“We've lived through 3 ice ages - here's what we learned” - how Indigenous wisdom can help us all

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Deen Sanders: Indigenous people, despite being, by the way, only six percent of the global population, we have access and responsibility for sixty percent of the world's land mass.

Robin Pomeroy: Welcome to Radio Davos, the podcast from the World Economic Forum that looks at the biggest challenges and how we might solve them. This week we hear from two Indigenous leaders about how they see the future of the world and what lessons they have for the rest of us.

Deen Sanders: For our people, we have lived through cataclysmic climate change. In our country alone, people have lived through three separate ice ages. We've seen our country shrink in physical land mass by 20% and our cultures and systems move and adjust to that. So there are stories of adaptation there. There are stories of how do we respond to the changes in those environments. And these are messages for the future.

Robin Pomeroy: I sat down with Deen Sanders, an Aborigine from Australia, and Fawn Sharp, who's a Native American leader. They're both members of the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on Natural Capital.

Fawn Sharp: Indigenous people can come to these conversations and we can say, we do not have access to capital, we do not have access to finance, but what we do have access to is nature. And with our access to nature, we can bring our teachings into these conversations and help guide, influence and quite frankly lead the world on how to maintain financial metrics that really reflect these are living systems.

Robin Pomeroy: Follow Radio Davos wherever you're at your podcast or visit wef.ch/podcasts.

I'm Robin Pomeroy at the World Economic Forum, and with this conversation with Indigenous leaders from opposite sides of the world...

Deen Sanders: Everybody is indigenous to somewhere. What we speak for is that deeper relationship to place, that deeper relationship to country, to humanity.

Robin Pomeroy: This is Radio Davos.

How can we as humans thrive without destroying the planet and the nature we depend on for our own survival? That's the question being asked by 24 experts who meet in the Global Future Council on Natural Capital. That's a group convened by the World Economic Forum.

And on this episode of Radio Davos, I speak to two members of that 24-person group who are talking about this big issue, and they have a particular angle on the subject because they're both indigenous leaders.

These two indigenous leaders, one from Australia, one from North America, have unique insights into our relationship with nature. I started by asking them to introduce themselves.

Deen Sanders: My name is Deen Sanders. I'm a Warranggal Nara, Worimi nation from Australia, Aboriginal Australia. And I'm a co-chair of a Global Future Council on Natural Capital.

Fawn Sharp: My name is Fawn Sharp. I serve as a council member to the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on Natural Capital.

Robin Pomeroy: It's great to have you both here to talk about the view of the world from the view of indigenous people. Let's start for anyone who's not familiar with that. What do we mean really by Indigenous? What is an Indigenous people? And you come from opposite ends of the earth as well. And so it must be a very diverse community, but you have things in common. So which one of you wants to go? How do you, if you're ever asked that, how do you reply to it?

Fawn Sharp: I consider indigenous peoples peoples who inhabited an area since time immemorial, since the beginning of time. And through the centuries, our occupation and our traditional homelands have been gifted throughout generations.

And so an indigenous person from from my nation at Quinault has inherited generations of of teachings of spirituality, of a way of life, our relationship to the natural world, our relationship to our creator and to each other. And so an indigenous person embodies generations of traditional knowledge, ancient knowledge, and also resilience. People, you know, present day seem to think that indigenous peoples can be somewhat weak and vulnerable as a result of colonisation. But not only are we spiritually resilient, but we're we're strong and that's the result of centuries of living a traditional way of life and so indigenous peoples are occupy every continent on the planet and and we've been here since time immemorial.

Deen Sanders: I think that's right. That's a beautiful way of telling the story.

I would add I think that that everybody is indigenous to somewhere and the truth of humanity is that all of us have our relationship to place. So we would describe it from an Aboriginal Australian perspective, that indigenous people we are the world's oldest continuous culture, more than a hundred thousand years of relationship, unbroken, to Fawn's point, an unbroken relationship with place and with knowledge and culture. Despite examples of colonisation and others.

We're just a little bit lucky in the context that we we we were late in the colonisation journey, so our culture is still intact. We are still in deep relationship with our histories and our families and our stories.

But I want to encourage all the listeners to the to the programme that everybody is indigenous to somewhere. And what we speak for is that deeper relationship to place, that deeper relationship to country, to humanity.

We think by the way, that despite being an ancient peoples and to Fawn's point custodians and holders of ancient knowledge, that this is in fact the knowledge of humanity for the future, not just for the past.

Robin Pomeroy: Tell us something about your community then. We talk about the Aborigines in Australia. But I'm guessing that's not just one homogenous group of people, right? It must be quite diverse. Tell them tell me about where you're from and who you are from, something about that.

Deen Sanders: Well, thank you for that. It's a beautiful question because in fact you're quite right that Aboriginal Australian, we talk about Aboriginal Torres Strait Islanders in our case, because there's a small cluster of islanders at the very top of our nation.

But in our records are at least 500 separate nation groups, and nation groups are not really even sufficient. Because I mentioned one of my one from Worimi Nation, which is saltwater people. Gupur Dolphin is my nation totem. But I'm also from Warranggal Nara, freshwater people. I was born on the mountains, born in freshwater country. But I was also born of Borogal clan, which is our we are keepers of the law. So within that clan structures, there are there are thousands of us that exist across the nation.

But what's beautiful, I think, and a really important story for all of our participants in the World Economic Forum, is despite a hundred thousand years of five hundred separate nations, we have no evidence of war or prisons or borders. People did bad things, of course, as human beings do, but we had systems of governance and relational regulation that governed how we connected with each other and met our responsibilities. So we think there's a beautiful story in there about 500 separate nations.

By the way, there are different languages and different cultures, different song, different story. When you have that level of richness and depth and difference, but nonetheless shared purpose. I think that's the story of future for the rest of the world.

Robin Pomeroy: And Fawn again, people often think about American Indians, indigenous people of America. We know that's not one homogeneous group. Tell us where are you from?

Fawn Sharp: Yes, thank you. I too appreciate that question. I come from the Quinault Indian Nation. It's a tribal nation located in western Washington, about three hours west of Seattle. And as Deen points out, we have over 574 sovereign tribal nations inside the United States. And those are nations that have bilateral and multilateral relationships with the US.

Of course, prior to the United States there were thousands of indigenous peoples throughout North America and through colonisation we started forming tribal governments as a result of US policy.

But to describe our people as politically distinct, that's just one way of describing tribal nations in the United States. We too have lived in in place for centuries. The place where I come from is absolutely beautiful and pristine. I live personally live right where Lake Quinault meets the Quinault River. One can travel from glacier to ocean and see absolutely no development. We have lakes, we have beaches, we have rainforest, and it's absolutely stunning and beautiful because our our citizens have kept the and honoured the teachings that we've had that we have to protect our resources.

And once the United States arrived, we began to mount aggressive campaigns to defend our our very homelands. There was mass and widespread clear cutting of our forests and my nation sued the United States all the way to the United States Supreme Court to protect our timbered lands.

And so we not only protect and honour the teachings of our ancestors to respect nature, we're also taught that the salmon cannot get out of the rivers and defend themselves, that we are the guardians of all of our relatives in the ocean and the lakes and that you know our our relatives that fly. And so we have this very beautiful place because we've honoured teachings and because we aggressively defend those resources from colonisation and others who seek to disrupt it.

Robin Pomeroy: So despite being very diverse all over the world they're indigenous peoples, you do you can and do come together at events like this. You're a voice, you're advocates for certain issues.

You've both mentioned the environment there. Would you say that's one of the key areas where Indigenous voices can help the rest of us, you know, the whole world improve things. I mean and can you give us any specific example? You've given us one of a local one, that's very interesting. But when it comes to things like climate change or protecting nature, maybe in other parts of the world where where you are not based, do you think you're a force that can actually have some impact?

Deen Sanders: I think we are, Robin. I think in terms of the stories of our of our cultures, those stories are stories for the future as well.

I mean in our particular case for our people, we have lived through cataclysmic climate change. As well as colonisation, other sorts of things, of course. In our country alone, people have lived through three separate ice ages. We've seen our country shrink in physical land mass by twenty percent and our cultures and systems move and adjust to that. So there are stories of adaptation there. There are stories of how do we respond to the changes in those environments. And these are messages for the future.

But there's also the idea of there is a there is a general narrative that indigenous peoples are peoples of the land, and Fawn spoke to, there's deep knowledge in that. But you don't survive for a hundred thousand years in five hundred separate nations without other tools. Tools of governance, tools of economics and trade and exchange. These are also, I think, stories for the future of the of the wider West that we weren't allowed to tell, we haven't been invited to tell.

And I think there are genuine stories about that. What we do know is that there is a shared principles around those things globally. And we love catching up as Indigenous peoples, Indigenous leaders around the world, because while the rest of the world is frankly crumbling in its relationships, we are growing stronger.

You know, our connections and relationships, the data tells us that indigenous people, despite being, by the way, only six percent of the global population, and disparate numbers in different countries, we're only three percent in my country, three to four percent. But we have access and responsibility for sixty percent of the world's land mass. And most of that is the di is is the biodiverse and and environmentally rich environments. So we have great responsibility. We might be small in number, but we have great knowledge to share, great power to share.

So there's a universal story about that future that brings us together in conversation.

Fawn Sharp: Yes, and I would add to to what Deen pointed out by suggesting that our ancestors have long foretold of a day of reckoning when the world is on a trajectory that simply isn't sustainable. So I think you're you're absolutely right in your inquiry. Do we have something to offer to teach the rest of the world? Yes, through centuries of of knowledge and prophecy that at some point the world was not going to be able to sustain a life way and and we're at that point now, we are in a day of reckoning.

And I also think that to Deen's point about the disproportionate share, population versus biodiversity, I think that those numbers in and of themselves prove that we can outperform everyone else in our life wise life ways by maintaining what's left, the biodiversity that's left.

And so I often flip those numbers to say we are outperforming everyone else by a very high percentage in our land stewardship and certainly the principles that have maintained that stewardship are lessons that we can teach the rest of the world.

And one of the biggest challenges we have is directly accessing finance, directly accessing capital, and that's been the the call of indigenous peoples for decades that we are on the front lines of climate change, we are disproportionately impacted, and we have little to no resources, but yet we struggle to maintain access to capital.

And so I think the beauty of our council, the council on natural capital, is indigenous people can come to these conversations and we can say, we do not have access to capital, we do not have access to finance, but we what we do have access to is nature. And with our access to nature, we can bring our teachings into these conversations and help guide influence and quite frankly lead the world and how to maintain financial metrics that really reflect these are living systems.

Nature is not just a commodity that through transactions it's traded. These are living systems that are relational. You can't look at a copper mine without thinking about water and and all of these systems are interconnected.

And those are the very teachings that we are seeking to not only bring to the conversation, but but develop tools for the rest of the world to know and understand that when you value nature, there are so many other metrics that need to be brought into the conversation.

So we absolutely do have things to teach and and share with the rest of the world.

Robin Pomeroy: I recently interviewed Marco Lambertini, a world-renowned nature conservationist, about this issue of becoming nature positive, and he's working on this initiative to try and persuade governments but also companies to a bit like becoming net zero on greenhouse gas emissions, net zero on nature destruction, and then net positive on nature protection.

I put it to him, I asked the same question to you though. We all know nature has a value, massively important, you know, vital value. We would die without it. But it doesn't really always have a financial value unless you're chopping down the timber or grazing cattle on the land.

As custodians of the land, what can you practically say to kind of global economies that are driven by the profit motive of extracting and exploiting the land, you know, often for perfectly good reasons to to feed our children and to develop? But how can we do that? What advice have you got to help countries and companies become nature positive, to leave the nature in better state? What's the practical, because I think everyone would agree with it, but how do you implement that? Who's first?

Deen Sanders: That's a big question, Robin. But but I would argue in fact that it does have a financial cost. And that most people haven't calculated that. That's the truth of it. We have the work of Dashgupta speaking about this idea of how if everybody paid for what they used, most corporations would in fact be bankrupted by the truth of those costs. As would most nation states.

So I think I mean we have a number of answers, and we're working on that as part of this larger conversation that we're excited to be part of, with our Global Future Council on Natural Capital. Trying to, as Fawn spoke to, trying to bridge that relationship between nature and capital.

But I I want to be really clear, it absolutely has a financial cost in every instance. We just haven't bothered to pay for it. We have fought we have sought through economic mechanisms to make that an externality that we're not responsible for today. That's just simply not true. We're always paying for it in the future. It's a debt that our grandchildren. In my culture we have a term Ma Bulubu or my language, in Gathang language, my language, we have a term Ma Bulubu, which means next seven again, which means we are always thinking about the next seven generations of responsibility. And I know that they will pay for these things. Their cost will be borne by them of what we do today, how we sit here today.

So I'm animated, I'm responsible in the conversation today to that. My job is to invite you into that. It's not just what indigenous people have to do. To Fawn's point, we have a job to do, we have responsibilities to meet. But we want to invite the rest of the world into that too. And I think that's the shift. The shift is how do we invite everybody into that?

The good news when you spoke to it is that most conservationists, most forward-thinking people realise that the knowledge sits here, as it has always sat here. It's extraordinary to read about our cultures in every book by every, frankly, if I can be honest, every white conservationist telling stories about indigenous knowledge. Let the indigenous people tell the stories. Let us control the economics of it. We suddenly will get a rebalancing.

What we're seeking to do in our conversation to simplify it, is make this not just a nation state conversation, because I think that's a challenge for many governments, but to make it a corporate conversation, a corporate capital conversation.

But also make it a family dining room table conversation. Until we understand the cost of these things around our dining room tables across families around the world, we'll never win this particular fight. If we leave it to governments, that's not the right answer. We've got to make this a real lived reality of economic cost for everybody, and it's absolutely a financial cost.

Fawn Sharp: I would I would add to that. Thank you, Deen. I just I get inspired when I listen to to Deen. He really makes me think about the fact that we are on a a dual-time horizon here.

We need to adopt short-term innovation that includes our values, but we also need long-term systemic change. And through this last year, there was a moment in time where it just occurred to me that the values that we hold and carry as indigenous peoples are simply inherently incongruent with a system that by design is intended to maximise profit at the expense of nature. These are two systems that are just simply inherently incongruent.

And so the world's best effort to bring nature into the financial systems and to commodify and realise value that goes beyond extraction. I think we need to not only look at innovative examples today, but what's beyond 2030? How are we going to be reimagining metrics? Imagine financial metrics and investment strategies that follow ecological thresholds. Imagine investment strategies that actually value human life in relation to the the maximising profitability.

And so I think these are all things that the current system, I call it the status quo, must look at with intention and strategy how to bring in indigenous values into every aspect of valuing nature. I think the world also needs to understand that Indigenous peoples are reimagining a financial system from our own perspective. We're reimagining systems, entire systems where imagine an indigenous finance platform or exchange where investors could go directly to indigenous communities to deploy capital at blended scale, whether it is public, private, philanthropic finance, and in those systems, you have metrics where you're not trying to mainstream living systems and valuation, but these are part of by design where we are the architects of financial metrics that include all things living, that include the spiritual dimensions of our relationship, not only with humanity and the natural world, but with our creator and our teachings. And so I think those are the things that we offer at this moment in time.

And as I said, we we might not have access to to finance and and capital, but we do have access to this. Incredible amount of biodiversity throughout the world and and we do have I I describe it as a mantle of of leadership that is what was achieved with a heavy price. The the mantle of leadership that we carry was at great expense to our our citizens, to our our relatives and and to our homelands. And so I feel very strongly that we know that this is a day of reckoning.

As as Deen pointed out, all the systems around us are are crashing and and proving that they're they're failing humanity, they're failing the financial system itself, they're failing the world, they're failing our environment and the world is looking for other solutions and and it's a moment in time when we are rising and our teachings are rising and and leading the rest of the world. But we have to really open up our heart, our mind and our spirits to engage in these conversations.

Robin Pomeroy: This is my last question, but it's a big one. And the short version is this: Is anyone listening to you? The long version is, can you give me any examples of when you've expressed a view and you've you've advocated for certain things where things have improved in a way that maybe wouldn't have happened? It's a nice long question, so it's a difficult one. So I'm going to give you a few moments to think about it. That things have improved in a way that might not have happened had you not been involved in that conversation. And or second part of this very long question, and I'll remind you what the short one was at the end of it. Are there things in the like in the next few months, the next 12 months where you want to be heard and that you think you really could make a difference? And what are those? So where have you made a difference already? Where do you think, finally someone's listened to us and this happened? And where do you want that to happen urgently in the next few months? The original, the short version of that question, was is anyone listening?

Fawn Sharp: Yes, thank you. The first part of your question when you raised it, are we visible? I instantly went back to a conversation I had someone about our vision. And I was you know, they appreciated the vision, but they quickly dismissed it by saying, that's that's nice Fawn, but but this is the real world. And and I thought to myself, wow, that's quite a disconnect because what I'm describing is definitely the real world.

In the places, the one example I would I would use that we were not only visible, but we made a difference. In the state of Washington, there was an effort to hold polluters accountable and price carbon. And we co-led an initiative, secured 300,000 signatures, put this initiative on the ballot, it was called I-1631. The Western States Petroleum Association dropped 33 million dollars to kill that campaign. It was the largest campaign in Washington state history. We came back and passed the Climate Commitment Act in the Washington State Legislature, hardwiring in 10% of all carbon revenues directly dedicated to tribal nations. And that was our vision for imagining public dollars brought into a mix that could then be leveraged to attract private sector investment, to de-risk that investment, and philanthropic investment as well. And so four years in, we've we've been able to drive one billion dollars into the Washington State treasury for local communities and and indigenous nations.

And so that's an example where we were not only visible, we led we joined the Seattle environmental community, we travelled every reservation, tribal nation in the state of Washington, and it was successful.

We were visible, we were heard, and people saw that we were indispensable to solving the crisis there in the state of Washington. And so that is definitely one example.

And what do I see on the horizon for the next six months? I see taking that public sector financing, utilising that to build an a system in which we can create a platform for others to to directly invest. I've had conversations with those who have spent 40 years of innovative finance with tribal nations. For example, the Calvert Fund, they took one percent of their community fund to issue community bonds to deploy private capital to build tribal economies inside the United States. That was a hundred million dollar raise.

Now, if we were to take the Climate Commitment Act funding, leverage that to de-risk private sector investment and create a a premium green bond, a deep green bond and a deep blue bond in which we are able to deploy capital directly in partnership with sovereign tribal nations to attract foreign investment that otherwise would not come to the United States and use metrics that bring to life our living systems where we do have access to tremendous natural capital throughout indigenous communities.

So that's what I see on the horizon for our communities. And it's it's a bright future, and I know that our ancestors foretold of this time and and we're about to make it happen.

Deen Sanders: I think Fawn has done such a beautiful job of prosecuting the the detail of it. I'll attempt to answer the long question with a short answer.

But it comes across a couple of I think a couple of foundational points. One is that we are seeing successes. We're seeing successes even in the fact that we're having this conversation, Robin. There were it was not that long ago I recalled doing some writing for the World Economic Forum, only a number of years ago where it was an unusual voice. It was a voice that they didn't know what to do with. Sort of looking sideways out of out of our view, didn't know how to position that voice. But here we are in this conversation. And that's that's one example of that.

And I want to acknowledge the World Economic Forum's thinking in the context of that. I'm co-chair of a Global Future Council for that reason. That's a that's something that we should recognise for a moment.

But it's also the fact that the real change, the real change of how things are listening is that in our culture we talk about the fact that country is our teacher. It's not us. We are mere big spokespeople for it. We are spokespeople for humanity because we are the oldest humanity. But it's country that does the teaching. It's country that is everything. So what I find the most successful is bringing people into country.

And I I see that. I I see the world being hungry for that change. Everybody I meet is asking themselves questions. The political systems are volatile, the economic systems are crumbling, the social systems are uncertain, everybody has questions. We are a small population, but we have access to the support for that.

So my my challenge is that the change will come when people invite us into those conversations. And I want to make sure it's not it's not seen as a power grab or a money grab or a or or a or a diversity and inclusion play. This is a responsibility that we are talking about. We want to invite the rest of the world into. I'm not here to fight for particular money for particular spaces. I'm here to invite you all into our responsibility. Because it's only that way that we're going to have a shared future together.

We may not have any shared future at all if we don't find that story.

Robin Pomeroy: Deen Sanders, Fawn Sharp, thanks very much.

Fawn Sharp: Thank you, this was fantastic. Thank you.

Robin Pomeroy: You can find out more about the work of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Councils on our website - links in the show notes.

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Radio Davos will be back next week, but for now thanks to you for listening and goodbye.