Chelsea Mikael Frazier: Learning environmentalism through the lens of black feminism
Dr. Chelsea Mikael Frazier (Instagram: @amazon_scholar; Twitter: @amazon_scholar) is a faculty fellow in the Cornell University Department of English and Black feminist eco-critic who writes, researches, and teaches at the intersection of Black feminist theory and environmental thought.
As the Founder and Chief Creative Officer at Ask An Amazon (Patreon: @AskAnAmazon; Instagram: @AskAnAmazon; Facebook @AskAnAmazon; Twitter: @AskAnAmazon), she designs educational tools, curates community gatherings, gives lectures, and offers consulting services that serve Black Feminist Fuel for Sustainable Futures.
In this podcast episode, Dr. Frazier sheds light on why there traditionally has been a lack of diversity in the field of environmentalism; how our world might change if the people currently most marginalized in our society, such as Black and Indigenous women, were centered and honored as leaders of our future; and more.
To start, get a glimpse below into the conversation between Dr. Frazier and Green Dreamer Podcast's host, Kamea Chayne.
“One of the most powerful untapped resources is spirituality. Spirituality —particularly spirituality from Black and Indigenous communities all over the world—has been so denigrated and so viciously attacked that many people are unaware of its transformative potential.”
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This is a conversation on Green Dreamer with Kamea Chayne, a podcast and multimedia journal illuminating our paths towards ecological regeneration, intersectional sustainability, and true abundance and wellness for all. This preview has been edited for clarity. Subscribe to Green Dreamer Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any podcast app, and support Green Dreamer on Patreon so we can keep the show going and accessible to a wider audience!
On thinking outside the box:
"If we're overly focused on reform, it keeps us from being able to see that, as my articulations of colonial earth ethics point to, a lot of these issues we're suffering from can't be reformed.
They need to be abolished, reworked, repurposed—they can't simply be reformed."
On ‘environmentalism' through a black feminist lens:
“A difference that Black feminist ecology has from traditional environmentalism is that [in traditional environmentalism,] there is a lot of rhetoric about ‘saving the environment'.
That is rooted in a particular religious-philosophical doctrine that thinks that saving is possible and necessary in our relationship with the environment. But really, we need to understand how to be in community with our environment.
Spirituality offers a metric for doing so that is not so hierarchical—or, at the very least, understands the hierarchy as humans not being on the top, because we're not.”
Final words of wisdom:
"As soon as I received notification that we might be having a conversation together [on Green Dreamer], it made me think of the Zora Neale Hurston quote:‘The dream is the truth.’
I want to encourage all of your listeners to keep that in mind that there is nothing arbitrary about dreaming. Continue to trust that the things we dream while we're awake and while we're sleeping can lead us to a better world.”
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