Transforming Indigenous Stereotypes: Stories By Us For Us with Crystal Echo Hawk

From racist mascots, to stereotypes in national creation myths like Thanksgiving, we have always faced misrepresentation and disrespect of our cultures and identities. Cultural appropriation and commodification of our cultures is commonplace, but Native activists, artists, youth, educators, legislators and our allies are changing that reality. We are winning battles to ban racist mascots and call out negative stereotypes in the media.

This episode features Crystal Echo Hawk, an enrolled member of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma and President and CEO of IllumiNative and of Echo Hawk Consulting.

Crystal Echo Hawk (Pawnee), is the founder and Executive Director of IllumiNative, the first and only national Native-led organization focused on changing the narrative about Native peoples on a mass scale. Crystal built IllumiNative to activate a cohesive set of research-informed strategies that illuminate the voices, stories, contributions and assets of contemporary Native peoples to disrupt the invisibility and toxic stereotypes Native peoples face.

This is an episode of Indigeneity Conversations, a podcast series that features deep and engaging conversations with Native culture bearers, scholars, movement leaders, and non-Native allies on the most important issues and solutions in Indian Country. Bringing Indigenous voices to global conversations. Visit the Indigeneity Conversations homepage to learn more.

Credits

Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel

Co-Hosts and Producers: Cara Romero and Alexis Bunten

Senior Producer: Stephanie Welch

Associate Producer and Program Engineer: Emily Harris

Consulting Producer: Teo Grossman

Studio Engineers: Brandon Pinard and Theo Badashi

Tech Support: Tyson Russell

This episode’s artwork features photography by Cara Romero, Co-Director of the Bioneers Indigeneity Program as well as an award winning contemporary fine art photographer. Mer Young creates the series collage artwork.

Additional music provided by Nagamo.ca, connecting producers and content creators with Indigenous composers.

Transcript

CARA ROMERO: Hi Everyone, I’m Cara Romero and this is Indigeneity Conversations, a Native-led and curated podcast from Bioneers. I’m here with my dear friend and Co-Host.

ALEXIS BUNTEN: I’m Alexis Bunten and we have an amazing episode today that we’re really excited about.

We’re taking a look at an issue Native peoples have been working for decades to address through education, activism and social justice campaigns.

So, you probably heard recently that the baseball team, the Cleveland Indians finally changed their name to the Cleveland Guardians. This didn’t just suddenly happen overnight, of course. It happened after a really long and difficult fight by many, many people and organizations that have been driving home the point that racist stereotypes of Native peoples are really harmful, and they have very real and negative effects on our communities.

CR: And the Cleveland Pro sports team name is a really poignant example of many battles taking place across the US to get rid of Native mascots in schools and sports. Many of these of these fights are covered by the media, but they usually aren’t covered from the perspective of Native peoples.

And Mascots aren’t the only issue Native People contend with: We face ongoing racism in schools and media – misrepresentation, like stereotyping and negative perceptions about our lifestyles and our very existence. All of these misconceptions and hostile attitudes towards Native peoples lead to devastating impacts within our communities – like depression, anxiety and youth suicide. They’re all tied to these ideas of systemic racism towards Native peoples.

I had a conversation about all of these issues with Crystal Echo Hawk, the President and CEO of IllumiNative. If you haven’t heard of IllumiNative, you definitely need to check them out. They’ve been one of the key organizations working to create cross-cultural understanding of the importance of accurate and contemporary representation of Native Peoples, and how getting rid of racist stereotypes helps create positive change.

AB: Crystal is a citizen of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, and she’s just been such a mover and leader in our Native communities for at least 20 years. She’s worked with the Native American Rights Fund and she also founded and developed the Notah Begay Foundation.

In your conversation, Cara, you talked with Crystal about the work of IllumiNative, and especially about a national public polling project she designed and co-led. The report that came out of this project is called “Reclaiming Native Truth”. And as a professional researcher, I can definitely say that this report offers solid data showing how non-Natives view us.

But most importantly, it shows that when we have control over our own representations, that we can and do shift the dominant narrative…

Crystal is such an inspiration to me, I know you agree with me, Cara. We’re both total fangirls of hers so let’s get into the interview.

CR: Crystal, thank you so much for being here. We’re all fan girls, and we all just appreciate not only you and your presence but everything you’ve done for your community and the greater indigenous community in North America, it’s really just something to be so proud of. And please know that everybody notices all the work that you’ve done over the years very selflessly.

CRYSTAL ECHO HAWK: Well, at first I want to say the fan-girling is mutual. When I got the call, it was like, yes, sign me up. You know, just, again, just have so much admiration. You know, we’re all doing it. We’re all working hard to do these things for our people, but…

The Reclaiming Native Truth project was a project I founded and co-led back in 2016 to 2018. It was a two-year $3.3 million project, and it was the largest public opinion research project ever done about perceptions of Native Peoples.

And really what we did with a multi-faceted research team was really unpack what are the dominant perceptions and narratives that Americans from across the country hold about us, including those in the highest kind of ranks of power. We interviewed federal judges and law clerks, to members of Congress, and people in media, philanthropy, and even our allies in social justice to really begin to unpack what do the American public think about us, why do they think that about us, where do these core stories and narratives emanate from, and most importantly, how do they affect our people. And so Reclaiming Native Truth mapped all of that, and really was able to not only map what those perceptions are, the role of invisibility and toxic stereotypes, in really advancing racism, but on the flip side it actually showed us a pathway forward about how we really change the narrative or change the story in this country about Native people so that we can really change our future.

CR: I think that that invisibility is really important to emphasize. I mean, I think that it goes back definitely to public education and all of these experiences that we have. They were still making drums out of oatmeal boxes, and having all of the kids put on turkey feathers. And like the way that a child internalizes the—it’s humiliating.

And I love the work that Illuminatives is doing to counter that narrative. I mean, it’s work that so many of us are doing, but you guys are so front and center of countering those humiliating narratives that we’ve endured our entire lifetime.

CEH: We’ve all carried these senses of this kind of duality I think we all walk with as Native Peoples, is that we feel very much unseen and unheard in society. We feel very invisible, but at the same time if we are, then we’re just these caricatures, right? We’re the stereotypes, we’re some other sort of representation that is not of our own making. I remember as a little girl, I would run home after school and turn on cartoons, and I’ll never forget about this cartoon I saw. I think it was like Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, and it’s like a Wild West sort of episode, and all of a sudden this very kind of stereotypical Indian man with a big red nose, kind of lumbering across the screen, but he was wearing a banner that said “Vanishing American”. And he walked across the screen and he disappeared; he faded to black.

And I just remember being in third grade, and just internalizing that, and never forgot that feeling. And I think from that to really I think what caused me to kind of really found Reclaiming Native Truth was just watching my daughter, like as a mother, watching my daughter be bullied because we had given her a traditional Dakota name, and watching her relentlessly being bullied that led to her almost taking her life, and really having a lot of struggles. And I think it was that, it was like enough is enough. And it was understanding that so many of us as mothers and fathers and aunties, and we all feel this in our professional lives, in our personal lives, about the impacts of our lack of representation and our misrepresentation have on our people and our children, and that’s really what was the catalyst to everything that I’m doing right now.

CR: I have just a similar way of stepping into the work, and probably a not uncommon story of being raised both on the reservation and in an urban setting. And I think when I first stepped out of the reservation setting, there was definitely a culture shock. I think that we have an understanding, a very private way of knowing and relating to each other within our communities, and when we step outside of our communities, it’s really shocking how people perceive us, and how very little they know about what it is to be a contemporary North American indigenous person.

And I internalized so many of those things as well, Crystal. And I went through school often exhausted of trying to explain the truth about, you know, where I’m from, which is a lesser-known tribe in California, about how we all look different, about how all of our traditions are different. And it is I think first and foremost exhausting. 

And then I went on to university where I was a liberal arts major in Houston, and was studying anthropology, and everything that I experienced up to that point. And then in the university setting was taught as bygone, you know, that we were relics of the past.

And I realized instantly that through photography, and through media, I think specifically, even as a young woman, that a picture was worth a thousand words, and that maybe, just maybe I could use this to become a photo documentarian of modern Native Peoples, to use this skill to really communicate to people all the intricacies of our cultures, of how alive and how beautiful we are.

Crystal, I think the mascot issue really stands out for me as something that is changing in my lifetime. I have so much respect for everybody that’s been fighting this issue for decades. For me, it was really stepping into tribal college at the Institute of American Indian Arts, where one of the other Native students was wearing an Atlanta Braves hat, and I remember it very clearly, because, Char Teters called him out in class, and she was one of the early activists that was fighting for, you know, Change the Name. It was a little bit of a scene, but she was explaining to him all the things that we were just talking about, how we really internalized this oppression.

CEH: You know, this is a movement that’s been going on for decades and decades, and particularly with, you know, the Washington football team, I mean, really led by elders like Suzan Shown Harjo, Amanda Blackhorse, and just thousands and thousands of other Native Peoples who have just been organizing.

One of the biggest targets of all has been the Washington NFL team, you know, that was formerly known as the R word. Right? The R word is the N word. It’s a dictionary defined racial slur. But there is, you know, really racist Native sports mascots that show up in all professional sports – in major league baseball, hockey as well. But they’re prolific through K-12 schools as well…

Right? And it’s not just the logos and the imagery, or the dictionary defined slur that was the Washington NFL team, but it’s the fan behavior. Who, you know, with chants from rival teams and sports fans, things like kill the Indians. Right? You look at all this whole fan behavior and culture that gets associated with racist sports mascots. And what we found with our research is that that promotes discrimination and bias against our people. It’s the red face. And red face is black face.

And thankfully this country has moved to a point where it understands that black face is wrong. Right? We’ve watched people lose their jobs. But yet somehow red face is okay. The way that the mascot debate has been framed in this country is about it’s a matter of public opinion. Oh, well, you know what, this Washington Post poll that was done was sort of, you know, 500 self-identified Native people says it’s all okay. Or, hey, we found, you know, a Native person to come to the football game, you know, and it all looks good. It’s a matter of opinion. And it’s not—that’s the wrong question, the wrong framing. It’s about harm.

Banner from IllumiNative’s #ChangeTheName campaign

And when they did studies with Native children, they found—and with Native young adults, they found that it increases suicidal ideation, depression, and anxiety. Right? The exposure to not only that imagery but everything around it. Right? So this is science speaking. This isn’t just a question of political science. This is actually showing that this causes harm to our children, and that they found that for Native young adults, they struggle to even see a future for themselves. It sort of depressed their ability to see the future.

And so when we look at our high skyrocketing rates of suicide, right, we look at the high rates of depression and the things that our people are struggling with, particularly our children, this becomes a matter of protecting our children from harm. This is what science is telling us. 

And what we’ve found through our research is that promotes bias and discrimination against our people. Right? It is scientists and the studies, and research led by Dr. Stephanie Fryberg and other really amazing Native scholars and non-Native scholars have found that that level of representation fuels bias, it does fuel racism, and it’s important that we smash those toxic stereotypes.

So many of the things that came up in Reclaiming Native Truth about how, you know, just that the problems with stereotypes and the power of invisibility, I think on one level we all knew that and we’ve been talking about that and advocating it, and living it in our lives for so long. But to actually have data and evidence, right, to really show,  as Dr. Stephanie Fryberg found from all of this research about the profound nature of our invisibility, right, which is really we found is institutionalized and perpetuated in big systems in this country, big systems like pop—you know, like popular culture. 

And we think about everything that that entails, from sports mascots, to TV, to film, all kinds of things, museums, to looking at the role of media and really looking at the role of K-12 education. These are perpetuating our erasure and our invisibility, and that is – as Dr. Fryberg says – that invisibility is the modern form of racism against Native Americans today. 

Part of our work at IllumiNative has not only been about the advocacy with the sports teams and schools and the media, but I think it’s also educating our own people about the harm that these representations have, and that this isn’t just a conversation that should be minimized and cast aside about public opinion or political correctness. So that’s really been kind of the work that we’ve been doing, and getting creative by partnering with artists and influencers, and finding ways in the media to kind of help create a social groundswell that people understand how important this issue is.

CR: I have so much respect for everybody that’s been fighting this issue for decades. And I think that what we’re seeing evolve with all of the contemporary media work is really this better future, right, where we’re able to choose accurate representations of ourselves. And that’s so powerful.

CEH: Yeah. Absolutely. Well, you know, the thing that we learned from the Reclaiming Native Truth project is that there’s such immense power in data, right?

You know, a big part of our work has been taking that research to Hollywood, for example, and meeting with the heads of the biggest studios out there, right, and educating their leadership about the importance of representation and not just check a diversity equity inclusion box. But that they’re no longer advancing harm by our erasure or by our misrepresentation. And that we were also able to show them through our research that 78 percent of Americans want to know more about Native Peoples. And what that 78 percent figure represents is audience demand. And that has really began to speak volumes to people within the entertainment industry, also in media and newsrooms, now that they understand there’s more of an audience there for our stories and our issues and what we think.

We have gone out and I’ve lost track now—it feels like hundreds of presentations I’ve done over the last two years and with my colleagues, traveling all over the country. And what we found is that when we go out and we educate our allies, I would say probably 85 percent of the people I talk to are like, “I didn’t know.” Once you walk them through how these big systems work and how they interact within these systems, and inadvertently sometimes, even through the best of intentions, kind of advance harmful representation about us, most people are like, “I didn’t know,” and “How do I change this?”

And so I think it’s really been the power of education and them understanding that they not only need to kind of wake up and understand and own that, but their guilt [LAUGHS] around that’s not helpful to us. What’s helpful for them is to really partner with us, and to really create platforms, and turn over the mic, so to speak, right, to Native Peoples. We don’t need non-Native Peoples to come in and save us. We need them, though, to be a partner in dismantling these systems that not only harm Native people, but they harm all of us and to really kind of go within the institutions and systems that they’re operating in, and saying, Wait a minute; how are we culpable here? How does Native representation show up and not show up? And that means everything from governance structures on boards of directors to staff in leadership, their hiring, to how they’re talking to Native Peoples, which nine times out of ten they aren’t talking about us. Right? So how do they need to make sure that we are in the room? So allies have an important role in all of this from a number of different angles.

CR: Crystal, what do you feel like has changed during your lifetime?

CEH: You know, I think about these sort of high points from, you know, over the last couple of years of just having our first Native US poet laureate, with Joy Harjo being named. Or with Wes Studi being the first Native American male actor to receive an Oscar, to things like the McGirt decision. The Supreme Court ruling that affirmed, you know, the Muscogee Creek Nation’s treaty rights, and its reservation, and that’s where I’m talking to you today, is sitting in the heart of the Muscogee Creek Nation, also known as downtown Tulsa, you know, and seeing, you know, big court victories for NO DAPL. Or looking at the exposure that was generated at the stand taken at Mt. Rushmore this summer. Right? And the way the LandBack movement has really kind of emerged from that. So it was amazing if we were watching that weekend of Fourth of July, it was like if you were watching MSNBC it was beautiful. There were nothing but a sea of Native faces speaking out on critical issues from mascots, to our treaty rights. I think it’s been exciting to kind of see, you know, how much of that is changing. And one of the biggest things is that in 2018 we elected the first two Native American women to Congress.

It’s just really about how we are building power. And so, our representation as contemporary Native Peoples and the way it’s showing up in all different facets is huge, and just those two women being elected, it’s really been transformative, and it really shows how important that aspect of our representation is as well. But, you know, it’s fairly recent. Right? We’ve been battling invisibility and misrepresentation pretty fiercely, and we still are, but to see the pace of change is really extraordinary.

CR: I think for me one of the biggest things that, again, I’ve seen change in my lifetime is when we talk about misrepresentation of Natives, it’s really hard to not talk about the Edward Curtis photographs. And the Edward Curtis photographs are an incredible body of work that were produced around the turn of the century by a non-Native photographer that’s aim was an ethnographic study to document the vanishing race. They were so beautiful, they captured America’s imagination, and really people’s imagination around the world. 

But then it really kind of became this stereotype that stagnated people’s view of what Native Americans are – not only what they are, but what they should be. And I just remember feeling a lot growing up that, if you weren’t that, then what are you. You know? 

Photographs by Edward Curtis

And I really hone in on this messaging in my own art, because I feel like it’s really dangerous to tell a young Native person that you’re only good if you are the way that you were 100 years ago, right? When you completely gloss over, you know, all of the assimilation, all of the residential boarding schools, all the things that have brought us to this place, including all the resilience of the things that have survived that have brought us to this place. I think everything that exists is really kind of against all odds. You know?

So we have this incredible thing to celebrate. But I think it’s really important for everybody to take a look at what they think they know Native art is, or what they think Native Americans look like, because again, those stories that artists and educators and activists are telling on their own are really the ones that people need to be looking at for representation. I think it’s unique to IllumiNatives and to this work that you’ve done, that you incorporate the importance of art and Native artists into your work. Could you talk to us a little bit about the importance of Native art?

CEH: Absolutely. What was so beautiful as we began to really understand through the research the power of our representation, the power of an image. The majority of them haven’t been authored by us, right, and don’t reflect who we are today in the 21st century. and so I think, I’ve always throughout my career, you know, working with artists has been such an important part of the work that I’ve done, whether it’s around the Native American Rights Fund, right, and the work we were doing, to really around youth leadership development, but really with Reclaiming Native Truth, it really centered the importance of artists. 

And in fact, you know, IllumiNative was co-founded by a circle of artists, and it was really their idea. I remember we sat in the room, we presented all of the Reclaiming Native Truth research to them. I think it was like February or January of ’18, 2018, and they said, You know what, we need an organization that can really not only take all this research and put it into action, but to really bring the power of artists and activists and organizers and our best thought leaders, because these systems are so big, and we need to join forces, right, if we’re going to change the narrative and change the story and the way that people see us and perceive us, then we really—we needed to really look at the role of culture and art to be the way. Because words and advocacy, sometimes it’s not enough to cut through the noise, and so it’s really understanding the power of art and culture as a leading force for really eventually policy and systems change. And so I really credit, you know, those artists with the call to action. They said, “Crystal, go build it.” [LAUGHS] 

And, you know, we founded IllumiNative in June 2018 and haven’t looked back since. So I’m just really grateful for the—just the vision and leadership of all of our artists, and all the different genres and mediums that they work in, because it’s so powerful. They allow us, you know, to really see ourselves and envision ourselves in ways that sometimes society tries to bar—create barriers to us not being able to see a future for ourselves, or to see ourselves reflected as we are.

Last Indian Market by Cara Romero

CR: Stories by us for us, you know? It really has this ripple-out effect of authenticity, of actual conversations, of ways of knowing how we interact with each other, that really almost always counters the narrative that’s out there, in my experience. I mean, we’re really focused. Um When we’re telling our own stories. We’re really focused on things that are very different than when non-Natives focus on our communities. 

CEH: It’s really about the values, about caring for Mother Earth, for our environment, for caring for our communities and our elders, and thinking about the power of art and its different expressions from beautiful photography like someone like Cara, you know, whose images can move us, to beautiful murals that can inspire that radical imagination that can help us get out of this moment where we feel so out of control, or the world feels out of control, and when we can kind of cut through the noise and see a beacon of light.

And I think that that’s what artists can do in this moment is appeal to us in different ways. And I think now more than ever there’s an urgency around supporting that art and those perspectives, and that level of storytelling.

CR: I think one of the biggest changes in the last decade also is our connection to each other through the Web, through the Internet. You know, we come from isolated communities, you know. That was by design. And, you know, the Internet provided, you know, YouTube and social media, and I just really started consuming this connection to, you know, other Indigenous Peoples around the world, really. We are consuming YouTube videos that are homemade, comedy, dance, you know, bird singing in Southern California,. We are so connected on social media, on Instagram, you know, artist to artist, Native to Native, culture bearers to culture bearers. So I think that like us harnessing the power of social media is also something that IllumiNatives is focusing on, as well as so many artists in, you know, continuing to connect to each other through the Internet. That for me has been such a huge change in my lifetime for the positive.

And, I love the power of art and seeing Native artists rise to tell our own stories. And it is happening in Hollywood. It’s happening in 2D art. It’s happening with graphic design.

And you’ve really been at the forefront of that, Crystal, in making sure that you incorporate some powerhouse artists in your messaging, and it really comes across. Where I think as a Native person I can instantly look at IllumiNatives and know that that’s a Native-led organization. And that’s important. That’s important when you’re building trust in indigenous communities, is that we know who we’re speaking to.

Golga by Cara Romero

CEH: You know, I always laugh, I go back and think about something that filmmaker Sterlin Harjo once said. Because somebody asked him like: What’s the ideal representation, like, in a TV show? And he said, It’s a Native man drinking a cup of coffee wearing a pair of jeans. And it’s like [LAUGHS]— and that’s it. And it was like it’s funny ha-ha, but it’s just to be normalized, right? For us to show up and not as the magical, mystical Indian, or, you know, we all know what it’s like when a Native person shows up on something, and we all like freak out, like it’s a rare—it’s like seeing a unicorn. Right? Or Sasquatch, right? [LAUGHS] Like when we see ourselves, we get so excited. 

Simultaneously, there’s two Native TV shows. One by Sierra Ornelas, she’s a showrunner and created it with Mike Schur. It’s called Rutherford Falls, and it’s 50 percent of the writers room are Native Peoples. You have a Native woman as the co-star with Ed Helms. It’s breaking all the record books on Native representation. To Sterlin Harjo, who’s teamed up with Taika Waititi to develop the show Reservation Dogs that’s on FX. And, again, I mean, these are really significant but, you know,  it’s fairly recent.

So I think the future is really about that, our representation, we are everywhere. And so I think it’s about that political representation, that we really hit parity in every single state and city, and nationally.

Or when we click on Netflix, or whatever we like to watch, that there’s ample choices around Native representation, and stories that are authored by us. You know, all kinds of stories, and not just the epic Westerns or the tragic tales, you know, about Native Peoples, but, you know, comedies and, you know, Natives in outer space! [LAUGHS] That we have the diversity of representation that not only reflects our humanity and the complexity of who we are but all of our contributions. Even imagining ourselves in the future. And that it just is on every level of society.

I really got choked up earlier, you know, when you were talking, Cara, about—as a young person through school, like how exhausting that was, our children have to constantly live in hostile learning environments, and it’s not only related to sports mascots, but that, because there’s nothing in the history books really about us that Native children today are still asked to get up and teach their classes – Native American history.

My dream is that that no longer is the case. That our children can go to school and feel positive about that experience, and that our history and our contemporary contributions to this country are reflected, and that we’re thriving.

There is such a power to the power of our story, and our stories. It really has the ability to change the future. I feel like in changing that representation, that we start to see that these big systems are transformed, that we are really about building Native power; we are about advancing justice and equity for our people. That is really my dream, and I really believe that it’s something that we’re going to achieve.

CR: Simultaneously, the dream is that all of those things are reversed, that we are creating and fostering future leaders, that we are fostering, you know, representation that’s empowering and uplifting, and that we’re able to reverse some of those negative correlations for ourselves and for future generations. That would be the dream.

Crystal, I can’t thank you enough for being here with us today. It’s always an incredible honor to share space and time with you, and thank you for joining us. And I just appreciate the work that you do so much, and please know that everybody sees you and your team over there at IllumiNative.

CEH: Well, it takes a village. It’s a big beautiful team of all kinds of people and I think this is also just an extraordinary time for Native women, right? In particular. And I just thank you for the work that you do, and just for creating this space and inviting me into your circle, and to connect with the amazing work that you do through Bioneers. So thank you.

CR: Thank you for joining us for this episode of Indigeneity Conversations. To learn more about the guests we featured today, go to the episode page on our website, bioneers.org/indigeneityconversations. You’ll also find more episodes there to listen to and share, and ways to become involved as an ally to indigenous peoples.

AB: And To find out more about our Native-led Indigeneity Program, go to our website bioneers.org/indigeneity. We offer more original Indigenous media content there along with our Indigeneity Curricula and learning materials for students and life-long learners.

CR: It’s been such a pleasure to share with all of you today. Many thanks and take care!

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Read more here.

Good Fire: Indigenous Cultural Burns Renew Life

Bill Tripp, Deputy-Director of Eco-Cultural Revitalization for the Karuk Tribe’s Department of Natural Resources, is a forest management specialist and the lead author of the Karuk Eco-Cultural Resource Management Plan and co-author of the Karuk Climate Adaptation Plan. His work involves developing partnerships and strategic action plans to enable large landscape collaborative management throughout Karuk Aboriginal Territory and beyond. Bill is featured in the film the INHABITANTS: An Indigenous Perspective which follows five Native American tribes as they adapt to today’s climate crisis by restoring their ancient relationships with the land.

Read more here.

Don’t Miss It: Upcoming Events

YES! Fest

YES! is turning 25 this year and celebrating with a free virtual festival this Thursday & Friday, Oct. 7-8!

You’ll hear from world-renowned scholar & activist Vandana Shiva, Alicia Garza, Adrienne Maree Brown, David Korten, Sarah van Gelder, and discuss transformative justice w/ Dallas Goldtooth, Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharris of Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, Mariah Parker, and Amanda Alexander. Plus hear performances from Brett Dennen, Dar Williams paying tribute to Pete Seeger, Taina Asili, Chris Pierce, Raye Zaragoza, Tawana Petty, and groove to Mollywop.

Come to YES! Fest – Sign-up (it’s free)! 

Fantastic Fungi Global Summit

If you loved the Fantastic Fungi movie on Netflix, you won’t want to miss out on the live virtual 3-day event from October 15-17 with over 40 leading experts such as Paul Stamets, Merlin Sheldrake, Michael Pollan, Suzanne Simard and many more!

Learn more here.

Bioneers Decolonization Series | What Is Decolonization?: In Conversation with Alexis Bunten

Decolonization has recently adopted a wide array of definitions and has come to embody various differing political interests. From its theoretical origins in the frontlines of war to the calls to reject processed food, its recent surge in popularity begs the question: What is decolonization? The rampant use of a term with no agreed upon definition poses the risk of decolonization losing its power as a concept – a danger often seen in language originating in marginalized communities. 

In this interview with Alexis Bunten, we explore how colonialism has evolved, its relationship with capitalism, and how this guides us to understanding decolonization. Alexis Bunten(Unangan/Yup’ik) is Co-Director of Bioneers’ Indigeneity program and is an accomplished researcher, writer, media-maker, and curriculum developer. 

MJ Ruff is an Oglala Lakota poet and writer from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. MJ’s writing focuses on the role of class in the development of Native political movements in the U.S. 

This conversation is part of the Bioneers decolonization series. Check out this article in the series to learn more about some of the ideas we explored in this interview.

MJ: What is the relationship between capitalism and colonialism?

ALEXIS: I don’t distinguish between capitalism and colonialism, and I intentionally call the social and economic system that we live in capital colonialism. Capitalism requires resources and it acquires that through colonialism. It also requires the exploitation of labor to extract those resources and colonialism is the method through which workers [extractive labor] can be acquired. 

Lastly, capitalism requires continued growth. For a capitalist economy to stay in place, it must continually grow and expand. For settler-colonialism to stay in place, it also must grow and expand. Their growth is intimately linked and will never stop until the planet dies. 

MJ: With this definition of colonialism, would it be safe to say that colonialism is an ongoing process today?

ALEXIS: Absolutely. Colonialism is a structure, not an event. Colonialism is not something that happened in the past and now we can all move on from it through apologies. It’s actively happening and we all have a role to play in fighting back against it.

MJ: How has colonialism evolved? What does it look like today?

ALEXIS: Some years ago, a multinational mining corporation was trying to steal resources in northeast Australia. Their tactic involved burning the local Aboriginal peoples village to take the land and extract resources from it. Today, as colonialism has evolved, so have their tactics. This same company, under a different name, tried to convince a community in Alaska to install a mine that would irreparably damage one of the world’s most important fisheries. Only, they couldn’t get away with burning down the villages in today’s political and social environment, so instead, they were going around to the villages, lying about the benefits of the mine, and bribing villagers with expensive steak dinners in a community where a box of cereal is $12. 

MJ: How do we, as Indigenous people who share in the struggle against colonialism, reckon with the reality that some of our leaders are bribed by the system we are struggling against? What are we to make of a system that buys peoples’ political interests? 

ALEXIS: I can’t fully answer that question without bringing up the internalized colonization. 

When colonialism is internalized, you begin to believe in the supremacy of the dominant capitalist culture, you internalize the logic and ideologies of capitalism (for example, believing that you can’t live a good life without a lot of money.)

Traditionally, a vast number of diverse economic systems have existed in Indigenous societies. Many of these economies involved the accumulation of something that can be defined as wealth. What distinguishes economic accumulation within Indigenous societies is the way that that wealth is shared according to cultural values. Transforming the way we relate to wealth and it’s distribution through Indigenous values is important in creating a future where we can take care of the planet.

MJ: Is that the task of decolonization?

ALEXIS: Decolonization is a term that is incredibly hot right now and we need to talk about what it means. Decolonization is loosely bandied about; for example, concepts like decolonizing your food and such. 

I think of decolonization as if it was defined on a continuum. At one end is literal decolonization which involves the return of land to Indigenous Peoples. On the other end is metaphorical decolonization in which colonial characteristics are merely stripped from things but the colonial core remains. Personally, I’m not a hardliner on either of the definitions but when asking if decolonization is possible, we need to be honest with how we are defining But, at the end of the day, I am an optimist, so I believe decolonization is possible, literally and metaphorically. It just depends on how long your timeline for it is. The planet is telling us right now that we don’t have much time.  

MJ: What role do settlers play in decolonization?

ALEXIS: The burden of decolonization is disproportionately put on the people who have suffered the most from colonialism. Settlers today can find themselves distanced from the history of colonialism through time but still reap the benefits of it. 

What’s going to have a huge impact is to shift public consciousness and the narrative around what colonialism and decolonization is. We need to start talking about what it means to live in a White Settler colonial nation that is an apartheid nation in practice. 

First, learn whose land you’re on, and the history of colonization where you live. For example, I live on Portola Drive which was named after the Portolá expedition to what is now California in 1769 during the late stages of what’s called the Age of Exploration. This expedition’s goal was to solidify Spain’s claim to this land, so that it, and it’s peoples could be exploited through a very brutal colonization. Portola Drive bleeds out onto Freemont Street named after John C. Frémont who was directly responsible for the genocide of thousands of California Indians. Why should I have to be reminded of a genocide everytime I leave my house to go anywhere? And I know that the majority of my City Council is going to think I’m nuts when I come to them about changing these names to Ohlone Drive, or something more appropriate. I hope to begin a community conversation about changing the street names. 

There’s so many more things like this that you can do on this community level to shift the public consciousness. In our next conversation, I’ll be happy to share some more tips. 

Starlings, Infinity, and the Kith of Kinship | Lyanda Fern Lynn Haupt

Lyanda Fern Lynn Haupt

Often regarded as a pest, the starling is a type of bird with a glossy black plumage that shines green or purple due to its metallic sheen. The speckles of iridescent, pearl-white spots that adorn their breast earn them the celestial title “Starling” (meaning “Little Star”). The starling’s impressive ability to mimic the sounds of life as it unfolds around them speaks to the way that song illuminates their practice of sharing in the web of life.  

In this excerpt from the brand new book, Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations, Lyanda Fern Lynn Haupt reflects on the beyond-human kinship her relationship with starlings has illuminated, and the infinity of intelligences cradled by reciprocity in a world that both includes yet surpasses the limits of human knowledge.

The following excerpt is from “Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations” (Center for Humans and Nature, 2021) and is reprinted with permission from the publisher.

A starling lives in my house. I prefer to think of the circumstance under which she came into my care as a heroic rescue, but to be perfectly honest, it was part theft. I was working on a book about kinship and creativity, explored through the window of Mozart’s relationship with a starling he kept for four years. In my research for the project, I’d scoured the academic literature on starlings, interviewed myriad experts, and traveled to Austria, where I haunted the Vienna apartment in which Mozart had lived and composed alongside the bird. But the longer I pondered and scribbled, the more I came to recognize a gap in my understanding of the human-bird relationship central to my project—I didn’t know, as Mozart did, what it was like to coexist with a starling in my own household.

Under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (and according to common ecological sense) it is entirely illegal to remove, harass, touch, or even glance sideways at the nests, eggs, or nestlings of nearly any bird. Starlings are one of the few exceptions. The twenty-some starlings that were introduced to Central Park in the late 1800s have swelled in number to two hundred million and now blanket North America, flourishing on farmland, in suburban lawns, and in urban parks. They are omnivorous, adaptive, and smart. While most of the general public cannot accurately identify starlings, we do know one thing: we aren’t supposed to like them. In ornithological and conservation circles, starlings are beyond question the most despised bird on the continent, competing with native cavity nesters such as acorn woodpeckers and bluebirds for prized nest holes. They cause millions of dollars in agricultural damage each year, their great flocks descending to feast upon fields and animal feed. With this track record, the starling is considered not just an introduced species but an invasive one; fish and wildlife departments across the country enjoin us to discourage starlings from nesting, cover their nest holes, destroy their nests, remove their eggs, and even kill both chicks and adult birds in any way we can think up.

One day a friend in the city parks department familiar with my project called to let me know that a starling nest in the eaves of a nearby park bathroom was going to be removed by park workers. I’d been studying that nest and knew that the young had just hatched—here was my chance. It was a harrowing caper, but with my husband as coconspirator, some ill-conceived climbing upon wobbly park-owned garbage cans, a share of bloody scrapes and ugly bruises, and a shocking amount of foul language, I managed to swoop in and scoop up a nestling before she was swept into the city trash bin. I was aware that while we are allowed to maim or murder starlings with legal impunity, it is decidedly not legal to lovingly nurture one in our living rooms. I have a background in avian rehab and knew what I was doing in terms of raising a chick. Still—I was about to become a minor criminal. We can kill starlings, but we can’t keep them. Rescue. Theft.

We named the bird for the Latin word meaning song, and Carmen joined our family—her flock—with warm and trusting enthusiasm, wanting always to be with us, on us, inquisitive about our doings, a participant in the round of our homelife. Shining, mischievous, playful, singing—flapping now from my shoulder to my wrist as I write these words.

I had a preconceived notion of what I would learn from this personal bit of starling research. Starlings are curious, intelligent, iridescent, beautiful; they have a complex social structure and are capable mimics. And so I guessed: Carmen would join me in my studio and get into so much trouble that I would marvel at Mozart’s having ever gotten any work done at all. She would charm my family by mimicking our voices. She would invite me and those who met her to explore the cognitive dissonance involved in being conservationists who are enchanted by this individual of an ecologically disdained species.

And yes. Yes, she affirmed all those things with panache. Then, having dispatched my expectations, she went entirely off script, ignored my research needs, took over the story, improvised new hypotheses, composed her own results. She taught me things about the measure of my human complexity, and even more about the expanse of my ignorance. I have been thinking and writing about beyond-human kinship for more than two decades. Now a common, invasive bird perched lightly upon my shoulder and sang into my ear, You know nothing. Winging into the great cloud of my unknowing, this one starling has taught me ten thousand things. Here are two of them.

The Infinity of Intelligences

Because of starlings’ detested status, most people are uninterested in their astonishing natural history, and even those who identify as birders have little idea that starlings are gifted mimics, able to imitate novel sounds and build a repertoire of new learned vocalizations throughout their lives. Starlings skillfully imitate other birds, cats, environmental noises, various kinds of machinery, cell phones, music, and the human voice. Rather than attempting to teach Carmen specific words, I wanted to see how her mimicry would unfold within our household, unprompted. Starlings are flirtatious, social beings, and they respond to interaction, so it was fitting that Carmen’s first word was hi, followed swiftly by hi Carmen, hi Honey, and c’mere, the phrases we most often speak to her. Eventually, she mimicked the creak in our old wood floor and practiced the song of the Bewick’s wren nesting outside her window until I couldn’t tell the two birds apart. All of this was a delight—but unsurprising for a starling. Both male and female starlings sing (uncommon in female passerines) and mimic. But it took me months after she came into her full voice to figure out the most wonderous dimension to Carmen’s aural echoes—that they are in truth not echoes at all.

In the dark of morning, before anyone else in the house is awake, I pad downstairs in my pink sock-monkey pajamas. As soon as I reach the bottom step, Carmen calls in a soft, whispery voice, Hi Carmen. The first words she hears each day. Our elder tuxedo cat Delilah follows me, ready for her breakfast—Carmen looks at her and says, Meeooow! in a demanding, hungry-kitty voice. I pick up the jar of coffee and, hearing the tinkling of the beans, Carmen calls ker-klunk, the sound of the jar lid hitting the countertop, then a gritty whiiiir!—not her prettiest vocalization, but an exact imitation of the coffee grinder, the sound she knows is next to come. And when I open the door of the microwave but before I press the buttons, Beep! Beep-beep. In rhythm and pitch perfect.

For so long I simply thought, “Wow, Carmen’s mimicry is getting really good.” But the moment I comprehended what was actually happening, a shiver ran from my scalp to my toes. Carmen does not just imitate the sounds of her world; she anticipates them, and she participates in the world by proclaiming the order of life with her voice. The more I watched, listened, and witnessed, the more it became clear that this radical aural attunement and readiness is her primary way of knowing, of learning, of communicating, and—especially, as a social bird—of sharing in the unfolding life that surrounds her.

Just as all dog owners like to think they have the smartest pup in the world, for a brief moment, I marveled that I was living with the most intelligent starling ever to rise from the stuff of creation—right here in my kitchen. It dawned eventually on my slow human brain that it is not just this brilliant little starling but all starlings who have such astonishing aural responsiveness to life and everything that passes within it. I threw binoculars around my neck and ran into the world. I studied wild starlings for weeks and observed this auditory alertness in the individuals everywhere around me.

Starlings are one of the most ubiquitous, most widely researched birds on Earth (in the United States, they are common lab subjects because they are unprotected, requiring no special license for collection), yet they are busy learning and expressing right beneath our noses in a manner that few recognize. The scientific literature on starlings is full of analyses regarding their vocal intelligence and the complexity of their syntax. But their anticipatory aural perception of the world is not represented in the oeuvre, which explores animal intelligence mainly by the extent to which it approximates human intelligence. Sure, we humans can hear a sound and predict what will follow. But starlings dwell in the living aural landscape as a fundamental way of being, alert in a manner beyond human capacity. And this is just one animal with one way of being, a way that I just happened to become aware of while living in uncommon intimacy with a single wild bird.

The starling’s gifts are singular—as are those of all beings. Turkey vultures vocalize little, no match for a starling, but their brains house the largest olfactory sense of any bird, drawing them to freshly dead food through fragrances that rise from earth to air. My own sense of smell is trifling next to a vulture’s. How must it be to live guided by fragrance and flight? What manner of intelligence forms within a life framed and molded by these things? Or the whisker-based seeing of night rodents? Or the skin-based knowing of an earthworm? Or the beyond-human echo hearing of bats? Or the rooted mycorrhizal communication of red cedars? Or the geometrical pattern recognition of bees in the flowers they see and the visual wavelengths we are blind to but that guide bee lives?

Media-driven lists of animals considered the most intelligent are most often populated by the same creatures over and over: other-than-human primates of various sorts, elephants, dolphins, border collies, crows, ravens, and parrots. The list of traits that indicate intelligence commonly include facial recognition, spatial memory, response to music, mimicry of the sounds of other animals (especially the human voice), tool use, problem solving, and grieving. These animals have eyes, most often they have fur, they live in social groups, and they do things that humans do. (The octopus, neither feathered nor furred, or even vertebrate, is trending as an outlier.) It is a positive that in recent years academic science is beginning to admit animal consciousness as a valid topic for discussion, yet both in our science and our everyday lives we continue to diminish the soaring uniqueness of other species and individuals by discussing animal intelligences only insofar as we perceive in them humanlike ways of knowing and feeling. As with the wild aural attentiveness of starlings, we who grew up with a conventional Western education constantly fail to recognize, or even imagine, the breadth of unique animal and plant intelligences that lie outside of human manners of being.

With gratitude to Carmen, I start each day with a reminder that we walk, wondering, within an infinity of living intelligences, cradled by the reciprocity of kinship in an inspirited world that simultaneously surpasses and enfolds the limits of human knowing. We walk as if in a faerie story—every being we pass, no matter how common, possessed of both message and mystery.

The Kith of Kinship

The genesis of the common name for starling—which means “little star”—is uncertain. It may have been inspired by the shape the birds’ bodies form in flight, reaching in four directions—bills, wingtips, tails tapering to the point that distinguishes them from flying blackbirds. Or perhaps the celestial scattering of iridescent, pearl-white star spots that adorn their breasts in most seasons. In either case, the name starling is a call from the cosmos to the earth, an embodied reminder of kinship’s essence. Together we are made of the fine things: soil, blood, the sustenance of earth, and ether. Starstuff.

Carmen roosts on my shoulder, quiet. Breast settled over toes, plumes soft against my neck, a slight fluff of wings lifted by tiny scapulae formed within a vertebral bauplan evolved millennia before there were any primates at all, let alone anyone in the genus Homo walking the earth. Can I hear her heartbeat there so close to my ear? No, but I imagine that I can. Yet I do feel a tingle on my own scapulae, as if I may sprout feathered wings of my own.

We feel this entrainment with other beings when we allow ourselves to enter into it—leaning with bare feet against the trunk of an ancient cedar, our craniosacral fluid rising and falling with the sap. The recognition of bright lightness in our own feet when the doe leaps back into her forest shelter. The alertness in the eyes of a cottontail that makes us turn to look over our own shoulders for, maybe, an even larger predator than the rabbit perceives in us. Deep kinship invites these moments of prerational interbeing with another creature, of everyday shapeshifting.

Yet this wondrous interrelatedness leaves us faltering in the face of many species’ disruptive presence to ecosystemic integrity, including the starling’s impact on sensitive native bird populations. In 1957, Rachel Carson wrote a paper titled “How about Citizenship Papers for the Starling.” In it she praised the species’ playfulness, watchability, and the fact that one of their favorite foods is cutworms—a menace to agriculturalists and gardeners. She was right, too, in noting that starlings in North America aren’t going anywhere. Despite the arsenal of tactics deployed to reduce starling populations (guns, traps, explosives, and species-specific poisons actually called starlicides), starling populations continued to grow for decades after Carson’s paper and stabilized at their current level about thirty years ago. It is a surprise for eco-minded people to hear a voice such as Carson’s speak in favor of starlings, but in 1957 there were only twenty million starlings, a tenth of today’s population. Plus, Carson, who had a love for all creatures and was fascinated by starling behavior, would have run up against the same problem we face today. In the calculus of kinship, the starling is our relation. As humans interested in acting on behalf of a wild earth with beautiful ecosystems that maintain a semblance of integrity, we face a dilemma. Starlings belong with us in kindred continuity, but what about in presence upon the landscape? How do we balance these questions in mind, body, and heart?

Here, the little-understood word kith that evolved alongside kinship sheds light. In modern English—even in England where the expression “kith and kin” originated—the two words are mistakenly conflated into one meaning: our relatives, those who are close to us. But the reason the archaic phrase was formed around two different words is that they are in fact different. Jay Griffiths points this out in her radiant book, Kith (changed to A Country Called Childhood for an American audience who is not trusted to know the word kith at all). The etymology of the word kith is murky, most likely related to the Old English cūth, whence the obsolete couth. We are familiar today with uncouth—a lack of knowing, an ignorance of how to act or behave. Couth, and eventually kith, by contrast, is the known, the familiar. It makes sense that the conviviality of kith came to be associated with the relatedness of kin and, as the etymologist Eric Partridge writes, “hence, by confusion, relatives.”

Where kin are relations of kind, kith is relationship based on knowledge of place—the close landscape, “one’s square mile,” as Griffiths writes, where each tree and neighbor and crow and fox and stone are known, not by map or guide but by heart. Kithship, then, is intimacy with the landscape in which one dwells and is entangled, a knowing of its waymarks, its fragrance, the habits of its wildlings.

Kinship speaks to the truth of an interrelatedness that is shared no matter how deeply we as individuals perceive this connection. (We experience this with our human blood relatives; the substance of our genetic lineage remains whether or not we know our relatives well, like them, or have any sense of what they do day to day.) And although it might be more beautiful to dwell in awareness of our kinship with all of life and to act from that center, such awareness is not required for the fact of our kinship to remain as an ecological given.

Kithship is different. It is an exacting intimacy, one born of nearness, stillness, study, observation, openness. Vulnerability. Kithship is hard-won visceral intimacy—blood cut of the thorn, bright stinging of the nettle. Knowledge of the rock where the snake suns herself and the best path around it.

Kithship is particular. Among the several things that the ecologist Suzanne Simard suggests we human animals can do to assist trees in their lives and forest making is to simply go and be among them. Simard grew up in a logging family and found her early inspiration as a child in British Columbia, when she would lie “on the forest floor and stare up at the tree crowns” of the ancient Douglas firs and western red cedars. It is only by dwelling over time with a particular forest that we can understand its uniqueness, what it needs to flourish and to thrive—and it is how, in our graced interconnection, we ourselves flourish and thrive in response. The place-based particularity of kithship explains why starlings are beloved in the United Kingdom and across Europe, where they are native. With the loss of agricultural land, their numbers are falling, and they are officially listed as a species of concern. Birders and even many academic ornithologists in the United States are stunned by this news—unable to imagine a world in which starlings are welcome. When I spoke about this subject to audiences in Austria, people were astonished to learn that the species is so despised here. 

The endangered orcas in the southern waters of Scotland are my beloved kindred to be sure. I know this even though I will likely never see them. But the Salish Sea orcas who roam the home waterways we share? I know them as individuals by the scars visible on their dorsal fins. I have seen their young breach the surface of waters I paddle in my kayak. I have watched the fountain of their exhale, the echo of their breath singing all the way to shore. I have walked home after such moments in wonder, wanting never to bathe again but to live always in a skin of orca breath.

Kithship crosses dimensions of knowing that bring us to intimate specificity: book learning, alert wandering, knowledge of species close to home and recognition of individuals within these species, knowing who lives where and why, knowing who is flourishing and who is failing. Kithship enlivens and complexifies kinship, and it is essential if the fullness of kinship’s wisdom is to be lived.

And the question of starling presence upon the landscape? What we should think, how we should relate, what we should do? Ah. I don’t know. Of course, I do not know. There is no one answer, no single right response. Dwelling with kith and kin awakens, always, an unsettled complexity. With our intricate human-animal minds, we can hold many dimensions of thought at once, and such complexity is not the same as contradiction. We are asked to walk lightly and intelligently within an essential ambiguity.

In kinship, Carmen and her own kindred starlings with their ravishing intelligence are my relations—sister, mother, beloved. In kithship, I pause. I observe the flicker who was evicted from her nest on the corner by a starling, recognizable by her habit of roosting on a particular cherry branch, near the tree’s trunk. I wander the woodland edges near my home where starlings do not nest and witness the uptick in native avian biodiversity there. I behold the starlings who swirl from their exquisite murmuration out of the sky and into our backyard fir. I watch Carmen when they begin to whistle; she falls silent, tilting her head. I wish starlings were not present upon this landscape. I know that killing them will not help and is unjustified. I know, too, that I cannot accept their presence with a full heart. We stand in a glorious, tangled dissonance filled with love, intimacy, and confusion. I cover the holes in my home where starlings might nest. I plant trees. And when I see a starling? I stand in awe of her loveliness and whisper, “Hello, shining one.”

Bioneers Decolonization Series: What Is Decolonization?

Within recent years, decolonization has grown to become a buzzword in community organizing work. However, the political power that it holds can easily be robbed of its importance if we are not intentional with how we use it. Fostering informed intentional use of the concept first requires that we understand colonialism and history. 

So, what is decolonization? Following an interview with Alexis Bunten (Aleut/Yup’ik), co-director of Bioneers’ Indigeneity program, we explore the Indigenous history, settler-colonialism and the meaning of decolonization.

What is Colonialism?

Colonialism is a structure through which capitalist nations steal land, occupy it with foreign settlers, and establish dominant political control to sanction the exploitation of Indigenous land and people. The misconception that colonialism is an event rather than a structure muddles its true nature and inhibits people’s development of a useful understanding of colonialism. Colonialism developed as a way for capitalism to expand its reach to new territories that could fuel the production of wealth for European nations. Capitalism’s global spread through colonialism is a result of its need to pursue infinite profit through finite resources. “The capitalist economy has to have continual growth to stay in place, and that’s what colonialism is about. It’s about this constant expansion, more resources to extract, more people to exploit, and it never ends and destroys the planet” says Alexis in talking about the intimate relationship between capitalism and colonialism.

Colonialism Today

As political and social norms evolve in different regions of the world, so does colonialism. Beginning in the late 19th century, a shift in federal Indian policy resulted in the investment in creating boarding schools that would serve to enact the cultural genocide of Indigenous people. In 1879, the federal government opened the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania under the superintendent’s motto of “Kill the Indian, Save the Man,” echoing the belief that Native people can be Americanized. Prior to the federal turn toward “civilizing” Indigenous people, the attitude toward tribal nations conceived of them as an impediment to American progress who needed to be killed en masse to pave way for the wealth of the new settler colonies. When Chief Justice John Marshall litigated a series of Supreme Court cases known today as “The Marshall Trilogy,” the federal government’s policy on Native peoples shifted as the ruling declared that the authority of tribes to govern themselves predated the creation of the United States and the American government had a responsibility to provide essential services and resources to tribal nations. The Marshall Trilogy marked the beginning of neocolonialism as federal Indian policy shifted from outright slaughter to a metaphorical “killing” of Indigenous culture and personhood. Despite the turn toward the systematic destruction of traditions, values, language and other cultural elements, the impact remained the same, as cultural genocide is still recognized as genocide.  No longer were the wars against Indigenous people being waged with guns; now the wars were being waged with treaties and negotiations. 

Indigenous people became intimately familiar with the pen’s might over the sword as tribes were displaced from their homelands and starved into negotiations. Alexis describes her people’s experience with the Pebble Mine project in Bristol Bay, Alaska:  “In my region, all the way across the world in Bristol Bay, Alaska – did they kill people or burn them out of their villages? No. You can’t get away with that in the modern day USA. What they did do is lure people into community meetings where they were trying to convince them it was a good thing, and brainwash them by offering people really expensive steak dinners in a place where a box of cereal costs $12.”

George Gillette, second from left, chairman of Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation, and other tribal officials at the 1948 signing of the Garrison Dam agreement.

When internalized by the Indigenous population, colonialism can be a powerful means of bribery through which to sow discord internally among communities. As much as colonialism is an act of physical violence that transforms material conditions, it is also psychologically and spiritually violent. By separating Indigenous people from basic necessities, stealing their resources and privatizing them under capitalist growth, settlers gain leverage through which they can coerce Indigenous leaders to comply with colonial interests. 

Without a comprehensive understanding of colonialism and the ways in which Indigenous leaders can uphold it, allies often reinforce the romantic notion that uplifting Indigenous wisdom and spirituality equates to action. As Alexis pointed out in our interview: “That is not to say we should not romanticize nor stereotype Indigenous Peoples. We’re so diverse and there were plenty of tribes in North America that took slaves.” Among the 574 federally recognized tribal nations that exist (and another 200+ that aren’t federally recognized), political leadership among tribes are as diverse as congressional U.S. leadership. Tribes like the MHA (Mandan-Hidatsa-Arikara) nation have grown to become one of the most oil rich nations in the country. In 2011, tribal chairman Tex Hall adopted the mantra “Sovereignty by the barrel” expressing the belief that wealth accrued from fossil fuels can fuel tribal sovereignty and self-determination. As Alexis puts it, “You internalize the logic and ideologies of capitalism in the dominant society, which is things like the life narrative in America: You’re born, you go to school, you get married, you get a job, you buy a house, you have children. All of that is tied into market capital and the acquisition of goods and consumerism.” 

What Is Decolonization?

Within the past few years, “decolonization” grew in rampant popularity among numerous social circles and without much care. Oblivious to the various uses of the word, allies risk robbing the concept of its political power when they lack a straightforward transparency with how they’re using “decolonization”. From “decolonizing your diet” to the literal taking of land, it is hard to pin down and define a single definition of the concept. The majority of the time it’s used, rarely does it ever center land. 

A landmark text within the debate is Eve Tuck’s and K. Wayne Yang’s , “Decolonization Is Not A Metaphor”. In it, the authors argue that any use of the term that does not directly involve the return of land to Indigenous people is not decolonization. Within Native communities, tribal internationalism plays a key role in the development of a decolonial vision. The 2016 protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation garnered international attention and welcomed allies from around the globe. The international reach of the protests followed a long history of the tribe’s global alliance with other Indigenous nations. 

Regardless of one’s opinion on the matter, the authors bring up a crucial aspect of the debate: action. 

One way Alexis recommends taking action is beginning by first learning whose land you’re on. With over 300 treaties signed by the United States with tribal nations, not a single one remains unbroken. Learning the treaty history and how it contextualizes your life on the land you live is a step toward challenging the legacy of colonialism. 

In a larger economic vision, Alexis speaks of how “the nation state controls the means of production and the distribution of it” and how “It should be out of the hands of the nation state and put in the hands of people.” Transforming our relationship to our resources and economy is a crucial aspect of decolonization. As we’ve seen in recent times, the United States colonial economic regime works to outsource production to Indigenous communities overseas where they can pay workers less in hazardous work conditions. Alexis’ vision of a decolonized economy seeks to end colonial exploitation in other countries that produce goods for the United States. 

A Tribute to Gabriel Howearth, Champion of Biodiversity

The plant kingdom is in mourning; their great long-haired ally, Gabriel Howearth, was swept away in August by the violent surge of a flash flood in Lo de Marcos, Mexico. The force of the waters turned over the pickup truck that he was traveling in, pulled him out of the vehicle and, presumably, out to the Pacific Ocean. His body, to date, has not been found. He was an extraordinary person who lived an extraordinary life.

Gabriel was renowned among herb farmers, seed savers, permaculturists, organic farmers and thousands of other people who learned from his profound depth of knowledge about plants and seeds as well as from his vitally important contributions to biodiversity in agriculture and gardening. Driven by his remarkable passion for botanical diversity and an indefatigable creative energy, he created unique, spectacularly beautiful and profoundly influential world-class gardens and farms in Oregon, New Mexico, and Baja, Mexico.

As a boy growing up in Southern California, Gabriel’s father took him to underprivileged neighborhoods to help start gardens for low-income families, instilling in him a deep sense of community service. It was the beginning of his love affair with the garden, and the first calling of his destiny. Later, he studied at UC Santa Cruz with the legendary Alan Chadwick who directed him to learn from Indigenous farmers. Gabriel took his mentor’s advice and traveled the world, working with Native farmers from a wide range of cultures, many of whom shared with him their most precious gifts – their traditional heirloom seeds. 

These global travels awakened him to the many facets of biodiversity and its fundamental importance to the web of life. It was not just a botanical issue, as important as that is; Gabriel understood that the botanical, ecological, cultural and spiritual aspects of humanity’s relationship to nature were inseparable. He once said, “In cultures that are disappearing, usually there is a set of plants that is going with them, and a spirit in the food, unique to the culture, that is being lost.”

Landing in New Mexico, he was invited by the elders of San Juan Pueblo to help them, as Gabriel stated in a 1990 LA Times interview, “regain their once-thriving and now fast-disappearing culture rooted in the soil….Part of the San Juan project involved searching for many types of old seeds that had been preserved for generations in gourds, pots, and other vessels as well as in the adobe walls of buildings and in the root cellars of traditional Indian pueblos throughout the region. Someone found some seeds of the sacred red corn of San Juan, which hadn’t been grown for 40 years, and planting it again felt like a spiritual homecoming for me.”

The work at that cutting-edge experimental farm became the inspiration for Seeds of Change, co-founded by Gabriel and Kenny Ausubel, which, later led to the birth of Bioneers. Nina Simons, co-founder of Bioneers, on her first visit to that farm was so inspired by its beauty and diversity it changed the course of her life. The way she describes that experience is, “Nature tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘you’re working for me now.’ ”

They understood the immense importance of open-pollinated heirloom seeds that were adapted to a specific place and were in the public domain. Concerned that multinational corporations were offering fewer and fewer varieties and about their attempts to monopolize the seed business, Seeds of Change’s mission was to inspire a legion of backyard gardeners to grow and save heirloom seeds and preserve food crop biodiversity. It was the genesis of a grassroots seed-saving movement that today expresses itself in seed exchanges, seed-lending libraries and small local seed companies attempting to offer an alternative to the mega-corporations’ increasing control of the food supply.

By the late 1990s Gabriel found an ideal 10-acre piece land (that grew to 20 acres) on which he developed his last, and most impressive botanical garden, near the town of La Ribera on the coast of the Sea of Cortez north of Los Cabos in Baja California, Mexico. That coastal desert land is blessed with an abundant supply of water from an aquifer fed by the Sierra de La Laguna mountains, the southernmost range on the Baja Peninsula. Located on the Tropic of Cancer, with a year-round growing climate, abundant sun and Gabriel’s botanical brilliance, he began to create his masterpiece, the Buena Fortuna Botanical Gardens.

Under Gabriel’s stewardship, with the help of Kitzia Kokopelmana, the land became an Eden in the desert with 3700 different plant species from the dry tropics around the world, many of them endangered. Plants from India, Madagascar, Chile, Peru, South East Asia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Somalia and Ethiopia flourish in the “Kinship” gardening system that groups together plants in the same botanical family from different parts of the world. In addition, several hundred different vegetables and fruits are grown at Buena Fortuna.  

In a Bioneers interview, Gabriel said “The plants and seeds we grow are shared with other botanical gardens and private collectors so that they can be preserved in different situations. The strategy is to make sure that whatever you collect you spread to each continent that has a similar climate, so that if there is a climatic condition (or some other cause) in which that plant species perishes, it will be preserved in another part of the world.”

With my wife Jan, I visited Buena Fortuna in the early 2000s. At the time the garden was only about 5 years old, but everything was so lush, vibrant and vigorous, it looked as though they had been there for decades. We slept in a tent and were awakened at dawn by a symphony of bird song. Buena Fortuna is on the Pacific flyway, and as birds migrate south along the desert of the Baja peninsula, hundreds and hundreds of them head straight to the bountiful garden oasis for rest and rejuvenation. 

Traveling to Buena Fortuna, after a night on the ferry crossing the Sea of Cortez, we landed in La Paz and took a bus that dropped us off in a rural area about 3 miles from the Botanical Gardens. Where we got off there was an arroyo about 30-feet deep and perhaps a few hundred meters wide. When I looked at it, I couldn’t imagine that something like that in such an arid climate could ever fill up with water. Along the banks of the arroyo were a number of very simple but sturdy homes with corrugated tin roofs.

A couple of years later, soon after the birth of Gabriel’s and Kitzia’s 2nd son, a major hurricane hit the cape region of Baja with heavy rains and 200 kilometer-per-hour winds. The structures at Buena Fortuna are built of local natural materials and materials grown in the garden, mainly bamboo construction with thatched roofs. People from the nearby community by the arroyo urged Gabriel and his family to take shelter with them in their homes; they were concerned that the dwellings at Buena Fortuna were not going to survive the oncoming storm. Gabriel decided to stay at Buena Fortuna. During the storm, he sat with his back to the wind inside the bamboo home holding his baby in his arms for hours. The structures bent and swayed alarmingly in the violent winds but never broke. The arroyo filled with raging storm water and some of the homes along its banks were destroyed. Many of the trees at the botanical gardens were knocked over but ultimately survived and regrew. Buena Fortuna showed remarkable resilience.   

I worked with Gabriel on two Bioneers projects. He and I traveled the back roads of the Deep South meeting with legacy African American farmers whose great-great grandparents were slaves. We collaborated with the Federation of Southern Cooperatives bringing Gabriel’s expertise in medicinal herb growing and organic farming to free workshops for Black farmers. For the Dreaming New Mexico project – a blueprint for a local food system at the state level­ – Gabriel designed a nutritional garden that grouped plants by the nutrients they contain. By eating something from each section, you would be consuming a balanced, healthy diet.

About 12 years ago, Gabriel came down with a life-threatening case of meningitis and was very close to death. He recovered, but it severely affected his speech, his walking and the use of one hand. He spent years rehabilitating but never fully recovered. Even so, he was able to, once again, teach and consult on projects. Despite significant physical challenges, he maintained his passion for biodiversity and dedication to sharing his knowledge.

A master seedsman, a tireless defender of biodiversity and an amazingly creative horticulturist, Gabriel increased biodiversity everywhere he went – Baja, Brazil, Oregon, Alabama, Mississippi, and the Indian Pueblos in New Mexico-just to name a few. In one wild, tragic and heart-breaking moment, he is gone.

The plant kingdom is in mourning; their great ally was swept away.

In the petals of every flower, dew drops turn to tears because Gabriel is no longer with us. 

The spirit of the plant world guides him now, lifting him from the raging water to somewhere beyond this world of mountains and streams that he loved.

His legacy, embedded generationally in the seeds and roots, his essence in the flowers and fruits.

Bioneers Decolonization Series: Why We Should Indigenize Place Names

Over the past year, Americans have made great strides in dismantling white supremacy, symbolized, in part, by the taking down of racist statues. We are still far behind other settler colonial nations in indigenizing our street names, but recent events point to a growing awareness and efforts to forward this movement. 

In October 2020, the Santa Barbara City Council voted unanimously to change the name of Indio Muerto Street, which means “dead Indian” in Spanish to Hutash st. a Chumash word that roughly translates to “Mother Earth.” A month later, the Phoenix City Council also unanimously agreed to change the name of “Squaw Peak Drive” to Piestewa Peak Drive  in honor of Army Spc. Lori Ann Piestewa, the first known Native American woman to die in combat in the U.S. military, and the first female soldier to be killed in action in the 2003 Iraq War.

While leaders in the Black civil rights movement have been renaming and inscribing streets to honor African American history for years, this is a fairly nascent movement in the US, especially outside of areas without significant Native populations. Renaming place names is especially needed in states that are eliminating or trying to eliminate critical race theory in the classrooms.

Indigenizing street names is a critical strategy for raising awareness of the disproportionate ongoing harms settler colonialism imparts on Indigenous peoples and other marginalized groups in the US. 

I can perhaps best explain why in a personal way. I live on Portola Drive, which connects to Fremont Street. This means that every time I leave my house, I have to see the visual and civil celebration of the Portola Expedition and John Fremont.

The Portola Expedition on 1769-1770 marked the start of the Spanish colonization of California, which brought the first wave of relocation, enslavement and murder of California Indians under the justification of the Doctrine of Discovery.

Ohlone and expedition members viewing San Francisco Bay from Sweeney Ridge on November 4, 1769. Dennis Ziemienski, 2019. source

John Fremont was a major player in ushering in the American colonization and the third wave of genocide against California Indians. (The second wave was when California was under Mexican law.) In 1846, Fremont and his men took control of the California Republic during the Mexican-American war. That same year, He ordered and participated in several massacres of California Indians. 

Being aware of my California history, I cannot not think about the valorization of these key moments in the genocide of millions of California Indians. I dream of a day when I live on Wéyotas Drive [source] that connects to Rumsen Street.

Wéyotas, or acorn, refers to the oak trees that grow native here and are a traditional food source for many California Indian peoples, and Rumsen is the name of the people whose ancestral territory I live on and with.

You can be a part of this movement by talking to a friend, sharing this blog, supporting existing efforts to indigenize place names, or learning your history and starting a movement of your own, in consultation with and under the free prior and informed consent of your local tribe of course. 

If you feel moved, we’d like to invite you to write a letter to the California State Park and Recreation Commission by September 28 in solidarity with the Yurok Tribe’s campaign to change the name of “Patricks Point” State Park to SuE-meg Village.

According to a release, California State Parks is recommending the commission to approve the changing of Patrick’s Point State Park name to Sue-meg State Park at the Thursday, Sept. 30 meeting. Public feedback on this potential name change will be accepted by the end of the business day, Tuesday, Sept. 28.

Written comments may be emailed to planning@parks.ca.gov with the words “Patrick’s Point Name Change” in the subject line.

The author, Alexis Bunten, PhD, Bioneers Indigeneity Co-Director at Su-Meg Village, Patrick’s Point State Park, CA

You can learn more about this inspiring campaign in this North Coast Journal article.


And let us know what you are doing to re-indigenize your community by writing to natives@bioneers.org!

Nurturing Resilience in the Wake of Hurricane Ida

Bioneers was first introduced to the work of Rebuild By Design when their Principal, Henk Ovink spoke at the 2015 Bioneers Conference. Ovink is also the first Special Envoy for International Water Affairs for the Kingdom of the Netherlands and supported the multi-billion dollar effort to rebuild and redesign parts of NYC after Hurricane Sandy. The visionary yet practical focus on resilient water infrastructure that Ovink and Rebuild by Design have led around the world over the years are truly inspiring. Their work continues to transform the way that we collectively think about society’s relationship with water – and how we can work with this essential element instead of against it.

After Hurricane Ida rolled through New York, Rebuild By Design immediately put out the call to a network of experts to understand what happened and what needs to be done moving forward. Managing Director Amy Chester wrote the following introduction and we encourage you to explore the full report that they rapidly produced.

– Teo Grossman, Bioneers Senior Director of Programs & Research

Hurricane Ida left a path of destruction and a collective head scratching –  wondering what could have been done to prepare, what can be done to help those most affected, and what should be done to prevent a similar event from happening again. 

However, we already have the answers. Experts in water management, data, transportation, parks and open space, regional planning, and emergency planning locally, nationally and internationally have been talking about the bold action we need to both prepare and respond to increasing severe climate events. We hope that the death and destruction we saw this month will never be repeated again.

Rebuild by Design asked 20 experts to offer “Concrete ideas of policies and projects that protect our communities from the flash flooding and loss of life which we experienced from Hurricane Ida.”  We know this will not comprise all the solutions, but we hope it is the start of an understanding that we know what we need to do – collaborate across government silos, sectors and communities to enact it. 

These essays will demonstrate that if we invest in green infrastructure on a large scale, changing the ways our government invests in projects, substantially increasing resources for the creation and maintenance of our green spaces, investing in data and more precise emergency alert systems which can be life-saving, building housing that is both safe and affordable, and doing with communities – from the start,  we can thrive in the face of climate change while also creating jobs, increasing physical and mental health outcomes, restoring ecology, improving neighborhoods, and building and rebuilding a City even greater than the City we live in today.

Read the full report here

Regenerative Agriculture Means Transforming the Relationship Between Women and Food

Paul Hawken

Women comprise the backbone of global food production despite enduring a lack of access to land and food security. Now women are leading the movement against the negative impacts that a male-domionated extractive agricultural industry is having on our climate. By restoring the land through a community-led form of regenerative agriculture, women are transforming our relationship to food and agriculture as part of the global movement against climate change.

In this excerpt from Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation, Paul Hawken describes the mass women-led movement to transform our agricultural system toward sustainable practices that mitigate climate change. 

From REGENERATION edited by Paul Hawken, published by Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2021 by Paul Hawken.

A key climate action pathway is where two major solutions overlap: the transformation of global food systems and the empowerment of girls and women. Achieving gender equity at household, community, and policymaking levels makes for improved agricultural yields and social outcomes. Agriculture is responsible for a significant share of the world’s greenhouse gas  emissions: almost one-quarter when accounting for land clearing. Climatic stresses on agriculture present significant food security challenges to large sectors of the population, especially rural women. In coming decades, adverse environmental and climate factors are expected to boost world food prices up to 30 percent and to increase price volatility. Amplifying the agency of rural female farmers—among the most marginalized groups in society and particularly vulnerable to food insecurity—is essential to building community resilience in the face of climate change. Reaching parity in training, education, credit, and property rights is critical: women own less land than men, while they do around 40 percent of labor related to food  production. Just as important is recognizing the value of women’s traditional knowledge of land, farming, and culinary practices and drawing this wisdom into the center of agriculture policy.

Women are the backbone of food systems in many parts of the world, deeply involved in every step of the process, from planting and harvesting crops to the planning and preparation of meals. Yet they receive a small percent of agricultural advisory and support services globally, and their involvement at the production level does not translate to increased food security or financial benefits for them. Nine out of ten nations have at least one law impeding women’s economic opportunities, including access to credit and the ability to own land. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reported that if women farmers were given the same access to resources that male farmers have, they could increase their crop yields by 20 to 30 percent and reduce malnutrition 12 to 17 percent globally. Boosting the yields of women farmers helps keep forests standing, as farmers are less inclined to expand their crops into nearby forests when their existing land is productive. This solution could reduce emissions by 2 gigatons of carbon dioxide by 2050. It highlights the deep connections between forests and food systems—integrating the two through agroforestry and ecological farming practices has been at the heart of a number of successful regenerative movements led by rural women. These initiatives, aimed at improving food and water security, result in restored ecosystems and demonstrate a powerful, multifaceted response to the climate crisis.

The effects of deforestation and industrial agriculture, compounded by warming temperatures, have resulted in severe  drought conditions and food insecurity in many parts of the world. Wangari Maathai’s Green Belt Movement organized women to plant trees on a large scale, restoring land and water resources and galvanizing a resurgence in traditional and organic farming in Kenya. The potency of women’s potential to innovate the food system is rooted in a deep understanding of the interconnectedness of nature and agriculture and a resourcefulness born out of their daily labor to  support their families. As Maathai pointed out, women who walk miles to fetch water daily are keenly aware when sources run dry. They are often the first to be involved in assessing changes in the availability and quality of  natural resources, and adaptively managing those resources to build resilience in the food chain.

Since 1977, the Green Belt Movement has planted more than 51 million trees and trained tens of thousands of women in trades such as agroforestry and beekeeping, serving as a model for women-led approaches to the transformation of food systems. The Women’s Earth Alliance Seeds of Resilience Project, in Karnataka, India, partners with a women-run seed-saving collective, Vanastree, which means “Women of the Forest.” In a region where chemical agriculture and climate instability are destroying forests, biodiversity, and people’s age-old control over their food sources and medicinal plant traditions, Seeds of Resilience supports women farmers who are promoting forest-based agriculture and small-scale food systems through conservation of traditional seeds. After participating in the year-long training, farmers went on to launch seven community seed banks, which increased seed biodiversity by 43 percent in the region. Women farmers also learned to become successful seed entrepreneurs who now grow and sell seed. These farmers train others to utilize drought and flood-resistant native seeds that secure healthy food and generate income. Earnings are reinvested into families and into training more women entrepreneurs. These seed banks act as a safeguard for preserving and storing critical seed varieties, alongside the landscape, which acts as a seed sanctuary itself.

These movements demonstrate the fierceness with which women are defenders and protectors of local resources, and the exponential effect of women’s leadership on food systems. Encouraging women’s agency at the farm level involves ensuring that education and training are equally accessible to them. This takes the support of both women and men, who must also recognize the benefits of inclusion for their families and communities.

In India, three-quarters of rural women work in agriculture, a sector that has been hit hard by decades of economic liberalization as the amount of arable land has dwindled as a result of government policies that support industrialization and  corporatization of farming. In early 2021, women occupied the forefront of one of the biggest and longest-lasting protests in the country’s history, when farmers demanded that the government withdraw legislation that supported corporations at the expense of small-holders. In spite of the patriarchal traditions that have prevented women from achieving equality in agriculture in India, these protests were a rare grassroots uprising in which women and men stood arm in arm, despite an increasingly authoritarian response from government.

In the United States, there is a significant movement of women into agriculture. Family farms always involved women as part and parcel of agriculture, but women are now taking over farm operations or are farming on their own in increasing numbers. Between 1997 and 2017, women as principal agricultural producers increased from 209,800 to 766,500, one of the greatest demographic shifts in agricultural history. Because of resistance, barriers, and sexism in the traditional farming community, women are forming networks and  organizations that provide them with safe spaces free from the pressures of “farming like a man.” The agricultural challenges they face are the same for all farmers: commoditized  markets, toxic  pesticides, depressed  prices, and small or negligible profits. They encounter greater difficulties in obtaining loans and working with equipment designed for men’s bodies. What women bring to farming are qualities that emphasize personal  relationships, a greater focus on sustainability for oneself and the land, regenerative techniques, networking, and collaborative learning. Around the world women carry forward Native and Indigenous knowledge of the land, climate, and plants, passing it on from generation to generation. For many reasons, women more easily recognize that our well-being is inseparable from the well-being of the soil. The restoration and renewal of farmlands means changing from a male-dominated form of extractive agriculture to a community-led form of regenerative agriculture that includes everyone.

Filmmaker Abby Ginzberg Reflects on Her Film & Barbara Lee’s Career of Speaking Truth to Power

When the U.S. military invaded Afghanistan in 2001 with the stated goal of bringing Osama bin Laden to justice, people who opposed a military reaction to the September 11th attacks found it difficult to voice their opinions. Corporate media outlets were beating the drum for war. They didn’t widely report that the Taliban were willing to give up Osama bin Laden to the U.S. if given proof of his guilt, or that neoconservatives were pushing George Bush, Jr. to implement their plan for regime change throughout the region. And so the invasions and occupations went forward.

After 20 years and $21 trillion spent on the “War on Terror”, a reckoning is revealing what many opponents warned from the beginning: waging war around the world does not make Americans any safer, waging peace does. Representative Barbara Lee of California was one of those opponents. She was the lone voice in Congress who voted against authorizing the President to wage war without Congressional approval. Peabody award winning filmmaker Abby Ginzberg has released her film “Barbara Lee: Speaking Truth to Power” about Representative Lee just in time to amplify this leading voice for global peace and security.

In her film, Abby features many aspects of Barbara Lee and how she came to be who she is today. We learn of her experience with racism as a girl growing up in El Paso, Texas, seeing that from the beginning, she was a fighter. Barbara wanted to be a cheerleader but was denied the opportunity because she was black. So she worked with the local NAACP chapter to integrate her high school cheerleading squad. We also learn about how Barbara got into politics and dedicated herself to her local constituents on a variety of issues.

I interviewed Abby in the flurry of the film’s release and spoke with her about why she chose to direct the film.

Abby Ginzberg

ABBY GINZBERG: Today is September 10th, and we are one day away from the 20th anniversary of the events that led to Barbara’s vote. I would say that the media has kind of woken up to her notoriety around that no vote. It wasn’t planned quite this way, but the film could not have asked to be released at a better time. I’m happy about it.

One of the reasons I made the film is because there were a lot of people around the country who had never heard of Barbara Lee. They may have known that there was one person who voted no on the AUMF (authorization for the use of military force), but they don’t know that she’s an African American woman who represents Oakland, California. So that was one of the reasons I made the film.

STEPHANIE WELCH, BIONEERS RADIO SENIOR PRODUCER: So tell us more about who Representative Barbara Lee is, and about the significance of her vote.

ABBY: Barbara Lee is my congresswoman. She represents Oakland, Berkeley, and San Leandro in the East Bay in California, across the way from San Francisco. She’s been in Congress since 1998 and has been one of its most progressive members.

Rep. Barbara Lee

Obviously, I knew about her “no” vote, and I knew that it was a vote of courage and morality. She was able to kind of take a breath when the rest of the country was in a kind of ridiculously feverish retaliatory mood. I thought her ability to find that peace and calm inside herself, to know what she felt she should do, was remarkable. So that provided some of the initial inspiration for me, but there is a lot more to her that justified doing a profile of her.

Let me say she was not a willing subject. Every time she saw me, I felt like she was greeting her dentist who was there with a drill to do a root canal. I mean, it was ridiculous. She really didn’t want to be followed by a camera. She didn’t want to have a mic on her, etc. So it took her a long time to warm up to the fact that I was going to make this movie come hell or high water, so she might as well cooperate.

What she says about it in retrospect is, “I think it took Abby twice as long to make the film as it would have had I cooperated more fully in the beginning,” which is true. But the timing is right, you know, all things happen for a reason.

There’s a piece in today’s Politico where they interviewed 17 people who were all involved in creating national security policy, etc., in the post 9-11 world, and among the things that they say in retrospect is ‘we wish we had taken a breath’. That was really what Barbara was asking for, if you listen to her speech on the floor of Congress when she is about to vote no. What she is saying is, let us take a moment; this is not the time for Congress to be giving up its war-making authority or its ability to approve war that the president’s trying to get us into. This is a time to take stock of where we are and proceed more deliberately moving into the future. Well, that is not what happened.

What happened is everybody but Barbara voted in favor of giving unlimited military authority to President Bush and to every president since. It’s still on the books. Barbara’s been fighting what started out as a very lone battle to get people to see the error of their ways. She’s finally been able to pass the repeal of the 2002 AUMF through the Democratic House, which is what the Bush administration used to take us into Iraq.

It’s been slow and steady, and as she would say, drip, drip, drip, drip. You just have to keep fighting, and eventually if you’re right, people are going to see the error of their ways and eventually join you. That has been, I would say, the lesson from her position vis-à-vis 9-11. She is not an I-told-you-so person. If you were interviewing her how she feels 20 years later, she would say, “As sad as I did on the day I voted no.” Because we’ve lost so many thousands of American and Afghani and Iraqi lives, and the women that are still left there that we weren’t able to get out, and translators, etc. She’s still mourning for both the lives lost 20 years ago and the mess on the ground that we have walked away from today.

STEPHANIE: In your film, you feature interviews with some of her fellow Congresspeople who didn’t vote with her. They voiced regret looking back now.

ABBY: Yes, and I was surprised. There are two points in the film that I think are worth highlighting there. One is when John Lewis said, I was really worried about her future, but in retrospect, I wish I’d voted with her. I should have been with her. And he voted the right way against the invasion of Iraq. And Lynn Woolsey said, if only one or two of us would have voted with her, it would have defused all this hatred and negative energy that landed in Barbara’s inbox and mailbox and kind of on her head.

It was very scary for her and her family right after 9/11 because people were writing to her and saying things like “You’re a terrible traitor”, “You don’t understand what’s going on in this country”, “How can we trust you”, and so on. She literally had to have 24-hour security services provided for her. She couldn’t travel. She was in Washington for weeks on end before she could come home.

None of it made her feel like she wished she had voted differently. But it took a while before the support letters came in. She received a heavy dose of hate mail and death threats. And her sisters were getting death threats.

Then it got better when people had a little more distance and were able to see that maybe Barbara was actually the one who understood what was going on in this country better than some other people.

STEPHANIE: You show a beautiful scene where everyone comes out in support of her in Oakland. Everybody’s there cheering her on. You’ve been in the Bay Area since 1972, which has been such a nexus for the peace movement. I remember the massive turnout against the invasion of Iraq War, which was unprecedented as it took place before the invasion occurred. We don’t see that level of mobilization against U.S. military action, even though they are engaged in many countries with drone strikes and forcing crippling sanctions on them. What is your reflection on where the peace movement is now?

ABBY: That’s a good question. It’s like, okay, which of the current disasters that we’re living through are we going to be on the streets about next? I just got a thing from the Women’s March saying they’re on the streets October 2nd, you better be with us around reproductive rights. I thought that fight was over back in 1973-74.

I would say that Barbara’s point of view is that we should always try to find a non-military solution to situations in which we claim we have enemies, a lot of people believe that, and after 20 years of not having been able to “eliminate the Taliban,” we need to figure out some other non-violent, non-military answers to the questions of how there’s going to be coexistence in this world without us blowing each other up.

I’m not really in some ways the right person to ask because I’m such a peacenik. Barbara says she’s not a pacifist. I think largely I am. Barbara grew up in a military family, I didn’t. I think I have kind of a little bit less regard for the military than Barbara does. I cut my teeth because I went to college when I was 17 as an anti-war demonstrator against the Vietnam War, and I’ve been in the streets ever since on anti-war issues. We’re in a complicated position when you’ve got a democratic president who’s really trying to kind of do the right thing in term of ending military presence in Afghanistan. Barbara’s very supportive of the idea that we had to get out of there, even though she too would critique how many people we left behind unnecessarily.

I think the peace movement is probably alive and well, and a little bit dormant at this point, but I think scratch the surface of the Bay Area and we’ll be out on the streets next time we have to oppose a military intervention.

STEPHANIE: Being in the Bay Area, you watched Representative Lee’s career, and portrayed beautifully how she evolved over the years, especially her mentorship with Ron Dellums.

ABBY: Yes, I’ve been a constituent of Barbara’s since I moved to the East Bay in 1992, so the entire time she’s been in elected office, she’s had my vote, both in the California Assembly and California state Senate, and in Congress. But you forget who somebody is when they start out, so some of those images of her early in her career, she seems so young and inexperienced. It’s less like a constituent and more as a filmmaker that I was like wow, she was young, and just kind of green about how do you get elected, and how am I going to do this. And I don’t drink, so my mother has to go to the bars with my sister and try to get me a few votes over a couple of beers, or whatever. So I appreciated being able to piece that together without having an active memory of what those days were like.

One thing that I was unhappy about, and there was nothing to do about it, was that once I was ready to interview Ron Dellums, which was sometime in 2018, he was already sick. I didn’t know it at the time. For nine months to a year, I would tell him every time I was coming to DC, and he would write back and say, I really don’t feel up to it. And I would just have to respect that. I feel like I missed my opportunity to get him on camera.

But I had to find a way to put him in the film and to let people know who he was, because for people who don’t know Barbara, they might not know who Ron Dellums is either. She never speaks about him without calling him Our Beloved Ron Dellums, and her mentor, and he really was. Barbara was a young, barely-out-of-college intern in his office where she first cut her teeth, and one of the very few black women on Capitol Hill at that point, and the fact that Ron had total faith in her and would take her anywhere or send her anywhere by herself really enabled her to kind of learn how the game works and to learn how to play it. I had to tell that part of the story, that she learned from one of the best.

One of the things that’s not in the film but I’ve heard her say many times since, is one of the lessons I learned from Ron was not to hit below the belt. Don’t turn people into enemies. If you can oppose somebody or create a point of difference, that’s fine, but don’t go out of your way to “one-up” them or put them down because it will come back to bite you. This is something I knew as a constituent of Ron’s.

He was a statesman. It helped that he was 6’4 and good-looking and had a commanding voice. Barbara is shorter than I am. She’s maybe five feet. She doesn’t have his stature in terms of height or presence or whatever, but she is channeling so many important lessons she learned from him, and that’s made her so much more effective than she might otherwise have been. Because he was somebody who was also said try to find common ground wherever you can with whoever you can. And Barbara’s strategy is, If you can join me in creating an international AIDS program and putting $15 billion into Africa, I’m going to stand with you even if you don’t agree with me on anything else. If you want to stand with me on the AUMF, I will stand with you even though we don’t agree on anything else.

Ron really paved the way for that type of legislative strategy; find your allies where you can and don’t worry about all the other issues that you disagree on.

STEPHANIE: Sadly, those below-the-belt tactics are everywhere in politics today.

ABBY: Yes, but not Barbara. She does not get down and dirty. As a result, she has a level of respect in Congress from others that is very deep. I think the reason so many members of the black Congressional Caucus and well-known members of Congress were willing to be in this film is because they respect her, and wanted to go on record saying that, and they learned from her and admired her, etc. Everybody from John Lewis to Ayanna Pressley to AOC and Gregory Meeks and so on talked to me.

STEPHANIE: You included the wonderful history about her and Oakland politics, just as she was getting started. Tell us about that part of her life and how dedicated she is to her local constituents?

ABBY: Barbara may not be as unique today as she was back then, but there are a couple of things that make her a little different. She went to graduate school as a social worker, and she went to Mills College a little bit later in life, so she probably didn’t start until she was in her early 20s. Barbara was a single mother on welfare with two kids trying to go to college where she did not have enough money for daycare and had to take her kids with her to class. That’s part of the story.

The other part of the story is that she was a local community activist working with the Black Panther party as part of their food program, which she bagged chickens and made sure people had enough to eat, and oversaw the distribution of shoes, bags of food, etc. It was part of what the Black Panther party was doing to take care of people’s needs in Oakland where the government was absolutely not responding at all. That’s how we got the George Jackson Free Clinic and sickle-cell testing and so on. Barbara was there on the ground. She wasn’t a member of the Black Panther Party but she was a community worker with them.

Barbara Lee protesting against nuclear weapons. Photo courtesy of “Speaking Truth to Power.”

That taught her a lot about community organizing, and later it became a really important base for her work on the Shirley Chisholm presidential campaign. It came to her as a bit of a surprise, but Shirley asked her if she was registered to vote, and she says, “Nah, I don’t believe in the system. I don’t believe in the Republicans. I don’t believe in the Democrats. No, I’m not registered to vote.” And Shirley says to her, “Little girl, you can’t even talk to me about working on my campaign unless you’re registered to vote, because unless you’re registered to vote, you’re not playing a real role in all of this.” So Barbara bit the bullet, registered to vote, went on and worked in the Shirley Chisholm campaign, and then became aware of the importance of voting, running for office, having somebody who reflects your values be the person you get to vote for. Because that was not typical back in those days, and I think just by stomping for Shirley and getting people registered to vote so they could vote in the primary where Shirley ran, etc., all that had a profound effect on Barbara and enabled her to see how she could have an inside and outside game at the same time; that she could be organizing and still protesting the things she thought weren’t going in the right direction, or if the Democrats sort of took a wrong position, she didn’t have to go along to get along.

I think the Shirley campaign made a difference in Barbara’s political life, and gave her a vision of what it would mean to run as a black woman. One of the themes that is embedded in the film from the beginning but has now emerged as something people talk about – this is a quote from Ayanna Pressley in the film. “The people closest to the pain should be the people closest to the power.” What that means is if you’re a black woman there are things in your life experience that are going to help you be a better legislator than somebody else who has not suffered being unhoused, who has not suffered ever being on welfare, who did not need a government loan to buy a house, etc. All of the things that Barbara went through helped coalesce around the kind of legislative agenda she first went for and then enacted in the California legislature and then took with her to Washington.

Every time the Republicans try to cut SNAP benefits from food stamp recipients, Barbara is there to say it was incredible help to me; it was a bridge over troubled water. Do not do this. This is not about people looking to be on food stamps, these are people who need help at a certain time in their lives, and if we help them, then what happened to me is I finally get on my own two feet and I’m able not to have to be on food stamps again. She had the food stamp experience. She had a federal loan. She went to college on various loans, etc. She’s a recipient of some government largess that she is fighting like hell to kind of keep in the budgets.

One of the things she is absolutely fierce about is the notion in the new infrastructure bill there should be money for childcare because she knows just how incredibly complicated it was to try to raise her children with no help.

I think it’s critical. But I think you listen differently. I would be fighting for that if I was in Congress as well, but I wouldn’t be able to say, “And when I was a young mother, I couldn’t afford daycare.” I had daycare or I wouldn’t have been able to work. It was as big of an issue in my life as it was in Barbara’s but I had saved enough money that I could actually pay for it.

I just feel like that point about lived experience, having faced challenges, and what that enables you to both say and the moral center that you then bring with you in a legislative body is really important.

STEPHANIE: And working with Bush on AIDS relief, you included that in the film.

ABBY: This goes to Barbara’s willingness to work across the aisle and find common cause around whatever the issue is. One of the things that Van Jones says in the film is, “Her relationship with President George Bush should be one for the history books because she was the only person who stood up against him on the 9-11 AUMF and she is the person who essentially got him to agree to look into and ask for in the State of the Union a $15 billion president’s emergency plan for AIDS relief in Africa.” Van’s point is that it doesn’t matter to her if you’re a Republican or a Democrat if she can get you to do the right policy thing. It was a heavy lift, and it turns out that when Bush decided he was really going to look into this and see if he could really support the creation of this new program, he did it on the low down. People were sworn to secrecy. So the people on his staff and around him in the cabinet who were working on this were not allowed to talk about it.

You meet Walter Jones in my film. He was a die hard NRA supporter, basically a really tried and true Republican, but once he got sick of writing condolence letters to members of his district that were being killed in foreign wars all around the world, he said, “I’ve got to do something about this,” and he essentially joined with Barbara early on, not in the last three years. He said, “I have now seen the errors of my ways,” and as he says in the film, “I don’t blame President Bush, I blame myself.” That’s profound.

She just sent me a picture of Walter Jones that she found where they’re both listening to testimony that related to not supporting this anymore. Kudos to Walter Jones. He’s passed now, but he could not wait to talk to me because he had so much admiration and respect for Barbara, and for their ability to work together even though they were literally coming from the most progressive and most conservative ends of Congress, and they had to meet in the middle.

STEPHANIE: You have the clip of Lynn Woolsey who encourages her to speak up about those experiences.

ABBY: Yes, Barbara had to be pushed. What she would say is this was part of her personal life; she’s not used to sharing parts of her personal life, therefore, she didn’t feel comfortable talking about it. And Lynn Woolsey said, “Well, if you and I don’t talk about it, since we’re the two welfare mothers here, who’s going to?” And that motivated Barbara to just let it go and start talking about it.

STEPHANIE: Also her experience with domestic violence?

ABBY: She was a victim of domestic violence. That led her to want to put the bill in on the Violence Against Women Act in California, and she got Pete Wilson, who was a Republican governor, to sign it. That was important.

Many of the issues that she has been most forceful on have come directly from her own experiences, and the difference between then and now is that she is happy to talk about how those experiences affect how we should be looking at these issues from a social perspective. So kudos to her for feeling comfortable enough to speak out about it.

STEPHANIE: You talk about her work with the Black Panthers, who were opposing police violence and the criminalization of black people, and in the course making your film, the George Floyd murder happened. You were able to include that.

ABBY: Barbara is seen in Milwaukee at a barber shop that employs formerly incarcerated men who’ve been taught barber skills in prison. She and her colleague, Gwen Moore, who represents Milwaukee, are looking for programs that work to lift people out of poverty.

One of the reasons we have mass incarceration in this country today is because of the long sentences that came along with marijuana arrests. And so now, even as we’re going state by state and marijuana is no longer illegal, etc., there are huge numbers of black and brown people who are in prison based on old marijuana laws. Barbara’s been trying to change the rules around cannabis and cannabis legislation and punishment.

Congresswoman Barbara Lee speaks in front of Oakland City Hall, Friday, June 5, 2020, during a solidarity George Floyd protest event. (Photo by Karl Mondon/MediaNews Group/The Mercury News via Getty Images)

And, yes, there’s a direct line between the Panthers calling out all-white racist police people in the city of Oakland whose entire training had been to essentially hate and gun down black people who were all over the city of Oakland, so it felt like an occupied town. And what’s happened with Sandra Bland and George Floyd and the number of other people. I would just say Barbara’s been on the right side of that debate from the beginning. I don’t know if she’s had any position on defunding the police, but she would certainly support alternative methods of intervention when you’ve got someone having a psychiatric break. Don’t call people with loaded guns to try to quell that situation. That’s not who’s needed. And as a social worker, she’d be the first to say you need someone with mental health experience to try to intervene.

So, yes, she’s been on the issue of mass incarceration. She’s certainly been on the issue to try to end police brutality and trying to find better means for dialogue between communities and those who are members of the police force. Oakland’s police force itself has been under a federal order for probably 20 years, and they’re just about maybe to get released from it, but God help us, because I don’t think they’ve totally learned their lesson yet.

And just a shout out to Thelton Henderson who had the Oakland Riders case for so many years. I’ve also made a film about Thelton. One of the things that he did was really forced a level of accountability, whether it was the Oakland Police Department or the California prison medical care system, to show up every month in his office and tell them whether or not they had accomplished the next set of goals, and often they had not. So having a federal judge who’s up to his own neck in trying to monitor the changes that had been part of whatever the judicial decree has been, he’s now retired and I don’t know exactly how the next round of oversight has been happening. But I would say that he, like Barbara, was a true role model in how to affect change. Part of that change is to force accountability, and she was really trying to do that with the Oakland Police Department.

STEPHANIE: I know you weren’t able to include this in your film, but Barbara Lee is also very passionate about environmental issues as well.

ABBY: Yes. What you can’t do in a film is everyone’s issue list. It has to all somehow relate back to the big picture you’re painting. But I would say Barbara is a total environmentalist. She’s championing the Green New Deal, and working hard to support those who are leading the fight.

One of the things that is interesting about Barbara is her ability—and it’s one of the things about what it means to represent Oakland—there is a way in which sometimes what we see in Oakland is essentially the canary in the coal mine. For example, on the AIDS crisis, when everybody thought it was just a white gay male disease, and Barbara was hearing from all members of the black community that it had infiltrated the black community, both men and women, gay and straight, her reaction was, okay, we need to understand there is a race-specific effect here that we need to call out. I tell that story in the film. But it would be true whether it’s about changes that need to happen in the tech industry, she is sensitive to the lack of diversity that is going on in all those big players, between Facebook and Twitter and whoever else. It’s not like she’s looking for the angle, the angle finds her, because it’s going to derive, to some extent, from her community in Oakland.

So the negative effects of climate change, what does it mean that there is more asthma among the African American and Latino community in Oakland? It means there are less protections in terms of air pollution, etc., and we are seeing the effects in the health of young kids. We see this with lead poisoning. The things Barbara is going to call out first are going to be the disparate impacts on communities of color in her district, and from that we often end up with progressive views and legislation and whatever about how to deal with these issues around the country.

For example, in the reproductive rights fight that we’re in the middle of, Barbara is really concerned about how poor women of color are being denied. Correctly, she could assume that wealthy white women are going figure out how to get an abortion even if they have to drive for a day or fly for a few hours or whatever, but what’s going to happen to African American and Latino women in Texas? It’s going to be terrible. That is going to be her focus, because they are the most heavily impacted. So much of her experience is reflected in their experience, and therefore this is kind of the platform that she speaks from.

So, people may know who Barbara Lee is, they may not. Someone just wrote a piece about a Civil Rights icon. Whatever. This is her moment because of 9-11. She was right and so many others were wrong. But she is not in an I-told-you-so moment. She’s in a moment of sad reflection. We should thank her for her vision. She had vision and understood that this would not have a good outcome, and she was right.

“Barbara Lee: Speaking Truth to Power” is available on Amazon Prime.

More films by Abby Ginzberg: https://socialactionmedia.com/stream

Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter | Ben Goldfarb

The consequences of losing beavers were profound: streams eroded, wetlands dried up, and species from salmon to swans lost vital habitat. Today, a growing coalition of “Beaver Believers” recognizes that ecosystems with beavers are far healthier, for humans and non-humans alike, than those without them. In his book, Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter, journalist Ben Goldfarb reveals how our idea of a healthy landscape is distorted by the fur trade that once trapped out millions of beavers from North America’s lakes and rivers.

Ben Goldfarb is an award-winning environmental journalist who covers wildlife management and conservation biology and holds a master of environmental management degree from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. His work has been featured in Science, Mother Jones, The Guardian, High Country News, VICE, Audubon Magazine, Orion, Scientific American, and many other publications.

The following excerpt is from Ben Goldfarb’s Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2018) and is reprinted with permission from the publisher.

Close your eyes. Picture, if you will, a healthy stream. What comes to mind? Perhaps you’ve conjured a crystalline, fast-moving creek, bounding merrily over rocks, its course narrow and shallow enough that you could leap or wade across the channel. If, like me, you are a fly fisherman, you might add a cheerful, knee-deep angler, casting for trout in a limpid riffle. 

It’s a lovely picture, fit for an Orvis catalog. It’s also wrong. 

Let’s try again. This time, I want you to perform a more difficult imaginative feat. Instead of envisioning a present-day stream, I want you to reach into the past—before the mountain men, before the Pilgrims, before Hudson and Champlain and the other horsemen of the furpocalypse, all the way back to the 1500s. I want you to imagine the streams that existed before global capitalism purged a continent of its dam-building, water-storing, wetland-creating engineers. I want you to imagine a landscape with its full complement of beavers. 

What do you see this time? No longer is our stream a pellucid, narrow, racing trickle. Instead it’s a sluggish, murky swamp, backed up several acres by a messy concatenation of woody dams. Gnawed stumps ring the marsh like punji sticks; dead and dying trees stand aslant in the chest-deep pond. When you step into the water, you feel not rocks underfoot but sludge. The musty stink of decomposition wafts into your nostrils. If there’s a fisherman here, he’s thrashing angrily in the willows, his fly caught in a tree. 

Although this beavery tableau isn’t going to appear in any Field & Stream spreads, it’s in many cases a more historically accurate picture—and, in crucial ways, a much healthier one. In the intermountain West, wetlands, though they make up just 2 percent of total land area, support 80 percent of biodiversity; you may not hear the tinkle of running water in our swamp, but listen closely for the songs of warblers and flycatchers perched in creek-side willows. Wood frogs croak along the pond’s marshy aprons; otters chase trout through the submerged branches of downed trees, a forest inverted. The deep water and the close vegetation make the fishing tough, sure, but abundant trout shelter in the meandering side channels and cold depths. In A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean captured the trials and ecstasies of angling in beaver country when he wrote of one character, “So off he went happily to wade in ooze and to get throttled by brush and to fall through loose piles of sticks called beaver dams and to end up with a wreath of seaweed round his neck and a basket full of fish.”

And it’s not just fishermen and wildlife who benefit. The weight of the pond presses water deep into the ground, recharging aquifers for use by downstream farms and ranches. Sediment and pollutants filter out in the slackwaters, cleansing flows. Floods dissipate in the ponds; wildfires hiss out in wet meadows. Wetlands capture and store spring rain and snowmelt, releasing water in delayed pulses that sustain crops through the dry summer. A report released by a consulting firm in 2011 estimated that restoring beavers to a single river basin, Utah’s Escalante, would provide tens of millions of dollars in benefits each year. Although you can argue with the wisdom of slapping a dollar value on nature, there’s no denying that these are some seriously important critters. 

To society, though, beavers still appear more menacing than munificent. In 2013 I lived with my partner, Elise, in a farming town called Paonia, set high in the mesas of Colorado’s Western Slope. Our neighbors’ farms and orchards were watered by labyrinthine irrigation ditches, each one paralleled by a trail along which the ditch rider—the worker who maintained the system—drove his ATV during inspections. In the evenings we strolled the ditches, our soundtrack the faint gurgle of water through headgates, our backdrop the rosy sunset on Mount Lamborn. One dusk we spotted a black head drifting down the canal like a piece of floating timber. The beaver let us approach within a few feet before slapping his tail explosively and submarining off into the crepuscule. On subsequent walks we saw our ditch beaver again, and again, perhaps half a dozen times altogether. We came to expect him, and though it was probably our imaginations, he seemed to grow less skittish with each encounter. 

Like many torrid romances, our relationship acquired a certain frisson from the certain knowledge that it was doomed. Although our beaver showed no inclination to dam the canal—and indeed, beavers often elect not to dam at all—we knew the ditch rider would not tolerate the possibility of sabotage. The next time the rider passed us on his ATV, a shotgun lay across his knees. The grapevine gave us unhappy tidings a few days later: Our ditch beaver was no more. 

That zero-tolerance mentality remains more rule than exception: Beavers are still rodenta non grata across much of the United States. They are creative in their mischief. In 2013 residents of Taos, New Mexico, lost cell phone and internet service for twenty hours when a beaver gnawed through a fiber-optic cable. They have been accused of dropping trees atop cars on Prince Edward Island, sabotaging weddings in Saskatchewan, and ruining golf courses in Alabama—where, gruesomely, they were slaughtered with pitchforks, a massacre one local reporter called a “dystopian Caddyshack.” Sometimes they’re framed for crimes they did not commit: Beavers were accused of, and exonerated for, flooding a film set in Wales. (The actual culprits were the only organisms more heedless of property than beavers: teenagers.) Often, though, they’re guilty as charged. In 2016 a rogue beaver was apprehended by authorities in Charlotte Hall, Maryland, after barging into a department store and rifling through its plastic-wrapped Christmas trees. The vandal was shipped off to a wildlife rehab center, but his comrades tend not to be so lucky. 

Although our hostility toward beavers is most obviously predicated on their penchant for property damage, I suspect there’s also a deeper aversion at work. We humans are fanatical, orderly micromanagers of the natural world: We like our crops planted in parallel furrows, our dams poured with smooth concrete, our rivers straitjacketed and obedient. Beavers, meanwhile, create apparent chaos: jumbles of downed trees, riotous streamside vegetation, creeks that jump their banks with abandon. What looks to us like disorder, though, is more properly described as complexity, a profusion of life-supporting habitats that benefit nearly everything that crawls, walks, flies, and swims in North America and Europe. “A beaver pond is more than a body of water supporting the needs of a group of beavers,” wrote James B. Trefethen in 1975, “but the epicenter of a whole dynamic ecosystem.” 

Beavers are also at the center of our own story. Practically since humans first dispersed across North America via the Bering Land Bridge—replicating a journey that beavers made repeatedly millions of years prior—the rodents have featured in the religions, cultures, and diets of indigenous peoples from the nations of the Iroquois to the Tlingit of the Pacific Northwest. More recently, and destructively, it was the pursuit of beaver pelts that helped lure white people to the New World and westward across it. The fur trade sustained the Pilgrims, dragged Lewis and Clark up the Missouri, and exposed tens of thousands of native people to smallpox. The saga of beavers isn’t just the tale of a charismatic mammal—it’s the story of modern civilization, in all its grandeur and folly. 

Despite the fur trade’s ravages, beavers today face no danger of extinction: Somewhere around fifteen million survive in North America, though no one knows the number for certain. In fact, they’re one of our most triumphant wildlife success stories. Beavers have rebounded more than a hundredfold since trappers reduced their numbers to around one hundred thousand by the turn of the twentieth century. The comeback has been even more dramatic across the Atlantic, where populations of a close cousin, the Eurasian beaver (Castor fiber), have skyrocketed from just one thousand to around one million. Not only have beavers benefited from conservation laws, they’ve helped author them. It was the collapse of the beaver—along with the disappearance of other persecuted animals, like the bison and the passenger pigeon—that sparked the modern conservation movement. 

But let’s not pat ourselves on the backs too heartily. As far as we’ve come, beaver restoration has many miles farther to go. When Europeans arrived in North America, the naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton guessed that anywhere from sixty million to four hundred million beavers swam its rivers and ponds. Although Seton’s appraisal was more than a bit arbitrary, there’s no doubt that North American beaver populations remain a fraction of their historic levels. Will Harling, director of the Mid Klamath Fisheries Council, told me that some California watersheds host just one one-thousandth as many beavers as existed before trappers pursued them to the brink of oblivion. 

That story, of course, isn’t unique to California, or to beavers. Europeans began despoiling North American ecosystems the moment they set boots on the stony shore of the New World. You’re probably familiar with most of the colonists’ original environmental sins: They wielded an ax against every tree, lowered a net to catch every fish, turned livestock onto every pasture, churned the prairie to dust. In California’s Sierra Nevada, nineteenth-century gold miners displaced so much sediment that the sludge could have filled the Panama Canal eight times. We are not accustomed to discussing the fur trade in the same breath as those earth-changing industries, but perhaps we should. The disappearance of beavers dried up wetlands and meadows, hastened erosion, altered the course of countless streams, and imperiled water-loving fish, fowl, and amphibians—an aquatic Dust Bowl. Centuries before the Glen Canyon Dam plugged up the Colorado and the Cuyahoga burst into flame, fur trappers were razing stream ecosystems. “[Beavers’] systematic and widespread removal,” wrote Sharon Brown and Suzanne Fouty in 2011, “represents the first large-scale Euro-American alteration of watersheds.” 

If trapping out beavers ranked among humanity’s earliest crimes against nature, bringing them back is a way to pay reparations. Beavers, the animal that doubles as an ecosystem, are ecological and hydrological Swiss Army knives, capable, in the right circumstances, of tackling just about any landscape-scale problem you might confront. Trying to mitigate floods or improve water quality? There’s a beaver for that. Hoping to capture more water for agriculture in the face of climate change? Add a beaver. Concerned about sedimentation, salmon populations, wildfire? Take two families of beaver and check back in a year. 

The Blue Economy: Too Good Not to Be True | Bren Smith

In this second of a two-part program, we plunge into the mind-bending proposition that we get a second chance to remake our broken food economy. Bren Smith, co-founder and co-Executive Director of GreenWave, has created a revolutionary polycultural farming model that has low upfront costs, is easily scalable, and can help mitigate climate change. It’s called regenerative ocean farming and aims to redesign the food economy away from destructive profit-driven practices and agribusiness monopolies in favor of democratizing the food economy.

Featuring

Bren Smith, co-executive director and co-founder of GreenWave and owner of Thimble Island Ocean Farm, pioneered the development of regenerative ocean farming. Bren is the winner of the 2015 Buckminster Fuller Challenge award. He is an Ashoka, Castanea, and Echoing Green Climate Fellow and James Beard Award-winning author of Eat Like a Fish: My Adventures Farming the Ocean to Fight Climate Change.

Credits

  • Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel
  • Written by: Kenny Ausubel and Arty Mangan
  • Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch
  • Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey
  • Producer: Teo Grossman
  • Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris
  • Production and Engineering Assistance: Rebekah Wineman
  • Production intern: Isabelle Dean

Resources

The Blue New Deal: Making a Living on a Living Ocean | Labor Network for Sustainability

Seaweed Aquaculture for Food Security, Income Generation and Environmental Health in Tropical Developing Countries | World Bank Group

The Least Deadly Catch: Ocean Farming in the Climate Change Era | Bren Smith’s keynote address at the 2016 Bioneers Conference

More Bioneers podcasts, articles, and videos featuring Bren Smith

This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast.

Subscribe to the Bioneers: Revolution from The Heart of Nature podcast

Transcript

NEIL HARVEY, HOST: Some historians, ecologists and agriculturalists suggest that the downfall of human civilization began with the invention of agriculture. As our hunter-gatherer societies transitioned into permanent settlements, it wasn’t just the damage they did to the land, which was formidable over long periods of time. 

Farming also led to the creation of surpluses – enter the first literal bean counters. Soon wealth began to concentrate at the top of the rising pyramid.

In the 20th century, industrial agriculture morphed into agribusiness. It’s a tightly monopolized, ferociously profit-driven partnership between giant corporations and the politicians who love them. It’s a pyramid scheme of a different kind: crucial federal policies that support and defend corporate hegemony. It’s known as “farming the government.” 

Good luck breaking into that game.

Meanwhile, forget the shining Jeffersonian ideal of a thriving nation of independent small farmers. Farmers have devolved in great part into indentured contractors. 

Altogether, we’re left with a degraded food system that’s impossibly vulnerable to all manner of climate shocks, market swings and dis-employment. 

But what if we had it to do all over again – to start with a clean slate? That, says regenerative ocean farmer Bren Smith, is the twice-in-a-civilization opportunity beckoning us today.

Bren Smith, photo courtesy of Greenwave

BREN SMITH: I feel like one of the real deficits of our economy right now is the absence of agency. Right? Of just a regular person like me being able to build a small farm, feed my community, just be in a space of hope and solutions.

HOST: Bren Smith is co-founder and co-Executive Director of GreenWave, a nonprofit dedicated to regenerative ocean farming. Its polycultural farming model grows seaweed and shellfish, and it’s the most affordable food production on the planet, and it regenerates marine biodiversity and mitigates climate change. We spoke with Bren Smith in an online conversation.

BS: One of the keys, I think, in the model is that it’s affordable and replicable. Right? The barrier to entry is very low. Low capital costs, minimal skill requirements. Because it takes between $20 – $50,000 a year to start a farm, depending on where you are and the depths. And you can be up and growing your first year.

The key is to grow things that are zero inputs, that take no feed, no fertilizer, no freshwater, of course, no land, and that makes it hands down the most sustainable food on the planet. Anybody that’s growing zero input food I think is going to have a real advantage and opportunity in this new emerging climate economy because freshwater prices are going to go up, feed/fertilizer prices are all going to go up.

And that’s so key, because that low barrier to entry is the secret to replication and the secret to scale. Right? But not scale through a thousand-acre farms run by single companies where all the benefits are going not to the community but to a few people at the top. Instead it’s network production.

HOST: But Bren Smith is at heart an impassioned fisherman. For him, it’s also about right livelihood, independence, freedom, justice, and solidarity with other working fishermen. It’s about making a living on a living planet by spawning a flush of economic coral reefs.

BS: So we think of it as GreenWave reefs, where you have 50 small-scale farms in an area, a processing hub and a hatchery in a struggling community, and then a ring of entrepreneurs doing these value-added products, and just figuring out all the ways to weave these crops into the economy. And then you replicate those reefs up and down the coasts. That allows for massive, massive scale, large climate impacts, but build a regenerative economy to ensure that everybody benefits.

That allows us both to grow huge amounts of food in small areas. My farm used to be 100 acres and now I’m down to 20 acres growing more food than before. But it also has a low aesthetic impact. And I think that’s important, right? Our oceans are these beautiful, pristine places, so the farm’s below the surface, and all you see are some scattered buoys

The other thing is we don’t privatize that space. Anybody in the community can come in, fish, swim, kayak. The best commercial fishing in the area is actually surrounding my farm because the species come to hide and thrive and eat there. My only right is the right to grow shellfish and seaweeds. Everything else is just an open space. I think that’s really important. Like we don’t want to privatize our lands the way we do in land-based agriculture. Let’s really figure out a strategy of collaboration, of protecting the commons instead of privatizing it.

HOST: An enthusiastic World Bank study found that if five percent of US coastal waters were developed to farm seaweed, it could create 50 million jobs and the protein equivalent of 2.3 trillion cheeseburgers. 

With low upfront costs, GreenWave’s model is easily scalable. 

They’ve created a menu of ways to help farmers who want to dive into the business. It’s particularly focused on lifting the burdens of history – on collaborations with communities that have been historically left behind, shut out, or shut down.

BS: You know, there’s so many folks fighting for reparations on land, right, to get black farmers and Indigenous communities, giving them back their rights to the land. Suddenly in the ocean, this can be right from the gate. This is a huge issue in the US.

So right now, indigenous communities have no right to farm, guaranteed right to farm on the waters outside their towns and villages. So they’re worried all the momentum around this might create the next sort of white land grab. But of the ocean.

So, for example, we just supported the first Indigenous-owned seaweed hatchery in the country, and that was in collaboration with Dune Lankard and a bunch of other, sort of, heroes of the indigenous movement. And that’s so important, right, that indigenous communities own their own seed.

We are partnering with Indigenous communities and leaders like Dune to develop what would be a set of principles and rights of ocean use and farming and preferencing for Indigenous communities.

We’ve got this high touch and low touch program. The high touch targets specifically indigenous communities and fishermen directly affected by climate change. We help permit, we help set up the farms, we develop business plans, we connect and create foreign contracts between buyers and growers, sort of a whole range of benefits.

But then to address the 6,000 people on our waiting list for programming, we’ve developed a platform: a toolkit, where farmers are able to like type in some different conditions, like their depths, their bottom type, lease size, and it actually spits out a full-farm design tied to a budget and a gear list, all these sort of things I wish I had two decades ago.

And then the farmer data dashboard so you can track what’s happening on your farm. And then a digital co-op. So we’re rolling out each piece over the next few years, and I think that’s going to be vital to continue to give people the agency to start this on their own, but tools so they don’t make the same mistakes I did over the years, and increase the chance of success.

HOST: Start-up costs depend on the location, but on average an ocean farmer with 20 acres, a boat and about $20,000 can eventually earn $90,000 to $120,000 per year once the farm matures, while generating approximately 150,000 shellfish and ten tons of seaweed per acre. In other words, you don’t have to be rich to get in the game. And the ocean could care less what race, ethnicity, religion or gender you are.

BS: You know, our farmers are from all walks of life. We have young land-based farmers that can’t afford land because it’s so expensive for land-based farming; we’ve got veterans; we’ve got retired cops and firemen, things like that. One of the farmers that has really risen to the top is Catherine Puckett, and she grows oysters, clams, and seaweeds out on Block Island, Rhode Island. She’s got a pink boat and she’s got an all-male crew, and the male crew hates being on a pink boat. They complain about it all the time, but they’ve got a full-time, year-round job on this island. Usually you have to leave, right, in the winter. And maybe that’s the future of what this Blue economy looks like.

What happens if it’s not just about justice, like equity for women, but women are the architects of this new economy, right, making us white, crusty men work on their pink boats. Like that’s kind of—[LAUGHS] that’s really kind of exciting.

We actually did this listening tour of women. Because I woke up one day. I was like there are so many women, like hatchery owners and farmers, and, you know, doing start-ups. We asked them, like why, what are you doing here? [LAUGHS] And they said, well, in like—its history hasn’t been written yet; it isn’t this calcified thing of a male run industry that we can actually participate and maybe build something different. Right? So it’s not just about food but actually sort of bringing to bear the power, the creativity, the vision of folks that have been excluded.

So one of the things we really care about is, you know, fighting injustice and addressing poverty, making sure the folks that have been left behind by the Industrial Revolution or were systematically excluded, that they are in the front of this Blue revolution. The hatcheries, like land-based infrastructure, is a way to do that. You don’t have to be a fisherman. You don’t have to be someone who’s been on a boat many years to participate in this and to benefit from it. GreenWave’s Hatchery is one of the poorest communities on the East Coast, and we have a new BIPOC program, like a jobs pipeline for folks of color to come in, learn how to run hatcheries. It’s a paid program. You know? There aren’t thousands of people trained in running a seaweed hatchery, for example, so that opportunity to create that pipeline, but create it in the right way has been really key.

HOST: This, says Bren Smith, is the crux of the twice-in-a-civilization moment. But the Blue Revolution is actually the first time we have the opportunity to intentionally build a food system from the bottom up – and to democratize it.

BS: We don’t have to unravel Big Ag. Right? We don’t have to unravel land ownership and all those things. What we can do is start with a clean slate and build it from the bottom up, and embed these principles of justice, like, into the DNA of this new economy. Let’s not privatize seed. Let’s make sure that beginning farmers can access ocean property at low cost.

This sector, as we’re building this economy from the bottom up, it raises all these fascinating issues, like, can we correct injustice of the past by building it right in the ocean. Right? Let’s do agriculture right.

The only way we’re going to do that is if this is not me. Right? I mean, I developed GreenWave as a strategy in planned obsolescence, quite honestly, just because I never planned, never wanted to run a nonprofit. I just want to be on my farm and die in my boat.

HOST: Bren Smith says it turned out that was the right strategy; bringing together leaders from all walks of life to take on building this new Blue Economy, tapping into blue collar innovation. The way he sees it, the models will only get better and better.

BS: I expect in 10 years I’m going to go out to do regenerative ocean farming and it’s going to be, look completely different, right, in all these great ways. And it’s actually a huge challenge, right? There’s a tsunami of interest. But that’s where the power is.

We need all hands on deck, to grapple with the challenge of growing food underwater. It’s the most volatile place to grow food on the planet. We can’t see the crops we grow, And I can’t control my soil, my soil turns over a thousand times a day. So that volatility demands creativity from all walks of life.

And it’s this opportunity to build a collaborative community-based ethic and culture of sharing and cooperation.

HOST: This blue renaissance means developing new economic models anchored in values of economic democracy, justice and collaborative creativity. That’s where the Blue New Deal surfaces.

More when we return…

HOST: The GreenWave model is partly anchored in what are called “anchor institutions.” Unlike the corporate hit-and-run economics that invade communities, pipeline the wealth out, then move on to the next mark, anchor institutions are rooted in community for the long haul. They’re sometimes called “eds and meds” – educational and medical institutions. 

In growing numbers of communities in the US, they sign on as stable, long-term purchasing partners that directly support community-based small entrepreneurs, worker-owned businesses and co-ops. The goal is to grow transgenerational community-based wealth and build a more decentralized, democratized economy.

BS: You  know, one of the challenges of the food economy, as it’s sort of the farmers’ market, CSAs and the high-end restaurants is that it’s really hard to scale that, and it remains boutique. Right? And institutions are one of the answers to that.

So, you know, Google serves up, you know, over 100,000 free meals a day. And so that’s a key outlet for our crops. Right? Then the hospital economy is incredible. We haven’t done this yet, but I think it’s a huge opportunity.  Hospitals are hard at work creating nutrition programs serving good food in order to get people healthy again or keep them healthy. Right? So the good local food we grow needs to be a key to that.

I’m here in New Haven, which is half the city, of land owned, is owned by nonprofits, a university – Yale – and a hospital system, also Yale. And the institutions really need to start playing their proper role and investing in the community. I mean, right now, it’s extremely extractive, and, you know, Yale has one of the biggest—the biggest endowment in the country.

So institutions are a key role for us in the reef model. We work closely with places like University of Santa Barbara, with Woods Hole, University of Connecticut, to keep our farmers ahead of the climate curve. Right? Because our waters are changing so fast. Water temperatures are going up that I need to be growing a whole different set of crops 15 years from now. And the scientists have just been absolutely key to that, I think.

So that’s like in the labs. But then in the cafeterias, we can introduce the entire new young generation of folks to things like sea greens, sea vegetables, the broader palate of shellfish. Those anchor institutions, I think, are absolutely key to our success.

HOST: What may have seemed like a drunken sailor’s dream is getting real. Every coastal state in North America has requested GreenWave’s ocean farms. Humboldt Bay is home to California’s first commercial, open-water seaweed farm. Led by Humboldt State University and supported by GreenWave, this pilot project stands to kickstart an industry where environmental sustainability and economic benefits go hand in hand – along a very long coastline.

Dozens of countries around the world are now implementing the model. As part of its reparations program, New Zealand granted 12,000 hectares to the Indigenous Maori people that can be used for ocean farming. 

Needless to say, there’s a clash between these twice-in-a-civilization models – between the past and the future. In the ring, it’s concentrated corporate power taking on the upstart challenger: a democratized, decentralized economy of distributed ownership and wealth.

BS: GreenWave, we view our role as helping build a movement, right, so that there’s just thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people hard at work trying to figure this out, so that’s not about GreenWave controlling or owning or franchising or anything. Those are tools of the old economy. Right? Our model is around collaboration, shared learning, shared innovation. I think that’s going to allow us to replicate and increase that learning curve faster and faster.

And in fact, when we train farmers, they signed a document that says they agree to share all their learnings. And there are farmers that come and they’re like, No, no, I don’t want to do that. So we’re like, okay, great, go succeed. But we really believe that that principle of collaboration, sharing, and community learning is just absolutely vital.

Photo courtesy of Greenwave

HOST: Bren Smith says that one of the great fears he has is that big, predatory companies will take advantage of the innovation and work that GreenWave and others have done to build hatcheries and processing plants and to stimulate the market.

BS: And now we’re seeing big companies come in, companies like Trident. There’s oil companies getting interested, involved. And like Trident, for example, is leasing grounds to farm in Alaska.

It’s clear to a lot of us and definitely in the ocean space, we need new investment models, right? Our waters are swimming with – let’s call them fuzzy sharks. Right? These folks have made an incredible amount of money on Wall Street, and then are coming to sort of do good, to have legacies, things like that, which is great. Right? And I’ve met a lot of these folks. They need to understand, like if they’re bringing the old models, they’re in climate denial.

HOST: When Bren says “climate denial”, he means that while these companies may acknowledge the existence of climate change, they somehow still believe they can make high returns in the short run using models from the old, extractive, dirty economy. The investment models that Bren Smith favors are not only climate friendly, but farmer friendly as well. For instance, they offer creative repayment options to pay back debt if they need a loan to get started.

BS: So revenue with a cap, right, is one model, where you get like a two percent loan; you don’t pay it back until you start making money, and then you start paying it back, and you fully pay back the loan plus two percent. Like that’s a really food friendly and ag friendly kind of business model. And I think the solidarity economy, the just transition movement have really taught us a lot about how do we match our farms, what we produce, and the value we provide to society, but allow it to scale with the right kind of money in a healthy, regenerative way.

HOST: Fuzzy sharks aside, Bren Smith sees the very real opportunity to tap the ocean for climate solutions. That vision is at the heart of a Blue New Deal proposal that he drafted with marine biologist and author Ayana Johnson and with Chad Nelsen of the nonprofit Surfrider Foundation.

It’s about “reimagining the ocean as a protagonist, as a place where we can build real climate solutions.” 

During the 2020 Presidential election, Bren Smith participated in a CNN town hall with candidate Elizabeth Warren. He threw some policy bait in the water.

BS: My oyster farm was destroyed by two hurricanes. Now warm waters and acidification are killing seed coast to coast and reducing yields. Those of us on the water, we need climate solutions and we need them now. The trouble is the green new deal only mentions our oceans one time. This is despite the fact that our seas soak up more than 25 percent of the world’s carbon. So what’s your plan for a Blue New Deal for those of us working on the ocean?

ELIZABETH WARREN: I like that!

BS: How do we make sure that all of us can make a living on a living planet?

EW: So thank you. I think it is a great question and I think he has got it exactly right. We need a Blue New Deal as well. Good for you! [Applause]

BS: You know it is bizarre that the Green New Deal mentions the ocean one time. I mean, we just forget about the oceans when we think about solutions, about policy. It’s all about addressing overfishing and things like that, which are all important.

So yeah, I asked Senator Warren about the Blue New Deal, and the great thing about Senator Warren, she immediately rolled out a plan. One of the key players in that was Dr. Ayana Johnson, who’s a dear friend and inspiration, who helped really shape that piece of policy. And as far as I know, it was the first time the ocean became sort of—it was part of the policy debate and framework. FOX News actually attacked regenerative ocean farming. The first time it had ever been said, and to me—People asked like what are your metrics of success. Well, it was attacked on FOX News. Excellent. [LAUGHTER]

HOST: The goal, says Bren Smith, is to build the principles of justice and ownership into any Blue New Deal policies. One example is ensuring that communities have control over the hatcheries, farms and processing plants that operate locally.

BS: Here in Connecticut, we wrote something called the Seaweed Jobs Bill, which created a framework because there was no law on seaweed farming in this area. So in these pieces of legislation, we can mandate, for example, the farms need to be locally owned, so it doesn’t look like Iowa, where most of the pigs that are raised in Iowa are owned—they’re companies that are out of state. Let’s actually control and limit the size of the farms. Right? A certain amount of acreage. Let’s have leases up for renewal every five to 10 years so there’s a lever of democratic control for communities. So I think the Blue New Deal and the state-to-state work on this opens up an opportunity.

Some of the components are training 10,000 young people to be sort of like a civilian conservation corps, but for the ocean, to plant mangroves, grasses, kelp, shellfish, creating a climate fund that will pay farmers for the positive things they do. Right? For capturing carbon, nitrogen for rebuilding reefs

Food security. So let’s have farmers out planting those public grounds for clams so communities can come out and collect their own food, especially in times like this when we have food system breakdown.

So the Blue New Deal, I think, is a place where the food movement, the agricultural movement can rally behind, and let’s match the energy around the Green New Deal, the vision on agriculture, but let’s do it underwater too.

And so the big question is: Will public policy people get behind us to defend this other vision? The folks that just want to be as extractive as possible, concentrate benefits at the top, have farmers just like as workers working for bosses in the fields. Right? Are we going to let that happen or are we going to be like, we have the control and the power to build something beautiful for once. Right? But we need a movement behind that. Right? We really need them defending this vision and really fighting for it.

HOST: As Bren Smith observes, the challenge is whether the high tide of global regenerative food and farming movements can lift enough public policy boats to launch the Blue Revolution.

If, as the saying goes, the world is your oyster, then it’s high tide for personal agency and collective action to make something beautiful this second time around.