Voice, Choice and Action Gathering

I'd like to acknowledge that we are gathered here today in the traditional homelands of the Haudenosaunee and the lands of the Seneca Nation. And on behalf of The Nature Conservancy, I'd like to respectfully ask for permission to gather on these lands so that we may post this learning exchange on respectful partnership with indigenous peoples and local communities for conservation across the world. We feel a certain amount of responsibility to speak out for those that don't have a voice, not onl

y for children, but for the plants, the animals. Who's speaking out for them? We are here together to really support the sovereignty of the voices, choices and actions of indigenous people. So as The Nature Conservancy, we are learning to work in good partnership with them in service of the work that they do in their own communities every day as part of their own cultures. I'm often struck by this fiction that we have created for ourselves that we can really affect change in the world simply wit

h information, simply with knowledge and evidence. We know that that's not true. Our promise is to not simply act from the intellect which is kind of the silo of western science, but to say let's connect it to heart and indeed to spirituality, by which I mean our commitment to something which is so much bigger than any one of us. It's just been really heartening to share with folks doing this work in other countries and to hear about really novel and unique ways that indigenous people are streng

thening their sovereignty and their nations and their access and care of traditional lands. We need to move away from extractive practices within the organization to accomplish our mission and to really honor and respect the whole systems and indigenous worldviews that create the outcomes that we're seeking. Recognizing our role in this place and stepping back when we need to, to let our indigenous partners lead. The people that are going to be in the territory forever and the people that is the

territory are the indigenous people and the local communities. So they are the mainly stakeholder that TNC has to work. How we treat ourselves, how we treat our families, how we treat our communities all relates to how we're also treating the natural world around us, and we're not in right relationship with the natural world right now. Global warming is a soft term. This is an existential crisis we're in here now, right now. We wake up every day and we see our beautiful islands being taken away

and swallowed by the rising sea levels. Things are not good with our environment in Canada and it's on fire. Their whole world is up in flames. What our ancestors always told and warned us about, which would come true, and when you look outside and you see nothing but haze and smoke in the air, they told us a long time ago that these days were coming. We start from our families first. From individuals to our families, to our local communities, and we grow from that. And if we don't have the par

tners on board with us, we're never going to make a difference because we as indigenous people of Australia, only 3% of the population cannot make that change on our own. We've all got our own stories and our own journeys that we walk and how we work, and it's about bringing our perspective to the table, sharing it with others, and learning from each other. We call it Utu, a cycle of reciprocity. We get to understand one another better, how we live, why we do these things, and it begins to creat

e a balance and to have that understanding and compassion for one another so that we can work together and break down those silos and to really know the truth about the people that exist here. My hope is that through gatherings like this that I know The Nature Conservancy is a lot of scientists and tapping into not only the power of the brain, but the power of the heart. What is going to save us from this climate crisis is changing how we show up. And if we have the ability to change the organiz

ation internally and start showing up to toward environmental justice, speaking truth to power, and taking a stand, we will start to change and address climate change. A call to action is to rematriate those lands back to the care and the tending by indigenous peoples as an act of justice for colonialism, but as a restorative act. We are also in New York undertaking a statewide analysis of all the lands that we care for to understand where are opportunities for indigenous access, for ceremony, f

or resource gathering, for hunting and fishing. And we are looking at all of these lands for opportunities for rematriation, [inaudible 00:06:18] of ancestral land, returning lands to indigenous nations. My vision for the actions that we are able to take is that TNC isn't necessarily saying we led this initiative, but instead we have indigenous peoples who are the leaders in their own places and they have told us what they need from us, and so we are able to service provide for them instead of s

aying, we'll take the lead on all of it. And I think that's the transformation and action that we're really looking for.