Environmental Justice: Why is Ethnic Studies Crucial in our Age of Ecological Catastrophes?

Mike Kamm Author

11/02/2023 Added

27 Plays

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Panel event held by the Institute for Ethnic Studies on November 1, 2023.

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[00:00:10.650]Welcome to the Institute for Ethnic Studies colloquium
[00:00:15.450]titled "Environmental Justice:
[00:00:18.240]Why is Ethnic Studies Crucial
[00:00:20.460]in an Age of Ecological Catastrophes?"
[00:00:23.730]My name's Tom Gannon.
[00:00:25.560]I'm the associate director of the Institute.
[00:00:27.960]I'd like to begin by acknowledging
[00:00:29.880]and honoring the Pawnee, Ponca, Otoe-Missouria,
[00:00:33.570]Omaha, Dakota, Lakota,
[00:00:36.390]Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Kaw peoples,
[00:00:39.600]as well as the relocated Ho-Chunk, Iowa,
[00:00:42.870]and Sac & Fox peoples,
[00:00:44.190]upon whose homelands now reside the campuses
[00:00:47.850]and programs of the Land Grant Institution
[00:00:49.980]that is the University of Nebraska.
[00:00:53.400]Let us recognize the legacies of violence, displacement,
[00:00:56.610]and survival that bring us here today.
[00:01:00.930]Also, in case you didn't know, if you've never heard of us,
[00:01:03.840]we're the Institute for Ethnic Studies.
[00:01:06.810]We're a consortium of joint appointed professors
[00:01:09.660]in the College of Arts and Sciences who do research,
[00:01:12.570]teaching, and service
[00:01:13.470]on behalf of the most historically oppressed US ethnicities.
[00:01:18.000]And so besides our ethnic studies major,
[00:01:20.580]we offer minors in African American studies,
[00:01:23.550]African studies, Latinx studies,
[00:01:27.120]Latin American studies, and Indigenous studies.
[00:01:31.050]Plus, we've recently added a new minor, about two years ago.
[00:01:35.490]It's called Racial Justice, Equity and Inclusion.
[00:01:39.480]It's already our most popular minor.
[00:01:42.540]So if you have questions about how to sign up
[00:01:44.370]for any of this stuff,
[00:01:45.990]my email is tgannon2@unl.edu,
[00:01:52.860]or simply Google UNL IES.
[00:01:58.050]It works for me every time.
[00:02:01.830]It's now my pleasure to introduce our panel members
[00:02:07.260]in order of appearance.
[00:02:10.920]Angel Hinzo, Indigenous Studies and History.
[00:02:17.760]She's new.
[00:02:20.670]Cynthia Willis-Esqueda, Indigenous Studies and Psychology.
[00:02:26.790]Luis.
[00:02:27.807](Luis speaking faintly)
[00:02:28.640]Not new, very old.
[00:02:31.080]I refrain to comment on that.
[00:02:33.330]Luis Othoniel Rosa, Latin American Studies
[00:02:37.290]and Modern Languages.
[00:02:39.480]And finally, and also new, Leanna Stanley,
[00:02:44.760]Indigenous Studies and Communication Studies.
[00:02:48.690]So in answer to the question of why, let us proceed.
[00:02:54.750]There it goes.
[00:02:55.846](speaking foreign language)
[00:03:03.597]Hello, it's good to see everyone.
[00:03:06.030]So when I was thinking about this question,
[00:03:10.890]the first thing as a historian
[00:03:13.230]and working in the field of indigenous studies
[00:03:15.300]that came to mind, was thinking about it
[00:03:17.910]in terms of, like, history and settler colonialism.
[00:03:22.380]So when thinking about where it's taken us
[00:03:25.860]over 500 years to be at the place we are now,
[00:03:30.390]and looking at that long line of building up to that place,
[00:03:35.160]like, 500 years of extractive industries
[00:03:39.150]in the United States.
[00:03:40.080]So that's just the United States.
[00:03:42.030]And so that's kind of what I was thinking of,
[00:03:45.480]and when thinking about this question in particular,
[00:03:51.709]and I guess this kind of goes into thinking about time as,
[00:03:55.440]in a lot of ways, non-linear,
[00:03:57.990]that yeah, we're in an age of destruction.
[00:04:05.310]Like, I think about the fires,
[00:04:07.140]the wildfires happening in Canada,
[00:04:09.600]and all of the smoke coming down here
[00:04:12.450]to where you could smell it here in Nebraska,
[00:04:14.970]and that it shut down areas of the United States,
[00:04:18.450]and that this is now an international crisis,
[00:04:24.330]where you're having these fires occurring
[00:04:27.030]and then it's impacting us.
[00:04:29.940]It's people with, like, asthma or who are,
[00:04:34.830]you know, immunocompromised and can't be outside,
[00:04:38.340]like the (indistinct) warning, "Don't go outside."
[00:04:43.737]And when I think about that,
[00:04:45.570]think about those wildfires, it's a part of the social,
[00:04:50.010]like, it's not apart from the social realities too,
[00:04:53.610]of the project of settler colonialism,
[00:04:56.790]the fact that we are living in a place that has this history
[00:05:00.690]of clear cutting our timberlands,
[00:05:03.510]of looking at the agricultural conditions
[00:05:06.960]that have led to that, or these huge wildfires
[00:05:11.730]to even be here, right?
[00:05:13.710]And so that's kind of what I'm thinking of
[00:05:16.350]when we're entering into this conversation
[00:05:19.830]of, like, the impact,
[00:05:21.720]like, the historical impact of environmental change,
[00:05:25.710]like, human-made change in this place
[00:05:28.830]that is now the United States, that is now the Americas,
[00:05:31.770]because this is an international,
[00:05:33.030]this is a hemispheric issue, this is an America's issue,
[00:05:36.210]like, as the wildfires in Canada have shown,
[00:05:38.970]like that this is a problem, right,
[00:05:42.900]that crosses our borders, international borders.
[00:05:47.760]And so that's what I think about
[00:05:49.530]when thinking about the importance
[00:05:51.390]of addressing this question of environmental justice,
[00:05:55.703]of remembering to bring in the project,
[00:05:59.250]you know, settler colonialism as a project
[00:06:01.200]in the United States
[00:06:02.340]and the history of extractive industry
[00:06:04.530]within the United States, the erasure of indigenous peoples,
[00:06:09.330]and that violent erasure,
[00:06:11.483]and the violent erasure of indigenous knowledges
[00:06:15.000]with that too.
[00:06:17.220]And so part of the history that,
[00:06:20.760]like, within my own research, part of the work that I do
[00:06:23.820]is looking at environmental extraction
[00:06:27.780]of the Great Lakes area with Ho-Chunk communities
[00:06:31.110]and Ho-Chunk people through time.
[00:06:35.080]And so I talk about that
[00:06:37.020]because those timber lands were actually
[00:06:39.450]under the jurisdiction of Ho-Chunk women,
[00:06:42.600]who were actually in charge of forestry.
[00:06:45.660]And so this is also a gender question,
[00:06:49.800]a social question,
[00:06:51.120]when looking at knowledge being erased with this.
[00:06:57.810]So those are some of the frameworks that I'm thinking of.
[00:07:02.160]And then wanting to bring it kind of locally too,
[00:07:07.290]I wanted to kind of reflect on the changes
[00:07:10.350]that have happened in our own, like, state,
[00:07:13.770]with the Missouri River.
[00:07:15.180]Like, I'm sure with a lot of us, in thinking about,
[00:07:19.890]the Missouri River is one of those rivers
[00:07:23.220]that, as part of its normal seasonal flow, it floods,
[00:07:27.180]and that has caused, like, within the last couple decades,
[00:07:31.350]there have been some serious floods, and this isn't new.
[00:07:34.830]Like, part of the construction and infrastructure work
[00:07:39.570]that has taken place along the river were attempts
[00:07:43.380]to prevent flood.
[00:07:45.990]So 15 dams have been built throughout the river,
[00:07:52.230]and that was an attempt to control flooding.
[00:07:54.810]It's also been heavily channelized to make it be able
[00:07:58.920]to have freight ships come through.
[00:08:03.060]And so both of those, you know, have changed.
[00:08:07.680]Like, humans have drastically changed our landscape
[00:08:11.280]that are here,
[00:08:12.330]and we're talking about the fourth longest river system
[00:08:16.380]in the world.
[00:08:18.390]The other animal communities
[00:08:20.580]that are now connected to it are endangered.
[00:08:23.670]So there's endangered birds,
[00:08:25.290]there's also endangered pallid sturgeon that is there,
[00:08:30.240]and despite the damning and channelization,
[00:08:33.180]which have been human-made attempts, right?
[00:08:36.270]And so very recent, too, when thinking about
[00:08:39.420]how long the United,
[00:08:41.640]well, very recent infrastructure attempts
[00:08:44.220]by the United States,
[00:08:45.810]but when thinking about how indigenous peoples
[00:08:48.450]in this region lived with the river before,
[00:08:51.390]there were not permanent settlements, as far as I know,
[00:08:55.140]in terms of my understanding of how they lived
[00:08:58.050]in flow with the river, right?
[00:08:59.970]So that's like a different view
[00:09:01.500]regarding how humans interact with our environment,
[00:09:06.060]to live seasonally and in flow with these, like, features
[00:09:14.253]that we need to live in relationship with, right?
[00:09:16.560]And we no longer are in,
[00:09:20.130]we are no longer living in that way.
[00:09:22.710]There are permanent settlements,
[00:09:24.150]and with permanent settlements come, like, major disasters,
[00:09:28.620]whenever there is flooding, a large ice melt,
[00:09:33.984]and then that impacts water quality,
[00:09:36.750]when thinking of, like, it's a huge question,
[00:09:39.060]but it's something that came to mind
[00:09:41.370]when thinking about this, and when I was thinking about,
[00:09:43.680]like, us in Nebraska specifically and the impacts,
[00:09:47.070]all these things were coming to mind.
[00:09:49.140]And so I will close with just those thoughts.
[00:09:53.760]And so main takeaways, you know, this question being tied
[00:09:57.750]to the project of settler colonialism,
[00:09:59.670]and then over 500 years of, like, history
[00:10:02.250]of human infrastructure tied to the creation
[00:10:06.240]of, like, nation states that are now here,
[00:10:10.620]that are trying to, like, grapple with this question
[00:10:13.830]of, like, severe weather,
[00:10:16.620]and, like, severe ecological environmental damage,
[00:10:19.950]and of, like, realizing that a lot of it's human made,
[00:10:24.420]and it's tied to capitalism
[00:10:26.940]and the building up of the state,
[00:10:29.520]and erasure of indigenous peoples
[00:10:31.860]that's part of that.
[00:10:32.970]So those are some of the main takeaway points
[00:10:35.100]that I thought of with this question,
[00:10:38.190]and I will pass it to my co-panelist, thank you.
[00:10:45.570]So this, okay, good.
[00:10:48.420]So I'm gonna take a little bit of a different tack with this
[00:10:51.480]and talk a little bit about the background
[00:10:53.520]of environmental racism.
[00:10:55.950]The term was first coined in 1970 by an attorney,
[00:11:00.630]actually a law professor, Carolyn Burrow,
[00:11:03.570]and a former director of the NAACP, Ben Chavis,
[00:11:08.820]pulls that up a notch, and does the first formal protesting
[00:11:12.660]about environmental racism in Georgia.
[00:11:17.070]An electronic company had been dumping PCB,
[00:11:20.310]which is a really toxic chemical,
[00:11:21.870]all over the highways in Georgia.
[00:11:24.270]And the State of Georgia needed to clean it up,
[00:11:26.550]so they gathered up all the PCB
[00:11:28.500]and they put it in a landfill
[00:11:30.390]next to an African American community,
[00:11:32.580]and Ben Chavis and the community went to war, basically,
[00:11:37.590]over the issue.
[00:11:38.423]It was a prolonged fight to get that cleaned up
[00:11:41.130]and to get it out of the landfill.
[00:11:44.280]But we also know, that was odd,
[00:11:47.700]we also know that of those toxic chemicals,
[00:11:52.470]of toxic chemicals across the United States,
[00:11:54.300]nearly all of them are located in landfills
[00:11:56.670]that are next to people of color communities.
[00:12:02.640]Robert Bullard has really made a career out of this.
[00:12:04.830]He's a sociology professor,
[00:12:07.740]and he defines environmental racism
[00:12:13.230]as any policy, practice or directive
[00:12:15.900]that differentially affects or disadvantages,
[00:12:18.360]whether intended or unintended, individuals, groups,
[00:12:21.900]or communities that's based on race.
[00:12:25.260]Now, within psychology,
[00:12:27.600]there's an entire branch called environmental psychology,
[00:12:30.510]and they've looked at this issue for people of color
[00:12:33.480]on all kinds of aspects of the environment
[00:12:35.970]that may lead to environmental racism,
[00:12:38.280]things like space and the physical use of space,
[00:12:42.180]even having access to space, like in crowding or, you know,
[00:12:46.770]having lots of space in order to live,
[00:12:49.920]colors can affect one's psychological state,
[00:12:55.680]toxins within the environment,
[00:12:57.360]hazards in built and unbuilt environments,
[00:12:59.760]smells and air quality, heat and cold exposure,
[00:13:03.510]events within an environment.
[00:13:05.160]Some environments will allow for violence and crime,
[00:13:08.250]and some environments don't allow for those things.
[00:13:11.370]And then finally, accessibility of healthy environments
[00:13:14.010]like food, water, and air.
[00:13:15.990]And all of these have been demonstrated to be
[00:13:18.720]in the negative for people of color compared to whites.
[00:13:24.510]In this you'll see that people of color,
[00:13:27.150]particularly Hispanics and black folks,
[00:13:29.100]have compromised environments.
[00:13:30.870]So both, if you look at all Americans,
[00:13:33.090]or you look at just urban residents, for air quality,
[00:13:36.180]for tap water quality, and for the amount of noise,
[00:13:39.120]people of color have compromised environments.
[00:13:45.180]If you look at the amount of pollution
[00:13:47.790]people are exposed to, Latinx and black Americans
[00:13:51.240]are exposed to more pollution than they actually produce,
[00:13:54.720]by 63%, 17% less exposure for people who are white.
[00:14:05.310]Environmental racism is nothing new.
[00:14:07.350]So race is the most significant predictor
[00:14:10.230]of people living near contaminated air, water, or soil.
[00:14:14.760]So 56% of people of color
[00:14:17.190]are gonna live near some kind of a toxic waste site.
[00:14:21.750]People of color are 38% are more likely to have
[00:14:25.170]higher nitrogen dioxide exposure,
[00:14:27.960]and they are two times more likely
[00:14:30.150]to live without potable water or modern sanitation.
[00:14:34.110]And when they bring a case before the EPA,
[00:14:36.660]Environmental Protection Agency,
[00:14:38.190]I don't know why this is doing this,
[00:14:39.990]95% of their claims are denied.
[00:14:45.690]So it makes sense that amongst Hispanics and blacks,
[00:14:49.800]they're more alarmed and concerned about global warming
[00:14:53.130]and things having to do with the environment
[00:14:54.900]than white people are.
[00:14:57.750]In addition, Hispanic and black Americans
[00:15:01.200]are more willing than whites to join a campaign
[00:15:03.630]or to do something in order to combat global warming.
[00:15:10.440]And they're also more willing in general
[00:15:12.240]to change their behaviors in order to combat global warming.
[00:15:16.230]They will get up and do something, whether it's protesting
[00:15:18.930]or changing the way that they live,
[00:15:20.250]changing their lifestyle compared to whites.
[00:15:23.370]So climate justice produces racial justice,
[00:15:28.020]and racial justice produces climate justice,
[00:15:31.020]and ethnic studies is really at the forefront
[00:15:34.530]of those who can contribute to and understand
[00:15:37.050]a possible solution to environmental racism.
[00:15:42.570]Oh wow, thank you Cynthia and Angel.
[00:15:46.410]I love my ethnic studies colleagues,
[00:15:49.890]and to continue with this disciplinarian rainbow,
[00:15:53.190]Angel, the historian, the psychology professor,
[00:15:57.480]and I'm gonna talk about poetry
[00:16:00.600]because I'm a literature person,
[00:16:03.315]and so I wrote what I'm presenting
[00:16:05.790]because that's what we literature people do, right?
[00:16:08.370]And I even gave it a title, right?
[00:16:10.507]"Cost, Sorrow, and Poetic Fury."
[00:16:15.397]"We want to talk about a poetics at world's ends,
[00:16:18.690]about why we humans, for millennia, have sought out poetry
[00:16:23.700]when our worlds are collapsing."
[00:16:25.710]I should use this one.
[00:16:26.857]"When our worlds are collapsing.
[00:16:28.740]About how language rationalizes horror
[00:16:31.290]to the point of denial,
[00:16:32.490]and how only poetry can break through the linguistic wall
[00:16:35.160]of self-deception.
[00:16:37.020]Why ethnic studies in this era of ecological catastrophe?
[00:16:41.670]Okay, only when we study the cultures
[00:16:44.490]of the historically disenfranchised,
[00:16:49.830]for those of whom the world has ended so many times,
[00:16:53.760]can we put a knife to the individualistic balloon
[00:16:57.000]of language that keeps us in denial
[00:16:59.970]of the catastrophes in front of our noses?
[00:17:03.630]It is, and it will always be through those cultures
[00:17:06.330]that we will be able to survive the worlds that are ending,
[00:17:10.410]that only through them can we think
[00:17:12.420]in the time of the species
[00:17:14.010]and not the petty and tiny temporality
[00:17:16.410]of the me, myself and I.
[00:17:18.240]We humans seek out poetry when our worlds are ending.
[00:17:22.410]It is poetry what allows us to mourn the dead,
[00:17:25.740]but it's also poetry, the poetic fury,
[00:17:30.300]that will make us rage and survive."
[00:17:32.490]So let's talk about the world's ending today
[00:17:35.130]in our present, right?
[00:17:36.810]Wars, big migrations, ecological collapses,
[00:17:40.050]we tend to separate these issues,
[00:17:41.790]to compartmentalize these issues in different boxes,
[00:17:46.440]isolated events of a state of exception,
[00:17:49.710]but there is a continuity between these three issues
[00:17:52.860]that I'm putting together here,
[00:17:54.690]completely interconnected problems.
[00:17:56.640]We cannot solve one without the others.
[00:18:00.480]I could go on here quoting countless research books
[00:18:04.440]about the interconnection between war, migrations,
[00:18:06.840]and climate change, but only a few examples must suffice.
[00:18:10.260]For example, do you know that the US Military,
[00:18:13.110]involved in so many brutal wars right now,
[00:18:16.650]is the entity that produces the most CO2 emissions
[00:18:20.190]in the world?
[00:18:21.023]The biggest polluter in the world is the US Military, okay?
[00:18:25.290]I did not find this in a leftist blog, okay?
[00:18:30.990]There's a very good book by an Oxford University scholar,
[00:18:36.990]Neta Crawford, about it.
[00:18:39.030]Do you know that every single historical mass migration,
[00:18:42.480]from Latin American people to the US,
[00:18:45.870]was preceded by a US intervention, political, military,
[00:18:50.010]or economic in Latin America?
[00:18:51.600]There's a very good scholarly book about this
[00:18:53.820]by Juan Gonzalez, "Harvest of Empire:
[00:18:56.340]A History of Latinos in the US."
[00:18:57.810]There's a new edition, even,
[00:18:59.550]the latest migration being the Venezuelans, right?
[00:19:03.900]Directly connected to the US sanctions of Venezuela,
[00:19:07.710]that is directly connected to the wrath
[00:19:09.780]that the US corporations felt
[00:19:11.280]for Venezuela nationalizing its oil.
[00:19:15.150]All these three things are very much connected, right?
[00:19:18.660]Do you know that war is the major factor
[00:19:21.150]for the displacement and the great migrations of people
[00:19:23.970]from the Middle East into Europe and to the US?
[00:19:27.120]Do you know that ecological catastrophes
[00:19:29.010]and access to water is the major force of displacement
[00:19:31.320]of African and certain Caribbean peoples?
[00:19:33.597]I'm thinking about my own country of Puerto Rico
[00:19:36.090]after the hurricane.
[00:19:37.470]I can keep going with an endless factual list
[00:19:39.780]of these interconnections between war, migration,
[00:19:42.330]and climate change.
[00:19:43.170]Yet, we rationalize each of these issues separately.
[00:19:48.690]And not only the issues, we separate each event
[00:19:52.020]as if there is no connection with the other.
[00:19:53.760]By rationalizing them as separate non-connected events,
[00:19:56.730]we accept their singular horrors as necessary exceptions.
[00:20:02.190]Only through this compartmentalization
[00:20:04.380]can we accept these horrors that we are seeing,
[00:20:07.080]can we accept that with our tax money,
[00:20:10.650]3000 Palestinian children have died
[00:20:13.020]in the last couple of weeks, right?
[00:20:15.330]We accept it,
[00:20:16.650]we accept that Latin American children were put in cages
[00:20:22.050]and separated from their families.
[00:20:23.280]We accept it because we rationalize it as different things,
[00:20:26.340]as states of exceptions.
[00:20:28.890]Do we really think that those mothers won't find justice
[00:20:32.310]for the children?
[00:20:33.150]That those children won't remember
[00:20:35.430]what we've done to them?
[00:20:37.500]There will be a reckoning.
[00:20:38.910]Those young generations of Latin Americans, of Muslims,
[00:20:42.150]of Indigenous people, of Africans will not forget
[00:20:45.090]and will grow remembering how the horrors they're surviving
[00:20:49.020]were accepted by us.
[00:20:51.000]Our children too will remember this.
[00:20:53.850]And now to end, I return to poetry,
[00:20:56.760]to how the poetry of the historically disenfranchised
[00:20:59.700]can do for us what research and science has failed to do.
[00:21:04.560]What I mean here is that in academia, for 50 years,
[00:21:08.100]scientists have been telling us we are warming the planet
[00:21:11.970]and we did nothing about it.
[00:21:13.170]It's like rational, intellectual,
[00:21:16.080]factual work doesn't work, right?
[00:21:18.600]In the humanities, we've been saying for a century
[00:21:20.880]our institutions are systematically racist
[00:21:23.430]and we do very little about it.
[00:21:25.290]So maybe where we have failed as scholars,
[00:21:28.590]maybe we need an army of poets.
[00:21:31.470]Poetry can communicate the deep sadness
[00:21:33.930]that the others experience at the world's end,
[00:21:36.090]so we can share their sorrow, the sorrow of this pain,
[00:21:38.970]the cost of our denial,
[00:21:40.770]but also about how poetry transmits us the necessary fury,
[00:21:45.420]the rage at the end of the world
[00:21:47.070]that gives us the necessary courage
[00:21:48.600]to survive in the next world.
[00:21:50.460]As we conclude, then allow me to share,
[00:21:52.710]I was gonna share four poems.
[00:21:54.330]I'm gonna cut two,
[00:21:55.380]and I'm gonna cut the two Palestinian poems
[00:21:57.660]I brought for today.
[00:21:59.220]I can bring in later, if you want, in a conversation,
[00:22:03.180]but my first poem is by a Mayan prophet,
[00:22:06.120]the indigenous central American peoples,
[00:22:08.460]from the 1500s,
[00:22:09.393]it's a poem from the famous Chilam Balam.
[00:22:11.820]There are Maya people here in Nebraska, do you know?
[00:22:14.935]There are Maya people here in Fremont,
[00:22:16.380]here, displaced from Central America
[00:22:18.990]in the (indistinct) and the meatpacking industries
[00:22:21.150]and others, right?
[00:22:22.964]Angel was mentioning the floods, the floods here
[00:22:26.130]that connected UNL very deeply with those communities
[00:22:30.900]that suffer those floods.
[00:22:32.610]So here, from poem from the 1500s,
[00:22:35.610]that I just taught to my students, thanks for coming,
[00:22:38.160]those of my students that came in, my undergrads there.
[00:22:41.929]Ahau katun 11, that word just means, in the Maya calendar,
[00:22:46.770]the most sophisticated calendar in their age, our age,
[00:22:50.190]the age that started in the 1500s,
[00:22:52.020]and that is actually ending now,
[00:22:54.330]according to the Maya calendar, okay?
[00:22:56.490]I quote, and it's my translation and my (indistinct), okay?
[00:23:00.097]"Oh, let's cry because they arrived.
[00:23:02.760]Oh, it's sad, oh, the protectors of water,
[00:23:05.850]your gods will be worth nothing.
[00:23:09.570]This one God that comes from the east,
[00:23:12.600]only of sin he will speak,
[00:23:15.300]only of sin will be his teachings,
[00:23:18.450]inhuman will be his soldiers,
[00:23:20.970]cruelty will be the spirit of his hounds.
[00:23:25.320]Let us be ready so we can bear this mystery,
[00:23:28.440]this mystery that is coming to our nations
[00:23:30.810]because this Ahau katun 11 that just starts
[00:23:35.310]is a katun of mystery, a katun of war,
[00:23:38.820]a struggle, this 11 Ahau.
[00:23:42.390]They were tiny kids
[00:23:43.680]and they were being martyred, miserable children.
[00:23:47.430]They didn't even protest at the hands of their slaver,
[00:23:50.640]the antichrist of this earth, the tiger of the peoples,
[00:23:54.330]the jaguar of our nations, the blood sucker of the Indian.
[00:23:58.500]But that they will come when our tears will reach the gods
[00:24:03.900]and justice will descend to strike this world."
[00:24:09.360]And I have one more poem, and this poem is written by us,
[00:24:14.010]recently written, and just translated into English
[00:24:17.550]for this event, of our unpublished manuscript.
[00:24:20.850]The title is "Sadness, the Fury."
[00:24:24.337]"Echoes of dead worlds, can you hear them?
[00:24:29.460]Earth-shattering roars of beginnings,
[00:24:33.390]the fury of old big bangs, can you feel them?
[00:24:38.730]Those worlds already ended,
[00:24:40.770]and yet they still whisper in this one.
[00:24:43.770]'Sadness is the river of time,'
[00:24:45.810]we are told by women we loved,
[00:24:50.096]and is no longer with us.
[00:24:52.560]Concentrate, can you hear the river far away from here
[00:24:56.550]shaping monoliths and drowning colonizers?
[00:25:00.750]A weak force is sadness, always there,
[00:25:04.770]constant residue of worlds.
[00:25:07.890]Fine tune your ears and you will hear it.
[00:25:11.490]Weak is its being, but not its origin.
[00:25:16.950]Sadness is the daughter of fury."
[00:25:21.660]Thank you.
[00:25:27.090](Leanna speaking foreign language)
[00:25:31.590]Hi everyone, my name is Leanna, Leanna Stanley.
[00:25:35.100]I'm Muskogee of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians in Alabama.
[00:25:38.970]I'm just gonna read some notes here.
[00:25:44.880]As I was preparing for this talk,
[00:25:46.860]a response to the question, why is ethnic studies so crucial
[00:25:50.550]in our age of ecological catastrophe?
[00:25:52.920]I kept returning to a confluence,
[00:25:54.870]a coming together of different bodies of water,
[00:25:57.330]ideas, elements, or people,
[00:25:59.760]a coming into relation of interdependence,
[00:26:01.650]mutuality, and collectivity.
[00:26:04.560]I'll begin by marking the gravity of the current moment.
[00:26:08.220]As educators, we are teaching in and against a world
[00:26:10.860]that is increasingly marked by relentless attacks
[00:26:13.200]on indigenous sovereignty, a growing reliance on cages
[00:26:16.500]to contain racialized and displaced populations,
[00:26:19.560]extractive industries that exploit and destroy the land,
[00:26:22.440]and the indigenous have all turned black
[00:26:24.180]and radical lives and knowledges that sustain it,
[00:26:26.880]the rise of a rule of fascism and anti-intellectualism,
[00:26:29.760]born of settler colonial death worlds,
[00:26:32.610]and the ethnic cleansing and real time
[00:26:34.170]of our Palestinian relatives in their lands.
[00:26:37.200]And now the confluence of these forces,
[00:26:39.210]the intensification of ecological catastrophes is edging us
[00:26:42.270]toward a sixth mass extinction event.
[00:26:45.990]And while these realities are pressing,
[00:26:47.730]they're not unprecedented.
[00:26:49.410]They're manifestations of the enduring racial
[00:26:51.600]and colonial legacies of conquest, occupation,
[00:26:54.510]plunder, dispossession, displacement,
[00:26:57.150]and genocide that students, elders,
[00:26:59.070]and relatives have long confronted and challenged.
[00:27:04.020]During the 1960s, amid the evermore urgent necessity
[00:27:08.010]of an anti-colonial and anti-capitalist consciousness
[00:27:10.590]to undo the persistent conditions of violence and precarity,
[00:27:14.670]a coalition of black, indigenous, Filipino,
[00:27:16.770]and other racialized students, faculty, staff,
[00:27:18.960]and community members
[00:27:20.010]formed the Third World Liberation Front,
[00:27:22.200]among other collectives of the San Francisco State College.
[00:27:26.460]These revolutionaries mobilized an opposition to the racist,
[00:27:29.310]colonialists, and neoliberal agendas of education,
[00:27:32.040]in service of self-determination, and community freedom.
[00:27:36.750]These are the conditions of possibility for ethnic studies
[00:27:39.210]on the whole,
[00:27:40.050]and American Indian and indigenous studies in particular.
[00:27:44.010]Ethnic studies, then, is a confluence of radical hope,
[00:27:47.250]struggle, rage, and love.
[00:27:49.260]Our presence is made by the presence of those
[00:27:51.210]who dare to dream, imagine, and create otherwise.
[00:27:54.600]Students know and do this work.
[00:27:56.700]Students are on the front line of struggle,
[00:27:59.400]and water knows.
[00:28:00.900]Water does not spontaneously materialize from nothing.
[00:28:04.170]The water that is circulating through the rivers,
[00:28:05.820]streams, clouds, oceans, grounds, and airs is the same water
[00:28:10.084]that has existed since the planet's formation,
[00:28:12.720]continuously moving and transforming in the hydrologic cycle
[00:28:16.410]through which it traverses multiple forms and states.
[00:28:19.830]Water stories are fluencies within
[00:28:21.540]and between the shifting links and boundaries of human
[00:28:24.180]and non-human, Earth and other worlds, and that is finite.
[00:28:29.790]Traditional Muskogee teachings tell us that water, or eau,
[00:28:33.570]is a sacred element in life.
[00:28:35.610]Water is a relation and relative
[00:28:37.920]with its own capacious forms of agency,
[00:28:39.990]vitality and knowledge.
[00:28:41.850]Water is mnemonic, a knowledge keeper, a storyteller,
[00:28:45.480]a protector, a life giver, a relative,
[00:28:47.910]an ancestor, poetry,
[00:28:52.200]and so water is deserving of love,
[00:28:53.880]care, respect, and protection.
[00:28:56.130]Land is not just necessary for life.
[00:28:58.320]Land is life, water is life.
[00:29:03.600]Yet, in colonial and imperial regimes
[00:29:06.360]that naturalized systems of exploitation,
[00:29:08.850]disconnection, and possessive human-centric individualism
[00:29:12.120]over relations of collective care, consent, responsibility,
[00:29:15.240]and reciprocity with all life forms,
[00:29:17.580]water is misunderstood as valuable only as a commodity,
[00:29:20.700]an infinitely renewable resource for elite regulation,
[00:29:23.850]management, and consumption.
[00:29:25.830]It's imperative that we examine our relationships
[00:29:28.050]and responsibilities to the land, water,
[00:29:30.090]and all living beings
[00:29:31.140]beyond their perceived worth as property.
[00:29:35.130]Melissa Nelson writes, "Most of us find it easier
[00:29:38.310]to separate ourselves from nature
[00:29:39.960]than to embrace the liquid mystery of our union with it.
[00:29:42.660]As fresh water disappears on the Earth,
[00:29:45.060]so do the water stories that remind us
[00:29:47.550]that we too can freeze, melt, conceive, and evaporate.
[00:29:51.240]We too can construct a confluence of cultural rivulets
[00:29:54.240]where the natural and cultural coalesce."
[00:29:57.510]Joanne Barker theorizes and engages water
[00:29:59.820]as an analytic of indigenous feminisms.
[00:30:02.040]She writes, "I do not think it is an accident
[00:30:04.830]that it is water that has brought social movements together.
[00:30:08.040]As the black community of Flint,
[00:30:09.570]and the Lakota and Dakota peoples of Standing Rock
[00:30:12.060]have taught us, water links us together
[00:30:14.130]in our struggles for life."
[00:30:16.200]And she also notes that, "Water provides a good place
[00:30:19.080]for beginning to denaturalize the inevitability
[00:30:21.570]of the current state formation.
[00:30:24.180]How might we educate in ways that directly respond
[00:30:26.460]to the material realities of the present,
[00:30:28.290]and in ways that affirm and give care to collective life
[00:30:31.340]in all its forms, land, water, plant, animal,
[00:30:34.230]human, non-human spirit, and otherwise?
[00:30:37.200]How about we educate in ways
[00:30:38.430]that re-center intergenerational formations
[00:30:40.470]of indigenous knowledge that are historically, politically,
[00:30:43.560]spiritually, and intellectually grounded
[00:30:45.930]in indigenous struggles
[00:30:46.980]for self-determination and sovereignty,
[00:30:49.320]in ways that are informed by the work of indigenous scholars
[00:30:51.630]and relatives, and by the changing realities
[00:30:53.550]of indigenous peoples all over the world?"
[00:30:56.910]And so with this in mind, I reached out to students
[00:30:59.670]with an open invitation to think,
[00:31:02.430]think with and alongside us about this question,
[00:31:04.470]why is ethnic studies crucial
[00:31:05.820]in our age of ecological catastrophe?
[00:31:09.000]To offer a moving conclusion, in Joanne's words,
[00:31:11.910]I wanna close with the knowledge offerings
[00:31:13.500]of these students, as a confluence and direction
[00:31:15.990]toward honoring our relational connections
[00:31:17.880]and making deeper and sustained connections with students,
[00:31:20.910]youth, elders, and community, particularly those
[00:31:24.360]who are most impacted by environmental destruction.
[00:31:27.540]So I'm gonna read and close with some of their responses.
[00:31:31.297]"Why is ethnic studies crucial
[00:31:32.790]in our age of ecological catastrophe?
[00:31:35.617]"Because it is a global problem that should be addressed
[00:31:37.950]in ways that follow spiritual and cultural protocol
[00:31:40.200]of the people experiencing the problems."
[00:31:42.937]"Because racism, colonialism and capitalism are at the root
[00:31:46.110]of ecological catastrophes, so fixing the system
[00:31:49.110]must also include ending these structures."
[00:31:51.787]"Because ecological catastrophe is something happening
[00:31:54.240]to the entire world, and if we go about it
[00:31:56.280]through diverse perspectives,
[00:31:57.480]we can think of ways to build international solidarity."
[00:32:01.267]"Because ethnic studies cares about indigenous peoples,
[00:32:03.507]and our lands, experiences, and knowledges."
[00:32:07.027]"Because planning for the future feels scary,
[00:32:09.240]but we are expected to go along as normal,
[00:32:11.400]like nothing is happening."
[00:32:13.537]"Because the Earth is dying
[00:32:15.270]and the future generations are at risk,
[00:32:17.400]and I want a future for us."
[00:32:19.590]Mvto, thank you.
[00:32:22.837](all applauding)
[00:32:33.478]We have a few minutes for questions.
[00:32:44.010]I've got a mic.
[00:32:47.730]How can ethnic studies be used as a tool,
[00:32:51.690]specifically, to chip away at environmental injustice?
[00:32:59.070]What can people in this room do specifically
[00:33:03.330]to begin unwinding and chipping away
[00:33:06.330]at everything that you've just said in the last 30 minutes?
[00:33:13.410]So the one of the first things
[00:33:15.120]that I think of is like civic engagement.
[00:33:18.240]So I know there are people,
[00:33:20.700]I know this is like a topic
[00:33:22.560]that people have mixed feelings about,
[00:33:26.400]but because so much policy is at the heart of approving,
[00:33:33.480]like, approving of land management that centers capitalism,
[00:33:38.790]that centers extractive industry,
[00:33:42.060]and de-centers, like, human social need,
[00:33:46.350]I would say, like, voting
[00:33:48.060]and being actively engaged civically,
[00:33:52.230]talking to people, and, like, sharing information.
[00:33:58.440]Yeah, so that's one of the first things that comes to mind,
[00:34:00.990]but I know there are a lot of opinions where they're, like,
[00:34:07.039]I think it's gonna be a multi-pronged effort,
[00:34:09.240]and that's one prong, because I know
[00:34:11.490]there's a lot of criticism around that, too,
[00:34:15.600]but that's one of the things that comes to mind for me.
[00:34:19.950]I would just add that, not being an American myself,
[00:34:25.350]there's this strange idea that ethnic studies
[00:34:29.040]is about minority cultures, right?
[00:34:32.250]I mean, you know that white people
[00:34:34.650]in the world are a minority,
[00:34:36.120]and we should not expect, honestly,
[00:34:39.450]we shouldn't expect the leadership for a future
[00:34:45.810]against these environmental catastrophes
[00:34:48.360]that capitalism is causing to come from the people
[00:34:51.720]that have benefit from that ecological catastrophe.
[00:34:56.100]This might be hard to hear, but it's true.
[00:34:59.010]We should not expect that leadership to come from there.
[00:35:01.230]This is the people that benefit,
[00:35:02.430]they are in their SUVs and their air conditioners.
[00:35:04.590]They're having a grand time
[00:35:06.660]with these ecological catastrophes, right?
[00:35:09.960]So what can ethnic studies do here in the US,
[00:35:12.630]that is supposedly minoritarian?
[00:35:15.570]I wouldn't say that because this is indigenous land,
[00:35:17.963]this is Mexican land, this is black land, right?
[00:35:21.300]But okay, beyond that, right,
[00:35:24.060]what ethnic studies can do in the US,
[00:35:25.800]so that's very much particular, right,
[00:35:30.000]is to learn from centuries of cultures
[00:35:33.060]that have dealt with the dark side
[00:35:36.720]of the organization systems of this world,
[00:35:41.190]that started with the plantation,
[00:35:43.530]with settler colonialism, right?
[00:35:46.200]The company towns that colonized the US
[00:35:48.780]had very similar ideologies
[00:35:50.490]to our current politicians left and right, honestly, right?
[00:35:55.200]So what can any studies do, man?
[00:35:58.770]And everything, everything is the most important thing here
[00:36:03.270]in that sense, right?
[00:36:05.550]But I'll stop.
[00:36:08.490]Thank you, Luis.
[00:36:09.750]I would just add, too,
[00:36:14.310]indigenous knowledges are always subjugated
[00:36:18.300]or made to be something, people are skeptical of them,
[00:36:25.740]because they're not theoretical enough.
[00:36:27.810]Eve Tuck talks about this,
[00:36:30.240]it's always, "Well, how do we put this into action,
[00:36:34.170]or what can I do?"
[00:36:36.330]But the very problem that we're experiencing
[00:36:39.120]in the world is because of exploitation,
[00:36:42.630]it's because of dispossession, it's because of displacement.
[00:36:46.440]Learning to live with the land is what we all should do.
[00:36:50.940]Going outside and actually learning from land
[00:36:53.760]because you can.
[00:36:55.740]You might not have someone to teach you,
[00:36:59.794]you might not have family that does,
[00:37:02.760]but you can learn a lot from land,
[00:37:07.260]and once you see yourself in relation with land and water,
[00:37:13.048]you will go through this world differently.
[00:37:16.290]And if everyone did, we wouldn't be in the position
[00:37:19.530]that we are in right now.
[00:37:24.240]I don't wanna hog the mic,
[00:37:25.350]but sometimes I think it's important
[00:37:27.480]in conversations like this to be specific,
[00:37:30.420]and to have a specific example
[00:37:32.460]of what we're talking about here.
[00:37:34.050]I imagine there's more than one person in this room
[00:37:36.360]from Omaha or Douglas County.
[00:37:39.840]There's a coal-fire power plant in North Omaha,
[00:37:44.250]and it has caused, over the course of 70 years,
[00:37:48.090]enormous health problems.
[00:37:50.520]North Omaha has a 48% higher asthma rate
[00:37:54.090]than the rest of Douglas County.
[00:37:56.760]The Douglas County Health Department,
[00:37:58.680]mercifully, pegs every zip code in Douglas County
[00:38:04.410]with life expectancy.
[00:38:07.440]The lowest life expectancy
[00:38:08.820]in Douglas County is 70.4 years on average,
[00:38:13.140]and that's North Omaha.
[00:38:15.300]If you move 15 miles west, you gain 14 years.
[00:38:20.640]The zip code 15 miles west of North Omaha,
[00:38:23.640]life expectancy is 84 years,
[00:38:26.670]and this almost exclusively can be pinpointed
[00:38:30.510]to this coal-fire power plant that spews enormous amounts
[00:38:34.740]of all kinds of toxins.
[00:38:37.290]And now the lead in the ground in North Omaha
[00:38:41.490]is so poisonous that people who need fresh vegetables
[00:38:44.850]can't grow gardens because the land itself is poisonous,
[00:38:48.990]and the air is poisonous.
[00:38:51.060]And they wouldn't build that coal-fire plant,
[00:38:54.900]I don't think, in Papillion or Elkhorn or Gretna.
[00:38:58.410]I'm just guessing they wouldn't do that.
[00:39:01.530]So I mean, it seems to me like, one thing,
[00:39:04.470]there could be a lot of pressure be put
[00:39:06.240]on Omaha Public Power District
[00:39:08.460]to shut down this coal plant that is killing
[00:39:12.720]these third graders who go out in the playground
[00:39:15.180]six blocks away every day.
[00:39:18.030]It needs to be shut down.
[00:39:19.320]That's something that can be done and should be done.
[00:39:22.500]Right, so let me just offer what I know
[00:39:27.120]about getting people motivated,
[00:39:30.450]or getting people ready to change,
[00:39:32.940]'cause I saw a slide up there, right,
[00:39:34.710]that said the people of color are much more likely
[00:39:36.390]to change their behaviors that they do
[00:39:38.070]because they experience it more.
[00:39:39.030]You have to get people motivated.
[00:39:41.220]In the United States, in my discipline at least,
[00:39:44.070]since the 1970s, actually way even before that,
[00:39:48.390]probably in the 1940s,
[00:39:50.190]knows how to get people ready to do something.
[00:39:52.560]We do it for war, we get people ready to go to war, right?
[00:39:56.160]And particularly if it's at the national level.
[00:39:58.680]We did it in World War II, we did it in the Vietnam War,
[00:40:01.410]we did it in the Iraqi War,
[00:40:03.900]we begin to display people in a different way.
[00:40:06.870]We know how to get people to change the unhealthy behaviors,
[00:40:11.910]and, you know, I'm old enough to know this,
[00:40:13.860]everybody used to smoke.
[00:40:14.760]They used to smoke in classrooms,
[00:40:16.470]and we changed an entire nation to not smoke anymore.
[00:40:21.330]Smokers are, you know, in the minority now.
[00:40:24.360]We did it with breastfeeding,
[00:40:25.770]we've done it with all kinds of things.
[00:40:28.380]We know how to make people change their behavior,
[00:40:31.200]but they gotta be motivated.
[00:40:33.780]Now, Jimmy Carter tried to do it
[00:40:35.370]when he was in office, right?
[00:40:37.080]Turn out the lights, start using solar power.
[00:40:41.670]There was a tax incentive to do it,
[00:40:43.770]but that meant that people had to change their behavior
[00:40:46.440]and they didn't want to.
[00:40:47.580]We want cheap energy.
[00:40:51.090]We want cheap energy.
[00:40:52.200]We want things to be easy and we want them to be cheap,
[00:40:55.710]and so we have to get more people motivated
[00:40:58.920]to care more about their health
[00:41:01.500]than they do about their pocketbook,
[00:41:03.660]to care more about their health than they do about
[00:41:06.450]how easy it is to live and not have air conditioning
[00:41:10.560]or not have cars all the time.
[00:41:12.120]We don't even promote public transportation.
[00:41:15.240]Everybody's got a car.
[00:41:16.950]Like, I'm old enough to know
[00:41:17.970]when families were lucky to have one car in the household,
[00:41:21.150]not for every person in the household to have a car, right?
[00:41:25.080]And to take public transportation more,
[00:41:27.060]so until we make those kinds of changes,
[00:41:30.270]and until we, as a nation, decide,
[00:41:32.220]'cause there are other nations who are already doing this,
[00:41:34.170]by the way, there are other nations that have already said,
[00:41:36.577]"Hmm, we think we're changing our ways.
[00:41:39.240]We're not gonna do this anymore."
[00:41:40.470]Until we actually decide to do that
[00:41:42.960]and begin to implement the kinds of changes
[00:41:45.510]we know we can do to get people motivated
[00:41:48.360]to change their behaviors, we are not gonna change.
[00:41:51.810]It will remain the same, but it's killing us,
[00:41:56.190]as you pointed out,
[00:41:57.450]One last quick just comment.
[00:41:59.014]No (indistinct). Let me add on-
[00:41:59.847]I just wondered,
[00:42:00.680]why do you think that this room is overwhelmingly female?
[00:42:05.130]Another question, right?
[00:42:07.110]Because there's a lot of people.
[00:42:08.430]We don't have a lot of time, sorry.
[00:42:09.540]Yeah, it's gonna go related to what you said
[00:42:13.130]because for people like me that is not that much familiar
[00:42:17.550]with Nebraska demographics,
[00:42:19.620]because I'm not from here, right?
[00:42:21.150]I've been here for five years,
[00:42:22.800]and I don't know if you mentioned that,
[00:42:24.030]maybe I missed that information,
[00:42:25.260]but something interesting to bring here is that North Omaha,
[00:42:30.360]the demographics of North Omaha,
[00:42:32.370]and I was trying to find information for that,
[00:42:34.110]is mostly African American.
[00:42:36.630]And so I think it brings, again, the conversation
[00:42:39.360]that this is a systemic problem
[00:42:42.630]that has been affecting people of color
[00:42:45.810]in a bigger way than it's affecting white communities
[00:42:50.370]here in Nebraska.
[00:42:51.510]So I found really interesting that,
[00:42:53.850]if this is a problem in Omaha,
[00:42:55.620]and it's affecting more North Omaha,
[00:42:57.330]I wonder if there is an intention
[00:43:01.590]for not fixing this in North Omaha,
[00:43:03.840]because precisely, there is a bigger population
[00:43:06.480]of African American communities there.
[00:43:08.700]So I just wanted to bring that to the conversation.
[00:43:13.300]I want Cynthia to answer this question,
[00:43:14.667]but I wanna add a question to Cynthia
[00:43:16.650]on your question to Cynthia.
[00:43:17.940]Cynthia, you put that slide that I took pictures of
[00:43:20.970]about willingness, as a psychology scholar.
[00:43:24.690]I mean, we've talked about, for example,
[00:43:27.210]the individualist denial of the problem, right?
[00:43:31.380]We see, rationally, we see the problem,
[00:43:33.990]but we're unwilling to change.
[00:43:35.730]What is the willingness of black, brown, indigenous people?
[00:43:41.040]Why?
[00:43:41.940]What is the psychological reason of that?
[00:43:43.468]Because there are people being affected by it.
[00:43:46.710]That's why they're motivated, right?
[00:43:49.200]I mean it's really, we talk about space,
[00:43:53.370]if you can isolate yourself physically and psychologically
[00:43:56.520]from a problem, you don't have to be motivated to change.
[00:44:01.380]You don't see it and you don't wanna see it,
[00:44:05.917]so it's a larger system, right?
[00:44:07.830]But we do know how to get people motivated
[00:44:10.200]to change their behavior and get them psychologically ready
[00:44:12.570]to do something, we just haven't, as a nation,
[00:44:15.030]decided to do that.
[00:44:21.120]And then I guess as a quick structural point,
[00:44:23.460]the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States
[00:44:26.460]has been heavily disempowered.
[00:44:30.210]So, like, around, looking at the
[00:44:33.480]what people with air quality can get away with,
[00:44:37.170]now what corporations can get away with,
[00:44:39.300]and also the US Army Corps of Engineers
[00:44:42.900]is part of the problem, like, regarding water issues,
[00:44:47.490]and there's a lot of critiques
[00:44:48.780]and a lot of, like, numbers and things around that too,
[00:44:51.540]but I wanted to throw that in there,
[00:44:53.220]around this being a structural issue
[00:44:55.080]and thinking about who is in power
[00:44:57.690]and who is keeping power by doing that.
[00:45:02.288]It's about being in check.
[00:45:03.150]Yeah, and just let me add,
[00:45:04.650]when I first came to UNL, a long time ago,
[00:45:07.290]over 30 years ago, there were still signs
[00:45:09.780]by all the light fixtures that said,
[00:45:11.347]"Turn out the lights," from the Jimmy Carter era, right?
[00:45:14.250]You don't see those anymore.
[00:45:15.900]We should have left those up.
[00:45:17.130]Why would they ever take those down?
[00:45:19.080]And you don't see an advance
[00:45:20.430]in all kinds of public buildings,
[00:45:22.440]public buildings with solar power panels
[00:45:25.380]on the top of them.
[00:45:26.730]That should be a no-brainer, right?
[00:45:30.300]But we're just, like she said,
[00:45:32.100]the structure's just not there, and we're no willing,
[00:45:34.590]apparently at this point, to make those changes,
[00:45:38.490]and to advocate for legislators
[00:45:41.670]who will vote for those kinds of changes either.
[00:45:46.830]All right, thank you, the four of you,
[00:45:48.180]for this wonderful presentation.
[00:45:50.490]I think it's very eye-opening.
[00:45:53.400]So my question is more about,
[00:45:56.760]so we have the facts,
[00:45:58.380]we have the facts and the history,
[00:46:00.510]and we know that, and apparently that's not enough
[00:46:04.260]for motivation to make people change.
[00:46:07.350]And I don't believe that we should individually,
[00:46:11.670]you know, be forced to change,
[00:46:12.990]but it's more of a institutional change.
[00:46:16.650]But then I turned into Louis and Leanna,
[00:46:21.330]who did a more poetic way of understanding this,
[00:46:25.290]and this is a question that comes
[00:46:26.700]from students all the time.
[00:46:28.080]So we have the facts, they're not enough.
[00:46:31.140]Why should we turn to poetry or to literature,
[00:46:34.380]or to a poetic voice?
[00:46:37.560]So I'm thinking that will be the motivation.
[00:46:40.200]Why poetry?
[00:46:41.520]Why would poetry be different than reading the news,
[00:46:44.970]or seeing whatever, or just why poetry?
[00:46:49.230]Why should we turn to that poetic voice,
[00:46:51.690]to advocate, to plead, or to express our feelings
[00:46:56.670]about climate change?
[00:46:59.400]To answer real quick,
[00:47:01.950]it's just that rational, logical,
[00:47:04.020]scientific language hasn't worked.
[00:47:05.820]We have all the fucking evidence we need.
[00:47:08.790]This is recorded, God damn it.
[00:47:10.603](audience laughing)
[00:47:11.520]We have all the evidence we need for decades.
[00:47:14.280]It's not even cool in science
[00:47:16.200]to be talking about climate change
[00:47:17.430]because the research has been done, right?
[00:47:20.490]This is done, right?
[00:47:21.990]So we have a problem of monolingualism and monoculturalism.
[00:47:25.830]That's the problem we have.
[00:47:27.870]That's why we allow, I insist on war,
[00:47:30.960]I insist on war here,
[00:47:32.670]that's why certain lives are not valuable
[00:47:35.400]because we don't know their culture,
[00:47:37.230]because we don't know in what language they pray,
[00:47:39.720]because that language sounds like gibberish to us,
[00:47:42.390]because in the US, we are proud to be monolingual, right?
[00:47:45.840]That's the problem.
[00:47:47.010]That's the problem that in the university system
[00:47:49.230]languages are being caught left and right,
[00:47:51.360]that in UNL, we don't have a program
[00:47:53.250]that teaches indigenous languages.
[00:47:55.260]Isn't that embarrassing, right?
[00:47:57.390]So if we cannot put ourself in those positions,
[00:48:00.780]we will never acknowledge,
[00:48:02.520]because, as Cynthia said, we'll remain in denial
[00:48:07.260]if it does not affect you,
[00:48:09.240]and it does not affect white people.
[00:48:11.670]That's the truth right now, right?
[00:48:13.980]You're still in your SUVs and your air conditioners,
[00:48:18.360]it doesn't affect you.
[00:48:19.950]You need to see the culture
[00:48:22.530]and the art of the people that it's affecting,
[00:48:25.470]but if you don't know the language,
[00:48:28.050]the first dictionary in Europe was written
[00:48:30.540]in Spanish, in 1492,
[00:48:35.130]and the guy who wrote it told the queen,
[00:48:37.537]"Language is the partner of empire," right?
[00:48:43.476]Telling the king of Spain, "You want an empire?
[00:48:45.492]Make them monolingual," right?
[00:48:47.880]So that's my quick answer to you.
[00:48:50.184]But we have quite a few questions.
[00:48:52.890]One over there and one over there.
[00:48:54.660]Thank you.
[00:48:56.670]I don't think I need a mic (indistinct).
[00:48:58.741]Yes, you need it.
[00:49:05.235](Tom speaking faintly)
[00:49:09.300]I have a less exciting question
[00:49:12.180]because it's administrative,
[00:49:13.770]and I feel like, as a poet,
[00:49:18.120]and someone who's sort of committing my life
[00:49:20.100]to the academic institution and a staunch criticizer
[00:49:23.480]of the institution and defender of it,
[00:49:26.520]how do we make these things...
[00:49:30.300]Like, I wish that this was in a big auditorium
[00:49:33.300]with professors from the hard sciences and lawyers
[00:49:37.140]because there's so many connections that you're making
[00:49:42.090]and that we need to continue to make at this institution
[00:49:45.180]to make ethnic studies central.
[00:49:46.950]So I'm just curious,
[00:49:48.270]as people have been in the academy longer than me,
[00:49:51.960]and also thank you so much for this wonderful talk,
[00:49:54.000]like, how do you see yourselves, specifically,
[00:49:58.500]individually and collectively, sort of fighting
[00:50:01.350]for the central position of ethnic studies
[00:50:05.070]in the institution?
[00:50:08.640]If ethnic studies were to be central,
[00:50:12.890]it would be brought on by students.
[00:50:15.870]That's how ethnic studies started,
[00:50:17.730]from student mobilization.
[00:50:21.150]Our students aren't supported
[00:50:22.410]to advocate for themselves, though.
[00:50:23.820]Sometimes they don't know how to advocate for themselves.
[00:50:29.640]And yes, ethnic studies shouldn't be siloed.
[00:50:33.180]It's literally the history of the world,
[00:50:38.970]but there's also risk in institutionalizing it,
[00:50:43.140]and other disciplines.
[00:50:44.370]So sure, I want the big auditorium with the hard scientists
[00:50:48.090]and things like that, but I don't want their questions,
[00:50:50.550]and I really don't want their collaborations either,
[00:50:54.750]which is why I look to poetry,
[00:50:57.750]because we need a place of knowledge production
[00:51:01.680]that's not constrained to these.
[00:51:04.110]I mean, we're always bracketing and classifying
[00:51:06.600]and identifying, and there's so much more,
[00:51:11.250]but we make it easy on ourselves by these standards.
[00:51:14.910]I'm not an academic reject.
[00:51:18.431]I love learning, I love reading, I love writing,
[00:51:20.250]I love being in an intellectual community,
[00:51:23.100]and I love being with students.
[00:51:25.740]I think it's a question
[00:51:26.610]of how we are understanding ourselves
[00:51:30.180]in relation with the institution,
[00:51:32.070]and using it for what we want to accomplish.
[00:51:38.160]It doesn't have to be,
[00:51:39.720]I mean, you know,
[00:51:40.560]there's the nine to five of the research
[00:51:43.770]and writing and publishing,
[00:51:45.000]but there's so much that happens outside as well,
[00:51:48.300]and it doesn't just go to nine to five, of course,
[00:51:50.970]but I'm talking about the moments
[00:51:54.510]of the excess with students and community.
[00:52:01.470]If I just focus on the institution,
[00:52:03.720]and if I thought of myself
[00:52:06.990]having like an institutional identity, which I do,
[00:52:12.131]I would have a lot less joy in my life.
[00:52:13.800]So I want to center my joy always,
[00:52:17.460]and other people's as well.
[00:52:19.260]We have time for one more question there.
[00:52:21.660]Cool, thank you so much for the talk.
[00:52:25.620]So often, I find that in these spaces,
[00:52:28.800]we're speaking to ourselves.
[00:52:30.660]So everybody that's here probably agrees with
[00:52:34.200]or is on board with these topics or these ideas,
[00:52:37.500]as a prerequisite to coming to these talks.
[00:52:40.926]A person I like to think about is my mom,
[00:52:43.770]a white, middle-class family from Lincoln, Nebraska.
[00:52:46.680]If I bring up either of these topics to my mom,
[00:52:49.230]she thinks I got radicalized at college
[00:52:51.030]and I'm off the deep end, right?
[00:52:53.610]So you four kind of live within these academic spaces.
[00:52:58.110]How would you go about bringing these topics up
[00:53:00.960]to people that, like, might disagree with you,
[00:53:03.510]or how might you, like, start
[00:53:05.850]to present these ideas every day
[00:53:07.650]so that we might see some change of opinion
[00:53:10.560]in my mom or in other people like my mom?
[00:53:14.220]We have mothers, too.
[00:53:16.035](audience laughing)
[00:53:18.300]I think it's also a question of investments.
[00:53:23.880]I don't claim I'm changing the world.
[00:53:27.480]So if someone's too confrontational, or, you know,
[00:53:32.817]I'm not gonna try to change their mind.
[00:53:35.790]Well, the big question, Luis, is
[00:53:37.200]how do you get other people to read poetry?
[00:53:39.510]I mean, that's what I've been trying to do all my life.
[00:53:43.748](Leanna speaking faintly)
[00:53:44.797]Well, there's a cool answer to that, right,
[00:53:48.210]that has nothing to do with academia, by the way.
[00:53:51.270]And I think we are in academia,
[00:53:53.760]I think all four here, we're in academia,
[00:53:55.800]but we're not of academia.
[00:53:57.707]In the US though.
[00:54:00.720]Like, what is the US?
[00:54:02.460]Come on, man.
[00:54:03.660]I mean, is this really separated from the rest of the world?
[00:54:06.360]I don't know, I don't know, I still don't know.
[00:54:08.100]I've been here 17 years, but still don't know.
[00:54:11.940]But what I was gonna say, man,
[00:54:15.150]art doesn't respond to institutions,
[00:54:17.580]doesn't respond to systems, you know?
[00:54:25.230]When people say what is cool, you know?
[00:54:28.650]I mean, it communicates, right?
[00:54:30.390]Good music communicates, good food communicates, right?
[00:54:33.840]But you gotta be willing, right?
[00:54:35.310]You gotta put yourself in the middle to see it.
[00:54:37.740]I don't think academia's gonna save the world,
[00:54:39.690]if anything we know is not doing it, right?
[00:54:42.450]I think it should exist, I do.
[00:54:46.601]Well, but don't trust me,
[00:54:47.760]I make my money from academia, right?
[00:54:50.610]So don't trust me on that, but do trust me on that,
[00:54:53.940]yeah, we gotta be willing to learn from outside
[00:54:58.890]just because this is what you humans do.
[00:55:01.380]We migrate, we move, you know,
[00:55:03.687]and we learn from other cultures,
[00:55:05.370]and if we don't do that, we die,
[00:55:07.680]and we are in the moment of,
[00:55:09.480]dying seems like a very likely, I'll stop.
[00:55:15.360]Thank you so much for coming out tonight.
[00:55:17.280]Give them another hand, please.
[00:55:19.092](audience clapping)

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Environmental Justice: Why is Ethnic Studies Crucial in our Age of Ecological Catastrophes?

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