I am unsurprised but saddened that you are so bad at accountability. It's not your fault. It's the fault of your cultural baggage, your inheritance, the dysfunction of your ancestors and ideological influences. Alan Savory's unaccountability and especially Bill Mollison & David Holmgren's unaccountability but Ernst Gotsch and all the modern White male assholes appropriating Indigenous wisdom for their own egos and saviour complexes and sense of innocence and personal gain too.

Toad and I differ on our conclusions in this. When I discussed this article with them prior to publishing, they pointed out that the White Colonial tools of siloing, reductionism and homogenisation are precisely the lenses I am applying to Permaculture in this examination of it. They reminded me that there are factions, that Permaculture is messy, that there are "particularly elevated people and schools of thought that are absolutely static" but that "there are also spaces that move against it". The movement is a living, complex system. There are plenty of Indigenous and queer folks and other vulnerable communities within Permaculture who are actually innovating and pushing the edges forward.

But they have not been abused, gaslit, scapegoated and demonised by the Permaculture movement's leaders in the way that I have.

So I say: burn it all down. Trying to fix Permaculture is lipstick on a pig. Whether you take the portmanteau to mean "permanent agriculture" or "permanent culture", the poison is in the 'permanent'. That staticness is built in. Do better.

A conversation I once had with Max Lindegger bears airing:

[me]\: I've started some conversations in other networks I'm a part of, but I am quite curious to ask you as someone with a presence in the movement since the very early days whether there are any formal accountability systems for permaculture at large. My research so far leads me to conclude that the answer is "not really".

[Max]\: !!!Not only "not really" but "Not at all" - Bill had little time for anything smelling of "authority". He was famous for making his own rules.

[me]\: Tough analysis. Would you be comfortable being quoted on it?

[Max]\: !!No problem - he was seen as a bit of a larrikin and being against authority was seen as a plus in the early days of Permaculture.
Not sure what the status is these days.

The status is that accountability is fundamental, and that the White 'alternative movement' entirely omits it for its own self-interested reasons.