 So thank you all for attending today. We have The second edition here the second gathering of the indigenous and newcomers chat and I'm going to welcome you all Officially and in my culture My name is crystal crystal and indigenous crystal. We're gone. Oh, mommy when you need to walk the gun And I'm going to bring a little bit of sage here got my sage in my abalone shell and just gonna smudge and help put some good energy and some good thoughts and asking for spiritual Support and wellness it for us as we start off on this chat. So I'm smudging you all You can smudge my my virtual group here Thanking thanking the ancestors for being with us today. So Again, this is the indigenous and newcomer friendship chat there and I'm Chris And I'm the indigenous program coordinator at Kairos and I'm also an omeni when he initially not a clay from the first nation and And In this gathering we're going to just All where if we're not If we're not the the speaker we're gonna ask that you keep your microphone on mute and This time just to kind of do something a little bit differently Adriana had a great suggestion about Changing your your screen name to include your location So that's something fun if you don't know where to find that if you go on our participant list you can actually right-click and Change your name rename yourself So just welcoming everyone together and again thanking you for taking the time out of all of the different Web gatherings you could have chosen today. I'm we're very happy that you chose this one and I'll let Alfredo talk a little bit more about the background of this initiative Sure. Thanks very much Chris. Oh, and thanks everybody. Of course, we're joining us recognize that as Rick was saying things and otherwise everybody will be you know, like a Staff meeting and the difference being is that we're probably going to be talking about things that we don't necessarily talk about You know, not even in the surface, you know as staff So I won't go into too much detail in terms of the you know, the indigenous newcomer friendship initiatives And why are we doing this in the sense that most of you already know and you know Hearing from us, you know something that we've been doing for quite a number of years now We met with Adriana You know prior to this meeting and last week as well to talk about what what this was and so also Thank you to Adriana for for joining us But the idea obviously is to Find some common ground and talk about, you know, what you know, why are we doing this? What is it in common between indigenous and newcomer peoples living here in Turtle Island? What is what is it that we can you know, learn from one another and to Collaborate with one another. How can we support one another? So I really enjoy crystal intro the auction in terms of this margin and Asking the creator and then our ancestors to be with us and ask for support because that's what this is all about And we agreed that we were going to do this introduction very short So we have more time for Adriana and each and every one of you to actually ask questions So I'm gonna leave it there and and and the other partner with that with us here in This indigenous newcomer friendship initiative is Connie. So Connie anything? Thank you still Fredo and just to echo, you know, our welcome to Adriana for joining us this afternoon and to all Colleagues who are joining us today. I have a very unstable internet connection. So often, you know, I see people saying so if I if you see me talking but not hearing what I'm saying It's because my computer or my internet connection is Yeah, really really great to gather up these different Justice pillars of Kairos and to come together in this initiative and I'm gonna introduce a little bit more in depth now But I'll leave the more in depth Introduction to Adriana herself, but I was really fortunate to Just happen to meet the wonderful Adriana in February when I had Participated in a Seed Keeper Gathering in Aqua Sosney Island so that's the Haudenosaunee community which borders New York the Ontario and New York border there and We we did a little bit of carpooling we did a little bit of hours of talking because that's the ground we covered and We spent a great day together with another group of people and I was really fortunate to be able to Witness Adriana and her skill set in action and she's a very Talented and capable artist Who is actually drawing in social justice work? And that's a really cool combination to me personally and the more I learned about her work The more it seemed that she would be a great guest to have in this space. So Adriana I'll I'll let you Take it away Sure So my name is Adriana Contreras I was born in in Colombia and I moved to the West Coast here Coastal ish territories when I was 15 I moved with my whole family. Fortunately, we were a few of the families that jumped in on the opportunity to move to Canada when Y2K was coming and the world was gonna end and they needed a lot of computer engineers and My dad is a train community engineer. So that gave us like a pathway to to come here But when we arrived none of us spoke English none of us knew where we were coming like it was a bit of a Of a wild ride for the first few years um as Crystal was saying we met in a pretty amazing way because that trip to Ottawa to do that work with the seatkeepers network was my first kind of like freelance gig On my own after like leaving my full-time job to work independently as a graphic recording and Illustrator, so I'll tell you more that afterwards, but um, I think a lot of the conversation will Will be around land and like recognizing where we stand and those movements in in From one place to another and like how that allows us to maybe go deeper inside of who we are Um, but also like what what those broken connections are um So I'm gonna share my screen because I have like a few images to kind of get us kind of um Um, I don't know round it into here, but also somewhere else So I'll just share it now Can you maybe able to see that? yes so, um, I was mentioning earlier to Cristal and Afrilo when we were just Meeting before to make sure everything was working that Um, I had the opportunities to sit down and look at the map of Colombia again I haven't done this in a long long time probably since I was in elementary school And realizing like my misconceptions of where some things are in my brain and where they are in this map um And so I was born here in this area Uh in Bogota the capital city, which is in um in the mountain Is a flat mountain? Super high up in altitude. I think it's 27 2700 meters from the sea level Um, and this is where I lived most of my until I was 15 Uh, and my dad comes from this area over here on the coast And he moved from here to Bogota when he was seven years old. So, um for me this I never thought of it about like about being migration, but it but it is internal migration and it was um, it was something that was decided by my uncle but my by my grandpa um In part because there are more opportunities in the city, but also maybe some untold stories of being violence um, Colombia unfortunately has been um dealing with civil war for many many many decades And it presents itself Uh, differently depending where you are in the country. Um It's a it's a country that has a lot of richness in Natural resources a lot of richness in food production We have access to the ocean Um, and it's also very culturally rich But also it's kind of like a like a a gift that also occurs Because there's been a lot of intervention Because people want to get to these resources and um, so this is kind of like where where I Where I find myself like where I'm from and where I call home even though I don't go there as often Um, the last time I was there was last year and it had been 10 years since I had been there And it had been More than 25 years since I had been in this region. The last time I was there was when I was eight years old um So I just wanted to show a little bit of the places that Um that are kind of close to my heart. This is like the back alley A window like what you see from the window of my one of my grandma's house. She doesn't She passed away many years ago and the house stayed in the family I think now it's is not longer in the family So this was like my last chance to to experience this feeling of looking out that window and seeing those styles and Um, not much had changed when I went back See um And this is just to show like the distance that that I've traveled A few times maybe like through Toronto and that one um And this is also in and so I'll I guess I'll go back a little bit this one here It's not Bogota itself. It's a small town called chia, which is the name of the Of the goddess moon in the muisca culture. So all this land is is muisca land um but Is not a lot of there's not a lot of knowledge Unless or at least I didn't grow up with a lot of that knowledge I kind of stumbled upon it and And you I feel that I really have to go and dig deep to be able to learn more even though I live in in that land um This this here is the facade of the um Of one of the Neighborhood houses pretty much or like the house of culture like la casa de la cultura Where I spent a lot of time and when I went back I saw the mural again It has always been there since I can remember and it has a lot of indigenous iconography And all around and the even the new library they built and It's again like there is like it's they're like Little glimpses of the culture that is there but not like a deep understanding or even a deep respect um at least not in the Place where I the people that I was That I grew up with And this is an image of bogota And this is another one of those images just glimpses of of Of just walking around and like situating myself when I when I went back And the next few are going are going to be images of when I went to the north park So where my dad was born and grew up. So this is an image of cartagena And this was taken um in one of the In one of the walls of the city It's um, it's a city that is a murallada It has like a huge wall all around because It's by the ocean and it was a way of protecting the the colony But it was also the part of this of the country or the part of the of the colonial Kingdom in in latin america where a lot of this late trade happened um, so it's a very complex Feeling being there because I love the place and it's so beautiful Architecture wise and even like the plants and Just being there is beautiful, but it's also very conflicting because you know that there is a lot of suffering that happened there and then I had a few more but they're not there and then Yeah, and I think I think I'll I'll leave it there. We can maybe start diving deep inside Of the the conversation we were having but something I love about this photo and I think it's the connecting it to Do maybe things we're seeing right now during this era of covet is Nature taking over in this case. I don't think it's specifically that what is happening But it just reminded me of that as well. There's places where Where plants are growing through the cracks and kind of taking back that space that was That was imposed on them Yeah that must have been really uh Impa just really intense to go back after such a long time and then you also on top of that have You know A different perspective because you've you've grown and you've aged and in that different kind of way that happens um Yeah, do you want to talk a little bit about that and what what you know Unlock a little bit of what that trip was like for you. Mm-hmm. Um So Maybe I'll just I'm gonna have some water um It took me a while to decide to go to go back for many reasons But I went back with my cousin who have been living here in Vancouver for a few years and we just wanted to To reconnect and do something together And when I gave her the dates of when I was planning to go She told me that it was carnival time in another town nearby and she like we have to go We've never been there and he was a way of connecting with Part of our family history from our dad's My dad and her dad's past that we did and We haven't really had a chance to really Dive deep into I'm I'm having something on my throat. Sorry No problem Yeah, that was something that we um had talked a bit about having such a unified relationship with and a lot of um A lot of people when they come to Canada and they learn about Indigenous like First Nations people history and Inuit and Metis You know and I believe I said something similar in the last web chat where you know, it's really those That that's a common theme for Indigenous people is to have this impact of colonialism this shared reverberation through generations and You know so much that you don't even know This often happens that when I'm talking I talk really fast and then my throat gets dry and many times it's like also Something that has to do with um I think it's like probably something somatic like something in the body that is like then it's to come out so I might need to take a little A little break and just grab something for my throat if that's okay. Yeah One second. I'll be back. I'm sorry. Sure. No problem. So just what we were telling In the chat a little bit if you have any questions for Adriana Um, please do feel free to to put it into the chat And we'll be sure to get to to those questions as soon as we can. I see Gabby's got one Or a really great talking point there that we can kind of touch on It was neat to to meet Adriana in that setting for the Seed Keepers Gathering because we both brought this really different Kind of we're both compelled in different ways to get involved for different reasons, but when it Kind of gets back to the same down to the to the to the brass knuckles if you will it's about food sovereignty and that autonomy and You know how as indigenous people It doesn't really seem to matter where you are. You're still struggling to get those those basics and Whenever whatever you're good Adriana feel free to jump in. Uh, Gabby has a point here that she asked that you maybe touch on Give you a you see the the chat there again You're muted your your your microphone. Yeah, I'm uh, I'm not sure I can access the chat right now from where I am Oh, there we go. Okay. Yeah Um, so something that I was mentioning to to Alfredo and crystal earlier is that for me This trip to Colombia was very different because I was in a way a little bit hyper aware of trying to find like glimpses of like that indigenous connection because Like it took me leaving Colombia coming to Canada Spending many many years here also not understanding where I was situated here in in this land And then starting to make those connections to then go back to Colombia and start to look for them so when I was driving Around or even after I went to uh on a hike with my cousin I would end up in places where I would see the entrances of cabildos, which Are then the indigenous communities and Alfredo was telling me earlier Which I didn't notice that it's kind of is it's not like a reservation, but it's a similar kind of imposed structure um In in Latin America. So those are sections where where these communities were Were displaced and put into these locations away from the lands where they had Inhabited for so many years So it just made me realize how Like that I there's so much that I was that I've been missing for so long that I still need to learn and that those are I think that those are relationships that kind of arrive When when they arrive, I don't know like um like the fact that Cristina and I met Going to this gathering and we spend like two or more hours in the car talking to each other Like those are things that you can't just I don't know coordinator going to a class and learn like those are just relationships that that are formed with time and and I just I just wish that more people Get that opportunity and I think that's why when this invitation came came up to to be part of this conversation I think it just I just hope that new people that are arriving and even people that have been here for a long time like I have um have opportunities to break those barriers to connect because um Like in my case, I I don't really know like those threats of Of history because a lot of those records are not non-existent So I know roughly where Where my mom is from the city, but I don't know what else happened before that and then from my dad, I know where he's from and I don't know much of what happened before that and I don't know who like if I were to do A search for ancestry. I don't know how far back we would go either and there is um Again, like the the records In the churches have a specific Agenda and they have a specific reason for being there and maybe names were changed like if there is a if I've always thought that in in my family. There's for sure some Some connection with the slave trade But then there is no like how are we going to find those those records and then After many many years we started to realize that there is also a strong connection with with syria and the middle east and turkey and Like what are those connections and and then it started to to be coming to a really Really complex Benefit from are the cost of people in columbia suffering from the armed armed complex suffering from social injustice uh suffering from From total exploitation and many of those things um Are because canadian companies are there mining companies oil extraction and it's very difficult so Maybe i'll jump to this slide here um last year in August i was invited by um A good friend a family friend who is involved in the columbian truth commission. I'm covering the image with the chat With the columbian truth commission and um What is happening there is that i don't know if many of you are aware columbia sign a peace treaty between the government and the guerrillas at the park and part of the process of making this um Peace agreement go forward is having a commission that will search for the truth And what is special about the truth commission with columbia is that they are Making a huge effort to also include the voices of people that are exiled So there are groups working in europe uh all over latin america in the us here in canada and um The idea is to be able to get as many testimonials as possible and to to get To get those stories that are often lost because people leave and they just maybe don't want to talk about what happened um So this is um a recording that I did um Based on many other recordings that I did live at events Uh with the commissioner who was here and also with the group of volunteers that are working here in bc and Some of the things that they that that kind of stuck to me a lot is this Is this idea that we need to open space for the for space and time for the stories that haven't been told so family stories and I think every time I read this I situate myself like with my history and then I start to think about other people in columbia But then I think about all the other immigrants here that might have that same situation So the younger generation that doesn't know what really happened to their parents and why they're here and then I think about residential school survivors And their kids and what the stories haven't been told and what have been told and what is the repercussion of that And then another big part of it Of this whole process is the idea of joining all those pieces of of a collective truce because we all hold a little bit Of of of that knowledge or our own personal experience that no one can tell us that is right or wrong Like it's our own and we can and we can share it Am I putting them together and then we can start to understand all of those patterns and and like make visible things that That are not so visible and also things that we might feel that are That are only unique to us and then we start to see the patterns that are also happening to more and more people And it's it's a difficult process The truth commission doesn't have a lot of time to to pick up this This testimonials which is a bit sad Um They have we have two more months to complete the work So my my my work has been mostly being able to produce our graphic pieces and Help to get the word out that way Uh, but we found that there is still a lot of fear because even though the peace process was Went through and the agreement was signed Violent hasn't ended. It has transformed into something else It is very difficult for anyone to really feel that they want to go forward and and Until their stories even though there are guarantees of like Things being secured like this information is not going to be shared publicly unless people want to and all of this Privacy is very big but people are still not There people are not comfortable um sharing these stories and and I think that what I find difficult is that All these processes that should take longer and that are not I mean they cannot be put into like a time frame that is so tight Because they are adjusted to institutional timelines Then they we lose opportunities. We lose opportunities for the connections that need to happen because if you're dealing with a conflict that lasted Who knows how many decades like since the 40s until now like a few years Is not going to allow people to really heal Um But maybe it's a starting point but we've been talking a lot about uh with the truth commission of What happens after like this document is is written what happens after and I think that is um I draw a lot of parallels with With the truth and reconciliation here as well. So that's why it's it's been very Yeah, it's been it's been a lot of reflection and a lot of like just time for thinking and And uh and asking questions. I think more than anything all of these processes just Are about asking questions, but but for me it's also understanding like what What it means to be situated in a specific place and and what that can allow and what also it it doesn't allow Yeah Yeah, I don't know if there are questions from anyone or reflections Well, I just want to touch quickly on you mentioned, you know that healing part and And also looking at this graphic recording that you've done You know, I personally and a lot of folks do they feel very strongly that art is a healing um expression and a healing release a healing of communication of representation and um, I I'm really struck by the beauty of this piece that and I know you have another version in Spanish and it's you know When I look at it and how beautifully balanced it is and and how it really catches the eye and it really engages the person looking at it to To draw them in to read and to to consider for a moment You know some some people can't pull this off with a graphics You know where it's like an auto paste Into shapes and things like that and you and I've been really lucky to see you work freehand just doing this beautiful stuff so I I can just imagine the care that went into crafting this piece, but is there Having this kind of relationship with art and A particular role where you're recording people and their expressions Do you want to talk a little bit about that how how that's been a You know a healing component, but also component of your activism um, so I think art itself Was kind of what got me through the first years of moving to Canada um in high school I I signed up for our classes right away and It was like a belief to be able to be in a space where I could communicate without having to worry about the language Itself like it was a different type of language. It was a visual language and it was very free and I think that my art teachers in high school kind of got me through things I'm still very close to to the teacher I had in grade 12. We're still talking often and exchanging ideas and And I always tell her that like her her Her believing that I could do something really made a big difference because when you move to a new place And you don't have the language and also you don't have like maybe the financial resources to do a few things like the classes here and there or Just even situate yourself. It it it creates a lot of at least for me I don't I'm just talking for my personal experience It created a lot of insecurities on what I could do And I was very attached to my school in Colombia like I The first few years living here. I would dream about going to school there And I would like walk through the hallways and like try to go back back to To my to the place that I knew because it was a school that I went to for for so long That from grade two until grade nine So it was quite the shock like I think school really like shook me a lot when I when I moved here so having that connection to the arts made a huge difference and And then I decided to go to university to do sociology But I I switched after the first year to do the the arts program and it's a few the Simon Fraser University and After that I Well that opened up the spaces for a lot of things university opened up the spaces for for many things like at university It was the first time that I actually heard about residential schools in an anthropology class High school. They never mentioned this And then I was also doing latin-american studies at the same time. So that's when I learned about um the coup in Chile and My teacher also one of those teachers that that now is a friend. She's she was exiled from Chile because of of the coup and and she just Showed me a whole different world of what latin-america was and so it was also a Going back to To questioning like all the things that I learned before But it was also but it was always through the arts. So it was through literature through cinema uh through visual arts um, so That has been my connection then to to my community here in bc Um, I've worked in the arts for many years. I worked as a gallery administrator An arts programmer for dance I've done a lot of marketing promotion. So like letting people know why the arts matter And a few years ago through many Like interesting connections One of my ex-co-workers told me that she was working as a with graphic recording and illustration and told me that there was an opportunity for a scholarship And I applied and I thought it was one of those scholarships where you go and like You do a class and then you go away and nothing happens and And it wasn't like that I did my my training and then I went home and then a few weeks later Sam brad who was my my mentor for this work He started to like ask me like so. Have you been practicing? I want to give you work Let's like let's get started and it took me a long time to To to feel that I could do it but then 2019 in in june, um, he told me okay. You're ready. You're gonna go do this recording for the my my grand workers forum and what is amazing about the work is that We're especially with um, we're often pair with things that he knows we That are close to to our understanding to our experience and that we can do well because we connect and we can listen so this work is a lot about Yes drawing but it's also about listening and being present and and understanding Understanding the essence of the conversations and For me it's been a way of reclaiming my own artistic practice because After doing the university degree and having to find work I started to work more in admin positions where I was supporting a lot of artists But not doing my own work. So this has been a way of going back to my work But also staying connected with all the artistic community um, and then I guess another aspect of of arts has been movement and dance and like that embodied uh presence and I've been very lucky to to be able to connect with a lot of indigenous artists based here and And I start to see the connections with Yeah, we've talked a lot about connections of land and food and dance and and song related to to To that understanding of our connection to land um and where we are Adriana, it says Cheryl in Toronto. I was going to ask you if indigenous art Especially in the west coast because the west indigenous nations In the west coast the art as you know is so incredible so powerful and I wanted to know how that was impacting you but i'm i'm curious to know If you recall the first time that you encountered this art and what your first impressions were Um, oh That's a hard one It's it's it's difficult because I can say that maybe the first times I encountered them were Maybe at the museums like museum of anthropology But if I go even farther behind like Dc ferries like they like gift shops, but then but then you think about like What is that really like is it? What is it? Like is it commodified or is it like who made this? But uh, but I think that's probably what it is like souvenirs was probably the first time I encountered any any Not maybe artwork, but iconography and But work itself. I think it's been more It's been more through dance, but I do I do recall something that I was gonna mention earlier and I forgot that um I think it took me about 10 years to really feel that Feel that I wanted to stay in Vancouver or like I wanted to stay on the west coast Because I always had like these ideas like I'll go live somewhere else or I'll move back to Colombia Or maybe I'll go live in Spain like all this and I think that's also just youth. You always want to go somewhere else, but but um But my dad started to do my daddy also paints. He's he's an artist. He's a painter and a photographer On top of his work as an engineer. He he's made it very Like like he he has dedicated a lot of his time to doing that and he started to do a series of paintings where he would take aerial maps of the city and and start to trace The roads and start to trace like the the way the city was established and then Looking at indigenous um drawings and patterns and seeing where those connections were and it was more like an experimentation and an exploration but Through his work and through his like going deep into the maps Was where I was like, okay. This is where I have to stay like this is it like He did that work and then I started to think this morning when I was thinking about that is that um When we first moved here the first few weeks my dad would sit down with a map every night to study the city And he wanted to know where we were and and I was like it was so strange to me I'm like, where are you? I'm just studying the map and and so like the fact that 10 years later He would do those paintings using those maps and those aerial views It was like he was dating the way for me to to feel that yeah, like I now understand why why we're here and why why I have to let go like Of my need to go somewhere else because I think one of the big issues that I found is that And and I hear I have this conversation with a lot of friends that move here and they're like, oh, there's not a lot of Architecture. There is not a lot of history in this place. Everything is turned down and built again. I'm like, yeah, but that's that's just I don't know a Eurocentric way of seeing things because it's not about That is about the land Like it's about going out and like feeling what's here. So if we're trying to come here trying to recreate something else like trying to recreate a colonial city and like walk around like What we're used to then we're not going to appreciate what's here and I think that's what happened Yeah, it doesn't really answer your question so much. Yeah. No, that was a beautiful answer I love it. And I mean, I'm originally from Vancouver in that I was born there and lived there for a great deal of my life before Moving here But I always am puzzled or thinking about, you know, the settler and the settler experience and this ease of picking up and moving wherever and Think of I mean generally the indigenous perspective as such the important connection to land and Certainly in BC The land is very very important extremely important. But I just loved what you said about recognizing that Um, there's more to to the place than just the buildings Yeah Yeah, and and recently like The past few weeks have started to also Start to uncover things from here that I was like, oh, that's like heartbreaking but There is um, there is a statue in gas town of this man gassy jack who had a bar And like it's place that you go and take photos and you walk around gas town And you take your family there when they come to visit and like my family doesn't come here very often because of visas They don't get to travel But they're very few that have been able to come and visit like we walk through gas town and then I saw this video shared recently by An indigenous artist that I respect very much and she was walking through gas town and talking about gassy jack and the fact that that He had these bars where all these People of these settlers will come and get drunk and Like the relationship of of alcohol and violence against indigenous women and that specific area in In Vancouver And that displacement and then the other day I was seeing a photo of another area here at Granville Island where I spent a lot of time and Where a lot of the traditional fishing happened and then it became this industrial park and now it's a cultural space but That displacement is still there. So it's a place I love very much But I also like now I go there and I'm not gonna be able to not think about this and then two years two years ago for the first time after like 20 years of doing here. I went to the peony the pacific exhibition fair I never I had never gone and I went with my family and we walked around and it was fun and then two or three weeks No tour. Yeah, like maybe a month after I went to see a play by one of my co-workers That was about the Japanese internment camps and they happened in that place Um where the animals are now this displayed during the exhibition fair. So I walked to the place and I walked in I saw the play the play was like super Like it was site specific and very much to the core and the story was about A sister and two sisters and and one of the sisters had a baby and my sister had just had a baby So like it was very personal And it just kind of like completely broke me and and it's it's those Like so many layers in the city. So for me, it's become really and like interesting to to walk around and and trying to find All those stories that they aren't told ones like we have the statues And like we have Cassie jack and that's there but like what's underneath those cobalt stones What else happened there? And I think we're just starting to to do that here in the city. So there is a festival called binds festival Um that is based in parks and the person that runs it She wants to like unearth those stories. So the parks like what are the parks like who gets to enjoy them now? What was there before? And and and I think those are the the type of Artistic connections where I'm drawn to now where it's it's beyond What we can share visually, but what are all the questions and I think for me is just always about like the ongoing questions like digging deep and and like looking at who's not there. Why are they there? and Yeah, yeah, because I get a lot of comments about Vancouver being so new and like such a new city and you're like, well, no The land is being here for like as long as everywhere else. It's just that we don't have those stories Or at least like the people that tell me that like we just don't have access to the stories And I mean we don't we shouldn't have to have it like it's not something we can just go and grab it like they will arrive to us if if it feels right and if it's If it's for us to get those teachings, but but it's it's about approaching the land with respect, I think Yeah Wow, Adriana, you've you've really brought us to a really natural place but you know where we we think about art and like I mentioned before For myself and especially because we have that sociology kind of connection that we can't help think about What that activism piece is and the art and what What are the social connections that can be made and and one of the things we had talked about putting out in this Web chat was a question of to our participants of how can we build relationships? How can outside community offer support and allyship and I feel like you just really beautifully Brought that out for us of you know, what are those stories? What are the layers? What can we unearth about where where we are where? You know the land we're standing on the the places that we're on How how can we? Demonstrate allyship in a real way and and I really like that idea of The park starting with the parks and that's that's I'm going to be thinking about that one for a while Um So this year because because of of all the restrictions with events, uh, the festival will happen big park, um online So everyone can access it Um, maybe crystal will send you the link to their website and it happens in august But they'll start like sharing more things and you can see what they've done in the past Um It is a lot of connection and friendship and I I can't really talk Much about it because I'm I'm not really involving the organizing of it But I do invite people to to look it up because I think it's a beautiful It's a beautiful model for what the arts can do And and something else that I often like to tell people when when we talk about like ways of of creating solidarity Is is is to look beyond what we're offered in media Because a lot of the stories In other parts of the world. They're just they just don't reach us unless we really go looking for them and I think mostly just to keep These places in in mind like to keep colombia in mind like if you see something in the news about colombia Then maybe look for other sources just not stay in whatever you see first, but also Like if if a big event happens like what we're living now like we we We receive a lot of news from the us and maybe some news from europe But very little from latin america and I think it's just important to To just even keep that in mind and like what is happening around the world like what else is going on Like this is we're feeling this here this way What does it feel somewhere else where the resources are not the same or not just from that Point of view, but also on the other side is like what can those places teach us? There might be solutions that are coming out of latin america that we don't know because also we we're often shown the despair and the Lack of success or the poverty, but there is also a lot of A lot of great things coming out of many parts of the world that we just don't get to Don't get to experience and I say that from myself as well because I Because I I can dive into the negative many times and and And more recently I've started to look for those stories of success or of things to celebrate as well Yeah, it's important to remember to keep keep looking for those hopeful pieces to certainly let's So we're we're coming to a close with our time with our very That was a really fast hour. I have to say If there are any questions I noticed that Giselle shared a thank you about how how her story Resonated from what she heard you share. So that's that's always great when When people can can hear a bit of their own experience um, is there any any final last or burning moments calling to Burning that I have is just to say thank you to to Adriana and and of course to to Cheryl and I mean to crystal sorry and and connie for helping put this together and and of course to each and every one of you Our colleagues from kairos to to to support us and to come and listen to to the story It's really really appreciated. You know, we've been talking about Soon fatigue, you know, we've been talking about all of this and we know that we've been in several meetings one after the other after the other But still it it's it's important for us to to to hear at the end of the story We can summarize it but we will put this On online later on so so we can go we can go back and see it But you as crystal said earlier, Adriana you Beautifully touch on most of the aspects that we wanted to bring out in conversations like this and to hear You and crystal interact is to me the embodiment of what indigenous newcomer friendships are so thank you so much Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's really great to to meet everybody Yeah thank you And thanks everyone for joining us and be sure to tell all your friends that you don't miss the next one We watch we watch so much. It was so great