TreeSisters founder Clare Dubois implores listeners to “let the righteous rage have its way with us.” This is not a time for business as usual.
In this powerful extended video panel, Jo Overton opens the conversation with this beautiful prayer by Chief Yellow Lark for beauty, for deep listening, for compassion and strength. Later, Jo and other women on the panel speak with fierce clarity about the legacy of 500 years of colonization, Manifest Destiny, genocide, invisibility and being abandoned by governments. As COVID-19 is compounded by the impact of extractive industries of mining and deforestation that harm humans and the earth itself, many indigenous peoples feel called to return to traditional ways. Jo ends with a call to all allies to raise their voices to blast away at indigenous invisibility: “How can you help? See what is around you. Hear what people are saying. We are all being called to do that work.”
Jo was one of four panelists in conversation called “Indigenous Wisdom for the Earth: Indigenous Voices on the Pandemic” with TreeSisters founder, Clare Dubois. Other guests included Atossa Soltani, founder, 18-year executive director and board president of Amazon Watch, Jyoti (Jeneane Prevatt, PhD) from the Center for Sacred Studies and members of the Kuntanawa tribe in Acre, Brazilian Amazon.
