Episode 15 – Amelia Ortiz - Legacies, Complexity, and Love
Published on: October 7, 2021
In this episode, we talked to Amelia Ortiz. We talked about so many different things: activism, languages. We talked about Columbus. We talked about indigenous erasure, immigration and immigrants. We went deep into systems and most importantly, we talked about love. It's an amazing episode for us we're very grateful to have had the opportunity to record it and I know you're in for a treat.
Please check out their suggestions in this episode:
Land Back Movement
Stop Line 3
Shellmound Ohlone Site and Sacred Ground
Canada: Bodies at Indigenous school not isolated incident
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“Let’s focus on the connections, rather than the things that divide us, in this moment.”
Transcript
Linet 00:02
Today we talked to Amelia Ortiz. Wow, we talked about so many different things - activism, languages.. We talked about Columbus, we talked about indigenous erasure, we talked about immigration and immigrants. I mean, we went deep into systems. And most importantly, we talked about love. It's an amazing episode for us. We're very grateful to have had the opportunity to record it and I know you're in for a treat.
Hello, everyone. Hola a todes. Welcome back to Season Two of the Unconscious Bias Project podcast. We had a very important break for Alexis, myself, and Seth, thank you all so much for joining us on that break. And we hope you all have also had some time this summer to engage in a little self-care, rest and healing, or hopefully just closing your eyes and resting a little bit. We have an amazing lineup this season that is sure to move your heart make you laugh and encourage you to keep moving forward. We are here with you. So with that, let's welcome back Alexis. Hi, Alexis.
Alexis 01:17
Hello. I am so glad to be back today. Let's please give a warm welcome to Amelia Ortiz, she/her Amelia considers herself a professional questioner always looking to find the hidden kernels of truth in every experience and learning opportunity. Amelia considers herself a professional questioner-- always looking to find the hidden kernels of truth in every experience and learning opportunity. Amelia identifies as a White-Indigenous woman and has a background in Conflict Resolution and Social Justice. Amelia is a lover of language studies and has studied Latin, Spanish and Mandarin, and has also dabbled in Korean, German, and the Little Shell dialect of Ojibwe/Chippewa (chih-puh-wah)--to which her family is connected. And Amelia, just so you know, I used to be a Latin teacher, which is why I had to make that noise.
Amelia 02:03
Yes, I remember it's very exciting connection.
Linet 02:07
And Amelia and I know each other through our interest in research into the restorative justice movement. Amelia works in the nonprofit and social change sphere. And she shared with me that she hopes to enter into work in the field of restorative justice more formally. So Amelia, welcome. And why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself? Hi.
Amelia 02:26
So thank you, Alexis. And thank you, Linet. I'm very excited to be here. I am going to now present my formal introduction. I am training to be a curandera. And in curanderismo, we follow the indigenous wisdom of acknowledging all four directions, and the places that we came from. And in this introduction, you can hear some of that. So hello, buenos dias. My name is Amelia Ortiz. I'm the first in my family to continue carrying the traditional medicine. I'm the granddaughter of Joy and Dave Ortiz and Annadelle and Richard Krebbs, the daughter of Michael Ortiz and Anita Ortiz. I grew up on traditional Ute land in Eagle, Colorado. My maternal lineage is German, and my paternal lineage is Spanish, Navajo, Little Shell Chippewa, and French. I am trained in the Mexico tradition, by my wonderful Maestra Kendall. And I carry my prayers with me. I offer my gratitude to the Creator, my extra, my grandparents, and my parents. Thank you.
Linet 03:44
That's really beautiful. So Amelia, I'm, I mean, I'm curious about everything I want to hear more about. I want to hear more about everything. But let's get started with how did you get into activism sort of what sparked you into the work that you do?
Amelia 04:01
It wasn't until much later in my years of college that I really considered it activism. I grew up in a really small town, in the middle of Colorado, sort of in where the mountains become the desert. I'm in the central western side. And it's pretty much, or at the time that I was growing up, it was a cow town. And so political activism, and even a political awareness, were not a thing that I grew up around. Were not really part of my upbringing and my family either. From a very early age, I was very aware of my identity. I really struggled with understanding who I was, and what I was, and where that place to me in space and time. And I was super aware of difference. And this mostly started because of a very acute difference in economic privilege in the area. So we live maybe 30 minutes west of the Vail Ski Resort, which is a world-famous world-class ski resort. And it's a very wealthy area. And then you know, like I said, this was a ranching, a cow town that I grew up in. And most of the people who live there would drive in 30 minutes every day to go and work in Vail, and they worked service jobs, or they worked, you know, with local government, they were civil servants or whatever else. And there was a huge income inequality gap there. You know, the folks who own houses in Vail are celebrities, or those who own multiple houses across the world. And they live a very different life than the folks who lived in the town that I grew up in. And I should mention that even then, we lived a very different life than those who were often undocumented workers coming from Central and South America, who were living in trailer parks, and we were working the jobs as the housekeeping staff in the ski hotels, and, you know, other such jobs in restaurants, etc. And so, income and the difference that that created in someone's social status was very, very apparent to me early on. And what comes from that, of course, also is the racial element, which was that most of the tourists or sometimes even the people who lived in Vail year-round, but were wealthy enough to own houses in Vail, were almost always white, and those who were working in, you know, the housekeeping and restaurant jobs, as I said, were undocumented immigrants from Central and South America most often, sometimes from other countries as well. And then there was me. And I did not know what to do with myself, because I had one parent who was white, and I had one parent who I had been taught all my life to be proud of his heritage of being Native American. I didn't really look completely like either. At least in the context of my hometown, I looked darker than most of my white peers, but I looked lighter than the others. And I also didn't know what it meant to be Native American. Because I didn't grow up with the culture, I grew up, for all intents and purposes, white. And that was done through very intentional decisions by my father's parents, who deliberately didn't teach my grandpa's first language of Spanish to their kids. They deliberately did not raise them in their indigenous culture. And they did these for reasons of assimilation and security. And my grandmother, who has only told me this story once has told me, “I made this decision to leave my culture behind, so that you guys would have the future that you have, so that my grandkids could live the way that we do.” So here I am, intentionally without my culture, or what could have been my culture. But I'm also white, but I also don't fit in with my white peers, because I'm not wealthy. But I'm also clearly more privileged than the other folks who live in the valley. So I was in some weird middle ground. And that acute difference that I was always aware of, was what brought me to think of things on the basis of race, class, gender, sexuality, all these things that I now know to be political issues, things that warrant activism, but at the time, it was just me trying to figure out what the heck life is and where do I fit? And that's how I came to activism, I guess you could say.
Linet 09:06
I'm just like imagining hearing my grandma say something like that. I'm not sure what I would do with that. My grandma, in plain words, she doesn't acknowledge that we have any sort of African or indigenous connection, because you just don't. So she clings on to our family name as coming from Spain, and she had somebody like trace it to Spain, and possibly Moors, and she refuses to acknowledge any sort of darker skin and so I once asked my dad, we because we did a DNA test, and I found out, “oh, we share 40% of our genetic markers with indigenous people. Do we know anybody, like I don't, or a great, great, grandparent, like is my my grandfather, my grandma, like, what do y'all know?” I asked my parents. Thankfully, they're open to talking about things. And they're like, “No,” and I, you know, I think they would, they would just stop talking if you ask them. So on the one hand, I can't imagine having, you know, an elder, be like, “I purposely made this choice for you,” in some ways, sounds painful, I would imagine that they experienced a lot of pain to make that decision. And then I'm also seeing like, my grandmother would even deign to acknowledge anything. I'm, I've said this on this podcast before, but I am the palest person in my whole family. So when we get together as a big family, it's like, oh, you can see our gradations of color. Yeah, yeah, totally refuse to even talk about it, even acknowledge that, acknowledge anything. And I can see how sitting and living and breathing and being with these, you know, very huge differences, and not being given any sort of background or context until you're like, “Hey, what's going on?” It's like, “No, we made this choice for you.” That sounds really painful.
Alexis 11:21
I think it's interesting, listening to this story that you have, Amelia, as well, because it seems to have resonance. It's not the same, but I think it has resonance with a common immigrant story, which is, oftentimes immigrants in the US under pressure from all sorts of xenophobia, racism, will often intentionally not teach their kids their home languages, in order to assimilate in order to fit in, you know, for me, I hadn't thought of that from that other side where like, your family wasn't immigrants, yeah, and yet are experiencing much of that same pressure, and sometimes it seems, are coming to those same decisions. And it's fascinating that it then unfortunately, you know, falls to us, our generations, to kind of pick back up the mantle.
Amelia 12:25
Yeah, you know, there's several things that you both mentioned that I want to pull out. But I think for one thing, certainly hearing my grandmother say this, it had a very profound effect on me. On the one hand, there's a massive sense of guilt. Right? And heavy, heavy sense of guilt. Like, what was it that she had to give up? Who was she, there are just things I will never know about her. There are things she'll never know about who or what she could have been. There's a lot of guilt, there's also a lot of loss. Everyone wants to feel like they fit in, like they're connected to something greater than themselves. And the knowledge that there's cultural wealth that I could have been connected to, and people and places and love that I could have been part of that I'm not because of that decision. It feels a lot like grieving. So there's the guilt, there's the grief, but then there's also the knowledge that it's true. The decision she made was not ill-advised, especially in the time that she was in, I live a rich life, a privileged life, a wonderful life. And I live that in large part because of the decision that she made. And I don't think that anyone who has ever, you know, seen the other side would say that, you know, it would seem very selfish, and very short-sighted of me to say that I'm not grateful for the privileges that I have, because of the decision that she made. Right? That's difficult. On the one hand, there's the guilt, there's the grief, and then there's also this, “well, shouldn’t I be grateful?” And it's a strange concoction of feelings to have all at the same time, especially when it's the one and only time that your grandmother has really spoken to you about these things. Because she keeps a tight lip about it. She doesn't want to talk about it. It is very painful for her. She made that decision and for her psychological safety. She kind of wants to not look back all that much. That's something that I have to understand and honor. But when you are searching for meaning as everyone does in their life, as an adolescent, but especially because you don't even feel like you understand where you fit in today's world, much less historically, you're trying to figure everything out at the same time. You're not just an adolescent, but you're a biracial adolescent, or you're looking for any knowledge you can get. And when your grandparents have too much trauma to talk about it, it becomes very difficult. But the other thing I want to talk about is this idea of the immigrant experience, which is something that I totally agree with. And I also at the same time, feel a caution with the thing is, America is built on a set of myths that give us all enough psychological safety to live with ourselves every day. And those are things like, “oh, America was founded for religious freedom.” Or, you know, “Lewis and Clark explored this beautiful expanse of land and opened up all this amazing territory to us, “without the knowledge of what was there, right. You know, things like “Thanksgiving was a feast between the Indians and the pilgrims. And it was a celebration of togetherness. And that's why we still celebrate it every year,” when the reality is that Thanksgiving was a celebration of a massacre, and another one of these myths and you know, they range in how violent the history they hide is, but another one of these myths is that America is a country of immigrants, that in itself, the value that's behind that I stand by that my partner, his family is immigrants, my parents family were originally immigrants. My grandfather on my dad's side was partly Spanish. My grandmother's side has French in there. So yes, they are immigrants. I'm not saying that. I don't agree with that. But what I do want to caution about is that if we say is a country of immigrants, we are erasing in one sentence, the fact that a there are still and were people here, before any immigrants came here. And that those original immigrants who came, did not come in the same way that we see immigrants today coming for better opportunity, or coming to flee persecution. And though we do talk about that as being part of why the original settlers came here, the reality is, is that they came here in search of gold, money, slaves, land, and they came in violent, violent ways. We have to acknowledge that right? So I do see the parallel with the immigrant experience. And I think that's true, because assimilation is something that has been inflicted on every new group of people that comes here. As their wave rolls in, and they have to assimilate to American life. This is so true. But I also want to pick out this word, immigrants, and just caution that when we think about what is an immigrant experience, we realize that it has not always been something that was for the future of our children, for example, it was violent, and it came with colonization. And we have to acknowledge that immigrants are not the only people that are here, that not all of us came solely from immigrants. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Linet 18:45
I wonder if there's some intentionality in the schools that were meant to, you know, the so-called missionaries, were re-educating the original owners of the land, the original people from the land, they're like, “I will take your children and we'll make them into better people because y'all are terrible. Y'all are, you know, uncivilized, etc, etc,” you know, falsehoods to rip out, to erase, I wonder if there was some intentionality in like, these ideas of like, “well, you're, you're different, and you're different from me, but my way is better.” That sort of colonial idea is sort of intentional, to make these kids that were sent to the schools to make their you know, their parents that were told that they were wrong for you know, wearing whatever clothes they were wearing, or, you know, having their cultures whatever way they were, to be made to feel like you don't belong, even that you've lived there forever. I wonder if part of that was, was behind that intention, not just erasure, but also making feel as if you don't belong?
Amelia 19:54
I don't think belonging was the issue. I think that when we think about new immigrants coming, we often think about, for example, the Chinese, we think about the ways that they were forced to assimilate, the ways that their names would have been changed, all of the atrocities that they would have undergone as a new racial group in the country that would have been singled out as a scapegoat for so many things. But we also think about the workforce of them building the transcontinental railroad, for example, so many of the groups of immigrants that have come to this country came in order to fill a need in the capitalist machine that has run America. And what was needed, in order for the capitalist machine to function, in the case of indigenous Americans, was extermination. It wasn't about belonging, they didn't need us to tow the line so that they could use our labor. They needed us to disappear, so that they would have legitimacy of being here. And I think that's the fundamental difference. Now, I'm not saying the tactics aren't quite the same. They're similar, that's for sure. But we have a different end in mind. And that is essential to acknowledge because we walk around on this continent every day. And the vast majority of us will never once think about whose land Am I actually on? What was the name of this place? Before it was called Oakland, Santa Cruz, whose home might have been, in this place that I'm standing on, whose family might have called this, their place, right? We don't think about those things. And we don't think about those things because of the total and complete erasure of indigenous Americans from the American consciousness. That requires a different kind of structural, cultural and physical violence than what folks who've come to this country have had inflicted upon them. It's not that they haven't suffered, but their countries, their lands, their languages, they still survive somewhere. settler colonialism means that the languages have to be extinguished, that the lands have to be completely divorced from the people who have honored them, and stewarded them for time immemorial, that the culture cannot be seen anywhere. Think about how often are you able to see a culturally accurate drawing of an indigenous person even in an American history book?
Linet 22:59
Absolutely. Never.
Amelia 23:01
Yeah, you won't find it, you won't find it because art was destroyed, records were destroyed, everything was destroyed. So yes, there is a parallel in these experiences, because, again, white supremacy and capitalism have to see us all look like one workhorse so that we can be used, but white supremacy and capitalism could not function here before it was cleared out for a baseline. And that is what we fail to understand is that yes, indeed, the structural violence that indigenous folks face today looks similar, lower health outcomes, shorter life expectancy, same sorts of gaps in education outcomes, job opportunities, but the original harms, that have yet to at all been acknowledged, have placed indigenous folks at such a disadvantage, that not only are we not seen, and we're not heard, but it's as if we don't exist in the mind of your average American, of your politician, of any one.
Linet 24:15
And let alone that even the hoops that immigrants would have to jump for health care for, you know, any sort of system of, you know, that that should be offered to any sort of citizen or any sort of person existing on any sort of place, then are 10 steps removed from any sort of system or member reading about how even the largest like some of the largest, most well-recognized nations, like the Navajo Nation, was struggling to get any sort of attention on their health needs to be met during the pandemic, like getting emergency authorization for funds, getting access, to getting supplies, to getting materials to getting even, you know, heard, it took like a full like month and a half after that process even started period for, you know, non-Indigenous people, and I just I remember being like “Jeez, like, in addition to, you know, being kicked off your land not being seen not being heard not being thought about not existing in any history books, then when you're just trying to survive, you need like additional governmental, you know, hoops to jump just to deal with an international health crisis,” right? It's not even like a national issue. It's like an international health crisis. I keep on, I don't know, maybe naively being surprised at, it's just 10 more levels.
Alexis 26:08
Amelia, a lot of the times what I'm hearing from you is you're saying, as a pairing, capitalism and white supremacy, you're linking those two, almost every time that you mentioned one, you're also mentioning the other. Can you talk to us a little bit about why those two are linked? And how the struggles against them might be linked as well?
Amelia 26:37
Yeah, that's a really good question. And I'll only speak for why I see them as linked in the way that I view the world. But the reason that I see them as linked is because I'm viewing the world through the lens of the settler colonial society that we live in. Now, there's a difference between colonialism and settler colonialism, they are related. But something that has to be understood is that colonialism, in which the colonizer comes and stays on the land, and then builds that place as their own, and moves forward for centuries as if nothing had happened, requires a unique set of conditions for that to actually occur. And in this case, it requires capitalism. That's why they came, right. They wanted gold, they wanted slaves, they wanted the riches. And it requires that capitalism to move forward in an unsustainable, but at the same time, economically prosperous way, for stability to continue. But still, that's not enough. Because at the same time, they have to build up this mythical background of why it is that they are those who got to come and conquer America and be the wonderful ones who were able to set up this beautiful, capitalist democracy that you know, is the beacon of the world, the beacon of the free world, that's white supremacy. In order for something like that, to function, white supremacy and capitalism have to work hand in hand, to reinforce the idea that white people are the supreme of the races. And that capitalism is the best system there is for all of us to prosper. And any holes that might be found, and the logic of either of those two ideas can be filled by the other one, they are mutually reinforcing. And that's how it functions. I'm not sure if I'm explaining this that well. But what I see is that without building this narrative of white supremacy, this country of immigrants would have a lot of people of color, who would have gotten rid of that idea. Who would have at this point, we would not see America as a white country, right? But we do. That's what we're imagined as in the outside world. That's what we're represented most by in our government, in our media. We are a white country, in the way that we represent ourselves. And at the same time, capitalism wouldn't function because the masses would rise up and say, “this is BS. This doesn't work for us”, except for the fact that those who are running the capitalist system are also white. And we have this idea of white supremacy. And white supremacy wouldn't function. If it wasn't for the fact that we had to pander to white folks and white ways of being in order to have money to live, breathe and survive every day. They reinforce each other in a closed loop like that.
Alexis 29:57
Yeah, yeah, I see what you're saying and it kinda I'm reminded me of what you were saying about the town you grew up in, and Vail, and what you were saying there?
Amelia 30:04
Yeah, that's exactly it. You know, that land wasn't originally owned by white people, of course, it was originally taken care of by indigenous people. And then even after that, it was taken care of by folks who were of mixed Spanish and indigenous blood, Mexican, as we would today call them, right. But all of that land is now taken over by folks who are rich, wealthy, white people who in those two inter-compounding - which is probably not a word - so, in those two interconnecting privileges, are able to sit at the top of a system that otherwise seems like it would most definitely topple.
Alexis 30:52
How do you see the struggles then against capitalism against white supremacy as being linked? What are some of the commonalities you see there? What are some of the ways that they overlap?
Amelia 31:05
I think that it's all one struggle to explain that. So doesn't sound like just the easy answer. I think that we look at struggles across race, gender, sexuality, economics, you name it. And the reality of it is, is that it's all coming from colonialism. And this baseline that was set in place for this capitalist and white supremacist system to function in the beginning, by the extermination or the intended extermination of indigenous folks, continued extraction from the land, what we have to realize is that motion that was set in place at the beginning of the founding of what we call the United States of America, or even before that, before that, I'm sorry, the beginning of Columbus's first step on this side of the earth. What we have to understand is all the sacred agreements between people of what we now consider different walks of life were broken. At the time that Columbus came here, people of different genders were treated with equal respect, people of different sexualities were celebrated and treated with equal respect. People of different skin tones were just people of different skin tones. And instead, what was put into place was a system that needed to boil us all down to seem as similar as possible to take any difference that might stick out and to stomp it down into nothingness, so that this machine could function. So I see that the struggles that we face across gender, sexuality, religion, XYZ, they're all the same struggle. We're struggling against the black and white system that colonialism put in place that told us either you're a or you're B, and that's it. And depending on whether you're a or you be your function in the A or the B way, and that's how life is. Colonialism works on binaries, you're white, or you're not. And if you're white, you have these privileges. If you're not, this is how you have to live your life. You speak English, or you don't. If you speak English, you have all these privileges. If you don't, you're screwed. If you're a man, you got all these privileges. If you're a woman, you got to suffer all these things. If you're straight, great, go ahead, have a bajillion babies. If you're not, you're in trouble. You see what I'm saying? Colonialism functions on binaries. And that is because it is easy to feed ones and zeros into the machine to make the rich people richer, and the poor people poor, and otherwise, all of the wonderful, sacred connections of love that we have with each other as humanity that cross what we now consider boundaries, but before would have only been elements of our being can no longer function. It's love is uprooted and torn out of us so that we can act as cogs in the machine. I believe that all of our struggles are interrelated. If we can free women, we are attacking the same system that is terrorizing people who are not white for being of a different race. And we're also talking the same system that is terrorizing people for being gender divergent, and not either male or female. Right, we are attacking that same system. And if and you know what if we're not attacking that system in an intersectional way, we're not really attacking the system, we are being complicit. What we're asking for is to earn privilege in a white, patriarchal capitalist system, so that we can be in the in crowd and leave the out crowd, we're not actually looking at solving the problem that keeps us all change to whatever our given struggle is.
Alexis 35:39
Yeah, absolutely. There's this privileged golden inner circle, you can either try to get into, you can try to expand it, or you can just try to abolish it. And I am definitely pro just abolishing that inner circle-ness, just why why do we have one in the first place?
Amelia 36:02
Right? There it is, again, it's that binary, either you're in or you're out? Why is that necessary? You know, we have to ask ourselves as humans, why we continue to play into this system that on some level harms all of us. Whether we want to admit that or not, you might be the most privileged person you might be a white heterosexual male who's wealthy, is Christian, speaks English, you have everything made for you. And you're still being harmed at the level that you are not connecting with your fellow humans, you are going against what is essentially human, which is to be a social animal, that loves other humans, that loves those other social animals that loves the earth that gave life to it. That loves to experience just being that's what humans are, we're animals. That's what we're meant to do, is to just love each other and live. And instead we focus on barriers and boundaries. And even those of us who think that we benefit from it, our hearts are bankrupt.
Linet 37:19
What if you were the, you know, white guy who had a ton of money, who had everything handed down to them, who didn't have to pay for you know, just about anything, and that just sits on a bunch of generational wealth, then it's also restricting who they can be, there's expectations of what being a man is, there's expectations of being cisgender would be, there's expectations of what you know, having a partner, what is your life, what is, you know, what is quote unquote, “success,” right? And I think people forget, it is actually harmful for everybody. That's a really good point. One of the things that I've learned as, as we've been doing this work, and I've learned in going through graduate school, and even advocating even in, in trying to campaign for politicians that share my view of wanting to do more for more people as opposed to restrict even those that make it. If we say that make it into the system to try to do something that actually benefits others and they're super-restricted, right, then it becomes like, you have expectations on you in this new position as a, you know, political leader, that you can't voice dissonance, that you can't point out the real true systemic problems, you have to just pretend that they're small. You have to, you know, play nice with, you know, people that are deciding to throw children in cages that are deciding to, you know, remove access to health care to millions that are deciding shit, the vaccines, that are deciding that, you know, having to wear a mask means that you're infringing on it - you have to make good with those people. That's the expectation once you join this hierarchical system of capitalism and white supremacy. And, you know, once I started thinking about, “What does white supremacy look like, what does it mean?” I'm starting to notice like,” Oh, this is also framed in a white supremacist context. This is also framed in white supremacy.” It's almost like you can't, there is no way that you can exist in this life without being affected by it without being a part of it in some way without being impacted. I remember as a kid, as I was growing up listening to people talk about politics, and in Columbia being into politics, being an advocate, being an activist means that you are putting your life on the line like there. If you are on too many social media channels voicing your dissent, if you are on too many protests on the street, you are putting a target on your back, and you will most likely die or be gravely injured. And you are putting a target on the backs of your family. That is the decision that you make by being politically active against the status quo. And as a kid, I saw this and I was like, “I am not going to go into politics, politics is frightening, because you can die. And not only you can die, you can make all of your family die.” So I thought, “I never want to be in politics. I never want to know anything about who is on what side or, you know, I can just be an artist. I can be a dancer, I can be, I can learn about languages, I can travel,” of course, you grow up, and then you realize that you can't, you can't, because politics influences everything, and influences whether I had access to health care, in order to have a child like it influenced whether or not I could remain the single independent women or I had to get married, in order to be able to access health care. That is, like, an easy choice that I was able to make. It wasn't easy. But it's easy comparable to, for example, people with disabilities, they actually don't have access to being married, they, you know, you can't like use a wheelchair, and then you know, if it breaks, expect to get a new one tomorrow, if you're somebody that that is on the cusp of, you know, I can get off of welfare by landing this next job, you actually can't because if you land a next job that doesn't pay past a certain amount, you won't be able to make enough to live, like politics isn't everything. It's in everything from like, the internet, it's in everything from access to health care, access to food, even like what our streets look like, do we have a bus that goes by? Do we have a park? Do we have like, do we have a voice? Can we vote? What happens if I get stopped by a cop? What happens if I want to put my kid in a school where they support bilingual education? It's all politics. Isn't that frightening?
Amelia 42:33
It's terrifying. And I think that that's that was the sort of rude awakening that I had coming to college, I went to college across the country from my family, I was the only one to really leave home. And I suddenly realized that politics was what was driving the need to even ask myself the questions that I did, or was driving the phenomenon, the phenomena that created these differences, like I mentioned, that were so perplexing to me as a child. And I realized that it was in every little decision I make about everything I do every day. And that was the point at which I realized, well, if deciding that I don't like this system of politics, and doing something to change it as what's called activism, then I'll be an activist. But at the same time, it's terrifying. It really is. And I feel your emotion when that, but at the same time, I want to remember that we are merely animals on this planet, whose only actual job the only thing we really have to do is to live our lives, to survive, and to be grateful for what we have. And I'm not saying that politics doesn't play into how we survive in a modern way. And I'm not saying that politics doesn't have to do with where we live and how we can live. But if we can boil down everything to the most simple pact we have with the creator for being on this earth, we would realize that the most important things to do are to love each other, to love the earth and to move forward in our daily lives. And that's how I keep my head on straight as much as possible is to just live I'm gonna make as much change as I can. But I'm not going to save the world. That's something that we as humanity have to do together.
Linet 44:44
And with that, I think we would take a short break
Seth 44:51
Hi, everyone, this is Seth and I am one of the audio editors and volunteers here at UBP. The Unconscious Bias Project brings creative, accessible, evidence-based solutions for unintentional bias to academic, technological, governmental organizations, and beyond. We sustain a welcoming home for inquisitive and creative minds and encourage a growth mindset. Working by the model of “0% Guilt, 100% Empowerment.” Please subscribe or follow our Facebook and Instagram for the latest in events and how you can learn more and be involved. Also, take a look and check out our guest's website and learn more. Look for that information in the description section of your podcast or on our website.
Alexis 45:42
Welcome back everyone. Again, we're here talking to Amelia, a human Linet met through restorative justice. What got you interested in restorative justice? And also for our listeners who might not know what it is yet, could you share with us? What is restorative justice? And what's its potential impact?
Amelia 46:03
Yeah, so restorative justice, it depends on what lens you're looking at it through. But restorative justice originally comes from indigenous practices of how to handle disputes amongst people. And it's the idea that, instead of, for example, in a modern context, handling a conflict or a dispute at the hands of the state, and making a decision to put the state in charge instead of the person who was harmed. What we do is, we empower both parties in the resolution of a conflict. So the person who has been harmed and the person who caused the harm come together to create a mutually agreed-upon a way to approach the conflict that they are facing, that will empower the person who has been harmed, will, in as much as possible, reconcile the relationship that has been broken, and will not be able to replace whatever has been lost. That's an essential acknowledgement and restorative justice, but might be able to build greater and stronger pathways for us to connect as human beings. The - one of the essential tenants in restorative justice is that we acknowledge that not only was the person who was harmed the receiver of whatever violence or trauma that was incurred, but so is the entire community. So in a restorative justice practice, what we would do is bringing the entire community, the family, the friends, anyone who witnessed the incident, bring everyone together to hold discussions and talks around what it is they need. And what it is that would make them feel as though they could move forward. And out of this comes an agreement that those two folks execute from there. But another really essential part of restorative justice that's very important to acknowledge, especially in how it's used in the modern context, is that we are not looking for punitive measures to punish the person who has caused harm. Instead, what we're doing, again, is bringing in the community and bringing in that person themselves, and connecting with them on a human level and asking them, what is it that you need? And what is it that has led you to this place where you've caused harm. And especially in the cases of youth of color in today's world, we'll find that when we use restorative justice practices, often these harms were caused because basic human needs of those youth were not fulfilled. They were hungry, they felt as though their identity was not recognized. They felt as though they had no opportunity. They were doing something for their family, and all of these basic human needs in terms of survival and also psychological survival. So physical and psychological, are two things that we in a restorative practice can acknowledge, as areas that need to be also repaired moving forward in our agreement, so that we're not only finding solutions for the person who was harmed, but also solutions for the person who caused the harm, so that we can heal the community as a whole on both sides. So restorative justice is a much more holistic practice. And it's the way to look at an incident of crime, what we would call crime as something that is is a symptom of a system that is broken in many ways and needs fixing for both the person who received the harm and the person who caused it. There's a focus on trauma healing and that, and I don't know, I think that there are probably much more scientific and less lengthy ways to describe this. But that's what I would say. Linet, what would you add to that?
Linet 50:27
One of the things that I learned, in that I sort of, in learning about restorative justice, when is practice and restorative justice practice? And it's not just for this conversation, like a conversation where you're figuring out, okay, what happened? What would you like, in order to, you know, work on possibly repairing this relationship or, you know, feeling possible resolution, or at least a discussion and acknowledgement is like, it's beyond just the harm. It's something about the whole community, it's about the whole system, it's when I realized it wasn't like, Okay, well, you know, here's conflict resolution through something called restorative justice. It's not that it's like, it's a way of being and it's a way of moving and existing as a community that I was really sort of impacted by that's, that's so different from, from the criminal justice system, which is more of like, “we're going to focus on this particular thing that we have called ‘ad’ through this specific set of words that somebody else decided was enough to be bad to be something that we should pay attention to.” And then it's not even really acknowledging that there's two human beings or you know, two groups of people, it's just focusing on this one thing, and then there's a punishment. There's not like a repair, there's not an understanding of, to humans, that that was one of the things that really struck me and learning about restorative justice is, it's not just like, “yes, a harm has happened.” But “let's learn and let's know about each of the people that are involved,” right? The people that experienced it, the one that, you know, made the decision conscious or unconscious to make that harm. And the person that received it in whatever way their wrist they received, it's like, acknowledging and learning about them as people, but also the community in which that harm happened. And what are the after-effects? And what are the things that led up to that moment? Like you were saying, Are they hungry? Were they not, you know, feeling safe? You know, what was the context? What was happening around here? You know, it's so much more all-encompassing, so much more open and fluid. And sort of cognizant to the fact that humans are humans, and we're not some, you know, easy. I don't know, four-sentence paragraph that can be to “okay, yes, this is a harm. This is not a harm,” like, you know, who lives that way, like, I don't, you know, if you nudged me with your elbow, and it didn't hurt, then it wasn't a thing, right. But if you nudge me with your elbow, and I happen to have a wound, and you hurt me, that's a harm. And it doesn't have to be like, a defined by a specific text, it can just, I can say that, and that can be respected. Right. Whereas in the criminal justice system, in any of these, like, even outside of the criminal justice system, thinking about the clients that we work with, in Unconscious Bias Project, you know, they have their like, rules of like, “well, if you do this, then you have to go to anger management training, and that is your punishment.” It's like, how is that gonna fix anything? If somebody's then like, “Yes, I was, you know, I raised my, I threw my keyboard at this person. And now I need to go to anger management training, that is my forced punishment. And I'm totally going to change behaviors after that. And that's totally going to fix this,” like, no, it's never going to fix that. It's never it's not it's not a fix. And it's not, you know, like, who knows what the person that got there keep the keyboard thrown at them was experiencing in that moment and what they actually wanted, right? What I find in thinking about restorative justice is it goes so much further in actually understanding context, understanding history and understanding. Like the lived reality of each person, much more than any sort of, you know, conflict resolution system or like engaging in a difficult discussion with your boss or anything else that I've ever gone through or been to in my sort of professional life. I find it really powerful and really, and really interesting. And I didn't know, actually, when I joined this particular restorative justice workshop where we met, that it has not just indigenous roots, but it's, it's an indigenous practice. And I thought that was really interesting because I only ever heard of it in the context of like, you know, and I'm gonna use quotes here as like “an alternative to the criminal justice system.” It was like, okay, here is how we try not to put, you know, so many people of color in jails. This is how we try not to, you know, it's sort of like a bandaid on, oh, look, we have just our, you know, gigantic proportion of especially men, especially Black men, and especially, you know, First Nations men in the justice system, instead of that, we're going to do this other thing that's like, you know, nice for such a quick, you know, it's completely different. I had no idea it was like an entire system. It was it's like a way of being, I was happy to learn that.
Amelia 56:06
Yeah, yeah, it's a way of being. And it's also how courts of law actually function for many indigenous groups, prior to the destruction of those systems, and the statement of colonial ones. So and that's a thing you know, so often these days, there are indigenous practices in law, in psychology, and you name it is any kind of science, indigenous knowledge or practices or beliefs that are the alternative way, right. And it's because modern science and I say that with air quotes, modern science, has not yet learned how to prove that these things are true or that they work. But so often, indigenous practices get coopted, and are thought of just the cool or niche way of doing things and eventually make their way into the mainstream. And we divorced them or we we failed to acknowledge where they came from. And that's again, another one of those ways in which our myths about who and what we are and how we do things, erase indigenous people over and over again,
Linet 57:20
Unconscious Bias Project is based in like, the Berkeley/Oakland area. And this is home of the Ohlone and Muwekma people, some of you speak Chocheno. And I just jumped into listening to this conversation that you were having with Alexis, and I was wondering if you if you could share a little bit about shell mounds?
Amelia 57:44
Yeah, so I just wanted to note that, like I said, we see what might be two social justice issues that seem to be competing in this moment in time of low-income housing, and the saving of this sacred site. And I would just encourage us to remember everything that we've spoken about on this episode and focus on the connections, rather than the things that divide us in this moment. There are so few demands upon the land that the Ohlone people are currently asking for. And I would say that though I understand the need for affordable housing, there are so many more areas in which we can ask those who have more than enough to help those who don't have enough, that wouldn't require the desecration of a sacred site, where people whose ancestors and whose history has been here for time immemorial, consider a sacred place. I think that is something that we should honor and we should fight in order to protect. And so I would encourage everyone listening to this episode, to pitch in to support the saving of the West Berkeley Shellmound to support Ohlone resurgence in the Bay Area, and to contribute to any efforts that are working to help the Ohloni regain their cultural sovereignty in Oakland and Berkeley and the area beyond.
Linet 59:16
Great, thank you so much, Amelia. So folks, we're going to include the links to shellmound.org to learn more about saving the West Berkeley Shellmound as well as really the disaster of the Emeryville Shellmound.
Alexis 59:32
So, Amelia, at the end of each of our podcasts, we like to give our guests an opportunity to tell us about anything that they're doing anybody that they whose work they want us to be paying attention to any other voices that they want to uplift people they want to thank. So do you have any acknowledgments that you'd like to make or people or projects to highlight?
Amelia 59:58
Sure, so Thank you very much, I would say first just acknowledge, I want to acknowledge my family and friends and all those people who have helped give me the thoughts and be the person that I am to even have these ideas to discuss today, I would say instead of promoting any of my own work, I would love to promote the work of indigenous scholars, activists, folks on social media who are educators, I think that it's very important that I state that no one person is the spokesperson for an entire community. And with that in mind, I want to encourage everyone to just go out and follow as many indigenous activists as you can to learn about each and every one of these indigenous issues that you might be curious about, because no one person can tell you everything there is to know. And I would say with that, please go and support the Red Lake Treaty Camp, Stop Line 3, go learn about the land back movement, learn about that which is happening for land back in our own area of the Bay Area, San Francisco, Oakland, where both Alexis and I are living, go learn about the missing and murdered indigenous women's movement. These are all things that the boarding school of finding the children, please go and learn about each and every single one of these things that are important and incredibly critical issues that affect all of us, in this world, and yet are somehow hidden as things always are, and are only talked about in Indian Country. Please go and educate yourself. It's critically important for the success of our movements, and for the success of us connecting as humans to conquer the system.
Linet 1:01:54
Hell yeah. That was awesome. Yes. So thank you so much, Amelia for joining us. I'm really grateful that I was able to successfully convinced you to share some of your wisdom, your thoughts, your deep learning, and your continuous passion, continuous curiosity, and an openness to talking about all of these different things, to urging us to action. Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah.
Alexis 1:02:20
Thank you so much for coming and talking with us today.
Amelia 1:02:23
Thanks for having me. It was great.
Seth 1:02:30
Thanks for listening. You can find more information and donate at unconsciousbiasproject.org. Dr. Linet Mera, she/her, and Alexis Krohn, she/her, are your hosts. Seth Boeckman, he/they, is your editor. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to this podcast and follow us. We can be found on Facebook at Unconscious Bias Project, Twitter at UBP_stem, LinkedIn, Instagram, or join our mailing list. UBP is a fiscally sponsored project of the Social Good Fund, a tax-deductible 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. If you wish to sponsor us, please contact us in the contact us tab at unconsciousbiasproject.org.