This is Climate to Action, a California State University San Marco Student Podcast.
We're here to amplify voices and empower solutions in the fight against climate change
and to address climate injustices for all people.
We are committed to incorporating discussions on indigenous knowledge and addressing the
climate crisis and in providing a call to action in every episode.
My name is Makair Sites and I'm an ENVS student here at CSUSM.
And I'm Michael Giles, also an ENVS student here at Cal State San Marcos and producer
of Climate to Action.
Before we begin, we'd like to acknowledge that CSUSM is located on the traditional territory
of Luseno-Payom-Kuichum people.
The university and surrounding areas are still home to the six federally recognized bands
of the La Jolla, Pala, Pama, Pachenga, Vringon, and Suboba-Luseno-Payom-Kuichum people.
In this land remains the shared space among the Coupeño, Cumay, and E-Pie peoples.
Again, welcome to Climate to Action.
In today's episode, we're going to be focused on climate justice and indigenous knowledge.
Today with us, we have author of the book, As Long as Grass Grows, and lecturer here
at CSU San Marcos, Dina Jilio Whitaker.
Professor, thank you for being here with us today.
Well thank you for inviting me.
So in your book, As Long as Grass Grows, it's actually taught here in several classes at
CSUSM.
Would you be able to tell us more about yourself, the inspiration behind the book, and its
connection to the climate crisis and climate justice?
Sure.
Well that's a long story, so I'll try to keep it brief.
But that book is really a direct result of my own journey as a student when I was an
undergrad at the University of New Mexico in Native American Studies.
And to make a long story short, I took a course on environmental justice in the Native American
Studies department.
And then when I got into grad school, I took another environmental justice course.
And I noticed how environmental justice was being framed.
There was some big gaps, especially as it was concerning American Indian people.
And so I was taught, and as you're developing your academic sort of path, you look for the
holes in the literature, you look to find ways to make interventions into whatever field
you're in.
And so it looked to me like a place ripe for intervention.
And so why wrote a master's thesis theorizing what environmental justice looked like when
American Indian people are centered.
And because environmental justice, the way it's normally taught and framed, it talks
about environmental racism as like the foundation, that there's this very particular type of
racism that happens.
And that's absolutely true.
But for me, what I knew is that a racial analysis or a race-based analysis was not enough to
encompass American Indian concerns.
And so the job for me was to expand that and to take all of the things that are important
for American Indian people into consideration so that we can come to a different conversation
about it.
And so it changes when we're talking about sovereignty, the nation-to-nation relationship
that tribes have with the United States, the factors of land loss, and the foundation
of this country being founded on stolen land.
All of these things, development, the building of the infrastructure of this country, in
consideration with indigenous relationships to land, which are very different, founded
on a very different orientation to the world, a philosophical foundation, all of that changes
the conversation about what environmental justice means.
So that's where it came out of.
Climate change and the climate crisis is really just a subset.
If we talk about climate justice, climate justice, and this is how I teach it, is a subset
of environmental justice.
So the bigger conversation in my mind is this thing that we call environmental justice,
and then climate falls underneath that umbrella.
So it's like a more focused lens of environmental justice, almost?
Yeah.
Yeah, I would say so.
I mean, there really wasn't a conversation about climate justice until there was a conversation
about environmental justice more broadly.
In your book, you mentioned indigenizing climate justice.
Is that what you mean with the indigenous, more focused, indigenous-centered focus on
environmental justice?
Is that what you're referring to?
In terms of climate change, so native people have also a different relationship to climate
change compared to other populations.
I mean, there's a lot of overlap.
Everybody is subject to it.
But for native people, it's part of this history of colonialism and some of the scholarship
that we're reading, especially I'm thinking of Kyle White, who put it so succinctly when
he said climate change is intensified colonialism for native people because we have, that's
where it comes from.
It's the imposition of all these systems that colonization brings, especially capitalism.
Being capitalism is that which really is responsible for the climate crisis.
Well, that definitely dovetails with this idea of colonialism being that which is predominantly
responsible for, because capitalism is hand-in-hand with colonialism.
It's not all humans that are responsible for climate change, too.
It's only certain kinds of humans with certain kinds of lifestyles and ways of being in the
world based on these capitalist values.
That's what gives us climate change, the concept of ownership and private property and the
exploitation of land and environment and not having a worldview that understands a relationship
to the land that's responsible and sustainable, which is really an indigenous worldview.
It's the lack of that, that what gets us here to climate change to begin with.
Can you go into more about that in terms of indigenous knowledge in a localized area,
like traditional ecological knowledge?
Can you explain how you talk about it in your book and how it relates here in San Diego?
Traditional ecological knowledge is one type of indigenous knowledge.
If we think about indigenous knowledge being the kind of knowledge that comes as a result
of what it means to live in a very particular ecosystem and to live with a very particular
set of values, an orientation to the world.
Traditional ecological knowledge would imply the ways that native people lived within those
environments in very particular ways that use the environment, that use their ecosystems
in very intelligent and deliberate ways.
We have this sort of mythology in this country that native people lived in harmony with the
land and they never interacted, they're never imposed on the environment.
They lived gently and didn't alter the environment in any kind of way.
Well, that's really not true.
They did alter their environments, but in very particular ways that typically were about
ensuring abundant food sources that were about controlling the growth of the overgrowth of
forests.
Other ways would be how native people interacted with the ocean in these ocean biomes.
I think some of that knowledge is being reclaimed because Kumiai and Payamkiewiczem, Luseno
people, were forced off the coast centuries ago by the Spanish.
They have become disconnected from those ocean environments, but I'm certain that there
are knowledge system embedded inside their languages and inside their stories about how
their relationship to the ocean evolved certain kinds of practices.
Probably that would be true with harvesting practices around fish species, abalone, and
other kinds of probably even things like kelp and seaweed.
There's probably an infinite array of ways that native people exercised these knowledge
systems into land management practices that would be true not just here in San Diego,
but all over this continent.
Does this knowledge still exist or has it disappeared, would you say?
I would say that it still exists and it exists in varying conditions in different places.
In places like coastal southern California where the tribes were pushed so inland and
dispossessed of the coastal lands, I would say that there's a loss of a lot of knowledge
compared to what we might see up in Northern California, for example, or in Alaska, or
other ocean-based kinds of cultures that haven't been quite as impacted, but certainly Southern
California is a site of some of the most profound impacts.
I would say that there's definitely more loss here.
It also remains to be seen about what's also recoverable.
I know that that's happening.
I know people who are involved in that work in recovering that work and what it means to
be in an ocean landscape and to use the ocean in ways that are culturally relevant.
We were talking earlier about your community-based work and specifically the ocean conservation
and you're an educator.
Do you take the knowledge that you have to try to preserve those indigenous habits and
fishing techniques and try to turn that into your conservation work as well with ocean?
To some extent, I do.
I always say that I might teach.
I teach a course here on this campus on TEK, but I don't teach TEK.
I teach about TEK, but I wouldn't call myself a practitioner of TEK.
When I teach about it, I teach it from a really holistic perspective that includes land management
practices, but it also includes things like policy and the bigger picture stuff around
politics and law and activism and community-based work and stuff like that.
In terms of your question, like how is that happening in my work community-wise, one example
is something I'm working with the Surfrider Foundation right now on.
The Surfrider Foundation, I live in San Clemente and I'm a surfer.
I surf regularly at San Onofre State Beach.
It's an iconic surf break and I'm a local down there.
It's like a home to me.
That beach, we are experiencing incredible erosion all over our beaches everywhere in
Southern California.
Are you eroding?
They're changing.
There's a sand crisis.
There's all kinds of problems.
All problems with overgrowth of urchins.
There's all kinds of intertwined problems.
One of the problems at San Onofre is the erosion, which has to do with the beaches going away
as a result of the interruption of sand flow.
Sand is not accumulating the way it should be for the beaches to maintain themselves.
That has to do with the engineering of the coastline in general, building and harbors
and the elimination of the wetlands.
There's all kinds of problems that have contributed to this issue in addition to a rising sea.
As the seas get warmer, the water expands and this is what causes these rising sea levels.
So San Onofre, we've lost in the last 10 years half the parking.
San Onofre for those who don't know is an iconic beach where for 100 years people have
been able to drive down on the beach.
It's a very important legendary surf break.
The charm of it is that you can drive your car right down on the beach and spend the
day there.
This is really the birthplace of surf culture as we know it in California.
What happens when the sea is rising and the beach is going away and you lose that parking,
we're literally losing that beach.
It's only a matter of time before there's no parking down there at all.
One of the potential long-term solutions, we're going to lose it no matter what.
You can't stop the ocean.
That's something that we all have to come to grips with.
Then it becomes a matter of how long can we make the beach last?
We look for nature-based solutions to that.
We're working on a living shorelines restoration project.
What that is, it's a nature-based solution to sand replenishment.
It's about planting native plants on the beach so that sand will be retained naturally.
Getting rid of some of the hard armoring, that is some of the seawalls that were built
there in part of the crisis, the seawall that they built down there really ended up contributing
to the speeding up of the erosion.
We knew that was going to happen when they built this wall like several years ago and
now we're living with it.
Why would they do that?
Why would we do that?
That's a good question.
At the time, the conversation was the sea is coming in, the oceans washing away the road.
If we build this wall, it'll save the beach from being closed because if there's no road,
there's no access.
They came up with this emergency and that's what the state and surf rider opposed it.
The state and some of the local surfer groups were like, no, we have to do something.
The state allowed an emergency permit to put this, it's called a riprap wall, a revetment
wall.
They built this wall on an emergency basis and surf rider was like, no, we know what
happens when you build these walls.
It's going to speed up the erosion.
It saved the road for a few years, but here we are now where the road is completely washed
out, the road caved in just about a few weeks ago.
Surf San Onofre is completely closed right now because the road got washed out and it
wasn't because of the wall, but the wall contributed to it.
There was this other problem with this drainage pipe, but you can see where the wall ends.
It's eaten all around there and it created a weak spot in there that contributed arguably
to the washing out of the road.
That's right where we were intending, where this plan to build this living shorelines
project is.
The living shoreline project is based on lots of examples all over this country, especially
in the East Coast.
They do these sand replenishment projects that are about building, they plant native
plants, the sand builds up, builds like a sand dune, and that helps keep the ecosystem intact
and the ocean kind of at bay.
Eventually, like I said, it's going to come no matter what, but if we can use these tools,
they're successful.
They did one, Cardiff.
There's a big living shoreline project in Cardiff.
There's a huge one in Ventura that's super successful.
These are nature-based solutions.
It acknowledges the problem of what it means to alter a landscape or a beach scape in this
case and the importance of native plants.
Both plants, they get choked out by invasive species.
That's definitely the case all throughout the Santa Novembere State Park.
One of the things that we do is try to do some beach cleanup by eradicating some of the invasive
species so that the native species can thrive in those areas.
That's more up, for example, in the Trestles, at the Trestles Beach area.
I know I'm going on and on about this.
No, no, that's good.
That just sounds like the native-based solutions are like a callback, I guess, to what tribes
did.
Like you said, they did control burns.
It was nature ideas that we could live harmoniously.
It wasn't short-term solutions.
It was things that actually aided in living with the land in a more harmonious level rather
than continuously doing things that would have to be redone, I guess, or things like
the wall where it just continuously erodes the beach and or faster in the wall.
We experienced it for less time.
These technological, that brings up another subject, the technological solution.
So much, and I always say, and I know we're getting off script here, but it's to your
point about climate change and indigenous knowledge, like what are the intersections of climate
change and indigenous knowledge?
I always say we often hear about climate change is a technological problem.
It's a problem of technology, and we can fix it with technology.
Or it's an economic problem.
We just change our economics to combat climate change.
I think those are all only partial answers.
Ultimately, I believe it's a philosophical problem, and I always say this, because when
you live in a society that is exploitive, where the relationship to your land and environment
is about exploitation and extraction.
There is no sense of reciprocity with the land.
There is no sense of responsibility to it.
There is no sense of what does it mean seven generations down the road.
And for native people, that's the difference.
They lived in ecosystems sustainably for millennia because they knew that whatever they did on
the land, they had to think about how it was going to impact generations into the future.
And so that's why they did not develop the kinds of high technology that Europeans developed.
It's not because they weren't smart enough or incapable or didn't have the right kind
of civilization.
It was because they had a different set of values.
What they believed their responsibility was to their environments.
They knew what it meant to live within the confines of an ecosystem.
It's that simple.
And taken to consideration what you do today and what it's going to impact, who it's going
to impact, and how it's going to impact in the future.
It's really not hard.
But European Eurocentric worldviews don't have that kind of ethos.
And that's why it's a philosophical problem.
These are philosophical issues.
These are worldview issues.
And so I firmly believe that there will be no sustainable society unless those kinds
of values are built into the systems that we have now, which include technology and economics.
Absolutely.
And in your book, you mentioned that a lot of policy follows that technology connection
and not so much the longevity.
You brought up that with a pipeline that only seven miles of 44% of the total pipeline
that runs across the United States, all pipeline have to be monitored or inspected.
And that was really in promotion of that.
That policy is a really...
Shocking, right?
Yeah.
When I read that, I was like, what the heck?
That doesn't make any sense.
And the policy promotes that lack of care for the environment.
And that really shows on the Eurocentric idea and connection with nature is that there
just is no care for it.
Why would you build a pipeline under a body of water?
Yeah.
That's the water source of a tribe and or people.
No, 17 million people.
Oh, yeah.
Not just a tribe.
17 million people down water, downstream.
That makes absolutely no sense.
Yeah.
I agree.
And it's one of those things too where there's just like these structures.
And I feel like we've talked about this before, but these structures, it's colonial infrastructures,
really what it is.
And it kind of goes back to this idea that you mentioned of domination and domination
of resources, right?
How does that alteration of water, of where it's at and how it flows, how does that relate
to the land and how it, I guess, affects indigenous communities?
Well, it's one of the huge topics that I talk about and wrote about in the book.
But these kinds of infrastructure projects, these national infrastructure projects, the
way that I think about it is that they were designed by settlers for settler populations,
growing populations.
So why do you build dams?
You build dams for flood control, you build dams for water storage, which can then feed
agriculture.
And those infrastructures, especially the big giant dams, like on my reservation, the
Grand Coulee Dam was a perfect example.
And that's in the Columbia River watershed.
The Columbia River watershed is incredibly dammed.
There are over 60 dams in that watershed, and I've even heard way more than that.
I don't even know if people know how many there are in that watershed.
And it's a big watershed.
In the Missouri River watershed, there were the Pick Sloan Act, which was passed in 1944,
only created five dams.
The dams created so much disruption for the tribal communities.
They flooded villages, they flooded timber sources, medicine sources, food sources, and
displaced thousands of people, thousands of people, five dams.
In the Columbia River watershed, where my ancestors are from, when they built the Grand
Coulee Dam on our reservation, the Calville Reservation, something similar happened.
People were flooded out of their homes.
But it was a different kind of disaster that happened there.
So this is salmon country.
And the entire Northwest used to be a haven.
So much salmon was a very important food source for people.
But not only is it a food source, salmon is a keystone species.
When you have the collapse of populations of a keystone species, that leads to a cascading
effect of other collapsing systems.
And so that's the disaster that's playing out in the Pacific Northwest.
That's one of the reasons they're taking out the dams on the Klamath River, those four
dams, to restore the salmon population and the ecosystem.
So that's a really obvious example of how settler infrastructure has impacted historically
impacted indigenous communities with these salmon runs.
Something similar happened in the northeast.
They have salmon in the northeast too.
Those tribes were cut off from their salmon sources too.
They're fighting this up in Alaska.
They have been for years.
So there's all kinds of ways that these settler infrastructure projects impede on indigenous
rights or indigenous cultures and rights, but also are tied to climate change.
Over Columbia River watershed, the tributaries and the waterways have been so impacted that
climate change, there's less water flowing in some of those places.
So climate change leads to warmer waters, and that also impacts the salmon and other
species.
So that's a whole other problem that's playing out.
So we heard of this new program called ISIC that's coming out of the CICSE.
Would you be able to explain what that is and what the CICSE is as well?
Yeah, the CICSE is California Indian Culture and Sovereignty Center.
It's a research center here on campus that's connected to the American Indian Studies Department.
And CICSE is, as I said, a research center, and we are in the process of forming the indigenous
climate and environmental collaborative.
And it will be housed within CICSE because of, it's a response to some of the things
that we've been seeing in the work that we do, like certainly the work that I do out
in the community, in the work that I do as a consultant, as an activist, and just a community
member.
It has to do with sort of the way that the climate change and environmental policy is
going in this country right now, especially under the Biden administration, where we know
the Inflation Reduction Act, which is often called Biden's climate bill, right?
It has sort of that nickname.
That was passed in what, 2022?
And he had a really tough time passing it because of the pushback that it was receiving,
but they finally passed it.
And it's a climate bill, basically.
And so there's a ton of money, I mean, billions, hundreds of billions of dollars that have
been allocated for climate and environmental things.
And so there's all this money coming down the pike for research, for policy work, for
community work, and for adaptation to climate change, mitigation, everything.
So clean energy, everything that is tied to climate change.
And so we've been seeing that there's money coming in for research grants.
Even at the state level, this is true, too, in California.
There's billions of dollars being provided for research and all kinds of initiatives.
And this is to college campuses, school campuses?
Yeah, that's definitely part of it.
The UC system alone got $100 million.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
Just in the last couple of years, that's a lot of money.
Sure is.
It's a lot of money.
And so there's, at the same time, the Biden administration has really prioritized environmental
justice and indigenous knowledge.
I mean, they've issued policy statements about this.
It's great.
You know, we really, this is a good thing.
But what's happening is that much of these monies coming down as grants are incentivizing
work with indigenous communities and the incorporation of indigenous knowledge.
But we're talking about researchers who have no knowledge of working with indigenous people
and no knowledge of indigenous knowledge.
So they wanting to take advantage of those incentives to incorporate indigenous knowledge
and indigenous communities into these research projects, they're often done really badly.
And there are also groups that are attaching themselves to, you know, are trying to capitalize
on some of this money that aren't even native, but passing themselves off as native.
So it's opened up, we think of it as a new gold rush.
So that's opening up, you know, new cans of worms.
And so we decided that we need to sort of take that, take initiative to be able to provide
some kind of interventions for folks who want to do these kinds of research projects and
whatever else kind of projects, but do it in the right way with the right kind of guidance.
We have the expertise, we have the connections in Indian country, we know who's who, we know
who to work with, we know how to steer people in the right directions, we know how to help
them design research projects in appropriate ways that include native people from the beginning
and not as an afterthought, for example.
So there's a number of initiatives popping up all over the country in different university
environments that are dedicated to incorporating indigenous knowledge, but they're typically
based in like environmental studies or other kinds of like STEM ways that are, you know,
science based.
And that's great, you know, that's all needed, but our work will be more focused more on
policy and helping to guide, you know, researchers and community, other kinds of, you know, stakeholders
that are doing work, nonprofits, there's all kinds of, all kinds of, you know, people
getting involved.
So, so we see, we see it as something like an institutional review board.
So yeah, so it where we'll be able to, to help just guide people in the right direction.
And would this be something that they like come up to you up, like with the, they come
up to the Isaac group themselves, or is this like, do y'all have to put in the work to
do this, to like go in and find the research and like review it?
Yeah, we're not going to, I don't see ourselves, I mean, we're still conceptualizing this thing.
I don't see ourselves doing research for them, but certainly guiding them in the right direction
where they need to go.
You know, we're working right now with, with surfrider, for example, with helping them
just doing simple indigenous engagement.
There's groups are coming out of the woodwork wanting to work in all kinds of ways with
native populations.
There's one of them, I'm helping them develop guidelines and protocols for how to engage
with native populations.
Surfrider's been around for since 1984.
And they're just now like starting to get in, to get sensitized and activated to working
with, with indigenous communities.
But it's a predominantly white organization.
They, they really don't, they don't know what they don't know, you know, and this is true
for many, especially conservation groups.
Conservation is notoriously white in its foundations.
And you know, with this new, this new push to diversity that we've been seeing in the
last few years, that's changing and that's great.
But what it means to work with diverse populations is not the same straight across the board.
To work with indigenous people is really a different, it's a different thing completely
than working with other, other kinds of like ethnic minority groups.
Native issues are very, very different.
And so, so there is a need for this very specialized kind of knowledge.
And that's what we'll provide.
It's amazing.
It's definitely, definitely needed because we've seen historically, Eurocentric ideas
really pushed on the tribes and people of indigenous background where it's not sustainable.
Like what their ideas of helping are really unsustainable.
And so having this open communication, this collaboration can actually make something
sustainable, which is absolutely incredible.
And really look forward to what could come out of that.
That's really amazing.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
And I really think that there is, there's an openness now that I've never really seen
before.
I think there's urgency, right?
Greater urgency.
We're seeing like climate change is here.
It's now, it's not in the future.
It's happening to us right now.
And that's creating this sense of desperation, I would say.
Absolutely.
Do you find, you mentioned that a lot of other like fake groups you said are coming out of
this too though, out of the build?
Do you find that like, I guess this bill is positive in a way where it really requires
different communities to connect within the communities and those that are in there, like
local tribes and different organizations working with local tribes in very specific community
needs like surf rider here in San Diego, working with San Diego tribes to solve San Diego
problems versus the basin and the Midwest or with working with their local tribes.
It sounds like this is beneficial for community based efforts rather than as a whole, I guess.
Yes.
I'd say.
Yeah.
And that's, and that's right.
All of this work when it comes to environmental issues and climate change is really best done
at the local level.
Right?
I mean, yes, it's a global national problem and region, I don't know, geographically regional,
but so much of the work that needs to be done has to be done in particular ecosystem regions.
Right?
Absolutely.
So, and be responsive to the populations in those areas.
So, you know, think globally, act locally is really what, how the approach that needs
to be taken.
And it's because of that kind of indigenous knowledge that has existed there for essentially
millennia, right?
It's just understanding what the lay of the land is like and understanding like the cycles,
right?
And having the CICSE on campus, like we could really, as a campus, come together and hear
all the different perspectives and work on bettering our community and things that we
and students interact with on a daily.
How have organizations here on campus interacted with the CICSE just out of curiosity?
Has there been much interaction or any relationship building anything like that?
I would say that, you know, there are, there have been successes and some not so much.
There's always room for improvement.
I think that we would really like to be, see more collaboration, you know, between the,
we call it the center, the center and our AIS, AIS department.
You know, we would like to see more collaboration.
And, you know, I think doing this podcast is one way to like get that word out.
We really, we do want to build bridges across difference.
We're just, we just keep putting it out there.
And, you know, we would like to, to partner with the climate, you know, the, I'm not
sure the climate, the faculty working group, but I'm not sure if they've changed their
name.
I'm not up to speed with where they're at, but, you know, at some point we would definitely
like to work with them and, and collaborate because they are just the kind of group that
would, could benefit from what we'll be doing with our ISIC initiative.
So how do people come to you like, where can they find you?
How do they say hi?
I guess.
Yeah.
Well, we have to build a website.
We don't even have funding yet.
Yeah.
Hopefully, you know, we're working, we're literally speaking this thing into existence.
And so we're working with Sir Frider.
We also, you know, there, there are other things kind of brewing as well.
And we have the, we have the attention of the chancellor's office, right at the, right
at the top of the CSU system.
They are totally in support of us.
And hopefully they're, you know, there's, they, I think that there's a, they want to
see this initiative be system-wide.
So we, you know, we are in a position of, you know, easily having more work than we
even know what to do with before long.
So as students of CSUSM, how can we help everyone on campus help promote the growth of this group
and promote what you guys can do?
Well, think about, think about in your own work, in your own research, whether it be,
you know, undergrad or graduate level, you know, come see us.
Just come talk to us.
If you are curious about, you need some advice, you need some, you know, guidance, you know,
remember that you have an incredible resource on this campus.
You got rock stars in this, in literally we are some of the, the faculty in our department
are rock stars in our fields.
You know, we're, we want to help.
You talked a little bit about how you're a surfer and how you do, do a lot of work out
kind of by the coast.
So I was just curious if you could go more into that and do you get a sense that you're
actually making a difference?
Because I know at least for a lot of the listeners out here, I know at least I'm part of this,
but when it comes to climate change, like there's just so much anxiety and it seems like things
are just changing so fast that it almost feels like your own individual actions don't matter,
you know.
I, I think so.
Yeah.
I mean, I, I would never have, I mean, even 10 years ago, I couldn't have imagined where
my, where the work has taken me.
An example is the work that I've been doing with the World Surf League.
So I've been working with the World Surf League for the past three years.
The World Surf League is just a for-profit corporation, they are the purveyors of global
professional surfing and they run surf contests, you know, all over the world.
And they, in recent years have developed a sustainability initiative that they call one
ocean.
And, and so this one ocean initiative is, they're very, they're very upfront.
They're basically, they do surf contests, but they're also a production company.
So it's very visual.
So they have a website and, you know, it's, you know, it has a large platform, millions
of people all over the world go to that website and watch their contests, you know, live streaming.
And so this, this one ocean initiative has done some really good work.
They, they produce these videos, they have, you know, fortunately become sensitized to
indigenous issues when they go into countries like Australia or El Salvador or Indonesia,
Tahiti, Hawaii, here in California, they have engaged with indigenous, they've, they have
grown in their understanding that when they go to those places, they are indigenous homelands.
And so I've been working with them here in California on that to, to build relationships
with local tribal communities, to pay the respects, to bring the indigenous community
in.
For example, they do the world championships at Trestles, right?
That's a Hasheman territory.
And so for the past three or four years, they have done, you know, this, all kinds of beautiful
programming with the tribal community.
And, and it's been, and they film it.
So there's an aspect of it that is kind of commercial, right?
It's, it's very visible.
But this is a tribe that is not a federally recognized tribe that has, you know, undergoes
erasure and invisibility all the time, but they, you know, when you get an organization
with that much visibility and power coming in to bring, to shine a light on that community,
that there's power in that.
And it has been a beautiful thing to see.
And it's because of me and one other person pushing our way in there and just saying,
you guys are coming here, you need to bring the indigenous community in, bring the native
community in, at least, you know, have, give, pay the respects that you're on their land.
And they took it really seriously.
And so now it's the point where every time they come and they do that, that world championship
there, that's what they're, they're seeing the faces of the indigenous community of
Orange County.
And you know, that's really gratifying.
And I think it teaches, you know, it teaches a certain kind of ethic to the non-native population,
right?
That, that number one native people are still here.
These are still their homelands.
And we need to be sensitive to that and to, to respect that.
This is, I mean, it's the culmination of decades and decades of the opposite of that happening,
of the erasure and the, the, the ignoring.
So in a way it's kind of rewriting historical narratives for, to acknowledge these people
and to try to undo the erasure that still happens today in some sense.
Beautiful.
Yep.
And, you know, we've done some amazing work and I'm really proud of it.
I've been able to help guide them in that work.
So these are, these are, you know, what we're talking about is paradigm shift.
This is what we need.
You know, the response to climate change and to all the crises that we live with in this
world require paradigm shift.
And paradigm shift is transformation and we need transformation on all levels of society.
We need them on, on the personal level within ourselves.
We need them on the intrapersonal level between our relationships and we need them on, we
need it on the institutional level.
So everywhere we can go and bring transformation.
That's really the work.
And that's what you need to keep your eyes on.
Like is what you're going to do today in this room in this podcast going to change the world
tomorrow?
Probably not, but it contributes to that energy.
Right?
It's all energy and, and all of it counts, all of it matters.
And that's what we just got to, you know, we got to focus on what's in front of us while
we work for the bigger picture.
But that's I think the way to manage that, that hope, that sense of hope and not get,
you know, not get inundated with hopelessness.
Just keep doing the work that's in front of you and do the best that you can do.
That's all any of us can do while we work to change the system.
You know, environmental humanities is really important, right?
So bringing in the humanities into conversation with environmental sciences, critically important.
And you're going to talk about the environmental humanities.
We need to talk about, you know, how do the environmental humanities engage in settler
colonial analysis, right?
Because then we can talk about the history, you know, how did we get here and, you know,
how the, the violation of indigenous rights and land theft and all of that, how it's all
tied together.
Because we need to, we need to turn it around.
There has to be a reckoning for this colonial system.
A paradigm shift.
Perfect.
Well, thank you again for being here, Professor Gilio Wittiker.
And thank you for talking with us today.
You're welcome.
And to our listeners, if you want to hear more from Climate to Action, a CSUSM student
podcast, follow us on TikTok, Twitter and Instagram at Climate to Action.
For this week's Call to Action, check out the California Indian Culture and Sovereignty
Center.
The first day is csusm.edu slash c-i-c-s-c or find the link on our socials.