It's very good that you note that, Julie,
because that is sort of a given preponderance to the visual.
It's a way of oppressing cultures,
you know, because the majority, for example,
when they speak of the Indigenous,
I always get the sense that people think oh, she's
speaking-- for example, in Chile, I'm often
ridiculed for being an Indian.
And why is it?
Because people have this idea that the Indians are minorities
and they are primitive peoples.
Nobody thinks that there are 380 million
of Indigenous peoples who still live in oral cultures
like people have lived for millions of years.
So this preponderance of the visual
is something that is not experienced by the majority
of people in this planet.
However, this wants to be imposed.
So that's why people, for example,
that when you have a colonizing effect of a dominant culture,
people can adopt the images of the dominant culture.
But they very rarely give up their sounds, you know?
And I think that is something.
It's like a resistance of connectivity
with the ancient spirit that is transmitted through the ability
to hear, which is dimensionless.
As a desert rat, I encourage you to reflect
on how racism is being [INAUDIBLE] in Arizona
today, as visitors.
It's the Black-white sort of racist discourse is not a--
you can learn from it, but it's Brown-white here.
And so it's really interesting when you look at how
Mexican-Americans and Mexicans, Latinos, ethnic studies,
immigration--
it's all this politics of dis- belonging
to say you're supposed to be invisible.
So Trayvon Martin is fine.
We learned.
We understand.
But there's acts that are going on today that are very toxic.
Then to Cecilia, the question about-- your piece
was beautiful.
The desert what we have, will be gone, thank god.
And the fact that the whole time you were doing this,
it sort of--
I kept thinking about the power of ritual and ceremony,
which within this Indigenous Southwest, we see it.
We have holidays around it.
And so it's really interesting.
Then I was trying to think about how does that work with film
and text in terms of ceremony?
If we wanted to kind of put ourselves in that frame
for a moment?
Just thoughts.
It's a wonderful thought.
For example, yesterday I went for the second time
to the so-called reservation.
I do not understand how this word came to be.
I mean, it is so offensive, so brutally offensive
just as a name for a place, you know?
But there I was.
And so I have been translating some
of the poetry of the Southwest, the sacred poetry
of the Southwest, for more than 20 years.
So for me, it's really a thrill to be here,
to be in the land that generated this poetry that
has been sustained for thousands of years
through ceremony and ritual, and never through text.
And I encountered this lady who told me,
we don't speak about it.
So that's how it's kept alive, by not writing and not
speaking about it.
But how can that be so contrary to the Western idea, you see?
And yet it is so powerful that it really generates such force.
However, covered up it may be, it will surface.
And I know-- I am with you--
the desert will win.
The deserts will continue.
The Black-white-- there's a sportscaster.
And anytime that anything happens that is racially,
he says, oh, it's a Black-white.
And then the other guy goes, you mean it's another Black-white?
And he's like, yeah, it's a Black-white.
And it just-- it's code for it's something
between the dominant and the non-dominant,
or the Black and the white, the Brown and the white.
So I think to say that here, the question is Brown--
I think the Black and white is any form of discrimination
in this country by the majority against a minority.
So in a way, you're also talking about gay marriage.
You're talking about immigration [INAUDIBLE]..
That's why we call this piece "Undocumented,"
because we're also talking about undocumented.
The same impotence is what sprouts out into oppression
across.
And I think it's a mistake to see it
as well, you might think the Black-white,
but here, it's the Brown-- that's bullshit.
It's all the same.
I didn't.
I was just trying to say you're here as visitors.
You should understand it.
No, no, no.
I'm understanding.
But I'm saying--
And so I use the language of the politics of disbelonging,
understanding that marginalization
happens all the time.
Right.
But it's so easy to reduce it to Black-white.
And I want to keep that--
I want to rupture that.
I want to create a critical witness that
says no, it's more than that.
And we know it.
I get what you're saying.
I didn't have a problem with the work.
No, no, no.
It's not a question of having a problem.
But I do think it's a good thing to bring up,
because I think it becomes emblematic of a condition that
plays itself out over and over and over again
but points to different--
at one time, it was women.
And probably if Romney gets in, it will be women again, right?
And it just-- but it's the same dynamic.
It's a question of limiting the rights of certain people
because they don't have the power.
That's it.
It's just like in order to maintain
a certain kind of power, all of these other people
should have none.
But I do think that what goes on for Brown men,
Black men in this country, it's not that dissimilar.
It's the same dynamic.
They're all Black men, in a way.
Black man is just a paradigm for that kind of condition.
Oh, I've got it.
Thank you.
I just want to thank you all for coming.
Let's give our artists a great--
[APPLAUSE]