What’s in a name?
This blog entry will be unarchiving a (rather academic-sounding) document we wrote a few years ago, that digs into the history of the name Terra Futura, and shows how the idea for a community popular education center and a permaculture demonstration farm morphed into a housing community project that has grown exponentially into the vision it is today.
A Note On the Name ‘Terra Futura’ and Other Important Terms
Terra - fr. Latin, meaning Earth, Land; the Roman Earth Goddess, equivalent to Gaia, or Gaea
Futura - Future, Futurities, Inheritance, Legacy
Terra Futura is our response to the concepts of ‘terra incognita’–unknown or unexplored territory–and ‘terra nullius’–land that is legally deemed to be unoccupied or uninhabited. During the European Age of Exploration, the discovery of “uninhabited” land invited and legitimized colonization by European settlers, the theft of Indigenous Land and the subjugation of Indigenous people and, ultimately, the brutal human trafficking and enslavement of Indigenous Peoples from the African continent. Today, we experience the legacy of these entangled histories, known together as Settler Colonialism, as open wounds on our collective psyche.
Added to this complex history is an emerging concept of indigeneity. As Black and Brown peoples who reside on this continent are rejecting colonial identities and ideologies, descendants of European settlers are rejecting them as well. Not in an effort to occupy space that belongs to others, nor to appropriate and profit off the cultural expression of others. But, through serious contemplation and actions of material repair (including land, monetary, and policy reparations to Black and Indigenous peoples), beginning to see that–though it was sometimes centuries earlier–we have all lost our connection to our indigenous identity and ways of relating to Land–through conquest, christianization, land displacement, the industrial revolution, and consumer capitalism. Together, we have more in common than what divides us, and finding ways of moving into a new future by honoring our past is our guiding star.
The Terra Futura Project
The Terra Futura project–which encompasses housing, collective Land stewardship, and place-making–grew from a smaller vision of a non-profit eco-education center: The Center for the Study of Land Futurities. The words Land and Futurities derive from the academic contexts of Indigenous Studies, Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Decolonization, which Indigenous peoples and scholars have used to theorize a way out of the ongoing entrenchment of the legacy of Settler Colonialism.
The word Land, emphasis on the capital “L,” comes from an Indigenous Studies critique of the academic field of Place Attachment called Land Education. Place attachment is a confluence of childhood psychology, environmentalism, and deep ecology. It is well-meaning, and we believe, on the right track to understanding the psychological loss that “modern” cultures have endured as a result of being disconnected from Nature and a sense of belonging to Place. We believe the co-created reality in which Man and Nature are thought to be separate, is patently false.
The study of Place Attachment in the 1970s initiated several waves of “back to the land” movements of white people leaving the cities to return to nature, raise their own food and build their own shelter. But, the “turn on, tune in, and drop out” lifestyle did little to address the history of the Land they occupied or connect young white idealists to Indigenous teachers that could have imparted valuable ecological knowledge. A poignant example is the true story, told by Jon Krakauer in Into the Wild, of an affluent recent graduate who abandoned his possessions to live a life of simplicity in the Alaskan wilderness and perished after eating toxic berries from the wild. This story has been lamented by many Alaska Native Elders who wondered why he didn’t seek knowledge from them about living on the Land.
The attempt at white place attachment is actually much older than the 1970s. The story of the American Frontier is a messy tale of the ideological white settler who would “reconnect” to land by homesteading, owning, and subduing the land–all while displacing Native peoples who had an intimate connection to Land. Early in our Colonial history, British White Fathers promised civilization would not cross the Blue Ridge Escarpment, but American history is pockmarked by broken promises to not encroach on Native lands. Generations of white settlers pushed westward without pause, dispossessing generations of Native people from the Land–which is to say, the geographies, plants, animals, and seasons they knew intimately in order to survive.
Thus, Land Education means acknowledging the bloody history of what many of our ancestors did on this Land so that we could be here, acknowledging that all of this Land was either stolen, or forcefully bought. It means a relationship to Land that acknowledges it as sacred, part of us, and life-giving. It means looking at ways we can honor it by creatively looking at legal structures that move away from individual property ownership, because privatization and commodification of Land is antithetical to its stewardship. It means creating true relationships with Knowledge Keepers who are Indigenous to Lands around the world, but giving special honor and recognition of Land sovereignty to the Indigenous Peoples of Abya Yala/Turtle Island. The use of these names for the Land known to white settlers and their descendants as America signifies ideological support for Indigenous rights and respect for Indigenous stewardship practices.
Futurities is a word that seeks to acknowledge the nuance of where we find ourselves in this pluralistic society that we were born into and find a way forward that honors our ancient ancestors, asks and receives grace and forgiveness, allows for bioregional economies of scale, and creates relationships to Land and each other where all beings can thrive. It is imagining ideal futures, but also creating practical “next steps” to move people from where they are at present towards a more authentic connection to community and Land. We believe this movement can only happen through efforts of emotional and material reparations.
The future is indeed an unexplored territory that we are told will be shaped by unchecked climate change leading to erratic weather patterns, disruptions to the global food supply, water shortages, mass migrations, global pandemics, political and economic instability and, very likely, violent outbreaks of war. Terra Futura–and The Center For the Study of Land Futurities–sees itself as an activist educational space for highlighting the shared interest that all people have in clean air and water, healthy food, safe communities, comfortable shelter, accountable social structures, bodily autonomy, ceremony and celebration, meaningful work and relationships, and more.
It aims to be an intersectional space for unifying groups that have historically kept to themselves despite common interest: predominantly white middle and upper-middle class “urban homesteaders” and eco-villagers; progressive, socialist activists who are already doing great community work; working class Appalachians with majority Scotch-Irish ancestry and others; “Blackalachians” and other descendants of formerly-enslaved peoples; Indigenous “immigrants” from south of the imaginary border; the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and other Native peoples; local officials, political leaders and influencers; and all other visitors and settlers on this Land.
The Terra Futura Paradigm
Generations of activists have railed against capitalism, colonialism, racism, consumerism, and many other “-isms.” Major political movements have been rooted in “anti”–anti-war, anti-fascist, anti-nuclear, anti-capitalist–as well as calls for “REVOLUTION!” But, history has shown that you can’t merely be against something, as revolutions are almost always replaced with a different shade of the same authoritarianism, greed, or corruption. We desperately need a movement of people who know what they are for.
At Terra Futura, we are not original in our stance that the revolution is already happening. It grows in power every time we refuse to work longer hours for a corporate master, when we move through conflict without violence, support local independent producers, share and reuse goods rather than buy new, grow our own food, compost our own waste, and many more acts of “radical responsibility.”
We see the goal of the revolution as a kind of social evolution, away from the capitalist logic of efficiency–characterized by bottlenecks and breakdowns leading to regular supply chain disruptions–and towards a logic of sufficiency, leading to greater resilience of regional and local communities. We envision a movement towards economic “relocalization,” rural and small town economic development, redistribution of the human population away from the overdeveloped metropolises and “tech centers,” and more mindful consumption with a focus on cottage industries and re-development of the home economy.
The revolution has been stalled, however, because of the monopoly on choices for basic needs like shelter, food, and income generation, resulting from the profit- and efficiency-driven capitalist model. The commodification of Land as individual privately-owned property further displaces people from the basic resource from which the necessities of life flow. And, the “rat race” robs us of the time, skills, and space to be in true community with our neighbors. We believe that our communities already possess the ancient and technological expertise to create solutions that:
provide adequate and comfortable shelter with free or cheap, renewable or reused materials, and with community-supported labor
Grow organic food, using on-site fertility-cycling systems, and share surplus
Find and propagate wild foods, medicines, fibers and building materials
Subvert the dominant paradigm by redefining wealth and what it means to live well
There is a barrier to a new reality that we cannot seem to break free from. It includes the bonds of private home ownership, the landlord-tenant paradigm, the 40-60 hour work week, the rampant obesity and diet-related illness epidemic, drug addiction, mental illness, pervasive anxiety and fear of violence, and the disconnection from each other and the Land. Most do not have the luxury to go live in a beautiful earth-ship eco-community, and those that do have not managed to blaze a trail for the less-privileged to follow.
Thousands of environmental and social justice nonprofits are out there everyday doing amazing work–dedicated to fighting all the “anti”s on all the fronts–but they alone cannot create the change needed. Though the US in recent years has come close to a true populist and economic shift, the colonialist falsehood that “I may be poor, but at least I’m not Black or ‘Indian,’” still abounds. Clearly, there is more that unites us than divides us.
Terra Futura and The Center for the Study of Land Futurities aim to bring together Knowledge Keepers to share skills for sustainable living and collective stewardship of society:
Critical theories and practices of Permaculture
Natural building and eco-renovation techniques
Organic growing and food sharing
Food preservation and storage
Animal husbandry
Slow, intentional living and radical responsibility
Fiber arts, craft, and intentional domesticity
Indigenous knowledge of wild foods, medicines, and right living
Cross-cultural communication
Conflict navigation
Alternative land “ownership” structures
Creating allyship movements
We believe the solution is a radical partnership to help anyone in our community make one step toward right living with each other and the Earth. By living cooperatively with one another and in deep rootedness with the land, we aspire to desirable futurities for all.
