Osprey Orielle Lake is founder and executive director of the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network(WECAN), and works internationally with grassroots, BIPOC and Indigenous leaders, policymakers, and diverse coalitions to build climate justice, resilient communities, and a just transition to a decentralized, democratized clean-energy future. She sits on the executive committee for the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature and on the steering committee for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. Osprey’s writing about climate justice, relationships with nature, women in leadership, and other topics has been featured in The Guardian, Earth Island Journal, The Ecologist, Ms. Magazine and many other publications. Her most recent book is The Story is In Our Bones: How Worldviews and Climate Justice Can Remake a World in Crisis. On this episode we discuss: * Osprey's longtime connection with the land, which was fostered and developed during her early years spent among the redwood trees and beside the Pacific Ocean in Northern California * Osprey's understanding of the Sacred Feminine, including how it intertwines with animacy and how She can help us deepen our relationship with the Earth * The concept of sacred activism and Osprey's work with many indigenous peoples through WECAN, including the Rights of Nature movement * The importance of worldviews, and why it's vital that we adopt one that places us within the context of an intricately connected web of life
Osprey Orielle Lake is founder and executive director of the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network(WECAN), and works internationally with grassroots, BIPOC and Indigenous leaders, policymakers, and diverse coalitions to build climate justice, resilient communities, and a just transition to a decentralized, democratized clean-energy future. She sits on the executive committee for the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature and on the steering committee for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. Osprey’s writing about climate justice, relationships with nature, women in leadership, and other topics has been featured in The Guardian, Earth Island Journal, The Ecologist, Ms. Magazine and many other publications. Her most recent book is The Story is In Our Bones: How Worldviews and Climate Justice Can Remake a World in Crisis.
On this episode we discuss:
Show Notes
Osprey Orielle Lake video episode
[00:00:00]
Hello, and welcome to Home to Her, the podcast that's dedicated to reclaiming the lost and stolen wisdom of the sacred feminine. I'm your host, Liz Kelley, and on each episode, we explore her stories and myths, her spiritual principles, and most importantly, what this wisdom has to offer us right now.
Thanks for being here. Let's get started.
Liz Childs Kelly: Hey everybody, it's Liz, joining you as usual from Central Virginia and the unceded lands of the Monacan Nation. And as always, if you would like to know whose lands you might be residing on, be sure to check out the map at native land. ca. I always put that in the show notes, so if you don't remember, you can go look it up.
And yeah, I'm [00:01:00] so glad that you are tuning in today. And if you are interested in learning more about the Sacred Feminine, there's all kinds of ways that you can do that. And I just want to tell you a few that I offer. You can check out my award winning book, Home to Her, Walking the Transformative Path of the Sacred Feminine, which is available wherever you buy your books.
You can check out the classes that are available via the Home to Her Academy. I will be rolling out new courses in collaboration with some really great teachers all year long. You can follow me on social at Home to Her on Facebook and Instagram. And you can check out articles and all the past podcast episodes at hometoher. com. This is all going to be in the show notes. And if you're a regular listener, I would love for you to leave a review of this show, wherever you access it. It helps other people find this, and I'd be very grateful. And then, as always, feel free to reach out to me with your thoughts, your comments, your feedback, your suggestions.
I love hearing from you. Social is a really good way [00:02:00] to do that. Let's get on with today's show, shall we? My guest today, her work is deeply inspirational to me. And she has written a beautifully researched and detailed book that just came out that I cannot wait to discuss with her. So let me go ahead and introduce her to you now.
Osprey Orielle Lake is founder and executive director of the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network, also known as WECAN, and works internationally with grassroots, BIPOC, and Indigenous leaders, policymakers, and diverse coalitions to build climate justice, resilient communities, and a just transition to a decentralized, democratized, clean energy future.
She sits on the Executive Committee for the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature and on the Steering Committee for the Fossil Fuel Non Proliferation Treaty. Osprey's writing about climate justice, relationship with nature, women in leadership, and other topics has been featured in the [00:03:00] Guardian, Earth Island Journal, and The Ecologist, Ms.
Magazine, and many other publications. She is the author of the award winning book, Uprisings for the Earth, Reconnecting Culture with Nature. And her most recent book is The Story is in Our Bones, How Worldviews and Climate Justice Can Remake a World in Crisis. She is joining us today from her home in the San Francisco Bay Area on Coast Miwok lands.
Osprey, thank you so much for being here. It's an honor to have you with me today. Thank you so
Osprey Orielle Lake: much for inviting me. It's a pleasure. Thank
Liz Childs Kelly: you. Well, regular listeners to the show know that I love to start the same place with everybody, which is just hearing a little bit about your spiritual background growing up.
And you know, kind of, I guess it kind of depends on your background, but a lot of times I have guests who feel like they maybe had experiences that they had to let go in order to sort of be where they are now and others who perhaps found a through line that was really useful and productive for them, but I'd love to start there if that's okay with you.
Osprey Orielle Lake: Sure. I [00:04:00] think the most, I mean, that's such a big question, but I'll just go to a significant part of the question for me, which is I would say my, my spirituality is really birthed from, if you will, the lands where I grew up, which is I was very fortunate to live in a small coastal town in Northern California called Mendocino, and I was just an incredible place.
Thank you. to, to grow up. I moved there after my parents were divorced. So my mom is a single mom, moved my sister and I there. And she taught at the art center there. And, you know, most of my childhood was, was in Mendocino. And I also needed a lot of healing at the time because of our family problems.
And that's when I discovered really having come from actually living in a, in an urban context to, to then being in the countryside. And really discovering in this particular region, the ocean and the redwood trees. And [00:05:00] that became so important to me in my own personal journey that it was sort of the awakening of my relationship with nature and learning from nature and being in nature for healing and wellbeing.
And that really started my, my spiritual path, if you will, of, of Really connecting with the natural world as my home place when I think about spirituality.
Liz Childs Kelly: Yeah, I lived in the Bay Area for 14 years before I moved here to Virginia now and Mendocino was one of my favorite places to go. So I know exactly, exactly what you're talking about.
It's just really stunningly beautiful in so many ways. Yeah, and I'd love to know how, if there was a particular moment that the, I use the language as a sacred feminine, but please feel free to say whatever you want in that regard, whether that's divine feminine or goddess or something else completely but I'd love to know, If there was a particular moment when the sacred feminine [00:06:00] appeared for you, or you became aware of her presence, or if that was intertwined with your relationship to the land or how that how that came forward for you.
Osprey Orielle Lake: I think it's, you know, I don't know if I could pinpoint an exact moment. But I can recall you know, this one particular backpack trip I had done when I was 14, up into the Sierras, I went with a group that was dedicated to, like, cleaning up the backcountry, and we would pick up all the garbage from the backcountry, and then, you The Rangers would come with mules and pick up all the garbage that we had collected and haul it out in these big sacks.
And as a result of that, it was sort of like a, you know, service community service effort, which then turned into something I, I didn't anticipate at all, which is there was a few nights, you know, I was 14 and I remember laying out under the stars, we didn't camp with any tents. And just this one particular [00:07:00] night that was moonless and there was just So many stars, you know, when you're not in the city and you can just see the sky lit up and I couldn't sleep and I was looking and I think it was one of the first experiences that I can recall vividly about the experience of the universe as a universe.
And. This immense realization, even though, of course, we know we're on a planet and all the things we learn even as kids about science. I just had an embodied experience of the living web of life and being part of something so vast and it had such a deep impact on me. And also in that moment. feeling the feminine energy of the Mother Earth as I had learned, you know, from reading lots of books on Indigenous peoples all over the world, which has always been an interest of mine.
And there was just this visceral sensation of the Great Mother, if you will that later [00:08:00] then, You know, I would begin to associate and study and research, you know, the goddess traditions and what the principle is and the sacred feminine, all these different concepts. But at the time I didn't really have like the intellectual concept, but I would really honestly have to say before the intellectual concept, the experience is what really moved me and then drove me to learn more.
And then, you know, just one other piece, you know, one of the things that I really get into in the book is around. You know, the the patriarchy itself and the interference of our natural understandings. of the sacred feminine because of thousands of years of patriarchy. So I think that analysis also came in early on as to trying to develop this relationship spiritually with the feminine principle, but also understanding that there was a lot of interference and of what You know, the feminine even is even what are we talking about, you know, in terms of actually a deeper [00:09:00] understanding.
So that journey began later. But the first experience is really, I think, more just an embodied experience of, of the living nature of life.
Liz Childs Kelly: That very much resonates with me and my own experience too. And so much of what I've heard from other guests is that, that the embodiment piece, and then also the deep connection to nature.
And I don't know, maybe you're sort of alluding to this, but one question that I had for you that came up as you were sharing that is you know, a lot of your book, you've, you've, Clearly done so much work with indigenous peoples. And so I'm, I'm curious, and maybe this is what you're saying about with the patriarchy, if you know that identifying this as the feminine principle, how much of that feels like sort of like a, antidote to the fact that in this dominant culture, to use your language, we don't really have a feminine spiritual face that we can all look for.
And so there's like a balancing of trying to bring that back, which we associate with the feminine versus [00:10:00] being innate to the feminine principle itself, if that makes sense.
Osprey Orielle Lake: Well, I think that, yeah, I think that several things are going on. If I, if I understand your question, you can help redirect me if not yeah, I think that the, living earth and seeing the earth as animate, that the stones are alive, that the ocean is alive, that the forest is alive, that the river is alive, and that we're part of this living thing.
Breathing entity of the web of life is a beginning point that has nothing to do with humans and our philosophies or ideologies or spiritual beliefs. Yes. Life is, life is alive. And this is something that I think we've lost in the dominant culture because of patriarchy, monotheism, and a lot of historical. Context of removing the goddess, the living goddess of the land from our spiritual or religious understandings. And this has happened [00:11:00] over a long period of time. And so when we moved in a dominant culture, because it's certainly not true of Indigenous or local peoples who have not lost that intact relationship with an animate earth, but for the dominant culture, this whole idea of this male, one male dominant God, who is now not necessarily in the stones or in the rivers or in the forest, but in the sky removed has created a sense of separation from the natural world, a separation from, I would say both the sacred feminine and the sacred masculine, because they really go together.
But once you lose one, you also lose the other. And so how I see it is that You know, when we innately are with the land and feeling that embodiment, we talked about all of those natural understandings of how our part and particle of nature are. We're in that we are animals in essence, [00:12:00] part of this land, part of this earth.
But when we intellectually begin to have these systems in our heads about what Philosophy is what is religion? What is spirituality? It can create this sense of being disconnected from the land. Since we have this ideology of, you know, this male God who is separate and is, is more important than the feminine is above the land and that humans have dominion over nature and men have dominion over women and the God has dominion over the goddess and all of these hierarchies.
Have created an imbalance that is, in my opinion, very detrimental to us in our human project of being here on the earth but also removed people from that natural balance of feeling the sacred feminine and the sacred, masculine and balanced within ourselves and in the world around us. And I would also include, you know, I think it's important not to just have these gender binaries, but really understanding there's [00:13:00] also a gender spectrum, even when we're talking about spiritualities and how we identify with, ourselves as human beings, but also within the sacred web of life, that there's, there's a range of experiences we're all having, but, you know, I hope I'm sort of getting at your question, which is that I think that innately, all of these things are there.
But we can have human constructs that remove us from the experience.
Liz Childs Kelly: Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. And something that was coming up for me as you're sharing that is also the idea of, well, just how intertwined for me exploring the sacred feminine has been with animacy and that understanding of, of the land being alive and all of life being sacred.
And so, I had a guest Sophie Strand on, well, back in 2022, I think, and she talked about the sacred feminine being a portal, being a portal to a just more expanded understanding of our spiritual [00:14:00] nature. And that also made a lot of sense to me.
Like she is An aspect, perhaps, that some of us have been deeply disconnected from. And when we find her, then we realize that, oh, the whole thing is so much larger than perhaps our own experience of, you know, like I had an experience in a, you know, patriarchal male religious tradition. It's so much bigger than that.
So anyways, what you're saying is kind of hearkening that to me and it makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Well, one of the things that really resonated for me with your book that's a real question and also passion for me is this thinking about why the sacred feminine is well, there are people that say she's rising, there are people that say she's already here, she never went anywhere, you know, but why she seems to be in our consciousness more.
And I do really believe in the idea that we change ourselves and that ripples out into the world. And yet I have always had a feeling that it's about more than that when it comes to the sacred feminine, that there is it's [00:15:00] about more than just our own personal development and personal growth. And so one of the things that I really loved about your book is I felt like there's this beautiful interweaving of what I call the sacred feminine demonstration of action in the world.
And How women in particular are showing up. Often indigenous women are showing up around the world to act in these really powerful ways. And I wonder if you could speak to that, that sort of intersection of the feminine principle, the sacred feminine and what I call sacred activism, but you might call it something else.
Wonderful
So. My day job, so to speak, every day is at the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network, as you mentioned in my introduction, which means, you know, mostly throughout the day, we're very engaged in very, if you will, practical matters, whether it's a reforestation project in the Democratic Republic of Congo or reforesting areas or protecting old growth forests up in the Tongass in [00:16:00] Alaska Or doing work to stop fossil fuel projects to protect land and protect rivers.
Osprey Orielle Lake: We go to the UN climate talks every year with frontline women so that they can advocate for themselves about their lands and territories. You know, all of that is very hands on work, you know, and, and doing advocacy work and practical programs. And within this I really like to, to think about how do we intervene in the current system and really instill.
Our values around the living earth and the web of life, and that to me is that place of sacred activism that you were mentioning. So this is always a big question of is we can act. But how are we acting? And what is the narrative and the purpose of the activity? And so while we're doing a lot of this practical work, and, you know, we advocate with financial institutions and with governments around stopping fossil fuels and moving to clean energy.
So. There's [00:17:00] that conversation going on, but how are we having the conversation and who is benefiting from it? So this is, I think, the difference in how we approach, you know, our, our systems change that we're looking at right now. And for me within that context, I would say also that there's a relationship between colonization patriarchy, racism, and our economic systems based on capitalism.
And when you sort of tug on one of those systems of oppression, they lead to another. This whole idea that, again, of looking at dominion over. From that is birth from the dominant culture and this hierarchy really puts us in a detrimental position with black indigenous and brown communities and women, because all the systems of oppression I named really land at the feet.
If you're not part of the white male community. Part of society. [00:18:00] And so I think it's really critical when we're looking at sacred activism or, you know, this interface and and having a, a approach to taking action that is is very transformative. We also need to understand the systems we're in and what it is we're transforming, which is why I was mentioning these different systems of oppression, because we're really needing to, on the one hand, dismantle them because they have been so dangerous.
But also what is it that we're birthing? And if we're going to know what we're birthing, we need to know what it is we're taking apart and what are the things that are Hurting us so that we can develop the world that I know many of us are summoning that is based on peace and egalitarianism and harmony with nature and, you know, living sustainably all these things we know we want for ourselves and our Children and the land.
Require both that we understand the systems we're in and how we transform them, but also what it is that we want to birth and what kind of communities and relationships of the [00:19:00] land that we want. And so I think that this is the role of sort of dancing between the worlds of a spiritual relationship with the land, this understanding that we come from an animate cosmology, and how we transform that into this very.
difficult time where we're facing so much oppression in the world in many different ways. And how do we get sort of from that, those spiritual understandings into practical application? And I'll just give one example to close my comment here, which is, you know we are very involved at WECAN of the Rights of Nature movement, which is this idea of not looking at nature as property.
Not putting nature into our market systems, meaning the commodification and financialization of nature, but looking at nature as sacred and holy and a rights bearing entity so that we lift up not only the Declaration on the Rights of Humans, which is very important, but also the [00:20:00] Universal Declaration on the Rights of Nature, On the rights of Mother Earth and that Mother Earth gets into the center of the conversation around our governance and how we have our legal systems and how we make environmental laws that we really see nature, not as property, but having the right to thrive and evolve. and exist all on its own. So the forest and the river can be represented in a court of law, which right now they can't be in most instances because they're viewed only as property. And it's very exciting because it's one of the fastest growing movements around the world. And in 2008, Ecuador was the first country in the world to bring rights of nature into their constitution.
And there have been now cases of rivers being protected under rights of nature laws. There's about three dozen cases in the United States and local ordinances that stopped fracking or protected rivers. Waterways. I'm using rights of nature legislation, and I'll just give one last example. I was really fortunate to go to New Zealand on fact finding mission around [00:21:00] rights of nature because they have something called personhood, which is in the umbrella of rights of nature.
And the Maori people there have always viewed the Whanganui River as their living ancestor. And they fought for over a hundred years and fairly recently were able to create a settlement. With the New Zealand government, where there's one representative from the government and one representative from the Wanganui tribe that are now the custodians and caretakers of the Wanganui River, and they were actually able to put that into law.
And so the, the river there is seen as their living ancestor and has personhood and is protected under personhood laws just like humans have rights. And when I was there. Visiting one of the, the Maori women took me to the river to meet the Wanganui River and sang these beautiful, beautiful songs.
And at the end, she took my hand and she said, we have a saying here, I am the river and the river is me. I am the river and the river is me and I was [00:22:00] just, of course, you know, we, we are close to water. But in that moment, I just had another level of understanding how, you know, our bodies are primarily water as human beings and the rivers flowing through me.
And yes, these are our living relatives. We come from the water. Water is life. And so What I love about Rights of Nature is it's this world where we can actually move law to have a deeper understanding our relationship with the web of life and nature, but it also helps culturally us understand nature is alive.
And so Rights of Nature is sort of in that sweet spot of really talking about, you know, how we can have sacred activism and change our systems and change our relationship with nature to really honor nature in a holy and sacred way.
Liz Childs Kelly: I love all of that so much. I was thinking about storytelling and how having a cosmology, you know, like a story and an understanding of who we [00:23:00] are and why we're here, that is centered on the sacredness of all life, how powerful that is, and how, you know, this dominant culture that you and I and all of us are a part of doesn't have that story.
And so how fascinating it is to me that, and if I think of I think of the sacred feminine or that feminine principle or whatever you want to call it is underpinning all of this, you know, and her, her ability to weave and go wherever she needs to go. Like how fascinating and how beautiful that it can come up like literally flower within the legal system, you know, through a rights of nature movement.
It's fascinating and really, really cool. And I think there's some talk about rights of nature around, there's something The there's something called the Mountain Valley Pipeline that I don't know if you're familiar with that, that yes. So I feel like that hasn't gotten nearly as much attention in the news as the Dakota Pipeline or, or some other projects.
But I, I believe there are some activists that are looking at rights of nature to see if they [00:24:00] can do something to stop that because everything else has failed at this point. So yeah, I find that, I find that movement really fascinating. The other thing that came up as you were talking about that is you write about this.
And this was really interesting to me because I'm I believe like you really into words, but you know, the, I am the river and the river is me led me to the writing that you did around language and how language by its nature can expand our understanding and our viewpoints. And it can also limit us. And I think that that's something that we don't think about very often.
So I wonder if you'd just be willing to speak to that. To that a little bit and some of what you wrote about in your book related to our language around nature and how it helps us and also relate to nature itself and then cuts us off from it.
Osprey Orielle Lake: Yeah. It's part of the whole concept of worldview that's in the title.
And so You know, throughout the book, I'm looking at how we can address our worldviews. So [00:25:00] we're kind of like going upstream and seeing, okay, we have all of these very challenging systems that we're living in, but where did they come from? And how do we work with our worldview to live in a more balanced way with nature and with one another.
And so one of the components of that was to, to dive into these really I really had fun working on those chapters around language and memory and the stories that are in the land and how they influence our thinking and our worldviews, as you mentioned. So to give some examples actually, I think I'm just going to share what, what came to mind right now.
I was just going over this myself actually, is that I was looking at different ways. of how languages can knit us deeply into the intimacy of the land. And so in one section of the book, I'm looking at the names of the months and some of the older languages. So as an example I had a dear friend that I visited in the Czech Republic many years ago, and he was sharing [00:26:00] with me some of the older Czech language.
And the months of the year. So as an example, January is called Leiden, which means ice. In February, it's called Unar, or the hibernation or the ice lowers. March is Brezen, or the birch or the sap moving through the tree. April is Dubin, which is oaks, when the oaks are blossoming. And then May is Kveten, the blossom or flowering time.
And I won't go on and on, but we, you can get the idea that the actual name of the month describes. What is happening on the land. Or human's relationship to that moment of how they would, you know, maybe go harvesting for something at that particular time or hunting at a particular time. And why I mention this is, you know, when I say January, February, March or something, I, these are just words.
I don't have any visceral embodied experience of the land. It's just a word. But as you can see with, with this older language, [00:27:00] it deeply ties you right into, you know, The cycles of Mother Earth. What is happening in nature? So just that is one small example is quite profound of what is we're putting into our mind and how we view ourselves in relationship to nature.
And so the exploration I'm doing in the book is really getting into some deep dives on different words that connect us deeply into the intimacy of the land. And where do those words come from? And so there's one section that really talks about You know current living indigenous peoples and their You know, in the assault that has happened through colonization and how much language has been lost and how important it is that we support indigenous people's rights, indigenous sovereignty for a million reasons.
We were talking earlier about, you know, their relationship with the land. 80 percent of all the biodiversity left on the earth is in the hands and lands of indigenous peoples because of this powerful relationship that we have with the land and how we need to really support [00:28:00] indigenous peoples. But also their language is containing deep traditional ecological knowledge, deep understandings of our relationship to the land and how we even view concepts that are not even possible in the English language.
So I also talk about how, you know, the modern English language doesn't have some concepts that help us understand even modern physics and how Older languages and some indigenous languages have concepts that actually help you understand physics in a way that we have a hard time with, like when we're talking about, you know, the particle in the wave, and they're both happening at the same time, you know, there are languages that encompass So That concept that makes it very easy for the human mind to then have that lived experience.
I think language is very, very critical and also going back to old you know, older European languages. Also have some of these roots [00:29:00] with land based peoples, you know, magical words that connect you into seeing, you know, the living landscape. And so I think this is really important to our development of like, how do we regenerate a earth loving language, a language that doesn't separate us from nature or even You know, many times you talk about resources when we're talking about, you know, specific waters or particular specific forests, instead of calling like the Boreal forest or the Tongass rainforest or the Rio Grande River, like actually talking about these beings as living entities with names versus resources, which now makes it reduced to something for humans to use.
So I think language is essential to how we're going to transform our worldviews. And also begin to place ourselves within the animate cosmology that we're talking about. And from there, we're going to govern differently, live differently, treat each other differently when we're grounded in our [00:30:00] Earth lineage and remembrance of ourselves as part and particle of the land, instead of this sense of orphanage from the Earth, which I think has been quite detrimental that happens through our worldviews.
And this, you know, dominion over nature worldview we've carried in separation from nature narrative that has, has arisen since the time of patriarchy, but also how it affects our language and how our language can be regenerated to connect us to the land again, I think is, is a powerful state of activism, but also a political imperative in some ways.
Liz Childs Kelly: Yeah. And maybe, I mean, I would say a mental health imperative is just thinking of just the high rates of depression and suicide and drug addiction and, and all of these things that we see in our United States. And I mean, there's no one cause for that, right? Like I would say it's this, this you could point to all kinds of things, but I'm, I'm thinking of perhaps even the loneliness of that [00:31:00] experience of isolation from nature or from deeper meaning and not being able to have a word to describe the disconnect. Like it doesn't exist as like a language concept necessarily. You know, we don't have that. So that's almost like further compounding the word.
The disconnect because you don't have the words necessarily to be able to say, here is what I feel like I'm lacking and I'm missing. So I, I see that I feel that that imperative in so many ways. I also just loved the reframe of I, as opposed to like, You know, the, the to be, you were talking about the, the, the verb to be and the language to be and how there's a lot of possession, like I am this and I am that in our language.
And so I am from Virginia being very different than I belong to the land of the, you know, ancestral Monacan nation that feels completely different when we frame it that way. Right. And I just, I love [00:32:00] that. So small and yet so powerful.
Osprey Orielle Lake: So yeah, I, I really love working with those concepts that you mentioned as well, of how there's a very big difference between This to be language as you were talking about, which I learned a lot about from a really wonderful indigenous leader, Martin Prechtel who writes about this and teaches about this extensively about this idea of, you know, coming from to be languages, meaning there's sort of a built in separation narrative within that, and we can circumnavigate it and work around that.
But you know, in the European bait languages are based on to be I am you are. This is a tree. That is a river. When we say to be we mean we're identifying things in that manner, and sort of innately has in it a separation tenor to it. Whereas if we talk about, you know, I am [00:33:00] from Mendocino versus I belong to the land of Mendocino or the town of Mendocino holds me. It puts us into relationship. And that I think is the big difference is how do we become relatives and understand ourselves as relatives again, as so many Indigenous leaders and peoples are always teaching us. How do we see the river and the town and the forest As our living relative and so I belong to this town or this town carries me or this river carries me is so different than I come from San Francisco, or, you know, and so I think it's a lot about creating language, or being alert to how we can utilize poetry and other ways of getting around language to kind of help it bend and twist towards a relationship language is really very vital.
And of course Robin Wall Kimmerer brings this up [00:34:00] very powerfully in her book, Braiding Sweetgrass, as well. So I think it's something that a lot of us are looking at is how do we have a language that brings forth relationships.
Well, and I'm going to take us on a slightly meandering related but different path now because that language of I belong to this is something that came up a lot where I was, as I was reading your book, as I was thinking about, as a white woman of European descent on this land, which is not my ancestral land.
Liz Childs Kelly: However I have seven plus generations on this soil. So I do have deep and powerful roots at this point on this land. And one of the things that you write about is, is trying to learn about your own ancestral indigenous traditions that might have come from somewhere else. And I think there's also a holding for me too, of like, and I have so much history here, so much history here.[00:35:00]
I mean, back to the 1600s. And so how do we I wonder how you see sort of the dance of that, of wanting to reclaim What might feel like our own indigenous roots with the reality that we are here, like we do belong to this land. Like it is nurturing us and holding us every day. You know, what does that, what does that dance kind of look like?
And I think there's an even another layer that I would put on that, which is there are so many people. living in the United States who represent multiple ethnic backgrounds. Like it's not, it's not super clean for a lot of people. They are a mishmash of all different kinds of peoples from all different kinds of places.
And so that, that feels like a whole nother kind of level to it too. But I, I wonder if you could speak to that sort of, that sort of dance between like, where do I come from and where do I belong now and how we can look at that in ways that connect us more deeply as opposed to make us feeling confused.
Osprey Orielle Lake: [00:36:00] Yeah, it's a, it's a wonderful and difficult question and I don't think I can answer it completely because I think it's an exploration that we are in. So I can just share notes along the way and some things I wrote about in the book because it's, it's a, it's a huge process that society is in right now.
And it has a lot of You know, difficult challenges and violent stories along the way. So it's not it's not an easy conversation. But I'll mention some things. And I love that you asked the question because we're all grappling with it. Like I said, it's an exploration. So I would start with saying one of the most important things, you know, to me that I've recognized is that first you Let's just take us living in the United States, but this is true of people in other countries, we are on stolen land of indigenous peoples.
I think that's the beginning point is just recognizing this is a reality [00:37:00] that most of us, if we are not indigenous, to North America. That means that, you know, our ancestors came from somewhere else and we are part of, whether we want to be or not, a colonized process, we are in it. It's not over.
Colonization continues and indigenous people's rights continues to be violated in the United States of America and other areas of the world. And so I think our first duty is to be good guests. On the lands that we are. So when we think about, you know, how long, you know, our ancestors were living someplace else, or how long indigenous people have been on the land, you know, it's a very long time.
So in measure to our lineages we're still fairly new guests. To this land. And so I think that's the first place to begin is okay. Indigenous peoples are here. There has been a huge violation. Colonization continues. So where am I living in this? I was really glad you opened with a land acknowledgement.
Like here I am in California. I'm on Coast Miwok lands. Who are the Indigenous people that we [00:38:00] live amongst? What are their campaigns? What are their calls to action? What are their needs? How can we be good visitors on Indigenous lands? Is I think a very good beginning point and to, to sit at the feet of indigenous peoples and learn from them and respect where we are and their longstanding knowledge.
and rights in the places where we live. That gives us a grounding that's very real and right here, right now. And what is that relationship between us and the Indigenous peoples where we live, and beginning to work on healing that, and what are reparations, and what are these land back movements that we can support, and all of these different things that help heal this, this horrific fact of colonization that exists.
So here we are, and we need to make where we are better. So I think that's number one. And then number two is yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, we're all part of Mother Earth. And so when we sit under the trees, we're no one, no one owns the trees. No one owns the [00:39:00] stars. No one owns the mountain. We're all here as children of the earth.
And how do we honor, you know, deepening our relationship with nature and walking in nature and having different practices that bring us close to the land. And everyone has, you know, variations of what that means to them, but all of us getting closer and closer to the land and having more knowledge of the story of the land and the science of what nature is teaching us and all of these things I think is, you know, an ongoing process just like any if we have a relationship with a human friend, we have to invest in that and take time and build that relationship and it's the same with the land getting to know the trees and the forest and the rivers where we live.
In terms of our ancestry, the part that I think is really critical is that one of the things that I've, I'll, I'll just speak from personal experience is having spent a lot of time with Indigenous peoples. And their deep respect for their own lineages and ancestry really made me think, gosh, what do I know about my own and also how healing it has been for me [00:40:00] to study not just my recent ancestors, which is also very important and my ancestry going back to Ukraine, but also as I dig into looping back to our earlier part of our conversation, about the sacred feminine and spirituality and an animate cosmology required that I go back to our pre patriarchal pre colonized ancestors, because until I did that, I never felt grounded because the other things, honestly, I could not identify with or reconcile within myself because I didn't believe in it or trust it or found myself not in alignment with it. And so for me, it has been very exciting to even if it's tattered and torn and little pieces, there's actually quite a bit of research about, you know, our ancestors from Europe or Ukraine or wherever we are from originally before our ancestors came to the Americas there's so much we can learn about these ancient stories that [00:41:00] are connected to the land and practices of reciprocity, and different ways that we can learn from our own lineage lines, and why that's important is because there are lineage lines, and that's where our The story is in our bones to go back to the title of my book.
The stories are within us. Oh, when we look at Europe, we can see all over Europe, ancient sacred stone wheels that were built to harmonize people's lives with the great calendar and the great wheel of time and the stars and the moon and relate all the activities to, the seasons and the cycles and much more than that.
And so, you know, this gives us a deep sense of being grounded in our own relationship with an animate cosmology that we come from, that our ancestors taught about and live within. And why I find this also so critical is that when we don't have it embodied within us, my sense is that we become very violent and [00:42:00] disturbed and and not well as a society because it's like empty ghosts. We don't have a place we've come from. We're not connecting to our rootedness in the land or our own understanding of egalitarian societies that our ancestors way back did come from and when we sit in that place, even if we just have little pieces of it, it completely changes how we can relate to where we live now and relate to indigenous peoples where we live because we're bringing our story forward so it can meet with their story.
Otherwise, we just come empty and I think it creates a, a void that is filled often with consumerism, needing to buy more, have more to fill up this great empty void of orphanage from the land and a sense of orphanage from the living earth that somehow where we come from is not connected. There's not that umbilicus cord into the earth and into traditions that understand that and [00:43:00] so I think it's a deeply healing process and necessary as we work to dismount to white supremacy as we work to decolonize ourselves part of that work is possessing our own ancestral knowledge of pre patriarchal and pre colonized time. So we were with our goddess traditions and with the land in a very different way.
And how do we alchemize that and metabolize that into a current cultural and ecological framework to live in harmony with the indigenous peoples where we live and with the land. And that's the exploration we're in. But I would again just like to center indigenous peoples because we have so much to learn from people who did not lose their that sense of connection from the land.
And so you know, just to recognize in this process, centering indigenous peoples is still a primary focus while we also do this other healing work.
Liz Childs Kelly: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, so much, so much goodness there. And I think there's something that I'm wanting to name just in listening to [00:44:00] you talk and also in reading your book that that I feel simultaneously that there's, I mean, you're, you're hitting a lot of really challenging things in your book you're writing about I mean we're in a crisis point, you know, and it's, very clear. I mean, and yet there's a lot of hope that I find in your writing as well when you are highlighting these stories, most of which I'd never heard before you know, in broader dominant culture, even in the news. And I, and I feel it even now when you're talking of like, oh wow, we are vastly off track, and yet there are opportunities There are still opportunities to course correct, right?
And not only are there opportunities to course correct, but there are people who are already doing it and have been doing it. They are doing it. They are living it right now. And so I wonder one of the questions that I had for you as I was reading your book was these powerful stories of change makers and if you have an opinion on, I'm not going for a conspiracy theory or something, but just a legitimate sort of sense of like, why don't we know about this more? Or [00:45:00] why aren't we centering these stories of, hope is not even the right word, like action, sacred action. Like why aren't these stories perhaps more front and center?
And if you have thoughts on that.
Osprey Orielle Lake: Well, I mean, I think we're, you know, just in terms of a larger frame, I think one world is burning, shattering and collapsing all around us. And we're experiencing that. It's very real with the climate crisis and social ecological crisis. I mean, this is very real.
And these systems of oppression we're talking about are playing out real time with wars around the world and huge devastation that is going on in Gaza right now. And just the atrocities happening there are, beyond speech even, and you know, we look at the fact that The climate crisis is escalating and the droughts and the floods and the hardships people are experiencing around the world.
So I think it's important to just look at it straight [00:46:00] on, but at the same time not lose hope in the sense that there is so much we can do. It's not too late to act and scientists are letting us know it's not too late to act. It doesn't mean that we're going to stop the climate crisis tomorrow, but we can make things a lot better and we can make things less harmful. We definitely have time for that. But as you were saying, you know, why are we not hearing like the solution stories and what is everyone doing and like we're doing all this reforestation work. I am so excited about we're growing trees in the DR Congo and starting a project in the Amazon.
Thrilling. And you know, we've, we've put 300, 000 trees in the ground and the rain is coming back in the DR Congo where there hasn't been rain because of this trees going and just how much nature can heal herself. And we could just go on with these gorgeous stories of many that I share in the book about all the beautiful work that's happening and the work that communities are doing.
And I think the reason we're not hearing [00:47:00] about it is that we have to simultaneously deal with the wealthy elite and the systems of control that we are operating in and the push to keep business as usual rolling forward, to keep capitalism perpetuated, to keep colonization perpetuated, to keep perpetuating white supremacy.
These structures of imperialism and, and oppression are very deep rooted all over the world in the dominant culture. And so to birth this other world and get it into mainstream news outlets is a huge task. Because We have to remember that, you know, the media is also controlled by the same systems of oppression.
And so these stories coming out or different worldviews or different ideas have to just keep pressing forward. And, you know, in a lot of ways, things are getting better at the same times they get worse, you know, it's not, it's not a linear path we're on right now. But I do think that there is a [00:48:00] crack in the system right now, and that we have an opportunity in this crack, in this crisis, to put forward ideas, and put forward our spirituality, and put forward our hope, and put forward all this immense work that is going on by people all over the world that's very positive, and realize, okay, we do have an opportunity right now, as these systems are shattering and cracking, to put forward these new ideas like rights of nature and a very different worldview than the one we have right now.
And this is, this is the moment that we're in. And so we have to remember that while we're building up this beautiful new world, we're still going to have to fight this and dismantle this other world, because it's not going to give up its power without us asserting power. And that's just, you know, something that philosophers have said forever and political analysts.
I mean, it's not going to, you know, people in power and the way that our system is run is not going to just disappear tomorrow. We're going to have to be [00:49:00] in an active participation of dismantling it and protesting and working in advocacy realms or whatever we're doing. Because the sooner that system. is dismantled and transformed the sooner we're going to have a healthy and just world for current and future generations. I think it's a very rocky ride, but I also think it's possible.
Liz Childs Kelly: Yeah, I really appreciate that, that note of hope and I wanted to read something from your book to that that spoke to me and I feel like maybe this is a good place to kind of round out this conversation.
All right, this is what, this is what you said, which I, I think this is. For me, it's really beautiful. So maybe you can just, you can reflect a little bit on it, but you, you said while it is true that the earth will live on, even if humans do not, it is tragic to think that our mark as a species on this beautiful numinous planet will be one of destruction and violence instead of beauty making, dignity, reciprocity, and harmony.
[00:50:00] And you're speaking to the tragedy of that, that viewpoint. But what I also hear in that is kind of like a weaving of all these other themes that we've had here of like this possibility of seeing our role in a different way. And I think that it was Lyla June, you said, who talked about us as a keystone species, right, that we really do have an opportunity to shape our world and what we're experiencing and I just that really spoke to my heart too because I also see in progressive circles this attitude that human beings are just fundamentally broken like we are just we cannot you know, like the world would be better off if we just weren't here And so I love this idea of like no, no it's our worldview that needs to shift not human beings as a species.
Like we just need to shift that and and there are people who already know that and are doing that. And so we can look to them as guides I don't know if you want to add anything there, but I just I wanted to say no
Osprey Orielle Lake: Very very beautiful. Thank you for bringing that up. And it's exactly you know, you captured the book perfectly Which [00:51:00] is why I wanted to look at worldview.
It's human beings are amazing. We're creative. We're quirky We're wild we're an experiment in the evolution of this planet And so no, we're, there's not something intrinsically flawed about humans. I think we're in a flawed system and that system has been in existence for a long time, which we've been talking about those systems of oppression.
But when we can be healed, when we can remember our true place in the earth lineage. But we can be, you know, a keystone species as Lyla June Johnston points out. We can be life enhancers. And that's really what the thrust of my book is about. It's like, how do we become life enhancing species again? And the excitement of that excitement of you know, how we garden the earth, how we tend to nature, how we live in community, how we treat one another.
You know, how we really develop kindness, living well we don't need to be over consuming, you know, [00:52:00] we can be living much simpler lives and be very happy. We can fulfill so many of our needs through relationship and intimacy. And a lot of these things that have been devalued in our modern context can be revalued and stories retold.
There's a lot of old stories that I tell from old Europe, you know, just to help, you know, really kind of spark people's inner memory of when we were close to the land. and lived in societies that were like that. And I think we can regenerate that. I think our psyches are deeply calling for that. Our spirits are calling for that and wanting that.
So absolutely, I think we can be here on earth and live in the web of life in harmony with earth. And I think all the plants and animals in the land would celebrate as you know, really rejuvenating that ancient code of good conduct that we hold with nature and that that for me is the vision of our future [00:53:00] is, you know, reinstating that good conduct and being good relatives I think is a really good principle.
Liz Childs Kelly: Mm hmm. Yeah, I love that so much. Well, and this went really fast, Osprey. Thank you so much. I'm like, wow, we're kind of out of time here. I just want to thank you for being a way shower on, on this different way of being, and also for amplifying all these beautiful and incredible stories and indigenous peoples who are championing this and are being way showers as well.
It's really, it's powerful. So thank you so much for your work and also for your time today.
Osprey Orielle Lake: Thank you so much. It was a wonderful conversation. Great questions. Thank you.
Liz Childs Kelly: Yeah. And so Osprey's book is The Story is in Our Bones, How Worldviews and Climate Justice Can Remake a World in Crisis. I will have a link in the show notes to that as well as to WeCan.
And yeah, I want to thank all of you for listening as always. It's, great to have you along for this ride. And if you like the show, you can do a few things. You can subscribe, you can tell all your friends about it. You can leave it a favorable review. You can do all those things if you like. [00:54:00] And until then take very good care of yourself and I'll be with you again soon.
Home to Her is hosted by me, Liz Kelly. You can visit me online at hometoher. com, where you can find show notes and other episodes. You can read articles about the Sacred Feminine, and you'll also find a link to join the Home to Her Facebook group for lots more discussion and exploration of Her. You can also follow me on Instagram, at home to her, to keep up to date with the latest episodes.
Thanks so much for joining us and we'll see you back here soon.