We’re at the Elko airport – it’s quiet, as there are only four flights that depart from here each day.  This diverse group of nine incredible women, all of whom are passionately committed to learning and being of service, is waiting to journey all the way from northern Nevada to southern Arizona.  We’re coming out of a powerful experience in Western Shoshone country, and are on our way to the U.S. – Mexico border.  Our Transformative Advocacy delegation to the U.S. Southwest is off to a phenomenal start!

On Thursday, all the lawyer-delegates arrived – Jennifer, an attorney/ organizer with Communities for a Better Environment in Los Angeles, and Meredith, an up-and-coming attorney dedicated to the Great Lakes Alliance in Chicago, arrived first.  Later in the afternoon we picked up Genesis, a public defender who’s just leaving a two-year fellowship at the Southern Poverty Law Center; Libby, who recently worked with the Center for Earth Jurisprudence in Miami; and Stephanie, an attorney at the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project.  From the moment we were all together – all the delegates, and the WEA team– I could sense the greatness of this group.

My sense was confirmed during our opening meeting, when WEA staff introduced our organization, the Transformative Advocacy program, our Advocacy Network, and this trip.  I shared my view of this experience as a way for members of the  legal community to become part of the ‘ecology’ of the social and environmental justice movement.  By taking time to witness the devastating and deeply entrenched environmental justice and human rights concerns facing Native American communities, and to connect with the inspiring changemakers who are spearheading efforts towards justice and sustainability, we’re creating a foundation of mutuality and trust.  And from that solid beginning, we can contribute our skills in an effective and meaningful way – exactly when we’re called upon, to provide exactly the form of assistance that is sought.  It’s really a way to make efficient use of the immense intellectual and technical resources held by dedicated attorneys, and to do so in the context of communion, which Carolyn Raffensperger says is the “most formidable power we can use in our work on environmental health.”

Shannon offered an utterly artful and compelling overview of our commitment to anti-oppression.  She gently brought us all into an awareness of the dynamics of oppression and privilege that exist in ourselves and in others, and invited us to stay conscious of those dynamics as we travel and participate in dialogue.  And the delegates introduced themselves, sharing their powerful personal and professional backgrounds as well as their heartfelt intentions for this trip. They’re really an amazing group of women – grounded, present, wise, kind, and good-natured.  We’re so very lucky to be traveling together!

One of the highlights of the afternoon was the presentation of the loom.  Before we left, our colleague Rachael (who is herself an incredibly talented and creative lawyer, as well as a master craftswoman), fashioned us a beautiful loom made out of mossy branches from Tilden Park bound together with leather, framing twine strands (the warp? the weft?  who can tell...).  Our vision was to bring the loom to each meeting and invite each of the women and men we'll be meeting with to weave a strand of beautiful, multi-hued yarn into it, so that eventually we'll have a gorgeous and tangible representation of the alliance we are weaving on this journey.  Before we left, several of our supporters weaved their prayers and intentions into the loom, and those strands primed our delegates to begin to weave their own colors into this shared creation. 

That night we sat down for a tasty buffet dinner at the local historic casino (complete with a humongous, stuffed polar bear in the slots room), and were joined by Julie Bill (formerly Julie Fishel), her husband Larson Bill, and two Western Shoshone women colleagues of theirs.  Julie is an absolutely amazing attorney who has been working for the past ten years with the Western Shoshone, spearheading numerous creative and powerful advocacy efforts on behalf of her clients before bodies such as the United Nations and the Inter American Commission on Human Rights.  She and the others shared just a bit with us about the struggle of the Western Shoshone people to defend their land and communities from the myriad destructive forces of mining, water extraction, unlawful land seizure, and overdevelopment.  That brief contextual overview served us well the following day.

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