It's very good that, because that
is sort of given preponderance to the visual.
Is 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 like 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 there are the 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 the dominant culture,
people can adopt the images of the dominant culture.
But they very rarely give up their sounds.
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 played in Arizona today as visitors.
It's the Black, white sort of racist discourse, is not if--
you can learn from it, but it's Brown and white here.
And so it's really interesting when
you look at how Mexican-Americans, Mexicans,
Latinos, ethnic studies, immigration, it's
all this politics of just want to say,
you're supposed to be invisible.
So Trayvon Martin is fine, we learn,
we understand what there's acts that are going
on today that are very toxic.
Then Cecilia, the question about your piece was beautiful.
The desert, what we have, we'll 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 world came to be.
I mean, it is so offensive.
So 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 powered 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.
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, the white, the brown, the white.
So I think to say that here is the question is brown,
I think the black white is any form of discrimination
in this country by the majority against the minority.
So in a way you're also talking about gay marriage.
You're talking about immigration.
And that's why we call this piece "Undocumented"
because we're also talking about undocumented.
It's the same impotence is what spreads 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 didn't--
I was just trying to say you're here, visitors, you should--
No, no, no, I'm understanding.
But I'm saying--
I use the language of the politics of dis-belonging,
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.
We know it.
I get what you're saying.
I didn't have a problem with the word.
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.
And 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 the paradigm for that kind of condition.
I-- thank you.
I just want to thank you all for coming.
Let's give our artists a great.
[APPLAUSE]