Restoring the Landscape: Indigenized Futures & the Land Back Movement
First we share a report from Yurok country, in the Pacific Northwest. The largest dam removal in U.S. history has entered a critical phase, with the lowering of dammed reservoirs on the Klamath River, with members of the Yurok Tribe leading the effort. We use this as an example of why Indigenous people must be leading the efforts of conservation, which is the basis of the Land Back movement discussed in this show.
We also include a brief report on the Northern California Hoopa Tribes relation to water from ABC10 in Northern California, featuring Merv George of the Hoopa Tribe.
Then we air an interview from 2023 of Dr. Cutcha Risling Baldy, Associate Professor and Department Chair of Native American Studies at Cal Poly Humboldt, on how radical imagination is required to forge a new, and also perhaps ancient way out of the injustices and destruction inherent in settler colonialism with the Land Back Movement.
Dr. Cutcha Risling Baldy is the Co-Director of the Cal Poly Humboldt Native American Studies Food Sovereignty Lab & Traditional Ecological Knowledges Institute. Her book: We Are Dancing For You: Native Feminisms and the Revitalization of Women’s Coming-of-Age Ceremonies received Best First Book in Native American and Indigenous Studies, at the 2019 Native American Indigenous Studies Association Conference. She is also the volunteer Executive Director of the Native Women’s Collective [http://www.nativewomenscollective.org/], a nonprofit organization that supports the continued revitalization of Native American arts and culture. She is Hupa, Karuk, and Yurok and is enrolled in the Hoopa Valley Tribe.
Carry Kim, Co-Host of EcoJustice Radio. An advocate for ecosystem restoration, indigenous lifeways, and a new humanity born of connection and compassion, she is a long-time volunteer for SoCal350, member of Ecosystem Restoration Camps, and a co-founder of the Soil Sponge Collective, a grassroots community organization dedicated to big and small scale regeneration of Mother Earth.
