REZ-Dog Mixed Media Paintings and poetry from 2010 Exposition

http://www.animistespace.ch/index.php/exposition

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ANIMOOSH CEREMONIAL SONGS

Based on the Creation telling

FEED THE PEOPLE

That which is good

May it be made an offering to her

May it be made an offering to her

The People who walks in the darkness

May it be made an offering to her

May it be made an offering to her – No’sa (my father)

The blue sparkling snow

May it be made an offering to her

May it be made an offering to her

The sage, the sweetgrass and the cedar

May it be made an offering to them

May it be made an offering to them

The birch barch and the red willow

May it be made an offering to them

May it be made an offering to them

On the ice the people’s little steps and the happiness

May it be made an offering to them

May it be made an offering to them

The famine

May it be made an offering to him

May it be made an offering to him

WICHIKAPACHE (DUAL SPIRIT)

At first the earth

Was inhabited solely by a giant woman

With a yellow rain arm

And dark pollen legs

And she cuts the wood

And she keeps the fire

One day she found animoosh a dog

The dog is aabita animosh

SLUGGISH TRAVOIS

Wichikapache this is my name now

I am the first human being

I receive my language from the animals

They give me birth

If I stop to talk about them

They will leave

This is the deal we did

Anishinabee

But this is the night I am waiting

On this flat long reservation road

A history to come and walk around

With a yellow rain arm

And dark pollen legs

She will find my people covered with snow

She will find me and give me a raven

Or a crow name

Later she will tell

What happened

In the snow I give love to this stray

In the snow I give love to this stray

And to this dog -No’sa (my father)

With his hair as black as choke cherries

I can’t think straight anymore

So I think twisted

This is how I transform

Atjecoutay this is my name now

I tell the story at the day of the dog

Before the time of the sacred atim

One thousand by camp

One hundred by family

One

‘Lone

Burden

Animoosh

Happy to carry heavy pack upon its back

Happily hitched to the travois-

Happily loaded with buffalo chips or wood

Pulling children and the elderly

Who couldn’t walk- who couldn’t walk any more

The Mandan, the Minnetaree

The Assiniboine, the Arikara and the Cree

The Blackfoot, the Grosventre, the Dogrib, the Sarsi

And the Arapaho, the Hidatsa, the Arikara, the Crow

The Shayela and the Dog Eaters

Houses

Atjecoutay this is my name

And I tell

Dog carries the house of the people

Dog carries the house of the people

The sticks of the people’s houses

Dragging along

Their courageous

Little

Dog

Legs

THE FIRST WINTER OF BIG FOOT

I am new-born Dog I wander around

I have seen the white god’s fire I wander around

I stole his fire from him I wander around

With corn around my lips

I have it I have it

I am changing Dog I wander around

Among the garbage rummaging

I haven’t been seen

I haven’ been seen

What do I find behind the house?

What do I find behind the house?

Snow white dog decorated- This is what I find

With red paint on his warm muzzle

And ribbons around his wagging tail

Almost soup

Almost soup

I am reservation Dog I wander around

Kokum’s house

With my large empty

Belly

THE BARRIER OF 3’

Sage cedar and sweetgrass I tell the story

Decrepit ol’ dog Trinity lived long even if she missed one

She never belonged to anybody

She was along with people who took care of her

Sage cedar and sweet

Grass I tell the story

At the age of four

Then she simply died from distemper

Behind the Roman Catholic Church

Spring came

Her contracted brown body was discovered

Somebody was kind enough to bury her

Instead of throwing her into the river

As it was before

Sage cedar and sweet

Grass three weeks after

Three trees were grown behind

The parking of the bingo hall

That signified her presence to the band

Of course

These trees are not very healthy

They are decrepit with no leafs

But they grow over the Cowessess Reservation

Sage cedar and sweetgrass I tell the story

But In the natural world nothing has three legs

Nothing goes by three

CALL YOURSELF HERB (THE PROSTITUTE)

She moves she moves

Herb woman she moves

Her shoes of sweet grass she moves

Her shoe-string of green grass she moves

Her leggings of fire herb she moves

Her garters of powder she moves

Her necklace of gray sage she moves

Her earrings of white shell she moves

The pollen of the various robes is placed in her mouth she moves

Her heavy coat of fire herb she moves

A grass-tunnel has been placed on her forehead she moves

Her feather of herb she moves

Above her a male blue bird dances about dangerously

She moves

One child after one child

She does not separate them

The day from the night

And she change the name

GAZDOG (THE 5TH DIRECTION)

Dog runs after food, flesh is ancient in her breath, bleeding feet tells the story of a woman way, chase the coyote naked till it drops, the odor of stories quiet in her blood she guards the door, she guards the bone of all living things, her regrets are numerous, this silent pup', trees are good to listen from telling how with thunder-hands the male God shaped the dust, circled bone-fire tumbled up the wind to make a fool. Now the fool is dead, his bone back out time the hills are young to look for signs that say a man could love his fate that winter fire in the blood is one sad thing, Woooo, com-passion translate wind to be fire I am life Gas-Dog to strong grace the People is and I promise to appease his troubled skin, I promise to protect his prayer within my full and warm belly.

I am with the People that broke its raw mirrors standing with solitude and dignity, now dispersed in 4 colored directions, a name has been given to the People, a name and others, the Word was the incarnated weapon, the pale God had the bone, the buffalo dust in the breast and one more cigarette for your treaty number.

O Take my paw now, 10-37 friend, for I lead you to your nature; she is there, patient, waiting on you that you come back to your beauty, your integrity, your respect of life. You have to do it, People, to appease your consciousness. I am Dog, brave People, the woman in love with your freedom. You aren't the abstract image of God, keeper of the chaos's structure; you are alive People and real. The Creation never happened, there is no Fall, there will be no Promised Land to where I could guide you, you are pure from Time.

O take my paw now, there is the act without loss of memory nor destiny; there is no small confined weakness between a father and a mother for a little Indian child to find a refuge, white God stole the point, separate the mother and the child, the blue from the blue and the energy went day and night, turning on them, selves, until love changes into solid chaos; then the One told the matter in order to structure them as symbols, creating con-fusion words into the devastated heart: this is now the point reached, the Time when all moral sense is gone with each destroyed family, only the name turns high, lonely No Name child, raw-raw beer child alone on Friday plains.

I am not afraid by you construction, migratory People, I am the chained dog on your little square rez house, I loved you all my life, I saw you honoring the wild rock flowers, I know you today you call death deliverance; or is death a delivery, Indian baby ? Who is always dying? Which One of you? To come out the family is it to be penetrated, dissociated in 4 x 4 directions like a light fire, this first time, not the other times? And guys, what'z your center?

It wasn't another you, a white dog, coming in and out and in and out; you didn't closed Time, you are intact and to coyote it is equal. You divided, parted yourself in the dream to control your emotions, now words are white, making you sick as alcohol does, turning you as vicious circle. Words are not trapped animals, indios, you are my trapped brothers in that story; her story, my mother died by the winter, from distemper, do you remember?

And you know this life as I know it: it is not her. At the center of hearth it was no difference between no-gods and no-dogs; all were living onto the womb; a man could transform into an animal if he wanted to and an animal could become a human: it was no difference, words were magic and spirit had mysterious powers. A silence pronounced by chance could have strange implications; it became suddenly alive: it was like it was. You came in me, People, with your seeds, waiting on me to deliver you from the symbolic world where you were caught since born, I soon will deliver you.

The justice of the solitary dog moves you, her paw scratches the air just right and the prairie dog was any dog. I dreamed to be him, I tried to be free, People, but you came broken, dizzy by the sense of a world trying to be right and the prey was any prey. Is it a right way, rezpeople, I am GasDog, I am in your hands begging for money and beauty I am with the sorrow child against the God. I refused, People, the manifest destiny that tells a prairie dog has to die for a wild animal's hunter's grace. Who is your Creator which allows the crazy equation? Xolot'l ? Quitzequatl? What is its creation that pretends to survive on another dependency? Meat? Are you, People? A 4-basis snake turns, you fat black car takes the 5th- Direction, the engine breaks, Dog tells a skinny loving lie.

FRITZ’S DOG (Hommage to Fritz Shoulder)

To Fritz I give my tribal blanket

Female strokes are

Anishinabe traditional

Attacks

MOTHER’S MILK (THE KEEPER)

All children need a proper burial

Animoosh keeps the bones between two worlds

Animoosh keeps the difference between both

Animoosh is waiting at the residential

School for a bone soup and a warm bath

We never lost the hearth we shall live

We never lost the earth we shall live

Here she is and we all live

In the shade of reality

BLANKET 1 - WINTER CAMP

Little people of the forest

Little people of the forest

So timid

That nobody knows you

Little people of the forest

So modest

Nobody cares

About you

You go walking you go walking

Little people of the forest

So modest

Nobody cares

About you

You go walking you go walking

BLANKET 2- BLUE DIIDE (SECOND MESSAGE FROM THE BLUE LIGHT)

This is your female cover I offer with notches to dig it out

This is your cultivated land

With the blue straight line above your sky

The sky has been set up it has been made

The earth has been set up it has been made

The spirit has been laid down

It is covered over with the growing thing it has been laid down

The earth has been laid down it has been made

The blue sky has been set up it has been made

The black sky has been set up it has been made

It is covered over with the heavenly bodies it has been set up

Gi'-tchie Man-i-to' has been set up

The sky has been set up it has been made

The mountains have been laid down the mountains have been laid down

The mountain spirits have been laid down

They are covered over with all the animals they have been laid down

The waters have been laid down the waters have been laid down

The waters spirits have been laid down

They are covered over with all the animals they have been laid down

The clouds have been set up they have been made

The clouds have been set up the clouds have been made

The black clouds have been set up

They are covered over with the male new rain they have been set up

And the four direction have been made

The night and the day have been set up

They are covered over with the male new sun they have been set up

And the hole has been placed

The blue divide has been set up it has been made

BLANKET 3 – SUBDIVIDED

My young men shall never work. Men who work cannot dream and wisdom comes in dreams.

You ask me to plow the ground. Shall I take a knife and tear my mother's breast? Then when I die she will not take me to her bosom to rest.

You ask me to dig for stone. Shall I dig under her skin for bones? Then when I die I cannot enter her body to be born again.

You ask me to cut grass and make hay and sell it and be rich like white men. But how dare I cut my mother's hair?

It is a bad law and my people cannot obey it. I want my people to stay with me here. All the dead men will come to life again. We must wait here in the house of our fathers and be ready to meet them in the body of our mother.

BLANKET 4 – THE COMPANY (SMALLPOX BLANKET)

We gave them two Blankets and

an Handkerchief out of the Small Pox Hospital

I hope it will have the desired effect.

BLANKET 5 - GOOD BOOK

There can be no peace or parity between

the savages and Christians.

This is required by our Faith and the fur trade.

BLANKET 6 - BLUE COLLAR

Industry worker

Doing time

This loud blanket from the factory I offer

To you Leonard

Blue Collar

Dreamer

You are the blanket

BLANKET 7 - SUNDOG DANCE

Ho, oh-o-o

Come ye shades, shadows come

Ho, oh-o-o

Come ye shades, halo come

Come ye ring, oh-o-o, ho, oh-o-o

Ye night ghosts and dance ye

What—dark!

Ho, oh-o-o

Come ye dogs, dog-howls come

Ho, oh-o-o

Come ye dogs dog-howls come

Come ye dog son-o-o, ho, oh-o-o

Ye singers merry feast ye—bark!

Ho, oh-o-o

Come ye dust, vertical-prism come

Ho, oh-o-o

Come ye dust, vertical-prism come

Come ye crystal, oh-o-o, ho, oh-o-o

Ye black robes and bark ye—hark!

Ho, oh-o-o

Come ye bones, bone-grins come

Come ye bones, oh-o-o, ho, oh-o-o

Faces

Pierced light

BLANKET 8 – WHERE THE LAND MEETS THE SKY

BLANKET 9 - THE RUN-AWAY

Little people of the reserve

Little people of the reserve

Earth is so red

Nobody knows

The animals

They run away

From you

All the relations

They run away they run away

BLANKET 10 – NATURAL DESTINY

ALTERNANCES

(les abstractions de la vie tribale)

ATJECOUTAY est un peintre heyoka.

Il ne peint pas mais marche dans la forêt vivante et sautille sur la terre brûlée de son peuple.

Outsider d’un art contemporain qui flirte avec le design et les biotechnologies, le « chien de réserve » veut ses terres vierges et manuelles. Simples traits blancs ou tipis abstraits, ses « attaques » figurent la partition de la terre subdivisée ; ce sont des « maladies du carré » qui se répandent sur des peintures venues des temps immémoriaux.

Faites de main d’homme, artisanalement, elles sont pourtant répétitives, sans attache ni appartenance. Cette symbolique contemporaine cache un cérémonial traditionnel :

A l’origine les formes abstraites étaient peintes par les femmes, tandis que les hommes portaient le message de façon plus réaliste. Le clown sacré (heyoka), lui, endosse les deux pouvoirs, les deux devoirs.

BLANKET 1 : WINTER CAMP (OJIBWAY I)

BLANKET 9 : THE RUN AWAY (OJIBWAY II)

FRIENDS AT THE EDGE (LIFESTOCK)

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Pour affranchir la parole aborigène de sa perception folklorique, passéiste ou new-âge, Atjecoutay organise différentes actions de sensibilisation à l’expression contemporaine amérindienne de qualité comme présentation de films, de livres et de disques souvent inconnus en Europe.

Sont en préparation plusieurs expositions media-mixtes, ainsi qu’une série de conférences et lectures publiques avec une préférence donnée aux femmes : « Nous sommes une société matriarcale mais la nature a été enlevée des paysages de nos esprits.

C’est arrivé ici avant de nous arriver : la mère est devenue la matérielle ; c’est avec ses valeurs que je peins et que je combats 

ANE WOLFE

 

"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