Maya Lilly: Lifting the Veil - Storytelling as a Catalyst for Change

How are storytelling and the arts a tool for activism and positive change? How does empathy, curiosity and understanding serve as an antidote to parachute journalism and the key to turning stories into positive change?And why are the arts increasingly critical in a polycrisis world?In this episode of Earthbound, I highlight a conversation with Maya Lilly, a lead producer of the Years Project, creating documentaries and TV docuseries vocal currently on the climate crisis, including the Emmy Award winning Years of Living Dangerously.Storytelling is a powerful tool, and in these dangerous, divisive times, storytelling Bearing Witness is among the most effective tools for making real change. But like any tool, it must be deployed competently, consistently and ethically to reach the desired result.In a media environment where clickability is the tail wagging the storytelling dog, journalists parachute into a community in a hurry without a deep understanding of the people, culture, history or context involved. Parachute journalism risks making the storyteller the protagonist.The story shifts to the outsider's perspective of a place or problem tinged with a predetermined angle rather than about the people who actually live with it. Or in can be subtle or sometimes maybe slick is a better descriptor.But instead of being a vehicle of discovery, understanding, and most importantly, solving problems for vulnerable communities, the star of the show is the storytelling. The storyteller.At their best, storytellers are to sound a bit highfalutin conduits of truth, and for that they must get out of the way, allowing that truth to reveal itself. It's not that outsiders are bad storytellers, motivated always by malevolence, indifference, or self aggrandizement.But it demands humility, time, context, meaningful listening, and a spirit of service, an awareness that people are more than the story we came looking for.Much too often the alleged journalist drops in with that foreordained chronicle in mind, gathers a smattering of interviews and juicy anecdotes, uploads the file, and then, whoosh, are gone.We'll let Maya nerd out on good storytelling in a bit, but first let's get a foundation her deep affinity for the natural world and how Maya came to invest her time, talent and energy in merging the arts with activism, storytelling with action, and shining a light on resilience in the face of overwhelming odds. Nature was always a refuge for Lily, the calming majesty of the coastal redwoods floating in the ocean, climbing a tree to read.At the same time, in the arts she found the connection between human expression and nature's sanctuary. And it was here, in Nature and the Arts, that she found her calling.

My first passion was the arts. So I loved everything about performing, performing on a stage. So it was singing, it was acting, it was dance, it was.I was in love with the arts, and I really thrived in that environment.

And when you were at Juilliard, you studied at Juilliard, you led the Green team, the Green group.

Yes, it was the Juilliard Greens. We weren't part of the political organization. It was more just.That was our name for an environmental club that was working on recycling initiatives on campus. And we did our first Earth Day and. And basically trying to, like, get the word out about different environmental issues in the 90s.

Were you always interested in the environment? Was there an aha moment that, you know, I gotta do something about this.

So I've answered this question a few times on podcasts, and it's always. I always have a different entry point.But when I think about it, I think I always felt very safe in deeply reverent natural spaces, like in the redwoods or. Or when I'd be floating in the ocean or when I'd be climbing up a tree as a teenager to go read a book.There was something to me about nature that felt like it had my back and that I was part of a wider web of life, but I didn't know the intricacies of, like, different environmental campaigns. Like, I, as a kid, I wasn't fully versed in ocean pollution or deforestation or animal rights issues.All of that I learned about the time I was 15, and my Cuban bestie was a vegetarian and sometimes pescatarian. And I had a conversation with her one night about it, and she, this is pre Google, you know, where you couldn't just Google PETA's fact sheets.She basically told me about factory farming, and I was like, oh, no, that is a horrible system. So I think what was cool about going vegetarian at 15, in the mid-90s, before Whole Foods, was, I had to figure it out in a very scrappy 90s way.You know, all those memes on social media that are like, you know, in the 90s, they just let us out the house. We didn't have any phone, so nobody knew where we were. They couldn't track us. We had to drink water from the hose.

I remember drinking water from the hose, riding my bike down the dirt hills on a soon to be developed tract of land, and spending my summer afternoons in evenings outside. What Lily describes and what I was unwittingly at the time developing was the sense of community with the natural world.I wasn't as intentional about it. As Maya was in her formative years.But the simple act of spending time outside paved the way for a lifelong journey of appreciation for the natural world and my or our place within it, Even as life's responsibilities drew me ever more indoors, apart, separating over those years from the sun drenched summer afternoons of my youth.We are happiest as individuals and as a species when we understand we are enmeshed in the web of life, not above it or outside it, or a godly master of its wonders. What it represents, perhaps, is balance, or a lack thereof.When we look out over the human world, despite all that modern life offers to many of us, though certainly not all, we are hobbled by destructive hubris, undermining the essential balance that makes life on earth possible. When we ignore this, we all pay the price.

One of my favorite books when I was a teen was Ishmael. And what I loved about that book was it's basically taking on that theory. It's looking at, are humans really everything evolution was intending?And are we taking ourselves out of the principles of life, such as, you know, locking up food from others or coveting food from other species? Like, that was a very interesting philosophy, philosophy for me.And then when I went off to college to environmental studies after Juilliard, I was really into deep ecology. I don't know if you've ever nerded out about that a little bit. Yeah, yeah.So for me it was, it was amazing to think about how our civilization has been set up as a human's first value system with an economic model that doesn't incorporate ecosystems or ecology, but the world, the natural world, is so incredibly complex that we cannot control it.And so I love how deep ecology teaches that it's not our right to reduce this richness of the natural diversity and that, you know, we are part of nature and therefore anything that we do that takes the ecological balance out of balance, it is not our right to do balance.

Deep ecology, these are just ways to talk about indigenous knowledge life, ways that respect the gifts of nature not as a means of linear extraction, but of circularity, understanding, reverence and affinity for the natural world, emphasizing once again that we are an integral part of, of creation, that the cycles of life, give and take, are the ground of all being.Since humans have gathered around the fire, stories have served as a storehouse of deep ecological knowledge and shaped our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. Good stories are not passive amusements, as Lilly says. The best stories connect the heart with the mind.And as she admits she loves to geek out on storytelling. And who am I to stop her?

I love. I love to geek out about storytelling.And my quick story is I moved to Hollywood after doing an environmental studies degree because I wanted to figure out what Hollywood does well, either to infiltrate it so I can get climate and environmental storytelling in Hollywood or take those techniques back to groups on the ground. And I ended up kind of doing both.What we do differently at the Years project is we go to groups, often Frontline, often bipoc, who already have a campaign, something that they're. An action that they're taking. They have a fight. Because a good story is somebody confronting a problem and overcoming that problem.I think there's a lot of fuzziness about what storytelling is, but in the Western tradition, that's what a good story is, is somebody has a problem and they overcome it. And we watch that story arc, that journey.And what it does in the process is it lifts the veil of what would otherwise be a chaotic life experience where nothing is connected and we understand the connections between seemingly random events. So story arcs are very important. They've been something we've been doing since around the campfire, from the on of time.So what Hollywood does is sometimes they'll have an impact campaign after they've produced the film. Films take a very long time. TV shows less. You know, a good documentary can take six years. A good TV show takes at least like eight months.They lock up that footage so nobody can use it. You have to license it. They don't give that license easily.You know, we just offered some footage from Cancer Alley to a documentary that's being funded by Ford Foundation. And one of the original contract pieces was they were like, okay, so now you're not gonna be able to use your footage that you shot.

Wow.

That we'd already released. And we were like, no, we're gonna have to revise that because we. It's our footage, so you can't tell us to lock up the footage.So Hollywood is known for that, and it makes sense. There are business, money making, Right. And then they.They usually will have an impact campaign at the end that may or may not have anything to do with what the community has been fighting for. So I'll give you an example.We were some of the first DOC team on the ground in East Palestine, Ohio, when the train derailed and they decided to blow up carcinogenic vinyl chloride over the town, which is still astonishing to me. I'm sure you saw that mushroom cloud.

Yeah, yeah.

And the town was getting sick. They were getting sick.Kids Were, you know, still playing in the water that the officials said didn't have any of the plume in it, but they were getting sick, so they knew that it did. So when I went in with my DP and my crew, I said, what do you guys need? What do you want? What can we do to help you?What can a lot of eyes on this piece help with? They said, well, Governor Mike DeWine of Ohio has not declared an emergency, so we do not have the FEMA funds.He, as I recall, he only declared a federal emergency on the day that it would expire, which was one year later. Now, we filmed them going to the Capitol and disrupting an event so that all of the politicians could know how urgent the issue was.And then they also wanted vinyl chloride placed on the list of banned chemicals by the EPA chemicals to consider banning.And so we partnered with Beyond Plastics after we had made different cuts of the film, and we specifically pushed the film to EPA regional and EPA federal officials. And we can see in real time whether or not they watched it. And they did.And then my proudest moments as a producer is vinyl chloride was placed on the list of chemicals to consider banning by the EPA.

That's great.

In Washington, D.C. so I say all that because, you know, Hollywood doesn't create an on ramp to action for the audience.And there was a good study by a group called Rare that said if you just tell people the facts and don't offer them some sort of have somebody tell them, well, what do I do? Then most people, they'll know the facts, but they won't take action.Yeah, because, you know, as Al Gore said in Earth and the Balance years ago, said if a problem seems too insurmountable that my one individual action can't have an impact, then people will do nothing, as opposed to a small step if it's too big of a problem. So we have this cognitive dissonance of like, oh, I just can't. I have no idea. You know, I can't help.So I try to jury rig the situation where and my whole team at the Years project, we try to jerry rig it so we can make it as easy as possible for not only the groups on the ground that are longtime climate activists to win their campaigns, but also wider audiences to know how can they help beyond just donating, like, what can they do? I think there are some things that can be learned from the story, techniques that have been told by the other side.And I should just say we're a nonprofit, so, you know, we don't advocate for politicians and we can talk about politics in general, but I'm sure you can infer my own opinions about this. I think what they have done well is they've had very simple narratives that they just hammered over and over and over. And I think what the.The liberal community has done poorly is have these very complex issues that they've told badly. And often scientists, who, bless their hearts, are not the best storytellers. Right.And a problem that I fight, that I have to deal with and fight with constantly is a lot of the foundations don't understand the value of storytelling, you know, so, like, I just. I just had a conversation with a giant indigenous funder who was very proud of the fact that their overhead is only 10%.Every other part of their budget goes entirely to the indigenous for land rights. And I'm like, that's awesome.However, some of that budget needs to be comms, because those groups will win their land rights if they have a really good campaign that involves storytelling. And because the storytelling is going to reach further and wider than they can. And it's going to. It's going to help.It's going to be because storytelling is culture shift. Storytelling is change. Storytelling connects the heart with the mind. The thing that inspires people to take action, not just the facts.It's marrying the facts with the. With the heart. That's what we do. And so in this time, I'm inspired by some of the techniques of simplicity.So I think that's one of the things our team really works hard on in our writer's room process is how do we make this as simple as possible? How do we not make it wonky? How do we stop using the word anthropocentric or even greenhouse gas emissions, and we swap it for pollution?There are so many tricks that you can do that make something much more palpable for a general audience who's concerned about their kids and their community and maybe not like the global environment, Right?

Well, we're a storytelling species. That's how we get through our lives by telling ourselves stories and all the myths that we've built up, some good, some bad.How can storytelling improve their lives and maybe balance the power dynamic that exists between the powers that be and the communities that are impacted by their actions?

So one of the best descriptions of environmental racism that I ever heard was from a man named Hop Hopkins from Sierra Club. And I'll give him due credit because I was like, finally, somebody has simplified this, of why racism is connected to climate.And what he said was, you can't have a disposable industry without disposable people. And so when you have industries that have byproducts that are toxic, they have to go somewhere. And where they go is racism. Yeah, right.That's interesting to people who they think of as disposable. And, you know, a lot of people think that black communities, like, form around the plants because maybe the land's cheaper.They've actually proved it's the opposite. Those communities, black and brown communities, existed, and then plants move in across the nation.So the power dynamic is always an underlying thematic in the pieces that I do. And I think what's great about storytelling is audiences love a good villain. We love a good villain.And there's no shortage of good villains in this climate fight, like Governor Landry in Louisiana, who did some pretty egregious things to prevent the EPA from actually following through with their investigation of Title 6. And like the racist claims that they said they were going to follow through on in 2024.Storytelling for me is like looking through a little peephole into a wider room. So often what I'm trying to do is find the smaller story that shows the bigger story within it.

Yeah, yeah.

Because I think sometimes where documentaries go wrong, and there are lots of them, is they go too wide, and then we don't have an emotional connection to an individual. And so no.Sharon Levine, the reason she is such a media darling and was the Goldman Prize winner, the grandmother in Cancer Alley who everybody knows now and is invited to every panel around the world and just met the Pope and texts me about one week, is because I love her to death.It's because she was able to take on a power system with her very simple story, which is, my family has been here for generations in St. James Parish. This plastics plant will triple the air pollution in my neighborhood. They have to leave. And she has stuck with that message. It was a simple message.She confronted power because the message was simple. It kicked off everybody knowing about her, and then it stopped the plant. The plant is not there.

Let's end where we began, in the embrace of nature. As we were closing out our hour plus long conversation, Maya wanted to leave me with one more story.

Can I. Can I tell you one more story that I would love to share with you?So when I took a trip to Jamaica with my mom a couple years ago, we were staying at this hotel that had this little swimming platform pretty far out in the water, maybe, I would say it was maybe like, I don't know. I can't ever think of feet, but, like, it would have been like a 20 minute swim to get to this floating platform, right?And I'm a good swimmer and I love swimming in crystal clear Caribbean waters. But it was enough that I had to kind of steel myself up for it.And I was sitting on the beach with my mom and I told her, I'm going to keep looking at you every now and then just to communicate that I'm okay in the swim. But I want to try it. I want to try and go for this little floating sunbathing platform that the hotel had put in the middle of the water.And so I set out and I had goggles and just a bikini and I just started swimming and I was able to see, like, the ocean floor. And, you know, unfortunately, Jamaica has lost a lot of its coral and a lot of its parrot fish because of warming waters.So I wasn't seeing as much as I normally do. But it felt really good to have the water on my skin. And I just was. It was a beautiful day. And I.Every time I got a little scared, like, oh, God, I'm so far out, and what if I get a cramp? You know, I would just like kind of turn on my back and float for a second and just remind myself that I was safe. This is the Caribbean.There are no big waves unless there's a hurricane, you know, like, I'm okay. So I finally, finally, finally, after about 20 minutes, I finally got to the little ladder by this floating platform.And I was so proud of myself as I climbed up it. I was like, that's the farthest I've ever swum. I am. I am a badass. I am so. Look at me.I'm in the middle of this floating little tiny platform that I can just lay on that's just big enough for me. And I looked out at the ocean and then I looked down and I had swum through a whole bloom of hundreds of jellyfish.And Jamaica doesn't have, like, the poisonous ones, like box jellyfish, like Australia, but they sting. They have jellyfish that'll sting you and it'll hurt. And I had swum through all of them unscathed.And they were floating everywhere and I didn't see them, I didn't feel them. It was like I was. It felt like I was protected. And it was that thing of feeling like again that nature's on your side and that because I had. I had.I had this challenge. It was almost like they parted the. It felt like they parted the way for me. To get to that platform because I have never.No idea why I didn't get stung. It was the most amount of jellyfish I've ever seen.And I looked it up later and those jellyfish are occurring in larger numbers because of the warming ocean. They have a longer breeding period. So I had never seen a jellyfish in Jamaica up till that point.

And here were hundreds of them. And not one of them. Not one of them bothered you? Well, you know, not one of them.

And I didn't have a camera, so I had no proof other than it was like Jody Faulkner in Contact. I was like, I have experience.

Yeah.

And my mom was like, really? It's like everywhere.

We were part of the web of life.

It felt that way. I mean, it felt mystical.It was like, how, how did they allow me to just go by and nobody, everybody knew, I guess, that I was there, not trying to hurt them.

Yeah.

That I just wanted to sit on this little. This little wooden platform.

That's interesting. I wanted somehow, you know, obviously they don't have the brains that we do, but somehow maybe they got a sense that you were not a threat.

Maybe. I mean, I wasn't singing, I wasn't swimming aggressively.

Yeah, yeah.

But it, you know, I tell this story because it just reminded me again of like, that we're part of the web of life and I think our intentions matter and I think our intentions can be felt. So like, indigenous people have long thought, you know, other species can feel us. You know, this is not just. This is not just a one way conversation.You know, there is magic to this world, this little beautiful planet that we're on.

To be clear, neither I nor Maya Lilly recommends swimming in a smack of jellyfish. It's impossible to know how or why the jellyfish left Maya alone as she swam to the platform, bobbing in the warm Caribbean waters.But we can use her experience to, as she says, remind us of the. The magic and beauty in the natural world that we are part of the web of life.And our intentions and the actions they bring about radiate out into the world in ways we cannot know. What we do know is that through these intentions and actions we have agency. The fight for a better world is never too big or too small.These highlights of our conversation represent the foundation of Maya Lilly's philosophy and work. Lilly's craft and mission is using storytelling as a window to a larger reality beyond the shadow of our biases and preconceived notions.Check the show notes for more information on Maya Lilly. The Years project and other topics discussed in this episode. There's also a link to the full RAW Interview audio for those interested.I'm Thomas Shinnamon, and this is Earthbound Stories from the Anthropocene Life on a Warming Planet. If this episode resonated with you, if you like what we're doing, please like and subscribe wherever you listen. Thank you.Dear listener, if you've made it this far, I truly appreciate you. We're working on upping our publication schedule to bring you more engaging conversations, so stay tuned and until next time, stay safe. Sam.