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Welcome to For The Wild Podcast. I'm Ayana Young. Today on the show, I'll be speaking with Bani Amor, a gender-queer travel writer who explores the relations between race, place, and power.

Bani Amor Even through story we’re consuming place and that is inextricable from consuming place.

Well Bani, thank you so much for joining me today. Your work is so expansive, you know, touching on issues from extractive tourism to climate change and disaster capitalism. So I'm really excited to weave all these threads into our conversation today.

Bani Amor This is so great. Thank you so much for having me.

Ayana Young Well, as a starting point, I think it would be useful to unpack common narratives of place and “travel” as a genre. Many of your articles speak to the historical tradition of travel writing that was forged during the period of European imperial expansion and “exploration.” Could you begin by sharing why we must understand this genre as a subjective one with its roots in colonialism? Who defines common historical and contemporary notions of travel, mobility, and movement? 

Bani Amor We already know who defines it, right? Just like who defines much of the world in the way it works, much of the story that we are given, especially, you know, I'm on Turtle Island, and I just want to, you know, acknowledge that I’m on Matinecock and Canarsie land here in Queens, New York. That is the story that we get, you know, what is the old adage, he who wins tells the story, it's very, that's such a paraphrasing of that term, but you know, the conqueror gets to tell the story of the conquered and we see that all encapsulated in travel writing. More I think then in kind of any other world, and travel, in general, is when all these delineations of power, just open up, and it's unavoidable and this elephant in the room of the of travel culture that we just are not going to talk about, and I mean, more and more, we are talking about it. But you know, there's a little bit of democratization of this, especially on social media - I'm talking more about.

But you know, the same folks are in power, the ones telling the story. And you know, Faith Adiele a mentor, she's a travel author, she teaches travel writing for BIPOC and she says, you know, this is all political, because travel writers tell the story of the world. So that is a huge responsibility and it's usually advertorial, right, we're basically selling place, and not thinking about that in a critical way, not thinking of ourselves as a part of the world and our place in the world in this critical way, and how that impacts the stories we tell. So our whole lives are subjective, you know, just being on this Earth is a subjective experience. But in travel writing, you know, you have this dominant narrator who is usually white, who is usually monied, who is usually Western and English speaking, and all these things, and, you know, that is such a delusion, a little bit of a delusion, you know, are we really getting the real story of this world when we're looking in the travel writing section of a bookstore? Absolutely not. We're getting a story of this travel writer, you know, when I'm reading trouble writing, just like, you know, a lot of our experiences, what we're really reading about how I feel, is I'm not reading about this place, I'm reading how this person uses this place, their writing tells me more about the person than it does about the place and, and you can say that about my writing content about anybody, that's just how we should look at ourselves more. 

But this invisible narrator who is there just to see just to observe, observe, and is, you know, assumed to be objective because often we don't put ourselves in the story. And there's a lack of transparency, especially with people who are not marginalized - a lot of times marginalized writers have to just, it’s expected of like, “I'm you know, BIPOC.” “I'm queer, and you're gonna see that in the beginning” because we are just so used to being othered to you know, we're not dominant so we're going to put ourselves in the story and that affects the way I travel in all these ways. Like travel writers of color, are often asked, you know, what is it like to be you know, Black in blank, what is it like to be, you know, this in blank and it's really like everyone should be talking about race, because race defines you know, all of our experiences in the world, but you know, you're just going to ask the other of like, how that affects them rather than how whiteness, you know, empowers people to take advantage of, you know, this history, and being empowered by this history of colonialism and white supremacy and other forms of domination, I don't want to just talk about race. And yeah, there's not much of looking at that. And so we, you know, we kind of take advantage of the story that already there, and the dynamics that have been put in place for hundreds of years, as you said, you know, through this period of imperial expansion, and, you know, there's not much of a difference, when you open books up, it's just not much of a difference. And it's just that gaze is so embedded into the ways that we see the world and not from far away, you know, where we are right now, like, I'm talking about the land I'm on right now. And if we don't have that relationship to where we are right now, and understanding how our identities are so influenced by place, you know, then how are we going to go far away and just be like this detached, you know, person who has, you know, no identity, I'm just the observer observing the “other” in this anthropological way. So travel writing is definitely kind of in a continuation of these kind of zoological, anthropological, colonial stories of I am this year, and this is the scene, and that dynamic, definitely, you know, we feel it and we see it in our travel writing today, often no matter who is writing it.

Ayana Young Yeah, it's so important to understand the objective versus subjective discussion. And I just don't think we can be objective, whether it's in travel, writing science, for the most part, we're bringing, who we are, our experiences, our memories, our traumas, everything into everything we do. I don't know how we can separate that. And I think that's such an important part. As someone analyzing these visual and written texts, I wonder if you could speak to what is lost when places are portrayed through the lens of white desirability, as well as the pervasiveness of this marketing in blogs, advertisements, television, Instagram accounts, etc. since the travel genre has really proliferated and taken on a new form and shape through online media?

Bani Amor Everything, I feel - we're only getting one, you know, part of the story, and that part of the story is already defiled. I mean, you know, who says, it's not just about white people, right - it's about whiteness, but who says that this is the experience, you know, and when we look at whiteness and white supremacy, there is an inherent detachment from land, from a self and, and from culture, you know, a sense of self and a sense of one's belonging to a place. That's what white supremacy did when it was forged you know, through chattel slavery and the transatlantic slave trade, and genocide, and displacement, and you know, forced reeducation and then kidnapping of Indigenous people, and which, you know, of course, include people from the African continent. And we're, we're kind of stepping into the shoes of this, you know, all-knowing, you know, kind of omnipotent gaze that is, like, you know, who says that this is “the story”, and if that's the story, it's, it's a distorted one. So we're not getting a lot of it. 

You know, we know how publishing works. We know how writing works. This whole industry is not diverse, and so you have a bunch of people trying to get new stories and trying to put, you know, put themselves more in and get the mic, you know, so, people are disempowered from, you know, having their stories, you know, disseminated in these more widespread ways. So in my experience when I'm teaching travel writing to BIPOC, or I'm in these, you know, small workshops or in these spaces and in, like I mentioned Faith Adiele before, being in her workshop, or, you know, whatever, I'm able to hear these stories from BIPOC of travel and all of our different entryways into it, whether it's like home going, you know, returnee, you know, refugee stories, you know, exile stories, all of that is migration stories that are not considered travel writing, and, and I just get everything I need from there, because I love travel writing, so let's take this back, because there's so much power in this, and that people, BIPOC, have been, you know, writing travel for so long, even, you know, before colonization. So that's out there, it’s just erased, people be like “I don’t see this, this doesn’t exist.” And that was probably like that in 2011-2012, and then I, you know, “discovered”, to use that nasty word, that canon of BIPOC travel writing, so that kind of did a little bit of a healing process. And I realized I had so much to learn and catch up with. 

So what is lost is, is a lot of that connection to each other, I'm not saying there's a right way to tell a story, but the more we get, the more voices we get, the more that we can kind of feel, especially people from that place right now, and how often do Indigenous people tell the story of like, travel around their own place, and travel writing, when you see that in the bookstore section, or in the travel section of bookstores, right? Or when you googling something, you know, all of travel writing is not just told from, you know, the side from people who are from there, that's just not what travel writing is considered to be. So we lose a lot. 

Especially because travel writing has been wielded as a tool of settler states, it's just a capitalistic enterprise, right? You know, they're not going to have the interests of the most oppressive oppressed people in their places, you know, the interest of getting, you know, appealing to a foreign audience. And, you know, getting money for them, getting them to come and just kind of like hustling, you know, an Indigenous culture or stereotype of it to you know, bring people in and consume, they're not going to have those interests at heart, they actually have, you know, there's a vested stake in whiteness, and travel, writing, and in tourism, of not telling those stories, and not having those people at the table. And maybe this whole industry shouldn't work, because that's, you know, an inherent part of it, of silencing and erasure and displacement that tourism causes, and that's why, you know, moving toward decolonization and reparations, and abolition, and repatriation of land, or rematriation of land, is how we're going to get like that holistic experience of place, and of people that I think a lot of travel writers or travelers purport to want. But if this is the way we're going, you know, about it, that's, that's just ain’t it, even if you take out some words, even if you, you know, doing some, you know, “ethical” travel stuff is not getting us there, I feel. So that is what is lost. 

As far as social media, I don't think much has changed at all. And that is really sad. Like I said, you know, 2013-2014, I mean, I got on Twitter. At that time, you know, I started being more public, you know, of course, because I had started freelancing, so I had to have more of a public kind of social media presence, and I didn't have any interest in it before that. So it was really cool to find, you know, other folks talking about this stuff, even if they weren't travel writers, it's just, you know, people like me from places who hadn't traveled much, who, you know, I include gentrification and displacement within these stories of decolonizing travel culture and we're talking about, you know, what it's like to be in a place in Ecuador, and see these people come in, there's all these uncomfortable, tense situations, when I'm traveling in my own country. And so I got a lot of, you know, hearing from people who were having this experience, it was all there, and it was just not academic and it was just not people who are, you know, travel writers, who would consider them to be, and a lot of BIPOC shun the label of travel writing because it has been so historically exclusive. 

So I think social media has allowed us to talk more to each other. And in particular, in the travel world, and non-travel writing, just you know, on Instagram, you can go on every single kind of traveler is there, you know, you have the Indigenous hikers and the fat hikers and the Muslim folks and you have like all these BIPOC doing all this cool stuff. But as far as travel literature goes, that's not really changing a lot. You know, maybe you see more like freelance pieces a lot more especially after this summer when a lot of magazines were like, you know what Black people exist all of a sudden, and now we want to publish our stories. You know, no offense, I think some great came out of that. But um, so when we look at social media and social media influencing, you know, we have this ability to actually, you know, leave these, you know, Conde Nast and the National Geographic and Travel and Leisure-ness of it all, and, you know, write in a way that is not, you know, pure advertorial, pure advertising for corporations that put people, you know, travel writers out on PR trips, you know, and we haven't taken it, folks haven't taken advantage of that as much as they could, you know, if you're an influencer, you get sponsored, how is that different from something you would see and you know, these huge corporations, you know, Royal Caribbean Cruise lines or whatever, you have this, this power to kind of tell this in a different way. But I don't see that happening. I see, you know, especially mainstream social media travel world, as a country, a complete continuation of what we're seeing in magazines and what we've seen in books before that, like so long ago, the white saviorism that is on display, the anthropological National Geographic of the other on display within travel photography on social media, it is so much the same, and that's really disappointing, but it is not surprising.

Ayana Young Yeah, absolutely. And you've also clarified that women and femmes are particularly targeted, in the fetishization of place. Can you speak to this as well?

Bani Amor this is how colonization works and how genocide works. You know, again, we don't have to go far away to see how this happened. I mean, I believe, you know, the Earth or La Pachamama is a feminine being and here we are, you know, pillaging, you know, ecocide, genocide, and femicide, they are not separate from each other, it's all at once. And so I mean, look at, you know, if you're, you're reading this, or even talking to elders, or whatever the case may be, and, and, you know, missing Indigenous women, I mean, you know, these are the most targeted people and why because it's a form of domination, over place, and over land. You have people who, you know, are holding on to you know “endangered languages”, you have people who, you know, within their bodies, and with each other are carrying parts of their land, even if they have been displaced, or, you know, deported, or whatever the case may be. And when you harm a person, when you know, sexually abuse a person, and when you kill them, you know, trigger warning for all of this, you know, you're also kind of killing this culture, there's so much that is lost. And that is not the point, right? This is harming humans, and it has been, you know, for, since 1492. 

So, you know, like, this is, this is a full-on attack on women, like, again, you know, I'm not going to go through all these things that have happened. But we read, we listen, and you see these horrible stories of how these settlers came in and what they did from town to town. It's disgusting. And we see the same in chattel slavery, how Black women and Indigenous women are singled out, as like, “we can't dominate a place, until we dominate your body.” And it's the same thing when we see this in travel writing and in travel media, through advertising, through photography, through the whole, you know, visual aesthetic of it, you know, there's all these statistics on it, when folks have studied the advertising of how Indigenous women, Black women are really the visual, you know, logo for a place. 

I mean, Jamaica, the sexualized, you know, kind of like really selling the sex worker and the sex tourism of it all, you know, through a woman's body, we don't often see them looking toward the camera, they're usually looking away, we usually see men, more looking toward cameras and being centered, we don't know the names of these women, and you know, femmes non-binary people. These are just static images, we look at Hawaii. And I mean, come on the hula girl, you know, this, this topless chick who's just so sexualized and completely, you know, out of context, cultural tradition of hula, I think there's another word for it. That is actually more of an original word that I actually don't have. I apologize right now. That is just - she could be anybody. She looks the same. You know, she's not an actual person. So you know, she is Hawaii. 

And when we go there when that land was “annexed” not so long ago, and what continues to happen to Hawaii through, you know, mila-tourism, you know, this is the US military plus tourism, the two biggest industries there. You know, it starts with women, and it kind of ends with women, with how they're treated and how they're sold as part of the product of place. So yeah, this is not just the imagery, right? I want to bring in the military part of it,  the militaristic part of it, and the violent part of settler colonialism and just looking at it being completely separated and it’s just like smiles and fun and sun, these cruises and all inclusive resorts. It's just a complete continuation, if not a tool that is inseparable from the project of domination. I mean, we need travel writing for these ideas and these processes of domination and colonization and progress to continue. That is intentionally the point of the woman, the femme, the non-binary, you know, the feminized person as being, you know, the face of the product that is place, to further colonization. And that is very real as we see it today.

Ayana Young Yeah, thank you so much for speaking of that I was going through my memory, thinking of all the images I've seen of the sexualized woman who has no name, but it's just her body and her smile, inviting, alluring people to this place, it's, yeah, it's definitely been burned into my psyche for all these years of conditioning in this very strange and destructive dominant culture. And I also think about how this settler mindset revolves around the fantasy of bringing the faraway close-up - that is, the tourist’s desire to appear close to place. This yearning drives people deeper into wild spaces like natural reserves, wildlife parks, and remote backcountry areas, hoping to catch a glimpse of, say, the last grizzly bear or take a photo in front of a disappearing glacier. Whether by cruise ship, car, or trail - this kind of travel can greatly impact fragile ecosystems, leaving behind a path of human waste, soil erosion, overfished seas, or polluted waters. What does the fetishization of land and the spectacle of wildlife say about our insatiable cultural hunger to connect with place?

Bani Amor I don't think that it has to do with connecting with place at all, I think it has to do with dominating place, and, you know, we see it's just another tick off of another country, another, you know, stamp in my passport, you know, people brag about this. So I don't think it's about connecting with place if we, you know, truly wanted to, we wouldn't go through this way. And I don't mean to demonize anyone who travels, I travel. But, again, if we're not really looking critical at these ways, then we know, we're not understanding just how problematic our places are within this. 

So the zoological gaze, I mean, we're talking about animals, I mean, going back, you know the time of human zoos, colonization, and creating the other and their environment as this kind of theme parky thing through human zoos for you know, Black folks, were taken and put on display as these animalistic beings that were just so spectacle, excuse me of culture, where people, Indigenous folks, we see, you know, throughout the world were brought to France, United States, to Belgium to all these places, and put on display in the circus act of, you know, you're not in your place, but we're going to put this little fenced in area and put little teepees and you're going to be there and just like pretend to go about your life, like you know, a museum, kind of just like one of those, you know, kind of exhibitions of you see, you know, the Museum of Natural History. 

So, that gaze of just equating someone not equating someone, because, you know, nonhuman animals are great, you know, shout out to them, and it is it but what you're dehumanizing, you know, folks, that is the whole point of the human zoo. And I think it's, I think it has a lot to do with travel today. When you go places people are kind of performing their cultures in very real ways. When we see from place to place again, you know, you have the hula dancers and every all-inclusive resort, you maybe go to the southwest or, New Mexico and you go to these places, and you know, you'll have Native folks put on a dance or put on some clothes that they may not wear every single day anyway. So it is a dehumanization and a kind of demodernization of kind of like putting Native folks and I'm including, you know, Black folks in this encapsulated you know, distorted story in our minds of like, just living in the past of like this land before time, but that is what really sold and travel media a lot is just people in native garb, which a lot of folks wear native stuff, and that’s great you know, traditional clothing, but if it's put on as a show just for the foreigner, that is not a culture and that is not truly connecting to a place that is like viewing it, looking at it, looking at the Maasai doing the adamu, the jumping dance, and just going about your way. 

So that is dehumanizing that is not wanting to see them as a fully-fledged people and their experiences today, especially because as I was touching on earlier, settler states do not, you know, they want this to happen, they don't want people to connect people in this true way. How often do you hear you know, folks, when you are traveling, actually connecting with them? It's more over a transaction rather than anything, how is that a true experience? So I believe that you know, through this, these kinds of continuations of the human zoo, and this actually does still exist, like people are put on display and against their will. And yeah, it's about dominating them through kind of bringing them down from humanity and dehumanizing them. That's the point of colonization.

Ayana Young No, it's all so good to hear this and just kind of be grounded in what you're saying because it's true. And it's easy to overlook this for some of us who are just trying to get a quick trip out of town, and not consider all of these pieces and drawing from what you've shared around the politics of representation, I’d like to think about extractive tourism as “an extension of the colonial project” on the ground. There are so many entry points into this conversation, though one that comes immediately to mind is the vast economic inequality that undergirds our fast-growing international tourism industry. And I think many travelers might think that the money they are spending is helping boost local economies when they travel, but you’ve shared that in a tourism-dependent country like Thailand, nearly 70% of all money spent by tourists leaves the country - a figure that’s even higher at 80% for the Caribbean. So, could you speak to the business model of tourism as extraction and perhaps the way it mirrors the dynamics of resource colonies? 

Bani Amor Yes, I mean, even through story, we're consuming place and that is inextricable from consuming place, the resources, the water, you know, the people and their time and labor, their energy. I mean, that is an extraction, I do feel like, I think with Black folks in particular, you know, that part of white supremacy is just extracting their energy and their labor, through all of these emotional ways, spiritual ways, and, and just draining folks of energy to live their own lives and self determine, which is, you know, how we see, this is what decolonization is about, we need the self-determination for folks to really try to tell the true story of place and their experiences within it. And if you can't, like, first of all, access the beach in front of your house, because this all-inclusive, you know, put in these rules that are just like you can't, this is our land, this is our stretch of beach, when you know, people's homes are bulldozed in Jamaica over and over again, to put in these resorts and have the prime real estate of living in front of the beach, or you know, visiting a beach - that is taking something from them, and that is taking the land that is colonization like it's just still happening through tourism. So this is a way that land itself is still being taken and people's energy and labor are still being taken and paid so less. 

If you're talking about the inequality when it comes to money - I mean, come on Google Google, like how do I travel for cheap, Google budget travel; “How do I live afar for cheap? “How do I become a travel writer”, all of it will say go to someplace where people are poor and live like a king. That is how you do it. You don't have to pay someone you know $300 to do like this whole four-week coaching thing of like, this is how you break into travel writing or this is how you live as an ex-pat. It’s just going somewhere where people are globally poor, where, you know, the, you know, the economy is just like, not as you know, they're not this developed world or whatever the hell we're gonna talk me we're gonna use those terms, economy, if your dollar can stretch longer than you can live like a king anywhere, and that is supposed to be some sort of hack, and it's not it's just you're globally rich and people are globally poor within that context. So people are taking advantage of that dynamic so that you can live there and can you know, in this socially way, live above people in a higher class and enjoy those privileges and turning people into a service class, which gentrification also does. You know who’s taking care of people’s kids, who’s walking their dogs? Who’s cleaning their houses? Who’s washing your dishes? All of these things - you know when you have an ex-pat culture, or tourist zone, tourist ghetto, everyone around it is not living for themselves is not self-determining, this just lessens the ability to strengthen local industries and the economy for oneself and just turning it into this economy that is for a foreigner. 

So I mean, what is the word for that? And I mean, is it imperialism, colonialism, there's like a specific word, I don't want to just put all these into a mishmash, but that's how domination works. I mean, how is that really different from what we're looking at like spice trays or anything else, you know, this economy is for someone else and not for you. And we don't like to talk about child labor, or sex tourism, we just see kids, you know, selling souvenirs to us and we're like, oh, that's very cute. Like, all of our kind of, you know, pseudo, I'm talking about the United States in particular, this kind of pseudo-liberal thing, especially with travelers who are like “I'm a traveler, not a tourist,” they go somewhere and then that social justice mind is goes on vacation, literally. And we just want to be a part of this experience. I mean, you're going to go to a hotel, you want to go to a jacuzzi, and or you want to go to Indonesia, you want to go to Bali, and you want to have this whole, I don't know, all of these kinds of, I'm talking more about the, you know, the alternative spiritual tourist, you know, nature, holistic, whatever that whole world is, and who purport to want these things. And then you're, you know, you're getting in this big tub of water when the, you know, this, this, this resource is dwindling. I mean, it's getting stolen from people so that you can just soak when you could do that at home. I'm not saying this is happening everywhere. I'm singling out Bali and the water shortage is terrible. And it just gets used more and more.

I think that figure 80%, I just want to point out that the figures that you used before that I pointed out in other pieces are like pretty old, like really old, I'm talking I think it's like 2000 or so. So think about how the economy has changed since then globally. So people are getting poorer and when we go places as ex-pats and have ex-pat culture and tourist cultures, we are keeping people from upward mobility, we're keeping them in that service industry. We're not asking them how much they're getting paid. Like, there is not any of that kind of working-class solidarity. When you travel, you are of a higher class period. I mean, that is different when you are Black. Definitely. It's definitely different when you are like a BIPOC woman or feminine binary person. However, it is a lot different when it comes to white folks, you are treated as VIP wherever you are on Earth, okay? Even if people feel like they're fetishized, it's not because whiteness can't be a fetish. It is dominant, maybe sexualized because whiteness signifies wealth. But yeah, that dynamic of I can just take because I bought a ticket like I paid my money, I want to get my money's worth, I want to do all these things. It keeps people in economic instability. 

Tourist economies are so famously unstable. Look at COVID you know, people had to Mexico, Ecuador to other places, Puerto Rico opened themselves prematurely to foreigners, tourists, because they needed that money, even though people are like dying and super sick. And, you know, again, you know, there is this story in travel, writing, this is what we want, we want to connect to people, we love culture, and that whole Mark Twain quote, about, you know, travel being, I guess, the opposite of, you know, intolerance, and these kinds of biases and stuff, but when we look at it, no, I mean, tourists are acting a mess in these places.

So when you become economically dependent to a foreign power, how is that, you know, empowering people? That is such a lie. You know, we see this with the language about supporting Black-owned businesses. No one supports white-owned businesses, right, we just buy. And we just assume, you know, this is all men on all these corporations, white people and all these corporations that we're buying from all the time, but we're going to go out of our way and think we're doing a charitable thing by paying Black people for things. That's just how labor works. You pay people, you get something. So you're not helping nobody, you're just a consumer. That is such a way to I think, just as travel writing does in the travel world does is to lull us to sleep and make us feel better to have this whole dynamic that we are taking advantage of that a lot of us are still marginalized by and these ways, no one is just like, this person has power and this person doesn't. But in travel, it is so very stark, that I think the function of travel writing historically and of now and travel culture is to take that whole violent colonial project and extract the fun and the sun and the leisure out of it, and the escape and wanderlust and have it all, as if it's completely separate. The fun side, the nice side, the pretty side enables the whole project to continue. 

Ayana Young Yeah, I hear you. And just so many memories popping up and thinking about how that relates to the experiences I had growing up and now and, you know, one thing that you mentioned was spiritual tourism. And I'm curious to ask you about the phenomenon of what might be seen as more alternative modes of travel, like say ecotourism, or humanitarian travel and volunteerism or spiritual tourism. Different from all-inclusive cruises, these are often sold as more “authentic” experiences under the guise of spiritual enlightenment, “doing good,” or personal exploration, but they too often revolve entirely around consumption...I recall you also framing this as “heritage tourism”, where a price is put on one’s proximity to Indigeneity and Indigenous cultures. How are these trends currently manifesting in this decade, and in the case of spiritual tourism, what happens when sacred sites, rituals, or medicines are maintained only as fetishized products to meet the tourist’s demand? 

Bani Amor I don't think that spiritual traditions of Indigenous folks and those cosmologies and how they're relating to them now, are completely, you know, for the “other”, a lot of it can be taken, but folks still hold on to things for themselves. It's just not the same, completely out of context. I look at ayahuasca, which I’ve written about in the context of spiritual tourism and how when I talk to folks again, you know, BIPOC as well, who are not from the Amazon - I am not either, I don’t have roots there to my knowledge, my family is from the coast of Ecuador, and you know I want to focus more on the Ecuadorian Amazon, which is what I know most about, people will have this life-changing experience, and that’s valid - I can't tell you what your experience is, but it's just this told as this cure all. 

You know, my time living in Ecuador and, and if I, you know, would have engaged with tourists or like maybe Argentinians, and their whole, like, just weed smoking, dreadlocked or, you know, we can call them mats, they're not actually dreads, they're their whole, you know, scene as like, you don't need pills Bani, you know, with your disabilities, you know, ayahuasca will cure you, or hoasca, or natem in some different words that folks use in different, you know, Indigenous groups in the Amazon, you know, it's completely seeing it out of context as life-saving, it's ableist right, this “life-saving” product, when you talk to folks who are from there, you know, you can do it habitually, it is definitely spiritual, you're not separating, you know, the spiritual natural world from the quote, unquote, modern world. Like, it's not supposed to be a cure-all, it's a way to communicate with the Amazon, particularly I think, trees and plants. 

And that is not what people are getting there. They want to save their own lives and their own souls, you know, maybe and again, I don't want to invalidate people's experiences, you know, my mother died, or I'm depressed, or worked sucks, so I'm going to go far away and take something else from the ground, have someone mix it up, have this super authentic experience with a shaman or a curandera, usually what people just think are shamans - and that is going to like, save my life, I'm going to go back and I'm going to, you know, tell everyone else that this is the cure, but it's just the trend for now, you know, it just, that's what it is right now or maybe even five years ago, and then it just keeps changing. 

So that extraction is horrible for the Earth, is horrible for the Amazon, the Amazon is suffering, why would anyone continue to go there and be a tourist? And you know, full disclosure, I've done ayahuasca after so much of this internal kind of conversation, as well as external, with my Indigenous Amazonian friends and being there and seeing how that market works and what my place would be within it as someone who, again has roots from the coast, from the coast of Ecuador, and taking a part of that. 

Also this conversation just with myself of just not being ready to kind of do something like that. But, but yeah, it's just for you. So how are you going to get well, how are you going to heal, how do any of us heal through harm? You know, so it's just, it's just this really basic way of seeing other people's medicines and thinking that the cure for your, you know, what was called, you know, first world problems, I'll use it in this context is hidden in someone's forest far away, rather than again? Where is the land that you're on? You know, there's healing things all over the place, and maybe what needs to be healed is whiteness itself? I mean, decolonization for white people is more about reconnecting to your humanity, that was taken through the project of white supremacy. I mean, you cannot hold on to that humanity when you, you know, we steal land, harm people, have them, you know, force them into labor, and extract that capital from their labor. 

So when you have folks perform their culture for others, for foreigners, it takes it out of context for themselves, and it puts a dollar sign on it and it's something to be consumed and that is really gross. For me, I don't think anyone should be using palo santo if that is not part of your culture. I think social justice, cool, alternative healing justice people think it’s cool as well, and sage as well, I mean crystals are unethically sourced a lot of the time. I mean, this is about all of us. Right? And even how yoga itself is completely taken out of context, a cure-all, you know, this, this whole Eastern medicine thing. I mean, if you're in the West and your Western, I mean, it's Western medicine. I mean, we're acting like science hasn't been proving these things about ayahuasca, proving things about acupuncture, and ayurveda and all of these things. So putting this really kind of Western and Orientalistic view on what healing is, and what medicine really is just basic, it doesn’t really serve what I think is the purported intention of healing and having connection to oneself and to one’s Earth. We can only truly heal through decolonization, is how I feel about healing through place and with lands and with ourselves. 

So maybe folks are running away from whiteness, and want to cure from whiteness itself, and the privileges it brings with it, which they may find oppressive, and go to a forest somewhere and do this. But you're really just continuing to take, it's not connecting you to your humanity, it's just causing more harm, and how does that heal you? And how does that heal anyone else. Because if we're doing this, it's really selfish. It's just, I'm doing it for me. So you know, kind of whatever happens to anyone else, I'm just not really going to think about it, or their culture or their land, I'm going to go in, I'm going to do it for me and leave. And that is not the point of a lot of these spiritual traditions, it's more about connection. And if you don't have any kind of connection to the land of that place that you're going to, you're going to take something from it, you're going to use it for yourself. I mean, there's a word for that. So I think a lot is lost to those cultures, as well as to the people who I think want to heal through them. It's just not really happening. I think it's a social placebo effect.

Ayana Young This conversation really does challenge me to think about the legacy and impacts of the physical journeys of settlers, and how people in the West have really benefited from “seeing the world”, but that action has opened up a pandora’s box wherein places and people have become commodified for consumption, and there is no reciprocity in that...So, I’d like us to sort of explore and challenge this notion that wisdom can be extracted from so-called “other places” without ramifications... How can one make reparations for the long-lasting effects of spiritual tourism? 

Bani Amor I think when it comes to people, creating social currency over having the access to travel, is like I was saying before, with, you know, the stamps in a passport, you know, it's I didn't really I haven't really gone into the erotics or the sexualization of a lot, we're talking about land and women and femmes and all these things, and the message that travel read media kind of exports, it's a very sexualized one, and a very kind of erotic one. And I think people can't satiate themselves, they can't hold themselves back from that kind of entitlement and that is, you know, inherent in whiteness, and settler colonialism, it's just as I was saying, before you buy a ticket, then you have the right to do whatever you want in that place. There's all inclusive consent, right? So going somewhere, especially for I would say, especially for white men, or like white people, it’s something you can put on your resume, like your worldly, you've traveled, like, while you seen the world, you're like a different person, it just makes you better. You know, what is the other quote, you know, those who don't travel, like have only read one page of the book, you know what I mean? And it's like, nah, you know, people who don't travel might have like, a better connection to their place, which is amazing, you know, knowing your community, you know, being in solidarity with people around you. I mean, this was the kind of year for folks who maybe weren't already doing that, to do that, to really like, Who are my neighbors, you know, who are the Native folks in the place I'm in? Where are they? And what can I do for them, as far as you know, more of like, earning my place and on this land, or doing what I can to help them, you know, to the goal of decolonization and self-determination as far as again, land taxes go and other things. So, yeah, we see how travel is used to bolster one's brand in the world. 

But as far as you know, reciprocity, when it comes to spiritual tourism, you know, this is what I'm saying, I think before we even go somewhere, we have to have that conversation with ourselves and with each other, and with people who are from that place, because you don't have to go far away to know how people may be living, or to hear their stories. You know, people, there's Native folks all over social media, who can tell you exactly you know, what is up? And you can read books, and you can watch movies, and there's people in your community who I promise, and not everywhere, right? I mean, I'm from Queens, there’s people from all over the world here, but you have access to talking to people even in English, you know, who are from all these places, you don't have to go somewhere so far, and then be like, how can I help once I'm here, we have to have that conversation before we go. 

And I know a lot of folks want to know what to do once we go somewhere and I think a lot of part of my work in the in the just the voice I want to have in this conversation is don't, or think about not going at all, think about how this mass migration of white folks to BIPOC, you know, historically are majority BIPOC lands, and I'm like drawing this, you know, really black and white thing, but it is kind of black and white, how has that kind of thing led to anything positive? You know, when white folks have traveled in mass, it always is just not a good thing. It's not great for local folks in this general way of talking about colonization and such, right. 

So you know, the more folks more white folks go to a place up even look at, you know, Crown Heights, 15 years ago to how it is now, more white people come, it just becomes more safer and more welcoming to, again, I'm singling out white folks and whiteness to go somewhere once a white person is there, and it just grows and grows and grows. And that's how we see the tourist zones and the tourist ghettos, and the ex-pats enclaves that create their own suburban worlds, and there are only no beach towns somewhere far away. So, yeah, I'm just saying that if we're doing that we’re just adding to those problems and I'd rather that not happen. 

When it comes to spiritual tourism, as far as you know, reciprocity and reparations go I mean, again, I think it's withholding. I think it's less like how about not taking it all, rather than taking it in a way that is maybe a little bit better than the way I wasn't? I don't know if that's what you're talking about, but I do feel reparations need to be paid. I mean, I think that all of us can have this in very concrete ways. You know, parts of our bank accounts, you know, just like paying, you know, Black folks back and, and, you know, there are projects, like I'm saying to pay reparations, and to pay land tax to original folks to do that, where exactly where we are right now, because that's the most important. 

So I might not know what that answer is, as far as you know, what can people do once they're there rather than other than just not doing it? Maybe I shouldn't actually go through with this plan that I had to, to have this experience when it comes to spiritual tourism, or, you know sometimes it just has to do with, you know, going to the right place and paying the right people sometimes, rather than a white owned, you know, resort. And, again, you know, how much are people getting paid? You know, how can you tell those owners? Maybe that's not enough, you know, learn about what the minimum wage is in place. And, and again, are people doing contract labor? Are they getting a salary? You know, how far do they have to travel to actually come to this place can they afford for their kids to go to school, you know, all these things I'm taking from them and I don't even know if they have enough in their own place to have these things that I'm taking advantage of when I go afar. So, yeah, I think that's a little bit of a conversation rather than an answer that I have for you.

Ayana Young  There's so much there and I really appreciate all the places you took us in our mind and, and just yeah, really asking the folks who are listening, to sit with the complexity of travel, and don't just go about our lives without considering all of the ramifications and, and ways of being in better relationship with the world because I think ultimately, all of us tuning in, that's what we want, we want to be in right relationship. And this is such a huge sector that we really can't ignore. It's not just flying on planes and it's not just the - I could I could kind of go on with it's not just the like, dot dot, dot, dot, dot, here's a long list. But yeah, I really appreciate the time that we were able to spend today, and start to deep dive into the world of travel. 

Bani Amor That's great. That's great. Thank you so much for having me, I just want to shout out Dr. Anu Taranath, I mean, just just from that one thing, you said, I can share so many authors and resources and websites and stuff, but her book Beyond Guilt Trips: Mindful Travel in an Unequal World is probably something that I think your listeners would be interested in and you just touched on just being uncomfortable. Let's do it, it's okay. You know, we can have these conversations with ourselves first and you know, become kind of develop our palate for this and our language for it and and our fluency in it  really by just sitting with ourselves, which, again, I think is something that we should take advantage of more this year, rather than just fighting it and fighting it. I know, it's hard, but we need to be able to sit with ourselves in discomfort in order to have this. 

And that kind of hostility or defensiveness, towards looking at our privilege, and our power is not, you know, the most beneficial, neither is guilt. That's why her book is called Beyond Guilt Trips. So let's sit in it together, be honest, be transparent, not be like, these people are bad, and these people are good, but like, this is all problematic, you know, how can I bring my full self to the experience of being alive where I am? I know it's very general and very vast. But that's, that is decolonising travel culture. And that's why I like to write about it and think in this world, because travel is basically everything. It ties everything together. So yeah, thank you so much for letting me you know, rant in all these little different zones that and that are entry points into this conversation. And yeah, thank you so much for inviting me and for your time.

Francesca Glaspell Thank you for listening to For The Wild podcast. The music you heard today was by Juan Torregoza, Peals, and Fabian Almazan Trio. For The Wild is created by Ayana Young, Erica Ekrem, and Francesca Glaspell.