CLIENT:
Hispanic Access Foundation

TITLE:
Our Heritage, Our Planet Film Week - Environmental Justice Poetry Performance

SERVICES:
Public Speaking

Join me on the first Our Heritage, Our Planet Film Week with Hispanic Access Foundation where I was invited to perform poetry on Environmental Justice.

Scroll down for a script of this piece or catch a replay below:

Out there

I always remember

Humans,

We were not born

To work

Without meaning

To work

Endlessly

To work

Extractively

Out there

I always remember

Humans,

We were not born

To destroy

But to tend

To each other and la Tierra

Out there

 I see

The  balance

So delicate

So slow 

Natural

Out there

I understand

Humans,

We have the gift

Of imagining

Creating

Inhabiting

A thousand worlds

A thousand mundos

But what world better than this one?

How many worlds until everyone remembers?

Humans,

We were not born

To just take

To ambition

Humans,

We who think and feel

Could share in all there is

And there is plenty

And we already have it

Out there

I always remember

I just got back from my first-ever elk hunt, and let me tell you, that stuff is hard. I mean you wake up well before sunrise, wait through the coldest hours and minutes of a day for that first light when you can begin to hunt, and then wander through the woods on your search for elk all through the last light of day...we walked miles on end each day on some unforgiving terrain, from brushy canyons to close-to-vertical rocky descents - through gusting winds, rain and snow. Hunting time seems to exist in an alternative reality, where your attention is focused on one objective that you have very slim chances of achieving, by the way. Days go by and is easy to forget what life is even about outside of hunting. In those moments you are alert, listening intently, treading ever so lightly, observing for small movement, sniffing for clues. Every day I asked the mountain for a relationship, for protection, for guidance, for an exchange, but I also asked: what is my purpose here as a human, today?

On our first day out on the mountain, before the hunting began, we spotted a herd of elk grazing in the distance. We must have watched for hours...they watched us back from over 700 yards away. They were living their purpose so effortlessly. Eat, rest, soak the sun, soak the shade, repeat. What amazes me most is...do you know elk migrate around different feeding areas so as to not overgraze... so as to not exhaust the food sources of any given place at any given time? How come elk, elk who do not build rocketships, or 100+ story buildings, or carry entire musical libraries in their pockets, how come they so effortlessly live a simple sustainable life? The comparison may be a stretch and there would be tons of complexity to unpack to make that a viable comparison, BUT entertain me here for a second: how? This is not true of just elk, but how come every living thing on this planet exists in relationship with and in balance with its surroundings, fulfilling a purpose that is so intertwined with the wellbeing of everything around them from the moment they are born to the moment they decease, except for humans?

While out on the hunt, I was living my purpose, to survive. First, to survive the hunt and then hunting to continue to survive. Truth is, after my unsuccessful hunt I get to go home to buy groceries. Our ancestors had no such choice, but they had and took their time to cover their and their communities’ basic needs.

I was invited here to speak about my work on Equity, Justice, and Health... and to be honest, I don’t have much more to offer than many existential questions and to say we, right now, have to salvage what indigenous knowledge we have left before it’s too late to restore our relationships with the land, to make them regenerative again and not extractive anymore. To go back to being Nature. Our health depends on it. Our joy does too. Why uphold broken systems that have proven for centuries their inability to improve the lives of most people whilst destroying the beautiful home given to ALL OF US.

To me, nature is where it all starts and ends. Our Earth is a mystery of life and thought, of histories filled with genocide-oppression-destruction yet amidst these human-inflicted tragedies, our families have cultivated empathy-love-hope, otherwise, why and how would we be here today?

So we are here, we are all our ancestors’ hope. What do we do with that?

For millennia our relatives survived through close and careful relationships with the land. Through observations so detailed that, might be hard to believe, but humans were once part of the natural balance of the Earth. Maybe we could still be.

When I’m out in nature, I’m constantly challenged to remember much of what should’ve been erased by capitalism, by the hustle, by consumerism. Out there everything has a purpose, nothing that gets created there is ever waste, 

So I’m here today with a sore brain from hunting, understanding how our ancestors’ mind muscles evolved so big that we can fly across our planet or beyond, raise 100+ story buildings, hold entire musical libraries in our pockets. But I also acknowledge that for me to have access to this practice of hunting, I must have a lot of privilege. It’s true, a practice so mundane such as providing food from the land to one’s table now requires an immense privilege. From access to the necessary gear, to being able to afford “taking time off” for scouting and hunting, to having the time needed to learn the skills to hunt...list goes on. An ancient and essential practice, which allowed us to survive and evolve through today, can feel like yet another high summit to reach in outdoor recreation. 

I was personally very lucky to have grown up in a family of hunters and fisher people. My family’s love for nature was such that time spent outside was just part of our lives, whether fishing, learning plant identification, or tracking animals, my most significant memories with family happened surrounded by nature. I’ve discovered also, that nature has been more than a backdrop for memories. It has played the role of mentor, of caregiver, of friend.

I know that time spent outside has allowed me to build confidence to tackle life’s challenges, it has helped me build character and skills that have allowed me to grow professionally, and it has been there for me when I’ve needed the comfort of being fully myself without feeling judged or noticed. 

The more I’ve gotten to see and understand this world, the more I realize the relationship I’ve developed with the outdoors from a young age is not accessible to everyone. And that to me, is unacceptable.

Not only do I believe everyone should have the opportunity to hunt/grow/harvest their own foods, but I believe everyone needs to spend time in nature in whatever ways we can make accessible for each other. I truly believe it’s a basic human need and should be a human right. Being one with nature, being part of nature’s balance, is really the one legacy we all have in common as humans - even when some may have to look further back in history than others to remember.

In 2020, I started working with Hiking My Feelings, a non-profit organization dedicated to spreading awareness around the transformative and healing power of nature - we do this through online and in-person programs that guide folks through incorporating mindful time in nature into their lives. Through my role as Director of Social Responsibility, I’ve been able to witness first-hand how people’s lives are changed for the better every day once nature becomes part of one’s life. From hearing success stories like the organization’s founder Sydney Williams who has used hiking to manage and beat her diabetes diagnosis, to holding space for stories from survivors of sexual assault, family violence, systemic abuse,  who have found refuge and emotional healing in the outdoors...to honestly just being in a community with people where we are all on a journey to be a better version of ourselves and having nature be at the center of our healing. I don’t need scientific proof (although it’s out there and a lot of it) to believe how vital nature is to our human wellbeing. 

That experience really inspired me to continue to pursue work that helps bring more people back to nature. Which landed me as Associate Equity Director at Nuestra Tierra Conservation Project, where we literally wake up every day to ensure historically deliberately overlooked communities have access, a voice, and influence in our country’s conservation efforts. Communities that have been pushed to the margins are usually the first ones to be affected by lack of protections to their natural resources and the last ones to have a say in the future of their landscapes. Through the work at Nuestra Tierra we are trying to change that. Historically, conservation has been mostly informed by the white male perspective of what is better for the land, often ignoring true stakeholders’ opinions and knowledge, and even their rights. We are not only making sure we create space for more diverse leaders in the pre-existing conservation movement, but we are also creating new spaces where the leadership is diverse, to begin with. 

An example of one such space is the Outdoor F.U.T.U.R.E. Initiative. This is an ethnically, racially, and geographically diverse coalition working to ensure that nature’s transformational powers are accessible to all of our nation’s youth. On the heels of two successful outdoor equity grant programs created in New Mexico and California, and a newly formed one in Colorado, the organizations that launched these efforts alongside like-minded leaders and with the support from Senator Martin Heinrich, have come together to create and introduce the Outdoor F.U.T.U.R.E -  FUTURE stands for Fund for Underrepresented Tribal Urban and Rural Equity. We want to secure the investment necessary to bring more kids and families closer to nature.   The outdoor future is the time when every young person has the opportunity of having meaningful experiences outdoors. 

The truth is, the work isn’t easy. My colleague and Outdoor FUTURE initiative member Teresa Martinez from CDTC always reminds us that “this work hasn’t been done before, of course, it is going to be uncomfortable, and we have the opportunity to sit in and work through that discomfort.” 

 Ultimately, if we are all going to work towards a more just, equitable, healthier world, we will need to work together and be willing to sit through a lot of discomforts, pain, and trauma. There is no way around that, but I propose we do this close to nature, back to nature, with nature, where maybe we will all remember.