Chrysalis with John Fiege by John Fiege

September 16, 2024 14. Layel Camargo — Queer Ecology, Indigenous Stewardship, and the Power of Laughter

What is our relationship to the land, to its other-than-human inhabitants, and to the rest of humanity? These are fundamental questions for thinking through how we can transform ourselves in ways that allow a multiplicity of ecologies and human communities to thrive alongside one another. And these questions are not just fundamental to us as individuals—they are essential to how we view our cultures, traditions, institutions, and ways of knowing.

Layel Camargo lives at the vibrant intersection of ecological justice, queer liberation, and indigenous culture—a cultural space that offers a distinctive vantage point on how our societies work, while holding enormous potential to both see and reorient our relationships to the land and to one another.

Layel Camargo is an organizer and artist who advocates for the better health of the planet and its people by restoring land, healing communities, and promoting low-waste and low-impact lifestyles. Layel is a transgender and gender non-conforming person who is an indigenous descendant of the Yaqui and Mayo tribes of the Sonoran Desert.

I met Layel at a climate storytelling retreat in New York City in 2019, where I became a huge fan of their work and of their way of being in the world.

Layel is a founder of the Shelterwood Collective, a Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ-led community forest and retreat center, healing people and ecosystems through active stewardship and community engagement.

Our conversation explores the idea of culture as strategy in confronting the climate crisis, diving into Layel’s work in video, podcasting, and poetry and the origins of their approach to this work of healing people and planet.

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Layel Camargo

Layel Camargo is a cultural strategist, land steward, filmmaker, artist, and a descendant of the Yaqui tribe and Mayo tribes of the Sonoran Desert. Layel is also transgender and non-binary. They graduated from UC Santa Cruz with dual degrees in Feminist Studies and Legal Studies. Layel was the Impact Producer for “The North Pole Show” Season Two. They currently produce and host ‘Did We Go Too Far’ in conjunction with Movement Generation. Alongside Favianna Rodriguez and at the Center for Cultural Power, they created ‘Climate Woke,’ a national campaign to center BIPOC voices in climate justice. Wanting to shape a new world, they co-founded ‘Shelterwood Collective’. The collective is a land-based organization that teaches land stewardship, fosters inventive ideation, and encourages healing for long-term survival. Layel was a Transformative Justice practitioner for 6 years and still looks to achieve change to the carceral system in all of their work. Most recently, Layel was named on the Grist 2020 Fixers List, and named in the 2019 Yerba Buena Center of the Arts list of ‘People to Watch Out For.’

Quotation Read by Layel Camargo

“You wanna fly, you got to give up the s**t that weighs you down.”

- Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

Recommended Readings & Media

Transcript

Intro

John Fiege

Layel Camargo lives at the vibrant intersection of ecological justice, queer liberation, and indigenous culture—a cultural space that offers a distinctive vantage point on how our societies work while holding enormous potential to both see and reorient our relationships to the land and to one another.

And besides that, Layel is hilarious.

Layel Camargo

My passion for humor has come from has been maintained by a lot of data and information that I've gotten around just the importance of people being able to process things through laughter. And that the climate crisis is nothing to make mockery and or to laugh, there's this is very serious. The ways in which our species is kind of being at threat of extinction, and right before our eyes. But I think that as humans, we're so complex and layered, and we're so beautiful in the sense that we get to feel so intensely, and feeling is what motivates us to take action. And laughter helps you process so much data quicker, it helps you be able to take something in, embrace it, release, and then have it make an impression.

John Fiege

I’m John Fiege, and this is Chrysalis.

Layel Camargo is an organizer and artist who advocates for the better health of the planet and its people by restoring land, healing communities, and promoting low-waste, low-impact lifestyles. Layel is a transgender and gender non-conforming person who is an indigenous descendant of the Yaqui and Mayo tribes of the Sonoran Desert.

I met Layel at a climate storytelling retreat in New York City in 2019, where I became a huge fan of their work and of their way of being in the world.

Here is Layel Camargo.

Conversation

John Fiege

How you doing?

Layel Camargo

I'm doing pretty good. How are you doing?

John Fiege

I'm doing well. I've got this thing in my throat. I, so I'm going to be drinking a lot of tea. And I might have to have a bathroom break. Know, I have forgotten to take my allergy medicine. And here we are. Great. Yeah. So can you start out by telling me where you grew up? And how you viewed your relationship to the rest of nature when you were a kid?

Layel Camargo

Yeah. Um, I can start off by Yeah. talking a little bit about where I grew up. Yeah, so I grew up on the Mexican border between Tijuana and San Diego. And my upbringing was in this very highly dense migrant community from Latinx to Philippines, because of the proximity to the military base. It was very military towns, pretty much the professions. They're like you're either work for Homeland Security, the military or police. And I didn't really notice what my upbringing was like till I left. But I grew up crossing the border back and forth. My grandmother migrated from the Sonoran Desert, to Tijuana. And that's basically where my mother was born. And she grew. She went to high school in San Diego, which is why I can say I'm an American citizen, but I'm a descendant of the Maya or the uremic tribes, my grandmother said, and then my grandfather said, The yucky tribes of the Sonoran Desert so I think for me, my connection ecologically was like the ocean Because I grew up in a beach city, and then it was also the desert, because of all the stories and my grandmother's connection to sanada. So high, I never felt like I was at home because as a queer person paid never really fit into the conservative nature of San Diego due to how militarized it is, and all this stuff. But it was through a drive, which I took from Northern California, down to Sonora, where my grandmother's family lives, when I drove through the saguaros and Arizona that I remember seeing the Saguaro forests and just like needing to pull over and just like, take them in. And I had this a visceral feeling that I don't think I've ever had before of just like being home. And I think this, this experience was like in 2016 2017. And that's when I realized that, in theory, I was a climate activist, I cared about the planet. But it wasn't until that moment that I was like, oh, what I'm actually doing is like actually fighting for us to return to be in better relationship with the planet. And this is where I belong, this is my source of my route, these trees and this desert. So because of that, and growing up in proximity to the beach, water conservation has always been an area of like passion for me and caring about the ocean, which pushed me to a practice of lowering my plastic consumption and being more mindful of oil consumption. And the desert has always been a source of like grounding in regards to like place and knowing that I come from the earth. So it's kind of like I was gonna say, it's kind of like, I'm from a lot of places, I moved to Northern California in 2006. So I love the forest. But nothing speaks to my heart, like the beach in the desert.

John Fiege

Well, they have sand in common. Is there? Is there a tension between the ocean pulling you in the desert pulling you or is it? Is it a beautiful harmony?

Layel Camargo

It's a bit of a tension. But I would say that in my body, it feels the same. They both dehydrate me and over, over like it's just a lot of heat, typically. So yeah, that it's different for Northern California beaches, because they're a little bit more Rocky and more cold. You have to wear more layers. Right? definitely like to where I grew up, it's it is warm, the sandy ness. That's a great connection, I definitely need to make that a little bit more concrete.

Totally

John Fiege

cool. Well, can you tell me more about the path you took from the neighborhood where you grew up in San Diego, to studying at UC Santa Cruz and what that experience was like for you?

Layel Camargo

Yeah, I, I went. So I grew up in a home where there was a lot of violence, which is very common in a lot of migrant-specific and indigenous communities. And I kind of came into my teenage years, like really realizing that I was different, but I didn't know how when it kind of got summarized in college around my queerness my sexuality and my gender, but just feeling this need of like needing to leave. It just didn't make sense for me to be there. And with that being said, I had a wonderful community. I still have quite a few friends in San Diego that I keep in touch with my sisters live there. And I was actually just started last weekend. So I, when I was in San Diego, I think a lot of my trauma responses of like, just ignore what doesn't make sense and just keep moving forward was how I kind of functioned. And that race. And I loved it, I succeeded at it. I've actually realized that I'm a performance artist because of that upbringing. Like I, you know, was captain of the water polo team. I was president of my senior class, I was featured in newspapers for my swimming. I was a competitive swimmer for 10 years. I I did, I did a you know, a good job. I had advanced placement classes and honors classes and I was well rounded but in the inside, I just didn't feel like I belonged. So I picked UC Santa Cruz to go to college because it was the farthest University and the University of California system that had accepted me. And they went and I didn't know what I was getting myself into. I visited the campus like two to three weeks before I had to actually be there to live on campus. Bass. And when my dad drove me, drove me up with my whole family drove me up and they left me they were like, are you sure you want to say I'm like, I got this, like, it was all redwoods. So it was definitely like, we went down to the local store. And it was like all these like hippie dreadlock, folks. And I was like, I don't even know what I got myself into. But I'm getting this degree, so we're good. And it was a big culture shock, I think for a lot of black and brown and indigenous youth when they have to leave their communities to attend. What is like better economic opportunities outside of them it is it's, it's more than just having to adjust, it's having to really like, Oh, I had to let go of everything I knew. And in order for me to take the most out of college, and I was fortunate enough that I had a container a university is like a container for young folks that I wasn't having to leave for work or opportunities. And so I fully immersed myself, and it allowed me to be able to identify myself sexually and through my gender, and a gave me solace, when you know, my family rejected me for coming out. And I think that I'm so fortunate that I had that experience. And then I also was able to gain double bachelor's when feminist studies and legal studies which allowed me to have some upward mobility that my family hadn't had, traditionally I was, I am the first person in my whole family to attend a four year university after high school. So I'm definitely very grateful that that path took me there. And at this point, I feel like it was not only good for me, but it was good for my whole family for me to have taken that journey.

John Fiege

And did you come out to them? In college or before college?

Layel Camargo

in college? Yeah, I was my second year, I had my first girlfriend. And I was a Resident Advisor, always I'm always trying to be the overachiever. So I was like Resident Advisor of my college, I was like, involved in every club, I was part of the dance team. And, you know, my mom called me, I just decided to actually move in with my girlfriend the following quarter. And she was like, What are you doing? I was like, Oh, my girlfriend's house. And she was like, why do you have to tell me those things. And I'm just like, because I'm not gonna lie to you. And she was like, I know, you're gay, but I just don't need you to rub it in my face. And I was like, then I guess we can't talk. And so we didn't talk for three months. And then she called me It's, it's, it's hard, you know, like, going to college is hard, especially when I went to very marginalized public schools before that. So I was struggling academically. And my solace was, like, being involved on campus, like to meet some social needs. And I was in, I was in a retention program for black and brown youth from urban communities. So that helped a lot. But I, I, my mom kind of rupturing that, really. I didn't realize what the impact was until probably a quarter the quarter into after that. And she called me three months later, and was like, so are you not gonna talk to me? And I was like, you're the one that doesn't talk to me. And she was like, well, let's just let's just try to make this work. And so we, you know, it took probably five to six years for my family to kind of fully integrate my, you know, my, my lifestyle as they, as they call it. The magic word of magic word. Yeah.

John Fiege

Yeah, wow. Well, you know, that's just what you need, right in the middle of college trying to adapt to, you know, crazy new culture and world is for your family to reject you.

Layel Camargo

Yeah, yeah. It's definitely one of those things that like a lot of queer LGBTQ folks. I, I feel like it's so normalized to us, right? And it's just like, well, when you come up, just expect to lose everything. And I think it is it now until I'm like, in my 30s, that I realized how painful that is, and how, like, it's just like, you know, one of the core things I think, as a human species is to know that you belong somewhere. And if you don't belong at home, then where do you belong? And I think for many of us, we've had to go through that unconsciously, without really thinking through that we're seeking to belong. And this theme of belonging has been something that's been coming up as I'm I navigate like, my professional career now is that like, I really do want people to feel like they belong somewhere. And the only thing I feel like makes sense as we all belong to the planet. We all belong to the same descendants and how we got here as a species and that I think that's being rejected from my family allowed me to be like weird do I belong? And so I fortunate that I had a best friend who was also queer. I had my queer community I had student governments and students social organizing. And then when I graduated, I was like, wait, like, Where else do I belong? So I went to my natural habitats like to the beach, and I picked up surfing again and scuba diving. And then it was like, Oh, I actually like I belong to the earth. Like, that's where I belong.

John Fiege

That's beautiful. Yeah. I love that. Oh, I am hearing some background noise.

Layel Camargo

Is it audio? Or is it just like,

John Fiege

people laughing?

Layel Camargo

It's my partner's on an Akai here, I'm going to shoot her a quick text. She like gets really loud because she gets so excited. Just going to share a quick text.

John Fiege

So before coming to climate justice work, you worked as an organizer with the Bay Area transformative justice collective. Can you tell me how your work in transformative justice informed your understanding of the climate crisis and how you approach ecological concerns?

Layel Camargo

Yeah, so I I organized with transformative justice for about six years. And then I you know, for folks who don't know, transformative justice is an alternative response model to violence, harm and hurt. And so similar to restorative justice, which works with the carceral system, so police, judicial systems, etc. to reform in order to help alleviate some of the biases that exists in the systems, transformative justice, as there's those systems actually don't serve certain communities like migrants, folks like that are trans, just the way that those systems just inherently violate certain people who are not included in our society fairly, was like, transparent justice exists to serve folks who cannot access or choose not to access or use the carceral system. So if you will, if you believe in defunding the police, and let's say you're sexually assaulted, you're probably not going to call the police for a rape kit, because there's probably ways that you've experienced those systems as harmful or violent. So when I started organizing were transferred to justice the spoke to me as somebody who had just come out as trans, somebody who grew up in a mixed status family, have relatives who have been deported. And I realized, like, Oh, it's actually worth investing in alternative models, besides the police. In order for us to get our needs met when crisises do happen, because they happen to all of us. And I was in it for six years, you know, we had built up, I had built a great capacity to work with people who had caused harm people who are caused domestic violence, sexual assaults and transforming their behavior and working towards reparation of relationships and or just like helping victims be able to move on after something like that happens. And it's it wasn't an easy task. And what we would come back to is we would spend like the first front of the months, trying to make sure that people's basic needs were met in order for them to slow down enough to process what had just happened. And basic needs included food included shelter, if they lived near, you know, a toxic site, what was infringing on their health, making sure that they had access to health coverage or health benefits. And that was about 60% of what we're doing was making sure that we could get the basics kind of stable so that they could jump into really honoring what it was a justice look like for them. And in doing this a handful of times, not too many, I will say I didn't think thankfully, we had a team. And so I did wasn't always having to handle everything. And we, the experiences that I did have, I was like, man, if people just had, like, a healthy environment where having to fight for housing wasn't a thing. Like we could just actually say, this is where I was born, this is where I belong, and I'm in relationship with the land. And that's how I feed myself, I clothe myself, like all these things that are kind of like indigenous traditional ways, then people could actually solve a lot of their crisis. He's in the moment without having it to be delayed years or having to rely on for it to get outsourced through the carceral system in order for them to feel like they get a minuscule amount of justice. And so I started to just be more cognizant of the way that we interact with the planet and how are everything from our legal structures to our economic structures are just completely devastating. Our environment that have led for us not to have good air quality for us not to have good clean water for us not to feel like we've belong to the earth that is right beneath us that we like, are in relationship with, with the rest of you know, most of our lives. And I, at the time I was living in West Oakland and I had just looked into the air quality report in the area I lived in, and I had the worst air quality in the whole Bay Area. And I started noticing my dog started developing like little spots on her skin, I started having like a lot of chronic coughing. And I was looking at how much money I was making. And so at the time, I was doing a lot of our pop ups, I was really passionate about zero waste, I cared about veganism, a lot of it was through the planet, and it just slowly started shifting away from Yes, I care about how we respond to violence and harm and all of that. And I want us to have alternatives that meet the needs of folks who fall through the waistline of certain systems. And at the same time, we don't even have clean water to come home to to drink when something violent happens, like we have to go buy it from, you know, a grocery store. Most of us don't even test our tap water anymore, because it's just consistently, we just grew up thinking that it doesn't, it's dirty, it's gross, it's non potable, so Right, right. I think at that moment, my heart just completely was like, I want to dive into this work 100% I want to fight for people to have clean air, like if you can't breathe, then you can't, you can't even do a lot, a lot of things. And so many black and brown people who grew up in rural communities have high rates of asthma have like low life expectancy because of air pollution, to you know, the logistics industry etc. And I just kind of fell in with all my heart in like, if I'm, if I'm against plastic put which at the time I was, like vegan for the planet and vegan for my health. And I was also really passionate about reducing plastic use. And I was like, if these are two things that I care about, I want to do it at a larger scale. So it meant that I had to really make those connections of if I want to end gender based violence, if I want to end large forms of violence, I have to start with the one common thing we have that we're constantly extracting and violating, which is the earth. And I think that that led me towards climate justice, because that is the most critical environmental crisis that we're in at this moment.

John Fiege

So what is the climate crisis? What what what causes is how do you how do you think about culture as a source of power and strategy for climate crisis?

Layel Camargo

Yeah, I mean, I this is this is really, you know, this, that this is what I do for my life is I spent the last 7 to 8 years really strategizing around what are the cultural shifts that are needed in order for us to be able to be in right relationship with the planet where things like the climate crisis are not happening, so that we can have an economic system and a political system that is serves the planet and the needs of our of us living and thriving, not surviving, which is I think, what we're stuck in as a global society now. And the, we have like quite a few things to kind of look at historically. And I think that there is a dominance of, which is we now know, it is like white supremacy, which is the idea that one group of human is like better than another group of human, and that because of that, everybody else needs to conform to the languages, the culture, the food, the clothes, the housing structures, that are pervasive, and that in, you know, the Euro centric way of living, and that has created a monoculture that is now spread at a global scale. And it's even because it's an economic sister in their economic system. Now we have global stock markets. Now we have the extraction at a global scale, for the sourcing of consumer goods that are all homogenous, and there. There's just one kind of how we do things. And I think the crisis that we're in is the ways that human have removed ourselves from our natural biodiversity relationships with our ecological systems. And then as removing ourselves we have are allowed for the rupture of a relationship that is very needed, which is if we're not integrated into the trees that are natural in our environment into trimming certain invasive species and supporting other biodiverse relationships around us, then we're crippling the ability of the soil to be healthy of the air to have the most amount of oxygen Have you Now we know that we need to be trapping carbon at such high rates. And I think that with a crisis that we're in is that we've allowed and have fallen victims to white supremacy, which was facilitated by colonization, that I, you know, that dominance of one group of people in the way of existing, and I think that's where we're at. I mean, if you look at the kelp forests, the kelp forest needs the otters, they need the, the sea urchins. But when you remove the otters and the sea urchins, you know, are not being preyed upon at a normal scale. And that's, you know, we're connecting it to white supremacy, let's assume that the sea urchins are like the dominant and because they're, they're the ones that ruled the kelp species are starting to be eradicated, and some of them are becoming a threat of extinction. And without a healthy kelp forests, you don't have healthy oxygen and maintenance of the acidification in the ocean, which, you know, couple that with global warming, and you basically have the rapid eradication of so many other natural ecosystems in the ocean that we need to survive. And so when you have one species dominating over another, it leads towards a crisis. So I think we're in a imbalance of relationships because of, of white supremacy. And that's what's causing the climate crisis we have. We have a monoculture. And so just as you look at mono cropping, as you look at anything that eradicates the health of the soil, because it doesn't have the reciprocal relationships that it needs from other crops, and are the resting in order for the soil to be healthy. This might not be speaking to everybody who's listening. But it makes sense that like, Yeah, definitely. The environment crisis is a symptom of Yes. Oh, the climate crisis is a symptom of a larger systemic problem.

John Fiege

Yeah. And in so many ways, white supremacy was created by colonialism, like, white supremacy is the cultural system that in some ways had to emerge to justify the political and economic brutality of colonialism. You know, it was a it was it was a way of organizing and understanding the world that justified these terrible things that were happening. And they're so it goes so much hand in hand.

Layel Camargo

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I mean, I feel like I could talk about this for hours, because there's just so many ways in which we can break it down to the minute level. And then there's so many ways that we can think about solutions. And a lot of my my work and my passion is really bringing as much power as I can to black, indigenous and people of color. Because the retention of culture, language, and different ways of engaging with the world, everything from how we grow our food to how we dress and what we celebrate. And where we honor is what's going to help us be more resilient towards the impending and the realism of what the climate crisis means to a lot of our communities.

John Fiege

Yeah, totally. Yeah. And you're you're living and working at this really interesting intersection between ecological justice, queer liberation and indigenous culture. Can Can you talk a bit about the intersections of your identity and cultural background and their importance to you and how you orient yourself to this work?

Layel Camargo

Yeah, definitely. So as I mentioned, I'm a descendant of the Yaki and the Mio tribes in the Sonoran Desert. And I didn't really realize how much this matter to me, I think till about like five to six years ago, because I grew up because of the borders. Technically, I'm Mexican descent, and Mexican American salesperson in this country. But the Mexican government is similar to what we're talking about white supremacy was created by European settlers and, and a hybrid of mixture of stealing of indigenous cultures. And there are so many subgroups of different indigenous cultures. And my heritage is that both my grandfather and my grandmother's tribe as they were nomadic, and they used to migrate up and down the Sonoran Desert, before the border was there from seasonally for survival. And there's so many ways that like food that we eat, how we dress, how we talk that I didn't realize like, Oh, that makes me so much more than just Mexican American. It makes me more than just Latinx. And I think my background and being in such close proximity to immigration and the necessity of immigration or to survive because my grandmother came to Tijuana because it was industrialized and she needed work. And so when they migrated, they like left everything behind. And they never went back. Like, I think so many people leave their home, thinking that they're going to go back and they don't, their children are born in different places. And eventually, that led me to be born in a different country. And so because of that background, I am so keen to issues around native sovereignty and land back here in the United States is like the retention of keeping people in the place of their origin is a climate solution. It's a way of keeping that ancestral knowledge in the place that is needed. I mean, here in Northern California, we look at the wildfire crisis, and it's due to climate change. And it's also due to the lack of forest management, that our indigenous relatives that are native to that area have been robbed of the opportunity to maintain those forests at the scale, which is needed in order to adapt and prepare for wildfires. Yeah,

John Fiege

yeah, with with the prescribed burning, and all that maintenance that used to happen. That was invisible in so many ways to the European colonists, they didn't even understand that that was going on, or how it worked.

Layel Camargo

Yeah, and I feel like, you know, it goes back to the monoculture. And I think, because I have indigenous ancestry, because I understand the nature of needing to migrate. And the realities of migrant experience, I think I feel so passionate about keeping people in their place of origin as much as possible, and allowing for people to move freely when they have to. And I think as as the climate crisis gets worse, I started to realize just what a disservice we have made by instilling borders by having governments that have been so gatekeeping and operating off of scarcity, that we've kind of mandated a world where people can move freely people, and people have to leave their place of origin. And that these two paradox that we exist in, is creating the dehumanization of a group of people that if you cannot sustain yourself in your place of origin, because of global extraction, by the way, because of environmental degradation and the economic viability of your area, and how that creates wars and mass extraction, that that is why people migrate. But yet those same people who are creating those systems that make it difficult for you to stay in your place of origin have also created borders to not let you move freely. That paradox to me is also part of this climate crisis as because many of us are going to have to leave john, at some point, there's going to be floods, there's going to be hot water, we're experiencing a drought prices in California, I'm actually living between northern California and Southern California already. And a lot of it is because of the wildfires and my family's down here. And my family's at threat of sea level rise by living in San Diego, which San Diego filed a lawsuit against Exxon and Chevron. And I think one or two other oil companies is we're all we're all existing now in this global climate crisis, that it's not quite in our face every day, but we feel it seasonally now, so we're gonna have to be able to move. Right? So yeah, and last to say is like similar to my cultures I have I lived with an end an endocrine illness. And so air pollution is something that could severely impede my ability to reproduce my ability to function. At this point, I spend about four to five days a month in bed, working from bed, and I'm fortunate enough that I get to work remotely. But for a lot of people, we're going to see more and more ways in which the mass destruction of the planet which has led to the climate crisis is how we become to adopt ways of having different abilities or not being able to live our day to day function. So yeah, the intersecting points are just, they're overwhelming. And I think a lot of us are starting to feel that more as things start to kind of get a little worse.

John Fiege

Right, right. Yeah, I was talking to, to my partner the other day, she was she was talking to a fellow activist about this idea of ableism. And how, you know, so much of the discourse around it is you know, what are your abilities and, and this, this person was talking about how it it's how unstable that is. Like you can be able bodied today and tomorrow, you can be not able bodied in the same way. Because of, you know, like you say the changing air quality or something happens, or you just you're getting old, or you get sick. And it's one of those things that we've so ignored as a culture of what, what ableism really means about our assumptions about the world.

Layel Camargo

And like the economic viability and how our economic system is just so dependent on us being fully productive 24 seven, which I made a video on this called The Big Sea, which talks about the intersecting points of labor and how the labor crisis is actually the root of our climate crisis. Because if we can have people have a bigger imagination around how they can use their bodies, to serve their own needs, instead of serving the needs of corporate interests, how that would actually alleviate a lot of pressure on the planet. And that that would potentially lead to our most successful outcomes in regards to the climate crisis.

John Fiege

Yeah, totally, totally. Well, can you tell me about decolonizing conservation in the environmental movement and what that looks like to you?

Layel Camargo

Yeah, so I, I started during the beginning of the pandemic, I started a nonprofit called shelterwood collective, which is black and brown and indigenous queer folks who are aiming to steward land at the time, I was aiming to sort of land a month ago, we acquired a 900 acre camp in cassada, California, and Northern California and our team is about conservation efforts, specifically with forest resiliency against wildfires. Taking Western Western practices of conservation, mixing them with indigenous practices that are similarly to conservation. And I feel like when we think about conservation efforts, a lot of them have been dictated by European ways of thinking through conserving natural environments, which a lot of it is like humans are bad, nature must be left uncared for. And this does such a disservice because our indigenous ancestors knew that in order for a forest to be thriving, we needed to be in relationship with it, we needed to monitor monitor it, if there was a fun guy or a virus that was spreading their disease, that we could actually help it, he'll help trees, he'll help it spread less, if there was fires that were coming that we could trim, and tend and do controlled burns, if there was, you know, sucks anything happening where a species was struggling, that we could help support its growth and its population by you know, hunting its predators. And so I think that, that is the challenge between indigenous conservation efforts are traditional ways of just being in relationship with the natural environment and conservation is the western conservation is that we have been so removed from what it means to protect water systems, what it means to protect forests, that now we have a crisis of mismanagement we have and that more and more countries are adopting European Western perspectives because of the dominance that white supremacy has instilled that there are certain group of people that know more than we do. And that's just that's created, at least for me feels very heavy on when it comes to wildfires. There is certain areas in Northern California where there have been residential communities that have been built on wildfire lines that we know now, indigenous people knew that like every 30 years, for every 50 years, there would be a wildfire that would run through that area. And now that we're not that it's getting hotter, the gap of that time is getting shortened. And also that we're realizing that the years, hundreds of years of mismanagement, and lack of tending has led to also these extreme wildfires, that's now causing casualties outside of wildlife. And I feel like conservation needs to evolve. I think that there needs to be more understanding around the harm that Western conservation has done to not only the ecosystems but to the people who have traditionally been keeping those ecosystems. And I do feel like it's like it's evolving. I just think that it's not evolving as fast as we need. And unfortunately, with the climate climate crisis, we're gonna have to really come to recognize what do we need to move really fast on on what can wait because it just feels like Everything's urgent, we need to save the oceans as much as we need to save the forest as much as we need to Save the Redwoods as much as we need to take the rain forests and it just feels like and and that is like the natural environment, then we have like the growing list of extinction, threats of extinction for certain animals. And I think that I don't know why just came to my head. And then you have people like Bill Gates who want to eradicate a whole mosquito species. So it just feels like we're gonna have to pick and choose our battles here. And I do feel like coming to reckoning around the harm that this pervasiveness in western conservation, which isn't the idea that sometimes we are harmful to, you know, our natural ecosystems isn't a bad one. Yeah, we are. But how we got here was by completely removing ourselves and not knowing how to take care of those ecosystems, had we been in a relationship with them for the last 100 years, maybe we wouldn't be so wasteful, maybe we would have caught air pollution sooner than then our body is telling us, hey, we don't like this, this is bad, we're gonna die sooner if you keep doing this. And I think that that is a disservice. So it's beautiful to see more forest schools popping up for young people. It's beautiful to see more conservation groups trying to bring in indigenous leaders into the conversations. But I do feel like that overall idea needs to shift. And I also think that the land back movement, which is returning national parks back to indigenous hands, is going to help alleviate some of those major tensions that do not honor that certain people have been doing this for hundreds of years. And if we don't return it in this generation, we just run the risk of losing more language, more culture and more practices that we need at a larger scale.

John Fiege

Yeah, in protecting ecosystems is just not a complete picture of everything that's needed. Like as you say, it's important on some level, but it's it's not it's not a whole, it's not a whole understanding of of the problem or how to address it. There reminds me I was I was just reading or rereading a bit of Robin wall kimmerer book braiding sweetgrass, and she talks, she talks about this very issue a bunch about, you know, sweet grass in particulars is something where there's this, this back and forth relationship between humans and nature. And she talks about teaching one of her University classes up here in New York, and asking them at the beginning of the semester, you know, whether people are bad for the environment, and almost everybody says yes. And we also

Layel Camargo

have this this perception of we are bad. Right?

John Fiege

Yeah. Yeah, this Western guilt is pervasive in that as well. Which is,

Layel Camargo

which is facilitated by religion? Yes, religion has a very good job of making us feel like we are horrible for everything that we have sent us that we need to repent for our whole existence as like, going from embryo to sperm is actually a sin itself. So we're born with so much already on our shoulders.

John Fiege

I was gonna say Catholic guilt, but I feel like at this point, it's so much broader than that. Yeah, it is. So you work with the Center for cultural power. And, and one of the main projects you've done with them is climate woke. And I'd like to start by saying how much i'd love the artwork of the logo. It says climate woke. And it's in, in the style of this fabulous flashback 1980s airbrushed t shirts, with, you know, rainbow colors and sparkles. And it feels like there's so much meaning embedded in the artwork. And I wondered if you could tell me about climate woke, how the project emerge, but also like how this logo artwork reflects what this project is.

Layel Camargo

Yeah, so we when we started thinking about what climate woke would be, we didn't know what's going to be called climate woke it was through several meetings with different community partners, different funders and other stakeholders, where we kind of discussed that we wanted a unifying symbol for all the communities that we had been meeting and we kind of landed that we wanted something to look good to represent black Dan Brown young people between the ages of 16 to 25, something that was appealing that somebody would wear with pride. And, you know, at the time, there was a lot of like, different stuff coming up around the importance of wokeness. The it wasn't used as how we use it now, which is like political correctness. It's, it's, it's not where it is now. And so we decided to kind of ride on the, the term itself climate woke, which talks about uses black vernacular very intentionally that this is a racialized issue. And we spoke with several leaders in the black community, and at the time, it felt like it made sense. And, and so we kind of quickly were like, this makes sense kind of work. We want people to wake up to a climate crisis, but also be like down and enjoy it. And that it's different than this doom and gloom narrative that we constantly see when it comes to the environment. As it is kind of depressing when you think about it. But so we wanted it to feel like inviting. And at the time, which I think was like 2017 2018. All these like 90s was like coming back. So we sat with like two or three potential designers, and we didn't really like what we saw. And then it was heavy and agile that he Guess who is kind of a co creator of this. Also, like a globally recognized artist who was like, hold on, I got this and just like hopped on her computer through some colors, did some and we were like, We love it. Like we just love it. We wanted it to be bright. We wanted it to be inviting. And I feel like we've been successful just two weeks ago actually got a text from my executive producer who works on the planet. Well, content, it was like to send a photo of like, I believe it was a young male of color about 21 or 22 years old wearing a climate woke t shirt. And she was like, do you know where that's from? And he was like, No, I have no idea. And I was like, that's how, you know, we succeeded. Because we popularize something, we made it look so good. People don't necessarily need to make the connections, but they'll be promoting our work. And I'm sure and I get so many compliments when I wear t shirts and sweaters. And so she she told him to look up the videos. And you know, she sent me the photo. And she's like, we've I think we've succeeded. And I was like, I think we succeeded, I think we have you know. But at this moment, we are considering evolving the terminology because it doesn't feel as honoring. And we definitely are very sensitive to the fact that we use black vernacular intentionally. And it's time to kind of give it back and think through like what other ways can we popularize other terms to kind of help. It's about it's about to help kind of build the community because it was about building a group of people kind of drawing in a certain community that wouldn't necessarily be about it. And I feel like that to me was like a, we did it. We did it.

John Fiege

Yeah, it's it's it's definitely one of those terms that the the right has co opted and really done a number on they. Yeah, they're they're good at stealing those terms and turning them on their head. And usually, honestly, as a as a weapon back the other direction. Can you turn down your volume just to hear again, just noticing when you get excited? I get excited so much. Alright, how's that? Right? Great. Yes. So in a couple of your videos, you talk about what being climate milk means to you. And you say it means one, standing up for communities of color and communities most impacted by climate change, to complicating the conversations on climate in the environment. And three, doing something about it. Can you take me through each of these and break them down a bit?

Layel Camargo

Yeah, so the first one is, can you repeat it again, that's the first

John Fiege

standing up for communities of color and communities most impacted by climate change,

Layel Camargo

right? That's right. Yeah, I've said it so much. And we actually haven't even recorded anything because of the pandemic. So I'm like, I haven't said it in a while. Yeah, standing up for communities of color. I think that that one to me specifically spoke to that. We need black, brown and indigenous people to feel protected and seen when it comes to the climate and environmental crisis. And that's everything from activating people in positions of power to empowering the people who come from those communities to know that this is an intersectional issue. I think that the climate crisis traditionally was like a lot of visuals of melting ice caps, a lot of visuals of the polar bears and you It's interesting because as we're getting more people narrative, I feel like the, we need to get a little bit more people narrative. And we need to return those images a little bit back, because the IPCC report has just been highlighting the rapid rates in which we were losing ice. And I think that when I initially thought of this at the time, there wasn't highlights of how indigenous people were protecting the large scale biodiversity that we have on the planet. There wasn't stories of, you know, urban, black or brown youth trying to make a difference around solutions towards climate change. And so I kind of made it my purpose that climate woke represent those demographics that we that I was important for me that black, brown and indigenous people of color were at the center of the solutions. And the complicated conversations and do something about it was that I actually feel like we have a crisis of binary versus complexity in our society. And I think that how we've gotten into this climate crisis is because everything's been painted. So black and white for us, that if you want a job, you have to be harming the planet, if you want to be unemployed, then. And then like all these hippies that are fighting to save the trees, they're taking away your job, you know. So I feel like there's so many ways in which our trauma responses just look for the patterns have been used against us. And it just felt really important for me, that people feel comfortable to complicate as much as possible, where we're gonna need different angles and different ways of looking at solutions that we need to embrace experimentation, where we need to embrace failures, and we need to really let go of these ideas that technology is going to come in and save us technology is a big reason why we got into this mess. And so I think that complicating the conversation to me was about this is like, if you are black, brown, indigenous, and you want to be a part of the climate crisis, but you have no way of integrating yourself besides talking about gender oppression, go for it, look at look at the leaders in this movement, and look at how many women are fighting and protecting, you know, at a larger global scale that don't get the visibility that they deserve. So I feel like that was my aim is to really invite that complexity. And then let's do something about it is that I don't want things to get stuck on the dialog. One of the biggest failures of the United Nations when addressing these crisises is that they don't have global jurisdiction. So they cannot actually mandate and or enforce a lot of these, it's usually done through economic influence, or like if one if we can get a first world to sign on to a certain agreement, then hopefully, they'll all do it. But then who ends up in implementing it, usually it's not the United States and Europe is not the first one to do it. And yet, we are the biggest global polluters on almost every sector you can think of. And I think that the do something about it is, for me a call to action, that we can talk about this, we can try to understand carbon emissions, methane emissions, global greenhouse, carbon markets, carbon, sequestering drawdown methods, we can talk about it. But if we're not doing it, putting it to practice while integrating these other two points, which is centering communities of color, and embracing the complexity of that, then it's nothing, it's pointless. We're just we're just allowing corporations to keep exploiting the planet and governments can keep, you know, sitting back and saying that they're doing something because they're convening people without actually regulating and putting down their foot for us. So, yeah, I think it was trying to summarize just my general feelings of this movement and the ways that there's been just lack of opportunities by not centering certain other people or allowing there to be more complexity.

John Fiege

Yeah, there's, I find, watching how those un meetings go down. So frustrating. Yes, just, you know, Time after time. It's just maddening. I'd have a hard time working in that space.

Layel Camargo

Yeah, I think I was fortunate enough to take I voluntarily took like a law class at pace, Pace University, pace law University, and one of the classes was United Nations policy, and so I got to witness the sub All meetings before that big meeting where Leonardo DiCaprio came out and said that we had a climate crisis, which everybody googled what the climate crisis was, I think it was called climate change. It was like the most time climate change was googled in the history of mankind. And I was sitting in those meetings and just seeing how it really is just a lot of countries just try not to step on each other's toes, because relationships translate into the economic sector, that I'm like, wow, y'all, like legit, don't care about the people you're representing?

John Fiege

Yeah. Yep. Yeah, it's crazy. Well, I wanted to talk a bit about what environmental justice means to you. And I thought we could start with your video called a power to rely on. And in your crudest, you include a statistic in the video that says in the US 75% of all houses without electricity, are on Navajo land. And, and then one of the people you interview in the video with Leah, John's with a group called native renewables, says, whoever controls your water and your power controls your destiny. And that's really powerful statement. Can Can you talk a bit about your experience working on this video, and how it impacted your thinking about environmental justice?

Layel Camargo

Yeah, so I, I realized that I'm really passionate about renewable energy and alternatives to energy capturing, probably through working on this video. And when we were first thinking about what themes we were going to cover, that's usually how I approached most of the climate world videos as I tried to talk to a few community partners. But mostly, I just do a lot of like, cultural observation, just like what are some of the themes that feel that are kind of resonating for people outside of the sector. So what's resonating for folks outside of the environmental justice world, and, you know, land back native sovereignty is something that's been popularized, especially after the Standing Rock camp, the no dapple camp, and I was noticing that it was kind of dwindling down. But a lot of data was coming up around the fact that a lot of indigenous communities are either sitting around and or holding and protecting 80% of the global biodiversity. And so something that how I approached this video was I wanted to show the native sovereignty piece with the land back as well as my passion for alternatives to our current energy use. And what Haley Johns is somebody who was recommended to me by Jade bug guy who's also featured in the videos, a dear close, like cultural strategist, filmmaker, co conspire in the sector. And she would I had initially approached her and said, I want ndn collective, which is what she works to kind of help us think through the script. And she said, Yeah, we're down and like, we trust you, like, we know you're gonna get the story, right, but we're down. And so it was, it was very easy for us to start with that. And then when I was like, Who do I talk to? They're like, you need to talk to a hayleigh. And I was like, Alright, let's talk to a healer. And so I flew out to Arizona, just to have a scout meeting with her, which I felt like I was chasing her down, because we didn't know she was going to be in Flagstaff, or if she was going to be near Phoenix, like we didn't know. So we were flying in. And we were like, Where are you today? She's like, I'm at my mom's house. I'm with my mom at this hotel. And we're like, Alright, we're coming through. So it felt very, like family off the bat, which now she has been nominated for I forget the position, but it's the internal affairs of Indian energy, energy efforts and some sort. So she's she's doing it at a federal level now. And when I was when I was working on this video, and I had talked to her and I interviewed her as she was giving me a lot of these numbers, and I just realized that, you know, the irony of this country is just beyond what we could imagine. You have a lot of these coal mines that help fuel some of the larger energy consuming cities and in the United States, like Vegas, like la that just consume energy at such high rates that are being powered by coal mines in Navajo or near Navajo Denae reservations. And yet, I was hearing about what halos program and her efforts were just trying to get funding and or subsidies from the government in order to put solar panels on folks his house because the infrastructure doesn't exist. And she was running she's letting me know about that. cost, she's like at $75,000 per house. And then we in order to like run the lines, and that's not even including the solar panel infrastructure. And then if they can't, we can't run the lines, and we're talking about batteries. And she was breaking this all down, I'm like, that is a lot of money. We need to get you that money. And then she started just educating us more through that. So I think I went into this video just knowing that I was going to try to make those connections. But what I realized was that I was actually going in to learn myself, just how much I need to humble myself with the realities that communities who have had less to nothing in certain things, everything from food, to energy to water, have made alternatives that they are, they've already created the solutions like we found one of the elders who had put up one of the first solar panels and Hopi reservation, which I highlighted in my video, she got it 30 years ago, like I, I was flabbergasted that she had the foresight, and the way that she articulated was everything from comfort to entertainment. But at the end of the was she knew she needed power. And she runs a business, the local business won a very few on the reservation that she was passionate enough to keep alive. And so this video just showed me that like, wherever you go, where there has been disenfranchisement, that's where you will find solutions. Because a lot of people have just making do for a long time, it just hasn't been seen, it hasn't been highlighted. Those are the people that like the UN should be talking to the you know, our federal government should be listening to.

John Fiege

Yeah, and I actually wanted to talk to you about Janice de who's the Hopi elder that you mentioned. And, you know, in particular, how it relates to how depth and skillful you are communicating with people from a wide range of backgrounds. in you, you you use humor a lot. And in this power to rely on video, you're sitting down with Janice day. And talking about how she's one of the first people to get solar power 30 years ago. And you asked her whether the first thing she charged with solar power would be a vibrator. And that was that was that was really funny. And all of a sudden, I'm watching with anticipation, asking myself, how is this woman going to react to that question? And you seem to have such a good read on the people you're speaking with. And I was hoping you could talk a bit more about how you communicate so many, so well and so many in so many different spaces and how you consciously or unconsciously lubricate the relationships with humor.

Layel Camargo

Yeah, I've been I I think a lot of it is my passion for humor has come from has been maintained by a lot of data and information that I've gotten around just the importance of people being able to process things through laughter. And that the climate crisis is nothing to make mockery and or to laugh, there's this is very serious. The ways in which our species is kind of being at threat of extinction, and right before our eyes. But I think that as humans, we're so complex and layered, and we're so beautiful in the sense that we get to feel so intensely and feeling is what motivates us to take action. And laughter helps you process so much data quicker, it helps you be able to take something in, embrace it, release, and then have it make an impression that is the one line that everybody brings up with that video. So I made the impression. And I hope that people watched it and then wanted to show it to other people. And so I think that, that that knowledge has retained my passion for humor. And then like I said, You know, I grew up in an abusive home where we had to process things fairly quickly in order to be able to function in the world to go to school to go to work. And growing up in a home where there was a lot of violence. I learned how to read people very keenly everything from anticipating when something was going to happen tonight, and I speak about that pretty like nonchalantly because I think a lot of us have a lot of strategies and skills that we've developed because of our traumas and our negative experiences that we've had in the world. And I think they don't often get seen as that we'll just say like, Well, I was just really I'm just really good at reading people and we'll leave it at that and it's like, but what is your learn that from like, there have been many chronic situations where you had to be really good at reading people in order for you to like practice it so clearly in it skillfully. And so I think I honor my experience in that in order for me to do that. And then I think cultural relativity and cultural content petencies is another thing like, Janice de actually reminds me a lot of my grandmother and my grandmother was somebody who was very religious. And at the same time, I always loved pushing her buttons. I would just like try to say things to get her activated. And I knew at the end of the day, she loved me. And that was about it. I didn't have to question whether she loved me because she was upset that I asked her something and appropriately. So I think it's a combination of that. And I'm grateful that I can embody that and be able to offer it to people who are curious about climate change and and feel more invited through laughter than they would about doom and gloom or heavy statistic videos and our ways of gathering information.

John Fiege

Awesome. Well, another kind of video you made is called consumerism, cancelled prime. And the first shot is you waiting while the camera crew sets up the shot and you're putting items in your Amazon cart on your phone. And then the quote unquote real video begins. And and you say 80% of California's cargo goes through the Inland Empire. And then you yell along expletive that's beeped out. And you ask emphatically his climate, wrote, his climate woke about to ruin amazon prime for me. And and I love how rather than just saying Amazon, or Amazon customers are bad. You're starting by implicating yourself in this system that leads to serious environmental justice issues. And again, it's really funny. Can you talk more about the situation with Amazon and other real retailers? And and how you went about positioning yourself in this story, and using humor again, and self criticism to connect to the audience?

Layel Camargo

Yeah, I mean, when we first started working on this video, we explore different avenues of that opening scene, when we wanted to highlight community members, I kind of at this point, have a pretty good like tempo of what it is that I want. I want a community member I want somebody who's like academic or scientifically based, and then somebody else who kind of comes in allows her to be more of a creative flow. So we have a pretty good structure at this point of the voices that we seek, we just didn't know how we wanted to hook the audience. And we went back and forth quite a bit on this, the thing that kept coming up was amazon prime memberships are very common. Most people have them most people buy on e commerce and this is pre COVID. And I was keenly aware of that I also knew that Amazon was growing as a franchise to now own Whole Foods that were just like expanding in regards to what it is that they offer people online. And as I mentioned, I, through my passion for reduction of plastic usage and plastic consumption, and plastic waste, I understand the ways that ecommerce has really hurt the planet. So I myself am not an Amazon Prime member, I I don't actually buy online and I allow myself when needed one Amazon thing a purchase a year. And it's like kind of more of a values align thing. So in order for me to reach connecting with somebody who's kind of a little bit more normal in regards to needing to rely on buying online, is I just had to exaggerate what I think happens when you're shopping, which is you look at a lot of stuff, you add them to cart, you get really excited, and then you kind of mindlessly click Buy without knowing what's going to happen. But you're excited when it arrives, surprisingly, because maybe you bought it in the middle of the night while drinking some wine and watching some Hulu. So that's like what I was trying to embody. And then what I was really trying to highlight in this video was I wanted to invite audiences to not feel shame about what they do, like we are we've all been indoctrinated by the system through what our education has taught us. Like we have values of individualism and patriotism and all these things, because that's what we were taught in schools. And that's been used and co opted by corporations in order for us to continue exploiting other humans and the planet. And that's by no fault of our own. That's a design that's an economic model that was designed since the Great Depression. It's just the way that it's been exaggerated and has scaled so quickly is beyond our control where our governments don't even regulate it anymore at the ways in which they should be. And I think that I wanted this to feel like it's not just on you as an individual, but it's specifically if you live in Europe or in the United States. You need to know that we are The biggest consumers on the planet, we have the most economic resources. We actually, if even a fraction of the United States decided to stop shopping at Amazon, we could significantly bring that Empire down. I say Empire pretty intentionally. And we could I mean, I feel like you. And that's and how I understand economics is that all you need to do is impact 10 to 20%. of supply and demand chain in order for a whole corporation to collapse. The problem is, is that our governments always come in to aid these large corporations that are hurting us on the planet by saying that they want to maintain jobs and maintain a GDP are going stock market, which they're reliant on. So this video was meant for audiences. And for people to feel like this is not just on you. But if you live in a first world nation, you have power, and I need you to use it. And at the same time, it's a bigger system. So it's not going to be enough for us to cancel our amazon prime memberships. It's also going to be on us to support community organizers, sign petitions, when possible join council meetings, you know, call your senators and your mayors. And we worked with Athena, which is a labor organization that's specifically has an anti Amazon campaign. And so they were kind of feeding us a little bit of our talking points. So we actually wanted to go the video mostly on a system scale, talk about how the systems need to shift, but they were really pushing for the US to bring in that individualism component. Because as difficult that is as it is to digest. As a consumer in the United States, my power of influence is like three to five times more than somebody else living in the global south. So it felt important to do those two intersections, but we're really just trying to hook people where they're at. So if you shop at amazon, and you want to watch that video, like don't feel like we're gonna call you out or make you feel like a horrible person, like, it's it's not it's not our fault, but we do have power.

John Fiege

And can you talk about what the situation is with the trucks in the distribution centers? And like, what's the environmental justice issue there?

Layel Camargo

Yeah, I mean, so there's the manufacturing of goods, which the manufacture of goods is done through a large global scheme, things are extracted and raw material. High mineral producing areas like Africa, South America, different places like that, then the raw materials get moved to places where they can manufactured quickly with the lowest cost, which is typically places that are not heavily regulated by the government, which is China, Asian countries, other other places like that. But they are very prevalent in an Asian countries. And then they're manufactured there and then shipped to Assembly in the United States so that they can get that made in the US kind of stamp. And then they get they get put on boats or truck trucks across the country. The Inland Empire specifically, which California is like a big supplier to the United States, we prove we you know, we supply 25% of most of the foods that are consumed in the US, we provide a lot of goods that come in on the ports on this side, to the US, but this the Inland Empire does. Supply I think like 50 to 70%, the numbers pretty spread out of all of California. So a lot of a lot of goods get brought in to Long Beach or LA ports. They get put on trucks, and then the trucks drive from LA or Long Beach, to the Inland Empire, where communities they're fighting to maintain the residential communities because warehouses are being popped up so fast. And so you have a lot of people in positions of governmental power, just constantly approving developers to build and build more warehouses. So you have school schools, hospitals and homes right next to and surrounded by warehouses that their sole purpose is to store materials anticipating you to click Buy. And the biggest corporates in that area are Walmart, Target and Amazon. And so when you look at the the what is happening is the problem is the storage and the breakdown of the residential communities because now you have people who can't afford to live and or work there, they need to sell their homes and they're being bought up at rapid rates by warehouses and then the warehouses all of a sudden appear within months of time, and we're talking about football fields were at the warehouses. I think we had said that in the video. And the the problem that's impacting the health of those communities is as these trucks they're coming in, I mean, y'all we buy really a lot in this country. So we need to be supplying and keeping these warehouses fully stocked in order for them to be efficient so that you can get it the next day, if that's what you choose, which a lot of people do tend to go that route specifically when Amazon gives it out so freely. And so in order to do that, we have to have trucks constantly coming and going from the ports in LA and in Long Beach down to the Inland Empire. And so what that means is that you have a lot of trucks in idle around the warehouse is waiting to unload and offload, you have a lot of trucks coming in, which are sitting in traffic, because they remind you all this is a heavily trafficked area, because there's been also a lot of push from the posts, Great Depression, to have people in Los Angeles consume more and more cars. And so there's just like, it's saturated. And then you have a lot of homes that are still built, that are still living along side these freeways, because the Inland Empire is a big Cross of many different interstates and highways, and the trucks are stuck in traffic. And so you have communities there that are lowering their life expectancy from like up to 1010 or 15 years, we're seeing a lowering and life expectancy because of respiratory complications like asthma, cancer, other other illnesses, and there isn't enough solutions to this problem. You know, it's very common there that people have respiratory conditions. I think in my work there, I will say from the start of this movie, from the start of this video, to completion and release, which got delayed because of COVID. But it ended up being about a year, a year, a little over a year, there was from everybody we interviewed, there was about, I want to say three deaths of relatives in the area from parents, two siblings, just one year. And these are just a microscale of people that we interviewed. And that just shows if you look at that at the larger scale, there's probably a lot of deaths happening in those communities. So yeah, that's that's the scheme of it, it's a lot of it is the logistics of how to get your goods to you. That is hurting people's health. And then if you look at the larger scope, assembling and creating those goods, is what's causing global greenhouse emissions that's causing climate change. So it's really addressing it on the place where we feel the most empowered to which is stopped demand. Cool.

John Fiege

Well, and and there's been a crazy twist to the story. Since you made that amazon video I saw on the news, that the Center for cultural power received one of these large donations from Mackenzie Scott during her giving spree in the wake of a divorce from Jeff Bezos. So how do you how do you wrap your head around that one?

Layel Camargo

Well, it was funny, because when we got the announcement that Mackenzie sky had given over $10 million dollars over to the Senate for cultural power. Our deputy director was like an even though we made that video against Amazon. She still came to us. I'm like, maybe she gave it to us because he made the

husband.

Layel Camargo

Yeah.

John Fiege

So funny. Yeah.

Layel Camargo

I mean, I think I think what that speaks, what that made me think of was that if you're passionate about something, you shouldn't let any politics or economic interest. stand in your way if it's in the service of creating a better humanity and not hurting anybody else.

John Fiege

Because if they're screwing over your community, they might also be screwing over their wife who leaves them and gives away all their money. Yeah, I'm so grateful for that. It's great. It's the layers of complexity and and irony and humor are hard to hard to fathom. So recently, you launched a podcast called while you recently I think you wrapped up the first season of the podcast. And it's called giving go too far. And you co host it with Trey Vasquez in I love the podcast. It's it's an enormous amount of fun. And your movement from video into podcasting also, of course, reminds me of my own kind of trajectory of looking for new ways to expand and deepen important conversations beyond film and video. And you cover so much ground in the podcast which shows on everything from pandemic parenting to liberated communities, to my personal favorite, a beautiful show on fashion and queer, queer ecology Can you tell me how you got into podcasting and and how it's related to the other work? You do like the videos?

Layel Camargo

Yeah. First off, congratulations on this podcast, john. Oh, thank you glad that you made this shift even if it is for short term or however long. Yeah, well, thank you for helping I AF course, I think that I've always been really passionate about just telling a story and movement generation who is the executive producer of the podcast, we had been thinking about how I could support them in creating some content in order to get their just transition framework out. And so I was coming in already with a lot to compete with is they had executive produced web series called the North Pole show, led by Josh Healy. And they, you know, Edie eventually made it to second season. And by then Rosario Dawson had also been co executive producer. So I was kind of coming in and being like, oh, man, I don't know if I can create something as amazing as that. And at the same time, I was really excited about the challenge. And so we got had a few ideation meetings where we talked about what was important for them to tell. We're pretty politically aligned. And we care about the same social issues, they're a little bit more focused on the ecological justice of it, which makes it a little difficult because a lot of people don't understand how to make the cross between climate justice and ecological justice, which is very much just like mimicking the way that the natural world is being heard and or responding that can help us think through solutions towards climate justice. And a, you know, we identified a few people who wanted to be involved Trey Vasquez being one of them. And then Alan toy who's also a collective member. And we had several meetings where we just thought through like, what what are some of the things we want to talk about. And movement generation is great at putting out pedagogy at bringing fact and community amplification to solutions and understanding the climate crisis in the environmental crisis at a more digestible scale that isn't so scientific and based on carbon economics, or carbon marketing, or any anything that has to do with global greenhouse, they actually barely talk about greenhouses when they teach about what's happening on the planetary scale. And I always love that about them, they make it so accessible. And so I was really hoping that the podcast could be the mixture of accessibility that they bring, as well as the humor that I like to bring. And just the reality that a lot of people are really just trying to get schooled. Like, I think during the pandemic, people had time to really sit down with some of these complicated thoughts that we haven't really necessarily been able to think of. So we did it all in horizontal fashion, because they are a horizontal, collective. So we had different people who would approve certain themes. And then we had everybody to ultimately at the final decision table, just being able to give their stamp of approval. But we started by creating kind of a list of topics, we did some hybrids, so the query colleges and fashion was a hybrid one. And we started identifying people we wanted to highlight in the community that we're doing amazing work. And then we just started pairing up the themes, and everybody was approving and giving their opinions throughout all of it. And it was really rewarding. I, one of the things that I've been able to do, from translate from film over to work, from video over to podcasts is this collaborative nature that is possible with creating content that isn't actually very easy to do, especially when you have a vision, but that I always find it as a fun challenging thing is how do I get other stakeholders, other people who care about me care about creating and who don't have necessarily all the skills, but they have a story to be told, how do I make it easy. And so for them, podcasting was the easy way to go about it. And I was excited. I'd already co hosted a smaller podcast with the Center for cultural power. When it was culture strike, we went to 12 episodes. And then we ended it was most more focused on current events and kind of more of a talking. And this one was really more of a preparation, like what was the story we were going to tell with three points we want to make sure the audience got, who did we want to highlight? And how did we want to work on it. So we also hired an all woman podcast production company called we rise. And they helped with editing and social media amplification. And they, you know, they they're very passionate about the issues we were talking about as well. So they occasionally with throwing a few of their creative ideas on how to speed things up. So it was overall very rewarding. And how I made the switch was that it just made sense. We were in a pandemic, people were very tuned in to having more of a connection and it was really timely when we started planning for this was about About six months prior to the pandemic, and then we contemplated just making it about current events and releasing it sooner than later. But we ultimately agreed that the issues and the themes we were trying to hit were merited giving such good attention. So if you haven't listened to it, I recommend you do. It's called did we go too far? And I think it's just a good way to get some information and to also get a little a little chuckles and giggles over, you know, about some things that are kind of difficult to digest at times.

John Fiege

Yeah, totally. And, and just transition is a key issue you address in the podcast? Can you talk about what just transition is and and how you think that term has been used or misused or appropriated in environmental spaces?

Layel Camargo

Yeah. So just transition comes from thinking through the green economy. And traditionally, it was created for labor workers to be able to discuss, being able to shift from a crony extractive economy over to one that's green that protects jobs that is a little bit more holistic when it comes to addressing just work and jobs and what's needed for a green economy or for something that's like more environmentally aligned. There's a few group of like social justice activists that care about climate justice and the environment who kind of took it one step further, which is that if we do want to just transition that does honor people's labor that we have to look at it a little bit more in detail. And so they coined and or potentially amplified more of the talking about what we currently have, which is the extractive economy, which relies on this, like extract, create, burn, dump kind of mentality of how our economic system works, and that's in a forest through militarism. And that works towards the concentration of wealth and power, at the scale, which has created, you know, a lot of the narratives around the 1%. So they coined that whole system, which is the one that we currently live in economically, which is called the extractive economy. And then they are envisioning a new world for us, which is the acquainting the regenerative economy. And so in the regenerative economy like sacredness and wellness is at the center, the labor sector is more cooperative and collectivized, there's more decision making that is drawn down to the local level. So allowing people to be making more decisions around like what's happening in their environment, and being able to dictate things that are more ecologically aligned. And and, you know, it there's like a upcycled system of how we create and use things that can be returned back to the earth, it's like pretty holistic, I think it's pretty awesome, which is why I lean towards talking about it, I think that just transitions are often used as like, we need just need to move away from fossil fuels, we need to invest in green economies. And when it stops at that scale, and it doesn't look at the way that the current labor sector is set up. Like for example, whether it's like a CEO or president or somebody who like friends, a whole company, and then you have other laborers underneath them that it's more likely for there to be a margin of failure margin of harm on the planet, because it's the actual people who work to land who extract the raw materials who run the companies who can be able to be able to inform and are realigned to sustainable practices. So I think the just transition framework is has evolved now where you have a lot more organizers and activists talking about now just recovery as well as like, when there's a hurricane, can we potentially get support not only on the food aid or initial Red Cross aid, but also like how do we look at the current infrastructure and how when the next hurricane hits, it's going to put us in the same position versus how do we adapt so that the negative impacts that has on communities are actually minimal. And so I think that the just transition is about centering the impacts that certain people are having to to the large global economy that we live in. And where it originated from is basically how it gets kind of CO opted is just thinking about it as kind of like let's create green jobs and that's going to fix everything. It's it that's that's not actually going to be the solution creating just green jobs. We need to look at how are the materials being extracted, how are they being democratized and the way that they're being put back in the hands of the people who are using them to the people who are selling them and how Do we approach the actual green economy in a way where maintenance is at the center where people who are actually using certain new technologies that we need to rely on, actually know how to repair them. So they minimize the waste cycle, it increases the empowerment of the community to be able to reuse versus dump and have to get a new one, which increases the power of corporate interests. So I think just transition is about doing something that's a little bit more holistic, that centers a new world, which is about being in reciprocity and regeneration with the planet and are you can eco ecosystems and their economic models mimic that. And I think that we can do it. I think that that's why I'm a big champion for and I love to talk about that.

John Fiege

And do you? Do you see tension in conversations or spaces you're in? Around kind of what the implications of that term like how, how systemic or holistic or radical it is, versus, you know, because I do feel like there's this sense that if we just switch to electric cars and solar panels, everything's gonna be fine from so many different, so many different parts of the media and different entities and groups and interests. And it I feel like it's becoming, it's becoming even more problematic.

Layel Camargo

Yeah, I definitely think that the tensions are there. I yeah, I think that there just hasn't there's there's certain folks who I've been in this is happening as frequent as much as probably because I'm in a lot of like, black indigenous PLC, like folks who intersect labor union organizing with like climate justice organizing, like that. It's less pervasive for me. But there is that a few times where I've popped on calls with just other community members who just want to chat and or potentially talk about collaborating. And it's like, oh, you're talking about just transition from such a different way that I haven't. So the, the narrative hasn't fully evolved. And I think a lot of that evolution is due to just how we haven't been really mixing as a group of people as organizers is I think that there's still this concentration of resources with the big green tops like Greenpeace like 350 dot org. And that, because there isn't that people centered approach that a lot of grassroots organizations that are actually thinking about the regenerative economy in a way that it serves the frontline communities that they're in day to day relationship with that that hasn't necessarily translated on the practical note. So a lot of folks can't really talk about it. But I do feel like it's just about moving away from talking about a just transition that's solely focused on energy consumption and alternatives to energy consumption, to really looking at the scale that like, as a first world country, we actually consume a lot of energy. And so we have to, at some point, come to the reckoning that we need to lower our consumption of energy that maybe we do not need to be watching TV 10 hours a day, or being on computer eight to 10 hours a day. That that is something that we're gonna have to come to recognize. And I think that will be instigated by values that are aligned with a regenerative economy, which is really about lessening the suffering of a few and increasing the wellness of many. And I think that in that spirit, people who just think that surviving this climate crisis is about having carbon drawdowns or carbon sequestering or making sure that everybody has solar panels on their roofs is not going to be the only solution. And that's that's just nature is going to let us know that. And it's going to be facilitated as well by a lot of big top green organizations just relinquishing their access to large amounts of resources and redistributing them to grassroots movements. But the tension is there, but it's not so big. I think it's the the tension is around, like the clarity of what it just transitioned on a holistic level could look like,

John Fiege

right? Yeah. Yeah. And it's complicated, because the simple understanding of just transition is an essential element of the more the more systemic conception of it, you know, it's not like, you're against solar panels, you know? It can't stop there. And another thing I hear you say a lot on the podcast is, I don't know, which I read as a powerful political statement in a world where all kinds of people claim to know what's what's the importance of humility. And of being honest about not having the answers, and and how how do you see that approach to the world, in contrast to other approaches that you might encounter out there?

Layel Camargo

Just that the level of humility, right? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think for a lot of us, needing to just like, really understand the level of slowing down, that's going to be necessary in order for us to create, for example, a new regenerative economy or a new political system, it's going to require us to really slow down, be humble and kind of realign and discard the values of that instigate greed, individualism. And that shifts us over more to collective well being. That that is at the core of I think what I'm wanting to do is I'm wanting to use storytelling in order for people to feel empowered to be able to look at the core values that colonization and white supremacy has written on, such as greed and individualism, and to start to challenge those in small to big ways. Because we need to rewrite our whole story as a nation that is causing a lot of havoc. And I think that's one of the pieces that when I was talking about instigating more complexity in this movement that is dear to my heart is what are the core values that are actually hurting? They're actually hurting our, our system, they're actually hurting the planet that we need to shift.

John Fiege

Yeah, do you? Do you feel like a lot of people have trouble saying I don't know.

Layel Camargo

I think they do. Plug in my computer for a second. Okay.

Oh, okay. Oh,

oh, I didn't see that.

John Fiege

Okay.

Gotcha.

Layel Camargo

I like can I just answer from that point, john, if that makes sense.

John Fiege

Okay. Do you want me to join me to ask the question again? Yes. Okay. Great. So I'll just, I'll just back up for a second. So another thing I hear you say a lot on the podcast is, I don't know, which I read as a powerful political statement in a world where all kinds of people claim to know, what's the importance to you have of humility and being honest about not having the answers? And how do you see that approach to the world in contrast to other approaches you might encounter out there?

Layel Camargo

Yeah, I think we discuss this on the first episode is that I, we are like pretty saturated as like a human species to just have to say that we have a solution or that we know what we're doing. And I think it's like, in our ancestral ways, where it's like, rooted to actually slow down, observe the seasons, look at the pace of the earth and be able to be like, Oh, yeah, actually, let's just sit in contemplation about this big area where we don't have a certain answer. And so in the first episode, we covered that idea that like, yeah, that's a larger mainstream ideology of like, needing to have solutions to their problems, or needing to have answers to questions that may feel daunting. And in the first episode, we kind of sat with that of how that has seeped into our social movements or social justice movements, that even when we are fighting a big crisis, we are still carrying the same values that have dominated our American Society for lack of like, you know, just thinking about it at a bit of a national scale, which are like individualism and greed that have really pushed us to feel like we have to create solutions. And when we're looking at something as big as the climate crisis, it's actually in the practice of slowing down that not only are we going to find solutions, but we're going to be actually practicing this solution which a lot of why we're exasperated. The, you know, there's the tension and the pressure that we're putting on the planet that's causing this this large symptom and reaction is because we're moving at such a fast pace that in the slowing down and trying to find more holistic and diverse solutions. is where we'll be able to thrive. And so I think that there's a bit of an ego problem in this country. And I think in first world countries where everybody wants to be right, everybody wants to lead in the technology that's going to quote unquote, save us. And everybody wants to have all the solutions that are going to be spread at a global scale. And that is a symptom of value. And the belief that we've all inherited from white supremacy. Yeah.

John Fiege

Yeah, it's, it's, it's something that I feel like, you know, I work at a university. You know, talk about a group of people who think they know the answers to things. Yeah, it's, it's so woven into everything. So another video you made recently is called a grief letter to COVID, which combines a poem of yours read by several people with images from Oakland, San Francisco and LA, I think, and many beautiful moving portraits of people in the community wearing masks, could could you read this poem and tell me a bit about the story behind it, and particularly how the COVID pandemic has informed your work and your understanding of what we face with other cascading crises?

Layel Camargo

Yeah, maybe I'll start up by reading it. Yeah. That'd be great. Okay, so I wrote this, and I'll speak a little bit more about why but it's called the grief letter to COVID COVID you ravaging monster? If you could? Please listen. I don't know why the universe brought you to us and somehow in a sick way I feel like we needed you. Do I need to thank you. You've been taking on a bigger beast you keep showing us who's really to blame that even in a crisis we are last to be protected last to be seen last to be vaccinated hit first hit hardware Hit, hit hit COVID You are our wake up call. You are reminding us that no matter what we need to save us care for us we've got us COVID you literal virus you spread and no see land or distance is a barrier for you. Stop taking our family stop taking my loved ones they have we familia and impasse. Why do you let them die alone? COVID. We're done. This is a grief letter, a breakup letter. We're breaking up with you. We're breaking up with the system's keeping us down. This abusive relationship needs to stop. We will draw tarot cards cast protection spells and pray. Oh God, how we have prayed for work done. Take this as a warning, a warning to the greedy a warning to the premises warning to the systems that be we are done being seen last, we are done being ignored. We demand vaccinations. Now we demand health care now we demand pay to stay home COVID slow us all down to that so that our loved ones can recover so that we can curve the spread so that we can fight for more vaccines. This is our last call COVID go away to where you come from. And while you're at it, take the greed take the racism take the in justices to us our kinship and our planet. Take everything that isn't working. Sincerely, the people who are sick of this s**t. So I started to write this ad was kind of like an artist residency. At the time, my aunt and my uncle and Mexico were fighting to survive co COVID, which they did, thankfully. And then I had an uncle who was in the ICU. And I think I had just found out that he passed away. My uncle who passed away was African American. And you know, it just the statistics were coming up around how prevalent COVID was in the black community. And then shortly after, while I was writing this, I wrote the first draft I wrote it around around that time and when I was doing edits, my cousin got COVID I had another cousin who got COVID and then my grandmother sister passed away from COVID from respiratory complications. And I was just really enraged. I was pissed off that this was happening to my community and that I wasn't surprised because my family is you know, first generation first generation migrant people of color. And my family they're all frontline workers, you know, working restaurants working, janitorial services, and My sister was a frontline worker, she's a nurse, and every other week, it was like, Oh, I could potentially have COVID. So she was quarantining, like, at least once a month, from coming home from work. And she has two kids. And I was going back and forth between being in San Diego to help with childcare to being up to Northern California. And I was sitting in my, you know, 300 square foot apartment when I was there, and just like feeling so relieved that I felt so safe. And at the same time when I would leave, just feeling so scared of potentially getting in this is pre vaccination, and the rollout was happening of the vaccination. And then there was more anti vaccine rhetoric that was being spreading that was spreading in migrant communities and eventually, in a lot of black communities. And so when we were starting to, when we were starting to produce this and turn it into a video was when the vaccine rollout was like, just at eyesight. And I this felt important for me to write because I was upset, I was pissed off. But what I loved about the time and quarantine was that I got to isolate and I got to really sit and care about the things that I wanted. I grew my garden beds, from two beds to six beds, I was harvesting a lot from the land that I lived on at the time. And I was spending more time at home was go I started hiking. I actually hiked I think I ended up hiking at most like 14 miles that one go about 2000 elevation and increase. I was featured on a podcast because I picked up hiking and I was feeling really healthy. I was cooking at home three times a day. And all this is happening while my relatives are sick. And I'm sure that they had some positives as well of like, not not needing to stay home and also the negatives of the economic disparity, I was fortunate enough that I could work remotely. And so I wrote this because it was like being in COVID, at the height of it really highlighted that all these systemic disadvantages were all made up, a lot of us were being asked to stay home, the government was doing some rollouts around, you know, some of the ways that they were financially compensating people to see how much was not enough and not anything close to what people were losing. And then at the same time, we were seeing women of color being let go of jobs and losing jobs at the highest rate. So it was a combination of processing that information. And then the piece around the piece that I wrote around, like, I take everything with you that isn't working like greed and racism was my attempt at being like when COVID goes away, I want this world to be reset. And this like to protect our kinship and our planet and allow for these injustices to go away was in me highlighting that COVID wasn't eco logical crisis like we have extracted from the planet at such high rates so much that we're going so much more deeper into wildlife that has not had contact with humans that were coming into contact with other viruses. And if we do not slow down our extraction rates, we're going to have more and more pandemics like these happening. And as the variants continue, it's going to just keep mutating and potentially have larger effects that were unaware of. And so this was a way of me processing that in that at the systemic scale. I just wanted to let people know that we needed to stop extracting from the earth in the way that it was and that as people we were done, we're fed up with the ways that we've been systemically disproportioned and used to harm the planet. And so the, you know, the sincerely the people who are sick of this s**t is like a call of solidarity for black indigenous and people of color for us to just have a voice. But it was a very powerful piece. And I'm grateful that the Center for cultural power allowed me to turn it into a poetry video.

John Fiege

Yeah, it's really beautiful. You know, listening to you talk about it reminds me you know, that a decade or so ago I got cancer is really bad cancer almost died. But you know what, when I first got it, and I kind of like entered this kind of cancer culture in a way and start reading a bunch of stuff, I kept seeing this expression that people would say, as cancer is the best thing that ever happened to me. And when I first had the beginning of this whole experience, I just remember thinking like, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. And by the end of the cancer experience, and I did survive, which is a key part of it, but I understood it all of a sudden, were it's not something you would ever wish on anyone, but it does so much work to reveal the fissures in the fractures in the in the The the assumptions that you're making in life and and the things that were always there that you didn't necessarily see. And I, I don't know, your poem makes me think a lot about that in relation to COVID. And how, with all the terrible things that COVID is, it's it's also an opportunity to see the world differently. Possibly in ways you haven't seen it before, but possibly just to, to to refocus on what you already knew. And and seeing, like, even more how important it is.

Layel Camargo

Yeah, that's a powerful connection, john. Yeah.

John Fiege

Yeah. And, you know, reminds me a bit of Arundhati Roy's essay. Did you see you see that? a pandemic is a portal? And she talks about? I don't think I've read it yet. Yeah, she talks about how the pandemic is a portal is an opportunity to enter another world. And there's that question, of course, like, what world are we going to enter when we go through this portal? But regardless, it's an opportunity to enter something else. But yeah, well, I love your your poem, and the piece you made is really beautiful. So thank you for, for reading that again, here. Of course, my pleasure. So we're wrapping up, and sorry about all the delays. But I just have a couple more questions. You could keep going for a few more minutes. Let's do it. All right. So going back to young Lyle, growing up in San Diego, how has your thinking changed since then, about who you are about your relationship to the rest of life on the planet?

Layel Camargo

I mean, I would say it's changed pretty drastically. I I think that young me was just really absorbed in the world that I lived in, which I think happens to a lot of us and the fact that like I wanted, I had dreams of having a family and having a connection with, you know, the people that I loved and cared and career that like fueled my heart. And now that I'm older, I'm realizing that like, what I at my core wanted was as a young person was I wanted purpose, value and meaning in life. And that I found, I could summarize that, in that way through these accomplishments that I saw for myself as a child based off of what I thought you had to do. And now that I'm older, and I think specifically coming out as queer, and definitely jumping into more understanding, like my role in the larger eco ecological crisis is that the possibilities of what finding meaning and purpose and value is, is actually way more bigger and complex than I can imagine. So I still want those things I want connection with the people that I love, I still want to, you know, have a quote unquote, viable career, which I think really just is my purpose. And my purpose is to tell stories and help create a world where we're in better relationship with the planet. And I feel like I'm doing all those things. And I don't necessarily feel like at my heart to have changed too much actually have this strong line that I kind of go by on a day to day, which is like people don't change people are at the core of who they are and how they were born into the planet of needing to be. And at the same time, I've, how I interpret that and how I choose to practice it. That's the part that has shifted, and a lot of it is through learning about the ways that ancestry what's been eradicated from my history, from my personal, indigenous lineage, and then what's been eradicated from other people's lineages and seeing how I can learn and adapt and be a better person and also looking at where we're headed. I'm contemplating starting a family very soon. And I think a lot about why I want that and then also what are some of the things I need to teach not only my children, but the children that I have close relationship with, and who I want what I want to leave behind if I What if and when I leave this earth and so I feel like a lot of that is rooted on us repairing and making this earth viable for not only myself but the next, you know, seven generations as a lot of indigenous elders like to remind us of and I think that that has changed. I think initially, it was like, have kids have a good home and have a career. And now I think it's like, oh, I actually have a large impact. And I'm choosing to, like, step into that and help create a better place for not myself, but the next generations. And I take that pretty seriously, but also with comedy.

John Fiege

As you always do, which is fabulous. Yeah, well, I must say, having kids. You know, it made the cancer experience as life changing event seems small. It's a man that it really changes everything about man, it's a it's an experience of facing yourself and who you are and the assumptions you make about the world and, and what you thought you were what you thought your role was, you know, man, I'm going through that my oldest just turned 11. And I, you know, I feel like I'm going through that on a daily basis. Still, you know, it's not like, Oh, yeah, I did. I did that. It took a couple years. I figured it out. It's like, nope. Like, every day is a different. It's a different maze. Navigate. I'm excited for that journey. Yeah, well, good luck. That's it's it's a journey. Gabriela who's listening right now is holding a four month old baby about four months, three months. How old Gabriella? Oh, that's it. It's only been two and a half months. Oh, my goodness. Yes. All right. So at the end of your power to rely on video, we hear from Jade Begay, who is the creative director at at MDN collective, which is an indigenous advocacy organization. She says, We have already survived Apocalypse, we've survived genocide. We've survived settlers colonization, wiping out entire food sources. We've survived biological warfare. And we're here and we're still thriving. The rest of the world and non native folks have a lot to learn. What do you think the rest of the world has to learn about surviving on this planet?

Layel Camargo

I mean, I think a lot of it is like, everything that we think we're in pursuing of. If you see yourself getting to the finish line and not being fully satisfied, then it's probably like a false solution. I think that we are such a beautiful species like we've evolved to be able to feel to love to care to be smart and intelligent, to build rocket ships to see go to the moon to go to the great depths of the ocean. And yet at the same time, our day to day pursuit is based on a fictionality that is for the economic and political viability of the concentration of wealth and power. And I think that it is such a disservice for us as humans that we spend our day to day on that grind, and we're so dissatisfied, that we can enjoy our families we can enjoy being able to make something with our hands and have the time to do that. And so I think what the rest of society that Jade is kind of alluding to that we need to learn is that we need to be more observant, we need to slow down, we need to be more interdependent, we need to lean into some of those indigenous stories that we are fortunate enough to still have even though colonization tried to eradicate them, and try to learn and apply those in our day to day they're often telling us about how to be in better relationship with each other how to be in better relationship with other animals, how to be in better relationship with plant species with trees, the forest ecosystems, and they're all through storytelling. And I think those wisdoms are the things that a lot of us have lost because of migration A lot of us have lost because of being in a settler colonial country for more than just a handful of generations. And for a lot of, you know, our white relatives is like your whole existence has been a whole system of eradicating other people's cultures and that that is a large healing that we're all going to have to come into reality with. And I think that is in our indigenous wisdoms that we still have access to the I think we should all fight our hardest to preserve is where we will learn that realignment that will break the chain that keep us I mean, for lack of better words that keep us like locked into a system that is exploiting our bodies just so that somebody else could have a third, fourth, or fifth vacation home. And that like what justice does that do when your children are at home, needing help with homework, and you can even take 10 to 15 minutes from your day to do that, because you're trying to keep up with a mortgage that you've been locked in so that you can keep working, that the whole system has been rigged so that we can use our bodies for that. So I think it's the reclaiming of our bodies in order for us to reclaim our impact and relationship with the earth. I think that's that's a big part of me. Jade is Jade is amazing. And she has so much wisdom. And if you don't know who she is, you should look her up and try to follow her as much as possible. But that's that's what I took from from that statement.

John Fiege

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the people you've you found and put in your videos are really remarkable group. It's really amazing work that you've done with that. So I've asked you to bring a quotation to read that's been particularly meaningful and your journey in life, could you end the show by reading what you brought and telling the story of its significance to you? Yeah,

Layel Camargo

so I'm going to pull it up on my emails, I don't miss read it, because I've read it so many times that sometimes I feel like I make up my own interpretation. But the quote is, you want to fly, you got to give up the s**t that weighs you down. And that's by Toni Morrison in the book, Song of Solomon. And the first time I heard this, I was in high school. And I think I was like 15 or 16, at the time, and I was in this terrible rut where I was just like, ditching school every day. And just feeling so dissatisfied. I think that's the year I got a concussion. And I was, as I had mentioned, I was a competitive swimmer. So I wasn't even swimming. And then, you know, I guess I would now understand that as like, I was depressed. And I was sitting in my AP, but I was still an overachiever. Y'all like how I managed, I have no idea. But I was sitting in my AP English, like literature class. And we had to read this book, I hate reading. But my teacher did such a great job at like taking us through the synopsis and the summary of the actual storyline, which is very metaphorical. The book is very, very deep. And I was in such a deep, depressive place that I really connected with it. And I remember when we got to this line, which is one of the characters that were very, like, there's a lot of metaphors around this character talking about wanting to fly, the that, you know, a lot of it was like connected to suicide and depression. And I realize that this line, you want to fly, you got to give up this s**t that weighs you down, just spoke to my spirit, and has I have come across so many other passages that are very equally, equally inspirational. But I always come back to this one, because there's always a situation where I have to give up something in order for me to get to something else. For example, you know, in order for me to get to college, I had to give up what I knew. And I jumped into this place that I had no idea. Most recently I've been, as I mentioned, I've been going back and forth between northern and southern California, and I had to give up my home in Northern California in order for me to be able to have more mobility. I'm in a relationship with somebody who's autoimmune compromised, and she works and lives in Los Angeles. And so because of the pandemic, I had to start making some of those choices. And so I feel like every single situation that I have found myself where it's difficult, even in advocating for the planet, and everything, there's always something that is holding us down, that once we get the consciousness that we need to make a leap to something better that we have to let go of. And to me, this speaks to my whole purpose in serving the planet and everything that I've talked about. Now, it's like to jump into video production, I had to jump into something I didn't know and give up the comfort of, you know, sitting behind my work in order to jump into climate change, I had to shift how I was advocating for better lives for people and leave behind my more active participation in transformative justice. And so I feel like everything is in s**t. Sometimes you have to give it up, but it turns into s**t if you hold on to something that isn't serving you anymore. So I feel Toni Morrison and this quote has always guided me and I want to read more of her books. And sometimes I'll pick up you know, different different books of hers that actually have a lot of them on my bookshelf that I haven't read. But a lot of it is reading visually doesn't work for me audio book is the best. And so I feel like I always want to get into things but If, for some reason this quote is one of the things that whenever I've come across it again, I just want to reread it over and over. And it just shows to me that as a, you know, low income youth who grew up in a disadvantaged community that I didn't have to read a whole book, I just needed to have a connection with a passage in order for me to make great leaps that I don't think would have been possible had I not had this perspective from a woman who really gave herself the opportunity to sit through and be intentional about how she walked around the world and had big impact. And if this that's the impact she had on me, I can't imagine what she did for other black Americans who just needed to see themselves more represented in storytelling.

John Fiege

Yes, she's absolutely incredible. And do you? Do you think there are some things that weigh you down, like past trauma or abuse, the need to get rid of while there are other things that weigh you down? Like maybe caring for an elderly parent or a stepchild or even a healthy child, and you're better off accepting and dealing with the terms and limitations? On your desires to fly?

Layel Camargo

Yeah, I mean, I feel like it never it never. I feel like it's about really being expansive with the statement because you know, some of the things that you're asking, I'm like, Oh, yeah, politics of disposability. Like we definitely live in a culture where people are more disposable, or situations are more disposable than others. So like, you'll have, you know, like folks who are in the disability community will talk about how disposable they feel from the economic sector, lack of an employment, and that, like, if we are talking about the misuse of the statement, it would be in like, thinking that you can just throw things and then somehow propel yourself to another level. The reality is, how about you throw your conditioning? How will you throw your perspective? How will you throw the ways in which your value is being challenged in this way, and make adjustments and so I think it's really thinking creatively and approaching this in a way that is the least harmful, I do not believe that. Things can easily just go away. But I feel like if you are dealing with a sick relative, and that is a limitation in your life, it's not about getting rid of the relative, it's about changing your perspective, and maybe growing your community of support. So if you feel like the embraces around the changing and adapting with your conditions, and I have I have this, like posted that I keep by my desk, that says your environment doesn't dictate your your environment doesn't dictate your conditions or your conditions don't. It's like my desk is a mess. I'm like, Where's that post it, but I just keep it around me and it says, My conditions do not dictate my perspective. And so what I really try to bring to myself is like, no matter what's happening externally, I always have options and choices, which is something very powerful for a queer, trans, migrant descent, indigenous descent person to be able to say, in a world where we're constantly being indoctrinated into a system that isn't meant to help us it's meant to hurt us.

John Fiege

Wow. Well, that's a great place to end. Thank you so much for joining me today. L'Oreal. It's been amazing conversation, as always, with you. Thank you so much.

Layel Camargo

Thanks, John.

Outro

John Fiege

Thank you so much to Layel Camargo. Go to our website at ChrysalisPodcast.org, where you can find the quotation Layel read from Toni Morrison, plus book and media recommendations, and links to Layel’s video works, and organizations they’ve worked with.

Chrysalis is produced and edited by Gabriela Cordoba Vivas; with music by Daniel Rodriguez Vivas, design by Unai Reglero, and mixing by Morgan Honaker.

If you enjoyed my conversation with Layel, please rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Contact me anytime at ChrysalisPodcast.org, where you can also subscribe to our newsletter and support us with a donation.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.chrysalispodcast.org

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