After the bold statement, the exploration. Canada is a colony and its poetry, science, transportation structures and administration are colonial. OK, that’s the statement. Now for the niggly bits. They concern themselves […]
The Beach at Dusk
Magpie’s Thoughts on Land Claims
Middle Class Country: an American pop culture project. Dude Ranch Country: an older American pop culture project. Spiritual Country: a Chinese-European folk cultural project. Artistic Country: an American cultural export installation. […]
How to Make a City Indigenous, Even if You’re Lazy, Eh
Let’s go downtown as if we lived here. Let’s look at Canada through the lens of the story it tells in the Syilx illahie (illahie is Pacific Slope trade jargon for “story” […]
Towards an Indigenous Agriculture: Land Reform for British Columbia (and beyond)
Yesterday, I showed how an aspen copse … … could be used as both a living and an agricultural space by farming both its edges and its shade. Here’s that post. Today, I’d […]
Learning to Live in Time: A Journey into Indigenous Agriculture
It is an intriguing question that sits in my house today: What does agriculture look like when conducted in “time” rather than in “space”. To show you how hard this is, here […]
Indigenous Culture, Settler Culture and Canada: Agriculture’s Highways and Byways
Harold Innis argued long ago … Societies that depend solely on time-biased media are oral and tribal. Although leadership tends to be hierarchical, time-bound societies may also operate by consensus. Since, in […]
The Medicine of Fall Colours
I’ve been thinking of “fall colours.” These pale greens, for instance. Or these pale. yellows, oranges, purples and pinks… and pale greens. Look, though, how the undercover is bright and lush. That’s […]
Nitrogen Dispersal Protocols for Environmentally Friendly Farming
The farm below solves the problem of nitrogen run-off cleverly. It grows plants that are so nitrogen hungry that they deplete the soil, while any remaining nitrogen is trucked away, to be […]
An Agricultural Run-off Solution That Doesn’t Foul Wetlands and Beaches
Wetlands are used in 21st century Canadian society to absorb nitrogen run-off from agriculture, to purify run-off from roads and sidewalks, to strip winter street snow of its road salt (my city […]
A Halloween Reminding
The greatest fear in 21st Century civilization is the loss of self. It must be controlled by extravagant ritual. Boo Some of its ways are the binary relationships of delineating self from […]
Okanagan Okanogan 