Collective Liberation & Colonial Legacies, 1 of 3
A conversation between guest collaborator sarah sao mai habib and Minnow’s former Director of Farm and Policy Programs, Mai Nguyen
sarah habib – Could you start by introducing yourself, Minnow, and your role at the organization?
Mai Nguyen – I have centered my work and dedication on fighting climate change and minimizing social inequality, two big challenges of our times. I've tried many different ways to be a part of the solution. I was a climate scientist and did field research and climate modeling disaster management for a while. And I then was like: I'm just measuring how bad things are. So, what if I take more direct action? I got more involved in disaster management after hurricanes. First, Hurricane Katrina, then when Cyclone Nargis came over to Burma, Thailand. I worked in a refugee camp there. That experience got me thinking about the human experience of climate change and how it relates to social inequality. I found myself in a refugee camp where people had been there for decades.
That normalization of displacement and asking questions about what it means to make a home brought me back to San Diego, California, where I grew up in a refugee community. My parents' family came as refugees. So, I wanted to pursue what it meant for us to be resettled within those broader causes. And connecting that with this place here, which pursued a genocidal campaign of eradicating the original peoples who were here before and those who are still here.
Growing up in San Diego, quite a few landmarks were dedicated to Spanish colonialism. I remember going to the Presidio as a kid when I was a third grader. I felt this eeriness and heard footsteps in the hallways when no one was there. It was the presence of something else. Then I happened to see this placard about Franciscan monks from Spain overseeing chained, enslaved Indigenous people working in the garden of the Presidio. That stuck with me since childhood and connects to my adulthood when thinking about resettlement and being here–making a home where people have lived for thousands of years and been displaced. What is my role in being here?
Then there's my farm work, which is trying to steward the land as a farmer/owner/operator wanting to grow Southeast Asian crops for my community and doing it in a way that honors the work that has been done for thousands of years to make it possible for this ground to be fecund and to continue to feed people. Alongside that, I have been working on cooperatives as a means for people like me, who have been marginalized from our conventional financial and market systems, to be able to cooperate amongst ourselves, build our economies, and feed ourselves. I helped develop immigrant-owned agricultural cooperatives and the first worker cooperative farms in California, all trying to address this very old disconnect between those who work the land and those who own the businesses and make decisions about the working conditions and how the land will be stewarded. That disconnect is deeply tied to racial inequality in our country.
Then, from that level of cooperation and democracy, I went into working on more formal politics. After the 2016 change in federal administration, I saw the need for all of these grassroots-level forms of democracy to institutionalize the right for people of color–who already have this experience of power building and resource building–to be in the halls of power at a time when that was really being eroded. So, I developed a California program through the National Young Farmers Coalition.
I was the first California organizer and director and focused on organizing farmers of color to participate in politics. We have so many farm workers, and there are attempts to organize them to have greater political power and influence. But there's little representation of small to midsize farmers of color owner/operators in politics. So that was my focus. Directing all that work on cooperatives and on trying to own our means of production into having power in the political sphere. During that time, what I kept hearing as a main hindrance for farmers of color and their communities to be able to have real sustainability and to build political and intergenerational power and what was standing in the way was the lack of land, the lack of land security, and the lack of land tenure.
In 2018, I was in a rural leaders fellowship retreat. We were asked to imagine that we had died, and to reflect on our lives and what we've done, and then to imagine that we came back to life and that in coming back to life, what did we want to do? And so it was at that moment that I recognized that I wanted to commit myself to land justice and building on all of that work. And that's where the idea that would become Minnow came from. I started bringing together people who I thought would be a good initial team. I thought, “Okay, we're talking about land. We need a lawyer. We need someone who understands finance. And we need someone who understands land history and can do the research.”
So there were three people initially, and we started formulating this idea of what would become Minnow—and going at this question of: how do we secure land for people of color? How do we address this labor justice issue, this racial justice issue, and how do we do that in a way that isn't part of a settler colonial project of continued displacement? How do we do this in a way that integrates and centers Indigenous sovereignty, and that is, first and foremost, when we are given permission then to bring farmers to the table? How do we then work together to find a place of belonging for everyone? So those are the initial days of Minnow and how I got there.
SH – Thank you so much for giving a more complete picture of what led you to create Minnow with your collective. I’ve really enjoyed learning about you. It feels like you took this circular journey around what it means to feed our communities, from soil to food distribution to waste management, and then to where you're at now. And it sounds like it's deeply informed by your many lineages.
Since this project really is about what it means to be in solidarity, whether it's with other humans or with other species, I'm curious to hear more about how those lineages informed your direction. You did answer it already in some ways, but if you wanted to add to that? And there’s a related question: do you have the desire to weave in the healing and wisdom traditions from your lineages as part of this sovereignty work?
MN – Regarding lineage and how it informs my work on sovereignty, I certainly go back to those times, and it's been a process. It's not like I had all these revelations at once in terms of what it means to be a child of refugees. There are the early stages of just assimilating/rejecting. But also of just being immersed in it. It's like there's my life, in our house, where talking about war and loss and violence was normal because that was everybody's lived experience. And that comes out in different ways.
I appreciate the question about healing, and I'll connect back to that. But recently, we were at a Northern Chinese restaurant, and they were playing Dances with Wolves. And there was all this violence against Indigenous people happening on the screen. And my four-year-old is sort of watching, not watching. And I just think about how, for me, that kind of stuff was on TV, and our families would play that stuff because violence was so...it's almost...it's not like people were desensitized to it, but it's like violence was fine. We could just never watch any films with sex scenes, which is like the flipside. So I think that as a microcosm of the experience of coming from a lineage where we're almost comfortable around violence–I wouldn't say comfortable like it feels good–but that it is more accepted than moments of intimacy. It’s something that I grew up with, and I’m thinking about how I don't want it, right? And how I don't want to live in a world where violence is the norm. So, in our resettlement in the US, how do we use this opportunity as a time to really advance peace in our surroundings and then in ourselves?
That connects to peeling back the layers of understanding, how we got here, and that it's not just about this Vietnam/American war in the American imagination and nostalgia and grief, right? It's portrayed in a particular way that's about just the North and the South, or Communists and the Republic. It goes back to not just French colonialism that also divided people, not just geographically, but within their own families: of those who then worked for the French government, those who did not, those who then could advance in society and have an education and have a house and have food and opportunities; and those who did not. But French colonialism goes even deeper based on the divide that was happening with the waves of colonialism from China. That colonial process took over a thousand years.
What I've been learning from my lineage is, first, the power of our resistance to colonialism over those thousands of years, where we would have periods of 400 years of independence; then 200 years of colonial subjugation under China. And, second, to think of that longer timeline and what's possible as an American now to say: yes, Indigenous peoples have been colonized for the 500 years of a Western European presence, but how does that fit into a longer time scale of resistance? Of then saying that those 500 years are not predictive of the next 500 years. So, how can I draw from my lineage of those experiences of maintaining persistence and commitment to resisting colonial powers and being a part of a solidarity movement for sovereignty here?
At the same time, I also bring the lineage of the cost of that colonial presence that the result for us was a displacement from our homes; what was the Civil War and this division in our families that still creates a rupture to this day? And how that plays out in family dynamics, I still see that they are old, and yet they are still renewed. So, in some ways, I think of my lineage and our experiences as the canary in the coal mine, like the warning sign that if we do not decolonize, if we do not do this healing work, then there will be even more displacement.
In the broader context of what we're seeing right now in the war between Israel & occupied Palestine, when there is no place to be displaced, then it becomes a genocidal campaign. We've also seen that here in the US, so I have that recognition of what's at stake. And it's part of my drive to decolonize and advance Indigenous sovereignty.
I've been learning more about my mother's lineage through listening to other Việt Kiều and also reading. So, thank you so much for giving me more to know about myself and contextualizing it to today as well. There's lots of wisdom in holding all that and in surviving that; lots of things that we carry through in our lineages that are healing. So the related question is, do you weave in or desire to weave in those types of healing lineages and traditions in this sovereignty work? And if you have, how has that taken shape?
I think of two ways that I've dug into the healing work. One is getting into the specifics of conjuring particular ancestors and relations. Thinking about trying moments or moments where I feel I need to take on a certain persona to meet the moment is channeling my aunts mostly. On my mom's side, I had a lot of aunts, bringing their tenacity, humor, and "I'm not going to take that!" attitude. And it's a way to keep alive their memories and honor how they've helped me grow. Thinking about my aunt Thu–there are so many stories!
I was also thinking about what's happening in Palestine and the cutting off of water and electricity. And right now, at my house, we had to shut off the water because there's a leaky pipe, and I'm like, oh my God, I'm just having to deal with this for a short period of time. And that is nothing compared to that, on top of all the other forms of violence that are happening in Palestine. But it got me thinking about how my family went through those times and of a recipe I used to make preserved cabbage. It's not precisely Kimchi. It's similar, but it's just more spices and garlic, and it lasts a long time. My mom showed me how to make it because she was taught by my aunt Thu when they were experiencing the Tet Offensive, and they had no water or power, but that's when they made all of these preserved cabbages. And so, just thinking of my aunt going out, finding whatever ingredients she could during a time when people were being shot in the street. And being committed to getting those supplies for the family and taking that time doing the mortar and pestling of the spices and then layering everything carefully so that there are no air bubbles, so it doesn't go bad, taking that patience during a time of such intensity and fear, and doing that with my mom, who was also quite young at the time.
Channeling those traits is a form of recognizing the power that we already have. And by making that food and eating it is also a time of taking in nourishment as a form of embodied healing, and not just as a mental-emotional concept, right? So that's an example of conjuring specific people and bringing their attributes to life as a way of healing by bringing them into new situations where it's like, oh, I'm now making it with my children in a joyful way. And so, how can we think of this food as healing a past experience that was much more fraught and bringing that kind of experience into something that is a homely and pleasant memory for my kids?
The other way I have tried to tap into healing through my lineage is by embracing Buddhism. People are exploring different modalities for healing and even in Western culture there's more normalization in talking about acupuncture, meditation, and mindfulness. You know, all these things are already a part of the culture I grew up in. And within a holistic framework that isn't just this piecemeal, “Now find time to meditate.” For us, there's meditation within the context of public service work. Serving others, making food for others, cleaning up public spaces, or going out to help people are acts of meditation, and taking care of all things is mindful and meditative.
And to this other part of your question of how that's manifested is just thinking about the early days of the pandemic, the response of our communities was, how do we take care of each other? One of the instances for me was thinking about who would need help the most. So, in my neighborhood, it was organizing all the teenagers who are great at texting fast to try to reach out to all of the elders to see if they were okay and what they needed, and bridging this generational gap to fulfill needs.
Then, in the scale of the work that I do with farmers, I recognized, like any time of crisis in this country, that the first people who are going to be attacked are going to be people of color. And so, how can we support people of color in their safety and help them make it through this challenging time? With that, I called up my friend Anthony Chang, who at that time was at Kitchen Table Advisors–he's just been such a great partner–and we tried to figure out the most relevant ways to support farmers of color. And I said, okay, we need a relief fund because farmers' markets are closing. All these supply chains are shutting down. How do we ensure people have money to pay for whatever they need?
So, we started organizing this emergency relief fund and doing it in a way that one: we wanted people to know about it, not just be like, oh, we found out the day after the deadline, and two, we wanted to have a really clear application process, which was mostly us calling people having amounts of money that were meaningful. What we saw coming out initially was like $1,000. I don't know what it would pay for. But for farmers paying rent and utilities or hospital bills for a family member, it’s going to be hard anyway. We knew that it needed to be more than that, and I had talked to over 130 farmers at that point and knew that we had to be in the range of $10,000 to $20,000.
So we were fundraising for that, but we also were reaching out to our friend A-dae Romero-Briones, at First Nations Development Institute, who works in Indian Country. And she said: “This is great. I can't work on this because right now, I need to get food and water for tribes.” And other people at the time were like, okay, yes, you focus on that. Because I have this food distribution background, I asked A-dae how I could help. Like, do you need logistics help? And so it turns out she was having trouble getting 6,000 pounds of meat to the Diné nation. And so I spent 72 hours, not really sleeping and just doing a bunch of logistics work to get this donated meat from California over in that direction. And yet it worked. It was all of these little, little pieces. And I was pulling all my networks of different food co-ops & distributors I had worked with ten years ago. It was like, "Hey, do you remember me?" I tried linking it all up to get the food over there. Then, through that relationship, I also learned that the Chinle Chapter of the Diné nation didn't have enough masks for the elders. So I talked to Fibershed in California to get a bunch of masks made and donated, and a thousand masks were made, which were exactly the number of elders over there. So we got that over there. And so I'm just trying to illuminate an example of this perspective of always thinking of others and our interconnectedness.
My Buddhist upbringing, the sort of can-do attitude that my aunts and mom raised me with–those are ways of activating to rise to a moment that hopefully prevented the need for healing because people were getting food and protection. Those are the ways in which I also activate those modalities for healing within myself to have that sort of strength in that compass to take the Right Action. Service can be meditative, and we can meditate on better serve sovereignty.
It's really inspiring and motivating to hear all those pathways to healing. When you were gathering and summarizing it, in the end, you also mentioned how food is a connector between not only your own history but also a beautiful way to connect to other people by sharing food. So thank you for reminding us how important food is.
I practice Zen Buddhism–and it's Thích Nhất Hạnh's birthday today, so I just want to shout out an ancestor. I learned from another teacher from a different Buddhist lineage, and you were speaking to this: how the Buddhism of where our ancestors come from, when it traveled over here to the US/West, had been sanitized of the communal nature of it all.
The last question, or second-to-last question, is really about speaking to the complexity of working with land, heritage, foods, and medicine in both a diasporic and an Indigenous context in Turtle Island. It is about navigating the complexity and the potential for deep healing that you're talking about, but also re-wounding within these intercultural spaces. If you're willing to share, how have you navigated that, and in skillful ways?
I think the core of what we're grappling with is honoring everybody's power. And that we are constantly operating in all these systems that have differentiated and created unequal and, over time, inequitable power distribution. A mentor of mine, Carol Zippert, at the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, reminded me that we need to practice equity amongst ourselves. And that is the means for engaging everybody's respective power. And that doing it relationally scales to the practice of doing it in community, scales to the practice of doing it as a society and with a shared government. But then, going back to that interpersonal level, part of acknowledging others' power is making sure that we ask for consent. That is the sphere in which someone is flexing or demonstrating their power. They need to have that opportunity and for us to refrain from constantly relying on assumptions within a system that says when someone has a say or not.
So, with that in mind, about ensuring consent, we recently had a situation at Minnow where there wasn't consent to talk about our Indigenous partners and people that we're supporting. As I understand, it landed as a visceral gut punch that added to a feeling that was all too familiar. It's a pattern that people with power have used in a disempowering way to our partners. And so, the people who wrote that piece highlighting those with whom we work might not have thought about it this way. They might have worked within the patterns of the system that we live in.
But it's really when we meet each other from our different cultural backgrounds, from our different lineages and experiences, and also as individuals that we always need to check-in. Does the pace at which we're pushed to work allow us that time? It hasn't normalized the process of checking in. There's this need to consider time differently if we are to build equity and engage in consensual ways that are democratic and equal. We have to reclaim time and move at the pace of trust, move at the pace where healing is possible.
I think something that we can look to in terms of your question about working with the land and food as it relates to healing and sovereignty is that we can look to our natural cycles of the earth, our seasons, and the ways that our foods grow healthily. Those things take their own time. To do that dance with the soil, the microbes, the water, the sunlight, and the air–for all of those things to move in concert together to become a food that is flavorful and nutritive and serves us in that relationship. It all needs that time, and in that time, to return to the earth and to be in that cycle of rest and regeneration and growth and being it's FULL this.
Our seasons are being disrupted by climate change. I think that disruption also threatens our ability to heal and follow the seasons for our expression, reflection, and learning processes. So, trying to wrap it up, it's messy. And we'll mess up, and we'll try to make amends and do that in a way that allows us all to move in concert to compost the things that need to be let go of so that they can be formed into something productive and not let things go fetid. To not have so much build-up or fear that it leads to neglect, such that you just have a rotting pile of toxic sludge, right? That is a pollutant. How do we move in a way that we can process everything together and renew it in a way that brings new life and new possibilities?
I think about cycles and time a lot and how a lot of it's shifting in really dramatic ways. And when I think about time, I also think about space and intimacy, especially between plants, and what that teaches us. I think, as humans, we've been conditioned to be competing against each other and "our issues" and "our problems." But I definitely feel inspired by how certain plant siblinghood actually encourages the thriving of other plants. And it's a big dream and it's a very messy dream. I agree with you.
This leads me to a question about how collaboration starts at Minnow, especially the land-based projects? Are there protocols for that type of relationship building and tending?
I'd be interested to hear what my colleagues say in response! We have these principles that we operate by, and that may be the closest to a protocol that we have. And regarding how it's worked so far, we are building relationships from where we are and where we live. So, for me, that’s Kumeyaay occupied territory. I have relationships with people, Luiseño or Payómkawichum, which is north of where I live in San Diego County. And that came through friendships and more casual interactions. And then, with the Kumeyaay, I attended a conference called Native Truth and Healing that was put on by several bands of the Kumeyaay. They contributed a lot to San Diego State University, where it was held. And so there's the more human ways of showing up, which is just building relationships. And trying to show up in meaningful ways in times of need or as we would as friends.
That kind of interaction or relationship with, say, A-dae at First Nations Development Institute–in this case, the work I did to try to get that food donated–it was from there that they donated a small amount of money to Minnow when we were just starting up. A-dae told Neil Thapar, one of Minnow’s co-founders, and me that she wanted us to know–and that we could let other people know–that it was only the second time her organization has ever funded non-Natives. And it's because of what we did going out of our way to get that food donated, which was meaningful. They knew that amount was not commensurate to how meaningful it was that we did that, but she wanted to say that it's a big deal for them to fund non-Natives.
From that act of solidarity, and I think for me, from feeling the pride of drawing from that Buddhist tenacious auntie lineage to do that work, that it was meaningful to them, that it was a big deal. Because of that relationship, they then asked us to be a part of this tribally-chartered project that became Kai Poma. And so Neil has been working on that. We could ask A-dae, but from what I understand, it's because that act of proactively reaching out and making that offering and doing that work was a sign of at least sufficient trust to invite us into this sacred project of land return. And I don't know how that will translate to other situations, like how we might be a part of other land return processes.
It's great that this nonprofit, Kai Poma, has provided California with a legislative precedent for transferring land. That is another key part of our role as citizens of the US, of California. But as much as we might try to build these interpersonal relationships, the work of decolonization and land rematriation and advancing Indigenous sovereignty is a government responsibility, and we need to do the work, the work of building our democracy, of engaging people to understand this history and how to engage in our political process, to elect representatives who will advance Indigenous sovereignty in that government to government relationship. That is what will be meaningful: we can hold our government responsible and accountable for land return and a healing process to address the harms done and build pathways forward that enable sovereignty, healing, and thriving.
It's a big prayer and also a requirement to take, like you said, proactive action. Is there anything that you haven't said yet that you want to share?
It's mainly just highlighting that last part. When people have asked me, “How do we do Land Back and how do we advance Indigenous sovereignty?” We need to recognize the sovereignty of these nations and learn about their governments the way we make the effort to learn about the British Parliament or other countries’ governments. We should learn about the governments of these different tribal nations. Understand that not all of them are federally recognized. What power do we have to influence our government to help with that recognition process? Recognition as peoples, recognition of what we have done to them, and also recognition of what we can celebrate, of what they still carry. So, I think it calls upon us to work through our divides, to strengthen our democracy, and to activate our own power.