Native Son, Native Seeds

http://www.stthomas.edu/news/native-son-native-seeds/


Engebretson, Kelly. "Native Son, Native Seeds." St. Thomas Newsroom. N.p., 01 Apr. 2016. Web. 28 Mar. 2017.

       The Mesoamerican Institute of Permaculture, IMAP, is a place that I have actually visited, lived and volunteered. The man, Rony, in this article is someone I have worked closely with and I will actually be bringing him to Westerns campus with a grant from the Office for Sustainability so that he can give people information on his amazing ideas. This article focuses on permaculture from the lens of Mayan culture, a way of regenerative instead of just sustainable living.
      When I first visited Guatemala and IMAP in particular I fell in love with the design of the place. I had no idea what permaculture was but I wanted to be a part of it, this thing that had the answer to everything from human waste to CO2 emissions from cooking. I was blown away that they had all the solutions in the global south and in the United States we are still struggling with so many of these small things that could be so easily fixed. 
      Rony speaks on the fact that permaculture is not difficult because all you have to do is let nature do n and observe what it does naturally and then help foster that growth. He makes use of everything from abandoned tires to the pulpe left from coffee beans. We are just a part of nature, not excluded from it so we must act the part.
This is a photo of some fresh dragonfruit I had just pulled off of an overhang of one of the structures along with some sweet plums.

Environmental Documentaries

Cowspiracy and Forks over Knives
      Both of these documentaries and a lot of research I did this past weekend proved again and again that the biggest impact you can make as an individual against climate change is to go vegan and not put in a demand for any animal agriculture. One hamburger takes 2500 gallons of water. Here are all the sources that cowspiracy uses. They are all legit so that's exciting.
      http://www.cowspiracy.com/facts/
And here are some articles about this documentary. This one also talks a lot about the health of humans and how eating meat and animal products leads to cancers of all kinds and many other health risk factors.
https://www.forksoverknives.com/articles/

Integrated Permaculture
      This documentary was awesome, we watched it at the WeSustain internship. Permaculture is regenerative whereas agriculture takes from the soil and kills the microsystems within it. Your ability to exist is predicated on the Earths ability to exist so if you undermine the Earth then you are undermining yourself. This is a step further than sustainability because we aren't just sustaining what is already there, we are giving back to the Earth and adding good things to it.

Valuing Footsteps - towards a valuation model of indigenous knowledge and cultural expression

https://academic.oup.com/jiplp/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/jiplp/jpu043

Burfitt, B., and M. Heathcote. "Valuing footsteps--towards a valuation model of indigenous knowledge and cultural expression for the sustainability of indigenous people's culture." Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice 9.5 (2014): 383-88. Web.

     My topic is basically looking at different indigenous cultures around the world and understanding that they have been here much longer, as a group, so they know more about how the world works. This particular article is from Oxford Academic, written by Brian Burfett and Marion Heathcote, and it was found through searching in Westerns Library online. As I have been reading it a lot of things have stood out as interesting and surprising. First of all, this resource is from a Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice so it is a bit different than I am used to because I have never read something like this.
      It speaks on Indigenous Cultural Property and how we want to get the information from them on how to live but just taking pieces of what they know will not give us what we want. Everything works in a system and especially in an indigenous culture there is a certain holistic way that they work so in order for us to replicate that we need to look at every part of this system, if that is even possible. Another problem is that we can't just take from another culture and call it ours, as much as we have forced our own "culture" on indigenous people for years, it wouldn't be right to turn the tables. There are a lot of logistical problems that we must address in looking into indigenous knowledge.
    My sources sources are very reputable, it is a scholarly journal after all.