14. Layel Camargo — Queer Ecology, Indigenous Stewardship, and the Power of Laughter

What is our relationship to the land, to its other-than-human inhabitants, and to the rest of humanity? These are fundamental questions for thinking through how we can transform ourselves in ways that allow a multiplicity of ecologies and human communities to thrive alongside one another. And these questions are not just fundamental to us as individuals—they are essential to how we view our cultures, traditions, institutions, and ways of knowing.

Layel Camargo lives at the vibrant intersection of ecological justice, queer liberation, and indigenous culture—a cultural space that offers a distinctive vantage point on how our societies work, while holding enormous potential to both see and reorient our relationships to the land and to one another.

Layel Camargo is an organizer and artist who advocates for the better health of the planet and its people by restoring land, healing communities, and promoting low-waste and low-impact lifestyles. Layel is a transgender and gender non-conforming person who is an indigenous descendant of the Yaqui and Mayo tribes of the Sonoran Desert.

I met Layel at a climate storytelling retreat in New York City in 2019, where I became a huge fan of their work and of their way of being in the world.

Layel is a founder of the Shelterwood Collective, a Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ-led community forest and retreat center, healing people and ecosystems through active stewardship and community engagement.

Our conversation explores the idea of culture as strategy in confronting the climate crisis, diving into Layel’s work in video, podcasting, and poetry and the origins of their approach to this work of healing people and planet.

You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms.

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Layel Camargo

Layel Camargo is a cultural strategist, land steward, filmmaker, artist, and a descendant of the Yaqui tribe and Mayo tribes of the Sonoran Desert. Layel is also transgender and non-binary. They graduated from UC Santa Cruz with dual degrees in Feminist Studies and Legal Studies. Layel was the Impact Producer for “The North Pole Show” Season Two. They currently produce and host ‘Did We Go Too Far’ in conjunction with Movement Generation. Alongside Favianna Rodriguez and at the Center for Cultural Power, they created ‘Climate Woke,’ a national campaign to center BIPOC voices in climate justice. Wanting to shape a new world, they co-founded ‘Shelterwood Collective’. The collective is a land-based organization that teaches land stewardship, fosters inventive ideation, and encourages healing for long-term survival. Layel was a Transformative Justice practitioner for 6 years and still looks to achieve change to the carceral system in all of their work. Most recently, Layel was named on the Grist 2020 Fixers List, and named in the 2019 Yerba Buena Center of the Arts list of ‘People to Watch Out For.’

Quotation Read by Layel Camargo

“You wanna fly, you got to give up the s**t that weighs you down.”

- Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

Recommended Readings & Media

Transcript

Intro

John Fiege  

What is our relationship to the land, to its other-than-human inhabitants, and to the rest of humanity? These are fundamental questions for thinking through how we can transform ourselves in ways that allow a multiplicity of ecologies and human communities to thrive alongside one another. And these questions are not just fundamental to us as individuals—they are essential to how we view our cultures, tr