discarded knowledge houses

empire will always be with us, how will we rebel?

Living in a world where everything is upside down and broken, we wonder how to hold onto hope at all. How to hold onto our sanity if we ever had it to begin with! How do we look at a future that is being burned, killed, stripped of all it’s wonder and complexity? A future torn into little shreds to feed the monsters of greed. I really don’t let myself go there. I need to stay focused on the knowledge keepers and the wisdom tellers. I need to keep my arms tightly linked to the black and brown rebels, the crips and neurodivergents, the outcasts, the artists. The ones discarded by empire are our people.

When I think of degrowth I can get swept into graphs, pie charts and predictions. Of course the meta politics and economists need to look at the math and thank god for the geniuses out there. But there is an upside down world that blows math and science out of the water. Things multiply without understanding. Wounds heal up with no logic. That’s the world I’m curious about. The world that makes no sense.

Empire will always be pounding on our door in the middle of the night trying to get in. It will come in and punish us, set up laws and enforcement that take away our rights and humanity. Empire will always try to make life illegal. 

We must be changelings, shape shifters, sneaky hobbits and undercover witches. We need to start illegal book clubs like The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. We must meet up offline and strategize in bars, cafe’s and salon’s. Where do people go to conspire and gossip away from prying ears?

We must embody our ancestral rebels. What made them so dangerous to empire? What tricks did they have? What truth did they know that power and greed had no access to? It’s in these cracks that we find true liberation.

Before and after the death of my Great Grandpa

My Great Grandpa on my Mom’s side was killed by empire. In the middle of the night, while his family was sleeping the communists came barging into his home and took him away. The family was left to grapple with the known fact he would be killed for his refusal to fight in the war.

My Grandpa of the same family was conscripted into the German army not too many years later. Forced to leave his mother, brother and sister for over 45 years. He didn’t know if they were dead or alive.

My Great Grandma and her daughter were forced by empire into servitude. Brute physical labour in Siberia. They worked to the bone under horrible conditions.

My Grandma’s family escaped the murder of her Grandpa through sneaky escape in the middle of the night. With a colicky infant in toe, wrapped up in many cloths for fear the soldiers would hear his screams, they walked with their horses and carts from Russia to China, unwrapping their baby to find he was alive.

These are only a few of the heroic and also tragic stories of escape, suffering and survival within my lineage. We come from multitudes. We must dig to find remnants. Scraps of fabric, paper, mementos. I am privileged to have my grandparent’s written stories. I know many people don’t have access to their lineages and wonder who their subversive ancestors were.

Who were our queer ancestors? Who were the ones surviving empire with disabilities? Did they live to tell their story? Did they hide under the radar of ableist rhetoric that wanted to eliminate them? Who were the deviant single women who never married or bore children? Who were the rebel children who ran away from their abusive school teachers or foster parents? Did they live to tell the story? Who were the outcasts and discards within our story-lines who were not even talked about? Did our ancestors hide out-of-wedlock children? Did they survive domestic abuse? What are the stories that no one wants to tell?

There are too many questions for one paper. Too many mysteries. But we must open our eyes to the state of the world we are living in today. We must see the oppression on the rise. We must see the way black, brown, queer, divergent, disabled, deaf, short, fat, mad, femme, youth, elder, poor, and imprisoned bodies are being censored, shadow-banned, ignored and erased. We must see the way laws are coming down to force birth, to force “homemaking”. We must see the way empire is alive and well in our cities and neighbourhoods. Not to live in fear, but to be spry and conscious. Because our lives depend on it.

As a white, semi-able-bodied woman, I am safe on most streets during the day. Safer yet if I have a child with me (I choose bears😉). I do not see or experience the state surveillance, the censoring, the neighbour with their finger on speed-dial waiting to call the police just for seeing my body on the street like my Indigenous friends. I can go into a grocery store and not be suspected of stealing. I can walk anywhere online and be listened to. But when I start to speak about Gaza I am silenced. When we speak of trans rights or the right to have an abortion, quickly we start to experience the censoring. This is a wake up call to all the white folks living with privilege. This “freedom” you are experiencing is a disguise. If you play by the rules of the ruling class you will be passed over. They won’t come knocking in the middle of the night.

Radical economists and politicians are trying everything in their power to convince empire to let go of growth. People like Jason Hickel and Kai Heron are pushing Government bodies to shift away from growth economies that rely on destructive extraction projects worldwide and exploitive labour practices. But in order to convince old systems to change it takes a vast amount of grassroots groups to show they want it.

Indigenous people worldwide are standing up to empire. They are bringing governments to court and winning. They are fighting back and defending their lands. This resistance is what we are all called to. This is not an indigenous resistance. This is our resistance. This is our call to give up the empire. To give up the pretend life. Give it all up. Get on the ground, in the dirt as my friend aptly described while looking at her garden full of weeds. Time doesn’t exist in an upside down world.

I want to introduce two indigenous concepts that will help us move past a growth mindset into a cooperative one. Beuen Vivir and Minobimaatisiiwin.

Beuen Vivir

Artwork by Soma Difusa for Sojourners Magazine January, 2021

Buen Vivir originates from indigenous communities in Bolivia and Ecuador. The notion of “good living” is not the same as western notions of well-being. This philosophy states that humans are not owners of the land and therefore not owners of its resources either. From wikipedia,

As a pluralistic concept, buen vivir has a variety of definitions. Eduardo Gudynas outlines eight core ideas for the concept: 1) create space for sharing critiques of development, 2) uplift ethical outlooks grounded in values, 3) center decolonization, 4) foster intercultural dialogue, 5) deny the nature–society binary, 6) reject manipulative and instrumental rationalities, 7) reject linear understanding of progress and 8) express feelings and affections. Overall, Gudynas endorses buen vivir as a framework for moving beyond modernity and development.^[2]

In Rethinking the future - exploring the philosophy of buen vivir in Ecuador and Bolivia, Tilde Bergström says,

In Buen Vivir, humans are not separated from nature. Pachamama, Mother Earth or Nature, is the foundation of which we are all part of, the very essence of life. As opposed to the anthropocentric worldview where humans are dominant and nature is a commodity, Buen Vivir takes on a biocentric perspective. This means that human well-being is dependent on the well-being of nature, and living in harmony with nature is vital. Another essential aspect is the importance of community, rather than the focus on individuals that tend to dominate Western thinking. Talking about well-being and prosperity within Buen Vivir has nothing to do with material accumulation to reach a certain standard. It is about prosperous communities that include nature, people, and all other life. Based on this, Buen Vivir strongly opposes the Western, capitalist view of development, and even views projects of industrialization as a continuation of colonial oppression. 

Minobimaatisiiwin

A few thoughts from Winona LaDuke, an Anishinaabec American economist, environmentalist, writer and industrial hemp grower on the concept of Minobimaatisiiwin,

Indigenous, land-based societies fundamentally understand that all life is accountable to natural law: cycles are natural, and reciprocity - the balance of taking and giving - is essential to maintain the equilibrium of humans with the environment. Laws made by nations, states, provinces, and cities are subject to this supreme law.

The ethical code of my own Anishinabeg community of the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota keeps communities and individuals in line with natural law. "Minobimaatisiiwin" - it means both the "good life" and "continuous rebirth" - is central to our value system. In minobimaatisiiwin, we honor one another, we honor women as the givers of lives, we honor our Chi-Anishinabeg, our old people and ancestors who hold the knowledge. We honor our children as the continuity from generations, and we honor ourselves as a part of creation. Implicit in minobimaatisiiwin is a continuous habitation of place, an intimate understanding of the relationship between humans and the ecosystem and of the need to maintain this balance.

Winona ends with,

Land-based traditional societies recognize the centrality of fertility and birth to their continuity. This is instinctual to socio-religious systems that place women in the central role and in which women are seen as the physical representation of the sacred…By contrast, in many ways, the frontier mentality focuses on the conquest of land and, frequently, of women. Where native societies value the sanctity of creation, settler-industrial society objectifies women and land. Turning this around, the environmental movement now speaks of the rape of the land, analogous to the rape of women.

Read full article here, Miniobimaatisiiwin

And here begins my favourite part of the story! The revolution might not be paid for by empire, but it sure will be precious and wonderful. Who’s coming to your tea party? Who’s making water into wine? Who’s inviting strangers (and bears) into their cabin? We are creating a new subversive culture folks! I actually feel far behind the tactics and moves of the youth encampments. I’m over here with my desktop, my spinning wheel and my couch! The revolution can happen from your couch too! Read tools for disability activism here⏩ 26 ways to be in the struggle beyond the streets

Here’s a short list of ways I’m learning how to reclaim the discards of empire:

• Commit to decolonial anti-racist work and invest in indigenous land back efforts.

• Play and care for children

• Radically accept disability in myself and divest from productivity and ableism

• Refuse pedestals, gold stars, high grades, big paycheck’s (unless it’s gonna radically get families out of poverty!)

• Get radically comfortable with perceived mess, unfinished projects, slow, ugly.

• Commit to generative conflict and active listening

• Learn a survival skill, which honestly starts with getting to know your neighbours and building inter-racial, inter-class, inter-ability, inter-gender, inter-age friendships and kin.

• Listen and record stories from grandparents, elders and people who are close to the other side. They carry more wisdom than we will ever know.

• soooo much more! What are you reclaiming?

Words to learn: deaccumulation, de-enclosure, and decommodification

More Reading (for the folks into economic models of degrowth)

Systemic Alternatives: Vivir Bien, degrowth, commons, ecofeminism, rights of mother earth, deglobalization - Download PDF

Jason Hickel, Degrowth can work—here’s how science can help

Kai Heron, Forget Eco Modernism

Beuen Vivir, South America’s rethinking of the future we want Juan Francisco Salazar speaks about a bio civilization where nations and constitutions agree to the rights of nature!