Transcript: KURT RUSSO on a Prayer of Mourning /357
Ayana Young Hello and welcome to For The Wild Podcast. I'm Ayana Young. Today we're speaking with Kurt Russo.
Kurt Russo These correspondences are telling us or telling us through her life, through your life, to life. There's something essentially divine about all of this...every bit of it, every bit of it. I don't have a denominational religion, but I love nature and I'm willing to take a risk to understand her.
Ayana Young Kurt Russo is currently the Executive Director of the Indigenous-led nonprofit that is dedicated to the application of ancestral knowledge to reimagine our relationship to the nature of nature. He worked at the Lummi Nation from 1978 to 2020 in the area of sacred sites and treaty rights. He also served as executive director of the Native American Lands Conservancy in California from 1998 to 2016, and was the senior adviser to the Kumeyaay-Digueno Land Conservancy of southern California. He was the co-founder and Executive Director of the Florence R. Kluckhohn Center for the Study of Values from 1987 to 2002. He has a BS and MS in forestry and a PhD in history. He has worked abroad with indigenous communities and their efforts to preserve their ancestral lands and knowledge in Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Chile.
Ayana Young Oh, Kurt, it's so meaningful and special to be speaking with you again. And I know that personally and for our audience, our last conversation together was so impactful. And yeah, it just feels really important to be checking back in with you. So thanks for joining us.
Kurt Russo Likewise.
Ayana Young Goodness, it's hard to know how to begin talking and mourning together for Tokitae, and I just really want to start at— focus this conversation and reverence to her, Tokitae. For those of you who don't know her, she was a Southern Resident orca who died at the Miami Seaquarium recently. And our first conversation, detailed the fight to bring her home and now her ashes have been brought back to the Salish Sea where her relatives swim freely. But oh my gosh, clearly this is not the outcome that we...so many of us had hoped for. So I wonder if we can begin with...I know it's a hard question maybe to ask you about your grief, but it feels really at the surface and maybe that's an important place for us to begin.
Kurt Russo It's a...truly a pleasure to be with you again and it's very difficult at the same time. I want to offer a [pause] a prayer offered to us by a spiritual leader from the Spirit Dancer Society and he's a Spirit Dancer of the Lummi Nation, recently passed away...had a prayer. In moments like this he would say, "When we die we put our relatives into Mother Earth. And when we get sad for them, we put our hand on the ground and we can feel their heartbeat and we pick up our drum and we sing to them in the universal tone of spiritual places where people live and die and are reborn into the creation." I offer that to Sk'aliCh'elh-tenaut.
My hands go out to her relative Raynell Morris, the elder matriarch of the Lummi effort to bring her home. Who did bring her home a couple of weeks ago in what to me is a magical, mythical, mysterious correspondence of worlds.
So, in that vein, I'd like to offer one other thing I think is appropriate to frame the mindset of what we'll talk about and it comes from one of my favorite writers, Roberto Colosso, who wrote in his book of Cadmus and Harmony, he says this, "We enter the mythical when enter the realm of risk, and myth is the enchantment regenerate in ourselves in such moments. It is a magical bond that tightens around us. It is a spell the soul casts on itself. We must enchant ourselves."
So, they brought her home. She passed away suddenly in Miami in the hands of those who are caring for her and trying to heal her sparing no effort and no cost. But after 33 years in solitary prison, her body gave up. She was probably within a year of being brought back to her home waters alive. They took her to a place in Georgia. And before she was cremated, her relative Raynell was with her the whole time. And as they put her body into crematoria and also the prayer, put cedar boughs on her body, and her ashes were brought back in a private jet landed in Bellingham International Airport a couple weeks ago. Was placed in a stretch limousine escorted by Bellingham police to the Lummi reservation, was taken out into the Salish Sea off, close to the Lummi Reservation in a Lummi Indian law enforcement boat, escorted by Lummi fishermen, and as they were making their way out into the Salish Sea, they passed by a part of the reservation where a funeral was going on. There have been a lot of deaths of Lummi. The drug epidemic is intensifying. And they brought the boat to where the people are standing on the shore. They come out from the funeral stand on the shore to honor and raise their hands to Tokitae, hundreds of people with their hands raised.
As the Lummi law enforcement boat made a circle, a counterclockwise circle as they do with funerals, four times. And then they took her out into the Salish Sea, escorted by the United States Coast Guard. And they took her to a secret location where they did deep ceremony and only Lummi Indians were on the boat. And they said farewell and put salmon in the water with her and the Coast Guard guarded the perimeter so that no boats' wakes would disturb her ashes.
And so she's back in the Salish Sea. And I asked myself when I heard this, What is that? A police escort, the United States Coast Guard, a funeral, a ceremony, cedar, and salmon. It's an Orca. No, it's not. It's a qwe 'lhol mechen. It's a qwe 'lhol mechen. And you see for many People, Indigenous Peoples of this part of the world. They're not killer whales. I know. I know. That's hard. I know. It's hard. It's hard that's why I read that quote from Mr. Colosso. It's risky to step outside what is convenient in how we make our world make sense. However, in the way that we make sense of this particular moment, qwe 'lhol mechen have agency parallel and equivalent to and almost identical with human agency. And we fought for her, we fought with everything we have. We almost got her home, but it was too much. 53 years of being in a 80 foot tank, 20 feet deep, filled with chlorine in average of 89 degree weather when you're an orca from the Southern Residents in the Salish Sea. It's amazing she lived that long.
Yes, she was an ambassador in solitary confinement. She sang her song every night of her life in that tank. So we feel heartbroken, but committed in her name in honor of her to fight for her relatives. Sk'aliCh'elh, Sk'aliCh'elh, Sk'aliCh'elh, Sk'aliCh'elh. So we're fighting for them now. So see what those tribes do, we all are.
We just got back from a campaign for three and a half weeks, dedicated to the Snake River and taking down the Snake River dams, which unless they bring those dams down, the Southern Residents will go extinct, period. Period. We will have driven a being that has been here for 10s of 1000s of years to extinction. So we're fighting for the Snake River dams to come down.
And you know what our elected officials say? Well, you know, we have to talk to all the stakeholders [garble]. One of your best stakeholders is the orcas and they're going extinct, the rest of them aren't. And we keep talking about them. So the tribes want the dams to come down. You're all welcome to join us if you want. We need your help. We need your help. What can I do? There's a lot you can do.
Ayana Young Wow, Kurt. Yeah, you had me in tears and in my mind reaching for some type of..maybe it was reaching for answers, but really just sitting in the trouble with you. And I am thinking of this memory. The memory that lives in the land and that lives with these relatives that remind us that hopefully and reinvigorate our memory, like when you're talking about Tokitae, still singing her song every night. I guess there's also something about memory and not forgetting.
And I know this is hard to speak to, but I wonder if you could just share with us a bit more about what Tokitae was experiencing at Miami Seaquarium. I guess there's something inside of me that just needs to sit with the abuse she was living through because I don't want to forget that either. I think there is a huge, hard, heartbreaking lesson in that. And I know it's a hard thing to ask. But I do think it's important for us listeners, and especially those who didn't hear the first conversation we had of what she was living through. And yeah, and honor that for her.
Kurt Russo Your viewers can actually Google it and experience the painful experience of the capture in 1970 when she was captured as a four-year-old, they think, taken out of Penn Cove. The village that…the Lummi village that was closest to where she was captured was the village of Sk'aliCh'elh. Sk'aliCh'elh was the name of the village that gave her that name to let her know she's welcome to come home now. She is home now.
She was taken to Miami. Imagine you're with your family and then you're being carried on litter into a tank with another killer whale who would soon be dead having committed suicide. And then you're alone. With two white-sided dolphins to keep watching your sides when you swim in a tank 20 feet deep too shallow or even dive in, 80 feet in diameter. And you go around and around and around that circle so you don't go mad. And you're echo locating so you're in an echo chamber. All you hear is your own voice bouncing back at you, for 53 years.
A yet and yet…but you know, she died suddenly and she was seemingly doing really well. And her handlers actually were in the process of feeding her live salmon.Then she died, gone. Gone. Might wonder about that. I wonder if she..I wonder about that...There was no...she was there and then she was gone. I don't pretend to know what that is. But I do know that you know, when you get...in this case, this close to beings of that nature, you realize something about yourself.
We are really in relations with these beings. I'm a diver. I've been in the water with them. I can tell you there's a 'there' there when you're around them. You feel you're in the presence of a mind. So I think to honor her, and I will always honor her in the work that I do, is to remember what she gave us, how she gave it to us. What she left with us. And really the fact that she gave it all back with such compassion. It's an amazing lesson.
[Musical break]
Ayana Young Why did they say or think she passed, like what was the quote, you know, technical response to that?
Kurt Russo Kidney failure. That's what we're told, kidney failure. And you know, if you were being pumped with that many medications 53 years, your kidneys fail too. No one understands how she lived as long as she did. I wonder. I'm assuming she knew what was going on. She was about to start getting cradle shrink. She didn't know what's going on, and she left. I don't understand that. Like there's something I don't understand there. I think she was tired. I think she's really tired. Reynell Morris, a Lummi Indian woman, matriarch elder, but I tell you when Reynell… her spirit, Reynell said, “So when I was with her, going from Miami to Georgia, I was with her going from Georgia to Bellingham. I was with her. We went to Bellingham out on her water. I was with her when..I told her You're okay, we're still with you. Don't worry. I was talking to her the whole way. I was with her when we put her ashes in the water.” She said, “You know, we did the ceremony, deep ceremony…one I've never seen.” Deep ceremony relationality. They know something. And she said, “She left. Her spirit went into the water and joined her family, and she was good with it.”
That's what I was told. I come back to this over and over again. We cannot give up. Indigenous people know something. And among things they know is why we must not give up. It's got nothing to do with science. No. It's got everything to do with correspondence.
I wouldn't trade my places to anybody. It is such an honor to work with humility among people with so much honor and so much humility, so much grace. So much knowledge of being within nature. It's just simply an honor.
Ayana Young I agree. And yeah, there's a few questions that came up for me about the Snake River dams and Tokitae as well. And maybe we could go back to Tokitae For a moment. So, Kurt, I wanted to talk a bit about the controversy over Tokitae's necropsy and her treatment at Miami Seaquarium and just take some time to talk through, yeah, what was happening to her in there.
Kurt Russo Yeah, I'm sure you know that she lived in the smallest tank of any sea circus in the United States. It was the smallest. It was the shallowest. But sure, tanks can be bigger, deeper. But these beings are known to cruise 200 miles a day. It comes down to a first principle. Unless we get to the first principles, we're just quibbling over details that matter not at all to the basic issue. Doesn't matter how big the tank is. These are highly sentient beings. They have agency. They have self awareness. They have intelligence at least as significant and as real as our own. They just don't belong in those places.
Now, she's one case in point, I would argue. And if you look at any of these orcas in captivity, look at their dorsal fin. Look at it, it's droopy. It's droopy, because they're not healthy. They're supposed to be erect. They're droopy, because they're unhealthy. They are certainly not happy. And occasionally they "attack," quote unquote, their "trainers," quote unquote. Yeah. There is no way you can have an orca in captivity and consider it in any way shape or form humane. It just…it's not doable. Whether that applies to other species, that's another open question. But you know, I think it comes down to what is our relation to and responsibility with nature? What is it? Is it such that we can have these places where you can look at animals that are clearly distressed?
But it's a very...China builds a new sea circus every six months, brand new one. They're capturing orcas every day in the high seas. What do we do about it? It's an outstanding question. I don't know, except to be aware, to be aware that as someone says this is for education. It's good to educate people in this way, it is simply not true. There are ways to learn about orcas without putting them in tanks.
We, at Se’Si’Le are trying to create a new way of experiencing that. We're doing a virtual reality program in one of our locations on Friday Harbor, so you will be able to be an orca in the water. You will have the Orca experience of being an orca in the water or a salmon. You'll have that experience. And our hope is that by doing that, we can generate new ways of reimagining nature, our responsibility to it, and a relationship with it.
We need to come together again, find a group that shares your vision of a relationship with nature and give them your best gift. And that will be honoring, preserving, passing on the lesson of Tokitae.
These orca we see and we treasure so much, they live…they live in longhouses. Okay, now let's step into that. Their longhouses. You know, an orca scientist told me as we were battling to bring Tokitae home. We only have 3% observational data of the Southern Resident killer whales. 3%. 97% of the time, we have no idea where they are and I said to him, If you only have 3%, how do you know it's 3%? It could be much less than that. They don't know where they are. Lummis do. They live in longhouses. There's a deep trench in the Salish Sea. And in that deep trench, longhouses and to the longhouses, the Orca will go. We got to take a risk here. Reynell took a risk. Reynell took a risk staying with her relative all the way through. But I can't say this about this Tokitae and how through her we see the whole world in a different way. You can see the whole world through a different way of understanding essentially, who she is, was, and always a little bit.
We were there...Tahlequah, the Tahlequah, they carry her baby around for 17 days in 2018 touched the world with a magical correspondence that reminds you that this was something larger than you and that you're never alone at the same time. The godlike moment, you know. That was the year we took that totem pole to Miami...all the way across the country doing ceremony with that totem pole all across the country that orca pole....all the way from Bellingham to Miami. Blessed by tribes many different places all for her. I want to say one thing about that. I could, pardon me, but, was it a bird? Was it a plane? Were the bees? What was this event that was blessing her pole? Down in California we asked for a blessing for them from the Viejas Tribe, the Cahuillas—San Diego County, wonderful people, extraordinary people—Cahuillas. We said we need a blessing for this pole. Okay, bring it to the village. We took it to the village and in the village there was a tarp and under the tarp were the elders, in front of the tarp was the totem pole and standing in front of the totem pole was the Chairman of that tribe and he said we're here for a blessing. And he no sooner said that and we heard a plane coming. Sounded like a plane coming right at us. We looked up—tens of thousands of honeybees circling out of the sky coming right down on to the totem. Everybody saw it, it was even filmed. And then the elder singer in front of me moved his wrist counterclockwise and the bees went counterclockwise and then disappeared—were gone. Later that night I asked the woman that was guarding the totem pole, Kumeyaay veteran. I can't sleep. What was that? She said, What was what? I said, What happened today. She said, You said you wanted the blessing. That was your blessing. What is that? What is she talking about? Supernature.
[Musical break]
Kurt Russo When we finished our event in Miami this moment came into mind today when I was driving, I live in Bellingham by Canada. And this morning when I was driving into town there was a rainbow. I mean, a huge rainbow at seven o'clock in the morning, just lavishing the sky. I thought supernature. I'm on doing this podcast today, I need that hope. I need that promise.
And I thought of the drive back from Miami. Doug James, Jewell James, the carvers of that totem pole driving in their big truck. And me and my, a company car, the scout car, I was still with them. And we're in Wyoming. Nobody on the highway but us. Driving side by side going down the highway and up in the sky. A dark sky at the end of the day, a very threatening sky on the horizon was a patch of blue sky. Nearly a perfect square and in that nearly perfect square of blue sky and a dark—darkening threatening sky was written the word like it was written by someone's finger: L-O-V-E. Everybody saw it and it did not go away. And hung there for a long time. We pulled over. The James boys said, Sk'aliCh'elh-tenaut is with us.
I say these things because...it's hard because you know I've been doing this work for decades and the more I see and the more I think I understand the less I know how to say anything about it. These correspondences that are telling us or telling us through her life, through your life to life—there's something essentially divine about all of this. Every bit of it. Every bit of it. I'm not a religious guy. I don't have a denominational religion. But I love nature. I love nature. And I'm willing to take a risk to understand her. But I don't know that much. So I spend most of my time with people that do and in my case those are Native people. They see things. Things show up for them.
Sk'aliCh'elh-tenaut was a member of the Southern Resident killer whales. They are native to the waters that are also the territorial Aboriginal waters of the Lummi Indian People. They share those waters. The Southern Resident killer whales, her family, are on the brink of functional extinction. There's 73 left. They're barely hanging on. Most of the Southern residents were captured and taken away in the same capture that took place when they took Tokitae in 1970. The Southern residents never recovered.
How do these criminals get away with this? And I keep asking myself that question. I mean what happened to her was criminal. They are criminals. Yeah, they have an amusement park. Okay. Do other things to amuse yourself. Nature is not here for our amusement. Se’Si’Le is an all Indigenous organization, except for me. At the recent board meeting they were talking about how to configure right and respectful relations with, with nature. And one of our members, a Yakima, former chairman of Yakima Nation, he said, We are not stewards. Get over that. Nature is our caretaker. We're not in the center of her world, we're part of her world. We're not stewards. That hubris is what got us in this mess to begin with.
I know what he's talking about. Right and respectful relations with nature to him means understanding nature is our caretaker for whom and with whom we have a sacred obligation and an ancient covenant, and we are violating it. And, you know, nature's very forgiving up to a point and then she never forgets. We're at that point. I don't know what your listeners, you know, I don't know what their lives are like...whoever's listening to this, if people listen to it, they have a life they go on with a life after this or whatever. But you know, we're in trouble. I mean, we, the part of creation—we are making trouble.
We brought that up in the fight for Tokitae. We brought that up to the owners of Miami Seaquarium. They ignored us completely. They said, she's an ambassador. To which we responded, You are whoring her out for profit, that's what you're doing. So the tribes want the dams to come down so we did this journey, our third journey. Let me share something if I may, one of our board members, Yakima gentlemen, very well thought of in his own ways, very knowledgeable about his own ways, very fluent in his own language. He said to us when we were contemplating doing another journey on 2022 [inaudible]...Before you go up the Snake River, before you go to the ceremony, before you do that event, I need to go up and we need to honor the spirit of the waters. We'll do this and then you can go on your journey. So we did. With other tribal members, he went all the way from Eastern Washington to the Yellowstone plateau. All the way there where the springs pop out of the ground, they give birth to the Snake River. And they did ceremony at each site that represented the baby, the young one, the adult and the elder—our ceremonies all the way to the Pacific Ocean. This is what I'm getting to in terms of what I...the code I started off with. At every single place, they spread a traditional table of food, traditional salmon, roots, berries, all of it for the waters. And they waited until the representation came to them. They said the spirit of the waters is present. Go ahead. In the first ceremony, in the first representation, they saw a raven standing on the back of a coyote, watching. What is that? Were those bees or a plane? What do you mean longhouses in a trench? A raven on the back of a coyote, watching. At every single place all the way to Astoria on the Pacific Ocean similar kinds of appearances were proffered by the Spirit of the waters to let the people know it was present.
You know...I'm going to bore you with one quote here. This comes from a fantastic book by a French anthropologist that spent many, many, many, many years with Indigenous peoples of the Amazon and he wrote this amazing observation which relates to bees and totem poles. It relates to longhouse in trenches. It relates to love in the sky. It relates to ravens on top of coyotes and he said, and I quote, "In many cases, it is said that an individual of one species apprehends the members of other species in accordance with their own criteria, so that in normal conditions a hunter will not realize that his animal prey sees itself as a human being or that it sees the hunter as a jaguar. Similarly, a Jaguar regards to blood that it drinks as manioc beer while the monkey spider and the Cacique bird thinks it is hunting is to a man nothing but a grasshopper and the tapers that a snake considers as its preferred pay are really human beings."
Transubstantiation, transformation. I think, the genius, at least the people that I've had the great honor of coming to know a little bit in this part of the Indigenous world understand the perspective of transformations. And you know, one reason I think they do. They'be been here for a very long time. They were here. The Lummi Indians and their relatives and, and [inaudible] they were here when where I am now sitting was under three quarters of a mile of ice. And they were here and they were here when the ice went away. They were here when the first cedar arrives 7500 years ago. They were here when the Orca came and the first salmon found its first stream. They were here and they've seen all this transformation and I wonder, what is the equivalent European experience of having that kind of place-based identity with the magical transformations, that transubstantial reality that lets you know things are never what they seem to be. And that's really been the essence of the battle for Tokitae. She wasn't just an orca, a black fish or whatever. For Sk'aliCh'elh, they're not orcas either—for salmon, for salmon, for water. I don't know what the answer is, but things I've seen that I've come to believe are as real as true as anything I knew before cannot be explained by the way I make my world make sense. So you got to take this risk.
I want to add one more quote. This comes from a Lummi Indian. Lummi Indians are up right here in Whatcom county out in the San Juan Islands. This is their territory. Lummi elder, very good friend, the President of Se’Si’Le said this, The Salmon people, the Salmon people are hardly here no more. We need to talk to them. We need you Salmon people, the life givers. You gave up your life so we can live. It is important for our people about who we really are. We sit in the lap of Mother Earth. Learning all there is to learn, not all at once, but built up over lifetimes every day. We need to keep learning, to never quit learning.
I mean, it's the challenge of our times, isn't it? We're facing some..and not so great choices. But to the issue of the dams and electricity, it wouldn't take much research to push back on that statement that someone may be making that the Lower Snake River dams generate valuable electricity, they don't. They barely generate any electricity. They're not a key. Other dams—there are 60 dams in the Columbia River Basin, which Lower Snake River are four. We're talking about breaching of one and those four dams don't generate. You can look at the research of BPA'S own research, or the tribes resources, lots of it, all say the same thing. They're not that critical. They're not that critical component to generate electricity. What they are crucial for is creating lakes so products can move by barge down the Columbia River. It's agriculture, it's not energy. And that is an issue. That is an issue, but it's not an unsolvable one. We have...there have been scenarios presented how the product can be moved down river with barges after breaching the Lower Snake River dams, it's all been laid out. So let me shift the language game a little bit. Because all we're doing here is we're entering the frame of reference, which isn't the only one you can look at the issue through look, look at the issue through the treaty rights. The basic treaty rights, promises made in our name to their ancestors, about their right to have their salmon lifeway. That was a written promise. They're not stakeholders. Farmers don't have treaties. And I know people don't like to hear it, but these dams are monuments to stolen landscape land…stolen. The tribes never agreed to these dams. They weren't even consulted. There is a treaty right issue here. A treaty right to have salmon.
One last thing. Climate change. A fast moving river is cooler than the slow one. Taking down the Lower Snake River dams will cool the waters. Everything downstream will be cooled and the salmon can get upstream to higher elevation to spawn where the waters are. Many hundreds of 1000s of acres are now not available to Salmon, otherwise the great habitat will be made available so they can go further up to spawn. It actually has a climate change component. What I can't figure out in looking at all this is, what is the problem? I mean, why? And you know what it comes down to? I know that sounds strange. It comes down to organizational turf. BPA is a country. Bonneville Power Administration is like the Corps of Engineers. It's a country. And they don't want to run the risk. If they take down these dams, they're afraid all the dams will have to come down. It's not even about the Lower Snake River dams. It's about the precedent. We're in a tough spot. We made some promises. We broke them. We gotta make it right. That river is a slave. It's a slave. It needs to be free.
[Musical break]
Ayana Young Thank you for saying it like it is.
Kurt Russo I know you can say there are two sides, and it may well be. I've read both sides and a lot of it. And there are arguments on both sides, just not particularly good ones on the other side. I mean, they're there. But you get the feeling, they're not really—this isn't really the issue. They're not really telling what the issue is.
Ayana Young Yeah.
Kurt Russo Because all of the issues they've raised. One last thing I mentioned to you. Washington state is 20% Catholic, roughly. Our governor is a Catholic. Our president is a Catholic. Our two senators are Catholics, just saying. The four leading Catholic bishops of this state have stated unequivocally, "The tribes are the primary dialogue dialogue partners when it comes to what happens on the Snake. They're not stakeholders."
Ayana Young So how do we hold these organizations accountable? Like you know, maybe the first question is, how do we hold Miami Seaquarium accountable? And then of course, there's the questions of how we hold the government accountable with the Snake River dams. Maybe we could start with Miami Seaquarium, because I think that it's so easy to sweep this under the rug as more media comes out and people get distracted by other things and then all of a sudden, Miami Seaquarium is just forgotten, continuing to do the horrors that they do. So how can we keep up the fight with them particularly, and maybe then we can go into, you know, the other organizations that are holding back the healing of the Salish Sea?
Kurt Russo That's a very good question and there are groups and individuals the Lummi Tribe is not currently one of them, but there are groups of individuals and organizations that are continuing to bring attention to the fact—Miami Seaquarium should just be shut down. It's terrible. It's awful there for anything living there. It's not well kept, it's not well-funded. It's basically in decline, and it's not being well cared for. So there is that in some organizations. I don't know. I know PETA is one there are several others that have their eyeballs set squarely on Miami Seaquarium. Our side of the fight with the tribe, we're not currently engaged in that it we're now engaged with the bigger question of our family and the Orca and the Salmon. So what I would suggest if people want to know how they could get involved in making their voices heard about Miami Seaquarium, there are two places to go. One is PETA, P-E-T-A is the initials and the other is Orca Network. And if one one didn't know how you can make your voice heard all the way to Miami Seaquarium, those two organizations can help you.
The dams, at the end of this month, supposedly, a decision will be forthcoming among the various litigants about a solution to breaching the Lower Snake River dams. The Biden Administration has been really good on this one. They’re really pushing for a good solution. And so all of the litigants have put the case on pause, the legal case, hoping the parties can come to a decision, we'll know at the end of the month what that will be. Whether it will be taking the dams down now, later or ever. And at the end of the month, we'll know. EarthJustice. Earth justice is the main legal beagle right now on that fight. The Nez Perce Tribe is doing a big event in November, the Unity event about orca, salmon and dams. They're doing a big event in Everett, Washington, tribes, NGOs, everybody. If someone in this area would like to attend, that they are certainly welcome to go to that and see where they can get involved. They just go to the Nez Perce, N-E-Z P-E-R-C-E Tribe, and you'll see reference to that event. We're waiting right now to see what happens at the end of the month.
I can recommend no better place to go than go visit a tribe. See what you can do. Don't go there as a savior. Go there as a helper. Go there as a volunteer. Go there...I mean, the way I arrived at Lummi. I just pulled in, I said, I've got these things, do you need any of them? Then just put them on the table. And I did so I did. But most of your listeners, I'm sure have a skill or two or three that a local tribe by that I mean somewhere and your state and your local area in your county, there is a tribe you can work with. And if you come to know their religion with nature, it will give you inspiration, reimagination, and give you hope. They never give up hope. Imagine what they've been through. That's what I would suggest.
Ayana Young Yeah. And as we begin to conclude, I think that question of, maybe we call it the dark forces...Not that we'll be able to understand it or figure it out in this conversation, or maybe our entire lives, but there is some type of spiritual warfare happening. And the extermination of Indigenous People makes sense in that design. Because if you want to disconnect from nature, and relationality, then you want to get rid of any energy that has that type of power to connect back, because it is such a powerful force. So why would you want that around if the force that you're working with is about really extermination of all living things? And where that comes from, I don't understand. I think it's maddening that we and whoever we're talking about the ones who are totally in captured or enraptured, and captured by the dark forces, that I don't understand why those people would even agree to ecocide. It doesn't rationally make sense. Why would anybody think that killing the Earth is a good idea? For what? For commodity? But why? I mean, we know what it equals. It equals death. So it's very much even against the survival mechanism inside ourselves...that innate survival mechanism.
Kurt Russo Well, that's the point.
Ayana Young Yeah.
Kurt Russo I mean, late state capitalism—
Ayana Young Yeah—
Kurt Russo —has a death wish. there and it's imposing itself on humanity. But to one last thing you are saying, it's not it. I don't think in my opinion, and I've it's not original with me, but it's not really of them. It's an IT. And it is this place in history. And it moves like a lava lamp, it just reshapes itself based on sort of the atmosphere of history is the relationship between power and knowledge. And there's a nexus where they meet. And the nexus where they meet is what enchants its era. This particular one is a dark one.
Ayana Young Any ideas on the origin of the dark forces? The ecocidal tendencies? Well,
Kurt Russo I may offend some of your list. First, it’s Christianity. Bottom line. It's the dark force of the last 1700 years.
Ayana Young And I'm going to, I'm going to ask beyond that, but where? Why? Where did it come from before that? Where..how was it created? Why was it created?
Kurt Russo Or? That's a good question. I mean, I don't see it in evidence. When I enter the world of, for example, the Mediterranean of 800 BC, I don't see it there. I see it show up sometime around Rome. This attitude of machine and mastery, engineering and technical. Yeah, let's think about that. They keep saying that to us. Think of all the great things they are just gonna bring. Oh, my god, the internet's gonna be our salvation. No, it doesn't help us. It doesn't really help the human flourishing. I don't think cultivating human flourishing has been a thing for 3000 years. It just hasn't been the thing and we're at one particular either the end of an epoch or the beginning of one. We've taken this version, world version about as far as we can, without destroying ourselves. I think what everyone must be asking yourselves uh, so I think most people know. Most people have a sense something is terribly wrong. They may act out that feeling differently, but they know it. They know something's wrong. But they feel powerless to either understand it or do anything about it. And that's kind of where we're at right now.
Ayana Young Well, Kurt, thanks for diving into those deep inquiries—
Kurt Russo —...your listeners. You have a great show by the way. It's so good. You've got your show because it's so hopeful and helpful, but I just have to implore your tribe. Fight for us. Fight for nature. Stand with her. Don't give up on her. Do what you can do. Now.
Ayana Young Yes, thank you for those words. They'll stay with me.
José Alejandro Rivera Thank you for listening to this episode of For The Wild. The music you heard today is by Julius Smack and Francesca Heart, courtesy of the Leaving Records record label. For The Wild is created by Ayana Young, Julia Jackson, Erica Ekrem, Bailey Bigger, Jackson Kroopf, Evan Tenenbaum and José Alejandro Rivera.