Patty Krawec
on Becoming Kin and Unforgetting the Past
“We are related. Nii’kinaaganaa.”
This is how Patty Krawec’s book, Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future, begins. Because we don’t exist independently, “we live in layers of relationships, among ancestors and descendants in a web that stretches far beyond our senses.”
How do we live as good relatives? How do we unforget the past and reimagine a future? How do we become kin?
That was the question that provoked her “Medicine for the Resistance” podcast, the one that became a book and was the fuel to all her activism. She is beautifully weaving her own story with the story of her ancestors and macro-themes like creation, disappearance, myth, identity, and spirituality.
Patty is an Anishinaabe / Ukrainian writer from Lac Seul First Nation, who regularly speaks about hard-to-tackle topics like the relationships we inherit, imagining otherwise, surviving through community and kinship, or the decolonization myth.
You will feel very touched by her gentle piece of advice on how not to lose hope:
“It’s ok to be tired, to feel a profound grief for everything that has been lost. The last two years have exacerbated every harmful thing in our society and loss of hope does, at times, feel like the most reasonable reaction. It’s hard to mourn the things that must be mourned when we are inundated by the toxic positivity of good vibes only or movements that base everything on personal choice even while we are surrounded by impossible choices. But even so, hope is praxis. It is defiant. It is, as Mariame Kaba says, a discipline. It is something we can choose. Because we have not lost. Every time we get back up we are showing others that they can too. You have more wins than you think.”
Listen to Patty’s powerful call to unforget your history, read her answers for #inspirators, as she has a powerful message to deliver: “Let’s build with what and who is in front of us and then we see where that takes us, we see what comes next. There are a thousand worlds waiting to be born.”
Thanks, Patty, for being a World Opener!
#INSPIRATORS QUESTIONNAIRE
Name: Patty Krawec
Company / Institution: Nii’kinaaganaa Foundation
Title: Co-Founder / Director
Website: www.daanis.ca
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patty-krawec-369090103/
Country of origin: Canada
Country you currently live in: Canada
Your personal definition of Sustainability: A way of living in reciprocal relationship with the world around us.
Main business challenge you face: Fundraising!
I’m not very good at it and mostly just shout about the Nii’kinaaganaa Foundation on Twitter. The foundation currently supports 10 organizers in communities across Canada doing a variety of land, abolitionist, and culture-based work. We hover around 500 monthly donors in addition to a dozen or so one-time donations each month and it’s been a real challenge breaking through that 500 barrier.
Main driver that keeps you going: We live in a world that is intent upon creating barriers between us, and the obstacles can feel overwhelming. The amount of change that needs to happen can feel overwhelming. Knowing that others are also working on world building, on creating the things that must be created, keeps me working on the thing that is in front of me. And right now, that is the foundation and my writing. We build with what and who is in front of us and then we see where that takes us, we see what comes next. Five years ago, I could not have imagined what my life has become, and yet here I am.
The trait you are most proud of in yourself: My curiosity. I want to know why things are the way that they are, so I follow threads and ideas back to their source and along the way I pick up other knowledge. I don’t worry too much about going down rabbit trails and distractions because they lead me to interesting places. I have a blog that I share with a friend, Highly Pertinent Digressions where we react to each other’s posts without any particular direction, just to see where our curiosity leads us.
The trait you most value in others: Kindness. I really value people with the capacity for kindness because they draw it out of me. I am often headstrong and passionate; I forget to be kind, so having people in my life who remind me to be kind too. In my acknowledgements, I thank a friend for being Thor to my Hulk, because of his persistent kindness and the impact that it has on me. There is no point in building a world nobody wants to inhabit.
Passions & little things that bring you joy: Supernatural and XFiles are my comfort shows, familiar universes that I can inhabit briefly when this one becomes too much. Thor Ragnarok reminds me that I can confront colonialism with laughter and joy, as well as anger. I have stickers and washi tape to decorate notebooks and planners. I like the temporary and solitary nature of the artwork in decorating notebooks and planners.
My more public artwork is ribbon skirts, a kind of clothing that Indigenous women and two-spirited people wear. It gives me joy knowing that they are being worn by others and a particular joy when I see somebody wearing a skirt that I’ve made. It’s like I’m there with them. There is a beautiful purity in my grandson and his squinched-up pirate face that he makes until I make it back to him.
The #inspirators who determined you to take the sustainability path:
Leanne Betasamoke Simpson
Robyn Maynard
Kelly Hayes
Isaac Murdoch
Christi Belcourt
Zoe Todd
Keolu Fox
Mayam Garris
S E Lawrence from Seeding Sovereignty.
These are Indigenous and Black academics, storytellers, artists, farmers. They are people we’ve talked with on the podcast Medicine for the Resistance or come across on social media and they are all doing what is in front of them, trusting that others are also doing what is in front of them. There are a thousand worlds waiting to be born, and these are people who are building worlds I want to inhabit.
A hint or starting point for companies or professionals that are taking the first steps in the sustainability journey: Think carefully about your priorities and what it is that you want to sustain, because too often “sustaining” becomes a means to greenwash harmful practices with the illusion of green choices.
Most used and abused clichés in sustainability that bother you: The use of the words “green” “all natural” or “organic” in any advertising copy. Listening to multinational corporations talk about how committed they are to a shared future while their business model devastates local communities is also tiresome.
An honest piece of advice for young people who lose hope: It’s ok to feel these things, to be tired, to feel a profound grief for everything that has been lost. The last two years have exacerbated every harmful thing in our society and loss of hope does, at times, feel like the most reasonable reaction. It’s hard to mourn the things that must be mourned when we are inundated by the toxic positivity of “good vibes only” or movements that base everything on personal choice even while we are surrounded by impossible choices.
But even so, hope is praxis. It is defiant. It is, as Mariame Kaba says, a discipline. It is something we can choose. Because we have not lost. Every time we get back up we are showing others that they can too. You have more wins than you think.
Books that had a major impact on you:
All Our Relations - Winona Ladue
The Solutions Are Already Here - Peter Gelderloos
The Next Apocalypse - Chris Begley
The Actual Star - Monica Byrne
Rehearsals For Living - Leanne Betasamasoke Simpson and Robyn Maynard
As We Have Always Done - Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Elite Capture - Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò
Disordered Cosmos - Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
Must-reads for any Sustainability professional:
Capitalism and Dispossession - ed. David P Thomas and Veldon Coburn
Elite Capture - Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò
The Land is Not Empty - Sarah Augustine
Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future - Patty Krawec
Movies / Documentaries you would watch all over again: Thor Ragnarok, Star Trek, Supernatural, XFiles (even though it’s conspiracy theorist copaganda, I still love it).
Blogs / Websites / Podcasts etc. you visit frequently: Movement Memos. Life is a Sacred Text.
Music that makes you (and your heart) sing: Mountain Hymn by Rhiannon Giddens. Carry it On by Buffy Ste Marie, traditional Irish music, singing with my hand drum group.
Places you travelled to that left a mark on you: Grange circle in Limerick, Ireland, the Orkneys, Bryce Canyon, Mayan temple in Belize, Cape Breton, Sioux Lookout.
Global Sustainability Voices you recommend us to follow:
Winona LaDuke
Keolu Fox
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
Seeding Sovereignty
Trends in Sustainability we should keep an eye on: Grassroots Indigenous-led organizations and movements, particularly those with transnational relationships.
Events we should attend: Indigenous events, local community activities. Talks and panels at local colleges. What’s the point of building a world if we don’t know the people who make up the vast majority of its inhabitants? So many of us in business and academia are isolated in communities that think those who are uneducated are incapable of understanding the complexities of “how things work” when they really aren’t. We need to work at building those relationships and that means showing up at things organized by grassroots community builders.
Associations, business clubs, tribes you belong to – and why:
Strong Water Singers: a hand drum group that gathers weekly to sing and talk. It feeds my soul like nothing else.
NAISA: The Native American and Indigenous Studies Association. I like reading the journals and would like to get to one of their conferences one day.
Sustainable Development courses / trainings / certifications that really teach us how to have an impact: I don’t know of any well enough that I could recommend them, but I would offer some criteria for consideration. It should be driven by the community being impacted, not government or industry, and focus on reciprocal rather than extractive or simply transactional relationships.
Reasons to feel optimistic about our future in 2030: Land Back and abolition are gaining more traction than they have in the past, we are in a time when we can organize around and develop practices regarding these things which seemed impossible even five years ago. Most importantly, people are increasingly organizing outside of government structures and building communities that embody these values.
Reasons to feel pessimistic about our future in 2030: The UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Partnership gives a nod to Indigenous peoples, but it operates within a statist system, so it is unable to truly value Indigenous rights or needs. Even the UN Rights for Indigenous peoples acknowledged the right of states to govern, and given that these states exist on top of and at the expense of Indigenous peoples that is a difficult obstacle to get around.
Regenerative Leadership qualities much needed today: We need leaders who are willing to step down or aside and prioritize horizontal relationships. Most Indigenous communities had a horizontal leadership structure in which leadership roles were temporary or based on the consent of the governed in a meaningful way. And we need leaders who aren’t trying to implement global solutions, there is no single-world solution. There are a thousand worlds waiting to be born and we need leaders who are willing to live within that kind of plurality.
Quote that inspires you:
Ruth Wilson Gilmore has defined racism in a way that I have found tremendously helpful:
“Racism, specifically, is the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.”
It’s too easy to think about racism as hurt feelings or discrimination and it can be those things, but when we get down to it, racism is about who lives and who dies and under what circumstances. It is about highways that divide racially marginalized communities. It is about who gets displaced for mining or development. It is about who populates prisons and where those prisons are located. It is about policies that result in inadequate housing and healthcare and education for the racially marginalized. Thinking about racism in these ways helps me think about where changes need to happen.
Your own quote that will inspire us:
As individuals and organizations, we are reluctant to think about the things we have inherited. Whether it is ancestors who owned slaves or a corporation that dumped toxic waste, we want to insist that it wasn’t us, that it wasn’t our fault. But these are the relationships we have inherited and we are responsible for what we do with it, for how we respond to it. We don’t want to admit these relationships, but there is something profoundly hopeful about transforming these things into something better and undoing the harms that our ancestors have done.
