For The Wild - LYLA JUNE on Resistance and Forgiveness in the Final Years of Patriarchy ⧸43

00:00:00.000 There's a battle raging on the sacred land

00:00:23.360 Our brothers and sisters had to take a stand

00:00:27.360 Against us now for what we've all been doing

00:00:34.060 On the sacred land there's a battle brewing

00:00:40.140 I wish somebody would share the news

00:00:49.440 I wish somebody would share the news

00:00:55.680 I wish somebody would share the news

00:01:03.080 Oh, now it's been about 500 years

00:01:16.720 And we keep taking what we give away

00:01:25.680 Hello, this is Ayanna Young, and I welcome you to For the Wild podcast.

00:01:30.220 Today we are continuing our conversation with Lila June, poet, scholar, and frontlines activist.

00:01:37.840 You can find part one of this episode on forthewild.world.

00:01:43.040 This episode is in collaboration with Living Village Culture and The Compass at Lightning in a Bottle.

00:01:49.220 Lila, along with myself and other Earth Warriors and movement builders, will be speaking at

00:01:54.840 the Compass at LIB at the end of the month, over the weekend of May 26.

00:02:00.080 We hope to see you there.

00:02:02.440 I'd like to kind of transition the conversation and talk about resistance.

00:02:08.920 And, you know, I saw that you were just at Standing Rock, and that's been such a powerful

00:02:14.620 movement that has brought so many people together and and specifically right now I'd like to talk

00:02:20.740 about women and resistance and the meaning of that for you women have nurtured the earth and 0.96

00:02:29.460 new generations for thousands of years even as patriarchal culture has attempted to spread a

00:02:35.460 wave of shame and silence over us through violence and oppression we continue to heal and protect

00:02:42.340 life and i would love if you wouldn't mind sharing your thoughts on how the history of women as

00:02:48.360 nurturers and life givers holds deep significance within the environmental resistance and activism

00:02:55.340 movements that are taking hold wow that's a beautiful sentiment and beautiful question

00:03:04.300 And, well, I can't really answer this question completely without explaining why women are so central to sustainability and how my personal life has taught me that.

00:03:19.780 As a young woman, I experienced a lot of abuse in ways that women should never be abused.

00:03:27.160 And it didn't really take the form that we conventionally think of when we think of sexual abuse.

00:03:32.680 I guess we think of drugs being involved or forcefully holding someone down or something

00:03:40.860 like that but oftentimes my abuse was more subtle than that it was more guilt driven like if you do

00:03:47.920 this you'll make me happy or if you just would do this you will prove your love to me or things like

00:03:53.500 that you know so it wasn't really like I was fitting the conventional definition of rape but

00:03:59.240 it was rape nonetheless I also experienced the drugging kind of rape too and probably every

00:04:04.640 different kind you could could experience but growing up that desecration you could say of

00:04:11.920 my body really impacted me and it impacted those around me because I thought that to be desecrated

00:04:22.240 was to be desacredized, as if your sacredness could be lost. And it took me a while to realize

00:04:30.080 that there is nothing anyone can do to my body. And for that matter, there's nothing so horrible

00:04:35.720 that I could do that would make me unsacred, and that I am sacred. I'm still sacred. I always will

00:04:43.480 be sacred as the day I was born. You hold a baby girl in your arms, and if there's anything, even

00:04:49.700 in this sacred-less society, you can tell that she's sacred. Something about this baby is sacred.

00:04:58.660 And to know that I still have that same sacredness after all people have done to my body

00:05:02.820 was really helpful to me. And the way that people around me were affected, well, the men,

00:05:10.300 they want the women to be safe. They want the women to be happy. The little boys, you know,

00:05:16.180 they come into this world oftentimes with a very fierce love for their mothers and they want them

00:05:24.140 to be safe they want them to be happy and if they watch their mothers get hurt or their sisters get

00:05:29.920 hurt oh there's nothing that could incense a man more than that and what's even worse is when he

00:05:36.160 blames himself for it like oh i could have done this i should have done that i could have locked

00:05:39.900 the door i could have called the cops blah blah blah i could have beat him up and same way that 0.99

00:05:45.260 A woman says, oh, it's my fault I got raped. 0.99

00:05:47.660 I should have done this. 1.00

00:05:48.400 I should have done that.

00:05:49.300 I should have said this.

00:05:50.120 I should have said that.

00:05:51.340 And so we question ourselves.

00:05:53.160 And if we have fulfilled our duty as either mothers or fathers, and so, and if I've been 0.63

00:06:02.080 raped and I cooperated with that rape, then I've disgraced my body somehow.

00:06:07.540 And the men say, if the women got hurt and I cooperated with them getting hurt somehow 0.76

00:06:12.920 by not being a good enough protector or being good enough this or that,

00:06:17.660 then maybe I've lost my humanity.

00:06:20.440 And the moment we believe we've lost our humanity

00:06:22.640 is the moment that we implode as an individual

00:06:26.140 and we don't allow the greatness that wishes to come through us to come through us.

00:06:32.060 We don't allow ourselves to shine and to bloom

00:06:37.120 and to sing out the song that was written into our DNA

00:06:42.280 each and every one of us and so it's like a human walking at 10 because if you believe you've lost

00:06:49.520 your humanity which i did believe you don't allow yourself to fully speak at 100 fully walk fully

00:06:58.720 think fully express your truest most beautifulest self because there's so much shame you think how

00:07:05.780 could someone like me do this? And so rape is a very profound tactic of oppression because it

00:07:12.840 kind of killed two birds with one stone. You take out the woman and you take out the men who love

00:07:17.540 her because they feel like they've made some mistake. And so like, even when I talk to my,

00:07:23.200 my male family members about what happened to me, they just get so, oh, they just don't want

00:07:29.000 to believe it happened. Cause even though they weren't even there, they still feel like it's

00:07:32.220 their fault and so when we heal the women we conversely we feed two birds with one scone

00:07:39.540 because we're feeding the woman and we're feeding the men who love her and we're uplifting the woman

00:07:46.020 and we're indirectly uplifting the men who love her so with the women being healthy and whole

00:07:51.960 and they start to see how precious they are how beautiful they are they can start to express

00:07:58.060 their gift, as I was lucky to be able to get sober and to heal from the rape, which I didn't

00:08:04.840 really need to do anything to heal. I just kind of needed to realize that there was nothing wrong

00:08:08.600 with me. And boom, I was healed. Then I was able to truly be all that I am. And so if we help the

00:08:19.100 women, we help everything. And the Cree have a proverb that says, a nation is not defeated until

00:08:25.320 the hearts of the women are on the ground because they knew that ultimately it was the women who

00:08:31.640 were the pillars of the society and what you have then is you have a converse of that which is a

00:08:39.820 nation can be restored if we uplift the hearts of the women off the ground and obviously you get

00:08:45.280 into a lot of philosophical debates about gender binaries there and i haven't quite figured out how

00:08:51.320 to tackle that debate even though I myself believed I was gay for a long time but kind of

00:08:58.660 realized that that was me wanting to be male because I thought being female was a curse

00:09:02.920 that's a whole nother story but I don't want to avoid that conversation that debate of the gender

00:09:08.180 binaries and is that accurate is that right blah blah which is an important question I don't know

00:09:14.120 how to answer that right now but anyway forgive me for not interrogating that issue but if we go

00:09:20.800 back to sort of this world where womanhood and manhood, which to me doesn't mean skirts and

00:09:27.740 lipstick or monster trucks and big muscles or anything like that. It means more like,

00:09:32.460 can you birth a human being out of your body? That's how I define woman. Do you have that 0.87

00:09:38.900 ability? And even if you don't, maybe you had a hysterectomy or something, but you came to this

00:09:43.860 earth ready and willing to try. You know, that makes you a woman in my eyes. Whether you want

00:09:50.300 to wear baggy pants or a skirt is a whole nother thing. So in terms of women being leaders of the 1.00

00:09:58.360 resistance, if you will, by and large, women, this is a big generalization warning, women lead with

00:10:10.260 their hearts. And women have a very intimate connection to the children, not only their own

00:10:20.340 children, but because they've raised children or they have ability to raise children, a propensity

00:10:27.780 to raise children, they also feel the needs of other children as well. And so if our movement

00:10:33.640 is designed to create a hospitable world for the next seven generations then the women is probably 0.99

00:10:41.520 who we should be talking to because they have an innate and intimate connection to when children 1.00

00:10:47.380 need to use the bathroom when they're hungry when they need to sleep what they're going to need to

00:10:52.620 grow up into adults they have a very keen understanding of this especially the grandmothers

00:10:57.880 because the grandmothers have not only seen it happen for them they've also seen it happen for

00:11:03.860 their children's children and they're in that phase they're in that grandmother's lodge as

00:11:09.660 my mother calls it where they have a very longitudinal understanding that is a very

00:11:16.660 long-term understanding of what it means to raise a generation from the earth and so

00:11:25.320 if our movement, in other words, is about creating a hospitable planet for our children,

00:11:30.560 then we should probably be talking to the women. And moreover, we should probably be talking first

00:11:35.560 to the grandmothers. And that's how it was in the old days. The grandmothers were the leaders

00:11:41.180 of the society, because not only did they have that motherly nature, but they also had just been

00:11:50.260 here for a long time and seen a lot of things and learned a lot of things through experience.

00:11:56.580 And so they were the ones who chose people to take certain positions of leadership. They were

00:12:02.840 like the leaders of the leaders. And so it all comes back to life. It all comes back to the fact

00:12:10.480 that we are here sitting, breathing, opening our eyes, seeing, and that this miracle that we call

00:12:16.880 life is enabled by the woman's sacrifice to carry and birth us which if you've ever been in a birth

00:12:25.140 it is not easy it is not easy if you've ever birthed someone or been around someone who birthed

00:12:32.380 someone when they birthed that someone you will have a profound respect for all mothers because

00:12:38.720 that act of birthing is hard it's difficult it's painful but it's worth it because at the end of

00:12:45.780 you have life. And so if our movement is about life, then we probably should be talking to the

00:12:53.400 ones who bear life. Having said this, some movements aren't about life. Some movements

00:13:00.620 are about revenge. Some movements are about winning a race. Some movements are about winning

00:13:08.560 a game. And maybe that's why those movements are not led by women, because at the end of the day,

00:13:15.420 they're not about life and we need to be careful to not slip into that because the no dapple

00:13:22.700 movement is about water which is about life water is life and so if we slip and we stop fighting for

00:13:30.380 water and we start fighting against the police against the governor of north dakota against

00:13:37.240 trump against the oil industry if we start to fight as a sense of revenge or a sense of

00:13:44.920 we have to win this one for our own pride, for our own reputation, against Trump, against the

00:13:51.540 police. That's a different movement. We need to be very careful to not fall into that, because

00:13:59.060 it's hard. You can slip from a movement for life to a movement for revenge very quickly

00:14:04.600 without noticing. And so we need to remember our movements are about life. It's about growing life,

00:14:12.940 Sustaining life, building life, and protecting life, honoring life, cultivating life, diversifying life, enjoying life.

00:14:24.340 And so when we remember that that's what we're really here for, we remember that it's time to turn to the life bearer.

00:14:30.720 what an incredible understanding of resistance and life and revenge and non-violence and leading

00:14:40.900 from the heart and womanhood and it seems that in this resistance and this movement for life

00:14:49.040 there's a place for honoring connectedness for honoring people's unique gifts honoring beauty

00:14:55.440 in the resistance not coming out of this angry vengeful violent destructive place but like you

00:15:04.820 said it's for all of life and how that just completely transforms the energy behind the

00:15:13.800 work and the movement and just how people are present

00:15:16.400 I have one hope and one question

00:15:23.600 Seek one light and one answer

00:15:26.180 Will this life take us to greater heights

00:15:28.860 Or will the illusion of unworthiness grip us forever

00:15:32.140 I am asking you to put on your turquoise

00:15:35.580 The peace collecting dust behind the altar

00:15:38.360 I am asking you to step into the sunshine

00:15:41.500 The golden rays you said you didn't deserve

00:15:45.140 I am asking you to remember who you were before the wreckage.

00:15:48.940 I am asking you to remember that you are that person still.

00:15:53.980 I am asking you to ignore the forked tongues that clamor in your mind.

00:15:59.320 I am asking you to trade them in for your favorite memory of a time that you felt alive.

00:16:06.560 I am asking you to trade them in for a time that you knew without a shadow of a doubt that you are sacred.

00:16:12.980 Only in such truth will you ever be able to complete your mission

00:16:18.380 For a warrior will not stand if she does not believe she is worthy to fight

00:16:23.580 Like the child of a deity, you were born to guard the sparrows

00:16:28.880 Like defenders of the crashing waves, you were born to protect the cycles

00:16:34.880 What is true will lift you higher

00:16:38.240 What is false will lead in the mind

00:16:40.600 And if that voice feels like fear

00:16:43.100 Then it is the siren's lie

00:16:45.340 What is true will lift you higher

00:16:47.740 What is false will lead in the mind

00:16:49.840 And if that voice feels like fear

00:16:52.240 Then it is the siren's lie

00:16:54.080 We are children of exquisite love

00:16:57.180 Let no one tell you otherwise

00:16:59.740 Finery deserves only finery

00:17:02.520 So take up that mantle once again

00:17:05.240 The one masterfully beaded by the creator's loving hands

00:17:09.460 I am asking you to remember who you are

00:17:13.220 Trust that life is all you hoped it would be

00:17:17.080 And then it will be

00:17:19.700 You are not imagining that lightning cracking in your heart

00:17:24.600 You are not imagining that whisper

00:17:27.680 Urging you to sing, to paint, to sculpt, to build

00:17:32.880 It is not what you do

00:17:35.560 It is who you are

00:17:38.120 And no matter what is done or said can ever take this away

00:17:42.080 I am asking you to wear your white shell

00:17:46.240 The one that they laughed at you for

00:17:48.880 The one that they said was too clean for you

00:17:52.460 The one that reminds you who you are

00:17:56.120 Clear the cobwebs from your dreams

00:17:59.540 Rekindle all that was deemed impossible

00:18:02.440 Spreak free the truth that lies caged and burning in your soul

00:18:08.060 This is not arrogance or folly

00:18:11.440 If it is done in prayer for the dying

00:18:14.380 The beauty of your talents is antidote to disease

00:18:19.580 The wild and untamed expression of our God-granted gifts

00:18:24.580 Is the key to those ancient prisons of hopeless mediocrity

00:18:29.860 Reclaim your right to be all that you are

00:18:35.600 And watch the captives run free

00:18:38.440 Unveil your glistening heart to the world

00:18:43.580 Not in lust for fame

00:18:45.740 Not in lust for money

00:18:47.640 But for the love of your people

00:18:50.140 And for the love of this land

00:18:53.040 You are worthy to pray for these things

00:18:56.500 You are worthy to sing for these things

00:19:00.260 Practice liberation

00:19:03.080 Of self and of others

00:19:05.980 And watch your old self burn

00:19:08.800 Like sweet grass in the air

00:19:11.760 Practice fighting for a life

00:19:14.880 For something that you love

00:19:17.580 And no activity provided by the world

00:19:20.960 Will ever again compare

00:19:23.300 I have only one hope and one question

00:19:27.080 I seek only one truth and one answer

00:19:30.020 Will this life take us to greater heights

00:19:32.900 Or will the illusion of unworthiness grip us forever?

00:19:37.220 Children of the deities, you were born to guard the sparrows.

00:20:02.900 I was wondering if you could talk a bit about the background of the uranium mining

00:20:11.160 and the extraction, the strip mining in your region

00:20:14.220 and work that you've been doing in your homeland

00:20:18.640 and what the mission is of the Nihigal Be'ina movement

00:20:24.500 and the role of prayer and ceremony within the resistance.

00:20:28.400 means our journey for life so there you have it again that word ina which means life

00:20:40.240 which coincidentally means mother in lakota but ina is really our movement for

00:20:48.240 not just to sustain people in the face of uranium pollution but also fracking

00:20:56.840 coal mining, alcoholism, anything that obstructs or destructs life, of which we have no shortage

00:21:04.180 on the Navajo reservation. It's the largest reservation. It spans three states. We have a

00:21:10.760 massive population. I think we're the largest tribe. And we're lucky enough to be released from

00:21:16.640 a concentration camp where 9,000 of us were held for four years. And I think about 2,000 survivors

00:21:24.420 were allowed to go back home after four years. And the idea was that if our ancestors worked

00:21:30.300 this hard to get back home from that concentration camp and prayed this hard so that we could be

00:21:38.020 here, then why are we destroying our homeland? So, and obviously it's not just Navajo people, 0.89

00:21:44.980 it's a lot of corporations that predate on our easily corrupted government and our easily 0.99

00:21:50.540 manipulated, impoverished population. But we as Diné youth, Navajo youth, must take some

00:21:59.180 kind of responsibility for the future of our community and our people and our culture and

00:22:05.880 our language. So we started walking from Sacred Mountain to Sacred Mountain. We have four

00:22:11.060 mountains. So we had four journeys, one each season. Each one lasted anywhere from a month

00:22:16.020 to a month and a half. In total, we walked 1,400 miles as a collective and brought our staff

00:22:21.040 around the circumference of our homeland and to not only expose what was threatening life,

00:22:28.940 but to also nurture life. And so uranium mining on the Navajo reservation has been going on for,

00:22:36.440 I think, at least, I want to say 60 years. The uranium that was mined from our southern

00:22:42.340 sacred mountain was a primary source for the cold war proliferation of nuclear weapons and so we

00:22:50.560 have actually been sort of the minions for the united states nuclear weaponry artillery and

00:22:59.380 navajo people mined the uranium because we had next to nothing and when someone offers you a job

00:23:05.120 and you're having a hard time feeding your family you usually take that job so um we mind this

00:23:11.720 sometimes with our bare hands. A lot of our fathers, uncles, grandfathers are dead now from

00:23:17.860 cancer, from radiation exposure. But the main ultimate understanding that I think people need

00:23:23.560 to have about uranium is that creator put uranium there for a reason. And there's also uranium in

00:23:30.740 the Black Hills. A lot of sacred sites have uranium. Is this a coincidence or is this because

00:23:35.360 uranium has a special spiritual dimension to it where uranium being that complex element that it

00:23:43.140 is and that very high-powered element that it is helps us to do our ceremony just like silver helps

00:23:49.560 to conduct electricity our ceremonies involve a kind of electricity and if we can find the physical

00:23:56.540 spaces that house and facilitate that electricity what we call the spirit then that's where we pray

00:24:03.380 we want to pray there so when we break something that creator has made there are consequences

00:24:08.940 when we break the mountain that we've been praying on for centuries or millennia rather

00:24:15.280 then there will be consequences there will be death there will be not because creator's punishing us

00:24:22.360 saying oh you broke my mountain now you have to die but more because creator made that mountain

00:24:27.560 to help us live. And if we break what helps us live, then we're not going to live. We're going

00:24:34.940 to die. So it's not a punishment, but it's just the nature of things. The world was set up perfectly

00:24:40.020 to help things live. And so if we break that system, then it's going to be very hard for us

00:24:45.520 to live. And so that's what we're seeing around the globe is that people are breaking what Creator

00:24:50.740 are put in place to help us live very beautiful intricate complex systems that help us live and

00:24:58.460 we're just breaking them like they're nothing we're breaking things we don't even understand

00:25:02.820 and so essentially we went on this walk to expose these things and to to let our people know we're

00:25:10.780 sorry you have cancer we're sorry you know we prayed on these lands we prayed as youth about

00:25:16.080 20 youth walked. And we helped our people know that they're not unseen. Their suffering is not

00:25:22.320 unseen. We're witnesses to the suffering. We prayed for them. We helped them. And we also learned

00:25:28.480 ourselves through this process, what we're dealing with. We were like scouts, modern day scouts,

00:25:35.100 scouting the land, seeing what's going on. And so in terms of prayer and ceremony, you know,

00:25:40.720 that was obviously an integral part of our movement. It was a prayer. The movement was a

00:25:47.700 prayer. It was one big year long prayer. And our ancestors taught us that prayer is not meaningless

00:25:56.000 mumbling of words to like the air. And you're not just mumbling to yourself in the middle of

00:26:01.260 nowhere. Prayer is a way of connecting with worlds unseen. And the scientist only believes

00:26:11.340 in what he can measure and what he can see. But our ancestors understood there's a lot out there

00:26:17.600 that we can't measure. There's a lot out there that we can't see. And so similarly, the scientist

00:26:24.380 is missing out on quite a bit because he's only observing what he can observe. He's only

00:26:30.740 believing what he can observe, but there's certain things you can't see with your eye,

00:26:35.120 but you can feel with your whole body. And prayer, if you do it, if you practice it,

00:26:39.680 if you experiment with it, just as the scientist experiments with thermodynamics, you can feel

00:26:46.420 yourself become a battery and the charge starts to flow. And so that flow is enabled by prayer

00:26:53.660 and no one can ever prove this per se although actually they have found some interesting

00:26:59.560 electromagnetic studies with prayer and stuff but it's more something that's meant to be felt

00:27:04.080 not something that's meant to be proven or explained you can tell someone that you love

00:27:11.120 someone but you're not really going to know what that means until you are in love and so similarly

00:27:16.520 we could talk about prayer and say oh yeah we're going to pray blah blah blah blah but no one's

00:27:22.040 going to really know what that means until they are in prayer, until they are in love with the

00:27:26.840 world. Then they'll start to feel. And again, we've been so desensitized that we can't even feel

00:27:32.100 sometimes the charge that's running through us. But through practice and experience, trying,

00:27:38.800 experimenting, you start to feel the importance of prayer. And I don't think it's a coincidence

00:27:43.800 that all of the most successful movements around the world take Gandhi's liberation movement or

00:27:49.000 Martin Luther King Civil Rights Movement, or Nelson Mandela's movement in South Africa,

00:27:53.680 all of these movements that are, or Dalai Lama, or No Dapple, all of these movements that kind of

00:27:58.680 punctured the ceiling and went to a whole nother global level. I don't think it's coincidence that

00:28:05.780 they were all guided by prayer, every single one of them. And so it makes you wonder, are these

00:28:12.400 movement leaders just idiots who think they're praying to something that isn't really there? 1.00

00:28:17.760 Or do they maybe have something going on that we should consider, think about, and practice ourselves? 1.00

00:28:25.200 Because in our way of thinking, in Dene way, prayer allows you to create the impossible.

00:28:33.280 Prayer allows you to inform yourself of things that you could not learn any other way.

00:28:40.440 And so prayer is a constant practice.

00:28:43.080 And every morning when you get up, you ask the spirits to move through you, to speak through you, because we understand that we can be merged with bigger spirits through prayer and they can work through us.

00:28:55.720 And even European medieval culture understood that through the word genius.

00:29:00.660 Genius has the root word genie.

00:29:03.480 And genie means spirit.

00:29:05.440 So the genius was not really someone who was so great, but rather they were someone who could get out of the way enough to allow the genie to move through them.

00:29:14.800 So you have Mozart is considered a genius.

00:29:17.420 He wasn't just writing those songs by himself.

00:29:19.920 The spirits were moving through him.

00:29:21.520 And so Mozart actually said, a lofty degree of intelligence is not the making of genius.

00:29:28.940 Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.

00:29:33.140 And so he understood that love enables the spirit.

00:29:37.900 Love enables creation.

00:29:40.620 And so what is prayer other than the act of loving someone?

00:29:45.540 When I pray for my grandma, I say, may I help her have a good day today, creative.

00:29:49.820 That's an act of love.

00:29:51.520 And so love and prayer are synonymous in my brain.

00:29:55.060 And so if our movements are motivated by ceremony and prayer, they're going to be much more

00:30:01.180 effective because we're merging with spirits who know more than we do, who see more than

00:30:06.000 we do, and who've been around longer than we have, and they're going to help guide us.

00:30:11.080 It's also kin to surrender.

00:30:13.040 Prayer is kin to surrender.

00:30:14.740 If we surrender and refrain from doing what Western doctrines have taught us to do, which

00:30:20.060 to pretend like we know everything and if we don't know everything then there's something wrong with

00:30:24.840 us or we're lesser of a person but to say you know what I don't know everything and I need your help

00:30:30.820 spirits I need your help creator then you are boosted to another level because now you get to

00:30:36.660 enjoy the knowledge of the creator the knowledge of the spirits knowledge which none of us could

00:30:42.260 really know in this state as a human being and so we get to benefit from all that ocean of knowledge

00:30:49.180 and they see things from a bird's eye view.

00:30:51.200 So we get to partake in that really incredible knowledge

00:30:55.800 and that's what makes our movements that much more effective.

00:30:59.960 Indigenous people, shine your light, we are equal.

00:31:08.300 I remember the days when our prayers were illegal. 1.00

00:31:13.460 I remember the days when being Indian was lethal 1.00

00:31:19.080 Yeah, we had a rough past, but get ready for the sequel 1.00

00:31:25.220 Get ready for the glorious comeback of our people

00:31:30.180 Oh, yeah

00:31:31.820 Rise up, all you warriors of love

00:31:35.840 All you aunts of our ancestors from above

00:31:38.200 I can feel it in my heart

00:31:40.040 Can you feel it in your blood?

00:31:41.720 But I can hear the seventh fire calling us to wake up, wake up.

00:31:45.920 All nations rise, rise up cause now's your time.

00:31:53.140 We don't have to hide anymore cause now's our time.

00:32:00.680 All nations rise, rise up cause now's your time.

00:32:07.380 We don't have to hide anymore cause now's the time

00:32:13.660 With forgiveness as my bow and my prayers as my arrows

00:32:17.180 Pull them back and let go I watch them fly like sparrows

00:32:20.760 Have hope, yeah have hope

00:32:24.620 With compassion as my shield and faith down to my marrow

00:32:28.060 I will walk the pollen path even when it gets narrow

00:32:31.820 Yeah, yeah, I resurrect, yes you can bet that we've seen the single mama raising children 0.98

00:32:41.540 on the res.

00:32:42.540 We've seen domestic violence tear apart what we have left.

00:32:46.060 We've seen the alcohol take it all and leave us dead.

00:32:49.320 We've seen the children take their lives when they can't take the dread anymore.

00:32:54.020 It's a war.

00:32:55.800 Can't take the dread anymore.

00:32:57.800 It's a war.

00:32:58.800 no we can't take the dread anymore no we can't take the dread anymore

00:33:06.800 it's a war but we've seen it all before and now we know we can change it because that's why we

00:33:12.240 were born we know we are the ones that we have been waiting for we are the ones grandma has been

00:33:19.120 praying for so rise up all you warriors of love all you answers to the prayers of our ancestors

00:33:26.080 from above. I can feel it in my heart. Can you feel it in your blood? I can hear the

00:33:31.400 seventh fire calling us to wake up, wake up.

00:33:34.560 Pueblo hermoso, levántense, es nuestro tiempo. No tienes que esconderte más. Ahora es nuestro tiempo.

00:33:47.860 Mujer indígena, tú eres tan sagrada. Traigas medicina de tu suelo todavía.

00:33:54.700 A pesar del abuso de tu cuerpo y tu tierra, respetamos tus ancestros y la suya cultura.

00:34:02.020 Hombre indígena, tú eres honorable, y yo veo la fuerza que todavía sobrevive.

00:34:08.780 A pesar del abuso de tu raza venerable, yo respeto tus ritos, tus danzas, tus padres.

00:34:16.220 Somos guerreros del amor y guerreros de la paz, sí, no vamos a escondernos más.

00:34:22.920 Somos guerreros del amor y guerreros de la paz

00:34:26.900 Y no vamos a escondernos más

00:34:30.360 They say that history is written by the victors

00:34:35.200 But how can there be a victor when the war isn't over?

00:34:40.620 The battle has only just begun

00:34:42.320 And Creator is sending his very best warriors

00:34:46.300 And this time it isn't Indians versus cowboys

00:34:50.620 No, this time, it is all the beautiful races of humanity together on the same side, and

00:34:58.840 we are fighting to replace our fear with love.

00:35:03.840 And this time bullets, arrows and cannonballs won't save us.

00:35:08.020 The only weapons that are useful in this battle are the weapons of truth, faith and compassion.

00:35:20.620 What a mental journey that was and a journey of the heart.

00:35:26.400 When you were speaking, I kept seeing this division between people that were open to this resistance of life and this way of being in love with the earth and working from that place.

00:35:43.700 and then the other group the desensitized group that's so shut down from what's been happening in

00:35:49.660 the world they can't quite see but that that's even available to them it brings me to this

00:35:57.100 through no fault of their own right of course thank you for saying that and so I'm kind of in

00:36:03.160 this place right now of thinking about cultural healing at a large scale in order to then move

00:36:10.340 through to the next step of being able to fall in love and have this deep connection and I

00:36:15.640 know that much of your work specifically writing for peace and the Taos Peace and Reconciliation

00:36:20.860 Council seems to stem from this place of deep love and compassion and in the wake of a political

00:36:28.560 system founded on and continually feeding off of the division and oppression of different cultural

00:36:36.500 groups. It's inspiring and comforting to envision a future where forgiveness and reconciliation are

00:36:44.600 within reach and form the base of our cultural relationships. The pain and the anger and trauma

00:36:51.820 stemming from a violent colonial history is not easily reconciled and I'm wondering how you

00:36:59.240 navigate this and how attainable you think cultural healing and decolonization are on a large scale

00:37:05.780 and if you have any guidance for people to cultivate this type of healing within

00:37:11.680 their communities yeah i mean being a hybrid a half european half native american woman

00:37:20.480 which i used to see as a curse but now i see it as a cross-pollinated being and plants with

00:37:26.500 more genetic diversity are they're strong so now i see it as a blessing i'm kind of a tough

00:37:33.280 little plant now and so my hybridity my hybrid nature has really given me the ability to see

00:37:43.080 things from both sides and obviously what characterizes my work is the interplay between

00:37:50.420 indigenous cultures and european american cultures and obviously that interplay has not 0.99

00:37:55.980 been very fun to say the least it's been bloody it's been horrific it's been sad to say the least

00:38:03.260 But there's also other interplays that I honor, which is the interplay between African-American culture and other cultures, Asian-American, Muslim-American.

00:38:13.960 I try my hardest to honor the fact that we're all dealing with our own challenges and our own oppressions.

00:38:21.480 I think that if we want to go out and create more peace, more sisterhood and brotherhood and kinship in our communities among divided peoples who judge each other and who oftentimes degrade each other, humiliate each other, and then reverse humiliate each other.

00:38:47.300 I think we just have to go back to the fact that love is the answer, no matter what the question.

00:38:54.840 Is someone coming to you bearing flowers and chocolate? Well, love them in return. Is someone

00:39:01.460 banging on your door with an eviction notice telling you that you have to move because you

00:39:06.880 can't pay the gentrified rent rate? You love them. Again, the answer is still love because two

00:39:15.260 reasons. Number one, it's productive. When we love, we are creating the opportunity for them to

00:39:23.940 see their own behavior as what it is. And we're giving them an opportunity to feel love, which

00:39:32.300 they might not have felt. And not only is it productive, but also in an external sense that

00:39:38.160 we're productive in spheres outside of our own. But it's also productive within ourselves,

00:39:43.900 because when you love and you are in a state of love you are returned to your natural state

00:39:52.880 of being and you are no longer fettered and chained by and burdened with the weight of hatred

00:40:01.160 which is so painful to feel and so oftentimes I've done forgiveness ceremonies where I work

00:40:09.980 really hard to forgive something that was painful. And in doing so, I can literally feel a weight

00:40:17.280 lifting out of my being. And as I mentioned, I've been pretty thoroughly abused as a woman

00:40:24.180 in my day. And in order to heal, my mentor told me, forgive. I said, what? She said, yes,

00:40:31.740 every single one of them. Forgive every single one of them. So I went back in my mind and I

00:40:36.660 looked at what they really did to me and I said you tried to destroy me but I love you and I don't

00:40:43.760 hold it against you if you can do that then you can actually free yourself and obviously I didn't

00:40:50.160 tell that to them in person because they're not actually safe to be around but in my mind from a

00:40:56.420 safe distance I forgave them and I prayed for them and said I don't hold it against you I want you to

00:41:03.580 be free that's a whole crazy medicine that liberates both the oppressed and the oppressor

00:41:10.980 so that's important understanding that if we see someone's hatred toward us as a inhumane

00:41:20.000 despicable thing then does it not also logically follow that we are dehumanized when we slip into

00:41:28.780 hatred towards them or is hatred for a perpetrator okay you know is it permissible or is it even

00:41:37.500 right or desirable these are all questions we have to answer for ourselves but my whole argument

00:41:44.320 these past few years has been our hatred for them is no better than their hatred for us

00:41:50.960 it's the same hatred because they're seeing us as enemies when really we're brothers and sisters

00:41:56.660 And so if I go into that same delusion that we're enemies, then I'm just as deluded as they are. So when we respond to an enemy type of behavior with a sister type of behavior or a brother type of behavior, we're reinstating the facts. We're reinstating the truth. We're dispelling the delusion and we're reminding them that, no, no, no, I'm not your enemy. Remember, I'm your friend. I'm your sister. I'm your brother.

00:42:24.940 And they sometimes they snap out of it. Sometimes they don't. But it's better for one of us to be snapped out of it than neither of us. And so that's important. Forgiveness and approaching a world that thinks it's a pool of enemies and affirming that we are family is very powerful.

00:42:45.280 and every time someone does this the whole world shudders the whole world it's rendered speechless

00:42:51.520 for a time they can't even understand it like all Mandela did was say no I'm not going to put you

00:42:58.120 in the same jail you put me in and everyone was like oh my god how did he do that he's winning

00:43:03.560 prizes and all this stuff the whole world's just like what or the Dalai Lama says we must pray for

00:43:09.340 the Chinese army and the whole world's like what the whole world just gets rocked the whole model

00:43:14.960 of punitive quote-unquote justice starts to come apart at the seams and the whole understanding of 0.96

00:43:21.620 eye for an eye and revenge is just is exposed as the nothingness that it is and we are reinstating

00:43:30.120 the truth that love is the answer no matter the problem no matter the question love is the answer

00:43:36.360 and so when we operate in this paradigm where it's very constructive not only within ourselves

00:43:43.080 to heal ourselves but also outside of ourselves okay the last thing i want to say on this question 0.58

00:43:47.540 is i was raised to believe that european americans were arrogant privileged heartless 0.98

00:43:56.860 fools i'm sorry to say that i know these aren't easy words to hear and i don't believe those are 0.97

00:44:03.760 true but that's what i was raised to believe as a native american half native american who was 0.97

00:44:10.800 raised all Native American, I guess you could say, in terms of custom and worldview and belief. 0.96

00:44:17.340 I was raised to believe that, that they were heartless. And of course, that's the form of 1.00

00:44:22.960 racism, because you're putting all European Americans in one box and saying, they are this.

00:44:29.500 And those types of generalizations are very harmful, because they're not true. And so then

00:44:36.040 I started to dig deeper and say, wait a second, I'm half European. There's got to be something

00:44:40.400 going on there it's got to be something that I need to understand about who and what I am

00:44:46.340 so I started to dig deeper into the history of Europe and I was blessed to discover that

00:44:54.620 there are great wealths of wise cultures in Europe and earth-based cultures cultures that were

00:45:03.520 extremely connected to themselves and to the earth and who were matriarchal actually and who

00:45:10.540 placed the goddess center stage and we think of europe as 1000 a.d and after that pretty much

00:45:19.540 dominates our understanding of what europe quote unquote is you know napoleon king louis the british

00:45:26.200 crown blah blah blah all these things right but those things are so recent that past is so recent

00:45:32.400 And if we scratch the surface, we find that Europe was beautiful, had beautiful, incredible cultures that thrived off of the nurturing of the earth and nurturing of women.

00:45:45.380 And we also find that in German soil, they found a 40,000 year old figurine that was of a woman. And you find these all over Europe of the goddess, you know, honoring the goddess of the earth.

00:46:02.400 and the fertility of the earth, and again, the life, the life-bearing ability of the earth and 0.97

00:46:08.140 of women, because she always has a big stomach and big breasts to feed her children, a pregnant

00:46:14.380 belly, you know, so they're honoring life. 40,000 years old, this is how long European cultures have 0.69

00:46:22.980 been honoring the earth. Now, there's a very important stage in European history around the

00:46:29.740 year 1000 up to about 1500 you see a lot of major shifts and the most important shift that i always 0.97

00:46:37.020 bring up is the destruction of european indigenous women because they estimate and the burning times

00:46:44.880 that about six to nine million european women were burned alive drowned alive dismembered alive

00:46:52.700 raped, beaten, or tortured, or multiple of those at once. And so it's really important to understand

00:47:02.200 that just like they tried to destroy the women of our communities in America as a war tactic,

00:47:09.000 so too did they try to destroy the women of Europe as a war tactic. Because when you destroy the 0.84

00:47:14.600 women, you destroy the whole thing. So it's very important to understand that capitalism 0.84

00:47:19.580 is a expression of the pain of the destruction of indigenous European women and that these

00:47:28.340 indigenous European women were so brutally treated worse than Native Americans were by far

00:47:36.340 believe it or not that the men who loved them went insane and the only way to try and relieve

00:47:44.560 that insanity was to try and compensate in other ways, to find meaning in the accumulation of

00:47:50.640 wealth, to find meaning in becoming a high reputation, to find meaning in domination.

00:47:58.000 And so we have to understand that capitalism and colonialism are a direct outgrowth of the abuse

00:48:05.400 of the women of Europe. And once you understand that, it's much easier to forgive. It's much

00:48:11.560 easier to honor the fact that, you know, Europeans didn't just wake up one day and say, hey, I think 0.75

00:48:16.980 I want to commit genocide on the whole continent of people. You know, that didn't happen. People

00:48:21.160 didn't just say, oh, I would love to just destroy millions of people today. That is a form of

00:48:27.980 psychosis that only comes from deep intergenerational trauma, a deep, painful wound in the 0.63

00:48:37.680 side of Europe, which is the destruction of the women. And so if we understand that, we can have

00:48:43.560 compassion as Native Americans. We can have understanding as Native Americans. We can have

00:48:50.020 forgiveness. We can have kindness. We can have a prayer even, a deep prayer for European Americans.

00:48:59.380 And all of a sudden, they don't look like such a winner anymore, do they? They don't look like 1.00

00:49:04.860 they're the ones who came out on top do they they look like they're the ones who were so brutally

00:49:11.480 beaten that they forgot what they were and so brutally beaten that they were brought to a state

00:49:19.520 where they felt okay with murder and destruction this is not being on top this is not being on top

00:49:27.840 this is being on the bottom of the bottom of the bottom of the bottom and we need to help them back

00:49:33.360 up. We need to help all of our brothers and sisters back up to the state of love. And how do

00:49:40.020 we do that? Forgiveness and education and articulation of these hard truths. And for that

00:49:48.260 reason, a lot of my music and poetry has been honoring the indigenous European women lately.

00:49:52.840 So that's a very long-winded answer to your question, but that's how I see it.

00:49:58.440 that was a very deeply explored articulate response to my question thank you and i'd actually

00:50:07.280 love to end on reading a quote from a new article that you just released called dismantling

00:50:14.500 colonialism a treatise on forgiveness quote only when we love in the face of hatred we are liberated

00:50:22.840 from that same hatred only when we love in the face of hatred can we loosen the screws of the

00:50:29.200 machine of oppression for who stands unfazed in the face of grace only the expertly numb

00:50:36.900 the rest of the world the majority trembles in the best of ways they are shaken they are inspired

00:50:45.600 they are transformed they are forgiven end quote

00:50:50.660 I just I just I am in awe and appreciation of you from this interview from reading your work from

00:51:04.960 learning more about who you are on this earth what you are bringing to humanity and all the

00:51:12.960 species and the waters and the lands. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me

00:51:19.540 and for opening up these channels. Thank you, Ayanna. I really appreciate it. And I have to

00:51:27.460 honor the fact that a lot of these words and a lot of these writings are not my own, but are a

00:51:32.480 collaboration between a lot of spirits that really want to help the world, that really want to bring

00:51:37.420 healing to the world. And so I have to give them some credit and say thank you for guiding me.

00:51:42.160 And also, just thanks for taking the time to formulate these questions.

00:51:46.120 And I hope that they can help someone somewhere.

00:51:48.480 And my prayers are with you, Ayanna.

00:52:12.160 It's what we have at the end of day

00:52:18.460 I wish somebody would share the news

00:52:24.960 I wish somebody would share the news

00:52:31.360 I wish somebody would share the news

00:52:37.960 Wish somebody would share the news

00:53:07.960 Thank you for listening to For the Wild podcast.

00:53:31.220 That was part two of a conversation with Lila June.

00:53:35.620 I'm Ayanna Young.

00:53:37.620 Lila's first spoken word piece was called Born to Guard Sparrows.

00:53:42.140 Leading into it was the percussion and voice of Ed Lee Natay.

00:53:46.500 Lila's second piece, All Nations Rise, has a widely viewed and acclaimed music video,

00:53:52.140 which you can find on YouTube.

00:53:54.000 We heard Neil Young from his latest album entitled Peace Trail,

00:53:58.340 and Kate Wolfe sings Like a River.

00:54:01.240 I want to thank our collaborators, Living Village Culture.

00:54:04.180 you can find them on the web at livingvillageculture.com

00:54:08.040 and the compass at lightning in a bottle

00:54:10.200 if you want to join Lila and other extraordinary activists at LIB

00:54:14.720 on the weekend of May 26th

00:54:16.920 you can buy your tickets at lightninginabottle.org

00:54:20.120 For the Wild is a listener supported podcast

00:54:23.580 so please go over to forthewild.world and donate if you can

00:54:28.300 and check out our other projects

00:54:30.300 including the 1 million redwoods native species nursery

00:54:33.300 and the Tongass National Forest Campaign

00:54:36.960 to end old-growth logging.

00:54:40.200 See you next time.

00:54:41.380 Sweet smell of pine

00:54:44.380 Tall western cedar

00:54:47.420 Drifting on the wind

00:54:50.660 Through the mountains like a river

00:54:53.440 Thank you.

For The Wild - March 14, 2017

LYLA JUNE on Resistance and Forgiveness in the Final Years of Patriarchy ⧸43

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