Life Ways that protect Food Sovereignty is a Birth Right.

When I talk of food sovereignty...and the rights of Mother Earth, all Peoples, and All Life...I always mention being in Guatemala in 1969 and what the resistance looked like then...it was understood by both the People and the Governor and Government of Guatemala City that there was in fact a "war" going on between those who were Indigenous to the land and the Colonized mind of progress and consumption that was and still is, ravaging the Life Ways of the People across the planet. My friends and I were asked to give a lift to some friends that needed to return to the city. We traveled unpaved mountain roads for many miles, until a few people came into our headlights. All bounded into our vehicle happily - guns and all. Me...? well there was not anything I could do except, accept that this was reality, and life and death became the sweet inhale and exhale of every breath. Later in the week, our friends invited us to go with them to the Governors Mansion Ball. 

I asked why they were going to the Ball. They explained that everyone knew who everyone was, and if the Governor was going to serve up a fiesta on the backs of the People, at the expense of the Mother and her People's Life Ways and "resources"...they were going, and they were going to sing, dance, pray and enjoy themselves. After all, if they are going to put on a big fiesta, while many People go hungry because they were removed from their homelands, it was their Right to be there. I said "well in the USA we are not allowed to go, we have to be invited and pay a lot of money to get to go, and if we do go we risk getting arrested." But they already knew that, and I knew why they were fighting as they did...because they felt alone, no one hearing them, if they were at their last stand, they would die for the Mother...and so they tried to fight might with might. Even at my virgin age, I knew the oppressive nature of the US and Corporate worldview, that had imprisoned my father for his refusal to be complicit in the government-corporate genocidal wars. My Guatemalan friends smiled, and told me that the Governments and Corporations do not own anything, they do not own Mother Earth, no matter how many contracts they sign without the People's consent, and they most certainly do not own the People.

I understood then what I understand now, one day the awakening will come to the colonized world, that we can not live without harmonious relation with our Mother Earth and each other. In the fall of 2011 a military copter hovered over the field of corn I was planting in the beautiful foothills of Northern New Mexico. I looked up into the cockpit of the copter as it's blade-wind blew all around me, at the two soldiers looking back at me, and then turned again to my planting. I knew that the awakening was no longer a vision somewhere distant upon the horizon....

There was a time growing up that the food that was collectively planted and wild-crafted in our village, or by collective families, was enough to sustain us from one harvest until the next harvest. It was understood what our collective gifts from the Mother were: water, field crops, mountain wild foods, wild game, and preservation practices...and these were all shared equally amongst us. All this, is still active knowledge in our community...yet, there are more mouths than what we currently produce agriculturally...in other words there are fewer people actively producing and gathering foods, than the number of mouths to feed.

So what happens when the con-ag truck does not come? We have a choice today in how we will choose to collaborate with each other. Life Ways that protect Food Sovereignty is a Birth Right. Idle No More!