Weaving of hats and bags of palm fiber, and  clothing of cotton and wool uses traditional knowledge, sustainable practices for maintaining life. Palm fibers wear out, becoming compost. Replacing hats for sun protection and bags for storing and moving goods, is a small scale livelihood for community members. Production of traditional clothing by weaving is time-intensive. Traditional patterns and designs mark one's place in the community. The consumptive culture of the global economy dumps plastic bags, and second hand clothing from wealthy nations into the peasant communities.

Forest and mineral extract companies, the military, tourist industries, find ways to appropriate communal land once used for food. As people are forced into towns and cities, they are forced to adopt the dominant cultures- trading palm bags for plastic, and the weaving of clothes for  jobs in sweatshop. The US military has recently been partnering with US and Mexican Universities to map the mountainous area. A benign offering to local people? A data base for Extractive Industries? A data base for police and military surveillance?

Icon for Via Campesina, an international organization that works (by consensus) to promote the concept of food sovereignty for all people in all ecosystems of earth.

Once upon a time - peasant agriculture and the family farm rooted in the soil fed entire regions and cultures with food.

The  Cash in and Burn methods of Industrial agriculture destroy the soil, local economies, and communities. 

Once upon a time - the fish harvest of Ethiopia provided protein for local people. Now in the global economy of cash markets, the fish of Africa goes to Europe. The magic hidden in the berries of native trees was immortalized in legends. Now we have Ethiopian Mocha Harrar at Starbucks. Arable land, that might grow food, is used to grow coffee for international trade.

Sacred knowledge inspired the forest women of India to protect the trees. Their example inspires others to a forest of resistance to protect the seeds that sustain life.

Vandana Shiva, cofounder of Navdanya, fights against the Biopiracy of gene and seed patenting by multinational corporations.  She is a champion of four aspects of Earth Democracy-Seed sovereignty, Food sovereignty, Water sovereignty , Land Sovereignty. She was inspired to activism by the Tree Huggers of Northern India. The power of truth is with these women. Shiva is a physicist, by university training.

The pattern in her scarf is a traditional design, a single line drawn by hand, that local children learn as part shared culture owned by all. in academic lingo the pattern is fractal. Because a computer can reproduce the pattern, does the computers owner have the right to patent the design? Can  communally knowledge be privatized?  Global corporations and the supreme courts they purchase would say yes.  Global Corporations claim patent on traditional knowledge of seeds and medicines. Their courts enforce laws requiring people to purchase what was once their own knowledge and produce. Human rights of common ownership. and the concurrent responsibility to protect forest, farmland, water resources must be sovereign over Corporations needs to sell for profit. 

Native, First Nation, Indigenous Peoples, human land - it is all the same. For the Corporations, its resources are easy picking, if no one is listening, if no one is watching.  If no one is willing to block the road.

A mythology of Continuous Economic Development is imbedded in our culture. Its sources and tendrils are many and hard to root out. It does not describe a living cycle. It is a  fantasy repeated so often that we no longer recognize its lethal underpinnings. It is an infection shared by good meaning people as well as by the greedy hounds that promote it for personal gain.

Helena Norberg-Hodge, of the International Society of Ecology and Culture, rethinks those assumptions and teaches others how to independently analyze the effects of our choices.