WATCH: Kyle Whyte and Jay Griffiths Discuss Indigenous Cultures and Climate Change

Border Crossings’ ORIGINS Festival celebrates the world’s First Nations in an explosion of art, performance and debate. ORIGINS creates a unique opportunity to engage with Indigenous artists and activists at the cutting edge of cultural resistance, environmentalism and spiritual tradition. Working with some of the most significant cultural institutions in London, ORIGINS brings the world’s Indigenous artists and cultures to the heart of the former Empire.

In this conversation, Potawatomi scholar Kyle Whyte and environmental writer Jay Griffiths discuss Indigenous cultures and climate change with ORIGINS Director Michael Walling.

From the conversation:

Kyle Whyte: There’s tremendous dialogue across Indigenous people about ethical responsibility, about reciprocity, about living with the environment, and those dialogues are extremely important because they’re actually identifying things that are particularly lacking in the world today. For example, a lot of Indigenous people right now are focusing on the fact that corporations can do things on our land—whether it’s the fossil fuel industry, the mining sector, or currently with the renewable energy sector and the clean energy sector—they can do things on our land without our consent, that don’t respect our self-determination. And so a lot of Indigenous people are focusing on the importance of what it means to be in a society that values consent, and that’s because the current situation we’re in is one that for many decades has destroyed relationships of consent with Indigenous people.