 Hello, my name is Keisha Rahm and I'm a proud board member of the Vermont Natural Resources Council. It's a statewide organization that's existed for over 50 years to support vibrant communities, a healthy landscape, and working farms and land for all Vermonters. I'm fortunate to be here with a good friend, someone I would consider a mentor, and now a fellow Vermonter, Carolyn Finney, who is a celebrated environmental author, someone who has really focused on environmental justice and diversity, equity, and inclusion and access to the great outdoors. And we as the Vermont Natural Resources Council are fortunate to have Carolyn headlining an event next Thursday, January 23rd at the Hilton Garden Inn at 5.30pm. Might say that again in the program. But Carolyn is just a wonderful, celebrated professor, thinker, author who is joining us here in Vermont and is actually local to the Old North End now. And I just want to ask you, Carolyn, some questions and give the audience a preview of what's to come next week and what your work looks like here in Vermont. So without further ado, Professor, thinker, author Carolyn Finney. What does one do with all that? Tell us a little bit about your life journey and how it's landed you here in Vermont. I'm still trying to work out, Kasia, how it's landed to be here in Vermont. Especially on a snowy day like this. Especially on a snowy day. I've only been here about four months, so it's like I'm just getting used to it. I'm actually not getting used to it. It's a lie. I know it takes time to adjust. I moved here from Lexington, Kentucky, so it's taken me a minute to figure out the lay of the landscape. But people who often ask me, like, how did I come to do this work? Because I really, I don't call myself an environmentalist. I would say I'm an accidental environmentalist, which doesn't mean that I don't care about it. It's just not where I started. I think a lot about it. I grew up in New York about a half an hour outside of New York City. My parents, who grew up poor and black high school education from the south, came up from Virginia back in the 50s. And the job that they took was to be caretakers for a 12-acre estate that was owned by a very wealthy Jewish family who owns a lot of real estate. And that estate is and was stunning, right? A small pond, vegetable gardens and fruit trees, a swimming pool. My parents were the full-time caretakers for that estate for nearly 50 years. So lived in the gardener's cottage. My dad was the chauffeur, the gardener. My mom was a sometimes housekeeper. And so when I think about where I grew up on that estate in a very wealthy white neighborhood, we were the only family of color. There were a lot of, there were a lot of, how can I say this? There's a lot of different ways I can talk about it. There's a lot of different perspectives on it, one, you know, in men's privilege actually to be able to play and learn. I learned how to swim by the time I was seven, me and my brothers, we were outdoors all the time. We had run of this place because the owners were usually only up there on weekends and holidays. So it was like our own little private park. And it was really special to have that. But we were also living there in the 60s, 70s and 80s as the only family of color in the neighborhood. And there's often a story I tell about getting stopped by the cops when I was nine walking home from school wondering where I was going and telling, asking me if I worked there. Me really thinking about that as an adult, about even though I was a little girl with my school bag at the end of the day, he couldn't imagine that I just lived there with my family. There's something about that. So I've sort of taken that into my adult life and somewhere in the early 2000s when the original owners passed away, they had to think about what's going to happen with my parents. My brothers and I were no longer living there, but my parents were. And they couldn't stay on that land. At the time, it was worth over $3 million, property taxes $124,000 a year. And so at the end of the day, the original owners had a house built for my parents in Virginia in Leesburg, which is where they live. And when my parents left at that moment in time, I had gone back to school. My life is, I had an acting career for 11 years, I spent a lot of years back packing around the world and living in Nepal. I had gone back to school and by then I was working on a PhD. I had been thinking about conservation and gender issues. I was thinking about them in Nepal far away. But suddenly issues that were happening right here at home were kind of coming. They were right in front of me because they became personal. When my parents had to leave that land, I watched my father in particular get very depressed about, you know, you spend 50 years on a piece of land and you come to love it, even if the primary way you engage with it is through work. And we could never go back. And so that's when I started focusing on ideas of whose ownership counts. What does it mean to have a sense of belonging to a piece of land? What does it mean to love it? Who gets to be called an environmentalist? So my parents cared for this land and all those resources for 50 years and they could tell you everything about the land, the wildlife on there. They don't have any degrees, right? Nobody's coming to them for information. But yet they're incredibly knowledgeable about that piece of land and what grows there. And who they are on that land. And then I started thinking about all the people in the history of this country who they come invisible in this larger conversation around environment and care and community and belonging and all those words we use. And that's kind of what started to drive me to think about with my own privilege of being able to go back to school and do this work. What does it mean to bring those stories forward? And if I'm really honest, what does it mean to bring my own story forward as well? Right, right. And some of that, some of those themes are in your most recent book, Black Faces, White Spaces, which is a lot about the African-American experience in the great outdoors. I should say it's a very celebrated book. I'm embarrassed in Carolyn a little bit. Always. It was just given honorable mention by Outside Magazine as one of the most important books of the decade when we think about access to the outdoors. So can you talk a little bit about how you put yourself in that book? And how that has really shaped your current thinking and career? Yeah, so the whole title, Black Faces, White Spaces, Reimagining the Relationship of African-Americans to the Great Outdoors. Do not say that three times fast. I didn't want to mess it up. I know. Well, I want people, because people hear Black Faces, White Spaces and it's like, what is she, what's going on here? And I was trying to make a point in part that when I think about national parks, when I think about national forests, when I think about the history of conservation, even the very idea of it and preservation, John Muir, Gifford Pichot, all the people who've had a say in the bigger story we tell about who we've been collectively on this landscape. And when I joke around, I say, but where are the Black people at? Well, where are the Brown people at? Where are so many of the non-white people at? Understanding that in whiteness, it's also diverse. And I understand that there's a very diverse history there. But for me, and because it was personal, and it started with me thinking about, here's what happened to my family. We can't, we don't have access to this land anymore. I started, I wanted to look at ideas of American identity and how we often look at things like national parks and part tell the rest of the world who we are. But what if we're not telling all the stories? Because we have, I tell people all the time, all this land was stolen. We can get 1,000 years down the road, and what will never change is that when this country was founded, all this land was stolen from the original people who are still here, right? So we started there, and then we enslaved a whole another group of people to work the land in a very particular way to build our economy. We brought in Chinese people to build the railroad, but then we left them out of the final picture. Like we don't talk about that. It's like we've done this over and over again with many different kinds of people. Who's creating our food basket right now? It's a whole other story of Brown people. Right, that's right, who are working the land, who have always been there, are still there. What do we all lose when we don't actually own up to all those stories? The good, the bad, and the ugly, right? It's there with us, and for me, it's always an opportunity. So for me, I wanted to start with thinking about because I identify as African-American, and what would it mean to just start to look at that? Look at issues of representation, and what I mean by representation. Who do we see? What stories are environmental organizations telling? What ones are they not? Which doesn't make them bad people if they're not telling the story. But I always say privilege has the privilege of not seeing itself. We all have privilege, we just all don't have the same privilege in the same way at the same time. What gets lost there? So what does it mean to, on one hand, say, we want a more diverse organization or we want a more diverse community? And yet, on the other hand, we're actually not telling those stories, we are not knowledgeable about those stories, we don't understand what those stories mean, not just to the people that we are saying we want to be in a relationship with, but what do they mean to us? How are we then accountable for that past? And for me, we're all accountable, right? So what does that look like, right? Well, speaking of what that looks like, Carolyn, we are fortunate on the Vermont Natural Resources Council Board to have recently invited Judy Dow to join the board. The first time we have an Abinaki woman and a very well-respected historian on our board who has 16 generations that she can count alone in this neighborhood in the Old Norfolk and Mockison Village. And we are extremely fortunate to have unanimously invited you to join the board and we're fortunate that you have accepted that invitation. I have accepted and happened to accept, yeah. And what do you, Vermont Natural Resources Council has a long celebrated history but is only now starting to prioritize environmental justice and these other stories. Other environmental organizations here are trying to do the same work. We're a rural state that has often been described as homogenous even if that leaves out the stories of Abinaki people, the black farmers and Buffalo soldiers who've made their homes here and others currently migrant farm workers who run our dairy industry. What would you say is the initial work of a board like that or the environmental community in Vermont to make a beginning, you know, there's a lot of concern about how do we get this right? How do we step into these waters? But you know, how can people think about making a beginning for this? That's a great question. Nothing like putting me on the spot right away. Okay, so. You can take some water. Right, that's right. Actually, so one of the things that I would do is reframe it. It's not about getting it right. So I spend most of my time going around the country, people invite me in to have these conversations with them, organizations, institutions, communities, often predominantly white who are thinking oh, whose heart is in the right place, I would say, or in the best place to begin this conversation. It's not about getting it right, which is why I think a lot of people never do anything because of that fear. This is where you have to take a risk. It's always a risk and there's so many of us who've always been taking a risk, right? For me that there's not an end game, there's not a goal, a place you're going to get to. This is a process. A process, diversity means difference broadly defined. There's always gonna be someone different in the room. So how do we build our skill set to be able to show up for that in terms of who we are, what we have to offer and be authentic and honest about what it is we want? What is the set of biases that are already in place? I always say to people, have you done an internal capacity assessment about who you are as an organization? Now I say who we are as an organization. What does that look like for us to sit down and say, okay, so who are we? Really who are we? How do we think about these things? It's not about sitting down thinking about, oh my God, we're such bad people, we haven't done X, Y, or Z. It's really not about that. And we have to own what that past has been in order to understand where we are, in order to be authentic about where we wanna go. So how do we do that? How do we learn how to have conversation with? I always say to people, I just had this conversation with somebody yesterday because organizations often use the term outreach and you've probably heard me say this before. I never use the term outreach anymore. I understand that outreach comes for a well-intended place. As someone who's been outreach to, I get it. And what I always say to people, here's what it generally means is I outreach to you, I bring you to my table, I make space for you at my table and then you have to learn everything about the table and everybody around the table. Well, we don't actually have to learn anything about you. And that in terms of power dynamics for me is not a sustainable relationship. How instead do we have a relationship of reciprocity? Which means if you invite somebody different to the table, you have to consider that you might have to get rid of the table. That's why I think it's often scary for people which I really empathize with, right? I empathize with if you've been comfortable and secure and sort of familiar with what your table's been and you've worked hard at it. So really, I don't want to undermine maybe you put in the time, you know? But now you're saying you want something different. So it's for me, it's so obvious but I know it's hard to say if you want something different then you actually have to do something different. And it's not enough to invite that one or two individuals who are different to the table and maybe unintentionally expect them to carry that load because nobody can. And that actually does not shift anything really in the room. People talk about retention a lot around diversity issues whether it's organizationally, whether it's even in communities where somebody moves in and they don't stay long and they move out. And we're like, why did that happen? And personal desires aside as also having been in that position and thinking the weight of that is really hard especially when there's resistance to that kind of deep change which requires some type of insight which requires taking the time to be honest about one's bias because everybody's biased. I can keep going, you know? I'm just like, how far do you want me to go? Yes. No, these aren't always the conversations that are had on channel 17. I think this is just so special to have you in our state and to have this conversation. And as I sit with your wisdom, do you want to say that? Well, you know what I want to say, first of all I realized, I'm new here. Like I've been coming back and forth to Vermont since around 2005. But and you know, I'm new here. I don't profess to know the state. I'm not even going to pretend. There's so much I have to learn here. So I want to be really clear that I've said that up front and not acting like, oh, I just know what, I don't know, I don't know anything. Really, I'm coming here in that way. I don't know anything. I'm in a state of learning, a continual learning about here and humility around what that means in terms of being new here. I'm stumbling around in so many ways. And I know that people, I came here in part because Middlebury College, their Franklin Environmental Center, we work together to put together a proposal for me to do a two-year residency there, to work with them on these issues and work with the students and work with the people on the campus around there. I know that there are a lot of people here who really, really want to do this work. And so I'm excited about that. And I said, to be honest with you, it was kind of scary for me to move here. I know a lot of good people here, but I'm a, I'm an urban gal. I've lived in a lot of places, and I tell people I've lived in a lot of places that aren't urban, but where I'm feeling most at home is usually in an urban setting that's incredibly diverse. That means I can get out and walk around. This is a very different space for me to be living in and trying to find my way in without losing a sense of who I am, but being open to what I might become because of the possibilities and the potential here in the state. So I wanted to be sure I said that because I didn't want to jump out there like I know anything. Well, class, that's such an interesting point because you're working with young people at Middlebury who have come from all over the world. It's a very international campus. You're going to be speaking next week at our event on January 23rd, Thursday, Hilton Garden in 5.30 p.m. I love how she did that in there. Hi, my best. And we're going to have a lot of generational representation in the room. We see extinction rebellion and sunrise movement and some really angry young people. I know that a lot of adults or elders are celebrating their entrance into this movement and everything they bring with it. And I shouldn't even say entrance because especially young indigenous young people have been really trying to sound this alarm going to the UN, trying to use their collective voices. How do we think about all those intersections of difference and where we are in this moment with generational difference? How do we speak to the anger and urgency in the room but still honor that this will take time and we have to get this right? That's a great question. So one of the conversations I've been having with younger people is around the question of anger and I'm also angry, right? So one of the things that I say is that anger isn't, it's not only young people who feel that anger, you have older people who feel it too. And some who've been feeling it in incredibly long time. I think about my father who spent his entire life angry, right, and it's actually eaten him alive. And so one of the things that I wanna talk about is how we don't deny that anger, right? I think it's important to call it out. I think it's anger also, there's emotional energy in there that can be turned into something really creative. I think it's important not to get stuck in the anger. And what I always say to people, I say it to myself, is what's your larger intention? What do you intend, right? Because I think when I've allowed anger, when I've allowed any one emotion to usurp my life, it doesn't become useful anymore, right? So I'm always thinking about what do I intend? And it's what I feel and how I feel, how can that be in service to what I intend? And to always revisit that, revisit what that intention is. It's like vision, if you have a vision, how do we always revisit what that is? So don't deny your anger, call it out. Figure out, know what it is. I think it's like know what it is you're angry about. So you're not simply coasting on the feeling and letting the feeling take you. You actually, you know what it is. And then what do you intend with that? A friend of mine, somebody who is a local Vermonner, which I don't know if she'd want me to call out her name, but for a long time said, she said it as well as Betty Reed-Soskin who's the oldest park ranger in the country. She's African-American, she's 97 now. She's Rosie the Riveter, she's outrageous. Like she's outrageously amazing. Read her book, find her online. She's actually on Facebook, it's amazing. Betty Reed's amazing. But she talked to me as well about standing on a river of rage. And the idea that as for her as a black woman and my other friend who's also a woman of color and we're getting to a certain point in their life and realizing like they'd standing on the river of rage but translating that into sort of creative energy for change, you know. And they're not gonna deny their river of rage which is valid and real. And that's not where they want to stay. Right, so for me is how do we balance that? Yeah, and we know a raging river can cut through rocks. That's what I like. Where you set that intention is powerful. That's a good quote, case you're wrong. A raging river can cut through rocks, that's right. Yes, I like that. So as we wrap up because we want this to be a preview of what's to come next week and in your time here in Vermont, I just want to say we're so fortunate to have you. When you think about your intention in Vermont in this rural place with a lot of interwoven community but a lot of untold stories, you know what kind of intention do you think you might want to set as you've had some time to be welcomed here? That's a really good question. You have time? Yeah, yeah. Do you want to sip some water? I should tell you I'm gonna sip some water. So I'm sort of in the midst of figuring that out. Part of what I know my intention is, it's part of it is personal. So I've been doing this work for a number of years and I sort of, in the last five years, I've always wanted to build a public platform. So I return to school but I don't inhabit academia in a traditional way and I'm not trying to actually. I come from a background in the arts. I wanted to make my story, everyone's story, how do we put these stories out there and learn how to converse and hold these stories and then move forward with some kind of effort to do things differently? What does that look like? And how do I bring my skill set and what it is I love to do, which is engage with people around this work? And I've also gotten really exhausted. There's a, for those of us who do any kind of this work, I always talk about the emotional labor involved. You know, I say it's hard to be the thing, to talk about the thing when you are the thing itself. You know, this isn't an intellectual conversation for me. I can make it intellectual, but it's also a personal heartfelt that's in my body. And I love to do it and I'm privileged to be able to do it and people bring me around the country and they pay me money to do it and I can pay my rent and it's a beautiful thing and I'm really grateful and I'm exhausted, right? And the burnout is huge. And for all of us who do any form of activism, however we define that, around these things that we care about, burnout is real because we're human. We have the limitations of our bodies and whatever that is. And so I also don't wanna always be repeating the same thing over and over as though my ideas aren't evolving. So I'm telling other people, why they evolve and move and it's fluid, but I'm still saying the same thing. So where's that for me? How am I inspired? What does it mean for me to work on something and do a new form of, as I started out in kind of environmental narratives, justice representation and it's expanded into ideas around climate justice and climate change and climate and what's that conversation? So part of my intention is making space for that. I mean, we folks at Middlebury and here are sort of supporting me in this relationship of reciprocity. How do I grow as well as working with other people who are trying to grow? So it becomes a mutual experience, not a transactional one, nor one that's one of extraction, whether I'm extracting people's stories or vice versa. How do we figure out what that is? And so that's kind of, I'm working on that intention, but that's at least where I'm trying to start and ground myself. Does that make sense? That makes sense. That is the work. That is the work of this moment is how do we build something together rather than extract from each other. I always learn so much from your wisdom, Carolyn Finney celebrated author, thinker, accidental environmentalist, new Vermonter. Oh my gosh. We are so happy to have you here in our state, to have you as part of the Vermont Natural Resources Council Board. Again, I'm gonna say it one more time. You could meet this amazing leader thinker and all around just wonderful woman in the flesh at the Hilton Garden Inn on January 23rd, that's Thursday, January 23rd at 5.30 p.m. And we're just so fortunate to have you in our state. And I just wanna leave it to you, whatever gratitude you're feeling right now for this place and we're feeling a lot of gratitude for you. I feel gratitude for you because we've known each other for a number of years and what I appreciate always is your energy and your honesty and your generosity. I wanted to say that if someone is watching this and then they see me on the street, they see me at the co-op or I'm walking around, please say hi, you know, I'm here. This sounds really strange, but I'm here on my own, right? I'm here on my own, I know people. I'm very much a people person and I love that idea of meeting people and it takes time in a new place to feel like you're home. And so I really wanna give it a chance for me to try to feel that way. And I'm grateful that actually I'm really grateful so many people wanted me to come here. That's right. But I'm grateful to that because it's a sense of, wow, that's kinda cool, you know, that people are inviting me in. I mean, people here have been working for years, you know. What am I doing? People here have been working for years, right? And have been committed to that, and to change here, to a change that embraces difference, to a change that makes space for different perspectives about the land and who we are and who we can be. So I'm just hoping to add a little bit to the story and I'm just grateful that you gave me the chance to do so. Well, thank you. I'm feeling the reciprocity. I hope folks at home are as well. And as always, thank you. I bow to you and deeply respect you. I appreciate it. Purely. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome.