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FEATURING ANGELA MOONEY D'ARCY - Our nation and our world is overrun with billionaires and bigots, but they are few and we are many. On this series, exclusive to subscribers of Rising Up With Sonali and viewers of Free Speech TV, we’ll hear from organizers in the movements for social justice, and dig into the nuts and bolts of values, strategies, tactics, narratives, and building power.

This week Angela Mooney Darcy, Executive Director and Founder of the Sacred Places Institute for Indigenous Peoples joins us. Angela is from the Acjachemen Nation, the Native Nation whose traditional territories include the area also known as Orange County, California. She has worked with Native Nations, Indigenous peoples, grassroots and nonprofit organizations, artists, educators, and institutions on environmental and cultural justice issues for over twenty-five years.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Angela Mooney D’Arcy: Thank you so much for having me. I started listening to your show when I was in law school years ago, so was very…

Sonali Kolhatkar: Oh my goodness!

D’Arcy: …very, very excited to get your message.

Kolhatkar: Well, we've both been at it for a long time, and I'm glad our paths have intersected. Tell me about the Sacred Places Institute for Indigenous Peoples. How do you summarize the work that your organization does? What is your main organizational goal?

D’Arcy: Well, our mission is to build the capacity of native nations and Indigenous peoples to protect sacred lands, waters, and cultures. And our goal is to achieve paradigm shifts, to protect Indigenous people so that our peoples and cultures can exist for all time.

And for us, that very much is about protecting all of our human and non-human relatives and the earth herself, because Indigenous people's life ways and relationships with the earth and with all of our relatives around the world is what keeps the world in balance.

And as you indicate in your introduction, right now, we are a world very much out of balance. So, from our perspective, supporting Indigenous peoples in this way, and that paradigm shift actually protects the world for everyone.