7) Work, Play & Population
LACROSSE STICKS as Polyculture Orchard fruit & nut picking tools
My cousin Bob Jack orchardist was a physiotherapist to the Kahnawake Lacrosse Team over many decades (died around 1990) travelling across Turtle Island to many games. Kahnawake Lacrosse youth were also Bob & Roberta's key orchard labourers & keepers over these decades. The Lacrosse stick is almost exactly the same as a number of fruit & nut picking sticks with much greater harvesting efficiencies than work with cumbersome ladders. We know that most sports have their 'cultural' origins in the everyday livelihoods of peoples. The balance of community-livelihood, economic-ecological biosphere contribution & exercise is essential to healthy bodies but as well so that exercise doesn't lose its origins & become lost in egoist abstraction. Abstract sport without attention to community wellbeing becomes a mirror of both enhancing & damaging subconscious relations.
I've spent much of my life in orcharding, owning, operating & working in orchards in British Columbia before coming back to my family roots in Quebec. When Europeans invaded, they had lost their own 3-dimensional indigenous Celtic polyculture orchard traditions. Europeans having become 2-D 'agriculture based, chopped & sawed down fruit & nut trees sometimes 100s of years of maturation & the ability to produce many tonnes of fruit & nuts per tree. They sold the hardwoods for instruments of war back to Europe & here. Colonists were then ordered to grow grains in the same space, but without the tree, produced only small kilograms in the same space with 100 times the labour. Without roots the land dried out, blew away in the wind & became barren. Previously Mesopotamian, Semite, Greek & Roman invasions & destruction of Celtic polyculture orchards, Europeans eventually succumbed to the loss of food, materials, energy & water/river/lakes, bio-diversity etc. These displaced Europeans then began their invasions worldwide similarly to those imperial colonial invaders before them. Part of the loss of gentle livelihood & relations is the cultural loss of memory, forgetting our 'indigenous' (Latin 'self-generating') heritage of abundance.
Here are some images of Lacrosse like orchard picking tools. Most orchards, human society, the biosphere & all life needs orchards & such gentle tools again.
http://www.gardenista.com/posts/picking-fruit-the-easy-way
The Lacrosse stick likely represents a fruit, tree-greens or nut picking implement. The top cover-bend, flexible sac of varying dimensions & varying lengths of pole are interesting integrated pieces of design. Here are 4 images of Fruit Pickers from Gardenista. If we reconsider the Lacrosse stick as an essential livelihood tool used by pickers during breaks for exercise, fun & amusement, then we have a cultural portrait of its use. Its considered by many researchers such as Petr Kropotkin in Mutual-Aid, A Factor of Evolution, that individuals in indigenous societies because of the inherent abundance of their Polyculture, worked not at back-breaking ground harvest in fields, seeding, weeding, ploughing, fertilizing but more at harvesting mostly from the waist up. Kropotkin's estimate on the indigenous peoples of Russia is working but one hour per day.
1st Nations & humanity's universal worldwide 'indigenous' (L. 'self-generating') heritage cultivate 3-D Polyculture Orchards. Polyculture is 100 times or 10,000% more productive than 2-D 'agriculture' (Latin 'ager' = 'field'). Polyculture photosynthesis absorbs 92 - 98% of solar energy converting this into food, material, energy & water-cycles, while agri absorbs only 2 - 8%. Tree roots descend 10s of metres into the earth's substrate pumping water, mining minerals & developing extensive nutrient colonies.
Massive biosphere photosynthesis creates continental 'cold' spots which draw warm-moist ocean winds inland. 60% of ocean to continent water transfer is through condensation on massive fractal leaf & bark surface areas. Only 40% of water transfer is through rain. When 2-D continental agri areas reflect over 90% of solar energy, winds push towards the sea, creating deserts & hurricane / tornado swirling of storms. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/design/1-indigenous-welcome-orchard-food-production-efficiencies
We're creating a series of films on indigenous Urban Polyculture. This 1st one on raw vegan is 5 minutes. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/design/1-how-to-grow-your-own-raw-vegan-food-garden
WORK & PLAY
All species work and play. There is a relation of play, sleep, dialogue, meditation, intergenerational interaction and other forms of neural-integration, which help humans to work more intelligently. 'Indigenous' (L = 'self-generating') peoples consciously strove for this balance and because they worked in harmony with nature developed such abundance to support themselves and all visitors with welcome. It is well established that the intense and degrading nature of our competitive pecuniary system is linked to unconscious population growth. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/home/indigenous-circle-of-life
AWA PEOPLES OF TIRACAMBU, AMAZON, BRAZIL, together inter-generationally at work and play
POPULATION
The psychology / sociology of the unconscious population growth which humanity is undergoing is related to 'compulsive', unintelligent work without play. Sex becomes a distraction for lives without nature's meaning and integration. Men and women are working in 'pecuniary' (money-making originally from 'pecus' for cattle or flocks, 'pek' = 'wool') systems which are designed against nature and within which they have little effective contribution and decision-making power. Our sexual relations reflect our pecuniary world. As we are abused and objectified so do we abuse and objectify our world. This is an immense contrast with indigenous Production Societies where every person is an owner-investor-contributor progressively-owning and being able to effect meaningful acts over the course of lifetimes. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/structure/5-collaborative-language
'INDIGENOUS' ('self-generating') ECONOMY
If we turn to First Nations as manager-governors (they have participatory structures for involving us) and our own indigenous heritage, humanity can increase productivity within 25 years of adopting such a 3-D polyculture orchard system by close to 100 times (10,000%) greater than we have today with our 2-D agriculture. Our other industrial, commercial, scientific, institutional, educational and government systems will each benefit from retracing operations back to original indigenous means and goals.
IMMIGRATION
Immigrating with respect for customs and law is our original contract/treaty (eg. Two Row Wampum) with First Nations. Under 'indigenous' governance, right from the 1st year of systematically planting and nurturing food and material trees as well as other empowering cultural, our present system will experience immediate benefits & productivity increases. Climate Change, rising oceans, desertification, hurricanes, tornados, freak weather, and many other supposed 'natural disasters' (cute but completely inaccurate phraseology) can be remedied by humans as a force of nature which influence all of these and more. When humans move from linear to multi-lateral inter-disciplinary thinking and science, our minds open-up and the math becomes understandable.
TIPI as a tool used for travel by peoples living in permanent housing & large urban agglomerations. Before violence of the European invasion & genocide, 1st Nations & in particular the 'Sioux' ('people') of the huge & populated Great Lakes area did not live in Tipi but used it for travelling, picking expeditions & hunting. The tipi when opened up flat upon the ground is a half-circle which when 2 tipis are placed around the bottom of 1st Nations nut & fruit trees in order to catch the abundance of many tonnes of produce when the tree is in the process of dropping &/or when shaken is very effective.