 Good morning, and welcome to Moments with Melinda. My guest today is Dr. Aujanette Decarlo. Hi, Aujanette, how are you? Hello, Melinda. It's wonderful to be here today. I'm so thrilled to share your story and your work with my viewers. Let me tell them a little bit about you. Dr. Aujanette Decarlo is a researcher, explorer, environmental and social activist, professor, and the founder of the Save Frankincense Initiative. Yes. And in my research, to put together this interview, my head just kept exploding about the depth of work that you've done and the importance that you've made in this world. So we're going to jump right in. Your biography is so incredible, but I'd like to start right at the beginning, because I think people have to understand who you are and where you came from. So share with us a little bit about your childhood. Well, my childhood was not traditional by any means. I grew up a lot of my childhood traveling. And a lot of people have asked her, well, you were a military brat. And I said, no, my mother was a hippie. And so she decided to end her marriage because of domestic violence and abuse that I was also going through as a kid. And we ended up living in car, place to place, outside. We spent some time on the Rosebud Reservation. We hung out with Hell's Angels. We really, she was searching for her place. My mother had been orphaned and grew up part of her childhood and orphanages and foster homes. And so she was always searching. And I think that started my early urges to be an explorer, that feeling of always looking for something and out there looking for it in different communities and different places with different peoples. And so I'm very grateful, even though it was sometimes traumatic and rough as a kid. I didn't go to school a lot. I learned from experience. Even though there were traumatic parts to it, it really opened just my being to be so inclusive and searching for answers from different religions, different places, different cultures. And I'm grateful for that. You went from a somewhat traumatic upbringing to getting your doctorate and doing this extraordinary work. So you talked a little bit about what, but who inspired you to choose your field of study and ultimately this important life's work? Yeah, literally the trees themselves. Trees were my refuge. And I remember even as a really small child kind of huddling with the trees and feeling so supported and how strong and the feel of the bark and just they were my safe place. And then because I had a difficult childhood, I had teachers who literally saved my life, who reached over and grabbed the hold of me and didn't let go. And there were several of them. I was lucky in Westchester in New York to go to an alternative type of high school that was a social experiment on more communal based education. And the teacher in that and also in the walkabout program that I did as my capstone in high school, they inspired me to become an environmentalist. I identified with things that didn't have a voice and wanting to stand up for nature, watching so much destruction and seeing that happen as a young person was extremely painful to me, especially since nature was my refuge. And you got into the sciences, was it a, you know, you got into the sciences? Yeah, that was tough. I didn't have a formal math education from not going through school in a regular way. So I really challenged myself to become an environmental scientist and I had to do about an extra year of undergrad to be able to get up through calculus. That wasn't an easy undertaking. And, but I don't regret it because having the science base allowed me then to do social sciences in a very grounded way. Your mother must be very proud of you. She was, she passed with COVID just a couple of years ago now, but she was, she was very proud of me. I'm the first person in my family to accomplish getting a PhD. You know, both sides of my family were immigrants coming through Ellis Island in New York, my father's side of the family and my mom's coming through Seattle and then living in Chicago. So it was a big deal, especially as a woman. It is a big deal. I'm sorry about the loss of your mom. Thank you. So let's jump in because there is so much that you have done in your short life, my friend. You conduct field research and ecological supply chain analysis on aromatic and medicinal species. Yeah. Talk to us about that work. Sure. So I have always looked for ways to, as an environmentalist and a human rights activist to be a part of businesses and organizations and not only shout from the outside. And I love a good protest. Don't get me wrong. I mean, there's absolutely a time to protest. But I was early on influenced by some of my boss at the Natural Resources Defense Council to get in the boardroom, to get involved, to get into companies. And so I brought my environmental science work and anthropology to bear on supply chains and starting with as a field researcher going to the base of supply chains, where we extract and where things come from and how they're processed before they ever even get into our hands or even into the direct company that then markets them and sells them forward to us. And so really this is the frontier right now in socially responsible business in the ESG space. Supply chains are the frontier because they're where we really need to improve our practices and how we source things and how we treat people. Interesting. Your organization, Save Frankincense focuses on the sustainable future for Frankincense and you call this tree an ancient medicine in the modern world. Now all of us know about Frankincense and myrrh and the gift of the magi. And so share with my viewers your efforts to save this tree. And why is it so important to do so? Yeah. Yeah. So Frankincense is one of the oldest traded commodities. Humans have been using and trading Frankincense along the Silk Route into ancient Egypt through Petra. It's something that has been used medicinally and spiritually for six to 10,000 years. And so the modern state of Frankincense was something that was such a, it just grabbed me. You know, when it was first proposed to me, did I have any interest in looking into Frankincense? I was hooked immediately. Who did that? Who asked you to do that? Well, it was a combination. I had been using Frankincense. I had known about it for a long time as a young person. And then some folks came up to the University of Vermont. I was at that time working as the program manager of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, which is now the Gund Center for Environment. And they were young folks themselves, Somali and Americans who were looking to bring Frankincense and sell Frankincense in Burlington. And I was hooked. And they wanted to do it socially responsibly and environmentally correct. And if I had known where it would go to after that one off conversation that day at UVM, I could have never foreseen where it would go, but I was hooked immediately. It's a tree, it's a sacred tree. It's been used by humanity for a long time. But what was missing was more of a current research on the state of Frankincense. It was sort of parked in this romantic view of the old camel roots and taking it on dugout canoes across the Red Sea. Now, that still does happen, but it's very different now as a modern commodity than it was a hundred or even 1,000 years ago. How serendipitous happened that way. Tell us a little bit about the medicinal properties and benefits of Frankincense. Sure, absolutely. So when Frankincense is burned in place of worship, it interacts with our brains and it has a calming and warming effect. It activates a pathway that actually readies a person for meditation by calming the mind. And so it really makes sense that it's been burned in churches and places of worship across the world for thousands of years. It's also medicinally used in so many different ways, locally, everywhere that it grows, it's chewed or it's a tree resin. So for viewers that don't know incisions are made in a tree and the resin oozes out similar to white pine, you know, when you're walking through the forest and you see the resin dripping down a white pine tree smells so good, Frankincense is quite similar. And so the use of chewing it for oral health, taking it internally for gastrointestinal calming to the body, it is now currently extracted. The certain component is extracted out called boswellic acid and that's highly anti-inflammatory. So that's used for osteoarthritis, it's used for all types of arthritis, for inflammation, for people who do sports, et cetera, to reduce inflammation. And a lot of research showing some cutting edge approaches to using it. So going from calming the mind all the way to reducing inflammation, Frankincense is used in many, many different forms. And you have a website and it's Save Frankincense and for my viewers, it's F-R-A-N-K-I-N-C-E-N-S-E, frankincense.org. And I suggest people go to that website and learn more about Frankincense. So you are considered a development expert and you've worked on post-conflict evaluations of natural assets, supply chains and environmental projects all over the world. Now our world today is in the midst of two major conflicts. How does your work assist in places that are ravaged by war? Yeah, so I mean, after conflict, people are still in a bad situation. When the conflict stops, their infrastructure is usually destroyed. There's serious environmental issues. There are human rights and community rehabilitation and restoration. Working in Sierra Leone was probably one of the hardest post-conflict assignments that I worked on, working with child soldiers and interviewing them and understanding them in an attempt, an NGO working to repatriate them and to re-assimilate them back into their communities. That was a really tough one. And looking for environmental strategies that ex-combatants could do for reconciliation, for horrible things that were done during the fighting. And we landed on this series of farming and gardening and planting trees. Things that seemed very straightforward, but they're extremely healing. You know, when people come together to do that, it really can make such a huge difference. Absolutely, fascinating. Really go on and on about them sort of restraining to the timeline, but once conflict is over, we still have to help people. You know, I mean, there's the urgency of the immediate of getting electricity and water and food and that kind of push during conflict and still after, but then the rebuilding part is slower and longer and more nuanced and interconnected. And that really takes the ability to ground it in an environment and also in social issues. Well, when you see the ravages going on in Ukraine and now going on in Israel and Gaza, it's, you know, it's just, you can't get your hand on the ground. It's just so incredible. Yeah, it really is. The work that you're doing is really important to help these places heal. And unfortunately that we have to even have these wars. But so moving on to, you have ventured into the world of cannabis. Yeah. Can you help us understand this industry and where you see it going over the next decade and what inspired you to move into this field? Yeah. So as a botanical and aromatic medicinal plant, it became part of the portfolio at the aromatic plant research center that I'm on the board of a lab. And we had the opportunity to design a medical cannabis testing protocol for the state of Utah. And it really just dovetailed with frankincense and other medicinal and botanical supply chains that I've worked in. And so it became increasingly interested in how is cannabis produced? What's the environmental impact? And it can be quite large. We tend to think that it's just a sustainable crop, hemp is sustainable, but that isn't always the case. There's quite a spectrum in terms of how it's grown and how sustainable it is. And that's what interests me the most as well as the testing, the safety of the products, making sure that people are getting clean, unadulterated botanical products is a big problem in our country. Not only with cannabis, but with supplements. We've done studies where we've purchased a whole array of different essential oils or CBD pens. We've done this in many different product lines and tested them and found so often they're not the milligrams stated on the bottle. They're not free and clear of adulterants. Some in some cases, not even when it says on the box. And so that speaks to this, gosh, isn't our government protecting us from these things? But that unfortunately is not always the case. And so I became increasingly interested in cannabis in both directions. The environmental impact, the development potential, especially in Africa. I spent a lot of time working in Africa and countries like Ghana and South Africa are really moving forward with a robust cannabis economy. What does that look like in terms of development and the environment? Very interesting to me. Back home here in Vermont, what's so interesting to me is the cultural acceptance coming out of an illegal space into a legal one. And I've seen some incredible grow operations, all different kinds here in Vermont. It's so unique the approach here in Vermont as an agriculture and as now an agricultural product. There's still environmental issues. There's still social justice issues, especially for women and people of color. It's quite a male dominated, white male dominated industry. But the cultural acceptance, how we move from something that could, for some folks is really taboo into now this is legal. And so that really interests me as an anthropologist. Well, certainly in my day being an old hippie, a lot of my friends went to jail for pot. But today the cannabis is so strong. Yes it is. My generation now in our 70s, I mean it just would, I mean it would blow our minds, blow our minds, you know, smoke, whatever. We've been blowing our minds for a long time and I'm gonna move now into something that I've spoken about quite a bit and that's psilocybin, psilocybin therapy. And I've spoken and I've written commentary about it. But have you ventured into the value and possibilities of magic mushrooms helping with mental illness, addiction and navigating dying? And have you seen the film Fantastic Fungi? I have. It's incredible. And actually I have shown that to my students. I'm teaching in the fall an environmental anthropology of plants. And I know fungi is not a plant, but I can't help but have a section in there about it. And I find that a lot of my students are quite interested in this topic now. I just had a student present on this to psychology major. And there is more and more interest in this. I think reevaluating our relationship with plants is essential and how we view the use of things like mushrooms instead of just having a taboo, you know, kind of blinders on actually look at the research, actually take a look at the species and understand that nature is giving us a lot of gifts. We've been given so many gifts. And mushrooms are just another one of them in our medicinal cabinet. And people have been punished. And punished. And disproving and picking things that grow out of the soil that they're using for their own benefit. And the whole generation has been, yeah, has been vilified over this time. I am glad that finally the bubble is bursting and this important research is going on. Agreed, absolutely agreed. So you are also a mediator and you helped to bring resolution and conflict areas around the world. How do we create win-win situations when authoritarianism is rising all over our planet? Woo, that's a tough one. You know, one of the, it sounds so simple, but we really don't give space to listen. You know, a lot of time we're just coming into a disagreement with trying to prove our point. And so taking a step back and doing deep listening, really, really paying attention to what people are saying and trying to find the commonalities where we have things in common that we can leverage to build on. Even in humanitarian work or environmental work, there's so much conflict. Even between people on the same wavelength, we still have to manage conflict. We have to manage conflict within ourselves. We have to manage conflicts at home. And really one of the biggest commonalities is absolutely listening without being ready to give your side, to, you know, that way when people are listening to you for a minute and they're like, and they're just ready to insert, that's not really listening. Deep listening is clearing your mind and really focusing on what's happening and what people are saying. And once you do that, you absolutely start to find commonalities with just about anybody. Now, of course, that doesn't always work. I mean, that's not the solution to every conflict there is, but it's certainly a good starting point. Well, you're a great mediator with that attitude. I can see why you would be brought in to mediate resolutions. Ajanette, you are an international celebrity. You just are. And I've done the research on you and you've been covered by Vice, The New York Times, CNN, National Geographic and other notable international publications and media outlets. Your work is deeply engaging and so important for the world where you're living in now and in the future. So I just want to put that out to my viewers that and in my research, I've just had my mind blown about your work. Talk to us about a new species that you've identified of Boswellia. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. Now named Boswellia occulta. Oh, I love the occult, occulta. And I believe it's a type of frankincense tree. Yes? It is. Yeah, it is. So this was so fun. And, you know, as a scientist, you geek out on these kinds of things. I had a lush, which is a producer of soaps and creams and bath products. They were getting some weird chemistry in some of their frankincense and they really didn't understand what it was. They had never seen it before and we started to look for it. And so it was the most fascinating process to have a chemical signature and try to find the plant that it was coming from. It took about a year and a half of kind of forensic psychology work where we would photograph, we would take transects and GPS coordinates and then get samples and then run the samples to find this tree that was producing this chemistry. And in fact, when we found it, I said, you know, I said, that doesn't look like this species or that species. This really looks like its own species. And so, Dr. Mats Thulen, who is the botanical authority on identifying species of frankincense, we partnered with him and we got to name a new species, which is really, really a thrill. And the reason why we went with occulta because it was literally hiding a plain sight. I love it. Boswellia occulta. So I also understand that women in Somaliland are taking on the male dominated industry of frankincense sorting. Yes. Talk to us a little bit about that. Yeah, so, you know, there's really rigid gender roles when it comes to frankincense in Somalia. Men harvest the resins and women sort them. And women's sorters are really at a disadvantage when it comes to earning income or workplace abuses and also just human rights. And so, after a string of events, exposing some really bad actors in the frankincense supply chain in Somalia, which is something I ended up taking on, again, not had no idea it was gonna go in that direction, but took on exposing some bad actors. The women, we stood together around taking a stand. You know, we're so different. We really were coming at this from different angles, but we stood together against the abuses of women in this supply chain in this area. It's not everywhere, but in this one. And we, these women formed their own cooperative. They blew my mind. I mean, these Somali women were like, you know what? The door cracked open this much for us. And they blew it open and they started their own cooperative. And they are sorting frankincense where they have a lot of project ideas. Of course, anytime I can help support by, you know, with ideas or contracts for making perfumes or soaps or incense, things like that. Hope to see this really growing in the next few years. Yeah. Now, to a more sensitive subject, Jeanette, I understand that you once were captured and tortured and I believe raped, but you escaped your captors. Would you be willing to share this story? Sure, because I'm very open about it. It's covered in Vice News. And as a matter of fact, that documentary just won two Emmy Awards, which was extremely validating as a whistleblower and coming forward. I had no idea what would happen to my career, to my life coming forward about being sexually assaulted. It was a very scary thing to do. And I can't, you know, I don't regret it, but it was rough being a whistleblower. It's not an easy thing to do. It's understandable why a lot of people wait so much later in life sometimes to come forward because of the direct toll that it has on your mentally and emotionally. But I came forward about the assault because something had to be done about this bad actor who was taking advantage of people. And I felt like coming forward about what happened to me would make a space to be able to also listened to women with less of a stage, less of a voice. It was a very rough moment when one of the media outlets told me that without me going public with my name that there was no story just about Somali girls being abused. That was horrifying. And at the same time, I said, well, then that seals the deal that I'm gonna go public because women have to stand together. And so the consequence for me of reporting someone who was a very bad actor in the supply chain was that they did assault me. Yeah. And that was the last time that I've worked in Somaliland and I did report him. And he is all over the news as well for his bad actions and he is now in hiding because he has really been brought to task by his own government, by the banks that he owes money to, et cetera, et cetera. And that I'm very glad about. I'm sorry for your trauma, but I honor you for your courage. Aja, do you believe the world is becoming a more inhospitable place for human development? Yeah, absolutely. Well, because we're pushing the planetary boundaries in every direction. And so as our environment is under more and more increasing pressure, we don't have some of the beauty and some of the productivity and abundance that nature provides as we destroy that. And that makes it, that makes development for peoples, for communities limited. So in Somalia, for example, and in certain parts where frankincense grows, I mean, they're in severe drought conditions directly related to deforestation and climate change. And so the folks living in those places, the children now being born in those places are living in some really inhospitable conditions. And really rough conditions around the world. And so absolutely, because our health and the planet's health are one and the same because we are nature. We tend to think of ourselves as separate, but as we say in permaculture, we're nature in motion. We're nature working. And so as our ecology, as our fellow creatures on the planet suffer, so do we. Your website, ajanetdecarlo.com, a-n-j-a-n-e-t-t-e-d-e-c-a-r-l-o.com is beautiful and informative. And I encourage my viewers to visit your website. Now, as we're coming sort of towards the end of our show, I wanted to talk to you about what words of wisdom and encouragement would you give our youth about the world they are growing up in and how to get involved in helping to make a difference in the way that you have in your life. Yeah, so I'm a professor. I teach at the University of Vermont in the Grossman School of Business and the Sustainable Innovation MBA. And I also teach anthropology at St. Michael's College. And so I deal with the very young students and I deal with kind of 30-some things in the grad school. But the angst is real amongst young people. And so first and foremost, we have to listen to them. We really do. We have to really understand they're not snowflakes. They're really responding to a situation that's a lot different than it was for previous generations. They are saddled with a lot of feelings of hopelessness. And so one of the things that I just did this with my class yesterday morning was it's a half hour of news a day. It's reading the news. It's not sitting on social media exposing yourself to images of violence over and over again, but it's not about being apathetic about them either. You have to take a stand against these things, against war, not against one country over the other, but against war, and really they need the respect and guidance of elders without us dominating them or trying to tell them how they should feel. Because we're not experiencing a world growing up in a world that they are. We have to be willing to set aside some of our viewpoints of, oh, you just pull yourself up. You got to be strong. I mean, those things are good and we do need that. We need a blended approach, but we have to really, really mentor them with some tenderness. And so I love being around young people. They help me stay relevant to the world and understanding of how things are changing. They're more accepting of differences of people. It's one of the things I love. And there's a lot of hope for that. The change in generations now of being more accepting and open is such a positive one. And they do care about the environment. They do want products to be sustainable. They just want to make enough money to be able to afford them. And that's the big rub right there. We don't, we live in a world where it's cheaper to produce something that destroys the environment where really the economics are not working for us. Would they really have to be retooled so that it is far more expensive to produce something that's destroying the earth than something that's sustainable? Well, that's one of the big missions of the Gund Institute, which I'm so glad you're involved in. Now, look, I could talk to you for hours, and I will certainly have you back on my show to continue this conversation. In the meantime, I also want to encourage my viewers to join your Facebook page. Yes, please. Save frankincense to learn more about your organization and the important and timely work you're doing. Thank you, Dr. Tarly, for your dedication to this important work and for being on my show today. I'm honored to have spent this time with you and to share your story and your work with my viewers. It's extraordinary. You're extraordinary, so thank you for that. For you. Well, to my viewers, I wish you a beautiful day and I will see you soon. Bye-bye.