Organising from Elsewhere Podcast
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Organising from Elsewhere Podcast
Restoring Intuition: Indigenous Ways of Moving Together w/ Erika Koskela
In this episode, host Tulia welcomes Erika Koskela, an enrolled member of the Brown Valley Tribes of California and a dedicated advocate for indigenous language and cultural revitalization. Together, they explore the deep connections between intuition, language, and identity, discussing Erika’s work on the Flathead Reservation in Montana and her experiences with nonprofit organizing rooted in indigenous values. The conversation delves into the challenges of moving beyond hierarchical, colonized models, the importance of spirituality and collective wisdom, and the process of reclaiming ancestral knowledge and capacities often suppressed by modern society. Through personal stories and reflections, Tulia and Erika highlight indigenous approaches to leadership, community, and relationality, inviting listeners to reflect on their own roots, relationships, and ways of being in the world.
0:00 Introduction & Intuition
2:41 Meet Erika & Her Work
4:11 Language, Identity, and Revitalization
8:07 Organizing Beyond Hierarchy
14:15 Spirituality, Intuition, and Indigenous Knowledge
15:55 Relationality and Community Healing
24:12 Leadership, Power, and Humility
28:51 Reclaiming Ancestral Capacities
35:33 The Collective Beyond Humans
38:56 Closing Reflections
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Intuition is given a lack of credential in modern society and it's downplayed and even laughable to some people, so you grow up not trusting it and therefore not using it. And it must be by design because if we were in touch with those senses, we wouldn't allow ourselves to get into those positions of this colonized modern society. Mm-hmm. It's like a muscle because once you start using it, you get more in tune with it, it gets stronger, and it's nice when you come to the point on the opposite end of the spectrum where you can't ignore it, even if you wanna try to ignore it, it's like your body is like, no! hello. I'm Tulia and I'm very happy to be here with Erica and have her to share with us some of, your stories and, and your life experiences. Maybe I'm gonna just open the space for you to introduce yourself and also maybe a little bit of the very beautiful place where you are, your land, uh, because yeah, that's very important. Absolutely. Thank you so much. I'm. So happy to be here and be talking with you and sharing with you today. My name is Erika Koskela and I'm an enrolled member of the Brown Valley Tribes of California. I am descendant from Wlac, Chinook, and Al. Tribes, but I live and work on the Flathead Reservation in Montana, Northwestern Montana. And I've been living here for 22 years now. And I live at In the Valley, at the base of the Mission Mountains. the work that I do here is with Bitterroot Salish. Ponderer, also known as Calipe Tribes here. And I was married into this community and over time I just kind of like got more and more, engulfed in the community, in the people and their. Through, mostly through language. Um, I was really excited to see all the indigenous language efforts that were going on to, revitalize Salish language here in Montana. And, my own personal story is that my tribe is classified as a dead language. Um, I personally don't like that. Phrase, I believe that the language is still alive. But, because I grew up not having access to my own language and, and a lot of my own culture, I was really excited to be welcomed into the community here to work. In language revitalization, which kind of worked its way into, cultural. Revitalization and different areas that I've been working in here for a number of years now. I did start a nonprofit five years ago with, three other co-founders, three other tribal members from, from this area and. The name of my organization is Que Eastern and basically we connect tribal foster to tribal identity through language and land-based programs and, different opportunities to share indigenous teachings with. Children who are no longer in their tribal families. So I also work in, still work in language revitalization. I work for a indigenous immersion language school that's been operating for 22 years now, and I just do a lot of administrative and supportive work with the school here. It's called inclusive, which means one fire. So, so fine. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. That's beautiful. Um, I definitely had like a lot of sadness for when a language is endangered and there are few people that speak it, I feel there is so much not this at risk of, of losing. Right. Because well, when I started in this project, like organizing from us were, I was thinking about what it's organizing, In the very root, and I saw like, it's so linked, the way we organize, it's so linked to our assumptions of life, our values, our ways of, of seeing others. And in the, in, in that way, we decide how to organize. But, uh, maybe it's not obvious, but for me, the language, it's like in your, in your brain in a way, how you see things and how you interpret it. And then. It's a way of organizing life, like you organize around life as how you, uh, interpret that. And I found like many indigenous languages, they have this really connection on how they speak in a way that, From colonized, uh, countries. They actually were in separating us from nature. It's very interesting. Absolutely. Yeah. I think you and I talked before about, um, language and how it affects our. Brain pathways. And so I think of language as kind of like a roadmap for our thoughts. And you know, as you reconnect and as you are able to use indigenous language and ultimately think in indigenous language, you change the patterns of your thoughts, which then can change. Everything else, you know? And, so for example, in your, in your past, which experiences, maybe you have asked story or two about, the nonprofit Yeah. And how, how that was. I know how it works in a setting of the Western world when, when doing a nonprofit, like I'm, familiar with that, but I'm wonder in your particular, way of living, how, how organizing that work the challenges and how, what worked well. Yeah. I think we were very fortunate when we were forming our nonprofit to already know and have the understanding that we did not want to use traditional, or, I, I shouldn't use that word, tradition, that we didn't wanna use colonized hierarchy in our business structure, in our model. So, we took the time to visit and get, as much information as we could from a lot of the tribal elders and from people who were in business already. And, One of the things that I feel has been, one of the key elements of our nonprofit is the local tribes have developed a tool that they use and it's, they call it the Salish Round, but a lot of people might recognize it as a term of, of a medicine wheel. But the Salish round is, um. First off, it's based on the seasonal movements of the people. So throughout the year, the different things that they would be doing and participating in. And from there there's like a lot of layers to it around values and Individual expression and different things that you can really gleam out of the Salish round. And so because we wanted to promote that above everything else, we knew that we wanted our business to look like the Salish round. And the problem comes when you're raised and, and lived all your life in a colonized. World of really trying to, um, step out of that and kind of stop doing things the way that you were raised to do them. So we did a lot of searching and we did a lot of asking. we were lucky along the way to make contact with the author of going Horizontal, Samantha Slade. Yeah. And she helped us. She was actually really excited to work with us and to help us figure out what that might look like and how to create a business model that look like. The Salish round. And so we knew we wanted to use like consensus decision making. So for the first year or two, as we were making decisions, we just knew we didn't wanna move forward on anything until everybody agreed. And a lot of that we would refer to our mission and values when we were making decisions. And it felt pretty simple for the four of us to agree on a lot of those things. But Sometimes some bigger decisions would come along and we would have trouble. Making a consensus. And so that was really a point in time when, when we started working with Samantha, when she introduced us to generative decision making, which was really helpful for us to, be able to get through some of the tougher decisions and to feel good about, making decisions that. The whole group was able to support and, and align with. Um, so that's actually a process that we don't feel like we're experts in, but we really appreciate, um, the steps that she's lined out. And I think one of the things I really like about the generative decision making is the way that it pulls in the people who are more reluctant to, speak their opinion. And it makes it. A conversation where everybody's voice is heard. And I noticed that in most group work there are some people that are just less reluctant to voice their opinion. And then there are people who are over eager to voice their opinion. So, um, through the use of talking circles that can be thought of as a traditional way of sharing, but also the methodology of making sure that, everybody is having a voice, everybody is participating. Those types of strategies have really helped us to know that the whole group is having a voice in the, in the things that we're creating and, and doing. Mm-hmm. That's very beautiful because I, I think sometimes we don't trust in the collective intelligence Of people that may not have a lot of experience in other things, but they have a lot, a bunch of lives experience in other, in other area like I'm learning more and more to trust the knowledge of the collective, of the group and see how everyone's sharing something, it, it sparks something else in me or that I wouldn't like even think about it or in other people. And then we start creating something new that the merges out of nothing I will do by myself. And also I, I'm very interesting about this process. Regenerative decision making, it's called. Yeah, we can definitely share a link so that people can look into it more and, and find out how to facilitate the process. Yeah, we, we are at the moment in organization where we're for people and it resonates a lot it seems really easy to get aligned and sometimes bigger decisions about, framework or about like. Things that will really impact everything we do. So yeah, I'm, I'm, curious about that tool and also I was wondering is this a decision making tool or it's used for organized. Other things around the the wheel, yeah. So, I did wanna say something I felt would be really important to share is that one of the things that gets lost, sight of in modern ways of organizing and modern ways of doing things is the idea of it, it's so foreign that I guess I have trouble even putting it into words, but, luckily because of the worldview and the values of the Salish people, we. Have a high reverence for spirituality and for, ways of knowing that aren't thought of in like modern science that it's really important for all of us to be intuitive and to, even. Be in touch with like, what's going on in our body, what's going on with the environment around us. Um, one of the layers of the sal round is elemental layer, which includes the water, the earth, the fire, the air and spirit. And, um, one of the things that Salish people on there, when they recognize social as, um. One of those elements is our connection with each other and, and our connection with our community and our elders and our descendants, and, and recognizing where we are in the middle of those that came before us and those that are coming after us. I know how it affects us in our work, but I don't know how that, um, translates into other people's work. Okay. But for us, it's very important. We, um, always take time to. Start every meeting with, a prayer or a song. And also we do personal check-ins. So personal, like where, where am I coming from? What's going on with me? So that we nurture the relationships because that feels like, uh, very valuable that. Interconnection between the people. Sometimes it's hard to work with somebody for a long period of time. And so we've taken the time to. Learn how to repair relationships, how to address things. Even in, um, one of the things that was happening in the beginning that we got better at is like we would get into an area where everybody didn't agree, and then all of a sudden people would start to feel dysregulated or triggered and, I'm sure that our ancestors knew this, but I wasn't raised with the awareness of like where my brain activity is and that when I'm dysregulated, you know, I'm in this back of my brain and not use my frontal. Solve and communicate well. So we started, taking time to recognize when somebody was. In that type of state and we would pause, we would, uh, use sweet grass or even just breathing or affirmations, something to bring the group back into regulation. And so I think it's important To not be disconnected with everything that's going on with modern science and modern education. Like I think one indigenous value is always be open to a new thing or a new idea and something that can make you better and make you stronger. So we've used the opportunity to do a Gallup string finder or to go through, um. Dare to lead training, do these modern, trainings or educations. We always try to connect it to our traditional teachings and values and understand, maybe. What is valuable to us and what we don't value, what might go against our, traditional values and, and ways of being in community with each other. So, I remember even when I was. A teenager, my aunt telling me, everybody carries wisdom and you should always be open to other people's ideas. And then you get to choose from those things that people have to offer you what you'll pick up and, and walk with and will change your So I think it is valuable. Especially in a day and age where we can connect with people from other parts of the world and all over the place, like to see people as gifts in your life and, and how they can help influence you and be a better person, be a better, community member and relative. Wow. That's a, a lot of of things that. I've been like wellbeing, like thinking about and practicing as well. and I see of the whole thing. You, you, you share with us. I see things that are very like a key and one is like the relationship between like each other, but also the relationship with the earth and the relationship of what's happening in that moment. To read the environment and to not go with the agenda because you need just to go with the agenda, but actually acknowledge what is going on right now, and then take the decision, maybe make a pause, maybe do, switchboards, maybe, maybe something, so that, that brings the presence, that brings relation, relationality and also context. And sometimes we, we forget. This context because for us, like colonized countries, for example, in my case and Mexican and, and I lost, the lineage, like I live in, in, in a rural community. Uh, my grandmother was always from here in the pyramids of Tuan. So she, like, I know my great-grandmother has a, like, knowledge that it wasn't, it wasn't. and it's really, really sad. But now people like me becomes really excited about indigenous knowledges and indigenous wisdom, but it's really also, I've been very careful on how I, I step in those spaces and how I, I learn because in the learning, it's very risky just to copy things that, that is not in my context. Like I spend a lot of time in the, in the jungle. And I wouldn't be bringing exactly the same things if I live in the mountain because my, my relationship is with this mountain and it's totally different context. Right. Um, so I, I, like I don't have an answer, but I, it's something really inside us on how we respect those knowledges, like you, the things you're sharing. So really excited. But I will have to sit with it, see like be very open, very happy to see how, how you work and then maybe see some things that I can relate to my context and then reinvent some of those. I dunno, I don't have an answer yet. Yeah. I understand and I think, it's always helpful to recognize, Our DNA. It doesn't just inform like our eye color and our hair color and our height and those things. I believe it carries that ancestral knowledge of how to be in the world, and so I think it's important for everybody to take the time to reflect Inside of them that they can, yeah, I think that's a, a key, very important because maybe something I wouldn't like exactly, like assimilate, but I learned it was when I was living in, in New Zealand with Maori people and for introducing themselves. They will not say their name. First they will say the mountain time, they come from the canoe. They arrive to the island, the family, they eat where they, they are belong. And to hear that repeatedly just, it make me aware of myself. Like it make aware of, oh yeah. My mountain is that mountain and my ancestry is that ancestry. Like I wouldn't like copy that, but I like just to see that in embodies and how they talk about it. It made me look for my own, ancestry. So I think that's a very beautiful thing that comes from you. Like indigenous, uh, wisdom. yeah. I remember hearing a speaker and he was explaining how we were all, everybody's history goes back to tribal living and some is more recent and others is longer ago. And I think that Like, say indigenous people from Turtle Island can, um, emulate for people who are from other places that lost their tribal connections longer ago. Is just that like reminder? Yeah. What is in their own history and how their own people used to be so connected with the earth and the relatives. And, the easy route is to say, okay, well these indigenous people are doing this thing. I should go do that. But that's not really the point as far as I'm concerned. It's like, just look back in your own history to see. Where maybe you were relating to each other in a different way, because I think one of the biggest differences is the, um, separation or the difference between an individualist society versus a collective society. And the, you can look at the way the world is going now and reflect on. Where are these values taking us? The idea of, capitalism and individualism is not going to take humanity to a good place for anybody, for any of our grandchildren. So, just more in a general term, like what does it look like to. Conduct myself in a way where I'm not the most important one, where the community has a higher value than, than my own one individual self does. And how can I uplift and promote community above my own, kind of ego Examine things like modern concepts of the idea of chief, of what a chief means in modern society, because I think people perceive it, you know, as somebody who has a certain level of power or authority. But I think that's an incorrect assumption and. we went back and kind of did some research on the root word, in Salish, the word is the word for chief. And what that really means is it, the root word is, a confluence where rivers and waterways come together. And the idea of a chief for these people here is the ability to bring people together and to like. Have things going in one direction and to make sure that everybody is included. A person who can make decisions with the best foresight into the future of how those decisions are going to affect the people. So. I think it's valuable to understand different ways that leadership might look. Um, we talk a a lot about leading from behind and leading even just by example, and we understand different concepts of power. I think that, mm-hmm. The idea of, organizing where there's a shared leadership. Some people might feel like that, conventional type of leader in hierarchy, that they wouldn't wanna give up their power. But we understand that power is a natural authority. not Something that you can get from a job title, you know? So it's nice to reimagine what those different things actually are conveying and meaning. And I think that it's pretty. Regular to see indigenous community where, people don't want to sit in that position of authority. They don't want to tell somebody else what to do. It's, they come from a much more humble point of view. Yeah. And so, um, I think humility is a really important Yeah. value that we. Try to perpetuate. I think it, it's really, really important where you mention, uh, about power and being a chief. Discussion Sometimes I had with a friend that like, um, he may think that everything should be horizontal, but then I will, because I have time being with, um, in the Amazon jungle when people have like positions of a power that is not the same power that in, in, in a Western society. And I see how that work because they work under a different. Set of assumptions and responsibilities and caring and, and, and, and humility. And when I say, okay, it's all contextual. Like you cannot say like everything should be horizontal or everything should be maybe like equal for men and women because there are contexts where, you are very core values are so different than the western that you grew up. That these, People have a place that is very different like chiefs. and in that context that works well. They are carrying not an authority that it's, the job title, as you mentioned, they carry an authority that it's so full of responsibility and connection and, and. Sometimes it's related to spirit, not sometimes, probably all the time it's related to spirit because they were cold or they were chosen, or they were, uh, in a way that also healers, I see that happening on healers. when I see the, the power. That it's related to, to a, for example, in the in, in the she people, they will say that your power doesn't come from how much you get, but how purified you are and how you connected you are with nature. I know. So beautiful. For me, I so different like wow. So the less I am myself, The more power I have. Okay. And that, that's really beautiful. That is amazing. I know that my own experience with traditional ceremonies has helped me to understand that the way things appear in the physical world so many times is, In opposition to the way things are in spiritual reality. Wow. So it's, yeah, it's important to understand that like when you just rely on your physical senses mm-hmm. That you can be missing so much of the information. Wow. That's important For these capacities, like they, there is, a woman, Andrea. she's from Canada, I think, and she, they've been doing so like beautiful work and gesturing towards. Decolonial futures, it's called, and they call it exile capacities. Like modernity has taken us, capacities of sensing things that they will block us. That then in our, in our nervous system, in our, in our narrow path. We are colonized, not only in the way we live, but it's inside our bodies and we are being just cut off of those capacities, that there is so much information we're just missing about when we are gathering, when we're taking decisions, when we're working together, when we are relating to each other. And yeah, it's a lot. It's some work to do. Yeah. I think that for me, growing up. Things like, if you just think about intuition, is given like a lack of, credential in modern society and it's kind of downplayed and, uh, maybe even thought of as, laughable to some people, you know? And so I think you grow up not trusting it and then therefore not using it. And, um, yeah, me, it's like a muscle because once you start using it, then it gets, you get more in tune with it, it gets stronger, and I think it's nice when you come to the point where like. On the opposite end of the spectrum where you can't ignore it, even if you wanna try to ignore it, it's like your body, is like, no, it's just like a muscle. I'm primi also, it's like when I started to to live more in, in nature for like 12 years now I don't live in a city, but I went into living in the ocean and also living in the jungle when. When I think about it, it's like if, no one told me I was able to smell and suddenly I get another scent, and then I smell like I, I get really in tune with that scent because now I use it more and more. And then it's like another, scent that you have. Yeah. But if, if it's blocked, and I think many, many ways we organize in society are made for book in that like. Probably not on purpose or maybe, I don't know, but it's, but it's, um, just so much noise, so much influence of, of, of the way we live in so fast. Like, yeah. I, I got stuck when you said whether it was on purpose or not. And I like, I think it, it must be by design because if we were in touch with those senses, then we wouldn't allow ourselves to get into those positions of this modern bay colonized. Mm-hmm. I think it's a feedback loop, like the more you block yourself, the more influenced you are from the colonial, patterns. And it's like this loop that, sometimes we require Like a really effort, to sit with ourselves and questions ourself. And also I see how our indigenous, societies, they have, these, technologies of relationality with land that they help them. If they are going into this patterns, like they help them to come back to like ground or medicines or like there is these technologies that Yeah. Or I think of drumming and, and singing like it has, um, so many. Benefits, and you can't write it on paper. It's just like, even the vibration just kind of goes into your cells and like mm-hmm. Makes the shift. I have a story about, when I started working full-time at the language school, and this is something that I think of with when I think of different ways of knowing and perceiving, one of the things that's really nice about the school is that they spend a lot of time. in, in the mountain, they're gathering medicine. They're, teaching the kids, traditional land uses and different things like that. And I went on a trip with the school one day and they went to, Dig roots, and there's a certain root, I think the Latin term is maybe Angelica or a, a proper name for it is Angelica, but we call the root husks. And I know Husk, I, I can go out, I can identify husk, I can dig husk and I know, a lot about it. But One of the coworkers had mentioned, Hey, up around the corner, I think there's some Lee Tea, and that's a traditional tea that we collect the leaves and we, we make tea out of. And that's something that I've been looking in the mountains for and I've been having trouble identifying. And so I'll be out by myself or with other people who don't really know and I'll. I've gathered it before with people who know, but I've never been able to go out and find it. So I left the group and I walked up the road and I said, I'm, I'm gonna go look and see if I can find it. And um, I was looking and, there's lots of different plants obviously, and bushes and shrubs and stuff, and I was feeling them and looking at them. Praying and asking to be able to identify this tea. And when I reached out and touched the leaf with my hand, I could taste the tea Wow. In my mouth and remembered that drinking it, you know? And I, I recognized here it is. And, um. That's something that I didn't know was possible, but because I was asking and being led and being open, like I had a whole new experience where I can taste with my fingers. Wow. Yeah. That, that's like, like these capacities that we, we have, I mean that we were. Kind of blocked from Right. And it's just beautiful, but I, I guess what you were saying also, it's, you were in the very connected to what was happening in the moment. You were in the land and you were praying and, and that's, uh, like, not a mindset, but like, because it's not mine, but maybe you like. Everything was in that intention, and then it just happened differently. And, and then that, that reminds me something that affects exactly how we organize. And maybe the one last thing I would like to chat with you. It's like when we say collective in the, regular, you know, modern society. We have in mind, just humans and what, it's very different. And I found, eh, with indigenous traditions, uh, it's like the collective is not only humans, like it is just so thought that it is just a collective of humans and, and it's just so assume. other ways of being that it's humans, it's buffalo, it's eagles, it's, ants it's the mountain. It's the spirit. It is the generations before, and that's inevitably it will impact a lot. And how we choose to do things Yeah. I think that. That goes back to the translation for Chief where they can make a decision that affects all of the collective, and that doesn't just mean us as people, you know, it's all of our relatives. How is this decision going to affect the air and the water and the grass and all of those things that you're referencing? it's very valuable and I think it. It behooves us. I think that's maybe one of the things that is overlooked is that we think, or there's an idea that like if we're only concerned with the people, then the people will do better. But if one relative suffers, then it creates suffering for all of us and that because of that connection, and when we work with the Salish round, one of the teaching is that. you can represent the elements or any, any layer of the, the round, whether it's seasonal or elements or, personal things like our emotions and our mental capacity and our physical capacity. All those things are represented in the round and they're all, Thought of as like these separate things like Earth is separate from water, is separate from air, but the actual teaching is that those things are interwoven to each other. That one cannot exist without, the other one cannot thrive without the other. So what happens is when we neglect to. Recognize everything that's a part of the whole. Then the things that are left can't thrive and can't benefit without that piece. That's like, it's there, but we're not acknowledging it and so you can't take out water and then fire and air and land. Like continue to exist in their state. Like they're all interdependent on each other. And that goes with everything that we're all like interwoven together. Yeah. I think that's, um, exactly the, the point of the main. Problem we have now that it can be many things that if we refine it to maybe, uh, one like illness it's the, uh, apparent separation of every part. And that affects like everything, everything we do. And, um. Well, that's, it was really beautiful talking to you. I could be like hanging out with you. I see. Like going for a walk in the mountain with you and, and just give, uh, maybe silent or maybe just chatting a lot about this exciting things. Um, but yeah, thank you. Thank you a lot for this time together. Thank you. we'll close here with Erica and we'll see you in the next. Oh yeah. Yeah. By the way, we were close in the podcast.