Christian Mey - Beyond Borders, an Afro-Futurist Vision for Conservation in Cameroon

Join us for an insightful episode where we discuss the pivotal role of GIS in conservation with wildlife geographer Christian May. Christian shares his remarkable journey from a self-taught ranger to an influential researcher creating protected area maps in the Congo. We dive into his PhD work on decolonizing conservation practices, the importance of integrating GIS from a young age, and the ethical implications of GIS in community impact. Don't miss our chat about the NorthStar of GIS Homecoming 2024 event and discover how you can help bridge the gap between technology and conservation. Tune in and learn how GIS can reshape the future of African conservation!

Learn more about Christian's work here.

Transcript

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Be Black, Be Bold, Be Innovative, Show the World Equitable Geo. We're coming together as a collective to celebrate people of African descent, the diaspora, and talking about geospatial equity and justice. You're listening to The North Star Gaze, a podcast with intimate stories from geoluminaries. So this particular episode is one that I've been looking forward to. We're going to have a conversation around conservation and where technology and mapping sits within conservation and biodiversity. And so this guest really struck my attention with the research he's done in the Congo. I looked at how he's creating protected area maps and making it available for stakeholders. One of the key things that also struck me was he recently got a title on wildlife geographer. Did I get that right? So I think that was really fascinating. I was like, Oh, that's such a good title. And so congratulations on earning that. Your journey has been so fascinating in the sense that it's also been self taught we'll also get into that on how that has evolved from your first assignment being, putting coordinates into a GAMIN GPS device in 2019. And now looking at you just breaking barriers in conservation and doing research in the most under researched and underfunded, beats of conservation. I think we'd also get into that, which is really interesting to also talk about and, shine a spot on as well. And so ladies and gentlemen, allow me to welcome Christian May into the pod. Thank you so much, Christian, for saying yes, we are so excited to have you and can't wait to hear more about your work and what you're doing in conservation. Thank you very much, for the invitation. It's my pleasure to be here and to have the opportunity to share a little bit about myself and what I do so far in the conservation, but also GIS area. It's a huge privilege for me to share this moment with you. I am fascinated as well. I think the point that I found most interesting is the fact that your work cuts across multiple countries, and having had some experience living in West Africa, I'm aware that there can be challenges with these boundaries, whether we consider them artificial or genuine, how do you work with issues that it could be water. It can be conservation. Land rights management. So I was particularly interested when I read about the work that you're doing that cuts across 4 or 5, 6 different countries at a time. Let me ask you, Christian, you've been doing this work. You've got a body of work that you've already built upon. You're obviously doing work that's going to go forward in the future. How do you see your role and your work in G. I. S. changing over the course of time? Thank you for the question. I'll say that from the beginning, J. S. has always been presented to us as something really complex to deal with. From the training I received, it was much more about, forest exploitation, not even about wildlife conservation, but more about forest exploitation. I've got my, associate degree from the National Forestry School of Mbalmayo, and you should know the country, Cameroon, Congo, and Many countries are more about logging. So I was trained as a logging technician. We're supposed to accompany companies into logging processes. And GIS is really presented as something really complex to deal with. And that's where I got this opportunity, putting these points into the GPS, because it appeared like something really complex that nobody wanted to do. All of them had a certain experience. So in a way of trying to have my own experience, I took the tool and I said, okay, let me try and do the thing. And that's exactly what I did. Within a night I was able to put all the GPS points inside the tool, learn more about how it works and, go on the field, place some points. And I was presented at the chief as a team leader after just two days. From that point to now, I would say I've grown. I've learned on the field. I've returned to school, I was fortunate enough to attend a lot of, international workshops linked to. Wildlife conservation, but also to GIS and to the link between those two to bring about more sustainability into conservation. Christian, as you, as you're speaking, I'm just thinking on how you've mentioned your first assignment and the fact that everyone was keeping off GIS. I think it's very technical. Do you think there's an opportunity there? How do we break down that barrier and just have more adopters GIS in conservation? How do you see that currently, and how we can address that gap in bridging it? Thank you. It comes from basic education, geography in our basic secondary and high school education, especially in my country, is not seen as something really scientific. Geography is confused with history, most of the time but they don't present the scientific significance of geography. It is when you start dealing with, the utility of GIS for decision making, how simple having some points presented on a map can help you seeing phenomenons at a larger scale that you start understanding how useful. Geography can be. For me attending the ESRI users conference and having this high school, students presenting the work they have been doing so far using GIS, shows how important it is to advertise GIS product, not only for those in the high school system, but starting from the base, I would say it's important to go from the base and show, primary secondary and high school students, how geography occupies a central places and everything we do. It is after my training at national forestry school, the first guy who trained me in GIS asked where does one phenomenon not happen on earth? Everything we do happens on Earth, so it has a geographic location. From the moment something has a geographic location, then it is linked to GIS. So everything we do is linked to GIS. Geography has been something very fundamental and needs to be brought back from the basic education, but also the secondary school education. So a lot of advertisement. And now the second aspect is the fact that in my country, especially trainings are really expensive. So making them affordable, making them reachable for the majority of people is going to break down this distance that exists between GIS and all those who need to practice GIS for their business or for their training or education. You may have actually partially answered the question I was about to ask, which is what can we at Northstar do to help advance the work that you're doing? Or, how do we advance the use of GIS in your home country? I'll say it's going to be really Interesting. Like for the last, 10 years before taking a break for my PhD, I used to be working with students planting trees every year. I used to be working, I would plant tree every time when I go for inventories in the bush, I'll return with seeds in bags and plant the seeds, have some saplings and every year carry out a campaign with some students. I'm replanting them with this to have, I think the students shouldn't have this natural curiosity. And if we start talking about GIS, the power of GIS, the beauty of maps and how they are made, the importance of having the location of things. Gathering, the link between where something happens and what is its nature. Having those, thoughts put in the minds of kids when they are still in primary school, in secondary school, is going to bring back the central place of. Gs and it is something so far that is not really done. Most of the people don't see the real importance of GIS because not much is said about geography and GIS when we are still in secondary school. So I think participating through the education as of secondary school is going to be very important to make sure the youth are more empowered about the use of GIS for their career is this something you think schools would be open to having either us or us teaching the teacher? You're like, 1 of the things that we find is powerful is not just doing trainings, but training the trainers who are able to do other trainings within the community. Is that something you think would be received? Well, yeah. For instance, most of the people now, because a lot of land are being purchased in Cameroon, we have throughout my career, the 11 years I've been working with the Department of Wildlife and Protected Areas, I've contributed to map and create around 12 protected areas. So we have this land tension and land conflicts. between the population, the country and the conservationist. Everybody now try to have a map. Everybody try to have a map if he buys a piece of land, he would like to know what is happening on the area. And everybody has a map on his phone. So it is definitely something people are going to be open to. And at the National Forestry School now, The school is benefiting from training, from the Canadian, University of Laval that had been supporting the National Forestry School to have a small institute of research into cartography and GIS. But so far it is still expensive because no access to the best teachers, but also to licenses or to open source, apps like QGIS to be able to work with. And if it is extended. To the high school level for the student, it's going to have a lot of openings, not only in conservation, but also in land use management, surveys and so forth so I think most of the school are going to be open for this kind of training, especially if the teachers have their capacity built, it's going to be something really interesting for the teachers. Thanks, Erica. I think one of the things I'm going to go back to the conversation we had in right before we started this off. I think it would be really interesting to highlight that Christian has a really beautiful background. Maybe we can briefly talk about your PhD research, what it's focused on and why because I think that would connect the dots on what you're talking about. Because when you're talking about training being expensive and how we need to change our education system and just introducing geography at a Beginner level in schools. I was like, yes, preach because we need to do that. In Africa, we do not have that. And that keeps us at a disadvantage when it comes to spatial literacy. We see that reflecting later on in our careers, because you're trying to catch up on what geography is. How do we connect it to real world analysis? Policy is and all that which highlights what Erica's talked about the gaps there. Can you get into the details of your PhD research how did you decide to merge or fuse GIS and conservation in your PhD? I'll say that, my, my research work aims, the decolonization of conservation practices and politics. Working at the Department of Wildlife and Protected Areas, I arrived as a forestry technician. The majority were engineers, PhDs, and, they were really deep into politics, into understanding the international perspective of conservation. But working on the field, I came with the field reality of conservation because I was first of all a ranger. One of the remarks that I made was the fact that most of the time the politics decided Upstairs are not really close to the field reality maybe completing a question you asked about my involvement in GIS after the experience with the GPS point, I had been sent on the field for another surveying mission we were following a group of elephants and the cartographer who produced our survey map made a huge mistake. He confused the contour lines and the river. When you carry out a wildlife inventory, you have to undo your bed every morning, work, follow the animals. And in the evening you do a new bed in a new place. So every time you have to detect a river close to which you are going to sleep, to be able to cook your food, have a drink. sleep over the night and leave in the morning. And for the next three days, we're unable to sleep close to a river because he had confused the contour lines and the rivers. So we're sleeping close to places that had no water. That's the reason why a year later I decided to go back to school to do my GIS. I was really mad. I almost lost my team. due to that experience. I said to myself, okay, let me get trained. If I want to be more efficient into this conservation thing, I need myself to be able to produce a map before going on the field. So why carrying out my, my associate degree thesis on the degradation of, the forest reserve from Bamayu, I started working there 2014 until now I'm working there. You reach to a place after carrying out the satellite imagery analysis, where you have to build the confusion matrices to see those places of vegetation that entered into bare soils, water that entered into bare soils, all the confusion you need to build a confusion matrix. And for that, you go on the field, and you are going to collect your data. So while collecting my data on the field, I realized that we were seeing some traces of animals that the literature had never described as existing there. Because I should say, I did my degree at the National Forestry School. And the Forestry School has a forest reserve created in 1947 by the colonial administration, they created hundreds of forest reserves in the country some way. Hunting reserves. What else? We're just wildlife conservation reserve. What else? We're national parks. So the Mbamayo Forestry School had a forest reserve for forest research applications, and that's a forest where subject later on to a lot of disputes with the community because the town grew around the reserve and the population started exploiting the area. That's where I decided to carry out my remote sensing research for my GIS bachelor degree. On the field, I saw some prints of animals, big zookas. Nobody in the literature talked about it. Everything I had read while doing the literature review did not mention anything about those. They were just talking about some rats. Everything in the literature was just saying, no, there's nothing there. The result has been destroyed completely. The next year. I registered for a master degree in forest management and I specialize in agroforestry and the contact of agricultural and forestry I decided to carry out a wildlife survey in the area and while carrying out the survey we found large antelope that had never been described there. Also some prints of gorilla and chimps. But those results, I didn't put them in my thesis of masters because they were too risky. Even Lutuzi, the famous researcher had not mentioned those animals. The only monkeys that we had described there were the talopines monkeys. So I said, I can't risk my scientific reputation by putting such animals inside there. The next year I bought four trail cameras and installed them inside. And we had one video of a gorilla. That's where I was motivated to buy more, camera traps and we installed inside and we found this group of chimpanzee in 2021 and 2022. So after these findings, I decided now to register for a PhD and carry out further research. Why? Because after presenting my research to my hierarchy, they were not really interested. They told me, okay, we have a lot of natural park. We have the Java Reserve. We have the Lobeke Park close to Congo Gabon. We have these international reserves with Nigeria, with Chad. You should go there and carry out the research, but I told him the creation of those protected area is based on one thing we carry out a study, we see the potentiality for conservation and we map the area as a cartographer, map the area, we discover the community and see the areas of interest for communities and remove all the areas of interest from the boundaries. The concept of conservation is based on the exclusion of communities. But as long as the communities are going to grow, their needs as well are going to grow and they will gradually enter the protected area. Is it not time for us to start? Thinking conservation with communities in areas where community exists and carry out their activities because in 50 years, those protected areas that are still natural now are going to be destroyed community will need to cut timber and sell the wood to be able to have something to eat, will cut everything they have around them and gradually enter the park. It is now that we have to look for these kind of areas where there is still potentiality and see how we can work with communities on the second hand, such areas are always the subject of human wildlife conflict. Because when these large NGOs go into the remote places where there are no communities to carry out their research, where they focus there without being disturbed by communities need and communities grievances and revindication. They abandoned these numbers of chimps, people who are going to carry out their poaching or who are going to be killed by animals in cases of human wildlife conflict. The aim of my research is to install camera trap everywhere, in every places where we have this urban, wild land. Intermix and interfaces and see if we have species of interest for conservation even if it is important to conserve the natural areas, we should not abandon these areas where communities and wildlife meet because resources are being lost every day, every single day, and that we could save it. If the model of conservation try to get a little bit away from what has been introduced to us by colonization, because the colonial model is that we took an area we excluded from the community and only the managers of the particular area manage. But this model that's based on the other efficient conservation models tries now to put more people at the center of conservation. And see how even around the communities, all the potentialities can be. conserve and preserve for both the well being of nature and community. So that's the base of my PhD so far. I'm curious to know what would be your biggest breakthrough. From your PhD and where GIS would sit within that, pipeline. And what does success look like when it comes to implementation of your research, on the ground? What does that look like? How do you envision that? I would say it's something very simple. We have the big NGOs. They will say, okay, let us decentralize things. We have a lot of small researchers coming from forestry school every day, technicians, engineers. This technician, a mama wants to work in this small village where they saw two gorillas coming time to time, me, big NGO. I cannot be working there. They are just two gorillas, but let me support him into creating a small. Nonprofit and working there, monitoring those teams, making sure they have access to a secure environment, making sure there are no conflict with communities. If we were able to have such small conservation models If there could be a kind of decentralization. While the big conservation politics and, practices are maintained In the areas with the most conservation interest that are parks, reserves, wildlife reserve, if those same conservation area, those same NGOs, funders, and partners could support small conservation initiatives around villages like this area in Balmayo, I would say it is close. It is, 45 kilometers away from the capital city. It is a major town. And these streams were just located. I'll say 115 meters from the main road. It's a highway and they are there. And we have images from 2021, 2022. It means that it is a permanent area that they visit. So if they could have some small NGOs funded in similar area, carrying out. A conservation research work. Instead of just focusing in the remote areas while abandoning these areas, I think conservation will be more spread. And in that sense, GIS is going to have a central role to play because only detecting the areas that share these similar characteristics in terms of forest fragmentation, in terms of shared stratification between natural and non natural areas is going to help detecting the areas of interest. potentialities for this intermix and this close proximity between wildlife and communities. Well, you have my brain buzzing, right? So I've been reading your work about local communities and indigenous people. Because you are dealing with multiple countries, multiple communities. The Chad Lake Basin, all of the communities that are there. Let me just ask you, do you have any concerns about GIS being used in ways that are adversely impacting communities? Yes, I will say for a very long time, GIS has been used, not always at the benefit of communities because GIS used to map areas of natural and conservation interest, directly facilitated the creation process of protected areas. Dragging out communities of the places, not always with considering their central interest and their central needs of the resources that exist in the area. Very recently, I was commenting, a publication on LinkedIn, someone congratulating himself of, his organization of the fact that, a state has brought, a new forest ban policy and conservation to almost 88 percent of their forest resources. That's thanks to GIS because they are able to map the area using satellite imagery, calculate the NDVI and determine the areas of interest for conservation and therefore for carbon storage. But What about the livelihood of communities and their need, their dependence through the natural milieu? So yes, GIS also can be misused. And here we call the ethical side of GIS. If all the information around are not entered in the model, GIS can be misused if only part of the information is considered. The information that tells us about the richness of the forest area and the possibility to. To transform it in the park or the possibility to transform it in the forest management unit that the state it's going to sell to an international company to come and be harvesting the wood without the community seeing their direct interest. So the GIS. Can be misused. It is just a tool giving us information that are now supposed to be used well or misused for decision making. That's caused more the ethical side of it but it depends now on the decision maker. I think it's also a matter of putting the tools. In the hands of more people, right? So it's not just the educators, not just the researchers, but within the communities, people representing the indigenous people themselves, if they have access, and if they understand the power of that access and the opportunity to speak up on their own behalf. Exactly. Because, sometimes, as a ranger, you visit a village you have the maps, the exact position of the river, you have the limits of the forest, but the community don't have access to such a knowledge. So most of the time, because of this abundant amount of knowledge that you bring ascendance. Everything you tend to say tend to be accepted, but if they were more educated and they were more aware of this reality, that is no longer virtual and miraculous. Because when I come with my laptop and my GIS knowledge, it is more like a miracle for those communities who are not aware of the reality that I'm bringing. So having the communities trained with GIS technology, knowing the reality of their map and the possible future. And I would say that's, another approach that I brought to this community. When I was presenting my PhD work, I presented a model of, a forest that has been restored in Brazil for the last, I think was the last 50 years. And I told them, this is something that has been done somewhere in the world that can also be done here. If you people allow us, giving them access to technology in terms of GIS gives them that ability to have the total control. On on their area, but most of the time the knowledge is hidden from the communities. So I'm curious on one of the other things we talk about from this other side of the globe, because I'm coming from Kenya, right? And so I'm curious to know on the data gaps or the data challenges you've encountered, as you're doing your research what can be done more in terms of creating businesses that actually work. I know I've previously been in research and one of the key things the project. We couldn't get highly accurate maps right for the continent. And so that kind of slows down the entire process and you end up going with what's available. And so with a view on the African continent and Cameroon as well, what are the data gaps there that you think need addressing from the conservation side of research? It's a very interesting question, and I will try to answer in two steps. First of all, working at the Department of Wildlife, most of the data that we have there are paper based, and having paper based brings us to talk about archives. Most of the time in public administration, people don't really want to deal with archives. They are not always trained on how to collect data from archives, or worse, How to conserve archives, and once the archives are not well conserved, it becomes very complicated to even know that any data can be accessible through them. Having data all around but not being able to fetch the information you need from them is a problem. Digitalizing our archives, digitalizing the data that we have, bringing about more digital database in everything we do, it's something central that we have. And it is not only at the level of communities, it starts with our administration. We have a very low rate of digitalization of All the processes that we have, therefore a very slow rates of digitalization of the data that we have in our prisons. Secondly, the data that we have are not. always geographically based. So we are going to have a lot of data, but just because a simple work of putting, GI as a geographic reference to those data could help us to see where a phenomenon is located. But it is just as if I had a lot of data and everything is in the table and nothing is projected in the map. So bringing more GIS support apps into our working environment is really going to make a great difference. I've had the opportunity to work with the survey one, two, three, tool developed by Esri and it is so interesting. It is one of the tool that I'm currently using for my PhD work and I carry out a kind of inventory, a survey of, the human wildlife conflict that have been happening throughout the last 10 years in Cameroon. I've partnered with a master's student at the University of Chiang in Cameroon, and we're working on that. It is very surprising to realize that when you remove data from paper based and just add a geographic location to the same data. You directly have different results. The perspective you had, seeing the information on the paper is a gorilla struck a man in this village. Chimps struck a man in this area, elephant came out and destroyed a market. But when you bring all those data together, you might realize that the areas where the animals come to have this conflict with humans, most of the time they are around. conservation areas, or they have a particular specificity that some other areas do not have. Having all those data mapped somewhere, having all those data geographically localized, helped us. Easily to make decision and maybe to make projections of the areas that can be of interest or that are to be controlled if we want to avoid human wildlife conflict. So I think that digitization of our processes is interesting, but also emphasizing the geolocalization of everything we do I worked in public administration, if we are to make budget allocation, and don't take consideration, for instance, of where does the budget go, where does the majority of the investment go, which are the areas that have not been considered the most, all those things can be easily determined if you have a map as a decision maker in front of you, and you localize an action that you wish to carry out. So GIS as a tool, and, I would say the style of geography supporting GIS for Africa will bring a lot of changes. because when we talk about public governance and good governance, just giving public administration the ability to localize their actions is going to reduce a lot of tribal wars. For instance, you build markets, you build schools, taking into consideration different communities, different areas of the countries, that can be easily done. When you use a map, when you localize the phenomenon when you localize your policy, but just writing down a policy without having a map in front of you to view what you are doing, I think is difficult. Okay. thank you So the theme for the C podcast, Christian is around, Afrofuturism Geo and Art. I'm curious on what your thoughts are on the future of GIS within the continent. And how you see that evolving. How would you paint that picture in terms of these themes? Right. I think that we already have much of GIS in our phones. We have access to connectivity. More people are using Ubers. So they are aware now of using Google Maps. Things are going to be easier now than they have been. Before, and it is going to be a huge opportunity, like training, young people, the future generation, into GIS techniques. It's going to be something interesting based just on the fact that it's going to later on apply on a variety of domains, like whether you work and that in public health, business. Conservation and all those areas, having these background strength and knowledge. Of GIS is going to be a huge advantage. And as I was previously explaining, so many schools have opened this last 10 years giving GIS trainings, but also sadly, the majority of them closed because the training is really expensive in Cameroon, for instance, and I would say in the whole French speaking African region, because Gabon, Congo, all the base maps that we are using. All our topographic maps are from 1973. No updates have been carried out so far. So there are so much work in terms of land surveying, map production, updating these products. Also, since the countries are continuously being built, there's a huge needs of cartographer and GIS scientist. And because Africa is presented as the future, the Eldorado of the world, the majority of country wants to come and install themselves there. I think there is this huge opening about GIS maybe the only restriction that is going to be visible is the fact that Countries don't have access to enough fundings, enough facilities, the trainings. It is just once here in the U S that I learned, for instance, about tools like, ArcGIS pro that it is a hundred percent internet dependent, the access to the internet. In my country is still very challenging and it is the same thing in Gabon, same thing in the whole French speaking Africa, maybe some rare countries like Nigeria in very large town like Lagos and Abuja will be maybe away from that reality, I would say there is a huge potential, but that needs to be supported. We need more communication, more proximity to decision makers to show them the importance of, training more people in GIS as a potential to help us build more efficient roads, more efficient communication systems, water sharing, and so forth I think there is a huge opening, but the conversation, needs to start from the root, from secondary school education, empowering geography, as it is supposed to be presented, not just as something that we confuse because geography most of the time is confused to literature. The scientific side of geography is not really visible when we go back in our countries. Thank you so much for that comment this has been fascinating. So thank you so much, Christian. And as we wrap up, one of the things I would like asking our guests is, what wasn't on your 2024 bingo card? It is a scholarship that I received from ESRID as a conservation leader. It was a fully funded scholarship at the Redlands University, but it came with attending international conferences where I had access to a lot of researchers in the domain of GIS, but also in conservation, but also opening to work with the American Geographical Society that I did this year. That's where I was able to meet up with. Aisha and see the wonderful work people carry out there at the North Star of GIS. And also at the end carrying out a very interesting work with the University of Redlands. We are currently working on a project to map the international reach of the University of Redlands. Their alumni, where they are in the world, how they can interconnect together, how they can share their experience, but also how from their perspective, they can help inspire young people who want to benefit from GIS training and recommend them to the University of Redlands. So that's a project we are working on so far. The map will be available online. And those are exceptional things. I was not really imagining myself to be producing this thousand and 24. And the last amazing thing is to be linked to this family. And I will say there needs to be more communication on your existence, first of all, and the work. You are doing to empower the black communities in the GIS area. I think it's going to be very interesting, very inspiring. I will give myself to work, to share link, to share your content, the postcards to more young GIS researchers and students in my country, to be sure more are aware I have some contacts in. Cameroon, Gabon, Congo, Guinea, and I'll be an ambassador if it's accepted to share the work you are doing so far. Love it. Thank you so much. Christian. Thank you Christian. It was nice having you. We've taken that challenge. We'll definitely. Talk a lot more and have not start out there. Thank you for noting that. And thank you for offering to be an ambassador. We're more than happy to have you on board. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more about Northstar of GIS, check us out on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube at GIS Northstar. Northstar's programming is produced in large part by donations and sponsorship. If you'd like to support the next season of the Northstar Gaze podcast, please submit your donations to northstarofgis. org slash donate. If you'd like to sponsor this podcast or the homecoming event, reach out to us at the following email address. Podcast at notestarofgis. org or notestargis. org slash sponsorhomecoming. You'll find all these links in the show notes. We want to thank our sponsors of the 2024 Homecoming event, our institutional partner ReGrid, and our sponsors New Light Technology, Afrotech, and Black at Work. We'd like to thank our keynotes, Tara Roberts, Linda Harris. Dr. Paulette Hines Brown and Vernice Miller Travis. We'd like to thank Howard University and the staff at the Interdisciplinary Building and Photography by Imagery by Chioma. We also want to thank our guests for trusting us with their stories. Tara, Linda, Paulette, Christian, Abraham, Jason, Vernice, Stella, Beye, Karen. Nikki, George, Frank, Labdi, Toussaint, Victoria, and the HBCU Environmental Justice Technical Team. And finally, thank you to the North Star team and our wonderful volunteers. We are your hosts of the Season 2 of the North Star Guest Podcast, which is based on the 2024 Homecoming Conference event. This podcast is produced by Ayesha Jenkins and audio production in collaboration with Cherry Blossom Productions, Kied Bodega, and Organized Sound. Thanks for listening to the North Star Gaze, intimate stories from geoluminaries. If you're inspired to advance racial justice in geofields, please share this podcast with other listeners in your community. The intro and outro are produced by Organized Sound Productions with original music created by Kid Bodega. The North Star Gaze is produced in large part by donations and sponsorship. To learn more about North Star GIS, Check us out at north star of gis.org and on Facebook or Instagram at GIS North Star. If you'd like to support this podcast and North Star of gis, consider donating at North star of gis.org/donate or to sponsor this podcast, email podcast at north star of gis.org. You've been listening to the North Star Gaze.