 Hello and welcome. My name is Tom Pessek. I'm a senior liaison officer at the Food and Agriculture Organization's liaison office for North America based in Washington DC and I will be serving as moderator of our event today. So on behalf of FAO North America I would like to thank all of you for joining this session on reclaiming health through Indigenous food systems a discussion on the film gather. Before proceeding with our formal program there are a few important housekeeping items I would first like to cover. First and foremost I'd like to advise you that this event is being recorded and we've had about 1,300 people register from around the world to join this discussion so there's clearly no shortage of interest in this topic and in the film and we hope that you've all had an opportunity to watch the film but in the event that you have not the link will be live through Thursday and we are also live streaming this event on Twitter at FAO North America. We're eager to hear from you the audience so to participate in the Q&A segment of this event I would like to encourage all of you to submit your questions for our speakers in the Zoom Q&A box at the bottom center of your screens and if possible please specify which speaker or participant your question is intended for. Due to time constraints I will not be able to provide full and proper introductions for all of our speakers however their biographies are hyperlinked in the chat box here for you to to see and lastly I would like to provide an outline of how our event today will be structured. In a moment I will be inviting my FAO colleague Vimlinger Sharon to offer welcoming remarks and thereafter we have the very good fortune of hearing from the ambassador of Canada to Italy and permanent representative of Canada to the UN food and agriculture agencies based in Rome. We will then have a traditional acknowledgement by a day Romero Briones. We will then hear from Sanjay Rao the director of Gather and we will also see a trailer of the film itself and then thereafter we will have a panel discussion with other speakers followed by a Q&A with you our audience and then to wrap up the event we will have some closing remarks from my FAO colleagues Vimlinger Sharon and Michaela Wei and we will endeavor to end our session promptly at 12 p.m eastern standard time. I now have the pleasure of introducing Vimlinger Sharon director of FAO's liaison office for North America based in Washington DC to offer welcoming remarks. Vimlinger has served in his current role since December 2016 and he came to Washington from Rome having served as permanent representative of India to the Rome based food and agriculture agencies of the United Nations. Vimlinger the floor is yours. Thank you Tom and greeting colleagues and friends joining us from all parts of the world. We have over a thousand registrants for the event today and that really speaks volumes for the interest that this topic has generated and that the film has generated globally because I find from the participants already joined in that they are from US to Sudan to India to Nepal and to all over the world. So welcome all of you and a very very warm welcome to Ambassador Alexandra Bogailiskes. I think she will be joining us soon and she's the chair of the informal group of friends of indigenous people in Rome and in that capacity a very powerful voice in championing the cause of indigenous peoples and the importance of indigenous food systems and food sovereignty in combating global hunger. As we know there is no universally accepted defined definition of food sovereignty and the closest that we get to understanding it is to see it as a specific policy approach to addressing the underlying issues impacting indigenous peoples and their ability to respond to their own needs for healthy culturally adapted indigenous food leading to the long-term goal of food security. Gather the movie that we're about to see is an intimate portrayal of the growing movement amongst Native Americans to reclaim their spiritual, political and cultural identities through food sovereignty. Though the film is around Native Americans the sentiments expressed in the film I think would hold true for indigenous communities around the world in every part of the globe. What impressed me really about this film is that it's not a editorial putting forth a director's view on what he thinks about the indigenous food systems rather it is building up of a narrative around the indigenous peoples themselves in their voices, in their perspective, in their sentiments. So it is an attempt to really understand them as they understand themselves and that is really crucial in today's world as we build upon understanding indigenous food systems and taking these systems along for ensuring global food security. In a recent newsletter that our office have published Ambassador Boogaliskes has rightly in her statement put it, I'll quote her here, that it is important that we do not speak for or on behalf of indigenous peoples but that we create space for them to be listened to and engaged with and actively advocate for their presence and participation in the discussions and decisions that affect their lives and communities. I think nothing could be true other than this, we really really have to provide for space and listen to them to understand them and stop prescribing. It is therefore an honor to have the film's director Sanjay Raoval here with us today and along with him some of the voices from the film itself join us at this special event and it will give us an important opportunity to interact with them and to understand their perspective more closely outside the cellar. So I once again welcome all of you to this event and I really look forward to an interactive and an interactive session with lots of questions and lots of discussions. With that I will pass the floor, virtual floor back to the moderator, Tom, you have the floor. Thank you very much Finlender for those welcoming remarks. Before we proceed any further with her program I would now like to invite a day Romero Briones to offer a traditional acknowledgement. A U.S. Fulbright Scholar a day is the director of programs for native agriculture and food systems at the First Nations Development Institute. A day please. The floor is yours. What do you say Hopa? Can you tell me what you are doing? Call Mahatana. I am Kochiti and Kayowa and this morning I am calling from Lodi, California which is the land of the Yucat people and Miwak people and I am surrounded by rivers and these rivers are pretty important right now. If folks don't know we are having a lot of fires in California and there is a train going by so excuse the train. We are having a lot of fires in California and during these fires it is important to acknowledge that indigenous people and the ancestors of my children and my husband's family have long taken care of this land and so I just want to acknowledge that we are in the lands wherever you may be are the lands of indigenous people who have also taken care of those lands and the movie and our discussion is a time to acknowledge those many ages those knowledge bases and put forth a lot of the indigenous knowledge and connections that are going to be much needed in the coming years and future our collective future and let's just give some time and room for indigenous knowledge people in space in our discussion. Thank you. Thank you very much Adé. I believe we are still waiting for the ambassador of Canada to Italy and permanent representative to the U.N. food and agriculture agencies in Rome to join us and so it's now my great pleasure to introduce the director of the film gather Sanjay Raul. Sanjay is a director and producer widely known and acclaimed for numerous films including Food Chains, a film about tomato pickers in Florida. Sanjay is a leading advocate for equality and works to develop a wide variety of strategies to help nations improve the quality of life for marginalized workers and people. Sanjay works tirelessly to educate audiences about philanthropic topics all over the world. His film 3100 run and become won several prestigious festival prizes had a robust theatrical release in the United States in 2018 and is opening in traditional theatrical engagements across Europe and Australia in 2020 and 2021. Sanjay thank you so much for joining us today to discuss your latest work gather and let me start by congratulating you on yet another master work and on directing such an eloquent and inspiring story of hope and promise one focused on solutions. That's very very kind of you Tom and thanks to everyone who has logged in to watch the movie over the last few days and first and foremost FAO for hosting this event. I would like to really pay acknowledgement to our partners in this film the First Nations Development Institute based in Longmont Colorado you know the documentary film industry started in 1929 with a film called Nanook of the North done by a non-indigenous filmmaker named Robert Flaherty who went to Inuitland and made a film that in hindsight was deeply exploitative and it's been a trend ever since for a number of non-native non-indigenous documentarians to go into communities that they really had no knowledge of and began portraying them without that deep cultural and spiritual sensitivity. So as a non-native American filmmaker I was you know very cautious about even approaching this topic but very much this was a project you know in collaboration with the First Nations Development Institute it was their leadership it was their work in indigenous communities that gave us access to the stories that were portrayed and gather and it was their sensitivity to the political and spiritual and cultural aspects of food sovereignty that truly allowed us to make a film that we believe is solutions based you know the timing of today's panel couldn't be more apropos most of you had the chance to in a sense watch gather before the rest of the world did but starting today the film is available on iTunes and Amazon in the US Canada and in the UK and we hope that this film will will spark a lot of important conversations not just about our food system but around the original stewards of food systems all over the world so thank you very much excellent thank you very much Sanjay if I may I'd like to ask a couple of questions I think it's it's safe to say that we're all aware that you've helped to tell the stories of other indigenous peoples and communities and some of your other your other films including but not limited to food chains which focused on Oaxacan and Chiapin and Guatemalan indigenous peoples as well as your film 3100 Run and Become in which you delve deeply into Navajo and Kalahari San Bushman running traditions could you describe for us your approach and building upon what you were just saying as a non-indigenous director what your approach was to making gather to directing gather a film about Native American food sovereignty and about those on the ground working to revitalize Native foodways I haven't been a documentary filmmaker for that long maybe 10 years or so and before that I worked in human rights and a lot of countries in Central Africa and Southeast Asia and the success of those projects was very much dependent on my ability to stay out of the way as as much as my ego would allow me to and to allow the storytelling abilities of people on the ground to carry their own projects forward so I hope that comes across and gather where we deliberately recognized all of the characters including Elsie Dubre who's here joining us in the panel as experts themselves we felt that we didn't need outside voices we didn't need voices from outside these communities to tell us what was going on within those communities and I think that I've been fortunate to carry that through line through my other films and treating characters with ability to portray their narratives in the ways they know best excellent and Sandra you've been making films for about a decade now could you tell us what was different about this film from your previous ones and perhaps what you might have learned in the process and making this film you know all of my films have I guess have been pretty adventurous and particularly 3100 run and become where we we kind of sneaked into Botswana and spent time with San Bushman activists and hunters but I've never really worked on a more challenging film I should say than gather even though it's very much a solutions based film the stakes couldn't be higher you know for people who watch the film you know we're in the words of one of our characters Nephi Craig we're on the native peoples are on the other side of the apocalypse and you know they've been through a horrific last few hundred years but at the same time those few hundred years are but a blip a moment in their 10, 20, 30,000 year history and to find characters with the resiliency and the ability to speak in a sense for millions of native peoples around the world wasn't easy and and for in that aspect you know I'm grateful to First Nations Development Institute it was their work with these characters that really gave us access to the voices we had that spoke with such wisdom depth and clarity and that's a rare thing for any documentarian to have access to you know people who have that authenticity who can speak with such heart and such soul be they 17 year olds like LC Debrae was in the film or elders like Twyla Cassador pictured in my background behind me Sanjay without further ado I think it's only right and proper for you to to introduce the trailer of the film so please cue it up for us and tell us a bit about what we're about to see well this trailer gives a little snapshot to what the film is about it starts of course with the modern destruction of Native American peoples on Turtle Island but hopefully it presents a really positive powerful approach to their revitalization of traditional food systems and their understanding of the place of those food systems in a quote modern capitalist world thanks Sanjay without further ado here's the trailer together we saw the world end once the whole life was gone now we're on the other side of the apocalypse the different wrongs that have been done to Native peoples are so sickening I mean they even had slogans like kill the Indian save the man that's genocide millions of people all across the Americas systematically wiped out starting here on the east coast that's the reason that we don't have that relationship with some of those traditional foods anymore what's popping I see onions yeah we have uh red onions yellow we're salmon people but what do we do if we're salmon don't come back what I've come to understand is if we want to maintain our culture then we have to have Buffalo as a vital part of our communities what we're doing is reintroducing our young people to the land the food and our traditional ways of healing working at the farm has brought a lot of healing to my life I've been clean 16 years June now I learned to heal through harvesting our traditional food we're celebrating Apache foodways in a kitchen that was built by Apaches for Apaches this movement among all indigenous people that they're finally they're listening and it's like music when you hear the drum is calling you and it's Mother Earth the Mother Earth's heart's beating and she's talking to all of us that we need to do something it's inside excellent it's now my great pleasure and honor to introduce ambassador Alexandra Bugaliscus who serves as ambassador of Canada to Italy and permanent representative of Canada to the UN food and agriculture agencies based in Rome and she also serves as the chair of the group of friends of indigenous peoples in Rome the ambassador has served abroad as ambassador to Syria and high commissioner to Cyprus ambassador to Cuba and Poland in Ottawa Canada the ambassador has held a number of senior leadership positions and in august 2017 she was appointed as Canada's ambassador to the Italian Republic without any further ado ambassador we're very excited that you were able to make time to join us today the floor is yours well thank you very much Tom and in and in fact I was there all along I thought it was a great example of how indigenous people feel when they're outside the room and hearing others talk about them and that's exactly how I felt today so thank you it's such a wonderful feeling to know that so many people have joined us today for this great film and I know I'm going to have to prolong the anticipation just a few more minutes I wanted to mention National Indigenous People's Day which we recognize of course in Canada and in that message that they are Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called for the elimination of systemic racism including discrimination towards indigenous peoples from all Canadian institutions and he reaffirmed Canada's commitment to working in partnership with indigenous peoples to build a renewed relationship that partnership extends to organizations like the FAO where dedicated people like Jan Fernandez to let us know I'll be a little bit later and the Melendera Sharan who was already speaking provide an important platform to give voice to indigenous peoples and today's film and discussion is just another example of their outreach and I want to thank them for also ensuring a strong gender balance amongst the speakers this is really impressive when the Friends of Indigenous People's Group was launched in November of 2019 at the FAO here in Rome we made it as Tom said a first principle that we would never speak for or on behalf of indigenous peoples instead we see our role very much as creating new space for dialogue and there's nothing like a good film to stimulate knowledge and debate but I wanted to just take a moment it's going to sound a little strange but I wanted to give a shout out to my Irish colleagues because I also read some good news today and they were competing in the world lacrosse games they step back aside in order to allow the Iroquo Nationals to compete in the Iroquo Nationals are actually a better team sorry but they're third place in the world but why weren't they competing because they were not being seen as a nation well that changed in Olympic committees around the world including Canada agreed with this move to allow them to play it's unbelievable that this still happens but I'm so so happy so well the Iroquo the heroes of the story the lesson is universal let's stand aside and let the real experts play and today's panel discussion on the documentary gather offers an occasion to learn more about the food systems of indigenous peoples in Canada and the US and their contributions to our food nutrition environment and biodiversity in Canada we know however that because indigenous peoples are three to five times more likely to be food insecure than non-indigenous Canadians and because indigenous women are particularly vulnerable we recognize that COVID-19 will disproportionately impact First Nations Inuit and Métis communities food insecurity is also a critical issue for Arctic and Northern peoples so we're taking action in Canada to both engage and support indigenous Indigenous and Inuit peoples Canada's vision for fostering long-term reconciliation is promote and enable their contributions to economic and social development so we are co-developing science projects with indigenous partners to support indigenous-led agricultural systems and our new food policy for Canada includes an emphasis on indigenous and local food systems and provides funding for local food projects and in response to COVID-19 we're also dedicating additional resources to improve public health it's never enough but it is at least a recognition of the need to start filling that gap so let me conclude by noting how the global pandemic has exacerbated the existing levels of inequality in food security access to health and economic opportunities faced by indigenous peoples and as we move towards 2021 a UN food systems summit it is critical that indigenous leaders be at the table to share their holistic approach to food systems health and sustainable development today's webinar provides another opportunity to inform ourselves and to highlight the important contributions of indigenous peoples to our food security so thank you so much for joining us today thank you very much ambassador for those words and for your critically important leadership and that of Canada on these issues including by chairing the group of friends on indigenous peoples in Rome so moving on to our our panel discussion we all know that behind every film there are a number of core individuals in addition to the director of course without whom it could not have been made those whose commitment and dedication helped make it happen and we're about to hear from some of the individuals who were integral and instrumental to making gather a reality I'd like to start by introducing Mike Roberts who is and has served as president and CEO of the First Nations Development Institute since 2005 previously he served as chief operating officer for the First Nations Development Institute until 1997 and then returned in 2002 and was appointed president by the board in 2005 in the interim Mike spent five years in private equity working for a telecommunications fund and for an early-stage midwest venture capital firm Mike has worked at alaska native corporations and for local IRA councils Mike serves on the board of First Nations Development Institute and is chairman of the board of First Nations always the corporation Mike can you share some background for us about First Nations Development Institute for our audience and your role as producer of the film yeah I mean I think you know where was probably more germane to the conversation today is the work of First Nations Development Institute in our food systems initiative First Nations has been a grant maker for 25 years and about five years in we did a reflection of the kinds of grants we were making to communities throughout the U.S. and found out that a large portion of our portfolio 50 or 60 percent was going to food systems related projects and in some ways that was a surprise to us we are kind of blocking intact economic development agency really looking at asset based development and putting native folks back in control the assets they own but when you look at the intersection between food and economic development really should be no surprise that we're in this business you know even poor folks in United States spanned upwards of 50 or 60 percent of their annual income on food and in reservation communities throughout the U.S. much of that money is exported to border town communities and so First Nations really looked at the work of food systems as a way of economic development recapturing dollars and hopefully tumbling them over a few times back in the local economies I think we we knew all along that this was going to be bigger than just economic development we knew as Indian peoples who worked here at First Nations that food touches so many other things in Indian peoples lives this is uh these are our you know origination stories these are our kinship with our fellow creatures these are our stewardship models of the places that we've lived for time in memorial and it was not lost on us at First Nations that these were as equally as important as the economic value that we were talking about and so you know that history of food and food systems and the communities that we worked with and worked for showed up and so when Sanjay and one of our funders came around asking us to be involved in this film it was it was an easy it was an easy yes to make because we have been working with these community members and celebrating the genius of indigenous peoples for a very long time and in our conversations with Sanjay he was willing to to play along and help us tell the story of the intentional destruction of food systems united states and the and the hard work and the the the knowledge keepers who've kept traditional food systems alive so we're excited to be part of this process and like can you tell us a bit about what messages you're hoping viewers take away from from this film yeah i mean i think that um a couple one is um that the the poverty and the and the the you know the difficult position that indigenous folks are in has been an intentional process that in order to subjugate indigenous peoples in this country we actively destroyed their food systems this was you know this was much we learned from the civil war marches to to to the sea by the union army the same same strategy was used to destroy food systems and intentionally starving these into into surrender in the west and and so i'm glad that you know Sanjay was very good about making that happen i think the other piece here is and i think it's been alluded to a couple times in this conversation um that native folks can speak for themselves right that when we do our work at First Nations what we do is we invest in local solutions to problems in the local communities and we recognize that the people who are living these experiences are ones who create solutions and oftentimes they need a little bit of capital and probably a little technical assistance but really the the genius and the traditional ecological knowledge of how to solve problems is there and i think that that's what the film portrays is that there is a great deal of human capital and reservation communities and they're complying real solutions both modern and traditional to solve problems of food sovereignty and native communities and i think that that's Sanjay did a great job of capturing community voice and community genius thanks mike i'd like to bring a day into the the conversation and once again day is the director of programs for native agriculture and food systems at the first nations development institute a day the the film in many ways focuses on your essentially what's your life work your your life's work as director of programs for native agriculture and food systems at the first nations development institute could you tell us a bit about what you wanted this film to to deliver and how you see this happening and and tell us a bit more about your work as the director of programs yes so i do have the honor of working with all of our grantees who are working in the native agriculture and food systems program and i don't think there's there's a better job i mean i get to work with farmers from all across the mainland united states alaska and hawaii and i would say really these folks are not only working on food but they embody all of the history of like our lands and our country and probably the global experience of indigenous people indigenous farmers are not only farmers and land stewards are not only working on on regenerating our land bases but they're fighting for access to fishing to hunting to seed sovereignty i mean the gamut of indigenous issues that are currently upon indigenous people are all felt on the food system whether it be environmental degradation whether it be the resurgence of different strains of food whether it be like localized food systems trying to figure out local supply chains and it's all done under the pressure of economic systems and really what comes out of this is like brilliance there's just a lot of brilliant people in this film and i just get to support them which is i hopeful hopefully came across in the film we at first nations are not the genius but as mike said it's the people who are on the ground growing those seeds and feeding the people who are a genius and that's really what i hoped um gather with showcase and i think it did a great job thanks today and if i if i could i'd like to follow upon a point that the ambassador made earlier and was wondering if you could tell us um what impact you're seeing uh the COVID-19 epidemic having um until now yeah i've well to me it's like a catch 22 there's two sites to the coin on one hand we see a lot of media that's focusing on the need for food in these communities at first nations we were definitely in the thick of the breakdown of supply chains and i never heard countries and communities um talk about supply chains like i did in COVID-19 like i think everybody has heard a conversation about supply chain breakdown and when indian country is outside of that supply chain the breakdown is very stark and we've had communities that um were without food and we're trying to figure out how to get it but on the other hand we have a lot of communities who leaned into their traditional food systems who recognize that they existed prior and they fed their communities prior to any um modernized supply chain and there was our actual resurgence and uh an interest unlike i've seen in any of this work before on um reestablishing traditional food systems and that was pretty that's pretty important because if there's not that conscious um effort within the community one person is not a community food system right it's a community that's a community food system and we really saw the resurgence and the excitement of how those food systems would serve us now and i hope i'm not putting you on the spot here but um i think it'd be fascinating for us to hear if you could an example a concrete example of how um how the community works to reestablish traditional um food systems yeah well i think we see the example well anybody can just jump on social media and see all the excitement about indigenous seeds um happening but more importantly like establishing a traditional food system like that's work right you not only have to um extract yourself from an economic system that influences almost every part of our being from the way we think to the way we transfer food to the way we grow food like extracting yourself in that system is really hard but the most exciting thing is is i saw indigenous people who are still growing traditional foods trying to figure out ways to get those foods to other communities more recently we had a group of southwest farmers who provided traditional crops that originally came from these communities back to these communities so we had like traditional squashes traditional corn actually being transferred back to where the first community gave to the second community second community actually returned them during covid as a way of not only things but as a way of um acknowledging that connection and i think that that happened also with um the irish community i know the ambassador mentioned our irish brothers and sisters and you back who knows hundreds of years ago that um Choctaw people helped a lot of the irish people in in their famine their time of famine and more recently they've donated thousands of dollars to the indigenous people in our time of famine like that that is like unheard of it is such a beautiful sentiment i get emotional about it but those connections as dormant and as quiet as they have been they have basically reared their head and created these long trade routes that have always been there and just been sleeping irish eyes must really be smiling listening to all of these uh wonderful references to to the role the irish have been playing of late so it would be fair to say that that the covid crisis has um generated some opportunities to reassert um native or indigenous food systems and uh to reestablish supply chains that existed long ago yeah and um i think the irish example to me just speaks to what i yeah you know like reassert i don't even know if that's the right word right but they've been just asleep they've been dormant but they've existed in our memory and in the types of foods we eat and it's just like a matter of waking up i'd like to say they're they're we're woken up not exactly woke but woken up and many more people are paying attention which is exciting what a great story thanks today i'd now like to bring into the conversation lc de bray who's featured in the film and is she's a member of the chi and riversu nation and she's currently attending stanford university as an undergraduate her analysis of lipid structure and buffalo meat which her family raises and harvest took her to the intel world science fair where she placed fourth in the biology division in 2018 lc is committed to using the resources of stanford's biological sciences program to further her research of traditional indigenous diets as a way to combat the diabetes epidemic in indian country lc welcome i was hoping you could tell us a bit about how the messages in this film can help to engage young people around these issues including not just of course native um but but non-native uh communities and young people yeah um kihani wash day good morning everyone um thank you for having me um i guess when it comes to youth i've it's really interesting because as a young person who's been given such a such amazing opportunities to be able to to speak um with opportunities on this film and to present my research i get the question um a lot about being a youth and i first would like to preface with the fact that i cannot speak on behalf of all youths um all indigenous youths um but to me i think we see a lot of young people in the film i mean we have twyla who is an um absolutely incredible elder and um and some other older folks but we also see this real resurgence in the younger generation i mean sammy and other members of the ancestral guard are only just a couple years older than me and maybe uh and multiple younger than me and when i see the film i think it's really cool to me because the film highlights these voices and while it's a really well it's a big part of our cultures in indigenous communities to respect and hold our elders to the highest level of respect it's a very colonial structure to silence our youth and that is something that has happened through the acts of colonization is youth voices don't matter youth voices are silenced um you don't know anything unless you're um unless you've gone to school and you're some big fancy ceo of something and that's simply not true and that's especially not true in indigenous communities where we have the knowledge of our ancestors from before we're born and i think the film does a really good job at showing that it's youth it's there are many youths who are in a way the forefront of these this food sovereignty movement and that it's important that we nurture the passions and um ideas of youth who are navigating in this world and who are going to be the next generation who carry this on and pass it on to other the next generation of youth and so um that's that's what i see um in this film and i'm i apologize if there was a second part to your question i'm missed but yeah no not at all thanks helsey um and if i could um um if i could ask what so what what sorts of actions would you like to see young people given as you say they're at the forefront of this movement what what specific actions would you like to see them taking and and perhaps also what opportunities do you see on the horizon for them to make a big impact on food sovereignty you know just speaking up i mean there are i know so many young people people my age or younger um or just a couple years older who are doing incredible things i mean it's not like there are just these select few people and i'm one voice who's been given incredible opportunities and been um given a platform and uplifted but there are so many other people who are doing incredible things other indigenous youth who are doing amazing really important things in their communities and for the rest of the world um who don't necessarily receive that kind of attention um especially widespread and i think that is not to their own fault it is that like i mentioned there's a culture that puts older voices um and not necessarily elder voices but um that silences youth voices and demeans them and so i think there's a there's been a semi-recent shift in in that culture in that there are a lot of people looking towards the the brilliance of youth um and looking to them for answers and for ideas including them in conversations um and so i think with that shift it's important that youth try to to take that risk you know and and to speak up and to speak up anyway you know and put those ideas out there because there are people listening now and um there are more people listening now people who have power and people who can support and um people who can really uplift and i've been so fortunate to have been uplifted by people like Adei and Mike and Sanjay and First Nations and so many countless others and every realm of anything that i've done people have been so supportive of me but it's important that um that that's happened continuously and across the board um and so i guess to to youth i just encourage them to speak up and to actually i mean it's it sounds so cheesy but it's so true to just say like follow your dreams like follow your passions because that's all i did was i had something i was interested in and now this is this is what people have supported me and i couldn't have done that alone but i didn't go out and do all go out and do all these incredible unheard of things like there are so many people like me doing the exact same thing and i just i want i want everyone to be able to be supported like i have and i um i just encourage people to go out there and do that on both ends thanks helsey your your enthusiasm is palpable and contagious um i'd like to hear a bit more though about the dynamics you were describing in terms of the role that that young people are playing and how that's shaking things up in terms of traditional roles and perhaps generational changes and i was wondering if you could talk about how this role this active and leadership role that young people are increasingly playing in this space how that's being received by um older generations or or elders you know every time that i go speak at a conference either presenting my research or talking about um the film it's elders who come up to me and it's elders who tell me that they are so proud of me and that i am one voice in the in the next generation and thanking me for what i'm doing and that i'm making ancestors proud and that i'm making them proud and to keep going and it's their support that's what keeps me going and it's my passion and my pursuit of what i'm doing that gives them hope and that is a very super cool relationship that has existed for time and memorial in our indigenous communities and that's something that through the acts of colonization or colonialism that's been trying that's been broken down that that has been tried people have tried to destroy that and divide um our own communities and our communities are not perfect that i mean their harm has been done um and these relationships need to be rebuilt but i have received nothing but support from older generations in my indigenous community and the indigenous community at large so that has really reinforced to me the idea that this um age hierarchy is a really colonial construct that has worked to dismantle our efforts of um restoring our communities um and so i don't see problems or resistance so much in my communities um i mean you have tribal politics which is messy on always but as far as like in elders versus youth that traditional relationship has stayed pretty consistent at least in my experience and that's something that i don't think can be broken um so i i don't entirely know i'm not very great at ending ending my ideas but i will just cut myself off well i'll see um i think we could listen to you all day thank you i'd now like to open this up to more of a conversation among all of you elsie and and mike and adai and sanjay and sanjay if i could start with you the film has a very simple yet powerful title and i wonder if you could tell us what about the word gather encapsulated or uh captured um that which you hoped the film would convey and communicate well that's a great question i mean to be honest again my my modus operandi in making this film was to try to stay out of the way as much as possible and capture what i saw one of our indigenous producers sterling hard Joe actually came up with the title and he understood the the deep resonance that that had with native communities he also understood that it was a word that neither had a romantic connotation like if we called i'm just making this up right now if we call gather like the harvest of the silver moon or something like that um it neither had a romantic context but at the same time it was easily translatable into many if not all indigenous languages that that that we knew of um so again that the title came from an indigenous person and i i would just add there this is um that when we talk about gathering like it has it has it's a heavy word for indigenous people when we talk about gathering on ancestral homelands whether that be roots whether that be food whether that be hunting like indigenous people have lost so much access to their lands that when we say gather it's not like um an activity that's taken lightly we have indigenous people all across the world in in the united states even in california still being prosecuted and still being harassed for gathering whether it be seaweed whether it be roots whether it be deer meat and so like gather on is sort of like our call to continue those activities wherever we may be not only for our own bodily sustenance but for the health of the world like we you know like indigenous people need to continue gathering yeah you know i would i would love to add i mean i think i love that the kind of double meaning of the word too because when we look at the food systems renaissance in indian country we're really talking about a community effort not i mean the film was nice enough to show individuals but i think what we we've lost a little bit was this is a this is a community activity and you know the idea of gathering right the the process of coming together i think was was is really an important part of what is happening in indigenous communities in united states around the food systems and food sovereignty movement helsey did you want to come in on this why not um i guess um when i didn't have much of a grasp on what the concept of food sovereignty was prior to my participation um in this film and i mean when i was approached about the film they were like we think your family has done a lot with food sovereignty like wait food sovereignty what because i thought food sovereignty had so much to do with agriculture and i had this very complex understanding of what agriculture really meant um but so once once i was kind of able to break down that wall within my own experience and kind of dive into the world of food sovereignty indigenous food sovereignty i realized just how holistic the concept really is and so when i think about uh the word gather in addition to everything that uh mike sanjay and day have said um i think about how in my own experience food sovereignty has really helped me um like unite with other um other indigenous people working on quote unquote other indigenous things because it's all interconnected um and i think it can be in western society that really attempts to compartmentalize everything and put everything into these tiny neat little boxes um and kind of sever the connections between everything it can be really hard to navigate um indigenous issues because those tiny little boxes don't exist it's this big messy beautiful web and so i think the term or the concept of food sovereignty kind of helps gather that all together and at least it has for me and um when we talk about cultural restoration certain people will say oh language revitalization needs to be like our priority and other people will be like oh but um restoring our food system like has to be uh number one or we have to address the health disparities that's number one um but when we talk about efforts of food sovereignty we're talking about all of that at the same time and it really gathers those ideas unites all the people on all of those working at the forefront of all of those quote unquote separate ideas and really creates this united indigenous force um that um is really something to be reckoned with and that i think is a really beautiful thing so that's just kind of an on-the-fly thought i've never given much thought to the title until now so that was a really um on-the-fly analysis i guess but that's that's what it makes me think of thanks helsey and if i could ask a question um well maybe starting with uh with mike a day and elsey but certainly sanjay please chime in i think um for those of us listening to all of you it's quite clear i think that there's quite a chemistry between all of you and that your your kindred spirits if you will and um clearly it's it's virtually impossible for a director to conduct her or his work without first establishing personal relationships of confidence and trust in order to become part of the the inner sanctum if you will or to be led in as it were to be granted privileged access to a subject or to a group of characters or individuals and um sanjay has repeatedly emphasized that his role was uh upon being granted access to stay out of the way and let people tell their own story i was wondering if you could all describe for us how this relate these relationships of trust and confidence developed how your initial interactions went and happened in such a way that you were all fully certain that you were working with the right people and with the right director to help tell this this really special story i mean i'll start um you know we uh i think this is an incredible story and i think um there could be lots of directors that could that could tell the story but i think one of the things that we we got with sanjay was um early conversations about what was important to us as first nations and the the movement that we were part of in the food sovereignty movement um and what was going on and what was kind of the the mood and the story that was important to us if we're going to give him access to our our partners in native communities and um you know i think lots of times native people are listened to but it's very rarely that people are heard and i think sanjay actually heard us when we talked about what was important to this work and and and early on you know the the conversations we had about the importance of community voice and people telling their own story and speaking for themselves not speaking being spoken for you know some of the early cuts we saw of sanjay's um film work really reinforced us that he heard us and and and therefore he let the community folks speak and be heard as well okay yeah i'll add i um so story sanjay we actually filmed many other communities besides those that are in the film so we have a lot of footage um and you know going into this i was i was working for first nations first nations decided to do this i work in food systems so like i was point person um and so there was much uh you know nervousness about working with um a non-native filmmaker but we went to one community and the little boy z which and it was my community the little boy z said i really want to be a filmmaker um can i can i see the camera so the filmmaker gives him the camera and then z says i really want to try this like try to be a filmmaker on my own so like how much do one of these cost and sanjay's response was like oh you probably want to get a different one this one's about 20 000 dollars and when he said the camera was worth 20 000 dollars i knew it was in a regular camera which made me realize that um sanjay did his best to ensure that this movie not only had the best equipment but it had some of the best producers filmographers photographers in the industry and i he had me there and of course my grandma liked him and fed him well so i he had me grandma's blessing is always key um elsie anything you'd like to share yes i have a lot to say on this end of things um so i guess um mike has known both of my parents for a long time so when i got i can't remember if i got an email from mike or sanjay first but when i shared it with my parents they knew what was going on because mike robber's name was um mentioned and so that was my like first like i wasn't really so on edge because my parents knew and approved and respected all that um and then once the film got started sanjay showed up to my science fair with a million cameras and i think mike was there too and um so we were just kind of thrown right into that that's when i first met them and they were there all day and that was fun um it was a little interesting being at the science fair with the whole film crew but i mean everybody who's been involved has really treated me like a person and um i never felt weird i mean as as weird as it was to have a million cameras and the mike things and stuff like they would ask i mean they were like right there with me they were getting hyped up about the science fair they were asking me questions and about about things that didn't have to do with like they weren't telling me can you stand this way or like tilt your chin up it was nothing like that they were asking me like if i was nervous they um they were commenting on the girl next to me and like oh did you see that judge like things like that and then um i went and spoke at the first nations food sovereignty summit last um september i think it was and i met a day for the very first time and she was so warm and welcoming and sweet and i that was my first time like going to a conference or anything like that alone i was in green bay by myself but i had said goodbye to my mom who helped move me into college um for my sophomore year at stanford and so i was kind of nervous and i'm not great with being by myself and when i went there the people treated me like i was family and i didn't feel lonely and i felt respected and like what i had to say meant something um which is has been proven to me time and time again and yet it's still something that means something every single time um and since then i have received nothing but support from everyone involved i mean sanjay sends me happy birthday texts and like that's that's not like the average filmmaker thing i mean i don't have much experience with filmmakers i don't besides sanjay but that's he is a very real person and the relationships that have that i have built with the people involved in this film have been extremely meaningful to me and so if you get anything uh from any of this um what i'm saying is that this is not your average film i wouldn't say and that there are some really important and valuable relationships at least to me thanks helsey sanjay anything you'd like to add i'm just getting i'm getting too emotional so thank you everyone i should i i'm gonna dissolve into a puddle of tears in a second so i should let you ask him another question to somebody else well i'd actually like to take um a moment i hope he's uh he's on with us i'd like to ask our FAO colleague yan fernandez laranoa who heads up FAO's indigenous people's unit in rome to perhaps briefly describe his work and FAO's work in supporting indigenous people's food systems and indigenous people's traditional knowledge yan are you there i'm here and i'm learning and learning so much thank you so much for the discussion and um of course i would like to greet all of you i think that there's many things that that we are doing but let me start tone by saying that um you cannot work on indigenous food systems without putting in the center indigenous women and if we consider indigenous women and we put them together um they will have it will be a country with more population than countries like pakistan or nigeria or brazil and this is something that people do not realize there's more than 476 million indigenous peoples in the world if you put them together in a single country it will be the third most populous country in the world so when you look at the institutions like FAO and FAO is very much a knowledge institution um we demand it to eradicate uh food insecurity and hunger but when you look at uh where is the knowledge that these indigenous peoples these 476 million indigenous peoples from across the world speaking more than than 4 000 languages uh where is this knowledge in the un institutions where is this knowledge in a film so a lot what we've been doing is actually putting uh indigenous peoples like i think like director sanjay has done in this film at the center of the discussion still there is many committees in FAO that the member countries still are not opening to indigenous peoples still many of us we give prevalence to scientific knowledge considered by somebody who has graduated from the university but when you watch the movie gather and then you see the amount of knowledge that every single person in the movie has how they share this knowledge there is more sharing of knowledge in in the whole movie that in many of the universities that some of us we have attended but yet it goes unnoticed so in 2018 we wanted to challenge this we organized a high level expert seminar on indigenous peoples food systems from all over the world we got indigenous leaders men and women coming from the seven sociocultural regions to describe how they think they feed themselves and let us remember Tom that the the eldest form of culture in the world that has come to our days is the original people in australia they have more than 60 000 years of assistance and knowledge but still we don't consider these knowledge in our in our policy discussions we don't consider this knowledge so a lot of what we are doing is trying to change mentalities trying to change perceptions trying to challenge the mindset that we've been all uh indoctrinated during our education that's why the work that um ambassador bogey lisk is doing with the group of friends of indigenous peoples is so central and so fundamental because we managed to gather ambassadors from complete different countries that come together to learn and to listen directly to indigenous peoples we are currently um with the methodology that we developed with a number of institutions and indigenous peoples we are right now documenting more than 16 indigenous food systems from across the world and i think that like like like all of you were saying before that the title gather will not be more appropriate because we don't talk for example in in my unit we don't talk of food production we took we talked of food generation which is actually gather is hunted is fish but we're the centrality of the capacity to generate that food is in the environment and in the cosmogony that influences that environment not necessarily in humankind so it's a major shift that we are trying to influence and we are trying to do this evidence base in 2021 there is a UN food system summit and one of the things that we are trying to do with FAO we are launching now in september a global hub a center of knowledge on indigenous peoples food systems there's more than 16 institutions indigenous academia research centers and what we are trying to do is to gather evidence like the one that has been shown in the film to make sure that the countries when they will meet in new york they include indigenous peoples voices and they include the knowledge that they've been gathering for thousands of years is a major undertaking but we are very fortunate to work with so many indigenous women and men from across the world and with the support of so many countries and ambassadors like ambassador bogey liskis that is actually helping us in putting indigenous peoples and their knowledge at the center of the policy debate but the movie is fundamental in all of these and again i want to congratulate all of you for so much sharing of knowledge that you have done thank you so much John thank you so much i'm really glad that you were available to join us and to tell us a bit about the important work that you and the unit are doing in in rome moving back to the the film for a moment um and perhaps i could direct this first towards sanjay and then others can certainly chime in but um in an effort to try to connect some dots um and cognizant of the fact that context is important i wonder if you could reflect on uh how this film relates perhaps to a larger set of events or debates processes or dynamics that are unfolding and ongoing beyond the communities and individuals featured in this film whether there are any linkages you see to other ongoing or contemporary movements or or efforts that's a great question and and i'll try to answer it as briefly and as succinctly as i can i mean most of the world was organized in billard structures not too long ago you know somewhere around the crusades business people in europe realized that that there was a lot of money to be made from organizing expeditions under the banner of religions um to plunder and to conquer these tactics were perfected and incursions into the bass country into wales and really set the template for the modern foray to turtle island to north america central america to extract wealth and multiples that economies had rarely seen and that wealth was primarily based on the land if not entirely based on the land you know there were silver mines in spain there were large cash crop you know dreams in the cribian and in what's now in north america those forays were financed heavily by national governments and business people and it required first and foremost land that land was obviously stolen from native communities in north america and labor was required to make those multiples and that labor had to be free so native communities were enslaved and when those populations began to be decimated by that that labor slash genocide you know there was a capitalistic push to start bringing agrarian laborers by force from africa we've seen the exportation of that model then to india to southeast asia to east asia so the modern food system the modern economic system is very much a a result of what happened in indigenous communities in north america in the 1400s 1500s 1600s at the same time we've seen those corporate tactics get exported across national borders and national boundaries we've seen that in indian country in north america and most importantly we've seen the resistance that native communities have formed the tactics that they've developed against those corporate and transnational pushes into taking away their sovereignty taking away their human rights we see in north america right now lastly you know the increased awareness of black lives matter of the legacy of slavery in those early capitalist economies and the residual effects of those today in policing and government structure but at the same time those early economic incursions were very much based on land and so the political landscape for you know indigenous communities is very much tied to the destruction and theft of those lands and we we we try to portray that and gather through the through the angle of food systems but even though the film doesn't explicitly decry certain policies the political reality of this fight is very very timely thanks sanjay mike elsi adai would any of you like to to come in if not um sanjay i was wondering if you could describe i'm sorry mike please no no i'm just laughing that we weren't even jumping i think he did a good job thank you sanjay sanjay i was wondering if you could describe for us uh over the course of the two-year period of this this film being developed and and filmed if there was a specific moment when you realized you had something special you know i i think i realized that in the first meeting where i discussed or we discussed the idea of this movie with first nations you know i i've been lucky in past experiences of getting access to great characters but that access came through years of relationship building or months of being on the ground but as i began kind of throwing out concepts for idealized cast members for this film it was apparent that first nations mike in a day knew these folks personally and so i mean that that's it's elsi's a great example of that you know when we were looking for youth voices who were also involved with food sovereignty you know mike had known elsi since her childhood and at the same time maybe at that stage elsi didn't even realize that she was that deeply involved with food sovereignty so we the personal relationships that first nations had developed over decades you know once they began revealing those in the depth of that i realized that you know we could make an incredible film and we could make it in in a way that would be visually arresting and cinematic thanks sanjay i think our audience has been waiting patiently and i think it would be appropriate at this time to start um posing some questions to to all of you from our audience and um given the interest of engaging youth i think we'll we'll take this to a new level by fielding a question from someone who is 10 years old and this question comes and this is for any of our speakers this question comes from sama hutchins of washington dc again who's 10 years old and sauna says uh in watching gather that wondering how kids can help to play a role in protecting indigenous people's food systems and what what young people should be telling their friends teachers and communities you know i'll i'll take a stab um the first nations did some work a couple years ago um on looking at the narrative that americans believe about indian people in the us and the and the primary narrative that folks in the us have about indians is that indians are invisible right and i think that when we talk to teachers and youth there is this hunger for a real curriculum about our history and i think the best advocates for the engagement and the demand of that curriculum are the people who are going to be subjected to that curriculum themselves the the the 10 year olds and 12 year olds and 15 year olds who want to know more and who are hungry in this um black lives matter bi-pock awareness of our community to insist upon hearing the real history of this country thanks mike but anyone else like to come in on that yeah i um i'm the mother of a 12 year old and um she goes to school in the state of california and when she was in fourth grade she had to do a mission project which she had to create a model of the spanish mission and it was really hard for us she's california native um you know her family came from a mission system which wasn't a pleasant experience at all and my daughter had to create the mission of which her people had to go um against their will and so um because it was so hard to do um her her her classmates recognized the emotion and the stress it was causing her um and together um with her and her friends they had a long discussion about why it was so uncomfortable or my daughter and she was one of the only native kids in her class and she wouldn't have been able to have that discussion if they weren't other kids willing to sit with her and say you know we really need to talk about this like this is making somebody in our class really uncomfortable and stressed and we don't like seeing that and so when you for a 10 year old to recognize that stress in another student and to say something is really important and so i encourage you to recognize when other classmates are being stressed or in the situations where the history being taught is really uncomfortable and say something and that was a really good question so thank you thanks for that Elsie or Sanjay any any comments or thoughts I guess I would just say that it's really cool and really encouraging to hear a question from somebody who's 10 years old and this like enhanced awareness um at the at such a young age is really hopeful to me um even though I'm fairly young myself I mean I've got a decade on this young individual and so that's this is really cool to me and um I think it shows this kind of I mean this isn't somebody having awareness starting like right now in the the shape of like the quote-unquote political climate of um of the United States and and elsewhere right now where people are having this aha moment at age 54 or something and saying this or maybe I need to start um uplifting BIPOC voices maybe um maybe I need to start caring about some of these issues I mean this is a 10 year old who's already asking and trying to engage in really early anti-racist allyship and that gives for a long time to develop that um to develop a real active allyship an anti-racist way of living and being and the fact that that's not happening at age 60 when there's a lot of damage that has been done that get there's a lot of room for growth as a collective I think because of that and so um I guess just heed the advice of uh a day and Mike and whatever Sanjay is gonna have to say but I think it's just really cool to recognize that this is a good track to be on as a 10 year old and I think it's awesome likewise thanks Elsie Sanjay any thoughts from your side everybody covered it so well thank you great and so I've got a question here from Marcy Cockrell uh who says that the film was really powerful and uh thanks uh for for making it and making it available uh for the audience and Marcy's question is what can people who don't identify as indigenous due to support indigenous food systems and indigenous food sovereignty and this this obviously can be to to any one of you so whoever would like to uh to take it first please go right ahead okay um there's um I'll just be I'll try to be quick um this question has come up in a few different panels and many just different discussions when I talk with non-native friends at Stanford and things like that and one of the biggest things is recognition of how important land is in this discussion and so um my like response to this question is always um like land back and that is has in the past been seen seen as the sort of really radical notion of like indigenous people in this country wanting to steal land back and that is a very like colonized or take on what this move movement um really means and there it's really not um some sort of hostile aggressive um colonial idea of stealing land from anybody it's about returning land to those who know how to take care of it and it's not about kicking anybody out or leaving anybody behind it's about doing what's best for the land and everybody who's on it right now and so I encourage people to look into um what look into the greater land hashtag land back movement um but that also really comes down to a really local uh regional specific there's no one size fits all answer to this question um it's I mean besides just universal support um but the best way I think a lot of people can support is to look into okay a do you know whose land you're on right now because if you don't that's that's step one um step two how can you support and um be a good guest on that land Sanjay talks a lot about um I'm I won't let him I won't try to answer it for him but he talks about being a guest um where he lives in New York and he does a really good job on that and what what is he doing to deserve to be there and so how are how are you taking care of the homelands of those people whose land you're on that was stolen from them how are you supporting their active communities I can guarantee wherever you are you're surrounded by some indigenous people and you are for sure on some indigenous land so what are you doing to actively support that land and those people and it's like the first and best thing you can do is where you are now support that community um and those people I would say thanks healthy great great answer would anyone like uh to add to that no you did a great job agreed here's another question um so as we know in indigenous peoples are key stewards of our natural resources biodiversity and nutritious native foods and uh indigenous foods and traditions can help expand enrich and diversify our diets and nutrition sources what can be done to promote a heightened sense of awareness of and recognition of the critical importance and contribution of indigenous peoples knowledge and practices um Sanjay does does this question well but I'm gonna start um you know when we think about our modern diet a large majority of those foods come from indigenous communities from chili to tomatoes um and it's important to recognize that these are the brilliance and like intellectual property of many indigenous people first that's like important to recognize and the other thing is a lot of our indigenous food systems are in direct competition with the modern food system so so like in the California Delta where I live for example right it's all been transitioned to um soy and corn I think I think uh I think a day is having some connectivity issues Sanjay or anyone else would you like to come in as we uh wait for a day to to reconnect yeah I'll add I mean I you know it was expressed earlier that when you look at um biodiversity on this planet that most of the biodiversity remaining is in the hands of indigenous peoples and so we're we are clearly the good stewards of this planet and this ecosystem this very fragile ecosystem that we live on and I think people are realizing more and more how how fragile this ecosystem is I think that we are often mistakenly believed that when folks showed up on the Americas that this was this pristine landscape and in fact it was a landscape that was that was highly managed by the people who were here for um the different kinds of harvesting and gathering they needed to be doing in order to create their food systems and and they had you know sophisticated belief systems that that helped them um pass on information and knowledge um and and deep scientific knowledge that they passed on from years and years of observation and experimentation and hybridization in the Americas that they they managed and I think this happens you know everywhere we find indigenous peoples and so I think this this heightened awareness of the deep science that indigenous peoples own needs to be respected because I think we are learning every day what what folks know and how it can help with some of the the problems we're having now especially with climate I'll just say one thing quickly that just is a corollary to what Mike in a day said you know if you look at our our own people's 500 or a thousand years ago very few communities were nearly as nomadic as most people are now I mean my people from East India demlendres people didn't travel 12,000 miles away to inhabit new lands we evolved deeply deeply complex and important relationships with our environment and that had a direct impact on our genetics for example if if you were born in a northern arctic climate and you couldn't process high levels of fat for better or for worse you didn't survive enough to trans you know to transfer your genes on to subsequent generations our bodies developed genetic specificity to specific foods but if we go back even in you know a couple hundred years we can see how the modern food system is completely shifted away from that ancestral diet most of what we eat is just given to us by the supply chain it's not really something that our peoples have developed any sort of relationship with and so as a person living on non in a land that wasn't native to my people you know it's beholden on me to figure out what my place is on this land and how I can bring in my own food traditions and begin to research my own relationship with my family. Thanks Sanjay would anyone else like to add to that if not we have a related question from Lordus Orlando she says thank you so much for sharing your stories with the world and for allowing us to see the struggle being undertaken to reclaim food sovereignty by indigenous nations I was wondering how the public sector can create an enabling environment to support indigenous food systems more systematically are there commonalities missing across reservations this is a day and again apologies we have internet issues we have fires here um yes so one I think there's in our in our program the native agriculture and food systems initiative we have hundreds of projects that we work with all the way from the more traditional indigenous food system like the ornitas and the Haudenosaunee who are using who are like using their traditional planting sticks all the way to the more structured agribusiness where they're creating commercial projects and so systematically buying from indigenous producers helps the entire food chain right so a lot of the people who are producing the products eventually support the traditional food systems and so like whenever there's an opportunity to purchase products from indigenous communities and indigenous people we should and so there's websites where we can find a lot of these indigenous products like the indianagfoods.org there's hundreds of indigenous products that are created by indigenous farms producers and traditional folks all across the nation and the second thing is um you know they're with the new onset of like interest in indigenous foods there's chefs there's um you know communities that are trying to learn about indigenous food ways and what we're seeing is this this mass movement to go gather indigenous foods we're saying wait you can't do that without first learning i mean you can learn about the foods and you can learn about how to gather them but it's part of a larger ecosystem and so you really need indigenous participants and so learning how to gather and hunt and fish the foods that indigenous people eat really require like a larger knowledge base that indigenous people have and so like you can't go gather all of the seaweed you know knowing that maybe in a couple months those indigenous people need it so we have to be really conscious of the food system the not only the foods but the the environment that these foods grow in and who participate and are in relationship with them that's really important so it's one thing to just learn about the food but it's another thing to learn about the the ecosystem and the knowledge behind it thanks very much a day before um turning to each of our speakers to ask them to leave us with a final takeaway message i wanted to see first if um either the ambassador or our FAO colleague yang would like to make any additional comments i'm not sure if uh if they're still connected to us but if they are please feel free to take the floor if there's anything you'd like to to add yang please well thank you tom i think the the movie the documentary does a great job in sewing the the diversity of indigenous foods that are often neglected by the mainstream supply chains food supply chains i mean if we look at the world today one of the most tragic thing that is going on is the over dependence we have for three crops to provide more than 50 of all the kilo calories needs of humanity we are talking of maize uh we are talking of wheat we are talking of rice but when we do research with indigenous peoples on the ground and we analyze within their indigenous food system just to give an example we have indigenous communities in india that only in the first year of sifting cultivation they generate more than 200 food items um many of them are not known they are wild edibles semi wild but if we look if we now uh stop the the discussion and we go to our kitchens and we count every single food item that we have the different types of food items i think most of us we will not go beyond 30 food items 40 food items the most so we are talking of um indigenous systems of knowledge capable of generating more than 200 food items that very often are not being taken into consideration in the mainstream discussions at global level and this is a major loss for humanity and of course for indigenous peoples so this is something that i think that the the movie that um or the documentary that san jai and and colleagues have put together really puts in the front line of the discussion and it's certainly very timely now when the world is preparing the next summit on food systems thank you so much thanks so much um i'd now like to turn to each of our speakers to ask each of you in a minute or two to tell us what your key takeaway message is for our audience and perhaps i could start with you mike yeah i mean i you know for me you know this this movie and this opportunity is about um the importance of of of knowledge right and and not just like current academic knowledge but deep understanding of place and environment and custom and tradition um you know it's you know i think it was elsey who talked about and a day who talked about that that we're not just extracting bits and pieces of knowledge that we're talking about a whole belief system that that that works together in harmony whether it's religion or philosophy or agronomy that these things cannot be separated into distinct rights to be sold off and i think that when you look at indigenous food systems you're looking at a systems approach to in this case feeding our people but more importantly that this is just it's not it's deeper than just producing calories it's about you know a way of living on this earth and about being in um harmony with not only each other but but our other um brethren in the animal world and the plant world and that when we start looking at this in this way there's an opportunity for us to share with the rest of humanity a way of living and being that that makes a lot more sense in the way we're living now excellent thank you mike a day could i turn the floor over to you yes um so one i think it's important to recognize that um in wherever you are indigenous people exist right even that basic concept that indigenous people are here and they exist i don't know how many places i've gone where they said well you know there's no longer indigenous people on these lands or they're whether it be in the city or a rural community like there's this idea that there's still this idea that we don't exist but we're here whether we we're in larger if we've melted into urban populations whether we're um in that lone house that you know used used to be in dland like indigenous people are all around us and it takes a little bit of effort to find them and it takes a lot of effort to listen to us right we have a lot to offer we have a lot to share and i think now more than ever is the world needs to start listening to indigenous people thanks excellent thank you a day elsie can i turn turn it over to you yeah so like adai was saying indigenous people still exist and a lot of people don't seem to recognize that and when they do recognize that they hear these horrifying health disparity statistics or it's always um talking about poverty and all of these i mean very real challenges in our communities but our communities also as the film likes to document hold a wealth of knowledge and really really rich cultures um and so one thing to always keep in mind and is how how these narratives about indigenous people whether they're things you're hearing or um conversations you're having are are framing um are framing indigenous people and i encourage people to look into like a uh progressive narrative versus a declension narrative this has come up with something i talked about in a film class and historically indigenous people are always there's a storyline story arc and then indigenous people end up down here indigenous people are not down here and so it's something really important is to look at and what this film shows indigenous people like this going like this that's the storyline and that's how our communities go that's that's that's what's happening and so it's important to recognize that my second point would be more specific to food sovereignty it's really important to consider that ultimately as with everything this comes down to relationships and relationships and relationality is not some like romanticized word it's something deeply complex and philosophical and scientific all in one and it's um how are it's something when i think about my involvement and i think about other people's involvement is how am i moving with this in integrity how am i honoring my relationship with the land with the buffalo am i being a good relative am i upholding their integrity am i being exploitative that's not my intention are you supporting indigenous communities in an exploitative way um that's not supporting an indigenous community um and how how am i operating to live up to my responsibilities to have good relationships with everyone here be them human or non-human and so that's another thought to consider thank you for having me thanks so much i'll say um sanjay i think it's only appropriate that we have you offer your final words with the audience as a nice bookend as as director of this this great film you know thank you so much tom and thank you to the fao for and mikaela way for helping to host us today i mean i i'm grateful to mike to aday to elsey to the other members of the the cast of gather for teaching me so much more about myself twyla castador who's in the film of the san carlos apache people she developed something called the western apache diet project where she went to elders and asked them if they could remember what was in the pantries of their elders so she went to elders in the early 2010s who were 80 90 years old and asked them if they could remember what their great parents great great grandparents cooked for them and i took that exercise to my own family i went to my mother and father who came from villages in west india and south india respectively and had them remember what their grandparents cooked for them and i got more of a connection to my past from that one conversation through food than i have through going to thousands of family gatherings so many of our own families histories have been trampled on by modernity trampled on by a transactional view of the world and i've learned through my time with elsea aday mike and others that the relationship i need to have with the land i live on with the people that i have relationships with need to be much deeper i need to look at things as as their people always have i'm a steward of the land that i'm on i'm a steward of the relationships that i have and i need to start acting with that responsibility rather than looking at things so self-centeredly i hope that's the message that people non-native people get from gather i hope that the message that indigenous people get from gather is is as deep as the characters in our film and so i i thank you guys for this opportunity thank you sanjay and and thank you elsea aday and mike as well for for helping to tell this story and shine a lot shine a light rather on these critically important issues it's now my pleasure to invite vim linger charon the director of faos liaison office for north america to take the floor again to offer some closing remarks and then to introduce our colleague mikaela way to to wrap up the session for us so without further ado vim linger over to you thank you tom uh for me uh watching the movie and listening to all of your talk i think it's been a pretty much a roller coaster ride of emotions and uh i think uh you know multiple emotions come in it's when you watch the movie and listen to conversations that we've had today it could be sadness anger fear anxiety frustration disgust but at the same time what also comes through is a lot of compassion a lot of love and gratitude and hope and i think those are the positives the four more positive emotions that come especially the emotion of hope is what i really want to take back with me uh for me uh normally for all of us when we host these webinars you know the way we judge the success is uh actually one criteria is how many people registered how many people are you know participated but i think what really mattered to me today was the fact that a 10 year old participated and also that she had the courage and she had the strength to voice her opinion and to put up a question and i think in that one gesture i think the success of today's event can be in a way defined so i really think we had a wonderful conversation i hope it's not the end of the conversation but rather the beginning of a beautiful journey from your head uh to me the biggest fallacy is that the word tradition has always been seen as something backward and the word science has always seen as something forward looking and something modern and i think that is where we are making a mistake uh traditional can be very scientific it's not necessary that tradition is backward and the sooner the world realizes sooner the policymakers realize that tradition can be a very powerful tool in building policies going forward i think we will be able to capture much of uh what we have lost over the generations uh sadly that that realization is not coming through and we are still looking at traditional as being uh backward i i find all of you uh today uh for joining us uh sanjay tom michela elsey mike adai uh yon ambassador uh buber list case and sharing with you your thoughts and your ideas it was fantastic to hear all of you and to learn from all of you and i really hope that this conversation will uh go forward but before i end up i think uh it behaves that i must uh remember and thank uh the dozen tribal nations that thrive along the anacostia and the otomac river watersheds and that's where we are at least fa of north america sitting and working from in fact that we must also acknowledge that washington dc itself uh sits on the ancestral lands of the anacostas and the kathway and the pamanke peoples so at fa and otomaca we are really humbled when we do this uh the conversations around indigenous issues uh we have had a series of meetings actually throughout july and august uh with various organizations and leaders and people from indigenous communities and this is part of that series which all will culminate in october in a uh in a one day seminar uh from where we hope to come out with some sort of a statement uh on indigenous food systems their importance their role uh in in ensuring global food security uh michela has been a consultant with us now for a couple months and she has done a fantastic job in bringing together all of you and bringing together an indigenous community in north america both in u.s and canada and in helping us at fa and north america understand the issues around indigenous peoples so uh hats off to her for her for her fantastic work and also to yawn for his support from rome uh for the wonderful uh team that he has in rome at a headquarter the indigenous peoples unit from and they have been doing a fantastic job supporting us so thank you all of you uh for being with us the panelists the people who have uh asked questions and uh there's a plethora of questions which have not been put forth actually in the q&a and also in the chat box uh which uh the rest are short we will share with everyone and encourage people to write back to you all directly with their thoughts and ideas uh i think this is a recorded session which will obviously be available in public domain for people to follow so uh this will we'll try and keep it all alive that's that's my uh short message and with that let me uh pass the floor to michela for final words uh and final thank you to all of you michela thank you very much director rimlander sharon and i recognize that ambassador bugalisky is still with us and i know that you may have to go to another meeting i just wonder if there's any closing words that you'd like to offer i'm putting you on the spot but i pass it to you i just want to thank uh everyone for joining us today um i think it's so important just to listen and i've been listening very intently and there are there's a great amount of questions and chatting going on so we'll be reviewing that as well i want to thank uh people like rimlander and and yan for the work that they're doing at the feo it's so incredibly important and already even in the short time that i've been here the last couple of years i've seen such a change such an opening and such a thirst when we do hold the the meeting of the friends of indigenous peoples it's amazing the turnout that is that we get for all of our meetings and uh that's not usual because these are all extracurricular you know items um because people realize that the knowledge base uh within the hand of the indigenous is so incredibly important at this juncture so thank you again um we're informing uh me so much and for joining with everyone else today thank you very much thank you so much for joining us ambassador and we're very grateful for your presence today yan i wonder if there's if i may pass it to you if there's any closing remarks that you'd like to make before i wrap up i only have two words to say and i thank you and uh i can send them in spank i can't say them in spanglish or in english but i just meant to be i'm very grateful to be with you and thank you for for the great uh discussion well it's mutual and thank you and thank you adai and mike and elsie and sanjay and thank you for giving us all an opportunity to listen and to hear today and continued on in the movie and i'm grateful that this is a recorded conversation so that those who are unable to join with us today but would still like to listen will have an opportunity to do so and thank you to all the people and the places who are part of this powerful production and for for sharing it with us thank you ambassador bubaliskes for making time and for sharing your statement at the beginning and for being flexible and and uh understanding in that moment of on the outside listening in and thank you tom for moderating and for your continued support since i've been here in january thank you director vimlendra and all of my colleagues at the f a o north america office for your unwavering support and willingness to engage and expand these dialogues and um venture into this conversation with north american indigenous peoples and to prioritize these conversations and thank you to the indigenous peoples unit in roam and to the unwavering leadership of yon fernandez de la erinua and the continued work that the indigenous peoples unit and the group of friends are all leading it's a tremendous honor and great privilege and i also felt tremendous waves of emotion and listening today and i'm grateful to all of you and and as a day and elsie and mike have all said it's it's incredibly important for the world to be listening to the brilliance of indigenous peoples and indigenous peoples community and the knowledge based there and i hope that we can together continue to change the narrative and with the leadership of the indigenous peoples at the front so my deepest respect and gratitude to all of you and i hope that we meet each other again and continue to tend our relationships so one another and all of those around us take good care everyone and thank you so much back to you tom no i don't think i could have said it better myself i think we should end with your words thank you everyone you