Support the Podcast: https://www.patreon.com/petermichaelbauer
To attain the level of resilience that cultural rewilding calls for, requires moving away from an economy based on extraction for profit that lays waste to local ecosystems and destroys ancient ways that people have lived from the land. To move away we need alternatives, and examples of how other people have found and maintained sustainability. How have humans lived in a myriad of ways for millennia without destroying their land and not living in greatly unequal societies? What is a subsistence economy and what makes them so resilient? To talk with me about this today is Dr. Helga Vierich
Dr. Vierich was born in Bremen, west Germany and immigrated with her parents to Canada, growing up in North Bay, Ontario. She began her studies at the University of Toronto in 1969. From 1977-1980, as part of her research, she lived in the Kalahari among hunter-gatherers in the Kweneng district with Richard B. Lee supervising. During this time she worked as a consultant on the effects of the extreme drought in Botswana. She was awarded her Ph.D. by the University of Toronto in 1981 and went to work as a Principal Scientist at the West African Economics Research Program, International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (headquarters in Hyderabad, India). She worked as a visiting professor of Anthropology at the University of Kentucky from 1985 to 1987, then as an adjunct professor of Anthropology at the University of Alberta from 1989 to 1997. From 1999-2022 she worked as an instructor at the Yellowhead Tribal College in Alberta. Now retired, she spends her time on a rural farm with her husband.
Notes:
Dr. Veirich’s Wesbite
https://anthroecologycom.wordpress.com/
Why they matter: hunter-gatherers today
https://helgavierich.medium.com/why-they-matter-hunter-gatherers-today-9af2a0d642df
Before farming and after globalization: the future of hunter-gatherers may be brighter than you think
https://www.academia.edu/109220612/Before_farming_and_after_globalization_the_future_of_huntergatherers_may_be_brighter_than_you_think
Changes in West African Savanna agriculture in response to growing population and continuing low rainfall
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/016788099090214X
3 Comments
What a wonderful woman! It seems to me that many anthropologist develop a 30,000 foot view of Sapiens and are able to see the systems we have adopted throughout the ages for what they are. By seeing our contemporary, consumeristic, extractive, hierarchical system as just one of many and then juxtaposing it with so many other examples that are based on reciprocity is a great way to understand that another world is indeed possible. I look forward to digging into her papers.
Great interview. Helga studied the Kua (similar to the !Kung) in Africa. Her PhD supervisor was none other than Richard B Lee. Helga has been working on a book for the last 5 years. I keep asking her how it's going, but she tells me it's going to be a while yet.
When we destroy woods we destroy the wild (the words are interchangeable if you go far enough back in time). They trace back to the same PIE root. "Weed" is also descended from the same root, which shows the hubris of humans even better than the other two forms. If WE didn't put a plant in a particular spot, it is a weed. No better example of how we deify ourselves.