Sounds of SAND

Transforming Colonization, Extractivism & Socio-Ecological Injustice: Casey Camp-Horinek, Osprey Orielle Lake, Abby Reyes & Rae Abileah

Sounds of SAND

Show Notes

Recorded live at SAND's Wisdom of the Ancestors event for the launch of the film series The Eternal Song, four powerful voices converge to address colonization, extractivism, and ecological injustice — and what it takes to move toward healing. Moderated by Rae Abileah, social change strategist, Jewish faith leader, and co-creator of the global Climate Ribbon art ritual.

Abby Reyes, author of Truth Demands and Director of Community Resilience at UC Irvine, shares her harrowing personal story of the 1999 murders of her partner and colleagues near U'wa territory in Colombia, and a landmark recent Inter-American Court victory for Indigenous collective rights. Osprey Orielle Lake, founder of WECAN International and author of The Story Is in Our Bones, brings a worldview-shifting lens to the climate crisis as a justice and relational emergency. And Casey Camp-Horinek, elder, actress, and Hereditary Drumkeeper of the Ponca Nation, grounds the conversation in Indigenous sovereignty and the Rights of Nature. Together they call for community-rooted action, mutual aid, and what they name "post-traumatic growth."

Topics:

00:00 Host Welcome and Land Acknowledgment

03:12 Session Theme and Intentions

04:48 Meet the Panelists

08:10 Why We Are Here

18:59 Indigenous Rights and Knowledge

25:14 Casey on Nature and Purification

34:29 Abby Story and Legal Victory

43:56 Meaningful Action and Getting Started

50:32 Community Practice and Post Traumatic Growth

57:58 Closing Reflections and Thanks

Resources

Rae Abileah

CreateWell — Website

Beautiful Trouble Bio

Abby Reyes

Website

Truth Demands — Penguin Random House

UC Irvine Community Resilience

Osprey Orielle Lake

WECAN International

The Story Is in Our Bones — New Society Publishers

Casey Camp-Horinek

Movement Rights Bio

SAND Feature

Connect with more talks from The Wisdom of the Ancestors in the SAND film Series The Eternal Song

Support the mission of SAND and the production of this podcast by becoming a SAND Member

More from Sounds of SAND

Oct 22, 2026

Language, Lineage, and the Spirit of Old Hawai‘i

Oct 15, 2026

What if humans and AI share the same hallucination?

Oct 8, 2026

Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee grew up with a Sufi teacher living downstairs and fell in love with jazz at an early age. He is now a Sufi teacher himself, a filmmaker, and the founder of Emergence Magazine. His new book Remembering Earth asks what it would take to come back into relationship with the living world. We talk about silence, the primordial covenant, the eye of unity, walking as practice, dreams, and what it means to meet this moment without turning away from beauty.

Sep 24, 2026

Earth, Spirit, and Collective Empowerment

Sep 17, 2026

Joan Tollifson returns to the podcast three years after her first conversation. We talk about her June essay Two Inseparable Truths, on the relative and the absolute and the trouble with getting stuck in either one. Along the way: the silence of many nondual teachers in a dark time, what cancer and an aging body insist on that philosophy cannot, and why "I don't know" may be the answer closest to truth. She closes by reading her essay 'Radiant Light in Dark Times' in full.

See all episodes →