In this address from the 2020 Bioneers conference, Bioneers Co-founder Nina Simons shares insights into how she’s navigating this time of loss and dissolution, and then expands upon how her commitments to nature, the feminine and wholeness have led her to deepen her commitment to allyship with Native Peoples.
Sharing examples of learnings gleaned from Indigenous colleagues and mentors, she also describes how she’s coming to understand and appreciate their immense value to all human beings, and to all of our other Earth kin at this time. She closes with gratitude for the leadership of BIPOC women and a prayer for healing.
Joan Blades is a social entrepreneur who’s built her career around bringing people together. Driven by her mediator personality and desire to find common ground, Joan has co-founded initiatives such as MomsRising, a network of parents working toward a more family-friendly America, and MoveOn, an online platform where citizens can mobilize for progressive grassroots campaigns.
Her most recent initiative is Living Room Conversations, a nonprofit based on conversational models specifically developed by dialogue experts to heal divides and promote understanding — a mission that’s more important now than ever before, as our culture and political climate becomes increasingly polarized.
In this interview with Bioneers, Joan shares the benefits of communicating intentionally, nourishing relationships, and coming together to collectively care for the planet and each other.
Joan Blades
BIONEERS: What core values do you have that led you to start your initiatives, like Living Room Conversations, MomsRising, and MoveOn? And have those values evolved over time as your campaigns have?
JOAN BLADES: I’m a mediator by origin and inclination.
MoveOn is about member engagement and empowering member voices. MomsRising was a very intentional effort to find a lot of common ground because there’s a huge bias against mothers in hiring wages and advancement. It is not because most people hate mothers, so what’s going on? And we did, we found a lot of common ground.
Ultimately, it became apparent to me that there was just a need to go directly at this problem of division. Our media and our politicians have been reinforced for focusing on our differences and not on what brings us together, and that is destructive. We’re looking for interventions, and we’re trying to step into the space where what people want in their lives is connection.
BIONEERS: MoveOn was founded in 1998, emerging before any social media platforms really existed. The first MoveOn petition was about the Clinton impeachment. What role do you think this massively successful online movement-building platform has had in how people speak up for what they care about?
JOAN: Thefirst MoveOn petition was the first petition that moved quite in the way that did. My husband Wes and I sent it out to under a hundred of our friends and family, and within a week we had 100,000 people that had signed it, and we’re like, “Oh, why don’t we do more of that?” It has always been about empowering people to have a real voice in what’s going on. That’s what we learned about doing MoveOn.
People power is fundamental. I still believe that leaders are sitting on top of the foundation that we create for them. We have to create a foundation for good leaders, for the leaders that we admire and respect. We’re not doing that very well right now. We’ve got this pendulum swinging, and it’s just swinging wider and wider in a path of destruction.
I’m hoping after this election we’ll get a lot of people showing up and saying, we’ve got to stop this. Have we hit bottom yet? It feels like we’ve fallen far enough down to me. Can we please turn this around now? That’s my dream.
BIONEERS: What do you think are some of the signs that we’ll see when we have hit rock bottom? And how can we yo-yo back up from that position?
JOAN: I think the fact that we have families not talking to each other, that’s pretty low, honestly. Since when has politics been more important than the relationship between siblings, or parents and children? That’s seriously bad.
Now some people have found a way to hold that, but others have just walked away. People will tell you that if we want to actually repair things, we have to stay in connection with people we disagree with.
We have to have that relationship. This is about holding those relationships and building new relationships.
BIONEERS: What are some of the practices that you think people can incorporate into their everyday conversations to promote that more constructive process of listening and communicating?
JOAN: Listening is incredibly powerful, and we forget that.
My question is often: “When’s the last time you changed somebody’s mind who really disagreed with you?” I get very few answers to that. But what does happen when you’re in a relationship with someone, when they care about you and you care about them, is you listen to each other in a different way, and your views become more nuanced, and you care some about what they care about, because you care about them. Just for that very simple human reason, and that’s actually a wonderful reason.
Genuine listening and curiosity are amazingly powerful. One of the things I love about doing the Living Room Conversations is people do these and then they say, “I’m gaining skills here,” and they take those skills out into their lives with them. That’s beautiful.
BIONEERS: What are your views about the hyper-partisanship that we’re collectively experiencing right now, as a nation and world?
JOAN: Hyper-partisanship is something that is intentional on the part of a number of players. For some players it’s a way to gain power, because if we are distrusting each other, we are not effective in dealing with environmental issues and dealing with economic issues. We cannot access the best part of our intentions. We’re living in fear, which causes us to shut down.
We like to think that we are thoughtful, intelligent beings. The reality is we’re first and foremost emotional beings. If we don’t recognize that, bad things happen.
BIONEERS: You seem to have a very optimistic view of the future. What continues to drive that hope forward?
JOAN: Optimism is just healthier. I have kids. I want them to have a good future. If I don’t work on it, if we don’t all collectively work on this, it’s not happening. It’s amazing what we can do if we work together.
And it’s amazing what we can screw up if we fail to work together. I choose to focus on the what-we-can-do side. The other side’s not much fun.
BIONEERS: Tell us more about how you examine your own internal biases, and what other people can learn from that process.
JOAN: I think doing this work causes me to be much less certain of almost everything.
There are a couple of things that I’m very solid on. Everyone deserves dignity. We need to have these relationships. But I’m afraid I can be made thoughtful about a lot of stuff, because I don’t know. People like answers that are black and white, but the reality of the world is multicolored. It’s not even shades of gray — it’s a vast array of colors, and when we reduce it to black and white, we don’t see what’s possible.
BIONEERS: What are some of the issues that our country is facing now that are most personally important to you? And what movements do you most align yourself with?
BIONEERS: I got into this because of climate change. If the world as we know it can’t support future generations and all the beautiful things on this Earth, then many things become secondary. So that’s a top concern. Human dignity, moving toward everyone having that experience of being respected and valued is critical. They aren’t separate; they’re intertwined.
I have tried to get people talking about nuclear weapons, because people don’t want to even think about them. The reality is they still exist and they’re a huge threat. It’s amazing that we haven’t done horrible things in that realm for 70 years.
I’m hoping that we can step into the spaces where there are dangers for the world, and we can reduce them. It’s a collective effort, and we’re going to have to really get serious about caring for each other. At the heart of this is caring for each other.
BIONEERS: Withthis empathy-centric view and all of this progress in mind, what are your short-term and long-term goals as you look ahead with your campaigns?
JOAN: It’s wonderful that I can have a Living Room Conversation with six people distributed around the country. The ways in which our media is giving us access is wonderful, especially at this time of COVID while people are isolated. We have beautiful conversations that are about our deeper values, that allow families, and people that care about each other to connect. That’s wonderful. So we can do that part, but how do we reduce or get rid of the destructive aspects of our world? I don’t have the answer. This is something we’re going to have to figure out collectively.
Amidst a global pandemic, the 2020 election is already making history as voters show up to the polls in record numbers. In a new interview with Democracy Now!, Jelani Cobb, professor of journalism at Columbia University, breaks down voter suppression in the 2020 election as many voters are being forced to choose between health and civic duty. Watch a video of that interview below.
Cobb examines the April 2020 Wisconsin primary in his new Frontline Documentary, “Whose Vote Counts,” as a microcosm of American electoralism. The history of Wisconsin as a deeply partisan state that essentially decided the 2016 election by just 22,000 votes exemplifies the larger dynamics of the United States. From gerrymandering, strict voter ID laws and the controversy surrounding absentee ballots, Jelani Cobb illustrates what voter suppression looks like this election season.
How Bioneers Has Been Supporting Indigenous Communities Hit Hardest by COVID-19
“She is over the moon grateful and said she deeply needed this help. Tears of joy and gratitude on all sides.”
Ruby Gibson, friend of a COVID-19 Regranting Fund recipient.
How “Indigigiving” Started:Since our inception, Bioneers has been profoundly shaped and guided by the knowledge and worldviews of Indigenous peoples, for which we are unspeakably grateful. Over the past 30 years, our work with First Peoples has been foundational and central, growing into our Native-led Indigeneity Program co-directed by Cara Romero and Alexis Bunten. At the 2019 Bioneers conference, nearly 300 Indigenous people representing over 100 tribal backgrounds participated, including 51 presenters and 125 Native youth. For these kinds of reasons, we found ourselves in a unique position to help move resources effectively and directly to some of those most in need from COVID-19.
Nina Simons, Co-Founder, Bioneers: When COVID-19 began to ravage this country, I was painfully aware of how much the pandemic would harm our relatives in Indian Country, where basic resources like healthy food, water and quality medical care are often scarce, difficult to access and far away. A friend reached out to me with a simple question: she wished to support the protection of Indigenous elders, but wanted to be sure her contribution would reach those in need. She didn’t know where and how best to donate funds.
I knew that between me, Cara and Alexis, our Indigeneity program co-directors, we held so many relationships with trusted friends, culture-bearers, community care-givers and partners that we could together develop some good resources. Once we shared those, people began donating and we found ourselves in a unique position to help channel funds directly to those in need, and help to make a real difference. It’s buoyed my heart over these months to know that we’ve been able to provide some tangible support to ease many relatives’ lives through this difficult time.
This message of gratitude comes from 35 Diné families with a total of 102 individuals, parents, children and more. We all say a heartfelt A’he’hee/Ahex’hee/ Thank you!
Because of your generosity, we were able to purchase a refrigerator, a water barrel, cleaning supplies, produce, food and water for these families, Delivering these items to their homes was essential in keeping these families safe. Thank you for your thoughtfulness, kindness and sense of Love.
Thank you!!!
Sunny Dooley, Traditional Navajo Culture-bearer
Alexis Bunten, Co-Director, Bioneers Indigeneity Program: When COVID-19 reached North America, we knew that it would disproportionately impact People of Color, and especially Indigenous communities. Historically it has been this way, and ongoing structural inequalities ensure it. We rapidly organized to gather impact as it was happening so that we could help. You can learn more about our early response to COVID-19 in Indian Country and read the results of our survey here.
Since we began this endeavor we’ve been blessed to be able to regrant over $165,000. Most of our efforts have been focused on Tribal Nations in the Southwest, whose citizens are in such dire need. Other giving has focused on partners across Turtle Island, to Amazonia, and international Indigenous communities.
With gifts ranging from $599 to individuals and families to larger gifts to partner organizations, we’ve carefully vetted each recipient through personal contact or on the recommendation of trusted Bioneers partners. Our contributors have helped support the lives and health of hundreds of individuals, prioritizing elders, and children. We are deeply grateful for our donors’ understanding, generosity and fierce compassion during this challenging time.
While others may be giving in a similar and decolonized way, yours by far, is more substantive, direct, and impactful. So kudos to all the hard work you and your team have done — my giving would not have mattered as much otherwise!!!
Trea Yip
Cara Romero, Co-Director, Bioneers Indigeneity Program: Our efforts have been profound, effective and heartfelt. Together our experienced and well-networked team is able to quickly identify multiple ways to address lesser-known unmet needs in Indigenous communities facing the devastating effects of COVID-19. These needs are unique, and we have focused on making sure funds and resources are strategically reaching marginalized pockets within the hardest hit regions. We have partnered with friends, organizations and volunteers to place trust and funds with accomplices that have intimate knowledge of urgent needs during this difficult time. From food banks to gas money to groceries to childrens’ books, we have seen our funders’ resources leveraged in meaningful and powerful ways. We know that these funds have made an impact on health and safety, as well as on peoples’ mental health and well-being. It is an honor to work as an extension of our funders’ generosity and transform their philanthropy into justice and caring.
What Bioneers’ Indigi-giving Has Accomplished So Far
We are so very grateful to have been able to regrant funds for COVID-relief Indigenous communities across 4 continents, representing over 25 tribes. We’ve sent direct relief to nearly 100 families, as well as indirect support through partner organizations to hundreds in the US and internationally. The recipients have directly received food, medical supplies, gas money, masks, personal care, heirloom seeds and garden starter packs with a focus on caring for elders and the most vulnerable. We’ve heard so many stories about how our support has helped families to obtain water, keep the lights on, stay warm, eat, and access vital information through technology.
While Indigi-giving has made a life-saving impact for many across the US and worldwide, we’ve especially focused our efforts on our home bases in the Southwest and in California, places that were hit soonest and hardest by the pandemic. We do this to honor the deep and long-lasting relationships we have made and relatives we have in the regions where Bioneers offices and staff are located. And, while we’re so grateful to have given to families and elders where we could, we’re deeply aware of the enormity of the need, ongoing – and would love to do more, or encourage you to give to one or more of the options below.
Take Action: Ways You Can Contribute
LEARN AND GIVE DIRECTLY:
If you are reading this and feeling moved to contribute toward healing the ongoing harms and traumas of racial injustice, we invite you to consider the Indigenous relatives whose land you may live on now, and to explore how you can support tribal peoples in your bioregion at this life-and-death time. This could take the form of donating to a local tribal resource, and learning more about the people who have stewarded the land you live on, often since time immemorial. A list of trusted partners that Bioneers has been working with as part of this project is available below.
SUPPORT BIONEERS:
When this project began, Bioneers responded from the heart, working to do what we knew was needed, offering connections we felt could help.
Small Gifts:
While we wish we could request and regrant small gifts, the reality is that we are a very small staff with limited capacity and it is simply not feasible. To give small gifts directly in support of Indigenous COVID-19 relief, please see the list of partners below.
To contribute at any level to Bioneers whole-system mission to strengthen the leadership of First Peoples, women, youth and diverse leaders, and to shift our course to an Earth-honoring and just future, please click here.
Major Gifts:
We encourage you to consider making a major gift in support of all of Bioneers’ work, as we are struggling to do all we can in support of this movement-building pivotal moment. Bioneers is creating curricula, media and online resources to strengthen activism, organizing and citizen engagement for Indigenous peoples of all ages, women and other leaders who are diverse in every way, young people (and all people) organizing around climate justice, racial and gender equity and regenerative agriculture.
I also want to take a moment to express my deepest gratitude to the anonymous donor for this most generous gift. I hope that she will truly know and wholly take in that she has helped change many people’s lives through her humanitarian outreach, kindness and generosity, including mine.
from an Indigi-giving friend who helped Bioneers to direct support to the families who needed it most
We are also happy to discuss major gifts directly to Bioneers COVID-19 regranting project, “Indigi-giving.” in support of Indigenous communities as we navigate this unparalleled pandemic time together.
We welcome your partnership and investment, as someone who recognizes that now is when Bioneers’ approach to igniting and collecting diverse leadership while spreading visionary and practical solutions are especially needed and potent. Never have we seen a time when people’s minds are more open to innovation and hungry for new visions for reinventing how we live on Earth and with each other.
To learn more about what Bioneers is doing, and explore the possibility of a major gift, please reach out directly to our co-founder, Nina Simons.
TRUSTED PARTNERS:
To give in support of Indigenous peoples relief through the COVID-19 pandemic, these are other resources that we trust, know well and feel great about supporting
Caroline W. Casey is a Visionary Activist Astrologer, devoted to the principle that imagination lays the tracks for the reality train to follow. Therefore, the cultivation of imagination coupled with the capacity for complex storytelling is a key strategy for personal and collective change.
Caroline has been studying astrology since she was a teen, has a degree in Semiotics from Brown University, and has studied magic, mythology and social activism all over the world. Based in Washington DC, Caroline broadcasts her live weekly radio show, “The Visionary Activist Show“, wedding spiritual magic to ingenious social action to Pacifica station KPFA (94.1) in Northern California, replayed on KPFK in Los Angeles. You can listen to the show live online at KPFA.org on Thursdays at 2pm PT .
Caroline offers Visionary Activist Revivals at a wide variety of conferences nationally and internationally, and is often a crowd favorite at the Bioneers Conference (for over 12 years!). A rousing and frequent speaker, Caroline invites us to imagine, conjure, and implement a more lovingly ingenious world.
Bioneers’ Polina Smith spoke with Caroline about her perspective on the time we’re living in, the role myth and astrology can play in helping us navigate uncertainty, Caroline’s own healing journey, plus much more! Check out interview highlights below or listen to the whole interview available at the end of the article.
The Trickster
Here Caroline talks about the 3500-year-old myth about the trickster- anyone unchallenged will become tyrannical. Let us call on the trickster, who serves to playfully challenge and liberate.
Language Crafting
Caroline tells us that language is magic. Language is power. Language can change the narrative. Let us use our language wisely.
Woof Woof, Wanna Play?
Caroline calls on her favorite tactic of ‘woof woof wanna play.’ She teaches us to not react, but instead respond with aikido like precision to opinions different than our own.
Caroline’s Underworld Journey
Caroline talks beautifully about her cancer dance, the lessons she learned and her process of healing.
This article contains the content from the 10/29/2020 Bioneers Pulse newsletter. Sign up here to get the newsletter straight to your inbox!
The 2020 election feels unreal.
Citizens have already cast nearly 70 million early votes, voter suppression tactics are preventing more from being counted, and the nation’s cultural consciousness is shifting amid a pandemic and a reckoning on racism. Not only is this election breaking records, but its surreality is broken by the deep-seated policy implications it holds for the next four years — affecting the everyday lives of Americans on issues like climate change, racial justice, protecting and restoring ecosystems, Indigenous rights and beyond.
Where do we go from here?
This week, we feature visionary leaders who are working to answer the question: How can we come together and redesign a more just and equitable democracy for all?
‘Accessing the Best of Our Intentions’: Joan Blades on Listening and Relationship Building
Joan Blades is a social entrepreneur who’s built her career around bringing people together. Her most recent initiative is Living Room Conversations, a nonprofit based on conversational models specifically developed by dialogue experts to heal divides and promote understanding — a mission that’s more important now than ever before, as our culture and political climate becomes increasingly polarized.
In this interview with the Bioneers team, Joan shares the benefits of communicating intentionally, nourishing relationships, and coming together to collectively care for the planet and each other.
Joan will be leading a live, interactive Living Room Conversation at the Bioneers 2020 Conference. Register now to save your spot!
Jelani Cobb Talks Voter Suppression in the 2020 Election
What does voter suppression look like this season? While citizens are already forced to choose between health and civic duty, journalism professor Jelani Cobb names some other insidious forces at play — gerrymandering, strict voter ID laws and the controversy surrounding absentee ballots — and who benefits.
Activism, Justice and Human Rights at the Bioneers 2020 Conference
As we challenge our world’s outdated systems and institutions, we must seize the moment to rebuild a more equitable and regenerative world together. Join the Bioneers 2020 Conference for programming around activism, justice and human rights, where a diverse coalition of leaders will share their wisdom and invite you to join the movements that are shaping our world for the better — such as Indigenous allyship, climate action, women’s leadership, and more.
Democracy Unchained: The Moral Foundations of Democracy
The State of American Democracy Project seeks to strengthen democratic institutions by igniting an honest conversation on equality, justice, tolerance and fairness. This is the first episode of their ten-part conversation series, where political thought leaders explore the moral foundations of democracy as the most certain way of defending the dignity of all citizens.
Moving Forward Together: Political Peace Building Conversations
Our friends at LivingRoomConversations are hosting Moving Forward Together, a two-week series of election-focused conversations for people to come together and share hopes and concerns, to process grief and anxiety, and to relate and build understanding even across political differences. This conversation series will run through November 9.
From the producers of Making Contact: “Unblock the Vote 2020” | This podcast episode explores voter suppression in Native communities and the political battle to restore the voting rights of more than 6 million convicted felons.
From Yes! Magazine: “How to Stop a Coup” | “As election results start coming in, the message needs to come through loud and clear: Count all the votes and honor the result.”
From the Schumacher Center: “Of Corporations, Law, and Democracy” | Thomas Linzey, Bioneers 2020 Conference speaker and Senior Legal Counsel at the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights, writes about how corporations influence democracy to prevent meaningful action on environmental protections.
This article contains the content from the 10/29/2020 Bioneers Pulse newsletter. Sign up here to get the newsletter straight to your inbox!
Pacific Coast Highway 1 between Santa Cruz and San Francisco is a beautiful stretch of road. On the coast side, steep eroding bluffs drop to flat sandy beaches pounded by rough surf and high waves. Along the highway there is amazing windsurfing at Waddell Creek and world class surfing at Mavericks. Año Nuevo State Park is one of the largest mainland breeding colonies of northern elephant seals. On the inland side of the highway, the coastal prairie is bordered by the steep canyons and mixed redwood forest of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The region is also home to a long-standing farming community growing Brussel sprouts, organic strawberries, Halloween pumpkins and assorted other crops. South of the town of Pescadero, you can’t miss the “Slow for Pie” signs signaling the approach of Pie Ranch. The coffee shop, located in a historic barn, is known for its fresh apple and berry pies and organic produce.
I visited Pie Ranch in August prior to the CZU Lightning fire that burned over 86,000 acres and destroyed about 1000 homes. Pie Ranch did not escape the fire unscathed, but on the day that I visited, the main topic was adjusting to the pandemic that has restricted so much of normal life. I was met in the parking lot by Jered Lawson. Jered and his wife Nancy Vail co-founded Pie Ranch in 2004 with a commitment to use the ranch in ways that advance social justice.
In a 2015 interview at a Stone Barns Center conference, Jered said, “Remember every inch of soil in this country was stolen from Indigenous communities, and people were stolen from Africa to make the USA what it is today. Racial justice and food and farming are inextricably connected; the act of farming has the potential to heal these wounds that affect all of us.”
With that in mind, Pie Ranch has developed a relationship with the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, giving them access to the land for ceremony, to teach native land stewardship, and to establish a native plant garden.
In that same Stone Barns interview, Jered also said: “If you are white, find out how to do the dance of stepping back, and allow yourself to be guided by the voices of people of color while also stepping forward to use your voice to lift up love and justice.”
The Pandemic Forces a Pivot
With the pandemic, all of Pie Ranch’s onsite education programs that served urban and underprivileged kids had to be cancelled. Their main markets–restaurants, bakeries, and the Google and Stanford campus kitchens–were disrupted. One of the ironies of the current crisis is that at the same time that farmers were becoming desperate for markets, the COVID-19 pandemic was leading to an unprecedented number of Americans experiencing food insecurity due to the dramatic rise in unemployment. An estimated 1 in 5 U.S. households don’t have enough to eat.
Forced to pivot from normal business activities, Jered saw an opening: “The pandemic laid bare the vulnerabilities of a more centralized, globalized, food system. Larger scale farms were plowing under perfectly edible food because their distribution channels had been disrupted. They lost large institutional buyers such as schools and hospitals and companies that provide meal programs for their employees. Smaller and medium-scale farms that had direct relationships to a restaurant community lost those customers. Suddenly there was a need to provide new ways of connecting farms and the communities that had previously been eating food provided by those institutions. At the same time, there were a lot more newly unemployed people looking to food banks and other sources of emergency food. Food banks were overwhelmed and unable to respond to that sudden increase in demand. We saw an opportunity to leverage our infrastructure to aggregate product from local farms and pack boxes with a nice mix of fresh produce and make them available to communities experiencing food insecurity.”
Jered Lawson inspects food boxes for the Farm Fresh Food Relief Initiative
Pie Ranch partnered with Fresh Approach to launch the Farm Fresh Food Relief Initiative to feed food-insecure people along the coast and in the Santa Clara Valley. With USDA funding and private donations, the program was able to support small local farmers while feeding 800 families weekly.
“There are small and medium-scale farmers,” Jered said, “who are former farm workers who are able to sell their produce through our food hub because of the economic stimulus. That food gets distributed weekly to communities with the greatest need. That’s the clearest expression of our goals of food justice.”
Pie Ranch had been approved for the program until August 2022, but unfortunately the funding ended this past August without formal notification from the USDA. The latest round of funding, $1 billion dollars, will go instead to large corporations such as Sysco. The program was initially supposed to help small and medium size farmers while alleviating food insecurity. It is unknown if the same families will be served, and the produce will no longer be local and organic. The USDA requires the new vendors to include a letter from Donald Trump as a thinly veiled campaign promotion, which is ironic considering Trump has pushed to drastically cut food stamps.
In the short term, limited philanthropic funds have enabled Pie Ranch and their partners to deliver 265 boxes to community members in the mission district of San Francisco, East Palo Alto, and Pescadero while they figure out a way to engage the community to invest in food justice for those who are disproportionately suffering from the pandemic
Fire and the Hope for Transformation
On August 16, a massive thunderstorm produced 12,000 bolts of dry-lightning that ignited hundreds of fires in California. A number of smaller fires merged in the Santa Cruz Mountains when the winds shifted. The CZU Lightning Complex Fire burned from the San Mateo Coast through the redwood forests of the Santa Cruz Mountains, ultimately destroying some 1000 homes and 490 other buildings. Pie Ranch farm crews worked to exhaustion to create fire breaks to protect the ranch but were only partially successful. An ember blew over the fire-line and burned down the historic 157-year-old farmhouse (used as an office) and destroyed other infrastructure such as water tanks; and some staff members lost their homes.
Nancy Vail picking pears
Showing remarkable resilience, Nancy Vail wrote in a Facebook post: “May this be the beginning of transformation; may we resolve to bring back Indigenous knowledge, heal the damage done since colonization, bring justice to the lands and the people, build resilient homes for all people, practice climate-friendly everything, feed people, love more.” To support fire evacuees, Pie Ranch teamed up with Off the Grid, Fresh Approach and others to buy food from local farms, prepare meals, and deliver them to fire-affected communities. Since September 1, produce from nine farms affected by the fire have provided over 13,000 meals. During the first 28 days, 800 evacuated families were served 500 meals per day.
Beyond the Pandemic
In my pre-fire conversation with Jered and prior to the discontinuation of the food relief funds, he was already thinking ahead: “Delivering food to those in need during the pandemic is meaningful, but it’s not sustainable, and sometimes it seems like a drop in the bucket…Looking beyond the efforts around the pandemic and the emergency food relief program, we want to build connective tissue with the farmers (including us) and the households that are receiving the food. We’re about to do outreach to the communities that may be connecting with local farmers for the first time to see how we can create experiences that are the seeds of that new relationship that will last long after the pandemic has (hopefully) been resolved.”
Communities of color are getting hit the hardest with Covid-19 and trying to create personal relationships during a pandemic is a real challenge. Jered is cognizant of the fact that the lives of people in those communities were difficult before Covid-19. Structural racial inequalities have become even more apparent with the pandemic, and Lawson sees those inequalities playing out in the food system as well. Many people in low-income communities and communities of color rely on food banks and don’t have access to high quality food. The Food Relief program, which delivered local, fresh, organic, food boxes at no cost, was a temporary remedy.
In thinking about structural racism in the food system, Lawson raises difficult questions: “Who owns the farmland? Who has the ability to access land and grow food for their communities? Who has access to the capital to build a viable farm business? Who has the networks and distribution resources to establish market partnerships?” In 2018 Pie Ranch secured a 10-year lease at the nearby 416-acre Cascade Ranch to start a program called the Regenerator with an emphasis on recruiting BIPOC new farmers and others who have been left out of equity-building in agriculture.
The Director of Operations for the program, Leonard Diggs, one of the few African American farmers in California, is leading the efforts to transition Cascade Ranch to regenerative agricultural practices. On a phone call, Leonard told me that the goals of the program are to “provide skills and resources for the next-generation of farmers who haven’t been able to accumulate the capital to buy land and start a farm and to train them in climate-responsible agriculture because if we can’t farm carbon-neutral or carbon-negative, and if we can’t get our communities to support that, then we’re not going to be successful.”
Leonard Diggs harvests tomatoes
Leonard’s vision for farming prioritizes the nutritional needs of the whole community, not just the affluent. He would like to see a bioregional approach with a network of farms that coordinate their production to manage the regional impact of farming. Farmers would receive 30 % of their income for ecosystem services funded by local sources. The program, in its first year, will work with new farmers for 3 to 5 years and help them develop farming and business skills, as well as to accumulate some start-up capital through saving accounts to help with a down payment on property and equipment and start their own farm or possibly remain on the Cascade Ranch and lease some acreage.
I asked Leonard in what ways he has encountered racism. He noted, as a Black, first generation farmer, one way racism manifests itself is through a lack of access to land, information and capital—all the things the Regenerator program is working to help people overcome. He added that “as an African American farmer people ask me what I think about Black Lives Matter. We talk about white privilege; people regularly bring up the privileges they have. So, the question I ask is, ‘What are you doing with your privilege? What actions are you deploying?’
The Regenerator program is one way that Pie Ranch is addressing inequity in the food system, and Diggs’ ambition of a regional network of farms working together fits into a larger vision of a regional food system.
“We’ve always been short on funds,” Jered Lawson said, “to build the local food system networks and the infrastructure necessary to accelerate a healthier and more just food system locally. It occurred to us that instead of relying on funding from USDA or CDFA [California Department of Food and Agriculture], maybe we could develop a local food and farm bill, as a Bay Area initiative, that would be modeled after the national farm bill but governed and funded locally.” Before the pandemic, planning had begun on how to engage the community, what counties would be involved, what the right structure would be, and when to place it on the ballot to raise the funds. Lawson feels that framing it as a regional food and farm bill could help connect urban and rural communities.
He explained it in this way: “The simple idea of a locality taxing itself to enhance its own local food system feels essential. It would be a direct recognition from the experience of the pandemic that local food resiliency is what’s going to enable us to weather such disruptions in the future, be it another virus or some climate crisis-related disruption. The stronger the bonds are between local farms and food producers and the local communities eating from those farms, the more capable we will be of surviving such disruptions.”
Just a few months after reorganizing their operation due to the disruption of the pandemic, the fire struck. In a Facebook post, Nancy Vail wrote about how farmers, local officials and Indigenous tribal members are using the trauma to unite and build community: “We circled up to meet each other, honor the land and history, and walk together through charred hillsides and the ash-filled watershed. We learned about the resources available to farmers and discussed putting together a recovery plan for the region that would include removal of eucalyptus, seeding of native grasses, erosion control techniques, prescribed burns, and other methods to support restoration and resiliency of the whole area while centering the Amah Mutsun tribe’s skill and knowledge with the commitment to bring back Indigenous practices of land stewardship.”
Undeterred by multiple setbacks, the work at Pie Ranch continues—fire cleanup, rebuilding and harvesting–with an unbroken commitment to food justice.
This article contains the content from the 10/21/2020 Bioneers Pulse newsletter. Sign up here to get the newsletter straight to your inbox!
“The problem is that Western thinkers tend to consider intelligence as a human exclusivity.” —Jeremy Narby, anthropologist
“We’re just one member of the democracy of species; the Earth does not just belong to us.” —Robin Kimmerer, Potawatomi Indigenous ecologist
Humans are a part of nature, not apart from it. Our innate capacity for intelligence suggests the same is true for the rest of our interconnected web of life. As researchers study the natural world, we find our notions of consciousness expanding.
This week, meet thought leaders whose work is transforming our curiosity about intelligence in nature into a full-fledged field of research — with deep implications for the future of our relationship with the natural world.
New Podcast Episode: Forest Wisdom, Mother Trees and the Science of Community
Forests have long occupied a fertile landscape in the human imagination, yet we’ve largely treated forests as inert physical resources to satisfy human needs and desires. The main operative science behind this commodification has been market science — how to extract maximum resources and profits.
This Bioneers podcast episode features Suzanne Simard, a revolutionary researcher who is transforming the science of forest ecology and coming full circle to the wisdom held by First Peoples and traditional land-based cultures from time immemorial. The story Simard is uncovering can change our story for how we live on Earth and with each other – for the long haul.
Intelligence in Nature at the 2020 Bioneers Conference
Paul Stamets and Mark Plotkin are two visionary leaders whose work has expanded our understanding of intelligence in nature. They’re also keynote speakers at the Bioneers 2020 Conference!
A Conversation with Merlin Sheldrake, Author of Entangled Life
Merlin Sheldrake is a biologist and a writer whose research ranges from fungal biology, to the history of Amazonian ethnobotany, to the relationship between sound and form in resonant systems. A keen brewer and fermenter, he is fascinated by the relationships that arise between humans and more-than-human organisms.
In this video interview, Bioneers Senior Producer J.P. Harpignies chats with Merlin about his new, highly acclaimed first book, Entangled Life.
Watch the interview here, and read an excerpt from the book here.
Paul Stamets, Katsi Cook and Jeffrey Bronfman – Plant Sacraments and the Mind of Nature
Can plants help people access the intelligence in nature—the “mind of nature”—that we must learn to understand in order to supersede our ecologically destructive habits? This panel discussion features Jeffrey Bronfman, founding member of the União do Vegetal church of the United States; Paul Stamets, master mycologist; and Katsi Cook, renowned Mohawk midwife and environmental activist. Hosted by J.P. Harpignies, Bioneers Associate Producer.
Stamets and Cook will also be speaking at the Bioneers 2020 Conference on December 5. Register now to join them for a voyage into the mind of nature!
The Honorable Harvest with Robin Kimmerer
What does ethical reciprocity between humans and the natural world look like? The Honorable Harvest reminds us how to take, use and share while mindfully honoring the indigenous legacies that teach us how to commune with our planet. Featuring Robin Wall Kimmerer, Professor of Environmental and Forest Biology at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry.
She is the Ocean is a new documentary profiling nine extraordinary women from across the world who share one thing in common: a profound love for the sea. A love so profound that they have chosen to make the ocean the center of their physical, philosophical, and professional lives. Don’t miss this new movie, which premiered online and at select theatres nationwide earlier this week!
This Bioneers Reader features some of the world’s foremost thought leaders sharing their research and observations about nature’s intelligence. We’re excited to share a selection of the groundbreaking concepts buzzed about within our community, in a beautifully-designed package that’s free to download. Don’t forget to share this reader with your friends and family!
Indigenous Land Acknowledgement Bill Introduced in California | Check out this conversation between Indigenous rights activists Alexis Bunten and Dr. Joely Proudfit, where they discuss the meaning behind an Indigenous land acknowledgment bill being considered in the state legislature.
The Benefits of Biodiversity on the Farm and Ranch| Regenerative agriculture strives to mimic nature’s by building biodiversity as the foundation for a healthy ecosystem that results in higher productivity. In this article, Arty Mangan, Restorative Food Systems Director at Bioneers, tells the stories of regenerative farmers and ranchers using this system to their benefit.
A Geography of Hope: Gabriel García Márquez and the River that Made Possible a Nation | Wade Davis, PhD, is a writer, botanist, and Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society. In this excerpt of his new book, “Magdalena: The River of Dreams,” he weaves together a fierce defense of Indigenous wisdom, a searing indictment of climate change, and a memoir of an author’s travels.
This article contains the content from the 10/21/2020 Bioneers Pulse newsletter. Sign up here to get the newsletter straight to your inbox!
In this letter, Bioneers co-founder Nina Simons reflects on the process of adapting to the pandemic, co-creating the Bioneers 2020Conference, and discovering the “learning, sense of community and cross-pollinating of ideas are possible online.”
These past six months have shaken me to my bones. I’ve looked deeply into my own patterns and considered what has greatest value to me. I’ve dreamt of how I can be most useful — in service to beloved community, Indigenous Peoples, healing alongside the natural world and the liberation of women and girls— the many causes to which I’m devoted.
I’ve learned to practice staying centered while being rocked by battering waves of uncertainty. This time is stretching my heart’s envelope. It’s a test of resilience to contain this wide spectrum of emotion, from immense gratitude and tenderness to outrage and loss.
My gratitude for Bioneers surviving to meet this time runs deep, as does my appreciation for Kenny’s and our team’s leadership. Thank you to everyone who’s contributed in so many ways.
Now, many have felt their illusions of democracy and equity in this nation’s institutions have been dashed. But the opportunity to reinvent how we live on Earth and relate to all of Life looms large. It’s a collective visioning that has lifted my heart. Nature shows us that diversity is essential to a system’s resilience after trauma, and the spectrum of topics, people and ideas we gather will strengthen our social systems’ resilience to revision our pathways towards regeneration, even after all this destruction.
I’ve been amazed to discover how much learning, sense of community and cross-pollinating of ideas are possible online. And I’ve never known a time when peoples’ minds were more open to new ideas, nor our hearts hungrier for innovative and practical visions we can collaboratively work toward, as we each contribute our own piece.
So when we realized we could co-create a Bioneers gathering for December, we went for it. With your participation, we hope to coalesce a multiverse of grounded possibility and abundant solutions to illuminate where we may be heading, and how we can get there.
Each time my heart’s boundaries must stretch again, to be able to contain the depth of emotional response I’m feeling, I am thankful that it is flexing to bridge the worlds — not breaking. While my heart is breaking over and over again, that’s just how the light gets in.
Join Nina Simons at the Bioneers 2020 Conference on December 5-6 and 12-13. Get your tickets now!
Forests have long occupied a fertile landscape in the human imagination. Places of mystery and magic – of wildness and wisdom – of vision and dreaming. Yet beyond mythic realms of imagination, we’ve largely treated forests as inert physical resources to satisfy human needs and desires. The main operative science behind this commodification has been market science – how to extract maximum resources and profits.
Suzanne Simard is a revolutionary researcher who is transforming the science of forest ecology and coming full circle to the wisdom held by First Peoples and traditional land-based cultures from time immemorial. The story Simard is uncovering can change our story for how we live on Earth and with each other – for the long haul.
Featuring
Suzanne Simard, Professor of Forestry at the University of British Columbia, is an expert in the synergies and complexities of forests and the development of sustainable forest stewardship practices. Her groundbreaking research centers on the relationships between plants, microbes, soils, carbon, nutrients and water that underlie the adaptability of ecosystems, especially the below-ground fungal networks that connect trees and facilitate interplant communication. Learn more about Suzanne Simard and her work at her website.
Credits
Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel
Written by: Kenny Ausubel
Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch
Co-Writer and Producer: Teo Grossman
Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey
Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris
Explore More
Dispatches From the Mother Trees, Suzanne Simard’s keynote address to the 2021 Bioneers Conference, in which she discusses the dire global consequences of logging old-growth rainforests, and nature-based solutions that combine Western science and Indigenous knowledge for preserving and caring for these invaluable forest ecosystems for future generations.
Lessons from the Underground, a panel discussion from the 2021 Bioneers Conference featuring Suzanne Simard as well as Anne Biklé and David R. Montgomery, a wife and husband team of scientific researchers whose groundbreaking work on the microbial life of soil has revealed its crucial importance to human wellbeing and survival. Moderated by Bioneers’ Restorative Food Systems Director Arty Mangan.
Intelligence in Nature, a deep-dive resource featuring leading experts in this burgeoning field.
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: One of the revolutionary researchers transforming the science of forest ecology is Suzanne Simard. She weaves a kind of ecological parable. It’s a story of community – of kinship – of diversity – of coevolution, cooperation and resilience. Call it the Tree of Life, as so many cultures have.
The story Suzanne Simard is uncovering can change our story for how we live on Earth and with each other – for the long haul.
This is “Forest Wisdom, Mother Trees and the Science of Community”. I’m Neil Harvey. I’ll be your host. Welcome to The Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature.
Forests have long occupied a fertile landscape in the human imagination. Places of mystery and magic – of wildness and wisdom – of vision and dreaming – sacred groves at the edge of civilization where enchanted beings dwell, where people become transformed in the ineffable face of danger, darkness and wonder.
Yet beyond these mythic realms of imagination, we’ve largely treated forests as inert physical resources to satisfy human needs and desires. Dating back to ancient Rome and Greece, this extractive mentality has toppled civilizations, turning forests into board feet, clearcutting what’s in truth a keystone in nature’s self-sustaining web of life.
The main operative science behind this commodification has been market science – how to extract maximum resources and profits.
Today the new emerging science of forest ecology is telling a very different story. It’s a story that’s both modern and ancient. Brilliant scientists are coming full circle to the wisdom held by First Peoples and traditional land-based cultures from time immemorial.
The daughter of a logging family who grew up in the towering forests of British Columbia, Suzanne Simard became a Professor of Forestry at the University of British Columbia where she studies forest science and the development of sustainable forest stewardship practices.
SUZANNE SIMARD: There are so many different kinds of forests in the world, so healthy is really place-dependent. The composition of forests it’s largely determined by climate. So a tropical forest looks way different than a temperate forest, which is in the middle latitudes, which looks way different than a boreal forest, which is in the high latitudes.
So diversity comes in many different ways, and really like this underlying principle that’s been proven in many studies, not just in forests, but in grasslands and in herbaceous communities in agriculture systems as well, that diversity increases productivity, it’s also related to health of the forest.
HOST: Simard’s groundbreaking research centers on the complex interdependent relationships in forests among the trees, plants, fungi, microbes, soils, carbon, nutrients and water.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of forest ecosystems to the health of the web of life. Forests are rightly called the lungs of the planet, absorbing a third of global carbon dioxide emissions. Forested watersheds provide 75% of accessible global fresh water. And forests are home to nearly 80% of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity.
Although we know how profoundly forests matter, modern society knows surprisingly little about how they actually function as a system. What are we learning today?
We spoke with Suzanne Simard at a Bioneers Conference.
SS: So what is a diverse forest? In the boreal forests, which are the northern latitude forests, there’s not that many tree species. But if you look at vertical structure in this forest, those forests are extremely diverse. If you think of trees and how they vary in height, and their crowns are in different places, well then other animals and plants will live in those different niche spaces in that crown that’s very diverse.
And then also belowground in those boreal forests, that are not very species rich in trees, are immensely species rich in fungi. And I think that one of the reasons that they’re very diverse there is because those fungi and the bacteria are acting on a very difficult environment to extract or to get resources like nitrogen and phosphorus that they can deliver to the plants. So they all have their own special little niche space that they occupy there.
In a tropical forest, it’s a totally different thing, where you could have hundreds of species in a hectare, of trees, whereas belowground there’s only a couple hundred of mycorrhizal fungal species it depends on where you’re looking, or which forest you’re in.
Even so, there’s the basic principle that a fully accessed community with lots of niche space is a productive community. That’s how the biodiversity works.
HOST: A community anchored in diversity is among the first principles in this ecological parable. But because industrial capitalism has treated forests first and foremost as profit centers, it has led to so-called “managing” them more like a factory than an ecosystem, exactly contrary to the very underpinnings of healthy forests.
Suzanne Simard experienced this lethal disconnect first hand while herself working as a forester. Along the way, she fell through the rabbit hole into the below-ground world of forests. She found, as the Hermetic Axiom suggests, “As above, so below.”
SS: I became interested in the below-ground world when I was actually practicing forestry, and the things that we were doing and people were doing in the industry — which was clear cutting, planting trees, weeding out things – plants – that they didn’t want, trees they didn’t want, trees like birch and aspen and cedar, making way for just one or two species — I thought it was wrong because it wasn’t the way I had observed how forests function and are patterned in nature, and I thought we should be emulating nature more closely.
And when I was studying these forest practices, I was observing that there’s a lot of disease in those forests. They’re really stressed out. The trees growing by themselves in these rows are not happy. They die. There’s a lot of death. So I wanted to understand why that was and how we could change that.
And of course I was always interested in how the forest works, but I knew that a lot of this disease came in through the soil, and so I thought, well, that’s the first place to look. And I was interested in how fungi interact with trees.
And so I started looking at these forests where they had cut out the unwanted species and cleaned them, kind of like biodiversity cleansing in forests, and to see what happened to the mycorrhizas. And the diversity of the mycorrhizal fungi went way down, just like it went way down with the trees. And that’s because different plants host different species of fungi, and so there’s a lot of co-evolution that goes on between these creatures, these symbionts. And so when you get rid of one of the symbionts, the other one goes too.
So that meant, too, that the potential for these trees to be connected by these fungi below ground also went down. So I figured out through many studies – that trees of different species were connected, and when the connections were severed or they were not nurtured – so not nurturing them means growing single species and weeding out all the other native plants – when they’re not nurtured, those symbionts die or they’re very low diversity.
And then I realized through many more experiments that when you sever those links that the communication between the trees actually is severed as well. I was able to show that when trees can’t interact like that, can’t have relationships through their connections, that they’re more at risk of disease. And so when that microbiome was not there, then the pathogens could really act or really take over these other trees when they were by themselves.
HOST: Just as nature banks on diversity and builds from the bottom up, it rewards cooperation. As microbiologist Lynn Margulis put it, Earth is a “symbiotic planet”– revealing another piece of the ecological parable puzzle.
Simard’s research has further found that – although the forest is a raucous symphony of life – it also has amazing soloists. Among these soloists are “Mother Trees.” It turns out they’re crucial to the vast below-ground cooperative networks that connect, protect and nourish all trees – connections well known to ancient aboriginal cultures. There’s good reason to call them “Mother Trees.”
SS: Most people don’t know this, but when you’re walking in the forest, you see these big, tall trees, and you think, Oh, that’s the tree. But actually there’s as much going on below ground as above ground.
A tree grows tall, but it’s got a root system but they also grow outwards. And a mature tree in our temperate forest will have root systems that go out like 30 meters. That’s like 100 feet. The root systems are as wide as the tree is tall. So that means that in trees, in a fully occupied forest, are only like a few meters apart, so that means that their root systems are completely overlapping.
On top of that, every root tip on those trees, those massive overlapping root systems, every root tip has got a mycorrhizal fungus that’s linked to all the other trees.
A big old tree will produce cones and set seed. The seed falls at whatever time of the year. It disperses its seed often in the spring. Those seeds fall to the forest floor, and there’s immediately, as soon as they fall to the forest floor, there’s a lot of communication going on between the seed and the bacteria and the fungi in the soil.
So then the seed germinates, and within a month or two, the root, the hypocotyl of that seed, becomes colonized by a mycorrhizal fungus. That fungus is actually part of the big old tree that produced the seed, so that big old tree has already got a network of fungi, and the seedling, with its little root system, hooks into the network of the old tree
The old tree immediately starts communicating with the seedlings through the network. And the way that the old tree does that is it sends carbon down its phloem, into its root system, into the mycorrhizal network, and then the little seedling takes it up, and when a seedling is really young, just like in our own kids, they can’t look after themselves completely. It takes a little while. They’ve got to build leaves and they’ve got to grow a little taller, and they’ve got to photosynthesize enough that it’s more than respiration so that they can produce their own food. But at first they can’t do that, especially if it’s shady.
So that mother tree sends carbon, and later we also found that the mother tree sends nitrogen, and it sends water, and it sends signals, and can recognize whether they’re kin or not kin. And so this communication goes on between the parent tree, the mother tree, and the offspring.
Teenagers will talk to each other as well. They can be linked together and communicate. It doesn’t have to be mother and kin.
We know that they recognize which seedlings are related to them and which ones are strangers. And we think that there’s certain kinds of kin recognition signaling molecules involved in this, but we don’t know what they are. We know that carbon is part of the story because we know that mother trees will send more carbon to kin than strangers. So it could be that carbon is part of this signaling molecule, but we don’t really know for sure. So there’s some work to be done there.
HOST: Science is just beginning to scratch the surface when it comes to learning about how plants communicate. What else are trees up to?
One finding was a vast public health hotline coursing through the forest.
SS: The other communication language that we’ve been looking at is stress signaling. So if one tree is stressed, it can send signals to neighbors that say, Hey, I’m stressed out and you need to watch out, and you need to increase your own defense.
The big old trees are the ones that have the biggest crowns and they photosynthesize the most, and so they’ve got the most surplus carbon, and so they send the carbon into the network. And usually they—the other trees that are smaller and have less carbon through photosynthesis are the sinks. So it’s like this source-sink thing going on between big old trees and the younger, smaller trees. And that’s, we think, is how the carbon is moving through the network is it’s following a source-sink gradient from really replete areas to depleted areas.
So it’s redistributing the resources so that the community as a whole is vibrant and healthy, even the ones that are maybe struggling in the shade, they’re getting help from the neighbors through the network.
And there’s studies that also show not just below ground but above ground that this kind of communication is going on between trees about stress and injury, and that they change the community health based on that signaling. It’s like a public immunization program.
HOST: As we begin to look, listen and learn, what science is unearthing about the depth and complexity of forest ecosystems is astonishing. For instance, how is it that rivers and oceans reach deep into the life cycles of the forest?
One of the primary elements necessary for plant health is nitrogen. In some regions near rivers up to 75% of the nitrogen in trees can be traced to fish.
SS: Through lots of studies in Washington and British Columbia, they’ve been able to determine that this nitrogen is transported into the forest by different animals – bears and wolves and eagles – and that this nitrogen ends up not just in the trees but in other plants and even in the insects that are associated with those plants. But nobody knows how it gets from the salmon that’s been eaten by the bear and maybe pooped out or just left to decay, how it gets from that point into the tree.
And so what we’re trying to do is figure out how the mycorrhizal network picks up the nitrogen.
And then most interesting how that mother tree then moves that nitrogen through the network into the forest and how deep into the forest does it go? And what is the ocean influence? How far does it go into the forest?
And we think that it goes a longways, and without the salmon, the forest suffers, without the forest, the salmon suffers because the forest provides cover for the streams, which makes it habitable for the salmon. It’s a really great example of how animals and salmon and trees, and even people because they harvest the fish, are all linked together.
And it’s not just in those forests, but even in the Douglas fir forests where I live and do my research, the animals are all part of dispersing the spores, and eating the spores, and the spores of the mycorrhizal fungi which colonize the seeds in those animals, also the squirrels will harvest the cones and eat the seeds in the same place that they defecate out the spores, and then the colonization of the seed happens right there. So the squirrel or the animal is an integral and critical part of the loop between the fungus and the tree.
I think the more we look, the more we’re going to see that these links are strong, and they’re there, and there are multiple pathways.
HOST: When Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, it revolutionized our understanding of evolution. His theory of natural selection became popularized as “survival of the fittest.”
But he did NOT mean an amoral struggle for existence where might makes right — where the ruthless pursuit of self-interest automatically cleaves to the greatest good.
What Darwin was actually saying was that the “fittest” were the best fitted to existing conditions at a given historical moment in a specific environmental context.
In other words, evolution is coevolution, navigating by the North Star of symbiosis. That’s exactly what Suzanne Simard’s ecological parable is showing.
SS: We’ve had this misconception that healthy forests are made of all fast-growing trees, and that the biggest and fastest-growing is the best thing, but no, it’s not true at all.
If everybody’s a strong competitor– if everyone’s an alpha tree, then they’re going to fight each other to death, through shading and so on. If you have a structured forest where you’ve got small ones, and big ones helping out the small ones, and mid-canopy trees, and different species, they’re occupying all the niches in that forest, that diverse forest, and so that’s actually a much healthier forest, is to have that kind of diversity.
HOST: Simard says that symphony of diversity is exactly why it’s so important to conserve these mother trees.
There’s a parallel in marine ecology and fisheries management, where it’s increasingly common for regulators to protect what they call BOFFFs – Big, Old, Fat, Fecund, Females. Pound-for-pound, in some species BOFFFs can produce vastly more life than any other fish in the population. Protect Big Old Fat Fecund Females, and the population will thrive.
Simard’s work has shown that the same holds true for trees. As forests are jamming into fast forward to try to adapt to radically accelerating climate change, protecting mother trees will be an essential practice for supporting climate-resilient forests.
The implications ofSuzanne Simard’s research extend beyond large-scale forests. She says our expanding understanding of plant communication can also offer promising practical applications, especially in this time of severe climate stress. One example is in agriculture, helping plants share much needed water in times of drought.
SS: So like a winery, for example, the roots will be accessing a very narrow niche space in the soil, and that makes it very vulnerable so that when there’s a drought, they can’t access water that might be in different places in the soil profile.
So what can you do? You can actually start mixing plants, and if you know about the species of the plants and how they communicate with each other and how they interact with each other, you can actually start creating polycultures of plants so that you have some that are deep-rooted ones, you have some that are sort of middle-rooted ones, some that are—maybe the vineyards are shallow rooted. And what happens under a drought situation is that those plants, the deep-rooted ones, like the trees, will access water in the deep aquifers, bring it up, and share it with the vineyards, for example, through mycorrhizal networks. And then you keep the whole system watered. The water cycles through the system and it keeps it living, and a living canopy will trap more water, there’s more transpiration going on, there’s–you know, they’re accessing other parts of the soil profile that are bringing up nutrients as well, and then if you do that, you have a resilient system. But that’s all based on our understanding of how these plants are able to communicate with each other and access different pools of resources in soils that results in a really healthy and resilient plant community.
HOST: If there’s one fundamental systems error in the modern mind, it’s the delusion that as human beings, we’re apart from nature. In truth, we’re a part of nature. We are one small late-blooming branch on the 3.8 billion-year-old Tree of Life.
As a forest ecologist, Suzanne Simard says the ecological parable of forests has direct and timely relevance to how we can organize our human societies.
SS: It’s a very potent mix of looking at these patterns and processes in nature, and how can we use that to help us understand these other systems, because these systems, basically from what we’ve discovered, is that they’re patterned very similarly. So we can learn a lot from that, like just say, in society about cooperation. Well you know, cooperative societies where specialists in different areas, even though they’re diverse and have different roles, if they can cooperate on different levels, then you have a more robust community that’s more productive and healthy, and the people within it are healthier.
And then of course combining society with a good functioning healthy ecology also is of course a potent mixture for happiness and health.
HOST: Suzanne Simard believes that the story of interdependence and mutual aid emerging from the science of forest ecology is already deeply wired in our collective psyche. It’s embedded in spiritual and religious traditions, and in family and social codes.
The leap today is to expand those ethics of right relationship to the natural world.
Although scientists scrupulously avoid ascribing human qualities to the natural world, Suzanne Simard uses the term “forest wisdom.” For a scientist who rigorously documents the astonishing sophistication and complexity of this forest symphony, is it in fact valid to apply words such as “intelligence” and, yes, “wisdom?”
SS: I started using that word when I realized that—or my science was showing me that we can deconstruct a forest and look at the mechanisms, like of communication and networks, but there’s so much of it that is beyond explanation. We’re not ever going to fully know, because there’s a lot of emergent things that come out of that that you just can’t trace.
And to me that’s intelligence, and wisdom – that it’s more than just a bunch of parts that are working together. It’s more than just a bunch of networks. It’s more than just a bunch of leaves. It’s that they’re all working together to create something that’s much, much more than that.
But there’s also that mother trees can recognize her kin and intentionally transfer carbon to her kin seedlings to favor them.That’s a behavior that has got intention and consequences, and there’s decision-making going on there. Right? There’s a choice.And we could deconstruct that to physics or something like that, but when we were starting to discover that she recognized her kin and could send more resources, I thoughtthat’s wisdom, because there’s intention there. There’s a sentience.
There’s a lot of resistance among, you know, more traditional scientists of using those kinds of words to describe plant behavior and how they perform and function, but that’s just because we’ve invented those words for ourselves and now we’re applying them. But they’re apt descriptions when you look it up in the Oxford Dictionary. It is intelligence. It is wisdom.
HOST: Call it the Tree of Life. Call it Forest Wisdom…
We’re not alone. There are an estimated 10-14 million species living on earth today. The complexity of life is so great that an estimated 86% of those species have not even been documented.
The numbers are impressive, but the way species interact – at times as competitors, but more so as symbiotic communities – may even be more remarkable. The web of life is held together by relationship. One species’ waste is a resource for another. Different species often work in cooperative enterprise for mutual benefit. For example, in a healthy soil system microbes that have been fed by the carbohydrates that a plant produces and exudes through its roots, in turn supply the plant with essential minerals and, in some cases, can even mediate nutrients between two nearby plants if one has an excess of a certain mineral and another plant has a deficiency.
Life on Earth is built on biodiversity and driven by the interaction of species and the collateral ecosystem services those relationships produce. Regenerative agriculture strives to mimic nature’s organizing principles and apply them to farming systems by building biodiversity as the foundation for a healthy ecosystem that results in higher productivity.
Doniga Markegard with her daughters
Doniga Markegard, an author, rancher and mother, observes nature closely to inform her ranching practices. “We ranch on California coastal prairie grasslands that some people might consider marginal lands. They’re not lands that people would grow carrots or strawberries on. There’s no irrigation. It’s not flat. It’s very hilly, rolling, natural landscapes. Those grasslands evolved with large herds of ruminants. In our case, in the most recent history, it was elk and American pronghorns that grazed those lands in large numbers. The early accounts of the settlers were that there were elk herds maybe 2,000-head strong.
“Grazers have a symbiotic relationship with grasslands and the other species within those grasslands. It takes a whole intact ecosystem to create a real balance. That’s what we’re looking towards. We want abundance; we want all species to flourish in a balanced way. We don’t want one species taking over the grasslands completely; we want diversity.
“Nature abhors a monoculture and thrives with biodiversity. Biodiversity provides checks and balances. A very important part of that system is the role of predators. The wild ruminants leave just enough nutrients in the form of dung and urine to fertilize the grasses, but before they overgraze and damage the grasses, the predators force them to move to a new area. In that way, all three species are taken care of.
“Since the predators and the large herds of grazing animals no longer exist in that dance with the grasslands, we try to mimic that relationship. We bring in cattle as the ruminants, and we bring in electric fencing, which functions like the predators once did to keep the cattle bunched up, and then, as we move the fencing, the cattle move on to fresh pasture. The pasture where the cattle recently grazed then flourishes from everything that the cattle left behind – the manure, urine, saliva and the disturbance. We’re really ranching like a prairie would ranch, as if the grasses really matter, as if the wildflowers matter, as if the voles matter, and as if the soil matters.
“California grasslands have some of the highest plant species biodiversity of all grasslands in North America. People don’t view California as a prairie state, however, our prairies are incredible. On one ranch alone, we have 157 species of plants, and we never planted a seed. This is the result of our stewardship and management approach of working with nature to provide abundance and build biodiversity.”
Elizabeth and Paul Kaiser met in Gambia, Africa while in the Peace Corps. Paul worked on Agroforestry projects and Elizabeth was involved in improving public health. In 2007 they started Singing Frogs Farm in Sebastopol, CA.
Elizabeth Kaiser, Singing Frogs Farm
In an interview I conducted with them, Elizabeth described the biodiversity on their 8-acre farm: “One of the first things we did was plant perennials. If you walk through our fields you won’t go more than 150 feet without passing by a large grouping of perennials, usually in the form of a hedgerow. That’s also true all around the perimeter of the farm. We used our own funds for about a third of those plants. We also got USDA funding through our local regional conservation district to put in 3,000 Sonoma County native pollinator-friendly plants over nine years. As those have developed, there’s just been an amazing transformation of the life on this farm.”
Paul added, “All of those plants have an indirect economic benefit in that they also harbor beneficial insects. Plenty of research has shown that perennial plants tend to harbor beneficial insects whereas annual plants tend to harbor pest insects. By creating huge hedgerows of perennial bushes, every 100, 150 feet throughout all the fields and all around the perimeters of the farm, we’ve created substantial habitat that has dramatically increased the overall quantity and diversity of beneficial insects and pollinators on the farm.”
Paul and Elizabeth are wonderfully complementary and often finish or expand on each other’s thoughts. “Most of our crops are annuals,” Elizabeth said, “but the perennials are just as important. They’re pulling up different nutrients, they’re shedding their leaves, they’re providing habitat for pollinators and beneficial insects and beneficial animalssuch as snakes and songbirds that are eating pest insects.”
The Kaisers maximize their small scale by farming intensively, planting 3-8 sequential crops per year on each bed and in some cases two different crops inter-planted in the same bed. Their modus operandi is to grow as many different plants as possible. Growing a diversity of food crops enables them to offer a wide variety to their customers through their CSA and local farmers markets. That diversity is also a benefit to the soil, as a variety of plants feed the soil microbes a wider spectrum of nutrients when they break down and decompose. As a result of that and other regenerative farming practices, Singing Frogs Farm has increased soil organic matter, an indicator of soil carbon and soil health, by 400% in just six years.
Regenerative farmers and ranchers are working to change the conventional agricultural mindset that nature is the enemy that must be attacked and eliminated with pesticides, herbicides and habitat destruction. Instead, ranchers and farmers like Doniga Markegard and the Kaisers are figuring out ways to live in harmony with wildlife and still have a productive operation.
Doniga offered me an example: “Our ranches are part of a rangeland monitoring coalition with Point Blue Conservation Science, which carries out a number of studies on threatened and endangered species. On our ranch, we have a high population of red-legged frogs in our stock ponds that my husband built. They wouldn’t be there without the rancher and the cattle. We have some rare and endangered plant species because those plants evolved with grazing animals. Without those grazing animals, the biodiversity plummets.”
Biodiversity is a cornerstone element of regenerative agriculture. Regenerative ranchers and farmers are bringing vibrant, diverse life back to working landscapes by designing their systems in ways that reflect the dynamism and life-promoting forces of nature. The notion that ecosystem degradation is inevitable on lands that produce food is being challenged. Singing Frogs Farm and the Markegard Grass-Fed operations are elegant examples that demonstrate that successful farming businesses can also be good stewards of the land by supporting a wide diversity of life.
Lyla June is a poet, musician, anthropologist, educator, public speaker and community organizer of Diné, Cheyenne and European lineages who has addressed audiences across the globe with a message of personal, collective and ecological healing. She blends studies in Human Ecology at Stanford, graduate work in Indigenous Pedagogy, and the traditional worldview she grew up with to inform her perspectives and solutions.
I had the incredible privilege of getting to hear Lyla June speak at Bioneers a few years back. I was deeply moved by her wisdom, her fierce grace, tenacity, and deep commitment to making the world a just and beautiful place. I have been following Lyla June’s career ever since, and all that she has done is an incredible inspiration. I was honored to get to interview her for Bioneers to talk about her perspective on this time that we are living in and how we can move forward in a good way. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I enjoyed speaking with her.—Polina Smith, Bioneers Arts Coordinator
POLINA SMITH: What’s your perspective, as an artist, an activist and a Diné woman on this historical moment we’re living in?
LYLA JUNE: Greetings my kin and my people. My name is Lyla June, and I come from the Naaneesht’-ézhi Tááchii’nii (The Charcoal Streaked Division of the Red Running Into the Water Clan) of the Diné Nation, widely but incorrectly known as the Navajo.
For me as an artist and all the things that Creator has made me to be in this lifetime, these times are really about learning. You know, there’s a very important principle within Diné cosmology about learning from one’s trials and tribulations. My elder, Philmer Bluehouse, talks about this a lot. We are here to learn, and we will learn through both positive things and negative things. We’re in a heavy learning space right now.
The American experiment and the capitalist experiment were never going to work in the long run. It seemed like it could work for a while—patriarchy, white supremacy, human supremacy over other species, male supremacy, all of those things; they were never going to last, so I feel like our bill is coming due. We’ve written all these checks and we thought it was going to work, but now it’s time for us face the consequences of our actions.
So from the global climate crisis to the breakdown of the American democracy (which for Native people has never been a democracy); to the huge fires that reveal that American society doesn’t know how to manage land, soil and water; we’re finally seeing the consequences of centuries of doing it wrong, but I don’t see it as a curse. I actually see this as a gift, a chance to learn how to get it right.
POLINA: That is a very positive way to look at it, but there’s so much heartbreak, so much trouble in this time. How do you navigate it, and how do you suggest we navigate it?
LYLA: Well, prayer is always one answer. We have a lot of stories about periods of collapse in our Indigenous cultural narratives, so there’s this background feeling that we’ve been through this sort of thing before. In Diné cosmology we’ve already experienced the destruction of four or five worlds, so as a culture we’re actually very accustomed to this idea of worlds dying and being reborn.
One of them was with a flood, which happens to be a recurring theme in cultural narratives throughout the world, so we don’t think these are just stories. We think this actually happened. Some of the collapses are social. Things come to a head, and people are forced to evolve or perish. One of those collapses took place in Chaco Canyon. Our people then had caste systems and slavery there and didn’t manage their land well. A lot of Diné people won’t go to Chaco Canyon for that reason. A lot of tourists go to see the archaeological site, but we as Diné never go back because that’s a place where we messed up.
At that time the youth rose up and the Creator sent us a drought, which we needed to give us the courage to change, and then we broke apart and eventually started new, much more evolved societies. We had to learn by going through the fire. Similarly, there’s a California tribe who say that they were in a state of famine, and everything was hard, and the women cried and prayed for their dying children. That prayer, that love, is what gave rise to the acorn maidens coming down to teach them how to gather, prepare and eat the acorns. There are a lot of different stories of collapse and rebirth like that around the world. Europeans have had that too. They had quite evolved social systems that were destroyed by conquerors on many occasions. The conquest of tribal peoples by the Romans, and then the collapse of the Roman Empire centuries later is a famous example.
So, I guess the way we manage it, the way I’ve heard of people managing it (and I’m not an expert) is through prayer, always asking for help. As they say: “When you hit rock bottom, the only place to look is up to Creator.” And humanity right now is going through a collective hitting of rock bottom, so maybe we’re finally waking up to the fact we have a big problem, like an alcoholic who finally faces up to his addiction. Maybe humanity is ready to admit: ”OK. Maybe I don’t have everything figured out. Maybe my universities don’t hold all the knowledge we need. Maybe what’s taught there is on some level actually part of the problem.” And I say that as a Stanford graduate. So I think that’s how we manage it, through humility and prayer, asking for guidance.
Lyla June speaks in a workshop at Bioneers 2018. Photo by TrimTab Media.
POLINA: As you were speaking, I was thinking of one of my mentors who often says that how we humans learn is by falling to our knees before being able to rise again. We need to be willing to embrace our failures and learn from them so that we can move forward, but many people in positions of power don’t seem to have that ethos, so how do we deal with people like that, when their desire for power is so, so strong and they lead us to destructive places?
LYLA: Creator did not design this world to have hierarchy. Hierarchy can rule for a time, but it will always perish, as it must. It cannot exist on land as sacred as this. For 500 years here on this continent we’ve had an oppressive hierarchical system, and we’re now finding out that it doesn’t work. One good thing about unsustainable behavior is that it can’t be sustained. Only love is sustainable. That’s how Creator made it.
So, yes, we are in this weird little point in time during which it looks like these crazy politicians are winning, but in the grand scheme of things, if we think on the scale of seven generations, it’s a short-lived thing, so we really don’t have to worry about empire. Empires take care of themselves. They may last a few generations, but they all die eventually. The sad part is that they do a lot of damage on the way up and down. I’m not trying to downplay that. It’s heartbreaking, but that model doesn’t win in the long run.
POLINA: But are there specific things that give you hope during this time?
LYLA: I would say the seeds, and our elders’ knowledge, and the intuition that we all have, and honestly the catastrophe itself gives me hope. I know that sounds strange, but when I was in Chile in 2010 they had an 8.8 earthquake, and I’ve never seen people come together with that much love for each other, ever. That’s what we’re going to end up doing. This catastrophe is going to bring us together. Sure, there will be some people who try to exploit it and capitalize on it, but I think it will bring out the best in a much higher percentage of people. It will bring out the beauty in us and force us to focus on what’s essential, not trivial stuff like who’s on the front page of this or that magazine.
These negative consequences are actually our friends, because they reveal the truth; they show that you pay a price when you abuse the land. You cannot have monocultures and genetically modified plants and animals. You cannot play God. You cannot douse your crops with pesticides and herbicides and destroy the rivers and the oceans. You can for a time, but the bill will come due. We can act like we’re the kings and queens of the whole world for a little while, but Mother Earth is starting to smack us down harder and harder to let us know we’re not. If we have the humility to be students of catastrophe, to learn the real lessons we are being offered, we are bound to become wiser and stronger people in the end. Every culture has had to go through that at some point. We’re just doing it on a global scale now, which is very hard, and the stakes are higher, but it’s a good thing if we draw the right lessons from the hardship.
POLINA: Lyla, you were involved with politics, running for office in New Mexico for a time. What was that like? What did you learn from that experience?
LYLA: I’m still processing that. Well, first of all, I managed to raise over $100,000 in 20 days through generate grassroots donations to compete with my opponent at the time who was (and still is) funded by oil and gas and big pharmaceutical companies, and casino interests. You could say he’s a representative of the addiction industries—oil, drugs, and casinos. But, to be honest, it was really hard, because I came with my whole heart and I was probably a bit naive. I thought: “I can do this! I’m going to be the next AOC, and it’s going to be great.”
But because I posed a threat to the really powerful fossil fuel industry in the Permian Oil Basin, which straddles New Mexico and Texas, there was a lot of money at stake for these people. A lot. And my opponent was and still is the speaker of the house in NM, so they stood to lose a lot of power if he lost. So they just did everything they could to crush me, and I just didn’t have the resources or the team to overcome that. That’s one thing I learned: If you’re going to run for office and be an actual threat to the powers that be, you need to have a very, very, very strong team of experienced people with you. And I just didn’t. I had wonderful people who tried to help me, but they were not equipped with the knowledge or skills or networks to help me out when the storm hit.
Long story short, they just slandered the heck out of me. They turned some of my own staff against me; paid people off. It got really ugly. But I learned a lot. I would know how to run a much better campaign next time, if I decided I wanted to do that again, but I’m not really thinking of that at the moment. I’m leaning more towards working outside of the colonial institutional box and sort of doing things that would make sense to my ancestors in this time and work in spaces that have fewer limitations. You can only make change as a politician to the extent that the colonial paradigm accepts it, but at the end of the day you are in that construct.
There is positive change that can be made in the political system, and it’s important and worth doing, but it will only give us so much. We also need to do a lot of other deep cultural work, so that’s why I’m working on trying to start an Indigenous university where we can actually study our own cultures on our own terms for our own purposes, and rekindle the teachings of our elders, and make a space where that knowledge is respected and effectively transmitted to the next generation. So right now, that just seems more productive to me, and, honestly, it’s an area I think I can be more effective in given my specific skill-set and my experience. But there’s no doubt that what happened on that political campaign stung. It was hard. I wouldn’t say I’m totally on the other side of it, but I’m much better. I’m getting there.
POLINA: Could you share a bit more about that vision of an Indigenous university and how the idea came to you?
LYLA: I’m still in a learning phase. I’m not an expert about Indigenous education, but did experience Stanford as an undergrad, studied American Indian Education at the University of New Mexico for my masters and I’m currently obtaining my PhD in Indigenous Studies from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. So I’ve been through the school system a lot. I’ve seen a lot of Native youth go into the school system, and in many ways it winds up being basically a modern-day form of assimilation. We have to give up who we are and how we see the world in order to get a degree. Our social status and our economic wellbeing is held hostage unless we get these degrees, which 99 percent of the time involve adopting world views that not only don’t respect our cultures but contribute to their destruction, as well as our lands and our people.
Most of the disciplines within the American university system are rooted in colonial ways of seeing the world, so I would love to have a place where Indigenous people could just learn and grow and obtain certificates and degrees in real skills that would actually help them and the world without forcing them to lose themselves and their souls, and their hearts, and their people, and their cultures. That’s something I’ve been dreaming of for a long time.
It’s looking more and more possible all the time because we are building the kind of networks that we will need to actually put it together. We’re in a research phase now, looking at what’s happening in some other nations, such as what the Maori and different peoples in Mexico and Canada and South America are doing, creating schools already. We’re in fact behind the times here in the States, compared to what a number of Indigenous peoples are doing in other places, so it’s time to do that, and hopefully, if we plant that seed today, who knows what it could become in a century or two centuries from now.
POLINA: Lyla, one thing that you speak about very powerfully is your own past of dealing with different addictions and coming out of that. Could you talk a little bit more about that journey, what you learned from it and what you can say to people who might be struggling in that way right now?
LYLA: Well, I still have addictions. They’re not chemicals now. They’re things like workaholism, so I’m still working on my healing journey. Basically it comes down to the basic kind of path you’re on: Am I choosing to face and learn from the pain of life, or am I avoiding those feelings through different forms of escape? At any given moment, we’re all doing one or the other, and it’s something I still have to struggle with. Feelings can get really uncomfortable for me because I fear that if I feel a little, then the whole dam will break. So I’ve been taking time to sit with that ocean of grief, so that I can then release it and learn from it. The political campaign was like that — a challenge, a catastrophe. I was lucky to have the guidance and support to become a student of that and use it to grow.
This is a good change, because most of my life I was trained to run from feelings. I grew up in an environment where there was a lot of drug dealing and addiction. That was very normalized in my little brain as a kid, so I started doing drugs when I was 11 years old, and that was my way of running, early on, from everything that was going on. Then I started to do pretty hard drugs and partying, which is part of what they dug out of the closet to smear me during the election.
POLINA: Oh my god.
LYLA: Yeah. I experienced child sexual abuse, and it kept going all throughout high school. I did not know what healthy intimacy was. I had no model of it, no compass. Mixing drugs and alcohol with sexual intimacy seemed normal in the worlds I had been exposed to. My path of healing isn’t just about overcoming addictions to substances; it’s about healing my understanding of myself, my body and the ways we should relate to each other in this world.
So I sometimes talk to people about these issues when I feel it can be helpful for me to share my experience and to explore how we can come to love ourselves again after experiencing these sorts of traumas. How do we come to see our own sacredness again? We have to start by having the courage to feel what really happened to us and to really understand deep in our bones that it wasn’t our fault and that we aren’t bad people. A lot of us women blame ourselves if we are raped. And my definition of rape is very broad. Anytime you do something intimate because you “have to” and not because you want to. There are all kinds of ways we can get pressured into doing things we really don’t want to do.
I finally got sober at age 23. I’m 31 now, so I’ve been clean almost eight years. I’m so grateful for it. I love every minute of it. I haven’t had a drop of alcohol or a puff of anything, or any pills, nothing. I made it to Stanford somehow and graduated with honors, even though I didn’t really get sober until my junior year.
All of these addictions are simply us abandoning ourselves, abandoning our inner child. I’m really into Margaret Paul right now, a wonderful author of a book called The Inner Bonding Workbook. She says that what we’re doing when we reach for an addiction is avoiding feeling an aching inside instead of exploring why we’re aching and being there for ourselves. You have to learn not to run away from the feeling but to sit with it.
POLINA: It’s extraordinary, Lyla that you were able to have gone through high school and then to Stanford with all that turmoil in your life. The tenacity of your spirit is extraordinary.
LYLA: Thank you, but you know, I’m still trying to figure out if that was tenacity or simply another form of escape. I had a very bizarre drive to be the best, and that’s not always healthy, so, to be honest, I don’t know if that was the healthiest expression of my being. Who knows what I would have done if I didn’t feel that drive when I was younger. I was a high-functioning addict.
POLINA: Was there a specific moment when you quit the chemical addictions?
LYLA: That big earthquake in Chile broke my hip and my spine. I couldn’t walk for two months. I was at rock bottom, and I prayed for divine help. I was finally ready to ask for some help and to admit that I had a problem, that I was an addict. And boom that changed everything. Creator was literally ready the whole time. He just needed me to ask for help!
The more nuanced answer, though, is that, as I mentioned before, in order to stop the drugs, I had to heal from the rape. So the way Creator answered my prayer was to send me some very special mentors in my life who helped me understand that just because they touched my body doesn’t mean they touched my spirit. You are unchanged. You are unscathed. You are your spirit, not your body. The body’s here today, gone tomorrow. The spirit remains. They said: “We don’t see you as a victim, we see you as a veteran of a war, not just against your body, but against your self-esteem, and we honor you the same way we’d honor a veteran coming home from war.” So it wasn’t a bad thing anymore; it was almost like a badge of honor. I survived and I still have love in my heart. That’s amazing. But it all started with that prayer and that realization that I was really ready to get sober. After that all of this help, all of these mentors, all of this spiritual support came to me to show me a path forward.
Lyla June’s keynote address at Bioneers 2018. Photo by Nikki Richter.
POLINA: I wonder what you think about how our personal addictions relate to our societal addictions to things such as fossil fuels and our wasteful way of living. Can dealing with personal addictions be a gateway to start thinking about quitting larger destructive societal addictions and dream a new world into being?
LYLA: Absolutely. I think that America is also running from feelings. It’s running from its past, from slavery and genocide and dubious wars. That feeling of guilt is so scary that they would rather write whole textbooks that completely omit the truth. They’re running from that feeling, so I think you’re absolutely right. The same principles that applied to me healing from my abuse apply to America healing from its past.
I abused people too, albeit unknowingly. If you grow up in an abusive environment, you are very likely to view that as “normal behavior” and think it is “okay” to abuse others in turn. European history is full of things like the Inquisition burning women at the stake and countless brutal wars. Europe was sort of a torture chamber on and off for about 2,000 years. It was horrible. Our ancestors on that side really went through intense suffering, so they tend to perpetuate abuse because it’s a hard pattern to break. To break the chain, you have to build the courage to look at how you’ve abused others. That’s not easy. You have to first just sit with it. It’s not going to kill you. It feels like it’s going to kill you, but just sit with it and explore it, investigate it, and come out the other side as someone who’s wiser and stronger.
POLINA: I’ve heard you talk about larger positive and negative spiritual forces that act through us and that act differently for women. Can you explain that more fully?
LYLA: I don’t mean to get too hetero-normative; there’s a lot of space for non-gender-conforming relatives in this discussion, but for the sake of simplicity at this moment, the way you destroy a woman’s spirit is different than the way you destroy a man’s spirit. As a woman generally speaking, one of our covenants with the Creator is that we have the capacity to bring forth life. That’s of course not at all the only way to express womanhood and it’s not everyone’s role or fate, but it’s one of our covenants: we are willing to bring life should Creator send it to us.
Conversely, the male covenant is to protect the sacred. So the way that negative spiritual forces can trick a woman are different than how they can mislead a man. If a woman accepts the trick and the lie that the rape is her fault, she can start to believe she has desecrated her covenant. She can start to feel awful about herself. It is a trick of coyote. Not the truth. And we’re really good at blaming ourselves. It’s my fault I drank alcohol or didn’t say no loudly enough, etc. If we believe that lie, it’s the first chip away at our spirits.
For the men, their spiritual goal is to protect the sacred. So if they accept the trick and the lie that the domestic violence is their fault, they can also start to hate themselves. For instance, if their mom gets beat up and they can’t stop it or protect her. Even if he is just a toddler the boys often blame themselves, which makes them think they’ve failed in their covenant of being a man. That’s when overcompensation and other forms of unhealthy behavior come up.
We have to bring these folks back so they can build the inner courage to face what has happened and to find the sacred within themselves. They have to realize that in many cases it wasn’t their fault. They were in situations in which Coyote, those negative forces, were just too strong when they were young and vulnerable, but then they have to be willing to face the truth that somebody did indeed hurt them, or those they love and work to change, to reconnect with Creator and feel that they are worthy. It’s not easy, but it’s always a prayer away.
POLINA: But when people rape or commit acts of domestic violence, can you really say it’s not their fault?
LYLA: I think we have distinguish those who hurt people as a result of their damaged childhoods and resulting lack of control and desperation and those who hurt people very knowingly, coldly, for their totally selfish advantage. Both need to be forgiven, but what are you forgiving? Are you forgiving someone who didn’t know any better? Or are you forgiving someone who did know better and still did it? Unconditional love is what I choose for both. But you have to forgive what really happened. Unconditional love doesn’t mean you ever have to see them again, as that wouldn’t be safe. But in your heart, you forgive and pray for them.
POLINA: These are really tough questions. Women and gay and transgendered people are victimized a lot, and we have seen so many people in power exposed through the #MeToo Movement, but our incarceration and criminal justice systems have also completely failed us. So what does justice look like? What could the vision of a real fair justice system be? And should we be expected to forgive or is it up to perpetrators to come forward and ask for forgiveness if they really find the truth within themselves first before we can forgive them?
LYLA: Yeah. Those are questions I’ve been grappling with my whole life, and I don’t proclaim to have the answer, but obviously forgiveness is a big part of my story. It had to be for me to heal at all. When I was healing, my elders said it was a three-step process: first look, then feel, and finally forgive. Looking is hard because what if you look, and it turns out you really are the person you feared you were; you really are a tainted woman or a “bad” man?
Generally I think that if you can have the courage to look anyways, what you find is that at your core, you’re quite wonderful, and something really bad happened to you. Then you can start to let yourself feel, and then forgiving is both the first and the final step of true healing, because you relieve yourself of the last wound they served you: the wound of the bitterness and hatred we carry.
But for those in positions of major power who have gravely not just broken human laws that are written on paper but cosmic laws that threaten countless people and living things, maybe there need to be much bigger consequences, but I’ve thought a lot about the carceral system. My brother’s in the carceral system, and we know how racist that system is and how black and brown people are jailed much more readily and treated so unfairly. So I don’t believe in that system as it exists, but there have to be consequences for harming others. In many Indigenous cultures if someone ever beat a woman, say, they were simply ostracized, and that was equivalent to a death penalty, because it was hard to survive alone. That’s not at all to say I condone the death penalty; I’m just giving you an example of how seriously this was taken.
But I don’t know. I really don’t know. What I do know is that I believe in love. I believe in forgiveness. I believe in prayer for those who have harmed, are harming. I even pray for Trump regularly, and most people I know think I’m crazy. I believe that prayers do have an impact, but I also believe that first and foremost getting ourselves to a safe space is the first priority, and some people have to be prevented from harming us, even if we can forgive them.
POLINA: Thank you so much, Lyla. Thank you so, so much for your time and your words and your wisdom and your work and your art. Before we end, is there anything that we didn’t talk about that you would like to say?
LYLA: I think the only last thing I would say is that I encourage everyone to make offerings in the morning when you wake up, whether it’s with tobacco or cornmeal or something special to you. Put them on the ground and ask for guidance and help in these times, not just for the world but also for yourself, and keep those prayers flowing because right now we need prayers and guidance. And if you are not Indigenous to the land you are standing on, please pray about how you can support the Indigenous peoples of your area – how you can help those communities in a respectful way, which is to always have them lead the effort. Because we need a lot of support right now. We need people to listen, to learn. Just offer help, but then follow their lead if they ask you to. Maybe they don’t want help, but if they do, please support them and their languages and their cultural programs in every way possible. Be patient as you learn from them, but if possible, continue to learn from Indigenous peoples around you, because we are carrying some of the most advanced wisdom on the planet in our knowledge systems.
