Transcript: LINDA BLACK ELK on What Endures After Pandemic /171
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Ayana Young: Hello and welcome to For The Wild Podcast. I’m Ayana Young. Today I will be speaking with Linda Black Elk from the Catawba Nation.
Linda Black Elk: I mean I hate to say it this way, but maybe had we shown greater respect for the micro, we wouldn’t be dealing with a pandemic virus right now, so I think that restoration ecology can sort of be a guide for how we relate to the planet and how we relate to our Mother Earth in the future. First listening and understanding and deeloping a relationship and then looking at ways that we can actually rebuild and restore and experiment.”
Ayana Young: Linda is an ethnobotanist specializing in traditional foods and medicines of The Great Plains. She is currently the director of food sovereignty at United Tribes Technical College in Bismarck, North Dakota and is the mother of three Lakota sons.
Well, Linda, thank you so much for joining us today. I was mentioning, this is a dream come true for me to be speaking with you. I have so much respect and I feel so connected to your work and the way that you go about your work in this world. Thank you for joining us.
Linda Black Elk: Well, thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited. I’ve listened to your podcast before, and I love it. I'm really honored to be on here.
Ayana Young: Oh! Wow! Okay, you just made my day. Linda, of course I have to begin by asking about the use of traditional medicine right now when it comes to community wellness. I know so many of us are taking time to take care and sourcing practices that can boost our immune systems through ancestral medicine, nourishing meals, being in prayer, acting in service to elders and even just taking a moment to lay in the sun. As a practitioner, I'm wondering if you could share some of the most important things you are doing to take care right now.
Linda Black Elk: Oh gosh! Yeah. It’s a really tough time to practice selfcare right now. We’re all really stressed, and stress and anxiety of course lower our systems. I would say that probably the best thing I'm doing for myself and my family, the ones that I am isolating with is to laugh and to keep our stress levels down. To talk to each other, to joke around with each other, keep our anxiety levels low so that our immune systems can keep repairing themselves. That's probably the most important thing, is just to make sure that we are doing things to allow ourselves to enjoy the moment, enjoy this time with our families while still remaining aware of what's happening in the outside world. It’s a tough thing to do, but we can do it.
The other thing, and I would say that it's probably equally important, is that I'm making sure to eat right. What does that mean to eat right? Because some people would probably say that eating right is just a matter of getting enough calories in your system. There is no foods shaming here. If people only have access to processed foods, things that are high in salt and sugar and preservatives, then that’s all they have access to, and I honor them in their journey and whatever food they need to eat. But if they have access, if we have access to foods that don't just nourish us physically, don't just provide calories, but also feed us emotionally and mentally and spiritually, then we should be doing that. It’s sort of my mission to help people to be aware of the fact that they probably have some of these foods that nourish them mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually growing right outside of their doors and they’re free. So that's always really important to my community, which is Indigenous people of the Northern Great Plains. Anyone else who needs that, I believe healing is for everyone.
Yeah. I’m focusing on staying as happy as possible. Decreasing stress, but also eating good things like the wild plants, which of course are not just edible, but medicinal as well, and focusing on a lot of fermented foods like kimchi and sauerkrauts. I’m not a huge fan of kombucha, which has become a very popular
probiotic these days, but I love vinegars, various fermented vinegars, like maple vinegar, and I’m incorporating a lot of those in my diet. I’m trying to, as much as possible, even though I don't believe in sort of preaching elimination diets, I’m trying to decrease the amount of sugar I eat, the amount of refined sugar I eat. I’m trying to decrease the amount of refined flour in my diet and I'm always trying to decrease the amount of dairy in my diet.
Now, as I was saying earlier, I love to laugh and I love joy, and sometimes that means eating cheese for me or it means eating bacon or it means eating some brownies. It’s just a matter of finding that balance between what is good for your body. What's good to eat, what you have access to, and what is going to help you stay happy and connected as possible.
Ayana Young: Oh my goodness! Linda, bacon, cheese and brownies? Yes please. That also brings me joy. Thank you for those reminders. I think that in times of crisis, we can forget these simple reminders of taking care in these ways of eating and laughing, and they feel really important right now. Yeah, it’s just undeniable that we are navigating this great unknown when it comes to what we do, and we don't know all the details of COVID-19. So I'd like to talk a little bit about the debate that is going on arounddifferent plant medicines and whether or not they should be recommended.
Obviously, we know that there is no official designated cure or preventative measures, but that being said, we can't just turn our backs on the medicines that had been in use since time immemorial. So I'd love if you could share with us what it means to practice plant medicine during times of urgency and how can we balance our reliance on plant medicine while preventing the potential misuse of this medicine during this time?
Linda Black Elk: This is such a great question. I think that one of the, dare I say, faults of Western medicine is that it is always trying to look for the cure. Western medicine is always trying to look for the magic bullet. The thing that will either keep people from getting sick or the thing that will actually cure an illness. We’re lucky, because as Indigenous people, we’re luck, because Indigenous medicine, traditional medicine, really focuses on the general action of plants. It doesn't focus on this magic bullet.
For example, we’ve had a lot of discussion recently about elderberry elixir, which is a mixture of medicines, actually, that of course includes elderberry. It includes raw honey and beautiful spices like star anise and cinnamon. People turmeric, and Echinacea, and rose hips into their elderberry elixir. It’s just a beautiful mixture of medicines that boost your immune system and help with cough and respiratory illness. All of these medicines have a general action, such as boosting your immune system, or such as generally being an antiviral. They’re not trying to be a magic bullet. People can use them in a really good, safe way to make themselves more able to fight off illness.
I think that those general actions are really important and I think that that is where Western medicine falls
behind. They’re not trying to help people be healthier. They are trying to find the magic bullet that will
either prevent or cure the illness. That means that we have to step in early within these epidemics and pandemics as Indigenous people as we have always done, stepped in to save and to comfort our
communities, whether they are our Indigenous brothers and sisters or non-Indigenous community
members as well. I have really found that traditional medicine, a lot of the hundreds of messages and requests for advice that I get per day actually come from non-native people who are just at an absolute loss and who are scared because they know that Western medicine does not have a way to currently fight, procure a COVID-19 infection. I'm happy to share that information with them.
Ayana Young: Thank you so much for being so available especially during this time when, yeah, people are really– It's troubling and people are really confused and there’s so much to be confused about that we’ll get into more of that further into the conversation. By now, I think we’re all familiar with the power that perceived scarcity holds as it has caused millions across the globe to engage in mass hoarding. In response, many are cultivating self-resilience by turning to traditional medicines and personal gardens.
However, I've noticed that the hoarding mentality reigns supreme in many of these well-intentioned actions. For example, many seed companies are completely sold out, and medicine like elderberry and bear root or Osha root are being harvested at an unhealthy rate. I keep help but think about how we remain trapped within the psychological confines of unbridled capitalism that even when we seek out so-called alternative ways of being, we continue to reenact selfish behavior in our harvesting, forging, growing, etc. I'd love if you could share with us how this behavior is diametrically opposed to being in relation with earth, or perhaps any guidance on practicing honorable harvest amidst times of panic.
Linda Black Elk: Yeah. Oh gosh! I’ve been dealing with this a lot lately, and I try to harvest as much of my own medicines as possible so that I can come in physical and spiritual contact with my plant relatives. Talk to them. Talk to them about why I'm harvesting them and how they're going to be applied. I feel like that always helps. But as an individual, there's just no way that I can harvest enough for everyone that I want to help.
I do contact various people, friends of mine, who might have stuff available, you might have medicines available, and a lot of them are struggling right now with having enough to meet the demand. I think it's important to remember that there's a difference between hoarding and being prepared, like all that bullshit with the toilet paper in processed high-carb foods, like ramen noodles that I was talking about earlier. People are hoarding those items. Making sure that you and your community, and let me stress the “and”. Making sure that you and your community have what they need. That's vital, because we won't make it through this on our own. Being quarantined doesn't mean that we can't take care of each other. The key I think fighting this hoarding mentality is the opposite of hoarding, which is sharing. I believe healing is for everyone and that we have to trust our relatives, native and non-native, in these times of crises.
I remember, as you know I was very involved down at Standing Rock and the camps fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline. I remember after I came through all of that, even though I had been pepper sprayed 12 times, even though I had been shot with rubber bullets, even though I had been sprayed with water cannons in subzero temperatures and had been the victim of this CS, this nerve gas that made be shake all over. Even after all of that, I remember standing there and looking around and thinking to myself that people are generally good. People are good. I swore to myself, swore to myself that I would never forget that, and that's I've been trying to remind myself of as I watch the news and I see people hoarding seeds and hoarding traditional medicines and over harvesting sage because they think that it's going to kill SARS COV 2 all around them.
I think a lot of that comes from misinformation and that it requires a large degree of patience on the part of healers and Indigenous people in general to encourage sustainability, to encourage sharing and demand. Not just encourage, but demand that people follow proper protocols that have been put in place by the people who know this land better than anyone, and that’s us. That’s native people. We have to believe and encourage commonsense, people who are saying ridiculous things about this virus being a hoax. As our Diné relatives are dying in droves, we need to practice patience, commonsense. We need to be teachers in a time when, really, I'm tired. I get very tired of having to share and teach. But right now, it is more critical than ever that we as Indigenous people are willing to share and demand that other people share and practice common sense and critical thinking and all of that. But there are times I would say more than others– There's been a real push over the last few years where my non-native friends, I’ll say it, my white friends, have stepped forward for me when people will try to argue with me or say, for example, that this isn't all native land. You guys lost some war or something. I have this amazing group of non-native friends who step up and don't make me try to explain to people why what they're saying is ridiculous, and I really value my friends for doing that because it gives me energy to continue and it gives me energy for times of crisis like this so that I can step up and protect my plant relatives. Make sure that people are sharing. Make sure that people are following proper protocols. Demanding that of them, and it makes a difference.
Beyond that, there's really not a whole lot I can do. I can explain. I can teach and I can encourage and I can demand. Beyond that, there's just not a lot that I can do. I do not want to be within touching distance of someone who is trying to over-harvest sage right now. All I can do is hope that if i give them the right information, they'll take it and do good things with it.
Ayana Young: Wow! Linda, your patience and bravery and love, just so much love that you have for this earth and for all the creatures including the humans roaming around is unbelievable. Just that you've been able to put yourself on the frontlines, your body on the frontlines for what was happening at Standing Rock with the pipeline and also have patience for those who have been doing things that are harmful and still see the good in people. I mean, that is such a practice that like, yeah, so challenging, and it's really inspiring to hear you speak to these things with so much care and love and– I don’t know. Just a feeling of abundance that you are sharing with us is really beautiful.
Linda Black Elk: I think it's important for me to say that it doesn't mean I'm not fearful. I am placing a
reat amount of trust in people that I have actually been taught to not trust. One of my friends, her name. is Valerie. She's another plant person, and she made a very good point that she was saying to me as I was making videos and I was on webinars talking about various plant medicines for boosting immunity and fighting infection. She said, “Don't ever forget that most of the witch hunts that have taken place have occurred after pandemics,” and that was very striking to me, because it's true. It's historically accurate. A lot of times, it's the healers after a pandemic who were hunted down and seen as the enemy, because of course we provide a service largely for free and we take funds money away from people who are trying to
make lots of it and take advantage of people who don't have very much. That means a lot of times after big illnesses like this, we receive a lot of ire, I suppose, in the eyes particularly of big business and big medicine, big pharma. I just wanted to make sure to say that it's not that I'm not fearful in a way for myself and my family and my friends and others healers. It’s that I know that providing healing for people is more important than my fear.
Ayana Young: My goodness, Linda. Wow! Thank you so much for adding that piece, and I didn't know that historical– I’m like slurring because I’m just kind of shocked by that. Maybe shocked isn’t the right word, but that was really kind of perked me up to think about that, and it makes a lot of sense, although it's horrible. I appreciate you saying that, because I think that it's important for us to understand the history of other pandemics as we look to the one that we’re in so that we can protect ourselves while protecting others.
As we’re talking about all of these things and honorable harvesting, and growing with reverence, and working with the plants, and giving, and sharing, I can't help but draw upon your work with restoration ecology and the importance of, for example, the life-giving prairies and grasslands. As many of us awaken or reawaken to the value of personal and communal gardening, I want to remind listeners the importance of cultivating care beyond our immediate place. I'm wondering if you could talk about the importance of restoration ecology as we make plans for living well and how is this an act of reciprocity?
Linda Black Elk: Wonderful question. Restoration is really in my heart, because I look at lands that are sacred and I look at the ways that various practices usually as a result of unbridled capitalism have destroyed soil, have destroyed plant life, animal life, have destroyed air quality and water quality. I do not lose hope when I see that, because I have seen restoration take place. I've seen the rebuilding of soil and I've seen water that I thought would forever be undrinkable. I’ve seen that cleaned and purified. I’ve seen the same thing happen with the air that we breathe in places, and it's really encouraging to me.
I think the reason I'm able to see that, the reason I'm always able to have hope when I see polluted areas is because I know that I have connection with the plant nations and the animal nations, the other animals that will grow and thrive there, because the first step to understanding restoration ecology is to develop a relationship with the land. That's absolutely the most important first step.
I think there's this mythology when it comes to restoration that we have to take the land back to some indefinable time. Maybe back to the 1500s but don't know. We were already here as Indigenous people for eons, millennia, before that. So where do we take it back to? I think that it's unrealistic to think that we need to restore land back to this immemorial time and that that can actually cause more harm to plant and animal life, cause more harm than good.
What I like to do is to take the approach of communicating with the land. As an Indigenous person, I hesitate to talk that way because people call me a big hippie when I do, but talking to plants, finding out what they need and where they want to grow and how best to grow them, experimenting with them, listening to them, understanding them, that is restoration ecology, and you cannot restore land without listening to the land. You do have to think about this is something I absolutely know. We have to think about rebuilding soil, restoring soil, air, water, wildlife so that we can be better future partners to help sustain all life on this planet. We can't just be superficial and plant some trees and walk away and expect things to take care of themselves. We have to consider soil biota first and belowground relationships that sustain everything that's above ground. We have to show respect and consideration for all organisms. I know everyone always tries to think on the macro level, “Let's look at these huge beautiful trees and let's look at restoring bison to an area,” but not many people are thinking about the microscopic organisms.
Perhaps– I mean, I hate to say it this way, but maybe if we’d shown greater respect for the micro, we wouldn't be dealing with a pandemic virus right now. I think that restoration ecology can sort of be aguide for how we relate to the planet or how we relate to our Mother Earth in the future. First, listening and understanding and developing a relationship, and then looking at ways that we can actually rebuild and restore and experiment. Does that answer your question?
Ayana Young: It answered the heart of the question completely, and I really agree with you, Linda. I’ve been involved is restoration ecology for the past six, seven years now, and I've been really disenchanted with the way academic restoration ecology is playing out or this restoration industrial complex like you were saying earlier with these visions of restoring back to a certain timeframe 200 years ago, 300 years ago. It doesn't really make sense. We’re not looking at what the land is saying right now and building those relationships and listening and trying things out and experimenting and being small and looking at the micro. I agree, people are much more obsessed with the grandeur of the large trees or they want things to happen really quickly. But I think that's also something that stops us from being in relationship or having consent or trust building. If we want things to be fast and urgent, we just want something that looks degraded to be somehow looking like old growth status within our lifetimes. That's not going to happen. We can't create old growth in a short span of time. It's old growth. I mean, these ecosystems, these lands take so long and I think for me getting comfortable with releasing the urgency not in the sense of releasing care and passion, but just putting things in perspective and putting things in relational perspective is so important for me in my own learning.
To hear you say what you've said so eloquently, it really helps me personally just to stay on this path, and I'm sure so many others will resonate with what you're saying because I think that what we have been doing in this industrial academic lens or format or way of doing is just not really working, and we’re not seeing the Earth respond. I don't think, especially when we’re just plugging trees into poisoned glands in a mono-cropped fa shion. Not really thinking about the whole system, like the biota, like the microorganisms in the soil. It's so important. I really am very appreciative that you spoke to that. Yeah, thank you.
Linda Black Elk: I think it helps when we think, truly, the planet as our mother, as Mother Earth, and realize that these degraded or polluted areas are wounds. They are literal wounds on our mother, and they are trauma. The healing of trauma is never easy. The healing of wounds is never easy, and sometimes it's a painful process, right? Sometimes medicine, when you apply it to a wound, it hurts and it takes time to heal and sometimes it has to heal from the inside out. We need to think of it that way and we need to think of ourselves as all of us, people who are practicing restoration ecology, especially we need to think of ourselves as healers the same way that I heal other human beings. I work to heal my mother, and that takes a certain amount of patience and it takes a certain amount of tending to these wounds and being patient and always trying to comfort her and let her know that healing, there’s a lot of trauma, just like we have trauma, historic trauma and more recently trauma. Our Mother Earth has trauma as well and it’s a painful healing process. So it takes time.
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Ayana Young: Now, outside of our individual and immediate experience with this global pandemic, we’re also grappling with how to make meaning of this message. It's common to hear this crisis framed as a spiritual one or an ecological message sent from the animal queendom, and it's also just as common to be reminded that, historically, global crises actually cause modern economies to push themselves even further to make up for the loss gains. It's a critical time that requires isolation, handwashing and medicine, of course, but it also requires prayer, contemplation and courage. I'm wondering if you'd be willing to share any of your own framing or reflections on this time.
Linda Black Elk: Yeah. I mean, this is a time of great lessons and it’s a time when I believe that we are being reminded that we have to rely on each other. I know my elders are relying on me even though it's very difficult to self-isolate, to not do the work that I love to do over at United Tribes Technical College. It’s hard. My elders are depending on me to not go near them at this time, but to still make sure that they're taken care of. I think that there are a lot of lessons to be learned from a global pandemic, but I think that they are internal and everyone has their own lessons for learning their own ways of learning this. I guess, for me, it's about learning to appreciate the silence, learning to appreciate the alone time, learning to appreciate the downtime. I’m someone who constantly keeps myself very busy and I have had to stop doing a lot of activities that I really love and enjoy. Yeah, I just think– I suppose if I were to frame it in a larger context, it will be that we’re all learning how to look within, or we should all be learning how to look within, and then we’re all learning how to apply what we find there to the outside world and do it without necessarily being right in front of each other.
I think one of the most frustrating things about social media is that because we are not face-to-face, we feel like we have permission to be cruel. When someone, when you can't feel their emotions, when you can't see their facial expressions, when you can’t see them hurting, you almost feel justified and being very purposefully cruel. I think the rise of Internet trolls is such an interesting research project. Right now, I'm seeing less of that. I'm seeing people learning to be kind to each other and learning to try to read emotions from a distance. Learning to try to read into feelings from text messages and emails and learning to read people from over a webinar and just from looking at them through a camera lens. Maybe that’s a
good thing. Maybe because we are the Internet age, maybe we’re learning to be a little kinder to each other, hopefully.
Ayana Young: Yeah. I hope so too. Now, I'd like to focus on some of the very delicate areas of the popular narratives going around COVID-19. In the environmental realm, the dominant narrative is one that highlights declining carbon emissions. A halt in many forms of transportation, the reappearance of animal kin throughout heavily populated human areas and the reminder that we don't need as much oil as big companies are telling us we need, or that actually there is a surplus of oil. But often, these conversations either romanticize or oversimplify the true expense of this disease in terms of the human lives it will cost. Indeed, it feels like we're veering into dangerous patterns of disposability and we must make no mistake that narratives of disposability are part of the colonial project. Economies are slowing, yes, but at the expense of entire swaths of our global population. I wonder if you could speak to the complexity, but more importantly, the care that needs to be exercised in processing global pandemics.
Linda Black Elk: Yeah. I've been seeing that a lot too, people talking about how skies are clearing over Hong Kong and dolphins are swimming in waterways and various parts of Europe for the first time. Excuse my language, but it’s bullshit. It’s the poor and the vulnerable who are dying.
The destruction of our planet is not a poor and vulnerable people issue. In fact, the poor have probably caused the least amount of pollution on our planet. This is an elitist issue. It's the rich. It’s major corporations and large industries. They're the ones causing the destruction of our water, and our soil, and our air, and we need to see how that ideology, the idea that human lives are the cost for cleaner air. That serves the 1%. That serves the rich. It takes the blame and the focus off of them, and it’s highly destructive. If anything is making me angry during this time, it is that.
Ayana Young: Yeah. I mean, going back to social media and just media in general, there’s so much coming at us from all angles, and there are a lot of dangerous narratives that we need to understand. I think that if we don't really look at them with a critical lens, that we will repeat the same destructive issues over and over again and really hurt each other. I think that the fact that carbon emissions are lower is a lesson to look at. Let's look at that, but you can’t just put it on a meme, and then one sentence later wrap it up and then everybody go, “Hooray!” It's so much more complex than that. I really appreciate you speaking to that. Yeah, this pandemic is showing us the extremes of our lived experience. We’re becoming, again, acutely aware that a different world is in fact possible.
I think of the prisoners who were mandated to remain incarcerated for decades now released early to be with their families. Workers at grocery stores whose value was estimated to be below the minimum wage now recognized as essential, and cities across the country finding housing for the houseless or for the homeless after telling us for years that there weren’t the funds or the space to do so. But I also wonder what happens to this power when the virus weakens or when life resumes to some sort of normal. What will endure? How do you think we can hold on to this momentum as so many are awakening to anti-capitalism? How can we ensure that we don't allow global powers to divert our attention amidst a public health crisis and a likely global recession? Whatdoes recovery from this pandemic look like?
Linda Black Elk: It's a great question. My hope is that we will not forget that the only people who are keeping the world running at this time are the people, as you said, who have been deemed sort of at the bottom of the economic ladder. My own son, he's 18, and he works at a grocery store, and he's actuallyhigh-risk because he is asthmatic. I was finally able to get him to take some time off of work because I was so concerned.
I actually posted about how concerned I was on Facebook, and I was shocked that people's reactions were, “Oh! Isn’t he so brave to be putting himself at risk to bag people's groceries?” I was so angry at people who were talking that way, because it's like he should not be the one putting himself at risk. If that is an essential service, if my son bagging groceries for his high school job, if that is an essential service, then why are the 1% not recognizing that? Why is he making minimum wage if he is so essential?
As we watch how like these stock markets plunge, when actually no real infrastructure has been destroyed and no natural resources, we still, as you said, have oil and all of that. If the stock markets plunge through all of that and our economy is crashing, what does that actually say about the labor of people like my son? What does that actually mean about the importance of people who are doing these jobs? Fulfilling these essential services as they're called? How do we make sure that the people who are in these sort of upper economic echelons, if want to talk about it that way, what they will do after all of this is over? Will they still recognize that importance?
Well, I think that that's going to have to be up to us. I think that we're going to have to constantly remind them and not ever let them forget. I have seen a lot of people having this discussion but with no plan about how to constantly remind the 1% of this. What happens? Maybe in the future it's just going to mean that we have to stop working for them. Maybe it means that we have to stop pumping their gas and we have to stop bagging groceries and we have to stop cleaning their hotel rooms in their hospital rooms in
order to make them see how essential and how important people's labor is.
Ayana Young: Yeah. I'm with you. I think that– Yeah, as you were speaking, I just couldn't help but look back to some of my own reflections, especially the importance of using this time to organize and potentially stop doing the grunt work, the labor. Yeah, what people have deemed as this less worthy work for the 1%. I think looking in this country, there are a lot of us who are really safe in comparison to what is going on elsewhere. Of course, there’s struggle. But I was just reading this article in India of this mass exodus, and it was horrifying seeing these images. But I think instead of just talking about it or sharing memes through social media, I really feel like we need to use this fleeting moment to demand Medicare for All and participate in rent strikes, for example. I wonder if you could speak to the importance of taking action now, organizing to ensure that we do in fact see measurable change at the end of this pandemic.
Linda Black Elk: Absolutely. Now is the time to demand that infrastructural change. Medicare for All and talking to people about a living wage, demanding a living wage, realizing that people who are working in these labor jobs, these labor positions, them struggling actually has a negative impact on the entire economy and on the sort of our emotional wellness as well. The emotional wellness of the entire country.
That has much more of a trickle down and trickle effect than actual cash does. So we have to demand this. We have to be voting. It’s coming up soon. We have to vote that way. We have the vote for the person and the people who are going to make sure that those lessons, these lessons that we've learned from COVID-19 are never forgotten. I can't stress it enough. Voting is what's going to be essential. Demanding that change from the people that we put into office is going to be critical and making sure that the people who are denying that to us are thrown out.
Ayana Young: Yes. Absolutely. I do think that we are in such a unique time because this country, the government of the United States and all over the world, there's a lot of chaos. There is a lot of lack of stability. I think if we do organize, if we really do take this time when we’re at home, when we don't have our schedules full to the brim, that we actually can make a lot of change with voting and otherwise, because we're in this place where things are fragile. There is a lot of opportunity to say no or to say yes. Whatever demands that we’re speaking to. I could imagine them really taking hold. If enough people strike for rent freeze, what could they do about it at this point? It’s kind of like, “Wow! We have a lot at our fingertips if we really get together through the Internet or in other ways to make a big change.” So I am holding on to that. It's just such a strange time though.
I also wanted to speak too that– And you spoke to this a bit in your last response, that we are also being reminded that it's really easy to capitalize on our fear, particularly to enact draconian and authoritarian measures. Once these measures are passed, there’s no telling if they'll be rescinded once the virus slows. For example, just last week the EPA announced a freeze on enforcing environmental regulations for an indefinite amount of time due to the coronavirus. Explaining that they will not seek penalties when major polluters fail to follow legal requirements on hazardous waste management, and air, and water pollution.
With that in mind, I'd like to turn towards the importance of creating resilience and freedom where we can, because it's not enough to be acutely aware of what might be taken away. We have to proactively engage with what we can create for ourselves. I'd love it if you could speak to your work with cultivating food sovereignty and stopping the exploitation of body, land and water.
Linda Black Elk: Absolutely. Yeah, I think that all of the lightning of environmental regulations along with what the EPA did in suspending those laws. Trump was weakening fuel economy standards and different states for passing laws to criminalize fossil fuel protests and things like that right under our noses, andthat's really in my opinion the sign of a tyrannical government. People who are exploiting, this government who are so opportunistic, right? That they’re exploiting us at our weakest time, a time when we are supposed to be in quarantine, a time when we’re scared about getting sick and seeing our relatives or people dying around us. The government and their rich allies are selling off their stocks and lining their pockets with our suffering and a lot of cash.
It's really a time for us to stand up and say, “Okay, how can we not be part of that system? How can we help to dismantle that system that is oppressing us?” One of the best ways in my opinion that we can do that is by growing our own food. We can grow our own food if you live in an area where you only have a balcony or a porch, you can grow food in containers. I am always amazed at the amount of usable space that is around apartment buildings that is filled with rocks and gravel. Demanded that those rocks and that gravel be taken out and throw some topsoil on there and start growing your own food. Even if you have to start small the first year and you're only growing lettuce.
Growing lettuce, growing small things that start, that is an act of resistance and it will just expand and grow year after year after year. Because once you get that feeling of being independent of growing your own food, feeding yourself and your family and your community, once you get that feeling, it spreads and you almost become dependent on it, and that next year, you’re going to go bigger. You’re going to plant more. You’re going to expand your gardens and you see that garden bed in the median in the middle of the street and you’re like, “Hey, some apple trees would grow perfectly there.” That feeling is going to spread. It only takes a couple of people to start it in a particular neighborhood and then the rest of the neighborhood will join, especially when you tell them about why it's important.
Along with actually growing our own food and planting our own food and saving seeds, it's important to share why we're doing that. A lot of people will get so frustrated, because they'll have their own garden and they’ll have neighbors and other people coming and saying, “Hey, do you want to share some of those cucumbers with me? Can you spare squash?” Things like that. But they're not actually saying to their neighbors, “Well, here's a squash. Make sure to save seeds from that so that you and I can plant them next year. I'll teach you how to grow this.” That education behind that is so important.
It's not just the education in growing food. We have to teach people how to grow their own food. We have to encourage them to grow their own food, but we do not just live in food deserts. We have to understand that. We don't just live in food deserts. We live in culinary deserts where people have forgotten how to cook good food. You know what? A lot of people are embarrassed by that. You hand them a kohlrabi, for example, or something even more common than that. Hand them a squash and ask them if they know how to cook it, and there’s going to be a lot of people even in Indigenous communities who do not know how to cook a squash.
So we have to teach people how to cook these items.Then we also need to encourage them to change their pallets to appreciate traditional foods, to appreciate good foods over time. It's not going to happen overnight. People aren’t going to give up fry bread overnight. I’ve tried. But, we need to encourage them, “Okay. I'm not asking you to give up fried bread, but just try adding this squash into your diet a couple of times a week, or adding a salad into your repertoire a few times a week, and here's how you make it, and this is what benefits it has, and this is how you will get taste amazing.”
It requires just a passion for food. It requires a passion for the plants and it requires a passion for our planet and a passion for our community, a love of our community wanting to be healthier not just physically healthier, but more spiritually and emotionally healthy.
Ayana Young: Yes. I love hearing that, and I never thought about the culinary desert, but I completely see that. I think a few years ago before I grew squash, I probably wouldn't have known what to do with a lot of them. I don't think I did. Also, some of them are so hard to cut that I think I probably gave up as soon as I couldn’t get a dull knife through one. Realized like, “I don't know what I'm doing with this big, hard thing.”
When you're talk ing about how it could be– Well, I guess the word came up contagious in a positive way, like getting your hands in the soil and growing food, it gets you. Working with plants, the plants get you. I’ve experienced this with myself and so many others. There is that resistance that feels like we could be so distant from the plants, but then once we welcome them in and we smell them, we feel them, we touch the seeds, we feel the soil in our fingertips, like something magical really happens. I think that, you're right, if people just start small and it can grow within the community and there is an excitement around it and then you have a potluck when we can have those again and we’re sharing the food from our gardens no matter if it's a container garden on our balcony or otherwise. There’s something so connective and primordial that all of our ancestors did at one point. I think there's a lot of healing that comes with food sovereignty on so many levels, physical, spiritual. There's a lot of purpose in it.
So I love hearing you talk about this, because it feels really good, and I think that like you were saying at the beginning of our conversation about laughter, we do need to feel good at times right now. Of course, we need to be taking in the truths and the hard truths, but if we don't have time where we are having a connection to joy and laughter and just that reverence, that feeling of reverence, I think it'll be really detrimental to us.I know that there's a lot of grief and panic and anxiety in the whole global sphere at the moment because of the Internet, and social media, and just 24/7 hour news streams, which I do not think us humans have been evolved to deal with this type of global news 24 hours, 7 days a week. We hear how many frontline responders are testing positive in New York and we’re aware of the increase in cases across the Navajo nation, and we’re witnessing the spraying of migrant workers in India and just the atrocities of the position that the refugees are in in Syria. I mean, stranded in camps without soap or water. I think this is causing both collective grief and anticipatory grief rightfully so.
So amidst a time when we need to be nourishing our immune systems and we can’t help but weaken them through our overpowering emotions, like I said rightly so, because we just can't turn away from the state of the world. I’m wondering if you could speak to how we can calm ourselves and how these tools will also be necessary in recovering from this pandemic over the long term, because we know what’s not going away overnight or even in April.
Linda Black Elk: It's not going away. Anytime that I really feel myself getting anxious, I try to stay as on top of the news as possible, but I only allow myself a certain number of views per day, because as you said, this constant stream, I can really can become obsessive about it. Because if I missed news, especially where people are dying and people are suffering, it's almost as if I feel guilty from missing it. How couldn't I have known that those two grandmothers passed away up on the White Earth Reservation or down on the Diné Reservation. It makes me feel like, “Oh! I’m missing this suffering of my relatives, andI should really be witnessing it so that I can talk to people about it in the future.”The very first thing I do when I start to feel that anxious is I breathe. I take super deep breaths. In fact, I speak for super deep breaths counting to 10 on the way in and counting again to 10 on the way out each time just focusing on the numbers, just focusing on counting. Taking those deep breaths, sometimes I’ll say to my students, “How many times a day do you take a super deep breath? How many times a day do you take air all the way into your lungs?” They will often say to me that they can't even remember the last time that they did that. Let alone doing that once a day, even once a day. They can't remember the last time they ever thought about that or did that.
The first thing I always do is breathe and I encourage people to take deep breaths. It's better if you can get outside, get near a tree, get on a patch of grass, get into a garden, whatever you can do, whatever you can find. Get out and get in touch with your plant relatives in whatever way you can and take those deep breaths in that spot. It's so calming and it's so reassuring. It makes all the difference in the world.
I am also– And it's difficult to talk about this, but I and in my home, we burn plants quite a bit. We smudge I guess is the popular term for it. Lakota’s use the word lazily, you know to purify the air around you. I think that that’s really important, but I was on a webinar yesterday where I said, “If you are native, do not use our sage to smudge with. Do not over-harvest it.” A lot of our species, sage especially, the California white sage, salvia apiana, is being terribly over-harvested and overexploited. So what I always say is you can burn rosemary, and it’s fantastic. Even think the stuff you get it and store in a bottle. Put some of that in a dish and burn it. It's antimicrobial. It purifies the air and there’s plenty of it. You do not have to go out and exploit traditional Indigenous medicine in order to purify the air through burning of plants. There's just so many that you can do. You can walk outside and grab some juniper off of your juniper bush that’s growing outside of your yard or maybe in the tree row across the street or something like that. You can get some of those juniper berries. You don’t have to use threatened or endangered species just because somehow the media has taught you that those clients are somehow more sacred than others. All plants are sacred. Of course, they have different medicinal properties, and that’s fine. The point to burning plants is to purify the air and there are lots of extremely common plants that have those properties.Breathing, smudging, making sure that you get outside in the sun as much as possible. It’s difficult to doin northern climates where I am sitting right now in Bismarck, North Dakota. We are expecting 5 inches of snow tonight in April. That’s fairly common. It's difficult to get out in the sun. But make sure that you're doing that as much as possible. Getting that gorgeous vitamin D. Make sure that you are eating well, as I said earlier. Making sure that you're communicating and talking to people. Being open to that. We are taught the expression of emotion is something odd or something to be ashamed of.But I called my mother yesterday and I cried to her. I cried like a baby, I suppose, and cried to my mom just about how stressed I am and about how difficult things are. I felt so much better afterward, and I then talked to my partner and I talked to my kids and we watched a movie together and we took a walk. Doing these things are just so important and so vital and showing love and appreciation for the plant nations for the food that we’re eating, even if they’re animals. Showing love and appreciation for the people around us. Not forgetting to have gratitude. It's vital right now.
Ayana Young: I feel so much better just from you saying all those things. I was so riled up in my question and I was feeling like I didn't even realize it until you said breathe. I was realizing that I was actually holding my breath and I had all this tension in my chest and in my throat. When you were explaining breathing, I actually did that, and the amount of release, as simple as that sounds, it’s almost silly how simple it is and how I know that I forget doing that.When I am holding my breath, the anxiety that builds, it’s really interesting somatically to experience that, and I just did it right now. That is really important for us to remember. Yeah, thank you also for speaking to the plant medicine. I never thought about burning rosemary, but that’s just such a good idea and it reminded me of thyme or oregano. I know rosemary–
Linda Black Elk: You can burn any of those.
Ayana Young: Yeah, and I love that. Yeah, I am so with you. We do not need to be using especially for those of us who are not native to this land, to Turtle Island, we don't need to be using sage. It's not necessary at all. There are so many beautiful plants that are waiting for us to give them attention and to smell them; rosemary, thyme, oregano. Oh my gosh! They're incredible. I love the culinary herbs like those and so many others. Yeah, thank you for speaking to that, because I think it's important for us to know there are so many other plants available for us to interact with. It's not just no to sage, but yes to all these other beautiful creatures that are wanting our relationship. Yeah, I wish I had a little rosemary with me right now. Yeah, I really love those herbs. Linda, this has been so wonderful, and I don't want to start closing this conversation, but I do want to make sure we talk about the survival meal kits that you're preparing. I was reading on Facebook that you and your partner are preparing survival meal kits for elders on Standing Rock and the Cheyenne River Reservations. I mentioned this to find out if listeners can support this cause, and if so, how?
Linda Black Elk: Thank you so much for mentioning that. That’s really kind of you. Yeah. My partner and I are getting as many traditional ingredients together as possible. For example, wild rice and maple sugar, maple syrup, real dried hominy, traditional beans, things like that. We’re even getting a lot of dried vegetables together, like dried vegetable mixes, dried fruit, traditional berries such as dried strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, things like that. But we’re also getting some nontraditional ingredients together. Foods such as coffee and white flour–What else did our elders request? It’s things like that that were very comforting to them. Oh! Oil, of course, for them to cook with.We've been getting out all of these items together and we’re putting them into these kits. We’re using these 18-gallons totes and we’re trying to put a month’s worth, 30 days with food into each tote to give to elders on Standing Rock and Cheyenne River and within our local communities. Our elders are petrified. They are so scared, and some of them are so frightened to go to the grocery store that they're just not doing it and there's no one else to bring them food. A lot of them are going hungry, but they're too scared to go over the store right now because they've been told that that's a hugely risky area for them. Of course, they are at a high risk than most young people or they tend to be a higher risk.Some of them, I’ve been seeing, I’ve been hearing stories about elders sitting in the parking lot of the Walmart asking people to go in and buy groceries for them and bring them out and then wiping them down with clorox wipes once they get outside. Especially on areas like Standing Rock and CheyenneRiver that are so remote, some of our elders live two and half hours from the nearest Walmart. Two and half hours and the nearest major grocery store. It’s a very difficult time for them. We’re putting these kits together, these 18 gallons totes and we’ll be handing them out to as many elders as possible.We’ve actually received enough funds to make more than 50. We had originally planned on 50. It's just my partner and I and we don't want to expose anyone or ourselves to other people right now because we’re supposed to be in quarantine. It's just the two of us having these items delivered to our very tiny home. It’s a challenge, but we’re getting it together and then we're going to hand them out, and with any of the funds that we have left over after these 50. We are going to make more kits that are the same with a lot of these beautiful, healthy foods and some other less traditional stuff.We are going to hand them out to displaced students, displaced families who may have–for instance, on the United Tribes Campus, we have students who live in student housing and have nowhere else to go. So they've been sort of left without any options besides trying to run over to Macdonalds and things like that. So we’ll start trying to make kits for them as well. But we want to keep feeding elders as much as possible and we’re using a lot of nonperishable foods. Luckily, traditional Indigenous foods, of course, tend to be very nonperishable. So we’re even including dried and canned meat in these kits as well.
If anyone wants to contribute to that, then they can PayPal at linda.black.elk@gmail.com or they canVenmo @lindablackelk. Thanks so much for asking that.
Ayana Young: Oh! Of course, and it’s such a beautiful offering. I was imagining these kits that you are creating and what a gift of not only physical nourishment, but just the relief that these elders and other folks will know that they're being cared for, that they're being thought of, that they’re being acknowledged, that they know that somebody is looking out for them. I think just that alone, that care is so relieving and tender and it reminds me of other things we’ve talked about in this conversation. Just how to be patient and how to really care for people and plants and the earth not just in this time, but especially in this time, and maybe this time is an awakening for even more people to start being in relationship in these ways.
Yeah, I love hearing what you're doing, and it's really inspirational. Maybe folks cannot only donate, but also start doing something similar in their neighborhoods for their communities and mutual aid.
Linda Black Elk: Yeah. It’s so important. I also wanted to say we’re including seed packets in all of these kits, because we want to encourage people to grow their own food after this. It's really apparent that if we are growing our own food, we wouldn't be having this problem right now. I know it sounds strange, but elders have–Especially our elders,Indigenous elders around here, they grew up gardening. A lot of them already know how to do it. They just lack the resources such as the seeds to do it. We’re including these seed packetsand we’re of course going to include directions foreach of those plants and offering to come into a garden for them. I think we’re not just trying to think 30 days ahead, but we’re trying to think much further ahead into the future with these kits as well.
Ayana Young: I love that. That is such an important part of these baskets or just having the seeds in them. It really goes with everything you've been saying in this conversation. Oh! Like it brings a smile to my face, because along with all of the anxiety and overwhelm of what's coming at us from all these directions to hear what year tangibly doing in this way is like, “Okay, we can focus our time. We can organize. We can take care of others. We have a lot to do in this time even if we’re at home. Even if we feel like we're bored and we just need to watch Netflix shows.” It’s like, “Well, sure put a Netflix show on while you're making a basket for the elders.” There's so much that we can be doing to take care of each other and really build resiliency. I love how you’re doing things beyond just this 30days, because this is not going to be over soon. Whether or not COVID-19 ends in a few months, climate change is here.Global capitalism and globalization, we’re up against a lot that is like a pandemic, but it’s just not called a pandemic.
I do think we have to be taking this time as a lesson to know that other things are coming and we can really learn so much right now, and that in a weird way gives me hope to know that we can take this time, organize, become more resilient in our communities. When the next thing hits, hopefully we’ll be much more prepared than we were this time around. Yeah, Linda, this has been such a beautiful conversation and I could talk to you all day and I would love to hopefully have a follow-up conversation and talk even more about plants and the land, because I know you have so much to share and I feel really honored and grateful that you spoke so directly to COVID-19 because we’re not–This is not something that we've been talking to guests about so directly, and I felt like you were somebody who could speak to the pandemic with such a breadth of wisdom and care. I really feel that we need to hear your voice right now.Of course, other times as well, but right now, folks need guidance, and I know I do. So thank you for sharing this time with us.
Linda Black Elk: Thank you so much for having me and letting me speak. Yeah, I just wanted to say that anything that I’ve said and anything that I know, it all comes from my people, my elders, other knowledge holders who have gifted me with what they know. I want to say thank you to all of them, and to you for having me. Yeah, much wishes for good things for you and yours.
Carter Lou McElroy: Thanks for listening to another episode of For The Wild Podcast, I’m Carter LouMcElroy and the music you heard today was Matti Palonen and Chris Pureka. I’d like to thank our founder and host Ayana Young, as well as the rest of our podcast production team Aiden McRae, Andrew Storrs, Erica Ekrem, Eryn Wise, Francesca Glaspell, Hannah Wilton, and Melanie Younger.