[Tom Allen] – What led to your passion in activism?

[India Miro Logan-Riley] – I actually get asked this question a lot. People ask me, “why are you in the climate change space? Why are you an activist?” I say, “why not?” There’s no other way that we can do things. Being Māori, being Indigenous, we have a long legacy of resistance and activism. My work is to step into that and ensure that (ideally) future generations don’t have to do this activism; that we do our job so well they get to have a joyful time.

Tell us a little bit more about ActionStation, the initiatives and campaigns you’re involved with, and how it is all unfolding?

ActionStation is an incredible organisation, because it works across multiple issues. We look at economic fairness, family well-being, climate justice, and honoring Te Tiriti, the Treaty that Māori signed with the Crown back in 1840. It means we get to work across really cool campaigns, but also collaborate and use them to enhance each other. The things we’ve worked on in the past are prison abolition and reform, justice, sexual harm, and seeing if there are better policies and support in those areas.

The first one is to have a team. It can be hard to have sometimes, especially if you disagree on a political matter. We need to figure out those relationships and be able to come together and heal whatever nasty words were said and move forward. The other thing is partnering effectively. We don’t hold a lot of our expertise in-house, we work with other lived experience and expert organisations to uplift their campaigns as well. The People’s report on the Justice System was done in coordination with the Public Health Team at a university. We bring tools, but it’s about being able to humble ourselves and ask questions regarding what the issue is and how it affects people? How do we become allies? How do I shop for other people as well as ask them to shop in my communities? Another part of this is being able to stumble and respectfully call each other out and correct each other at the same time. The other important tip is to remember as heavy as the subjects are, this is good work and what we should be doing. It’s such an honor as well.

the other side of that is what are older generations doing to open up channels for young people to lead? often that’s cushioned by people saying our, “asks are impractical or not realistic”.

If you’re all about young people, then you’re going to say, “here are some resources for you to run with, here’s where we will support you, here’s where we help ground you and keep your mental health strong and support the well-being of your group to take charge.” We can’t do it alone, and often the spaces we do have to go to speak truths of power are very harsh and unkind. We need older generations to be behind us and help navigate through harmful spaces.

What initiatives and projects do you believe are creating fantastic progress outside of what you’re doing?

I can’t talk about positive impact without shoutouts to my activists and campaigners, especially youth organisations. I was actually just at Powershift here in Brisbane on the weekend; the Australian Youth Climate Coalition and Seed coming together to talk about what they’re doing. I think that was amazing because through working with local communities and unions/workers, they’ve managed to achieve beautiful impacts. That’s just a group of young people coming together and saying, “we are going to do this.” I also think it’s important to highlight the unseen and uncelebrated work of communities pooling their resources and helping each other.