When we talk about solutions to climate change, we look to emerging technologies. The latest innovation that can remove carbon or recycle waste. We’re immediately inclined to rely on big tech, but what about low tech solutions?
Indigenous communities around the world have been living in balance with nature and leaving no trace or damage for hundreds of thousands of years. Despite all the promises and goals corporations and governments have made to reduce climate change, our global emissions continue to rise at a dangerous rate. So why don’t we ask the Indigenous experts with a proven track record for guidance as we continue to get it so wrong?
After her enlightening talk at Collision 2024 about how big tech won’t save us, I sat down for a chat with actress Nathalie Kelley. You might have seen her in Dynasty, Baker and the Beauty or Fast & Furious. Now, Nat is using her fame to amplify the voices of Indigenous peoples who aren’t being heard all around the world. Being of Quechua descent, Nat had some powerful messages to share, and I was eager to learn more from her.
We’re here in Toronto at this conference talking about the development and future of tech. But in your talk, you suggested we’re not making progress?
It’s not progress if it wreaks havoc on our environment. We’re experiencing mass extinction of species due to this “explosive” growth.
Let me focus on my specific area of interest and knowledge, which is agriculture. It’s arguably the most important technology that humans have developed around how to sustain ourselves on this earth by growing food. With regards to the transition from hunter-gatherer to agriculture, some people say that was the beginning of the end for humanity.
When you look at the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians, the Romans, the Greeks, all these civilisations followed the same trajectory. An enormous amount of growth and concentrated agriculture. But deforestation causes the ground to salinate, so now that soil is no longer fertile. Year after year, it yields less crops. And then you have this huge population that you’re not able to sustain anymore with your system of agriculture, leading to food insecurity, political instability, and civilisation collapse.
You can argue that we are on exactly the same trajectory right now. Because these big tech systems of monoculture farming that they have introduced and have replaced Indigenous forms of agriculture with are inherently inefficient.
What are the barriers for changing this trajectory?
The barrier is nothing less than the global economic system that we’re in, keeping this unsustainable casino alive. It’s greed — aiming for never-ending growth and knowing full well that we cannot sustain it.
We have very real biophysical limits on this planet as to how many minerals we can extract. Around 3% of all water on earth is freshwater and we’re using huge amounts of that to cool data centres so people can stream Only Fans or use chatGPT. How do we explain to future generations that we’ve used their freshwater on these ridiculous things that at the time seemed important to us?
We have to understand that corporations are never going to get it. And any messaging that they do is pure greenwashing because by design, they are beholden only to their shareholders. The stakeholders Indigenous technologies are beholden to are all the living beings in the web of life: humans, animals, plants and fungi.
With regard to the knowledge and expertise of Indigenous peoples, presumably all humans would have had this deeper understanding of our planet at some point. Where down the line do you think it was lost?
Good question. Over 300, 000 years, all of us have evolved out of complex land-based communities all over the world that were in deep observation of and relationship with the natural world. For Indigenous peoples, “god” or “the sacred” exists in all living things. Their reverence is not for some invisible being in the sky, but in every living cell around us, in the animals, in the blades of grass, in the rivers, the brooks and in the mountains.
So I wonder if it was the rise of monotheism — the idea that nothing is sacred except one male god. A lot of cultures took on these religions that are inherently patriarchal. It’s a bit of a philosophical / spiritual question, and quite a controversial answer that I’m giving. But maybe there’s something to be said.
Wow, interesting thought. So what do you think the solution is, for a more sustainable future?
I just love that everybody asks that, because they’re like, okay, enough with the doom and gloom.
Aha well I like to address important issues, but ultimately share a positive message of hope. We need something to work towards, don’t we?
True. So I think the answer is figuring out ways to liberate technology from the hands of corporations. I’m not against technology entirely, but I believe that it needs to be born out of local communities and local solutions. And they need to take into account the biophysical limits of our ecosystem. If this technology involves extracting from 10 places around the world, is it worth it?
I said it in my talk earlier. It’s estimated that in the next 35 years, our economy will double and the amount of minerals we will need equates to all the minerals we’ve mined in the whole 300,000 years of our existence.
In order to challenge the corporate system, we need a consciousness shift among individuals. And I think as we start to see ecosystems collapse and start to wake up to the tragedy of loss of biodiversity, loss of our homes, livelihoods, forests and clean water, enough of us are going to be able to stand up and say, we don’t accept that this is the only option available to us.
And it is at this point that those of us who never lost our ancestral connections to the land, the Indigenous peoples who hold — what we call the original instruction of how to live in harmony with the natural world — can step in and say, here’s the alternative pathway. One that takes us back to our original blueprint: to be a keystone species, to start building biodiversity.
When did you feel inspired to take a stand and begin sharing this message?
Part of the damage that colonisation has done is to the psyche of colonised people in the global South. The superiority complex of the Western mindset that arrived in our Indigenous homelands and said, you guys are primitive, let us show you a better way. It’s sad is that a lot of people in Peru want to live like Europeans and look back on how we used to live as backwards. And that’s why in my first decade as an actress, I was just happy to be known as Peruvian-Australian. That felt like it summed up who I was. But a few years ago around the pandemic, I realised that I needed to represent myself as who I really was.
I am Quechua. I am Indigenous. I come from an incredible lineage. And when more people with a platform like me speak up and are able to say, actually, we’re not primitive. Let us teach you about our incredible history — there’s a lot we have to teach the world, I think we can start to see a cultural shift. And as an actress, I am uniquely positioned to shift culture, which is why I showed up today in my Indigenous dress.
It’s lovely!
It’s a political statement. Being here in this heavily corporate space with a spiritual message. It’s like an arrow into the dead heart of this corporate monoculture that wants to extinguish life on earth, including cultural life and cultural ways of living and expressing ourselves on this planet. I noticed there’s a few more Indigenous speakers today and I’m looking forward to these talks as well.
It’s great that you’re here — and I’m looking forward to hearing from the other Indigenous speakers too. What improvements would you suggest for corporate conferences like this?
I want a world of meaningful diversity, not just a little box checked. I’m talking to Collision about creating a low tech pavilion. There are experts who can speak on fire technologies, bioremediation, cleaning water, Indigenous agriculture and agroforestry. And I’m like, bring them in alongside the start-ups! Because these are technologies as well.
That’s what I’m here to argue. As long as we have this narrow perspective of what technology is, we know the road that’s going to lead down.
Good point. Any final thoughts to instil some hope and inspiration in our readers from an Indigenous lens?
One of the things that I’m passionate about is returning Indigenous peoples back to their sacred places. The Kogi, who are indigenous to Columbia, believe that the world will not come back into balance again until Indigenous peoples are allowed back onto their sacred places to sing their songs and activate them again. There are songlines around the world. These are part of our technologies.
We also need to understand our sacred place in the web of life. I think I’m against this consumer culture because it has taught us that humans are bad. That we are the problem: Earth is good and humans are bad.
But we are earth. We are nature. We were designed and created with a specific purpose. We’ve lost what that purpose is, but we can get back to it. It is in our cellular memory. It is in our DNA. It is our design to live in harmony with the natural world.
Amazing, thanks so much Nat!
Thank you, Emily. It was such a pleasure meeting you and thank you for being so receptive to the message.
Emily D'Silva 
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