TRANSCRIPT
Adam Huggins 00:04
Picture a courtroom. The lawyers are opening their briefcases, ruffling through their notes, getting ready to present their respective arguments in the case of the people of the state of California versus BP, Exxon Mobil, Shell, ConocoPhillips and Chevron, the five largest oil companies in the world, responsible for at least 11% of all global carbon emissions since the Industrial Revolution. As the judge enters and takes a seat, a hush falls over the onlookers in the gallery. The case should be a slam dunk. But the judge dismisses the suit, not because the climate crisis isn't real, all are in agreement that it is, and not because the defendants aren't key contributors, all are in agreement that they are. Instead in his opinion, the judge writes, our industrial revolution and the development of our modern world has literally been fueled by oil and coal. Without those fuels, virtually all of our monumental progress would have been impossible. Would it really be fair to now ignore our own responsibility in the use of fossil fuels, and place the blame for global warming on those who supplied what we demanded? In other words, we're all invested. We've all benefited. We can't just throw these companies under the bus, can we? Not after all they've done for us. All that they're still doing for us. Look at what we've built together. Perhaps this is what the proud denizens of Atlantis thought, as their fabled Metropolis was swallowed up by the sea.
Adam Huggins 02:09
Which raises the question, What determines whether we're psychologically prepared to go down with the ship or to strike out for more solid ground? Deep at the bottom of the ocean, amongst the wreckage of doomed vessels, and stoic seamen, lie the dragons of sunk costs. The secrets they guard may determine our fate. These are the Dragons of Climate Inaction. their habitat is in our minds. And this podcast is your field guide. Welcome to Chapter Six Relatives of the Deep.
Introduction Voiceover 02:49
This is Scales of Change: a field guide to the Dragons of Climate Inaction. Join us as we learn to spot them in the wild, and discover how they can be disarmed. Produced by Future Ecologies on the traditional territories of the Lekwungen and WSÁNEĆ peoples, with support from the University of Victoria.
Adam Huggins 03:23
Welcome back. I'm Adam.
Mendel Skulski 03:25
And I'm Mendel. And we're here with Robert Gifford to uncover the secrets of the dragons of sunk costs.
Adam Huggins 03:32
And if this whole dragon thing isn't making sense to you, check out our introduction to this series entitled A Theory of Change.
Mendel Skulski 03:40
Okay, if you're ready, let's dive right in.
Robert Gifford 03:42
Sunk costs is something I learned about because I never even took economics 101 but that's an economic concept. Once I own something, it tends to prevent me from doing something else.
Adam Huggins 03:57
That sense of ownership can manifest in any number of ways, literal and figurative. That's why we've named this dragon genus Pretium, after the Latin root for price.
Mendel Skulski 04:08
The most straightforward form of ownership in our society has its mirror in the Dragon of Financial Investments: Pretium pecunia.
Robert Gifford 04:18
So the obvious one, which is not by no means the only one is, say, owning oil stocks. So I have a colleague who owns a bunch of oil stocks, and so because of cognitive dissonance, it's hard for him to also think that climate is a big problem, because there's a tension between these two things. And so what we say in the cognitive dissonance literature, it's easier to change your mind than it is to change your behaviour. So in that case, what happens is, I change my mind that climate change is not important, as opposed to what's a little bit harder: that is, sell my oil stocks,
Mendel Skulski 04:52
These kinds of financial entanglements can influence our behaviour. They're the reason politicians and judges are expected to recuse them themselves from decisions that may affect their personal investments.
Adam Huggins 05:04
The Dragon of Financial Investments operates at a societal level too. It's one of the reasons Southern landowners in the United States were willing to go to war and die in the 1860s to preserve the system of chattel slavery that their whole economy was based on.
Mendel Skulski 05:22
Canadian journalist Andrew Nikiforuk actually makes a compelling argument that our economic structures haven't really changed that much since the 1860s.
Adam Huggins 05:32
Wealthy countries have just substituted fossil fuels for human bodies as a new form of what he calls: energy slavery. And as you heard in the judge's decision in our introduction, that was a real judge in a real case, by the way, we're just as wedded to this form of energy slavery as the Antebellum South was to its own.
Mendel Skulski 05:54
The point is, you don't by any means have to own oil stocks, in order to be invested in the fossil fuel economy.
Robert Gifford 06:01
But the less obvious example than owning oil stocks is just owning a car. Because it's like, well, why should I take the bus if I have a car? It kind of, doesn't make any sense. This thing is depreciating, I'm paying insurance on it, and then you want me to go on the bus? So there's different kinds of sunk costs, and they're not all directly financial.
Mendel Skulski 06:24
Consider, for example, the Dragon of Behavioral Momentum: Pretium impetus.
Adam Huggins 06:31
I like to think of this one as the Dragon of Inertia.
Robert Gifford 06:34
Well, I should- it should be called lack of behavioral momentum, shouldn't it? But I think you're right about that. But, just habit.
Mendel Skulski 06:42
Basically, as we've discussed in past episodes, we're largely creatures of habit. And those habits are a form of behavioural investment that can be very hard to overcome. As anyone who's ever made a new year's resolution will know.
Robert Gifford 06:57
It's not an exciting dragon. It's kind of the dragon over in a corner that's bored and boring to look at, but is one of the biggest dragons in the pride.
Adam Huggins 07:09
So we're going to move on to something a little more exciting. Our next dragon, conflicting goals and aspirations. Beyond financial and behavioural investments, our deepest investments are often in the stories we tell ourselves and others about our lives, where we're from and where we're headed. For most of us, at least those of us who aren't Robert's mules, we aspire to more than just mitigating global climate change in our lives. And often, these other aspirations, conflict with climate action.
Robert Gifford 07:43
We legitimately have other things in our life that are important. We want to take care of our health. We want to take care of our children. We want to have a nice place to live. We want to do a good job at work. And so these things are legitimate goals. But sometimes they're used as an excuse to not do things for the climate, when it is still possible to do to make room to do something for it.
Mendel Skulski 08:11
A really basic example for us is the conflict between wanting to reduce our carbon footprints, but also to make the best podcast possible. Which means actually getting out there in the field, talking to folks in person, and taking you, our listeners along for the ride. And it's so easy to just use the podcast itself as a justification to say, travel to California or to Haida Gwaii to get that good tape in person. It massively increases our carbon footprint. But those ends justify the means, right?
Adam Huggins 08:47
As Robert has said previously, we're more a rationalizing species than a rational species. When our top priority is the safety of our children, it's easy to rationalize driving them around in a big ol' SUV to reduce collision damage even though it may not be necessary. Or to take that far off vacation because we really do work so hard and probably deserve it right? In this way, we can give ourselves a nearly endless license to consume energy and resources.
Mendel Skulski 09:17
If we can afford it.
Adam Huggins 09:18
By just framing that consumption within a set of highly justifiable priorities like health or safety, stress reduction, career goals, or even trying to make a podcast to help spur climate action.
Mendel Skulski 09:33
But as Robert said, it doesn't have to be either or so we split the difference for this series by doing our interviews remotely, and still going out into the field but keeping it really local. And we just hope that for all of you listening from beyond the Salish Sea, there will still be a lot for you to take away from all this. It's our hundred mile podcast diet.
Adam Huggins 09:56
And staying local has allowed us to focus on one of the most challenging dragons of all Pretium dissocioterra or the Dragon of Place Attachment.
Mendel Skulski 10:07
We're going to spend the rest of this episode focusing on place attachment, or the lack thereof.
Mendel Skulski 10:15
When Robert first explained this dragon to us, it seemed really straightforward. If we have a strong relationship to place, we're more likely to want to protect that place from environmental harm, more likely to notice the effects of the climate crisis that are already impacting the places we love.
Adam Huggins 10:32
And reciprocally, if we move around a lot, or don't really have a strong connection to place. We might not notice the world changing, or really care about what happens to the places that we live in.
Robert Gifford 10:45
You know, if it's my nest, I want to make sure it's nice and clean and looked after. If it's not my nest. I'm kind of a cuckoo bird who lays eggs and let somebody else take care of it. That's one for your biologists there.
Adam Huggins 10:59
You know I'll take it. And the metaphor is actually more apt than it appears at first. Because as we're about to discover, the idea of place attachment is so much more complex than just, we care or we don't care about the places we live in. It touches the deepest parts of our emotions and our identities, perhaps even our languages, which is why Robert directed us to a subject matter expert.
Robert Gifford 11:25
Yeah, this one should be credited to my former PhD student, Leila Scannell. She's the global expert on place attachment and I'm just the hanger or the supervisor or something like that.
Mendel Skulski 11:37
And through the power of podcasting, here is Leila.
Leila Scannell 11:41
So my name is Dr. Leila Scannell, and I am a researcher, environmental psychologist and I've studied place attachment in various different contexts.
Adam Huggins 11:52
Starting with the basics.
Leila Scannell 11:54
Place attachment is a strong emotional connection between an individual and their important environment. So it's emotional, it's a cognitive, it's a behavioral connection between an individual and their important place.
Mendel Skulski 12:08
And that important place can take many forms.
Leila Scannell 12:12
The literature says some of the most common places we become attached to are places of residence, it may be a childhood home, places in nature, that's very common as well, because we know that nature offers a certain psychological benefit and so that we're more likely to be attached to those types of places.
Mendel Skulski 12:29
I think most of us have at least one place that has this special emotional attachment to it. Whether we return to our childhood homes in our dreams or fall in love with a particular ecosystem, or, you know, just spend all of our lives in the same community.
Adam Huggins 12:47
So far, so good. But here's where it gets complicated. We knew from speaking with Robert that the longer we stay in a place, the more attached we're likely to be to it.
Robert Gifford 12:58
One thing we know about place attachment is by and large, one of the main factors is that people's place attachment grows with the length of time they spend in one place. They get to know it better, they become familiar, they begin to identify with it. And so one of the reasons that place attachment is related to more positive attitudes is simply the length of time that you spend in a place.
Mendel Skulski 13:18
And from there, you can infer that the less time we spend in places, the less attached we are to them. And the less attached we are, the more likely we are not to notice or care about environmental degradation.
Robert Gifford 13:31
That's true, you know what, the average length of time people spend in the same place is shrinking by the year. And so that's creating less and less place attachment in general because that, not surprisingly, the main predictor of place attachment is length of residence in a place. It's not the only one but that's the key predictor. So the more we're a migratory society, the less place attachment and then the less care about that environment.
Adam Huggins 14:02
And I think this rings as intuitively true to many of us. I've personally moved dozens of times in my life from Florida to Ontario, California to British Columbia. And I've just now finally chosen a place to put down some roots and try to practice place attachment as a form of climate action. So the idea of a highly mobile society losing that place attachment, makes a lot of sense. But when we spoke to Laila, something much more unsettling came to the surface.
Leila Scannell 14:32
But I wouldn't say that lack of place attachment is a problem in society. In fact, oftentimes, I think that people are so strongly attached to a place that sometimes that can be the problem.
Mendel Skulski 14:44
She took Robert’s dragon and flipped it completely upside down.
Leila Scannell 14:49
Yeah. So it could be somebody totally disconnected from a community, they don't care, or they're disconnected from the natural environment. And so in that sense, they don't have motivation to protect it. Or it could be that they're very attached to the place and they want to keep using the place in the same way. So for example, I'm from the Kootenays, there's a little lake called Christina lake. And there's a lot of boaters that go there every year. And that for them being attached to Christina Lake means boating. But if everyone's boating on the lake and you know, creating the negative environmental impacts of that fun behaviour, then that can be a way of harming the place that they're very attached to. So strong place attachment can be a barrier in a way as well as not being attached and being disconnected from a place.
Adam Huggins 15:36
Leila's research has dug deep into the effects of place attachment on climate action. And her results show that there is a positive relationship between place attachment and caring about the climate. But it really depends on what we mean when we say place.
Leila Scannell 15:53
So I looked at two communities in BC, Nelson and Trail in the Kootenays and in both communities, being attached to the natural environment is associated with more pro-environmental action. But only in one community, being attached to the civic aspects of that community is associated with more pro-environmental behaviour. And that is being attached to Nelson, which is just espouses environmental values in terms of its identity. And in Trail they have different goals and different things that they're focusing on – it's industry, it's lifestyle, it's sports. And so, you know, you can be very attached to both places, but it has a different outcome in terms of environmental behaviour.
Mendel Skulski 16:36
This is where place attachment collides with world views to produce a major barrier to positive environmental change.
Leila Scannell 16:43
So there's two, there's two dragons there I guess, there's the one that's the disassociation one; however you frame that. And then the other dragon is one that it's kind of like um, it's a very defensive dragon. It's like a, don't don't touch my dragon cave, this is how-- I want it the way it is, don't change anything. So they're different I think they're different dragons.
Mendel Skulski 17:06
[Whispering] I believe we've just witnessed the hatching of a new dragon.
[Egg cracking, baby lizard cooing]
Mendel Skulski 17:15
Deep attachments to place become parts of our identity. And if our collective notions of place are more civic than ecological in nature, that can radically alter the outcomes of that attachment.
Adam Huggins 17:28
So for example, let's say that you're attached to the idea of a place called America. From sea to shining sea, you know, liberty, property, the pursuit of happiness. This was all drilled into me as a child anyway. And if you're really attached and protective of this idea of this place, then you might view any major social change as a threat. We're seeing this play out with COVID-19, which has forced countries all around the world to radically change almost overnight. And suddenly, you have folks coming of the woodwork making truly unhitched arguments. That only makes sense if you take into account the power of the Dragon of Place Attachment. People like the Lieutenant Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick. I have to apologize for this ahead of time, but here he is on Fox News.
Media Clip 18:17
[Dan Patrick] I'm living smart, listening to the President, the CDC guidelines like all people should. But I'm not living in fear of COVID-19. What I'm living in fear of is what's happening to this country. And you know, Tucker, no one reached out to me and said, as a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren? And if that's the exchange, I'm all in.
Mendel Skulski 18:49
Oh my God. So that phrase, “the America that all America loves”, is doing a lot of work here.
Adam Huggins 18:58
Yeah, he he's basically arguing that seniors, not to mention other immunocompromised folks might be willing to forego social distancing and risk a painful, lonely death to preserve the idea of America that he's talking about. Which the cynical side of me would just say is the settler colonial capitalist economy wrapped in a flag. But if you listen to him, and know, it's impossible to say for sure with politicians, he seems genuinely concerned. Right?
Media Clip 19:27
[Dan Patrick] And that doesn't make me noble or brave or anything like that. I just think there are lots of grandparents out there in this country like me, I have six grandchildren, that what we all care about, and what we love more than anything, are those children. And I want to, you know, live smart and and see through this, but I don't want the whole country to be sacrificed.
Mendel Skulski 19:49
If only he and these other grandparents could see the well being of their grandchildren as actually being tied to the climate. I mean, the… the logical endpoint of this horrible reactionary version of place attachment is a toxic blend of nimbyism, nationalism and sacrifice zones.
Adam Huggins 20:14
Speaking of sacrifice zones, I kind of get the feeling that Dan Patrick would sacrifice the entire planet to protect his notion of "the America that all America loves". And that's kind of the point that I'm trying to make. Place attachment is a serious double edged sword. If we don't have enough of it, it's a definite barrier to climate action. We don't care. But if we have a lot of it, the question then becomes what is the nature of that place attachment?
[Cuckoo clock rings]
Adam Huggins 20:49
Different cultures can perceive place in radically different ways. And I think the cuckoo bird that Robert brought up earlier, is actually a really disturbing metaphor. For the settler colonial mindset, that is so tied to the climate crisis that we're in. Like this bird has evolved to lay its egg in another birds nest, and when that egg hatches, it displaces and destroys all of the other eggs that were already in the nest and takes all of the food and space for itself.
Mendel Skulski 21:19
Yeah, it's pretty dark.
Adam Huggins 21:21
And that's just how the cuckoo bird evolved. It's one life strategy among many. But we have a little bit more agency in our own evolutionary trajectory. And not all cultures have such a cavalier relationship to place.
[Music]
Adam Huggins 21:38
Which is why earlier this year, I tagged along for a day with a truly inspiring group of youth and elders here in the Salish Sea.
Mendel Skulski 21:46
What were they up to?
Adam Huggins 21:47
Well, when I found them, they were pulling out an invasive species here called Daphne, which is actually really toxic. Like you don't want to touch the sap.
[People talking]
Adam Huggins 22:00
The group was part of something called the... okay, I'm going to try this ṮEṮÁĆES Climate Action Project.
Mendel Skulski 22:09
And what is that?
Adam Huggins 22:10
So we were on an island called Pender Island here in Southwestern BC. But that's not this island's only name. This is also the traditional territory of the W̱SÁNEĆ people. And in their language, which is called SENĆOŦEN, the name for Pender is SDȺY¸ES. This group was there for this totally unique five day field course, organized by a local non-profit and the W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership Council. And it was actually a mix of people who live on stays and people who came from elsewhere to be a part of this, also W̱SÁNEĆ people. The first person I spoke to, her name was Josephine Henry, and she's a W̱SÁNEĆ educator. She told me that it was learning her language that brought her out to the land that day.
Josphine Henry 22:57
Yeah, I am fortunate to be learning, I'm learning SENĆOŦEN. That's how I became involved and that's how I'm here and that's where the teachings and the language you know, like that I'm learning all about, you know, this place and other places through the language.
Adam Huggins 23:15
So it started with with language for you.
Josphine Henry 23:17
Yeah. And then…
Adam Huggins 23:19
Here you are removing Daphne.
Josphine Henry 23:20
Right yeah.
Adam Huggins 23:22
It's a rabbit hole.
Josphine Henry 23:22
Feels awesome.
Adam Huggins 23:24
In a nutshell, the project is based on the W̱SÁNEĆ teaching that the creator hails cast out stones from a mountain top on Vancouver Island. And these stones became the Gulf islands, or the ṮEṮÁĆES, and the W̱SÁNEĆ were given the responsibility to look after these islands.
Josphine Henry 23:42
These islands are our villages. Our assorted villages spread out all across our territories. Our teachings that have been handed down to us from x̣éʔəl̕s, our Creator, to protect our relatives of the deep. ṮEṮÁĆES… that’s what’s ṮEṮÁĆES means: relatives of the deep.
Mendel Skulski 24:05
Relatives of the deep… I can see that you'd be more inclined to protect these islands, if you think of them literally as members of your family.
Josphine Henry 24:18
In the creation story of these islands and of these places, that's what He foretold, as He, you know, after upon creating them, protect [SENĆOŦEN]. We’re meant to protect these places, or other homelands all of our homelands as they were our relatives of the deep.
Josphine Henry 24:39
[SENĆOŦEN] and so I'm here.
Adam Huggins 24:42
Yeah, doing your part.
Josphine Henry 24:43
Yeah. Trying
Adam Huggins 24:46
Getting this Daphne out. Can I give it a tug?
Josphine Henry 24:52
Yeah go for it.
[Sound of pulling Daphne]
Adam Huggins 24:56
I can't keep my distance from this stuff.
Mendel Skulski 25:01
Sounds like you two are really getting to the root of the problem.
Adam Huggins 25:06
I couldn't resist getting my hands dirty. But yeah, the root of the problem is displacement. Right? And that sense of displacement was also felt by the non-indigenous folks there who were in some cases, getting to know the places they already loved in a completely new way.
Adam Huggins 25:24
All right, what's your name?
Nadia Nowak 25:25
Nadia.
Adam Huggins 25:26
Nadia, why are you here?
Nadia Nowak 25:29
I'm here because I was born and raised here on Pender Island. And I didn't learn anything about the W̱SÁNEĆ history of this place throughout my whole childhood.
Adam Huggins 25:40
And it's almost like the course was designed for somebody with Nadia's background.
Nadia Nowak 25:45
I mean, I used to be more of a climate activist in the sense of advocating for particular carbon reduction limits, and that. And I still think that's, of course, absolutely critical. But I think over time, I've learned more about how the colonial regulatory system works, and now I see the future and like the revitalization of indigenous governance and laws as climate action.
Adam Huggins 26:17
And this is why she was out pulling Daphne that day. The land we were on is a W̱SÁNEĆ reserve bordering what is commonly called Bedwell harbour. And it's literally right next to this upscale resort called Poet's Cove.
Nadia Nowak 26:30
The indigenous history of this place, in particular, the Bedwell Harbour area, but Pender in general was essentially erased from my understanding of this place for my whole life. I took swimming lessons at the pool here at Bedwell Harbour as a kid. And my first ever job when I was 13 was cleaning rooms at the resort, and my mom was doing the bookkeeping and I continued to work at Poets Cove for a number of summers. After that I remember Poets Cove being constructed after they demolished the Bedwell Harbour resort, and I still didn't know the indigenous history. And maybe there were folks talking about that at the time, but I wasn't hearing it because I was a teenager and I was just, you know, self-absorbed doing my own thing, right. And so now learning, like actually sitting with W̱SÁNEĆ elders telling their stories of this place, and the pain that they still experienced as a result of their communities and their people being removed from their stories and their histories has been really moving for me. Yeah, so I have a lot to reflect on and think about.
Mendel Skulski 27:47
You know, I get the sense that like, Nadia, growing up in a place like this, she would actually be the kind of person who would have some serious place attachment to places like Poet's Cove and Bedwell Harbour as they are today.
Adam Huggins 28:03
You'd think right, but he or she was trying to undo some of the damage and learn to look at the place differently. The thing is, the W̱SÁNEĆ were forcibly removed from these islands. And Poet's Cove is actually built on top of a W̱SÁNEĆ village called QENEṈ,IW̱. It's really messed up. Village sites in this part of the world often include these mittens, which are filled with remains of what people were eating, but also human remains. And when the building crews excavated to build Poet's Cove, they actually just took all of those remains and dumped them unceremoniously on the W̱SÁNEĆ reserve lands. So later when we gathered around the fire to eat some salmon that they'd been cooking there in the traditional way, on these long skewers W̱SÁNEĆ hereditary chief and residential school survivor, Eric Pelkey talked about what it was like to go through that soil.
Erik Pelkey 29:01
Actually 40 sets of remains they found there. And it was pretty heartbreaking for them. So that's that. That's what all the spirit is here, you see, it's a pretty heartbreaking thing to see and it's a constant reminder to us when we come here that, that is those are the remains. The dirt that was removed from the excavation site when they expanded this hotel. And our people had to come and sift through them to find those remains. So that that is that is what this land really, really means to us. This is our old village site, and so it really, really means a lot.
Adam Huggins 29:59
And that's just one village site, the W̱SÁNEĆ people they lost so much more than that.
Erik Pelkey 30:06
We had a permanent camp gone in Pender canal that belonged to our family, it'd been used continuously. And then it was turned into a park, and our people were told they couldn't, couldn't camp there anymore and couldn't harvest there anymore. You know, oh, that really, really broke their heart. Because as a young man I remember our people used to come out here and climb, dig and hunt deer.
Mendel Skulski 30:39
That's so painful.
Mendel Skulski 30:44
And I'm sure there are settlers who now know Pender Canal as a park and have formed their own place attachments there.
Adam Huggins 30:51
Totally. But if the length of time you're in a place is related to the depth of attachment, then the W̱SÁNEĆ relationship is just on a whole other level. Here's Leila Scannell again, on the power of historical connections.
Leila Scannell 31:07
Time is also related to ancestral ties. So if we have generations of families or if we have cultural ties to a particular area, we're more likely to be attached to it.
Mendel Skulski 31:18
Right. And so the loss of it would just cut that much deeper.
Leila Scannell 31:23
It's very common that people express grief as a result of those place changes. That they can't use the place at the same way, they can't connect to the place and they've lost this continuity to the past. They've lost the social ties that go with this place. So yeah, there's grief and there's a lot of reasons for that when places are changed or lost.
Adam Huggins 31:46
I heard a lot of grief that day. But I also heard a lot of hope, because a huge part of this project is reconnecting with place. And I mean, here they are right? Despite everything, still caring for these lands, and also making space for settlers to participate and learn. That's how strong the relationship is.
Mendel Skulski 32:09
But how can a relationship, even a strong one, survive such a violent displacement.
Adam Huggins 32:19
The thing that kept coming up again and again, was the role of language. It didn't really sink in until I was on the ferry back home later that evening. But luckily, our associate producer Simone Miller actually attended one of these courses herself a couple weeks later and she got to sit down with some new friends and really dig into the conversation. They were actually staying at Poet's Cove for that course. And so Simone had to improvise a little bit.
Simone Miller 32:48
We're also, we're in the employees room right now in the hotel. So there's an element of risk.
Peter Underwood 32:55
Risk, yeah. Kind of spicy.
[Banter]
Mendel Skulski 33:05
It sounds like a covert operation.
Adam Huggins 33:08
I guess so. Anyway, here's Peter.
Peter Underwood 33:11
Yeah, ÍY SȻÁĆEL, my name is Peter Underwood. Yeah, I work at the University of Victoria and I'm here at the ṮEṮÁĆES field school.
Adam Huggins 33:22
And this is Sarah. A W̱SÁNEĆ visual artist and restorationist with the SṈIDȻEȽ Resiliency Project.
Sarah Jim 33:29
[SENĆOŦEN introduction] So I just introduced myself in SENĆOŦEN, and I just learned how to do that the other day, which is really exciting. So it's not as fluid or fluid as it should sound, but it's practice.
Mendel Skulski 33:51
I mean, it sounded fluid enough to me. So what is the relationship here between language and place?
Adam Huggins 34:01
Well, at the most basic level, there are place names. And when Simone asked Peter about place attachment, Peter referred to a place that's called Clover Point, after a delightful plant that used to grow there called springbank clover. It's pretty well known spot in the city of Victoria, British Columbia.
Peter Underwood 34:22
So yeah, at Clover Point there's no more springbank clover, so that kind of defeats the name of the purpose of the name of it being called Clover Point. The same thing happened with like, so many SENĆOŦEN place names. SENĆOŦEN is the language of the W̱SÁNEĆ people, but a lot of the SENĆOŦEN place names are… they no longer hold the same meaning because the name usually includes what is in the place, usually like a plant or an animal. And a lot of those places no longer have that unique feature anymore. There's a river, a creek – more like a small creek – nearby SṈIDȻEȽ, which used to make a special sound. And it was named after that special sound, the name of that little creek is called W̱EĆEĆE. Because it describes the way that the water would run over the rocks there, but after some of the blasting that's been done there, it doesn't make that sound anymore. So it almost shouldn't even have that name anymore, which is really sad. So I think bringing up a lot of those place names and how we've changed the environment so much that they don't even hold. Like the meaning, the purpose of the place is really huge in how we kind of attach ourselves to these places to an English these names aren't related to the place even. Some of them are, like Beaver and Elk Lake, but some of them are just named after colonizers, like people who so called discovered the land or people who settlers believe should be upheld and named after. Like, there's creeks that are named after random families or random people in history that did something supposedly notable. The silliest thing is like being the first Western doctor in the area when that's like, kind of cool, but there's been phenomenal doctors that have been here before, like, since for thousands of years, but they don't have like a Greek or anything yet for them. Because that's not the way W̱SÁNEĆ, to name places after people. If anything, we named ourselves after the land, like, we’re the W̱SÁNEĆ people because the name W̱SÁNEĆ comes from our sacred mountain, where the people of that area instead of the area being, you know, Hagen’s or Quadra, or whoever It's named after.
Mendel Skulski 36:59
So there's knowledge about place that's embedded in language, often through names, and which is made invisible when settlers just throw some sailor's name, for example, on that place instead. And that sort of allows people to change the place so thoroughly, that the indigenous name hardly even applies anymore.
Adam Huggins 37:23
Yeah and if you look around, you can see this everywhere. And even when settlers rename areas after natural features, they often just go ahead and transform those places beyond all recognition anyhow.
Mendel Skulski 37:35
Oh, this is actually one of my ultimate pet peeves. When a building gets put up, and they name it after the natural feature that got destroyed in its construction, like calling an apartment complex Oak Meadows or Walnut Grove when all of those trees are long gone.
Adam Huggins 37:53
Yeah, it's really aggravating. And the sad thing is that some of those places may never come back. But as long as that memory is still alive, and that relationship still holds through the indigenous name, and through oral history, there is still a chance to restore that sense of place. Like when we did the Daphne removal, I asked the restorationist in charge of the event, why we weren't going to plant any native plants after removing the Daphne. And she told me that we actually didn't need to plant anything else right away, because she knew that underneath the Daphne, this shallowly rooted invasive species, there were bulbs and roots and seeds of native wild flowers just waiting for the opportunity to return. So in one sense, these changes to place can be really profound. But in another sense, they can also be so ephemeral.
Mendel Skulski 38:50
I mean, that's a really beautiful image to have all those seeds and bulbs just waiting under the surface. But as we were discussing earlier with Leila, even though some of these settler names and place relationships are relatively recent and shallowly rooted, people can still be very attached to them- and to the cultural legacies and ways of life that they represent.
Adam Huggins 39:15
I mean, the project of settler colonialism has always been to sever indigenous peoples connection with land in order to allow settlers to occupy and exploit that land. Renaming these places and forming new place attachments based on settler economies, that's just part of the process.
Mendel Skulski 39:35
As is climate change.
Adam Huggins 39:37
Exactly. So, when we're talking about decolonization as a form of climate action, forming attachments to place that don't erase these rich histories? I mean, it's gonna it's going to be a messy process. And it's going to require a lot of healing of both land and people. I guess there's like there's this fundamental tension between Robert and Leila's perspectives on place attachment that we talked about earlier. Which is you can form deep attachments to place and still do tremendous harm to those places and to other people who have relationships with them. So, when Simone asked Sarah about place attachment, she told a story that really drove this point home.
Sarah Jim 40:25
So when place attachment was brought up. I immediately thought of our trip to Saturna today. I've never been to Saturna island, but W̱SÍḴEM and SȾÁ,UTW̱ have ties there. We have a big acreage of land that is owned by these nations. And I'm from W̱SÍḴEM. So I've, I'm part of that.
Adam Huggins 40:47
Just FYI, W̱SÍḴEM and SȾÁ,UTW̱ are two of the four W̱SÁNEĆ bands. And Saturna is another one of the Southern Gulf islands or that ṮEṮÁĆES.
Sarah Jim 40:58
And it was decided to log a big section of that last year by the people in charge of the nation's, the leadership. And so, like a lot of community members didn't agree with it, and we visited the site today and it was just a devastation. It was a total clear cut of 100 acres. You could see for as far as you can see, there was just no trees, everything was slashed, and it was just like a dead zone. I've never been to this place, I've never been to this island, I didn't really think about it much until the past few years. And I went there today, and I had just like a visceral feeling of loss. Like I felt like part of me was missing from this loss of habitat, this big forest that was old growth. I just cried because that was the only reaction I could do.
Sarah Jim 42:10
And it's never gonna be the same because once you disrupt a natural area, invasive species, that's when they strike that's when they take over. You know, we lost a lot of like medicines and a lot of habitat for not only us but animals and birds and insects and everything. So I'm just very saddened that that is the young people's legacy that we have to kind of deal with this now. We didn't have the privilege of going to this pristine forest today we had the opportunity of going to this giant clear cut. So when you say place attachment, I felt it in my, how do you say, səlí. I felt it in my body and səlí means soul. That that was our legacy. I don't know, I felt it in me. I felt loss, like a huge loss, and that I never knew I had in the first place. So it's just interesting when you say place attachment, how I felt it so deeply, and I've never been to this place before. Seeing it that way was extremely sad because that's not how we are. That's not our traditional values. You know, you, even when you harvest, you go to the plant and you give an offering of a prayer and you do it in in a good way. You ask permission before you take. You ask for consent. And then you harvest in a good way, you don't take more than you need you. You leave some for the birds or for other people. And that was our way, you know, we respected the land and it would respect you back. It would, it would, it's reciprocal, like Peter said.
Sarah Jim 43:53
And then once you start abusing it that's when stops giving to you.
Mendel Skulski 44:02
That's tragic.
Adam Huggins 44:04
Yeah. Not to single out the First Nations. This kind of clear cutting has been the practice everywhere in the West. And I'm sure they only made this decision out of dire economic need.
Sarah Jim 44:15
It's such a complex issue, because the decision to do this clear cut wasn't just a decision to do it. You know, like, there's so many factors that led up to it. Colonialism, capitalism, traumas, disconnection from the land, you know, it all adds up to this moment. And it's just so unfortunate that that decision was made to take that natural, beautiful pristine area away. That was probably one of the last natural areas of this area. And the indigenous people made the decision to get rid of it.
Adam Huggins 44:57
I think just sitting with this moment that Sarah is processing something that we all have to come to terms with eventually: that no matter who we are and where we come from, we're capable of harming the places that we love.
Mendel Skulski 45:17
I mean, we live in systems of exploitation that make that almost inevitable.
Adam Huggins 45:23
Right. Yeah. And as she said, there's so much history behind a decision to clear a forest like that. But what really stood out for me from the experience that she describes, is that Sarah had never been to this place before. And she still felt this pain and a desire to heal that land, without any prior relationship. And it says to me that we don't need to carry forward the same destructive relationships to place, of people that came before us. We can choose to take a more restorative path.
Sarah Jim 46:02
It's our land, it is our land. And as indigenous youth and just the community in general, we can band together and fix it. Plant, restore, you know, there's opportunities. So it can be a teaching tool in the future.
Adam Huggins 46:20
And that's the kind of spirit of what I think people came away with from these courses. This attachment to place, even though it can be fraught, might be the best common ground that we have to work from, even with folks who are very different from ourselves. Here's Josephine, again.
Josphine Henry 46:39
You know, we've finally found common ground to share. The people who are most concerned about, you know, climate change, and making climate action to affect climate change are our people and those are the, you know, those are our allies, and then those are the people that are gonna help, help us to execute our beliefs and our values and help breathe, help us to breathe them into life until we need to [SENĆOŦEN] like, work together and do good work together.
Adam Huggins 47:18
Do you feel like we can make a difference that way?
Josphine Henry 47:19
I think it's the only way to make a difference. And I think it's all us as First Nations people has ever wanted is to be able to honor our beliefs and our laws and those beliefs and laws support climate action and what non-First Nations people are calling for. And now's the time to act together and like this gives us space to find each other and also to show others that we can like what we can do if we work together.
[Music]
Adam Huggins 48:03
So the way that I've come to see it, place attachment might be both our best chance to confront the climate crisis, and also our greatest cause for concern depending on the nature of that attachment. The good news is that, according to Leila, and Robert, climate positive place attachment can be learned.
Robert Gifford 48:24
Yeah, my thought about that is that a person even if a person's only lived for a short period of time, and in a place which could be associated with less lower levels of climate action, one can be more mindful about the place that one lives in even if one's only lived there a short period of time-- pay attention to that place.
Leila Scannell 48:45
Asking people that have lived in a place for a long time, asking, you know, elders and parents and others who know a place well, what has changed. And getting them to reflect on that and then those stories can then help younger generations learn about how things were and how things are now.
Robert Gifford 49:02
And that could serve as a kind of substitute for having lived there for a long time, more mindfulness now equals longer life in a place.
Mendel Skulski 49:14
That's definitely encouraging.
Adam Huggins 49:17
I mean, as a settler who's moved around a lot, that's basically what I've got to work with. And I want to play you one more bit of tape that I found really moving. It's from a young participant named Lael Rathje, who took one of the courses and was sitting in on the conversation between Simone, Peter, and Sarah. She grew up here in the Salish Sea, and like me, lives on an island that is a neighbor to Sidious
Lael Rathje 49:44
It's been very, very inspiring to listen to Sarah and Peter talk about this and to be able to listen to the Saanich elders speak on so many important things. I feel like, more than anything this this course is it's taught me to not feel so guilty about being here. As soon as I was old enough to understand what had happened here, I just I've never felt quite right being here I feel like I was intruding even though I was born here. So I think being able to meet everyone and learn from them and learn ways to fix things or at least to help in that way it's connected me more with my home again in a way I haven't really felt connected since I was very young.
Mendel Skulski 50:53
I am honestly really impressed by the sheer quantity of hope that you've enabled squeezed out of this conversation.
Adam Huggins 51:01
That episode on Hope Punk really turned things around for me, you know?
Mendel Skulski 51:05
Nice. Well, I'm glad.
Mendel Skulski 51:08
So the bright spot here is that people are actually open to re-evaluating and changing their relationship to place. Especially if they realize that their understanding of that place is incomplete, and maybe even causing harm to other people and the climate.
Adam Huggins 51:27
Yeah. And that investing in that relationship can also be a profoundly healing and enriching experience, even though it can be painful sometimes.
Mendel Skulski 51:36
I guess. I guess the question for me around all of these Dragons of Sunk Costs is kind of a choice: of what emotional and financial investments it's time to finally let go of and what we should be looking to invest in going forward.
Adam Huggins 51:52
Yeah, what to nurture and what to let go of what kind of change to embrace and what kinds to resist?
Mendel Skulski 52:01
And that's a perfect segue to our next and final chapter of Scales of Change.
[Musical beeps and boops]
Adam Huggins 52:14
This has been chapter six of Scales of Change, A Field Guide to the Dragons of Climate Inaction. We'll be back next week with our next and final chapter, A Form of Life.
Mendel Skulski 52:26
Scales of Change is a production of Future Ecologies with support from the University of Victoria.
Adam Huggins 52:33
In this chapter, you heard Robert Gifford, Laila Scannell, Josephine Henry, Nadia Nowak, Eric Pelkey, Peter Underwood, Sarah Jim, Lael Rathje. Myself, Adam Huggins,
Mendel Skulski 52:48
And me, Mendel Skulski. Huge thanks to Simone Miller for going out into the field and getting us that good tape.
Adam Huggins 52:56
Special thanks also to Paul Petrie, Sarah Jim, Suzanne Hearn and Maclaurin, Andre Kozlowski and all the elders and participants who spoke with Simone and I on SDȺY¸ES but that we couldn’t include here - including SELILEYA, Belinda Claxton, SESEITN, Earl Claxton Jr., Judith Lyn Arney, and Tye Swallow.
Mendel Skulski 53:20
Besides discovering the Dragons of Inaction, Robert Gifford is literally the author of the textbook, Environmental Psychology: Principles and Practice.
Adam Huggins 53:30
Leila Scannell is a Banting postdoctoral fellow at Royal Roads University.
Mendel Skulski 53:35
Josephine Henry is a W̱SÁNEĆ Indigenous language revitalization student. You can follow her on Twitter @WSANECjosephine.
Adam Huggins 53:43
Nadia Nowak is a climate activist who grew up on SDȺY¸ES
Mendel Skulski 53:47
Eric Pelkey is the Hereditary Chief of SȾÁ,UTW̱ of the W̱SÁNEĆ First Nation. You can follow him on twitter @Pelkey_Eric
Adam Huggins 53:57
Peter Underwood is a W̱SÁNEĆ student of Indigenous Studies at the University of Victoria.
Mendel Skulski 54:02
Sarah Jim is a W̱SÁNEĆ visual artist and restorationist with the SṈIDȻEȽ Resiliency Project. You can find her incredible artwork at SarahJimstudio.com
Adam Huggins 54:14
And Lael Rathje is a climate activist and youth member of the Salt Spring Island Transition Town Board.
Mendel Skulski 54:20
To learn more about the ṮEṮÁĆES Climate Action Project, visit https://www.sgicommunityresources.ca/climate-action-project/
Adam Huggins 54:33
Our theme song for this series is by Loam Zoku. Other music in this episode was produced by Radium 88, Blear moon, Ben Hamilton, Dust Motes, and Sunfish Moon Light.
Mendel Skulski 54:46
You can tweet at us or follow us on Facebook and Instagram @futureecologies.
Adam Huggins 54:52
To learn more about each one of the Dragons of Inaction, including silly things like the Latin names that we gave them, go to futureecologies.net/dragons.
Mendel Skulski 55:01
And if you want to support the work that we do, join our community at patreon.com/futureecologies.
Adam Huggins 55:08
Thanks for listening. See you next week.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai and edited by Carmen Liu