For The Wild - Dr. CUTCHA RISLING BALDY on Land Return and Revitalization ⧸219

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00:00:30.000 Hello and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young. Today I'm speaking with Dr. Kutcha

00:00:39.120 Risling-Baldy. We have to take a moment to kind of think about the ways in which we've not been

00:00:44.700 able to learn how to imagine futures together beyond resource extraction. Dr. Kutcha Risling-Balding

00:00:53.980 is an associate professor and department chair of Native American Studies at Humboldt State

00:00:58.580 University. She received her PhD in Native American Studies with a designated emphasis

00:01:04.220 in feminist theory and research from the University of California, Davis, and her MFA in creative

00:01:09.940 writing and literary research from San Diego State University. She also has her BA in psychology

00:01:15.960 from Stanford University. Her research focuses on California Indians, indigenous feminisms, 0.94

00:01:22.600 social and environmental justice, and decolonization. Her first book, We Are Dancing for You,

00:01:28.580 Native Feminisms and the Revitalization of Women's Coming-of-Age Ceremonies

00:01:32.720 Addresses Gender Inequality and Gender Violence Within Native Communities.

00:01:37.660 Dr. Risling Baldi is Hupa, Yurok, and Kauruk,

00:01:41.740 an enrolled member of the Hupa Valley Tribe in Northern California.

00:01:45.780 In 2007, she co-founded the Native Women's Collective,

00:01:48.760 a non-profit organization that supports the continued revitalization of Native American art and culture.

00:01:58.580 Well, Katja, thank you so much for joining us today. I'm really looking forward to this

00:02:04.560 conversation and just had such an inspiring research session, getting to know you a bit

00:02:11.600 through your work in preparation for this. Yeah, thank you so much for inviting me.

00:02:17.180 So I'd like to start off by talking about the land back movement. In the past couple of years,

00:02:22.680 we've seen a cultural narrative shift around land ownership, settler relations, stolen land,

00:02:29.400 and with more and more people attaching themselves to the language of land back,

00:02:34.440 which is great, but it does feel like the shift loses some of its momentum and application,

00:02:40.160 in part because I think settlers remain overwhelmed and perhaps unwilling to fully

00:02:44.900 commit to the work of mapping out what land return looks like. So I'm wondering if you

00:02:50.360 could speak to the reality of who actually owns the majority of land in this country,

00:02:54.900 individuals or the state. And then what are some examples of how Land Back unfolds under

00:03:00.380 United States legal governance? I love talking about Land Back because I think that it's a

00:03:07.520 movement that sort of inspires what we could do. To me, it's like a really inspirational movement.

00:03:14.780 It kind of says, like, how do we think beyond what we're currently living under, right? Like

00:03:19.820 this settler colonial system, the system of capitalism and exploitation, and instead think 0.69

00:03:25.600 about what the future is going to look like. And I think if you would have asked people

00:03:30.380 10 years ago, how can we even imagine that happening? People would have had a very different

00:03:36.820 answer than now, because I have seen land return happen in my lifetime. I have been fortunate

00:03:44.160 enough to be you know a witness to it and also to be a part of seeing that happen in my own

00:03:49.800 communities so I I love this like conversation like starting this conversation and I always know

00:03:56.500 that when I do start it it's very it can be very kind of scary for people at first you know because

00:04:01.460 they've never really been approached with like oh what would it look like if we returned land to

00:04:04.940 indigenous peoples but the more you talk about it the more it starts to become oh how exciting

00:04:09.980 is land return? How exciting is land return? And what could that help us to sort of imagine this

00:04:15.980 world to look like next? In the United States, we can talk specifically about the United States

00:04:20.920 because things are so very different if you're talking about other countries, other spaces. But

00:04:25.920 in the US, the primary land ownership is by private landowners. So about 60% of land is

00:04:32.620 owned by private landowners. And then about 30% of land is owned by the federal government. So the

00:04:39.780 federal government is the second largest land holder in the United States. And private land

00:04:45.540 owners is anybody that owns land privately. And so that could be made up of several millions of

00:04:51.540 people, really. But the federal government owns 30% of the land that is in the United States.

00:04:57.300 And then the rest is sort of a mixture of state governments and then tribal governments. Tribal

00:05:03.960 governments own about like 2.5% of the land in the United States. So, you know, a significantly 0.99

00:05:11.140 smaller portion. And when you think about like land ownership in general, you also sort of,

00:05:17.120 if you do research on it, you kind of start to realize that there's a very large racial

00:05:21.780 disparity in who owns land through private land ownership. And so the five largest land owners

00:05:27.800 in America are all white and they own more rural land in the United States than all of Black America 0.62

00:05:35.000 combined. So if you're looking at like Black land ownership, the five largest landowners in America 0.99

00:05:40.500 own more land than all of the Black ownership of land in the United States. It's generally

00:05:47.520 white Americans who own land. So you have about 98% of land ownership is owned by white Americans.

00:05:55.140 And so you see a great racial disparity when it is white Americans to own 90% of U.S. land that is in land ownership. So of the 60% that's owned by private ownership, 98% of that is white Americans versus every other group in the United States.

00:06:11.260 And I think that that's something that when people start to learn about that, they get very surprised that there's such a large racial disparity when it comes to land ownership.

00:06:22.240 And it actually becomes like a really interesting conversation because then you start to see that lends itself to how we understand like wealth disparity in the United States as well.

00:06:31.400 It's primarily white families who are significantly wealthier than all other racial and ethnic groups combined.

00:06:38.180 So if you take all ethnic groups and combine where their wealth is in their families and you add them all together, it does not meet the same as white families who have generally a net worth that is much more than all of those families combined.

00:06:55.480 And then you also look at how then that lends itself to what land ownership looks like within your own communities. When you break down land ownership in the United States, what you'll notice is that the eastern part of the United States kind of blending into what we call now the Midwest is primarily dotted with federal land ownership.

00:07:19.500 And so you see very sparse areas that are owned federally because, you know, the federal government's the second largest landowner.

00:07:26.440 But when you get to the West and the Southwest, the land of the West and the Southwest is primarily owned by the federal government.

00:07:34.540 And so what you'll see is that there are some places where the federal government is the largest landholder in the state.

00:07:41.620 In the Midwest and East Coast, that's not usually the case.

00:07:44.280 Usually it's private landowners that are the primary owners of the land in the state.

00:07:48.760 But on the West Coast, it's primarily the federal government.

00:07:51.760 And in California, 45 percent, I think, 45 percent of the state is owned by the federal government.

00:07:58.900 In Nevada, it's like 80 percent of the state is owned by the federal government.

00:08:02.540 So a lot of this really does have to do pretty significantly with history, like the history of the region and the area.

00:08:09.880 And then also the availability of natural resources and resource extraction industry, and then the availability of what we now call like, you know, the wilderness or state and national parks and forest land. And you see a kind of big disparity between federal government ownership of land on the west of the United States versus the east and Midwest.

00:08:31.220 I want to mention for listeners one specific example where the city of Eureka returned the island of Tuluat to the Wiyat.

00:08:40.320 And I'm wondering if you could share about this example and how this return initiated a new chapter in Wiyat's living history.

00:08:49.000 Yes, I mean, and this is actually particularly important to me because it's, you know, it's the it's the place where I live.

00:08:53.760 So I am joining you today from Humboldt County in what the WIAT refer to as like Baduwat, the Baduwat region, which is very near the Mad River, what's currently called McKinleyville, but it's very near what the WIAT called Gigi or Eureka, California.

00:09:09.760 And so this whole region where Humboldt State is, which is where I teach, that's all on WIAT land.

00:09:15.820 And WIAT land spans a really large portion of what we currently call Humboldt County.

00:09:21.920 And in the centers, the city centers of Humboldt County, primarily Eureka, but also Arcata,

00:09:27.400 McKinleyville, sort of like the places where many of the people live, are right in the 0.99

00:09:30.720 midst of Wiat territory. 1.00

00:09:32.920 And the Wiat worked for, you know, close to two decades, like over 20 years on the return 0.88

00:09:39.260 of Tuluat Island, which is the center of the world for them. 1.00

00:09:43.220 It's the place where the world came into being.

00:09:46.660 and it's really significant to how they celebrate and renew the world each time that they do world

00:09:52.720 renewal ceremonies. And in our area, you know, it was pretty well known by us as Native people,

00:09:58.600 even though I don't think it's like standard practice to teach about Tuluat in the way that

00:10:02.860 maybe we grew up learning about it. But it was the site of a really horrific massacre in the 1800s

00:10:09.720 during the gold rush when we had a massive influx of people to this region who were really just here

00:10:15.260 to try to get as much gold as possible. And they thought of Native people really as in the way

00:10:19.740 of that. And they didn't really want to set up, you know, like relationships with Native peoples

00:10:26.280 and governance structures. They wanted to get whatever they could from the land, from the gold 0.87

00:10:31.100 and from the people. So you see these moments of them passing laws to legalize slavery of Native 0.86

00:10:37.160 people, passing laws they can legalize militias that would rise up against Native people and 0.85

00:10:42.340 commit massacres and kidnap primarily women and children. And Jack Norton, who wrote a really

00:10:47.980 great book called Genocide in Northwest California, he really talks about how in Humboldt County,

00:10:53.660 it was a marauding horde of people. And he refers to them as a marauding horde. And he just says,

00:10:59.540 you know, the violence introduced during this area was in this area during this period of time

00:11:04.280 was really horrific. And you almost cannot, you can't tell a story that will tell you about just

00:11:09.840 how awful it was. And so you're talking about indigenous peoples having to navigate this period 0.98

00:11:16.260 of time when really everybody is working together through law, through policy, through militias to 0.97

00:11:23.780 try to get rid of us, to genocide us. It was nothing. I mean, it was an attempted genocide

00:11:29.320 of our people. And then in this region with the WIAT, they had to navigate just sort of the

00:11:34.660 ever-changing policies of the state and county government about where they could and could not

00:11:40.080 be. So you're looking at Tuluat as a place that they thought of as very important. And they were

00:11:46.120 doing a world renewal ceremony in the 1800s. And they, because of that, many of their men would

00:11:54.400 stay off the island while primarily women, children, and elders would be on the island

00:11:58.680 during this ceremony and a group of people came together from like a Humboldt County citizenry

00:12:06.120 and they went to the island to massacre everybody there and they killed primarily women children and

00:12:13.200 elders one of the things that a historian Tony Platt talks about is that they used very like

00:12:19.940 he calls them quiet weapons things like hatchets and knives and came in the dead of night to kill

00:12:26.860 everyone. And it's a really, it's a horrific and sad story about these people who were trying to

00:12:34.340 perform a ceremony that would balance the earth for everyone and help the earth for everyone.

00:12:41.140 And then they were attacked in this way. And after the island was emptied out because of this

00:12:47.500 massacre, you see people coming in and purchasing it and selling off pieces of it. And it becomes

00:12:54.080 sort of like private property, but also city property. And I think that one thing that I

00:12:58.560 always try to point out to people is like, after that period of time, a lot of people started

00:13:02.980 referring to this island as Indian Island. And like colloquially in this region, especially,

00:13:08.540 they will sometimes call it Indian Island. And I really made a point like with myself and

00:13:14.640 my students and people that I talked to to say that I try not to refer to it as Indian Island.

00:13:19.420 Although if you look up different things, many people will talk about it that way. 0.99

00:13:23.040 But it was only given that name after they, you know, attempted this massacre of Wiat people. Then they started referring to it as Indian Island. And instead, it's Tuluat. Like, that's the name of the space, you know, that the Wiat have known for, you know, for time immemorial.

00:13:41.820 And so Tuluat, I think, is a really important name to sort of reclaim and make sure that that's what we call it.

00:13:49.620 And there's so many beautiful and amazing stories around Tuluat that what I tell people is it'd be easy to tell that story as if it was a story of like the end of Wiat peoples or the tragedy by how we remember them or how we know them.

00:14:06.380 And for a long time, I think most people would say that what they know about the Wiyat is that they experienced this great tragedy, this attempted massacre of all of their peoples on Indian Island.

00:14:16.260 But now the story is very different. And I think that that's important for us to remember because, you know, 150 years later, the Wiyat returned and they did a world renewal ceremony there and they made a point to be able to be in that space.

00:14:30.460 And then they worked for 20 plus years to have the island returned. And it started with their tribal leader at the time, Cheryl Seidner, just sort of starting to say to people, I'm going to get my island back. Now it's time. It's time for us to get Tuluat back.

00:14:46.720 And people told her, people told all of them, I think, that that wouldn't be possible, that that was like a pipe dream, that that was from that would take so long. And they just kept saying, no, like, this is what needs to happen. This is what's right. So they just made it happen.

00:15:02.680 And I keep telling people like, you know, you're talking about people who came together and started doing like bake sales and selling T-shirts, trying to just get people to donate to them so that they could buy portions of the of the island that were for sale.

00:15:18.840 And then they started saying out loud to people, we need to get this island back.

00:15:22.640 And what would that look like and how would that work?

00:15:24.940 And you have the Eureka City Council working with them to make that happen.

00:15:28.500 And yes, it took, you know, over 20 years to make that happen. 0.84

00:15:32.680 But from start to finish, what I've learned from speaking with the Wiyot peoples and listening to them tell this story is to them, they were signing up for however long it took to get the island back.

00:15:46.180 They were like, if it took 20 years, if it took 30 years, we weren't going to stop working for the return of this place that is the center of the world that we need to make the world healthy again and that we need so that we can carry on the ceremonies that we have.

00:16:00.560 um and i think that that type of approach which says you know this is our space our land our

00:16:07.520 our future and we're going to work as long as it takes to make these things happen because we know

00:16:12.700 that this is what needs to happen so that this whole world can be a better place that's the

00:16:17.200 story that we should tell about native people sometimes we focus a lot on telling the story

00:16:21.780 of california indian genocide and you see like the best-selling books about california indians

00:16:27.440 tend to be about our genocide. But I think the stories of our resurgence and our revitalization,

00:16:32.860 our land return, our movements, those are the stories that I want people to know about us. And

00:16:37.600 those should be the stories that are the bestsellers about us because we're doing that

00:16:41.840 good work right now. Yeah, just as we've seen a popularization of land acknowledgements in the

00:16:49.260 past couple of years, I've also noticed that traditional ecological knowledge has become

00:16:53.980 much more of a buzzword. And I can't help be reminded of earlier moments in history where

00:16:59.900 settlers were really interested in indigenous culture as a means to secure their own hobbies,

00:17:06.540 livelihoods, and even culture, but weren't willing to engage with indigenous sovereignty.

00:17:11.600 Another example that you've written about is the hypocrisy of California implementing controlled

00:17:16.680 burns and acknowledging indigenous practices as a way to save, quote, the state without addressing

00:17:22.760 the California tribes that still don't have access to their land. So it would appear that

00:17:28.380 settlers just want to be able to import the ideas and practices that we think will give us a shot

00:17:36.300 at life on this earth, but we want to do so without having to learn about rematriation. 1.00

00:17:42.600 So I'm wondering if you could speak to the reality that you can't uproot indigenous

00:17:46.360 sovereignty as something that exists siloed from traditional ecological knowledge.

00:17:50.780 sure i mean i think that um we're always talking about like what are we going to do now right like

00:17:57.340 what is it going to look like as we start to really face uh what's happening with climate

00:18:03.180 change what's happening with like environmental justice issues what's happening with racial

00:18:06.920 justice issues uh what are we going to do like what what are what are the solutions look like

00:18:11.640 and i think that for far too long we've been creating solutions um especially to these larger

00:18:16.780 problems of like, what do we do with climate change without Indigenous knowledges? And have

00:18:22.440 been taking for really for granted that Indigenous knowledges are going to be the response that we 0.79

00:18:27.520 need to have. I've been reading articles talking about how like, you know, Indigenous knowledges

00:18:31.920 are not a backup plan anymore. They are the plan. And the things that we've been fighting for and

00:18:37.580 maintaining and pursuing for the last 50 years really are the ways that need to happen in order

00:18:44.820 to move forward. And what I think that also means is that we as Indigenous nations need to be

00:18:53.060 centered in how we enact that knowledge and what that looks like, because it can't happen

00:18:59.340 in a vacuum, in a silo. It's like a totalizing experience of what this space is supposed to

00:19:08.240 look like. So if you talk about cultural burning, for instance, some of the people that have some 0.90

00:19:13.400 of the most intimate knowledge of the forests and the ways in which they're supposed to be managed,

00:19:18.500 especially in our region, also have no access to forest land, because even though they are

00:19:23.940 tribal nations recognized by the United States, the land in which they now have doesn't include

00:19:30.600 forest land. So when they want to go and gather or interact with or even propose cultural burning,

00:19:37.320 they have to navigate several federal government agencies to make that happen. And a lot of the

00:19:41.660 times that's based on a lot of education because you still have people who don't know that like

00:19:46.380 cultural burning is one of the only things I think that's really going to address this issue of like

00:19:50.840 why our forest fires burn so hot or why they're so damaging or why it is that they pop up every 0.91

00:19:56.940 couple years in a way that really sort of like destroys rather than protects like the region

00:20:02.680 that they're in and you start to see people saying well what's the answer to this and people are like

00:20:07.380 it's cultural burning. If we had been burning consistently, we would not be having these same

00:20:12.060 problems. And what you're seeing is that the policies that were set forth by the federal

00:20:16.160 government that primarily focused on fire suppression in order to maintain, and really

00:20:22.720 that was about like capitalism and profit, because it's really focused on how do we make more

00:20:28.160 trees or more things that we could use so that we could take it out of the area and we can sell it.

00:20:33.980 But it's also really based on this idea that somehow this is supposed to be wilderness and what people were seeing was like untouched land.

00:20:42.000 And wilderness is a concept that really was used to erase Native people from lands.

00:20:46.500 And most of the wilderness that we know today, especially in California, is Native lands where Native people were living when that quote unquote wilderness was created.

00:20:55.940 So when they became national parks or state parks, Native people were actually living in there.

00:20:59.960 And so anything that you're thinking about when you think about wilderness, what you're actually thinking about is native lands that they tended to, that they took care of, and much of that was done with cultural burning.

00:21:08.380 So when people start talking about bringing cultural burning back, what they don't tend to acknowledge is, yes, inviting indigenous peoples from that area to come in and tell you and inform you and help you to do that cultural burning is really necessary.

00:21:22.400 But it's also really insulting because you're acting as if that land is not their land that they have knowledge of. And you're being okay with the fact that they're being kept out of it legally and often physically and often like spiritually and socially.

00:21:39.300 they can't connect with that forest land in the same way because it belongs to the National Park

00:21:45.200 Service or to the State Park Service because it's part of wilderness areas or protected in some way

00:21:50.840 by the federal government or even the state government laws. And so I'm thinking in particular

00:21:55.320 in our area about like the Kaduk tribe. They are a tribe who was significantly impacted by the gold

00:22:00.960 rush. Horrific things happened in that area to remove them from their lands and push them into

00:22:07.620 various areas. And then they made a treaty with the federal government, with the United States

00:22:12.420 at a point in the 1800s when they were making treaties in California. And because of pushback

00:22:17.820 from the citizenry of California, those treaties were never ratified. And so suddenly you go from

00:22:23.020 tribal nations in California being guaranteed certain lands that they negotiated, that they

00:22:28.600 made sure they would have until the end of time that they agreed to, to maintain a relationship

00:22:35.080 of nation to nationhood with the United States. And these treaties were unratified. And then they

00:22:40.480 were put under an injunction of secrecy so that nobody knew about it. And then the Native people

00:22:47.740 in California were never informed of this. And so what you suddenly see is like just pandemonium

00:22:52.600 and chaos because of what happened with these treaties, which are still in existence. You can

00:22:56.280 actually go, the Smithsonian, the National Museum of American Indian did an exhibit on the treaties

00:23:01.980 a couple years back, and actually brought them out from where they had been kept in storage,

00:23:07.640 so you could see that these were real documents signed by Native people and the federal government

00:23:13.340 of the United States. And so what they have now are two areas of land that they live on,

00:23:19.300 that they're a part of, but they don't have a large reservation, and they don't have any forest

00:23:24.480 land in their control. Yet they still continue to outreach and work so closely with forest managers

00:23:30.660 and the forest area. And so they make requests about cultural burning. They make requests

00:23:36.280 constantly about saying, we want to take care of this area. And they are consistently,

00:23:41.100 there's so many roadblocks to making that happen. And a lot of people coming at them through

00:23:45.800 suspicion of like, why do you want to be in charge of this? Or what does this mean?

00:23:49.600 Or like, how do we make this happen? And so to me, it's like, people want the benefits,

00:23:55.020 they want the knowledge, they want to be able to invite indigenous peoples in, come here and give,

00:23:58.840 And we will extract from you this knowledge of what to do in this area so that we can keep it healthy and safe. But start talking to them about how like, well, then look at the Karuk who don't have the same type of access to land and don't have the same type of ownership of land. How are you working to uphold their sovereignty, self-determination? And how are you working to push back and say they need to be the ones who also have access to, who own this area? 0.99

00:24:25.320 And if you're not working in partnership in that way, then what you're really doing is kind of saying that you're OK with this unequal treatment of tribal peoples, where they are really important to how we're going to build our futures in a way that we can all breathe, that we can all not have periods of time where the air is so thick with smoke that we can't even go outside so that we can protect our future peoples and families and areas.

00:24:55.320 even our water supply and resources because fire is really you know attached to water and you're

00:25:01.620 okay with letting them do all of that but the idea of having a conversation about what that means for

00:25:05.720 their sovereignty and what that means for their own land ownership isn't okay then to me that's

00:25:10.300 such an unequal relationship that it um it behooves people pointing out like this is not okay

00:25:16.460 like we also have to uphold what they need if we're going to ask them for that type of work

00:25:21.960 And they're happy to do it.

00:25:24.000 But I will say that, you know, there is always a conversation about how hard it is for them

00:25:29.000 to access the lands, to do the things that they want, and how much pushback they constantly

00:25:33.260 get, which they wouldn't get if they were the owners of that land in the first place.

00:25:51.580 Holy River, take me back in time

00:26:07.360 Before the mud be bowed up

00:26:16.580 Yeah, I see this a lot in my on-the-ground work.

00:26:44.320 And it's so complex. And yeah, it's just another form of extraction and really manipulation as well. And I'm thinking about California's gold rush again. And then I think about Canada's current gold rush and the interviews I've done with Nuskamata up in British Columbia and just all the extractive industries that continue to plunder the earth to uphold a violent lifestyle.

00:27:11.780 And I do wonder, what will it take for us to recognize that California's gold rush was a precautionary tale? 0.99

00:27:20.120 And despite living amongst the consequences every day, you know, this current dominant culture continues to replicate the same abuses.

00:27:29.200 So what do you think is required to break this psychosis?

00:27:33.200 Well, first, I would say land return.

00:27:35.080 um i think that i actually think physically when people start to see land being returned it kind

00:27:40.940 of changes their their approach to tribal nations when they're starting to go like oh you guys could

00:27:46.980 actually have land returned and then you know it could work in a very different way how we understand

00:27:50.940 like the placement of land or the idea of what land is what in this region so i do think like

00:27:56.520 working toward land return to indigenous peoples is really important uh because it demonstrates

00:28:01.540 for people sort of the reality of how physically ownership can change or even like the physicality

00:28:07.180 of like where you go to do certain industry or where you where you can sort of have certain

00:28:12.980 lands under like that are open for certain things or not um so I would say land return but that's

00:28:17.940 my answer to everything like everybody's always asking me like what's the answer to this and I

00:28:22.080 always say land return just give it back and then uh we'll have a totally different conversation

00:28:26.000 after that, I promise. But the other thing I'll say is, we have to take a moment to kind of think

00:28:31.940 about the ways in which we've not been able to, to learn how to imagine futures together beyond

00:28:38.840 resource extraction. And, you know, we view like the ways in which we do things in this world as

00:28:45.440 like kind of inevitable. And then also, that it's not possible to do something else. And all the

00:28:51.240 time people will say to me, like, that's a really good dream that you have, right? Where I'm like,

00:28:56.280 oh, someday we won't actually need any fossil fuels. And then they're like, that's a really

00:29:00.420 good dream you have, but that's impossible. That's impossible. But what I tell people now is like,

00:29:05.440 you know, I think we have to stop thinking about things as impossible. What we have to do is say

00:29:09.760 out loud what we want the world to be. In indigenous contexts, we say nothing can become

00:29:15.880 until you speak it into being and you, you first have to tell a story about it. You have to open

00:29:21.520 up people's imaginations to what that could look like. Um, I've been doing a lot of like really

00:29:27.740 good research and talks where you hear, you hear from people that like, uh, there was a speaker

00:29:32.960 who I heard one time talking about how it's easier for people to imagine like what they're

00:29:37.760 going to do in a zombie apocalypse. Uh, they'll have like plans and they'll be like, when the

00:29:42.480 zombies come, I'll do this, right? They can do that, but they can't imagine a world post-capitalism

00:29:47.480 and they can't imagine a world like post-settler colonialism. And they can't imagine a world

00:29:52.720 post-patriarchy because we don't get a lot of like books or movies or things that are like,

00:29:57.140 this is what the world looks like once we've taken apart settler colonialism and we've started to

00:30:01.680 look at what this could look like when we're not building pipelines, right? When we're not

00:30:06.000 extracting resources, when the dams come down, like we have a hard time thinking about that post.

00:30:12.480 But we have to start to be the people that say out loud when the dams come down, after the dams come down, because we have to know it's possible. 0.95

00:30:22.080 And the thing I know in my life right now is when people, when the Wiyot went to the city and they were like, we're going to get this island back, however long it takes. 0.93

00:30:33.780 When they started talking to people about it, people kept telling them it was impossible. 0.97

00:30:37.640 and then it happened. And I always say to people, I have seen an impossible thing happen in my

00:30:44.180 lifetime. So I've seen the impossible become possible in my own lifetime. So I know that

00:30:50.620 it starts with being open with yourself to like have that conversation and to say out loud

00:30:56.140 the things that you want to see happen. And so I feel like that's my job lately is I go and

00:31:01.280 I'll do talks and I'll stand up in front of rooms and I'll be like, give all the land back and all

00:31:06.060 the baskets and all the remains and all that because that to me is where we're where we're

00:31:10.680 going with this and then people will be like oh that's impossible and I was like well I'm going

00:31:14.160 to keep saying it because I feel like at a point it starts to become more possible because we're

00:31:18.620 just speaking it out loud and I see that as like a movement toward allowing us the space to have

00:31:25.980 conversations about what that could look like because all the times I start talking about like

00:31:30.660 land return, for instance, uh, people want all the answers about how that's going to look. So

00:31:36.460 they'll, they'll start asking me like real kind of like nitty gritty questions about like, well,

00:31:41.540 how's that going to work on a functional level of property taxes within like cities, states,

00:31:46.480 and counties. And I just, I just started to laugh and I'm like, you know, that's going to take some

00:31:50.720 work to do. You're right. But let's start by giving the land back and then we can answer all

00:31:54.480 those questions and see how it works. Like, I, I kind of want to tell people like it doesn't have

00:32:00.020 to be all perfect before you make something happen what you have to start doing is talking about it

00:32:05.020 and then you figure out how to make that happen and anybody that's returned land which we've done

00:32:10.840 a report which shows like what land return looks like throughout California it looks different for

00:32:15.940 everybody because I think that's part of like the imaginatory process and I do think that in Native

00:32:22.020 American Studies, especially, we're doing so much work to retell the stories. We call it rewriting

00:32:30.360 history, so that people can start to see that imaginatively in history, there's always been

00:32:37.880 a different view that shows you that there was something else happening and going on,

00:32:41.900 and you need to see it. You need to know that story so that you can imagine something different

00:32:46.760 now. I think of the work of my colleague, Caitlin Reed, and she's really doing amazing research

00:32:53.960 on how she's understanding the current movement and what they call the green rush in Humboldt

00:33:03.140 County with the cannabis industry. And she's saying, you know, it's talked about as like the

00:33:08.000 green rush. And she's really looking at the fact that it's repetitive of the gold rush in terms of

00:33:13.640 the same types of focus on resource extraction uh who's actually making money sort of like what

00:33:20.300 happens to the land in this region and the question becomes when when will we learn our lesson

00:33:25.820 and one thing that i told her when she was interviewing me as part of that research is like

00:33:30.880 well we've been rushing like humboldt county has been rushing since the very beginning like we

00:33:35.240 rushed like they rushed the gold trying to think that was going to be the thing they rushed minerals

00:33:39.780 they rushed in the timber industry they rushed in the fishing industry it's never been good for the 1.00

00:33:46.280 region and there has to be something else and through all of that it was always indigenous 1.00

00:33:50.840 people saying this is not the answer to how you're supposed to live here like this is not the answer

00:33:57.980 to how we're supposed to be in this space and they and we have maintained our ceremonies our

00:34:02.820 connections to land, our histories, our knowledges, our sciences. And we keep doing it, knowing that

00:34:10.420 this is going to be the answer to how we're going to move forward. And I think we've seen that world.

00:34:16.960 I think we've dreamed that world for thousands of years. So I don't think we're going to stop

00:34:22.400 until we can chip away and see how we can make that happen.

00:34:25.300 you write quote my contention is that through this in-depth analysis of cultural revitalization

00:34:35.960 as decolonizing praxis we see how native nations are able to challenge settler colonialism through

00:34:42.520 native feminisms and build revitalization movements that not only imagine decolonized 0.74

00:34:48.000 alternatives but also acknowledge that these alternatives did have always and will always 0.89

00:34:54.140 exist, end quote. And that last sentence, I think, really is saying that cultural revitalization

00:35:02.220 is anti-apocalyptic, and revitalization is done in collaboration with the past, present,

00:35:08.620 and future all at once, always. So I'd love if you could speak a bit about what cultural

00:35:14.640 revitalization has taught you about living well post-apocalypse. I mean, I think it's taught me

00:35:20.940 a couple of things. One is that the answers that we're seeking can be found within our own cultural

00:35:27.840 teachings and cultural knowledge. I think we were some of the best philosophers and many of our

00:35:35.500 oldest stories are providing for us guidance to be able to build futures and saying like,

00:35:42.200 we're going to be here for you in multiple and various ways. And so here's a story to kind of

00:35:48.380 help guide you through that and I think it teaches us that like the power of those things

00:35:55.120 so that we don't feel um like we're starting brand new uh but acknowledging that like this

00:36:04.080 is a very old knowledge that has been time tested and has managed to be passed through

00:36:13.840 generations after generations so there's something very powerful about that but that it is also so

00:36:20.100 adaptable and um challenging to our current situation uh i i look to the old stories a lot

00:36:29.480 and i'll say you know let's start with our language let's start with our stories to see

00:36:33.280 what's the guidance that's supposed to be provided to us about how we live in this world

00:36:38.800 And I think it helps us so that we don't feel like we're making it up brand new, but that it's coming from a base of knowledge that we've carried with us.

00:36:48.960 I also think when you're talking about post-apocalypse, there's something very powerful about us being able to do this revitalization now.

00:36:58.480 So when you think about the effort and energy that went into the peoples who were living through the apocalypse, right, who were living through the genocide to make sure that we would have this, whether that was like a person saying, you know, I'm going through this, but I have a song, I'm going to pass that song on and make sure that happens.

00:37:20.920 or I know one part of it, you know, or I'll carry these words forward. Whether that was people

00:37:27.080 saying, I'm going to sit with this anthropologist or this ethnographer, and I'm going to tell them

00:37:31.240 everything I know about the women's ceremony. Those are moments where you start to see that

00:37:35.860 what we're doing now is such an important honoring of the effort and strength that it

00:37:43.380 took for them to be able to do that and and and and also i think um a demonstration that they're

00:37:51.220 envisioning that they're saying out loud someday someone's going to do this dance again and we need

00:37:57.640 them to have this information made it happen like they had to start by saying that it was possible

00:38:02.740 that someday somebody would do this again and they said it and they brought it into being

00:38:08.540 because then now we're doing it so they were not wrong and they were making sure that you know

00:38:14.280 people could make it possible by saying aloud someday it would happen and when I would interview

00:38:19.960 the women who were involved in this revitalization a lot of them talked about how like

00:38:24.580 you know every generation somebody shared something somebody did a demonstration somebody

00:38:30.020 sang a song somebody did something and they just kept saying someday somebody's going to do this

00:38:34.920 dance again someday we're going to do it again so now i'm going to share this part they just said

00:38:39.880 it out loud um and according to like the the medicine woman i interviewed she talked about how

00:38:45.720 when they finally were open to it and they said okay we want to do it once they said we want to

00:38:52.020 do it she said all we had to do is scratch the surface we just had to say we wanted it and then

00:38:56.800 so many things came to us elders started to remember things that they had forgotten people

00:39:02.660 started to have dreams that reminded them of something that they might not have remembered

00:39:07.200 otherwise. Songs came to people. So I think that those are the things that people should understand

00:39:13.160 is like, it was slightly bigger than us. But I think it also showed that those efforts and

00:39:18.740 moments of what happens in time of great upheaval, where you're like, I'm going to believe that

00:39:23.600 there's a better future after this, I'm going to believe that there's going to be a moment of

00:39:28.140 resurgence and revitalization, that it mattered because that's what helped to make it possible

00:39:34.040 for us to be able to do it because they never stopped bringing it up. They never stopped saying

00:39:38.460 it. They never stopped speaking about it. They never stopped. They never pretended like it was

00:39:43.660 gone forever. To them, it was always a part of their cultural imagination. It was waiting for

00:39:48.780 the right time for it to happen again. And I think that that's a really beautiful thing for us to be

00:39:54.040 a part of now. Because when I start talking about what the future could look like, and I'm saying,

00:39:58.860 let's speak into being the things that we want. I'm telling you, for my elders and ancestors,

00:40:04.620 I am the living being of the things that they wanted. We are doing the things that they spoke

00:40:09.820 into being now. So what are we going to speak into being and make happen in the future?

00:40:24.040 Thank you.

00:40:54.040 You co-authored an article titled

00:41:19.580 Indigenous Peoples and the Politics of Water

00:41:22.540 with Melanie Yazzie. And you write, so too, do we both maintain indigenous feminist integrity

00:41:29.820 towards the love of all good relatives of the earth and the cosmos who caretake the future?

00:41:35.640 In closing, we leave you, our new relative, with this. Indigenous people are good at making 1.00

00:41:41.880 relatives. It's what we do. It's who we are. Our relatives are our source of strength. We are not

00:41:48.340 And so I'd like to ask you about indigenous feminism in terms of emboldening kinship and 0.98

00:42:17.200 respect. And for many folks, the concept of feminism in their communities has been appropriated

00:42:23.700 and commodified and just really hollowed out, which has caused a lot of injury. So I'm wondering

00:42:29.920 how has Indigenous feminism in Native communities remained devoted to respect and relationality

00:42:35.860 while actually chipping away at the gender binary, not solidifying it?

00:42:40.440 I think that what indigenous feminism is really important and is really building off of and a part of a lot of women of color feminisms, you know, like you're talking about black feminism, you're talking about Asian feminism, you're talking about the feminisms that are sort of pushing back against a feminism that would sort of uphold white supremacy.

00:43:02.460 And I think it's I always it's really important for me to point out to people, people will sometimes give the label white feminism and they'll say, like, you know, what I'm really what I'm really what I'm really not on board with is white feminism.

00:43:16.920 And I always say like any feminism that upholds white supremacy or that upholds like racial injustice or that in any way sort of doesn't center intersectionality, doesn't center like the voices of the least marginalized is just not feminism.

00:43:34.920 So I wouldn't even call that feminism at all, because feminism is about looking at how we understand what equality actually is. And for us, I think doing this work, we're really talking about how we uplift, center, and push forward the most marginalized of voices, so that we understand that gender equity and equality is what we're talking about, and that we have experienced that.

00:44:01.620 I think what Indigenous feminisms adds to this conversation is that in the time before colonization, you are talking about cultures that were truly enacting, theorizing, and living Indigenous feminisms, that were living in a way that said gender equity is about the ability of peoples to be able to live in a space where they are treated in a way that upholds dignity, respect, and relationship.

00:44:31.620 And whether that manifests itself as various genders or manifests itself as various gender identities, that doesn't play into how we understand what relationality is and the relationship that we exist in with each other.

00:44:50.480 And we know that time. We have stories about it. We talk about it. We see it enacted through our ceremonial practices. So we know that that can exist.

00:45:03.420 So for anybody to come in and say a society that exists where all genders are equal is a utopia, a utopic vision that could never possibly be, because a lot of the times we get told through our own ways in which we learn about history or the ways in which we learn about politics or culture or society, what they call social science, right? 0.85

00:45:25.320 people sort of take for granted they kind of say like patriarchy is natural and sort of like a 0.83

00:45:29.940 patriarchal role of how we understand the world is the natural way of being and then you see these

00:45:35.280 kind of moments throughout even like the ways in which we understand like science or the or you

00:45:41.240 know the animal kingdom or whatever where people are like see we can normalize this idea of like

00:45:47.580 patriarchy and inequality of genders through all these ways that we view the world but indigenous

00:45:52.700 feminism reminds you that actually when you are in relationship with the world through an

00:45:57.760 indigenous lens, you are in that relationship in a way that values the equity of gender and all

00:46:05.900 beings. And that it's a very different way of approaching. It's not extractive. It's not

00:46:13.100 exploitive. And it really values people and demonstrates that when we exist in relationship,

00:46:20.620 we make very different decisions. And it also then says, and there is a way that this can exist

00:46:27.260 because we have lived it. We have seen it. It was the way that many of our cultures were

00:46:35.000 organized. And then you see then what happens with the change with gender violence, with sort

00:46:41.120 of the introduction of like the ways in which people approach gender specifically. The attempted

00:46:46.680 genocide, I mean, this is actually really important work that's been done by Debra Miranda

00:46:51.180 here in California, where she talks about the attempted specific targeting for a genocide

00:46:57.400 of people of different genders. So people who sort of lived in art, who are a part of our

00:47:04.980 communities, who, you know, don't fit the male female binary of gender, were really targeted 0.63

00:47:12.220 for genocide especially in the Spanish mission system and so you start to see that all coming

00:47:17.940 in at the same time and so now we're intervening again because I think I don't I it's really hard

00:47:25.740 to hear from people when you start talking about this and they go well that's a utopic vision of 1.00

00:47:29.440 society I'll say you know prior to colonization many of the work that's being done by indigenous 1.00

00:47:34.480 feminists show that there are there are many indigenous cultures that did not have rape 1.00

00:47:40.860 Rape is not something that existed. 1.00

00:47:43.160 It doesn't mean that we didn't have like any instances ever in the 10,000 years minimum

00:47:48.520 history that we have.

00:47:49.960 It means that it was so rare that people can't just be like, oh, yeah, it happened all the

00:47:54.480 time or even like it happened a lot or even I can name a time when it happened because

00:47:58.720 it was so rare.

00:47:59.660 And we're willing to say that because of the work that we do.

00:48:02.640 And then people will say, that's not possible.

00:48:05.260 That's not the way it works.

00:48:06.420 and they won't believe it because we can't even imagine beyond this world of patriarchy and how

00:48:11.520 it kind of like holds us, holds onto us of how we understand things. And I think indigenous

00:48:16.540 feminism intervenes on that and says, there was a time where that is, there can be that time again.

00:48:22.500 What that means is that we have to build true and better relationships with how we all

00:48:28.240 understand each other. And we have to reject, we have to flat out reject that patriarchy,

00:48:35.400 heterosexism uh that the gender binary that these things are natural and normal we have to flat out

00:48:43.040 say that is not the way that a society is supposed to be structured and i think that work has to be

00:48:50.280 done not just by us not just by people who are in you know positions where they're teaching people

00:48:57.300 about it it needs to be done by everybody and i'm not saying that our cultures are perfect all the

00:49:03.540 time. I think what we also need to acknowledge as indigenous peoples, which we, when we talk to

00:49:10.940 each other, have a lot of discussions about is, you know, you're talking about a very long history.

00:49:14.820 Of course, during that time, we made mistakes. We did something and we didn't like the way it

00:49:20.820 turned out for the land or for the people or for the fish or for other people. Or we might have

00:49:26.560 had a policy or we might have had a way that we did something that then we realized was hurting

00:49:30.920 a certain group of people. Of course that happened. But our point is we always came from it from a

00:49:36.680 place of indigenous feminisms, from a place of looking at what true equity and equality looks

00:49:42.940 like. And we said, what do we do about this? How do we fix this? And we had systems in place to 0.76

00:49:47.080 make sure that when we understood the hurt that came within the relationship that we had with

00:49:53.380 people, places, animals, the land, that then we made different decisions because it was based on

00:49:59.660 that type of relationship. And I think it gives us a way to see forward from what we're experiencing

00:50:05.600 right now. So I should preface that you and I are recording on November 4th, the day after the

00:50:12.740 election. And I want to talk about the parallels between Andrew Jackson and Donald Trump that

00:50:17.980 you've continuously called out over the past four years on your blog. And in one post, you write,

00:50:23.560 we act like all of these things couldn't happen so that they continue to happen it becomes hard 0.98

00:50:30.180 for us to imagine a world where our president would actually round up people and kill them all

00:50:35.020 illegally even though the supreme court told them not to but it already happened it's hard for us

00:50:41.220 to imagine that our president would make a plan to invade one of our states and not make efforts

00:50:46.000 to avoid having to go to war with their own people but it already happened we can barely imagine that

00:50:52.120 one of our presidents would be beholden to propaganda news and get his facts and information

00:50:57.440 from a propaganda news site and not from informed people in government positions, but it already

00:51:03.100 happened, end quote. And yeah, I mean, the question here is open, but it definitely recognizes that

00:51:10.680 Andrew Jackson and Donald Trump are cut from the exact same cloth, like eerily so. And I wonder

00:51:17.940 if you think it will ever be possible to break this cycle under settler colonial governance?

00:51:25.840 I mean, I, you know, that's a really good question. I will say, um, so I, the, the blog

00:51:32.500 itself, it's, it's always very pithy. It's always very like, let me just throw this information out

00:51:37.200 there, but I will tell you when I write in there that I'm like 30 to 60% sure that Donald Trump

00:51:43.640 is actually just Andrew Jackson, what I mean to say is if someday Donald Trump takes his wig off

00:51:52.900 and starts saying, like, I'm Andrew Jackson and I've been zombified, it's like, I am not surprised.

00:51:59.520 And the whole rest of the world will have to be like, she was right. And I will be like, I was

00:52:03.300 right. Because it's not just eerily similar. It's almost like a weird playbook and a repetition of

00:52:12.240 the wording uh the sort of ways in which he talks about things that um that you can almost

00:52:19.620 you almost kind of feel like he's he's in some ways I mean I guess that's kind of

00:52:26.680 the standard of somebody who's like from television right or like a somebody who's

00:52:31.320 been in the entertainment industry but he's like pulling the the greatest hits the moments

00:52:35.580 and sort of being like this is my rhetoric so that people can kind of identify with me

00:52:40.380 in a way because it's so eerily similar even just the way that the like who he was running against

00:52:46.900 when he was running against Hillary Clinton even just the ways in which I mean he he venerates

00:52:51.400 Jackson a lot um like when he first moved into the White House he put up a giant portrait of

00:52:56.660 Andrew Jackson so that when you are looking and when they take pictures of him sitting at the

00:53:01.200 office desk Andrew Jackson is right behind him like like looking over his desk like lording over

00:53:06.980 him. And then one of the first things he did when he became president was he went to visit Andrew

00:53:11.900 Jackson's grave, which I felt like he was trolling me. I was like, he's like trolling me now. He's

00:53:19.180 like, now I'm going to go visit the grave of where I'm supposedly buried. Right. But I think that

00:53:24.660 what it has kind of highlighted for me, because when you start to put that information out there,

00:53:30.300 people go, well, I knew Andrew Jackson was bad. Right. Because they will often learn about like

00:53:35.480 the Trail of Tears, but they don't quite understand that what that means is that it

00:53:39.920 means for me that we should not be surprised when a system that was created to uphold

00:53:48.760 settler colonialism and white supremacy and slavery fails us. We shouldn't be surprised.

00:53:57.260 we should be annoyed and disturbed and angry about it because it didn't need to be that way

00:54:07.260 but we shouldn't be surprised when the system is working the way it's supposed to work

00:54:12.580 and I think that there are there are really important moments to understand that because we

00:54:18.840 tend to sort of look at history as like look at those people back there we would never make that

00:54:26.220 same mistake today and look at those people back there because we keep like we've been taught that

00:54:31.500 everybody's always getting smarter and better at things and so somehow that means we're not going

00:54:36.880 to make the same mistakes or we're not going to make mistakes like that but really we are those

00:54:43.460 people we are the same people and so I use this example sometimes with people where I say

00:54:48.020 150 years ago you have people coming into California and they're like I really want gold

00:54:54.660 So what I'm going to do, because I want to get all the gold, is I'm going to pour mercury into the water.

00:54:59.940 And you know somebody was like, I don't think it's a good idea to pour mercury in the water.

00:55:04.600 Like, what's going to happen?

00:55:05.780 You know, like 150 years from now, that could really affect people for all that time.

00:55:10.200 And they're like, don't worry about it.

00:55:11.520 It's like so far away.

00:55:12.700 I'm pouring mercury in the water.

00:55:14.260 It's going to give me more gold.

00:55:16.080 But we, we are the people 150 years from then.

00:55:19.620 So we're like, hey, that wasn't a good idea.

00:55:22.120 like we really shouldn't we shouldn't pour mercury in the water because now we have a bunch of water

00:55:27.000 that we can't fish from or use and i mean we like as in everybody in that part of california

00:55:32.160 so when we're thinking about our decision making process we need to realize like when we make

00:55:37.420 decisions and go and we can take all the oil out of the ground right now and we can build this thing

00:55:42.680 here because like whatever it's only going to matter 150 years from now it's really not that

00:55:47.400 far away it's like like we that's us that's like us in the future so we have to kind of start

00:55:53.520 thinking about ourselves as like connected generation to generation uh and with Andrew

00:55:58.820 Jackson me I have like a personal hope that at some point when someone mentions Andrew Jackson

00:56:05.620 everybody just rolls their eyes and it's just like yeah that guy uh it was not a good decision

00:56:12.400 maker and also we need to be very clear about what we can do to prevent that from happening

00:56:17.060 again because there are still laws on the books that allow that to happen so like the law that

00:56:24.360 was passed so that he could invade some states because he was mad at them they wouldn't participate

00:56:29.260 in these tariffs that doesn't get taken off the books right so like we have some work to do if we

00:56:34.760 want to make sure that like we're not repeating the same things and then we have to remind ourselves

00:56:40.160 like we're in the midst of it um we're the ones that need to be the loudest and we have all the

00:56:46.220 we like we have all the ability to be the loudest about what's happening so like we should speak up

00:56:52.020 and we should not sort of say oh this is just like you know acceptable and happening right now

00:56:57.940 we need to speak up all the time because we we hold people responsible from history and we're

00:57:03.380 like why didn't they speak up why didn't they fight but we're in the midst of history right

00:57:07.480 now how are we speaking up how are we fighting how are we pushing back um and i will say there

00:57:13.800 was one other thing that happened with Donald Trump that just like, I actively think he's like

00:57:18.440 trying to, he's really trying to find a way to tell us that he is Andrew Jackson. Sometimes I

00:57:25.200 think he like maybe like did some kind of weird, you know, like Illuminati thing. And he like took

00:57:31.960 in the essence of Andrew Jackson or whatever. But one of the things he did, like, I guess when he

00:57:37.100 met with Justin Trudeau, when Justin Trudeau was like, you know, the prime minister of Canada came

00:57:41.680 down to visit and he was like they were meeting he said something to him that was like oh nice to

00:57:48.020 meet you but we don't really like you do we because of the war we don't like you very much

00:57:52.800 and Justin Trudeau said that he was just like what are you talking and he goes are you talking

00:57:56.880 about the war of 1812 like is that what you're talking about with me right now and everybody

00:58:01.440 thought it was like a haha funny moment but uh you know who was in the war of 1812 Andrew Jackson

00:58:07.300 So I was just like, see this man, he he's got some type of tie to this idea of like, to him, that's like the moment of American history that we're just like, plowing through and, you know, doing whatever we want, passing laws and taking control.

00:58:24.760 And because we have continued to venerate Jackson, instead of making him the laughing stock that he should be, we're now answering for that today.

00:58:36.200 If we would have laughed at Jackson the way we should have, if we would have said that that was an aberration and also completely unacceptable, maybe it would have been different.

00:58:46.800 But we turned around and made him into some kind of like folk hero president. And now what we're seeing is that people venerate him in a way that says it's a good thing that he tried to, you know, really destroy everything that would have, that like uplifted what was happening at the time with like the people on the ground.

00:59:09.280 um but i think i mean i think when you're in indigenous studies and when you're from like

00:59:15.560 uh spaces where you're really thinking about like with native interventions and philosophies what

00:59:21.740 you start to realize is like the whole system from the beginning was kind of set up so that

00:59:26.580 it could uphold itself and white supremacy and we've been navigating it and dealing with it

00:59:33.860 But it's never going to be a system that truly empowers our country to become, I think, the vision of what it could have been had we had the right kinds of interventions at the beginning.

00:59:48.180 So maybe what we can do now is work for, like, is dismantle and disrupt and then decolonize and then reimagine what it's supposed to look like.

01:00:03.860 Yes. Oh, well, Katja, thank you so much for joining me today. And before we come to a close, I'd just like to invite you to share any closing sentiments you want to share with listeners or ways to support your work on the Native Women's Collective.

01:00:19.620 I think I always encourage people to follow me on Twitter and then follow everybody I follow on Twitter and uplift Indigenous voices.

01:00:29.060 Think about how you can have Indigenous voices be at the center of the things that you're talking about, or you can invite Indigenous peoples to tell those stories.

01:00:37.200 The work I do with the Native Women's Collective is on the revitalization of Native arts and cultures.

01:00:42.180 And we're very clear at how we work in Native communities to empower people to be able to reconnect and have a resurgence of our cultures and the things that we do.

01:00:57.460 And I think that it's a pretty powerful way of supporting, especially young people, as we work toward what decolonized futures look like.

01:01:05.300 So if people want to look us up, we're at nativewomenscollective.org.

01:01:09.240 we have a special project that's going on with my book right now where you can buy a copy of the

01:01:14.480 book through our site and then if you donate the amount of money it takes we will take that

01:01:20.360 donation and use it to purchase a book and send it to we send it to rehabilitation centers tribal

01:01:27.460 libraries and women and men's prisons in California so we're starting with California

01:01:34.940 But we want to get the book to places where people might normally not get a copy of it and really sending it to the various places where people, especially like with the women's and men's prisons, like where people are incarcerated, because we want them to have the opportunity to read this story about community and sort of the empowerment that's happening.

01:01:53.600 and often they don't get you know books in their library so we will donate a copy of the book to

01:01:59.820 the various places that we have on our list if people want to donate there it's one project that

01:02:06.060 we're doing to try to get the book out there and then we have several other projects that we're

01:02:09.740 doing which you can learn more about but it's really about connecting with community and making

01:02:14.300 sure that our community is cared for especially in times like this where we can find ways to

01:02:19.460 reconnect with our cultures so that we can move forward in really good ways.

01:02:29.540 Thank you for listening to another episode of For the Wild podcast. The music you heard today

01:02:35.580 was by Aisha Badru, Holy Rivers, and Teresa Anderson. For the Wild is created by Ayanna

01:02:42.280 Young, Erica Ekrem, Francesca Glaspell, and Melanie Younger.

01:02:49.460 Thank you.

For The Wild - January 27, 2021

Dr. CUTCHA RISLING BALDY on Land Return and Revitalization ⧸219

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