Plant communities mirror the cultural displacement of their peoples

Evidence

The history of the plants is inextricably tied up with the history of the people, with the forces of destruction and creation. At graduation ceremonies at Carlisle, the young men were required to take an oath: “I am no longer an Indian man. I will lay down the bow and arrow forever and put my hand to the plow.” Plows and cows brought tremendous changes to the vegetation. Just as Mohawk identity is tied to the plants the people use, so it was for the European immigrants who sought to make a home here. They brought along their familiar plants, and the associated weeds followed the plow to supplant the natives. Plants mirror changes in culture and ownership of land. Today this field is choked by a vigorous sward of foreign plants that the first sweetgrass pickers would not recognize: quackgrass, timothy, clover, daisies. A wave of invasive purple loosestrife threatens from along the slough. To restore sweetgrass here we’ll need to loosen the hold of the colonists, opening a way for the return of the natives. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 957

Categorization

• XREF: Powerful direct statement of the vegetation-as-settler-logic parallel: invasive exotics as botanical colonialism — a hinge passage usable across the whole polyad (Eco-Justice, Reading the Landscape). — connects to: Nonhuman animal culture is demonstrably tied to landscape structure — Almo Farina, Soundscape Ecology: Principles,…, 227; Indigenous agriculture adapts plants to land while industrial agriculture adapts land to cloned plants — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 483; Landscapes can retain cultural practices after the peoples who performed them are gone — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 887 (+4 more)
• QUESTION: Kimmerer treats non-native plants as ‘colonists’ to be loosened — worth chasing the tension with ch51 where an introduced immigrant plant earned belonging by good-neighbor reciprocity. Did she resolve the contradiction between welcoming worthy immigrants and removing invasives?

Broader Connections

• Colonial displacement severs the naturalistic link between birthplace and cultural identity. #expands (0.90) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 1191
• Losing a landscape plant can unravel the cultural practices built around it #exemplifies (0.85) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 956
• Human culture and the natural environment form an interdependent dialectical system. #expands (0.80) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 251
• Environmental degradation of a place is experienced as an attack on community identity #corroborates (0.75) — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice, 232