05/05/2024 - Max Wilbert
And now it's time for First Voices Radio with Tiokasin Ghosthorse.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:Land, air, and water is nature's law. First Voices Radio brings to you the basics of how not to violate the law. We bring the awareness of a different paradigm to the airwaves as we shed the same old systematic paradigm that is killing mother earth. And you can hear the perspectives of indigenous peoples throughout the world and how they live with the law. Land, air, and water, the oldest way of living with mother earth and not on mother earth.
Intro:Who makes you such a threat? We choose the right to be who we are. We know the difference between the reality of freedom and the illusion of freedom. There's a way to live with Earth and a way not to live with Earth. We choose the way of Earth. It's about power.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:You're listening to First Voices Radio, and I carry the name ksinn Ghosthorse, sending you greetings and strength from the highlands of the Asopus in the lands of the Munsee speaking Lenape, often referred to as the Catskill Mountains. This is an all native hosted, all native produced First Voices Radio. And Liz Hill from the Red Lake Ojibwe Nation is a producer of First Voices Radio. And on the line, we have a longtime friend and frequent visitor. I wanna welcome you back.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:Max Wilbert is a writer and biocentric community organizer, and he's part of the grassroots political work for 20 years and is a founder of, again, Protect Thacker Pass. And Max is the author of 2 books most recently Bright Green Lives, How the Environmental Movement Lost its way, and what we can do about it, published by Monk Fish in 2021. And he is currently studying for a master's in degrowth. Max's work has been featured on CNN, the New York Times and PR, LeMond, BBC, and elsewhere. And here we go.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:We have, Max Wilbert. I like to welcome you. And it's an honor once again, Max, to have you on First Voices Radio.
Max Wilbert:Thank you so much, Tio, because I really love your show and all your work, and so it's a real honor to be here as always.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:I read, which is really ringing true for me after all these years as my time spent in the Pacific Northwest running with the pack, so to speak, the environmental movement, and understanding it as almost there, but quite not there. I I couldn't understand what the missing piece was. And you said something about that. They have lost their way. What I was sensing back then is the spirit or the center or the core of the environmental movement seems it's either either given away to NGOs, nonprofits.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:It seems to be signing up for everything, I think, just to, shine the cover of a magazine, shine its cover of its movement. And when I read your little bio here about degrowth and then the second half of the bright green lies, how the environmental movement lost its way and what we can do about it, and then your recent, commentary about an article in Mother Jones, but, yes, it's in our backyards. These are things that we are distracted with is we have the the mainstream news going on, and, yes, our hearts go out to what's going on in Palestine and other places. But my experience as a native person for these 30, 40 years that I've been active in mind and body defending earth is that that distraction often means something else is going on behind our backs, And that usually has to do with land. These are my hunches.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:These are my intuitions about how I've organized my life and what to look forward to because we live in this binary world. I like you to maybe address that little thought about, you know, we lost environmental movement may have lost its way.
Max Wilbert:Of course. It's a it's a great question. And what comes to mind, Tiokasin, I'm gonna start kind of in a little bit of a roundabout way, but hopefully reach people's hearts rather than their minds first. I saw this artistic video that was created by, an artist. I don't know her name off the top of my head, but I can send you the link maybe to include in the show notes.
Max Wilbert:And, the video is about 5 or 6 minutes long, and it shows this woman standing out in a grassy field, and she's naked. And she stands there just perfectly still as a excavator. This massive steel machine drives up next to her and starts digging in the ground a few feet, to her left. And it digs a trench 10 or 15 feet deep. And then it turns, and it digs another trench on the other side, and then the other side, and then finally on her right.
Max Wilbert:And what you're left with is this woman standing there, you know, naked, vulnerable, a human being, a body, a soft creature of of this planet, standing on this little island of of soil, rising above this this these trenches carved all the way around her. And there's no words, there's no commentary, but it's a very, very visceral video. I actually had a lot of trouble watching it. I found it very disturbing, which I think is the intent, this contrast, you know, between, again, the human and the the metal, the machine. And what prompted me to write the the article that you mentioned in that intro is this cover of mother Jones magazine, which is a a pretty sizable magazine.
Max Wilbert:A lot of people will will know of it. And it shows a, another woman and an excavator. But, what it shows is is this woman sitting in the bucket of this excavator, and she's embracing the the the machine. She has her arms around it, and she's smiling and has this expression on her face of, like, joy and and contentment and peace. And the the image is illustrating the cover story.
Max Wilbert:This is from the May June 2023 issue of Mother Jones Magazine. The cover story is called yes in our backyards. It's time for progressives to fall in love with the green building boom by Bill McKibben. And, as you know, and many of the listeners will know, Bill McKibben has been around for a long time. He's written many, many books.
Max Wilbert:He founded, 3 50 dotorg. He's been a significant figure in the environmental movement, mostly raising awareness about global warming for for many, many years. And and I found the the image very disturbing. I found the article itself very disturbing as well and quite representative of this wing of the environmental movement that believes that machines, construction, building, excavating, mining, provide an answer to the destruction, which has largely been caused by those exact same things. So that's what led me to write this essay.
Max Wilbert:I'm trying to challenge that idea and and expose this, as I as I said in the essay, a division in the environmental movement, between what you could say is the mainstream environmental movement in terms of being aligned with, corporate power more or less and being aligned with industrial capitalism, industrial civilization more or less, although there is some critique of it, of course. And what we could call the grassroots environmental movement or, you know, obviously, that term has a lot of baggage, especially for native people and the relationship between the environmental movement and native people historically. So we could go simpler and go closer to the root and just say people who care about what's happening to this planet, which is much more basic. At grassroots, people who really are aligned with the water, the forest, the mountains, the rivers who see a need to end the use of fossil fuels and solve solve global warming address that real crisis, but who see this focus on electric vehicles, mining, new transmission lines, massive solar projects, carpeting the desert and and forests being cut down for new solar, wind turbines proliferating throughout the oceans and throughout the the mountain tops, cutting birds and bats out of the sky, and and bringing huge amounts of ship traffic to these areas offshore where the vulnerable whale populations live and fish and all these other beings who we share this this world and these oceans with who they they don't need electricity.
Max Wilbert:They don't need these industrial products. They need a a they need a home. Right? They need a place where they can survive and be well and flourish. And, and so there is this this, this real arrogance, I think, that underlies the technological solutionism that we see.
Max Wilbert:You know, as I'm sure you know, John Trudell called it technologic. Okay. And he did a lot of writing and fighting against nuclear power and nuclear energy, which is having a resurgence right now because of these very people, because they believe it's low carbon energy and that somehow is is good for the plan and or that's all that matters. Discounting the the impacts of uranium mining, the impacts of installing and maintaining these facilities, and the nuclear waste itself, which represents dangers for nuclear proliferation as we sit now at perhaps in the most nuclear danger of of an Armageddon that we have seen since the height of the cold war. I don't think many people realize how dangerous of a situation we're in right now with the tension rising between Iran and Israel and, the fact that Israel has nuclear weapons and has these far right warmongers in charge of elements of the government and and the military.
Max Wilbert:And then on the other side, you have, you have heavily armed Iran, which probably doesn't have a nuclear weapon at this point, but then you have nations like Pakistan, which do and which might intervene or fire back if Iran were to attack or Israel were to attack Iran. So the nuclear approach just represents so many problems. And and, again, I think, John Trudell said it well when he said techno logic. There is no logic behind this approach. It's, it's very, very shortsighted.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:Thank you for that remembering and bringing up an elder of late John Chudell. One one thing again, Max, is that there is, and I found this out later that the World Economic Forum and subsidiaries and whoever deals with Wall Street and Trade Stock Exchange. And what they've done is assess the value of Earth, and that assessment was valued at $400,000,000,000,000. So in Wall Street, things are being stock trading is because of land, and you can see how this fits here. It's no longer the legality of what people are doing.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:It's actually lethality. Lethality. How much damage can you do without destroying that whole ecosystem? We're not really paying attention or reacting as an environmental group movement, whether it's left, right, mainstream, whatnot, and and complaining about what's hurting us and what the problem is in being not being proactive about paying attention to what's underneath and what's going on behind us. So you have an example of 22, your substack in biosafety.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:And I think part of that is really underlying a lot of what people are doing here and indigenous peoples are doing, fighting massive solar energy projects like you you've said and mentioned, resisting these these projects and also understanding the rivers and and ecological wastelands. So this this is language that is so foreign, very denatured language. A lot of this denatured language leads to biophobic language, and John Trudell said technologic. So we're we're into this using these other languages to catch up with the naturalness that we are missing. What have they lost in the environmental movement?
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:We can say all the right things and throw money towards what we believe is the right things, but the, the result is always the same thing. Land is losing its life because of our acceptance of technology, AI, and so much more.
Max Wilbert:Yes. Yes. Absolutely. I well, I think there are 2 forces that drive this. One is there is a large segment of the population, you know, in in this country, in what's now called the United States, and around the world in many places that believe that believe in the ideology of technological progress and that have believed in it for generations, have believed in this idea.
Max Wilbert:It it it's the exact same ideology that was behind manifest destiny behind, Hitler trying to to purify the Aryan race and create some sort of, you know, Uber mentioned, this this this this Superman idea and and create a a nation of technological might and power. It's it's the same idea that we have seen over and over again throughout world history of communities and nations of people seizing onto technology as as power and in a way as a weapon. Secretary secretary Granholm, she's the energy secretary for the United States right now, has spoken about weaponizing green power, so called green power, weaponizing it, to to build increased geopolitical power for the United States and and and allies. And there's a very clear understanding among these people that to do these things is to gain access to more power, to extend empire and increase its power to create the outcomes it wants in the world. And this this is assisted along unintentionally, perhaps by many people who perhaps are less actively supportive of, of empire, but who believe that it is not publicly acceptable to critique these things.
Max Wilbert:And so they hold their tongues. They hold back, and they don't speak the truth that they actually believe in their hearts that destroying the land is wrong, whether it's for coal mining or for fracking or for solar energy farms or for industrial agriculture or urban sprawl or whatever else. It's just wrong to do this. And that there are ways that we can live in balance with the land. But many people hold back on that because, speaking out favorably towards these renewable energy projects is a great way to access more funding, to get grants and get donations, to get votes, to get public support.
Max Wilbert:It's not very popular to oppose these projects in the environmental movement. And so I think many people as well are unfortunately taking what what really amounts to a coward's way out. And and I I try to say that with compassion rather than attacking those people because I understand why they make that choice. It makes sense even though I don't choose to make that choice, and I wish that they and hope and try to help them find the courage to speak out. And and between these 2, these 2 forces, these 2 groups speaking out in favor of these technologies and pushing it forward.
Max Wilbert:And, of course, the massive corporations that are making 1,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars off of these green energy technologies. Of course, Tesla now one of the largest companies in the world. The the the amount of power that's lining up behind this is is massive. We are seeing opposition. You mentioned in in this recent essay I wrote, I included a list of 22 different communities around the world which are fighting back against either industrial wind energy projects, solar projects, mining associated with these technologies, or other similar similar, destructive activities.
Max Wilbert:And, these communities come from all over the world. They come from different backgrounds, different politics, different approaches to the issues. But I think it's important to tell the stories of these communities because it's not just one case here and there. It's a pattern. And that pattern is very important because this new energy transition, this new push for mining and so on, it is a new industrial revolution.
Max Wilbert:It is a new front in the war that industrial civilization has been waging against the planet. And you've spoken so eloquently to Kacen about making peace with the planet. We need to end that war and people are making the mistake thinking that this is a way to end the war that is global warming, but the the global warming is only one front in this broader this broader issue that we're seeing. And, and so it's it's I also wanna, of course, support those communities, get their stories out there. You know, just most recently at the end of that list, I mentioned there are a bunch of different tribal communities in what's now called Oregon and and California who are speaking out against offshore wind projects, wind energy projects here on the West Coast because, there's major concerns.
Max Wilbert:The whole ecosystem out there in the ocean off the coast of this area, is fueled by the these currents that bring up nutrients from deep underwater towards the surface, and those nutrients feed the plankton and feed the fish and, the reefs and the kelp forests and the whales and and feed everything. And these wind turbines could actually modify the currents of the entire ocean because they're not taking energy from nowhere. They're pulling it out of the wind, and that changes things. That changes things. And it's not understood that the best science available right now doesn't, even under begin to understand what the consequences of that could be.
Max Wilbert:These technologies are so new and so poorly understood that there's a chance that moving ahead with this could be just like building the dams on the Columbia River, you know, destroying the salmon and the the lampreys and, and the sturgeon and all these fish communities that rely on a free flowing river without even realizing what you're doing without even knowing what you're doing.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:Max, the because we're talking about thinking processes here And what we've learned and what we need to unlearn, or are we unlearning, you know, decolonizing our experience with earth and what we've done experimenting with earth, which is now technology. We're still in that old school mentality antiquated that we own earth. But there's another one that's coming to light. How are you going to relearn to live with earth? In other words, we can't relearn what we've learned in the 1st place with the same process and the same mechanical thinking.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:Fairly new language to native people. That since we've had this forever, not just something fairly new to us. So but people are going with it because they understand that grassroots language, but not enough tree roots language. Earth is a being, and all these things are being done to her. And this is my Farfetch mind working here.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:I'm thinking about autoimmune disease. Earth will know and is knowing what's wrong with it and begins to fight back or even take away from itself and dealing with who is the antibiotic here, who is the antiviral people, the humans, let alone other other beings that are also fighting back. See, we don't give enough credit to other divergent forms of life because they also are fighting back. But we think we can save the day by just being environmentalist saving the day, saving Earth. So I'm seeing, like, the many things wrong with people are actually the same things that are about to happen to Earth.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:She's going to go into where she's going to attack herself in order to really cleanse. Now this is nothing to do with superstition or prophecy. This is just my own non conspiratorial mind saying, where's this logic going? And now this is the way out, and I'm I'm willing to take this risk on radio that we are the the the humans attacking earth, and we are not natural beings anymore. And we're finding reason and and and and rationale to keep doing this because something in the core of us is missing.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:And I just wanted to do that because you talked about the ideology of of technology and how how we've, really idolized ourself or ideal situation such as Dubai. Yeah. You know? Like, we're gonna get out of this if we keep going with technology. That Earth is actually gonna it's like, okay.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:I'm done. I'm done. I'm tired with this. Earth is in correction mode right now, because that's what I'm feeling. That's that's the energy I'm feeling from Earth.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:Yeah. If you can go far out there with me, I'd welcome your comments.
Max Wilbert:I love the I love the far out conversation, and it it doesn't feel far out to me at all. I mean, the the I there's there's even scientists who have have spoken about this, not to lift science above our intuition and and and different types of knowledge. But interestingly, there are scientists who have talked about, you know, it's wrong to think about different species of life evolving on top of a dead planet, on top of rocks that are dead, that it's more accurate to think of life itself as a property of a planet, as an emergent process that is happening to an entire planet where all the life is is at, in some sense, the same process flowing in and out of, of itself. And, and we know this is true in some ways, because the water that is inside my body right now was once inside the bodies of many different creatures was once inside ice and on top of mountains and in the Arctic and the Antarctic, and and was once blood that was spilled on the ground when some ancient creature was was hunted by another creature. And that there's this circle, the circle of life.
Max Wilbert:We we know this, and it's reflected in the stories and the cultures of different communities all around the world, going back throughout human history. And I think you're absolutely right. Whenever I get discouraged, Yokosun, whenever I feel alone standing up. Just the other day, I was speaking at a conference and I felt nervous because I still get nervous when I speak in front of a cloud crowd. You know?
Max Wilbert:I'm I'm gonna embarrass myself. I'm gonna say something really stupid. And, and whenever I do that, I always come back to, I'm not speaking for myself. I'm just here as a conduit. I'm just here to speak on behalf of the trees because they don't speak this English language.
Max Wilbert:They can't uproot themselves and walk into this room and address these people inside and indoors. And they can't, you know, join a podcast, at least not in the way that that most people would understand or appreciate. And so we have this this unique voice and ability to communicate with each other in this way, in this particular way. And whenever I I do that, of course, I also think that you're exactly right. Whether it's the ice that is crying apart the concrete or, the dandelions that are doing the same thing, or whether it's, you know, squirrels and different animals taking down electric power lines, often dying in the process.
Max Wilbert:But they're by their very lives, they are taking action against this particular way of life, this particular industrial model. And, you know, winter winter is so we have the strongest allies available or imaginable in, in life on this planet itself, the natural forces all around us. And I think you're absolutely right. That so much of what we're seeing is, every every action causes a reaction. That's a relational world, and that's the type of world we live in.
Max Wilbert:That's the type of reality we live in. And so much of what we're seeing, whether it's disease or, increasing natural disasters or floods, droughts, desertification, and soil falling to pieces. All of these different issues are ultimately consequences that that should have been foreseen and should have caused people and should cause people now to, to take action, to change, to change the ways, to change the things that cause those.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:Max Wilbert, a longtime friend here at least on First Voices Radio, who's a writer, biocentric community organizer, wrote several books, including bright green lies, how the environmental movement lost its way and what we can do about it, was published in 2021 by Mung Fish. And he's again studying for a master's in the growth. And just to just to round us up, a little bit, you know, the the the thing that I really was moved by is alarming when you said weaponizing green power. Always a military thing, always technology, always leaving a nature behind second place. And, yes, we've taken everything away from Earth, just about everything.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:And now we're we're telling Earth the solutions for her. You see, this is what this the the left or the environmental movement, even the right, of course, at all. They're telling Earth what's good for it or her. And the same they've done with indigenous peoples. This is how you have a movement.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:This is what you do. You apply for that money to to sustain yourself for temporary purposes, but yet that's still weaponizing the mind so that you don't really understand the consciousness of birth. Binary. So earth is not working in a binary process. This is why when the elders speak, they're they're thinking with the Earth, not out of a human library.
Max Wilbert:Yeah. Absolutely. And I'm reminded, just I'll I'll say this. This will be the last thing. I I recently read an an old interview.
Max Wilbert:It's about 10 years old with Leanne Simpson who, who is part of this interview is about the idle no more movement. And she tells a story of talking with an elder named Robin Green from Shoal Lake Community in Winnipeg. And she Leanne Simpson asked him if there was a similar concept in the Anishinaabe worldview to sustainable development. And she says he thought for a very long time, and he said no. He says the concept is backwards, and this is so relevant to this whole idea of of green technology.
Max Wilbert:He said the concept is backwards. You don't develop as much as mother earth can handle. And he said, for us, it's the opposite. You think about how much you can give up to promote more life. Every decision you make is based on, do you really need to be doing that?
Max Wilbert:And she says the whole purpose of this life is it this continuous rebirth to promote more life. And it's such a fundamentally different approach that, you know, that that that he was relating in that story and that I know my ancestors used to follow the similar ways at one point because they wouldn't have survived if they didn't. They just wouldn't have. They would have destroyed their land, and and eventually they lost that thread. And so many of us have lost that thread.
Max Wilbert:And that's what I'm seeing with the environmental movement is is that losing that thread, losing that fundamental connection to, this life, this continuous rebirth that is so much bigger than ourselves. I think when we situate ourselves within that, then the idea of doing something like destroying a mountain to create temporary consumer products and wealth in the short term at the expense of poisoning the future and leaving behind the wasteland. That idea would become impossible to even conceptualize. And that's really the type of future that I wanna be working towards.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:This is how you were going to think. If we think with earth, it's a whole lot more valuable than making decisions through the bank. Just again, wanna thank you for that honor of being here with you and being able to talk with you once again in your stance and in your energy. It's an honor to have you here on First Voices Radio Max.
Max Wilbert:Thank you so much, Tiokasin. I I just think these type of conversations are so important, and I hope that the listeners will get something out of this and and continue to ponder and have those conversations and and be carried into action in some way.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:1st Voices Radio, and I'm your host, Tiokasin Ghosthorse.
Speaker 3:It's hard to keep a moment for yourself when you're caught up in the game. You get the feeling you're only dealing the train. Save your money, keep the motor running. Drag the ball and chain. You can tell there's something else you wish you could feel.
Speaker 3:There's a secret you wish you'll keep in wheels within wheels. Your whole time with all your mind, you hold on what seems real. You can't let go of what you know and let them be revealed. Well, I got something you want, baby. It's not for sale I'll write on the sunshine.
Speaker 3:Catch me if you can. I feel like I'm a god. Can you slow the rain?
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:I just wanna say bye. Thank you for joining us here on First Voices Radio. My name is Jokusen Ghosthorse. Thanks again.
