July 2, 2025 • 45 mins
Bruce Rettig, author of Refraction, shares fascinating experiences of living & working on Alaska’s North Slope. Located 200 miles above the Arctic Circle, the North Slope is a center of oil extraction & Bruce delves into the complicated issues of the oil industry’s impact on the fragile environment of the North Slope. Several of Bruce’s own photos provide views into the everyday life of northern Alaska. He also promotes tribal tourism for the American Indian Alaska Native Tourism Association.
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It's Your Voice is broadcast live Wednesdays at 8PM ET Music on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com). It's Your Voice is viewed on Talk 4 TV (www.talk4tv.com).
It's Your Voice Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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We make no recommendations or endorsements radio show, programs, services,
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c Y Radio or its employees are affiliates. Any questions
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(00:20):
you for choosing W four c Y Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Loch Let's meet Logic, Let's beak shore in Lot, Let's
in Lot, Let's breach all the in loticar, Let's brit
(00:47):
and Logic.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Let's a lot, Hello, and welcome to It's Your Voice,
the show that hosts enrichie conversations in diversity. My name
is Bihia Yaxon. I'm a core alignment coach and a
diversity educator, which means I coach and train organizations and
(01:10):
individuals to identify patterns of bias that they know are
harmful to them and to others, and better yet, cultivate
new patterns of habits and whether it's patterns and an
organization or in your life that do create more belonging
and more inclusion, and do connect and align people better
(01:32):
to their values and integrity. It's a healthy, helpful process
that involves some work, but in the end and makes
everybody happier. And if you're interested in looking at Stample
classes or courses I teach, whether it's for an organization
or one on one coaching, you can check out my
website which is called Know what you Want Coaching dot
(01:56):
WordPress dot com. So today we have a very interesting
show thanks to one of my sisters and her husband,
and my family supports me in a lot of ways,
and they be anonymous, so out of respect for the wishes,
I won't say their names. But I have an awesome
family and some of them helped me connect with this
guest whose name is Bruce Reddick. He is an author.
(02:20):
He came to be known introduced to me as an author.
The show title is North Slope Frontiers, Culture, Climate and Oil.
I'm going to read a little bio now you get
a sense of him, and we're going to end up
talking about more than the book, what that led to
and his environmental perspective and how it shifted what he
(02:41):
does now in addition to writing, so this bio itself
will tell you a lot. Bruce Reddick is the author
of Refraction. I Love that title, a biographical narrative that
provides intimate insight into the power of big oil, the
shadow of the Cold War of the eighties, the dangers
of an indult still environment, living with fellow laborers in
(03:03):
an isolated work camp, and growing threats posed by climate change.
Refraction is a personal journey told in a series of
reflections on a time spent living as a merchant marine
in Prudo Bay, Alaska, one of the most remote destinations
in the world and home to the largest oil field
in North America. At the Community of Writers' Workshop, Refraction
(03:25):
was described as a cross between heart of Darkness and
into the wild. The piece One Excuse Me. The piece
won first place at the twenty eighteen San Francisco Writing
Contest Awards in Nonfiction, first place in the twenty seventeen
Chanticlear Book Review Awards in Narrative Nonfiction, and first place
at the twenty seventeen Pacific Northwest Writers Association Literary Awards
(03:49):
and Nonfiction Memoir. So this is a good book. Bruce
graduated from the University of Colorado with a Bachelor's of
Arts in Fine Arts and Fine Arts History. After working
at several apps avertising and graphic design agencies, he founded
Charter Advertising Design and serves as president and creative director.
He founded Charter Advertising Design. Sorry I've already read that.
(04:13):
He also works as a travel writer, photographer photographer for
the American Indian Alaska Native Tourism Association AYANTA, promoting tribal tourism,
which will be very interesting also to hear about. Bruce,
Welcome to the show. Thank you for being.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
Here, Thank you for here, Happy to be here, Thank
you for inviting me.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
You're so welcome. So there's so much I want to
ask you about, and I'm wondering how you'd like to start,
because I know we get to hear you read an
excerpt from the book. Do you like to start with
a reading first or do you want to.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
See Yeah, maybe I could just give a little bit
of background. I think you've covered a lot of it,
but basically, yes, I served as a merchant, marine and
labor up on Alaska's North Slope, and where I worked
at was about two hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle,
and that was where I learned a lot in my
(05:05):
early twenties, and my memoir Refraction and Arctic Memoir recounts
that time. So it's told through two different perspectives, that
of when I was in my twenties and now years
later looking back and at everything I learned. And you know,
some readers, they comment, and my book is really three
stories or themes. The story of my personal journey, and
(05:29):
then one of the story outside of the Arctic, and
then the story of the human impact on the environment.
You mentioned some of the awards that it's won. I've
been very proud of the awards. But it won several
first place in gold awards, but the one I'm most
proud of it won of Silver and Environmental and Ecology,
and that's the one I really was like.
Speaker 5 (05:49):
All right, they get it.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
So it kind of gives a perspective of what I
saw and how I feel about it now. So I
can talk a little bit about I was going to
see if I could open up a slide show.
Speaker 5 (06:02):
Let me give her a shot here. Beautiful, Okay, great,
This was.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
My view from outside of camp when I was in
my early twenties. So when I first went up there,
I had no idea what I was getting into. We
worked twelve hour work days every day of the week
for about three or four months straight, and this was
outside the window. I originally wanted to go up there.
I was looking for an internship in geology, and I
(06:30):
was looking for a job in the oil companies as
an intern in paleontology. And my uncle had connections with
the oil companies and he got me a job instead
on the tugboats and barges. This is the oil line
pipeline looking down the Trans Alaska pipeline. It runs eight
hundred miles all the way from Prudo Bay down to
Valdez and pump Station one. This is just I wanted
(06:53):
to show these photos because it just gives you some
groundwork for the environment and the backstory. And when I
was up there, you know, my perspective on the environment
was we heard a little bit about greenhouse gases, just
a little bit. Those are like on the back pages
of newspapers. You didn't care much more than that. So
when I was looking around, this was under the pipeline.
(07:15):
This is an Arctic fox. I saw the pipeline elevated
in certain areas so that the caribou herds could migrate
underneath it. I saw it seemed like the oil companies
were all being pretty responsible, you know, as far as
the environmental impact at that time. And there's a caribou
in front of one of the drill rigs and eider
duck eggs out on the tundra. It's just such a
(07:38):
fragile environment. I think that that's the thing that hit
me the most when I first went up there. There's
beautiful flowers, wildflowers as across the tundra, but you could
tell it's super super fragile. So anything catastrophic can't of
course damage it. Driving by shot out the window and
(07:58):
these are flares, gas flares, and I knew that couldn't
be one hundred percent great, but flaring, now looking back
at it and doing more research, it puts a lot
of methane up into the air. And flaring is still
really big across the world. It's really bad in other
nations as well. It just puts out a lot of
(08:19):
a lot of pollutants into the air, and it's a
gas that can't be It can be captured, but it's
not economically feasible, so they burned it off into the atmosphere.
These were all the equipment that we were bringing in.
Were these big drill modules and containers that would come
in and we would offload them. But this gives you
a perspective of the size. It was like a city
(08:41):
when it floated in. In fact, they were welded right
to the decks of the barges when we brought them
in and then they were offloaded and then went out
into the Pruto Bay oil field.
Speaker 5 (08:51):
So that was our job.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
That there's a crew working on the pump pump crew,
and that was my job. It was to help do
a lot of the offloading. And we also constructed islands.
You constructed Muckluck Island, which was one of the most
expensive dry holes. I think it was fifty million. I
can't remember the exact cost of it. But we built
a gravel island out into the bay and they did
(09:14):
an exploratory drill and it came up dry. But we
did a lot of island building also when we were
out there side jobs. And this was another drill rig
that was brought in. It was a CIDs project. It
was made out of concrete and it was floated in
into the Arctic. So that's just some of the some
of the pieces that I saw while I was up there,
(09:36):
and you know, again, you know, at that time, I
knew there was some environmental impact, but I didn't know
how much, you know, and you tend to justify it.
And that's what the what the book deals with a lot.
It's you know, looking back, and even now when we
justify some of the things, monetized things, it's you know,
(09:59):
you look back and you go, oh, there's a better
way to do it. You know, there's just a much
better way to do it. And it's hard because I
know it. The money I made up there was good money,
and I was very grateful for the job and appreciated
the job and the people I worked with, and we
were proud of the of the work that we did.
And I've talked to other people that work in the
oil industry now, you know, today, and they are proud
(10:19):
of it, and you know, they are doing the best
I can.
Speaker 5 (10:22):
But it's it's.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
Hard when you look at some of the environment where
I was at how fragile it was, and now they're
looking at expanding into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and
it's just such a fragile, fragile area and one of
the most pristine areas in the world, and that expansion
into more federal lands, into foreign service lands and BLM.
(10:45):
We've all heard the news lately about how they want
to expand that it did get shot down as of now,
but on the coastal areas of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,
they do want to keep pushing to try to sell leases.
Speaker 5 (11:00):
Along that area.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Well, those snapshots really say a lot. And I appreciate
your sharing how you're awareen, and I know this is
true so many of us. You know, with beginning of something,
we have an inkling that's really right, this can't be okay,
and then we justify and go on. I'm just curious,
(11:22):
like you just I only got to read a very
beginning part of your book, which I really liked, and
I saw already, and you know in the first fifty
pages how much you listen to people, Like how it
seems like it's relatively easy. Not everybody has this skill
set of like an interest in really listening to people
and you know, developing relationships that impact over time. But
(11:45):
I'm I'm guessing that's how you learned about not only
the environmental impacts, which you can say so much more
about but also how it impacted people's lives, impacted culture
in that whole area. So I wonder if it's if
you could talk about that a little bit, like, you know,
how and when did your kind of environmental awareness shift
(12:11):
and then to the point where it changed you. Because
sometimes we're aware of something but we don't let it
change us. Maybe it's too hard to face, or we're
just not willing to make a change, but it seems
like it's changed you. Can you say a little bit
about that?
Speaker 5 (12:24):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (12:24):
Yeah, And that might be a good point where I
can I've got two minute reading here I can do.
It's from my chapter Power of Oil, and that kind
of gives a little background and insight and to that
transition that you were talking about. Okay, it's called power
of Oil. The barges that arrived during sealift were huge,
much larger than the ones in the AMF fleet. They're
(12:45):
boil over a football field long. When we walked alongside
the first one, we craned our necks and to the
towering oil field equipment sitting on the decks. Hack tight
drill modules look like large buildings, void of windows. There's
steel walls painted all of drab. The floating city made
me feel small. I could only fathom the amount of
money put into getting all the barges and rigs to
such a remote destination. As a teenager and later during
(13:08):
community college, I had worked at a couple of shell
service stations, a mobile gas station in two goodyear shops.
I service cars and performed my share of oil changes,
and I couldn't estimate how many gallons of gasolina I
had pumped. The oil companies were enormous, but I never
fully understood how much power they actually yielded. As a
mini city floated around US, I realized for the first
(13:29):
time the true dominance of the oil companies. They could
go anywhere in the world and do anything they wanted.
The Proof of Ail Field, in total area, remains the
largest in North America, with a lifespan stretching as far
as two thousand and seventy five. Major players have included
bp RCO, Conoco, Phillips, and Nexon. In nineteen eighty eight,
the Trans Alaska Pipeline delivered twenty five percent of all
(13:50):
US oil production. In nineteen eighty nine, two milli million
barrels of oil per day flowed down the eight hundred
mile pipeline south to Beldiz. It's estimated that three hun
hundred and forty seven thousand barrels per day still flow,
although it fluctuates. The Kupuric River oil Field, about one
hundred and thirty miles east of pro Obey, is the
second largest oil field in North America by area, producing
(14:12):
approximately two hundred and thirty thousand barrels per day. The
state of Alaska received a record nine hundred million dollars
for the Prudeo Bay oil lease. It's difficult to calculate
the exact profit that the oil companies have made over
the years, but they continue to pay taxes to the state,
its major source of revenue. I had never thought much
about who called the shots and decision decisions affecting our world,
(14:33):
and always believed government officials were ultimately in charge of
most anything global in scope. The more I saw during
my time in Prudo, the more I realized who controlled everything.
I maintained a question authority attitude, but I was making
excellent money working for a maritime company whose clients included
several large oil companies. Proud of the work we completed.
I wasn't in any position to bite the hand that
(14:55):
generally fed generously fed us. A family dinner, my uncle
offer and discuss politics with my brother, who previously taught
us history. Big industry runs everything and always will, my
uncle stated. My brother simply nodded his head in an agreement.
It made me wonder if society lost its way quite
a while back, what were the consequences a big industry
(15:15):
carelessly freewheeled along an unbridled and self indulgent path. So
those are some of the questions that were running through
my head at the time.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Wow. Wow, very very very well said and shared, and
I imagine not easy to grapple with. So what kept
you moving in the door? Like, was it not until
you were writing that all of this? Is often I
feel like I don't process something unless I like sit
down and write about it and really brings things up.
What about for you, did it come through the writing
(15:46):
or did you hold it in your in your mind
for a long time before you actually started writing it.
Speaker 5 (15:51):
Yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
You know, I had all these all these stories, and
of course my kids would always say, oh, Dad's telling
another c story, you know, and you know, I thought,
you know, I need to get these down on paper,
but always carried a little bit of weight as far
as knowing that that money was made or I had
(16:13):
profited off money that went into building this oil this uh,
this oil reserve or oil exploitation. So once I started
getting into it, I wrote a short story about landing
on a on a little Nupiate island where our boats
got blown in an Arctic storm during the winter or
the fall of one year.
Speaker 5 (16:34):
And I wrote a short story. It had to be.
It was a flash fiction.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
It was a Cold Flashes of Alaska. It was published
by University of Alaska Press, and they had to be
under five hundred words long, so it was a very
short short piece. And I had it published, and I thought,
you know, I have all these stories and I should
put them all.
Speaker 5 (16:53):
Down on paper. I should.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
I should get them into a into a book and
put it together. And then when I started looking at it,
I I realized that I was a much different person.
I worked up there for over four years. I was
a much different person when I went in there as
when I came out. So there was a definite arc there.
So I thought, you know, this is a memoir. I
don't know how to write a memoir. But I learned,
(17:16):
And yeah, I think it was during that time when
I started learning about reflection, not just putting down what
happened up there and the stories, but what it meant
to me and now what it means to me now
where I dug a little bit deeper and it kind
of came into fruition. It's like, Okay, this is cathartic.
(17:37):
You know, this is helping me understand and grapple with
you know, working up there and working with oil companies,
and you know, it helped me a lot when I
gave me a strong sense of work ethic when I
was up there, but and also helped pay for my
deposit for my first house, and it helped me put
me through college the last two years. I mean, there
(17:58):
was a lot of great things that came out of
a lot of good relationships and people that I still
keep in touch with. So yeah, but looking back and
looking at the industry as a whole, there was a
shift there. I'm looking what I was proud of the company.
Speaker 5 (18:14):
I worked for.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
They recently came out with e tugboats down in Long Beach,
so they're they're headed in a good direction, you know,
And I could see things changing and the types of
contracts that they're taking on. There's a solar farm they're
working on back on the East coast. You know, they're diversifying.
It's not just all lumped into the oil companies. So
I was proud to see the company take that direction.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
Wow, e, tugboats and solar farms definitely sounds like a
good direction. And how did you get I don't know
if you want to see more about that short story,
but I'm curious. And again, you can flow back to
any any topic in this conversation. How you got to
know the American, Indian and Alaska Native tourismotation.
Speaker 4 (18:59):
Yeah, and you know, and that that's another thing I
think when I was up there, it brought in my
view of it made it strengthened my cultural awareness. I
grew up in the in the Bay Area, East Bay,
and so it was a diverse area where I where
a lot of my friends were from multicultural and so
I felt comfortable with around different cultures. But I really
(19:21):
didn't know that much about Indigenous American indigenous culture at all.
And yeah, the short story talks about landing on the
island of Kactovk and I'll do it. Try to see
if I can do a slideshow here too.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Yeah, the photos there we go.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
Yeah, this was the plane that we took out to Kactovik.
It was Bartered Island, and Barter Island was part of
the Distant Early Warning System. It was at one time
we had a lot of radars all on the Alaska
coast to UH that were pointed towards Russia to see
UH indicate if any incoming missiles or aircraft were coming in.
(19:59):
They monitored all the traffic coming out of Russia. So
it was called the dew Line. And so they had
an airstrip out here and it was also the site
of a Cactovic village and a Nupiat village.
Speaker 5 (20:11):
And when we.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
Landed, yeah, it was a it was a different world.
This is the job own of a whale that was
out there. And the Nupiat people a Caactovik are still
they still rely on whaling and polar bear and they
still carry on a lot of their traditional traditional culture.
These were the boats that then in the camp when
(20:33):
it blew out there and they rounded it up. A
lot of the crew rounded up and got it tied
up to and and docked at the at the Island
didn't have a standard dock or anything. They put it
up against the shoal and it was there for the winner.
So you can see where the drifts are. And that's
(20:54):
actually a picture of me out on the ice that
became the cover refraction. You can see how desolate it
is and just looking straight out at the Arctic.
Speaker 5 (21:02):
And this is the Brooks Range.
Speaker 4 (21:03):
I had mentioned a little bit about the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge, and the Brooks Range reaches into and across
a lot of the refuge, and it's just a beautiful,
beautiful mountain range. You could see it on a clear
day across from Barter Island, from prude O Bay. It's
(21:24):
way in the distance. It's hard to see. It's every
just every so often you can see it. That's one
of the things I wanted to kind of bring out too,
is the word you know, you mentioned the tidal refraction. Uh,
the way I got refraction, it's in what refraction is.
Refraction is a trick of the eye. Sometimes looking at
the Brooks Range, it would look like it was floating
(21:46):
in mid air. And sometimes out at sea you'll see
boats or ships and they'll see they've almost seem to
appear to be hovering above the water, so they're almost
like a flat like floating islands out there. So it's
a phenomenon that's been around, of course forever, and in
Italian it's known as fata morgana. And it was believed
(22:08):
that these mirages were like castles in the air or
false land created by witchcraft and it would lure sailors
to their death. And I thought that was a really
interesting place. So I use this mirage like phenomena in
a in a metaphorical context, distortion of one what one
might see or believe as compared to what might be
a little bit closer to the truth. And that's how
(22:30):
I looked at my experience up there. You know, sometimes
you try to trick yourself into into believing one thing,
but in reality it's much different.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Wow, that is an excellent metaphor.
Speaker 5 (22:41):
Thank you. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:42):
And this was a camp in the distance and you
can see the remnants of an older whaling encampment by
the Nupiat when we were up there, and this was
a friend we met. We were we were working on
the boats one day and a couple of the Nupiat
came by on three wheelers and they didn't talk to
us at first, and they had hired a couple of
them to watch over the boats during the winter, and
(23:04):
there was some food left over and some of the
wheel houses.
Speaker 5 (23:07):
And everything, and like, who are these guys?
Speaker 3 (23:09):
You know?
Speaker 4 (23:09):
And then anyway, they came riding by one day and
they look at us, and time we waved to them,
and then they waved back, and pretty soon we start
talking with them and building a relationship. And I actually
kept in touch with this one particular cactobic villager for
a couple of years. We mailed back and forth. Since
lost contact, I'm trying to get back in touch with him.
(23:30):
But yeah, just I couldn't. It was hard for me
to imagine anybody living out there permanently, and I mean,
this is their home, this is these are their homelands.
This was in his backyard that you can see the
the whale meet on stretched out and being dried out
there on that platform. And I still wonder why the
dog hasn't wouldn't need it, but they must have put
(23:52):
him on a short leash for protection. And there's a
polar bear skulls he had out front also, and we
went to a blanket toss he invited us to a
blanket toss and went into town and we met several
of his friends. The people were so inviting and it
was just it just was a great, great experience one
of the villagers there and you can kind of get
(24:12):
a feel for for a cactobic in the background the
homes and the houses, and it just really kind of
opened my eyes to a new culture. And from then
I started working and my background is in advertising and
marketing and graphic design, and uh I kind of started
focusing more into into rural marketing, uh later on in
(24:36):
my career, and then started working for the American Indian
tribes out in Nevada and do work for the Northern
and Southern Paiute in Western Shoshone, and then our local
our local tribe here is a Washow of Nevada in California,
and uh just I just loved working with them, and
(24:56):
then I ended up getting a job at Ayanta, which
is the Marria can Indian Alaska Native Tourism Association. So
that passion for culture and learning.
Speaker 5 (25:05):
It's just it's just continuing now.
Speaker 4 (25:07):
I also worked for a little while for the Islanders
out of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands and I was
out there for a while too, and I learned that
culture and that was just great because I'm also I
also have an interest in nuclear proliferation. I look at
the two existential threats of the of the world is
(25:29):
pretty much the environmental threat and then also nuclear nuclear proliferation.
So I know there are two dark topics, but you
know that there's there. It's important to know what's going
on there. And Nevad Nevada is right in my backyard,
and I'm aware of all the history of the Nevada
test site and the testing out there. And there's also
(25:49):
a connection to Alaska with it too that I bring
out in my book. So when I was able to
go out to Micronesia and visit the Marshall Islands, I
learned a lot of the history out there too in
bikinis and the testing they had done out of the
islands and the.
Speaker 5 (26:02):
Trinity Test, So that was very interesting.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
But yeah, just my passion for indigenal what we do
with iantas we help our aid the tribes tell their story,
share their story because the stories have been told by
so many people in the past and oftentimes are very inaccurate.
So we team up with a lot of agencies like
(26:26):
the US four Service and National Park Service in BLM,
and National Historic Trails, Lewis and Clark Trail, the DeAnza
Trail running from Arizona up to San Francisco. I've worked
on that project and what it is is we reach
out to the tribes and discuss what they might want
to share. And also it's an economic driver as well
(26:50):
because we help promote their businesses and Native owned businesses
as well. So it's really rewarding work and I enjoy it.
I'm learning all the time, still learning.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
That's yeah, that's the only way to be. I think
there's just so much to learn. Well, that's wonderful. So
you help promote Native businesses and you capture you are
part of a team that helps capture stories that are
from people who've lived the lives of Native lives, rather
than their stories being told by others, which has been
(27:23):
the situation for far too long.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
Yeah, And that's a good example is Lewis and Clark,
because everybody's heard the stories of Lewis and Clark, and
they've heard a little bit of Sackato, but they really
don't the stories of all the tribes along the trail.
Itself really haven't been brought to the forefront, and there's
so many rich stories, and again we share only what
(27:45):
the tribes want us to share anything. You know, it's
all approved by tribal council. The board of directors of
Ayanta are all tribal members, native members, so we're very
very native to what is shared and what's not and
and some of the tribes, you know, they might not
want to share their story or they might want to
(28:06):
not want to show certain areas, and that's you know,
we respect that and others. You know that the powwows
are so big and the arts and culture. We do
a lot in promoting Native arts. And we recently had
a poster contest for the California Trails stretching across Nevada
and had a Native artist and so it portrays how
(28:29):
native tribes in in Nevada saw the settlers coming across
because you always see you know, they had a logo
with the pioneer and the wagon train and there was
no you know, in the artwork itself, there was no
depiction of the Native people, you know, going across. So yeah,
(28:51):
it's neat to work with all the Native artists and
get their perspective on things.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
That's fantastic that's been sorely missing. I did go to
the website and it was beautiful and and I guess
I must have put in what the A I A
t A right Iana, and it came up American Indian
and Alaska Native Tourism Association, and I really encouraged listeners
(29:15):
and viewers to check that out. And then the eco
tourism in the hands of the people is just ideal, right,
so we and then I just really appreciate that you're
with an organization and and the respects what the people
want to say, what they want to share, what they
didn't want to share, and the decision making power in
(29:37):
the hands of the people. That's refreshing.
Speaker 5 (29:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (29:40):
And again there's that environmental it doves tails and the
environmental efforts too.
Speaker 5 (29:46):
You know.
Speaker 4 (29:47):
I do work for Nevada's Indian Territory and they call
it eco cultural tourism, you know, and it's and it's
how we've all heard of cultural burns now too, the
for US four services leaning more on the trial to
how do we do it the way that used to
be done, how do we manage the force the way
they used to be there's always been somebody here. It's
(30:07):
never been one hundred percent wild. You know, it's somebody
has lived here and maintained it. And you know, back
in the day it was with a lot of cultural
burns and keeping the forest healthy.
Speaker 5 (30:17):
And how to do that.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
And we're learning that that that's a better way, and
those are the things we're trying to look back to.
So it's yeah, I think it's exciting.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
That's great, really encouraging. And again I encourage listeners and
viewers to look at up Ayana, American, Indian, and Alaskan
Native Tourism Association, and I've interviewed some firefighters from a
couple of different tribal nations and learned a lot about
cultural learning and how, thank goodness, some US officials are
(30:49):
listening and respecting and learning and grateful for finally opening
to knowledge that's stewarded the lands for whom knows how
many thousands and thousands of years. I was just thinking,
you can tell me what's on your mind, and then
I can ask my question. But go ahead, you were
about to say.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
Something, Oh no, go ahead.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
Well, I was thinking about in one of the book
reviews that talked about the I think you maybe more
than touch on the Cold Wars of the eighties. And
I remember being very, very concerned about nuclear pro proliferation
in the eighties. It was just like an all consuming worry.
(31:30):
And now we have new worries, which I'll share my
feelings about when we as we wrap up. But for
people who didn't live through that, how can you say
a little bit more about when we were living under
that threat?
Speaker 4 (31:44):
Yeah, well, amazing as it was. When I would drive
across going to University of Colorado, going across Nevada, testing
was still going on. It was underground, but it was
still throwing a lot up into the air. And I
actually just started a actually completed a project. I wrote
a novel and the background is with the downwinders in
(32:06):
the testing of the nineteen fifties. So I really went
down the rabbit hole and doing research on it. And
it's pretty incredible, you know. I think there were over
three hundred tests done out there, and the amount of
fallout that that went across the nation is it's pretty astounding.
What lew me away was how far it extended, you know,
(32:29):
the Kodak company, Kodak Film back in New York. I
think it was in Rockshire, Rochester. Anyway, it was back east.
Their film was being was being altered because of the
radiation that was coming from the test in Nevada. And
I didn't even realize it what had gone that far.
And it also drifted up into Alaska because of the
(32:53):
way that the gyration of the of the earth and everything,
a lot of it ended up there as well. So
it's just, yeah, it's it's a heavy subject. But yeah,
we grew up under that threat and the duck and
cover drills and all that, and we didn't, you know,
think too much of it. We thought, well, it's over
with now. But you know, they wanted to renew testing.
(33:13):
I heard just you know, a couple of months ago
they said they were discussion on renewing testing or underground testing.
And you know, the groundwater for the underground testing. It's
starting to migrate south too. And there's little rural towns
that are very concerned about I do a lot of
work for rural Nevada, and yeah, there's just hand so
(33:34):
many stories about how they wanted to really push atomic
energy and the top atoms for peace. They wanted to
use it in construction and constructing canals, and there's a
chapter on my book I talk about this too. They
actually wanted to use nuclear detonations to create a harbor
up in Alaska and through a series of atomic explosions
(33:59):
and great and actual harbor out of it. So there's
just some crazy stories. And the downwinders, I mean a
lot of them are still fighting, you know, from the
dam for damages. I think the Shoshoni tribe still has
a couple of lawsuits for all the damages that the
fallout had on their people. And from what I last heard,
(34:22):
I think they were they might have received or some
individuals might have received ten or fifteen thousand dollars, that's
about it. And the cancer rate just shot up. It's
crazy when you look at the statistics and the farmers
and the shepherds out in Utah as well, you know,
a lot of the sheep, and then it got into
the milk and then into the babies, you know, the
(34:44):
baby's milk. It just, yeah, it created quite an economic
or quite an environmental catastrophe, that's for sure. And it's
an invisible one. It's one you might not see, but
it's one of the most dangerous ones.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
And well hidden from us. I appreciate you digging into
those stories and bringing them out to the light. It's
just so we don't we don't know what we don't know.
I think it's just it can be very disheartening. So
any any acts that are constructive and contributive and support
(35:19):
other people, I deeply appreciate, and they love showcasing it.
Speaker 5 (35:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (35:24):
I actually I've got a blog too, it's called Changing Tides,
and I've written a lot of different little excerpts on this.
My daughter and I were out driving out Nevada one
time and we found it what we call it, it's
called a nuclear plug, and it was where they were
doing experiments actually outside the test area, and it was
out in some ranch land and it was in the
(35:47):
the Atoms for Peace projects. They were looking at how
it would shape landforms, which pretty much know.
Speaker 5 (35:55):
How how it's going to happen.
Speaker 4 (35:56):
And did they the shaft itself, then they filled with
concrete and they put a plug on top of it.
Speaker 5 (36:02):
They actually have a.
Speaker 4 (36:03):
Little monument out there, a little interpreted sign saying about
talking about the project. But it just way out in
the middle of Nevada, the middle of nowhere, you know,
outside the test area.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
Speaking of your blog. Can you say, for people who
can't don't have the video right now but are listening,
like your website or your blog, how people can find
your book reach you any of that? Can you say
that out loud?
Speaker 5 (36:30):
Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 4 (36:31):
My website is Bruce Reddick dot com. And when you
go to the homepage you'll see purchasing purchasing options for
my book. My publisher has been great. They're an eco
lit company and I was just really happy to find
I'm really fortunate to have fin found them. H If
you buy directly from the publisher, which is what I
(36:54):
suggest people to do, Amazon's great and well, I'm wont
to say Amazon's great book is on Amazon, but I
really like to promote small bookstores and publishers, independent publishers,
and again, my publishers and eco lit publishers Wayfair Books,
(37:15):
And if you purchase it from them, they're also hooked
up with one Tree planeted, so if you buy my
book through them, you're planning a tree too, so that's
kind of cool. And yeah, and then on the home Yeah,
on the homepage also is my blog Changing Tides, and
you can click on there. I've got several years of
(37:35):
material on there. I let it go this last year
because I've been writing so much on this new project
and promoting refraction. So I want to get back to
the blog because there's a lot to talk about right now.
Speaker 5 (37:49):
And when I.
Speaker 4 (37:49):
Started the blog, it was about in the same environmental
and political atmosphere.
Speaker 5 (37:56):
So yeah, I need to get back to it.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
Well, speaking of that, before I forget, I want to
spell reddick for people who are wondering, how do you
spell that? It's two t's and one G right, Bruce
R E T t ig dot com right is how
people find you?
Speaker 5 (38:11):
Yes, exactly, Okay, thank you.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
Yeah. I was earlier sharing that I can feel I
can get so discouraged. That's one reason I became a coach,
because I know, I know it's not It doesn't move
me forward if I sit there and wonder why and
how did this happen, how it's going to be? Instead,
I ask what what can I do? What's next? How
(38:36):
do I move forward? So I went I was sharing
that this what's our official top officials are doing right now,
and this bill that's the same what it's called by
the administration that people probably know. I'm referring to what's
called the Big beautiful bill, which I've heard renamed as
the Big Betrayal Bill because it betrays a lot of
(38:58):
promises that the President United States promised people. There's so
much misinformation about it, coming from even members of the
Congress who are elected who don't seem to have the
courage to say no to the President for fear of
their jobs, rather than fearing the consequences on the people
there considerings they represent. There's so much that could potentially
(39:22):
affect they numbers vary from twelve million to seventeen million.
People could lose their insurance in the United States, something
around four million can lose, you know, food assistance, and
I'm usually paying attention. And then there's what's so called
like no more taxes on tips that would be very temporary.
I know that drew in a lot of like firefighters
and hardworking people who heard that early on and voted
(39:45):
for this mega group. But turns out that doesn't last
long and it's nothing compared to the tax cuts that
will go to the wealthiest, wealthiest people. In short, it's
the if this bill goes through right now it's back
at the House, then it'll be the historically the biggest
transfer of wealth or and resources taken out of the
majority of people and then transferred to the most wealthy.
(40:09):
So I see there's a question, but I wanted to
I'll get back to you. I want you were the
one who pointed out to me the negative impact on
the environment in this bill that I didn't. I wasn't
thinking about it. I was so worried about the social programs.
But after Bruce answers this question, like, can you just
say a little bit about the environmental impact and the bill?
Speaker 4 (40:27):
And yeah, you know, that's what's so interesting. I think
you kind of hit on the nail on the head.
It's it affects so many different aspects and so many
different people. You're not even aware of some of the
things that it's hitting. You know, they just cut a
lot of education programs to the tribal communities and that's
a treaty violations. And also with they're trying to lump
(40:53):
a law of the tribes into DEI, which they are
sober nations. I mean, they're pushing it as far as
they can. And then then on the environmental end, of course,
you know I talked about anwar Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,
and then they wanted to open up lands for land leases.
(41:13):
Of course, I think that got shot down, thank goodness.
But they I'm located up in Southlake Tahoe, California here,
and they wanted to lease out the land or they
had the plan to lease outland above Emerald Bay, which
Emerald Bay is the most photographed area in the United States.
And when you when I looked at that map, I
(41:34):
I kind of had to laugh because I was like,
they couldn't do that. They could, I mean, this is
just like pristine area. And then again looking at the
tribes they the Columbia River, they're trying to trying to
restore a lot of the salmon fisheries. Well they've cut
the salmon fisheries going now, but the native salmon runs,
which means also trying to take some of the dams
(41:55):
down and doing things a little bit differently, looking at
different ways to do it and how to do alternative energies.
Speaker 5 (42:01):
A lot of the tribes up there have solar power.
Speaker 4 (42:04):
They have big solar farms going on right now, so yeah,
there's alternative ways to generate power and then restore the
river and the salmon runs. Well, that funding got cut,
so that's in litigation right now too. So yeah, I
just agree with you. It's it's so wide. How much
damage is this doings, It's hard to comprehend.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
Thank you for that. I want to just say one
more sentenced about that, and then ask Rebel to put
up the comment and again, because I want to make
sure we respond to someone who sent in a comment. Yeah,
just that if anyone. A lot of people don't know
a lot of information, and I think that I just
want to encourage people to see what your representative is doing.
I know it's hard when we have a lot of jobs,
(42:46):
we're raising kids. But if you could take the time,
you know, tonight tomorrow before some representatives vote yes to
let this through, it would be really important because it
could impact people for generations. Okay, so the comment is, Bruce,
you are so to listen to. Thanks so much for
your work in so many areas. I have to ask
the fact that you've lived two hundred miles above the
(43:06):
Archeo circle Micronesia and Nevada, do you have a special
blood temperature and skin thickness Bihia. Are you sharing that website?
I will share the website also when we put up
the podcast. But it's there's different ones. I'll put in
the American, Indian, Alaska Native towards some association website and
also Bruce Reddick dot com my own website doesn't know
(43:28):
what you want, coaching dot WordPress. But Bruce, do you
want to answer that? We really have two minutes, so yeah,
I'll go and I need the last thirty seconds.
Speaker 5 (43:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (43:36):
No, just one other website, real quick, Native America dot travel.
That's our major tourism website for Native America dot travel,
and there's an app as well. But yeah, I also
traveled down to Nigeria, Africa when I was working as
a merchant marine and I saw a lot of things
that would go was going on down there too, And
I wake up a lot at three o'clock in the
morning thinking just thinking of these things and thinking just
(44:00):
I think, but here I think what you hit it
on the head again with with just saying be aware,
you know, and getting it out there. You know, if
you see these things. And that's my book. It's not preachy.
It just relates what I saw, you know, and how
I look at it now and you can you can
take it and read it. And I have people from
(44:21):
you know, a lot of different backgrounds that read it
and say wow, I didn't quite think of it that way.
Speaker 3 (44:26):
So very helpful, very helpful. More views we hear, the
more we learned. We can use our own critical thinking
to make our own decisions. But we really got to
support democracy by if you, if you have representatives in
this country, please call them and make sure they're doing
the right thing. So Bruce, thank you so much. Bruce Reddick.
Really great to meet you. I can't wait to finish
(44:47):
your book. I also want to thank the viewers and
the listeners in the comment Thank you so much for that.
Please check out the websites. I'll put them up with
when the podcast goes up. There'll be in the description.
And thank you Rebel our engineer, and Dean Piper, our producer,
and may we all have energing conversations in diversity this week.
Thank you again.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
Ecogic, Let's beach logic, Let's pitch over e loogic, Let's
pitch a logic, Let's pitch all the illogic. Let's pitch
(45:28):
a logic. Let's pitch
The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are
solely those of the hosts and their guests and not
those of W four c Y Radio. It's employees are affiliates.
We make no recommendations or endorsements radio show, programs, services,
or products mentioned on air or on our web. No
liability explicit or implies shall be extended to W four
c Y Radio or its employees are affiliates. Any questions
or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank
(00:20):
you for choosing W four c Y Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Loch Let's meet Logic, Let's beak shore in Lot, Let's
in Lot, Let's breach all the in loticar, Let's brit
(00:47):
and Logic.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Let's a lot, Hello, and welcome to It's Your Voice,
the show that hosts enrichie conversations in diversity. My name
is Bihia Yaxon. I'm a core alignment coach and a
diversity educator, which means I coach and train organizations and
(01:10):
individuals to identify patterns of bias that they know are
harmful to them and to others, and better yet, cultivate
new patterns of habits and whether it's patterns and an
organization or in your life that do create more belonging
and more inclusion, and do connect and align people better
(01:32):
to their values and integrity. It's a healthy, helpful process
that involves some work, but in the end and makes
everybody happier. And if you're interested in looking at Stample
classes or courses I teach, whether it's for an organization
or one on one coaching, you can check out my
website which is called Know what you Want Coaching dot
(01:56):
WordPress dot com. So today we have a very interesting
show thanks to one of my sisters and her husband,
and my family supports me in a lot of ways,
and they be anonymous, so out of respect for the wishes,
I won't say their names. But I have an awesome
family and some of them helped me connect with this
guest whose name is Bruce Reddick. He is an author.
(02:20):
He came to be known introduced to me as an author.
The show title is North Slope Frontiers, Culture, Climate and Oil.
I'm going to read a little bio now you get
a sense of him, and we're going to end up
talking about more than the book, what that led to
and his environmental perspective and how it shifted what he
(02:41):
does now in addition to writing, so this bio itself
will tell you a lot. Bruce Reddick is the author
of Refraction. I Love that title, a biographical narrative that
provides intimate insight into the power of big oil, the
shadow of the Cold War of the eighties, the dangers
of an indult still environment, living with fellow laborers in
(03:03):
an isolated work camp, and growing threats posed by climate change.
Refraction is a personal journey told in a series of
reflections on a time spent living as a merchant marine
in Prudo Bay, Alaska, one of the most remote destinations
in the world and home to the largest oil field
in North America. At the Community of Writers' Workshop, Refraction
(03:25):
was described as a cross between heart of Darkness and
into the wild. The piece One Excuse Me. The piece
won first place at the twenty eighteen San Francisco Writing
Contest Awards in Nonfiction, first place in the twenty seventeen
Chanticlear Book Review Awards in Narrative Nonfiction, and first place
at the twenty seventeen Pacific Northwest Writers Association Literary Awards
(03:49):
and Nonfiction Memoir. So this is a good book. Bruce
graduated from the University of Colorado with a Bachelor's of
Arts in Fine Arts and Fine Arts History. After working
at several apps avertising and graphic design agencies, he founded
Charter Advertising Design and serves as president and creative director.
He founded Charter Advertising Design. Sorry I've already read that.
(04:13):
He also works as a travel writer, photographer photographer for
the American Indian Alaska Native Tourism Association AYANTA, promoting tribal tourism,
which will be very interesting also to hear about. Bruce,
Welcome to the show. Thank you for being.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
Here, Thank you for here, Happy to be here, Thank
you for inviting me.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
You're so welcome. So there's so much I want to
ask you about, and I'm wondering how you'd like to start,
because I know we get to hear you read an
excerpt from the book. Do you like to start with
a reading first or do you want to.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
See Yeah, maybe I could just give a little bit
of background. I think you've covered a lot of it,
but basically, yes, I served as a merchant, marine and
labor up on Alaska's North Slope, and where I worked
at was about two hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle,
and that was where I learned a lot in my
(05:05):
early twenties, and my memoir Refraction and Arctic Memoir recounts
that time. So it's told through two different perspectives, that
of when I was in my twenties and now years
later looking back and at everything I learned. And you know,
some readers, they comment, and my book is really three
stories or themes. The story of my personal journey, and
(05:29):
then one of the story outside of the Arctic, and
then the story of the human impact on the environment.
You mentioned some of the awards that it's won. I've
been very proud of the awards. But it won several
first place in gold awards, but the one I'm most
proud of it won of Silver and Environmental and Ecology,
and that's the one I really was like.
Speaker 5 (05:49):
All right, they get it.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
So it kind of gives a perspective of what I
saw and how I feel about it now. So I
can talk a little bit about I was going to
see if I could open up a slide show.
Speaker 5 (06:02):
Let me give her a shot here. Beautiful, Okay, great,
This was.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
My view from outside of camp when I was in
my early twenties. So when I first went up there,
I had no idea what I was getting into. We
worked twelve hour work days every day of the week
for about three or four months straight, and this was
outside the window. I originally wanted to go up there.
I was looking for an internship in geology, and I
(06:30):
was looking for a job in the oil companies as
an intern in paleontology. And my uncle had connections with
the oil companies and he got me a job instead
on the tugboats and barges. This is the oil line
pipeline looking down the Trans Alaska pipeline. It runs eight
hundred miles all the way from Prudo Bay down to
Valdez and pump Station one. This is just I wanted
(06:53):
to show these photos because it just gives you some
groundwork for the environment and the backstory. And when I
was up there, you know, my perspective on the environment
was we heard a little bit about greenhouse gases, just
a little bit. Those are like on the back pages
of newspapers. You didn't care much more than that. So
when I was looking around, this was under the pipeline.
(07:15):
This is an Arctic fox. I saw the pipeline elevated
in certain areas so that the caribou herds could migrate
underneath it. I saw it seemed like the oil companies
were all being pretty responsible, you know, as far as
the environmental impact at that time. And there's a caribou
in front of one of the drill rigs and eider
duck eggs out on the tundra. It's just such a
(07:38):
fragile environment. I think that that's the thing that hit
me the most when I first went up there. There's
beautiful flowers, wildflowers as across the tundra, but you could
tell it's super super fragile. So anything catastrophic can't of
course damage it. Driving by shot out the window and
(07:58):
these are flares, gas flares, and I knew that couldn't
be one hundred percent great, but flaring, now looking back
at it and doing more research, it puts a lot
of methane up into the air. And flaring is still
really big across the world. It's really bad in other
nations as well. It just puts out a lot of
(08:19):
a lot of pollutants into the air, and it's a
gas that can't be It can be captured, but it's
not economically feasible, so they burned it off into the atmosphere.
These were all the equipment that we were bringing in.
Were these big drill modules and containers that would come
in and we would offload them. But this gives you
a perspective of the size. It was like a city
(08:41):
when it floated in. In fact, they were welded right
to the decks of the barges when we brought them
in and then they were offloaded and then went out
into the Pruto Bay oil field.
Speaker 5 (08:51):
So that was our job.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
That there's a crew working on the pump pump crew,
and that was my job. It was to help do
a lot of the offloading. And we also constructed islands.
You constructed Muckluck Island, which was one of the most
expensive dry holes. I think it was fifty million. I
can't remember the exact cost of it. But we built
a gravel island out into the bay and they did
(09:14):
an exploratory drill and it came up dry. But we
did a lot of island building also when we were
out there side jobs. And this was another drill rig
that was brought in. It was a CIDs project. It
was made out of concrete and it was floated in
into the Arctic. So that's just some of the some
of the pieces that I saw while I was up there,
(09:36):
and you know, again, you know, at that time, I
knew there was some environmental impact, but I didn't know
how much, you know, and you tend to justify it.
And that's what the what the book deals with a lot.
It's you know, looking back, and even now when we
justify some of the things, monetized things, it's you know,
(09:59):
you look back and you go, oh, there's a better
way to do it. You know, there's just a much
better way to do it. And it's hard because I
know it. The money I made up there was good money,
and I was very grateful for the job and appreciated
the job and the people I worked with, and we
were proud of the of the work that we did.
And I've talked to other people that work in the
oil industry now, you know, today, and they are proud
(10:19):
of it, and you know, they are doing the best
I can.
Speaker 5 (10:22):
But it's it's.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
Hard when you look at some of the environment where
I was at how fragile it was, and now they're
looking at expanding into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and
it's just such a fragile, fragile area and one of
the most pristine areas in the world, and that expansion
into more federal lands, into foreign service lands and BLM.
(10:45):
We've all heard the news lately about how they want
to expand that it did get shot down as of now,
but on the coastal areas of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,
they do want to keep pushing to try to sell leases.
Speaker 5 (11:00):
Along that area.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Well, those snapshots really say a lot. And I appreciate
your sharing how you're awareen, and I know this is
true so many of us. You know, with beginning of something,
we have an inkling that's really right, this can't be okay,
and then we justify and go on. I'm just curious,
(11:22):
like you just I only got to read a very
beginning part of your book, which I really liked, and
I saw already, and you know in the first fifty
pages how much you listen to people, Like how it
seems like it's relatively easy. Not everybody has this skill
set of like an interest in really listening to people
and you know, developing relationships that impact over time. But
(11:45):
I'm I'm guessing that's how you learned about not only
the environmental impacts, which you can say so much more
about but also how it impacted people's lives, impacted culture
in that whole area. So I wonder if it's if
you could talk about that a little bit, like, you know,
how and when did your kind of environmental awareness shift
(12:11):
and then to the point where it changed you. Because
sometimes we're aware of something but we don't let it
change us. Maybe it's too hard to face, or we're
just not willing to make a change, but it seems
like it's changed you. Can you say a little bit
about that?
Speaker 5 (12:24):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (12:24):
Yeah, And that might be a good point where I
can I've got two minute reading here I can do.
It's from my chapter Power of Oil, and that kind
of gives a little background and insight and to that
transition that you were talking about. Okay, it's called power
of Oil. The barges that arrived during sealift were huge,
much larger than the ones in the AMF fleet. They're
(12:45):
boil over a football field long. When we walked alongside
the first one, we craned our necks and to the
towering oil field equipment sitting on the decks. Hack tight
drill modules look like large buildings, void of windows. There's
steel walls painted all of drab. The floating city made
me feel small. I could only fathom the amount of
money put into getting all the barges and rigs to
such a remote destination. As a teenager and later during
(13:08):
community college, I had worked at a couple of shell
service stations, a mobile gas station in two goodyear shops.
I service cars and performed my share of oil changes,
and I couldn't estimate how many gallons of gasolina I
had pumped. The oil companies were enormous, but I never
fully understood how much power they actually yielded. As a
mini city floated around US, I realized for the first
(13:29):
time the true dominance of the oil companies. They could
go anywhere in the world and do anything they wanted.
The Proof of Ail Field, in total area, remains the
largest in North America, with a lifespan stretching as far
as two thousand and seventy five. Major players have included
bp RCO, Conoco, Phillips, and Nexon. In nineteen eighty eight,
the Trans Alaska Pipeline delivered twenty five percent of all
(13:50):
US oil production. In nineteen eighty nine, two milli million
barrels of oil per day flowed down the eight hundred
mile pipeline south to Beldiz. It's estimated that three hun
hundred and forty seven thousand barrels per day still flow,
although it fluctuates. The Kupuric River oil Field, about one
hundred and thirty miles east of pro Obey, is the
second largest oil field in North America by area, producing
(14:12):
approximately two hundred and thirty thousand barrels per day. The
state of Alaska received a record nine hundred million dollars
for the Prudeo Bay oil lease. It's difficult to calculate
the exact profit that the oil companies have made over
the years, but they continue to pay taxes to the state,
its major source of revenue. I had never thought much
about who called the shots and decision decisions affecting our world,
(14:33):
and always believed government officials were ultimately in charge of
most anything global in scope. The more I saw during
my time in Prudo, the more I realized who controlled everything.
I maintained a question authority attitude, but I was making
excellent money working for a maritime company whose clients included
several large oil companies. Proud of the work we completed.
I wasn't in any position to bite the hand that
(14:55):
generally fed generously fed us. A family dinner, my uncle
offer and discuss politics with my brother, who previously taught
us history. Big industry runs everything and always will, my
uncle stated. My brother simply nodded his head in an agreement.
It made me wonder if society lost its way quite
a while back, what were the consequences a big industry
(15:15):
carelessly freewheeled along an unbridled and self indulgent path. So
those are some of the questions that were running through
my head at the time.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Wow. Wow, very very very well said and shared, and
I imagine not easy to grapple with. So what kept
you moving in the door? Like, was it not until
you were writing that all of this? Is often I
feel like I don't process something unless I like sit
down and write about it and really brings things up.
What about for you, did it come through the writing
(15:46):
or did you hold it in your in your mind
for a long time before you actually started writing it.
Speaker 5 (15:51):
Yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
You know, I had all these all these stories, and
of course my kids would always say, oh, Dad's telling
another c story, you know, and you know, I thought,
you know, I need to get these down on paper,
but always carried a little bit of weight as far
as knowing that that money was made or I had
(16:13):
profited off money that went into building this oil this uh,
this oil reserve or oil exploitation. So once I started
getting into it, I wrote a short story about landing
on a on a little Nupiate island where our boats
got blown in an Arctic storm during the winter or
the fall of one year.
Speaker 5 (16:34):
And I wrote a short story. It had to be.
It was a flash fiction.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
It was a Cold Flashes of Alaska. It was published
by University of Alaska Press, and they had to be
under five hundred words long, so it was a very
short short piece. And I had it published, and I thought,
you know, I have all these stories and I should
put them all.
Speaker 5 (16:53):
Down on paper. I should.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
I should get them into a into a book and
put it together. And then when I started looking at it,
I I realized that I was a much different person.
I worked up there for over four years. I was
a much different person when I went in there as
when I came out. So there was a definite arc there.
So I thought, you know, this is a memoir. I
don't know how to write a memoir. But I learned,
(17:16):
And yeah, I think it was during that time when
I started learning about reflection, not just putting down what
happened up there and the stories, but what it meant
to me and now what it means to me now
where I dug a little bit deeper and it kind
of came into fruition. It's like, Okay, this is cathartic.
(17:37):
You know, this is helping me understand and grapple with
you know, working up there and working with oil companies,
and you know, it helped me a lot when I
gave me a strong sense of work ethic when I
was up there, but and also helped pay for my
deposit for my first house, and it helped me put
me through college the last two years. I mean, there
(17:58):
was a lot of great things that came out of
a lot of good relationships and people that I still
keep in touch with. So yeah, but looking back and
looking at the industry as a whole, there was a
shift there. I'm looking what I was proud of the company.
Speaker 5 (18:14):
I worked for.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
They recently came out with e tugboats down in Long Beach,
so they're they're headed in a good direction, you know,
And I could see things changing and the types of
contracts that they're taking on. There's a solar farm they're
working on back on the East coast. You know, they're diversifying.
It's not just all lumped into the oil companies. So
I was proud to see the company take that direction.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
Wow, e, tugboats and solar farms definitely sounds like a
good direction. And how did you get I don't know
if you want to see more about that short story,
but I'm curious. And again, you can flow back to
any any topic in this conversation. How you got to
know the American, Indian and Alaska Native tourismotation.
Speaker 4 (18:59):
Yeah, and you know, and that that's another thing I
think when I was up there, it brought in my
view of it made it strengthened my cultural awareness. I
grew up in the in the Bay Area, East Bay,
and so it was a diverse area where I where
a lot of my friends were from multicultural and so
I felt comfortable with around different cultures. But I really
(19:21):
didn't know that much about Indigenous American indigenous culture at all.
And yeah, the short story talks about landing on the
island of Kactovk and I'll do it. Try to see
if I can do a slideshow here too.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Yeah, the photos there we go.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
Yeah, this was the plane that we took out to Kactovik.
It was Bartered Island, and Barter Island was part of
the Distant Early Warning System. It was at one time
we had a lot of radars all on the Alaska
coast to UH that were pointed towards Russia to see
UH indicate if any incoming missiles or aircraft were coming in.
(19:59):
They monitored all the traffic coming out of Russia. So
it was called the dew Line. And so they had
an airstrip out here and it was also the site
of a Cactovic village and a Nupiat village.
Speaker 5 (20:11):
And when we.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
Landed, yeah, it was a it was a different world.
This is the job own of a whale that was
out there. And the Nupiat people a Caactovik are still
they still rely on whaling and polar bear and they
still carry on a lot of their traditional traditional culture.
These were the boats that then in the camp when
(20:33):
it blew out there and they rounded it up. A
lot of the crew rounded up and got it tied
up to and and docked at the at the Island
didn't have a standard dock or anything. They put it
up against the shoal and it was there for the winner.
So you can see where the drifts are. And that's
(20:54):
actually a picture of me out on the ice that
became the cover refraction. You can see how desolate it
is and just looking straight out at the Arctic.
Speaker 5 (21:02):
And this is the Brooks Range.
Speaker 4 (21:03):
I had mentioned a little bit about the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge, and the Brooks Range reaches into and across
a lot of the refuge, and it's just a beautiful,
beautiful mountain range. You could see it on a clear
day across from Barter Island, from prude O Bay. It's
(21:24):
way in the distance. It's hard to see. It's every
just every so often you can see it. That's one
of the things I wanted to kind of bring out too,
is the word you know, you mentioned the tidal refraction. Uh,
the way I got refraction, it's in what refraction is.
Refraction is a trick of the eye. Sometimes looking at
the Brooks Range, it would look like it was floating
(21:46):
in mid air. And sometimes out at sea you'll see
boats or ships and they'll see they've almost seem to
appear to be hovering above the water, so they're almost
like a flat like floating islands out there. So it's
a phenomenon that's been around, of course forever, and in
Italian it's known as fata morgana. And it was believed
(22:08):
that these mirages were like castles in the air or
false land created by witchcraft and it would lure sailors
to their death. And I thought that was a really
interesting place. So I use this mirage like phenomena in
a in a metaphorical context, distortion of one what one
might see or believe as compared to what might be
a little bit closer to the truth. And that's how
(22:30):
I looked at my experience up there. You know, sometimes
you try to trick yourself into into believing one thing,
but in reality it's much different.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Wow, that is an excellent metaphor.
Speaker 5 (22:41):
Thank you. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:42):
And this was a camp in the distance and you
can see the remnants of an older whaling encampment by
the Nupiat when we were up there, and this was
a friend we met. We were we were working on
the boats one day and a couple of the Nupiat
came by on three wheelers and they didn't talk to
us at first, and they had hired a couple of
them to watch over the boats during the winter, and
(23:04):
there was some food left over and some of the
wheel houses.
Speaker 5 (23:07):
And everything, and like, who are these guys?
Speaker 3 (23:09):
You know?
Speaker 4 (23:09):
And then anyway, they came riding by one day and
they look at us, and time we waved to them,
and then they waved back, and pretty soon we start
talking with them and building a relationship. And I actually
kept in touch with this one particular cactobic villager for
a couple of years. We mailed back and forth. Since
lost contact, I'm trying to get back in touch with him.
(23:30):
But yeah, just I couldn't. It was hard for me
to imagine anybody living out there permanently, and I mean,
this is their home, this is these are their homelands.
This was in his backyard that you can see the
the whale meet on stretched out and being dried out
there on that platform. And I still wonder why the
dog hasn't wouldn't need it, but they must have put
(23:52):
him on a short leash for protection. And there's a
polar bear skulls he had out front also, and we
went to a blanket toss he invited us to a
blanket toss and went into town and we met several
of his friends. The people were so inviting and it
was just it just was a great, great experience one
of the villagers there and you can kind of get
(24:12):
a feel for for a cactobic in the background the
homes and the houses, and it just really kind of
opened my eyes to a new culture. And from then
I started working and my background is in advertising and
marketing and graphic design, and uh I kind of started
focusing more into into rural marketing, uh later on in
(24:36):
my career, and then started working for the American Indian
tribes out in Nevada and do work for the Northern
and Southern Paiute in Western Shoshone, and then our local
our local tribe here is a Washow of Nevada in California,
and uh just I just loved working with them, and
(24:56):
then I ended up getting a job at Ayanta, which
is the Marria can Indian Alaska Native Tourism Association. So
that passion for culture and learning.
Speaker 5 (25:05):
It's just it's just continuing now.
Speaker 4 (25:07):
I also worked for a little while for the Islanders
out of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands and I was
out there for a while too, and I learned that
culture and that was just great because I'm also I
also have an interest in nuclear proliferation. I look at
the two existential threats of the of the world is
(25:29):
pretty much the environmental threat and then also nuclear nuclear proliferation.
So I know there are two dark topics, but you
know that there's there. It's important to know what's going
on there. And Nevad Nevada is right in my backyard,
and I'm aware of all the history of the Nevada
test site and the testing out there. And there's also
(25:49):
a connection to Alaska with it too that I bring
out in my book. So when I was able to
go out to Micronesia and visit the Marshall Islands, I
learned a lot of the history out there too in
bikinis and the testing they had done out of the
islands and the.
Speaker 5 (26:02):
Trinity Test, So that was very interesting.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
But yeah, just my passion for indigenal what we do
with iantas we help our aid the tribes tell their story,
share their story because the stories have been told by
so many people in the past and oftentimes are very inaccurate.
So we team up with a lot of agencies like
(26:26):
the US four Service and National Park Service in BLM,
and National Historic Trails, Lewis and Clark Trail, the DeAnza
Trail running from Arizona up to San Francisco. I've worked
on that project and what it is is we reach
out to the tribes and discuss what they might want
to share. And also it's an economic driver as well
(26:50):
because we help promote their businesses and Native owned businesses
as well. So it's really rewarding work and I enjoy it.
I'm learning all the time, still learning.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
That's yeah, that's the only way to be. I think
there's just so much to learn. Well, that's wonderful. So
you help promote Native businesses and you capture you are
part of a team that helps capture stories that are
from people who've lived the lives of Native lives, rather
than their stories being told by others, which has been
(27:23):
the situation for far too long.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
Yeah, And that's a good example is Lewis and Clark,
because everybody's heard the stories of Lewis and Clark, and
they've heard a little bit of Sackato, but they really
don't the stories of all the tribes along the trail.
Itself really haven't been brought to the forefront, and there's
so many rich stories, and again we share only what
(27:45):
the tribes want us to share anything. You know, it's
all approved by tribal council. The board of directors of
Ayanta are all tribal members, native members, so we're very
very native to what is shared and what's not and
and some of the tribes, you know, they might not
want to share their story or they might want to
(28:06):
not want to show certain areas, and that's you know,
we respect that and others. You know that the powwows
are so big and the arts and culture. We do
a lot in promoting Native arts. And we recently had
a poster contest for the California Trails stretching across Nevada
and had a Native artist and so it portrays how
(28:29):
native tribes in in Nevada saw the settlers coming across
because you always see you know, they had a logo
with the pioneer and the wagon train and there was
no you know, in the artwork itself, there was no
depiction of the Native people, you know, going across. So yeah,
(28:51):
it's neat to work with all the Native artists and
get their perspective on things.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
That's fantastic that's been sorely missing. I did go to
the website and it was beautiful and and I guess
I must have put in what the A I A
t A right Iana, and it came up American Indian
and Alaska Native Tourism Association, and I really encouraged listeners
(29:15):
and viewers to check that out. And then the eco
tourism in the hands of the people is just ideal, right,
so we and then I just really appreciate that you're
with an organization and and the respects what the people
want to say, what they want to share, what they
didn't want to share, and the decision making power in
(29:37):
the hands of the people. That's refreshing.
Speaker 5 (29:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (29:40):
And again there's that environmental it doves tails and the
environmental efforts too.
Speaker 5 (29:46):
You know.
Speaker 4 (29:47):
I do work for Nevada's Indian Territory and they call
it eco cultural tourism, you know, and it's and it's
how we've all heard of cultural burns now too, the
for US four services leaning more on the trial to
how do we do it the way that used to
be done, how do we manage the force the way
they used to be there's always been somebody here. It's
(30:07):
never been one hundred percent wild. You know, it's somebody
has lived here and maintained it. And you know, back
in the day it was with a lot of cultural
burns and keeping the forest healthy.
Speaker 5 (30:17):
And how to do that.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
And we're learning that that that's a better way, and
those are the things we're trying to look back to.
So it's yeah, I think it's exciting.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
That's great, really encouraging. And again I encourage listeners and
viewers to look at up Ayana, American, Indian, and Alaskan
Native Tourism Association, and I've interviewed some firefighters from a
couple of different tribal nations and learned a lot about
cultural learning and how, thank goodness, some US officials are
(30:49):
listening and respecting and learning and grateful for finally opening
to knowledge that's stewarded the lands for whom knows how
many thousands and thousands of years. I was just thinking,
you can tell me what's on your mind, and then
I can ask my question. But go ahead, you were
about to say.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
Something, Oh no, go ahead.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
Well, I was thinking about in one of the book
reviews that talked about the I think you maybe more
than touch on the Cold Wars of the eighties. And
I remember being very, very concerned about nuclear pro proliferation
in the eighties. It was just like an all consuming worry.
(31:30):
And now we have new worries, which I'll share my
feelings about when we as we wrap up. But for
people who didn't live through that, how can you say
a little bit more about when we were living under
that threat?
Speaker 4 (31:44):
Yeah, well, amazing as it was. When I would drive
across going to University of Colorado, going across Nevada, testing
was still going on. It was underground, but it was
still throwing a lot up into the air. And I
actually just started a actually completed a project. I wrote
a novel and the background is with the downwinders in
(32:06):
the testing of the nineteen fifties. So I really went
down the rabbit hole and doing research on it. And
it's pretty incredible, you know. I think there were over
three hundred tests done out there, and the amount of
fallout that that went across the nation is it's pretty astounding.
What lew me away was how far it extended, you know,
(32:29):
the Kodak company, Kodak Film back in New York. I
think it was in Rockshire, Rochester. Anyway, it was back east.
Their film was being was being altered because of the
radiation that was coming from the test in Nevada. And
I didn't even realize it what had gone that far.
And it also drifted up into Alaska because of the
(32:53):
way that the gyration of the of the earth and everything,
a lot of it ended up there as well. So
it's just, yeah, it's it's a heavy subject. But yeah,
we grew up under that threat and the duck and
cover drills and all that, and we didn't, you know,
think too much of it. We thought, well, it's over
with now. But you know, they wanted to renew testing.
(33:13):
I heard just you know, a couple of months ago
they said they were discussion on renewing testing or underground testing.
And you know, the groundwater for the underground testing. It's
starting to migrate south too. And there's little rural towns
that are very concerned about I do a lot of
work for rural Nevada, and yeah, there's just hand so
(33:34):
many stories about how they wanted to really push atomic
energy and the top atoms for peace. They wanted to
use it in construction and constructing canals, and there's a
chapter on my book I talk about this too. They
actually wanted to use nuclear detonations to create a harbor
up in Alaska and through a series of atomic explosions
(33:59):
and great and actual harbor out of it. So there's
just some crazy stories. And the downwinders, I mean a
lot of them are still fighting, you know, from the
dam for damages. I think the Shoshoni tribe still has
a couple of lawsuits for all the damages that the
fallout had on their people. And from what I last heard,
(34:22):
I think they were they might have received or some
individuals might have received ten or fifteen thousand dollars, that's
about it. And the cancer rate just shot up. It's
crazy when you look at the statistics and the farmers
and the shepherds out in Utah as well, you know,
a lot of the sheep, and then it got into
the milk and then into the babies, you know, the
(34:44):
baby's milk. It just, yeah, it created quite an economic
or quite an environmental catastrophe, that's for sure. And it's
an invisible one. It's one you might not see, but
it's one of the most dangerous ones.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
And well hidden from us. I appreciate you digging into
those stories and bringing them out to the light. It's
just so we don't we don't know what we don't know.
I think it's just it can be very disheartening. So
any any acts that are constructive and contributive and support
(35:19):
other people, I deeply appreciate, and they love showcasing it.
Speaker 5 (35:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (35:24):
I actually I've got a blog too, it's called Changing Tides,
and I've written a lot of different little excerpts on this.
My daughter and I were out driving out Nevada one
time and we found it what we call it, it's
called a nuclear plug, and it was where they were
doing experiments actually outside the test area, and it was
out in some ranch land and it was in the
(35:47):
the Atoms for Peace projects. They were looking at how
it would shape landforms, which pretty much know.
Speaker 5 (35:55):
How how it's going to happen.
Speaker 4 (35:56):
And did they the shaft itself, then they filled with
concrete and they put a plug on top of it.
Speaker 5 (36:02):
They actually have a.
Speaker 4 (36:03):
Little monument out there, a little interpreted sign saying about
talking about the project. But it just way out in
the middle of Nevada, the middle of nowhere, you know,
outside the test area.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
Speaking of your blog. Can you say, for people who
can't don't have the video right now but are listening,
like your website or your blog, how people can find
your book reach you any of that? Can you say
that out loud?
Speaker 5 (36:30):
Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 4 (36:31):
My website is Bruce Reddick dot com. And when you
go to the homepage you'll see purchasing purchasing options for
my book. My publisher has been great. They're an eco
lit company and I was just really happy to find
I'm really fortunate to have fin found them. H If
you buy directly from the publisher, which is what I
(36:54):
suggest people to do, Amazon's great and well, I'm wont
to say Amazon's great book is on Amazon, but I
really like to promote small bookstores and publishers, independent publishers,
and again, my publishers and eco lit publishers Wayfair Books,
(37:15):
And if you purchase it from them, they're also hooked
up with one Tree planeted, so if you buy my
book through them, you're planning a tree too, so that's
kind of cool. And yeah, and then on the home Yeah,
on the homepage also is my blog Changing Tides, and
you can click on there. I've got several years of
(37:35):
material on there. I let it go this last year
because I've been writing so much on this new project
and promoting refraction. So I want to get back to
the blog because there's a lot to talk about right now.
Speaker 5 (37:49):
And when I.
Speaker 4 (37:49):
Started the blog, it was about in the same environmental
and political atmosphere.
Speaker 5 (37:56):
So yeah, I need to get back to it.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
Well, speaking of that, before I forget, I want to
spell reddick for people who are wondering, how do you
spell that? It's two t's and one G right, Bruce
R E T t ig dot com right is how
people find you?
Speaker 5 (38:11):
Yes, exactly, Okay, thank you.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
Yeah. I was earlier sharing that I can feel I
can get so discouraged. That's one reason I became a coach,
because I know, I know it's not It doesn't move
me forward if I sit there and wonder why and
how did this happen, how it's going to be? Instead,
I ask what what can I do? What's next? How
(38:36):
do I move forward? So I went I was sharing
that this what's our official top officials are doing right now,
and this bill that's the same what it's called by
the administration that people probably know. I'm referring to what's
called the Big beautiful bill, which I've heard renamed as
the Big Betrayal Bill because it betrays a lot of
(38:58):
promises that the President United States promised people. There's so
much misinformation about it, coming from even members of the
Congress who are elected who don't seem to have the
courage to say no to the President for fear of
their jobs, rather than fearing the consequences on the people
there considerings they represent. There's so much that could potentially
(39:22):
affect they numbers vary from twelve million to seventeen million.
People could lose their insurance in the United States, something
around four million can lose, you know, food assistance, and
I'm usually paying attention. And then there's what's so called
like no more taxes on tips that would be very temporary.
I know that drew in a lot of like firefighters
and hardworking people who heard that early on and voted
(39:45):
for this mega group. But turns out that doesn't last
long and it's nothing compared to the tax cuts that
will go to the wealthiest, wealthiest people. In short, it's
the if this bill goes through right now it's back
at the House, then it'll be the historically the biggest
transfer of wealth or and resources taken out of the
majority of people and then transferred to the most wealthy.
(40:09):
So I see there's a question, but I wanted to
I'll get back to you. I want you were the
one who pointed out to me the negative impact on
the environment in this bill that I didn't. I wasn't
thinking about it. I was so worried about the social programs.
But after Bruce answers this question, like, can you just
say a little bit about the environmental impact and the bill?
Speaker 4 (40:27):
And yeah, you know, that's what's so interesting. I think
you kind of hit on the nail on the head.
It's it affects so many different aspects and so many
different people. You're not even aware of some of the
things that it's hitting. You know, they just cut a
lot of education programs to the tribal communities and that's
a treaty violations. And also with they're trying to lump
(40:53):
a law of the tribes into DEI, which they are
sober nations. I mean, they're pushing it as far as
they can. And then then on the environmental end, of course,
you know I talked about anwar Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,
and then they wanted to open up lands for land leases.
(41:13):
Of course, I think that got shot down, thank goodness.
But they I'm located up in Southlake Tahoe, California here,
and they wanted to lease out the land or they
had the plan to lease outland above Emerald Bay, which
Emerald Bay is the most photographed area in the United States.
And when you when I looked at that map, I
(41:34):
I kind of had to laugh because I was like,
they couldn't do that. They could, I mean, this is
just like pristine area. And then again looking at the
tribes they the Columbia River, they're trying to trying to
restore a lot of the salmon fisheries. Well they've cut
the salmon fisheries going now, but the native salmon runs,
which means also trying to take some of the dams
(41:55):
down and doing things a little bit differently, looking at
different ways to do it and how to do alternative energies.
Speaker 5 (42:01):
A lot of the tribes up there have solar power.
Speaker 4 (42:04):
They have big solar farms going on right now, so yeah,
there's alternative ways to generate power and then restore the
river and the salmon runs. Well, that funding got cut,
so that's in litigation right now too. So yeah, I
just agree with you. It's it's so wide. How much
damage is this doings, It's hard to comprehend.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
Thank you for that. I want to just say one
more sentenced about that, and then ask Rebel to put
up the comment and again, because I want to make
sure we respond to someone who sent in a comment. Yeah,
just that if anyone. A lot of people don't know
a lot of information, and I think that I just
want to encourage people to see what your representative is doing.
I know it's hard when we have a lot of jobs,
(42:46):
we're raising kids. But if you could take the time,
you know, tonight tomorrow before some representatives vote yes to
let this through, it would be really important because it
could impact people for generations. Okay, so the comment is, Bruce,
you are so to listen to. Thanks so much for
your work in so many areas. I have to ask
the fact that you've lived two hundred miles above the
(43:06):
Archeo circle Micronesia and Nevada, do you have a special
blood temperature and skin thickness Bihia. Are you sharing that website?
I will share the website also when we put up
the podcast. But it's there's different ones. I'll put in
the American, Indian, Alaska Native towards some association website and
also Bruce Reddick dot com my own website doesn't know
(43:28):
what you want, coaching dot WordPress. But Bruce, do you
want to answer that? We really have two minutes, so yeah,
I'll go and I need the last thirty seconds.
Speaker 5 (43:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (43:36):
No, just one other website, real quick, Native America dot travel.
That's our major tourism website for Native America dot travel,
and there's an app as well. But yeah, I also
traveled down to Nigeria, Africa when I was working as
a merchant marine and I saw a lot of things
that would go was going on down there too, And
I wake up a lot at three o'clock in the
morning thinking just thinking of these things and thinking just
(44:00):
I think, but here I think what you hit it
on the head again with with just saying be aware,
you know, and getting it out there. You know, if
you see these things. And that's my book. It's not preachy.
It just relates what I saw, you know, and how
I look at it now and you can you can
take it and read it. And I have people from
(44:21):
you know, a lot of different backgrounds that read it
and say wow, I didn't quite think of it that way.
Speaker 3 (44:26):
So very helpful, very helpful. More views we hear, the
more we learned. We can use our own critical thinking
to make our own decisions. But we really got to
support democracy by if you, if you have representatives in
this country, please call them and make sure they're doing
the right thing. So Bruce, thank you so much. Bruce Reddick.
Really great to meet you. I can't wait to finish
(44:47):
your book. I also want to thank the viewers and
the listeners in the comment Thank you so much for that.
Please check out the websites. I'll put them up with
when the podcast goes up. There'll be in the description.
And thank you Rebel our engineer, and Dean Piper, our producer,
and may we all have energing conversations in diversity this week.
Thank you again.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
Ecogic, Let's beach logic, Let's pitch over e loogic, Let's
pitch a logic, Let's pitch all the illogic. Let's pitch
(45:28):
a logic. Let's pitch
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