The indigenous world is in accelerated transformation in its will to survive and to adapt while preserving its traditions and culture that are continually threatened by modern lifestyles. The vision proposed by Anastasia could very well be the means by which First Nations could retain a living relationship with nature and their traditions.
The vast territories and freedom required for a nomadic lifestyle no longer exists. Family domains offer solutions to the chronic problems of unemployment and poverty which are the lot of many native communities. .
Eloquent figures drawn from a video on Anastasia’s Russia illustrate this. In Russia 80% of the population is active in maintaining small gardens and sometimes travel 90 minutes on weekends to work on their small plots of fertile earth that were given to them by the Russian government. These are often very small gardens, less than an acre. Nevertheless in 2004 year when this video was filmed they produced 54% of the food of that country. It’s important to know that land cultivated by a family in biodiversity produces a lot more edible biomass than that cultivated industrially. And indeed, there are numbers here to confirm it. Without subsidies, without equipment, without mechanization, without outside work, on only 7% of the farmlands of this country families produce 54% of the total food produced in Russia. Corporations that cultivate industrially with subsidies, employees, mechanization, artificial pesticides and herbicides and chemical fertilizers, use 83% of farmlands to produce 43% of the food produced in Russia.
There are many benefits to home gardening. Cultivating one’s garden moves families closer together, feeds them, contributes to community dynamics and to the health of the community. Now that ecovillages inspired by Anastasia have had the time to develop in Russia, these figures are going to be even more eloquent. But here we are, it’s time for us also to get to work and plant our gardens.
Peace and Light
Blue Eagle