Ep1 full mixdown-82620. mp3

Ep1_FULL_mixdown-82620.mp3
[00:00:16] This is The Root, a special edition podcast series discussing the decolonization of the sustainable fashion agenda. I'm Dominique Drakeford, the founder of Melanin and Sustainable Style.
[00:00:30] And I'm Kestrel Jenkins, the host of Conscious Chatter. The music for this special edition five part series was written and performed by Mel Chanté. We hope you will join us for these mandatory conversations.
[00:00:46] It's time to reclaim our power. Rewrite our paths, rebuild our future, for Black lives will last long. Headstands.
[00:00:59] Freedom, our flag. Freedom are where freedom and love freedom are here. Freedom of peace, freedom, no fear. Freedom will fade. We're two minutes a mile. We got it going on from afros and white tooth combs and hand me down clothes. The unmistakable gold down in our souls.
[00:01:23] We can be our last decolonize. White laws eliminated Black bodies traced by white outlines. Recognize our troops. Value our youth. See the humanity. Looking back at you as we heal our wounds, we heal the nation. No negotiation for Black and Brown liberation. Just we'll take the reparations and credit is doomed. We'll use our voice to teach history. They and teachers and school. We've had the patients and doctors to fix our crowds so they can no longer be removed. Cotton field hands built the land on which we stand, planted the trees that give breath to every man. Summon the spirits and never break but bend and do it all stitched up. How we're back together again.
[00:02:13] Together. Just to give.
[00:02:35] We want to thank this week's sponsor Fibershed, an educational space that uplifts and promotes climate, beneficial fiber and natural dyes systems.
[00:02:46] Fibershed is amazing. I actually remember having their founder, Rebecca, on the show in the past and. She just has so much knowledge and wisdom when it comes to land and soil and agriculture and all of these systems. And I just remember listening and wishing that I could talk to her all day to absorb all of these layers that she was able to break down. But, Dom, I would love to hear from you. Like, what has your experience been with Fibershed?
[00:03:25] Do you have any stories to share?
[00:03:28] I do I do in very close alignment with the context of this episode. Last year I did a keynote presentation at their annual Wool and Fine Fiber Symposium, and my presentation was called The Root of Exploitation in American Land Use. And ultimately, we were discussing the historical context of colonial systems with regards to agriculture and land and with fiber shed working to promote climate, beneficial fiber and natural dye systems. They have become very intentional about equitable approaches to fortifying these systems as it relates to land and farmers. They have a really beautiful community based ecosystem that connects designers with farmers to elevate what they call soil to soil, textile visions and so Fibershed. I'm team Fibershed. They've been doing great work and taking all of the necessary steps forward and even sometimes backwards when it comes to ethics around agriculture. And I just really love what Rebecca and her team is doing.
[00:04:36] And I'm here for their journey and their elevation within the fashion and fiber space.
[00:04:43] If you're interested in learning more about fiber shed, you can find them online at Fibershed.org. And we'll also have a link in the show notes.
[00:05:14] Hello, my friends, Kestrel here, the host of Conscious Chatter. I want to welcome you here for the first episode of this special edition series. I'm so grateful to have co-produced with Dominique Drakeford of Melanin and Sustainable Style. Over the next five weeks, we will release a new episode each Tuesday, equitably centering the voices, knowledge and labor of Black and Brown Indigenous People Of Color. As a white woman and the host of this show, I must first acknowledge that I move through the world with layers and layers of privilege, privilege that has contributed to helping me build this very platform. I am operating in and benefiting from a very fucked up system, one that has been built to serve white people, to prevent Black and Brown Indigenous People Of Color from thriving and is grounded in upholding white fragility and white supremacy. The sustainable fashion conversation is notorious for being dominated by white women who have stolen the philosophies of Indigenous thought and action, repackaged them for white consumption and left out the voices of BIPOC.
[00:06:29] And I am part of this problem. This series is a baby step for me. It is my responsibility as a storyteller to pass the mic fully back to those who originally created regenerative thought and who hold multifaceted solutions. So often as white women, we end up finding a way to make anti-racist work about ourselves, our feelings, our tears or our pain. We are a huge part of the problem, and that includes the expectation that BIPOC need to educate us. We need to stop sliding into Black and Brown Indigenous People Of Colors, Dems, assuming they will hold our hand and teach us all we need to know to check this learning off of our to do list. So, yes, Black and Brown Indigenous People Of Color have to lead the conversations around sustainability and fashion, but it must be equitable.
[00:07:29] Compensation needs to be mandatory and respecting and valuing their time and their space is imperative. Most importantly, we all need to do the internal work so we can take action. We must slow down, listen, work through and examine our own implicit and explicit biases. Get uncomfortable and grow. We are key players in the work to dismantle the systems of power. Because my voice has led our discussions on conscious chatter over the last four years. I want to briefly acknowledge some of the ways I have messed up thus far, too often in the past. A moment gets me fired up, angry, upset or motivated to dove deep into educating myself about systems of power and anti-racist work. I go full speed ahead and can only think about this. Then I quickly burn myself out and find myself taking long breaks in between the work.
[00:08:32] Basking in my privilege, I have taken long segments of time to totally check out or disconnect from the realities of our oppressive society. And this is not acceptable. As Dominique has reminded me before, I have the privilege to learn about our oppressive history and reality, but not actually experience it. This privileged cycle has at times impacted the content. I've shared and the guests I've posted on the show and I must do better. Moving forward, I am building balance into my anti-racist work because using my privilege to take long breaks from this work is no longer an option. I believe this platform can have more equity integrated into its fabric. And I am working on specific steps I can take to actively create a space where multiple voices are heard and represented. And one that has been built with intention and authenticity. Because as one of my recent guests on the show, fashion psychologist Shakila Forbes Bell reminded me, "representation for representation sake is dead."
[00:09:44] Dominique, I want to wholeheartedly thank you for going on the journey to build this project with me over the last couple of years. Thank you for your willingness to share your knowledge for your patients. And thank you for all that you do. You are absolutely one of the people I admire most in our industry. I am beyond honored to fully pass the mike to you. I think it's important to state that I am not still holding on to it, needing to shine a light back onto myself or interrupt the storytelling that is to come instead. I will be here with all of you out there listening and learning from the outstanding experts. Dominique has brought together for these episodes. Dom, I am humbled to have your deep, exceptional and grounded wisdom guide us through the next five shows. Take it away.
[00:10:38] Thank you so much, Kestrel, for going on this rugged journey with me as a friend. I appreciate you having the buoyancy to begin internal processes of decolonizing your mental enough to have such a forward thinking collaboration. Handing me the mic and pardon my vulgarity, getting the fuck off the stage with love is precisely what needs to be done in this state of emergency. This project is not just a series of podcasts, interviews, pulling on the archaic levers of the environmental and social detriments within the fashion industry. This is not your typical toxic sustainability conversation that was created by white patriarchy, but was molded govern and strategically reinforced by white women in the name of feminism. This mainstream space has appropriated the narrative of sustainability circularity and regenerative systems theory. For far too long, we've built an immunity to this toxic pathology of white supremacy while conditioning society to call this sustainability with a smile on our face and our hearts on our sleeve. In my 10 plus years of working across the sustainability and ethical fashion sector, the word I hear the most is transparency. Yet the irony is you haven't been transparent. This project is called The Root because for the first time, we're not only getting to the root of the fashion system, but an art thing, how the so-called sustainable fashion movement has been a poisonous derivative of that infrastructure. This global project centers the breath of Black and Brown Indigenous leaders in sustainable fashion across a multitude of intersections. Saving the planet means inhaling the truth and exhaling the bullshit, oxygenating. A new cultural paradigm that articulates how mellow native humans are to descendants of those who created the ideology of sustainability and have upheld its legacy. Black and Brown folks are the original stewards of the land. Makers of responsible arts and solutions to capitalistic depletion, all while disproportionately and intentionally being affected by the colonial climate crisis. The fundamental limitations of sustainable fashion discourse starts with everything that's going to be shared in these five podcast episodes. This is the digital revolution. The fashion industry never knew it needed but one where Black and Brown folks have always been privy to our knowledge is currency or the future of fashion. And what is done with that knowledge becomes the new standard. If we do it correctly, no more time for the bullshit and synthetic frameworks of savior ism that create disposability of our bodies, our intellect, our heritage. Our existence. Black and Brown folks are the past, present and future of sustainable fashion. And we start today.
[00:14:30] This is episode one, racism as a system.
[00:14:35] So we have Nikki and Lisa, Nikki Sanchez is a pill admire an Irish Scottish academic, Indigenous media maker, environmental educator, community organizer and publish author.
[00:14:51] She holds a master's degree in Indigenous governance and is presently completing a P.H. D with a research focus on emerging visual media technology as it relates to Indigenous ontology. Lisa Betty is a PHC candidate in history at Fordham University, teaching on themes of labor, migration and diaspora in the Americas, Caribbean and Africa. She has worked in the field of nonprofit advocacy, serving in organizations that advocate for children, families, immigrants and incarcerated people and leads anti-racist teaching workshops.
[00:15:30] I am so excited to have you both on Episode one. How are you?
[00:15:38] I'm well, I'm well, I'm very good.
[00:15:43] Glad to hear it. And Nikki, how are you doing?
[00:15:45] I'm just so excited for this conversation with the both of you.
[00:15:49] Yes. I'm excited to chat with and really learn from two prolific scholars and community leaders to help create what I would consider a foundational roadmap for understanding the systems of racism. And I truly believe and I know the both of you do to believe that the system doesn't start with colonialism. It starts with Native American and an Afro Indigenous communities having thriving economies and operating in societies with Brillion as farmers, with engineers, with mathematicians, with fashion designers, with innovators, philosophers and having regenerative governing systems. But we've been taught to believe that the system of racism starts with colonial takeover. And so I'd like to hop right in and really understand from both of you how advanced, circular, sustainable civilizations were operating before European discovery and colonization.
[00:16:56] Yeah, I'll jump in.
[00:16:58] I mean, we have these really interesting narratives that have been inserted into our world use from a colonial lens and from a colonial historical analysis that kind of frames pre contact Indigenous people as uncivilized, unstructured and an advanced economies, when in actuality there were thriving trade networks that spanned across the Americas from North America to South America prior to contact. You'll see things like Mayan blue that you can only create in my in my own territory and then find, you know, hundreds of years old artifacts that are in Florida or different parts of the southern states now that actually speak to this, that speak to the movement of goods, foods, medicines across the Americas prior to the arrival of the Europeans. Additionally, we also have a lot of free existing nation to nation relationships, not only with other nations of the Americas, but with the Chinese, with the Hawaiians, Pacific Islanders. And so prior to, quote unquote contact, there was a ton of reciprocal and respectful relationships across different territories. It just didn't have to look like complete domination, enslavement, land theft and colonization. So our history becomes so much richer and so much more exciting and holds so many very hopeful visions for a really positive future for humanity. When we start to really reclaim the fullness of that history and I love the fact that you added.
[00:18:42] The connection between, you know, relationships between multiple nations and it and it's just an important reminder of localized circularity, it's an important reminder of humanity like connections within other cultures, within subcultures, and really having a thriving eco system with healthy relationships that go beyond a specific tribe or a specific community or a specific nation. There was literally a beautifully orchestrated network of trade, of, you know, companionship, of agreements that were here and president, but for colonial takeover. And I think even talking about that is really important. And it's something you don't hear too often because connection. Right.
[00:19:36] Connection to land, connection to entire communities, but also connection to outside communities is is so important as we talk about sustainability later on in this in this project. And Lisa, I'd love to hear some of your contacts with regards to Afro indigeneity before colonization.
[00:19:59] So within the framework of the Americas, because the trade routes and the Atlantic is is very much connected to, you know, the winds, the trade winds and, you know, Africa and particularly modern day Brazil are very close. There's no way that Africa and the Americas couldn't be connected in any any which way. And even if we're we're talking about particularly the Polynesian islands, you also have the Melanesian islands. So we have to look at the way, you know, tight, textured haired people, darkly melanated, richly melanated people are also a part of this was I don't want us when we think about the Americas to look at that. So think about it in a colonial framework, too, to think about it within people with tan skin and long straight hair, because then we're still stuck in those narratives. But we have to look at the Americas, at Turtle Island as a place that is global and that as the Europeans are coming to Africa, they're learning also about the Americas, they're learning about Islam and what's happening in the Indian Ocean. They're learning about India, from Africa and from an African context. And they're learning about Turtle Island and the Americas from an African context as well.
[00:21:18] So when we think about first contact as well, we have to include a sense of effort and dignity that isn't necessarily just rooted in slavery, but is rooted in in cohabitation, trade, contact, circular shipping routes and win win trade routes that already exist, and that Europeans use already existing routes as a way to enrich their economies. But these routes were already in existence. So we have to look at that. And that really connects with a lot of the maroon heritage. If you talk to Maroon and Afro Indigenous communities within Central and South America and in the Caribbean. Their stories, their foundation stories and creation stories are connected not only to Indigenous A.D. as we know it, as we're taught, but also Indigenous 80 by connecting, you know, African and Melanesian spaces to the Americas, kind of that rooted space and saying that, you know, type textured, virtually Melin native people. We're also here in this space as Africans were exiled to here and they created something that was already in existence. So it was easy for them to connect because they've already connected for millennials before. So to take refuge in the mountains together is nothing new to share. Share seeds and food and knowledge is nothing new.
[00:22:45] And that's the reason why after indigence 80 in terms specifically in terms of what we're talking about, the Caribbean, Central American, South America really survived on that type of level level of, you know, survival, but survival because of remembering and recreating systems that were already in place before colonialism and before the brute systems of slavery.
[00:23:08] Yes. Thank you for sharing that. It always blows my mind that. Conversations of history or and more specifically, sustainability. Don't start here. It doesn't start with Indigenous communities and how they have always been sustainable, how they've created very wealthy, powerful, resource driven, integrated, circular economies like that level of brilliance, of of ingenuity, of craft is just it's so pivotal and it's imperative for us to begin any sustainability conversation at that point. I'd love to learn more about. Agriculture and land, I think. You know, this whole podcast ultimately is going to be about fashion, and we have to understand the route of fashion and the route of any races system is tied to the exploitation of land, labor and resources. Right. So I'd love to hear or just have a discussion about the historical context of of stolen land and forced labor. As we begin to really weave in this conversation of the systemic infrastructure of racism.
[00:24:41] I can start with our knowledge of even these modern systems and the narratives built around them is connected to the narratives which you know about capitalism and capitalism.
[00:24:54] The narrative is that it's a positive, greater good free market, free enterprise.
[00:24:58] And it's always putting contestation with Cold War politics and communism. So there's that conversation. So we're acculturated to think of capitalism as something good and free markets, free enterprise. In concerning with fashion and in fashion trends and spreading as good opening up markets.
[00:25:18] But this narrative does not go well with the reality of free force of labor.
[00:25:27] It's like, why? Why we laugh is not funny. Yeah. But there are other aspects that they just don't want to talk about. All right.
[00:25:35] And the attraction of intellectual, emotional, physical labor force migration. It's all African peoples and their descendants. First Nations, peoples, Indigenous throughout the Western Hemisphere, Asian, Southeast Asian communities within the context of the Western Hemisphere. And then also free land, because that always is a part of it. Where from one positioning is all from the counter positioning of Indigenous people, it's free land. Right. But it was somebody. So, again, that's extractive. Colonial and national entities, where are they getting this free land from? To expand this free enterprise and gain free markets. And then also, where are the cultural and environmental costs?
[00:26:23] And again, we have to always connect via extraction and colonization and the brute force, military force and intervention of taking land from Indigenous peoples worldwide. But within the framework of the Western Hemisphere, that looking a certain way with the realities of, again, brutal forced migration, forced exile and force assimilation and acculturation. So land and labor are always together.
[00:26:54] So if a space is colonize, military intervention, even with the Trail of Tears and everything that was going on with the five specific nations that were affected by the Trail of Tears of the eighteen thirties, knowing that existence that opened up space for slavery to expand exponentially. So it's not just one, you know, it's not just taking taking land by force from from one people. And that's just what happened. And, you know, white, particularly white people of European descent are just living free on this land. It's also about extracting labor to vent. Cultivate the land, to drain the swamps. To create a plantation system. It's it's all connected, forcibly taking land and then extracting from that land, using forced forced labor. So it's it's all connected.
[00:27:53] Yeah. Before I even think about sort of the policies that created, you know, the policies that created those systems, those very clearly racist systems, I think about even just the paradigm of European colonizers in particular. Just understanding that their methodology in terms of how they operated and how they viewed land as transactional, whereas Black and Brown Indigenous communities had a very intimate relationship with land. It was. It was very spiritual as a place of refuge. It was it was a very important and intentional relationship that that these Indigenous communities had with land. And even just understanding the dichotomy between that and, you know, Europeans seeing land as something to conquer, something to make money from.
[00:28:50] Even just that distinction from a theory point of view is is very interesting and important to touch upon as well.
[00:28:58] Yeah. And I think it's so important that we ask ourselves, like, why did the Europeans come in the first place? Right. Was it because things were perfect in Europe? It was so good there. They wanted to spread that. No, they the whole disease. I mean, and the way that the historical word is, they they brought these you know, they'd brought civilization here when in actuality what they did is they brought their sicknesses. They brought their social dysfunction. And they brought economic and social systems that were so unsustainable that they'd already come to the end of their viability in their own European territories. And so I feel like when we think about things like, you know, women's women's right. Freedom of speech, burying the military from holding political office, the protection of our homes, leadership by consensus, all of those things are actually principles that were introduced to Europeans from the Iroquois League. You know, like the basis of what we know to be democracy came from Indigenous social structures and governance structures. And so I think it's very convenient at this time to have this narrative around colonization and the discovery of the new world, to bring freedom and to bring, you know, a thriving economy and technology and all that stuff. But if you if you just take a quick moment with the history that was never the case. They were fleeing from themselves. They were fleeing from the unsustainability of the systems that they had created. And they brought all of that here. And it's taken, you know, now five hundred years for that to run out because what was once seen as infinite resources and infinite labor to be extracted in infinite bodies, to use as workers and to use as slaves to fuel this economy that has now run out like rent is due. But I think it's also so important that we really understand that initially the colonization of the Americas was driven entirely by industry. It wasn't driven with, you know, a belief to Christianize or a belief to bring liberation or anything like that. It was about getting more raw goods to fund industry, and it was the corporations ultimately develop.
[00:31:14] Let's be clear. It was it was anomic through and through. Exactly. And so an economic breakthrough.
[00:31:21] When I see patriotism and I see blind patriotism, it makes me so confused because, you know, it's like, what is it that you feel like you're standing for? Because ultimately, what it was was just the driving of these corporations that held so much power that they then became government and rebranded themselves as, you know, democratic organizations that were carrying out the work of God. And that work of God looked like genocide. It looked like destiny. Yeah. It was like weft of bodies. It looked like death of children. It looked like intentional biological warfare. And I just want to add on to the comment that you made that, you know, with racism, there is always an underlying economic agenda for racism. And that's what that's what the notion of a subjugated other is, is that desire ultimately for greed and power. And there are absolutely no other is less than therefore the other can be exploited. Therefore, the other doesn't feel pain and their suffering is is insignificant.
[00:32:20] Yeah, not that shit is real. And even when we think about, you know, farmers being stolen, slaves weren't stolen. Farmers were stolen. Engineers were stolen. And they were stolen to keep the wheels of the economic model turning. And I think once we position slavery and slavery systems, the whole ideology around slavery and colonization as an economic model, our framers changed. And I think that's how conversations need to be had in terms of power relations and, you know, economic industry.
[00:33:01] And even connected to all of these very narratives that when we think about marketing and how marketing even works today, these narratives are built up, you know, about religion and othering.
[00:33:13] And, you know, the Enlightenment period and the Enlightenment period coming out with so many so many brilliant ideas about who people are, how they are, how society should function. That's all a marketing ploy now. Now we know it's you know, it's just like a great commercial, great branding on the reason why we need to use the labor and intellect and emotional labor of of African people within the West. Why we can take this land, particularly a piece of land from these Indigenous people and why it doesn't matter. There's a whole kind of intellectual process. I call it white supremacist logic that is being created under the guise of enlightenment. Even the word sounds positive, but it isn't. It's just white supremacy. It's just Eurocentrism, right? No, it's just capitalism. So. So we have to also know the ways in which the society is even intellectually being built. Let's systemically, in a way, even sort process of logic being built around these notions. And and justification is also being used as a tool and marketing is being used as a tool to kind of create these spaces and make them viable even when they don't make any sense, but just keeps them going and to sustain them even when they're unsustainable.
[00:34:39] Absolutely. You just reminded me I have three main core mechanisms for how this system functions. My three are public policy, which controls access education, which controls information and marketing, which controls perceptions. And so between the three, it creates this Venn diagram of access information and perception that that's really controlling the spokes of the wheel.
[00:35:13] And it has this interesting weaving of psycho social conditioning. Right. That would be the education and marketing.
[00:35:20] You know, philosophies that have been perpetuated in mainstream spaces. You can't talk about the system without also infusing be conditioning aspects of that system. Right. When we talk about everything from self-hatred to, you know, uncivilized communities to I mean, the list goes on and on and on like that, that the psychological component is so critical to this whole conversation.
[00:35:54] Yes. I'm like, you can't you can't see me.
[00:35:56] But I'm doing a whole body nod right now as body.
[00:36:01] I mean, the process of decolonization is truly a daily practice. Absolutely. You know, I mean, I've been living in an Indigenous body for 33 years and I've been a scholar and someone who is, like actively researching and engaging with notions of decolonization, like in Praksis for the last 13 years. And still every day I'm having revelations about just how deeply that that diagram of access information and perception is operating in ways that I'm I'm not even conscious to. And I'm still picking pieces out and having to practice that reframing of my own conception of myself, my conception of other Indigenous people, my conception of Afro Indigenous people and all People Of Color, because those so saturated in these racist mythologies that were absolutely designed to prevent us from having these exact kind of conversations. Because when we do when we do, it becomes so blatantly clear that the emperor has no clothes and that we can take we can take this back at any time, because that's just how how fragile and ineffective these systems are.
[00:37:18] Yeah, I mean, the process as a Black body, not an over here to her body, not, you know, it's like the unlearning and learning as a Black person on American soil.
[00:37:31] That shit is real. It's also very traumatic.
[00:37:33] And even, Lisa, you mentioned something to us about coffee. Like what was that tidbit you recently learned about coffee? It's so interesting. And then it's just like, oh, that makes fucking sense.
[00:37:50] So it's it's not only coffee, it's it's coffee, cocoa, sugar and cotton. And usually we don't put them together in the mix, even though those are cash crops. You know what I mean? Wallet or cash crops are just. And then also the foundational base of kind of brutal capital, capitalistic systems of slavery in the US in particular, U.S. and Caribbean in particular. But just if what I did and that's also through the works, through the work of Sidney Mintz, who's controversial, like I anthropologist scholar. But he has some yes. Some fruits and his stuff. But is that he made a connection and sweetness and power that particularly with sugar, but with sugar, is connected with coffee and cocoa because you're making chocolate that the proletariat or the the working class or the workers of of Europe or any society, the quote unquote, free workers, the non enslaved workers and even the slave workers. But mostly he's talking about the the non-slip workers were cohort's into these factory type systems, into what we know as the industrial revolution. What we know is factory work, a garment work, buy in taking and satiating there their pallets, but then also in taking sugar and coffee as a stimulant. So you have in addition to having a forced labor system, you have a kind of satiated labor system. This labor system doesn't have to necessarily the uninsulated of non slave labor system doesn't actually have to be healthy. They just have to be able to work. And by using stimulants like sugar and making it, you know, commodities and it as as something that's cheap and available through the different variations of sugar, if it's cane sugar from in slave labor or forced labor within the American context throughout the Americas, or if it's beet sugar within Europe or Mediterranean spaces, you're still creating a system where you have workers that will work and feel as if they're satiated and that they if they're satisfied. But at the same time, they're stimulated to keep on working doesn't mean they're healthy, but they're able to work. So connecting systems of enslavement and forced labor within the Americas and those growing systems also with within the space of free labor. And what that means, because we already know free labor is not free, free labor is still abstract of free labor, still forced. But the way that these systems have figured out or have reclaimed themselves or or, you know, remade themselves into being viable by just giving us a whole bunch of coffee and sugar, you know, giving us coffee breaks, you know, giving us chocolate with sugar in it, you know, has really kind of enforced this system and solidified the system. And so to what it is. And we already see that even with marketing in spaces, the first place, really the first thing that is marketed to, you know, quote unquote underdeveloped or overexploited spaces as new markets, it's usually candies and sugars. And yet it's usually like they'll bring Cheetos to like a small place. Right. Right. You know, it's those it's those things that will chemically stimulate the population.
[00:41:31] And then also satiate them and create some sort of addiction, but allow them to keep at pace, keep working. And then also you need cash to get these things. So you need to work then to get sugar to feel, you know, stimulated and satiated. And then at the end of the day, be able to work for more money.
[00:41:52] So it's a cycle that is unrelenting. And so when we're thinking about coffee, sugar and tea and cocoa, we can't we can't, you know, take them out of the conversation when we're talking about textiles or we're talking about any type of this factory work, when we're talking about the garment industries because they're connected. It's if the this is the cyclical. Type of situation in which it's feeding itself. So I just sometimes with fashion, with agriculture in itself. Usually fashion. And those kind of textile industries are put on one side. And then you have agriculture dealing with food and food insecurity and all that put on another side. But we really have to connect them because the issue, they're already connected. They already are working in tandem. They already work. They already are the same same person, different industries. And they're just, you know, doing their thing. They're the puppet master for both these spaces. So we have to understand that and not necessarily put agriculture dealing with food and those type of markets on one side and then agriculture and then agriculture dealing with textiles and the fashion industry on the other. These are very much interconnected spaces.
[00:43:09] I just want to add to that, you know, if all the consideration of the use of pharmaceuticals, the intentional use of things like opioids and like hydro morphine for soldiers and took to assist in kind of the brainwashing and control of U.S. troops around the world while they carry out these projects of neo liberalism, which necessitates the extraction and occupation of other lands overseas to carry out those wars to fuel the U.S. economy. And I think that that even extends now to our devices and the ways in which neo liberalism is now mining our internal content to keep the machine going. And so the same way that we've we've now built these addictions to being oversaturated, being over inundated and being on our screens at all times and consuming other people's internal content.
[00:44:05] These are all things that keep us kind of oversaturated, stimulating and addicted to this really unsustainable system.
[00:44:16] Yes. Yes. Just like I feel like sugar was the first point. And then. Because I know that. Exactly. Because if anything, the military militarization even of the labor of the labor force of the work force is very important.
[00:44:35] Just a pure fact that a lot of people within the framework of the military get the most basic healthcare or stability from being in the military, just even tells you who they're attempting to recruit in these spaces.
[00:44:51] And then to, you know, then move this into other frameworks of addiction and compulsion and stimuli to to do these types of processes for the powers that be are just disturbing.
[00:45:06] But exactly. So it just starts out one little, you know, 18, 20. Let's give them some sugar.
[00:45:14] Wow. That it just kind of weird. It gets weird.
[00:45:20] But I always say that that, you know, capitalism and the powers that be are not innovative. They're not very smart. They're just persistent. And they'll do the same things.
[00:45:30] But with by different with a different tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet.
[00:45:36] But at the exact same thing. So the same thing they did. And 60 90 they will do today. And they have no qualms. They know it's the same exact thing with a minor tweak, a minor remit, but they don't mind.
[00:45:50] They market it. They do good marketing around that minor tweak, just like you were talking about before. Good marketing around that minor tweak so that the public perception is like, oh, we didn't catch on.
[00:46:04] I will read now as well like this. In this moment we're living in watching, you know, the United States fall apart and break into the brink of civil war. It's so important that we understand this exact theme, right. Of the recreation of the same strategies again and again with a slight tweak and a swap, slight reframe. And I really engage with an academic called Paul Farmer, who has a theory called the historical amnesia.
[00:46:34] And his thesis is historical amnesia is essential for the colonized and for the colonizer to keep the colonized colonized. Right. And so when we when we look at what's going on right now and the way that the media is framing the narrative, we're watching the disintegration and the collapse of an empire, however, not being framed like that. So that. And therefore, people are being complicit with, oh, you know, we can trust our governments. We, like everything, will be stabilized.
[00:47:02] The military will ensure public freedoms. And we're watching as the exact opposite happens. And yet we're still so brainwashed and can conditioned to believe in our democracy or in our freedom. When the nation itself was built on neither of those things. So important. At least I'm so grateful for you for bringing that historical lens into the conversation, because I think for all of us right now, understanding collective global history and collective colonial history is essential if we're going to work together towards a pathway forward that looks like something like liberation, something like freedom, something like the emancipation of bodies of color and Indigenous bodies that for so long have been the source of extraction, the source of suffering the sacrifice on.
[00:47:54] All right. This is getting too juicy. But we're going to take a brief break and we'll dove right back in together.
[00:48:04] Just.
[00:48:25] As we mentioned earlier in this show, this week's episode is sponsored by Fibershed.
[00:48:31] So a fiber shed has some really powerful programs and I feel like they're always doing so much more than I realize. They're diving into so many layers around regenerative agriculture and building systems around healthy soil. Are there any initiatives that they're working on right now that you're excited about? Well, yes.
[00:48:52] I love the RFMI, which is the Regional Fiber Manufacturing Initiative with a huge goal of regenerating the West Coast fiber system. They're really into taking economic and organizational needs for different partnerships and implementing that into a collective strategy to to ultimately rebuild the West Coast fiber manufacturing ecosystem. They're really big on scrutinizing the gaps in the regional infrastructure and helping to garner resources and capital for a supply chain partners. And overall, they're reducing the footprint of fast fashion, supporting local community, working on circular paradigms such as their soil to soil initiative and authentically hyping up the importance of craftsmanship. And I know they're still in the research phase of this vision, but I'm really excited about the expansion of this system focused initiative and really just looking to continuously support and nourish their endeavors in this space.
[00:50:01] If you're interested in learning more about fiber shed, you can find them online at Fiber's share dot org. And we'll also have a link in the show notes.
[00:50:12] It's just.
[00:50:35] And we're back.
[00:50:38] It's it's imperative for every single human soul on this planet to especially in America.
[00:50:46] Let's keep it in America. There's it's so imperative for for every body in America to understand that collective colonial history alongside the Black and Brown Indigenous sustainability history. We need the colonial thuggery. And we also need to understand how Black and Brown Indigenous communities have been have been killing it in a good way forever.
[00:51:12] And Lisa, I know you speak a lot on alternative systems.
[00:51:16] I'd love to hear more about what alternative systems were taking place during slavery during the height of slavery at that.
[00:51:26] So I think with with slavery, the biggest misconception is that you just have this and it's a misconception built up by the Enlightenment mean white supremacist logic.
[00:51:37] And all of that is that enslaved people were docile, enslaved people were a kind of zombie like workforce. And even, you know, feeding into notions of othering and and, you know, and barbarity and us as animals. Our answer as animals is saying that, you know, enslaved person was like a cow, a dog or whatever, because that is the way in chattel slavery. That is the way people were counted. This is the economic system. So we were counted alongside the livestock, depending on the county, the system or however.
[00:52:14] But that's not how actual enslavement works.
[00:52:19] Enslavement works where you have people who are human beings that come from a certain culture, that come from certain spaces and that want to show their sovereignty and their autonomy and their humanity in a variety of ways. And the one of the ways we did it was through provision ground.
[00:52:39] So enslaved people in particular could take on a provision ground, either by or by requesting it from the enslaver or the overseer that they they can, you know, lease a piece of a piece of land, be sold a piece of land.
[00:52:55] It wouldn't be a good piece of land. But, you know, we know what to do. Right. There's also other tactics. You could say, quote, unquote, guerrilla agriculture. So within that realm, which is now, it's called regenerative agriculture, in a way, you see people farming within forest or foraging or planting within a kind of of an eco system that's already in existence and not necessarily, you know, tilling and ripping out trees. But within that ecosystem, that's what enslaved people did. Literally, you would you would know in your mind, you you plotted out where you had your yam, where you had these trees actually planted, where you had this, where you have that. But it's not necessarily a farm in the way that we think it is, but it's a farm that's already within a forest or at a already an ecosystem. And then you also had Baroon communities that developed alongside kind of an effort Indigenous. So, as you said, Africa and melanated people from Melanesian Isles, Polynesian Isles are not new to the Americas. So within those already bases that were set up, you have people that would basically early ancestors. They're part of early ancestors who were African that would run away to feed these sovereign spaces that were pre established, pre established by Indigenous people within those spaces who also absconded to these spaces. Because when we're thinking about the great dying, we can't it would be wrong of us, especially within that colonial narrative, to even assert that all all these Indigenous people died. It's like no one ran away. Like you just assume it makes sense. No.
[00:54:43] Like you've people who have who know how to use boats, who who have inter inter regional communication, international communication. And everyone just stood there and was like, you know, you have different things happening politically. Some people were restrained to the certain spaces area because with any type of enslavement or colonization, you know, not everyone can move in the same ways. But you did have people that that tried their best to survive, particularly outside the system, and create new spaces outside the system or regenerate spaces that were already maybe alternative in the in the hills, in the woods, in the mountains. And African people who also were trying to find space outside of slavery ran to join these spaces. These spaces were Indigenous. These spaces were already in the context of the Caribbean, Central and South America Afro Indigenous. So we have to see this as something bigger that's happening, not just kind of marooned communities or Afro Indigenous communities, starting with particularly with slavery, because that's a colonial narrative that I'm definitely trying to think outside of. And it's outside of the framework of Indigenous people in the room communities that I work with today. So to say all that, we have to look at how alternatives were already in place. So you have brutal enslavement of African people, but you also have African people and Afro Indigenous people and within that space who are creating systems of survival that are generative, that are sustainable, that are community oriented, that are very much connected. To the earth, the land keeping places enriched. That are not about extraction, that are about creation and regeneration. So this is happening in the midst of the most brutal systems of capitalism, most brutal systems of enslavement. Like people are surviving and moving and thriving outside of those systems and even within those systems. And they're not they're not moving in the same wavelength or being they know something is wrong with the way that Europeans are moving within the America they know. They said that, you know, because it's a part of their history and heritage. But they also know that this this is not sustainable. This is not going to feed anyone. All this sugar crop. But where is the food? Yeah. Know this day provision provision grounds, particularly in the Caribbean. Which on what provision grounds. Provisions mean food. And when you say food, if you go to a West Indian restaurant or I tell restaurant finally say food, you're talking about Yeb, you're talking about ground food. You're talking about root vegetables. When they say, I want food, you know, you're talking about you're not even talking about rice because some of that was imported.
[00:57:39] But you're talking about we're talk about food. You're talking about ground foods. And those are foods that are based in Aphro Indigenous practices and basic bathroom practices and based in practices of of enslaved people who, you know, did farming techniques and tactics that were alternative to the plantation capitalist system.
[00:58:00] I just. I can feel all of our ancestors right now, just like so please, that we're having this conversation and naming like the truth of the resilience of our history. And I just, you know, that we've really gotten used to this discourse around intergenerational trauma. And that is a reality, you know, like what we've had to endure and on a cellular level in order to survive is real. But we would not be here if it weren't for intergenerational resilience and the power that our ancestors and that we carry in order to have survive the forms of oppression that were necessitated by the project of colonization. And I just really you know, I really want to call out the ways in which colonial historical narratives are always still talking about, you know, the nations dying out. People disappearing because of their lack of civilization. And, Lisa, what you're saying is like, no, we were always trying to survive and we were always finding ways to survive. Whether or not that that that has been included in the mainstream narrative of history, that's another conversation. But none of us would be here if it wasn't for this incredibly strong intergenerational resilience that we carry. And I mean that like that goes so deeply, is embedded in our teachings and our language, in our songs, in the agricultural knowledge that was passed down, the seed saving that was required in order for so much of what we still consume today, to even survive when, you know, all that people wanted to put money into was farming sugarcane. But I think, you know, this is like this brings me to to the theme of appropriation, which I really wanted to bring in this conversation, because we are talking about fashion and this whole notion of like what I find as an Indigenous person is that there's a real framing of like the static Indigenous identity that existed right at contact. And if we evolve out of that in any way by wearing modern clothing, speaking English, participating in it in a capitalist economy, going and getting educated, went to school, all of those things that somehow undermines the real ness or the authenticity of our Indigenous ety. And so it's like we're damned if we do or damned if we don't, because we if we stay in that static place, we then can't exist in this society.
[01:00:26] However, as we evolve or shift or change in order to maintain ourselves in this dominant colonial society, we're then no longer really Indigenous. And I think that leads me to this theme of appropriation, because to be simultaneously trying to navigate the complexity of that narrative while people want to wear our clothing, well, people want to steal our intellectual property and designs and have white people wearing that stuff while they're simultaneously telling us that we no longer exist. The violence that is the is foundational to that worldview is why we get so angry, is why we cannot sit back and tolerated. It's why we will not be your mascotte. You know, when you look at what mascots are, they're either animals or their mythological creatures. They're not your neighbors. They're not your friends. They're not human beings. So you have equal respect for. And so to be made into a mascot is to be told you no longer exist or you're not you're not even real in the first place.
[01:01:38] Cool. I'm sorry about this. Yep, yep, and and.
[01:01:48] You know, I mentioned this before off this episode, but just when I'm thinking about fashion and you know, Lisa, as you were touching on alternative systems and then making as you were touching on sort of the that the harm and the the exploitation and the theft and I. I immediately go to. Harriet Tubman. I mean, there's so many different avenues I can go when I when I think of these intersections, but I go to Harriet Tubman because most people know her as the woman who spent her life freeing a bunch of slaves. But there was so much intricate communication and survival mechanisms and fashion woven in to her work and her existence. I don't think a lot of people know that Harriet Tubman was a quilter. And quilting is such an important tradition to so many West African communities and nexus African-American communities because their stories and the quilts, there's rich, traditional cultural heritage woven into the quilts. And Harriet Tubman had a quilt called the Underground Railroad. Right. And the underground rural quilt was situated strategically in certain areas. And they would share with her and other people who she worked with that, you know, this is a safe house. If you see this quilt hanging outside, just know that this this was a safe house. But there were also trade routes woven into the quilts just as much as there were seeds saved. And and strategically placed an African hair.
[01:03:49] And to see certain levels of appropriation in the fashion industry with out having without giving a shit about those elements of survival, without those elements of cultural ingenuity, without those elements of.
[01:04:10] Of, you know.
[01:04:13] Reference, community reference. It's it's it blows my mind and and it has to stop because, like you said, it's super violent and it's super harmful. And fashion. Fashion weaponize is that more than, in my opinion, most industries, because fashion at all, fashion is is a form of communication in many ways. And so it's like, yo, we got to get this shit together. It's so much deeper than than you guys are making it. And it's imperative that we mitigate those detriments in the fashion industry. Asep.
[01:04:53] These foundational footprints of of fashion and survival and communication and and love and all of that has to be discussed because we created alternative that it was that was one form of of an alternative system within the fashion industry. And the ancestors were like, look, these examples have to get passed down and we can never forget this.
[01:05:19] This knowledge and these practices and these principles ever. We can't.
[01:05:27] I'm so excited just to see this revitalization happening across the Americas of the reclaiming of weaving as a traditional practice and for. You know, the last hundred years that that has really been underground. But I'm seeing like from my territory in Central America all the way up to north coastal territory here. This revitalization of weaving in for my people, like our church, our traditional shirts are called quick appeal and appeal. Like what is woven in is our geneology is what's woven in is our creation stories, what's woven like our original instructions for how to live a good life, for how to live in harmony. And so like the technology and the integrity of what those repeal's meant to us. And they were woven by our mothers are our anti's or our grandmothers. And I heard appeals from when I was a child, like they last forever, you know. And that just makes me think of, you know, that resilience and that, like, intergenerational legacy and love that you were actually wrapped in clothing that reminded you who you were, that was woven with prayer for your for your well-being, for your protection, for your safety, and with the stitched in everything you need to know about who you are, where you come from, what why you're here and where you're going. And I'm just thinking about one of the registry chiefs up in Canada here where I live. Of the what Sowden name to name Ochs, who is one of the last chiefs to actually undergo the traditional rites of ceremony for hereditary chiefs. And that meant being left in between two mountains at eleven and being left there over the winter and to survive. And if he survived that, that that would mean that he would be able to take on the chief them. And I've had the privilege multiple times of dressing him in his regalia and with his button blanket and with his headpiece. Every time I pick it up, he tells me the story of each of those buttons being put on there by his great grandmother, of all the other people who is who have more in the butt and blanket, of all every significance of every piece that comes out of the headpiece. And so, like, these are powerful items, these carry energy themes of love. And so, I mean, this just touches the brim of why it's so infuriating to see a chick in a bikini in a headdress acocella. It's actually understood even just the slightest amount of what those cultural artifacts mean to us, what they carry their power, their teaching that they're spiritual. It would be unthinkable. Right. Reengage with those objects and that kind of way. And so for me, when I see, you know, a white woman wearing her appeal because she, like, got it at a thrift store or whatever, it hurts me deeply because when we were colonized, the way in which our colonizers tried to to raise us, similar to the reservation system in Canada, we were made to wear specific colors based on our regions that we we couldn't travel. And so that they could keep track of us. And so the evolution of that is that the Weavers took those colors and began weaving those colors into the appeals. But with our story of resilience, with our story of how we're going to survive, with our story of who we were. So if I see a woman in an appeal based on the colors that she that she's wearing, I know where she comes from. And I know who her ancestors are. And already that creates such an incredible level of respect and relationality, you know, and solidarity. And so just the power, like just even speaking these words, I feel the power in my body. You know, what our fashion meant to us. And so and then I think about Fash fashion and how no fashion has become like something that people occupy themselves with and distract themselves with and create stress over to maintain when in actuality that when we made our clothing, it was for generations. And it was an honor and honor to receive, you know, your mother's appeal or your anti's had peace or any of those things because that carried those relationships and that love and the resiliency of those items mirrored the resiliency of our people. Yes.
[01:09:58] Nikki, I am so incredibly grateful for your storytelling, your cultural lens and just the passion you have, like the passion that is losing from your pores. I levy just such good texture to this conversation.
[01:10:14] And as a Black woman, something I'm often thinking about, especially, you know, being a Black woman in America. How important it is to reclaim our identity within the fashion narrative. But I'm also aware of the complexities and the nuances of reclaiming, you know, as an Afro-American, the the cultural autonomy in the adornment is a mix of Afro ancestry, but also what we've contributed to Americanism, you know, with Hip-Hop culture and revolutionary dress and activism. I eat the Black Panthers. I'm from Oakland. Shout out to Oakland always. But when I think about stories of Indigo from Ghana and Kente and Modcloth and weaving, but also how clothing had to be our armor in America, it's just very interesting to consume. But reclaiming is the name of the game for damn sure.
[01:11:09] I totally agree, especially with in terms of cultural appropriation, especially as we're attempting to reclaim and then others are like I can relate to. So similar to Nikki's story and connection of of kind of colonialism, reclaiming and reframing. So that to show our survival is the technol in in New Orleans, but all over. So the head wraps that women wear, Black women wear force. You know, it was enforce the law that we wear head wraps to cover our hair because, you know, and then we have the Crown Act now. But in terms of Black women's hair having meaning either, you know, being a Rowly, being primitive, being too flamboyant, being quote unquote, even the word kinky, it has also a sexual connotation. As mentioned, we're talking about colonial and nationalistic terms and slavery and Black women's bodies. But the 10 young in the 18th century and even moving forward was kind of had a similar stance where, OK, if we have to wear a rap on our head, we're going to bejeweled it. But it's also not necessarily we're going to be juillet. It's something that. OK, well, when we did Rabson within the African context, we bejeweled those things, too. Oh yeah. So it is what it is. So it's kind of like enforcing something, enforcing enforcing a law to as as a as a way of discrimination, as a way of othering. But then us taking that, taking that othering and putting a jewel on it and making it something that's important to us, making it something that that becomes even a ritual ritual allies from the African continent to kind of modern day a tool of oppression. If you can't cover your hair. But that's a part of I mean, you have to cover your hair. But that was a part of our tradition to cover our hair. We don't know in a certain situation or ceremonial or however. But even to now. And, you know, covering our hair and covering our hair and our daughter and our hair, particularly with with wraps and textiles from the continent, become an import. And there's also the same situation within all Indigenous communities globally where you have a fashion industry attempting to take on particular colors or particular pattern. And even, you know, try to have some intellectual property attached to it even. I think the past 10 years with the Rastafari and colors, or maybe it was 20 years Russified, the colors that we're take, which is also the opiate. But it was within that space of Rastafarianism. And if you open it bizim that I can't remember what large bag brand leather bag brand attempted to do it, but they were you know, they took on the colors. They took on the sensibility even in the fashion show, had bottles with locks and all this. You know what I mean. And had Rasta music playing and roots reggae. And I was just like what the hell. We would see. You see today where Rastafarian People in Jamaica are still being discriminated against. A child has to cut off their locks to attend a school. So we had a form of Giovinco. Yeah, just agreed with that. So within our own context, where we were discriminated against, we're made to feel otherwise. But then they can appropriate that and create a whole marketing situation based on it and make, you know, almost billions of dollars on the backs of our. It we can't even live literally we live with colors that represent us with hair, that represent us with a style that represent us, with sea that represents us. But someone else can appropriate that and make billions and just be seen as bohemian, quote unquote.
[01:15:14] And appropriation is an aggressive ass strategy.
[01:15:19] I don't think people understand what the word bohemian.
[01:15:23] And that being attached to Roman Roma people face. Yeah. So we we even need to figure out, like writing this new language to express, because that's the language that they created to appropriate from us.
[01:15:42] But what's something that was familiar to me and that those oppressed people at the same time that were also displaced from their lands, being excluded from economies, you know, like and to this day are still referred to as gypsies and not recognized as people. Lisa, I totally remember I think it was Dooney and Bourke.
[01:16:02] I remember a girl on Instagram didn't know video with the Rasta color bag.
[01:16:12] And I was so angry. I was so angry and infuriated. And I mean, I think this is such an important I mean, we can have a whole other protest. Just talking about appropriation. Yes. Well, it is so important that people understand the validity to the raid that is felt like, listen, when you're talking about the head raps and hairstyles and the fact that Black folks come and go to school with their own hair or, you know, but yet white people can have dreadlocks because it suits them and they don't understand the history of it. Kylie Jenner can do, you know, cornrows and it's cool. And all the sudden, you know, every other white girl in America is doing that as well. And like with complete impunity and with complete ignorance, with the implications of what the history and the significance of those things are and that that just carries with me like such a level of of white oblivion and privilege and the willingness to be, you know, willfully ignorant to those things. And that's the essence for me of white privilege is not even needing to know the significance, but feeling as though you're entitled to take absolutely anything of anyone else's while you still stand on their necks, stand up their land and steal and oppress from them for your own benefit.
[01:17:34] And the thing that even is worse about it with that, with the Rastafarian flag and culture, spirituality is also based in Pan Africanism. And it's also based in like decolonization and revolution. So and a lot of it being a part of the Ethiopian flag and that being kind of taken in in positive grace because they were also moving kind of rhetoric and supporting, if you'll be out during World War Two and all of that stuff and pre-war votes. But those colors are were used in the decolonization period in particular to show kind of Pan African pride as as as African nations where we're creating new flags and colors, this, that and the other. They were choosing those types of colors in particular that, you know, red for the blood of the people. Yellow for the sun, green for the left. You know what I mean? So there's there's meaning. And then you have the African-American flag as meaning to the Black, red and green. It's a similar kind of decolonizing type of space. Pan African space that that that people are attempting to assert. And so by taking that sacred space of decolonization and saying we have our own flag and then saying, no, you don't, we're going to market it, maybe we'll even intellectual that you'll have this intellectual property. And TM it or would have put it registered trademark. This is as if, as you said, it's not a but I think it's just arrogance because I no longer say, like, willfully ignorant. I say that's just some that's just arrogance. You don't even care. You don't even. It's not that you don't even care to know once, you know. You still don't care about total disregard.
[01:19:24] Yeah. That part, even even when people exert their labor to educate, still don't care. They still don't care.
[01:19:36] And I think it it speaks a lot to the monopoly of world power and resources and the importance of one dismantling the system, which means getting to the root of the issue.
[01:19:49] Wow. For me, simultaneously creating adjacent systems where we are seen, heard and feel safe.
[01:19:57] Because we can't fully rely on, you know, the system to crumble the way it needs to crumble and be rebuilt in the interim of that, just as you were speaking about alternative systems during slavery, the. The snowball effect of those alternative systems have to spill into modernity.
[01:20:19] And reclaiming and reimagining our culture and social freedom in that way.
[01:20:26] But this has been a beautiful conversation, are there there? It literally.
[01:20:34] Lisa and Nikki, you both planted the seed for how dope this podcast is going to be, this series is going to be. I'm so grateful. Are there any sort of final thoughts with regards to closing the loop on the ideology of racism as a system?
[01:20:56] I mean, the one thing I just really want to say in regards to your comment about the complexities of the mysteries of these things, complexity to me is like the reflection of possibility. Right. And so I feel so excited to talk about the future of what decolonized fashion looks like, because there's so much room for innovation, there's so much room for truth telling. There's so much room for reclaiming our histories and telling new stories about who we are going forward. And I love that, like the proliferation of creativity. You know, when we have complexity, it also drives us to find creative solutions.
[01:21:34] So I so look forward to seeing what emerges in the future and thinking, too. We thought about this like Pan African flag. Yesterday I drove by a Canadian flag and just like that flag feels like violence to me and the symbol of allegiance to that violence system. And I feel the same way about the U.S. flag and what I want to see. You know, a proliferation of is like sovereignty, flags and flags of know nation to nation, reciprocity and and liberation because our liberation is absolutely tied to one another's. So I did. Yeah. So my my heart is so full having this conversation with the both of you. And I know that the future looks beautiful because so many of us across across Turtle Island, across the world are having these conversations at this time. And that means that we're reclaiming our narrative. And that means that we're directing our pathway forwards.
[01:22:29] Deb? Absolutely. And Black and Brown Indigenous solidarity is so imperative in in the evolution of how we decolonize for sure. And I'm here for the sovereignty flag that needs to go into law after we burn the Constitution.
[01:22:51] You feel me? Why, Lisa? Any final thoughts?
[01:22:56] Just, you know, the conversation, particularly about Brooks Brothers, really just, you know, hurt people or hurt a lot of us just to know that they been serving clothing. And thank you for Jonathan's square for really. Yeah. Allowing us to know because we think about agriculture. We don't think about how interconnected this system of chattel slavery was and how it was just the base of the US economy just in total, like everything was connected. But then I also think about during that same time where Brooks Brothers is making these served cold and critical servant clothing for enslaved people. You have where free People Of Color, people like Harriet Tubman and people within our community are tailors. We're seamstress, we're shoe makers. And you have large populations of people who are training as apprentices and are creating alternative systems in which they can thrive for what they can. You know, they're they're employing themselves in their communities within these systems, and they're creating really fashionable Dandi. Yeah. Just really cool clothing and fashion sense within that. The framework of being tailor sensuousness. And this is from the early eighteen hundreds even before that. Seventeen hundred. Sixteen hundred. So we can't see that these large systems as, as, as the norm. They're not, they're not even normal within the framework of history, but particularly for Black people who struggled with this system of slavery in our skin meant that either we were enslaved, our dark skin and tight touch your hair meant that we were enslaved or just associating us racially with slavery because it's racial slavery at a certain point in history. It's just us. And within that space, we have to look at. Okay, what alternatives did we really use and utilize within, particularly within fashion that helped her survive? And Taylor seems seamstress Shoemaker's quote, quilters is very important. Not not just that for brothers profited from making clothing for enslaved bodies, but the fact that once we ran away, once we found freedom, once we became fugitives of chattel slavery, once we self emancipated, we then became seamstresses and tailors and then dressed ourselves.
[01:25:23] Yes, there's one word you mention and a name you mentioned. And I just wanted to briefly share some context. You mentioned Jonathan Square. He is an amazing writer and historian specializing in fashion and visual culture of the African diaspora and does a really phenomenal job of giving texture to to fashion and systems of race and agriculture. So definitely look into Jonathan Square. And then you mentioned Dandyism, and there's a book that I'm reading actually called Slaves to Fashion Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity by Monica Miller. And just one final note, since I provided a few resources. If there are any resources that you both would like to share, now's the time.
[01:26:16] I'll give I'll give a few good ones. And this is just from a diversity of of authors. But of course, farming while Black, of course I leave. Those are your father. Birkitt gives a really good kind of exposed day. But it's not exposed to the rest of us. But for him, the field, it is of cotton and capitalism because they try to not connected to it in textile and all that by empire, cotton and sweetness and power. Sydney meant so well, no anthropologist that does work on an African and Black studies. Capitalism and slavery. Eric Williams grieving Africana Studies. Rubin Patterson. And a really good one is in the shadow of slavery. African Botanical Legacy of the Atlantic World by Judith Carani. That's a really good.
[01:27:05] Thank you. Thanks for that healthy list, Nikki. If you have any resources.
[01:27:12] Now, think of the professor here gave us a pretty good or healthy list, leaflets that weren't just that, but I do just really encourage everyone, you know, who's listening to this like.
[01:27:24] Take some time to think about what one act of decolonization looks in in their life and really like. Find out whose land you're living on. You know, if you want to know if you want to. Find out their story. Find out their language. Find out what's going on with them now. And find out how you can be in solidarity and in support of that liberation.
[01:27:47] And that can look like I mean, the antidote for appropriation is cultural exchange. So when you're actually supporting artists to carry on their knowledge systems and their traditions, when you're insuring that you compensate, if not overcompensate, creative and academic credit, I will always get creative credits.
[01:28:05] So important. It's so important. And like, pay extra, you know, buy direct from makers and pay extra. And listen to the story of the pieces. Listen to the story, because you're a man when you have access to to wear something that signifies other people's culture and their history. That is an absolute privilege. And that's a gift.
[01:28:27] Reparation, taxes always. So thank you both, Nikki and Lisa. This was such. I'm I'm so honored to have you both kicking off Episode one, racism as a system, as we discussed decolonizing the fashion agenda. Yeah, I mean, I'm full of life and I'm ready to continue the work at this point. I appreciate your time and energies. I'm full today. Thank you both.
[01:28:58] Plus, Komati, it's been such a pleasure to be in this conversation with you both.
[01:29:02] Thank you, Dom. Thank you, Nikki. And also thank you to Kestrel. Thank you. Conscious chatter This is beautiful. Thank you so much.
[01:29:35] I have so much love for you both, Nikki and Lisa. You all have woven together such a powerful conversation about the importance of history and how critical it is to reclaim not only the fullness of our own histories independently, but that of other beautifully adjacent Indigenous cultures with which modern systems were built upon. There is literally no such thing as a sustainability conversation without an intentional understanding of the cultural and environmental cost of being mellow native on this land. But more importantly, the route of sustainability is in Native American and global Afro Indigenous sovereignty that existed before colonial frameworks. We are powerful as fuck from the spectrum of cultural autonomy and reclaiming alternative systems to the pillars of genocide and the tools for marketing them. This has to be the new standard of conversation. If we are truly discussing sustainable solutions, this is the root, y'all. This is the root of it. And I'm excited to dove into the next episode that's going to dig even deeper in discussing the detriments of white privilege as a tool for control as we set the stage for the fashion industry. Stay tuned for Episode two, The Power of Privilege.
[01:31:00] It's time to reclaim our power. Rewrite our paths, rebuild our future, for Black lives will last long. Well, Patty Hearst.
[01:31:13] Freedom flag. Freedom, aware, freedom. Our love, freedom are here. Freedom, peace, freedom. No fear. Freedom. Welfare. Words mean a symbol. We got it going on from afros and whites. Tooth combs and hand me down clothes. The unmistakable gold down in our souls.
[01:31:37] We can't be our last decolonize. White lies eliminated. Black bodies traced by white outlines. Recognize our troops. Value our youth. See the humanity. Looking back at you as we heal our wounds, we heal the nation. No negotiation for Black and Brown liberation. Just we'll take the reparations and credit was doomed. We'll use our voice to teach history. They teach us in school. We've had the patience and don'ts to fix our crowds so they can no longer be removed. And field hands built the land on which we stand, planted the trees that give breath to every man. Summon the spirits and never break but bend and do it all stitched up. How back together again.
[01:32:26] Together.