00:01:16.300Someone to lean on and someone to trust
00:01:20.380Who needs your assistance and finds your disguise
00:01:25.000Hello and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young. Today we are speaking with Clayton
00:01:39.880Thomas Mueller, who is a member of the Treaty 6-based Pukatawagan, Cree Nation, located in
00:01:46.600northern Manitoba, Canada. Clayton is an organizer, facilitator, public speaker, and writer on
00:01:52.900Indigenous rights and environmental and economic justice. Based in Winnipeg, Clayton is the Stop
00:01:59.540at the Source campaigner with 350.org. For the last 15 years, he has campaigned across Canada,
00:02:06.600Alaska, and the lower 48, organizing in hundreds of First Nations, Alaska Native,
00:02:12.680and Native American communities in support of grassroots Indigenous peoples to defend their
00:02:18.020traditional territories against the encroachment of the fossil fuel industry. This has included
00:02:23.820a special focus on the sprawling infrastructure of pipelines, refineries, and extraction associated
00:02:30.240with the Canadian tar sands. Thank you so much, Clayton, for joining us today. You have continually
00:02:37.400inspired me, and every time that we get together at an event, I'm always so excited to see what you
00:02:45.820bring your energy, your motivation and your insight. Thank you so much. It's a real pleasure
00:02:53.340to be here and greetings to all of your listeners. Thank you. So part of my excitement for having you
00:03:02.860on the show is I feel a real kinship with your fierce dedication and your willingness to go at
00:03:13.640these topics so directly as these ripples of mass extinction claim more species each day.
00:03:20.740The climate is undeniably shifting. I feel that preparing for an uncertain and chaotic future
00:03:28.200urges us in a way to decolonize. It urges us to question what parts of our lives
00:03:34.180we walk blindly through and reflect on what we are complacently being spoon-fed by the system,
00:03:41.460what we truly need in order to be self-reliant when the system does collapse you know in the
00:03:48.280most basic sense survival and preparedness in the anthropocene requires each of us to
00:03:55.700re-inhabit a reciprocal relationship with earth and you know this forgetting of the language of
00:04:03.440the land is what got us into this mess in the first place we won't find all of the answers
00:04:09.340or solutions we seek in the dogmatic prescriptions of reductionist science or capitalism, but
00:04:17.300instead in the rekindled correspondence with our lands and waters as they evolved.
00:04:24.760So I really believe that we all need to spend more time watching and documenting how these
00:04:29.680climactic shifts are unfolding in the places we love and call home.
00:04:33.980because I believe that if we wish to co-adopt with our ecosystems in this new climate paradigm,
00:04:40.200then first and foremost, we must unsever ourselves from our elemental sacred mother and,
00:04:48.260you know, begin to really learn directly from her. I'd love for you to begin by sharing
00:04:54.340on the scientific side of things, your current understanding about where the climate is headed,
00:05:00.280the kinds of changes Earth is going through. But I also welcome you to bring in your intuitive
00:05:06.880or your spiritual knowing. Do your gut feelings align with the scientific consensus of this
00:05:13.420unprecedented overshoot and extinction crisis? Yeah, I mean, first and foremost, you know,
00:05:22.280I believe that if humanity is going to deal with this climate crisis, we have to understand that
00:05:29.220it's fundamentally tied to the colonial mindset, to the mindset of the colonizer. You know, our
00:05:35.240climate is a delicate interconnected strand of webs. You know, you pull one strand and the entire
00:05:40.560web begins to unravel. And that's what we're watching happening right now. You know, I work
00:05:45.140for the global climate organization 350.org. And, you know, our job is to end the fossil fuel regime
00:05:51.740to build the world's largest social movement ever in the history of humanity to deal with this issue.
00:05:59.220I think that in this journey, we've learned that things like the tar sands in Canada,
00:06:05.460northern Alberta, where I work in support of First Nations,
00:06:08.360we're fighting the expansion of that project and its associated pipeline infrastructure,
00:06:14.500refinery infrastructure, is that these primary drivers of climate change,
00:06:19.480you know, human interference in the Earth's atmosphere,
00:06:23.360carbon cycling capacity through our fossil fuel-centered economy,
00:06:27.120things like tar sands and even climate change itself are a symptom of the problem. They are
00:06:33.260not the actual problem. The problem, of course, is the big C. It's capitalism. It's consumerism.
00:06:39.260And I think that that's centered in a really interesting phenomenon of this, you know,
00:06:43.920Western scientific industrial experiment called capitalism. And that is that I think neoliberalism,
00:06:50.240free market economy has severed our connection as humanity to the sacredness of Mother Earth.
00:06:54.880And, you know, the process of becoming politicized, of learning and practicing and executing social movement change theory, you know, to get people out into the streets and out onto the land in defense of our sacred elements from multinational corporations who want to commodify those things and chop them up and sell them to the highest bidder on international markets.
00:07:16.360Our job is to help people get out of the apathy that hyper individualism that our capitalist economic paradigm perpetuates.
00:07:26.300You know, the way to do that, I believe fundamentally, is through indigenous worldview and cosmology.
00:07:33.220You know, I think that for many people, they are multi-generations disconnected from a cultural existence where they live as part of nature, as part of an ecosystem, as part of a biosphere, instead of this super patriarchal Western kind of like ownership mentality where, you know, humanity exists above a life on the planet.
00:07:57.180and it's ours to own and to, you know, to sell and to chop up, you know, extractivism is what
00:08:03.600I'm getting at. You know, what I've seen over the years I've been organizing is that when human
00:08:10.180beings are exposed to ceremony, when they learn about the true names of the rivers, the lakes,
00:08:18.540the streams of the ecosystems that they live on, the places that they call home, when they achieve
00:08:24.440that connection, they tend to care more about their footprint. They tend to care more about,
00:08:29.660you know, whether or not a pipeline runs through their community or if a forest is going to get
00:08:34.460clear cut in their community. And I think that a big part of this work now, you know, in this era
00:08:40.500of the economics of the Anthropocene, you know, the era of human impact on a planetary scale,
00:08:47.380we must understand that, you know, we've got to look to the indigenous peoples first. There are
00:08:52.280only 380 million indigenous peoples across the planet but they represent 86 percent of the
00:08:57.860languages spoken on the planet they live in high 80 percentile of the world's last remaining
00:09:05.220biologically intact bioregions ironically these are the places that are most rich in fossil fuel
00:09:12.680resources and other mineral resources but they're also places where renewable energy scores the
00:09:18.340highest as far as potential and so we're in this like moment right now where indigenous cultures
00:09:24.540are making their final stand against industrialism and capitalism to protect the sacred places on the
00:09:30.740planet where life begins where you can still drink from the rivers where you can still harvest
00:09:35.780medicines and wildlife for consumption for subsistence practices and who have the stories
00:09:42.100of how to be connected to the sacredness of mother earth how to be conscious you know in my own
00:09:47.640lifetime. I just turned 40 this year in my own lifetime. You know, I remember riding dog sleds
00:09:53.120when I was a little kid. You know, I remember when my trapper uncle Alec got a skidoo and was
00:09:59.720the richest Indian on the reserve because he had a freaking motorized dog sled. So it's only within0.93
00:10:06.520my lifetime that we've been removed from, you know, a life in balance living close to the earth
00:10:11.860in my own family. So there's still connection there. It's not a far distance as far as time
00:10:16.900to travel and memories are fresh. I think that that's the same around the world with the world's
00:10:22.980indigenous peoples, is that we, in our traditional knowledge, have a vital and critical role to play
00:10:29.120in certainly the adaptation to the long-term effects of climate change. Even if we turn the
00:10:34.420tap off now, we're going to be living with it for a few generations, if not more. But I think most
00:10:40.560importantly, our knowledge plays a critical role in mitigating the drivers of climate change,
00:10:46.480which are unregulated, unfettered expansion of the fossil fuel regime, we know, and we've known
00:10:53.020for a long time, and we've been saying the same things for a long time, that we need to keep it
00:10:57.660in the ground. We need to shut off the tap now, and we need to do it because water is life.
00:11:04.140Yeah, I have heard these statistics of, I think it was 86% of the biodiversity of the world
00:11:11.120is in the hands of indigenous people and it really shines a light on the denial of the privileged
00:11:20.840and although the indigenous people of the world are holding so much of the biodiversity they're
00:11:27.060also dealing with more of the consequences of the climate crisis and they are the communities on the
00:11:32.520front line and they've been the most oppressed by the colonizer capitalist machine and it's just
00:11:38.160amazing to see that also those are where the solutions are being held. And I guess I'm wanting
00:11:44.800to understand, let's say as of tomorrow, we kept it in the ground, we stopped fossil fuel extraction.
00:11:51.520What would it look like for Indigenous leadership to rise up and to lead the way for the next
00:11:59.360generations? Yeah, I mean, I don't have the answer to that question. I don't think anybody does.
00:12:05.380What I know, though, is that there are pathways forward that if people utilize, you know, those pathways, that the solutions will present themselves.
00:12:16.300What I do know is that we as humanity have to develop our economy, you know, to quote, I think, David Suzuki, he says, we need to put the eco back in economy.
00:12:29.440I fundamentally believe this. And I believe that, you know, that indigenous peoples, you know, in our traditional knowledge are one part of the overall solution. I mean, I don't think that traditional knowledge in and of itself is going to stop capitalism.
00:12:43.260I believe that hybrid economic models that are bioregionally designed and that are designed to solidify humanity's place in the circle of life in that particular spot on Mother Earth, wherever these local economies are being established, they need to assert our footprint, our existence within living systems, not outside or external from living systems that we depend on for our livelihood.
00:13:11.420We need to develop closed loop economic infrastructure that has a full life stream analysis.
00:13:17.960You know, this throwaway economy that we have been living under created a circumstance where, you know, the fastest growing sector in our economy in the developed world is the waste management sector.
00:13:29.080And that's just psychotic. I mean, you know, all these super weather events that have been happening in the U.S. this hurricane season, the ties to geological movements on the earth, you know, tied to climate change in terms of earthquakes and volcano activity, you know, all of these things are as a result of us living externally from the living systems that we live in.
00:13:51.920you know, building nuclear facilities along coastal lines and on fault lines in the state
00:13:57.860of California. I mean, these are us being very arrogant and not living within our circle of life
00:14:04.380that we were meant to live in. And I think that's where I think indigenous peoples in the deep,1.00
00:14:09.280profound respect and humility of our cultures, of our worldview, of our cosmology, you know,
00:14:16.180and thinking seven generations. And, you know, I come from the Cree Nation and, you know,
00:14:20.200our people say that you have to make your governance your decisions the way you design
00:14:24.300economy the way you design social systems all of this fundamentally has to take into consideration
00:14:30.320three generations before you the current generation that you're living in and three generations ahead
00:14:36.060of you so thinking seven generations before you and after you is of vital importance because
00:14:42.500our decisions affect our ecology and you know ecology moves at a slower rate than a human life
00:14:49.320And so when we think about the way that we plan our economy, the way that we plan our communities, the way that we do business, we have to think about the last three generations before us and the lessons that we learned, the responsibilities we inherited from them as far as our ancestors three generations past.
00:15:07.720We have to think about the current people that are living here in the ecosystem right now, benefiting from it depending on the sacred water and food that Mother Earth provides us.
00:15:17.780And we have to think about the children we're going to have and their children and children after them, our great-great-grandchildren, because the decisions we make always have to be learning from our past, preparing in the present to defend our collective future, to defend the commons, what we refer to as the sacred.
00:15:34.920And these things should not be commodities bought and sold as things that we own.
00:15:41.560You know, they are things that we borrow from future generations and they must be well taken care of.
00:15:46.420So however we design our economies of the future, we've really got to deal with this absurdity of privatization.
00:15:54.700If we're not talking about the radical dismantling of systems of power that enable, you know, the richest people on the earth to own all the resources, you know, if we're not talking about the radical redistribution of land and wealth, especially in the developed economies of the planet like the United States, like Canada, then we're not really doing anything.
00:16:18.860You know, we're just continuing the same patterns of colonial violence, of assimilation, of colonization that we have been.
00:16:26.700We're only doing it with solar panels and base plastics instead of petroleum.
00:16:30.860So we have to like be very intersectional in how we approach moving into the future.
00:16:34.760We have to embrace a mix of indigenous traditional knowledge and technology, you know, Western technology.
00:16:41.540And our economies themselves have to be, you know, modernized in that context as well in that intersectional way.
00:16:48.140because you know indigenous peoples are not stuck in history books pages you know we're not a
00:16:52.820monolith we're diverse our knowledge is diverse and it's forever adapting and modernizing in and
00:16:58.840of itself you know i think that we have to think about it that way
00:29:41.200The other thing I think about with these huge climate catastrophes, whether it's Puerto Rico or the wine country of California with the fires or the floods in Texas and the south of the United States, I think sitting with these questions of once these disasters hit, who's profiting?
00:30:01.600how is it being privatized but also how do we move forward in a way that is just for the people who
00:30:10.480are actually living there on the front lines and it really is sad because I think there's this
00:30:17.900inevitability of climate refugees that is not a topic that's spoken about enough in my mind
00:30:26.980You know, I think about where I live in Northern California and people are already trying to rebuild the areas of the fire zone, you know, just days after really it stops smoldering.
00:30:39.420Are we actually looking at the future?
00:30:43.240This will probably happen again next year.
00:30:45.840I understand that it's a really sensitive topic, especially for indigenous people, that this is their homeland.
00:30:51.360I just wonder what your opinion is on what we can actually learn in disaster zones that are continually being hit year after year and how to help support people in protecting themselves for the future.
00:31:07.600Well, first of all, you know, my deepest prayers and condolences to especially the families that lost loved ones in the Northern California fire crisis that just rolled through one country up there, you know, it continues to unfold.
00:31:21.360I just returned here to Canada, you know, after a lovely week in the Bay Area at the National Bioneers Conference. And this was the big topic of discussion and most Northern California people are in a state of trauma. And I think that that's a big part of the work organizing this movement for climate justice, organizing a just transition that's fundamentally based on intersectionality, you know, between a number of issues.
00:31:45.280part of what we have to do as organizers working in the movement for climate justice
00:31:50.200is continually dealing with our communities who are living in trauma from a variety of things,
00:31:55.960including these crazy disasters. You know, I was recently at the 10-year anniversary of Hurricane
00:32:00.600Katrina and Rita, which drowned the city of New Orleans, in particular the Black community in the
00:32:05.940Ninth Ward. But there were many communities affected, you know, the Homa Nation south of
00:32:11.140the city on the five fingers on the bayou where their traditional land is you know their communities
00:32:16.060were wiped out you know Vietnamese fisher folk who have a huge community there on the gulf coast
00:32:20.540a lot of their fishing assets wiped out you know many water dependent fisher folk people in the
00:32:26.500gulf you know livelihoods wiped out going back 10 years later it was amazing to me that you know
00:32:32.360the entire city had been redeveloped rebuilt the levees were fixed but the ninth ward which was
00:32:38.020this predominantly multi-generational black-owned community. There continues to be browns fields,
00:32:43.980burnt out houses, houses that were torn down and nothing ever built in their place,
00:32:47.840boarded up houses that were never reoccupied. And this huge displacement of community all
00:32:54.140across the United States, people left and just never went home. So trauma is a huge part of
00:33:00.700organizing the new economy of the future. You know, we need to deal with how people have been
00:33:06.480displaced, oppressed. And we need to approach that work from a strong framework of anti-racism,
00:33:11.880anti-oppression, and anti-colonialism. We have to have a theory of change that is about undoing
00:33:19.880those systems of power that make it so that poor people in Northern California have to just move
00:33:26.160to the city or go somewhere else because they don't have the money to rebuild. And that allows
00:33:31.160for these more affluent people to just recover. And I think that's the story globally when we
00:33:36.200look at climate change and the story between U.S. imperialism and that of the European Union and
00:33:42.200you know other industrialized countries of the world they have a little bit more insulation a
00:33:46.480little bit more time before they start feeling what many across the planet are already feeling
00:33:51.460as a result of increased typhoon cyclone you know earthquake vulnerability is particularly acute in
00:33:59.000the global south and I think that that plays out in the United States over very very deep lines of
00:34:05.440race and class. And again, if you're not organizing with a goal of the radical redistribution of land
00:34:12.700and wealth, then you're not really changing anything. I'm so grateful that you brought up
00:34:19.560the trauma piece of moving forward after these climate catastrophes. And I mean, of course,
00:34:27.000there's trauma that's alive in probably all of humanity that doesn't even have to deal with these
00:34:33.720big disasters. And so it's this compounding trauma that is probably one of the most
00:34:41.200frightening things I think about climate change is how people will react and how people will
00:34:48.620treat each other as land and resources become more scarce and places to live will become
00:34:57.240uninhabitable. I think about Joanna Macy and the work that reconnects. And I think she had said
00:35:03.420one time in a workshop that her work is really for when the system collapses how to help people
00:35:11.300not turn on each other and I think about that just so much you know there's this amazing coming
00:35:17.800together after climate disasters usually it's like people are I feel like they're really
00:35:22.040supporting each other and there's kind of this war-like mentality of banding together and
00:35:28.060protecting each other. But I think as the adrenaline wears off, that people get afraid
00:35:34.820for their own survival and rebuilding and resources. And there can be this turn because
00:35:41.820this selfish individual culture that has swallowed the majority of North America.
00:35:50.820And the globalized world for that. Exactly. It's called greed. Thank you so much for bringing
00:35:55.040up trauma because I think that is something that's not talked about in climate discourse.
00:36:00.600You know, trauma isn't brought up in the UN when we're discussing these ways forward.
00:36:05.820I actually found this quote from you and you said, the current fight against oil is to
00:36:11.580give our young people the movement infrastructure to fight the next big war, which is going
00:36:17.020to be to defend the sacredness of water.
00:36:19.700That quote is so powerful because as we're talking about climate disasters that will continue and we're talking about resource depletion and the trauma of humanity, of course water, which is life and necessary for all life to survive, it's a pretty huge puzzle.
00:36:40.080I've heard that we've hit peak water. I don't know if you agree with that. But I'd love to hear, you know, your feelings about this quote that, you know, our young people, this movement is supporting them is teaching them how to fight for water, the sacredness of water.
00:36:56.380You know, as human beings, we're pretty incredible. And the majority of our physicality, you know,
00:37:03.680is water. And we spend nine months inside a placenta and our mom in that sacred water.
00:37:10.160You know, that's where we begin our life. And this whole fight, you know, for many people
00:37:14.700has been about protecting the stream that pipeline is going to cross or that trout pond that they're
00:37:21.340going to eviscerate for a strip mine, you know, that mountaintop that they're going to blow to
00:37:25.120the moon and back, you know, to get the coal inside, that mountain that they're going to hollow
00:37:30.080up so they can store nuclear waste in it. A lot of this work, the good fight, as I often hear it
00:37:35.940referred to, is about protecting water because we need it. We are water. For me, I believe that
00:37:43.420water is already trading at a much more profitable price than oil is on international markets. You
00:37:49.640know, and I come from a land of water. You know, where I come from, there's hundreds of thousands
00:37:54.140of lakes, rivers, and streams, then you can still drink from these places straight from the source.
00:38:00.400We have the majority of the Earth's remaining potable water, you know, freshwater resources
00:38:05.480exist in Canada. You know, the fight against the expansion of the Canadian tar sands and its
00:38:11.460associated pipelines, I mean, heck, the fight against the fossil regime and multinational
00:38:16.900mining corporations in general, this social movement infrastructure that we're building up
00:38:21.640right now, you know, to shut down the fossil fuel regime will more frequently intersect with the
00:38:27.540movement to protect the sacredness of water from both contamination and privatization. And that
00:38:33.940fight will concentrate where I come from, you know, in this beautiful place that they now call Canada
00:38:39.480in our territories. You know, these are the places that have the world's remaining freshwater
00:38:44.640resources. Someday, you know, all these oil pipelines might be pumping water for all we know.
00:38:50.220I can't see into the future, but I know we have a big responsibility to protect the Great Lakes up in our north, you know, Great Slave Lake, Great Bear Lake, because these places are being drilled over by multinational water companies and by nation states who have poisoned all of their own water through their industrial practices and lack of oversight and enforcement, you know, against these multinational, predominantly U.S. and Canadian-based companies.
00:39:46.620What a visual to think of, oil pumps pumping water.
00:40:12.040That is a horror film Twilight Zone. And I'm so with you that we need to protect the intact places, the intact creeks and rivers and streams and forests that hold this sacred water.
00:40:29.700Standing Rock changed the world. It's not like natives haven't been saying water is life for
00:40:36.140like ever. You know, my ancestors were saying water is life when they fought western expansion
00:40:41.960of European settlers. We all have that shared cosmology of our sacred responsibility to protect
00:40:49.500things like water for future generations. Like that's just how we're raised as indigenous peoples.
00:40:54.400it's in our blood memory and the beautiful thing about standing rock is that you know this
00:41:00.960thunderbird woman this mean that's been traveling the globe she's showing up at every protest at
00:41:07.560every march at every direct action every civil disobedience that's happening we see the images
00:41:13.720of thunderbird woman and you know the thunder beings many indigenous nations have stories about
00:41:19.220them you know and they bring the spring storms they bring the rain they represent the the end
00:41:24.100of the hard season and the beginning of the growing season you know they represent the
00:41:28.040introduction of abundance back after the rest that mother earth gets during the winter when
00:41:33.180she's covered in snow and thunder beings they bring that water that sacred water and i think
00:41:38.880that it's through narrative-based storytelling strategies like the ones that came out of
00:41:43.300standing rock you know with profound imagery like thunderbird woman that facilitate a connection to
00:41:49.260the sacredness of place for people, not just those 16 million people that depend on the Missouri
00:41:55.040River for their water source, but people from coast to coast were touched by Standing Rock.
00:41:59.720They were touched by the meme, water is life. And, you know, the ability for the Lakota people
00:42:05.920in that territory and all the indigenous peoples and non-indigenous peoples that came to stand
00:42:10.680with them in solidarity, you know, the ability to use that platform, that global teaching moment
00:42:15.800to help citizens in the United States connect to this idea that water is life was a global shift
00:42:23.160moment. I think that we're going to see the ramifications of that story-based strategy
00:42:28.080in terms of people caring more about where they live and being connected to the sacred elements
00:42:36.380that you need to be connected to when you're making decisions about development or economy
00:42:41.360or politics or whatever. So my hat's off to Standing Rock and everybody involved in that.
00:42:46.080And the artist who made that meme is an Ojibwe man who works with Christy Belcourt. His name's
00:42:51.600Isaac Murdoch. And they've been kicking ass all across Turtle Island doing amazing decolonization0.83
00:42:56.680work through art. Yeah, my hat's off as well. And speaking of story-based strategy, you have this0.69
00:43:04.600new transmedia storytelling project called The Life in the City of Dirty Water. I'd love to
00:43:12.360hear about that and, you know, hear the details of this project. And I also want to learn
00:43:17.460how did you arrive at this creative concept? Well, Life in the City of Dirty Water is a very
00:43:23.060personal project. It's something that, you know, I'm not wearing my camp painter hat when I did
00:43:27.900that, representing that project, doing the stories, you know, telling the stories that are housed
00:43:32.160within that project, you know, it started off as a book. And I wrote a book, but it was just
00:43:36.340too screwed up to publish, you know. And it's a collection of stories about growing up Indigenous
00:43:41.620in the city of Winnipeg. Essentially, the premise of it was a survival guide for the urbanized
00:43:46.960Indigenous person. You know, because of my work in social movements, you know, I'm a narrative-based
00:43:51.560digital storytelling strategist. You know, I use video to motivate people to get out in the streets
00:43:57.220and in the land and defense of Mother Earth, we decided to take elements of the book that I wrote
00:44:02.060that was too much to publish. But we took some of the lessons in the stories out of that. And I
00:44:06.780hired a videographer to travel with me across Turtle Island and to record live storytelling
00:44:11.860sessions in the tradition of oral history of non-written language. We then took those stories
00:44:18.260and transcribed them into the existing book, which drops this spring. And we made a short
00:44:23.820documentary, a 30-minute short doc, but a whole host of other transmedia elements will be housed
00:44:29.460at the website lifeinthecityaddirtywater.com. People can go there now and see some of the
00:44:34.800content to get an idea of this huge storytelling initiative. And, you know, the movie is going to
00:44:41.600do the festival circuit. We hope to premiere it on television here in Canada once it's done,
00:44:46.880the festival circuit, and certainly posted online on the website for people. So we're just at the
00:44:52.000beginning stages of this but you know the whole thing started off as a healing journey for myself
00:44:56.820growing up native turning 40 becoming a dad you know I've made a lot of mistakes in my life
00:45:03.840a lot and you know like any other native man been affected by colonial violence and white patriarchy
00:45:10.020and physical and emotional and spiritual and sexual manifestations of colonial violence you
00:45:16.020know I've lived with those things and so this storytelling project is about me becoming whole
00:45:22.700and telling these stories of surviving colonization in an urban context and you know just kind of
00:45:29.000putting it all out there so that I can be a better dad to my kids you know I found that my two sons
00:45:34.120Felix and Jackson as they you know got older they're 11 and 9 now I found that I was getting
00:45:39.220triggered by them because I was remembering the things that I went through at their ages
00:45:43.260growing up in winnipeg and it was triggering me so you know i talked to a therapist about it and
00:45:49.200he said oh yeah for sure you know that's going to be triggering you've got to do mindfulness
00:45:52.460meditation you've got to like go to ceremonies and you got to like confront those things so that
00:45:58.880you can be present for your kids so that you're not disassociating you know so that you can do
00:46:02.960things like homework and playing with them and so that's what i did you know i wrote this book
00:46:06.780worked with my team got an amazing team that i'm working with spencer mann and annalee popham my
00:46:12.640videographer and editor and we're producing these beautiful stories shared with people so that we
00:46:19.400can normalize some of the things i think that other native people are going through but might
00:46:23.480be too ashamed to talk about i'm hoping that life in the city of dirty water will be a positive
00:46:28.960impact in this you know meta discourse on truth and reconciliation here in canada and it's the
00:46:34.460150th year anniversary of the colonization of our homelands of the confederation of canada
00:46:39.460and I chose this year to tell my story and I hope that it has ripple effects in a healing way
00:46:46.200for other people who are trying to tear down patriarchy and white supremacy and and heal
00:46:52.240from the generations of colonial violence that we've been affected by. Wow Clayton thank you
00:46:57.920so much for having the courage to do this project and this was a process for you to heal yourself
00:47:07.700and become a better father and to connect with those, like you said, who may be too ashamed to
00:47:13.560talk about their wounding from colonialism. And what a gift for your family, but for your extended
00:47:21.500family of humans. And I'm so excited to see all this incredible creation that is coming out of
00:47:30.220this project. And I'm wondering, is there a Kickstarter? Is there a way for people to
00:47:34.760support this project and support this transmedia project because it seems like there's so many
00:47:40.400levels and it will go on for a while certainly i think that that's the beauty of this project is
00:47:45.960that it'll live as long as i want it to you know through the podcast or dropping a hip-hop mixtape
00:47:51.300you know i used to be a rapper sitting on these songs for years you know so music will be a part
00:47:55.320of it and just the ability to create new vignettes on the website you know people don't want to read
00:48:00.040the book they can watch each chapter and video vignettes on the website it's going to be pretty
00:48:05.540cool and we'll be able to produce new things and certainly we're still fundraising to polish the
00:48:10.660existing transmedia elements and you know if people want to support the project or just check
00:48:15.340it out they can make a donation on the website life in the city at dirtywater.com there's a link
00:48:20.380to my paypal there but you're not able to support it that way just hit and share and sharing that
00:48:26.360social media content on your social media platforms is also a really meaningful way to
00:48:31.320contribute. I'm really looking forward to seeing how it grows over the years. And I think it's so
00:48:39.340wonderful because I was having this conversation about how burnt out people are getting in the
00:48:46.140movement. And there's so many losses. And even when there's a win, it's not a win that actually
00:48:52.980last forever in the United States right now. For instance, the public lands like Bear Ears,
00:48:58.100these were protected. And somehow with the administration, they're being opened. Even
00:49:04.000things like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. So I think there's this deep sense of grief and
00:49:10.520exhaustion and hopelessness. And I feel like an antidote to that is creativity, arts, storytelling,
00:49:18.940all the things that you're doing in your transmedia project. And to me, if we can push
00:49:24.540ourselves beyond our creativity, if we can push ourselves beyond what we know in the movement and
00:49:31.180keep growing, and that's what I feel like this project that you're doing is, it's pushing the
00:49:36.320boundaries of creativity and storytelling and the wounds of colonization and finding new outlets and
00:49:42.880new ways to connect. And that to me is like what I really want to grab onto in the movement.
00:49:47.280You know, I'm ready to align myself with these other projects so that I have the fire and the fuel to keep going. And I think a lot of people are really craving that right now. How do we keep going? How do we find the connections and the energy to not wallow or to not become, whether it's desensitized or debilitated or just overwhelmed?
00:50:09.340So I think supporting projects like Life in the City of Dirty Water, supporting projects like this and being connected is the food to the movement.
00:50:18.300So I really appreciate all of your work with the campaigning and the truth telling and your analysis on the economic and scientific level and your connection to heart and land is so incredible, Clayton.
00:50:33.900I just I'm so appreciative of you. And I feel wonderful being able to share your words and your insights with the audience today.
00:50:44.480Well, it's been a real honor to be invited to this podcast. And again, you know, sending a lot of love and light to everybody affected by the California fires where you live. And, you know, if people want to follow me on social media, it's super easy. On Twitter, I'm at Cree Clayton. That's C-R-E-E Clayton.
00:51:03.220you know, easy to access on Facebook. And, you know, I encourage the listeners to check out0.56
00:51:08.340350.org, plug in, you know, through local organizations in your community that are
00:51:12.780fighting for climate justice, you know, show up to the demos, sign those petitions, you know,
00:51:18.060and organize around your own dinner table, you know, have those conversations with your kids
00:51:22.420and with your grandparents, pull the family together. This fight for climate justice is
00:51:27.140an intergenerational fight. And we need to always be learning from our past, preparing in our
00:51:32.420present to defend your collective future. So, yeah, thanks for having me.
00:51:52.360Thank you for listening to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young.
00:51:57.360The music you heard today was Go Back by Leilani
00:52:01.240Mensahid de Alto by Rodaya del Templo de Mita
00:52:07.080Followed by Night Star Watchers by Ahmad al-Pharazi
00:52:12.240Our theme music is Silence Returns by Bo