Beyond Patriarchy: Indigenous Perspectives for a Sustainable Future

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Verda: [00:00:00] Welcome to break some dishes, define the rules to inspire design. I’m Jon Stroszner and I’m Verda Alexander. So here’s another. Guest that you met in Connecticut in your hometown. Yes. Lots going on in Connecticut. Lots going on in

Jon: Connecticut. Yeah. Down in New Haven at a, uh, like a sustainability festival down there.

It was, it was wonderful. I happened to watch a panel discussion and, uh, Keisha DeFreece Lawrence was a part of the panel and I wanted to bring her on to break some dishes because she is a member of the Ramapo Munsee DeerClan, so she’s indigenous to the eastern part of the United States, and I thought it might be amazing to get an indigenous perspective on some of the things that we’re going to be talking about this season.

Verda: Yeah, and it’s interesting a little bit because, I don’t know if we should admit this, but we were trying to get her on last for season five and Back in September, right? Right. It just kept kind of falling through for various reasons. And then we came up with this new season. And I think a lot of her ideas about just the fact that her clan comes from a matrilineal society.

And, you know, we’re exploring. The idea of women women in design and the issues around that and yeah a challenging season But I think one that that is timely and that I think needs needs a spotlight right now Yeah,

Jon: yeah, definitely a tough one out of our comfort zone.

Verda: Yeah out of our comfort zone we might stumble a little and we’ll be figuring things out as we go, but um, I think it’ll be interesting and

yeah,

Verda: um, yeah just bear with us and um, we’d love to hear from you all too if you have any Thoughts on our thoughts on our season?

So should we go ahead and get started? John?

Jon: Yeah, let’s talk to Keisha. I am excited and nervous.

Verda: we, yeah, and it’s our first one of the year, so we need to, we need to get back on it. ,

Jon: I know. Back on the horse. Okay. Yes.

Verda: Okay, let’s do it.

Jon: So today. We are joined in Break Some Dishes with Keisha DeFriese Lawrence. She’s a member of the Ramapo Lenape Munsee Deer Clan and Indigenous Education Specialist at Harvard Forest and Brown University John Carter Library Tribal Fellow. How did I do? Tell me, did I screw any of that up?

Keshia: No, that was fine, that was great.

Jon: Hi

Verda: Keisha, nice

Jon: to meet you. Thanks for joining us today. Yeah, thank you for having me on the show. Well, as everybody can tell from that introduction, Keisha, Is doing a lot these days and I’m, you know, one of those people that when I research people and I’m, you know, looking at Keisha and everything that she does, I sit and I say, what the hell am I doing with my life?

Because this woman is doing a lot and we’re really, really Honored to have you on today and to spend time with us to tell us not only about the work that you’re doing, but Verna and I are going down a slightly different track this season with Break Some Dishes. We started out Break Some Dishes with talking about plastic and all the easy stuff and, and now we really want to get into some of the more complex issues that we think are a part of climate and sustainability and our planet,

Verda: right?

And the inspiration of this episode came from I was helping to develop a climate as carbon educational series and I learned that the person that discovered the greenhouse gas gas effect was a woman named Eunice foot in 1856 and her work was basically forgotten or lost. And a man, I guess in Scotland, she was in America and he was in Scotland or something, got all the credit, of course, several years later.

And it took many, many, many years, I think until recently for that to get fixed in Wikipedia. So you’re in science as well, right? And John, why don’t you go ahead and kick us off from there? Because I just, I liked the connection between science and yeah.

Jon: That did kind of inspire the season, didn’t it? So we are, we are celebrating the female perspective.

We’re celebrating the way that women problem solve and is it different than the way men problem solve? And, and it really kind of got us into some of the things that you’re talking about, Keisha, and some of the stuff that you’re working on. So we, before we get too deep into it, give us, um, give us a [00:05:00] little bit of history, a little bit of your origin story, how you got where you are today.

Keshia: Oh, wow. I feel like that’s such a heavy. Was

Jon: that too big?

Keshia: No, it’s not. I think it makes sense. Um, it, I feel like the, the verbiage there just felt so heavy. Um, so yeah, I’m rambling up a Muncie deer and wolf clan, um, and Montauk it. So my tribal territory is much of New Jersey, New York out into Long Island, um, but no further than Albany, um, and parts of Western.

Connecticut. However, I’ve grown up on Narragansett land in Rhode Island, um, as well as pretty close to Pequot, Nipmuc, and Wampanoag land. Um, so just a little bit more north of my traditional territory. Um, and yeah, my background is both types of sciences, if you will. Um, I currently work in the environmental and ecological side of sciences, as well as field research application.

However, my, my academic training is an international law with a focus on conflict negotiations and, uh, settlement of disputes. So I did my undergraduate degree at the American University of Rome in Italy, and I did my master’s at the United Nations University for Peace in Costa Rica. I think there’s something to be said from coming from an international lens as an Indigenous woman coming from the U.

S., but also for where I’m thinking interconnectedly already being attached to my cultural identity. And so bridging these two worlds that are viewed as different types of sciences, but very heavily linked and require one another to thrive, I think is a lot of my like entry Some of this work, however, also being an educator and a storyteller, um, has been a different layer.

And when we talk about climate literacy and what does it mean to understand a place or an ecosystem, there’s always been some kind of academic, but also really critical personal segue into how, how we live these concepts out, apply them, but then also, um, Continue to take them further. And there is this design approach behind political science and international law, right?

So seeing that within the other realm of sciences, there’s a literal, and then there’s that symbolic. And so I try to play within those two worlds.

Jon: Man, there’s a lot there. Keisha, you’re using this international experience to build into your indigenous perspective, which I’m interested to see what that has done to the way that you look at something like, I don’t know, land management, right?

Keshia: I think we are all international people, um, regardless of how recently or not recently we’ve been able to travel, right? Doesn’t matter if you have a passport or not, I promise you at some point in your, in your human lived blood experience, there has been travel. Um, and, From a political POV, the creation of a nation state is relatively recent when we think about Westphalia and the founding of the German Kingdom as being one of those critical points for the European view of sovereignty and the European view of a nationhood, a nation state.

It is the other realities that make us close in proximity. And I say that thinking of community as also being a word that’s related to cousins with we’re, we’re looking for similarities that unite us and then how we work further in that. And I think with environmental sciences, that should be an easy thing to do because gravity works for all of us.

We’re all in some type of an ecosystem and a climate that gets experienced everywhere, whether it’s just rain, whether it’s a period of drought. Right. And so I think also moving from a From an educator point of view or storyteller in terms of an indigenous POV is how we build up data, but also then how we share data and at what point that knowledge and communication becomes collective is really critical when we determine those things.

And that’s what I mean by there’s I think also this design layer for how we’re even thinking of one another, but then also ourselves in this larger ecos, right? Um, and so yeah, I, I think especially in terms of some of my ongoing, but like later work, if you will, that is, um, in process of being a part of my, my PhD and my doctoral.

Um, relationship, but sovereign science, looking at science outside of, um, and again, coming from a U. S. context, ultimately, looking at science outside of a military or a governmental game. Most of the sciences that is taught in schools didn’t begin until 1950, outside of a few things like momentum.

Everything else has been a regimented educational plan, and those are things from a political science standpoint. perspective are really designed to support a certain political agenda. And especially when we think about what was happening in the world post World War II, we see a linkage between our science and our political science at an international level.

The United Nations Security Council, we’re dealing with the people who won World War II, and those are the only people with a veto power in the world. So when we also look at our sciences, it’s very common in fifth through middle school to still have the social science meets hard science question of was the atomic bomb okay and why?

as a persuasive writing piece for students in the United States. [00:10:00] So we see a disconnect from social science in terms of emotional learning, trauma informed pedagogy, right? We don’t see that all of the time, but we also don’t see it for Indigenous learners in the environmental spaces. Folks, Talk about more than human relatives as organisms and different species.

But for me, that is a human, that is a relative,

Jon: right?

Keshia: That is a relational piece that when we want to switch words, we’re, we’re talking about bio indicators. I’m talking about my original relatives. Salmon used to be in Connecticut and out east. We’ve lost a lot of that. And so being able to draw those lines so we can not only understand each other better, but how are we creating policies that are truly meaningful?

And what is, what is the direction which we want our future sustainability at that personal level to look like? I want the next generation, Native or not, to look at these species that are endangered as relatives. Because at some point, They won’t be here at all.

Jon: You bring up sovereign science, and I’m glad that you did because we really wanted to start talking with you about that.

Now that’s, you know, to me, I love the concept of sovereign science because you’re talking about approaching science or approaching the environment with intention, right? And using a different concept. Paradigm of like protection and care and it feels so relevant today as we are more focused on sustainability and all of the the impacts that we have on land.

I’m curious because as a bird and I were discussing this topic is, is this taking the indigenous perspective versus the western perspective on how we treat and manage land or is this more because I know you talk a lot about. You know, the matriarchal relationship, right? And how we, how we treat land or, or is it, is it both, right?

Is it, is it Western perspective, indigenous perspective, or because the, you know, the patriarchal method of dealing with our environment is, you know, drop pesticides and, you know, kill the bugs and stuff. So tell us, talk a little bit about sovereign science in this matriarchal, I think, perspective.

Keshia: I guess I want to start off by saying not all Indigenous peoples are matriarchal, so I’m definitely coming from, um, an ethnic centric, more ethnocentric POV on that than, than other Indigenous people might, but I’m also coming from one that is then also Eastern with regards to not only where I am, but in thinking.

We consider the Eastern door and where the sun rises to be the birthplace, I guess. And so moving more westward and then ultimately moving towards where we consider our final days to be means that when we use the terminology of Western science, my cultural POV is that is death. So I’m moving from a place, hopefully, of life first, and that is, I think, um, a maternal instinct, a maternal skill.

And when we think about Eastern nations, in particular Haudenosaunee and my cousins to the north, we’re talking about people. who decided war based on mothers. Do I want to send my child to war? Can I replace my child, my brother, my husband as easily as I’m thinking post, post any traumatic reality? And so when you apply that mentality into every other living being it becomes really difficult to view natural resources as something worthy of making money off of.

Because you are still talking about the death of a relative in some, in some capacity. So for Indigenous peoples, I think we’re all, we’re always walking on that line of essentially always grieving, but also understanding that there’s life at the end of that grieving, at the end of that mourning, at the end of that bereavement.

And so sovereign science, is an act. It is an act to think about and communicate with the environment, um, in a way that honors its sovereignty, as well as our own as individuals. I only have sovereignty because no black bear has come to kill me, right? I only have sovereignty because I am acknowledging and respecting the other sovereignty of people around me, but also more than human relationships around me.

Um, and so being able to address what it means to collect a water sample in that way requires a lot of ceremony and connection. And it requires a certain layer of knowledge sharing, as well as respect and transparency. And those are really the five core pillars of sovereign science. Whether it be research that’s happening on the land or in the field sciences, or that bench work reality.

And, um, with that being said, I think there is no real separation from quote unquote western sciences or settler science. And a part of that is because I have already been colonized, so it’s hard to then be able to separate out what I don’t fully know. And that’s true for all of us. Um, so where we, we choose to connect.

[00:15:00] Around the sciences, I find critical. So, for example, and I used water water samples as one POV of that because that’s something that is really easy to do, whether it be with a classroom of students or a group of indigenous youth, right? We all need water and we understand that water connects us and a majority of the planet is water.

So to take some water. five milliliters to look under a microscope and see what’s in that could be a very easily teachable moment. The sovereign aspect of that is honoring, so in your tribal community, how would we actually do that? Do we have to have prayer before we do that? Do we need to add anything to the water before we do that?

And then understanding for that non native science that means something will be changed and become a variable. Um, so sovereign science is being able to stop it. And walk through all these components, but also consult different tribes, different educators on these components, so that way it makes the conversation just around science smoother for those who are Indigenous, rural, or frontline, or subsistence livers, right?

Not all people who are the closest to the land sometimes are Indigenous. And that’s, um, a reality that we also have to face a lot, at least in the U. S. and Canada, a lot of Indigenous peoples are in urban spaces now. That doesn’t mean we’ve lost connection with our environmental ones or want or deserve access back to it, um, which is why, like, working at Harvard is really critical for me in terms of Harvard Forest, because it’s on Nipmuc territory, it’s on historic Nipmuc land where people were scalped in bounties.

to remove them from their land, yet they still hunt there, they still ice fish there. So being able to create a meaningful relationship with such a large and historic institution with 4, 000 acreage of land, that is sovereign science, right? That community led driven desire is something that has I’ve been highly forgotten when we think about government organized science.

And I, I say that because scientists is one of those only other career categories where you’re a government official or not, other than a lot of political worlds, right? Or our medical worlds, there is no government official teacher. We have state official because there’s certification, but there is no unified federal reality for that.

So why is there for science to essentially pose that back to indigenous peoples? If we are a country within a country in our own separate indigenous. nationhoods, then we need to own that with our science as well. So, Sovereign science is also a counter data. Not all of the data that has been collected of our home territories is correct.

Because the people who first collected it were not from here. I mean, Abraham Lincoln as a president, his whole scientific cabinet was fascinated that they found a moose in California. They couldn’t understand what that species was. They had seen it out east under George Washington. Why would it be out here?

You should talk to some indigenous peoples about that trafficking, right? That movement, that tracking of species. But also a moose is a, you know, the deer is the cousin of a caribou, the cousin of a reindeer.

Verda: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So,

One of the things you talk about is rematriation of space, of physical space. And as a designer, we deal with space all the time. So that term really intrigued me and you gave us a little bit of homework. And in there, it, there was a just definition where it says that it honors matrilineal societies and stands in opposition of patriarchal violence.

And. It made me think of just the idea of matrilineal society made me think of this book that I read recently called The Patriarchs, and it was trying to find examples of matrilineal societies from the past just to, to oppose this idea that patriarchy is just the way the way of the world, right? It’s just It is how things should be, and there are a number of them, not all, like you said, in the, in the, what would you call it, the new world, or?

Turtle Island. Or, uh, Turtle, I was trying to think of that, Turtle Island, right, a number of them on Turtle Island. Um, if we’re framing, um, In terms of matriarchy, right? Is that just substituting patriarchy for matriarchy? Or are we, you know, we’re still looking at things through a binary lens. How is, how is it different?

How are we not thinking of it as just men being dominant and violent while when the women are the nurturers and the peaceful ones are kind of creating community, uh, how do we, How do we challenge the binaries, but I think encourage a more non binary view of things?

Keshia: Yeah, no, I really appreciate addressing the binary because it exists in so many different [00:20:00] ways and is attempted to be transformed in so many different ways.

I want to first start by pointing out just queer ecology as a concept in terms of the worlds that I work in, um, and how deeply queer ecology connects to, to multiple spiritual realities, whether it be identifying as a two spirit or a queer person or what have you. Our environments are queer. Our environments are very, very homo.

There’s not hetero happening out there in all reality. And so, um, looking at that at, at truly an atomic level. Um, but also when we think about worms, earthworms, cut them in half, one side’s male, one side’s female, it can reproduce. When we think about regeneration, that is a trans property. To be regenerative and to build yourself up from essentially nothing requires multiple chromosomes, multiple other parts to work together.

And so, within an indigenous POV, we look at those relatives that way, and we look for that medicine and that lesson within our human selves as well. And so, I would like to think in my most perfect of world, although this doesn’t always happen, there is toxic matriarchy the same way there’s toxic patriarchy.

Verda: Absolutely, yeah.

Keshia: But in the most perfect of world, you are your mother. Because your father can change, your mother never changes, who gives birth to you stays the same. In terms of that, that final chaotic moment that is both life and death happening at the same time because the placenta dies. And we need to acknowledge that it carried so much life, but then in this one moment it dies.

Jon: How, how does the father, how can the father change?

Keshia: This is a cultural teaching in the sense that, um, father not necessarily, I’m not talking about the biological, your father changes in terms of who might provide food to your home, or, um, who might teach you how to hunt, or who might, that, that will change in life.

Your mother could die and now it’s only a man that’s teaching you that, but you still came out of a uterus.

Jon: Okay.

Keshia: And one that also had a placenta carrying life and a heavy amount of water, which only women carry at such high levels, that also dies. And so when we think about matrilineal societies and an indigenous POV, you trace the mother because at some point you will come back to earth, land back quantum forward.

If you are always who your mother is, then at some point, it’s kind of like what came first, the chicken or the egg. We’re kind of choosing the chicken as what came first when we, as indigenous peoples in a way, but I say that because when we apply those concepts outside of just ourselves into other people’s children, again, in the most perfect world, we’re hoping that in a matrilineal society or in the rich pairing of matriarchy, there is a value system for all life then.

And not necessarily the competitive destruction that we see, like your elder women choose who the next chief is because they’ve known who they are since babies. They’ve known who they are since in utero. They’re able to see those skills that are not commonly identified by the other beings that didn’t carry those heartbeats.

I didn’t have to carry those level of breaths. Now, modern day medicine has changed a lot of that, which is why the skills and the lessons that we look for can apply to multiple people. And so, our, our Our Two Spirits and our multi spirited people identify with those other medicines that other portions of the planet may carry, not necessarily them as individuals, acknowledging that many an asexual Indigenous person has come up in a historic archive before, but then also acknowledging the traditional medicines that would have changed what we view as normal, whether it be Periods or what have you.

There are so many different teas that different indigenous communities hold the intellectual and cultural property to, um, that have acted as natural methods of abortion, that have acted as natural period, um, cleansing moments, right? So somebody might have had a very heavy menstrual period, but then because of a certain tea or a root system, all of a sudden they only have their periods for two or three days.

And these things. were created well before what we know as modern day birth control. But that’s not to control gender. That’s to control health that is attached with an anatomy that somebody has known intimately. And, and so I think when we address matri, matriarchy and patriarchy from an Indigenous point of view, it is so vast and it changes all of the time depending on who you’re with, which is why I think of critical examples.

Most of the homes in all of the original colonies in the United States, or the 13 colonies, are very square and boxy. Some of them don’t even have, like, the triangle [00:25:00] roofs that little kids draw. In fact, they’re flat boxes. It is a patriarchal line that is happening, because the traditional Eastern Woodlands homes would have been domed to represent a uterus.

To represent the only home any of us ever actually know and can communicate around.

Wow.

Keshia: When you create structures that don’t attach to a cultural value, you build conflict. Because you build confusion. You build confusion of place, of meaning, and of value system. So I think, as much as everyone wants to focus on matriarchy and patriarchy in a political sense, or in a genealogical sense, We are also a high tech context culture.

So you, you must look at those words deeper than they are. Um, like a lot of people, these are tattoos. For me, these are markings and that’s not a word that would then come up in your daily conversation. When I say you are who your mother is, I’m also saying you are where you come from. You are where you’ve always lived, where you’ve always been nourished.

You could be an orphan, I don’t care, where did you grow up? Right? That matriarchy, patriarchy then, is acknowledging, a patriarchy for us means you don’t know where you come from. But you’re fighting to figure that out, whereas a matriarchy might offer more solid ease of a foundation to then build on. But a matriarchy also doesn’t function in a silo.

We acknowledge clan mothers, and always in a plural, because there’s a reason why elderly women should always get together and talk. And it’s a little bit of, yeah, to talk about how do we know these children? What is the future going to look like? But it’s also to determine how we tell stories and pass data down.

And a lot of times that comes from our elderly women, and it. It just historically always has. But on the flip, I think there are gendered jobs, or would be perceived as gendered jobs, like skinning a deer and butchering a deer. That’s a female’s job in an Eastern Woodlands Indigenous community. That is not the job of a man.

I need to know how to use a knife. I need to know how to take apart an animal, because that animal comes from the same mother that I have, right? It is my duty to then determine what happens to life, even in its afterlife. So, I think There’s just different ways of thinking, especially, again, as somebody that went to school in Europe, I don’t look at patriarchy completely in a bad light either.

I think every community has their preference, and I remember a Korean colleague of mine saying, you know, some of us needed a dictatorship.

And

Keshia: I thought that was a really heavy statement. I was mortified for a little while, but I thought about it. I was like, you know, if my mom didn’t make me clean my room, I never would.

Even if that was the only thing in my life, she was a dictator about, I needed that. Right. So, but it says a lot about a cultural context to even be able to acknowledge those things or feel that way. About leadership. Is it humble or is it crazy? I don’t know.

Jon: We need some elder mothers, uh, right now, I feel, I feel we need a lot of them.

I’m going to let you continue on with your,

Verda: yeah, so if you don’t mind backtracking a little bit and just defining rematriation of space.

Keshia: Defining rematuration of space, for me, deeply attaches to this concept of access and what it means, um, to have a birthright feel to you. environment. And rematriation of space is more than, I think, just the natural world of space, considering how much has changed.

It’s also the rematriation or the reconciliation of knowledge to some of those first bearers or creators. And I say that thinking about Institutional archives or museums holding on to different types of baskets and, um, physical work as well as also human remains. We’re talking about having access to identify, having access to come in and be able to then also bring those different types of relatives home, um, And so rematriation is being able to give those who have, have birthed or created that opportunity for that life back.

And that doesn’t always mean a woman. A tribe in total is the birther of whatever item is sitting in a museum, right? So being able to have that access back and that access not be a one off, because that’s not how we build relationships. It has to be continuous. Um, I think about, you know, NAGPRA, Native American Graves and Repatriation Act.

What happens when we all get everything back? Do I have to pay to go into museums that once housed my dead relative? Or will I always be able to come in here for

free?

Keshia: Is there, what is the time limit on reconciliation? But also what is the time limit on [00:30:00] access and meaningful right to space? And I think that applies to everybody because we have public services for some things that there’s definitely open access to.

And then we have others where possibly not or maybe if you know a few people there is. Um, so really being able to share and acknowledge that community is more than a couple dozen. It’s larger than that.

Verda: Yeah. I keep thinking about borders and all of that and how ecology and animals and plants they don’t.

They don’t see those borders.

Jon: But what a design concept too, Verda. What a design concept. When, you know, you think about the fact that we started it out all wrong with square boxes, when we should never have been putting ourselves in square boxes. Yeah. Yeah.

Keshia: I wonder how people would think if our norm was instead always round structures.

Yeah. I mean, yeah.

Jon: Yeah, you couldn’t stack them up like, like we do now, so density would not be such. We wouldn’t live on top of each other.

Verda: Or even where we learn and work. Everything is square and rigid. Yeah, right angles. So we’d love to kind of wrap this up with what you’re working on now, or a project that you’re planning in the future that you’re very excited about.

And maybe talk a little bit about some of these concepts like ecological kinship that we haven’t quite gotten to.

Keshia: I guess I’ll start. By kind of sharing how I define ecological kinship, and that being truly deep relationship, um, not only to place, but various species in a certain place, and, you know, in particular, I think of species that we have as clan names, or that might be attached to our individual names, um, but also those species that we we have creation stories for.

Those are our original species of any given location. So, um, I think about how there are very old stories now, but in particular coming from parts of like New Hampshire and Maine of caribou. And, um, that we still have caribou out east, although they tend to be over the Canadian line now. Um, but that as a, a relative that is far in my ecological kinship because I haven’t been here in a while, but it is one that at one point was directly attached to my various relatives, right?

Whether it be eating, hunting, following, simply seeing and enjoying, or using their hair and their tuft to make different pieces of jewelry or regalia. Um, So, I think of that kinship, and it’s not a one way kinship, it’s definitely a two way street. Um, because we wouldn’t have any of those, those relational pieces if we were functioning in overabundance.

They would have already been gone by now. So, the species that we function with now, the kin that we have now, are very much the last of, of what we know for this territory coming out of the, The ice age and all of these other realities that on an ecological basis weren’t that long ago, but we’re rapidly dealing with the effects of them.

So they feel really, really recent, um, and some of our ecological kinships are, are spiritual. And so red tail hawks and eagles being some of, I think, For non natives the like clear spiritual value and a part of that having to do, um, with eagles in the 70s and 80s and there being this whole like rebranding of, of who can have an eagle and what does it mean to be close to an eagle and essentially only indigenous peoples and scientists, right?

Um, aside from zoos and those many other layers that still add to the science realm. Um, however, There are stories for all of our birds and how they got their songs. And we have a place for every bird, crow, vulture, raven. I mean, every bird has a meaning. Owls are medicine birds that can do good and bad medicine.

It depends on how you treat them, but also when they appear and what they’re doing as well. So being able to understand place, um, and all of its nuances. Come from who that relative is and then what that kinship means, what, what that story behind understanding who that relative is. And so for me and some of my ongoing work, that is, um, not only Sovereign Science, but also Harvard Forest, Bard College, and Harvard Animal and Law Clinic.

Um, we’ve been looking at, with various community partners, Indigenous and non Indigenous throughout the state of Massachusetts and nearby New York, this increased, um, mortality of red tailed hawks, as well as owls, and, and other types of big birds in particular. I believe Massachusetts has already lost four eagles, if I’m not mistaken, in the past three years.

All of which have, um, positively come down with rodenticide. So we’re seeing those eschars, those anticoagulants, in particular, second generation. So very young, we’re dealing with our babies. And [00:35:00] that is a call to, I think, matriarchal societies everywhere. What happens if we destroy a relationship that only avian relatives are a part of?

Now, I say this with a caveat, but not all avian, it’s not only avian relatives that are dying from rodenticides. In Massachusetts, there have been a positive tip for foxes, deer, some of our wolves have come down, and they’re unable to have offspring, and they, they suffer on their way out, because ultimately, they bleed out.

They’re not, their bodies are not able, um, their blood is not able to coagulate. So, we’re talking about really painful and morbid deaths, and for our avian relatives, These are the only species that connect all of our ecosystems. They are air, they are land, and they are water relatives. So we’re missing a huge bio indicator that we are the only variable that is negatively affecting.

And that is something that, in terms of ecological kinship, we need Indigenous impact statements on, on how we manage this issue, and how we control and continue to preserve, because we won’t have much of a sustainable future for our forests if we don’t have all of the components that even make a forest.

Verda: I feel like the work you’re doing is connecting all of these dots is just incredible. You

Jon: know, I, I know we’re wrapping up, but Keisha, thanks for sharing it with us. I, I, I’m really trying to get my head wrapped around a lot of what you said because it’s a lot. It’s, it’s a whole new way of, of looking at things that we’ve been conditioned, you know, not to notice.

So thanks for that. Yeah, it was very enlightening, very enlightening.

Verda: Yeah, if we just had stories in our Western world, like you do, to share about our kin, right? And to think about things as kin, I think we’d have a much different perspective on nature, the environment.

Jon: Yeah,

Verda: for sure.

Virta,

Jon: that was That was really deep for me.

I absolutely love talking to Keisha. She gave me a lot to wrap my tiny little head around and it’s going to take me a little while to process everything but I’m so appreciative because I feel like she opened some doors for me that I just hadn’t, you know, my perspective hadn’t been exposed to amazing.

Actually, I really enjoyed it. How about you? What did you think?

Verda: Oh, gosh. Yeah, that’s a few points. I was starting to get a little lost. I have to admit that, right? There was so much there is so layered and it comes from a perspective that I think as People that are pretty embedded in Western culture. We don’t totally understand and she’s she’s not only brought her indigenous perspective but an international perspective to the to the Conversation and it reminds me of our season 5 episode with the astronaut where she said from space you don’t see Borders, right?

Jon: Yeah,

Verda: and I do feel like borders Modern day borders that we’ve created for ourselves have caused a lot of, a lot of interesting conflict and contention and issues and, and as we talked about that nature, animals, the red tailed hawk, they don’t recognize. They might go between Connecticut and whatever, Massachusetts.

I don’t know what’s next to Connecticut.

Jon: Okay, we’re going to work on American geography next episode.

Verda: By Passachusetts. And they won’t, and they have no idea that they’re crossing that border into Canada or whatever, right? Yeah.

Jon: Yeah. Yeah. I, I have felt that, that she, there is a certain vulnerability in her sharing of information that I really appreciated.

And, you know, there was sort of, for us, we’re so comfortable talking about, Oh, stop. You know, throwing, throwing plastic in the ocean or try to, you know, we always so many of the topics we bring up on this show. We’re so comfortable with. We talk about it and read about all the time, but this was definitely something very new and foreign.

And I absolutely enjoyed sort of opening up and, and just listening to it.

Verda: Yeah. And I think we’ll be talking a lot more about gender and binaries and, and.

Jon: And design

Verda: and design and things that that we design that are maybe gendered more in a certain way right around strength or something that’s gendered more around sensitivity or collaboration, right?

And, and how, how we can go beyond that binary and maybe start to, to, I think, um, To solve the problem, we need to start kind of putting those all together and not thinking of these in a binary way. I think that ecologists

Jon: and environmentalists have started to turn to indigenous people for really [00:40:00] important knowledge that’s been there for a long, long time.

And why can’t design do the same thing?

Verda: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And we’ve been looking at, I think design and science through this kind of more patriarchal lens. And she brought up this idea of query ecology, right? Thinking of looking at nature, just, it’s not, it’s not binary. It’s not binary, but we want to put it in that.

Binary.

Jon: Queer ecology.

Verda: Yeah.

Jon: Queer ecology.

Verda: So many great terms that we learned today, John. I know.

Jon: Are you like me? Do you sit there and write them all down?

Verda: Yes. Yes. And I’m going to write them down. I’m going to put them in my, in my Evernotes and I’m going to keep researching, learning. Yeah. That’s why we’re here.

Jon: Man, I got a lot of words. A lot of words today, Verda. A lot of words. Yes.

Verda: Lots of big words. Yeah.

Jon: Anyway, thanks to Keisha. We love her.

Verda: Yes.

Thanks to Keisha DeFreece Lawrence for joining us today.

Jon: We’d love to hear about the issues that you’d like us to address. Be sure to let us know by leaving a positive review wherever you listen to podcasts.

Verda: Break Some Dishes is a Surround podcast by Sandow Design Group. Thanks to the team behind the scenes.

Jon: This episode is produced by Rob Schulte and edited by Rob Adler.

Verda: Thanks to Master Dynamic for the official headphones of The Surround Network. You can hear other podcasts like this one at surroundpodcast. com.

I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just.