00:06:44.920Yes, it has been quite a long journey because, as you mentioned, Hilton Head Island, which
00:06:50.380the world knows as a golf resort and people see on television all over the world. They have no
00:06:57.580idea that beneath all of that false grass that's placed there to remain green all year long are1.00
00:07:06.440literally the blood, sweat, and tears of people of African and indigenous American descent1.00
00:07:11.460called the Gullah Geechee. And so when the island was actually first somewhat discovered in this0.88
00:07:18.920Columbus-esque style to become an area first to be where Charles Frazier and his friends could come
00:07:27.180to and actually go and hunt. And then when they cleared out the woods, they said, well, what else
00:07:33.460are we going to do here? And then their friends started thinking they'd compete. And the more that
00:07:37.840they came, they decided, well, we came by boat. Now we need bridges and we bring our friends over.
00:07:43.860So now as their friends come in, you have all these people of African descent living here.1.00
00:07:48.880So what are we going to do with them?1.00
00:07:50.800Well, then they either wanted you to work for them or sell them your property.
00:07:56.320And so people started losing not only the areas that we live in, the places that we had as bush arvas or brush arvas, which are our sacred grounds for prayer and healing and spiritual practices.
00:08:08.780They started losing areas where our natural herbs that we use to heal the body grow.
00:08:14.660You then started losing the actual environment itself where any of the sweet grass or any of the things we'd known to be natural and indigenous vegetation were because in came clear cutting.
00:08:29.480So with this clear cutting, we are literally in a hurricane zone.
00:08:33.280So this allowed more winds to rapidly get into what did remain on the island. It then started to erode the earth itself because what we are on Sea Islands are maritime forests.
00:08:46.040And so the maritime forest is abutted then by Spartina grass, which is abutted then by oyster banks.
00:08:52.680People started finding that the oyster banks, which we just opened up the shellfish season here again this year, a lot of the oyster banks had to get closed around these gated areas because now the pollution, the runoff and everything was going into the waterways.
00:09:08.700So when we look at it about land loss, land loss isn't just coming because of, you know, sea level rises and winds and other things, but it actually came with the storm of people coming in over building, building right into the marsh line, building right into the seashore and telling us who are the natives that we were just emotional individuals when we said that that's inappropriate.
00:09:33.040It's not sustainable. It's not going to be something beneficial to the environment because you're going to disrupt the ecology.
00:09:41.120And when you clear cut, then you have no buffer when the storms come and all of the things that come blowing in literally and figuratively with the storm are going to have a direct hit on you.
00:09:52.860And so now we're dealing with what was an onslaught of people coming by boat to the very earth itself, now throwing itself up on land with you having sea level rise and storm surges that are putting water up on land.
00:10:10.280We're just now dealing with flooding that's leaving the area that's been going on for over a week on the heels of a hurricane.
00:10:18.800And 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.
00:10:43.220that's now contributing to other factors in the environment that ultimately all contribute
00:10:49.500to the climate change dynamics. And we're seeing us lose land, lose trees, lose farm areas and
00:10:56.340things even more rapidly than we ever would have thought of 50 years ago. And so it is a really
00:11:03.240pressing matter. It's a pressing issue. As you mentioned, our burial areas, our burial areas
00:11:08.700are usually on the waterway. And so we've even seen sacred grounds such as that getting taken
00:11:16.080underwater. Areas that did not hold water before are holding them now. And so we're seeing a number
00:11:23.280of things, including the predatory laws that the county governments put in place where someone
00:11:30.160was now living on, say, Hilton Head, and their land tax had only been $50 a year because someone
00:11:37.040built a resort next to them, their land tax would go up 100%, 200%, 300%, 500% in some cases in one
00:11:46.780year. And that wouldn't sound like a lot of money to some people. But if you were only accustomed
00:11:51.880to living from the waterway and from the land, and you were looking to pay $50, where do you get
00:11:57.040500 times that much? And so people got displaced because of taxation as well. And so the loss of
00:12:05.100ownership has come in so many different ways through heirs' property with piercing the veil,
00:12:10.760as you mentioned, where predatory destruction heirs, we call them. I don't call them developers.
00:12:15.820I call this all destructionment that they do come in and figure out, well, maybe there's an
00:12:21.080heir that's the 25th cousin. And if I can buy that interest out, that person's all the way in
00:12:26.220Arizona. That person's in New York City. That person's in Texas somewhere, and they're not
00:12:30.440going to move back. If I offer them $1,000 for their property, I can get in. I can sue the rest
00:12:36.440of the family that lives on that land. Since they won't sell it to me, I'll sue them off of it.
00:12:41.260And so then they go to court. There's no decision that can be made other than the judge saying,
00:12:46.120well, let's have a forced partition sale and sell the land. So the Gullah Geechee Sea Island
00:12:52.060Coalition has been fighting now for 20 years against these issues. And so that we can keep1.00
00:12:58.480people who still have their land here on the land, but then teaching people how to sustain
00:13:04.260that land has become even more trying over these years. It's just, it's so disgusting,
00:13:11.120the tactics that they are using to steal this land and the sheer, gosh, just disrespect to the
00:13:19.560people and to the land and the lack of forethought with climate change. I mean, I was reading that
00:13:25.740the recorded sea levels at a tidal station in Charleston, South Carolina, show over a foot of
00:13:32.520sea level rise in the last century. And sea levels have been gradually and continuously rising along
00:13:38.280the North Carolina coastline for the past 30 years. So I'm thinking, you know, as ice sheets and
00:13:44.700glaciers melt in the Arctic and Alaska and Antarctica, you know, how is the Gullah Geechee
00:13:51.420nation faring. How will the melting ice impact your nation in terms of tidal flooding and storm
00:13:58.100surges? Well, see, that's been the biggest issue in terms of what you say, the lack of forethought,
00:14:04.520because when people talk about glaciers, and we live here in the southeast, we live in the
00:14:11.160Atlantic Ocean, no one here has ever seen a glacier, unless they've seen it on YouTube,
00:14:15.940on a video, on a photograph, a postcard. So that doesn't seem to them to have anything to do with
00:14:23.420them. And I feel like a lot of the people moved here. We said we'd have been here and things like
00:14:29.240that. And these other rest of the people have come here. And so in our language, there are terms for
00:14:33.200this. Where are the binyas and these new people are coming? And when they come here, they have0.99
00:14:37.660no knowledge of the ecology and balance in the Sea Islands anyway. So that's why they feel they
00:14:42.780can build on shifting sand that has tides, high tide, low tide, spring tide, and now king tides,
00:14:49.160and they think it's going to be sustainable. I'm an engineer. I'm a scientist. So trying to tell
00:14:54.280them that you'll cause sinkholes, you'll cause other things that are not going to be sustainable,
00:14:58.680these politicians don't get it. So when you start to talk to them about the glaciers and you talk
00:15:04.380about the Arctic, they're looking like, that's not part of my constituency. That's not in my
00:15:08.840voting district. So who cares? It's the tourists coming that I need to satisfy. And it's about
00:15:13.700making more money. So this mentality of destruction goes well beyond concerns for the
00:15:21.240whole globe. It's so limited in terms of its perspective. And the people that are lawmakers
00:15:28.200have literally had to see their own homes and their own businesses and their own golf courses
00:15:35.360get flooded when there was no hurricane for them to stop saying that we were emotional natives,
00:15:44.320to now at least pause on that and to also hesitate to say that there's no such thing as climate
00:15:51.460change or that it's a fraud. Many of them are simply ignoring the issue because I hate to have
00:15:57.260to say this. It sounds ageist, but it's realistic. Many of these people live in gated retirement0.54
00:16:03.660areas. So for them, this is their last hurrah, these are their last days, and they're not really
00:16:11.160concerned about us and the next generation that's coming. They want to live out their days however
00:16:17.820they want to do it, even if that's just trying to attempt to count more money as if they need
00:16:23.740more money or we can eat money. Well, guess what? Even if you have a treasure trove of money,
00:16:31.160We have seen enough flooding here and tides rise so rapidly that it can float away your treasure trove.
00:16:39.800And so that's the thing that we have to get them to look at is how does this connect to you?
00:16:45.660Don't think of it as something so far away and that's up north and that's on the West Coast.
00:16:51.240Those glaciers aren't over here. You got to look at the world. It's all connected.
00:16:56.520the water bodies are connected. So we have to get people to understand that our bodies as human
00:17:02.540beings are connected. We also are made of water. So we don't start to look at this and examine
00:17:09.600what the scientists are telling us about the levels of water and how it's getting higher and
00:17:15.060higher and how we need to keep the waters pristine so that the oceans don't acidify.
00:17:21.480We need to take it personally and think about how much seafood you want to eat. If you did
00:17:26.260come to a beautiful, pristine area on the water, on an island? Would you want acid in your food?
00:17:34.360Because that acid would be in your person. When we start making it more personal, we cause them
00:17:40.000to pause. We cause them to hesitate to say that we're just emotional or that we don't know what
00:17:46.020we're talking about or that somebody's trying to pull a hoax. And so we have to bring it down
00:17:52.120to their level as much as we'd like to bring down the waters right now. And so we really have to
00:17:58.500meet these folks where they are. But remember, many of them aren't going to listen because they
00:18:03.020feel like, well, these are my final days and this is just what I want to do. Oh, my goodness. I'm
00:18:08.820just imagining the people behind the gates just counting their money as the ship goes down and
00:18:15.620just feeling exactly like you were saying that these are the end of their days and they want
00:18:21.420to live them out like how they want to live them. And they don't care about what happens to other
00:18:27.840people in the area or the future generations. And they have no forethought. And I was also just
00:18:35.100really shocked by the government's lack of intelligence when it comes to climate change.
00:18:40.180For example, research has proven that the torrential rainfalls that accompanied Hurricane
00:18:45.640Florence were projected to be 50% worse than it would have been without global warming.
00:18:52.120The rainfall not only led to flooding, but also polluted water and soil.
00:18:56.980You know, it's clear that climate change and global warming are strengthening the force of natural disasters.
00:19:02.380Yet government agencies have in many ways declared that they do not care about those who are impacted by said disasters.
00:19:11.740In 2010, a North Carolinian State Commission report said that sea levels could rise as much as 39 inches by 2100.
00:19:21.420Yet in 2012, North Carolina passed HB 819, which sought to ban local and state agencies from using scientific predictions of accelerated sea level rise.
00:19:33.540You 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.
00:19:43.780So I'm just wondering, do you believe it's possible that any branch of the government
00:19:50.500will be able to successfully address the aftermath of natural disasters?
00:19:55.680Or is there just blatant disregard, a clear sign that communities must begin to localize
00:20:03.000and think about how they're going to respond to their own regional natural disasters?
00:20:07.740Well, 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 and 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.
00:20:32.820And so, but the thing that has happened, I'm a person who's a firm believer in divine order. And I do believe that there is a creator of us all. And 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.
00:20:52.260And 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.
00:21:07.900Now 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.
00:21:24.340And they did not even admit to the national news that there were many communities of people displaced ever since Hurricane Matthew.
00:21:33.320And so many of those people hadn't even returned or were living in dilapidated homes as a result of the previous storm.
00:21:39.940The 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.
00:21:51.060Before 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.
00:22:03.100And that was based on real estate, where people's lives and cultural heritage are more valuable than any real estate.
00:22:14.960I'm a mathematician by degrees, and I bring that up in every meeting that I go to about these things, especially with legislative members.
00:22:24.420Most 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.
00:22:38.460So that tells you that you cannot go to your state dome or to Capitol Hill and look for help.
00:22:47.220We are the ones that we've been waiting on.
00:22:50.000Just 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.
00:23:02.100get you down this road, off this road, over the river, through the creeks, or whatever you have
00:23:07.680to do to share food, get lights on, and to survive and thrive. That's what Gullah Geechies have always1.00
00:23:14.440done here in the Gullah Geechie Nation. So for us, it's not something new. That's why everybody1.00
00:23:19.140calls us resilient people. How do you adapt? How are you being resilient in the face of this? I mean,
00:23:25.480the politicians aren't paying attention to you. Well, we never expected them to, because they
00:23:30.180have also been the ones that always set the laws in place that would displace us, disrupt us,0.92
00:23:35.620and did not ever value our lives because we were people of African descent. So why would they do0.53
00:23:41.160it now? Again, what they value is what they can exploit. And if they can exploit the land to make
00:23:47.140it another place that's somewhere where people recreate, that's more concern to them than the
00:23:52.460people who live there all the time and who are the traditionalists that have to live from this land
00:23:56.840in this water. And right now we can't live from the water if the water is polluted by coal ash
00:24:02.680that they found has spilled into it and so on. So that tells you where the mindset is. The mindset
00:24:08.680is about being about dollars and not about the people themselves. And so we have to get together
00:24:18.620on the grassroots level and work with other people that are willing and able to actually see
00:24:25.000what is going on and to actually have concerns for this generation and the next. And that is not
00:24:31.940a politician necessarily make. Politicians will promise you one thing on one side of town and
00:24:37.380promise another group on the opposite end of the spectrum, something on the other side,
00:24:41.440the next side of town. So we have to come together on the shoreline as people who really recognize
00:24:48.080the reality of the world we are in right now. And we have to get these kind of people that are in
00:24:53.840office currently out of there and get people in that have the same mindset and have the eyes to
00:24:59.400see that the waters have risen, the winds have spoken. It has been ordered for them to actually
00:25:06.140read that handwriting that used to be in the wall that's now mounted on a post in the front yard
00:25:11.880with water surrounding it. How can you say that the predictions were wrong in this case
00:25:17.640when your street, you can't drive down and you need a boat to row down it right now?
00:26:23.840I have so many thoughts and questions swirling around my mind as you're so passionately explaining
00:26:40.960these issues. But one thing I was thinking about is just the resiliency of the Gullah Geechee Nation.
00:26:48.480While life as we know it is expected to intensify under climate chaos, the Gullah Geechee Nation is a community that has long been familiar with storms of the east.
00:26:58.280I mean, almost 150 hurricanes have hit the area between 1851 and 2013.
00:27:04.940So I want to ask you to share what these storms have brought with them, both in magnitude of their power, but also in terms of the resiliency and knowledge that they've provided.
00:27:19.120And I have a second part to that question, but I think I'll save it so I don't get too excited.
00:27:36.280So 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.
00:27:50.780And 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.
00:28:05.440I've stayed on St. Helena Island, which is my home island. I'm a native of St. Helena Island in South Carolina.
00:28:11.220And 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.
00:28:29.700But 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.
00:28:40.120And so they always told us stories of how the family gathered together and how what they did and how high the water rose.
00:28:48.020And sometimes having to run from one house they were in to get to another house that was on higher ground.
00:28:53.620And how fortunate they were that they did it because when they got back to the house, they left.
00:28:58.520how windows had been blown out right onto a couch that a little child had been playing on
00:29:03.460before they'd left the house, you know, and all these kinds of stories. And so we know how to
00:29:08.860prepare, how to store up things all year. You don't wait until a storm is coming to prepare
00:29:14.620for the storm. So there's a lot of emergency preparedness things that we do naturally to us.
00:29:21.940That's just part of our culture that we would do on a day-to-day basis so that when the storm is
00:29:26.840approaching it's really just you know you're checking off everything again and you're just
00:29:31.720you know retrofitting certain things to the current situation or making sure things are right
00:29:36.420at hand that you don't look at every day like you know i've learned to to buy you know these
00:29:42.640floating kits now to put all of our paperwork in that are waterproof and air sealed and all that
00:29:48.380just in the event that we have to get in a boat and float up out of here that we don't lose all
00:29:52.800our paper and then have somebody like fema tell us we won't give you any money because you can't
00:29:56.680proof who y'all. We learned that from Katrina and our people down in Louisiana, that you could run0.84
00:30:02.960and just leave. But if you run and just leave, and now your paperwork's all soaked because you
00:30:07.420were trying to swim out with it, or you just left because you had to because the storm just came
00:30:12.880upon you suddenly, now what? Now the government's not going to help because they're going to claim
00:30:17.640you can't prove that was your property. You can't prove you lived here. You may not even be able to
00:30:22.500get back into your house if you don't have ID with you. So there's been so many things from
00:30:26.520practical application and occurrence that we've been able to use as tools that we can now use
00:30:33.100to teach the next generation and to model in other communities that never experienced it,
00:30:39.360that never lived through one storm, much less the several that we've been blessed to live through
00:30:44.100and be able to remain in our houses. And so a lot of it really, though, has to do with just living
00:30:49.820in a traditional communal community where we help each other every day and we share what we have
00:30:55.260every day. So now all of us needs like, well, we got all on votes. No, we don't because the next
00:31:00.960people who are in our Gullah Geechee Fishing Association, for instance, will know how to
00:31:04.700navigate to come get you and to get you out, you know, and they'll check on you. And so now with
00:31:10.500social media, then we started to develop our own platform for conveying information and relaying
00:31:16.800it to people so that if they do evacuate, we have ways to get them back in or they know when they
00:31:21.580can come back in and all that. So it's a lot of things that I've learned that are too many for us
00:31:26.820to even get into totally on this call. But I've done a number of videos on our Gullah Geechee TV
00:31:32.340platform. So it's just Gullah Geechee.tv that people can go to or find it on YouTube and even
00:31:38.720see some of the things. Or if they follow our blog at Gullah Geechee Nation dot com, I blog about
00:31:43.680this issue a lot because as much as God has spared my life and my family's lives, I want
00:31:49.200other people to survive and thrive too. So we want to share some of that knowledge with them.
00:31:54.980Oh my gosh. Wow. I just, it's just so amazing to hear how you even prepare by protecting your
00:32:03.500paperwork. I had never even considered that that would be something you would need to prove land
00:32:10.060ownership or identity. I mean, I'm just thinking about all of the insidious ways that this
00:32:16.620government will try to disenfranchise people and not help the people, their citizens even.
00:32:23.320And, you know, not only are you preparing to protect your life and the life of your family
00:32:28.120and your community members, but you also have to think about how the government could try to
00:32:34.700steal your land. I mean, that is just insane. So thank you so much for shedding light on these
00:32:44.740issues that the general public just has no idea about.
00:32:50.740Well, another thing I've been thinking about is for the Gullah Geechee, water has always been
00:32:58.400a spiritual entity of sorts. You know, one did not necessarily go to the water for recreation.
00:33:04.700In fact, there's a tradition of building away from the water.
00:33:08.660So I'm wondering, how have these traditions and traditional ecological knowledge influenced
00:33:15.940or even prepared your community for rising tides and the future of natural disasters?
00:33:23.580And then also, you know, you started to speak about this, but what is the importance of
00:33:28.360intergenerational engagement in building climate resilient communities in this new world that
00:33:33.860we've soon to arrive at if we haven't already? Well, it's very important to have the
00:33:39.780intergenerational knowledge because the older people, we have a saying that they say, well,
00:33:44.560the old horse and noted road, the young one must find a way. And so we see that in this sort of
00:33:50.920individualistic society that we're in, a lot of people seem to think that the day that they were
00:33:56.220born, that they had all knowledge that exists in the world. And if they don't have it in their head,
00:34:00.140They find it on the Internet. And that is not true. And so people want to Google every other thing.
00:34:06.080But what you find there doesn't make it accurate and it doesn't come from practical application.
00:34:10.960But if you sit down with an elder in your community that can say to you, well, I've lived 100 years.
00:34:16.100I literally have family members who are over 100 years old and they can say 100 years ago when I was little or when I was your age.
00:34:24.340OK, this did not happen. This you do not build this here because of this.
00:34:30.140This is what exists here. And the water will come in. There's a whole bunch of things that they could share with you that on site, you just look at it and say, oh, it's just a piece of land. I like that spot. It's pretty. Let me go over here. And they'll go, no, you don't. And they'll explain to you exactly why that's going to shift. It's going to change or why that's a sacred place. And you shouldn't put something like that there.
00:34:51.740And so with us being people of African descent, we've held on to a lot of our ancestral traditions that you respect the elders in your community in the first place.
00:35:02.160So having the elders talk, the children listen.
00:35:05.640And then if they allow you to talk, then you share knowledge you have.
00:35:09.640So our older people, they don't get on the Internet, but I can teach them what I do and how what they can teach me, I can pass to another set of people elsewhere that are younger, my age group, my peer group, and how it can maybe benefit all of us.
00:35:23.840That's one of the ways that some of the Gullah Geechies who work in emergency management elsewhere found out and checked in with me during last year's storms was saying, Queen Quet, where are you?0.97
00:35:36.460I started getting emails and Facebook messages. Where are you located? And I'm like, I am actually on the island in the eye of the storm. And they're like, oh, my God, please, if you can continue to get in touch with us, please do. And so it takes all those levels. It takes the people who are younger who say, well, oh, we know this new modern technology, but you can't eat that phone when you're out of light and you're out of food for days.
00:36:00.760Do you know how to go out here and feed yourself? Do you know what herbs are out here that you can eat when the rain stops and the wind stops blowing and it's safe for you to be outside?
00:36:10.580You know, do you know how to chop wood? Because you may have to bilify. You can't turn the oven on now.
00:36:17.020So now what do you do in those circumstances? So it's very important that that intergenerational knowledge is there because there are we do build away from water.
00:36:43.260You know, you might have one or two gully geaches around here that ever learned how to surf or anything like that because they were in the military.
00:36:49.400You know, but there are not things that we go out there just to play with the water.
00:36:54.460We respect the power of water and we respect it as a healing entity spiritually and physically.
00:37:01.520And so that the elders taught us that we wouldn't know it.
00:37:06.400People younger than me wouldn't know it if our elders hadn't taught us that.
00:37:10.040And so now we can bring in more modern technology to help us kind of harness that power and get clean energy here and things like that that they don't know about because this kind of science wasn't taught when they were in school.
00:37:22.180You know, it didn't exist in some cases like computers like you and I talking over the day.
00:37:27.600You know, so these are important things, us sharing knowledge in both directions, it being circular.
00:37:33.940Everything about the Gullah Geechee community is about connecting in the circle.
00:37:38.140And if you ever see the Gullah Geechee national flag, you see that there's a golden circle around a tree.
00:37:45.160And that tree is human bodies intertwined.
00:37:48.780And people will often hear me state the slogan of the Gullah Geechee Sea Island Coalition, that the ancestors spoke into my spirit.
00:39:42.960I completely resonate with being able to respect the elders and the land enough that you can hear
00:40:06.740them speak, you know, if you actually slow down and listen. And this is just not spoken about
00:40:13.140enough as a mandatory practice, especially now, you know, we really need to reconnect with that.
00:40:22.640Um, gosh, you've been giving us, oh my gosh, you've been describing so much in this conversation.
00:40:29.480And my next thought is, you know, I'm wondering if you found yourself frequently having to push
00:40:36.620back on the narrative that the Sea Islands region is unprepared for climate change due to socioeconomic
00:40:42.920status. Do you believe this is reflective of a larger trend in which climate scientists and
00:40:50.300officials actively choose to ignore indigenous data sources? Yeah, I do think it is a trend that
00:40:56.800they tend to ignore indigenous data sources and tend to ignore the indigenous voice because most
00:41:03.240indigenous communities are oral communities. We do sit underneath the oak tree and tingle like
00:41:08.520that, and crackly teeth with one another upon the shoreline. So we sit under the oaks and talk to
00:41:12.940one another right on the shoreline, and we share that way. And then talking sometime is an active,
00:41:19.260talking is an active process, because if I speak, you have to listen in order to really hear me.
00:41:26.500And so really, that's why a lot of young kids say, do you feel me? And that's what you want to do.
00:41:31.280You want to be able to feel what the environment is giving to you and its message as well.
00:41:36.800And that's what indigenous people do because we are locked in.
00:41:41.120As I say to people, we are inextricably tied to the land.
00:41:45.060The land is our family and the waterways are our bloodline.
00:41:48.780So you don't want your blood poisoned.
00:41:51.400You don't want to kill off your family.
00:41:53.220So in order to respect that, you have to be in a position of not just hearing, but listening,
00:41:59.980being part of an active process of choosing to listen. And then once you have listened,
00:42:05.960taking that into account and taking it back and being accountable. And that is not happening
00:42:11.960with most people in these legislative meetings. In these legislative meetings,
00:42:16.580they're number crunching and they're trying to figure out the next big way to make money. And so
00:42:21.500the traditional knowledge goes out the door because we don't necessarily do PowerPoints.
00:42:26.040I 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.
00:42:32.360And 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.
00:42:42.220They may come in with something as simple as, hona must take care of the root for heal the tree, and then go sit down.
00:42:50.100Everything is in that proverb, just like an oak tree is inside of an acorn.
00:42:54.220But we got to sit and take time to watch it grow. We can't rush it to its end. And 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.
00:43:15.880But maybe your reports don't all have to be written. Maybe they need to be oral reports. Maybe they need to be something that others can hear so that they can listen to it and they can feel something. And that might make them change.
00:43:30.800Because when you can connect to people's spirits and their souls, that's the real impact that we need.
00:43:38.120And that's the real climate we have to change.0.99
00:43:40.900It'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.0.83
00:43:52.960I love that you've said that for the Gullah Geechee, the land is your family and the waterway is your bloodline.0.86
00:43:59.940and so if the waterways and ocean are threatened so is the gulagichi culture0.98
00:44:07.740and i'm wondering what will vanish from the ethnosphere if you can no longer remain in
00:44:15.320your place of becoming and belonging what do you have to say to those who claim culture is
00:44:22.440carried on our backs independent from the soil beneath our feet or the water that washes upon us
00:44:28.740I would say to that person who never lived here on the sea island, because yes, as much as culture, you're only carrying your culture on your back like it's a backpack.
00:44:38.640Once you unpack it somewhere, you can lose items along the way, wherein for me, it's my very DNA.
00:44:45.200It is my body itself. So, yes, wherever I go, I'm still Gullah Geechee.
00:44:49.740I'm going to be Gullah Geechee and things like that.0.95
00:44:51.720But what about the rest of how we continue to perpetuate it in the next generation?0.98
00:44:57.040I can take a cast net with me to New York, but I'm not about to cast into the Hudson River and eat anything that comes out of there.
00:45:05.600And there may be laws to prevent me from doing so in the first place.
00:45:10.220So you cannot say that you can lift up a group of people and their very culture that built America from the very spot where the foundation of it was poured and place it somewhere else and have it be the same place and have it be the same expression of that culture.0.58
00:45:30.960So from the ethnosphere would be wiped something that is valuable to world history, not just Black history or American history, but to world history, that of Africans that were kidnapped during the crime against humanity, but 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 earth.0.63
00:46:00.960the coastline. You cannot pick them up from there, put them in an urban environment or suburban0.96
00:46:06.100environment, and expect it to be the same expression of that. In fact, it would be the
00:46:11.600very genocide and elimination of that. And so I would want them to show me how somebody who has
00:46:20.720never watched the sea rise on its own and go back down on its own and watch a sunset across the
00:46:29.820sure, feel that that's the same thing that I could do if I went on and moved out west
00:46:36.220and was amongst the mountains and having to peek up into the sky above the mountain before
00:46:43.740me to even see the sun go up or come down and tell me how would that be the same?
00:46:52.260I'd have to be someone other than who I was, which means my children would be someone else.0.98
00:46:56.780My grandchildren would be somewhere else and their culture would be something else.0.71
00:47:01.960And so we need to realize that there is a value in keeping these individual traditions and cultures of coastal people around the world intact.
00:47:11.380And the way you do it is by fighting together to protect the land and to do all that we can to reverse our behaviors on land that are causing the negative impacts that we now find under the outcomes of climate change.
00:47:25.180Just to think about how dominant society tries to understand the scope of natural disasters through the lens, basically, of economic threats alone.
00:47:37.240You know, nothing about the value of cultural heritage.
00:47:40.680And I'm really questioning how we can begin to understand the relationship between natural disasters and climate change and cultural loss.
00:47:52.340and how perhaps if we start to understand
00:48:17.480But, oh goodness, just saying that out loud
00:48:20.960really hearing that question out loud I'm like we are so far from that oh so far from that
00:48:29.780so far from that exactly yeah I'm with you
00:48:34.200oh yeah and you know it's sad that we are because when something's so up close and personal as
00:48:43.000weather channel now that everybody's watching on apps and tv and everything else and people see it
00:48:47.820And for two seconds, they go, oh, tweet, are you OK?
00:48:51.140You know, they don't even pick up a phone anymore and check and see if you're OK to send you a tweet.
00:48:54.800They write something on Facebook on your wall and hope that you have lights on to see this stuff.
00:49:00.620You know, and then as soon as the news isn't covering it, they're not covering you anymore.
00:49:05.000They're not covering you in prayer. They're not covering you in concern anymore.
00:49:09.240And so it's very important that we get people to just feel that you are a part of other people first.
00:49:15.400and it's sad that we even have to go there but we do because until we realize that we're part
00:49:20.120of other people first we're not going to realize people are attached to culture it's cultures that
00:49:25.160make them have the mores and the behavioral patterns that they have the things we like
00:49:29.840and some we don't like but it makes them who they are and then this is what makes the world a
00:49:34.180beautiful place because we have such an array of these different cultures and means of cultural
00:49:38.480expression including when we do crack we tea daughter so we're down on a till and not do
00:49:41.860So even all the different languages of the world make a difference. And one of the things that 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, this 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 the world.
00:50:11.860of this storm of information and how to go about it and what do we do and how do we resource
00:50:18.400it, but actually have this voice there to start to say, this is an element that's missing.
00:50:24.380When we're calculating the cost of what's happening with climate change and sea level
00:50:28.500rise and ocean acidification, we can't just talk about the environment.
00:50:31.900We are the environment and the people who live right there in the midst of most of the
00:50:38.200hardship and who are going to suffer the most as they call us the most vulnerable communities
00:50:42.200end quote are the people you see that are indigenous to the land who still have their
00:50:47.280cultural heritage intact and are holding on to it with everything in their being and we need to hear
00:50:55.260from them now because we cannot hear from them as a photograph or video on a museum wall in the years
00:51:02.240to come as we say, look what we lost. Why lose it when it's here right now? And you could do
00:51:08.000something by just listening to them and having them be part of putting these plans together,
00:51:13.780whether you call them adaptation plans, whether they're resilience trainings, whether we're
00:51:18.260putting together models or modules, but then fund it because the things that people find important,
00:51:24.760They will put money into it. They will invest in it. It's amazing to me that we had people, as long as things were on the news, make donations to our Gullah Geechee Storm Rebuilding Fund. And the minute the news stopped, the stats dropped in terms of people making donations.
00:51:43.680It dropped in terms of people actually sharing the post, even though we were saying, wait, wait, wait, wait, the storm moved north, but the water is still rising here.
00:51:54.080It was on the news. So it didn't impact them anymore.
00:51:57.540So we have to continue to keep things in their faces. We have to continue to make them hear it and see it until they realize when I'm talking, it's you talking.
00:52:08.320When 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.
00:52:18.440So 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.
00:52:38.320Oh, freedom, oh, love me, and before I be a saint, I will live early in my grave, and when I go to my Lord, I will be free.
00:58:24.340The music you heard today was by the Gullah singer
00:58:27.500There were live recordings from Gullah Geechee TV, Nation News, with Queen Quet and the Gullah Geechee Nation International Music Movement Festival.
00:58:38.220I'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.
00:58:53.880this episode kicks off our theme month of natural disasters so stay tuned for the next three
00:59:00.060episodes that are following this theme also sign up for our newsletter if you haven't already
00:59:05.780and write us on itunes all right thanks so much