Solidarity Economics is an economic frame that recognizes that people are not just individuals, but also members of broader social groups and communities, that people are motivated not just by self-interest, but also by caring for others and a desire for belonging, and that we can and should build our economy not on an embrace of individuality and competition, but rather on a sense of commons and our shared destiny.
In this session, Natalie Hernandez, Associate Director of Climate Planning and Resilience at Climate Resolve, and Nailah Pope Harden, Executive Director of ClimatePlan, join Manuel Pastor, one of the nation’s most influential thinkers on poverty and social movements, and Chris Benner, a leading innovator in urban political ecology, discuss how these concepts might apply in the realm of solidarity with people and the planet, and how we can make this real in terms of policy and power in this moment.
This discussion took place at the 2021 Bioneers Conference.
Panelists
Manuel Pastor
Manuel Pastor, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity at USC and Director of its Equity Research Institute, has long been one of the most important scholars and activists working on the economic, environmental and social conditions facing low-income urban communities and the social movements seeking to change those realities. He has held many prominent academic posts, won countless prestigious awards and fellowships for his activism and scholarship, and is the author and co-author of many important, highly influential tomes, including most recently, State of Resistance: What California’s Dizzying Descent and Remarkable Resurgence Means for America’s Future (2018) and the just-about-to-be-released Solidarity Economics: Why Mutuality and Movements Matter.
Natalie Hernandez
Natalie Hernandez is a Los Angeles region-based specialist in environmental policy and community planning who is deeply knowledgeable about climate change-related government processes, funding, stakeholder engagement and resilience. She is Associate Director of Climate Planning & Resilience at Climate Resolve, where she has: managed climate preparedness projects, co-authored California’s Adaptation Planning Guide, led community outreach for an urban cooling project in Canoga Park, and provided technical expertise on a number of climate grant programs. Her past positions include stints at the California Natural Resources Agency, California Air Resources Board, Institute for Local Government, and USC’s Equity Research Institute (formerly USC PERE).
Chris Benner
Chris Benner, Ph.D., the Dorothy E. Everett Chair in Global Information and Social Entrepreneurship and a Professor of Environmental Studies and Sociology at UC Santa Cruz, also directs the Everett Program for Technology and Social Change and the Institute for Social Transformation there. His research examines the relationships between technological change, regional development, and the structure of economic opportunity, focusing on regional labor markets and the transformation of work and employment. He has authored or co-authored seven books (including the forthcoming Solidarity Economics) and more that 75 journal articles, chapters and research reports.
Nailah Pope Harden, who has years of community organizing experience spanning regional, state and national environmental justice campaigns, is the South Sacramento-based Executive Director of ClimatePlan, where she: manages state policy campaigns; mobilizes partner organizations; provides analysis on policy, state investments, and legislation; and builds strong relationships with state agencies and key decision-makers, all in order to further Climate Plan’s vision of a healthier, more equitable California.
Many boys and men of color have to grapple with very potent intergenerational traumas deeply linked to the racism, oppression and systemic inequities their communities have had to endure for so long. The Covid Pandemic has unfortunately exacerbated many of these underlying dynamics, resulting in increased levels of domestic and community violence in many neighborhoods. This session, facilitated by internationally-recognized author, community leader and healing practitioner Jerry Tello, offers an intergenerational conversation among young men, elders, and middle-aged men of color. They explore the deep traumas they and their communities suffer from, and how to develop strategies of responsibility and accountability that face the truth, but also create conditions for deep healing and prevent these wounds from undermining our families, communities and selves.
With: Jason Seals, professor of African American Studies at Merritt College, with a long career in youth development; David Bouttavong, a Fresno, CA-based first generation queer Lao American activist with extensive experience working on issues affecting young men and boys of color.
This discussion took place at the 2021 Bioneers Conference.
Panelists
Jerry Tello
Jerry Tello, of Mexican, Texan and Coahuiltecan ancestry, raised in South Central Los Angeles, has worked for 40+ years as a leading, award-winning expert in transformational healing for men and boys of color; racial justice; peaceful community mobilization; and providing domestic violence awareness, healing and support services to war veterans and their spouses. He co-founded the Healing Generations Institute and the National Compadres Network, where he is currently Director of Training and Capacity Building. He has authored numerous articles, videos, curricula, and a series of children’s books, and is a member of the Sacred Circles performance group.
Jason Seals
Jason Seals, a professor of African American Studies and Chair of Ethnic Studies at Merritt College in Oakland, California, also has a long career in youth development, serving in multiple roles across the nonprofit, mental health and juvenile justice sectors, and he continues to facilitate community workshops and professional development trainings on a wide range of topics, including radical healing, anti-racism, parenting/fatherhood, and systems change. Professor Seals is also often called upon to provide his expertise as a consultant, curriculum designer and speaker, and he provides a platform for a wide range of African-American authors, leaders, activists and artists in his podcast, A Moment of Truth.
David Bouttavong
David Bouttavong, a Fresno, CA-based first generation queer Lao American, is on the outreach team of Poverello House, working with individuals experiencing homelessness in his town, and also serves on the board of the Laotian American Community of Fresno. He has had extensive experience as a health educator working with young men experiencing trauma and incarcerated youth with Planned Parenthood Mar Monte and doing advocacy on issues affecting young men and boys of color, including with Fresno Barrios Unidos and the Fresno Unified School District.
Bryant Terry is a James Beard & NAACP Image Award-winning chef, educator, and author renowned for his activism to create a healthy, just, and sustainable food system. Since 2015 he has been the Chef-in-Residence at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco where he creates public programming at the intersection of food, farming, health, activism, art, culture, and the African Diaspora. He is the author of four books, including Vegetable Kingdom and Afro-Vegan, and his new collection of recipes, art, and stories entitled Black Food: Stories, Art, and Recipes from Across the African Diaspora [A Cookbook] is soon to be published by 4 Color Books/Ten Speed Press.
Bioneers’ Arty Mangan interviewed him in anticipation of the publication of his new book. Check out a recipe from the book here.
ARTY MANGAN: You have a rich family heritage around food culture. How did that influence you in becoming an activist chef?
BRYANT TERRY: I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, and I come from a family that has agrarian roots in the rural South. My family had farms in Mississippi, Tennessee and Arkansas. It was something I took for granted growing up, but I gained a greater appreciation of it when I was living in the hyper-urban environment of New York City. By visiting different family members, particularly my paternal grandfather who had an urban farm in his backyard, I learned a lot about the seeds-to-table cycle. A lot of the things that were a part of how my cousins and I grew up laid the foundation for I’ve been working on the past couple of decades.
I think, talk, and write a lot about how my grandfather used every bit of available space in his backyard to produce food for the family. He had muscadine grapes, walnut and pecan trees, half-a-dozen different kinds of dark, leafy greens, even at one point, pigs and chickens, but I don’t want to romanticize it because, to be honest, I actually hated working on his farm. I think all of the grandkids did; we didn’t want to be weeding, harvesting, shucking corn and shelling peas and all that, but now I’m so glad my grandfather made us do it because there are so many life lessons we learned in his backyard garden.
Growing and raising food was just the way that they lived. It wasn’t anything special. I think a lot of it came out of survival. My grandparents were working class Black folks who moved from the rural to the urban South and brought to the city an agrarian knowledge and a connection to the land. They had an understanding of the importance of being self-determined and being able to feed yourself. My grandfather would often say to me: “If you rely on other people to feed you, when they decide they don’t want to anymore, you’ll starve.”
It’s been frustrating for me the past two decades to see magazine and newspaper articles about practices (growing food at home, canning, preservation, urban homesteading, etc.) that were second nature to my family and ancestors, but that almost always feature young, well-educated, pretty white women with cute pictures of them in their boots out on farms and all that, so I feel it’s important for me to uplift the legacy of my elders. It may not be sexy to cover them doing it, but this was the work that people did to take care of their families, to ensure survival, to feed people in their communities. I think it’s important that we all tap into the older generation who hold that knowledge and make sure we record their stories and hold the memories and the history of the things that they did to take care of their families.
One of the most important lessons I learned early on that I carry with me to this day is the importance of supporting your community and of mutual aid. My grandfather had so much surplus that he shared and gave a lot away to neighbors. They would barter and trade. They had a thriving local food system in their working-class South Memphis community. Everybody was producing food in some way, whether it was Miss Johnson growing tomatoes on the front porch or Mr. Hill who had fresh herbs in his kitchen window sill, or Miss Bonner who had the mini-orchard in her backyard with the peaches, pears, and nectarine trees. People shared food and bartered. My grandfather would also give a lot to the church where he was very active. This was all taken for granted. You gave back to your community. It helped shape me, as these examples led me to understand that we need to be proactive in working towards structural change to ensure everyone has access to healthy, fresh, affordable and culturally appropriate food. We need to take care of our people. We need to ensure people have their basic needs met. That was second nature in my family’s community.
ARTY: There’s no question that African American contributions to local food security and food sovereignty have been overlooked. I worked in Mississippi and Alabama with Black farmers through Bioneers, and some of what you were just talking about brought me back there. I had the privilege also to stop by Tuskegee University and see the George Washington Carver Museum. Have you been there?
BRYANT: Yeah. My parents lived in Huntsville, Alabama.
ARTY: It blew my mind how many of the things that we’re promoting today as progressive, Carver was developing and advancing, such as bringing cutting-edge farming education to the farmers where they lived, increasing farmers’ incomes by value-added products made on the farm, using all parts of the crop, and art and creativity coming from agrarian culture. Carver was also an amazing artist.
Bryant Terry photo by Adrian Octavius Walker
BRYANT: Carver’s contributions are not celebrated enough. Carver’s inventions are just innumerable, from paints to lotions and soaps, and obviously peanut butter! And there are so many other unacknowledged and erased contributions and inventions of people from African descent. Things like the hairbrush, stoplights, heating furnaces, infrastructure for telephones. I encourage people to do the research. Many Americans are undereducated or miseducated (in part due to the chokehold that Texas has on the textbooks that are being used throughout the country). The contributions of Black folks and other people of color have long been hidden or erased from the teaching of history.
ARTY: As the Chef-in-Residence at the Museum of the African Diaspora you are in a position to elevate the African contributions and influences on cultures and cuisines around the world.
BRYANT: I’m discovering that a lot of people don’t know what the African diaspora is. My forthcoming book, Black Food is a largely diasporic book, if you will. The African Diaspora is a collection throughout the globe of communities of people who descend from people native to the African continent. A lot of emphasis is in the Americas because of the transatlantic slave trade which brought so many Africans from West and Central Africa to different parts of the “new world.” Most people here don’t know that the largest Black population outside of the African continent is actually in Brazil, and only after that comes the population of Black folks in the United States.
There are culinary techniques such as deep frying, grilling, and cooking things in the ground that were pioneered on the African continent and then exported to different parts of the world. Of course, many different cultures have contributed to the wider culinary landscape, but for me it’s important to uplift the food ways, the classic dishes and the flavor profiles of the African diaspora. In the mainstream, European food is often placed at the center, at the top of the culinary hierarchy, and that dominant culture often ignores “ethnic cuisines.”
From the beginning, my work has been about educating people about these contributions and helping to move Black food (my shorthand for food of the African diaspora) closer to the center and away from the margins. This has been my mission. A lot of it has emphasized African American cuisine, but you can’t talk about African American cuisine without looking at the larger diaspora. In fact, I would argue that African American cuisine is the original modern global fusion cuisine when you consider the food that traveled from West and Central Africa to the Caribbean and to the American South. You have the influence from the African continent, you have foods that were native to the Americas, and you have the influence of European cuisine, and that cross-pollination created something new and vibrant and flavorful. I want people to not only appreciate the food because they like eating delicious food that has roots in Africa, but I also want them to respect and appreciate the people who created these traditions. If you love whatever the culture produces—whether it’s music or art or food— then appreciate and support the people in that culture as well.
ARTY: A large focus of your work has centered around food justice, which is sometimes framed as combatting apartheid in the food system. What does that mean to you?
BRYANT: I’m glad you asked about “food apartheid.” I think a lot of people have been slow to pick up on it. Food activists have largely abandoned the term “food desert” to describe areas devoid of good quality, healthy, fresh affordable and culturally appropriate food. A lot of food justice activists have largely supplanted that term and have been using “food apartheid” instead to describe the material conditions in which many people are living in historically marginalized communities. Karen Washington, a movement elder, reminds us to focus on the root problems in these historically disenfranchised communities. She argues that food apartheid is a more appropriate term because it looks at the whole food system along with race, geography and economics. Deserts are natural ecosystems, so the concept of food desert gives the impression that it is a natural phenomenon. Many people mistakenly view deserts as devoid of life; actually, many deserts are teeming with life, so that term reinforces the idea that many low-income, historically marginalized communities are devoid of anything but crime and poverty and are associated with negative stereotypes.
These communities are actually very vibrant. They’re not totally devoid of good food. People even in the most economically stressed circumstances who are immigrants from different countries or who may have migrated from the South to the West Coast or the urban North, have carried their food traditions. They’re bringing the seeds and crops and growing foods in their backyards or fire escapes, so I think it does a disservice to imagine these communities as deserts in the popular imagination; it prevents a lot of people from understanding the systemic barriers that people in these communities face, whether economic, geographic, or physical, to accessing healthy, fresh and affordable food. Food apartheid is such an important way of framing it because it allows us to imagine solutions for addressing the apartheid. So, respect to Karen Washington for pushing us in that direction.
ARTY: What systemic changes need to happen for people to be black, green and healthy?
BRYANT: Many of the issues we’re dealing with are the result of policies that actually create barriers to the health and wealth of Black communities. It’s important for us to understand the role that we also play as citizens and to ensure that we’re electing public officials who are working in the best interest of regular people and not the multinational food corporations and big ag. I think if there’s anything 2020 taught BIPOC folks, it’s that America isn’t going to save us; late-stage capitalism isn’t going to save us. We have to create parallel systems owned and driven by the people most impacted by food insecurity and food injustice. We can’t wait on these larger institutions to save us. A lot of people have been struggling and getting sick and dying, as they deal with so many impacts of these broken systems. We need to create our own agricultural systems in rural areas and cities. We need to invest in co-ops, so that people can actually own the businesses they’re shopping from and supporting. People at the margins really need to buckle down and work toward creating our own systems that are going to support us and ensure that we’re surviving and thriving.
ARTY: Back when we were working together in the Bioneers Just Us for Food Justice Program for youth, you organized grub dinners based around hip hop. Now you’re organizing “diaspora dinners.” As your work progresses, you seem to be reaching even further back into Black culture and heritage for inspiration.
BRYANT: As part of my work at the Museum of the African Diaspora, I did produce diaspora dinners, but they have been on hold for over a year because of COVID. I started them 1) as a way to further double down on the bounty and brilliance of different culinary traditions, classic dishes, and flavor profiles throughout the African diaspora; and 2) it’s been important for me to create spaces in which we can celebrate, love each other, be kind to each other, take care of each other, feed each other and have joy. When we talk about food justice, equity, racism, and many other issues, these are heavy realities. We need to ensure we’re addressing these issues, but I don’t want to be in a cycle where we’re constantly feeling like victims and focusing on what’s wrong. I think it’s important for us to also uplift and celebrate best practices. It’s just really important for us to chill and have joy, and eat good food and have good music.
Much of that goes back to my childhood because I come from a musical family. Whenever we had gatherings around food, there was always music present, my Uncle Don playing the piano, his brothers harmonizing, my mom and her sisters jumping in and singing. These things were so central to the way that we lived when I was growing up, so part of my mission is to reintegrate many of the things our industrialized food system has excluded. There’s been a chasm in which food has been isolated on one side as a commodity, while many of the things that have been so central to food—community building, music, art—from cultures throughout the world have been taken out of the picture, but they are in fact inseparable from food and the way that we feed ourselves. My work includes bridging that chasm and showing how we can reintegrate them in a modern context.
We’ve been robbed by the industrialized food system of our interactions with things that nourish us in complex ways and that have been a part of the way societies throughout the globe have traditionally interacted with food. That’s why, in my books, I have suggested soundtracks of music, art, films and other books. All these things are equally important.
ARTY: Your new book, Black Food, is not only a platform for your own voice, but it brings in the voices of other black leaders, artists, and chefs. Why was it important for you to write this book?
BRYANT: It really came out of this movement moment in 2020 when we were seeing uprisings throughout the country because of the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and others. The media was regularly revealing racism and white supremacy, even in the food media. I’ve wanted to write this book since 2015 when I started my residency at MOAD. The programming that we are doing there is so cutting-edge and inspiring to people all over the globe. We get emails every week from around the world asking us about the program. People and institutions, even organizations that don’t have a focus on food, want to include more programming around food into their work.
So, my agent and I pitched a book, and my publisher immediately understood the vision, and we made it happen. But I wanted to go beyond that, so I now have my own publishing imprint under Penguin Random House called 4 Color Books. This is the vision I’ve had. I felt that it was a perfect time to actually create some sustainable institutions that aren’t just about publishing my work but about lifting and nurturing and supporting the work of other budding authors who have a lot of important things to say. Our first project is a cookbook by 17-year-old Oakland-based Afro-Latina chef, Rahanna Bisseret Martinez who was a finalist on Top Chef Junior when she was 12. She’s worked at top at restaurants such as Chez Panisse, Ikoyi in London and the James Beard House in New York City. She’s brilliant. We’re very excited about her book. We’ve also acquired two additional books: a photography book by a Black photographer in New York City, and a “pizza manifesto” by Scarr Pimentel who is an Afro-Dominican pizzaiolo in New York, who has a very popular pizza shop, Scarr’s Pizza.
I’m very excited about the publishing work we’re doing, but I made it clear from the beginning that I don’t want to just publish books. I want to put some muscle behind ensuring that we see further diversification in food media. We’re in the midst of planning a black food summit that will be held at the Museum of African Diaspora in April of ’22. We are amassing databases of BIPOC food photographers, food stylists and people who are creatively working in food media. It’s oftentimes hard for BIPOC folks to break into these fields because you get into them by shadowing and by networks and nepotism. It’s just how the world works. I want to do all I can to help create pipelines because the typical answer you get is: “Well, we looked. We tried to find a Black photographer or food stylist, but we just didn’t find anyone who would work for this project.” I had to confront that working on Black Food. It was excruciating just finding a handful of Black food photographers who would work for this particular project. That just further underscored the importance of creating these resources. That can no longer be the excuse. We can create databases so that people in the industry can tap into this brilliant talent pool that I think is often not being sufficiently supported.
My goal is to train and prepare a new generation to pick up this ball and run with it much further than I can. Initially, I was thinking in terms of grassroots activism. That’s where most of my energy was going, but I’m thinking about that now as an author and publisher. I see myself as a building block, and I want people to one day talk about me being someone upon whose shoulders they’re standing. I want to be in the crowd, in the audience cheering them on, and thanking them for the brilliant work that they’ve done that can go further than what I ever imagined.
“In late summer our work might be thinning the long vines off the sweet potatoes because my father would say we’d only have little stringy potatoes if we didn’t.” —From Mama Dip’s Kitchen by Mildred Council
Mildred Edna Cotton Council founded Mama Dip’s Restaurant in 1977. She was the daughter of a sharecropper, the granddaughter of a slave, and the founder of a culinary empire. She was also my grandmother. One of her most popular dishes was her sweet potato biscuits. I’ve adapted her recipe to make it vegan. Coconut milk adds a delicate richness, with cinnamon and brown sugar providing an extra hint of spice that elevates these biscuits to another level.
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1⁄2 teaspoon kosher salt
1⁄4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1⁄2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup mashed sweet potato, chilled (from about 1 large sweet potato)
1⁄4 cup chilled coconut milk, plus more as needed
Preheat the oven to 400°F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, brown sugar, salt, nutmeg, and cinnamon.
In a small bowl, whisk together the chilled sweet potato and coconut milk. Add this mixture to the large bowl and mix just until the dough comes together. Turn out the dough onto a floured surface and press together with the heel of your hands. If the dough is not holding together, add in additional coconut milk one tablespoon at a time—I usually need to add about 2 tablespoons.
Turn the dough out onto a well-floured surface. With floured hands, bring the dough together, then pat into a rectangle that is about 1 inch thick.
Cut the dough into rounds, using a 2-inch biscuit cutter. Place the biscuit rounds about 1 inch apart on the prepared baking sheet. Brush the tops of the biscuits with coconut milk.
Bake the biscuits for 12 to 15 minutes, until they are puffed and just barely golden.
Author, conservation biologist and explorer Meg Lowman is one of the world’s first arbornauts. Whereas astronauts explore outer space, arbornauts make discoveries in the tops of trees. Lowman takes us on a global journey into forest canopies, tracing her geek-childhood as a nature nut into adulthood where she works tirelessly to conserve some of the world’s most biodiverse, yet endangered, forests. Formerly the Chief of Science and Sustainability for the California Academy of Science and the Director of the Nature Research Center, North Carolina, Canopy Meg (as kids affectionately call her) is the Director of the TREE Foundation, heading up her newest program, Mission Green, to build canopy walkways that will hire indigenous people for ecotourism, an action that in turn will conserve their high-biodiversity forests through economic sustainability.
The following excerpt is from Meg Lowman’s “The Arbornaut: A Life Discovering the Eight Continent in the Trees Above Us (Macmillan Publishers, 2021) and is reprinted with permission from the publisher.
The question I hear more often than any other from elementary schoolkids: “What is the most common species living in the canopy?” Unfortunately, there are not yet enough arbornauts to have figured the correct answer. But if I were to wager a guess, my response would be tardigrades, commonly called water bears or moss piglets. “Tardi-what?” most people ask. This relatively unknown phylum, Tardigrada, literally means “slow walker.” These sluggish microscopic creatures don’t really walk at all, but essentially float in a water droplet. They thrive in almost any moist substrate, fresh and saltwater, so they can thrive in dry deserts with occasional downpours, moist tropical forests, and even the extremes of hot springs or Antarctica’s icy cliffs. Any moist bit of moss, lichen, bark, or leaf surface provides the required film of water to coat their tiny cylindrical bodies plus four pairs of telescoping legs with claws or adhesive disks. And if their watery habitat evaporates, they transform into a dormant state to await rainfall, sometimes for decades, or they drift in the air above the treetops to a new location, seeking moisture. Neither drought nor flood nor extreme temperatures will kill them. About 0.2 to 0.5 millimeter in length (the size of a particle of dust), they dominate their Lilliputian kingdoms of soil, leaves, and water droplet along with other small creatures such as nematodes, collembola, rotifers, and mites. It sounds like a science-fiction invasion – billions of miniature bearlike creatures crawling across our suburban lawns and shrubbery while we sleep.
As a scientist, as an explorer – or really as any ordinary person living in this world – you never know what will bring you to your next discovery. Tardigrades came into my life because I was determined to provide opportunities in field biology for underserved youth. I have passionately pursued inclusivity in science for many decades, probably because I did not always feel welcome into my profession by the white-male network that dominated it…. I’ve made it part of my mission to take every opportunity to work with minorities in science – teaching girls from economically challenged families to climb trees at a summer camp, training female arbornauts donned in traditional garb in the jungles of India, hiring qualified candidates from minority backgrounds throughout every leadership position, sponsoring girls and boys from underserved communities for scholarships and research opportunities, and advising large numbers of minority students at the universities where I taught.
One group continually overlooked in field biology is mobility-limited students. Nearly 25 percent of Americans live with a disability, yet they comprise only 9 percent of the scientific workforce and 7 percent of PhDs in science, according to a 2019 report in Science magazine. …. What better way for them to become excited about field biology than discovering a new species? It is unlikely to find that new species of birds or beetles exist in temperate trees because those larger creatures have already been documented, but what about water bears? …
So that was how I ended up partnering with Randy Miller (aka Dr. Water Bear), a tardigrade taxonomist who himself has mobility limitations. With a combination of my canopy skills plus his water bear expertise, we made a great team. Those are the unexpected and circuitous pathways by which collaborations in field biology are born. We never overlapped at a conference because our disciplines are so different, but we knew of each other’s expertise and reputation, which formed the basis of a trust partnership. …
Our students addressed questions new to science: What is the density of water bears in different canopies? Are there hundreds per tree, or millions? Of the same species, or different? Over five summers, we collected 28,234 samples representing 37 species from 58 forests in 4 states, ranging from zero to 4,500 feet in elevation and from zero to 200-foot-high trees. Our students climbed 492 crowns and discovered 8 new species, plus set 26 new distribution records. What was especially amazing (called an “OH WOW factor” in field biology) is that 80 percent of every sample of lichen, moss, bark, or foliage collected contained at least one water bear! And it is likely the other 20 percent also had a water bear, but our microscopic techniques were not so exacting with amateur eyes.
A star student named Rebecca who was shy and reminded me of myself, later accompanied me to the Amazon jungles, where she undertook research in tropical trees. Loading and unlading her wheelchair from small dugout canoes was not easy, but the trip fulfilled a lifelong dream for her to experience the Amazonian rain forests – and she is now a seasoned arbornaut! Not bad for a reticent young lady with limited mobility working alongside her treetop supervisor, who still sometimes acts like a wallflower, even in adulthood.
As ecological destruction, climate destabilization, the global pandemic, and all forms of historical and current injustice are converging to initiate a near-death experience for our species, learn from a group of wise women as they discuss why the combination of honoring, respecting and learning from nature, being motivated by a deep quest for justice, and cultivating the leadership of women can provide a potent, three-pronged strategic path for getting us to a world we want.
With: Osprey Orielle Lake, founder/Executive Director, Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) International, author of Uprisings for the Earth: Reconnecting Culture with Nature; Amisha Ghadiali, a UK-based intuitive therapist, meditation and yoga teacher, host and founder of the podcast and community, The Future Is Beautiful, and author of Intuition; Naelyn Pike, renowned young Chiricahua Apache activist. Hosted by: Nina Simons, co-founder of Bioneers.
Panelists
Amisha Ghadiali
Amisha Ghadiali, a facilitator, speaker and writer with extensive backgrounds in sustainable fashion, socially conscious entrepreneurship, activism, meditation and yoga, is host of the globally-acclaimed podcast The Future Is Beautiful. She has led many retreats, workshops and rituals around the world, and designed programs such as: The Heart of Transformation, Wild Grace, and a residential fellowship in community facilitation leadership. She also hosts an online membership community—Presence: for Creative, Connected and Courageous Living; and works one-to-one in her Presence Leadership Mentoring program.
Naelyn Pike, 22, is a renowned young Chiricahua Apache activist and lifelong fighter for Indigenous Rights who follows in the footsteps of her grandfather who founded the Apache Stronghold to protect their people’s sacred sites and rights. At age 13 Pike was the youngest Indigenous girl to testify before Congress. Today she continues to battle corporations and political leaders whose actions damage the Earth as she fights for environmental sustainability and Indigenous rights at the local, state, and national levels.
Nina Simons
Nina Simons, co-founder of Bioneers and its Chief Relationship Strategist is also co-founder of Women Bridging Worlds and Connecting Women Leading Change. She co-edited the anthology book, Moonrise: The Power of Women Leading from the Heart, and most recently wrote Nature, Culture & The Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership. An award-winning social entrepreneur, Nina teaches and speaks internationally, and previously served as President of Seeds of Change and Director of Strategic Marketing for Odwalla.
The psychedelic community owes enormous debts to the Indigenous cultures that, over millennia, developed the use of consciousness-modifying substances, which laid the basis for the now ever-expanding interest in and use of these medicines. Indigenous peoples are also very often the best protectors of what’s left of global biodiversity, so finding effective, concrete ways to help support these groups’ struggles to defend their lands and rights is of utmost importance to all of humanity. So far, though, while the psychedelic world is replete with romanticized language about Indigenous worldviews, it has done very little to offer genuine, large-scale tangible support that actually reaches frontline communities, and as enormous amounts of venture capital are now pouring into the psychedelic domain, this is the time to act. The Chacruna Institute’s Indigenous Reciprocity Initiative (IRI) was created to fill that void.
With: Joseph Mays, the IRI’s Program Director; Bia Labate, Chacruna Institute co-founder and Executive Director; and cultural anthropologist Daniela Peluso, who has extensive experience working with Indigenous communities in Peru and Bolivia. The session also features several videos of statements by Indigenous leaders from frontline communities throughout the Americas who are partnering with the IRI.
This discussion took place at the 2021 Bioneers Conference.
Panelists
Bia Labate
Beatriz (aka “Bia”) Caiuby Labate, Ph.D., a San Francisco-based queer Brazilian anthropologist whose main areas of interest are the study of plant medicines, drug policy, shamanism, ritual, religion, and social justice, is Executive Director of the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines and co-founder of the Interdisciplinary Group for Psychoactive Studies (NEIP) in Brazil. Bia also serves as: Public Education and Culture Specialist at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS); Adjunct Faculty in the East-West Psychology Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS); Diversity, Culture, and Ethics Advisor at the Synthesis Institute; and is the author, co-author, and co-editor of 24 books and a number of journals and peer-reviewed articles.
Joseph Mays, MSc, an ethnobotanist, biologist, anthropologist and conservation activist who has conducted extensive cultural and ethnobotanical fieldwork in Peru and Ecuador, is the Program Director of the Chacruna Institute’s newly launched Indigenous Reciprocity Initiative of the Americas, where he conducts research and builds connections with small Indigenous communities throughout the Americas to support Chacruna’s mission of increasing cultural reciprocity in the psychedelic space.
Daniela Peluso
Daniela Peluso, Ph.D., Emeritus Fellow in social anthropology at the University of Kent and a member of the board of directors of the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines, is a cultural anthropologist who has worked over the last two decades in lowland South America, mostly with communities in Peru and Bolivia. She has been actively involved in various local efforts on issues relating to health, gender, Indigenous urbanization and land-rights, working in close collaboration with Indigenous and local organizations. Her publications focus mostly on Indigenous ontologies, urbanization, violence and relatedness.
Clayton Thomas-Muller and Julian Brave NoiseCat are nationally and internationally acclaimed Indigenous leaders in the fights against climate change and the accelerating, human-induced destruction of our ecosystems. When they aren’t on the front lines organizing movements to protect the planet, Clayton and Julian work as accomplished writers penning penetrating analyses of the connections between settler colonial capitalism, broken social and political systems, trauma, and environmental disaster. They also happen to have a deep friendship. In this intimate conversation, these two exemplary leaders share the story behind the story about how their lives intersect with their activism and discuss their new projects and their hopes for the future. Moderated by Alexis Bunten (Unangan/Yup’ik), Co-Director of the Bioneers Indigeneity Program.
This discussion took place at the 2021 Bioneers Conference.
Panelists
Julian Brave NoiseCat
A prolific, widely published 28-year-old Indigenous journalist, writer, activist and policy analyst, Director of Green New Deal Strategy at Data for Progress, Julian Brave NoiseCat has become a highly influential figure in the coverage and analysis of Environmental Justice and Indigenous issues as well as of national and global political and economic trends and policies.
Clayton Thomas-Muller (Mathias Colomb Cree/Pukatawagan), the Winnipeg-based ‘Stop It At The Source’ Campaigner with 350.org and a founder and organizer with Defenders of the Land, is involved in many initiatives to support the building of an inclusive global movement for energy and climate justice. He also serves on the boards of Black Mesa Water Coalition, the Global Justice Ecology Project and Bioneers and is a steering committee member of the Tar Sands Solutions Network. Clayton has for over 12 years campaigned across North America organizing in hundreds of Indigenous communities to defend against the encroachments of the fossil fuel industry.
Alexis Bunten
Alexis Bunten, Ph.D., (Unangan/Yup’ik), Co-Director of the Bioneers’ Indigeneity Program, has been a researcher, media-maker, manager, consultant, and curriculum developer for organizations including the Sealaska Heritage Institute, Alaska Native Heritage Center, and the FrameWorks Institute. She has published widely about Indigenous and environmental issues, and is the author of So, how long have you been Native?: Life as an Alaska Native Tour Guide.
Permaculture, based on the ethos of “earth care, people care and fair share,” has provided millions of people the principles and tools to live and work in right relationship to the earth and to produce and harvest abundance without degrading the environment. At a time when the world is desperate for a new approach to living on the planet, can permaculture scale-up to create the global ecological and social changes that are needed for human survival?
With Permaculture co-founder David Holmgren, Maddy Harland, co-founder and editor of Permaculture magazine, and author and regenerative farmer Mark Shepard. Hosted by Permaculturalist Penny Livingston.
This discussion took place at the 2021 Bioneers Conference.
Maddy Harland co-founded a publishing company, Permanent Publications, in 1990 and Permaculture Magazine in 1992 to explore traditional and new ways of living in greater harmony with the Earth. She is the author of Fertile Edges—regenerating land, culture and hope and The Biotime Log. Maddy and her husband, Tim, have designed and planted one of the oldest forest gardens in Britain: once a bare field, it is now an edible landscape and haven for wildlife.
Mark Shepard
Mark Shepard, CEO of Restoration Agriculture Development, runs New Forest Farm (in Viola Wisconsin), a cutting-edge solar, wind and local biofuel-powered 110-acre commercial-scale perennial agricultural savanna, one of the first of its kind in the USA. Mark also teaches agroforestry, Permaculture and Restoration Agriculture and designs natural resource and agricultural properties worldwide and is author of the award-winning books: Restoration Agriculture: Real-world Permaculture for Farmers and Water for ANY Farm. A certified organic farmer since 1995, Mark is also a founding member of the American Hazelnut Company, on the board of the Stewardship Network, and a lead designer for the Valley Foundation of the Reed Jules Oppenheimer Foundation.
Penny Livingston
Penny Livingston, one of the most renowned and respected leaders in the field of Permaculture, has been teaching internationally and working professionally in land management, regenerative design and permaculture for 30 years. She has extensive experience in all phases of ecologically sound design and construction and specializes in the site planning and design of resource-rich landscapes that integrate rainwater collection, agroforestry systems, edible and medicinal planting, pond and water systems, habitat development and watershed restoration for homes, farms, co-housing communities and businesses. She is currently teaching online courses with Ecoversity and the Permaculture Skills Center.
They say “laughter is the best medicine,” but the most powerful medicine of all might just be American Indian comedy. Native peoples on this continent developed rich and complex humor traditions in response to centuries of oppression and the intergenerational trauma of ongoing settler colonization. Jokes were and are used to reflect on life’s ironies, impart wisdom, build relationships, and help heal from pain. Comedy can be one of the most effective tools in the arsenal of Indigenous strategies of deep cultural resilience, and as we emerge from this global pandemic and continue to struggle with dire threats to our people and the planet, we need the healing medicine of laughter more than ever.
Share some laughter and learning with Oakland-based (Yerington Paiute/Washoe) stand-up comedian, writer, actor and producer Jackie Keliiaa; and Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), Program Director of Bioneers’ Indigeneity Program and renowned artist/photographer.
This discussion took place at the 2021 Bioneers Conference.
Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), Program Director of the Bioneers Indigenous Knowledge Program, previously served her Mojave-based tribe in several capacities, including as: first Executive Director at the Chemehuevi Cultural Center, a member of the tribal council, and Chair of the Chemehuevi Education Board and Chemeuevi Headstart Policy Council. Cara is also a highly accomplished photographer/artist.
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: Andthe 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, youtalked 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.
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.
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.
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!
Prior to the colonization of North America, over a thousand separate Indigenous nations populated the continent – each with their own unique culture, language and traditions. The perseverance of Indigenous nations in the face of a global extractive economic order, climate change, and racism speaks to the endurance of spirit and the wisdom of ecological stewardship. Today, Indigenous peoples comprise 5% of the global population yet protect 80% of Earth’s biodiversity. Building solidarity with and respecting the leadership of Indigenous peoples has been a core part of Bioneers’ ethos since our founding and is increasingly a focal point in global organizing across any number of issues, from large scale conservation work to climate activism to movements for social change.
This coming Monday, an ever-increasing number of state and city governments are taking part in a larger movement to challenge the American mythos about Indigenous people and the founding of this country. Indigenous Peoples’ Day offers us a chance to reckon with a violent and oppressive past in service of a nascent trajectory towards healing, reconciliation and new ways of being.
This article contains the content from the 2/01/2021 Bioneers Pulse newsletter. Sign up here to get the newsletter straight to your inbox!
Bioneers Decolonization Series
What Is Decolonization? | Decolonization has recently grown to become a buzzword among various organizations and businesses and used to support a wide range of political interests. With no informed understanding or intentional use of the term, decolonization risks being robbed of its political power. For an in-depth conversation about the concept, check out this interview with Alexis Bunten on decolonization.
Why We Should Indigenize Place Names | Over the past year, Americans have made great strides in dismantling white supremacy. 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.
Register for the 2021 Bioneers Conference today to tune in for this incredible panel and many more powerful programs.
Conversation with Oglála Lakȟóta Elder Basil Brave Heart
The Oglala Lakota Nation are one of the many nations that belong to the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (“Seven Council Fires”; known derogatorily as “Sioux”). Basil Brave Heart is an Oglala Lakota combat veteran, Catholic boarding school survivor, author and retired school administrator from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.
The newest podcast program from Bioneers is on its way in just a few days. Each episode will bring Indigenous perspectives to global conversations. Keep an eye on your inbox for launch details!
Life in the City of Dirty Water | Clayton Thomas-Muller
The mass Indigenous-led movement against oil pipelines left a permanent impact in the fight against climate change. Indigenous nations are leading the movement to protect water and hold governments accountable to treaty laws that preserve Indigenous relationships with the environment. In this excerpt from his brand new book, Life in the City of Dirty Water: A Memoir of Healing, Clayton Thomas-Muller shares the power and wisdom of Indigenous climate advocacy.
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.
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.
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!
