"Our Land" Consequences of Domestication and Sedentism

Anonymous  AniMist 

 

Sedentism and domestication, separately and together, transformed human life in ways that still affect us today.

"Our Land"

Sedentism and domestication represent not just a technological change but also a change in worldview. Land was no longer a free good, available to anyone, with resources scattered randomly across the landscape; it was transformed into particular territories, collectively or individually owned, on which people raised crops and flocks.  Thus, sedentism and a high level of resource extraction (whether by complex foraging or farming) led to concepts of property tat were rare in previous foraging societies. Graves, grave goods, permanent housing, grain-processing equipment, as well as the fields and herds, connected people to places.  The human mark on the environment was larger and more obvious following sedentization and the rise of farming; people transformed the landscape in more dramatic ways--building terraces or walls to hold back floods.

Fertility, Sedentism, and Diet

One of the more dramatic effects of settling down was the change in female fertility and the rise in population.  A number of different effects together caused the population to grow.

Child Spacing Intervals   Among modern foragers, a woman's pregnancies tend to be spaced three to four years apart because of the extended period of breastfeeding characteristic of these societies.  Extended means not just that children are weaned at three to four years of age but that they still nurse whenever they feel like it, as frequently as several times an hour (Shostak 1981, 67).  This nursing stimulus triggers the secretion of a hormone that suppresses ovulation (Henry 1989, 41). Henry points out that, "the adaptive significance of such a mechanism is obvious in the context of mobile foraging. A single child, who must be carried for some 3 to 4 years, creates a heavy burden for the mother; a second or third child within this interval would create an unmanageable problem for her and also jeopardize her health.

There are many reasons that nursing continues for three to four years in foraging societies. The foraging diet is high in protein, low in carbohydrates, and lacks soft foods easily digestible by very young infants. In fact, Marjorie Shostak observes that among Ju/'hoansi (!Kung), a contemporary foraging people of the Kalahari Desert, bush foods are rough and difficult to digest:  "To survive on such foods a child would have to be older than two years--preferably substantially older." (1981, 66).  (See EthnoProfile 19.1: Ju/'hoansi [!Kung]).  By having her child nurse exclusively for six months, a mother does not have to find and prepare food for the infant in addition to her ordinary routine. Among the Ju/'hoansi, infants over the age of six months are given solid foods in the form of prechewed or pounded foods, a supplement that begins the transition to solid food (67).

The length of time between children in foraging societies serves to maintain a long-term energy balance in women during their reproductive years.  In many foraging societies, adding the caloric requirements of nursing to the physical demands of mobility, and the burden of food-gathering in the context of a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet can keep the mother's energy balance low. Where nutritional circumstances are marginal, the period of pregnancy and nursing can even constitute a net energy drain, resulting in a sharp drop in fertility. Under such circumstances, it will take the woman longer for her to regain her fertile condition. Thus, the period when she is neither pregnant nor nursing frequently becomes essential to building up her energy balance for future reproduction.

Fertility Rate Changes   In addition to the effects of breastfeeding, Ellison notes, age, nutritional status, energy balance, diet, and exercise all affect female fertility in a graduated way (1990).  That is, intense aerobic exercise may lead to the loss of the monthly period (amenorrhea), but less intense aerobic exercise may disrupt fertility in less obvious but still significant ways.

Recent studies of North American women who engage in high levels of endurance exercise (long-distance runners and young ballet dancers, for example) demonstrate several effects on childbearing.  These data are relevant to the transition to sedentism, because the levels of activity of the women studied approach the levels of activity of women in modern foraging societies.

Researchers found two different kinds of effects on fertility. Young, highly active ballet dancers studied by Warren (cited in Henry 1989) experienced their first menstruation at about 15.5 years, much later than a nondancing control group, whose members first menstruation was at about 12.5 years. High levels of exercise also seem to affect the endocrine system, reducing the time during which a woman is fertile by about one-third.

Summarizing the effects of foraging on female fertility, Henry observes:

It would appear then that a number of interrelated factors associated with a mobile foraging strategy are likely to have provided natural controls on fertility and perhaps explain the low population density of the Paleolithic. In mobile foraging societies, women are likely to have experienced both long intervals of breastfeeding by carried children as well as the high energy drain associated with subsistence activities and periodic camp moves.  Additionally, their diets, being relatively rich in proteins, would have contributed to maintaining low fat levels, thus further dampening fecundity. (1989, 43)

With complex foraging and increasing sedentism, these brakes on female fecundity would have been eased.  The duration of the breastfeeding period would have declined, as would the energy drain on women (Ju/'hoansi women, for example walk about 1,500 miles per year, carrying about 25 pounds of equipment, gathered food, and young children). This is not to say that a sedentary life is physically undemanding. Farming requires its own heavy labor, both from men and women. The difference seems to be in the kind of physical activity involved. Walking long distances carrying heavy loads and children was replaced by sowing, hoeing, harvesting, storing, and processing grain.  A diet increasingly rich in cereals would have significantly changed the ratio of protein to carbohydrate in the diet.  This would have changed the levels of prolactin, increased the positive energy balance, and led to more rapid growth in the young and an earlier age of first menstruation.

The ready availability of ground cereals would have enabled mothers to feed their infants soft, high-carbohydrate porridges and gruels. The analysis of infant fecal material recovered from the Wadi Kubbaniya site in Egypt seems to demonstrate that a similar practice was in use with root crops along the Nile at what may have been a year-round site by 19,000 years before the present (Hillman 1989, 230). The influence of cereals on fertility has been observed by Richard Lee among settled by Ju/'hoansi, who recently began to eat cereals and experienced a marked rise in fertility.  Renee Pennington (1992) notes that the increase in Ju/'hoansi reproductive success seems to be related to a reduction in infant and child mortality rates.

The Decline in the Quality of Diet

Westerners have long seen agriculture as an evolutionary advance over foraging, a sign of human progress. Put simply, however, early farmers did not eat as well as foragers. Jared Diamond (1987) writes:

While farmers concentrate on high carbohydrate crops like rice and potatoes, the mix of wild plants and animals in the diets of surviving hunter-gatherers provides more protein and a better balance of other nutrients. In one study, the San [Ju/'hoansi] average daily food intake (during a month when food was plentiful) was 2,140 calories and 93 grams of protein, considerably greater than the recommended daily allowance for people of their size.  It's almost inconceivable that San [Ju/'hoansi] who eat 75 or so wild plants, could die of starvation the way hundreds of thousands of Irish farmers and their families did during the potato famine of the 1840s.

Skeletal evidence makes the same point. Skeletons from Greece and Turkey in late Paleolithic times indicate an average height of 5 feet 9 inches for men and 5 feet 5 inches for women. With the adoption of agriculture, the average height declined sharply; by about 5,000 years ago, the average male was about 5 feet 3 inches tall, the average woman, about 5 feet. Even modern Greeks and Turks are not, on average, as tall as the late Paleolithic people of the same region.

Increase in Precariousness

In the short term, agriculture was probably developed in ancient southwestern Asia, and perhaps elsewhere, to increase food supplies to support an increasing population at a time of serious resource stress. Over time, however, as dependence on domesticated crops increased, so did the overall insecurity of the food supply system. Why?

Proportion of Domesticated Plants in the Diet  There are several reasons why early farmers depended more and more on cultivated plants. Because the agroecology created an environment favorable to the plants, farmers were able to cultivate previously unusable land.  When such vital necessities as water could be brought to the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Mesopotamia, land on which wheat and barley was not native could support dense stands of the domesticated grains.  Domestic plants also provided more and larger edible parts and were easier to harvest, process, and digest.  There is good evidence that they also tasted better. Rindos lists a number of modern food plants that derive from bitter wild varieties. Finally, the greater yield of domesticated plants per unit of ground also led to a greater proportion of cultivated plants in the diet, even when wild plants were still being eaten and were as plentiful as before.

Reliance on a Smaller Number of Plants   Unfortunately, reliance on an increasingly smaller number of plants is very risky should those plants fail.  According to Richard Lee, the Ju/'hoansi, who live in the Kalahari Desert, use over 100 plants (14 fruits and nuts, 15 berries, 18 species of edible gum, 41 edible roots and bulbs, and 17 leafy greens, beans, melons, and other foods; 1992b, 48).  By contrast, modern farmers rely on no more than 20 plants, and of those, three--wheat, maize, and rice--feed most of the world's people.  Historically, it was only one or two grain crops that were the staple for a specific group of people.  A decrease in this crop has devastating effects on the population.

Selective Breeding, Monocropping, and the Gene Pool  Selective breeding of any given plant species decreases the variability of its gene pool, eliminating varieties with natural resistance to infrequently occurring pests and diseases and lowering its long-term survival chances by increasing the risk of severe losses at harvest time.  Again, the more people depend on a particular plant species, the riskier their future. 

Monocropping is the practice of growing only one kind of plant in a field. Although it increases efficiency and short-term yield, it exposes the entire field to destruction by diseases or pest damage. The outcome could be starvation.

Increasing Dependence on Plants  As cultivated plants took on an increasingly large role in their diet, people became dependent on plants and the plants in turn became completely dependent on the people--or rather on the environment created by the people. But the people could not completely control that environment. Hail, floods, droughts, infestations, frost, heat, weeds, erosion, and other factors could destroy or significantly affect the crop, yet all were largely outside human control.  The risk of failure and starvation increased.

Increase in Disease  Connected to the evolution of domesticated plants was an increase in disease, especially of the epidemic variety, for which there were several reasons.  First, prior to sedentism, human waste was disposed outside the living area. As increasing numbers of people began to live near each other in relatively permanent settlements, the disposal of human waste became increasingly problematic:  Large quantities of fecal material had the potential to transmit disease, and animal and plant wastes nourished pests, some of which served as disease vectors.

Second, a larger number of people living very near each other served as a disease reservoir.  Once a population is large enough, the likelihood of disease transmission increases.  By the time one person recovers from the disease, someone else reaches the infectious stage and can reinfect the first.  Consequently, the disease never leaves the population. The speed with which school children catch and spread colds, influenza, or chicken pox illustrates how a closely packed population and germs interact.

Third, settled people cannot just walk away from diseases; by contrast, if someone in a foraging band falls ill, the others can walk away, reducing the likelihood that the disease will spread.  Fourth, the agricultural diet may have reduced people's resistance to disease. Finally, the rise in human population provided a greater opportunity for germs to evolve in human hosts. In fact, there is good evidence that the clearing of land for farming in sub-Saharan Africa created an excellent environment for malaria-carrying mosquitos, leading both to a dramatic rise in human malaria and the selection for the HbAHbS genotype.

Environmental Degradation

With the development of agriculture, human beings began to intervene more actively in the environment.  Deforestation, soil loss, silted streams, and the loss of many native species followed domestication.  In the lower Tigris-Euphrates valley, irrigation waters used by early farmers carried high levels of soluble salts, poisoning the soil and making it unusable to this day.

Increase In Labor

Raising domesticated plants and animals requires much more labor than foraging.  People must clear the land, plant the seeds, tend the young plants, protect them from predators, harvest them, process the seeds, store them, and select the seeds for planting the next year; similarly, people must tend and protect domesticated animals, cull the herds, shear the sheep, milk the goats, and so on.

Bibliography

Diamond, Jared. 1987.  "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race" Discover, May

Ellison, Peter. 1990.  "Human Ovarian Function and Reproductive Ecology: New Hypotheses" American Anthropologist 92 (4): 933-52

Henry, Donald. 1989.  From Foraging to Agriculture: The Levant and the End of the Ice Age  Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press

Hillman, Gordon. 1989. "Late Paleolithic Plant Foods from Wadi Kubbaniya in Upper Egypt: Dietary Diversity, Infant Weaning, and Seasonality in a Riverine Environment."  InForaging and Farming: The Evolution of Plant Exploitation, edited by David Harris and Gordon Hillman, 207-39. Vol 13 of One World Archaeology.  London: Unwin Hyman.

Lee, Richard. 1992. The Dobe Ju/'hoansi  2d ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Pennington, Renee. 1992.  "Did Food Increase Fertility: Evaluation of !Kung and Herero History" Human Biology  64: 497-501.

Shostak, Marjorie. 1981.  Nisa: The Life and Words of !Kung Woman  New York: Vintage Books

Against Mass Society

Against Mass Society

Many people desire an existence free of coercive authority, where all are at liberty to shape their own lives as they choose for the sake of their own personal needs, values, and desires. For such freedom to be possible, no individual person can extend his or her sphere of control upon the lives of others without their choosing. Many who challenge oppression in the modern world strive toward their conception of a “free society” by attempting to merely reform the most powerful and coercive institutions of today, or to replace them with “directly democratic” governments, community-controlled municipalities, worker-owned industrial federations, etc. Those who prioritize the values of personal autonomy or wild existence have reason to oppose and reject all large-scale organizations and societies on the grounds that they necessitate imperialism, slavery and hierarchy, regardless of the purposes they may be designed for. 

Humans are naturally sociable, but are selective about who they wish to associate with. For companionship and mutual support, people naturally develop relationships with those they share an affinity with. However, only in recent times have people organized themselves in large-scale groupings composed of strangers who share little of relevance in common with each other. For over 99% of human history, humans lived within small and egalitarian extended family arrangements, while drawing their subsistence directly from the land. The foraging bands and shifting horticultural communities of past and present are known to have enjoyed extensive leisure time, and have rarely required more than 2-4 hours daily on average to satisfy subsistence needs. Famine and war are extremely rare in these societies. Additionally, physical health, dental quality and the average lifespan of small-scale communities are markedly higher than that of agricultural and early industrial societies. If leaders exist, they are usually temporary, and hold no power beyond their ability to persuade. While hunting/gathering and slash-and-burn gardening do indeed alter local environments and are sometimes wasteful, they have proven themselves to be ecologically stable adaptations. Foraging served humanity for 3 million years, while horticulture has been relied upon by many societies in the Amazon basin for approximately 9,000 years. The small-scale cultures that remain today generally prefer their traditional way of life, and many are currently waging impressive political resistance against corporations and governments who wish to forcibly assimilate them so that their land and labor may be exploited. People rarely enter mass organizations without being coerced, as they lead to a decline of freedom and health. 

The rise of civilization was made possible through compulsory mass production. When certain societies began to prioritize agricultural productivity as their highest value, they began to forcibly subject all life within reach of their cities to that purpose. Communities of people who wished to forage or garden on the land for subsistence would be mercilessly slaughtered or enslaved, and the ecosystems they inhabited would be converted to farmland to feed the cities. Those engaged in the full-time facilitation of crop and animal production would reside in the nearby countryside, while public officials, merchants, engineers, military personnel, servants, and prisoners would inhabit the cities. The task of creating a surplus to feed a growing specialist class caused the duties of the food producers to intensify, while simultaneously creating the need for more land, both for agriculture and for the extraction of materials for construction and fuel. Humans were forced into servitude for the benefit of their culture’s institutions of production as a prerequisite for continued survival, and non-human life was either harnessed or eliminated for the sake of completing human projects. To occupy land, one would be mandated to continuously pay tribute in the form of a tax or tithe (or and more recently, in the form of rent or mortgage), hence requiring one to devote most of one’s time and energy to a politically accepted mode of employment. Upon being required to satisfy the demands of landholders or employers in exchange for personal space and commodities, it becomes impossible for people to make their living through subsistence hunting or gardening. Although small-scale self-sufficient communities would resist or flee the intrusion of military and commercial forces, those that failed would be assimilated. Subsequently, they would quickly forget their cultural practices, causing them to become dependent upon their oppressors for survival. 

Capitalism is civilization’s current dominant manifestation. The capitalist economy is controlled mainly by state-chartered corporations; these organizations are owned by stockholders who are free to make business decisions without being held personally accountable for the consequences. Legally, corporations enjoy the status of individuals, and thus an injured party can only target the assets of the company in a court case, not the possessions or property of the individual shareholders. Those employed by corporations are legally required to pursue profit above all other possible concerns (e.g., ecological sustainability, worker safety, community health, etc.), and can be fired, sued, or prosecuted if they do otherwise. As a technologically advanced form of civilization, capitalism encroaches upon and utilizes even greater territory, causing further reduction of the space available for life to freely flourish for its own purposes. Like civilization, capitalism conscripts both human and non-human life into servitude if regarded as useful, and disposes of it if regarded as otherwise. Under capitalism, most people spend the majority of each conscious day (typically 8-12 hours) engaged in meaningless, monotonous, regimented, and often physically and mentally injurious labor to obtain basic necessities. Privileged individuals also tend to work intensively and extensively, but typically to respond to social pressure or to satisfy an addiction to commodified goods and services. Because of the dullness, alienation, and disempowerment that characterizes the average daily experience, our culture exhibits high rates of depression, mental illness, suicide, drug addiction, and dysfunctional and abusive relationships, along with numerous vicarious modes of existence (e.g., through television, movies, pornography, video games, etc). 

Civilization, not capitalism per se, was the genesis of systemic authoritarianism, compulsory servitude and social isolation. Hence, an attack upon capitalism that fails to target civilization can never abolish the institutionalized coercion that fuels society. To attempt to collectivize industry for the purpose of democratizing it is to fail to recognize that all large-scale organizations adopt a direction and form that is independent of its members’ intentions. If an association is too large for a face-to-face relationship between members to be possible, it becomes necessary to delegate decision-making responsibilities to representatives and specialists in order to achieve the organization’s goals. Even if delegates are elected by consensus or by majority vote, the group’s members cannot supervise every action of the delegates unless the organization is small enough for everybody to monitor each other on a regular basis. Delegated leaders or specialists cannot be held accountable to mandates, nor can they be recalled for irresponsible or coercive behavior, unless held subject to frequent supervision by a broad cross-section of the group. Such is impossible in an economy based upon a highly stratified division of labor where no given individual can focus upon or even view the actions of the rest. Additionally, elected delegates are allotted more time and resources to prepare and present a case for their objectives, and are thus more likely to gain further power through deception and manipulation. Even if the group at large determines all policies and procedures (which is itself impossible when specialized knowledge is required), and delegates are only assigned the duties of enforcing them, they will still act independently when they disagree with the rules and are confident that they can escape punishment for ignoring them. Democracy is necessarily representative, not direct, when practiced on a large scale - it is incapable of creating organization without hierarchy and control. 

Because mass organizations must increase production to maintain their existence and to expand, they tend to imperialistically extend their scope of influence. Because cities and industries rely upon outside inputs, they aim to seize the surrounding areas for agricultural and industrial use, rendering it inhospitable to both non-human ecosystems and self-sufficient human communities. This area will expand in relation to any increase in population or specialization of labor that the city experiences. One could argue that industrial production could be maintained and yet scaled down, leaving ecosystems and non-industrial peoples some room to co-exist. Firstly, this proposal invites the question of why civilization should determine its own boundaries, instead of the victims of its predation. Secondly, there are no historical examples of production economies that do not expand, mainly because they must expand after depleting the resources available to them at any given time. 

The structural complexity and hierarchy of civilization must be refused, along with the political and ecological imperialism that it propagates across the globe. Hierarchical institutions, territorial expansion, and the mechanization of life are all required for the administration and process of mass production to occur. Only small communities of self-sufficient individuals can coexist with other beings, human or not, without imposing their authority upon them. 

Green Anarchy

Manifest Destiny and American Holocaust, A Dr. Ward Churchill Lecture

Further Study:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchill



The Lie

The Pilgrims left England seeking religious freedom. When they landed here, the righteous Pilgrims met wild Indians who soon became their friends. They learned to work together even though they had different languages and cultures.

In October of 1621, the Pilgrim settlers and the Natives of Plymouth Plantation in Massachusetts celebrated their good harvest and had a feast together. They each brought foods, which they shared with each other, in the first Thanksgiving, a celebration thanking God for taking care of their people. Thanksgiving is a wonderful way to remember all that we should be thankful for, and a reminder that white people and people of color can unite and be happy together. Yeah Turkey!

The Truth

This is how it really went.

The Pilgrims may have been religious radicals who were driven out of England, but they were never known for being "righteous" people. Although we are often taught that they were "fleeing religious persecution," most schoolbooks don't mention that their voyage was being funded by a trading company. The trading company and the Pilgrims were interested in a lot more than religious freedom.

In 1620, the Pilgrims were pleased to find the ruins of a former Native village of the Pawtuxet Nation. They settled here and built a colony which they called the "Plymouth Plantation."

The Pawtuxet people had lived there in peace for thousands of years. That is, until the English settlers began arriving. In 1614, an English soldier named John Smith arrived and began taking Indians to sell into slavery in Europe. Another common practice among Europeans was to give "Smallpox Infected Blankets" to the Indians.

The settlers would offer the blankets as a friendly gift, secretly knowing what would soon happen to their new "friends." Since smallpox was unknown on this continent before the arrival of the Europeans,Natives did not have any immunity to the deadly disease. In a short time, smallpox would wipe out entire villages with very little effort required by the Europeans.

The Europeans thanked their God for the Natives demise. A colony founder remarked in a letter back to England: "But for the natives in these parts, God hath so pursued them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by smallpox which still continues among them. So…God hath thereby cleared our title to this place."

By the time the Pilgrims arrived six years later, only one Pawtuxet had survived, a man named Squanto, who had spent time as a slave to the English.

When the Pilgrims met Squanto, they were sick and near starving. Since Squanto understood the language and customs of the Puritans, he taught them to use the corn growing wild from the abandoned fields of the village, taught them how to fish, and taught them about the foods, herbs and fruits of the land. Basically, Squanto saved their lives. Without his help, Plymouth Plantation would not have survived its first winter.

Squanto also negotiated a peace treaty between the Puritans and the Wampanoag Nation, a very large Native nation which totally surrounded the new Plymouth Plantation. Because of Squanto's help, the Puritans enjoyed almost 15 years of peaceful harmony with the surrounding Indians, and the Pilgrims prospered.

At the end of their first year, the Puritans held a great feast following the harvest of the food that Squanto had taught them how to farm. The feast honored Squanto and their friends, the Wampanoags. The first Thanksgiving was a day of the Pilgrims giving thanks for the  Natives helped them and took care of them.

However, the Indians who were there were not even invited! Actually, a few days before this feast took place, a squad of Pilgrims led by Miles Standish actively sought the head of a local Indian chief, and an 11 foot high wall was erected around the entire Plymouth settlement for the very purpose of keeping Indians out!

The feast was followed by three days of "Thanksgiving" celebrating their good fortune. The Pilgrims drank even more than their daily custom of half a gallon of beer, and engaged in drunken acts of violence and sodomy. They were having a good old-fashioned European party.

Soon after this first "Thanksgiving," in 1629, the Puritans began a march inland from the shore. Using *Bible Passages* to justify their every move, they seized land, took the strong and young Indians as slaves to work their land, and killed the rest.

They destroyed their "friends" the Wampanoag pretty easily. Their chief was beheaded, and his head placed on a pole in Plymouth, Massachusetts - where it remained for 24 years.

But when they reached the Connecticut Valley around 1633, they met a different type of force. The Pequot Nation, very large and very powerful, had never entered into the peace treaty negotiated by Squanto, as had the Wampanoag and the Narragansett. They were not interested in helping or befriending the white settlers. The elders of the Pequot had warned them not to trust these people.

When resisting Pequot Natives killed two slave raiders, the Pilgrims demanded that the killers be turned over to them. The Pequot refused. This act of resistance led to the Pequot War, the bloodiest of the Indian wars in the northeast.

An army of over 200 white settlers was formed. They also convinced over 1,000 Narragansett warriors to join them by using lies and deceit. Although they would later destroy the Narragansett as well, the Narragansett Natives believed that they were helping the right group of people.

Commander John Mason decided not to fight a head-on battle. Instead, the Pequot were attacked, one village at a time, in the early hours of the morning. Each village was set on fire with its sleeping Natives burned alive. Women and children over 14 were raped and captured to be sold as slaves. Other survivors were brutally tortured and murdered.

Indians were sold into slavery in the islands of the West Indies, Spain, Algiers, and England; everywhere the Pilgrim traders went. The slave trade was so profitable that boatloads of 500 at a time left the harbors of New England. Of course, all this helped lay the foundations for the African slave trade.


The destruction of Indians in the Pequot War soon led to more destruction in King Philip's war. In 1641, the Dutch governor of Manhattan offered the first scalp bounty. Usually, we are taught that the Indians were the ones scalping white people. The truth was that it began with whites scalping Natives, and other  Natives paid or tricked to scalp their brothers and sisters.

The Dutch and Pilgrims joined forces to exterminate all Natives from New England, and village after village fell. Following an especially successful raid against the Pequot in what is now Connecticut, the churches of Manhattan announced a day of "Thanksgiving" to celebrate victory over the "heathen savages."

One colonist in Manhattan wrote, "There is now but few Indians upon the island and those few no ways hurtful. It is to be admired how strangely they have decreased by the hand of God, since the English first settled in these parts." Strange, indeed.

This was the Second Thanksgiving. Since that day, Thanksgiving has been a celebration of the destruction of Native people in the name of white supremacy. And somehow, God is all part of the plan.

During the feasting that followed this second Thanksgiving, the hacked off heads of Natives were kicked through the streets of Manhattan like soccer balls. This is the origin of the football tradition on Thanksgiving.

From then on, a Thanksgiving feast was held after each successful massacre. Each town held days of Thanksgiving to celebrate their own victories over the Natives until it became clear that there needed to be an order for these special occasions. It was George Washington who finally brought a system and a schedule to Thanksgiving when he declared one day to be celebrated across the nation as Thanksgiving Day.

Years later, Abraham Lincoln decreed Thanksgiving Day a legal national holiday during the Civil War - on the same day and at the same time he was ordering troops to march against the Sioux Indians in Minnesota.

Epilogue

In 1492, there were over 600 t0 300  million Native Americans. A century later there were only ten million. Today, there are about two or  three million left, 98% were exterminated mostly by disease famine and not as many by war, that common knowledge suggests!.

You can't help everybody.

First it was smallpox blankets meant to kill any Indian who touched them. But the Europeans gave them to the Indians as an act of friendship. The Indians would not be cold during the winter, thanks to the generous white people, right? Then they all started dying.

Then the Europeans offered alcohol to help the Indians cope with the cold winters (especially since many of them had lost their homes), and also to help celebrate their…um, well they ain't have sh*t to celebrate, did they? And now alcoholism is a major problem for Indians. They call it their "firewater" and that sh*t is killing many of them slowly.

Finally, some people learned that casinos could be built legally on Indian land. This seemed great. After all, the Pequot Indians, who were almost destroyed in the Pequot War, now make about $9 Billion a year off their casino built in the same area where they once fought. But guess what?

Now, the Natives have  more problems. First, they're losing their traditional values and deep understandings of man and nature. Instead, they're becoming shallow and materialistic  in the pursuit of more money. And now the Natives have another addiction after alcohol: gambling, and giving in to the newage movement, which is a spiritual exploration, It is just as easy to rediscover ones own lost spirituality, PLEASE go take the time and LOOK instead of selling us out, to consumerism and capitalism!

Be careful whose "help" you accept.

Everyone offering help isn't sincere.



Anonymous Animist

Arundhati Roy

 Arundhati Roy (born November 24, 1961) is an Indian novelist, activist and a world citizen. She won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her first novel The God of Small Things.

Roy was born in Shillong, Meghalaya to a Keralite Syrian Christian mother and a Bengali Hindu father, a tea planter by profession. She spent her childhood in Aymanam, in Kerala, schooling in Corpus Christi. She left Kerala for Delhi at age 16, and embarked on a homeless lifestyle, staying in a small hut with a tin roof within the walls of Delhi's Feroz Shah Kotla and making a living selling empty bottles. She then proceeded to study architecture at the Delhi School of Architecture, where she met her first husband, the architectGerard Da Cunha.

The God of Small Things is the only novel written by Roy. Since winning the Booker Prize, she has concentrated her writing on political issues. These include the Narmada Dam project, India's Nuclear Weapons, corrupt power company Enron's activities in India. She is a figure-head of the anti-globalization/alter-globalization movement and a vehement critic of neo-imperialism.

In response to India's testing of nuclear weapons in Pokhran, Rajasthan, Roy wrote The End of Imagination, a critique of the Indian government's nuclear policies. It was published in her collection The Cost of Living, in which she also crusaded against India's massive hydroelectric dam projects in the central and western states of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. She has since devoted herself solely to nonfiction and politics, publishing two more collections of essays as well as working for social causes.

Roy was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize in May 2004 for her work in social campaigns and advocacy of non-violence.

In June 2005 she took part in the World Tribunal on Iraq. In January 2006 she was awarded the Sahitya Akademi award for her collection of essays, 'The Algebra of Infinite Justice', but declined to accept it.

O baby

Natural
Reality
Has escaped
To the caverns
Of spiritual

The earth has come to a sad sad place to be
human without the Being
Missing
The human animals
Encountered the civilized
Mixed with him

The Being has left all
Waiting in the caverns of the spiritual
Returning one day

The civilized excused himself
The darkness came
It stayed with those who believe

And we live
In a world of constant fear
We fear

Those who are still
Human
Being
Animal
Plant
Natural Reality

Living away
From
Civilization
Also leaving in fear

Civilized
Who will come
Take what they have left

But soon soon
That will be gone
As well

Fore there are those
Believing they have a right
To what is not theirs

The fearful minded
Will one day be
The norm
Of your
Security

We have embraced
Virtual
Civilized
Man

Forever losing
Natural
Rational
Reality

It is a sad sad situation for all
Humans
Animals
Plants
Spirits
Living in fear with each other

I refuse to live in the realm of fear
My reality
Switched
To none
Trusting
All humans

Their being their animal has escaped
Too busy pretending to be civilized
Just like they wanted to be

Those who are still
Human
Being
Animal
Plant
Natural Reality


Understanding you completely
I would not want strangers
Interfering

Spiritual being
There is my place
Intimate

My relations I follow
The way it was in the past
And the way it should be now

Believing no human
Without its Being


AKAtjecoutay

The air is fresh with the sweet scent of buffalo grass.

Jan 23 2011 Anne Wolfe

The air is fresh with the sweet scent of buffalo grass. As you look to the horizon you can see all that is natural, walking without being disturbed, till you have reach your migrational destination...

Just over 500 hundred years ago there was a force that impeded our direction, a force that has gone down in the Euro-American history books as the greatest conquest of civilized man... According to my point of view that would be rape, murder, disease, theft, lies and the unnatural occupation of my homeland.

"Genocide is the political purgative of Euro-American progression and I personally am a survivor of this policy. But the attempt was unsuccessful: still we survive and live among those who were brought from Europe who now call the Americas their homeland".(KA)

The residential schools were one of the attempts to re-educate the Indigenous for this reason: the invaders inability to exterminate the tribal people. So to “save the man you must kill the Indian”. Up until the time of my mother and father, the last generation of residential school survivors- (but not the only ones-) those Indian children have been systematically de/re-programmed, battered, sexually abused, humiliated into submission and, at times, killed for resisting their forced brainwashing.

In present days, approximately 50,000 children are missing. This is the result of the residential school policy implemented by the US and Canadian governments under the care of the Roman Catholic Anglican Protestant and other churches.

Kerry Atjecoutay became aware of this truth from his parents, There, he heard stories of some of the atrocities that the Church had committed. Guided by the Duty of Memory, he courageously started to lift the veil on the complete history of what happened to the Native children in the Christian Residential Schools. Today, Kerry Atjecoutay is looking for answers: why this happened, how this happened, and where are the bones of these lost children. In this spirit, along with other concerned people to bring about a symbolic healing of the Church and the children that suffered under its “care”.

The Indigenous people are waiting for the Church authorities to recognize their participation and responsibility for the Genocide.

Anne Wolfe

Labrador North

The dog days are gone.

The dog days are gone
Pulling homes of the free
Migration
The Dog days are over

Came the horses- Pulling the chariots
Of wealthy overweight patriarchal Gods
To fill them with - The weight of self worth

Gold
Oil
Minerals

The horses trampled - Hard and heavy
Upon the flesh of our Mother
With the weight of one's - self worth

Enslavement
Tribal child

Is not need anymore - So poor they stand
And watch
As the Machine
Does all the work

Dog is not need anymore
The horse is the symbol
Of past

Enslavement
Free sprite
Mascot

Now machine
Rips away at her
To feed the ever greedy
Consuming descendant

Tribal past of the Dog days
Is needed some more !

Atjecoutay

Moon Lodge of the Upper Manitous

The Garden of Eden is located on the dark side of the moon, and when Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of deception, The patriarchal Manitou Banished them to the earth

Civilized Mans first attempts to travel back to the moon was by strapping feathers of the Golden Eagle to his body and then jumping off his grand ole cow barn, after a few attempts and reaching a middle distance, he floats back to earth, landing among a tribe of half naked Redskins in the original and ancient world of Anishinaabe. There he builds a Zeppelin that eventually takes him to his destination, which goes to show that the ancient world of the Anishinaabe has always been the ideal place for moon launchings. The people he encounters on he moon are the Manitous, eighteen feet tall (6.1/2 meters) and walk on all fours. they speak two mother tongues, but neither language has any words in it. the first, used by the common people, is an intricate code of pantomime gestures that calls for constant movement from all parts of the body, they like to pretend that they are shaman but mimic no particular animal. The second language is spoken by the upper Manitous, and consists of pure sound, a complex but unarticulated humming that closely resembles music. The moon people do not eat by swallowing food but by smelling it. there money is poetry - actual poems, written out on pieces of moon rock whose value is determined by the worth of the poem itself, The worst crime is not having a spiritual resume to brag about, and the common people are expected to show disrespect for there upper Manitous.

The longer one's nose, the more noble one's character is considered to be, among the common folk. Men with short noses are castrated and their scrotums are used as medicine bags that hang around the necks of the upper Manitous, for the moon people would rather die out as a race then be forced to live with such ugliness. There are talking books and traveling cities. When a great philosopher dies, his friends drink his blood and eat his flesh and will be expected to perform a gesture of symbolic cannibalism for over 2000 years.

Bone penises hang from the waist of men - in the same way that seventeenth-century European men used to carry swords.( I smite thee with thy inverted cross) and water fill balloons hang from the backs of the women like implants of Hollywood celibates, As a moon man explains to the confused earth man: Is it not better to honor the tools of life then the tools of death???

The earth man spends a good part of his stay in a scrotum medicine bag of one of the upper Manitous. Because he is so small, the moon Manitous think he is a talking trinket sent from Adam and Eve.

In the end, a giant Red-man throws him back to earth along with the Anti-Christ.

A List of organized Terrorists

To genocide the so called "Indians" they first defined them as "Savages". To genocide the Jew, they first defined them as "under-human" (Untermenschen). To denature the Africans, they first defined them as "Nigger".
And you ? What sort of ANIMAL are you, as you use your SUPERPRODUCT certified, secure and ANIMAL TESTED. How is your human consciousness doing today ?

They have declared ecological and economical war and the Natural world!

Why are these companies included on the list?

The following companies manufacture products that ARE tested on animals. Those marked with a t are currently observing a moratorium (i.e., current suspension of) on animal testing. Please encourage them to announce a permanent ban. Listed in parentheses are examples of products manufactured by either the company listed or, if applicable, its parent company. For a complete listing of products manufactured by a company on this list, please visit the company's Web site or contact the company directly for more information. Companies on this list may manufacture individual lines of products without animal testing (e.g., Clairol claims that its Herbal Essences line is not animal-tested). They have not, however, eliminated animal testing from their entire line of cosmetics and household products.


Similarly, companies on this list may make some products, such as pharmaceuticals, that are required by law to be tested on animals. However, the reason for these companies' inclusion on the list is not the animal testing that they conduct that is required by law, but rather the animal testing (of personal-care and household products) that is not required by law.


What can be done about animal tests required by law?

Although animal testing of pharmaceuticals and certain chemicals is still mandated by law, the arguments against using animals in cosmetics testing are still valid when applied to the pharmaceutical and chemical industries. These industries are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency, respectively, and it is the responsibility of the companies that kill animals in order to bring their products to market to convince the regulatory agencies that there is a better way to determine product safety. Companies often resist progress and, instead of using human-relevant non-animal tests, choose to use animal tests because their results can be manipulated. Let companies know how you feel about this.

COMPANIES THAT DO TEST ON ANIMALS


Unilever (Axe, Dove, Lever Bros., Suave, Sunsilk), 800 Sylvan Ave., Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632; 212-888-1260; 800-598-1223; www.unilever.com

Vicks (Procter & Gamble), 1 Procter & Gamble Plz., Cincinnati, OH 45202; 513-983-1100; 800-543-1745; www.pg.com


Arm & Hammer (Church & Dwight), P.O. Box 1625, Horsham, PA 19044-6625; 609-683-5900; 800-524-1328; www.armhammer.com

tBic Corporation, 1 Bic Way, Ste.1, Shelton, CT 06484; 203-783-2000; www.bicworld.com

Church & Dwight (Aim, Arm & Hammer, Arrid, Brillo, Close-up, Kaboom, Lady's Choice, Mentadent, Nair, Orange Glo International, Oxi Clean, Pearl Drops), P.O. Box 1625, Horsham, PA 19044-6625; 609-683-5900; 800-524-1328; www.churchdwight.com

Clairol (Aussie, Daily Defense, Herbal Essences, Infusium 23, Procter & Gamble), 1 Blachley Rd., Stamford, CT 06922; 800-252-4765; www.clairol.com

Clorox (ArmorAll, Formula 409, Fresh Step, Glad, Liquid Plumber, Pine-Sol, Soft Scrub, S.O.S., Tilex), 1221 Broadway, Oakland, CA 94612; 510-271-7000; 800-227-1860; www.clorox.com

Dial Corporation (Dry Idea, Purex, Renuzit, Right Guard, Soft & Dri), 15101 N. Scottsdale Rd., Ste. 5028, Scottsdale, AZ 85254-2199; 800-528-0849; www.dialcorp.com

Johnson & Johnson (Aveeno, Clean & Clear, Listerine, Lubriderm, Neutrogena, Rembrandt, ROC), 1 Johnson & Johnson Plz., New Brunswick, NJ 08933; 732-524-0400; 800-526-3967; www.jnj.com

L'Oréal (Biotherm, Cacharel, Garnier, Giorgio Armani, Helena Rubinstein, Lancôme, Matrix Essentials, Maybelline, Ralph Lauren Fragrances, Redken, Soft Sheen, Vichy), 575 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10017; 212-818-1500; www.loreal.com

Max Factor (Procter & Gamble), 1 Procter & Gamble Plz., Cincinnati, OH 45202; 513-983-1100; 800-543-1745; www.maxfactor.com

Mead, 10 W. Second St., #1, Dayton, OH 45402; 937-495-6323; www.meadweb.com

Melaleuca, 3910 S. Yellowstone Hwy., Idaho Falls, ID 83402-6003; 208-522-0700; www.melaleuca.com

New Dana Perfumes, 470 Oakhill Rd., Crestwood Industrial Park, Mountaintop, PA 18707; 800-822-8547

Olay (Procter & Gamble), P.O. Box 599, Cincinnati, OH 45201; 800-543-1745; www.oilofolay.com

Pantene (Procter & Gamble), 1 Procter & Gamble Plz., Cincinnati, OH 45202; 800-945-7768; www.pantene.com

Physique (Procter & Gamble), 1 Procter & Gamble Plz., Cincinnati, OH 45202; 800-214-8957; www.physique.com

Ponds (Unilever), 800 Sylvan Ave., Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632; 800-909-9493; www.ponds.com

Procter & Gamble Co. (Clairol, Crest, Gillette, Giorgio, Iams, Max Factor, Physique, Tide), 1 Procter & Gamble Plz., Cincinnati, OH 45202; 513-983-1100; 800-543-1745; www.pg.com

Reckitt Benckiser (Easy Off, Lysol, Mop & Glo, Old English, Resolve, Spray 'N Wash, Veet, Woolite), 399 Interpace Pkwy., Parsippany, NJ 07054; 973-633-3600; 800-333-3899; www.reckittbenckiser.com

Shiseido Cosmetics, 5-5, Ginza 7-chome, Chuo-k, Tokyo, 104-0061, Japan; 212-805-2300; www.shiseido.com

Schering-Plough (Bain de Soleil, Coppertone, Dr. Scholl's), 2000 Galloping Hill Rd., Kenilworth, NJ 07033-0530; 800-842-4090; www.sch-plough.com

S.C. Johnson (Drano, Edge, Fantastik, Glade, OFF!, Oust, Pledge, Scrubbing Bubbles, Shout, Skintimate, Windex, Ziploc), 1525 Howe St., Racine, WI 53403; 800-494-4855; www.scjohnson.com

Suave (Unilever), 800 Sylvan Ave., Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632; 212-888-1260; 800-782-8301; www.suave.com




.

YOUR FEAST IS A REVOLUTIONARY BEAST

This is the revolution of a sedentary Beast
Born in a factory farm
In a cage of corrugated steel
Never seeing the light of day
Never feeling the warmth of sun
Always hearing the blades of grass

Human life
Is
Consumption

Pump full of growth hormones
Antibiotics
Vitamins and chemicals
Are passing though your ass
Slaughtered in the cruelest of ways
And off to the market

Oh what a feast
A Man gets off work oh wait I just said that...
This may be the revolution of a beast

You do not have to think anymore
Just do what you’re told
Life as we know it
Is far from being more

Natural
Natural
natural

You do not have to revolve anymore
Just move in a straight line
You are now bored

This is no Lion King
Just the reality of a privileged life and more
Oh wait
There is that club the EATMORE

Calling yourself a Defender of the Earth
And then running to eat
More factory farmed Meat
This is a serious contradiction of moral defeat

This is the bases of a civilian beat

What about Ben -
Zene
Oil
Plastics
and
Cultivated
Meat

It is at this time that the Civilian will be given a choice between two roads
If he chooses the right road
Then the Seventh will light the Eighth and final Fire
An eternal flame of tranquility and equality between all MEAT...

Stop what we are feeding??
Stop what we are beating??
Egocentric - Masturbation
The Creator of green house gasses and cruelty to
MEAT
One race
One species
More important than your defeat

Historical dissemination as priority

I see no one in any humble way of beating
And you are thinking you are believing

Believing is not thinking

Human life consists of consumption
The revolution of sedentary life
Born as a factory farm meat
In a cage waiting for your defeat

Corrugated steel
Never seeing the light of day
Never feeling the warmth of sun
Always hearing the blades of grass

Pump full with growth
Hormones
Antibiotics
Vitamins to keep you meating
O man you’re so fucking sick
As result of your unsanitary beating
Slaughtered in the cruelest ways
 Of
Being

Chlorine, chemical baths
Off to the market for a meating
Because this is your wrath
Oh wait I just said that
Off work she gets the
Civilized Race

This is the revolution of a beating

Free range
Organic
Natural or fresh
Does not exist just the word
Satan
Is by far a much kinder beating

Or do you prefer it straight from the cage of a factory farm Beast
Your fleshy lifeless corps tortured and laden with chemicals
Ready for a feast?

Because this is the revolution of the Beast
The Revolution of your feast


by Atjecoutay

"Almost Soup"

Almost Soup"
Windigo dog
You will end up puppy soup if you're born a pure white dog on the reservation, unless you're one who is extra clever, like me. I survived into my old age through dog magic. That's right. You see me, you see the result of dog wit. Dog skill. Medicine ways I learned from my elders, and want to pass on now to my relatives. You. So listen up, animoshug. You're only going to get this knowledge from the real dog's mouth once.
There is a little of a coyote in me, just a touch here in my paws, bigger than a dog's paws. My jaw, too, strong to snap rabbit bones. Prairie-dog bones as well. Prairie. I don't mind saying to you that I'm not a full-blood Ojibwa reservation dog. I'm part Dakota, born out in Bwaanakeeng, transported here. I still remember all that sky, all that pure space, all that blowing dirt of land where I got my name, which has since become legendary.



Here's how it happened.
I was underneath the house one hot slow day panting in the dirt. I was a young thing. Just chubby, too, and like I said white all over. That worried my mother. Every morning she scratched dirt on me, threw me in the mud, rolled me in garbage to disguise my purity. Her words to me were this--My don, you won't survive if you lick you paws. Don't be respectable. Us Indian dogs have got to look as unappetizing as we can! Slink a little, won't you? Stick your ears out. Grow ticks. Fleas. Bite your fur here and there. Strive for a disreputable appearance, my boy. Above all, don't be clean!
Like I say, born pure white you usually don't stand a chance, but me, I took my mama's advice. After all, I was the son of a blend of dogs stretching back to the beginning of time on this continent. We sprang up here. We had no need to cross on any land bridge. We know who we are. Us, we are descended of Original Dog.
I think about her lots, and also about my ancestor, from way way back, the dog named Sorrow who drank a human's milk. I think about her because I know it was the first dog's mercy and the hand-me-down wit of the second that saved my life that time they were boiling the soup.



I hear these words--Get under the house, Melvin, fetch that white puppy now. Bam! My mama trows me in the farthest house corner and sits down on me. I cover up with her but once Melvin is in play distance I can't help it. I've got that curious streak of all the Indian dogs. I peek right around my mother's tail and whoops, he's got me. He drags me out and gives me to a grandma, who stuffs me in a gunnysack and slings me down beside the fire.
I fight the bag there for a while but it's warm and cozy and I go to sleep. I don't think much of it. Just another human habit I'll get used to, this stuffing dogs in sacks. Then I hear them talking.
Sharpen up the knife. Grandma's voice.
That's a nice fat white puppy. Someone else.
He'll make a good soup, but do you think enough to go around? Should we kill another one?
Then, right above me, they start arguing about whether or not I'll feed twenty. Me, just a little chunk of a guy, owah! No! I bark. No! No! I'm not enough for even five of your big strong warrior sons. Not me. What am I saying? I'm not enough for any of you! Anybody! No! I'm sour meat. I don't want to be eaten! In response, I get this tap from a grandma shoe, just a tap, but all us dogs know feet language. Be quiet or you'll get a solid one, it means. I shut up. Once I stop barking all I can do is think and I think fast. I think furious. I think desperate puppy thoughts until I know what I'll do the moment they let me out.



A puppy has just one weapon, and there really is no word for it but puppyness. Stuck in that bag, I muster all my puppyness. I call my tail wags and love licks up from deep way back, from the dogs going back to dogs unto the beginning of our association with these strange exasperating things called humans. I hear them stroking the steel on steel. I hear them tapping the boiling water pot. I hear them deciding I'll be enough, just barely. Then daylight. The bag loosens and a grandma draws me forth and just quick, because I'm smart, desperate, and connected with my ancestors, I look for the nearest girl child in the bunch around me. I spot her. I pick her out.
She's a visitor, sitting right there with a cousin, playing, not noting me at all. I give a friendly little whine, a yap, and then, as the grandma hauls me toward the table, a sharp loud bark of fear. That starts out of me. I can't help it. But good thing, because the girl hears it and responds.
"Grandma," she says, "what you going to do with the puppy?"
"Where'smyogleyzigzichaogleyzigzicha," mumbles Grandma, the way they do when trying to hide their actions.
"What?" That gets her little-girl curiosity up, a trait us dogs and children share in equal parts, what makes us love each other so.
"Don't you know, you dummy," shouts that boy cousin in boy knowledge, "Grandma's going to boil it up, make it into soup!"
"Aaay," my girl says, shy and laughing. "Grandma wouldn't do that." And she holds out her hands for me. Which is when I use my age old Original Dog puppyness. I throw puppy love right at her in loopy yo-yos, puppy drool, joy, and big-pawed puppy clabber, ear perks, eye contact, most of all the potent weapon of all puppies, the head cock and puppy grin."
"Gimme him, gimme!"
"Noooo," says Grandma, holding me tight and pursing her lips in that terrible way of grandmas, when they cannot be swayed. But she's dealing with her own descendant in its purest form--pure girl. Puppy-loving girl.
"Grandmagrandmagrandma!" she shrieks.
"Eeeeh!"
"GIMMEDAPUPPY!GIMMEDAPUPPY!"



Now it's time for me to wiggle, all over, to give the high-quotient adorability wiggle all puppies know. This is life or death. I do it double time, triple time, full of puppy determination, desperate to live.
"Ooooh," says another grandma, sharp-eyed, "quick, trow him in the pot!"
"Noooh," says yet another, "she wants that puppy bad, her."
"Give her that little dog," says a grandpa now, his grandpa heart swelling up. "She wants that dog. So give her that little dog."
My girl's doll-playing fingers are brushing my fur. She's ju7mpting for me. Spinning like a sweet maple seed. Straining up toward her grandma, who at this point can't hold on to me without looking almost supernaturally mean. And so it is, I feel those ancient dog-cooking fingers give me up before her disappointed voice does.
"Here."
And just like that I'm in the most heavenly of places. Soft, strong girl arms. I'm carried off to be petted and played with, fed scraps, dragged around in a baby carriage made of an old shoe box, dressed in the clothing of tiny brothers and sisters. Yes. I'll do anything. Anything. This is when my naming happens. As we go off I hear the grandpa calling from behind us in amusement, asking the name of the puppy. Me. And my calls back, without hesitation, the name I will bear from then on into my age, the name that has given so many of our breedless breed hope, the name that will live on in dogness down through the generations. You've heard it. You know it. Almost Soup.

(Louise Erdrich's The Antelope Wife, 1998)

Capitalism, The System of Waste