Opinion
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7 Things I Learned by Collaborating with Indigenous Wisdom Keepers
Production still from the film “One Word Sawalmem”
I first met Indigenous wisdom keepers as a child. After days of off-road driving to the Gran Sabana in Venezuela, we had arrived at the ancestral lands of the Pemón people, where they still lived. “Go fill up your thermoses with water from the river,” my father said. As I got out of the car with my round, red canteen strapped over my shoulder, I knew that I wanted to be a part of whatever was going on at that river.
Jessica Flores April 30, 2021Updated: April 30, 2021, 12:33 pm
Pam Tau Lee holds a photo of Brandon Lee during a rally at San Francisco City Hall on Aug. 9, 2019. Brandon Lee, an activist and community organizer, was shot outside his home in the Philippines, according to friends. Photo: Noah Berger, Special to The Chronicle
Pam Tau Lee was 21 years old when she began her activism career in San Francisco, later becoming the co-founder of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network and the Chinese Progressive Association. Now Lee has started painting to continue her activism.
“I can’t be out on the front lines anymore at 73 years old,” Lee, of San Francisco, told The Chronicle in a phone interview. “I express my views now mainly through my painting.”
California s McCloud River Among Most Endangered in U S – El Observador el-observador.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from el-observador.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Housing and Development Newsletter
The talk is the culminating event in the Capps Center’s yearlong exploration of contemporary Indigenous ethics, Ethics in Place: A Symposium on Indigenous Peoples and the Future of Principled Democracy.
“We began with a question,” said Johnson. “How do we take steps toward a principled democracy wherein bedrock ideas of fairness and honor anchor our common humanity? One starting point, we suggested, is to address Native American land claims and place-based sensibilities in a sustained and forward-looking manner.”
The Ethics in Place symposium was designed to focus on what Johnson calls “knowledge production outside of university settings,” and has featured a slew of speakers who are not academics, including Walter Echo-Hawk, president of the Pawnee Nation; Caleen Sisk, chief of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe; Justice Gregory Bigler of the Muscogee Creek Nation Tribal Court; and Pua Case, a Native Hawaiian ceremonial leader.
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While the federal government sees the prospect of raising the height of Shasta Dam as a way to increase water storage for a thirsty California, the Winnemem Wintu of Shasta County see it as a threat to their culture.
It was a theme picked up this week by American Rivers, a conservation group that named the McCloud River one of America s 10 most endangered rivers because of the proposal to raise the height of Shasta Dam.
“Raising the height of Shasta Dam would decimate more of the McCloud River,” Ron Stork, with Friends of the River, said in a news release.