cooperative and sustainable traditions.

Children were encouraged to develop strict discipline and a high regard for sharing. When a girl picked her first berries and dug her first roots, they were given away to an elder so she would share her future success. When a child carried water for the home, an elder would give compliments, pretending to taste meat in water carried by a boy or berries in that of a girl. No laziness.

-Flat-Iron (Maza Blaska Oglala)

Technological warfare was not a product of the natives due to the fact that warfare could not contribute to such open systems due to its unsustainable nature. During the massive raping and pillaging of Native Americans by the “white man”, the native culture which was savage on its face but held a complexed degree of economic freedom gasped its last few breaths before suffocating underneath the guise of a freer, more progressive system. The native ideas that we’re once impossible without chaos still linger through the minds of free thinkers. At the dawn of their civilization, many natives stood brave to proclaim their continued existence against the new society.

"I will follow the white man's trail. I will make him my friend, but I will not bend my back to his burdens. I will be cunning as a coyote. I will ask him to help me understand his ways, then I will prepare the way for my children, and their children. The Great Spirit has shown me - a day will come when they will outrun the white man in his own shoes."

-Metea, a Potowatami chief of the Illinois nation

The Great Spirit we call God must have been able to foresee some distance into the future because it is becoming widely apparent that within our closed system, the government is going to push society into oblivion or into the hands of such successors as Bill Mollison. By this I mean that permaculture is indeed the shoes of the grandchildren for which they will escape the burden of the white man. All permaculturalists prove that open systems to the naked eye seem chaotic, but in reality contain interrelated patterns woven to fit the invisible hand of God.

Moreover, another native reinforces the idea of an eternal open system. This native warns the white man without giving his identity.

"When the Earth is sick, the animals will begin to disappear, when that happens, The Warriors of the Rainbow will come to save them."

-Unknown Speaker addressing the National Congress of American Indians in the mid 1960's

As our governments form carbon tax programs in Copenhagen, they are unknowingly pushing society towards permaculture in order for the citizenry to survive in the coming world order which thrives off of debt. As people struggle to tender their debts, they will learn as much as they can to sustain themselves without the need for such costs. This is when society itself will begin to outrun the closed system our governments run. As communities come together to exchange goods and ideas they harvest by design, society will begin to recognize the essence of cooperation. The doors of commerce will open and a free market for the first time will peep its head from the edges of each community. Technology will survive to sustain the guilds created by man and to evolve the natural system into a utopian future.

I leave you with one last quote from a Native American who attempts to explain the fallacy of the second law of thermodynamics.

"Once I was in Victoria, and I saw a very large house. They told me it was a bank and that the white men place their money there to be taken care of, and that by and by they got it back with interest. "We are Indians and we have no such bank; but when we have plenty of money or blankets, we give them away to other chiefs and people, and by and by they return them with interest, and our hearts feel good. Our way of giving is our bank."

-Many Horses

Written By: Tony Elswick

Books to read: Introduction to Permaculture By: Bill Mollison

Permaculture: A Designers Manual By: Bill Mollison

A Road to Serfdom By: F.A. Hayek

A Peoples History By: Howard Zinn

Coming next summer: Permaculture Republic By: Tony Elswick