Nat Geo Explorers discuss the importance of inclusive communities | Pride Month Roundtable | Nat Geo

All of the work we do is based and affected by our identities, right? Whether that is conservation or highlighting social stories, all of those cool ideas, we owe them to our differences and our diversity. It makes us stronger, and it makes us think outside the box, right? It helps to find out that there's other people also doing fieldwork and being queer. Yeah, I thought that I was the only one.

The same communities that we work with are very conservative at the same time, right? The assumption is that you are straight until you say you are not. You have to come out every single day. That's a barrier that is just hard to navigate. Despite the fact we grew up in so many countries, so many continents, we're still united by very specific things. Those feelings of isolation, of resilience, of perseverance.

We've been through the wringer in life, and we've had to battle social norms in a lot of ways. So, you're really bringing these added, other layers that really influences the work that you do. Queerness was always natural, both in the animal kingdom and ancestral cultures, indigenous cultures. With all the religious beliefs that came with colonization, we restrained ourselves to think a certain way.

All of these letters, the LGBTQIA+, there's no need to decide, "I'm this category and this is the only thing I represent." Even if it's not linear, right? You can go back, you can go and search. And going at your own pace. Come whenever you feel safe and feel good about it. It's a process, it's a difficult process, and some contexts are more complicated than others, but that's the beauty of our community; it's so diverse.

You can't possibly represent every intersectionality, but opening the door to them and extending the invitation and saying, "This is a safe space." It's part of a whole, right? Fighting for indigenous rights, for women's rights, for LGBTQIA+. It's part of the vision that we all share as queer people, right? Of how the world should be.

We have a responsibility, and I think all of us would agree it's to make sure that we leave breadcrumbs. Saying, "Okay, we're here and we're in these spaces. What are our shared goals? What are our needs from certain people? And how can we elevate different voices?" And changing the narrative of what an explorer, a scientist, a storyteller looks like because it's a variety of different types of people. Once you form those trusting relationships and those really, really strong bonds, you can find ways to make the system better.