February 2008
Muscogee Nation News
Joy Harjo
I took a jumphop flight to Hilo, Hawaii. As soon as I landed I called Mililani Trask, the brilliant Hawaiian attorney and activist. She told me she was introducing Winona LaDuke, the Anishnabe activist. Winona was presenting with a group from the Mainland on protecting our food from genetic engineering and invited me to attend. I admire Mililani. When she ran for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs several years ago, she won by a landslide. Mil also worked in Calcutta, India with Mother Teresa. She has experienced, like the rest of us, that the hardest test of compassion is working with your own people. The Hawaiian community, like our own, can get choked up with jealousy and self-doubt.
Luana Busby-Neff opened the program with an oli wehe, a chant. The spirit in her voice turned us together to listen, to be together.
The first speaker turned out to be the poi farmer, James Cain. Before the event started he’d been pounding taro to make poi. I took a taste. You could tell he sang and talked to his plants. He sang a song to honor his mentor, Uncle Ray who had just passed from this life. Uncle Ray taught James all about the taro. He told James: “Think about things in a positive way.” This sounds very familiar to Mvskoke philosophy.
“Taro goes back 30,000 years. Taro is family. Taro doesn’t just feed the body. It feeds the mind. It teaches you patience. It teaches you respect, respect for ancestors…elders…and respect for the land…it feeds the spirit.”
He joked “We’re taro-ists! We’re pushing for a ban on genetic engineering.
Who has the right to control life forms? The scientists protest that it is their academic freedom, to do what they want. What about academic responsibility?
For the Hawaiians, taro (or kalo) is literally our elder brother...”
Next Mililani introduced Winona. In her introduction Mil pointed out that pharmaceutical companies are claiming private ownership of life itself. “What we are dealing here with rice, taro and corn is bio-piracy….the purity of our food is part of cultural sovereignty... “
“Wild rice” Winona said, “…is one of our most significant relatives.” Wild rice sustains her people in body, soul and mind. It is also a way to sustain the Anishnabe people economically. They’ve struggled with corporations who wish to patent the DNA and steal the rice for cultivation, for money. They want to own the idea, spirit and body of rice. Corn was one of the first of our native plants to be patented.
Winona reminded us that the people and their rice are fighting to live with dignity. In 2000 the University of Minnesota cracked the DNA sequence for wild rice. Now they want to patent it. Ultimately that would mean that the Anishnabe would no longer have the right to harvest their rice, without paying royalties to the corporate patent owners!
As I listened I kept moving outwards into a larger and larger perspective. When I looked from that perspective, human and plant were one body.
Something to think about: what we ingest, in food, thoughts, vision either serves us or hurts us.
COMINGS AND GOINGS
