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Lessons Learned Roadtripping Through a Divided America with Anthony James
173 Plays19 days ago
It’s no secret our world is in upheaval right now—climate disasters, political unrest, economic uncertainty. But in the midst of it all, there are also stories of resilience, adaptation, and new ways forward.
That’s a theme Anthony James, host of The Regen Narration Podcast, has explored deeply. From an extended road trip across the U.S., interviewing community leaders navigating climate adaptation, to studying how people respond to upheaval, Anthony has seen firsthand how crisis can be a catalyst for transformation.
In this episode, we dive into:
- Why witnessing and pitching in during disaster—rather than looking away—is essential to change.
- Lessons from his travels across the U.S., meeting communities in the midst of transformation.
- A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit, and how joy and transcendence can emerge from catastrophe.
- Real-world examples of people coming together across political and cultural divides to build something new.
- What modern society can learn from Indigenous worldviews that see nature as kin and resilience as a collective effort.
- Do we focus on building centralized movements, or do we nurture local seeds of change and trust in their transformative power?
- And much more…
More about Anthony and The Regen Narration Podcast:
The RegenNarration podcast features the stories of a generation that is changing the story, enabling the regeneration of life on this planet. It’s independent media, ad-free, freely available and entirely listener-supported.
Created and hosted by Anthony James, a fifth generation Australian man living on ancient lands among the oldest continuous cultures on earth. He is a Prime Ministerial award-winner for service to the international community, sought after MC, widely published writer, facilitator and educator, Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia, and Warm Data Lab Host Certified by the International Bateson Institute.
Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song. This episode was edited by Drew O’Doherty.
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Transcript
Introduction to Agrarian Futures
00:00:02
Speaker
There is a capacity inherent and remaining in people to stick together and find a way when things get awful. And there's going to be a whole bunch of pregnant potential that we are capable of coming together on.
00:00:29
Speaker
You are listening to Agrarian Futures, a podcast exploring a future centered around land, community, and connection to place. I'm Emma Radcliffe. And I'm Austin Unruh. And on the show, we chat with farmers, philosophers, and entrepreneurs reimagining our relationship to the land and to each other to showcase real hope and solutions for the future.
Introducing Anthony James and Regeneration Podcast
00:00:59
Speaker
Anthony James, thank you so much for joining us today. I had the pleasure to first meet you at a Kavir conference, I guess a few months ago at this point. You are the host of a podcast called the Regeneration Podcast.
00:01:11
Speaker
Yeah, really excited to talk to you today and maybe identify and talk common themes that we've all been trying to understand better and address. It's a great pleasure to be with you guys. I've enjoyed listening your podcast since we met.
00:01:24
Speaker
So great to be with you. So to get us started, you're almost at 250 episodes at this point. You've been doing this for a while, wide ranging types of guests from grassroots activists to a lot of farmers, policymakers, so much more. I'd be curious to hear you talk a little bit about like, what are some of the common threads or through lines that you've kind of seen emerge through your journey over the last several years, talking to all these people across all these different spaces and countries?
Communities, Disasters, and Resilience
00:01:58
Speaker
Of all the principles and threads that have come through, and there are many, there's perhaps one underpinning one. And it sort of echoes ah conversation I heard the other day and then wrote a bit about on Substack.
00:02:11
Speaker
with Rebecca Solnit, who wrote the famous book, A Paradise Built in Hell. And it was basically this incredible and now famous catalogue of how out of disaster, like, for example, the LA fires now, which is what she was talking about the other day, comes extraordinary stories of communities coming together providing for each other and with a joy, ah joy out of total disaster.
00:02:40
Speaker
So we're talking about Hurricane Katrina when the book was written, a whole bunch of others she surveyed prior to that, and then even now the stories are coming through from LA like this. Like the looting stuff is just like a fraction of the picture. There's this bigger picture of incredible transcendence almost.
00:02:55
Speaker
Yeah. And then I looked through my little list and thought, wow, it's the same. They're sort of different fronts to the same pattern, which I've always thought was a bit of a shame that we're in such a time which is so laden with disaster that that's required to bring the best out of us.
00:03:13
Speaker
But I don't know. i think, well, it's almost ah moot point. Either way, it brings the best out of us. So in that sense, I would say that's front and centre.
00:03:24
Speaker
Even in the worst of what's going to be served up, the best of us comes through almost relative to it. you You still don't wish for the worst on each other, obviously, or on ourselves. But But we know it's a challenging time.
00:03:39
Speaker
And in that sense, it can be heartening to know that we've got it, so to speak. Things will look different. LA is a good example, right? It's not going to be the same city. And funnily enough, I was listening to her conversation when I was in the ancient Mayan cities up in the north of Guatemala, where I'm at the moment.
00:03:53
Speaker
And it felt really visceral, you know, one civilization's attempt. to cope with the struggles. But then I was in that city and as the day progressed, I got there at dawn. By noon, it was flooded with people and heaps of Indigenous Maya.
00:04:08
Speaker
And I thought, the city's alive, mate. The city's not dead. It's utterly transformed. It's gone through other stages of being, you know back to the earth.
00:04:20
Speaker
But here it is, after all those centuries, still alive, full of human voices, joy, food, there was ceremony going on. And, i mean, again, not that I wish for our cities to hit that fate.
00:04:33
Speaker
Hopefully we can do a bit better, you know, with the knowledge that stemmed from the Mayan experience even, which we're fortunate through our mechanisms of of knowing to have access to. But I think either way, ah LA is a good example.
00:04:47
Speaker
It's going to be transformed. Things are going to look very different. But we can manage this. We can do this if we keep anchored to what matters most in human life and obviously the the rest of the natural world we share it with.
00:05:00
Speaker
I love that framing. And Anthony, one of the reasons that I've really been looking forward to having this conversation with you is not only are you a really good narrator and a really good storyteller, but also you're coming at this from a very different perspective.
00:05:14
Speaker
And i think probably coming into United States with a ah very eyes wide open and very fresh eyes. For someone to come from Australia and come and spend seven months in the United States, traveling around and visiting rural communities.
Regenerative Efforts in the US
00:05:30
Speaker
Let's start out by framing just what you said.
00:05:33
Speaker
in regeneration, we are starting with something that is dead or it's sick, somehow it has been is been harmed, it's been hurt, and we are looking to bring this thing back to health, back to life.
00:05:46
Speaker
So from your perspective, as you've been traveling around, what are some of the, maybe the unique challenges that you have witnessed, that you have seen here in the United States?
00:05:58
Speaker
I started in California, right? I met people who had lost insurance. The insurers, or as or as one person described them, the ah the the casinos, right?
00:06:12
Speaker
have left town. i mean, there's a couple of really amazing parts to this story. One was that this particular guy was one of the founders of a place called the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center in in California.
00:06:25
Speaker
and And they'd been behind decades-long campaign to have legislative change with regards to the beaver, for beaver habitat, landscape rehydration, and and so forth.
00:06:36
Speaker
And a they achieved it. That just happened as I was there. The legislative change had come in. B, there was this extraordinary story he told me about, and I i put a picture of this in that subtext piece I was referring to that Rebecca Solnit prompted in me, that of a situation where another fire, not the current ones, this beaver habitat was smack bang in the middle of it all, utterly green.
00:06:59
Speaker
It didn't burn. And that was then in parallel with another story, which was his particular community. They brought together the community in that watershed to talk about what they're going to do now that there's no insurance.
00:07:12
Speaker
Like they're all stuffed. So everyone was there, right? People of all persuasions. There was about 60 people at this meeting across the political divide. And all those other divisions that, we you know, sort of get talked about a lot in the States and certainly elsewhere, but certainly in the States.
00:07:26
Speaker
And he said this director, there was a moment where this director of ah a conservative Christian organisation got up and said, the insurers have left. We've only got each other now.
00:07:39
Speaker
It'll depend on how much we can come together and be our own insurance for each other. And do that by restoring our landscape, rehydrating our landscapes in this way. We saw this sort of thing, this sort of sentiment, or at least, or at least, if not always that kind of sentiment and awareness, it hadn't got that bad yet, perhaps, don't know, but at least a ah human spirit, I often said, frankly,
00:08:07
Speaker
alive and well throughout rural America in the midst of those political divides. And it really showed me how much, I just sort of flippantly say TV world or or even for that matter, internet world, mean, save blessedly this kind of media, but certainly algorithmic internet world, which is sadly the the big force, that that just doesn't represent what we saw.
00:08:30
Speaker
It doesn't represent what we saw. So really fascinating. So you're saying that in the media, I would say in cities, you feel like things are extremely polarized. In a sense, in a sense, I feel like maybe they're not as polarized as we think they are.
00:08:46
Speaker
Right. That's what I'm saying. It's like on the grounds, when you go to these communities, especially communities that are facing um a challenge that affects everyone, whether you're you know conservative or liberal, you actually saw people kind of having conversations across these political divides to work together.
00:09:05
Speaker
And that was much more prevalent than then maybe you had thought or expected. Oh, 100%. Yeah, 100%. I mean, we get TV internet world in Australia. That's our only... I don't get the chance to so to go through communities in the States, but this is why we did it, because that's where my podcast started, was doing that back home, because I didn't really know... i didn't know the people in the interior of my country.
00:09:30
Speaker
mean, so I was there, right? And it's funny, I can still find myself on occasion thinking that way, abstractly, remotely from actually speaking, and perhaps more importantly, listening to my compatriots.
00:09:43
Speaker
But it's when I stopped doing that and went and listened, that things were just infinitely better than I thought they'd be. And that was true of the states as well, and even true politically, because I saw, like, one of the great stories out of the election was a mob called Dirt Road Organising, a non-profit that stemmed from woman's experience with her best mate, a young fella, who and he'd been he'd become campaign manager, and she became youngest senator Australia.
00:10:16
Speaker
in the state of Maine in their history. And then
Grassroots Political Movements
00:10:20
Speaker
in her case, and partly I think because she broke new ground, it took a toll, but she also, well, they both probably shared an insight that there needed to be many more.
00:10:30
Speaker
And so why don't they create a nonprofit to train up people who would be next senators whatever congresspeople around the states who actually represent community.
00:10:43
Speaker
So these this woman was in Maine and and she lives on a farm. So it's all tied in with ag and everything else, the economy, everything else really.
00:10:53
Speaker
And by an intensive, I mean, I guess they call it deep canvassing now, I think when she did it, I don't think that term was around, but it even feels like it it's more than that. it's Canvassing still gives it that sense that we're talking to you because we want something, but it's talking to people because you want to know about them.
00:11:16
Speaker
That's the key. And the fact that she won doing that, And then they had a cohort, they've got about 70-something alumni already. They've only been running in ah a year and a half or something. And half of those ran for office at recent elections at different levels, mostly state from what I can gather. And a bunch of them won.
00:11:35
Speaker
And ah at about 50% outperformed past levels of progressive candidate, let's say, broadly speaking, which blows me away. All the more in an American system and all the more given,
00:11:49
Speaker
the the way the politics had arrived at the context they tried this in, that that's had that success. And I guess I see a bit of that because I watched a similar process happen in Australia where a 10-year period realised a transformation in our federal parliament, but from humble beginnings 10 years prior, where one rural seat changed from an incumbent, how would you kindly word it,
00:12:15
Speaker
a taken-for-granted, let's say that, conservative seat holder because the community got their stuff together and found what mattered to them as a whole. They went through the work of those conversations themselves, went to that incumbent MP, Member of Parliament,
00:12:33
Speaker
and was dismissed summarily out of hand. Literally, that Conservative member said something like, I don't think this community cares about politics. And so they realised someone had to stand amongst their ranks, someone did, and that woman won.
00:12:46
Speaker
It was extraordinary, but just... raised a little blip on the radar of major party politics. But then when she retired six years later, another independent woman won.
00:12:58
Speaker
And she's still in there six years on, and the next election will be next year. But not only that, out of that experience, a national movement built and built and built and took off in the last three or so years, and seven or eight more of those independents, mostly women, were elected at the last election.
00:13:14
Speaker
So I've seen what politics can look like. Oh, and one of those seats, by the way, was ours, which was an utterly conservative seat. It just happened to be my home for life and we have a real connection to the ocean, but I never thought I'd be actually represented by a member of parliament, and much less a federal parliament, but there it was. We were one of those seats, um you know, a miracle win.
00:13:34
Speaker
And I saw the difference when a politician or a would-be politician went to people saying, tell me about you, and then didn't seek to, you know, divide and hive off the others and all that sort of stuff. So I guess I've seen the power of it. it it mapped What I saw in the States at a fledgling level mapped on. And it just made me wonder what might be possible.
00:13:57
Speaker
So, I mean, staying on the on the topic of politics, obviously you traveled through a lot of rural communities. Many of them, I assume, voted for Trump, most likely.
00:14:08
Speaker
A lot of rural communities, record numbers, voted for Trump. You know, you talked a little bit about the issue of insurance in California and kind of this kind of impending environmental challenges people are facing.
00:14:20
Speaker
I'd be curious to hear... and especially as it relates to people you know voting for Trump and kind of like this populist discontent with the status quo, what were some of the things you are hearing from people in in these communities around you know maybe not feeling politically represented or being frustrated with how the world is going?
Understanding Trump Voters
00:14:40
Speaker
Well, there's plenty of that, basically. So anything that was going to appear as just tweaking the edges, as much as I should say, like I had some communities perhaps more progressive, but I'm i'm talking First Nations too, tell me we've never received so much support as we're receiving right now.
00:14:57
Speaker
The first Native American head of the FSA, a whole bunch of stuff like that was just... amazing in that administration. mean, Paul Hawken went as far as to say he thinks the Biden administration, you know not Biden, but his administration was the best we've had in perhaps 50 years.
00:15:12
Speaker
ah When I say we've, that's what he said, best you guys have had in in decades. So, you know, I hasten to add credit where credit's due.
00:15:22
Speaker
Every time I saw the Democrats roll out celebrities and opposing billionaires, it was like, oh, man, that's not what, that's just not going to go down well. It is what we heard was, frankly, a lot of what I feel, that people have been neglected and shafted for a bloody long time. You know, when I visit El Paso and they talk about how overnight people their community was shredded because of the North American free trade agreements back in the 90s at Democrat government.
00:15:47
Speaker
There are very good reasons. We've just seen that then continue over the the neoliberal trajectory, essentially. It's cushioning that, I guess, the worldview of conquest and separation and all that stuff.
00:16:00
Speaker
What I also heard from Trump voters, I heard people who had always been Democrat voters who were now Trump voters. People who were Trump voters and who were aghast that they would be scaring, no less, people who didn't win the election like Democrat voters, that they would have struck fear into the hearts of Democrat voters.
00:16:19
Speaker
People who were aghast at that thought. Like they are genuinely seeing a necessary step, even though many would say they wouldn't want to be at the dinner table with Trump, but a necessary step to break through.
00:16:33
Speaker
i heard others who are deeply in regenerative agriculture, deeply pivotal to the success of globally of many people who have taken this on in recent decades, who are just so, and this is where I can empathise, they're just so deeply frustrated at the big food, big pharma thing that they would say, and you id I'd agree, is an epidemic of ill health and destruction of landscape.
00:17:05
Speaker
and leads to the destruction of human spirit like farmer suicides en masse in my country too, let alone in India, which is a whole other orders of magnitude. That system, they just see there's such a lock on it.
00:17:18
Speaker
but'd They'd almost do, you know, having spent their lives in it, they'd almost do anything to break that lock. Like, sure, so some people will be deported and stuff, but, you know, in their mind, it's akin to a genocide and even, well, a planetary destruction.
00:17:30
Speaker
So they're like, we've got to go for the root. yeah In their mind, I've had to grapple with this a lot myself, I should say. and But this is some of the complexity and nuance.
00:17:41
Speaker
So when I still read more simplistic representations and Democrats still howling in simplistic howls across the aisle, Like, it's just not what I saw. It's just not what I saw.
00:17:54
Speaker
So complex, almost hard to grapple with, almost hurt your head, you know, and hurt your heart for that matter. but But there it is, some of the reality. And being able to empathise as I could with with some of these feelings, I was just trying to sense into why...
00:18:12
Speaker
how then they could countenance all the tough stuff, like the just the autocratic rubbish and the the deeper threats in that sense and, yeah, the cruel deportations and all that. ah And, you know, is Trump going to deliver what they want?
00:18:28
Speaker
They believe. So that we'll see, and it will be interesting to see what happens if and when that doesn't come to bear. What happens then? Given the amount of genuine thought and care I saw everywhere Again, I can't help but be hopeful if we don't let that abstract level of politicking and TV and internet, which, you know, is becoming more concentrated power. But if we can keep our hearts and minds free of that sufficiently, that there is ah hope there, that there is a capacity inherent and remaining in people to stick together and find a way when things get awful,
00:19:13
Speaker
So if and when he doesn't deliver, then we we're going to be there and there's going to be a whole bunch of pregnant potential that we are capable ball of coming together on.
00:19:24
Speaker
And digging into an issue that is near and dear to our heart and obviously to you too, agriculture. mean, you've mentioned already a little bit how that played into even this kind of political climate.
00:19:35
Speaker
What did you see with respect to kind of agriculture, both the industrialized agriculture that you probably were exposed to in a lot of rural communities and obviously also the amazing regenerative farmers that you've been talking to?
00:19:48
Speaker
So from the outside perspective, again, some of the stuff we hear, but to see, fields of corn branded, like in rows. but That was another level.
00:20:00
Speaker
um So do that that was pretty confronting. More confronting still, well, more con confronting, how do you rate these things, was back in California in the Central Valley and just the moonscapes.
00:20:13
Speaker
and And, of course, you got the migrant worker scenario playing out there too. So it was all pretty confronting. And then some of the extraordinary, you know, even that farmer in Maine who became the youngest female senator there, her partner is an in independent and has an independent is winning seat and just won a fourth term at the last election.
00:20:34
Speaker
So, again, he's still there. He said something to me like, when I speak to the farmers in in my conservative district, I say, look, I'm with you the way we're losing our family farms.
00:20:45
Speaker
And in in that sense, then we lose our landscapes, we lose our good food and our health, you know, et cetera. So he says, it's possible for us to say, we care about you as a farmer.
00:20:56
Speaker
We care about farmland and farming. And we don't have to resort to mean politics, et cetera. Like I can say I'm here to protect you, conservative voter, as a fellow farmer.
00:21:13
Speaker
So I saw a bit of that there and that was super interesting and all the more as an independent. And then I saw this other you incredible thing happening.
Tribal Bison Restoration Initiatives
00:21:21
Speaker
Well, a number, but one comes to mind, which was with the Buffalo restoration happening across the country, which again triggers all sorts of polarizations, right?
00:21:31
Speaker
Apparently, and at certain levels, let's say. But I was watching people come together on it and in ways I didn't expect as well, even in the tribes, right?
00:21:42
Speaker
So there's this amazing film that screened at Regenerate with that we attended, Emma, Bring Them Home. It's screened just before, but it's been sweeping all kinds of International Film Festival awards and it's going to roll out through this year.
00:21:58
Speaker
But I had already been privy to the story, partly through the brilliant book Healing Grounds by Liz Carlyle and partly through visiting a ah bloke who's regarded by some as the best bison wrangler in the world.
00:22:10
Speaker
Though he defers to a First Nations bloke nearby, interestingly enough, but... I visited him in Montana and what was happening out there was incredible. And then I find out it's sort of they're linking up now, all these First Nations efforts and and other people, Savory Institute and so forth.
00:22:25
Speaker
And then there was this film, though, at the conference, which took the next steps then on the story I knew out of Liz Carlisle's book on on the Blackfeet effort. And it went into detail as datatal how long it took, again, decades of effort,
00:22:39
Speaker
But as much because of the bureaucracy and so forth and colonial stuff as their own internal stuff, in the end, that's what really hit them in the last six or seven years. And yes, it still took that long when they realised that they were in their own way now with regards to bringing back the bison and in a holistic management, holistic grazing, regenerative type setup, restoring culture, right, as well as landscape and animal welfare and all that sort of stuff.
00:23:08
Speaker
That in the tribes, there was a bunch of people that said, look, we've come so far down this line. We've got cattle now. How are we going to accommodate bison herds roaming through here?
00:23:21
Speaker
We're all already on a knife's edge, like all farmers in the country, heck, up against it, marginalised. How are we going to grapple with bringing a bison back into it? Yet they did.
00:23:31
Speaker
And they had just, when the film decided to pack up and say, that's enough, let's release it. Or they just let go of the first absolutely wild herd. So this gets to a really big point.
00:23:42
Speaker
I was going to say it's not even managed, but yes, it's managed. You might say in words we understand it's shepherded, like it's tended. It's how it used to be. And I think that's a big point because again, back home in Australia,
00:23:55
Speaker
a story where not only is this former Rhodesian using cattle to regenerate land in an extraordinary way over 30 years, he started to harness other megafauna, other large herbivores, and the donkeys in particular.
00:24:08
Speaker
And donkeys are regarded as feral pests in Australia. They had to be shot. He didn't. He's got a herd of whatever now, one or 200, and done extraordinary regeneration with them where the cattle don't go.
00:24:19
Speaker
So combining them has been the key. And doing so with that proximity, not in an industrialised form. Like he he's classic Bushman. He learned from the Maasai partly.
00:24:31
Speaker
Bare feet a lot of the time on rugged country. Voice. Conversations with the animals, basically. And once the donkeys come to know him, because they're used to being chased in helicopters and shot, the trust restored and then what they can do together.
00:24:44
Speaker
It's just been extraordinary. So, again, I map it on to other things I've seen back home. And then I see how internally in tribes and then partly externally, We're coming back to it.
00:24:55
Speaker
And then it asks all sorts of beautifully tantalising questions about what is management? What is almost what is life?
00:25:06
Speaker
What is wilderness? What if there's not so much of a difference between them all and a wild life, a an inherently alive spirit is the birthright and that the more we can feed that, pardon the pun, in the animals, the more we feed it in ourselves and vice versa and that that has something to do with then dissolving the that animal bad, this animal good, that human bad, this human good,
00:25:35
Speaker
That party bad, this party good. This is some of the then you know deeper principles and threads that that started to emerge, I think, and and probably through through the whole journey of the podcast and and certainly in some pretty powerful ways in the States.
00:25:50
Speaker
Anthony, you'd shared in another podcast, ah one that you did with Manga Bay. that of the indigenous framework around kinship, that kinship is a very different framework, a very different way of seeing the world where we are related to, we are we are intrinsically in connection with not only each other,
00:26:15
Speaker
but also with the natural world and all the
Indigenous Kinship and Nature
00:26:18
Speaker
elements. And that this gives us a different way of seeing the world, a different framework in contrast to our our economic framework, where we see the natural world as something that we can, can we can we make money off of this or is this gonna cost us money? so So tell me a little bit more about what that lens, that perspective on life looks like and how you see it being used and maybe adopted by more people.
00:26:45
Speaker
Yeah, great stuff, great stuff. Two things come to mind. One is what really grabbed the attention of Mike in the Mongabay podcast before we got online, which was a story out of the Kimberley, the North West Western Australia, an Aboriginal guy up there who returned home because, again, over there, same thing, stripped from their country and then white fellas go in, destroy it and leave.
00:27:08
Speaker
So it's just abandoned and then becomes a mess and then fire tinder and all, et cetera, et cetera. So that had happened, but he went back and certain legal changes and other shifts meant he could.
00:27:19
Speaker
mean, it's a much more complex story, but broadly that's what i was able to happen. And the regeneration they've done in their way, amazing. I mean, you just, you walk around and you're just eating, eating,
00:27:31
Speaker
I'll never forget. He actually showed me one of the plants. He said, and this plant, you pull this leaf off and rub in your hands and it lathered up. He said, so that's our soap. and And this plant, he pulled the leaf off.
00:27:44
Speaker
He said, and this is sandpaper and he rubbed against my skin and it's just... If he said it was actually sandpaper and I had my eyes shut, I'd have believed it. And I just had to laugh. I'm like, wow, you guys really did have everything.
00:27:55
Speaker
We went and created all these industrial production lines, but you really did have it all just hanging off trees um and out of the ground. So that was all funny. But he was the one that said...
00:28:06
Speaker
Donkeys? They're not pests. They're our transport. But you know what really hits me, though, is what he is what he and so many other Indigenous people in Australia have said. And for that matter, I had it echoed to me in the States too as we visited people Navajo, Cheyenne River Sioux.
00:28:24
Speaker
A person was on, a filmmaker, Joel Caldwell, who'd who'd done a film for Patagonia on the Lower Sioux. was the same sort of themes. These brilliant stories of regeneration in themselves and an invitation.
00:28:37
Speaker
to us. And when I say us, I'll say colonial descendants. And that's everywhere. Like I hear that everywhere. That view that you talk about, Austin, like where they're kin to in their eyes, in spite of everything.
00:28:52
Speaker
In spite of it, that in my mind, I'm still thinking, wow, don't you want to cut loose on me for a bit first or, you know, bloodlet? um but But by and large, sure, there's some and maybe there needs to be still.
00:29:05
Speaker
But by and large, what I'm getting is invitation and kinship. And then the other related story i want to tell and in response to your probing there is was out of New Mexico, actually.
00:29:21
Speaker
I met a bloke who I really wanted to actually meet, having had a podcast with him last year stemming from Judy Schwartz's book, The Reindeer Chronicles, the now famous Chapter 3 with Jeff Goebel.
00:29:33
Speaker
Love that book. Oh, and this chapter, I had to read it again and again. I had this podcast with the guy and then and then blessedly, met him and met him as he was going into facilitate workshop. So let's come back to that, actually, what I saw happen again in person.
00:29:47
Speaker
But I want to reference Judy's perspective when she was in this three-day workshop, when people had come to arms down there in New Mexico, the land was shot almost in representation of where the community had got to and relations had got to. Again, sort of, you know, that connection we talked about a bit earlier.
00:30:03
Speaker
It was as bad as things got, last resort, in Jeff's words, the facilitator who was then called in who by the way cut his teeth in the northwest of the states with Colville Tribe. So again, deference to a lot of those learnings. He was running this workshop over three days.
00:30:18
Speaker
You don't know who's going to come. You invite anyone who is who makes decisions and is affected by decisions regarding the issue at hand is the sort of motif. So they did. They don't know who's going to come.
00:30:29
Speaker
You don't have to stay. Everyone go, whatever. So people came in and asked Some of the big players Judy was writing about, you know, I'm not seeing this person says, you how's it going to work with without that person? And then this person walks in and will'll never forget, she said he had the belt buckle the size of a dinner plate.
00:30:43
Speaker
And then proceeded to see the conflict play out. This is end of day two. There's no way this is resolving in one more day. And sure enough, it did. And by the end of, through that last day, there were facilitative structures. But then the people themselves, and I'll never get her describing, they came to the point where they started to say things like, your dad and my dad were friends at school.
00:31:08
Speaker
I don't want this to continue where we're enemies. And when we think about kinship, that was the thread. And it so often is. What is the connection we have? It doesn't have to be literal, you know, well, literal in a Western sense, because we're all kin. But can we, if we can strike that match of kinship,
00:31:30
Speaker
so almost like the dam wall breaks. And I use that metaphor advisedly, by the way, because some of that's happening around the country too and restoring life and culture. Again, First Nations are off at the heart of it.
00:31:41
Speaker
It's almost like the dam breaks. And that that guy with the belt buckle dinner plate has since relinquished some power and things have continued to progress well in the last, whatever it is, then two or three years.
00:31:52
Speaker
I was told when I was there and I saw Jeff then firsthand play out. It was how can we stop the spread of homelessness because it had just started to hit Belen where he's based in New Mexico out of a pretty bad, i believe, situation in Albuquerque.
00:32:06
Speaker
How can we stop it happening anymore here?
Addressing Homelessness in New Mexico
00:32:09
Speaker
and fix it so to speak like stop it period and then have that be a model of how it can be stopped everywhere else because it's getting epidemic levels and what we saw in la of san francisco it's just incredible and that was all he had was one day what stood out to me all the major agencies actually put some faith into spending a day and and i knew ah certain representation of them that there were people who just wanted action And I don't want to be sitting around here talking in another meeting.
00:32:39
Speaker
There were other people who were data-driven. I'm like, look, we've got to follow the databases, this, this, and this. Why don't we just get on with it? And there were people who appreciate getting together as community. So though I knew there was a spread. There were homeless people, importantly, almost like, you know, how could there not be? And certainly in this frame, that's how it's viewed.
00:32:56
Speaker
And some government people and blessedly some press who, by the way, have continued to run the story since when they hadn't, despite protestations to that effect, before.
00:33:07
Speaker
What happened in six hours was they didn't get two-thirds to the agenda. So they didn't get to the bit where you nominally resolve it and come up with the awesome stuff that's going to happen henceforth.
00:33:19
Speaker
And yet I'm there braced at the end of the workshop when they do a last round the circle as to impressions. Like, okay, this is going to be interesting and awesome. i'm going to watch this. it iss going to be interesting.
00:33:29
Speaker
There is surely going to be a bunch of people who are going to cry out, what have I just spent this day for? We didn't even get through the agenda. What an unprofessional outfit, whatever. There's going to be something. There was universal acclimation.
00:33:42
Speaker
There were even laughs in the room because of, well, one particular woman really got the house roaring because they knew she was the most sceptical. And she was ablaze with praise for the process.
00:33:55
Speaker
How did that happen? How did this happen? And another woman who'd got up at the start and said, you know, I've achieved this, I've achieved that, I've achieved this. was so humbled by the end.
00:34:07
Speaker
And she said, now I realise for all I've achieved by myself, if i had connected with you guys, what more could be done? And I asked Jeff later, how does that happen? And he said, because people were listened to.
00:34:22
Speaker
And in that sense, you don't, like you prioritise that above getting it to an agenda and a nominal resolution phase. You listen and then you let people talk as long as they had to talk.
00:34:38
Speaker
So he said those people wanted to talk. I was there sitting sitting there thinking with the facilitator's hat on because I've done a bit of this stuff, right? But the the conventional wisdom from our culture is if the dominators talk too much, move on.
00:34:54
Speaker
But this was let people talk as much as they need to talk. Listen, even if you're in debrief spaces, write down every word. It's less for what's left on the board as having people know they've been listened to.
00:35:11
Speaker
And then out of the workshop, within weeks, the press is covering it every week and they've got half a billion dollars donated and a piece of land.
00:35:22
Speaker
it's It's like an alchemy. And there's a message in that too, I think. It's like careful of getting mechanistic with how you think things should be, should work, and listen and observe how they are working and go with that trusted.
00:35:40
Speaker
And all I can say is, as I've been confronted by these things for, yeah, these eight years, certainly writ large in the podcast, as that really turned to literally listening, like tell me about you all the time, I've seen it work.
00:35:54
Speaker
And work in ways that do feel like alchemy, like where you least expect it. And I guess, yeah, we're full circle to Rebecca's appraisal, isn't it? Like, out of the worst comes the best and you'd you'd scarcely realise it, but it's true.
00:36:08
Speaker
And now Rebecca's worry is that if we don't hear these stories in this way, we'll forget and go on believing a story that feels like you need to get a stronger leader to beat the other one, et cetera.
00:36:24
Speaker
Have you ever read any David Graeber? Oh, yes. Yes, Emma. 100% I have. Some of what you're saying kind of is similar to what he kind of talks about in the dawn of everything around this process you're you're discussing of like listening and discussing, you know, even if you don't get what you want in the end, like being this kind of deep participatory form of democracy that is how a lot of communities work.
00:36:53
Speaker
traditionally practiced governance and is even to this day how a lot of indigenous communities still practice like these long kind of dilatory, you know, meetings they have where everyone's talking and arguing and and laughing. I mean, it's like, you know, and they can go on for days often.
00:37:12
Speaker
being kind of this like kind of deeper form of democracy than kind of what we have today with an election every four years and pretty impersonal representative democracy that that feels pretty shallow ultimately.
00:37:27
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I should confess, I've got that book on the shelf and not read yet. oh I'm hanging to read that book. Everyone says that. Yes, that's right. They're thick books. let's take It's like Stephen Hawking's book about physics years ago, whatever. a kind of Brief history of it everything, was it? I can't remember, but time, maybe. Brief history time, and no one's read it, but everyone loves the myth of it.
00:37:49
Speaker
But no, I've listened to his co-author, David Wengro, I think his name is, and love it. And yes, yes, yes, it's funny, Emma, that you should bring this up because I just read, while I've been here in Guatemala, which was an old haunt of mine, so I write this...
00:38:05
Speaker
I hadn't been here for 20 years, but I used to live here for a few and really connected just incredibly. I just never thought I'd be back because I'm from Australia. It's so far. You actually have to go to the States first. But given we were there, I'm coming back. And it's been incredible.
00:38:19
Speaker
And reconnecting with the stories of this place and these cultures and how they connected with the North American cultures and in the South, like the whole lot was connected in trade and spirit and governance.
00:38:34
Speaker
But referencing what you've just described, i mean, front and centre is the Haudenosaunee, of course, from the north-east. And it's funny because the book that came to me, and I don't know if you find this, but I have all sorts of uncanny books uncanny happenstances, coincidences play out.
00:38:53
Speaker
One of them was I'd come across this book 1491 across the States the whole time. I'd say like it's 18 years old or something. It's not a new one, but clearly as I learned, I'd never heard of it.
00:39:05
Speaker
As I learned, made a real splash. and And then a documentary was made about it like in 2017 or something. I've learned all this since. And it won awards. and it was made by a First Nations person too. It was written not by a First Nations person, but a brilliant writer.
00:39:19
Speaker
And who happens to have my last name? So maybe we're related somewhere down the track or my firm last former last name, I should say, because I ditched my last name. but Charles Mann was his name.
00:39:31
Speaker
And then I sort of I've got to read that one. At some stage, I'll come back to 1491. I took a photo of it. kept seeing it everywhere. And then I come to Guatemala. There was one secondhand bookstore nearby. And there's actually another one over there too, I think. But this one that I found first, it's it's like a cave. It's a ripper. It's got all sorts of fascinating stuff. And there was this book staring me in the face for a hundred quetzales.
00:39:53
Speaker
And in there, It talked about this stuff too, this this way of governance that goes back centuries and millennia on this continent. And in particular, the starting point for the documentary, which I only watched last night.
00:40:07
Speaker
So coming into this conversation and having you say this brings it front and centre for me. The five warring nations that originally formed that confederacy that then inspired in part the United States Constitution.
00:40:22
Speaker
In critical parts, it didn't translate, obviously, with slaves and in and critically with women. Across the genders, it was, you would be equal. I don't even know if if that's the right word.
00:40:36
Speaker
Everyone played to their strengths and their roles. And it actually worked and endured or and does still. So 900 years and counting. that that's still how it's being played out.
00:40:50
Speaker
So when you think about that and you think about how we've been managing gender, it doesn't have to be that way. We can come together and inspire the best out of each other, not just interpersonally, but structurally, we can do this.
00:41:08
Speaker
And it all relates to dissolving the abstraction. Like you've got to be in the room. Yeah, as you said, Emma. So to think that that stemmed from your you know, a neck of the woods that you live in and that even the governance system that is in place today connected with it in its way and in important ways still at the time.
00:41:31
Speaker
is very interesting. Again, I just feel like it's laden with possibility and that the seeds are already there. We don't even have to recreate anything or pluck some AI out to do something extraordinary.
00:41:42
Speaker
Literally and and a bit figuratively, the seeds are there.
Local Solutions to Global Issues
00:41:46
Speaker
What comes to mind as you're sharing these stories from all across the United States and abroad is this phrase that the future is already here.
00:41:57
Speaker
It's just not evenly distributed yet. This is something that I keep coming back to in my own work. where we are doing a lot of silvopasture work in this small geography right here. And I fully believe that that will at some point spread very significantly in the years ahead.
00:42:16
Speaker
But if you were to look right now and do a survey of syllable pastor adoption, we would hardly be a blip on the radar because there's so little syllable pastor being done in the United States.
00:42:27
Speaker
But yet at the same time, I think that in five years, 10 years, you'll see it really, really take off. And I think that's probably the case so for a lot of the the solutions that you're seeing in small form throughout the United States as you're going throughout your travels.
00:42:43
Speaker
is you're seeing beaver ponds and beaver restoration being something that is gaining acceptance, at least in pockets. Reestablishment of travel corridors for bison, local politics, people who otherwise didn't have the ability to run for office, the training, the the resourcing to run for office, now having someone who's making it easier for them to do so, more grassroots representation in the political office. There are significant problems that we are facing today,
00:43:13
Speaker
that there are already people working on each one of those problems. We just haven't yet scaled up. Not all areas have picked up those solutions yet, but they're out there and they're they're often in nascent form and they're waiting to be adopted by others. And sometimes it just takes time, but it's wonderful to have someone like you going out there and able to see and identify those nascent solutions to the big scary problems that we are facing. And oftentimes,
00:43:43
Speaker
at least for me, I don't feel like I have the the vision to see all of those solutions because I'm here in my own area working on my own solutions to problems and not connected to ah to others where i I can see the problems.
00:43:58
Speaker
I can see the wildfires. I can see the the political strife. I can see all of those things. They're very, very clear. But you don't see the people working on the solutions. Ah, geez, that's well said. Also, I really appreciate that.
00:44:13
Speaker
You know, someone said, maybe someone's now to scale across, not scale up. I reckon that's the distributed piece you're talking about. Yeah. And I like that, that expression, because we're after something that's different. Yeah, we're after something that's distributed, not not control center, because that's how nature works.
00:44:33
Speaker
And because that's how nature works, the world, nature, will be at our back if we're operating more in that way. And that's what I'm finding. That's true of the stories that, you know, almost produce miracles. The alchemy is because that's the way nature works.
00:44:46
Speaker
These pockets are working and in staggering ways because they've got back in sync. Things are only struggle street otherwise, aren't they? Even if someone's winning, it's like how many rich people aren't happy? Like it's it's almost a stereotype, but it's true.
00:45:00
Speaker
They're miserable. Australia's richest man and when i was a kid died miserable of a heart attack. and What you're saying, Austin, kind of goes back to possibilities for the future being emergent and coming coming out of kind of spontaneous, or maybe spontaneous isn't the right word, but like, you know, multitudes of different projects happening all over the country, not necessarily with some sort of big intention or vision to scale or anything, just responding to tangible problems they have and being flexible and agile and how it evolves. And I think that goes contrary to mechanistic,
00:45:36
Speaker
technocratic conversations that go on about things like climate change, where it's all about how do we create like a world framework for how to reduce carbon emissions by two degrees? Or, you know, how how do we get, you know, all the nation states to agree on, you know, these specific set of, you know, commitments?
00:45:56
Speaker
I think that approach comes with a certain hubris, comes out of the same mentality that like we as as humans can kind of control and shape the world the way we would a machine, as opposed to what you were talking about, Austin, which is more kind of the way nature works and is just a lot of emergent, diverse solutions kind of just emerging and shifting and changing, you know, everywhere without some sort of like set plan determined, you know, ahead of time.
00:46:23
Speaker
Another thing that seems to be going on here, and and Anthony, from what you're sharing from your stories and your travels, is when people stop asking who is going to save us, who is going to come in from the outside and deliver a solution for us, whether it's the insurance, whether it's a government, whether it's a politician, ah we're going to vote in the right politician, we're going to get the right insurance for our issues, for our for our house or whatever it is.
00:46:52
Speaker
that when people start to look to each other and say, how are we going to solve this? And obviously, there's always going bigger problems that we can't necessarily control ourselves or we can't control within a community. and But in a community, you can ah have a significant effect on homelessness.
00:47:12
Speaker
You can have a significant effect on the water holding capacity of your landscape. You can have a significant effect on the way that ranch land is managed in that Judas Schwartz example from New Mexico.
00:47:25
Speaker
When they kind of give up on being rescued, being saved by some large institution that's going to come in and save the day, and instead they look to each other and say,
00:47:37
Speaker
we're all we have. And we actually have a lot more power and agency than we thought we had. Let's get down to business and get to work. And then they start to, and i think this is the important part of of storytelling and and what you're doing is then, well, how do we find the solutions? And those solutions are often out there. They're just in another community that has already taken that step of, we are going to solve our own problems.
00:48:04
Speaker
Yeah, i really appreciate what you both said there. It's like, ah because I still feel, but still hasten to wear it. Like, bless the ones who, I mean, partly, Emma, you you're no doubt right. there's ah There's a cohort of people at the...
00:48:17
Speaker
let's say abstract levels that are there with that control mindset or trying to win, trying to win change. But bless them because a lot of them are there, obviously, and maybe there's overlap in this where, you know, i talked about even my unconscious, you know, persistent, unconscious, mechanistic,
00:48:35
Speaker
forms of thinking just from a lifetime in it in this culture, but that people are there because they desperately want to help. And that's the way they can, at least in their own minds, help. So bless them.
00:48:47
Speaker
I think those people get to sing more when what you said, Austin, happens, like, that it also means we do get to have representatives in our congresses and parliaments who have stemmed from that ethos of getting involved, organising as a community and getting the person that represents us to be there.
00:49:08
Speaker
It's not that they're mutually exclusive. Well, again, they don't have to be. It can work together. It's interesting to me that across the board, again, and um we could talk more of...
00:49:19
Speaker
media outlets and education models and a whole bunch of other stuff that I've just seen come on in extraordinary ways. But across the board, they were all saying there's been step change in the fields therein, as you have observed, you guys have observed too.
00:49:36
Speaker
So if we are on an exponential curve then of the good stuff, of people getting stuck in and finding the joy that Rebecca Solomon was talking about, even out of the worst, even when it gets to the worst, but also to recognise that it's marginal, like you said, Austin, it's still marginal.
00:49:54
Speaker
All this good stuff is still marginal and in pockets. But if it's on an exponential curve, then what could happen if we didn't think to... organize and manage them and connect them and, you know build a movement.
Hope for Grassroots Change
00:50:08
Speaker
We didn't think like that so much as just kept tending it and invited more people in from by listening to them and conducting more processes like we witnessed in New Mexico and more political ones like we witnessed in Maine and in Wisconsin and then wherever the other people that won, there were four or five that actually did actually win this time, even in that environment that went so far.
00:50:30
Speaker
the other way but again evidence i think of the complexity it's not as binary as it appears nothing in nature is what would be possible and perhaps even more so paradoxically if things get worse what would be possible to tend that naturally exponential curve of the good stuff where where we where we connect you know viscerally that's a pretty enticing thought Love it.
00:51:01
Speaker
Anthony, this has been an absolute pleasure to have this conversation, to get to share in the the wealth of knowledge and insights and connections that you've been able able to make over the last eight years of the podcast, over the last number of months as you've been traveling.
00:51:16
Speaker
ah Really a pleasure to to have this conversation. And I do wish you the best in your continued travels and as you continue to share the word and and spread all these little nuggets of fantastic regeneration.
Engage with Agrarian Futures and Regeneration
00:51:30
Speaker
And before we go to, let's make sure that people know how to find you. So obviously you do a podcast. Please tell people where to get that podcast and what it's called. Cool. Well, the podcast is is everywhere podcasts are found and it's called The Regeneration with a little play on the word. Regen, narration, like story.
00:51:49
Speaker
but no gap. So just regeneration, but narration like story and Navy Blue Insignia. There's a website, which is regeneration spelled like that.com. But you know, when we do talk in more depth, like we are here, it's not just stories of regeneration. It's stories and systems we live by for the world to regenerate itself on its terms.
00:52:10
Speaker
So there's a cultural story, if you like, that the name is really alluding to. So thanks.
00:52:19
Speaker
Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexander Miller, who also wrote our theme song. If you enjoyed this episode, please like, subscribe and leave us a comment on your podcast app of choice.
00:52:29
Speaker
As a new podcast, it's crucial for helping us reach more people. You can visit agrarianfuturespod.com to join our email list for a heads up on upcoming episodes and bonus content.