Episode 141 - Arctic Rewind

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[Music] hey everyone it's william matthews and i'm excited about this episode of the liturgist podcast see last year august 2019 myself jamie lee finch mike mccork and michael gunger went on a very special trip to the ar[ctic refuge now if you don't know what the arctic refuge is it's a wilderness sanctuary that's located in the northern tip of alaska and is so far removed from modern civilization now we went up there to visit the land but also to talk to an indigenous community the gwichen nation who are embroiled in a legal issue as it pertains to their land the porcupine caribou that exists on that land and the trump administration who wants to drill oil on that land so here's a quick update from our trip we know that the house of representatives passed a bill to protect the arctic unfortunately that bill is being held by mitch mcconnell who's the house majority leader in the senate as it pertains right now we have no legal protections for the arctic refuge the only protections we have are the bill that's stalled in the house and a commitment from presidential candidate joe biden to stop all drilling particularly oil drilling on public lands which includes the arctic refuge but as of now the trump administration is still planning on moving forward with leasing the arctic refuge out to oil companies and depending on what happens this fall in the presidential election we may very well be in a situation where the last food source for the gwichen nation is under threat due to oil drilling so we decided to re-release this episode the arctic in part to highlight the continuing struggle that the gwichen are facing but also to announce that we have recorded a short documentary of our time in the arctic refuge that's right the liturgists recorded a documentary and i'm really excited to share this documentary with you because it really gets into the heart of what this episode is about but also has some new information and a new perspective about what indigenous liberation looks like as it pertains to the liberation of black people in this country this documentary highlights my perspective being a person of color in this space and also highlights how my pain is so similar to the pain of my indigenous brothers and sisters so here's the details the documentary comes out in two weeks if you want more details on when where how i want you to go to the liturgists.com backslash arctic that's right the liturgists.combackslashartic to get more details on the release of the film and also a live q a panel that we're gonna do in conjunction with the film so we're gonna talk to myself christian atkins who's the cinematographer for the film including jamie lee finch and others and and we're gonna dive deep into this issue of what does protecting land look like so once again make sure you head to the website to get all the details on our film premiere as well as the live q a that's going to take place now without further ado i want to re-introduce you to this episode of the liturgist podcast entitled arctic whether you've heard this before i want you to take time and really listen again deeply take in the sounds taking the words spoken by the indigenous elders that we talked to and if this is your first time listening to this episode then i want you to strap in because you're in for a wild ride so here we go [After Episode 113 - Arctic is fully transcribed, paste it here.]