The reality is the future is now, it's like the biggest problems in the food system right now, which will be the biggest problems in the future tomorrow are those dealing with the fact that people who work the hardest in the food system can barely make ends meet. Sanjay Rawal is my guest on this episode of Inside Ideas brought to you by 1.5 media and innovators magazine. Sanjay is a James Beard award-winning filmmaker. He made the movie documentary Food Chains, which was with Eva Longoria and Eric Glusser, which chronicled the battle of the coalition of Emo Pali workers, a small group of Oaxacan and Japan indigenous farm workers in Florida against the largest agribusiness conglomerates in the world. The film was released theatrically in a number of countries and won numerous awards, including citations from the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the Clinton Global Initiative, and the White House. The film was also a winner of the 2016 BitDoc Impact Award and several other festival prizes. Sanjay's last film, 3100 Run and Become, won several festival prizes, had a robust theatrical release in the U.S. in 2018 and is opening in traditional theater theatrical engagements across Europe and Australia in 2020 and 2021. I just want you to know that I probably slaughtered those indigenous names and Sanjay I'm glad I have you on the show to correct me and make sure any misgivings of my horrible pronunciations are fixed but welcome to the show I'm so glad you're here. Mark it's great to join you thank you for having me. Did I did I horribly mess up those names? Well you know we live and learn. So you've been doing this for quite some time have some wonderful accolades and and doing something very dear and near to to my heart food, food poppies especially with indigenous people and in nature kind of the reconnecting the historical views of how food was processed and and how over the years that we've kind of just found worldwide globally and all forms that if we cut food off from people that's really the biggest way to to bring them to their knees and and we've done it in your in your film gather you you so nicely show how horrible we've treated indigenous people around the world and especially Native Americans and we've used food to kind of treat them horribly as well. I want to start out first with all this experience that you have. Did I help you weather this pandemic, this crazy times, black lives matter, all the inauguration, all the craziness we've had in the world? Did it give you any resilience? How have you weathered this time? Well so this is a great question and it'll allow me to frame I think a lot of our conversation. In a nutshell there's a small health food store, a natural food store around the corner from me where I live in Queens New York City and 15 years ago there were no whole foods. Amazon didn't deliver in a day. There were a lot more grocery options, particularly grocery options for communities that wanted that little agency of their own health. I live in a majority minority neighborhood and probably a very underserved low-income neighborhood. Demographically speaking there's a lot of ancestral knowledge and this little health food store called grew health foods was really literally a lifeline for this community which was one of the hardest hit in the entire world. The store has herbs, it has organic food and it's there to provide a community service and I'm going to jump from that little pinpoint to like a million foot like lunar observation. I think people should keep in mind that this modern system of extracting foods from one part of the world and shipping them thousands of miles away to where they might be worth the heck of a lot more really only began with the spice trade. Corporations were set up backed by governments to travel to the far east and literally raid islands for their spices. In the meantime as part of that whole global expedition the European conquerors colonists came across Turtle Island, North America, the western hemisphere and they figured out particularly the Anglo-European explorers they figured out that the value of Turtle Island was in the topsoil and they quickly developed agricultural cash crops akin to spices, cotton and tobacco specifically and that created this whole system that we now have exported all over the world where people go to supermarkets, big box stores, get things that were grown very far away and in many cases in communities that get very very very little equity they get very very few dollars compared to the sales price along the way the way this the system was pioneered was really to the detriment of local indigenous communities first in North America and then all over the world to the degree where for many farmers internationally it's much more economical to grow things not tailored for local market. So when we in the developed world begin to look at food issues we have to realize that capitalism has created a series of haves and have nots and to tie it back to my my initial kind of personal anecdote when there are shocks to this global supply chain system whether they're economic or pandemic related what ends up happening is that those who can afford food experience very little interruption very little lack of access very little lack of choice but communities that don't underpin the economics of that system like my neighborhood in Queens find themselves in dire straits so during the pandemic this little health food store had an extraordinarily difficult time with its suppliers the same suppliers who deliver to whole foods and other natural food conglomerates and it just showed me that every single food issue is local and until we find ways to circulate local dollars within local systems no one is going to be safe from future shock. So this past week I've had a couple people on the podcast who've written books who've started the DC central kitchen Robert Egger and also Dr. Katie Martin who just finished the book reinventing food banks and food pantries the topic of food is a big issue started really last year on an international basis with the United Nations coming forward and saying they're going to do the UN food system summit and just really trying to push awareness and that's been moved now to this year the the movie or the documentary that we've really got you here for today to speak to us is gather which came out during the pandemic you know fall of 2020 about Native Americans and I know how it is to release a book a documentary and extreme difficulties during a pandemic when you're used to a system that's normally you know movie theaters or screenings and release premieres or events how did that all go can you tell us a little bit more not just on how maybe how that process worked but then we'll go more into the the documentary itself but just that process of you know doing something around food around the food insecurity the food sovereignty the issues in that whole area you're trying to release it during a pandemic well I'm very lucky like I have a great team and at the beginning of the pandemic March February March April 2020 it was clear from our own personal habits that we were all watching a lot more content than ever before and at the same time a lot of these content providers had ordered their slate for 2020 already and didn't necessarily have the ability to rapidly create new programs obviously those programs couldn't be produced during the pandemic so we realized that there was a tremendous opportunity people were looking for content that was positive you know if our movie was about like murderers and torturers you know it's not the kind of film that folks wanted to watch at the same time we do touch on very very deep topics particularly critical theory around race and our film came out in September 2020 in the US and Canada and digitally and this was just after the summer of the the kind of renewed focus on Black Lives Matter George Floyd's murder Ahmed Aubrey's murder Breonna Taylor's murder and we were able to basically connect the Black Lives Matter movement with native resiliency in the sense that this agricultural system that we spoke about a few minutes ago the colonial system of cash crops as people know required the brutal enslavement of people from West Africa who were primarily agricultural experts and last summer a series of protests really educated people on the legacy of slavery within institutions in the US today from you know loan systems redlining to of course law enforcement but we made the case that the obverse of that coin of labor in the original agricultural economy was land that land was not unoccupied it was not wilderness it was a careful interconnected series of Native American farms and harvesting and foraging areas to the degree that now 70% of the variety in global food came from scientists in the Western Hemisphere from indigenous people from corn to a lot of beans to potatoes to tomatoes what I think of as my ancestral food in East India potatoes tomatoes even capsaicin didn't exist in any form whatsoever until the British brought those food stuffs over in the 1700s the San Marzano tomato which underpins Southern Italian cuisine didn't actually hit mainland Italy until 1770 so as people were beginning to understand the inequity that creates the conditions for African Americans in the US from a structural standpoint our film provided the other half of that and we we were shocked by the interest we only we created the movie primarily for indigenous audiences but when non-natives particularly those people in the food system wanted to understand the depths of inequity again those of us in the food system don't have any connection or bear any responsibility for the horrors of the past but a lot of the problems in the food system are due really around the world are due to the original inequity that caused that created the supply chain system in America the land issues the labor issues and that's been exported all over the world absolutely that's so true and I mean that's kind of why I asked you that the first question you know you you with food chains and with your dealings with James Beard and and dealing with food over the years and your documentaries and things that you've done that you know there's a lot of discussion food insecurity food sovereignty you know how does this whole system work and function the inequalities the enormous race issue in the entire system and then this pandemic this black lives matters and and inauguration and many global unrest happen that maybe I was hoping some of those experiences are those moments where you said we're we're trying to uncover this injustice or what's been going on so long that we're we're starting to learn what some models of resilience could be and how to apply them that maybe occurred during this pandemic for me on on the flip side what I've seen is this bigger global view where we had another crazy thing that happened is as the Brexit obviously that we really couldn't believe but all that combined with a lockdown and the enormous amount of migrant workers that go every year into the United Kingdom to harvest produce and sell the foods that they make showed us oh my gosh how big a problem we have around the world in the our global food systems and I was wondering if there's any more learning lessons from this time that you can give us a depart to us so gather is based on the concept of food sovereignty which is a much deeper idea than food access or food security food security is the the availability of calories at an affordable cost food sovereignty is a community's exercising of rights to have the types of food that they want many times we only really see food sovereignty in play in immigrant communities in developed nations that have little tiny stores that somehow exist and they're affordable but on a larger scale and this is what I explored in my first movie and it's something that half of the food world doesn't pay any attention to and the other half thankfully pays all attention to it is the value of human beings food sovereignty requires community food security just requires a truck and a road and ability to get whatever quality food to a particular location when it comes to food sovereignty we don't just have to think about the producers we have to think about the people that are working in the fields that are working within the meatpacking plants that are working in the grocery system that are working in the supply chain because of any if any one of those nodes experiences any sort of shock an entire system is turned upside down so a great example of food sovereignty in a non-native setting is our communities in Detroit who about 10 or 15 years ago began to realize that they were not getting access to food and at the same time there was a lot of unused land in their lower income neighborhoods that was abandoned but still under the ages of the city of Detroit local folks you know pressured the government pretty significantly to be able to take over those empty tracts of land and to grow and harvest food and so what happens there when an entire community relies on itself to be the supply chain is you develop an understanding of everyone's role in that community you know who's doing what so to extrapolate from that what what I think most of us realize during the pandemic is that were it not for strong local food systems we would have been stuffed and that might have included you know the person making meals in their house and distributing them to seniors it might have been the local natural food store that was willing to deliver it to seniors unlike the big box stores we begin to realize how many people in our community work on the food system and how we need to really understand and value that and build our alliance once we have that concept you know front of mind we can begin to figure out how to channel more of our dollars into that local food system at the end of the day the cost on taxpayers is so much greater for supporting big box stores for the lower prices that you might get you know on a day to day basis the externalities end up killing us for example in the United States you know we've got we've got Walmart as do a number of countries Walmart half of their workforce or more are recipients of government aid and so the prices for consumers are cheap there because their labor costs are negligible at the same time the same people buying that food end up paying for the subsidies for that labor force to get food stamps and other government aid and at the same time that sort of big system is as far away from local as possible so we need to understand how to make our dollars work within communities and how invaluable those personal bonds are with everybody in our local food system. Absolutely so true and I want to really get more into gather kind of step back I originally heard from a mutual friend of ours Diane Hats she said you've got to see this new documentary gather and she said there's a segment or a piece from Trevor Noah and Jason Momoa where they talk a little bit about it and I know Jason Momoa is the executive producer on it although I don't believe he appears in in the documentary at all but just kind of raising the awareness and so as you said earlier you definitely have very fortunate to to get it out to the right people and hear this I went and watched it I watched it twice as a matter of fact and I have to be honest I was shocked I was devastated I've lived in and on close and and on reservations before as a white American from from New York but it wasn't in New York it was in and Roosevelt Utah matter of fact with indigenous native tribes and seeing some of the things that was depicted in and gather and I don't want to be the big spoiler alert or give everything away I want people to go out and watch it for themselves but not only did it properly depict the the true situation that I even saw when I was younger and those Native Americans but it's just really to me almost depicted now how the US how the world is destroyed our indigenous and native populations and really left them in a really hurtful way on on how they eat where they get their food their lands the way it's done you know there's a scene that's even shown in your trailer of all the buffalo heads and where they talk about that you did an excellent job but I'm telling you it was so real and scary for me it was as oh it was scary for me because how can it be that bad I mean it just was for me I felt like you know I've heard I've heard Trump talk and I've seen some crazy things but for me this was like the as real and crazy as it could get how bad these Native Americans were were in a situation they were in well you know it all really started in the crusades it started again you know a few hundred years later in the 1400s with this concept of the doctrine of discovery which basically allowed Catholic explorers to kill non-Catholics for their land and their resources effectively it didn't exactly say that but that the latter was justified by by this doctrine and so that created the conditions where these Catholic kingdoms and then Christian kingdoms to what would literally hire ship captains and ships and send those ships all over the world to find wealth I mean it's it was literally one of the first forms of modern venture capitalism you know John Cabot one of the England's main explorers wasn't English at all he was Italian you know the Portuguese and the Spanish hired a lot of Italians including Christopher Columbus to head out you know and explore and bring back wealth and both explorers would get a stake in that wealth but they were being funded by these large nation states and so the idea was money the Spanish were very cruel but you know they were looking for for gold the Portuguese were looking for gold it was only the the Anglo-Europeans that realized that the value in North America was in the top soil and to their dismay you know or actually to their surprise you know there was a lot of already cultivated land on the eastern seaboard um to their dismay it was populated and so thus began a series of exterminations supported by the British military to the effect that by 1763 the farmers of the American colonies had so depleted the top soil on the eastern seaboard that they asked for royal permission to cross the Appalachian mountains now why would they need permission they didn't really need permission but they needed the British military to support that venture because they were going to steal more native land now the you the British military and the British government didn't have the money or the interest in that and you know put forth this royal decree banning the settlement of the areas west of the Appalachians and that created the Revolutionary War that concept you know was the underpinning of the expansion of the United States you know pushing not not so much killing natives anymore as the British did but sending them west of the Mississippi putting them on reservations force marching them to places that were undesirable for American farming but again it's like those lands west of the Mississippi by the 1860s 1870s you know were essential to supporting a new form of American immigration again all the money was land-based we're not even at the industrial revolution yet if you wanted to make money you had to grow stuff to the degree that by 1920 the third largest carbon sink in the world the planes the great planes were turned into monocrupt farmland which was such an unsustainable way of of supporting that land that it created a dust bowl so these these disasters were all initiated by the destruction of native ways of life that said what we focus on and gather is the the reality that despite a history of genocide a history of devastation many native communities still have kept their ancestral songs their ancestral practices even if they're living on land where their ancestors didn't live if they were forced off their ancestral land onto reservations they're keeping the concept of stewardship and they're reviving localized food systems because the last bit of it all is that natives were pushed so far away from the supply chain that and into many areas that are unformable that they received the worst quality food at the highest prices they still subsist on effectively what were military rations bags of flour bags of sugar bags of salt bottles of oil and it's created a health epidemic in Indian country our film focused us on a handful of people and there's many more than just those in our film but focuses on a handful of people in Indian country that are revitalizing those traditions and building a food system up tomorrow yeah that handful of people is absolutely right there there are more but even when we look at some of those handful of indigenous tribes and nations in in the United States they're definitely not what they used to be and they've had a hard road to to so over all these years many trials and tribulations and we have definitely not made the food systems food security food sovereignty an easy road or easy way to go for them at all I see a lot of a lot of things that that really need to be not only the paradigm needs to be shifted but brought to awareness but to kind of give back and and make right or help them restore those indigenous traditional ways and help them be further promoted and use more often that's why in some respects I tickled on those two authors and super people around some new systems even emerging and developing around food banks pantries and central kitchens to that are almost systems that that can possibly be of help to to bring back pride and and just sovereignty back into those areas and bring back the traditions give back land allow fishing and and different things that you also address and gather that that really need to change and I see it changing in non-reservation areas so that it's being restored and we're kind of coming to a better system but it really needs to occur for everyone and we need to remove this huge race barrier that there are some tools on the gather film website there's availability to do screenings to there's availability to go there and and get some resources what are the main messages and things that you would like people to do um before after and during they they see this movie so to say what what what your objectives and lies so I I imagine that this podcast has a global audience not just in in the US and Canada yes but there are we'll call them first people there are communities of first people in every country and they can be identified by their connection to their land in Europe as well their connection to their land their existence depending on a very very deep knowledge of that of their ecosystems they don't just have to be practicing non-Christian religions a lot of Native Americans are Christian so the the way to identify where these communities exist are basically to to to see which folks are super tied to the land and obviously not all will identify as indigenous but very often those communities are the ones that are first hit by potential environmental disasters they're the canaries in the coal mine so to speak they're the ones who are fighting against oil extraction fighting against unjust mining fighting against the building of rickety pipelines and for those of us who live far away from those communities we might ask you know how does that concern me but most of these communities have a larger view than just their own little ecosystems they feel a sense of stewardship towards their land and towards all of earth and for example a lot of folks will know about the the Standing Rock Sue reservation in North Dakota and the mass protest and fight against the pipelines a few years back now the pipelines would have crossed that reservation and would have potentially impacted the Missouri River which has millions of people living downstream one of the tenets behind the protest was not just that an oil pipe bursting would affect the local lands but it would pollute the water system all the way down the Missouri and that would have an impact on tens of millions of people's lives and so that little fight began to be understood by people in much larger cities downriver understanding that if the systems up north weren't secured and and this company has had a history of of leakages and since the pipeline had been installed there there were you know problems even on the Standing Rock Sue reservation a lot of these kind of frontline communities I'll say have policy goals and so this is to answer your question find out what those policy goals find out who the people most rooted to your land are and find out what they're fighting for don't go in with your great grand ideas particularly if you live near an indigenous community a truly indigenous community that's been there for hundreds if not thousands of years practicing their own way of life understand what's important to them and try to see if they need us outsiders to be allies because chances are those policy issues will have a deep impact on your life now gather focuses on a handful of characters we've got a chef from the white mountain Apache tribe in eastern Arizona Nephi Craig of a female forager named Twyla Casador from a little further south in Arizona young scientist on the Lakota reservation in a Shrine River Lakota reservation in South Dakota named Elsie Dubrae and a group of young men on the border of California and Oregon on a gigantic river the Uroth Nation on the on the river of the called the Klamath now the Klamath River has a series of dams that have been there for decades ostensibly to provide hydroelectric power but it costs too much to upkeep those dams and those dams have destroyed the river and it really impacted the way farmers use water because in some sections there's an it is unlimited active which is not good you know in this modern sense water is so precious it needs to be used and as as as specifically as possible so these young men you know as shown in the movie you know have finally been able to help secure the demolition of those dams and this will have impacts throughout the the the California agricultural system it'll be difficult because you know at first there isn't going to be the same unlimited access to this water but it's going to force the whole system to rethink water usage and it's going to deeply increase the health of hundreds of thousands of acres of forest systems which will hopefully prevent the next decades you know crop of wildfires that leads me to a real unique question and I'd like to see how you answer it in this we're talking about indigenous tribes natives we're talking about those who aren't first peoples who are although probably maybe have also multi generations live there as well but aren't first peoples and living in a different situation how do you feel about the the firm or the the sense of being a global citizen and a world without nations borders divisions of humanity one from each other not cultures but these divisions and borders that we've had so we've in this lockdown in this period of of covid and and and endemic we've we've been combined more as humans but error's been a global citizen food's been a global citizen species have been a global citizen how does that tie into not only gather but also this is kind of the wisdom you shared with us on how we go in by try to help and see if that's even needed or wanted I mean we we see that the most powerful social movements really of the last century or more are the ones who've united people based on socioeconomic class you know if there wasn't this horrific engine of money making that has crisscrossed the world and literally created this supply chain which just extracts value from one community and sends it to another there wouldn't be the global inequity that there is now you know obviously it's like that supply chain is also transferred knowledge it's transferred culture but looking at the precarious situation that we're in there isn't a single place on earth that's devoid of culture that's devoid of spirituality so we don't really need to you know to look at how to protect those issues necessarily but the world has been divided by class and the great travesty is that people have been pitted people of the same class have been pitted against each other through artificial politics through an artificial you know campaign to control emotions and to sow this division but when you look at you know the Black Panthers when you look at it Reverend Barber in the in North Carolina and the the the poor people's movement when you look at Martin Luther King's work when you even look at you know the work of like Subhash Chandra Bose and and India's freedom fighters it was very much collecting people against a power that exerted itself by controlling economics and controlling the supply chain and so there's room for all of us in this movement who understand that the overlords aren't simply motivated by politics or ideology at the root it's economics and they might justify their economics through ideology or religion the same way that the the colonizers did but at the end of the day you know most of us who aren't of that class have very very similar goals that can coexist. You said it really hit the nail on the head it really all comes back down to economics in many respects that where we decide to make divisions or find racial issues or to try to disrupt or displace or hurt people who maybe don't fit into the system somehow and I speak a lot about sustainability and environment I'm really big on Indigenous peoples and that and some people you know think sustainability are an environmentalist or an activist you know as a tree hugger earth lover hippie whatever whatever it may be but really it comes down to three things with sustainability comes first and foremost you have to be very wise with economics what is a sustainable economic model that will run and work in the future for everyone that's a model that needs to work for everyone you're a futurist you think about the future what's the future health of our planet and humanity going to be and the last one is you really have to think about wisdom and I or innovation and I think in innovation I think a lot about Indigenous wisdom as some of the best innovations I've seen even at the at the world economic form stage where we've seen people who are suffering or been in a certain situation come up with new models that are very innovative based on old wisdom to get us into new situations and I after seeing gather both times I just really felt strongly how besides what what we're already hearing going on the United Nations food system summit James Beard the eat form all the different food movements and food awareness the food bribes that are going on in the world how do we really get a food system or food systems reform that will work for everyone what would you have some I know I'm giving you the big question but I really want your wisdom learning to see how what we need to do where we need to be looking in the right area I think I think the first question is and and and you know this is you know the exact opposite of what you've dedicated yourself to is that when we listen to these ideas do we want to possess them because there are just as many people at these forums that have an interest in commodifying these ideas and we see this notably in the regenerative agriculture movement or all of them the indigenous wisdom and local wisdom and deep knowledge underpinning it there's a class of people that are selling the content that are making a lot of money on it and at the same time that's not a bad thing but we also see that the money makers don't include indigenous voices or longtime experts in their leadership there's a conversation right now to allow diversity and it's not necessarily leadership we should be looking at communities that have the most the deepest stake the deepest knowledge to be leaders for the rest of us but for the most part the people that are leaders are the ones that have access to money in the food system that have the financial wherewithal to like fly to Davos or fly to Geneva and participate in this global circuit of speaking whereas the people doing the hard work that are suffering are those that are right now protesting in Delhi you know it's like I haven't seen a New York Times article where they basically allow the people on those front lines to speak about the movement in their own voices you know that's the thing it's like if we want a food system of equality we have to look at who's represented in all of these conversations not just tokenizing people putting them on a stage but actually putting them in positions of leadership and understanding I think at the fundamental level that institutions don't make people experts in the food system so just because a female farmer you know in India doesn't have a degree from Oxford doesn't mean that she doesn't have ideas on how to effectively change the food system we would in the institutional framework we would never consider a woman like that to be the head of the food and agriculture organization but maybe folks like that are the ones that need to be in those positions I totally agree we have a I believe a mutual friend and he was also on the show Lauren Cardelli and he says hello by the way and he also brought up this topic there there will be many protesters there at the UN food system summit that are just feeling that their voice is not at the table that there's not true representation but also that we're giving giving the stage or the voices to sometimes the wrong people and so I love that you you brought that up because there needs to be that equality there needs to be a strong indigenous voice there and we need to have those exactly those voices of of the female farmers from India matter of fact the majority of the world's farmers and food harvests are women and girls and they definitely need to have a voice in this not to just bring them into a gender equality but to give them a fair wage to to give them a dignity of an education to give them land and micro loans like Muhammad Jonas giving his Grameen bank and the micro credits that he does we need make sure that whether they're introverted or they're not educated or whoever that they everyone has a voice at the table on food and you don't need this is my biggest monitor is you don't really need the degrees or to be the scientist or to be the long term farmer Jill food producer for Nestle or Unilever to have a voice at the table because food is our energy source would be it's the longest oldest running economy in the world it's been around for 13,000 years 12,000 years it's the most successful longest running economy we've ever had but it's also the least paid the least digitized the biggest employer of women girls the biggest cause of human suffering and greenhouse gas emissions and our global grand challenges regardless of just the ones that you're talking about and gather of racial inequality and and indigenous inequality for of access and what's going on that you address or you speak about and shed the light on and gather we really need some fixings and so I went when you mentioned that my my heart just rings because it's as much as needed voices I I necessarily want to bring those voices to the UN or to the world economic form which are could be seen as elitist clubs but how can we give them empowerment how can we do more to reach that critical mass so that we can start to see these effective changes happening globally as well as in for Native Americans in the US that's a very big question and obviously the the solutions are going to be different community by community I I think it's an understanding that any weakness in the food system any inequity in the food system will rear its ugly head and haunt those of us who think that we're insulated there is going to be a reckoning there is a reckoning right now and the way to effectively support that is to support all the wonderful legitimate movements out there it's like everyone in the food system should be talking about what's happening in India right now everyone should be talking about like the health of meatpacking workers in like Nebraska where the covid restrictions are non-existent everyone should be talking about how to support the community the food community in Texas right now it's like the world is so global but when there are problems around the world that seem like they're millions of miles away it's out of sight out of mind simply because of ignorance we have no idea how much we're reliant on markets all over the world for those of us who live you know in the modern food system whether we're in the developing world or the developed world if we live in an urban area or a semi urban area and we don't grow our own food you're dependent on people who could be thousands of miles away from you and so that's just to say that shocks in the supply chain can have long lasting effects for people who don't think that they're to people who think that they're insulated from it and that's the main thing it's like you know we should focus on supporting change in every local community that wants specific local changes I agree I agree that's that's beautiful advice I have probably this is probably the most difficult question that I have for you today it's also very big and and hard to answer question but it's the burning question WTF and it's not the swear word although I'm sure we've all been pulling our hair thinking that since the pandemic and with many other injustices going on in the world but it's what's the future I mean like the great question the reality is the future is now it's like the biggest problems in the food system right now which will be the biggest problems in the future tomorrow are those dealing with the fact that people who work the hardest can in the food system can barely make ends meet you know it's like yes climate change is an issue but the way the global food system has worked the last 20 years is wherever there's environmental issues lack of rainfall less predictable stuff the food system just moves and it finds land that can support this type of of of economy or this type of production and it finds local people very often because of the economics of food those local people aren't paid very much those those land costs are very minimal national governments are pressured or incentivized to support you know the the the the the movement of the global food system but what ends up happening is five or ten years later we see the inequity in that food system from a labor standpoint and those people begin to rise up whether they're farm workers in mexico in griskell supply chain whether they're the coalition of amokli workers tomato pickers in southern florida whether they're the farm farmers and farm workers in india whether they're meatpacking workers etc it's like the problems in our food system that create the most the the highest degree of unsustainability it's a fact that it's not sustainable right now for people to harvest food to produce food to help the rest of us you know achieve the type of lifestyles that we want to this kind of there's a couple things that you said earlier but also what this ties into you know there's the buzz word obviously around regenerative regenerative or organics and uh there's some new different certifications and kind of movements in that direction um is there are we talking about a more regenerative system or more regenerative economy in a sense for those food workers one that can go on indefinitely are we only talking about just better working conditions and um how how their jobs work and i want to dive a little bit deeper into that that's a great question i think i think that the the question needs to be posed to the people you know i can't think of many workers on the ground that care if they're in a region on a regenerative farm or not most not those definitions impact how big of a jerk your boss is going to be they don't impact the high degree of sexual violence that exists in agriculture they don't impact the low wages one of the biggest issues i have with the regenerative system is farmers for the most part except for rare collectives but this isn't in the definition of regenerative farming regenerative farmers are still at the mercy of the supply chain they still have to make ends meet they still have to pay property taxes they're still kind of fighting the same forces that move them into regenerative farming in the first place it's not necessarily the best condition for workers there's no guidance for those farmers on how to really you know ensure the highest standard of conditions for everybody within their system they don't have enough money to have hr departments and to implement a lot of like kind of government mandated guidelines so again it's like i would like to talk about labor more than the environment you know we in the west generally or in the developed world generally tend to fix on climate change and not labor it's much more sexy for progressives to talk about climate change than to advocate for the unionization of workers they should go hand in hand they're equally important so i i would just push more people in the food movement to think about the actual system you know it's not just dependent on earth it's dependent on people and that's where the division is you know we tend to think that we're superior to people that are of a different color of a different socioeconomic background and we tend to think that we can exist without them we tend to think that if the global temperatures dropped everything would be fine but it would be and tell me if i'm wrong but i think you really touched more about that labor and about that in the food chain in your documentary the food chain as well not only picking tomatoes in this migrant workforce and and just really horrific conditions in that that really need to be changed and also when i mentioned you know kind of the the migrant workers with the brexit but that's going on all around the world where we tend to forget the huge reliance upon these migrant workers who are picking and growing and and planning and harvesting transporting and processing this food for us all around the world and they're not being paid a fair wage and and they're it can even go further we can I mean we could go even to more the other thing that you touched upon is how food from in 2008 was all made into a commodity through the financial crisis and what ripple effects that's had on those migrant workers on the workers in the food industry period and that's taken food and made it into a commodity which is when you cheapen food you cheapen life so to say I think the biggest thing and this is this sounds dumb is that people not be jerks you know the those in the food not neither ignoring them neither patronizing them understanding that if you go to a supermarket you are intertwined with a complex set of layers of production and transportation each of which depends on transportation each of which depends on on human beings more often than not those human beings are at a lower socioeconomic level than the end consumer and that shouldn't create a sense of superiority in us to the degree that we should realize that the solutions to those people's problems exist within their communities so when they're advocating for specific change it's not enough for us to say like oh but here's the change that I think would be better it's up to us to have oneness with them and to support their change or to support their their their campaigns with the realization that the better off human beings are in the food system the better off the rest of us will be and that includes people who aren't in the food system at all I mean who aren't in the supply chain when we look at issues that we talk about and gather like an Indian country in Native American reservations they have a completely different set of governance by the United States United States government than farmers you know they're under the Bureau of Indian Affairs they're under the Secretary of the Interior they don't have the massive resources of the USDA the United States Department of Agriculture they don't have access to capital they don't have all of the elements that any food producer needs to be part of the supply chain so it's two parts people in those communities whether they're Native American or African American or rural white communities they need to have the same tools that much more wealthy elements of the food chain have but number two if they wish to exist outside that food system they should be able to there's there's been a devastating clawback of African American owned farming land in the south and in the midwest there's also been a clawback a lot of a lot of Native American land and the appropriation of that for mining or other extractive industries and that affects hyper local food systems the way we justify it as non-natives is that those areas aren't in production for the greater food system and so why couldn't they be used for energy production whereas their value is to local people those pieces of land support local food systems that aren't connected with the supply chain so it's all twofold it's number one it's understanding that those of us who don't have to grow our own food or harvest our own food are in a place of privilege in the matter what our socioeconomic level is and that we rely on the hands and hearts of millions of other people and we have to meet them on their level yeah we really you mean you started out saying you know this might be stupid or dumb and it's absolutely not it's really what I hear out of what you said it's almost the golden rule you know treat people on planet how you would want to be treated and how you want to be treated and it's really kind of even though we definitely do have this racism and this class separation of you know that's really what what needs to change those communities and those areas where they're saying hey we want to change we want to change but we need to get in there and support them that's what I'm hearing out from you somehow and it's not stupid at all I I really just we're all on the same planet we're all on the same spaceship earth moving in the same direction there's none of us dropped off on on this planet whether we're indigenous whether we're from Germany from India from Africa we're all on the same planet moving in the same direction and we need a world that works for everyone and not just a few because underneath we're all distant cousins we're all related we're all the same species and this sense that I've been feeling in many others is a sense of unease and unrest that our current civilization framework models that we see around the world are just not working for us anymore and I'm a big fan of Carl Sagan and he said you know there's a rising collective consciousness that sees the world as the earth as one single organism and an organism divided amongst itself or at war with itself is doomed and and I truly feel that that with all the other and inequities in our in our world and civilization frameworks is really bubbling to the surface and uh that leads me to the question you've kind of answered it in one respect what does a world that works for everyone look like for you great question I think the first thing is to realize that for the last 500 years the world hasn't worked it's just that we've been like a frog in a pot and now we realize the water is pretty dang hot the solutions are everywhere and it's so simple it's like I mean we're doing a lot of talking right now but like the solution is listening you know you as a podcast host do a heck of a lot of listening the solutions are all in listening it's all in realizing that if you believe in anything in this world you have to believe in the interconnectedness of everything and if you just choose to look at it from the economic or physical standpoint great but if you want to look at it from a molecular standpoint you understand that there are kind of quantum effects with everything that everybody does particularly when you look at human beings and the earth as a system if you want to look on the spiritual connect the spiritual level you know I'm from India like we believe that there is a universal consciousness and that consciousness is expressing itself through every sentient and non-sentient being those of us who believe that have the greater task of understanding the depth of what that means and that this consciousness does exist in every other human being and once we realize that there's a part of us in a part of everybody it's a lot harder to be a bad person I think we've existed in a space for so many thousands of years where individual actions don't really have a huge lasting effect we've seen in the last few hundred that certain individuals can change the course more often than not in a negative way for thousands or millions of people and that's not just like the great like you know like autocrats of the last century it's greed it's CEOs it's people who come up with what we think is a world-changing idea like Facebook but whose primary motivations are so opaque even to themselves that it just ends up fitting into a force of destruction you know in this day and age everybody matters more than they ever have and I think that's a beautiful thing but I think that as human beings we are forced maybe for the first time in our existence to value life life is no longer cheap it's like we read about all these horrors of you know thousands of people dying in a tsunami from like 500 years ago it's like ho-hum those things probably happened you know quite often but now when that happens you know when there's an environmental disaster in Texas we have a heart we feel that pain we can understand it and I think we have to build on that we have to cherish the fact that we do have those connections and I think that's what's going to take humanity into you know fully into the next millennium for sure what what are some things that maybe are coming down the the pipe or down the line for you some new projects that you're working on anything that you can tease or tickle and get us excited about to to be looking forward from you also I'm in a weird world like my first film was was on food my second film was on ultra ultra distance running with a very strong with a very strong indigenous aspect I mean this is a little bonkers but it's completely true that humanity's first religion first religious practice you know incorporated running yes there was there was prayer there was dance but the most powerful forms of prayer were in dance were in motion and there is a deep connection that we have to mother earth it's just in the last few hundred years that sense of connectivity has disappeared but imagine running for days to catch animals imagine walking for months to follow the crop cycles as nomadic indigenous people did imagine going on thousand mile pilgrimages once every few years which a handful of people you know particularly in Spain and in India and Tibet still undertake there's beauty and physicality and so like I did a food movie I did a running movie did a food movie gather my next movie is going to be on running I also find that they kind of revisit these larger like macro level issues I need to spend a few years focusing on the completely micro set of circumstances on individuals and then systems and then individuals and then systems that's great is there any specific ways besides going out to the places that I will list in the description of the show notes to view the documentary that we should go do be aware of get involved how to help support you but as well as the indigenous natives and just in general if we're not from the United States or in the United States how can we maybe do something to support raise awareness to bring it back to our own situations thank you that I'll list three things in order of ease number one watch the movie if you're in the US Canada or UK it's on Amazon and iTunes and if you're anywhere else it's on Vimeo on demand number two go to first nations.org which is our primary partner in Indian country in the United States they're doing incredible work for the 574 federally recognized tribes and a number of other groups that don't have that political recognition give a dollar give a euro give a pound everything helps it it's super easy to do like the easiest way to affect things this day this day and age when it comes to inequity is to redistribute the wealth you know it's going to take a long time before wealth through the supply chain hits these marginalized communities but it's very easy to send a dollar or two in that direction and then number three if you want to do the work figure out what the most local personal issue is things that are tangible not gigantic issues but like things that have people standing on soapboxes ranting about pain in your local food community and how to address that whether it's through food banks whether it's through supporting local kitchens and always always always putting a human faith to things not thinking about things in terms of food waste or climate change but making it even more specific you know food waste and the way to redistribute that to this neighborhood in your city you know super localized food waste within an institution a university and another way to redistribute that to lower income people on a campus etc it's like who cares about how many millions of tons of stuff is wasted all around the world figure out what's happening within a few blocks or a few miles or kilometers of you and focus there you know the big picture ideas are such a waste of time where there are so many things in so many ways that you can be of service to the people in your community so those are definitely things that we'll do we'll list them in the show notes in the description my last three questions for you are kind of almost on the flip side of that something that a takeaway for my listeners maybe some insights and advice that you could give them the first one is as if there was one message that you could really depart my listeners that would be considered a sustainable takeaway that has the power to change their life what would it be your message I would say if you're able to take regular walks go for regular runs you know as much as I want you to listen to Mark's podcast on those walks of runs unplug get to learn more about your ecosystem through your feet through your eyes through your ears we tend to become stronger fighters when we develop a much stronger connection to our local neighborhoods you know get to know the trees get to know the birds get to know the animals the water systems on a deeply personal level you start having those types of contemplative experiences because when you have those experiences you develop a connection on a much deeper level and if somebody ever tries to take that away from you I guarantee you you will fight like the dickens that's one percent of what indigenous communities go through when they see their land being desecrated or taken it's not just the history of their ancestors on that land it's the connection that their culture has instilled in them through practice their intimate knowledge of that land so that's what I would suggest breathe the air get your feet dirty get your hands dirty meander and make that a regular practice well that's beautiful what should young innovators in your field film making be thinking about if they're looking for ways to make real impact find a really good story about people again it's like I can't tell you how again I'm being a snob here how sick I am of like all the media out there about like you know particular resources whether it's plastic whether it's this or that it's like yeah like these the global problems are big and they're important but I guarantee you more people developed a connection to the environmental movement by watching that octopus movie it's like by making a connection to life you know making a connection to something that affects us on an incredibly deep level and it never comes from anybody telling you this is bad this is bad this is bad you're all gonna die I mean that's the beauty about gather it's like the folks in the film are literally living on the other side of the apocalypse where their ancestors were decimated you know their land was desecrated but they find strength in their relationship with mother earth we're really we really don't care about mother earth as much as we care about ourselves mother earth is always going to go on even all the nuclear weapons would have destroyed this planet and I think it's important to understand that like our issues around climate change are really quite selfish right we want to ensure our own survival no one really cares about that octopus you know if it was like a choice of New York City living and thriving or like an octopus living or thriving like no one's going to choose the octopus so it's beginning to understand how to make our motivations really focusing on earth on mother earth and that's only going to come through developing your own personal connection with it and realizing that at the end of the day we are all so insignificant but at the same time if everybody developed that feeling of insignificance all the solutions would come to the fore and so it's just like this western drive drive drive drive drive drive the urgency like the gut the power that maybe isn't the best approach we've been talking and trying to fight for these solutions for decades now I think the ultimate solution is going to be on the individual level but as we practice this globalist worldview you know make sure you focus on yourself make sure you focus on really walking the walk and deepening that connection which we all talk about is as precious as one can imagine I love how the two that you know the answer you gave before this one really ties so nicely to this one because if you make that connection back with your community your environment with nature take a walk get go barefoot look at the trees see your surroundings reconnect with the earth which basically you're saying then then you do care more about that octopus in that next step then you do make it more personal it's a lot harder to not care if you've made that connection but if there if we're desensitized that we don't make that connection it for me anyway it just seems a lot harder or a lot easier to just it's not a big deal you know it's a thing but if you do that there's that learning and the last question really is what have you experienced or learned in in your professional journey so far that you would have loved to know from the start you know that's a great question and I'm sure there's plenty of your plenty of listeners who already practice this in their day-to-day life but you know I think most of us as kids felt the much stronger connection to nature than we do now it was just freer like you could run around barefoot in your undies whether you lived on a sidewalk or you lived on a farm you know mother earth is under that dirt mother earth is under that sidewalk as well as we grow older we tend to focus more on comfort and for whatever reason the more comfortable we get the more the fewer calluses we uh we maintain on our feet on our hands etc and so it really took movie making like this really technical work that's focused on a piece of technology for me to really get to spend a lot more time on feeling my connection to earth I mean I traveled a lot I was in jungles and deserts but I wasn't really really there it's like I was doing work I was you know moving earth around moving things around but I never really developed a sense of where I was in that moment and I try to do more of that now on my daily runs or my daily walks I try to have much more consciousness of the geography I'm in um and that's been a beautiful thing I think that I'm blessed to be in that frame of mind again um and I would encourage folks who might not be you know in their 40s 50s 60s or 70s who are kind of in the hustle bustle of life to make sure that you don't lose that the last thing is kind of my my personal thing that I wanted to to mention with you and then I'll let you go and it can open up a whole another world and so I don't want to go too deep but I want to get your views and opinions what it is is for for many years I just feel like most of the media that we see out there is very dystopian most of what we're bombarded with not just social media but movies and tv series there's very dystopian depictions of the future black mirrors and and and on and on um I am I am wondering what when I was younger what may hopefully when you were yours well we had Jean Roddenberry who had Star Trek we had these sci-fi visions of the future it showed uh interracial couples they showed no smoking scenes they showed these future technologies and innovations really sci-fi but cool it was something that was inspiring and as a kid or as a youth you'd say oh wow that'd be cool I'd love to have that and over the years to me it seemed like we had architects creatives engineers designers and even movie makers doing film magic to create those kind of futures and and most of them have come to reality what if we took even the sustainable development goals or the paris agreement or say hey let's do media that depicts what a sustainable future looks like or what a resilient future looks like or a regenerative future looks like in 2030 or 2050 uh and create a tv series or create something that's constantly showing us what that future that we should be trying to work towards getting towards even looks like so that we can begin to create engineer and design for that and so I hope you're get where I'm going with my question what I'm trying to do you see media like that coming about what what do we need to do to create more of it so it's bombarding us just as much as all the dystopian images and maybe you believe that that would inspire people to say hey now I get it that that looks and feels like a wonderful future let's create that economy that system that those things so that we can achieve that and get there I mean I would argue that we're already there like five years ago much less 10 years ago there weren't podcasts like this where you could just listen to people having a positive constructive conversation I think there's a there's been a lot bigger focus on this idea of solutions based media on on more positive imagery and inspiration within cinema the last five or ten years and there's plenty of examples but I again I can think of no greater example than the prevalence of or the power of like email newsletters the power of instagram which is obviously a lot more positive than than facebook that's focusing on sharing you know inspiring motivating content and podcasts you know which you know for the most part need to be inspirational I mean there's great ones obviously that are based on storytelling but for the most part they're motivating they're inspirational they're really addressing the sliver of humanity that is interested in either deep dives big pushes to dispel ignorance or like solid doses of inspiration so I love where we are right now and I love the trends of where things are pushing forward I was kind of hoping more movie magic where you know somehow we we depict these futures I always think what would it look like well it looks like when I grew up when I was younger maybe how boring would that be it's a lot more difficult to do now because there's been such a tremendous consolidation at the very very top amongst these massive streaming platforms that are global and find that more I mean you see this year changing drastically year by year more often than not they can satiate people through middle of the road content there's no real artistic need or impetus for really taking a very very big risk because for the most part because the market's not there that said you know one could argue that you know with the kind of like reinvention of television there are tons and tons and tons of like really great long-form episodic work but to your comment I think the fact that so there's so many choices it's really hard for that one star trek again which was just on for a handful of years so it's not like it was a commercial success there's there's there isn't the opportunity for that like one little tiny show that one sliver of like futurism to all of a sudden be what everybody around the world watches because instead of just having three or four channels we literally have like 10,000 when you look at all the streaming options as well so it's just a different media landscape and you know to extrapolate on your point a lot of the futuristic stuff that we're watching is so fantasy-based superhero movies where it's like the most powerful woman that anybody could think of is like Wonder Woman or Captain Marvel and like you know the most powerful man that anybody could think of is some billionaire in an iron suit iron man so it's much less rooted in in in reality I mean hopefully that'll change and hopefully that kind of human creative spirit will push past the commercialism of media these days. Thank you so much Sanjay it's been absolutely wonderful that's all I have for you unless you want to ask me something but it's been a sheer pleasure and I hope we can follow up with your next projects very soon. I wouldn't really appreciate that Mark it's been great to spend this time with you you're obviously a legend you know so many friends of mine were like oh my god Mark Buckley he's great he's super kind he's super focused and I got to experience that a thousand fold so thank you. Thank you so much and you have you have a wonderful day and I will put it all in the links in the show description so that everybody can go out and reach you and find your work thank you. Thank you.