00:00:00.000So we have to continue to keep things in their faces.
00:00:20.580We have to continue to make them hear it and see it until they realize when I'm talking, it's you talking.
00:00:28.580When I'm seen, you're seen because we're connected to each other the same way the bodies of water are connected to each other all around the world.
00:00:38.700The silence is broken by somebody crying
00:06:14.860Yes, it has been quite a long journey because, as you mentioned, Hilton Head Island, which
00:06:20.320the world knows as a golf resort and people see on television all over the world, they
00:06:26.840have no idea that beneath all of that false grass that's placed there to remain green all year long1.00
00:06:35.780are literally the blood, sweat, and tears of people of African and indigenous American descent1.00
00:06:41.400called the Gullah Geechee. And so when the island was actually first somewhat discovered in this0.82
00:06:48.860Columbus-esque style to become an area first to be where Charles Frazier and his friends could come
00:06:57.120to and actually go and hunt. And then when they cleared out the woods, they said, well, what else
00:07:03.400are we going to do here? And then their friends started thinking they'd compete. And the more
00:07:07.560that they came, they decided, well, we came by boat. Now we need bridges and we'll bring our
00:07:13.040friends over. So now as their friends come in, you have all these people of African descent living1.00
00:07:18.080here. So what are we going to do with them? Well, then they either wanted you to work for them1.00
00:07:23.420or sell them your property. And so people started losing not only the areas that we live in,
00:07:30.840the places that we had as bush avas or brush avas, which are our sacred grounds for prayer
00:07:35.880and healing and spiritual practices. They started losing areas where our natural herbs that we use
00:07:42.760to heal the body, grow. You then started losing the actual environment itself where any of the
00:07:50.880sweet grass or any of the things we'd known to be natural and indigenous vegetation were
00:07:56.500because in came clear cutting. So with this clear cutting, we are literally in a hurricane zone.
00:08:03.860So this allowed more winds to rapidly get into what did remain on the island. It then started
00:08:09.620to erode the earth itself because what we are on Sea Islands are maritime forests. And so the
00:08:16.860maritime forest is abutted then by Spartina grass, which is abutted then by oyster banks.
00:08:22.440People started finding that the oyster banks, which we just opened up the shellfish season here
00:08:27.800again this year, a lot of the oyster banks had to get closed around these gated areas because
00:08:34.060now the pollution, the runoff and everything was going into the waterways. So when we look at it
00:08:40.960about land loss, land loss isn't just coming because of sea level rises and winds and other
00:08:47.940things, but it actually came with the storm of people coming in, overbuilding, building right
00:08:53.800into the marsh line, building right into the seashore and telling us who were the natives
00:08:58.340that we were just emotional individuals when we said that that's inappropriate, it's not
00:09:03.700sustainable, it's not going to be something beneficial to the environment because you're
00:09:08.920going to disrupt the ecology. And when you clear cut, then you have no buffer when the storms come
00:09:15.900and all of the things that come blowing in literally and figuratively with the storm are
00:09:21.280going to have a direct hit on you. And so now we're dealing with what was an onslaught of
00:09:27.360people coming by boat to the very earth itself, now throwing itself up on land with you having
00:09:35.400sea level rise and storm surges that are putting water up on land. We're just now dealing with
00:09:42.220flooding that's leaving the area that's been going on for over a week on the heels of a hurricane.
00:09:48.740And so we've seen this disruption to our lifestyle and land loss happening, not just because people were displaced, people were murdered and killed for their land in the case of Hilton Head and in Charleston and various areas, but also by the erosion of the land because of what got built on it.
00:10:13.160that's now contributing to other factors in the environment that ultimately all contribute
00:10:19.440to the climate change dynamics. And we're seeing us lose land, lose trees, lose farm areas and
00:10:26.280things even more rapidly than we ever would have thought of 50 years ago. And so it is a really
00:10:33.180pressing matter. It's a pressing issue. As you mentioned, our burial areas, our burial areas
00:10:38.640are usually on the waterway. And so we've even seen sacred grounds such as that getting taken
00:10:46.020underwater. Areas that did not hold water before are holding them now. And so we're seeing a number
00:10:53.220of things, including the predatory laws that the county governments put in place where someone
00:11:00.100was now living on, say, Hilton Head, and their land tax had only been $50 a year because someone
00:11:06.980built a resort next to them, their land tax would go up 100%, 200%, 300%, 500% in some cases in one
00:11:16.720year. And that wouldn't sound like a lot of money to some people. But if you were only accustomed
00:11:21.820to living from the waterway and from the land, and you were looking to pay $50, where do you get
00:11:26.980500 times that much? And so people got displaced because of taxation as well. And so the loss of
00:11:35.040ownership has come in so many different ways through heirs' property with piercing the veil,
00:11:40.780as you mentioned, where predatory destruction heirs, we call them. I don't call them developers.
00:11:45.760I call this all destructionment that they do come in and figure out, well, maybe there's an
00:11:51.020heir that's the 25th cousin. And if I can buy that interest out, that person's all the way
00:11:56.040in Arizona. That person's in New York City. That person's in Texas somewhere, and they're not going
00:12:00.520to move back. If I offer them $1,000 for their property, I can get in. I can sue the rest of
00:12:06.480the family that lives on that land. Since they won't sell it to me, I'll sue them off of it.
00:12:11.220And so then they go to court. There's no decision that can be made other than the judge saying,
00:12:16.060well, let's have a forced partition sale and sell the land. So the Gullah Geechee Sea Island
00:12:22.000Coalition has been fighting now for 20 years against these issues. And so that we can keep1.00
00:12:28.420are people who still have their land here on the land, but then teaching people how to sustain
00:12:34.300that land has become even more trying over these years. Thank you for going deeper into all of
00:12:42.900these pieces. It's just, it's just so disgusting. These, what were you calling them? The disruptors?
00:13:13.400I mean, I was reading that the recorded sea levels at a tidal station in Charleston,
00:13:19.280in South Carolina show over a foot of sea level rise in the last century. And sea levels have
00:13:25.360been gradually and continuously rising along the North Carolina coastline for the past 30 years.
00:13:31.800So I'm thinking, you know, as ice sheets and glaciers melt in the Arctic and Alaska and
00:13:37.580Antarctica, you know, how is the Gullah Geechee Nation faring? How will the melting ice impact
00:13:44.580your nation in terms of tidal flooding and storm surges? Well, see, that's been the biggest issue
00:13:51.080in terms of what you say, the lack of forethought, because when people talk about glaciers and we
00:13:57.820live here in the Southeast, we live in the Atlantic Ocean, no one here has ever seen a glacier
00:14:03.260unless they've seen it on YouTube, on a video, on a photograph, a postcard. So that doesn't seem to
00:14:11.080them to have anything to do with them. And I feel like a lot of the people moved here. We said we'd
00:14:17.900have been here and things like that. And these other rest of the people have come here. And so
00:14:20.980in our language, there are terms for this. We're the binyas and these new people have come here.
00:14:25.280And when they come here, they have no knowledge of the ecology and balance in the Sea Islands
00:14:30.200anyway. So that's why they feel they can build on shifting sand that has tides, high tide, low
00:14:36.180tides, spring tides, and now king tides, and they think it's going to be sustainable. I'm an
00:14:40.860engineer. I'm a scientist. So trying to tell them that you'll cause sinkholes, you'll cause other
00:14:46.220things that are not going to be sustainable, these politicians don't get it. So when you start to
00:14:51.760talk to them about the glaciers and you talk about the Arctic, they're looking like, that's not part
00:14:56.420of my constituency. That's not in my voting district. So who cares? It's the tourists coming
00:15:01.160that I need to satisfy and it's about making more money. So this mentality of destructionment
00:15:07.340goes well beyond concerns for the whole globe. It's so limited in terms of its perspective and
00:15:15.500the people that are lawmakers have literally had to see their own homes and their own businesses
00:15:23.080and their own golf courses get flooded when there was no hurricane for them to stop saying
00:15:30.700that we were emotional natives, to now at least pause on that and to also hesitate to say that
00:15:39.460there's no such thing as climate change or that it's a fraud. Many of them are simply ignoring
00:15:45.060the issue because I hate to have to say this. It sounds ageist, but it's realistic. Many of these0.54
00:15:50.880people live in gated retirement areas. So for them, this is the last hurrah, these are the last
00:15:58.960days, and they're not really concerned about us and the next generation that's coming. They want
00:16:06.000to live out their days however they want to do it, even if that's just trying to attempt to count
00:16:11.440more money as if they need more money or we can eat money. Well, guess what? Even if you have a
00:16:17.940treasure trove of money. We have seen enough flooding here and tides rise so rapidly that
00:16:26.820it can float away your treasure trove. And so that's the thing that we have to get them to
00:16:32.020look at is how does this connect to you? Don't think of it as something so far away and that's
00:16:38.240up north and that's on the West Coast. Those glaciers aren't over here. You got to look at
00:16:43.820the world, it's all connected. The water bodies are connected. So we have to get people to
00:16:49.960understand that our bodies as human beings are connected. We also are made of water. So we don't
00:16:56.900start to look at this and examine what the scientists are telling us about the levels
00:17:02.200of water and how it's getting higher and higher and how we need to keep the waters pristine so
00:17:08.520but the oceans don't acidify. We need to take it personally and think about how much seafood you
00:17:14.480want to eat if you did come to a beautiful, pristine area on the water on an island. Would
00:17:20.440you want acid in your food? Because that acid would be in your person. When we start making
00:17:27.540it more personal, we cause them to pause. We cause them to hesitate to say that we're just
00:17:33.700emotional, or that we don't know what we're talking about, or that somebody's trying to
00:17:37.980pull a hoax. And so we have to bring it down to their level as much as we'd like to bring down
00:17:44.580the waters right now. And so we really have to meet these folks where they are. But remember,
00:17:50.420many of them aren't going to listen because they feel like, well, these are my final days,
00:17:54.260and this is just what I want to do. Oh, my goodness. I'm just imagining the people behind
00:18:00.920the gates, just counting their money as the ship goes down and just feeling exactly like you were
00:18:07.500saying that these are the end of their days and they want to live them out like how they want to
00:18:12.560live them. And they don't care about what happens to other people in the area or the future
00:18:19.840generations. And they have no forethought. And I was also just really shocked by the government's
00:18:26.640lack of intelligence when it comes to climate change. For example, research has proven that
00:18:32.300the torrential rainfalls that accompanied Hurricane Florence were projected to be 50%
00:18:37.380worse than it would have been without global warming. The rainfall not only led to flooding,
00:18:43.440but also polluted water and soil. You know, it's clear that climate change and global warming are
00:18:49.140strengthening the force of natural disasters, yet government agencies have in many ways
00:18:55.260declared that they do not care about those who are impacted by said disasters.
00:19:01.120In 2010, a North Carolinian state commission report said
00:19:05.040that sea levels could rise as much as 39 inches by 2100.
00:19:11.360Yet in 2012, North Carolina passed HB 819,
00:19:16.140which sought to ban local and state agencies from using scientific predictions of accelerated sea level rise.
00:19:22.480You know, the bill itself was criticized by a majority of people across the country, but the state's business interests prevailed over public safety and well-being.
00:19:33.260So, I'm just wondering, do you believe it's possible that any branch of the government will be able to successfully address the aftermath of natural disasters?
00:19:45.160Or is there just blatant disregard, a clear sign that communities must begin to localize and think about how they're going to respond to their own regional natural disasters?
00:19:58.020Well, the interesting thing is that I agree with what you're saying, that what you just posed is that communities now have to realize why many of us have been out here on the front lines and now join us on the front of the shore.
00:20:11.180And actually creating our own plans and implementing those plans to actually enact the things that are even in the very Paris climate agreement because the elected officials cannot see.
00:20:22.740And so but the thing that has happened, I'm a person who's a firm believer in divine order.
00:20:27.600And I do believe that there is a creator of us all.
00:20:31.260And I feel like when you don't listen and there are so many signs at some point, then the sign is going to be actually driven down hard in your own front yard.
00:20:41.760And that is what just happened with Hurricane Florence, the same state, North Carolina, that you just talked about the laws that nobody in the country, much less other parts of the world, could believe that they would enact some years ago.
00:20:57.360Now they are dealing with the worst flooding, the worst environmental injustices and pollution they have ever seen in that state, not just on the coast, not just on the barrier islands, but also inland North Carolina.
00:21:13.820And they did not even admit to the national news that there were many communities of people displaced ever since Hurricane Matthew.
00:21:22.800And so many of those people hadn't even returned or were living in dilapidated homes as a result of the previous storm.
00:21:29.420The biggest problem I've seen in all of this has been, just as you said, they have no concern about the people, but they're always calculating the cost of the real estate that they're losing.
00:21:40.540Before the storm had ended, before the flooding even came, they were already declaring states of emergency and then estimating how many billion with a B dollars they were losing.
00:21:52.580And that was based on real estate, where people's lives and cultural heritage are more valuable than any real estate.
00:22:04.440I'm a mathematician by degrees, and I bring that up in every meeting that I go to about these things, especially with legislative members.
00:22:13.880Most of the environmental groups that call conferences together, bring people in to meet, they invite these people that are in elected offices in the Carolinas, in Georgia, in Florida, and they don't show up.
00:22:27.940So that tells you that you cannot go to your state dome or to Capitol Hill and look for help.
00:22:36.700We are the ones that we've been waiting on.
00:22:39.480Just like after a storm, in the storm, it's your neighbors, it's your family, it's your friends that are right around you that you have to rely on to help get you out of a home or get you back in your home.
00:22:51.580get you down this road, off this road, over the river, through the creeks, or whatever you have
00:22:57.160to do to share food, get lights on, and to survive and thrive. That's what Gullah Geechies have always1.00
00:23:03.920done here in the Gullah Geechie Nation. So for us, it's not something new. That's why everybody1.00
00:23:08.620calls us resilient people. How do you adapt? How are you being resilient in the face of this? I mean,
00:23:14.960the politicians aren't paying attention to you. Well, we never expected them to, because they
00:23:19.660have also been the ones that always set the laws in place that would displace us, disrupt us,0.92
00:23:25.100and did not ever value our lives because we were people of African descent. So why would they do0.53
00:23:30.640it now? Again, what they value is what they can exploit. And if they can exploit the land to make
00:23:36.620it another place that's somewhere where people recreate, that's more concern to them than the
00:23:41.940people who live there all the time and who are the traditionalists that have to live from this land
00:23:46.320in this water. And right now we can't live from the water if the water is polluted by coal ash
00:23:52.160that they found has spilled into it and so on. So that tells you where the mindset is. The mindset
00:23:58.160is about being about dollars and not about the people themselves. And so we have to get together
00:24:08.100on the grassroots level and work with other people that are willing and able to actually see
00:24:14.480what is going on and to actually have concerns for this generation and the next. And that is not
00:24:21.420a politician necessarily make. Politicians will promise you one thing on one side of town and
00:24:26.860promise another group on the opposite end of the spectrum, something on the other side,
00:24:30.920the next side of town. So we have to come together on the shoreline as people who really recognize
00:24:37.560the reality of the world we are in right now. And we have to get these kinds of people that
00:24:42.980are in office currently out of there and get people in that have the same mindset and have
00:24:48.140the eyes to see that the waters have risen, the winds have spoken. It has been ordered for them
00:24:54.920to actually read that handwriting that used to be in the wall that's now mounted on a post in the
00:25:00.700front yard with water surrounding it. How can you say that the predictions were wrong in this case
00:25:07.120when your street, you can't drive down and you need a boat to row down it right now?
00:25:42.980Come on, let me see, let me see, let me see, let me see.
00:26:12.980I have so many thoughts and questions swirling around my mind as you're so passionately explaining
00:26:30.440these issues. But one thing I was thinking about is just the resiliency of the Gullah Geechee Nation.
00:26:37.960While life as we know it is expected to intensify under climate chaos, the Gullah Geechee Nation
00:26:44.180is a community that has long been familiar with storms of the east.
00:26:47.760I mean, almost 150 hurricanes have hit the area between 1851 and 2013.
00:26:55.620So I want to ask you to share what these storms have brought with them, both in magnitude
00:27:01.560of their power, but also in terms of the resiliency and knowledge that they've provided?
00:27:08.680And I have a second part to that question, but I think I'll save it so I don't get too excited.
00:27:15.080I hear that. Wow. 150 storms. I never even realized that was that many. And then you
00:27:21.720said that was only up to what, 2013? Yep, 2013.
00:27:24.940So that doesn't even count. Matthew and Irma and Florence and all of their buddies and family members that have come to visit us over the past five years and this season alone.
00:27:40.260And so when you mention this about what we've learned, one of the things that we've learned is how important intergenerational knowledge is, because I know how to protect myself.
00:27:54.920I've stayed on St. Helena Island, which is my home island. I'm a native of St. Helena Island in South Carolina.
00:28:00.700And so we have been in the eye of the storm many, many times. And we feel very blessed that we weren't with Florence because at one point they did say it was coming toward us and then it shifted. And I've been here through Hurricane David and Hurricane Floyd and, you know, the list goes on and tropical storms as well.
00:28:19.180But I knew what to do because I had elders in my family, including my mother, who'd been here through Gracie's storm and other storms way before that.
00:28:29.220And so they always told us stories of how the family gathered together and how what they did and how high the water rose and sometimes having to run from one house they were in to get to another house that was on higher ground.
00:28:43.100and how fortunate they were that they did it because when they got back to the house, they
00:28:47.520left, how windows had been blown out right onto a couch that a little child had been playing on
00:28:52.940before they'd left the house, you know, and all these kinds of stories. And so we know how to
00:28:58.340prepare, how to store up things all year. You don't wait until a storm is coming to prepare
00:29:04.100for the storm. So there's a lot of emergency preparedness things that we do naturally to us.
00:29:11.320That's just part of our culture that we would do on a day to day basis so that when the storm is approaching, it's really just, you know, you're checking off everything again and you're just, you know, retrofitting certain things to the current situation or making sure things are right at hand that you don't look at every day.
00:29:28.360Like, you know, I've learned to buy, you know, these floating kits now to put all of our paperwork in that are waterproof and air sealed and all that just in the event that we have to get in a boat and float up out of here that we don't lose all our paper and then have somebody like FEMA tell us we won't give you any money because you can't prove who you are.
00:29:46.840You know, we learned that from Katrina and our people down in Louisiana, that you could run and just leave. But if you run and just leave and now your paperwork's all soaked because you were trying to swim out with it or you just left because you had to because the storm just came upon you suddenly, now what? Now the government's not going to help because they're going to claim you can't prove that was your property. You can't prove you lived here. You may not even be able to get back into your house if you don't have ID with you.
00:30:14.200So there's been so many things from practical application and occurrence that we've been able to use as tools that we can now use to teach the next generation and to model in other communities that never experienced it, that never lived through one storm, much less the several that we've been blessed to live through and be able to remain in our houses.
00:30:35.620And so a lot of it really, though, has to do with just living in a traditional communal community where we help each other every day and we share what we have every day.
00:30:45.380So now all of us needs like, well, we got all on votes. No, we don't, because the next people who are in our Gullah Geechee Fishing Association, for instance, will know how to navigate to come get you and to get you out, you know, and they'll check on you.
00:30:58.400And so now with social media, then we started to develop our own platform for conveying information and relaying it to people so that if they do evacuate, we have ways to get them back in or they know when they can come back in and all that.
00:31:12.360So it's a lot of things that I've learned that are too many for us to even get into totally on this call.
00:31:18.840But I've done a number of videos on our Gullah Geechee TV platform.
00:31:22.600So it's just Gullah Geechee.tv that people can go to or find on YouTube and even see some of the things.
00:31:29.340Or if they follow our blog at Gullah Geechee Nation dot com, I blog about this issue a lot because as much as God has spared my life and my family's lives, I want other people to survive and thrive, too.
00:31:41.240So we want to share some of that knowledge with them.
00:31:44.380Oh, my gosh. Wow. I just it's just so amazing to hear how you even prepare by protecting your paperwork.
00:31:53.980I had never even considered that that would be something you would need to prove land ownership or identity.
00:32:02.340I mean, I'm just thinking about all of the insidious ways that this government will try to disenfranchise people and not help the people.
00:36:55.860People younger than me wouldn't know it if our elders hadn't taught us that.
00:36:59.140And so now we can bring in more modern technology to help us kind of harness that power and
00:37:04.460get clean energy here and things like that that they don't know about because this kind
00:37:09.420of science wasn't taught when they were in school.
00:37:11.540You know, it didn't exist in some cases like computers, like you and I talking over the day, you know. So these are important things, us sharing knowledge in both directions, it being circular. Everything about the Gullah Geechee community is about connecting in the circle.
00:37:27.480And if you ever see the Gullah Geechee national flag, you see that there's a golden circle around a tree, and that tree is human bodies intertwined.
00:37:38.680And people will often hear me state the slogan of the Gullah Geechee Sea Island Coalition, that the ancestors spoke into my spirit.
00:37:46.340It was not a Gullah Geechee proverb, and people are going around the world saying that's what it is.
00:37:51.080It's a proverb now, but it came from me, actually, that says, Huna must take care of the root for heal the tree.
00:37:56.260So you have to get those tools sometimes to dig deeper. And the people who dug before, they have them already. So why are you trying to make them? All you got to do is sit down and listen and learn. And not only does the wind speak to you sometimes, but also the elders definitely will if they realize that you value what they're saying.0.82
00:38:26.260A long time, I have been walking the road.
00:41:05.500And then talking sometimes is an active, talking is an active process because if I speak, you have to listen in order to really hear me. And so really that's why a lot of young kids say, do you feel me? And that's what you want to do. You want to be able to feel what the environment is giving to you and its message as well.
00:41:25.900And that's what indigenous people do because we are locked in. As I say to people, we are inextricably tied to the land. The land is our family and the waterways are our bloodline. So you don't want your blood poisoned. You don't want to kill off your family.
00:41:42.700So in order to respect that, you have to be in a position of not just hearing, but listening, being part of an active process of choosing to listen. And then once you have listened, taking that into account and taking it back and being accountable.
00:41:59.360And that is not happening with most people in these legislative meetings. In these legislative meetings, they're number crunching and they're trying to figure out the next big way to make money. And so the traditional knowledge goes out the door because we don't necessarily do PowerPoints. I call it death by PowerPoint after you see five or ten of them in a row and nobody remembers anything that was on any slide.
00:42:21.320And so here it is that you have people doing PowerPoints, you have people doing reports, you have executive summaries of those reports, and oral communities don't do that.
00:42:32.000They may come in with something as simple as, hona must take care of the root for heal the tree, and then go sit down.
00:42:49.600And what we're doing is getting rushed to our end of the earth by people who won't slow down and listen and acknowledge that there is such a thing as indigenous and traditional knowledge and that it should be a part of your reports.
00:43:05.620But maybe your reports don't all have to be written.
00:43:10.740Maybe they need to be something that others can hear so that they can listen to it and they can feel something.
00:43:17.620And that might make them change. Because when you can connect to people's spirits and their souls, that's the real impact that we need. And that's the real climate we have to change. It's a political environment that only speaks to the written as being valuable and only speaks to the Anglo version of the written that is valuable and not that of people of color.
00:43:42.140I love that you've said that for the Gullah Geechee, the land is your family and the waterway is your bloodline. And so, if the waterways and ocean are threatened, so is the Gullah Geechee culture.0.68
00:43:57.140And I'm wondering, what will vanish from the ethnosphere if you can no longer remain in your place of becoming and belonging?
00:44:08.700What do you have to say to those who claim culture is carried on our backs, independent from the soil beneath our feet or the water that washes upon us?
00:44:18.720I would say to that person, they've never lived here on the Sea Island.
00:44:22.560because yes as much as culture you only carry your culture on your back like it's a backpack
00:44:27.800once you unpack it somewhere you can lose items along the way wherein for me it's my very DNA it
00:44:34.780is my body itself so yes wherever I go I'm still Gullah Geechee I'm going to be Gullah Geechee
00:44:40.340but what about the rest of how we continue to perpetuate it in the next generation I can take1.00
00:44:47.500a cast net with me to New York, but I'm not about to cast into the Hudson River and eat anything
00:44:53.540that comes out of there. And there may be laws to prevent me from doing so in the first place.
00:44:59.700So you cannot say that you can lift up a group of people and their very culture that built America
00:45:08.860from the very spot where the foundation of it was poured and place it somewhere else and have it be
00:45:15.540the same place and have it be the same expression of that culture. So from the ethnosphere would be0.97
00:45:23.060wiped something that is valuable to world history, not just Black history or American history,0.97
00:45:30.680but to world history, that of Africans that were kidnapped during the crime against humanity,0.79
00:45:37.820But yet having the strength and the survival mechanisms to remain and to then recreate their cultural values in a way that created a new nation on a coastline, you cannot pick them up from there, put them in an urban environment or suburban environment and expect it to be the same expression of that.
00:45:59.640In fact, it would be the very genocide and elimination of that. And so I would want them to show me how somebody who has never watched the sea rise on its own and go back down on its own and watch a sunset across the shore,
00:46:19.780feel that that's the same thing that I could do if I went on and moved out west and was amongst
00:46:26.740the mountains and having to peek up into the sky above the mountain before me to even see the sun
00:46:34.480go up or come down and tell me how would that be the same it wouldn't I would have to adapt I'd
00:46:40.700have to change I'd have to be someone other than who I was which means my children would be someone
00:46:45.880else. My grandchildren would be somewhere else and their culture would be something else. And so0.96
00:46:51.900we need to realize that there is a value in keeping these individual traditions and cultures
00:46:58.240of coastal people around the world intact. And the way you do it is by fighting together to protect
00:47:04.060the land and to do all that we can to reverse our behaviors on land that are causing the negative
00:47:10.480impacts that we now find under the outcomes of climate change.
00:47:15.640Just to think about how dominant society tries to understand the scope of natural disasters
00:47:22.140through the lens, basically, of economic threats alone. You know, nothing about the value of
00:47:28.480cultural heritage. And I'm really questioning how we can begin to understand the relationship
00:47:36.320between natural disasters and climate change and cultural loss and how perhaps if we start
00:47:44.720to understand these three things together if that would you know shift the quality of support the
00:47:50.800communities like the Gullah Geechee would receive after a natural disaster if we could you know1.00
00:47:56.820actually as a society or a government or a country really value cultural heritage just as much as
00:48:05.160everything else but oh goodness just uh saying that out loud really hearing that question out
00:48:13.140loud I'm like we are so far from that oh so far from that so far from that exactly yeah I'm with
00:48:23.440you oh yeah and you know it's sad that we are because when something's so up close and personal
00:48:32.020as weather channel now that everybody's watching on apps and tv and everything else and people see
00:48:37.120it and for two seconds they go oh tweet are you okay you know they don't even pick up a phone
00:48:42.040anymore and check and see if you're okay to send you a tweet they they write something on facebook
00:48:46.260on your wall and and hope that you have lights on to see this stuff um you know and then as soon as
00:48:51.340the news isn't covering it they're not covering you anymore they're not covering you in prayer
00:48:55.780they're not covering you in concern anymore and so it's very important that we get people to
00:49:01.700just feel that you are a part of other people first and it's sad that we even have to go there
00:49:06.960but we do because until we realize that we're part of other people first we're not going to
00:49:11.620realize people are attached to culture it's cultures that make them have the mores and the
00:49:16.880behavioral patterns that they have the things we like and some we don't like but it makes them who
00:49:21.180they are and then this is what makes the world a beautiful place because we have such an array of
00:49:25.860these different cultures and means of cultural expression including when we do crack we tea
00:49:29.840So even all the different languages of the world make a difference.
00:49:34.480And one of the things, though, I must say to you that gives hope that there are more people than just you and I thinking that this is something important is that at the Global Climate Action Summit that just took place,
00:49:45.660This is the first major environmental meeting that I've been in where Cultural Heritage actually had a cultural heritage mobilization group to form so that we can get out here and be voices in the midst of this storm of information and how to go about it and what do we do and how do we resource it.
00:50:08.200But I actually have this voice there to start to say this is an element that's missing.
00:50:14.060When we're calculating the cost of what's happening with climate change and sea level rise and ocean acidification, we can't just talk about the environment.
00:50:22.880And the people who live right there in the midst of most of the hardship and who are going to suffer the most, as they call us, the most vulnerable communities, end quote, are the people you see that are indigenous to the land who still have their cultural heritage intact and are holding on to it with everything in their being.
00:50:43.140And we need to hear from them now because we cannot hear from them as a photograph or video on a museum wall in the years to come as we say, look what we lost.
00:50:54.440Why lose it when it's here right now and you could do something by just listening to them and having them be part of putting these plans together, whether you call them adaptation plans, whether they're resilience trainings,
00:51:06.980whether we're putting together models or modules, but then fund it. Because the things that people
00:51:13.280find important, they will put money into it. They will invest in it. It's amazing to me
00:51:20.000that we had people, as long as things were on the news, make donations to our Gullah Geechee
00:51:26.400Storm Rebuilding Fund. And the minute the news stopped, the stats dropped in terms of people
00:51:32.240making donations. It dropped in terms of people actually sharing the post, even though we were
00:51:37.860saying, wait, wait, wait, wait, the storm moved north, but the water's still rising here. It was
00:51:44.140on the news. So it didn't impact them anymore. So we have to continue to keep things in their faces.
00:51:50.160We have to continue to make them hear it and see it until they realize when I'm talking,
00:51:56.400It's you talking. When I'm seen, you're seen, because we're connected to each other the same way the bodies of water are connected to each other all around the world.
00:52:08.160So this is a global issue, and I'm so glad that the Global Climate Action Summit brought together a new group of us that are focused on cultural heritage mobilization.
00:54:34.700So how has the international community supported you and the Gullah Geechee Nation?
00:54:39.940It's been interesting because, you know, in those big arenas like the UN, you get a lot
00:54:44.260of perfunctory exercise reporting that goes on.
00:54:48.360So the support tends to be signing declarations or signing agreements, thanking you, patting you on the back for your interventions.
00:54:56.760And then you don't really hear anything again.
00:54:59.660But this time, because a lot of what was going on was going on while a storm was being broadcast nationally and internationally, we finally got partners that went, oh, my goodness, wait a minute.
00:55:14.080We know somebody who's been telling us this stuff was going to happen where they are.
00:55:18.360Queen Quetta, you OK? How can we help? So now we have people wanting to bring together resources, whether it's technological resources and their expertise or financial resources to get things like apps and other things done for us and with us that is happening.
00:55:35.140So it's been very slow. It's been just as slow as those sea levels rising that you mentioned earlier in our conversation. It happens so subtly and it lifts things and it starts to bring things with it so subtly that that's why it's hard for people to believe it's even happening.
00:55:54.260but it definitely is happening we now have a rising tide of people that recognize that we
00:56:02.580need to resource cultural heritage in this movement that we're in and so it's a blessing
00:56:08.480to have folks like even for the wild reaching out to us saying well how can we use our platform to
00:56:14.080help you to get the word out there that you even are there because you'd be surprised how many
00:56:19.040people don't even know that the Gullah Geechee Nation exists at all, much less to say, help us.
00:56:24.680You can't help what you don't know is there. And so now more people with expertise, financial
00:56:29.980resources, technological resources that we're starting to engage with. And we pray that we
00:56:36.120have enough time to put some new things in place that are going to help our communities.
00:56:41.420Oh, my goodness. Thank you so much, Queen Quet. You know, I want to say this has been
00:56:48.820inspiring but it's so much more than that you know that's I want a better word for that yeah
00:56:53.800I've just been so moved and really just stoked my fire and I just really believe that we need to
00:57:01.460break out of our silos and work together right now collectively you know face the insanity together
00:57:09.120and support each other and uplift one another and I just really want to encourage our audience to
00:57:17.280support your work. And thank you so much, Queen Quet. And I really hope to stay in touch and stay
00:57:24.720in connection into the future. Thank you so much. And I mean, I really appreciate you reaching out
00:57:30.580and I enjoyed this conversation. Like you said, we could talk all day. I just feel like I got a
00:57:38.880new friend here. We could just sit on the swing with some sweet tea and we could just go for it.
00:58:14.500The music you heard today was by the Gullah Singers.
00:58:17.260There were live recordings from Gullah Geechee TV, Nation News, with Queen Quet and the Gullah Geechee Nation International Music Movement Festival.
00:58:27.740I'd like to thank our wonderful staff, our editor and producer, Andrew Storrs, our research collaborator and writer, Francesca Glassbell, our media director, Molly Lebov, and our music coordinator, Carter Lou McElroy.
00:58:43.360this episode kicks off our theme month of natural disasters so stay tuned for the next three
00:58:49.540episodes that are following this theme also sign up for our newsletter if you haven't already
00:58:55.260and write us on itunes all right thanks so much