this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2026
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I don't get the joke? Aren't the named tribes a subset of native Americans, so it can be true without the original statement being false? Also, I thought the Iroquois used it too
Edit: yes, the Haudenosaunee are the Iroquois. Til
There is a tense change. The second person is saying the technique is still used by those tribes today.
The Iroquois are the Haudenosaunee. The latter is the more respectful and culturally appropriate term.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois
I did not know this before. Thank you!
Don't culturally appropriate please
Edit: come on, it's just a word joke from a none native speaker. Culturally appropriate and cultural appropriation is pretty close no? I never realized until now and thought it was funny.
Having worked directly with these communities and their material culture, this is what I was taught, but I am happy to be corrected if there is another better perspective.
EDIT: I checked, since I am old and sometimes out of date. The Smithsonian and Library of Congress have switched terms since about 2022 to Haudenosaunee. https://americanindian.si.edu/sites/1/files/pdf/education/haudenosauneeguide.pdf
Edit, Edit: I get the joke now, but you’re all trapped in here with me now, so here’s an info-dump: I used "Iroquois" interchangeably until about 2022, which is right around when the American Anthropological Association and the Smithsonian made the formal switch. While "Iroquoian" is still used as a technical linguistic category, "Iroquois" is being phased out as a name for the people because of its colonial origins and its potential interpretation as a slur. I remember hmming and hawing about it back then, but ultimately, as I’ve learned more about Indigenous sovereignty, "Iroquois" just feels increasingly dated now in any context.
I'm guessing this won't last for long, given some people already call the language family "Ogwehoweh" instead of "Iroquoian". Example here.
I agree with you, it was just a word joke
aaaaa lmfao sorry autistic moment
No worries, it was not the most clear joke (it went over people's head I think, seeing the downvotes).
All jokes aside though, coincidentally I just finished reading Robin Wall Kimmerer's "Braiding Sweetgrass", which has reinvigorated my respect for the Haudenosaunee and the Three Sister's. Such a great read! I'm a student of ecology at the moment, and I studied Social Anthropology years ago so it was double interesting.
I prefer her book on Moss. Check it out if you have not!!!!
I didn't know of its existence, thank you! Such a spot on recommendation
If the shoe fits, Dr. Bryophyte. ;)
PS, in case you have missed: !Lichen@mander.xyz and !mosses@mander.xyz -- pls submit stuff haha.
It’s a joke based on the different definitions/pronunciations of the word
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/appropriate
How am I going to phrase requests then?
sudo make me a sandwichstyle?I read it as criticising reductionist views of the many diverse nations that existed in North America before Europeans showed up and decided that the whole continent was Terra Nullius.
To this day a significant number of US high school American History textbooks only discuss the tribes in terms of their interactions with European invaders, and shy away from anything that might make them look like they were ever legitimate nations. Referring to them as 'Native Americans' instead of by name also has this effect.
The original statement implies the technique was widespread across Native American groups. It's almost certainly false for the ones here in South America; there's a lot on terrace farming and slash-and-burn, but AFAIK nothing that resembles the companion system of the three sisters. (I wonder if it's due to the prominence of subterranean crops. Taters, yucca, sweet potatoes.)
The Haudenosaunee/Iroquois and the Cherokee/Tsalagi being related hints me it was something they developed.
That's what I was thinking. Native Groups in many parts of North America didn't practice agriculture at all or used rudimentary agriculture.
I believe it's the verb tenses. Instead of it being a historical fact, it's an ongoing practice of an ongoing group of people
There is a huge community of indigenous agriculture in the US. I wouldn't be surprised if there are a few Cherokee operations going. From what I see on IG it is going through a bit of a renaissance, but it is not my field.
I have no knowledge on the topic so I can't answer the first couple questions.
However, I will say its a useful correction to say there are ongoing efforts to maintain historical practices if it makes the correctee happy to hear that (as is the case in the meme). It's also useful to remember that indigenous peoples still exist and aren't just historical (something a lot of US folks aren't taught in school)
I did a little research, check it out above. :)
I looked it up:
According to the 2022 USDA Census of Agriculture, there are ~78k producers, ~58k farms, on ~63 million acres.^1^
Specifically in this case, the Cherokee Nation has its own Secretary of Natural Resources and a dedicated Seed Bank program that distributes traditional heirloom seeds (like Cherokee White Eagle Corn) to thousands of tribal citizens every year to maintain food sovereignty.^2,3^ However, Native American agriculture is a multi-billion dollar industry.
It’s not "subsistence" in the 1700s sense; it’s a mix of large-scale ranching, commercial cropping, and traditional community gardens.
Regarding the renaissance I mentioned: There is a massive "Food Sovereignty" movement right now where tribes are reclaiming their health and economies by growing their own traditional foods to combat issues like diabetes and food deserts.^4^ So these traditional methods are very much ongoing and evolving.
Many of these operations work with researchers using traditional methods. There is a lot of experimenting right now.^5,6^
1: https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Highlights/2024/Census22_HL_AmericanIndianANProducers.pdf
2: https://naturalresources.cherokee.org/ethnobiology/seed-bank/
3: https://www.cherokee.gov/our-government/secretary-of-natural-resources-office/
4: https://indigenousfoodandag.com/
5: https://www.foodsystemsjournal.org/index.php/fsj/article/view/1325
6: https://organicagcentre.ca/cultural-and-indigenous-agricultural-wisdom/why-indigenous-seed-keepers-hold-the-future-of-canadian-agriculture/
REDRAFTING; had to correct something lol.
That’s a common misconception. Three Sisters polyculture can be more "efficient" than monoculture when you measure "efficiency" by nutritional yield and soil health rather than just ease of machine-harvesting.
And while many operations utilize modern machinery, the "efficiency" of monoculture is actively being re-evaluated in the face of climate change. It can produc more protein per acre than corn grown alone, while significantly reducing the need for synthetic nitrogen and irrigation.^7,8^
Large-scale tribal operations are exerimenting using "strip intercropping," which is alternating rows of corn/beans and squash, to allow for modern mechanized harvesting while maintaining the soil-health benefits of the traditional system.^9^
This is resilience-based commercial farming that utilizes what is called Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) to survive droughts that kill monocultures.^10,11^
7: Food Yields and Nutrient Analyses of the Three Sisters: A Haudenosaunee Cropping System Ethnobiology Letters, 7(1), 87–98 (2016).
8: A framework to guide future farming research with Indigenous communities (2025)
9: https://eap.mcgill.ca/CSI_1.htm; https://www.researchgate.net/publication/397936106_Agricultural_Mechanization_for_Regenerative_Agriculture
10: Why Indigenous Seed Keepers Hold the Future of Agriculture (2026)
11: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_ecological_knowledge
I fixed it, the AI I used to organise fucked up my link and I am cooking right now lol, sorry about that. Missed it on my edit. I think it tried to grab from the 2025 report below, anyway I added a second link as well and a better source.
My partner and I were looking to try to make an educational game about the Three Sisters a year or two ago, so I was looking into this... Like, we wanted to make a kind of chess board that reacts when you plant things for mobile using the plant databases I have. It ended getting a bit too close to modelling, though, so we set it aside for now.
TEK in general is really cool, and worth looking into and this is new stuff that is not well publicised imo. It's like permaculture but actually more grounded in science. It is quickly becoming a minor special interest of mine, it has a lot of promise.
For contrast, my PhD thesis is basically about how the British carved everything up, so there's no longer really connections between people and place and the ecology suffers for it, while modern western conservation can be more akin to gardening. Here is another book about it that just came out with the same idea. I was a bit jealous when it came out as they beat me to my conclusions. :')
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/23/natures-ghosts-excerpt-sophie-yeo-the-vile-national-trust-aoe
Here is the most recent report: https://indigenousfoodandag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Annual_Report_Web.pdf
A bit more on TEK, though slightly dated. This is a new field and rapidly evolving: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0169534721001063
(PS: I know you guys hate AI, but this stuff is worth learning about and I edited everything myself.)
Well, “Native Americans” means everything from whoever lived on the tip of today’s Argentina all the way to the Inuit. So saying “native Americans” when it’s actually just two tribes is wrong.
Edit: Wikipedia says the technique was used by ‘various’ people.
So if you say like "people farm beans" that's wrong because not all people farm beans? Presumably not all of the people in those two groups, it even every community within them, use the three sisters method, so is it still wrong?
Or is it just that it's ok to say " does " without meaning "all do "?
It's not wrong.
We all learned how categories like this work in school - squares are rhombuses but rhombuses aren't necessarily squares. It's weird that some people would argue like against that.
Well I do think there’s a certain tipping point where this categorisation breaks down to just ‘technical’ correctness.
If I live in a village and there’s a dude called Toby who regularly gets drunk and shits in the main square, but he’s the only one to do it, I’d be a little miffed if a newspaper ran the headline ‘people in this village shit in the main square’. If a newspaper somewhere else ran with ‘people in this country shit in the main square’ most would agree that this veers into being wrong, though technically correct.
If Toby had one friend he always did this with, for me the general consensus wouldn’t change. But what if he brought out the whole pub to do it or more people joined in? That may change things.
That line is what people are arguing whether it’s crossed here or not. If most of Native Americans did it, sure the category will apply. But if only two out of dozens do? May be a different context (and closer to what is an ‘essentialization’ of those cultures)
It is true that Native Americans used the 3 Sisters. Which ones? Those specific tribes, apparently.
First nations?
I believe that term is reserved for (some of) the indigenous peoples of modern-day Canada.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples#North_America
I think that's why there's a smile in the last square.