Listening to Earth: Indigenous Wisdom & Climate Futures

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] The International Festival of Arts & Ideas is created and produced on the traditional lands of the Mohegan, Mashantucket Pequot, Eastern Pequot, Schaghticoke, Golden Hill Paugussett, Niantic, and the Quinnipiac, in the land we all call home, Connecticut.

We hope that from wherever you are you take a moment to acknowledge and honor the native people whose lands you are on, and the history of the place you are in.

- Hello, and welcome to "CUTLINE in the Community."

My name is Elizabeth Nearing and I'm the Curator of Ideas Programming at the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, and I'm talking to you now from my home on Wappinger and Quinnipiac land.

Thank you for joining us for the festival 2021.

This is our year of imagine.

This year all of our programming explores the world both as it is today, and how it can be in the future.

Today it's my great pleasure to welcome you to "Listening to Earth: Indigenous Wisdom and Climate Futures," featuring three extraordinary people.

Diana Montano, the Outreach Manager at Science Friday, who will be moderating our panel.

Kyle Powys Whyte, the Professor of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan, and an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, and Eriel Deranger is from the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and is the Executive Director and Co-founder of Indigenous Climate Action.

Today's event is proudly presented in partnership with Science Friday on NPR, Connecticut Public, and our 2021 ideas partners, Connecticut Humanities.

This event is a part of our exploration of the themes of Joy Harjo's, "An American Sunrise" during the NEA Big Read.

A program of the National Endowment of the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest.

The NEA Big Read is presented locally by the International Festival of Arts and Ideas alongside the New Haven Free Public Library, New Haven Museum, and many others.

This event and the festival as a whole is made possible through the generosity of people like all of you watching this, enabling us to provide more than 95% of our programming free of charge this year.

Please consider joining our community of supporters with a gift of any amount @artidea.org/donate.

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The survey just takes a few minutes, and is available in both English and Spanish @artidea.org/survey.

And without any further ado, take it away Diana.

- It is so wonderful to be here and thank you again for asking Science Friday to be a part of this event.

We are so excited.

I would love to have our esteemed panelists introduce themselves today and tell us a little bit about the work that they are doing and something that they're really excited to be doing right now.

So Eriel, I'd love to ask you to do that first.

- Thank you.

(speaking in Denesuline [Chipewyan] language) So my name is Eriel Tchekwie Deranger.

And as I was introduced, am a member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and I'm a part of the family, the Deranger family.

So that was part of my introduction.

And I'm joining you all and thank you so much for the invitation from (indistinct) which is Treaty 6 territory also known as Edmonton, Alberta in Canada, in the state of so-called Canada.

I'm working as Executive Director of Indigenous Climate Action.

And our organization is Canada's only indigenous led climate justice organization.

We're currently working on a project called, "Decolonizing Climate Policy in Canada."

And we just released a report last month.

And it's sort of a critique of Canada's current climate plans: the Pan-Canadian Framework as well as the Healthy Economy's Healthy Environment reports, and needs and plans.

And so we're critiquing these from an indigenous lens and looking at how these policies and plans don't incorporate indigenous knowledge and indigenous rights and foundations and value systems to determine what solutions in Canada can look like.

As well as our sort of pinnacle tool kit, which is training indigenous peoples in communities to be climate leaders but centering climate solutions from an indigenous perspective and indigenous lens.

- Those are all amazing programs.

I am particularly interested in hearing about the last one you just spoke about.

But before we do that, I'd like to introduce Kyle Whyte.

I'd love to hear you tell us a little bit about the work that you do and something you're really excited about that you're working on right now.

- To introduce myself, (speaking in Algonquian) So, I'm Kyle.

And I'm a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and I'm a professor at the University of Michigan.

And I work in our Environmental Justice Specialization at the school for Environment and Sustainability.

And for some years I've been focusing on empowering indigenous people to prepare for climate change, to mitigate climate change and to create stronger communities that are gonna be prepared for what's coming.

Especially as we see the world moving toward solutions to climate change, but solutions that from an indigenous standpoint it's unclear what they mean for us and whether they'll be beneficial to us and whether they reflect the values of many indigenous peoples that have respected the environment and honored the environment for generations.

I've worked on climate change mitigation and climate change policy, as well as the ethics of knowledge exchange.

So whether or not tribal forms of knowledge are genuinely respected and have a footing where they're not marginalized in relation to other types of science.

And right now the White House, as well as some other political institutions are very much trying to center environmental justice and climate justice at the heart of 10s of billions of dollars of investments.

And so I currently serve on Environmental Justice Advisory Council for the White House.

And we recently published interim recommendations for how 100s of billions of dollars should be spent in order to benefit communities affected by environmental justice, which include indigenous people.

We have the grassroots organizations the tribal governments all working together in a planned way in order to meet the needs that our communities are gonna have into the future.

- Amazing, I'm also extremely excited about hearing more about that work, Kyle.

Eriel, I'd love to come back to you and talk a little, hear a little bit about the toolkit that you are designing or have designed in order to help people who are in their communities who want to do this work as indigenous people and for indigenous communities.

Can you tell us a little bit about that?

- A lot of the time the people in community lack some of the basic understanding, and maybe it's not even understanding it's really the empowerment and feeling that their knowledge it's actually relevant to the conversation.

And because within the climate discourse there's often this focus on greenhouse gas emissions there's focus on the Western science.

And when we talk with communities and we say climate change they're just like, yeah, you gotta recycle, you gotta like reduce our emissions you gotta put up solar.

And I'm like, yes, those are part of the solution.

But then you start to talk about and dissect the fact that climate change is not just about the reduction of emissions but it's about the preservation of biodiversity.

And suddenly you see light bulbs click in communities, 'cause it's not just about factories and cars producing greenhouse gas emissions.

It has to do with state and colonial violence and the appropriation of our lands and territories for those industries that are producing greenhouse gas emissions.

And you start to see those correlations between colonization and climate disaster.

And so our toolkit really focuses on refocusing where climate, like roots of climate change, come from and the power of indigenous knowledge, language, culture, governance, and society has in proposing solutions that are not just applicable and relevant to their communities but serve a global purpose of climate stabilization.

And so it's this toolkit that we're working with community members.

We're doing a Train-the-Trainer which we're running our beta cohort right now just to make sure that everything is good.

And we'll be launching a full call for participants in this program come the summer.

And once they have completed the program we are going to work with individuals to then take that training and deliver it into their own communities.

To develop a larger group of indigenous leaders that are working towards climate justice.

- That's amazing.

And one of the things that I really loved when we were speaking about this previously was that, the solutions that are being proposed in every community look different because of course each community is different and some people, you know, may decide, we're gonna start with revitalizing and, you know, increasing people's ability to speak the local language or the indigenous language.

Each solution is gonna look a little bit different in each community.

Can you speak a little bit about that as well?

- Yeah.

that's been one of the most powerful things because when you change the frame of like what climate solutions look like to moving away from just the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and you bring into the fold the importance of land and culture and biodiversity.

You start to see communities come up with ideas that are really outside of the colonial perspective of what solutions are.

But it's really powerful and beautiful to see.

So you'll see communities, they'll say.

"You know what we need?

We need to have an elders and youth intergenerational knowledge-exchange program built.

We should build a center for this, and we should make sure that the center is powered by renewable energy."

But the real crux of it is the solution for them is this re-establishing of their culture.

The reestablishing of the ways in which our knowledge was transmitted and shared.

They're empowered to see that indigenous knowledge systems and traditional knowledge systems are actually quite powerful.

The fact that our lands and territories and lands we occupy represent 80% of the world's biodiversity is such an empowering statistic for our communities.

And they start to see this as, well if our language is connected to the land, it connects us, it drives us.

It really is a part of who we are.

Like my nation's traditional name is (indistinct) It means People of the Willow people of the land.

And it's a reference to the delta that we come from.

Solutions become connected to place.

They come connected to our identity and that identity is language, culture, you know, spiritual practices and procurement that happens on the land and it's our communities as a whole.

And so our solutions are rooted in that.

And so in some, it's like we need to revitalize the harvesting of sea grasses.

In other communities, it's like, let's revitalize our languages.

And it's always taking these two (indistinct) approaches that are both reducing emissions in communities but simultaneously increasing the preservation and protection of critical biodiversity that our planet so desperately needs to be protected.

- Kyle, I saw you nodding your head pretty vigorously when Eriel was mentioning that, in addition to these solutions like building different and better infrastructure comes with the preservation of biodiversity.

Do you talk about this in the classes that you teach at the University of Michigan?

Is this sort of part of the curriculum as well?

- Yeah, absolutely.

And for a lot of the work that I've done directly with tribes and their planning efforts, you know these are key issues, you know.

For example, about 10 years ago, when I started working with tribes and their community-based climate change planning efforts.

For native people, climate change is not a new science it's actually one of the oldest sciences that there is.

In fact a native or indigenous political philosophy is one that actually might consider a society as being well-organized when it's attuned to the dynamics of the world that's changing around us each year, each cycle but also across different years.

So something that approximates climate change.

But for a lot of tribes and a lot of tribal communities because of the US policies, they were so siloed.

So if the US had a climate change planning program would go to one agency within that tribe and nobody else would even know about it.

So they could produce a plan and a small percentage of the tribe thought the plan applied to them.

Then similar to what Eriel discussed, oftentimes native folks didn't really, they weren't made to feel, by non-native people, that their knowledge of climate change really mattered.

And so oftentimes there'd be particular communities where they would observe that change is happening.

And it's changing in a way that's different historically and it poses threats and risks.

But then a scientist would say, "Well according to my instruments, it looks like it's not warming that fast.

Or it looks like the rain's not changed that much."

And a lot of times native folks were like, "Oh, we've heard that before we leave them alone.

Let's just disengage.

We know this for generations how we're treated by some scientists."

But then in cases when dialogue actually occurred between indigenous knowledge keepers, indigenous scientists and scientists from other cultures and heritages, It would often turn out that native folks were actually not just looking at like temperature and precipitation.

They were looking at like 50 different variables.

(chuckles) And making very precise observations and that wasn't an accident.

And so in the courses that I teach, what I really try to bring to students is this experience.

And really that's a perspective, which I think right now in higher education is the perspective that not only students need, but that students are are hungry for.

They're actively looking for it.

- I saw you also getting really excited when Eriel was speaking about justice-centered framework.

How do you talk about this in a classroom and in your broader work as well?

What does a justice centered framework look like?

- There're often kind of theories or ways of thinking about justice where, you know, first you have climate change, or first you have an ecosystem, or first you have a culture and then you have justice.

So justice is just applied onto something else.

Which means that justice isn't actually thought of that richly or deeply, it's just thought is something you sort of apply to constrain, you know, something else.

A lot of native communities first, there's a lot of wisdom about justice, but it's not necessarily using that English language term, "justice."

And so I think we have to work really hard to speak to that understanding of justice in some of the dominant societies around us but we have to be careful to make sure that we're actually taking care of the richness of our own thought.

And for at least, Anishinaabe but also alot of other communities that I've been in dialogue before about justice, you know, for us, whether you're doing science, whether you're doing cultural work, whether you're doing political work, whether you're just working within your society or family, there's a great emphasis on what it means to be in good relationships.

Relationships with qualities like consent, trust, reciprocity, accountability, transparency but also an appreciation for the importance of privacy and protecting certain things that are sacred.

When we say that reciprocity is important to climate change, that trust is important to climate change, that biodiversity is important to climate change, where biodiversity means a system of environmental relationships that respect non-humans, that respect the spirituality of the non-human world, that respect the reciprocity that's needed for us to be in relative relationships with each other.

That's always already about justice.

It doesn't need the additional justice add-on.

It's already about justice.

And using that way of thinking, we can not only understand our local relationships with our own kinship, but we can also speak to colonialism and to capitalism and to racism and to broader justice issues in a way that's different from some of the abstract formulations of justice that are more common.

- Eriel, do you have anything else to add?

Kyle, just put that really perfectly.

But is there anything else that the Indigenous Climate Action team is also thinking about when they're thinking about this idea of, of justice centered frameworks?

- Yeah, I think it's really really important to talk about like decolonization as a core central part of this.

If we don't begin the process of decolonization we will continue to live in a society that is rooted in the ideologies of superiority, like white supremacy and the worship of Western academic approaches.

So decolonization is really like dismantling those structures that perpetuate the status quo of colonial power and ensuring the rights of indigenous community members and nations are respected and actively involved in setting policies, setting solutions.

When we talk about decolonizing it invites a possibility for justice.

It responds to many of the calls here in Canada to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission reports, calls to action, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

And it affirms the importance that indigenous peoples our rights and our knowledge is critical in decision-making.

It welcomes the idea and the opportunity for two I'd seen approaches to collectively move together to create the best solutions to address the climate crisis.

And it's really really critical that the framework is not simply just about the climate crisis to the reduction of emissions.

We have to address the root causes that have got us there.

And that is really facing the fact that colonization brought with it patriarchy, capitalism, extractivism and the violence to indigenous peoples and, you know, attempted genocide.

And if we don't face those then we are not going to actually achieve justice.

We will just equalize GHGs in the atmosphere and indigenous and other marginalized groups will continue to be the sacrifices or the status quo of white supremacy.

- Eriel, you mentioned that part of the reason that you started the Indigenous Climate Action was because there wasn't an indigenous led organization in Canada before.

How do you think the creation of this organization changed the conversation around climate change and indigenous ways of knowing?

- First off, there's lots of indigenous organizations.

(laughs) (mumbles) There's just none working specifically on climate justice.

And there are other organizations that don't have a climate justice focus that are working on climate justice issues but we are centered fully on climate justice.

So how that's changed the discourse and change things in Canada is that we have to recognize the fact that prior to Indigenous Climate Action the environmental movement and the push for climate policy and climate justice was primarily led by white ENGOs, white environmental organizations.

And those are primarily led by white middle-class folks.

That prior to the development of ICA, there was this continuation of just like, well, the climate crisis is so urgent and we just have to go forward.

This is as good as we're gonna get with this government kind of ideology.

And just continuing to leave indigenous communities behind in the conversation and really not upholding tenets of internationally recognized and affirmed rights under the United Nations declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples to free, prior, and informed consent.

And it's not even consent anymore.

And they're just like, well, we consulted so therefore it's FPIC.

And it's that consultation is not FPIC.

Consult like FPIC is free, free of intimidation, coercion and manipulation, prior means beforehand with enough time before these things have even been contemplated and developed into policies or even a draft policy and informed means they have to have access to this information in whatever language is accessible.

So it should be accessible in the languages of the community, accessible to those communities in a way that they understand and can process.

And then they get to determine whether or not they want to or don't want to participate or want to like be a part of like these new policy ideas and strategies.

But what we saw instead was these organizations and governments just going to communities after not engaging with them for decades.

And saying, all these ENGOs say that indigenous rights and knowledge is super important.

So what do you want?

And these communities are like, what do you mean what do you want?

Well, they're like the climate is the climate crisis.

So tell us what your solutions are?

And they weren't ready.

And then the ENGOs go, you know what, well what are we supposed to do?

We made space for them.

We created the space but there's no investment in developing the infrastructures of our communities and the resources and the capacities.

And ICA saw this gap.

Like the Indigenous Climate Action and the founders, we saw this huge gap.

That there was so much investment in resources, put into white environmental activism and resources.

And those resources were going towards changing the minds of politicians in colonial governments and states and no resources being put in, build up the infrastructure of communities to take those positions in those seats that they kept saying, look we created the space for.

And so there has been a shift in how we see indigenous participation in this country.

And there is now a growing critique of what it means for indigenous peoples to not just be tokenized people on a stage or at a meeting but what it means for us to have direct input in actually developing strategies from the ground up from indigenous values and from indigenous communities to actually change the face of what climate solutions in this country can look like.

- Do you find that people who have been doing this kind of work are rushing towards those seats maybe people who are considered elders or people who have been doing climate work for the last 20 or 30 years?

Or is it young people who are really sort of like running at those opportunities and seeing like I'm really invested in climate issues and I wanna, you know, be in that space from the moment they're available?

- We have a mix of young folks and elders.

And but at the same time they're also acknowledging that there has been this sort of gap in the struggle.

So while there's seats, people are taking those spaces and they're not just going there be like, "I have all the answers and solutions" "and I represent all indigenous peoples."

Let's be real, indigenous peoples in so-called Canada and the so-called United States are so diverse.

We are as diverse as the biodiversity and the biomes of this country, and even more so.

You know, there are over 630 First Nations communities, over 50 Inuit settlements.

And I think there's over 50 Métis settlements in this country.

Probably closer to 100 at this point.

So that's over 700 indigenous nations and groups in this country.

And no single person can enter in and sit at the table and say, "I speak for all indigenous peoples" "of this, you know of this colonial state."

And so, you know, when we talk about like these ways of affirming indigenous knowledges and experiences in world view, we are interrupting the norm.

And we're able to really challenge these systems and moving towards, you know new approaches that move towards that justice framework.

And it's such a beautiful thing that we've seen, whereas it's not just people rushing to assert power and be in those systems of power that are traditionally when within those structures of white supremacy.

White supremacy is surrounded on hyperindividualism, accumulation of wealth and notoriety whereas indigenous peoples, it's about centering community in our approaches.

- I love that.

Thank you so much, Eriel, Kyle, I would love to hear more about the committee that you were on for the White House.

What does that meant to you and your work?

- What I wanted to just share right now in response to your question, you know, I definitely see as related to what Eriel has just shared in the important work that they're doing and that they're describing and talking about right now.

Each generation, and we're currently in a generation right now, they just believe so firmly that what they're doing couldn't possibly as bad as be as bad as what came before.

But I think we really need to think very critically about how a lot of very dominant forms of environmentalism are responding to crisis thinking in a way that's it's actually just not even helpful to think of it as any different as what came before.

The reason why on the White House counsel this is one of the issues that we're dealing with.

Is that in the so-called (laughs) US context, people of color, you know native people included are what won the vote for the Democrats.

In the state that I live in, you know the so-called State of Michigan, native people people of color came out won the election took what was originally a 10,000 vote margin and transformed it into a victory for the Democrats in Michigan.

And so the Democrat and the Biden administration have then made huge promises.

That they're gonna engage in huge infrastructure spending.

But what we know is that the current setup of the US system right now there are not the relationships, there are not the moral bonds, there are not the institutional setups for that investment to go anywhere but to privileged people.

The investment will go to contractors that have nothing to do with native people.

The money will go to projects that can't even get off the ground because there's no understanding through a consent process that in order to have renewable energy, you need to deal with the electrification grid disinvestment of the past - the road system, the broadband and telecommunications.

And so we're at a time where a lot of environmentalists are seeing environmental justice and infrastructure as the calling of environmentalism, climate change mitigation, and justice.

But they're so urgent and adamant about it, and they're just focused on that one single goal that they're ignoring the severe lack of kinship that's been festering for generations, which will make it.

So every single good idea actually is associated with an inequity with a displacement of indigenous people, with a situation that marginalizes indigenous people economically, that entrenches dependence on energy from others, that creates continuous vulnerability to coastal erosion or other climate change impacts.

And so we're right now in a time that clean and renewable energy projects are deeply problematic for indigenous people everywhere in the world.

Whether from an economic standpoint, a cultural standpoint, a displacement land, tenure land sovereignty standpoint.

And so on our council, one of the responsibilities we had was to give advice on what's called the Justice40 Initiative.

Which is that 40% of the benefits of billions of dollars of federal investments in infrastructure has to be for communities affected by environmental justice.

But we had to hit that question hard.

What does it mean?

Benefit?

What does it mean to make an investment that is meaningful that does advance equity, that does represent or that does protect the environment?

And so right now this area that I think many people just thought was the domain of practice, right?

I think a lot of us are like, no, that's not a domain of practice.

There's not theory and practice what there are are institutional arrangements.

And when you have a colonial system those institutional arrangements, and I include actual relationships and emotional bonds.

they're not in the position where people can act in a coordinated fashion and achieve equity and justice.

And they've not been like that for years.

And so whenever somebody recognizes that maybe their solutions are not implementable.

They shouldn't just try to create more innovation in the solution itself, but realize, wait a minute, maybe I have the wrong focus.

Maybe my focus should be on repairing kinship, be repairing the institutional arrangements, be focusing on what it means to have a truly consensual system a truly reciprocal system.

And that, that has to come in with equal importance as the goal of mitigating climate change.

Why isn't that just as urgent?

- Eriel, I would love to offer you some space to, I saw just so much encouraging nodding during that.

So I'd love to give you some space to respond.

- I am so familiar with this because I come from a community that's impacted by industrial development in Canada.

The largest industrial project on planet earth which is the Alberta tar sands is upstream from my community.

And part of that whole project was people were opposing, they were challenging, they were saying, "These projects are destroying the land," "destroying the water, destroying our food sources," destroying our culture," all the things.

And the government said, "Okay, well, let's just figure out" "how these communities can 'benefit' from these projects."

Which created this whole process in Canada known as the Impact Benefit Agreement process.

Which are private proprietary agreements that are negotiated between the proponent - so the corporations, multinational corporations - and the First Nations to determine what the benefit is.

And these companies were like, okay so we'll build a "compensation lake."

These are things that they have literally created in our territory.

Where they dig a hole and put a bunch of water in and take fish from the lake or the water system they destroyed, and put it over there.

And then, but in indigenous knowledge and our intergenerational knowledge has no relevance.

We don't know this lake.

We don't know this land.

We don't know these fish that are displaced here.

It's not the same.

That interrelationship that Kyle talked about, that relationship with the land the relationship with each other, we don't have it with this made up compensation lake.

And so we really have to think about like what does benefit mean?

That urgency that pushes in the sort of modern environmental world often continues to alienate indigenous peoples, putting forth environmental principles that actually continue to invisibilize that indigenous worldview.

And subsequently our rights and our title, along with it.

- Kyle, you work often with graduate students who are hopefully, what they are... Part of what this program is doing is actually asking them to address and really focus, think about these systems.

Are you finding that that mental shift is either easy for them to find where they maybe think they come into a program thinking, I can find all of these solutions and implement them.

- Yeah great question, Diana.

I think for our higher education system, you know a lot of students come into a program that you might have some faculty that are pushing not only systems thinking, but historical thinking and thinking in a way that validates communities and that validates diverse systems of knowledge.

But in so far as most college campuses I'm aware of are like these sort of indoor classroom based environments with you know, field trips here and there.

That really isn't gonna do it.

Just the whole setup can't possibly be a place where the type of generative learning would occur.

And so, you know, in terms of the work I do I do my best within that particular context but I don't apologize for the restrictions.

And I'm proud of students that have taken it as their calling to seek reform and change and push for transformation in a very restrictive system.

But I think we always have to keep in mind that there are so many better ways to do it.

I mean, we should be learning from experience.

We should be learning from all types of knowledge keepers.

We should be learning in a land-based context, not a context that's attempting to sanitize itself from a greater connectivity to the land.

And we have to be learning in ways that are directly tied to actual projects in the world.

And, you know, the program I am in, in comparison to others, you know, certainly we have project-based curriculum.

We have a practice-based curriculum and we have many faculty that are committed to the types of things that I'm talking about.

But if we don't fundamentally alter the very infrastructure the very geography, the very land that the university educational experience takes for granted.

Then I don't think that we're doing the service that we're supposed to be doing for students that are hungry for the type of training that can really make a change.

- So your work is in Michigan, Kyle.

Do you have knowledge of any local organizations or communities that are doing this kind of work in Connecticut as well?

Because I think a lot of the people who are joining us of course, hopefully from across the country and world, but I'm wondering if there are any, if people are looking for, are living in Connecticut, in so-called Connecticut I should say, and are looking for, you know, some of these projects, what ones might you point them to?

- Yeah, you know, with indigenous work, I think people really need to open their minds because the majority of work that native people do including work on climate change, it's not work that's out there in the media, it's not work that is publicized.

And so a lot of the people I connect with when I visit a community I've never been in before, you know you see how much is happening and how much has been happening.

And there're stories of what native people have done generations ago including being some of the people that were there at some of the earliest stages of, you know dominant forms of climate science.

But that their stories and their histories are forgotten by the academic literature that has documented those periods of time.

And so, you know, it's important to note that everywhere where there's tribes or a say of communities, there's so much happening.

And when I was an author on the "Fourth US National Climate Assessment," you know we found that there were, at that time, which was 2018, over 800 actions that native people were taking on climate change.

And that actually didn't even include figures on a lot of the indigenous environmental justice resistance to pipelines and to other fossil fuel infrastructure.

And so now that same figure has well over 1,000.

And if you add the other things I said were missing, that's many more.

It's way over 2000.

And then if you take what I've learned from experience is that all such statistics like that only cover about a third of what's actually happening, you know.

We're talking about a population of just several million people with thousands of actions.

And if you look at the State of Michigan which has 10 million people, there are not a 1,000, even 1,000 climate change activities.

I've had a collaboration on different projects with an inter-tribal group that has many tribes that are from, you know, so-called Connecticut, Massachusetts and Maine, and that area it's called the United South and Eastern Tribes.

And they work to coordinate climate change plans of different types with those tribes, whether it's energy plans or climate change adaptation plans.

So, you know, I completely agree and appreciate Eriel's point that actually when you look in practice these things are braided together in terms of the people that are actually doing them.

But, you know, if you look for example, like the Passamaquoddy Tribe, they've done tremendous work on energy planning and climate change planning and they're facing some serious threats but they're getting ready for the future.

I'm very inspired with the work that they're doing.

But then on the other hand, there has been tribes like the Mashpee Wampanoag that have struggled against some of the solutions of climate change.

There's been a long-standing struggle against wind turbines and their cultural impacts and a lack of understanding of what cultural impact really means for native people that are concerned about that.

As well as issues tied to policies that make it very hard for native people to exercise sovereignty over land and which have a very problematic impact especially on tribes in Connecticut and Massachusetts and the broader region.

So I'd really encourage folks to check out both like the United South and Eastern tribes but also scholars from tribes in the area like Dr. Kelsey Leonard at Waterloo University and others.

I think there's a lot that people can plug into and learn about if they seek that information from the tribes and the communities themselves.

- One of the things I keep hearing both of you saying that I wanna just spend a little bit of time on too is how important language is in all of this?

So, you know, not just of course making sure that we're going back and respecting and revitalizing indigenous languages that may have been, you know forced out of people and communities.

But also the language that we're using in English and other languages and the languages of colonizers to make sure that we're thinking differently.

And, I guess I wonder what role do you think language plays in all of this talking about and preparing for climate change?

- I think that language has a huge part in this.

We can't like separate the fact that we have this history of the Americas that steeped in, you know violent colonization and attempted genocide of indigenous peoples.

But within that history, we don't talk about the fact that there was this demonization and devaluing of indigenous value systems cosmology in life.

And this demonization still continues to...

When I say demonization, I mean, for real.

They were like, "indigenous people are heathens, they are backwards, they're, you know, barbaric."

All of these, really things that made us to be feared.

We're feared.

And we're still seeing that.

'Cause like, you know, when you asked about climate action and looking at indigenous peoples, what are they doing?

Climate action for indigenous folks is opposing a pipeline like we saw with the NoDAPL movement.

Or that we're seeing with Line 3 currently up in the Northern states.

Which state I can't remember...in Minnesota.

And we're seeing with all of these oppositions to projects.

But it's also climate justice when we talk about those that are challenging some of the, you know, "sustainable" solutions, like wind and solar.

Because those solutions are still rooted in those foundations that have dispossessed us of our lands, see us as less, that still demonize us and vilify us as criminals in our own lands and territories, where we don't have a say in what it means for climate justice, for energy just futures for all of those suite of solutions that we talk about.

Indigenous peoples were in processes of evolution, just like anyone else.

And contrary to this, you know, really overbearing myth that innovation didn't occur in the Americas until colonization started.

Like let's not forget that indigenous peoples of the Americas invented aspirin, rubber, baby nipples for the bottles to feed children, you know sort of iterations of soap and cleaning products.

Like the laundry list...lacrosse...so many different things that were appropriated and we were never given credit for until sort of now.

And even then it's still marginal.

And that has to do with language.

It has to do with how we see and view indigenous peoples as mystical, magical, romantic versions of something of the past.

As if we don't exist in this current space in time.

And we can't just say we respect indigenous knowledge.

We have to talk about like what does it mean to implement indigenous rights?

We have to go beyond just giving it lip service and actually move towards what it means to implement the indigenous sovereignty and self-determination.

When folks say we don't want a wind turbine, that we're no longer vilified and that were looked at and go, okay, so what would it be?

Because there are white communities that have opposed similar things and they have gotten, you know those projects moved to another location that probably displaces another community of color or marginalized community.

Marginalized, what does that mean?

That means that we're like pushed off to the side.

And we're not marginalized we're like oppressed peoples because we've been oppressed.

We've been "othered" by white society.

And we have to like start talking about ways to empower ourselves and not keep ourselves in this state of victimhood because that serves white supremacy, to keep us as victims.

And so we have to empower ourselves to be sovereign, self-determined, and assert that our value systems, our knowledge systems and our ways of being are not something to be vilified and demonized any longer.

- Kyle, I'd love to invite you to also speak with us a little bit about language.

But what does it mean to have and to put a lot of emphasis on the way that we're speaking about climate change and the language that we're using.

- I really appreciate what Eriel shared about language and all the complexity to the points that they made.

I mean, that really has me thinking about a lot of connections.

And I'd like to mention a dimension of language as well.

So indigenous languages, and, you know I think it's important for people to note that, you know language is complicated for indigenous communities, you know.

On the one hand, right, a lot of indigenous persons, I know, you know grew up speaking English or French or Spanish.

And then their communities may have various connections to either of those languages, you know, native people oftentimes speak the languages in a way that's different.

That has a different significance and meaning and communicative value to it.

But then also their own languages, right?

And, you know, historically it wasn't that each tribe had its language but actually there was multi fluency, right.

There were diplomacies.

I mean, native people historically would speak many different languages, just like we see in different parts of the world today that haven't had linguistic genocide at least to the degree that our communities faced it.

And, you know, so for some communities that are protecting their fluency of one or two languages others are awakening their languages.

And regardless of where that community or any community is in relation to their language, there's a significance of an indigenous language that can't be devalued by our colleagues in the dominant society.

And so for example, you know I am oftentimes part of discussions or consultations or policy situations where you'll see say a non-native scientist or engineer.

And I recently have been in some situations where this has come up with regard to Enbridge's Line 5 pipeline that goes through the Mackinaw Straits, which is a sacred and significant area for Anishinaabe people.

And it's a pipeline that needs... well we need to get rid of it but (laughs) it's out of date and there's a proposal by Enbridge to completely replace it which would be a huge tunneling project.

And, you know, some scientists and engineers to discuss it they might say things like... And I've seen people say things, you know, the animal or plant communities yeah they're gonna be disrupted but they're not like super rare communities.

They're not, you know they'll bounce back and alright, fine.

(laughs) But then you'll have, you know, somebody who say like a culture keeper or culture bearer or knowledge keeper from one of the effective communities, then start talking about those ecosystems and those plants but using their language, not relying on English.

And using those terms, evoking those sounds providing illustrations that show relationships.

And that's what sacred, that's what rare that's what significant, that's what valuable means from an indigenous perspective.

And you can't, you know... And going back to Eriel's really good point about replacement, that that can't be replaced by an equivalent that emanates from the value system of the dominant society.

That's a value that the language itself gives some guidance on what that value means.

But you have to take the language seriously.

You have to understand that those words.

And again, even words is an artificial construct, right?

But those sounds, those phrases, those meanings oftentimes talk about the social activities that were connected to those plants or animals.

They also denote the entire history associated with that.

Our language just needs to be asserted into those contexts and non-native people have to respect our languages and they have to understand that they can't possibly try to articulate or apologize for or think that they've understood what those meanings were.

They have to allow us to define what "safe enough" means, what "culturally significant" means, what sovereignty means.

That's for us to define.

It's not for them to define and they need to respect our languages and how they convey that significance.

- Yeah.

I just wanna add, Danika Littlechild, who was one of the original folks on ICA's Steering Committee, she said, "We are our own experts."

"We don't have to constantly be translating ourselves" "through a colonial lens."

And that is an important articulation that I think is just like that, she sort of resonated everything that Kyle said.

And I was, I always say it because it's true.

We are our own experts.

It's time for us to take our power back and understand that importance.

And I'm also reminded of when, prior to a lot of this work I worked for the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations and Saskatchewan working on land claims, and there was this land claim where a bunch of land was destroyed over a long period of time.

And there was all these ecologists trying to figure out how to compensate this nation for the losses they had.

And the nation said, "Are you gonna compensate us for everything?"

And they said, "We're going to compensate you for you know," "significant species to your culture."

And they said every single one of them were.

And they ended up having to go down the list of everything from every kind of flora and fauna, from the rats and the raccoons to the muskrat, to the trees, to the grasses, to the flowers, and the medicine.

And these ecologists and economists were just like, we can't possibly value every single living species.

And they're like, those are all the things that are significant species to our culture and identity.

And they were just like, my God, this is impossible.

And they gave up trying to valuate everything 'cause it became an impossible task.

And that just sort of, sort of hits the nail on the head of what Kyle was saying.

'Cause it's like impossible to valuate and to replace those things.

- I mean, impossible to value in this Western system, right?

Yeah, exactly.

I wonder too, about, as we've been talking about the role of science and the role of language and I wonder about this is the Arts & Ideas Festival.

And I wonder if you have a few moments to talk a little bit about the role of art as well.

Eriel, I know that you have been sort of on the front lines of a lot of protests and activism and so I'm sure I would love to start with you and just talk a little bit about the role of art in this whole, in this process.

- Art is such a powerful medium, and it's actually really center part of indigenous culture as well.

My dad is a storyteller and an artist, like he draws and he paints and he writes.

And so art is just been a big part of my life.

But it's so critical and it's so powerful.

Like art and activism are go hand in hand.

Like some of the most creative and most amazing art I've seen at protests from puppets to chants to the music to the ways in which people show up.

It is really an art form.

And with that in vain, ICA really empowers our people to look at art as that practice.

We have a lot of short films and documentaries on our YouTube channel.

We have a Flickr account and we're just about to launch our podcast.

I believe we're gonna launch it next week focusing on a diversity of issues regarding climate justice with youth and elders and, you know, just transition and healing justice and all those components.

But these different types of art forms are central to shifting change.

Because we're moving away from this idea of hyper-productivity, working for the man and making the money and living the American dream and really leaning into this idea of Joy.

What it means to create something as opposed to extract and gain power over something else.

And art has this beautiful way of sort of really tempering that and bringing us to a place of joy and creativity.

- Kyle, what about you?

How has art played a role in maybe your work or the work that others you've been connected with?

- Absolutely, and I first wanted to encourage everybody who is tuning in or will tune into our conversation to definitely follow the Indigenous Climate Action podcast that's forthcoming, that's absolutely amazing, and I look forward to it.

(laughs) I remember, you know, different years when I'm working a lot on funding policy for tribal climate change planning one of the assumptions has always been how do we fund more science?

How do we increase the amount of scientists and tribes?

Yet with every tribe that I've either worked with directly on their climate change work or who I've interacted with through one of the educational programs that I've been part of like Tribal Climate Camp or the Indigenous Planning Summer Institute, they didn't need more science.

(laughs) You know, I actually it's support for the arts that's most missing.

Because from a tribal climate change planning perspective the media arts, the visual arts, the performance arts that's really how you bring an entire community together around a coordinated approach to addressing climate change.

Yet that's the, you know, the arts are probably the least funded area in any, you know so-called US climate change funding program.

And if I asked a certain number of scientists or federal employees or officials, I knew where they rank the importance of the arts in like hardcore climate change planning, they would say it's not very important.

Yet actually, what makes a climate change plan for a tribe something that will be practiced and implemented, people will care about, is if it's infused with indigenous arts.

And that is the most practical way, that is the most action oriented way.

And notice that that really requires at least for some people we probably know a big change in their perspective on the relationship between sciences and arts.

- Yeah, absolutely.

And I think it's something that a lot of people are starting to think about.

But it's hard to know how much movement we're making in that way sometimes.

But it's encouraging to hear that there are people who are putting the arts and sciences side-by-side and making them a part of the same structure and the same movement.

That's exciting to hear.

Well, we're almost at the end of our time together but I wanted to give both of you a chance just to let people know if they're interested in finding out more either about your work or the work that you're doing within the organizations that you're a part of.

How can they find out more?

How can they get more involved?

Eriel.

- Yeah, you can check us out on the internet where everyone is these days because of the pandemic.

So www.indigenousclimateaction.com.

We're also on Facebook and Instagram, we also have a YouTube channel.

And on Flickr account you can access that all from our website.

Check us out.

And if you can donate.

You know, we are a nonprofit organization trying to hustle and make it in this world where only like 1% of the philanthropic dollars go towards indigenous work.

So we need all the support we can get.

And we'd love to have you join our listserve and get involved.

- And listen to the podcasts too.

I'm very excited for this forthcoming podcast.

- And listen to the podcast.

I'm really excited for the podcast too, actually.

- Amazing, Kyle what about you if people wanna find out more follow your work?

- Sure, absolutely.

So a couple of things that could be easily Googled.

You know, I've got my own website with information on things I've written and things that I'm doing.

I'd also encourage folks to go to the website on Environmental Protection Agency for the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council and scan all the way down and you'll see where our interim recommendations are.

Check out the affiliated tribes of Northwest Indians climate change program page and especially the part on the review of the Congressional Climate Crisis Action Plan.

That has great information about where indigenous people are at with some of their goals and aspirations for climate change.

And check out the work that we do at the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition.

You know, we're a coalition of different people of color organizations and we're working on all sorts of issues affecting EJ in Michigan and that I've implications for environmental justice everywhere.

And the, yeah, I would also add strongly encourage you to consider supporting our organizations like Indigenous Climate Action.

It makes a huge difference.

And you know, I think you see the difference that they're making.

It would be great to have many of you part of that, that difference making community.

- Amazing, thank you both so much for being here.

It has been such a pleasure to speak with you for the 30 minutes that we spoke before this event that I got to just ask you questions and chat with you one-on-one and for this over hour time that you've given to all of us.

So thank you again.

I also wanna thank Connecticut Public and all of the partners for the International Festival of Arts and Ideas.

It is such a pleasure to be here today and to be able to gather with all of you even if we can't gather in person.

- Thank you, (speaking in foreign language) - Thank you, (speaking in foreign language) - Elizabeth, it is so nice to see you again and thank you again for inviting all of us to be here.

- Thank you so much.

It was such a gift to be able to listen to you.

I thank you for all that you've brought to this conversation.

We have so much work to do and so much to continue to be curious about and hopefully we'll see you all soon.

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