Keep your hearts open for the folks in Palestine who are experiencing their second winter under genocide. No water, no food, temporary shelters at best and the constant spectre of death are their lot during what is traditionally a harsh season.
As herbalists and food growers, we recognise that an entire lineage of herbalism is being wiped out, that millennia old food systems have been systematically eliminated.
Olive groves that have been lovingly tended for longer than our own history have been targeted and burned and aquifers that have sustained a nation’s agriculture have been flooded with seawater. Many of the original lineages of fruits and vegetables that we take for granted are now gone as are the lineages of those who tended them.
We mourn these losses as we march into our own summer. Such a loss of knowledge, culture and biodiversity is irreversible and unconscionable. It has been enacted here in Australia too with the original dwellers being denied their traditional food sources and knowledge based on what is the standard practice of Empire.
Please don’t discount herbalism and food as being ‘apolitical’. In the quest for resources, they have been weapons in the hands of aggressors and are now powerfully weaponized against us all as big companies press us towards less healthy diets in the search for profits.
The infamous ‘Irish Potato Famine’ wasn’t caused by a virus. The Potato virus as actually spread throughout Europe. The difference in Ireland was a calculated set of policies designed by the British to deny food and support to those people
Churchill, too caused a famine in which millions of Indians starved to death during World War 2 because he insisted on all agricultural products be sent to Britain to support the war effort there, ignoring the plight of India.
Remember too that, in our own culture, more than 2 million women who fell under the general rubric of ‘healers’ were hunted and executed by the church, backed by the state during the Inquisition. That wasn’t really that long ago in the scheme if things.
Food, medicine, healing, history – equally as potent weapons as race and class. The group Public Enemy have a song on the topic. It’s called ‘Food as a machine gun‘. Check it out.
Other herb pages on Ligaya Garden
We cover a lot of ground on many herb related topics here on our website. There are whole pages devoted to different topics as well as frequent posts. Some of the links are –
