Episode 9 - Reclaiming Culture, Decolonizing Fashion
Fashion is a connector of land, labour, culture, and personal expression. Through a decades-long project of fast fashion, we have forgotten and become disconnected from regional, regenerative fashion systems that can exist. There have been beneficial fashion systems embraced by many cultures throughout history and today, where clothing is an expression of place. Natural dyes come from the landscape, dressing the wearer in the colours from their home. Natural textiles connect regenerative farmers with makers, and give back to the soil both in their farming at the beginning of their life, and decomposition at the end of their life, as part of a circular fashion system. We can dream of, imagine, and create this relationship to clothing again.
Aditi Mayer joins Reseed host Alice Irene Whittaker to help reimagine such a fashion system, while also advocating for the reclamation of culture. Aditi is a sustainable fashion blogger, photojournalist, and labour rights activist. A storyteller and creator, she looks at fashion and culture through a lens of intersectionality and decolonization. She approaches her work from multiple domains: from grassroots organizing in Downtown LA’s garment district to educating folks on the importance of diverse perspectives. She is on the council of Intersectional Environmentalist and State of Fashion. Aditi will be spending this year as a National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellow, spending one year documenting the social and environmental impacts of fashion in India.
This conversation explores the questions: How do we create an expressive fashion system that fosters well-being for land and people? How do we decolonize fashion, while reclaiming culture?
Episode Show Notes
Brands Are Today’s Colonial Masters by Ayesha Barenblat and Aditi Mayer
Inside the Fight to End Labour Exploitation in L.A. Garment Factories by Aditi Mayer
Sustainable Fashion Has a Diversity Problem. Here's How I’m Helping to Fix It. by Aditi Mayer
Intersectional Environmentalist Council
Adrienne Maree Brown’s book Emergent Strategy
The Rana Plaza Accident and its aftermath
Intersectionality, explained. Meet Kimberlé Crenshaw.
Lauren MacDonald Confronts Shell CEO About Climate Record
Farming While Black by Leah Penniman
Transcript
Alice Irene Whittaker (intro): Welcome to Reseed, a podcast about repairing our relationship to nature. Reseed tells the stories of a RE generation: the people embracing repair, redesign, reuse, and reduction. The people who are uprooting the extractive status quo and rooting the future in justice, wellbeing, resilience, and care. This is a podcast for those of us who are re-imagining our relationship to the natural world and to each other. I am Alice Irene Whittaker, the host of Reseed. Together, let's plant the seeds that transform us from being takers to caretakers.
Alice Irene: Welcome. Today, I speak with Aditi Mayer, a sustainable fashion blogger, photojournalist, labor rights activist, and National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellow. Her work looks at fashion and culture through a lens of intersectionality and decolonization. Aditi and I discuss how social justice intersects with environmental care, and why and how fashion needs to be decolonized. We discuss land, labour, culture, and creativity.
Aditi Mayer: Decolonization of fashion to me is a way that I kind of thread these webs between styles, sustainability and social justice. So it's not just about the ills of the industry. It's also looking at how fashion is a very beautiful way to engage with your cultural identity, to engage with the beauty and joy of our natural environment.
Alice Irene: Far from being frivolous, fashion is a connector of land, labour, culture, and personal expression. Textiles are also a part of our global economy that every single person interacts with in some form or another, like food. Many of us are most familiar with the current fashion system that exploits people as underpaid labourers working in unsafe conditions, uses unhealthy toxic dyes that are bad for both our bodies and the Earth, sells excessive clothing for cheap, and then accumulates in piles of waste. This is what we think is normal. Through a decades-long project, we’ve forgotten and become disconnected from the other fashion systems that have existed in the past and still exist today.
Alice Irene: There have been other more regional fashion systems embraced by many cultures throughout history, where clothing has been an expression of place. Natural dyes come from the landscape, dressing the wearer in the colours from their home. Natural textiles connect regenerative farmers with makers, and give back to the soil both in their farming at the beginning of their life, and then in the decomposition at the end of their life, as part of a circular fashion system. We can dream of, imagine, and create this relationship to clothing again.
Alice Irene: A storyteller and creator, Aditi Mayer helps people to reimagine such a fashion system, while also advocating for the reclamation of culture. Frustrated with the lack of representation and intersectionality within the sustainability movement, she cultivated a space that looks at sustainability with an eye that is equally curious, curatorial, and critical. She works to understand the historical and sociopolitical underpinnings that allow the fashion industry to function in a colonial manner, rooted in exploitation and extraction of both people and the natural environment.
Alice Irene: Aditi’s voice has grown in prominence and resonance in the sustainability movement. She approaches her work from multiple domains: from grassroots organizing in Downtown LA’s garment district to educating folks on the importance of diverse perspectives. She is on the council of Intersectional Environmentalist and State of Fashion. Aditi will be spending this year as a National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellow, spending one year documenting the social and environmental impacts of India’s fashion supply chain. Aditi uses multiple mediums, from photojournalism to modeling to speaking, and her approach itself is a testament to intersections, deep thought, and creativity, as you’ll hear in just a few moments.
Alice Irene: You’ll hear us speak about fibresheds in this conversation, and I’m honoured that the next episode is with Rebecca Burgess, indigo farmer, weaver, dyer, community organizer, and author of Fibershed: Growing a Movement of Farmers, Fashion Activists, and Makers for a New Textile Economy. Rebecca devoted a whole year to wearing clothing all grown, dyed, and made in her bioregion, and that planted the seed to build an extensive network of farmers and artisans in the Northern California Fibreshed. They're innovating this fibre system at the community scale and her project has become internationally recognized. I know it's come up so many times in conversations I've had with farmers and people who are passionate about creating a new fashion system. Both Rebecca and Aditi are in California, and both are impassioned advocates for fibresheds and justice.
Alice Irene: There’s so many lovely threads weaving this pair of conversations together, and so I wanted to release them close to one another. They are different in many ways, too, and also emblematic of the connections that exist between the seeds people are planting to create a world of caretaking and repair our relationship to nature. They complement one another beautifully, and I recommend you listen to both. You can listen at Reseed.ca, where you can also sign up for my newsletter, and you can also stay up to date by following me on Instagram @AliceIreneWhittaker. Okay, here is my conversation with Aditi Mayer.
Alice Irene: Thanks Aditi. I’m so happy to be speaking with you and thanks for sharing your time with me and coming together in conversation. So I wanted to start by asking you about your relationship with the natural world as a child.
Aditi: You know, when I think about growing up, I wasn't someone that had that narrative of growing up surrounded in green spaces or with an acute love of the outdoors. When I think about growing up and what the natural world was for me, you know, I come from a first-generation family and a low-income family. So when I think about growing up, it was really framed by the tensions between assimilation and maintaining my own cultural identity, my family finding their space here in the states.
Aditi: But the cornerstones of what I think grounded me growing up was intergenerational connection and a very strong sense of family. So I was someone that grew up with my first cousins and paternal grandmother living across the street. And that really granted a strong sense of family. But when it comes to my relationship with the natural world, I think one very instrumental part of growing up was when my maternal grandparents moved in with my family and I during my high school years.
Aditi: And that was particularly special because my grandfather was a farmer back in India, back in Punjab and had a really strong relationship with land and nurturing. And so I still remember in that span of three, four years that they lived with us. They took our otherwise barren backyard and planted all these trees. And now we still have the pomegranate trees, the guava trees and everything. And that time really framed this relationship of getting to know my maternal grandparents on a special intimate level. Hearing about their stories in relation to the land, seeing my grandmother, who was such a talented woman when it came to knitting and embroidery.
Aditi: And this was also a bit of a time where I think personally I was having a renaissance when it comes to my cultural identity as a South Asian woman, specifically a Punjabi woman, where I really fell deeper into the songs and dance of Punjab and looking at the lyrics was also often speaking about our connection to land. And it's interesting because I think when I fell into the sustainable fashion world a few years later, I would eventually connect the dots of orienting my practice in sustainability as one rooted in reclamation of cultural heritage and decolonization. But yeah, that's a little bit about myself growing up.
Alice Irene: Beautiful. And what a gift from your grandparents and those songs, that art, to foster that relationship with you. That's beautiful. You mentioned there the decolonization of fashion and decolonization more broadly. I'm really fascinated, obviously with my work and this podcast on a whole number of Res. So, repairing, refusing, resisting, reusing, and so many more. And even when you mentioned there reclaiming cultural heritage, but there are also, the Ds like decolonization. So, this uprooting of what we don't want, as well as growing what we do want to cultivate in our systems and our society.
Alice Irene: So, I wanted to ask you about what you've articulated, which is that the current fashion industry is rooted in exploitation and extraction of both labor and the natural environment. What does the decolonization of fashion look like? And how is the decolonization of land and labor linked with this decolonization of fashion?
Aditi: I think that the decolonization of fashion looks like, as you said, reorienting our relationship with the two pillars of fashion, in my opinion, which is land and labor. And I think both of these things, land and labour require us to embrace this idea of place-based community or embracing this idea of the fibreshed, which I can speak a little bit about, which really creates this intimate bond between land and labor. So, a question I'm often asked a lot is what the ideal future of fashion looks like to me, granted that I speak so much about the ills of fashion.
Aditi: And I always say the ideal future of fashion is decentralized. And it's rooted in regionality, whether that's ecologies and culture. So, as you mentioned, I argue that the dominant fashion model is colonial in nature and it's colonial for a variety of reasons. But a few of them are, power is centralized among the world's richest billionaires who are fast fashion CEOs while their workers, their garment workers, and the landscapes that these brands produce in continue to suffer. And we see that fashion fabrics and fibres are becoming more and more homogenized. We see that 60% of the fashion we see today in stores is made out of polyester or synthetics, which are products of the fossil fuel industry.
Aditi: And we see this production model where fibres are grown in one country to be shipped across seas to be processed, to be shipped to another, to be cut and sewed. And it's all based on this artificial man-made subsidized construction of this is the quote unquote cheaper way of doing it without really paying heed to the emissions that are suffocating our planet.
Aditi: And so I think this is why one of the key examples of what an equitable and resilient system is rooted in this idea of a fibreshed. So fibresheds is this idea of having place-based textile sovereignty. So basically imagine within a 150 mile radius, you have local fibres growing that are then dyed by native plants that are then constructed by local artisans to be brought to you the consumer. So it's about localizing the system, you know, and we've seen the popularity of this for our food systems, but not so much our fashion systems as far as how fashion exists now.
Aditi: And I think that's because if we think about fast fashion, fast fashion kind of exists to alienate consumers from what they consume and where it come from and who makes it. And so this would be antithetical to that idea. So long story short, when it comes to decolonizing fashion, I think it demands that we first understand how the system is inherently colonial and in doing that we can then address the ways that you can decentralize and redistribute power. Going back to the Ds and the Res that we need to do. But yeah, that's a little look into what I think the ideal future of fashion can look like.
Alice Irene: So powerful. And I just love fibresheds. Like there's some of those ideas that just spark something in you. And this is the one for me that really fuels me and it helps me envision what it could look like. Oh no, this is better - you know, this is better for the land of which we're apart. This is better for people. And it's more expressive too, of where you come from. You know, like if our clothing in its dyes reflected the landscape that we're from, like how different is that than what we're currently experiencing with this sort of uniformity and this global extractive fashion industry.
Alice Irene: And actually I just interviewed Rebecca Burgess author of Fibershed in the last week. And there are so many threads weaving this together. So, I feel like I'm in the right place at the right time.
Aditi: Yeah. Rebecca is amazing. And I think what you spoke even like the diversity we could have in the way things are produced and the ways they're dyed also extends to the aesthetics of fashion, right? If we look at fashion. And then through a lens of like cultural hegemony we see a quote unquote Western aesthetic is being exported globally. So think about like secondhand clothing markets or this idea of discarded clothes from the global north being shipped overseas. And I think about my family back in India, that there's a lot of interesting conversations we have of the youth kind of wanting to wear jeans and a t-shirt because it gives them proximity to this idea of the west and what that means in terms of reclaiming and maintaining your cultural identity and all of the practices that come along with our own forms of dress and the way they're made and the way they're dyed, all of those things are deeply connected.
Alice Irene: It's so true. I've been visiting, well, one farmer, a shepherdess in particular here in this area, who's working to create a fibreshed here, sort of from the beginning stages. It's just incredible seeing how it's such a community effort, you know, you need the farmers and the growers and everyone along the whole line, working together and kind of rebuilding things that we don't have any more in terms of infrastructure and connections and relationships. Which is negative that we don't have it anymore, but also really enthralling to think about creating it again.
Aditi: Completely. And when we think about all of this through a movement building lens, there's this idea that I recently came across in Adrienne Maree Brown’s book Emergent Strategy. And it speaks to the way that our approach to community building needs to be one mile deep and one inch wide. But right now we usually do one mile wide and one inch deep. So really looking at the quality of relationships and really understanding the ways that relationships are required to really reimagine the systems and the way that we do. And without it, things can't get done in the way we want them to.
Alice Irene: That brings me to my next question, which is related to movement building. And that's how you're creating at this intersection of style, sustainability and also social justice. Can you tell me more about how they intersect and how social justice is so embedded in fashion?
Aditi: Yeah, completely. I think, you know, maybe this question is best answered with speaking about my origins in this space, which kind of elicited this light bulb moment of seeing those connections between styles, sustainability and social justice. So I had my start in this space back in 2014. At that time, I was just about to start my first year of my undergrad studying journalism. And I learned about the Rana Plaza factory collapse, which was such a catalyst for so many people in this space. But for those that are not familiar, Rana Plaza was this eight story garment factory in Bangladesh producing for some of the world's biggest fast fashion names and structural cracks were found in this building.
Aditi: And it was ordered to evacuate. But because of the pressure from upper management to have workers complete orders, they were called back into work the next day. And I think that's what really got me is the way that Rana Plaza at its core was an avoidable disaster in terms of a factory collapsed, but they knew that something was wrong. And what that kind of awoken in me is the way that the fashion industry was predicated or is predicated on speed and scale at all costs. Even human lives. And so that was kind of the first step in looking at fashion through the lens of the politics of labor, to the environmental impacts of fashion. And when we think about the dominant fashion model today, it's predicated on two things that go hand in hand.
Aditi: One is the global race to the bottom, and one is sacrifice zones. So the global race to the bottom is this idea that brands are looking to produce as much as they can, as fast as they can, as cheap as they can. And in order to have that trifecta, you have to have the idea of the sacrifice zone, right? So places around the world whose populations and landscapes undergo extraction in order to maintain this project, which is very much a colonial project.
Aditi: So that's kind of like an overview about the ties between styles, sustainability and social justice. But as I got deeper in this space, I was acutely aware of the issues like many of us are, but I kind of came back to my own cultural identity as a South Asian woman to also understand what change can look like. So I think something that's been really important to my personal journey in this space was understanding that colonialism in India and the British Raj in India was largely an empire of textiles or an empire of cotton, even. So prior to British colonization in India, farmers in India were largely subsistence farmers
Aditi: And the fashion models in India always at their core have been rooted in this idea of fibresheds. So you had farmers growing native fibers to that land, and you had a series of artisan practices throughout India that are all unique in their own ways that are tied to, again, the native ecology. So whether that's block printing or this very intricate embroidery practices where my family is from. But when it came to the fight against the British, one of the most important tools that changed to kind of symbolize resistance against colonial powers was there was a host of farmers that were kind of forced to shift from subsistence farming into mono-cropping a certain type of cotton for the garment industry. And then all of this cotton would be exported to the mills of Lancashire and Westminster to be tools for the British. A lot of weavers were left destitute in that practice because the British rafters selling the cotton back to India at a premium, which was very interesting.
Aditi: And so when it came to kind of resisting this, one of the biggest tools was Swadeshi, which translates to made in India. And so people began to burn British made goods and textiles, and they reclaimed their own spinning wheels. So that's called the charkha and the charkha became a symbol of rural self-sufficiency. It became symbolic of made local. And so there was this idea of that we don't need mass production. We need production by the masses. So seeing the way that you can kind of subvert being a sacrifice zone into a way to reclaim your cultural practices was an incredibly inspiring idea to kind of study and realize what we're seeing today is almost a continuation of this colonial model.
Aditi: At that time, it was the East India Company, but today you can just switch that out with fast fashion brands. And so I think decolonization of fashion to me is a way that I kind of thread these webs between styles, sustainability and social justice. So it's not just about the ills of the industry. It's also looking at how fashion is a very beautiful way to engage with your cultural identity, to engage with the beauty and joy of our natural environment. So we need to continue to engage in beauty to maintain our sense of vitality to continue our work in this movement. And I think decolonizing fashion is my way to do it.
Alice Irene: That is so powerful. And I love this emphasis on beauty. We don't hear about that enough, but it's something that as human beings we need and resonates with us and we love it, right?
Aditi: One hundred percent. And I think when it comes to the larger environmental movement, we need more touch points for folks to see themselves involved in this movie. As I mentioned, even from your first question, I wasn't someone that grew up with an acute love of the outdoors or anything, but fashion was a growing passion of mine as I got older. And fashion became that vehicle through which I was able to engage in the larger environmental movement. So beauty, whether that's fashion or whatever it may be. You know, there are so many things that we need people to champion because it allows folks to see themselves represented or ways to get involved in the larger climate justice conversation.
Alice Irene: Right. Broadening the definition of the environmental movement. And also something I'm thinking about recently is broadening the definition of creativity and that we all are creative and for some people that's baking bread or it's working with hands, knitting, woodworking, gardening, whatever it is, fashion, comic books, you know, whatever sparks that beauty for someone. And that can be an entry point into environmentalism and related social justice movements.
Aditi: One hundred percent.
Alice Irene: There’s this risk with the term regeneration, which is something I really love and spend a lot of my time thinking about and writing about and speaking with people about, and even too when we think of a term like fibreshed, which right now, you know, less so I think has a risk of being co-opted, but there is this risk that these things that grow in this really meaningful way can sometimes get absorbed in by the dominant culture. Or by the brands themselves and turned into something far from the original intent. And can even be problematic because it convinces people that something's good when maybe it isn't. And I'm wondering if this is something that you worry about or that you see as a risk? And also if it connects with what you've spoken about in the past, around eco-fascism and if you can talk a little bit about that ideology?
Aditi: So, I think regeneration - you're right. It's becoming the next buzzword of the industry. And it's always this delicate balance between bringing terms into the mainstream. That should be on the radar of a lot more folks, but making sure that we understand the true core of that. But as far as the idea of regeneration in conjunction with eco-fascism, this is an idea that came to me at the start of the pandemic. At the start of the pandemic, I began noticing the rise of a lot of problematic narratives, whether not even narratives, but also realities. So whether that was the rise of anti- Asian violence and xenophobia when it came to coronavirus, to the growing ubiquity of this idea that humans are the virus, right?
Aditi: We heard that so much in the early days on the pandemic. And so why was that an issue? Well, for one, it put blame on humans rather than the systems that we operate in, right? So, it was making sure that we're being very clear that the problem is not you, the individual. It’s capitalism or Indigenous folks have always lived in unison with the earth in terms of having touch points of folks to think of alternatives to the current dominant reality, or the idea that one hundred companies are responsible for over 70% of carbon emissions. It was just the reframing of individual onus rather than systemic critical thinking. And so, it really brought home this idea that we had this interesting quirk of putting all the onus on the individual. And this kind of coincided with the time where I was kind of deepening my personal journey with this word regeneration through regenerative agriculture, right?
Aditi: So this idea that certain forms of agricultural practices can sequester carbon, which is important to note that this has been a practice for a very long time. It's by no means new. And it's something we've seen in a series of Indigenous and BIPOC cultures around the world. And so at that time, I was introduced to the work of someone named Farmer Rishi. He's a great regenerative farmer and something he talks a lot about is the language of regeneration. And so it's important to note that we say that climate change is a result of the amount of carbon in our environment, which I guess is objectively true. But why is there an excess of carbon in our environment? That is a product of colonialism, which became capitalism. Very extractive systems that is leading to this excess of carbon, but it's repositioning carbon as a building block of life.
Aditi: So we have to reorient the conversation of saying carbon isn't the bad guy. It's the systems that put it in abundance. And so Farmer Rishi kind of goes on to say that when we look at the environmental and climate change conversation they're always talking in the language of minimizing, minimizing, minimizing. You do this, you're contributing to climate change. You wash your hands, you're contributing to climate change. You drive your car, you're contributing to climate change. It has very detrimental impacts when we talk about this conversation through the lens of eco-anxiety, right? And so something that Farmer Rishi went on to say is that we're not disconnected from nature, we're dissociated. And so it requires a shift where we see that we are nature. And so our existence isn't inherently negative.
Alice Irene: It’s fascinating. And I love this idea of we aren't bad. We aren't inherently the problem as human beings and we actually can even be good. Right. We haven't heard that. I haven't heard that from the main narratives around environmentalism or anything else. We can actually give back in the way that we farm, we can actually take care. And that is something that we're good at as people naturally, but it's a system which has disassociated us to that, which I like that reframe.
Aditi: So I guess I could connect this back to eco-fascism. So learning about all of this language of regeneration during the start of the coronavirus was especially apt because we saw air pollution clearing up and other things. Well, maybe humans are the virus all along and coronavirus is the vaccine. There was a lot of interesting dialogue happening at this time. And so at that time, I really started looking at eco-fascism, which is this ideology that has its roots in white supremacy.
Aditi: So eco-fascism, for those that are not familiar - it's an ideology that believes that the way to fix the climate catastrophe is population control. And so this goes all the way back to the 18th century, where there was an individual named Thomas Malthus and he argued that poverty, disease, and hunger wasn't caused by the exploitation of capitalism, but rather the working class having too many babies. And so this was a very flawed basis to understand the health of a society. And it became the basis of genocidal means to see that those that are the most vulnerable in society were social parasites. Right? So I think all of this came together to paint a very negative portrait, and I think that needed to be addressed.
Aditi: And I think it's best articulated by this quote from Rachel Carson that I always come back to, which is “Man is a part of nature. And his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.” And I think that really connects the dots between everything that I've shared about my own journey and cultural reclamation, which is an ongoing journey and what decolonization looks like in practice. But it's all really, I think, acutely framed by the disconnect where we don't see ourselves as nature. So we feed this ongoing narrative of eco-anxiety rather than systemic overhaul.
Alice Irene: The point around on population control. There was, I think another edition of that Oxfam Inequality Report came out where the injustice is honestly staggering. It's hard to wrap one's head around, but it's something like the top 10 billionaires, they produced much more emissions than billions of people, right? It doesn't need to be disproven, but that report really shows and they're all different measures that they look at around inequality, but it's not around population it's around excess and capitalism. And this extractive system that says the privileged few can live with abandon beyond the boundaries of the natural world, and then to go and blame others and perpetuate this ideology. It's just so unjust.
Aditi: And I think it's important to note that it is a bit of a political project to maintain this sense of individual impact and kind of dampening the imaginations of re-imagining the system. So I think it's important to note that this idea of the carbon footprint was championed by companies like BP, you know, as part of a marketing tactic to make it feel like it's the individual's responsibility. Or I always point to this phenomenon that is fed by this acronym called TINA, which stands for There Is No Alternative. Pointing to that there is no alternative to neoliberalism and our current economies - that was championed by the likes of Margaret Thatcher. So something that I've been thinking about a lot is how it's been a political project to limit our imaginations.
Aditi: How that awareness is really important to move forward as well, which doesn't mean we're reinventing the wheel by any means when it comes to our practices and sustainability, but really looking within and looking at our ancestors and cultures to know what has existed and what can exist.
Alice Irene: Right. Instead of focusing on all of the ways that we’re bad and can maybe be less bad or aim for zero this, or reducing that, actually cultivating and creating something rich and just, and beautiful, which we need more than ever right now. It's so hard to stay heartened by what's possible, but having a visual and a story around it as storytelling creatures, having a story around it to help us dream and imagine, and then work to create it is so key.
Aditi: Most definitely.
Alice Irene: Awareness of climate justice and intersections finally seems to be taking root after a long time. And certainly it's been known and talked about for a long time in many communities and BIPOC communities but hasn't mainstream, particularly in the environmental movement, particularly with a lot of white-led organizations in the environmental movement.
Alice Irene: It seems to be reaching that point now where more people understand connections and there's this ever growing community of young people who are really leading this. I think in terms of telling stories in different ways, making environmentalism more accessible to many people, using a variety of means. And I really see you as part of this community. Can you tell me more about Intersectional Environmentalist, for example, which I believe you're a part of, or your experience at COP26 in the fall when you were there with fellow creators and activists?
Aditi: Yeah, most definitely. Well, when it comes to Intersectional Environmentalist, that is an amazing organization that I have the pleasure of being a part of. And that began also shortly after the pandemic. So I think the pandemic has really framed a time of a lot of reckonings, but shortly after the pandemic began, we had a long overdue racial reckoning in the US when it came to the Black Lives Matter movement. And so Leah Thomas, who was the one who created the idea of intersectional environmentalism in terms of bringing language to this idea of connecting intersectionality, which was a term created by Kimberly Crenshaw, who was a critical race theory scholar.
Aditi: And bridging that to this idea of environmentalism. And so for those that are not familiar with the term intersectionality, intersectionality describes the way that multiple parts of our identities, whether that's race, our sex, our socioeconomic status, our gender, all of these kind of layer our identities and affect how we navigate the world. And this is how systems kind of affect the individual. And so that is the same approach when you do kind of bring when it comes to our practice in environmentalism. And I know when it comes to Leah's personal story, intersectional environmentalism was born out of this idea that we're talking about I can't breathe in relation to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Aditi: But this is also applicable when it comes to environmental racism and a host of other issues that disproportionately affect Black, Indigenous and People of Color. And so my involvement with intersectional environmentalism came when Leah made a post about intersectional environmentalism that went viral. And after that fact, they decided to kind of make that moment a movement and create an organization around intersectional environmentalist. And so I was a part of the council for Intersectional Environmentalism, which has been such a beautiful way to connect with the larger community in a very special way.
Aditi: Obviously you have these dynamics at times where you're connected with someone through Instagram, but really translating that to an in-real-life connection has been incredibly vital. As far as COP26, I personally was not at COP, but I was at the Ted Countdown Summit, which I think you might be thinking of which was a precursor to COP.
Aditi: So if you think about Ted's mission of ideas where it's spreading, but climate change edition. And this was a very interesting time because there was a group of us that are in this environmental creators community that were invited and overall the Ted Countdown Summit was a great place to further the sense of community. But what was especially interesting was the CEO of Shell was invited to speak. So what happened during that time is a bunch of these youth activists that were invited, got together and decided to have an action to set a tone that we will not platform the CEOs of fossil fuel companies. And if you are giving them a platform, it has to be with the presence of an activist to kind of balance that narrative and who gets that stage time.
Aditi: And so they were successful in doing that. An amazing young Scottish activist named Lauren MacDonald was invited to share the stage with the CEO of Shell and folks can look it up online. But it actually became a whole moment where she was able to face to face address the CEO of Shell and the lies that he was spreading, their ongoing work of creating an oil field in Scotland. And there was a walkout from the youth in that auditorium. Which a lot of folks came and joined. So I think it really spoke to the way that there's an amazing cohort of young folks that are navigating these systems to educate, but also disrupt. And I think that's incredibly important and something that is the plus sides of social media, right?
Aditi: The way we are able to kind of democratize the spread of ideas, who can be an educator and really center the perspective of young folks, especially those from marginalized communities. So whether it's the TED Countdown Summit or the presence of youth at COP26, which was a mess in its own right but I wasn't there to speak about the specifics of that.
Aditi: Intersectional environmentalist, I think really points to the next generation of folks that are acutely aware of the multi-layered oppressions, that kind of plague our societies and why we need the language of intersectionality to address these properly. And I think we're in an interesting time right now where a lot of mainstream environmental organizations, especially white-led environmental organizations are finally kind of reckoning how their own racist histories, but also the ways that colonialism and capitalism are attributed to our current climate catastrophe rather than, as we mentioned before, just an excess of carbon in our system that exists in a vacuum for some reason. So I think we're at a very critical juncture, which is amazing to see.
Alice Irene: I feel like we're at that juncture as well. And the word is - hope isn't my favorite word, but it does give me hope or helps me envision what might come next. And I'm wondering how you feel being at this juncture and being a creator and an activist. How do you feel about what comes next and the future of what you're creating and what you're advocating for? Or do you sort of focus on the work of the day and knowing that the future is ultimately out of your control?
Aditi: Yeah. I think this is a really good question because there is a lot of power in the work of spreading these narratives on social media, but there are also limitations. And I think where I have decided to kind of focus my efforts is the industry that I have decided to focus on, which is fashion, right? And so that means making sure that I am putting my energy and labor into building a more grassroots movements. One of my specific focuses on the labor side of fashion and also make sure I'm amplifying the narratives of place-based communities that can present alternatives to the fashion narrative. So I would say it's a balance of understanding the histories that we are coming from, but being quite present in this moment, because I think present-focused approach allows us to actually have the tools to get to that future we'd like to create. So yeah, I would say my approach is very much rooted in the present. Helps me keep focus on the problems at hand.
Alice Irene: I feel like there's often this question of, well, can we really make a change or do we have time? Or these sorts of questions and environmental narratives. And I don't think they serve us. I know why people ask them and it makes sense, but I don't think they serve us because it doesn't really matter. What matters is where our hearts are and the work that we're doing today and we're lost if we don't try and invest ourselves in creating the world that we want.
Aditi: Yeah, completely. I think it's best framed by this idea of when people look back at this window of action, we don't want the future generations to say who was asleep at the wheel, right? Because we are at this window of action. So it's again, focusing on ways that we root ourselves in the action rather than be at the hands of despair to what might be the future if we don't do enough in this moment.
Alice Irene: Right. And one of those things has agency and the other doesn't and let's skew towards the one with agency completely. I wanted to ask about something that you have coming up this year. I know plans are hard to make in the era that we live in, but I understand you'll be spending a year documenting the social and environmental impacts of India's fashion supply chain as a National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellow. Is that true?
Aditi: Yeah, that's also a mouthful, but yes, that's obviously I think the pandemic has made everything kind of subject to the health of folks on the ground, but this should be starting this spring, hopefully.
Alice Irene: So exciting. What does that look like? What's the vision for the project?
Aditi: So before I started my work, you know, with the sustainable fashion, content creation and labor activism side, I was , I am a photojournalist. So it's kind of returning back to those roots as a photojournalist, but creating the bridge between my work as a photojournalist with the work that I do now. So documenting these stories across India and going back to these ideas of place-based communities, fibresheds, like we spoke of.
Aditi: The visuals are going to be a big part of it. I really want to be intentional in going beyond a lot of the visual clichés, that kind of frame. The sustainable fashion narrative right now where you have a person in the global south holding up the paper saying “I made your clothes”, which I think is good in terms of the visibility when it comes to the labor behind the label, but we don't get a deepened narrative of the obstacles folks are facing and the ways that they're after championing solutions. So, yeah, it will document a lot of the issues that plague the fashion industry, but engage in the work of solutions oriented journalism as well, and hopefully do so in a visual way that goes a bit deeper.
Aditi: Because something I think a lot about is looking at journalism and photography through a lens of power dynamics. And historically, you know, there has been a lot of problematic narratives when it comes to how communities are showcased or not showcased. And so the hope with this project is to bring light to a lot of the issues, but be sensitive of cultural dynamics and power dynamics in that processes as well.
Alice Irene: I really look forward to seeing what emerges from this. The stories and what you create with that. That's so interesting your history as a photojournalist as well.
Aditi: Yeah. Thank you. I'm very excited as well. And I hope that it can hopefully begin this spring.
Alice Irene: Yes. It's hard to make plans these days. You kind of keep your heart a little bit guarded about what's going to come to fruition, but hopefully it all comes to be.
Aditi: Completely. Yeah. Cause this fellowship was something I actually got back in 2020, right when the pandemic started. So it's been a patient two year waiting.
Alice Irene: Well, it's like we were talking about before we started recording around some of these things you create that are slow and the antithesis of social media content creation, which is so quick. And like you were saying, you don't have the same time to process it. It's great because you can be nimble and you can control it a bit and have say over it, but you also don't have that time to go so deep. This is a good segue into a question around creativity and you don't just speak about fashion.
Alice Irene: You also have a really evocative fashion sense and beautiful fashion sense. And I'm wondering how that comes out too. I don't know if people ask you about that part. I don't know if you'd call yourself a model or what that identity feels like to you, but I'd love to hear more about your creativity through fashion. And if there's anything in there about your voice and finding your own voice and your own style over the past few years?
Aditi: Well, first of all, thank you so much. That's incredibly kind of you, but yeah, I think it's really interesting when I think back. Sustainable fashion came on my radar when I was entering college, as I mentioned, but my first love in terms of artistic practice was photography. And that came about when I was probably in middle school. Got my first little digital camera that was probably 30 bucks and just started creating. And so my first little practices, and that was, I still remember posing my dolls together and creating these sets. I used to call it Barbie Vogue. And yeah, I think photography and fashion kind of go hand in hand at this moment in time.
Aditi: And it really goes back to the value of visual language as a medium to connect, inform, and inspire. And going back to this idea of beauty that I mentioned before, I think is incredibly important to me as an individual, it gives me vitality. It inspires me, you know, so when it comes to my personal style. Personal style I think is something that is inherently incredibly sustainable because it's antithetical to this idea of trends, which is tied to fast fashion, right?
Aditi: Ongoing trends that change a mile a minute that are always telling you, you need to buy this because that's what the mannequin says or the marketing campaign says. So my personal style, I think, has come to be defined by a lot of artists and crafts from India that are rooted in again, those regions that I come from. I'm incredibly inspired by either bold, strong silhouettes or those that are flowy and movement oriented, both for their photographic quality.
Aditi: And so, yeah, I think it's another side to my work that exists alongside the climate activism, the labor activism. And I think when I was a bit younger, I used to feel that one is frivolous because we've been fed this idea that fashion is frivolous. And I think that's very much a gendered concept and it's not true, right? Because we know that fashion has so many implications - socially and environmentally. And I think engaging in this visual practice of content creation photography allows me to bridge all those worlds together and say, they're just as valid as one another because it inspires us to continue to create. And I think the pursuit of creation is in many ways, a practice of decolonization.
Aditi: Decolonization to me is about creativity. If you're deconstructing one system, you need to create it with another. So we have to keep those muscles of creativity alive. And when we see creativity as a holistic practice, it becomes a lot more, it just feeds the soul in another way that we can't compare it to.
Alice Irene: This is tangential but related. I was reading something recently about creativity and mother's rage. Like when mothers feel a lot of rage building up and not just in a moment, but over time. A relationship to not being able to express oneself creatively, whatever that looks like for that individual. And I think there's something to that. I'm just sort of exploring the idea right now and listening to it. And I know that being creative, I'm a different person and it's something I need. It feeds me. I love that you brought that up and then two, and you're talking about the fibresheds that you come from. It makes me want to dig deeper into, back in my ancestry, what my fibresheds might've looked like.
Alice Irene: And I'd read recently in Farming While Black by Leah Penniman this idea that particularly for white people working on being anti-racist, that digging deep into your own ancestry is one important way to do that. And I do have this love of wools and linens and all of these fabrics that I wonder at what goes back to fibresheds I'm from. So I'll have to do some work digging into.
Aditi: Wow, I love that. Yes. I think it should be required work for everyone in this movement. Like that work of really understanding of our ancestral lineage, because there's a lot of power in how that roots you and your approach and your connection to things so that's beautiful.
Alice Irene: Yeah. I'll have to look in, like I have Swedish, for example, I don't know what a Swedish Fibreshed would look like, so I'll have to explore. And my last question is around ancestry actually. I always finish with a question around ancestors and how your ancestry has impacted the path that you're on. And also any reflections that you have on yourself as an ancestor.
Aditi: This is a beautiful question. When I think about my ancestry, I think what comes to mind is I come from a lineage of land stewards. I come from a culture and people that have understood the intimate links between land and labor. And with that said, I come from a culture and people has been under assault from a colonialism and continue to reel from the impacts of extractive systems that subjects my communities to being a sacrifice zone. So it's this tension between the beauty that we hold and the systems that we have to continue to confront. And when it comes to ancestors, I mentioned the deep impact of my maternal grandparents.
Aditi: My grandfather, who was a farmer and instrumental to kind of facilitating my own personal relationship to the land around me, learning about his stories as a farmer and what happened in India in the sixties and seventies, which was the green revolution, where they were forced with, you know, mono-cropping and the use of certain pesticides. So we're continuing to see the degradation of land in my ancestral homelands. So when it comes to what's coming next and how I hope to see myself as hopefully a good ancestor is going back to Punjab. That's going to be a big part of the year to come. Hopefully if everything works out with COVID, but yeah, going back to Punjab and looking at the way the land has been affected, but also highlighting how we can have a new reality.
Aditi: It's this ongoing process of rebirth and regeneration. And I hope to be a part of that process that can kind of be this turning point of looking at where we’ve come from and where we can go in the future, despite all that has happened.
Alice Irene: That's so beautiful. Thanks so much Aditi. I really appreciate it.
Aditi: Of course. Thank you so much for having me. It's been lovely to be in conversation with you.
Alice Irene: That was today's episode of Reseed. I'd love to hear what you thought about our conversation. Reseed is created on unceded Algonquin land. Thank you to this place. Thank you to Rebecca Ryvola for podcast cover art. And Teghan Acres for being an outside eye. And thank you for listening. Together, let's plant the seeds that transform us from being takers to caretakers.