Luke Storey: [00:00:02] I'm Luke Storey. For the past 22 years, I've been relentlessly committed to my deepest passion, designing the ultimate lifestyle based on the most powerful principles of spirituality, health, psychology. The Life Stylist Podcast is a show dedicated to sharing my discoveries and the experts behind them with you. Welcome to the podcast.

Reinette Senum: [00:00:27] Thank you. It's great to be here.

Luke Storey: [00:00:28] I first saw you speak at a private event here in Austin. Yeah.

Reinette Senum: [00:00:34] Oh, that's right.

Luke Storey: [00:00:35] I think it's kind of a secret sort of-

Reinette Senum: [00:00:38] Private event.

Luke Storey: [00:00:38] ... private community event of sorts, so I won't go into detail to not incriminate anyone present, but there were a number of speakers that got up and just kind of said some things about themselves. And when you got up there and started talking about, A, California, which I love and miss in so many ways, I was like, man, she's just fiery, I like her. And I remember, I saw you and I think I even said to my wife, Alyson, I was like, I'd like to interview her, I don't know exactly what she's up to, but she's got it, so I'm glad we ended up connecting.

Reinette Senum: [00:01:08] And I've been invited to that only a couple few days before. It just was happenstance, and also, I'm just there, and next to the group, and she's like, how about this, and I had 5 minutes 5 minutes to-

Luke Storey: [00:01:19] They were short, yeah.

Reinette Senum: [00:01:20] There was 5 minutes, and it was like, okay, so I went in full throttle. So, nobody knows me here, they've never heard of me, I'm just going to go full bore. And everybody went up into a standing ovation, I'm like, that's the fastest standing ovation I've ever gotten.

Luke Storey: [00:01:34] You made an impact.

Reinette Senum: [00:01:35] Yeah.

Luke Storey: [00:01:36] Yeah. That was an incredible night.

Reinette Senum: [00:01:37] It was. It was a beautiful night.

Luke Storey: [00:01:39] I was getting goosebumps the whole time.

Reinette Senum: [00:01:41] I was, too, and even the audience, the people were extraordinary.

Luke Storey: [00:01:45] Yeah.

Reinette Senum: [00:01:45] Yeah.

Luke Storey: [00:01:46] I don't think we'd lived here that long at that point, a couple of months, and I kept saying to Alyson, I was like, man, do you feel this? Are you getting chills, like hairs standing up on my arms?

Reinette Senum: [00:01:56] I'm actually getting chills right now just saying that.

Luke Storey: [00:01:57] Yeah. It was just like, man, I think I know why we're here. I know how it's going to pan out, but so many people of alike mind seemed to have converged.

Reinette Senum: [00:02:06] And that was the first night I even went public with me running.

Luke Storey: [00:02:08] Really?

Reinette Senum: [00:02:09] Yeah, that was about a year ago. I'd been very quiet, and so—and even then, I thought I was running for the recall, which I did not do, in California.

Luke Storey: [00:02:16] Oh, that's right. Yeah, we were talking about that. Yeah, that was a good call.

Reinette Senum: [00:02:19] I know. See? Politically savvy.

Luke Storey: [00:02:23] That was a good call. You would have shot your-

Reinette Senum: [00:02:25] Shot my wand.

Luke Storey: [00:02:25] Yeah, shot your wand on that one. I'm glad you said those words. For people listening, you can find the show notes for today's show at lukestorey.com/wakethebear. That's Wake the Bear, which is a part of your campaign, which we want to talk about, of course. And I would like to say, too, that, for the listeners, while your energies are focused on California, for those that live in different states like myself or different places in the world, I think the model that you're presenting there and the work that you're doing in California is a template that could be followed elsewhere.

So, as we get into the conversation that's a little more politically centered, which is historically kind of outside of the norms of what I talk about, it's not my lane of expertise, so I just kind of avoid it, but I think what you're doing is very unique. And right now, we need change, so that's why I wanted to talk to you and I just want people to tune in, if we get very California-centric, that-

Reinette Senum: [00:03:18] It applies everywhere.

Luke Storey: [00:03:19] ... these are just solutions based in truth and liberty of the human spirit, which I think are applicable widespread. But before we do that, I've got to know how, in 1994, you became the first woman to cross Alaska alone in the dead of winter while filming for National Geographic. I've heard you tell an abbreviated version of that story, and I was like, I got to, just selfishly, I got to hear that story. It's just so wild.

Reinette Senum: [00:03:45] I like to say to people, well, I went out to get the mail one day and got lost. No. It was a multitude of reasons. What had happened was I had been traveling around the world after my adoptive mother died at 18. And before then, when I was 11, I was adopted at two months old, and I have to tell this part. So, when I was 11, my adoptive mother had a great aunt come from England with the family tree that went back 900 years, and I was enamored with this.

I love history, right? And I was just like, wow, and then it dawned on me, it wasn't my family or my blood. So, I turned to my mother, I said, "Well, when do I get to see this with my family?" She's like, "Oh, no, you'll never know". And as happenstance, which I have a lot of this happened in my life, the next day, there's a local paper that talks about finding out your natural family, you can go to these research organizations.

So, as a 11-year-old, I wrote off to all of them saying, "Would you help me find my mother?" And within a week's time, they all wrote back, saying, "Legally, there's nothing we can do for you until you're 18". And from the information, was general information that I gave them that I had, not identifying information, they said, "You have plenty of time, and your mom's young, you're young, you have time".

Well, they didn't know it and I didn't know it, but my natural mother was actually fighting breast cancer at that time and would die a year later at the age of 35, in 1979. And so then, my adoptive mother also died when I was 19, and she had already told me by that time my name was Marcella Andersen, and she had lied. So, for almost 20 years, I went looking for the Andersens and it was the wrong name. 

Luke Storey: [00:03:45] Oh, my God.

Reinette Senum: [00:05:12] Yeah, she died before she'd go, "Sorry, honey, I was just kidding". And so then, now, I'm in my mid-20s and I couldn't find my family, I thought, they've just disappeared, I can't find them. And I tell people the funny story of, I always had this fantasy of driving up and down I-5 in California, this iconic Pea Soup Andersens, and I used to think maybe that was my family. So, I had this fantasy.

Luke Storey: [00:05:34] I know that place, yeah.

Reinette Senum: [00:05:35] Right? Going in there and seeing people look just like me, serving soup, I'm like, Mom, Dad, that was my childhood fantasy. So, now, I'm in my 20s, and I thought, I'm never going to find them. And at that time, I'd been part of a South Pole expedition I trained with, but I couldn't go to the South Pole, couldn't raise the money in time, then I organized my own Trans-Antarctic expedition with just women only.

And after having them on the team for 10 months, they said, "Hey, Reinette, we were doing this stuff for 15, 20 years, you're just starting", and they went to the South Pole without me. And after a year, I mean, I was really depressed, I'd say even suicidal, because I didn't have the tools to deal with, wow, people can take your dreams like that? And then, I came out of it, and like a year later, I thought, well, you know what?

When you started this, you didn't even know how to ski, you didn't know how to climb mountains, you weren't even EMT, you didn't know the difference between the Z-Pulley, and a C-Pulley, and Crevasse rescue skills, and now, you've learned all this, just go find something to cross, because I want to see what I was made of. I'm like, you're never going to find your family, so just go out there, break a new trail, and see what you're made of.

So, I spun a globe, looked at Greenland, looked at, what else? Siberia, and I thought, no, I'll cross Alaska. By that time, I'd climb Denali already, and I'm like, that will have plenty of challenge, what I'm looking for. So then, ultimately, I end up going up to Kodiak Island up in Alaska, I thought, well, I'll commercial fish. And if I commercial fish and I'm not tough enough to do that, then I'm not tough enough to cross Alaska.

It was a great litmus test and I could save up some money. I'm working so hard to save money, not spend it and pay for the trip myself. So, I got a boat after walking the docks in Kodiak Island called the Big Valley. And I would actually watch that boat, 12 years later, sink on a show called The Deadliest Catch with my captain and four others, crew members. And after commercial fishing for six months, and when these guys found out I was going to commercial fish or actually go out there and ski across Alaska, they're trying to break my will, and when I got off that boat, I was done with humanity, I'm like, I'm out of here, I'm going to go way out into the woods and never see any of you again.

And then, I went to Homer, Alaska, started putting my gear together, made my sled, got my polar suit together, and then I called up National Geographic to see, "How do you weatherize a camera for extreme cold?" And they asked, "What are you doing?" I'm like, "Crossing Alaska by myself", like, "We'll send you the equipment". And so, they did. And I was proud of myself that I got that far, and then I survived commercial fishing, so like, okay, I'm ready for this.

And then, I started training with two dogs. I had them harnessed to my waist. I was going to ski-journey, and I got the two dogs from a local neighbor named Jack Berry, who was an Iditarod dog sled racer. And I started training with them for, gosh, a few months, and we were skiing, I don't know, 15 to 24 miles a day, and I was fit as a fiddle, and ready to go, and then Jack Berry, who owned those two dogs, came up to me five days before I was to leave, and he said, "I don't think you can do it.

In fact, I think you're going to die before you make the first hundred miles, so I'm taking the dogs back." And he's walking away, he's thinking, for sure, I'm not going to go now, who's going to help me pull my sled? So, I yelled at him, and just screamed, "Fine, I'll pull the sled myself". And five days later, at 55 below, I'm out there, I'm going down the frozen Yukon River, pulling the sled without my dogs.

Luke Storey: [00:08:41] You had me at 55 below. 

Reinette Senum: [00:08:44] I know, right?

Luke Storey: [00:08:44] Today, I think it's like 40 here with a wind chill, and I'm like, yeah.

Reinette Senum: [00:08:48] Okay. Everything's relative. I'm cold, too, so the irony is I'm cold.

Reinette Senum: [00:08:52] But yeah. So, there's a lot of that, right? There's a lot of opportunity to give up, right? That's for sure. So, here I am on the frozen banks of the Yukon River, and it's afternoon by the time I have the mail plane land, and drop me off, and I'm along the Canadian-Alaskan border. And I'm looking down the frozen Yukon River, and I see the biggest thing that scared me, which is a big gaping hole in the ice.

And then, as soon as I see that, I'm like, no, not that, because I always had this fear of breaking through the ice, and then going under the water and drowning. That was like my one fear. And then, I started to kind of choke up, and I thought, just lay your topographical maps out and just get a handle of yourself. And I laid them out, and then I looked way down the river, and I see a bend in the river, and then I look on the map, and it barely registers, and I realize how huge the state is, and I'm like, Oh, my God, what have you done?

And I have 14 bucks in my pocket, I'm like, there's no way out except for down the river, you don't even have enough money to fly out of this situation. And by that time, too, I have to tell you, Luke, I had had so many people trying to sabotage and stop me or protect me, or prevent me that it was so hard just to get on the banks of the river, that I'm like, I'm here now, you can't stop now, you've been through hell fire just to have this opportunity, so you've got to see this through.

And so, I'm sitting there and I'm starting to cry, because I realize how big the state is. And then, my eyelids start to freeze together, and I'm like, I can't even afford to cry. So, I start coaching myself, which I've learned to do over and over again, I'm like, okay, okay, this is point A, point B is way, way, way down there. Just to get going right now, what do you need to do?

And I thought to myself, I need to make dinner. Okay, then make the camp. Put that together. Go to sleep. Get up in the morning, make breakfast, break camp, ski, do that again the next day, the next day, the next day. And then, I was actually able to see myself on the other side of Alaska looking back. I'm like, okay, I can do this one step at a time. And I started. So, I ski for just three days, almost froze to death my third night out, my body was convulsing and shaking, and it was a real close call.

And my eyelids had snapped, frozen off, because I had the big polar suit on, and I was perspiring so much, the moisture was rising up, catching on my eyelashes, and weighing them down, so I tried to slide the ice off, it just snapped all my eyelashes off immediately. And then, three days in, after my third night out surviving, I came across, I was told about these two trappers, they're having a big dog sled race called the Yukon Quest, and there are these two trappers, it was one of the racers saying, "And you got 16 miles, and it's going be getting colder tonight", it was already 55 below, "I suggest you get there", and I could barely make 10 miles, because the snow is really dry and sticky at that temperature, so things were just dragging. I had no idea how-

Luke Storey: [00:11:36] So, you're on cross-country skis?

Reinette Senum: [00:11:37] Cross-country skis, got some metal poles.

Luke Storey: [00:11:39] Do you have a radio or anything?

Reinette Senum: [00:11:40] No radio, no tent, no gun.

Luke Storey: [00:11:43] No gun? 

Reinette Senum: [00:11:44] No gun.

Luke Storey: [00:11:45] Oh, my God. Do you have a bear spray?

Reinette Senum: [00:11:47] No, I didn't, but I did have a Winchester rifle, which, by the way, I didn't even know how to shoot it, and I didn't know how to load a gun, I know how to shoot a gun, but not load a gun, clean a gun. And what happened was the same guy, Jack Berry, who had the two dogs he took away, he started trying to like stump me, like stop me from going, so he, finally, at one point said, "You know what? In order for you to take these two dogs, you need to have 200 booties, fleece booties to protect them".

And so, I had to like sell my gun in order to get the fleece booties for my dogs, and even then, he still took the dogs away. So, he was trying to stop me, prevent me from going, because part ego, part fear for my life, I'm sure. So, I'm like, "Take the rifle, it weighs a lot, and I really don't know how to load and fire that thing, and if a bear is charging me, I'm certainly not going to have the capacity, in those temperatures, the thing will probably just freeze up anyway", because as soon as you get into those temperatures, you're on Mars, everything works differently.

Everything. Nothing works as it did before under normal temperatures, is what I discovered really fast. The tent didn't come together. In fact, my first night at the tent, after trying to put it together, I almost froze my fingers, I handed it to a park ranger who was passing by me just as I was leaving, I'm like, "Take my tent". It's too heavy. I'm going to lighten my load. I almost lost my fingers", and I was told you can lose your feet to frostbite, but you can't lose your fingers, and almost lost my fingers like immediately out the gate.

So, I'm just, "Take it". And then, three days into the trip, I come across these two trappers, who I was told to get to, and I could only make 10 miles, and I actually stuffed my polar suit with Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, like, okay, baby, you're going to have to get 16 miles, and just like—so I'm like, okay, you get to that voluntary way down there, you get there, you get a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, and I'm like ski like I battled the hill, and I get to that tree, and I pop a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup in my mouth, and I'm like, okay, you see that bend in the river, you get there, you get another one.

And I just kept pushing and pushing myself, because I knew if I did not get to that trapper's cabin, I was going to die that night. I was not going to make a fourth night out. Just perspiration, I was so wet, I was so freezing cold, and I got to the trappers. And then, they're like, "You know what? Just stay for a little bit, because the next morning, like just stay for a little while, it's still really cold". And I'm like, okay, sure, and I did for 10 days. And they gave me a trappers boot camp. They taught me how to break through four feet of ice, to set a beaver trap, how to make an Athabaskan fire, how to make a spruce bough mattress, how to make a trappers camp. I mean, it was a boot camp.

Luke Storey: [00:14:09] That's so cool.

Reinette Senum: [00:14:10] Yeah.

Luke Storey: [00:14:11] Did you end up trapping any beavers out there?

Reinette Senum: [00:14:13] No, thank goodness. No. In fact, you know what, it's very funny, but they-

Luke Storey: [00:14:16] I have a friend that eats the hunts and eats them, he says they're delicious.

Reinette Senum: [00:14:18] I'm sure they are, because they're probably really fatty. I bet they're delicious. But in fact, they actually wanted me to come back the next winter, and I was so honored, that they like thought I could actually do this, like, "You want your own trapper's line? 300 feet, you have your dog team, and you just go around, and you circle around 300 miles", say 300 feet, "300 mile trap line, and what you just keep circling around that trapper's line, 300 miles, just go round and round for day after day, and you catch all the animals along the way", and I'm like, "Well, I'll do, but why do I have to catch anything?"

It sounds exciting, but I don't want to catch anything. And it ends up, interestingly enough, that not having a tent was the smartest thing I'd done, because you don't want a tent. There's a way of building a fire and kind of reflecting the heat onto your sleeping bag while you're on a spruce bough mattress. That is really a better way to keep yourself warm. So, that's what I started to do. 

Luke Storey: [00:14:18] Wow.

Reinette Senum: [00:15:06] I know. And then, 200 miles in, I got to my first village of circle, and by this time, I realized that I could handle the cold, and I told, psychologically, this was going to happen, the colder it got, the more intense it got emotionally and psychologically. It just does a number on you. I mean, there's a big difference between 25 degrees and 55 degrees. You can't feel the difference, but things go wrong faster, you freeze faster, and things just intensify. Your emotions, your thoughts intensify.

Luke Storey: [00:15:33] What are you eating out there?

Reinette Senum: [00:15:35] Well, I'm eating a lot of what's called pilot bread, these big, huge, thick crackers, lots of peanut butter, and then I have a lot of pasta. I was eating two cubes of butter raw every single day like a candy bar, and tasted delicious at the time. 

Luke Storey: [00:15:48] I would argue that it still tastes delicious.

Reinette Senum: [00:15:51] I know. I love it.

Luke Storey: [00:15:52] I don't eat butter sticks, but I'm known to take a little spoonful of ghee.

Reinette Senum: [00:15:57] Oh, yeah.

Luke Storey: [00:15:57] Just by itself, it's tasty.

Reinette Senum: [00:15:58] I probably still eat two cubes of butter a day, actually. But lots of fatty things, and carbs, and stuff. And I used to put like Tang in my water, and I was battling, because I'd put tangy water in my insulated container to drink my thermos, but the hardest thing was keeping myself hydrated, because you have to drink the water relatively fast, because they'll start to freeze, right? 

Luke Storey: [00:16:20] Oh, my God. That's crazy.

Reinette Senum: [00:16:22] Yeah. And then, towards the end of the day, you can't stop to melt more snow. First of all, there's barely any moisture in the snow. So, even if you melted down the whole pot of snow, you only get like a quarter of an inch of moisture.

Luke Storey: [00:16:31] Wow. Is that what you were doing for water, just melting snow? 

Reinette Senum: [00:16:34] Oh, yeah.

Luke Storey: [00:16:35] Oh, okay.

Reinette Senum: [00:16:35] Yeah. And then, the hard part was I had to have 6,000 calories a day, and I still have like, I don't know how many, just dozens of dozens of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, and I still lost 25 pounds on this trip. But the thing that was really hard is eating 6,000 calories a day is not an easy feat. And what was really awful is that by the end of the day, I was exhausted, all I wanted to do was sleep, and my food tasted like pine needles, and ash, because I'm cooking this stuff on the open fires.

And of course, in the snow is all these pine needles and branches, and so it tastes like crud. And so, eating 6,000 calories on a normal circumstance is difficult, but under that circumstance, it was really hard. And so, yeah, and you just have to be highly, highly focused, right? You can't really mess up. And so, now, I'm 200 miles in, and I realize the cold is really tough, but the loneliness was tougher.

I met another trapper, his name is Douglas Fir. He's an outlaw from the Lower 48. And I told myself, I need a dog, I need something else to focus on, and I need the attention on something else other than how intense this is, and the loneliness. And so, he's like, "I got three dogs", be actually had like 30 dogs, "but because I have three dogs, he will be shooting and killing the spring, because they're not fast enough sled pullers, so you can take one, you can take all of them".

And two of them are too wild, they almost bit my hand off. And then, there's one named Diamond, was my birthstone and was really sweet, I'm like, ah, meant to be. So, I attached him to my waist, he could barely pull me a mile, because he was on a chain in a post for two years straight, never got off, had a half a frozen salmon a day. So, he's really kind of just weak in the muscles. So, we just kept working and working for two weeks.

I just started training him for two weeks. We went out every day. And then, by the time we got back on the river, this one day, I looked out of my map, I'm like, oh, wow, we are so lost. I'm like, what the heck? We're in a place called Yukon-Charley. That's where the river gets like 20, 30 miles wide. There are all these islands everywhere, and it's really hard to kind of find your way, and I'm like, I think we're lost. And then, I realized, oh, no, this is Moose Island. We're not lost. We just made 60 miles.

We started averaging 60 miles. That dog was pulling with his heart. He was like, woo-hoo, it was so exciting to him, and we were just like lightning. And then, what happened, this is a game changer, is I'm halfway across the state by the Arctic Circle near a place called Stevens Village, and I looked down, and I'm like, no, no, there's all this water over the ice. It's called overflow. And I'm like, the ice, it's melting ahead of schedule. I'm like, no.

This is the only road I know. I have no other way to continue. The frozen Yukon River is my road. So, I ended up staying in this Stevens Village, this Athabascan village, and the locals were nice enough to give me a little tiny cabin right there on the banks of the river. And against the happenstance, so I'm walking in and out of my door, of my cabin, and I'm thinking to myself, how am I going to continue? Do I give up? Do I go back home? Do I pick up where I left off next year? I have no other options.

And then, as that's happening, this little snowbank right by my door of my cabin, of all the places, of all the time, and it starts to melt, and this little green thing is protruding out of it. And I'm like, wait, what is that? And it keeps protruding a little more every day. And then, finally, I dig out the last canoe built in this village 20 years before. And I look at that, and I think to myself, oh, my gosh, that's it. It's dilapidated. I'm not using that canoe.

And I also have this little experience where during this time waiting to figure out what to do and waiting for the river to break up, I did a little side trip down the river to the next village, and I had this incredible experience where I was being followed by a wolfpack, completely oblivious to it. It wasn't until the state trooper flying a plane overhead dropped a note saying, "Hey, there's a wolfpack behind you. And P.S., I'll try to distract them. And the biscuits", had a little bag of biscuits, "are for your companion", my dog.

And the next morning, when I went to start early in the morning to get back to Steven's village just to figure out what I was going to do, I thought, oh, the wolfpack, it might—because it was still dark out, right? Because I'd leave early in the morning, because the ice and snow is really frozen solid. So, I thought, oh, I just have to look behind me to see if the wolfpack is there, and I turn behind me, and it's not there, but there's this huge, beautiful, amber, golden full moon just ready to sink behind the face of the canyon.

And I looked at that, I'm like, oh, I almost missed that. And then, I looked above me, I'm like, whoa, wait, there's this incredible northern lights dancing over my head. I'm like, look at that, oh, my God, I almost missed that. And then, I looked ahead, where the direction I was going, but I was busy looking at my feet, so I would stumble, and this is a sunrise. So, there's a sunrise, northern lights, a full moon, and all the stone ice is reflecting all those colors.

It's like the whole entire world is exploding in beauty. And this is my last day on the ice. I'm like, this is it. This is Mother Nature's gift. This is like the most extraordinary thing. And I'm so taken aback by this beauty that I just do this, "Thank you". And I hear this echo, "Thank you, thank you, thank you". I'm like, whoa. And then, I was so ignited by this, I thought, no, man, I'm not giving up. I'm not going home. I'm going to build myself a canoe.

So, I get back to the village, and I go to all the elders, and say, "Hey, I'm going to build a canoe, I'm going to build a canoe, and can I borrow some tools?" And word got right back to me, "Women don't build canoes. That's just not what we do here." So, I had to go back to the elders, and say, "You don't understand. Where I come from in California, that's what women do, we're canoe builders. It's like our thing."

And they didn't know how to respond to that. And I'm sure there's a few canoe builders that are female in California. And so then, I go out, I have my new Athabascan friends take me out to the forest, I said, "What kind of trees do I cut?" They told me what kind of trees, I dragged them in, and now, they're like, "Ah, she's really going to try to build this canoe". So, the elders actually volunteered, Herb, who's a big-bellied Athabascan, to sit down and have a fatherly talk with me.

So, he comes up to me and we're looking over, sitting on the logs, and we're looking over the river, and he says, "We call you Wonder Woman, because of all the miles you can ski in a day, but you build this canoe and we're going to call you Fruitcake". So, I just have to go with the flow, and I laughed. And so then, I start ripping these beautiful 18-foot long planks of wood, I start hand-planing them five days a week, 5 hours a day, it's very meditative, and they're going by, "Fruitcake", waving at me, and of course, the kids are emulating this.

They're like, "Fruitcake". And it was really interesting, though, because what did happen that really struck me, and it really hit me in the heart, was the kids came up to me, and they looked at me, and they're like, "What are you doing?" And I looked at them, and I said, "I'm building a canoe like you guys have done for thousands of years". And I realized I was witnessing a break in their culture, the end of the Athabascan culture right there, and I was like, no, no.

So, the kids came, and they'd help me hand-plane, and we talked about it, and what the objective is, and here's the old canoe, that's what I'm shooting for, and I made a few little variations on it for rougher waters and stuff. So, we both kind of reignited it and rediscovered the skill, but it was sad to see that. I saw a lot of that, right? And then, what's so beautiful is after two-and-a-half weeks of hand-planing, I finally had been taking all this wood as I was told to do, and I was putting it into the local muskrat pond, whereas submerging the wood in the water, so it gets really pliable, well, now, I laid all this wood at my feet, and I had enough for two-and-a-half boats.

And I see this glimpse into our humanity, and I started to assemble the ribs, and the railing, and I'm putting together, and all of a sudden, they stopped coming by going, "Fruitcake", and instead, I see them say, "I got a sea clamp if you need a sea clamp for that". And then, someone else came by, saying, "Hey, I got some galvanized screws if you need some". And then, someone else came by saying, "I got some oil-based marine paint, you like blue and red?"

That would have a massive influence on how I would show up in the world later on in my life, in my community, and my style of leadership. I'm like, that's how humanity works. They think you're crazy, they think you're a fruitcake, but when you actually really start to create something that's like in the physical world, people want to jump on that boat, they want to jump on that train. And that's how we work as a human species. So, I actually understand that now.

So, I built that thing in three-and-a-half weeks. I paddled it in 900 miles in 11 days. I averaged 75 miles a day, and it was no current, it's a big river, there's like just paddling, and I averaged 50,000 strokes a day, and I counted, because I had nothing better to do. And I did the trip in four months, six days, and I was finished, and filmed it for National Geographic, and I thought the trip was over.

Luke Storey: [00:25:07] Did you have Diamond with you in the canoe?

Reinette Senum: [00:25:09] So, what happened was when I built the canoe, I knew that I couldn't have Diamond with me in the canoe because he had claws, right? And it was a canvas canoe, so I went to the elder—I was going to say the captain. To the chief of the village, his name was Randy, and I said, "Would you please hold on to Diamond and I promise you I will come back?" But he will literally puncture the canoe, and I was planning on like paddling long, long, long days, right?

And he was not going to sit there just calmly for that. And as I was leaving, as I was departing the riverbank, as a matter of fact, Diamond's off the river, off the bank, away, and I hear this [making sounds], and I'm like, "I'm coming back, Diamond. I'm coming back", and my tears are pouring down my face. [Making sounds] "I'm coming back, Diamond." I mean, I cried. I cried for three days.

And so, when I finished it, I came back home, and I worked, I mean, day in and day out, I worked, and I took the film, the footage I had for National Geographic, and I put together a one woman show that I've been doing for 25 years. And so, these nine different segments of different pieces of music, and I did a one woman show, and the whole theater was packed. It's this Nevada theater in my hometown of Nevada City and the place was packed, upstairs, down, just standing room only, right?

Because they knew how many years I have been trying and trying, and they just had this kind of like familial pride, like she did it. And so, the place was packed. I had my show. Next morning, I had cash in my hand, jumped on the plane, flew into the bush, and brought Diamond back for the second show. And then, as soon as I got him back, I realized I made a mistake. He was a dog of the wild, didn't know what domesticated cats were and animals, didn't know what roads were or cars, and within two months, was hit and killed.

Luke Storey: [00:26:56] Oh, man.

Reinette Senum: [00:26:57] Yeah. It was brutal. And it was a heart-stopper. And it was one of the things where I had to kind of come to terms with the fact that he was actually going to be shot and killed the year before, and I gave him the best year of his life, and he changed my life, too. That whole trip was changed. As soon as I got him, it's like, of course, I've got to make it. Of course, I have to survive. What would happen to Diamond otherwise? I mean, the lessons he taught me.

Luke Storey: [00:27:25] I mean, the mom instinct.

Reinette Senum: [00:27:28] Yeah.

Luke Storey: [00:27:28] Right? I mean, there's-

Reinette Senum: [00:27:29] Instantaneously.

Luke Storey: [00:27:30] ... probably nothing as powerful as that in the known universe.

Reinette Senum: [00:27:33] Yeah. I survived it because I had to, what would happen to him if I didn't make it?

Luke Storey: [00:27:37] Yeah.

Reinette Senum: [00:27:37] Yeah. And so, that was a brutal ending. And in fact, that's why I thought I thought, oh, this is how it's going to end on this note. That's so sad. And as I mentioned before, I realized that later on, it didn't end. Actually, the journey was just beginning in many ways, which we can get into shortly.

Luke Storey: [00:27:54] What a cool story. I'm so glad I indulged myself and the audience with that. I love stories. It's my last name, you know what I mean?

Reinette Senum: [00:28:02] Right?

Luke Storey: [00:28:03] Yeah. And just the whole time you're telling it, I'm thinking of, of course, putting myself in that position like, at no leg of that trip did I think, yeah, I could do that. I was like, holy shit. She might be a fruitcake. It sounds crazy. But man, it's so cool. Thank you for sharing that.

Reinette Senum: [00:28:22] Yeah, my pleasure.

Luke Storey: [00:28:23] So, man, there are so many directions I want to go here. You went on to become very socially and politically involved in your town of Nevada City, which I've been to once. It's a beautiful, beautiful town.

Reinette Senum: [00:28:41] Northern California.

Luke Storey: [00:28:42] Yeah. I was staying in Tahoe, and so hop, skip, and a jump from there, and I had a company that I work with called AmpCoil is based there.

Reinette Senum: [00:28:51] Yeah, Aaron. Yeah, I know them.

Luke Storey: [00:28:53] Yeah, they're based there, too. So, those are the only people I actually know there, except, now, you. So, you eventually become mayor of Nevada City, for what, two terms?

Reinette Senum: [00:29:02] Two terms. As city council member for eight years, and two of those years, as mayor, and also then, also vice mayor, too.

Luke Storey: [00:29:08] Okay. And then, in 2011, you co-founded Sierra Roots, a homeless advocacy organization, launching the county's first extreme weather shelter for the homeless.

Reinette Senum: [00:29:22] That's right.

Luke Storey: [00:29:22] Tell us a little bit about that. I love your history, because you've done so much meaningful public service, and now, where we're going to go in this conversation, we were talking about this earlier, like some people could deem you a right wing extremist or something, because you've been very outspoken about your views about the convid, as have I, but in reading all this stuff about you, I'm like, this is like the most progressive person, that this is like a classical liberal kind of person that gets involved and is actually doing things meaningfully and consciously in their community. So, what was that Sierra Roots project about?

Reinette Senum: [00:30:03] Sierra Roots, so what happened was, and we'll get into another story later, but my objective was in 2004, I was really concerned with the plight of the world, the direction we were going in, and now, 2004, it feels like the good old days, right? The irony. And I thought, well, what can I possibly do? I'm one person, I can't change the world. And then, I thought, well, look, if you're going to make a difference, start in your own hometown, for Pete's sake.

And I read the book, The Tipping Point, and then, of course, later on, like even Power vs. Force and stuff like that, and I thought, you know what? Just make your community what you want to see in the world. And so, what happened was we had a homeless shelter that would close during the summer times and our homeless population was rising. And I thought, this is awful that in the summertime, they have to go off and fend for themselves again, so I decided to do kind of a public outreach project that would kind of really galvanize the community and really focus on the fact that we don't have a homeless shelter 24/7, all year long.

And so, I got over 100 volunteers together, and in two days, we built a fleet of microhouses on wheels for the homeless. And I actually spent the next three years hauling out into the woods, the forest, wherever they were, if they're willing to accept it. And so, we built 40 of these, these are like these big, huge wooden, almost like Flintstone wheels, and rickshaw handles, and corrugated tin roof that opened up, and had mosquito netting, and a little shelf inside, enough room for your stuff at the foot of this little microhouse or for your dog delay.

And once we did that, I was working with a woman named Janice O'Brien, and I'm like, we need to do more than this. And our objective was to get away from the homeless shelter model and actually create a homeless village, where people could live and work. And we can help them rebuild their own skills and their own sense of purpose, and give them wraparound services they needed. And so, we started Sierra Roots.

And then, what happened was we had one of our local indigenous people freeze and die under one of our overpasses in our little town in Nevada City, and that just hit us in the heart really hard. And I thought, this is messed up, I can't believe this happened on our watch, on our guard. So, at that point in time, there's a lot of outcry throughout the community. I was upset, and we're like, okay, that's it, we're going to start an extreme weather shelter, so this never, ever happens again. And when we started, it was like just got on Facebook saying, okay, I need bags, I need mats, I need kennels for the dogs, we're going to do it tonight.

And it was a battle for years to get the county to support it, to get the city to support it, and it was highly controversial, and it was a little bit of the Wild West at first, right? There weren't many house rules and things like that. And we would sit there all night long kind of trying to keep my eyes open with a toothpick on a cold metal chair, just trying to watch everybody, and it was a little hairy, right? But now, it's a regular thing, and the county supports it, and the city supports it, and it's not even a question.

Luke Storey: [00:32:53] Wow.

Reinette Senum: [00:32:53] Yeah.

Luke Storey: [00:32:55] That's super cool. It just goes to show, sometimes, good ideas stick.

Reinette Senum: [00:32:58] Sometimes, they do.

Luke Storey: [00:33:00] Well. I want to maybe fast forward a bit, because there's a few nuanced accomplishments that I think are interesting that I could dive into, but I don't want to miss out on some of the current affairs. And I'm going to try to put this one out as quickly as I can, because when I cover things about the world today, it changes so fast. It's my usual six to eight-week lead time, by the time that happens, the trucker convoy is history or whatever.

Reinette Senum: [00:33:28] I know, right?

Luke Storey: [00:33:29] But as you're serving as mayor of this small town and you start seeing the reports of what was happening in Wuhan and all of these people just collapsing like zombies in the street, and then people are being boarded into these housing projects, and encampments, and things like that, when did you start to become aware as a mayor that something was off with this?

Reinette Senum: [00:33:57] Well, in January, I became aware of it and almost obsessed with like, what is this? In January. And in fact, I was never concerned about SARS, or MERS, or H1N1, never was worried about any kind of pandemic, to be honest, and this really captured my attention fast. And what shocked me was how the government was responding. I'm like, wait a second, and watching people fall over, and they're boarding people up in their apartments.

I'm like, what is this? And so, I'd go to the city and county, in fact, I went into my city manager, saying, do you know this thing called coronavirus? Have you guys been paying it—I'm like, we've got to prepare, because they're right over the pond from us, essentially. And if it's that virulent, we need to be ready. And my partner, Susan, and I got our N95 masks, and we were even kind of self-quarantining.

And I was running for city council for my third term, as a matter of fact, and there's this one day we're having our parade, which was the last parade Nevada City had, I was going to be out there in the parade, promote, I'm running for city council, and I stayed home, and I listened to the cheers, and the drums, and the marching band, and I'm hearing this sound, and I'm crying. I'm like, that might be the last time I hear that sound for a long time.

And I don't want to go into the public, because I'm like, if it's that deadly, we might be infecting each other. Did not know anything. Knew nothing, right? And I'm trying to warn the county and the city like, hey, guys, there's this thing. It was really surreal, actually, and like, oh, it's okay. And now, I kind of understand why they're a little bit maybe little slow to be concerned. I kind of feel they may have been, I don't know.

Maybe they—I don't know. It was just weird that they weren't responding very quickly. So, finally, what happened was in March, the county is catching on, the city is catching on. And then, March, we have our Governor Newsom make his state home order, which, at the time, is the mayor, and I signed a Declaration of Emergency. I'm like, look, I'm a risk taker, I have no problem with risk, but this is where we have to be extra cautious, because we do not know what we're dealing with.

And so, I signed a Declaration of Emergency. The stay-at-home orders happen, I'm good with that. And then, what happens is that we have all of our meetings now on Zoom, right? And we have these weekly Friday meetings with all the county officials, the health department, the city managers, the mayors, and I'm like, this is good. We're on the same page. Make sure we're all on the same narrative and we're talking the same talk.

And once we go beyond predictive models and get into the raw data, then we can adjust ourselves accordingly. But what happened was we started having these weekly meetings, and I'm looking at the data, I'm watching the Johns Hopkins University updates every single day, right? I'm watching it. I'm looking at the data. And then, the data comes in and it's not so bad. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, by the skin of our teeth, we're okay.

And so, what happens, though, is I'm in these Zoom calls quietly behind the scenes and I'm seeing some distressing things. First of all, what they're saying to us behind the scenes, versus what they're putting on the official county website and what they're saying publicly was very different. So, I already saw from the get go that they're sending out mixed information, which is not a good thing to do, right? They're telling us one thing, but they're telling the public a different thing.

So then, we're seeing that the data come in, I'm like, "Hey, guys, it's not so bad", I start asking questions, like, "Oh, no, no, just stay on the same track". And I could tell by that time that they wanted everyone with a jab, it was very evident that was the end goal, and I kept asking, what's the end goal? What's the metrics? What are we shooting for? And when I would do this, the CEO of our county would actually mute me, ignore me, or say, "Reinette, you're asking too many questions", which was actually more than two questions. "Wait until the meeting's over, and then afterwards, we'll answer your deep-dive questions". And then, they just dogpile me, and then send me away. And so-

Luke Storey: [00:37:35] I mean, you have to think at this point that like, where are the directives coming from? When it all began to roll out universally across the planet, not only like in one town, but it's like every town in California was the same thing, it's like, who's dictating that? That's what always-

Reinette Senum: [00:37:56] Well, and there's another component we never talk about, because most people aren't aware of, but what I was doing as the mayor was I would drive around my town at 3:00, or 4:00, or 5:00 in the morning. I drive around the county just to see what was going on in the middle of the night. And I see these utility trucks rolling into town 3:00 in the morning, 4:00 in the morning, extending the fiber optics, and they disappear by the time 6:00 rolled around. And I've talked to people around the country and the world, same thing happened globally. Do you know how much planning, and cost, and organizing that takes to do something like that on the dime?

So, when you talk about this as happening globally, there's something else happening. They were rolling out the backbone of broadband, right? Fiber optics, I'm not opposed to fiber optics, I'm not opposed to broadband, but that's not what this was about. Because what happened was when everyone came out of the stay-at-home orders, everywhere across the United States, all across the world, including Ireland and Israel, they came out, and also, there were antennas everywhere. Who made that order? Who organized that? We don't talk about that, so yeah.

Luke Storey: [00:38:59] I saw quite a bit of that in the alternative media, citizen reporters going, "Hey, they're like in the middle of the night or in a Sunday", just all of a sudden [making sounds] all these 5G towers going up.

Reinette Senum: [00:39:12] That takes a lot of planning, and funding, and hiring, and organizing, and getting all the materials.

Luke Storey: [00:39:19] And it takes a lot of time, way ahead of time.

Reinette Senum: [00:39:21] Right? Doesn't just spontaneously erupt, so okay. So, now, what's happening is that I'm getting really concerned, because we are not pivoting according to the information coming in. I'm like, what is going on? And I know who I am, I call out corruption, I don't care where it is, I just call it out, I'm a truth teller, and I've got a loud voice, and I'm willing to make a stand, because I know most people don't have the backbone. I've got that, so like I'll use it.

So, I see Gavin Newsom make this announcement, that statewide mandate, and I'm thinking to myself, how is that? That's not how laws are made, that's not how legislation is made, and that's not the job of a governor. So, I go down to my police chief, I walk right down to city hall, I say, "Hey, Chad, I want to know, you intend on enforcing this? And he says to me, "I don't know how. It doesn't come with a penal code. You can't enforce something without a penal code." I'm like, "Thanks". He goes, "And it doesn't look very constitutional to me". I'm like, "Thank you very much".

So, I sit, and I go back home, I'm online, I'm looking for the media, I'm looking for the radio, I'm looking for the newscasters to say, hey, a governor can't do this, and it's silent, and I'm thinking, oh, no, I'm going to have to resort to my Facebook page, which I have done on a few occasions, and I've made a big stir in my town, I don't need to tell anybody that, they can Google that. And so, I'm like, okay, this will have to do.

So, I go and I grab a Peggy Hall, the Healthy American video, where she does a beautiful job of explaining how legislation is made. I'm like, thank you for doing that. I get that post, and then I do this post like, hey, just so you know, I'm paraphrasing, as you go about your day, just know that Gavin Newsom is not king, governors can't make laws, and you can breathe freely. And I knew that was going to create a bit of a storm, but I'm like, I'm just telling you all the truth. This is not how it works, especially during a state of emergency.

During a state of emergency, this is actually the responsibility of elected officials to make sure that we abide by the Constitution and not go down this slippery slope. And I'm watching us go down a really fast, slippery slope at that time. And of course, as you can well imagine, all hell broke out. The phone calls came in, the emails came in, people were like, we love her, we hate her, shut her up, no, speak. The newscast came, and now, people-

Luke Storey: [00:41:27] And you're a mayor at this time?

Reinette Senum: [00:41:28] I'm mayor.

Luke Storey: [00:41:28] Wow. God, that's crazy. It's not like you're just a rogue, pissed-off woman or someone questionable. I mean, you're in charge of some stuff.

Reinette Senum: [00:41:36] I am, and I was right. That's not his authority. They should have actually been focusing the cameras on him, but they're focusing on me. And I'm not going to back down. I believe in telling the truth and I've got very thick skin, so I'm going to just hold the line. And the haters are going to hate and the lovers are going to love. And so, now, by this time, I've already been elected for my third term.

We are now in July 8th, and I'm still the mayor, ready to step down, take my oath of office for my third term as council member, and as my partner, Susan, can tell you, it was several weeks of me going, I think I have to resign, because I'm not going to shut up. And my town is so tiny and my city hall is so small, they're taking the crosshairs, they're just getting it left and right, they can't even do their job, they're just answering the emails and the phone calls, it's not good for City Hall.

And I think that me truth-telling and calling out these uncomfortable truths is more important right now in this current atmosphere than me being a mayor. And also, the climate changed so much in my town, there are like so many incoming missiles that were out of the purview of my community and my job as mayor that I was like I have to pivot. I don't know what I'm going to do, but I have to come at this completely different and it can't be at this level.

And I didn't even know what that was yet. So, here I am on my Zoom call, I'm the mayor, ready to step down and take my oath, and instead, I read my resignation letter, and the city's—I mean, I see the councilmembers just whip their heads up, they're like, what? Because this town is my everything. This town is like, this is how we're going to change the world, is by me investing in my community, and I was letting go of my baby.

It was a big thing for me. And I was investing in this community, because I believe if we go into hard times, it's going to be us, it's going to be our networks, it's going to be our neighbors, it's going to be our farms, it's going to be all of us, we're the ones who are going to survive the hard times, and I was letting it go. Never thought I'd do that.

And so, I say to my council members, which I'm sure they still don't like me to this day, said, "I have to leave you with a story. There's a gentleman by the name of Dr. Lennart Hardell, who's well-known for convincing the World Health Organization after years of collecting empirical evidence and studies that Agent Orange is a cancer-causing agent, and once they said yes, it is, they went around to all the heads of different chemical companies, and said, 'Stop spraying Agent Orange'. And the heads of the companies that did not stop spraying, they hauled them into the international courts and started prosecuting them for crimes against humanity. And in order to identify who was committing these crimes against humanity, there's only one question you have to ask, which is, what did you know by when?"

So, I said to my city council, "We're going to come back, because you have enough information right now to know better". This is July of 2020. "You have enough information right now to know better to stop doing what you're doing. And I'm going to tell you right now, I'm going to come back, and I'm going to hold your feet to the fire to the highest extent of the law, and we're going to charge you guys for crimes against humanity", and I left.

Luke Storey: [00:44:33] Oh, my God. That's a mic drop of all mic drops. So, when you mention these crimes against humanity, I'm trying to think of the timeline there. I mean, we're force-masking kids.

Reinette Senum: [00:44:45] Waiting for the jab.

Luke Storey: [00:44:46] Closing down businesses, right?

Reinette Senum: [00:44:48] Oh, yeah.

Luke Storey: [00:44:49] Just all of this stuff that is illogical and unconstitutional in many cases.

Reinette Senum: [00:44:52] But we weren't even forcing the children yet to wear the masks really big time. It's more like adults, and businesses, and close the businesses.

Luke Storey: [00:44:59] And that was enough to fire you up, even that, because it's gotten so much worse.

Reinette Senum: [00:45:04] Right. And it wasn't necessary. It's just like, you guys, we have other options.

Luke Storey: [00:45:08] And did you know about the lack of efficacy with masks and the possible harm that they could actually cause, people wearing them?

Reinette Senum: [00:45:16] Well, interesting, because I was a house painter for decades and I have what's called industrial bronchitis, hence the cough. And so, what happened was I was wearing my N95 mask incorrectly many times, wasn't fitted to my face, or I'd pop a dirty one on, oh, it's better than nothing. Well, actually, it wasn't. And so, now, I permanently damaged my lungs. So, I say to people like, look, you may not know this, but if you wear a mask improperly, or it's dirty, or it's like got bacteria inside, you can actually do damage, this is not good.

And the masses should not be wearing masks 24/7, or 8 hours a day, or 10 hours a day, it's just we have other alternatives. Even then, I was saying, we've got vitamin D, we got vitamin C, we got zinc tablets, go out, and that's what I was saying to our health department at that time. They're like, because they said to me when I would challenge them, they'd say, "Reinette, until we have high herd immunity, you can expect more of the same".

That's when I was asking like, "What's the goal here?" And I said, "Well, if you want herd immunity, you need acquired herd immunity, and if that's the case, should we let people going out into the sun now, vitamin D, get out of their homes, grow food, get their hands in the soil? We can distribute C and D." And then, found me another doctor in these Zoom calls that said, "Well, Reinette, until we have zero cases".

I'm like, "When do we ever have zero cases of anything? None of this is making sense." And so, at that point in time, I thought, okay, and I said to the city council when I resigned, "I'm stepping down to step up". Didn't know even what that meant, but I thought, okay, at that point in time, there was just this complete broad silence across the world. I'm like, where are the doctors? Where are the nurses? Where are the virologists and the experts?

I know there's more to it than just masking and social distancing. There's not a lot of science behind that that really backs it up. It's very quiet, so I thought, well, this is what I'm going to do, I'm going to go on YouTube, and I'm going to start interviewing experts in the respective fields, and I'm going to bring them to the table, basically, and they'll share that with my community and anyone else in the world who wants to hear their opinions, so they can make educated decisions.

That is actually the job of an elected official, is to inform the public. That's what our elected officials should be doing, but they were not. So, as a citizen, I'm going to do it, without putting my city hall into the crosshairs. So, I went on to YouTube, started with Reinette Senum's Chew on This, and when I interviewed Sherri Tenpenny, it went viral. She was the first time anyone talked about the mechanisms of injury. And it got millions of hit and immediately YouTube-

Luke Storey: [00:47:37] Of the inoculations.

Reinette Senum: [00:47:37] Yeah, YouTube took me down.

Luke Storey: [00:47:38] I listened to that one, by the way, and we'll link to that. It's on BitChute, I think.

Reinette Senum: [00:47:42] BitChute, on my Reinette Senum's channel.

Luke Storey: [00:47:42] Yeah. We'll link to that in the show notes, which, again, people can find at lukestorey.com/wakethebear. The Sherri Tenpenny, I mean, I've heard her here and there, she's definitely one of the outspoken heroes of-

Reinette Senum: [00:47:54] Yeah, she is.

Luke Storey: [00:47:56] ... saving humanity at the moment. But that interview that you did with her is crazy, and that was even a little earlier on.

Reinette Senum: [00:48:01] Well, that was in the summer of 2020.

Luke Storey: [00:48:04] That's when they first started rolling it out.

Reinette Senum: [00:48:06] The Fall of 2020, and then we did another one in January. And then, I interviewed people like OSHA experts on the masks, right? A Dr. David Martin, a Dr. Carrie Madej, Attorney Leigh Dundas, a Professor Dolores Cahill in Ireland, Dr. Peter McCullough. These were people who people didn't know about them yet. And I was getting their names, my mama warriors, who were on the front lines, saying, "Reinette, they fed me. Reinette, you need to interview this person. Reinette", and we'd contact them and we'd interviewed them.

And then, what happened was I was on The Highwire, Del Bigtree's The Highwire about me stepping down and how there's no other elected officials in the State of California. 40 million people, nobody was calling him out. It's like I was this little lone wolf out there. I'm like, okay, guys, backup. Now's the time to back me up, there's nobody. And so, I get people reaching out, saying, "You should run for governor", and I'm like, "Absolutely not. I will not be doing that any time ever."

Reinette Senum: [00:49:03] And I got a lot of that. And then, I had some folks reach out to me who were interesting. They've been involved in the California political scene. And then, I was talking to them mostly not to talk about running for governor, but just really to talk about, what are you seeing, because am I losing my mind here? And then, after conversations about it and just watching the political climate, waiting, waiting for people to speak up and wake up, I'm like, ayayay, I think I have to like really, really step up.

So, I was talking to the two individuals who are asking me to run, I just said, I said, "I have a really good life, and in fact, my partner, Susan, and I are actually test-driving RVs right now, and we just might go ride off into the sunset, because I don't know if there's anything else I can do. And I can do my podcast from anywhere in the world, so I can just keep doing them, and just go off, enjoy the rest of my life.

But if you really want me to actually run for governor, it has to be extraordinary, because other people can just do more of the same, and I'm not going to do more of the same. So, if you guys are willing to support me n not running with a party affiliation, whatsoever, because ever since Citizens United decision came down from the Supreme Court, big money's infiltrated our politics, our government is dead, the two-party system is absolutely corrupt, it does not matter who you get, red or blue, you will get more of the same."

Luke Storey: [00:50:25] Two-headed snake.

Reinette Senum: [00:50:26] It was a two-headed snake, they had different wing of the same bird, and this is the biggest thing I could express.

Luke Storey: [00:50:30] That's what's so frustrating to me is that as I was kind of joking earlier about you could be labeled like a right-wing extremist, just because you're a fucking normal person who just values freedom, but we get so caught up in the left and right, and Republican, Democrat thing, and it's like if you zoom out just 10,000 feet even, you can see like, does anything really ever change? I mean, think about who's president, right? It's like-

Reinette Senum: [00:50:56] Different shades of gray. That's it.

Luke Storey: [00:50:57] Yeah. I mean, you've had a couple. You have, okay, way back when, women were allowed to vote, fucking awesome. Fast forward a couple few decades, gay people can get married, awesome. It's like you have a couple moves toward the liberty of people and the betterment of society, but I mean, you can like name them on one hand, things that have actually been meaningful in terms of a positive impact with widespread legislation that matters. And it's just like it doesn't matter if it's Trump, Obama, Hillary, I mean, it's all the same stuff.

Reinette Senum: [00:51:30] Well, when you look at the Republicans and the Democrats, and who's investing in their campaigns, it's the exact same companies, exact same people.

Luke Storey: [00:51:39] Right. It's like when you look at—because we'll be polarized, oh, I like Fox or CNN, and then you look [making sounds] BlackRock, you know what I mean? 

Reinette Senum: [00:51:45] Right.

Luke Storey: [00:51:45] It's like the same multinational corporations, these bloated, seemingly unstoppable corporations own all of the media and they're creating the narrative. And some people, like David Icke, for one that I interviewed, even said, and I had a hard time at that moment thinking that, but that they even like, if not created Trump, at least at the very least allowed him to get in and do that thing, right?

Reinette Senum: [00:52:10] Right.

Luke Storey: [00:52:10] Because they just wanted the disruption and they wanted to trick this whole kind of segment of the population to think they had a win, right?

Reinette Senum: [00:52:17] Yes.

Luke Storey: [00:52:18] But like if you look at the aftershock of what happened, it's like dude rolled out vaccines. I mean, we're in much worse shape.

Reinette Senum: [00:52:24] I know.

Luke Storey: [00:52:26] So, after all of that, I was like, I don't know, maybe they were right. Not like I was a big Trump guy, but I did like—I don't want to say I was a Trump guy at all, per se, but I did like that things were getting shaken up, and that the mainstream media was being exposed, and at least, it was different, you know what I mean?

Reinette Senum: [00:52:42] It was monkey wrench. It seemed like it was monkey-wrenching the system, somewhat.

Luke Storey: [00:52:46] Yeah. So, I thought-

Reinette Senum: [00:52:46] Whether it was good or bad, it was monkey-wrenching.

Luke Storey: [00:52:47] ... whether or not like I liked that particular person's personality, and some of the things that they had said, and all that very immature, and egotistical, and stuff, but I did like that, well, hey, even if this whole thing blows up in our face, at least the status quo is being diminished. But then, here we are, and it's like, no, the status quo is kind of still there, only things are actually way more polarized and worse. So, you could see from that point of view that, perhaps, those oligarchs behind the scenes do orchestrate all of this and give us the perception of choice, because we won't question our slavery if we don't know that we're slaves.

Reinette Senum: [00:53:21] 100%. You don't fight for freedom if you don't know you're enslaved. And it's total war games, right? Because the bankers always invest on both sides of a war. Well, what do you think we're in right now? So, they've invested on both sides. So, either way, either side you vote for, you voted for more war. And I tell people, you can sit there and you can vote for a Republican right now, governor in California, and you're just going to get a red Newsom, versus right now, you've got a blue Newsom. It's like you're just going to get more of the same. It's impossible. Don't even kid yourselves, folks. And this is the biggest message to get out there, is as long as you continue to vote for a Democrat and a Republican, you are guaranteed more of the same, and you have to ask yourself, do I want more of this?

Luke Storey: [00:54:06] I hope no one in California thinks they want more of that.

Reinette Senum: [00:54:10] I hope so, too.

Luke Storey: [00:54:11] I'm so pissed at these demons that have ruined such a great state. I lived in California most of my life and I literally like felt like I had to flee. It was almost like a-

Reinette Senum: [00:54:21] You're not alone.

Luke Storey: [00:54:22] ... refugee kind of escape. Even I was texting with my dad today about the arduous journey of renovating the house, he said, "Well, you bet you'll never do that again", and I said, "Well, probably not, but I'm just glad I got out of California". And no offense to people still living there. I mean, I love California.

Reinette Senum: [00:54:36] No, it's brutal. It's really hard. 

Luke Storey: [00:54:39] It's crazy.

Reinette Senum: [00:54:40] You realize how hard it is once you get back into it.

Luke Storey: [00:54:42] Especially LA, I mean, just that was LA and San Francisco, maybe the epicenters of all things that have gone wrong politically in California. I know there are many places that are still inhabitable, yeah.

Reinette Senum: [00:54:53] It's true. And it's very true. And we just try to let people know that this is the moment, this is the moment, this is the time that we make the great leap of faith. We have to. This is it. If we don't do it now, if you think things are tough now, just wait. And so, I think people are really starting to realize, I think the young people who voted for Biden are like, wait, you're not going to forgive our student loans, and instead, you're going to give us crack pipes? I mean, that's the reality. It's like, yeah, that's what it looks like. So, people are really waking up really fast, like, oh my Lord, it's like, welcome to the party, there you go.

Luke Storey: [00:55:28] Like the buyer's remorse crowd.

Reinette Senum: [00:55:29] Yeah, it's a buyer's remorse. Yeah, it's sad.

Luke Storey: [00:55:31] Realizing they got duped.

Reinette Senum: [00:55:32] They got duped. And the whole system is meant to dupe us. So, when we were talking about me running for governor, it's like, look it, because Citizens United, I've been aware of it since the 2010 when that court decision came down and most people didn't even catch some attention.

Luke Storey: [00:55:47] I've never heard of it. So, Citizens United is a non-partisan?

Reinette Senum: [00:55:51] No. Citizens United is The Supreme Court said, basically, your campaign contributions as a corporation is equivalent for freedom of speech, the First Amendment right. So, your campaign dollars is considered a First Amendment right. It is free speech. And as soon as that happened, they infiltrated the campaigns, and they started infiltrating all of politics, all of campaigns-

Luke Storey: [00:56:14] So, this is how a George Soros can move into-

Reinette Senum: [00:56:17] That's right. So, basically, big money literally co-opted, it was a coup. It was a monetary coup, essentially.

Luke Storey: [00:56:22] Got it. Okay. So, people are whining, what happened to our representatives? They're bought. They're paid for. And I know for a fact, because I'm talking to these folks and my campaign team is talking to them, we have people in LA who are Republican, who have no competition in their district of any other Republican, they're pushing the dial just a tiny a little bit, and the GOP on the official website is removing them, just because they're trying to push the dial a tiny bit.

If you do not toe the line, that's what I'm saying to folks, like look it, guys, with the party comes money, it comes infrastructure, it comes donor base, all these great things, but you have to sell your soul. You can never represent the people in the party. It's impossible. The system is structured for that. So, when I was talking to these folks saying, I'll run, but no party affiliation, which comes with its own challenges.

You don't have the big money, you don't have the donors, you don't have the structure there, but anything else is a joke. It's a facade. So, there is that piece. And there's another important piece. As a person who's been in the foxhole, in the trenches for almost 20 years now, I've been doing all this incredible work with the community, and yet I see our community and our world just backsliding, and backsliding, and getting worse.

I'm like, what is going on? Why is it getting worse? Why is our Constitution getting eviscerated? So, I said to folks, I said, "Look it, guys, I'm willing to do this, but there has to be something at the foundation of this campaign". And I told them the story about the Seventh Generation Principle, which a lot of people still don't know about. In fact, there's Seven Generations, and it's an eco product. That's how people are familiar with it.

Luke Storey: [00:57:54] Oh, right, yeah.

Reinette Senum: [00:57:54] They don't realize there was something more. 

Luke Storey: [00:57:56] The laundry soap.

Reinette Senum: [00:57:56] The laundry soap, the paper towels. I said, our constitution, most people don't realize, was inspired by the six nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. The Iroquois, the indigenous people, inspired our forefathers, they're like, "You guys are so brilliant, we're going to take that". And they did, and they made the Constitution. And it was not until 1988 that the Congress and the Senate actually gave the Iroquois their due credits, saying, "Thank you for inspiring this beautiful constitution".

So, we have that piece, but also, what people don't realize is the Iroquois, their constitution, this beautiful vessel, came with two important components that every vessel has to have, an anchor and a compass. And the compass is that Seventh Generation Principle. Every decision you make today should serve seven generations from now. That's the metrics. That's the measurement. That's how we measure ourselves in our own lives, and our leaders and their decision making.

And then, the compass is, okay, we have the elders, who are now locked away in nursing homes, what we do is we take those elders, and we let them look back on the last few generations, fold in that wisdom over the generations into the decision making today to ensure for the next seven generations. And it's that kind of wind that you fill into yourselves that continues the boat to propel towards that particular shore, right?

And so, I said, "So, we can create a contract for Californians. That's a blueprint for California that's based on that principle. As everyone's running out of the burning house, I'll run in, but that's my prerequisite, essentially, is like no party affiliation and it's got to be the Seventh Generation Principle, because I want us to have a common goal. I want to stop the party division.

I want to stop the caustic words. I want to stop the weaponization of our world. And I want to make sure that our children have a future", period. And they're like, "Game's on." I'm like, "Oh, boy". So. We actually read Newt Gingrich's Contract with Americans, we read Ice Cube's Contract with Californians, read those, got inspired, created a Contract with Californians. It's a 30-page blueprint.

Luke Storey: [00:59:57] It's beautiful, too. I skim-read it today in preparation for this. Yeah, it's powerful document.

Reinette Senum: [01:00:02] It is. And it's a living document. We have a second iteration coming, right? Because my whole thing for my canoe story is I believe in the collective genius. I'll have an idea, I'll think, oh, it's a great idea, but when I let people pile on their wonderful ideas, it always outshoots my wildest dreams. So, that was just like the fundamental start, right? So, we already have better ideas, more beautiful, more powerful programs and stuff like that to put in there, but it's based on that Seventh Generation Principle. So, we worked on that and that was in October of 2020, we started working on that. And I was going to run for the recall.

And then, as the recall got nearer and nearer, it looked like it was a big old boondoggle, I'm like, no, I'm not doing this. This looks like don't even bother, so we pulled out and just focused on June of 2020, which most Californians have no idea. Go ahead and ask them that, in less than three months, they're getting ballots to vote for a new governor. And the media is not even covering this, which I find fascinating, as Governor Newsom is backpedaling, oh, do we really want masks? Oh, do we really want to close businesses? Did I say that? And the media is keeping it very quiet that there's even an election coming around. I can't help but just note that.

Luke Storey: [01:01:12] In 2022?

Reinette Senum: [01:01:13] In 2022, right now, coming up in a few months.

Luke Storey: [01:01:15] Yeah.

Reinette Senum: [01:01:16] Right? So, it's interesting how the media—because think about it, three months before the recall in California, it was, oh, Caitlyn Jenner, oh, Larry Elder, that's all you heard about, right? Recall, recall, recall. And now, we're three months out, there's this huge—I mean, this is a primary, right? This is for the next four years and the media is barely covering it. It's fascinating.

Luke Storey: [01:01:36] Wow.

Reinette Senum: [01:01:38] So, what I think is happening from what I can tell is that our elected officials in California and our governor are trying to backpedal like, "Oh, did we say that? Were we locking you down? I'm sorry, were we destroying your lives and your children's future? Was that me?" And they're going to backpedal all that, and kind of just pull it in, and then go, oh, by the way, I'm running again. We have very short memories. So, I think this is the game they're playing.

Luke Storey: [01:02:04] Wow. So interesting. I was talking to a guy here who was in politics in Texas in like a couple of decades ago, and I forget if he was running to be a senator or something like that, but he was telling me how, when he reached a certain level of success and achievement, whatever that was. I forget what distinction or title he had, but he said that he was kind of shown in order to be part of that club and get into the upper echelon that it was dark. He didn't go into specifics, but he's alluding to-

Reinette Senum: [01:02:43] Was he an American?

Luke Storey: [01:02:43] American guy, yeah.

Reinette Senum: [01:02:44] Okay.

Luke Storey: [01:02:45] I think we were talking about the rampant pedophilia in the world, and Jeffrey Epstein, and all of that stuff, and how politicians are compromised, and get blackmailed, and things like that. And I was kind of poking him for like, is any of that stuff true? And essentially, what he said is at a certain level, you're not going to get further unless you are-

Reinette Senum: [01:03:04] Part of the team.

Luke Storey: [01:03:05] Yeah, unless you are compromised in some way. I wonder if the future legacy that you're describing, and envisioning, and acting toward without the Republican Democrat thing. I'm curious as to how this is going to perhaps emerge with an upswell of public support, and that so many of us have realized we got duped.

Reinette Senum: [01:03:27] We're duped.

Luke Storey: [01:03:27] I mean, I was never political, but I would have always considered myself a liberal, and I'm like, if I look at the far left now, I'm like, I'm definitely not that. 

Reinette Senum: [01:03:35] I know. 

Luke Storey: [01:03:35] But I'm also not some fundamentalist, White supremacist, or whatever.

Reinette Senum: [01:03:38] I know. I'm not either.

Luke Storey: [01:03:40] Whatever the extremes are, I'm like, I actually just want people to be free, and happy, and-

Reinette Senum: [01:03:45] And healthy, and right.

Luke Storey: [01:03:46] ... follow the golden rule. I mean, it's not that complicated.

Reinette Senum: [01:03:48] It's not that complicated. And I say to people, I'm like, look at California, has everything it needs to turn it around. We have everything. We've got the resources. We've got the intelligence. We've got the money. We're the fifth largest economy in the world, still, the only thing we're lacking is the leadership. And I agree, it is a club, and so we know that. So, the thing is we know how elections can turn out, so we have a multi-pronged approach here at this campaign.

We're not putting all of our eggs in the gubernatorial basket, right? So, it's like, okay, if we win, we're going to kick butt. We're going to make sure the buck stops with me at my desk, when bad bills come through that are not constitutional, I veto them. We're going to make sure that we actually appoint people that actually are going to do their job, and care for the planet, and care for the people.

These are the things that I can do, right? But we're challenging people to, we're like, look it, guys, do not think one governor is going to save you. This is all hands on deck. We're in such a deep hole. We need everybody and everybody counts. So, what we're doing is we're challenging people to say, look it, we want you to run. We don't care about your party affiliation any longer. You can be over here, Libertarian, you can be a Dem, you can be Republican, but you can be in different parts of the sea and still head towards the same shore, right?

There are many different routes to the same shore. That's what we're asking about. So, we want people to run at that school board level, at the city, the state, the federal level, with the Seventh Generation Principle as a foundation of their whole candidacy. So, you can be a Libertarian and still think about seven generations from now, you can be a Democrat and you can still think about seven generations, so that's what we're doing.

And then, we go even beyond that, we're like, okay, guys, this is more than a political campaign, we're talking about a cultural shift here. We want a cultural shift in California. And we want this to catch on fire around the whole entire planet, and this is what we're asking people to do. Your legislators, your leaders have convinced you that they're in charge of your destiny, and that's absolutely not true.

Where your destiny goes is how you think and the actions that follow. You have 12 to 60,000 thoughts a day, they are connected to actions. Now, just imagine for a moment, if you take some of those actions and you make sure that when you make those actions ,that they're based upon that Seventh Generation Principle. And so, what happens is, over time, maybe 20% of the time, you actually make decisions based upon the Seventh Generation Principle, or maybe 50, maybe 70. Well, guess what, over time, as you're moving, you'll change the trajectory by a lot within seven generations, even within one or two generations, right?

And people will ask me like, "Well, what do you mean by that? I'm like, wwell, it doesn't matter if you're a doctor, or a policeman, a fireman, a parent, a garbage man, let's say you're a farmer, for instance, and these are my two examples, is you have a crop, and you've got some weeds here, and you want to spray your weeds, do you spray with Roundup or do you spray with white vinegar? Which better serves the seventh generation?

Let's say you have food you want to take, do you put it in a one-time use Styrofoam container or do you put it in a multi-use stainless steel container? Which better serves the seventh generation? And the beautiful thing about this is, because I think we're all tired of the micromanaging, right? We're like, get out of my business. The government does not belong in my business, does not belong in my life, does not belong in my education, does not belong in my family, does not belong in my living room, and certainly does not belong beyond my skin, people are done.

And what's so beautiful about the seventh generation principle is that you can be over here in these waters with this kind of current and this kind of wind, and you can be over here, but we can all still head, and you're tacking back and forth, and might be looking if you're going this way or that way, but you're actually heading towards the shore according to the wind that you're facing. So, it's not about me micromanaging your life, you figure that out for yourself, but we have a standard. We have a cultural standard. Do we have a cultural standard in our world right now? Is there any cultural standard that we're all trying to achieve? Like this is our goal is a humanity, as a society.

Luke Storey: [01:07:29] I mean, not one that's been fulfilled or recognized.

Reinette Senum: [01:07:33] And the Iroquois knew that. They knew that. They knew they had to have that in order to keep their constitution. Because I know if you have a ship, a boat, and it has no momentum, and it's bobbing up and down, and the propeller's not spinning or the wind is not filling the sail, that thing will actually rattle, and fall apart, and sink to the bottom of the ocean. It's the Seventh Generation Principle, that's what gives that vessel the momentum, so it can cut through the crap, right?

It can get through the storm. It can get through the high waves. And we don't have that in society. And so, on the front end, you have to have that Seventh Generation Principle. And I don't have to micromanage you, because the thing is, too, this is not about perfection, right? This is not about even 100%. Sometimes, you might just go, you know what, I can't make the decision right now on the Seventh Generation Principle, I'll do it all the other times, but this time, I have to do it this way.

It's like, okay, but are you doing it some of the time? You're still going to change the trajectory of our lives. You're still going to benefit the seven generations if you do it more than not. That's on the front end. Now, let's talk about the back end, and this is my favorite part. So, when I was mayor in 2012, I want to know how I'm doing, I want to know how my community is doing, and we didn't have a metrics for that, like a measurement, right? And when I was looking at America, like, well, what do we do to measure our wellness in America?

Well, there is no measurement beyond the GDP, which is gross domestic product. And then, when I start looking at that, I'm like, well, wait a second, the GDP, what adds to the GDP, death, illness, catastrophic fire, hurricanes, car accidents, I mean, nothing that actually measures our wellness. What it's measuring is somebody's making money off of bad things, and it looks good, because it's like, oh, our GDP is bloated, but it doesn't measure our wellness. So, I look to the country, Bhutan. Do you know about the happiness index?

Luke Storey: [01:09:20] No.

Reinette Senum: [01:09:21] Well, this is fantastic.

Luke Storey: [01:09:22] No.

Reinette Senum: [01:09:22] So, for years, what they did is, to this day, every year, the citizens take like a 70-page survey, which I never have Americans do, because we don't have the patience for that. But in this, they take this survey to see how well their citizens are doing, and they ask questions like, how fat's your ox? How tall is your wheat? I mean, those kind of questions, right? Well, that wouldn't apply to Americans, but we have an American version of this.

And there are certain areas in the community, mostly, I'd say probably more liberal communities, but they have a way to take a survey, every citizen can do it every single year, and it's not identifying information, so it's not like the government's going to know your business. And what they do is they ask questions like, do you have access to clean water? Do you feel safe in your neighborhood? Do you have access to higher education, to arts? Right? Do you have access to hiking trails? Do you have time to have sit-down dinners with your family?

These are the measurement of wellness. Do you feel like your government, your government representatives are hearing you and representing you? Well, guess what, if you have your citizens take that survey every single year, you can dial that down to the neighbor, to the zip code, and you can go back to your elected official, and say, hey, you know what, your community does not feel safe, so you've got a year to clean that up. You've got a D on your report card, you got a year. And if you don't do it, we'll recall you or you'll never get elected again. We need measurement, and right now, there's no measurement. And so, I did that in Nevada City in 2012, and let me tell you, it was not very popular with a lot of people, because they're like, don't start measuring us.

Luke Storey: [01:10:55] Really?

Reinette Senum: [01:10:55] No, it got squashed really, really fast. And I couldn't understand why. Now, I'm looking back at it, oh, of course, you didn't want us to measure you. So, you got the front end, you got the back end. The front end is the goal, and the back end is we're going to measure you. And this is the beautiful thing, you're ready? None of this is incumbent upon me winning. If I win, we'll kick butt. We'll do amazing things.

But if I don't win, you can still do all of this. You can still pursue the Seventh Generation. You can fill that into your life, in how you think, how you show up as a leader in your own community, in your own family, in your own life. And then, also, if you want to, you don't need the legislators to pass the happiness index, the wellness index, you can implement it in your own town. It's online. You can sign up and get it going in your own community.

Do some press releases about it, promote it, and do it every single year, and measure elected officials anyway. The objective is this, is we're not playing on the same game board that we've been playing for generations. We're starting a whole new game board over here, a whole different set of rules, whole different set of little icons on the board, and we're not playing by the rules any longer. So, the objective is not to just say, oh, I've got to win an election, the objective is to change the face of California through the campaign itself.

Luke Storey: [01:12:07] That reminds me of a great quote that I've heard before and I found on your site by old Buckminster Fuller, "To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete". That's what I hear in what you're describing, because as we were talking about, we've all been duped into thinking that there are two choices, politically speaking, which, of course, is the sum total of our culture, is based on who's kind of supposed to be in charge, so we're all like running around in circles, and meanwhile, there's this whole other infinite way that we could interact as a society and as a culture, multi-culture.

And we're kind of like just distracted with our heads down in this sandbox that's so limiting. So, let's say you have a groundswell of grassroots bottom-to-top support for your candidacy to be elected, how does the money part of it work and how does the social awareness work in an age of censorship, where the fox is guarding the hen house, with the same people that are paying to put people into positions of power Also control the media, and so all of it's rigged, how are you navigating through the rigging of the whole system? Not the least of which being the actual votes, right? I mean, I think most people really highly doubt-

Reinette Senum: [01:13:32] Right. Well, first of all, we're mailing ballots now only in California, so we're telling everybody to tell everybody to, when those polling places open, you'd put your ballot in, so that reduces some of the chances of the mailman coming along, and then somehow, the box of ballots just disappear, right?

Reinette Senum: [01:13:50] Yeah.

Reinette Senum: [01:13:51] End up on some side of the road. That's important. But again, we may not be able to counter that. That's where I'm like, look it, we got to swamp the system. And that is, everyone's got to run at every level, because if you have one or two people popping up being leaders, it's a game of Whac-A-Mole. And I've been there in my local town where I'm making a stand like, bam, pop up over here, like, bam, over here, bam, and it just happens over, I'm like, you guys, if there's 100 or 1,000 of us, I won't be the only one getting hit over the head, they can't hit that many people over the head.

So, it's a numbers game and we outnumber them. That's what we're seeing with the truckers, we outnumber them, right? So, the objective is to jump into the ring at every single level and swamp the whole entire system. Now, even then, if that doesn't work, that's why I'm like, look at you guys, if you're not willing to run with the Seventh Generation Principle at every single level, and I know those people out there who've been thinking, "Well, maybe I should", I'm going to ask you, I don't know your name, I don't know who you are, I don't know what you're running for, but I'm going to personally ask you to run.

Run like your life depends upon it, because it does. Then, even if we can't get people to run, it's like when you're making your decisions day in, day out, just think about that Seventh Generation Principle and try as many times as you can to make decisions based upon that and you've already changed our future. We don't talk in our culture about legacy. Do you know the rest of my Alaska story? You probably do. Do you know?

Luke Storey: [01:15:13] No.

Reinette Senum: [01:15:15] You don't know the rest of my Alaska story?

Luke Storey: [01:15:17] I'm hearing it here essentially for the first time today. I mean, I heard you tell an abbreviated version of it.

Reinette Senum: [01:15:23] Okay. But not the aftermath, like what happened after?

Luke Storey: [01:15:25] No.

Reinette Senum: [01:15:25] Oh, this is so fun.

Luke Storey: [01:15:27] I mean, it must have been big because of the way that you're operating in the world now.

Reinette Senum: [01:15:31] Okay. So, let's go back to me being adopted.

Luke Storey: [01:15:34] I know Diamond didn't make it. I know that part, sadly.

Reinette Senum: [01:15:38] Okay. You ready? So, I do my trip across Alaska, and now, I'm 30 years old, I still haven't found my family, because I've been looking for the Andersens. And then, finally, I get my files open, my adoption files, and I found out my name was not Marcella Andersen, as my adoptive mother told me before she died, my name is Marcella Funston, F-U-N-S-T-O-N, and I'm like, Funston? I was like, I never had a chance of a normal name, Reinette Senum, Marcella Funston, like ayayay.

I'm like, Funston, what kind of name is that? Well, ends up I was born in San Francisco. And what happened was I find my real name, and then I find that when I started looking for my natural mother when I was 11, she was sick with breast cancer, would die about a year later at the age of 35. So, I'm looking for for 20 years not knowing she died around the time I started looking for her.

And it happens at about four-and-a-half years after I was born, she gave birth to my natural half brother, different dad, same mom, and we are now talking to each other for the first time. He's in Tokyo, Japan, working as a journalist. I get like a 800-dollar phone bill after this conversation, before Skype. It's '94—no, actually, this time, no, it's 96 now. And so, it ends up that I had this really wild great grandfather named General Frederick Funston.

And in San Francisco, there's a Fort Funston and a Funston Avenue that's named after him. And so, as I'm talking to my brother and I'm given a synopsis of my life, I can't believe you don't know the story, he says, "Reinette, now, when you crossed Alaska, that was after you found out our great grandfather did that, right?" I was like, "What? I'm like, "No, no, no. You got the story wrong. I crossed Alaska." He goes, "I know. That's what he did. There's a Smithsonian magazine article, May '89 edition, that talks about his life, and he goes into that very trip."

And I'm like, no, no, no, no, you're so confused. So, I'm living right by UCLA, just like a half a mile away, and as soon as I get off the phone, I literally jumped into my car, go into the library, and in a half-hour, my whole entire world is ready to be tipped upside down for good. So, I am in the library, I got the Smithsonian magazine in my hand, because the internet was not like full-fledged at that time yet, and I find out my great grandfather had been hired by the USDA to go up to Alaska to collect botanical samples, to find out like what was up there in this new frontier, right?

And he actually was the further north of any White man at the time, he went up there, and his trip was a total of two years long, okay? He did not have the luxury of flying into the Yukon headwaters like I did. He had to actually have the Tlingit Indians take him up to the headwaters. So, I'm reading this, and I'm like, wow, that's crazy. He started his trip on April 10th, my birthday, what's crazy, wow, what a coincidence.

And then, as I continued reading, I'm like, oh, look it, oh, wow, he skied down the frozen Yukon River, and along the way, he shot and killed a sled dog to eat, because he was starving. And I'm thinking to myself, that's crazy, because I skied down the Yukon River, and he's now shooting, I actually saved that dog from being shot and killed, and use him as my companion. I'm like, that's really crazy. And then, oh, wait, with two buddies, he cut down three trees and built an 18-foot long canoe.

Luke Storey: [01:18:42] No way.

Reinette Senum: [01:18:43] And I'm thinking to myself, wait, I cut down three trees, and I built an 18-foot long canoe. And then, I kept reading, and then he paddled down the rest of the Yukon River in his canoe, and when he got into the Delta, he flipped his boat, lost most, not all, but a lot of his botanical samples and photographs, I'm like, that's funny, because when I built my canoe, I actually put a little stabilizer on the boat, which really saved me, and I didn't flip my boat. And he did his trip in 1894. I did my trip in 1994. He was 27. He turned 28 along the way. And I'm 27 and I turned 28 along the way.

Reinette Senum: [01:19:19] Are you serious? What the hell?

Reinette Senum: [01:19:23] And I'm thinking to myself, that's mathematically impossible. I'm thinking that's mathematically impossible. And I kept thinking, I can't—and I'm reading the words in the Smithsonian magazine, I'm like, I can't. And I kept doing my math, I calculate, I'm like, no, exactly 100 years before, at the exact same age, exactly a 1500-mile trip, all in an 18-foot long, and I kept thinking, no, because I didn't even know my name yet. I didn't know my—I knew nothing. And I'm like, who is this guy, this Frederick Funston? Who in the world is this guy and what do I need to know? So, Frederick Funston, he is the most famous military figure you've never heard of.

Luke Storey: [01:20:04] Really?

Reinette Senum: [01:20:04] Yeah. Five-foot-four, barely 100 pounds at the time of his death. He was the highest ranked military official in the country when he died. He had a massive heart attack and set the whole entire nation into shock, because he had under his command, Patton, Pershing, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and MacArthur, and he was actually overseeing Pershing as he had on pursuit Pancho Villa at the time.

And he drops dead of a heart attack, sends the whole entire nation into shock, because he was supposed to lead us into what was known at the time as the Great War, World War I. And instead, he drops dead, and they gave his plan to Pershing, and Pershing had us into the war a few months later. So, let's talk about legacy, and that's what this whole entire campaign is about. This is where the real influence comes in, right?

So, Frederick Funston, his father was a congressman who was six-foot-four, a whole foot taller than him. And Frederick Funston, he did a few things that left a big mar on our lives today. One of the things he did is during the Spanish-American War, he actually went into the Philippines and was the first ever in America, actually, to kidnap a democratically elected president, President Aguinaldo of the Philippines, but it brought the Spanish-American War to an early end.

But later on, when they found out he did this and how he did it, they're like, oh, no. It was pretty, pretty brilliant. But still, you just kidnapped a democratically elected president, and well, we've done that since then, a lot. And of course, Mark Twain, who was a big hero, childhood hero of mine, hated my great grandfather, wrote scathing articles about him, right? But this is the most important part of the story.

My great grandfather was second in command of the Presidio in San Francisco, the first in command this one night, went off to a train to go to the East Coast for his niece's wedding, and the very next morning, the 1906 earthquake hit San Francisco, and my great grandfather was head of the Presidio right now. So, what he does is he actually declares martial law. He orders every tent and blanket west of the Mississippi with no communication to the outside world, he gets it within 48 hours, sets up refugee camps everywhere, Oakland, Berkeley, all that area, gets them all set up.

And what happened was the morning that he was shaken out of his bed, he actually ran up in his little skivvies to the top of Nob Hill, he looked around and saw the whole entire city burning down in an inferno, ran right back down to his home, where his wife was, I don't know what kind of calm demeanor she had, but she handed him his morning cup of coffee, and he looks at her, and he says, "Love, pack the belongings into the trunks, the house will be burning down today", and the house burned down about 5 hours later.

And then, what he did, because this inferno was just devouring the whole entire city, he's actually known as the man who saved San Francisco, he took what dynamite he could, this is very controversial until this day, if you're like, oh, he used the wrong dynamite, I'm like, I'm sure he used whatever dynamite he could get his hands on. He, long then this boulevard, blew up all these beautiful homes, and buildings, and businesses, and it actually did stop the fire, but it continued on the flank, but he'd saved a huge section of San Francisco. Well, then later on when the dust settled after this, later, those homeowners tried to sue him and the US Army, and they lost, and out of it came a little ruling known as eminent domain.

Luke Storey: [01:23:08] Wow.

Reinette Senum: [01:23:08] For the larger good.

Luke Storey: [01:23:10] Wow.

Reinette Senum: [01:23:11] Do you know how many times I've spent my life fighting eminent domain? Do you know just over a year ago, I was sleeping in a cemetery in my downtown Nevada City, a historic cemetery, and spending the days watching a tree sitter, as we were trying to stop Pacific Gas and Electric from coming in and cutting down our heritage trees, and they're using that same eminent domain to bully their way into our town? I've been at Standing Rock, where they're using eminent domain, I'm like, Fred, Fred.

And all of a sudden, Luke, I intrinsically, on a DNA level, understand what legacy is. And when I became aware of the story, first and foremost, I'm like, I've got to share this story, people have to know the story, but no, I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, this is more than that, you've got a responsibility to it. You've got a responsibility. This was not happenstance. This didn't just happen. I was hellbent, hellbent on having an extreme weather experience, and certain doors opened and certain doors closed to get me to Alaska exactly 100 years later, doing the exact same trip, building the exact same boat, at the exact same age for me to find this little nugget.

Luke Storey: [01:24:22] Oh, my God. That's golden. Thank you for sharing that.

Reinette Senum: [01:24:27] Yeah. So, when people ask-

Luke Storey: [01:24:29] Maybe the coolest story I've ever heard on this podcast, and there have been a few of them.

Reinette Senum: [01:24:33] It's a crazy story.

Luke Storey: [01:24:35] It's insane.

Reinette Senum: [01:24:36] So, in 2004 when I'm building a better community, it was with the understanding of like, well, I've got a legacy here. And I realized that, you know that proverbial, oh, you cast a stone into the pond and the ripples, well, we're actually more the ripple than we are the stone. And I realized, that I'm thinking, well, Frederick Funston didn't know that eminent domain was going to become weaponized.

He didn't know that, that it was going to be almost used against us. But when I think of his spirit, he, Carnegie, and Roosevelt were the standard bearer for American imperialism. He was actually on the presidential ticket with Roosevelt as the vice president, and as he was traveling around the country doing the stump speeches, going, oh, American imperialism, it's great, oh, we're going to do it, we're going to take over the whole entire planet, it's wonderful, well, guess what, Roosevelt's campaign team kept saying to him, shut up, stop talking about the plan.

Well, he wouldn't shut up, and like if you don't shut up, we're going to pull you off the ticket. He wouldn't shut up and they pulled him off the ticket. But he was a standard bearer for this. And he actually believed in going out there, he believed in the White man's burden. He believed in going out there and democratizing the whole entire planet. So when I think about his spirit, that continues in his actions, that continues in those ripples across the pond, and here is his great granddaughter having to deal with it, not even knowing her name, not knowing her family, not knowing about his actions.

He actually disappeared behind the shadows of the World War I heroes. As soon as World War I happened, he just kind of disappeared into the shadows. But still, without knowing who he was or his name, we're dealing with his actions. And I'm like, oh, my God, what are we leaving behind? And now more than ever, with the children, these last two years, I'm like, oh, my God, what are we leaving behind?

Oh, my God, the legacy, what have we done? So guess what, I'm hellbent. Once again, like crossing Alaska, I'm on a mission. And whether I make it into that gubernatorial seat, we're still going to talk about seven generations, and we're going to change the culture in California, and America, and the rest of the world, because I did not cross Alaska and lose my eyelashes for nothing, right?

Luke Storey: [01:26:47] Yeah.

Reinette Senum: [01:26:48] We're going to do it. And I believe this is Fred, way behind me, saying, I'm so sorry, let me doll up my my great granddaughter and see if she can clean up this mess a little bit. And that's the mission that I'm on, and that's what the Seventh Generation Principle is about. That is what this blueprint for California is. And that's the message that I'm sending, that I'm sharing with everybody. But it's also not just sharing the story, it's like, no, no, no, it has to come with some action, and this is the action that I'm taking, I'm running for governor for California.

Luke Storey: [01:27:15] Hot damn.

Reinette Senum: [01:27:16] Right? Wild.

Luke Storey: [01:27:17] In terms of local winds for people that might hear this, they go, ah, it's just too big, like the beast is just too multifaceted, what were you able to achieve with the 5G stuff in Nevada City?

Reinette Senum: [01:27:35] Well-

Luke Storey: [01:27:37] Is that an eminent domain sort of issue as well, where they come in, and they're like, well, it's going to benefit the city if we have a bunch of 5G towers everywhere?

Reinette Senum: [01:27:44] Well, 2016, when I got re-elected, Verizon came in and they were trying to put eight antennas on the top of one of our historic buildings, and it was because of me, I sent them packing, because I was able to prove they did not have a, what's called gap in service. So, I knew the political scene and I knew I was fighting wireless enough, and going down and testifying at the Sacramento Capitol enough to know, okay, this is where the weak link is, and I pushed that, and we were successful.

But they have used and they are using eminent domain, which is, I mean, across America, they're using eminent domain everywhere, and I'm like, oh, my God, Fred, ayayay, I got a big, big job ahead of me. But see, this is the thing, is that I think once people realize, and there's been some really good federal cases that we now know for a fact that they are doing things illegally, and once people become aware of that, we can start kind of dismantling this, but I was listening to your wonderful Charles Eisenstein interview, and this is not about coming head on and fighting this beast, it's about The Art of War, transmuting the energy.

So, this blueprint for California, as a matter of fact, we looked at the biggest challenges we're facing, right? And some of them are the reduction of the pollinators, the loss of the topsoil, the loss of legacy farms. And we're all about regenerative farming and using community gardens and so on to actually rebuild the frayed fabric of community, and start building our relationships back up again, and start the healing, where our whole entire economic plan is based upon healing and restoration. Like, as Buckminster Fuller says, we can do is like "Now is the time". So, right now, people are not aware of what's really going on with 5G. It's much more sinister and much larger than most of us realize, and it's having a huge impact on our bodies.

I go down to Los Angeles, and I get blurry vision, I get headaches, and I'm just cooking down there. And the pollinators are dropping. So, once we realize what's going on, we're going to probably live a more simple life. And right now, when I drive up I-5, there are huge, huge towers everywhere, and they have nothing to do with our phones. They have nothing to do with service, right?

And I've been warning people that, look it, even our own Congress a few years ago, after congressional hearings said to Huawei and ZTE, who are the ones making the motherboards, and the hardware for our phones and for our antennas, they told AT&T, and Verizon, and Comcast, "Stop doing business with them, because they have backdoors to all this". These are towering Trojan horses and people don't get it.

And so, I've been sounding the alarm for a long time. So, what's really important here is that we've got to stop participating in the system that's causing our demise. It's that easy. And we need to decentralize. We need to regionalize. And I've said to people, look it, we have been turned into a generation of consumers. And now, because of what's going on with China, Evergrande, the bond market, inflation, printing dollars because of C-19, all these different things, we have no choice but to go from being consumers to producers regionally, locally, getting to know your farmer, right?

You're having a blacksmith again or people who repair our appliances and stuff like that. We have no choice. Knowing who we are, knowing our neighbors, we're going to have to do that. And I'm going to say it's probably going to be a much more beautiful life, because I think we yearn for that now. We want a deeper life as well. And so, the objective is to do the Akita move, where you just transmute the biggest challenges we're facing, and decentralize, and just say, you don't have my permission, I don't give you my consent, and I'm just not going to do it. I'm not going to ask for permission, I'm just not going to participate.

I'm going to go over here, and I'm going to participate in this decentralized, regionalized, local economy. And because we have been so subjected to screens in the last two years, which, by the way, have been weaponized, we have been traumatized. We've been undergoing psychological warfare. Don't kid yourselves. It's called Biderman's Chart of Coercion. Do you know Biderman's Chart? You don't know. Oh, okay. What have we been subjected to? Biderman's Chart of Coercion. So, ends up Amnesty International back in the '500s, they went out and they looked at the biggest despots and dictators around the planet to see what they would do to prisoners of war, to make them break, right? Only eight steps. First and foremost, the most important one, isolation.

Luke Storey: [01:31:57] Isolation.

Reinette Senum: [01:31:57] Right. Humiliation, right? Rules that you apply, then you don't apply, right? Omnipotence, I got my mask on, you don't. I'm social distancing, you aren't. And this is kind of the break you down type of situation, when you look at Biderman's, it's spelled B-I-D-E-R-M-A-N-S, Biderman's Chart of Coercion. When you look at those eight steps, you clearly see that we've been subjected to that, and you're like, how dare you, leaders? How dare you do this on such a massive global scale?

And so, that's what we've been subjected to, and it's been through the screens, right? That's where they got us. They sent us home, they closed our doors, we were all on the screen, no longer face-to-face, so we can actually have a heart-to-heart connection, speak our truth, that information, that metadata being usurped and used against us, and we were undergoing and we still are undergoing psychological warfare.

Luke Storey: [01:32:49] God, it's such perfection in the way that they orchestrated it, too, because you've got the isolation, and then you have not only the force-feeding of propaganda, and more fear and more limbic system damage to the populace, but then anything outside of that feed of information has been silenced step by step. So, it's like cutting out all alternative points of view, force-feeding.

Reinette Senum: [01:33:13] And that's what abusers do. That's what abusers do.

Luke Storey: [01:33:15] It's a cult. It's a freaking cult.

Reinette Senum: [01:33:17] It's abuse. It's abuse. That's like a spousal abuse, right? They ostracize you from your family, and they just diminish you, and demoralize you, and isolate you, and make you question yourself, and it's horrific. And I have to say, though, Luke, and I want your listeners to understand this, is it's been really hard, obviously, on all of us. I don't know anybody who's not impacted by this, but it had to happen.

It's a spiritual transition that we're in, right? This is a spiritual war. And if we did not go into the dark depths like this, we would never come out the other side. It's like a birth canal, we have to go through this darkness that's really intense, lots of pressure, like where am I? Where I am? And I'm going to pop out one day, and go, oh, that was it? And I think that we're going to reckon on the other side that we're much more powerful than we believe we are, and that, really, the control is in our hands, and we've been over the generations, through the public education system, which, again, its two goals ever have been to make sure there's never any dissent in the individual and that we remove all originality.

Those were the two goals in the public education system. Well, good job, they've done it. They have done it, right? Here we are, generations later, and sure enough, we're not thinking for ourselves. We're not trusting our instincts. We can't critically think like we used to. And that's where they wanted us so that they could do this to us. Who's they? I don't know. You're like, "Who are they? I'm like, "I don't know. I'm going to assume the establishment, the 1% of the 1%, the people who are in control, I don't know. That's another two-hour conversation". But that's where we are.

Luke Storey: [01:34:46] It doesn't really matter either, in a sense, right?

Reinette Senum: [01:34:48] It doesn't matter.

Luke Storey: [01:34:48] Because you can't stop them, you can just go build something new to replace it.

Reinette Senum: [01:34:52] And that's Buckminster whole thing, is like it's not about fighting them, and you'll probably see in the next few months little fights popping up here and there, but really, it's about transmuting our own leadership and how we show up in the world, and just starting the new reality. And when you start the new reality, you think about that Seventh Generation Principle. Again, I didn't have to go out there and figure it out.

Fred was the one to tell me, "Reinette, look in the rearview mirror. Reinette, look behind. If you look behind you, you'll see a pattern. You'll see reoccurring beats in the story, and then you'll recognize them in current times." So, when I'm looking back at Fred, I started looking back in the Constitution, looking at that going, oh, wait, there's more there, what am I not seeing? I'm like, oh, the Seventh Generation Principle. We forgot to apply that to the nation. Thank you, Fred. Right? Thank you for making me wake up to what's behind us, so now, I can see what's ahead of us. And there we are.

And so, this campaign, Luke, me running for governor, our awakening could never have happened without COVID. The people were not ready for a decline to state candidate, they were not ready for the Seventh Generation Principle, they were not ready to fight for their children's future, until now, and here we are, and the floodgates are opening. I mean, I'm out in the streets. I'm campaigning, I'm talking to people across a whole political spectrum, and they're done. And that is a sense I've been getting really for the last few weeks, they're done. They're done. They want something different and we're primed. We're ready to go. Let's start.

Luke Storey: [01:36:35] I think that's the key to a shift, is getting out of the polarization, right? And there's, like you and I were discussing earlier, that that middle group, that's not a hard no, like someone like me is against all this stuff, and then you have to just, I'm just going to listen to my TV people and anything that the TV tells me to do, I'm going to do that and nothing else, right? I trust my government, and blindly, people that are in a lot of fear that are willing. But then, this middle group is, I think, a group that's growing and growing. 

Reinette Senum: [01:37:08] Every day.

Luke Storey: [01:37:08] And they're starting to realize, wait a minute, I did the things, I closed my business, I put something in my body, and maybe things went wrong, and I masked my kid, you told me to, and now, we find out it wasn't necessary, and that, now, they are developmentally challenged. I mean, overdose is domestic abuse.

Reinette Senum: [01:37:25] Suicides, I know.

Luke Storey: [01:37:26] Yeah, just the massive, massive repercussions of this, I think, are starting to, because it's been a couple of years, hit that middle group. And I think many of them, from what I perceive, are starting to lean more in the side of the questioning, more discerning, hard-headed, maybe, at times, group that I would consider myself, and just don't trust anything the government says ever until it's proven otherwise, which is infrequently.

Reinette Senum: [01:37:53] And just trust yourself. We give so little credence to our own intuition, right?

Luke Storey: [01:37:59] Right.

Reinette Senum: [01:37:59] And now, all of a sudden, we're like, wait a second, we really need that common sense. And we talk about common sense education, like teaching children to critically think, teaching them how to use their hands, bringing back the trades, right? And getting them back out into nature, and being attuned to the seasons, and Mother Nature, and the animals, and themselves, and sensing their way through the life.

We've really set that aside over the generations, and now, we realize how important it is. And so, we are returning to that, but it had to be the death of the old system. And so, there are such cracks and fissures in the old system that people like me, a little old mayor of 3,100 people, is like, ah, there's a crack, I can get my foot in that door, here we go, and we're wedging it open.

And so, the thing is, you have to understand, the system that we've been encapsulated in for generations, it has been planted with a seed of destruction. It will destroy itself at some point. That's this kind of a system. So, we don't have to really fight it and kill it, it's going to kill itself. We just have to go off and just start building our world that we want. And I don't even have to say, go do it, it's already being done. I've had people in the past say, "Reinette, how are you going to convince people to go sustainable?"

I'm like, "I'm not. You can't, but we have to be ready when they have no other option, so when people realize that they've got to actually start doing something differently, we can help them, like, 'here, how about this? What about that?'" There are so many different things that we can do, and that's what gets me excited. I've been doing it on the microlevel. Now, all I have to do is just scale it up. It's all doable. We've already been doing it.

Luke Storey: [01:39:35] Yeah. I think my perspective of that or experience of that has been in being into alternative health for a couple of decades and seeing things now becoming commonplace that used to be like ozone therapy or something, which used to be super fringe.

Luke Storey: [01:39:49] Even infrared saunas when I first got into that, it's like I didn't know many people that knew what that was or that had one. And now, having the show for a few years, it's really exciting and shocking to me, really, young people are aware of all this stuff and they're doing it. I think as things are getting more sort of constricted from outside of us, these forces, the powers that be, I think that we and they don't realize that with the advent of the internet, despite censorship and all the things we're seeing now, that our ability to share information and the ability for people to educate themselves so quickly from podcasts like this, and YouTube videos, and things, I mean, you can bypass the education system, spend time devouring content, educate and empower yourself, and you're living in a totally different world.

Reinette Senum: [01:40:40] And you're also becoming an expert in that respective field, right?

Luke Storey: [01:40:44] Because I used to feel like kind of an expert. And now, I get messages from people all the time, and they're schooling me on stuff, and I'm like, wait, you're 22? Like how did you-

Reinette Senum: [01:40:52] Well, and I do believe right now that we have a lot of college students who really believed in the Biden administration, and now, they're having this total reckoning, like what? He's giving us crack pipes instead. That's what he's doing for us? It's like [making sounds] this is the system. This is exactly what we're talking about. And in particular, when I talk to the people in their 20s, even if you think the system is flawed, go out, and you have got to register, and you've got to vote, and you've got to show up, because this is your future.

You and I are not—I'm older than you, but we're on the other side of our life, right? We've lived a lot of our life. They're just starting their lives, so they have a lot more to lose than us. And they're going to be the tidal wave. When they wake up, and they are waking up right now, and they realize what's going on, and they realize the two-party system is an absolute fraud, it's just a mirage, they're going to be a force to be reckoned with, and we're watching the rumbling right now under the-

Luke Storey: [01:41:48] I see that on TikTok, the stuff young people on TikTok are posting, because my wife sends—I don't know, she must be getting the algorithmic feed of some of the counter culture news and whatnot, even though she's not really into any of this stuff like I am, but she sends them to me, and it's like some kid talking about the Rothschild banking system, where I'm like, what? Geoengineering, I'm like, how do you guys know about this stuff? But it's like, I'm 51, right? So, it was harder for me to uncover some of this stuff. It was right around the time the internet was-

Reinette Senum: [01:42:22] It wasn't out there.

Luke Storey: [01:42:23] Yeah. I mean, there was very fringe, weird websites that you could get some alternative news from. But now, it's just crazy. It gives me hope. And that's what I have to hang on to myself, because if I get too into like the fear porn and just the documentation from around the world of what's going on and some of the grievous harms upon humanity, it's dark.

Reinette Senum: [01:42:45] I know. It's atrocious.

Luke Storey: [01:42:46] It's dark.

Reinette Senum: [01:42:47] And the people who've been harmed and the people who've died, I don't want them to die or be harmed in vain. It's like, no, not on my watch, it's just not going to happen, right? So, it's that, too. It's like, I mean, we've lost friends and family members in these last couple of years for what's happened. It's real for us, too. It's very real. I'm like, no, I'm not going to let them pass in vain or be injured in vain or terrible things happen to them in vain. It's like, no.

So, it just kind of fuels that fire even more, right? It's like we're going to change this and shift this, and that's where we are right now. So, I came across a quote last week, and I'm like, oh, I love this quote, something like, "Man has never invented a material as strong as the human spirit", right? It's true. The human spirit is remarkable. I mean, even like me crossing Alaska, if somebody had said to me, hey, Rene, in order for you to get from this point to that point, your eyelashes are going to have to freeze off, you're going to have to ski this many miles a day, you're going to find a dog, learn how to build a canoe, dadadada, or be chased by wolf pack, oh, the bear encounter, I'd be like, are you crazy?

I can't do that. But then, when the moment would come and I was faced with it, either like I give up or I find a different way to continue, I always found a different way to continue. That is a human spirit that's in every single one of us. So, everyone is born right now in this moment of time, because they're meant to be born. They're meant to rise to a whole new occasion. This is spiritual warfare.

And I tell people, we've already won. We've already won. I'm on the other side already looking back. If you want to know what it looks like, I can tell you it's really beautiful. We've already won. The question is, how long is it going to take? That's where our leadership, and our activity, and our action comes in. Is it going to be six months or is it going to be 60 years? That's. That's up to us, right? We've won, but how long? That's where we come in.

Luke Storey: [01:44:36] What can people do to support your campaign?

Reinette Senum: [01:44:40] Well, censorship, word of mouth, right? I know on a microlevel that when people promote, let's say, an event, you see it advertised here and there, but you don't hear about it, the turnout might not be so good. But when you start hearing a buzz on the street, and chatter, and people are talking about it, that's when you know it's going to be a big event. So, we're asking people, when you hear this story, you send it out to everyone you know, you tell them to send it out to everyone they know, you start talking to everybody, your neighbors, the grocery store line, the library, the gas station, "Do you know Reinette Senum? She's running for California governor. No party affiliation, it's for the children. Let's go." Right?

That's what we need to do. We need to circumvent and sidestep the censorship, right? And I was in South Africa in '87 at the height of apartheid, 19 years old, hitchhiking across the townships in South Africa. It was really wild, and censorship was huge, but the word of mouth was so powerful, and we got to go back to that word of mouth. The other big thing is getting people to run. Please run at every level. If you don't want to run, please start reading up on the Seventh Generation Principle, see what that is, fold it into your life.

And the other big thing is we don't have the donors, we need money. We're scrappy, we're in the ring with the big boys, but we don't got the multi, multimillionaire guys putting the money in the corporations and the dark money. It's us, it's you, it's me, it's everybody. So, we need the donations as well. But we're not going away. We're not going away. Even after the election, we're not going away. This is forever.

Luke Storey: [01:46:04] Awesome.

Reinette Senum: [01:46:05] Yeah.

Luke Storey: [01:46:05] Thank you for joining me today.

Reinette Senum: [01:46:06] Oh, Luke.

Luke Storey: [01:46:07] So exciting. So exciting. As I said, it's somewhat out of the lane of my normal show, but when I saw you speak at that event, I was like, man, she's on fire. I don't know. I don't even care what we talk about, I just like love your passion and your heart, so thank you for sharing it with us.

Reinette Senum: [01:46:22] Oh, really? I really appreciate you.

Luke Storey: [01:46:24] Yeah, super cool. And I think right now, where we are in the world, too, from feedback I get from listeners, I mean, we also need to hear this. Like we need solutions, man. Everyone, whether you believe in the official story of what's happened over the past couple of years or not, or you do, like you said, we're all trying to meet in the middle and finding the solution, because this is definitely not it. The direction we're going know is finite.

Reinette Senum: [01:46:49] And we are the solution. We're the solutionarians. We are the solution, it just requires our engagement, which we have not been engaging for generations. We just have to engage with a purpose, with the measurement, that's that Seventh Generation Principle. So, we are going to do it, I can already see it.

Luke Storey: [01:47:03] My last question for you is, who are three teachers or teachings that have influenced your work and your life?

Reinette Senum: [01:47:10] Oh, my goodness. I'm going to answer this, and later on, go, oh, I should have included dadada.

Luke Storey: [01:47:14] That's common.

Reinette Senum: [01:47:15] Uh-huh. Well, Buckminster Fuller, right? He's really huge, gigantic. Try to think of who else? Oh, my God. I have so many, actually. I have some big, big people, but I have to say that I'm going to actually make it more personal. Buckminster Fuller, so ahead of the curve. But actually, I'm going to have to say Frederick Funston. He taught me what to do and what not to do, right? And the other person I have to say is my partner, Susan. Yeah. She's so beautiful and she's so kind, and so generous, and such common sense. She's my rock, so I'll just say Susan.

Luke Storey: [01:48:04] Someone like you has got to have a pretty sturdy rock.

Reinette Senum: [01:48:06] Yeah, she's amazing.

Luke Storey: [01:48:07] Yeah, I can see the emotion. There's nothing better than being in love, man, I'm telling you. When you meet the person, it's just-

Reinette Senum: [01:48:15] Couldn't do without her.

Luke Storey: [01:48:16] Yeah. I mean, like I can't imagine what life was like before. It's like, what was I doing at all times? And what would I do, God forbid? So, yeah.

Reinette Senum: [01:48:27] Well, I can tell. She's beautiful.

Luke Storey: [01:48:29] Yeah, she is. Yeah. Well, that's a great shoutout. Thank you for that. Well, man, I think we did it. So, again, guys, you can find all of the show notes at lukestorey.com/wakethebear. But what about websites, like if somebody wanted to donate or get on board? Like we'll put it all in the show notes in one place, but in case someone right now is like, okay, I'm into this, how can I help?

Reinette Senum: [01:48:48] Okay. So, I'll give you several different things. One is electreinette, so it's ELECT, elect, Reinette, REINETTE, electreinette.com. Go on there. And actually, if you look under my service, you'll see like almost 20 years of the community work I've done, so you kind of know who I am. We have a big event happening on March 6th in my area, my hometown near Nevada City, a big crab feed, if you want to come on in.

And again, you can make donations there. We really do need the donations. We're fighting the big boys here, as you can imagine. And then, if you want to learn even more about me and the Alaska trip, if you go to my personal blog, the, T-H-E, foghornexpress, thefoghornexpress.com. You'll find out more about me. And then, you can kind of look under about, where it says Alaska Trip. You'll see some historic photos, my great grandfather, you'll see his canoe. You'll see some video footage I shot.

Luke Storey: [01:49:37] I'm so glad I didn't see that site, because all this was relatively new to me. So, I'm like, oh, that's cool. I would have ruined it for myself.

Reinette Senum: [01:49:44] No, I'm glad you didn't know.

Luke Storey: [01:49:46] Spoiler. I would have done a spoiler on myself.

Reinette Senum: [01:49:48] No, no, no.

Reinette Senum: [01:49:48] So, there's that. So, that's, okay, thefoghornexpress.com. And then, if you go to BitChute, you look up Reinette Senum's, don't forget my name, because you won't find it easily, Reinette Senum's Chew on This, you'll see, and I'm not really doing any more interviews, because it's covered. People are doing interviews, right? That's great. The void has been filled. But you'll see over the last year-and-a-half, starting in the summer of 2020, where I just started just interviewing, and interviewing, and just trying to bring the information to people, and that's how I roll. So, if you want to know who I am, if you check out those sites, you'll have a good idea of who I am.

Luke Storey: [01:50:18] Cool. Yeah, one of your BitChute videos was where you were interviewing these injury victims. I was watching that this morning, I was like, I can't watch anymore. It's just too sad, man. So brutal.

Reinette Senum: [01:50:30] And I've got so many more stories, I just don't have time. Other people are capturing that. And I did ask them, by the way, I'm like, "When you did research, did you know that this could do this, these injuries could be caused?" And they're like, "No". And I asked them, I said, "Did you ever search on a different engine other than Google?" And they all said, "No". I'm like, "Okay".

Luke Storey: [01:50:50] Yeah.

Reinette Senum: [01:50:51] Yeah. Of course, not. You won't find it on Google.

Luke Storey: [01:50:53] Yeah. I don't even try.

Reinette Senum: [01:50:55] I know. Most people don't know that.

Luke Storey: [01:50:57] If I'm looking for something important, at least.

Reinette Senum: [01:50:59] Yeah.

Luke Storey: [01:50:59] Well, thank you. So, we'll put all that stuff in the show notes, and anyone listening to this on a podcast app will be all of the links that you just mentioned and all that.

Reinette Senum: [01:51:05] And thank you for who you are and how you show up. You're just a beautiful soul, and I'm really appreciative of you big time.

Luke Storey: [01:51:11] Thank you. Well, I appreciate that. Thanks for making the time to come out here and also doing some travel. It's like you know from doing your Zoom interviews, to sit down and hang out with someone, it's a different experience.

Reinette Senum: [01:51:22] It's totally different. It's like it gets in your DNA.

Luke Storey: [01:51:24] Yeah. So, I appreciate it. And if I get back to California-

Reinette Senum: [01:51:28] Oh, mi casa, su casa, you got a place to stay.

Luke Storey: [01:51:30] ... I'd love to come, because I love that area up there, so beautiful.

Reinette Senum: [01:51:33] The Yuba River. Oh, I shouldn't have said that. I should never. I don't want to talk about it. Never mind. Cancel that. Erase that. Yeah. But no, we'll-

Luke Storey: [01:51:39] No one go to the Yuba River. We do not need tourists. Yeah, I heard it's polluted.

Reinette Senum: [01:51:43] It's terrible. It's awful.

Luke Storey: [01:51:45] Dead fish everywhere.

Reinette Senum: [01:51:46] Sorry.

Luke Storey: [01:51:47] But yeah, I do love it up there. And I think just in preparing for this interview, I'm like, God, really, there are so many things about California I miss. It's just such a beautiful, fantastic state with so many great people.

Reinette Senum: [01:51:59] It's ridiculous.

Luke Storey: [01:51:59] The people that are cool. It's like you have some voting centers in San Francisco and LA that are making some pretty shitty decisions, but-

Reinette Senum: [01:52:07] I think they're done.

Luke Storey: [01:52:08] Everyone I know in California is awesome. I'm like, how have you guys voted so poorly?

Reinette Senum: [01:52:14] Well, we're waking up really fast.

Reinette Senum: [01:52:16] Yeah, we are.

Reinette Senum: [01:52:16] I'm out there on the street, we're waking up.

Luke Storey: [01:52:18] Nice. Keep up the good work.

Reinette Senum: [01:52:19] I will. Thank you, Luke.

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