Healing The Land IS Healing Ourselves

Hi, I'm Matika Wilber, and I'm Adrienne Keane, and you're listening to all my relations. Welcome back. We're so honored to be with you today. On today's episode, we're exploring the connections between land and body, through a conversation with the amazing community organizer, writer, farmer, curator, citizen scientist, and denate woman, Kim Smith. We learned so much from our conversation with her, and a lot of what I was left thinking about after listening to this episode, is the need to take matters into our own hands as indigenous people. How do we heal the land and ourselves when there isn't anyone else who will do it? How do we start the conversations, collect the stories and the data, and make the needed change ourselves? How can we draw upon our community strengths and relationships to make that happen? And there's never been a better time to ask that question, and to dive into action than right now. Kim Smith is from the Navajo Nation, and as we all know, Navajo Nation is being hit really hard by this pandemic. The Navajo Nation is home to 175,000 people, all of whom who are grossly endangered by the staggering spread of COVID-19 across their homeland. Unfortunately, Navajo has more cases of COVID-19 than eight U.S. states, and in the episode that we did on COVID-19, a couple of episodes ago, in the end of the episode, Dallas and I started to get into this idea of how our relationship to the way that we've treated land with the extractive industries, deforestation, climate change, etc. and how COVID-19 is just one of the many consequences of mismanagement. Well, for the Navajo Nation, the promise help from the U.S. has been slow to arrive, community has stepped up in its place. In the last few months, networks of mutual aid, systems of food distribution, and outside donations have appeared, and continue to grow as the crisis rolls on. The help has come in the form of people helping one another directly. So if you'd like to be part of those people to people networks, there are innumerable GoFundMe's organizations and places to support. One of my college classmates, Stephanie Soci, has pulled together a lot of those resources on a single site, which we will link in the episode description as well, but it's indigenouscovidresponse.com. And on the site, there are ways to support monetarily, to support with supplies or with your knowledge and expertise. What we know is that the way that we treat the land is directly related to the way that we treat our bodies. And that has to do with violence upon the land, being directly related to violence upon the body. And there's this idea that I continue to explore in my own work, Adrian. I look at, and I ask folks, you know, how have you been impacted by the patriarchy? And one of the massive shifts that we've seen, I think in this country, is when we shifted from a female-centered horticultural system to a male-dominated agricultural system, we lost our personal connection to land. And when the patriarchy took over, it did so in a very violent way. And that has mirrored what has happened to our bodies. And these are some of the ideas that we're about to jump into with Kim Smith. I just want to acknowledge that the amount of work that she has done and continues to do on the subject is mind-blowing, the impacts are immense, and I'm a huge fan of her work. I'm so honored to have had this conversation with Kim, and with that, we'll jump back into our recording with her from a few months back. Sorry. All my relations. So welcome. Thank you. It is an honor to be here. Thank you both for your work that you do within this podcast, but also outside of it. You are both an inspiration to me as well. My name is Kim Smith. I am a biter water woman. So the treatment in the Shlidoz at Najini Bashi's chain, a shi dashi chae do kyaani dashinale, what's out in the sun in the Shlia, I see Dan Na Shahagi age ill hot saute adok ade, it's a doc on the audition on Nish Dosh Run. Hello relatives, my name is Kim Smith. I am a biter water woman who hails from a small village called St. Michael's Arizona. And now I live in another village, another Denna village called Hogback New Mexico. Thank you. Thank you for having me. We are so thrilled that you're here. Kim, let's start the episode off by discussing how you came to understand that violence on the land is violence on our bodies. It took me really looking at my spirit, looking at how it is broken in the sense of how my body is reacting to the things that are in my environment. I have an autoimmune disease, I have rheumatoid arthritis, and having that type of disability can be very hard. And feeling the pain, the intense pain, and thinking about the land, and how the land is hurting, and thinking about it on that context of why? Why is the land hurting, and why is my body, my spirit taking that in? And so really expanding on that and thinking about it, but also looking at things on the outside world as well, because there are a lot of communities like my own that are exploited, that have the rape of the land, as you mentioned. And really the deepest understanding that I had the privilege of learning the most was on our walk, and he called the journey for existence. And what that is, is it was a journey of young women organizing a pilgrimage to our sacred mountains. And there's six sacred mountains. And when we first started the walk, we said there's four sacred mountains and come to find. There's a lot more than that. And so it was really this scouting mission for us of finding our original selves, reconnecting back to our homelands. And these mountains are sacred because we believe our deities live there. And they're connected to our creation stories. And from 2013 to 2014, we really started to look at our communities. Like why are we in the state that we are in? And so in me and my analysis of that, I had to look at where I embroidered and looking at it from that type of lens, you know, there is a coal mine five miles away to the east of me. And then to the south of me, there is a transfer station for gas and natural gas. And so really looking at it like in that context of, okay, this is how the community, this is how the earth is being broken. And this is why I'm broken essentially. And so it was really this idea of this idea that was planted into me of, okay, how are you going to heal it? How are you going to make things better? And I've been taking, you know, taking the prayers to the mountain is something that has helped me to do all of the healing that I feel I have done up into this point. And that really shows the connection, the power of the reconnection that we have to the earth and to the deities and to these sacred places. And also the responsibility really that it takes to to make those pilgrimages to be in tune with nature with the elements. As dine people, the elements are our deities. Water is a deity, air is a deity. And you know, we need those things to live. And when you're connected with that, it's so healing. And I feel that. And it came from the walk. Can you tell us a little bit more about the walk? How long was it? How long were you on the road? What were some of the things that you saw on this journey? So in the Nihigalbeina journey for existence, we walked over 1400 miles in the span of a year. We started in the winter. And the choice to go in the winter had to do with in honor of our ancestors who were forced to go on the long walk in the dead of winter. Like if, you know, we want to honor them. And so we left in the winter. And for me, I think of it as a modern day scouting. What type of monsters are on our land? It's a lot different when you're walking on the land as opposed to driving through it, you know. You feel, you hear, you smell, you hear different things. And at the same time, you're connecting the dots and listening to elders and community members and sharing stories. And you know, you're remembering or reconnecting to these places and It's just so incredible and that's where I met Matika. She came and photographed us on our first leg of the walk. And the feeling and the things that we have seen, it's so mind-boggling that we were and continually are in that state. You think of-- this was really before the MMIW awareness really came about. We were starting to see it and hear it in the Chaco Canyon region where they were proposing fracking and the beginning of seeing and hearing it come into our communities. Was really shocking and scary. But really, what we wanted to do was figure out how do we come up with protocol for these types of things. How do we keep these predators off of our territory? How do we reenact warrior societies? And how do we defend our communities? Because when we do that, we're able to defend our spirits. And it was just the hue. Every season, we would go to the next mountain. And the element of the seasons changing were also something really beautiful to be able to walk in the spring and then have new thoughts. And more connections through prayer and song and ceremony and community members. It was just this huge growing curve. It was five years ago. And we were all really young. And we were doing something that had never been done before. There were places that we went where community members, elders, would be like, we've been waiting for you. There was a woman that came up to us and said, I had a dream about y'all. Five years ago, and you were coming and here you are. To just hear and awaken our people that way. And it has definitely really shaped the work that I'm doing up until now to really know, like, OK, when you went on your scouting mission, these are the things that you found out. But also, there's just so many layers of things that we have to help heal in our communities, but the basis that we need to get to our healing is healing the land and thinking about how all of the different ways that we are exploiting it. So the way I was thinking about the walk and what I learned while I was out there and thinking about the extractive oil industries and fracking and the damage that it causes to our bodies, but also realizing that along with the extractive oil industry comes these man camps. And what surrounds those man camps is a lot of violence. And so we see these sort of hot zones for disruption to the safety of our women. And a lot of it is in these places where there's a predominant source of extractive oils. And so in Navajo Nation, you have-- at that time, there was a lot of fracking. I'm not sure if it's still-- if there's still a lot of fracking, but we see it in the oil fields in North Dakota, we see it down in places in Florida. And I understand that maybe your work with honor the earth and what you saw on your scouting mission could help us to understand that more, because I don't know that people really realize the deep connection there. Right. So the area that the region on our territory that there is this fracking boom is right outside of a national sacrifice zone, essentially. Ronald Reagan in 1974, he deemed it a national sacrifice zone. And basically, what that means is that it opened it up to all types of different explorations for oil, for gas, for coal. They have two coal fire power plants there, Montenegro fields. So it's just all of this bad in one region. And if you think about it in that context, then you see the different waves that this is-- this has always happened to our communities. It's not a wave of something new. This violence is deeply embedded in the history of where are people, essentially. So just to reiterate that, the president Reagan chose a spot in Navajo lands and said, we're just going to literally sacrifice this land to figure out what is there that we can exploit. Because there was only-- I think it was something like to less than 2,000 people that live there, which is why they justified it. Well, there's not really that many people that live here. So-- Wow. And that it's even called a sacrifice zone. A national sacrifice zone. I have never even heard of that. That is so-- When you think about the denab politics of it, they go hand in hand. The government always has a hand with the industry. And so they play hand in hand. They perpetrate. And it's just the cycle that it goes in. And our nation, unfortunately, is tied to each of these industries. We get royalties from each of these industries. We're dependent on these industries. And that's a really tough component, especially going into 2020 when we're in this climate crisis, because we contributed to the problem. So we've contributed to the exploitation of our land. And that's so heartbreaking, because that shows how disconnected we are to the land. Yeah, you bring up a valid point, which is-- whenever I've attempted to have this conversation publicly, especially with a non-ally community, I find that people say, well, you participate. You drive a car. You came here on a plane. It's on our in-swinimished where I'm at. We have-- well, it used to be called Texaco. Now it's shell, but it's a refinery. And the result of that refinery is increased asthma, increased birth defects, increased allergies, and on and on and on. And we know that it's dramatically impacted the health and well-being of the salmon. And we believe, why I'm from the salmon is who we are. The salmon is our-- and let me say shillane, and it's our way of life. And we know that our way of life has been dramatically disrupted by this refinery. However, it's our own people and our own leaders that continue to allow this to really sort of go on within our community. And so the difficult part of this discussion is that our people are complicit in this problem. And that's to say that not all of us feel like it's a good idea, but it's complicated because there's much-- a lot of educating that we have to do within our own communities. But also checking our privileges, too, because energy privileges a thing. Our community-- denenation, they generate so much in resources and energy. And just like you're saying, we contribute. So we have to check our energy privileges. When we turn on that light switch, where does that energy come from? It could come from nuclear power, which means uranium. It could be coal fire power plant, which goes into all of the coal ash and the pollution of the air. There's just all of these different components that we have to think about when we're consuming. And it's not just an indigenous thing anymore. It's us as humans. How much are we consuming? Because then that ties into capitalism. And we really have to change our ways. And sometimes it worries me because it doesn't seem like a lot of people are really thinking about the climate crisis that we're in. No one's in crisis mode. And so we really have to think about that. Do we really need to have wands? Do we have to waste our water on things like that? Do we have to have a city in the middle of the desert that just keeps growing and growing? Because that all ties into the energy grid. And that ties into the exploitation of indigenous communities for their resources. And where we come from, it's super hard because you're caught, you're really pushed into this corner and your health is economic hostages, because 85% of your tribal revenue comes from these industries. And people don't want to talk about the health impacts or the health effects because don't bite the hand that feeds you. And it's just so complex. And we really have to dig deeper into going back to our original selves of living sustainably and connecting more to the earth and only taking what we need or using what we need. Yeah, it's a lot. It's a nice light conversation for all of you, some light listening on your way to work. You made this connection of seeing that needing to heal yourself by healing the land. That there is a connection there between the two that they go hand in hand or healing the land by healing yourself. So once you realize that healing was needed, what kind of steps did you take? I think the hardest step for me was self-care, drawing a line and saying, no, I shouldn't take on that many projects. I really have to think about. And my friends and family would tell me this all the time. You know, you're-- you need to slow down, you need to rest. And doing that was so hard for me, but the reward of it was very tremendous, because it really did allow me to go back to my original self and looking at the place where I grew up. I moved back there. And I walked the land. I walked where my grandmother and father and grandmother and grandfather's land and really was like searching for them really and figuring out, OK, how do I reconnect to them? They both had passed. And it really opened my eyes to how I need to figure out how I can heal myself without the influence of IHS. Like that is something that's very real in our communities of that abuse of power, that abuse of knowledge, and seeing it and not wanting to go down that route. But also doing research until like, what are these medicines due to you? What, you know, there's a lot of toxicity within that, or dependence, or addiction, you know, abuse, substance abuse, and things like that. And so I went sober. I have been five years sober now. That was one of the biggest steps for me. And it really opened up my lens to a completely different way of seeing things and thinking about things. And I also understand that, you know, in the walk, taught me a lot about this is that I have a privilege of being connected to who I am as a dinner woman. Because I grew up with my grandparents. I know the language. I go to ceremony. They embedded that in me. And there's a lot of folks that don't have that luxury. And so, you know, just really cherishing that and nourishing it and upholding that responsibility of, OK, your grandma would have this ceremony all the time now with your turn. And then, you know, that pride of doing that on my own, you know, not having an adult or an elder to help me do these things, but also reconnecting to the people that we met on the walk, you know, the elders and the medicine people going back and checking in with them. And then also teaching me how I uphold those responsibilities. And so that in itself is really what helped me to go back to these places to remind myself of how what self-care really looks like for me. And then that grew into understanding food better. And because food is a big part of our ceremony. And I'm not talking about like mutton stew and fry bread and things like that, but really about foraging with the things that are in our backyard. How do you prepare those things? How do you pray to them? How do you make offerings to them so that you can harvest? How much do you need? What do you need to do so that when you take from it, it will replenish itself for the next, for others, and for the next season. And so that was also a very humbling experience because it allowed me to change my diet of like, you know, that decolonial process, if you will, of looking at the things that are in our communities, that are offered in our communities. I think there's only like seven or eight grocery stores within the span of our territory. Our territory is the size of Ireland. So just thinking of that visually, you know, it's pretty disheartening when you think about it. But the reality is, is that we can harvest things within our backyards if we wanted to. And those foods are medicine. And it really did help me heal. I lost 35 pounds at that point as well. And it really prepared me, at that time, it really prepared me for the walk. It really helped me to be that leader, that older sister. I was one of the older folks in the walk, too. So it was a responsibility to help navigate a group of young people collectively. How are we going to be road warriors together? Or, you know, how are we going to live together as no mads and take care of each other and protect our spirits? And, you know, it was, it really helped prepare me for the work that I'm doing now. In that sense of healing myself, you know, I was able to become healthier, know what triggers my body, what triggers the flare-ups that I have, how to avoid them, you know, just really being entombed and listening to my body. And we still make our pilgrimages since the end of the walk. And so those prayers are what is manifesting a lot of the healing and the work that I'm able to do now. And could you tell us a little bit about the process that you and your partner and a bunch of community people underwent to actually clean up the land where you came from and build things and kind of start a new in that space? Yeah. So last summer, one of the projects that I've always had in my mind to do is there is a huge number of illegal trash dumps throughout our territory. There's a lot of it within my, where I live as well, because there's a lot of canyons and ditches and things like that. So it's kind of like out of sight out of mind type of thing. People are either throwing their trash in these illegal landfills or they're burning their trash or they drive it from where they live to the nearest trash bin because our tribe doesn't really provide those for our community members. But really connecting that part of abuse to the land, that is a type of abuse that's contaminating our watershed because a lot of these legal dumps are in our watersheds. But prior to that, I did a lot of work around sustainability and conservation and water catchment systems, like water quality sampling. I worked with an organization called the Little Colorado River Water Association. And LCRWCA is that what it-- anyway. And so we were basically forced to figure out how we defend our water because the state of Arizona was trying to make us settle our claims to the Little Colorado River because of the cities, because of the coal fire power plants that needed cooling. And so we really had to figure out as community members, how do we capture our water? How do we even see what's in it? Because nobody's doing any of these studies. So that way, when the feds come at us, we have a plan. So we started doing all of these different pilot projects along the Little Colorado River within our territories. And so that kind of gave me a background of, OK, this is how you catch water. This is how you detoxify the soil and yada, yada, yada. And so I figured, OK, I want to do this in my backyard. I want to honor my grandparents in that way of cleaning up some of the things that are within our family land. And it was one of the most invigorating processes and healing processes to be able to do this and just see the different levels of colonialism, of capitalism. The town where I come from is called The Settler Name is St. Michael's. And the name kind of says it all. It was settled by the Catholic Church. And then the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, they built an Indian school there, which became a boarding school called St. Michael's. So it's just all of these deep layers of colonialism. But also, this is the central area where indigenous people were traded. There was a lot of human trafficking. And there was also a lot of traders that were within this area. And so thinking about the land and that context and looking at a trash dump, like these different layers of it and connecting the two, you know, the very bottom layer was mainly 10. And then it started transitioning into glass and then started transitioning into plastics. And so it was just this interesting archaeology. Yeah. Right. Archaeology of how we consume or how we were introduced to capitalism. And just also how it grew from just the small amount of cans to something bigger, bigger, bigger. And it really made me think about how we were taught to consume through capitalism. But we weren't necessarily shown how to dispose of those things, you know? And that's how these landfills really came to be. And so within a week, we were able to clean up this illegal trash dump. It was probably about half a nature, I would say. And it was really grimy and gross. But I think that's like my favorite kind of work of it is to just get in there and dirty and help make something so beautiful again. And so once it was cleaned, we planted sunflowers because sunflowers are known to detoxify the soil and the water. And so the next phase is building a ceremonial home there to help balance the healing that needs to happen there. and we are building the house with no fossil fuels, all by hand, my partner and I are even harvesting the logs ourselves and using an axe to do it, and just trying to be really mindful in the way that we're going to build this home and honor the ancestors and really honor that land and help heal it and help the water. So the other interesting part about why this is so important to me is because as I had mentioned, the Catholic Church is there and they own a huge majority of the water rights within this area. And so where we live is right at the base of a mountain, so the watershed feeds their water rights. And so we have this responsibility to make sure that the water that we can harvest within that area, that it's clean, but also if we're not harvesting this water and taking care of it, then it goes to the church rather than our community members. So it's just this huge responsibility to make sure that our future generations, my nieces and nephews and we will all have clean water to be able to harvest. Wow. - That's a wild story. - And such powerful work to just think about, that one half acre, like the impact that that one half acre can have on the entire community and that it was such a community grounded process to like bringing everyone together. And I know you brought like folks from different schools and stuff to come through and help with different aspects of it and how much power can come from that journey together, like that it is just such a collective and it's so so important. - Right. And the other really cool part that I like about this cleanup is that we tried to reuse a lot of the things that we were finding in these trash jumps. Like I have shelved, like things that we've turned into shelves, things that we use for like indigenous goddess gang pop-up shops. Like the materials, the recycled reclaimed wood and the glass, you know, anything that we could recycle, we did. Yeah, and it's so beautiful to think about how that land is now and just the process of it and wanting to do it for so many years and now it's done. And so this, that component of the work is definitely something that we're taking into the work that we're doing now around the closure of the coal fire power plants and this health impact assessment that we're working on and this just transition. The just transition also has to encompass how we detoxify the soil and the water and you know, they go hand in hand and this project, this pilot project that we did is an example that it can end as work. (gentle music) (upbeat music) Kim, tell us a little about your travels and this work that you've done, visiting with other communities and reconnecting with not just the land but with and creating relationship with other activists, land defenders, water defenders and how that impacted the work that you then brought home. So after I participated in the walk, it was going, I really wanted to go to other resistance camps, other resistance communities in across Turtle Island and see how they're defending their communities or what types of things they are trying to fight and really trying to rebuild or reintroduce ourselves to our different kinships and relatives and really this idea of looking at economy and how our food is a part of our ancestral economy, if you will, you know, food and seeds and water, those are the basics for a lot of that. Trading that happened throughout different inner tribal relationships. And so it was really important to go to these places to reestablish that kinship but also take a lesson on how ways that you can defend your territory or ways that the feds and the industry are coming into these communities but also the intersections of what's happening in those communities is happening in our communities. So really looking at solidarity and a whole different framework but also trying to host benefit shows, you know, as grassroots organizers, a lot of us aren't a part of NGOs, you know, a lot of the work that we're doing is out of the kindness of our hearts and we know we're financially supporting it as well. And so really looking at it in that context of, okay, how could we bring our communities together to come up with resources that we can give to these communities to help them by groceries or, you know, have gas money, just the little things like that, you know. And so it was really tiring. We went down as far as Chiapas. We had a fundraiser where we raised $10,000 and we divvied that up between four resistance camps that we visited and, you know, helped them with the different projects that they were trying to get off of the ground. And at the EZLN Liberation School, they were hoping to start a food forest. So part of the money went to that and to be able to go to these places and say, hey, we're back and just rebuilding these relationships and a lot of the Chiapas communities, they still speak their indigenous language and there's five different languages there. And Spanish would be the sixth and then English is the seventh and then when we were there, Dinew is the eighth and so it was this long process of like translating things and learning from one another, we were able to go up to the Unistote in Camp and Leilu Island, we went out to visit with Laduc on their ride along the pipeline and that's how we ended up in Standing Rock. We were in Standing Rock before the huge camp that it became and, you know, we were there when there was like a handful of people there, like just feeling hopeless and just trying to re-envoke and ceremony and, you know, try and uplift spirits because what, it didn't seem like they were going to win the battle and, you know, the self-esteem and the spirit of the camp really needed an uplifting and then a week later, tons, thousands of people started showing up and so to be a part of that process and be there and know that we raised funds to go and help these communities, has really helped shape us to think about what a regenerative future looks like for our communities, you know, something that's based in indigenous knowledge, indigenous lens and, you know, these different stories that people from all of these places that we visited have taught us but also remembering them in prayer, remembering them in ceremony too because they're doing the same exact work that we're doing as well. - That must have been so cool. You know, it's important to tell those stories because many of our people in our communities don't have the chance to travel. - Right. - And so it's really important that we go home, we share what we learned, you know, we share with other communities and we continue to spread that knowledge as like as a form of medicine. - Right. - And also see the differences of like people who live within quote unquote reservations or reserves because they're every day is different from folks that live in like metropolitan areas and they don't necessarily have that opportunity to voice what they're going through or people to talk to, you know, and I really carry that to heart and really thinking about the grassroots organizers, you know, the sacrifices that they make, you know, every day to defend their land and their livelihood and it has definitely made me a stronger organizer. - And part of that sharing back and that teaching and earlier we were talking about the need to talk to our own people about some of these things that are going on with the environment and our role in it. And I know that you and your partner have embarked on this journey of creating a health impact assessment and would love to hear about that process and how it ties into those teachings that you received in all of your travels as well. - Yeah, it has really shaped us to figure out, okay, you need a plan. What's the plan in five years, 10 years? 'Cause our leadership isn't planning past what their elected term is going to be. And so that's problematic because then it's just like these same politicians doing the same things, but there's no, and there's no involvement within the community members because they feel so helpless. And so we wanted to do a health impact assessment that helped harness those ideas and frustrations from community members. We're working on a health impact assessment in the northern agency of our community. And in this area there are two cold fire power plants and these two cold fire power plants are on opposite sides of the San Juan River and they have been there for the past 50 years. They have made the top 10 dirtiest cold fire power plants year after year. And within all of this, within the existence of these power plants there has never been any studies done by dine people, for dine people. And so there's no baseline for what types of health disparities there are. The other harsh component to this is, as I mentioned earlier, it's a national sacrifice zone. So there are all of these different forms of toxicity just kind of brewing within this area for the past 50 years or so. And so we have a food truck and we serve ancestral foods and we're visiting every village within northern agency and telling the folks, telling the people within these communities that we want to know if you have any health disparities. We want to to compile the data so that we can take it to the state of New Mexico and take it to PNM to give proof that it really is making our people sick. And this is how. And so really digging deep and gathering that data because the San Juan generating station is set to close in 2022, they originally thought that they would be open until 2055. And so now they filed for abandonment and so what that means is they want to completely abandon the power plant, the coal mine, the cleanup, any of that they just want to completely abandon. They can do that. And they can do that. And the state of the PNM, the owners of the coal fire power plant as well as the coal mine. So they literally can just say we've had this coal plant open for decades and decades and now we're done and we're just going to walk away. Peace. Yep. And so it gets worse than that because the state of New Mexico is allowing them to collect profits that they would be missing out of because they're closing early. So that comes out to $380 million that PNM through the energy transition act that was passed in January, they are going to get the $380 million of lost profits because they're closing earlier. And none of that money is going back into community members, impacted community members downstream. This is also super frustrating because the community members don't even know that the power plant is going to close because nobody is going into these communities and telling them, okay, we have to figure out what our plan is going to be because our biggest source of income as well as our jobs are going to be gone in a couple of years. So we're the ones who are doing it. You know, we're working on this health impact assessment and we're gathering surveys and we're doing our presentations all in Dine. And that in itself is something that is so empowering because nobody does these. Nobody, no young people are going into our communities and presenting this knowledge all in Dine from a Dine lens for Dine people and giving them the opportunity to say how they feel about it. And there's a lot of trauma within that for these community members because the type of researchers that they are used to are a lot of academic folks that are working on their PhD. They come in, extract what they need and then leave and write their books or whatever. And there's never really a report back. There's also other examples of like surveys coming in where they only have like 30 surveys and there's like 10,000 people that live in this area and that those that small amount of surveys are you going to set the precedence for, you know, everything, everyone. And so it just becomes super frustrated and frustrating. So what we do is we serve ancestral foods and we educate the community on what is happening as well as you know go through the survey and translate and help people fill it out. And it's such a huge learning curve. Like I've been doing this work for like 12 years. And it's frustrating for me because like I'm like damn I I I missed a lot of steps in this work. Like for example most folks don't even know what climate changes. Like that something so simple like wow how did I miss that in this this fight like as an environmentalist as a land defender as a water protector that I couldn't even go back to my community members and explain to them what climate changes and assume that they know right. Or even the the ability to read the surveys. Like some folks win as far as like third grade and you have to go and it's just this huge learning curve and humbling work but also nourishing our communities and reintroducing them to ancestral foods to be able to break bread prepare the meal with them and then break bread with them and then strategize for okay this power plants closing down we have this opportunity to do this health impact assessment and give it to the state so that we can get funds for our health care. There is no library within this community that we live in. There is you know their education system is below par the roads like just everything you know most extractive industries are billionaires at this point and we've been in this game for 50 years but we are still living in poverty and we're like trying to catch crumbs if they're even going to give us any and so it's like super frustrating and there's also no baseline for this health impact assessment. You know there's a variety of different ailments that were the data that we're collecting. There's a lot of uncertainty with a lot of people especially the power plant workers because they that's all they know really. I went out to Nevada. I did this project I went to all of the different coal plants on reservations before the Trump administration the only active coal plants and coal refineries and all of the United States were all on reservation land and that's a really important thing to acknowledge because we know that there have been other studies done in these communities and I'll send you those studies from that community so you can sort of see how it mirrors yours but we know that coal burning and coal extraction is one of the most harmful industries to human existence and so they found extremely high birth defects. Women 60 or 70% of their women were miscarrying you know in the first three months of conception and then there was babies being born you know with like things coming out of their head and major deformities and it was directly related to what happened to the water there and to the contamination in the water and they had to sue and it was like a 20 year lawsuit they never won they sued again they finally won they got it shut down but the Trump administration reopened it and so the wild part about this about this industry is that it's mostly happening on reservation land and mostly happening to native people and so we have to keep making the correlation that violence on land is violence on our bodies and that systemic injustice and racism is always related to safety of body. Right and the patriarchy like I'm getting like it's so crazy to think about the way that the patriarchy is enforced in our communities and how it goes hand in hand with the abuse of the land like sometimes we're presenting and the men won't talk to me and they'll only talk to Makai like that's how embedded the patriarchy is and most most times it's the coal miners or the power plant workers that are doing those types of things you know and a lot of the people in positions of power are the same exact way like they become threatened which is sad because we're a matrilineal society you know and we should have clan mothers a part of these conversations and they should have the floor but the men don't allow for that space a lot of the time. Well I want to take a moment to acknowledge what you said about the way you're conducting this research and thank you for that it's it's really actually an entire shift in the in a paradigm shift as we as people say you know I've been a part of research projects and that have not been that we're not done in a good way. And I think there's something so powerful about you saying we have this food truck and we spread the table with ancestral food. That's profound, that's a profound awareness. And then we present in our language to our elders. It's an incredible service and it's very rarely done. And so I just want to raise my hands to say thank you for that and modeling. It's really important. And I feel honored to get to hear about it. And I hope that those listening can think about that. And they work with Indian country because way too often do we have researchers come to our community and it's only for the benefit of their own selves. And that research doesn't go back into community and they certainly don't spread the table. And so this is groundbreaking work and it's really important work. Thank you. It's one of the things that had led us to knowing how what works and what doesn't work or what hasn't been done is and also one of the biggest challenges of this work is the institutional review board and how I have to be a citizen scientist. And we can't go before the IRB because we don't have the credentials to be what is a PI, primary investigation. Primary investigator. You have to have all of these certifications and yada yada yada. But I feel like the work that we're doing is we're getting our PhD in a different way. And sestually if you will. We're becoming wizards. It's taking this different route of really acquiring our ancestral knowledge and trying to think things clearly through it in our lens because that's what's going to save us. Our systems of accountability to our communities and wanting to do good work and the ways that we think about feeding people, the ways we think about reciprocity and that of course the research needs to be something that's in service of the community and all of those things that are just inherent to being good relatives and in good relation. Don't translate very well into their little boxes on the form. And so I have spent hours on the phone being like, yeah, I'm going to do observations that culturalize. No, I'm not going to sit and have 140 students get their parents to sign a permission slip for me to talk with them. Like, it's going to be okay. I promise. So it's just a lot of these conflicts between like the Western science side of things and the community grounded. So I think having this model of what you're doing is really powerful to tell people like, there's another way. There's a third way. It doesn't have to be this exploitative Western research. It doesn't have to be through the channels that we've established. There can be this other way that is outside of that and that can be equally if not more powerful. Yeah. And I had the privilege. I have how I even learned about the institutional review board is I got like a summer job there or a part time job. And that's how I learned about the process of it because I didn't go into higher education to where I needed to do like a thesis or a dissertation. But the process of everything really just slows things down. And we don't have that time because PNM is filing for abandonment. We don't have the time. Yeah, we don't have the time to go through these formalities. And we really want to educate our communities and empower them to help figure out what this transition is going to look like. And it's so much work, but it's something that is so powerful and so beautiful and so humbling. It's a shame that more industries or politicians don't go back to these communities because there's so much knowledge and so much power there. There's so many answers for the way out, but they're just not taking the time. They want to go the easier out. Let's just go to a chapter meeting real quick and get our resolution and be out. But one of the things that is really guiding our work is we have different advisory committees. So we have an elders advisor circle. We have a youth advisor circle. We have an academic circle of folks who are actually in academia who could help us figure out loopholes for not having to go before the IRB. And we also have different folks in their resistance to help us figure out what's happening with the fossil fuel industry on a national level, on an international level. So there's just these different pods of knowledge that are helping us navigate how to do this health impact assessment right. And of course, it's very grounded in ceremony. I think that's one thing that a lot of us forget to do. The first thing we should be doing is ceremony to help us ask for guidance on how to move forward in anything that we're doing, so that we're doing it in the right way for our people and by our people. That's perfect. Aside from the work that we're doing within the food truck and the HIA gathering, we're also going to other indigenous communities throughout New Mexico and doing the same thing that we did before and going to these impacted communities. But this is more at a more communal level from where we're from. And so we're reconnecting with Pablo's and you and really talking about, okay, this is what's happening because it affects them too. These are where neighbors. And so we have to really call them in and really help figure out a plan. But also that means we have to keep up with the policy side of everything. So having to keep up with what's happening at the legislature, we spent a huge part of January and February duking it out with the state legislatures, with a lot of these environmental organizations like Sierra Club and 350.org, you know, who are basically on the side of the PNM, but they're supposed to be these allies in the work. And so just completely forgetting that they are indigenous territories, that their power is coming off of the back of indigenous communities, the luxuries that they're having are coming off of the back of indigenous people and also talking about climate change and the green new deal. But completely excluding indigenous communities to be a part of the conversation. And so it was a lot of really going into these places and taking up as much space as possible to tell them, you know, hey, what about the indigenous people? Have you consulted them? And so with the Energy Transition Act, that was passed, which is essentially PNM's bailout. There was no tribal consultation within it whatsoever. It was created over the span of two years. Sierra Club and 350.org, PNM, they all kind of, they all played a hand in crafting this bill. And there was no representation from any indigenous communities until we told them, hey, what happened to, was there any indigenous consultation within this? But also what is the transition plan? Like have you gone to these community members and ask them or told them that you plan to shut down the power plant? And so we had to be there day after day in the roundhouse, like reminding them over and over again. But essentially the bill ended up getting, there was a lot of different resolutions within it. They were able to finally include tribal consultation, indigenous consultation within that. And so now the Public Regulations Commission is forcing PNM to go to four communities only for, to go to four communities out of the 34 to tell them like, hey, we're planning to leave. And of course none of these are done in DINL language. Of course there is no time for question and answer, like nothing. It's super frustrating. But also they were, they also added that there is going to be more money for training, for the Net Power Plant and minors to transition to other jobs or pick up other fields like renewable energy, trainings and things like that. But that isn't even, that's just like the bare minimum, you know, we wrote, we wrote a manifesto so to speak. And we really wanted them to acknowledge the indigenous communities that they have impacted whose land that they're occupying. And acknowledge a lot of the things that come along with these industries from reproductive justice issues, to health impacts, to air, water, quality, standards, you know, food quality, you know, all of these different things. Water, the increase of violence against women, missing and murdered, indigenous relative, drug use, different drugs that are coming in, you know, we put all of that into this manifesto. But also we put it in our XIA. And that was one of the things that we kind of got a lot of resistance from was, you know, writing that question of have you seen missing and murdered indigenous women increase within our communities. And that right now there's, I see a missing in that person like, you know, I'm not sure. flyers up like every week and it's definitely this increase and you know there's this this idea of you don't talk about those things but we should talk about these things so that we can figure out how we come up with protocols to prevent these types of things to start making these demands for what we want our transition to look like when this power plant closes down and that's deeply embedded in healing the land and being on the land and figuring out how we reverse these toxins to make mother feel whole again because just like we said in the beginning of this you know once we heal the land then we heal ourselves one of the things that has come up a couple of times is this idea of patriarchy and the ways that we come from major rural communities that that has been taken from us because of colonialism and you are also the creator of this incredible online digital magazine and space called indigenous goddess gang and I see it as this incredible indigenous feminist empowering space that lets us think about really how to celebrate who we are as indigenous women indigenous femmes and wanted to hear from you about how you think about that space as working in with all this other work out works in conjunction and the role that you see indigenous goddess gang as plain in this work as well yeah I with indigenous goddess gang when it was birth I guess it was this idea of me knowing a lot of incredible women and fams that are doing so much necessary work and also thinking about like for instance when I mentioned the walk and how there were a lot of indigenous folks that don't have that connection to that knowledge even if it's just like the bare minimum or the basis knowledge of you know indigenous midwifery or seed keeping you know just trying to spark that interests or planning because that those are all things necessary for planning for what's coming and it just kind of fell into places organically you know a lot of the women were on board with the magazine and it was something that I've always wanted to do when I was in college I thought okay I think an online magazine would be really cool but I'm glad that it didn't happen then because then it wouldn't have been as powerful as it is now because of all of the much needed work that has been done within that time and I just really want to be able to help create a space for us to reclaim that knowledge and and feel like it's okay that we can it's it's okay and it's powerful and it's medicine to go back to our original selves and matriarchs carry that you know that's why we're still here and I think people tend to forget that and in in Dineculture the patriarchy is fueled by yajing out and so yaj is basically like a word for like babying our men like we wait on them hand in foot and always say oh shiaj and things like that and it makes our men super comfortable and our women are also the ones who are enabling that and so it's it's really drawing the line and making our stance on yeah you can be tender and loving but you also have to really enforce the responsibilities of the the matriarch medicine and magic what what have you because it's there and it's necessary and we need it to continue to move on as indigenous people and it has allowed us to get to where we are when we started indigenous goddess gang I think we had like six sections and now it's grown double and we want to be we it's beautiful because it shows how much this this medicine is necessary and how many of us carry it you know and there's so much beauty and power within that and I don't I didn't expect it to get as big as it did like as it has and I think that's so much it's so beautiful but also I feel bad because like I'm doing all of this other work and I can't imagine what it could be like if we could just do it full time like how much power that could be but I I think it's good too though because it's a good balance one of the things that I've learned is that like really have to navigate the groundwork the grassroots work which is like the hia the national work and international work you know with indigenous goddess gang or frontline defenders like it's just all of these different ways of contributing to the reclaiming of our power of that matriarch medicine of that matriarch economy that's really what I feel is going to save us and indigenous goddess gang helps harness that and helps remind everybody that you know and we also have to be gentle with ourselves I think one of the things that folks want indigenous goddess gang to do is heal them but we can't because we're trying to heal ourselves too you know and it's we can help support it and we can give you a nudge and a push some good words gentle reminders but we have to humble ourselves and remember that we're all the same we're all we all have a lot of baggage to carry but it lightens the load when it's done collectively I kind of want to I want to acknowledge that part of this conversation and what we sort of like glazed over sort of is is that what we're when we're talking about our women we're talking about violence on the body and that three out of four of our native women are sexually assaulted or experienced domestic violence in their lifetime and for us that's my sisters my aunties my cousins it's the women that I love and care about it's myself it's my daughter the next generation of women and it's not okay and so this work and this conversation is for those women you know like for the to be a part of the me to conversation in some ways from an indigenous perspective and that perspective is that these all these things are interconnected and so we want we want to provide not just acknowledgement of the problem but acknowledgement of the solution and that's why it was so important to me to to recognize that that statement healing the land is healing my body as an as medicine you know as a direction to go because sometimes when we're in the thick of it and these things are happening in our communities you know I just came from Nome Alaska and they told me that they in their community of 1800 people have five rape kits come into the clinic every week and that there's over 1800 rape kits that haven't been processed there from the last year you know and so I just want to like acknowledge that I know that that's real and happening and that some of that solution is in healing the land that there's empowerment in that and offer that as a solution and I think that's what you do what you're doing and you've talked about that experience firsthand and so what are some of the the practical the pragmatic the step by step ways that you've done that in your own life or you can offer those words of encouragement to those women and those men you know or those two spirits that are out there and doing this work themselves right I think that the the message should be to the men to the patriarchy how do you uphold these systems of patriarchy and how do you nourish the matriarchy like I that's definitely a question that we all have to ask ourselves because the answer of how we heal the mother and how we heal ourselves is within how we nourish when you think of the nourishment you know it's a lot deeper because then it ties into the ceremony it ties into the offerings to the water that you make to the air you know there's just those simple things they for me they're simple but I acknowledge that some folks don't have that that type of knowledge but I encourage people to seek it I did and look at how far it has gone me we just have to figure out no one's going to walk our walk us to finding out these answers you know especially in this day and age you know our knowledge keepers our story keepers are some of our medicine people you know they're passing on and they're not gonna wait around for us to come we have to go and seek them and there's so much power and beauty within that but it's up to us to have the courage to go and find these spaces and gain in that knowledge. But also, as I mentioned before, it's also something like checking your energy privilege, like most, all plastic comes from oil. And then that stems into fracking, and that's how we contribute to it. You know, what type of energy are we consuming? Because it could be nuclear. If so, then there's uranium that ties into that. Coal is something that's dying out. But look at the impacts that it has had on indigenous people. The crazy thing is, is that what's happening in northern New Mexico, on the New Mexican side of our territory, the same thing is happening on the Arizona side. There's another coal fire power plant called the Navajo Generating Station. And those communities are faced with the same exact thing, but they don't have a health impact assessment. They don't have a seat at the table. And it's all led by men. And there's a huge problem within that. And how are we going to take a stand against that? And it really comes down to how are we going to nourish the matriarchy? How are we going to nourish our mother Earth so that we can survive past what's coming? And really carry that on to future generations. [MUSIC PLAYING] Thank you, Kim Smith, for joining us on all my relations, such an honor to have you. Thank you to our supporters, the Wisteria Fund. And thank you to our incredible Patreon subscribers. We'll be back in a couple of weeks to think more about ideas of protecting the land through a large two-part episode on the movement to protect Manakia in Hawaii from the massive 30-meter telescope project. We have tons of voices from the field, folks who are activists, elders, or Capuna, students, faculty, community members, and more. It was an incredible experience to get to be a part of the movement for a short time. And we can't wait to share these stories with you. Well, that's all we have for you. But before we go, we want to make sure to thank Sierra Sanna for her incredible episode, Art. Please follow her on the gram. You can find her there. We'll link to her. And we want to make sure we thank Theo for doing everything that he does, the heavy lifting on sound, editing, production. And thank you for shrinking down all of my sound waves, Theo, for this loud laughter that comes out of my body uncontrollably. [LAUGHTER] We'll see you next time. Bye. Thanks for listening. All my relations.