Speaker 1: Welcome back to Point of Origin, a podcast about the
Speaker 1: world of food worldwide. I'm your host, Stephen Saderfield. This
Speaker 1: is our very last episode of season one, and I
Speaker 1: would like to thank every one of you for supporting
Speaker 1: this podcast. It has been such enriching experience for me
Speaker 1: as a host, to talk to so many people for
Speaker 1: whom I have such great admiration, and to partner with
Speaker 1: a company like I Heart Radio that helps amplify the
Speaker 1: work that we'd like to see in the world. So
Speaker 1: much gratitude to everyone who made this first season possible.
Speaker 1: And before we close out on our final episode of
Speaker 1: the season, part two of our series Farming Wild Black
Speaker 1: and the second interview with my friend Gabrae al et En.
Speaker 1: In our discussion, there is a mention of racial violence
Speaker 1: that could be a very upsetting story for some of
Speaker 1: our listeners, so I'd like to mention that off top,
Speaker 1: and I would also like to say that if you're able,
Speaker 1: it is such a powerful story that I do believe
Speaker 1: it will be worth your time. Again, i'd like to
Speaker 1: thank you all for making the season possible. We are
Speaker 1: already hard at work on the second season, and while
Speaker 1: I've got you here, a gentle reminder that if you
Speaker 1: are enjoying this podcast, the best way to ensure that
Speaker 1: we continue to enjoy this platform and share these stories
Speaker 1: as if you give us a five star review on iTunes.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for considering, and please enjoy Farming
Speaker 1: While Black Part two. Welcome back to Point of Origin.
Speaker 1: Today we are focusing on farming Wild Black the many
Speaker 1: intricacies of blackness and African americanness in relationship to the land.
Speaker 1: Our next guest is the Associate Professor of Environmental Justice
Speaker 1: at the University of Wisconsin Madison, Dr Monica White, is
Speaker 1: also the author of an amazing book that was just
Speaker 1: released in two thousand nineteen called Freedom Farmers, and we
Speaker 1: will talk about all of the above today. Monica, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for joining us on Point of Origin.
Speaker 1: Thank you for the invitation. It's sorry to be here
Speaker 1: with you. Let's just get right into the book, Freedom Farmers,
Speaker 1: agricultural resistance, and the Black freedom Movement. There's a lot
Speaker 1: to unpack in the book, a lot of amazing themes
Speaker 1: around blackness and relationship to land. But before we get
Speaker 1: into that, can you just tell us what you're impetus
Speaker 1: for wanting to write this book was so I was
Speaker 1: returning to Detroit to take care of my parents. I
Speaker 1: was moving back to Detroit and needed a research topic.
Speaker 1: I was going to teach at Wayne State University. And
Speaker 1: I knew that there was a robust black farmers movement
Speaker 1: that had proceeded the two thousands and really wanted to
Speaker 1: sort of capture that, and so joined and met Baba
Speaker 1: Malika Kini to do some organizing around around the Detroit
Speaker 1: Rebellion Conference and sixty seven Rebellions, sort of recognizing the
Speaker 1: history of existence in the city. And I knew the
Speaker 1: black folks have been growing food in Detroit for a
Speaker 1: long time, my dad, my grandmother, and my sister, and
Speaker 1: I knew that the scholarship that was coming out about
Speaker 1: the movement about the return to food production were really
Speaker 1: missing the black folks, you know, folks who looked like me.
Speaker 1: One of the sort of capture what was happening in
Speaker 1: that moment, but then also finding that the current, at
Speaker 1: least in the two thousand at that moment, needed a
Speaker 1: historical frame that was different than what I found when
Speaker 1: I looked up the scholarship on what do we know
Speaker 1: about Black farmers? A lot of it came from a
Speaker 1: deficit approach, and they talked a lot about slavery, tenant farming,
Speaker 1: sharecrofting in those exploitative conditions and relationships to the land,
Speaker 1: or the way that agriculture used as suppressive. And yet
Speaker 1: what I was hearing in Detroit was using agriculture the
Speaker 1: strategy of resistance, resilience in other way for liberation, and
Speaker 1: so I didn't hear it, and as are now recent
Speaker 1: ancestor so any more ins instead, if there's a book
Speaker 1: that you want to read, it hasn't been written, then
Speaker 1: we're the ones who has to to write it. And
Speaker 1: that's where the idea around freedom farmers came from. Knowing
Speaker 1: that there had to be other reasons, other frames to
Speaker 1: understand black folks in our relationship to the land, and
Speaker 1: not seeing it written, but yet hearing him. You know,
Speaker 1: you hang out with generational or black folks with net
Speaker 1: whose families never left to land, and you hear this
Speaker 1: language of being able to feed myself and free myself
Speaker 1: for every wental parents as I can free myself when
Speaker 1: I can feed myself, and to hear how pul found
Speaker 1: that statement was and yet not reading any scholarships to
Speaker 1: elevate his philosophy. You know, I felt like this was
Speaker 1: the perfect kind of a contribution um to how we
Speaker 1: understand our relationship to food production and to the land
Speaker 1: more generally. Absolutely so. Obviously in these more oppressive accounts
Speaker 1: of our relationship to the land that are rooted and
Speaker 1: enslavement have some generational or I guess, period specific elements
Speaker 1: to them. Were you finding that this disposition of liberation
Speaker 1: was more something about a recent generation or do you
Speaker 1: feel that that has been present throughout but we just
Speaker 1: haven't been exposed to that ideology? You know, yeah, thank
Speaker 1: you for that question. I feel like I consist to
Speaker 1: except found all kinds of ways to resist, and yet
Speaker 1: our scholarship around resistance strategies has really come from universities,
Speaker 1: and so there's been a disconnect between how people resist
Speaker 1: and how people study resistance, and so occupying both spaces, right, So,
Speaker 1: coming from a community known for resistance and resilience in
Speaker 1: Detroit and also joining the academy and feeling like the
Speaker 1: university tools could be useful for our liberation, I do
Speaker 1: think that there have been all kinds of ways that
Speaker 1: we've resisted that has been overlooked. So guess I wanted
Speaker 1: to really sort of problematize the way we frame resistance.
Speaker 1: You know, we often think about protests, marches, and boycasts,
Speaker 1: and those are really almost the only ways that we
Speaker 1: as theorists talk about what it means to resist. And
Speaker 1: yet this current moment, it shows us other ways to resist.
Speaker 1: And I'll just give one example. Here's this horrible situation
Speaker 1: that comes Barbecue Betty right now at eleven people fired
Speaker 1: up over this viral video from Oakland fired up their
Speaker 1: grills tonight to take a stand. The group says they're
Speaker 1: tired of people calling police prematurely. They are upset over
Speaker 1: a confrontation at a barbecue at Lake Merit. It was
Speaker 1: all caught on camera last month. The video is still
Speaker 1: getting passed around the internet non stop tonight. What's going on? Nas?
Speaker 1: You don't want she doesn't want to talk? Now it's
Speaker 1: a link to having a chocolate grill in the park here.
Speaker 1: What kind of girl are you not allowed? And why
Speaker 1: are you so bent out of shape over them being?
Speaker 1: Because it causes extra money from our city and things.
Speaker 1: One children get injured because of it. So yet the
Speaker 1: open community has just now celebrated a second celebration around
Speaker 1: recognizing the potential calamity of the situation, but embracing that
Speaker 1: as a celebration or blackness, and so are like the
Speaker 1: scholarship is behind the ways that we resist and Freedom
Speaker 1: Farmers was an effort to sort of show the links
Speaker 1: between the historic resistance using food and food production. So
Speaker 1: we talked about the seeds in our hair that we
Speaker 1: carried over the Middle passages. We talked about the demand,
Speaker 1: our demand for provision grounds during slavery. We talked about marketing,
Speaker 1: We talked about all the various ways historically bartering and
Speaker 1: creating these spaces to celebrate culture or using food as
Speaker 1: a part of that have been used historically as a
Speaker 1: part of our our freedom strategy. I'm curious what you
Speaker 1: think the role of some institutions have been in further
Speaker 1: perpetuating this exploitative narrative, whether that be the university or
Speaker 1: the food system, Like, what are some of those institutional
Speaker 1: pressure points. Yeah, I just think everybody who's not basically
Speaker 1: I mean not to be not just you know, not
Speaker 1: a broad brush. I think that Samananda dj argues the
Speaker 1: danger of a single story, right, So to come up
Speaker 1: with a single story and it becomes easy to grab
Speaker 1: ahold of it and then run with it. And so
Speaker 1: those of us that are currently involved in dismantling that
Speaker 1: single story historically, and I think that I can't point
Speaker 1: to an institution that isn't responsible for oversimplifying Black folks
Speaker 1: relation to the ships and through land. It's you know,
Speaker 1: the university, it's the add community, it's you know, in
Speaker 1: some ways, it's even how we tell the story of
Speaker 1: civil rights with no ill intention necessarily, right. I think
Speaker 1: that you know, that danger of the single story means
Speaker 1: that there's certain ideas that get shared, and then once
Speaker 1: that is shared, it is assumed that's the only narrative.
Speaker 1: And there comes somebody like me who says that can't
Speaker 1: be the only story. And so therefore, how do we
Speaker 1: unearth some of the other ways to to to interrogate,
Speaker 1: to scholarship, find the data to really make a different case.
Speaker 1: It was not just my research question was unearthed in
Speaker 1: this movement. So I left Detroit and the Detroit last
Speaker 1: community prostituting that was teach me language like through sovereignty,
Speaker 1: food security. This wasn't something I had taken at school.
Speaker 1: I understood what it means to resist and said the
Speaker 1: social movements and so marrying my understanding of social movements
Speaker 1: and the Detroit Black communities for securities classes, her soon
Speaker 1: of speech on food sovereignty really helped me see that
Speaker 1: what they were doing wasn't new. It was just a
Speaker 1: new in this moment in the particular rights because they
Speaker 1: inherited a legacy of resistance and resilience using foods as strategy.
Speaker 1: And so that was really good. I was trying to capture.
Speaker 1: But yes, if you think of which entity is guilty,
Speaker 1: I don't know if one that isn't in attuchu wating
Speaker 1: simness around agriculture as as oppressive and not just a
Speaker 1: last folks and talking about sovereign tee of food that
Speaker 1: is really a conversation that is central to land. How
Speaker 1: do you reconcile for black folks who are are with
Speaker 1: you intellectually and saying like yeah, we you know, there
Speaker 1: are many stories to be told about our relationship to
Speaker 1: the land here, but one problem we don't have any land.
Speaker 1: Yeah you have great questions. Um, so absolutely, folks are
Speaker 1: asking a question if it's My approach has always been
Speaker 1: as an asset based approach, right, So I think that's
Speaker 1: a different orientation that I take to scholarship, which is,
Speaker 1: every community has something upon which to build, what are
Speaker 1: those assets? And then how to rebuild on that, which
Speaker 1: I think is a different approach. So for me, every
Speaker 1: community has something upon whished to build. And so if
Speaker 1: I may not have access to land in terms of
Speaker 1: land ownership, what are other ways that we can obtain
Speaker 1: access to those message or mechanisms to to grow. My
Speaker 1: dear friend Dr Cooper talks about individual ownership leads to
Speaker 1: individual volner ability, and so collective ownership is an important
Speaker 1: component to make sure that it's olidified. I just talked
Speaker 1: to folks at the Prince Duty Theological Seminary, and these
Speaker 1: are folks who run their own churches. And Reverend Hebrew
Speaker 1: Brown talks about how black church ownership and the land
Speaker 1: that black churches you know, have access to, is an
Speaker 1: important part of like a land trust right. And so
Speaker 1: what happens is we use the church own land as
Speaker 1: a part of our food production, resurgence and reconnection in
Speaker 1: those particular chimes of late and you know, I mean
Speaker 1: I'm telling from a frame. You know, in Detroit, where
Speaker 1: we have access to a lot of land, a lot
Speaker 1: of that land is contaminated. And so how do we
Speaker 1: restore the land, how do we share access? So you
Speaker 1: talk about community lands trust, you talk about soil mediation,
Speaker 1: and then for those who don't have access to land land,
Speaker 1: they are all kinds of beautiful techniques of of growing
Speaker 1: indoors that don't require a lot of money. But bots
Speaker 1: are growing in you know, cut up tunated bottles on walls,
Speaker 1: you know. And so I think that there are lots
Speaker 1: of ways, creative ways that folks are growing using various
Speaker 1: medium like, you know, maybe a hydropondical, you know, something
Speaker 1: along those lines. And there's the wine range of housefolks
Speaker 1: accessing land. And so let's just be also clear figure
Speaker 1: are still who like folks that are farming in the South,
Speaker 1: who have land in a generational that is you inherited
Speaker 1: land and really trying to find some collective ways to
Speaker 1: make sure that we retain actors to death which we
Speaker 1: have without losing another angor welcome back to point of origin.
Speaker 1: Let's talk more about Detroit, because obviously you've learned a
Speaker 1: lot there and it has been kind of an epicenter
Speaker 1: for the revival of urban farming across the country. What
Speaker 1: are the factors environmental factors of Detroit I'm talking are
Speaker 1: like socially and culturally that have made it so amenable
Speaker 1: to this urban farming movement. For the black folks who
Speaker 1: were in the South, who contested any form of this
Speaker 1: racialized exploitive relationship to land, there would be threatened, their
Speaker 1: lives would be threatened. At night, they would get the
Speaker 1: Birmingham and by more in that we're in Detroit. So
Speaker 1: there was a really clear line between Detroit and Alabama
Speaker 1: in terms of the migration. And I would also argue
Speaker 1: based on what farmers and the reason told me, especially
Speaker 1: about what we're happening in leth County, where black folks
Speaker 1: were especially politicized, right radically politicize whole many of whom
Speaker 1: ended up in Detroit. So one I think that there
Speaker 1: was a political connection that exists between Alabama and Detroit.
Speaker 1: There really hasn't been examined. To my preference. I feel
Speaker 1: like there's a lot that can be examined in terms
Speaker 1: of understanding s particular black radical orientation in Detroit. Additionally,
Speaker 1: we took our black out of gudeology, but we also
Speaker 1: took our feed and our knowledge of food production, and
Speaker 1: so our generation was returning where our parents had migrated
Speaker 1: we wanted to make sure that our children and access
Speaker 1: in nature and rich food, and so that agricultural knowledge
Speaker 1: was one generation removed. But we also knew that you
Speaker 1: are clearly providing for ourselves and themselves. And so I
Speaker 1: do think that there was some as a strategy, some
Speaker 1: connection that wasn't too far fetched. And I also think
Speaker 1: that for me personally to try to put the world
Speaker 1: on wheels, and once the automobile crisis collapse, then folks
Speaker 1: were forced to sort of think about, well, what do
Speaker 1: we know, what do we remember? What can we reconnect
Speaker 1: as a strategy to build resilient communities around food production?
Speaker 1: And then that conversation the food is just ever present, Um,
Speaker 1: how do we make sure that we not only feed
Speaker 1: our families, but feed and build our communities and build
Speaker 1: community health and wellness. And so I just feel like
Speaker 1: there are those kind of ideas that we're perfect termination
Speaker 1: for what we see happening in Detroit now. Definitely, and
Speaker 1: I totally support your continued work in following the trajectory
Speaker 1: of the black radicals from the South to Detroit. I
Speaker 1: think that is super interesting. I want to ask you
Speaker 1: about land reparation. You know it is somewhat being censored politically,
Speaker 1: at least in a way that it hasn't um in
Speaker 1: my lifetime. What are your ideas about a land based
Speaker 1: reparation in terms of effective policy, like how it could
Speaker 1: actually happen, and or whether or not you feel this
Speaker 1: is the right kind of prioritization for advocates of food
Speaker 1: justice and environmental justice. So I would say that the
Speaker 1: scholarship around land dispossession, especially a black folks, we have
Speaker 1: to respond to that right in order for a society
Speaker 1: to move forward. I do think that reconciling task historical
Speaker 1: wrongs for the stolen labor and the stolen land, including
Speaker 1: you know, indigenous First Nations folks, But that has to
Speaker 1: be a part of how we move forward as a whole.
Speaker 1: I don't know what mechanism, what form that take. I
Speaker 1: think that any time a nation and a world has
Speaker 1: created wealth and there are communities that have suffered from
Speaker 1: that wealth of the extraction of those resources, those people,
Speaker 1: those riches, that land, there has to be some reconciling
Speaker 1: of that, and reparations is an important part of that conversation.
Speaker 1: I think that the case can absolutely be made and
Speaker 1: has been made more distinctively now in this Sutork moments
Speaker 1: than I've ever seen, you know, supporting black lead institutions,
Speaker 1: both of the educational nature like in land Grand institutions,
Speaker 1: and supporting black lead organizations that are working to respond
Speaker 1: to the needs of folks around food and land. Outside
Speaker 1: of that, I don't know enough I've read about it,
Speaker 1: but I also love that qualified to speak on the distermination.
Speaker 1: What that looks like, well, oftentimes that is the wisest
Speaker 1: answer to give, and I completely um, that is totally adequate.
Speaker 1: One last question for you, and again it is about
Speaker 1: your your latest book, Freedom Farmers. Such a powerful book.
Speaker 1: I mean really, I think you know, I feel pretty
Speaker 1: well versed in a lot of these conversations, but you know,
Speaker 1: you had such clarity from the onset and trying to
Speaker 1: further ideas around black folks relationship to the land, especially
Speaker 1: African Americans. So I'm wondering, do you have any specific
Speaker 1: hopes or directions for for the readers of this text. Yes,
Speaker 1: so I wrote this book for you, I wrote this
Speaker 1: book for us. I wrote this book because I wanted
Speaker 1: to give us some sense that we don't have to
Speaker 1: reinvent a strategy that we can inherit the legacy of
Speaker 1: our an sensors and previous generations in terms of how
Speaker 1: do we get free? And so for me, the book
Speaker 1: and all that it took to write it and all
Speaker 1: of the intentions around it were really so that we
Speaker 1: could think about our relationship connections to the land, our
Speaker 1: responsibility to the environment, right to the planet, and our
Speaker 1: connection and responsibility to each other. And so for me,
Speaker 1: a great outcome would be to allow the book to
Speaker 1: complicate what we thought our relationship was, use it as
Speaker 1: um inspiration for us to reconnect to the land and
Speaker 1: to each other, and to figure out what this new generation,
Speaker 1: what this generation commitment will be in this legacy as
Speaker 1: you read, so, I'm excited to see what we do
Speaker 1: in this generation as we're grappling with how do we
Speaker 1: make sure that our communities are cared for and using
Speaker 1: food at the beginning conversation, but connecting the conversations around
Speaker 1: food to conversations of land, conversations of a education, conversations
Speaker 1: with healthcare. But just because this is our history, this
Speaker 1: this is ours, and I want us to own it.
Speaker 1: I want us to reclaim that. I want us to
Speaker 1: embrace it at least figure out a way forward. Amen
Speaker 1: to all that. Well, thank you so much for this resource.
Speaker 1: Looking forward to your continued research and publishings on this topic.
Speaker 1: Monica White, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at the University
Speaker 1: of Wisconsin and Madison and author of Freedom Farmers, Agricultural Resistance,
Speaker 1: and the Black Freedom Movement. Thank you for joining us
Speaker 1: today on point of origin. I really really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Fry too myself. Thank you. All right,
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you soon. Welcome back to point of origin.
Speaker 1: Today we have a very special guest from Holly Springs,
Speaker 1: North Carolina, just outside of Raleigh, Gabrielle Etienne, who is
Speaker 1: a cultural preservationist, which is the perfect umbrella term for
Speaker 1: her as she is a gardener, farmer, cook, community organizer. Gabrielle,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us today on point
Speaker 1: of origin. Hi, thank you for having me, which is
Speaker 1: really exciting. Of course, so today we're talking to a
Speaker 1: really cross section of black folks who are involved in
Speaker 1: agriculture and different capacities across the US, and we wanted
Speaker 1: to talk to you because well a couple of reasons.
Speaker 1: But first of all, I just really as a as
Speaker 1: a fan of your work, love, the way that you
Speaker 1: express your relationship to the land, and how your embodiment
Speaker 1: on the land in the garden, when you're harvesting, when
Speaker 1: you're cooking, just feel so grounded. I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to you about your relationship to the land and how
Speaker 1: you started to develop this practice. Mm hmm, okay. I
Speaker 1: don't feel like I'm anything new. I am really standing
Speaker 1: kind of on the shoulders of a lot of women,
Speaker 1: so thank you for that. My relationship to the land
Speaker 1: really kind of jumped off when I was living in
Speaker 1: New York, kind of seeking connection. I was really homesick,
Speaker 1: and I would come home a lot, and every time
Speaker 1: I would come home, I would get in the garden
Speaker 1: with my grandfather and with his brother, my great uncle, Andrew,
Speaker 1: and um. I started to learn these things about my family,
Speaker 1: about my family's history, about you know, just access just
Speaker 1: our beautiful relationship with our land and the land around
Speaker 1: here within like a ten mile radius of where I
Speaker 1: lived for a long time, and I just started feeling
Speaker 1: way more grounded, way more connected to who I am,
Speaker 1: but also to like who my family is and the
Speaker 1: importance of our own stories A little I guess history is.
Speaker 1: I was working in fashion for a while and I
Speaker 1: ended up just feeling some of the traumas of working
Speaker 1: like corporate, working in New York, working in you know,
Speaker 1: just fast paced corporate America. And when I transitioned out
Speaker 1: of fashion, I started working in food and I was
Speaker 1: working on the line I'm in um this gastro pub
Speaker 1: and the leat packing, and I was also doing a
Speaker 1: lot of food storytelling for different brands and chefs, and
Speaker 1: one of those chefs was J. J. Johnson, and his
Speaker 1: work kind of aligned with my family's work in a
Speaker 1: way that I didn't expect. And the more I started
Speaker 1: to uncover with the work I was doing with him,
Speaker 1: the more, you know, I bring stuff home. And I
Speaker 1: remember my grandfather's brother, older brother Herbert, when I showed
Speaker 1: him as rice that was from Trinidad, that was an
Speaker 1: African strain of rice. I remember him being like, oh,
Speaker 1: I remember when Grandpa John used to grow rice in
Speaker 1: the yard and we used to harvest it. And he
Speaker 1: talked about winnowing, and he talked about you know, his
Speaker 1: his memories were vague because he was a little boy,
Speaker 1: but he remembered these key things and that's how the
Speaker 1: rice got on the table. And that really like made me.
Speaker 1: It just woke something up in me around like place,
Speaker 1: and I started to think about, oh wow, well what
Speaker 1: were we before we were here too. To have that
Speaker 1: knowledge in that technology, you have to you know, be
Speaker 1: in certain areas. So just discovery after discovery kind of
Speaker 1: brought me back here because I was really focused on
Speaker 1: telling other folk stories and digging up this history through food,
Speaker 1: through food, research through food kind of art and you
Speaker 1: know development. Thank you for sharing that. That is a
Speaker 1: very dense journey that I would like to further unpacked.
Speaker 1: So J J. Johnson, if people don't know, is a
Speaker 1: young ish millennial chef in New York. He just opened
Speaker 1: a new rice centric restaurant called Field Trip. And j
Speaker 1: J also worked with at Cecil's, which is a pretty
Speaker 1: legendary spot in Harlem. So he is a very prominent
Speaker 1: young chef. When you are talking about, you know, the
Speaker 1: rice being part of the epiphany for you, I'm assuming
Speaker 1: that you're talking about when you were working with j J.
Speaker 1: And he was kind of also cultivating this vision around
Speaker 1: a rice based restaurant. Is that right? Yeah? Yeah, So
Speaker 1: that's so crazy to think about how that unfolded. But
Speaker 1: he was researching a strain of rice called Areza glab
Speaker 1: Arima and Glenn Roberts from Ansonville helping him with that
Speaker 1: and providing him grains. And Glenn while I was working
Speaker 1: with JJ really but can kind of a mentor for
Speaker 1: me in the space because we can nerd out about
Speaker 1: like agriculture and grain facts and suns at goals, and
Speaker 1: he just put me onto so much stuff that really
Speaker 1: likes sent me down this mildly crazy rabbit hole of research.
Speaker 1: And can you say, um, what Anton Mills is for
Speaker 1: people who don't know, Oh, it's a it's a grain
Speaker 1: mill based in South Carolina. Um. They do various heirloom
Speaker 1: and land race grains and corn and it's a farm.
Speaker 1: It's a mill. And Glenn is the one who founded
Speaker 1: that and is an awesome farmer and just really on
Speaker 1: the ground doing the work. So basically we were working
Speaker 1: on some concepts so well, it was the grain concept,
Speaker 1: which initially wasn't field trip, it was a different name altogether.
Speaker 1: But we were, you know, brainstorming and mapping things out
Speaker 1: and kind of came to the rice is culture point
Speaker 1: of view when we were doing this work, because every
Speaker 1: culture has has grains on the table, and it just
Speaker 1: seemed like this unifying crop. So finding like those stories
Speaker 1: that were interstwined in that, and and reading about like
Speaker 1: even Japanese grains of rice and black rice, and you know,
Speaker 1: folklore around these various crops, because all these crops have
Speaker 1: their own stories and their own folklore. And I think
Speaker 1: that's what really tied me in because I grew up
Speaker 1: hearing folklore, and I grew up hearing stories from my elders.
Speaker 1: My grandfather still will pop up and like when he's ready,
Speaker 1: he will share, he will share a story quick. Um.
Speaker 1: It was really beautiful to like learn about our rice
Speaker 1: and our our grain history and some of the other
Speaker 1: grains that you know, I read in books. I remember
Speaker 1: the first mention I think I ever read was in
Speaker 1: Jessica the Harris's book The Africa Cookbooks. She talks about
Speaker 1: grains out of Africa, and that really was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: I think as an American, as an African American who
Speaker 1: grew up in the South, I didn't really know much
Speaker 1: about us having our own crops and the fact that
Speaker 1: a lot of those things came from Africa that wet now,
Speaker 1: you know, growing up, you just don't think about that stuff.
Speaker 1: But through like a lot of the literature that I
Speaker 1: started reading and the works of like Cranelia Bailey and
Speaker 1: Vernemet Grosner can really like learn a lot about our
Speaker 1: just our history with agriculture and seedkeeping and how important
Speaker 1: those crops were to us and to our stories into
Speaker 1: the passing down of the house and the whose You know,
Speaker 1: I'm really interested in what you're saying about story and folklore.
Speaker 1: Obviously it is central to the African diasporic tradition. And
Speaker 1: your grandfather he's a gardener, right, I think that's who
Speaker 1: I've seen on the grand before in the garden. Well,
Speaker 1: so my grandfather is I mean, you could call him
Speaker 1: a gardener, but really he he and his brothers, all
Speaker 1: of his siblings, they grew up farming. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: in reference to my grandfather's generation, we're talking about hundreds
Speaker 1: of acres of land. Uh is gardening? Right? That is
Speaker 1: definitely not gardening. And so I think that's the kind
Speaker 1: of the distinct difference, just like and also what they
Speaker 1: were growing and why they were growing. You know, it
Speaker 1: wasn't the reason that I'm growing necessarily now, it was
Speaker 1: out of necessity. And their parents they were like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're doing this, so you're gonna get this work to
Speaker 1: come on, You're gonna pick three hundred towns of cotton today,
Speaker 1: Like this is the work that they were doing growing up.
Speaker 1: And so their relationship to farming growing up is very
Speaker 1: different from what I see in them now as they
Speaker 1: work an acre a lot of land and treed everybody
Speaker 1: around us and my my grandfather's brother Andrew, has kind
Speaker 1: of been my my since in the field because he
Speaker 1: holds a lot of the old history in my family,
Speaker 1: which is crazy because he's the baby brother. And it's
Speaker 1: when we're in the garden that we're able to talk
Speaker 1: about those things, or one one's kitchen that he's sharing
Speaker 1: those things, or when we're showing dried seeds. You know,
Speaker 1: that's when those stories really come to life. Reach inside
Speaker 1: and get out to how meditates you need at last,
Speaker 1: fear for week or two three, you get out altering
Speaker 1: you need where you're keeping how Yeah. So my grandfather
Speaker 1: is an engineer and an inventor, and he it's just
Speaker 1: an incredible inventor and kind of magician of sorts because
Speaker 1: he can turn anything into something that's how to keep
Speaker 1: I mean that in the sense of he rebuilds the tractors,
Speaker 1: so like that's kind of his relationship to the garden
Speaker 1: with Uncle Andrew and I. He is our mechanic engineer,
Speaker 1: and we do the planting and the harvest thing for
Speaker 1: the most part, and so whenever thing's work down, it's
Speaker 1: in his shop, which is located right behind our house.
Speaker 1: In terms of proximity, it's kind of like we have
Speaker 1: everything we kind of need within like the street that
Speaker 1: is very powerful. And I have to say, do you
Speaker 1: have any stories off the top of your head that
Speaker 1: have been passed down to you around food and folklore?
Speaker 1: M yes, I think my stories that have been passed
Speaker 1: directly to me from my relatives on more memories. So
Speaker 1: the games that they would play as children when they
Speaker 1: were out in the field. What is it when it's
Speaker 1: peanuts season? There's Jack in the bush? Is a game
Speaker 1: that they used to play, which that sounds like an
Speaker 1: old person's game. Jack in the bush? You know that
Speaker 1: was before So what is jack in the bush? It's
Speaker 1: a game And the way it was explained to me,
Speaker 1: they would have peanuts, you know, one would be the
Speaker 1: guesser and one would be the I guess the holder
Speaker 1: of the peanuts, and so they would hide them in
Speaker 1: their hands and the guesser would have to, you know,
Speaker 1: approximate how many peanuts are in your hand, and if
Speaker 1: it was wrong, if it was over, you had to
Speaker 1: give them the peanuts, and if it was under, they
Speaker 1: had to make up the difference. It was, Oh God,
Speaker 1: thankfully I've recorded these things. If you know how many
Speaker 1: you have in your hand, you have. I said, if
Speaker 1: you had five peanuts in your hands and you said,
Speaker 1: Jack is in the bush, you know, other person said
Speaker 1: cut him down? You say how many licks? You're guessing
Speaker 1: how many peanuts in your hand. If you said you
Speaker 1: had five in your hand and the man said ten,
Speaker 1: well give me five and make me teen. But if
Speaker 1: he guess exactly what was in your hand, you had
Speaker 1: to give him to him. Like hearing the way that
Speaker 1: they formulated James and created you know, their all reality,
Speaker 1: even in like kind of hard times, and like the
Speaker 1: way they just created these worlds. It's really interesting. Hard
Speaker 1: to house all of these all of these things that
Speaker 1: they created. But I think that's what made me pursue filmmaking,
Speaker 1: like as a medium to record these things and keep
Speaker 1: these things and pass these things. You chronicle your life
Speaker 1: in your family's life with such joy, and there's such
Speaker 1: intimacy there. Do you feel like compelled or that it's
Speaker 1: part of your work to to share that that intimacy
Speaker 1: and that relationship that you have with your family. I
Speaker 1: don't know that I always have felt compelled to like
Speaker 1: share that necessarily. However, I think in the process of
Speaker 1: sharing that I've realized how much it's opened up for
Speaker 1: other people, the possibilities of what your relationship to your
Speaker 1: elders can be and kind of this inheritance that they
Speaker 1: hold that is storytelling, that is recipes, that is you know,
Speaker 1: whatever form it takes, it just opening up communication. But
Speaker 1: that these things can be passed down. That feels very important,
Speaker 1: especially you know, as a form of preservation. You're right,
Speaker 1: the preservation is so important because when you think about
Speaker 1: how quickly that generational knowledge has been lost, it is
Speaker 1: it's because we we don't talk explicitly with our elders
Speaker 1: oftentimes about their remembrances and relationships to the land, and
Speaker 1: unfortunately often times we you know, that land is not
Speaker 1: in our families in the same way, you know, which
Speaker 1: is part of that generational loss is of memory and
Speaker 1: also a place. The fact that you do have access
Speaker 1: both to the memories and the place is powerful, and
Speaker 1: we are grateful that you share it with all of us.
Speaker 1: So what are you working on right now that has
Speaker 1: you most in a drive? Mm hmm, yeah. So, Revival
Speaker 1: Taste Collective is the name of an online journal that
Speaker 1: I started a few a couple of years ago when
Speaker 1: I was living in New York and I was making
Speaker 1: these visits to the South and I went to Staffalo
Speaker 1: Island for the first time when I started this journal,
Speaker 1: and I got a chance to meet Clinelia Bailey's family
Speaker 1: and be on their land and learn about their ancestral
Speaker 1: connections to the land and place and the things that
Speaker 1: they grow. So all of that was kind of a
Speaker 1: part of my discovery of myself and my own story,
Speaker 1: or at the start of it. So I started putting
Speaker 1: that in various like random journals online, and um, that
Speaker 1: was the start of it, and I kind of put
Speaker 1: that on the back burner when I was in New
Speaker 1: York and when I made the decision to move home
Speaker 1: with intention to preserve our land, to tell these stories,
Speaker 1: to preserve these stories, Revival Taste Collective felt like the
Speaker 1: way that I was going to do that the place
Speaker 1: that I was going to have these stories and bring
Speaker 1: people together in order to taste the food, in order
Speaker 1: to see the seeds and feel the feeds and maybe
Speaker 1: take seeds home, but also commune over storytelling. And so
Speaker 1: I'm really excited because we've been doing a few things
Speaker 1: here on like what I call the Wardard Homestead, which
Speaker 1: is our land here where our house, where the shop is,
Speaker 1: and where the garden is. I'm gonna start a series
Speaker 1: of events through these journal entries basically online. So the
Speaker 1: things that I've been writing about that I've been sharing,
Speaker 1: We're actually gonna like bring them to life through dinners
Speaker 1: and through community cinema and screenings of independent films and
Speaker 1: documentary films and things that are important to the culture,
Speaker 1: so that the kids in the community have access to
Speaker 1: this knowledge and they have access to the art. And
Speaker 1: we did one screen already of my film Tall Grass,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, the stories from my community, some
Speaker 1: of the inheritance in the form of growing and keeping,
Speaker 1: and also what's happening around here in terms of the
Speaker 1: highway and how that's cutting into our land as well
Speaker 1: as displacing our elders. So there's a lot hidden in
Speaker 1: the grass and and this is kind of shining a
Speaker 1: light on those things, on some of those stories. Well,
Speaker 1: so crucial that you are creating this space and that
Speaker 1: you have this relationship to the elders, and I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: thank God that they're they're sharing, and that you're documenting.
Speaker 1: It is a gift that extends far beyond your family.
Speaker 1: So will you be making like an announcement. Are you
Speaker 1: gonna do it in series or do you think it
Speaker 1: will be like a one off thing where we'll just
Speaker 1: get like an update, So via Instagram that's the newspaper.
Speaker 1: That's how you do it exactly. Okay, give us your
Speaker 1: g handle so we can know where to find. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's my name, Gabrielle g A b r I E
Speaker 1: l l E Underscore at g M E I t
Speaker 1: I E m n E Gabrielle et t N. Cultural
Speaker 1: preservationist in Apex, North Carolina, doing amazing, amazing work. Thank
Speaker 1: you for joining us today on point of origin. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much, Stephen. This is wonderful. H m m
Speaker 1: m m m m m m m m m m
Speaker 1: m m m m m m m m m And
Speaker 1: that's it for this episode. Point of Origin is a
Speaker 1: podcast from My Heart Media and wet Stone Magazine executive
Speaker 1: produced by Christopher Hasiotis and hosted by me Stephen Saderfield.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Cat Hoong for editing, supervising producer Gabrielle Collins,
Speaker 1: and a very special thanks to my business partner, Wetstone
Speaker 1: co founder Melissa she who helped produce this podcast. Thanks
Speaker 1: mel and thanks to all of you for supporting wet
Speaker 1: Stone and listening to the Point of Origin podcast for
Speaker 1: all of the latest on all things point of Origin.
Speaker 1: You can follow us on Instagram at wet Stone Magazine
Speaker 1: or online at wet Stone Magazine dot com. We'll see
Speaker 1: you next week at the Point of Origin. M