Green Gal

"Every issue that's out there is your opportunity to step up," shared Amigo Bob Cantisano, one of the founders of the EcoFarm Conference, in his welcome address at EcoFarm 2017 on Wednesday evening. I was in the audience as a first-time attendee of EcoFarm, an annual conference celebrating its 37th year this past week at the Asilomar Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove, across the road from the glorious Pacific Ocean. The Ecological Farming Association that hosts this conference has a mission "to nurture healthy, just, and ecologically sustainable farms, food systems, and communities by bringing people together for education, alliance building, advocacy, and celebration." I am so grateful I had the opportunity to participate in the conference this year! I was able to do so with the help of my good friend David Shaw , who recently started a permaculture business called Santa Cruz Permaculture . He invited me to table with him for his business in the exhibit...

Tule rope braided at camp. The white rope is made solely from the interior fibers of the tule plant, and the green ones are from the outside part of the plant. Experimentation in rope-making during lunch! Valley oak gall toys. The one on the left is a deer, made by Green Gal. The one on the right is a turtle, which was tragically abandoned by a camper at the end of the day. I rescued it and put them on my shelf, next to the tule rope. The native people of this area used to make toy animals out of Valley oak tree galls, like these pictured. The kids had a blast at camp making helicopter toys, hats, snowmen, and fun animals with their oak galls. What do you make from nature's arts and crafts supply?

I have been visiting the Alviso Adobe Community Park in Pleasanton, CA, since it opened in 2008. This video documents my amazing journey of learning experiences there, and it also serves as a way to share about the park's history and beauty. I have written a lot on this blog about my experiences at the park. Please click here to view those posts.

In the early twentieth century, American anthropologists and photographers were scrambling to document the “vanishing race” of Native Americans who had endured centuries of struggle against European imperialists and settlers and whose culture was already imbued with the culture of white, European America. Those photographing Native Americans at this time presented idealized, romantic, static images of a people who in reality were experiencing a complex social, political and economic transition. Native American culture at this time was not the same as Native American culture before European contact, but nevertheless, anthropologists attempted to capture the romantic ideal of the “noble savage” and preserve the very culture that society at the same time was attempting to eradicate through assimilation. Thus, Native Americans at this time were not depicted as real, individual beings facing these complex factors, but were depicted as either representative of a culture that was believed to ...

Here's another, shorter paper I wrote last year in my Native American studies class at UCSC. I attended a lecture and wrote this for extra credit. On Thursday, March 03, 2011, a room-full of students and professors gathered in Humanities Building 1, Room 201 to listen to Ned Blackhawk speak about famous American writer Mark Twain, his “overland narrative” Roughing It , and what his representations of the western United States during and after the Civil War have to do with Native peoples, imperialism and anthropology. Blackhawk is the author of Violence over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West. His lecture was based on a section of his book about Mark Twain, whose real name was Samuel Clemens. Twain’s Roughing It tells the story of his journey west with his brother that began in 1861, right when the Civil War was beginning. The two traveled through what Blackhawk said is ethnographically called the American Great Basin between the Colorado Rockies and the ...

I'm currently writing a History of Art and Visual Culture essay on Native American photographic representations in the early twentieth century, so I've been reading through old essays and notes I have from various American Studies courses I took last year. As I was reading through this paper I wrote for a Native American studies class, I realized I hadn't posted it to my blog, so I figured I'd share it now. When the Ohlone Native Americans of the Monterey and San Francisco bay areas first encountered Spanish explorers like Captain Pedro Fages and missionary Juan Crespí in the 1770s (Brown 1), they had never before seen such “light-skinned creatures” (Margolin Ohlone 158), nor their glass beads, metal or mules; they concluded that the Europeans were “children of the Mule—a…powerful animal-god” that “had blessed them with stupendous magical powers” (158). Years later, the Ohlone recounted this initial impression to missionaries. By then, they had for years been virtually ...

Earlier this afternoon, UC Santa Cruz student leaders from a unique selection of campus groups gathered in the Stevenson Event Center to talk about sustainability, environmental and social justice, democracy, the green economy, and the future with a "globally recognized, award-winning pioneer in human rights and the clean energy economy," Van Jones . There were students in the room with a variety of different interests, but all were drawn to the event by the promise that Van Jones would be an inspiration to hear from and speak with, and at least in my opinion, that promise was fulfilled. But before I go into what he said earlier today, let me share a little about Van Jones. He is the best-selling author of The Green Collar Economy and served as the green jobs advisor to President Obama. He is currently a senior fellow at the Center For American Progress and a senior policy advisor at Green For All... Jones is the founder of Rebuild the Dream, an engine helping to drive the m...

At nine o'clock this morning, I put a pair of binoculars around my neck and stuffed a small red notebook into my pocket before setting off with a group of four other UCSC students led by UCSC Museum of Natural History curator Chris Lay. I had signed up for this Natural History of the UCSC Campus one-day class last quarter, but it had been cancelled due to rain. Today, even with the threat of snow, the class was still on. It was chilly but fortunately not raining as we set off from the UCSC Recreation Department toward the East Field. After introductions, Chris asked if there was anything we particularly wanted to see. An environmental studies major named Shannon, who I talked with throughout the hike, said "any mammals other than deer and ground squirrels." We all laughed because moments before we had seen about 25 ground squirrels on the hill by Stevenson College, and deer are ubiquitous throughout the campus. Chris said he hoped today's hike would take us places w...

I just returned from the dining hall after eating a delicious omelet scramble. My large brown bear mug is filled with the rich, suprisingly well-made coffee the dining hall serves, and it's sitting here on my desk, wafting wonderful scents into the room. When I got back to my house, I checked on the laundry I'd put in the wash right before leaving for breakfast, and my timing was perfect: the laundry was finished washing just as I walked in. Don't you just love when things work out like that? After I post this, I will return to my reading assignment that is supposed to be completed by noon today for my Native American studies lecture. We're reading Native Features: Indigenous Films from Around the World by Houston Wood. I have to read to chapter 9, and then I'll move on to Archaeology homework. This book on films is quite interesting, as it describes many of the central themes found in indigenous films, as well as analyzes the issues with stereotype found in films ...

In my many years of encounters with the performing arts, I had never experienced hip-hop theater before Sunday night when I attended a performance at The 418 Project on Mission Street in downtown Santa Cruz. The theatrical performance, entitled FreeLand , took place during the second half of a benefit evening for Black Mesa/Big Mountain Dine (Navajo) Native residents in northeastern Arizona. I'm hesitant to write about the Black Mesa situation, as I know very little about it. Essentially, the United States has been trying to relocate the Dine people for thirty or so years in order to access coal deposits under their homes. It's highly controversial, and these people have refused to leave their land. A group of people working with the Black Mesa Indigenous Support group is caravanning to the Black Mesa/Big Mountain reservation this month to provide support to the people who live there. I'm going to research the situation so I have a better understanding of what happened and...