I thought Edna Staebler was woke
Welcome to the first installment of Not Dead Yet, my monthly roundup of compelling writing. Sometimes, I'll send you articles that got lost in the hyperspeed distraction economy of our social media feeds. Other stories will be older articles that I'm revisiting for their staying power.
I don't want this newsletter to be a burden. So be assured that I'm not giving you a list of required reading. I'll try to keep things relatively short, with about five stories for you to check out in each email. I started this newsletter as a way to get myself back into the practice of writing, so by the time it lands in your inbox it has already fulfilled its purpose.
A couple months ago, I picked up a used copy of Sauerkraut and Enterprise at Second Look Books. It's a delightful collection of essays by Edna Staebler about Mennonite life in and around a changing Kitchener-Waterloo. Growing up, my family kept a copy of Staebler's Food That Schmecks cookbook in our kitchen, and we would read the recipes for entertainment more so than for actually cooking something. These essays, first published in Maclean's in the 1950s, capture the folk culture, customs, and cooking of Waterloo County's Mennonites. She gushes over the Kitchener Market and talks a little bit about the growing city life of K-W too.
One of the essays that appears in this book is also available online. Why the Amish want no part of progress appeared in the September 27, 1958 edition of Maclean's. This is how she recounts the story of the first Amish settler to Waterloo County:
He landed in New Orleans in 1822 and walked most of the way to Waterloo County where he picked out some wilderness that he thought would make a good place for a colony. Then he went to the Governor of Upper Canada to ask him if it would be all right to bring people over here. The governor said, 'go ahead,' but the Amishman was taking no chances. He went right to the palace of the King of England and got it in writing with a gold seal that the land would really be his.
Those words sound embarrassingly colonialist and tone-deaf today, now that we know all about broken treaties with Indigenous peoples. Referencing the Halidmand tract has become common practice at local land acknowledgments. But can we really fault Staebler for a lack of critical thinking in the 1950s?
It turns out, we can. Three years before she wrote that profile of Waterloo County's Amish community, Staebler turned her trademark curiosity to the Six Nations reserve, in a feature article called The Unconquered Warriors of Ohsweken. A photo of the Haldimand treaty document is right there in full colour!
Staebler's conversations with folks on the reserve run the gamut: tensions between hereditary and elected leadership, the role of religion in colonization, land rights being withheld.
Canada has tricked them and robbed them and broken their treaties, the Iroquois say. They claim Canada has no right to govern them at all and that their land is not a reservation but a sovereign state in North America, as Switzerland is a country in Europe.
It's incredible to me that these observations were printed in Canada's national magazine all the way back in 1955. It's even more incredible that Staebler went ahead to ignore that history in her later reporting on Mennonite and Amish communities.
Have you ever felt, like, so trapped by consumerism? Why can't we just collectively help each other out in community? Who even needs hierarchy, man? I had such a blast reading Alexandra Schwartz's New Yorker article about the Park Slope Food Co-op in Brooklyn: The Grocery Store Where Produce Meets Politics. There's something attractive about an independent, member-driven store that isn't chasing profit. It's equally satisfying and horrifying to read about the social drama and pettiness that can arise with a labour structure where there are few paid staff and "members must work a shift of two hours and forty-five minutes every four weeks".
Chase this story with another food-and-labour-related one. In I Heard You Socialize Groceries, Corey Mintz writes about a town in Florida that created a state-run grocery store -- but it's totally not socialism.
In December, Iran killed a U.S. contractor who was working on an Iraqi military base. Then the U.S. assassinated Iran's top military commander as he was leaving an airport in Baghdad, Iraq. In response, Iran attacked U.S. military bases in Iraq. The Iraq War may be over but it continues to be a battlefield.
But the country is not just a playground for powerful foreign militaries. In I Will Visit Your Grave When I Go to Iraq, Sinan Antoon writes a touching eulogy for his friend and poet Safa al-Sarray, who was killed by riot police amid peaceful street protests.
The most common and passionate slogan throughout these protests has been, “We want a homeland.” It reflected the anger and alienation Iraqis felt toward a political class beholden to external influence (Iran and the United States) and oblivious to its people’s demands.
The next time you hear about Iraq, remember that people like Safa are working for a better future there. That they have art and families and book fairs and jobs to go to in the morning.
I'd love to hear what you thought about these stories. You can reply directly to this email.
The next Not Dead Yet will come in four weeks' time. Until then, why not forward this email to a friend who'd appreciate it?
Cheers,
Sam