 I'm Chief Don Stevens of the Nohigen Abenaki Tribe. We're one of the largest tribes in Vermont. There are four of us, four tribes in Vermont. There are the Nohigen, which is up the Northeast Kingdom, which means place of the fish trap. So it's the Nohigen Band of Kusuk Abenaki Nation. Other Native people would know us as people of the place of the fish traps who live in a pine to see the first light. That's how Native people would know us, because Kusuk means pine, Abenaki means first light. So it'd be Nohigen, which is fish traps, pines who live in the pines, and who see the first light. So that tells you who we are. Our territory goes up in the Northeast Kingdom, up in the Canada, across New Hampshire, and we said Lake and Maine, all the way down through New Hampshire and into Massachusetts, where we meet the Narragansett, the Nipmucks, the Wampanoags, and all of the Native people who control that territory. The next tribe is the Missisquoi. They live in the St. Francis, the Koki Band of Missisquoi. They live up, most people know them, up in the Franklin County Swamp area. They have a little less people than we do. They've been really heavily politically active if anybody ever knew home or St. Francis. He was kind of in-your-face kind of guy, and he really helped out with keeping us out in the public. So there's this Franklin County and on the Lake Champlain, up into Canada, and they are Sokoke, in other words, they're of the Turtle Clan. The rest of us are all bearers. Then there's the El Nui, which is in the southern part of Vermont. Genesis, Jamaica, Putney area, there's about 150, 200 El Nui citizens. And they control kind of the southern part. Then you've got the Koas Sok Traditional Band, which is kind of Bedford, April area. Koas Meadows, won't go into too much detail. There are about 150, 200 people, so there's not a lot of us left. So we do the best we can to educate people that were your neighbors and were still here. We didn't die. So I'm gonna do a welcoming song for you, just so I can teach you a song, and this can be filmed and recorded if you want. It's just a welcoming song. It's only got really two words, okay? So you can, you'll learn your first Avanaki song, which is welcoming. And this is only sung as a welcome song. Kwe Kwe means greetings. This is Kwan O Day, which is the same thing, but it's only sung, it's a welcoming song. So I'm gonna set my drum over here. Our visitors here to our land, so that they can speak to you today about what they have going on. But I wanna let you know about the Avanaki people. I already basically told you the four tribes that make up the Avanaki people here, and there's two up in Canada, which are Odinac and Wollinac. They're the reserves. We fought with new friends. So I'll give you a little idea of what the regalia is. We call it regalia. This is a ribbon shirt, okay? Modern days, we wear ribbon shirts. We don't wear skins. I mean, when we do our living history, we might wear buckskin or something to honor our ancestors. But there's two clans. Like I said, the turtle and the bear, the kusuk and the bear, we live inland. We live near the woods, the turtle on the lake. So our part of two confederacies, back in 2015, we brought people here. The Wavanaki confederacy, which is made up of five nations of people, the McMack, Penobscot, Malassee, the Avanaki, and let me see, and McMack, Penobscot, Malassee, Pasamaquoddy, Avanaki, five. Then we're also part of the Seven Nations of Canada, which the Seven Nations of Canada is where the people on the front line, if you knew anything about history, this became New France when the settlers came. Over in the New York side, it became English territory. So we fought with the French. So the people, part of the Wavanaki confederacy are people allied with the French, but they may not be on the front line. Like the Penobscot's weren't on the front line. They were over on the coast. We were on the front, because we had to control the lake, which is the, whoever controlled the lake controlled the fur trade. Because the Dutch were on the southern part, the English were on the northern, I mean the New York side, and we were on the eastern side. So whoever controlled the lake controlled the fur trade. So those were allied with the French, but the people who were on the front lines who actually fought the British and the Iroquois, that's the Seven Nations of Canada, like the Huron. Anybody seen the movies Black Robe and a few of the other things were there decimated by the Iroquois people. There were some actually three Iroquois tribes that were part of the French alliance and also the Avanaki and the Algonquin and so on and so forth. I won't go into the history part of it, it just gives you an idea of how this was all laid out. So, you wanna hear all these born statistics. You guys might wanna know how Lake Champlain and Champ was formed, right? I've seen you guys at the Maritime Museum. Exactly. That's right, I know you guys. I've seen you. Anyway, I'm gonna tell you how Lake Champlain was formed and how Champ came to be. Everybody wants to know how Champ came to be. I already knew that. Well, good, and you'll know, so you gotta be quiet. You'll see if I still got the same story. I'm just kidding, I want you to listen because then you'll remember it. All right, the lake and our language is called Bittabock, the lake between us and our enemy, Mohawk. We're not an enemy, but at the time it was our enemy. So it was the lake between us and our enemy, Bittabock, okay? And Dakinah, our land. Cham, gizegog, gizegog means horned serpent, gizegog. Great horned serpent we call underwater panther. So, here it goes. You guys ready to hold onto your seat? Anybody know who Azeozo is? Anybody know? All right, but what was Azeozo? What is he for? Wait, I just heard all the people I remember he is. We'll tell you what he is then. That's okay, it's okay. Azeozo, Azeozo means transformer in our language. It is rock thunder. You guys call it rock thunder, which is off Shelburne Point. If you go down to the waterfront near Echo, you can see rock thunder off from Shelburne Point. The creator, when the creator was making this land, and I'm gonna skip through our creation stories because that's a whole other story. But, when dust was falling from the creator's hands and landed on the back of Tolbo, which is the mother earth turtle. That's why it's called Turtle Island. When the dust was falling down and landed on the turtle's back, well a lot of things started to appear, started to create themselves out of the magical dust as it fell to earth. It was Gloscopy, which is the father of us who created us. But there was also other spirits, like Azeozo. Azeozo and also people, we call him Big Hairy Man, but you guys might call him Bigfoot or Yeti. He's a spirit, same thing with spirit of the drum and all the other spirits. No different than Christianity who has, they had angels, archangels, saints and all kinds of other spirits themselves. We have our spirits as well, which are, they kind of, you know, we have our spirits all meshed together. They're all up there, right? So, Azeozo, when the magical dust from the creator was falling to earth, Gloscopy was formed and fell down onto the ground, onto his feet. He got most of the dirt. So when Azeozo had formed, his back was stuck. He was stuck on the earth. He was going out, out being anybody there, kind of stuck while Gloscopy and the creator heard him calling. And they were like, you hear something? So they started to investigate and they came over and they see this form of this spirit, this person that's stuck to the ground. They said, well, we can't leave him like that. So they chiseled him around him. The creator got on one side and Gloscopy got on the other. And they pulled and pulled until they ripped him up out of the ground. But of course, he didn't have any legs. He only had a torso, you know, from here up. So he was kind of looked at Gloscopy who had his legs and looked at the creator and he got pretty mad. He was like, I've been cheated. He's got legs. How come I don't have legs? You know, he got formed out of the same stuff I do. How come I got cheated? So Odziozo was pretty, pretty upset, pretty mad. So he decided that like anybody who gets mad, sometimes my wife when she gets mad, she stomps up Mount Philo. You know, so Odziozo was like, he couldn't stomp away because all he had was a torso up. So he had to drag himself, right? So he was mad. So he started like this and he started pulling himself all over the place, which created the Champlain Valley and all the valleys. As he pulled himself, he drugged these valleys, which created all of the valleys that you see around the Champlain Valley as well as all the other valleys in Vermont. And so Gloscopy felt sorry for Odziozo. But in our culture, in order to get something, you have to give something in return, right? It's cyclical, you can't just take, just like you can't just take all the natural resources and think they're gonna last. If you take something, you gotta replace it with something, right? You've gotta give something back. So there's only one exception to that rule is if we know somebody needs something and they can't afford to give us something back, we can lay something down like when we have our Christmas, when we lay something on a blanket, we know what people need. So we put those things on a blanket and we walk away. And then if you need it, you pick it off the blanket, but you're not obligated to pay anybody else. Everybody picks from the blanket, but you've given something, but you're not obligated to that person, right? So anyway, so as Odziozo left, Gloscopy says, okay, I wanna help him out. So he took some dirt. And just like when you're on the beach and you make little legs, he made legs and he left them. Cause he knew Odziozo would come back to where he started after he cooled down, right? Just like your wife who might stomp off. She's gonna come home, right? Now, she still may not be happy, but she's gonna come home, right? So he made it right there, right where Odziozo is, right where he was laying. And then he left. So I don't know if it sounded like that, but it was, he kinda left. And then Odziozo eventually, Odziozo eventually came back. And he was looking and he said, oh my God, he saw legs where they weren't there before. And he was kinda surprised, he's looking. He's like, wow, there's some legs there. Wonder where they came from, they weren't there before. So he started getting closer. Well, does anybody know what happens when two magnets come together? They can either propel or start attracting, right? So as he started getting closer, he started feeling this pull. And he's like, oh my God, oh my God. All of a sudden, wham, his torso sucked right into these legs. And he go, oh man, I'm stuck again. But his hands were free. So what did he do? He took his hand like this. And does anybody know what mountains are older here? Green mountains, green mountains are older than they are on our index. Anyway, so he's stuck. He took his hand like this and he starts chiseling around his butt and around his legs. And he goes, he's trying to pull up. So he puts his hand on the ground and he pushes real hard. And he made himself free. That created the green mountains. So when he pushed up, he pushed up the green mountains. So then he starts chiseling around. On the other side, he started pulling and he pulled out and he goes, ah, and that formed the aurondies. So now you have both mountains. Well, he had to get up. Now he wanted to see things from a new life. So he grabbed those mountains and he raked down the sides and as he pulled himself up, we created the rivers and the streams and he pulled himself up. Well, now he can see everything. Anybody who looked at a map, topographical map of Lake Champlain, you'll see the torso and two legs going in grandisle, kind of splitting right in the middle. You'll see the torso, like I said, and the legs. Of where Adilzo came out of the ground. So he walked around and as he was walking around saying, oh, this is awesome. I'm gonna get to see everything from the new height. He goes, well, I got these legs. Luscafi must have gave them to me. So I wanna repay that. So how would you repay that? Luscafi is a creator, our father who created us. He goes, I know I'll protect his people against their enemies. So when he decided to do that, he said, I will transform onto our shores, the Abenaki shores to protect the Abenaki people against their enemies. But before I do that, this is such a beautiful spot. I need to take care of the waterways, right? Everybody cares about the cleanup of Lake Champlain. Everybody cares about the waterway, right? We do. It's our life. It carries our memories. So he needed something to go patrol those things. Hence he created what you call Cham, who we call, get to God. So how did he do that? Well, he reached down in the water and he said, whatever this has to be, it has to be a fighting thing. It has to have real strong whiskers to feel things and horn. Anybody grab a bullpout and get picked by it? Anybody's ever had a catfish or something? They got horns on their fins. So he took a bullpout and he said, okay, I'm gonna take that out of the face. And he said, okay, but I need some armor. So I'm gonna take this cart and he smushes it right into the bullpout. So now he's got this weird looking bullpout face with armor, like with a cart. And he said, well, it needs to be able to swim. Someone grabbed a needle, they shoved it right up his butt, or attached it to his butt. So now he's got a long tail, but he may have to go to other water waves. So we have to have legs. So grab a salamander, shoved it right up under his belly. So now he's got a long neck, bullpout face, like a horn pout. Got whiskers, long neck, salamander body, but it had armor on. Champ was formed to navigate the waterways. When that happened, Adjojo said this was good, and he transformed himself into rocked under so he could always be there to protect us. But champ, just like Bigfoot or Yeti, a big hairy man, they're spirits who can manifest themselves so you can see them, but you can't capture them, right? So that's no different than the Christian people who believe in God and then the burning bush and Jesus appearing to you. Are you gonna catch God in a trap? I probably don't think so, right? I mean, you can't catch champ and you can't catch Bigfoot or Yeti because they're spirits who transform themselves. So anyway, that's the story of how the lake was created and how champ was created to protect the waterways. I think I've used up all my time, but if anybody ever wants to know anything about us, they can go to avanachytribe.com. I'm always out there, like I said, Chief Don Stevens. People know how to get a hold of me or research for us. And I wanna turn this over to Mary so they can get along with their programs. But I wanna thank you. Oluwani means thank you. Or olibumpkani, thank you very much for coming. And I appreciate you listening to our story. And the avanachytribe. Thank you so much, Chief Stevens. And thank all of you for coming to this event. My name's Kathy Shapiro. I'm with Vermonters for Justice in Palestine. You can find information about us on the wall there. We work to the rights of the Palestinian people to land and to equal rights and the right of return for Palestinians to a combined event that Mary Tomasetti is gonna tell you much, much more about. We have a website, it's btjp.org with a lot of information. Please go to that for more information on the happened. So thank you again. All right, good news. So, and Anita and Ginny, our hosts here to you, just very quickly about Tree of Life Educational Fund, we started out of a church, the first congregational church in old line Connecticut. We're now 501c3. And since 2004, we have been bringing Israeli and Palestinian voices of conscience to speak out about the occupation and share the stories that are of a reality that we don't hear from our news media. In addition to bringing voices of conscience here to speak to American audiences, we also take annual witness journeys to Israel and Palestine so that people can see for themselves and experience for themselves what it means for folks to be under occupation in this area. Our next journey will start on August 31st. That's a trade union journey. So the PGFTU, the Palestinian trade unions are calling for help just in the same way that the South African trade unions did. And the trade union involvement in the United States really helped to push apartheid to its end. We hope that the same thing will happen with the occupation so that the Palestinian people can live freely. Traditionally, our programs have been in churches and colleges and universities, indoor speaker programs. And they've been very effective. But one of the things we noticed was our audience became people that we knew, people that we knew already knew what was going on. We weren't reaching new audiences. So we decided that being outside and in the streets and on the road would help to raise awareness with the American population. And we think that's really critical to ending the occupation. So that's part of half of the idea behind Native Voices of Traveling in Kamen. The other piece is that the people that we want to serve, our Palestinian friends, have said to us, thank you for sharing our struggles, but we also want people to know that we are resilient, that we are strong. And like our Native American family, we will stand strong. And there is hope. And then we have culture that we wanna share with your American audiences. So in response to that request from our Palestinian friends, we are trying to bring more programs such as this, including music, including poetry, including all of the beautiful culture and arts that these people can share with us. So thank you for taking the time to join us today. Next up in our program is going to be my Lakota Ho-Chunk brother, Travis Hardin. Travis will share with you some stories of his Native American culture, as well as his experiences in Palestine. Travis has traveled twice to Palestine once with me. And it was an amazing experience. After Travis, we're going to hear from our Bedouin friend, Khalil Alamoor. Khalil comes from the south of Israel the Nakab or Nagev desert, and he is Bedouin. So you'll learn a little bit about his culture, his history, and a little bit of the current struggle. After Khalil, we're gonna hear some amazing music from Albert Basile. Albert is our brother from Bethlehem Palestine, currently studying at Berkeley School of Music. And Saber Shreem, our dear friend and actor, where I can't see you, Saber. I think he's back in the corner. Saber will join us for just a very small piece of a performance that he does. It's not conducive to outside, but we're gonna show you just a little clip of it. And then Saber will share his experiences living in Janine. So thank you very much, and please help me to welcome Travis Hardin. Oh, nice, thanks. My name's Travis Hardin. My Indian name is Iteshakia. It means Patious Space Red. It was my great, great, great grandfather's name that they gave me. But I just want to sing a fast song kind of to open what I'm doing. This is one of our pow-wow songs. There's not really any words in it. It's just a style of changing notes. I like to sing. I mean, I know many songs, but just as ones are kind of my favorites. And anyway, I've been teaching children how to sing for like 40 years now. And I took nursery songs and made them into in half nursery and half Indian. And I'll just kind of share a couple of those real fast. My friends that may be here with us now. And when I sing, like especially around here in Connecticut, I come out here and I see these big giant trees, you know, these huge ones, probably even this one. You know, and I like to sing to them because they don't, I tell children, I, you know, they don't have eyes and ears, but they can hear us and they can probably see us. And these big ones, I've probably heard the Pequots or, you know, the Mohicans or the Mohawks or the Oneidas, whoever was here singing long time ago. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry, my bad. But anybody, you know, they probably heard them singing, you know, and so I always think, maybe they didn't get to hear singing. And so I like to sing to them and you sing loud and, you know, let them, let them let them know that I'm here to sing for them. And as they wave at me, see, they're all waving at me now and sing with the water and the grass. And if you look at the little rocks, you can almost imagine little faces, you know. Mother Earth is alive. And I'm a water protector. I was at the Standing Rock protest camp for like five months. Like Mary said, I've been to Palestine twice. And while all my life I grew up hearing what I've heard on the media and all they've ever wanted to see like all they've ever wanted me to think was that all Palestinians are terrorists and all they want to do is kill us. So I went over there and I didn't know anything about it. And I learned so much and it changed my life. And when I saw the Palestinian people, I saw us, you know, the same thing happening. And, you know, like they used the buffalo on us. I've seen a picture where there's like piles, biggest that, four story buildings, you know, almost a buffalo skulls, you know. Maybe it was only three stories, but it was big. And, you know, they tried to use it as a genocidal movement so we wouldn't have our food source, you know. And so they're doing the same thing now with water and in Palestine. I've seen pictures of places where children swam and, you know, they got to have water. And now I went to Palestine. I went there and it's all dried up. They're damning up all the water and they're using it for their settlements where they just spilled and they just bulldozed whatever's in their way. And they send their sewage down to where the Palestinian farmers are trying to farm. And, you know, they're good. You've probably heard about a lot of other things that they do but I'm not gonna spend too much time about that. But I went to the Bedouin cat. Bedouin, you know, and they're bigger than this but I was inside and I was singing to the children and they were smiling and laughing. And, you know, they were just happy and I'm thinking, you know, how can they be like so still happy living in, you know, a world like this. But that's their lifestyle. And, you know, like they took our land and made it smaller and smaller and smaller. As my friend Cleo will tell you about, you know, that this is the same thing that happened to us a century ago is happening in Palestine. So, you know, I really feel that, you know, we share something, our people are in solidarity but we don't know that much about it because they're on the other side of the world and we've got our own problems to worry about. So, we don't really, so I kind of made a commitment to my people to try to teach them and educate them about what's really going on with the Palestine and Bedouin people, you know, and, you know, they're just kind of like us, you know. I've seen their children. They look just like our children, you know, and they're all waving and happy, you know, and like we get tourist buses on a reservation and we're not waving and we're not smiling at them, you know, I don't, it's a different kind of thing but I don't know. But anyway, I just wanted to share a little bit about my Palestine life but I just want to sing maybe another song or two. I probably don't got much time left but this is a water protector song, you know. They may contaminate all our water someday, you know. Maybe it won't happen in my life but, you know, when we had our camp, there was thousands of us and we were all, there was no racism. There was, it was beautiful because everybody was for the same thing, for the water. You know, we didn't see each other as different colored people. We just, everybody, you know, everybody you saw, you shook their hand and hugged them, you know. And it was such a beautiful time and place and then they, you know, they were shooting. I was singing up at the Brent Lines one time and I was, I'm gonna sing that song I was singing for you, for singing and I thought, okay, I could, all my friends and cousins were getting shot by the police. And I was going up, speaking in the police. Anyway, I was walking up and I was thinking, I can take a hit, you know, and a bullet went right past my head, you know, like this far away and I think they were trying to shut me up. So I, you know, started getting down like this, you know. That's some of the things that happened to us and, you know, we still, all we're trying to do is pray for the water and save the water and they just went and put that pipeline under our Missouri River anyway. Once Trump got in, he was behind the whole thing. So I don't know what's gonna happen in the future, but I hope I'm just praying for my grandchildren. I have 15 grandchildren. That's why I was there, fighting for the water. But anyway, I'm gonna sing a couple of melody, a few songs, because I don't have much time left. They're the same kind of, you'll tell you more about it. Thank you very much, my friend Travis. I am really happy to share with you my experience of some of the past of my community, the bidouin community and some of the, maybe the challenges that we are facing in our daily life today. So this is the bidouin tent, as you can see, but I am coming to you from this side as a guest now. This is your tent. And guests always have to come from the back, never from the front, you know? And this, in your right side now is the guest house. It's the guest part. The tent is always separated to two parts, at least sometimes three, but two parts. This one is for the guests. As you see, we have two rugs here, one for the host and one for the guests. We will see soon where every side can sit. And this is like a separation wall. It's something that separates the room that they can, cannot see the family. Yes, I'm not allowed to see the family. That's why they come from the back. And the host is standing here normally. And when he hear the voice of the animal or the dogs that normally outside, keeping the folks, you know, the sheep and the goats and the camels and the sparking and the host go outside and welcome his guests, say, ahlan wa sahlan, ahlan wa sahlan Arabic is more even than welcome. You are very welcome here. And he ties his horse or his camel for the host and welcome him to come inside. And he sits in this side, the guest sit in his side, with the face to the host that's sitting opposite side. So his back is always to the family. He cannot see the family, even if they're on any hold here inside, he cannot see inside. So always he offer them coffee. Coffee, they've, they didn't even offer, they just bring the coffee and serve it. The same with the food, a plenty of food, even they are very poor and very humble life, but they always serve and give all they have. They don't have anything in the fridge. They prepare everything. They don't have this even. So they serve the food, they give the coffee and it is amazing. The coffee have to be fresh. They prepare it instantly for you. So I remember my father was making the fire, liking the fire, roasting the beans, green beans and crushed them in the crater. I don't know if it is the right name. It's a piece of wood that have a hole inside it and they do this to maybe illustrate that I brought the voice for you so I can let you hear that, maybe you will recognize it. It's very beautiful music that he was doing with this. With this instrument, yes, from the YouTube. It's not my father's, but it is very, very similar. So he ground them in this way and serve the coffee. And one day I really wanted to help my father. I noted that he worked very hard. So I went to one of the electric shop center and bought the grounding machine, you know, this one that you put a lot of coffee, you press the button and it makes the coffee grounded. And handed it to my father. I was proud that I did something good and he look at my face like this and say, what is this good for? I said, this is for you. You can ground coffee very quickly. He said, okay, you can keep it for you. He didn't like it. He said, you studied in the university but you don't understand anything in hospitality. This is the inviter. He said, this is the inviter. When he ground the coffee, all his neighbors and his friends hear the music and they come to have the coffee with them. This is his pleasure to have the guests and when they pull the coffee for you, they always offer you one third. They are small cups. And even that they are small, they put one third. And they talk a bit and a few minutes will offer you another third and another. So by the end of the day, you have your whole cup but it's an installment here. You know, if they offer you one full cup, it means one thing in the Bedouin hospitality. Take it and go. You are not with me here. So it's crazy. Don't feel insulted if they offer you a small cup, you know. When I was roaming with Josh and Mary, I noticed a sign in one of the, like a sighting in one of the restaurants in our breakfast. It says, of course, Thais matters. Nobody wants a small cup of coffee. I said, this is not right. I want a small cup of coffee. So I always tell Mary, my father, see me drinking a coffee and big cups like Coca-Cola, you may win. Will laugh at me all the time. So it's like showing disrespect for the coffee. But this is another culture. I understand that it's okay. One, maybe a sentence or two about the other things they usually made of hair gold, of hair of gold and the black. And I normally say, what is that black? It's ugly. It's not beautiful. But I realized when I growed up that the hair of the goats have an oil later on it. And when it's wet, it's like a waterproof. The water just was, you know, splitting like this on the tint and doesn't come inside. I don't remember that the water coming. It's always dry. And in behind the tint, they have like a small canal, like a small place that the water can run inside. They dig it with the many tools. Always protected and happy. I growed in a tint, finished my high school in a tint. And I remember my first or second year in the college that was in the tint. So this is our past. And I'm so happy to share that with you. But unfortunately, this life, it changed in the last few years. And we've been facing a lot of challenges after the establishment of the state of Israel, especially on the land, the grabbing it where, and taking and confiscating and all these. So the land minimized and the strength that we have. And many people gave up their original and ancestral life and cultural life. And these changes that I'm good to with your help, Mary, I wanted to show you the pictures, maybe we will talk about. So this is my village. If you look at the village, you don't see tints. There is no more tints. So the life changed really. You see some houses with the roofs on them. So the people built them very quickly so they don't want to get caught. And the houses can be demolished. We have a lot of demolitions. We will talk about demolitions soon. So we didn't bring the map of the world to show you where is Israel because you already know. But for children, I would do that maybe. This Israel, you say all the Israel in this side, we have Jordan and this side, we have Egypt and Sinai. But we are mainly talking about this part of Israel which is where the negative, the knock up in Arabic, so knock up negative. Where I live, this is where my community live. In the circled area you can see. I hope you can see in the back. It's a, normally we beam them on the screen, but here we have beam them on the trees and when the tree doesn't work. So we will focus on the negative and you see we will zoom in on the negative and show you the picture and the maps soon. Here you see we have the negative. I'm sorry, Mary. Yes, this is the negative. The southern part, it's a huge area. It's about two thirds of the state land. It's about three million acres. And only 10% of the population live there. Jews and Bedouins and everybody. Only 10% of them, so it's empty area. Anyway, they confiscated most of the land. They expelled our population. About 90,000 people were in 1940. Only 11,000 of those, 90,000. Only 11,000 survived the Nakba. The Nakba is the name of the disaster. We call it Nakba in Arabic. It's a disaster. In all Palestine, many Palestinians where it built, 500 villages were destroyed, you know the story. But I am now concentrating in the negative and the Bedouin community in the south. I'm not talking about all the Palestinian story which is very important and well known. So the people who remained, the 11,000 who remained who survived the Nakba, they just relocated them and concentrated them into this highlighted area. You can see the arrows around. Which is called the siyaj here. Siyaj in Arabic is a fence. The fence area. You can see reservation area, the same. So you look now how similar the stories of the Native Americans and the native Bedouins are. The indigenous Bedouins are. This reservation area is only 10% of the native lands. 10% I think. But as I always say in my mathematical way, think about that. I say 10% of our population survived, remained with 10% of the land, the same. Okay, let's take it. But you know Israel is Israel. And the situation you will see will get. So we'll take the siyaj area, the reservation area and zoom in again and see. This is the reservation area where we all live. You can see this 10% stream. And today we are talking about this than 5%. You can see many things in this map now. You can see green spots in it. Those green spots, seven towns that the government built for the Bedouin community. They want to take the Bedouin from their lands and put them into these towns. But as I always say, these towns are not the paradise that they're promising. It is the hill. People are suffering there. They don't find work. They don't find places to stay. They can build their houses. It's very expensive to live in the city. And they are not trained to live in this. Numeric people and the herders and the desert agriculture to live in the city, it's not easy. And it doesn't quite the solutions really that the people want. So one small point is that those small dots, the small pot that you can see around in Perpelka, it is 35 unrecognized villages that the government don't recognize, don't support, then give them electricity, no water, no clinics, no kindergartens. And those small dots, you may maybe see them later if you want in the map. And they pressure them to move the cities and the towns and they still refuse. I am one of them. So our little dot is here, nearby the airport. They build the airport here. And it's our dot. And I'm going to talk about one of them, my village. Before that, we show the way that the government to pressure the community. This is the big instrument that the president always in the villages, bulldozer. We have like five to 800 demolitions a year. You can ask my friends in the coexistence in the negative coexistence forum, Haya Noah and others that reporting these numbers appear. The other one is for one family that I just remember and not them. You see, this is a child that just came back from school and found his house turned down. So we have 800 demolitions a year. All this doesn't convince the bidon and it doesn't convince me at least. We have another tools. You can see them at another bulldozer that blow the fields that can destroy the fields. If they activated some wheat or barley, this is what we can do in the division. And it is also blowed as you can see or destroyed. After it has already grown. So the green becomes red, yes. If this doesn't help, there's another tool which is the water system. You can see it is a very powerful tool that they try to pressure people through. Every family, this is not the connection for every family. Each connection is for a village, for hundreds and tens of families share the same connection. And if you are lucky, like my family and my village, you have one inch for the village. We have one inch, this one in your right side. The others have half an inch and some have three quarters. But we are the luckiest, we have one inch for the village. We received that, we got that after 50 years of the establishment of the state. We got that in 1998, from 1948 till 1998. It is a problem of the water supply. No running water in many villages. And they carry the water in tankers. Very, very dangerous waters. This is one of the villages, it's called Atir. Atir is one of the villages to be uprooted. They want to uproot it. This time is another excuse, another reason. We, they are going to expand the forest. We have Yar Yatir, the forest of Yatir. We have about 28 million trees. We will have now 29 million trees. And that's why they are going to uproot Atir. By the way, Atir was uprooted in 1956 by the Israeli government. And they were put in this area, moved to this area. Their lands were given to the Kibbutz. The Kibbutz name is Shubal. And they are cultivating their lands up to date. Now they say, you are trespassers and invaders. You can move to the seven towns. The nearest one is Hora. It's one of the seven, if you remember, the seven spots. Oh, that's good. I am going to show you my village. This is my village. And this picture is very important for me to show you. You know, we are invisible. The Israeli planners, when they sit in the air conditioned room, they don't see us. We don't appear in any official map. And we don't have signs that show the location of the villages. If you drive in the desert, you wouldn't see a sign that says this is Aserra. This is Hora. No, Hora is one of the recognized, but Atir or any other village, you cannot see the names. But we changed this. We had our map that we created, slowly, now and only among the community. And we put sign, this sign we mounted by ourselves. We brought the sign and ordered that in a place. And with the same name, you can see Arabic Hebrew English, the same colors, green and white. We added a line here in the bottom, who can read Hebrew, can say that, can see that it says established in the Ottoman period. Yes, it is. And the more funny thing I think is this sign that you can never meet in the roads. It's hard to see from there, but you can see, it's a bulldozer demolishing houses ahead. Yes. Another friend of mine says that you should, you should change to a red circle that says, no demolitions here, but we didn't really. So you can see it again. This is our sign we put by ourselves. And I love it very much. My guests always take picture of this sign. It is in the entrance of the village. So we try to change this situation by all means. This is my house. You can see the house, the porch outside the car. And this is me here in the cell. And I love this place. But I don't feel confident really. I don't feel happy sometimes because of the threats of being displaced all the time. Those guys posting the demolition orders in my house in 2006, it started, it's an old picture. And the police there are protecting them. It's about 20 that were down the stairs that are protecting this one. From me, I'm dangerous. And they posted those demolition orders in all the houses of the village. But I am happy to tell you that all those demolition orders were revoked. We went to the court and continued fighting for eight years. In 2014, the judge, Tali Haimovic says that these demolition orders are illegal. And I am canceling them. They claimed for public need. And she said, public need have to be strong and declare. It is not. So I cannot leave those people that predate the state with no rules. And she canceled them finally. So we are protesting, you see. We are protesting everywhere in Beersheva, the district city there in Jerusalem, in Tel Aviv, everywhere. We try to change this situation. We are not really playing the role of the victims and only crying. We're trying to do something by ourselves sometimes. And this is one of the ways, it's not the only one. We don't have electricity, remember. But I have solar panels, you see. This is my roof and these are the solar panels. And I convinced all the families in my village to leave the generators and move to the solar panels. And today, we have 70 families, 500 people all powered with solar panels. So we are a green village, we are a green village. And I love that really. Last two weeks ago when I came, I just participated in a conference in Geneva. And there I visited the company that produced the inverters that I am using. It's a studio, it's a Swiss company. And they were very, very happy to have me there and also me. It's exciting. So this is the solar panels, alternative. So if we want to really conclude all this thing, we see the similarity between our case and our native brothers here, the Indian, native Americans. Whatever you call them. And you see, here is the green color, the Palestinian lands everywhere. You see them shrinking, shrinking and shrinking. And finally, we see small pieces of preservations and dots everywhere. The same with the Americans here, if you look at the red color here, shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. Today we have only the reservations. And so it's really an unbelievable situation that the people in the modern societies and democratic societies like United States today and Europe and everywhere I speak, I think they need to stand for those people and to change this situation just to have more justice. This is not a justice situation. I think native people in everywhere have to be respected, their rights have to be respected. They did that in Australia, even that they have many mistakes there, but they changed in New Zealand. They changed, they did very good. And even in United States, I think the situation is better than in the beginning. Of course, they are not killing more Indian people here, but this is not good. And in Israel, we are not expelling, they are not expelling people to Jordan and Egypt. We have more than half million Bedouins in Jordan today. Beside the other Bedouins there, and I'm talking about the Bedouins that came from Beir Saba, where I live, from the Beir Sheba area. We know them and they know us. So we leave the questions maybe to the end, but I want to thank you very much for having us here and for your attention. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Albel Basile. I'm from Bethlehem, Palestine. And as Mary said, I now study at Bethlehem music. So I live in Boston. And I just started in January. So the spring was my first semester. And in the fall, I'm gonna do my second. So I wanna tell you a little bit about my work in Palestine, what I used to do before coming here. I used to work with two organizations. One is Musicians Without Borders and the other one called Sounds of Palestine. And so with Sounds of Palestine, we were targeting children from the refugee camps, especially Aida refugee camp. And if you know like refugee camp is the place where now Palestinians live, who were kicked out from their homes and lands in 1948. And it's like a place just next to the wall and the door like where the Israel military saw like lots of guns, clutches, tear gas. And so like the kids, children, social life there and what they see is really terrible. So we see like this program, just we wanna take those people from this place and like make them have good, happy life with music and trying to solve like using music, trying to help them with their social problems. And also like as a way of resistance and also as music like, because like they don't have this like access to music as other people and other children because they have their own problems to deal with. So like for me as my experience, music has changed my life and like I choose that the music, that's the thing that I want to do. And so I believe also in those kids, there are some of them who wanna do music in their life and like they wanna become musicians. So I feel that's really important for them. And the other program was called musical playground. It was with musicians without borders. Maybe you heard of those guys. And so we used to go to schools in Palestine in like isolated areas where like they're really poor schools. They have not great education. They don't have also music. So we give them like music workshops for three days. Like give them very basic things, music which they don't know. And also like it's kind of just to show them friend happy music life. And all the time when we go to schools, we could feel like how this is really important for the kids because we could feel like how happy they are when they are doing music with us. So that's about my work. I wanna tell you about my instruments that I play. So this is this instrument called Drek. It's not a tambourine. It looks like tambourine, but if you so we play it in very different way. I'll show you. It doesn't sound good. This instrument is broken. It has some problem I have to fix. So it should sound much better. And this is the frame drum. We call it Mazhar or deaf. Or I can tell you about this instrument that also we use our technique which depends a lot on fingers to play it. Like also Native Americans, they have this drum and other cultures also they have this drum they play different way. But I'm gonna show you like the basic hits how we do that on this drum. And the last instruments, this called Darbuka or Dumbik, Palestine we call it Tabla. And it's made by like from metal plastic skin and the two basic sounds from this instrument they are the Dumbik. The deep sound and attack. Yeah, these are the basic sounds. We have this lab too. So you can start from here. You wanna play this instrument. And I would like to teach you like two Arabic rhythms before I'm done. The first one called Baladi. It's very famous in Arabic music. So we're gonna use this basic sounds. I want you to do the dome on our leg. So that's the dome with two hands. That's cool. And called Chef Tatelli. And it's like that. Wow, that's good job. Okay, thanks a lot. Thanks for coming. Yeah, come. So the only reason I'm up here, my name's Josh Perlstein and I work with Mary and Tree of Life. But before that I was very privileged and have been very privileged to work for the last 10, not with microphones. For the last 10 years with the Freedom Theater which is a theater in the Janine refugee camp in the West Bank. I first started going there in 2008. And in 2002, the 13th, I met this guy and taught him for a month. And the reason I'm talking now is because in the time since then, since his training at the Freedom Theater, he has gone on to study mime and comedia de l'arte at Paris in the Le Coq school. He's performed and traveled all over Europe, including Amsterdam. And right after he finishes here, he's going to be heading to Amsterdam for his first real professional acting job in Amsterdam. His name is Thaubershren. And the reason I'm telling you this and he's not telling you this is because the work that he performs comes from a tradition of theater which is considered to be sacred. So the mask that he wears is sacred. And the style of movement is considered to be sacred. So this is really his shrine, and he really would prefer to be inside, but I made him perform for you today. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about the story, yes? So Saber and some other actors in Jeanine created this piece based on the story of Saber's family who moved from Haifa, which is in what is now Israel, and they were forced to move from there to Jeanine and live in Jeanine away from their homes. They still have, as many Palestinians do, as many of you know, they still hold the key to their original houses, that they've kept the keys in the idea that someday they will go back and they will get their houses back. So he created this story. I imagine that it's partially true and partially from his imagination, but it's the story of a man who was forced to come from Haifa and live in Jeanine and he had to work in a restaurant and not only did he have to work in this restaurant, but he had to live in the kitchen and he was never allowed out of the kitchen. But at night he would sneak out and he would go to the graveyard where his best friend and his brother and his old love and finally his mother were buried. And so the very short segment that you're going to see just a brief taste of what Saber's work is, is a taste of that visit to the graveyard. And so that's all I have to tell you. Is that good? Did I do a good job? Thank you so much. Well, I just want to tell you about this mask. This mask, it comes from the tradition of Comide del Arte. Did you hear about the word Comide del Arte? Yeah, so it comes from Italy, right? This mask, it came from a leather, right? Which is made from the back of the cow. And it takes us normally four or five years to practice, to make a show for one hour, right? Normally we don't do it in the outside because it has to be in the theater, right? And as you saw, there is no decor. We don't use decor at all. We do everything by miming, right? And there is only the musician, right? And the mask, and the actor, and the light. So I just wanted to share with you this little piece about this tribute, his name is Aouda, right? Aouda means the return. And yeah, so thank you so much. Thanks a lot. Yeah, we culture, we adopt a lot. We did that a long time ago. And Lakota means, we might have learned in the history books, we're called Sioux Indians. I don't know, that's just a girl's name to me, but it's a French word, or a Chippewa word, the French used to give us snake in the grass, our cutthroat, I don't know, I've heard a couple things, but we're Lakota. And our church is the Black Hills of South Dakota. It's the trees, the rocks, the water, the dirt, the animals, the insects. Mother Earth, and that's our church. And so the Black Hills of South Dakota, we call it our Holy Land. So when I went from the one Holy Land to the other Holy Land, across the world, to Bethlehem, that's where he is from. So we are, we might be like making history, you know? Having two cultures from both sides of the world coming together. And when I first came back the first time, Albert traveled back with another gentleman that plays the Oud, the oldest instrument in the world, and his beautiful wife, Nadine, they sing, she would sing to her beautiful voice. And we went around all over to the universities and Cape Cod, New York, you know, and we went to like 10 different places. In all those places we performed, I learned the song of the Palestine National Anthem. So I sing it in the Lakota way, like the way I sing. And he's gonna play the rhythm and we're gonna collaborate two cultures from both sides of the world together. So we just wanna close with this closing song. And so there's two cultures, you know, the Palestine culture, Arabic and Lakota. So we'd like you guys to join with us with clapping hands. And maybe, you know, somebody could start, yeah, you could, you know. Yeah, so it's just gonna be like this.