Earthkeepers: A Circlewood Podcast on Creation Care and Spirituality · Forrest Inslee

A More Ecological Democracy: Native American Vision for Better Government, with Randy Woodley | Ep. 143

·38 min·2 clips

Woodley lists universal care, shelter, hospitality, and consensus as practices Indigenous ancestors used for millennia.

1. Earthkeepers: A Circlewood Podcast on Creation Care and Spirituality centers this conversation on Randy Woodley's series "Make Democracy Great Again" and its link to earth care. 2. Forrest Inslee speaks with Randy Woodley, an author, professor, and Ketawah Cherokee descendant, whose work on indigenous values shapes the episode's argument. 3. The episode asks what democracy is for if it does not protect land, community, and the people most excluded by power. 4. Woodley describes a $164,000 solar grant for Ilohe Indigenous Center for Earth Justice and says the county delayed installation, demanded permits, and required an agritourism application. 5. He says that dispute may become a landmark case and connects it to earlier conflict around county planning and zoning. 6. Inslee asks why Woodley chose the title "Make Democracy Great Again," and Woodley says it is a play on "Make America Great Again" that points back to exclusion. 7. Woodley says Native tribes often practiced better forms of democracy than the United States has ever achieved. 8. He names the Iroquois Confederacy and says Franklin, Jefferson, and others took ideas from it but "didn't go far enough." 9. He says the old ways valued peace, hearing everyone's voice, and cooperation more than competition. 10. Woodley says the series will also cover immigration reform, health care, and public campaign financing. 11. Asked what angers him, Woodley says Congress, especially the Republican side, has stopped acting as a co-equal branch of government. 12. He quotes his father on Republicans and Democrats and uses that memory to describe long-standing distrust of both parties. 13. Woodley says the current government is more embarrassing than ever and that America has long avoided reckoning with its history. 14. He says the founders built a system for wealthy, landowning, white Western European males, not for Native Americans, African Americans, poor whites, or women. 15. He argues that the country has always functioned as an oligarchy when corporations and wealthy interests outweigh ordinary citizens. 16. Woodley says the environmental crisis reflects "rare earth minerals" logic, "drill baby drill," and taxing the earth beyond her recovery rate. 17. He says policy language is shifting so that the EPA now focuses on what damages corporations rather than what damages humans. 18. The interview style is direct and conversational, with Inslee asking pointed follow-up questions and Woodley answering in a plainspoken, sometimes blunt register. 19. People interested in Indigenous political thought, creation care, and civic reform would likely want this episode. 20. People wanting a light, nonpolitical conversation would probably skip it.

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