Clayton Thomas-Müller: You know, like in our Cree culture, we have a prophecy, you know, the prophecy of the seventh generation, you know, the Ojibwe's call it the prophecy of the seventh fire, it talks about a time when young people would be born and they would be free from the colonial mindset. Paulo Freire called it the mentality of the oppressed, they would hit a fork in the road, right? And one pathway would be like, you know, extraction, destruction, uncontrolled climate change, never ending war, scorched earth. And then the other one would be like permaculture, intensive, you know, farming and basic, you know, guaranteed income and housing is a right you know, just like the good life, right? What I often say is like Mad Max, or Star Trek.

 

Kelly Kornet: Hey, my name is Kelly Kornet. And I'm the host of Take Me to Your Future, a podcast that seeks to counterbalance conventional ideas about the futures with those envisioned by real people. On today's episode, our first actually, I'm joined by Clayton Thomas-Müller, a member of the treaty six based Mathias Colomb Cree Nation, also known as Pukatawagan, located in northern Manitoba in the place currently known as Canada. Clayton is based in Winnipeg, and is known for his prominent roles as a campaigner, film director, media producer, organizer, facilitator, public speaker and author on Indigenous rights and environmental and economic justice. He's currently a senior campaign specialist with 350 dot org, and is involved in many initiatives to support the building of an inclusive global movement for energy and climate justice. And thinking about how to tee up a conversation about the future as we hold show producer Stuart Candy recommended and exercise from the late at Elise Boulding . It's called the 200 year present. Clayton, I'm going to ask you to stretch back into the youngest age you can remember, think about the oldest person who held you.

 

CT: Yeah, that would have to be my like, Great Grandfather, like great, great grandfather, George Nicholas. Who I'm namesaked aftar, he held me when I was a baby is quite significant, actually. Because, you know, he told my grandmother, the mother of my mother, like when she was just a little girl, she wouldn't receive his bundle, his sacred bundle, which is like, you know, your pipe and your drum and your rattles and sacred objects that you use for ceremony. And he said, You know, you're, you're gonna go through a hard time, my girl and all your brothers and sisters are gonna, you know, die horrible deaths, and your kids are gonna have a hard time. He said, But your kids children will pick this up again. And so I was the first person since my great grandfather to, you know, start going to ceremonies and sundance and sweat lodge are a very big part of that, trying to learn the language and, you know, raise my kids in a traditional way. Yeah, that was the oldest person that held me, but he held me - apparently, he lived till I was born. And, you know, I met him and then he died. You know, like your ancestors are always standing behind you and always pushing and guiding you, you know, forward.

 

KK: Thanks for sharing Clayton. It's really powerful to hear about your experience with your great great grandfather and how much hope for the future he had in you. I'd like to invite you to think about the youngest person you know, today.

 

CT: Well, I'd probably have to say my my niece, Darelyn. You know, my my sister star has beautiful, beautiful children, but her youngest is just a toddler right now and it just like this brown little fireball and and she's quite the she's quite the force of nature. And yeah, I really enjoy my time with her. She's very special.

 

KK: Yeah, she sounds awesome. And thinking about the future that Darelyn's inheriting What do you think it's gonna look like?

 

CT: It's pretty wild. You know, as Native people you know, we're always fighting for sovereignty and self determination and the ability just don't have control over our land, you know, in our resources. And the whole reason native people are the poorest and represent every negative statistic in Canada is because we don't have control over our land. 

 

KK: There's a lot to unpack here. settler colonial violence has existed since first contact and continues to have devastating intergenerational impacts on First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities. All non-Indigenous people, myself included living on Indigenous lands across this nation are settlers. It's not about our ancestors - we're contemporary actors in an ongoing history of violence, theft and colonization. Were living on stolen land.

 

CT: The late Arthur Manuel talks about that he said that we have less than 1% of our land base. And that's why we cry on the shoulder of the person who stole our land. You know, we got to stop doing that. I think that Darelyn is going to be okay. And I think you know, my own sons and all of my nephews and nieces are going to be okay. But I think that they're going to face things that most people that are living now can't even imagine.

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KK: Yeah. I'm curious to hear what signals of change you're paying attention to.

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CT: When I think back to this last September 27th in a million children hitting the streets to protest for Friday's for Future that was when Greta Thunberg was in the country. You know, I went and march with my son's you know, on that March. 20,000 kids marched here in Winnipeg months later, you know, like, during the quarantine, the Black Lives Matter mobilization happened and same thing. You know, all these young people, and they were, you know, they were saying Black Lives Matter, while at the same time saying land back for Indigenous peoples, you know, while at the same time like demanding Black trans, gay, lesbian, that they're safe, you know what I mean? And like, just this, like really powerful, like intersectional analysis in all of these young children. So I know that we're on the right track, and the world might be pretty freakin wild 60 years from now for Darelyn. But I also know that like this new generation of young people are responding to things that for decades and decades and decades, the white decision makers in power have just not given a shit about and that's changing. I think it'll be like, pretty crazy. I think we're about to beat the fossil fuel sector. But I also know that, you know, there's a new war that's coming up and a lot of the infrastructure from a social movement perspective that we've built to defeat the fossil fuel barons, we'll just switch over for the new fight, which is going to be about water. Yeah, Darelyn will be out there on the front line. You know, shouting Water is Life, you know, against water privatization companies.

 

KK: Despite the fact that Canada has the world's third largest per capita freshwater reserve, our long term water security is in a precarious position. fossil fuel projects continue to threaten the health of rivers and lakes, and pressure to privatize water sources and treatment could spell trouble. As of December 2020, there are still 40 First Nations communities across Canada that are struggling with long term drinking water advisories. As a climate action organizer, how has the landscape changed in your lifetime?

 

CT: You know, I've been an activist and been fighting against the fossil fuel sector for 20 years now fighting against settler colonial governments like the Canadian government, the US government, others as well in unity with other Indigenous peoples across the planet. I guess one of the things that blows me away is I remember, I was like a really influential activist in the 90s. Here in Manitoba, where I live in Winnipeg, because I had the most comprehensive fax blast list. You know, I had the fax list that had all the Chiefs like main offices and all of Canada, the National Chief, all the ministers and every media outlet. This is before cell phones, you know, and I remember signing up for my first hotmail in 1995. My first email was like to Shell they had murdered  Ken Saro-Wiwa, you know, this famous poet from Nigeria, he was an Indigenous man from the, I believe, from the Nigerian Delta. They murdered him for standing up against big oil, and I sent them, you know, an email from my Hotmail, it was a big deal. I never got a response. But the point is, is I lived through the transition from analog to digital. And I remember talking to, you know, other young people about the fact that like information was going to become the most valuable thing. You know, the digitalization of information was going to change the world fundamentally. And I didn't know what I was really talking about at that point, but I knew something was coming. And so through my life, I saw this like, huge shift. And, you know, the quote, Van Jones, Van talks about the fact that, you know, we have more power in our cell phones, more computing power than the computers, they used to send, you know, the mission to the moon. We have more computing power in our iPhones than those computers. Were in this crazy situation right now where, you know, because of the connectivity of our smartphones, and you know, I've got 50,000 people I can communicate to through my social media platforms on a daily basis. You know, we just saw one Native guy whose car broke down on social media the other day, he had to skateboard to work on his longboard. And he like, you know, made a meme where he was drinking Ocean Spray. And that's been viewed 40 million times now. So there's this, like connectivity that's happening right now, which I believe will tip us into the right choice. You know, and I think it's the young people that are going to take us there. That's the prophecy. And so the future, you know, the values that I see that are coming up with this potential future, it all comes down to connectivity, you know, community, but not just like, you know, your family and your friends. I think that Indigenous peoples have had a lot to share with the world over the years about this topic. You know, the fact of the matter is, is that capitalism and the sickness of greed that plagues humankind right now, is fundamentally like, rooted in the fact that we've been disconnected from nature. We've been disconnected from the circle of life that we call home the place wherever creator put us, the only cure, and the only way for people to like, you know, move forward in a way that doesn't continue this pattern of feeling this emptiness inside that nature used to fill with consumerism, is by reconnecting to nature.

 

KK: In addition to the Indigenous concept of interconnectedness that Clayton shared, there have been over 100 studies that back up the benefits of being in nature, living near nature, or even viewing nature in paintings and videos. Using nature tends to trigger positive emotions reduce stress and calmer nervous systems. It can also shift our sense of self diminishing the boundaries between self and others. When study participants who spent a minute looking up into eucalyptus trees reported feeling less entitled and self important. Even just viewing Planet Earth for five minutes, led participants to report a greater sense that their concerns were insignificant, that they themselves were part of something larger compared with groups who had watched neutral funny clips, yet are busy connected lifestyles often lead to spending less time outdoors.

 

CT: You know, and they say it right in the Paris Climate Accord, the biggest gathering of bureaucrats and decision makers in the history of the human race, you know, and right in the preamble, it says that we recognize the vital and critical role of Indigenous peoples traditional knowledge and mitigating and adapting to climate change. And you know, there's only about 360 million Indigenous peoples on the planet, but those people represent, like 85% of the world's cultural diversity of the world's languages spoke. What you have to understand is that Indigenous peoples languages are what linguists refer to as polymorphic, their unwritten, their oral, our histories, our culture, everything lives in our language. And that's why we tell stories, and we sing songs, and we have ritual and ceremony and different ways to teach our children about the circle of life and about our sacred responsibilities within that circle of life. And it's also quite interesting when you think about that, because anytime an Indigenous language is lost, Westerners need to think about it as equivalent to the burning of the libraries of Alexandria, we lose a unique set of 1000s of years of observation of that particular ecosystem, and 1000s of years of know how and how to manage and protect that ecosystem, because that's our responsibility as members of the five fingered nation. Native people wherever we are, including here in Canada, we also happen to live in the last remaining places where there's abundant biodiversity. 86% of the world's remaining biodiversity is Indigenous peoples lands, biodiversity and cultural diversity are inextricably linked. And native people represent a last stand, if you will, to protect not just humanity, but also the ones that can't speak for themselves. You know, the ones that swim fly and the ones that crawl underneath the earth. The ones that walk on the earth.

 

KK: In hearing you speak about the need to protect our animal relatives. brings to mind that moment you spoke of when your great grandfather passed on his sacred bundle to you. Just the weight of that moment, the weight of you know, being trusted with the traditional knowledge and the responsibility to carry it forward.

 

CT: I spent a good deal of my life training, shit, it has been 1000s of young people at this point using every opportunity I can to you know, get young people out into the bush and you know, have an experience get them into a sweat lodge have a pipe ceremony, have a smudge, even just like offer a cigarette, you know some tobacco and say a prayer. You know there seems to be a powerful, powerful reaction to the toxic double millennia triple millennia old brain of patriarchy. And this imbalance between man and woman and everything in between. and a lot of Native people refer to it as the rise of the sacred feminine creative principle. And for us, you know, like, especially praise, it's the women that used to make all the decisions, who is the women, there seems to be this like, massive shift. And I see it in the movement, you know, virtually every community that I've worked in from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico and across Mother Earth, in terms of supporting native people to fight against the encroachment of the fossil fuel sector into our traditional homelands. It's all led by women, all grandmas, moms, aunties and like, big sisters, you know what I mean? calling the shots, and then the men show up, you know, they do. But it's always the women that carry everything. You know, there's this like profound shift in consciousness that is like occurring. It's not everywhere, people are at different stages, different phases. But there's something really profound happening. And the young people are really tuned into it.

 

KK: Yeah, and I can't help but wonder, I mean, you've been a leading organizer for campaigns like Idle No More, the Indigenous Tar Sands campaign of the Polaris Institute. Yeah, you're a central figure in the climate justice and Indigenous rights movements across Canada. So what of these profound shifts in the movement felt like for you, on a personal level?

 

CT: I've always like been out there in the front line, and the very public life, as I get older, just taking a full on stop and stepping back, all these powerful women, they're stepping forward, and it's intergenerational, it's like grandma's and like, you know, young girls and mom's, and it's been really interesting to, like, go through this, like, like, almost a humbling process, you know, what I mean, I don't need to speak as much, I can take a step back, if there's nobody there, I can step forward and like, make sure that the message gets out, I just have faith that things are gonna be really okay. Because there's some powerful, powerful women that are stepping up, you know, and they're backed up by like, part as, you know, organizers and lawyers, you know, like myself and the people that I have in my circle, you know, and we won't stop, like ever. I know that, that Indigenous knowledge is not enough on its own to stop everything that's happening and turn it around and make it right. But I know that there's some kind of hybrid like, you know, sharing of knowledge in some kind of like bio regionally planned systems of design that are going to emerge, that lift up community self determination as the true solution to climate change.

 

KK: For those that might not be familiar, self determination was codified by the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), through self determination. Indigenous communities have the right to freely determine their political status freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development. And this is inclusive of an understanding of the past, present, and future of those communities.

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CT: I think that the future, you know, it's going to look different in different regions. But I do believe that the future will be successful if communities connect to their their bio region, and plan, their city development, their food security and water, and sanitation systems and energy systems, and their agricultural systems in a way that cements their place within the circle of life within that system, not above it dominating and controlling it, but as a part of it, that's what's going to solve a lot of the problems that we're dealing with right now. But, you know, people are realizing that capitalism is fundamentally like, at the root of all of our problems, and that things like the tar sands and pipelines and police violence, you know, against people of color and Indigenous peoples, and, you know, all these, you know, Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG), you know, these are all symptoms of the actual problem, which is like predatorial capitalism, and I feel that, that that, you know, cuz of the nature of leadership that's emerged in the movement, this like Rise of the sacred feminine creative principle that maybe, you know, just maybe right now during this like, like, whirlwind storming moment that we might be able to, like actually push through like a new economic paradigm, we might be able to shift the Overton Window of what's possible. You know, we might just build an economy. You know, some people are referring to it as a Green New Deal. Some people are calling it a Just Recovery. Some people are calling it the smashing of capitalism and patriarchy and the rise of a new economic paradigm. Like there's a lot of different perspectives on what what's possible right now. But I feel like we're all headed in the same direction.

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KK: Clayton, thank you so much for sharing your time, your talents and your energy with us today. It's so inspiring to hear about this shift in consciousness that's happening with our youth and the rise of the sacred feminine creative principle and how these young women are stepping into lead.

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CT: I guess, I just really appreciate this opportunity to be a part of this podcast, you know, talk about the future, because that's been like my whole obsession, trying to make sure that I'm healthy, that I can be a good father to my sons that I can be a good son to, you know, my mother and grandson to my grandmother and bring forward a type of thinking and planning into the world that is uniquely Indigenous people often in Canada, you know, they, they hear the Cree teaching that, you know, we think seven generations ahead. But that's not actually accurate. We think in seven generations, we plan and think in seven generations, but it's not seven generations ahead. Every decision that we make takes into consideration the three generations before us, the current generation, that we're living in the now and three generations ahead. And so it's this idea of learning from our past, preparing in our present, to defend the future. And, you know, if the rest of the world could start thinking that way, then you know, instead of in quarterly, like profit margins, you know, then we're going to be okay.

 

KK: I love what you just shared, they're really grounding our listeners in the role of long term thinking and Indigenous communities.

 

CT: A good friend of mine, you know, said that maybe she was quoting Octavia Butler, adrienne marie brown is her name. She's just this dynamic author and trainer and facilitator and leader, you know, she wrote a bunch of incredible books about the movement, you know, the main one being emergent strategy, you know, people should check that book out. But basically, you know, she said that campaigners are the ultimate science fiction authors. You know, because, like, our job is to always think about a better world to think about the future and what's possible.

 

CT: You know, so I spend a lot of time thinking about the future, and how are we going to like, defeat what is, you know, some of the most powerful entities that have ever existed on the planet, and all the biggest companies in the world, in my time, in thinking about defeating coal and oil and gas companies and, you know, nuclear, mega hydro, all of these centralized systems have dominance and control and profit, you know, at the expense of frontline communities in the at the expense of poor people who have to choose between paying rent or their their hydro bill, or grocery bill of thought a lot about the future. And I think there's lots of good work out there. And, you know, people they want to get involved in connecting the dots and helping our society stop sacrificing certain communities at the altar of irresponsible economic policies, and, you know, build a much better future for our kids. Well, you know, now's the time to put our hearts minds and the, you know, spirits together and see what we can do. 

 

 

KK: Clayton, before I let you go, I wanted to invite you to share a bit more about what you're working on. So our listeners can tune in.

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CT: You know, one of the big writing projects that I just completed was a book called Life in the City of Dirty Water, and it's about growing up here in Winnipeg, you know, and being Native, and next year COVID-willing, you know, drops on September 2021, with Penguin Publishing, and I'm going to do a big tour. You know, with the book, I have this whole stage performance I do singing and reading from the book and I've got vignettes from the film and it's this whole kind of multimedia like transmedia performance that I do with the book, but the idea behind the whole thing was really asking the question: what does it take for Indigenous men to heal from the violence of colonialism? I was really struck by you know, as my son's, you know, Felix and Jackson were getting older, from babies to young children. I found myself disassociating and having a really hard time, like doing simple list of tasks, like playing with them or doing homework. I talked to my therapist about it, and he's like, Oh, yeah, no, like, you know, as your kids grow older, you'll see yourself and remember all the things you went through at that specific age that your kids are at, and I grew up in the 80s, the 70s and the 80s. And you know, that was a different world back then is very violent. A lot of domestic violence. just crazy shit went down growing up. And so, you know, I was like, well what do I do? How do I heal from this? And he's like, I don't know, write about it. And I was like, okay, so I, you know, I started this project life in the city of dirty water. It's this whole transmedia three dimensional storytelling universe that poses this question, what does it actually take to heal from colonialism? You know, it wasn't an easy task. It was really difficult. But I did it, you know, and I'm still going through it.

 

 

KK: Clayton's also in the process of writing a badass sci fi book called Manitawabe 2100.

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CT: So this story, you know, is about what Canada is going to be by 2100, you know, just under 100 years, 80 years from now. You know, the whole premise of the story is that the natives have won. You know, Canada lost. And the way you know, the way the natives won, you know, wasn't, you know, you have to ask yourself the question, did they win? Or is this just a manifestation of colonialism in a neo form.

 

KK: In addition to Clayton's writing, he's also been on the board of the Bioneers for the last 20 years.

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CT: We produce the largest like environmental conference in the United States. It's been a big part of my life. And, you know, the conference is in Marin, California, and, you know, the work of the Bioneers is something that everybody should check out, you know, bioneers.org

 

KK: Yeah. Bioneers is a super cool organization. What about your team at 350?

 

CT: We've got like a really, really critical campaign that we're fighting right now, you know, we already won this campaign, you know, the trans mountain pipeline in British Columbia will greatly expand the Alberta tar sands at a time when we need to be, you know, shutting down our reliance on fossil fuel and transitioning to a Green New Deal, you know, an economy that leaves no worker behind, that's in full partnership, with Indigenous peoples taking reconciliation a step forward, to land back, there's a million jobs that we can create, that allow for, you know, workers to stay home and their territory, close to their families. 10s of 1000s of workers that go and fly to the Alberta tar sands, you know, many from the maritime provinces, in that sense, sustainable, you know, and it really affects not just the climate, but it affects families, the fabric of communities, you know, what we're trying to do is to stand in solidarity with First Nations that are fighting against this proposed trans mountain pipeline, which would open up the tar sands to Asian markets. You know, but the economics don't add up. Oil is in decline, the world is changing, fossil fuel companies are becoming junk bonds. You know, Exxon was once the biggest company on earth and has been kicked off of stock exchanges, you know, the junk bond, got a campaign called defund TMX, because after we beat Kinder Morgan and sent them back to Texas with their tail between the legs. Justin Trudeau turned around and bought the pipeline with taxpayers dollars and nationalize the project. You know, we expect the pipeline will cost well over $20 billion, with all the COVID stuff and everything. You know, this is money that could be going into social programs into you know, health care, into education. You know, there's so many things that this type of money that is subsidizing Big Oil could go towards, you know, fixing the boil water advisory crisis on First Nations. You know, I'm also involved with a group called the Indigenous Climate Action, which is the first Indigenous, you know, climate justice organization to exist here in Canada. They're headed under the leadership, my good friend, Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, their organization is doing profound work, you know, organizing with native communities to find, you know, Indigenous solutions to the global climate crisis, and I think people should check them out as well.

 

KK: That's all for today's episode of Take me to Your Future. Thanks for listening. And thanks to Clayton Thomas-Müller for sharing his perspective with us. To hear more scenarios like this, subscribe to Take Me to Your Future wherever you get podcasts so you never miss an episode. Do you have any interesting ideas about the future or no a futures thinker that we should have on our show? reach out to us at takemetoyourfuture@gmail.com. Catch you next time.