The Sun Shines in the Hoopa Valley (Part 1 of 2)

The Trinity River valley. It is said that the Hoopa (Hupa) people came into being here. This past weekend marked yet another step back toward Hoopa community self-sufficiency with the launching of small organic farm.

Working together made for quick work -- and the passage of 24 hours saw soil preparation, raised bed creation, stick planting, vegetable starts and watering all take place on a two acre plot. This builds on our rainwater catchment workshop last year, and the solid work done by the Klamath-Trinity Resource Conservation District to highlight techniques and tools for everything from canning to irrigation to Holistic Management and more.

The power of people-connected-to-land cannot be overstated. It makes for a firm commitment to place and improvement of the community, which we too often lack in more transient (usually urban) settings. And commitment creates real possibilities for long-term self-sufficiency -- "clothing security" with sheep ranches producing local wool, "building security" through sustainable forestry, strawbale building and earth plaster skills, and "energy security" in passive energies, investing in solar hot water and careful design.

Watch the movie of highlights!

Biodiversity and the Quest for Balance (II)

The trends we see at the first post in:
- amphibians
- bats
- songbirds
- general ecosystems

are a clear call for greater understanding and action

However, ultimately, these issues are not simply an issue of forging better environmental policies or implementing better practices. At their core, the issues we are dealing with are issues of values, mindset, and spirit, requiring a fundamental shift in how we relate to, and act in, the world. Perhaps the key defining moral failure of our times is the failure to recognize the right of other species and ecosystems to exist.


In not recognizing the rights and value of biodiversity, we create the many bizarre situations in which we currently find ourselves. For instance, rather than ban toxic substances outright in the shared recognition of the paramount importance of the protection of life, we instead permit them to be legal, and subsequently spend tremendous time, resources, and energy toward using as little of them as possible. How much easier would it be to simply ban them outright? How many toxic products do we really need? Even more importantly, how often do we really need the short-term beneficial results these toxic products produce?

Yet, countless efforts are put forth to show how we can't shift away from toxic substance use, or cut our energy use in half, and the excuses are endless. Doing what's right isn't feasible. It's too expensive. We can't get by with less resource use. We can't survive into the indefinite future in a sustainable way, never mind the fact that we as a species have been doing so for millennia.

Our mindset is _so_ key. In nations where basic needs are already met, the mindset that humans have the right to do as we please, and take as much as we want, is at the core of many of our most basic problems -- habitat destruction, loss of species, obesity, energy wars, and water shortages. The bottom line in these five issues is . . . hunger . . . and with this mindset, hunger is never satiated. It ignores responsibility. It drives an incessant collection of things, and keeps us so attached to those things that we spend significant resources on property insurance, storage, and security systems for their protection. It exacerbates the very real global hunger of those who cannot meet their basic needs, by artificially inflating our demands on the earth. And, the mindset maintains the fiction that we cannot afford to live sustainably (i.e. live with less resource consumption and maintain the same quality of life).

With a simple shift in mindset, suddenly "never enough" becomes "more than enough". The food that we have is enough, the property we own is enough, and the energy to which we have local access is enough. It’s simply a common sense approach to life. If certain things are non-negotiable, then you organize your life to get those things done. If the kids need to get picked up at 4 PM, then you figure out some way to make that happen. So too is a goal like 80% greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction by 2050 -- it's a pragmatic goal to manage against the impacts and risks of climate change. Thus, we need to make it a reality.

We need a worldview that respects the need for balance, shares resources with our fellow beings, and acts to maintain the web of life that supports us all. We in the developed world who have the basics of food, clothing, shelter, and water need to recognize that we always have enough. And we need to allow other peoples and species to have their share.

Local Food: Gathering Strength

Climate change concerns call us all to seriously analyze our way of life, and look for ways to improve business as usual.  It has helped also bring a wave of interest in eating locally -- purchasing foods grown and processed within a one hundred fifty miles of where we live.  It's no wonder why.

According to the WorldWatch Institute, food transportation is among the biggest and fastest-growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.  A basic diet of imported ingredients can easily require four times the energy and emissions of a domestically-based source.   Though, note that one of the leading researchers on this topic, A. Carlsson-Kanyama, found that the actual greenhouse gas benefits of local production is limited for commodities where the amount of resources required for local production dwarf the shipping impacts.   And one of the better ways to reduce the carbon impact of your diet is by shifting away from meat to a vegetable, seed, and legume-based diet.     However, the fact still remains that the eating seasonally and shifting toward higher percentages of local foods appropriate to your region will support your community and the planet.

You can all join the effort, enjoy local, organic meals to the greatest extent you can, celebrate your local farmers, and grow your own food.  Support local food efforts through many resources, including: 

Indigenous Permaculture -- provides Certificate Trainings to enable participants to sustainably grow their own food, and  delivers community food security resources and tools to low-income and indigenous grassroots groups. (www.indigenous-permaculture.com)

Community Alliance for Family Farmers --  provides policy analysis and advocacy for sustaining family-scale agriculture (www.caff.org)

Community Food Security Coalition --  provides networking, technical assistance, and program evaluation to support grassroots groups (www.foodsecurity.org)

Local Harvest -- links to local food sources of all types throughout the U.S. (www.localharvest.org)

Indigenous Strength at Food and Society

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation hosted its Food and Society conference once again this past week, from April 21-23 in San Jose. In showcasing many inspiring projects across the country, participants both learned from presentations in traditional panels and keynotes, as well as from a very rich day of open space sessions, where attendees proposed topics and held small group discussions.

Many groups in attendance were working for sustainability and better relationship with their lands, including:
Mvskoke Food Sovereignty Initiative

New Mexico Acequias Association

Tohono O’odham Community Action












One open space session focused on identifying the solutions that we're missing from 10,000 years of place-based living and understanding of right relationship to our lands. The thoughts that came up included: understanding and documenting our history; use of permaculture techniques like observation of the patterns of sun, wind, and water across a landscape; and using story to communicate concepts and values. We hope to further highlight the outcomes of that session in a future post.

People on the Edge

The shootings that have gripped our country over the past several weeks is an unfortunate alarm.  We think it's no coincidence that this is a time of economic uncertainty and recession -- problems typically come to the fore during times of stress.  

Part of our challenge is that we have become over-vested in the economy.  We have designed our lives on the assumption of plentiful money, working in whatever profession we choose.  What we've given up is resilience and managing against the risks of not having the ability to provide the basics of life -- food, clothing, shelter -- forgetting that we cannot eat money.  When we can't provide these basics, we necessarily are under undue stress and react on a primal basis.

Rather than pursue earning as much money as possible, perhaps it is time to return to the basics.  We can learn how to grow our own food, and make our own clothes and shelter.  These are skills that characterize true community resilience, security, and sustainability, rather than high income.  

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"Through [the new paradigm], we see reality so structured that all life-forms affect and sustain each other in a web of radical interdependence.

. . . . We turn to this radical interdependence . . . because it can serve the healing of our world, and its very survival."

                                                --- Joanna Macy

Biodiversity and the Quest for Balance

There was a pause in the breeze, on one of those crisp fall days that foretell colder days to come.  Yellowed dogwood and aspen leaves already littered the swampy forest floor, providing temporary cover for tree frogs and field voles.  As the breeze picked back up, a lone hiker emerged out of the mist, studiously watching the ground as he moved through the trees.  Hearing a slow trill, he bent down, looking intently, and spied what he was looking for – Hyla chrysoscelis, the gray treefrog.  As it turned slightly, he noticed the leg.  A fifth leg, sprouting from the middle of an otherwise-normal back limb.  He stood straight sharply, taken aback.  This was the sixth deformed frog he had found this season.

Although the story above is fictitious, the essence of the passage is a very real story that gripped the scientific world between 2000 and 2004.  Reports from all over the world document both a general decline in amphibians and the alarming increases in deformities and unnatural growths.  Was it some odd fungal infection?  Was it a legacy of the decades of pesticides, fungicides, herbicides and other synthetic chemicals that had been dispersed throughout the environment?  No one was sure, to believe the report in the 2003 Scientific American, which hypothesized several possible causes: contaminated water, ultraviolet radiation, or a parasite.[1] And an article in the March-April American Scientist of 2004 linked many of the amphibian problems to human-induced climate change.[2] 

What was clear was simply that something was wrong.  Amphibians, with their highly permeable skin, act as canaries in the coal mine, and signal that something is amiss in the world's living systems.   And it was highly probable that human activity was culpable in some way.

In how many other areas have we seen significant detrimental impacts in our lack of balance with Mother Earth?  And perhaps more importantly, why do we so often fail to restore balance, once we see what we are doing?  

All life is sacred, and our fellow beings are key threads of the web of life, yet our actions too often do not make this recognition.  As we see, amphibians are not the only threads in danger.  

- Bats under Siege.  Similar, to the frog decline, 2008 and 2009 found tens of thousands of bats killed, in relation to a white fungus which is somehow involved, and has had a 50-90% fatality rate in infected bats.  The ultimate cause is not known.[3]

- State of the Songbirds (Aububon Report).   The Aububon Society in 2007 reported on the population changes of several common bird species in North America, and found twenty species had declined at least 50, and in some cases, 80 percent.[4]  The critical factor is the loss of habitat – i.e. the grasslands, wetlands, and healthy forests that have been taken through development.  This largely tracks the 50-80%% of wetlands that have been lost throughout the U.S., according to the U.S. Geological Service.[5]

- The UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.  This project of the United Nations  looked at the services provided to humankind by nature.  The report's scientists found that "approximately 60% (15 out of 24) of the ecosystem services examined in this assessment are being degraded or used unsustainably".[6]

We clearly have our work to do.  Of this, more to be said later.

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[1] Bustein, A. R. and P. T. J. Johnson. 2003b. Explaining frog deformities. Scientific American 288: 60-65. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=explaining-frog-deformiti-2003-02

[2] Kiesecker, J. M., L. K. Belden, K. Shea, and M. J. Rubbo. 2004. Amphibian decline and emerging disease. American Scientist 92:138-147.  http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/id.46/past.aspx

[3] "Bats Perish, and No One Knows Why", Tina Kelly of the New York Times, March 25, 2008.

[4] Common Birds In Decline, The Audubon Society, http://audubon.org/news/pressroom/CBID/PR.html

[5] Loss of Wetlands in the Southwestern United States, Roberta Yuhas of the U.S. Geological Service, 1996.  http://geochange.er.usgs.gov/sw/impacts/hydrology/wetlands/

[6] Ecosystems and Human Wellbeing: Opportunities and Challenges for Business and Industry, The United Nations, 2005, p. 6.

Community Leaders

Jesus Leon Santos was awarded a 2008 Goldman Environmental Prize, as an indigenous farmer who works with Mixteca traditions, and has conserved more than 4,000 acres of farmland while creating more economic growth.  And the Hopi Tutskwa PermaCulture program has a community tree-planting project, where volunteers planted 320 trees in five community orchards.

The power of these programs is that they are rooted in the traditional ecological knowledge that spans centuries, and use the permaculture principle of looking at all physical, ecological, and social resources available -- whether traditional or modern.