[K] Just a quick note at the top of the podcast before we get into the conversation. I just wanted to say that the concepts we're talking about are not our original ideas. We are two white guys sharing thoughts we have that have been informed by many different indigenous and black perspectives. The point of this podcast is not to claim expertise about these ideas, but to urge other white people to start and frankly, never stop, deconstructing whiteness and dismantling white supremacy. So the title of this podcast is a bit ironic. You should not take our perception of these concepts at face value. You should dig into the resources linked in the description and you should actively seek out more. So with that said, here is our conversation. [K]...Coming to you live from the East Rim trail, in Zion National Park. Nobody... [N] We're Pretty far from Iowa. [K] Yeah, pretty far from Iowa. Pretty far from all the Zion tourists, also. Nobody seems to be taking in the beauty of the East Rim. Everyone wants to see Zion Canyon. [N] We're in a pretty lush woodland area with stuff growing out of sand because we're in the desert. We're next to a pretty large rock face that's sandstone... the red, gray, black sediment, as well as, you know, lighter shades of orange and tan. [K] Yeah it's really beautiful. The striations through the rock. It's pretty cool down here, the sun... It's pretty early in the morning, it's like 8:00. The sun has not reached this little valley yet. It's real nice. Just been doing a lot of thinking. Always thinking about land and what it means to be a person on the land. What it means to be in a national park owned by the federal government, stolen from indigenous people who aren't allowed to live on this land or use this land anymore. [N] In Utah, a state that was pretty colonized by Mormons. [N] So it's kind of like a, you know, not a religious ethnostate, but... [K] Kind of. A little bit. [N] Kind of. Which is a added layer, I think, you know, of being in this region of the United States. [K] Yeah. Even now it's been pretty quiet, except for the wildlife, a lot of birds that we heard. But I can hear a plane going over right now. That's sort of the one sound that reminds you that you can't actually escape capitalist colonial imperialism. It's just flying overhead. But, um... I think there's a lot to be learned from the beings that are still making this place home. [N] Wait, let's just sit and see if the bird calls will go in. [K] Okay. [Wind & very faint bird calls with a louder spotted towhee call at the end.] [N] That was probably good. [K] Yeah, that was a good one. Good note to end on. [K] So I think that wraps up the podcast. I don't think I have anything to add beyond that. [N] I mean, the birds have more to say than I ever would, but yeah. Yeah. No, I think being in such a lush ecosystem has me thinking a lot about the land in Iowa and how... what a luxury it is to be surrounded by something so powerful and meaningful as rocks that are 50,000, over 50,000 years old. [K] Older than that. Yeah, I'm not a geologist, I don't know, but like, as far as age of things on this planet, rocks are definitely up there. And you got to wonder how much wisdom there is untapped, because we've got quite a communication barrier between us and the rocks. [N] Speak for yourself. [K] Haha. And just how long it takes things like this to happen, how short, you know, human existence is in the relative span of time. [N] Yeah, especially compared to rocks of this... [K] Yeah. Well, I'm speaking quite linearly. Maybe I shouldn't say "short" and "span," but how new humans are to this... [N] True. [K] ...cyclical timeline. We're a really new addition. We're young. And us white people especially, who have been severed from our ancestors, we lack a lot of that wisdom that's been passed down. I think it's just a little bit ridiculous to think that we could ever know more than the trees and the rocks and the birds and... [N] Yeah. I've been dealing with... We've been at Bryce Canyon as well. And that's a little bit more... Where we're at, at Zion, is pretty grounded. Kind of in the valley. We're not really on the edge of the cliff or edge of the canyon. But at Bryce, we were. And I've been dealing with a lot of... just some uneasy feelings of being so high up on the edge of a cliff, and I... um... Got distracted by birds. I think of, like, of how... I stand up there and I just think about how powerful this place is, just to even be able to see it and witness it, and how it could just swallow me whole in so many ways. Like, not just physically, but like, even mentally. It's so powerful to just be able to sit there and like, it almost takes thoughts out of my brain. [K] Yeah. It makes me think about the hubris of how easy it was to get here. Right? All you gotta do is pay for gas and find a place to camp, and then take a road, take a trail and you're somewhere that, ordinarily, outside of all of these structures we've built, would have been incredibly challenging to get to. [N] Yeah. I mean, indigenous people of this land were living in these canyons for thousands of years before they were forcibly removed. And then it became a national park owned by the federal government. But, you know, like, imagine how long it took for people to climb up the entirety of the mountain range. Possibly cross the Rocky Mountains to get here, maybe on foot or on horseback. But, like, incredible. But we just blew up some mountains and put some roads through it, and now we can drive from Iowa to Utah. So it's, you know. [K] It feels like we shouldn't be able to. [N] No. It feels a little bit unnatural, in my opinion, but... It's not unnatural to be a human amongst this landscape. Just that... [K] The commodifying of it, the, the, um... what's the word I'm looking for... convenience. The convenience. It shouldn't be convenient. [N] No. [K] To get to have a moment like that, at the top. At the edge of that amphitheater, full of hoodoos. I mean, convenience should not play any role in... [N] ...our access to these spaces. [K] Our personal convenience. Yeah. I think we prioritize human convenience over what's good for every creature here. I think... I've been thinking a lot, too, about the small things, the things that nobody looks at when they come to these places. I mean, we're on the East Rim, right? This isn't like the tourist hotspot of Zion. And in addition to that, I am looking at all these teeny tiny little plants on the ground, just growing in the sand, living humble little lives next to these giant rocks that everyone wants to see. And I, I think they go under appreciated. [N] Yeah, 100%. You know, you were speaking about commodification and... or commodifying spaces like this almost. And it is... we have in some ways commodified this. I mean, it's a park that you pay to visit. I mean, there's souvenirs that you take, you know. I mean, there is a commodity aspect to it. And it... it's um... kind of a stark difference of commodification than what we experience in Iowa. Which was like land stolen to be commodified for agriculture. So people are making money off of the land in a very different way here. But they make money off of the land in Iowa where we're from. And I think... I've been thinking so much about the landscape of Iowa while being here in Utah and, and, um... the sadness it brings to me, in a way, because of how terraformed the land is for consumption. For human consumption. And just how, how wrecked the ecosystem is. But how beautiful prairies and wetlands and the plains are in their full form. And just how devastating it is that indigenous people who cultivated that land and stewarded that land, not cultivated but stewarded the land... I mean... and, just people now, don't ever get to experience that vastness and beauty of something as large as acres and acres and acres and acres, thousands of acres of prairie and wetland that goes into woodlands that, you know, have just been destroyed. And how disconnected we are from the land and the earth because of all the terraforming that was done in Iowa for human consumption. [K] That's not to say that that kind of like, extraction and terraforming doesn't happen here, right? I mean, outside of the national park, there's a ranch. And... but it's... I think it's a lot... I don't want to say easier. It seems that it was easier for colonizers and settlers who arrived here to destroy the prairie than, you know, destroy a mountain because of the properties of plants versus, you know, the minerals that make up these rock formations. But age wise... I mean, it takes years to establish a prairie, right? It takes so many years, so much time for that ecosystem to establish. And just because we can sort of see time in the rocks in a way that we can't in plants that have sort of a shorter life cycle, I guess to me doesn't mean that they're any less important. [N] Absolutely not. I mean, yeah. Absolutely not. Yeah, it's almost like... I mean, the trees, the ponderosa pines, right? Are, I mean, very old. I mean, probably extremely old. And also, they don't look like really old trees because they have a, um... a shorter growing season in this area because of, just the, the weather of the desert. Minimal rainfall, and just a very short growing season. So they're, comparatively to like, the redwoods, you know, or the sequoias in California or, or trees in the Pacific Northwest, the trees here are maybe a similar age, but they just look smaller, way smaller. So like, the wealth of knowledge that's in these plants can't really be discerned necessarily by their size. Even though that's kind of how we, as, I would say white people, have kind of grown to and been indoctrinated to believe that plants, you know, grow... their size should be an indication of how old they are. Or how or how wise or powerful... [K] Yeah. I think, you know, quantity being tied to power is like, really white supremacist and colonial. You know, you have the most land, the largest area, and you get to make the decisions. It's really easy when you think like that to overlook all of the important relationships at a small scale. [N] Yeah. I mean, think about.. we passed by a plant here that is a host plant for some small bug, I'm sure. But, you know, there are so many small relationships and, um... experiences of reciprocity between differing living beings within a forest or within any ecosystem that, I mean, down to like the microscopic level. I mean, you think about the microbiome of soil and how... [K] Soil is alive. Soil is a living thing. [N] How, how important that microbiome is and how that, I mean, has effects on the entire ecosystem. If the soil composition changes, like that is such an important thing. And people don't even think about that, they don't go down to that micro level and think, "wow, this is something that is living and breathing and and alive, that is in relation with so many different things" and how important that is. And how important it is to maintain that in as much of its natural state as possible. [K] Yeah. I'm so glad you mentioned reciprocity, because, to go back to the commodification aspect, I've been thinking about, how is it possible to be in this place in a reciprocal way, when we're tourists moving through? You know, it's kind of not possible. We can do our best. But, reciprocity is really a place-based relationship. You, you live somewhere, you form those relationships. I mean, if you think about your relationships with people, those take time, those take continued contact, being together over, um... many different interactions throughout time. And it's the same with our relationships with all non-human beings also. And, just doing tourism through a place and appreciating it isn't the same as living in relationship with it. [N] Right. Yeah, of course. I kind of see it... It's not even this because like, if something is migrating through somewhere, it usually has at least some ties to that space. You know? I'm more just uh... my metaphor would be like, a bird that is migrating and stops here for a week to eat, you know? And is only here for a week. But gets to experience this, the beauty of it, even for a short amount of time through just moving through that space. Obviously different because I'm a person who... I'm a human who decided to travel here to see the space instead of migrating over it and having to stop for sustenance. But it's a similar... [K] Yeah, it's not impossible. It certainly is possible. I think it takes a lot more conscious effort within this framework that we have, which is, you know, "public land" owned by the government that it costs money to see. I think you have to be really intentional. But I do think we try. And obviously, you know, we're camping. We are, you know, literally living off of the land right now. Um... not in... I mean, you know, we've packed food and we're not like foraging and all of that stuff. But still, I mean, the ground is a place to sleep at night and the trees shelter us. And it's important to find the little ways that you can give back whenever you take. [N] You mentioned public land, and it makes me think of like government owned land being labeled as public land. Like what is public land if I can't access it for free whenever I want? [K] Well, right. And what is public land when our public understanding of how to steward land is so skewed towards colonialism? [N] Yeah. Like what is public land if you've forced all the indigenous people out of this space and you won't let them steward it the way that it should be. Like we, you know, they have these signs up and this guy, this indigenous man was talking about how he, you know, traveled back to Bryce Canyon for the first time. Because they were originally, like, not allowed back on their ancestral lands. The same is true of, of indigenous people who were forcibly removed from places in Yosemite and not able to, or Glacier and not able to go forage for the food that they used. It was illegal, like they were. I mean, what is public land when you have stripped all of the rights from the people who were stewarding that land, and you have banned them from using... I mean, what is public land? Like, that's not public land. [K] Exactly. I think it's interesting that you say stripped rights, because that's absolutely true. And also, before the rights were stripped, the rights were imposed. Right? I mean, there's no... none of us has like a legal right to the land. [N] No. [K] Legality is a made up colonial concept. Like we came here and we said, "these are rights codified into laws we made up, and we're going to take them away from you." And that's just... I'm just sitting, surrounded by all these rocks and by fucking mountains. And I'm like, why does the government need to give me permission to be here? The fucking mountains are who I need to be asking permission from. The fucking beings that live here. Like that's whose permission matters. [N] That giant rabbit that we saw. Like, I need to ask him for permission to enter. Like, "may I cross your path, sir?" Like, I mean, you know, like, what is, what is... what rights does the government have or anyone have to own any land, period. I mean, owning land is such a fucked up construct in general that it's like. I mean, what is... Yeah. And then it's just like, you know, all these public spaces are not necessarily, I mean, in my opinion, they're not, they're not just publicly owned spaces. They're government owned spaces where you have public access to them. That is not public land. Public land is a collectively, I mean, a space that no one, I mean, in my opinion, that no one would own, that anyone has access to. And we all are responsible for stewarding it and being respectful and living in reciprocity with it. That is what we... is public land. The government cannot own land and make it public. That's not, in my opinion, that's not public land. I mean, that's owned land that I'm allowed access onto because I'm a citizen or whatever. I mean, yeah, who knows? Because like, I don't know. But, anyway, I'm just rambling now, but... [K] No, but I'm glad that you... I'm glad that we touched on asking permission from, you know, the beings that live here because it, uh, this is a segue for me to share my woke-est take that all the other white people are going to be like, "shut the fuck up, you idiot." Even some of my friends, even some of my friends who are vegan, think I'm a little crazy for this one. But like plants? Sentient. [N] 100% [K] You don't get to absolve yourself of killing to sustain yourself just because you don't kill animals. I'm vegan. It's because, you know, industrial farming is, is terrible. But I've, I've been thinking a lot about veganism and whiteness lately, and I think a lot of white vegans end up unironically doing like, native savage bullshit when they come for indigenous people for hunting. And my even woke-er take is that rocks are sentient. [N] Hell yeah they are. [K] But yeah, I think... I'm, I'm pro vegan. I think you should be vegan, for sure. Instead of, like, buying meat from a fucking store. Buying dairy from a fucking store. Like, if where you're getting your animal products is factory based, I don't think you have any excuse not to cut that out, but I think it's a worthwhile thing for everyone to confront whose life they take in order to sustain their own, and how you give life back. [N] Mhm. Whose life you take and exploit. Because, there are levels of exploitation of animals, right? Like, the dairy industry. While you're not necessarily killing the animal, I mean, eventually they will be killed because that's how our industrial and factory farming works. But ultimately, like you are exploiting that animal for the purpose of getting the milk. I mean, you're forcibly inseminated them to get milk, you know, constantly. So that, so like... but you eat vegetables and people, so many people are exploited in that process. I mean, I worked on a farm. I worked on a vegetable farm as vegan. [K] A small scale organic, too. Not even like a big... [N] Yeah. Small scale organic. And I mean, I don't necessarily know how many vegans reckon with the fact that most vegetable farmers are killing animals on their farm. "Wild animals" I guess is what we would call them. Like are, are killing the gophers, they're killing the groundhogs, they're killing the raccoons, they're killing rabbits. They're killing deer so that they don't eat the vegetables so that you can eat the vegetables. What about that? Like, what about that killing? I mean, what is that? You know, like, there are so many layers involved in farming vegetables even, that are you are killing beings, you are exploiting beings. And you... are you not going to reckon with that? Are you not going to sit with that? Or are you just going to say that, "Oh, because I'm not eating animal products, I'm doing the right thing." Well, you know what I mean? I mean, even dairy is a post-colonial concept, like in terms of, at the United States. I mean, that's like, that was brought here. [K] Right. Like, like dairy cows. [N] Cows and goats. But, you know, it's... There are so many lives lost for us to eat anything, period. And that is something that we need to, you know, reckon with as a society and individually as we alter our ways of living to be more in alignment with our principles and values. [K] Absolutely. I understand why a lot of vegans fight back against these talking points, because they're often used as excuses by white people to not be vegan. [N] Right. Of course. [K] Right? It's often white people invoking indigenous cultures sort of as an excuse to not change their own behavior, but certainly it's something that vegans need to confront. To really consider, you know, why their values are what they are. Why are you vegan? And as we move towards, hopefully, a future where we don't exploit animals and people and plants in this way, how is that going to change, you know, your diet? [N] Right. Yeah, 100%. And, you know, and now I'm just going to bring it back to Iowa City, since this is going to be an Iowa City based podcast, quick, and just say that I think Iowa City likes to think of themselves as a really radical, revolutionary place. Maybe they wouldn't say revolutionary. Maybe I'm just subscribing that... [K] I think progressive, I think confidently we can say progressive. Like, Iowa City thinks of itself as a place that really is a bastion of progress in Iowa. [N] Right. But where's the land back? [K] Exactly. [N] We're getting nowhere. We are getting no, nowhere, if we are not reckoning with whose land we are on and trying to... I lost... [K] Right, right that relationship. [N] Yeah, mhm. [K] I'm going to, I'm going to just mildly clarify. I don't think we're making no progress. I think white people in the city are making no progress. I think indigenous people are making progress of their own accord, like Great Plains Resilient Hub, Resilience Hub. That is, to me, you know, it's, it's in ways land back. Right? I mean they now are stewarding this, this land but they had to buy it from the city. That's ridiculous. [N] I mean, that's, right? [K] Like the city should have just given it over. [N] I love, I love the Great Plains hub. I love it. It's awesome. It's cool. The fact that they have that area is amazing. And also, I think that the city should have given it to them for free. Period. Point blank, no questions asked. They should be giving that land back for free. There should not have been a situation in which Great Plains had to go through this governmental process to purchase the land, get it rezoned, [K] Raise funds. [N] You know, all this stuff like, what is that? Like, what are we doing here? And, you know the city is going to pat themselves on the back for rezoning that so that they could, so that Great Plains could have their multi-use space, right? Where... they should have never had to go through that bullshit. [K] Exactly. And now, now, I mean, this is at the county level, not the city level, but Iowa City is the county seat of Johnson County. So, they are going to, I mean, they're looking at land. This is all top secret and we don't really know what land they're looking at. But supposedly there's a location for a new $100 million—maybe we don't even know the number yet— jail. With... It's gonna be, you know, they've, they've pitched a fit about the numbers that we're using. And you know, it's, regardless it's gonna be on a plot of land big enough to support 240 beds. [N] Mhm. Land they're buying... [K] That cannot be, that cannot be the direction that we're going with our land. I mean, I'm going to like, put a pin in all of my other non-land based anti-jail arguments and just say from a land back perspective this is fucking insane. Johnson County cannot claim to be progressive. Jon Green needs to stop like, waxing poetic online about being the blue dot in this state and getting attacked by the state legislature when he is supportive of a new build that is going to take land that's already been stolen and devote it to incarcerating indigenous people who are incarcerated currently, actively in Johnson County at a rate that is, I think, 5.5 times the rate that they just exist in the Johnson County population. [N] Yes. I mean, alongside Black Americans, indigenous native people are jailed disproportionately more than their population as they exist. [K] Yep. And people don't think about that because there are so few indigenous people in Iowa. I mean, and it's, when you look at the numbers that are published on the Johnson County website. This is the sheriff's own data. Any layperson can look at that and immediately see the racial disparity. Because of how many black people are incarcerated at the jail. There's a fewer quantifiable number of indigenous people in Iowa and incarcerated at the jail, but when you run the math, the rates are worse than the disparities for black people. Slightly. They're like, very comparable. But it's just a point to make that like, we don't think about that. Ever. When we're talking about race and white supremacy and incarceration. [N] Right. People are often, when they are talking about incarceration rates and disproportionalities and disparities, white supremacy and racism, that is... what they're usually referring to more commonly would be, you know, the experience of black people in America. And, we often are not reckoning with the disparities, disproportionalities of the experiences and incarceration rates of indigenous people. We just don't. I mean, we don't. I think that there's a lot of arguments to be made there about like, why or what's going on. But the mere fact is, is that we need to do better, because that can't be left out. I mean, we can't, we can't be leaving out indigenous people over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. I mean, it's just been a historical pattern since the genocide of the indigenous people of Turtle Island. [K] Like from the very beginning. From the moment that white settlers set foot here, and it's ongoing. [N] And there's just so much erasure of, of that. And, and we are... we do not confront it enough, in my opinion. [K] So true. [N] As a city, as a county, as individual people who claim to be progressive and want to do better and want a better world. Well, you really got to sit with that. That really, really traumatic and harmful history that is our ancestors stealing this land and murdering and genociding a people. [K] Many peoples. You know, not to paint indigenous people as a monolith. There's similarities obviously, especially in the ways that people have been treated. But... [N] Yeah, thank you for that. [K] Genocide of many different peoples with many different cultures. [N] Mhm. Yeah. And the exploitation of their lands. And the segregation of them that continues to this day. Because we don't see it. We don't confront it because we don't see it. [K] Especially in Iowa, because the only, like, there's no reservation in Iowa. I think, in addition to the, like, the Great Plains hub is really cool. I think the Meskwaki, um... is a really cool, I don't know, bit of, of native resistance, I guess, in Iowa. In that they own that land also. Similar, I have similar feelings about it. Right? Like, they shouldn't have to go through the legal ownership process with money and all that bullshit to like, obtain it from the government. But it's not a reservation, um, in the traditional like, legal structure. And so that's really cool to me. But, um, there are so few indigenous people. I think it's... when you look at a map of this sort of area that we're in now and in the southwest, you can really visualize that segregation a lot better, because you've got these national parks that are beautiful and full of white tourists. And then next door you've got like, a reservation where, like, indigenous people who are economically poor live. And it's, it's very stark. And we don't think about that. [N] Yeah. I mean, it was so clear when we were driving through New Mexico. I mean... Yeah, that, last October. It was just so... Yeah, it was so... there was just such a stark difference between the spaces that white people inhabit and the spaces that have been allotted to indigenous peoples of that land. And that's, you know, something that is never lost on us when we are traveling through North America, in the United States. I think it is often lost on a lot of people, as they want to go on vacation and do fun things, and they don't want to sit with these really hard feelings and really sad things, and really traumatic things that don't have to dampen your experience. I mean, I... we are never not talking about these things or thinking about these things when we're on these types of trips or really any trip at all. And it doesn't ruin the experience at all. [K] It heightens it for me. It... I learn a lot being in these spaces and being able to devote, you know, all of my brain energy towards that. We were talking earlier about anti-racism, and, you know, I'll add now, like, decolonialism being a 24/7 mindset, it's work all the time. And, you know, we, we work all the time on a lot of things in addition to those two things. And this vacation is a break from some of that, you know, some of the more mundane logistical aspects of work that have been bogging us down and burning us out. But, vacation isn't a time to escape the mental work. It's actually the time that you have to devote to it the most. And I find it really fulfilling and really rejuvenating to have time in these spaces to devote to that mental work. [N] Yeah. I mean, I can't even imagine, like, being in this space and not thinking about all those things and just being so grateful. It adds a level of gratefulness that I feel, I think, to even just sit five feet away from a rock this large like, I'm never... it's never lost on me, the privilege to be in a space like this and, and it's never lost on me the sadness of some of that. A lot of this, you know, ecological destruction that may not be because of people being in this space, but because of capitalism and colonial exploitation that has led to climate collapse, which is affecting these really meaningful and beautiful spaces. [K] That really delicate balance that is being thrown off as a consequence of our actions, even if not directly. [N] Yeah. And, I can't imagine being here and not giving thanks to all the living things that make this possible and all of the living beings in the past that made sure that this was here today. [K] Yeah. Well, I feel like we've blabbed on for long enough. We should probably get back to hiking. [N] Yep. All I want to say is that I think Iowa City should ban mono crop farming within city limits and ban meat farming within city limits. So, yeah, if the city of Iowa City is listening to me... [K] And we should dissolve the police department and bolster the Climate Action Division so that we can actually restore these ecosystems. And we should... [N] Give land back. [K] Give land back, and let Great Plains and other indigenous groups and individuals lead the way on restoring our relationship with the land. And we should not build this fucking jail. [N] Nope. [K] Peace. [N] Love. Fuck Prisons. Anarchy.