This is the sixth article in my series about our changing Earth from interviews with Native Americans shared in We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth, edited by Dahr Jamail and Stan Rushworth (USA 2022). My presentation does not follow the order of the interviews.

#6: Dr. Kyle Powys Whyte (Potawatomi)
      (Chapter 6, pp. 73-95)

Kyle Powys Whyte, PhD is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. A faculty member of the University of Michigan, Illinois, he is a George Willis Pack Professor at the School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS). He is founding Faculty Director of the Tishman Center for Social Justice and the Environment, Principal Investigator of the Environmental Justice & Humanities Hub, co-Principal Investigator of the Global Center for Climate Change and Transboundary Waters, Faculty Associate of Native American Studies, Principal Investigator of the Secretariat for the Pathways Alliance for Change and Transformation, STRIDE Committee member, affiliate Professor of Philosophy, and Senior Fellow in the Michigan Society of Fellows.

His primary research addresses moral and political issues concerning climate policy and Indigenous peoples and the ethics of cooperative relationships between Indigenous peoples and climate science organizations. His articles have appeared in journals such as Climatic Change, Sustainability Science, Environmental Justice, Hypatia, Ecological Processes, Synthese, Human Ecology, Journal of Global Ethics, American Journal of Bioethics, Journal of Agricultural & Environmental Ethics, Ethics, Policy & Environment, and Ethics & the Environment. 

Dahr and Stan asked Kyle to address the following:

1. How humanity got to this climate crisis and what’s connected to it.
2. How the sense of panic in societies around the world might be differentiated from a sense of urgency.
3. How we might comport ourselves as members of the larger world society to meet the situation before us.

Kyle first notes that when addressing problems and solutions for the crises we face, we end up harming vulnerable Indigenous people, people of color, and other disempowered groups. This, he claims, occurs when we fail to treat each other with reciprocity and value each other’s consent, essential for building trust. Reciprocity, consent, trust, transparency, and privacy or confidentiality are all qualities of building relationships with each other. These qualities are a key aspect to what Kyle calls a part of kinship. Regardless of the society we live in, there’s some degree of kinship.

He describes kinship this way (p. 75):

Kinship refers to relationships of mutual responsibility, where we care for each other, and we create bonds with each other that make it so that, regardless of what the law says, and regardless of how severe a problem is, or regardless of what our rights are, we have an abiding sense that we need to care for others (emphasis mine).

This responsibility for each other is not limited to human relationships but must also include non-living entities and systems. He reiterates that this shared responsibility will only work if each one of us has a profound respect for reciprocity, for consent, for trust, for transparency, and confidentiality.

Kyle argues that there’s a profound lack of kinship in our world today. He traces this decline to the impacts of the complex network of systems established by patriarchy, colonialism, capitalism, industrialization, and ableism. Locally and globally, these systems have disrespected, erased, and continue to ignore the importance of kinship.

For example, when addressing problems related to climate change, further problems emerge when proposed projects ignore consent from the local community. Numerous cases exist where a wind power or hydroelectric power project has harmed Indigenous people, creating widespread distrust.

To regenerate the kinship and reciprocity needed, Kyle points out the importance of considering the way we humans tell time. We tend to address climate change in terms of clock time or linear time. We speak about years, decades, and centuries. We speak about how the changes are occurring. Then, there’s the fact that the clock is ticking: we have two decades or only fifty years to act.

He takes issue with clock time and presents alternatives to telling time (pp. 80-82):

When you put a ticking clock on anything you do, it completely changes your approach to moral action, to action that promotes justice and equity. […] Can we actually talk about climate change through some other way?… For example, a lot of Indigenous people don’t necessarily look at today’s time as one century out of twenty or thirty centuries, in some precisely countable sense. We have a notion of deep time, the concept that today we’re just operating in what must be a smidgen of all of the time that ever existed. And what is important is that when we talk about deep time, when we talk about the fact that we’re currently living in a small period of time in relation to other eras, it gets us thinking about other things. […] Deep time is one way of telling time, and one of the things that it gets us out of is the panic that whatever is happening right now is completely unprecedented (emphasis mine).

Kinship is also another way of telling time, according to Kyle. For example, in a conflict between Native people, the conflict is resolved by considering an entire history of each of the people’s kinship relationships, both direct family and their societies. They can even go back centuries. This process reveals the different ways in which people are related and how the current conflict reflects a historical betrayal of some kind. He further expands this idea (p. 83):

This is not exclusively the realm of Native folks. What is important is that if kinship relationships are not just the responsibilities themselves, but are all the qualities that are attached to them, the reciprocity, the consent, the trust, and so on, then you can actually tell a whole history by looking at different areas of when there was an escalation of kinship or a de-escalation of kinship, when there was an expansion and the contraction of kinship.

In telling history in terms of kinship relationships, Kyle says, it’s no longer surprising when a wind power project is approved without the consent of people living on the land. Likewise, it may also help us to understand why people refuse to wear a mask during the COVID-19 pandemic, not only for their own safety but also to protect others more vulnerable.

Another way of telling time is through the seasons. Over time and generations, Indigenous people have gained knowledge of hundreds of human and non-human relationships and social activities during each season. Kyles explains this way of telling time alerts Native people to changes in the environment that require attention (pp. 84-85):

[Native people] don’t say that ‘During this season, this blossoms.’ […] They always talk about a social activity, and by social, I’m meaning human and nonhuman. They always talk about a social activity that has some importance. It could be cultural and it could be economic, so they talk about the relationship and the social mobilization that occurs along with it.

In this way, when you notice that seasonal relationships are not in line with society’s social activities, you know that a seasonal indicator is off. Then, it becomes essential to get together as a society to find out the cause. When a global response is required, Kyle cautions us to take everything into consideration. For example, we cannot decide to end the coal industry and ignore what would happen to the people working in that area.  

For Kyle, the issue is not “How do I reduce my carbon footprint?” Rather, it’s “Do we have the kinship needed to properly respond as a society, so that we won’t mess each other up in the process?”

Kyle points out that Indigenous communities, repeatedly devastated during the last couple of hundreds of years, are still in the process of figuring out how to rebuild the fabric of their societies through networks of kinship relationships. He adds (p. 88):

When I advocate for tribal dignity, self-determination, it’s because I know that the families, or that my family, that my society, and some of the related communities, are really my best bet if I want to have that network of people that will give me the support that I need. And I know that my support of them will be meaningful to them.

Kyle notes that we shouldn’t pretend our freedom comes from our acts alone. The sooner we acknowledge that there are several other factors involved, the sooner we’ll understand our responsibilities towards others. No one individual has caused climate change or a public health crisis. Yet, the resulting effects challenge our conception of freedom, our wealth, our well-being, and our safety. Until we seriously reflect on how we got to this point, it’s extremely challenging to mobilize people to respond.

Collective action, Kyle points out, depends upon kinship relationships with others that don’t ignore the diverse contributions of others. We should also consider that what works for one community may not work for ours.

We also need to free ourselves from clock time that limits our vision to our own lifetime. This creates a sense of panic. Instead, we should be planning for the next three, four, seven generations, for the long term, and what it means to think about our kinship as transcending whatever we perceive to be our life.

[W]e need to think about what type of team we want to be part of. We want to figure out who the collective of people are that are meaningful to us, that are responsive to change, and think about what it means to build that kinship network (emphasis mine).

Kyle acknowledges that developing relationships is a slow process. There’s also a dark side to kinship. Oftentimes, the people we regard as our kin are the ones who are in the position to be the most abusive. Moreover, a nepotistic society is a type of kinship that is completely unbalanced. The challenges are many. We’re all learning how best to comport ourselves. Though we may not always succeed in gaining trust and consent to achieve a specific course of action, we must not forget that we’re all in this together for the long term.   

*  *  *  *  *  *

I know about the dark side of abusive relationships among my own kin. I also know firsthand about the power of non-familial kinship relationships. I experienced it after my ex-husband abandoned me and our two sons, then six and eight years old, in Brazil and returned to Guyana. Neighbors, teachers, and work colleagues rallied around us, offering support in a myriad of ways. More recently, I witnessed this power following the devastating January 2025 Palisades and Eaton Fires in Los Angeles County, when we Angelenos mobilized to provide for the immediate needs of thousands of families who were not only left homeless but also lost their possessions and memories.

I remain hopeful that, when another extreme weather event strikes again, the communities under attack will find strength and resilience within their kinship networks. As Kyle emphasizes during his interview with Kahr and Stan, the strength of those networks depends upon the work we put into developing our kinship relationships.

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Click on links below for previously featured interviews:

#1: Raquel Ramirez (Ho-Chunk, Ojibwe, Lenca) – Awareness
#2: Alexii Sigona (Amah Mutsun) – Stewardship
#3: Terri Delahanty (Cree) – Sacred Feminine and Sacred Masculine
#4: Shannon Rivers (Akimel O’otham) – Balance
#5: Lyla June Johnston (Diné [Navajo], Tsétsêhéstâhese [Cheyenne]) – Trust