Fierce and Wild Dandelions: Decolonization Through Loving the Weeds

“On the whole people might be better off if they threw away the crops they so tenderly raise and ate the weeds they spend so much time exterminating.” Euell Gibbons, Stalking the Wild Asparagus

I have a fondness for weeds. For the forgotten, dismissed, and marginalized. Anyone who visits my garden in mid-summer probably wonders if I’ve let it go. And it’s true. I don’t tend to it all. The wild nettle patch is left to grow right next to the somewhat cultivated beans. Purslane wiggles its way between stalks of wavy squash. Lambs quarters lap up the sun that break through the canvas of tomatoes. During the early months, I do my best to give everything enough space. But once July rolls around, I mostly stay out of the way.

Recently, I saw a pair of monarchs in a field. The first I had seen all season. It’s the end of July. One of the consequences of colonialism and economies built on profit and endless growth is the loss of biodiversity. The deliberate murdering of anything, and anyone, that gets in the way.

When I saw the Gibbons quote above, I immediately thought of Monsanto and monarchs. How our own government quietly legislates the means for planetary demise. All the while telling us that this about food production and feeding the hungry.

The hungry. Yes, we are hungry. But most of us don’t even know why. The loss of connection to the very land we live on. The failure to recognize that many of the plants we call “weeds” have been used for centuries as food, medicine, and so much more. Perhaps the nettle tea I drank last night is prompting this post. Or maybe it’s the fresh dandelion greens I snack on regularly while I “tend” to the garden.

In my view, we cannot speak of things such as “decolonization” without remembering the weeds, and all the ways in which our lives have been tied together throughout history. My love of dandelions, for example, is also linked to the knowledge that they were one of the plants brought by my settler ancestors. My love of all things herbal medicine is tempered by the fact that white folks and privileged others continue to colonize and denature indigenous plant wisdom and healing practices. Truly loving weeds is really a practice in discomfort. In living with a myriad of contradictions that cannot be mowed flat or made to line up straight.

Awhile back, I had a poem about Monsanto published at Turning Wheel Media. One of the things it speaks to is our human desire for comfort and ease, and how giant corporations like Monsanto thrive on that. In fact, some of us become so attached to their products that it's akin to having another lover in your life. I recall the mother of my sister's childhood friend who drank a case of Diet Coke daily. You read that right. A case. Maybe not a full a case every day, but she probably averaged that over the long run. She didn't live to 50. And I'm guessing that even after she found out about the negative health impacts of soda pop, she kept on drinking it.

Weeds are the antithesis of ease and comfort. In the practical sense, their appearance mucks up uniform lawns and tenderly raised garden beds. Psychologically, weedy thoughts can stir up all sorts of emotions, from confusion to perverse desire. Spiritually, it is the lowly weed that frequently blows through the seemingly perfect answer we offer to life's deepest questions. How often have you thought "I've finally got it," only to have some simple and forgotten thing appear alongside the answer, almost as if in mocking?

The lowly dandelion, with its bright yellow head, can grow in almost any soil, thriving in some of lousiest conditions imaginable. Every spring, I'm amazed at its early appearance here in Minnesota, when the weather is still up and down, sometimes even poking through fallen snow from the tiniest cracks in sidewalks.

Eliminating weeds means destroying our toughness, tenacity, and flexibility. Whether we do it for profit or out of a mistaken sense that the best food comes from weed free conditions, the results are the same.

When I consider the history of Buddhism, its best teachers might be considered weeds. Fierce, wild and unruly. Their ideas spreading in all directions.

You can’t tame someone like Ikkyu or Milarepa. You might, like the best of gardeners, manage some of the mad growth of their life stories, but that's about all. Any efforts beyond that lead to suppression or outright destruction. When I look around at many of the attempts to “secularize” the dharma, or to “strip the cultural baggage” from the practice, it feels a lot like Monsanto in action. The deliberate murdering of anything, and anyone, that gets in the way of “purity.” What is purity anyway?

Apparently Milarepa was fond of drinking nettle tea, so much so that his skin turned green in some life accounts. You might wish to prune that detail away. Maybe it sounds bit too wild or unrealistic. Seems like anything bordering on the supernatural or unexplainable is being pruned away by some these days. But there's no doubt in my mind that regular consumption of weedy teas changes you. Turns you green if you will. Just as drinking diet Coke every day changes you, for better or worse.

Weeds get in the way of our notions that we're separate. Weeds remind us that trying to maintain uniformity in our communities, or on the lands, is both an illusion and a dangerous form of action. If Monsanto or some giant oil company poisons the soil 1000 miles away, it impacts all of us.  And yet, unless the entire planet is rendered dead, there will probably be dandelions splitting through the soil every spring to muck up the “pristine” lawns.

Eliminating weeds means destroying our toughness, tenacity, and flexibility. Whether we do it for profit or out of a mistaken sense that the best food comes from weed free conditions, the results are the same. We cannot speak of things such as “decolonization” without remembering the weeds. It’s time to re-envision our relationship with them in all their forms. Our very liberation is at stake.

*All photos by the author.