CIIS Public Programs Podcast

TRANSCRIPT

[Cheerful theme music begins]

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

Dr. Lyla June is a renowned Indigenous musician, songwriter, poet, hip-hop artist, human ecologist, and community organizer. Her music and message center around intergenerational and inter-ethnic healing and are poetic articulations of Indigenous philosophies. Through her vibrant art across mediums and extensive community organizing efforts, Lyla offers pathways forward for Indigenous liberation and creates solidarity for Indigenous communities and their allies. 

This episode was recorded live in San Francisco on November 3rd, 2023. Lyla was joined on stage by Preston Vargas, CIIS Director of the Center for Black and Indigenous Praxis, for a powerful evening of song and conversation exploring her life, art, and community organizing. 

CIIS Public Programs members can watch a video of this talk on their member portal. A transcript is available at ciispod.com. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms. 

[Theme music concludes]

Preston Vargas: Good evening, I'm Preston Vargas. Also, Baba Ifalukun Afuntade Fatunmishay. And as many of us at CIIS are the descendants of settlers, immigrants, or the descendants of those who were forcefully brought to this continent We at CIIS recognize and remember that our university's building on Mission Street, San Francisco occupies traditional unceded Ramaytush Ohlone land. And we remember, we honor, and we hold in our hearts, but most importantly in our actions, the people who are Ramaytush Ohlone. As we continue to do the work together for liberation for all. It is my honor tonight to introduce Gregg Castro. Gregg has worked to preserve his Ohlone and Salinan heritage for over three decades. Greg is the Society for California Archaeology's Native American Programs committee chairperson. Gregg is a facilitator for the annual California Indian Conference that's been going on for over 30 years. And is the founder and advisor to the California Indian History Curriculum Coalition Based out of CSU Sacramento. It promotes the accurate school curriculum. He is a culture director, the Association of Ramaytush Ohlone, advising within their San Francisco Peninsula homelands. Gregg is a writer, activist within the California indigenous community. We welcome you again, Gregg.

Gregg Castro: Greetings, thank you for having me tonight. We understand as native people that wherever we are, we're on someone's indigenous land. And whatever disguise it is currently put onto it as we have here in San Francisco with concrete and asphalt and buildings and cars and things. We know underneath it is essentially the same Mother Earth that gave us birth at the beginning of time. And it's the same Mother Earth that nurtures us even today through that concrete and asphalt. And we must remember however our relationship is with our mother, It is our mother and we need to treat it with respect, dignity, and value for the gift of life that it's given us. And to always remember that in everything we do and for the Ramaytush people who were pushed out of our homelands generations ago but we are still here and we're still working to fulfill our sacred obligation to take care of Mother Earth the way it took care of us and to take care of all the living things on it. And those living things look a little different than our ancestors may have anticipated but still, living things deserve respect and dignity. So I offered this song, this is a song from my mother's other lineage. The Rumsen Ohlone from Monterey. It's a fog song, I sing it often, some of you may have heard it before but for me it's a very powerful song to clear ourselves, to clear the fog away from our own mind and hearts. So especially to hear the wisdom that's going to be shared tonight.

[ Gregg Castro sings a California Indigenous song titled, ‘fog song’ ]

Gregg Castro: It's my great honor to introduce this young warrior. We've run across our paths occasionally and I've been a great admirer of the wisdom she brings forward. One of my elders, in response to my exclamation that aren't we lucky to have these young warriors here coming, and his response was, well what makes you think there's any luck involved. The ancestors are sending them to us when we need them and this is one of the most delightful and powerful young warriors we have, so I entreat you to listen to her. Please welcome Lyla.

Dr. Lyla June: Hello, Yá'át'ééh. Good to see you all here, thank you for coming tonight. I'm just going to read a poem so, I don't really want to talk about logical things right now. “It is dawn, The sun is rising in the sky. And my grandmother and I are singing our prayers to the horizon. This morning she is teaching me the meaning of Hózhó. Although there's no direct translation from the Diné Bizaad, the Navajo language into English Every living being knows what hózhó means. For hózhó is every drop of rain. It's every leaf on every tree, It's your every eyelash, It's every feather on the blue bird's wing. Hózhó is undeniable beauty. And my grandmother knows this well. For she speaks a language that grew out of the desert floors. Like redstone arms reaching into the sky. And praising creation for all of its brilliance. Hózhó is remembering that humanity is a part of the earth's brilliance. Humanity is an expression of the earth's brilliance. And my grandmother knows this well. For she speaks the same language as snowstorms. She speaks the same language as horse hooves hitting the dirt on birthdays. For she was a midwife and she would gallop to the women in labor, until she became fluent in the language of suffering mothers. Fluent in the language of joyful mothers. Fluent in the language of handing a glowing newborn to its creator. Hózhó is an experience, but It is not something you can experience alone. The eagles tell us this, as they lock their talons together in the stratosphere and fall to the earth as one. Hózhó is inter-beauty. And my grandmother, she knows this well, for she speaks the same language as the male rain. Which shoots lightning boys through the sky. And pummels the green corn children. And huddles the horses against the cliff sides in the early afternoon. She also speaks the language of the female rain. Which sends the scent of dust and sage into our hole runs, into our homes, and casts rainbows in the sky. Us Dine, we know what Hózhó means. And each and every one of you here, you know what Hózhó means. And I believe that deep down we know what Hózhó does not mean. Like the days we walk in sadness. Like the days we live in fear, like the days we live for money, or like the days when I lived for fame, or like the days when the conquistadors came. When they climbed off their velvet press saddles, and told us they were going to take away the mountains. Now we knew this was not Hózhó. Because we knew for one thing, you cannot own a mountain. But for another thing, we knew that we could make it Hózhó once again. So we took their silver swords, we took their silver coins. And we melted them with fire and buffalo hide bellows, and recast them into beautiful turquoise silver pieces. And put it around their necks. We took the silver helmets, straight off of their heads, and transformed it into a fearless beauty. We made jewelry, we still do. Hózhó is like this, my grandmother says, it is the healing of broken bones, it is the healing of our broken hearts. Hózhó is the prayer that carried us, Through genocide, through disease. Hózhó is the prayer that will carry all of us here, Through anything. Even this global warming, Even this crisis, Hózhó is the prayer that will carry us through anything. This morning, my grandmother is teaching me something very important, I think. She's teaching me that sometimes, the easiest and the most elegant way to defeat an army of hatred is to simply stand before it and sing to it. Sing to it your most beautiful songs, until it falls to its knees and surrenders. It will do this, she says, because it will have finally found a sweeter fire than greed. A sweeter fire even than revenge. It will have found heaven, It will have found Hózhó. And so, my grandmother is talking to the colors of the sky at dawn as she does every morning. And she is saying, hózhó náhásdlíí, hózhó náhásdlíí, hózhó náhásdlíí, hózhó náhásdlíí, which means beauty and joy are restored again. It is dawn, my friends. Wake up. For the night is over.” Thank you.

[ Beatboxing ]

We were all given sacred duties to this land, Take care of Mother Earth and she will help you understand, That everything we need is in the palm of our hands, No need to drill, mine, conquer, or extract, With faith in the Creator, we will blaze a brand new path, When we let go of fear, the greed turns into laughter, Unity, of all people, that is what we're after, Cruising down the red road with sweet grass on my dashboard, Used to drag and drink but now I'm sober and now I'm faster, Sharp as a tacky tome, it can't hold me back now,

[ Beatboxing ] 

I just want to build a new world for my children, With love, prayer, and unity, this nation is rebuilding, Up from the ash of genocide and division, Red, black, yellow, white as one, that's the vision, Every race participates in this new beginning, Sacred is the masculine and sacred is the feminine, Infinite, indigenous, continuous, deliberate, Nothing can stop the people once they got their intention set, Some people say that the land can be owned,

[ Beatboxing ]

Some people say that the land can be owned,

[ Beatboxing ]

But deep in our hearts we know that isn't so, Cuz we don't even own this flesh or this bone, We can't take it with us on the soul's journey home, The only thing we own is the lesson that we know, So when we wake from the slumber to remember we are one, One beautiful people under one beautiful sun, We must also release all claims to the earth, Cuz she don't belong to us, we belong to her, 

[ Beatboxing ]

Mother earth was meant to be a place where we could learn, We pray to jesup for a blessing on the world, We practice satyagraha because violence doesn't work. We pray for those who are injured, those who are injure, We pray for those who are injured and, We pray for those who are injure. Unconditional prayers for the whole wide world. We sun dance year round, yet we let the sage burn, cause when we pray for the people, we will start to understand what it means to be true women, what it means to be true men. Cradled in the arms of the sky and the sand, just strands woven into the tapestry of the master plan. Cause together there is nothing that we cannot achieve. Together there is nothing that we cannot achieve. Can I hear you guys say that? Together there is nothing that we cannot achieve. Together there is nothing that we cannot achieve. Together there is nothing that we cannot achieve. Together there is nothing that we cannot achieve. Find love, find healing, find unity. hózhó náhásdlíí, hózhó náhásdlíí, hózhó náhásdlíí, hózhó náhásdlíí.

You know, tonight's like a night, and I don't know if I've ever done before. We're gonna like, I'm gonna do some music and some poetry, and then we're gonna talk, Preston and I. And so I think I wanted to start with music because I think for one thing, music speaks to a part of us that talking cannot. So yeah, and I think that if I had more time, I would rather do more songs. Because I don't know, there's a lot of stories in there that I think would help contextualize everything we're about to say. But we have time for three songs at the beginning, and then I'll do one at the end. But I really like this next song. It's not very like fancy musically, but it's actually a story of my life, kinda. And I think each of our lives is a special story. One time my elder said, your life is a parable. What do you want it to say? But for me, I grew up, I grew up in a community where there was a lot of drugs and alcohol. And I actually myself started to do drugs and alcohol when I was 11. And growing up, when you're a drug addict from such a young age, you're at the parties. And crazy stuff happens at parties, no matter who you are. But if you're a woman and a brown woman, I don't know, I would say statistically maybe even more. And so yeah, I was drunk and high for a good nine years straight in very dangerous places. And so a lot of stuff happened to me, specifically stuff that shouldn't happen to a woman's body, you know, like quite a bit of stuff. And I started to blame myself. Like oh, if I wouldn't have gone to that party, that wouldn't have happened. Or if I would have said no to that person, that wouldn't have happened. Or if I would have said no louder, that wouldn't have happened. Or if I would have said no in a different way, that wouldn't have happened. Or if I wouldn't have, if I would have done a karate chop, that wouldn't have happened. If I would have ran away, that wouldn't have happened. You know, you find all these creative ways as a woman, as anyone, to blame yourself for abuse. But despite all this, I like to get straight A's. Maybe it was my way of coping. So I had like business in the front, party in the back kind of life. And went to Stanford University nearby here. And the drugs were even more prolific, believe it or not, or maybe that's not too hard to believe. And yeah, got deeper and deeper into alcoholism, drug addiction. And when I was about 20 years old, I'm happy to say that I broke my hip and my spine in an earthquake that is pretty, an 8.8 magnitude earthquake in Chile. And I jumped out of a third story balcony because I thought the building was going to collapse. And it's this kind of funny story because the building didn't collapse. But I did. I always say breaking my hip and my spine was the best thing that ever happened to me because it really shook me awake. It was like, do you want to die an addict? Because you could have just died just then and that's what your parable would have said. Lyla was born, she got addicted, and she died. And I didn't want that to be my story. And so I started to pray for sobriety around that time. And I don't know if anyone was listening. Sometimes you pray, you're like, oh yeah, there's, I don't know if Creator can pull off that one, get me sober. That's like a miracle for sure. But sure enough, people started coming into my life, they started helping me. And one of the things they said to me was, in order to stop your addiction, you have to stop hurting the thing that you're running from through the addiction. You have to stop the root of the addiction. So in this case for me, it was abuse, right? Abuse that women should not endure. A lot of it. Incest as well from when I was younger. So a lot of, quite a bit of stuff I had to sift through. And it was worth it. It was hard. And they said, they said, we did not see you as a victim. We see you as a veteran of a war against women. And we honor you the same way we would honor a veteran coming back from war. And they also said, you know, what happened to you was not your fault. And that was something no one ever told me before. You know, it wasn't your fault. Those are powerful words. If you ever have someone tell you something like that happened, always say it wasn't your fault. And they said, another thing they said was you are sacred. That was a mind blowing statement. I am sacred. And that was, that was quite something because I thought I had lost that through all the abuse. You know? When someone does something unsacred to you, you start to feel unsacred. So they told me quite a few things. I'm trying to think what else they told me. These elders, you know, these healers. They said if we can heal the women, we can heal the world. Which of course by extension means we can heal the men. And our two spirit relatives. But one of the things they said was if you want to fight for the creator, and I said, oh, yes, I would love that. I'm not doing much else. I'm just smoking cigarettes and whatnot. So they said you'll be a much better warrior without the chemicals in your system, the drugs and the alcohol. And I thought, okay. So I want to thank all of you tonight because you're the reason why I quit. Because I couldn't quit for myself, but I wanted to be a good warrior for my people, which includes all of you. And my people and my community and my planet is what I ended up putting the drugs down for. And I can happily say that this December I'll celebrate 11 years of complete sobriety. So naturally I had to write a song thanking the creator for answering that prayer. Right? I just remember being there and just looking up. What do they say when you hit rock bottom, the only place left to look is up. And man, did Creator answer that prayer in a powerful way. I didn't just get sober. I had to heal the root of why I was an addict. And that has helped me to help other women and men and two spirit folks understand that it's not our fault. And then the things we do to others because of our abuse is by extension also not our fault. We have compassion and patience for ourselves for the mistakes we've made as well. So anyways, this song is called Thank You. Thanking the creator for helping me out. 

I just want to thank you for everything you do. Just want to thank you for everything you are. You taught me how to love myself when nobody else believed in me. They didn't see what you see. So now I give it all away. All the pain and all the shame. You said I give it all away. Like a burning flame. You said I give it all away. Every single day. No longer live my life for myself. Now I live it for everybody else. Never knew you could be so poor. And have so much wealth. Cause now I'm rich in my soul. Like never before. You said I'm rich in my soul. And your love is my gold. You said I'm rich in my soul. Like never before. And now I, I would die before I let them take me away. Don't take me away. Don't take me away. In that chariot of flames, all the addiction and the pain, cause I am yours now. Creator, I am yours in your everlasting arms. In your everlasting arms. And I just want to thank you. Yeah. For everything you do. Just want to thank you for everything you are. You taught me how to love myself. When nobody else believed in me. Yeah, they didn't see what you see. 

Preston Vargas: Wow. Sweet fire. Huh? That's all I can think of now when I'm, when I'm hearing you. The poetry and the music. Sweet fire. And what you shared about singing before hatred because it then gives it a sweeter fire. What has this sweet fire, this relationship to music, to art, to poetry meant to you? 

Dr. Lyla June: Wow. Well, I think that frankly, I was, I was conditioned to be a people pleaser. I'm still working on it actually. And so on one hand, poetry and art was a way for me to heal myself. Maybe some of you know about this when you write, it's so healing. But I think I also was doing it almost as a way to gain external validation. And I also was doing it because I did actually have some things to say. As an indigenous woman, you have 500 years of pent up rage to talk about. And is a mixture of both good and bad things of why I did art and poetry. And that's why in that first poem I said, we know what hojo does not mean, like the days I lived for fame. Like that time in my life where I needed my worth to come from the outside in versus from the wellspring inside of me out and just to know myself enough that I really don't care what people think anymore. Part of the abuse that I experienced was approval and disapproval. You can never quite do enough to get love. And that's probably why I went to Stanford too and probably why I got a PhD. Hopefully not always, all the way because of that. But there's part of you that just, you're never gonna do enough to be loved. So that's that overachiever thing. But luckily, despite those not so great reasons for doing art and poetry and music, I also was doing them for the right reasons, which was to heal myself and to heal the world. And so a lot of my artistic practice has been about purifying my intention and cleansing it of that insecurity and doing it because the world needs to hear our stories now. They need to hear the messages now and they need our help now. And I think when I step into that purity of intention, the art gets much better. So there's a saying of, may I be a hollow bone. And that's one of the prayers our ancestors would say. And that's the attempt to be so clear and so devoid of selfish intentions that the creator can blow through you like a flute or like an eagle bone whistle. And so that's sort of my main goal of my artistic practice. And I think could be the goal for anything anyone does is, may I be a hollow bone. Whether you're a carpenter or a filmmaker or a farmer or overseeing a church, literally whatever you do, you can ask, may I be a hollow bone, may you work through me so that my work is not for me, but it's for others. And when you open that valve of true selflessness and it's not about you or for you or to validate yourself or whatever, I think creators are allowed to move through in a really beautiful way. So that's sort of where I'm at right now, because it's always a work in progress. 

Preston Vargas: I've heard some other folks kind of use that term of a hollow bone, and I really wonder if they've misunderstood it. Only because I feel like Lyla has a shape of a hollow bone that Preston doesn't. So as the creator blows through you, there's a unique pitch, a unique tone, a uniqueness there that comes out that the creator needs to bring out into the world. As you're talking about healing and what comes through you in the personal healing and also in the world, how do we kind of apply that process of scrubbing, like purifying, scrubbing, refining, together? 

Dr. Lyla June: I think just as each of us has our own unique contribution to give to this planet during the brief life that we each have, we also have our own unique traumas and stories and conditionings and programmings that sort of guide the scrubbing process. So my scrubbing process is going to be very different than someone who went through something else. But we also have a lot of commonalities, right? That's why I tell my story up there, because I know I'm not alone. And I wish I was, but it's so common. And I tell that story to help others see, who knows, maybe a piece of themselves in the story. So yeah, I think, I guess there's no one size fits all answer. I think each of us have our own journey of healing. And some of us, I don't think, I don't know if any of us ever completes it, like 100%. Maybe a few people have in history and I commend them. But there's other folks who take quite a bit to the grave. I have an elder who was beaten in the boarding schools. And one of the things she tells me is, well, they beat us, Lyla, because they loved us. They wanted us to be disciplined and be good people. So their hitting was their love. And clearly she made up that story to help her survive, right? And that's exactly what that story needed to do at the time. That's actually a good job for making that story, because when you're an eight year old native kid in a missionary boarding school, and you're only getting out when you're 18, that just might as well be forever, right? It's just 10 years of this. So you have to find these stories to help you cope and survive. But then hopefully, ideally, once you're in a safe place, you can let those stories go. But the sad part is you have to also feel the truth for the first time, which is they hit you because they were not healthy people. And it actually was not love, and it actually hurts. So that's the downside of lifting those rose tinted glasses, right? Is we have to actually feel everything. And I think that process is so challenging that many people never do it or do much of it. But I really think it's rewarding. And as one of my friends says, you only have to go in there once and check it out. It's like a splinter. You're like, oh. But once it's out, you're good. You can live the rest of your life not carrying that story with you. But she's 99 now, and she still says that. And that's okay. You know, maybe to each their own, to each their own amount of layer peeling. But I think that that scrubbing process really has to do with your unique story. 

Preston Vargas: That feeling of like, I'm not alone. And like feeling into the story. I feel that now walking the streets because I feel so many people who also have their traumas activated by what's going on today. By active genocide, by passive genocide, which is systems of oppression and power denying folks life saving sources and resources. And so I'm just wondering, you know, the ancestors, I feel like I'm not alone and we're not alone. And I can almost hear the ancestors up in their spaces looking at us and witnessing that these things have happened before. They've happened to them before. And they have so much wisdom to share if people would slow down and listen. And we're listening today. We're listening with you and your stories. What has your relationship with your ancestors meant for you in your role in life and in healing? And as you said, being a warrior for the creator. 

Dr. Lyla June: Well I am, well my, actually I should have introduced myself properly at the beginning. But my clans, according to the Diné way, my mother is Diné, which is also incorrectly known as Navajo. And my father is a mixture of European and indigenous. And so in my mother's nation we actually introduce the clans of our four grandparents. And you start with your mother's mother. So for me that would be the Nanishcheketchitni clan or the Black Charcoal Street Division of the Red Running Into Water People, which is a Diné clan that's very old. I don't really know how old, but quite old. At least hundreds, maybe thousands of years old. My second clan I honor is my father's mother. So that would be, in my case, the Southern Cheyenne or the Tsis tsis'tas People. My third clan I honor is my mother's father, which is, in my case, the Áshįįhí, the Salt clan of the Diné. And then the fourth clan you honor is your father's father, your patrilineal line. And that is your, for me, Bilagana or European. And so the first clan, though, is your mother's clan, your mother's mother. And that's just so important for us because we could trace our mother line back. Like that Nanishcheketchitni clan is my mother's clan, my mother's mother, mother's mother, mother's. But my father's clan, I don't know, because it gets lost, you know, because my children will only keep my mother's mother's clan and their father's mother's clan. They won't they'll lose track of the paternal and maternal grandfathers. So I had to fight really hard to know all of my clans. It wasn't just like, here you go, Lyla, here's the family photo book thing. You know, it was like I had to go and research and ask people all these questions and be like, what the heck is going on? Who am I? I had to research records because to find out my father's mother's clan, I had to find out her mother, mother, mother, mother, mother. So it took some work. And even to know that I'm Scottish took some work. And so that Scottish ancestry is actually really important to me for many reasons. One being that I think we as, and I say we because I am part white or whatever that word means, but we as Europeans, we have a lot of amnesia, right, of like who we are. And growing up as a kid, I was really trained to just focus on my Diné identity. You know, you just Diné, don't worry about that side of the family. They were the bad guys. We're not going to talk about them. But it was actually through my Diné ceremonies, I had to acknowledge those clans. And when I really first acknowledged my Beligana clan, my European clan, I was like, oh shit, I'm white. And I was like, okay, let's talk about that. So I went back home to Europe. I went home several times. I went to the sacred sites. I went to where the ancestors are. And I guess what I want to say in answer to this question, which I could probably talk all night about, but I will spare you, is that both my indigenous ancestors from here and my indigenous ancestors from Europe really guide me strongly because I went from hating my European ancestors and disowning them to really understanding the amount of trauma they had been through. For example, the witch burnings, they burned so many of our mothers, sisters, daughters, burned them alive. And they drowned them alive and they tortured them in torture chambers. And there was just this mass hysteria that really damaged our communities. And of course, these weren't witches. They were medicine women often. And witch, the word witch actually means wise. So the wise women, you know, like take them out. If you take them out, you could take out the whole community. And so also language prohibition. The Welsh language was prohibited in schools and Scottish language and Irish language until the 1920s. And if they caught you speaking Welsh, they would have a block of wood around your neck and the letters WN was written on it. And the only way to get the block of wood off your neck is if you caught another kid speaking Welsh. Yes. And so that's how they tried to destroy the Welsh language, which is actually called Cwmraeg. And the Cwmraeg language is very encoded with indigenous knowledge because the Welsh have been there like forever. And so they call them like Druidic cultures or Celtic cultures. But you also have the Roman expansion, you know, just destroying people. And Constantine, you know, in the year 300s, in the 300s AD, murdering people in the name of Christ, you know. In Hoc Signo Vinces, you know, he saw the cross in the sky and like, oh, I gotta go conquer in the name of Jesus, right? And of course, Jesus would never approve of that. He'd be like, what are you doing? You're like appropriating my culture for your own empirical empire crazy stuff. So that was a thousand years before they were conquering people here in the name of Jesus, like literally right where we're standing. So all the tactics of language prohibition, dehumanization, the MMIW, you know, which in Europe was the witches, right? Missing and murdered indigenous European women. All those tactics were practiced in Europe before they were exported to the rest of the world. And I think that's a really important thing for us as Europeans to both grieve and to understand and to reconnect with our indigenous identity. So I'll just end by saying I was lucky to go to a sacred site in Britain and the full moon was rising and the sun was setting on opposite sides of the sky and we were sitting on a rock, a stone like formation that had a natural pool of water on the top. And we were entering in our mug war and our Holly and our Apple and I was with these women and it just made me feel so happy that our culture, our indigenous European culture, despite everything that's happened was still being enacted today. And I think that's no matter who you are, whether you're white or black or from Pacific islands or parts of Asia or Australia, it behooves us to look past these thin walls of time of like who we are, like Napoleon and what's his name, King Louis and Alexander the Great. And like that's what we think Europeans are, right? No, they found a clay effigy of a woman in German soil and they radiocarbon dated it to be 40,000 years old. This was back in 2009. So this is how long our European ancestors were molding the earth into a shape of a woman to honor the feminine, honor the sanctity of the earth. And so I think that's who we are before the trauma, before the fear. So suffice it to say that I think my ancestors have really quite guided me, not only in healing myself but helping us all remember who we are and grieve what we've been through and come back together and see that we're actually quite similar. 

Preston Vargas: That veil of time. And for me it feels like compassion to remember who we were before the trauma. I can find that so challenging and I think maybe other folks do too when it comes to also trying to hold boundaries and integrity around how my culture and my community is preserved or continues to flourish. And having compassion for folks who don't have the same respect there. There are so many people who are really invested in oppressive cultures, in the systems of power because they're benefiting from it and even if not benefiting from it, they're addicted to it or afraid of change or whatever reason can break free. How do you kind of navigate that dual wisdom of what's coming through with the ancestors in your own experience seeing beyond the thin veil of time but also recognizing some folks are really invested? What do you do there?

Dr. Lyla June: I think what I hear you saying is there's a tension between loving, having compassion and understanding for oppressive cultural groups while at the same time honoring how those oppressive cultural groups are harming your community. I would almost argue that the only way to disarm these oppressive cultures is through love and understanding. And I know that sounds kind of abstract but I think, I guess it also is reflected from the microcosm of my little story where I mean if you met me 14 years ago, I was drinking every day, I was chain smoking cigarettes, I always wore big sunglasses because I couldn't stand for people to see my eyes because I just hated myself so profoundly. And as a result, I wasn't really a good influence for those around me. I was bringing people into the drug culture and the party culture and had no idea how to properly treat people because I was never properly treated. And I was kind of a monster of sorts. I was still trying to be good but I just didn't know how. And instead of taking me and saying you need to go to jail, you're doing illicit things, you're a bad girl, how dare you. Oh and I also had like a shoplifting issue. 

Preston Vargas: Ditto. 

Dr. Lyla June: I got kleptomania. Yeah, was it kleptomania? Yeah, kleptomania. And I was just like a menace to society, right? I just like was not your model community member. And the ancestors took that broken bird and instead of saying, F you, get out of here, stop hurting people, they said, I'm sorry. I'm sorry this happened to you. I'm sorry you grew up in a community of drug dealers. I'm sorry you were high from secondhand stuff since the day you were born. I'm sorry people treated your body like an object to be disposed. And that compassion and understanding was crazy and so transformative. And when they applied that grace to that song, A Wretch Like Me, that amazing grace song really hits me. It's like I was such a, I don't know what I was, but that grace and unconditional love, even for someone who's actively harming others, is what changed me into something less harmful. And I think that part of my work in reclaiming European indigenous identity is about disarming white culture, disarming our own selves by allowing us to grieve what we've been through, which we never even began to process, right? We're talking 2000 years of open warfare in Europe. We're talking a third of Europe disappearing overnight from a plague. They call it the dark ages for a reason. And that trauma of dog eat dog, and that's where capitalism comes from, right? Like hoarding. You don't know if it's gonna be there tomorrow. We know through epigenetics that even if we didn't go through it, we still behave as if we did. And so having a chance to grieve what we've been through as Europeans, I run it, and giving us that space to do so, and even acknowledging there's anything to grieve, right? Because that's not very often that we even remember, oh yeah, my people were totally called savages. The Scottish were called savages 1000 years before indigenous people, you know what I'm saying? They just copied and pasted all this stupid rhetoric. Then we can be, that broken bird can heal, and can be honored as not a broken bird, but as someone who was here for purpose from the beginning. Even if they were tricked out of that purpose, or beaten out of that purpose, or abused out of that purpose, it doesn't ever take away their purpose. And helping us all to return to that purpose of being accountable, being apologetic, being in service, and being part of community again. But we can't be a part of community if the world doesn't let us, right? So it is a bit of a challenge, but I think it's actually, ironically, the fastest way to healing is by applying that compassionate understanding to the monster. That's the fastest way to healing versus condemning and punishing and that punitive model, right, of like, get back in your cage and stay in there. So yeah, I'll stop talking. Thank you. 

Preston Vargas: No, never. 

Dr. Lyla June: I was like, I go on a ramble sometimes, it just doesn't stop. 

Preston Vargas: That for me just evokes this different sense of life. The person in front of me, the person beside me, around me, everybody has their own purpose that they came here for, even if they were beat out of it, tricked out of it. It seems like part of your purpose, at least from the outside, my perspective, has also been about ecological repair and justice and healing. I can see, as you explain it, that lineage of trauma that human beings experience and how it's now impacting the earth as well, environmentally, were there pivotal moments for you or the epiphany moments that kind of aligned you with ecological justice, with food justice, with healing the planet? 

Dr. Lyla June: Well, I'm lucky to have been raised in Lakota ceremony, and I have to really thank the Lakota people for giving me ceremony, because my lineage, it had been broken in the boarding schools. So we ironically found it in another tribe, and then that led us back to our way. But the Lakota are scientists, and they're very advanced scientists. And as you may know, they have this principle of mitakuye oyasin, which means we are all related. And their science, there's not even really a need for the word ecological, because it's already assumed. Everything we do and say is part of a larger web of life. We are all related. And so I'm really fortunate to have been raised up by them to some extent, because they always honor the buffalo, they honor the water, they honor the stones, they honor a lot of things that it's not really my place to say or explain, but they really live to serve all their relations. And how do we see everything as our relative? How do we see the turtles as our relatives, the little microbes on our skin as our relatives, the bazillions of creatures in my stomach right now that help me digest food as my relatives, the living beings in my womb that help me protect me. There's so many beings, even just. We are an ecosystem. It's so wild to think about. You think Lyla's just sitting up here. No, I'm with a lot of friends, billions. And when I achieve something, I thank them, because it was a team effort. And not only that, but those microbes are traveling between each other. That's another kicker, right? My sheep, their breath stimulates my microbiology in a way that only churro sheep can do, the sheep that my people have had for thousands of years. And what's really crazy is they need my breath to stimulate their microbiome, because we've been together for so dang long, our DNA is like a lock and key. And those sheep, I need those sheep. I don't exist in a vacuum. I don't exist alone. And each and every one of us has our own DNA, our own lineages, our own ancestral diets that influence us in very unique ways. And each of us, I believe, really need to eat those foods to be a part of the ecology of our world. So that was the foundation of my upbringing, thank goodness, to just have this consciousness that we are all related. Not only like, you're my bro, you're my sis, you're my sib, but there's a thread of microbes, like literally just connecting us all. That's wild. And connecting us even with the trees, right? And the oxygen, it's just amazing. But then of course, there was another pivotal moment where I had just finished my master's degree and I was like, should I get a doctor's degree? I was like, I don't know. I was like, only if there's something worth obsessing over. And one of my elders told me, Lyla, they have history all wrong here. They think that Indians were just running around in loin cloths trying to start a fire, picking a barrier where they could and eking out a living on the land like cavemen. I said, actually, we managed this continent extensively and we populated it densely and our food systems were incredibly powerful and long lasting. And my elder said, native people have enough land, we don't have much, we have enough land to change the way the world thinks about food and water. And I thought to myself, okay, that's worth obsessing over. And so I embarked in a journey of research, both Western and indigenous methodologies of learning and knowing and figuring out. And I just came upon all of these amazing archaeological, paleo archaeological data that were saying that we've been harvesting oysters out of Chesapeake Bay for 3,000 years straight with no end. And that under American management, there's now less than 1% of oysters in Chesapeake Bay. We looked at fossilized pollen evidence and found that Shawnee ancestors in Kentucky, they oversaw a chestnut grove that was also intermixed with hickory nut and black walnut and sumpweed and goosefoot and sunflower, all these edible plant species for 3,000 years. And that they managed this grove with periodic fire burning because there's fossilized charcoal starting right when those trees come into the record. And you can see that in the late 1800s, the chestnut pollen just disappears. And what happened? The blight, the fungus wiped it out because the native people who were managing it and spacing the trees properly were killed off. And these trees started to crowd and that made their immune systems weaker because they were competing for limited nutrients and the virus could hop quicker and the blight wiped them out. And now you're hard to find an American chestnut. They're almost extinct. But also success stories like the Heiltsuk who oversee herring roe farms. They hand plant kelp forests along the whole coastline to create more surface area for the little herring fish to lay their eggs, which feeds everyone. It doesn't just feed humans, it feeds the salmon and the killer whales and the eagles up the food chain, the wolves and the bears. And everyone feeds off of these little eggs that are augmented because these human hands planted kelp forests along the coastlines and augmented the very caloric base of the entire coastal food web. And they still do it today, such that their new year is in February when the herring come. And that's a 6,000 year old system. We know that their clam gardens where they build these intertidal rock walls and actually augmented clam habitat in one island by 35%, they built clam gardens that augmented how much clams were available not only to them, but the mink and the otter and the birds. And we just know so many beautiful food systems that make it so clear that these were not hunter gatherers, right? Hunter gatherer, I do not like that term anymore. I used to, but it signifies that you're a victim of circumstance and you're just kind of like, is there a berry out there? Hello? Instead of actively managing berry patches, which is what the Heiltsuk also do, instead of actively burning meadow so that the deer come to you, the buffalo come to you, the antelope and expanding buffalo habitat, which we did from Alaska all the way down to Louisiana. We had buffalo in Louisiana, Georgia. We had buffalo in Pennsylvania because we expanded their habitat by burning the meadows. Anyways, I could go on and on, but suffice it to say that that elder really kicked me off on a research journey that now I'm like the food lady and one of the food ladies, right? And I'm like, okay, I did not see that one coming. I thought I was going to be a musician and just go around and, but yeah, so those are two pivotal things, really being raised by the brilliance and the beauty. I have to give them a shout out of the Lakota people, the Chetishakowin and my elder sort of pushing me off on this research journey that I finally finished last year. Yeah. 

Preston Vargas: There are two, I see here snaps there. There are two things that are coming from what you just said for me. One is I can see how you and your community are actually taking the gift from the Lakota folks and maybe passing that forward with the past six years of, forgive me if I mispronounce, Hogan, with Hogan building and your desire for it to be for everyone to be able to come. I know this is a bit like tangent, but could you share maybe a little bit more? 

Dr. Lyla June: Yeah. So Hogan is a Diné ceremonial house and it has eight sides and it has four directions. The door always opens to the east and it's supposed to symbolize the womb of a mother. So when you go in, it's a sacred space. And so yeah, we built one, we're building one. We're building one and I did want it to be a place where people could come primarily for healing. I mean, I think all of us are deprived of sanity for one thing and healing spaces for another and safe spaces and I think we're all deprived of paradigms that actually make sense. And when you finally get a glimpse of it, it's like a breath of fresh air. And how sad is it that things are so rare in normal American culture? And so I think that there's a split camp. Some people are like, let's be generous and share our culture. And then there's some that are like, they're just gonna abuse it, don't share our culture. But I err on this camp of, look, our ancestors were people of peace. Our ancestors were diplomats, our ancestors were healers. So who are we to not be those people again today? And we need to help others heal. No matter if they've hurt us. I mean, obviously you have to be careful. I don't wanna like, if someone's actively dangerous, you want to pray for them from afar. But if they're not, then let's start working on this. So I wanted to open the Hogan doors to people because I really feel like our elders, Dine elders, different elders of different cultures around the world, including Scottish elders, Sami elders, Hungarian elders, it's not just native people or melanated people, but we do have a lot of intact stuff that we have something that can help the world. And when the colonizers first came, they didn't wanna hear it. We don't care. We're gonna destroy all of you, just like someone tried to destroy all of us. And we're gonna wipe out all your languages in the boarding schools and we don't care. But now they're like, oh shoot, what do we do? Like we don't know what the heck we're doing. The whole world is imploding. All of our systems that we thought were so civilized are actually completely primitive and we're imploding from the inside out politically, ecologically, hydrologically, food wise. All of our systems are kind of doing what they were always gonna do, which is collapse. And so now's the time for us as indigenous peoples to carefully, lovingly and appropriately share this knowledge, not just to help people fix the world, but just to help individuals heal. I think that's the thing that is above all else. It's not like I'm healing you so you can go out and be a better person, like go help others. I just genuinely wanna help others heal, because I know how special that was for me. So yeah, I think that's why we're opening the door. Yeah. 

Preston Vargas: Ashay. The second thing that came for me when you were talking about yourself as the food lady is, for me, it also comes up as anthropogenic instead of anthropocentric. And so many of the systems are failing because they are just simply anthropocentric. 

Dr. Lyla June: It's a distinction. 

Preston Vargas: Yeah. Could you maybe share a little bit about indigenous wisdoms and the current. Of course, climate change, which is affecting everybody, but of course, mostly people who are living traditional in indigenous communities around the world, the politics of oil and greed and food insecurity all wrapped together, all anthropocentric. What does it mean to shift to anthropogenic? And maybe if you could actually break that word down for folks too. 

Dr. Lyla June: Yeah, yeah. So anthropogenic, anthropo just means human, anthropocentric is centering humans, anthropogenic is made by humans. But yeah, so anthropocentrism, we've approached white supremacy, right? This strange notion that for some reason, the lighter skin you have, the more important you are. It seems kind of arbitrary to me, but someone or some system came up with that, right? We've been interrogating that for a while now. We've also been interrogating male supremacy, this notion that for some reason, men are just more important than everyone else. Really random thought. And now we're starting to approach and interrogate kind of this deeper frontier, which is human supremacy. This notion that for some reason, we're just more important than everything else. It doesn't make any sense. Why would we treat an animal with moral exclusion, right? Moral exclusion is this idea that there's some things that you don't need to be moral to, because why? I don't really know. But we just in our brains conveniently like, oh, they're animals, they don't matter. It's a plant, it doesn't matter. But how do we bring them back into that inclusion of what deserves moral treatment? And so in Diné way, we have this belief that when your grandparents die, they come back to you as sheep. So you're going to treat your sheep the same way as your grandmother. I know this is really powerful, because it's so different than how I was trained, you know. But that's really what we're taught, that every single creature or being is deserving of our decent behavior and decent treatment. So my sheep are very special to me. And I think that all of our ancestors lived among animals, whether it was, you know, eel or salmon or bison or cattle. And I really encourage everyone to reconnect with your domesticated or semi-domesticated or whatever you had a deep relationship with. Because those animals, again, they need our breath and we need their breath. And it gives us a chance to practice non-human centricism. So some people call it kin-centric. Kin-centric is this notion that not only are we equal to all life, but all life is our relative, is our kinship-minded mentality. And I would really, really encourage us all to lean into that somewhat foreign territory of this familyhood with the bee that's buzzing by you and helping those relatives be in balance. But moving on to anthropogenic, you know, I think that, and sort of the biggest message of my dissertation is that humans are not a pest. Humans are not a problem. Humans are not a stain on the earth. We are meant to be a gift. And that each of these ancient societies showed how their very presence improved the land around them. Their very presence augmented the kelp, which augmented the herring, which augmented all life around them. Their very presence enabled the eel to go back and forth. Their very presence enabled the echinacea to come up after fire. Their very presence enabled the abalone and the otter and the urchins to stay in balance. And so it's just so important to reframe who we are and what we are. And so a lot of what I was trying to do was help us love ourselves again, you know? And not have this shame of being alive, which I think so many of us feel. And distinguishing between the hardware of the human body, which I do not think is bad. I do not think humans in and of themselves are bad, and the software of the human body, which is the paradigms, the world views, the value systems that drive us, that program us, that determine our behavior. And honoring that the software simply needs to be updated. The software simply needs to be cleansed of these viruses of hate and fear. Simply just fear, different forms of fear. And so it's really important to understand that even if humans were equipped with the right software, the right knowledge of how to see everything, and therefore how to treat everything and therefore how to construct our societies and therefore what to prioritize, that our population problem could become a population asset. And if all these eight billion people were just equipped with another, more advanced way of seeing the world, it would actually be a good thing. Like, okay, sweet, there's more people, we can help all these soils regenerate. We can help regenerate so much more of the coastline. We can help regenerate so much more of the grasslands. This word anthropogenic, right, is meant to be a negative word. Like, ew, this anthropogenic algal bloom, this anthropogenic city, this anthropogenic acid rain. You know, like all this stuff that humans make is just bad. And instead of that seeing as a. Instead of a dirty word being like a positive word, like, wow, humans made the whole soil system of Amazon that we now call Amazonian dark earths or terra preta that would not be there without human hands. Whoa, human beings created these gardens in the desert because they knew how to work with the topography of the land and the monsoons and slow down the water and actually helped the soil not get eroded every time it rained? Whoa. And so not everything anthropogenic is good, that's true, but not everything anthropogenic has to be bad either. I think that's what calling us back into is to be those warriors, those servants of life, and to live with a new software that is based on reciprocity, reverence, relationality, respect, restraint, responsibility, and regeneration. That's the indigenous software that I find in these various case studies. 

Preston Vargas: Thank you. It's been a blessing. Yes. 

Dr. Lyla June: Okay, song? 

Preston Vargas: Yeah, let's sing a song. 

Dr. Lyla June: Yeah, I have a song I could sing, but I kind of want to do a song with all of you. If you want to just repeat after me, but no pressure. 

May you bless our children. May you bless our children. May you bless our children. May you bless our children everywhere. Everywhere. May you bless our mothers. May you bless our mothers. May you bless our mothers. May you bless our mothers everywhere. Everywhere. May you bless our fathers. May you bless our fathers. May you bless our fathers. May you bless our mothers everywhere. Everywhere. May you bless our people. May you bless our people. May you bless all people. May you bless all people everywhere. Everywhere. Everywhere. 

Thank you all for praying with me. I think I will sing a song. 

Indigenous people, shine your light, we are equal. I remember the days when our prayers were illegal. I remember the days when being Indian was lethal. We had a rough past, but get ready for the sequel. Get ready for the glorious comeback of our people. Rise up, all you warriors of love. All you answers to the prayers of our ancestors from above. I can feel it in my heart. Can you feel it in your blood? I can hear the seventh fire calling us to wake up. All nations rise. Rise up, because now is your time. We don't have to hide anymore, because now is our time. With forgiveness as my bow and my prayers as my arrows, pull it back and let go. I watch them fly like sparrows. Have hope. Have hope. With compassion as my shield and faith down to our marrow, we will walk the pollen path even when it gets narrow. Yeah, yeah. Resurrect. Yes, you can bet that we've seen a single mama raising children on the rez. We've seen domestic violence tear apart what we have left. We've seen the alcohol take it all and leave us dead. We've seen the children take their own lives when they can't take the dread anymore. No, we can't take the dread anymore. I won't take the dread anymore, because I can't stand the dread anymore. Yes, it's a war, but we've seen it all before, and now we know we can change it, because that's why we were born. We know we are the ones that we have been waiting for. Yes, we are the ones that grandma has been praying for. So rise up, all you warriors of love, all you answers to the prayers of our ancestors from above. I can feel it in my heart. Can you feel it in your blood? I can hear the seventh fire calling us to wake up. All nations rise. Levantarse es nuestro tiempo. No tienes que esconderte más, porque ahorita es nuestro tiempo. 

This next verse is in Spanish to honor all the indigenous peoples who live south of that imaginary border, which has divided a continent that was once very much connected.

Mujer indígena, tú eres tan sagrada y traigas medicina de tu suelo todavía. A pesar del abuso de tu cuerpo y tu tierra, respetamos tus ancestros y la suya cultura. Hombre indígena, tú eres honorable y yo veo la fuerza que todavía sobrevive. A pesar del abuso de tu raza venerable, yo respeto tus ritos, tus danzas, tus padres. Guerreros del amor y guerreros de la paz. Si no vamos a escondernos más, we are warriors of love, we are warriors of peace, and we will not hide ourselves anymore. All nations rise. Rise up, because now's your time. We don't have to hide anymore, because now's our time.

I want to humbly thank you all for receiving everything Preston and I had to share. I think if there's one thing I could do tonight is just to reflect to you all the profound beauty that you all are and that you all carry. And I hope you take these words and use them to love yourself deeper and use them to believe in yourself more and use them to remember that your story, your parable is just as equally important and vital to the whole tapestry of the story we're all writing right now. And so please, you know, just know that I love you deeply. And yes, have a beautiful 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. 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, Nikki Roda, and Pele Shalev. 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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