It was brought over by descendants of European settlers, who searched the world avidly for new plants and animals to import. https://portal.ct.gov/CAES/Fact-Sheets/Plant-Pathology/Chestnuts-and-the-Introduction-of-Chestnut-Blight

It was brought over by Europeans who traveled the world, collecting new animals and plants wherever they went and importing them to new locations.
“G. H. Powell wrote in 1900 (9) that Japanese chestnut trees (Castanea crenata) were first imported in 1876 by nurseryman S. B. Parsons of Flushing, New York (in the New York City borough of Queens, at the western end of Long Island). These were widely distributed, and two of them were planted and still survive in southern Connecticut. In 1882, William Parry in New Jersey imported 1,000 grafted Japanese chestnut trees. In the West, Luther Burbank planted a box of seeds sent by his collector from Japan in 1886. He subsequently had over 10,000 bearing trees growing in his Santa Rosa, California, nursery. Three of Burbank’s selections were sold to Judge Coe in Connecticut, and then to J. H. Hale who propagated and sold them from his South Glastonbury, Connecticut, nursery.”
https://portal.ct.gov/CAES/Fact-Sheets/Plant-Pathology/Chestnuts-and-the-Introduction-of-Chestnut-Blight

But just I believe that Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Wiccans, Satanists, and ALL other religious groups should NOT be allowed to force their beliefs (OR their culture, which is knitted to those beliefs) upon other people?

I also do not believe that Native Americans should be permitted to claim and exercise authority over the public “goods” of the lannd, just because their religion/culture SAYS that they’re supposed to.

In all the worlds that have existed before through all of time, not ONCE has it ever ended well when people of one particular faith/ethnicity/culture were granted special privileges that were totally inaccessible to people who had NOT been born into that community.

And I say this as someone whose paternal grandfather was Ohio Shawnee, and who still lives in Appalachia. I am looking at this issue from a *humanist* perspective—and I believe that ALL people should be permitted access to these blight-resistant trees. If not for the meat, nuts, greens, mushrooms, and other foods that my Dad gathered in the forest every year, my family would have starved. We were (and still are) poor.

When I think of the woods full of chestnut trees again—I see the opportunity for FOOD. For rural, low-income people to have a new source of protein, fat, and carbohydrates; or to gather and sell, and use the money to pay bills or buy groceries that can’t be foraged.

I guess the bottom line for me is, when it comes to free, natural sources of FOOD; there is no ethical or moral justification for “gatekeeping”, or for making access contingent upon people agreeing to allow their privacy to be invaded by special caretakers who have the “correct” bloodline—the implication being that everyone ELSE is somehow not “qualified” to care for a TREE in its own natural habitat. Which is either foolish, bigoted, or both.

We cannot undo the wrongs of the past by harming innocent people *today* who need the chestnut available as a free food and feed source, again. If we gatekeep every plant, animal, rock, mountain, prairie, canyon, river, island, volcano, lake, forest, and so forth that SOME NA tribe considers “sacred”, then nobody would ever be allowed to leave their homes.

I read recently that a NA tribe is trying to claim gatekeeping authority over the moon. The MOON! As if there is a valid argument in which the moon somehow belongs MORE to the tribe because it features in their religious traditions. As if it DOESN’T feature in almost EVERY religious tradition!

GREED is not a Shawnee value or tradition. AVARICIOUSNESS isn’t either. I just hope that MY tribe and MY people have nothing to do with all of this grabby, self-serving acquisitiveness. In a land where “freedom of (and FROM) religion” is the ultimate law, laying claim to assorted natural resources because they have some involvement with this or that ritual or practice, is just NOT going to work.

It’s like if Jewish people decided to gatekeep the entire city of Jerusalem for themselves, because (1) they were there FIRST, and (2) it’s an important part of their culture. However, it’s ALSO a vital part of the culture of at least 5 other religions—maybe more. It doesn’t matter at this point in time whether the Jews were there FIRST; what matters is that Jerusalem is sacred to a LOT more people than JUST Jews. And so the city is shared, as it should be.