An Important Discussion ... with the beautiful Nat Kelley
I’ve had the absolute pleasure of chatting to someone I look up to in countless ways. Her sincere dedication to our world including our land, oceans & humanity ... along with her tireless efforts towards teaching people that it's possible to live with the planet & not just on the planet in terms of our evolution - is quite remarkable. Her ideas towards regenerative living, her commitment to unlearn the many lessons we're taught early on about living in a way that causes so much harm to our environment, plus her sheer passion for sustainable living is simoly incredible. It blows my mind every time.
Nathalie Kelley (@natkelley) is a woman so much more than her successful career. She so humbly takes her successes in her stride as she lives to better her footprint, not her bank account. She is well researched, honest, brave & soulful.
I personally learn so much just from her Instagram … not to mention her many interviews, articles & live discussions on matters to do with ethical production & trade, sustainability, climate change & social equality. She is a woman on fire. I really urge you all to hold onto her words below, and move forward with your day taking her ideas into account.
Get ready guys … this is one powerful piece.
Thank you so much for taking the time to chat Nat. I am such a fan of your wonderfully, wise voice. I hope the whole world hears you.
Elyse x
1. What is your first memory of becoming aware of the environment & the health of our planet?
For as long as I can remember I have felt very connected to the natural world. I think this can be said of most Australians. How could you not feel awe at the sound of a kookaburra laughing? Even now in my 30’s, Australia and her wildlife still fill me with wonder. But like so many of us I “grew up” and felt I needed to pursue “more important things.” Society tells us that in order to be successful you have to accumulate a lot of things and make a lot of money and drive a nice car. And in the pursuit of all these things we grow further and further away from nature. Our heads become so full of content, news, music etc that we stop listening to the kookaburras and to the natural world. Maybe if we listened more we would understand how badly our earth and Australia especially is hurting right now. I believe a profound, symbiotic and mutually beneficial relationship with nature is our birthright. But it is just now in my 30’s that I’m beginning to unlearn all the harmful thinking that separated me from her in the first place.
2. How about social equality? What is the earliest memory when you thought to yourself, "things have to change!"
Growing up as an immigrant in Australia really expanded my awareness of injustice from a young age. Not that I personally suffered any particularly hard injustices, but when when you have been ‘the other’ it gives you more empathy for the underdog in any given situation.
I remember being around 5 years old when Nelson Mandela was released from prison and watching his speech with my mum and brother. I was only little but I understood the meaning of apartheid and how unjust it was. In our house we watched movies like the Power of One, and later Rabbit Proof Fence. The latter resonated deeply with me because I am also of indigenous (Peruvian) descent. In my late teens and early twenties I volunteered with Aborginal youth in Redfern/Waterloo and also at Yasmar the girls juvenile detention center. The families I met and the stories I heard were a big awakening for me. I had imagined that such systemic injustice and racism only existed in South Africa, and now I was seeing that it had been happening right here in Australia for the last 200 + years.
Most Australians are only vaguely familiar with the crimes this country has committed against the Aboriginal people. From genocide to the Stolen Generation - we have so much to do in terms of seeking forgiveness, bestowing meaningful reparations and restoring our precious First Nations peoples to a place of sovereignty in this country. The recent fires have shown us that now more than ever we need their 40 000 years of wisdom on how to live in harmony with this land we call home. For further study on this subject I encourage readers to watch both Rabbit Proof Fence and the new wonderful film In My Blood It Runs.
3. You make no secret that your personal goal is to create & lead environmental & social change. It's very selfless! Does it ever exhaust, frustrate or restrict you? If so, how do you manage that?
If I am being honest I have to admit that at times, the current climate crisis situation had left me feeling so devastated and hopeless that I didn’t want to live. Though I never came close to the fires, the collective grief and the thought of those billion animals burning was to much to bear. When I considered all the ways that I personally contributed to the situation by all my mindless consumerism, my 30 + years of excessive meat consumption, all my shopping and flights and generally wasteful way of life - there was a moment when I didn’t see the point of continuing.
But then I remembered something I had learned about the Amazon Rainforest, that years of research and carbon testing are now proving - that humans had helped to grow parts of rainforest, mindfully cultivating certain species of trees, creating literal food forests for themselves and being stewards of biodiversity at the same time. What an incredible thought! It changed my whole perspective on what it means to be human. For a long time I had thought that we were the problem, that we were inherently bad for the planet. But here is an example of when we were co-creating with nature, helping her rather than harming her!
This is the whole concept behind regenerative farming, something that I was becoming more and more drawn to after seeing the film Kiss The Ground (out soon.) And then I realized it was not too late to change my ways and become a regenerative human (someone whose presence is beneficial to the earth) as opposed to a degenerative human, someone who just constantly consumes and takes from the earths resources without giving back.
I’m still a long way from living fully regeneratively but I am looking for a place outside of the big city with a nice chunk of land so I can get started planting. I no longer care about the size of the home, just about the size of the garden! I encourage everyone to look up regenerative farming in their area, maybe look into woofing on a farm or even starting in your own backyard. If we can start the shift away from these big polluting cities and go back to the land where can start to farm in ways that heal the earth and bring biodiversity back - then humans might have a chance at surviving on this beautiful planet.
4. Another huge part of your life is advocating for sustainable fashion. Australian brands such as Nobody Denim choose to manufacture their clothing in Melbourne, Australia to reduce their carbon footprint & strengthen their ethical ethos. In recent times, what have been the biggest changes you've seen in fashion, in terms of brands becoming more eco-conscious?
To be honest right now I just see a lot of “green washing”. Brands hopping on the ‘sustainability’ bandwagon hoping to sell some more clothes that way. At the end of the day we cannot buy ourselves out of this problem. When we are making clothes to wear a few times then throw away (trillions of tons of clothes are burned or thrown into landfill every year) there really is no sustainable solution to the current fashion crisis that doesn’t involve buying less. Brands are going to have to swallow that hard pill and use their creativity in other ways in order to survive. If a brand wanted to truly be considered sustainable it would have to use EXISTING textiles - this means up cycling existing clothes to save them from landfills. Or switching to regenerative textiles like henequen. To give you an idea of why this is important consider this - it takes 3 years worth of drinking for one human to make ONE cotton t-shirt! Especially in a country like Australia that is experiencing a drought and where our fresh drinking water is a precious limited resource it is absolutely crazy that we are still growing this crop in Australia. To make more cotton t-shirts that we don’t need! Now take a plant like Henequen/Agave, which is found in Mexico. Being a desert plant it requires very little water, it Is farmed in a regenerative way as the parts that are not used in weaving the fibre are used to feed the soil - and it employs local indigenous workers and artisans in the process. Now we just have to convince brands to use these regenerative textiles in their designs instead of these awful man made fibres that are made from petroleum, leach microplastics into the oceans and take thousands of years to decompose in landfill!
6. I am all about sustainability & reducing plastics to protect our beautiful land & sea. I live for this! Can you share some of the ways you've altered your day-to-day life over the recent years to lessen your reliance on plastic and other harmful materials?
Well the first step is to eliminate single use plastics from your life. This means sacrificing a lot of the conveniences we have convinced ourselves that we need in our lives! For example I don’t order food delivery now (incredibly wasteful plastic packaging) and I always carry my basket with my reusable Tupperware and cutlery and straw - pretty much everywhere I go. It’s just a habit now. But all this individual action is pointless if we don’t lobby our local governments for change. We need to push for legislation that bans these harmful plastics. Something that is going to be harder to do with Covid because of germ fears, but I believe in human ingenuity. And if we ban harmful single use plastics then maybe we can design truly compostable and (again) regenerative materials that can be used once then thrown in the garden. Our ancestors used bowls made of hollowed nuts and tubers. I have seen packaging made from banana leaves. We can do it! I know we can! But the first step is making the harmful stuff illegal.
7. I'm also very big on promoting positive thinking & practising gratitude. Working on our own happiness & feeling confident within our own skin can manifest into amazing productivity! How do you remain positive & uplifted when you're having an off day?
Kundalini and Qi gong are two of my practices that I credit with clearing stagnation from my body (physical, emotional and mental).
Another healing technique that has had an enormously positive impact on my emotional well-being is PSYCH-K. I have been holding virtual sessions with my friend and facilitator Alison Godbier, and in the month I have been doing it I have seen very powerful shifts in my life. Why I like this technique is that it uses kinesiology to track limiting beliefs in your subconscious and clear them from your mind and body. I think traditionally therapy has its benefits but after years of just talking about my problems it feels so good to let my subconscious do the work and the healing. For example, one belief that we uncovered was my blockage around laughter. I didn’t realize it but I had unconsciously been holding onto the belief that it was frivolous and I needed to spend my time doing important things like solemnly meditating, saving the world, researching etc. Even all my healing techniques made space for emotions like sadness and grief, but I had made no such space for levity and laughter! So she gave me the homework of incorporating a laughing meditation (there is such a thing, look it up) into my daily ritual and it has had a profound impact on my outlook on life. But I would probably never have discovered that hidden little subconscious block in traditional therapy.
8. What is something you have learned in your "sustainability journey" that you think we should all know? Is there something you learned that made you super determined to drive change?
I will end this interview with a link to an article explaining our potential as humans on this planet. When we lived as co-creators with Mother Earth. I hope it inspires you as it has me!
