For The Wild - LIL MILAGRO HENRIQUEZ-CORNEJO on Climate Resilience Rooted in Ancestry ⧸249

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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

00:00:40.860 Lil Malagro-Aricas. You know, be prepared to walk incredibly humbly and gently because we

00:00:47.760 are all trying to figure it out together. Lil Malagro-Aricas is the founder and executive

00:00:53.480 director of Mycelium Youth Network, an organization dedicated to preparing and empowering young

00:00:59.520 people of color for climate change. Lila Milagro is a veteran of social justice organizing with

00:01:05.600 over 18 plus years of experience working on a myriad of issues, including access to higher

00:01:11.380 education for low-income people and communities of color, food sovereignty, environmental racism,

00:01:18.000 union democracy, and labor organizing, among others. In 2017, she founded Mycelium Youth

00:01:24.760 Network. She is a current recipient of the Women's Earth Alliance Fellowship.

00:01:31.140 Well, Lil, thank you so much for joining us on For the Wild podcast. I'm really looking forward

00:01:37.740 to diving deep with you today. Sounds great. Qualito Nali, thank you so much for allowing

00:01:44.040 me to be here with you. Thank you. So, you know, we've been warned that in order to limit global

00:01:53.040 temperatures from exceeding a 1.5 Celsius increase, we need to cut global emissions by 45%

00:02:00.940 in the next 10 years. However, recent reports indicate that if our current global pledges

00:02:07.460 were enacted, we'd only reduce our emissions by 1%. And so I think it should be pretty obvious by

00:02:15.180 now that ourselves and future generations are going to live through what some might define

00:02:22.020 as an ongoing climate emergency. So I want to begin our conversation by recognizing that we

00:02:29.160 really need to focus our energy into thinking about how we can be healthy amidst unhealthy or

00:02:35.180 unusual circumstances, rather than spending all of our energy on thinking about how to stop

00:02:41.020 climate change-related disasters. So as an entry point into your work with Mycelium Youth Network,

00:02:47.220 I wonder if you can talk about the importance of a new paradigm of education, coping mechanisms, and survival skills in context to climate change-related adversities.

00:03:00.020 That's right. And I think that it's, thank you for that question. It's something that consistently keeps me up at night and really drives the work of Mycelium Youth Network.

00:03:12.040 and for me it is a fundamental question about how do we rethink what we are doing in education

00:03:20.380 and rethink the point of education in many ways and I a lot of times what happens is what or what

00:03:28.980 is currently happening our business as usual model tells us that the point of education is

00:03:34.600 to get a good job to make lots of money to you know achieve the American dream in many ways

00:03:40.400 and we teach young people as if that is both where we should be going and as if that should

00:03:49.280 be the model and as if the world is not going to change and everything that you just highlighted

00:03:54.700 and there's so like you know the issue of climate change and what's coming it's becoming really

00:04:00.680 well documented and mycelium youth network starts from the idea that we need to rethink the point

00:04:07.540 of education. The point of education should not just be how do we get a good job? How do we make

00:04:12.060 lots of money? How do we quote unquote make it as individuals? But how do we prepare young people

00:04:18.100 for the world that they are already aging into? We know what is coming. We know like climate

00:04:25.240 scientists have been telling us here are all of the points that we are hitting already. And the

00:04:31.400 idea that the world is going to stay the same is really false. And I think that we need to be able

00:04:38.200 as adults to have the courage to start shifting the education and our educational model to support

00:04:44.620 young people in normalizing what we know is coming and then preparing for it accordingly.

00:04:52.180 And I think young people are already sensing the ways in which the education that they are receiving

00:04:59.380 is not up to the task of the world that they're living in and you know I think that the climate

00:05:05.140 marches that have come out recently are strong indicators that young people are seeing past the

00:05:11.420 hypocrisy of you know studying to get a good job to go to college to do all of these things when

00:05:16.660 the world itself is falling apart and so I think that as adults we need to be able to have the

00:05:23.400 courage and the bravery to say if we know what is coming is coming what does that mean for young

00:05:30.240 people from like kindergarten in terms of social emotional development in terms of science

00:05:35.500 technology engineering and arts and math skills in terms of ancestral knowledge kindergarten

00:05:40.440 through 12th grade and start shifting what we are teaching young people and how we are teaching

00:05:46.460 them so that they can actually have a chance of a better future rather than what we see now which

00:05:52.740 is only there's a great Washington Post article that was talking about that there's only only 29

00:05:58.120 percent of young people feel optimistic about the future and if that is not in of itself a reason

00:06:03.600 to start shifting the way that we're thinking about education I don't know what is. Yeah I hear

00:06:10.460 you and I've seen so many memes on social media where young people and honestly even millennials

00:06:17.380 are like, what the hell? You know, what have, what are we inheriting? And why are the older

00:06:26.360 generations not paying attention to this and thinking about our future? So I so respect what

00:06:31.860 you're doing and appreciated that introduction. And I've heard you share the importance of

00:06:38.480 dismantling the narrative, the frontline communities, which are also often BIPOC

00:06:43.100 communities need, quote, saving. And so often these narratives also pull income into the equation

00:06:49.960 while completely ignoring the wealth of wisdom that derives from BIPOC communities when it comes

00:06:56.700 to tending the land, you know, navigating failing systems, etc. So with this in mind, I'd like to 0.95

00:07:03.340 ask you how something like Mycelium Youth Network is working to change this narrative while also

00:07:09.780 developing climate resilience that is rooted in ancestral traditional practices and a science,

00:07:16.100 technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics curriculum? Yes, thank you for that question.

00:07:22.500 It's something that we try to do at two different levels, and I think that it is necessary to do it

00:07:28.280 at two different levels to really be successful. And the first level that we think about it is

00:07:32.180 as an organizational structure how are we orienting ourselves with our staffing

00:07:39.740 with our board of directors with our advisory board with the people we bring in as partners

00:07:47.080 like how are we understanding the ways in which we're you know in many ways saving ourselves

00:07:54.000 right and mycelium youth network is a predominantly queer all BIPOC staff you know black indigenous

00:08:01.600 and other people of color staff and our board is predominantly POC our board of advisors is

00:08:07.800 predominantly POC and I think that we think fundamentally about what does that mean on a

00:08:12.400 daily basis in terms of how we even do the work and how we are positioning ourselves in places of

00:08:18.800 power right in our organization to be able to have a voice in in what we are doing and how we are

00:08:25.800 doing it and then and how are we also thinking about things from a labor perspective from a 0.80

00:08:30.620 queer perspective, from an anti-ableism perspective. And so we're really trying to 0.79

00:08:37.420 think into how we're also decolonizing ourselves as an organization. I think that that's fundamental

00:08:42.940 because I don't want that to get lost in also the work that we do, because I think in order to do

00:08:49.180 the work that we do, we need to first be able to have a staff that feels empowered, that feels

00:08:54.400 like their voices matter, that where we're bringing in voices that are traditionally considered

00:08:59.240 marginalized but which are actually incredible sources of power and knowledge to be able to make

00:09:04.440 the decisions in their individual lives as workers at mycelium and for programmatically what that has

00:09:12.560 looked like has been us thinking deeply into our own ancestral traditions and practices and

00:09:18.120 recognizing that pre-colonization so many of our communities so many of our peoples for generations

00:09:23.160 and generations have been able to live in sustainable regenerative relationship with the

00:09:27.980 land and not even just live in a relationship with the lands, but live in ecosystem, live in

00:09:33.860 community, right? And so in sharing stories about plant relatives, about animal relatives, being

00:09:39.540 able to understand the nature of our relationship to a much larger ecosystem. And it has been

00:09:50.100 through the process of colonization that has really stripped so much of that knowledge from us

00:09:55.820 And, you know, taking a place like where my family is from, which is Lutatlan, El Salvador, I identify as a detribalized person of Nahuatl descent, and looking at how the cities started springing up.

00:10:11.340 And so people and the farms and the small villages started getting deforested and how people left their land in order to be able to move to the cities because they weren't able to survive otherwise.

00:10:23.740 and so what we do is we say like what is the knowledge that we have lost through the process

00:10:29.180 of colonization that our ancestors used to hold very very close and dear to them and how do we

00:10:35.340 start recapturing some of that knowledge how do we start recapturing the idea of what it means to

00:10:39.800 live in sustainable relationship to be able to know the songs and the stories of the birds around us

00:10:46.680 for example or our plant relatives and how do we infuse that knowledge and a different way of being

00:10:53.360 in relationship to the world into our curriculum. And only from that place do we then start talking

00:11:00.720 about science, technology, engineering, arts, and math techniques. Because we want young people to

00:11:07.420 feel like they don't need to be saved. They already have ancestral knowledge, which is valuable and

00:11:14.740 which is needed. And actually, this is the knowledge, that traditional ecological knowledge,

00:11:18.980 that ancestral cultural traditions and practices, that is the knowledge that will save us.

00:11:22.680 because even if we do every single thing right from a STEAM perspective, from a science perspective,

00:11:28.060 we are still going to go over the climate cliff. And so how do we actually recapture some of what

00:11:33.700 that knowledge means, start developing a different way of being in relationship to the world, to each

00:11:39.200 other, to ourselves, and then be able to think about solutions on top of that. But then the

00:11:45.380 solutions themselves would shift and change based on the conversations that we're having

00:11:49.520 that are forefronting and empowering that ancestral knowledge.

00:11:55.520 Wow. Thank you. That was really beautiful. And yeah, it's clear that Western science is not

00:12:05.660 only failing in its approach to navigating climate change, but it's also part of the problem.

00:12:12.200 So I'm wondering how does developing a curriculum that incorporates both

00:12:16.060 STEAM and ancestral knowledge move us into a much more comprehensive way of being in the world

00:12:23.780 than what the Western academic paradigm has provided us thus far, which is largely just

00:12:30.640 overwhelming data. And I will say before I answer this question that a little bit,

00:12:37.100 that my history, not a little bit, my history really comes from one of organizing and one of

00:12:42.700 recognizing that numbers do not move communities. Numbers do not move people. Data doesn't make

00:12:49.140 people take an action on something. What allows them to feel empowered to take action on something

00:12:55.120 is stories. It is connection. It is feeling this more holistic, comprehensive approach to an issue.

00:13:05.540 And so when I think about just having what is classified as Western science, I think of it as

00:13:10.740 really siloed knowledge that feels really abstract, both in my life as well as in the lives of the

00:13:18.040 students that we're talking to, our larger community. And so if we're just operating

00:13:22.280 from a place of siloed knowledge, then we are not moving people to actually shift and change.

00:13:30.820 And what Mycelium really tries to do is we try to create a system where we're understanding that

00:13:39.520 If this is a comprehensive, if climate change is a comprehensive, large issue and problem, then our solutions need to match it with comprehensive, holistic ways of being and knowing in the world.

00:13:53.680 And I think that for us, that means that we do look at science, you know, our students are taught how to read National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data, they're taught to read eco mapping, but that knowledge is deeply embedded in a different way of being in relationship to the world.

00:14:12.000 and that it needs to be because that knowledge doesn't move students it doesn't move us to

00:14:17.120 to transform our communities and so the way that I think about it one way that I think about it is

00:14:23.540 during last summer right when COVID was you know happening or getting off the ground

00:14:30.440 was we launched our resilience in pandemic times series and there was a few different

00:14:36.620 workshops that we did as part of that, but one of them was From Seeds to Songs, a musical journey

00:14:42.580 with our plant relatives. And Danny Cornejo, who is from the Opata Nation, came and led that.

00:14:49.900 And so it wasn't just a gardening class. It wasn't just a, here's how you plant a seed that

00:14:54.280 will then sprout an X amount of days that will produce X amount of food. It was how do you learn

00:14:58.740 the stories of the plants that you're planting? How do you sing their songs? How do you actually

00:15:04.360 develop a relationship to this plant and how can that relationship then transform your life

00:15:11.740 as well as allow you to see a plant as a relative and that class was a huge success with young

00:15:19.780 people and because it was about all of the ways that young people are inherently good at

00:15:25.760 understanding the world which is through like song through movement through curiosity through

00:15:29.720 innocence through wanting to develop a relationship and what western science will often tell us is

00:15:34.920 this is an object to be observed these are the data points and that that doesn't spark that

00:15:41.620 sense of creativity or wonder that we really want to to highlight and uplift at mycelium

00:15:47.260 and then i think that's actually i'll say it's also led to where we are in this moment in time

00:15:52.660 where our current way of seeing the world around us is is in a very siloed way where we're not

00:15:57.920 having relationships with the food that we eat with the water that we drink and because of that

00:16:05.480 we just see them as commodities to be used and then dismissed and we're not we don't see ourselves

00:16:11.580 in relationship with with any of the worlds around us within a traditional system right it is very

00:16:16.360 much about like like self you know maybe family maybe just people but when we don't actually

00:16:25.040 create a relationship with the world around us it is easy to abuse and to dismiss and to devalue

00:16:31.300 everything that is not us yes i feel you and yeah i'm thinking about adultism and environmental and

00:16:45.280 climate change movements and the first thing that comes to mind is the reality that for so long

00:16:51.540 these movements were not made accessible to young people. And it was also often portrayed that young

00:16:57.580 people didn't actually care. And this has changed a little bit, but adultism is still rampant. It

00:17:04.820 just takes on different forms these days. So I'm curious to hear what critiques you have on this

00:17:10.500 and specifically what you think is needed to empower young people in a way that is meaningful,

00:17:16.260 but also prevents them from getting jaded about these movements over time that's a great question

00:17:23.380 and I think about it a lot because I hear when people hear that mycelium does work with young

00:17:29.140 people or you know when we have amazing youth speakers whether that's like through mycelium

00:17:36.100 directly or in the larger world I think Greta is such a wonderful example of that we I hear a lot

00:17:40.980 of adults saying things like, youth are so inspirational. Or, you know, I feel so much

00:17:47.880 hope when I see young people and the work that they're doing. Or the opposite of that, which is 0.86

00:17:52.640 just young people don't care. And so I feel like young people are placed in this false binary of

00:17:59.440 either they're hopeful visionaries, or they just don't care and they're consistently connected

00:18:05.440 with their phones and I think about all the young people I directly talked to and what really led me

00:18:13.720 to start my psyllium was in conversation with young people who told me that they are terrified

00:18:21.180 about the state of the world and that almost every young person I've ever talked to I said

00:18:28.820 that they have a deep fear about what the future holds.

00:18:32.800 And so they go to marches and they go to protests

00:18:35.860 or they connect with each other online on social media.

00:18:39.560 And then adults tell them,

00:18:42.440 they might give them praise

00:18:43.740 in that youth are so inspirational kind of way,

00:18:46.020 or they might get dismissed,

00:18:47.260 like they're just always on their phones.

00:18:49.100 And I think about how in both of these scenarios,

00:18:51.960 we are not giving young people any inherent power

00:18:56.240 to make real change in their lives and I believe that like that is a form of adultism and it's

00:19:05.240 a way to dismiss young people even when we say young people are so hopeful but we're actually

00:19:08.880 not taking any actions to ensure that young people have a livable future that's adultism to

00:19:14.960 me because then young people are there to just serve our own needs and our own fears and our

00:19:20.260 own despair about the future without actually us having to change anything about the way the system

00:19:26.260 is created and is being run and I think young people should have decision-making power over

00:19:33.980 aspects of their lives and when I say that oftentimes it's a radical view like what they're

00:19:40.780 so mature they don't you know they don't know enough but I think that young people are also

00:19:44.300 incredibly imaginative and innovative and because they've actually experienced less

00:19:49.940 socialization than adults, they're more willing to dive into out-of-the-box thinking. And they're

00:19:56.160 more willing to question the systems that we take for granted and assume will always be true.

00:20:02.580 And I think that youth should be on school boards, for example. I think youth should be able,

00:20:07.560 should be at all the places where decisions are being made, and they should actually be heard.

00:20:11.780 Because when we make decisions about the future of the world, when we take action or don't take

00:20:16.500 action on a climate issue we are having a direct impact into the lives of young people and into

00:20:21.960 the world that they're going to age into and I think if young people like any group if any group

00:20:28.740 is old enough to experience something they're old enough to learn about why it exists and how they

00:20:35.280 can have power to be able to change it so I want us to be able to like think into that issue of like

00:20:41.520 how young people should be in all the places where decisions are being made, especially around

00:20:47.980 environmental issues, but also about their education. And it is wrong to assume that

00:20:52.580 young people do not have opinions about things or that they're not experienced enough to be

00:20:56.460 able to tell them something because they are the ones that are directly experiencing it.

00:21:11.520 You were going to see the city looking for change

00:21:18.880 What a loaded word

00:21:22.320 You would never be the same

00:21:29.580 And your sides were fogging up the windows

00:21:32.980 Watching all the lights go in and out of frame

00:21:37.080 Like gold thread over

00:21:39.280 Black velvet

00:21:42.980 Did you hear it?

00:21:46.940 What did the music sound like?

00:21:52.360 What did the music sound like?

00:21:57.460 What did the music sound like?

00:22:01.560 What did the music sound like?

00:22:04.580 It's been a long time

00:22:06.500 I'm wondering for listeners who aren't engaging in this realm, I wonder if you could speak to the

00:22:21.160 power of BIPOC youth futurism and the sort of visionary nature that's created when young people

00:22:27.620 are committed to an integrated approach to navigating climate change. When I think of

00:22:33.300 youth futurism I think actually about one moment in mycelium where we were looking at classes we

00:22:39.380 wanted to offer last summer for young people and one of the classes I I'm not an educator you know

00:22:47.260 I have I'm blessed to be surrounded by amazing educators who are fantastic at their craft but

00:22:54.720 one of the classes I do teach when I when I can is a Dungeons and Dragons class and I kind of

00:23:00.800 offered it as in a something I didn't think was going to be very important last summer

00:23:04.920 but it's something I'm really into I am a huge sci-fi fantasy nerd and it became one of the

00:23:13.860 most popular classes at Mycelium Youth Network and it was really surprising to me and to my

00:23:19.200 exceptionally cool staff that Dungeons and Dragons was all of a sudden one of our most popular

00:23:24.060 classes and we were looking at having our first conference last year and we did what we did

00:23:31.420 normally normally when we don't know exactly how we're going to go about something or when we

00:23:35.680 need feedback which is just go to young people and so we had a young person focus group for

00:23:41.260 students that have done mycelium before and we asked them what they wanted to do we're like what

00:23:45.580 do you want to if you had two days to dive into anything what do you want to dive into and these

00:23:51.000 were largely middle school some high school young people and they said that they actually wanted to

00:23:57.120 play and they wanted a space to game and that they wanted to think outside of what was possible

00:24:07.860 in that and we ended up creating apocalyptic resilience which an apocalyptic resilience

00:24:13.700 an afro-indigenous futuristic adventure and we did that for several reasons like one is we really

00:24:19.140 wanted to meet young people where they were at. And where young people are at is in the amazing

00:24:25.780 potential of futurism. The futurism that is grounded in Afrocentric or indigenous traditions, 1.00

00:24:34.120 which I think is really important because a lot of the sci-fi fantasy that we can read that is not 0.71

00:24:39.060 that can be really depressing. It can be really apocalyptic, for lack of a better word. It can be,

00:24:46.140 it can feel absent of community and what i appreciate about afro indigenism afro and

00:24:51.920 indigenistic futurisms is that it often is pushing us to have again a different relationship with

00:24:58.680 the world around us it is more hopeful it is less accepting of boundaries like racism sexism

00:25:05.100 classism and it's trying to imagine something different in our world and i think that young

00:25:11.560 people flocked to the conference we had about 140 people attend about 70 of them were young people

00:25:17.240 during a time that we had heard that young people were so zoomed out they came and they created

00:25:22.520 characters where they were were the heroes in their own adventures and I think that when we

00:25:29.080 open that up as a place of possibility when we meet young people where they're at when we allow

00:25:33.840 them to be their incredible imaginative selves and we give them the power to be able to do that

00:25:41.020 in a way that is authentic that what we have is a system or we create a process in which like young

00:25:47.980 people are able to blow every single expectation of what the world should be completely out of the

00:25:53.700 water and they're able to think collectively they're able to build relationships with one

00:25:59.100 another you see this like innate sense of curiosity there's so much there that young

00:26:04.160 people are actually hungry for because they haven't been taught it and they want to dream

00:26:10.560 big and I think as we grow older you know we get that dreaming big kind of you know taken away from

00:26:17.340 us right it's like conform conform if you want a good job conform if you want to go to college

00:26:21.440 conform and I really appreciate the the ways in which young people consistently go back into this

00:26:30.180 place of play as a labor of love and as a vision for all of us to be able to imagine something

00:26:37.680 different. Thank you. I'm feeling so energized by what you just said. And I would like to transition

00:26:51.780 into the practical makeup of Mycelium Youth Network. Some of your programs include Science

00:26:58.300 for survival, clean air is a right, air is life, and eco-mapping our present and future. So I'm

00:27:05.520 wondering if you could share what these programs look like and what is being taught, and potentially

00:27:11.100 are there any upcoming programs that you're especially excited about? Oh yes, so the programs

00:27:18.700 you mentioned are fantastic programs, and they all make up part of what we call our Climate

00:27:23.940 Resilient Schools Initiative, which is us imagining schools as resilient centers or

00:27:31.580 resilient hubs for the community around us. And what those are based off of is we will take a

00:27:38.320 school, we will train young people to read NOAA data, the National Oceonic and Atmospheric

00:27:45.040 Administration data. We will train them to read different climate mapping tools. And then we will

00:27:51.800 break down which issues are issues that they're likely to experience. And then we will do two

00:27:56.260 things. We'll do climate adaptation and climate mitigation. So what are the ways in which we can

00:28:01.400 mitigate damage around sea level rise, around drought, around fires, to, you know, around

00:28:10.040 different issues that are climate related. And then we'll also do climate adaptation. So if it's

00:28:15.000 going to happen, then what do we do to be able to prepare for these different issues? And all of our

00:28:20.460 climate resilient schools initiative is next generation science standard aligned so that it

00:28:26.600 is easily able to be embedded within science standards at schools. We also have a water is

00:28:32.740 life, clean air is a right, growing our health, food, soil, and carbon sequestration. They're all

00:28:38.880 around different climate related issues. And we, those look like, again, starting from a place

00:28:46.260 of social emotional health starting from ancestral traditions and knowledge and then you know so that

00:28:54.460 can look like anything from if we're doing a clean air is a right talking about the breath as a tool

00:29:00.560 of grounding and of like meditation and mindfulness it can look like the ways in which the breath

00:29:08.580 and different breathing activities across different traditions and cultures has looked

00:29:13.020 differently, but how it all goes back to us being able to ground into the truest version of

00:29:19.760 ourselves. And then we will talk from that point about how to create a DIY air filter. Then we

00:29:27.520 will talk about how to create a detox box, because oftentimes the chemicals in our homes are more

00:29:34.700 toxic than the chemicals outside of our homes. You know, then we will talk about how to make a

00:29:38.580 tincture or a salve and which are the plant relatives that we need to be able to bring in

00:29:44.000 that medicine to our bodies and so it is always from we always start off from that place of

00:29:50.320 what does this mean for us social and emotionally ancestrally culturally and then how do we then

00:29:56.700 dive into the the technical you know know-how the other one of the programs i'm actually really

00:30:03.300 excited about is our telling our story program. We are partnering with Bioneers to train about 20

00:30:12.280 some odd young people from across the nation. So it'll be young people from the Bay Area, San

00:30:19.040 Francisco Bay Area, connecting with young people from Louisville, Kentucky, connecting with people

00:30:23.180 from New Mexico, connecting with people from Boulder, Colorado and Denver to look at environmental

00:30:30.000 issues that are of concern in their area then they'll learn how to speak their truth to those

00:30:36.480 particular issues so they'll learn how to create podcasts how to do video blogging how to make a

00:30:43.380 social media post go viral how to do written journalism around these issues and then we'll

00:30:49.100 pay young people to actually be able to post and share out those stories because that's another

00:30:53.940 thing that we believe in is that young people if they put in the time and the labor they should

00:30:59.000 get paid for their work and they should be valued for the work they're doing and so that's a program

00:31:03.380 we're really excited about we're really excited about our gaming for justice which you know i can

00:31:08.780 talk about a little bit later but which is a version of our dungeons and dragons curriculum

00:31:14.100 where we're looking at environmental justice issues but those are some of our programs and

00:31:18.620 what we do we also do like one-off workshops for communities we've done last 2020 january 2020

00:31:26.860 which feels like a lifetime ago we co-ran with youth versus apocalypse a youth resilience village

00:31:33.800 where we ran the science for survival station and just trained up young people on different

00:31:40.480 climate preparedness you know tools and techniques that they can use so we've done things like that

00:31:46.300 we also do shorter sessions just around like kitchen herbalism or kitchen science or you know

00:31:52.400 a mini growing our health gardening class. We offer so many programs because we recognize that

00:31:59.460 the climate change itself has so many, there's so many issues we need to prepare for. And we're

00:32:05.820 really trying to meet young people in the community where they're at to be able to provide

00:32:11.860 solutions. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I wonder if some listeners might be thinking to themselves,

00:32:20.240 who is decolonizing education for and i think about this balance between remembrance and

00:32:27.940 unlearning now for myself i know that if i had access to this sort of information earlier

00:32:33.780 it would have saved me from ultimately having to spend a great deal of time

00:32:38.440 unspinning myself from the tangles of western indoctrination in a post titled keeping bees

00:32:45.720 at the end of the world, you write, quote, we must return to our plant and animal relatives

00:32:51.460 into our own ancestral knowledge. If we are to survive, we need to learn what has been lost

00:32:57.660 during the violent process of colonization. Imagine a Puerto Rico where there were thousands

00:33:03.400 of community gardens, where everyone knew how to rebuild and water purification was the norm.

00:33:10.480 Imagine a California where public education meant that youth were trained in creating

00:33:15.200 defensible space against wildfires. Imagine a New Orleans where bayous were national treasures

00:33:21.940 so that when hurricanes hit, they slowed down enough to pose minimal danger, end quote.

00:33:29.300 And so I'd like to ask for your reflection here and how you see decolonizing education

00:33:36.820 engaging with public education, particularly for listeners who are parents and maybe have

00:33:43.400 their children enrolled in public schools right so I think that I wrote that post um and I have

00:33:51.920 to do a sad spoiler alert that my bees died because of the forest fires and because of climate change

00:33:58.600 which I was incredibly sad about but uh the I wrote that post because I

00:34:04.000 i new orleans in particular katrina had a significant impact on my life and i grew up

00:34:14.020 in new orleans and i had left a few years before katrina had to go to undergrad and i didn't know

00:34:21.160 for months on end if my father was alive because he was he was in there or my and my aunts and my

00:34:30.420 uncles had to completely leave their homes for months they weren't able to go back and I remembered

00:34:36.380 seeing these videos of people who were in almost all black communities who were in incredibly

00:34:45.980 desperate straits and nobody knew what to do and I had this deep pain in my heart and I still have

00:35:00.440 it when I think about both Katrina but then also you know now we've seen in Puerto Rico in Texas

00:35:05.740 here in the you know also a United States case here in Texas and I have this firm belief that

00:35:14.200 the government as a whole is not putting into place policies that show that they care

00:35:24.200 about poor people of color. And I have a fundamental belief that the government will

00:35:30.000 not save us. And by us, I mean, poor people, communities of color in heart hit areas,

00:35:36.500 we are already seeing the ways they're stripping us of so many right to vote, 1.00

00:35:42.340 to just representation. And if we are going to save, like, if something is going to save us,

00:35:49.660 it has to be us. And I think about how education is not meant to produce people that can,

00:36:03.200 that know basic skills, like how to purify water, for example, how to build a fire,

00:36:10.380 how to keep warm in a blizzard right and there are things that we can do there are fundamentally

00:36:19.120 things that we can do in these situations but we don't have the knowledge to be able or we don't 0.72

00:36:24.300 have access to the knowledge to be able to tap into that and so when I think about a decolonial

00:36:29.760 education I think about relearning things that have been lost to us I think about being able to

00:36:36.800 train up for what's coming in the future and not from a like a conspiracy theorist kind of

00:36:43.820 perspective but just like from the fact that when climate disasters happen or when extreme weather

00:36:50.320 happens or and when we say extreme weather now what we consider extreme weather now is going to

00:36:55.400 be I feel like the norm in 20 years right 10 years uh is it's not sooner but like how do we how do we

00:37:02.080 respond how do we create ways of being together or of responding to emergencies that is different

00:37:09.720 and I'm I get incredibly hopeful when I think about things like the mutual aid network that's

00:37:13.860 happening right now and the ways that people are actually saving other people not governments

00:37:19.660 saving us and so I would like us to actually start and instead of waiting for government to

00:37:27.260 you know to come around or to fix it is to start saying actually no we have the resources and we

00:37:33.060 have the knowledge within our own communities to start rebuilding to start relearning to start

00:37:37.920 remembering how to do all of these things and you know to take it back to new orleans there

00:37:43.220 my dad lives in new orleans east and there was an amazing documentary that came out about

00:37:49.740 vietnamese populations in new orleans east and how they were able to rebuild fairly quickly after

00:37:54.920 Katrina because they had already gone through so much upheaval at three or four different moments

00:38:01.380 within their lives right like transferring over and how that community was able to rebuild itself

00:38:07.180 because they were immediately able to start you know connecting with other community members start

00:38:11.180 like distributing resources it's like they were like hey we got this rebuilding thing because

00:38:15.460 we've had to do it so many times and I think about well why can't we why can't we do that like why

00:38:20.120 can't that just be the norm of what we teach young people why can't we have something like mutual aid

00:38:24.680 networks and how to set up mutual aid networks, which is also a topic that our middle schoolers

00:38:29.360 and high schoolers are really interested in learning is like, how do we set up mutual aid

00:38:33.320 networks to start like easily redistributing resources to one another or to start distributing,

00:38:39.740 doing skill shares to one another. And I think that that for me is what decolonial education is,

00:38:46.240 is that personal connection, that not waiting for governments or even nonprofits or corporations to

00:38:52.960 come in and save us, that we actually have, we can train ourselves and we can train our

00:38:58.640 communities in having the knowledge to be able to grow how we want to grow.

00:39:04.180 And that to me is really beautiful and really hopeful.

00:39:22.960 And all the world's amalgamated

00:39:27.860 Flecks of color and supernatural

00:39:31.780 Floating landscapes set before your lovin' eyes and picture boards

00:39:39.740 golden ages castle people a pauper life and the priest united

00:39:55.580 sitting down at your kitchen table social classes clash no more social classes clash no more

00:40:09.740 wow i really love that you just said all that because i was

00:40:18.580 have been actually in multiple conversations about mutual aid and community empowerment

00:40:25.440 versus big gov or big industry or policy and and just this uh maybe it's two sides of the same

00:40:37.040 coin or maybe that's not even the right metaphor but I'm just thinking about the pressure put on

00:40:44.040 communities that they can't empower themselves and they need big brother or empire to make sure

00:40:52.460 they're okay when really when we look in history that's never been the case and most likely never

00:40:58.140 will be so I am really grateful for you bringing that up again to our attention that the power

00:41:06.080 really lies within the community and it always has and it always will and um yeah in preparing

00:41:12.840 for our conversation i came across a report titled preparing people on the west coast for climate

00:41:18.740 change that was put together by the international transformational resilience coalition and it

00:41:24.720 concludes quote further because traumatized and stressed people often withdraw into a self-protective

00:41:32.080 survival mode left unaddressed, the harmful human psychological and psychosocial spiritual reactions

00:41:39.980 to climate impacts also threaten to stall or derail efforts to reduce the climate crisis

00:41:45.800 to manageable levels, end quote. And yeah, it's like we often hear about how mental health is

00:41:53.640 suffering in context to climate grief and anxiety, but less so do we hear about the correlation

00:41:59.400 between how well-being and personal preparedness impact our capacity for community resilience.

00:42:06.640 And so I wonder if you could share a bit about the argument for integrated knowledge as a

00:42:12.220 preemptive measure that will help stave off mental health crisis and violence and perhaps

00:42:18.780 even encourage us to have stronger social skills than what we have now.

00:42:23.100 yeah and you know before i answer that i just want to quickly go back to the second question

00:42:30.460 and also say like i think that i think there is space to do both but i think that if we wait for

00:42:35.560 government to do it first it's never going to happen and i think that what i think is is helpful

00:42:41.820 is the ways in which community action then grudgingly bring government along with it and

00:42:48.280 by that I mean like you know government kind of follows when we after we have a community action

00:42:53.780 that is or a community response and so I think it I say I always believe in like having community

00:43:02.900 lead before government leads but so I just wanted to just thank you for that point yeah appreciate

00:43:09.340 it but like in terms of the ITRC I love ITRC and I think they did they they're thinking really big

00:43:16.880 in terms of what does what will be the mental health effects of climate change and I think

00:43:25.100 about how within our communities or within like communities that are traditionally thought of as

00:43:29.980 again like marginalized or disadvantaged and these are all terms that I think are for me

00:43:37.560 really hard because it doesn't embody who my community is and or you know I think about like

00:43:45.000 minorities, like these are all terms that for me are really difficult because we are so much more

00:43:49.300 than that. And we are so resilient and we carry with us both the legacy of intergenerational

00:43:56.560 trauma, but we also carry within us so strongly the legacy of intergenerational healing

00:44:02.260 and how we have ancestors, my ancestors, I think in many ways, a lot of our ancestors who have died

00:44:09.860 to preserve our ways of healing whether that is within a mexican tradition um you know doing

00:44:19.040 limpias whether that's doing like you know herbal flower baths whether that's doing prayer whether

00:44:25.260 that's the drum you know in many different ways like we carry so much intergenerational healing

00:44:31.760 and how that is beautiful to me.

00:44:37.360 And I think about how our, again,

00:44:39.860 what is the value of education?

00:44:41.320 What is the meaning?

00:44:42.000 How are we redefining education?

00:44:44.220 And that looks like for me,

00:44:47.460 incorporating a strong social and emotional dynamic

00:44:50.260 into our curriculum.

00:44:51.940 That's also what we're trying to do

00:44:53.380 with our ancestral traditions.

00:44:54.280 And so we want our curriculum to really match

00:44:57.780 the social and emotional needs of young people.

00:44:59.980 and I think that that's why young people resonate so strongly with our curriculum

00:45:06.320 is because some days we are actually talking about water catchment and water purification

00:45:11.000 and the necessity of being able to access clean water and some days we're actually just talking

00:45:18.320 about how hard the world is right now for a young person and creating open space to have that

00:45:26.280 conversation. And Mycelium just finished our latest round of our affinity groups. We offer

00:45:33.260 three different affinity groups, three, four different affinity groups. We offer our Talk

00:45:38.380 Black to Me, which is the affinity group for Black youth, Queer and Teen, which is an affinity group

00:45:43.260 for queer youth, Sacred Circles, which is an affinity for Native youth, and Inlakesh, which

00:45:49.900 is an affinity group for youth activists and our only point of being together in those spaces

00:45:56.220 is to be together in those spaces there's no agenda beyond what young people want to bring

00:46:02.760 and I think that when we think about a lot of times like mental health it is something that

00:46:07.000 we do as an afterthought or it is something that is not as important as meeting next generation

00:46:14.720 science standards and GSS science standards, but it is actually the work. And if we're going to

00:46:20.400 prepare for the future, if we're actually, then we need to recognize that for a lot of our young

00:46:25.120 people, we are already living in difficult environments because of how poverty and racism

00:46:34.340 and heterosexism for a lot of our queer youth have played out over their lives. And so just

00:46:41.260 taking a moment to slow down and recognize that not as something extra that we have to do but as

00:46:48.180 the work itself that we have to do I think is really important to being able to support young

00:46:53.320 people in their mental health and in even like when I say mental health that feels kind of off

00:46:59.780 to me because I'm like this is a we try to be holistic and their mental health again feels like

00:47:06.000 a siloed term like there's mental health and then there's physical health no it's all an

00:47:09.740 interconnected system and how do we support young people at every single angle or every single part

00:47:15.880 of their system to be able to feel whole and I we can never talk about with young people you know

00:47:24.360 doing a steam project or even talking about the run for salmon if young people aren't in a mental

00:47:30.640 place to deal with it because they just went through a trauma and so just the need to really

00:47:35.940 prioritize and highlight that social emotional health that is equally as important as the

00:47:42.960 ancestral traditions and knowledge, and is completely wrapped up in the ways that we try

00:47:46.720 to do it, that is also equally important into this theme. And so we really want to create a system,

00:47:53.020 and we've done this more and more as we start to develop out as an organization, but we want to

00:47:57.880 create a system in which that knowledge is just as sacred and just as important as more traditional

00:48:07.120 STEAM type activities. Because when, you know, things are incredibly hard, that's what we go to

00:48:15.880 to just ground ourselves to still feel human. And I think that that often gets lost in conversations

00:48:21.580 around education and meeting standards is just that holistic heart education that for us is so

00:48:30.100 vital. Yeah, I really agree with you. And I know that prior to your work with Mycelium Youth

00:48:40.880 Network, you were looking at faith-based activism and liberation theology. And I know we could have

00:48:48.140 a whole conversation on this alone, but I really do believe that having a spiritual practice or

00:48:53.780 an orientation towards faith can really feed us in many ways in terms of our ability to

00:49:00.080 commit to world-making practices. And I think mainstream environmentalism and climate change

00:49:06.760 movements have really alienated themselves from this course of thought, you know, for so many

00:49:12.840 reasons. But as someone who has looked at the ways that religious faith can be connected to

00:49:18.520 social activism, I wonder if I could ask you what you think the role of religious faith is in terms

00:49:26.060 of transforming communities and building climate resilience. Yeah, that's a great question. I feel

00:49:33.380 like it's a question that we don't ask ourselves enough on the left. I think that as a whole,

00:49:38.680 we have ceded religion and faith to the right. And I think it's been a detriment to us as a

00:49:46.680 society. And I think that faith can be such a powerful vehicle to enact social change. My family

00:49:55.040 is from Kuzatlan. My mother is from Kuzatlan, which is now known as El Salvador. And my family

00:50:02.240 has a strong history of liberation theology and I think about bringing faith into movements is

00:50:09.300 about recognizing again that people are not driven by data people are driven by deep-seated beliefs

00:50:16.060 by stories by connections and also faith-based places like churches or mosques or like different

00:50:25.040 cultural centers are incredibly important places to mobilize people and the government people

00:50:32.120 generally don't trust the government i think for the most part at least in my communities

00:50:35.320 they don't trust the government and but they will trust is a church or there's what's happening at

00:50:41.240 their school and so if we can start thinking about organizing whether that is environmental justice

00:50:49.960 organizing or labor organizing or whatever as fundamental love for each other and how it is a

00:50:58.360 call to us to action, to put our faith in something larger, right? I feel like that's so much of

00:51:04.420 organizing. We're putting our faith in the power of people to mobilize for something larger than

00:51:09.560 us. I think that that is such a powerful way to tell people that they can bring their full selves

00:51:17.040 forward and that we will hold them as a movement in their full selves and that they don't want to

00:51:23.560 check any part of themselves at the door they don't have to silo their faith they don't have

00:51:27.800 to silo their politics right and so you know we can have really difficult conversations about

00:51:33.120 the connections between faith and politics and i you know in the united states we're taught that

00:51:37.960 you don't talk there's two things you don't talk about at the dinner table like what is it faith

00:51:41.800 and politics and those are we're then telling people we don't have difficult conversations

00:51:46.540 that it is more important to keep a veneer of civility quote-unquote um at the dinner table

00:51:53.560 than it is to you know recognize that people are dying in the streets and they're dying from

00:51:58.940 policies and I think that it is okay for us to have difficult conversations and I think

00:52:02.820 that faith should be used to challenge ourselves to be the very best versions of ourselves that we

00:52:11.000 can be for something larger than ourselves whether that is for our community whether that is for our

00:52:18.420 planet whether that is for the future generations that are going to come after us like I think that

00:52:24.080 unless we grapple with that conversation we're not we're not meeting people where they're at

00:52:30.180 we're we're assuming that you know we can win it in all of these different ways when I don't think

00:52:35.520 that we can I don't feel like we also have enough time to try to figure it out without faith and

00:52:40.560 without bringing faith into the conversation. And so, you know, there's that study that says

00:52:46.340 that we have until 2030 to make radical changes. Well, the things that people trust most are

00:52:51.420 schools and communities, like community organizations and churches. And so let us

00:52:58.180 actually start diving deep into those difficult conversations that we know are what shifts and

00:53:04.120 changes people in their lives rather than ignore it because we feel like we need to silo it because

00:53:10.160 it is not for us and and I feel like yeah that that's how we that's how we really make change

00:53:16.880 in our communities yeah I'm so with you and I'm so happy that we got to touch on that a bit because I

00:53:27.400 yeah I've been thinking about that more and more and as we come to a close I just want to talk a

00:53:36.040 bit about normalizing our fear and channeling it into action. And I've heard you share that

00:53:42.500 Mycelium Youth Network sort of came as a response to a movement in time where you were feeling a

00:53:49.240 lot of anxiety for the future. And this is obviously so relatable to many, definitely

00:53:55.500 including myself. And so I'd just like to ask what advice you'd offer to those who feel similarly

00:54:02.860 now? Yeah. I mean, it's, it's also the same advice I would offer myself. I have such deep

00:54:11.440 anxiety. It is, and I'm starting to do better with my anxiety, but I have, I oftentimes think

00:54:19.400 my anxiety is my, is very pragmatic. Um, but on a good day, it's very pragmatic on a bad day.

00:54:25.980 It's just hard to get out of bed. But I think that I have learned through doing this work

00:54:31.840 that when my anxiety or when my fear rests just in fear and just in myself, and it is a tight

00:54:40.520 ball in my chest or in my neck, it is incredibly debilitating. It is impossible. And every time

00:54:54.120 I connect with others. Every time I step into spaces where I am not prioritized and where I'm

00:55:03.800 there in service of others, my fear that like little ball in my chest or in my neck kind of

00:55:10.320 shrinks down. And I think that when we do work, when we commit ourselves lovingly to a cause that

00:55:21.980 is larger than us while still practicing self-care I think I'm all for self-care so I don't want to

00:55:26.720 say this is all just self-sacrifice but when I am able to ground into something that feels larger

00:55:33.240 than myself and to do work for something that is larger than me I feel that like not in my chest

00:55:42.020 slowly start unraveling and then it is not just the work itself that does that it is the connection

00:55:49.300 and the communication with others and when I'm able to share that with young people or when I

00:55:55.820 hear young people sharing that with each other I see the ways that this thing that feels so scary

00:56:03.020 and large becomes smaller and smaller and smaller the more it gets spoken and I think there's there's

00:56:10.400 so much power in just being able to share those stories with one another and knowing that we're

00:56:15.520 not alone. And I hear from young people all the time that they wish adults would talk to them

00:56:22.240 about this. And I get it. It's incredibly scary. Climate change is incredibly scary. It's scary

00:56:28.200 for me. And I do this work all the time. I pour over this news like every single day. And at the

00:56:34.940 same time, the more we speak it out loud, the more it becomes manageable, the more we can share,

00:56:41.100 the more we create connection and so I would say to speak it out loud as much as you can

00:56:47.120 share it with those that are also afraid I think if young people are old enough to experience it

00:56:56.020 they're young enough to be able to talk about it they're young enough to be empowered to create

00:57:00.660 solutions around it there's so many amazing people doing groundbreaking work around climate

00:57:07.460 adaptation and climate mitigation. But we don't see any of that in the news. And so unless we

00:57:14.500 start seeking that out, unless we start figuring out where those conversations are at, it's

00:57:20.660 impossible to know that. And so my advice would be to share, to share constantly, to be ready to

00:57:27.360 grieve a tremendous amount that we've already lost, and to also, in sharing those stories, be prepared

00:57:36.400 to empower young people to empower yourself to create visionary change because humanity to me

00:57:49.080 is both so beautiful sometimes and so terrible sometimes but the beautiful part is the ways in

00:57:54.680 which we consistently adapt and we are resilient and we try and we struggle and we share and I

00:58:02.520 would say that is for me the most beautiful part and it's when we don't do that when we are just

00:58:08.200 in our fear that things can turn toxic and then we see the worst of humanity so I would definitely

00:58:14.580 say talk to young people about it share that you're afraid share that you don't have any answers

00:58:19.200 if that's also the case we don't have answers we're just trying to figure out together what

00:58:24.020 that looks like but share that you're also willing to try to meet a young person where they are at

00:58:28.700 in their fair and you're willing to think about it with them I think is incredibly powerful I think

00:58:33.500 if there's any organizations native organizations in particular that are doing work in your

00:58:39.080 communities it's like moving beyond a land acknowledgement I see a lot of non-profits

00:58:43.460 do land acknowledgement as if that's it like we acknowledge we sell this land for you and we're

00:58:47.500 done but also like seek out native communities that are in your area pay a land tax if it's you

00:58:53.420 know relevant to your community figure out what are the traditional ecological sources of knowledge

00:58:58.040 that are there support them wholeheartedly you know melinda adams is another scholar that does

00:59:04.620 amazing work in northern california around traditional fires and traditional burns

00:59:08.100 and like support that work that there's people out there that are doing visionary groundbreaking

00:59:14.220 work and support them you know whether that's through funding whether that's through showing

00:59:18.900 up at events whether that's through conversation whether that's through sharing your story

00:59:22.900 and be prepared to walk humbly in it you know whether that's with a young person or somebody

00:59:28.840 that you might have privilege over you know be prepared to walk incredibly humbly and gently

00:59:34.560 because we're all trying to figure it out together beautiful beautiful beautiful that's such an

00:59:42.800 amazing way to yeah start to wrap up our conversation but before we completely leave

00:59:50.980 each other for this time i just wanted to ask if there's anything else you'd like to share with

00:59:55.640 listeners you know follow us on facebook or twitter or instagram i'm a bit of a i feel very

01:00:03.160 old with social media i'm not even that old but i feel very old in social media but follow us on

01:00:07.180 social media we have amazing people leading the work um you know we do offer classes virtually

01:00:13.540 if you want to get involved in that but I yeah I just want to say like meet there's one lesson I

01:00:22.480 would have been or viewers take away or listeners I should say take away it is to meet young people

01:00:28.300 where they are at because like what is often seen within an adult culture as frivolous or silly

01:00:33.920 is actually some of this the spaces for really groundbreaking transformational work and that to

01:00:40.620 me is is where young people are actually visionary and hopeful and not just them giving a speech

01:00:45.180 right so meeting young people uh where they are at and providing them a seat at the table because

01:00:51.180 they are going to go through it a thousand times more than we are and have right yeah absolutely

01:00:58.820 oh well thank you so much lil this has been just a really deep and um beautiful time to share with

01:01:07.900 you so thanks so much for your work and for joining us on the podcast yes thank you so much

01:01:14.960 for having me thank you for listening to another episode of for the wild podcast the music you

01:01:24.240 heard today was by harry foster leah thomas and ian george for the wild is created by

01:01:30.080 Ayanna Young, Erica Ekrem, and Francesca Glassbell.

For The Wild - September 01, 2021

LIL MILAGRO HENRIQUEZ-CORNEJO on Climate Resilience Rooted in Ancestry ⧸249

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