The view from the half century

"The economics of 2050 will be the reverse image of 1950, if we make it that far."

Every year, current and former residents of my ecovillage, The Farm, gather here in Summertown, Tennessee to meet and reminisce. We call the reunion our Ragweed Festival because it began as a celebration of the night 50 police cars, helicopters, ATVs, and canine units descended on a 5-acre melon patch we had planted along the county road that had become overgrown with neat rows of four-foot-tall ragweed.

The Assistant Attorney General, parked in a black limo outside our front gate all night, came in search of marijuana and went away sneezing. Eventually, the TV vans packed up their satellite uplinks and left for breakfast. The Nashville Banner ran a cartoon lampooning Dick Tracy’s Crimestoppers’ Text Book that described to Junior G-men all over the world the sound a helicopter makes when landing on a watermelon, and in a separate panel, how to distinguish a watermelon from a pot leaf. “Know the difference!” the caption commanded.

As I bike the summer roads these days I see a lot of differences from when The Farm’s 320 tie-dyed pioneers arrived smelling of the patchouli of San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury district. In 1972, many of our neighbors were earnestly dirt poor. Rusting automobiles littered most yards. The ridges of house roofs sagged toward their middles, tar paper flapping. Weathered outbuildings were poised to collapse in on themselves. Skinny cows, horses and dogs meandered aimlessly over bare dirt yards. The population of Lewis County, so named because it was where the great explorer and Governor of Upper Louisiana was assassinated traveling the Natchez Trace in 1806, had grown to 24,900 since Andrew Jackson removed the Muskogee, Creek and Choctaw to Oklahoma.

The population only grew another 1700 people, to 26,600, in these past 50 years, but you wouldn’t know it was the same place. Most buildings are either new or recently remodeled. The yards are tidy and well-mowed. The dogs are fat and the horses well-groomed. Cars and pickup trucks are late models and shiny, with a fair number of Teslas or hybrid Cadillacs and Lincoln SUVs. In 50 years, median household income grew from $12,000 to $60,000 (unadjusted dollars). While Lewis County is poorer per capita than Franklin or Nashville, the fish are jumping and the living is easy.

The other thing I notice is how strongly nature has regenerated in the care of us ecovillagers. When the first group arrived, the oak forest was still recovering from its third or fourth clear-cut. We planted pines to fill some of the forest’s holes and today those trees are so large it takes two people extending arms to reach around their bases. The climbing vines over deadfalls and the leafy waterfalls in parts of our land remind me of landscape paintings from the early part of the 19th century — vast, unspoiled wilderness; the forest primeval. Deer come up to my porch looking for handouts. Possums and squirrels climb trees to peer in my windows. Fox kits bay in reply to the hoot owls in the hollow.

Even within our ecovillage there is a layer of social discontent below the surface that shows itself in untempered social media outbursts, factionalism and mob behavior. We are not immune to the steady trickle of mental pollution osmosing from the popular culture. We have many new neighbors on our borders. For $20k down and a bank loan, anyone can buy 100 acres of mature forest with all-season freshwater springs and creeks. Since my return, I have visited several of these neighborhood doomsteads that did not exist when I left. Typically they are some miles up a dirt road, then a half-mile down a mossy driveway, and elegantly self-reliant in their design, with state-of-the-art solar power, woodstoves, rainwater capture, large, well-tended gardens, and internet. Not concerning to most USAnians but worrisome to me is the number of guns.

Weapons in the USA: 400 million + 40 million/yr
AR-15 assault rifles in private ownership: 20 million
Small arms in military armories: 10 million
Small arms in police departments: 1 million

In some ways, Lewis County reminds me of what I saw when I visited the former Soviet Union in the years immediately after the fall of communism. There was widespread poverty and dislocation but the system had inertia. Wealth had accumulated by various means over a very long time. That store of wealth, along with general camaraderie, took them through their rough patch until the Western-style economy got going. Nobody but the Russian mafia had guns.

Nurses and Teachers

After two years of vacillating pandemic shutdowns and virtual work, some industries are finding it difficult to re-hire on-site workers. In particular, nurses and teachers have come to understand that they were at a front line they had not been aware of before, and not given hazard pay. In Denmark, hospitals are starting to limit surgeries to emergencies, and not because of Covid. In the US schools have been forced back to virtual or hybrid classroom mode.

Last week I told my Patreon subscribers that:

• The real inflation rate in the US is likely in the 12–15% range.
• Groceries up 11.9% since June 2021, highest since 1979
• Chicken up 17%, highest ever
• Restaurants up 9%, highest ever
• Fuel up 107%, highest ever
• Electricity up 12%, highest since 2006
• Rent up 5.2%, highest since 1987
• Airfares up 37.8%, highest since 1980
• Services up 5.7%, highest since 1990

These price increases show no sign of peaking, and some are at early exponential inception. Large firms are laying off a third of their workers, which will augur double-digit unemployment and federal aid demands by masses of the newly unemployed. Crashing stocks, bonds and crypto will take away fixed income assets for millions. Your savings are already worth 12–15% less than last year just from inflation. Social Security will not staunch the bleeding. The shock will have profound political implications that President Cheney may find insurmountable even with Keynesian stimuli or war on China.

Last week I looked at the gift economy as an alternative way to organize commerce. Our present rat race boils down to optimizing either production (as a means to consumption) or happiness (too often as a measure of consumption) per unit of time. Why? I think it makes more sense to optimize for total happiness and decouple from consumption/production.

 

Delegates gather for the IPCC event under the Glasgow / Sharm el Sheikh
work program at Bonn 2022. Credit: Photo by IISD/ENB | Kiara Worth

Hanging over our economic malaise is a sword of climate chaos and the indifference of humanity to raise its shield. A 2020 Nature Communications paper entitled “Scientists’ warning on affluence” warned:

“Any transition towards sustainability can only be effective if far-reaching lifestyle changes complement technological advancements.”

 

 

The Behavior Barrier

Recent reports from the UN’s IPCC co-lab echo that conclusion. The world’s wise men suggested reframing the meaning of affluence. Instead of using metrics of consumption, they proposed switching to metrics of lives well lived. Instead of intensive resource use, they proposed “the achievement of well-being and quality of life” within the biosphere’s limits. What scale of behavioral shift does that imply? Vox reporter Jag Bhalla writes:

So when leaders like President Joe Biden say they’ll heed “the science” on climate change, that should mean urgently enacting deep cuts to emissions, not just by the US as a whole, but by the wealthiest Americans specifically. There is no other physically possible, science-consistent way to get to 1.5°C stabilization or even 2°C.

By most accounts, we are in a recession already and it will get a whole lot deeper. The latest UN report says we are heading for a world that is 3.2°C warmer, even with full implementation of the Paris climate agreement. There is no obvious way out. The Fed or central bank levers used in the past are not going to work this time. Meetings in Bonn this week — the 56th sessions of the UNFCCC’s Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) and Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) (referred to as SB56) — were meant to set the stage for an aggressive October COP27 meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh but broke up in a blame game and name-calling.

One can never really predict the future — at best we can only make an educated guess. Plague, famine, war, and climate change are the four colorful horsemen galloping in our direction. How do you imagine this will end?

Perhaps The Farm’s new prepper neighbors have it right.

_____________________

Towns, villages and cities in the Ukraine are being bombed every day. As refugees pour out into the countryside, ​they must rest by day so they can travel by night. Ecovillages and permaculture farms have organized something like an underground railroad to shelter families fleeing the cities, either on a long-term basis or temporarily, as people wait for the best moments to cross the border to a safer place, or to return to their homes if that becomes possible. So far there are 62 sites in Ukraine and 265 around the region. They are calling their project “The Green Road.”

The Green Road also wants to address the ongoing food crisis at the local level by helping people grow their own food, and they are raising money to acquire farm machinery, seed, and to erect greenhouses. The opportunity, however, is larger than that. The majority of the migrants are children. This will be the first experience in ecovillage living for most. They will directly experience its wonders, skills, and safety. They may never want to go back. Those that do will carry the seeds within them of the better world they glimpsed through the eyes of a child.

Those wishing to make a tax-deductible gift can do so through Global Village Institute by going to http://PayPal.me/greenroad2022 or by directing donations to greenroad@thefarm.org.

There is more info on the Global Village Institute website at https://www.gvix.org/greenroad

__________________

The COVID-19 pandemic has destroyed lives, livelihoods, and economies. But it has not slowed down climate change, which presents an existential threat to all life, humans included. The warnings could not be stronger: temperatures and fires are breaking records, greenhouse gas levels keep climbing, sea level is rising, and natural disasters are upsizing.

As the world confronts the pandemic and emerges into recovery, there is growing recognition that the recovery must be a pathway to a new carbon economy, one that goes beyond zero emissions and runs the industrial carbon cycle backwards — taking CO2 from the atmosphere and ocean, turning it into coal and oil, and burying it in the ground. The triple bottom line of this new economy is antifragility, regeneration, and resilience.

Help me get my blog posted every week. All Patreon donations and Blogger or Substack subscriptions are needed and welcomed. You are how we make this happen. Your contributions are being made to Global Village Institute, a tax-deductible 501(c)(3) charity. PowerUp! donors on Patreon get an autographed book off each first press run. Please help if you can.

#RestorationGeneration #ReGeneration

“There are the good tipping points, the tipping points in public consciousness when it comes to addressing this crisis, and I think we are very close to that.”

— Climate Scientist Michael Mann, January 13, 2021.

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Return of the Wampum

"This is the last of several parts on the long beaded belt of white wampum with two parallel lines of purple beads, the Gä•sweñta’."

A Canadian art museum site says the original Gä•sweñta’ exists today only in memory and reproduction. From what they say, one is left to speculate. Perhaps it is in the man cave of a Silicon Valley billionaire. Maybe it is in an oil lawyer’s private office on the 200th floor of a Dubai skyscraper. Perhaps it was on a wall of one of Saddam’s palaces before it was bombed, or in a private collection in ill-fated Fallujah or Mariupol.

Smithsonian returns belt to Six Nations of Grand River

Fortunately, we need not speculate. The Joseph Brant Grand River band took both the Two Row Belt and the Friendship Belt with them to Canada in 1783 to establish the Nations’ Council there following the Treaty of Paris. In 1843, Chief John Buck, holder of the Onondaga Wolf Clan title Skanawati, became the Grand River wampum keeper and, until his death in 1893, preserved some 22 important belts and their messages. Historian Kathryn Muller writes:

It is crucial to understand that these belts belonged to the League as a whole, serving as mnemonic devices to preserve political transactions and creation stories for generations to come and were not the personal property of John Buck. In 1871 Horatio Hale photographed the nineteen League belts of great historic importance, subsequently described by Elisabeth Tooker: six related to the founding of the League, four explained the first treaty between the Haudenosaunee and the English, one confirmed a treaty by the Canadian government, and the rest remained unexplained.

Unfortunately, what had happened to the belts held by Wampum Keeper Thomas Webster in the USA also happened to the belts held by Buck in Canada. After Buck's death in 1893, his son Joshua Buck refused to return the belts to the community and instead treated them as private possessions, offering them for sale to numerous dealers. J. N. B. Hewitt, an ethnologist for the Smithsonian Institution, attempted to purchase the belts in 1897, but Joshua Buck, at the time wanted for robbery and rape, fled to the United States. Eleven of the League wampum belts eventually wound up with T. R. Roddy, a Chicago dealer in First Nations artifacts. Roddy bought six from Cayuga Chief James Jamieson of Grand River, who was never a wampum keeper. Roddy later claimed that "they have been in the Jamieson family at least fifty years.”

Roddy attempted to sell his collection but New York State Archaeologist Arthur C. Parker warned all American museums of the Six Nations’ claim. Kathyrn Muller writes:

Regardless of who sold the belts to Roddy, their removal from Native custodianship demonstrates a clear shift in their ancient roles: originally living representations of historic pledges, the belts were reduced by their sale to simple commodities, pawns in the thriving, yet often unscrupulous, trade of Native artifacts.

This is what happens to the value of a non-fungible token (NFT) if it loses the trust it symbolizes. Its strength or fragility is not embedded. It relies on the entire chain of custody and custom. 

Follow the Money

Set upon by Parker, the US Department of Indian Affairs continued to contact Roddy, stating that "the loss of these belts is a matter of concern to their Indian owners, and I have to ask whether they are not in your possession, and, if so, what action under the circumstances mentioned you intend taking in regard thereto." Meanwhile, Roddy, negotiating through the Indian Trading Company of New York City, finally sold the eleven belts to George G. Heye for $2,000 in 1910. Heye exhibited them at the University Museum in Philadelphia, where he was a trustee. Not long after that, anthropologist Frank Speck discovered Heye's belts while working at the museum, compared them with a photo, and wrote to the head of the Anthropological Survey of Canada who contacted the Deputy Superintendent General of Indian Affairs in Ottawa. Heye admitted they were original wampum belts but denied they were ever stolen.

Haudenosaunee efforts to repatriate the eleven belts lay dormant for just over sixty years until lawyer Paul Williams, director of rights and treaty research for the Union of Ontario Indians, wrote to the Museum of the American Indian-Heye Museum (MAI-HM). Heye once more admitted they originated in Grand River but demanded proof they were stolen. A Heye trustee performed independent research confirming the theft but rather than returning them, suggested they be transferred to the National Museum of Man in Ottawa.

Chief Jake Thomas, 1988

Finally, in 1985, the Haudenosaunee Council, represented by Williams, formally demanded the return of the wampum belts. Eleven belts were returned to the Grand River Onondaga Longhouse on May 8, 1988. At the repatriation ceremony, Jake Thomas of the Onondaga Nation Council of Chiefs, read the Friendship Belt and the Two Row Wampum, using reproductions since the originals were too fragile to handle. He described in eloquent detail how the Friendship Belt "reaffirms an early bond of alliance,” notably the chain concept, representing the original agreements between the Iroquois and the colonists. Moving on to the Two Row Wampum, Chief Thomas described "two parallel lines that never converge on a white background, representing the enduring separation of Iroquois from European law and custom.”

Jake Edwards in January 2013 with replicas

The surviving Haudenosaunee that Justice Hiscock had ruled as “ceased to exist” is today 125,000 strong and still standing for their rights. Agreements entered into with the Smithsonian Institution and other museums have succeeded in returning many artifacts, including lost wampum.

The Two Row Wampum belt, originally recorded in three rows of white beads alternating with two rows of purple, is back in the possession of the Haudenosaunee. The Hiawatha belt—the federation Constitution—has been returned.

In the first installment of this series, I compared wampum to NFTs, employing proof of work as authentication of value. The blockchain of the day was the oral history carried across generations by designated wampum keepers, persons given care of the belts who were worthy of maximum trust. In that way, wampum is like a token based on proof of trust.

At a 2013 remembrance celebration, Jake Edwards said:

We agreed at that time to only take what was needed to survive and make sure there was something left for future generations, and not to pass laws on to each other. This agreement was made 400 years ago and it’s been violated. We’re looking to educate the other side of the ship people, so they can persuade their governments to honor the treaties and protect the Earth.

The Six Nations still observe the Gayanashagowa and adhere to the Kaswenga. They are still in the river with us, still paddling their canoe, and watching as we go our strange, separate way.

Gratitude versus Greed

Consider how different was the gift economy of the Americas before the arrival of French, Dutch and English merchants. The encounter was greed meeting gratitude.

In rural México it is customary when visiting the home of another that you bring some small gift to the host. When someone gives you a gift you tend to like them more. You are less likely to feel threatened. That gift culture ecosystem, carried through time from Aztec, Olmec, Nahuatl and Maya economies, represents an honor code where things of value are exchanged without an explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards. The late David Graeber, lost to Covid in 2020, observed that no reciprocity is expected between unequals; if you make a gift of a dollar to a beggar, he will not give it back the next time you meet. Nor do you expect to receive anything of value in return. And yet, you do.

The Children of Peace were a 19th-century utopian Quaker experiment based on living values of peace, equality and social justice. They built Ontario's first shelter for the homeless and organized the province's first co-operative, the Farmers' Storehouse. Then Ontario enacted laws making accepting charity a sign of indebtedness and decreed that any debtor—any recipient of charity—could be jailed without trial. It was called the "poison of the gift,” an effort to stamp out the nascent gift economy. CoP opened the province's first credit union by transforming their fund into something like today's micro-credit co-ops. By offering the poor loans instead of charity, they were allowed to keep going. Unfortunately, they were also laying the groundwork for debt slavery and by that means accomplishing the regressive government’s plan.

Imagine for a moment that a neighbor comes to visit and brings in your mail for you. No doubt you are grateful for the gesture. Now imagine the neighbor asks for money in exchange or even says he/she will withhold the mail until you pay him/her for the kindness. In most places, ransoming your mail would be a crime, but in many jurisdictions, like the USA, the legal means to get it back would likely cost you more than your mail is worth. The design of the justice system, based on a lack of trust like everything else, impedes justice.

Take that kind of systemic blackmail to scale, as the European traders did at the time of the conquest, and you eventually achieve embedded and intransigent income and social class disparities, public health and education privatization, growth addiction to meet promises and political polarization that threatens all life on Earth. Scale it the other way and you get localized economic regimes of common property and non-commodified labor, perhaps even memorialized in beaded belts.

The Haudenosaunee spoke of remembering the “original instructions” given by the Creator. The belts helped. For the rest of us and climate change, it will come down to wanting to survive badly enough to consider the alternatives we know we have.

References:

Barreiro, Jose. "Indian Roots of American Democracy.” Cultural Encounter I. Special Constitution Bicentennial Edition Northeast Indian Quarterly 4, no. 4 (1988).

Dwyer, D., Two Row Wampum campaign marking 400th anniversary of first Haudenosaunee treaty, Ithaca Times June 5, 2013

Graeber, D. and D. Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, Penguin: 2021

Lopez, A., Pagans in Our Midst, Akwesasne Notes: 1977

Mann, Barbara Alice, Iroquoian Women: The Gantowisas, New York: Peter Lang: 2000

Muller, Kathryn V., The Two “Mystery” Belts of Grand River, American Indian Quarterly 31:1 Winter 2007

Otto, Paul, and Jaap Jacobs. "Early Iroquoian–European Contacts: The Kaswentha Tradition, the Two Row Wampum Belt, and the Tawagonshi Document." Special issue, Journal of Early American History 3 (2013): 1.

Parker, Arthur C. 1912. The Code of Handsome Lake, the Seneca Prophet. New York State Museum Bulletin 163, Education Department Bulletin 530. Albany: University of the State of New York.

—. 1916. The Constitution of the Five Nations, or the Iroquois Book of the Great Law. New York State Museum Bulletin 184. Albany: University of the State of New York.

—. 1919. The Life of General Ely S. Parker, Last Grand Sachem of the Iroquois and General Grant’s Military Secretary. Buffalo Historical Society Publications 23. Buffalo, NY: Buffalo Historical Society. 

Losing the Peace: The Beaded Blockchain of Kahionni

"A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain. —William James"

This is the second in a series.

 

Image after Franco Mocci, Iroquois Warrior

Last week we looked at the way that cultural heritage was preserved through the distributed ledger of wampum, or kahionni, based upon both proof of work and proof of trust. Through the Two Row Gä•sweñta’ Belt, early colonial-era cross-cultural negotiations in New England could be governed by mutual respect, reciprocity, and renewal. From the standpoint of the Haudenosaunee, or Six Nation Iroquois, the relationship was one of sovereign interdependence. The various parties—Indian, French, Dutch, English—would agree to share the same space while each retaining separate nationhood.

The Indians learned to their misfortune that the French were not as keen on the compromise as the Dutch were. In 1687, Louis XIV decided to put an end to the well-organized Iroquois League and dispatched the Marquis de Denonville with orders to use whatever force necessary to drive the then Five Nations from the Hudson region. David Graeber and David Wengrow tell what happened in The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021):

Feigning interest in a peace settlement, Denonville invited the League council, as a body, to negotiate terms in a place called Fort Frontenac (after the former governor). Some 200 delegates arrived, including all the permanent officers of the confederation and many from the women’s councils as well. Summarily arresting them, Denonville shipped them off to France to serve as galley slaves. Then, taking advantage of the resulting confusion, he ordered his men to invade the Five Nations’ territory. [Quebac Governor] Lahontan, who strongly disapproved of the proceedings, got himself into trouble for trying to intervene and stop some underlings from casually torturing the prisoners—he was ordered away, but in the end spared further sanction after protesting that he had been drunk. Some years later, in a different context, an order was put out for his arrest on grounds of insubordination, and he had to flee to Amsterdam.

Fortunately for the survival of the Indians, the head of the Haudenosaunee women’s council, the Jigonsaseh, had chosen not to attend Denonville’s meeting. Graeber and Wengrow tell us that she and the remaining clan mothers quickly raised an impressive army from the four corners of the Nations, including women warriors. The Jigonsaseh was a far superior military tactician to Denonville. After routing the French in New York, her forces were at the point of entering Montreal when the French sued for peace, agreeing to dismantle Fort Niagara and return the surviving galley slaves that had formerly constituted the Great Council and its officers. Of the original 200 mostly elderly high-level officials, only a dozen or so made it back from France alive.

“America is one of the finest countries anyone ever stole.”

—Bobcat Goldthwaite

After driving the French out of their lands, the Jigonsaseh demobilized her army and convened the matriarchal process of selecting new officials to reconstitute a government. It should come as no surprise that thereafter the Haudenosaunee were somewhat chilly to the French and warmed to an alliance with England.

In 1677 the English and the Haudenosaunee officially pledged a strategic bond of friendship, known as the Covenant Chain alliance. This grew out of an earlier wampum treaty between Dutch traders and the Mohawks, depicted as two stick figures at either end of the belt united by a rope that ran down the middle of the belt.

The rope evolved into a sturdier iron chain in 1664 when the covenant was extended to include the English who had conquered New Netherlands. This eventually became a more durable silver chain of friendship in 1677 and was further formalized by a treaty made with Lt. Governor William Denny of Pennsylvania on behalf of the Crown in 1757. The belt, part of the Haudenosaunee ledger system, was called the “Friendship Belt.” The metaphors of the rope, the iron chain, and the silver chain illustrated steadfast and everlasting friendship and mutual respect. Custody was given to a trusted interpreter who will hold the belt for life, read It back to the Council on appropriate occasions, and pass it to a trustworthy successor.

Friendship Belt

 

Please bear with this lengthy narrative. I am laying the ground for why the Friendship Belt, and many of the other wampum belts, were so important. Later we will see how blind the European economic system was to that perspective.

Fractured by War

British loyalty in peace and war proved a disaster to the Haudenosaunee when the alliance suffered the defeat of the American Revolution. They had not entered into that conflict entirely blindly, or with unanimity. In order for the Great Council to officially declare war it was necessary for each state in their union to separately declare. Kathryn Murray writes:

Council after council was held but all could not agree as to what policy to follow. The Mohawks were for war. The Onondagas were neutral. The Senecas and Cayugas were lukewarm to either side. The Oneidas and Tuscarora sympathized with the struggling colonies. Even within a nation, all could not agree. Finally, Theyendinagea, a Mohawk war leader, said, "Let each nation be responsible for its own members. Let each nation decide for itself what path it will take in this war!” He held up this wampum belt which has on it the figures of two roads. They represent the road of the English and the road of the American colonies. The nations of the Iroquois could choose either road to follow.

Following the war, those who had sided with the colonies or remained neutral stayed in their ancestral home in New York. Those who were British loyalists departed and were led by Chief Joseph Brant north to Grand River, Ontario, where they founded a new Six Nations government seat. Given the scale of this exodus, much of present-day New York State was abandoned to white settlements. Today more than 45,000 enrolled Six Nations people live in Canada and about 80,000 in the United States. 

 

Joseph Brant by Charles Willson Peale

What Became of the Ledger?

In the late 19th century, as the old chiefs who held the sacred belts died, more of the collection came to reside in the possession of Onondaga Chief Thomas Webster, until he died in 1897.

Syracuse Journal July 5, 1897:

Chief Thomas Webster, the keeper of the wampum of the Iroquois confederacy, is dead…. The office of wampum keeper is one of the most ancient in the Confederacy. The Websters are mentioned among the most noted chiefs of the Onondagas of recent years. They are the descendants of the marriage of Ephraim Webster, Onondaga's first settler, with an Indian.

***

The chief kept this wampum under his bed in his hut on the reservation. Now it is said that some of the most valuable pieces of it are missing…. The Mayor of Albany is said to have come into possession of a very valuable piece called the Hiawatha belt. The question is how did these belts disappear?

 

Copyright 1896 by Procter & Gamble.

SAID Uncle Sam: I will be wise, 
And thus the Indian civilize.
Instead of guns that kill a mile,
Tobacco, lead and liquor vile.

Instead of serving out a meal,
Or sending Agents out to steal,
I'll give, domestic arts to teach,
A cake of  IVORY SOAP' to each.

Before it flies the guilty stain,
The grease and dirt no more remain;
"Twill change their nature day by day,
And wash their darkest blots away

'They'll turn their bows to fishing rods,
And bury hatchets under sods,
In wisdom and in worth increase,
And ever smoke the pipe of peace;.

For ignorance can never cope
With such a foe as *IVORY SOAP!*

 

Syracuse Post Standard July 12, 1897:

Harriet Maxwell Converse in writing about the death of Thomas Webster, said in the Buffalo Express that there may be serious trouble in holding the national condolence because of the disappearance of the wampum.

***

The federation agreement among the Six Nations is the most highly prized of the collection. It represents the Long House, or Council House of the Confederacy, which was always located in the Onondaga Valley flanked by small figures. To the right and left of these small figures are six larger ones with clasped hands.

***

Belts Made From Shell Beads

One of the other belts of wampum, it is said, sealed the treaty by which the Tuscarora (Shirt-Wearers) were admitted to the Iroquois confederation. The Tuscaroras were originally from the South Atlantic coast; were driven north by the persecution of their more warlike neighbors and were admitted into the Iroquois confederacy. Still another of the pieces of wampum is known as the Hiawatha belt. All are made from shell beads, the original wampum of the North American Indian.

[Mrs. Converse | writes: I "It is fitting that something more than a mere mention should follow Thomas Webster. He was nearly 90 years of age, and had held the wampum for sixty years. No council or condolence could be held without him. His duty to 'read the wampum’ was imperative, his office absolute and important. The sachem name cannot die, therefore, as a matter of law and necessity, a successor will be 'raised' within a year.

There will be some delay and possibly serious trouble in holding this national condolence, for the reason that most of the precious wampum has disappeared. It may be that by. the death of this distinguished man some light may be thrown upon the mystery of the loss of these laws of the wampum.’

On November 13, 1897, the Onondaga Nation sued Albany Mayor John Thatcher to recover the Webster wampum. Thatcher maintained he had legally purchased the belts and intended to maintain his ownership. A book printed on The Farm in Tennessee by Andre Lopez of Akwesasne Notes in 1977, Pagans in Our Midst, goes on to describe the travel of the lawsuit against Thatcher through the years and ends with this:

The Syracuse Post Standard, Oct. 27, 1889:

IN THE LONG LITIGATION AND NOVEL SUIT BROUGHT BY LOCAL INDIANS AND THE STATE UNIVERSITY TO RECOVER POSSESSION OF RELICS.

Will Remain With Ex-Mayor Thatcher
Decision Rendered Today

Justice Frank H. Hiscock this morning handed down his decision in the Supreme court action brought by the Onondaga nation of Indians to recover of ex-Mayor John Boyd Thacher of Albany possession of four wampum belts. The complaint is dismissed with costs, allowing Thacher to retain possession of the belts until such time as he may place them in some public place for preservation.

***

I am not willing to hold that on February 10, 1891, this old league, composed first of the Five and then of the Six Nations, had any active or actual existence or that Thomas Webster was at that date wampum keeper for those nations and that he held these wampums as such and that in violation of his duties sold them, or that there is any such identity and community of interest between these individual plaintiffs and members of the Six Nations in having these wampums preserved and restored to some custodian as permits the maintenance of this action. The evidence seems altogether too shadowy to sustain these propositions.

I am rather led to the conclusion that at and long before the time mentioned the league to which these wampums are said to have belonged had been dissolved; that we had come to associate even the name with a period long gone by; that the nations which composed it had become separated and to a large extent scattered and dispersed as wards of the government, and that these wampums are curiosities and relics of a time and condition and confederation which has ceased to exist and that Webster had possession of them as one who had gathered them as such relics. The evidence indicates to my mind that the Onondaga nation had ceased to treat or regard them as the property of the Onondaga nation, much less as that of the Iroquois League.

While the ruling by Justice Hiscock made a number of errors in facts and law, it was binding on the Onondaga. Among the errors were Hiscock’s declarations that the League had never had any historical existence; that it wasn't a violation of a wampum keeper’s fiduciary trust to sell his wampum; that the League was long since dissolved and scattered; and that these belts were mere relics. There was no further appeal allowed. It seemed certain that the ledger had been broken.

This essay is one of several parts. Next week we will examine how the sacred wampum returned home and was restored to its former position.

References

Barreiro, Jose. "Indian Roots of American Democracy.” Cultural Encounter I. Special Constitution Bicentennial Edition Northeast Indian Quarterly 4 (1988).

_____, Indian Roots of American Democracy, NY Albany Museum: 1990

Berman, Howard R., “Perspectives on American Indian Sovereignty and International Law, 1600 to 1776,” in Oren R. Lyons and John C. Mohawk (eds.), Exiled in the Land of the Free: Democracy, Indian Nations, and the U.S. Constitution, Santa Fe, N.M.: Clear Light Publishers, 1992, p. 135

Graeber, D. and D. Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, Penguin: 2021

Lopez, A., Pagans in Our Midst, Akwesasne Notes: 1977

Muller, Kathryn V., The Two “Mystery” Belts of Grand River, American Indian Quarterly 31:1 Winter 2007

Otto, Paul, and Jaap Jacobs. "Early Iroquoian–European Contacts: The Kaswentha Tradition, the Two Row Wampum Belt, and the Tawagonshi Document." Special issue, Journal of Early American History 3 (2013): 1. DOI 10.1163/18770703-00301005

 

Towns, villages and cities in the Ukraine are being bombed every day. As refugees pour out into the countryside, ​they must rest by day so they can travel by night. Ecovillages and permaculture farms have organized something like an underground railroad to shelter families fleeing the cities, either on a long-term basis or temporarily, as people wait for the best moments to cross the border to a safer place, or to return to their homes if that becomes possible. So far there are 62 sites in Ukraine and 265 around the region. They are calling their project “The Green Road.”

The Green Road also wants to address the ongoing food crisis at the local level by helping people grow their own food, and they are raising money to acquire farm machinery, seed, and to erect greenhouses. The opportunity, however, is larger than that. The majority of the migrants are children. This will be the first experience in ecovillage living for most. They will directly experience its wonders, skills, and safety. They may never want to go back. Those that do will carry the seeds within them of the better world they glimpsed through the eyes of a child.

Those wishing to make a tax-deductible gift can do so through Global Village Institute by going to http://PayPal.me/greenroad2022 or by directing donations to greenroad@thefarm.org.

There is more info on the Global Village Institute website at https://www.gvix.org/greenroad

_______________

The COVID-19 pandemic has destroyed lives, livelihoods, and economies. But it has not slowed down climate change, which presents an existential threat to all life, humans included. The warnings could not be stronger: temperatures and fires are breaking records, greenhouse gas levels keep climbing, sea level is rising, and natural disasters are upsizing.

As the world confronts the pandemic and emerges into recovery, there is growing recognition that the recovery must be a pathway to a new carbon economy, one that goes beyond zero emissions and runs the industrial carbon cycle backward — taking CO2 from the atmosphere and ocean, turning it into coal and oil, and burying it in the ground. The triple bottom line of this new economy is antifragility, regeneration, and resilience.

Help me get my blog posted every week. All Patreon donations and Blogger or Substack subscriptions are needed and welcomed. You are how we make this happen. Your contributions are being made to Global Village Institute, a tax-deductible 501(c)(3) charity. PowerUp! donors on Patreon get an autographed book off each first press run. Please help if you can.

#RestorationGeneration #ReGeneration

“There are the good tipping points, the tipping points in public consciousness when it comes to addressing this crisis, and I think we are very close to that.”

— Climate Scientist Michael Mann, January 13, 2021.

Want to help make a difference while you shop in the Amazon app, at no extra cost to you? Simply follow the instructions below to select “Global Village Institute” as your charity and activate AmazonSmile in the app. They’ll donate a portion of your eligible purchases to us.

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4. Follow the on-screen instructions to activate AmazonSmile in the mobile app

The First NFTs Pre-existed the United States

"The first NFT was a long, beaded belt of white wampum with two parallel lines of purple beads."

 

Chiefs of the Six Nations, after photo by Horatio Hale, 1871

At the time when Europeans made first contact with North Americans, beaded belts of wampum were something like blockchain tokens—employing proof of work as authentication of value. They were not really used as a substitute for barter, as Europeans then and many historians today still believe. Most were created to authenticate, certify and memorialize, like an NFT.1 The blockchain of the day was the oral history carried across generations by designated wampum keepers, persons given care of the belts who were worthy of maximum trust. In that way, wampum was like an entry into a platform based on proof of trust.

Last week I wrote about the Onondaga Land Claim and in the process, I stumbled upon a historical mystery—the whereabouts of some beaded belts, including one known as Teioháte Kaswenta (Two Row Wampum). The story behind this and other belts continues to inform legal cases, diplomatic relations, history and art today.

When the Dutch East India Company, looking to trade for beaver pelts, sailed up the Hudson and encountered the Haudenosaunee2, they noticed that white shell-adorned belts, sashes, wristbands, moccasins and necklaces were common accessories for men, women and children and more valued than Dutch gold or silver. The most prized beads were brilliantly white, made of Knobbed Whelk and Channelled Whelk (Busycon carica and Busycotypus canaliculatus) brought inland by coastal Algonquian speakers such as the Munsees and Pequots of Long Island and Cape Cod, or by Penobscot and tribes along the coast of Maine. The term wampum is an anglicized truncation of the Algonquian term wampumpeag, which is perhaps a corruption of Wampanoag, a coastal nation that made beads from those shells more than 1000 years ago. 

When the Great Law of Peace was enacted, Hiawatha designed the Five Nations wampum belt as beaded white squares signifying the Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida and Mohawk in geographical order with the Onondaga, at the center, represented by an eastern white pine—the Tree of Peace.

 

Hiawatha belt

The Todadaho 

Five months before he died in 2018, my friend Manitonquat, known to most as Medicine Story, sent me his favorite story, the Great Law of Peace. 

The Peacemaker was born and grew among the Huron people. We who are not Haudenosaunee have heard that his name was Deganawida, but those people only call him the Peacemaker. When he began to have a vision of a Great Peace among all the nations, the fiercely independent Huron would hear none of it. So he traveled to other lands and found acceptance for his dream among the Kanayenkahaka, the People of the Flint, whom we call the Mohawk. They are the eastern guardian of those nations.

The central nation, which we know as the Onondaga, had been taken over by a powerful and dangerous magician called Todadaho. Another man of that nation, Hiawatha, came into conflict with the magician’s dictatorship, but the rest of his people were all afraid, so Hiawatha left them to seek another community. On his travels, he had several dreams that told him the five nations should unite and agree on peace among them.

***

The Kanayenkahaka encouraged the Peacemaker and Hiawatha to travel to the other four nations with their proposal. So they set out and enlisted the Oneida, the Cayuga, and the Seneca in the proposal for a union, saving the difficult task of the Onondaga under the power of the magician Todadaho for the last. They all went together in a great peace march, singing of the Great Peace to come.

***

Todadaho had snakes all over his head that secreted evil into his brain, so while Hiawatha spoke the Peacemaker began to comb the snakes out. When someone combs your hair it is very relaxing, and Todadaho was quieted and open to hearing Hiawatha.

“O Great Todadaho,” Hiawatha crooned, “wise and powerful war leader of the nation, you are the greatest of warriors. But now we have a vision of far greater power for you. As great as you are in war, we see an even greater future for you in the much more difficult arts of peace in which no one has been successful. As the head of the center of the five nations, you could institute a Great Law of Peace that would unite them and make them live while all other nations die away, and your honor would remain for all time, your wisdom sung by many generations to come.”

Of course, Todadaho was won over, not just by the flattery, but by the vision of his leadership in a Great Peace. So it was that the Onondaga became the center of this league of nations, and the man who leads the league from there today is still called by the title of Todadaho.

Hiawatha is said to have introduced wampum to the Peacemaker after the former’s wanderings along the Eastern Seaboard. The Peacemaker employed wampum designs to keep his teachings and they became the oral constitution or Gayanashagowa. The original five member nations ratified this constitution in council near present-day Victor, New York, perhaps 500 years ago, maybe longer, with the Tuscarora later joining in 1722.

Included in that constitution, passed to this day by storytellers who interpret the wampum belts, is a system of government whereby the League is governed by a Grand Council—an assembly of fifty chiefs or sachems, each representing one of the clans of one of the nations. Most Iroquoian peoples have a matrilineal kinship system—descent passing through the maternal lines—and children are considered born into their mother’s clan. Their clan mothers, or elder women of each clan, are highly respected. The women of a clan nominate the chief for life, own the symbols of his office, and can remove him if he disgraces himself. The wampum designed by the Great Peacemaker and made by Hiawatha provided ways to settle grievances, make decisions of state, and rituals of social healing. These “NFTs” are still employed in longhouse councils today.

Historian Kathryn Muller writes:

Without the belt's accompanying discourse, the historian would simply examine an expressive object, rich in color and pictographic symbolism but lacking in elaboration. Too often, however, the historical value of the oral tradition of wampum belts is ignored by academics who consider it to be unreliable. For example, political scientist and author Tom Flanagan doubts the accuracy of oral tradition since it “is a memory of a memory and depends on person-to-person telling and retelling, which offers more opportunities for omission, distortion and error to creep in.” Furthermore, William Fenton, an eminent scholar of the Six Nations, asserts that since the frequent reading of a belt is necessary to maintain the precision of the message, belts retained for decades in museums, far away, lose credibility.

Cayuga Chief Jake Thomas argues with this idea that “proof of trust” messages lose fidelity. He says that elders carefully instructed younger keepers of the wampum in the precise memorization of stories, preparing them to become spokespeople of their nations. “When you pass it on, you don't try to use your own ideas, because if you do, you get people confused.”

The Colombian Encounter

Although the first European explorers incorrectly assumed wampum was an indigenous form of money, they were not far wrong, in that all Eastern Woodland Indians practiced some form of gift economy and social reciprocity. Gift-giving resolved differences and cemented relationships between individuals and groups. When the Dutch and French began bringing colored glass beads to trade, and iron drills, they had scant conception of how valuable those were, or how much their gesture would be appreciated. Those beautiful little bits of colored glass might even be worth taking in trade for an entire island at the mouth of the Hudson.

Explorer Jacques Cartier recorded in 1535 that 

the most precious thing that they have in this world is esnogny, which is white as snow. 

The esnogny referred to was likely the polished whelp shells. When Cartier returned in 1541, as he had promised, he was greeted by a chief who 

took a piece of tanned leather of a yellow skin edged about with esnogny ... which was upon his head instead of a crown, and he put the same on the head of our captain, and took from his wrists two bracelets of esnogny, and put them upon the captain’s arms.

Cartier was being introduced to the gift economy, although he failed to grasp its significance.

Cornell University’s Jon Parmenter records that the Iroquois employed a method of weaving that permitted side-to-side stringing of short tubular white whelk shells and dark-colored tubular beads for geometrical designs and representational images. The availability of European-supplied iron drills came later, but examples of purple wampum of quahog shell have been dated to 1605.

Wampum recorded other important agreements, such as the 1701 Dish with One Spoon Treaty between the Haudenosaunee and the Anishinaabe peoples or the 1722 admission of the Tuscarora to the League.  These belts were not currency—they were tokens admitting new groups to participate. According to Muller,

White wampum symbolized “peace, desire for understanding, and sociability,” while purple, dark, or black wampum “conveyed a semantic context of death, mourning, and associability.” A wampum belt colored red reflected “high emotion and excitement and the ultimate expression of antisociability: war.” … Many belts, perhaps even the majority that survive today, combine both purple and white beads in their pictographs, and many of these definitely represented friendly relations between Europeans and Natives.

***

While such pictographs and color symbolism allowed Native chiefs and European colonial officials to circumvent early language barriers and understand the bare bones of the message (peace/friendship or war), a much more complex explanation could only be developed with an interpreter….

In 1613 there was perhaps one of the most significant parlays ever to occur, between unnamed Mohawks and a Dutch trader named Jacob Eelckens at Tawagonshi. Its memory is retained in Haudenosaunee oral history as the Gä•sweñta’ or Kaswentha. Parmenter describes it this way:

The underlying concept of kaswentha emphasizes the distinct identity of the two peoples and a mutual engagement to coexist in peace without interference in the affairs of the other. The Two Row Belt, as it is commonly known, depicts the kaswentha relationship in visual form via a long beaded belt of white wampum with two parallel lines of purple wampum along its length – the lines symbolizing a separate-but-equal relationship between two entities based on mutual benefit and mutual respect for each party’s inherent freedom of movement–neither side may attempt to “steer” the vessel of the other as it travels along its own, self-determined path.

The Two Row Belt

 The Onondaga Nation website describes the Kaswentha this way:

After many discussions, it was decided that the Haudenosaunee and the Europeans must have a way to greet each other when they meet. The settlers with their large sailed boat thought that they should be called “Father” and the Haudenosaunee “Son.” The Haudenosaunee said that this would not do. “We shall address each other as ‘Brothers.’ This shows that we are equal to each other.”

As the Haudenosaunee and Dutch discovered much about each other, an agreement was made as to how they were to treat each other and live together. Each of their ways would be shown in the purple rows running the length of a wampum belt. “In one row is a ship with our White Brothers’ ways; in the other a canoe with our ways. Each will travel down the river of life side by side. Neither will attempt to steer the other’s vessel.”

Besides in their Council gatherings, Haudenosaunee speakers recited the Kaswentha tradition for Anglo-American and French colonial audiences on at least fifteen recorded occasions between 1656 and 1744 with “a striking degree of consistency.”

A nineteenth-century French dictionary of the Mohawk language defined the very word for wampum belt (kahionni) as a human-made symbol emulating a river, due in part to its linear form and in part to the way in which its constituent shell beads resemble ripples and waves. Just as a navigable water course facilitates mutual relations between nations, thus does kahionni, “the river formed by the hand of man”, serve as a sign of “alliance, concord, and friendship” that links “divergent spirits” and provides a “bond between hearts”

The Haudenosaunee on the US side of the border used their Two Row Wampum to resist the Indian Citizenship Act, the Selective Service Act and the Internal Revenue Service Act. Before allowing their young men to join the army in 1942, the Grand Council made a separate declaration of war against the Axis powers that they forwarded to Franklin Roosevelt. In Canada, the 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples described the Two Row as “a model of parallelism with which to guide Canadian-Aboriginal relations.”

Art historian Laura Brandon observes:

It is considered a living treaty, and its alternating rows of purple and white shell beads represent the two parties to the treaty moving forward together in parallel, but never merging, signifying respect for each other’s rights. Of the five rows, the first of three white ones denotes peace, the second, friendship, and the third, perpetuity. One of the two purple rows symbolizes European leaders, government, and religion in a sailboat, while the second purple row signifies a canoe conveying Indigenous leaders, their government, and their way of life.

The official seal of the New Netherland colony, probably adopted in 1630 (the date of the original deed of the patroonship of Rensselaerswijck), featured a beaver on a background of the Two Row wampum. 

It may be comforting to imagine a different scenario that could have unfolded. When approached by the Dutch in 1613, the Haudenosaunee welcomed them with gifts and established that the newcomers were their guests. Had the Haudenosaunee not later ceded—by treaty, coercion and outright theft—vast lands from the St. Lawrence to the Delaware River, there could today be wolves, bears and cougars in the Allegheny and Pocono Mountains. Beavers would still be there. The ecology of the region might still be relatively intact, resilient and regenerative.

 

Pueyo, T., Uncharted Territories, June 2, 2022

Of course, that is only to be imagined. The population pressure of Europe was such that relief had to be found and the Atlantic crossing was the easiest release. In the Old World, teeming human populations had disrupted ecological and social balances, driving many plants and animals to extinction and placing nations at constant war with one another for adequate land and resources.

From first landfall, conflict between East and West was inevitable. The Haudenosaunee, as formidable as they were, had neither army nor weapons sufficient to repel such an invasion. Suing for peace provided little respite.

A wave of human flesh enveloped and decimated the entire natural ecology of the Western Hemisphere. Poor stewardship was just one outward manifestation. It was population that killed the continent. Many invasive species were introduced, but the most dangerous of them had two legs.

Until almost the end of the 19th century, some of the most important belts of the Haudenosaunee, and the stories they told, resided in the possession of just a few trusted wampum keepers. As these began to die, it was as though the “NFTs” they represented were deprived of power.

Syracuse Journal July 5, 1897:

Chief Thomas Webster, the keeper of the wampum of the Iroquois confederacy, is dead. This death takes the last of the aged keepers of the wampum of the Six Nations Confederacy. Upon the 28th of February, 1895, Abraham Hill, the keeper of the wampum of the Younger Brothers died. The office of wampum keeper is one of the most ancient in the Confederacy. The Websters are mentioned among the most noted chiefs of the Onondagas of recent years. They are the descendants of the marriage of Ephraim Webster, Onondaga's first settler, with an Indian. These descendants have always lived with the Onondagas. Harry Webster, one of Ephraim Webster's children, was long a chief of high reputation. Thomas Webster came from this same family.

There are some stories afloat about the recent disappearance of wampum from the keeping of Chief Webster. The chief kept this wampum under his bed in his hut on the reservation. Now it is said that some of the most valuable pieces of it are missing. Three years ago, at the time of the Onondaga Historical Association loan exhibition, this wampum was exhibited in the charge of Chief Webster. They were returned, and some of the most valuable pieces are said to have been missed and turned up in the collections at the State museum and the Smithsonian Institution. The Mayor of Albany is said to have come into possession of a very valuable piece called the Hiawatha belt. The question is how did these belts disappear?

This is the first of several parts. Next week we’ll try to find out where the wampum went. 

References

Barriero, J., Indian Roots of American Democracy, NY Albany Museum: 1990

Berman, Howard R., “Perspectives on American Indian Sovereignty and International Law, 1600 to 1776,” in Oren R. Lyons and John C. Mohawk (eds.), Exiled in the Land of the Free: Democracy, Indian Nations, and the U.S. Constitution (Santa Fe, N.M.: Clear Light Publishers, 1992), p. 135

Brandon, Laura, Art and War. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012

Dunn, R., J. Savage, and L. Yeandle (eds.), Journal of John Winthrop. Harvard University Press, 1996

Getty, Ian A.L. and Antoine S. Lussier (eds.), As Long as the Sun Shines and Water Flows: A Reader in Canadian Native Studies. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1983

Kennedy, A., The Importance of Gaining and Preserving the Friendship of the Indians to the British Interest Considered (New York, 1751)

Lopez, A., Pagans in Our Midst, Akwesasne Notes: 1977

Muller, Kathryn V., The Two “Mystery” Belts of Grand River, American Indian Quarterly 31:1 Winter 2007

Otto, Paul, and Jaap Jacobs. "Early Iroquoian–European Contacts: The Kaswentha Tradition, the Two Row Wampum Belt, and the Tawagonshi Document." Special issue, Journal of Early American History 3 (2013): 1. DOI 10.1163/18770703-00301005

Parmenter, Jon, The Meaning of Kaswentha and the Two Row Wampum Belt in Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) History: Can Indigenous Oral Tradition be Reconciled with the Documentary Record? (State University of New York, 2013)

_____, “Separate Vessels: Iroquois Engagements with the Dutch of New Netherland, circa 1613-1664”, forthcoming in Jaap Jacobs and L.H. Roper (eds.), The Worlds of the Seventeenth-Century Hudson Valley (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 2014). 

Varia, Original deed of the patroonship of Rensselaerswijck, 13 August 1630, New York Public Library

Notes

[1] NFT stands for non-fungible token. It's generally built using the same kind of programming as cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin or Ethereum, but that's where the similarity ends. Physical money and cryptocurrencies are “fungible,” meaning they can be traded or exchanged for one another.

 

[2] The word Haudenosaunee means "people of the longhouse" and will be used in this text as the preferred name of the Haudenosaunee people themselves, instead of the French/English term, Iroquois. The League originally was comprised of five nations (the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas) and the Tuscaroras joined as the sixth nation when they migrated north in the early eighteenth century.

_____________________

 

Towns, villages and cities in the Ukraine are being bombed every day. As refugees pour out into the countryside, ​they must rest by day so they can travel by night. Ecovillages and permaculture farms have organized something like an underground railroad to shelter families fleeing the cities, either on a long-term basis or temporarily, as people wait for the best moments to cross the border to a safer place, or to return to their homes if that becomes possible. So far there are 62 sites in Ukraine and 265 around the region. They are calling their project “The Green Road.”

The Green Road also wants to address the ongoing food crisis at the local level by helping people grow their own food, and they are raising money to acquire farm machinery, seed, and to erect greenhouses. The opportunity, however, is larger than that. The majority of the migrants are children. This will be the first experience in ecovillage living for most. They will directly experience its wonders, skills, and safety. They may never want to go back. Those that do will carry the seeds within them of the better world they glimpsed through the eyes of a child.

Those wishing to make a tax-deductible gift can do so through Global Village Institute by going to http://PayPal.me/greenroad2022 or by directing donations to greenroad@thefarm.org.

There is more info on the Global Village Institute website at https://www.gvix.org/greenroad

---

The COVID-19 pandemic has destroyed lives, livelihoods, and economies. But it has not slowed down climate change, which presents an existential threat to all life, humans included. The warnings could not be stronger: temperatures and fires are breaking records, greenhouse gas levels keep climbing, sea level is rising, and natural disasters are upsizing.

As the world confronts the pandemic and emerges into recovery, there is growing recognition that the recovery must be a pathway to a new carbon economy, one that goes beyond zero emissions and runs the industrial carbon cycle backwards — taking CO2 from the atmosphere and ocean, turning it into coal and oil, and burying it in the ground. The triple bottom line of this new economy is antifragility, regeneration, and resilience.

Help me get my blog posted every week. All Patreon donations and Blogger or Substack subscriptions are needed and welcomed. You are how we make this happen. Your contributions are being made to Global Village Institute, a tax-deductible 501(c)(3) charity. PowerUp! donors on Patreon get an autographed book off each first press run. Please help if you can.

#RestorationGeneration #ReGeneration

“There are the good tipping points, the tipping points in public consciousness when it comes to addressing this crisis, and I think we are very close to that.”

— Climate Scientist Michael Mann, January 13, 2021.

Want to help make a difference while you shop in the Amazon app, at no extra cost to you? Simply follow the instructions below to select “Global Village Institute” as your charity and activate AmazonSmile in the app. They’ll donate a portion of your eligible purchases to us.

How it works:

1. Open the Amazon app on your phone 
2. Select the main menu (=) & tap on “AmazonSmile” within Programs & Features 
3. Select “Global Village Institute” as your charity 
4. Follow the on-screen instructions to activate AmazonSmile in the mobile app