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Ep 59: Black Earth Wisdom Part 2
444 Plays1 month ago
Welcome back to part 2 of our conversation with this season's guiding text: Black Earth Wisdom. In this episode, we talk about how racism has cut us off from natural spaces and our indigenous knowledge. We elevate our environmental justice ancestors and discuss how liberation of Black people is tied to the liberation of the Earth.
RESOURCES
- Black Earth Wisdom: Soulful Conversations with Black Environmentalists by Leah Penniman
- "Gmail’s smart replies will use AI to pull context from your inbox and Drive" by Jay Peters. The Verge.
- "Carbon footprint of Israel’s war on Gaza exceeds that of many entire countries" by Nina Lakhani. The Guardian.
- "When You Die, You’ll Probably Be Embalmed. Thank Abraham Lincoln For That" by Brian Walsh. Smithsonian Magazine.
- Cob Hill Natural Building School
- "Mississippi's bear population is growing. What are they good for and why do we want more?" by Brian Broom. Clarion Ledger.
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Apocalypse Still by Leah Nicole Whitcomb
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This podcast was created, hosted, and produced by Dani & Leah.
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Transcript
Gratitude for Nature and Our Bodies
00:00:00
Speaker
who do plants mamas
00:00:32
Speaker
Y'all, we just out here trying to water our plants and mind our business, you know? Everybody from the deep south, man, everybody can have culture like us.
00:00:45
Speaker
Hey y'all and welcome back to another episode of Who Do Plant Mamas. I'm your co-host Lynn Nicole. And I'm Dani B. And before we get started today, Dani B, what are you feeling grateful for?
00:00:56
Speaker
I'm feeling grateful for the trees. um I moved into another apartment unit and I get to see more of the trees. They just been carrying me for real through this week.
00:01:08
Speaker
Especially at night I just open my window Lay in bed and just look at the trees So I fall asleep like Thank you We here together So what about you?
00:01:20
Speaker
I would say i am grateful for my body. i know sometimes my body doesn't think I am because I complain about it being achy and feeling old. But considering what I have put it through its first 30 years and it's still here and it's still getting me where I need to go.
00:01:42
Speaker
I'm very little. I'm very grateful. I'm very grateful it's still going. And I'm trying to do my best to take better care of it. But I am grateful that it has not given up on me.
00:01:53
Speaker
Period.
Nature Exclusion and Historical Segregation
00:01:57
Speaker
So today we wanted to finish our conversation on Black Earth Wisdom. There was so much that we talked about in part one because there was so much in this book but in this I really wanted to focus on the themes and the thoughts that we were left with so when I was reading the book I thought a lot about nature as exclusion you kind of talked about this a little bit Dani in part one about how the national parks pushed out indigenous people and excluded or segregated black people.
00:02:29
Speaker
The Great Migration forced black people out of the rural South and into urban industrialized areas And the white people who were in those urban areas left for the suburbs where they had sidewalks and trees and water features creating this sort of nature oasis.
00:02:46
Speaker
But it reinforced this idea that nature is for white people and that for a lot of us, we are safer in these concrete jungles, right? We're safer, disconnected from the world, living outside of our nature cycles.
00:03:00
Speaker
And so I'm thinking about the effects that that has on us. Like spiritually, we don't see the sunrise. We don't see the sunset. We don't feel the sun on our skin. We can't see the stars because of light pollution.
00:03:14
Speaker
Our local water systems are polluted. We don't have access to the earth technology or to the nature divinations that our ancestors have had access to for millennia.
00:03:25
Speaker
And that's aiding in this feeling of loneliness and depression and anxiety and
Environmental Racism and AI Narrative Critique
00:03:32
Speaker
disconnection. And in addition to that, I've been thinking a lot about how the global south and how people of color are scapegoated for centuries. I believe this book talked about as early as the 1700s, white folks have polluted areas with black people or indigenous people in order to get the benefits of non-renewable energy or sanitation or whatever they wanted the benefits of without having to deal with the punishments of those things.
00:03:59
Speaker
And that's why today folks of color deal with air pollution, like with Elon Musk's XAI in Memphis. water scarcity, like with Mark Zuckerberg's metadata centers in Georgia, or Bill Gates' Microsoft Stargate's campus in Texas.
00:04:17
Speaker
And it's also why places in the West, like the United States and Great Britain and Canada and several other countries are responsible for most of the planet's pollution, but they'll ship They're trash to Africa or to Asia for them to deal with.
00:04:35
Speaker
but So that way they don't have to deal with the overconsumption or the greed or anything like that. They'll pollute someone else's waterways instead of dealing with their own problems. But then we go back to like white people in these green spaces cosplaying climate justice warriors when whiteness as a system is responsible for the climate destruction.
00:04:58
Speaker
And that's just that. And that's why I've been struggling with, if you're going to use AI, if you're going to make that choice, I don't need all this flowery fake language around using it responsibly.
00:05:14
Speaker
You cannot use something responsibly that is inherently harmful to people. They strategically target the most powerless communities because they know it's going to be harder for these people to advocate for themselves, but they're not backing down.
00:05:31
Speaker
They're not backing down. People are tired. But it's like people don't understand how they use this propaganda around responsibly using AI.
Global Conflicts and Environmental Interconnectedness
00:05:43
Speaker
Technology is happening to us, so we have to get on board and figure out how to use it for the better good. This is how they get you to comply and feel better about the fact that this is a wretched, evil tool that is harming people, that is stealing water from communities.
00:06:00
Speaker
So it's just like there is a cost to this. Like you said, Leah, it's almost like they think we'll just put it over there. We know this bad thing is happening. We'll just put it over there. It's almost like they think it's not going to catch up with them.
00:06:15
Speaker
There's like something about capitalists, especially the ones at the very top, filthy, dirty billionaires, because that's what they are. Because we all share this planet and you think, oh, I'm going to throw it over there because I believe those people are worthless or I believe that country ain't shit anyway.
00:06:33
Speaker
Like it's never going to get to your doorstep. And I think that's indicative of how a lot of Americans or people in the West in general feel. That's not my problem. That genocide over there is not my problem.
00:06:46
Speaker
That thing that's happening to women in this other country is not my problem. And it's like... Okay. I think this has been my like frustration because like you say, i think it is a very American notion to think that things happening elsewhere is not our problem, but like Israel bombing Palestine is our problem. Like we live on the same planet and their bombing is heating up our planet. Their bombing is not only destroying that local ecosystem, but
00:07:19
Speaker
but it's destroying the entire globe. Like we are all at risk because this country wants to bomb another country and displace those people so that way they can claim ownership. Like it affects us too.
Critique of Burial Practices and Advocacy for Natural Burials
00:07:32
Speaker
And also this idea of like outrunning it, it just reminds me so much about all of the bad things that have happened to Mississippians by our government.
00:07:42
Speaker
And a lot of people will say, that's what you get for being in Mississippi or that's Mississippi, that's not the rest of the state. or the rest of the country. But it's like, Mississippi is a testing ground for what happens here. You don't have access to abortion because you said, Mississippians don't deserve access to abortion.
00:07:59
Speaker
Like everything that you co-sign for somebody else will happen to you eventually. They didn't care about what was happening to us in the South. And now they want to simultaneously blame the South for what's happening now or say, we need to throw away You didn't care enough.
00:08:15
Speaker
You didn't care enough to build of those bridges bridges. You found safety. and they're And they're still doing it. There's still people that's in places like California where they think they're safe.
00:08:25
Speaker
And it's like, no, sweetie, it's coming for you. And if anything, it's going to start up there because our current administration got far more animosity for you. It got far more animosity for the places that think they're safe havens.
00:08:39
Speaker
But you still can't get them to understand that because it's so easy to use somebody else's escape goat. People are literally dying and y'all are in the post talking about.
00:08:49
Speaker
So how's that third party vote going for you? I need you people to go sit on the edge of a mountain. I'm not telling you to jump because I don't want you to.
00:09:02
Speaker
I want you to sit there and sit with yourself and ask yourself why you still that This shit is about voting. Like reading this book, I've just been thinking about like not only the effects of global racism, but like how racism has cut many of us off from our indigenous knowledge. Like many of us don't know how to swim or plant or love the land. We're afraid of and mistrustful of technologies that could save us.
00:09:34
Speaker
And I've been trying to tell my family that I want a natural burial. I'm on record saying I want a natural burial. Okay, throw me in the ground loose. But they look at me disgusted at the thought and they think that that's what poor people do.
00:09:50
Speaker
is get buried in the ground loose instead of paying $10,000 for a fancy box to hold your body that's pumped full of chemicals and that's going into the ground where nobody's going to see it.
00:10:02
Speaker
So for me, when I think about the modern funeral, it's a capitalist scam. Like we're supposed to give our bodies back to the earth. And besides mummies, humans have been doing that forever. It's a very modern practice. I believe Lincoln...
00:10:18
Speaker
was the first person that they like pumped full of chemicals because they were taking him around the country to show that he was dead so like that was was the reason um for doing that like it's very recent that this has become a normal thing and i think it's become quote-unquote normal because again it's money making it's tens of thousands of dollars to bury somebody. But many of us aren't returning to the dust like we're supposed to. We're destroying trees to build these caskets.
00:10:48
Speaker
We're polluting the ground. We're disrupting the nature cycle to not appear poor. The question I have for people who are resistant to natural burials is, what do you think is going to happen when these natural disasters continue to pick up?
00:11:05
Speaker
One of the things that I remember happening during Hurricane Katrina was these caskets floating, these people's bodies getting lost or remains getting lost.
00:11:20
Speaker
Because we don't got no business putting these boxes in the ground. They don't need to be there. It's such a waste of resources and space. And it's not sustainable.
00:11:34
Speaker
The earth is changing. You spending all that money, it's almost like burying literal money. That at some point... It's going to come up at some point. It's going to get shifted and pushed and end up somewhere because the earth is a living thing and it is affected by all the things that's happening on it, including the climate.
00:11:57
Speaker
And I think about that all the time because I also want to get make sure I'm dead. Make sure I'm dead. And throw me on in there. don't Make sure I ain't got no box braids in or nothing either, unless they're biodegradable.
00:12:14
Speaker
And just put me in there. that's That's the way I want to be. Preferably at the foot of a tree, so I can get looped up into their roots. You know what I mean? But you can't get people understand. You can't get people to see past what capitalism has taught them. Exactly. I did want to make a note that I know in New Orleans...
00:12:33
Speaker
They don't bury below the ground because it's basically water. Six feet below the earth is water. So that's why they're above ground. But you are right. Like your casket can come up. People can disturb your body because you didn't return it to the earth. And it's just reminding me of like this extractive relationship that we have been taught to have with the earth. Not we come from it and we need to return from it. But it's like, oh, what can the earth give me?
00:12:58
Speaker
Yeah.
Commodification of Sustainable Practices
00:13:00
Speaker
I would say another example is earth homes. Ever since I've learned about them, i have been like angry and excited. Angry because white people are now saying that mud huts are great for the environment and they're fireproof and they're cheap to build and they're durable in extreme weather and they're well insulated for the heat and the cold.
00:13:21
Speaker
But earth homes were also the reason that their ancestors killed indigenous people in the Americas and in Africa. So earth homes were seen as a sign of being quote unquote uncivilized in favor of wood homes that needed to clear forest.
00:13:37
Speaker
So anyway, like all of this, like we have been brainwashed to view sustainable ways of living with the land as poor, uncivilized, ghetto, because capitalism tells us that real wealth is in production. It's an industry that destroys the earth without a second thought of the repercussions. They sell.
00:13:58
Speaker
This is why I say they are selling back our indigenous practices, our indigenous ways of living back to us. That's what a colonizer does. They just running out of shit to colonize. You've colonized nearly the entire world.
00:14:15
Speaker
And now it's like, okay, let's go back to these other things that we vilify these people for what we use to pop propaganda for. And like the media to say, Oh, this thing is bad. This is barbaric.
Racism's Impact on Indigenous Land Knowledge
00:14:27
Speaker
And now let's call it something else. and sell it back and overprice it and then benefit profit from it and make it so that the people that created it or descendants of the people that created don't have access to it.
00:14:42
Speaker
Because, you know, we can't, I don't know how much they're running for, but I'm sure the average person can't afford a fucking earth home, depending on if they've capitalized off of it fully yet. I was going to say you can build one.
00:14:56
Speaker
I saw someone who built one for like $5,000 and he built it himself. But he went to an earth building school, which again, full of white people, but the school was $2,000.
00:15:09
Speaker
for like a month. So you have to be able to take off for a month, have the $2,000 to go and to learn all of these and then be able to have the time and the resources to build the home. So compared to a an actual like standard home, like that sheet, but then you got to think about plumbing and all of that. What does that look like? I'm sure that's more money. I think that was the five that with the plumbing, because they do teach you like how to do plumbing on that. It's not like,
00:15:39
Speaker
modern plumbing but yeah so in this book there were quite a few environmental ancestors that popped up i kept seeing harriet tumment and fanny lou hamer and we've talked on the show about the connection between their spiritual lives and freedom Harriet Tubman became disabled through a head injury after being beaten by an enslaver. And after that, she talks about God speaking directly through her and giving her the conviction needed to free over 70 enslaved people through 13 missions.
00:16:13
Speaker
But this book brought up how she would have had to have known the forests and the marshes and the swamps she was traveling through in order to traverse through them. She had to have deep, intimate environmental knowledge and to do what she did.
00:16:28
Speaker
And Fannie Lou Hamer was famous for using the Bible to indict white supremacy, often saying faith without works is dead. And being a Mississippian, she survived the way many of our ancestors did through self-sufficiency because the government basically left them to die.
00:16:46
Speaker
She said, as long as I have a pig in a garden, no one can tell me what to do. And in 1969, Hamer founded the Freedom Farms Cooperative in Sunflower County, Mississippi.
00:16:57
Speaker
It was an agricultural cooperative built on 680 acres, which included a pig bank, Head Start program, community gardens, commercial kitchen, a garment factory, sewing cooperative, tool bank, and low-income affordable housing as strategies to support the needs of Black Americans who were fired and evicted for exercising the right to vote.
00:17:20
Speaker
And that's a lot. And this is what I mean when I say a lot of what Black people say will save Black folks in America. A Black Mississippian has already done the work.
00:17:33
Speaker
But so many of y'all will turn your noses down at us and think we have nothing to contribute But we've done the work. We just don't have the money. And reading about these women in this way reminded me that freedom comes through knowledge of the land. It's not divorced from it.
00:17:51
Speaker
We have to repair our relationship with the earth if we want true freedom as Black people. If we knew how to navigate the wows, if we knew how to feed ourselves, we don't have to rely on the racist structure to do it for us.
00:18:06
Speaker
When you talk about like not having the resources, not having the money, and this was what I mean, like when you say they left us for dead, so did the rest of the country. Because if the people that spent the most time admonishing Black people about leaving the South, pulled their are resources and used those resources to support folks in the South, things could look different.
00:18:31
Speaker
Things could look different. To be honest, I've been in this country for generations. My people, this is where we unfortunately got dropped off instead of in the Caribbean or Latin America where I could have been living off the ocean. But I'm not going to, you know, I think about it. I'm a little mad about it. But like when...
00:18:54
Speaker
Immigrants come here, a lot of them, if they come here to have a better life and get an education, a lot of those people are still sending money and things back home to their family.
00:19:06
Speaker
they're so They're still supporting people back home. When we talk about, when people talk about community and mutual aid and stuff, they're That is not just like a small community thing. That is something that should happen on a large scale.
00:19:21
Speaker
And it's something that people who have certain privileges and in certain types of access up north should have and could have been doing for us down here. When I think about all the things that particularly Fannie Lou Hamer was doing within community, you talking about Head Start program, community gardens, sewing cooperative, affordable housing.
00:19:47
Speaker
That is what it means to take care of your community. But once again, like this is not a one person thing. She couldn't do, she she wasn't superwoman.
00:19:59
Speaker
She wasn't. She was disabled. She had health issues and she was economically disadvantaged in Mississippi and being poor in Mississippi. I just seen someone make a post about being poor in the country ain't the same as being poor in a city.
00:20:17
Speaker
And it's absolutely not. Because at least in the city, you may be able to walk to certain resources. You can't walk nowhere in the country. And if you ain't got a car or the car ain't working, you stuck.
00:20:31
Speaker
It's just that. So I feel like one of the things that I was thinking a lot about with this book was community in a real way.
Genuine Community and Nature's Importance
00:20:40
Speaker
Not just the community, community, community, community. What everybody says online.
00:20:46
Speaker
Community as in all of us. The birds, the trees, Roxy, my cat.
00:20:54
Speaker
All of us. How are we taking care of each other from up north to down south, midwest? Like, that's all. Like, you have to think about so those with the least amount of power among you and then really put your support behind them because we all know how it works.
00:21:15
Speaker
You will benefit. This is why people are trying to get folks to care about what's happening abroad. But they think that it can never get to them. And then when it gets to you, you're going to act surprised because you didn't care enough when it was them.
00:21:29
Speaker
And it's the same thing within the United States. Yeah, a lot of this just reminded me of how thoroughly brainwashed we are. Like you said, this book is definitely a call for us to be in community with not only each other, but with the land and with the animals. But we have been forced to be reliant on the government.
00:21:53
Speaker
And we believe that without the government, without the US government, right, we'll die. And disclaimer, there are some things in our modern society that I do think are good, like vaccines.
00:22:07
Speaker
Vaccines are good. But nature is generous in a way that capitalism doesn't like. And so it benefits capitalists to tell us that nature will kill us.
00:22:18
Speaker
And I think that this is why we focus so much on the dangers of nature and not enough on the benefits. For example, i in our last episode, I talked about eating fruit off of trees and lot of the conditioning I've gotten since childhood.
00:22:33
Speaker
you know, that age and now has been like, oh, you can't go outside. Everything's going to kill you. You know, the mushrooms are trying to kill you. you eat the wrong berries, you're gonna drop dead. Everything, the snakes are lying in wait to kill you. Everything's waiting to kill you.
00:22:47
Speaker
But it does that so that way we can be like, oh, nature's super scary. And all these things that our modern society have made is there to protect us. And that's not the case. And I think that being in an African-based spirituality, being in a nature-based spirituality,
00:23:03
Speaker
It reminds me that it's all connected, like nature, spirituality, and freedom. But unfortunately, a lot of Black people have been taught to be afraid of all three. Yeah, I agree with everything you said.
00:23:16
Speaker
um Really moving away from that fear and kind of moving into respect, right? You wouldn't walk up on a complete stranger out in the street. You wouldn't walk up in on them.
00:23:29
Speaker
So don't walk up on a bear, right? Be mindful of the snake and try to step aside. You know what I mean? My bad. I'm in your house. But I need to go through here.
00:23:40
Speaker
And I think moving from respect, from fear to respect, is it really a good way to, like, view it. And I think that's the way a lot of our ancestors viewed it. I think it was respect and knowing that, yeah, some things in nature can kill you.
00:23:55
Speaker
Some animals can absolutely kill you. And you have to figure out how do I move through this in a respectful way, staying alive and also not feeling like, well, now I got to kill all of these animals.
00:24:11
Speaker
One of the things I've been doing a lot is I've just been learning a lot about like other types of animals in nature and the fact that a lot of animals have. that went extinct or got endangered, it was because humans decided they were bad and were just like killing them and overdid it because now there's this stigma. So now it increases the likelihood of them killing them.
00:24:36
Speaker
What does that sound like? So it's that fear also contributes to how people treat nature. The fact that people don't give a damn about cutting down a tree, cutting down a tree.
00:24:48
Speaker
Now, are we meant to use some of these resources within nature? Sure. But the like readiness of just chopping down trees do all these developments and And leave them empty.
00:25:02
Speaker
It's just incredibly violent. It's incredibly violent. And just like people are being displaced. Trees are being displaced. It's affecting everybody. It's affecting all of us.
00:25:14
Speaker
So. Sorry. turned into a tree hugger. That was a good tangent because it reminded me of something that I have to say ever since I learned about it.
Historical Impact of Hunting on Ecosystems
00:25:26
Speaker
So growing up in Mississippi, i have never seen a bear in Mississippi. Black bears used to be abundant in Mississippi. What happened was Teddy Roosevelt went to Mississippi.
00:25:38
Speaker
He saw this cute little baby black bear. They called it Teddy's bear. That's where we get the teddy bear from, right? Right. And then after that, a lot of people went to Mississippi killing bears because they wanted to take a bear home.
00:25:53
Speaker
And so now as a result, bears used to kill deer. And so now our deer population is out of control. We have to have deer season every single winter. in order to kill the deer because there are more deer than there are people.
00:26:06
Speaker
And it all started because people wanted to own bears. And so they threw off our entire ecosystem and we are still dealing with the effects of that. That's really wretched.
00:26:17
Speaker
Yeah. I wonder if they were taking the bears, killing them and stuff. Probably. Probably like taxidermy. I don't even want to think about it now. Well, thank you for that history lesson. We need to know it.
00:26:28
Speaker
at this is it You need to know. So everybody going to be uncomfortable now. Fun fact about Teddy Roosevelt, our conservation president.
00:26:39
Speaker
Anyway, do you want to take a break? Yeah, let's take a break after that.
Supporting the Podcast Community
00:26:52
Speaker
Let's get into some ways you can support the Hoodoo Plant Mamas. One is through our bookshop where you can buy the books that we've discussed with our Writing the Spirit guests. We have a Hoodoo Beginners Guide, Tarot and Oracle decks, as well as our top reading picks.
00:27:06
Speaker
You can also buy Leah's books. Every purchase you make helps support our show. Check us out at bookshop.org slash shop slash hoodooplantmamas or click the link in our show notes.
00:27:19
Speaker
Our Patreon is currently paused, but other ways you can support us include rating and reviewing this podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Follow us on Instagram at hoodooplantmamas.
00:27:30
Speaker
You can donate via Cash App, cash tag hoodooplantmamas or our PayPal hoodooplantmamas at gmail.com. Let's get back to the show.
The South as a Future Hub for Black Communities
00:27:39
Speaker
Thank
00:27:44
Speaker
So something that was reoccurring for me was the theme of the South is the future and some quotes from this book. Charles M. Blow calls for a reverse migration to repopulate the South and establish a Black political majority in a number of states.
00:28:00
Speaker
Adrienne Marie Brown said, there's a shit storm coming one way or another and we need to build our land-based communities to survive through to the other side. For some Black folks, this activated homing instinct means a reverse migration home to the South, planning roots with the folks we want to be in community with.
00:28:19
Speaker
And this is something we've talked before we just had this conversation about the South being the future. There's so many creative people here doing so many great things with so little.
00:28:30
Speaker
And the South, and especially the Black South, is so under-resourced, but we have a fighting spirit. We're resourceful. We have solidarity. In my small hometown, Black people have been able to effectively boycott several businesses who have either been outright racist or have racist employees that they support.
00:28:50
Speaker
They would shuttle people to the next county over to shop, to get their groceries, to do whatever to support people. And all I can do is imagine how much bigger we'd be if we had help.
00:29:01
Speaker
I agree that kind of gets to what I was saying i do have mixed feelings about this sort of Migration back south Because who's migrating And then like Are they putting those resources into people who are already here Because right now even in the south Even in places like Durham People have been displaced because of gentrification And like You may be able to migrate here.
00:29:34
Speaker
Like it's something I saw in Mississippi, like in Jackson, people you're coming from these bigger cities. You're able to buy these houses for cheap. And it's like, how do you, so how do we responsibly reverse migration and integrate into the community and not price people out and displace them? Because I've been having this fear of them coming back this way doing to the South what they did to the cities, like to the bigger cities where now after you done push all these poor black and brown folks into the urban areas, now you want to revitalize and gentrify and then push them out for your high
Economic Reliance vs. Sustainable Practices in the South
00:30:21
Speaker
rise building. So that's something I've been thinking about and that I was thinking about when I read that quote specifically about
00:30:28
Speaker
from Adrienne Marie Brown because I think a lot of about conversations I'm having having with my friends, we can't afford houses. Some have tried, I know of, and failed.
00:30:42
Speaker
Like a lot of black people can't buy houses. So now what? How do we then create these little enclaves of like ah land-based communities?
00:30:52
Speaker
We can't even, ah like a lot of us can't even afford land. So I'm just like, You know, I'm just having a tug of war with it. I really am. And i it's it's kind it's in conversations I've been having with friends because I actually do want to live.
00:31:06
Speaker
I've been thinking about it a lot. Like, I want to live with people. and I'm tired of living isolated. I don't want to live in the boxes no more. So how can we support each other and support these communities and not push them out?
00:31:21
Speaker
And then create our little safe enclaves within communities while the other people here are still suffering or without the resources they need. I think that's a great point because I also can't afford a house. I was delusional and I was like, oh, going back to Mississippi will be so cheap and so will the houses.
00:31:42
Speaker
Not anymore. it was cheaper. The house that me and my ex-husband rented in coastal Florida was cheaper than any of the houses that we've seen in Mississippi, in central Mississippi. And I'm like, how is this even possible?
00:31:58
Speaker
But yeah, each year just gets worse and worse. so At the same time, I am like, the South is a great place to be. i have been in the South for most of my life. I do still have mixed feelings about the South. Like,
00:32:11
Speaker
in terms of green futures, especially because it is beautiful, it's green, it's abundant. And the number one threat that we have to our environment is also the thing that we rely on for money, ah for jobs, right? um Logging, which was how I was able to get through college. I had a scholarship that was funded through logging, fully paid off my college. So I got degree with that.
00:32:44
Speaker
But at the same time, logging is a direct threat to our land. A lot of people get jobs through offshore drilling, working on the oil rigs on the coast. And it's like, that is part of BP, but you know, the BP oil spill, but it's like, it is affecting our water as well.
00:33:00
Speaker
So it's like, on the one side, The things that make this a beautiful state, the things that make this a beautiful region of this country, we're also exploiting for money because that's all we have to give.
00:33:14
Speaker
And it's just like, i don't know. and don't know. I've really been struggling with that because I i do think that there is a lot of potential in the South. Like something this book talked about was farm to table.
00:33:28
Speaker
And a lot of us have been able to eat in that ways. And I didn't realize that till I left because our grocery stores work with the local farmers. And so,
00:33:40
Speaker
We have food that didn't have to travel very far to get to us. A lot of us can hunt and process our own meat and our own fish. Like we have fresh food pathways and it's affordable.
00:33:54
Speaker
Water on the other hand, especially in Jackson, that's a bit trickier, but like we have a ton of green space. And so it's just, it's difficult because it's like, yeah, we have a lot of resources at the same time. Those resources are being exploited in order for us to survive.
00:34:10
Speaker
it's, I don't know. so that's a good, that's a really good point.
Dream of Communal Living and Sustainable Futures
00:34:15
Speaker
It's, it's incredibly tricky, but I think it goes back into people not really want to invest in us.
00:34:24
Speaker
People want their own safety and they're not really concerned about the collective, I agree with the fact it is so beautiful and so green here. But yeah, it's, it's complicated and people are just trying to survive.
00:34:38
Speaker
Yeah, I really am going to continue to think through sort of what this sort of reverse migration could look like. As somebody who recently left Mississippi and now I'm in a place where I still don't really feel fully at home, which I think is connected to, we need to be together. We need to be on some land.
00:35:01
Speaker
in a house or a series of houses sharing the land. Cause I'm about ready to get me a trailer and go set it up in Gray's parking lot at the apartment she live in because I'm tired this.
00:35:15
Speaker
I figure it out. Cause I'm going to buy me a trailer home. And I'm serious, actually. It's like my dream. I had a dream you didn't live that far from gray. Just saying, because I'm ready. I know people have a lot to say about trailer homes and tornadoes and stuff.
00:35:33
Speaker
I'm just saying, yes, it's a concern, but I know a lot of people that's been staying in the same trailer for like decades and they have lived through them twisters and they're fine they're still they might have wanted and one of them bad ones they might have had to get some stuff remodeled but I don't think remodeling a trailer is the same as having to do it for a house Not even close Child we just gotta to redo these little Whatever they call The little panels that's it A few them panels blew off We don't we can get that tightened on up And the little panel things at the bottom If you live in the south You know what I'm talking about Them little metal things at the bottom of the trailer And maybe the maybe it blew off the stairs too We can buy some new stairs You know what I mean So I'm at this point I'm like One y'all go ahead and get some land
00:36:25
Speaker
And I'm gonna bring my trailer, me and Roxy, and going to come on down there and get set up.
00:36:36
Speaker
Anyway So I wanted to end this episode With a question that Leah Penniman Asked her interviewees What is the earth saying to you At this time? The earth is literally telling me girl come outside Come outside Like Come closer and sit With me And I don't think it's just a me thing Like I'm saying it in first person But I actually think it's a collective call Put the phones down I'm sorry going to sound like your meemaw and your mama and auntie and them.
00:37:11
Speaker
Put the damn phones down. Put the guns down. Like,
00:37:19
Speaker
sit at a tree. Just sit. Sit by some water. A lot of people just, sometimes when I sit by water and just look at it,
00:37:35
Speaker
and there's a There's a period in my body where I feel like a little overwhelmed because I feel like it's my nervous system trying to recalibrate.
00:37:45
Speaker
Like, you're safe here. Because I actually think a lot of us are perpetually operating under distress. Even if we think we're chill, we're trying to survive. We are literally under distress.
00:38:00
Speaker
And you go out into nature take a forest bath or just sit by a lake or a creek, I think your body knows and feels the safety.
00:38:12
Speaker
Because we're not supposed to be in these boxes. I'm go keep saying it. We're not supposed to be in these boxes. We're really supposed to be living outside. That's all I'm saying. You can disagree.
00:38:23
Speaker
But I feel like we're supposed to be outside. Okay? In something sustainable that is of the earth. Earth homes. Okay?
00:38:35
Speaker
I'm not even going to piss myself off, but you know what I mean? And so, yeah, she's saying, girl, gender neutral, girl, come on out here and have a seat with me.
00:38:48
Speaker
Let's talk. What about you? I like that message. I feel like that is where what I have been getting personally is to go outside because literally i hate people.
00:39:03
Speaker
working indoors in an office with those fluorescent lights. I absolutely hate it I also hate being in the house all the time. So that's been my difficulty a lot with finding a job.
00:39:14
Speaker
And by the time this comes out, I will be in the woods ah with very limited internet access. Sitting by the lake, sitting under the tree. i'm very excited. i was like, I think that this is definitely what I need.
00:39:28
Speaker
So personally, i definitely feel that come outside, come sit in nature. going to be my job by the time this comes out. But What I feel kind of collectively is this need to take a breath.
00:39:44
Speaker
Cause I do think that there's a sense of urgency, which is, I'm not gonna say it's not fake. Like we do need to be urgent, but I do think a lot of it's like, we have time.
00:39:55
Speaker
i think a lot of us think like, if we don't do so-and-so right now, the whole earth is going to explode, but it's like, we have some time, maybe not a lot, but we do have some time. Like, Take a breath, calm down, and then get to work.
00:40:10
Speaker
Like we can make sure that humans have a future on this planet. I have solutions. I cannot share them on the podcast. I have solutions for quick ways to to benefit the planet. But we do have time.
00:40:26
Speaker
We do have solutions. There is work to do. But you can take a break. You can take a breath. it's It's not going to be the worst case scenario immediately. Amen.
00:40:37
Speaker
We can talk about those solutions when we get our little plot of land. Yeah. no We gonna figure that thing out But Amen Thank you for that That's it for today y'all If you liked this episode You can like rate and review Who Do Plant Mamas On Spotify and Apple Podcasts If anything from the show resonated with you Make sure to share with us on social media You can find us on Instagram At Who Do Plant Mamas Thank you for listening And we will see ya next episode Bye Bye