For The Wild

The abundance of the Klamath River has been severely restricted since the late 1700s by way of mining, logging, and damming. Once home to the third-largest salmon run in the lower 48, now Northern California is risking the collapse of its entire salmon population. After two decades of activism, the Klamath River dams will finally be removed by 2023, restoring salmon access to more than 400 miles of habitat. However, this is merely one example of the ways in which land has been chronically mismanaged across the so-called United States. This week we speak to Yurok fisherman and activist, Samuel Gensaw III, on the ways in which Northern California has served as a continuous extraction site for colonial development. This expansive conversation begins by looking at resource extraction, but moves into a larger dialogue on our collective responsibility to world renewal, bringing back balance to our relationships, how to instill new values without appropriating cultural traditions, and the Ancestral Guard’s Victorious Gardens program featured in the film Gather. Samuel Gensaw III is the founding director of the Award-winning Ancestral Guard program. Currently, he is the youngest person to serve as the vice-chairman of the Yurok tribe’s natural resources committee. He and fellow Ancestral Guard members are featured in the documentary, Gather, which focuses on the growing movement among Native Americans to reclaim their spiritual, political, and cultural identities through food sovereignty. Music by Lake Mary, All The Queen’s Ravens, Jess Williamson. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Dallas Goldtooth, originally aired in December of 2018. Dallas Goldtooth joins Ayana in a conversation around toxic masculinity, accountability, and dismantling patriarchy. So often, conversations around gender wounds quickly deteriorate into oversimplifications of, and accusations towards, one gender or another – failing to realize how we are all hurting under patriarchy. Toxic masculinity, settler colonialism, and white supremacy are impelling us to a point of no return. If you are coming to this conversation as an environmental advocate, understand that in order to shift our relationship from that of domination over “nature” to one of reciprocity and understanding of the ecosystem we are a part of, we must examine our values with one another. “Dallas Goldtooth is the Keep it in the Ground Campaign Organizer for the Indigenous Environmental Network. He is also the co-founder of the Indigenous comedy group The 1491s. Dallas is Dakota and Diné, a loving husband, dedicated father, comedian, public speaker, recovering exotic dancer, plastic shaman extraordinaire, and body double for that guy who plays Thor in them Thor Movies.”Music by Lyla June Johnston.Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

When one thinks about iron, copper, and gold mining, Sweden is not the first place that comes to mind, but in the past few years the country has granted roughly 500 mining exploration permits as it positions itself to become one of the largest mining centers for all of Europe. The price of mining in Sweden has largely been paid by the Sámi, whose lifeways are permanently changed once the government and multinational corporations seek to extract so-called natural resources from their traditional territory of Sápmi. In this week’s episode, we look at extractive mining in Sápmi and how Sweden’s colonial government exploits their very limited definition of Sámi indigeneity to further land grabs and resource extraction with guest Josefina Skerk. Josefina Skerk is a Sámi politician with a background in law. She is the General Manager of Sijti Jarnge, a Sámi Language and Culture Centre in Norway. Skerk has been a member of the Sámi Parliament in Sweden since 2013, and has held office as its former Vice President. Indigenous rights, especially connecting to land and language rights, are key issues that she is passionate about. Music by Andy Tallent, Dana Anastasia, and West of Roan.Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

“What might happen if we saw a migrant child at the border as our own daughter? Or George Floyd gasping for breath as our own brother? Or Brianna as sister? Or the Asian American women slaughtered in Atlanta as our own aunties? What might happen? What would we risk? What movements would we build? What would we demand? How would we harness our rage? How would we reimagine a world in which all of us are safe? What might happen if we made love the ethic that guided all of our actions?” This week we ground down in visioning our shared survival with guest Valarie Kaur, who reminds us that for millennia prophetic voices have been trying to remind us that we belong to each other, here on Earth, and if we were to recognize this simple truth, what would the world look like? Valarie shares that in recognizing this reality of inherent belonging, we might have to “love beyond what evolution requires.” A revolutionary love for each other, our opponents, and ourselves. Valarie Kaur is a seasoned civil rights activist and celebrated prophetic voice. Valarie now leads the Revolutionary Love Project to reclaim love as a force for justice in America. As a lawyer, filmmaker, and innovator, she has won policy change on multiple fronts – hate crimes, racial profiling, immigration detention, solitary confinement, Internet freedom, and more. She founded Groundswell Movement, Faithful Internet, and the Yale Visual Law Project. A daughter of Sikh farmers in California's heartland, Valarie earned degrees at Stanford University, Harvard Divinity School, and Yale Law School. Valarie's new book is See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love. Music by AMAARA and Madeleine Sophia.Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

In this magnetic conversation, Ruth and Ayana consider where a politics of love can breathe, radical softness, mindsets of abundance, climate justice advocacy, and the steps we can take to create systems of wellness. In recognition of what might feel like a painful transition for many, Ruth guides us to think about what practices and acts of care we can implement with each other as a way of willing a more beautiful world back into existence. Support the show

In the fast-paced movement of today’s media, it’s easy to become entangled in narratives of extinction, loss, a lack of time, and a tremendous amount of misanthropy. However, when we pause to look within the ecosystems around us we can find examples of life pushing through the most difficult of circumstances. Our more than human kin continues in defiance, refusing to cease their own lineage under the current modern paradigm of exploitation and desecration. In this week’s episode, we look into a thriving life paradigm, which places a reverences for life at the center of all action, with guest Woman Stands Shining (Pat McCabe). In this expansive conversation, Woman Stands Shining coalesces topics of Indigenous sovereignty, land back, how gender and consent behave in different paradigms, and the vital importance of moving out of modernity’s obsession with intellectualism as the primary way of knowing, into a powerful call to choose a timeless paradigm that is life-affirming for us all. Woman Stands Shining (Pat McCabe) is a Diné grandmother, activist, artist, and international speaker. Her primary work is proposing to the Five-Fingered-Ones, that paradigm is a choice, and pointing to Indigenous cultures as examples that we have evidence that human beings can participate in paradigms in which we can become beings capable of causing all life to thrive. Music by The Range of Light Wilderness, Violet Bell, and Sea Stars. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

When we hear about the Green New Deal, it is almost always in context to policy and business within the United States. The urgent push for an energy transition away from fossil fuels often obscures the reality of extractive frontiers and the supply chains that green energy necessitates. This week, we slow down and explore the structures behind “our” energy systems, what a Green New Deal means for “resource-rich” countries in the Global South, and what a globally accountable Green New Deal could look like with guest Thea Riofrancos. As we explore what a renewable energy transition looks like from the so-called peripheries of extraction, Thea guides us to think about the relationship between solidarity and consumption, collectivity, and the vital importance of pushing for policy, systems, and organizations that empower public services, forms of sharing, and economies of care. Thea Riofrancos is an assistant professor of political science at Providence College, an Andrew Carnegie Fellow, and a Radcliffe Institute Fellow. Her research focuses on resource extraction, renewable energy, climate change, green technology, social movements, and the left in Latin America. These themes are explored in her book, Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador and her co-authored book, A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal.Music by 40 Million Feet, Mitski, and Alexa Wildish. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

In order to limit global temperature from exceeding a 1.5°C increase, we need to cut global emissions by 45% in the next 10 years. However, recent reports indicate that if our current global pledges were enacted, we’d only reduce our emissions by 1%. We are living through what some might define as an ongoing climate emergency, and this will only continue for future generations. Instead of fixating on how to “stop” climate change-related disasters or putting our trust in ineffective government bodies or greedy purveyors of “green” technology to “save” us, this week, we think about how we can have community resilience, ingenuity, and wellbeing amidst unpredictable circumstances with guest Lil Milagro Henriquez-Cornejo of Mycelium Youth Network. For Mycelium Youth Network, the capacity for community resilience is inextricable from reconnecting with ancestral knowledge and reestablishing our relationships with one another and Earth. Lil Milagro Henriquez-Cornejo is the founder and Executive Director of Mycelium Youth Network, an organization dedicated to preparing and empowering young people of color for climate change. Lil Milagro is a veteran of social justice organizing with over 18+ years of experience working on a myriad of issues, including access to higher education for low-income people and communities of color, food sovereignty, environmental racism, union democracy, and labor organizing, among others. In 2017, she founded Mycelium Youth Network. Music by Harry Foster, Lea Thomas, and Ian George. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Queen Quet, originally aired in November of 2018. The Anthropocene tells the story of compounding injustice towards people and planet. It tells the story of growth for growth’s sake, living beyond boundaries sacredly assigned to us. In this episode, we are honored to be in dialogue with Queen Quet, Chieftess and Head-of-State for the Gullah/Geechee Nation, who is striving for justice on the front lines of the most pressing Anthropocentric intersections: climate change, resource extraction, corrupt and negligent government bodies, encroaching development, and exploitative tourism. Queen Quet, Marquetta L. Good-wine is a published author, computer scientist, lecturer, mathematician, historian, columnist, preservationist, environmental justice advocate, film consultant, and “The Art-ivist.” Queen Quet was selected, elected, and enstooled by her people to be the first Queen Mother, “head pun de bodee,” and official spokesperson for the Gullah/Geechee Nation. She is the founder of the premiere advocacy organization for the continuation of Gullah/Geechee culture, the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition. Music by The Gullah Singers - Live recordings from Gullah/Geechee TV Nayshun Nyews with Queen Quet and The Gullah/Geechee Nation International Music & Movement Festival. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

The ubiquity of water is demonstrated in almost everything we come into contact with. It’s responsible for everyday objects like blue jeans, bread, and coffee, it rushes through pipes below our feet, is necessary for industrial violence like fracking, mapped through watersheds, exists as a healing modality, and is also a great source of pleasure - yet most of us take water for granted as a mundane necessity, rarely stopping to look at how tightly water is woven into politics, science, and the economy. This week on the podcast we look at the power and ubiquity of water in a world where it is becoming scarce with guest Andrea Ballestero. Andrea explores the tensions that exist between a human right and a commodity, water futures, pricing mechanisms, the fallacy of rationing and block pricing, and water scarcity. Andrea Ballestero is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Rice University and she is also the founder and director of the Ethnography Studio. Her background includes a law degree, training in Natural Resource Policy, and a Ph.D. in anthropology. Her recent book, A Future History of Water, examines the daily work of implementing the human right to water in Costa Rica and in Northeast Brazil. This book is open access and available for download for free on her website. Dr. Ballestero is currently researching cultural imaginaries of the underground in Costa Rica, particularly aquifers. Her research and all of her publications can be found at https://andreaballestero.com/.Music by The Pit-Yak Aiodoi, Palo-Mah (Suculima), and Jahnavi Veronica.Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show