permaculture

[Jason Gerhardt <jasongerhardt@gmail.com>]

Christopher, thank you for responding to this. I thought of your work
immediately, though I was unaware of your history with the author. He has
done zero research, as you point out, other than surface scans of things.
He seems more trying to act out the popular social justice angst of the
times so he could get whatever little fee Huff Po paid him for this
article. His title is also extremely broad and his article extremely
limited, and the whole thing does damage to permaculture, which does an
incredible amount of good on the earth.

Things I question from this article:

On Cultural Appropriation. Where do we draw the line between cultural
appropriation and cultural exchange? I was once criticized by a white woman
for using clay ollas in my university greenhouse as cultural appropriation.
She said it was an indigenous  technique and I shouldn't use them without
crediting the Hopi with a sign (why she settled on Hopi people I don't
know). When I asked her if I shouldn't also credit North African's and the
Spanish, who brought the technique to the US Southwest, she had no answer.
People live on the surface, especially nowadays with social media and
character limits/attention span limits. It's disappointing. Permaculturists
probably haven't given enough credit to traditional peoples for some of the
techniques we recommend, or for the paradigm, but even that credit seems
like a general form at best. This is a tricky subject when applied with a
deep look.

Permaculture Demographics. Are we sure it's predominately white male?
Permaculture authors, it seems that's true, and surely it's true for
youtube permaculture, but that's not the claim he made, nor representative
of the global demographic of practitioners. Personally speaking, I've had
the same amount of female permaculture mentors, teachers, and co-teachers
in my nearly 15 years in the field as I've had male, and while that may not
be representative, it's my experience nonetheless. I can also say I've had
far more female students than men. The white part of this claim is probably
true, but globally I'd be curious to see data before making that claim, and
regardless, his article does absolutely nothing to address the real
injustices that exist.

On making a living as a teacher. Well, I'm glad I don't, but not for the
reasons he suggests. I don't see how I could be a teacher only without also
being a designer and agriculturist, and for that matter a social activist.
However, his claim is that courses cost too much, the PDC should be
abandoned (I'm not even gonna address this), and only white people take
them. The last claim is just rubbish, and demeaning to many of my students
of color. That said, I took exception to the cost issue because judging by
the date of the article a course I taught in Costa Rica was probably in his
sample size. I think he should go to the campesino refugee camp of
Salvadorans and Nicaraguans this course was taught in, at their request,
and tell them that the nearly $15k we left in the community shouldn't have
happened, and that the international students who brought in that money
should feel bad about their privilege.

On pedagogy. He claims traditional people can't learn from power point and
lecture. LMFAO. He should keep telling people what they can and can't do,
it looks excellent.

In short, popular culture is lost. Don't trust everything you read and
hear. Dig deeper than the surface.

Two recommendations for decolonizing your mind (which is actually the
culprit here, not permaculture): Raoul Peck's film I Am Not Your Negro
based upon James Baldwin's work, and Wendell Berry's book The Art of the
Commonplace.

Please, please, please dig deep in this life,
Jason