 everyone to climate action in a global landscape. A TCG virtual summit and the third event in our fall, winter convening season. The theme for this convening season is crisis and transformation. And we are so grateful that you're here with us today. My name is Teresa Eyring. I'm the executive director and CEO of TCG and I use she, her pronouns. I am currently zooming from the unceded lands of the Lenape, colonially known as Manhattan. For people with visual and access needs, I'd like to offer a visual description. I'm a white woman with shoulder length, brown hair, purple reading glasses and a beige sweater. And I am sitting in front of a wall that has some artwork and a lovely oval mirror with gold trim. Adrienne. Hi, welcome everyone. I'm Adrienne Badoe, TCG's deputy director and CEO and I use he, him pronouns. I'm so grateful you're here today amid the rush of the holidays, spending time with us today for these critical conversations. For visual and access needs, I'd like to provide a visual description. I am male of Indian descent. I have short black hair with a dustin of gray and I'm wearing an orange shirt. I'm also zooming from the land of Vecaro, Wichita, Kawakoni and Kikapu peoples. We're also going to share TCG's land acknowledgement in the chat along with ways to move from acknowledgement to action in support of native led movements for justice, which will be a major theme of our work today. Now, before we get into this truly amazing lineup of speakers and conversations, we want to pause for a moment of reflection. This is the last major gathering of the calendar year and what year it's been. We've been reopening our theaters amid the challenges of the Delta and new Omicron variants. And we've been doing that while also deepening our accountability to racial justice. Those efforts have been both fruitful and frustrating. But what we know for sure is this past year has changed us and we're not going back to the normal of scarcity and inequity. We have worked too hard for that. And we also know that all hard work needs to be followed by rest and reflection. That's why we've rescheduled our theater and active in summit from January to fall of next year. That will give us time to recharge our batteries and realign our efforts to truly live our new mission to lead for a just and thriving theater ecology. And a big part of that realignment process will be our re-envisioned governance ecology. We are now seeking nominations for candidates and the task forces that we are seeking nominations for our next generation, breaking barriers and global connectivity task forces. These are three task forces of our board which we hope you'll consider nominating yourself or someone else. And we are going to share the links to the executive summary of our new strategic plan which is very exciting as well as an FAQ page for our nomination process. We also strongly encourage you to, again, as I mentioned, not only submit nominations for others or for yourself but also note that the deadline is December 17th which is next Friday. Before we get started, we have some love and gratitude to give to our sponsors for TCG's fall and winter convening series. ALJP Consulting, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, The Schubert Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, Fisher Dax Associates, Charcoal Blue, Threshold Acoustics and Shuler Shook. We're also very grateful to our friends at HowlRound for live streaming this event. Yes, thank you so much to all of our funders and our sponsors at HowlRound for being partners and supporting our work. Now, earlier we talked about how much has changed over this past year and one of the most exciting changes for us has been our focus on climate action. TCG has been programming climate-focused sessions at our convenings for well over a decade but this year really marked a new level of commitment. Many of you may have joined us for our first Climate Action Summit in April of this year or perhaps participated in the climate track of our June virtual conference. Some of you may be participants in our newly launched climate action monthly meetings. I know that many of you who are here with us today have been prioritizing this work for a very long time and for others, you've only begun to integrate climate action into your work as a theater maker. Just wanna tell you that wherever you are on that spectrum, you are welcome in this conversation. We need you, as said by the people's climate march and others to change everything, we need everyone. And as we were reminded in our April Summit, climate work must be racial justice work because it is people of the global majority who are on the front lines of the climate crisis. TCG's new strategic plan centers black, indigenous people of color and theaters led by and for communities of color. So that commitment must show up in our work and our climate action work as well. Now, at our April Summit, we spent a lot of time focused on case making. Why should theaters and theater makers take a leadership role in addressing the climate crisis? While case making continues to be important and we will continue to do that, this summit is moving away from the why to the how. We'll discuss how we can support indigenous led climate resistance, how to connect the goals of the Paris Agreement to your own goal setting and how to enact divestment and carbon budgeting strategies as well as how to reimagine climate artistry. And before we move into the how, we want to go deeper into the why because there's a difference between no and climate action is no and climate action is important and really committed into it. We wanted to create space for that deeper conversation about why. And just as we did in our last convening in November, emerging from the cave, we want to lead with the voice of the artists. To help us do just that, please join me in welcoming one of TCG's climate champions back to the screen, Devin Berkshire. Thank you, Adrienne. I'm so grateful for the ways that you and Teresa have supported TCG moving toward really sustained climate action. So hello everyone, I am Devin Berkshire. I'm the director of conferences and field-wide learning at TCG. My pronouns are she, her. I'm on the land of the Muncie Lenape in Greenwood Lake, New York. And I've got short blonde hair, a white sweater on, my grandmother's earrings, glasses on my head and a ceiling fan in my background. So before we get started with our opening conversation, which I am very excited about, I wanted to name and deeply thank my co-curators for this summit, Big Roxop Kung Feng and Corinna Shulenberg. So you'll see more of them throughout the day and the three of us are also responsible for co-hosting TCG's Climate Action Monthly Meetings, which I really hope you'll join. So we'll drop a link to that community in the chat. If you have any issues joining the community, just email Corinna at the email address also in the chat. So I also really wanna thank our partners in Climate Action, Groundwater Arts, Broadway Green Alliance, HowlRound, Superhero Clubhouse and National Alliance for Musical Theatre. It is so important for us to do this work in partnership and to name that in Climate Action and beyond the theater field that Climate Action has been happening for a long time. And TCG has an important role to play, but that role is not to colonize the climate leadership of people of the global majority, many of whom have been doing the work for generations. So as Adrienne quoted earlier to change everything, we need everyone and in that spirit, we bring our resources, our relationships and our organizational strengths to this work. So one bit of housekeeping, those of you who've been coming to our monthly meetings or our virtual summits know how much we at TCG love our paddlets and today is no exception. We will be continually referring to this paddlet. We're dropping in a chat right now. It's where we've already put quite a few resources and links that we'll be sharing and have shared and we'll continue to use it over the course of the day, but you can too. You can actually click on the plus sign in the lower right hand corner to add something of your own. So now on to our program. So in researching COP26, which we'll talk more about later, we came across a New York Times article that quoted collaborators of ours like Lanny Fu of Superhero Clubhouse who has been making theater centered on climate action for over a decade and she'll actually host a breakout later today on that topic. And I think big strapping the link to the article in the chat, but the article also focused on the one piece of theater that was on the official schedule at COP26. It was created and performed by Fainty Baligan and he's a theater and film artist who's really began to make a name for himself at the intersection of theater and climate justice. Most visibly with his piece that was aired at COP26, Can I Live? Here's a quick trailer. So let's start from the beginning. What is climate change? Why don't we talk about it? Why don't we talk about it live? Why don't we talk about it? Why don't we talk about it live? Why don't we talk about it? Why don't we talk about it live? Why don't we talk about it? Why don't we talk about it? I don't want to live by the house now. So we reached out to Fainty to speak with us today to help, really to help frame our time at this summit with his personal story, which to me illustrates what's really possible when even a single artist puts their mind to making an impact with their art. So I'd love to welcome Fainty to the screen. Hello. Hi. All right, we are so honored to have you with us. So I'm just going to get in to these questions for you, but it's... So I'm just going to start by asking. I want everyone to know that I want to give Fainty's whole bio and do that whole field, but we only have 15 minutes to talk, so I just want to get to the heart of the matter and Google's there for a reason. You can find out all about you and anything that folks might want to know about you is going to probably come up a little in the course of our conversation, but I just want to get to the heart of it. So first things first, how did it feel to have a piece of yours, Can I Live, shared at this big global climate summit Cup 26 and what role were you hoping it would play there? Obviously to change the world in a climate crisis. Obviously, but that didn't happen. How do I feel? It's quite a complicated question. The vindication of media outlet is quite a powerful elixir because you're told by a respected, quote unquote narrative that you matter. But the whole point was to shout not about me mattering, but the fact that this whole structure doesn't work. So the two things working with each other is quite a difficult thing, but it definitely felt like a milestone just because we wanted to see what it's like to be in that building, to talk to those people, to be face to face with the people causing the problems, frankly. And that's difficult. That was a difficult thing because we then uncovered, not so much uncovered, but saw the complicated corruption of it all. And so, yeah, ups and downs. Right? Yes. That makes absolute sense. But I want to back up so everyone has the context of how we even got to this point, right? How that was screened. And I wish there was more theater screened there, but I'm glad it was your piece that was. If they were going to choose one. What would you like to let everyone know a little bit? When we're in our monthly meetings, we've started talking a little bit through like our climate stories, because ultimately this work is so deeply personal, right? We're doing it through so many different mediums and so many different spheres of influence, but what is your climate story in terms of how you came to care about and then ultimately devote so much of your life to the climate crisis? Yeah. Oh, that's a long story. I'm going to make it as brief as I possibly can. I got into an argument with my mum and she wanted to know why. In fact, now I'll go back a bit further. I did a play at the RSC in 2017, all about climate change at that point. I didn't know anything about climate change. So I read up about it for research, became terrified, then couldn't really leave my room without sort of scowling at people, because I couldn't work out why everyone was just able to live life. I couldn't process it. So I made a decision in order to keep my sanity and to feel like I was need something. I was like, I'm going to be vegetarian and I'm going to stop buying plastic. And then I've done my bit. I did my bit. I'll go on and I don't have to think about this anymore. So I didn't. I didn't for two years. And then I started experiencing climate anxiety, because the fields in London were turning brown. There were crops dying across the continent. And I could feel it. I don't know quite an emotional person. I could just feel this something in me. And I wanted to, I wanted to be a part of something. So I tried to launch different initiatives. Singularly all failed. No, I wanted to see me. And then I got this job. This is so brief. Got this job. I flew off to the desert. But just before I did, I got involved with XR. Got massively into organizing. They set me up there. Went away to this job and came back and the protest has happened. So I'd spent a lot of time organizing. I couldn't be there because I had to go to this job and I got back. And I got to argue with my mom because she couldn't work out while sacrificing my career to be an activist. In a sense. And I couldn't either. And so we just, we just argued and argued and argued and argued. And then our last argument, because it's last about a month, I took my phone and I recorded the conversation and I put it under a pillow. And she didn't know until a year later. So I recorded the entire conversation and I went home and I listened back to the conversation. And I realized I was like, ah, fuck. I swear. It's fine. I'm very swearing. I was like, ah, fuck. Like she, she has a point. So then I, I took her voice recordings and I turned them into a climate lecture because I realized with the life that I have as an artist and the, you know, the, the place of being the people I meet, I sort of accidentally jumped social class as you do as an actor. Like one month you're, you're at the private members bar. The next month you're, you're working at the bar at the private members bar. Like it's a funny thing. And so I met these people. I've been in this situation at all. Well, I can use my privilege to, um, to bridge the gap. I can talk to people that look like me if you're like me. Um, and I can also make a piece of work that is engaging and breaks all of this down to demystify, um, the climate change and remove it from its colonial perspective. Um, and that is a long story short. That is an amazing, a bridge version of your story. And, um, so I'm going to, I'm going to pose a quote to you that we're using as a lot of inspiration for our, our, um, because we're also somehow already running short on time. Um, we've been using this quote that, uh, from Tony Cade Bambara, the role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible. Um, does that resonate with what you're trying to do, um, in a piece like Can I Live? And another kind of version of that question is who are you speaking to with that piece and what are you wanting them to come away with? Yeah, I'll answer that with a question, with a, with a story, a very brief one. When I was writing Can I Live, uh, I wrote the first speech. It was about a poem. It's about two pages long and, um, very excited. And so I read it to, uh, Simon McBurney and Simon McBurney had a friend who was a scientist and got the scientist in, I think her in, uh, where were those? Stockholm or something. And, um, they were like, this is great. Cause we can't do this. We don't have the ability to say the things we need to say in the way that we need to, and all the further people to understand. Um, and I really took that, I resonated with that because I don't particularly, I, I, this is going to sound awful. I don't particularly think I'm a very clever person or, or all that. I get very easily bored, very bored, very easy. And I love TikTok, which is a problem sort of. Um, and I've got a short tension span. So I know if it's not going to work for me, it probably won't work for my siblings or my friends or my cousins or my auntie. Um, because not only do we have to deliver a message, we have to deliver a right to that message and then empower and then give tools. There's a lot of work that has to be done that you can't expect a scientist to be able to do. And I don't know about anyone else from the call, anyone else listening ever, but I, I'm constantly trying to find my place in the world and where I'm useful. I tend to think I'm really fucking good at this whole acting spiel. Um, and I quite like music and I quite like art and communicating. And actually I can do that work. The idea of making activism irresistible or revolutionary resistible is how we place ourselves in society. Always historically, we've always been part of that narrative, whether we've been the gestures or we've been the storytellers to deliver a message. We as artists shape society. Um, we have a responsibility in the sexiest fashion. Um, to make waves in that way. Um, so I think, I think it has to be part of every, every decision we make going forward as, as to who, who is this for why and how do we go forward? Otherwise, and I don't mean what's the point. I just think we are more than what we allow ourselves to be because of the parameters that we're given. This is coming off topic, but I promise I'm coming back. They're sort of like the climate change is a symptom of capitalism, right? It's not the deal. Capitalism is the deal. And that's where we get colonialism racism. Um, and it's within that narrative of capitalism that we limit what we are because in order to survive, we have to make a certain amount of money, be sellable, do this, that and become this and the other. And, you know, I'm not saying I'm apart from that. I'm part of that structure. Um, that limits ideas of what we can do. So for instance, like theater buildings becoming community centers, housing kids when they're in storms, um, becoming centers to learn from theater shows being more than just a show about, um, entertaining someone or catharsis, like being a place of discussion and growth going outside of the structure. And that's why I really like working with complicity because they're not worried about structure. And surely if you do all of these things and you're working for the community as opposed to the individual, individual, they are inherently anti capitalist goals. Um, so these are all and everything I say sounds complicated in the sense that it's just not. And that's what art does. It just makes it very, very simple, very easy. This is bullshit. Let's do something about it. And here's how we do it. And like, boom, do you know what I mean? And I thought that was really important. And I felt for me, I think in the West, especially, um, people need to see versions of themselves. And I thought, I don't see many people who look like me, talk like me, come from where I come from, talking about this or delivering these messages. So that's what I can do. And that's what I will do. Um, and so that, that's what I thought was important in my work in this. Um, uh, yeah. Time. You just, you actually magically answered like two more of my questions. So that was it. That was a very efficient use of our remaining time. And I, I have like one more minute. So I just wanted to, um, make sure everyone knows if they are going to be able to find, can I live somewhere online anytime soon or experience that work post cop 26. Is that going to come? Is it available now or is it going to come back around? So it finished last weekend. Unfortunately. Um, uh, we're working out a plan. We're working out next steps of what to do. We really want this piece to not just be a piece that is perfunctory. Uh, we run workshops along with it. We've been trying to do it at community centers with different grassroots movements. Um, trying to bring those to the forefront into, into mass media. Um, so hopefully next year we'll be part of that journey. Um, yeah. So just keep, keep looking out. Um, because there'll be news. Just. I think, I think you might have just gotten around 80 more, uh, Instagram followers or whatever. So, uh, everyone do check out Fenty's work more online. It has really been a truly an honor having you with us. Thank you for indulging us in even a brief conversation. And thank you for all the work that you do and please keep doing it. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thanks everyone. So, uh, it is now, um, my pleasure, um, to, uh, welcome one of my co-curators, Karina Shulenberg to the screen. Thank you so much, Devin. That conversation was amazing. Um, it's been so much fun working with you and big on this summit. Uh, it's a reminder that although this is a very, really high theater people love stakes, uh, and this work can be joyful. And it's a real joy. And an honor for me to introduce this next session. The culture of indigenous led climate resistance. First, I'm Karina. I use she, her pronouns. I'm joining you from the lands of the Muncie, Lenape and canarcy. And my visual description is I am a middle aged white woman with long reddish brown hair, wearing a cute blue floral shirt. Now, why is this summit beginning with honoring indigenous led climate resistance? Well, in the words of a niche, not a writer Riley, you know, there is no climate action without indigenous people. In so many ways, the climate crisis began with colonization. Eco side has always been a strategy of genocide. You see it when Washington ordered the destruction of Seneca and Cayuga and fields and orchards to extra Pete, their peoples, you see it when us generals monetize the slaughter of nearly 30 million buffalo until only a few hundred were left. These acts of genocide were also acts of eco side. And really only the scale has changed over the past 100 years. Now it's not just a single ecosystem, but the whole planet. So if we don't prioritize indigenous led climate resistance, we will not only be ineffective, but it's likely will actually reinforce the colonialism that brought us to this edge. And indigenous led climate resistance is effective. According to the indigenous resistance against carbon report. Indigenous resistance has stopped or delayed greenhouse gas pollution equivalent to at least one quarter of annual US and Canadian emissions. We'll put that report in the chat for you. One quarter of emissions is huge. But their leadership goes beyond direct action to stop fuels. Indigenous people steward about 22% of the world's surface. Yet that holds 80% of the earth's biodiversity. And you know, so often when I hear my fellow settlers say, or when I say it myself, I don't know what to do. The climate crisis is so overwhelming. The good news is the knowledge already exists. It has existed on these lands for thousands of years. We just need to show up and try to be as effective as possible to show up and try to be in right relationship. And it's my belief that being in right relationship with indigenous led climate resistance is above all a conversation about culture. And aren't we theater people, culture makers and culture bearers? Because I've noticed in my own efforts to show up for indigenous led movements, how important cultural practice is to those movements. And it's true that indigenous leadership is where we must begin our climate action. And if it's true that culture is at the heart of that leadership. And if it's true that we ourselves are culture makers, what then becomes possible? What then becomes necessary? We're only going to begin to ask these questions today, but I hope we will carry them forward into the rest of the convening and all the way to COP 27 and beyond. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for helping us do that. It is my deep honor. To welcome our speakers to the screen. Help me welcome Reverend Houston Cyprus. Sherry Foytland. Seachem. Hawks storm. Now a shahoo. Yawa now a Bergen. We're so grateful to have you with us today. Thank you. Thank you for your time. We're so grateful to have you here today. And talk about the work you're doing. And how we can support it. One of the goals of this session is to direct tangible resources to your work. And to the work of indigenous climate leadership. In all of our communities. So please tell us what you're doing. And how we can support. And we will start with you. Houston. All right. I was experiencing some tech problems. Can you hear me? Okay. Just let me know. All right. Thank you. So my name is Houston Cyprus. And I'm from the Otter Clan, which is one of the families that make up the make a Suki tribe of Indians of Florida. And. I consider myself an artist and environmentalist. And I work with the nonprofit that I started love the Everglades movement. And I'm also a two-spirit person. And I'm here in my homelands, which is what we refer to as. These are lands that are cared for by my people, the make a Suki. As well as our friends from the Seminole tribe of Florida. And the independent make a Suki. Seminole people of the land. This place is also known as the greater Everglades, which is West of Miami, Florida. And. I am an indigenous person with a light brown complexion. I'm wearing glasses, my hair, my long, beautiful hair is pulled back in a pro detail. And I'm wearing a light blue turquoise jacket, which is decorated with the patchwork textile art of my community, the make a Suki and Seminole people. So just to tell you a little bit about how I do my work, why it's important to me, who I serve. I wanted to start out with this quote by Angela Davis. And the quote is that walls turned sideways or bridges. So how I do this work is that I uphold the traditional spiritual practices of my people. And that includes holding up a wall to that sometimes because these are sacred practices. And some things we can share, but a lot of things we cannot share with you. But in terms of turning these walls sideways into a bridge, like there's other spiritual practices that I embrace. And this is a universalist spiritual practice. And that just means finding the commonalities that we all share and also finding ways to respect all the different spiritual traditions and faith practices that are out there. In a very practical sense. I also honor and uphold gender diversity from multiple perspectives. Indigenous perspectives and other perspectives. Here in my home community to make a Suki tribe. I like to serve on this environmental advisory committee that we have. And it's made up of different community members because we want to make sure that different perspectives, even from our own tribe are honored whenever we talk about the Everglades or environmental concerns. And so, a couple of years ago me and my buddies started the nonprofit that we call the love the Everglades movement. And basically that means using all the tools and all the tactics that's available to us. So we started this nonprofit a couple of years ago because we wanted to be a model for Indigenous solidarity for this region. And what we do is we integrate the Indigenous priorities as our own nonprofit priorities. And so, what we do is we integrate that into our policies. And so, what are local Indigenous communities asking for, integrate that into your policies. Whether that's your organizational policies or the environmental policies of your municipality, your state or federal laws, like integrate that and put it on the books. We got to show up for nature. So that's creative solidarity with the natural world too. And so, when we talk about this practice, you'll get better at it. And you'll be able to intuit and maybe listen directly to what nature is saying to you. So listening deeply is a good part of this practice. And when we talk about all the tools and tactics that's available, art is especially important to me and my colleagues. Art and culture, because for me I find that the convening aspect of art, especially through the social practice is vital. We're definitely about inspiring action, direct actions, especially the ones that are organized and led by Indigenous people is here in my region. We work through policy and politics. We got to change the laws that are problematic. We work through science, education and research, especially the Indigenous-led sciences of the Mikusuki and Seminole people. And yeah, we got to get the word out too. So get the word out through the press, get the word out through the media. And we consider that like public storytelling, because that's how I grew up here in my home. Listening to the stories of my elders and my family. We don't have to share those stories directly, but we can do that tradition of storytelling publicly. So like overall, like in a spiritual sense, where like Bob Marley said, we chop down Babylon. And so our organization that loved the Everglades movement, what we want to be is a, I guess you could call it something like a concierge for direct action for the Everglades. So if you want to know what you can do, call us up and we'll offer advice and suggestions for you. But the reason I do this work is because I want the future generations to benefit from the medicine that sustained me and my community when I was growing up. I want the songs and the dances to continue to resonate throughout space and time and perpetuity. This phrase, sharing the joys of where garden was one another is poetic, but it's also literal. Like we have our fruits and veggies and we can share and that brings people together and that puts a smile on our faces. What are the values, the communities, the projects and the practices that we're cultivating. And like thinking about garden work, as we spread it across the landscape, we're caring for the landscape. We're tending to what's there and we're tending to what should be there. So like as an environmentalist, the water quality is very foundational to support multiple species out here. When you get the water right, the animals thrive, the people thrive, the plants thrive and the practices thrive. So water quality is always a good place to start, especially from the Mikosuki environmental priorities that we are articulating. When we talk about restoration, preservation and conservation, these can sound like big words, but like a simple way to understand them is put it back, restore, don't use it, preserve and use it wisely, conserve. But overall, like the things that we're always talking about out here is let nature heal and that means leave it alone and let nature have its rhythms and support nature's rhythms. Like who do I work for? Like when I do this kind of work, I'm always keeping in mind the idea of the circle of life. And what that means is that we got to prioritize all the other species and we as people have these skills and talents that we can do that. So it's not about supporting people in their priorities, but what can we do to support the overall circle? In general, I look to the indigenous communities for inspiration and leadership. And so like here locally, we have the Mikosuki tribe of Indians of Florida. We have the Seminole tribe of Florida. And then we have the independent communities which are not federally recognized. We got to listen to them. I also want to do this work because I want Florida citizens to enjoy what's out here because those are voters. Those people are going to change the laws and basically like anybody around the world like who wants to come out here and connect with the greater Everglades. There's a lot to enjoy. There's a lot to be inspired by. So come on out and check it out. But in a very practical sense, like how can you support our work here to love the Everglades movement? How can you support the priorities of the indigenous communities out here? Well, like I said, let's use auto tools and tactics that's available to us. In fact, let's bend these tools that are available to us. And in that way, we decolonize these tools. When it comes to the scientific tools, the Mikosuki people are relying on the circle of life philosophy when we have important decision making points when we're using the scientific tools. That's how we bend the tools of science. We don't necessarily think of it objectively. We think of it as how can we support the circle of life? So political sovereignty for the indigenous people is very important because we always have issues with the consultation process. Here in Florida, the EPA gave certain permitting authority over to the state and that diminishes our exercise of sovereignty. So I would ask for your support in rescinding the 404 permitting that is authorized by the Clean Water Act. Like that's a big problem for us. Again, support our sciences. Support our educational fund. Like support the next generation of Mikosuki and Seminole people. You can support the nonprofit. That's cool. But really I think that some of the best ways that you can support what we're doing out here is just come and visit, get to know the land, connect. But at certain times you do have to stay away. Like when we're doing ceremonies and things like that. Like there's always a line. Collaborate, invitations, all that sort of stuff is great. But there's definitely real things that we need help with. Like rescinding a biological opinion that protects one species of bird, the Cape Sable seaside sparrow. But that is a detriment to all the other species that need protection. So it's not like we have something against this one bird species. It's rather that we love all of the species out here. So let's increase funding for Everglades restoration at the state and federal level. Again, let's support nature's rhythms. And that means opening up the gates that prevent the water flow. There's a big beautiful lake here in the middle of the state of Florida. It's called Lake Okeechobee. And unfortunately, like there is a legacy of nutrients that have built up in the mud at the bottom of the lake. Help us to get that out. That's a big, herculean effort, but it can be done. People put that pollution in there. People are going to take it out. People are going to take it out. So let's work together to do that. And overall, like let's, let's get these unnecessary nutrients out of the watershed in general. Because as we do this restoration work, things bounce back. The birds come back. The plants come back. The water gets cleaner. It's doable. We've seen the success of restoration projects. In places like the Kissimmee River. So those are some things that I would offer to invite you to look at. I'm going to share with you some of the things that I've talked about. Why and how I do it. There's a bunch of resources and links that I'm going to share with you after the event. I've already put some links in the Padlet. And one of the most important things I want to bring your attention to is the accountability framework. Cities can use that to transition to clean energy. And there's a guide for that. Check out the Padlet. Check out the film that I shared on the Padlet. And check out the talk on indigenous contemporary art as well. I hope I didn't go over too long, but I appreciate you all very much. And I want to see you soon. Somewhere deep in the greater Everglades. Thanks, friends. Thank you so much, Houston. For everything that you shared. I particularly heard that theaters. And theater people could be aware of the indigenous priorities in their community and integrate them into their organization. So let's all do that. We're going to be making some commitments at the end of this session. And that's one big thing we can do. So I'm going to turn it over to Sherry. Hi, my name is Sherry. I'm a Afro indigenous woman. I have six beautiful kids. I'm living in northern New Mexico now, but prior to this, I lived in a South Louisiana for a good number of years. And we bought a little project down there called the by bridge pipeline, which was the tail end of the Dakota access pipeline. But I really started way before that. Right around the time of the BP oil spill. Now look, I grew up in Oklahoma running the field running in the woods. You know, that was our, that was our play place. And I always loved the environment. And so I would give to, you know, nonprofit, big nonprofits every year and think I was really doing something. But when the BP oil spill happened, I had an, I was working for a paper as a reporter. And I had the opportunity to go jump on a boat with a fisherman and his little boy who was about five. And, um, yeah, we went out on the boat and it wasn't very long that we team across just like this huge slick that basically surrounded the boat. And, uh, inside the, the water was a pelican. And we thought at first that we could take this pelican and get back to Fort Jackson where they were cleaning the pelicans at the time, but we didn't make it. And so we ended up just idling down the boat and just like sitting with this pelican as it passed away. And I remember that this big, like Cajun man, like huge man fell to me because he didn't know what he was going to get back. You know, it's true. Like things do come back from oils, but some things just don't. And at the end, his little boy ended up getting sick. But at that time it was just the three of us. And we were just like, everyone was just very moved. You're just all together. And I came. My ex now was my husband and he's asleep and looked in the mirror and I thought to myself, what am I doing? Look at this bad. Like, first of all, and then what, what's going on? What have I done to contribute to that? What have I done to not contribute to that or to teach my children different. And so. Yeah. I mean. From the beginning, like, you know, we have this like, in sense of culture in society here on Turtle Island, where we do feel like, you know, we're the, the keepers of this land. I, my blood has been on this in this land since time immemorial from all the way down to the Mayans, the, the, the, the Danai Navo people. And that always, like, is, is, has been in my spirit, but something I won't that day that reminded me that not only did I get to take the privilege of being who I am serving my identity and raising my children, but I have the responsibility to stand up and to take action in the opposite direction to, to, to, to fix the wrong, to, to, to, to fix the wrong, to, to fix the wrong, to, to fix the wrong, to, to fix the wrong, to, to fix the wrong. To, to, to, to, to fix the wrongs, basically. Right. So, yeah, we did this campaign down there. I also like worked on the bayou bridge, the bayou bridge pipeline. We had bought 11 acres and we turned that into a camp that was right in line with the, with the pipeline was going to go through it. And we ended up saving that land. They ended up having to go around us. So even though the pipeline did eventually go through, we delayed it by three years, which is part of what the, the, the plan that we were doing was called the bayou bridge. And that report was about, actually, we were included in that report. So yeah, I mean, we just been rolling along and, and, and, and doing good stuff. We have now that piece of property is called the Indian bayou food forest. And the, the idea around that is that. You know, We're in a very. Scary situation right now with the, with where the earth is. Right. And we feel like. pass right? I mean there is going to have to be at some point like a major like change and shift in the way we think about things but in the meantime capitalism is going to come in and it's going to take advantage so now we're going to see BP end up with all these sewer panels and they're still going to be raping the land somewhere else and things like that but we want to take that away from them. They've had it for a long time. We want to give it back to the people on the ground who are being most affected by climate change because we know that the richest countries in the world are creating the most emissions are creating the most problems and the people that get left out are the people who have to suffer the most from those effects. Well there's the people in Africa and St. James Louisiana where it's the people and it's always almost always native and black folks and so we're talking a lot of times we'll all hear other people like you know nonprofit people or whatever talk about you know their job or their role of like helping and that's great that's all great but listen we're trying to survive and we've been trying to survive for like 500 years of this stuff and don't get me wrong we ain't the first generation and we ain't going to be the last like my kids are coming up strong you know my little girl is suing the government she's part of our children's trust so I guess what I'm trying to say is I just want to make sure that everyone understands that we can do this and along those two roads we have to figure out how to protect our communities and on the other side of the road we have to figure out how to build our communities and so Indian by Food Force is about building and in the meantime I go out and I fight like hell I fight and anytime I can and I use theater and I use like I bring organizing and bringing people together and I use actions where I get on top of trains uh cranes and I've been arrested 18 times never really wanted to but that's how it turned out um and I'm what I'm trying to say is like the feeling of love that we have for this earth means nothing if we refuse to take that same amount of courage and eat it and bring it back up and fight with every fight that we have and you've got to follow native people because this is our land and no one knows how to build it back up more than we do so I guess I'll stop there sorry if I went over but uh we'll talk more later thanks sherry I'm so grateful for everything you shared and I really just want to boost the the way that you talked about the risks that you've taken which I know from reading and listening to some of the other things you've shared are a lot more than what you've shared now and y'all we've got to we've got to put ourselves there uh you know right now the burden of risk is falling on native peoples it's falling on black peoples black people and that's that's not okay you know um so I just want to like really name like how honored I am to have you here sherry and how I really hope that we're not only going to shift resources toward toward you and your work but we're going to be willing to put our bodies in those places right and take on some of that risk um and I also can't wait to talk to you about the musical that you put on but but we'll see that for later because that was amazing because I want to make sure that we do um we do get to hear from everybody before we move into the conversation so now it is my great honor to welcome uh Seachem Hochsturm and Nawashahu Yawanawa to and Bergen to uh speak to us thank you uh hello everyone um first I would like to say that uh we're very honored to be here and um you know it's always good when people come together to to make a change and to be a part of what what we do um to introduce myself um Ligawa was shown on Kasik Pasek of the Scotticoke First Nations peoples um I am also by the name of Yawawa Masharawa uh through the Yawa Nawa Peoples Brazil um and I I want to say one two many two and uh to always be mindful to thank the creator and thank the earth mother for bringing us together uh in this way today and I'll I'll let Nawashahu introduce herself and then we can talk a little bit about what we're doing. Hello everyone um I'm Nawashahu Yawanawa Bergen. I'm from Yawanawa Peoples Brazil so great for the honor to be here today uh thanks so much for this great opportunity to share more with all relatives um yeah we're very excited to talk more and share more about all communities and how we're working what we're doing here and thank you. So um I guess I'll start with some of the work that we do um I we are indigenous delegates to the United Nations at the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues um and we uh are very strong activists um for the global climate movement um we I have led the uh both climate marches the climate strike in in New York um as well as uh work would draw down for a number of years and spoke with a bunch of scientists to try to uh shift the way that they think with a more indigenous perspective um one of the main things that I I know is that language is a major cause of of the problems that we're having so one of a major part of of colonization was to remove our language and our understanding of who we are on the planet and this didn't just happen to us here uh in Brazil or in in New York uh this happened around the world uh two indigenous peoples um those indigenous peoples on every continent there's a a great forgetness of this this history is forgotten and the stories are lost the the way that we talk about things now from a colonial lens using English or or Portuguese or these these uh colonial languages um they take away the meaning and the story and everything that that we are and everything that is here um just for a quick example in our language we say nibi which would mean the living water it doesn't mean water if you if you say water you're really not saying you don't know what that is what is water right h2o well uh water is the combination of all of its parts and in order to survive in any environment that you are in you need to drink the water from that environment so that your body can adapt to that environment um and this is part of the work that we do is teach reteaching how to uh think about language and how how we are um uh in right relationship with with the land the water the trees the the medicines uh the foods and and learning the stories behind each one and so we use our indigenous traditional knowledge in that way um you know just something as simple as maple syrup uh now it's uh mass produced using hoses from tree to tree but when we go back to our original teachings and we listen to the stories of how and why we get the maple syrup when we when we think about uh gluskett and how he came to the village and and the village was destroyed nobody was taking care of anything the crops were not growing the houses were disarray and he went to find his people and he goes into the woods and and there they are laying under these broken branches from the maples and they're just drinking maple syrup directly from the branches and fat and lazy and he says go back to work go back to taking care of your families and they don't they don't want to move so gluskett goes to the river and he takes this giant basket and he pours water into the maple trees and so much water that when they that they're laying under it they're now they're just starting to drink water and they started getting back up and going back into their their uh their daily lives and and you know got away from that and so gluskett left and when he came back a year later people are asking him why why did you take away our maple why can't can we have it back to me and gluskett says well look at your fields attended your families are taken care of and you're no longer lazy i'll give it back to you but i'll give it back to you in a different way now you can only have maple syrup one time a year and you have to collect it from each tree and with this basket and then you have to boil it and it takes this much water to make this much syrup and so it it was that lesson that we got from the maple syrup and that that we have to bring back uh so we're teaching this to our children and we're planting food for us i was so glad to share sherry talk about the food for us um at casco back in new york uh we've planted we we we were able to get 73 acres back and we are using it as a teaching tool to to plant a food forest in the forest and um and it kind of changes what we're talking about with farming and food right but we're also uh all the forests have been so destroyed and we're looking at the resilience of of our earth mother coming back but if she doesn't have all the seeds that she used to have how can she bring back all the foods so we're assisting her by bringing back all of these these seeds and these foods that are meant to be there and so over the last two years we planted over 2000 trees and a thousand ramps and six pounds of ginseng seed and a bunch of things and and bringing back those natural foods and medicines and plants that need to be there in our environment and then teaching that this the children as to why and the adults uh relearning uh who we are on this planet and now um we're also doing this in in brazil so uh i'll let you know i'll show you how to take over yes it's so important for us to to tell our history to to talk in our language to live how to remember who we are in this planet to feel connected connected with the nature to protect and to share the knowledge with people and for us here we understand how important is all the vaccines and how we don't need to go in our village like we don't need to go to the hospital and when the snake bites us because we have a whole medicine in the in the jungle and we need to understand how it's important to to protect this knowledge to pass for the future generation i see this in my community in brazil and we try to to remember and to to explain for people how we need to feel strong and we need to remember our history and our language we need to talk about the community we can't talk in portuguese we need to remember we have our own language so uh i completely uh in our community as covenabilites we try to we have plans to that we want to to share our whole uh knowledge with our community because some people they all saw disconnected and we need to remember who we are and i feel so so proud to this whole history and because i feel this i feel i feel we all connected we all belong in this next so we need to understand how important is to tell our history and be living in reciprocity with the nature we need to we need to to to protect because we need to do this for kids for the future generation it's so important for us so important for them so i totally feel so so proud and so honoured to to listen all like all share what i should say about food forest about how it's important to have our medicines our ceremony and our language our music and it's a whole it's amazing how we can we can remember and leave it and reciprocity with the nature so i guess i just want you to i feel very honoured very very happy to so i'm listening i'm learning so much and i want to share with my community i want to say this we need to be strong we need to to feel so strong because we are champions we are a champion of this world and we need to feel empowered thank you all thank you both so much i i wonder before we move into the main conversation if the two of you could just talk about uh because i was so moved to learn about it about the ways in which the villages have grown for the yawanawa people the language is growing it's amazing what you've both been able to do and you know others as well could you just talk a little bit about that yeah um over the last uh 12 12 years now um the yawanawa people's under started with uh no one else's great grandfather who actually decided that it was time to to remove the missionaries out of their territory and they uh fought to get their land back my father was the one to look back so hard and i feel so proud because when he tells his surface and i feel he he's so strong he's champions because we were totally slave and today we have the freedom to dream and to decide how we want to live it and it's so amazing right now um we have 10 10 yawanawa villages and mr pulvino village is the newest village that we established two years ago um it was a dream uh for quite a few years of your father and and you and um and so two years ago we partnered up together uh with our people in new york and with uh her family and and now we have we have a village that we're working towards sustainability and language and teaching medicines and and we have how many families are there now like 10 or 15 families there um now and and uh it's actually a living breathing village and um we're working towards being as sustainable as possible to keep our people in the forest where we belong and um you know we're trying to teach that also in new york which as you know very difficult but we do have um the problem now with balsam narrow where he's trying to demarcate uh the indigenous territories so that the farmers and the miners can come in and destroy the rainforest and we're seeing giant tandem trucks coming out every day 10 to 20 giant trucks taking trees out of the amazon rainforest and acrea and everybody thinks the rainforest is so big but it becomes very small very fast we're on the front lines and literally the only barrier between the uncontacted tribes that are still here uh and uh with covid we even saw uh uncontacted tribe have to come out into turbo car and uh and get support because they were dying from from the farmers and the miners coming into the forest and giving them covid so it's a very real uh situation but we feel if we lead by example and and show people that that that this is possible uh that people will wake up and and remember who they are and and their place in nature and we are the most effective oh my god the flooding the flooding and and we can't drink our water anymore because if you you can see we have diarrhea the whole community you can see because uh we probably don't have clean water in our village and i remember in covid time we don't have any more and the river was so big and the auditive town was so big and it was impossible for us and i was oh my god like once i can do like in my own family we don't have clean water the i see a whole kids sick and kids dying kids dying and it's it's per se because we are very effective for this climate change and we need to we need to understand and it's it's how important is to protect because it's it's really hard and sad oh we see we all end is we share with katakina's people and they are most effective too and i see the community so effective like so so cool and it's hard to get support and people need to understand need to see need to to know what is and i think one of the biggest problems that we have is that the people with the most money don't live in the most affected areas and they're not attached to it but they're the ones driving it like their consumerism and their capitalism is driving what's happening in in all of the poorest communities and countries um you know america thinks it's so great but really it's the biggest terrorist organization on the planet when it comes to to indigenous peoples and when it comes to to peoples of color you know they're the ones that are driving this and so we get to see it firsthand and it's and it's hard thank you for you know uh speaking honestly about that reality you know we as witnesses to it now we can't say we don't know if any of us didn't know now we know um and i'm hopeful that one of my colleagues if they haven't already will put in the information on how to send you both money to continue the front line work that you're doing is like one small way that we can show our support um so i'm hoping that folks will do that thank you um and i really do think you know there's there's uh some of the larger not-for-profits of course are doing good work but when you can really be supporting folks who are on the front lines indigenous folks who are on the front lines that's where you make the real difference and i hope you can hear about the difference that is being made um and we can't waste time in supporting these folks uh it's so urgent um so now we move into our conversation uh which i'm so excited about and really you know the the the prompt is very open however you all want to reply to it is how we can reply to it but it's about uh culture you know theater people are culture makers um for for many theaters and theater people who are operating within a white settler context our culture of making theater is colonial um and many of us are trying to move away from that um but i'm curious about how you conceive culture and its role in your work um and so whoever wants to like you know speak first to that um honoring what houston said about some of it is a wall and some of it is a bridge so please only share the bridge um but whatever you can share about the role culture plays well i can start asking you a question oh yeah houston go ahead i would like to um culture as a bridge again i comes back to like inspiring action um being able to see ourselves in that position and so i think representing the beauty of the varieties of people that are out there is vital to um to inspiring the action whether like i remember growing up out here in makasuki like i didn't really get to see um two spirit or lgbtq indigenous people on the screen so i kind of fell very lonely so when we have the diversity of people on the stage or on screen i think that that inspires us to stand up because when we can imagine the possibilities i think that that's again an invitation to do things to to to celebrate joy to stand up and fight to continue to sing and dance and celebrate so i think um i think that the representation is vital whether any kind of art form um inspiring action i think that's one of the great things that uh that culture and and how i use that in my work too and again um it brings people together like it takes a community to put on a theatrical work and um and i also like was really inspired by um forgive me if i say their name wrong but lancing cool um and superhero clubhouse how they were able to create like theater works and plays like on the land like get it out of the theater get it out of that building and do these works on the land and maybe that these works are not just um reenactment of stories but maybe this work can actually put plants on the ground maybe we can create theatrical gardening pieces like put it in the ground so these are some things that that that question brings up to mind and thank you Houston does anybody want to jump in hi yeah well for us from the beginning like the very first thing that we did was talk to the people who's laying this was in south Louisiana so this is a they talk about each type people united home nation uh the Choctaw um no there's other groups but um the very first thing we did was figure out where we were at and it was a talk about each other and we had ceremony out there the very first day uh and uh we asked permission and if they just said no then we would have to have gone a different way but they said yeah we asked them can we fight from this property right here on your land and can we grow um things for the future and and they said yes and they've been back several times they come and hang out and check it out and you know see what's going on um so yeah and then in our actions and what we did we incorporated ceremony especially in the beginning um but around this direct action campaign which we didn't even do until they actually start you know doing the labor and uh one of the things like from the beginning we had decided like we were in south Louisiana and in south Louisiana it's a really oil soaked place like a lot of people work for the industry or their family works for the industry and even though it's killing them uh they're bought into this idea that they that they have to support it and so we knew from the top that this was going to be like an uphill climb and so we we needed everybody on our on our side and so by by saying that when we had ceremony on one of the things I thought was so important was we just didn't have ceremony for um humans I mean we definitely asked for permission but we asked all the things around us to help support us and to protect us and to and to like guide us and I can tell you from experience I can tell you that when we were out in the middle of that swamp doing the direct action and it was hot and the only way to get there was by boat and those cops showed up the swamp had beat the hell out of them they came with no shoes on because they had lost their boots they were they were hot they were sticking we gave them water because I was afraid one of them was gonna die I mean I seriously was worried about them we helped guide them out a couple of times out of the swamp so they wouldn't get lost and get injured and um and so yeah I'm just trying to make the point that I think that that it has to start in a in a in a very clear place where you are just giving yourself to um this struggle and in all ways and that you are asking and being so we were so full of gratitude that we had these opportunities to fight this fight because if you can't find joy in the struggle if you can't find like fulfillment uh you know it's what is what's the use what are we fighting for right so as we instill like this this resistance into our kids we also have to like instill within the within us this idea of joy around the movement and finding connecting and networking and and and and also like just being so humble in the way that you ask for you for space to do the work that you need to do if that makes sense we uh we had ball games out there on the on the easement and there was one time we had something called crawfish to musical and uh we were in south Louisiana of course see I gotta get that Cajun flare out there and uh we someone dressed like a crawfish we had a whole play that we put on on the easement and the workers had to stop because we were right there all over the place we ran it two times we did an encore and um at the end of both times the workers clapped they clapped and we always thought that's so funny but do you know that like two years later I was reading an article and in the article it was about a man in south Louisiana who was starting a solar company and in the article he said that he had been an oil uh he was a pipeline worker and that he had gone to a job one day and that there were people out there dressed like crawfish did this whole entire musical and he's thought to himself and I know is that day he thought to himself you know uh maybe we could do something different you know and it just made him think like you know and so the next thing you know like he took that action we didn't do that and that's my biggest thing to tell everybody that's the secret right there you are never gonna know what your legacy is or how you touch people or how you change this world don't expect to it's not going to happen and sometimes it's gonna feel like you lost like you like you like you gave you're all in and you didn't get it but let me tell you something there's no way to lose because what you're doing is you're inspiring other people to take action on their own behalf right I always say courage breeds courage right don't expect anything back right and you will be blessed in so many ways that's just the way it is that's just the law oh my goodness sorry um feelings and things uh thank you for sharing that story thank you for reminding us of the power of story theater people we got to know our power we got to know the power that we have and that we could have in showing up for these indigenous movements um we are running short on the the colonial entity known as time but I want to make sure that we at least get a chance to hear um from everybody on this question on culture so I'm going to mix these four sichim and now a shahu to speak if they want to do this question of culture yeah um for us culture drives everything um and we start with we start our day by calling each other um it's not by name you know we'll call each other across the villages just by making sounds and um you know when we're hiking through the woods we're calling each other each call means something different um and there's different inflections in your call there's everybody has their own call um you know when we started this process of working together we did it through a pipe ceremony and we did it with our songs and we and we sat down with our traditional songs from the north and the yawanawa songs from the south and and bringing these this agreement together uh in this way um it's it's everything for us it's like our understanding of who we are on this planet comes from our culture and and how we're teaching our children what we want uh to see for them and what they want to see for us you know we learn from the kids all the time do we want to colonize our children no they're they they are already um so much more connected than we are uh we call them jungle they're more jungle than we are right because we have to live in both worlds and they don't have to listen to that um and so uh we learn every day this way you know our songs are so important to us how often are we playing the drums and and you know and singing the songs yes and we need to remember all traditional songs and we yawanawa i just want to talk a little bit about we have this maridae party is it's one weekend during the years when we celebrate we make ceremony we eat together we sing together we discuss about what do we we want and we players and we invite another another community and it's so important for us to feel this we need to feel this it's it's all it's our food you know it's who we are and we was the first one he stayed up after to do this maridae party and today so many people they try to be brazil they do the same because it's it's magic it's all it's who we are on these planets and it's so amazing how we can share we can we can see each other we can talk in our language we can we can be who we are we can be ourselves and and see our kids in this way is what we need to and i remember when my grandfather tell me all this history i remember when my father because my grandfather this one his father and my he told for my father and today my father tell me and i will keep continue to tell my kids and they they need to know how important is for us of puto and i just want to tell about this this because i remember when when uh you know what's talking about and i feel so i'm so emotional because it's it's it's so amazing you know they do this thing um where you gotta be careful who you marry because if you if you marry somebody with a lot of brothers they get to hit you with a banana leaf and it hurts um it's all love but yeah but it there's this big ceremony and it's like a rite of passage that that they've held on to and that has become so much stronger through the years where you know you're dressing in paint and your traditional clothing and and you you enact this fight this warrior fight and and you and you really hit each other with these the inner stem of the banana leaf and it doesn't sound too bad but trust me it's pretty pretty pretty good and sara has what 10 brothers 15 brothers yes so anyway um but it's beautiful it's beautiful and everybody circles around and all of her sisters and and sara uh come by my side and and then afterwards we all dance together and so it's a beautiful thing and this is these types of things that that that we're missing in our lives in our in our day-to-day isolated families isolated culture isolated work structure you know we're not even working for our own communities we don't really know who we're working for in these in these corporations corporate world um you know this brings the communities together all of the communities of the hour now all of the communities of the katakina come together to do this this uh party every year this celebration covet obviously uh heard that the last two years but but this is something that that is a tradition that is amazing and and you know they talked about i think we heard about the powwows and stuff like that yeah the origins of the powwow kind of suck but the powwow itself brings our communities together and and helps us really bring our children into um a pride in in who they are and their songs and their traditions and and their beadwork and i mean i'm wearing beadwork right now this is this is uh very important you know these are these are our stories this this is our protection when we when we when we have business in our land we say you need to use this cross because it's you need to protect it and it's they all have a mean they all have been meaning and yes each design yeah and each tribe has their own okay well thank you so much for ending on us and a note of joy and celebration um and can we please show love and honor and respect to our amazing panelists in the chat um so deeply grateful to all of you for this conversation which it feels like we were really just beginning um we're going to take a five minute stretch break but before we do i just want to give you two quick logistical things if you can fill out the feedback form that we're going to be putting into the chat that would be amazing we really do take your feedback and try to make things even more meaningful and don't forget to check out the padlock because a lot of the resources and links that our speakers have been talking about you can find them there so that's it for me love again to all of our panelists and we'll see you in five well i was told that my cue was when the music faded and so i think that's when the music faded uh welcome back everyone i'm lisa portes i use she her pronouns i am zooming in from the land of the council the three fires the ojibwe the adawa and parwadumi people colonialy known as chicago i am a five foot tall uh latina wearing a red sweater uh with uh silver earrings and behind me is my office and a uh a piece of woven art from the indigenous peoples of colombia now i'm welcoming you back for three exciting reasons the first is that i serve on tcg's board and so i wanted to boost the call for nominations again for our new governance ecology you'll see the links dropped into the chat momentarily but if you have an interest in serving on the board uh this is a great way to get in we have a we have a brand new ecology and um uh and i think it's it's it's a really fantastic way to get involved with tcg and by tcg through tcg to the larger field the second exciting thing i get to do is ask you for money so here's a slide that will take you to a couple of different ways you can do it now my quick pitch is this there are so many reasons to love tcg right there's tcg books and the new illumination series curated by brandon jake of jinkens and featuring the classic works by black playwrights there's the irreplaceable american theater magazine i don't know i have about 100 200 maybe 300 stacked in my office we've got grand and professional development programs like the rising leaders of color but more than anything tcg acts on the most existential issues facing our field today when the pandemic struck tcg helped secure the largest federal investment in the arts since the wpa and convened public health experts to navigate each wave of the virus working with jessie cameron alec and his collaborators tcg recently hosted emerging from the cave artists lead the way and is launching a new state of the artist project this project will help move our field towards supporting artists upon who our work depends and yet who face so much precarity and inequity and then there's the climate crisis and that's where this gets even more personal for me it's personal first of all because i'm on a break from rehearsing catty that switches desdemona's child which is a climate play about a generation born into a world of past lies and rising waters sound familiar it's personal because speaking of a generation seeking to reverse the damages of their forebears i'm deeply inspired by the climate activism of my daughter eva murillo who is a chicago leader in the sunrise youth movement for climate change and the founder of the sunrise chicago high school hub i wonder what kind of world we are leaving for her and for her peers and it's personal because this next session is the kind of portes family or portes family reunion as two of the brilliant speakers this is insane are my wonderful and real-life cousins Xavier Cortada and Anna Maria Claymire whose work at the intersection of arts civic policy and law blow me away every single and blessed day so for all these reasons and more i hope you'll support tcg and now i'll turn it over to devin and big to kick off this portes family reunion thank you so much lisa just for your ongoing support of our climate action work at tcg um and of course the introductions uh hi again everyone um big and i are just going to offer some quick context for this next section and then turn the floor over to our wonderful speakers um so this summit uh is in december partly in response to cup 26 the big global un climate summit uh that was in november last month cup 26 is part of an ongoing decision-making process uh under the united nations um and also served as an accountability check-in for the nearly 200 countries who are members of the un climate treaty and who participated in a paris agreement which was adapted at cup 21 in in 2015 so we wanted to begin this conversation by drawing some lines between the paris agreement and our field so the paris agreement uh has three main goals that are summarized on this slide and you have the slides ready or do you want me to share my screen give me one moment please no worries i will keep going i'll verbalize those goals and the slides will catch up uh great so the goals are to maintain global temperature well below two degrees Celsius and preferably below preferably below 1.5 uh to increase global adaptation and develop resilience and to make finance flows basically consistent with these goals so the paris agreement is global but it's implemented at the national level uh part of the agreement requires countries to submit a statement outlining what they will do to help achieve the goals that i just mentioned um and so on earth day of this year the biden administration announced a goal for the us to meet our commitments and in short a 52 percent reduction by 2030 so today we're focusing on two of those three paris goals the first and the third and and expanding on those ideas and adaptation and resilience is an important part of the climate conversation but today we are lifting the goal of drastically reducing emissions across every sector and the need to align our financial activities with that goal and as we know as storytellers we hold even more power our art making as we've been talking about can shift our culture so back to cop 26 uh the stakes were really high at this cop because for more than four decades the IPCC has been ringing alarm bells with their reports like one of the most recent ones it emphasizes that warming past that 1.5 will mean climate catastrophe locking the planet into increased climate volatility for the foreseeable future but we do still have a small window of opportunity to avoid the worst case scenario for the human race after that if we act wisely and if we act fast so even as we've emerged from cop 26 we're on track to warm the planet by 2.7 degrees Celsius or more the effects of which are almost unthinkable so hopefully by now you don't need convincing that this is an emergency and that we all have a role to play but the paris agreement lifts other practices as important for realizing our goals some of which as a field we should take note of collaboration and cooperation between countries transparency of progress climate education and awareness raising capacity building and harnessing technology and taking action responsibly and indeference to local and indigenous knowledge systems so how do these concepts translate to our industry well we need to work together to make enough progress we need to measure and message our progress transparently we need to engage in raising awareness and capacity building around climate change and we need to follow the lead of our local bypass leaders and the work they've been doing for years so we're going into the how very soon for now I will hand the mic over to my partner big will tell us a little about how she translated global goals into footprint reducing footprint reducing goals for TCG big thank you Devin thank you so much my name is big Raksha Kong saying my pronouns are she or they I am in the grand making programs department at TCG zooming in from the land of the Lenape people my visual description I am a Thai person with beautiful brown skin and black hair wearing a gray shirt sitting in front of a white wall so back in 2019 I thought sure TCG will play a part in achieving the Paris agreement goals with power I had in my hand as an operations manager I set a target for the TCG office to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2030 I calculated our current carbon footprint and searched for where we could cut down before COVID hit I ran a calculation again and estimated that the TCG office had reduced our emissions by about 53 percent I'm not going into the house here for the sake of time I've put a summary of what TCG did on the patlet the amazing pilot that we have so feel free to cruise through in your own time well climate change is a global concern it is not a site specific issue to Turtle Island almost all of the top 10 countries that will be affected most by sea level rising aren't even top greenhouse gas contributors my home country Thailand is among the top 10 so I'm passionate as much as angry when it comes to climate justice to the point that I have to co-share this summit it's high time we look beyond borders to think global and act local act if not for your older self then for your younger ones so before we go into the space for action and collective commitment today we are graciously joined by two amazing speakers who have worked on climate climate issues at an international level and attended COP26 if you have any questions for the speakers please put your questions in the chat if you have if we have time we will take one or two questions at the end so please welcome Anna Maria Clemire a climate attorney to the UN who has represented Argentina and Micronesia and Xavier Cortara an artist and a professor of practice at the University of Miami thank you big greetings everyone buenos dias bonjour I hope everybody is doing well I hope that you are safe I hope that you are warm I hope that you are protected by the home where you live or the space that you inhabit these are things that I wish for everyone in the world and things we often take for granted but they are the essence of what is at risk for many people in the world including many people in our country and we've heard about some of some of those I'm here today zooming in from from the Chesapeake Bay the land of the Piscataway people colonially known as Alexandria, Virginia and I'm so excited to be here I'm really really it's really such a pleasure I really I'm sort of happy beyond words to be speaking to this community because in the in the in the deepest part of my heart and soul I believe that this challenge of climate change cannot be solved without artists and the artistic community that can catalyze the change that we need to see in the world I've been invited to tell you a little bit about the experience of of the conference of the parties or the cups as as they're known I'm a lawyer by day and an artist and musician by night and I've spent yeah many years working on on this issue and so I'm going to just kind of give you a little bit of an overview Devin has has done a great kickoff I'm going to go a little bit more into depth and then I'm going to to talk with well sort of start the conversation and first introducing my cousin Xavier Cortela but also opening your minds and your hearts to think about in what way can you contribute and activate yourself your life your talents your community to participate as much as possible in helping the world to address this problem so I'm going to try to share my screen here we go yeah so just an overview of the treaty a few takeaways from the cop and then a little bit about where we can go from here just in a nutshell and I'm not going to read out everything on the screen but the the the countries of the world as a global community have been working on climate change for for many years for nearly 50 years on environmental issues more broadly but also on the issue of climate change and it was back in 1992 that that countries gathered in Rio Brazil and they agreed to a number of really important environmental treaties these are global agreements that countries sign up to so the governments themselves have a legal responsibility to fulfill the treaties one of those treaties was the was the United Nations framework convention on climate change the where was this born did it just come out of nowhere well no in fact just as today the scientists are guiding light on what is happening in terms of climate change and how we can participate back in the 1970s and 80s there was a community of of scientists from around the world called the intergovernmental panel on climate change oftentimes referred to because it's a it's a long and awkward phrase it's there oftentimes just referred to as the IPCC and these scientists they publish a report about every five or six years it's not the most cutting edge because it takes them that long to to come to consensus globally and that report drives our decisions our being the the countries that attend these conferences they drive the decisions forward because every time they tell us something new and they and they stress more and more about the urgency of climate change and give us greater depth of knowledge on what the causes are what the impacts will be and it's taken a very very long time as you can see many many decades since the since the crisis was identified to where we are today at a point where still despite a lot of a lot of great let's say greater attention to the issue there's still not quite enough being done the other thing that the scientists have told us and that is important when we think about this you know this the the global conference and also our role is they they they give us updated reports on what exactly where exactly is the root of this problem and you see this weird spaghetti thing that i'm showing here and basically this is a crazy but fairly accurate description of all of the different sources of greenhouse gases and where they come from and if you just give it a quick look what you'll probably notice is that so many things in our daily lives contribute to climate change basically everything that we that we do contributes in one way or another the upside of that is that there are many opportunities for engagement and trying to reduce the emissions from these sectors so this climate convention that started back in 1992 it has 197 member states that's basically every country in the world it's an international treaty which means that the countries had to formulate it then sign up to it and once they signed up they basically became members of this club that that agreed to certain principles about what they were what they were going to do collectively cooperatively Devin used that word and it's a really important word in the international negotiations cooperation on climate change um they uh the the original treaty was quite broad and so in 2015 the countries got together again and they said all right we need we need some more specificity we have to do more the problem is becoming ever more urgent and so they agreed to this uh this new piece of the convention called the Paris agreement it's kind of under the umbrella of this bigger convention and the Paris agreement Devin pointed out some of those important pieces of the Paris of the Paris agreement but one of the most important things that the agreement did was that it um it told parties that they would have to pledge their actions their specific actions and targets on climate change both on the mitigation and reduction of the gases but also on the side of adaptation and implementation what exactly are you going to do and if you're curious it's pretty easy to find the these these nationally determined contributions as they're called NBC's if you're curious about one country or another maybe someplace you've been or someplace that you're from you can find those NBC's online and see what um what what a different you know different countries have committed to the United States has an NBC of course as well however what's really important um from our perspective as normal people not as the governors of countries is that um the pledges if you add them all together and scientists and economists have they've added up all of all of the promises from countries and they find that even if every country does everything they say they're going to do we're still on track for 2.7 degrees Celsius of warming which is about like closer to like four and a half degrees Fahrenheit of warming now that doesn't mean every place in the world will warm exactly four and a half degrees but it doesn't mean you know some places will warm more and others will warm less but it does put at risk some critical parts of the world like the Arctic the glaciers from around the world on which we depend not only for water but also for the stability of our oceans etc so basically this is not good news that we're on a 2.7 degree Celsius path we need to help change that and that's what we'll talk about in a minute how can how can we as citizens of our country help affect affect this the ultimate goal and the implementation of this convention but one thing I wanted to point out before we get to the what can we do is why do why are we cooperating as countries together on this issue and the reason is that climate change is essentially an environmental and economic problem that that knows no borders right so the emissions that are released on one side of the planet cause changes in the atmosphere that affect everywhere and anywhere in the world the other reason is that the countries and the people and communities that contribute the least to greenhouse gases are the ones that will suffer the most and the reason for that is that those communities are the poorer communities or those who who who live most in equilibrium with nature and those communities tend to be more vulnerable to to the impacts of climate change the droughts the extreme weather events they don't have the resiliency and the protection that the more industrialized countries and communities have to protect them from these changes that are coming so there's a recognition in the climate convention that first of all the industrialized countries will take the lead on the greatest amount of action because they recognize that they are contributing and have contributed the most and second that they will help developing countries especially the most vulnerable of those countries and communities like small island states and these developed countries they will help them to adapt to climate change and they will also help them get on track with a more climate friendly resilient future so I just want to I'm gonna just touch on quickly on the in the climate cop what does it look like there you have your negotiators and the negotiations happening in some rooms but there are all of these observers who who attend and those are you know basically people from all walks of life interested in climate change those observers provide accountability they help exchange information and experience and find solutions to climate change they report to the world that they have a lot of responsibilities and they range from youth indigenous people artists industry people it's really kind of every everything that you could possibly imagine and the kitchen sink there's only about two or three thousand negotiators who attend the cop and about eight thousand people who are not negotiators who attend this is a little bit of what it looks like so I just want to I talked a little bit about this you know that there's sort of an connection between those who are impacted those who contribute etc but now I want to talk a moment about you know what can we what can we do as as citizens and and this will be a segue into our next seeker so the way that I look at my role as a as a human being on the planet is that I have a lot of a lot of influence over my own decisions over myself but that influence only has a certain amount of impact in in terms of climate change or in terms of anything that I want to change at a global scale but when I work within my community I have more influence and impact maybe I can't convince everyone in my community to do everything that I would that I would do but I can through my example and through education and through inspiration I can I can catalyze more support and then through that larger influence I can have more impact on the decision makers and the political level right and that's how we connect up to two processes like the cop is that from our own daily lives through our communities into our influence of our governments then when our governments show up to to to meet and discuss with other countries they have the force of our intention behind them and I believe that art and artists are the energy that connect the individual through the community to that greater level and we do that because we can inspire and we can help inform people in a way that that really goes deep into the fabrics of our lives of our souls and of of the way that we engage with those around us and there's no one that I know better in the world who does this who uses artwork to to inspire and connect these three spheres than Xavier Cortada. He happens to be my cousin and and that's a great coincidence but we've been collaborating also for many years on on environmental and climate change issues so it's a real pleasure to introduce him now and I'll turn it over to him and let him tell you about his work. Thank you so much Ana Maria I love that we are doing our family reunion here in front of everyone else which is awesome. Anyway I know we're short in time so I'm really going to rush through this so that we can engage with one another so I'm sharing my screen now. Oh gosh hold on slide show play from start. Hi everyone it's my pleasure to be here and I am here with a sense of urgency a sense of urgency because if we fail to act everything that you love is at stake every ecosystem animals within those ecosystems the waters humans humans not yet born and the organizations like nation states that are organized as societies to protect those humans in those ways of life all of that every single thing of it is at stake. This picture here is Miami it's actually a photograph taken at the dry valleys in Antarctica but that is landing here this is where I live this is my home and sea level rise threatens to impact us because Miami is flat our highest point is 24 feet above sea level I live this room that I am sitting in is six feet above sea level. In the past I've tried tackling sea level the way you would track any hostile takeover unfortunately I must apologize I did resort to violence so I tried hitting the water but that didn't work again violence only begets violence so instead I decided to freeze those very glaciers that were melting in Miami and threatening to drown Miami. I thought my gosh if this water that's coming into my living room this water that is putting salt water into my freshwater aquifer was once frozen ice then I can just refreeze it but of course I realized the futility in that because the refrigerator would only emit more greenhouse gases that would melt more glaciers that would cause a problem so I did what every politician does I decided to dig a hole in the sand but unlike politicians I did not shove my head in the sand instead I decided to take the entirety of the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico and put it underground right the idea is to keep the water below the ground and I got really tired I got exhausted so I thought I needed other people to help me I went back and used those images of the art pieces I created with the very art the very ice that threatens to melt my city and I decided to create these ice paintings capturing the bullet the precursor of the horrors to come so these ice paintings I've used over the years I created them back in 2007 but for COP26 I decided to use them as a way of engaging the audiences at COP26 and I wanted to create an art piece where instead of us seeing each other as individuals we would see each other with our vulnerabilities with our fears our hopes and our shared goals so the idea is as the little ice painting the background melts the sea level rises and when it rises to your elevation your community suffers here's a quick little video of what we did at COP26 the idea was thank you mayor so as you go to Glasgow I know that you will be I know that you will be sharing all the wisdom inner stories but also sharing our elevation thank you so much I'm relatively high at seven feet Daniela thank you so much mayor the idea was to let miamians in Miami Dade County understand that what was happening at COP26 4000 miles away in Scotland mattered to them that it was relevant the decision made by these nations by these parties at this conference would impact Miami the same way it would impact Micronesia and the same way it would impact everywhere where land touches water but not just where land touches water but the thriving ecosystems that need the climate that has evolved the living beings and living systems today to continue as you know warming climate impacts all of us a weakened Gulf stream that would be caused with the incredible melting of Greenland would wreak havoc across our entire world specifically across Europe the destruction of the sea ice in the Arctic would cause jet streams that would wreak havoc across all of our planet and of course within our country the droughts that would come the stronger wetter slower hurricanes caused by heat being trapped in our waters again because of the human impacts of greenhouse gases the carbon footprint that we every one of your theater goers every one of your board members every one of your actors every one of your playwrights contributes into the atmosphere would spell catastrophe to every human not yet born for the next millennia if we continue doing this and putting it at two degrees three degrees and even four degrees above the pre-industrial averages so this is a world problem it is an existential crisis and it is a reason why artists are needed to be able to take really complex ideas ideas that are hard to solve and have us find ways of reimagining of rethinking how it is that we as a society could come together and address the issue and the issue is hard and it is particularly hard when you think of yourself as individual nation states as you think about your own personal or economic interest and that's why it's important to help use art to reframe the way we think not as individuals with rugged individualisms but as a collective not as politicians thinking as nation states but thinking in a planetary context and again it's by building constituencies movements individuals who see ourselves as having a shared future based on our current action that we get to do something and nowhere more than theater nor more than in your ability to work not as a painter alone in a studio but in an industry in a field in a practice in an art form that by its very nature necessitates interdisciplinarity and has broad audiences that appeal to massive massive sectors of our society and that has a huge carbon footprint can we begin to make a difference and our plea today is for you as the cultural leaders of the United States and the facto environmental cultural leaders by your very participation in this conference take action to effectuate change and as Anna Maria said it could be as simple here I am by myself talking to a tree as a performance art piece in the middle of the negotiation trying to tell that tree that what these guys were trying to do was something that it does inherently which is to take carbon out of the atmosphere I later tried to rescue that tree but the bureaucracy allowed that tree to die so I gave it its last right so you can read all about that I'm sure in the chat links that you are being given but again it's so it's a way for an artist to use this medium that helps us imagine engage reframe rethink how we problem solve and that's something that I as an artist have been doing in my practice where they're the slide on the left I put an iceberg big piece of ice and have it melt in my beautiful opening because Antarctic god doesn't care about your timeline it's working on its or you have children take the property records of their parents homes and create an underwater flotilla because those property values are going to be underwater if we continue polluting and putting carbon into the atmosphere or airplanes made of utility bills because our fossil fuel based economy our utilities that use fossil fuels continue going high high high not just in their costs but also in their polluting and destructive effect something that we as a society continue to subsidize through our tax dollars and one of the two things are trying to solve here through our investments that needs to end artists you we need to show society a better way a way to transform that and again collective collaborative thinking is a way for us to get there that is what I saw at COP26 what happened inside COP26 was really important but you know what the 130,000 people I marched with across the streets of Glasgow during the conference and those youth that managed to be inside also had impact and it's that kind of impact that we as a society need to have and that each of us through our own cultural institutions can bring and do so in the next 11 months as we approach COP27 when all these nation-states will once again come together and perhaps this time do more than what Greta accused them of doing which was blah blah blah not doing enough and not taking the urgency of the moment in the future every single one of us will come to understand that climate is to us what tech is today you could have not imagined 10 15 years ago that everything we do is so dominated by technology whether it's education or grocery shopping that technology is immersed in every aspect of our lives well just like that climate will be involved in every single thing we do and especially as the world suffers in the arts and I challenge us to be able to walk the walk before we talk the talk we will have a responsibility to program culturally program content that addresses climate more and more than we do so today let our board members create sustainable organizations let that organization model behavior across the community and be open and in fact serve as a catalyst an incubator so that more cultural programming happens not just in the state in the stage on the stage but across the community unleash yourselves become agents of change and use the very power of your craft to transform the planet and give yourselves a goal what will each of us do in the next 12 months when there are hundreds of people hundreds of thousands of people marching across the planet asking for each of these nation states to keep us under 1.5 degrees celsius what will each of us do to contribute to that discussion I believe in the capacity and the ability of our theater community to be among the loudest and more persuasive voices at the US as we prepare for cop 27 let's each of us do our part thank you so much thank you so much so so much for these just hugely important insights on a maria into cop 26 and the it's like level of global global climate work that seems so far away from so many of us and Xavier for your incredibly powerful art and words we have so much gratitude to both of you for joining us so this is actually friends where we say goodbye to our live stream friends our friends on howl around and hello to