Ethnomimicry in Permaculture

We all agree that nature has done a great job perfecting the systems needed for a thriving planet. That plants, insect and animals live in a dynamic community where nothing is wasted. Nature has a way of showing us alternatives to our myopic view, if we only look. Opening our eyes is the first step. I would suggest that this extends  culturally also. Our present resource shortage has been repeated over  generations. Who was it solved by before? Perhaps the answer lies with  the people that preceded us. The people we displaced that lived here for centuries an adapted to the seasons, weather and climate; dealt with adversity far and beyond anything we face now.

If worse comes to worse I have a feeling this land will revert to the original population that occupied it for 20,000 years making out short foray a minor occupation. For certain many of the customs and means to survival will resurface as the cold climate population transitions to an agrarian lifestyle. Our hybrid niche courtesy of cheap carbon fuels, will rescind to the natural niche we should be dealing with. Native Americans lived in a niche or succumbed to natural forces outside their niche. Eastward movement over countless generations of the first population built skills to survive and new means to prosper. Over centuries there bodies adapted to the rigors of outdoor life in regions hot, dry, wet, cold, and frozen.

Had not 95% of the indigenous population been killed by European diseases, our nation would be quite different and most of us would have been born in the land of our great great grand parents. Yet here we are at the cusp of a transition from cheap energy to expensive energy having flourished in a land we razed, drained, depleted and marginalized. A land our children's grand children will still have to use to feed themselves, without agrochemicals, without diesel fuel and without irrigation.

If "worse comes to worse", for the Republic, the only people that might be here after us will be the people who were here before us and those that accept their standard of living and learn their old and forgotten ways.

I hope for the

1. Abenaki
   
2. Akimel O'Odham (Pima)
   
3. Alabama-Coushatta
   
4. Aleut
   
5. Apache
   
6. Apalachee
   
7. Arapaho
   
8. Arikara
   
9. Arkansas (Quapaw)
   
10. Assiniboin
    
11. Bannock
    
12. Blackfoot
    
13. Caddo
    
14. Canarsee
    
15. Catawba
    
16. Cayuse
    
17. Cherokee
    
18. Cheyenne
    
19. Chickasaw
    
20. Chinook
    
21. Chippewa (Ojibwa)
    
22. Choctaw
    
23. Coeur d'Alene
    
24. Colville
    
25. Comanche
    
26. Cree
    
27. Creek
    
28. Crow
    
29. Dakota (Sioux)
    
30. Delaware
    
31. Erie
    
32. Gros Ventre
    
33. Haida
    
34. Hidatsa
    
35. Hoopa
    
36. Hopi
    
37. Huron
    
38. Inuit
    
39. Illinois
    
40. Iowa
    
41. Iroquois Confederacy
    
42. Kalispel
    
43. Kansa (Kaw)
    
44. Kickapoo
    
45. Kiowa
    
46. Klallam
    
47. Klamath
    
48. Kootenai
    
49. Kwakiutl
    
50. Lumbee
    
51. Mahican
    
52. Maidu
    
53. Makah
    
54. Malecite
    
55. Mandan
    
56. Manhattan
    
57. Maricopa
    
58. Massachusett
    
59. Menominee
    
60. Miami
    
61. Micmac
    
62. Mission Indians
    
63. Modoc
    
64. Mohave
    
65. Mohawk
    
66. Mohegan
    
67. Montagnais and Naskapi
    
68. Muskogee
    
69. Narragansett
    
70. Natchez
    
71. Navajo
    
72. Neutral Nation
    
73. Nez Percé
    
74. Nootka
    
75. Ojibwa
    
76. Okanogan
    
77. Omaha
    
78. Oneida
    
79. Onondaga
    
80. Osage
    
81. Oto
    
82. Ottawa
    
83. Paiute
    
84. Papago (Tohono O'Odham)
    
85. Pawnee
    
86. Pennacook
    
87. Penobscot
    
88. Pequot
    
89. Pima (Akimel O'Odham)
    
90. Pomo
    
91. Ponca
    
92. Potawatomi
    
93. Powhatan Confederacy
    
94. Pueblo
    
95. Puyallup. See Salish
    
96. Quapaw
    
97. Quechan
    
98. Sac and Fox
    
99. Salish
    
100. Santee
     
101. Sarsi
     
102. Sauk. See Sac and Fox
     
103. Seminole
     
104. Seneca
     
105. Shawnee
     
106. Shoshone
     
107. Shuswap
     
108. Sioux
     
109. Spokan
     
110. Stockbridge
     
111. Teton
     
112. Tillamook
     
113. Tlingit
     
114. Tohono O'Odham (Papago)
     
115. Tsimshian
     
116. Tuscarora
     
117. Ute
     
118. Wampanoag
     
119. Wappinger
     
120. Washo
     
121. Wichita
     
122. Winnebago
     
123. Wyandot
     
124. Yakima
     
125. Yamasee
     
126. Yokuts
     
127. Yuma
     
128. Yurok
     

will rise to the 25 million that were here before Columbus. I hope
they will accept and bare the burden and take the best systems our democracy
devised.

In Permaculture the Edge and Margin holds great energy and resources.
A society on the edge of "cilvilization" or maginalized by the
majority might hold the key to prosperity or at least survival in
extreme adversity.

Each of these tribes, bands and nations are a national treasure, they
should be honored and respected. Their culture understood and
appreciated.