Dogwoods, Pine Trees, Magnolias and Clam Gardens.

-
My American father grew up on a farm in Indiana. My German mother grew up in a large and cosmopolitan European city known as Danzig (a "free city") at the time, currently known as Gdansk, Poland.
I grew up between their two worlds, where their worlds met. I grew up on the edge of town where sprawling suburbs ended and trees and undeveloped lands began.

When I was a child, behind my childhood home there was a patch of undeveloped woods. After I grew up and moved away, it was turned into more housing.

Studies show that Indigenous or Tribespeople who move to cities remain much more aware and knowledgeable about flora and fauna in their environment than average AND they pass this heightened awareness onto their kids. They and their children are much more likely to know the names of the tree species and bird species (etc) around them even while living in the city than other residents.

Daddy was like that and it took me a while to attribute it to his Native heritage because HE did not attribute it to his Native heritage. Growing up in Georgia, I knew the names of the various trees around me, like dogwoods, pine trees and magnolias

His stories about being in the army and knowing more about dealing with terrain and so forth always framed it as "City Boys got no sense" not "White people got no sense." He framed it lefthandedly as "I know something about the land because I grew up on a farm" but that claim does not fit with the kind of knowledge he had of how to relate to things like UNDEVELOPED FOREST LAND and I have NEVER read that "farmers and agricultural types just KNOW MORE about the natural world than city boys."

He probably did not frame it as "farm boys know this stuff" because that was more likely to have other farm boys go "Hey, wait a minute...I grew up on a farm and I DO NOT KNOW THIS STUFF!" But if you sneer at city boys who are probably crapping all over the "dumb" rural types, the other farm boys are probably happy to not question it and just laugh and agree that the snobby city boys aren't superior in every imaginable way like they like to act like they are.

At some point, I went through a big book about colleges across the US and made a list of majors related to the built environment, like architecture, civil engineering and urban planning. I think there were originally five to seven majors I listed out and then looked at requirements, etc. and ultimately decided on urban planning as my goal.

Most urban planning degrees are master's degrees. I later decided I would get a bachelor's in environmental studies as prepration for a career in urban planning.

So, kind of like my childhood home in the 'burbs at the edge of the city with woods behind it, my educational and career goals are a reflection of the fact that daddy grew up on a farm and mom grew up in a large cosmopolitan European city. Only not just that.

It's probably partly rooted in "Daddy was part Native, so I knew the names of the tree species in my neck of the woods growing up in the 'burbs of the third-largest city in my home state."

I don't see cities as separate from the natural environment. I don't see The Built Environment as SEPARATE from the rest of the world.

I see the WORLD as the context in which cities live and you MUST understand that larger context to make a high quality built environment for humans to inhabit.
The deer is not crossing the road. The road is cutting through its forest.
-- some internet meme
These days, article are saying that the supposedly "natural" environments in the Americas that were here when Europeans showed up were not actually natural. Natives had been exercising stewardship over them for a long time. They just related to the land differently from the European settlers who trampled their rights and took their lands without entirely realizing they were doing so.

European culture likes to cut Mother Earth up into little parcels so individuals can "own" a piece as if they fail to undersstand that the land is part of a living gestalt and cutting it up can kill it.

I am increasingly seeing articles about projects trying to reinstate old Native practices, like clam gardens. It makes me hopeful for both the status of Natives and for the future health of the planet.

Popular posts from this blog

Life

-
Image
I was born in Columbus, Georgia. My parents were stationed at Fort Benning -- a base which may soon get a new name, from what I gather -- but I was not born in Martin Army Community Hospital on the base. It was a busy year for soldiers having babies and my pregnant mother was sent to a civilian ob-gyn for her care. My father was forty years old when I was born, which may not sound that old to the modern ear as someone fathering a child, but it was unusual for that era. He was one year younger than my ex-husband's paternal grandmother. The ex and I graduated high school together and our birthdays are very close together. I have family stories and very hand-wavy timeframes for the first three years of my life. I have only two clear memories from that time. I remember sitting on my mother's lap and riding in the back of a tank at some Army Family Day. My older sister once told me that I must have been about fifteen months old, which fits with my recollection of "Sept
Read more

A Legend in My Mind

-
My father was a two-time decorated veteran. He had a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart, having fought in both World War II and in the front lines of Vietnam. You will notice that skips a war. Dad did not fight in the Korean conflict. He had orders for Korea and was packed to go. The night before he was supposed to ship out, he got a call informing him that he was the only man in the Battallion (about a thousand people) who had all the schools required to teach ROTC at some college, so he was being held back to fill that slot. They needed two guys and they also held back some officer -- who likely had a college degree -- with less stellar military credentials. My dad was an NCO, not an officer, and a high school drop out. Dropping out of high school was common at that time. At age fifteen, he was big enough to earn a man's wage for a man's work, so that's what he did. Dad originally joined the Army as a teen to fight in World War II. My recollection is that he was seve
Read more

Intro

-
Image
According to oral tradition, my father was 1/16th Cherokee. That wasn't talked about much and it was only after he died that I realized this was likely a larger influence on my life than I had ever known. Gary Farmer, Actor The above photo looks uncannily like my father. I saw it not long after my father died and was surprised to learn that Gary Farmer is full-blooded Iroquois. I did a bit of research and found that the Iroquois are related to the Cherokee. This spurred a series of personal revelations and led to me starting this blog, which has had a few false starts while I tried to figure out how to proceed. The original subtitle of this site was Exploring the largely unrecognized Native influences on my own life and society generally. During my divorce, I had a long distance relationship to a man named Tom. He was Chamorro , which is the indigenous people of the Mariana Islands, politically divided between the United States territories of Guam and the Commonwe
Read more