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  • From: Toby Hemenway <hemenway@jeffnet.org>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Re: Permaculture on Pitcairn
  • Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 10:36:15 -0700

On Wednesday, July 9, 2003, at 02:04 PM, dwayne wrote:

As things stand, there's
close to zero chance of the world being repaired post-colonialism.

Gonna stick my nose in here a minute (I may regret it). I think John and Dwayne and Russ may not have opposing viewpoints so much as are coming from different places. I know John, and he's spent a good bit of time on Hawai'i and is very familiar with the traditional Pacific Island cultures that existed before white contact and still, to some extent, exist. These were very small populations that were doing very well, thank you, before whites arrived, with highly evolved social and resource-use systems that generated huge surpluses. Now that they've been colonized, they are too small and weak to survive independently in a world geared toward large powerful nations, as Russ very ably pointed out, from his own experience doing aid work. But if the Pacific Islands were allowed to once again have their own indigenous culture, which is I think where John is coming from, they would probably do very well (it would be nice to get them medicine and electricity and such, but they might be able to get all they need by exporting the huge surplus that used to go to their kings and to war).

John's scenario may be unlikely (though there's a powerful sovereignty movement in Hawai'i) but it could lead to a viable independent culture on islands that, given western geopolitics, cannot now be independent.

Hope you guys can keep it civil (since I've just cooled off myself).

Toby





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