 Okay, I have to squat very low to use this microphone. I would like to welcome to the stage Alison Warden, I'm gonna do this. I'm going to welcome to the stage now, Alison Warden, who's here from Alaska in the U.S. And I met Alison some years ago in Seattle and then we got reacquainted this last December in New Orleans through her work with the National Performance Network in the U.S. And I've seen this piece before when it was performed in Seattle. It's called Calling Old Polar Bears, dealing with issues of global warming and how this is affecting animals, especially polar bears as well as other animals in Alaska. This is the theme that she's dealing with. So I really enjoyed this performance and I'm sure you will too. And I'm gonna welcome Alison to the stage now. So, thank you. Do you guys know what a Cactovik is? Does this look like Alaska to you? Oh, that should pass in time. Okay, so this is Alaska now. I am from an island in the Arctic Ocean. It's okay to live. Cactovik, it's like Hawaii. But the ocean is frozen. It's real. And guess what? We are gonna go to Cactovik together today. Everybody say in it beacuse they're so smart. That is the name of my people. Inupia from the Arctic. And we are way up there and you guys are gonna go. Okay, are you guys ready? Okay, put your super sign. Okay, it's okay to live. Okay, right there. Okay. Oh, oh, oh, I did something. Here it is. Yes, you're supposed to laugh. You're supposed to be funny. We're people together. And we're future together, okay? Okay. Hi, hi, hi, I'm Uncle Neyamin. Hello, okay. Welcome to Cactovik. Yeah, you made it. Nice and cool here. What did me to, I'm gonna put this, needs to go to sleep. She wanted me to tell you about the land up here and poobers and all these things. Because I look like poobers. And here, we have a belief in our people. They are just like poobers inside. The animals, all of them. Poobers, seals, whales, all we see is everything. What kind of animals you got around here? I don't know, right? Moose, you guys got moose? Just like poobers inside. So we treat them with respect. You know, I have my coat on. If I was gonna take my coat off, the animals, they take their coats off. Yeah. They take their coats off because so this, they're coats, they're fur. And they go into their homes and they take off their coats. And some of them have really nice European style homes. So, and they put them on the hook and they have people inside their homes. Yeah. So, I'll tell you a quick story. He likes to go hiking. Anybody over there, okay. Anyway, we go hiking, but we don't really call it hiking. But there was a trace on the ice. I was walking on the trail one time. And the poobers were using the same trail. And I saw him and I looked at him and I thought, it looks pretty fat. I don't think he's gonna eat me. And he looked at me and he was probably thinking, he looks pretty fat. I don't think he's gonna eat me. And so I thought, well, I don't, I just keep walking. And he was walking too on the same trail. And we're walking, walking, true story. And we came by each other and we went like this. And he went like this. And we kept on walking. Yeah. Just like people inside. Yeah. You know, being up in this Arctic, you know, I've lived here my whole life, I grew up here. Yeah, a beautiful country, all right. You know, they've been trying to drill for oil up here. For 30 years trying to get under the supposed oil underneath this place. Now, when they first told us about that, they said, everybody's gonna beat me. And I thought, that sounds pretty good. I could get a new boat, no skidoo, all kinds of things go Hawaii. Maybe go Berlin. Anyway, I thought that sounded really good, all right. But then, thank goodness those environmental people who are fighting against it in the Gucci Nation, you know, nowadays, I was on the boat with my niece. She's like, look who I'm going to do. And she was, we were out and I said, do you see those that big iceberg way over there? That's what I'm gonna do. It cannot. And she said, yeah. And I said, there are used to be lots of ice everywhere. Ice, like a city of ice, skyscrapers. Now, we'll only see one, maybe, look over there. So it's changing really fast. We used to be able to hunt, said our watches by the earth. But nowadays, we have no idea what's gonna happen. You know, the hunting is weird. You know, nowadays, now I'm not so much for it, you know, that development. Because if I can't hunt, I don't know if I'd still be in the back. The be twins. Hi, I'm Sandy. Hello. Welcome to Cocktooth Good, you guys are learning. I work with a tribe here, and it's so good to have so many visitors here in Cocktooth Good. So I guess you just met my uncle. Isn't he a character? Yeah, he is. Well, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about tribes versus reservations and corporations. Do you guys know about reservation system? About Indians, American Indians in the States? Anybody know about that? One person, okay, a few people. So the native people in the States got reservations, right? What do you think Alaska's native people got? Did we get reservations too? No, so smart. We got corporations. Seriously. Okay, well, you know, shorts in December or in 1971, they discovered oil in Prudhoe Bay, so they wanted to quickly solve the lamp claims with the native people of the whole state. So who was born before December 18, 1971? Okay, one brave person. Okay, and who was born after December 18, 1971? Most everybody else. Oh, I'm missing some hands. Some people just arrived now. They manifested. Okay, anyway, they had a cut-off date. If you were born before December, December 18, 1971, you were a shareholder in your corporation. So you would be the shareholder. And the people after that date, we were called the Athbaburns. Ooh, so gross, yeah. And those people, which is me, we didn't get any stock in our corporation, which is our tie to the land, and the tribes didn't get any land. So it's kind of interesting. I was at a big conference in New York City, and there's a South American guy, and they've been fighting all the corporations there, and I told them that they made us into the corporations, and I thought his poor little head was gonna explode. It's like, you are the corporations? The native people? So, you know, my uncle mentioned the oil. They've been trying to get at the oil here in Caktovic. Oh, and you know, anyway, they've been trying to get at the oil down here, and they have all these strategies to try to win us over, our opinion. All the students got a brand new Apple laptop. Nice one to keep. And every year they would send, well, I called home, I was going to graduate school, and I called home, and my mom was on the phone. Honey, guess what? Guess what sent to Blackmay? A really nice crackpot, really good, red one, really good, a normal, really fancy, and heavy, and a good lid. And all the men got really nice knives with a sharpener from Santa. And the kids got MP3 thingies. Oh, who brought them, mom? Santa, BP Santa. Yeah, yeah, for 10 years, the oil companies would send to Santa with gifts for the villagers. And they stopped doing that, now they will have internet. But there's all kinds of strategies. Okay, one last story. I was just graduated high school, and my uncle called me. Hey, we're gonna go DC, everybody's going to go. Well, except for me, I'm organizing it. Okay, anyway, you, Sissy, Bonbon, Yaki, Marjorie, anyway, everybody, and you. You guys can go DC, go Six Flags, Great America. You can have a lot of fun, go shopping, okay? You're gonna be on the list, okay? You're on the list, okay, bye. And I did, I went on the list. I went on the charter to go to DC, and they had told us to bring our regalia. And we had fun, we went to Six Flags, Great America. We went to shopping and all these things. But right at the end, they said, okay, time to put on your regalia and your boots and everything. You're coming back, and we normally wouldn't wear it in the city. And then they took us to the senators and the congressmen of the future. Scared of you, so scared of you. And me and my tentative pooper, the sky closed the book of me. Future. And we were, but it's a symbol of a company, but it's not a words, it's a picture. There was a logo on the side of that building. And it was starting to come alive. I need to start coming off the building and then that tentative pooper looked at each other. And we know, and so we had a heartbreak and it was so scary, despite that corporate monster. No, I heard you met a polar bear. You guys look like polar bears. Hey, feed those polar bears at the end of the runway. And we used to never do that. We give them, we have, like from here to that wall, even closer, and we'll turn on our high beams in our trucks and we'll watch them eat like animal kingdom. We just need to provide music and it will be a food thing, you know? Romantic. But now they can't be on land. We feel sorry for those. Them polar bears. I grew up here testing. I'm a wailer, you know? I go out on this land too. I live in both worlds. And these yin, yang, yin, yang people, upstarting pecs. They don't understand. You know, the technology to extract the resources that we have here is a lot better than what it was even 10 years ago. It's getting better all the time. And we as the corporation, we wouldn't support any kind of activity up here if we didn't think it could be done safely and in harmony with the land here. Ah. You know, they don't know what hard work is these young ones. I grew up, it was 40 below, I'd have to start the stove. We grew up on hard work. You know, they just got internet and cable now and they don't know anything about that. Now, everybody here knows that eventually the world companies are gonna get at these resources, right? There's no stopping them. So we need to have a seat as a table, as native people. And when it comes down to it, you really gotta think about it. Ask yourself, whose hand would you rather shake? Theirs or ours? This last year, they made two cups. Junior, the same ones with the seals and they were learning how to stop them and then it was time for us to go. So we set off, me and my, we were swimming and we left the same time as last year. So I started telling them stories about how Sedna created all the animals of the sea. All of them about the villages under the sea with the seals and the walrus village and how their people inside like us too. So after stories, I was tired so he wanted to think by himself so I let him, and we kept swimming but it wasn't land in a moment. I had to tell her, to the bottom of the ocean to go and visit the seals. He had a special invitation and he's gonna go down the bottom way. Maybe we could see him and we're gonna go that top way and we're gonna meet him on the other side when we reach to the shore. Just kept going. And I told her about what it means to be a woman polar bear and having baby polar bears and we just kept swimming. I told her story after story and about Sedna's long, beautiful hair and how it longs to be brushed. And she said, maybe I can brush Sedna's hair. She didn't last so much longer after that. I had to keep going. I just kept swimming. I had to tell somebody about my cubs. They were doing so good. So smart, learning and stocking the seal and they were really working good together as a team and they were just, really just, I just had to tell somebody about my cubs which just kept growing myself. Yeah, he thought, ma. I was in turns. Wait, wait, wait. I'm gonna show you a trick. Go, go, go, go, wait. Here I am, here I am, wait, wait. It's not my cousin. You give me, you give me. It's a trick, man. Feel it out to me. I thought, no, I should talk about the people. The people are always talking about the animals, you know? I was like, what about the people, man? It's not just about the animals. Yeah, you know, there's an elder in the village. She was born in 42. She grew up in a sod house. Now she's on Facebook. There's a lot of change, man. Lots of change. Things are getting weird up here, too. The eyes. Did you hear about the, what is it about the pulimers? What about the seals, you know? You know, did you hear that the pulimers are starting to mate with the priceless? Seriously, man. Weird, those guys are weird. They freak me out. They're still waiting for us, guys. Okay, I'll try to get ready. Watch. You just got sealed. Yeah, you got me, you got me. Yeah, tough food. Yeah. Yeah, see, the people, you know, there's a lot of change to go through. One lifetime. You know, 70 years from the sod house to the internet, you know? She gets a perm. Man, they went to a lot of stuff, man. We think it's bad for our seals, but, man. You know, well, first of all, there's this first grade wave of death, you know, didn't affect our seals. We're about 85% of Alaska. Whoa, chippy, man. And then there's a second wave. You might know about this. I recognize you. There's, like, TP, boom. All those, like, 10 kids from Coptovic, you're sent away to Seattle. Only one came back alive. Rough stuff, man. Oh, yeah, she's gonna be funny. Oh, anyway, what else? Who knows? Yeah, lots of things happened to the people, man. Oh, they sent all of the kids out to boarding schools, you know. They sent them all out, and they were punished for speaking their language. We have our own language in Seattle. You understood me. I'm saying, I'm hurrying. Anyway, lots of crazy stuff, man. I mean, you know, they did experiments. The government did. On the kids. And they put all the little inured kids together, and they were naked in a room, and they just to see if they were more resistant to cold. Seriously. What do you do? You inject it with, I read you at the buy-it-in. Oh. Oh. So can't make this stuff up. Yeah. I'm producing it to cold. I got my glue, bro. Yo, man, lots of stuff here. You know, what about me? What about the seal, you know? I mean, like, a fox? Ew. What am I gonna do? I've got the land now. I'm not so comfy, huh, you guys? Yeah, but there we go. Gotcha. It's just a funeral. Closer to the time to get ready to go back to your destination. I'm gonna stay here. Oh, oh, oh. Oh, my goodness. Well, you know, you have been maybe seeing images of ruling. You see any images of the ruling? Guess what? We're just in real time right now. We just recently got away. I think it was today or yesterday. So we are still. Some of you look like, oh, my goodness. You're killing the wealth. Yes, we are killing the wealth over there. And they are really yummy. And it tastes good. And I wish I had some right now. But anyway, yes, we are living off the land still and using our traditional ways. And a little bit about that wailing. You know, we have been living in this Arctic for 10,000 years. We don't have a tofu farm in the Arctic. You know, we have a relationship with the animals. It's called the gift of the whale. Okay, pretend this is a boat right here. Okay, pretend I'm a whale. I know I'm fat, but pretend I'm really fat. Okay, like 60 ton fat. And I'm swimming along. And I'm swimming out there. I look like a whale, right? And in order for the crew to kill me, I have to, as a whale, it's a conscious choice of the whale. And we have all these ceremonies and rituals. We don't like that word, but we are. That's what we do. All these things you have to do to be ready to have a respected animal in the right way. Anyway, I'm a whale. I have to surface and expose my sensitive whale area. I don't want to get you guys excited. It's too much. I have to expose my little area here and then they can only kill me in that one area. It's like a beautiful dance. You know, so we have a relationship to a bad animal. And my niece, she was in... Oh, I can't be able to see her because she's my friend. Anyway, my niece, she was over in a meeting in New York City and all these indigenous people were... And she was talking to these people from South America and they had something called the gift of the turtle. And it was the same thing that that turtle has a sensitive turtle area too. And it was the same thing, the same beliefs. Everything was the same. So you remember here since we even met anybody that don't look like that long, you know. So think about that. Whoa. I'm very original here. No. Anyway, because we're having indigenous people all over the planet, we are facing all these corporations trying to come in and take our stuff. My goodness. And you know, we can't fight it by ourselves. We need people like Elliot. We need allies. Elliot, you're a perfect example of a good ally. You know, you've got to be a good ally. And you know, first of all, you listen, you show up to native things. You don't have to be shy. You can come to our things. I don't think there's anything in Berlin, but poor. But anyway, I didn't bother to get to know us. We are nice, okay? We're really nice and we want to be your friend too. But you've got to listen some more. Every time you feel like saying something, count five of those somethings and then say something. I love you guys. Okay, but it's good. You know, we need to all work together on the planet. The whole planet needs everybody, right? Yeah. Okay. Well, tears. Oh, don't everybody get the bad ones. Okay, two men and two women. Okay, I volunteer you as a man. Is she the man over there? Yes. Okay, there we got two women. Oh, everybody could be more than two. And then you could put these in your face. Okay, I need one more man. Oh, you're so precious. You're the most precious. Okay. So I'm going to teach you how to dance. Now, the men dance like this. Okay. Put the gloves on. We'll have a belief about our gloves. But you could just hold them in your face. You're doing it perfectly, one on each fist. Okay, men dance like this. And you can get up and dance if you're a man and you say, oh, that's what you're doing. You could dance while you're sitting. You don't have to be shy. You could come down. It's okay. Now for the women, you put your feet together and you bounce like this. Bounce, bounce. And then you wave your hands. You could come up. Okay. Are we ready to do this? We're learning together. Okay. Now if you have a jacket, I know it's hard, but pretend you have a jacket even if you don't have a jacket. I have my own jacket. I pretend with you guys. Okay, let's put on our jackets together. And thank you for pretending. Thank you. Good job, actors. Now put your seatbelts on. Now you have a jacket. Now you have become honorary pull-up bears. Remember? And you have your pull-up bear jacket on. But guess what? You're people inside. Everybody's people inside too, even you. We're all people inside. Just like the animals. Okay? So remember that. Okay? Are you guys ready to go back to get some cool laughing? Thanks for coming to Kok Tuik. Are we ready to go? We are too precious. So you guys better come back. I'm going to stay here in Kok Tuik. You guys go by yourselves. Okay, ready? Thank you so much, Allison. Allison flew all the way here from Alaska to come and perform for you guys. So another round of applause for her. Yeah? So this is the end of Saturday, our second day at Innovate Heritage. If anybody has any questions, we had reserved time for a Q&A, but we were a little over time also. So if people want to ask a question, or Allison... Hi. We can also, Allison will also be here for part of tomorrow, so you can also speak afterwards. But if there's any pressing questions... There's our real pull-up bears. Anybody have a question? All the stories are true. Yes? I wanted to say how amazing that was. It was absolutely amazing. It was the most incredible mix of, yeah, of stories, of politics and of poignancy and of hilarity. It was absolutely incredible. Absolutely amazing. Amazing. Yeah, I think it was very convincing. You passed the message across very clearly and it appealed to our human nature. You didn't come from a traditional point of view, fighting back and just explaining what's happening. And I like the child in you. You did express that in a very innocent way, representing Alaska as an innocent area that's been ravaged, actually. Thank you very much. Anybody else? Okay. As I'm picking up, I have my business cards over here. I'm normally a rapper. That's fair for an extra, yeah. Cool. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So, thank you guys for staying. We had a very long program today. Tomorrow, our first lecture is actually at 10 a.m., so everybody go home and go to get some sleep and we'll see you back here tomorrow and also in the live stream. We'll begin again tomorrow at 10. Thank you very much.