UNL Faculty Discussion - Global and Historical Moments of Reckoning with UNL Faculty

Ng’ang’a Wahu-Mũchiri, Deirdre Cooper Owens, William Thomas, Margaret Jacobs Author

09/09/2021 Added

128 Plays

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This kickoff event will include faculty from the departments of History and English, the Humanities in Medicine Program, and the Center for Great Plains Studies to focus on different groups and periods of racial reckoning and action.

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[00:00:00.000](dramatic music)
[00:00:07.107]Today, you are part of an important conversation
[00:00:09.640]about our shared future.
[00:00:12.020]The E.N Thompson Forum on World Issues explores a diversity
[00:00:15.340]of viewpoints on international and public policy issues,
[00:00:18.960]to promote understanding and encourage debate
[00:00:21.800]across the University and the State of Nebraska.
[00:00:25.220]Since its inception in 1988,
[00:00:28.140]hundreds of distinguished speakers have challenged
[00:00:30.760]and inspired us
[00:00:32.270]making this forum one of the preeminent speakers series
[00:00:36.670]in higher education,
[00:00:39.440]it all started when E.N Jack Thompson,
[00:00:42.850]imagined a forum on global issues
[00:00:45.330]that would increase Nebraskan's understanding of cultures
[00:00:48.360]and events from around the world.
[00:00:50.790]Jack's perspective was influenced by his travels,
[00:00:54.180]he's role in helping to found the United Nations
[00:00:56.980]and his work at the Carnegie Endowment
[00:00:59.590]for International Peace,
[00:01:02.120]as president of The Cooper Foundation in Lincoln,
[00:01:05.130]Jack pledged substantial funding to the forum
[00:01:08.310]and the University of Nebraska
[00:01:10.110]and Lied Center for Performing Arts agreed to co-sponsor.
[00:01:14.650]Later, Jack and his wife, Katie,
[00:01:16.870]created The Thompson Family Fund to support the forum
[00:01:20.500]and other programs.
[00:01:22.610]Today, major support is provided
[00:01:25.840]by the Cooper Foundation,
[00:01:27.920]Lied Center for Performing Arts
[00:01:30.000]and University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
[00:01:32.850]We hope these talks,
[00:01:34.250]sparks an exciting conversation among you.
[00:01:37.139](dramatic music)
[00:01:39.500]And now on with the show.
[00:01:41.899](dramatic music)
[00:01:47.832]I'm Elizabeth Spiller.
[00:01:50.210]Okay, great.
[00:01:51.238](crowd chuckles)
[00:01:53.450]Executive Vice Chancellor and Chief Academic Officer
[00:01:56.520]at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln
[00:01:58.730]and I'm very pleased to welcome you, all of you,
[00:02:02.020]those of you who are watching here in the audience
[00:02:04.910]and those of you who are joining us virtually tonight,
[00:02:08.600]since 1988, Thompson Forum has brought us critical thinkers,
[00:02:13.686]policy thinkers and leaders,
[00:02:16.280]who are shaping our global society
[00:02:18.720]to discuss issues that affect us all.
[00:02:21.948]We are grateful to the Cooper Foundation,
[00:02:24.450]which provides the Nature Funding for the forum,
[00:02:27.910]to the late Jack Thompson, who conceived the series
[00:02:31.430]and the Thompson Family for their continued support.
[00:02:35.573]We would also like to acknowledge,
[00:02:37.970]the Lied Center for the Performing Arts for their support,
[00:02:41.960]the University Honors Program
[00:02:44.270]and the UNL College of Arts and Sciences
[00:02:46.830]for their partnership on today's event.
[00:02:50.570]This seasons theme is, Moments of Reckoning:
[00:02:54.300]Global Calls for Equity and Action.
[00:02:58.680]This theme is meant to promote important
[00:03:01.320]and timely discussions
[00:03:02.510]and further our understanding
[00:03:04.950]of the challenges relating to equity.
[00:03:08.810]The forum has a strong lineup this season,
[00:03:11.810]starting with tonight's faculty panel focused on global
[00:03:15.770]and historical moments of reckoning.
[00:03:18.520]I would now like to take this opportunity
[00:03:21.340]to introduce Dr. Colette Yellow Robe,
[00:03:24.090]originally from the Winnebago Indian Reservation in Nebraska
[00:03:27.965]and an enrolled member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe,
[00:03:31.640]in Montana.
[00:03:33.000]Dr. Yellow Robe holds a PhD
[00:03:35.410]from The Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education Department
[00:03:39.130]in the College of Education and Human Sciences
[00:03:41.970]at the university of Nebraska-Lincoln.
[00:03:44.550]She's an active community member,
[00:03:46.810]committed to social justice and alleviating poverty,
[00:03:50.770]as the Academic Counselor,
[00:03:52.470]for the Students Services Program at UNL,
[00:03:56.070]her workforce is focused primarily on first generation,
[00:03:59.980]low income and disabled college students.
[00:04:03.560]Currently, she serves on the UNL Chancellor's Commission
[00:04:08.580]on the Status of People of Color
[00:04:10.870]and the Mayors Local Cultural Advisory Committee
[00:04:13.770]for the City of Lincoln.
[00:04:15.780]We are pleased to have Dr. Yellow Robe performing
[00:04:18.297]the acknowledgement ceremony
[00:04:20.420]before we begin our program this evening.
[00:04:23.860](footsteps pattering)
[00:04:32.130]Well, hello.
[00:04:33.532]Greetings everybody.
[00:04:35.368]Thank you, Dr. Spiller for an amazing introduction.
[00:04:39.240]I'm here joining you from Lincoln-Nebraska.
[00:04:41.380]So we're going to do a Land Acknowledgement tonight.
[00:04:45.190]Land Acknowledgement is a formal recognition
[00:04:47.880]of the indigenous tribal nations
[00:04:50.280]as the original stewards of the land.
[00:04:52.700]It is a sign of respect and gratitude
[00:04:55.255]for the ongoing relationship between tribal nations
[00:04:58.460]and the land.
[00:04:59.974](indistinct)
[00:05:05.253]I would like to acknowledge,
[00:05:07.010]the ancestral present and future homelands
[00:05:09.860]of indigenous tribal nations and people
[00:05:12.510]upon which the University of Nebraska was founded.
[00:05:15.800]The university stands across several areas,
[00:05:18.170]so I'm honored to include our regional stewards of the land
[00:05:22.299]in the tribal nations.
[00:05:23.880]This includes, the territorial lands of The Pawnee,
[00:05:27.960]The Ponca
[00:05:28.974]and also Missouria,
[00:05:30.376]The Omaha or the Oma,
[00:05:31.815]The Dakota.
[00:05:32.648]Lakota.
[00:05:33.481]Arapaho.
[00:05:34.314](indistinct) or Cheyenne.
[00:05:36.300](indistinct)
[00:05:49.315](foreign language)
[00:05:53.550]Thank you.
[00:05:54.720]Next, I'd like to invite, E.V.C,
[00:05:57.299]Executive Vice Chancellor Spiller back to our podium
[00:06:00.110]to introduce our amazing panel.
[00:06:02.679]Thank you.
[00:06:04.312](crowd applause)
[00:06:10.090]Thank you, Dr. Yellow Robe.
[00:06:12.900]The faculty panel discussion this evening,
[00:06:15.810]will address insights into global and historical moments
[00:06:20.370]of reckoning from different perspectives of different groups
[00:06:24.170]in different time periods.
[00:06:26.050]Tonight's forum brings together faculty
[00:06:28.657]from the Departments of English and History,
[00:06:31.930]the Humanities and Medicine Program
[00:06:34.057]and the Center for Great Plains Studies.
[00:06:36.880]This event is also a partnership
[00:06:38.810]with UNL College of Arts and Sciences.
[00:06:41.870]I would like to begin with an introduction
[00:06:43.890]of our moderator, Dr. N'Kenge Friday.
[00:06:46.930]Dr. Friday, is a diversity and inclusion strategist
[00:06:50.500]with a background leading organization
[00:06:52.880]by change in diversity and inclusion efforts.
[00:06:56.450]She serves as the Assistant Vice Chancellor
[00:06:58.760]for Strategic Initiatives.
[00:07:00.813](footsteps pattering)
[00:07:07.255](crowd applause)
[00:07:12.930]Hello everyone.
[00:07:14.329](indistinct)
[00:07:15.620]Yeah.
[00:07:16.453]Good afternoon.
[00:07:17.530]So, welcome to today's event,
[00:07:19.760]entitled Global and Historical Moments of Reckoning.
[00:07:23.920]This is hosted by the E.N Thompson Forum on World Issue
[00:07:26.400]in partnership with UNL College of Arts and Sciences.
[00:07:30.330]As Dr. Spiller said, I'm N'Kenge Friday,
[00:07:32.550]Assistant Vice Chancellor for Strategic Initiatives
[00:07:35.036]and everybody agrees from the office of Diversity
[00:07:37.250]and Inclusion here at the university.
[00:07:39.920]I am honored, which is an understatement.
[00:07:42.557]I'm honored to moderate this evening's live session,
[00:07:45.810]which features four distinguished panels
[00:07:49.330]and before I start,
[00:07:50.530]I do have a quote,
[00:07:52.727]"not everything that is faced can be changed,
[00:07:55.940]but nothing can be changed until it is faced"
[00:07:59.170]these words were written in 1962,
[00:08:02.450]in essay by James Baldwin for the New York Times.
[00:08:06.120]These words were written nearly 60 years ago
[00:08:10.937]as Mr. Baldwin commented on the state of global affairs
[00:08:12.900]and the global priors in particular
[00:08:15.750]in addressing global issues.
[00:08:18.930]59 years later and here we remain in this country
[00:08:22.970]and this world discussing issues of race,
[00:08:26.340]systemic inequities and historic marginalization.
[00:08:31.210]Following last year's global reckoning,
[00:08:33.230]that many attribute to the national uprising sparked up
[00:08:35.670]by the murders of George Floyd, Ryan Taylor
[00:08:38.600]and Ahmaud Aubrey,
[00:08:40.030]there have been highly visible demonstrations and calls
[00:08:43.840]for true examination of our ongoing racial crisis,
[00:08:47.540]not only in this nation, but globally,
[00:08:50.630]this moment has illustrated how deeply indebted in equities,
[00:08:53.920]phobias and oppression are rooted
[00:08:56.130]into the fabric of our societies.
[00:08:58.700]It is particularly exposed to complex intersections
[00:09:01.210]of history,
[00:09:02.210]healthcare,
[00:09:03.060]education,
[00:09:04.160]economic policies,
[00:09:05.800]environmental justice,
[00:09:07.300]politics and the law in so many other elements of our world,
[00:09:12.260]but for the purposes of tonight's panel, it is our goal
[00:09:14.970]that participants walk away
[00:09:16.330]with some foundational knowledge,
[00:09:17.700]as well as inspiration for effecting
[00:09:19.905]and understanding change on multiple levels.
[00:09:24.462]So, with that being said, let me introduce our panelists,
[00:09:27.780]who will lead us through this conversation
[00:09:30.020]in order they're going to deliver their remarks.
[00:09:33.790]First, we will have Dr. William Thomas III,
[00:09:36.800]who is going to get our conversation started,
[00:09:38.930]specifically on American failures challenging slavery.
[00:09:44.180]Dr. Thomas is the Angle Chair in the Humanities
[00:09:46.610]and Professor of History.
[00:09:48.270]He is also the Associate Dean for Research
[00:09:50.580]and Graduate Education at the College of Arts and Sciences.
[00:09:55.090]A Guggenheim Fellow and a Lincoln Prize Finalist,
[00:09:57.620]He's a co-founder of Animated History,
[00:10:00.480]a series of live action animated documentary films.
[00:10:04.470]Next, we have Dr. Dierdre Cooper Owens,
[00:10:08.090]who will speak on race, gender and women's health.
[00:10:12.069]Dr. Cooper Owens, is an Organization
[00:10:14.635]of American Historians' Distinguished Lecturer.
[00:10:17.390]A press American College of Obstetricians
[00:10:19.820]and Gynecologists Research Fellow
[00:10:21.720]and has won a number of prestigious awards and honors
[00:10:24.543]for her solving and advocacy work
[00:10:27.520]and reproductive and women justice.
[00:10:31.510]We also have, Dr. Margaret Jacobs,
[00:10:33.480]who will talk to us about several reckonings
[00:10:36.480]in indigenous histories.
[00:10:38.420]Dr. Jacobs, is the Charles Mach Professor of History
[00:10:41.815]and the Director of The Center for Great Plains and Studies.
[00:10:45.240]She is of civil background and collaborates with Roseland
[00:10:48.050]and Kevin Alvarez on the reconciliation rising,
[00:10:52.520]and most of media project showcasing indigenous people
[00:10:55.850]and settlers who are working together.
[00:10:58.540]Last and certainly not least,
[00:11:00.199]we have Dr. Ng'ang'a Wahu Muchiri,
[00:11:02.840]who reserves perspectives from Africa.
[00:11:05.820]Dr. Wahu Muchiri research and representation
[00:11:08.782]of African land is the subject of prime monograph project,
[00:11:12.770]land and landscape
[00:11:14.190]and literature from Eastern and Southern Africa.
[00:11:16.900]He's the author of "Gender and Land Rights"
[00:11:19.450]in the Encyclopedia of World Poverty, 2015.
[00:11:23.500]So, with that, I'd like to turn things
[00:11:25.580]over to Dr. William Thomas III,
[00:11:27.590]who's going to get our conversation started,
[00:11:30.300]specifically on American families challenging slavery.
[00:11:36.990]Thank you, N'Kenge.
[00:11:38.130]Good evening, everyone.
[00:11:40.900]In the spring of 2017,
[00:11:44.600]I was deep into the research and writing of a book called,
[00:11:49.297]"The Question of Freedom"
[00:11:51.608]A book about enslaved families who sued for freedom
[00:11:55.260]after the American Revolution in Maryland and Washington DC.
[00:12:00.890]I went to New Orleans to meet
[00:12:02.650]with several descendants of the families,
[00:12:05.630]I was writing about,
[00:12:07.850]the day was bright and hot
[00:12:10.050]and I walked from my hotel to the downtown public library,
[00:12:15.400]where we were planning to meet in a small conference room.
[00:12:21.130]Now these families had wage day momentous data in the wall
[00:12:26.580]to challenge slavery at the time of the nations founding,
[00:12:30.880]claim freedom and keep their families together.
[00:12:36.980]I wanted to know if many of the descendants in Louisiana,
[00:12:41.180]had heard of their ancestors freedom suits in Maryland
[00:12:47.103]and up to that afternoon
[00:12:48.480]in the public library in New Orleans,
[00:12:51.670]my study of their lawsuits,
[00:12:54.050]had been largely an academic pursuit,
[00:12:57.680]history was distanced,
[00:12:59.760]it was contained
[00:13:03.380]within minutes of meeting Sandra Green Thomas,
[00:13:08.049](indistinct)
[00:13:10.360]and Karen Harper Royal,
[00:13:13.040]I knew that the past was not past,
[00:13:16.720]that my perspective on the history
[00:13:18.350]of American slavery would never be the same
[00:13:21.690]and that this was a room of reckoning.
[00:13:26.910]240 some years, Sandra Thomas said,
[00:13:31.997]"was the blink of an eye,
[00:13:35.470]her family had sued the Jesuits in the Maryland"
[00:13:39.250]and the Jesuits had eventually sold 272 men,
[00:13:44.520]women and children to Louisiana
[00:13:48.170]to pay off the debts
[00:13:50.322]at the then down there college at Georgetown,
[00:13:53.130]today, the university.
[00:13:56.460]The sale was a trauma
[00:13:58.770]with effects that were plainly visible
[00:14:01.450]and being felt up to the present day.
[00:14:06.567]"Something has been taken from us".
[00:14:08.980]Sandra Thomas told.
[00:14:12.210]And one of those things was as she put it,
[00:14:16.230]never having known our families in Maryland,
[00:14:20.410]their relatives in Maryland.
[00:14:25.530]Many Americans talk about,
[00:14:27.650]write about,
[00:14:29.000]think about
[00:14:30.650]and understand slavery as anonymous
[00:14:34.480]as somehow abstract.
[00:14:37.650]In American history textbooks,
[00:14:39.890]often enslaved people are nameless and faceless really,
[00:14:46.090]but after New Orleans,
[00:14:48.590]I knew slavery wasn't anonymous.
[00:14:51.508]Slavery was experienced by particular families,
[00:14:56.900]families with histories,
[00:14:58.520]families with hopes,
[00:15:00.060]families with dreams,
[00:15:01.810]families with skills,
[00:15:03.200]ideas,
[00:15:04.080]knowledge,
[00:15:06.240]politics,
[00:15:07.780]experience,
[00:15:09.751]arguments,
[00:15:11.250]motivations,
[00:15:12.430]plans,
[00:15:14.560]families with ancestors,
[00:15:16.834]families with descendants.
[00:15:22.730]A second moment of reckoning was more personal.
[00:15:27.460]One of the most important freedom suits,
[00:15:30.400]had been brought by The Queen Family
[00:15:32.460]in Prince George's County, Maryland,
[00:15:35.720]after the American Revolution.
[00:15:39.170]Three generations of the family, Edward Queen,
[00:15:43.175]his mother, Phyllis Queen,
[00:15:46.590]and eventually Mima Queen and Priscilla Queen,
[00:15:50.540]had sued the Jesuits who enslaved them
[00:15:54.290]and nearly every other major slaveholder in Maryland,
[00:15:58.940]their lawyer was Francis Scott Key.
[00:16:02.887]Hundredth of my grandmother's ancestors, the Ducketts,
[00:16:08.150]were judges and lawyers
[00:16:10.500]and tobacco planters in prince George's County, Maryland.
[00:16:16.820]It was obvious that they were slave holders.
[00:16:20.480]What I did not know,
[00:16:22.150]was that one of the Ducketts,
[00:16:24.670]got his start as a young lawyer defending the Jesuits
[00:16:29.620]against the Queen Freedom suits
[00:16:34.330]and then I found out that the Duckett Family
[00:16:38.100]at the end of the civil war,
[00:16:40.680]enslaved the last Queens' held in bondage in Maryland.
[00:16:47.800]And yeah, my family had no narrative,
[00:16:52.110]no memory,
[00:16:54.020]no stories,
[00:16:57.740]of their particular enslavement,
[00:17:00.660]of their experience
[00:17:02.340]or even of their very presence.
[00:17:07.210]So what would reckoning with this history look like?
[00:17:11.350]Here's an excerpt from June 10, 2018.
[00:17:16.460]I'm with Letitia Clark and Guildford Queen,
[00:17:20.340]who are both Queen descendants.
[00:17:24.990]For months we had been planning an informal road trip.
[00:17:28.870]We were going to tour the plantations
[00:17:30.650]of Southern Maryland together.
[00:17:32.760]Follow the Potomac River on it's course
[00:17:35.350]down to the open water of the Chesapeake Bay
[00:17:38.880]and talk through the meaning of what we were learning
[00:17:41.820]about our families and our interlinks to histories.
[00:17:46.710]A few days before our excursion
[00:17:48.860]in anticipation of history we would encounter,
[00:17:52.450]Letitia Clark realized the source of her sleeplessness.
[00:17:57.437]"I just wish our parents were alive to know this",
[00:18:00.730]she explained, as we drove South
[00:18:03.460]on route 210 towards Southern Maryland.
[00:18:07.330]To find out that our family intersects with parts of history
[00:18:10.390]that we've known about all our lives like, Francis Scott Key
[00:18:14.530]and to think that our ancestors intersected
[00:18:17.720]with them periodly,
[00:18:18.940]even though they were never mentioned,
[00:18:22.204]never thought of,
[00:18:23.730]but they were there
[00:18:25.360]and they were young.
[00:18:29.210]The source of my insomnia was different.
[00:18:32.080]I had been reading the proceedings
[00:18:33.500]of the first Slaveholders Convention ever held
[00:18:36.270]in the United States.
[00:18:38.890]150 of Maryland's leading slaveholders had gathered
[00:18:43.250]in Annapolis in January of 1842
[00:18:47.080]to turn back the tod of abolitionism
[00:18:51.280]and one of my distant relatives,
[00:18:53.330]Thomas Duckett had taken on leading role.
[00:18:58.060]He considered himself a moderate,
[00:18:59.690]but like Francis Scott Key and Roger B. Taney,
[00:19:02.800]he disparaged black freedom.
[00:19:06.041]Duckett announced that, he quote
[00:19:08.010]viewed the freedom (indistinct)
[00:19:13.740]his words haunted him,
[00:19:16.290]they were rebuked,
[00:19:19.220]a constant reminder of how his generation
[00:19:22.860]had seduced themselves and justified themselves
[00:19:25.890]in extricating themselves from responsibility
[00:19:29.730]for the moral problems.
[00:19:34.847]"I was thinking about the trip before we came"
[00:19:37.150]Letitia Clark reflected, as we talked under the locus tree,
[00:19:41.070]nasty old manor house.
[00:19:42.807]"And I hope that coming here and trying to sort it out
[00:19:45.300]as a way of honoring the people who were here before me,
[00:19:47.920]who worked so hard and lived and died here".
[00:19:52.190]She wanted them to know that what they did as she put it,
[00:19:57.430]counted for something,
[00:20:00.200]that she was their legacy.
[00:20:04.640]It was the tearing apart of her family.
[00:20:08.220]One part sold and sent to Louisiana,
[00:20:10.860]never to be heard from again,
[00:20:12.810]another part in Maryland,
[00:20:14.460]partly enslaved,
[00:20:16.070]partly some had won their freedom.
[00:20:20.410]It was the tearing apart of her family
[00:20:23.120]and the other families
[00:20:24.470]and the consequences that flowed from that historical trauma
[00:20:29.440]that Clark thought about at night.
[00:20:35.307]"Once you're free", she said,
[00:20:37.637]"you can stay together as a family,
[00:20:40.618]a family is the strongest unit there is, right?
[00:20:48.020]A family is the strongest unit there is, right"?
[00:20:56.440]Sometimes the reckoning comes
[00:20:59.650]in these moments of recognition
[00:21:03.450]that the past hold such suffering,
[00:21:08.390]such sorrow,
[00:21:10.520]such tragedy
[00:21:13.240]and the possibility of transcendence,
[00:21:19.070]every journey of reckoning,
[00:21:20.510]I came to realize is unfinished,
[00:21:25.360]incomplete,
[00:21:28.020]and what happened 200 years ago in these families
[00:21:34.300]and in the day shift, might seem distant,
[00:21:38.780]but those events are still with us.
[00:21:43.580]We all have inside of stories,
[00:21:46.950]stories of family,
[00:21:48.670]stories of the community,
[00:21:50.400]stories of the nation.
[00:21:53.450]and we blend
[00:21:54.300]and we shape those stories into mythical narratives
[00:21:59.700]of our family,
[00:22:00.912]of our communities
[00:22:02.400]and of our nation.
[00:22:05.580]Many times, those difficult narratives are good
[00:22:08.550]and important to have,
[00:22:12.300]but not all, work that way
[00:22:16.350]and when stories we've not heard are told,
[00:22:21.730]our narrative needs to change.
[00:22:26.530]That's what these moments of reckoning are
[00:22:29.070]and what they offer us.
[00:22:31.800]They offer us the possibility of a more complete
[00:22:37.250]and whole truth of who we are.
[00:22:42.319]Thank you.
[00:22:43.927](crowd applause)
[00:22:52.595]Thank you so much Dr. Thomas.
[00:22:54.490]Our next panelist is Dr. Dierdre Cooper Owens,
[00:22:57.000]who will speak on race, gender and women's health.
[00:23:03.982]Good afternoon everyone.
[00:23:07.627]On a beautiful and warm seasonal day
[00:23:10.329]on October 2015 in Manhattan, New York.
[00:23:13.971]I learned that I could have (indistinct)
[00:23:19.120]as a result I had to have my cervix dilated,
[00:23:22.770]so that my uterus would be more accessible
[00:23:25.181]for embryo implantation
[00:23:27.233]during our initial in vitro fertilization procedure.
[00:23:32.620]What that meant was that my cervix had stenosis
[00:23:36.270]with no hole in it
[00:23:38.070]and so it needed to be dilated.
[00:23:41.531]This is where I depart from the script.
[00:23:46.953]I've never had a child.
[00:23:48.471]I was now pregnant.
[00:23:49.975]And so the only time I've had cervix dilation was when women
[00:23:54.430]or birthing people talked
[00:23:56.303]about being a few centimeters apart
[00:23:59.897]and the baby's about to come.
[00:24:02.108]And so the other day after meeting with the professor,
[00:24:04.140]I did research.
[00:24:05.420]I tried to find YouTube videos.
[00:24:06.900]I called everybody I knew,
[00:24:08.380]but no one had been in this situation.
[00:24:11.787]And so, the dilation was conducted
[00:24:16.380]without me receiving any anesthesia
[00:24:19.460]or numbing shot to ease the pain.
[00:24:23.390]It was conducted by one
[00:24:25.840]of the city's best fertility specialists,
[00:24:28.220]or at least that's what all
[00:24:29.070]of the local New York magazines proclaimed.
[00:24:34.831]He told me I'd experience some cramping,
[00:24:38.220]but not a lot of pain.
[00:24:40.790]Pain was an understatement.
[00:24:43.530]I had never gone through that kind of physical agony
[00:24:47.403]and by then 43 years of life.
[00:24:51.697]Imagine, you're lying on a bed.
[00:24:56.362]You're instructed to put your feet on the steps.
[00:25:00.003]A speculum is inserted.
[00:25:02.300]The doctor takes your cervix.
[00:25:04.380]He has a long metal washer
[00:25:06.400]and at the very end there's a metal brush.
[00:25:08.810]And for 15 minutes, he bore a hole into my cervix.
[00:25:16.130]All while during the procedure,
[00:25:18.920]he kept apologizing for the pain he was causing me.
[00:25:22.723]He even mentioned that he had thought to inject me
[00:25:25.350]with a numbing medication,
[00:25:26.660]but decided against it since I had taken two midrodine pills
[00:25:30.760]an hour before.
[00:25:34.630]By New Year's Day, I changed physicians.
[00:25:39.230]My new specialist was a woman,
[00:25:42.435]she was a Southern woman, originating from South Carolina,
[00:25:44.640]in a little place we call UpSouth, which is Washington DC,
[00:25:47.749]where all the black South Carolina's went
[00:25:49.470]during the great migration
[00:25:51.287]and so I felt certain familiarity with her.
[00:25:55.220]I informed her that my service had been dilated twice
[00:25:59.160]without me being under anesthetics,
[00:26:02.142]said she expressed shock- disbelief,
[00:26:05.780]but after giving me a vaginal ultrasound,
[00:26:09.100]she told me my uterus was so small for my body.
[00:26:14.030]She also asked if I had ever (indistinct), told her no.
[00:26:17.714]And she said, well your uterus is so small,
[00:26:20.480]you probably developed gestational diabetes,
[00:26:23.230]so we'll need to do a C-section.
[00:26:27.750]It seemed to me that I could not escape,
[00:26:30.980]James Marion Simps historical games.
[00:26:34.570]He's known as the 'Father of American Gynecology',
[00:26:38.980]but also the lessons he left for doctors,
[00:26:42.080]who worked on the descendants
[00:26:43.990]of the 'Original American Mothers of Gynecology'
[00:26:47.560]held in medical bondage.
[00:26:50.040]To theorize about 19th century black womens' bodies
[00:26:53.870]as medical supervise,
[00:26:55.850]impervious to pain,
[00:26:57.830]Is an exercise in analytic reason
[00:27:00.455]and historical methodology making,
[00:27:02.747]however to live through a medical procedure
[00:27:06.530]in the 21st century, in which the expectation was
[00:27:10.880]that I could tolerate acute pain seemed surreal.
[00:27:16.350]As I revealed to the medical staff
[00:27:19.250]during my initial dilation,
[00:27:22.750]I was really shocked, all right?
[00:27:26.040]Because I had been left in the medical room by myself,
[00:27:30.146]waiting for 15 minutes, the nurses had gone,
[00:27:33.564]the doctors had gone.
[00:27:35.366]And I just looked for supplies to feed myself
[00:27:39.610]and then walked across the street to the hospital,
[00:27:43.280]so that I could get an Interest Gene Exam,
[00:27:47.402]all right, sorry, in expansion what that means is,
[00:27:51.531]the doctor has to inject dye,
[00:27:53.330]so that the doctor can see the fallopian tubes
[00:27:56.173]and the ovaries and everything around it.
[00:28:00.721]I was so enlarged
[00:28:03.230]that he could not inject the dye.
[00:28:08.000]I had a look of odd and shock on my face
[00:28:12.970]and so one of the nurses looked at me and she said,
[00:28:16.357]"I hear you're writing a book".
[00:28:18.460]And I said, yeah.
[00:28:19.340]She said, "what about"?
[00:28:21.200]I said the "History of American Gynecology".
[00:28:23.319](indistinct)
[00:28:29.417]and so, after talking to me
[00:28:31.810]and doing the things that you've kind of not supposed to do,
[00:28:35.330]rubbing my forehead and my arm.
[00:28:37.690]She looks at me
[00:28:38.700]and she says, "girl you better put this in the book".
[00:28:42.730]I'm a historian, we don't write about ourselves.
[00:28:46.249]We write about dead people.
[00:28:48.166](crowd chuckles)
[00:28:49.371]You don't put yourself in the book.
[00:28:51.779]But I had to reckon with my place
[00:28:56.368]at the intersection of history and the present.
[00:29:01.316]My physician shared with me
[00:29:04.600]when he heard me and her speaking how James Marion Sims,
[00:29:08.530]pioneers fertility treatment in the U.S.
[00:29:12.163]Then he started contemplating his words
[00:29:14.520]and the nurses advice.
[00:29:16.830]I was struck by how time and space seem to work
[00:29:21.020]as the historical narratives of those women held
[00:29:24.450]in medical bondage in the 1840s,
[00:29:27.151]seems so timely and important for black women,
[00:29:31.520]who I think had to interact
[00:29:33.959]with present fertility specialists and gynecologists.
[00:29:36.713]What my work as a historian of race, slavery
[00:29:39.950]with medicine and gender has taught me,
[00:29:42.850]is that the legacy is from the 19th century,
[00:29:45.480]are always present in our lives as Americans.
[00:29:49.440]I recognized that I was a benefactor of all the work
[00:29:52.473]that the country's earliest gynecologists performed
[00:29:55.626]on (indistinct)
[00:29:59.180]I had also inherited the burden
[00:30:01.731]that black women in the 19th century carried with them
[00:30:05.010]about their illnesses and the pain they felt.
[00:30:08.810]Silence and the resemblance
[00:30:14.001]that they needed to engage
[00:30:15.210]in order to survive.
[00:30:17.920]Not only did black women would be helped in gynecology
[00:30:21.164]through their sufferings,
[00:30:22.340]I have a platform that allows me to reveal,
[00:30:25.470]how black women still negotiate their lives
[00:30:28.270]as medical receiver bodies
[00:30:30.498]from studies on black women chronic pain sufferers,
[00:30:34.630]who live in more pain than the Americans
[00:30:37.240]and have less access to pain medicines,
[00:30:40.800]to scholarship that highlights the ways
[00:30:44.290]of black gynecology patients have always had to deal
[00:30:47.347]with efforts to colonize the medical bodies,
[00:30:50.610]my own ideological experiences in fertility medicine,
[00:30:54.313]be it other black woman mistreatment.
[00:30:58.940]As a 21st century patient,
[00:31:01.510]I wasn't hearing that my medical treatment,
[00:31:03.960]might differ drastically
[00:31:05.590]from that of white women wishing to conceive.
[00:31:08.700]The sector of medical racism wounds
[00:31:11.140]because of the history of American women's mess,
[00:31:14.940]numerous medical studies,
[00:31:17.180]have risen convincing evidence that African American women,
[00:31:21.490]have more reproductive challenges than white women
[00:31:25.130]and experience racism in class of your darkness.
[00:31:29.310]It is an outright part of me that I'd always offer
[00:31:32.704](indistinct) to speak about reproductive justice issues
[00:31:35.910]and the history of women's reproductive medicine
[00:31:39.060]that in the 21st century,
[00:31:41.512]the United States, is the most dangerous place
[00:31:44.460]for a black woman and pregnant people,
[00:31:46.370]to not only be pregnant,
[00:31:47.900]but to give birth in a high income conditions,
[00:31:52.790]the staff surrounding black women mortality
[00:31:57.470]and also infant mortality in the 21st century rival
[00:32:02.560]with those in the 19th century.
[00:32:05.670]So working with the change from slavery
[00:32:08.210]to freedom in that respect.
[00:32:16.290]The process of pregnancy see women embrace
[00:32:19.900]as a biological construct,
[00:32:22.210]no matter what I have been taught,
[00:32:23.959]as an ongoing student and later on as a professor,
[00:32:27.372]all the doctors were white and the nurses
[00:32:30.380]and some of the staff were women of color,
[00:32:32.750]how can I not think of all race fully
[00:32:36.230]when I body was sent to labs for genetic testing based
[00:32:40.270]on my racial group.
[00:32:42.591](indistinct)
[00:32:48.920]but my blackness is biological.
[00:32:51.350]All my focus is on the antebellum era,
[00:32:54.742]the racial legacies of this period affects all Americans.
[00:32:59.830]Black women will still represent some
[00:33:02.916]of the poor treatment methods,
[00:33:04.440]the group that suffers from Warwick ailments
[00:33:08.112]than any other developing country
[00:33:09.937]and the demographic mothers and single women,
[00:33:12.480]more than any other American women,
[00:33:14.627]are still being treated as supervising medicine.
[00:33:18.840]It is a sober reality for me is that I face my own battles
[00:33:22.610]despite my status as a married, educated, middle-class woman
[00:33:29.130]perhaps literary (indistinct) was right when she wrote,
[00:33:34.417]"I am a mocked woman, but not everybody knows my name,
[00:33:39.900]I describe a locus, but with fountain entities"
[00:33:44.353]Well I decided to write this book,
[00:33:46.133]I intended to not simply describe the racializing processes
[00:33:50.710]that created these crashing identities,
[00:33:53.370]but to more accurately name and define them,
[00:33:56.850]so when I went to research on the mothers of gynecology
[00:34:01.060]in the process of my discoveries,
[00:34:03.650]I learned that I was the adored
[00:34:06.318]and overall mocked woman
[00:34:08.380]and this is the reckoning of slaves legacy in our lives.
[00:34:13.026]Thank you.
[00:34:14.122](crowd applause)
[00:34:22.737]Our next panelist is, Dr. Margaret Jacobs.
[00:34:25.780]Who'll talk less about fellow reckonings
[00:34:27.560]with indigenous histories.
[00:34:31.679](footsteps pattering)
[00:34:33.683]Good Evening.
[00:34:34.516](echo buzz)
[00:34:37.925]Good evening.
[00:34:39.003](crowd chuckles)
[00:34:40.790]Good evening.
[00:34:42.180]Okay, good.
[00:34:43.993]Thank you to the E.N Thompson Forum.
[00:34:48.081]To Colette Yellow Robe for her Land Acknowledgement.
[00:34:50.560]For my wonderful colleagues.
[00:34:52.770]For our moderator, thank you.
[00:34:55.686]One of my personal and scholarly moments
[00:34:59.170]of reckoning occurred very unexpectedly on June 1st, 2015
[00:35:05.650]in Ottawa, Canada.
[00:35:08.720]I've been writing about Indian boarding schools
[00:35:11.447]and their counterparts in Australia and Canada
[00:35:14.260]for almost two decades.
[00:35:16.730]And I decided to attend a final ceremonies
[00:35:19.320]of the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission
[00:35:22.240]or TRC for short
[00:35:25.600]For five years, the TRC had gathered testimony
[00:35:28.600]from indigenous people,
[00:35:30.620]who as small children had been separated from their families
[00:35:34.750]and forced to attend Indian residential schools in Canada.
[00:35:38.561]These are the various schools you may have been reading
[00:35:41.350]about recently and which masked unmarked graves,
[00:35:44.660]had been found the last few months.
[00:35:48.640]On the morning of June 1st,
[00:35:50.660]I walked briskly from my Chevy Airbnb
[00:35:54.459]to the Delta Aqua Hotel.
[00:35:57.617]I joined thousands of people as they cried out
[00:36:00.700]in the hotel's ballroom.
[00:36:03.350]Some like me were of Southern background,
[00:36:06.370]but most attendees were indigenous,
[00:36:09.670]three drummers surrounded and pounded a large floor drum
[00:36:14.900]as the three distinguished TRC commissioners paraded
[00:36:18.930]onto the stage.
[00:36:21.430]Commissioner Murray Sinclair opened the event,
[00:36:25.610]of Obijibway and AbinochiZhawayn heritage.
[00:36:29.440]He had become the first indigenous judge
[00:36:31.750]on the Province of Manitoba
[00:36:34.440]He asked all the survivors in the audience to stand
[00:36:38.690]and I happened to be seated next to three elderly men
[00:36:41.520]and women who solemnly rose from their seats
[00:36:44.550]along with many hundreds more.
[00:36:47.760]I have to say it was deeply moving,
[00:36:50.470]just to be seated next to them.
[00:36:53.390]Sinclair honored the courage of the survivors,
[00:36:56.810]acknowledging that sometimes, it hasn't been the first time
[00:37:01.020]that you have told your stories,
[00:37:04.160]the crowd stumped their feet in unison
[00:37:07.759]and thundered their applause
[00:37:09.672]and many people were weeping.
[00:37:13.240]Then Sinclair declared that the findings of the TRC
[00:37:17.400]about the abuses of the residential schools,
[00:37:21.308]were not an indigenous problem,
[00:37:23.800]but a Canadian problem.
[00:37:26.220]Canada had said had sought to a erase from the face
[00:37:29.830]of the earth the history
[00:37:31.680]and culture of its indigenous peoples.
[00:37:34.530]He spoke to both in-person attendees and viewers at home,
[00:37:39.270]we ask you to learn,
[00:37:41.170]to share
[00:37:42.360]and to reflect on this tragic part of Canadian history,
[00:37:46.080]but more than that, we ask you to act.
[00:37:51.256]The next day, to much fanfare
[00:37:54.780]the TRC planned to release their final report.
[00:37:58.760]I was really eager
[00:37:59.900]and I got to the hotel about an hour early,
[00:38:02.750]but the ballroom was already full.
[00:38:06.520]I followed a crowd out to a room on the third floor
[00:38:09.530]to watch the proceedings on TV.
[00:38:12.530]Commissioner Wilton the Littlechild,
[00:38:15.338]told how he had been robbed at the age of six
[00:38:17.940]from the home of his Creed grandparents
[00:38:20.000]to spend the next 14 years at Indian residential schools,
[00:38:24.977]"we were abused for using our own languages
[00:38:28.140]to practicing our spirituality", he told us,
[00:38:32.260]in a video of them, one residential school survivor,
[00:38:35.387]described having to lick the floor as punishment.
[00:38:39.488]Another survivor saw another child forced
[00:38:42.140]to eat his own vomit.
[00:38:44.370]He learned that more than a third
[00:38:45.750]of survivors experienced sexual abuse.
[00:38:51.370]Those of us who watched the broadcast together
[00:38:53.517]in the small room were all weighed there,
[00:38:56.759]by the magnitude of the cruelty.
[00:39:00.810]We collectively agreed to prevent sufferings
[00:39:02.733]of indigenous children and families
[00:39:05.340]whom may have been separated,
[00:39:08.730]but, for all the sadness,
[00:39:11.061]there was another shared emotion that permeated the room,
[00:39:16.190]a potent kinship formed among us,
[00:39:19.530]even though most of us were strangers.
[00:39:22.870]It felt like a deep connectedness,
[00:39:26.360]a desire among all of us to care for one another
[00:39:29.347]and do better.
[00:39:31.600]We weren't witnessing a moment of reckoning,
[00:39:34.350]a nation remembering
[00:39:36.320]and taking responsibility for its past abuses.
[00:39:40.630]But each of us was being called to tap
[00:39:42.810]into our deepest humanity as well.
[00:39:46.460]In a world of sinisterism,
[00:39:49.210]It was surprising to experience this moment
[00:39:52.190]of pure possibility.
[00:39:55.160]We glimpsed how we might all heal together
[00:39:58.610]from the historical wounds we've had suffered or inflicted.,
[00:40:03.270]If we could just polish these moments like tiny beads
[00:40:07.370]and string them together into a long necklace,
[00:40:11.676]I wanted to not just to represent a national level
[00:40:15.340]of reckoning,
[00:40:16.850]for me it also engendered a personal reckoning.
[00:40:20.670]It really changed me as a scholar
[00:40:22.950]and I have to say as a person.
[00:40:25.570]From that moment on,
[00:40:27.920]I have asked myself all the time,
[00:40:30.840]how can the word I deliver to (indistinct)
[00:40:33.930]help people come to terms with the traumas of our past
[00:40:37.850]and develop respectful ways of relating to each other?
[00:40:42.160]I realized that I have a responsibility
[00:40:44.520]to use whatever scholarly skills I have
[00:40:47.830]to serve the cause of truth and reconciliation.
[00:40:51.990]So my scholarship shifted from an individual endeavor
[00:40:56.210]to a collaborative partnerships
[00:41:01.124]through the Genoa Indian School Reconciliation Projects
[00:41:04.920]and then the Reconciliation and Rise,
[00:41:07.780]a multimedia project that showcases the work
[00:41:11.030]that indigenous people have suffered,
[00:41:13.030]who are working together to confront painful histories
[00:41:16.490]and promote reconciliation.
[00:41:19.770]So, I'm a historian.
[00:41:21.645]I don't usually share,
[00:41:22.478]this kind of pieces of advice perhaps,
[00:41:27.770]but I felt this as an usual event,
[00:41:30.360]my colleagues, as you noticed, have been very vulnerable.
[00:41:33.640]So it happened, maybe this is the time to do this as well.
[00:41:37.047]So I have a few things I've learned along the way
[00:41:40.520]that I thought might be helpful
[00:41:41.353]to others like me in the audience,
[00:41:44.346]who also feel compelled to work for racial reconciliation.
[00:41:49.370]To borrow from the African-American civil rights activist,
[00:41:53.634]Ryan Stevenson, "get proximate to those,
[00:41:56.199]who are dealing with inequality and injustice".
[00:42:02.050]If I find myself spending a lot of time in situations where
[00:42:05.680]almost everybody is white,
[00:42:07.820]I realized something's wrong.
[00:42:10.240]So, I seek out opportunities to be with multiracial person
[00:42:13.900]and even better to be on my money for a change.
[00:42:18.107]Granted sometimes I feel really awkward
[00:42:21.320]and uncomfortable and vulnerable,
[00:42:23.750]well, I'm just one of the few white people
[00:42:25.800]on the with indigenous people working for color,
[00:42:30.250]but it's good to feel uncomfortable sometimes,
[00:42:33.720]it gives me a taste of what it's like for people of color
[00:42:36.710]and predominantly white community and institution,
[00:42:39.950]who have to deal with this almost all the time
[00:42:43.668]and as a bonus, I often become invisible
[00:42:47.430]and then I can listen and learn a lot.
[00:42:51.529]Everything I've learned,
[00:42:53.887]I know I'm gonna make a lot of mistakes,
[00:42:55.638]I'm probably making them right now
[00:42:58.055]and that's unavoidable
[00:43:00.490]and it's okay to make mistakes.
[00:43:03.950]And I don't need to be defensive.
[00:43:05.960]I can admit my mistakes.
[00:43:07.420]I admit my limitations and shortcomings
[00:43:10.270]and I can learn from them.
[00:43:12.240]Finally, one thing I've learned is to reflect deeply
[00:43:15.840]on my motivations.
[00:43:18.010]I'm not driven by shame or guilt for being a Southern,
[00:43:21.870]but by accountability,
[00:43:24.120]a passion for justice, healing and deep human connection.
[00:43:30.170]For white settlers, reckoning with our content past,
[00:43:33.210]may seem daunting,
[00:43:35.840]it's true that it involves difficult conversations
[00:43:40.140]as we unflinching face up to our history
[00:43:43.390]and work together toward reconciliation,
[00:43:46.400]but we may also be transformed by the process
[00:43:50.230]as I was when my moment reckoning
[00:43:52.213]in that little room in the Delta Aqua Hotel,
[00:43:56.640]ultimately, we may learn of and become empowered
[00:44:01.231]by our deep interrelatedness.
[00:44:04.060]Thank you very much.
[00:44:05.842](crowd applause)
[00:44:19.392]Good afternoon everyone.
[00:44:21.234]Thank you to my fellow panelists
[00:44:23.738]and thank you to the audience for making time to hear us.
[00:44:31.830]There's quite a few of us and that is even more important
[00:44:34.720]and we're committed
[00:44:36.727]because we face harder life today
[00:44:39.880]and yet why privacy is the aging like a two-year-old
[00:44:44.950]with lips, cheeks, fingers
[00:44:47.200]and a (indistinct) full of powdered sugar,
[00:44:50.460]we all know he is guilty as hell,
[00:44:52.110]yet he insists on shrugging shoulders,
[00:44:55.560]hands behind his back and proudly equipped
[00:44:59.137]And until Americans internalize the fact
[00:45:01.483]that our tax, dollars are weaponized
[00:45:04.280]against communities of color,
[00:45:06.870]they hope the lies will have changed
[00:45:10.922]until Americans accept
[00:45:13.204]that their votes are often hijacked
[00:45:14.540]into terrorizing minoritized communities.
[00:45:17.910]We shall keep mourning the same deaths
[00:45:20.840]and grieving the same tears.
[00:45:22.870]It is impossible to cliff hanging over state
[00:45:26.084]and local taxes with all those things
[00:45:28.786]that they are demanding, certain levels of accountability.
[00:45:32.630]The human rights communities of color
[00:45:35.281](indistinct)
[00:45:44.568]We can no longer witness the hurting of minor communities
[00:46:18.641](indistinct)
[00:46:19.526]And so they tell us, there is a dog in this your place
[00:46:21.350]across the street,
[00:46:40.735]There's a dog send her back,
[00:46:41.690]lock her up,
[00:46:42.523]strain him up,
[00:46:43.356]shoot him up,
[00:46:44.189]gun him down, merry Christmas,
[00:46:46.210]basically African refugee ship or country.
[00:47:14.146](indistinct chatter)
[00:47:24.030]It's a fundamental revision of the software
[00:47:27.103]with which we're on this nation,
[00:47:33.290]expectations of government
[00:47:41.030]anything less is superficial.
[00:47:44.230]The bandaid is what is ostensibly a multiple fraction.
[00:47:51.480]Alongside hours of reconstructive surgery.
[00:47:55.430]The level of moral and spiritual expertise required to
[00:47:59.540]successfully accomplish task ahead is unimaginable
[00:48:04.040]the demands to our cycle
[00:48:24.970]the two quests are fundamentally linked.
[00:48:34.021]or points in our collective memory where those two objects
[00:48:39.750]transform into grocery items
[00:48:42.575]our points will sugar and cotton.
[00:48:46.410]Since the accusations of its nation's original deaths,
[00:48:51.870]folks around the world are dreaming of near common
[00:48:54.940]connections between nations corporations
[00:49:16.026]And it's kind of been designated at it's a democratic of
[00:49:20.140]struggles for racial equality mirrors,
[00:49:22.680]such quite environmental justice alongside gender equity.
[00:49:26.450]We shall feel biodversity.
[00:49:28.637]We cried for the mothers to stop
[00:49:36.780]No nation is an island.
[00:49:50.640]It dips into the future of human,
[00:49:53.330]far as the human eye could see.
[00:52:02.738]Thank you to all of our panelists.
[00:52:06.230]So I've been sitting here the past few minutes,
[00:52:09.530]really thinking, it kids you, where do you really start
[00:52:12.410]after all of this?
[00:52:14.470]So I thought to myself,
[00:52:15.840]I want to start with an open question for all of you
[00:52:17.940]and whoever wants to answer, please.
[00:52:22.530]So, after a painful, yet eliminating year,
[00:52:25.440]we saw protests.
[00:52:28.190]56 protests.
[00:52:29.320]We saw ongoing global pandemic,
[00:52:32.040]which we've touched on a little bit.
[00:52:34.000]The world appears to be reemerging
[00:52:35.570]with a clearer understanding
[00:52:36.950]of the broad gift complex picture of systemic racism
[00:52:40.227]and the need for action.
[00:52:42.360]Everyone's ready for action, right?
[00:52:45.533]But we're now witnessing
[00:52:47.490]and I don't want to call it unprecedented,
[00:52:50.053]but perhaps in our lifetime,
[00:52:51.435]perhaps I can frame it that way,
[00:52:52.670]we are witnessing severe backlash
[00:52:54.520]that has taken many forms from pundants,
[00:52:57.703]even their new props of journalism, et cetera.
[00:53:02.390]So, from your respective angle,
[00:53:04.750]what has proven to be
[00:53:05.670]the most surprising form of this backlash?
[00:53:09.010]Now, that we've experienced some little reckoning,
[00:53:11.080]what's been the most surprising form of backlash for you?
[00:53:15.480]Nothing.
[00:53:17.236](panelist chuckles)
[00:53:18.290]I'm a historian of the 19th century in US history
[00:53:21.904]and race and racism,
[00:53:22.737]nothing, the whole journalism,
[00:53:25.530]which is based on sensationalism,
[00:53:27.320]we had people naming diseases after different nations,
[00:53:33.140]that's been going on for centuries,
[00:53:35.120]the French disease.
[00:53:36.815]Nothing, when I was in college,
[00:53:39.806]guess nothing, I was in college in the '90s
[00:53:44.251]and people were videotaping Robbie Keane getting beaten.
[00:53:47.750]Rwandan genocide was going on,
[00:53:50.090]there were epidemics in the '80s
[00:53:51.710]when I was a little girl in DC,
[00:53:54.420]people were dying of AIDS
[00:53:56.680]and there was act up
[00:53:58.720]and there were people who were protesting,
[00:54:01.100]none of this is new.
[00:54:03.484]None of this is new.
[00:54:04.770]we lived through epidemics.
[00:54:06.690]We live through pandemics,
[00:54:08.110]the difference is unlike AIDS,
[00:54:10.720]where you could use a group as a vector for filth
[00:54:14.242]and pathologies up,
[00:54:17.250]just deranged white gay men in San Francisco.
[00:54:22.400]This is now a pandemic,
[00:54:24.820]what we're seeing in this different generation,
[00:54:27.670]everybody's affected
[00:54:29.870]and so that's not even about the blacks,
[00:54:33.200]that I teach my students about, affected everybody.
[00:54:36.314]So for me, there's nothing surprising about this.
[00:54:40.680]If there's something I feel disappointment
[00:54:44.490]that people are responding in the same ways
[00:54:47.480]and we are bearing rotten fruit,
[00:54:49.950]we should have learned
[00:54:51.750]and unfortunately we are not.
[00:54:57.230]Yeah, one of the most surprising things to me,
[00:55:00.790]has been the effort to restrict
[00:55:03.703]the teaching of history
[00:55:08.290]and to ban certain events.
[00:55:10.826](crowd applause)
[00:55:14.343]Certain people and subjects from the curriculum.
[00:55:18.930]I grew up in the cold war.
[00:55:20.290]I never expected to see a day
[00:55:22.220]where history would be seen as somehow threatening
[00:55:32.320]and that certain subjects would be banned,
[00:55:35.430]it's misguided because history is always being retold.
[00:55:38.890]It's always being be reinterpreted.
[00:55:41.210]That is what history is
[00:55:43.480]and so it's misguided in that way,
[00:55:46.290]but it's also dangerous because a democracy thrives
[00:55:52.025]on the reinterpretation of its past,
[00:55:55.790]to chart a future
[00:55:58.180]and so I've been surprised about that actually.
[00:56:10.740]Perhaps one of the more surprising tons has been,
[00:56:14.600]not quite isolationism,
[00:56:16.060]but an inward ton,
[00:56:18.280]whereby the other variously defined,
[00:56:23.470]the flooring-the strange, is no longer friend, neighbor,
[00:56:28.210]friend we're about to meet but right,
[00:56:30.840]something scary
[00:56:32.010]and Dr. Owens quite lucky to have seen this period,
[00:56:35.940]but that's the disappointment in it because,
[00:56:43.007]the solutions to many of the questions and the challenges
[00:56:46.420]that we face lie out there, like literally,
[00:56:49.970]and not to be romantic,
[00:56:52.158]there's so much potential that is then wasted-lost
[00:56:57.970]by these fear of the other across multiple kinds of factors
[00:57:06.000]and maybe that never quite went away,
[00:57:08.730]just rarely it's head a lot more now,
[00:57:13.470]but I do agree that is lost opportunity in the case.
[00:57:22.840]So, I kind of had the reaction of Dr. Cooper Owen,
[00:57:27.445]but it didn't surprise me,
[00:57:30.890]really disappointed and frustrating,
[00:57:34.420]but part of me thinks we give way too much attention to it
[00:57:39.198]and that in giving that attention to the backlash
[00:57:45.732]or people who live in fear, hey,
[00:57:49.040]and this view of fear in the age
[00:57:51.350]that we reinforce it,
[00:57:54.170]so that's actually one of the reasons
[00:57:56.200]that Kevin Alvarez and I started Reconciliation Rising
[00:57:59.549]as we thought it was really important to highlight people,
[00:58:03.930]who you never hear about who are doing amazing things
[00:58:06.970]for good in the world.
[00:58:09.850]So, for example, Kevin and I spent
[00:58:12.830]the weekend doing some filming of a group of Pawnee people.
[00:58:17.490]40 Pawnee people came up to Nebraska last weekend
[00:58:22.830]and they were harvesting sacred,
[00:58:26.440]traditional equal corn on two acres of land,
[00:58:30.940]15 miles West of Lincoln
[00:58:32.460]on land owned by a white settler named Del Ficke
[00:58:37.010]and Del Ficke is about one
[00:58:39.560]of about 20 white, Nebraska settlers,
[00:58:41.870]who've sacrificed part of their land for this purpose,
[00:58:46.220]so that the Pawnee, who once lived here in Nebraska,
[00:58:49.100]this was their homeland,
[00:58:50.470]could come back and grow their own corn here
[00:58:53.440]that they now use for ceremony and food
[00:58:56.225]and are reestablishing their food sovereignty?
[00:59:00.621]And it was a truly amazing weekend.
[00:59:04.310]This efforts led by a woman named Deb Echo-Hawk,
[00:59:06.880]who's Pawnee and her good friend, Ronnie O'Brien,
[00:59:09.820]who's a Nebraska settler from certain grand island area.
[00:59:14.530]These are people you should know about
[00:59:16.800]and I'm betting has anybody heard this?
[00:59:20.082]Nobody sitting in the audience.
[00:59:21.990]We have one person.
[00:59:23.122]So, why don't we know about this?
[00:59:25.990]I think that we need to know about people,
[00:59:28.910]who are doing these things
[00:59:30.650]that if we knew more about it, one,
[00:59:33.330]we'd have more models for how to do this
[00:59:36.983]and two, we would help to birth a different way
[00:59:41.190]of being in the world.
[00:59:42.460]And I know this sounds perhaps naive and Pollyannish,
[00:59:46.110]but I know we can't ignore the backlash,
[00:59:49.760]I mean, we have to pay attention to it,
[00:59:51.700]but, I also think we need to pay attention
[00:59:53.540]to these other enterprises that are going on in the world.
[00:59:59.710]Thank you, Dr. Jacobs.
[01:00:01.743]I have a question,
[01:00:04.220]because again, we were touching a little bit
[01:00:05.910]on what's happening across the globe,
[01:00:07.370]but there's also this global pandemic COVID,
[01:00:11.590]which seems like it's been five years,
[01:00:13.210]but unfortunately it's barely been 19-20 months.
[01:00:17.550]So I have a question for you, Dr. Owens,
[01:00:20.445]in the midst of this global reckoning,
[01:00:21.780]we are experiencing unprecedented global health pandemic.
[01:00:24.900]I feel like that's still not strong enough language to kind
[01:00:27.480]of describe where we are,
[01:00:28.830]but ongoing reports and data show us
[01:00:30.448]the disproportionate impact of COVID-19
[01:00:33.010]on communities of color,
[01:00:34.350]particularly black and indigenous communities
[01:00:36.610]and even in recent reports,
[01:00:37.990]you're witnessing the impact on women
[01:00:39.870]and black women in particular.
[01:00:41.610]So, is this global pandemic,
[01:00:43.347]countless for true change?
[01:00:45.220]You talked about, especially your own experience,
[01:00:48.530]your personal experience with your researcher history here.
[01:00:51.320]What can history teach us during this period?
[01:00:55.006]Those are wonderful questions that you've asked.
[01:00:58.620]I'm gonna try and take them from the top to the bottom.
[01:01:02.090]And you know what, I'm typically pessimistic,
[01:01:05.530]even though I'm a really happy person,
[01:01:07.510]I'm talking about pessimistic around people's responses,
[01:01:11.670]Dr. Jacobs highlighted,
[01:01:14.700]sometimes who we tend to highlight
[01:01:17.400]and I don't think we should,
[01:01:19.235]but in this way I am seeing public health officials
[01:01:25.300]and medical professionals in organizations saying,
[01:01:30.440]we haven't done a good job for a really long time
[01:01:33.877]and perhaps now is the time where we can start
[01:01:38.460]to look at the disparities that are happening in real ways.
[01:01:42.140]And so, often when I give talks to audiences
[01:01:45.300]and I'm integrating history,
[01:01:47.060]I have to ask them,
[01:01:48.900]when did the government first define medical racism
[01:01:54.400]as a public health issue?
[01:01:56.720]And I get all different kinds of dates,
[01:01:58.037]but I'm like April, 2021,
[01:02:02.336]but people have been calling for it for decades,
[01:02:06.180]so the first office of minority health was starting
[01:02:09.060]to with the regular presidency.
[01:02:11.780]People see him as a symbol for like the culmination
[01:02:15.387]of the modern conservative movement in the '80s
[01:02:17.980]and yet there was so many health discrepancies
[01:02:22.610]by race in class that his presidency,
[01:02:25.114]was the one that created this office,
[01:02:29.280]by the Clinton presidency in the 1990's,
[01:02:32.795]when you had the black Surgeon General, David Satcher,
[01:02:35.380]he said, "we didn't have to address this,
[01:02:39.610]medical racism is a thing"
[01:02:41.391]We have to address it
[01:02:43.180]and then 10 years we wanted dismantled in this country
[01:02:50.390]that was in the '90s.
[01:02:52.350]The CDC doesn't declare medical racism
[01:02:55.670]as a public health crisis until 2021.
[01:02:58.440]So, that gives me some hope
[01:03:00.530]because at least now we have it on the stroke record
[01:03:04.414]and people are actively working to unlearn a lot of things
[01:03:08.780]that had been detrimental.
[01:03:10.760]What might they think in terms of COVID-19,
[01:03:13.960]also goes back to something, Dr. Jacob said,
[01:03:17.440]it was already assumed even before asking black people
[01:03:21.210]that there would be hesitancy
[01:03:23.600]and so you cannot imagine how busy my year was during COVID.
[01:03:29.600]I was in the house,
[01:03:30.830]but I wasn't literally giving interviews in Turkey,
[01:03:34.670]in the US and documentaries,
[01:03:37.310]giving zoom talks to every organization you can think of,
[01:03:41.698]can you create learning modules
[01:03:44.130]and they were like,
[01:03:45.644]why are black people hesitant about the vaccine?
[01:03:48.060]And I was like, are there any studies signing this?
[01:03:51.738]So the assumption was
[01:03:54.530]and so I'm like black people can think of me
[01:03:56.650]and still do something different,
[01:03:58.890]which means we can be quite aware
[01:04:01.800]of the history of medical racism
[01:04:04.060]and still go to the doctor
[01:04:06.450]and still get the vaccine.
[01:04:08.540]I've been black for 49 years.
[01:04:10.320]Most of the black people I know in my family
[01:04:12.620]and I know quite a few of them, have vaccines.
[01:04:17.270]In fact, the ones who are hesitant,
[01:04:19.997]tend to be in the minority
[01:04:23.360]and in fact the CDC has shown over the past two weeks,
[01:04:26.940]more African-Americans are getting the vaccine.
[01:04:31.163]So once again, it's about the ways too,
[01:04:34.450]that a certain message has always been promoted.
[01:04:37.436]That doesn't update that the United States
[01:04:39.850]as a nation, has a really long shacked up history
[01:04:43.560]of mistreating black people and poor people
[01:04:46.168]and disabled people
[01:04:47.160]and black women, especially,
[01:04:51.190]but this is probably the first time
[01:04:53.270]that I've seen medical organizations from the AME
[01:04:56.180]to the American College of Concentrations Gynelogy
[01:05:00.402]and then gynecologies,
[01:05:01.700]public health groups finally saying,
[01:05:04.150]we have got to do a better job
[01:05:05.650]because people are dying on our watch
[01:05:07.750]and COVID-19 has worn that out
[01:05:11.250]in particular for poor communities,
[01:05:14.160]black communities and indigenous communities.
[01:05:17.630]Thank you.
[01:05:19.430]And Dr. Thomas, in your remarks,
[01:05:23.050]you mentioned the personal reckoning with history,
[01:05:25.970]particularly quote, many Americans talk about,
[01:05:29.340]think about and understand slavery as an abstract,
[01:05:33.710]even anonymous institution,
[01:05:35.900]It's like people remain faceless and nameless
[01:05:38.270]in history textbooks.
[01:05:40.450]So this seems to be true,
[01:05:41.450]not only in this historical context, but currently
[01:05:44.860]and as Dr. Cooper was mentioning now,
[01:05:49.026]but during this little reckoning,
[01:05:49.859]how can we really think about this painful history,
[01:05:52.660]which we have a tendency to again think about an abstract,
[01:05:55.800]that we continue to struggle with.
[01:05:58.220]How can we use this to reconcile our present,
[01:06:01.780]especially the present right now,
[01:06:03.450]there is extreme divisiveness,
[01:06:06.520]denial,
[01:06:07.353]alternative truths, if you will?
[01:06:10.192]Right.
[01:06:12.840]Well, I think the pathway to reconciling the present
[01:06:20.510]and the past is through stories we haven't heard,
[01:06:24.200]I mentioned that.
[01:06:27.129]I'm thinking of specific stories.
[01:06:29.070]We need specific stories of people in the past,
[01:06:33.720]who acted in ways that we may not have recognized
[01:06:37.510]or acknowledged.
[01:06:38.343]We have a lot of what I think many of us
[01:06:41.715]on this panel would call repair work to do in history.
[01:06:45.220]We need to prepare our understanding of the past
[01:06:48.657]and we need to bring those stories into our lives.
[01:06:57.416]One of the enslaved families that researched
[01:07:03.350]and wrote about in depth, is the Mahoney Family
[01:07:10.058]and Charles Mahoney, historians remarkable.
[01:07:14.670]He files a suit for his freedom and his brother's freedom.
[01:07:19.450]It takes 12 years to litigate through the courts.
[01:07:23.160]The entire 1790s,
[01:07:25.320]there are three jury trials
[01:07:26.970]and two appeals to the Maryland Supreme Court
[01:07:30.260]and then another 12 or 15 years later,
[01:07:34.054]he manages to purchase the freedom of his daughter.
[01:07:40.170]This is a man who spent 25 years effectively,
[01:07:45.910]freeing himself and his family.
[01:07:50.612]And he goes unmentioned in American history.
[01:07:56.130]The Mahoney suit is one of the most important
[01:07:58.780]and it's never discussed and yet,
[01:08:01.970]so we need these stories to repair the enormous gaps
[01:08:08.400]in our understanding of the past.
[01:08:10.680]I think one of the issues we have right now,
[01:08:12.830]is that there really are just fundamentally,
[01:08:18.130]different historical memories.
[01:08:22.260]James Baldwin who you quoted,
[01:08:24.090]to open, spoke about this in his 1965 debate
[01:08:28.870]with William F. Buckley,
[01:08:30.680]the historical memory
[01:08:36.311]that many Americans might have
[01:08:38.690]does not include these stories.
[01:08:41.210]And the only way forward I think is
[01:08:44.780]for that separation of historical memory to close.
[01:08:53.170]Dr. Muchiri, in your remarks,
[01:08:55.820]you know histories of violence within policing,
[01:08:59.620]legalization of taxation
[01:09:00.780]to fund the various systems of oppression
[01:09:03.690]and we understand the ongoing struggle
[01:09:06.371]for equality truly is slow
[01:09:07.420]and sometimes I think when we think global,
[01:09:10.212]of course, we have a tendency to think of US goal,
[01:09:13.900]or we just think of America, right?
[01:09:17.070]How are the calls to examine and confront our histories
[01:09:21.125]of racism, white supremacy being confronted currently
[01:09:24.730]within African nations?
[01:09:25.880]I think we think about it in historical terms,
[01:09:29.330]which of course that matters,
[01:09:31.920]but how do we begin to confront this,
[01:09:34.130]what's happening to African nations
[01:09:35.650]and then are there similarities or opportunities
[01:09:38.410]for this raising of our consciousness
[01:09:40.670]through education due to some of our very similar histories?
[01:09:46.140]Excellent question Dr. Friday.
[01:09:48.020]Yeah, there are quite a lot of points of similarities
[01:09:52.355]between the kinds of challenges,
[01:09:56.909]this stories and narratives,
[01:09:58.403]and historical topic where we're sharing about here
[01:10:02.680]with what we've seen across the African continent.
[01:10:06.450]So for instance, the idea of settler colonialism,
[01:10:12.360]that obviously rings very true within the United States
[01:10:15.320]and in Canada,
[01:10:16.153]it also rings true in Algeria under French colonialism.
[01:10:22.824]It rings very true in Zimbabwe and South Africa,
[01:10:25.650]in Kenya.
[01:10:33.999]I think there's a tendency within the US public space
[01:10:37.990]for some sort of exceptionalism.
[01:10:46.024]A podcast I was listening to reminded me,
[01:10:49.220]which obviously it's true, right?
[01:10:50.760]The fact in colonies where exactly that right?
[01:10:53.571]Colonies and so on that level,
[01:10:57.900]speaking with any African nation,
[01:11:01.080]except for Ethiopia and Sierra Leone, to a smaller extent
[01:11:03.634]there is that common experience
[01:11:09.692]of having to go beyond the colonial moment.
[01:11:11.420]Having to colonize infrastructure and systems
[01:11:16.150]from healthcare obviously to education,
[01:11:18.780]to the criminal and justice system.
[01:11:22.860]There are lots of points of commonality and similarity
[01:11:28.247]and we often,
[01:11:31.380]we being the American public space
[01:11:33.730]often miss those lessons
[01:11:35.330]because we approached the African continent
[01:11:38.250]from a certain number of stereotypes.
[01:11:44.550]With the refugees,
[01:11:45.912](indistinct)
[01:11:47.160]hunger,
[01:11:49.036]famine,
[01:11:49.947]disease
[01:11:50.780]and so we kinda label those experiences
[01:11:52.640]and those communities and those nations,
[01:11:53.947]but that misses a lot, again,
[01:11:57.240]to go back to what I said,
[01:11:58.590]misses a lot of opportunity.
[01:12:01.970]Just from what we're discussing in terms of medical racism,
[01:12:04.834]some of us may know this,
[01:12:07.390]but one of the first open heart surgery was done
[01:12:10.752]in the pockets of South Africa in the mid '60s,
[01:12:14.886]if I'm not wrong,
[01:12:16.000]but in the pockets South Africa,
[01:12:17.360]which raises a lot of questions
[01:12:19.040]about who are the experimental subjects,
[01:12:21.380]what kind of funding was available for this, right?
[01:12:24.410]And this is clearly linked to what we all benefit
[01:12:29.140]as patients in a kind of global medical marketplace.
[01:12:32.720]So, a lot of links, right?
[01:12:35.730]A lot of lessons to be learned.
[01:12:37.520]A lot of narratives to be revised.
[01:12:46.800]And how will you use this, all these lessons,
[01:12:49.250]because they're really,
[01:12:52.189]I mean, thinking about the audience,
[01:12:53.710]how do we use this towards our current experiences
[01:12:57.920]and how do we use it in own historical context?
[01:13:00.200]Because I think as many of you are noted,
[01:13:04.280]I think it's typical that a lot of these things
[01:13:06.050]that are happening in history.
[01:13:08.525]History has taught us a lot.
[01:13:09.358]I don't know how much we're using it
[01:13:10.367]for where we currently are?
[01:13:11.710]And I do have a question for you, Dr. Jacobs.
[01:13:14.490]So I mentioned this 50 state protest,
[01:13:18.127]summer 2020, highlighted the atrocities
[01:13:21.720]of racism in policing premiums of color,
[01:13:23.980]for many people, especially perhaps those that research,
[01:13:26.899]those that experienced it because they're real identities,
[01:13:29.560]this is not new,
[01:13:31.350]but there's 50 state protests that happened in summer 2020,
[01:13:34.300]following the murder of George Floyd.
[01:13:36.300]It really had for many of the atrocities of racism,
[01:13:38.950]policing communities of color
[01:13:41.530]and it led to demonstrations,
[01:13:43.620]outpouring support,
[01:13:45.050]statements of solidary from civic leaders to corporations.
[01:13:48.510]I mean, you saw statements being released across the nation,
[01:13:52.115]across the globe.
[01:13:53.240]Many of them were rebuking what was happening
[01:13:55.915]to the communities of color,
[01:13:56.770]chat sizing various systems and leaders
[01:13:58.800]that continue to defend the racial of native
[01:14:00.680]and indigenous communities
[01:14:03.522]and so we started to see that
[01:14:04.734]and then some of these reviews were coming from countries,
[01:14:06.340]such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada.
[01:14:09.130]And I found it quite fascinating
[01:14:11.670]to see native indigenous people start to rise
[01:14:14.300]and to speak out against these statements of solidarity.
[01:14:17.950]So, during this period of global reckoning,
[01:14:20.020]how can we begin to educate ourselves
[01:14:22.160]and more intentionally on the racial,
[01:14:24.880]painful history surrounding native indigenous communities
[01:14:28.070]and our nation and others.
[01:14:30.030]We continue to use this as an afterthought,
[01:14:32.320]which is rather unfortunate because it's all connected,
[01:14:34.940]interceptional
[01:14:36.450]and how are these histories connected
[01:14:38.340]towards our large whole story of modernization
[01:14:41.230]and systemic oppression.
[01:14:43.690]Wow.
[01:14:44.915](panelists laughing)
[01:14:48.810]well, after the murder of George Floyd and the protests,
[01:14:56.310]locally it was really amazing and heartening to see the ways
[01:15:00.250]in which people who experience marginalization
[01:15:05.770]and oppression in many different ways,
[01:15:09.150]formed a lot of solidarity with one another,
[01:15:11.590]for example, the Lincoln Indian Center did a lot of events
[01:15:14.850]and protests in solidarity with black lives matter
[01:15:19.600]and black lives matter people have been showing up
[01:15:22.230]at the Lincoln Indian Center,
[01:15:24.910]when horrific things are going on in the Indian community,
[01:15:28.300]such as Zachary Bear Heels,
[01:15:30.400]who was killed in police custody,
[01:15:34.698]or such as the discoveries of mass graves in Canada.
[01:15:42.070]So, I think that there may be these attempts to silo people,
[01:15:49.670]who have experienced oppression,
[01:15:52.020]different kinds of oppression,
[01:15:53.470]but those groups see common cause.
[01:15:56.709]I've also been really excited
[01:15:58.960]by ever been here in Lincoln, called standing for Nebraska,
[01:16:03.530]that's got an amazing holistic vision,
[01:16:06.254]the connections between all the different types
[01:16:09.300]of oppression that people have experienced.
[01:16:15.780]So I think one of the most important things
[01:16:17.490]about making sure that people's experiences
[01:16:22.870]and histories are not arranged is really trying new ways
[01:16:25.820]to find, to support indigenous media
[01:16:31.673]because for a long time
[01:16:34.210]partly because of indigenous people are a small minority
[01:16:36.820]in this country,
[01:16:38.460]their stories have been really overshadowed
[01:16:42.010]by other peoples,
[01:16:43.910]mostly settlers people's narratives about them
[01:16:46.880]and so there's an amazing kind of movement
[01:16:50.570]of indigenous people to tell their own stories
[01:16:54.580]from their own perspectives
[01:16:56.050]and to kind of break out of the stereotypes
[01:17:00.170]and you see that with some of the new TV shows
[01:17:02.380]that are coming out like Rutherford Falls
[01:17:04.680]and Reservation Dogs,
[01:17:06.170]but even here in Lincoln,
[01:17:08.740]we have this amazing organization called Vision Maker Media.
[01:17:14.480]I have to admit,
[01:17:16.260]I knew what Dr. Friday was gonna ask me,
[01:17:19.370]so I looked at Vision Makers meeting,
[01:17:21.830]their mission because I think it's amazing.
[01:17:24.855]Their mission is empowering,
[01:17:26.440]engaging native people to share stories.
[01:17:29.430]We envision a world changed and healed
[01:17:31.430]by understanding native stories
[01:17:33.293]and the public conversations they generate.
[01:17:36.370]So the more we can seek out indigenous media
[01:17:39.589]and hear their stories from their perspectives,
[01:17:43.210]I think that's super important.
[01:17:45.240]Another thing I think we could all do,
[01:17:51.416]is recognize the historical connections
[01:17:54.570]between what I call the two founding primes of our country
[01:17:59.770]and those are land dispossession and slavery
[01:18:02.740]and these things are totally related.
[01:18:05.000]We often study them in isolation,
[01:18:08.110]we're often trained as historians.
[01:18:10.890]Will's trained as a historian,
[01:18:12.610]more of slavery and civil war
[01:18:14.137]and I'm trained more as a historian of the American West
[01:18:17.630]and indigenous peoples,
[01:18:19.700]but these things are totally related.
[01:18:22.400]The expansion of slavery went hand in hand
[01:18:24.783]with the dispossession of American-Indian people.
[01:18:28.590]So, we should be trying to find ways
[01:18:32.120]to bring those stories together,
[01:18:34.390]so that we can understand the ways
[01:18:36.620]in which the systemic oppression is related.
[01:18:41.530]So we have a few minutes remaining
[01:18:43.952]and I wanna just open this up to the audience for Q&A.
[01:18:48.400]We're gonna actually be using
[01:18:50.570]a little bit of technology now
[01:18:52.260]and don't worry, I'm going to repeat myself multiple times,
[01:18:55.980]but we will be using Poll Everywhere,
[01:18:58.280]so that you all can submit your questions.
[01:19:01.420]If you are using your cell phone, you can pull it out
[01:19:04.535]and you're gonna text E-N-T,
[01:19:08.800]echo-November-tango 9, 1, 8.
[01:19:14.000]So the number, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3.
[01:19:19.330]Again, you will text E-N-T, echo, November, tango 9, 1, 8,
[01:19:28.063]2, 2, 3, 3, 3.
[01:19:33.200]I think that bears pity one more time.
[01:19:36.380]So if you're using your cell,
[01:19:37.950]you can text E-N-T, 9, 1, 8 to number 2, 2, 3, 3, 3.
[01:19:44.570]And if you want to go online,
[01:19:46.260]you can go to "pollev.com/ent" to submit your questions.
[01:19:52.690]So I'll give you all a second to submit those questions.
[01:19:54.980]If you want to text those,
[01:19:56.480]or if you want to go online, poll,
[01:19:59.310]p-o-l-l.ev.com/ent 9, 1, 8
[01:20:06.340]I did all the repeating, no one.
[01:20:08.287](panelist laughing)
[01:20:09.789]I want to be diligent.
[01:20:11.210]I want to be diligent.
[01:20:12.380]So we'll give you a few seconds to get those
[01:20:14.290]and I will pull your questions up
[01:20:16.000]and we will get to them as we are able to.
[01:20:23.090]I don't know about you all,
[01:20:24.070]but that made me more nervous on how to give a talk.
[01:20:27.771](panelists chuckles)
[01:20:35.380]So we do have one question.
[01:20:37.590]Don't you just love technology,
[01:20:38.670]you can do these things on the fly.
[01:20:40.500]So our question,
[01:20:41.980]how do you avoid?
[01:20:43.270]And this is open for all our panelists.
[01:20:45.740]How do you avoid,
[01:20:48.861]give me a second, you know, what's happening?
[01:20:50.979](indistinct)
[01:20:58.290]how do you avoid becoming desensitized or cynical
[01:21:00.959]when it comes to what's happening right now?
[01:21:03.540]How do you avoid becoming desensitized?
[01:21:09.857]I'll go first.
[01:21:23.907]I'm always pleasantly surprised by how often leaders
[01:21:29.680]within the African American community return
[01:21:32.460]to the idea of love.
[01:21:36.110]Surprise, because they have so much cause to be angry
[01:21:40.900]and bitter
[01:21:42.120]and writing in despair
[01:21:44.220]and hopeless.
[01:21:46.030]And yet you find the very best writing,
[01:21:47.970]the very best stories,
[01:21:50.040]always bawling for time to this idea of love, absolutely.
[01:22:00.593](indistinct) like more recently, his memoirs,
[01:22:05.647]his essays they all return to this idea of love.
[01:22:10.570]I mean, witnessing folks,
[01:22:13.000]who have quote unquote the potential
[01:22:15.870]to be so bitter choosing not to do that,
[01:22:19.264]choosing to resist and to fight by being hopeful,
[01:22:26.370]Dr. King, obviously, his idea of a beloved community,
[01:22:30.180]that to me is private and also very hard.
[01:22:34.412]The amount of faith and belief, not just in oneself,
[01:22:39.660]but in ones neighbors to make that happen,
[01:22:44.662]it's quite amazing.
[01:22:47.740]It's divided in the very definition of that word.
[01:22:50.840]That gives me a lot of hope to solve things in all.
[01:22:54.830]Yeah, that's important.
[01:22:56.243]I think if I always have my students go to the source,
[01:23:00.060]so as a historian you're always teaching them
[01:23:02.590]about primary sources
[01:23:04.520]and although I just wanna say, like Dr. Thomas,
[01:23:08.979]when I teach my history of American medicine class,
[01:23:12.838]I move towards the contemporary moment stuff in the 1980s.
[01:23:17.450]So I don't feel like a sociologist
[01:23:19.262](chuckles)
[01:23:20.910]because it's so recent,
[01:23:23.797]but I do remember in the moment making this thing,
[01:23:28.313]like it was really well-known
[01:23:30.699]and there were all these competing definitions
[01:23:31.960]about what it was,
[01:23:33.050]but I was like, why don't we actually go to the source?
[01:23:36.250]How did the founders of women founded black lives matters,
[01:23:40.962]black lives matter as a network?
[01:23:43.180]How did they define that?
[01:23:45.100]They defined it as a love letter written to Trayvon Martin
[01:23:49.980]and so when Dr. Muchuri, is talking
[01:23:53.620]about this notion of love,
[01:23:55.501]the very thing that has been really corrupted,
[01:24:00.400]I think in the kind of specter of public,
[01:24:04.473]the actual founders wrote a love letter to a 15 year old boy
[01:24:09.830]who was unarmed,
[01:24:11.950]who was hurt walking home.
[01:24:16.010]I believe them at their work,
[01:24:18.970]that that's the point of origin story, right?
[01:24:24.540]So I just want to add that to really highlight
[01:24:27.820]the way the guiding principle of a loving ethos,
[01:24:31.560]is at the center of the black protest.
[01:24:34.890]That doesn't need to be angry,
[01:24:37.540]but it still needs that they were rational enough
[01:24:41.090]and capacious enough,
[01:24:42.913]in their regard for this young boy,
[01:24:45.810]who was killed to start from the point of love.
[01:24:50.470]I think for me, what doesn't make me do stuff,
[01:24:55.828]is to constantly being in dialogue with activists
[01:25:04.470]around the issues of reproductive justice
[01:25:06.410]and broken justice,
[01:25:07.870]I did not start out wanting to do this work.
[01:25:13.152]I wanted to write about enslaved people,
[01:25:16.340]that's what I dedicated my professional life
[01:25:19.020]to write only about enslaved women and their experiences.
[01:25:24.290]But when I was kind of jostled out of the security
[01:25:26.810]of being in the academy,
[01:25:29.650]where sometimes it's comforting
[01:25:31.680]to talk about people who are dead.
[01:25:35.120]I had folk like, okay, thanks for writing the book,
[01:25:37.260]now what do we do?
[01:25:39.703]What are the answers for us now?
[01:25:42.110]And as you know, especially for the three
[01:25:44.960]of us as historians,
[01:25:46.350]the objectivity question is a really big thing
[01:25:49.940]and all of a sudden I had community members saying,
[01:25:52.610]okay, so you wrote this book about these people,
[01:25:55.250]where did we find the answers for today?
[01:25:59.010]And I had to reckon with finding my place.
[01:26:06.060]So I don't ever use the word activists.
[01:26:08.550]I was given the opportunity to being a little scared?
[01:26:13.590]I'm going to get beat up
[01:26:15.020]and I'm wearing high heels
[01:26:17.200]and it makes it impossible for me to run fast.
[01:26:19.866](crowd laughs)
[01:26:21.348]so I did advocacy work
[01:26:22.930]and there is a difference.
[01:26:24.648]There is a difference.
[01:26:25.603]I do advocacy work because I stay in my lane
[01:26:28.310]and I try to change the institutions and the systems
[01:26:31.980]that are harmful to people's health.
[01:26:34.590]And so I wrote about medical hospitals and organizations,
[01:26:39.000]I consult with these groups to create learning modules.
[01:26:42.550]I get a grand rounds, (indistinct)
[01:26:47.263]I do all of those things to try
[01:26:48.750]to change the curriculum design of textbooks,
[01:26:53.598]of study aids that are really awful
[01:26:58.362]around ideas of race and sex.
[01:27:01.120]And so that's the way that I continued to be encouraged
[01:27:05.680]that people are working towards dismantling
[01:27:08.880]this thing that's really costing our country valuable lives.
[01:27:18.100]And I wanna be respectful of time,
[01:27:19.520]but there was one final,
[01:27:20.950]we had many questions,
[01:27:22.880]but I think I'll just play a little bit of selection here.
[01:27:28.290]It's often noted.
[01:27:30.130]This was a great discussion.
[01:27:31.760]And I'm specifically speaking to Dr. Muchiri
[01:27:34.467]because I've been looking and they say,
[01:27:35.810]that was a great idea of wearing the socks.
[01:27:41.133]And perhaps the question itself,
[01:27:43.523]is where did you purchase the socks?
[01:27:45.731](crowd chuckles)
[01:27:46.733]and you don't have to just admit it.
[01:27:49.897]Well give us some names,
[01:27:50.730]so I thought it was important to note.
[01:27:53.090]Wow, there is no way recurring that question too,
[01:27:59.550]or we have a table here.
[01:28:02.980]Let me see.
[01:28:03.910]Yeah, I can come up with something quick here.
[01:28:07.685]I pick them up at Express.
[01:28:11.440]Two, that means a lot,
[01:28:13.820]that brings us back to the idea of Thomas
[01:28:15.760]and where we're spending our dollars,
[01:28:18.860]which is important.
[01:28:25.924]We're always kind of struggling to spend our money in ways,
[01:28:33.630]that benefit local economies.
[01:28:35.380]So, buying outfits is an evil,
[01:28:38.198]that is worth considering,
[01:28:45.740]other than that I guess the flip side
[01:28:47.380]of that is being cognizant of what brands are we loyal to?
[01:28:53.310]And what supply chains do they use?
[01:28:56.970]Is that prison industrial labor?
[01:28:59.320]Is that sweat shop kind of labor?
[01:29:02.310]I cannot speak for Express, so I am guilty as charged here,
[01:29:06.350]but I do think those are important questions, right?
[01:29:08.959]And so I go to the shop and I got the socks from Express
[01:29:11.690]and I guess the lesson there is, voting with our feet
[01:29:16.010]and voting with our wallets.
[01:29:19.658]Absolutely.
[01:29:20.491]Being cognizant, yeah.
[01:29:24.590]So, first, I want to thank you all so much for attending
[01:29:28.670]and I wanna say that this has been an honor to sit here,
[01:29:31.140]to listen.
[01:29:32.241]I've really subscribed to being a learner
[01:29:35.120]in all that I do in life
[01:29:37.006]and I have to tell you all that I'm just full tonight.
[01:29:40.195]I wanted to take notes,
[01:29:41.028]but I also didn't want to be so rude as in your timing,
[01:29:42.410]but thank you all so much for sharing, not only..
[01:29:45.075](dramatic music)

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UNL Faculty Discussion - Global and Historical Moments of Reckoning with UNL Faculty

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