Farming While Black Part 2

work that we'd like to see in the world. So much gratitude to everyone who made this first season possible. And before we close out on our final episode of the season, part two of our series Farming Wild Black and the second interview with my friend Gabrae al et En.

In our discussion, there is a mention of racial violence that could be a very upsetting story for some of our listeners, so I'd like to mention that off top, and I would also like to say that if you're able, it is such a powerful story that I do believe it will be worth your time. Again, i'd like to

thank you all for making the season possible. We are already hard at work on the second season, and while I've got you here, a gentle reminder that if you are enjoying this podcast, the best way to ensure that we continue to enjoy this platform and share these stories as if you give us a five star review on iTunes. Thank you so much for considering, and please enjoy Farming While Black Part two. Welcome back to Point of Origin.

Today we are focusing on farming Wild Black the many intricacies of blackness and African americanness in relationship to the land. Our next guest is the Associate Professor of Environmental Justice at the University of Wisconsin Madison, Dr Monica White, is also the author of an amazing book that was just released in two thousand nineteen called Freedom Farmers, and we will talk about all of the above today. Monica, thank you so much for joining us on Point of Origin.

Thank you for the invitation. It's sorry to be here with you. Let's just get right into the book, Freedom Farmers, agricultural resistance, and the Black freedom Movement. There's a lot to unpack in the book, a lot of amazing themes around blackness and relationship to land. But before we get into that, can you just tell us what you're impetus for wanting to write this book was so I was returning to Detroit to take care of my parents. I was moving back to Detroit and needed a research topic.

I was going to teach at Wayne State University. And I knew that there was a robust black farmers movement that had proceeded the two thousands and really wanted to sort of capture that, and so joined and met Baba Malika Kini to do some organizing around around the Detroit Rebellion Conference and sixty seven Rebellions, sort of recognizing the

history of existence in the city. And I knew the black folks have been growing food in Detroit for a long time, my dad, my grandmother, and my sister, and I knew that the scholarship that was coming out about the movement about the return to food production were really missing the black folks, you know, folks who looked like me.

One of the sort of capture what was happening in that moment, but then also finding that the current, at least in the two thousand at that moment, needed a historical frame that was different than what I found when I looked up the scholarship on what do we know about Black farmers? A lot of it came from a deficit approach, and they talked a lot about slavery, tenant farming, sharecrofting in those exploitative conditions and relationships to the land,

or the way that agriculture used as suppressive. And yet what I was hearing in Detroit was using agriculture the strategy of resistance, resilience in other way for liberation, and so I didn't hear it, and as are now recent ancestor so any more ins instead, if there's a book that you want to read, it hasn't been written, then we're the ones who has to to write it. And

that's where the idea around freedom farmers came from. Knowing that there had to be other reasons, other frames to understand black folks in our relationship to the land, and

not seeing it written, but yet hearing him. You know, you hang out with generational or black folks with net whose families never left to land, and you hear this language of being able to feed myself and free myself for every wental parents as I can free myself when I can feed myself, and to hear how pul found that statement was and yet not reading any scholarships to

elevate his philosophy. You know, I felt like this was the perfect kind of a contribution um to how we understand our relationship to food production and to the land more generally. Absolutely so. Obviously in these more oppressive accounts of our relationship to the land that are rooted and enslavement have some generational or I guess, period specific elements

to them. Were you finding that this disposition of liberation was more something about a recent generation or do you feel that that has been present throughout but we just haven't been exposed to that ideology? You know, yeah, thank

you for that question. I feel like I consist to except found all kinds of ways to resist, and yet our scholarship around resistance strategies has really come from universities, and so there's been a disconnect between how people resist and how people study resistance, and so occupying both spaces, right, So, coming from a community known for resistance and resilience in Detroit and also joining the academy and feeling like the university tools could be useful for our liberation, I do

think that there have been all kinds of ways that we've resisted that has been overlooked. So guess I wanted to really sort of problematize the way we frame resistance. You know, we often think about protests, marches, and boycasts, and those are really almost the only ways that we as theorists talk about what it means to resist. And yet this current moment, it shows us other ways to resist.

And I'll just give one example. Here's this horrible situation that comes Barbecue Betty right now at eleven people fired up over this viral video from Oakland fired up their grills tonight to take a stand. The group says they're tired of people calling police prematurely. They are upset over a confrontation at a barbecue at Lake Merit. It was all caught on camera last month. The video is still getting passed around the internet non stop tonight. What's going on? Nas?

You don't want she doesn't want to talk? Now it's a link to having a chocolate grill in the park here. What kind of girl are you not allowed? And why are you so bent out of shape over them being? Because it causes extra money from our city and things.

One children get injured because of it. So yet the open community has just now celebrated a second celebration around recognizing the potential calamity of the situation, but embracing that as a celebration or blackness, and so are like the scholarship is behind the ways that we resist and Freedom Farmers was an effort to sort of show the links between the historic resistance using food and food production. So we talked about the seeds in our hair that we

carried over the Middle passages. We talked about the demand, our demand for provision grounds during slavery. We talked about marketing, We talked about all the various ways historically bartering and creating these spaces to celebrate culture or using food as a part of that have been used historically as a

part of our our freedom strategy. I'm curious what you think the role of some institutions have been in further perpetuating this exploitative narrative, whether that be the university or the food system, Like, what are some of those institutional pressure points. Yeah, I just think everybody who's not basically I mean not to be not just you know, not a broad brush. I think that Samananda dj argues the danger of a single story, right, So to come up with a single story and it becomes easy to grab

ahold of it and then run with it. And so those of us that are currently involved in dismantling that single story historically, and I think that I can't point to an institution that isn't responsible for oversimplifying Black folks relation to the ships and through land. It's you know, the university, it's the add community, it's you know, in some ways, it's even how we tell the story of

civil rights with no ill intention necessarily, right. I think that you know, that danger of the single story means that there's certain ideas that get shared, and then once that is shared, it is assumed that's the only narrative. And there comes somebody like me who says that can't be the only story. And so therefore, how do we unearth some of the other ways to to to interrogate, to scholarship, find the data to really make a different case. It was not just my research question was unearthed in

this movement. So I left Detroit and the Detroit last community prostituting that was teach me language like through sovereignty, food security. This wasn't something I had taken at school. I understood what it means to resist and said the social movements and so marrying my understanding of social movements and the Detroit Black communities for securities classes, her soon of speech on food sovereignty really helped me see that

what they were doing wasn't new. It was just a new in this moment in the particular rights because they inherited a legacy of resistance and resilience using foods as strategy. And so that was really good. I was trying to capture. But yes, if you think of which entity is guilty, I don't know if one that isn't in attuchu wating simness around agriculture as as oppressive and not just a last folks and talking about sovereign tee of food that

is really a conversation that is central to land. How do you reconcile for black folks who are are with you intellectually and saying like yeah, we you know, there are many stories to be told about our relationship to the land here, but one problem we don't have any land.

Yeah you have great questions. Um, so absolutely, folks are asking a question if it's My approach has always been as an asset based approach, right, So I think that's a different orientation that I take to scholarship, which is, every community has something upon which to build, what are those assets? And then how to rebuild on that, which I think is a different approach. So for me, every

community has something upon whished to build. And so if I may not have access to land in terms of land ownership, what are other ways that we can obtain access to those message or mechanisms to to grow. My dear friend Dr Cooper talks about individual ownership leads to individual volner ability, and so collective ownership is an important component to make sure that it's olidified. I just talked to folks at the Prince Duty Theological Seminary, and these

are folks who run their own churches. And Reverend Hebrew Brown talks about how black church ownership and the land that black churches you know, have access to, is an important part of like a land trust right. And so what happens is we use the church own land as a part of our food production, resurgence and reconnection in those particular chimes of late and you know, I mean I'm telling from a frame. You know, in Detroit, where we have access to a lot of land, a lot

of that land is contaminated. And so how do we restore the land, how do we share access? So you talk about community lands trust, you talk about soil mediation, and then for those who don't have access to land land, they are all kinds of beautiful techniques of of growing indoors that don't require a lot of money. But bots are growing in you know, cut up tunated bottles on walls,

you know. And so I think that there are lots of ways, creative ways that folks are growing using various medium like, you know, maybe a hydropondical, you know, something along those lines. And there's the wine range of housefolks

accessing land. And so let's just be also clear figure are still who like folks that are farming in the South, who have land in a generational that is you inherited land and really trying to find some collective ways to make sure that we retain actors to death which we have without losing another angor welcome back to point of origin. Let's talk more about Detroit, because obviously you've learned a lot there and it has been kind of an epicenter

for the revival of urban farming across the country. What are the factors environmental factors of Detroit I'm talking are like socially and culturally that have made it so amenable to this urban farming movement. For the black folks who were in the South, who contested any form of this racialized exploitive relationship to land, there would be threatened, their lives would be threatened. At night, they would get the

Birmingham and by more in that we're in Detroit. So there was a really clear line between Detroit and Alabama in terms of the migration. And I would also argue based on what farmers and the reason told me, especially about what we're happening in leth County, where black folks were especially politicized, right radically politicize whole many of whom ended up in Detroit. So one I think that there was a political connection that exists between Alabama and Detroit.

There really hasn't been examined. To my preference. I feel like there's a lot that can be examined in terms of understanding s particular black radical orientation in Detroit. Additionally, we took our black out of gudeology, but we also took our feed and our knowledge of food production, and so our generation was returning where our parents had migrated we wanted to make sure that our children and access in nature and rich food, and so that agricultural knowledge

was one generation removed. But we also knew that you are clearly providing for ourselves and themselves. And so I do think that there was some as a strategy, some connection that wasn't too far fetched. And I also think that for me personally to try to put the world on wheels, and once the automobile crisis collapse, then folks were forced to sort of think about, well, what do

we know, what do we remember? What can we reconnect as a strategy to build resilient communities around food production? And then that conversation the food is just ever present, Um, how do we make sure that we not only feed our families, but feed and build our communities and build community health and wellness. And so I just feel like there are those kind of ideas that we're perfect termination

for what we see happening in Detroit now. Definitely, and I totally support your continued work in following the trajectory of the black radicals from the South to Detroit. I think that is super interesting. I want to ask you about land reparation. You know it is somewhat being censored politically, at least in a way that it hasn't um in

my lifetime. What are your ideas about a land based reparation in terms of effective policy, like how it could actually happen, and or whether or not you feel this is the right kind of prioritization for advocates of food justice and environmental justice. So I would say that the scholarship around land dispossession, especially a black folks, we have to respond to that right in order for a society

to move forward. I do think that reconciling task historical wrongs for the stolen labor and the stolen land, including you know, indigenous First Nations folks, But that has to be a part of how we move forward as a whole.

I don't know what mechanism, what form that take. I think that any time a nation and a world has created wealth and there are communities that have suffered from that wealth of the extraction of those resources, those people, those riches, that land, there has to be some reconciling of that, and reparations is an important part of that conversation.

I think that the case can absolutely be made and has been made more distinctively now in this Sutork moments than I've ever seen, you know, supporting black lead institutions, both of the educational nature like in land Grand institutions, and supporting black lead organizations that are working to respond to the needs of folks around food and land. Outside of that, I don't know enough I've read about it, but I also love that qualified to speak on the distermination.

What that looks like, well, oftentimes that is the wisest answer to give, and I completely um, that is totally adequate. One last question for you, and again it is about your your latest book, Freedom Farmers. Such a powerful book. I mean really, I think you know, I feel pretty well versed in a lot of these conversations, but you know, you had such clarity from the onset and trying to further ideas around black folks relationship to the land, especially

African Americans. So I'm wondering, do you have any specific hopes or directions for for the readers of this text. Yes, so I wrote this book for you, I wrote this book for us. I wrote this book because I wanted to give us some sense that we don't have to reinvent a strategy that we can inherit the legacy of our an sensors and previous generations in terms of how

do we get free? And so for me, the book and all that it took to write it and all of the intentions around it were really so that we could think about our relationship connections to the land, our responsibility to the environment, right to the planet, and our

connection and responsibility to each other. And so for me, a great outcome would be to allow the book to complicate what we thought our relationship was, use it as um inspiration for us to reconnect to the land and to each other, and to figure out what this new generation, what this generation commitment will be in this legacy as you read, so, I'm excited to see what we do in this generation as we're grappling with how do we make sure that our communities are cared for and using

food at the beginning conversation, but connecting the conversations around food to conversations of land, conversations of a education, conversations with healthcare. But just because this is our history, this this is ours, and I want us to own it. I want us to reclaim that. I want us to embrace it at least figure out a way forward. Amen to all that. Well, thank you so much for this resource. Looking forward to your continued research and publishings on this topic.

Monica White, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin and Madison and author of Freedom Farmers, Agricultural Resistance, and the Black Freedom Movement. Thank you for joining us today on point of origin. I really really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Fry too myself. Thank you. All right, I'll talk to you soon. Welcome back to point of origin.

Today we have a very special guest from Holly Springs, North Carolina, just outside of Raleigh, Gabrielle Etienne, who is a cultural preservationist, which is the perfect umbrella term for her as she is a gardener, farmer, cook, community organizer. Gabrielle, thank you so much for joining us today on point of origin. Hi, thank you for having me, which is

really exciting. Of course, so today we're talking to a really cross section of black folks who are involved in agriculture and different capacities across the US, and we wanted to talk to you because well a couple of reasons. But first of all, I just really as a as a fan of your work, love, the way that you express your relationship to the land, and how your embodiment on the land in the garden, when you're harvesting, when

you're cooking, just feel so grounded. I wanted to talk to you about your relationship to the land and how you started to develop this practice. Mm hmm, okay. I don't feel like I'm anything new. I am really standing kind of on the shoulders of a lot of women, so thank you for that. My relationship to the land really kind of jumped off when I was living in

New York, kind of seeking connection. I was really homesick, and I would come home a lot, and every time I would come home, I would get in the garden with my grandfather and with his brother, my great uncle, Andrew,

and um. I started to learn these things about my family, about my family's history, about you know, just access just our beautiful relationship with our land and the land around here within like a ten mile radius of where I lived for a long time, and I just started feeling way more grounded, way more connected to who I am, but also to like who my family is and the importance of our own stories A little I guess history is.

I was working in fashion for a while and I ended up just feeling some of the traumas of working like corporate, working in New York, working in you know,

just fast paced corporate America. And when I transitioned out of fashion, I started working in food and I was working on the line I'm in um this gastro pub and the leat packing, and I was also doing a lot of food storytelling for different brands and chefs, and one of those chefs was J. J. Johnson, and his work kind of aligned with my family's work in a way that I didn't expect. And the more I started to uncover with the work I was doing with him,

the more, you know, I bring stuff home. And I remember my grandfather's brother, older brother Herbert, when I showed him as rice that was from Trinidad, that was an African strain of rice. I remember him being like, oh, I remember when Grandpa John used to grow rice in the yard and we used to harvest it. And he talked about winnowing, and he talked about you know, his his memories were vague because he was a little boy, but he remembered these key things and that's how the

rice got on the table. And that really like made me. It just woke something up in me around like place, and I started to think about, oh wow, well what were we before we were here too. To have that knowledge in that technology, you have to you know, be in certain areas. So just discovery after discovery kind of brought me back here because I was really focused on telling other folk stories and digging up this history through food, through food, research through food kind of art and you

know development. Thank you for sharing that. That is a very dense journey that I would like to further unpacked. So J J. Johnson, if people don't know, is a young ish millennial chef in New York. He just opened a new rice centric restaurant called Field Trip. And j J also worked with at Cecil's, which is a pretty legendary spot in Harlem. So he is a very prominent

young chef. When you are talking about, you know, the rice being part of the epiphany for you, I'm assuming that you're talking about when you were working with j J. And he was kind of also cultivating this vision around a rice based restaurant. Is that right? Yeah? Yeah, So that's so crazy to think about how that unfolded. But he was researching a strain of rice called Areza glab Arima and Glenn Roberts from Ansonville helping him with that

and providing him grains. And Glenn while I was working with JJ really but can kind of a mentor for me in the space because we can nerd out about like agriculture and grain facts and suns at goals, and he just put me onto so much stuff that really likes sent me down this mildly crazy rabbit hole of research. And can you say, um, what Anton Mills is for people who don't know, Oh, it's a it's a grain

mill based in South Carolina. Um. They do various heirloom and land race grains and corn and it's a farm. It's a mill. And Glenn is the one who founded that and is an awesome farmer and just really on the ground doing the work. So basically we were working on some concepts so well, it was the grain concept, which initially wasn't field trip, it was a different name altogether.

But we were, you know, brainstorming and mapping things out and kind of came to the rice is culture point of view when we were doing this work, because every culture has has grains on the table, and it just seemed like this unifying crop. So finding like those stories that were interstwined in that, and and reading about like even Japanese grains of rice and black rice, and you know, folklore around these various crops, because all these crops have

their own stories and their own folklore. And I think that's what really tied me in because I grew up hearing folklore, and I grew up hearing stories from my elders. My grandfather still will pop up and like when he's ready, he will share, he will share a story quick. Um. It was really beautiful to like learn about our rice and our our grain history and some of the other grains that you know, I read in books. I remember the first mention I think I ever read was in

Jessica the Harris's book The Africa Cookbooks. She talks about grains out of Africa, and that really was like, oh, okay, I think as an American, as an African American who grew up in the South, I didn't really know much about us having our own crops and the fact that a lot of those things came from Africa that wet now, you know, growing up, you just don't think about that stuff.

But through like a lot of the literature that I started reading and the works of like Cranelia Bailey and Vernemet Grosner can really like learn a lot about our just our history with agriculture and seedkeeping and how important those crops were to us and to our stories into the passing down of the house and the whose You know, I'm really interested in what you're saying about story and folklore.

Obviously it is central to the African diasporic tradition. And your grandfather he's a gardener, right, I think that's who I've seen on the grand before in the garden. Well, so my grandfather is I mean, you could call him a gardener, but really he he and his brothers, all of his siblings, they grew up farming. Yeah, I think in reference to my grandfather's generation, we're talking about hundreds of acres of land. Uh is gardening? Right? That is

definitely not gardening. And so I think that's the kind of the distinct difference, just like and also what they were growing and why they were growing. You know, it wasn't the reason that I'm growing necessarily now, it was out of necessity. And their parents they were like, Okay, we're doing this, so you're gonna get this work to come on, You're gonna pick three hundred towns of cotton today, Like this is the work that they were doing growing up.

And so their relationship to farming growing up is very different from what I see in them now as they work an acre a lot of land and treed everybody around us and my my grandfather's brother Andrew, has kind of been my my since in the field because he holds a lot of the old history in my family, which is crazy because he's the baby brother. And it's when we're in the garden that we're able to talk about those things, or one one's kitchen that he's sharing

those things, or when we're showing dried seeds. You know, that's when those stories really come to life. Reach inside and get out to how meditates you need at last, fear for week or two three, you get out altering

you need where you're keeping how Yeah. So my grandfather is an engineer and an inventor, and he it's just an incredible inventor and kind of magician of sorts because he can turn anything into something that's how to keep I mean that in the sense of he rebuilds the tractors, so like that's kind of his relationship to the garden with Uncle Andrew and I. He is our mechanic engineer, and we do the planting and the harvest thing for the most part, and so whenever thing's work down, it's

in his shop, which is located right behind our house. In terms of proximity, it's kind of like we have everything we kind of need within like the street that is very powerful. And I have to say, do you have any stories off the top of your head that have been passed down to you around food and folklore? M yes, I think my stories that have been passed directly to me from my relatives on more memories. So the games that they would play as children when they

were out in the field. What is it when it's peanuts season? There's Jack in the bush? Is a game that they used to play, which that sounds like an old person's game. Jack in the bush? You know that

was before So what is jack in the bush? It's a game And the way it was explained to me, they would have peanuts, you know, one would be the guesser and one would be the I guess the holder of the peanuts, and so they would hide them in their hands and the guesser would have to, you know, approximate how many peanuts are in your hand, and if it was wrong, if it was over, you had to give them the peanuts, and if it was under, they had to make up the difference. It was, Oh God,

thankfully I've recorded these things. If you know how many you have in your hand, you have. I said, if you had five peanuts in your hands and you said, Jack is in the bush, you know, other person said cut him down? You say how many licks? You're guessing how many peanuts in your hand. If you said you had five in your hand and the man said ten, well give me five and make me teen. But if he guess exactly what was in your hand, you had

to give him to him. Like hearing the way that they formulated James and created you know, their all reality, even in like kind of hard times, and like the way they just created these worlds. It's really interesting. Hard to house all of these all of these things that they created. But I think that's what made me pursue filmmaking, like as a medium to record these things and keep these things and pass these things. You chronicle your life in your family's life with such joy, and there's such

intimacy there. Do you feel like compelled or that it's part of your work to to share that that intimacy and that relationship that you have with your family. I don't know that I always have felt compelled to like

share that necessarily. However, I think in the process of sharing that I've realized how much it's opened up for other people, the possibilities of what your relationship to your elders can be and kind of this inheritance that they hold that is storytelling, that is recipes, that is you know, whatever form it takes, it just opening up communication. But that these things can be passed down. That feels very important,

especially you know, as a form of preservation. You're right, the preservation is so important because when you think about how quickly that generational knowledge has been lost, it is it's because we we don't talk explicitly with our elders oftentimes about their remembrances and relationships to the land, and unfortunately often times we you know, that land is not in our families in the same way, you know, which is part of that generational loss is of memory and

also a place. The fact that you do have access both to the memories and the place is powerful, and we are grateful that you share it with all of us. So what are you working on right now that has

you most in a drive? Mm hmm, yeah. So, Revival Taste Collective is the name of an online journal that I started a few a couple of years ago when I was living in New York and I was making these visits to the South and I went to Staffalo Island for the first time when I started this journal, and I got a chance to meet Clinelia Bailey's family and be on their land and learn about their ancestral connections to the land and place and the things that

they grow. So all of that was kind of a part of my discovery of myself and my own story,

or at the start of it. So I started putting that in various like random journals online, and um, that was the start of it, and I kind of put that on the back burner when I was in New York and when I made the decision to move home with intention to preserve our land, to tell these stories, to preserve these stories, Revival Taste Collective felt like the way that I was going to do that the place that I was going to have these stories and bring people together in order to taste the food, in order

to see the seeds and feel the feeds and maybe take seeds home, but also commune over storytelling. And so I'm really excited because we've been doing a few things here on like what I call the Wardard Homestead, which is our land here where our house, where the shop is, and where the garden is. I'm gonna start a series

of events through these journal entries basically online. So the things that I've been writing about that I've been sharing, We're actually gonna like bring them to life through dinners and through community cinema and screenings of independent films and documentary films and things that are important to the culture, so that the kids in the community have access to

this knowledge and they have access to the art. And we did one screen already of my film Tall Grass, which is, you know, the stories from my community, some of the inheritance in the form of growing and keeping, and also what's happening around here in terms of the highway and how that's cutting into our land as well as displacing our elders. So there's a lot hidden in the grass and and this is kind of shining a

light on those things, on some of those stories. Well, so crucial that you are creating this space and that you have this relationship to the elders, and I mean, yeah, thank God that they're they're sharing, and that you're documenting. It is a gift that extends far beyond your family. So will you be making like an announcement. Are you gonna do it in series or do you think it will be like a one off thing where we'll just get like an update, So via Instagram that's the newspaper.

That's how you do it exactly. Okay, give us your g handle so we can know where to find. Okay, it's my name, Gabrielle g A b r I E l l E Underscore at g M E I t I E m n E Gabrielle et t N. Cultural preservationist in Apex, North Carolina, doing amazing, amazing work. Thank you for joining us today on point of origin. Thank you so much, Stephen. This is wonderful. H m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m And

that's it for this episode. Point of Origin is a podcast from My Heart Media and wet Stone Magazine executive produced by Christopher Hasiotis and hosted by me Stephen Saderfield. Special thanks to Cat Hoong for editing, supervising producer Gabrielle Collins, and a very special thanks to my business partner, Wetstone

co founder Melissa she who helped produce this podcast. Thanks mel and thanks to all of you for supporting wet Stone and listening to the Point of Origin podcast for all of the latest on all things point of Origin. You can follow us on Instagram at wet Stone Magazine or online at wet Stone Magazine dot com. We'll see you next week at the Point of Origin. M