Abby Reyes: Engaging ‘the slow work’ in the face of urgency and crises

Green Dreamer: Seeding change towards collective healing, sustainability, regeneration

kaméa chayne

Nature, Alternative Health, Society & Culture, Philosophy, Health & Fitness, Science

4.9 • 661 Ratings

🗓️ 13 May 2025

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1999, Terence Unity Freitas, the partner of our guest today, along with two other Indigenous activists Ingrid Washinawatok El-Issa and Lahe’ena’e Gay, were murdered in Colombia after they left the U’wa territory, where they were visiting to support the Indigenous U’wa community.

Now, in one of her first interviews about her new book, Truth Demands: A Memoir of Murder, Oil Wars, and the Rise of Climate Justice, Abby Reyes is here to share her story — and her journey of navigating grief and healing while fighting for truth and accountability from Big Oil.

How has the U’wa community been resisting against colonial-capitalist interests? What does it mean to depart from urgency culture and to tap into the “slow work” of deep, social change? And what is the relationship between engaging in the “inner” and “outer” work of systemic transformation?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's your host, Kamea. I just wanted to quickly share that Alchemize, our 12-week audio-based program of daily imagination and creative practices, is now open for enrollment again. My personal favorite theme from the program is Into Otherness, where I personally lead a practice called You Are Water, and some of our past guests lead
0:22.2	invitations like, you are a honeybee, or you are lichen, or you are fermenting.
0:28.1	There are also grounding practices to support you to re-web yourself within your more-than-human
0:33.2	community, and so much more. The question I had was, what could it be like to go beyond just
0:39.0	thinking about the topics that we often discuss on the show and to engage them in more
0:44.3	interactive and embodied ways? If this speaks to you, I welcome you to join us today at
0:49.7	greendreamer.com slash alchemize. Maintaining the still point, even in the face of urgency or in the face of crisis,
1:00.2	it is for me an active daily practice.
1:04.6	The allure of urgency, the allure of responding at the clip and at the intensity of the harms that are coming our way,
1:15.4	that allure is strong.
1:16.8	And so my community, we do a lot of physical, somatic practice to make sure that we're tapping into a deeper source, a deeper current, a stronger
1:30.7	current than the urgency.
1:39.6	In 1999, Terence Unity Freitas, the partner of our guest today, along with two other indigenous activists
1:49.0	Ingrid Washanwatok Elisa and Lahaina Aege were murdered in Colombia after they left the Uwa territory,
1:57.5	where they were visiting to support the indigenous Uwa community.
2:02.7	Now in one of her first interviews about her new book titled Truth Demands, a memoir of
2:09.3	murder, oil wars, and the rise of climate justice.
2:13.8	Abby Reyes is here to share her story and her journey of grief and healing while fighting for truth and accountability from Big Oil.
2:23.3	I was really moved to my core learning about Abby's story and the resistance efforts of the Ua community,
2:32.3	in particular their invitation for us to embrace and embody the
2:36.1	slow work of deep change. As Abby says, it's about tapping into a deeper source, a deeper
2:42.4	current, a stronger current than the urgency. This is a powerful conversation that asks for us to
	...

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