Jeanine Canty ***** Hello. And welcome to Mindful U at Naropa. A podcast presented by Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. I'm your host, David Divine. And itÕs a pleasure to welcome you. Joining the best of Eastern and Western educational traditions - Naropa is the birth place of the modern mindfulness movement. [MUSIC] Today we welcome Jeanine Canty of Naropa University. A full time and professor and chair of the Environmental Studies Department, which includes the MA and Resilient Leadership Program and the BA Environmental Studies. She is also the editor and contributor to the book, Ecological and Social Healing: Multicultural Women's Voices. So, thank you for uh joining us today Jeanine. ItÕs really good to have you. [00:01:07.04] JEANINE: Thanks David. [00:01:07.21] DAVID: Yeah, and today we're going to be talking about - what was your topic. Oppressions of People and Oppressions of the Earth Go Hand and Hand. [00:01:15.00] JEANINE: We are. Yeah. [00:01:16.12] DAVID: That's pretty big. [00:01:17.07] JEANINE: It's pretty heavy. [00:01:18.01] DAVID: So, uh can you just give us a brief uh who you are and then we can just jump right into it. [00:01:23.01] JEANINE: I sure - and thanks for uh coming here this morning. ItÕs great to be in your presence. Yes, so as you said I'm a professor here at Naropa. I just started my 11th year which feels like wow I've been here for a while. And, I uh - teach in both the environmental studies BA and the MA in Resilient Leadership. The courses that I teach - a lot of them have to do with the connection between ecological issues and social justice issues. So, I teach Eco-psychology, Deep Ecology, uh Earth Justice, uh - with a sub title Patterns of Oppressions and Healing. Also, Wilderness Solo courses, Indigenous Environmental Issues and right now I am also teaching community based learning and action course for the uh undergraduates which is actually really fun. [00:02:15.01] DAVID: Cool. [00:02:16.14] JEANINE: Yeah. Yeah. [00:02:18.02] DAVID: A lot of classes. [00:02:18.02] JEANINE: It is - actually it is. Uh but I like to really uh - do a lot about how we change our world views. [00:02:26.13] DAVID: Yeah. [00:02:27.02] JEANINE: I'm originally - I was actually - I was born in the Bronx in New York City and I grew up mostly in - on the east coast - New Jersey, Connecticut uh I went to my undergrad at Colgate University and I did a BA in International Relations. And then I uh - did a teacher education 2 year program at Prescott College in Arizona and I also did my masters there. I worked there for a long time and was a faculty. My masters is in Cultural Eco-Psychology and then I did my PhD at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco - a.k.a CIIS in uh Transformation Learning and Change. So, I'm all about world view transformation particularly around uh social justice and ecological issues and looking at the connections between them. And then as you mentioned my uh - most recent book that I edited and contributed to - Ecological and Social Healing: Multicultural Women's Voices - is also really looking at this edge awareness that surfaces from people who are quote unquote marginalized, yet have been teaching in the areas of social justice and ecology and may have different perspectives that actually lead to some of the healing solutions we need in this work. [00:03:50.21] DAVID: Yeah. Wow. Very own. So, excited to hear you talk today. [00:03:54.17] JEANINE: Oh, well thank you. [00:03:55.21] DAVID: Yeah so - if you'd like to - [00:03:58.05] JEANINE: Yes! Yes. And uh for our listeners - I always encourage you as I'm speaking to uh - notice how you're caring your body and notice your breath because I am going to drop into some information that may push your buttons a little bit. So, as David - as you were saying the topic is looking at how the oppression of people and the oppression of earth go hand in hand. And uh so I'm just going to read a frame that I often employee in a lot of my classes and so when we're addressing issues of racism - I think itÕs essential to trace the roots of oppression to their form. You know to basic roots. And so, in order to adopt an approach that is embedded in both social action and support human rights on the largest - like the largest, widest, scale - we have to actually understand the link between social and ecological injustice. And so, uh - this is where I really focus on the oppression of people of color as inseparable from the oppression of the natural world. And uh - I think this knowledge, this understanding is starting to come more into the meme of our society. But often, we're compartmentalizing. We're teaching about ecological issues and climate change and then we're talking about social justice and human rights. Or we're talking about diversity and inclusivity without actually connecting it together. And so, I think its futile to study either separately if we're actually not looking at the uh biggest picture of oppression. And so, I've been teaching and learning about environmental issues for the past 18 years and uh often I actually find myself in groups and organizations where believe it or not there aren't that many people of color. And so, I'm often the only person of color and uh - once and a while I will get the comment of hearing from someone like oh itÕs so great that you bring your diversity here. And uh I wished more diverse people would get involved and to me this really brings out an assumption of what an environment meant - an environmentalist looks like. And where they work and the groups they're involved with. And, you know typically uh people uh stereotype environmentalists as kind of liberal white people often middle class to affluent and that's really not the case. People of color and other diverse groups have always been involved with environmental issues. And since the advent of the ecological crisis this has been most clearly visible through the environmental justice movement. Uh and - and our department - our students take courses in environmental justice and I will give just a little breakdown of what that is. Its specifically looks at how environmental issues are uh affecting marginalized communities such as communities of color both urban and rural, indigenous and its really saying that uh people of color - indigenous peoples, women, poor, working class and children are actually disproportionally affected by environmental issues then mainstream communities because they have less power both uh political and economic power to fight these issues. And so, uh - the environmental justice movement is really critiquing the mainstream environmental movement for not including these issues uh often letting like environmental companies and other organizations move into communities of color. There's a classic uh acronym call NIBY - which is Not My Backyard. And so, like in Boulder which is a very affluent, pretty uh - you know homogenous white community when uh - some sort of environmental uh travesty happens you know everyone gets on their bike and we have a rally uh and then force the company out of here. And then we often don't realize that it gets situated in another community uh that doesn't have the power of uh - you know free time and money and voice and sometimes to fight these issues. [00:08:28.19] DAVID: Yeah. [00:08:29.18] JEANINE: And so, uh you know this is a main - one of the main issues in - in environmental justice and we take it to a bigger scale when we're talking about getting social justice in the US and often we equate this with the American Dream - like oh we want everyone to have the American dream but if everyone had the American dream we would just be further taking the resources of people in the global south and all around the world. And so, we really have to uh recognize this. I'd say that's one of the reasons where I don't think it appropriate to teach diversity uh courses without really looking at ecological issues. Because we're not going to erase oppression just by everyone getting along. And uh yeah and so itÕs also important to recognize the environmental justice did not develop after the mainstream environmental movement uh marginalized peoples have always been facing and fighting these issues since the onset of environmental issues. Uh but they've been actually framed as social issues. So, colonization uh think about farm workers, genocide - toxic health, human rights, poor housing. Uh so many different things uh the civil rights movement in the 1960s was really instrumental in bringing a voice to these concerns. Impact before uh Martin Luther King died he was working on the rights of uh sanitation workers, which was an environmental justice issues. And so, environmental uh justice uh before that it was actually framed as environmental racism was formalized in the 1980s and it became more commonly known in the 1990s. So, itÕs great you know any kind of reputable environmental studies program now has a course in that. But I think itÕs also important to recognize that itÕs not a side dish - itÕs actually the main dish. And, uh - one of my specific contention is is that you can't take any large scale pattern of racism and I am very US centric but you can't take any large scale pattern of racism and not see the connection between ecological issues because all of those are always about the acquisition of natural resources. And so, uh in the US there is a scholar named Frederick Eio(sp?) and he talks about cast leg minorities and they're basically people who did not choose to come to the US. So, we could say you know Native Americans because they were already here. And African Americans because they were forced here. And then Latino Americans again in general they were already here. We - you know took their land and in some case Asian uh Americans as well that after enslavement was band often the former slave ships were used to bring Asian populations here to work uh pretty free labor. And so, when we look at these populations we can actually see what - in each group it was about the acquisition of natural resources. With Native Americans, it was about taking land. You know there's a term teranalus or some people pronounce it teranalus and it basically means empty, vacant space. And so, some of the founding philosophies in US culture was about this free land and manifest destiny. Really saying that the continent of turtle island continent of North America was basically empty and free of people. Instead of the millions of Native Americans that were actually here. And so, the taking of their land was all about taking a natural resource. And then when you talk about the enslavement of African uh peoples forced here during the diaspera it was about working the land and having a free labor source. And then you get into uh - we've had such a very bi-polar relationship with Latina populations. You can look at history - historically that depending on how much labor - free labor we need uh during a given uh time period - whether we let immigration happen or not - there is so much history in terms of farm workers. World War II embarassero program - just so many different instances and similarly with uh Asian uh American populations. And so, racism isn't about you know some people not liking certain people - itÕs actually about acquisition of natural resources. Yeah, and the founding of our country there was a whole movement of uh - indigenous peoples uh free uh peoples of color. Working class and poor, white - that were actually getting together to uh protest and try to overthrow the owning class and the owning class uh realized that this was actually a problem if uh all of these peoples got together to try and change things. They actually had the largest percent of the population and so that was in 1690s the creation of whiteness occurred. And before that you know you had so many - we had a lot of enslaved white people through indentured servitude uh you had people weren't white - they were Italian or English. Uh they were Irish. They were Scottish. They were Dutch. And then with the creation of whiteness it gave a whole series of packaged benefits - privileges to white people uh which broke the solidarity and so yeah, itÕs really important to look at that. So, now I am going to take just a little bit of pause uh and go back to my uh starting message of uh everyone just checking in - checking in with their body and their breath. Because you know I can even just speaking about this my shoulders get a little tight. My uh throat gets a little itchy uh and I know just my own buttons get pushed uh its emotional for everyone. Uh and this is one of actually the reasons I love teaching at Naropa. You know we're a Buddhist inspired institution and one of the grounds of that - is this idea of basic goodness or the inherent goodness of all living beings and so when we're talking about racism and the ecological crisis - and if we honor that everyone has basic goodness we realize that something had to go wrong for the situations to unfold as they have. And, so another area that I am very passionate about I teach at Naropa is uh called Eco psychology and so Eco psychology really looks at the collective madness we find in Western civilization uh and really can translate that to anyone who is living under a world that's uh within corporate globalization which unfortunately is pretty much everyone on the planet. Very few people are untouched about - by corporate domination. And so, Eco psychology is really looking at this collective illness we have and how that has caused the ecologically crisis. And so, there's four basic assumptions and the first is that the planet is calling for healing. And so, you know just even in uh recent weeks with these accelerated hurricanes, storms, earthquakes, you know we're seeing many things with climate change. We're seeing uh - major forest fires out of control. Uh - you know Mumbai, Nigeria - just so many places all around the world where people are suffering. The planet is suffering. And then the second one is assumption of Eco psychology is at the state of the human psyche is calling for healing both collectively and individually. Uh, we see such high rates of people with anxiety and depression. People uh suffering from addictions whether its drugs or alcohol uh television, technology, co-dependent relationships. My favorite you know consumerism is a huge one. Then so uh see this kind of individual collective madness and then the third is that these two things are in separate psyche and earth are interdependent. And so, the fourth is what I framed earlier is that this pathology - this illness is embedded in the history and culture of history of western culture or uh a.k.a. also globalized culture. Yeah! And so, for me this is really powerful because if you uh essentially recognized that we're all traumatized. That we're all ill - when you have a loved one that's ill - you're not uh mean and abusive to them. You treat them with compassion. And so even as we're not agreeing with people as we're seeing this collective abuse of the planet and one another uh if we recognize that we're all under illness then we actually start to treat one another with a certain level of compassion. And uh - yeah - I think that's the gist of what I wanted to uh speak about. My - one of my favorite books to have - students read both of the undergraduate level and the graduate level - itÕs actually my favorite book to read on a plane because people sitting next to me are like oh interesting is uh My Name is Chellis and I'm in Recovery from Western Civilization uh by amazing author named Chellis Glendinning and she straddles uh psychology and Eco psychology and uh she talk - has two really interesting concepts - one is called the Primal Matrix. And this is - uh before we uh - experience this separation from the natural world - what was our actual inherent nature? And she says itÕs the primal matrix and this has three dimensions. And the first is a sense of belonging and security in the world and so just really, itÕs like feeling at home. Uh so many of us don't feel at home even at home. Uh you know there is always something wrong. A lot of us afraid of nature uh you know whether itÕs just like small - you know spiders or dirt or the forest or getting into water uh you know I know people who are - don't like to drink water. I am like what? That's crazy. [00:20:00.02] DAVID: How does that work? [00:20:00.23] JEANINE: Right, I know! I know! We're just going to drink some soda pop or juice and youÕre like no don't do that. And then the second dimension is uh - I like to translate it into having your - a unique calling in life. Uh she says itÕs a sense of personal integrity centeredness capability. Consciousness of I. And so, in our society we're often educated and conditioned to get a job that's going to make the most money and its work, but itÕs not necessarily a calling. Uh yet you know many spiritual traditions believe that we're born into this earth with a unique gift to offer to earth and also in - reciprocity we also receive uh a special gift as well. Uh, yet our conditioning often separates us from this type of path. Uh and I feel like a Naropa education is helping us to get back onto this path. [00:21:04.09] DAVID: Yeah. [00:21:04.16] JEANINE: And then the final uh quality that she talks about in this primal matrix is non ordinary states of awareness and this is just huge uh this is really our birth right. And in a lot of ways itÕs the experience of magic - the numinous uh it doesn't - you don't need to get there by you know taking Iowasca or drugs uh meditation, dancing, uh singing, creating art, spending time in nature, being in ceremony. There is so many ways to be in this, but a lot of the day to day habits that we have in our culture don't uh encourage this. And so many of us have grown out - up with uh not experiencing them because we haven't had those rights of passage. Yeah. And so, this is huge. Yeah, and so - there is so many uh dimensions around this uh she talks about the other concepts this original trauma. And this is you know what broke our in tact relationship with nature. And again, if we go back to Eco psychology which says itÕs the history of Western culture - this really uh comes through a whole movement of different things. Such as the establishment of mechanistic science which instead of seeing the universe and earth as a series of relationships broken into a series of parts of dead matter. Many claim that organized religion separated the separation. Because instead of having first hand experiences of what is sacred uh we suddenly shifted to getting that from a book or a person or a pulpit, doctrine rather than our own intuition and relationship and exp - embodied experience. Uh for uh European folks - the witch burnings were huge. It really broke you know people call this the female genocide but it was both men and women and uh you know pagans which are actually small town farmers. It was their separation from earth. And that persecution. I see colonization as a major force in that uh and so many different uh format. And uh - yeah so - you know my - just my takeaway here which was the title is uh the Oppression of People and the Oppression of Earth go hand in hand. And racism has not been an arbitrary act. ItÕs been used to separate people from land uh and to force people into classes that work the land for lower no compensation. And uh - yeah - yeah. [00:24:00.11] DAVID: Wow, that is some pretty big heavy stuff right there. I've actually never seen it in that light until right now and I'm seeing it extremely clear of how - you know an entity comes in and wants a material - wants a resource - that's kind of like their goal essentially and then they use the people that are there to get it for them. [00:24:19.21] JEANINE: Definitely. [00:24:19.21] DAVID: You know and its uh some heavy stuff. [00:24:23.11] JEANINE: Heavy stuff. [00:24:24.22] DAVID: Wow, but I mean your message is powerful. You have like such good energy. You have like a powerful person behind the message. And like shedding your wisdom and knowledge is - is so good to hear and especially on matters that need attention so we appreciate you sharing your uh - your topic with us today and I kind of wanted to ask you a question or two. [00:24:46.21] JEANINE: Sure. [00:24:47.12] DAVID: Yeah. So - with all that like what are some of the things we can do as like a community and society to both help our environment and also our social interactions with people who might be marginalized. People of color, diversity - keeping it all inclusive. Like what are some things that we could do right now or maybe a little bit of planning to help this? [00:25:11.12] JEANINE: Yeah. And uh - that's one thing that I love about this work is there is infinite things that we can do. And one of the first things which connects so much the work that we're doing here at Naropa is really starting with our sense of self. Uh and so no longer staying in this kind of ego bound narcissistic self but uh - extending our sense of self so we embody a more compassionate self and so an Eco psychology and deep ecology we have this concept called the ecological self. And so, when we spend time in nature we suddenly you know maybe you're out on a park bench and you're talking to a squirrel or there's this creek that you walk by every day and you uh - you know see the same ducks or you know this fox or this tree you love - all the sudden you're sense of identity extends to this other being and you can actually start doing that with lots of different beings uh and knowing your place. And then same thing with other uh people there is this idea of this multicultural self and that actually when we spend time with diverse people's we actually stop inhabiting our own frame. We realize wow, you know there is things to learn here when I know someone's story that of someone who is different suddenly you know there is like love you know. Uh I love that person who I thought I was before has now extended to include some of that person's story. And so, when we can actually do these things - we can actually shift our identities and our level of compassion the way we start our work in the world. [00:27:09.07] DAVID: Yeah, we shouldn't be afraid of differentness. We should almost celebrate it more. [00:27:13.07] JEANINE: Yeah. [00:27:13.07] DAVID: To make us more whole you know feel out - feel out our puzzle piece of our characteristics you know. Let's collect them all. [00:27:22.23] JEANINE: Yeah definitely. Definitely. [00:27:25.09] DAVID: Show everyone some love and let's do this. And I think yeah it definitely starts with - with the human interactions, the - the natural interactions - and just interactions with our self too you know and I think that's a great place to start, but that's a lot of work too. [00:27:42.07] JEANINE: Yeah, but - but good work. [00:27:44.03] DAVID: Yeah. You got to start somewhere. [00:27:45.09] JEANINE: Yeah. [00:27:46.19] DAVID: So, here's another one. Uh - how can we use this thing that we're labeling mindfulness? How can we use mindfulness in sort of these pursuits? Is there anything that you like to do to be mindful when you're stepping into a classroom? Uh when you're stepping into uh conversations with other colleagues uh or just stepping into the work that you do. Is there - is there like mindful practices that you use? [00:28:14.00] JEANINE: Yeah. I do so many - just uh I have to do a lot of just practices every day to be able to show up uh in the work that I do and the work that we're doing collectively. So, just on a you know every day I pretty much go to a yoga class. I have got a dog so I get out in nature. I live in the foothills in Boulder so I get to the woods a lot. I meditate every day. I am all about eating healthy. I've got a garden and then you know when I step into a class - I try to uh first like unpack some of the assumptions I have you know am I checking on what I'm feeling. Am I in a kind of cranky mood. Am I little tired? Am I like over exuberant and remember that even if there is folks that might push my buttons we're all about learning together and so kind of showing up in a way that my heart is in it. And also knowing that I don't actually have to hold the room. I am uh while I am teaching I am also learning and showing up authentic. Uh, so yeah - I think just really stepping in in that way. [00:29:31.16] DAVID: Wow. Thank you so much. [00:29:33.10] JEANINE: Thank you David. So that was Jeanine Canty of Naropa University - a full time professor and the chair of the environmental studies department and we uh just like to thank you for coming out today and speaking with us. [00:29:45.13] JEANINE: My honor. Thank you. [MUSIC] On behalf of the Naropa community thank you for listening to Mindful U. The official podcast of Naropa University. Check us out at www.naropa.edu or follow us on social media for more updates. [MUSIC]