BEFORE YOU BEGIN: TIPS & TOOLS FOR FACILITATORS

Preparing to Facilitate
Participants will arrive with differing degrees of knowledge and lived experience with regards to the many topics that Manzanar, Diverted invites you to explore. It is helpful to prepare yourself and ground yourself in both knowledge and intention ahead of facilitation. As a facilitator we encourage you to take the necessary steps to ensure that you are prepared to guide a conversation that prioritizes the safety of those whose experiences and identities have been marginalized. This will allow you to set an intention (and sustain a generative dialogue) that maximizes care and critical curiosity, transformation, and connection.

The following are tools to support you and your community before, during, and after the screening + discussion.

Helpful Concepts, Definition, and Language for Framing

Settler Colonialism: The goal of settler colonialism is the removal and erasure of Indigenous peoples to take and use land indefinitely, and to establish property rights over land and resources. According to the “Settler Colonialism Primer,” by Laura Hurwitz & Shawn Bourque, “settler colonialism is not just a vicious thing of the past, such as the gold rush, but exists as long as settlers are living on appropriated land and thus exists today.” An ongoing structure, settler colonialism has sought to gain control over land, space, resources, and people by illegally occupying land then establishing coercive labor systems to extract resources from the land and establish economic infrastructure.

A settler is anyone who isn’t Indigenous and lives on the stolen land that we now refer to as the United States of America. However, under settler colonialism, groups are racialized in different ways according to the economic needs of the settler state. Some peoples were brought to settler states due to chattel slavery or indentured servitude. Others are descendents of European settlers.

Tribal Sovereignty: According to the National Congress of American Indians, “Tribal members are citizens of three sovereigns: their tribe, the United States, and the state in which they reside.” Tribal sovereignty is defined as, “the ability to govern and to protect and enhance the health, safety, and welfare of tribal citizens within a tribal territory. Tribal governments maintain the power to determine their own government structures and enforce laws through police departments and tribal courts.”

Counter-Narratives: Counter-narratives are stories that challenge widespread beliefs and discourses (Solórzano & Yosso, 2001). They often serve as powerful and rich data sources to present and elevate the voices of historically marginalized communities that have been left out, erased, or made invisible in the mainstream discourse.

White Supremacy: White supremacy is the source of race based violence, and it has also shaped the mainstream environmental movement and perceptions about conservation. White supremacy is an ideology promoting white people and the ideas, thoughts, and beliefs and actions of white people as superior to those of people of color. The systems of white supremacy also refers to interlocking institutions and systems: Political, educational, social, cultural and more. Within these systems, white people have a structural advantage, individually and collectively. White supremacy is ingrained within systems, including the environmental movement with prominent white male founders. American environmentalism’s roots have long standing prejudices against local communities and Indigenous peoples, and have historically prioritized conservation of “wild places” at the expense of people who live there. Local people are often written out of conservation narratives, which the environmental justice movement sought to change.

Environmental Racism: Dr. Robert Bullard, a leader of the environmental justice movement, defines environmental racism as “any policy, practice or directive that differentially affects or disadvantages (where intended or unintended) individuals, groups or communities based on race.”

Environmental Justice: The environmental justice movement began over thirty years ago at the First National People of Color Leadership Summit, where a delegation drafted the following:

• The 17 Principles of Environmental Justice
• The Principles of Working Together
  

These principles and practices significantly redefined and reconceptualized our understanding of the “environment,” and shifted from the environment being considered “pristine natural wilderness” to areas where people (particularly people of color), live, work, study, play, and pray. This subsequently allowed for the inclusion of issues such as toxic pollution, transportation, worker safety, and environmental health. The environmental justice movement seeks to connect the dots between environmental, economic, social, and racial justices. Environmental justice is the movement’s response to instances of environmental racism.

Japanese American World War II Incarceration: According to Densho’s Terminology Guide, the term “internment” that was used historically, fails to accurately describe what unjustly and illegally happened to Japanese Americans during World War II. “Incarceration” is the suggested and more accurate term. The Associated Press Stylebook, 56th Edition, (a guide for newsrooms, journalists, and reporters), was recently updated to reflect a terminology change from “internment” to “incarceration.”

Community Agreements: What are they? Why are they useful?

Community Agreements help provide a framework and parameters for engaging in dialogue that allows you to establish a shared sense of intention ahead of engaging in discussion. Community Agreements can be co-constructed and creating them can be used as an opening activity that your group collectively and collaboratively undertakes ahead of engaging in dialogue. Here is a model of Community Agreements you can review. As the facilitator, you can gauge how long your group should take to form these agreements or if participants would be amenable to pre-established community agreements.

Opening Activity (Optional): Establishing Community Agreements for Discussion

Whether you are a group of people coming together once for this screening and discussion, or a group that knows each other well, creating a set of community agreements helps foster clear discussion in a manner that draws in and respects all participants, especially when tackling intimate or complex conversations around identity. These steps will help provide guidelines for the process:

• Pass around sample community agreements and take time to read aloud as a group to make sure all participants can both hear and read the text.
• Allow time for clarifying questions; make sure all understand the purpose of making a set of agreements and allow time to make sure everyone understands the agreements themselves.
• Go around in a circle and have every participant name an agreement they would like to include. Chart this in front of the room where all can see.
• Go around 2-3 times to give participants multiple chances to contribute and to also give a conclusive end to the process.
• Read the list aloud.
• Invite questions or revisions.
• Ask if all are satisfied with the list.
• Ask all participants to sign the list of agreements. Leave it where all can see. As the facilitator, be mindful of the agreements throughout your session, noting if someone speaks or acts in a way that runs counter to them.

Grounding in the Past & Present

Histories of colonization and American Slavery are deeply intertwined as are their enduring structures. While the experiences of settler colonialism and chattel slavery are unique to place, peoples, and communities, we all inherit and hold different relationships to this inheritance. We must recognize this past and its ongoing human, environmental, and structural implications in order to commit to change. We encourage your community to openly acknowledge the legacy and inheritance of both and open this discussion with aLand Acknowledgment.

What is a Land Acknowledgment?*

Land acknowledgments do not exist in the past tense, but rather recognize that colonialism is a current and ongoing process with enduring structures. Land acknowledgments are a way to combat systemic erasure and honor the traditional indigenous inhabitants of the land you are currently living on, to offer respect, and to support larger truth-telling and reconciliation efforts. Acknowledgement is a small gesture that must be accompanied by continued education, action and commitments to justice and repair. Here are some resources to learn more about Land Acknowledgments:Native Land Resources,

To discover and learn about the Indigenous Territories you currently inhabit you can:

1. Visithttps://native-land.ca/to see a visual representation and learn more
2. Text your zip code to (855)-917-5263
   
   

Land Acknowledgment Model:

I/We acknowledge that today we gather as [name of your community/group] on the unceded Indigenous lands of Turtle Island, the ancestral name for what is now called North America. Specifically, I/We acknowledge the unceded territory of the [indigenous community/communities local to your zip code] past and present; as well as all the American Indian and Indigenous Peoples and communities who have been or have become a part of these lands and territories in [your state]. We honor, with gratitude, the land itself and the people who have stewarded and lived in relation to this land across generations.

Resources for Taking Action/Deepening your Understanding

Learn More About Payahuunadü:

• Owens Valley Indian Water Commission (OVIWC) :
  The OVIWC’s mission is to work together closely and cooperatively with Payahuunadü Tribes to advance self-sufficiency and sovereignty, protect and promote culture and traditions, increase sustainability and food security, preserve and restore land and habitat, improve water quality and increase water supply, increase Indigenous farming and ranching, improve environmental and human health conditions in the Owens Valley and Eastern Sierra, and to assist Tribes with securing water rights settlements that include land acquisition.
  
  
• Bishop Paiute Tribe: The official website of the Bishop Paiute Tribe
  
  
• Big Pine Paiute Tribe: The official website of the Big Pine Paiute Tribe
  
  
• Lone Pine Paiute-Shoshone Tribe: The official website of the Lone Pine Paiute Shoshone Tribe
  

Resources To Challenge & Counter Mainstream Media Narratives:

• Illuminative: A Native woman-led racial and social justice organization dedicated to increasing the visibility of–and challenging the narrative about–Native peoples

• Indigenous Photograph: A space to elevate the work of Indigenous visual journalists and bring balance to the way we tell stories about Indigenous peoples and spaces.
  

Support & Join the Movement–National Environmental Justice Organizations:

• NDN Collective: NDN Collective is an Indigenous-led organization dedicated to building Indigenous power. Through organizing, activism, philanthropy, grantmaking, capacity building and narrative change, they are creating sustainable solutions on Indigenous terms

• Indigenous Climate Action (ICA): ICA is an Indigenous-led organization guided by a diverse group of Indigenous knowledge keepers, water protectors and land defenders from communities and regions across the country. They believe that Indigenous People’s rights and knowledge systems are critical to developing solutions to the climate crisis and achieving climate justice

• Indigenous Environmental Network: Established in 1990 within the United States, IEN was formed by grassroots Indigenous peoples and individuals to address environmental and economic justice issues.

• Nia Tero: Nia Tero works in solidarity with Indigenous peoples who sustain thriving territories and cultures to strengthen guardianship of the Earth and all beings.

• We ACT for Environmental Justice: We ACT was established in 1988, and empowers and organizes low-income, people of color to build healthy communities for all.

• Robert Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice: The Robert Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice at Texas Southern University was launched to address longstanding issues of systemic inequality and structural racism that cause disproportionate pain, suffering, and death in Black and other people of color communities
  
• Deep South Center for Environmental Justice: The Deep South Center for Environmental Justice is dedicated to improving the lives of children and families harmed by pollution and vulnerable to climate change in the Gulf Coast Region though research, education, community and student engagement for policy change, as well as health and safety training for environmental careers

• National Black Environmental Justice Network: The National Black Environmental Justice Network demands solutions that use an equity lens to develop policies that address health, environmental, and economic justice challenges facing Black Americans

Support & Join the Movement–California Based Environmental Justice Organizations:

• Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN): APEN is an environmental justice organization with deep roots in California’s Asian immigrant and refugee communities

• Pacoima Beautiful (PB): Pacoima Beautiful was founded in 1996 by five mothers who were distraught by the trash and pollution in their neighborhoods and decided to engage in collective action.

• California Environmental Justice Alliance: The California Environmental Justice Alliance is a statewide, community-led alliance that works to achieve environmental justice by advancing policy solutions.

• Communities for a Better Environment (CBE): The mission of CBE is to build people’s power in California’s communities of color and low-income communities to achieve environmental health and justice by preventing and reducing pollution and building green, healthy and sustainable communities and environments

• Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice (CCAEJ): The mission of CCAEJ is to bring people together to improve the social and natural environment. This is done through indigenous leadership, community organizing through strategic campaigns and building a base of community power.

• Center on Race, Poverty, & The Environment (CRPE): With roots in California’s San Joaquin Valley, CRPE is a national environmental justice organization providing legal, organizing, and technical assistance to grassroots groups in low-income communities and communities of color

• East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ): EYCEJ is a community-based organization that works to facilitate self-advocates in East Los Angeles, Southeast Los Angeles and Long Beach. By providing workshops and trainings, EYCEJ prepares community members to engage in the decision making processes that directly impact their health and quality of life

Support & Learn–Resources by Indigenous Activists, Journalists, & Scholars:

• Gilio-Whitaker, D. (2019). As long as grass grows: The Indigenous fight for environmental justice, from colonization to Standing Rock. Beacon Press.
  
• Hernandez, J. (2022). Fresh banana leaves: healing indigenous landscapes through indigenous science. North Atlantic Books.
  
• Kimmerer, R. (2013). Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants. Milkweed editions.
  
• LaDuke, W. (2020). To be a water protector: The rise of the wiindigoo slayers. Fernwood Publishing.
  
• Leonard, K. (2021, Winter). Putting Indigenous Place Names and Languages Back on Maps. Esri. https://www.esri.com/about/newsroom/arcnews/putting-indigenous-place-names-and-languages-back-on-maps/
  
• Nagle, R. This Land [Podcast]. (2019). Los Angeles, CA: Crooked Media. https://crooked.com/podcast-series/this-land/
  

Support & Learn–Japanese American Organizations:

• Japanese American Citizens League (JACL): The nation’s oldest and largest Asian American/Pacific Islander civil rights organization

• Japanese American National Museum (JANM): The national repository of Japanese American history, JANM’s mission is to promote understanding and appreciation of America’s ethnic and cultural diversity by sharing the Japanese American experience.

• 18 Million Rising: 18 Million Rising was created in response to the untapped opportunities to educate, organize, and mobilize young Asian Americans.

• Manzanar Committee: The Manzanar Committee is dedicated to educating and raising public awareness about the incarceration and violation of civil rights of persons of Japanese ancestry during World War II, and the continuing struggle of all peoples when Constitutional rights are in danger.

• Tsuru for Solidarity: A non-violent direct action project of Japanese American social justice advocates working to end detention sites and support front-line immigrant and refugee communities that are being targeted by racist, inhumane immigration policies.

• Nikkei Progressives: A grassroots, all-volunteer, multigenerational community organization that was formed in late 2016 partially in response to the Trump Administration’s expected attacks on the civil liberties of Muslim Americans, immigrants, and other minority groups and in recognition of the need to offer support and resistance.

• Densho: “Densho” is a Japanese term that means “to pass onto the next generation,” or to leave a legacy. Densho documents testimonies of Japanese Americans who were unjustly incarcerated during World War II before their memories are extinguished.

About the Author:

Kimi Waite is yonsei fourth generation Japanese American and has received awards for her work in environmental education and social studies education. She is a public voices fellow on the climate crisis with The OpEd Project and the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and has written about the intersections of race, education, and environmental justice for publications such as Ms. Magazine, Rethinking Schools, Grist, Cal Matters, The San Diego Union-Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, and The Progressive. Kimi is a Civics Environmental Education Fellow with the North American Association for Environmental Education. She has an M.Ed. from UCLA and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Sustainability Education at Prescott College.

Framing Document Producer, POV

Courtney Cook, PhD || Education Manager

William Tolliver, Jr || Education Assistant

This resource was created, in part, with the generous support of the Open Society Foundation.