Migration & the US/Mexico Border

In this Episode, Radical Futures Now is so excited to tap into the great wisdom of Jason De Leon on issues Immigration and Migration. Jason De León is Professor of Anthropology and Chicana, Chicano, and Central American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is Executive Director of the Undocumented Migration Project, an organization committed to documenting and raising awareness about the violent social process of clandestine migration through a combination of anthropological research, education, arts initiatives, and public outreach. De León is Head Curator of Hostile Terrain 94, a global participatory exhibition focused on memorializing those who have lost their lives while migrating to the United States through the Sonoran Desert of Arizona that will take place in 130 locations on six continents through the fall of 2021.

Resources

Undocumented Migration Project webpage

Hostile Terrain 94 webpage

Land of Open Graves book


Transcript:

Intro:
Welcome to the Radical Zone Podcast, where we get updates on the current state of the world and how various communities are impacted from activists and organizers who are out there doing the work. The Radical Zone Podcast is housed under the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership. I know you’re probably wondering what the Arcus Center is. The Arcus Center for Social Justice leadership, also known as ACSJL is an initiative of Kalamazoo college whose mission is to develop and sustain leaders and human rights and social justice through education and capacity building. We envision a world where every person’s life is equally valued. The inherent dignity of all people is recognized. The opportunity to develop one’s full potential is available to every person and systematic discrimination and structural inequities have been eradicated. Listen to and engage in conversation with organizers and activists across the globe about social inequities that impact us all.

Rhiki:
Hey you all, it’s Rhiki here. Thank you for tuning in to the radical zone. Joining me today is my co-host who was actually one of our students who works in the Arcus Center Jesse Herrera. 

Jesse Herrera:
Hey all.

Rhiki:
So we have the pleasure of bringing a very special guest Jason De Leon, to discuss the current issues around migration and immigration happening in our country today.

Jesse Herrera:
We’re so excited to welcome Jason De León. He is a professor of anthropology and Chicana, Chicano and Central American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is executive director of the Undocumented Migration Project, an organization committed to documenting and raising awareness about the violence, social processes of migration. Through a combination of research, education, art and public outreach. De León is a head creative of Hostile Terrain 94. A global participatory exhibition focused on those who have lost their lives while migrating to the United States through Sonoran desert of Arizona. Welcome, Jason.

Jason De León:
Thank you both for having me.

Rhiki:
So Jason, I want to ask you, when did you become a radical? Or how did when you crossed that threshold of being a radical?

Jason De León:
It’s funny, I feel like for much of my academic career, I did not consider myself a radical, or someone who was thinking outside the box or expressing my opinion about certain political things or my rage. I think that I was definitely doing those things in other aspects of my life from a very early time. So I grew up all over the place I was a military brat. But I ended up going to a little bit of elementary school, junior high school and high school in Long Beach, California. I think it was growing up in Long Beach, when I really discovered my love for punk rock. And all of the things that punk rock represented. Especially the anti authority, anti racism, being a vocal opponent of injustices. And I gravitated towards music that was really doing those sorts of things, or saying those kinds of things. 

And then I started playing that kind of music and expressing those same sentiments. I did that from a very early age. But I think when I began my career as an anthropologist, I wasn’t that interested in politics. And partly because I think I was taught that anthropology or archeology was supposed to be this apolitical endeavor. So I would say that for much of my college career, and through almost my more than half of my graduate career, I wasn’t really thinking about pressing social issues. And it wasn’t until I decided to make a shift from doing archeology of the distant past to thinking about contemporary migration issues, that I think I started to fuse my passion for social justice with research. But it’s funny when people ask me now, “Who are some of your biggest influences?” 

And I think oftentimes, they expect me to rattle off a bunch of anthropologists. But I would say that probably my biggest influences are musicians and writers. And probably one of my earliest influences is the LA punk rock funk ska band called Fishbone. Who early I picked up on them when they were coming out in the late 80s, early 90s with basically t-shirts that just said fuck racism. And I am Immediately gravitated towards that. 

And it’s only later on, two decades later that I think I really see how much a band like Fishbone has influenced all of the work that I do both in terms of its political tone, as well as eclecticism I think. My desire to blend different genres, put things into a melting pot, and then see what comes out on the other side. And so now I don’t know, I guess you could call me a full fledged radical now. But there were probably definitely moments in my career where I wasn’t thinking about myself in that, in that sense at all.

Rhiki:
Yeah. So you touched on it a little bit. But I just want you to expand a little more on how you went from being a professor of anthropology and looking into archeology and research how that drew you into the work that you’re doing now?

Jason De León:
Sure. Well early on in my career as an undergraduate, I really wanted to be an archeologist. I was fascinated with the past. I was fascinated with ruins and with the whole process of archeology. And so I started doing it as an undergrad, and then went to graduate school started working in Mexico, on excavations. And it was during the course of many years of fieldwork in Mexico, where I ended up in these little tiny communities, these rural villages. Where oftentimes, I was working alongside working class women and men who were getting paid to dig ditches with archeologists. And who had these desires to migrate to the United States, or some of them had already tried and come back. 

I ended up meeting a guy, probably my end of college for second year of graduate school. A guy named Victor Baldio in central Mexico in the state of Tlaxcala. He and I were about the same age, but had these radically different life experiences. And it was through his stories about trying to migrate to the US, almost dying in the Arizona desert, getting kidnapped by smugglers. It was through hearing all those kinds of stories, I really started to get inspired to think about a different research trajectory. It was people like Victor and others who started me thinking, do I really want to commit my life to an archeology of the distant past, or is there something that’s happening right now that I can be involved with? That would allow me to blend my interest in anthropology as well as my interest in raising awareness about global inequality.

Rhiki:
Jesse, you also have done some work at the border. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Jesse Herrera:
Yeah, definitely. It was a world that I didn’t think I would love so much. I started off doing a lot of work with the border studies program. Specifically, it was a study away program that was available to me. It was really hard to go to, just because of all the technical stuff that my school has, but I was able to meet really great people around there. I was able to do the border watches that people do sometimes. I forgot where but it’s just an accountability process. The CBP officers, I was able to be a part of this report by this journalist, Todd Miller. He’s really famous in Tucson specifically. And he was tracking the line between how specific political officials get money from big corporations that profit off the border. 

So he was just unveiling that I’m producing a lot more work on that. But that’s the report I was able to do. And then the border studies kicked off my work in this past summer. Which I work with Mariposas Sin Fronteras they are really great organization. I love them so much. They help queer and trans migrants specifically in detention centers. I was able to do detention center visits, and I was able to just help out with anything I could. They have a house that they built recently. Which is really great, and really awesome, because you just [inaudible 00:09:02] to come out of detention that’s usually a sponsor and housing. 

So I was able to help out a little bit with that planning process. And it was heavy, I think most of the time, I’m pretty sure Jason knows that. Like all of the [inaudible 00:09:15] border isn’t really easy. And it’s really easy to slip in this hole, especially in the work you do. And trying to I give you not doing enough. You start to blame yourself instead. And it’s a good segue for you, Jason. I don’t know if… I know you wrote a book, really famous book, Land of Open Graves. It was really hard book to read. I read it while I was doing the work on the border and had to take a lot of breaks. And we want to know a little bit more about your book and how explores issues in immigration policy. 

Jason De León:
Sure. Well thank you for reading the book. And I think it’s really amazing that you’ve been able to have these opportunities to go down and get involved in these issues. I know that for me, it was life changing. I think for a lot of people to go down and see these things up close. I don’t know how it wouldn’t be life changing unless you’re completely callous. So I think it is really important, especially for students. I wish that I had had more opportunities to get involved in that kind of stuff. I came to it fairly late in my career. I was already a professor when I started studying really migration. But I’ve tried very, very hard for the last 10 years to facilitate student engagement with these issues as much as possible. Because I know it can be so transformative and inspiring just to go down and be able to sit with people. 

Hear their stories, witness what they are going through, and then take stock of yourself. Like what is it that I’m going to do now? Now that I’ve seen this stuff, can I ignore it? Or am I now committed to working towards these issues in some way, shape, or form. So I think it’s really amazing that you’ve had that opportunity. And I hope that more people can have that, especially as we’re moving forward now. And things have only gotten worse in the last five to four years. But in terms of the book, Land of Open Graves, it was a book that I had never intended to write. I had never intended to write a book in general. I was trained as an archeologist and really my thinking about… So for people who don’t know, when you become a professor, you move through three stages of promotion. 

A junior person, you’re an assistant professor. You get tenure when you become an associate, and then you get promoted to full professor. And typically, each of those promotions, you put together your tenure file for the jump from assistant to associate. And for many archeologists, that file really just involves writing a lot of articles and then some grants. But for some anthropologists and especially socio cultural anthropologists, you typically are required to write a book. And I was not intending to write a book. Or hadn’t really been thinking about a book until University of Michigan said, “If you want to keep your job, you’re going to have to write a book.” 

And up until that point, I was not very enthusiastic about academic writing. I’d actually hated writing for a long time, because I just felt it was a writing devoid of any feeling emotion or even just craft. I was never trained to write well, I was trained to write academically. Which I think is not the same as writing well, and I’m sure that students can agree that you’re oftentimes forced to read really painful academic writing. I mean, things that are not well written, that are not exciting. That really can take an interesting topic like anthropology or immigration and then suck the life out of it. Because it’s been translated for an audience that, I think, doesn’t always appreciate the craft of writing. So when I was forced to write a book, I was like man do I want to write a 100,000 word book that’s going to brutalize the reader?

Nobody wants to read 10 journal articles in a row? Are they going to want to read 10,000 words? And so I got to a point where I had to take stock and go, what kind of book do I want to write? Do I want to write a book that is just repeating the academic writing that I’ve been trying to do? Or is there something else that I can put out there that feels better, both to me and to the people that I’m writing about. And so Land of Open Graves, really it’s a book about immigration and about borders, and about anthropology. But I think at the end of the day, I’m most comfortable saying that it’s a book about people. It’s about these two guys that I met that I call Memo and Lucho who are trying to get across the US-Mexico border. 

It’s about the life of a 31 year old mother of three from Ecuador, named Maricellas [Aguipuyas 00:13:47]. And it’s about a 15 year old kid from Ecuador named Jose Maria Tacuri. For me I wanted to write a book that was really about those people. So that someone reads the book and then the next time they hear a statistic about a deceased migrant or disappeared migrant or an undocumented person, they can maybe have a name and a face to attach to some of those stories. And so for me, that book was an attempt to be true to those stories. And to try to get people to feel for these folks whose stories fundamentally changed my life. And it affected me on such a deep level. 

And I just wanted the reader to try to at least experience some of those things. Which includes tragedy, sorrow, but also these moments of joy that people can experience during extreme forms of trauma. So yeah, that book was my attempt to translate the anthropology into a way that would get people thinking about migration perhaps in a different way. Or at least make it more accessible to a wider audience.

Jesse Herrera:
Yeah, definitely. You said something just there that really resonated. When I was in the border cities program, the very first thing that we did is an orientation week. And we went to an [albergat 00:15:05] which is a migrant shelter for people who just couldn’t cross that day. And it was really intense. And my facilitator, the person I was with, he said that his name is Jeff is amazing person. He said that you get a gift from people while you’re in there. And you have to redeem that gift or make it up for your entire life after you experience it. It’s really hard I think. I don’t know if you know that, Jason. I’m pretty sure you know that just experiencing or just knowing these things and trying to do justice as much as you can. Because once you see it, you just can’t ignore it. It’s really hard. 

Jason De Leon:
Yeah, I completely agree. I think when people share their story with you open up their lives to you, even if it’s just for a little bit. I think that there comes a lot of responsibility with that. And what is it that you’re going to do with it? And I think sometimes people will take those things, and they can be really exploitative about it and hey, I’m going to write a story about it. And that’s the end of it. And I think there’s other people who maybe they’re going write a story about it, but also it becomes this thing that you try to take in yourself as well. You never forget, and it always changes your outlook on all kinds of things. 

And I think for all the years that I’ve worked with people who are in the process of migrating, I’ve always been very, very grateful for the openness that people have been willing to share. But also just the inspiration that I think that people can give one. You come in from the outside, and it’s so just oftentimes really difficult to see these things that are so emotionally challenging. And I just think you go and have those experiences, and then you… For me, I don’t ever want to lose the importance of those things. 

And so I always want to find ways to, I don’t know if I want to say internalize. But at least carry it with me. And I hope that those experiences make me a better person in whatever situations I find myself in after that. But truly, I think that I’ve long been inspired by people who were migrating because I know how much they struggle. I know oftentimes that they are working to improve their life, the lives of the ones that they love. And the fact that they’re able to do it with so much optimism sometimes for me is really an amazing thing to see. 

Jesse Herrera:
Definitely, I was once really caught off guard, one time I was in an Operation Streamline court. They had just reinstated the chains that they use for migrants to get processed. And I saw someone laugh. Multiple people laugh during… And I got caught off guard, and thankfully had some great people around me and saying yeah,  people can have joy during… It’s their way of processing. And then they should be able to do what they want. And it’s amazing how much people are [inaudible 00:18:05]. I think so I really think people are [inaudible 00:18:07] When they get to these things.

Jason De León:
Yeah, I’m always skeptical of any book about migration, that doesn’t have humor in it. Because I’ve laughed my ass off in some of the darkest times. Because you know people… And I’ll tell you, you cannot do this without humor. And the guy that I call Memo, he would always give me so much shit when I would get down and out about some of the stuff. And he would say you’re never going make it across this desert, with an attitude like that. You got to find ways to maintain that joy. And life is good, even when it’s beating you down. You still have to be able to find ways to survive it. And that’s why I say that migrants can be so inspiring, because I don’t know if I will be able to do that in that same situation. And so I’m in awe oftentimes of people’s outlook.

Rhiki:
So in your book, you talked about the prevention through deterrence policy. Can you speak a little bit about that and how people were actually using the desert as a scapegoat to justify this policy and the funneling of migrants through the desert.

Jason De León:
Sure. So prevention through deterrence is a border policy that was officially put into place in 1994. And it’s a pretty simple idea. It’s basically the recognition that the US Mexico border, is a landscape that much of it is really rugged, depopulated, sparse and it can be used as a natural barrier to movement. And it really came out of… It’s a little bit of a complicated story, but I think an interesting one. There had been some high school students at a place called Bowie High School in El Paso, Texas that’s right on the US Mexico border in the 90s. And most of those students are Latino, Latinx students. And Border Patrol was coming onto campus during school hours, because they were chasing migrants who were hopping the fence and running into the US. 

And you had all of these students on campus who were getting harassed by the Border Patrol. Because they couldn’t tell the difference between who was documented and who was undocumented. So all of these brown students started to mobilize and tried to sue the federal government for harassment. And there’s a really good book called blockading the border. That’s all about the Bowie High School issue. But long story short, Bowie High School sues the federal government. And the response from the federal government, form the Border Patrol is they said, “Okay, we’re going to try to make it impossible for migrants to cross the border, in downtown El Paso. And near places Bowie High School. We’re going put all these agents on the ground. We’ll put new motion sensors, helicopters, all that kind of stuff. And instead of hopping the fence in downtown El Paso, someone would have to walk five or six miles east or west to the outskirts of town. And then they can hop the fence and then and then double back over.” 

So it doesn’t actually, this heightened enforcement, doesn’t stop migration. It just redirects it to other places. Pete Wilson in California in the 90s is governor. And he’s getting a lot of pushback from his constituents in places like San Diego. Who were saying look how visible these border crossers are. If you go down to downtown San Ysidro, the San Ysidro port of entry at dusk, you would see hundreds of people amassing at the fence, waiting for the sun to go down. And they would hop the fence and then run into town and try to hide amongst the local population. 

So Border Patrol there starts doing the same thing they did in El Paso, they put all these agents on the ground, and it becomes impossible to hop the fence in downtown San Diego. So now suddenly, these people are going to the outskirts of town and then hopping the fence and doubling back in. They realize if they do this, they can push people out into the middle of nowhere. Where they have no place to hide. And also, if they are going to get through, they’re going to have to walk dozens of miles through mountains across desert cross these really difficult landscapes. So they start to implement this officially in 1994. And the idea was that if they do this, along these urban zones along the US Mexico border, people can be forced out into these rugged zones, especially places like Sonora desert of Arizona. 

Which at the time the Border Patrol refers to as quote “hostile terrain”. And so the idea was if you have to walk across a desert, where there’s no water, there’s just mountains and venomous animals. And you have to walk for three or four days and it’s 110 degrees outside. And you can die of dehydration or break your ankle in the middle of nowhere, that all of those things will be a deterrent to the movement of people. Of course it doesn’t, people just start doing it. And you go from having, 10,000, 15,000 apprehensions in southern Arizona in any one given year. To suddenly you’ve got hundreds of thousands of apprehensions through the desert because people are being funneled out there. 

And the border Patrol’s logic is, it’s much easier to catch a migrant if they’re exhausted and dehydrated, or if they’re dead. And that has been the dominant paradigm for border security for decades. We still do it today. We’ve been funneling people now away from Arizona into New Mexico and parts of South Texas thousands of people have died because of this policy. And everybody knew in the beginning that this was going to lead to a lot of injury and death. You can look at the federal documents that they clearly laid out. They say if we put this policy in place, one expected outcome will be a rise in migrant death. And of course we went from averaging 25 to 50 deaths across the entire US Mexico border annually. To suddenly two or 300 deaths in Arizona alone. 

And so this policy, prevention through deterrence has killed thousands of people. And unfortunately, it’s also led to the disappearance of a lot of folks out in these really remote locations where their bodies will never be recovered. Because they’re out there for so long they get destroyed by animals in the natural environment. And there’s nobody actively looking for all of the missing. And so this policy is probably… If we were to talk about a border wall, and the brutality caused by border infrastructure. Prevention through deterrence in places like the Sonoran desert are the number one victimizers of migrants.

But it’s also done in a very savvy way because the Border Patrol can say, “Well, if you die of dehydration in the desert, it’s not the border Patrol’s fault. It’s your own fault for being out there.” Even though they’ve actively created a scenario where they know that people are going to try to cross with these places and so they’re they’re encouraging that. And then they’re able to say at the end of the day well it’s not our fault. These people did it to themselves, or people are disappearing, and then there’s no evidence. The desert is destroying these bodies and then the Border Patrol can have complete deniability about this whole thing.

Rhiki:
Yeah. So you’re curating right now and art piece based on this very policy called hostile terrain 94. Can you tell us a little bit more about that project and why you chose to do it in art form?

Jason De León:
Yeah. So hostile terrain 94 is a global participatory installation that was supposed to open three weeks ago. But clearly, that’s not happening. And then we’re supposed to then launch in 130 plus locations on six continents, through the end of the year. The idea behind hostile terrain 94, is trying to raise awareness about the number of people who have died and disappeared in the Sonoran Desert. And it came out of an art exhibition that we had done in the fall of 2018. It’s called Mecca, the main… Institute for contemporary art in Portland, Maine, had a big show that we were in. We had a full room of different elements, photography, video artifacts, various things that were art pieces that were translating anthropological data for a public audience. 

And one of the things that we did with that particular show is we created a wall graphic that plotted out 3200 migrant deaths in on a map of Arizona. And that had been printed out in vinyl. So it was 3200 red vinyl dots on a wall, representing each of the deceased. And I thought that that was going to be a really impactful way to represent these deaths. And it ended up, once we did it and put it up on a wall, it kind of felt flat. And I felt it wasn’t really conveying the gravity of the situation. And so we had a follow up show that happened at the Phillips Art Gallery in Lancaster, Pennsylvania at Franklin and Marshall College that was coming up six months later. 

And so we decided, okay, let’s replace this wall graphic with a map of Arizona. And we’ll make custom toe tags. And we will hand write out the names and all the information for the dead. And we’ll color code the tags will do Manila for people who were named and orange for the unidentified. And we’ll mount those tags in the exact location of where those bodies were found. So we started doing that. And I had students writing tags when I was teaching at the University of Michigan. And in the middle of all that, the students started coming to me and saying, hey, this is really difficult to do emotionally, it’s hard to sit down for an hour and write out the names of the dead. And the condition their bodies were found in the students were we’re really having a hard time with it. 

And I got to thinking, what if we came up with an exhibition where, instead of us installing a map with these handwritten toe tags, we asked people to collaborate with us and build these maps themselves. So that they could directly engage with these people on a real level. Because I think there’s something important that happens when you sit down, and you write out the names of the dead, I truly do. I think it connects you to that issue in a different way than just reading about it or seeing it on a wall. I think when you commit your time and energy to writing up those names, you connect to it in a different way. 

And so it happened in the middle of planning for this show at Franklin and Marshall. I had this dream about what if we were to do an exhibition around migrant death, but we made it really collaborative. So we would organize people into different places, we would send them a kit, and they would build it themselves. We would make it really cheap to do. So like 1500 bucks for supplies and logistical support. Anybody can host it. You don’t have to be a gallery, you can be just a student group or a church or just an average person who wants to put up this show. We’re happy to support you will subsidize it if we can. And what are we tried to do that in 94 locations around the globe. 

And at that point, 94 was a reference to the year that the policy prevention through deterrence it started. I built a little website in January of 2019. I put out some calls for collaborators on Twitter and Facebook. And immediately we had 50 or 60 people who were signed up. And so we got to the 94 mark pretty quickly. We pushed it to 150. And realized that we logistically we couldn’t do more than that our team is too small. And so now we’re hovering around 130. We’ll probably get back up to 150 into next year because of delays from COVID and people not to wanting to sign on. But the idea is that these shows will pop up all over the place in all these different locations. 

And we really want It to be collaborative. So people come to us and say, we want to build this wall. We want to memorialize the dead and build this exhibition. But we also want to connect it to our own communities. And so we’ve given our partners, carte blanche to say, look, you tell us what you think would be the best things to add to this to compliment it? Is it other art pieces? Is it workshops? Is it musical performances? Is it lectures about how immigration is impacting your own local community? And it’s been really great. I mean for me, the fact that this is a really accessible exhibition and collaborative is really amazing. 

Because it can be hard sometimes to be in an art space where it can feel very elitist. Even if it’s in a small gallery on campus, that’s not always necessarily a safe space for a lot of people. And so we really worked hard with our partners to try to be as inclusive as possible. We have a show launching virtually July 17th in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And they’re going to open up the first gallery, July 10th in Santa Fe, but people will not be filling out toe tags, it’ll already be built. But they will be using social distancing measures for people to go and visit the gallery. But we anticipate public… In the late fall, early 2021, these shows will start popping up all across the US, Latin America, Europe, Asia, Africa. 

And yeah, we’re just really, really excited to see what people come up with and including the folks at Arcus. It’s been a real pleasure just brainstorming with so many different student groups and faculty. And artists who are trying to find ways to both amplify the message of the exhibition, while at the same time empowering local communities to get involved and feel like they’ve taken some ownership of this exhibition.

Jesse Herrera:
Yeah, there’s a component of the specific collaborative component of the hostile terrain project. That when specifically when you write the names, for me was a very intense process. And just seeing them in your mind it was… Especially for me I have friends who have last names. Who have those specific names. And it really did make me connect to it. And really put a name to the violence that is happening at the border. And I know you’ve done a lot of work down there. And I just want to ask this question of specifically who is making the journey across the border? And what are the reasons for?

Jason De León:
Well it’s evolved over time. 10 years ago, the bulk of people who were crossing were people coming from Mexico. It was primarily men, young men, people coming for the first time or people who are getting deported by Obama who deported a lot of people. In probably the last five or six years, there’s been a major shift now to, you still have folks coming from Mexico, but now different parts of Mexico. Indigenous communities in Mexico that are struggling with cartel violence and poverty. But also a high number of people coming from Central America. Particularly the Golden Triangle so Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. You got a lot of young people now, both male and female, fleeing those places, because they’re just unsafe. 

You’ve got lots of unaccompanied minors coming now as well. But then now, you’ve also got people coming from other places. Haiti, the Dominican Republic, India, Africa, you’ve got all these migrants who are coming up from South America, crossing all of Mexico, and then trying to get across, either through Arizona, through Texas, through California. But many of them are coming because of poverty. But they’re also coming because of political instability. Because of violence, because of the impacts of climate change. So droughts, flooding, increased intensity of hurricanes. You’ve got people who are migrating now, for reasons that we weren’t thinking about it all 10, 20 years ago. 

And it’s a much more diverse pool now. And it’s not uncommon to see entire family groups to see women traveling with children, to see children traveling alone. And I think that’s for me one of the reasons why this issue is so crucial right now. Because it’s not going away anytime soon, and it only appears to just be getting worse and worse.

Rhiki:
Yeah, like Jesse, I filled out a couple of the toe tags for the hostile terrain project. And it was a lot and especially because even if they didn’t have names, so some of them say unidentified. They were these bodies and it shows a description of their bodies. And I think the first two that I filled out one was an older woman. And I don’t know why I paid attention to the latitude. But the very next one was this very young child. And it was the latitude and longitude was the exact same. And it clicked for me this was a mother and her child. And I don’t know, that moment just solidify how real this issue is. I think that there’s a certain narrative that’s being passed around in America that is so lacking the human element. And this project really kind of brung that human element back into this issue. 

I feel like when we talk about it, we talk about it as this big conceptual idea. That’s just like, it only exists within inside the realm of politics. And it’s like no these are actual people. And these things are happening to them. So to do the toe tags, and then to also read your book and the story about how Javier in the book. That illuminated what that experience across the desert is like. Just really opened my eyes to how real this issue really is.

Jason De León:
I think there’s something really powerful that can happen when we think about one of these global issues. These huge structural issues, but then we can break it down, right? And then if we just have one name. I think that one name can be so powerful. I mean George Floyd right now. I mean just one name, one person. If we can understand the tragedy and the sorrow of one person’s loss of life? For me, I think that that’s more powerful than statistics, than these numbers. That if I can’t connect to an individual I think it can be really hard then to understand, okay well, this happens to thousands of people. I think that’s why these movements say their names. 

I mean, I think that’s all of these movements now to get people to understand that these structural issues. The violence created by these different systems, impacts millions of people. But we need to start on the ground level, and just connect with one life. And understand that, that one life and that loss of life impacts entire communities. And if you can connect with that one person, and then start to slowly take a step back and go my god all of these names now. How many people have been devastated by these different forms of violence? 

For me that’s what sticks with me. And so this project it started out going in the opposite direction. I wanted to show the graph that the scale of this whole thing, but then realizing that didn’t work. And it really only worked when you started small. With one person which is not a small thing. One every life is important. And if we can focus in on these lives that are disproportionately impacted by violence and show you that one person, then maybe you can start to understand the real gravity of this whole situation.

Rhiki:
Yeah, I feel like we’ve been so desensitized by all the things that happen in our society. That we forget… I don’t know, I feel like we’re so used to it that we forget that these are actual people. And the emotion just isn’t there. But when you sit down and you’re forced to, not forced, but you’re paying attention to these toll tags, and you’re actually writing information about somebody and their body and their life. It just re-sensitize you to… I don’t know how to explain it, but yeah, it just makes it real.

Jason De León:
Yeah, I completely agree. I think that we live in this era where… I remember after Rodney King, I was in LA at the time. And everybody thought finally this… Finally, you’ll believe us that people of color are brutalized by the police. And it’s on video, and everyone thought that that was going to be a game changer. And of course, it didn’t. And I never thought that I would live in an era where you could just turn on the television and see a black person killed by the police that someone had filmed, on a weekly if not daily basis, and nothing would come from that. That we got to a point fairly recently, where I just felt like people were becoming desensitized to these police killings. 

And I don’t know if you guys have seen the recent Dave Chappelle show. I don’t even know what to call it. But basically it’s a 20, 27, 28 minute long discussion about police brutality. And he really, I think he talks about George Floyd in this very personal way that reminds you that you cannot be desensitized to these things. And that and this one person’s life is so important, and has been cut short in this brutal way. And we need to start with that person’s humanity first and not these other scales that were at some times I think, really don’t allow us to connect. And I think we’re desensitized to immigration issues. We’re desensitized to police brutality. 

And we think about all the things that the Trump administration has done to immigrants. Putting babies in cages, tear gassing moms with their kids at the US Mexico border. Separating kids from their families. I mean, we’re just flooded with all these different horror shows. But they’re happening at such a grand scale, sometimes that it’s really hard to get a sense of It’s worse than you actually think it is. Because it’s terrible to look at it when you see it at a higher level of like it’s happening to thousands of people. 

But I think for me, it’s even more devastating when I start with that one person. Try to understand their position, and their experiences, and then slowly move out and then go oh my god I can’t believe that we’re now orders of magnitude. We’re multiplying this is trauma. But we’re living in such a fast paced world right now. With these media cycles where I think, it oftentimes can be hard to stay connected to these individual lives which is really unfortunate. But that’s partly because there are so many lives being affected by this right now. And we don’t really know how to talk about these things.

Jesse Herrera:
One thing that comes up specifically a name when you said that just one life would be… In Tucson, this boy got killed. His name is Jose Antonio, by CBP officer. And his name is always everywhere, just trying to get justice for it. And I was there during the court decision for whether or not the CBP officer was going to be guilty or not. And I saw the boy’s mother’s reaction after they found out. And she’s like I’m not going to give up. I’m not going to give up getting justice for my son. 

And you really try to find this idea… Like you see this idea that the government, not the government. But just people in political positions don’t really care. And there’s no oversight. I think we’ve been seeing that a lot now for COVID. And just like the entire… There’s just no oversight, no accountability, on the specific ways that the government implement certain measures. And I’m wondering, how the government has ignored the issues of COVID in relation to migration. How is it impacting people in general?

Jason De León:
Well, I think the federal government is making COVID much worse in a lot of places. I mean, we know that migrants are in detention right now, in unsafe conditions. I’m not expecting these private prisons, with very little oversight. That are known for all kinds of human rights abuses, sexual assault, violence, extortion. We know that’s been happening for a long time. And so in those places, I don’t imagine that they’re following safety protocols to keep people protected from COVID-19. And so we’re exposing migrants to other to this medical issue. And then we’re deporting them in the middle of the night, back to these home communities. Where they are bringing that these diseases now back to these places that where transmission rates, which I’m sure will be high. 

And where there’s little to no medical care. I think that we are doing all kinds of… Our actions here in the United States, they’ve always been devastating to places like Central America. And COVID-19 I think it’s just one more example of governmental indifference or even maliciousness towards these communities. Because we’re sending people back full well, knowing that they have been exposed to COVID-19 taking no precautions to protect anybody. So I think we’re only starting now to see the ramifications of things like deportation, as has been happening under COVID.

Jesse Herrera:
I’ll never forget this one experience where we were able to go through a detention center. And we were obviously being guarded by two high officials. And I forgot which one it was, I think it was Florence I was able to tour. And what got me afterwards was, they were gaslighting me the whole time during the tour. They were convincing me of how good the conditions were. It was almost at the point where I was trying to convince me. And afterwards I thought to myself is like why are they so good at this? Why are they so good at convincing people and justifying. Like the accountability and not even thinking about these people? It was wild, the kind of logic that happened there. And I can only imagine it’s worse now during COVID.

Jason De León:
Well, they’re invested in keeping the system rolling. And I think people who are part of it have to justify to themselves as well. They believe oftentimes their own nonsense.

Jesse Herrera:
So we talked about the detention centers, and how the US is affecting Mexico and Central America as far as COVID. Are there any other US policies you want to bring awareness to that are affecting Mexico and Central America? And specifically, I want to talk about deportation flights?

Jason De León:
Sure. Well probably one of the biggest things that’s been a game changer for Mexico. Is that starting in 2014, under Obama we started putting all this political pressure on Mexico to stop Central Americans from crossing their country. And this had been in response to all the kids who were showing up at the US Mexico border in the summer of 2014. So Mexico launched a program called [Foreign language 00:46:26]. 

Which was an attempt to slow down, to arrest and deport Central American migrants back to their home countries. And that was being supported by the United States government, was being partially funded. We were training agents on the ground in Mexico and in Central America to do this kind of stuff. And Trump has only made this worse. But we’ve been basically putting pressure on Mexico to act like a second border. To deal with our immigration issue. And it’s just made things so much more horrific for migrants who are attempting to get across Mexico. 

Jesse Herrera:
In terms of the continuing policies, how do you think the upcoming elections will affect the immigration and migration right now? And specifically policies too.

Jason De León:
That’s a good question. I don’t know. I mean, are people angry enough to come out in the fall and vote? Are they going to be angry enough to take politicians to task about these things? It’s unclear. I think four years ago, my thinking was it’s going to get really bad under Trump, and how bad will it have to get before people actually want to make real structural change? I don’t want to see it get any worse than it already is. But I don’t know if we’re at a point now, where more people are going to be committed to voting politicians out. And then committed to holding the ones that we vote in accountable to these issues. 

I have to be optimistic. I think that your generation, this is your moment. And I’ve been really inspired by the way people have been mobilizing to deal with these issues. I just hope that it carries over into the fall. But also of course, the big worry is about the undermining of democracy by this current administration. And so will there be oversight? And will we be able to vote in fair elections?

Rhiki:
So what should people know or be aware of right now? Moving forward, at least with the upcoming election, what things do you want to lift up?

Jason De León:
I think right now just getting educated. And getting educated beyond the current news cycle. I think you can only learn so much from reading the newspaper about immigration. I think if you want to understand these issues, you’re going to have to dig deeper. And of course, you can support organizations that are working on these issues. But just because you give 50 bucks to an organization, I don’t think that that should clear your conscience. And it’s kind of like what the Black Lives Matter stuff. You went to one protest, okay, I’m real proud of you. Now, what are you actually going to do? Are you going to be committed to anti racism? Not committed to like diversity training, or whatever nonsense that we throw around these days to make ourselves feel better? But I don’t want to hear like I’m not racist. I want to hear you say I am anti racist, and I’m actively working to deal with these issues. 

And it’s the same thing with immigration, get involved in your community support. You don’t have to go to the US Mexico border to work on these issues. Immigrants are in your backyard and you can support them in all kinds of ways. But I think a crucial part of that is to take a deeper dive into the educational stuff so that you can understand the long history of this and it doesn’t start under Trump. It goes so much farther back. And having that knowledge, I think can be really empowering. And can shape your life in all kinds of ways. Not just who you vote for, but where you buy your food from, how you have conversations with your family members about these issues. All of those things I think, can spark real change. But you have to  educate yourself first in order to do that.

Rhiki:
And it really never stops. Especially now when people go to protests. People have been saying solidarity isn’t a trend. Isn’t something that you stop after big events happen? It’s not something that… It’s a continuing process. And I like it when you say educating yourself. Because educating yourself never stops either. I think even with the work I’ve done, it’s just you learn so much more every single day, if you’re invested into it. And we wanted to know Jason, now that you have all these projects. What are you working on right now? Is there anything else that other than hostile terrain that you’ve been working on?

Jason De León:
Yeah, I’ve just started writing a new book on human smuggling. And so it’s a book called Soldiers and Kings. And it is about Honduran smugglers. Largely young men from Honduras who are transporting migrants across the length of Mexico. And so the book focuses on the daily lives of those men and a few women. How does someone become a smuggler? What is your daily life like? And how is smuggling connected up to things global political economy, US border enforcement practices. But it’s really this in depth look at the lives of these folks that are very difficult, oftentimes end very violently. Sort of my attempt to shine a light on this aspect of migration that I think we oftentimes don’t hear much about. 

Or we hear very one sided sorts of stories about who smugglers are and what and what they do. So I’ve just started writing basically. And I will probably spend the next… Sorry, if you hear my cat meowing. He’s got an opinion about the book. So I’ve just started writing and probably hostile terrain is ongoing. We’ve got another project on detention centers that we’re just getting started with now. But I’ll be mostly working on this book for the next year and a half to two years.

Rhiki:
Cool. Well, that’s all we have for today. So thank you so much, Jason for joining us.

Jason De León:
My pleasure. Thank you all so much. This is great. And I hope that everyone is staying healthy and happy and relatively sane during these difficult times. But for me, it’s really helpful just to be able to talk to somebody about something.

Rhiki:
And also thank you Jesse, for joining us. Jesse recently graduated, so they’re technically not a student anymore. Doing this out of the kindness of their heart.

Jason De León:
Congratulations.

Jesse Herrera:
Yeah, thankfully, I made it somehow.

Rhiki:
So remember everyone to continue to always educate yourself. This is not a trend. This is a lifelong journey. If you want to learn more about Jason’s work, please visit the Undocumented Migration Project. And also be on the lookout for our Hostile Terrain 94 project coming in 2021. And join us next time on the Radical Zone. Thank you all for tuning in to the Radical Zone podcast where we center radical thinkers and their ideas. See you next time.

outro:
Thank you for tuning in. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast and follow us on social media. You can find us on Facebook @ACSJLkzoo, Twitter @ACSJL and Instagram @arcuscenter. For questions, comments and ideas for future topics. Please leave responses on our social media platforms.

Indigenous Uprisings & Cross Movement Building

The Radical Futures Now team had the pleasure to speak with Holly Bird to bring us to speed on critical issues facing Ingenious Movements parallels to Black movements, COVID-19 and its impact on the Indigenous Community in America. Hon. Bird graduated from DePaul University College of Law, where she served as the Native American Representative and President of the Latino Law Students Association. Most notably, however, Hon. Bird founded and served as Vice-President, President, and President-Emeritus of the Illinois Native American Bar Association, and is credited for using her advocacy to remove offensive sports mascots from several Illinois schools. Hon. Bird has authored the publications: “Jumping Through Hoops: Traditional Healers and the Indian Health Care Act,” (1999) and “Making the Cross-Cultural Case; Educating the Judge about Race, Religion, and Ethnicity” (2004). In 2008, Hon. Bird was appointed as an Acting Chief Judge / Associate Judge for the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, where she served until 2011. Bird maintains a private practice in Traverse City, concentrating in matters of Native American, family, juvenile, criminal, civil, traffic, real estate, probate, employment and business law. Bird also served as the Civil Ground Coordinator for the Water Protectors Legal Collective, the leading legal service at the NoDAPL camp/protest in support of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. She continues to volunteer for WPLC to date. She also founded and serves as the Executive Director for the MI Water Protectors Legal Task Force, a project of the National Lawyer’s. Take a listen and be a part of this conversation.


Transcript:

Rhiki Swinton:
Welcome to The Radical Zone Podcast, where we get updates on the current state of the world and how various communities are impacted from activists and organizers who are out there doing the work.

The Radical Zone Podcast is housed under the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership. I know you are probably wondering what the Arcus Center is. The Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, also known as ACSJL, is an initiative of Kalamazoo College whose mission is to develop and sustain leaders in human rights and social justice through education and capacity building. We envision a world where every person’s life is equally valued, the inherent dignity of all people is recognized, the opportunity to develop one’s full potential is available to every person, and systematic discrimination and structural inequities have been eradicated. Listen to and engage in conversation with organizers and activists across the globe about social inequities that impact us all.

Hey, everyone. Rhiki Swinton here. Thank you again for tuning into The Radical Zone. Joining me today once again is my lovely co-host, Tirrea Billings. 

Tirrea Billings:
Hello, everyone. 

Rhiki Swinton:
And we have the pleasure of talking to a very special guest, Holly Bird, about indigenous movements, the parallels of those movements to black movements, and also how COVID-19 has been impacting the indigenous community in America. 

Tirrea Billings:
Awesome, and so I just want to introduce our guest, Holly. So Holly has a private practice in Traverse City that concentrates on matters concerning Native Americans. She is the associate Supreme Court judge for the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi Indians. She is the leading legal service at the NoDAPL camp/protest in support of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and she is also the co-executive director of Title Track. 

Holly Bird:
Yes, thank you, [inaudible 00:02:07]. I’m so glad to be here. 

Rhiki Swinton:
So Holly, how are you doing? How are things in Traverse City?

Holly Bird:
Things in Traverse City are doing pretty well. We have managed to keep our COVID numbers down, and many of us are working remotely. I’d already been doing that for quite a while. So we’re just holding it down, basically. Keeping the families safe. Trying to keep tourists from infecting us too much, so that’s where we’re at. But I’m very blessed. 

Rhiki Swinton:
So I’m really interested to know: How did you get into this work, and what motivated you to pursue a career in law?

Holly Bird:
That’s a great question. I always like to tell people that I came into this in a very unconventional way, and I am a fairly unconventional attorney as well. I actually graduated from Interlochen Arts Academy here in Michigan and went on to get degrees in art, social science, anthropology from Michigan State. So I went off and was actually working as an artist on the West Coast and was introduced to the concept of Native American law by my Aunt Maria, who was the executive director of Oregon’s native legal services. And I had some exposure to lawyers, as my father was a lawyer and my grandfather, and my step-grandfather. But they were businessmen. They weren’t really practicing as lawyers, so I never really got to see the advocacy side of it.

But in college, I had always been really active in advocacy, protesting, negotiating rights, whatever it was, so it actually was a very natural sort of fit for me to be an advocate, more so than it was to be a typical lawyer. So I went into the law because at that time, our Native American community was in dire need of lawyers. I’m really only third-generation attorney for Native Americans and second-generation judge, and I am the very first Native American arbitrator in the United States. So that was a need that our community had. I sort of became fascinated, seeing what my aunt was doing with the attorneys in her office and how it affected our communities and how rich that need was. So went from basically being an artist to being an attorney.

So from there, I worked in various issues concerning our communities. One was initially working with mascots in Chicago. As a law student, I helped get rid of a Redskins mascot in Chicago in their high schools. I started working immediately on the different urban issues that Native Americans face when they’re sort of disenfranchised from their reservation areas and the support that they can get there. And also, just lots of advocacy. And all of that kind of rolled around eventually into working for tribes as a tribal judge. I worked as a guardian ad litem for children. And then, when Standing Rock came around, that was sort of a natural for me. When I saw videos of the dogs being sicced on my relatives out west, I literally couldn’t sleep for days. So in a way, it really wasn’t even a choice for me. I had to leave, and I had to go help.

So fortunately, there was a legal tent there that allowed me to volunteer. And then eventually, I came on staff with the Water Protector Legal Collective and had been with them for about four years in various roles. I was the ground coordinator during the NoDAPL Standing Rock camp, which meant I was in camp, lived in camp, and provided legal services to the people that were there. Sometimes that meant just giving them legal advice on different things. Other times, it meant holding off the police for a raid. So there were a lot of different things that we did.

And then after that, I’ve been volunteer attorney, I’ve been on the board, I was a co-executive director. And recently, actually departed because COVID made it necessary to be home, and started working with Title Track as a co-executive director. So fortunately, I get to do a lot of the same work here that I did there. I’m still working on water issues, working on racial justice and equity. And as well, I still have my private practice focusing on Native American issues.

Rhiki Swinton:
So let’s talk a little bit more about the NoDAPL protests. Can you tell us more about it? And from our research, I’ve seen that it started in 2016, so can you talk to us a little bit more about how they maintained momentum for the movement over a long period of time?

Holly Bird:
Absolutely. And you’re right: NoDAPL started in 2016. It actually started in April by a group of spirit runners that were teenagers. And these teenagers began a run to bring awareness to the fact that this pipeline was being built a mile from the only water source of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation. And that was Lake Oahe that connects up and goes right next to the Missouri River. And it was very controversial because the DAPL had, prior to that, decided to put the pipeline through Bismarck. But because of one township meeting they had with some of the local residents where they expressed displeasure, they decided to move it and put it one mile from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, despite their vehement objections and lawsuits, et cetera, et cetera. So this amounts to environmental, ecological genocide
for this tribe if that pipeline breaks.

And so these youth started a spirit run to bring attention to that, and then they ended up bringing the focus of that run to a camp that they started about a mile from the NoDAPL pipeline site. That quickly grew, and at one point toward the end of 2016, we had over 20,000 people there in support of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. I was there as the civil ground coordinator, and so lived in camp along with those other 20,000 people that would sometimes come and go. And we lived under the threat of… We had missiles that were pointed at us 24 hours a day. We had huge spotlights that were on the camp 24 hours a day. There were over 33 different law enforcement agencies that showed up to essentially terrorize these peaceful water protectors. And we don’t call them protestors, because you’re not protesting when you’re on your own land. You’re protecting it.

And the land that they were on was unceded territory under the treaties, so it was land that they had easements with the federal government to have ceremonies on. They had burials on that land. They had ancient ceremonial sites that this pipeline crossed. As a matter of fact, in April, right around Easter, there was a break, and the tribe had just set forward to the judge and to DAPL the location of the ceremonial sites that were going to be in the way of the pipeline. And that weekend, which was over a holiday weekend, DAPL came and bulldozed all those sites so that there wouldn’t be any proof of that. And that was right before the dog bites happened, and the dogs that were being used against people who were coming to protest and trying to protect those sites.

So there was a lot of just real nasty things going on in the name of big oil. I personally watched troops of law enforcement, National Guard, private security guards running all over burial sites, including the burial site of a five-year-old child of a friend of mine who was there. So it was just really disgusting, what they were trying to do. And so I think the outrage that came out of that, the fact that law enforcement could treat people that way, it was something that we hadn’t… That form of racism we hadn’t seen since almost the ’70s. People were not seeing that on large scales, as far as what was happening to Indian people, even though we’ve said it’s always been there. But this was really obvious. Everything from using high-powered water cannons to try to remove water protectors from certain areas to blocking traffic to the casino to that tribe so that they would be economically forced to allow the pipeline through. It was just horrible, and the government there, unfortunately, was completely bought out by DAPL for that pipeline.

And I should mention that it wasn’t just the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe that was on the receiving end of that injustice. There were lots of farmers, there were lots of citizens that are being affected by that pipeline. We saw, for example, one elderly woman who had a family farm that she’d had for a long time, and through the use of eminent domain, they built the pipeline through her back yard, and it was between her house and a barn. And she didn’t even have permission to cross over that pipeline to get to the barn. So there was just horrible things happening with this pipeline. And you couple that with the continued injustice and continued poor treatment of our native relatives in those areas, and you get something like Standing Rock happening.

So in my mind, the momentum kept moving because we have the youth as a driving force. The youth were there and not letting people forget. The elders were there to advise them. We had ceremony involved. We had prayer involved. And people came to camp saw a different way of living, which made it pretty amazing. One of the things I noted about living in camp was that we were off grid, so we really had to rely on each other for food, for our basic, everyday needs, whether it was sending people out to get water, whether it was the big kitchens that people set up for cooking, whether it was donations or food brought in by people. We had lots and lots of donations, as far as clothes, shelters, things like that. And we all worked very hard in camp to basically do our everyday things.

I had gone there with my husband and my teenage son at the time, and this was before anything was getting too crazy over there. And we all remarked that being there for a week, we felt more invigorated and healthy than we could ever remember. And so I think a lot of people went to camp. They saw that people could live together in sort of a good way, a traditional way, with prayer and ceremony, work, exercise, eat healthy, and rely on each other in a really good way, and this was all under the cultural principles of the Lakota, the Dakota from that area, and that you could see that work. I know a lot of people’s lives were very changed just by being there, and they came out with that fire in their hearts to continue this and the fire to continue what we Native Americans have always been trying to get across, which is the relationship with our Mother Earth and our protection of her so that we can all sustain here.

Rhiki Swinton:
Wow. Holly, that was beautifully said for sure. That actually is a great segue to my next question. So considering the most recent protests and calls to action around police brutality and the state of black lives, can you describe the parallels that you’ve noticed between indigenous uprisings and the current black uprisings that we’re seeing today?

Holly Bird:
Absolutely. To me, the only real difference that we’ve had recently is that the black uprisings have been more urban, and the indigenous ones have been more rural or based on the land. But the injustices are very similar. The need for racial equity in these situations is very similar. The need for recognition for this culture of white supremacy and colonizing… It’s a call for it to stop. As a Native American, we don’t really count ourselves as different from our black brothers and sisters. We kind of feel like we’re all in the same boat. We got to this boat in a different way, but we’re all being treated poorly because of the color of our skin. Whether that’s purely the other issue, I think for us, we also have to look at how this colonist culture has continued to treat us poorly.

And I always say… I guess in our culture, it’s because they themselves have healing to do. They have not begun their own healing journeys to sort of get over the trauma of colonization of… When people murder others, when people enslave others, when people murder babies in order to access land, there is actually a trauma there for them. I mean, you really have to deaden yourself to spirit and the heart to be able to do those things. And collectively, when the colonists came here, they were all part of that. They were all complicit in that. And unless you’ve done the work to heal that in yourself, which would include healing alongside the people that you’ve inflicted that harm upon, then you’re still going to fall back on those old habits of treating someone as inferior or, in some cases, and I can say this even about my good liberal white friends, perhaps lack of understanding about these situations and what they mean and what they are.

I honestly don’t believe that a lot of white people in our culture today have done the work, and I know that there are many that are still deeply involved in that system. They benefit from it, and they don’t see a reason to change. So unless they’re opening and willing to understand what that is and to name the problem and to start dealing with it, it’s going to continue.

Rhiki Swinton:
Holly, I love what you said about how we’re all being affected by this colonist culture, and it really doesn’t matter. As long as we’re people of color, we’re being affected in some way because our skin color is a little bit different or darker. Can you talk about how we can work together, how all people of color can work together in this realm, I want to say, of cross-movement building, how we can use this time to stand in solidarity with one another?

Holly Bird:
Absolutely. I mean, we have to be in solidarity with one another, in my mind. I have seen this happening quite a bit. At Standing Rock, for example, close to 50 percent of the people that were there were not native, and there was a large number of people there from other places, all kinds of skin tones, and they were some of our closest allies. We’ve got lots of cross-culturalization within our own communities as well. So I have, for example, lots of relatives that are black, because that was sort of a natural caring for a lot of our people, was that coming together in unity and in understanding.

So what I’ve seen happen with the Black Lives Matter movement, so many of my native relatives are 100 percent behind that. And the way that we be a good relative in that aspect is that we don’t attempt to co-opt that movement. We don’t attempt to say, “Oh, yeah, but what about us?” We say, “Absolutely, 100 percent. We support you. We’re uplifting your voice, and now is your time, and for us to back you 100 percent on these things.” And you’ve seen that, I think, in a lot of these protests, that we’ve had lots of native uprising groups that have participated in the Black Lives Matter protests and in the media and forwarding all the different pieces of literature or anti-racism, and certainly a lot of anti-law enforcement. Educational materials. I mean, we’re lifting our voices alongside of yours, essentially, or black people. And I think that the same thing can happen as well, and it has happened in the past, where the black communities have stood up for us as well.

So I think that there is no question that we need to be unified. We have done it in the past. We’ve seen things like the Rainbow Coalition come up and support black people in these urban centers, but we need to have that, in my opinion, strengthened even more, and for any detractors that are out there to put down any hesitancy and stand up for one another.

Rhiki Swinton:
Absolutely. There’s a lot of gender wars and things going on in the black uprising community, and there’s a lot of comparisons going on, as far as the gender dynamics in black movements. And so I know a lot of black movements have been started and spearheaded by black women, like the Black Lives Matter movement started by black women as well as other movements, too, like the Me Too movement and things like that. And so can you describe the role of the matriarchy in indigenous movements and how supported are they, or lack thereof, as far as the matriarchy versus the patriarchy?

Holly Bird:
Oh, yes. We have so many parallels. And in fact, if there’s one thing that we’re really very similar in, it’s this: Both of our communities are spearheaded by very strong women, very strong matriarchs. We’ve had to undergo the oppression of this colonist culture where men were subjugated, our warriors were taken down. And often, we were left to fend for ourselves. We’ve been left to raise our children. We’ve been left to be the moneymakers in our home. And I’m not blaming our men. I’m blaming an oppressive system that created so much dysfunction within our traditional roles and within our families.

So we’ve had centuries of this happening, and so we’ve had… Out of this, strong women have risen. And we’re also trying to help uplift our men at the same time, but what ends up happening is, there has been a lot of disparity in that. Because of that unhealthiness, because of the oppressive culture, because of the imposition of colonist religion, even, and particularly in my community, we’ve seen upticks in sexual molestation. We’ve seen upticks in rape and the putting down of women, which is not a traditional role for us. Women in our culture, depending on which tribe you’re from, our culture is largely matriarchal. The women make the decisions along with the men. There’s a balance there that traditionally, we always had. But women were in charge of making a lot of the important decisions. And that was a recognition of the fact that women are life-givers. Hence, they have a direct spiritual connection to the creation spirit.

And so for women, every person is somebody’s father, mother, child, daughter, son, niece, nephew. So when we make decisions, we make those decisions for the seventh generation. And I believe that there are similar ideas within the black community. Women make those decisions based on what’s good for the future and for the family. And so we’ve sort of arisen out of these colonial ashes that have been cast at us, right? And in that, we’ve had to struggle with our men. We’ve had to struggle with the patriarchy that’s been imposed on us.

Like I said, for us, a lot of that imposition was through the enforcement of the Catholic Church on our people. And what that meant… The Catholic Church is a patriarchal religion. It’s a patriarchal setup, and really is meant to either cast women into the role of the good madonna, virgin type of situation versus the Mary Magdalene prostitute. And when you do that, you pit people against each other, and you make stereotypes that, in my mind, have contributed to the subjugation of women and the large numbers of murdered and missing women that we have in both of our communities.

All of that kind of rolls in, and then you have society in general thinking it’s okay, that if women are inferior to men, and to me, this was vastly a white idea, but if women were inferior to men, then you could do whatever you wanted with them. You could take the head of their family and enslave or kill them. You could separate their families through the use of child and family services. You could do all of these things to essentially try to break that family down. And the focus is on the women, because they recognize that our women are strong, and our women are the center of our families. So in that way, I feel like our spirits and our communities are not broken, because our women still remain strong, that we still remain as the head of our families in many ways, or at least in the center of our communities. And that is something that they will never be able to break, as long as we recognize and we keep that moving forward.

And doing that, we do have to have some calling out. We have to tell people, “You can’t treat us this way.” We recognize that there’s an illness within the patriarchy when women are being treated poorly, and we call it out, and we push it out, because we have to keep our people in a place to survive. And fortunately, I’m not saying that that’s all men, because we all know that there’s many, many wonderful men out there that are supportive and are performing in ways that they should be, that they are the strong men that we need to have in our communities. But that’s a journey for them as well. They’ve had to undergo a lot of punishment on all sides and a lot of learning, and then healing for themselves. And as women in these movements, we have to understand and uplift that as well.

I always say one of the things that we always have to remember is to love each other, our men, our women, our children, to make us strong, not to make us weak, and to make them strong and not to make them weak. And we’ve been taught by this society to try to do it the opposite way. And that was intentional. That was an attempt to break us down. But as women, we take that back, and we keep people strong. I always say that’s where the strength of women is, is in the strength of their heart, and the fact that we can love people to make them strong. And I see that as a complete parallel in both of our communities. We do that, and we do that with all that we have.

Rhiki Swinton:
So can you talk a little bit about what is happening on the reservations right now, as far as COVID-19 goes, and how is the virus affecting Native Americans and indigenous communities?

Holly Bird:
Yes. COVID in Indian country has been devastating, unfortunately. Like other minority groups and some lower-income groups, our communities have been very disproportionately affected by the virus. And there’s a lot of reasons for that. First of all, we have less health care available to us, even through the federal funding that we receive. And I want to make sure to point out that when we say we receive federal funding, this is something that we negotiated for with treaties. This is sort of like rent for the land that people now live on. And because different administrations have tried to withhold that funding, have put barriers to that funding, it’s constantly being messed around with, we’ve had less health care available to us. And the health care that we do get is often less quality.

So because of that, we have a couple centuries of poor health care. You add to that the lifetimes on using the commodities that the government has given us. That’s the food, which is really unhealthy. It’s always, like, Velveeta cheese and white flour and things that were never traditional to our people and caused us to suffer epidemics of diabetes and high blood pressure, asthma. Lots of things that could be avoided with a healthy, traditional diet.

Because of the lack of health care, we have higher numbers of these things happening in our community. So when something like COVID hits, it’s devastating. These are higher risk factors for complications of death in all people, but because we already have these in higher numbers, we’re dying disproportionately as well. And I do want to point out that some of this also is caused by… We have environmental diseases that other people don’t have. Some are due to uranium poisoning, for example, on the Navajo reservation. The government allowed uranium companies to lease that land, and then when they chose to close down, they didn’t make them clean it up. So there’s whole reservations that are without water because it’s poisoned by uranium. And that’s another thing that makes it difficult to combat COVID. If you don’t have water, you can’t wash your hands. If you don’t have water to drink, it’s also hard to make sure your health care is doing what it’s supposed to do.

And then as well, we have other places, whether it’s urban or other rural places, where we have very poor or polluted water or no water. So we can take the recent Standing Rock issue as a case in point. If that pipeline were to rupture, one of the largest tribes of Sioux in the United States would become drastically unhealthy and then susceptible to things like COVID.

Furthermore, we have a really bad economic impact. I think we have 245 casinos in the United States out of over 500 tribes, and most of those were shut down due to COVID. And their income is largely based on those casinos. The economic impact has been enormous. Out of 245 casinos, that’s 1.1 million jobs that are affected. A lot of them are non-native, too, so it’s not just the native community. For example, the feds in the state, I think they get, annually, about $17 billion in taxes from casinos. So there’s been a large effect because of COVID.

And then furthermore, we were left out of the initial CARES Act package. I don’t know if some people knew about that, but when they were initially doing those stimulus packages and the CARES Act packages for the states, they left tribes out. And tribes had to sue to be included. And there was really no reason for leaving them out, other than the current administration doesn’t really like Indians. So we had to sue the federal government to be included in those stimulus packages. And then it took months to get that funding for our Indian health centers and our tribes. There are still some tribes that are experiencing delays in getting that funding. So that has a large impact on their ability to provide services and to provide food and housing for people during this crisis. And as of right now, we’ve had 19,378 deaths in Indian country due to COVID, and that gives us one of the highest per capita rates of deaths in any community in the United States.

Rhiki Swinton:
Wow. That’s insane. I was reading your publication called Jumping Through Hoops: Traditional Healers and the Indian Health Care Act, and it basically talks about what you were talking about in response to Tirrea’s question about how the Indian Health Care Improvement Act was an act that was supposed to offer Native Americans and indigenous people high-quality health care, but it excluded them access to traditional Indian medicine. So can you just talk a little bit more about that act, its shortcomings? Is there any work happening now around amending that act? And then also, what are some resources out here that people can look to for more information and get more information on how to help indigenous communities in the U.S.?

Holly Bird:
Thank you so much. Wow, you really did your homework, and thank you. I appreciate that. That was an article I wrote back in, I think, 1998. And it has been used many, many times by the Civil Rights Department with the Department of Justice. And yes, the history on that… I was in law school when I wrote that and did a number of interviews to find out what I could about the Indian Health Care Act, because believe it or not, there wasn’t a lot of research out there about it. And I spoke to some of the original doctors and people that were involved in creating that act, and yes, they purposefully left out provisions for traditional healers, the traditional medicines that people have been using for thousands of years to treat medical conditions, et cetera. And their reasoning for that was because they felt it was second-class health care.

And of course, now some of them, I think, have changed their mind. They understand that that was short-sighted and certainly racist in its implication. And actually, when you look at all of the things that Native Americans have contributed to modern-day medicine, it’s also just false. One really good example that I think most people don’t know about is the fact that aspirin was invented by Native Americans. It’s something that they’ve used for thousands of years. Oral contraceptives were invented by Native Americans. Most of the antiseptics and pain medications, or a lot of them that we use today, were created by Native Americans. And the list goes on. I mean, there’s countless applications. But what has happened in Western medicine is that you’ll get a scientist or someone who “discovers” indigenous people using a certain type of plant or medicine, and suddenly they’ve discovered it, and it becomes their own invention. They take it, they make a drug out of it, and it becomes what you have today, and the original person who had been using that for thousands of years and who actually made those discoveries is called a second-class health care person.

So that was sort of what I was pointing out about the Indian Health Care Act. And I do think that there has been a change in viewpoints, mostly because Colonial America started looking at alternative health medicines, keeping in mind that people were dying of overdoses, looking at the way that the Western medical health profession… Sometimes the cure is worse than the actual illness. And so people started reaching out, looking for different ways of healing, and that sort of opened up the doors a little bit to Native Americans being able to access their own traditional healing sources.

And it’s sad to have to say that, because I think that they should have always had a right to those things and should have always had funding to be able to pay for those things. We have a number of traditional healers, and unfortunately, that number is always dwindling for us because they’re not supported, but who use our traditional medicines, who use our traditional ways. That includes songs and prayers and relationships of all kinds with medicines, with the spirits, and with the communities themselves. And those healers, unfortunately, are often poor. They’re often overextended and required to travel long distances to help bring healing to people.

So that’s a situation that, if you had a really good medical doctor, that would be unheard of, to be treated in that way for helping to heal people. These methods do work for our people, and in fact, we’ve seen some cases out there now where, for example, a young girl was being treated for cancer, and the medical establishment wasn’t working for her or the parents. Her cancer wasn’t going away. And the parents actually had to go to court to get an order to allow them to take her to a traditional healer, who then cured her of her cancer. But it took an enormous amount of time and money for them to be able to do that, and that just shouldn’t be the case. Native Americans are entitled, and should be entitled, to utilize their own healers and their own medicines that work for them without persecution and with financial support.

So yes, with the Indian Health Care Act, I think there have been improvements, but it’s slow going. And I think the fact that it has been slow going has resulted in greater disease and a real lack of health improvement for our people.

Rhiki Swinton:
And can you just tell us in what ways can people support the indigenous community, and what resources can we look to for more information on how to help, whether that be with the economic aspect or with the health aspect?

Holly Bird:
There are so many resources. Right now, for COVID, Indigenous Mutual Aid: Eagle and Condor is one of the organizations I’m working with. I’m also working with the Return to Heart Foundation. I’m working with the Nexus Equal Justice work group. There’s a number of them out there. You could actually just do a quick search, and you’ll find Native American organizations that have popped up in response to the COVID crisis.

Now, in general, if you’re interested in Native American affairs and helping out, I always point to things like the Native American Education Fund, the Native American Rights Fund. Earthjustice often does a lot to help with the legal aspect of things. And there are a number of groups out there in any given place. I guess it depends on where you want to focus your efforts and what kind of things that you would like to give to. So there’s those that are based on helping children. There are those based on helping elders. For example, if you’re in Michigan, we have the Anishinaabe Racial Justice Coalition, and they’ve been helping along with Title Track to put together funds for native elders during the COVID crisis. So there’s a lot of ways that you can help.

Rhiki Swinton:
Who inspires you to do the work that you do?

Holly Bird:
You know, I’ve spent a great deal of my life working with children, whether it’s as a guardian ad litem or a child attorney. I’ve also worked in some preschools, but I have to say that what I do is for our children. I really want my children to grow up in a world that they don’t have to walk down the street and be called Pocahontas or a wetback or something else. I want them to know that their friends and their relatives, their aunties, their cousins are not going to be pulled over and killed because of the color of their skin, whether it be their Native American family or their black family. I want them to know that their Jewish relatives can go to synagogue and not be blown up by bombs.

So I think that for me, it’s my children and our future generations. In our Native American culture, we always work and look toward the seventh generation, which would be seven generations in front of me. And of course, one of the biggest issues that I see right now is the environment. And part of me worries about even my children having a world to grow up in that’s safe and healthy, environment-wise.

When I went to… And this is kind of an example, I guess, of, in my way of thinking, as simple as it is. When I was taking part in the Higginbotham Fellowship for arbitration in New York City, they had a group of us there. And we were all going through our bucket list. And lots of people wanted to get a Tesla, they wanted to go skydiving, they wanted to make a million dollars. And I think I was the only person in the whole room that, when they asked me what was on my bucket list, I said, “The number one thing is to hold my grandchildren.” And that stands true today.

We have such high rates of death in our Native American community. We’re the highest rate of death in any minority in the United States, whether that be from police brutality, from physical health and poor health care to the highest suicide rate in the country, and in fact, almost the highest suicide rate in the world. And then you couple that with the environment and what’s been going on with it… To me, there would be no greater joy than being able to see my future generations living healthily and living in a much freer and more loving place than I am right now. And I would love to be able to look my little grandchildren in the eyes and know that they have hope and that they have a future that they, too, can believe in. So that’s my greatest inspiration.

Rhiki Swinton:
So we’re coming up on the end of this segment, but before we let you go, Holly, we just want to know: What projects are you currently working on?

Holly Bird:
So I’m working on a number of projects. One is Indigenous Mutual Aid: The Eagle and Condor. We have a Facebook site with the same name. We’re receiving and looking for PPEs, anything that we can use to help fund the needs or help bring up the needs of our community during the COVID crisis and beyond, because we expect that there’s going to be some economic delays and things. And not everybody is going to be okay. There’s going to be elders that have lost their rides to medical appointments. There’s going to be young families that don’t have access to food or funds for rent. So those are things that we’re working on within our indigenous community.

And it should be pointed out that when we do work on those things, it actually benefits the entire community, because if we have overages, or even if somebody is there, we share. We’re a community that constantly shares. And I always said that here in Michigan, if you see a community that has a casino, like a tribal community, you’ll notice that the entire community surrounding it, including all the non-native communities, benefit greatly from their economic success. And that’s because it’s within our culture to take care of our community members, no matter who they are. So that’s one of the projects I’m working with.

I also have a fellowship right now with the Return to Heart Foundation, which is… Sarah Eagle Heart is the CEO of that organization. And our focus right now is on COVID, but also on uplifting indigenous female leaders within these movements and providing support for each other and for our efforts to take care of our indigenous wisdom keepers and keeping our communities healthy and safe. And then, of course, working with Title Track to uplift whatever racial equity voices we can.

One of those voices that I’m working specifically on right now is the Northern Michigan Anti-Racism Task Force, which sprang up out of a need during this Black Lives movement period. We got together. I think we put together one of the largest protests in Northern Michigan in support of Black Lives movement and are now working to change policies, both law enforcement, government, school, et cetera, et cetera. Policies within our communities to address bias and racism and prejudice.

We’re also working on trainings to help with implicit bias for the general community and are getting requests daily from companies, from governmental entities, et cetera, et cetera. I’m also working on the water campaign, which… Our focus is, of course, the Great Lakes and getting Line 5 out of the Great Lakes. Our focus, which is sometimes a little different from some of the other groups, is to bring creative practice, meaning performers, entertainers, and their voices to uplift these movements as well. So we use a lot of that within our campaigns in order to bring attention to the matters. But my focus has been also to use all of that to bring natural rights to the Great Lakes. That’s an idea whose time has long past been overdue and needs to be done in order to protect the lakes.

And then on top of that, we do a lot of work with youth, including more recently, the youth of Flint. We’ve been working with them on songwriting, workshops, something we call RiverQuest, where we get them out in nature and talk to them about the water and its importance, and then help them to inspire creativity within themselves. And that’s been really a beautiful, beautiful project. So there’s so much that I’m involved in and I’m looking forward to being involved in every day.

Rhiki Swinton:
Holly, thank you so much for joining us and having a conversation with us about the indigenous community and things that people should be aware of around that community. I just want to close out with a quote. So we believe that every voice must be heard. We believe that every person must be seen. We believe that together, we have the power to build a better world.

So that’s all that we have for today. Thank you, Holly, again for joining us. Remember that the conversation is not over, so please join us next time on The Radical Zone.

A Conversation with Babaluku

In our second episode, Radical Futures Now had a social distancing conversation with a Hip Hop movement builder Babaluku to deciphe the effect of Covid19 in Africa as well the creatives around the world. Silas Babaluku is the founder and executive director of The Foundation, creator of the Dynasty as well as an award-winning musician, producer, community youth activist and social entrepreneur. Being raised in Uganda and living in Canada during his late teens and early twenties has given Silas a unique and powerful perspective on how to effectively create positive and empowering global partnerships. Since 2005, Silas’ work through the Foundation has provided a platform for positive expression of thought and community building. As a part of the Bavubuka Foundation, Silas is responsible for creating Dynasty, which is an international platform that celebrates indigenous culture, socially conscious artists, and has birthed Uganda’s most popular Graphic tee movements. His work has created opportunities for youth to conceptualize, design and execute their own entrepreneurial visions with a bridge to a global audiences and markets.Silas is the founder of Back To The Source, whose vision is to grow Indigenous Hip Hop Practitioners all over the continent who are dedicated to leading their communities through the journey of reconnecting to their authentic ancestral trans formative power. He has traveled extensively promoting hip hop as a powerful tool to teach leadership, build peace and strengthen relationships. His foundation was a 2015 finalist for the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership’s Global Prize. Silas has been recognized and honored across both the African and North American continents as a musician, pioneer, social entrepreneur, youth leader and community activist.

Learn more about Bavubuka Foundations at:

Bavubuka Dynasty’s webpage and the Bvubuka Allstraz Foundation Facebook


Transcript:

Tirrea Billings:
(singing). Welcome to the Radical Zone Podcast, where we get updates on the current state of the world and how various communities are impacted from activism organizers who are out there doing the work. The Radical Zone Podcast is housed under the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership. I know you’re probably wondering what the Arcus Center is. The Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership also known as ACSJL is an initiative of Kalamazoo College, whose mission is to develop and sustain leaders in human rights and social justice through education and capacity building. We envision a world where every person’s life is equally valued. The inherent dignity of all people is recognized. The opportunity to develop one’s full potential is available to every person and systematic discrimination and structural inequities have been eradicated. Listen to an engaging conversation with organizers and activists across the globe about social inequities that impact us all.

Rhiki Swinton:
Hi everyone. Thank you for tuning in and welcome back to the Radical Zone Podcast. It’s me, Rhiki Swinton, and I’m here today with my co-host Tirrea Billings

Tirrea Billings:
Hello everyone.

Rhiki Swinton:
So today we have a really interesting conversation ahead of us. We invited Babaluku, to discuss his work using creative arts as a transformative tool for change.

Tirrea Billings:
Silas Babaluku is the founder and executive director of the Bavubuka Foundation, creator of the Bavubuka Dynasty, as well as an award-winning musician, producer, community youth activist, and social entrepreneur. Being raised in Uganda and living in Canada during his late teens and early twenties has given Silas a unique and powerful perspective on how to effectively create positive and empowering global partnerships. Since 2005, Silas’s work through the Bavubuka Foundation has provided a platform for positive expression of thought and community building. As part of the Bavubuka Foundation, Silas is responsible for creating the Bavubuka Dynasty, which is an international platform that creates indigenous cultures, socially conscious artists, and has birth Uganda’s most popular graphic tee movements.

His work has created opportunities for youth to conceptualize design and execute their own entrepreneurial visions with a bridge to a global audience and market. Silas is the founder of Back to the Source, whose vision is to grow indigenous hip hop practitioners all over the continent who are dedicated to leading their communities through the journey of reconnecting to their authentic ancestral transformative power. He has traveled extensively promoting hip hop as a powerful tool to teach leadership, build peace and strengthen relationships. His Bavubuka Foundation was a 2015 finalists for the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership Global Prize. Silas has been recognized and honored across both the African and North American continent as a musician, pioneer, social entrepreneur, youth leader, and community activist.

Rhiki Swinton:
Welcome Babaluku.

Silas Babaluku:
Thank you. Thank you.

Rhiki Swinton:
So I know you kind of live both in Canada and Uganda. So can you tell us about what is happening in both places regarding the pandemic, and then also what’s happening regarding the recent uprising due to police brutality and the killing of innocent Black individuals.

Silas Babaluku:
It’s interesting because the pandemic lockdown for me on the continent. And I had been out of the Western hemisphere for the last five months. So I’ve been here on the continent doing work when all this outbreak came out, first us the pandemic, then the protest, and then the idea now of the Black uprising for justice. But I think that it’s not incidence, a lot of this are affirmations of what our ancestors have always kept telling us that this times will come to pass when we will rise, when a generation that understands justice will take a stance to be able to speak out and be active in changing the paradigm or changing the narrative. So I think that it’s a very crucial and critical time for Black communities, not only in the Americas but everywhere, to tune in to a level of this awakening and this ancestry spirit of resilience that has now become an outcast in every community due to what was so happen to George Floyd, rest some peace.

And I think for me being on the continent, I was already in lockdown with COVID, and then to now get the George Floyd video and then tune in to an energy that rekindles memories of me growing up in the West. I’ve run a program for the last, I’m going on a seventh year, that’s called Back to the Source. I’ve always desired to find solutions on how my relatives in the diaspora can heal, or how they can find new solutions around what they’re doing in their communities to be empowered and strengthened that there’s alternatives to the suggestions that we’ll want to see in our communities.

But I think that it’s not incidence that first, we have the pandemic and then George Floyd happens, and all of a sudden you’ve got masses of people in the outside and no one is actually caring about the pandemic, but they’re now raising a higher level of something that’s more important. It goes back to that slogan of, freedom or death, you know what I’m saying? So I think that is really a beautiful time, regardless of series of deaths surrounding it and the traumatic nature of its sense, because of focal focus on the why. In this moment in time, we’re definitely are given an opportunity to treat this moment and this uprising with the power that it could offer us back as people who’ve been oppressed over time.

Rhiki Swinton:
Yeah. So I also want to ask you, so for those who don’t know, Babaluku was an emcee and a member of a hip hop group back in Uganda. So how did you go from doing that to being a community organizer and community builder?

Silas Babaluku:
There’s not a transition necessary, anyone who grows up in a hip hop culture that’s rooted in the spirit of its authenticity and truth, the equation is community. Hip hop equals community. Hip hop equals movement, hip hop equals transformation. I always tell people that hip hop is our ancestral gift to remind us of a collective nature that we have as human beings to create together. So I think that with understanding, I didn’t have to really think far, I wanted to be a genuine emcee. I wanted to understand the culture in its entirety. I never got in this to write bars or to spit a few cool lines or to just be famous, sort of get a stage. I wanted to heal, hip hop for me was a culture to heal and offer me a conversation that the world outside was not offering me.

So as a hip hop enthusiast, I started to want to understand the force and the energy of why we love the safer so much. Why we see them waste a lot of our time creating rhyme pardons or schemes to express what’s coming out of our own minds and spirits. This creative ability that is within us, that is cued and connected to the ancestral expressions. So I felt like for me, the culture was something to embody and something to not only say I do, but I live the culture, something that allowed me to learn and identify myself. And I feel like that’s the struggle for a lot of people in the hip hop culture, the identification piece. If you can’t identify yourself, then it’s hard for you to find your source.

So from just writing, I paid attention to what I was writing about. It was not just… I’ve actually never been comfortable with the commercialism of the culture. I understand its viability, but it’s never been something that takes up my mind, what I wanted to is how can I heal? Because with the oppressive nature of growing up in the West, will the therapy becomes the most essential need for you to be able to cope with the day-to-day. So I think that the culture availed me a great opportunity to seek education, to seek mentorship, to be engaged in communities that were speaking out and stand in for similar values that we shared, and to also create new solutions that we know would liberate our guy, our narratives to a higher realm of practice, and that’s today when we talk about indigenous hip hop practitioner, we are the pioneers of that narrative in Africa, because we felt like it was not enough focus to watch hip hop on television and emulate. It was important for them to authenticate and have something to offer the world.

Tirrea Billings:
Yeah. So for those of you who may not be aware, the purpose of the global prize initiative was to recognize and honor some of the most impactful social justice projects and organizations around the world. So Silas back in 2015, you were a finalist in the Arcus Center’s global prize for the Bavubuka Foundation. Was there a specific project you were working on with the foundation that was getting recognition or the foundation as a whole?

Silas Babaluku:
It was the entire vision. It was holistic in our submission, we submitted what Bavubuka was doing. So using hip hop culture to contribute to social justice in our communities, and we felt like a lot of people don’t talk about indigenous hip hop voices on the work they do on the continent. So it was important for us to engage and put this voice on the frontline. And so we have holistically approached every idea we put out in the community as something that we feel can be able to be an instrument for many people to rise. And so we’ll go from providing spaces, to provide them platforms, to provide an equipment and experiences, honoring the holistic nature of healing and providing our youth the chance and the opportunity to explore their own authenticity.

And we talk about a social justice leadership, empowering our young people who are leading, what’s at the core of our submission because all the young people, whether they’re emcees, they’re fashion designers, they’re photographers, they’re journalists, they’re dancers, they’re emcees, they all lead community. So with that energy and power or that capacity to mobilize, I think it was part of the energetics that landed us to be the finalist, because we brought authentic approaches to this hip hop culture to a platform and a stage that necessarily we wouldn’t be on if we weren’t doing the work.

Tirrea Billings:
So you talked about creating spaces and platforms for the youth to get an opportunity to express their creative expression. Can you tell us a little bit more about the process and what it was like to actually create those spaces?

Silas Babaluku:
You did mention earlier that I started as an emcee. So this is like a mad scientist move, where you know what’s working on you and you want to testify about it and then apply it, and open other people to connect to it and see if they feel it. So we started Bavubuka Allstarz. And when we started Bavubuka Allstarz, it was the idea that all youth are stars and that our job was to stand with them, so they could point out their stars and then start following up on how they want to polish their stars to shine. And so it depended on how well you polish your star, that will could point out on how beautiful it was shining. So with that analogy, the Bavubuka process was an open community space, where you brought your idea and our job was to facilitate and be mentors and those of guidance to your idea and vision. So we could see how it lives bigger and beyond you.

So there was never this idea of, I want to be a musician and all we’re focused on was just the music. No, we got into the depth of why music? Where do you see your music? What’s the purpose of this music? What are you saying in this music, just to allow you to have the why’s, the who, and what, of what you’re thinking about. And that availed us a great opportunity being that in Africa, we had so many colonial setups or NGO platforms that were crippling young people’s mindsets and not activating them. So it gave us an authentic reach to offer new narratives where these young people were now self driven, then what engaging from a point of direct impact for their community because they come from those communities. And we were breaking the dependency syndrome of them having to depend on aid for envisioning their own breakthrough or support.

So that led us to the core of them looking at being their own bosses, being entrepreneurs in their own realm and coming out with their own authentic extraction that they could take from their community and put it on market. So the experiment is definitely us engaging in the arts, but to holistically honor and create a place that dignifies, what people have dimmed not credible or what people have them lesser than, or when you’re coming from the ghetto and people look down on you, it was to allow the ghetto kings and queens to sit with those prestigious individuals that are notable in the community. So our work was to see that we’ve bridged the gap between that and that the opportunity is equal.

Tirrea Billings:
And so here in the United States, pursuing a career in the arts is usually frowned upon. And as artists, we really don’t receive a lot of support or belief that we can be successful as artists, or being an artist isn’t considered like a “real job” compared to that of a job in the STEM field or in the business field, for example. And so is that similar to the experiences you’ve had in Uganda?

Silas Babaluku:
That’s definitely similar. I think the arts in general, everywhere you go struggle due to the fact that the powers that we understand the independence that comes with being an artist, and also they understand the influence an artist creates. And if we are aware of our artistic abilities, we tend to be looked at as a threat of a freedom that could be avail to the masses. If they still figured out that they really had the power for things they didn’t have to purchase or buy, but abilities and gifts and talents that they’re inspired from within.

So I think that there’s struggle globally. I think I’ve had a lot of artists, not only here in Uganda, but in America, in Canada have the same conversation of feeling like they’re undervalued. They’re not supported and that there are no systems in place to honor their contribution. And I think that’s part of what Bavubuka is doing. We will continue doing this work until the creatives of the land are put in the position of what they contribute so that they could benefit from their healing services and how they serve this community and keep our young people inspired to be better people every day.

Tirrea Billings:
And I want to follow up with that by asking you, why is it important for you to engage youth in the creative arts and have space for them to do that?

Silas Babaluku:
I mean, arts, youth, creative, when you say all those words, they center around an ancestral responsibility that highly needs to be earned, without those key words, it’s hard to have an individual who’s community orientated. And we are a communal people, as a people. We thrive by being collectives, why ideas don’t derive out of individualism. They come out of collective formations that take care on the design and that bring wisdom and knowledges to strengthen community. So I think that as young youth, if we’re given the opportunity to identify a source, we can be a great resource to our community.

And we need to see that this message reaches every young person in a community from the age of four, five, six, seven, eight, so that they can have an idea at least that could guide their mind as they’re growing up into a space that allows them to feel like they could relate to, they could feel holistic in their expression and that they can have a liberty to offer what their gift has to offer their community. That’s one of the most powerful thing is the gifts. Our young people have a lot of gifts, but if not channeled right, that could turn into destructive gifts. So it’s important that we create platforms, conversations, ideas in a communal sense that allow everyone to look in a mirror and feel like there could be contributors in their own spaces.

Tirrea Billings:
And so I want to switch gears now and talk about the Back to the Source retreat, which is used to bring people of color in America back to Africa. And so can you talk a little bit more about what made you want to create this program and the impact that it has had on the individuals who have participated.

Silas Babaluku:
Now, as a young African who migrated to Canada at the age of 12, I say, I have shared a load with my African-American brothers, with my African-Canadian brothers, with my diaspora Black people, because as any Black person knows, when you migrate to the diaspora, you tend to lose the sense of, I’m from Uganda. I’m from Senegal, I’m from Nigeria, you become Black. You join the undercurrent of how people have seen Black people in that country or in that space. So I think having that experience and knowing how the suffering that we bear as Black men and Black women growing up in the diaspora has not gained ways to feel heard or expressed, or feel like we have even spaces where we could heal and be confident, and feel like someone is listening. I think within my hip hop space, I was longing to find a solution that could collectively give us a conversation out of the plantation, because it don’t matter how much we talked on the plantation. If we don’t shift the paradigm to move our conversation in a different energy, I felt like we’re always fighting similar struggles on different days.

And so being that I was working on a continent and I was already infused in communities and using hip hop culture. I hosted a relative from Washington, Seattle, with a white ally brother Scott Macklin and brother Jonathan Cunningham. And they came and we had a workshop that was called the art of indigenous hip hop storytelling. Now, part of that, we had to travel to the social denial. And when we traveled to the social denial, they looked at us and they say, “You are the people or the source.” Have you ever imagined the influence and an impact you could make if your time into that narrative of reclaim it. And that left me thinking as a practitioner, as someone who’s open to wisdom and knowledge, when it flows, I went home and I started to tell myself, this is it. I want to create a gift. And this gift has to honor the knowledges that we’ve lost over time.

And the idea that we haven’t had a chance to convene as indigenous Black folk on the continent and indigenous Black folk in the Americas. We now need to create a space where we could come together and have conversations. And this conversation should honor our journeys. And they should give us an idea that in this conversations we find healing, in this conversations we’ll reclaim our space, in this conversation we are guided to find new ways to traverse our challenges in the West. And at the same time, we open up to new ideas on how we could stand in solidarity with our relatives on the continent. So Back to the Source, came out of the idea that we wanted to honor the message of Marcus Garvey, who said repatriation is a must.

And while I’m in Canada in Vancouver, I’m thinking about, this brothers say this, God knows how many years ago. And I feel like we haven’t listened. There’s a reason why he was echoing that message and that truth. Why was it important for Black people in the Americas to repatriate, even if it was just for a minute to get off the plantation and remember, and recollect a memory or recollect a story, connect to something brand new, you owe it yourself to honor that, just because you’re born in the American soil, it doesn’t mean that your DNA is restricted to that land. So in the message of Marcus Garvey saying that repatriation is a must. We went ahead to say, if we did not listen when he said that it is much more feeling like in this day in time, reconnection is a must because we are disconnected generation.

We are losing ourselves. We are getting killed. We have no anyone running to our rescue due to the fact that we got disconnected systematically on all levels. And that if you wanted a free on top into a new freedom and liberty as human beings, we had to start embarking on a quest to reconnect to our source. Now, whether it was spiritually or physically, the idea that you want to die reconnecting, sounded liberating versus on the idea of feeling disconnected and having nowhere to go. So Back to the Source in its entirety, inspired by the culture of hip hop, it was to celebrate the lost indigenous wisdom and also be a welcoming space for our desperate family to center their knowledge and wisdom and relate to the relatives on the continent. So we could grow as strong a voice as a people to heal ourselves.

Rhiki Swinton:
So when thinking about the work that you do with Back to the Source, getting people from other places to come and participate in this retreat, and also thinking about how you work with use, to develop their entrepreneurial skills and get them thinking about a global market. So when taking that into mind, can you answer the question of, why is it so important to have a transnational lens when doing this type of work?

Silas Babaluku:
So part of the problem with Africa has been information. A lot of young people are I left behind due to lack of information. And that means that they’re not open a global platform to be up to date with what’s happening currently right now in Michigan. And there’s a problem in that. I should be able to be on a par with the information happening right now where you are, you know what I mean? On the same level, so we growing together, not me being behind a 10 or 20 or 50 years behind while you are advancing. So a part of that need to talk global narratives or to talk global ideologies comes from a lot of internal work, whereby you feel like locally, you always marginalized. And then globally, when you create allies, you’re strengthened because you could fly on the wings of your allies.

So it was important for young Black people who are locked in a dependency syndrome on NGOs and various government institutions to find a new way where they could fly, just like we did it. For us to be labeled as legendary and pioneer for hip hop culture, we had to seek global allyship to give us platforms. When we made it to Hollywood and people were like, you rapping in your language, you got an award winning documentary in Hollywood, man, that means you doing it big. So we got embraced locally when we came off because of once again, the Western conditioning that everything that is good and that has value has to affiliate with the colonizers setups to get credit. So in this work, now, we’re trying to make sure that Africa plays a frontline and reclaiming this narrative that you got to affiliate to Africa to be dope, and that we are the source and that when you come to the source, the magic that happens here has an infinite power for all of us to grow. Not only the Africans, but our global indigenous relatives.

And so global, that’s why we running a hip hop gathering called the B-Global Indigenous Hip Hop Gatherings. We are understanding that in these affirmations, we are breaking the boundaries and the margins on the information. And now we could transmit our conversations together and come out with different new knowledges that could support our communities both locally and internationally. So the power to globalize our narrative is a strategy to make sure the young people know to seek information to be on a standard, and that allows them to participate in global dialogue. Let’s be on a frontline line. Let’s not just talk about the village.

Tirrea Billings:
So what is your life philosophy?

Silas Babaluku:
Rooted. Everything rooted. Back to the Source, I think, embodies my life philosophy. As a child of the continent who grew up in the West. And I’ve been blessed to have that opportunity to return, not only to say that I’ve return for family, but for my own individual healing to tune in to the voices of my ancestral narratives. Whether it’s medicine, whether it’s music, whether it’s song, whether it’s poetry, whether it’s art, to honor the greatness and the beauty that’s in everything that defines me. I think for me, it’s the message is that when we are here, we must always remember that we are not alone. We are representation of those that came before us and they live through our works. They live through our ideas, they live through our thought pardons. They manifest to the greatness that we all bear and carry.

So we must be attuned to that message. So we can allow ourselves to be human beings, because if we’re being killed, if we are struggling, talking about racism right now, I don’t want to die as that’s my frontier battlefront. I want to die knowing I was a human being who lived with certain philosophies, who served my people and who stood my ground to be equal with any human and soul on this planet. That’s why I talk about indigenousness. Because you have a lot of Black talking about, decolonize your mind. What happens after you decolonize, what are you going to stay on a plantation?

And if you have an understanding that the system was not designed on based on you being dignified, then you’re restricting your mind to the systematic way of thinking. And the only way we untie ourselves from the systemic oppression is by making a choice to reconnect, making a choice to explore our indigenousness, not even our blackness, because our blackness is a layer to creative brand that defines us in the West. When I’m in Africa, they don’t call me Black. I come from a tribe. I go by the clans, you know what I mean? My honor here is by my clan not by my color.

So you get to understand that there’s so much lost in our narratives. And if we could honor ourselves and respect our ancestors and choose to journey, to remember, the point remember to remember, for without them, we would not encounter the beauty that we celebrate today. Regardless of the pain we have carried over their struggles. I feel like the message is to lead and guide and promote rootedness, for when we root ourselves, we will once again, find a foundation to stand as a dignified people, regardless of where we’re placed on the map. So Back to the Source is my philosophy. Indigenizing is my way of achieving that. Honoring your ancestors is my way of saying you have magical powers to allow them and be a witness on how they work on your behalf.

Because let’s agree, we on this podcast and I’m talking to brilliant young people from different parts of the world. And at the end of the day, we are a representation of a beautiful act that all of us had no say in the making of it. How you became a journalist, how I became a leader, how they became a fashion design. I had no say in that, but the answers to say, that would be your gift. And you’ll use it and it will guide you. It will lead you. It will bring you people. It will resource you. It will find a way to be in conversation with you so you can find your way home. Because see if I didn’t have music, I would have not found my way home. You see music, hip hop led me back to Africa.

So I honor the culture and everything I do, whether I’m in a corporate boardroom, whether I’m in a hospital, whether I’m in a church, whether I’m in a farm, everything I do, I have to honor the spirit in which I was guided home. So I think that the philosophy is to tune in to our rooted ideas and embrace the philosophy of reconnection and accept that we are a disconnected people that need to heal ourselves to the process of reconnecting.

Rhiki Swinton:
Okay. And lastly, we just want to ask, how can the rest of the rest of the world get involved or support the work that you do?

Silas Babaluku:
That’s a very great question. I always love when people say, how do we support the work? The work starts with you. If you’re out there doing powerful work in your community, you’re doing the work we’re doing and you’re supporting us. For me, that’s paramount that individuals remotely in our own communities are tuned in to an energy of healing their own communities. And when you find that you’re healing your own community, our shared values will guide you to really understand a service that you could render beyond your community, because you could relate in your practices. So we’re looking for people who honor the messages that I have shared and who are on a quest to build with Africa. And not to tie into the narratives of the past, but to participate in the new design that allow us to meet the freedom, when we talk about liberation for Africa.

So you could support us in this liberation work on a frontier, by you, yourself, engaging in your own community and having healing circles and learning circles that allow our young people to learn about Africa and its importance in their lives. And also, how does young people have a magical and top resource from their ancestral lineage that we need to teach them about so they can activate and use it to power forward. And then we then invite you to come to Africa to join us on the land. So we could physically move to some energetics that could given us the opportunity to celebrate each other’s stories, set up with each other’s journey through our Back to the Source leadership retreat. We love to say that we want to encourage as many people as we can to connect with the land and have that healing sense and feeling that could cue them into their powerful superpower space to traverse this universe knowing that they are here to live holistically, living out their assignments and offering what they have to the universe in the most authentic and genuine way they can.

And for you to do all that is to be tuned into this medicine that we’re talking about, self healing, narrative medicine, where we could honor the idea that we take responsibility for what’s happening to us. And that we are standing up to do something about it, whether it’s music, whether it’s fashion, whether it’s photography, whether it’s journalism, whether it’s entrepreneurship, tech, farming, medicine, name it, add it to the list. We invite all this practices, lawyers, doctors, to come to the continent. We will host you, we’ll push you into a place or a community where we feel that you could be able to impact not only the community, but your own story, to find that awakening that derives you to attach yourself to the assignment necessary to lead your vision, your purpose, to a place where you feel like you’ve lived here, having told your story and celebrated beyond any local margins that restrict your ideas and understand it.

But people are always welcome to hit us up at Bavubuka the Facebook page. So we have a Facebook page, Bavubuka Allstarz Foundation. And I think we’ll share the links. On Instagram, it’s Bavubuka, and Bavubuka is @bavubuka, Instagram, you can hit us up on there. We’re still working on our website for this new conversation that’s happening because we thought elevated. But the most powerful way we really want people to stand with us is in the legacy work. The legacy work that we’re doing, we’ve been doing this work for 14 years and participating in hip hop culture for 17 years. And as we moved towards a 20th mark, we’ll want to stand with influencers and powerful individuals to continue the vision of providing safe spaces for our communities to build visions for their authentic local environments, forward together.

And we want to honor that because we feel like libraries are not in Africa, museums are not here in Africa. Our young people don’t have inspirational walls. We don’t have a place where thought pardons could be shaped into greatness. So we want to honor that outreach of being able to be advocates for providing such spaces. So talk to Bavubuka, hit us up, call us, reach out, and we’ll definitely guide you in the best way you could be suitable to support the work, but be blessed. And we’re grateful to always participate on the frontline.

Tirrea Billings:
Awesome. Thank you so much for speaking with us today, Silas. That’s all we have for today. Please join us next time on the Radical Zone Podcast.

Rhiki Swinton:
Thank you all for tuning in to the Radical Zone Podcast, where we center radical thinkers and their ideas. See you next time.

Tirrea Billings:
Thank you for tuning in, be sure to subscribe to our podcast and follow us on social media. You can find us on Facebook at ACSJLKzoo, Twitter @ACSJL and Instagram @arcuscenter. For questions, comments, and ideas for future topics. Please leave responses on our social media platforms.