Taylor Rees Instagram – This week the news was released that our Orca sis Tokitae (Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut, her Lummi name) has been granted permission by her “owners” to go home to a sanctuary in the Salish Sea. This brings up a lot of feelings because while this is a long fought win, it’s a situation that should never had happened if we all honored our relationships to non-human kin, as the Lummi have – her direct human relatives. Thank you to those at the forefront of that fight (@oursacredsea) and we hope her journey home helps us all connect to the greater history of human violence and the future ahead of reparations. We know that road ahead is filled with lots of questions about how she gets home and what that process looks like. There’s also the hurdle, as with anything, of funding. Stay tuned as we are here to help those who are organizing. The big other news this week was that in a historic event of collaboration amongst 191 countries, a commitment to protect 33% of the biodiversity on Earth was made at COP15. Another win that has been long fought and championed by many, our dear @prospektmiraorg, and Indigenous and rural communities with deep relationship and sacred instructions to protect biodiversity. With both these scenarios, we feel a bit of relief for the more the human world, and at the same time we wonder about the other 66% – why not a commitment to try and protect all the biodiversity that’s on the brink of collapse? Is it simply that we’re too little too late in the greater trajectory? As most of us know, Indigenous Peoples protect 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity. So , when it comes to this new UN commitment, we sure as hell better see a significant majority of investment go towards Indigenous Peoples as well as a commitment to Indigenous rights. Because, whether it’s our Orca sis or the destruction of old growth forest and other critical biodiversity regions, none of this would have happened if people took Indigenous rights seriously and supported any community, indigenous or not, who lives in deep and direct relationship to the land. [written by myself and @jadethemighty after a long and teary evening debrief. shared with love to anyone reading]