their own because they've been helped, they've been backed by education, they've been backed by infrastructure, they've been backed by science and technology so that we can all be productive and we can all share once again in what really is the greatness of america, a middle-class society in which everybody can be prosperous, responsible, fair to their neighbors, and accountable and sustainable for the future. nicole: i think there's a very strong interpersonal element to occupy wall street, which is just kind of asking for compassion and empathy and understanding of your fellow human being, whether they're across the table or like across the world. jake: right now we... we love things and we use people. what we need to learn is to use things and love people. and when we understand that, we're onto something, let me tell you. lillian: i think the occupy wall street movement is just a breath of life. jose: we're told that once a

marine, always a marine. and so...i take a look at what's going on, and i just, to me, i feel like right now i'm really serving my country at this moment. russell: there are things that are changing the system because occupy exists. so occupy is an ongoing process, you know. people are raising consciousness, awareness, and promoting a more just society. that's not gonna go away, and just keeps--it keeps growing. jeffrey: every generation has to make that struggle to achieve true democracy. clearly, this generation is ready to make that effort, and i believe it will succeed. jake: we need more people to care. x?x?

man: i'm really, really honored to introduce some people. i'm a do it real quick so that they can talk as long as they can. at the far side is chief caleen sisk. she's the spiritual leader and tribal chief of the winnemem wintu tribe, who practice their traditional culture and ceremonies in their territory along the mccloud river watershed in northern california near mount shasta. in the middle is jeanette armstrong. she is a selx--syilx, uh, okanagan, a fluent speaker of okanagan, and a traditional knowledge keeper of the okanagan nation. she currently holds the canada research chair in okanagan indigenous knowledge and philosophy at ubc okanagan. and just on a personal note, she is probably the single most

influential person to my thinking. um, anne keala kelly is a native hawaiian filmmaker and journalist. her award-winning documentary "noho hewa" dispels any idea people may have about hawaii as a passive polynesian paradise. for 14 years she's been documenting and reporting on hawaiian resistance to the u.s. occupation, the spiritual, cultural, and environmental destruction of hawaii. [applause] anne: you first. [inaudible] caleen: well, it's great to be here with you guys and to talk about these different things that are in our world today. and i'm happy to be sitting with these ladies here because i believe that it is the women of the world right now who are carrying the load and pushing everything to the good side. [applause]

i also have to mention that my shawl here is from people in hawaii. [indistinct] one of the people who was standing up for mauna kea to stop the telescope from going on top. and i happen to agree with her because i'm from mount shasta. [indistinct] they don't think that there should be anymore of that stuff going on. and we're just the messengers. we're the ones trying to convince the people we shouldn't do those things to those sacred majestic mountains anymore because they're part of our water system. and when we do things like that, we're really kind of taking from ourselves and our future generations. and in my world, you know, my future generation was standing up here singing with me a little while ago. and i also have ones that are on their way to become a part of

this world. and so it's right now. it's not someday. it's right now. and so, you know, my grams was the leader of my people for 68 years. and we're on that same kind of system. you know, i'm only in my 14th year of leading as a chief of the winnemem wintu, but i hope i go 68 years. you know, it's a long time to be responsible for a people and the world. you know, we go to mount shasta at that sacred [indistinct]. and we sing to that water. and once we sing to that water, the water is gone from us. it's already going down the stream. it's already heading to this ocean right here in this place where the ohlone people are from. and the ohlone people, they do their ceremonies still as well. you know, in spite of all of the what they call modernization and civilization, you know, it wasn't very civil to us indigenous peoples who

were here in a civilized really harmonious world. and we see that now when we look at our sisters who are struggling in peru and around the world in trying to take care of the, you know, the sacred potatoes up on top of [indistinct]. that these things are coming up for all of us around the world. but more so in the women because i think that, you know, we're really connected to that water. grams says, you know, most people are 80, 90% water. but women are the ones who carry that sack of water that births all babies. and when they come out, they come out in that sacred water. and so we have to kind of remember that now because, you know, my question, and i don't know if there's scientific folks around that know this answer,

but the thing that i'm looking for is that everybody knows there's only a finite of water in the world, right? there's a finite of water. and they say that's like 2%, and only 1% is reachable for drinking. right? and so we know that that is true about drinking water. then how much are we polluting purposefully every day? how much do we frack, because we know that we create poison water when we frack. we know that we create poison water when we bottle water. we know that we do it when we transfer coal. you know, we know when we're doing that. when we're taking pristine water and converting it to poison water. like on mount shasta right now, they're talking about opening up another water bottling company called crystal geyser. and a lot of people depend on the water bottling companies now.

they have wormed their way into being necessary, and especially in towns that have no good drinking water in their taps anymore. so now the water bottling companies have managed to become necessary. and so people don't really think about, you know, they're gonna tap into a lava tube on mount shasta, take half of that pristine crystal water, and bottle it, which isn't really good for you anyway. and then poison the rest of it. and it'll go into the sewage tanks that they're promising to build for the city of mount shasta. so it's like how does this-- how do people think like that? it's like i just don't know. but we should find out, especially here in california with our water systems that governor brown is talking about. when we know that the water that's being transferred or developed, and they say it's gonna be more water. two of those pipelines are gonna go off or fracking. why do we allow that?

because, you know what, we can live on without electricity, believe it or not. people did for many, many years before it was here. and it's a convenience. but no one in the world, nothing in the world can live without water, good water. and we're not upset, you know, when people say every river in california is contaminated. did you know that? i was appalled. it's like what? why aren't we teaching that in school? why aren't we designing these little brains that are gonna fix that? or have we given up hope? is it hopeless now? we just can't go back and put tulies back in the river. you know, we just don't know that there was tulies in this whole valley and this whole area of san francisco. you know, but if you look back on the history of the indian people, everything was made out of tulies. and i look around and think, wow, where did they get so many tulies, because there's just nothing today, right? there's no tulies.

not even everybody knows about tulies, but they're a water-- they're a natural water purifier. but we're not using the education they say that, you know, everybody needs to have. so what i am asking is is that we, like here, which i am very grateful to be here, get to a place where more people can listen to some traditional knowledge of the people who lived here all this time and still depend on picking the reeds and the plants for basket making, for net making, for dancing. we still have the relationship with our birds, and watching their struggles as well when their eggs won't form right, when things are happening to their habitat. you know, the forest service tells us we're gonna cut those trees in a non-nesting season. when is that? when is there a non-nesting

season? that's like saying, you know, the people just don't have kids during these months, and so we're just gonna ruin their homes during that time. and they can rebuild when they come back, if they do. you know, so, you know, i come from a very long line of traditional spiritual leaders who have got us this far with the knowledge that we have. we are struggling to bring back our salmon from new zealand where they were sent in the early 1900s, and now our river has no salmon that all. yet the government refuses to let us be on the committee to address the pilot project of bringing salmon back to our river. and the best brood stock for salmon, because they're not endangered in new zealand, is them. and the ones with the dna to come back and swim from this bay all the way to mount shasta is them.

why won't they do that? why wouldn't they do that? but, you know, there's so many things around the world that i'm interested in, and i'm working with different people who are standing up for these things. and i support them wholeheartedly. you know, the pipeline people and the people in canada in the tar sands, and all of these ugly things that, you know, is driven at the same time that we're losing everything. you know, it reminds me of winnie the pooh when he's got this idea to get the honey out of the tree. and he tells christopher robin to walk up and down the path with his umbrella while he takes this balloon and floats up to get the honey. he gets the honey and he's finally finished, but christopher is putting on this facade, you know, walking back and forth saying gee, looks like rain, it looks like rain. and there's no rain, right, but he's a little black raincloud. and when he's finished, he can't

get down. and christopher yells to him, let go. and he says i can't let go. he goes, well, you have to let go to get down. he goes, well, you'll have to get the slingshot and break the balloon. even though the result is the same, we can't let go. but we need to let go of some of those things and readjust how we do things. so i'm glad to be on this panel, and thank you very much. [applause] jeannette: [speaking native language] i just said greetings to everyone from my people and my community. i'm from two sides of occupied okanagan territory-- british columbia and washington state. i'm syilx okanagan. that's my growing up and my understanding that as an

indigenous person, as a syilx person, that--that the way that we lived, the way that we grew up, the way that i grew up in my community was a healthy way to be. not just the body of health, but the mind and the spirit of health that we as human beings have given to us through our mind intelligence so that we could achieve a level that we were meant to achieve. and so what i want to talk about today is about that idea of shifting from knowing that we're doing something really wrong, that all of us are part of this, from knowing about it to doing something about it. and i think that i really want to thank the sponsors and really want to give great respect to

the work that derek does and others of you that are out there obviously are here because you care and because you're doing that work. and you are so needed, and everyone of you needs to make sure that, you know, a hundred people or a thousand people are listening to you. because they need to hear these things. and they need to do these things that you're doing. so i wanted to talk a little bit about the main point of my experience of being indigenous. and then i want to talk about how that is really foundational, i think, to the idea that we need to shift ourselves. it's not just a matter of in my mind a lack of, um, chains that we somehow can't understand in our lives.

but it's in looking at what it is that makes us human, what it is that makes us what we're doing right now. and so i think that question has to be confronted in a really truthful and a really serious way. some of the things that chief here, [indistinct] in our language here, has brought forward i think is really way more incredibly important than we put thought to. we think about indigenous people, and we think about, oh, yeah, i support their right to be indigenous, their right to do their culture, their right to do their things. and i'll stand with them to help do that. but i'm gonna turn around and go back and live the way i live and the way i think and the way i am. and i think there's something really wrong with that because indigenousness isn't just about culture.

i don't even think it's about race. i don't think it's about ethnicity. i think it is about how you respond to the living things in the place that you live. it is a set of values. [applause] and you cannot live those values unless you have knowledge about that place, knowledge about what lives there and why you need to be in tune with that and why you need to protect that with your life like some of our people are doing and protect that against all odds. we don't have things to gain in the material world when we stand in front of those trucks at those roadblocks and we have those guns pointed to as, which we have done up there and every other place in the world. you need to be standing there with us, and you need not only to stand there with us and then

go back home, you need to think about what it is to live that way. and so i know that most of you agree with this, so i'm talking to the converted, and so what i want to say about that is that there is a depth of experience from being indigenous. i'm a fluent speaker. my grandfather, my great-grandfather, was chief. he was the manager of the whole upper columbia river salmon system. there is not one salmon that reaches that community now because of the grand coulee dam. and my grandparents' home is under lake roosevelt. that's where i come from, and that's where my emotions come from. but i go every year to our ceremonies there, there in my [indistinct] with my brother, with my uncle, with my cousins, and we make those prayers

every year to those salmon to return to that place. that's the place we need to get to is all of people in every place that we're at. we need to understand what drives us to feel that, to experience that, and to know that is how we are supposed to be as human beings. those are the things that i want to talk about. those are the things that i want to invite you to be. we invite as okanagan people everybody to come to those ceremonies. we don't close them. we say you need to feel that. you need to understand that you can be at home here. that you don't have to be the alien here, the colonizer here. you don't have to long to be home. you can belong. but there is a way to do that,

and it has to be a about the life of the land in the places that you occupy, the living things. they're indigenous because they learned how to be there over millions of years and thousands of years, and we as indigenous peoples learned that road, learned that path with them. that spirit has to be there planetwide. one of my mentors, john mohawk, said it's not about indigenous peoples as ethnicity or race. it's about re-indigenizing the planet. we have to confront that and learn how to do that. and i know that most of you have that in your hearts. i know that most of you feel that, feel that when things are going so bad, when you go and see the things like the tar sands.

if you haven't seen it, go and seen it. look at--if you can't, go there, look at christopher mcleod's, toby mcleod's film "standing ground," and you can see what is going on and feel that. feel what is happening with the living things, the living water, the living beings that we're displacing and making extinct. in my community, many of the life forms are--we are called a hot spot in canada of extinct animals and instincts and birds. and part of my work every day is to try to move my community, all people, whether you're from the city or whether you're from the reservation, toward replacing those things, toward restoring those things, toward protecting those things,

and toward feeling like this is my home and this is why i have to do this. this is why i have to be responsible. and so i just wanted to leave that message with you. i know that i'm really emotional, but you need to be this emotional. you need to feel this way. thank you. [applause] keala: is this microphone-- is this working? i have no idea why i'm supposed to follow these two. [indistinct] because part of me just wants to carry on the conversation that they started. [speaking hawaiian] good morning. my name's keala and i prepared something written because there's so much to say

about hawaii. and if i try to freestyle it, i'll not tell you some of what i think you need to know. so i'm gonna talk about a little bit about origins and occupation and what these things look like in hawaii, and how notions of originality and the actual settler, military occupation, operate on subtle and not-so-subtle levels of being. in advance i want to say that in order to do that, i'll stop plenty of times along the way to explain a few things about identity, culture, and politics. i also know that some hawaiians will eventually come across this online. i don't know if there are any kanaka maoli in the audience here. but in part i'm also speaking to them, even though they're not here. i'm not just speaking about us. i'm speaking as a hawaiian to other hawaiians. and because time's so short, i want to apologize for the shotgun approach. i'm hoping that it won't just come out sounding like a list of dirty deeds and ugly truths. we call america--the american

presence in hawaii an illegal occupation. some people call it the prolonged belligerent occupation. that's like using international legal jargon. even hawaiians are very conflicted about the ideas of what the foundation of the occupation is. and so what ends up happening with us is that we don't end up so much protesting en masse the way that we should, but we often end up having these fights basically over what's actually happening to us. and i think that's tragic because the focus stays in the idea of legal speak. and in the meantime, our world is being cannibalized and our cultural is being cannibalized by americans, tourists, and industries from all over the globe. um--[sighs] in the absence of this kind of intervention that i actually believe really needs to take place, what happens to the native people in hawaii is that a lot of people start to opt for a lesser degree of oppression.

it's such an oppressive place that for many of us the only way we can be empowered in it is to just maybe be a little less oppressed. and right now what's happening, one of these seemingly less oppressive things, is what president obama's going to attempt to do in 2015. he's going to attempt to federally recognize us as a native people of the united states, which we are not. and he's gonna use his executive powers to do that. [applause] so a lot of hawaiians actually want that. well, not a lot but enough want that because they want the money that's gonna come from the military contracts, from the federal contracts that they're gonna get. most hawaiians i believe don't want it or are confused, especially at a time when hawaiians are calling for the deoccupation of hawaii. and by the way, when i say hawaiian, i mean the indigenous or aboriginal people of hawaii. many use the word hawaiian to

refer to descendents of any ethnicity of the hawaiian kingdom, which was overthrown by the united states in 1893. when i say hawaiian, i'm talking about native hawaiians-- kanaka maoli, kanaka oiwi. and just a side note about that, the u.s. occupation of hawaii began in earnest in 1898 when they created counterfeit legislation and called it a treaty of annexation. but all they did was pass a joint resolution. actually they kind of smoked that joint because they passed a joint resolution and then pretended to have annexed an independent country. the hawaiian kingdom was recognized internationally recognized as an independent country in 1842. it was the first non-caucasian country admitted to the family of nations, which eventually became the united nations. so we've been dealing with this occupation for over a 120 years. in a way--in a way the country is under arrest.

it's not just occupied. it's incarcerated and it's in solitary confinement. and that metaphor actually makes sense. it actually translates that way in our community as well. we make up just over 20% of the population, but we are 50, 60, and 70% of the incarcerated men, women, and children in hawaii. just a reminder, hawaii's actually 2,400 miles away from here. it really isn't part of this country. am i really down to three minutes? >> [unclear] keala: ok, well... there are many haole narratives about our origins as hawaiians. i have to stop again and say something about the word haole. it means white person. i identify as hapa haole because my father is irish. haole's a really good word. it's just a word. but because white people get

freaked out when they get called white in another language, that word has been completely rehabilitated over the past 20 years and somehow people are trying to say it means foreigner. i promise you i've never met a hawaiian person who called a black person a haole, ever. it's only really used to describe white people. in fact, if i were to get in a fight with somebody in here, if i were to rumble with you, and win, and call you a ... haole when i did it, i could be charged with a hate crime. they actually-- it's done that way. so, um, anyway, the haole narratives about where the hawaiian people came from are intended to erase us. haole science as it pertains to hawaiians is how manifest destiny functions today. you put science and capitalism and the state together, and you could name that course economic terrorism 101. the monetization of acts of ecocide and cultural genocide via the desecration of our sacred sites and burials, monetary incentives to destroy a people's spiritual reality.

their obsession with origins is an excuse to continue their practice of colonization in the so-called postcolonial world. and the logic behind haole science is one of supremacy, white supremacy. and in their story of us, we don't belong in hawaii anymore than anyone else because according to them we're all settlers. there's a recent article, by the way, that details how polynesians quote-unquote rediscovered the americas before columbus. so, you guys, you should rest knowing that when you were lost, the polynesians paddled up here on your shore and rediscovered you. and they use the science of dna to say that because they found some sweet potato dna that goes back thousands of years. but they never mention hawaiians. they always show these polynesian guys paddling on the world's largest ocean wearing these gourd helmets. i guess they're just out there looking for chicken dna and sweet potato dna. our cosmology is nothing like

what haole people try to tell us it is. our cosmology, which is called the kumulipo, the kanaka, the people, we don't even show up till a thousand generations into that story. we're just part of the story. we're part of that chain of living things. and we're part of--and we come from the land. we literally come from the kala, we come from the land, we are related directly to the land and the things that grow on it and the animals and the gods and goddesses and tutu pele, who right now is making her way through pahoa making new land. that is hawaiian thought. that is hawaiian thinking. not what they try to tell us. but according to the logic of white supremacy, we're supposed to believe their lie and our truth is supposed to be some kind of a fantasy. you know, in the settler mentality, hawaiians are supposed to accept the remaking of our world. now, i don't know

how many minutes i have over there, so i'm just gonna-- two. ok. i'm gonna have to jump ahead here. so the american empire is still expanding in the pacific. i don't know what any of you folks know about the pacific, but the american empire is alive and well through the military. and the military occupation is the foothold in the pacific, and it is now literally expanding throughout the pacific, swallowing guam whole on its way to micronesia in an effort to control asia. there are bases in australia, africa. the expansion has been going on for a long, long time. the worst hit, however, are the hawaiians. and i want to just circle back to this idea of economic terrorism because when we talk about industries like militarism and tourism, like, people don't really think of tourism as a kind of terroristic industry, but it is in hawaii.

[applause] it's destroying the place. and, you know, people want to have their fantasy of the place. they want to be able to visit it and take a vacation. even the most progressive liberal people don't really want to embrace what it is that i'm saying. so hawaiians are being like the beautiful girl that gets raped to death because of that industry. and as far as the way it looks to me, the industry, the tourism industry is peddling fantasies the way pornographers are peddling misogyny. and this is what gets visited upon us every day. [applause] but chief caleen mentioned something, and i'm gonna wrap it up and end on this. when economic terrorism is dressed up in the astronomy industry, absolutely nobody wants to admit the devastation that it ushers in. people think it's harmless to want to look at outer space and look at the universe and try to figure out where we came from.

because white people, i don't understand, but origins is like a big deal. so they deploy countless, you know, destructive things on the earth, but then at the same time they use the same illogic to say that they need to know where we're from out in outer space. the fact is that in order for that industry, just like for the military industry, and just like for the tourism industry, in order for the astronomy industry to exist in hawaii, we have to be erased, we have to be removed, and we have to be assimilated. so right now there's a plan to begin building what's called the tmt, a 30-meter telescope on the summit of mount mauna kea. that mountain is the tallest in polynesia. its sacredness is part of our spiritual, religious, cultural, and even political reality. so you folks here in california, please make a note. the money for this atrocity is coming from the gordon and betty moore foundation of palo alto, cal tech, and the university of

california system. these california-based people are using the $1.5 billion as the incentive to invite the whole world to desecrate one of the most sacred sites in all of polynesia, and in the world. we're being told that the temporary jobs, construction jobs, is worth threatening the freshwater aquifer of the island of hawaii, which is on mauna kea. so those of you who don't care about sacredness, at least try to care about the environment and the endangered species there. hawaii has the largest number of endangered species habitats per square mile in the world. we have the largest open field tests of genetically modified organisms taking place in hawaii in the world. we have the largest military command in the world. we're a sacrifice zone for the united states. and i know we're gonna talk a little bit, and i do want to talk a little bit about what jeannette was saying, but you're all responsible.

we all have kuleana. and in hawaiian language that means you have knowledge, you have something, you have power, and you have responsibility. we're all responsible for what happens in the pacific. we're all responsible for what happens to hawaii. let's exercise our power. we need your help. we're gonna do a blockade. they're not gonna build that telescope in the spring. [applause] so everybody's invited. we need your support. all your support. because come spring, we're not gonna let them build that telescope. mahalo nui. [applause] >> so did you all want to talk among yourselves, or do you want me to ask these questions? whatever you want to do is fine. caleen: maybe just start with the questions. >> ok, we have three questions. and how long do we have for the whole time? >> we have about 15 minutes. >> ok. and we can do any of the questions you want.

ok, first question. you are still here despite 500 years of colonization. what do you want white people to know about resistance? i want to resist the destruction. caleen: you know, it's a struggle for us to be here. it's a struggle for us to hang on to our language and on to our songs. and to get the kind of knowledge that creates that understanding and connection to say [indistinct] mount shasta, which is renamed, right? all of our beautiful places got renamed. and so now we have to use those language as well as teach our own language of what that means, you know? [indistinct] is a name for that mountain that's a twin peak volcano. and i'm not sure what mount shasta means, other than maybe there was a small man named shasta. [laughter] because that's what they like to do is name huge majestic mountains after small little

man. [applause] but for us, to have that knowledge means that we know that that volcano and those lava tubes that run down into mother earth from mount shasta come up all around the world, because that's what my grams told us is that there are sacred mountains that hold mother earth together. whatever happens on one mountain happens on the other mountains. when one mountains are losing water, like on our mountain right now here in california. maybe you don't know, but the sacred spring there is going dry at least two months of every year for three years now. and this is a big warning sign. when we found that out, we offered a fire and water ceremony to ask the creator, ask these spirit beings to look down and help us learn how to change this. make it turn around.

bring them back into balance. and in doing that, we went to the tallest mountain in the world, and that's in hawaii. we'd never been to hawaii before. but we went there because that was the tallest mountain in the world. and it had the oldest water in the world. and it was a volcano, and it's connected to [indistinct]. and they also had the sea turtles, which are the oldest beings that live both in water and on land. and so we had to go there. not because we went vacationing in hawaii, but because we had a connection. and in that connection we met traditional people in hawaii who could take us to these places in the right way, seeing us in, let us know the stories that we needed to be aware of so that we could put down prayers for this fire and water dance to bring back on our mountain. but in addition to that, there were many women around the world

who came to that fire and water ceremony who were experiencing the same kinds of things on their mountains and in their homelands as that. and this is what we're working on now. and so, you know, it's very difficult. there's very few of us who actually still follow the old ways, and we're searching for each other in the long run because right now we have a call out for a women's gathering of those women who believe in their traditional cultural way. not in any church. not in any other religion. but in their own, their very own what was given to them [indistinct] to follow and to guide their families in their responsibilities here. and it's very difficult to find them because, you know, the other culprit is religion that has gone around the world and left us homeless and poorest of the poor, and gave us a book. and that's what we have now.

and those people are still hanging on to that book. and they still have nothing. and we're dropping our responsibilities is the worst thing, that we've stopped singing our songs, we've stopped making our fires, we've stopped training our children. so it is difficult. and the more support that, you know, we can have to fight off these issues like the tar sands. i mean, if you've ever seen mordor, that movie, it's real. it's in canada. it's like, it's not a theory anymore. it is actually a thing that's happening. so it takes--you know, we're in a precarious position about being able to live in this world like it is, you know? and it takes money. i mean, you can't even live anywhere without money, right? because you have to have insurance for your car, and maybe you never have a wreck for 40 years, but you still have to have insurance for your car, so you're paying money out. you know, and we have to go to

the top of the mountain. we have to go up to the prayer places. we don't own those places anymore, so we really can't stay there. so it's very difficult, you know, and i really am thankful for all the indigenous peoples who are able to hang on to that little bit because i think that's where the knowledge is. and one day we're gonna get together and we're gonna talk about what mother earth is talking about, what is in our future, the way that we used to. [applause] jeannette: so, for me, i guess the idea of growing up in the presence of two really separate worlds and realities and navigating that for me has always been to try to find a way to bring that experience to people who are impoverished about it.

we as indigenous people are the wealthy ones because we still have that spirit inside of us. and the people that are impoverished are the people that have lost that and that don't have that and have to find all these other things to try to fill that hole inside of them. it's one of the reasons that i decided to do a phd. my phd is in my language, and my ceremonies, with my people. i go up on the mountain to fast for the things that i have been given to talk about and to share. and to work with people that i can gather and find and say listen, i maybe have a few things you might, you know, you might like to hear. because you feel that inside of you. and i think that part is really

incredibly important in its authentic form the way that she's talking about. so i work in the university system. i'm, you know, the person that will push my way into any door and say this is my place. you can come to this place and you can be healthy in your spirit and in your mind. you don't have to fear and try to fill that hole with all these other things. there's another way. and it has to do with knowledge, and it has to do with knowledge that is experience, not belief. which is what i think religion is. i really, really would like to be able to work with people that could lift that curtain

because the world really, really needs it. we as human beings, we as people on this planet have something that we're not using. we are dehumanizing ourselves away from it with all of these things that we're doing. we're regressing. we're not moving forward. what--what is looked at as progress and what is looked at as things that are gonna launch us forward is really taking us backward from the things that we can be and the things that we really are. and that is what we're missing. that is what you're missing. indigenous peoples worldwide are losing that as well because they are getting pulled into that world. and we need to do everything

that we can because it's human beings that are at risk. the earth will go on without us. [applause] >> what's our time? keala: um, i'm never gonna volunteer to go last again. just making a mental note out loud. i just want to--i feel very warrior like right now. and not in as beautiful and feminine and sacred a way as the women beside me are. i have almost zero faith in the systems that exist. i see every day all day what's being done to my people and our homeland. and i have a hard time being polite about that. ok? so everybody in here tells

10 people that, you know, some hawaiians said get the ... out, that might help. we need you to pass it on. you know, there's a film i made, "noho heva," which derek mentioned. it's actually for sale in the lobby at a pretty decent rate. try to get a copy. you know, pass it around your friends. talk about hawaii. understand it is not the 50th state. and with your help, we actually have an opportunity because of the horrors that they're gonna try to perpetrate on mauna kea. this i will say to these beautiful women. they're reminding me, yes, i mean i know it always comes back to the sacred. it actually starts from the sacred. if anything i do isn't starting there, i'm not doing anything. aloha is a philosophy. it is not a tourism industry slogan. it is a philosophy about reciprocity, about love and life and belonging. [speaking hawaiian] these are philosophical ideological ways that hawaiians

for thousands of years have developed that have allowed us --allowed us to live there before captain cook and his syphilitic merry men got lost over there. and, you know, there were a million hawaiians alive. and without any of this [unclear] that's there now. without any of the infrastructure. now there's like 1.3 million people there, and look at the place. it's a toilet. americans think the pacific is a toilet. nobody even talks about fukushima anymore. you know, when you're in the pacific, you actually care about the fact that there's almost no more fish. that the ocean is dying. it's terrifying to be on the receiving end of this society, this culture. it is terrifying every day. and because i'm hawaiian, people go wait, wait, wait, hold it, hold it. you're not supposed to be that angry. so then i gotta blame being

irish. [laughter] but being angry, that's a healthy emotion in the face, you know, when you're facing down the united states. so, you know, unfortunately or fortunately for my people, i got invited to this amazing event. and i got to be a part of the conversation that's beginning today that will go on today and tomorrow. i'm incredibly the grateful for that opportunity, derek and max and leaire and sabrah and everybody that put this together and for all the work that you've done. i'm trying to get some of the radical environmental political thinking that goes on amongst you folks into hawaii. it's a tough gig because we're an indigenous people and we have to be real careful. we have to be real careful what actually makes sense to us in our place. but i know we need it. so i feel very grateful to have been

able to come here and be on the stage with everybody and talk story with you just a little bit about what's happening in hawaii. because we need your help. that place is being murdered. one of the most beautiful places the creator made is being murdered. you can stop it. the people in this room can stop it. so... [applause] >> so we have like two and a half minutes. what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna read both of the first three questions that we got, and then of course you can do whatever you want. but you can either answer one of these questions, or you can just do final words. and we've got like two minutes for the whole thing, three minutes for the whole thing. so, yes, in three minutes, what is the appropriate role of spirituality and resistance? >> say again? >> what is the appropriate role of spirituality in resistance is one question. another question is any thoughts about the tension between nonviolent action and more militant the action. is it acceptable to escalate our

tactics now or ever? or you can talk about anything else you want. caleen: ok, for us, for the winnemem wintu, we follow the spiritual. we do things because we are given that information from the prayer places, from the sacred places. we don't just up and say count our pennies and we're going to hawaii, or count our pennies and we're going to new zealand, or you know, we're a very poor tribe, but we still have obligations to do things that we feel that the creator has given us to do, including going to see chief spence when she was on our fast about the things that were happening in canada. we still don't know exactly why that happened, but we know that there's a connection. and at one point in time that's gonna unfold in the same way that we were given the instructions to go there. and so if we come from that prayer place, you know, i as a younger person was much like my friend over here, and i would look at my grams, and i would say why aren't you so terribly

angry? why aren't you there? and it's because we can't do anything from that position. we can't carry on. we can't make good for our kids coming up behind us. but i also wanted to say that we have to be careful as indigenous peoples and indigenous leaders that there are many of us who are being murdered, disappearing, having infiltrators coming into our own camps. and so it's hard for us to open up our gates and say come on in because we don't know your intent and we've had people come in who had the intent and looked like they were gonna help us, who actually got inside and caused splitting and turmoil and havoc and heartache that we almost could not recover from. because once it's inside of our camp, it's like a cancer. it just goes from one person to the other person and we lose our harmony and we

lose our solidarity. we lose those things that help us step forward and to step out and to be at things like this to share and to give out, you know, what we can so that you can stand up. jeannette: so i just wanted to make two or three sentences here. yesterday lynne quarmby was arrested. lynne quarmby is the chair and head of the molecular bio chemistry department at simon fraser university. she's a scientist and a professor and a respected professor at simon fraser university. the proposed lng pipeline that's going to go through from edmonton over to the burrard inlet is gonna go right next to simon fraser university through burnaby mountain. yesterday there was 33 people that were arrested, people from

the community. the mayor of burnaby said-- this is as coded as saying there's going to be a war. so that kind of change has to happen. that kind of person has to step forward. we saw her getting arrested last night. that's unusual. and i think to move toward that kind of knowledge, to move toward that kind of commitment, she said i'm going to cross this line, the rcmp line, because i have to be a good citizen. [applause] keala: i'll just make kind of a quick comment. i think--i know--i know that to have spirituality without political thinking or processes

is like a bird with one wing. it's like politics without spirituality, you know? in hawaiian world it saddens me when people try to separate the two. if you're going to say the prayer, you must be willing to be part of the answer to the prayer. [applause] and that means that you have to be willing to go and put your body out there. whether you're an intellectual, whether you're somebody who didn't even go to formal school, whether you're rich or your poor, it really does come down to all of us now. we have to be willing to go the distance when it comes to protecting a mountain, or protecting a river or stream, or an animal, even a bug. we have to be willing to do that. but it does have to start from the sacred because if it doesn't here's the thing. we will go insane. because what's happening to us is insane. and if we start from that place,

we'll go insane. we'll stay crazy. so to be well, we have to start with [unclear] with the prayer, but be willing to be part of the answer. that's all i have to say. mahalo. [applause]