Maurizio Benazzo: [00:00:00] So the next conversation is hosted by our colleague. . She's one of the people that has, uh, helped us put together this miracle that we are all experiencing. Ray.
Zaya Benazzo: Ray Avila and Ray joined us last year when we were releasing our film where Olive Trees, we, and she's been instrumental in yes, sharing the film across communities and yeah.
And since then Ray has been, yeah, maybe instrumental for everything we do. So deep, deep gratitude and just a brief eve intro for Ray and Ray, you can continue [00:01:00] yourself. Ray Abula is a Jewish faith leader, writer ritualist within spirituality with social transformation. Drawing from her Dutch and Ashkenazi roots, she brings ancestral reverence, creative activism to movements for justice and collective healing.
Maurizio Benazzo: Yay.
Zaya Benazzo: Welcome, Ray. So good to have you with us. Thank you for all your nourishment support and kinship in working and learning together.
Rae Abileah: Thank you Zanio, and to everyone who's tuning in from around the world. Welcome, welcome, welcome.
Um, as you mentioned, my name is Ray Aleah. She her pronouns. I'm your host for this session, and in addition to being a ritualist and a, a holy troublemaker, I would say I'm also a book doula, particularly for a new book called Beautiful [00:02:00] Solutions, A Toolbox for Liberation, which feels very aligned with the themes of this session.
And I'm so grateful to have the pleasure of working with Sand on building community around these films with where all of trees weep, and now with the eternal song. And I'm speaking with you all today from the Tesuque Pueblo home of the Tiwa people and land of the Pueblo people here in New Mexico. I wanna welcome our wise and well ancestors on whose shoulders we stand as we go about the work of unraveling unjust systems and reimagining the world.
You may wish to. As we start this session, think of an ancestor of blood lineage or movement, memory that you wanna dedicate your listening or participation in this session to and hold space for them. And also, as we gather, I wanna hold space for our kin who are experiencing the immediate impacts of climate, chaos, and injustice in our world.
[00:03:00] Today I am thinking about the people in Manitoba who are facing wildfires, and I'm thinking about the families who are facing starvation and bombardment and Gaza. The session is entitled, transforming Colonization, extractivism, and Social Ecological Injustice. It's a mouthful, and we're gonna get to hear in a moment from Casey Camp Hornik, Osprey, Orel Lake, and Abby Reyes, who I'll introduce in a moment.
The session title has a lot of big words, implying that we have a role to play in unraveling this curse of colonialism. And our three speakers are in so many ways playing larger than life roles in the work of unraveling and building anew. And I look forward to learning from them about how we can take meaningful action in these times.
Yesterday as I was preparing for the session, I sat at the bank of a nearby creek and I felt [00:04:00] this trepidation around holding this conversation. I felt my heart beating like a hummingbird. Uh, what does it mean to hold space for these women warriors who are holding so much? In the term, in the moment of this planetary crises.
And then my heart started pacing with this creek, with these rambling waters and reminding me that when we feel nervous, when we feel trepidation, it means that something important is happening. That we're on a journey to somewhere new, um, that our bodies are telling us some information that, oh, this is sacred.
Pay attention. So I, I pray that we can travel these braided waters with care, and that as the eternal song film beckons us, we can slow down and welcome a flow of conversation that invites connection and presence. If you're joining us in the zoom room, you're welcome to place any questions you might have in the conversation into the q and a button.
We might not get to them here, but by asking them, there's a curiosity that's [00:05:00] opened and a prayer that's woven. So without further ado, I'd like to give you a bit more background about our guests and welcome them. I'll introduce each of you and then we will begin the conversation like to begin by welcoming Abby Reyes, who's the author and a leader in weaving community climate solutions. Abby's book was just published last month. It's called Truth Demands, a Memoir of Murder, oil Wars, and the Rise of Climate Justice.
I can't recommend this book highly enough. I haven't been able to put it down, to be honest. It's this riveting personal story where Abby is sharing her own healing journey and pursuit of justice after the loss of her partner and two other land rights advocates who were murdered near indigenous UA territory in Columbia in 1999.
May their memories be for a blessing and a transformation. Abby's the director of the Community Resilience Projects at University of California at Irvine, [00:06:00] where she supports climate leaders from climate vulnerable communities and their academic partners to accelerate community owned adjust transition solutions.
Such an honor to have you with us, Abby, and if we
welcome Osprey. Orel Lake is the founder and executive director of Women's Earth and Climate Action Network. We can international, working with diverse coalitions to build women's leadership, climate justice, resilient communities, and a just transition to clean energy. Someone wrote, every now and then a book comes along that resets who we are and how we relate to the Web of life.
And Osprey's new book is one of these. So as Osprey's book came out last year. It's called, the story is in Our Bones, how , worldviews, and Climate Justice can remake a world in crisis. And in these pages, unlike a lot of non nonfiction where you only find facts and strategies, the pages are packed with myths and stories [00:07:00] and impacts your dream world in my experience of reading it.
But also very practical, tangible pathways forward for how we do this work of systems change. It feels like it's a poem for the thriving of life on Earth. And let's see if we have Casey with us. Welcome Casey.
Osprey Orielle Lake: I tell you, I just wanna interrupt and say, Casey and I have been working very hard to get her on, so I'm especially happy she's here.
We've just barely pulled the top. Welcome, Casey.
Thank you all for your patience and, and walking me through this without a child or a grandchild here. I'm lost with technology. You made it.
Rae Abileah: So appreciate that you're with us, Casey, and to briefly, uh, introduce you so much to say, but Casey Camp Hoek of the Ponca Nation is a community leader, longtime Native rights activist, environmental ambassador, actress and Women's Earth and Climate Action Network board member and [00:08:00] Senior Project Lead as traditional drum keeper for the Ponka.
I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. Um, close enough. Okay. Thank you for your Grace Woman Scalp Dance Society. Casey helped maintain the cultural identity of the Ponca Nation of Oklahoma for her, herself, her family, and her community. So welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome to all of you. And I'd like to begin at the beginning and just ask you to each share a bit about what brings you into this conversation.
What was your Yes. To want to be in this portal of conversation and. How are you navigating amidst these times of poly crises? Uh, Casey, I wonder if, if you might wanna share with us where you're coming from today.
Well, first of all, I trust Osprey. You know, she and I have been together in this work for a while now, and, um, [00:09:00] her leadership has really meant a lot to me to navigate the ins and outs of the political situation and the women's work around the globe.
It's really been a leadership thing. Also, I think the main thing is that we can't miss any opportunities to gather together, to share our voices, our spirits, and our knowledge with one another at this particular time in history. I don't even use the word time. This movement that's going on right now, that human beings are finally aligning themselves with natural law and in a healthy way en mass.
And women understanding how that can happen and what their village needs has made a difference in my approach to the global understanding of [00:10:00] where we are and what we're doing. So this opportunity to come and learn from all of you and listen to all of you and share what I have to share is invaluable to me.
Rae Abileah: Ray, where are you coming from today?
Osprey Orielle Lake: I'm really honored to be here to be with all of you in this community. The sand community is, is really doing such beautiful work.
Thank you Ray for facilitating and good to be with you, Abby. And of course, being with Casey is always such a deep honor. Uh, right back at you Casey's an amazing leader from the Panka Nation. And really has guided a lot of indigenous leaders, indigenous women leaders, but women from all over the world with her voice and presence and knowledge. For me, this is such an important dialogue and I'll try to be very concise because there's so many threads and so many layers to this moment and time and I think the weaving of really centering indigenous knowledge is absolutely [00:11:00] critical at this time when we're not living in balance with the earth and each other.
And so I think it's so important that we look to indigenous knowledge and wisdom because of the ancestral knowledge that is carried there, but also these deep relationships. And in contrast, I would say that many of us are coming from backgrounds in which there's been a deep severance, a deep cutting off from belonging a deep cutting off from the natural laws, and we're in the process of that healing.
Um, and it's, it's an amazing time to be alive because why much of the world is burning and on fire and in destruction. We're also having this incredible opportunity to birth the world that we know is possible, that we've all been working for in different ways. And so it's so amazing to be living in these contradictions of being very excited about opportunity, but also holding enormous grief and pain and trauma all at the same time.
And yeah, just to, to say [00:12:00] that, you know, we do work at the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network around the climate issues, but it's sort of strange because we call it working on the climate crisis, but it's so much more than that. It's. You know, it's a, a crisis of justice, a crisis of spiritual relationships, a crisis of orphanage from the land and from one another.
A crisis of not belonging, of filling ourselves up with things that are material wealth because of this emptiness that many of us are trying to heal. So the climate crisis is sort of the end result of how we've been living for a very long time. But it also gives us this opportunity to, to change from an extractive economy to change from extractivism into rep and into reciprocity and into healing.
And so it brings me here to this conversation, like how do we further this conversation, but also how do we take action? And, um, you know, our work is very on the ground, uh, working with policy, working with programs, working with governments, financial institutions, communities on the ground. So [00:13:00] how do we take these ideas of transformation?
Into action, into how we're living. And I think that's a really big question that we can all explore and sit with and learn from as we, we work with ourselves personally, but also how do we, we take action in, in, in the world that we have been presented with.
Abby Reyes: What Osprey said.
I'm, my name is Abby. I'm really happy to be here with all of you. I, I am glad that we have this hour. I wish for more.
I'm here because I just recently. Finally moved a story out from inside my body onto the page. And it's a story that spans three decades and three continents and, uh, that that illuminates a lot of the elements of the [00:14:00] poly crises that we are all grappling with and some, some gestures of ways forward.
And it, it does so through looking at our relationships, unsurprisingly our relationships to oil and to water and through story, um, I, uh, used the writing to try to tease out, you know, what it, what it can look like, what it's looking like in my life and in the, in the communities to which I'm accountable to get into right relationship, both to to oil and to water.
And the stories arise from a moment half a lifetime ago for me, in which my world was turned upside down in a geopolitical nightmare involving murder and oil wars, indigenous communities, and stolen land. And that was a time in [00:15:00] which the, a community that I was working with the UA Pueblo or Pueblo UA Nation in northeastern Columbia, they live on the river border between Columbia and Venezuela.
They were saying a big definitive no to fossil fuel extraction on their land. In a moment, this was, you know, around nafta, or this is ages ago, 30 years ago. Really. Um, in which they were pointing out, you know, this is not this, we're not talking about a sustainable development framework. Here.
We're talking about keeping the oil in the ground. We're talking about the human role of maintaining the equilibrium between the world above where we live, this life and the world below where the waters and the oil flow. And, uh, for me, as a young person. That clarity I had just come back from working in [00:16:00] rural environmental legal assistance in the Southern Philippines, my father's homeland, the in which there was an interplay in environmental and human rights.
With this idea of sustainable development and to move over to working with the Colombian Pueblo Uua who had this clarity of mind that we are all familiar with now that we just need to keep it in the ground was powerful for me in that work. My partner, Terrence Unity Freis and his mentors Ingrid, was Wauk from the Menominee Nation in the land we think of as Wisconsin and Lanae from Hawaii, native to Hawaii.
The three of them were working with the UWA on indigenous education projects and, um, were murdered. At that time for me, the their murders were a harbinger for the climate chaos that we all face now. And at [00:17:00] the very, very same time, the way they lived their lives and the example they set and how they were walking alongside communities, including that one, uh, we're part of ushering in what we are now also experiencing as the rise of climate justice.
So I walked into adulthood with that paradox lodged in my throat, and I wrote, because I needed to clear my voice. And so for your question Ray of like, what brings me here, it's like finally I feel the courage to be in a setting like this and to really be turning towards dialogue. Um, I. Together with others, this panel and beyond.
Um, so I'm here in the humility of that transition for myself because I'm practicing the thing that we're all needing to practice right now of u of using the voice as a, as one, one way we can participate in turning the [00:18:00] wheel.
Thank you, Abby. And
Rae Abileah: the offering that you're sharing with us of letting grief be a guide and of the necessity of giving voice and speaking those truths to the point of the title of your book.
Truth demands that we need more truth telling in this time. Mm-hmm. And uh, you know, there was an [00:19:00] old organizing, aah, don't mourn, organize. And we are now in this. Time of welcoming the mourning and the grieving as essential to how we organize. Um, I wanna go back to something you shared Opr about traditional ecological knowledge or knowing and the ways that the West has for too long, um, disregarded or placed Western science at the center.
There was a tweet from We Can on Earth Day this year. That said how indigenous rights are vital to a healthy planet. And a just world. And that's so at the heart of the Eternal Song I call the speakers in the film who said, Somoa, we are the earth. And I remember facing that false separation and supremacy between nature and people.
And in my own work I used, I remember going to [00:20:00] El Salvador and interviewing Campesinos who had been through Civil War and Central American Free Trade Agreement, natural disasters and so on. Um, and asking them, how do you relate to nature? And they looked at me like this idiot gringo, and said, so. What are you talking about?
So this is an undoing of a myth that we're amidst. And I wonder if you might speak to how you're seeing indigenous knowledge systems being centered in climate solutions and also to one of the questions we received in the chat centering indigenous leadership as well as knowledge.
Osprey Orielle Lake: Yeah, and I'll say for a few words, but I've always, um, I would also hand it to Casey to add into that since she's an indigenous leader herself.
But I'll, I'll comment first and, and love to hear Casey's input as well. You know, I think that in, in the I think one of the things that's really critical, and I I wanna get into areas that have nuances because I feel this is also a very sophisticated [00:21:00] audience that you have. In the, I wanna distinguish between like indigenous knowledge, which you asked about in indigenous rights, excuse me, which is what we were also talking about and sort of talk about a few layers.
So, the tweet that we put out, or I don't even know if it was a tweet or what maybe sometimes we don't use X very much. But anyway it it really speaks to something that's very specific in international law in, uh, that the fact that indigenous peoples have unique rights. There's the international there's the universal declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples as an example.
Okay. Which indigenous people fought for very, very hard. Um, because we have had collectively. The Universal Declaration on Human Rights and indigenous people stepped forward and said, well, that's great, but human rights specifically address my personal human rights. Your personal human rights as individuals and indigenous people said this is not our worldview.
This is not how we view the world. [00:22:00] We view the world as us having collective rights as peoples and plural. And not only that, we have relationships with land that are very unique. And so it was quite powerful going through the United Nations process of this agreement about the Universal Declaration on Indigenous rights and why this is also important.
You know, I could go on for a long time about that, but just to kind of get to the crux of it. There's something called free prior and informed consent, meaning that there is an international standard of law that says that indigenous peoples has the right to their territories and that nothing can happen there without their consent and agreement and their right to be informed.
And this is really vital at this time. It's one of the most powerful tools we all have, is to stand with indigenous peoples in their rights to say, no, we don't want some extractive fossil fuel project or mining issues coming into our territory. Now that right is violated all of the time, but it's also gives us a foothold to [00:23:00] fight governments, financial institutions, and corporations from these harms.
So that's like one body of work that's really key. Then there's, the other components that are so important, which is just our worldviews and how we are understanding our place on the sacred earth. And for those of us who have really lost. Those stories and those ceremonies and those rituals and connections to our ancestors.
Indigenous people have so much to offer us from that intact nature of their knowledge systems around these practices that are scientific, that are spiritual, that are emotional, that are psychological, that are so many layered in an understanding of how to live with one another in the earth. And so I wanted to weave those two things together because one is a very practical law that, that we can all stand up and wherever we live, to know the indigenous peoples in whose territories we are and how can we help them implement their rights and implement free part informed consent, but also sit [00:24:00] at their feet to learn how to live in territory in the lands that they have so much knowledge about, which is another practice.
And the last thing I'll say here and, and love to hear, uh, Casey's input is that I wanted to also get to this point, which we get asked a lot about our own indigeneity. If we're non-indigenous and be reminded that at one time, and I'm sure people have spoken about this over the course of, of the week here.
That, you know, we all come from indigenous roots at some point in time. Doesn't mean that we should claim that we're indigenous right now because I don't think that that's the case. We're not on our homelands, we haven't been practicing our ancient traditions, but we can begin to reclaim our indigeneity.
We can begin to look at those practices. And one thing I have found to be very, very knowledgeable and helpful and healing for me is, and I go into this in my book a lot, is to really trace back what I call our pre colonized and pre patriarchal a meaning before our own people were colonized before the, in [00:25:00] onset of patriarchy when we were close to our own deities that were connected to the land and the cycles and the seasons.
And so I think this is a really rich and important conversation about reclamation of our own ancestries while we learn from intact indigenous peoples and respect those who have kept those traditions. So yeah, I would just bring both those threads together and, and love to hear what you have to say.
Casey.
Thank you. I'm listening to everyone speak and it's so, uh, powerful to me to hear the perspectives and to be sitting here at the same time. I'm looking outside, literally had a tornado hit my territory where I live two days ago. And so there, there's a lot of trees down. I'm looking outside and there's a hummingbird that's coming to the window over and over again.
While you all are speaking [00:26:00] as if to join, as if to want to be part of this conversation. I heard Abby mention the water and the oil, and it made me thirsty, but not for oil, but for her. And what she has to say, and I'm, I'm feeling as if perhaps that's a perspective that we're not really talking about in the way that I understand.
So I'm going to ask for help
and say thank you to her because it's her voice that we need to be listening to the voice of the sacred water herself, the hummingbird and the thunder nation and the sacred trees and the voices of [00:27:00] the creation that we're all part of. It's our mother Earth who made us, it's not us who are all of a sudden becoming.
This giant force, uh, to alter the trajectory that, uh, mankind has, has chosen for these last industrialized years, but is the voice of what has literally made these bodies that we wear and this ego that we inhabit while we're walking on two legs on the face of our mother, the earth. It is the voice of those things that have created this body and this portion of us that we call ourselves right now, that we wear over our spirit that is truly connected.
To those spirits that have their roots in the ground that have the wind that [00:28:00] blows and, and shares the breath with all things. And oftentimes people think this is a metaphorical way of looking at things through indigenous cosmology, when it is in fact a, a physical reality that we should be receiving our information from and sharing.
Those are the things that make up the United Nations declaration on the rights of indigenous people, not just these minds that the great mystery has put into place the thoughts that we humans think that we're coming up with, but in fact, the thing that's called nature that makes us who we are as a species that is related to all things.
That gives us the ability to write things down in books such as you all have, have done, or in the [00:29:00] papers that the United Nation clutters itself with online. And the manner in which humans feel as if they have a separateness from all that is quantum physics says the opposite. And as scientists begin to catch up with indigenous science that has always been in place through your ancestors and mine.
It makes a difference in how we approach what is called the climate ca chaos, the climate situation we were taught many years ago when I was much younger. I'm very happy to announce I turned 77 yesterday on this physical plane. And you know, it really makes me feel good to have all the memories that I have from the teachings that brought me into this place.
And those teachings are [00:30:00] so simple and profound simultaneously that it's really difficult to even translate them into this world. Uh, when I was a young woman and my mother first born in captivity on a reservation and my grandparents on the forest removal from our traditional lands, we only spoke our language.
We only had the understanding of this one relationship. And that is how do you. Uh, make a way for your generations to come. And I know you've all had the same thoughts and the same teachings. You want a place for your children to inhabit. But during that period of time that we also had those understandings, we were fed the understandings that if the corn didn't survive, neither did we.
If the trees were damaged, we must take care of them because they not only give us physical food, but they also give us [00:31:00] food of spirit and breath that the waters had to make sure that that she was respected as she lives because she understands how to be part of all things. How to go through all obstacles.
And so when we move fast forward into today's world and we talk about climate chaos and climate change in our terms, it was purification that was coming. We recognized within all of our communities globally. I'm finding this out more and more because I'm very centered within my own tribe, the Ponca people of Oklahoma and naca that, that a time would come when the earth would have to take charge of things rather than just trust us, her children, to be part of the pattern of life, the web of life, but to take charge of a purification so that all things might live, not just humans, [00:32:00] uh, demanding and, and extracting and, and dividing and, and creating situations that were untenable for all life.
And that was called the purification because that meant the winds would create situations of purifying. The waters would flow and flood and drought would happen. That the, uh, the alignment of natural law with human law would be inevitable in order for human life to continue. And as part of that. With you and with all other beings who are awakening to that simple way of understanding that we humans are just another species and that we have a special place in the great mysteries, uh, creation, but we only have one space [00:33:00] and the rest of the spaces that are occupied by other living beings, such as the rooted ones, the four legs, the fins, the wings, the water, the air, the fire, the earth herself as all of these things.
And the father sky and the star nation, the, the moon, that, that governs our rhythms, the waves, the mother, ocean, all of those things being so interconnected. That humans have to just jump in right now and say, if the indigenous rights are handled through this piece of paper that is created, it protects the neighbors all around it.
If the rights of nature, uh, has become the largest and fastest moving environmental movement, it's because we have to recognize through legalities, through statutes, through policymaking, that [00:34:00] indeed nature has rights. And we humans, yeah. We're just nature. That's all. It's simple. Nature has rights. We, humans are just nature, so simple, so profound.
Abby Reyes: I'd love that. Grandma Casey, thank you for making sure that as we're thinking about the paper that the rights are, are written on, we are, uh, letting ourselves zoom all the way back into what this paper actually has been.
Yeah.
Abby Reyes: The grandma Trees behind us there.
It's right there. It's all, it's all over. I am, uh, moved to tell a story that we've, what Osprey and Casey just said together with one of my experiences in the last, in decade or so, um, in the set of murders that I was talking [00:35:00] about one way that the United States government interpreted and used. The murders of our loved ones was as a rallying cry for more war in Columbia, more military aid to a nation tied to their agreement to open up more oil for extraction.
And at the same time as we were on Capitol Hill saying, our grief is not a war cry, the Pueblo UA was facing intense, increased armed violence there as they tried to simply block the road from the oil company that had been using the increased armed violence in that region as a cover for making it so that there, the road could get opened up faster so that the camps could be built faster so that the.
Pipe. The, um, exploratory well, that the oxidative that the oil company [00:36:00] wanted to drill could go in before all of the reviews were done, definitely before any kind of free or prior or informed consent was even attempted. And, um, all of that violence, which included getting into relationship with the waters there in a, in a heartbreaking way.
At at one point the OA women who were leading the encampments blocking the road, which of course, drew not just the indigenous folks who were living there, but also the non-indigenous campesinos who understood what you're saying, grandma Casey, that if the UA Pueblo's rights were respected, it would be a better situation for all people living in the region.
So this encampment included. Indigenous folks and non-indigenous folks, students, clergy, social workers, reporters, human rights bar. And [00:37:00] when the state and other armed actors decided with finality to clear the road, it meant that, um, OA people and supporters were pushed to the edge. And the edge was the river.
So it meant moms with their babies on their backs, needing to choose the river in order to stay alive, and not everybody stayed alive. So these, these are some of the bases for, um, extended claims at the inner American Court of Human rights from way, way, way back then from even before the murders was, were some of the claims.
And then with the violence I'm talking about now we added to those claims and then a lot of work had to go underground because it, it was not safe. People were not, we were the, it was not tenable to keep doing the, the public work the way that we had been doing. So a lot of work went underground and that included the training [00:38:00] of young people in both the systems, in both the dominant systems of law and indigenous ways such that many of those people who were like 10, 11, 12 years old at the time of the murders, are now the social workers, the teachers, the lawyers the city planners, et cetera, who are leading the nation, including one who, revived their community's claim in front of the Inter-American Court of human rights, such that finally after 27 years or 25 years, a couple of years ago, the claims were heard on the merits. And it's a very happy story because just a few months ago, the court ruled in favor of Pueblo Oua completely in this manner, Osprey, that you'll appreciate because it is a decision that not only for the first time holds the country of Columbia, um, [00:39:00] accountable for violation of human and indigenous rights, but does so in a manner that expands the indigenous rights, um, of folks in 22 Latin American countries.
And those rights include collective property. Ownership or, you know, collective property as a construct, as a way of going about asserting self-determination and autonomy in, in ancestral lands. And it in a manner that also says to nation states that they, they have to, to work not just with individual members of any given tribe but in the collective.
And so it's and in a manner that says in this moment of climate change, we actually do need to start listening to traditional ecological knowledge. We d do, do need to understand that the old regime we were operating under, which was that, oil is this economic panacea that's [00:40:00] going to, you know, that's essential to our nation's developments is kind of.
Not appropriate, not that it ever was, but not appropriate now. So, I'm really excited about that win. And at the hearing a couple of years ago, I'll just tell this story, um, I took my younger son who was 13 at the time, the hearing was in Santiago, and it was a time in which, you know, I don't, I can't visit with what people very much, uh, because their geographies are so different and because of some of this history doesn't make it tenable for me to be there.
But 15 of what people came to the hearing in Santiago. And so it was a reunion and it was, uh, indigenous people from five or six different South American countries came and packed that courtroom, um, for, for the two days of the hearing. And so my son and I were also there, and my child, Julian said to me, uh, while we were [00:41:00] listening to the expert witness for the government talk, he was like, mom, couldn't the witness just agree with the ua?
And then couldn't the lawyer for the country of Columbia just also agree with the witness? And maybe they both get fired, but, but couldn't they just, couldn't they just admit that the or are right? And I was like, oh yes, my child. The fact that you even have that question like tells me a little bit that maybe we're headed in the right direction a little bit.
So of course I affirmed and was like, yes, it's entirely possible. We are, we are on that cusp. So be it. See to it as Octavia Butler would say, and
Rae Abileah: may it
Abby Reyes: be so,
Rae Abileah: and not to minimize your role in that, Abby, as a parent and, um, each of us who are, you know, connecting with the next generations at this time and the hopefulness that we see.
Thank you for sharing that story and also for threading in and amplifying the ways in which direct [00:42:00] action people being in encampments and putting their bodies on the line was so integral. And also what I heard in your story was a kind of a cross-cultural solidarity of the indigenous community, the camps, the people coming from different parts of society, recognizing that their fates were bound up with each other.
You know that. And
Abby Reyes: it was, yes. And it was super intense too, because we were on Capitol Hill while all of that was happening. So we were mobilizing. That, that particular kind of dominant power in dc to try to have any bearing on what was happening on the ground and at the same time, supporting folks on the ground to, to have basic needs met when, when all access to those camps were, were blocked off.
And, um, it was a gargantuan inter international effort that ultimately rested on and was won [00:43:00] by, by Pueblo uwa, by their leadership and their clarity of Word as the only unarmed actor in the region.
Rae Abileah: [00:44:00] Beautiful. Thank you for that. Witness and story and such a powerful example. I'm curious in the spirit of that cross-cultural solidarity to also invoke this quote from Angela Davis that's in your book, Osprey.
Angela says, you have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world, and you have to do it all the time. And I would love to welcome, anything you all would like to share about the ways that you're finding meaningful action in this current moment. And particularly for those of us who are just maybe getting started in our journey, who hear these big un acronyms and these international incredible campaigns, like how might, how might we en engage or take part in the work that is so close to your hearts and to our hearts?
Osprey Orielle Lake: Okay, I'll jump in. Thank you [00:45:00] Abby and Casey for your comments and, and stories. There's so much. I think one of the most important things, because there's so much going on and there are so many different struggles we're going through quite, quite a radical moment.
And I think one of the most important things is about how we start within ourselves and what we're really in alignment with. That's really important. What really inspires us? What are we drawn to? Because. That is the combination of our own spirit and us listening to Mother Earth, as Casey was talking about earlier, so that we're really part of a collective movement, not just with other people, but what the land and Mother Earth calls us to do.
And there's that, that really beautiful blend of listening and acting that I know many of us try to practice so that we're coming from a much deeper [00:46:00] place. I'm not saying we all do it perfectly, but really that effort to listen to what the trees and the land and the air and the animals are telling us and calling us to do.
And so I think it's very unique for each person what and how we grew up, where we grew up, what our backgrounds are, what we're drawn to. And I think that's really important because this work is quite extensive. There is, as Abby's pointed out, a lot of violence, whether it's physical violence or assertive right-wing governments.
You know, we're seeing, you know, we, you know, the incredible violence that's happening in Gaza, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo. I mean, there's this work of justice and healing. Exposes us to a lot of violence, and I mention that because the more that we can really be attuned to ourselves and our groundedness and where we live and who we are, it really prepares us to best handle that violence, but also to be guided by [00:47:00] something that's larger than ourselves.
And then to find community. That's sort of our, our beginning point is who we are and how our story unfolds. Abby had a very unique situation that then unfolded her story. Casey, being a Ponca woman, all of these things affect us. I grew up in Mendocino County where the redwood trees were under attack, all my youth, and that brought me into activism.
I mean, it all depends on who we are and our particular lifetime and all the different threads that make us who we are and how that impacts us listening to the earth and what we're going to choose to do. And then when we find that place, I think it's so important. I'm sure people have heard this many times, but it's so important to find your people and your community to work with.
We can't do this work alone. It's way too much to shoulder on our own. And so being in community with others who have those interests and those passions is really critical. And I think also that balance between continuing to do the inner and outer work. We're all [00:48:00] in a society that has many traumas, many challenges, and so how do we also heal ourselves and be involved in our own healing justice work, our own wellbeing?
While we're also taking on these really big, these projects that you were mentioning, um, you know, we, we go to the United, uh, nation's climate talks every year. We're getting ready for Cop 30 right now. Uh, we're gonna be putting on a big assembly in two weeks, which I'd love to invite your community to bringing together 125, uh, leaders from all over the world.
Indigenous women leaders, policy makers, people who are doing practical work on the round for reforestation together to, to have this big assembly. So there's all these like really large spaces, but I think it's also really important to know those large spaces are made up of us. Those large spaces are, are made up of us and our relationship to the lands where we live and the people we're in community with.
And to remember that no act is too small. That wherever we come in and whatever energy we have that is feeding something holier [00:49:00] and more powerful than all of us and that world of wellbeing, that world of nature. World of supporting the rights of nature, supporting indigenous people's rights, supporting each other's healing, supporting climate justice, supporting people in need, anything we can do to feed life, to feed the web of life is so critical right now as we're facing these super oppressive powers that are on a death march.
They're on a death march of destruction and violence. And I think a lot of it is, you know, and I, I take no quarter with them for sure. But we also have to remember on that side of things, there's enormous pain and trauma or there wouldn't be so much violence by that leadership. And it's like the epitome of taking out, you know, this, the end result of an extractive mindset of colonization, of racism and patriarchy and having it be manifest right in front of our faces.
And we have the opportunity [00:50:00] to dismantle that. To reorganize that, to take those thoughts and dismember them and transform them and any way that we are in our good wellbeing to do that is needed at this time. And the most important thing is none of us can be on the sidelines. It's just too big. Mother Earth is in her purification moment.
We are part and particle of nature. It's our time to stand up as the immune system and to act. And so I would just really encourage people to not think any act is too small or too big, or not right, or we don't know what we're doing. Enter. Enter the space. We're all here for each other, and we can be in community with one another to stand for life.
Rae Abileah: Beautiful call to action, but also call to heart.
I am in total agreement. Um, I also want to demystify a bit on, on some of the things we talk [00:51:00] about. You know, when others talk about the spiritual connection to the earth and to all her living beings and how we should listen and pay attention, it's not always about that.
You know, I do have to go sit in a forest and really get it. Although I love that and will do every chance I get because that is there as well, but it's also within. A woman's understanding of what her village needs. And your village is you, it is your family. It is your neighbors, it is your community.
It is your connection to what you watch on TV or what you interact with on social media or the space that you go for. Your piece. It is looking at your history and saying, when I was young, it used to snow. When I was young, there were no floods. When I [00:52:00] was young, we didn't get these torrential, uh, rains and huge hurricanes.
Because what you're witnessing is nature talking to you. What you're feeling when you go outside into those spaces is the joy of the oneness that we talk about. It's not a, it's not all that difficult to really interpret that. You have to go with those inner feelings and you have to understand that they're as valid as the spoken word from human to human.
And that it means that you are in community, you're in community, and that you want your community to thrive. You want this future that you can envision. And if you can envision it, it can happen. Energy follows intent. If your intention is to help things to heal, uh, we have to start with ourselves.
I, I, I'm very. [00:53:00] I have this beautiful young niece that lost a, a child, and, uh, she became a psychologist to help people in grief. But most recently she was talking about, I, I hear post-traumatic stress and healing a lot. She said, I want you all to know that I'm not gonna do either one of those. I'm never going to heal from the loss of my child, but what I'm going to learn to do is to adapt to where I am right now.
I felt that was important. And then the next thing she said is, in doing that adaptation, I am choosing to live in post-traumatic growth. I find that exactly where we are as a movement of women as gathering around our village hearts and knowing how to go forward is to live in post-traumatic growth. All of the things that, that [00:54:00] both of these incredible women have spoken about in terms of violence, in terms of the extractive industry, in terms of, uh, the right wing where it is right now.
And, and the manner in which it's in its very last gasp of, of breath and its greed is making it even uglier by the day. We choose to live beyond that in post-traumatic growth. And for, I try to break things down in my own vision as the most simple way that I can approach things. And I always remember that sitting at my mama's kitchen table with my siblings.
And with my mom and whoever, aunties or grandpas or whoever felt like being around generally having our coffee or a glass of water and visiting and laughing and joking, and then the inevitable drift towards what's going on in our [00:55:00] community. We happened to be a tribe. We are small peoples here in Oklahoma.
So it was very easy for me to say Auntie is facing this issue. Uncle has this problem with unemployment. We have Conoco Phillips 66 up the road here, inflicting environmental genocide. Our water is dirty. Uh, the Department of Energy is trying to open us up for putting uranium into the ground here to the spend uranium, which will poison us.
We talked about the issues that. That we had to deal with. And then we talked about how, how to do it. Where do we go from here? How do we, uh, lift this? How do we make sure she eats? How do we make sure grandpa has transportation? How do we make sure that these companies are accountable and, and what do we do And things happen.
We, [00:56:00] you know, we. Our activists, not just by accident, but by the manner in which Abby was talking about what was going on in the territory in Columbia and which people had to do to move through there. Uh, Osprey and I did not because connected, simply because our hearts aligned, but also because our goals aligned of what we wanted to do.
Uh, we talk about indigenous, just transitions with the help of we can. The first Ponka Earth and Lodge has been built here, and she echoes into the universe. That too is, is quantum physics. The amount of energy that is produced from that is enormous. It also protects us from the tornadoes I was talking to you about, and it is a way that, uh, we can live through this increasing temperature.
All of those things were started [00:57:00] simply by doing, by talking, recognizing what the issue is in your area and starting to do something about it. Whether it is gathering then in your cousins and your neighbors, or in some cases I remember doing the Cowboy and Indian Alliance up in, uh, Nebraska. Mm-hmm. But there's always a way for us to go forward and it's simply a matter of trusting yourself and doing, do not sit, do not wonder.
Do not doubt.
Rae Abileah: Mm-hmm.
Live in post-traumatic growth and do it. And beautiful
Rae Abileah: We are just at our time of completion and those words of just start by doing. Don't wonder or sit but take, take the action from the kitchen table from what's needed, from what our village is calling from upon us and from what nature is guiding us toward.
[00:58:00] Um, and by, from listening to the waters, from acknowledging that if the corn don't, doesn't survive. Neither do we from living into this moment of purification, of transformation. Right before we wrap, did I hear there was maybe one last word from either of you, Osprey or, or Abby, briefly. I didn't wanna interrupt anyone.
Abby Reyes: I'll just chime in to say, um, building on Osprey and Casey's invitation to just find what the, that the task we have is to find our people and, and move, pivot to the far horizon of the world that we know is possible. That there are, in all of our communities, there is work that is happening that needs more hands.
So I, the community that I am the most accountable to in Southern California, Santa Ana, a midsize immigrant led uh, city of Working families, [00:59:00] all of this work that we. Brought to the surface during the pandemic through mutual aid is now manifest in urban food sovereignty work, and c and community land trusts and curriculum for worker-owned cooperatives in this framework and recognition that yes, when the sys the systems are broken and have been broken, then they weren't made for most of us anyway.
And so what does it look like to reimagine our relationship to work and our relationship to land and water waste and energy, and that the doing is happening everywhere. I just want to emphasize that, that there are community stewards working in similar fashion all over the country. And even as we face the dismantling, um, that we're facing now communities aren't waiting.
Rae Abileah: Thank you to everybody for participating, for bringing your full selves and for [01:00:00] the actions, those visible and invisible that you're up to in the world. Casey Osprey. Abby, thank you for joining and weaving in this portal, for saying yes to this invitation and for the sacred activism and work and visioning that you're up to each and every day.
We are with you in this work and in this prayer for this other world that is possible. And may the words that you shared here be seeds for future action and transformation,
Osprey Orielle Lake: or at least
Rae Abileah: the water
Osprey Orielle Lake: analyzing the change. Thank you for
the water.
Osprey Orielle Lake: For the water, for life, for the water.
Abby Reyes: Thank you. Thank you, Ray.
Thank you
Osprey Orielle Lake: all. Thank you [01:01:00] everyone. [01:02:00] [01:03:00]
