DEI in Context
As diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts are increasingly targeted at the federal level, TWP’s Indigenous Lands Outreach Coordinator, Phillip Chavez, shares his perspectives on the broader context of DEI efforts.
Phillip: “It’s important for people to understand they can’t just look at DEI from the perspective of now. Historical injustices have led us to this point, because it’s never been an equal playing field. Inequality has been here for generations, from access to wealth, to land, to basic resources, to safe environments to live in. We’ve had less than a generation of DEI compared to hundreds of years of unequal systems.
And the history is not that far back. Freedom of religion wasn’t granted to Native American people until 1978. My dad graduated in 1977.
To me, especially being a veteran, this is all about freedom – freedom of speech, freedom of ways of thinking, of ideas.
They’re scrubbing the federal federal systems of all things climate change, environmental justice, diversity, and one of the things that was alarming to me is they’re targeting Indigenous communities, Indigenous knowledge. But the erasure of that knowledge has huge implications.
Even from just a scientific view, you want to take in all data and then make an educated decision. But excluding this and that because it doesn’t fit within your ideology, that’s a danger.
Especially in Indigenous cultures, from my understanding, our inner connection with the environment is relational. These are our relatives, our family members. Would you harm your mother, would you harm your cousin, your relative? If you know your grandmother was sick, wouldn’t you go above and beyond to help her? The more we move away from Indigenous knowledges, the more we separate that feeling from the land.
But everything is sick right now. So how do we address that, how do we allow forest fires back in as a management tool, how do we bring health back? It's by integrating different ways of looking, different ways of perceiving. The more data we have, the better picture we have, the better plan we can make.
Now is a time we need to come together, understand our history, understand where our science comes from, recognize there is value in all of it, and use it to adapt, to move forward, to find different ideas.”
