Highlights - Amanda E. Machado - Writer, Public Speaker - Founder of Reclaiming Nature Writing

Interviewed by Mia Funk

Amanda E. Machado is a writer, public speaker and facilitator whose work explores how race, gender, sexuality, and power affect the way we travel and experience the outdoors. She has written and facilitated on topics of social justice and adventure and lived in Cape Town, Havana, Mexico City, Berlin, Rio de Janeiro, and other cities. She has been published in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Guardian, New York Times, NPR, and other publications. She is also the founder of Reclaiming Nature Writing, a multi-week online workshop that expands how we tell stories about nature in a way that considers ancestry, colonization, migration trauma, and other issues.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

There are different ways of traveling. This idea that sometimes travel is almost a consumerist or extractivist way where you're just not showing respect. You are always mindful of immersive travel.

AMANDA E. MACHADO

I think that was definitely a pattern that I unknowingly replicated when I first started traveling. I think that's how the travel industry has kind of marketed to us, right? This idea of bucket lists and wanting to like check boxes of things you're going to do in each place becomes this thing of, rather than consuming a product that's an actual physical thing, you're consuming a country or consuming an experience. It's the same framework. We're still grasping at things. We're still compulsively trying to do XYZ without really thinking about its impact, without really thinking about the relationships that we're making in those places, without really thinking about reciprocity. And a lot of it comes from a deeply colonial mindset also, right? So much of the travel industry was built on the idea of colonialism which really makes us all inherit this idea that whatever we need in life is going to come from seeking it elsewhere and grabbing it from somewhere else, right? Which I think is the more modern 2023 way that we kind of replicate that colonial travel mindset of–My life right now is not great. I'm going to take a vacation. I'm going to take a break and go somewhere else where I can get what I need? Which I think in a lot of ways can describe what I did at 24 as well.

I think looking at that, really deeply thinking about what is lost from that mindset and the harm that is caused by it has been something I've been trying to do over the last few years. And a lot of that has to do with land trauma, right? Like really acknowledging where our settlement of land comes from and how we can heal that in the ways that we travel.

Pintor de manos, Eduardo Kingman

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

When you travel, you're leaving parts of yourself behind or the way some people see you. You're exploring other aspects of yourself as you travel. Tell us about those different explorations.

MACHADO

When I was 24, I decided to take a year off to travel. And I sold everything. I ended a relationship that I was in. And I ended up taking a plane trip to Colombia, a one-way ticket. And then I backpacked throughout South America for the next six months. And that's where my father is from in Ecuador. My mom is from Mexico. So a part of that trip also was trying to reconnect to a continent that I didn't really have much knowledge of or experience in, even though it was where my family came from.

And now looking back, there's like parts of that trip that were just simple adventures and simple excitement of trying new things, right? Like I hiked, I backpacked for the first time. I was in the mountains, 4,000 meters camping for the first time. I sandboarded. You know, I did all kinds of new things that I had never tried before. But I do think now looking back, there was also an ancestral connection. So that area was really important for me and really got me thinking too about my identity as a Latinx person in the US and as a person of color. I think what also was really important about those travels is that it made me realize that identity is really malleable, that in the US, I'm considered a Latinx person of color. In South America, I was considered a white person, actually, or an American. People heard my accent, but even when I was speaking Spanish, because of my light skin, I had a different classification in Latin America than I did growing up in the States. So I think also seeing how I changed based on where I was traveling to and where I was living within, in some ways that was kind of liberating. It was educational, and it was also liberating that these identities are not fixed and that we need to be cognizant of them and responsible and accountable to the position we live in or the positionality that we have of privilege or not privilege, depending on where we are. But that there is no concrete identity really. It moves and changes and shifts with us, depending on where we go. So I think that was also something that helped expand and broaden the way I was thinking about all the things I was feeling a little bit trapped in when I was in the United States.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

The United States is a country that has around 5% of the world's population and yet imposes a lot of its belief systems onto the rest of the world. And I think now, there's a little bit of a reckoning with the growing power of the BRICS countries and others.

MACHADO

I still do workshops on oppression generally, but at this point, I've been focusing mostly on a workshop that's called Reclaiming Nature Writing, which has been a workshop that takes the idea of nature writing, which at least in the US has always been seen as a predominantly white male field and looks at writers that have existed for hundreds of years that have always been writing about nature but have maybe not been considered nature writers by the field generally.

So we look at writers like Audre Lorde who wrote about nature all the time but is not usually seen as a nature writer. And many others like that because it addresses ideas of land trauma and severement from nature and what are the historical causes for that? And what are the systems of oppression that have led certain people to be disconnected from nature in certain ways? And how can we heal that by telling new stories about the outdoors and travel and nature in general?

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

You've also written about,forging your queer Latinx identity, and that there weren't many examples in the media or in the wider culture where you could see others in this space. It was something that was more visible in the white American culture, but other representation was miniscule.

MACHADO

So after coming out, I went to Mexico, which is where my mother's from, and spent most of my time there interacting in queer communities and queer spaces. And it just made such a huge difference. It was, again, such a flip from what I had seen in the US where so much of queer media and queer representation is mostly white, right? And creates this idea that the queer community automatically means the white community and Thankfully, I think that's shifted a lot. I think shows like Vida that came out recently and just a ton of other movies that are coming out lately and books by Latinx queer writers are really shifting that. I think this generation coming up now will have so much more representation to look at. But for me, I think what was most healing and most necessary at that time was to go back to Mexico and to see for myself what queerness looked like under a Mexican context. How it was different than what I had seen in the States, how it might more feel like home.

And also really unpacking the history behind queerness and Latinx culture is how it had always been there, right? This idea that it was invented recently or something that just came out of nowhere is completely false. And really understanding the way indigenous communities in Mexico had interpreted queerness, had words for queerness. There was a word that I learned, patlacheh, which is a Nahuatl word that meant women that were in love with other women. And had been used for a really long time. So learning that history of transgender communities in Oaxaca that were called muxes. Just knowing that there was always terminology for this. These ideas always existed.

A lot of writers of color have talked about this. James Baldwin had a similar experience when he went to France, you know, that was the most American he had ever felt. And I think this is the case for a lot of people who have a marginalized identity in the United States. That becomes kind of their whole experience, which is what growing up in a really conservative town in the United States felt like to me. It felt like my whole identity had to be where my parents came from. And being a person of color was the only way I was seen as. It was a very one-dimensional way of being interpreted by the world here. And so then by traveling and seeing the other ways that that can change depending on your context. It made a huge difference. And at the same time, the flip of coming from being a marginalized person in the United States as a Latinx person, to suddenly being one of the most privileged people while traveling as an American person with an American passport and American dollars. Realizing the huge impact of that privilege also made me rethink the ways in which I look at my identity and the ways in which I think about how I should be, again, engaging as a traveler with the rest of the world.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

Tell us about some of your workshops.

MACHADO

So I do workshops on what in the industry called Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Although I have a lot of issues about those terms, but essentially I do workshops that create spaces where folks can talk about issues of white supremacy and basically any oppression, homophobia, gender roles, things that we now call diversity, equity, and inclusion, but I like to think of as issues that are actually affecting us so much deeper than that.

I think a lot of times when people seek me out to book one of those workshops, it's because they think that they want to help their company become more diverse or help their company become more inclusive. And I guess what I'm realizing is that the issue with that framework is that it actually makes us only think about how we're helping others and not really thinking about the impact that these issues are actually having on ourselves. And what I have noticed in these workshops is that the people who

do the deepest work on this and actually create the biggest changes and make the best impact are people that are wanting to learn about oppression and white supremacy and all these systems. Not just to help others and not just to make their company more diverse or more inclusive, but also because they're realizing that these systems are also making them feel less free, even at the same time that they might be benefiting from it, right?

So like they might have a privilege by having this identity. And at the same time they're noticing that even with that privilege, something about this system still does not feel good and does not feel right. That dismantling that system would not only help the people who are not benefiting from it but would also help themselves and would also free themselves. I try to teach people about how these systems work and how imbalanced power systems affect not only the people with the least amount of power but also the people with the most amount of power and how everybody is suffering under that system. And how dismantling the system, changing the system, and finding a different way to live without those imbalances in power ultimately makes everybody feel free.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this episode was Naomi Zidon.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).

Interviews - FEATURED

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UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network

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INGRID NEWKIRK

Founder & President of PETA - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

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DANIEL GOLEMAN

Psychologist
Author of Emotional Intelligence · Optimal · Ecological Intelligence

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Emmy Award-winning · Oscar-nominated Composer · Musician
1 0 0 1 · Silfur · Transparent · Lion

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JEFFREY ROSEN

President & CEO of the National Constitution Center
Author of The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America

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Academy Award-winning Writer, Director & Producer
Glory · The Last Samurai · Shakespeare in Love · Thirtysomething
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Emmy & Golden Globe-winning Executive Producer · Director
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Featured

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MICHAEL CRONIN

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CAMILLA HAWTHORNE

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House of Sand and Fog · The Garden of Last Days · Ghost Dogs · Townie

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Comics, Music, Ethics & AI

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Songs of Nature

Musicians, Writers, Ecologists & Philosophers on the Mysteries of the Natural World

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KATHLEEN ROGERS

President of EarthDay.ORG

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The Unseen Invasion of Microplastics in Our Lives

Interview with KATHLEEN ROGERS
President of EarthDay·org

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SASHA LUCCIONI

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DR. SHIV SOMESHWAR

Fmr. European Chair for Sustainable Development & Climate Transition · Sciences Po
Development Clinician focused on Cities & Nation States

How do you have economic growth that is socially equitable and environmentally sustainable? It's not just that you have ecological sustainability; hence, that is sustainable development. Because lots of examples of economic, ecological, and ecologically sensitive growth need not be socially equitable. That's why this whole emphasis on just transition is not just about climate, but it's also about justice. It's about social equity in economic growth. Unlike in Europe, where there is now the call for degrowth or a circular economy, most parts of the world would look at you blankly if you talked about degrowth because they are hungry for growth. And so sustainable development is about managing these trade-offs.

From Ancient Wisdom to the Language of the Earth

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DOUG LARSON

Award-winning Scientist · Ecologist · Professor Emeritus · University of Guelph
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I think one thing I learned from looking at the ancient trees is that there is no great benefit to anything of growing quickly and accumulating vast resources. Growing slowly and patiently and with fewer demands on the environment in which you live is just as healthy and perhaps more healthy than the endless hunger for more and more and more, which we see as a characteristic of our species.

THOMAS CROWTHER

Ecologist · Founder of Restor
Co-chair of the Board for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration

Global restoration really means finding and empowering the millions of local communities, indigenous populations, and farmers who are promoting biodiversity. Restor is a digital platform, sort of like Google Maps, but for restoration. So rather than seeing coffee shops and supermarkets, you will see conservation projects and Indigenous-led restoration initiatives. And that means you can find a currently on Restor - I think we have around 140, 000 - so you can go on there for free right now and find thousands and thousands of these amazing heroes of nature. And you can zoom in and you can see every single tree on the ground. You can see every bush and you can fund them or you can buy their coffee or you can go visit their projects and do ecotourism. There's a myriad of ways that we can all support their efforts by also improving our own lives.

We need to be cutting our emissions so that we can allow nature to thrive and help us along the way. For far too long people have been squabbling about emissions. We should do this or we should do that. Climate change is way too big for us to be squabbling about things. We need to do everything now. When we grow the same crops every year, the soil gets more depleted and all the nutrients are lost. I've heard quotes that if we cannot find agricultural systems that rejuvenate the soil instead of depleting it, we are signing our death warrant. It's like we need to be promoting healthy soils if we're going to have any agriculture in the future.

PETER D. DITLEVSEN

Professor of Physics, Ice, Climate & Earth at the Niels Bohr Institute

What happens if we lose the Greenland ice sheet and pass the tipping points and Earth systems shut down?

If that shuts down, roughly speaking, the climate of Northern Europe would be like the climate of Alaska. So, climate models that actually simulate what happens when it's shut down, would say that England becomes like Northern Norway, which means that food security and things like that will be threatened because you cannot grow many crops in Northern Norway. And other models say precipitation changes, so places that are wet might become dry, and so on. So, these are of course severe consequences for Europe, but in some sense, this is going in the opposite direction of global warming. We're all talking about we're getting into a warmer world, but I'm talking about a cooling here. But the warm water that does not then flow from the tropics into the North Atlantic will stay in the tropics. And there, you're not contra-balancing global warming. There you will have the heating on top of the global warming. And that I see as maybe the largest problem we have is that the tropics become even warmer. And we have to realize if you live in a place where mean temperatures are maybe late thirties Celsius and or rise to the forties livelihood becomes very difficult.

DR. BARRY SCHWARTZ

Psychologist · Author of Why We Work
The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

In 2004, the internet was just getting started in a major league way, and already the choice overload was a problem. I would say that from the modern perspective, 2004 seems like the 18th century, and as near as I can tell, all of these changes, every single one of them has made the problem substantially worse. The idea that you can get information to help guide you through - well, yeah, but what information do you believe? What's trustworthy? What's being motivated by an opportunity to sell you something? So there is a haze, there is this fog that we're operating in. And I think we just sort of give up in resignation and look at recommendations and hope that they're legitimate because how else do you get through the day?

KOHEI SAITO

Author of Slow Down! How Degrowth Communism Can Save the World
Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism

The Green New Deal presents itself as a kind of radical policy. If you look at the content, it's just simply the continuation of what capitalism wants to do. It's a massive investment in new, allegedly green industries, with the creation of more jobs with higher wages, but these are not the things that socialists or any environmentalists should be actually seeking because we recognize that capitalism is basically the root cause of the climate crisis and the misery of the workers. If so, I think it is high time to imagine something radically very different from business-as-usual capitalism.

The Long Tradition of American Jewish Critiques of Israel & Their Suppression

American Jews were interested and involved in Palestinian rights all the way back to 1948. There's this idea that it came about just now or in the 1970s, but actually as long as there's been a Nakba. As long as there's been Palestinian refugees, there’s been American Jews concerned with that, too. I would say that a lot of times these American Jews were very well informed and spent time in the region, and they came to these conclusions often not in the United States, but over there where they were talking to the Israeli left and meeting Palestinians and seeing a situation that they don't feel is ethical or sustainable.

BEN FRANTA

Founding Head of the Climate Litigation Lab
Senior Research Fellow at University of Oxford’s Sustainable Law Programme

For 40 years, the American Petroleum Institute has hired economists to argue it would be too expensive to try and control fossil fuels and that climate change wasn't that bad. The same go-to consultancy firm has been involved in every major climate policy fight from the very beginning and hired by the fossil fuel industry, but what are the courts going to do? It's not just the historical deception. It's an ongoing deception.

MICHAEL STICKA

President/CEO of the GRAMMY Museum

It's actually right in our mission statement that “we celebrate the music of yesterday and today to inspire the music of tomorrow.” And we do it through our exhibits. We have 35,000 square feet of galleries. We travel exhibits, really, all over the world over the world for the past 15 years. And through our education programs, we really focus on the next generation of music's creators and leaders. We do that through really specific curricula that is designed to educate particularly young people, K-12, about the business of music, especially for those who want to go into the industry.

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