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Life in the City of Dirty Water
123 Plays3 years ago
Clayton Thomas-Muller discusses what it's like to be on Jason Kenney's enemies list, why Indigenous climate resistance is absolutely key to effective climate action, how George Soros works for him and more details of his incredible life that you can find in his new book, Life in the City of Dirty Water.
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Transcript
Introduction and New Podcast Announcement
00:00:00
Speaker
The Progress Report is a proud member of the Harbinger Media Network. A new pod on the network that I want to highlight is the latest from our friends at Big Shiny Takes. Recovering podcaster Rob Russo joins Marino, Eric, and Jeremy of the Big Shiny Takes crew to discuss one of the many awful columns published in Canadian newspapers on the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Harbinger is a fantastic project. Become a supporter of Harbinger and get exclusive supporter-only content at harbingermedianetwork.com. Now, onto the show.
Interview with Clayton Thomas Muller Begins
00:00:39
Speaker
Friends and enemies, welcome to The Progress Report. I am your host, Duncan Kinney. We're recording today here in Amiskwichiwa, Skaiga, otherwise known as Edmonton, Alberta, here in Treaty 6 territory on the banks of the Kasiska-Saw, Mississippi, or the North Saskatchewan River. Joining us today to discuss their just released book, Life in the City of Dirty Water, is Clayton Thomas Muller. Clayton, welcome to The Pop. Hey, thanks for having me, and hello to all the listeners.
00:01:04
Speaker
So I have to say, I really enjoyed your book. I flew through it. It is engaging, thoughtful, and important read. And it's like not even a book that I kind of read very frequently. I can't even remember the last like memoir or autobiography that I read. But I would really recommend it.
Clayton's Activism and Influence in Indigenous Resistance
00:01:24
Speaker
And before we get into the details of the book. Yeah. Yeah. This is the Clayton Thomas Muller appreciation post.
00:01:34
Speaker
But I would say that if like Jason Kenny, if Jason Kenny has like an enemies list, which I mean, let's be real, he certainly does. Yeah. I think, I think you would definitely be on that list.
00:01:47
Speaker
And your book doesn't necessarily focus all of its energy on the work that you do. But I think for the context for why the folks who listen to this podcast should be interested in your story, I think it's just worth starting off with the oil and gas projects and pipelines that you have campaigned against over the years and the indigenous resistance that you have trained and held up and found and discovered and
00:02:13
Speaker
and worked with in order to stop or
Clayton's Early Life and Turning Point
00:02:15
Speaker
slow down those projects. So you kind of like run us through your like your resume real quick. Well, you know, I mean, I got involved with the movement for environmental and climate justice. I guess about 20 years ago, you know, I start, you know, I've been an organizer since I was a teenager. But, you know, like here in Winnipeg, where I'm talking to you from today,
00:02:44
Speaker
You know, my older brothers started one of the largest native gangs in the country called Manitoba Warriors. And so my first job was, you know, working for my older brothers, you know, selling drugs, running a drug house. And, you know, there came a moment in time where my older brother, John, as well as my my son's mother, Corinne, you know, were high school sweethearts, you know,
00:03:14
Speaker
they both gave me feedback and basically were like, you know, you're, you're too smart and you really shouldn't, uh, you know, this is, this is not the lifestyle for you. You can do a lot more, uh, for yourself and for your people and for your family and, uh, you should go and pursue education.
Leaving Gang Life for Education
00:03:33
Speaker
And so, you know, so I took that advice. Um, I asked my uncle Brian, uh, who was the president of a,
00:03:40
Speaker
of the gang at that time and I asked him for permission. I said, hey, man, you know, I want to change my life. I want to go to school. Do you mind if I leave my job and I do that? And so he said, yeah, man, you know, I support that. I think that's a good idea. You're a really sharp guy. And, you know, and what he said to me was, you know, if you
00:04:08
Speaker
If I find out though, you're hustling on the side, I'll fucking kill you. So I was like, holy smokes. Okay. Well, can I ask him a thin for that? Yeah. Oh, I'll go, I'll go to school. So, um, you know, I got myself in an inner city, um, program for at-risk youth, um, and, uh, managed to acquire my GED and,
00:04:35
Speaker
The rest of the program was culturally based and I was able to attend my first Sundance and start going back to sweat lodges again and just get exposed to the language and culture again. And that was a really big catalyst thing in my life. And I've seen it thousands of times with other young people who get reintroduced back to the culture and begin that journey of decolonization.
Burnout from Community Work and Career Shift
00:05:06
Speaker
And, you know, where I ended up was doing gang intervention work here in Winnipeg and, you know, doing a lot of frontline organizing work and, you know, working in schools, working in community centers and, you know, traveling to reserves and doing decolonization workshops with the Native youth movement with young indigenous peoples and, you know, trying to get other young people to have the same experience that I had gone through.
Joining the Indigenous Environmental Network
00:05:33
Speaker
But, you know, like all things, that work got pretty intense and a lot of the young people I encountered, you know, they made their journey to the good hunting grounds or they ended up incarcerated or, you know, in a mental health facility or whatever, you know, shits hard in the native community. And so I burnt out and, you know, I got a job opportunity in California.
00:05:59
Speaker
And so my partner and I eloped there. And while I was in California, I ended up working for the Indigenous Environmental Network. And it was pretty crazy because they basically offered me a job to just start organizing in Native communities and start fighting against the fossil fuel sector. And the interview was hilarious because they were like,
00:06:28
Speaker
Can you take orders and not ask questions? And can you go into these communities and just listen to the stories of the elders and support the young people and the grandmas and the moms that are standing up against the most powerful corporations on
Campaigns Against Environmental Damage
00:06:43
Speaker
the planet? And I was like, fuck yeah, I can do that. No problem. I was, I think, 22 or something at the time and all full of optimism and whatnot.
00:06:54
Speaker
And I didn't know what I was getting myself into though. Like I honestly didn't. And so I spent the next many years traveling.
00:07:05
Speaker
You know, and over time, you know, I've become engaged in about 33 campaigns against everything from, you know, long-term nuclear waste storage dumps to LNG export terminals to coal-fired power plants to, you know, coal bed methane and fracking.
00:07:30
Speaker
and just the pipelines in Alaska, oil extraction on the North Slope, just a whole plethora of stuff.
Fighting Alberta Tar Sands and Pipelines
00:07:42
Speaker
And it was quite the time, but my boss at the time, Tom Goldtooth, he said, there's all these little fires burning in Indian country and I need you to go and talk to all these communities
00:08:01
Speaker
And we got to bring all these little fires together into one big fire. And so, you know, with those instructions, I spent the last 20 years
00:08:11
Speaker
you know, engaging in a lot of different fights against, you know, some of the most toxic industries who collude with settler colonial state governments to target indigenous lands, you know, to become the sites of, you know, some of the most climate-wrecking, you know, toxic polluting industries on the planet.
00:08:34
Speaker
And all of that experience and work and relationships and prayers and fights and losses and wins and led to the biggest battle that has really been my entire life, which is the fight to stop the expansion of the Alberta tar sands and its associated pipeline shipping and refinery infrastructure, which spans the continent, Turtle Island, North America,
00:09:03
Speaker
and across the world. And, you know, so, you know, part of the work that I was a part of, you know, was supporting a family in a downstream community from Fort McMurray in Fort Chippewa, which is this sleepy little village about 150 kilometers down the Athabasca River from Fort Mack, the beating heart of, you know, Alberta's oil industry.
00:09:32
Speaker
This is a community where the majority of the 1,200 people that live there are native. There's been hundreds of deaths from cancers, some rare cancers and regular cancer and autoimmune deficiencies.
00:09:50
Speaker
you know, local knowledge carriers like local elders, you know, associate all of this to, you know, the massive bioregional contamination caused by the environmental footprint of the Alberta tar sands, you know, which all flows north upstream on the Athabasca River into the Mackenzie River watershed.
00:10:09
Speaker
and, you know, which represents I think a third of the freshwater here in Canada, which, you know, globally represents a huge percentage of the global freshwater resources. And, you know, and we were able to, as grassroots organizers, pull together the first Tarsans Indigenous Action Camp
00:10:35
Speaker
where we talked about how are we gonna stop the world's largest construction project in the history of humankind, which is a daunting task, and how are we gonna do this as grassroots native people? And so we talked about the half a dozen or so pipeline proposals that industry and the Alberta government had on the table
00:11:02
Speaker
And we figured out that all energy infrastructure in Canada, whether it's hydro or oil and gas, including unconventional like tar sands, is directed to our biggest trading partner, the United States. And so all existing pipelines go to the States.
00:11:23
Speaker
And we figured out at a very early stage that these oil companies wanted to find the path of least resistance to get this oil to international markets. They needed the pipeline to the coast, to some body of water.
00:11:40
Speaker
where they could hide mythical tide water in this thing that always gets brought up by government industry. Exactly. And, you know, because Alberta is right in the middle of the country, you know, it's where the Rockies meet the planes here in Canada. And, you know, there's no there's nowhere to pull an oil tanker up beside it and ship it out easily. So they need, you know, they need that that pipeline to tide water.
00:12:07
Speaker
And so we figured out that if we intervened, you know, these proposed pipeline routes, we're also organizing corridors where we could like as organizers meet with communities and talk about the climate change implications, the human rights and indigenous rights implications of, you know, Alberta's, you know, oil sands sector, you know, growing.
00:12:30
Speaker
And we knew we had to put a stop to it and that if we shared the science, if we shared the stories about cancer deaths in Fort Chipewand, you know, I mean, this community's got 1200 people and there's been, you know, so much put into health studies. And, you know, Dr. O'Connor,
00:12:49
Speaker
you know, who was the local doctor there in Fort Chip, he whistle-blowed the reality that there were six suspected cases of a rare form of bile duct cancer in a population sample of 1200 when this particular form of cancer only appears one in 200,000.
00:13:09
Speaker
And what he figured out was that, you know, this type of cancer is caused by long-term exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, you know, RE fossil fuel. And so for six suspected cases to occur in a population sample of 1200, well, then there, you know, there just has to be an environmental determinant, right? Like there's some kind of external thing happening because that's statistically impossible.
00:13:39
Speaker
And so, you know, and so yeah, you know, we, you know, I mean, jeez, like around 2008, we launched a campaign against the Keystone number one pipeline, you know, before the Keystone XL. And we lost that campaign.
00:13:58
Speaker
But we were able to raise a lot of profile about the implications of the tar sands and about the agenda of the oil sector to get this product to tide water.
00:14:14
Speaker
The funders, you know, took a notice and the big NGOs environmental organizations took notice and you know all of a sudden, you know, these pipelines became the main focus of the climate movement, you know, which led to, you know, a plethora of
00:14:29
Speaker
really high profile campaigns and battles, including the Enbridge Northern Gateway, which we won dead in the water, you know, including the Energy East pipeline, which was a proposed pipeline to New Brunswick from Alberta, you know, right across Canada, you know, which we won
00:14:51
Speaker
Um, you know, we shut that pipeline down. Um, and then of course, you know, uh, the Keystone XL, probably the most high profile campaign, uh, which would have carried oil from Alberta's tar sands from hardest to the Alberta to Port Arthur, Texas.
00:15:07
Speaker
to be refined down there because all the refineries in Houston are equipped to deal with heavy crude like the tar sands because they've been taking crude from Venezuela and from the deep sea drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. And they're retrofitted to deal with that kind of oil, which is the bottom of the barrel, dirtiest
00:15:32
Speaker
kind of oil you can get. And we were able to kill that pipeline as well. I mean, that was an 11-year campaign in itself. And there are still fights that are raging right now against the Line 3 pipeline here in the territory where I live in the Midwest. And of course, in BC, the Trans Mountain Pipeline continues to be a big battlefront.
00:16:01
Speaker
in terms of keeping tar sands from tidewater. But I had the privilege of being a part of all these campaigns with hundreds, thousands of people, communities, cities, municipalities, First Nations.
Political and Personal Impacts of Fossil Fuel Dependence
00:16:17
Speaker
And the fight, this story is not done. It continues. And I think the only other thing I would add to it is that
00:16:27
Speaker
You know, quite often I get accused of, you know, not thinking about families or communities that are impacted by this imperative that science has given us to get off of our addiction of fossil fuels and to transition to some new economic paradigm that is powered by the sun and the wind and the water. You know, and, you know, it's, you know,
00:16:53
Speaker
I wanted to just name, like, you know, when you open my memoir, there's a name in there, you know, and it's a dedication to Charlton Edward Budd, who was my brother, you know, we grew up together. He was my cousin, but he lived with my mom and I growing up. And, you know, he was an All Sands worker, and he got laid off. And, you know, he took his own life two years ago, and at Christmas.
00:17:18
Speaker
And I know a lot of families are being hurt by the political inaction by the Trudeau government and subsequent governments before them to really address this issue and to provide the funds, the money, the investment to retool trades workers into the renewable energy economy.
00:17:41
Speaker
You know, my own father, you know, works in the tar sands, you know. And so, you know, this issue is very personal and close to home. And it's something that I've taken very serious and I paid a high price for, you know, for taking the stand that I have to support the communities on the front line of this big fight.
00:18:04
Speaker
Yeah, my dad moved to Alberta in the early 80s and worked in oil and gas for 36 years straight and supported a family off it. He doesn't anymore. He got laid off six years ago and hasn't really found full-time work since and wasn't really supported in any way by any level of government when it came to retraining him or finding him a new job.
00:18:26
Speaker
The context of right-wingers or industry folks talking about the jobs is a red herring. They care about profit and pleasing shareholders. The jobs are totally incidental.
00:18:40
Speaker
I think you've established your Bonafides as far as why Jason Kenney would hate you and why you'd be on his enemies list. And, um, and, uh, you know, I think it's worth getting into the book now and like, and, and, you know, your backstory and how you grew up, where you grew up, you know, you, you grew up in treaty
Cultural Connections and Activism Motivations
00:19:00
Speaker
six. We're here in treaty six in Edmonton, but you're over on the Eastern edge of it, right? Can you walk us through the, like the landscape and the people of where you grew up, what that place, uh, means to you?
00:19:11
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, like just riffing off of that whole, this is personal kind of frame. You know, like it's also personal on a land use term, you know, like Edmonton, you know, Treaty 6 goes from my community, Pugetawagan, all the way across Saskatchewan, you know, all the way into Alberta. And
00:19:35
Speaker
These are the lands that my people were promised that we could hunt, fish and trap on to sustain ourselves in this new era of living with the settler colonial state, sharing the land, the resources in a fair and equitable way.
00:19:57
Speaker
And not even like that, actually, that we were the bosses. We're the older brothers and sisters in this land that they call Canada. But we're also very sharing. And we took in settlers back in the day, taught settlers how to survive the harsh conditions.
00:20:17
Speaker
you know, all through gunboat diplomacy and plague, you know, people talk about COVID right now and how upset they are that they got to have a QR code to go to a, you know, a Blue Bombers game or to a Winnipeg Jets game or whatever, right? Have their kids go to public school, like, you know, everybody's got to be vaccinated. They complain about that shit. But, you know, people don't know.
00:20:41
Speaker
what native people went through just with the diseases, you know, when the white man came to this land, you know, with smallpox, you know, that decimated our people by millions.
00:20:52
Speaker
You know, so, you know, for me, you know, Pagadawagan is part of a second adhesion to Treaty Six. You know, we signed on to it, you know, back in the day. And we're the first, we're the furthest Eastern Treaty Six First Nation. But, you know, my sons, you know, Felix and Jackson, you know, they, they, their father is a hunter. And, you know, I'm a fisherman, just like my father before me.
00:21:20
Speaker
And, you know, we have a right, a treaty right with the crown, with the colonizer to use our lands to sustain and feed our families.
00:21:36
Speaker
you know, the impact of oil pipelines, you know, crossing our rivers, whether it's in Alberta or Saskatchewan or here in Manitoba. You know, I have a say in that because that's my son's future. And, you know, so so for me, you know, you know, it's a very personal issue, this fight against the tar sands and against big oil.
00:22:02
Speaker
because they have their finger in a very complicated and disproportionate battleground that we as Native people, as treaty people, have with the settler colonial state, the crown, the British crown.
00:22:20
Speaker
You know, and these are, you know, these rights that are listed out in the treaties and also section 35 of the Canadian Constitution, the right to hunt fish and trap. These are inalienable rights. You know, these are God-given inherent rights that no state can mess with. And they're outlined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as well.
00:22:43
Speaker
So, as if I'm gonna let some greedy ass like corporation come in and pollute the lands and waters and the climate that are so integral to my sons having that sacred connection to mother earth. And I'm gonna fucking make damn sure that I'm gonna fight tooth and nail, not just for them, but for all the families that rely on our lands to be healthy and to provide for us.
Influences and Warrior Ethos
00:23:11
Speaker
Um, because that's our sacred responsibility. Yeah. There seems to be a couple of kind of formative incidents in the book. And one of them is like your time in terrace, which I want to ask you about, but another one seems to be your uncle Alec and, you know, what happened with him and, you know, the forestry company that was trying to, to, to clear cut his trap line. Can you talk about your uncle Alex and half victory, half loss?
00:23:38
Speaker
Well, you know, I would I mean, you know, the way it comes out in the book, it talks like half victory, half loss. But what I was, you know, attempting to articulate to the reader, you know, my uncle Alec is it's just this badass, you know, I mean, he's getting old now. He's an elder now and he's got a lot of health issues. And but, you know, when I was young, he was like literally the toughest Indian on Mother Earth.
00:24:06
Speaker
You know, I have so many memories. I remember him throwing me up and I remember being little and him throwing me up in the air like literally 10 feet. It was so dangerous. Like I would never do that with my own children. And he was half cut, you know, doing it. And, you know, I mean, shit was different in the 80s, you know, but but yeah, you know, I remember him like, you know, I remember riding on his shoulders and, you know, going to a funeral, which was quite common back then.
00:24:36
Speaker
And, uh, you know, my, my great grandfather's cabin was near the church in Pugetawagan. And I remember riding on my uncle, Alex shoulders, you know, and again, he was half cut and it's kind of staggering. Um, but I just remember like, I could feel the strength, you know, in his arms and, uh, he was so solid.
00:24:57
Speaker
And like that bush strength, it's different than, uh, than, than, than like a weightlifter or whatever. It's sinew strength, you know? And, uh, he, he just had that, that strength in his body. And I remember always feeling safe with him because he was just, he was just the wildest Indian, you know? And, um,
00:25:16
Speaker
Yeah, you know, like, when forestry companies tried to encroach on my family's trap line in Chitate, you know, about 20 miles from Pugetawagon down the train line towards Thompson, Manitoba, or Lynn Lake, Manitoba. You know, he took a stand. He said, no fucking way, you guys aren't coming in here and doing this. And
00:25:37
Speaker
They started their operation and they got closer and closer to our cabin and our meadow where we have unlimited berries to pick. And when they got too close and nobody was listening and the reserve wasn't supporting him and the provincial government wasn't hearing him,
00:25:58
Speaker
He chained himself to the tracks and he had his 30-30 with him and he took some shots at that train with the heavy equipment and all the forestry workers and they backed off. Eventually, he did win the injunction to stop them from clear cutting our entire homeland, our family's trapline where we've been
00:26:25
Speaker
subsisting for Jesus my whole life anyway. He went to jail. He served two years in prison for that act of resistance. He wasn't a protester. He was defending our family's way of life. He was a land defender, a big brother in this settler colonial state we call Canada.
00:26:54
Speaker
Um, yeah, you know, he, he sacrificed a lot. And that's, I think the message that I was trying to convey and sharing the story about my uncle Alec is that, you know, these fights are not easy and, and, you know, and, and they, they come at a great personal price, um, you know, to, to the individual who stands up and says, I'm not going to let, I'm not going to let this happen. And, um, you know, I can attest to that, you know, with the,
00:27:24
Speaker
20 years I've been doing this work. My family paid a high price for this work and they continue to in terms of the time I'm away and the risk I've taken, surveillance by the state and all of that stuff impacts wives and husbands and children and extended family.
00:27:51
Speaker
You know, um, it's a high price to pay. And I think that people in Canada need to understand, um, that we're not just, you know, native people are not, are not activists. You know, we're not protesters. We're land defenders, water protectors, climate defenders, treaty rights protectors. And, um, you know, and we have the right, we have the right to sovereignty and self-determination. And, you know, and so, yeah.
00:28:21
Speaker
That's, that's my alcoholic man. He's, he's a real, uh, treaty rights, uh, warrior. A real one. And, uh, yeah. And the other formative instance, I mean, it's, it doesn't seem like a particularly happy time in your life, but the time spent in terrace BC, uh, you know, first girlfriend, first depression, first, uh, lots of firsts as well as a lot of risky criminal behavior.
00:28:50
Speaker
What was your time in Terrace? How would you characterize your time in Terrace and like how it was before obviously you got into organizing before you got your GED, but like still shaped you into the person you are today, right?
00:29:05
Speaker
Well, Terrace is weird. You know, for those that don't know, it's way up by the Alaska Panhandle in Northern BC, by the port city of Prince Rupert and between Prince Rupert and Prince George. It's near where the Wet'suwet'en are fighting coastal gas link in Smithers, BC. Is it Dixanter or is it Wet'suwet'en?
00:29:29
Speaker
Uh, well, well, Gitsan is in between Smithers, like Wet'suwet'en territory, which is Smithers, and, uh, Hazleton comes next, which is Gitsan. And then Terrace is Shimshan and, uh, Nishka. And, uh, um, yeah, there's, there's so many nations in BC. It's so diverse there. I think there's over 200 languages in BC alone. Um.
00:29:53
Speaker
But yeah, you know, I grew up, you know, my family was part, you know, in the 80s, there was this huge exodus out of the prairie provinces to the west for good jobs, you know, in extractive industries, you know, things were booming back then.
Commitment to Land Defense and Cultural Connection
00:30:08
Speaker
And my dad,
00:30:09
Speaker
You know moved out there. He got a job, you know, it was a heavy-duty diesel mechanic He came out of the military and he used to fix tanks, you know when I was a little kid I was Driving around in tanks and stuff with my Papa in Shiloh Manitoba on the on the on the army base there and you know my dad my dad fixed tanks for living and then when he got out of the military and
00:30:34
Speaker
Um, you know, he, he, uh, he got a job, you know, working in one of the forestry camps in Heidegger. And, uh, moved to Terrace and my mom, unfortunately couldn't get a job in Terrace quite yet. She's a psychiatric nurse, um, but she got a job in Dawson Creek. So we lived in Dawson Creek. My mom, my sister and I, for, for a year.
00:30:56
Speaker
And, you know, that was really tough, you know, being away from my German dad, my adoptive father, and, you know, living in this, you know, really dark northern coal town that was hella racist. And eventually, you know, my mom got a job at the Terrace Hospital and we moved to Terrace.
00:31:23
Speaker
which was challenging, you know, like, you know, this, I was a very cute, you know, skinny, tall, Cree boy and all the BC natives, man, they didn't like me because I looked different and, you know, and I, you know, I think some of the ladies thought I was cute and I don't know. So I wasn't fighting like racist redneck white boys in Terrace. I was fighting like other natives.
00:31:49
Speaker
and for being an outsider, you know, being the city kid from Winnipeg and the prairies and, you know, moving to this northern town. And yeah, it was a difficult time, you know, living there because, you know, I used to have this mantra, I'd look in the mirror and I'd be like, none of this is real. This is only temporary. You're not actually this hated.
00:32:11
Speaker
You're really cool. It's just that you're living in a redneck logging town. That's all. And I would say that to myself every morning when I look in the mirror. And my escape was, you know, terraces situated in Biskina Valley, which is one of the most pristine intact salmon economies on the planet. You know, the salmon in that river watershed are under threat now, though. And, you know, it's hard times
00:32:40
Speaker
for everybody who depends on the salmon industry and terrace, and especially the First Nations around that territory.
00:32:51
Speaker
But, you know, when I was growing up there, I mean, shit, you know, I spent a lot of time in the bush by myself just like hiking up, you know, the tributaries and, you know, creeks that, that bled into the Skeena River, you know, salmon spawning grounds. And I spent a lot of time with my, I had a St. Bernard, this huge 180-pound dog named Schnuff.
00:33:14
Speaker
And Shnuff and I would just go, you know, fish. We'd fish for cutthroat, Dolly Vardentraut, you know, steelhead, all the salmon's coho, the king's, like the Chinook, you know, the sockeye, and especially the pinks, you know, the humpies. And, you know, and that was my teenage years, you know, it was,
00:33:39
Speaker
you know, either fighting in town or escaping into the bush by myself with nothing but my dog and my fishing rod and, you know, and getting to know the land. And, you know, I attribute my time in Terrace to probably a good reason to why I do the work, you know, being a land defender as a man, as a father, because of the time that I spent with the land, connecting with the land,
00:34:08
Speaker
by myself in that little community. Because it's so abundant there. It's so rich. I don't know how many memories I have just making a fire on the shore.
00:34:25
Speaker
And, you know, sometimes not even using my fishing rod, just grabbing a fish out of the water with my bare hands and cooking it right there, you know, and me and my dog, you know, having a whole frickin' salmon to ourselves. You know, and there's always like, and even when I didn't go out fishing, there was always like this old Indian uncle
00:34:48
Speaker
in this old Ford pickup at the end of our street, he'd just parked there and he'd sell Dungeness crabs for like 10 bucks. He'd get a huge crab and he'd sell like 10, 15 pound sock eyes for like five bucks a fish. And you just don't see that shit anymore because of the...
00:35:12
Speaker
the climate change and the environmental impacts of industry on these ecosystems that have sustained people for millennia. So yeah, Terrace was a big deal in my life and a big reason why I'm so committed to helping a transition off of the fossil fuel economy.
00:35:37
Speaker
because we don't have to sacrifice these sacred ecosystems, these food supplies, these water supplies to sustain ourselves. We can be a part of those ecosystems and protect them and sustain our economies.
Redefining the Warrior's Role in Activism
00:35:57
Speaker
We just got some political bullshit like your leader there in Alberta, Jason Kennedy, to deal with, so.
00:36:06
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. He's recently reappeared. So he took like most of August off. I mean, I took most of August off too, but, um, you know, there isn't a pandemic going on. So it was very funny. Finally show up. Um, so after you kind of decided to go legit and get out of the mandatory war Manitoba warriors and, you know, get your education, this,
00:36:30
Speaker
This part is where you kind of define and you try and make someone like me understand what a warrior is and what that means and how that kind of helps you organize your life. Can you kind of walk us through what your understanding of what being a warrior is and why it's important to the work that you do?
00:36:56
Speaker
Yeah. Well, this is I think something that I've learned just recently. I always thought a warrior was like chest out, like get in the face of the enemy, talk loud, be ready for violence and whatever. I had this romanticized vision
00:37:25
Speaker
of what a warrior was, you know, something you'd see in a movie, right? And, you know, I think in this memoir, one of the things I tried to describe to the readers is that, you know, a warrior is somebody who works from a place of understanding, compassion, unconditional love,
00:37:49
Speaker
Because for a lot of years, while I was involved in this fight against the fossil fuel sector, I still to this day, I go to therapy, I deal with post-traumatic stress disorder, being a child of residential school survivors and being a survivor of physical and sexual abuse, domestic violence.
00:38:18
Speaker
you know, being a survivor of, you know, just growing up native in an inner city in this land that they call Canada, you know, you see a lot of shit, like a lot of really messed up things happen disproportionately to other people, you know, like just people die all the time. It like never ends. Like I get exhausted, you know, explaining to my peers at work that another bad thing happened and I got to deal with it, you know, with my family, you know,
00:38:48
Speaker
But these are all things that come with colonialism and poverty. And quite often, I think people who come from privilege, who are middle class, up, they don't deal with tragedy at the same scale as the most marginalized group of our population here in Canada, our native people.
00:39:15
Speaker
And so I wanted to explain with this memoir what it takes to be involved in this fight. And for me, I use this ball of rage, I imagine it to be like dense as the sun, but as big as my fist and it lived inside my tummy and it was all the rage and resentment that I had.
00:39:43
Speaker
being native, growing up in my own homeland and just really fucking having it rough, you know, like, and I think every native can relate to that, you know, why is it so bad for us in our own homeland? Why are we like struggling so hard? Why does it have to be so just, just hard all the time, never ending, you know, no reprieve and nobody's helping us, you know, they apologize, but there's, there's no, there's no,
00:40:10
Speaker
You know, they talk reconciliation, but they, you know, there's no conversation about reparations, right? And nothing changes. So, you know, so I held onto that as an organizer, as a campaigner for a long time, you know, and, you know, during my service with the Indigenous Environmental Network, you know, I was their hatchet man, you know, like I was the one they'd send into impossible situations to make things possible, you know.
00:40:39
Speaker
And I would use hate and anger to intimidate my enemies and to force them to bow to my will. And it was a very challenging time. And eventually, if you organize from a place of anger and hatred, eventually it consumes you and it turns you into what you're fighting against.
00:41:06
Speaker
And so I learned that the hard way. I just came out of my sixth career burnout. And what I've come to learn now is that we have to approach this work from a place of the sacred feminine. We have to approach this work from a place of love, unconditional love for human beings and all the sacred circle of life that we share a space with in the biosphere.
00:41:35
Speaker
you know, and we have to, you know, hold ourselves, you know, we have to be reserved and not reactive and not do this work to protect the sacredness of Mother Earth and our connection to it from a place of fear and hatred, you know, which is so easy to do, especially if you're a native.
00:42:00
Speaker
growing up in Canada, you know, it's easy to work from a place of, you know, from that place, you know, to want to, you know, bring fear and strike fear in the hearts of our enemies. You know, instead, you know, we've got to like approach this from a frame of instead of othering people, but, you know, turn it to a frame of, you know, helping people find belonging.
00:42:30
Speaker
because there's such a great polarity that exists between indigenous peoples in Canada and all the work that I'm doing now and with 350.org and moving forward into the future is going to be trying to pull people towards the middle so that we can find common ground
00:42:53
Speaker
and build the new economic paradigm that leaves no worker behind, that leaves no community behind, and that's rooted and fully in partnership with the older big brothers and sisters in this settler colonial state. I'm talking about my people, all native people. We can do it, but it can't come from a place of revenge or resentment or hatred
00:43:23
Speaker
It's gotta come from a place of peace building, facilitating peace and healing and open conversations about some pretty rough topics if we're gonna get to that place.
Indigenous Resistance in Climate Action
00:43:37
Speaker
And that's what I'm committed to as I move into the middle stage of my life.
00:43:44
Speaker
Yeah. I think, um, you know, what I learned from your book, and I've read this in other places too, like this, this warrior approach, I think a lot of like white people misunderstand it and characterize it as the like aggressive native guy shit.
00:43:58
Speaker
And it's a brown, angry man. Yeah, that's really annoying. And and it's it comes from a much different place. And it is. And I mean, you know, we were talking about this book, this terrible book written by an ex-military guy named Doug Bland off podcast.
00:44:15
Speaker
And it was like he reads the word warriors in literature and people describing themselves warriors. And he thinks these are people who are literally ready to pick up a gun and go to war against the Canadian state. And it's not like that at all, my guy. Right.
00:44:34
Speaker
There's a person out here in Alberta who I want to bring up, who I don't think enough people are aware of. And his name is Milton Bourne with a tooth. And I grew up in Calgary. And I distinctly remember seeing Milton's face on television and seeing his name on a Chiron and being like, oh yeah, that's a badass name. I had no idea what he was on about or why he was on the news. But I just knew I was like,
00:45:03
Speaker
I don't know when, when, when did Milton get in trouble with the law? Like in the early nineties, I was born in 83. So I would have been like a kid, right? But, but I just knew that like that was a bad ass name and like he was involved. Something was going on. He was doing something. And then later on in my life, you know, I'm reading these books by Arthur manual and discovering that this Milton born with a tooth guy is just an absolute legend that like everyone should know about. What can you tell me about Milton and his legacy when it comes to kind of indigenous resistance here?
00:45:33
Speaker
Well, you know, I mean, it's really hard to sum up Milton, you know, in a couple of minutes. You know, I mean, I think the thing that most people should know is that, you know, when they, you know, through his territory on the Blood Reserve, you know, they dammed up the Old Man River and
00:46:00
Speaker
you know, for hydroelectric power and, you know, the government of Canada likes to call hydro a green renewable energy, but it's not.
00:46:10
Speaker
It becomes a great, great fucking cost to Native people. So many of our fishing economies were destroyed by hydro. So many of our ancestors and sacred sites, burial grounds, are under massive hydroelectric reservoirs, flooded forever, or until we actually tear these dams down and decommission them.
00:46:40
Speaker
You know, and the highways that our people used back in the day were not roads of concrete asphalt, but they were the rivers themselves. Whether it was winter on dog sled and, you know, traveling through the night following the herds that we subsisted on or whether it was, you know, on canoe.
00:47:05
Speaker
The rivers have always been the pathways between our communities, like we're connected. Like Edmonton, where you're talking to me from, is connected to Pugetawagan through water. And so these pathways that connect our communities, our kinship lines, have been blocked by hydroelectric development. And Milton, Uncle Milton,
00:47:34
Speaker
He took a stand and he took an excavator and he tore down a dam on the Old Man River. And he went to jail for that shit for a long time, I think like seven or eight years or some shit. He served federal time for it. And he found me when I was just a young man. And I don't know why, but we connected.
00:48:01
Speaker
You know, I know the mother of his son, you know, his son lives here in Winnipeg. He was part of the Native Youth Movement, Nindua Richards, amazing community organizer here in Winnipeg, a young man. And, you know, so I always kept an eye on Nindua, you know, over the years. And, you know, I don't know how the hell Milton would do it, but like, because I change my cell phone every now and then, right?
00:48:29
Speaker
And, um, but Milton would always find my cell phone number and just like randomly call me at like two or three in the morning and wherever I was, I'd be in Europe or, or, you know, wherever in the planet. And he'd be like, Hey, how you doing there, Clayton?
00:48:48
Speaker
I was watching you on the news the other day and I had some thoughts about strategy. So let's talk about that right now. Here's some framing I'd like to propose to you on what I think you should say when asked these questions. He just rattled off some badass guidance.
00:49:09
Speaker
He always took the time, you know, to like find me. And it was weird because it was always during moments where I was going through a hard time. And then he'd just show up and he'd be like, you know, this is what we do. We have to suffer if we want to see the results, you know, and we want to see our prayers answered, you know, like he was a very special individual. And, you know, when he,
00:49:38
Speaker
When he was making his journey, I was in Ireland, actually, and we talked. The last time I talked to him, I was in Killarney, Ireland, and we had a conversation. And it was a tough conversation because I challenged him on some things, you know, before he made his journey. And, you know, he told me that he always respected me and, and, and,
00:50:08
Speaker
that you wish me good luck into the future and told me that we'll hang out again in the good hunting grounds. And that was the last I talked to my uncle Milton. So, yeah. Yeah. Thanks for that story. He's, yeah, I figure that I think more people need to know about here. Absolutely. Yeah.
00:50:32
Speaker
And finally, I think to close out this conversation, Clayton, because we're coming to the end of it. Yeah. A report just came out from a year old employer, the Indigenous Environmental Network. They partnered up with Oil Change International.
00:50:45
Speaker
It's titled indigenous resistance against carbon. And in this report is something that, you know, they've, they've quantified it. Like they have a methodology and everything where they have quantified the fact that indigenous resistance has stopped or delayed greenhouse gas pollution equivalent to at least one quarter of annual us and Canadian emissions.
00:51:07
Speaker
And if there's one thing that you want people to take away from this chat when it comes to indigenous resistance and indigenous sovereignty and the fight against climate change, what would you say? Well, first off, big shout out to the crews at IEN and Oil Change. These are some incredible organizations that if you're listening and you have the means to donate to,
00:51:35
Speaker
you know, support these organizations. You know, they are literally some of the most cutting edge, badass crews on the planet, you know, fighting to protect, you know, the sacredness of Mother Earth and all of us who depend on her. And, you know, IEN, you know, during my time there, you know, we put out a whole theory of change into the world.
00:52:02
Speaker
naming what reality is. There has not been a major environmental victory won in Canada in 40 years without Indigenous peoples at the helm asserting their title, their collective rights, their right to self-determination and sovereignty.
00:52:25
Speaker
and supported by sophisticated, multi-pronged, multi-faceted intersectional social movement apparatuses. Whether it was James Bay, the big dam fights back in the day, or the McKenzie Valley Gas Project and the Barringer Report inquiry.
00:52:49
Speaker
right up to today, you know, with the battle against the tar sands, the expansion of the tar sands and, you know, Native people through, you know, our priority rights, you know, have been the basis for stopping evil people and evil corporations from, you know, causing harm, you know, to humankind and to the biosphere.
00:53:18
Speaker
And it's similar in the United States. And, you know, so yes, you know, you know, I think I think I think this is a great report, you know, that that sums up not just like, you know, the role of indigenous peoples and social movements, but also
00:53:39
Speaker
you know, why it's so important for us to get over our bullshit and like, especially like the funders of environmentalism and climate change resistance, you know, like native people are where it's at. And if you're not with the program, then you don't really count, you know. And so, you know, that's why I like going back to like, you know, being on Jason Kenney's enemy list, it just makes me laugh because
00:54:08
Speaker
know, I don't know how many times I've been called a foreign asset of Soros or some, you know, Rockefeller. And it's like, no, man, these people are my assets, like, they're my nation's assets, you know, and you fuckers.
00:54:30
Speaker
You've got your hand in the government's pocket and you're spending taxpayers' dollars to buy pipelines in the climate emergency and you're investing teachers' pensions in the Keystone XL, a doomed infrastructure project. If anybody's in the pocket of international interest, it's Jason Kenney and the Alberta government.
00:54:56
Speaker
And it's funny when they accuse me, a Native person, a treaty Indian member of Treaty 6, as being a foreign, I don't know, agitator or something. It's just fucking hilarious to me. And I'm like, you're really going to go there?
00:55:19
Speaker
You know what I'm saying? But because of white supremacy and this weird corporate media and these white intermediaries who translate history, his story, about what's happening in the movement,
00:55:38
Speaker
you know, like, you know, Native organizers like myself or colleagues that I have, you know, in our inner circle of elite global campaigners that are indigenous, you know, we, you know, it's just funny when they throw these turns at us, right? And we just laugh about it, because it's like, oh, come on, like, you
00:55:59
Speaker
It's the other way around. All these movement assets, all these funders, they work for us. It's not us being paid to work for them.
00:56:12
Speaker
Like we're dismantling patriarchy. We're dismantling white supremacy in the work that we're doing. We're helping Canada and holding Canada's hand towards reparations, you know, and eventually hopefully reconciliation. But we're nowhere near there yet. But like, make no mistake, we're completely aware of what we're doing and intentional about it.
00:56:41
Speaker
And we're not just these like blundering idiots that are lucky or whatever.
Conclusion and Contact Information
00:56:49
Speaker
I don't know what white people think, so yeah.
00:56:53
Speaker
It's a, there's a lot going on there, especially I'm, I'm knee deep in this, uh, this foreign, uh, the inquiry, the public inquiry into anti Alberta energy campaigns. And so I got a lot of, I got a lot of thoughts on, on that particular frame, but I think our time chatting has come to an end Clayton. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me. Uh, where can people find your book? What is your book called? How can people support you and your work? How can people find you on the internet? Now is the time to plug your pluggables.
00:57:21
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, just Google life in the city of dirty water. It's literally in every bookstore across the country. Um, you know, um, you know, it's on every web platform you can order online on, yeah, literally every place to buy books. Um, but I would encourage, uh, the listeners to, you know, order it to your local, um, locally owned bookstore, you know, support.
00:57:46
Speaker
local bookstores, especially right now, they, you know, like every sector in our economy have taken a big ass kicking because of the COVID pandemic. And so, you know, if you can buy my book, you know, please do buy it from an independent locally owned bookstore rather than, you know, Amazon.
00:58:05
Speaker
But yeah, people are busy, you've got kids, we're all getting them ready for back to school. So if you can't do that, you can order it from Amazon. And it's also available in the audio book format on Kobo and all the platforms for audio books. So if you are not a reader, but you like having a cool set of stories to listen to in the background,
00:58:31
Speaker
get the audiobook. I've read it myself, so I do a lot of impersonations of characters in the book, and it's quite animated, so I've heard.
00:58:45
Speaker
Well, buy the book, folks. That's the one thing from this podcast. Buy the book. And if you like this podcast, you want to keep hearing more podcasts like it. There's very easy thing you can do as well. It's embedded in the show notes. There's a link. But if you could afford $5, $10, $15 a month on your credit card, it really helps keep this independent media project going.
00:59:04
Speaker
Also, if you have any notes, thoughts, comments, things you think I need to hear, I'm very easy to get ahold of. I am on Twitter at Duncan Kinney and you can reach me by email at DuncanK at ProgressAlberta.ca. Thanks again to Clayton Thomas Muller for coming on the show. Thanks to Cosmic FamU Communist for our theme. Thank you for listening and goodbye.