upworthy

Democracy

Badge
Pura
Pura Fragrances
Justice

Walking Alongside Martu: A journey with one of the world’s oldest living cultures

Pura’s inaugural impact collection honors both sacred traditions and sustainable futures.

James Roh
True

In a world driven by speed, efficiency, and immediate results, it’s easy to forget that lasting change is built on trust. Real impact doesn’t come from rushing toward an end goal or measuring success through lofty metrics. It comes from falling in love with the problem, building a community around it, and sharing a vision for lasting transformation.

Pura, the smart home fragrance company that marries premium fragrance with innovative technology, recently launched its inaugural impact collection with K Farmer Dutjahn Foundation (KFDF) and Dutjahn Sandalwood Oils (DSO). The Pura x Dutjahn partnership began with a clear purpose: to source a sacred ingredient directly from its origin while honoring the land and the people who’ve cared for it. Our goal wasn’t simply to find sandalwood — it was to find a community and an ingredient that embody exceptional land stewardship, ethical harvesting, and transformative, community-led impact. After careful research and over three years of development, we saw an opportunity to secure a premium, luxurious ingredient while supporting a regenerative supply chain that invests in Indigenous-led education, economic opportunity, and land stewardship.

James Roh

Over the past several years, we’ve walked alongside Martu, an Indigenous tribe from the vast Western Australian desert. Martu are one of the oldest living cultures in the world, with a history spanning 60,000 years. As nomadic hunter-gatherers, they have unparalleled ecological knowledge, passed down through generations, making them the traditional custodians of the land. Their approach to sandalwood harvesting isn’t driven by market demand but by a deep respect for seasonal rhythms, land health, and cultural law. Their work adapts to the environment—whether it’s “sorry time,” when mourning pauses activities, or the harsh desert conditions that make travel and communication difficult. Martu operate on Martu time, a deliberate rhythm shaped by millennia of experience, far removed from the rapid-swipe, hyper-productive pace of Western systems.

Martu’s ecological knowledge isn’t documented in baseline reports. It’s lived, carried in stories, and practiced with rigor and respect for the changing needs of the ecosystems. True partnership means unlearning the typical approach. It means standing beside—not in front—and recognizing that the wisdom and leadership we need already exist within these communities. Our role isn’t to define the work, but to support it, protect it, and learn from it.

James Roh

Tonight, as I spoke with Chairman Clinton Farmer and the KFDF team about our focus for this piece, I learned that Clinton’s truck had broken down (again), leaving him to “limp” back to town from the desert at low speeds for hours and hours. He had been awake since 3:00 a.m. This is a common and costly setback, one that disrupts the harvest, demands days of driving, and brings real financial and emotional strain. These barriers are relentless and persistent, part of the harsh reality Clinton and his community face daily. It's easy for outsiders, detached from the reality on the ground, to impose rules, regulations, and demands from afar. Rather than continuing to impose, we need to truly partner with communities — equipping them with the resources to operate sustainably, avoid burnout, and protect the very land they love and care for. All while they endeavor to share these incredible, sacred ingredients with the world and build an economic engine for their people.

There is much to learn, but we are here to listen, adapt, and stay the course. The future we need will not be built in quarterly cycles. It will be built in trust, over time, together.

To learn more about the partnership and fragrances, visit Pura x Dutjahn.

Related Articles Around the Web
indigenous people
Democracy

Reality has hit. A small-business-owning mother's receipt that shows the pain of tariffs.

Here's what the new world looks like.

via Sofia Ramsay/TikTok (used with permission)

Small business owner Sofia Ramsay shares her tariff bill.

After the Trump administration raised tariffs on countries across the globe earlier this month, the bills are starting to come due, and we’re getting the first look at how this abrupt realignment to international trade will affect everyday working Americans. Interestingly, a poll in late January 2025 found that only 45% of Americans understand how tariffs work. Many incorrectly believe that the Chinese exporter pays the fee when the US imposes a tariff on China. However, in reality, when the U.S. imposes a tariff on Chinese goods, the American importer pays the tariff. The funds raised by the tariffs then go to the government, like a tax. Polls also show that those who understand how tariffs work are much less likely to support them than those who do not.

How do tariffs affect American business owners?

Sofia Ramsay, a mother who has owned a homemade jewelry business for the past 13 years, explained how the tariffs affect her small business, and it’s a practical explanation of how tariffs work. “I recently started doing a new program which is a subscription box that sends bead kits all about having a good time and celebrating friendships and bringing art into your life," she begins her video. “a lot of the materials that I provide for my subscription service are upcycled and reused just in order to keep up with trends and to keep up with supply and demand. Quite simply, I do need to import a lot of the materials.”

@sofiaramsay

The 🍊🤡 is still up there saying other countries will pay these bills. Tell me how this makes America great?

Ramsay adds that they have a great relationship with the factory she works with in China, but things started to become difficult a few weeks ago. It took over a month to get an expedited shipment of materials. Then she received a tariff bill from UPS. “It was a tariff bill on my import, now I'm happy to pay the price to do my business, but this is something I'm not prepared for as far as price increases,” she said. “I just don't think it's sustainable for my business to take on this level of expense.”

The cost of her tariff bill? $208 on $485 worth of goods.

That's a 43% increase in her cost of doing business, and the money went to the U.S. government. This was before the administration raised tariffs to 245%, which would have cost Ramsay $698.25.


Now that Ramsay's expenses have increased due to the tariff, does she pass it on to the customer? “I’m not willing to raise my prices, but I probably should raise them by 15-20% or so just to offset these fees,” she told Upworthy.

One of the goals of the tariff policy is to encourage Americans to source their products from U.S. companies. Or enable investors to increase manufacturing in the U.S. However, in a recent video, Ramsay explained why she can’t source her products from a U.S.-based company. The only company that does something similar is in New York City, and their products constantly change, so that she couldn’t deliver a consistent product to her customers. Further, the upcycled beads in New York originally come from overseas; they’ve just been handed around through separate transactions.

“I have to just be at the whims and fancies of whatever is available in this warehouse. It would be like if I had a fashion design company, if I was a clothing brand, and then I just switched to being a thrift store or vintage store or reseller, that would kinda pull the rug out from under my customer base,” she said.

Even though Ramsay is in a bind, being charged a hefty price for importing her products and without an option to source them from within the country, she’s optimistic that things may change. “I believe [the tariffs] are temporary and just posturing on the part of this administration. They have no plans to invest in domestic manufacturing,” she told Upworthy.

From Your Site Articles
small business
Democracy

Fox News viewers were paid to watch CNN and it actually changed their views

Political bubbles can break.

via Wikimedia Commons

Fox viewers changed their minds after watching CNN

The prevailing logic in today’s political world is that polarization is worsening because people live in media echo chambers where they are only exposed to outlets that mirror their views. People who live in echo chambers come to distrust any opinions outside their bubbles, especially when they're not exposed to conflicting information. This creates a scenario where the person becomes increasingly entrenched in their worldview.

One would assume that after a person becomes fully entrenched in an echo chamber, they have little chance of changing their views. However, a new working paper by researchers at Stanford and Yale universities has found that when people are removed from their bubbles, there’s a chance they’ll change their minds.

David Broockman of Stanford and Joshua Kalla of Yale conducted a study in 2022 where they paid regular Fox News viewers $15 an hour to watch CNN for around seven hours a week for a month. The researchers then surveyed them about their political beliefs and knowledge of current events.

anderson cooper, cnn, cable news, cooper live, newscasters, news programming, liberals, conservativesAnderson Cooper and David Axelrod speaking in the spin room following the CNN Republican Presidential Debate at the Olmsted Center at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.via Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons

The study is titled “The manifold effects of partisan media on viewers’ beliefs and attitudes: A field experiment with Fox News viewers.” It was conducted in fall 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and the lead-up to the presidential election.

When the participants were polled, researchers found that they were five percentage points more likely to believe that people suffer from long COVID, 6 points more likely to think that other countries did a better job of controlling the virus, and 7 points more likely to support voting by mail.

“CNN provided extensive coverage of COVID-19, which included information about the severity of the COVID-19 crisis and poor aspects of Trump’s performance handling COVID-19. Fox News covered COVID-19 much less,” said the study.

sean hannity, fox news, red state, news bias, political polarization.Fox News host Sean Hannity. via Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons

After Fox viewers switched to CNN, their opinions on the social justice protests happening at the time changed. The switchers were 10 points less likely to think that Biden supporters were happy when police got shot and 13 points less likely to believe that if Biden gets elected, “we’ll see many more police get shot by Black Lives Matter activists.”

Many of the participants also realized that when it came to Trump, they weren’t getting the whole story. After switching to a steady diet of CNN they were less likely to agree that “if Donald Trump did something bad, Fox News would discuss it.”

“Despite regular Fox viewers being largely strong partisans, we found manifold effects of changing the slant of their media diets on their factual beliefs, attitudes, perceptions of issues’ importance, and overall political views,” the authors of the study said.

fox news, fox news van, new york city, politics, political coverageA Fox News van in New York Cityvia Wikimedia Commons

The study shows that Fox News isn’t just a media outlet that affirms its viewers' worldviews; it also feeds them a distorted version of reality that pushes them toward more extreme opinions. The good news is that some of these people can be changed when exposed to better information. It should also be noted that Fox News viewers aren’t the only ones living in information bubbles and that there are plenty of ideological traps that ensnare people on the left as well.

“Partisan media aren’t just putting a thumb on the scale for their side,” Brockman said. “They’re also hiding information that voters need to hold politicians accountable. That’s not just good for their side and bad for the other side — it’s bad for democracy, and for all of us.”

Two months after the study, it was found that the Fox News viewers reverted to their opinions before their exposure to CNN. Still, Brockman believes that the study offers some hope in a time of deep political polarization. “Even among the most orthodox partisans and partisan media viewers,” he said, according to Berkeley, “those who receive a sustained diet of information that helps them see the bigger picture actually are open-minded enough to understand that their side isn’t doing a perfect job, either.”

The study should give everyone hope that all is not lost and that America’s political divide may not be impossible to bridge.

This article originally appeared two years ago.

From Your Site Articles
politics
Democracy

Millennial shares a spot-on theory about why his generation and Gen Zers are so burned out

They're not lazy, they're exhausted.

via Canva/Photos

A woman is feeling major burnout.

Freddie Smith is a popular TikToker and host of The Freddie Smith Podcast, where he talks a lot about income inequality and finance from a down-to-earth perspective. One of Freddie’s biggest topics of focus is how the younger generations, millennials and Gen Z specifically, have it a lot harder than their Gen X and baby boomer counterparts. Recently, he described why he believes the younger generations feel so burned out: They are spinning their wheels and not getting ahead because of the rising cost of living. This counters the boomer notion that young people are entitled and lazy.

“They're working 40 hours a week, but at the end of the month, they have nothing to show for it. So if you're not making any progress and you look back five years and go, damn, I made $300,000 in the last five years or I made $400,000 in the last five years and I have nothing,” Freddie says. “If, anything, I have $25,000 in debt, that's gonna create burnout cause you feel like you just put in 5 years of work and have nothing to show for it.”

@fmsmith319

Why Millennials and Gen Z are facing burnout

Freddie adds that the younger generation's inability to get ahead leaves them constantly strained. They are stuck in apartments and can’t grow their families, or if they do, they don’t have the same quality of life that they were raised with.

“It's the 30% increase in rent prices where people are spending 40% of their money on rent, you're still being taxed 20, 25, 30%. People just don't have any money,” Freddie adds. “People aren't having kids, and they're unable to start families. People are struggling financially, fighting financially, and suffering in relationships. This is all decline in living standards.”

stressed woman, stressed millennial, financial stress, burnout, gen z stress, young womanA young woman is stressed about her future.via Canva/Photos

Feddie’s numbers are backed up by research, and the biggest significant issue that younger generations face is the price of home ownership. Adjusted for inflation, in 1985, the average home cost $96,985 in today's money. However, the average price of a home today is a whopping $426,100. Rent is a little better, but still tough. The average rent in 1985 cost $1,031 in today’s dollars; in 2023, the average rent is $1,406.

In a video published in November 2024, Freddie did the opposite and shared five reasons baby boomers had it much easier than millennials and Gen Zers.

  1. You could buy a house for 30 to fifty thousand dollars
  2. Union jobs were more prevalent
  3. College actually worked
  4. Social Security was actually strong
  5. The invention of 401(k)s
@fmsmith319

Why Millennials and Gen Z have it harder today compared to boomers

“The boomers always come at us and say ‘Why are you saying it was easy I was living paycheck to paycheck. You don't realize how hard it was.’ Look at all the advantages you had and how hard it still was,” Freddie says. “Think about the kids today, they cannot buy a house, union jobs aren't available, college is completely out of whack. They're spending 80 grand to get a job for $50,000. It's backwards.”

Freddie makes a strong case for millennial and Gen Z burnout. Because, face it, there’s nothing more exhausting than grinding away at something and not moving an inch. At the same time, things only become harder. Rent goes up. A carton of eggs is $8; if you are fortunate to have money in a 401k, it no longer feels safe. “Humans are good at adapting,” Freddie concludes his video. “But there's a fine line between adapting and being taken advantage of. And I think we're being taken advantage of.”

From Your Site Articles
millennials
Trending Stories