That’s not a correction, that’s an added detail.
“was” vs. “is”
As Mitch Hedberg would say
They used to use it
they still do.
But they used to, too!
Ok, so it wasn’t even an added detail. It was changing the topic to present day instead of the past. That’s even further from a correction imo
Being pedantic it is added detail. As native Americans did it, even if they still do it, they could have originally/historically not done so.
And also are there tribes/larger groups of native americans that did stop doing it? Then that statement is even stronger
It specifies the cultural application but broadens the temporal.
(To be more direct: not every first nation practiced that technique.)
And thus is not a correction. It’s an added detail at best, or at least a change of topic. It’s not a corretion
Changing the past tense to present tense (these people and practices are still very real, they are not just part of “the past”) is a correction.
No it is not.
One person is talking about the past. The other person is talking about the present
That is incorrect, like incorrectly referring to the agricultural practices only in the past tense, or incorrectly lumping all peoples who lived in the Americas prior to European colonization into one generic group. The fact that both viewpoints are not equally correct is what makes it a correction.
What the hell are you talking about? The statement “Native Americans used the Three Sisters in the past” is a 100% correct statement. Just because it isn’t as precise as you want it to be doesn’t mean it’s not accurate
I always wondered why we don’t do more polyculture ag
It’s more labor intensive, especially for corn. You can’t just run a big harvester over the field, someone has to go out and pick it.
That makes sense with the technology of the time but I imagine that’s probably changing
We still have people out in the fields picking vegetables. It’s not a solved problem.
Profit margins and prioritising short term gains. :(
It’s more the fact that you can really only do handwork on a polyculture field, so it’s completely unsuited for anything but subsistence farming.
I like it when food is cheap and I don’t like it when poor people starve to death, shoot me.
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
The Iroquois are the Haudenosaunee. The latter is the more respectful and culturally appropriate term.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois
Haudenosaunee (“People of the Longhouse”) is the autonym by which the Six Nations refer to themselves.[23] While its exact etymology is debated, the term Iroquois is of colonial origin. Some scholars of Native American history consider “Iroquois” a derogatory name adopted from the traditional enemies of the Haudenosaunee.[24] A less common, older autonym for the confederation is Ongweh’onweh, meaning “original people”.[25][26][27]
I did not know this before. Thank you!
Aren’t the named tribes a subset of native Americans, so it can be true without the original statement being false?
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.
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.
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
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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
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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
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
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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. :')
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.)
REDRAFTING; had to correct something lol.
There is a tense change. The second person is saying the technique is still used by those tribes today.
I think that’s why there’s a smile in the last square.
I thought it was a rock formation in Australia?
Correction: The three sisters is an agricultural technique that is used by me in my garden. And I’m neither a Cherokee nor a Haudenosaunee.
