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Large Scale Stewardship from Patagonia’s Home Planet Fund
Dahr Jamail, Communications and Media Relations Lead at Patagonia’s new Home Planet Fund (HPF), discusses how they are funding large-scale, indigenous-led ecosystem restoration and carbon sequestration efforts around the globe. Indigenous peoples who are living according to their traditional life-ways make up only 6-7% of the total human population, but steward lands on which 80% of the remaining terrestrial biodiversity is found! Thus, these indigenous communities are essential “keystones” of the global population when it comes to environmental stewardship and regeneration. The Home Planet Fund was created with the sole purpose of supporting this indigenous-led keystone work, and has already begun deploying resources to support nature based solutions, biodiversity hotspots, regenerative agriculture, and climate change mitigation efforts in critical regions of our planet.
Officially just launched on Earth Day (April) 2024, the Home Planet Fund’s four initial projects include: supporting traditional pastoralists’ land tenure rights (and regenerative grasslands stewardship) in East Africa (Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya); supporting three Native Alaskan tribes in and around the Tongass National Forest region; supporting intergenerational wisdom transfer work led by women across seven islands in the South Pacific (Fiji, Samoa, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tonga + Vanuatu); and supporting indigenous regenerative farmers at “the top of the world” in the Panj River region of Tajikistan, often called the planet’s “third pole” of ice. Dahr tells us that HPF will deploy more projects in the coming months.
Because Home Planet Fund has been established by the Patagonia “ecosystem” of organizations, and HPF’s operating costs are paid for by Patagonia, 100% of any additional money raised by the organization goes directly to these on-the-ground, indigenous-led projects. You’ll find an explanatory flow chart graphic on their Financials page illustrating how capital flows are deployed and leveraged within this unique model, and you can get involved by supporting these critical efforts too, by making a donation directly to the Home Planet Fund.
About Home Planet Fund, Patagonia, and Founder Yvonne Chouinard
Patagonia, which consistently scores at the highest levels of the B-Certified classification regime for stewardship and sustainability performance, generates over one billion in annual sales, and now directs 100% of it’s roughly $100,000,000 in annual profits to a foundation established by founder Yvonne Chouinard called the Holdfast Collective. Through Mr. Chouinard’s leadership, Patagonia is one of the global leaders in the conscious capitalism and socially-responsible business movements, having helped to found – among others – both 1% for the Planet and the Regenerative Organic Alliance (see related podcast episodes below). Having “given his company to the planet,” Chouinard has long insisted that business can be rooted in ethics and an engine for positive impact, and demonstrates this excellence though both “business unusual” and “philanthropy unusual,” according to Mr. Jamail. The Home Planet Fund, part of Patagonia’s “solar system” of impact organizations, was launched in April 2024.
About Dahr Jamail
Dahr Jamail is an award-winning author and journalist. In 2003 he was one of very few unembedded journalists in the early stages of the Iraq War. He has written for Le Monde Diplomatique, the Guardian, the Nation, the Huffington Post, the Sunday Herald in Scotland, the New York Times, and Foreign Policy in Focus, and has contributed to Democracy Now!, Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera English, the BBC, NPR, and numerous other radio and television stations around the globe. In 2008 he was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Award for Investigative Journalism, and in 2018 the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College awarded him an Izzy for his “path-breaking and in-depth reporting,” work that exposed “environmental hazards and militarism.” He is the author of Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq (2007), The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan (2009), The End of Ice: earing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption (2019), which was a finalist for the PEN E.O. Wilson Science Writing Award, and co-editor (with Stan Rushworth) of We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth. He is now the Communications and Media Relations Lead for the Home Planet Fund.
Resources & Related Episodes
https://www.linkedin.com/company/home-planet-fund
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100087135978703&mibextid=LQQJ4d
https://www.instagram.com/homeplanetfund
Ep. 148 – Jorge Fontanez, CEO, B-Lab USA & Canada
Ep. 114 – Elizabeth Whitlow, Executive Director, Regenerative Organic Alliance
Ep. 95 – John Liu, Founder, Ecosystem Restoration Communities
Ep. 85 – Kate Williams, CEO, 1% for the Planet
Transcript
Welcome to the YonEarth Community podcast. I’m your host Aaron William Perry and today
we’re visiting with Dara Jamil, the Communications and Media Relations Lead at Home Planet Fund,
a new project of the Patagonia Ecosystem. Dara, it’s great to be with you. How are you today?
I’m great Aaron. Thanks so much for having me.
Yeah, I’m really looking forward to our conversation and not only are we gonna
talk a bit about the work you’re doing through the Home Planet Fund, which is really exciting.
We’re also gonna talk a bit about your background as a journalist. You’ve seen so much and have
written and revealed so much on behalf of the world and so I’m really looking forward to diving
into that as well. Thank you, me too. Dara Jamil is an award-winning author and journalist. In 2003,
he was one of very few un-embedded journalists in the early stages of the Iraq War. He has
written for Le Monde Diplomatique, The Guardian, The Nation, Huffington Post, The Sunday Herald
in Scotland, The New York Times, and Foreign Policy and Focus, and has contributed to Democracy Now,
Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera English, the BBC, NPR, and numerous other radio and television stations
around the globe. In 2008, he was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Award for Investigative Journalism,
and in 2018, the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College awarded him an Izzy for his
path-breaking and in-depth reporting work that exposed environmental hazards and militarism.
He is the author of Beyond the Green Zone, Dispatches from an Un-Embedded Journalist in
Occupied Iraq, and The Will to Resist Soldiers Who Refused to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan,
as well as The End of Ice, Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption,
which was a finalist for the Penn E. O. Wilson Science Writing Award, and Dar was co-editor
with Stan Rushworth of We Are the Middle of Forever, Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island
on the Changing Earth. He is now the Communications and Media Relations Lead for the Home Planet
Fund, again a project launched by the Patagonia Ecosystem, or as I understand it Dar, it’s referred
to as the Patagonia Solar System. Is that right? Yeah, I think it’s evolving from an
ecosystem to a solar system now. Yeah, fabulous. Well, I’m so excited. Let’s just dive right in,
and if you would, tell our audience, please, about what the Home Planet Fund is. It’s a very new
project and why you guys are created and what you’re up to already in these first few months of
the organization’s work. Yeah, thanks Aaron. Happy to jump right into that. So, I would imagine
that the majority of your listeners are familiar with Patagonia, outdoor gear, outdoor apparel.
Brand has been around since the 70s. Great reputation, makes fantastic products. Speaking
from experience, I used to do a whole lot of mountaineering and we always held and continued
to hold Patagonia in the highest esteem. And so, in 2022, the founder and owner of the company,
Yvonne Chinard, announced September that year that he was going to give the company away to the
planet. So, what he meant by that was beyond keeping operating costs covered that all profits
were going to be given back to the planet by various ways. And so, he is a long time climber,
and for decades, seeing what was happening on the planet just became increasingly distressed,
and that’s why Patagonia has the ethics that it does. He’s always really gone to great lengths to
try to underscore, look, we understand that we’re in a business that isn’t helpful to the planet,
so we’re going to do it in the best way possible. So, everything from where you source
products to supply chains to how they do everything is right in alignment with,
in my opinion, fantastic environmental values. So, when he made that announcement in 2022,
one of the ways by which they wanted to help the planet was to set aside a chunk of money
to be distributed to indigenous people in local communities around the world. Indigenous people
in local communities, IPLC, it’s a UN term that basically involves all indigenous peoples because
I didn’t know before I came on with the fund that that terminology is very important around the
world because in the United States, we just refer to them as Native Americans or Indigenous
peoples, etc., but most other places, especially in Asia, don’t tend to refer to themselves as
indigenous. It’s more the local community perspective, so a little background on that term.
So, Home Planet Fund was created to distribute money to these folks who are already engaged in
best practices, like what we now refer to as nature-based solutions. It’s simply the way
they’ve always been living. So, things like regenerative farming, living very close to the earth,
creating biodiversity hotspots by their work, having hyper-localized economies within their
communities. So, projects like this, planting forests to taking care of already existing forests,
to taking care of ocean areas around islands where they live in the South Pacific is what
some of our partners do there. So, all of these things with a focus on mitigating the climate
and biodiversity crises and also adapting to the climate crisis. So, we identify these groups,
we establish trust-based relationships with them, and then over time, if the values align,
then we decide to give money to these groups. And what really sets us apart from most other
environmental NGOs is that there’s a few points. One, we give our grants no strings whatsoever,
that by the time we are ready to give a grant, that trust has been established,
and we understand that we are supporting people who already live in best practices,
so they don’t need us to tell them what to do, they already know, which is why
we’re in conversation. They just need support. Another thing that sets us apart is that since
Patagonia provided us all of our seed funding, we don’t have any overhead requirements. So,
everybody that donates to Home Planet Fund, every penny of that goes directly to our partners on the
front lines doing the work. And then third, we work in places where many other people can’t or
won’t, and by that I mean extremely fragile, rural, remote areas, but also places where there’s
conflict. Like one of our original grantees are Pamiri farmers in Tajikistan, where there’s an
active genocide happening. We have another project, I can’t talk about it publicly yet,
but it’s in a conflict zone as well. So, we’re not afraid to figure out how to get in there and
get the money where it needs to be, regardless of where it is on the planet. We launched officially
on just this past Earth Day, so just this past April, but building up to that, since we had two
years from when we originally were funded from September 2022 to that launch, we’ve already had
four partnerships launched and four grants go out the door. And those were happening and
well underway for quite some time before we even launched. So, we literally just yesterday,
from the time of this recording on June 11th, posted an update story on how effective already
those original four grants are by way of how much areas being protected and stewarded,
as well as how much carbon and carbon dioxide equivalent is already being sequestered. And
it’s some pretty phenomenal statistics. So, we’re off to a great start. That’s so impressive.
Would you mind just listing for us where these four initial projects are located? I will and I’m
going to pull up some statistics to share too while we’re here. But so, the first program
are pastoralists in East Africa. And so, these are folks who are in Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya,
and their way of life basically naturally sequesters carbon. So, as they move around using
their best practices as they always have in those countries, and then sometimes even they go outside
of the borders of those countries as well. So, we’re talking about a very, very large amount of
land that’s covered by their semi-nomadic lifestyle with pastoralism. Another grant is,
as I mentioned, with Pamiri farmers in Tajikistan, who are re-establishing native farming practices
and native seeds in areas right up, very far high up in the mountains, nearby the third pole,
which is the largest area of ice outside of the North or South Poles. Another grant goes to
a group of women. It’s called the Shift the Power Coalition. And it’s a group of women
in the South Pacific across seven different islands. And they came together after two massive
cyclones went through there in 2015 and 2016, realizing women, younger generations, and people
women with disabilities needed a voice at the table that they just didn’t have one. So,
we’re supporting them in that kind of action so they can get more involved in mitigation efforts
and have a voice. And relocation is going to happen in some of those islands. It’s because
a sea level rise. So, we’re supporting them in those facets and many more. And then another
of the original grants was with three Native Alaskan tribes up in Southeast Alaska. They’re
all situated within the Tongass National Forest, which is a giant, giant carbon sink. It holds an
enormous amount of carbon compared to all the other national forests in the country. And we’re
supporting them in bringing back their own cultural practices, some of their own traditional
economies, having a voice at the table in terms of what’s going to happen in the Tongass, etc.
So, that just gives you a general idea of the first four grants.
Well, it’s so impressive. And the geographic reach is there’s something about it that’s really
exciting and inspiring. And I’m excited to ask you about some of the work and your perspective
on what’s needed and what’s possible in zones of conflict, especially given your background as a
journalist. And maybe before getting there, we could just talk a little bit about, so Patagonia
seeded and launched Home Planet Fund with $20 million. And because of the structure, Patagonia
is covering 100% of your operating costs as an organization, which as you said, means all other
third-party contributions will go 100% to the projects on the ground, which is obviously
really tremendous in terms of impact and leverage. I’m curious when, for instance, you’re working
with a group of semi-nomadic pastoralists in East Africa, what kind of specific things are you
funding? And what does that look like? What’s needed? I’m just trying to imagine, is it
telecommunications equipment? Is it herd animals? Is it, you know, both of those things and other
things? It’s a lot. That’s a great question. The single most important thing that we are helping
them with is securing their tenured rights to do what they do. So they are consistently running
into problems of developers coming in and cutting off land byways that they’ve used for thousands
of years, issues sometimes across national borders, whether it’s within and between the three countries
where our partners already work, but their traditional practices sometimes have them going
outside countries, outside their countries’ borders into other countries, even where we don’t
have active partnerships. So as well as with private property, you know, someone comes in,
hey, we’re going to build a plant here or a dam or build a road. And then, you know, this access
gets cut off and it’s critical because a lot of the land where they work, in fact, most of it,
is where the Great Migration occurs every year, you know, where literally the Serengeti Plains of,
you know, seeing the herds of elephant and water buffalo and, you know, you name it. I mean,
I think we all know these archetypal animals and these pastoralist work helps take care of the land
in a way where it supports carbon sequestration, biodiversity, wildlife, and growth to where it
literally helps that continue to happen. So the most important thing we do is
helping them actively work to secure their tenured rights to be semi-nomadic and continue
what they do. So they are actively working with lawyers, attending international conferences,
getting support that way. So that’s how some of the funding is used to support them in that.
It’s also used to do more rudimentary things like you mentioned, but equally important,
things like maybe buying seeds if they’re going to do a little bit of farming someplace or tools
or other things that they need to continue their way of life, as well as all the way down.
Sometimes they might find it necessary to use some of it for disaster relief, like if they have a whole
area, you know, that is flooded from an extreme climate event or something like that, on down to
supporting cell phones and chargers and things like that so that they can be out in the field and
that’s going to contribute to their work as well. So it’s, again, it’s used in a wide variety of ways,
but all of them have in concert, the theme is that they’re all towards maintaining that lifestyle
and that way of life and pastoralism, because that is the singular focus of that action just by
that carrying on is sequestering enormous amounts of carbon in the ground. And I’ll just, I’m going
to just bring up a figure in front of me to make sure I say it the right way, but we just on
Home Planet Fund’s website yesterday posted an update on here’s some statistics on some of the
initial impact of these programs and it’s quite amazing. So our partners in East Africa, again,
in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, they are working across an area, stewarding and protecting an area
of 1,645,527 square kilometers. So we’re talking about a massive amount, a massive area of the
planet. And across that area, there’s between two and 500 kilograms of carbon per hectare per year
that’s being sequestered by their work. And so to combine those two figures, I have an astrophysicist
friend, I said, hey, how can we present that to the general public in a way that makes sense
and gives them an idea of how impactful this work is. And so what we came up with was the fact
every human being contains about eight kilograms of carbon in our bodies at any given time.
So on an annual basis, our partners in East Africa, they sequester up to, because again,
it’s between two and 500 kilograms of sequestered carbon per square hectare,
they sequester annually up to the total carbon equivalent of every human being on Earth.
So that gives you a little bit of an idea of how important this work is for the planet.
That’s incredible. Well, it brings to mind for me a question that I hadn’t thought of prior to our
conversation here today, but I’m curious, we’re connected with a number of colleagues and projects
that are looking at blended finance solutions in bioregional contexts for regenerative activities,
carbon sequestration activities, but these are blended finance so that there are investment
opportunities and potentially low interest lending opportunities into these communities.
I’m wondering, are you guys looking at or looking for partnerships with other capital sources that
might be coming out this a bit differently than a straight philanthropic contribution,
or are you sort of just staying in the lane of philanthropy and let whatever else might develop
sort of do so outside of your guys’ coordinating efforts? We are definitely open to different
ideas of finding money and matching grants. We’ve already done several of those. In fact,
we make sure that there’s value alignment because we carried on with basically the same values
as Patagonia. We want to make sure we’re consistent in everything that we do. One of the things we
note on our website is how we do things is as important as what we do. So we try to really
mirror that and walk that talk in how we do these things. So the short answer to your question is,
yes, we are open to doing that as much as possible as long as there’s value alignment between
whoever or whatever that entity is going to be and ourselves. Makes a lot of sense. Well, I will
look forward to falling up with you on that offline as there may be some synergies that emerge there.
And before coming to the questions around your experience in conflict and war zones,
I’d love to learn a little more about the values commitment that you guys have within the Patagonia
Solar System. It’s something I know many in our audience are familiar with, but I’d love to hear
kind of the reiteration and sort of deeper emphasis on what that is and what that means
and what that looks like. Obviously, what Yvonne Charnard has chosen to do as a very successful
entrepreneur is quite different from business as usual at this point in time, right?
Exactly. And business unusual for Patagonia, we’ve taken that phrase helped along by him,
and we call ourselves philanthropy unusual, because we are the result of someone asking Yvonne
Charnard a ways back, hey, what you guys at Patagonia do is so great in your ethics,
have you ever thought about starting an NGO? And at the time he said something along the
lines of, yeah, that’s a good idea. We should think about that. And we are a result of that
specifically. So Patagonia is a fascinating company in that it started out as a climbing
company. Yvonne literally was a big rock climber and started making his own petons, the metal
spikes that are hammered into a rock wall to clip in a rope to and use as an anchor.
And he started making these petons and selling those. And of course, as climbing gear,
there’s no room for error. I mean, this thing, literally people’s lives are depending on it
every day. So you have to make it absolutely the best. Yeah, it has to be flawless. And it was
really that ethic that then as he shifted, and I’ll skip over some of the details, but as that
company shifted from being direct climbing gear to climbing apparel to clothing and other outdoor
clothing, that same ethic and that high standard has always been maintained. And I think that’s
obvious for anybody that has used Patagonia gear and wears it and you keep going back to it. It
comes with a lifetime guarantee. If it ever fails, send it in, you’ll get a brand new one back.
If it wears out, send it in, it’ll be repaired and sent back to you.
That kind of thing has been there from the start and that’s never changed. Along the way,
they ran into things like they were one of the first companies, if not the first,
to start using organic cotton because they were getting cotton from a certain source and
literally brought in all these new products and everybody in that particular Patagonia store
was getting sick. And it turned out, well, there was formaldehyde in the cotton,
because that’s what was being sprayed on it when it was being grown. And so that’s how they learned,
hey, we can’t have these chemicals at all. So they literally went out into the field,
figured out what was going on, it’s the spray, okay, we need to have organic cotton. So that
kind of thing has been reiterated over and over and over through Patagonia and how they source
products to making sure there’s no sweatshops to what’s the supply chain like, is it being shipped
in as carbon neutral way as possible on up to what are the employees paid and the places
where these garments are being made, manufactured, etc. The point is, all through the supply chain,
they as a company, they’re a B Corp and they’ve gone to great lengths to be in as alignment with
that as possible. And they literally consistently are getting some of the highest scores possible
for being a B Corp because of those efforts. And it’s that ethic in those philosophies
that have carried on into Home Planet Fund. And so if you go to the about section of our website,
we get deeply into what are some of those core values, one I mentioned earlier about
how we do things as important as what we do, as well as a lot of indigenous values, things like
kinship, responsibility, transparency, and things like this that we practice within our small team
of the three of us that are the staff, as well as with our partners, as well as with the general
public. And so we have all those values listed out in a little bit more in-depth explanation
as to what those mean on our website that people can check out.
That’s great. And we’ll be sure to include several links in the show notes, including
to the website, which is at homeplanetfund.org. And yeah, we’ll include some LinkedIn and Facebook,
Instagram, etc., social media links as well. And Dar, I mean, this is what a tremendous
position of leadership you’re in now, in this context of the Home Planet Fund,
and what an interesting stage in your career following so much that you’ve done as a journalist
and an author, and particularly some of the work that you’ve done around conflict and war zones,
and also around the climate crisis specifically. I’m struck that increasingly we’re seeing
convergence in conversation and in action between the climate environmental biodiversity crises on
the one hand and the geopolitical warfare extreme violence and disruption and dislocation on the
other hand. And indeed, some of the models would suggest we might be seeing more convergence
in terms of crises around these issues going forward. But in the meantime, your work has
sort of been documenting, observing, and documenting so much of this already. Can you
give us a glimpse into the work you’ve done as a journalist and maybe share with us
some of your perspective that might be unique being right in the middle of some of the
wars and conflict zones around the world? Yeah, thank you. Really great question and
it’s, I think it’ll be helpful and I think underscore a lot of what I just talked about
and regarding Home Planet Fund and add a little bit more weight to it because of my background.
I, before I became a journalist, I was living in Alaska. I was working as for a while as a mountain
guide and later as a volunteer rescue ranger up on Denali, the highest peak on the continent.
And all that is to say, I was acutely aware of the climate crisis happening. This was back
starting in the mid 90s, where when I was getting out regularly spending months of every year on
glaciers and watching them changing rapidly every single year, going year to year. But then when
the Iraq War broke out in 2003, I was deeply moved and troubled by what I was seeing in the media and
the lack of coverage from the Iraqi perspective. And so I basically sent myself to Iraq and became
a journalist and it wasn’t my overt goal to be a journalist. I thought I was just going to go
right about it for a while and then come home and be able to sleep with myself a little bit
better at night because I did try to do something. But going there, there was such a need for good
independent information that my career as a journalist started and didn’t stop for almost
20 years. So I worked there for in and out of the country for 10 years. My trips totaled being in
Iraq a little bit over a year of my life, covered it very, very extensively, including the refugee
crisis, both internal and then external. And then from that, I always knew because I’m living in
Alaska, I wanted to get into climate coverage. And of course, as that crisis was developing rapidly
in a negative way every day, I segue during the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 into
environmental journalism, wrote about that real heavily, and then got hired by Al Jazeera English
and Doha Qatar and went and worked for them for almost three years doing environmental journalism,
but also climate. That’s when I really dove very, very deeply into the climate crisis and writing
all kinds of stories on it. And then carried those trains of journalism on primarily then climate
on up to writing my book called The End of Ice. And it was a book that was a deep dive
into going to the hotspots, some of the biggest climate hotspots on the planet, glaciers in North
America, the Great Barrier Reef, the Amazon Rainforest, et cetera, and went out into the field
with climate scientists, most usually people with 20, 30 years studying that specific thing,
that they had a long-term intimate relationship with the area where they studied. And so wrote that
book, poured my heart and soul into it because it was really my swan song for my journalism career.
But in doing that book, I got very much up to speed on the depth of the crisis that we’re in
and understood deeply, perhaps too deeply, how much trouble we’re in and how many of the feedback
loops are already kicked in and how much warming is already baked into the system. And for years,
during and then after writing that book, I had a dark night of the soul. I was,
I was as big a doomer as you could expect. Just you want to talk to me about the climate,
the first thing you’re going to hear is how screwed we are. And I was not a real fun guy
to be around. We’ll put it that way. But then what happened was my, I met the co-editor of the book
you mentioned. We are the middle of forever, Stan Rushworth, an older fellow who taught
indigenous literature and critical thinking at a community college in California for 30 years.
And he came to some of my talks at the end of I and said, hey, we, there’s so much despair in
the audience, but people here need to understand the indigenous perspective because we’ve already
been through the.
in the audience but people here need to understand the indigenous perspective because we’ve already
been through the apocalypse, you know. And so we had the idea, let’s interview 20 people
and share their perspectives on this poly crisis that we’re in. And that’s what we did. Any kind
of along the way became not just a really good friend, but a mentor for sure. And as we went
through that process, working on that book for the few years that we did, I started to change
because being around indigenous thinking and perspective really started to change me.
And I learned to start becoming less attached to the results of my actions and more focused on,
hey, I have these obligations as a human being on this planet to serve others and serve future
generations and serve the planet. And so my focus shifted from doing actions with the intent
of getting a certain result to doing the actions because it’s the right thing to do no matter
what, damn the results. And then that book led me into doing a podcast where I was interviewing
different indigenous people from around the world about the poly crisis. And one of the people I
interviewed, Dilla Fruz Konek Boyeva, she, we had a great interview and Holding the Fire is the
name of that podcast. I would encourage people to listen to it. And after the interview, months
later, she said, hey, we have this communications position and maybe you should consider applying
for it. And so here we are. And really the punchline of all that, Erin, is for me to have this position
where I can play a small role in helping a fund that is getting money to where, in my opinion,
are the most important places it could go is to supporting indigenous people that are already
doing the work that has to be done for the planet. And I couldn’t have made up a better job for myself
as far as having a role to play that will legitimately help the planet. And as we put it
on the website, we’re literally serving those who serve the planet. And I get a bit emotional talking
about it because understanding the depth of the crisis and now being in a position where I can
do a little bit to help have some healing of the planet, sequestering some carbon,
helping some different indigenous people around the world, give them more support to live
best practices and what we now call nature based solutions. It’s deeply, deeply meaningful to me,
to be in this position. And because of all that, I 100% believe in what we’re doing. And I couldn’t
imagine doing more effective work with my experience than being part of this fund.
That’s so beautiful. Thank you for sharing. And thank you also for sending me a copy of
the book that you did with Stan Rushworth. I’m showing it on screen here. We are the
middle of forever, which is a collection of really wonderful interviews with various
indigenous and community leaders around the world now struck by the accounting in the beginning
of some of the Hopi prophecies being shared not only in the 70s, but clear back in the 40s,
I think, might have been with the global community through the United Nations. And I had,
I was aware that Hopi elders have been sharing at least since the 80s, but I didn’t actually
previously know that the way that these wisdom keepers have been sharing with the world goes
clear back to the time of the Second World War, which of course, the prophecy sort of
referenced with the signposts of the the Gord of Death or Gord of Ashes and the
sacred symbol of the swastika turned topsy-turvy. Of course, the swastika being a sacred symbol in
Asian traditions and native traditions at least and turned 45 degrees as the
nationalist-socialist party did in Germany during the prior to the Second World War. And this sense
that we’ve been in the middle of the apocalypse for so many generations now, it does somehow
provide a sense of hopefulness. And I hear this hopefulness in what you’re sharing with us, especially
after this dark night of the soul that you went through. And thank you so much for sharing with
us so authentically and personally on that. And I imagine that Stan in particular may have played
a special role in your journey as a mentor. And I know you and I have been sharing offline about
very dear mentors in our lives, mine being Kevin Townley, who just recently passed and who was on
our podcast episode 33 and also on our global advisory board for the YNR community. And I was
hoping we could take a few minutes to share a bit about these two extraordinary leaders who have
impacted our lives as they have. And I’m wondering if you might share a little more with us about
Stan and his legacy in the world. I’d be happy to do that. I’ll turn the table on you though,
Erin, and ask you. I’d like to hear a lot more about Kevin. Would you be up for starting us off on
that? Yeah, I’d be happy to. Thanks. It’s, you know, Dar, he transitioned just a couple weeks ago,
not quite three weeks ago. And for me, the emotions are still very high amplitude and there’s still a
real rawness. Got together last night for a few hours with Artem Nikolkov, who’s on our board and
who also knows Kevin very well. And, you know, we shared some tears as we were sitting outside
talking about him and his legacy. And Kevin is the kind of mentor and leader who was a dear friend
and brother to so many and a father figure to several younger men and women. And so there’s this
wild combination of emotions where, you know, on the one hand, there’s a great deal of sadness and
like a missing, right? But on the other, there’s this great deal of gratitude and
celebration Holy smokes to have had such a tremendous friend and mentor as Kevin in my life
and knowing that so many others feel similarly puts a little extra wind in the sales and especially
with the respect with respect to the work that we’re doing through the Y on Earth community,
which I think Kevin sort of understood from a vision standpoint as well or better than
anybody else really. He got that this was one of many gestures in these times and around the world
that are part of this movement for goodness and humanism and caring compassion and love and
kindness in our world and stewardship and restoration and regeneration. And so there’s a sense that, okay,
now and forevermore going forward, this work we’re doing is at least in part a way to pay respect
and honor the life and legacy of Kevin and the gift he gave so many of us in friendship and
support and also being a spiritual elder and teacher, the way he taught us with so much
knowledge and wisdom. Thank you. Thank you. And you wouldn’t be who you are without having
shared that big chunk of your life with them. Yeah. Yeah. And for me, well, I really appreciate
you sharing all that. And when we originally were swapping emails about this leading up to the
interview, I actually was talking about a previous mentor of mine who I shared a little bit about
Stan. And that’s really a whole nother story. But I would be remiss if I didn’t go back and talk
about my dear friend Dwayne French who left the planet back in 2019, not long after my climate
book was published. And I actually, when I moved to Alaska, I’m from Texas originally. And I moved
up to Alaska in 1996 and met Dwayne. And he’s a high-level quadriplegic. He broke his neck when
he was 14 in a diving accident and had then dedicated his life to becoming a fighter for the
rights of people with disabilities. His work helped pass the Americans with Disability Act.
An amazing man. And I took a job as his personal assistant. And when I first started working for
him, I have to share this story because it says so much of who he is. And I had no politics. You
know, I had all this privilege and just didn’t think I need to be involved in politics or worry
my mind with that kind of stuff. And he said, well, what are your politics? Because he is a blue blood
Democrat. And I said, well, I guess I’m a Republican. That’s how I was raised. And he says, you guess
you’re a Republican. He says, well, what are their policies that you support? Or why aren’t you a
Democrat? What are their policies that you oppose? Why aren’t you a green or a libertarian or an
anarchist? And I had no response because I was completely ignorant. And I just said, well,
you know, Grant, I’m 26 at the time. I said, ah, whatever they do, doesn’t really affect us.
He says, you really believe that? And I said, yes, I do. And he said, okay, so
right now the Alaska legislature is trying to pass a bill. And if it goes through, I’ll lose the
funding I get to have a weekend personal assistant. So here’s what I want you to do. It’s Friday.
When you get in bed tonight, I want you to stay in bed until Monday morning, because that’s what I
would have to do. Somewhere around the middle of the day Saturday, you’re going to be laying in your
own piss and shit, and you’re going to stay that way until Monday morning, at which point I want
you to call me and tell me that what they do doesn’t affect us. And that was like his literally his
first lesson. And it was just one after another like that, that it’s like, I had to get involved.
I had to get engaged because I loved and cared about him. And that was my first experience of
what happens out there affects all of us directly. And we have to be engaged and we have to pay
attention. And it was just one after another lesson like that on up to when he walked on,
how he walked on, the timing of it, having me being the only person in the room with him to
help him do it in a good way. And then the lessons that kept coming even after that.
And I wouldn’t be on talking to you today without him because he woke up my conscience
and woke up the fire necessary for us to fight the good fight.
Yeah, I love that. Woke up the fire. That’s such a beautiful way to describe it.
Thank you for sharing that. Wow, amazing.
It’s people like this, right? That really, I wouldn’t use the term hope for myself because
I’m still quite cynical in my outlook of where things are going. But that’s really neither here
nor there and doesn’t matter because I can’t control it anyway. But I think the thing that
really has shifted because of my life experiences with Dwayne and perhaps you with Kevin and
certainly mine with Stan is that I have purpose. And I know that that’s I know that what I do
has effect and I know that it’s important and I absolutely believe in it. And so therefore I
have purpose. I think the most important thing now, at least for me personally, is knowing in
my heart that I have purpose, that I have a job that has effect and that is literally working
directly for the planet. And I don’t need to be attached to what’s going to happen in the future
or what I think should happen and how I’m going to feel if that doesn’t happen, i.e. results.
Like I have, I have literally, I think through the sum of all my experiences have brought me to
this place of the bottom line is I have purpose now. I have a job to do. I’m real clear about the
effect of that job and that what it does and what it helps. And my hope would be that everybody
listening to this has a similar type of purpose or the feeling of the meaning of it and knowing
that what you do has effect and knowing that it’s important because finally coming into a place of
having that kind of purpose is a great gift and extremely necessary for these times.
Yeah. Yeah, no doubt about it. It reminds me of the wisdom I’ve heard from several
Indigenous perspectives, which is orienting ourselves not only around what rights we might have,
but especially around what responsibilities we have. And from a certain perspective,
a responsibility’s first way of connecting with others in our relationships might be part of
the key here to turning the corner that we’re hopefully turning here on the planet. And this
idea of having purpose and it makes me think of relationships and it makes me think of service,
working in service to others and to the world. It may be the thing that hopefully gets engendered
and activated in so many of us that many of the other perhaps otherwise intractable problems begin
to transform and transmute of it. And at least that’s the hope I hold, Dark, because otherwise it
seems like the entrenchment of how we’ve been doing things and the momentum and directionality of
so much of how we’ve developed our ways of lives on the planet over several lifetimes now
probably leads into a pretty, dang, dark and terrible and sad place if that sense of purpose
is not activated in more of us. And this reminds me of the original instructions that comes from
so many different Indigenous traditions. And so I’m grateful not only for some of the
dear mentors we’ve had in our lives, but also the learnings that we’ve been able to encounter and
experience coming from so many different Indigenous traditions. Yeah, I mean, it’s changed my life
from the inside out and literally has changed every aspect of my life from the job I have to
my partner and who she is and what I do for fun and just literally my entire epistemology
and ontology, literally everything has changed and all for the better. That’s as I know that you
know personally because of your heritage that that path, it will always take you where you need to be,
but it’s going to be a ride. It’s no doubt about that.
Yeah, that’s really a great way to put it. Let me remind our audience, this is the
Why On Earth Community podcast and I’m your host, Aaron William Perry. Today we’re visiting with
Darja Mail, the Communications and Media Relations Lead at Home Planet Fund and also
author and journalist. I’d like to share and mention, give thanks to a handful of our supporters
which includes Chelsea Green Publishing, Wele Waters, biodynamically-grown hemp-infused
aromatherapy soaking salts, profitable purpose consulting, Earth Coast Productions, Dr. Bronner’s
and Soil Works, biodynamic land alchemy for your gardens and yards available through the
Why On Earth community and also a very special thanks and shout out to our Why On Earth community
members and ambassadors, many of whom make a monthly donation to support the work that we’re
doing including our podcast series. If you haven’t yet signed up to become an ambassador or to make
a monthly donation you can go to whyonearth.org and just click on the Donator Support button and
set it up at whatever level works for you and if you’d like to give it the $33 or greater level
as a thank you we’ll send you a jar of the Wele Waters soaking salts each month to help
enhance your health and well-being as well. And for those of you who like Patreon as a platform
we’re there too and you can go there and check out some of the additional goodies and thank you
gifts that we’ve put together for you there. Of course for our ambassadors one of the many
benefits is access to our ambassador resources which includes a variety of video recordings from
conferences and symposia proceedings to our recordings from our monthly meetups, our regeneration
renaissance roundtable meetups and the behind-the-scenes segments that we do with our podcast
guests and Dar and I will be doing that here in just a little while after we conclude our main
interview together. Of course I want to be sure to mention you can get to the Home Planet Fund
website at homeplanetfund.org and you’ll find them also on LinkedIn, Facebook, X and Instagram
Home Planet Fund generally across the board it looks like home-planet-fund in the case of
LinkedIn and we’ll have the Facebook link there for you too. So invite you all to connect and
check out what Home Planet Fund is doing and get involved. If you’re a philanthropist, if you’re
working with the personal 1% for the planet commitment, if your employer or place of work
makes charitable contributions, consider supporting the Home Planet Fund because those
dollars are getting leveraged as Dar mentioned across so many important projects around the world
led by indigenous and on-the-ground community leaders and you know Dar one of the things that
really jumped out at me on your website is the statement that while traditional indigenous
peoples are in control of quote-unquote a relatively small percentage of the
land around the world they are nevertheless stewarding lands that have an extremely high
percentage of the world’s biodiversity and of course many of us engaged in this work understand
that in addition to the climate destabilization crisis we also have a very severe biodiversity
crisis underway also and so the solution sets seem to speak to both of those across the board
and I was hoping you could tell us just a little bit more about how and why you’re selecting the
specific groups organizations and cultures to do this ongoing stewardship and regeneration work to
have such such a deep impact I’m really glad you bring that up and especially reminding me to
put forth that statistic because it is arguably the most important statistic of them all because
without healthy biodiversity humans can’t be on the planet for too much longer either and that
statistic that you mentioned the conservative estimate is that 80% of all remaining biodiversity
on planet earth is on indigenous controlled land so we have you know in estimates vary a little bit
on both of those I’ve seen that statistic as high as 85% of all remaining biodiversity but I go with
a conservative which is still shocking and then the general percentage of the population of the
planet being indigenous I think it’s between six and seven percent and and it’s on a far far less
than a quarter of the land on the planet so that’s how important it is to support indigenous
people and their projects and ways of life because that they are they are who are protecting the
biodiversity on moss for all of us and so that’s a key factor when we get into talking about
where does how does home planet decide where to work and a big a big layer of that is identifying
where are these kind of acupuncture points on the on the planet of that need support
whether it’s for biodiversity or climate climate crisis mitigation those are the two factors it’s
climate and biodiversity that we’re looking to try to shore up is is is those systems that are
kind of holding the line so how much carbon does a certain area sequester or in the case of the
south pacific partners they are essentially the lab of adaptation for the climate crisis I would
argue for the planet because they’re the ones literally they’re they’re having to make choices of
not if but when do we abandon this island the place where us and our ancestors it’s all we’ve
ever known since we’ve lived since time immemorial and so when do we have to leave like that kind
of thing so we try to determine where these places are where we can put money to have the greatest
impact on hopefully mitigating the climate crisis you know we’re very clear you know that that’s
that’s what’s left to do now is mitigating that as well as the biodiversity climate
crisis of beefing up these areas so one one future project in our pipeline that we’re looking at
it’s it’s we’re still not there yet but it is going to be located in the amazon if it comes to pass
for obvious reasons you know another thing in the south pacific is these partners are actively
doing work that helps take care of the coal reefs around their island so so things like that literally
where can we put money that’s going to sequester carbon beef up biodiversity safeguard those areas
and and that’s a giant factor on where we determine where the where the grant money is going to go
wow yeah so so tremendous and exciting to hear about the the work that you guys are doing
how can people help and get involved in addition to potentially giving money to you guys
yes it’s not just money i mean i think just educating yourself on the things that we’ve
been talking about we we have a lot of that on our website people can check out learn go into
we have a partner page for each of the things i’ve talked about cursorily today people can learn
a lot more about what these folks are doing and just spreading the word you know just letting
people know i think most importantly how critical this work is and and that it does have effect and
just simply spreading the word about just sharing the website sharing it across social media getting
folks to sign up to our email list so even if you never ever donate just using us as an educational
tool and and spreading the word that we exist in getting it out there would be really really helpful
wonderful yeah thank you for that invitation and oh this is so much to to consider and to
reflect on and i i’m really grateful dar that we have this opportunity to visit today especially
um it being at such a special time in the launch and development of the home planet fund and also
for us personally a special time in terms of some of our uh unfolding life experience and it’s just
been a a real joy to visit with you today and before we wrap up and transition to our behind the
scene segment for our ambassadors um i’d like to invite you if there’s anything else you’d like
to share with our audience please my friend the floor is yours and if you’d like to share even a
little more about some of your experiences as a journalist would love to hear that as well but
just want to make sure to give you the the floor to say whatever else you’d like to say
well i first want to start with reciprocating the thank you erin it’s been a really great
conversation i mean i’ve done tons of interviews during my time as a journalist covering you know
wars and environmental disasters and things and it’s it’s not often you have that kind of
rapport and serendipity with somebody and i’ve really really enjoyed our conversation
and learned a lot from it too um and gosh that’s that’s a that’s a pretty big floor you give me
there to try to add anything um you know i i just think uh i guess i would just simply reiterate
you touched on it earlier but essentially uh that idea one of the pivot points for me that
shifted things in me into the place that i was talking about earlier you touched on it used a
little bit different languaging but it was essentially the same thing and it was something
that i learned from stan when when he and i first started hanging out back around 2019
and he said look uh western culture teaches us what are my rights i have my rights you know
be said but the more indigenous perspective is we’re born with two primary obligations one to
serve the planet and two to serve future generations of all species and so my day from that point on
my days have been determined on which of those i want to focus on because if i focus on my rights
especially with what’s happening on the planet today i am guaranteed to be miserable and frustrated
and afraid and angry and all these other negative things but if i focus on my obligations uh my
work’s cut out for me and then i’m going to be focused on work and the solution and that’s going
to become my world rather than focusing on the crap which is you know open your browser and open
any news source it’s there every day uh it’s self replicating and it’s self fulfilling in a sense
so what do you want to focus on and and and that becomes your world and this is just i’m just
reiterating teachings that i’ve gotten from my experience with stan and all the people we’ve
spoken with for that book and then the podcast hold holding the fire that that i got to work on
and talking with more indigenous people so in some find that work that gives you purpose and and stay
busy love it but so beautiful and uh thank you so much dar uh it’s it’s been absolutely wonderful
visiting with you today likewise erin thank you yeah take care the YonEarth community stewardship
and sustainability podcast series is hosted by erin william perry author thought leader
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