CIIS Public Programs Podcast

Transcript

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[Cheerful theme music begins] 

This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by the Public Programs department of California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land. 

For a great many people, the human impact on the Earth was not apparent until recently, but this is not the case for all people or cultures. For the Indigenous people of the world, radical alteration of the planet, and of life itself, is a story that is many generations long. They have had to adapt, to persevere, and to be courageous and resourceful in the face of genocide and destruction, and their experiences have given them a unique understanding of civilization-based devastation. 

In this episode author and journalist Dahr Jamail is joined by ecologist and activist-scholar Melissa K. Nelson for a unique conversation exploring ideas from Indigenous voices at the center of conversations about the current climate crisis. These stories and perspectives of those who have long been attuned to climate change, provide indispensable wisdom to those looking for new and different responses to the challenges we all face. 

This episode was recorded during a live online event on March 23rd, 2023. You can also watch it on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube channel. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms. 

[Theme music concludes] 

Dahr Jamail: Well, Melissa, it is very great to be with you here. Last time we saw each other was with Stan doing your interview for the book. So, really great to be here and thank you very much for being able to be part of this event tonight. 

Melissa K. Nelson: Thank you, Dahr. 
 

Dahr: Yeah, so where should we start? I feel like I've looked over some of the things that we discussed, and some of the parts of the book that we might talk about, but where do you think we should begin? 

Melissa: I think we should start at the beginning, Dahr. I mean this book that you and Stan put together and the inspiration for it and the writing process, I love that it's based on really the oral tradition. I think most of it you did is in-person interviews with all the contributors and it would be great to hear from you, you know, just a little bit about the origin story of this project and how you put it all together. I think it's a remarkable collection for those who haven't seen it, We Are The Middle of Forever, and it's really a powerful text. I was rereading it in preparation for our time together. It's called Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth and I love your writing and you and Stan did a beautiful job curating these voices so let's hear a little bit from you about that origin story. 
 

Dahr: Thank you, Melissa. Well, what happened was, I was on tour for The End of Ice, the climate book, and I met Stan a little bit before that book was published. And we became good friends, very good friends, when we met. He came to a couple of my different presentations for the climate book, and together we're witnessing this, just, abject despair that so many people were feeling about the climate crisis or, you know, ‘insert-name-of-crisis-here’, you know. There's so much going on, so much despair, but keeping it specifically to the climate issue: People just did not know how to be with it. We were seeing in the audience that people were angry and despairing and at one point, some people were making comments like, 'Well, if humans don't survive this, the Earth will be better off without us,' and comments like this and Stan particularly was quite upset hearing this.  

We kept talking more and more about it and he said, 'Look, you know, this is not a new thing for Indigenous people. Indigenous people have survived genocide, have continued to survive the ongoing erasure, all these different things, and we're still here. What if we thought about some kind of a book, or we could just gather together, almost like a talking circle, just a group of say 20 people—reservation, non-reservation, academic, non-academic—just get a big broad cross-section of society—best we could anyway with a limited number of people—and just ask them a few general questions. Which were basically, What do you see happening on the earth today? How did we get here? Where might we go from here/how might we comport ourselves?' 

And so that's really where the idea of the book came from. Another one—Kyle Whyte, one of the interviewees in the book—talks about this in a little bit different way, but another thing that came up was: If you take, for example, the Apache folks from northern Mexico and Arizona and that region, put them on a train, ship them across the country, and drop them in Florida and say, ‘Here you are, this is where you're going to be,’ that is abrupt climate disruption. And so, they survived and they're still here. And we can look at large numbers of instances of the same thing, these shocking dislocations of Indigenous people around the country—just the movement not even talking about the genocide—and they're still here. So, these folks clearly have insight that would be very, very helpful to all of us right now. That's really the origin story of the book. 

So, to close that out actually, the plan was to go to each person and interview them together. Three interviews of the book happened, and then the pandemic happened. So, then the rest of them, like yours, were done on Zoom. 
 

Melissa: Wow, what an incredible story and such a reinforcement really of even your thesis, in the sense of, 'Wow, the earth is changing dramatically,’ and ‘let's talk to people who have actually gone through those experiences before,’ and then a global pandemic happens. And, you know, Indigenous peoples have suffered through different forms of epidemics, you know, throughout history since colonial times. So, it was just kind of, almost ironic that the pandemic hit right as you're beginning this book about the changing earth and the changing times and the threats to humanity. It just reinforced the whole purpose of it, it seems. 
 

Dahr: And, you know, I think, again, starting at the beginning of things, knowing that you had the honor and the privilege to get to study under Jack Forbes. And one of the seminal books for me in recent years, because I first read it probably about five years ago, was Columbus and Other Cannibals. You got to be at UC Davis, studying with him and introducing the idea of wetiko disease, or cannibalism disease, and just talking about, ‘Okay, so, how did we get here?’ I thought it'd be really great, if you felt like talking about that, to kind of lead this conversation.  
 

Melissa: I would be honored to, Dahr. Thank you. Yes, I was very fortunate. One of the reasons I did my graduate work at the University of California, Davis was because of Jack D. Forbes, Lenni Lenape scholar, author, historian, really one of the founders of the Native American Studies movement in academia and certainly the Native American Studies department at UC Davis. I had just read his book, Columbus and Other Cannibals, in "honor" of the quincentennial of 500 years in 1992 since Columbus' fateful encounter, first in the Caribbean and Florida, and then coming up into what we call Turtle Island or North America. 

And Dr. Forbes had a really unique and original interpretation of that fateful meeting. Yes, we know Columbus brought the whole age of discovery, and the idea of imperialism, and really, extractivism, and seeing the colony as a place to exploit resources, including humans and labor. It was also religious because of not seeing Indigenous peoples as human because they were not Christian. Many layers to that, but what Jack D. Forbes said is that Columbus had been infected with a type of cannibalism. Now, it wasn't eating the human flesh by injecting it like we eat food, but it was destroying life. It was needlessly destroying the forest, looking for gold, destroying mountains, hillsides, killing Native Americans, and that that was like a mental illness. That was a contagion, and actually could infect anybody. It could infect people because we know that the early colonists privileged male leaders over female leaders, which really didn't happen as much in a lot of Native American societies. The gender balance and gender relations were very different. 

And so, when Columbus and the early colonists came, of course, it was the males who were the dominant leaders in their patriarchal worldview. So, they brought in this patriarchal worldview, a very sexist worldview, misogynist, in a way. We know what happened to the women in Europe. Just prior to this time, they were burning them at the stake for being witches if they were close to the Earth or didn't want to be married to men or use traditional medicines, and things. 

So, this was like a mental illness, was really Forbes's hypothesis, and that it infected the people, the first settlers who came to Turtle Island, and then sadly spread sometimes to even native men, especially who became also engulfed in this kind of 'power over,' this dominating spirit. And it goes back to a traditional myth and story. The Lenni Lenape of the East Coast are sometimes called the grandfathers of even my Anishinaabe Confederacy, the Ojibwe, the Potawatomi, the Odawa. We all speak in Algonquian root language and share some common stories. We call it the Wendigo, and in his language, it was Wetiko. It's this really dark, horrible, cannibalistic spirit that is insatiable. It's a symbol of greed and hunger and selfishness that destroys landscapes and destroys whole cultures. So, it was part of our oral tradition to always be wary of Wendigo or Wetiko, that it was always lurking in the consciousness and psyche of humans. There was this part of ourselves that could take over like a disease. 

So, very powerful, and I think it fell a little bit, not on deaf ears, but I think it was so radical in the '90s. I think it was kind of a cult classic book. Some of us studied it in depth and worked with him, and many people resonated with it, but many people did not. And fast forward 30, 40, 50 years—well, not quite 50, but 30 years later—it's finally people are really recognizing it as being prophetic, in a way, about the extractivist conquest mindset and worldview that we still see sadly in the world today. 
 

Dahr: Right. So, would you say that capitalism is really a symptom of that disease? It's not the actual disease; it's not the disease that is fueling it and has caused it, but that capitalism is a symptom. Not to get that confused with the idea, really, the Christian mindset of the original sin idea—almost like humans are inherently flawed. 

Versus, as one Indigenous elder told me at one point, highlighting that difference. He said to paraphrase: "In Christian belief, you have to wait to die to go to heaven. Well, our God loved us enough to put us straight into heaven. And here we are, like we are in Eden." 

So, that really gets down to this idea of human nature. When we spoke about what we wanted to bring into this conversation today, you mentioned how Forbes asked, ‘Why should we accept a definition of human nature given to us by a civilization engaged in several thousand years of barbarism?’ So, it really comes down to what is the nature of humanity and looking at it through that lens, all of this destruction, rampant capitalism, end-stage capitalism, and the climate crisis—all these things stemming from this is really an aberration of human nature. This is really not what human beings are, real human beings. This is an aberration. And that's a really important point. You've talked about this. You talk about this in your chapter of the book, and other folks did, too. Would you like to address that a little bit more? 
 

Melissa: Yes. I mean, I think that's such an important point. Through intellectual colonialism that accompanied actual colonialism and imperialism, this idea, this Judeo-Christian idea of original sin, and that the Earth is really a place of sin and that we're only temporary here to get to the promised land or get to heaven above, as you said so well, it made us disregard life. It created this aberrant worldview that was disregarding this life because it was made merely a steppingstone to another place. Whereas our Indigenous worldviews, this earth is sacred. Our human bodies are sacred. To wake up every morning and see the sunrise and to be able to breathe air and drink water and have family and friends and affection and see the beautiful trees and plants, this is such a gift. 

Indigenous cultures the world over traditionally had annual ceremonies and rituals and seasonal cycles. We just went through spring renewal, and many world religions do celebrate it in some way, Ramadan and Easter. So, there's remnants like little artifacts of these worldviews, but a lot of Indigenous cultures pre-colonial practiced these ways, to not forget that and to remember our relationality and to remember reverence, and sacredness, and gratitude, what other elders have called original instructions. And I put together a collection of voices of Indigenous people talking about our original instructions, and each tribe is different. Each community is different, very place-based, very distinct with our different languages, but we have our own place-based original instructions that remind us gratitude is one of those most important things. 

So, when this aberrant conquest consciousness came in the Wendigo or Wetiko disease, it just has thrown the whole world upside down, and it sadly spread around the world. And so that now we have extractive capitalism, we have sexism, we have racism, we have white supremacy, we have this exploitive attitude with consumerism where everything is based on things. And it's interesting, another native author Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about Wendigo capitalism. So does Winona LaDuke and really uses again what Jack D. Forbes started by looking at the way capitalism is exploiting Indigenous lands, Indigenous bodies with pollution, with extraction, with oil, with uranium, with the siting of toxic waste, etc. Indigenous peoples are still targeted for those kinds of environmental racist projects. And she talks about how important it is to immunize ourselves from this Wendigo virus. We do that by our original instructions. We do that by our ethical frameworks. We do that by following those on a daily basis in our relationships. 

And she also talks about this idea that even our languages, how the English language is so based on nouns, so based on things and objects. It puts us in this very consumerist mindset, whereas our Algonquin language of the Ojibwe and the Potawatomi, Lenni Lenape, actually the Blackfeet, so many are languages verb-based. So, it was more based on process and flows and activities that were in movement and fluid, and things were not so focused on acquiring objects. And so, she even says that the way the English language has colonized the mind also puts us, makes us more vulnerable to the Wendigo or the Wetiko as opposed to our own languages that don't give as much supreme importance to consumerism and materialism. 

Dahr: And another, thank you for that. And another of the antidotes that you talk about in your chapter in the book, as did Dr. Kyle White, was kinship. And I'll just read you one quote from his chapter. He said, “Kinship refers to relationships of mutual responsibility, where we care for each other and we create bonds with each other that make it so that, regardless of what the law says and regardless of how severe a problem is, or regardless of what our rights are, we have an abiding sense that we need to care for others.” And he goes on to talk about other beings, of course, human beings and all the other species and the tree people and the waters. I mean, he expands that out to include everything. And kinship was a topic that beautifully really threaded its way into just about every single chapter of this book. 

And that was one of the great joys of writing it, posing these questions to all of you. And nobody knew what anybody else had said or was going to say. And just watching these threads weave their way through the book. It was this really beautiful, spiritual, organic thing that just happened. And that's another reason why Stan and I call ourselves editors of the book, and not authors. Because all we did was our best to just hold each of you up, what you said, the best that we could absolutely represent that and just let this come through. 

And each person in that way really just was this instrument, if you will. And as these textures just beautifully weave themselves together. And kinship, you talk about this some in your chapter as well. But would you talk a little bit about how you see that not just in regards to being the antidote, one of the antidotes to the Wetiko, but really something that can hold us together through this time, kinship with each other and with all living things? 

Melissa: Exactly. Well, thank you for articulating that in that beautiful quote by Kyle who writes and speaks so eloquently about kinship as our foundational being is our responsibility and again encoded in so many Indigenous languages where to be a human being means we are constantly in relationship with others. 

We cannot be a human being without the food that we eat, the water that we drink, the air that we breathe, the parents that we come from, the offspring if we create new generations, all our relations. The Lakota often say, "All our relations," [speaks Lakota] and all different Indigenous peoples in our own languages. I often greet people, [speaks Anishinaabemowin], that means, “I see you all as my relatives.” And if you interpret, Alarian mentioned this in one of the chapters too from Alaska, native Alaska, also the Mayans, often the way they greet each other is, “Hello to my other self.” Hello to my other self. 

And so built within a lot of Indigenous worldviews and languages is this idea that we are a collective. We cannot exist without a collective of beings and organisms that even make up our digestive track so we can eat food and that we have to be in this reverential reciprocity with that which gives life and that we are only here a short time, this little collection of molecules that we call the self. And just a short blip in the history of the cosmos. 

And we are stardust. We have stories about being stardust. And of course, this is all being proven now by Western science about how many microorganisms humans are made up of and how the stardust rains on us every day and we incorporate it into our cells. And so that's just built in that we are in kinship with all of life, whether we recognize it or not or act like it or not. And yet we need to be responsible for that life because with every act, with every breath, we impact the whole. And again, quantum physics talks about this now as well, but you know, non-local effects that happen with life across the planet. And so, it's so important to act and care for each other and that when somebody suffers, we all suffer. 

And I think I mentioned when we were talking in the chapter, it was kind of at the peak of one of the peaks of the virus and our breath, we couldn't share breath with each other anymore. One of the most sacred things, the word spirit in so many languages is, we are inspired. We are full of breath, the breath of life that gives us life. And the first thing a baby does is breathe. And the last thing we do when we die is exhale. 

And so, you know, we couldn't share breath anymore because we would infect each other, you know, and I think that's so powerful. And that just shows how close the kinship we have with each other. My exhale is your inhale and vice versa. And we're also inhaling the breath of the trees every day. So, remembering our kinship, and honoring that kinship, and having daily practices of gratitude for that kinship, is really a key to Indigenous compassion, and empathy, and care. So yeah, it's great to hear that that was such an important through line throughout the whole book. 

Dahr: And listening to you describe this, again, very similar to some of the conversations during our interview with you for the chapter, it just strikes me as how functional these— I'm not going to call them beliefs— these facts are. Often still couched as Indigenous beliefs or things like this, but whether we're talking about the concept of kinship or ceremony, these really, these ways of living are functional, and as Stan and another friend of his said, 'Hey, we do these things because they work.' And I think so much of what you and others in the book talked about were, you know, listening to you, it's just, okay, we can apply this directly to how we're going to get through this together. Not just leaning on each other, but what does kinship really, really entail? And it entails acting in a very, very responsible way. 

That's another thing that Kyle in his chapter talked about that, you know, just a really, really deep issue of responsibility. And I'd just like to read a few more sentences of that. He said, “We need to be responsible for each other. And that's not just confined to the human-to-human context but depending on the culture to all living beings and non-living entities and systems. So, responsibility is a really important way of understanding kinship. Responsibility is a type of relationship, as we know, because we have a responsibility in relation to somebody else. That's a shared responsibility, but it's only going to work if each of us has profound respect, for reciprocity, for consent, for trust, for transparency, and confidentiality. You can only really have a responsibility that's working and functioning if you have these qualities.” 

Hold that up to how things are done in the business world. 

Melissa: Oh, my goodness. Yes. 

Dahr: [laughs] That is stark. 

Melissa: The stark contrast is just outrageous. Yes, I love that excerpt from Kyle's chapter and his emphasis on responsibility. And Kyle and I've had great conversations about this idea. 

Many native scholars are now writing about treaties and this idea that, again, is part of our worldview. We don't just have treaties that people think of as nation to nation, like the US and Canada have a treaty or even maybe between tribes, the Navajo and Acoma Pueblo have a treaty. We still have this very human-centered idea of what a treaty is—a mutual agreement of respect, responsibility, mutual obligation, transparency, and trust. All those things that Kyle just outlined so beautifully in the quote.  

But a treaty, we have treaties with our seeds that give us life, our maize, our corn. We have all those obligations. They're often even called covenants. We have covenants with the blueberries and the bears because we have to share the blueberries with the bears. So, we need to have a three-part treaty and agreement. This is based on a beautiful traditional teaching from Otis Parrish, a Kashia Pomo elder who shared this incredible story of this three-part treaty between his nation and the huckleberries, and then the bears and how they have to negotiate place, and space, and food, and timing with care, and responsibility, and mutuality. So, everyone eats, and is safe, and fed, and there will be more huckleberries next season for everyone to be fed and safe. So, these are these treaties we have with animals, with plants, with our food.  

And you know, even with what people would call inanimate beings—the rock beings, the grandfathers with mountains. In Northern California, the Winnemawintoo are caretakers of Mount Shasta. You know, they have sacred responsibilities and obligations to take care of that mountain, and that mountain spirit, and the land takes care of them. And that's the whole concept of sacred places that are so important for Indigenous peoples. Our sacred places are nature. They're not in a church, or a mosque, or a synagogue. It's great for other peoples, but for the Indigenous peoples, our sacred places where we have these responsibilities of reverence, and care, and love.  

They happen with our more-than-human kin and the salmon nation. You know, the salmon are suffering right now, and how important it is to restore the salmon, and the salmon people of the Pacific Northwest. That is, it's a religious violation to not be able to care for your sacred relatives, like the salmon. For the Blackfeet people, they've restored the bison, the mighty buffalo. To not have that relationship, it's not just food. It's not just, you know, clothing or using the bones for tools. It's actually part of this cosmic responsibility as well as the very practical benefit of mutuality and kinship with these relatives. 

Dahr: And you touched on it a little bit there, but another one of the things that I think is important for us to talk about is trauma, and unresolved or unhealed trauma. One young woman we interviewed, Raquel Ramirez, had this great quote. She just cut all the way to the chase in her interview. She said, “We all need to go to therapy as a collective nation.” [Melissa: [laughs] Yes!] 

She, along with Tahnee Henningsen, also talked about, both of them saying, ‘First of all, we have to acknowledge what happened.’ And one of the other themes of the book is bringing truth into history of this is why we have to talk about the genocide, and why we have to talk about and acknowledge what actually happened here with Indigenous people. And I think it'd be really beneficial if you felt like talking about why is that? You know, why now? It's assumed, you know, probably the majority of the people watching this understand it, but yet why do we need to amend the history books? Why does this need, why is it so imperative that we get this right? 

Melissa: Yes. I mean, this nation was built on many things, but largely on the genocide of Native Americans and the enslavement of African people. Also, the eco side of the land, just driving species extinct from overharvesting and just killing them needlessly. The miners, when they came in with their guns, would just decimate elk populations, and the people on the trains would decimate the buffalo. And then they would go out and kill Native Americans and get a bounty in California, state-sanctioned genocide in California. So, these are the dirty little secrets, the shadow on this nation that has not been fully revealed. And if we don't acknowledge it, it will fester, and it's a festering wound in the psyche, the collective psyche. 

Eduardo Duran has called this the soul wound, the soul wound of the psyche, not only for the descendants of those who did survive, we did survive. We are still here. Not everyone though. Some tribes were really, really driven to near extinction, and our numbers really depleted to just a handful of survivors. There are some tribes that are descendant of like 10 survivors. It's just incredible, some of the massacres that happened here. And until that is revealed, and aired out, and understood, and witnessed, and acknowledged, there cannot be healing for the colonized or the colonizer. The colonizer carries that weight as well.  

When I look at some of the statistics of depression, suicide, dependence on pharmaceuticals, and overdoses, it's just frightening and shocking and sad to see that there is like this collective weight in the world and certainly in America right now. Once we are able to expose to the light of day, some of these festering dark wounds and tell the truth and history, as Kanyon Sayers-Roods says so beautifully, and Ann Marie Sayers has said forever, there cannot be real healing. There has to be that truth and reckoning. I don't really use the word reconciliation, even though that's used in Canada with the truth and reconciliation process. It was used in South Africa. I think that's an important move, the truth and reconciliation process, and different forms of restorative justice. We absolutely need that to heal at the personal level, and at the collective level, and at the ecological level. We need to heal our landscapes. 

Dahr: Right, right. I think another, just looking at these as far as kind of how we referenced kinship earlier, is an antidote, and what you just shared is another. Another one is, certainly was for me when I really started getting into working on the book, and just having a very, very personal relationship with each interviewee as Stan and I would edit the chapters and send them back and forth and get to know them increasingly deeply each time. 

And along with that, as I watched kind of my brain and my perspective being changed and widened out just by the perspective of time. Again, Kyle Whyte talks a lot about linear time versus nonlinear time and deep time. You spoke to this as well, which I would really, if you feel like going there, like to hear you talk about that a little bit this evening. But also the idea of, you know, one thing that Lyla June Johnston talked about in her chapter with us, and she brings this up in many of her talks is that they understand that they've already been through the destruction and rebirth of several worlds before this one that we're currently in. 

And I thought that that's another extremely helpful tool just for just like, let's just open the aperture up very, very wide here. And that brought a really new level of grounding for me. 

Would you feel like talking about that? 

Melissa: Sure. I mean, some elders I've heard in different Indigenous, you know, friends and colleagues say, you know, climate change is, oh, déjà vu or, you know, racial inequities. It's like, oh, déjà vu. I mean, we've been here before. Right. And we have these stories in our oral traditions going back millennia and tens of thousands of years to the last ice ages. So, oh, here we are again. And whether it's the Dine, the Navajo stories of the Fourth World or many, many different prophecies have foretold this time. Our Anishinaabe people have the seven-fire prophecy that talks about times when people forgot the original instructions and suffered, and the world went into chaos. What we're going into now, a form of chaos on multiple levels, sociologically, economically, climate, personally, with the virus, biologically.  

And so, it has been foretold that when humans forget our original instructions, forget our kinship, forget our responsibilities, chaos ensues. I think Lyla referred to it as the coyote. It makes us kind of fertile ground for the Wetiko virus to get in. And then it becomes a positive feedback loop, not in a good way, but meaning a runaway effect of just destruction, breeding destruction again with that unconsciousness, also not revealing the truth of history and just repeating these lies over and over again that we start to believe them. And that kind of chaotic episode has happened in the past before. And people have suffered, and people disappeared, and went underground or the earth was flooded or fires. And that's what we're seeing now with climate change, fires and floods.  

It is quite, you know, we say biblical, but it is, you know, many different original stories, sacred stories have these warnings about these times. And that also, so on one level it says, why aren't we learning? Are we just, are humans destined to repeat mistakes, even though we have these warning stories and so many of our sacred texts and traditions, why aren't we just changing? So that's the negative part of it. 

The positive part of it is for Indigenous people, it's like, we are resilient. We've been through this before. We've survived plagues, and climate change, and dislocations, and near attempted genocide. And we are still standing, and we are still here, and we will get through this. We have adaptive strategies, and we have our antidotes and our immunization to the Wetiko disease and our kinship and our original instructions and going back to the earth. 

One of my favorite quotes is by a dear teacher, Blackfoot elder Leroy Little Bear. And he says, as Indigenous peoples, we find our cultural resilience in the medicines of the land. The land gives us medicine, but we have forgotten that. And we've stopped listening to the medicine of the land and the medicine of the ancestors. And so, and the beat of the drum, you know, and so we did not forget that. And that's why Indigenous peoples are still here and we will get through this. And we have resilient strategies so that we're not as, how to put it, I mean we're vulnerable in many ways because we're targeted, but we're also very strong, very strong. 

Dahr: I'd like to read a quote from Fawn Sharp. When we interviewed her, she was president of the Quinault Nation, which is, I'm in Washington state and it's just out on the West coast here. I'm pointing because it's that way, but she's currently the president of the National Congress of American Indians and is still, last I checked vice president of the Quinault Nation. And speaking to what you just said, and I'd like to read this quote. And then if you feel like, I'd love to hear you talk a little bit more about values that you pointed at just now and what she does in this quote.  

She said, “Ultimately the solution to the crisis lies in our values. And we've proven that simply by existing today, regardless of how we had the most powerful country in the world try to destroy us, terminate us, and assimilate us. We lived under great pain and suffering. They carried out murder and genocide and attempted full-scale annihilation, but they never could stop that drumbeat in our heart. One could either just wither away like paper or be like steel that just grows stronger and stronger. When the most powerful country in 400 years can't stop you, you know it is because of our resources, prayers, and blessings and everything that has been across this land since time began. And we not only have survived, but we are now emerging even stronger.” 

Melissa: Whew... Yes. I mean, that just gave me chills. That just gave me chills. Yeah. So beautiful. 

Dahr: She talks directly about the values.  

Melissa: The values, it's the values and they can't just be empty words. They have to be lived values, embodied values. We should really even forget them as words like ‘kinship’ or ‘reverence’. How does it feel in our heart? How does it feel in our body? How does it feel when we see a stranger? How does it feel when we see houseless people on the street? Like what is our response? And that's responsibility (response-ability). It's based on responding, not reacting, not being blindly reacting or shutting down. This cultural amnesia, forgetting the past. There's a lot of shutting down that happens in this country. I don't want to see that. I don't want to talk about that. That's the past. I don't. And again, that's when those festering shadows or wounds or hungry ghosts come up to haunt us. 

And so, to be open, to be responsible in these times of great change with an open heart, it's not easy, right? It's not easy. It keeps us humble. It's a daily practice. But again, the kinship of Indigenous solidarity with each other and our ceremonies and those instructions and those values, those living values, embodied values, it's very pragmatic. A lot of people want to think Indigenous people are all mystical with stereotypes of the mystical. It's very pragmatic. It works. We've survived this, all of that because it works. So that care for each other is just essential. 

Dahr: And that is, again, back to what Stan mentioned that I pointed to earlier about, just that the book is functional. And what you and everybody else in the book talked about, as you just said, is it's functional. It's proven to work because you're still here. 

Melissa: That's right. 

Dahr: All of the Indigenous people in this book and their people are still here. If it didn't work, they simply, you simply would not be here. It's really that simple. And I'm just trying to find a way to kind of triple underline what you just said that, you know, it's, you're so articulate and it's eloquent how you talk about this. But getting down to the brass tacks of it is that it's been a survival situation just for Indigenous people and other marginalized communities. Now we're all in this survival situation because of really a global epidemic of Wetiko. [Melissa: Yes.] And now we're in what's often referred to as the ‘polycrisis.’ And we don't know where it's going. We don't know how it's going to end. But just from really being steeped in all of the wisdom from what you shared and the other 19 people in the book of the years that took us working on this project, it shifted me from being, I was Dr. Doom, by the end of my climate book.  

I was for sure humans are going extinct within a hundred years. And you know, Stan challenged me on that. We were actually looking at the Quinault Nation website, learning more information about Fawn before we're about to reach out to her for an interview. And I was still in Dr. Doom mode [Melissa laughs] and I was so sure of it. And he said, “Okay, scroll down to the bottom of the website,” which I did. He said, “You see those little kids?” and there's this beautiful picture of a bunch of very, very young kids wearing traditional clothing. And he said, “Are you going to look at those kids in the face and tell them that they don't have a future?” And it just stopped me. You know, I almost cried, and I was like, “No, there's no way in hell I would do something like that.” And he said, “All right, well, you've got to find a better way, don't you?”  

You know, and it's everything that you've been talking about. And it's everything that everybody in the book talked about that, yeah, things look absolutely dire, but we don't know for sure what's going to happen and no matter what, and this kind of brings us into how are we going to comport ourselves? Results are none of our business. We can't control them anyway. But this gets down to really living what you've been talking about this evening. Like if you could take everything that you've just kind of spoken towards for almost an hour and how do we comport ourselves? How do we how do we walk this going forward? Would you feel like talking about that a little bit? 

Melissa: Well, sure. And it kind of brings me back to your earlier commenting question about time. I think that you picked such a perfect title also for the book. It's a John Trudell quote, right? [Dahr: Right.] “We are in the middle of forever.” And again, as Indigenous peoples, if we want to, we know that many worlds have come and gone many worlds with humans, without humans, other worlds. And again, you know, physics and astronomy, astrophysics proves us to think creation and destruction are an essential part of life. This Americana idea of, you know, pro-life and continuing consumerism and development and progress has denied the death and destruction and the natural part of life that is the cycle of creation and destruction. And that we are simply in the middle of forever, that life will continue. And that some parts of life is death.  

Death is a natural part of life. You cannot have life without death. And so, this denial of death and denial of the history and the denial of colonialism has just created such a fictional part of life. And so, to make ourselves more vulnerable to life means we also do need to be open to death and to change. And that's another part of Indigenous cultures and worldviews is that we honor death practices, we honor things decomposing, we honor compost, sacred compost. There's so many things we need to compost. That's another way you can heal. I saw one of the questions is like, if you're infected by Wetiko disease, we can compost those values of consumerism, of extractivism, of greed, of selfishness. We can compost them in ourselves and transform them.  

And that's part of true transformation is being able to see things freshly and they disappear when we see them with fresh eyes, and we're willing to let things go. And I think native people, we've had a lot of tragedy, we've had a lot of loss. We continue to. That's really that struggle is part of our daily life as well. But we have ways of living with it and finding balance with it. So, it may not sound like a very hopeful way, but to embrace life and get through this, to comport ourselves, it means we also must be vulnerable to understanding death and decay and transformation and seeing things with clear eyes and open hearts. 

Dahr: And would you say that it also comes down to that obligation that is inherent with kinship? [Melissa: Yes.] Of that responsibility that no matter what, I am going to keep doing the right thing, trying to save the salmon or this tree or help my people or whatever it is, no matter how dark the skies might look at this point. But down again, back to that sacred obligation inherent within kinship that I am responsible for you. I am responsible for everyone that I come in contact with. You know, if we're going to really live that going forward, right? 

Melissa: Yes, absolutely. It's the daily acts. I mean, we get speaking of time, linear time, we worry about the future. You know, so much of us are not present and we just worry about this future. This whole society is all about future oriented, this linear time progression. And we really need presence because when we fall into presence, being here now, as the mystics say, we can enter the timeless and we can also really feel what we need to feel and care for each other and listen to each other in new ways. 

Dahr: And then behave accordingly. 

Melissa: Yes. Yes. Yes. 
 

Dahr: Well, Melissa, it's been a real honor and thank you so, so much for your time. 

Thank you for being in the book. It was so powerful getting to do that interview with you live and then get to write it up. And thank you for everything that you shared tonight. So much wisdom, so much medicine. And yeah, so thank you. 

 
Melissa: Thank you, Dahr. Really, what an honor and a privilege to be a part of this book with you and Stan and all the 19 other folks. Yeah, let's keep learning and sharing this work with all of you. So, thank you for this opportunity and all you share with your other works as well. 

Dahr: Well, thank you, Melissa. And thanks everybody for joining us and good night.  

Melissa: Good night. 

 
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Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live. 
 
Podcast production is supervised by Kirstin Van Cleef at CIIS Public Programs. Audio production is supervised by Lyle Barrere at Desired Effect. The CIIS Public Programs team includes Izzy Angus, Kyle DeMedio, Alex Elliott, Emlyn Guiney, Patty Pforte, and Nikki Roda. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe wherever you find podcasts, visit our website ciis.edu, and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms. 
 
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