The Nature of Immigration and Invasive Species
(Read to the end, please.)
I was thinking about birds. More specifically, the “dawn chorus” that happens in Spring when all the birds arrive from their winter abodes to wake us up with their gossiping and catching up with their friends. Thank god birds don’t have to go through border patrol, or get their visas checked, or have their children kidnapped by ICE.
The truth is that borders are man-made and imaginary, although sometimes water helps to define them. Since the beginning of time, both humans, plants, animals, and birds…basically everything…has been migrating. Moving. Seeking better weather, food, land for grazing, resources required for life, like water, fuel, and community, both nomadic and settled.
America, specifically, was populated by Indigenous brown people for thousands and thousands of years (at least 20,000 but probably more). They built civilizations. And sometimes they moved them. They fought with each other at times. But also traded and worked together.
When white people arrived here, for exploration, opportunities, freedom, and resources, the Indigenous people were not suffering and starving. They were fine. They had a rich culture and civilization filled with art, jewelry, farming techniques with unusual plants like potatoes, amaranth, quinoa, and Dahlias, and an ancient and effective spiritual practice. Once we came, they weren’t fine anymore. Ninety percent died of smallpox. Many were raped, slaughtered, and captured for slaves. But white people and our violent, puritanical ways “thrived.” We spread across the continent like an invasive species. Too bad the indigenous people of Turtle Island hadn’t invented vaccines.
The invaders called the Indigenous people “savages,” and yet it was their behavior that was most savage. And their arrogance made them unwilling to learn and question their successful ways that we are all now having to relearn.
But here we are, overly concerned by “illegal immigrants,” as well as eliminating “invasive” species in nature. Is there a connection?
Yes. Yes, there is.
The fatal flaw of man is the hubris with which he believes he knows better than anyone else, especially women, nature, and people of color. Even as evidence shows again and again that he is often wrong, “the end justifies the means,” right? The end being wealth, power, control, and domination.
Sigh. It’s so boring. But this is not a left or right, Republican or Democrat issue. It’s a human issue. We love to use our power to solve “problems” without actually getting to the root of why those problems exist in the first place. And far too often, those problems are manufactured to justify the means to the end: wealth, power, control, and domination. And those “solutions” create even more problems. On both sides!
I remember hearing Mark Zuckerberg, then a newly minted billionaire, claiming that his billion-dollar donation to something or other would solve all the health problems in the world. The audience laughed. Money doesn’t solve problems. Actions do. Doing does. Doing things like making sure children are fed real food and raised with kindness and love. Doing things like preventing toxins from entering our environment in the first place. And doing things like getting involved in our local communities and governments to create change from within. Also, Mark, doing things like not raping and pillaging the minds of the world by allowing the spread of false information so that you can feed your cows macadamia nuts. COWS NEED GRASS. It just goes to show that all the money in the world doesn’t make someone smart, or good, or kind.
But it’s not just billionaires and republicans that are a bit off the rails. Take the current obsession among environmentally passionate people with eliminating “invasive” plants, for instance.
I know for a fact that many conservation organizations that are trying to protect and save our natural habitats use Roundup and other herbicides to eliminate “invasive” species. We think we know better than nature what nature needs, and so we use toxic chemicals to poison the soil, life, and water to try to recreate a fantasy landscape that only existed in our minds. Make Nature Great Again. Right? But nature IS already great and knows what it’s doing. Many of the plants considered invasive are filling in gaps that we have caused by overdevelopment. Just because it seems to be taking over a new place, doesn’t mean there is no deeper purpose to its migration. It behooves us to pay attention, learn, and have faith, rather than kill first, ask questions later. But even those rights are going away among humans these days.
Plants and people have a right to move where they need to go to thrive in safety. Birds do it. Bees do it. Butterflies do it. Oh, except we are killing them in catastrophic numbers. Just like we are trying to kill ourselves by denying healthcare to women, stealing and starving children, and bombing the shit out of any group we don’t like. They’re killing the birds! They’re killing the kids! They’re killing the Moms!
We are living in a moment of cultural insanity. Most likely fueled by the very toxins someone somewhere made a shit ton of money from. (If you only read one thing I link to, please read this post by Bruce Lanphear.) And there is only one way out…we each have to grow the fuck up, take responsibility for our actions and begin to create a better world by DOING things. Doing good things. Doing hard things. We don’t need a third party, we need responsible, sane, grown-ups to get involved in both parties (and I’m not talking about age here. In fact, we need age limits in government roles for sure!) We don’t need AI or Bitcoin to solve our problems by creating even bigger problems. We don’t need toxic chemicals; we need a bit of elbow grease and ingenuity. We need to take action in our own homes, yards, communities, countries, and most importantly, in our hearts and minds.
What if I told you there was no such thing as an invasive plant? What if I told you there was no such thing as an immigrant, legal or illegal?
We are all indigenous to planet Earth.
Nature knows what it’s doing and will survive long after we are dead bits of carbon, perhaps fossilized, our bones abandoned and ignored by whatever new species evolves to take over after we do our best to ruin things. Migration is a sacred journey. It’s time to learn to honor it, both in nature and people.
The old world order is crumbling and changing before our very eyes, as it does from time to time. What we once took for granted yesterday, today is being shot with rubber bullets, trampled by cops on horseback, and fed false information to inflame, distract, and destroy our rights.
Who knows what tomorrow will bring, but unless we DO something, each in our own way, all the things we love and enjoy (yes, even you MAGAs), will be destroyed, just like Gaza, if we don’t learn how to live together with nature and everyone on this planet, no matter what their color, caste, or gender.
There is a thing going around Facebook (a good thing) that is written by the Zen Priest Peter Coyote. Okay, that’s a silly name, but still, he’s an expert on effective protests. Of all the things he said, two things stood out for me: Dress like you are going to church. Be silent. You don’t want to give the “leadittes” any reason to think you are anything but responsible, peaceful, and determined citizens of a land that deserves to be free. We deserve to be free!
Be strong. Speak up (but protest in silence). Embrace all of nature and all people, and sooner rather than later, our hearts will begin to heal. And nature will rejoice and breathe a sigh of relief.
I hope.
But here is what you urgently need to know in the meantime:
Trump has deployed the Marines from 2/7, Twenty-Nine Palms, to LA. These are the most vicious killers the US Military has. They are trained for one thing only: To kill. LA, stay home! Trump is desperate, and your life is precious. The best protest for your city right now is to be invisible. There is no shame in that. An anonymous source of mine also told me that local LA cops are enjoying the opportunity to shoot at people at random. This is not just a Trump problem; it’s an American problem.
Also, according to House Representative Eric Swalwell, Republicans just unanimously voted to allow Trump to deport US CITIZENS. To where? No one knows. And it’s probably not to a luxury hotel in a foreign country.
If you are going to go out on the June 14th No Kings Day protests, dress like you are going to church, wrap yourself in an American flag, and be careful out there.
This is going to get close to home for all of us. Today, in my hometown of Bethlehem, which was named after the town in Palestine where Jesus was born, they took 17 people who were working to rebuild a building that had been destroyed by fire. No warning. No criminals. No justice.
I am ashamed that people in my country have allowed this to happen. I hope no one shows up for his stupid parade.
Maria, you have peered inside my mind and eloquently articulated my thoughts. Thank you for your diligence.
Here in New England where I’ve lived (in various states but always New England) for all of my 73 years, over the past two decades especially, I’ve witnessed an almost total change in the ecology. On the surface, if you don’t pay attention, you might not notice. But where there used to be fireweed and native phlox, there is now purple loosestrife and an invasive that looks similar to our phlox, but isn’t. The Japanese knotweed has taken over roadsides and river banks at frightening speed, and in NY the non-scented, non-sweet invasive honeysuckle seems to have almost totally eliminated the native shrub or vine I remember growing up in NH. Nor does it seem the agencies in charge of roadside maintenance have any real understanding of how to mow to slow the spread of biennials like wild parsnip. There are others too. And in NY we now have an overpopulation of white tailed deer, much beloved for good reason, BUT that deer population is contributing big time to the loss of native shrubs and trees in the woods! It seems deer do not like the non-natives, so when they find them, they eat them before they’re big enough to withstand being eaten.
So . . . I joined some native plant groups to learn more. And over the course of a couple of years had to leave them in frustration. Because among them there is zero awareness of the role of climate chaos or even our over-development that literally invites “invasives” to take root. Also it’s interesting that Japanese knotweed is a major plant healer for lyme and it’s invasion was timed exactly with the invasion of ticks (we did not have ticks in the northcountry when I was a kid; they came about 30 years ago). There’s a huge story of relationship and meaning going on that I wish people were paying attention to.
I talk to plants and trees, and I often wonder how it “feels” to be a reviled plant when all the plant is doing is fulfilling its purpose. It’s our human actions that have led to the invasions. These native plant people are so holier-than-thou that they actually tell people to pull of mullein, plantain, dandelions, St. John’s wort, and other excellent herbal healers simply because they were brought to the Americas by colonists hundreds of years ago. They have become naturalized and for the most part, do not cause issues. Mullein, for example may proliferate in land degraded by development or clearing, but as more plants take root, the mullein becomes an occasional plant, not a dominate one. This happens naturally. (This does not happen with some invasives like that Japanese knotweed however). Also, many of our beloved natives can no longer thrive in the changed climate we have today. We no longer have the cold winters, especially at night, the weather patterns are very different than they were, etc. Even without the competition from invasives, these plants and trees would not be flourishing here anymore.
So we need to take stock and reevaluate. How can we support natives that can thrive here still? How can we, very carefully because many of the invasives were planted on purpose by landscapers and government agencies for various reasons but they did not know they would eventually take over, introduce plants/trees more liable to withstand increased heat, increased dry and also wet? Rather than being the primary means of destroying our home ecosystems, how can we become healers of it? It will require letting go of preconceived ideas of who is supposed to grow where, while, at the same time paying very close attention to how the new-comers cooperate (or don’t) with those already here.
This is true of immigration as well. We are all immigrants, unless we are Native Americans. The immigration crisis is more a crisis of racism and fear than “illegals”. It’s a concerted attempt at lateral oppression - pitting poor and middle class white people (mostly men) against anyone who is not white or rich. Misdirected hate, misdirected anger. When that anger should be directed at the current regime (and those before this regime perpetuating this anger for their own benefit - power and money).
Somehow, someway, we need to find our way towards balance - ecologically and within our human societies and cultures. As you wrote here, these issues are connected. Because there are no actual separations between any of us or Earth or even the cosmos. I have no clue if our human time is drawing to a close, or if it’s “just” our so-called civilization that is endangered. I guess that will depend on the choices we make now, and the actions we take, or don’t.