The Honourable Harvest of the Potawotamy Native Americans.
The Honourable Harvest
For thousands of year, Native Americans lived in peace and harmony with their lush abundant country. They had a way of getting their resources called "the honorable harvest." We also in the westernized global society also have a different way of getting resources. The westernized global society is killing everything on the planet, in the time of decades. Westernized global society let money guide us. So if there is gold in the mountain, the miners take the %100 of the gold. If there is iron in the sand, the miners take %100 of the iron, if there is fish in the sea, the fishermen take %100 of fish. If there is wood in the forest, the lumberjacks take %100 of the wood. The Fish meat will sit in freezers to fetch money. the wood will sit in warehouses to fetch money, and the gold will sit in banks to insure that bank. Rotten meat gets thrown back into the ocean or on land dumps.
So lets' look how to do an honourable harvest:
- Never take the first one that you find.
- Ask permission to harvest
- Listen for the answer
- Take only what you need
- Use everything you take.
- minimize harm
Never Take the first one that you find.
If you are foraging for some herb or hunting some thing, the rule is to leave the first individual that you find. This is like when Maori return the first fish they catch back to the God of the oceans.
Today, native Americans say that by doing this, and taking the second, we are assured of not taking the very last individual of its kind.
Ask the creature for permission to harvest.
While some westernized people pray to the God before they work, have they thought of asking the creatures they are going to harvest from if it is their wish to be harvested?
To ask a tree if you can take it's fruits, or ask a fish if you can take it from the water to eat.
Simply in the silence of your mind, as you would pray to the Holy Spirit of Christ, simply introduce yourself to the creature, share you name and what you want. And then ask it for permission.
Listen for the answer.
Christianity and other religions teach that trees, animals and humans have souls. different sorts of souls where the soul controls the bodily movements. Respecting the soul of another, is key to be able to listen and share understanding with that creature. In the same way you can understand what a foreign person is saying in a foreign language by their bodily movements and tone of voice, you should wait for the creature to give you a yes or no answer.
Take only what you need.
This is hard to explain. Do we think about the difficulty to harvest? the timeframe of the harvest, the timeframe of the things as they are ready to harvest? do we think of the timeframe of our eating or consuming of the things?
Consider a fruit tree. How much do you need? if you are plucking fruits you don't need to pluck leaves. If you are just feeding your family for a meal, then you need only one fruit for each person. You don't need to kill the whole tree. If you are harvesting leaves from silverbeet, then you don't need to cut the whole plant off as is done in industrial silverbeet farms. You only need to pluck as many leaves as you need, and the plant will keep growing more leaves and finally produce seeds.
Do you need 50 fish if you are keen on fishing? You will fill your freezer, and then give fish to your friends as though they needed your help. If you didn't kill 50 fish each time you went to catch dinner, your friends could also find their own fish.
Use Everything that you take.
Be inventive about how you use everything which you harvested. Since you disrupted and destroyed some part of another creature's life, you should find ways which utilize and make up for all the bits of the things which you harvested. There shouldn't be anything which is "unused" or "Rubbish." If there is rubbish, then you have taken too much and not been wise enough.
Excess unedible things can be used as fertilizers, as bait, as paint as libricant many things which individuals can make and use.
Minimize Harm
To understand the ways in which we shouldn't harm creatures of Earth, we need to understand the creatures themselves. In the Holy Bible the creatures have their purposes, which are good, perpetual and preserved purposes. So we as the last creatures, need to respect all of the values which each of the creatures aspire to and lend to their subsequent creatures.
Animals grow in size, and reach a certain maximum size, in the same way fruits and trees reach a maximum size? well animals have their freedom. While fruits and tree branches have their sizes. Fruits stop growing in size, but branches never stop growing in size.
So harm is to stop a creature from growing in size, or to remove the freedom from a moving creature. Harm may be to disrespect the heavenly bodies (the planets, sun and stars) especially by not caring about the time, or where they are in outer space, as we use the basic building blocks of physics.
Summary
The responsibility is within your life alone. The responsibility to interact with natural resources isn't governed by your brain's understanding of money. The responsibility to honourably harvest comes from respect for the creatures which build up our own lives, that is the creatures of the ecosystem which build up our children and our ancestors.
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