When we decolonize our food systems, our approach to the earth changes. We replace dominance over living things with reverence towards them. In doing so, those living things which we consider to be nuisances or pests become meaningful and inspiring parts of our ecosystems.
I spent months living among the crows of Santa Cruz before I began to take note of them — how they hop across freshly mowed fields, their morning calls, how some have ragged feathers to others’ smooth, slick bodies. I love them for their darkness; I believe there is a decolonizing principle there too. I don’t know if it’s their darkness or their territorial presence that draws me to them. It’s interesting to watching such unicolor, almost metallic-like birds stake claim to space. We often use crows as metaphor for territoriality, and in our human communities, we know all too well that we are territorial too. Perhaps part of the draw for me is sharing that trait, even as I engage in the political and personal exercise of trying to let it go.
But maybe part of decolonizing food and land is seeing shared behavior where shared behavior lives. Both crows and humans have the instinct to attack when feeling threatened. Our desperation to protect ourselves drives violent impulse. For me, this looks like pushing people away when I am afraid of getting hurt. Crows have a way with this, too, mobbing hawks as they circle through the air. Mobbing is a collective harassment. Hawks circle and crows flex their evolutionary adaptation, harassing the hawk in numbers; groups of three are common. In a way, it’s fascinating that I can be so frustrated with my own territorial ways, yet mesmerized by the collective harassment crows inflict upon other birds with whom they share the sky. Creatures have confusing ways.
Death can be confusing, too. Grief is in some ways the loneliest feeling I have ever experienced, and in other ways is necessarily communal, ritualistic, and bonding. I have never witnessed crows in their death rituals. But I know that their strength in mobbing numbers is their elegiac strength, too. When a crow dies, crows gather in large numbers to pay attention to their dead. Often, their gathering is investigative — crows can sense danger and are known to mob humans who kill crows for weeks after that crow’s death. Their attentive gatherings are often defensive and can be aggressive in nature. Death, for many living beings, can be territorial too.
Nature raises so many questions concerning the ego. In some ways, I feel reverence for a space complex beyond human imagination. Crows take me into that imaginary space. Watching crows, I experience an intimacy with the sky.
On the other hand, why is so much of how we relate to living things self-referential? We are always thinking about ourselves, even when we are practicing otherwise. Which leads me to wonder: is my love for crows a selfish one?
At the end of the day, when the crows head to their roosting spot, often in hundreds and sometimes thousands at a time, I try to remember our interconnectedness. I remember that all things have a duality. The selves we share and the selves we shadow, the sun and the moon, the living and the dead, the natural world and the one we make. I believe decolonizing food systems starts with decolonizing how we talk about the earth and its living things. For me, I start with crows.
Written by Makshya Tolbert
Makshya Tolbert is a writer, cook, and potter. Reach out to her if you like what she does across any of those mediums at tolbert.makshya@gmail.com
