When you’re living your purpose, when you see your life in a 100-year timeline, and when you stop efforting so hard to just fix all the world’s problems, what is possible?
Kory Lambert's wisdom about how he figured out how to harness his own magic to heal the world within his reach– specifically by reconnecting diverse youth with the ocean– is a model for the rest of us.
He is voraciously intellectual, discerning and determined, and has figured out how to channel his substantial energy and capacities to meet the moment. A master diver, founder of the Aquatic Futures Foundation, underwater photographer, archaeologist, marine scientist, walking (or better yet, swimming) archive of black histories of the ocean, and all-around wise soul, Kory Lamberts brings many passions to bear on making the world a better place for both humans and nature.
SHOW NOTES:
- Aquatic Futures Foundation
- Kory’s instagram for creative work
- Environmental Studies Department, Cal Poly Humboldt
- Undrowned, by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
- National Association of Black Scuba Divers
- Warsan Shire’s quote
- Ismatu Gwendolyn
- Rebecca Solnit - The Arc of Justice and the Long Run
- Reconsidering Reparations, by Olúfemi O. Táíwò
- Henriette Marie shipwreck
- Stanford archaeologist Dr. Ayana Omilade Flewellen
- UCLA grad student, Jewell Ruth-Ellen Humphrey
- UC Merced professor and author of Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Cultures in the African Diaspora, Kevin Dawson’s bio
- Alta Sea company
- Ocean X company
- They Came Before Columbus book
- Gullah-Geechee maroon community
- Kory’s essay in El Lenador, the CPH multi-lingual school newspaper, “I’m tired of talking about rocks… what about the people?”
- “Hurt People Hurt the Planet,” my substack essay inspired by this conversation with Kory
- History of the World in Seven Cheap Things book
- Project Rebound at Cal Poly Humboldt
- Thich Nhat Hanh’s “The Tree” excerpt: “The tree does not hurry, It does not strive. It simply is— Alive in every moment, Dancing with the wind, Drinking the sunlight, Embracing the rain.”
TRANSCRIPT:
LAMBERTS: What I do know is, I've been able to introduce a bunch of people to the ocean this year. I made a bunch of people rethink how they look at science. I made a bunch of people rethink their possible careers. I brought some healing, hopefully, and some fun and some joy to some people that I've taken into the ocean.
And I realized, when I had less power, I felt moved by everything happening. I felt more moved in that instantaneous factor of let this just happen. I need to do something today about it, versus I have a 100 year plan. I have a 100 year plan, a 50 year plan, I have a ten year plan, I have a five year plan, and I had a one year plan. I'm thinking on a drastically different time scale now. If I were zoomed in, I would freak out every day.
RAY: Welcome to Climate Magic, where we explore the emotional life of climate politics. I'm your host, doctor Sarah Jaquette Ray, chair of the environmental studies department at Cal Poly Humboldt. In this show, I speak with one of my old students, Kory Lamberts.
Kory graduated in 2021 from Cal Poly Humboldt as one of my students in environmental studies. He came to Humboldt as a transfer student after turning away from a possible career as a football player. Like many students, he had many interests and used his time in college to craft a unique path to combine them. He immediately stood out to me as a passionate, motivated champion for social justice. And as awesome as it might be, football wasn't going to fix the problems he cared so much about: incarceration, environmental injustice, connections between racism and sustainability, and the representation of black people in natural spaces and environmental leadership.
Since he graduated, Kory worked for the nonprofit called Negus in Nature, which focuses on building bridges between black communities and natural spaces while in college and also while working with nuggets in nature. Kory became an avid scuba diver, joining the National Association of Black Scuba Divers (NABS) and receiving multiple opportunities to participate in dives that focus on connecting black people to their histories and their connection with the ocean.
The next phase of his ambitions and passions flowed from there. His work exemplifies how integrating environmental science with community engagement, a combination I personally like to call environmental studies, can drive meaningful change. I invited Kory to have a conversation with me because his story and his words are a beautiful example of a determined human trying to figure out his way to do more healing than harm in a messy world.
My hope is that this interview will build confidence in you to pull together your own Climate Magic, give you a dose of hope that there are many ways of showing up in the world that are available to you right now, which are hugely impactful regardless of what's happening in mainstream politics. In this conversation, Kory and I talk about a million things.
He is a fountain of wisdom and expertise. I just can't put our conversation into a bullet point list. You'll just have to see for yourselves that he is such a force. He describes how his passion for social justice for history, archeology, marine science and sustainability have led him to the various projects he works on.
He's doing art, he's doing storytelling, he's doing research, he's doing activism, he's doing community building.
He's doing it all. He talks about how the most radical work to build a better future that we want comes from the fringes, especially in these times. He talks about how he shows up in the world and how he manages heartbreak and overwhelm. I'll stop there.
I really want you to hear it all from Kory's voice itself. Are you ready to be totally bowled over with inspiration? Let's dive into these healing powers of the ocean with a human I am honored to have had as a student, Kory Lambert's.
RAY: Do you think of what you're doing as on the fringe?
LAMBERTS: It's leaning towards the future, which is always towards the fringe. But right now I'm partnering with universities, partnering with big non-profits. But I'm not fully working for them. It's been really cool. I'm able to still reach students, whether under college, high school, grad students, even junior high students I've been working with lately, I'm able to reach these students, meet them where they're at, dive with them, talk to them about marine science, show them pathways, but then not have to, fully be in a university setting all the time, which has been really nice.
Aquatic Features Foundation allows me to have a space to push marine science, aquatic adventure, and really leverage community as well as the resource and the access I have to the resources and science here in Southern California and see how we can affect change in environmental research and education and studies. And since being down here, that's really where my focus is shifted. Aquatic Futures Foundation. I just have to say it's a 501 C3. We are an official nonprofit, state and federal. And ultimately, it's a collective of marine scientists, and enthusiasts committed to creating sustainable futures for the ocean. And in whatever way that looks, right. And obviously, that looks creating access that's a big equity piece that has to come first. But then really, once we get past that, and I think there's a lot of other organizations who support us in doing that. And that's what's been really cool is we've wanted to lean more towards education, scientific diving, and career pathways. And I think that's really where Aquatic Futures Foundation fills the gap. That is, really a path that I kicked off with you when I was up at Humboldt trying to decide which direction I wanted to go. And that came from saying no, right. That came from saying no to a class I was super unhappy with.
And I said, I need to get out of this class. What can you do? And this is actually really funny. I'm going to tangent slightly because I'm already on this. But, I tell this story quite often, and I always, tell it like this. And I don't remember the way it actually happened.
I remember the way I remember it. Right. And tell me your rendition after I share mine, because here's what I remember happening. I remember having a class that I really didn't like. It was a sociology class. I said, hey, I need to get out of this class. I went to you. I'm hey, I need to get out of this class. I really can't do it. I remember you being it's a core requirement. You can't get out of this class. It's not an option. I was I had to. I got to figure it out. You were like, You have to take it. I'm like no, no, I really can't take it. You're okay, what's something we can do to figure it out? And I remember somehow finding scuba around that time, and it was one of the few classes that was available. And then I was able to add scientific diving into my major. I don't know if I made it in my mind or.
RAY: It was the emphasis area.
LAMBERTS: It was the emphasis area. I remember it, was I on track? Is that totally, totally.
RAY: Because, you were one you were the second student that had wanted to do scientific diving as their emphasis area. And now there's been three more since. There is a, there is a, precedent you set with your no.
LAMBERTS: That's amazing, and it's set me on this path. Right?
RAY: It’s incredible.
LAMBERTS: And then once I got into it, I realized it was only marine biologists in these fields. And I'm oh, my God, how narrow. Once again, as a scientist, I got bothered and I said, oh my God, we're taking such a small focus point of people's perspectives.
How can we do good science? We're asking less than a 10th of the population or whatever the actual statistic is, don't quote me on the number, but we're asking such a small focus group to, hey, how do we change the ocean? Most people don't even live by the ocean. Most people don't interact with the ocean. What about all the people who've lived on the ocean for years? Why don't we ask them?
And those were the questions I started wanting. Right? And that's why getting the opportunity to dig into scientific dive training was amazing for me. And then I think the big piece where we and this is where I'm excited, is in researching careers. And this is the leg of Aquatic Futures Foundation, that we're building out right now that we're really leaning into, it's not only once you get your training, what do you do after? And we're mainly focused on junior college to undergrad demographics. That's where I feel we're having the lost generation. Right. There's many programs for youth. Everybody wants to work with high school kids. Everybody wants to do a summer camp with high school kids. Everybody wants to get them junior scuba certified or these types of things. But then what about the kids who don't go straight to a four year institution? And then if you make it straight to a four year institution, maybe you're still fighting challenges, but you're probably okay, you at least had an advisor to tell you how to get your classes. You're on your way.
I really want to focus on junior college, because it also provides students who are going to be ready to work. And that's another big piece of Aquatic Futures Foundation is getting people in the field to work in the ocean. Something that I've identified is the global economy and the blue economy that going to be relying on the ocean is only going to be increasing as environmental degradation changes and as the environment changes more rapidly, we've been seeing lately. So careers in the ocean are going to open up and we already have a deficit. What would it look to be at the forefront of shaping, one of a new workforce that could possibly be the largest workforce that we have on the globe. It's the largest place that there is on the globe. Right. And I'm what does that look to shape the workforce of the blue economy from the ground up? And that's something that makes me really excited. And I think it's something that the government is pretty excited and interested about as well, on a national level and on a state level. I know California is making a lot of plans towards sustainable energy in the ocean.
I know that there's some big goals for 2030 and by 2050. And it just makes a lot of sense to one, lean into the future and then two, have a hand in how that is shaped. I'm really excited for that in careers and then for myself personally, as a scientist and as a researcher, I'm excited to start doing research. So we're working on getting a Aquatic Futures foundation officially accepted into the academy, the American Academy of Underwater Sciences. Right now, affiliated, through UCLA. And they're diving safety officer Mike Angara as the Bay Foundation. Right now, I think officially, Aquatic Futures Foundation has our AAUS through the Bay Foundation and Mike Angara and then the Aquatic Futures Foundation is going to be accepted, and our students are trained under that umbrella, and then they'll be a US scientific divers. But I'm working on getting Aquatic Futures Foundation fully incorporated ourselves that we can then do research grants and research funding, to take us further out of that nonprofit track. Right.
Kind of what you were talking about in the beginning is, I came into all of these things from a super environmental, super environmental and social justice lens. And I guess what I was talking about is how I've deconstructed all these things. If you look at my website, if you look at a lot of the things and ways I've been coming off lately, because social justice is inherently environmental justice and the way that it's been written has never framed it that way for a while, and for a time there was a necessity, I found, and other academics, I think, found as to be like hey, we have to say and look at environmental justice and social justice, and we have to do inclusion. We have to do it diversity, we have to do all these things. And then I shifted to this lens of what if it's ingrained, right? What if it's ingrained? What if it is the new normal? What if that is just the baseline standard? Would you talk about it?
And I think that is more what I've chosen to do with the Aquatic Futures Foundation over the recent years, I think it says diversity in my website once. But it's now it's more look at the team we've built, look at the board. I have look at the instructors, look at all the people that come through and look at all these experts I found all over the globe. Oh and they just all happen to be black and from diverse backgrounds all across the world, and diversifying science, whether that looks like data, whether that looks like research, whether that looks like researchers, whether that looks like location is going to bring better science. Right.
And I think focusing on what we all know, that's where I'm at now. And I think it's brought us really far and then allowed me to get excited about what I want to do again.
RAY: I love it. I'm glad to see how this tapped your Climate Magic, as the name of the podcast, I was thinking, oh, I wonder if he himself would describe it that way. Is what you're doing bringing together all these different threads of your passion in a way that feels oh, I finally found my direction in that.
RAY: It sounds mostly, yes. And that you're always itching with the next thing, which is totally cool. We can talk about that in a second. But I want to ask, before we get to the itching to the next thing, I want to ask if and this is, you've described everything that you're excited about with the Aquatic Futures Foundation where you're trying to go. That's really cool. I also want to get into the heart and soul of what's been going on at the underneath level while you're doing all that stuff about, does this help you as an antidote to overwhelm about what's happening to the world? Does this help you with your existential despair and dread? If you experience any of that, how is it keeping you focused and active and waking up in the morning when you, if you do it all, feel there's no way this one thing could possibly tackle all the problems in the world, it's so overwhelming. Right? The inner critic of the world is bad and there's nothing I can do to fix that. I'm just going to go crawl into a hole. Do you ever feel that way?
LAMBERTS: I do. I haven't so much lately.
RAY: I'm wondering I'm wondering if that's a little bit because of what you're doing.
LAMBERTS: Right? I think so. I am taking a sabbatical this weekend, and I'm gonna do a silent retreat for, two days. I need it.
RAY: It’s going to be so good.
LAMBERTS: Good. I think Saturday. Sunday.
RAY: Okay. There is a practice right there.
LAMBERTS: And then we have a program that starts on the fourth. My scientific dive program starts on Monday, it's gonna be a full month of programming.
RAY: You need a break.
LAMBERTS: Five students, five students in that cohort. It's going to be pretty fun. Have people flying in. We're going to be diving on Catalina off the coast here.
RAY: Oh my Gosh.
LAMBERTS: Doing some, dive practice. Anyways, I have that coming up next week. I'm gonna do a silent retreat. What do I do, and how do I feel about the existential dread and crisis of the world?
RAY: Doesn't have to be an answer to that whole question. But would you say you don't really feel that much? And I'm wondering if it's partly because finding your path in this way has alleviated a lot of that.
LAMBERTS: There's this therapist that I follow that's really cool, Ismatu, I think that’s her name. I'm forgetting her last name. But she has this piece where she talks about, we all have these worlds spinning in our hands, and we talk about, hey, we have to save the world.
And I think when I was in college and I was a little bit younger and I turned 30 recently. Right. But all these things I used to be we have to save the world, every day, right? We have to save the world. And she's like, what world?
And she has this theory, and I don't know who she got it from, or she created it, but she said, we all have these worlds, spinning in our hands. Some of us have one, some of us have two, some of us have ours with our kids, spinning around us. Right. But we all have these little worlds in our hands. And when we come to this with someone and say, hey, let's fix the world. And then the question of what world is brought up, you can say, I have these worlds in my hands that I've been spinning. Which do you have? Do we want to combine ours and put them together, or put them in an ecosystem together in a universe, and then continue to share that with more people to then collectively change the world? Right. And that for me was a really big concept.
And she further goes into these ideas of is it self-care or is it self maintenance?
And maintenance is necessary, just like an oil change on your car. You wouldn't miss that. And then self-care is actually also going to be necessary, but only when self maintenance is the baseline. And between all of those ideas and concepts and I guess the first time having my own safe space since living in Humboldt in 2021. I guess the last four years, five years, for the first time since then, I've have a space that's comfortable and safe. Since then, I've been semi-nomadic, living out of my car, having short term rentals and living on islands and traveling and doing all these things, which was cool for the time being. But for the first time, I have a place to put my brain and my body and my soul. Yeah, it feels pretty different. I lost our original thread even when I was talking.
RAY: No, the way you do your work helps you with your overwhelm. And what you answered is beautiful. The worlds concept just really is rocking my world right now.
LAMBERTS: And so I guess ultimately now I have this place, I have this house, I have this thing to take care of. And I have plants. I have my business, I have my own mental health, my own physical fitness. I'm training again, that's been really nice. I'm competing in jujitsu, which has been amazing. And, still surfing a bit, diving a bit, working on art projects again, working on little, craftsman projects around the house, framing photos I'm doing a bunch of things, now that, I guess I would have thought would be, frivolous or a waste of time, except I've been going to the museum, museums. I've been looking at history, I've been listening to stories, and I'm oh. I want stories to be told of the amazing things I thought of or did or worked on with my friends or places that we went and saw.
I feel all these experiences, how do I transmute that into a story, into an image, into these things that other people can then learn from and share from and grow from? I think I'm just living in that fully. I know it's happening. I know it's been happening. I've known this was going to happen since the last time it happened. So for me, other than okay, the more real threats and dangers like ICE in Los Angeles right now, taking some of my friends’ family and some people I know and things that, obviously, I know that's happening. I have a friend who was recently taking her dogs to the airport in Oman, and it got hit by an airstrike. I have friends whose family evacuated in Iran. I have a friend who lives in Kurdistan, is dealing with stuff like that. I have a friend who lives in Jordan and is constantly watching these things happen in Palestine. I have a friend in Lebanon who sees white sulfur on the ground. So that’s happening to all my friends.
I know that's happening, I don't really need to watch the news.
I know that the system's going to collapse. I don't need to pay attention to that. Right. I know these things and I have friends who share with me. I have news sources I find these things from, on an overarching tip. I know that that's happening every day. I'm paying attention to the markets and some of these things, that's allowing me to pay attention to the news vicariously. Thankfully, my funding wasn't super affected by what happened. I guess for a lack of, I guess what I'm trying to get at is right now, I'm so locked in on something that I know is making a change, and I know there's a lot of stuff happening outside of that.
But what I do know is, I've been able to introduce a bunch of people to the ocean this year. I bet a bunch of people rethink how they look at science. I've made a bunch of people rethink their possible careers. I brought some healing hopefully, and some fun and some joy to some people that I've taken into the ocean.
And I know what I'm doing has an effect. And I think because of that, I've allowed myself to not worry about some of the things that are out of my control. And what I've realized is young people, students, certain types of people in their phase of, education, knowledge, activism, whatever you want to frame it, don't have any power, don't have a lot of power, maybe even for their own life– What their time is, where they go, where their body is they don't. Who knows? Right? They may have control, literally nothing except what they think, what they say, what they share on whatever access or platforms they may be able to share. And I realized, when I had less power, I felt more moved by everything happening. I still feel very moved, but I felt more moved in that instantaneous factor of like, damn, this just happened. I need to do something today about it. Versus I have a 100 year plan right now. I have a 100 year plan. I have a 50 year plan. I have a ten year plan. I have a five year plan. And I have a one year plan, and I have all these big scale plans, I'm thinking on like a drastically different time scale now.
And if I were zoomed in I would freak out every day. But I'm.
RAY: You're, you are hitting all of these incredible insights. That it’s just, I would love if there was some way to package that all up and give that as a gift to every young person, can we just take that? That's one of the reasons why I want to amplify your voice on a podcast, and the only place I can, in my little world, because I think what you've just shared can really crack open some hearts. So thank you for that.
You just talked about you're on a drastically different time scale, and if you were zoomed in, you would be in an urgency all the time too. That is beautiful.
LAMBERTS: So there's a quote that I got that perspective from. It's a poem or an excerpt from a poem by Warsan Shire. It’s “I’m overwhelmed. My biggest downfall is my brightest blessing. Ya Allah, I feel too much all the time. If it'll keep my heart soft. Break it every day.”
I think that is a quote that. I have lived with that. And I obviously am always making sure that my heart stay soft and I never am callous to the realities of the world, and I every time I see these crazy images, I'm obviously, still moved by them. I never want to be desensitized to sing dead babies on my phone. My heart. My heart's already broken every day. I don't have to remind it. And I think now more of it, it's just okay, what do I do? How do I maintain, knowing that all these things are happening, what do I what what do I think of?
RAY: I, what a model that is. Thank you for that. Those, that practice and those insights and that wisdom because I think that's really, honestly the pith of what we're all trying to figure out. And I think you, you are in a place where you've got that figured out and you articulate it beautifully. But I would tell you that the vast majority, I would say I would go as far as, say, 100% of young people and students are not there yet. And, and we're at a historical moment where I think the wisdom of our elders, even though you're only 30 or whatever, 32, I think, the wisdom of our elders who have been really chewing on this and who have been studying it, you've made a study of it, really, we need to fast track that wisdom to young folks.
And thank you for all you've said there. Your time at your is, spanning out timeline thing, I think is a really radical piece I want to pick up on that thread. And, in Reconsidering Reparations, Olufemi Taiwo talks about the ancestor principle or the ancestor perspective, in which he talks about one way to deal with that sense of urgency and overwhelm that you've figured out yourself is to think about how, in our short, maybe meaningless lives on this planet, we are just all our job is to do is to carry forward ever so slightly the most noble projects of our ancestors, and to pass that on to our descendants, whether they're biological or not, whatever. But to think of the, human family as our descendants is fine, too. I'm curious, do you see yourself as carrying forward, you just talked about this larger time perspective, which makes me think you do. So that's why I want to probe a little bit. Do you see yourself as carrying forward the most noble projects of your ancestors in some way here? And if so, if this is the first time you're thinking of it, which I doubt, how might how might that play out?
LAMBERTS: I get the opportunity to do amazing projects that bring me back to that all the time. And I'm really blessed and thankful for that. So to say more about that, I just got back from Key West, Florida, diving the Henrietta Marie shipwreck, which was a slave ship carrying enslaved Africans, from England over to the Bahamas, up to the Caribbean, ultimately crashing, 35 ish miles off the coast of Key West. And that site was dove and discovered by Michael Cottman and Kory Malcolm. And I was able to go out to Key West to do a documentary piece, with the goal of getting underwater interviews of them at the site, to tell the story of this wreck, to tell how they feel at this site and to tell the impact of this work.
Right now in archeology, there is a thought process talking about what is the spiritual component of the artifacts that are being found. For a long time in archeology, that's been a piece that's been left out. They carbon date things. They tell how old they are, they tell what it was used for mechanically or whatever. But that cultural significance and spiritual aspect has long been overlooked in Western archeology. So that was really what the aim of this piece was. It was done by Dr. Ayana Omilade Flewellen, and she's a professor at Stanford currently, but also the co-founder of the Society of Black Archeologists. And she's in the Department of Anthropology currently. She's an assistant professor of anthropology at Stanford. So I got to go on that project. She invited me to come on to the team. And it was amazing.
I got to be with a bunch of elders from the National Association of Black Scuba Divers, as Diving with a Purpose. I was out there with Jay Hagler, who's one of the diving safety officers for Diving with the Purpose. I was out there with Camille Siddiqui, who is a researcher, historian, diver. And I was out there getting to document these stories that they've been telling for years. Now picking that up, right, helping them tell the story and then still, finding more stories to be told with them and then on my own.
Right? That's really inspiring. I got to do that. I recently got to go to Cuba on a research trip for a graduate student at UCLA, Jewell Ruth-Ella Humphrey. She's an amazing archeologist and researcher.
Her work focuses on the Black Star Line, which was a shipping company made by Marcus Garvey. As many other endeavors that he embarked on. But this ended up being a shipping company that took tours all throughout the Caribbean with the ultimate goal of sailing African Americans back to Africa and never made it back to Africa. But the impacts of that project were profound and live on to this day. And I got to go to Cuba looking for that history, meeting with Jamaican descendants who were brought to Cuba by the United Fruit Company, a United States company that needed English speakers in Cuba.
So they brought over Jamaicans because they spoke English, which created a whole Jamaican diaspora in Cuba. There's all these interesting things and ultimately, right, my work, is connecting my work on my, more historical and personal side, that's not always directly attached to Aquatic Futures Foundation, I think it is really about storytelling in the ways in which African people and then Africans in the Americas and then ultimately black people, how we've all been separated from the water and how ultimately that separation started at the Middle Passage.
And by reconnecting to the water, reconnecting to the ocean, there's this greater healing that's going to be able to be done, for people of the African diaspora throughout the Americas, whether that be North America, Brazil, South America, the Caribbean. Right. There's been a great disconnection, to all people from the African diaspora with water now.
And so by connecting all these stories, telling these stories, and then also looking at historians who were telling, pre-colonial history of swimming, Kevin Dawson, is a really good African historian who tells the pre-colonial history of surfing as well as swimming in Africa. It's really fascinating. Right. And I guess connecting all these pieces together has been providing just such a cool opportunity to connect these dots.
I think they all come together to tell this broader history. And I think it's just illuminating all of these pieces and giving context.
RAY: And I, I'm really struck by what you described about the separation of black people from the water that started with the Middle Passage and the work of healing that you're trying to carry forward as an answer to that question of, what are you carrying forward here? And I'm struck also how you weave together traditional academic disciplines and also more, maybe indigenous knowledge around and experiential knowledge, you describe, the degrees that you have from your experience, that you're bringing archeology together, you're bringing history together and you're coming you're trying to think about storytelling in these radical new ways, in order to do this work of healing and translating that, that history in a way that reaches people's hearts and does some of that reconnection or repair work.
Anyway, that's the way I'm hearing what you're saying, and I think it's just incredible, to hear your description of it because not everybody is going to go and much less do the dives that you do, but also do all the reading and the research to figure out what are you actually looking at.
LAMBERTS: And, and I guess that's why I'm thankful now. And I've gotten to find my through section because I'm with tons of really great researchers, sometimes I just have to show up and do the dang thing. And that's been pretty cool too. When I went on the trip with Jewell, her research was good, right? And her archival data and prep worksheet for the trip was good. Everywhere we went, we met the person we were supposed to meet on accident because she put us in the right spot through all her research and data already, and on just in energetic alignment but.
RAY: I was, it feels something more than that.
LAMBERTS: But it's been really cool. all of these stories it's just what I've wanted to do and what I've wanted to tell the history on for a long time. And I'm always thinking of new things and then, every ocean story because it hasn't been looked at from a critical lens is missing the most important part. Right. And even last night I was talking with a friend from the Philippines. There's a tribe in the Philippines called the Bajau tribe who are known for having an extraordinary breath hold because they live on the water and they're fishing people. Every YouTube video is some white or European freediver going over there and living with them, talking about how they're superhuman and how they're really great divers.
RAY: I've seen that.
LAMBERTS: For first time I at first time I bring it up to one of my Filipino friends. They're oh but they're super exploited by the fishing companies because they can hold their breath long. They get really badly treated. They speak a different language and everybody else and there's a huge injustice. I googled that couldn't find anything. I have another project, but there's much work to tell for all people, for everywhere, for everything. Just because, no one's actually looked at any problems, in my opinion, for the ocean or a lot of environmental studies with the lens that actually is going to do anything, I think it's always just been this ivory tower pontification of like, is there an issue dude, there's sea land.
RAY: I Google it, there's nothing there. I googled it, so it’ not an issue. I love that what you just said about there's much ocean and there's much human experience on the ocean. But because the western lens has been focused on what's happening on land, so land centric, that and also because that's been, making invisible what's happening in the ocean has always served colonialism. Keeping it invisible, there's a reason for that., People's imaginations for what's happening in the Great Blue is really limited because we can't live there. That’s what you're trying to, that's why you keep saying there's infinite questions to bring things to light. And the questions that people are asking aren't getting answered.
And there's reasons for that. And and you do to circle back to, to our original conversation, in many ways, you really do have to bring those things to light from the fringes. Because you're not invested and you're not about to the, the safest place to be is the fringes in some ways, under these current in this current mode, because you can't get fired from the fringes.
LAMBERTS: We could lose all of our funding, in theory. But that's really why I want to branch into research too. Right. I think getting away from the standard nonprofit model.
RAY: When you’re so tied to philanthropy.
LAMBERTS: And obviously the research funding is at risk, too. But I think there's just much space. There's much space. There's many things you need to learn. There's many ways we need to learn to sustainably grow coral, kelp, sea sponges. All these things that get overfished, right? The fisheries in Southern California are super impacted by the way it's been fished for years, by climate change, by, all these problems and fires and things that we're having. And I think more than ever, we're seeing a push for kelp research and kelp restoration and, one of the professors I got to work with at USC actually started their own oyster hatchery down in San Pedro.
And there's a really amazing facility called AltaSea, which is an Ocean Company incubator. There's a company called Ocean X there who's doing some wave energy power. So people are pushing and doing really cool things. And I guess really right now it's my focus is connecting kids to these people, connecting all these people to the stuff that's already happening.
RAY: To magnify the workforce that they’re doing this. And knowing that there's pathways here. I think the despair young people feel about how they can possibly make a difference, you are trying to cure a little bit with those clear pathways. Look at all this stuff that has to happen that combines sustainability, that combines community, that combines social justice, that combines science, that we need desperately to build this future that we would rather live in than the one that's being handed to us. To that point you were making earlier about I'm leaning into the future. It's not about whether or not I'm inside institutions or not. I am doing what I can with the tools I have to lean into the future and help other people find those same pathways. I do love that.
I, I know I'm, I don't want too much more of your time. I can talk to you all day. And I'm also thinking, as you're speaking, I'm thinking, oh, we just need a thousand Kory Lamberts. You just said that. I'm trying to, magnify the numbers of people who are passionate about these things. And there's nothing like telling your storytelling capacity to make that contagious.
I'm feeling very honored that there's a little part that I get to do to amplify your work. I'm yay! Anybody you listen to, anything you say is going to be yes, I'll do that. Let me just connect. I am going to ask at some point how people can connect with you to do that.
But I before we get into that, winding down kinds of logistical questions, I did want to ask you, if you have more to say about, especially for listeners who might not know much about this. I know that you did a project with something called Undrowned, and I assume there's some reference there to Alexis Pauline Gumbs work Undrowned, which is a beautiful book I'm sure you're familiar with. Is there something that would be helpful for folks to understand about why it is such an important dimension of black healing to repair this relationship with water that you are talking about? What is that connection between black communities and the ocean that, maybe people aren't that familiar with, especially, potentially lay white audiences who might not understand that as well as you do.
LAMBERTS: I think first thing, is going to be the framework, of what I talked about, about the transatlantic slave trade and then a little bit about the book Undrowned by Alexis Pauline Gumbs. And then a quick excerpt on the project that I named after that. and it's, I guess, to paint a picture, of what the transatlantic slave trade in the Middle Passage would look Africans were put into the gate of no return of the door of no return. Depending on what port they're being shipped out from, oftentimes in Ghana, to embark on a, potentially month-long sail if they lived that long across the Atlantic Ocean, traveling to the bottom of a sailboat in shackles. And I think for one, the start of that journey and voyage, began a separation, of Africans that were then brought to the Americas enslaved, from water, once arriving in the Americas, I think those things were further reinforced due to the fact that, all these people that were enslaved were actually already water people in most cases.
I think that's one of the biggest pieces that I've learned before from books They Came Before Columbus by Ivan Van Sertima, and by researchers Kevin Dawson. We find out that the maritime history of Africans, as well as indigenous people in the Americas was really robust. People were building canoes and boats that actually were able to circumnavigate the globe, let alone go from Africa to South America and South America, back to Africa.
And all of this knowledge was actually already innate within these people. So once getting to the Americas, a further separation had to be created from water to ensure that people didn't run to their freedom. When we look at areas like South Carolina, North Carolina, Louisiana, and we look at the ways in which certain people, marooned communities and the Gullah-Geechee, were able to use waterways to secure freedom.
We see how it's always been, an intrinsic link to getting freedom for enslaved Africans in the Americas. Obviously, the institution, the system knew that as well. So upon arriving in the Americas, enslaved Africans were not allowed to be near water, use water, go near water. As slavery, progressed, all the way up until abolition, which then turned to the 13th amendment, but as that process went on, we saw waterways used to secure freedom. And things about the Underground Railroad. I'm forgetting the exact name, which I'm gonna pull up real quick so I can quote it, but I know that there was a naval gun ship that was stolen by Africans who were enslaved to free themselves. And then they used that gun ship to sail up a river and free more people. We see time and time again that water.
RAY: Is such a threat.
LAMBERTS: We see that is a threat to the institution by it being inherently linked to freedom. And so I'm really using, it was Robert Smalls. He seized a Confederate ship and sailed it to freedom. Let's see here. May 13th, 1862, in Charleston, 23 year old enslaved man Robert Smalls still on the deck. He impersonated a naval officer and memorized the secret wave and hand signal, essentially, or whatever the call was, to get past and was able to steal his ship.
Right. And using the water. I'm studying all these things. Right.
Then we had the abolition of slavery, the 13th amendment. We saw the Jim Crow laws and segregation laws go into keeping black people out of pools, segregating pools. Black people had bleach, chemicals, and bricks thrown at them while in pools. Then further redlining for the way cities were built to not allow them to have pools and to have access to pools and ultimately being, distanced from the water. We see all these things happening leading us up to the current climate that we exist in now.
And without critically addressing all of these factors throughout history, there's no way to find any form of equity to move them towards equality. And it's my biggest focus with some of the work that I do, for the global community, but specifically people who are affected by this, ancestral trauma to help them reconnect these pieces, to help make some of these things make sense of why certain things feel the way they do.
And then ultimately to possibly connect a level of healing that they previously didn't have access to. And I guess just to tie this back in, Undrowned, the book by Alexis Pauline Gumbs. There we go.
I already misquoted once. I was having a panic attack.
RAY: I don't want to get the name wrong!
LAMBERTS: That book really was profound to me. I'd use that to teach the majority of my classes since reading it. And, I actually was working on an archeological project of Lake Lanier, and chose the title at that. Since then, I'm still doing that project. I've realized the archeological viability of that project doesn't fully add up timeline wise.
However, it's still a profound story. But I think ultimately in underground, Alexis Pauline Gumbs is talking about the shared experience that she's felt throughout her life and the crossovers that she's been able to find, with the oppression of water, with the oppression of the ocean, as well as marine mammals and life. I think one of the biggest pieces in there, two big pieces.
One, the piece that I share with my class is when she talks about the baby Weddell seal. Doesn't know that I can dive to thousands of feet yet hold its breath for hours. But the mom teaches it to and helps it. And ultimately, in the beginning, forces it to realize its full potential.
And that was a really amazing piece that really stood out to me.
But one of the key pieces in that book that really shows the ways in which environmental justice has always been social justice, is actually the extinction or near extinction of the monk seal on Saint Croix. They talk about the way in which the monk seals were used. The Caribbean monk seal is now considered extinct, with the last confirmed sighting occurring in the 1950s. The monk seal was really prevalent in St. Croix at the time of colonization. And they were in reciprocity with the locals. And they weren't really killed. They weren't hunted. They would mate really shallow on the water.
During the time of colonization, it was found that the blubber of the monk seal was highly effective to use as a lubricant for the mills.
And so that monk seal was actually hunted to near extinction to use as a lubricant for the plantations. And I think that is one of the just most blatant examples to me personally of oh, I guess obviously, it's a pretty clear, crossover of, okay, this is why and this is how, this seal was extinct.
It was directly because of slavery. And I, I just think that in Undrowned, further ingrained the idea for me that we're always going to have this linked and shared connection to nature. We don't even have to try. We don't have to focus on it.
We don't have to really dig too deep into it. But vicariously focusing on and I guess this is the interesting piece. It's not by focusing on saving animals that I think we're going to save the animals. I think it's by focusing on saving the people. And I think that's where all the environmentalists have it wrong.
I think that's my little piece. I wrote at Humboldt was on “Forget About Rocks, What about the People.”
I think everything I'm trying to say is getting to that. Maybe if you take care of kids, you're going to find a way to save the whales. And I feel it's just such it's just such the collegiate lens to be oh, we got to save the plastic rings and use paper straws. And it's but what if you just made it the next 5000 scientists didn't die of famine or get bombed and maybe, it could do something too.
RAY: Kory, you're preaching. I'm totally loving it. I have this phrase, there's this common phrase. You've probably heard it before. “Hurt people. Hurt people.” And what I keep thinking is “hurt people hurt the planet.” And it a little bit is referring to what you're talking about when you talk about these interconnections between slavery and extinction of animals. And the thing you just said about, we don't need to save the animals, we need to save the people. And it's not because we shouldn't be saving the people because we want to save the animals, or that that's a noble, noble reason. But because we actually care about life on this planet, including human life. And that's really the beautiful crux of what I think you're saying, that I am very moved by and agree with. Thank you for articulating it way better than I just did.
I'm feeling I could talk to you all day, but I do feel this is a good chance for maybe you to share anything that you feel we didn't talk about, or how people can support what you're doing or connect or follow in your path. Because I'm feeling this. Line me up behind Kory or whatever he's doing. I wanna do that.
LAMBERTS: Thank you. First things first. I need to come up to Humboldt soon. I need to connect with Rich and Steve from the Humboldt diving program and catch up with those guys. So that’s, hopefully I'll be up there soon. I'll stay in touch. For those of you that are wanting to follow the work that we're doing with the Aquatic Futures Foundation, I'm going to shout that out first. Our website’s, www.aquaticFuturesfoundation.org. That’s futures with an S Aquatic Futures foundation. We also have an Instagram and aquatic futures. We have a LinkedIn, a Facebook. And then for myself you can follow me on LinkedIn; it's my first name last name Kory Lamberts, as well as on my Instagram, I think those are the two I'm most active on. My Instagram is Kory. Kory, number two deep. I share a lot of my photo work that I do there as And I think I guess for the purpose of this podcast, I really wanted to talk about research, science education, and the workforce development that AFF is doing. But I think it'd be a good time to say that my work doesn't just stop there. I really am into visual storytelling. I focus on underwater photography and underwater and in water photos and videography. And that often looks like photographing surfers, or some of my friends who are doing different types of research, archeological work or other types of work in the water. And that's really where my heart and my passion has been for my personal work. And that's been super fun. I share more of that on my Instagram. And then, I'm figuring out how I want to come out with all these things and share these things, via my social media.
RAY: I can see in your visual storytelling the inherent, the deep and long term interest that you've had in weaving together exploitation of peoples with exploitation of nature and how the indictment of colonial capitalism comes from that. And then also in the Aquatic Futures Foundation work you're doing the healing and repairing of that, with the existing systems that we have, to build a new future and to pump up all these, pump out all these people who are going to be skilled and building that future, which is really, truly incredible.
RAY: Thank you, Kory.
LAMBERTS: I really how you said that. And honestly, I don't even… I love that.
RAY: That's how I see it, Kory. That's what we know.
LAMBERTS: That what it is. But that is what it is in a way. But I, I stopped thinking, no. It's not not oh, I know, but for me, because I always thought much, it feels as if I stopped thinking, and I, and I want to say this is too is I had to give myself the kudos of having 10,000 hours, right?
And I've thought about this for 10,000 hours, I've worked on this stuff for 10,000 hours. I've, I've achieved a level of mastery, whether it's from a degree or not, in my focus, in my focus of how environmental studies and social justice intersect. I've read the theory. I've read the environmental books. Right. I have History of the World and Seven Cheap Things, that I read in this class. I have that book that I have earmarked, and I just read a page of it every couple months. Right. I have all of that deeply ingrained. I have all of, the, revolutionary work, all of the abolition work, I've read those things. I did those things. I picked up people from Pelican Bay.
I did my official Humboldt graduation, and I did it with Project Rebound. I graduated with a Humboldt student who had served over 20 years incarcerated. Right. All these things, there's no way I could never not do or be those things. And I think that was the biggest piece that I got in my late 20s, was I never have to try again to be political.
I never have to try again to be revolutionary. I never have to try again to be myself. I never have to try to be anything because I am that and my whole life has reflected that. It doesn't matter if I draw a circle on a page, by the time I'm done presenting it as my art piece, it's going to talk about environmental studies and social justice. You know what I mean? That's what's going to happen whether I try to or not. That's what's going to happen. I guess now I'm at this stage of just be be yourself, do what you want to do. Think of an art project or a science project that sounds it has nothing to do with anything, because I know that there's no where I could land other than it being about what it needs to be about.
RAY: You are just so inspiring. I don't want to keep saying that, but yes, yes, Amen. But I also you remind me of this Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddhist, the Buddhist monk text on, on. There's a poem he's read that I'll try to link in the show notes to every, by the way, every reference you've made. I'll be putting in the show notes so you don't have to worry about trying to find those for me. I'll go. I'll go and make sure that they're. Because you are an archive.
But I his poem has something to do with, does a tree have to effort to be a tree? The tree, just as this thing where it takes in the carbon dioxide and does this process of photosynthesis and creates oxygen and it holds the Earth together and it communicates to other trees, and it does all these things without efforting and no one ever tells the tree it's not enough, and the tree's not sitting there thinking, I need to try harder to be a tree. And anyway, the that's not what the poem says, but that's what I, how I interpret the poem and what you just described reminds me of this, kind of, Oh, I don't have to, this is not a performance. It is the being of the humanness that you are.
LAMBERTS: And that's even what I've gotten from a lot of this. I do much archeological and history work, and I'm not going to I'm not going to sugarcoat it at all. And some of it has brought out my own ego, being an uncle and then doing archeological archeology and history. Those two things have brought my ego back out more than anything else. In the most.
RAY: Positive, I was gonna say, in a good way,
LAMBERTS: in the best way. Right. And the best way, because one it's that, okay, I want to have a family. I'm really thankful for the influence I can have with my nephews, but what would it be if I could talk to them every day? That'd be pretty cool. I love my sister. I love, and I love her family. And I love everything she's done. And she's providing a wonderful life for my nephews. My nephews are wonderful young boys, and I've learned much from seeing how she parents and how she's already broken generational curses. Right? And now. But it made me be like, I wonder what it'd be if I did this to this could be really beautiful, right?
So that was one thing. And then doing historical work made me think, what? What cool, what cool project are kids going to have to tell about 100 years? I better do a sick project. I better go do a good project.
RAY: I’m an ancestor, for goodness sake.
LAMBERTS: Right. And and I guess that leads and we got away from it. But that leads to the 100 year plan. I think it reflects my mindset in my growth. Before going back to school. When I finished football, I lived in about three month cycles. Really, it was day to day, but as far as I was, I could see was three months.
When I went to school. I saw it for two years because I said, hey, I need to finish school. When I finished school, I was living day to day again. And then as I started to find a deeper love for myself, community and the things that I was doing, I said, what would it look like to build a five year or a ten year, 50 year plan? And then I actually met with a mentor, and I was like, build 100 year plan. And once I really started living my life on that type of scale, one, I was relieved of much pressure and stress. Two, I was able to start doing things that really built these types of pathways forward.
But then it inspired me to think of myself like an ancestor. And what are these things that I need to do in my life today? But also what are the ripple effects and the waves that I want to leave on the universe? What do I want to be known for? Or and I feel I'm a comic book character that I would have loved in junior high. And I'm just, trying to live my life is this, action hero that I would have, that was super cool. In like high school.
RAY: That science and math geek who had to go to go do math and at the age of five or whatever was, what's that superhero that, that sustainability, social justice, repairing and healing history superhero.
RAY: Thank you. I could talk to you all day but I don't want to keep you any more. Is there anything else you'd to add though.
LAMBERTS: No I think that's it.
RAY: Some million dollar quotes in there that I'm I got gotta go back and listen to this thing and pull some of these things.
LAMBERTS: You're saying that that could be pretty cool.
RAY: I want to tattoo them on my forehead so I can remember them. Thanks much for talking with me today, Kory. I just loved our conversation.
That was my conversation with Kory Lambert's, dive professional, interdisciplinary marine scientist and community leader, and an alumnus of Cal Poly Humboldt's Environmental Studies program. Show notes of his archive of incredible resources and how to follow or support his work are all available at KHSU.org. I'm Sarah Jaquette Ray, and thanks for listening to Climate Magic. Produced at Cal Poly Humboldt.
