The Bioneers community (that means you) has always been at the vanguard of social and environmental movements, especially those that honor Indigenous knowledge to solve the planet’s most pressing challenges. In order to understand how destructive practices continue to persist in America, we need to examine how narratives of “conquest” continue to disconnect us from nature and the peoples who have been stewarding it since time immemorial. In this newsletter, we share our ideas developed by the Bioneers Indigeneity Program about how to transform Thanksgiving into a new set of narratives that honor nature, the plants and animals indigenous to this land, and help us reconcile our nation’s troubled past.
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Teaching Children the True Story of Thanksgiving
In 2022, Charlsebridge Press published Keepunumuk: Weeâchumun’s Thanksgiving Story to transform the story of this holiday that so many Americans take for granted. The inspiration for this children’s book came from the idea of hosting a “Decolonized Thanksgiving,” and it creates a new story that puts Native peoples—and nature—at its heart: Two children from the Wampanoag tribe learn how Weeâchumun (corn) persuaded the First Peoples to help the newcomers (the Pilgrims) survive in their new home.
“I think it will play an important role in a larger, Native-led movement to educate the American public about Native Peoples, our histories, and the contributions that we make to this country. It’s very important to underscore that this book is reaching children. I strongly believe that children are the pathway to the social change their parents learn. When children learn, their parents learn. For children who read this book as their first exposure to Thanksgiving, Keepunumuk will shape their baseline understanding of the Wampanoag peoples and all Native Americans by extension.” —AlexisBunten (Unangan and Yup’ik), co-author of Keepunumuk and co-director of the Bioneers Indigeneity Program
3 Simple Ways to Teach Children About Thanksgiving
As parents and authors of the children’s book Keepunumuk: Weeâchumun’s Thanksgiving Story, Alexis Bunten, Anthony Perry, and Danielle Greendeer strove to create a story that gets ahead of the stereotypes that are so often children’s first exposure to the narrative of Thanksgiving. They believe that the holiday can be celebrated in a way that shows gratitude to the plants and animals native to North America, while not shying away from the true history of this country. In this article, the authors offer three hands-on ways to help children learn the real story of Thanksgiving and integrate the lessons from Keepunumuk into their holiday traditions.
In 2016, Bioneers made a commitment to decolonize Thanksgiving by recognizing and sharing the truth of what this holiday means for Native Americans and all Americans. We’ve collected a variety of resources to learn more about what it means to decolonize Thanksgiving, including articles, videos, and curriculum on how to “Indigenize” the holiday and what decolonization encompasses that can help you start conversations with your family and friends, and create new traditions. You’ll also find an interactive map that will show you whose ancestral territories you’re living on.
Healing From Colonization on Thanksgiving and Beyond
Edgar Villanueva and Hilary Giovale share an ancestral bond that is far from unique, but one that is rarely acknowledged. Edgar is a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. For generations, his family has lived in the same region where Hilary’s ancestor received a land grant after his family migrated from Scotland in 1739. Now 280 years later, Edgar and Hilary reach across the Thanksgiving table to bridge the painful colonial gap.
With Thanksgiving around the corner, millions of families across the country are preparing to celebrate one of the more loved holidays on the calendar. Most look forward to the day as a time to take a break, to be with family, and to enjoy a meal together in the spirit of gratitude, but for many Native Americans, Thanksgiving is a national day of mourning over the genocide that took place throughout America. Here are some ideas for new traditions you can include at your Thanksgiving this year to better honor the Native Americans, immigrants, and their descendants who contribute to our country’s diversity.
By Alexis Bunten, Anthony Perry, and Danielle Greendeer
As more Americans become aware of the ongoing effects of stolen land and slavery in the United States, many are becoming increasingly concerned about Thanksgiving. Most Americans cherish the turkey and family get-togethers that mark this holiday, but many recognize that the story didn’t turn out so well for Native Americans. Some Native Americans consider Thanksgiving a Day of Mourning, but many of us have conflicted feelings about it.
As authors of the children’s book Keepunumuk: Weeâchumun’s Thanksgiving Story, we strove to create a story that gets ahead of the stereotypes that are so often children’s first exposure to this narrative. Our take on Thanksgiving is that the holiday can be celebrated in a way that shows gratitude to the plants and animals native to North America (see 3 ways to Decolonize Thanksgiving) while not shying away from the true history of this country.
Image of the cover of Keepunumuk courtesy of Garry Meeches Sr. and Charlesbridge Press
As parents, we are also aware of children’s social and emotional development stages. We were very thoughtful in how we introduced concepts and themes around the holiday to our children who were of preschool age when we started writing this book. The easiest way to introduce Thanksgiving to young children is to read Keepunumuk to them.
After that, try the following three easy Native American-inspired suggestions to help young children to integrate the lessons introduced in Keepunumuk.
1. Connect to Nature
Try to make a Thanksgiving meal with food indigenous to North America, and have your children help pick and cook the produce. Danielle is a seed keeper and has helped to revive the Wampanoag traditional corn (see A Thanksgiving Lesson in a Handful of Corn). You can serve the Three Sisters — corn, beans and squash — and explain how the sisters help each other to grow strong and healthy. This year, Alexis is growing the Three Sisters from heirloom seeds for the second time. Spending time in the garden with her daughter is a way for them to connect with nature by being outside and caring for the plants as they watch them grow. Tony is also raising the Three Sisters in his garden with his family in England, using seeds of plants raised by his Chickasaw ancestors.
Here’s a Three Sisters curricular resource and craft written to Kindergarten standards, but these could be easily modified for other grades and contexts.
Author Danielle Greendeer with the King Philip Corn
2. Help Others
We will never know the “real reason” why the Wampanoag decided to help the Separatists, now known as Pilgrims, to grow their indigenous foods. It is possible that they thought an alliance with the settlers would strengthen their position politically vis-à-vis other Native groups in the area after their population was decimated by disease. They may also have simply wanted to help others in need. Perhaps it was a little bit of both. Regardless, the theme of helping others lies at the heart of Thanksgiving, no matter what background you come from. Make a new tradition by asking your young children to “help at least one other person, plant, or animal” on the holiday. Ask them to share at the table who they helped and how that made them feel.
3. Honor Elders
One of the things that we love most about Thanksgiving is gathering with family across generations. The dominant American culture has divided families into nuclear units, dividing families by generations. However, for more than 99.9% of human history, our species has lived in intergenerational groups, where elders are revered for their knowledge and help in taking care of children. Ask your young children, “Who is an elder?” and “Why is it important to honor elders?” and your heart will be warmed by their responses. Have them make a present or put on a play for an elder in your life or community.
Here’s a crafting and play activity developed for 1st graders that can be adapted for other grades and contexts.
Author Danielle Greendeer’s mother Nokomis with her grandchildren, who inspired Keepunumuk. Photo Courtesy of Danielle Greendeer
More Helpful Resources
The activities shared in this article and many more can be found at the Bioneers Indigeneity Curriculum webpage. The early grade Thanksgiving curricula have been developed to Massachusetts State Standards and take into account social, emotional, and cognitive learning as well as different learning styles. All of the curricula has been created by Native content developers.
Mer Young is an Indigenous (Chichimeca and Apache) socially-engaged, Southern California-based artist whose body of work includes collages, drawings, paintings, and murals. She is the founder of Mausi Murals, and she has been widely exhibited nationally and internationally. Some of her public artworks can be found in a wide range of Southern California towns, including Long Beach, Glendale, South Pasadena, San Pedro, Paramount, Anaheim, Tustin, and Los Angeles.
Bioneers reached out to Mer to help design the beautiful look and feel of Bioneers’ latest podcast, INDIGENEITY CONVERSATIONS. She worked closely with the hosts and guests to create the singular images of each guest that appear alongside each episode, highlighting the power and depth of the work each of these leading activists.
She was interviewed by Bioneers’ Polina Smith.
Polina Smith (PS): Mer, you have had such an extraordinary career as an artist and activist. How did you start off on your path as an artist? Were there specific people and/or events that inspired you?
Mer Young (MY): I have always been moved to help others. When you go through the trenches yourself and are able to come out of them, you know what many people have to go through, so it was natural for me to want to give back. As a youth I used my gifts to help me survive through some hard times in very hostile and volatile environments: art was my outlet, but it wasn’t until my early adulthood that I began to use my art as my voice to create change. The light went on, and I felt a calling from within.
Many people have influenced me: my son, some of my relatives, my shimá (my mother), those from my community, the Trask sisters from Hawaii (Dr. Haunani-Kay Trask and Mililani Trask), Assata Shaku, Angela Davis, James Baldwin, Wendsler Nosie Sr., Lozen, Dahteste, Gouyen, Goyaałé, Casey Camp Horinek, Corrina Gould; the list goes on, but these individuals molded me into doing better for the greater good.
PS: Is there a particular project of yours that you feel especially, deeply committed to and passionate about?
MY: I have been creating collages inspired by the “Land-back” movement. Land-back is long-term, lifelong work. All over North America, Native folks are seeking to bring a number of traditional lands back into Indigenous hands. In this collage project, I reimagine 1900 photographs that were taken by privileged men with cameras who took posed photographs of Natives in unnatural settings in the 19th and early 20th centuries. I try to learn about each photograph: the individual in the photo, their tribal nation, the land they came from, etc., and then I cut the original image and place it into a photo of their actual ancestral lands. Photographs are long lasting, like time capsules, so I felt it was important to me to reframe those images and give them back their lands in this symbolic way.
PS: Do you have any projects on the horizon you’re really looking forward to?
MY: I am also a muralist, and I am always happy when I get to go out and paint and create public art. I have a project coming up, and the wall is approximately 30x30ft, so it will be nice to get out in the sun and create something on a large scale for the community.
PS: What role do you hope your art will play in the world?
MY: My hope is to bring awareness, to invoke change, to inspire the hearts and minds of the young and of future generations.
PS: When things feel challenging and seemingly insurmountable, what keeps you going?
MY: My family keeps me going. I have a four-year old son who looks to me for love and guidance, and fighting for my people keeps me going as well. I was always taught never to break, to keep pushing and have courage to move out of whatever vortex you’re in and to show resilience. I believe there is nothing that can stop us from overcoming what’s wrong on this planet. Even in death, our lives move into the spirit world, and from there we can live through our relatives and ancestors to keep the struggle and the good work going forward.
PS: Could you share some words of inspiration to young artists who may be feeling scared or just aren’t sure where to begin?
MY: I was told as a youth that art wouldn’t take me anywhere, but when I created, it did. It provided a safe place from all the ruckus around me. I kept at it and continued, and I found my voice, so my advice is: Continue doing what you love, and the rest will follow. Show your work to your relatives, to your peers, to your community, and they will see your gifts. They will have different things to say, good and bad. Take them both equally, and that will help you get better at what you do. Never be afraid to use your gifts: they were given to you for a reason, so listen to yourself and your heart. It is always an honor to share your talents; it brings life and appreciation even when no one is looking. You can begin by simply putting your work on the wall with tape. Be proud of yourself because no one, other than you, created those marks. You can only get better and soar beyond your imagination. The best part is that there is no end in the universe, we are a part of that, so there is no end to us. Ahéhee’
PS: Thank you Mer, for taking the time to speak with us today and for your extraordinary work!
Patricia Watts, the founder (in 1997) of the groundbreaking, highly influential nonprofit ecoartspace, has been one of the world’s most important curators and leading figures in the “eco-art” movement for over a quarter century – for a detailed bio and information about her organization’s work, see: ecoartspace.org
She was interviewed by Bioneers’ Polina Smith.
Polina Smith (PS): Patricia, how did the idea for ecoartspace first come about and how has it evolved over the years?
Patricia Watts (PW): It was conceived in 1997 in Los Angeles. I was a mother of a two-year old and had recently lost a job working on a museum-in-development centered on the creative process. For three years I had researched artists working in and with nature alongside a staff of creativity theorists, anthropologists and exhibition designers. As with most of the unfortunate events in my life, I turned this experience around and decided I wanted to create a place where children and their families could learn about the principles of ecology through immersive environments created by artists. I came up with the phrase ecoartspace, and the following year I created one of the first websites of artists addressing environmental issues.
In 1999, I was introduced to Amy Lipton, a curator in New York City, and we decided to partner and move forward as a team, together in our vision but apart geographically, she on the East Coast and me in California. Our mission was to reach out to museums, botanical gardens, and nature centers to educate them about the work that artists were doing focused on ecology. The actual “place” never came to fruition, though we persisted for twenty years curating over sixty art and nature exhibitions between us, and we gave dozens of lectures and participated on many panels nationally and internationally. Combined, we worked with hundreds of eco focused artists.
In December 2019, I decided to remake ecoartspace into a membership platform, which launched in January 2020, just weeks before the pandemic lockdown. It worked brilliantly. The timing was perfect as artists were looking for ways to connect online. We started doing Zoom events, inviting our members to share about their work. Artists connected with each other and new collaborations ensued. We launched calls for artists to do online exhibitions and publish companion books. The first year we had around 400 members and by 2021, we ended the year with 700. This year, 2022, it’s looking like we will end with 800, although we’ve had almost 1,000 members join since 2020. Over 200 members are from 26 countries outside the United States. And, we have another 1,000 followers who subscribe to our monthly newsletter.
Karen Hackenberg, Amphorae ca. 2010-2011, oil on canvas, 24 x 48 inches
PS: Was there a project that took place during the lockdown period that you felt was especially inspiring?
PW: During the lockdown there were wildfires raging all over the world, in Australia, Brazil, California, etc., that were burning millions of trees. The loss was so profound, and we were all making connections between the difficulty breathing caused by both COVID-19 and the smoke from the fires. We were also making connections with how mycorrhizal networks connect forests with rivers and creeks. The lights started going off, so we created a monthly Zoom event called Tree Talk hosted by Sant Khalsa, in which our members making work about trees can share their work. We then put out a call for artists for an online exhibition titled Embodied Forest, which launched in September 2021. Almost 200 artists applied and 90 artists were included. We have now printed the second edition and only have a few copies left! A third edition is in the works.
PS: Is there a project on the horizon you’re especially looking forward to?
PW: This year we put out a call to our members to submit recipes and remedies to heal the “man” and heal the land. It’s called Earthkeepers Handbook. Artists or scientists (who are also members) can submit how-to instructions, manifestos and meditations to help make the world a better place. Kim Abeles, who wrote Crafts, Cookery and Country Living, a homesteading book, in 1976, and is also a member, was the inspiration for this year’s project. Abeles, along with member White-Feather Hunter, will be reviewing the submissions and coming up with a curatorial focus for the layout of the book. This year we decided to be more inclusive and we will include all submissions, with guidance if needed. Submission fees go towards the design of the book and honoraria for Abeles and Hunter’s time. The handbook will be available online at the end of this year and be a printed book early 2023.
ecoconsciousness catalogue 2020, Maru Garcia, Vivarium I, 2018 (detail)
PS: What do you think the role of the arts is in the eco-movement? How can arts serve to move the conversation forward?
PW: Most of what we do not know is unseen, happening behind our backs, or it is simply invisible to us, like carbon emissions in the air. Today’s artists are in a way more like scientists, doing the research to understand the behaviors and lifestyle choices we make to offer a different way of seeing and thinking about the role humans play in the destruction of our ecosystems. Artists are making the invisible visible. Their work offers a point of departure for having real conversations about the fate of our planet and human survival, topics that are not exactly joyful or entertaining. They are taking on the hard realities that we face and making their understanding of what is happening into visual, audible and experiential art or aesthetics.
PS: When things feel hard and insurmountable, what keeps you going?
PW: I’m all about truth. I’m not someone who sticks my head in the sand, although I’ve definitely tried to survive situations maybe a bit too long that were unsustainable. I always say we are all on a learning curve. It takes time to be willing to face the hard truths that we are currently living in. I mean, how can we tackle climate when most people are just trying to survive, making just enough money to keep a roof over their head? If those in power or the wealthy do not care about the majority who are struggling and do not feel safe due to racism or violence against those who are different, we are fighting for more than just a reduction of carbon. There is so much not right in the world, we have so much catching-up to do, to feel heard and be free to be ourselves, but people such as MacKenzie Scott give me hope. She has donated billions to hundreds of nonprofit organizations, which will hopefully make a big difference. We definitely need more Robin Hoods today, and we need to live in truth.
PS: Do you have any words of wisdom you would be willing to share with young artists wanting to combine their work with environmental advocacy?
Embodied Forest catalogue cover, left, Laura Gorski, Sprout in the Encounter, 2021 (detail), and right, Carol Paquet, Shrouded Green, 2020 (detail)
PW: If you are an artist who is concerned about ecological issues, use your skill-set to make work that speaks to the people in your community. I think this work is more about quantity than quality, though quality is always important. You don’t need to be a part of the larger art world or to be in a big city to make this work. It’s antithetical to be concerned about the hierarchy of the artworld when we need all hands on-deck. In fact, I go as far as to say that the work that you do should be replicable; that you should encourage those around you to also do similar work. A few years ago, I started making Action Guides that allow artists to perform other artists work as their own. Yes, sure it’s important to acknowledge those who have inspired your work and to consider how your work is different than work by other artists, but when we are trying to save the planet and humanity, I think we can let go of the idea of originality, especially in this day and time when imagery and information are so ubiquitous.
PS: Is there anything else you’d like to share?
PW: Artists are creative divergent thinkers who can inspire new ways of seeing and of addressing the ecological problems of our era. They can serve as healers in this time, and they are here in large numbers because this is their time to speak; and now is our time to listen.
PS: Thank you so much, Patricia, for taking the time to speak with us and keep up the incredible work!
Lindsay Wood, widely known as “The Tiny Home Lady,” the founder and CEO of Experience Tiny Homes, is an expert on tiny home design, material/appliance selection and builder analysis. She has been a leading figure in developing innovative strategies to change the way tiny homes are designed and purchased, and she serves on the board of the Tiny Home Industry Association.
She was interviewed in October 2022 by Bioneers’ Arts Coordinator Polina Smith.
Polina Smith (PS): Lindsay, how did you become The Tiny Home Lady?
Lindsay Wood (LW): In 2017 my husband and I were living in Marin County, and while it was an amazing place to live, we were renters, and we figured out that after seven years we had contributed up to $100k to someone else’s dream of building wealth (our landlord) instead of our own.
We thought about it and realized we had a few basic desires: home ownership, living simply with a lighter footprint on the planet, and the ability to move around. After exploring our options, we landed on the idea of a movable tiny home, so we flew out to Arlington, Texas, and went to a tiny home festival. On the last day of the event, in the final hour, we met our future builder. We signed up, started the design, and placed our deposit of $45k on a $90k build.
While we were waiting for our house to arrive, we started downsizing our stuff in preparation, but after three months, after we had paid our second deposit, the builder kept extending the delivery date, until one day, six months after we had ordered the house, they called and said, “We are going out of business, so you need to come pick up your tiny home.”
We drove from California to Utah, and the day we picked up our (unfinished!) home it was a hundred degrees. We had no experience towing such a large load and had trouble with the brakes, but we persevered and made it back. After eight months of DIY work with a lot of help from family members lending their expertise in building, welding, painting, and all-around support, we hit the road, traveling from California to Texas.
But on day-two of our travels, we found out that our builder had undersized our axles and tires, so we had to spend $5400 more to fix that. Overall, we wound up spending $50,000 over our initial budget, but we made lemonade out of the lemons the builder had served us because we took everything we had learned from our experience and turned it into the GO TiNY! Academy, so other folks interested in a tiny house could avoid all the problems we had had. The GO TiNY! Academy born out of our challenges now supports people to get the information and guidance they need to navigate their own journey towards their dream Tiny Home. Our goal is to save people time, energy and money in that pursuit.
PS: Do you think tiny homes can play a role in helping address the housing and climate crises?
LW: I do think tiny homes are uniquely positioned to help with the housing crisis and to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Smaller-sized homes mean more living spaces can be placed in back and side-yards, giving families the option of housing family members and friends, or providing a rental unit that helps both the homeowner and the renter. Having more housing stock in a more compact area makes living more affordable.
Smaller homes use far fewer building materials, so their construction has much less environmental impact, and creating “infill” housing (i.e., that fills into already existing cities, roadways and infrastructure) results in less sprawl, less destruction of natural landscapes or agricultural land, and less strain on police and fire departments and utilities.
PS: For you personally, what have been the unexpected gifts of tiny house living?
LW: The less stuff I own, the more flexibility I have, the more I can travel, and the more energy I can devote to building a business. I don’t get as caught up in the process of buying stuff, which is very time-consuming. I only buy what I really need, and I have really enjoyed reducing the items I own because they actually end up owning you.
And because I go to many Tiny Home events every year, I have developed a whole new set of friendships that are a beautiful connection to this growing industry. I have also really enjoyed the mentorship of some developers, business owners, real estate investors and others. This lifestyle has been a great way to align with people doing good work on this planet.
PS: And what have the biggest unexpected challenges been?
LW: The biggest unexpected challenge was right at the beginning when our builder went bust in the middle of building our home. While building a business has its challenges, diving into this industry through that really traumatic experience was one that I do not wish on anyone.
PS: On a policy and political level, what are the biggest challenges tiny homes face? What changes would you like to see implemented in the next 5 years?
LW: In our country we have two main areas that need to be addressed for tiny homes to become more available: building standards and zoning. The good news is that a new International Tiny House Provisions document just got released, so at least there is now a document that describes four types of building standards for tiny homes. This is a terrific start.
But outdated zoning regulations (that dictate what is allowed and not allowed on land) are the biggest challenge. There is an ugly side to the history of zoning, as realtors through most of the 20th Century wouldn’t sell or rent homes to members of minorities seeking to move out of inner cities and banks refused to give them mortgages (a discriminatory practice called redlining), and that led to de facto segregation and the separation of “ghetto” neighborhoods from lily-white suburbs. And many, many neighborhoods today don’t allow anything other than large single-family homes with a quarter or half-acre of land around each house.
But for many of us, buying a large home in the suburbs is either out of reach financially, or we simply don’t want that much space to have to take care of. The notion of living in 200-400 square feet goes against the traditional American Dream of owning a big home with a big lawn that has been sold to us through decades of advertising and propaganda, etc., so some cultural attitudes will need to change as well, but that’s starting to happen.
PS: What words of wisdom would you have for anyone considering a tiny home?
LW: Join the GO TiNY! Academy. At $400 a VIP seat in the Academy is 0.5% of the cost of an average size $80,000 tiny Home, and it’s a great way to get answers to your questions and the guidance to ensure you make the right choices. Going Tiny is a transformation. If you are eager to explore if it’s something you’d like to do, check out: TheTinyHomeLady.com.
Patsy Craig is a curator/producer, author/artist and Indigenous rights advocate who has for over 20 years generated and cultivated a wide range of cross-cultural collaborations in the fields of art/design, music, urbanism, and environmentalism. This output has included publications, exhibitions, and events, including lectures, concerts, symposia, workshops, etc.
Six years ago, Craig turned her focus to the environment and Indigeneity after spending time at Standing Rock to support the water protection movement resisting the infamous Dakota Access Pipeline. Since then she has continued her activism and seeks to provide platforms that contribute to amplifying Indigenous world-views. Since 2020 she has been operating a cultural project called AWA in Cusco, Peru that showcases environmentally focused art and the work of Indigenous artists.
HubertTayori1@MINE
Polina Smith (PS): To refresh our memories, Patsy, how would you describe AWA?
Patsy Craig (PC):AWA is a word that in Quechua, the native language of 14 million Peruvians, refers to weaving and the notion of interweaving. So that is what I do, I interweave visual culture in order to amplify Indigenous world views because to me it is clear that we have much to learn from ancestral wisdom. This learning is long over due and desperately needed at this point in our human story. A story that is currently driving us towards ecological collapse due to our ethically untenable relationship to nature. With these works of art I hope to inspire a reconsideration of all that drives us.
AWA is based at 11,500 feet in the ancient capital of Cusco in the Peruvian Andes- one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the Americas conceived as the belly button of the world. From this vantage point, my work focuses on environment, Indigeneity, ancestral knowledge, and decolonisation. Through research, art, and education I aim to provide unique access to cultural traditions that acknowledge, enrich and perpetuate sustainability and biodiversity as the means to ensure mutual flourishing. Today, such traditions are calling out to be seen, understood and honoured.
RaynerMikiri@MINE1
PS: Since our last interview in 2020 tell us about what you are up to, how is AWA evolving?
PC: Well so much has happened since we spoke last, the world has completely shifted, for one! Here in the Peruvian Andes many understand that this point in time is one of transition, of both personal and collective reflection and re-action. In these sacred lands many identify this time as the beginning of a new cycle, the Pachakuti, which in the Andean tradition refers to the cycle of changes of the earth. The Pachakuti is manifest in the union of the ancestral and the here and now. In this way, we can describe ourselves not as who we are or what we were, but who we are becoming.
Given the current state of planetary affairs, I hear our earth mother’s calls loud and clear and I know that if I do not pay heed then I am out of sync. So I feel the need to shift with her, and I do my best to envision relevant responses.
In this light I guess the primary shift with AWA since we spoke over two years ago is that it is evolving into more of a project than a gallery, per se. This is exciting actually. It means that I am out in the field more often generating projects to do with art of course but that the focus is more on collectives or communities rather than individuals. The idea is to allow for individuals to shine in this context but to embrace what I feel is closer to the essence of the Indigenous ethos. In Andean culture we call this Ayni, which embraces the concept of reciprocity or mutualism. Ayni and the practices related to Ayni remind us of the interconnectedness of all life and how to live in relation to one another. So this is the essence of how I choose to evolve my practice that is not accidentally located in the heart of Andean culture.
YesicaPatiachi2@MINE
PS: What new projects are you generating?
PC: There are three principal projects that I have been developing:
One focuses on an art collective from a native community in the Madre de Dios region of the southern Peruvian Amazon known as the Harakbut. This collective is called ETOCHIME. In their native language Etochime means “our roots” and they identify their artistic practice as such: PAINT SO AS NOT TO FORGET. The members range in age from 4-44 and are essentially self taught artists. Paint on canvas is not their traditional art form but they have chosen this medium as a means through which to communicate their urgent messages with the outside world. Their imagery consists of lines and figurative representations of their human and non-human surroundings. The lines traditionally are natural plant dyes painted on the body as a symbol of respect to their sacred forest and it is believed that through these lines a more profound connection to the spiritual beings of the jungle is possible. The Anämëi tree is at the heart of their origin story. Just as the tree saved the Harakbut and gave rise to many species of animals and plants, the Harakbut iconographies also originated there. The tree became a symbol of unity, respect and harmony with the forest and other beings of the Harakbut worlds.
Yesica Patiachi is the driving force behind Etochime and was chosen to represent all Indigenous Amazonians to address Pope Francis when he visited Peru in 2018 warning that the Amazon’s indigenous people have never been so threatened in their territories as they are now demanding an end to the relentless exploitation of the region’s timber, gas and gold. The illegal gold mining so prevalent in Madre de Dios has had a tremendously negative impact on the cultural survival and territories of the Harakbut peoples.
PercyTayori1@MINE
Over the past year I worked with Etochime to create paintings that represented their culture and the impact of gold mining on their communities. This body of work was presented in San Francisco, California at both the Bioneers conference 2022 and elsewhere in SF alongside works by San Francisco Art Institute alumni in an exhibition I curated titled MINE: What is Ours in the Wake of Extraction. This was geographically and historically relevant of course because both Northern California and Madre de Dios share a connection to gold mining. I also curated an exhibition in Peru of their works which was recently presented in Cusco entitled ETOCHIME Children of the Forest: The Infinite Lines of the Harakbut. A more recent proposal with Etochime is in its initial stages so I will only say briefly that it has to do with dreaming, an important aspect of theirs and all Amazonian Indigenous cultures.
The second project involves my translating an extraordinary book called Soy Sontone, an account by a Harakbut elder of his memories pre-contact. It is the first publication by an indigenous person in a situation of isolation in the Amazonian forests as told by father to son. The testimony of Antonio Sueyo Irangua as transcribed by his son Hector Sueyo Yumbuyo, immerses us in the life of the Harakbut, an Indigenous people whose territory is located in the region currently known as Madre de Dios. The first half of the 20th century the Harakbut remained isolated from the rest of society until they were contacted by rubber barons and Dominican missionaries, thus Antonio, or Sontone, lived his youth without contact with what he would later know as Peru. These memoirs show us a personal view of the dramatic changes suffered by the Amazonian peoples due to colonisation; how in the span of Antonio’s lifetime, their world changed completely. Alongside Luis Fernandez, director of CINCIA (Centro de Innovacion Cientifica Amazonica), I received a grant to translate this book for CEES at Wake Forest University.
The third project is with a women’s weaving collective from a remote Andean community focusing on the impact of climate change in the Cusco region.
PS: So you are working with Andean communities now, how would you compare this to working in the Amazon? What characterizes each?
Video walk-through of the exhibition MINE : What is Ours in the Wake of Extraction
PC: It is totally different. Peru is divided into three distinct regions: extreme jungle, extreme mountains, and extreme desert. That is what makes Peru so geographically spectacular. Although distinct these areas are coherent and have always maintained interrelation. One of the sacred plants of the Andes for example is coca and it is grown in the Amazon. What distinguishes the Andes from the Amazon of course is altitude and vegetation. Both regional cultures are intrinsically defined by their natural surroundings; by the local flora and fauna, which in regards to artistic practice is manifest both iconographically and materially.
Pre conquest, paint is perhaps more prevalent in Amazonian cultural traditions and weaving is the traditional art form in the Andes. Both of course implement natural dyeing techniques and both employ abstract patterning in their respective visual iconographies. Weaving is integral to the Andean cosmovision and Andean weaving is one of the worlds most sophisticated textile traditions still practiced widely to this day. I have been collecting Andean weavings for quite some time so I’m really excited about further developing my relationship with these remote Andean weavers.
YesicaPatiachi4@MINE
PS: How is weaving integral to the Andean cosmovisión? Please elaborate.
PC: Weaving is the aesthetic manifestation of the entire Andean cosmovisión and all of the tangible and intangible elements that identify it. This cosmovisión embraces the notion that humans are but one component in the biosphere within which all living organisms evolve. It is the belief system that links the human and non-human with the cosmos, where the native language for example does not have a word for “it,” only pronouns that signify the position or location of an entity in relation to surroundings like “this, here” or “that, there.” This culture of life that celebrates and venerates the Pachamama or earth mother as the supreme universal intelligence is a perfect model for the new- old Rights of Nature movement proposing legislation that recognises knowledge that has long been silenced by European hegemony as fundamental to planetary survival and indeed flourishing.
So from this place, weaving is central and universal- the words “text” and “textile” share a common root in the Latin word texere, which means to weave, for example. To me, and to many, ancient Peruvian woven textiles were essentially a cultural database, a library if you will, of all that is culturally significant practically, intellectually, and esoterically. My project involves generating dialogue and inspiring new textile works that are representative of our times amongst a remote community of women weavers. Although there have historically been other climate crises for example some classify this one as the anthropocene- a geological era whose characteristics, the sixth great extinction event and general environmental collapse, as driven by human activity, primarily the unsustainable use of land, water and energy. I would love to see this represented in contemporary Peruvian woven works.
HubertTayori2@MINE
PS: Tell us a bit more about the exhibition you brought to San Francisco over the summer MINE: What is Ours in the Wake of Extraction, will your focus now be on extraction and its impact on Indigenous communities?
PC: In that all of the environmental issues that we are up against relate to extraction and our addiction to what this “provides” us, then yes. The exhibition MINE: What is Ours in the Wake of Extraction was interesting because it combined sensibilities with Indigenous non-Western artists alongside Western artists, attracting an audience that might not otherwise have been present. I think it was a welcome and appreciated learning curve for all Westerners involved to learn about the issues at hand from front line communities. And of course an opportunity for Indigenous artists from the Peruvian Amazon to have their voices heard. As the title suggests, my aim was to inspire a realisation that we are all interconnected and responsible however far off the context. I hope to work with Native American artists in the future and am excited by this prospect.
YesicaPatiachi1@MINE
PS: Finally, in the last interview we spoke a bit about the plant medicines that are part of traditional Peruvian culture, do you have any updated thoughts in this regard?
PC: Yes I do. Since last we spoke I have initiated a relationship with the plant known as Wachuma or San Pedro. I feel a calling from the plant and am interested to explore it further. It speaks to me and after a powerful experience with Wachuma in the past year I am working with a Peruvian master to engage more profoundly. I am now open to receive the wisdom of the plant and with this master we will be looking at dreams as a source of significant spiritual knowledge and information. Essentially I will be learning from the plant and the guidance of a master healer, how to dream… All for now!
Note: This is an edited version of an interview conducted in October 2022 by Bioneers’ Polina Smith.
Veronica Ramirez, an Oakland, CA-based artist of Mapuche/Chilean-Mestizo ancestry, was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has been leading public “earth-altar” making (mandalas) for the past 24 years.
Polina Smith (PS): Veronica, you have had such an extraordinary career as an artist and ceremonialist. How did you start off on your path?
Veronica Ramirez (VR): I clearly remember the moment that led me to start creating sacred spaces and altars and then earth mandalas. I was at a gathering with a live DJ and vibrant art and lights all over the walls. It had been designed as an immersive experience. At some point in the evening, as I stood there observing the blissful surroundings, I got the urge to look up, and there above the doorway was a small stick mounted just above the door frame with a feather on the end of a thread that was tied to it. It swayed ever so gently, and I remember feeling my whole being captivated by this serene presence. In that moment I had had an inner knowing that had called on me to notice that object.
This gathering was super dialed up with music and popping artwork and people enjoying themselves, but I got the sense that this feather was saying: “I’m the calm in the storm, the gentle heart that seeks inner peace, the yin to the yang of this environment.” It felt perfect, but it also felt as though I was the only one seeing it or noticing its beauty. It gave me a sense of peace and a kind of familiarity, like seeing an old friend. I wanted everyone there to feel that peace and connection too, so that little feather on a stick inspired me to start creating sacred spaces, so that others could feel this too.
I joined the collective that had produced this event and began creating earth altars for “our” events from then on. I brought sand, soil, branches, shells, flowers, rocks, and of course feathers, to these sacred earth installations. I added journals and other interactive pieces to the spaces so that people could write what was in their hearts and minds and could write their prayers/wishes on pieces of paper and hang them on the “Pure Intentions Tree.”
The moment I discovered the art of creating circular mandala earth altars was when our collective was asked to come out to a peace rally event at the Civic Center Plaza in San Francisco. Because it was all outdoors, there wasn’t the usual environment of an interior space to work with, so I suggested we make a circular altar on the lawn. It ended up being a beautiful flower mandala with many hands involved in its creation. It was a beautiful ritual co-created with the public. It was pure presence! We were all guided by our own spirit to create with heart, love, creativity and cooperation. It was magical, and everyone felt it. It was our coming together that was the medicine and not necessarily the end result. That began my journey with this “earth mandala medicine.”
PS: Are there any of your projects that stick out most in your mind as being especially significant for you?
VR: After 25+ years of doing this work with all sorts of communities, many stand out. All of them have been unique in spirit and in purpose, but some of the living earth altars from the last few years have been really inspiring. In 2020 I got involved in a project at a houseless encampment here in Oakland. I was part of a grassroots, mutual aid coalition, the North Oakland Restorative Justice Council, that provided hot meals, sanitation kits and clothing as well as masks to the houseless communities. It was part of a coalition of many other organizations and individuals. When the Wood Street community (the largest such encampment in all of the U.S.) was asked what they wished to see in their communities, one of the residents told one of our partners that they really wanted gardens.
I suggested we build a living mandala garden. Its design included four directional garden beds and a center where one could come to sit, to pray, sing or even cry if that’s what was needed. Most of the “altarscapes” I have created with people have been impermanent, so this one was especially exciting because it was going to be living and not taken down at the end of the day. This “medicine wheel garden” was created by many hands picking up compost, loading up logs for the beds, mulching, and finally planting.
The housed volunteers came out every Sunday to work alongside the residents on various projects, not just the gardens. It was a big beautiful vision by a group of housed and unhoused activists, artists and gardeners, healers, and many others. From the garden came a free clinic, then a kitchen, then a free store for the many donations coming in during this time. I should mention that this whole center, we called Cob on Wood, was not sanctioned, it was just what the residents wished for and many of us housed allies sought out ways that we could assist in this vision. It was not a sanctioned endeavor by the city of Oakland, but we captured the attention of many Oakland officials, authorities, and the press.
However, due to recent evictions by Caltrans (note: the California Department of Transportation), we’ve had to dismantle it all. People and plants were evicted from this Caltrans land. It was a devastating experience for the residents. I and others dismantled the living altar gardens and surrounding garden beds, potted up all the plants and bagged up bags and bags of rich soil cultivated and nurtured for the past 18 months by the residents and allies. This garden had been thriving and healthy. I had witnessed the residents of this community come together and build deep bonds with the many volunteers that came out to help each week.
It had become a revived ecosystem for birds, worms, bugs, butterflies. We had prayed, planted, nurtured, healed and sang songs in this space. On the last morning when I was bagging up more soil with volunteers, I took off my gloves for a moment and scooped up the soil with my bare hands, and in that moment profound memories of all the joy I had seen in the people who built that sacred space came flooding back. This soil essentially didn’t want me to forget what effect this project had had on others. It was letting me know that I needed to remember these stories and the people who came to contribute to its beauty.
Those stories can live on in this soil that can be carried forward, to a new site to be imagined in our hearts and minds. I was uplifted by this channeled message and shared this with all of the folks shoveling soil. I invited them to circle with me in the center and touch the soil and give thanks and remember the stories here. With tears of immense connection, I shared this message. We are not defeated as long as we remember who we are and what’s really important. The relationships we have formed were a crucial part of this creation and are not for naught. They live inside of us and will guide us to the next creations we construct together to touch many other hearts.
PS: Is there a project on the horizon you’re really looking forward to?
VR: I have a couple of projects that I’m dreaming up from my experiences, building other gardens anchored on some secured land where the housing and community are not threatened by evictions but rather stewarded by those who live there. Some communities are working to secure land for tiny home villages in Oakland for the unhoused, and I would love to collaborate on bringing sacred garden spaces into these projects. I recently met two city employees working to provide resources to the houseless communities, and they were very interested in my coming to do these sacred garden projects in other houseless communities that they are supporting. This would seem to be a most timely partnership in the making.
Another project is a vision of someday hosting multiple altarscapes, much like the four I brought to this year’s Bioneers. I can envision many of these throughout a large space where each one would carry specific healing themes and intentions. Each altarscape would represent a group or issue that needs healing or raised awareness, such as homelessness, gun violence, or MMIW (note: “murdered and missing Indigenous women”), which was one of my altarscape themes this year at Bioneers. I would invite individuals and organizations working on an issue such as social justice, climate change, peace, immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, etc. to collaborate with me. I think it would be a meaningful blessing for those engaged in their particular arena of social/global activism to be able to co-create their own altars of importance.
The project launched at Bioneers was in a way an initiation of this idea of having multiple altars. There is tremendous opportunity to collaborate with others in this creative and interactive healing endeavor. It’s been humbling to witness the many hands and hearts who come to create, heal, grieve and celebrate life in this way, together.
Another project on my bucket list is a mandala book. I want to share the many stories that have come from this work over the years, before I forget them. There are many ways to convey the stories, told by me or by people sharing themselves. I recently have been inspired to find a way to create an interactive children’s book as well. I just need time to develop this and secure resources to make it happen.
PS: What role do you hope your art will play in the world?
VR: “Sacred Activism” is what I call this work now. I introduced it in SNAG magazine this year. I had invited Tara Trudell, an artist, activist and bead-maker to collaborate with me on this healing, post COVID issue of the magazine. The “Call to Sacred Action” was first born when the murder of George Floyd shook the world. I had a moment of breaking down in tears, in my car at a stop light when this news was freshly being delivered all over the world. I realized that if I could somehow spread the word of earth mandala creations all over the globe, that this would be a prayer and powerful medicine to help transform the hate and destruction taking place. I thought that if we can plant trees to offset carbon emissions or have a day of peace or a walk for a cause, then why couldn’t we have a day for making earth mandalas to heal our hearts, and our communities? What a prayerful act of love it would be to tip the scales to a higher vibration of existence and change.
I have called this work “Sacred Activism” since that time. Back then I had a vision of earth mandalas all over the globe for the purpose of healing the illnesses of our world, to offset the negativity and all that is out of balance with our society. I don’t have a social media presence, but I tried to create an Instagram account dedicated to this work in the hopes that this “Call to Sacred Action” that Tara and I launched would begin to take off. We trust it will over time and with a shout out at every opportunity. We asked people to share photos of their sacred actions and their earth mandalas or prayer beads. More about this is in the magazine.#sacredaction4healing#makearthaltars #prayerbeadpoweringup
PS: When things feel challenging and seemingly insurmountable, what keeps you going?
VR: A few things keep me going, especially my prayers to “Divine Spirit” or “Sacred-Source.” I also give thanks for the day, the morning, my breath, my body, my mind, all that I have that I am grateful for. Gratitude practices/prayers can bring me back into balance. I also take a walk to the marina and sit on the boulders to meditate just before the sun sets. It’s a sweet time for me to speak to my ancestors and the elementals. Sometimes a seal will pop up out of the water to say hello.
PS: How does that connection to the sacred influence your work?
VR: The sacred is my guide and has been from the very first moment this work was ignited in me. It’s deeply connecting and opens the channels to magic and wonder. It’s a responsibility that humbles me to carry the work with reverence for life and intentionality—the prayers are the invitation to the sacred.
PS: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
VR: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to express my process. Much of what I do is for that specific moment, so having the opportunity to put words to what I do is another form of expression. I like to do and make with purpose. The work is really for those who have been in those spaces, engaged with me, uncovering the unspoken and mystical parts of the piece itself. It doesn’t completely translate to photos; you have to be there to experience its true gifts and healing energy, like a ceremony.
These earth-altars have been kind of spiritual friends or guides in my life. They’ve shown me grace, presence, joy and peace, like that feather on a stick. The true potency of this work is people doing it together. It’s been a truly humbling experience to witness how it touches people in deep ways, whether they participate in its creation, offer their blessings in song, dance and prayer or help with the final dismantling phase. Over the years I have realized that this container is much larger than me, and I felt a calling to bring it out into the world, sharing it with many others so they might experience and partake in its mystery. I’m so grateful to be a steward of this sacred work for all of these years, and I believe it to be an ancient practice that is not unique to me, but one that we all have agency to discover.
Keepunumuk creates a new Thanksgiving story that puts Native peoples—and nature—at its heart. Two children from the Wampanoag tribe learn how Weeâchumun (corn) persuaded the First Peoples to help the newcomers (the Pilgrims) survive in their new home. It is written by a team of Native creators, including Bioneers Indigeneity Programme co-founder Alexis Bunten (Unangan and Yup’ik), Danielle Greendeer (Mashpee Wampanoag and lead author), Anthony Perry (Chickasaw) and Garry Meeches, Sr (Anishinaabe and illustrator).
The concept for Keepunumuk began with a “Decolonized Thanksgiving” meal that Alexis organized in 2016. to begin educating Americans about the truth behind the holiday. You can read about that first event here. The event went on to become a campaign to decolonize Thanksgiving.
After watching an online conversation between Alexis and Chris Newell about the myths surrounding the Thanksgiving story, Anthony reached out to Alexis with the idea of writing a children’s picture book about the first Thanksgiving from a Native American perspective. A picture book for the Thanksgiving story would create a new “default” story for younger children and challenge the narrative assumed by many older people. It would, ultimately, reshape the Thanksgiving story and how America sees itself.
As Native Americans whose ancestors were not part of the tribe that saved the Pilgrims, Alexis and Anthony knew they needed to get free, prior and informed consent from the Wampanoag tribe(s) before writing their book. Danielle, a friend of Alexis, is deeply involved in Wampanoag traditions and cultural revitalization in her ancestral homeland. She excitedly agreed to co-author Keepunumuk as the lead author.
Below, we ask Alexis Bunten about the book and the real story of Thanksgiving.
Why is this story important right now?
Alexis: We are in the middle of a serious cultural shift to recognize and respect the Indigenous peoples of this continent as real, living peoples and not just victims of the past. This is evident in the removal of professional sports teams’ racist mascots and more accurate Native American representation in the media than ever before. Thanksgiving is most Americans’ only exposure to Native peoples. Until recently, Native representation has been largely controlled by non-Natives, and it is replete with negative stereotypes.
The false narrative taught in schools of friendly Indians who rescued the Pilgrims and then quietly disappeared afterward is a lie meant to erase the genocide of Native peoples. Over the past two and a half years, we have all witnessed a historic awakening in America. No one can deny the white supremacist history of our nation that manifests itself in brutal police killings of innocent Black people, the caging of Central American child refugees at our southern border, and the uninvestigated murders of Indigenous women. It is time for this story to come to light.
We need more Native American representation in children’s literature that is written by Native Americans, because much of what’s out there is filled with stereotypes. It’s offensive. It’s not fair to children.
What do you hope readers will take away from this book?
Alexis: I hope that it inspires children and their parents – if they are non-Native – to develop an appreciation for Indigenous cultures, to learn whose ancestral territories they live on, and to learn about the cultures and traditions of those tribes. For Native readers, I hope that it instills pride in the children and encourages families to participate in their own cultures if they are not already doing so. For everyone, I hope it leads to a critical examination of how we live our lives. Are we connected with our grandparents? Are we growing our own foods? Are we respecting the plants and animals around us, taking care of the Earth, and taking care of each other?
What do you hope Keepunumuk will do in terms of changing the public narrative around Thanksgiving and about Native Americans in general?
Alexis: I think it will play an important role in a larger, Native-led movement to educate the American public about Native Peoples, our histories, and the contributions that we make to this country. It’s very important to underscore that this book is reaching children. I strongly believe that children are the pathway to the social change their parents learn. When children learn, their parents learn. For children who read this book as their first exposure to Thanksgiving, Keepunumuk will shape their baseline understanding of the Wampanoag peoples and all Native Americans by extension.
What can Americans do to be more conscious about Thanksgiving?
Alexis: One way to decolonize our minds is by learning about Indigenous relationships to the land and our interdependent obligations to the plants and animals we share it with. Instead of thinking of land, animals, and other humans as things to exploit, we should relate to them as interdependent relatives who help us to thrive. We can put this into action by making sure that we are thankful for all these things at Thanksgiving.
We should also be aware that most of what we eat at the Thanksgiving table are foods Indigenous to the Americas. We can acknowledge that the turkey, squash, corn, and cranberries on the traditional menu are from this continent. Eating these traditional foods sourced in organic, non-GMO, and non-factory-farmed ways is a way to decolonize your diet while making more sustainable choices for the Earth’s health.
It’s easy to introduce these traditions into your household for Thanksgiving without giving up football. All you have to do is learn about the real history of Thanksgiving by reading with your children, give thanks for the Native sources of the food you are about to eat, and make more sustainable (and more delicious) ingredient choices. If you want to learn more, I encourage you to visit Bioneers’ Decolonizing Thanksgiving collection, where you can read more articles about how to decolonize your thanksgiving, access culturally accurate curriculums, and find more resources.
What kinds of curriculum and extension activities can teachers use to accompany Keepunumuk?
Alexis: We have curriculum and activities for informal and formal learning spaces for grades pre-K through high school.
Our writing team included some curricular extensions for younger students in the back matter of Keepunumuk that can be used in the classroom or at home. These include:
This newsletter features several pieces that discuss the rising threats to democracy and civil liberties both here in the U.S. and globally. It is, of course, going out days before our midterm elections. As deeply flawed as our political system is, voting is still one of the main leverage points for citizens to have at least a chance of having an impact, so, above all else, PLEASE VOTE!
That said, it is crucially important to remember that the efforts we are engaged in on the ecological, social justice and human rights fronts are longterm struggles for the soul of our civilization. Yes, several of the crises we face are existential and impacting us intensely right now, but the work of shifting the core values of a society can take centuries, and there will invariably be periods of progress and periods of reaction and regression.
It is a delicate balancing act: We must stay engaged in fighting for what’s right in the moment, but we must also understand that seeding new values and worldviews is an endeavor with a long arc, so we must not let temporary setbacks (no matter how alarming) unmoor us at our core. We must work hard in the here-and-now, but stay calm and centered and keep a positive spirit (no matter the outcome of these elections) as we continue the long march to the eventual emergence of a far saner and more compassionate world.
This week, we’re proud to share words and ideas from Vanessa Daniel, Lawrence Rosenthal, Thom Hartmann, Stacy Mitchell, Maurice BP-Weeks, and others in discussions about the history of the U.S. political system and how it might be remedied.
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Free Speech or Money? Driving Representative Justice through Democracy Reform
Here in the United States, the work to achieve true equality and equity continues—it’s not a linear pursuit, of course, as some gains are made while others are lost. The journey is inherently fraught and can feel daunting. Still, through democracy reform efforts, people are doing the work to take us toward a society that genuinely embraces the core values of liberty, equality, and justice. Here are a few critical reforms gaining traction now, and ways you can get involved.
Why the Reproductive Justice Movement Must Be Intersectional
“The traditional reproductive health and rights movement invited people in through one doorway—the struggle to achieve the legal right to abortion and contraception. That doorway made a lot of sense for middle and upper-class white cisgender women, but for the broader population, including low-income white women, other doorways are necessary. For example, some young people want to focus on comprehensive Sex Ed or on the importance of reducing stigma and school pushout for teen parents.
Many Native women are saying that abortion is important but not our top issue, which is the fact that so many folks on our land are experiencing reproductive health cancers from toxins and uranium mining, and pollution. For many women of color entering through surviving the U.S. prison industrial complex, key issues include stopping the shackling of incarcerated pregnant women during labor and delivery, the conditions of their confinement, and stopping the pipeline from poor communities into prisons. There are a whole host of issues requiring a broadening of the movement.” —Vanessa Daniel
Fascism in the USA: Could It Happen and How Can We Avoid It?
“Another important factor in all this is how groups coalesce around certain identities. Identity can be formed when we feel we are part of a specific group with shared characteristics, and that identity can be intensified when we feel that our group has been oppressed or kept down. What people call the identity politics of the left generally involves movements in which women, minority populations, gay people, etc., groups that have historically been disenfranchised, demand a seat at the table.
The identity formation in the populist right is the opposite: they feel that their seat at the table is being taken away, that they are being dispossessed. That second identity formation mechanism is more likely to lead you to define yourself in intense opposition to an enemy, i.e., the ones who are taking your power away. The most significant political philosopher (and he was brilliant) of Naziism was Carl Schmitt, and he argued that the first act in politics is to define the enemy, and this has proven to be a key factor in right-wing politics.” —Lawrence Rosenthal
PODCAST: Democracy v. Plutocracy: Behind Every Great Fortune Lies a Great Crime
In this first part of a two-part program, we travel back and forth in time to explore the battle between democracy and plutocracy that goes back to the very founding of the United States.
The extreme concentration of corporate power and the prevalence of monopoly are indeed inarguable in our history and currently. If the solution is once again to, metaphorically, throw the tea in the harbor, what does that look like in the 21st Century? In today’s new Gilded Age of rule by the wealthy, rising anti-trust movements are challenging the stranglehold of corporate monopoly.
How to Follow Your Congressional and Local Elections in 2022
From competitiveness ratings to campaign contributions, there’s a lot to follow in local and down-ballot elections. Learn how to decipher election coverage.
Here in the United States, the work toward true equality and equity continues—not a linear pursuit, of course, as gains are made while others are lost. The journey is inherently fraught and can feel daunting. Still, through democracy reform efforts, people are doing the work toward a society that realizes the values of liberty, equality, and justice. Here are a few critical reforms gaining traction now, and ways you can get involved.
Free Speech or Money? Undoing Unlimited Political Spending
In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled in the Citizens United v FEC case that any limitations on campaign spending constituted an infringement of first amendment rights, arguing that if money can be used to purchase “speech,” then money and free speech are indistinguishable. The last in a series of Supreme Court rulings codifying the idea that “money is speech,” Citizens United effectively disabled states, voters, and legislators from creating or enforcing any laws to limit the amount of money individuals, organizations, or corporations can spend to influence elections. While direct campaign contributions are regulated through PACs (political action committees) and Super PACs, individuals and organizations are able to contribute unlimited money to parties, candidates, and elected officials.
In the years since the Citizens United ruling, political spending has skyrocketed from $1.8 billion spent on the 2008 presidential election to $14 billion spent in 2020. Donors can conceal their political spending through Super PACs. These so-called “dark money” groups are untraceable, and foreign entities use these spending loopholes to influence U.S. elections.
A tiny, elite group makes up the majority of political spending — for example, the 10 most generous individual donors and their spouses have injected $1.2 billion into federal elections over the last decade. By enabling those with the most money to buy the most “speech,” the Supreme Court has created a fundamental imbalance in our ability to participate meaningfully in the political process.
Be part of the solution:Americans across the political spectrum agree that money in politics is a problem and disagree with the Supreme Court’s assertion that money is the same as free speech. One group leading the way toward a solution is American Promise, a non-partisan citizen-led nonprofit organization working to pass a constitutional amendment to enable limits on money in politics. American Promise is organizing an effort to overturn Citizen’s United through a constitutional amendment since the decision cannot be undone by legislation alone. Americans have used amendments to overturn six past Supreme Court decisions, including decisions that upheld slavery and denied women the right to vote. For an amendment to pass, it must be passed in Congress and then ratified by two-thirds of the states (38 states); so far, 22 states have passed legislation in support of a constitutional amendment to enable limits on money in politics. You can join the movement here.
Who Counts? Fighting Racist Voting Restrictions
The right to vote has been fought for and won by marginalized groups across U.S. history, yet that right is continually under threat. Following Supreme Court decisions that undermined the strength of the Voting Rights Act (a 1965 act passed by Congress that prohibited race-based voting discrimination), in 2021, 19 states enacted 33 laws that made it more difficult for some Americans to vote. In another threat to voter integrity, both major political parties have increasingly engaged in partisan gerrymandering, a process by which voting districts are redefined in order to favor a particular political party.
Be part of the solution: The Poor People’s Campaign is a national nonprofit organization leading a campaign for democracy and justice. Among many justice-based priorities, the Poor People’s Campaign is working to further demands around fair and anti-racist voting practices, including “full restoration and expansion of the Voting Rights Act, an end to racist gerrymandering and redistricting, early registration of 17-year-olds, automatic voting registration at the age of 18, early voting in every state, same-day registration, the enactment of Election Day as a holiday, and a verifiable paper record.” The organization also encourages us to join them in demanding that voting rights of currently and formerly incarcerated people be restored, and that polling places be adequately funded to allow full participation of the electorate.
How Could You Think That? Unraveling the Polarized Mindset
It’s nearly impossible to avoid the narrative: Americans are more divided than ever before; we don’t trust or like each other; things are so bad we are headed for a second Civil War. According to recent surveys, about 40 percent of each party now considers the other side “downright evil.” These partisan divides are driven by hyperbolic political ads, self-reinforcing social media circles, and a 24-hour news cycle that demands ever-escalating clickbait.
The reality is we aren’t as split as the mainstream narrative portrays. Political polarization exists, but it’s driven by misunderstandings and inaccurate assumptions about the beliefs of the “other side.” One recent large-scale study found “people often exaggerate political differences and negative feelings of those on the opposite side of the political divide, and this misperception can be reduced by informing them of the other side’s true feelings.” Other research focuses on the “perception gap”: Democrats and Republicans imagine almost twice as many of their political opponents hold views they consider “extreme” than actually do. Even on our most controversial issues, Americans are less divided than most of us think.
There are also really important issues on which a vast majority of Americans agree, such as universal health care and a living wage – policies that would a tangible difference in the lives of most Americans.
We can each make individual progress on bridging divides: consume less partisan media, avoid sharing inflammatory or derisive materials, talk to one another, and try to find commonalities. But civility alone will not resolve our deep challenges, as More in Common writes: “Our analysis reveals a powerful polarization ecosystem that thrives off of outrage and division. Traditional media, social media platforms, friend networks, political candidates, and consultants benefit from dividing Americans, exaggerating disagreements, and inciting conflict.”
Several organizations are committed to helping people bridge partisan divides and create a future where we value one another’s perspectives and find shared solutions.
Be part of the solution:
The Millennial Action Project works to strengthen democracy and pursue justice by “working directly with our nation’s leading young policymakers on both a national and state level to bridge the partisan divide and lead a new era of collaborative governance.”
BridgeUSA is a youth-led nonprofit organization that creates spaces on high school and college campuses for open discussion between students about political issues. BridgeUSA believes political division is one of our biggest challenges, and that today’s youth are being taught that tribalism is better than unity and that having conversations across differences is impossible. By engaging America’s youth in constructive discussions, BridgeUSA aims to equip the next generation of leaders with the skills necessary to navigate conflict, find solutions across differences, and build bridges in their communities.
The overturning of Roe v Wade and the failure to codify rights to abortion as legislation symbolize a slide backward for the progress that decades of organizing efforts made toward reproductive freedom and justice. Amid the anger and fear created by this new reality, there is also a vibrant movement emerging to ensure women have access to reproductive health while coming up with strategies to finally embed this right into legislation.
But as Vanessa Daniel discusses here, there are also aspects of the reproductive justice movement that are important to emphasize as we move forward. Historically, the U.S. government has targeted poor people (mostly women) – and poor women of color in particular – for eugenic sterilization. This hidden history is beginning to emerge in some academic and activist corners, though as I detailed in my documentary, A Dangerous Idea: Eugenics, Genetics, and the American Dream, these efforts diminished after WWII. On the contrary, rates of sterilization rose exponentially in the 1950s and particularly during the 1960s.
The Nixon administration lifted a ban on the use of government assistance to pay for sterilization procedures but never sent guidelines to the doctors in hundreds of federal clinics around the country to ensure this new rule wasn’t abused. As a result, many doctors took it upon themselves to determine who would and wouldn’t have children. Up to half a million mostly Indigenous and African American women and girls were sterilized without their knowledge or consent, and were coerced with threats to withhold federal assistance if they didn’t agree to an operation. No one has been held accountable. A lawsuit by the Southern Poverty Law Center helped to stop the second wave of sterilizations in the U.S., but abuses have continued in some prisons and hospitals.
Another aspect of the reproductive justice movement to understand is how this multifaceted movement has evolved over time to protect women and girls from these kinds of human rights violations. So many people who get involved come from very different experiences and with a wide range of knowledge of the movement’s history.
I spoke with Vanessa Daniel about these and other topics. This is an excerpt from our interview.
Vanessa Daniel
VANESSA: So reproductive justice is really defined by a few key variables: one is the leadership. The movement was founded by black women, and it’s a little over 20 years ago now that the term reproductive justice was coined. It’s now a multi-racial movement, and there are many white women and genderqueer and transgender people of all races who are part of it, but the leadership of women of color remains predominant and unique, I think, as far as social movements go in this country.
The second element is that it’s multi-issue. The traditional reproductive health and rights movement really invited people in through one doorway, which is around abortion rights, the legal right to abortion specifically, and then, to some extent, contraception. Reproductive justice groups have said those doorways make a lot of sense in terms of the top priorities for middle and upper-class white cisgender women. But for the broader set of people, including low-income white women, people actually want to enter the movement through different doorways. Some young people want to enter in through comprehensive sex ed or through the importance of reducing stigma and school pushout for teen parents.
You have a whole swathe of people who are entering around environmental issues. Native women are saying abortion is an important issue for us, but not our top issue; our top issue is the fact that our aunties and cousins and so many folks on our land are actually experiencing reproductive health cancers from toxins and uranium mining and pollution. You have many women of color entering through surviving the U.S. prison industrial complex with issues around stopping the shackling of pregnant women during labor and delivery who are incarcerated, conditions of confinement, stopping the pipeline into prisons. There are a whole host of issues.
The separation of families at the border is a reproductive justice issue that echoes a legacy that we’ve seen in so many communities of color, whether it’s the separation of black families from their children on the auction blocks in slavery to theft of native children who were taken into mission schools and abused, causing generations of trauma, to the internment of Japanese and the separation of families through deportation and exclusion acts in this country. It is a very recent manifestation of a very long-standing American tradition in fact in this country, and it’s a reproductive justice issue.
The fact that black women still suffer maternal mortality rates that are four times that of white women in this country is a reproductive justice issue. Birthing justice, the ability to access midwifery care, doula care. So this full spectrum of things.
Reproductive justice has shown and proved that if you create more doorways for people to open to enter the movement, more people come in, you have a stronger grassroots base of support, and you have a base that actually has the strength to win against the very united opposition that we are facing, which is very lockstep anti-LGBT, anti-immigrant, anti-abortion access, white supremacist. We need a very diverse movement, and as Audre Lorde said, there’s no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives. And that really is the ethos of reproductive justice.
STEPHANIE: Are you seeing more awareness about the different experiences that white women and women of color have had historically when it comes to reproductive justice? How are these multifaceted organizing efforts going?
VANESSA: That’s an excellent question. I think that one of the fundamental things to understand about the different experience of white women and women of color is that historically, patriarchy has exerted itself on white women’s bodies with a pressure to have children, to procreate white children who are “desirable” additions to the population. So it makes sense that for white women, priority issues would be the ability to actually have the agency to choose not to do that, and so thus very focused on access to birth control, on the right to abortion, the right to sterilization if they choose. That’s fine and that makes sense in that context.
With the exception of what was forced child-bearing of black women during slavery in order to create more people that were considered property under slavery, women of color who can bear children have been seen as producing children that are “undesirable.” So there’s been a pressure to control and suppress that reproduction. Thus you see forced and coerced sterilization and those types of things. You also see the way in which our children, even children who are born, the virulent attack through state violence and racism on their ability to live and survive – and in the case of many groups – even make it past the age of 20 is a real factor. So for women of color, it makes sense that reproductive justice must include the right not to have a child, but also the right to have children, the right to parent them in safe environments.
So part of what’s happened in race relations is because of the power differential – that white women have more wealth just as a group comparatively to women of color, have more access to power, that in institutions like the one where I worked, in philanthropy – the priorities that white women identify as at the top have been what’s resourced, what’s defined as credible and important, is to the exclusion of many of the issues that impact women of color. So you have white women feminist organizations going onto reservations and saying come and join us and help us in the fight for abortion to native women who are literally dying because of uranium mining that is causing rampant reproductive cancers in their communities.
There is a lot of work that needs to be done in the feminist movement to mend the Achilles heel of race that has divided us in ways that make it harder for us to win for anybody. There’s more work happening now to try to heal that. There are many white women who are doing a lot of their own internal work to undo white supremacy in their own consciousness and to stand in solidarity with women of color, and not just verbally.
Like my good friend and colleague, Mia Birdsong, who says you cannot call yourself my friend and do nothing to dismantle the systems that are trying to kill me and my children. So it’s not about saying the right things. It’s about, do you actually stand up. Are you standing up when black people are being murdered by the police? And some of them are standing up, and more of them need to.
STEPHANIE: When I was working on my film, I followed the work of a group that was seeking justice for women who’d been sterilized in California against their will. Can you talk a little bit about that history and whether that human rights issue is coming up in the movement, and if there’s a concern that it will continue, particularly for women who are incarcerated?
VANESSA: There’s a long history of forced and coerced sterilization. In recent history, we have Puerto Rico, where close to one-third of the child-bearing population was sterilized to the extent that they shut down many schools there because there weren’t enough children to attend. There’s an incredible documentary called La Operación that documents that. Many Native American women have been sterilized against their will, many disabled people who have been sterilized, and in California, some lawsuits have resulted in settlements, though there are also cases in which nothing has been done. But I think we need to look at that as part of the broader constellation of ways that the bodies of people who can get pregnant are controlled and where our constitutional rights are taken away.
Reproductive justice really provides a framework to think about returning that agency to all of us in the many ways that it shows up and that these are not different things. Oftentimes we think, oh, the woman who has kids is different than the person who gets sterilized, is different than the person who’s denied access to contraceptive care. In fact, these issues are all interconnected ways that the bodies of people who can get pregnant – and I include women and transgender and genderqueer folks in that – are really controlled by patriarchy, by white supremacist systems. So we need to see all of that together and work against it.
When we think about the right to birth, and the right to birth in the way that we feel is empowering – whether that’s in a hospital, whether that’s having a midwife or a doula, whether that’s having traditional cultural practices that are important to whether a woman is in a native community or Afro-diasporic community – that is part of and connected to the right and ability to access abortion that’s safe and affordable.
The other thread that connects all of those is the way in which women of color in particular, and people of color who can get pregnant are disproportionately impacted by barriers to accessing those things. We know that the sterilizations that have occurred have disproportionately impacted those groups, and that is who disproportionately was in the California prisons who were impacted by that.
STEPHANIE: There was also the case in the mid-90s when doctors were pushing long-term birth control on young women of color, some were coerced into being guinea pigs for various experimental drugs, some were bribed. It was only through women fighting back that this program was canceled, right?
VANESSA: Yes,there was a group of young women of color in the Bronx who were organizing around this. They said they would go to the doctor for appointments, and doctors were very aggressively marketing long-acting contraceptives to them. Of course, we want choices, like a menu of options that may include some of those long-acting methods, but it is a problem when that is being pushed over other methods. There should be a neutral delivery of the information, the benefits, and the risks to all these different methods, so the patient can make an informed decision for themselves. It shouldn’t be marketing because of money from foundations or pharmaceutical companies or indicators of success that are kind of driving towards one method or the other.
There’s a long history, I think, in communities of color of not only aggressive marketing of these things, but of some of these products being tested on our communities, treating them as guinea pigs. The original birth control pill was tested on women in Puerto Rico. I think it was about 50 or 60 times the strength of the pill now that we know to be safe. The same thing with the HPV vaccine. There was a campaign to get the CDC to cease and desist from requiring this for young girls who were immigrating to come into the country. Coercion has to be taken out of the equation.
STEPHANIE:What is an example of a recent success story when it comes to a coalition working together to address a specific reproductive justice issue?
VANESSA: One example is the Reproductive Health Equity Act in Oregon. The way that this was won was a set of people of color-led organizations from reproductive justice, and other social justice sectors ended up getting involved in what was a historically all-white coalition for reproductive rights in the state of Oregon, and they lobbied very hard within that coalition that there be a bill that would be inclusive of the full spectrum of reproductive healthcare, and public funding for it, and it would also be inclusive of all groups, including – and this was a very radical proposition – undocumented immigrants and transgender, gender non-conforming people.
They got a lot of pushback, saying there’s no way that we can move this through with those groups, we need to take those groups out of it because it is going to be easier and more palatable to pass, it won’t be as threatening. They were able to create a multi-racial coalition to have a conversation and come to the agreement that they were going to leave these groups in. As a result, there were other coalitions in the state that cared about immigrants, that cared about the LGBT community, that really cared about expansive safety nets, who then galvanized along with them and created even more momentum for it to pass. And there was enough momentum that even when they tried to repeal it a year later, it couldn’t be repealed.
So I think there’s a real lesson here. Oregon is not the most conservative of the states, but it’s definitely not the most progressive of states. There’s a strong white supremacist thread in Oregon, dating all the way back to when it was founded, and there are a lot of issues in that state. But successes like this are possible.
It is possible for us to wrestle with the work and stand together. I think that that is work that all of us have to do, even in communities of color, looking to the groups that are marginalized and actually fighting for solutions that protect them as well. For example, for myself, I know that as a queer South Asian woman, I know that if black transgender women of color are free in this country, I’m definitely going to be free. So I think if you can support solutions that allow the most vulnerable and the most marginalized populations to have safety, have stability, to thrive, to have dignity, then that is the way to lift all boats. In fact, sometimes looking to those populations for some of the solutions is very smart, because many times the people that live their lives at the sharpest crosshairs of race, class, gender, colonization, oppression see with greater clarity than anyone the path that we can all travel to get to freedom. I think we see that, even in the case of black women in this country.
Black women are really unparalleled in terms of demographic groups for their moral and political clarity. I mean, they vote down hate more consistently at the ballot box and are clearer and more progressive on most issues than any other demographic group. So I think there’s also a way in which all of us – white women, white people, other people of color – also can lean in and open our ears towards the folks that we should be putting at the center who have a lot of wisdom about how to lead us out of this.
There is so much brilliant work happening across the country. There’s an opportunity for folks to become a part of building a multi-racial community where we can practice what it means to heal a lot of the core wounds that were part of what this country was founded on.
NOTE: This is an excerpted and edited version of the transcript of a session held at the Bioneers Conference in May 2022, in which Bioneers Senior Producer J.P. Harpignies interviewed Professor Lawrence Rosenthal.
Lawrence Rosenthal, Ph.D., is Chair of the Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies, which he founded in 2009. His work has appeared in numerous publications including the Nation, the International New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Foreign Policy, and many others. He co-edited Steep: The Precipitous Rise of the Tea Party and The New Nationalism and the First World War; and is the author of Empire of Resentment: Populism’s Toxic Embrace of Nationalism.
J.P. Harpignies
J.P. HARPIGNIES: A very influential text in my life has been The Art of War, the oldest known manual of military strategy, attributed to a 6th Century BCE Chinese general, Sun Tzu. One of the main overarching themes of that work is that if you want to be successful in a conflict, you need to: know yourself, know the opponent as well as yourself, and know the terrain. Knowing yourself means having a really good sense of your own strengths, weaknesses and capacities. Knowing the opponent as well as yourself means having the same deep understanding as regards to your adversary, and knowing the terrain in a military sense means knowing the actual physical terrain, but in a political rather than a military context, it means understanding deeply the ideological, cultural, economic and historical features of the nation or region in which a political struggle is being waged.
And I feel that the progressive left in this country has in general done an extremely bad job of understanding the right, of understanding the ideological opposition. And that may be one reason that we seem to find ourselves on what currently appears to be a sort of slow conveyor belt to authoritarianism.
One of the most important organizations attempting to remedy that lack of understanding is the Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies led by Professor Lawrence Rosenthal. It’s the only such center anywhere in any major American university. Professor Rosenthal founded it in 2009, and unfortunately, his area of expertise is in great demand at the moment.
Obviously, the risk of a right-wing takeover is on so many people’s minds, and it’s being widely discussed in progressive and centrist media, but one problem is that even though so many historians and pundits are talking about it, I’m not seeing very many genuinely realistic approaches to preventing it.
But Lawrence, what drew you to devoting so much of your intellectual life to the study of the right?
Lawrence Rosenthal
LAWRENCE ROSENTHAL: Troy Duster, a brilliant thinker who has had a great influence on me, says: “Scratch a body of work and you’ll find autobiography.” To some extent that’s true in this case. I spent some time living in Italy as a young man, and I was really interested in the place. I became struck by the fact that this country I loved, an immensely humane place where I really enjoyed life and felt at home, had invented fascism (it’s an Italian word).
Back in the 1920s, they had dressed in black, gotten in the back of pickup trucks and gone into the countryside, lynched socialist mayors, poured castor oil down the throats of union members and destroyed whatever socialist infrastructure existed. I wanted to try to understand the point of view of the people who had done this, and I continue to be motivated by wanting to understand what’s going on in these sorts of movements.
JP: Can you talk a little bit more about Italy, including what’s happening there today and what it might tell us about our own politics, since that Italian experience was so formative for your work.
LAWRENCE: In Italy, from the end of World War II to the early ‘90s, there were mostly two dominant parties, the Christian Democrats on the center-right and the Communists (which was somewhat similar to post-war France), but that somewhat stable decades-old dynamic started to break down in the 80s, especially after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and Silvio Berlusconi, a charismatic if vulgar, hustling businessman who was the richest man in Italy and owned nearly all the private TV in the country, emerged in the early ‘90s, putting together a populist political party, Forza Italia, that filled the political void. There are many ways in which he foreshadowed Trump: blatant lying, womanizing, the love of wealth, shameless corruption, etc.
But Berlusconi’s brand of populism, starting in roughly 2010 with the rise of immigration as a major issue in Italy and Europe in general, mutated into a more intense nationalist populism, and new actors with closer historical ties to fringe fascist parties emerged, including Matteo Salvini, who was rabidly anti-immigration and prevented ships with desperate migrants from landing at ports when he was Interior Minister. (Editor’s note: and now, since this discussion was held, another political figure with ties to historically fascist parties, Giorgia Meloni, has become Italy’s first far-right leader since Benito Mussolini)
That transition in the thrust of populism was mirrored in this country, so that the populism that had this huge burst during the Obama years, as manifested in the Tea Party, had a definite racist aspect but was above all defined by a sort of anti-government regulation, Koch brothers-style of libertarian capitalism, similar to Berlusconi’s free-wheeling, free market, anything goes to get rich ideology. That mutated into a much more “America First” strain of nationalism far more focused on rabid opposition to immigrants that Trump capitalized on and rode into the White House.
That transition of contemporary populism to a far more intensely nationalistic form has, in fact, been happening all over the world: in Turkey, India, Hungary, Brazil, Russia, etc. The triumph of Brexit in Britain was part of the same international zeitgeist, and it has had the wind in its sails for the last 10 years or so.
JP: Why do you think that transition occurred? Why did so many working-class people who used to vote for the left in Europe or Democrats in the U.S. or the Congress Party in India become rabid nationalist populists?
LAWRENCE: There are basically two points of view on this rise. One is economic and the other is what you could call cultural. A huge study of the 2016 election run by the Gallup organization that spoke to 80,000 people discovered that the likelihood of being a Trump voter in 2016 was directly proportional to the absence of immigrants in your life or anywhere around you. I call it the imagined or “imaginary other.”
On the economics side of things, yes, there has been an increasing immiseration of the American working class and increasingly the middle class as well, since about 1973, and that wave crested and broke in 2008 with the financial crisis, which really boosted that populism around the world. The right wing very effectively uses social media to take advantage of the vulnerability of alienated people who feel dispossessed. And their worldview seems on the surface to offer a powerful alternative to the failures of the “neo-liberal” economic system because, while one would think the economic crisis of global capitalism would boost the left, this populist worldview had an element the left lacked: intense resentment.
That is why I called my book Empire of Resentment. The motivation of this rising movement, which Trump understood, is above all resentment, which is anger, but anger with a direction. It’s anger that’s directed at those you perceive as being above you, those you perceive as an elite. It’s in contrast to contempt, which is anger that’s directed down to the people you see as lesser than yourself. And in the history of this country, resentment has been the prime mover of populist politics.
There is also a history of left populism in America, and there is some resentment toward elites on the left as well, but the resentment on the left has historically been aimed at financial elites, whereas on the right the rage is directed at cultural elites whom they perceive as people who think know better than us and are trying to tell us how we should live, and that anger seems to be sharper, more emotionally intense and easier to mobilize than anger aimed solely at economic inequality.
The fact is that the center left did not successfully mount an alternative to neo-liberalism. Bill Clinton and Obama didn’t do it, and it’s not clear to me that there was a program out there that could do it because capitalism is so deeply entrenched, but it’s extraordinary that when neo-liberalism finally confronted a truly powerful adversary, it came from the nationalist right, because there is a considerable movement on the populist right which doesn’t conform to the kind of classic Koch brothers’ populism that corporations can do no wrong, especially if those corporations are viewed as “politically correct” and parts of the snobby cultural elites.
Another element that’s really important to understand about the MAGA movement and this quality of anger is that they feel that they had the presidency, they were finally going to be able to retake control, the control that should rightfully be theirs, but they lost it, and they can only come to terms with that by believing that it was taken away from them for the benefit of immigrants and people of color. They feel that they are the ones who are victims of discrimination and are disrespected.
The sense of dispossession is fundamental, and this is where it hooks back up with economic factors. You hear them say: “I was supposed to have a job and work my whole life for decent pay, you know, and I could afford to send my kids to decent schools.” That was the implicit deal the white working class assumed was normal in this country post World War II, but the breakdown of unions, of good-paying manufacturing jobs, the evolution of global financial capitalism, all contributed to dissolving that status quo, so that sense of dispossession is really strong.
And they have a strong “zero-sum” mindset: they oppose even government programs that could help them if they perceive that they are helping “others” (people of color, immigrants, etc.) too much. Expanding those people’s rights can only be understood from the point of view of taking them away from “us,” hence the very different definitions of “freedom” on the right and left. For most of us, it’s wrong for businesses to discriminate against/refuse to serve minorities, as was the case with blacks until the 1960s and now with some businesses refusing to work on, say, gay weddings. For the right, it’s the “freedom” of business owners that is being impinged upon if they are forced to serve one and all.
And that combination of resentment against cultural elites, immigrants and “others;” economic insecurity; and that deep sense of dispossession creates a potent motivator for the most militant of responses. And one of the main triggers of their rage is their hatred of what they call “political correctness,” especially the embrace of multiculturalism and of feminism. The thought that the USA is on the way to becoming a majority-minority country (as California already is) terrifies them. That’s something that Trump has shown an extraordinary capacity to understand and to use.
JP: That raises an interesting issue: Trump got 70 million votes in the 2020 election, and it wasn’t just white working-class men. The majority of white women and roughly 30% of the Hispanic electorate also voted for Trump. This seems a little broader than just the dispossessed working class. Where is this larger base of support coming from?
LAWRENCE: It does seem improbable that so many women voted for the thrice-divorced pussy grabber. It’s even more extraordinary that he has become the darling of American evangelicals. There is a widespread belief in things that seem, from an outside point of view, deeply irrational, but a lot of the resentment around feminism and multiculturalism is rooted in (mostly white) evangelical Christianity. Obviously, Trump’s commitment to putting anti-abortionists on the Supreme Court was often sufficient to garner their support, but there is a deeper, weirder aspect to it.
They’ve kind of read Trump back into the Bible, comparing him to a couple of biblical figures—David, who was deeply flawed but saved the Jews, and King Cyrus the Babylonian non-Jew who also saved the Jews. Trump seen in this light is a bringer of deliverance in spite of his peccadillos and immorality. As with these earlier figures, God, in his mysterious ways, sometimes sends someone like that to save us.
Another important factor in all this is how groups coalesce around certain identities. Identity can be formed when we feel we are part of a specific group with shared characteristics, and that identity can be intensified when we feel that our group has been oppressed or kept down. What people call the identity politics of the left generally involves movements in which women, minority populations, gay people, etc., groups that have historically been disenfranchised, demand a seat at the table. The identity formation in the populist right is the opposite: they feel that their seat at the table is being taken away, that they are being dispossessed. That second identity formation mechanism is more likely to lead you to define yourself in intense opposition to an enemy, i.e., the ones who are taking your power away. The most significant political philosopher (and he was brilliant) of Naziism was Carl Schmitt, and he argued that the first act in politics is to define the enemy, and this has proven to be a key factor in right-wing politics.
JP: There’s been a long history of right-wing movements in America. We had Rush Limbaugh-equivalents with such figures as Father Coughlin, and Lindbergh and the America First folks in the 1930s and ‘40s were Nazi sympathizers, and we had the John Birch Society in the ‘50s. And going further back there were populist movements in the 19th Century that were often racist. What makes this particular period different? What makes this particular iteration of right-wing populism particularly pernicious in your view?
LAWRENCE: I think the answer to your question is magnitude, how big it is. The political worldview that the Trumpian right stands for these days in America has been with us in its current form at least since the 1970s, including the militia right and the Christian right, which was very powerful in the ‘90s. They had consistently been at the fringes of the Republican party, but they always had power because they were the largest coherent block in Republican primaries. The Tea Party really raised primarying to an art and they began to drive the more “moderate” (or less insanely right-wing) Republicans out of office. The MAGA movement has intensified that and pushed nearly the entire party to the far-right.
The far-right of the party was always ultimately disappointed by their leaders, by Reagan, by Bush senior, even by George W. Bush (who actually, at the time, led the most conservative administration since Calvin Coolidge). They voted for the Republican party, but they never really felt that it delivered what they wanted. For the first time, with Trump, they got the sense that they were finally getting what they wanted: unbridled rage against the “politically correct” elites and feminists and immigrants, assaults against abortion rights, etc.
And Trumpism has been uniquely successful in forging alliances between Christian nationalism, white nationalism and the anti-government right (in the Timothy McVeigh/militia movement vein) and cohering these formerly mostly fringe elements into a single movement that has taken over much of the Republican Party, especially at the state level.
JP: In a number of other countries, we’ve seen a more successful complete takeover of power by the far right, in: Hungary, Turkey, Egypt, India, China, Russia, Poland to some degree, and sadly, many other countries. And here we seem to have dodged the first bullet, but the impression I get is that we’re on this slow conveyer belt heading into more authoritarian territory. Do you think that there are sufficient antibodies in our current body politic to repel this virus?
LAWRENCE: In the largest picture, if you take, say Hungary or Russia or Weimar Germany, each of those enjoyed a brief period of liberal democracy, and each of them got dispossessed by authoritarian takeovers in about 10 to 12 years’ time, but the United States has had democratic institutions (with all their failings) for about 250 years. There’s a lot more momentum and civic infrastructure to bring down here than there had been in Hungary, Poland, or Russia. I recognize that people may be surprised to hear a note of optimism from me, but I am attempting to show some versatility.
We have in our country not only the institutions of government but the institutions of what sociologists call civil society that are very powerful. There’s some irony here in that people on the left have railed for my entire lifetime, often justifiably, about the excessive power of large corporations, but some leading American corporations under pressure from their employees and much of the public have come out against the repeal of Roe vs Wade, the murder of George Floyd, etc. Major league baseball even took the all-star game out of Atlanta last year.
I think a complete authoritarian seizure of power in this country requires a much steeper climb than elsewhere. They are certainly trying. Ron DeSantis is attempting to make Florida into a mini-Hungary. He has even gone after Disney, the largest entertainment corporation in America, and he’s gone about it in a really extraordinary way, which is that he has managed to put a bill into law in the Florida legislature which takes away the privileges of a single entity. This is very much the Viktor Orbán playbook in Hungary.
We will have to see if sufficient corporate power, calculating that its interests lie in maintaining the relative stability of liberal democracy, will resist attempts at authoritarian takeovers, but one way or another they are a major force that has to be reckoned with. Add in our still existing free press/media and the whole landscape of strong civil society organizations, and it will be tough for the far right to make all the opposition go away. It will be much tougher to take over all the levers of power than it was in, say, Poland, which had liberal institutions for only a dozen years before Kaczynski and the Law and Justice Party came to power. But there is no doubt that the game is on, and there is a really fundamental difference between blue America and the current version of red America. Samuel Alito stated in the Supreme Court’s decision on Roe that the right to abortion cannot be protected because such a right is not “deeply rooted in this nation’s history and tradition.” People in blue America have taken for granted that there is a creed, an ethic of equality at the heart of what American democracy is about, as manifested in the (obviously aspirational) language in the great documents of the 18th Century. But for Alito and the current right, it’s not the words of the Declaration of Independence that define our traditions, it’s the values and power of those who wrote it: white male Christians. That is an assertion of a fundamentally different view of what the American experiment is about.
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