Turning Deserts to Gardens with Lyla June

In the Chalice and the Blade, Riane Eisler provides a compelling story of our cultural origins that incorporates both the female and male halves of our humanity. This story provides verification that a better future - a Partnership-based future - is possible. In this episode, Lyla June, an Indigenous musician, scholar, and community organizer of Diné (Navajo), Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne), and European lineages, explores this history as it relates to both environmental sustainability and our relationships with ourselves, other humans, and the planet on which we live.  

Center@Partnershipway.org
Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future, Riane Eisler (https://centerforpartnership.org/resources/books/the-chalice-and-the-blade-our-history-our-future/)
Lyla June’s TedX talk, “3000-year-old solutions to modern problems” (lylajune.com)
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (https://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Societies/dp/0393317552)
1491: New Relevations of the Americas Before Columbus (https://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before-Columbus/dp/1400032059)
Resilience by Rising Appalachia (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx17RvPMaQ8)

Transcript

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Welcome
to the Power of Partnership podcast.

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I'm Riane Eisler, founder of the Center
for Partnerships Systems,

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and this podcast brings
you voices from the partnership movement.

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People who are using partnership practices

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to build a world that values caring

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nature and shared prosperity.

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The Power of Partnership podcast is hosted

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by Cherri Jacobs Pruitt

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Health Policy and Partnership Scholar,

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and today Cherri interviews
Lyla June Johnston

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on how Indigenous partnership practices

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turn deserts into gardens.

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So now on to the Power
of Partnership podcast,

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showing how we can reclaim harmony

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with nature.

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So Lyla I'd love to start our interview
today

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by asking you to provide a deeper
introduction for our listeners

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and how you first learned of Riane's work.

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Thank you so much.

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So first off, I as a Dine’ woman,
I have to state my clans

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in the introduction, which is the
the clans of your four grandparents.

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So just to position myself
within the various rivers

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that flowed together
to make me who I am so

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(speaking in Dine’)

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I'm from the Na-Hashtł'ishnii
clan of the Dine’ Nation.

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We're also incorrectly known as Navajo,

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which was a colonial Anglicized word
that was put on us.

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Like most tribes are misnamed actually

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because they didn't want to take the time
to learn our real names.

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And when you rename everything
through colonization, you replace

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what was there
with your own version of it,

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which is the whole
point of colonization. So

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but that clan I get from my mother,

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we are a matrifocal, matrilineal people

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We are indigenous to what is now called
New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah.

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But we call it the Diné bikéyah 
the people's land.

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And so, yeah, I that's my first clan.

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We get our clans from
our mothers our number one clan.

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Like in American culture,
you get your last name from your father

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and then your mother's name is your
is the maiden maiden name.

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But for us,
our last name comes from our mother.

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And so my second clan is

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my father's mother's clan,
which is éí bá shíshchíín.

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So my father's mother was from Anadarko,
Oklahoma.

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She was of the southern Cheyenne clans,
if you will,

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(speaking in Dine’)

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My mother's
father is my third clan is salt

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(speaking in Dine’) clan of the Dine'. 
My father's father's clan is the

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European

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clans so I'm kind of a mixture of things
like most of us are. But

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(speaking in Dine’)

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In that manner
I present myself as a Dine' woman.

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I stumbled upon Riane's work.

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I obviously love
how she chronicles in Chalice

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and The Blade, how we went
from a chalice culture in Europe of

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abundance, community, unity, partnership,
if you will,

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to a blade culture of fortification
and

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brute force and things like that.

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And I think what she proved

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to say that human beings are not
inherently warlike

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is so profoundly important
for Native Americans, if you will.

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We prefer to call ourselves indigenous people. But

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because one of the biggest

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excuses that people use

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to legitimize our genocide, about
98% of us

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were wiped out here,
in what we now call the Americas,

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what they used to 

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to excuse themselves of,
you know, almost wiping out an entire race

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people is they say,
oh, well, humans are just war like.

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So we had the bigger guns and Jared
Diamond's book

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what is it, Guns, Germs and Steel.

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That's basically his core argument.

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Humans are just war like.

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And we had the bigger guns
and that's why we won.

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And instead of saying

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we killed everyone because we were wrong,

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we killed everyone
because we were sick inside.

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We killed everyone because we
we made a mistake.

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You know?

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And so I think that her work actually

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has great implications for the indigenous
conversation here in what we now

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call the Americas, because it's like,
no, we are not inherently war-like.

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Riane and many other scholars
have done the work to show

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there have been many peaceful societies
that lasted for thousands of years

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and speaking of which, I come from
one of those peaceful societies

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that lasted for centuries and millennia.

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And so anyways, long story short,
I stumbled

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upon her work through the chalice
in the blade first foremost,

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especially because I'm part European.

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And this the last thing I'll say on
this question is that

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I had to go to my European roots

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as a as a half native,
half European person.

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My native culture taught me
that your roots are important.

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So it kind of guided me down
the road of my European roots.

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And I had to see the witch burnings,
I had to see the bubonic plague.

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I had to see the trauma
that our European ancestors went through.

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And I think Riane really helped me there,
too, because she showed me how we are

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not that we are
not this thin wall of time that dominates

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our understanding of Europe, which King
Louis, Napoleon, Alexander the Great,

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all those patriarchal guys,
God bless them, but really see deeper

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into these deeper archeological contexts

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where the true European identity,
I think, which is buried under literally

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thousands of years of war,
but our true selves, our true selves.

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And that's what I've been trying
to, you know,

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preach on top of the hill or whatever,
or shout from the rooftops is like

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we as Europeans, we have more than just,
oh, we're just the slave masters.

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Oh, we're just the colonizers.

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Which don't get me wrong, we did that.

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And that's a problem
and we have to accountability for that.

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But, a way of taking accountability
for that is to really honor

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who we actually are before the trauma,
before the witch burnings,

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before the Roman expansion.

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And so her work was really instrumental
in helping me share with the world

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a deeper, truer European identity
to help us reconnect

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with our indigenous roots
and start acting in accordance with those

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for both the healing of ourselves
and for those around us.

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Beautiful.

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you know, you have on your website.

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LylaJune.com.

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You have a copy of a

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TED X video that you delivered
that was a

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summary of your dissertation, correct.

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And it was, yeah.
So can you talk a little bit about that?

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That was just at one point
you describe it as a message of hope,

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which it very much was to me personally.

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And I know everyone who is listening to it
probably just feels like, oh my gosh,

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there is hope in this incredibly
challenging time of climate change.

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Yeah, I mean, there was many
there were several main points of the TEDx

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talk, which by the grace of the Creator,
has has blown up.

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I'm so grateful for that.

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Not for my aggrandizement, but
because this is what the elders taught me

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and I'm just so happy that my native
elders message is getting out there.

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I'm just like, Yes,
that was a win, you know?

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But what it was saying was Indigenous
peoples have sculpted

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this entire continent
in an extensive manner,

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way before Columbus was born


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and compiled a lot of incredible
scholarly work that proves ancient

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Indigenous fisheries were thriving all
along the coastlines of this continent.

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Ancient Indigenous soil management
techniques that were just

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absolutely brilliant.

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And in some places they still exist.

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And the ways in which we used fire
to sculpt

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entire grasslands to manage
the chestnut forests of the east,

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and just really changing the narrative of,
oh, humans are a pest to

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humans are an essential piece
of the ecological puzzle.

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And my native ancestors
knew how to do that.

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And in fact, ancestors around the world
knew how to do that.

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And we became what
we call a keystone species,

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which is a species, a linchpin
that the entire ecosystem depends on.

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So not only are we not a pest,
we're actually an essential,

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vital variable in the whole functioning,
because if the creator

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creates everything for a purpose,
you know, it's easiest for for us to say,

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Oh, that tree has a purpose,
that bird has a purpose.

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That rock is here for a reason.

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That star is holding the galaxy is doing
its part to hold the galaxy in place.

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But then when it comes to saying
that human has a purpose,

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why wouldn't we have a purpose too

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and we exclude ourselves
from all of creation.

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Like everything has a purpose except us,
because we're these problem child

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problem children,

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misfits

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of creation that we're just wrong
and bad, you know?

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And don't get me wrong,
we can behave wrong and bad, obviously.

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But we have proven, just as Riane's work

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proved,
that peaceable societies are possible,

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I think my work was proving
we can be a gift to the earth.

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We can be a nourishing balm
to the entire ecosystem,

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and not just in little gardens
and little oyster farms.

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I'm talking entire estuaries were managed
by the Algonquin

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nations in Washington, D.C.

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I'm talking entire chestnut groves were
managed by the Shawnee people in Kentucky

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starting 3000 years ago that we know of
through fossilized pollen records.

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I'm talking entire oak groves

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becoming fire resistant over
thousands of years because Native peoples

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managed the entirety of California
with routine burning.

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I'm talking about alluvial farming
techniques where every time the monsoon

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rains come, people would position
their fields where those rains flow down,

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which carry both water and fertilizer
from that nutrient dense upland soils.

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So saying like, Hey,
we had whole farms that lasted thousands

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of years, never needed outside irrigation
or outside fertilizer

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because we went where nature was creating
those deposits already.

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And so just showing the world like,
hey, not only are native

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people not stupid,
we're not primitive, we're not

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culturally

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backward, which is what the narrative has
been, right?

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We are actually profoundly sophisticated
and we can learn a lot from these systems.

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These systems could transform
food systems around the world.

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They could transform
our governance systems.

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And what we'll probably be talking about,
the partnership ethic

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within indigenous cultures,
is so informative and could help us a lot.

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You are listening
to the Power of Partnership podcast.

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00;12;08;23 - 00;12;13;51
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00;12;13;56 - 00;12;17;18
And now back to today's episode.

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And so I always think like the best
part of my dissertation is the part

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I didn't write, the part
where these elders and these land managers

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speak and tell their story and they've
been doing it their whole lives, you know.

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So one of the things that the
the first elder said, Val Lopez

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 of the Amah Mutsun Nation,

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which is indigenous to what we now
call Santa Cruz, California,

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he said that sacredness, you know,

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is the first and last word of anything,
anything, period.

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But food systems as well
that our food systems and our land

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management practices and you could say
our relationships with each other

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sacred knowing what sacred means,

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is always going to precede everything.

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So maybe I should just start with that,

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which didn't make it into the TED X Talk,
which is probably a mistake.

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But you know that
this it's so hard for American culture

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I feel like to know what sacred means.

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And it's not our fault
that we don't know what that means.

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We're not given many opportunities to

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to to to revere something as precious
and just stop

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just put a pause on the clock
and stop time and just honor

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how gorgeous and how sacred
and how precious this breath of life is.

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And not just our life, but

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every single living beings life,
you know, in native languages

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you know, one of the words that's always
so prominent is this word life

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In Dine, it's iina, you know

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And that that word is imbued

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with such power and such excite
and such beauty and such excitement.

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So I think, you know,
that's one thing you could say

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that I didn't say in the TED X talk.

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It's like sacredness and
and honoring life as sacred

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Can you talk a little bit about any

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positive ways of

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of addressing challenges
that are bumped up against

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when you're trying
to get that back to narrative

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where you're
trying to communicate a narrative

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that's different
than how things are being done

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and are is so clearly a better approach.

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Any Yeah.

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Any thoughts on how we can help us
all shift

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forward to partnership,
how to address those challenges we meet?

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Well.

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I'll preface by saying

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at the end of the day,

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sometimes,
no matter how eloquently you phrase

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things, people aren't going to change
until they're forced to.

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So I think that one of the greatest

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allies to help us

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correct our behavior is collapse.

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That is something that

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no one can deny.

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You know,

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when and if the grocery stores
run out of food,

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no one's going to say, oh, you know,
I don't believe your opinion.

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It's like this is not an opinion.

00;15;32;21 - 00;15;34;19
There is no food in
the grocery store. You know,

00;15;36;21 - 00;15;39;29
or when,
you know, hurricanes knock out entire.

00;15;39;29 - 00;15;43;13
So I think collapse is one of our friends
because it's showing us like,

00;15;43;47 - 00;15;45;55
no, really, really.

00;15;45;55 - 00;15;50;31
You can't pretend humans are the center
of the universe on this planet.

00;15;51;09 - 00;15;53;13
That will not work, period.

00;15;53;13 - 00;15;56;53
No matter what your politics are,
no matter what, whatever

00;15;57;13 - 00;16;00;29
who you are, what race you are,
you have to be

00;16;01;31 - 00;16;04;45
within a web of relationships,
of creation, and partner

00;16;04;45 - 00;16;07;41
with that web of relationships.
That's so.

00;16;07;41 - 00;16;12;01
But okay, So I preface by saying that,
however, I think there are ways

00;16;12;01 - 00;16;15;07
we can still shift culture
and the best practice

00;16;15;07 - 00;16;18;07
that I know is love.

00;16;18;47 - 00;16;20;15
Being somebody’s

00;16;20;15 - 00;16;23;59
ally. It's kind of like
when you train a dog, they say, Oh,

00;16;23;59 - 00;16;27;09
we're not training dogs, we're
training humans because it's the humans

00;16;27;09 - 00;16;30;17
who have to learn how to be their dog’s

00;16;30;17 - 00;16;35;01
ally. When you're trying to teach the dog
to sit or to lay down or whatever,

00;16;35;27 - 00;16;40;31
you have to understand
that the dog needs your help and the dog

00;16;41;35 - 00;16;43;27
has feelings too.

00;16;43;27 - 00;16;46;55
And so not to compare humans with dogs
and training them to sit.

00;16;46;59 - 00;16;52;11
But I'm just saying that
when I have a big culture that I really

00;16;52;11 - 00;16;56;29
need them to start behaving a certain way,
which is the case every day.

00;16;56;29 - 00;16;59;35
As a native woman, you have you're
surrounded by one big culture

00;16;59;35 - 00;17;03;13
that you really need them
to stop treating you like crap.

00;17;05;07 - 00;17;06;43
It's through love.

00;17;06;43 - 00;17;09;11
Instead of saying, Hey, you're bad.

00;17;09;11 - 00;17;11;21
F-you, you, you know.

00;17;11;21 - 00;17;15;37
You deserve to be locked up or what
in the in

00;17;15;37 - 00;17;20;39
the prisons of of history, you know,
instead of saying that, say, hey,

00;17;21;43 - 00;17;23;07
I love you.

00;17;23;07 - 00;17;27;21
I am your relative and I appreciate you

00;17;27;53 - 00;17;30;27
and I forgive you for any past

00;17;30;27 - 00;17;33;27
trespasses
because you've been through a lot.

00;17;33;27 - 00;17;36;55
And I have compassion
and understanding for your situation.

00;17;37;31 - 00;17;42;01
And once you love and you forgive
and you love unconditionally

00;17;42;15 - 00;17;43;57
and many people will disagree
with me on this,

00;17;43;57 - 00;17;47;55
but for me, it's like
once you establish that and you mean it,

00;17;49;19 - 00;17;52;07
then people are so much more open.

00;17;52;07 - 00;17;54;03
There's so much more.

00;17;54;03 - 00;17;55;33
They're moved. For one thing.

00;17;55;33 - 00;17;59;41
They're moved. Like, wow, I killed
98% of your people and you still love me.

00;17;59;41 - 00;18;02;01
And I'm like, Yeah, of course I do.

00;18;02;01 - 00;18;05;01
Because guess who killed
98% of your people?

00;18;05;01 - 00;18;06;47
The Romans.

00;18;06;47 - 00;18;11;13
So. It's like you have to have compassion
and understanding for

00;18;12;03 - 00;18;16;27
for the people and through your speech
to be their partner,

00;18;16;49 - 00;18;21;33
you know, to be their
their ally, to be their comrade.

00;18;21;57 - 00;18;26;07
Because the biggest problem here is not

00;18;27;47 - 00;18;30;03
the outward behavior.

00;18;30;03 - 00;18;33;03
The biggest problem is we forgot
we are relatives,

00;18;33;15 - 00;18;35;53
We forgot you are my sister.

00;18;35;53 - 00;18;38;51
And that random dude at the store
is my brother

00;18;39;15 - 00;18;43;49
And to to confront
that non kinship mentality

00;18;43;49 - 00;18;47;25
with a kinship mentality and say,
hey, we are relatives.

00;18;47;45 - 00;18;50;51
And then from there
so much more as possible.

00;18;50;51 - 00;18;55;21
So I have often, you know, I'm
hard on people, you know, I'm like, hey,

00;18;56;25 - 00;18;58;23
colonization happened,

00;18;58;23 - 00;19;01;27
you know, I'm very frank,
but I do it with a lot of love.

00;19;01;43 - 00;19;06;55
I'm like, Hey, we have an opportunity
together to change this story.

00;19;06;55 - 00;19;09;55
We I want to be your partner in this.

00;19;09;55 - 00;19;12;41
I want to be your friend in this.

00;19;12;51 - 00;19;17;13
What would be your closing words
to our listeners

00;19;17;37 - 00;19;21;47
about finding their way to the partnership
end of the continuum

00;19;22;09 - 00;19;25;57
and helping create a healthier world
and a more sustainable world

00;19;25;57 - 00;19;27;47
that is truly filled with love.

00;19;28;59 - 00;19;30;03
I think

00;19;30;03 - 00;19;33;03
I would be remiss to say to not say

00;19;34;01 - 00;19;36;53
that perhaps

00;19;36;53 - 00;19;41;31
partnership mentality begins
with being a partner to yourself.

00;19;41;53 - 00;19;47;03
My journey to being a positive force
in the world started with healing

00;19;47;03 - 00;19;51;29
and loving myself because the main reason

00;19;51;59 - 00;19;54;59
that I stopped being

00;19;55;39 - 00;19;59;25
a positive force was because of the wounds

00;19;59;33 - 00;20;02;31
that I had endured

00;20;02;31 - 00;20;05;55
and that had caused me to get lost
along the way,

00;20;06;51 - 00;20;11;57
specifically, you know, physical abuse
as a woman, you know,

00;20;12;39 - 00;20;15;35
I didn't even know I had been
through physical because it was so normal.

00;20;15;35 - 00;20;17;13
You see it in the movies.

00;20;17;13 - 00;20;20;09
They'll hit on her,
they'll talk crappy to her, and it's just

00;20;20;09 - 00;20;23;05
and then they go to the next scene.
It's just normal.

00;20;23;05 - 00;20;27;01
And that happened to me growing up,
you know, a lot of abuse.

00;20;27;35 - 00;20;30;01
And that's actually
where my addiction came from.

00;20;30;01 - 00;20;33;53
The addiction was more of a symptom
than the actual problem.

00;20;34;29 - 00;20;39;43
And so I had become
not a partner to myself.

00;20;40;13 - 00;20;42;07
I had become a dominator.

00;20;42;07 - 00;20;44;39
I had said, Lyla,
you're a horrible woman.

00;20;44;39 - 00;20;47;39
You're a tainted woman,
you're an ugly woman,

00;20;48;11 - 00;20;51;11
and you have desecrated your body

00;20;51;29 - 00;20;55;37
in all these ways when really actually
the world had desecrated my body.

00;20;55;37 - 00;20;58;31
But I blamed myself for all of it.

00;20;58;31 - 00;20;59;57
And I became a dominator.

00;20;59;57 - 00;21;03;01
I became a jailer to myself.

00;21;03;15 - 00;21;05;25
And it wasn't until I

00;21;05;25 - 00;21;08;23
hit rock bottom
and all of these elders helped me

00;21;08;33 - 00;21;11;33
that they helped me become a partner
and ally to myself,

00;21;12;03 - 00;21;16;43
to love yourself, to give yourself
a hug, and to say I like you

00;21;18;13 - 00;21;21;03
is a lot more than many of us can do.

00;21;21;03 - 00;21;24;17
But it's so profoundly important
because once you come

00;21;24;17 - 00;21;27;57
into communion with yourself
and you forgive yourself

00;21;28;31 - 00;21;32;57
for being a kid who was abused,
for being someone who didn't

00;21;32;57 - 00;21;37;07
have the support that they deserved,
for someone who, you know, to really

00;21;37;07 - 00;21;40;37
take a good look at like, no,
maybe you didn't have a perfect childhood.

00;21;40;53 - 00;21;44;05
Maybe that's what you tell yourself,
to take away the pain of the fact

00;21;44;05 - 00;21;47;05
that your childhood was so imperfect

00;21;47;17 - 00;21;49;59
and then to to to come back into communion

00;21;49;59 - 00;21;53;45
and partnership with yourself
and love yourself deeply.

00;21;54;05 - 00;21;56;03
Then you reconnect to source.

00;21;56;03 - 00;21;59;35
Then you reconnect to Creator because
you give yourself permission to, right?

00;22;00;05 - 00;22;03;55
Because if you say I'm a good person, I'm
a loving person, I'm a

00;22;04;35 - 00;22;06;55
I'm a I'm a good person, period.

00;22;06;55 - 00;22;09;01
Then you're allowed

00;22;09;01 - 00;22;12;19
to connect to the Creator,
which is the ultimate source of goodness.

00;22;12;37 - 00;22;16;33
And once you connect to creator
who watch out, nothing can stop you

00;22;16;33 - 00;22;19;33
because you're connected to an entire web

00;22;19;49 - 00;22;23;41
of incredible, synchronistic, beautiful,

00;22;23;41 - 00;22;27;09
loving energy,
if you will, around the universe.

00;22;27;35 - 00;22;30;13
And then you're basically unstoppable.

00;22;30;13 - 00;22;34;23
But the thing that keeps us
from connecting to that gigantic,

00;22;34;33 - 00;22;37;49
vast ocean of power and beauty and love

00;22;38;21 - 00;22;41;51
is this shame, this guilt that says, Oh,
I don't deserve it.

00;22;42;17 - 00;22;45;45
I tainted my I let myself be desecrated,
blah, blah, blah.

00;22;45;59 - 00;22;50;21
Or for men, it's like I didn't
protect my mom when I was boy, I didn't.

00;22;50;39 - 00;22;54;21
She got beat up
and I I'm a bad kid because I did.

00;22;54;21 - 00;22;58;23
So it's different for men and women, but
there's different ways that men and women

00;22;58;39 - 00;23;02;47
allow shame to become a wall between them
and the Creator

00;23;03;27 - 00;23;06;17
and creators
always trying to knock that wall down.

00;23;06;17 - 00;23;09;17
Say, No, you're my beloved child,
you're mine, you're mine.

00;23;09;35 - 00;23;10;19
I love you.

00;23;10;19 - 00;23;11;41
I'll never stop loving you.

00;23;11;41 - 00;23;13;51
And I know your story better than you do.

00;23;13;51 - 00;23;16;51
And I know that you've been through more
than you even understand.

00;23;16;59 - 00;23;18;21
And I'm here for you.

00;23;18;21 - 00;23;23;01
And then once that wall gets broken down,
you can do partnership stuff

00;23;23;01 - 00;23;26;47
in the world, you know, because you're
allowing yourself to be that agent.

00;23;27;09 - 00;23;29;35
You're allowing yourself
to be that instrument

00;23;29;35 - 00;23;32;11
that is so desperately
needed in the world.

00;23;32;11 - 00;23;33;41
But you can't do it alone.

00;23;33;41 - 00;23;33;57
You know,

00;23;33;57 - 00;23;38;39
you need that connection with creator,
with your ancestors, with the universe.

00;23;38;39 - 00;23;42;59
If you will, whatever you call it,
you need to be connected to that source to

00;23;43;11 - 00;23;46;51
to move and shake in the world
the way you were born to do so.

00;23;46;51 - 00;23;48;41
Step one Break down that wall of shame,

00;23;48;41 - 00;23;51;41
connect to the Creator,
become a partner to yourself.

00;23;51;51 - 00;23;56;25
Then you can start really moving fluidly
in the world to do the partnership work.

00;23;56;25 - 00;23;57;55
Your you were created to do

00;23;59;55 - 00;24;00;21
well.

00;24;00;21 - 00;24;04;31
Well, we thank you so much, Lyla,
for joining us for this podcast.

00;24;04;31 - 00;24;05;57
Such beautiful words.

00;24;05;57 - 00;24;08;03
We appreciate you so much.

00;24;08;03 - 00;24;09;11
Thank you for having me Cherri.

00;24;09;11 - 00;24;10;43
I really appreciate it.