Didn’t get the message that you were lumping any groups together other than ‘modern trendy’ of whatever caste. The loss of knowledge by loss of an entire generation in Cambodia is one frightening example of the damage of ideology run amuck. Whether the dominant cultural values are equally damaging to knowledge is one of those partly philosophical questions that I am engaging with. Perhaps what I am frustrated with is just life and life cycles. The young not interested in the knowledge of oldies and the past. There is a Quaker belief that each generation must take upon itself the responsibility for gaining and interpreting knowledge and that while parents can help their children, they cannot do it for them, nor can they control the uses to which knowledge is put, because the world will throw new challenges to each generation. Hard, but probably true. Trying to be philosophical and spread the word at the same time, Margaret Healey From: medit-plants-bounce@freelists.org [mailto:medit-plants-bounce@freelists.org] On Behalf Of Silke Bernau (Redacted sender "silke.bernau" for DMARC)
Sent: Friday, 14 July 2017 9:15 PM
To: medit-plants@freelists.org
Subject: [medit-plants] Re: Looters strip Greek mountains of wild tea I have just re-read my missive, and realised it sounds as if I am lumping Margaret and responsible dyers, collectors etc, in with trendy foragers -- absolutely not my belief or intention, apologies if it came across that way.
From: Silke Bernau <d*@freelists.org>
To: "m*@freelists.org" <m*@freelists.org>
Sent: Friday, 14 July 2017, 12:53
Subject: [medit-plants] Re: Looters strip Greek mountains of wild tea
Thank you very much indeed for writing about your collecting and dyeing, Margaret; I found it fascinating to learn about something I knew nothing about, and I wholeheartedly agree with your reflections. I have been turning the information over in my mind for the last few days, especially your last sentence, 'People want to do things, not to know things', which really resonated with me, sadly.
I don't want to pretend that peoples who live closer to the land somehow live in a pre-lapsarian ecological idyll, but as your experience shows, when people know intimately about a resource which they use and benefit from, they know its value and are unlikely (absent greater existential pressures) to deplete it. That knowledge is dying all over the world as the older generations die, younger people need new ways of making a living, as their land is logged or built on by resort developers -- or just by humans' inhumanity to each other.
In 2006, we visited a dyeing and weaving studio in Cambodia, where, in the 1970s, the Khmer Rouge regime murdered millions of people, including almost all experts in traditional culture. A Japanese textile expert had found a small group of very old women dyers who were now passing on their knowledge about plants and dyes to young apprentices. A heartbreakingly delicate thread of hope.
Knowing and learning takes time, and knowledge needs to take root, but the dominant ideology of pseudo-individualism, which substitutes consumer choices for self-worth, obliterates that. 'Foraging' doesn't mean that someone is interested in botany and food, but merely that they are up to date with the latest trends. The infinity of possible coffee orders in chain coffee shops are a perfect metaphor: the more convoluted your coffee order, the special-er you are. Not just a simple cafe au lait for me, oh no. Instead, we are told to measure and demonstrate our individuality by spurious, seemingly endless 'choices' and ultimately, those choices and activities become an empty form rather than something done out of genuine preference, interest, curiosity, hunger for knowledge.
We can record and gather the existing knowledge to prevent its loss, but in the face of the dominant cultural values of trendy consumerism, short-termism and quick fixes, and I also cannot see a solution to how to implant it.
S.
________________________________
From: Margaret Healey <m*@bigpond.com>
To: m*@freelists.org
Sent: Tuesday, 11 July 2017, 3:05
Subject: [medit-plants] Re: Looters strip Greek mountains of wild tea
I have been involved in the collection of lichen and fungi from the wild for experiments in dyeing. Much of this was gratuitous and probably vandalism in the early years. Over time this practise has evolved, around here at least, into more of a harvest of material that we have identified as reproducing itself annually. We have agreed on boundaries and I believe most of the long term practitioners abide by them. We do have a problem in that, as plant dyes come in and out of fashion, new people enter the field and gather without any knowledge or self-imposed restrictions. Once committed to the practise of plant dyeing, harvesters become practical conservationists, protecting a resource they use. But those of us who have been here a long time feel we have to keep inventing the wheel and that the knowledge we have gained is going to be lost as we retreat into nursing homes and the like. We feel that we are caught between two stances – ‘don’t touch’, and ‘take what you want’. The hard path – practical knowledge – doesn’t seem to have a home in the discourses of the day. Dyers are a small group and so it is not a subject that is going to make the television news. They are also a group that is dispersed so they are hard to collect and inform. The books that are published on the subject usually urge caution when collecting, but they don’t convey the ethics that arise out of detailed knowledge of the environment.
The point is that we have two knowledge bases here – environment and dyeing – that aren’t communicating well. I suspect that dyers are similar to collectors of medicinal plants and wild food enthusiasts and others who seem to have ‘discovered’ sets of natural resources they think of as ‘free’. Each of these groups has a knowledge base they want to share and preserve but there doesn’t seem to be a way of making knowledge of environmental protection an essential and fundamental part of this knowledge that they want to pass on. Some traditional societies managed with the notion of taboo, but that won’t stop the modern collector who thinks they have found the cure for death or the taste sensation to beat them all.
Sorry for the rant but it is the loss of knowledge that I feel is the key to protection of places and I don’t really see a solution to it. People want to do things, not to know things.
Margaret Healey
From:m*@freelists.org [mailto:m*@freelists.org] On Behalf Of Rosie Peddle
Sent: Saturday, 8 July 2017 7:09 PM
To: m*@freelists.org
Subject: [medit-plants] Re: Looters strip Greek mountains of wild tea
A friend was involved ina wonderful scheme to agree a management regime in which local people could continue to collect medicinal and culinary plants ina sustainable way for them and which protected their environment. Economic farming of small bulbs has been established in Turkey to avoid collecting from the wild.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Katherine_Protectorate
On 8 Jul 2017, at 02:04, Margaret Healey <m*@bigpond.com> wrote:
Agree!
>What's the cure for 'the refugee problem'? Peace.
>What's the cure for the sort of damage described? The ability to make a living.
>There are those who vandalise the environment for fun and profit, but they would be the ones who could put a spin on it an inform us that it is 'progress'. This tale reeks of desperation.
>
>Margaret Healey
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: m*@freelists.org [mailto:m*@freelists.org] On Behalf Of Silke Bernau (Redacted sender "silke.bernau" for DMARC)
>Sent: Friday, 7 July 2017 6:34 PM
>To: m*@freelists.org
>Subject: [medit-plants] Re: Looters strip Greek mountains of wild tea
>
>I have really mixed feelings about this, as always when conservation of flora and fauna conflicts with people trying to make a living. On the one hand, I want rare plants and animals, and endangered ecosystems, to be protected, but people also have a need (indeed a right) to be able to make a living.
>
>
>The people at the bottom are almost always desperately poor and trying to support their families -- yes, in this case illegally, but I imagine that they have precious few alternatives. This is why they have to run the risks and why they are the ones who get arrested, go to prison, receive fines: they are powerless targets.
>
>
>Once they have done illegal deed, the herbs enter the official, legitimate trade with bigger profits and bigger players who never get punished. Finally, the herbs grace the shelves of health-food shops catering to the demand of eco-conscious and healthy-living customers. So it seems pretty harsh to call a poor family trying to earn some income 'looters' -- they are the least element in a long chain of demand.
>
>
>It seems clearer to me every day that conservation will only work if people around it are allowed to have decent lives.
>
>Just my 2 cents, apologies if this was not the time or place for an off-topic rant...
>
>
>S.
>
>
>________________________________
>From: Sean A. O'Hara <s*@gimcw.org>
>To: "m*@freelists.org" <m*@freelists.org>
>Sent: Thursday, 6 July 2017, 17:01
>Subject: [medit-plants] Looters strip Greek mountains of wild tea
>
>
>
>http://www.seattletimes.com/business/looters-strip-greek-mountains-of-wild-tea-rare-plants/?utm_source=RSS&utm_medium=Referral&utm_campaign=RSS_all
>--
>
>Seán O.
>https://seanaohara.wordpress.com/
>
>
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