The Promise of Permaculture

The promise of permaculture is similar or equal to the promise of the Iroquois Indigenous people to take only what is needed and to leave behind resources for the next seven generations; to sustain life today, tomorrow, and the indefinite future; to avoid extinction. Bill Mollison ("father of permaculture") says that permaculture is a movement that encompasses agriculture, horticulture, architecture, ecology, economic systems, land access strategies, and legal systems for business and community. Permaculture is a bit of everything and through experimentation, trial and error (aka science…but we will get to that later) we explore the right mix and balance of the things that work for that particular place.

The analogy that Dr. Culhane used in the lecture of how to treat a person experiencing cancer really stuck out to me. Like most people, I have known multiple individuals personally who have experienced this horrible disease. Unfortunately, the individuals that I knew were diagnosed already in the later stages and eventually passed away. The interesting thing is that they each dealt with the illness differently. Some chose a purely Western medical way of fighting it through chemotherapy, radiation, prescription medicine, and treatment. Others chose to fight the cancer in their body the natural way: changing their diet, making fitness a priority, using herbs and other homeopathic medicine, and strengthening their spirituality. These individuals became either purely dependent on Western medicine without making any other lifestyle changes, or they scoffed at western medicine and only depended on natural lifestyle changes to heal them completely. Perhaps sustaining life as a healthy individual or planet requires nature and self-sustaining practices to take charge. And we all know that Western science has revolutionized the way we live, but alone solves one problem but causes many others. So, in order to fight for our lives, against our extinction, a combination of all of these practices, treatments, and lifestyle changes, science and nature together are the solution.

For a cancer patient, finding the balance of how much of each thing works best looks different for everyone. In permaculture and sustainability that delicate dance of what combination of things works best, depends on the location. Here is where the teachings of metis (wisdom, skill) and becoming native to our location come in. The INHABIT video mentions that “In order to design our agriculture and culture to be ecological, we must look at our local environments.” They go on to define permaculture as, “the process in which we adapt to the Earth.” A truly holistic approach recognizes the value in all things: Metis, techne (technology), animals/pests, waste, weeds, Western science, AND Indigenous science/knowledge.

This brings me to my next point: acknowledging Indigenous knowledge or “traditional ecological knowledge” (TEK) as science. Dr. Culhane highlights the fact that the permaculture only got its “public genesis as a university interaction between Professor Bill Mollison and his students.” And even though Bill Mollison coined the term, and is credited as the “father of permaculture” the ideas, lessons, and gifts of permaculture have been around for centuries and discovered by indigenous communities through observation, experimentation, and analysis. Sounds like science to me! Leah Penniman, the founder of Soul Fire Farm and author of Farming While Black, argues that “permaculture” doesn’t exist and that the many dozens of practices based on TEK/Indigenous science deserve their own story and recognition. Nigeria alone has 26 different types of agroforestry systems and that’s only counting the ones that have been documented by western scientists (Penniman, 2019).

Another great author, Dr. Robin W. Kimmerer, of another incredible book: Braiding Sweetgrass, speaks of the symbiosis between Indigenous wisdom/TEK and western science. Additionally, she speaks of the many challenges she faced as a scientist that is also a member of the Native American Potawatomi Nation. Today Dr. Kimmerer is a distinguished professor of Environmental and Forest Biology with a Ph.D. in Plant Ecology. However, when she first began her career she was told her reasons for applying to an undergraduate Botany degree program were not scientific but rather more relevant to art school. She wanted to know why goldenrods and New England Aster flowers look beautiful together and why they often grow intermixed. She wanted to, “know about relationship, harmony, and beauty…” and she thought, “there must be ecological meaning to it as well.” It turns out that the yellow of goldenrods and the purple of asters are reciprocal colors in human and bee eyes, so grown together they attract more pollinators than either would growing separately, thus leading to greater plant success (Kimmerer, 2013). This is permaculture. Nature doing its thing is permaculture. Indigenous knowledge/wisdom is permaculture. Permaculture is science, a testable hypothesis. Permaculture is systems thinking. “Permaculture is a nexus of nexi...” that “minimize inputs ad maximize the use of outputs” (Culhane, 2019).

References

Thomas H. Culhane. (2019). The Promise and Peril of Permaculture FEW Nexus Module F2 Student Illustrated. Retrieved October 18, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgGyIRS6V0k&t=1416s.

Costa Boutsikaris. (2014). INHABIT: A Permaculture Perspective. Retrieved October 18, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U56O6LDyLQ.

NOFA-VT. (2019). Farming While Black | Leah Penniman. Retrieved October 18, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHiDSMKpkRg&t=1140s.

Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). Asters and Goldenrod. In Braiding Sweetgrass. essay, Milkweed Editions.