Seminar Week 5

Jessica Herrera
SOS: ComAlt
Seminar Pre-Writing Week 5
1 May 2017
Word Count: 454

Passages:

“ ‘ That is the kind of thought we are capable of, we human beings, that and even more, if we press ourselves or are pressed. But we resist being pressed, and rarely press ourselves; we think our way into death only when we are rammed into the face of it.’” (Coetzee 1999: 32)

“ So often native people in the Americas are defined solely by their relationship to the colonizer’s story. Rarely are we defined in terms of our own story.” (Deetz 2016: 2)

“ For Akwasasne people, much like many other native people, eating from the earth is about more than diet, it is about cultural continuity. It is about the recipes, methods of harvest, the cycle of the seasons, and holidays. It is identity.” (Deetz 2016: 4, 5)

News Media Source:

“ This could be any chatty gathering of neighborhood cooks in any kitchen in the world, except that in Oaxaca, amaranth is not just a fad ingredient. The ancient indigenous plant is part of a movement to revive native crops and cuisines, and a means of restoring the physical health and economy of their state, one of the poorest in Mexico.”
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/05/01/526033083/why-mexican-chefs-farmers-and-activists-are-reviving-the-ancient-grain-amaranth

Discussion:

In J.M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals, Coatzee creates a fictional interaction among characters with varying viewpoints on the consciousness of animals and the relationship between animals and human beings. I found myself both agreeing and disagreeing with aspects of all of the characters points.
One character, a writer called Elizabeth Costello, is of the mind that animals have souls and the violent human behavior that is often inflicted upon them is unbearable to her. The passage I chose is from the voice of Costello during a lecture. While I found myself finding fault with parts of Costello’s argument, I found myself nodding in agreement that often, it seems that people will choose to stay in their comfort zone rather than push the limits of thought and experiences. This can be applied to day-to-day life choices or to bigger decisions. Engagement in social and environmental justice often hangs on this idea. How do we press ourselves? What allows us to do so? Why is it so easy to resist and stay in our comfort zones?

Earlier in Costello’s lecture, she declared that in small instants of time, she knows what it is like to be a corpse – “…I am alive inside that contradiction, dead and alive at the same time” (32). I can remember, as a little kid, thinking that I knew what it felt like to be everything. Things we think of as sentient and otherwise. Dirt, the sky, a bird – everything. An overwhelming feeling would come over me, simultaneously liberating and sad. And then it would just go away, and I would think, “ Should I be having these thoughts as a little kid?”

In this weeks Food First reading, I found myself thinking a lot about the Indigenous peoples of New Mexico. Having spent the first 18 years of my life there, I was used to the many Pueblos scattered throughout the state as well as the many casinos. Because the lives of Native Americans were so drastically and negatively altered by colonialism, people do often think of Native Americans, as a whole, in relation to the story of colonialism – in relation to the colonizer’s story. Growing up in New Mexico, I was fortunate enough to witness the preservation of Native culture. Through feast days, danza, storytelling… There is so much tradition that remains beyond the settlement by Europeans of this land.

Culture expressed through and created by food is identity, as Deetz said. In eating from the earth, recipes become stories and the distinction between nature and self vanishes. Continuing to see Native Americans as a part of the colonizer’s story is, in some ways, perpetuating their oppression.

Through reclaiming indigenous foods, as is being done in Oaxaca with amaranth and other crops, identity is being reclaimed as well.

Works Cited:

Coetzee, J. M., and Amy Gutmann. The Lives of Animals. Princeton, N.J Chichester: Princeton University Press, 2001.

“More Than a Bingo Hall: A Story of Mashpee Land, Food, and Sovereignty : Food First.” Accessed May 2, 2017. https://foodfirst.org/publication/more-than-a-bingo-hall-a-story-of-mashpee-land-food-and-sovereignty/.

“Why Mexican Chefs, Farmers And Activists Are Reviving The Ancient Grain Amaranth : The Salt : NPR.” Accessed May 2, 2017. http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/05/01/526033083/why-mexican-chefs-farmers-and-activists-are-reviving-the-ancient-grain-amaranth.