LongGreenHouse is a cross-cultural partnership for regeneration of social and ecological networks and webs, involving the Anikwom WholeLife Center, UMaine Permaculture Club, and Still Water Lab at UMaine.
Moving beyond sustainability as a mere business slogan, LongGreenHouse weaves together indigenous culture, permaculture, and digital culture. Together we are developing a Living/Learning model for thriving cultures in this bioregion based on the intersection of evolutionary wisdom, natural patterns, and social networking.
LongGreenHouse includes a multi-age integrated homeschool, Wassookeag, based on an experiential and ecological curriculum; operates a Permaculture research lab for UMaine graduate and undergrads; develops and implements protocol for Longhouse living in partnership with Wabanaki elders; and develops global social networks with state-of-the-art network technologies.
After three centuries of colonial hubris, Euro-ethnic civilization is finally coming to the realization that the indigenous cultures it absorbed or eradicated may hold the key to undoing its legacy of rampant commercialism and environmental devastation. Yet surprisingly few of the thousands of sustainability initiatives launched in the past few years are looking to indigenous peoples, despite their uncontested expertise in millennia-old forms of sustainable ecology, economy, and governance. Obstructing this essential conversation on the native side is a mistrust due to promises broken by national governments, and on the colonial side an ignorance of real native beliefs and needs due to the skewed representation of native culture in movies and other mass media.
Into this cultural gap LongGreenHouse inserts a series of micro-treaties designed to foster trust among Native and non-Native individuals and organizations, with the goal of weaving a fabric of trust. While such trust is a valid goal in itself, LongGreenHouse aims to use this foundation as a basis for trade--not trade in crafts or money, but trade in essential skills for sustainable living. Natives bring to this trade sacred knowledge about medicinal herbs and flexible family structures; colonials bring to this trade skills in deploying information networks and resources for promoting the visibility of native issues.
LongGreenHouse is collaboration between Wabanaki elders Miigam'agan and gkisedtanamoogk and Still Water co-directors Joline Blais and Jon Ippolito. This collaboration is built on a legal innovation that LongGreenHouse's founders helped to devise, called the Cross-Cultural Partnership framework.
The Cross-Cultural Partnership framework is meant to encourage ethical collaboration across the many cultural divides that criss-cross our society: between drug companies and rainforest shamans over medicinal herbs; between Native peoples and musicians over ceremonial chants; between artists and technologists in art and science collaborations; and between libertarians and communitarians over control of software design.
In the case of LongGreenHouse, the collaboration is both thematic and practical. LongGreenHouse attempts to forge a microtreaty between families whose peoples have been at war for five hundred years, based on the common desire to trade strategies and techniques for living sustainably on the land.
For more information on the Cross-Cultural Partnership, please visit Still Water's Connected Knowledge Web site, which includes the latest framework draft as well as information on the project's goals, contexts, and contributors.
In their courses in Indigenous Media at the University of Maine, LongGreenHouse co-founders gkisedtanamoogk and Joline Blais draw parallels between the interpersonal social networks of Native peoples and the electronic social networks of the Internet. Still Water Senior Fellow Craig Dietrich has collaborated with anthropologist Kim Christen on the Mukurtu Archive, a culturally sensitive database of public and private heritage for the Waramungu people of Australia.
Recent student projects in Indigenous Media include the design for a post-Peak Oil game entitled "Back to the Land Bridge" and Ian Larson and Sam Hunter's Passamaquoddy Living Language System. The Passamaquoddy Living Language System is a collaboration between Still Water and the University of Maine's Wabanaki Center that leverages the Passamaquoddy's tradition of multigenerational oral teachings to help preserve their rich language. Powered by Drupal open-source software and a suite of Apple iBooks purchased with a RUS grant, this system encourages younger members of the tribe to seek out grandparents and other elders, contributing videos of their stories to database records related by Passamaquoddy vocabulary.
Established in 1985, Wassookeag is a nondenominational, not-for-profit cooperative homeschool based on parent involvement, ecological curriculum, and experiential learning for grades 1 through 8. Wassookeag is a community of home school students, university students and faculty, families, elders and educators with a shared philosophy working to create a progressive learning environment based on Earth Community. Wassookeag builds community by nurturing each child's individual strengths and accommodating their needs in a responsive and respectful environment.
Since fall 2007, Wassookeag makes its home in the green belt at the south edge of the UMaine campus, in alliance with the LongGreenHouse project of the University of Maine. More at Wassookeag.org.
LongGreenHouse aims for a deep sustainability that starts with reducing our carbon footprint but goes beyond to consider the economic, political, and cultural demands of reconnecting to the land. Several university classes have constructed a four-season unheated greenhouse on site, as well as a sweat lodge, and the grounds are the site of a permaculture gardens used by Wassookeag schoolchildren, University of Maine undergrads, and adult gardeners alike.
Economically, LongGreenHouse explores alternative currencies anchored locally yet linked together via human and electronic networks, creating a social structure that is neither colonial nor indigenous but arising on the interface between the two cultures. Max Terry's experiment in online currency, AUX, is one student project to come from this exploration.
Politically, LongGreenHouse combines indigenous models of community organization with network models of global connectivity. LongGreenHouse co-founder Miigam'agan emerged as a recognized leader in the Burnt Church affair of the Maritimes, and she remains active in both formal and informal work in Wabanaki communites. LongGreenHouse has also hosted student debates over global warming and premiered a film about the political schism between ethnic Greeks and Turks on the island of Cyprus.
Culturally, LongGreenHouse's goal is to pursue an art of connecting people to each other and the world around them, as is the case in many indigenous cultures. The Tambaran of Papua New Guinea consider its major art form the creation of children and spirits--including all the social and ecological ties necessary to sustain their lives. Malanggan, another Reite art form, creates webs of social trust across generations and families while producing wood carvings. The songlines of Australian Aborigines crisscross a continent and centuries of history, articulating dense, discreet social networks. LongGreenHouse aims to follow these models of artistic co-creation that inform indigenous 'art' in a way that builds working webs of trust, locally and globally.
Green U-Me
May 1, 2009 1-4 pm
Bangor Room, Memorial Union, UMaine Orono
Generate a Green Design for campus, curriculum and community with UMaine students, faculty, neighbors and their special guests, including:
Free and open to university and community members
Please click on stories at right or visit the LongGreenHouse blog directly.
You can see recent photos of LongGreenHouse and its projects at Flickr.com/photos/green-house/.
| www.flickr.com |
Wabanaki elders Miigam'agan and gkisedtanamoogk became the first Still Water Research Fellows in 2007, but their ongoing participation in Still Water programs has a longer history. They have participated in the Cross-Cultural Partnership initiative, the Connected Knowledge summits in 2006 and 2007, classes in indigenous media, and LongGreenHouse.
Miigam'agan is a member of the Mi'kmaq (Micmac) Nation, founder of the Elders and Youth Council, and cofounder of the Wabanaki Nations Cultural Resource Center, the Miingignoti-Keteaoag, the Esgenoôpetitj Mi'kmaqesk women's council, and Anikwom WholeLife Center. She is affiliated with the Wabanaki Confederacy, New Brunswick Native Women’s Council, Elders and Youth Council (Burnt Church New Brunswick), Esgenoopetitj Mi'kmaqesk (Burnt Church New Brunswick), Wabanaki Language Immersion Program (St. Thomas University), Aboriginal Rights Coalition Atlantic (centered in New Brunswick, Canada), and Tatamagouche Center (Nova Scotia). Her life-work is dedicated to supporting empowerment for women, youth, families and communities and preserving and teaching Wabanaki culture and spirituality.
gkisedtanamoogk brings to Still Water a background in finding creative ways to bridge the socio-political polarization of the Indigenous Nations of Turtle Island and the newcomer nation-states of North America. His professional background is in human and community development and his interests include Law, History, and Spirituality. He is Wampanoag from the Federation of the Pokaunauket and practices the Ceremonial Life of his People; he is Otter and Turtle Clan; married with three Children; Education and Cultural Specialist and co-founder of the Anikwom Wholelife Center in Maine, whose work and proximity correlates to the Wabanaki Confederacy Territories. gkisedtanamoogk is currently adjunct faculty at the University of Maine at Orono.
Joline Blais, Associate Professor of New Media at UMaine, co-directs Still Water, and co-founded LongGreenHouse. At the Edge of Art (2006), co-written with Jon Ippolito, investigates how new strategies of empowerment--execution rather than representation, arrest rather than entertainment--work in communities of new media artists, and how these practices reshape both art and real world contexts. Blais' publications and creative work explore the overlap of digital culture, indigenous culture and permaculture. This cross-cultural braid suggests tribal and networked alternatives to conventional socio-political and cultural structures, and co-creates models of deep sustainability. LongGreenHouse (2007), for example, weaves the Wabanaki Longhouse, permaculture gardens, and networked collaboration together in a hybrid "communiversity", in partnership with UMaine, Wassookeag homeschool, and ESTIA Eco-Peace Network. Other projects include FC: Request for Ceremony, a call for re-investing quotidian life with ceremony; and the Cross-Cultural Partnership, a legal framework for developing trust networks with indigenous peoples.
Jon Ippolito hopes building networks will help keep digital culture alive and kicking--but he has his hands full in today's climate of unfettered media monopolies, accelerated obsolescence, and looming co-optation by academia. He is the digital doyen of The Variable Media Network, an international consortium of museums and archives that devises medium-independent strategies to preserve new media art. As grand vizier of The Open Art Network, Ippolito works with a growing number of prominent digital artists to promote an open architecture for the Internet and digital media. As chief constable of the Still Water lab at the University of Maine, he works with Co-director Joline Blais to enforce an expansive definition of networked art in the academia and the art world, as argued in their 2006 book At the Edge of Art. The recipient of Tiffany, Lannan, and American Foundation awards, he has exhibited artwork with collaborative teammates Janet Cohen and Keith Frank at the Walker Art Center, ZKM/Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Harvard's Carpenter Center, and the Yale Art and Architecture Gallery. As Associate Curator of Media Arts at the Guggenheim Museum, he has curated Virtual Reality: An Emerging Medium and, with John G. Hanhardt, The Worlds of Nam June Paik. Ippolito's critical writing has appeared in periodicals such as the Art Journal, Artforum, Flash Art, the Washington Post, and in his regular column for ArtByte magazine.
Debby Bell-Smith graduated from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst with degrees in English and Education. She has been teaching professionally for twenty years. She was trained at the Parkway School in Philadelphia, the first alternative school to be established within a public school system. She has since taken numerous courses and workshops and has attended conferences all over the country with other progressive educators. Debby believes that teachers are facilitators in children's educational process and should be available to provide resources and tools for discovery. Elementary education should provide an environment for children to develop strong skills in literacy and mathematics and exposure to all other disciplines. The school environment must feel safe so that children can take risks and learn from their mistakes. She believes that students need to learn social as well as academic lessons. School should allow kids to experience and work through interpersonal experiences in a real and supportive environment.
Australians Julia and Charles Yelton are internationally recognized experts in the study of sustainable design known as Permaculture. Armed with backgrounds in computer engineering, ceramics, and landscape design, the Yeltons cut their Permaculture teeth at Australia's Crystal Waters community, then went on to work with the INSAN Permaculture Institute in Nepal, hill tribes in northern Thailand, an alternative energy group in Wales, and a natural Permaculture village in Bali. In Whitefield, Maine, the Yeltons established a passive-solar, energy-efficient homestead with a four-season garden to demonstrate that it is indeed possible to grow lettuce in January--not to mention staying warm without oil or gas and redirecting waste water and food to build fertile soil.
Since establishing a presence in Maine, the Yeltons have joined in a number of projects by the local ESTIA eco-peace community established by U-Me Peace Studies professor Emily Markides, including leading U-Me students on a two-week Permaculture intervention in Hawai'i's main island and coordinating the design and growth of a community food forest on the island of Cyprus. Julia and Charles are hands-on advisors to Still Water's LongGreenHouse project, where in fall 2007 they joined U-Me students led by Markides and Still Water co-director Joline Blais in erecting a 50-foot greenhouse, coldframe, and 200 running feet of swaled gardens.
In a world of shrinking energy resources, Charles and Julia Yelton offer a positive and practical approach to redesigning environments and livestyles to live more lightly on the planet.
Internships
Semester and year-long internships begin fall 2009. Interns will propose, research and implement permaculture projects for course credit in small groups at the edge of campus, along the food corridor, and eventually along the York Eco-Village paths and grounds. Possible projects include edible landscapes, food forests, bog walkways, wetlands regeneration, DIY solar design, and regenerative art. Prior permaculture knowledge preferred. Interested undergraduates are invited to submit applications which will be available in July 09.
Apprenticeships
Successful interns will be eligible to apply for year-long apprenticeships with local trades people, farmers, engineers, builders, economists, storytellers, and media artists. These "green internships" will partner local skill with Permaculture techniques and technologies to "retrofit" Maine economy. Apprentices will be developing job opportunities to continue the work of regenerative design of Maine's green future. Apprenticeship will begin fall 2010 and will be open to undergraduate and graduate students.
Please contact us via pool DOT culture AT umit DOT maine DOT edu.
Cross-Cultural Partnership
Wabanaki and permaculture activists working together to re-connect people and the land. More...
Still Water has been awarded a Maine Water Resources Research Institute grant for a community-based ecological intervention that is creative and practical at the same time. The project takes place at LongGreenHouse, a site at the southern edge of the Orono campus dedicated to the intersection of old and new models of sustainability. The initiative will take [...]
Still Water is pleased to announce the publication of 60: Innovators Shaping Our Creative Future, a landmark book on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of renowned art and design publishing house Thames & Hudson. Still Water co-directors Joline Blais and Jon Ippolito penned the new media section of this book, which profiles five of [...]
A new University of Maine class in Life Art (NMD430/520) explores the boundaries of artistic collaboration by encouraging students to co-create with entire ecosystems of humans and other critters. Life artists may : Crowd-source their artmaking with 10,000 earthworms. Get frogs to do their drawings for/with them. Create sculpture ‘for the birds’ so they can survive destroyed [...]
From 24-26 September 2009, Espacio Enter brought artists, performers, technologists, and theorists to Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa. Organized by Montse Arbelo and Joseba Franco, directors and founders of ART TECH MEDIA, the conference explored possible scenarios for the future of creativity and new media over the next few [...]
As the final speaker in the panel discussion “Re-Imagining Globalism: Maine in the World’s Economy” at Bates College on Jan. 25, 2008, Peter Riggs, Executive Director of the Forum on Democracy and Trade, concluded his talk on climate change and international relations with a call for a new kind of creativity: “Probably the most exciting part [...]