How Do Love & Diversity Push Us Forward?

Jennifer (2s): Hey Monica. 

Monica (3s): Hi Jennifer. 

Jennifer (5s): So this week's conversation is so important. I really want to just get right into it. Tell our listeners about our guest today.

Monica (10s): Well, we're really excited about today's episode because we spoke with Drew Lanham, who is an author, a poet, and an alumni distinguished professor of wildlife ecology at Clemson University. His specialty is ornithology, which for those of you who may know refers to the study of birds. As an avid bird watcher, Drew first gained national recognition in 2013, he published an article called Nine Rules for the Black Bird Watcher, and that drew attention to the dearth of diversity in birding, as well as the natural sciences, more widely. 

And it drew national attention to the fact that birding is an escape for a very privileged view. 

Jennifer (46s): You know, we didn't really talk about this specifically in the interview, but there's a pretty famous and obvious parallel we can draw in 2020 with a Christian Cooper incident in central park. How while participating in this really inherently gentle and thoughtful hobby of birding, his status as a black man was completely weaponized against him. I remember this moment full circle because I was there in New York city when it was happening. It's really, it was really upsetting. 

Monica (1m 8s): Yeah, it was a terrible incident. So, unfortunate real life example of some of the things that Drew speaks about in his article. But in addition to Nine Rules, Drew is the author of a memoir called the Homeplace Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with nature, which was the winner of the 2017 seven book prize. The read award from the Southern Environmental Law Center was also named best scholarly book of the decade. If all those accolades aren't enough to convince you to listen. I'll just add that it's a pretty breathtaking book and I highly recommend it to all of our listeners. 

Jennifer (1m 40s): So without further ado, let's get to our interview with drew Lanham. 

Well, hey, Drew, we're so happy to have you here today. Monica and I are super fans. So we're very appreciative for you to take the time to be with us today. Thank you so so much. 

Drew (1m 55s): Thank you. Thank you, Monica. It's good to be here, 

Monica (1m 60s): Yeah, so you just came from Charleston. And where are you? Where are you right now? I see some antlers above your head. 

Drew (2m 11s): At least they're not out of mine. I'm in Seneca, South Carolina and the upstate near the near the blue, the Blue Ridge starts about a half hour from there, but I'm stuck geographically between the metropolis of Atlanta and Charlotte. So I'm kind of in a, in a sweet spot near Clemson University where I work. So I'm in a little studio called my favorite, which is a writing shack. That's become the zoom room. 

Jennifer (2m 43s): I'm also going to start by saying you might hear some background noise because I'm actually in my tent. So you might hear some birds and wildlife. I had a squirrel break-in last night, so I'm just putting that out there. 

Drew (2m 58s): Alright, all good

Monica (3m): I like that, a squirrel break in, that's good. 

Jennifer (3m 1s): That’s a whole other story. So Drew, I want to really start by just you giving us a little background. I mean, we know because we are the super fans, but can you give us a little background about who you are and what you do?

Drew (3m 17s): Well again, thanks for, for having me. I am at, at my heart. I guess I'm a bird brain. I've got lots of labels. I grew up in Edgefield, South Carolina. And so that's an extraordinarily rural place on a family farm. So that makes me a country boy, a, a black man, a southerner, a birdwatcher, a naturalist, a college professor, a poet, and an author. 

So I've got lots of labels, I suppose, but ultimately I'm, I'm just someone who loves nature. That's my, that's probably my, my, my byline, my, my truest north, I guess, as a, as a friend suggested yesterday, she asked me, she said, well, what's your true north? And it's loving nature. That's that true north. 

Monica (4m 17s): That’s beautiful. How did you get into it? How did you become somebody who wanted to get into the natural sciences? Was it the time in the country growing up or, you know, what kind of drove you? 

Speaker 2 (4m 27s): Well, you know, I think Monica, it was the, yeah, that was primary, I guess. And just growing up, surrounded by woods and forests, fields and streams. And all of that was, was key. Having parents who were, are, were both science teachers, a grandmother who was, was steeped in nature in all sorts of ways, and then spending so much time out outside, but we depended on nature in very real ways. 

I mean, daily, you know, there was food on your plate that came from the soil that you had just walked over. So, or the cattle that were grazing out in the pastor. So you understood that you relied even on, on the earth to give you the, the, the water from the Springs that came through our faucets, ultimately. So that, that drove this appreciation that, in many ways, quite honestly, as a child, at least I took for granted because, you know, you just, we, we were never hungry. 

We, we never wanted for food of, of any kind. Well, I did, jelly cake that my mother made. Yeah, that, that was, that was special. But that reliance on the soil and water and the things that surrounded us made it made, made nature a necessity. 

And so that, that was, that was at the base of all this, but then birds, I came to love because of this fascination with flying and, and, and birds allowed me to do that vicariously after I failed at it so many times. So it was just this almost immediate attraction to this sort of ever changing palette of bloomages that was just always around me, red birds, blue birds and blue jays, and rain crows and cat owls. All of that was sort of my grandmother's ornithology as I call it, but it came, became my ornithology. And, and it's never that, you know, I've not been able to turn that switch off for loving nature. So it's nurture and nature for me. 

Monica (7m 15s): Do you, we talk about a lot, you know, that, that so many people around the world, you know, are very disconnected with nature. And that is, you know, one of the challenges of sort of getting people to care about it is cause they don't, they aren't connected, right? Whether it's, they're not, they're not near it, they don't get out in it, they don't understand it. And I think birding is something that sort of anyone can do. I mean, even in like a big city, like New York, you know, Jennifer's lives typically in, you know, you do have the parks and you can find birds. 

And so when you decided to teach, tell me a little bit about like students. I mean, those kids are coming to you with an interest in the natural sciences, but are you finding kids today, like connected or disconnected? Cause we're always trying to find a way to like, how do we conjure up that understanding of the magic of nature and how do we encourage people to sort of get back outside. But what do you see in your students at Clemson? 

Drew (10m 14s): Well, that's a good question. You know, it's changed in, in our major, in, in forestry and environmental conservation, which is mostly forestry and wildlife and fisheries, some environmental conservation there. Those, those students formerly were mostly rural white males. Right. And, and, and that was, that was sort of the archetype. And then as more as things got better in terms of at least some diversity, we began to have an influx of, of, of white females. 

And, and, but that's, that's largely where it remains, at least with now close to across the major, probably close to closer to, to being, even between white males and white females, there's still an amazing and said dearth of, of color of black students and brown students that we don't see, but that, that base of students is also changed that lots of them are not rural. 

You know, they, they did not grow up in the forests and fields with that lens. They did not grow up hunting. They, they, they, many of them grew up on a crocodile hunter or, you know, that, that, you know, I, I grew up on Wild Kingdom and Marlin Perkins and Jim, you know? Yeah, well, that was, that was very different. 

It makes me feel old to say that I know, but it's, so that, that base from going from rural to more urban or at least suburban sort of reflects society and, and that disconnect from, from land. But I, you know, one of the things that I think about in connecting and as I talk about this overwhelmingly rural upbringing that I had is that the connection still for me, that I, that I mentioned at the front end of our conversation was food, right? 

Food and water and clean air to breathe. And I think that's, that's our way in as much as I want others to love birds, the way I love birds or other, what I call lesser beasts, the, the, the idea that food that we need to understand where our food comes from. I think it's central to our, our reconnecting to the earth. So, you know, as people that some people have the privilege of trekking to a Whole Foods or, or wherever it may be that when you look at a map, we live in the midst of so many food deserts, so many people of color and rural people and impoverished people don't have Whole Foods to, to sustain them. 

But there's lots of fast food. There's there's liquor. There are all those things that are available that aren’t good for you, at least large volumes. So if, if we began to, to, to roll back and think about our basics, I mean, we all gotta eat. We all need water, clean water, and clean air to breathe. So those, those, those students that we get, that's part of the conversation, even in an ornithology class that you began to have. 

I mean, you got to understand what different species of birds are depending upon for, for sustenance, for their lives and to try to connect that to the students. So their, their understanding of, you know, of, arthropods of insects decline or insect outbreaks that impact some bird species. You know, the question that you, you can pose to someone you can, it's amazing to ask someone where peanuts come from and they not know that they come from the ground, that they think they come from trees and that's, you know, that they not know that potatoes come out of the ground. 

And so those kinds of things, that's a, that's a disconnect, right? That they may not have ever seen. Most people have never seen their meat blink or, or, or, or, or know that that, that animals die for, for us, not only from us, us eating them directly, but even as we produce those, those who don't eat meat, that, that there, there has to be habitat. 

That's cultivated under the plow that takes away the habitat. So there's blood on our hands regardless, but I don't think we recognize that. So trying to connect students in that way is important. And then we can talk about wildness and we can talk about all these other things, but yeah, food, food is the connection, right? I mean, we've all had coffee this morning, may be too much for me, but, but you know, our, our bellies want to be filled with good nutritious food. And lots of people do not have that option. Yeah. 

Jennifer (16m 9s): We talk about that a lot too, Drew, I'm so glad you brought that up because Monica and I discussed this many times over about our disconnection from understanding the source and that you're talking about this, because I think about even how I grew up in the Bronx, you know, I had concrete all around me, but I was still had access to a subway to get to, botanical garden or the Bronx zoo. So I was still exposed to certain aspects of understanding in class and my parents, but not everyone was, so like, you have to continue that conversation right. 

Of how do things happen and how do we become interested in the birds and in the land. And then once you start understanding where the things come from, that's where like the love of conversation, our conversations around conservation come because you love things and you want them to flourish and you want them to survive and keep going. And I think this constant conversation around why we have to have these conversations of love of land and love of soil and air and water is so important from an early age until, you know, and like you've loved birds as an early adopter when you're a kid. 

Right. I think I read somewhere that you were like a child when you started loving the birds. 

Drew (17m 20s): Yeah, Jennifer, you know, as long as I can remember, so six or before really, and, and watching my grandmother feed birds grits, you know, I had no idea what, what black oil sunflower seeds were, but I knew what grits were because they were heaped on my plate most mornings, but she would take just a handful of handfuls of grits out of the bag and throw them out to the snowbirds, the juncos and sparrows that were out there. 

So, you know, but that was, that was her showing me a love of something outside of her, outside the door, right outside of her control, really. And that's what wildness is. Wildness is anything out of our control. So, so when we began to think about loving wildness and loving the air, loving soil, the water, those are the, that word, love that four-letter word is extraordinarily powerful, but sometimes it gets lost in all of the other data that we collect that helps us understand the world, defining, defining, love, and affection for we, you know, we try to do that for one another, but we, we are failing at doing that for nature it's and it's all, and th those signs are all around us and all sorts of ways of things falling down and disappearing species and habitats, but also in not having clean air and not having potable water and soil being poisoned in all sorts of ways. And that's not love. So those, those connections that you and Monica talk about, it's all glued together with love, or comes apart with carelessness and hate for one another and, and for, for the land. 

So that's, that's something, when you start talking to students that at least I go down several rabbit holes with it, and, and you can tell sometimes you get these looks at where's this guy going, we sign up for love 101 or, I mean, yeah, it, you know, it's, it's just a, it is. I mean, I love birds. I love the land. I love wildness. And, you know, sometimes the hardest thing to love is humanity when you see us doing things to one, over nature, and that's the harder work, but I don't, I don't believe that we can, can love one and not the other and be authentic about it, so.

Monica (18m 32s): I totally agree. And, and I think it's, it's, you know, we come back to this sort of hard truth that we haven't, nature is taken for granted. And I think, you know, sometimes we take relationships for granted and we don't sort of see the nuances in it. And a lot of, you know, conservationists are trying to, or, you know, even capitalists are trying to put, and I shouldn't separate the two, but trying to put a dollar, you know, or a value on nature. Because if we start to say, Hey, big corporation, when you destroy the downstream, because you're polluting it, you know, you're, there's no consequences for you right now, and we're having those conversations, but until we sort of put a dollar on it or consequences for the individuals that are causing the problem, you know, unfortunately I think, you know, we're going to still have that sort of, you know, degradation happening. 

But, but one of the things that I wanted to talk about it, cause you have this beautiful memoir called the home place that you wrote about what, five years ago now in I think ‘17 that really explores the themes of nature and belonging in nature. And I think that if we could get, you know, and this may be again, you know, the love and, you know, everybody's like, oh, conservation environmentalism is all hippy dippy and you know, you and your, you know, squishy things. But I do think that like belonging, right? Like how do you grapple with belonging on land and as a black man, right? 

Where your ancestors, you know, didn't own the land and they were owned, you know, how do you get black and brown people who have been pushed off land and really just truly disconnected from it, you know, how do we bring everybody back in and not let it be the white guy, or even, you know, that's great that women are coming in, but how do we make it for everybody that there's that belonging, you know, an access. And I know that that's something you grappled a lot in your book, but can you just touch on that? I know it was probably, we could do a whole, you know, session on just that one question, but I think it's so important about access and equity. 

And we talk a lot about that with other interviews, but how are you hanging, hanging with that, you know, with your kids of the students and then bringing more into it? Like, how do we, how do we say this is for you? Sorry, I know I'm like, just drop it. It's just a small question. Just a little, I know, could you solve that for us right now? 

Drew (22m 55s): Yeah, here I, you know, I've got a button. Part of it, you know, that, that legacy I talked about a bittersweet of sort of, of the ecology is his brother Marvin Gaye's saying about, and that, that bitter is part of it. A large part of it was enslavement of black people. Large part of it was genocide of indigenous people. A large part of it is marginalization of, of, of so many non-white people off of land and all these ways that are sometimes obvious. I mean, you know, it's, it's, it's obvious for, for first nations people it's obvious for, for black folks and slave black black people, but then there's this insidious continuation of it in all kinds of ways, you know, I talked about food deserts or where factories decide to, to build such that communities of color are down wind of toxic flumes. 

So, you know, the what's visited upon on us as, as black folks or as, as brown people is in, in some ways, you know, the, the worst multiplied it's compounded by identity, by who we are. But I, I think that what the way forward in some ways, at least for me as a Southern black man is to try to help people understand the importance of the connection and to reclaim, to, to, to take back ownership where you can and, and you have, and you have legal help. 

And, and those kinds of things, certain organizations, you know, you can work to do that, but then psychologically to renown to repatriate your mind towards land that your ancestors worked for, died frequently on there's the blood, sweat, tears, and toil in the soil that they have, have, have put down for you. 

So for example, from the point of view of public lands, that's land, that we all own land, that you don't have deed entitled to even understand what went into that land. So that, that gives you then a basis for saying, well, you know what? I do have these real connections that I don't need to ignore. 

And so when, when it's time to speak up for a piece of land and what happens to it and whether a factory builds there, that's going to pay really an unlivable wage and create an unlivable environment for me, downstream or downwind that I need to fight for better, right. That I can't sell out again, I was sold out before with no voice now that I have some choice to be a part of a solution that I need to be a part of that solution and not sit on the sidelines. 

And I got to fight for that. And that's, you know, Monica and Jennifer, that's the best, the activist part of conservation that I think a lot of conservation is uncomfortable with. You can sort of get this deer in the headlight look, when you say conservation is activism, people who maybe got into this quote unquote business thinking, oh, I'm just going to have to deal with wild things. No, you're, you're going to have to manage people. What people do. We’re the hardest beast to contain. You know, if we give other creatures a chance, you know, it's amazing what they can do given the chance, but for humanity, you know, all of these things that we want and that we desire to access to excess and access that, you know, in this Anthropocene, I call the Anthropocene the age of woe, W-O-E but I also call it, it should be the age of whoa, W-H-O-A, slow down. 

Right. And so I say all that to say again, to, to repatriate our mind, to, to get, to give ourselves sort of a place in the conversation, not to wait for people to let us in, because it's been proven that they won't. So, you know, you don't just knock on the door, go in and then be, and be a part of these conservation conversations that are not just about wild things, but they're about your wellbeing. So take it personal. 

Monica (26m 34s): Oh, I like that. Take it personally. That's fantastic. Yeah. It, you know, we have to care and we have to care, you know, in Jennifer. And I talk a lot about this that, you know, we know, and I'll say the, we, like really me, but like my cohort of like people that, you know, I know, you know, we get busy, I'm using like kind of air quotes. You know, you're taking the kids to school, you're trying to get food on the table. You're do, you know, keep trying to keep your job. You might have to get your car fixed, you know, all these things that are your day to day. And then we stop- I don't want to say we stopped caring- but then we forget, you know, we forget that we should all be activists in our own way, choosing what that passion is for us. And obviously we're all sitting here talking about nature and we believe that everybody should really understand and care more because without it, we are nothing, right. We are part of nature. And so it sort of goes back to sort of that whole biophilia. And I have like a, a quote from the homeplace that if I could, yeah, yeah. Can I read it? But I thought that this was really great to share with the listeners and it's a little long, but I really love it. So “to save wildlife and wild places, the traction has to come, not from the regurgitation of bad news data, but from the poets, the prophets, the preachers, the professors, and the presidents who have always dared to inspire hearts and mind cannot be exclusive of one another in the fight to save anything, to help others understand nature is to make it breathe like some giant a revolving, evolving celestial, being with ecosystems, acting as organs and the living things with those places, humans included, as cells vital to its survival. And then my hope is that somehow I might move others to find themselves magnified in nature, whoever, and wherever they might be.” 

Jennifer (30m 25s): I love that so much. You know, it brings tears to my eyes.

Monica (30m 30s): Drew, this is the work that you're doing, you know, that is so beautiful. And like, how do we amplify it? And I think I would love to hear more, like, how was this book received and then your subsequent work, because I think you've, you've written some really pointed, phenomenal articles. You know, one was in Orion magazine that was Nine Rules for the Black Bird Watcher and then a Vanity Fair piece, which was about revelations for the Black American Birdwatcher. 

And I want to say that there is a 2021 piece that was noted, or sorry, 2020, how am I going to be perceived as a black man with binoculars? I love that because you're, you're, you know, as a white woman, I take for granted that I can walk into most spaces and not be looked at as a threat. You know, I may be looked at as lesser right. Sometimes, but, but I, I can take my binoculars and roll around wherever I am, and I'm probably not going to be people aren't going to be concerned about me, but I think that that, how has your work been received? 

Cause I think it's super important to start saying rethink, you know, rethink, you know, kind of who you are and what your presence is and how you're going about just birdwatching. All you're doing is birdwatching. Sorry. Another heavy question. Another heavy question for you. Sorry. 

Drew (32m 2s): Well no it's, it's, you know, I, I, I appreciate the, the, the space to talk about it really, because it is they, they are heavy questions and there are a lot of heavy questions that we now have to, that we should have been considering for a long time. You know, I, I go all the way back with my friends at Montpelier where I'll do work, James Madison's Montpelier. And I always say, you know, it started there when, you know, when our quote unquote founding father was drafting the constitution and you can stand in or sit in where he sat and look out toward the Blue Ridge Mountains. 

But in order to do that, as he was drafting this, this document towards the rights of free men, quote unquote, what he was really writing towards the rights of free landed white men, while he was looking over the backs of black people, he owned. So, so to, to speak to that hypocrisy from that historical hypocrisy, that defines in many ways who we are, you know, we have to unveil truth and, and the way for me to unveil truth, my activism is in my writing. 

And, and, and I see each word hopefully is some sort of step forward in a march towards a greater truth. And sometimes that truth is my opinion, but my opinion is life as I see it through my lens, which is tinted black. So in, in those ways, the words and how the work is accepted, mostly positively, I think. But then I, you know, this, this piece that I just wrote for Audubon magazine exposing really the history of who John James Audubon was as a slave holder. 

And, you know, this genius, this genius artist, but a bad, he wasn't a good human being. You're not a good human being, if you own other people, if you abuse anyone, you're not a good human being, I'm not going to excuse that. So, you know, when I write those things, I, I, I try to be what I call palms up in that people understand who I am. 

I'm not claiming any sort of perfection or high ground. This is how I see. So, you know, the, the book is, has been well-received much longer than I thought it would from, from back in the day it seems so long ago. But you know, one of the interesting things is that I, I get, I get letters and books every, every week multiples now, still from people who will say sometimes, I mean, I remember one note from, from an old white woman out in the Sandhills of Nebraska, who was saying, you know, I know we're different, but, but this book also helped me understand some sameness. 

And, and, and then to get the notes from, from black folks who say, you know, what, thank you for writing this for, for helping to, to bring out things that, that are important to us that, that maybe haven't been said. So, you know, it's, it seems to have had pretty broad reach and everything is a positive, but part of what I like to do with critique is I, you know, that, that's a foundation to help me understand the work that needs to be done. 

And, you know, and it's not people frequently ask on these, on these, in these meetings, they'll say, oh, well, how can we solve this problem? And I'll say, well, it's well, and it's it, it's the thing to understand is that it's a process. There is no end to being better. My daughter, our daughter, Alexis once said, you know, she said, she said, daddy, there's good, but there's always better. 

And so if we strive for better. If we strive for better, then that means the work's never done. And, and, and that can sound scary. Cause I, you know, at some point we all want to, you know, turn off the lights, you know, grab up our work and go home and put our feet up and not have to worry about anything, but then we can do that. You know, we could go out and, and enjoy nature and do what we have to do. But I, you know, it's like now part of what I feel, I feel the absence of birds, you know, the billions of birds that have declined. 

I feel that absence in not hearing birds and not seeing birds that I'm used to seeing, you know, I feel it when, when I'm on a, on a, on a rice field, looking out over a rice field, black people, you know, the incredible toil to create this now wonderful wild habitat that at one point in time was money in the ground for the, the white people who owned our ancestors. 

And so I can't watch black birds without thinking about black people. And, and so all of that, that comes out in the writing, you know, the bitter and the sweet, I want people to understand how much back to that word. I love nature, but I also want them to understand the lens through which I view it and to think about their own lens. I don't just want them to, I don't want to bemoan blackness. 

That's not what I'm doing at all. I celebrate who I am, who we are, but then to get a note from the Sandhills or wherever, and people find a bit, a way to unify behind that, that is the greatest feeling from the work. So for y'all to call me Monica and Jennifer, and say, would you talk to us about this? That's an opportunity for, to, to expose, eliminate or luminate rather, but also, and maybe to eliminate misperception, but to luminate ways that we can work together to be better, to go from, you know, some bad situations to better. 

And that's the only way we're going to do it is to have these conversations. 

Jennifer (39m 12s): Well, also, there's this undertone of hopefulness, I think, in your work and what you say in your poems and your, your writing. And let me, you speak to it. There's really this underlying, this web of hopefulness. I just hear in your voice. And it's really that, that, that beauty of hopefulness that binds us together. And love, love 101. It really comes from nature too. When we love, we love nature. We love one another. We want to uplift and teach and learn and continuously be better. 

Monica (39m 45s): Well, and I think also giving, giving ourselves and giving others, grace, kind of like you were saying, I really liked that phrase. I hadn't heard palms up, you know, where you're sort of coming and, and sort of showing, you know, it's like a dog, you know, you like the dog is not being alpha, kind of like rolls over. You're sort of coming to people saying, I am vulnerable. I don't have all the answers, but I want to be better. Right. And I think that's what these conversations can do is, you know, it's hard to talk about some of these things, but we need to, but I think people need to know that it's okay to talk about them in a, you know, you don't have to be perfect talking about it. 

You just need to talk about it. Right. And I think that's a big thing that I think about is giving myself grace and being okay, being vulnerable and a little insecure about the things, because I don't know how to do the things. I don't have all the answers, but, but if I can continually seek out and be curious, and I think that's what nature also is like, think about, you know, nature is just a forever, you know, beautiful, wonderful pallet of curiosity. I mean, think of all the things we learned from it by just walking through a trail or a field. 

Right. So I think, I think grace is another thing, but I do want to sort of tack back a little bit to Audubon because I think that as a sort of somebody who doesn't, you know, obviously we all know, I don't think anybody doesn't know quite who Audubon is, but sort of bringing up this history of, you know, slave owner, but also potentially a black man, you know, that maybe he was biracial, but could pass. And I think that that's an interesting thing that I'd never heard. 

So how is that being received out in the world once that, that article hit in Audubon? I mean, I think it's fascinating, right? Like, woah. 

Drew (41m 48s): Yeah, it's been this sort of, it hit, you know, sort of dropped in this pool and there was this initial wave of, oh, and then, and then now there's this, as people find it, more people find it, there's this, this other wave of oh, anger and, and, and really, why would you do that? 

You know, how, how could, how could you, first of all, tell the truth, but then how could you being an ornithologist? How dare you expose this history that’s gone, that we shouldn't deal with after all, we just want to watch birds. So you get some of that. And it's right now, it's about half and half. You know, those people who say, you know, thanks for illuminating this history and helping us understand how you feel and how this impacts you and how you think it impacts how we care for birds in one another. 

And then the other, the other half, roughly are people who, you know, I would say, they're not probably asking to be friends on social media, but you know, it points to, to me again, how much work there is to be done that there, there are people out there who, and I'm not telling people not to enjoy birds. 

And as I say in the article, I mean, I'm looking at turnover, my, my left shoulder. And I look at my print of my Audubon print of yellow breast chats. It's absolutely beautiful. But guess what I know who painted that, I know that I know the artist, I know that he was having issues with who he was and, and that part of those issues by his own admission was that whether, you know, an Audubon was sort of this, this, this infamous exaggerator, but he tells the story of the runaway, right. 

He tells a story of turning black people back in to be re-enslaved. So who does that? Even if you make it up. You know, I ask people to just sort of take a step back and put it into current context and no, I'm not gonna correct. I'm not trying to correct Audubon, and I'm not trying to rewrite history, but for us to understand it, you know, as we talk about monuments, that they're also flesh and bone monuments, these idols that we put up for perfection, and I look, I don't want to be anybody's idol. 

I've got, you know, enough issues of my own, but for us to understand for us to go forward and, and have some idea why you don't see more people of color, maybe out doing the things that, that, that we talk about, that we all enjoy. And it's not that black folks and brown folks aren't enjoying nature, but from sort of this, this idea of, of what bird watching birding is that it can be exclusionary and that there's some stuff baked in. There's some stuff baked in that, that, that excludes. So, you know, it's, it's, it's hard to go and bird around stone mountain and not, and to see pictures to see carved in stone, you know, these, these Confederate, these traitors who, who, who who's seceded from the union, so they could keep people, my ancestors enslaved, it's, it's hard to, it'd be hard to go to Mount Rushmore and say, huh, I wonder how I wonder how it would feel to be quota and, and have these people, some of whom were responsible for genocide of your people looking out over your sacred land. 

How, how does it feel to be a part of an organization with a name of someone who, who paints beautiful birds, but then thought less of human beings that he thought of the birds. So, so little of those human beings that they were disposable to him, and that's the word that I've begun to use disposable. That enslavement is disposable humanity and, and anyone who looks at anyone, I mean, we can talk about slavery, we can talk about misogyny, we can talk about all kinds of bias. When you have that kind of bias against people to abuse them, you see their lives as disposable. And I can't let anybody like that by with a past to say, oh yeah, but he had a big bird list. 

Monica (47m 4s): Right. He's okay. Yeah. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, context, history, so important. 

Drew (45m 21s): And if he was, and you know, what, if he was passing and we know that there were black folks who owned other black folks, we know that there were these abuses. We, you know, part of what I get is I get this, this long treatment of yeah. But they wouldn't have been here, but for the black people in Africa who were abusing them and they were better off here than they were there, sort of this sort of this revisionist rewriting of what chattel enslavement and institutionalized racism is. 

So, you know, part of this now, Monica and Jennifer is this, you know, we, we have, now we're in this place where people want to call any of this, they say, oh, well, you know, you're one of these critical race theorists, well, race is critical. What I disagree with is it ain't theory. It's real. This is real to me, it's real to a lot of people. So you, you, the, the, the reviews that I see and I don't sit and, and dig deeply into every review that that's, that that's a deeper rabbit hole, but one pops up and I see it and I take it, I read it and I say, okay, all right. 

And then I look at the good one and I say, okay, all right. And it's sort of this, you know, it's this, this rollercoaster, you know, as my friend, Camille Dungy says, you know, these oscillations that we go through and oscillations can be tiring, there's up and downs and back and forth, joy and pain, bitter and sweet. So that's what the article has been. But guess what? I'm going to write more like that and, and hopefully continue to aluminate and, and eliminate perception that, that these people were worshipable, which they weren’t. The work maybe, it'son a side note, it's interesting to me, how many people didn't know that Audubon was killing these birds to paint them. 

Monica (49m 28s): Right. Right, right. I had read that at some point and thought, oh, I have, I'm very conflicted about this because to your point, the outcome, the, the, it was beautiful work, but like how, the way he got there, then we, 

Drew (49m 45s): Yeah. And I'm a, you know what, I'm a hunter, right. So it's not, but, but I'm not. So, you know, we have to, and we look at scientific collections, we look at, we can look at all those things, but ultimately the sort of cognitive dissonance that people allow to develop between demigods and, and, and their ideas can create these blind spots, these elephantine blind spots that they can't get around. 

And that's part of what this, that article revealed to me, just the blind spots that people have. Yeah. 

Monica (50m 25s): Well, and so many people, and, you know, myself included, you know, you, you just want to put the blinders on, you want to just get, oh God, oh no. If you tell me that, now I have to deal with it. You know? Cause once you know, it, we talk about once, you know, you kinda can’t un-know. Yeah. And so, and I, and I think with like so much of, you know, culture, if people don't agree, they want to weaponize it sort of against you, whatever. And you know, in sort of isolate, oh, it's this thing. 

So, you know, it's, oh, it's, you're doing critical race theory and it's this thing over here. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is history in context and, you know, truth telling and let's have those conversations. And again, I think, you know, as somebody who was a, you know, a kid who grew up in California, you know, didn't really understand the south and the history and, you know, I got a very kind of white bread, you know, pun intended history of it and in the public schools. 

So, you know, but so even my kids growing up here in the south, getting the education and then just the awareness, right. The way they teach now is so much deeper anyway. So like Jennifer and I talk a lot offline, just, you know, I'm getting my own history redone by seeing it through my kids' eyes, beyond, you know, the reading and the education. But I think it's super important to keep, you know, for you to keep writing, not that you're, you know, it's like, this is what we have to hear. 

Right. And then talk about it and say, oh, how does that make me feel? Or I, you know, yeah. He was this demigod, you know, Audubon, and now how do we take this information? And we can still revere his art potentially, but how do we have a nuanced understanding of who he was and maybe why he even created it, right. What was he escaping, you know, in his mind? 

Drew (52m 30s): Well, I, you know, again, that, that's the thing that's interesting to me, you know, talking to an artist for him down in Charleston yesterday, and we're working on a project to expose ornithology in, in some of these ways that are important. And, and, and for me, I always tell folks when I stop learning it's time for my ashes to be in the wind. Right. Because it it's, I mean, we have this, this capacity in, in our brains, hopefully to, to take information, assimilate and, and again, be better somehow after we learn then before in some of the things that help us learn are not pleasant, but, but if, if all we're depending on is being fed pleasant news, then we're, then we're going to spend a lot of our time in lies and myths. 

And so this mythology that, that people in a mythology is important, right? Ask, ask the Greeks, ask the Romans, ask a lot of people, but ultimately I don't think that we can go forward in this whole conversation about quote unquote saving nature, because it's really not a question. It's really not about us saving nature. If we really get down to it, humans in the course of, of billions and billions of years are just sort of, again, dust in the wind and the Astro wind and, and, and nature in some form or fashion is going to outlast us. 

And so really this conversation is about us saving us in this context. It's almost like we're in this giant sort of a terrarium, you know, and, and we got to figure out in while we're in this terrarium together, how we're going to live without making it so unlivable that we all, that we all perish in this horrific way. And, and, and when you put it in that context and understand, okay, you know, we could, we could all be wiped away and, and, and, and, and things will outlast us, ask roaches, ask lots of things, ask alligators, you know, the, those things will, will, who've been around for much longer than we have. 

Many of them will survive. So, so a lot of these questions of conservation and wildness, and this is why, you know, I talk a lot about un-siloing nature. You know, that, you know, in, in both of you brought this up, you know, we're part and parcel of nature. The parcel part is that we are just these packages of protein. We are just these bipedal apes, you know, with, with, with certain advantages, at least for now, but we've got to understand how to live together. 

And if we don't understand how to live together in the terrarium that we're in, we're going to perish together. Some of us will perish faster than others, but make no mistake, we will all perish. And, and so we, we, our lots are thrown together. So what we're doing instead of understanding our lot's thrown together is that we're hoarding, right? We're, we're, we're hoarding this thing versus that thing we can hoard ideas. 

We're better off when we share ideas and come- and we don't always have to agree. I don't, God knows I don't expect people to agree with me all the time, but we can agree on, we can agree on that. We need clean air, we need clean water. We need clean soil, that ultimately we'll share the same fate because we're on this one earth. And if you look at the cost of flying in outer space, most of us ain’t going to be able to afford that. 

Monica (56m 45s): Yeah that's a whole other podcast, but I, I, I, yeah, I totally agree. It's like, we, we are a part of it. We, we yeah nature will outlast us in some form. So how do we yeah. Stay, keep it. And, you know, sort of think about like all the things we can save here and educate people that, yeah, we are a part of it. And if we're destroying it, we're actually destroying ourselves and sort of trying to connect people. 

And so that's a big part of what we're trying to talk to people about and, and hopefully do it in sort of a, you know, a hopeful, palatable way that doesn't want people to, you know, put their hands over their ears or their eyes, or put blinders on, you know, because I do think that the conversation can be off-putting because so much of it has been negative in the past. And so how do we say, how do we bring the “awe” in? You know, you talked about the whoa, you know, the whoa, you know, that's another thing, like, you know, birds, they're so beautiful and just watching them can provide so much awe and wonder. 

And so how do we sort of pass that down and pass it around, right. 'cause it cause it's next generation, but we have to do our part now. That's super important. We all, recognize you know. 

Drew (57m 16s): It's, you know, Monica, it, it, to me, it's, you know, I've, I've defined conservation as this, as this selfless act of, of love and saving something in abundance, saving something that, so that those people who you don't even know that are coming behind you will have it in abundance, right. That you're, that you haven’t taken so much, that all you leave is crumbs or that the terrarium is so soiled that those coming behind you will live in worse conditions than you were in. 

And so, you know, Leopold talked about, you know, the greatest task of living on a piece of land was, was not spoiling it. Right? And, and when you think about that and all the science that goes into it, you can roll it all back and say, you know what, leave better behind than you found, leave better behind than you found, and, and some days that might ju- that's picking up a piece of trash instead of walking over it, you know, some days that's that that's having the courage to get up and look yourself in the mirror, in the mirror straight on, and understand maybe a little better that morning, who you are then you were yesterday morning and it's small steps, and it can be overwhelming. 

I think about back in the, back in the old days, when we would have these, these drills and we'd have to crawl under our desks and tuck our head between our needs as if that was going to save us from the mushroom cloud. It wasn't. But, but you know, that mentality is not what I want to encourage. I want to encourage people, everybody to get out wherever you are to get out, look up and, and let a bird, you know, accept that grace of that bird flight, whether it's a pigeon or a Peregrine Falcon, that, that, that bird is gracing you in some way with its presence in this unbelievable ability to fly through this ocean of air that we are, are dirtying up. 

And so let's, but it's also the year that we breathe. I don't want people to take a bunker mentality, racism and misogyny and homophobia, and all of these biases. Don't tuck your head down and say, well, I just don't want to hear about it, it’s bad news. Cause you can't watch birds with your head tucked between your legs. You can, but guess what, you're, you're doing it in such a way that it only means anything to you and that's selfish. 

And, and what you're telling me is that as long as you see the bird and put it on your list, it doesn't matter if anybody else ever sees it. So, you know, take your binoculars down, untuck your head from that place, where you got it and, and, and see us. Right. And, and, and, and, and see, when I say, see us, see you, you see that I'm a human being with these joys and pains, these demands, some of which should not be demands. 

See us as a collective, and then see us as a collective. When I say us, I'm talking everybody, that we're all in this together, and then see us as a collective of not just humanity, but also the wild things in this, in this system. And then you, maybe you begin to get some idea, you know, what, what I do affects this person or that person or this thing and that thing. And you go through life in sort of a different way, right? 

You don't, you don't go through as if you're the last human on earth and everything only matters for you. It matters for somebody else 

Jennifer (1h 2m 49s): What a beautiful statement. And I want to keep talking to you for a few more hours, Drew, but I think that's a perfect way to end this conversation because you're right. It's all about how we inspire others, how our actions really can take hold into other beings. And you're doing that work every day. And I'm so inspired by you and your work and your love of birds. Because I think in the past year, I have also fallen so much more in love with the birds around me. Thanks to COVID that silver lining of COVID. 

But I just want to say, thank you, thank you for your enduring work and your continued work and your teachings of striving to be, we could all be better. 

Monica (1h 3m 31s): Yeah. And thank you for talking. What a joy, now I want to have like five hours with you. Thank you so much Drew.

Drew (1h 3m 39s): Thank you both for the work you're doing. I appreciate the form. And again, this is a conversation that I hope others enjoyed, but thank you for the work that you do. And thank you for having me. 

Monica (1h 2m 2s): Oh thank you so much. Okay. So first of all, wow. At the end of our podcast, we typically give a pretty clear call to action, such as donate here, or check out this fashion label. But I don't really know if we have that same extent here, but I think that's okay. 

Jennifer (1h 4m 6s): Yes, totally. The lessons that I took away from this conversation were bigger. Like life lessons, almost 

Monica (1h 4m 12s): Same here. What did you get out of it? 

Jennifer (1h 4m 15s): Well, so we talked mainly about the human relationship with nature, and then how race factors into that in a major way. So these are big, difficult issues to work through. And I think the refrain that I would keep coming back to is what Drew said towards the end, leave behind better than you found. We don't have to be perfect. We don't have to agree all the time, but we have to be good stewards of the land and of each other. And in many ways, save ourselves from ourselves. 

Monica (1h 4m 40s): Yeah. I think you mentioned this in the episode, but I was also struck by the undercurrent of optimism and hope in Drew's work. The way he writes about birds and nature, he really strikes a perfect balance at being a realist and not, not seeing the world through rose colored glasses yet also appreciating the beauty of nature and the potential of what could be. And to that point, it's really about saving ourselves from ourselves because nature is going to be here in some form or fashion with, or without us. So we really need to do our part to recognize how interconnected we are with the fate of the planet. 

Jennifer (1h 5m 11s): So, you know, the other thing I think we've talked a lot about is this notion of blinders, the Audubon article is such a great example of that. Once I know, now I have to deal with it. Once I see something, I can't see it. This resistance Drew received from the article. It's really interesting to me, it's like the birder’s version of a Confederate monument or heritage not hate. In order to move past this ugly history, we have to confront it. We have to see the full picture in order to then deal with it, to grow and to become better. 

Monica (1h 5m 38s): If you have blinders on, you won't know what you don't know, but what do you do when you do know? And you have that information. I love what his daughter said about how there is good, but there is always better.  

Jennifer (1h 5m 52s): I love that. Okay. So to wrap it up, I would highly, highly encourage our listeners to check out the articles linked in our show notes and to read the Homeplace. I think as we move forward with this biophilic journey, Drew Lanham offers a really important perspective on humanity, race, and nature that we all need to be thinking deeply about. 

Monica (1h 6m 9s): All right. It's a lot for us to sit with until next time. See you soon.