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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] A MANIFESTO FOR SEEDS
  • Date: Thu, 09 Sep 2004 18:32:59 -0600


A MANIFESTO FOR SEEDS
http://www.kootenay.com/%7Eaurora/free.html

We are seed users, seed eaters, seed growers...all of us. We have
been wrapped in a world of seeds for eons, since long before agriculture. In
hunger we ate the bird that ate the seeds; in happy accident we brewed the
beer from spoiled and worthless seeds; in unwitting service to the plant we
transported its seeds on our trouser cuffs. We slobber over ear corn and eat
our Wheaties. It's in our language: We are of our parents' seed, our
ancestors' seed, Adam's seed ultimately. We are born into, thrive in, die
in, a seed sowing, seed garnering heritage. To deny the status of the sacred
to these time capsules, these enfoldments of life we call seeds is to court
foolish disaster. We have always known this.
But...now they're messing with our seeds. The power grabbing
corporations, the fascistic governments, propose in their arrogance and
disrespect to irradiate...manipulate...defructify...monopolize and further
commodify our ancient birthright, our real wealth: SEEDS. We are strong
when we have our seeds, and they know this. They would enslave us and they
would use as leverage the seeds we cherish, the seeds that nourish us. What
we would pass on to the seventh generation as bridegift they seize as
strategy. They would put a price on the priceless and sell it back to us.

Leave our seeds alone. Leave our seeds in the hands of the people
who feed us...the family, the clan, the village group. The profession of
"seedsman" was created only 130 years or so ago. Perhaps it was an
aberration to try to centralize, and then commidify, a process that had
before been disbursed in village gardens, homestead gardens, middens and
small fields. Grandmothers and Great-uncles collected, watched over,
cherished the seeds that came down to them. Grew them out with love and
patience and infinite care. Grandmother's seeds... grandmother's
blessing...passed from generation to generation. Reckon three generations to
a century and 150 centuries in the history of agriculture and you have
several hundred generations of seed gathering folk, seed saving grandcestors,
passing on precious seeds to descendants. There is memory encapsulated in
this line of life stretching so far back. Feelings are there too...feelings
of gratitude to Gaia, of holding dear, of well wishing to the future
generations, feelings of faithfulness...feminine feelings.

The memory is right there in the seed, in our cells, in the
mitochondrial DNA passed down the feminine line. When I touch my seeds I tap
the memory that is there, instinctive wisdom almost lost, beaming itself into
our consciousness just when it is most needed.

John Trudell said: " It's about our D and A. Descendants and ancestors. We
are the descendants and we are the ancestors.
D and A, our DNA, our blood, our flesh and our bone, is made up of the metals
and the minerals and the liquids of the earth. We are the earth. We truly,
literally and figuratively are the earth. Any relationship we will ever have
in this world to real power-the real power, not energy systems and other
artificial means of authority-but any relationship we will ever have to real
power is our relationship to the earth." (1)


Seeds are concentrated wealth. Seeds are worth far more than we pay
for them now, in this aberrant commodity trade. You can pack in a suitcase
$10,000 worth of garden seeds in any variety you choose. The slavemasters
and their propagandists would have us believe that money is power and, since
they have plenty of it, that they are in control. They don't want us to have
that suitcase, to be free to leave and plant elsewhere; free to stay and
plant many gardens, feed many people with real food.

If we are staunchly of the Earth, her power is ours to neutralize and
transmute the evil work of the authority-mongers, those without conscience.
We can do this with life enhancing actions. Repeat. Life-affirming actions
override, overwhelm, the lifeless. Always the great stone temples of the
arrogant become topsoil for living systems. It's something the corporations
and governments fail to appreciate. Their authority rests on entropic
processes, explosions, coercions, cultural lies. They cannot take into
account the power of life, the connectedness of life. They would have us
forget where we come from...so we can be entertained and exploited and
addicted to their cheap dream, their gadgets and their ersatz food. If we
are staunchly of the Earth we have access to the strength of the generations,
the ancestory, to help us put life and affirmation in the places where
death-dealing had been. We can REMEMBER from where our power comes. Let us
plant gardens. Let us plant trees. Let us tend cows.

Let us join Wendell Berry's "Mad Farmers Liberation Front." No dues.
No meetings. You just have to be clever. Don't be depressed, be clever.

Our weapons are our tools...
Our ammunition is our seeds...
Our fuel is our sacred intent to do right by the future of life on the
Planet...
Our marching song is the thrumming of memory in our cells.
We march in concert, but we do not march en masse. Our aim is not
to dominate or overpower. There has been enough domination and power
grubbing. Rather, our aim is service. Each of us has a plot of earth to
serve, our own elementals and devas to consult...intuition that speaks in us.
We know how to surrender to the task, to the plants and soil, in order to
earn our harvest. We bend to it in joy and service, each individual one of
us mustering pure intent, a gutsy laugh, with the power of life upholding us.

Let us be clear. There is no money in this, only sustenance. This
passing forward of seed on the family or clan level is a matter of right
livelihood, not of commerce.

And right livelihood brings joy. If I can feed myself, my family, a
few others perhaps when surplus appears, then I have done something REAL.
Something subversive. I am in touch with my power, and my delight.

JOY...What if the picture that's been drawn of medieval peasant life
as basically "Nasty...Brutish...Short" is a cultural con job put out by the
rationalists and the materialists, the ones who shortly would have something
to sell us? What if life on a subsistence level has joys and satisfactions
as well as challenges? What if people had time to laugh and sing? What if
there were still people in the world who could catch the memory of this and
show it to us??

A friend tells me about life in the Philippines, far back on the rural
islands...tells how, when two rice threshers or donkey drivers meet and begin
to talk, they're laughing most of the way through the conversation. There
is something boisterously entertaining about what is going on in their
poverty-stricken lives.

John G. Bennett wrote of an encounter in Africa: "Following a
lightly trodden path, I came upon a Basuto village. All the inhabitants were
out hoeing mealies. Their ages must have ranged from seven to seventy, and
they were singing and hoeing to the rhythm of their own music. As they saw
me they all stopped and stood straight up in surprise. Then with one accord
they began to laugh. I have never heard such laughter. It was pure joy and
friendship, without malice and without thought. I joined in, and we all
laughed together for several minutes. I waved my hand and walked on, and
they resumed their gravity and their hoeing.

"This was one of the unforgettable moments of my life. A lifetime's
experience had convinced me that happiness is greatest where material
prosperity is least. I had seldom seen a happy rich man, but I had seen many
happy people among the poorest villagers of Asia Minor or Greece. I had seen
happiness in Omdurman, but this happiness that I saw before my eyes was
beyond all the others. Here was a village totally lacking even the smallest
of the benefits of civilization. They had not even a plough or a cart. And
yet they were the happiest people I had ever seen. They were without fear
and without pride." (2)

The meek shall inherit the Earth, for the meek remember who they are
and where their power comes from. The meek overcome oppression not by
fighting it, but by serving the Earth.

(1) John Trudell, on the occasion of a memorial service for Earth First!
Activist Judy Bari.

(2) J G Bennett, _Witness_ Claymont Communications, 1983, pg. 229.




  • [Livingontheland] A MANIFESTO FOR SEEDS, Tradingpost, 09/09/2004

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