Talking Wings - The Collective Behind the Summit
Throughout this series on Decolonization and Food Sovereignty, I have had the honor of speaking with several of the individuals you will hear from at the North Country Art, Land, and the Environment (NCALE) Summit. It is immensely important to share their stories as we look to regenerative solutions for our collective future. Talking Wings Collective, the creators behind the summit, could not agree with this more. This series would not be complete without hearing their inspiring words.
The Individuals Behind Talking Wings
The core team and artist couple at Talking Wings and the subjects of this interview are Tzintzun Aguilar-Izzo and Blake Lavia. In the context of the conversations that will be taking place at the NCALE Summit, positionality is of constant importance:
Tzintzun: I want to say right off the bat that I did not grow up in the North Country. I grew up in Mexico, and I am of Purépecha, Nahua, and Mediterranean descent. However, I do look “white.” I grew up as a white person in Mexico. So, I come with that baggage and that positionality. I came to the area because I went to school at St. Lawrence University.
Blake:. I came to the United States to study at SUNY Potsdam. I am from Italy. My background from college and beyond is mostly in the visual arts and filmmaking. Since then, I have expanded from filmmaking to novel writing and illustration.
Burning or Breathing: A Documentary About Earth Guardians
The summit will conclude with a screening of Talking Wings’ latest documentary, Burning or Breathing, which follows Earth Guardians across Turtle Island (North America). From the Kaniatarowanénhne/St. Lawrence River Watershed in the North Country (Haudenosaunee territory) to the Antigua River Watershed in Veracruz, Mexico (Totonac/Nahua territory), the documentary highlights the regenerative solutions being used by Earth Guardians not only to thrive off the earth but also to heal it. Blake explained what gave rise to such a momentous project:
Blake: We want to explore solutions for the present and the future - solutions that can help us save the planet from the climate crisis that is becoming increasingly dire. Burning or Breathing is a collection of short documentaries that we will expand over the years. These documentaries feature Earth Guardians across Turtle Island and hopefully will expand beyond the continent. These Earth Guardians are people fighting for their communities and their environment…Our hope is to create an expansive website that will not only function as an encyclopedia of what these people are doing, but also spread a positive message that goes against the doomsday rhetoric that we so often hear in the mainstream news. We want to spread a message that says yes, there are people all around you that are doing amazing work, yes it is possible to change things, yes it is possible to have a future for ourselves, our children, and future generations to come.
COVID-19, Racial Justice, and the Urgent Call for Regenerative Solutions
COVID-19 and the ongoing movement for racial justice in the United States of America and across the world are, to a critical eye, obvious manifestations of the settler-colonial and environmental paradigms that I have described throughout this series. COVID-19 is but one symptom in the declining health of our planet; the movement for racial justice is not new but has intensified as BIPOC collectively confront the settler-colonial structures that benefit from racial injustice. Our world must go through an immense process of healing. The solutions that will be featured at the summit can serve as an integral part of this process. So as Blake and Tzintzun knew, despite the global pandemic, the summit must go on, even if it may look a little different than expected:
Tzintzun: The entire global reality for everyone has shifted. We were forced to move the events online. At first, we were thinking of just making it a carbon copy of the previous version of the summit, but then we quickly realized that would have been a grave mistake. Why? Because the conversations for so many people have shifted. So many people’s lives have shifted. It is important to address all of those questions that are now troubling people on a day to day basis. So, to a certain degree, it turned out for the better. Environmental justice was always going to be present in this summit. However, the movement for racial justice, which has always existed in this country, has now swept through the national discourse, becoming present in most people’s minds. It thus needs to be addressed urgently, more urgently than ever. We shifted one of the events to address environmental justice and racial justice in the North Country. Without it, the event would have of course been incomplete and harmful to the general discourse. When it comes to COVID, the health of communities has always been vital and was going to be addressed in the summit. COVID, however, made extremely evident how the environmental racism that many communities have suffered can only harm communities more in the face of a pandemic.
The Issue of Settler Colonial Language: Speaking Through Art
Something it is easy to forget is that the language, English, that I and many other residents of Turtle Island, and for that matter the world, are constantly speaking is itself settler-colonial in nature. The hegemony of settler-colonial languages within education, research, and academia problematizes any conclusions we can draw from such resources or institutions. Tzintzun explains the role that art can play in this respect:
Tzintzun: When we talk about the environment, it is very easy to look at it through colonialist terms, such as settler-colonial scientific terms. At its foundation, science is built upon a settler colonialist society and colonialist perceptions of the land, people, and cultures. In delving into these conversations, it is very important to use other approaches that aren’t completely dominated by settler-colonial discourse and to use other forms of storytelling. When it comes to the environment, it is very important to decenter the settler-colonial or scientific discourse and allow the discourses of cultures, the land, and water itself to come forward and speak. Of course, a lot of that cannot be done with the spoken word, for right now we are speaking in the settler-colonial language of English…The artists we are working with and the art we have made is a very humble attempt to approach those themes through other means.
Cultivating Agency for a Better Future
The North Country Art, Land, and Environment Summit will serve the purpose of cultivating a sense of agency for the future. I conclude this series with Blake and Tzintzun’s hope for the impact the Summit will have on the North Country:
Blake: I think our biggest hope, particularly for the area, is that people become aware of the different work, struggles, and achievements that have been happening in the region. There are people who have been working on incredible projects that can really make a difference in the environmental future of the region.
Tzintzun: As we do our very humble work of weaving these different stories, people, and storytellers together, we are hoping that the settler-colonial lenses that we are trained to use will be put into question. The audience will be encouraged to analyze their own biases, their own perceptions of what the environmental movement is and means in this area. Hopefully they can start thinking about the environmental future of the region and new ways to understand these realities, new ways of understanding these futures…What needs to happen to make everything work together is communication and knowledge sharing.
As Blake and Tzintzun have iterated, the Summit will be a touchpoint for conversation and storytelling, nurturing an environment where all can learn, share, and grow. Let us build a better future together. We can truly change the world if we take the time to learn.
The North Country, Art, Land, and Environment Summit is being organized by Talking Wings Productions and will take place between September 9th and October 2nd, 2020. Their team is primarily comprised of Blake Lavia and Tzintzun Aguilar-Izzo. You can find out more about Talking Wings at https://talking-wings.com and the Summit at https://nocoenvironment.org/.
Banner Image Courtesy of Talking Wings.
