00:02:56.080environmental-related issues and programs working within tribal governments in developing
00:03:01.220indigenous-based environmental protection infrastructures. He works with indigenous
00:03:06.680peoples worldwide. As executive director of Indigenous Environmental Network since 1996,
00:03:13.240Tom is known as one of the environmental justice movement grassroots leaders in North America,
00:03:18.960addressing toxics in health, mining, energy, climate, water, globalization, sustainable
00:03:26.180development and Indigenous rights issues. He is one of the founders of the Durban Group for Climate
00:03:31.820Justice, co-founder of Climate Justice Now, co-founder of the U.S.-based Environmental
00:03:37.360Justice Climate Change Initiative, and a member of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on
00:03:43.020Climate Change that operates as the Indigenous Caucus within the United Nations Framework
00:03:48.700Convention on Climate Change. Tom is a policy advisor to Indigenous communities on environmental
00:03:54.640protection, and more recently on climate policy focusing on mitigation, adaptation, and concerns
00:04:00.880of false solutions. He was also awarded the Gandhi Peace Award in 2015.
00:04:08.180Wow, Tom, what a gift it is to welcome you on the show today. Thank you so much for joining us.
00:04:14.000Thank you, Ayanna. I'm glad to be on the call. And it's a warm day where I'm from right now in
00:04:22.300northern minnesota we have not even have a spring we went straight from a long winter almost like
00:04:30.340right into summer definitely all over where i've been traveling and talking to people it's very
00:04:37.500warm out there in north america oh my goodness it is it was breaking 90s yesterday here in northern
00:04:46.960California, and it's still May, so we're all feeling the heat. I just want to jump right into
00:04:54.760this topic of red, and your work on behalf of Earth and Sky has reverberated through networks
00:05:03.580locally, nationally, and internationally, and you are so well-versed in the ways colonization
00:05:10.500unduringly attempts to exploit, commodify, and privatize the sacredness of life.
00:05:18.520And in this phase of great planetary shifts, we see the beast of global capitalism unraveling.
00:05:25.860Yet instead of letting itself die, it literally grasps for carbon as the new commodity.
00:05:33.020With the UN, the international NGOs, and institutions such as World Bank
00:05:37.280championing market-based carbon trading regimes, such as REDD, a program, which is reducing
00:05:43.240emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. And you and IEN have been loud
00:05:49.460in your opposition to REDD, not only for its failure to address the root sources of climate
00:05:55.320change, but also as a scheme to precipitate one of the largest land grabs in colonial history.
00:06:02.320So, Tom, would you help us understand the mechanisms of red, how it works, and also explain why you have compared it to the doctrine of discovery for its use of dishonest justifications to dispossess indigenous peoples of their lands and cultures?
00:06:20.720Well, you asked me to talk about something that I'm really passionate about.
00:06:26.420I remember when I first got into this work, there are some friends of mine who are older than me.
00:06:35.200I guess in a way, you know, one would call them my uncle, my aunties.
00:06:42.220I've always had older friends, even when growing up.
00:06:47.040And, of course, like in relationship, I would normally call someone my uncle or grandpa.
00:06:54.340But somehow for me, it was more on a friendship and they opened that door with me, you know.
00:07:00.540So that's why I say I have some other friends who say, who told me, Tom, in this work that you're doing with this organization, working on environment, remember it's spiritual work.
00:07:16.360because our relationship, no matter what tribe,
00:07:21.000we have a spiritual relationship to our Mother Earth,
00:07:43.700It's always been a foundation of who I am and what I talk about.
00:07:51.460So it was a good reminder when they said, you know, don't forget of that work that you do is spiritual work.
00:08:00.180The second piece that I was told is also watch out if you come upon an issue that's really hard to translate into language.
00:08:10.100And this moment came about, I would say, about 15 years ago, when there was a lot of policy work in this country, but internationally, where it seemed like instead of the countries of the North, like the United States and Canada and Europe and the UK,
00:08:36.340Instead of cutting back on carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases, they actually started to look at alternatives.
00:08:48.560Instead of cutting back, they created a market system called carbon offsets, carbon credits, going carbon neutral, carbon trading, payment for environmental services.
00:09:03.320this is an area that I really needed to study.
00:09:08.580So looking at it, studying it, talking to elders,
00:09:13.420even having ceremonies, consulting with other folks
00:09:27.700because it was a violation of the sacred, bottom line.
00:09:31.040It involves a market system of trading air.
00:09:36.360In this case, carbon or methane and other greenhouse gases.
00:09:41.820A trading mechanism to where if you trade anything in a trading system in this world, whether it's a Wall Street type trading system, you have to determine whose property right that is.
00:09:55.280You can't trade anything until you determine the property right.
00:09:58.380in this situation, we have an economic regime where you have to privatize the air and create
00:10:07.540a trading mechanism. It is a form of privatization. That's something that is very critical to us
00:10:14.740is that the world has come to this time and place to work. This is one of the major solutions
00:10:21.220of the United States and Canada and other countries of the north to mitigate climate
00:10:27.020change that we're in. Another moment that I always reflect on is a gathering that was held by
00:10:33.740an indigenous president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, who is still the president.
00:10:41.620And he was so frustrated participating in the UN climate meetings when he also was trained to
00:10:48.680integrating the issues around indigenous cosmology. It was in 2009 in Copenhagen,
00:10:57.920and there was a strong resistance against these false solutions. IEN was very critical in that
00:11:04.560area, and we were mobilizing other NGOs, non-government organizations, to speak out
00:11:11.660against these, that they're false solutions. They're not really mitigating climate, and actually
00:11:16.120They're giving polluters the right to continue to pollute.
00:11:20.200Evo Morales left Copenhagen at that UN climate meeting and said, we're going to have our own meeting.
00:11:29.400He's going to invite the farmers, the peasants, the people who struggle for water rights, indigenous peoples, people from throughout the world to have their own World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth.
00:11:44.500that was in Cuchabamba, April 22nd, 2010.
00:11:51.140And it was really, man, it was a really good meeting.
00:11:55.560It was a lot of critical analysis about where we're at.
00:12:00.100But something that really struck out at me,
00:12:02.460and I found another stronger base there of people who thought like I did.
00:12:09.520And out of that meeting came a universal declaration on rights of Mother Earth.
00:12:14.500But why I mention this is that it talks about that we have to come together as people and nations of this earth and that we have to challenge the decision makers to reevaluate the relationship to the sacredness of Mother Earth, acknowledge that she is a source of life and that we get our nourishment from her.
00:12:37.480Everything comes from her. And recognize that capitalist system, along with everything that it represents, exploitation, abuse, contamination, commodification, and part of the problem of climate change, that we have to address this reality.
00:12:56.580And that really was the hook for me to better understand where we're at, because if we as indigenous peoples, as well as non-indigenous people, lose our understanding about what those original instructions are that were given to us by the creator, then we're in the danger of becoming like dominant society.
00:13:22.580And that's the critical area, is that we have a dominant system that views Mother Earth as an object, the same way that many of us are addressing the issues of objectification of women.
00:13:41.980We have an economic system and politics and policies, including property rights, that objectifies that sacredness of our Mother Earth.
00:13:54.760So it's linked up. It's related to this broader frame of financialization of nature. It creates a new commodity of nature by turning that sacredness of our Mother Earth's carbon cycling and Mother Earth's life cycling capacity into property to be bought and sold in a global market.
00:14:17.680That's what red is, reducing admission from deforestation and degradation, selling the carbon that's in the trees.
00:14:38.400It's the very polluters that are creating climate change but also toxic contamination in this world.
00:14:45.060It gives them a free ride. They use carbon as a sponge. And the carbon credits that they buy are cheaper in the global south. So in a way, what's happening is that they are buying the trees in the south. It's their trees. They have bought carbon.
00:15:02.320And now we are experiencing human rights violations from all over the global South, Indonesia, Africa, Latin America, where these forested regions where indigenous peoples live, now they don't have access to the trees because those are protected trees.
00:15:23.140It is a catch-22 because we do support the conservation of trees. There's so much illegal logging that's going on in the South.
00:15:32.320But out of what's happening here, using trees as part of a trading system with no really clear and strong mechanism for reporting, verification and monitoring, it ends up potentially, and we've seen this already, this international Ponzi scam of climate capitalism.
00:15:54.840Wow. Thank you, Tom, for unpacking this really disgusting false solution. And it seems that
00:16:06.660the REDD program seems to avail the longstanding colonizer strategy of divide and conquer.
00:16:14.540And I'm wondering how you've seen communities fissure when grants from the World Bank or
00:16:21.100NGO rhetoric begin shaping indigenous delegations? It is one of the problems and we want to talk
00:16:28.360about that at our Protecting Mother Earth Conference and a lot of these policies that are
00:16:34.200you know that we're struggling with especially when you link money to it and we want to come
00:16:40.520together to address this issue because what is that foundation that holds us together as
00:16:47.420indigenous peoples aboriginal first nation people not only of north america canada and u.s what we
00:16:54.260call turtle island but of the world there's a lot of division the sacred hoop is really
00:17:02.260not completely broken the sacred hoop needs to be mended and and healed because a lot of these
00:17:11.400initiatives, whether it's mining, the differences between saying no to mining, that there's no such
00:17:18.120things as sustainable mining, but yet there's such a push from financial institutions like the World
00:17:24.660Bank who say, yes, there is sustainable mining. We'll give you money to go development around
00:17:30.540sustainable mining. But when we consult with our traditional people, there's really concern and
00:17:38.220lack of trust in the concepts of sustainable mining. Does that really exist? So the other
00:17:44.740area that we've been talking about is this area of commodification of the sacred, privatization
00:17:51.340of nature, financialization of life itself. That's the number one solution for mitigating
00:17:59.400climate change. And we know, like what I briefly talked about, it's not a real solution, but it's
00:18:06.300being pushed by some of the well-financed large green groups in this country, U.S., as well as
00:18:14.100throughout the world. We call them the large non-governmental organizations, NGOs, the well-funded,
00:18:23.100and they're pushing this fault solution agenda along with World Bank, which is sourcing up
00:18:29.760Indigenous organizations to support REDD. REDD is, again, is part of this carbon trading,
00:18:37.360carbon offsets. There's other related initiatives like payment for environmental services
00:18:43.380compensating people under this regime. So money talks, especially when you're dealing with our
00:18:51.420people that haven't had money, or they're fighting other issues and they need resources.
00:18:58.340So we've been battling with this as how do we create the necessary resources to do community-based training
00:19:06.000and make those available in different languages, whether it's the indigenous languages of Brazil or in Ecuador
00:19:14.280or other areas of the global south where tropical forests are.
00:19:21.060That's where these initiatives are being implemented.
00:19:24.420And also domestically in the U.S. and Canada, they're being implemented in forested areas in the north as well.
00:20:43.800There's cancer clusters around a lot of these polluting facilities that are greenwashing.
00:20:49.720And then the other issue is that the numbers don't add up.
00:20:53.900Europe was a good example of that in their admissions trading.
00:20:57.180We have a new publication, a new report that we just put together along with the Climate Justice Alliance called Carbon Pricing, a critical perspective for community resistance.
00:21:11.360Do carbon trading regimes threaten cultural genocide on a scale we have never seen before?
00:21:20.140Well, not only genocide against our people, it's a form of ecocide against nature, against
00:21:28.380Mother Earth. It's as if these policies are liquidating the sacredness of what we as
00:21:36.400indigenous people understand in our relationship with Mother Earth. She's in liquidation. It's all
00:21:43.100about money. And not only is it red and the trading of carbon in the trees, but now agriculture.
00:21:52.300In the UN system, they are even proposing what we call climate-smart agriculture,
00:21:57.120which means that it involves genetically engineered seeds for agriculture and crops
00:22:04.740that are climate friendly and it also involves not turning the soil so that you sequester the
00:22:13.120carbon in the soil again who buys carbon in the soil who makes that investment
00:22:20.000around climate smart agriculture again it's the polluters now it's also mining companies
00:22:28.500It's pension funds. There's big money and investments around what I'm talking about.
00:22:37.400And it involves also biological offsets, conservation offsets.
00:22:42.960So this is really concerning because on an international scale, it's also coming out of the international realm.
00:22:51.580It's a whole financial system that is not transparent.
00:22:56.240The bottom line, at the end of the day, at the 11th hour, it's not our people or even non-Native people that have rights to the land is going to be in corporate hands.
00:24:34.880Again, if you look at the weather, in our Navajo tradition, there's male rain and female rain.
00:24:40.840You get a lot of male rain these days that when it rains throughout different parts of the country, it comes down really hard, fast, and it runs right off the land and goes into the rivers and causes floods and washouts, things like that.
00:24:56.740When it's more gentle, it soaks in into the ground.
00:25:00.500So these are things that affect our right to hunt, our rights to gathering, our medicines and our foods, the right to plant and our agriculture.
00:25:12.580So this is all part of the link to our health and our well-being.
00:27:19.020like you've been explaining to us. But I also know that here in California, as well as in Alaska,
00:27:26.040carbon offset programs have actually been welcomed by some indigenous nations. For example, the
00:27:31.500Chugash willingly sold their coal rights to a conservation investment management company,
00:27:35.840who then retired those rights to the local native conservancy land trust, leaving the Chugash to
00:27:42.160manage their ancestral territory for carbon stocks. I know situations in Alaska are particularly messy,
00:27:48.400as the Native communities are navigating the wake of ANSCA, the Alaska Native Claim Settlement Act.
00:27:54.820But I just wanted to bring this to the table to illuminate more of the complexity surrounding this issue
00:28:01.560and probe if you think there is ever a situation in which carbon trading can be beneficial for a community's well-being.
00:28:10.480Good question. I appreciate you asking that.
00:28:13.900It goes to the core of whether or not these economic measures would be able to affect the amount of greenhouse gases that go into the environment.
00:28:30.000That's the critical part that we really have to look at.
00:28:33.620For our network, you know, we are advocating that we need to take action, action quicker to move away from a fossil fuel economy.
00:28:45.680Mother Earth just cannot absorb any more carbon.
00:28:49.340That's why we've been bringing attention to science organizations that have said that if we're going to really turn this planet around and reducing the amount of concentration of greenhouse gases, that we have to keep at least 80% of fossil fuel reserves under the soil, beneath the ocean floor.
00:29:13.280And we have to start banning any new exploration and exportation of oil, car sands, oil, gas, shale, or fracking, coal, and even the link to other extreme energy that are not solutions like uranium mining and transportation infrastructures, pipelines, going across Mother Earth.
00:29:39.600tanker traffic taking frac oil or car sands oil overseas from the Pacific Ocean.
00:29:47.820And the question is, how do we achieve 100% clean renewable energy by 2030 or no later
00:29:56.860than 2050 without any dependence on nuclear power?
00:30:01.000We're in that critical stage right now.
00:30:04.100And any participation in this market system is a contradiction of that need of where we need to go.
00:30:14.740And I have been in discussions with policymakers and debates around this issue of can we reform market systems?
00:31:08.360And the temptation is there to try to get us to compromise our position and negotiate in a way that allows this black snake to go across not only our land, but in the minds of our people.
00:31:24.560okay one more question about red because it's such a huge topic to cover i think about red and
00:31:34.600other carbon offset programs and how they operate under the premise that without intervention from
00:31:40.340a developed country quote developing countries as they call it will inevitably cut down their
00:31:46.340forests and extract their resources anyways part of me wants you to debunk this myth and then the
00:31:53.520other part of me asks but it's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy as life-sustaining cultures
00:32:00.320have no reason to do so until imperialist intervention prohibits them from gathering
00:32:05.740hunting and tending their traditional territories so in one way i feel like this is a myth that
00:32:11.020they're going to do it anyways these communities but then a lot of times these communities are
00:32:15.920pushed into a corner when capitalism comes and really wrecks havoc in their area
00:32:23.240Right. Our Indigenous Environmental Network is really concerned about all these points that we've been talking about.
00:32:33.500It's that, you know, we're committed to looking for real solutions.
00:32:38.680And we have seen that in areas that dissipate in red.
00:32:44.460And we have to understand a lot of the red projects are just starting up.
00:32:49.620But also in some of these areas, eventually, deforestation may take place, and they just replant the trees in afforestation, and it's still part of a market system.
00:33:06.280So is it a way to preserve and conserve trees?
00:33:10.820There are already laws in the Global South that address illegal logging.
00:33:15.560So where are the pressure points outside of a market system that puts the pressure on government, whether national or subnational?
00:33:26.460Brazil, for example, or Ecuador, or the Congo in Africa, can get real solutions to preserve the trees.
00:33:36.260And those dialogues have not taken place.
00:33:38.880In areas of Africa, there already are human rights violations perpetuated by the national governments against tribal peoples in the remote areas of the forests.
00:33:51.320There's big money in forests now in these carbon trading mechanisms.
00:33:55.520We already are seeing violations of the human rights of forests in the communities that are going to be removed from their traditional homelands.
00:34:04.960because those trees are now part of a market system.
00:39:15.160So as we understand an extractive economy, that's something we really need to analyze.
00:39:21.240And that's one thing we're going to introduce as far as these different concepts.
00:39:27.260You know, it's not going to just take four days, but we're going to give the tools for people to think
00:39:33.280and to be critical thinkers as indigenous peoples you know many of us been in the public school
00:39:39.860systems we've been raised in a society doesn't value who we are our traditional knowledge our
00:39:46.500identity our language many of us are part of that seventh generation part of that seventh to the
00:39:54.720eighth fire our children now are part of that generation that are going to make and change
00:40:01.980But that also means being critical thinkers of where we are and where we're going, and to really look at this danger of capitalism and economic system that creates money.
00:40:15.360You know, what is our model of growth?
00:40:18.940How do we evaluate that for us as indigenous people?
00:40:23.500So what we've been advocating is decolonization process for us as indigenous peoples.
00:40:30.400to ask ourselves about establishing our own policies on our own indigenous-based index
00:40:39.060for living well that creates and establishes standards for meaningful work, a livable wage.
00:40:47.580What is that for our reservations? What does it create a sustainable community?
00:40:53.560Is there other models for housing, building our homes, energy-efficient homes,
00:40:58.980rather than these government-subsidized homes that leak in the middle of winter?
00:41:03.960What's our agriculture and what's food sovereignty to create our own food?
00:41:08.380And this is all linked together, renewable energy.
00:41:12.420How do we rebuild our communities based upon our original instructions
00:41:17.620and also looking at the future generations,
00:41:20.840the seven generations to be able to take them into account?
00:41:24.660So this is part of the challenge that we have.
00:41:26.900And it is going to be a challenge because a lot of our Native nations, whether it's in Canada or the U.S., we are dependent on federalism.
00:41:36.780We're dependent on the money that comes down.
00:43:14.860We're going to change the system, and I believe we can do that.
00:43:18.580It takes education, popular education, and beginning to speak up as indigenous people about that responsibilities that all of humanity has to protect that sacred female principle of creative principle of Mother Earth.
00:43:35.720that's beautiful tom and as we've been talking about the economic system i've been thinking
00:43:42.560as well as about the legal system and i'm reflecting on how colonizer legal systems
00:43:49.040have foundationally enabled the destruction of the planet these environmental laws and
00:43:54.380regulations have never sought to protect nature only to legalize exploitation and while corporations
00:44:02.120are granted personhood by law, water, soil, forests, etc., are considered property. And
00:44:09.040although there are glimpses of this transforming with countries such as Bolivia and Ecuador and
00:44:13.880New Zealand adopting the Declaration of the Rights of Mother Nature, stemming from a movement that
00:44:19.720you've been vital to. So I want to ask, how do you see the legal recognition of the rights of nature
00:44:26.240challenging and shifting the prevailing paradigms that uphold violent and disharmonic ways of being.
00:44:34.260It's part of our prophecies, for one thing. Some of our people have been told that a time will come
00:44:40.720when these children of the colonizers, these people who come as the settlers, that they're
00:44:47.580going to start waking up and see those things that we've always been saying. That's coming about.
00:44:53.420Some lawyers, some social change people, they're starting to come about throughout the world, and they formed an alliance on the rights of nature.
00:45:04.980Of course, I initially was very cautious in that, and what is the agenda of these descendants of settlers?
00:45:13.440As I checked it out and a number of us were evaluating at work with these people, we felt that it was consistent with at least with those prophecies that we have.
00:45:26.000And there's other people I know who have talked about the doctrines of discovery.
00:45:31.360And even back then, in the colonization of the U.S. and of their Americas, there were international laws at the time.
00:45:39.900So the question I'm sure that was asked, how can colonizers, the countries that are coming here to the U.S. and throughout the Americas,
00:45:49.620how can they come and invade and colonize our territories legally under international law?
00:45:58.160It needs the church, basically and very simplistic, it needs the church to say that we are not civilized.
00:46:04.660we are pagans and that's part of that process doctrines of discovery manifest destiny so one
00:46:14.140of the challenges that we look at in our decolonization process is to call question
00:46:20.420to the concepts of dominion dominion it's the same thing with the man says i have dominion over my
00:46:28.220wife the same thing man says they have dominion over mother earth and that's a concept that's a
00:46:37.180principle that we have to change we got to really work together to reevaluating our relationship as
00:46:45.440humanity to the sacredness of mother earth and how we walk upon her that's where we're at that's why
00:46:53.060for continuing to look throughout the world about the struggles of indigenous peoples
00:46:59.440like the Maori people who have fought for the recognition of the river over in New Zealand.
00:47:06.880And it's important for them to look at that.
00:47:10.780And they've been fighting for it for a long time.
00:47:14.320And now New Zealand has finally recognized the personality of that river.
00:47:23.060We're looking at that. It's progress. It's the first step.
00:47:27.020It's something that we're continuing to promote throughout the world.
00:47:31.320It's this new system of what we call systems change, not climate change, where it moves away from this framework of privatization and looking at Mother Earth as a property right.
00:50:56.460Where are we going as far as building a just transition and transformation to a better world?
00:51:02.600Those are questions that we have to ask ourselves, and it does look at the concern we have not only within our territories, where some of our Native nations are invested in mineral extraction, who are invested in fossil fuel development, but we also have to challenge the dominant society to be part of this transition.
00:51:31.000We have in the United States policies that really create too much waste.
00:51:37.460We have policies that encourage continued consumption at levels that are not sustainable.
00:51:46.280Our dependence on energy is something that we really need to look at in this country and Canada as well, these big cities.
00:51:55.780If we're going to be pushing for wind turbines or photovoltaic solar, at scale to meet current needs being expressed by an addicted society to energy is not sustainable.
00:52:12.360So we really need to reevaluate what is our needs energy-wise.
00:52:17.320What is the concepts of energy democracy when we look at not only our energy, true energy needs, but also how do we as communities have more control on the energy that we produce or do we participate in a colonial federal electrical grid line system?
00:52:39.700You know, what is a microgrid system? Those are things that we are advocating for as Indigenous Environmental Network. When it comes to just transition, definitely those are areas, again, that we're lifting up this decolonization process.
00:52:56.520that does look at our physical, our psychological,
00:53:18.940but also going through the healing process.
00:53:22.280So this is kind of, again, where we're at.
00:53:24.420Just transition has to have its foundation in our original instructions, those spiritual teachings that have been left to us by our ancestors, and leave enough of that information and knowledge for our future generations to recognize, again, that vital life cycle of Mother Earth.
00:53:46.260That should be the core of where we go and how we build our communities.
00:53:50.400How does it impact our Mother Earth, our water of life, our air, our trees?0.63
00:53:57.040It does bring up some of these questions that this other movement by non-Native people within the Rights of Nature movement are asking.0.67
00:54:08.760Those are critical questions that they are asking that really jumped out at me on that question of do trees have standing?
00:54:16.260Looking at if white folks can develop their own laws, like in Pennsylvania, I mentioned that earlier, where they have laws that they recognize the rights of nature.
00:54:27.580I think I remember a couple of their communities through their ordinances, and including the city of Philadelphia, passed an ordinance that recognized the ecosystem and the natural community as having legal right to exist and to be healthy and to flourish.
00:54:46.260And that, you know, the community, the people have that authority to enforce and defend those rights.
00:54:54.180That's not much different than those instructions I've been raised on, that we are guardians, we are caretakers, that when Mother Earth cannot speak for herself, we are there to speak for her.
00:55:08.900I remember Roberta Blackboat made an intervention in Geneva, that statement, talking about the earth bundles of the mountain area.
00:55:19.600Most people in the world don't know how to listen to nature.
00:55:23.460They don't know how to listen to the earth.
00:55:25.900And it's our people that have to do that.1.00
00:55:28.260So, again, we're going to talk about these at the Protecting Mother Earth Conference coming up June 28th through July 1st in the territories of the Nisqually Nation.
00:55:38.900the people in Washington state. Yes, I'm so grateful that you're putting on this
00:55:46.000conference to give space to these issues for people, indigenous people to come together and
00:55:53.000really sit with one another. And like you said, have people and lawyers and those who are up to
00:56:01.580date with the laws and and the regulations and and how we can learn and educate ourselves and
00:56:09.160and so i i really am so excited about protecting mother earth conference and one more question tom
00:56:14.900before we end this incredible conversation you've mentioned a few times in the interview about
00:56:20.740this time and perhaps the cosmology or the proverbs behind it and i so respect your connection to
00:56:28.360spirit and i'm interested by what lessons your cosmology gleans from this particular time
00:56:37.000of great unraveling and great change and if there's anything you feel called to say about
00:56:42.620where humanity stands right now or for the carrying capacity of earth in your belief system
00:56:48.820you know a couple years ago i i was talking to orrin lyons a faith keeper
00:56:54.920one of the Aga people over in the Great Lakes, the Iroquois Confederacy, he told me that they
00:57:01.040have prophecies in the Mohawk people. Trees will start dying from the top down. And he related that
00:57:08.160to where we're at with climate change because they started to raise this issue up in the late 1970s
00:57:15.080as far as climate and prophecy. For us as IEN and my role, I've been there as a knowledge holder as
00:57:24.400well. And I remember a statement that we said at a circle of wisdom keepers, including elected
00:57:33.440tribal leaders and grassroots and spiritual leaders. In 1998, that was the foundation of
00:57:40.540our work here on climate. And we said that indigenous prophecy now meets what we have
00:57:47.900known and believe. You also now know the earth is out of balance. The plants are disappearing.0.89
00:57:53.640The animals are dying, and the very weather, rain, wind, fire itself, reacts against the actions of the human being.
00:58:02.860For the future of the children, for the health of our Mother Earth, Father Sky, and the rest of creation.
00:58:09.580We call upon the people of the world to hold your leaders accountable.
00:58:13.420That's what the elders and our youth and women and our elected leaders and grassroots said in 1998 at our Circles of Wisdom gathering to talk about our native homelands.
00:58:26.580And it was a climate workshop that was held in Albuquerque.
00:58:29.840It was there that was a foundation of recognizing that prophecy of where we're at and why we need to do what we're doing.
00:58:38.140Just transition is part of that foundation.
00:58:41.060transition is inevitable. Justice is not. That's why we have to fight for the justice.
00:58:47.940And so we will get there and lifting up those good way of thinking, lifting up our original
00:58:54.160instructions and those teachings of respecting ourselves, our clan systems, our family systems,
00:59:00.440and our Native nations. We always say to the rest of the world, don't just put it on our shoulders.
00:59:06.960we need the people of the world to come together to learn about what's going on here and we're
00:59:13.700going to talk about that very soon wonderful thank you so much tom for this the time that
00:59:20.240you've spent with all of us diving into such complex issues and we support you and ian and
00:59:28.040indigenous rising and protecting mother earth conference thank you for all that you do and
00:59:33.800we will keep supporting and really believing in your leadership and those that you work with.
00:59:41.920Thank you very much for this opportunity.
01:00:03.800Thank you so much for listening to For the Wild podcast.