Dr. Kelsey Leonard on Indigenous Tradition + the Rights of Water

Kelsey Leonard: [Speaking in Shinnecock] So hello and welcome, everyone. My name is Kelsey Leonard. I introduced myself in my Shinnecock language, so I’m from the Shinnecock Nation and our territory is located on the southern shore of what we call Pamona. But what’s currently known as Long Island, New York. But today I am calling in voicing in from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. I am here for research that I conduct on water science and water governance and looking about how we can ensure water justice not only for our communities, but for the water itself and particularly the the Great Lakes in this region for our future generations in the face of our current climate crisis.

Aurora: Wow, beautiful. And so, Dr. Kelsie, for those who may not be as in touch and those who may not have watched your TED talk. So for those listening, please make sure that you like and watch a phenomenal TED talk. Can you set context for the for those of us who may not know, what does water justice mean to you?

Kelsey Leonard: Yes, well, I think for me – and I and I feel that it’s really important that folks work to form to have a general understanding of the foundational concept of water justice from a global perspective, but also recognize that there is a local relevance and a local connection that needs to be formed to the broader concept and context. And so my personal definition of water, justice that I’m going to share with you now may be a little different from other folks whose definition of water justice. And I think that’s OK and that’s important. Globally, though, internationally, within the larger environmental justice movements that we see internationally, water justice is ensuring that there is adequate water security for peoples around the world. And that means that there’s an adequate quantity and quality of water to sustain our daily livelihoods. But it also goes a step further and in in understanding water, justice is not just what do we as people need to maintain our daily livelihoods, but what does the water need? What is the larger ecosystem that depends on different water scapes and water environments, hydro environments need to live and to survive and to thrive? And so in my work in promoting water justice, I do it from a particular localized concept of being a Shinnecock woman. In our language, Shinnecock means ‘people of the stony shore.’ So I really believe that our ancestors set out for us to be these protectors, to be the the folks that made sure that that shore, that place where freshwater and saltwater meets and forms this beautiful landscape, water escape that we now often flock to for solace and calm is something that we protect for future generations and for time immemorial. And so for me, I have this larger understanding of what water justice means at a global scale, but at a local scale. For me personally, it’s about how do I protect the ocean? How do I protect that beautiful shoreline of Long Island? And now where I currently live, how do I protect my new home of the Great Lakes?

Aurora: You know, I think one of the connections that may get lost for many of us is – you know, I always think that what percentage of our of our being, our bodies are made of water? You know, 70 percent of our brain is is water. And then the other flipside of that externally is the concern that we have about our water and our water bodies and what they represent not only in the sustenance of our planet, but what they represent and the sustenance of us as human beings. You know, there’s this big concern that by 2030, you know, seven hundred million people will be displaced worldwide due to water scarcity. And it’s hard to sort of conceptualize that and understand it in this definition that you’ve given us that is multi-dimensional, right?

Kelsey Leonard: Yes.

Aurora: And I don’t know if you can sort of offer anything within that construct for us to understand the global implication of it, understand the ecological local implication of that, and then the implication to us as humans as individuals.

Kelsey Leonard: Yes, definitely. And I think the first place to start with that is for your audience, for for listeners today to think about how you relate to water. Do you find that you relate to water in such a way that you see it as an infinite resource? Something that’s: Oh, it’s always gonna be there. There’s there’s no problems with my water. I turn on a tap and it comes out. That level of convenience is not something that is experienced by everyone around the world on a daily basis. So when we talk about water, justice or water injustice, it’s getting everyday folks to question what is my level of convenience or my level of of expectation and entitlement when it comes to water, because it’s going to be different for every single one of us. Now, I didn’t always have this level of of awareness – I think I had a level of awareness, but it wasn’t as pronounced in terms of me understanding that other folks around the world. I didn’t realize that there was a water problem, that water was a finite resource and that we were going to face these scarcity issues. That had always been something that I had grown up with because I’m an indigenous woman. But getting to a point in my scholarly and professional career to realize that other people – that’s not their existence. Other people don’t have that frame of reference, maybe even for a portion of their life, let alone their whole life. And there was one moment in my journey where it was so pronounced. I was at a conference, an indigenous conference, and we had, you know, indigenous people from all over the world that were there. And it was actually a conference on water. So it was really beautiful. And we were in South Dakota, in a really beautiful part of the world. And we had indigenous peoples from out here in New Zealand and indigenous peoples from all over the United States and Canada that that were there and talking about our experiences with water. And someone asked a question where we pulled the audience and said, how many of us have had to drink bottled water at some point in our life as our only main source of water? And every hand in the room went up. And that was so profound for me, because in our communities, we’re not born into this existence of being able to turn on the tap. That wasn’t something that I trusted until I became a water scientist and I understood, you know, living in different places. But I never drank in my households, in my family on Long Island and then when we lived other places around the world, we never drink out of the tap. It was always bottled water. And it wasn’t even just our reservation territory, you know, on Long Island, it’s, you know, has massive water concerns across the board and all different types of communities. And now that you asked me that question about that, my journey and where this sort of level of advocacy and understanding and awareness for water insecurity and water being a finite resource came from, that was a very, very pronounced moment in my journey. And it I think back I was about 16 years old and I was at a another native youth conference in San Diego, California, by an organization that I then went on to become a female co president for called United National Indian Tribal Youth. But in this youth conference of 3000, the keynote speaker said, How many of you have a family member or you yourself that is afflicted with diabetes? And every hand in the room went up.

Aurora: Oh, gosh.

Kelsey Leonard: So when we think about water injustice, it’s directly related to our well-being and the well-being of our communities. And that’s now even more pronounced when we see – when we think about the impacts that COVID-19 has on our communities, are existing health conditions like being prone to diabetes, being prone to high blood pressure, being, you know, having poor life expectancies are already preexisting conditions, putting our communities at a higher risk for COVID-19. And then you add on the, you know, the audacious impact of not having access to clean water or one of the key preventative measures against COVID-19 is washing your hands, you really start to see the connection. You start to see that if we can advocate for water justice, if we can advocate for the health of our planet, we start to really advocate for our health as individuals and human beings. And it has to start somewhere. So for me, it starts with water.

Kelly: How does my water entitlement cause harm? Dr. Kelsey.

Kelsey Leonard: I think the greatest harm is the unconsciousness. Right, entitlements aren’t necessarily malicious. They don’t necessarily come with a malicious intent. They’re often they’re often the most damaging and most harmful. When they’re unconscious, when they’re implicit. When we just do them without thinking about it. And then when we do it so frequently and we have so many aspects of our lives that are prone to those water entitlements and water complicity, it becomes from a molehill to a mountain. And it’s almost it feels almost insurmountable, the way in which we take for granted freshwater on our planet. Generally folks can say, oh, I’m leaving the tap on too long or I mean, I’m spending too much time brushing my teeth or taking a shower. And yes, if we can if we can shorten those things, that definitely will help. But the big things that are cutting into our water resources on the planet are agriculture are the clothes that we wear and consume. It’s also technology. You know, I think we’re gonna see data in the next 10 years coming out of COVID-19 and its impacts with people needing so many individual technological devices like iPads and iPhones and laptops. And all of these devices that we’re going to need right now. And we do need right now to adjust to this new normal of COVID-19. Those natural resources that make those things come from indigenous lands, come from the earth, takes a massive amount of water to cultivate those and extract those natural resources to then make your laptop and make the lithium batteries that support everything that they do. So to answer your question, to really address our entitlements, it’s to say have them not be so unconscious. At least if we’re conscious, complicit, that’s shifting the paradigm. I’d rather have us be consciously complicit in the destruction of the planet than unconsciously, because to me that’s a bit of understanding, truth and reconciliation. And you can’t move forward. You can’t get to a newer level of understanding and innovation in our world and as a society, if we aren’t telling the truth and we can’t tell the truth until we are conscious in every action that we undertake in our daily lives.

Aurora: You know, you talk about the consciousness, right? The consciousness of whether, as Kelly said, the entitled entitlement of me to use or not use. There’s something that comes up for me with regard to the consciousness of all of us having the right to clean water. You know, when you talk about bottled water and some some members of our human community actually spending their entire lives drinking water out of a bottle. There’s also this notion for me of honoring the fact that water and clean water is part of a mother Earth’s offering to us but it’s also is an opportunity for all of us to have it in its purest and cleanest form and a responsibility that we have towards that. And I don’t feel that we all consciously even have that awareness. And I know that’s a that’s a bigger awareness of just even a consciousness of the tap overflowing when I’m brushing my teeth.

Kelsey Leonard: In my TED talk, I talk about granting legal personhood to water, which is definitely a strong legal mechanism, an instrument that that folks should look into and explore. But the other aspect that isn’t really presented in my TED talk is around the human right to water. And this has been something that’s been advocated for for over 10 years. There’s a General Assembly resolution from the United Nations that has recognized that there is an international human right to water. Now, it’s a non-binding resolution, which is for a lot of things that come out of the United Nations can be very difficult to implement because it’s non-binding. But it points to a historical moment in our global society where we are consciously saying that every human on this planet has a right to water. For them to meet their basic livelihood and daily needs. Right. So we’re not saying that you have a you know, you have an inherent right to use all of the water you want, you know, run your business and and pollute the planet. No. But what we are saying is that that humans should be able to have that level of of dignity and that non access to water should not be a reason to strip someone of their dignity. I really am a strong advocate for the human right to water for these very reasons that that people should not have to live their whole existence on bottled water and the economic costs that are associated with that, when other folks around the world don’t have to potentially even pay for water. AAnd so there’s a lot that has to change both in the policy realm, in the legal realm, in our engineering realm. We have dilapidated infrastructure across the United States and Canada. Some of our pipes were built over 100 years ago, if not more. And they’re they’re falling apart. And so when we think about, you know, politicians, legislators, everyday citizens that are out there advocating for the Green New Deal in in our country and in the United States, and that’s a big part of it. You know, we can green our economy even in the water sector by investing, you know, a whole lot of infrastructure dollars into our piped water systems and making them on par for 2021, which will it soon will be.

Kelly: =When you say legal personhood, can you just define that for me?

Kelsey Leonard: I hesitate and I cringe a little bit because it is a legal mechanism and a legal philosophy that is very much commonly understood through a lens of Western law. And and so what what do I mean by that? From a Shinnecock legal perspective there are rights of being of existing, of having a consciousness, of being a person that are the same for me as a human or being a part of the human species as there are for our whale relatives or as there there is for water. That’s very different from the Western understanding of legal personhood, which is the granting of personality understandings, something that is not of the human species being entitled to rights of of a human being. So legal personhood, if we put it into layman’s terms or more simplistic terms, it’s the idea of saying that right now, generally the average American does not see water as being alive.

Kelly: Hmm.

Kelsey Leonard: The average American understands their dog to be property and not necessarily a family member. The rights of nature and granting legal personhood to water or to your dog is an affirmation that says that that living being is entitled to certain rights and protections under the law. So for granting legal personhood to water, it particularly frames it as an understanding that a water body has the right to exist, flourish and naturally evolve.

Kelly: Mm hmm.

Kelsey Leonard: And you might say, well, that doesn’t all water have that right? Isn’t it already doing that? Well, not if you put a dam on the river, not if you put levees in. Not if you have any type of human manmade infrastructure that is put in to confine about water body and manipulate it. And so when we think about what has been the legacy of the United States in comparison to other countries, we now see other countries like China, like India and others around the world that are also seeing an increased proliferation of hydro projects – so sort of the damming of nations. But the United States was the leading country in the proliferation of hydro projects and dams and in many ways still is because we’re exporting that knowledge of how we played God. And that was really the terminology of the Army Corps of Engineers for much of the 20th century. And we’re exporting that that ideology, that philosophy of man can conquer nature to other parts of the world for the proliferation of these hydro projects. So that is a threat to the legal personhood of water, to the ability for water and water bodies, rivers, creeks, streams, lakes to be able to exist, flourish and naturally evolve without our human manipulation.

Kelly: Wow. Dr. Kelcy, that’s blowing my mind.

Aurora: And I think it’s actually connected. Right. And to me, it’s connected to how you talked about the injustice of humans having access to water and the loss of dignity to the being. Well, it’s the same thing with water. We’re doing the same thing to water. We are manhandling it.

Kelly: We are extracting.

Aurora: We are extracting it. We are damaging it. We are Manipulating it and then to serve out our selves.

Kelly: I would say terrorizing it. But yeah.

Kelsey Leonard: And I think that’s so interesting, the the modality of language that we that we use in understanding the injustice of indigenous peoples that are often on the front lines of water protection, defending their water relations, that that kinship connection that they have to water are often labeled as terrorists. I think, you know, you really hit it on the head. There is. Are we terrorists for wanting to protect the water? Or is the rest of the world terrorists because they want to pollute it?

Aurora: Yeah, I mean, that literally that just brought – I mean, that actually just brought me to tears. Right. This is where it’s so messed up. It’s sort of this Westernized notion that actually is -.

Kelly: I would say, white supremacist cultural conditioning.

Aurora: That says I have ownership.

Kelsey Leonard: Well, and there there definitely is a racial-racialization of the term terrorist. When we think about land defenders, water protectors around the world, not just in the United States, but they are being murdered at exponential rates. Land defenders, water protectors in in Honduras, in in Ecuador and in Mexico have been targeted for just wanting clean water, labeled terrorists for wanting clean water. It threatens big business, it threatens corporations, it threatens the autonomy and the authority of the state of the colonial state. When we think about shifting these water paradigms to recognize legal personhood of water, to recognize the human right of water, that is a massive threat to the colonial state and the colonial mindset.

Kelly: Yes. What do you mean by Colonial State?

Kelsey Leonard: So the Colonial State is any government that still is colonizing a territory that is not their indigenous land and is colonizing communities of marginalized populations that have existed on that land prior to the formation of their new state. Embedded within the colonial state, as you mentioned, is the hierarchy of ideology that is based within white supremacy. And when we’re seeing the injustices around our world today that’s calling out systemic racism, embedded within systemic racism is the colonial state and the the ideology of the protection of the colonial state. And so I think what we’re seeing now, too, with calls for Black liberation is also calls for recognizing indigenous sovereignty. They go hand in hand. You can’t dismantle systemic racism within our world without decolonizing. And so that’s where you’re seeing a lot of allyship of of community co-learning and sharing about our experiences. Because for a lot of folks, you know, even other persons of color, they may be unfamiliar with the indigenous experience, particularly as it pertains to water. And my hope is that by shining a light on some of the water injustices facing indigenous peoples, we often start to see some some similarities of shared experience, of how racial oppression as well as white supremacy is linked to our colonized experiences as indigenous peoples.

Aurora: And in appreciating at two to pull on that thread, Doctor, Dr. Kelsey, is that our experience and sort of the impact? Right. That experience being one impact and that this the the the challenges or the impact of water, justice or injustice disproportionately impacts BIPOC.

Kelsey Leonard: Exactly. And I think even going a step further, right? So we’ve laid the foundation of systemic racism, white supremacy and colonization being interwoven and interlinked and being ongoing processes within, you know, our current nation states. We have to go a step further and then also identify the misogyny and the hetero patriarchy that’s also linked to that. So in the work that I do and in our understandings as indigenous peoples, we do not separate the violation or the inherent understanding of viability of Mother Earth from the violence against women that exists within our world in society today.As a global society, if we are OK with violating Mother Earth, We are also unconsciously or consciously saying it’s OK to violate women. There is a innate female connection between the land and water and and us as women, as female bodies on this planet. The sickness we see in the planet is the sickness that we then enact on other bodies across this planet. I do not believe that we can end violence against women until we end violence against the Earth and vice versa. There’s so much within indigenous epistemology is that share that way of understanding from our birth to our death. Well, we really want to take a good look at the violence present on our planet. It’s interlinked to interwoven to the oppression of women.

Kelly: That just clicked something in me that’s like I may have known it all along, but not until you said it is it so clear and rings so true. How do we become more connected to the water, to the earth, to our to myself as a woman. What are your thoughts?

Kelsey Leonard: Well, I would say first, it’s really about understanding the water and the environment that you exist in. We all exist on this planet, but do we know about the land that we’re currently occupying? Right. Who lived here? Who made it so that my home could now exist where it does? Over millennia, someone had to cultivate that environment, that land, so that it could give birth to a new home and a new family and a new society that currently lives on it. So when you hear about land acknowledgments or understanding the land that you currently occupy from an indigenous perspective, particularly within the United States and Canada and other colonial states, it’s about a recognition that there were and are people here that existed before your ancestors arrived and they made it so that you have these beautiful homes and these beautiful communities to live in and these beautiful rivers and streams. And I think that’s a really powerful place to start building a connection, to start understanding. How did you come to exist on this land? And where is the land that you come from? There’s probably a really rich connection to to that place that your ancestors were born out of. So that’s a step one. Then the step two that, I say to folks is, OK, now you know about the people who were here before you. What about the land and the water itself? How have you built a connection in your present existence? Right, so the first step was kind of going back. Understanding your past and the collective past of the place that, you know, occupy, the second step is understanding your current existence as it connects to other aspects of your life and the environment around you. And a way to do that is to find the water body closest to you. Maybe you live in a desert and that might be a rain barrel. Maybe you live near a river. Maybe you live near the ocean. Go and actually visit. Be in nature. I think if anything, there are. Some unique opportunities that COVID-19 has presented us with an ability to physically distance and connect with nature. You have to socially distance because you get to be very social with the water. You get to go and visit and talk to the water. Talk to the trees. Yeah, you might feel like a crazy person because you’re not used to this type of socialization. So that would be, you know, step two is to understand your your natural environment, even if you live in an urban location. There is a way to connect to nature. There are places to connect. And so that’s where I would go next. And then once you do those first two steps, it’s about then going to that third step. Past, present. Future action. What are you going to do to ensure in the same way that those ancestors did, that you’re cultivating a planet that future generations can live and thrive and flourish? And it’s not just future generations of humans. It’s future generations of all beings on this planet. And that might seem insurmountable when you take it in its totality, but just start with something small. Maybe you have a beautiful lake near your home and you say that in three generations of my grandchildren. I want them to be able to enjoy that lake in the same way that I have. So you go out and you do what you need to do to figure out how to protect that lake. There probably are some threats to that lake. There probably are maybe folks that are doing really great things to protect that lake. Donate to them, have a conversation with them. And even if it’s just committing to yourself that every day you’re going to go and visit with the lake and check in and say, hey, how are you doing? I know that that conversation might seem strange to folks. But our planet and our world is really strange right now. So one more strange thing probably isn’t going to push us out of the atmosphere.

Kelly: It may even make us feel good.

Kelsey Leonard: Yeah. And I think that I really want your listeners to to know that as well. When we think about what types of water makes us feel good. I really hope people also think about what types of water makes us feel bad. And what are you doing to change the bad water in our world? People love going to the ocean. I live on a first nation indigenous community surrounded by the Hamptons. We are the playground of the rich and famous of New York City. And we have been for at least two centuries, if not longer. But they come because they want to embrace that quote unquote, beautiful, imaginative, speculative space of ocean and pristine and an untouched nature. Yet they don’t want to do anything to fix the effluent that’s being dumped into the ocean from paper mills. They don’t want to do anything to fix the polluted stream that’s right behind their house. They’d rather take a vacation somewhere pretty. Because the bad water that’s that’s that’s too difficult to deal with or to address. It’s easier to look away. How do you think the water feels? The water doesn’t get to take a vaction in the Hamptons.

Kelly: You said so much and our theme for this season is community. And me as a white person, I see a lot of in myself and others around me that community is a forced, constructed, sometimes paid for thing. And and I look to Aurora and people in my life to to create and be a part of re humanizing myself as part of a greater community. So I just wanted to ask you what community meant for you. Knowing that. All of this is just so you’re so deeply connected to it.

Kelsey Leonard: For me, I love this question. Thank you so much for asking it, because there is a word that is just kind of plastered everywhere in our in our community for the Shinnecock nation. And we’re also a community that, because of colonization, is in a process of reclamation and idolization for our language. So over the years, you know, we’ve been growing. But there’s always been a word, at least in my lifetime, that’s that’s been plastered everywhere, you know, on our newsletters, on our buildings. And it’s called the word is: Mamoweenee. And it means that we move together. I don’t even know if we have a word for community in in our language, but I feel like that would be the word. And I feel like in the water work that I do, that’s a part of it. The waters are part of a community. And when we think about, you know, how water moves and flows, it moves together. Everything’s connected. And that’s my vision for a global community that is thriving.

Aurora: That’s absolutely beautiful. As our listeners hear this and sort of get their heads wrapped around this notion, what would your what would your ass be? What would you want them to opt into, Dr. Kelsey?

Kelsey Leonard: I think I’d have to go back to where we started this this conversation. Everyday being conscious enough to wake up and say, what am I going to do for the water today? Or making it your bedtime mantra. If the water is a part of our community, then that means that every day you did something to move us forward together. That’s what I hope people opt in for.

Aurora: This has been beautiful. Thank you so very much for your wisdom, for your guidance and for all the work that you continue to do to evolve our consciousness.

Kelsey Leonard: [Shinnecock language] Thank you both so much. It really was a pleasure to speak with you. 

Aurora: Can I just say how moved I was by the conversation?

Kelly: Yes! Not only moved, completely activated to start thinking about our waters.

Kelly: Thank you all for listening. Find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @the opt in.

Aurora: Music for this episode is by Jordan McCree. And the Opt-In is produced by Rachel Ishikawa.

Kelly: See you next week.

Aurora: Bye