Birds of America
One hundred ink paintings on John James Audubon’s Birds of America, Volume 1, on live-edge mesquite wood stained with sumi ink. 2023-2024

In order to paint his well-known collection Birds of America, John James Audubon “roamed the woods, the swamps, and the coasts of his adopted land with all the freedom of the wild creatures he stalked.”(5) With help from the slaves he legally owned, he stalked and killed each bird to pose it as still-life for his life-like depictions that are beloved symbols for nature conservation to this day.

     If freedom could be anything other than the freedom of the powerful to exploit and injure the less powerful, then we need to look deep and hard at the concept. The popular United Statesian image of “freedom” was formed or at least perfected in the vast landscapes of western US, especially Texas. “Cowboy capitalism” refers to the mythical state of the US economic system as a way of life. The cowboy icon: virulent, boundless, self-determined, entrepreneur of the self, who has mastered nature, and is usually a man of European heritage. Ronald Reagan, the tall, handsome president who pushed the country off the cliff of neoliberalism, was first famous for playing a cowboy in Hollywood movies. With the headline “In Defense of Cowboy Capitalism” greed is the rallying call for neoliberal think tanks such as the Cato Institute, and the Atlas Institute who declare: “Selfishness is good, and, if the words be properly understood, greed is good. Businessmen are the symbol of a free society—the symbol of America. If and when they perish, civilization will perish. But if you wish to fight for freedom, you must begin by fighting for its unrewarded, unrecognized, unacknowledged, yet best representatives—the American businessmen. Let us heed her call to arms.”(6)

         Researchers in the USDA and at Texas A&M University recognize their primary and fundamental assignment: to enable, assist, and protect capital at all costs, and have listed 26 prosopis species as “noxious” on their database, and publish tips on how to “beat the mesquite.” (26) (27) Despite valiant attempts to destroy the gnarly giant, it survives and continues to torment ranchers and the “economic productivity” of Texas. This battle is surreal: imagine if the wealth, power and knowledge of the US government and institutions of higher education and research would focus instead on working towards ecosystem solutions to assist organisms such as mesquite in its job as a key species, while at the same time, assisting ranchers to bring food to market within the bounds set by the ecosystem itself? Science does not need to have warfare as its goal, but when it is used at the service of the capitalist economy alone, this is the result.
            The potential to shift agricultural production from energy, machine, and therefore capital- intensive, highly polluting, and ecosystem-destructive monocropping — to returning instead to the logical rhythms of permaculture — is rooted in key nitrogen fixing species such as the tree of life.

            While the average modern Texan is either indifferent to or annoyed by mesquite, the tree stoically enjoys a widely celebrated reputation. The Lipan Apache Tribe posted their creation story on their website, and the mesquite is prominently featured: “The Mesquite People were the last to stop on land which had little water, but this land was just right for them. They sang with joy, as their rattles became their sweet pods. The mesquite’s pods still rattle with joy each summer.”(28) Indigenous people from California to Texas and across Mexico value the mesquite as a life-giving tree, and bakers are beginning to remember lost recipes. Rather than market this as a “superfood” there is potential to work with something already here, that is already deeply known.

(5) Marshall B. Davidson, introduction to “The Birds of America, the Original Water Color Paintings by John James Audubon.” American Heritage Publishing, New York 1966 pg xiii

(6) “In Defense of Cowboy Capitalism” The Atlas Society. June 16, 2010, Kingwood, Texas. Accessed October 24, 2023 https://www.atlassociety.org/post/in-defense-of-cowboy-capitalism

(23) Prosopis as a Heat-Tolerant Nitrogen-Fixing Desert Food Legume. Prospects for Economic Development in Arid Lands. Felker and Puppo eds, Academic Press, London 2022, pgs. 16, 19, 20, 41

(24) “Honey Mesquite” USDA Natural Resources Conservation Center plant guide. Accessed October 24, 2023 https://plants.usda.gov/DocumentLibrary/plantguide/pdf/pg_prgl2.pdf

(25) Nabil Nasseri. “Investigating the Effects of Ant-Hemipteran Mutualisms on the Invertebrate Community Structure and Their Host Plant, Honey Mesquite (Prosopis Glandulosa)” PhD dissertation University of Vermont. 2018

(26) Go to United States Department of Agriculture Plants Database, in the invasive and noxious plants search, and enter “prosopis” in scientific name. Accessed October 24, 2023 https://plants.usda.gov/home/noxiousInvasiveSearch

(27) Robert K. Lyons and Megan K. Clayton. “How to Beat Mesquite” Texas A&M AgriLife Extension. November 2021, Accessed October 24, 2023 https://southtexasrangelands.tamu.edu/files/2021/11/how-to-beat-mesquite.pdf

(28) Lipan Storyteller Hermelinda Ryan Walking Woman, daughter of Anita Elatsoe Soto of the Lipan Apache Tribe. “The Lipan Creation Story: Emergence" Accessed October 24, 2023 https://www.lipanapache.org/LAT/e-creation.html

(29) “Cializtli” entry in The Nahuatl Dictionary. Wired Humanities Projects, College of Education, University of Oregon. Accessed October 24, 2023  https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/cializtli