EP 15: Engaging in Planetary Health is a process of healing People w/ Dr. Kelsey Leonard

[Music] This is the Indigenous Planetary Health Podcast. It's an archipelagic podcast about Indigenous Lead Resurgence for healthy lands and healthy peoples. On this show, we'll speak to academics, artists, and activists. And you'll hear how they're all working to heal our planet through Indigenous Lead Place-Based Resurgeon Practices. I'm your host, Heather Castleton. And I'm your co-host, Hokulani Ika. [Music] Our guest today is Dr. Kelsey Leonard. Dr. Leonard is an expert in many things. She's a water scientist, a legal scholar, a policy expert, and a writer. But she firmly sees herself as a protector of the shore. [Music] She's an enrolled citizen of the Chinnacoc Nation. And we learned from Kelsey that Chinnacoc is now gonquen term that roughly translates to people of the stony shore. They live on lands now known as Long Island in New York State. Growing up in the space between land and water shaped Kelsey's understanding of planetary health. And it also put her on a path toward fighting for justice and governance over Indigenous lands and Indigenous water. These fights have become even more urgent as her island nation faces the impacts of sea level rise. Today our conversation with Kelsey takes us down a slightly different path from her water research. In this episode, she offers an honest critique of our educational and academic systems. We discuss how we can unlearn and reshape these academic structures to enable Indigenous Lead Resurgence. As Heather and I are keenly aware, the current educational model is based on a published or parish impact scores, university rankings. None of these harsh and hierarchical concepts capture the collaborative nature of Indigenous knowledge. Sadly, the symmetric system incentivizes scholars to capture Indigenous knowledge for their own gain. In this interview, Kelsey offers alternative models to the current academic framework. All right, let's get to it. Without further ado, Dr. Kelsey Leonard. [Music] It's an honor and pleasure to have you with us here today, Kelsey. Welcome. Aquee, Winikusak. It's good to be with you all today. I'm really excited to be here. Thank you. Thanks, Kelsey. Can you tell us a little bit about who you are, your people, your place, and how have you come to do such an enormous scope of work? Well, I am, as you mentioned in the introduction, the citizen of the Shunnecock Nation. And in our language, Shunnecock means people of the shore. So oftentimes I will get asked this question, how did you come to be a water scientist? Or you have all of these degrees, one, you're a glutton for punishment, but you know, like, you know, how do these various degrees in law, political science, anthropology, sociology, how do they connect to water? And how did it lead you onto this path of being a water scientist and now professor and scientific researcher in this space? And honestly, I always say, well, it comes back to who I am as a Shunnecock person. So in our language, in that meaning that we are people of the shore, ultimately my responsibility, my gift in being on this planet is to be someone who reciprocates that knowledge, that understanding of being a shore protector. And inherently that's connected to our relationships with water and the places where we're water and land meet. That's so exciting. To I think one of the things we learn is that when we move to Indigenous vernacular and use our languages, especially when we start to unpack, when folks unpack the words for the word that they used to describe themselves, we already learned so much about their environment and their place and the responsibilities that come with that. So I want to ask you and perhaps you can talk about the relationship between being people of the shore and planetary health broadly. Wow. Yeah, it's a small question. It's a small big question because it's so important. I think being someone who is Shunnecock is from a coastal tribal nation, first nation territory, we are directly already feeling the ramifications of the lack of planetary care and healing that is redistened across our society today. And what do I mean by that in sort of practical, basic terminology, less academic jargon, sea level rise? You know, we're a coastal tribal nation that is already facing the impacts of sea level rise from storm surges to extreme storm events that lead to those surges to implications to our water systems, our drinking water systems, as well as erosion, actual loss of land. So when I think about planetary health, unfortunately at this stage in my life and my community's history, it's almost a sadness that sets in because we feel the depths of planetary unwellness or illness or lack of being healthy. And so to try and imagine what that future healthy planet looks like is very difficult, but there are folks that find inspiration, find hope, and ultimately the planet is really good at healing itself if humans just kind of get out of the way. We, the collective of humanity, not necessarily indigenous peoples, but the larger collective have a really long history of not getting out of the planet's way of trying to dominate, of trying to control, of trying to manipulate the planet's natural existence. So I wanted to ask a little bit more about that as a coastal people. So I'm Kanako Weevi from Hawaii. So that relationship between land and water is one that's always influx. I mean, it's dynamic, right? The land changes as the tides change, right? As the currents change seasonally all of that. But with climate change, that relationship between at the interface between land and water is just radically changing our relationship to both, right? Which is essential to us as peoples. What does that look like in more specific kinds of ways in your community? I think I pause because there are so many stories to tell. I think that there are so many ways in which individuals and pockets of our community are experiencing the effects of climate change from loss of traditional medicines. I don't want to also focus so much on the vulnerability or the loss, but also thinking about the ways in which despite all of this harm and climate-induced trauma that communities are currently existing through, they're finding ways to be resilient, to be hopeful, to protect what we do still have, and also pathways for reclamation of things that may have been previously lost, but are beginning to be able to be returned. And so I think in the context of my community, some of the examples of all of these stories, the reason I paused earlier as I was mentioning is because they're just not told. And I feel like that's a big part of the joy that I get out of being a scientist in an academic and new spaces is I have the opportunity to be a conduit to be a translator so that more of these stories can be told, if not necessarily be told by me, but be able to provide the resources and capacity and the navigation so that members of our community and other Indigenous people's communities like ours who are facing these impacts of climate change can tell their own stories. And what does that look like in practice? What's things like shoreline restoration initiatives that are being led by tribal nations and communities, which, for many communities, that can include things like seagrass plantations and planting activities, which is really helpful for the overall water quality health of marine ecosystems, but also when we think about climatic changes, I'm thinking about being able to have greater carbon sequestration and storage, seagrasses are really important for that. They help with storm surge reduction. So something as small but as big as that is just one story of how communities are starting to rebuild and respond to the the trauma of climate change that they're facing, but also in doing that they're not only healing the planet or healing ecosystems, they're healing themselves because I think what often isn't told in relationship to these stories is how we want just existing through loss. Like the loss was forced upon us. So the ability to actually do seagrass plantings, the ability to utilize our traditional knowledge for clam gardens and for the rehabilitation of traditional medicines, those were things that were historically and in some instances still today legally prohibited. You were not allowed to engage in those types of conservation and restoration activities as indigenous peoples or you were blocked and barricaded from actually accessing those traditional sites and cultural sites and resource sites along the coast. And so now when we start to see some of those laws be disbanded and taken away so that we actually can do things that we had done for millennia, we're starting to see that we're not only engaging in planetary healing as healers, but that process heals us as communities too. On this island, for Le Quangan, speaking peoples for Kaukwako, Koseilish, Nucchanath, a lot of that coastal restoration is happening as well. It makes me think about this project that we're all involved in, this notion of archipelago's of indigenous led resurgence. I think about what you're doing and what your nation is doing in your territory and what's happening here in other territories. What are some of the protocols? I'm thinking particularly from your legal scholar background. What are some of the protocols for nation-to-nation diplomacy in your context? What does it mean to be a good host and also a good guest from your point of view? How do you go about sharing and engaging with others without risking? I'm thinking maybe specifically for non-indigenous peoples like myself, how do we engage without dominating, appropriating, or extracting? It's a big question. It's an important question. It's a question that 10 years ago probably wouldn't have been asked. I'm really excited that we're at that stage where we're having these types of conversations and asking these types of questions. Oftentimes, I will say this to students. I'll say this to everyday folks who are interested in creating a vision for our planet, our communities that are and is healthy. Is this work? Isn't that complicated? The question itself, the answer to the question itself, isn't that complicated? Just be a decent human being. Treat other people how you would like to be treated. Unfortunately, for indigenous peoples, because of that legal legacy, the colonial legacy, we have been subjugated and treated so unfairly. That process of treating us unfairly and treating us harmfully and violently is something that is so indoctrinated within the settler colonial society and those citizens who inherit that society that is really challenging for them to take on a different path. But I think at the end of the day, if we can all come back to that, our cultural or other ways of being are, whether you're indigenous or non-indigenous, there's something in your life where you were taught what constitutes being a good person. I think the other part to that too, and something that we've heard in some of our other conversations, is about the different ways of thinking about individualism, which is more of a Western model of, how is this good for me? How is this good for my family versus the collective? How do I be a good human as part of a collective? The individualistic behavior is something that also you have to unpack and unlearn. There's a lot of processes of unlearning that we have to go through as a society to actually be able to do good work and reach the vision that I think we have for these collaborative, codesigned research ecosystems, if we'll call it that. But I also think too that the elephant in the room is that academia, research institutions, they're not designed with these types of approaches in mind. So we also have to think creatively about that structural oppression and how we navigate that because we can as individuals and or as sort of collectives of folks who want to do good work. Imagine a future that's different, but if the structural barriers are still there, we're never really going to reach the maximum success or potential that we have envisioned for ourselves. And I feel like that's a bit of where I find myself in this particular stage in my career and working with others is, you know, you can have folks that want to do this sort of collaborative research, but at the end of the day, they are still awarded as researchers and academics for the research that they put out for the first author publications. Like their reward system is still a process by which they have their careers monetized. Right. And it reinforces that individualistic golden competitive boy. Okay. So that's the golden boy. That's why we also know that it's deeply patriarchal in so many ways. Yeah, system, right? That's about rewarding the individual for work that in many cases is deeply collaborative, right? And where the knowledge holders and where the responsibility or the place where the knowledge should reside is in the community. But again, it's that extractive model of higher it of academic research. You know, and it's it extends not just to the sort of professional institutional researchers, but but students as well and who's training them. You know, like I work with a few First Nations Tribal Nations right now and we try and create these collaboratives where it's like you're you're coming in to learn and to do work that is of service and value to the nation. You're not going to get an article out of this. You're not going to get a thesis out of this. You are, you know, likely not going to, you know, have some type of metric that will be added to your tenure review. Like if that's what you're coming into this process looking for, we're not the right project for you. But unfortunately, there are so many good people who would want to contribute, but they're measured under these other metrics and they're like, I can't you know, make a rationale to my supervisor to my department chair that I should be working on this project if there's nothing that's actually going to, you know, be contributory to my tenure files. You know, that's why it's so important to come together and talk about what are our strategies in our individual institutions for navigating that on the one hand. And on the other hand, around pushing to change the structures because they need to, they are very colonial and don't consider the double responsibilities that indigenous scholars have to their communities and people that they work with. Well, I think that's what's so exciting to you about the Archipelago's project and the conversations that we're having today as Indigenous researchers is we often say to non-Indigenous researchers and folks, we are so willing and open to collaboration, but we can tell our own stories now. So if we're collaborating, it's because you know, there's obviously mutual benefits here, there's respect here. We are hoping that you can learn from us, but we don't need you to learn and then go publish something about us, you know, you know, some of our our our our our our our Australian colleagues will say, you know, nothing about us without us. I think that is a really unique time that we're in, particularly an Indigenous research and that's a space that I advocate for for my own nation and for others who other nations that I work with that, you know, we have Indigenous scientists and researchers out there and they're from these nations and they can tell their own stories. And so we don't necessarily need folks coming in and, you know, trying to be first authors or write their dissertations on our communities when you have no actual ties to those communities. And I think that's sort of where I'd like to see the transition go in the next few years. And I think it's moving that way to really be able to create a space where we're developing student trainees to know that they have authentic stories to tell to and to, you know, find their passions in those stories and to find the unique way that they can write a story that is pertinent to their experience and to what they contributed to a project, even if it is in collaboration with Indigenous peoples. But that fine mind, it's a very fine line. It's really difficult for established academics to navigate, let alone students, but I'm hopeful for the future, right? Well, I agree with you. I think that we have to continue to train students differently if we want the outcome to be different. Right. If we want the future of research to be different, we have to do the training of them in a very radically different way. Totally. And the one thing that I do too when non-Indigenous students come to speak to me as a non-Indigenous scholar about working with Indigenous peoples and communities, oftentimes I'll say, you know, here are the people that I work with, here are the projects that I'm involved with. But also look at as a non-Indigenous person, what are some of the structures that you can contribute to decolonizing? Because that is part of our responsibility is to say, you know, rather than, you know, and I still think about when I was studying anthropology as an undergrad, about the exotic, about the other, and, you know, having that opportunity. I'm like, let's turn, you know, the lens back on ourselves and our structures and how can we push at that? That can be part of our solidarity work is saying, this isn't okay anymore. And here's how we can change and researching those who are creating the structures in the first place and perpetuating them. Yeah, what I want to add on to that is I'm just what you were saying about the roles and responsibilities that settler allies accomplices can be in this work. Reminds me of the work of my colleague back at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Julie Calmea, who writes about Kuleana in Hawaiian, the word for responsibility obligations is Kuleana. What is the Kuleana of settlers, white settlers, or in our case we would call them Haule, in this work and she says it's knowing when to step up, when to step back. when to step aside and when not to engage at all. - Absolutely. - And that it's the responsibility of the settler ally to be attentive to all of that. But then in my own experience, the other thing that I find challenging about doing this work is with collaborators who might be coming from a different values system than the one that I come from is this idea that somehow indigenous people have to teach them how to do it. Like I love this example of the genomics, right? It's like, okay, that's not my area of expertise, but I also don't go to a genomicist and say, okay, well, I want to teach me everything I need to know about it in time to go and do this research, right? But it's, yeah, I just want to reinforce that that it's also not the responsibility of indigenous people, scholars, or the communities that you work in to educate you. You have to do the work. - And unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, it's a bit of a cyclical problem and concern, right? Because the reason they don't have that expertise or that background is because it's not offered in university, right? You know, indigenous research methods courses are very difficult to have stood up and supported in academic institutions, let alone the sort of academic freedom critiques, that sort of, you know, lambass, any type of indigenizing of curriculum across Canada and the United States. - Right, and you know, the political science, you know, personally says there's also this polarization that's happened within university institutions and university education systems. I try and hold out a little bit of hope, I think that's why I'm still here, you know, assistant professor and researcher, that there is the potential for us to transform these spaces to be of benefit to communities, but I also go in with a level of reality. And my expectations are not super high because there's just a lot of these also kind of, you know, violent experiences that you have as an indigenous student and indigenous researcher and that actually brings me back to what you were saying earlier, Heather, about anthropology, you know. (laughing) As a native student, it was, it's still such a vivid memory in my head, our anthropology undergraduate research methods course where they were like, yeah, it's really important for you to not go native. - Oh God. - Yeah. And for those listening in, I don't really understand that. That's unfortunately a common term and phrase that was utilized throughout the discipline of anthropology and I think the substance is still is. Talking about the field research methods practices of ethnography and trying to keep your level of objectivity and balance in the field when you're doing your research. So as not to perceive as some might say of someone like a Margaret Reed or others that they took on the identities of their communities and went native in the context of indigenous peoples in the Pacific with me and others. And that's a really violent thing to hear as an indigenous student when you're like, well, and I remember asking this to the professor in that moment. I was like, so I understand you're saying this to all the non-indigenous students in this classroom, but for someone who actually is native and doing research in my native community, what do I do here? - Again, the girls back to what you said about this institution was not built for us, but it was not only not built for us, it was built by the extraction of our stories. I mean, again, thinking about like Linda Tuchibai-Smith, I think one of the first sentences that she has in her book decolonizing methodologies is indigenous people are the most researched people on the planet, right? It's that research that became the fourth, that is the foundation of anthropology as a field. So of course, that professor was not able to understand it because it's incommensurable to everything that they know about the discipline. - I call them inherited legacies of intellectual colonialism where you have been indoctrinated, you may or may not realize it, and you continue to push out these ideas within academia because the disciplines, as you mentioned, were constructed for that intent and purpose to be extractive, to be colonizing. And so until you do the hard work, to face that and to tell truth, you can't have any form of reconciliation. - Absolutely, so true. Well, to that point that you were making about how we are indoctrinated indigenous scholars, students, native students, other students of color are indoctrinated into these disciplinary norms and ideas. I would say that we're also indoctrinated into these ideas from the moment we inter-public school systems, right? What kind of like, learning do we have to do so that we can be more attentive to our own indigenous teachings and how does that connect to the work that you do around indigenous resurgence, indigenous led resurgence? - Education is key way in which we address injustice. And so that's one example of how I envision indigenous led resurgence being sort of taken up by myself and by the folks that I work with because we really do, when working with indigenous elders, I would often ask them early on as a researcher in political science and looking at these aspects of governance, particularly around water. Oh, so do you have hope for the politicians? Like do you think that the work that you do around water governance and sharing indigenous knowledge around water will help them to change the way in which they make decisions about water? And they were like, no, not at all. It's not why I do this work or why I pray for the water, walk for the water. And I said, okay, well, why? Why do you do that? - Yeah, I said, well, why do you do the work and is there any hope? And they said, well, the little ones, these JK, these toddlers, they are so excited to learn about the water, to care for the water. And if we can just instill within them and have that educational connection to water and to the environment and to indigenous knowledge, stewarded throughout their whole educational careers, we will then have a new generation of politicians and lawyers and doctors and educators who know the value of indigenous ways of knowing and being in the world. And so that to me was where I really sort of set my eyes on the work that I do in a space of climate, water, ocean justice to be inclusive of educational research. So in across North America, we have tribal colleges and universities, we have indigenous educational institutes like Six Nations Polytechnic and for the tribal colleges and universities, we have places like Haskell. These are places who have been in operation for decades, if not half a century, have been revolutionizing indigenous education and indigenous science curricula and are really the beacons and leaders for the rest of the world to think about, oh, how do I integrate this into my classroom? Well, why don't we look at the experts who've already been doing this for 50 years? You know, we have a project right now with the Shana combination. So my nation, our cultural resources department and our environmental department, looking at impacts of climate change through an ethnopatannical end. So the impacts that it has to largely our flora within our territory. And we bring the youth out. We have them do ecological plot surveys with us. They learn how to, you know, ID trees and plants and they work in tandem with elders and knowledge keepers. And so it, for me, intergenerational knowledge transfer for indigenous peoples is just learning and sharing by doing. So yeah, our training historically has been around this notion of objectivity and just how problematic that is, because we all come from our own subjective places and ways of understanding and seeing the world. And so to think that that kind of positivist mentality that there's one truth, there's one way of thinking about and understanding the world instead of the plural verse. Is that-- Yeah. The multiverse. Multiverse. Multiverse. Multiverse. The pluralities of knowledge. Yeah. I mean, I'm very much with you. And I say, you know, I don't even say this. I adopt it from what Bindalore Jr. said, that there is a myth of objectivity within academia and within the sciences. Absolutely. And reminiscent indigenous perspective and knowledge system approach and speaking as a Shanacock person, we need to operate from an ethic of love in how we support indigenous led resurgence and planetary healing. But these ideas of operating from spaces of love or compassion or humility, those are spaces where the Western world has often thought will diminish your objectivity. And that, I think, is really the barrier or the head-butting space that we come to as indigenous and Western scholars is, from an indigenous perspective, you don't need to be objective. Rather, you need to be operating from these spaces of emotional connection and connection to place and connection to people. And that is very foreign or not even misunderstood, but denied as a space of good science by Western scientists. This has been a really vigorous conversation. It's been so great to co-host with you again, Hoku. And to meet you, Dr. Kelsey Leonard, rock star, indigenous water scientist, legal scholar, policy expert, and writer from Shanacock First Nation. Thank you again to our guest for this episode, Kelsey Leonard. It was so great to speak to her. So Hoku, what are your takeaways? Well, what? What has stayed with maybe on the interview is how much unlearning we need to do to be able to effectively engage in Indigenous knowledge. I mean, one lesson I'm taking away has to do with how Indigenous Research Practices Center, Love and Humility and Compassion, and to be sure, you know, this isn't the first time that I've heard this, but it was a really important reminder of how important those three values are. And they also really helped me to shift to ask some questions, or I'm asking myself some questions right now, like what my research looked like if these were the values that guided our work. What new possibilities are opened up when we begin from a place of love, compassion, and humility, rather than academic rigor or academic freedom. Yeah, I think I'll be sitting with these questions for a long time as I try to vision and enact what they look like in my own work. When you mentioned humility and thinking about what Kelsey said, I'm also reminded of some research that I did that involved talking with people who are in the water research world. And one of the things that we heard from the water keepers was the importance of when Indigenous communities allow you to come and spend time with them, the idea of leaving your expertise at the door and just coming to listen is so important. And so, yeah, it's, it is one of those, I think it's a reoccurring theme actually in our podcast episodes and interviews about the importance of humility. And it's one that I think about a lot and try to embody as much as I can. The other thing that I really loved about Kelsey was the joy she describes having in her work as a scientist and an academic with her own community. And how she sees herself as a conduit or translator so that more of the stories that are unfolding can be told not just the science stories and academic stories, but the stories that are coming from community and the Indigenous scientists that are there, the elders and the youth who are doing the land-based restoration work on the shorelines. And just you can tell that she just loves what she does and that just fills my, fills my heart. It definitely fills your cup. This is one of those interviews that just, that has so many beautiful moments that can, that yeah, just so many beautiful moments where you're like, yeah, that's super, super exciting and it, you know, gets you really energized. But like you said, I think there's a lot of recurring themes, not just in this interview, but as we, you know, post multiple interviews and folks have a chance to listen to them. But I, another recurring thing they're going to hear across many of these interviews is how engaging in practices of healing the planet through research, through collaborations, through whatever that might look like, how that process is simultaneously a process of healing ourselves. For me, that was another component of the interview that just again still resonates and stays with me. The research stories she shares really underscore the power of Indigenous research practices to heal Indigenous communities, to bring back that practice of what we call, what is it? Intergenerational transmission of knowledge, which sounds like a lot of words, but you know, having old elders teaching youth, youth being present when elders are telling stories, right? All of that context is coming together and it's really exciting. Absolutely, Hoku. And I think those stories that she shares, what I'm hoping is that for the non-Indigenous listeners out there, that they can find resonance in that and think about what do they do in their own spaces in terms of intergenerational teaching and learning and engaging with the land. As a non-Indigenous person myself, I think there are some really important messages in what Kelsey had to share around the unlearning that people need to do. And it's not just a one off, it's a constant attention to how we might have epistemic blinders on and how we need to engage with other ways of seeing the world. And I'm just so impressed with Kelsey's abilities to communicate that message to our audience. I agree. She has, she's just so wise and just so grounded. And it's interesting to think about what it means to be grounded in a space, a space that it's always in flux, right? Again, thinking about being a person of the shore, where the shoreline shifts as the water shifts. You know, it's interesting. Thank you for listening to the Indigenous Planetary Health podcast, a production of the Impact Chair and Transformative Governance for Planetary Health. This podcast is coming to you from the Archipelago's for Indigenous Lead Resurgence for Planetary Health Collective. And this podcast was made possible by funding from Heather's Impact Chair at the University of Victoria, as well as grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The show was recorded at the University of Victoria Podcast Studio in our living rooms, and we had some additional support from the University of Victoria for production. Find additional episodes and more information about our collective on our website. Thank you for listening. Check back soon for more episodes.