TY - JOUR
T1 - Pushing the boundaries of indigeneity and agricultural knowledge
T2 - Oaxacan immigrant gardening in California
AU - Minkoff-Zern, Laura Anne
N1 - Funding Information:
Fifteen families from the Oaxacan Cultural Project began the project in the spring of 2009. The garden was started when Jones noted how nostalgic people would become when talking with fellow Triquis and Mixtecos about their farms and gardens in Oaxaca. He brought up the idea of starting a garden in casual conversations with people and received an enthusiastic response. Within a few months of seeding the notion, a three-member leadership committee was formed.8 Although Jones initially secured major resources, such as land and water, the committee and other community members have since taken the lead in organizing the participants and implementing the project. Jones, who also wrote the grants for the garden with the assistance of a Triqui woman, Maria Montes, specifically noted that when they crafted the grants they appealed to what the foundations wanted. One of the funders specifically mentioned the use of ‘‘traditional farming practices’’ by strictly ‘‘indigenous peoples’’ as a requirement for funding.
Funding Information:
Regardless of indigenous identification, the garden was made possible by resource mobilization using pan-indigeneity as leverage. The garden project received funding from two sources: The Health Trust Foundation, a foundation supporting health-based initiatives in Silicon Valley, and Honor the Earth, an environmental organization and foundation led by US-based Native Americans.17
PY - 2012/9
Y1 - 2012/9
N2 - This article explores a community garden in the Northern Central Coast of California, founded and cultivated by Triqui and Mixteco peoples native to Oaxaca, Mexico. The practices depicted in this case study contrast with common agroecological discourses, which assume native people's agricultural techniques are consistently static and place-based. Rather than choose cultivation techniques based on an abstract notion of indigenous tradition, participants utilize the most appropriate practices for their new environment. Garden participants combine agricultural practices developed in Oaxaca with those learned while working on California farms. Through the process of community gardening, immigrants find a new interpretation of their own shifting indigenous identity, based on culinary and agrarian practices in a new place. Additionally, they form solidarities between historic ethnic divides of Triqui and Mixteco, based on newfound commonalities in the garden. This case study provides an important example of the current articulation, construction, and deployment of indigeneity in the context of migration and agriculture, and its implications for immigrant opportunities and futures.
AB - This article explores a community garden in the Northern Central Coast of California, founded and cultivated by Triqui and Mixteco peoples native to Oaxaca, Mexico. The practices depicted in this case study contrast with common agroecological discourses, which assume native people's agricultural techniques are consistently static and place-based. Rather than choose cultivation techniques based on an abstract notion of indigenous tradition, participants utilize the most appropriate practices for their new environment. Garden participants combine agricultural practices developed in Oaxaca with those learned while working on California farms. Through the process of community gardening, immigrants find a new interpretation of their own shifting indigenous identity, based on culinary and agrarian practices in a new place. Additionally, they form solidarities between historic ethnic divides of Triqui and Mixteco, based on newfound commonalities in the garden. This case study provides an important example of the current articulation, construction, and deployment of indigeneity in the context of migration and agriculture, and its implications for immigrant opportunities and futures.
KW - Community gardens
KW - Identity politics
KW - Immigration
KW - Indigeneity
KW - Traditional agriculture
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84865403895&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84865403895&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s10460-011-9348-4
DO - 10.1007/s10460-011-9348-4
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84865403895
SN - 0889-048X
VL - 29
SP - 381
EP - 392
JO - Agriculture and Human Values
JF - Agriculture and Human Values
IS - 3
ER -