 Transitional Justice here on Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel. We have the honor of talking to Stella Pisato. She's a member of PEJ, Project Expedite Justice, and she joins us today from Verona, Italy, which is between Milan and Venice. Am I right Stella? Yes, exactly, and thank you for having me here, Jay. Absolutely. Okay, so what do you do for Project Expedite Justice and how does it involve the title of our show, which is Indigenous People? Yes. So I've been with Project Expedite Justice for a year, a little bit more over a year, and I'm a consultant, mainly at work in the Conservancy and Indigenous People's Rights Project. We've initiated like a research and investigative report about a year ago. I also sometimes work on other projects within Project Expedite Justice. We have projects working on Ethiopia, on Sudan, on South Sudan, on Ukraine. So sometimes I hop around the project when it's needed, but mainly I'm on the Conservancy and Indigenous People's Rights Project. Okay, I want to make a distinction. I'd like to know the difference between, we have interviewed a number of people for Project Expedite Justice, some of them in Europe, some of them in Africa, some of them in Latin America. And they're usually talking about atrocities, usually talking about murder in rural areas, or in cities where government has gone off the side and killed people and there are war crimes involved. So, and I know you have a lot of projects, you meeting Project Expedite Justice, there's a lot of projects, investigations, commissions, maybe prosecutions, lawsuits and all that about those war crimes and atrocities. What's the difference between what those investigators are doing and what you're doing? Okay, so to start with the Conservancy and Indigenous People's Rights Project, it's a very new project. So compared to the other projects that we have, there's something that we've built in a year now starting from scratch, so from researching these crimes, which in our case, in Conservancy and Indigenous People's Rights Project, they're not war crimes per se. Maybe they sometimes can reach the level of crimes against humanity, but it's not like, that is not what we're investigating now. We are looking at land dispossession. So when Indigenous People's are removed forcibly from their lands, we're looking at all the consequences that this land dispossession has on Indigenous People's and we're looking at also gross human rights violations that happen within the protected areas. So torture, arbitrary detention, rape, extradition killings. So we do come across gross human rights violations also in these areas, but that might be the similarity with the other projects. And also these are marginalized communities. They're upon the most marginalized communities in the world, Indigenous People's. So Projects with Justice works with marginalized people around the world that have a difficulty assessing justice. And also this is another similarity with our project, with the new project. Well, that's very important. So what is an Indigenous person? Can you give us just a thumbnail definition of how is that different from an ordinary person? Okay, so there is no like made definition for Indigenous People's that is accepted worldwide. What we do with PHA is that we look at the UN kind of definition. And it was given years ago on a policy paper and basically Indigenous People's are people that leave and were came before other people and they live in ancestral, in their ancestral lands. Sounds, and you mentioned also the dispossession of ancestral lands is a critical piece in defining the problems for Indigenous People. And it sounds like what we're talking about here is that people who are particularly vulnerable, they start off being vulnerable. They start off without having a whole lot of prospects and options in life. Am I right about that? Yes, completely right. So Indigenous People's are already very vulnerable because of the fact that they're so marginalized. And most of the time they're not recognized by their governments. It's also a choice of life, like what they are. But when they're dispossessed from their lands because their attachment to the land is so strong and therefore it's everything, it's their church. So they are so attached to their land that when they're dispossessed, they lose part of their identity. And yes, they lose part basically of their identity when they're dispossessed from their land. Which is really sad. You know, I was thinking as you were describing that Stella of a movie that I saw maybe five years ago by Ai Weiwei, Chinese dissident, activist, human rights person. And this movie was called Human Flow. And it talked about the number of people in this world of ours today who are in camps, forced involuntary camps. They're sort of stateless. They don't know where to go. Nobody wants to take care of them. They've been the victims of one kind of atrocity or another, maybe sort of a group atrocity, if you will. And I guess what I'm thinking, and at the time, at the time the movie told us that the number of people in these camps worldwide was something in the order of 65 million people behind barbed wire who had no prospect of education or any wealth accumulation or even leaving the camps. And they went through generations upon generations in these camps and they died in these camps. There was cemeteries in these camps. It was very tragic. And it was the study of a phenomenon that I didn't know about. And I'm wondering if the dark side of this if you are unable to help an indigenous person, an indigenous group, where do they wind up? And they've been dispossessed from their traditional lands. Nobody helps them. Do they wind up in the camps that Ai Wei Wei was talking about in his movie? Well, they do sometimes end up in refugee camps when they're dispossessed. But what I heard the most from indigenous peoples and other organization that work in the field, indigenous people will protest till the end till they're killed to stay in their land. And this is something very inspiring and powerful that they have in their nature. So, yeah, they might end up forcibly in some other situations that they're not choosing. But they will try, they're trying till the end. That's why there are so many scandals, for instance, with the Ma Zai in Tanzania of people that are getting killed because they're trying to go back to their ancestral lands. So they're fighting, they're fighting all over the world. Oh, they're fighting to get back to where they were removed from, yeah. Exactly. The Ma Zai is famous for that. It's really very tragic in Tanzania. So what can you do as a member of BEJ, making these investigations, writing these reports, what can you do in fact to help them? Okay, so what we do and what we're trying to do in the best case scenario, obviously, is to, well, first, we understood the situation. We mapped out what is happening, why it's happening, how it happens in different areas. And now on the next phase, in the next phase of the project, we're trying to dive in one country that we are in the process of choosing. And then there, we also are in the process of making connections with people on the ground that know their way around the park and also know how to talk to indigenous peoples or local communities. And from there, then we would try to map the evidence that we can gather. We usually go for fresh evidence. So atrocity that have happened within a year, within a year or two. And then depending on what we can get, we will either make, we will either pursue sanctions or help in domestic cases or other human rights bodies. But most importantly, we first need to listen to what the communities want because if we go there and we say, we want to take your case to court and maybe that's not what they want, but maybe they want to learn how to do it themselves, then PJ will teach them, will help them build the capacity to do that. So we will start from what the community wants. PJ has a community-based approach in all of its project and we will copy paste it to Conservancy and Indigenous Peoples Rights Project. Well, part of that is to build trust with the people that you seek the information from. And they could be from a completely different culture. They are not from Verona usually, right? They're from undeveloped countries, the undeveloped areas in Africa, Latin America maybe. So my question to you is how do you build that trust? Well, how do you approach them? Especially when you maybe you can't get to them physically and you'll have to deal with them through the internet or email or message, text message, who knows what? How do you build trust with somebody who's far away in a different world? So connecting with them was actually one of the main challenges we faced at the beginning of the project, but also now in terms of infrastructures and also internet connection for them, it's really hard to connect to something if they live in the forest obviously. So we had issues like connecting with them and we tried to use maybe different kinds of communication, maybe just a text, going back to your questions. Time, you need time to build trust. You need to show that you're there for them. So you need to show that you're available. And also it's important from the start not to build expectations too high because they're suffering a lot, they're traumatized, they've lost everything, they've lost their lands. So we say also that this is where we can go if we have this, this and that. So yeah, being truthful to them and transparent helps building trust and also showing that we are there for them and we care. You talk to the phone or use Zoom meetings like this one to have a face-to-face discussion or at least a voice discussion. Yes, we did. And I mean, at least for me, it was very... Yeah, it was particular. It was very special to talk with them. Also very intense because also maybe their way of talking and of speaking, expressing their thoughts. It's different in my perspective from maybe how I would say something or how you would say something. And what comes out of these conversations is really their attachment to the land and that they want to be recognized more. They want to be part of the decision-making process when it concerns their land and they want their knowledge as Indigenous people to be used and recognized because they know, they've experienced that that's the best way of doing conservation. So that's something that they really stress when we talk to them that they want to be... And they have to be the main character in display. Yeah, well, there's so many questions that come to mind about this. When we spoke earlier, you mentioned that you, generally speaking, you talk English with them. But not everybody does speak English in some of these places. Because when you have a language or even if you have the person on the other end is able to speak a kind of rudimentary English, but you have a problem in really articulating what you want to say. And likewise, they have a problem in articulating what they want to say. And maybe they don't speak English as well as some local Indigenous dialect or Swahili. Is that appropriate in the Masai area in Tanzania? I don't know. But, you know, a language, an African language, for example, that is not English. What do you do? So we have... Oh, usually they have translators. And we talk through translators with them. For instance, in Nepal, we talked with an organization of Indigenous women. And the chair of the organization is an Indigenous woman. And to talk with her, she invited an interpreter that was also part of the organization. But that's usually how we try to solve these issues. I also most of the people we talk to in Africa, they speak French. For instance, in Cameroon or in DRC. And we have colleagues that speak French. So in that case, it's easier because we can solve the problem internally. You're operating now, your investigations, your discussions with people are in, what, Africa? Does that extend to Latin America? In places in Asia? Yeah, so for the exploratory report, we covered a wide area, a wide geographical area. It was mainly Africa, so Uganda. I'm just naming a few. Uganda, Tanzania, DRC, Cameroon. And then in South Asia, India and Nepal. Oh, you mentioned Nepal, yeah. Yeah, and Nepal. So we are now diving into, let's say one of these, or more than one of these countries and others that we are discovering through talks with researchers, anthropologists, experts in the field. And every day there's something new, something that we say, oh, we should research that as well. And there is a lot. But we haven't covered Latin America yet. Talking to people about very personal things, about their feeling about their land and the frustration it goes with being really thrown off their ancestral lands. I'm sure that's for a variety of reasons, all of them unfair and trying to help them develop some hope in the future and a life for their families and all that. Why are you doing this, Bella? This is pretty demanding and I'm sure it's emotionally demanding. Why are you doing this? It is emotionally demanding. So to answer, I see two sides of the same coin and the coin being PJ for let's say now. On the one side is very fulfilling. You feel that you are doing something and you are helping this very marginalized communities, these victims of atrocities, of rape, of torture. And on the other side, you also feel that you're never doing enough and there is maybe a sense of frustration sometimes because, yeah, these things keep happening. It's very hard to stop the cruelty of the human being. So you will really face every day with catastrophes, with human catastrophes. And well, what I hope is not to become detached while working on this in the long run, but always having like a sensitivity towards it. Definitely like in this job, you have to learn to also live your own life because it's different. I'm from Verona. I went to university. I'm here talking with you now. I will travel and these people have lost everything. So sometimes you also make a comparison and you can say we really deserve this but then you talk with other people and it's easier. It's nice to talk about this with colleagues and people because they some understand very well and they're also grateful to you for doing this. What did you study in the university, in Verona or anywhere else? And you told me that you're taking a master's right now. Have you finished that already? And what areas of study have you been engaged in to qualify you for this very difficult work? I finished high school in Italy and right after that I moved to other countries in Europe. I did my bachelor's in International European Law in Kroningen. Very hard to pronounce. It's a small student city in the north of Poland, of the Netherlands. So I did my bachelor's there in International European Law and I spent six months in Southeast Asia well initially I had to be in Hong Kong but because of the protests of 2019 after a month of university I had to leave Hong Kong because of the political situation and then I moved back to Kroningen after traveling in South Asia and I just finished my master actually today. Congratulations. We all congratulate you. Thank you. It was a very hard journey, it was a very tough journey especially with the pandemic. And yeah, I did my master's in International International Criminal Law in Amsterdam. Wow, that's pretty ambitious. Do you have a lot of friends and classmates and colleagues who feel the same way about this that you do? I mean, are you part of a new generation in Italy or in Europe or really anywhere in the world which is dedicated to helping people, indigenous people and others who've been the victims of human rights violation? I think there have always been people like us in the past that wanted to do something for justice and for humanity otherwise we wouldn't have some institutions like the International Criminal Court and other human rights bodies. But I think maybe now it's becoming stronger the sense that we have to do something and that climate change for different wars around the world and people are taking studies about it maybe a few years ago my master didn't exist and now it exists so that's a change and that says something because we have the possibility to choose to study these and it's really niche but there are people that do it. So you must look down the road Stella and see what a career, a life expressing these interests would be like. How do you see your life unfolding? Will you make this your life's work? Will you continue to travel and talk to people in developing countries and be as fervent and passionate or do you think you might move on to something else? You mentioned something before that was interesting that you didn't want to lose the passion here but isn't there a progression in work like you're doing where you get to be management and you get to be an administrator and as such you don't necessarily deal directly with the people as much as you used to. What about that? What is the career pattern and is there a time when you will be an administrator, a manager and not have so much contact with the people that you talked to in these investigations? So what I really like about PHA is that it's a very small organization and also the people at the top for instance Cynthia or... You're referring to Cynthia Tai, the founder of PHA who lives in Kona although she travels a lot. Yeah, she does travel a lot. They're constantly in contact with these people maybe even more than me sometimes. So that's what I really like about this organization because it's small and it gives everyone the possibility to directly feel what's happening on the ground. In terms of career path, like for now I just started, I just graduated and I think this is the place where I have to be now to also learn and decide what to do in the future and if it will happen for me to have the possibility of growing, why not? I will definitely take it as a possibility. I know that you have colleagues in various countries, various cultures, various nationalities. It's interesting how PJ has a global network of people who are like you and motivated in the same way. Just my limited knowledge of it, I know they're in Latin America, they're in many places in Africa and Asia and they're in Europe because a lot of the actions, so to speak, is in Europe, the cases, the lawsuits, the court process, what have you, and of course in Ukraine as well and that's all totally appropriate. But have you met them? You talked to them? Have you physically said hello to them? Do you get around and meet your colleagues? I was actually very lucky and I had the chance to meet Cynthia, Nikola, Sisman, Boje, Arva and other team members because we had a conference in The Hague. We participated of PJ at the World Justice Project which is a conference that lasted for three or four days and while Cynthia was traveling a lot, she made a stop in The Hague. Nikola was on a mission and they stopped in The Hague. I was in Amsterdam, other PJ team members were also in Amsterdam for studying so we did have a few meetings but they were really rare but I'm happy I had the chance to meet them personally in a year of seeing them in the screen. Yeah, yeah. I'd like to ask you if you could sort of address American young people who might be interested in this thing or if not interested because they don't know about it, interested in general in helping people deal with violations of human rights of one kind or another at various places in the world. In a way, Ukraine has woken a lot of people up about the need to protect the liberal world order, the need to help people who are under attack, disadvantaged and so. What would you say to an American college graduate? What would you say to a master's candidate or a PhD candidate in social sciences to encourage that person to join organizations like PEK and to travel and reach out and help people in various difficult places to cope with a world that has all too much violations of human rights? That's a very difficult question because also I think everyone reacts in a different way to maybe what I think. But for me what woke me up is that is understanding that this is my history. I'm living in this timeframe in the world and there is so much cruelty. There has always been a lot of cruelty in the world and if you can do something to either be more aware of what's happening around you or something to kind of mitigate the cruelty of some human beings, you should do it. That's what I would say. One other thing is we're running out of time and I do want to ask you about this. We have heat waves. We have supply chain issues. We have economic issues in various places including Europe certainly including Italy. We have difficulties in getting around and flying around. There have been a lot of articles about how big American airlines and global airlines have canceled a lot of flights and so forth. At the same time we hear about heat waves in Europe and in the U.S. and I wonder, I think it's appropriate for me to ask you how this affects your work because it's going to affect people in Tanzania. It's going to affect all of these areas where indigenous people have lost their ancestral homeland. It's going to affect you getting around to them and them getting around to you. It's going to affect a lot of things that are going to affect you. It's going to affect a lot of things and I wonder how you see that going forward. Climate change is not going to slow down until the world figures out how to deal with it and the world hasn't figured that out yet. So, Queery, how does climate change play in everything we've been discussing? I was talking with an activist from Chad and she said that there is this lake in Chad where basically there is no more water and when she was a kid it was full of water. And this now, like the scarcity of resources due to climate change, it leads to conflicts within communities that maybe didn't fight like a couple of years ago to get some water from a nearby lake. So I think it will affect our job because there will be more and more conflicts to get resources because we have less and less water or drinkable water at least. And if there are fires, then we lose wildlife, we lose trees, we lose forests. So I think the worst impact among many others of climate change on our job is really that it's going to increase the number of conflicts. Yeah, that's sad when you think about it, but at the same time I'm glad you're there doing what you do. And I want to express on my behalf and the people that I know who are sensitive to this, thank you for your service to humanity. Thank you for saying this, for seeing it, and also for giving the space to us to talk here. Della Pisato, the kind of person we want to have everywhere, not just in Verona. Thank you so much, Della. Thank you for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.