Side B:
Man: "...the crowd we have this morning, I hope that we haven't been forgotten. I think everyone just took off until tomorrow, which is unfortunate, because I was looking forward to tonight as [...] part of the program. Mary Hillaire, who is a member of the Evergreen faculty, is here to speak for Native Americans and what they feel is important in terms of [...] and the environment. Following Miss Hillaire, we have the Greenpeace [...] [world citizen show(?)], and I don't know if [...] can [...] exactly what we have tonight, we have a slide show, [...] greenpeace (stops recording)
Mary: I was in quite a quandery wondering how exactly I could start, and the young man [...] outgoing gave me my key.
Undoubtedly, it's a sign of our times when people gather together to try and distribute the kind of information necesary that man might endure and establish upon the earth again a hospitable environment for life. This has had great struggle as man has set out to amass vast material wealth and establish a society in which the [...] level was predicated on what I call a secondary, garbage can society. How did this society grow? As has been given reference to by [...] in his book, The Other Americans, has been established in some of the more critical, environmental, difficulties that life on this continent has faced when we turn the pages of a paper and read about thousands of birds dying in this area, hundreds of animals dying in another area, the very issue of our land, the water, dying in other areas. You see, it's rather easy to understand that as a people, we see increases [...] us to death and dying. And it is on this note that I feel the Indian and the white [...] together to establish this nation, indivisible. The kind of interesting, the echo of a humane way of looking at life that this symposium has, and yet not 200 years ago established in this country nothing more than the same holding pen that we are now in grief about that the [blackfish?] is retained in until some legal issue is decided either for him or against him.
In the treaties that sustained the relationship between the Indians and the whites under the nation, which we hope will be undivided, establish a new low in dehumanizing a kind of life that we do not feel necesary that it should become a part of the understanding of ourselves. And therefore it wasn't really difficult to understand why these words were in the decision made prior to the treaty which I hear is the highest law of the land. The words read something like this: [...] Indian people were removed from their homes to make room for the whites. It was an undisputed question. Shall we take a look at what might have been should we have had the kind of support that now you folks are leveraging for the orca. Because of this statement and because of where it was in our history, the Indian people were removed from their homes and placed on reservations. Reservations not large enough to live, not expansive enough to move, not flexible enough to change, only enough room to die. But this seemed reasonable to those people that made that treaty, those people who wrote the Bill of Rights, those people who commanded the authority of the constitution of the United States. This seemed reasonable. And so the people of this land were placed on reservations to live out their lives in captivity. I say captivity because several years ago, I tried to ask for help, to establish a way to get to the legislator of this country, of this state, of this land. This land that is our land. This land that is the issue of our fate. To try and give the Indians the chance that we are trying to give the orca. A chance at freedom. A place in the liberty that is supposed to have established this country. A part in the challenge of life in which man was given dominion. A part in the solutions necesary for our preservation, and a place in the understanding of mankind.
And do you know what one of the legislators in the state of Washington reported? And then responded to that request? He said, and I quote, I think, "the Indian people of Washington state have faired as well as any other captive people of the world. Why, then, must they have help?" It's awfully hard to fight for a cause when your cause is inferior. Since I made the decision to talk to you, I have gone through a series of believing, maybe just an extraordinary kind of faith, that maybe communication can be established where we could go away from an experience together, neither diminished nor demoralized. I have listened to your cause, now I want you to have the patience to listen to mine. I know the grace and beauty, and the challenge of understanding life that is beyond our everyday practice of living. And therefore, I support what you are doing. I guess what I have to tell you tonight, is of a people, I don't know whether you know that as American Indian people, or Native American, or Lummi, or Cherokee, or Choctah, Northern Cheyenne, Ute, but however you know them, they have come to this day without the kind of knowledge that will help people as you have been helped to see the need of the Orca to support. These people were not a damaging people, if one was to sum up their life, in a flexible definition, one would say they were peaceful people. They did not possess land, they were of land possessed. The substance of their life was melted into a family relationship with mother earth and father sky. Their very existence was of the heartbeat of this land of which I think it was Chief Joseph who said "The land and myself are of one mind." They were an unusually creative people, establishing I suppose one of the most democratic ways of life the world has ever known. Flourished because they lived in a land of plenty, and nourished in the belief of hospitality. The whole circumstance of their life melted into an artistic approach to life that has never been compared with favorably by other societies that I have studied. Their values are astoundingly reasonable.
Basically, we are placed in service to the land, thereby believing sincerely in the value of the land and their relationship to it. I don't know how many of you watched the dances today, but if you would see, the person's feet were always very soundly attached to the floor, and frequently and more favorably attuned to the earth. In one with the land, it was only possible for the Indians to think first, even before his own life, his reponsibility to the land. The first value of Indian people in the demonstration of their lives is that of understanding their relationship to the land. Once people understand this solemn foundation it is easy to see the social system was one of the highest forms in some authors mind, in a society that did not depend on agriculture for its development. Some of the most sophisticated social structures, even yet not comprehended by the mind of others, the Indian people lived in peace, examining their world without boundaries of formal instruction, contributing to their society without the implication of status and power, being allowed the full realization of potential, whether it be the nature of their individual desires, or the responsibility in community that they lived in. And so it was really a surprise that the second value in the life of an Indian is his relationship to others, demonstrated in the care that he took in the hospitality that he gave, as the people, unknown to him, searched for a home in this land. Even now, it is absolutely beyond human comprehension to realize the patience and the understanding that the Indian has had for these visiting peoples. Yet, he has a belief that somewhere, if you look deep enough, he would find the honor that comes between men who believe in life. The understanding necesary to weld the kind of communication that will allow both to live, each in their own way, within the commonality of a single environment.
I have a hunch that the word that should fit in there some place, but my tongue couldn't do it. It's peace. A communication that will allow diversity to meet, and the challenge of solving the problems of the world without shattering the environment in such a way that we can no longer live as human beings. This requires a concious effort to understand one another, though communication do not have to be the hard step, I have to explain, there is a quality in the voice of Indian people that is very quiet. Each time I have to speak in audiences like this, I have to exert my voice so much that sometimes it just plain fades away, then you'll have to forgive me. But to try and get points over it seems necesary to exert the kind of pressure that will do this very [kind(?)].
But the main idea of the kind of communication that we need must be in the type of communication that neither have to strike so each can understand. We have be a people that have predicated our aquisition of things even when you have violated the implication of our ideas by war and by revolution. We have yet to see the [...] quality of understanding that, as the Indians used to sing a song about the cedar trees, the cedar tree in many instances has great value in understanding some of new concepts in psychology. If you have ever seen the cedar tree, the boughs very grossly come down to a taper. And as the Indian would think about this grateful tree, the tree's understanding of itself, would say "stand back", and you'll see what I mean. And of course the people of phychology and the behavioral sciences call this psychological living [...]. It's valid. If you don't believe me, ask the cedar tree.
The relationship of the American Indian to other people has been a binding and an enduring quality of his life. His number two value. Beyond that you go toward the environment. The third value held by Indian people in the establishment of their lifestyle and the maintenance of their quality of living is their relationship to work. I think this is one of the most fateful misunderstandings that has come between Indians and whites. Under the punity of nature, of the work ethic, whites will sit and try to do something when nothing is there to be done. I worked in Washington DC and there were just halls of people, sitting there waiting for something called retirement. Either waiting for retirement or waiting for another thing they called tenure. When they pass tenure they seem to be home free, that did not, my friends, stop them from dying in their chairs. In the ten months I was in Washington DC, six different people died sitting in their chairs. I wished I had feigned kindness and tenderness and asked them, did they find something before they died? Because when I did talk to them there was a hopelessness that I had yet, in what the whites had told me, I live in abject povery, they said. [...] but I was never that hopeless. I never felt hopeless enough to sit and wait for something for me to do, to come to me. So the third value in the lives of Indian people is their relationship to that concept, work. And I am saying work instead of employment because I don't believe in employment. I don't believe that anybody is born to the slavers hand. I don't think that anybody, with clear vision of life, must establish themselves under the shadow of another. I don't believe it. I do believe that out their in our world there's a lot to do, and you can't reach it from behind a desk. The value of human concerns must have some real understanding of the nature of work. I think one time the Christians had it, because in some of their readings I've heard this: that I must be about my father's work.
The last value, and the value, I suppose, that allowed me to come and have the patience to hold my antagonism that has grown all these years, with my people dying, is the relationship of Indian people to the unknown. I believe that this is the key to the reason that they have waited so long for the kind of understanding from their visitors that they should have demanded. The relationship that people have with one another beyond the conscious, and I might say carnal attitudes of our biology. What is it that holds us together whether we will it or not? That is a question that none of our educators, or any of our educational institutions have faced. It is one that I think we must face if we are to deal with our lives in the quality of living that will allow us to go beyond the demands of our physical limitations and take on the nature of the infinite potential of our spirits. It is in this part of our thinking, this substance of our belief, that we can take on the challenge to preserve other forms of life as we are seeking to legally and morally understand the responsibility we have to the orca, in determining the future quality of our living. I don't want to leave at this hopeless deal I have [stare stepped(?)] us down to the depths. There is hope. The hope is that you are there because you are convinced because you are convinced that you are needed, that in this need you are not restrained, that is is not for your own people, or for your understanding of humanity, but it is the challenge of the quality of life.
There is a way to do this. The first step of course is to lose our minds, to go beyond that wall of 37% of mental effieciency, and rethink our relationship to the land, I think you folks call that ecology. Where you find the highest form of life to preserve it. Where in the human mind, the conscious awareness of creation is reborn. Man was placed here, my dear friends, in dominion. Do you know what that means? Do you understand that? Our first step is to understand it. And it needs everybody. The whites can't do it. The blacks can't do it. The Native Americans, whether they have come close to it and passed through it, can't do it. There was a book, I never did know what was inside of it but it had a catchy little phrase, and it said 'we all had a part in killing grandmother'. We all have had a part in where we are today, and it will take all of us, with all that they have available to exercise on the challenge of change tomorrow. We must understand that the builders of yesterday are gone, we need people with a sound understanding of the future that will maintain the quality of our life. [...] indicates that in 2525 we will still be alive. Our first step is one of rethinking our relationship in this land. The second step is one of realistically constructing criteria of equivalentness. So we all have these programs, equal opportunity, affirmative action, so we'll all be goading ourselves into believing we are changed because we have moved from Monday to Tuesday.
It is the 11th hour, we have been here in this land according to our regulations of understanding, our education, we have been here now at least 200 years, we have not come nearer the kind of understanding of each other that will allow us to live in peace together. Some of the most brilliant legislation is being written today regarding the future Indian people, and how much do you know about it. The most elaborate corruption is designed into the government defying our lives, denying our morals, undermining our spirit, how much do you know about it? When will you folks vote for an Indian person into candadicy and [...] an election. Not because you know that person, but because you know your life is denied without diversity. Diversity, my people, are those commands in the very substance of our creation that provide our wholeness because we are different. Diversity can no longer be seen as merely a spice of life, it must be understood and an essential element. I think somebody else said that too, but the second step is that we, in the words of one of our past leaders, we reason together toward developing an accepted criteria to establish equivalence. Well, an Indian or a Black or a Chicano or an Asian might not have to wave that thing as a flag in order to get attention. The third step that we must tape, of course this has some issue in the very cause that you're here to discuss, there must be a way to realistically appraise the nature of our resources and establish a functional economy. An economy that will not only keep us from dying, but will allow us to live. And through us all life. This kind of an economy cannot sanction the isolation of the millionaires and the impetus of politicians. The economy must reach all of us, establishing a way of challenge the capabilities that we have to deal with life's affairs in a just and fair way. And then of course, following very closely after this, we must re-educate ourselves as we are not the only form of life, although our way of living has been placed in dominion. We must become the sharers, the issue of that family that will regain us the presence of our infinite spirit. We must become the issue of the parentage of Mother Earth and Father Sky.
And of course, the last, and hopefully a realized goal before our own destruction becomes the author of abject depression. We must again find a way of feeling comfortable in the unknown. And I'd like to mention a couple of things before I stop. The reason why we must become comfortable with the unknown is that we have been unbalanced. This society is insane! When crime can go up 70% a year, when divorce rates, what is it, three in one? When one parent every minute can kill his own child, something in his life is wrong. We know too much when you can take another person's life, when you can take the life of a bird or a cat or a dog or a snake and you don't know enough of what part that plays in the balance our times, then you know to much. We must allow ourselves to go beyond the safety of knowing, into the elements of uncertainty in such a way that we are added to because we take the chance. We believe in balance of [...] that we don't have to overkill. We belive in life so much that we can't even think of death. Death is something you don't think of, you don't have to, it comes. But to belabor the responsibilities of you life by thinking of death is death itself. And as you think of yourself, my friends, so is the light of our universe. And some people say, 'well, the universe is going to take hold, and we'll have disasters and we'll have earthquakes and we'll have floods and it'll take care of us. Don't bank on it. Understand why, in the scheme of things, man was tantalized by understanding. Try to percieve the essence of that majority that allows us almost to dictate of our very own heartbeat. And yet, we have still to try and find a rule for the tongue. And understanding the nature of communication, we still have to find out why, in the moving of people in time and space, is thought such a hard and tedious process. I believe that our future requires conscious awareness of self reaching out to the infinite without knowing, in hope that life abides fair. And through that abiding light, we can live our life, and live it more abundantly.
Thank you very much. Any questions? [audience member asks question, tape stops and restarts] There is an article and I don't remember who wrote it, but was called 'Loneliness', and I believe that one of our number one problems today is institutionalized loneliness, and it's from birth. We're beginning to find out right now that the hospital isn't either the only or the best place to give birth to life. In fact, I have a hunch maybe some of our most sterile places to give and any recognition to life [tape ends]
Man: [...] friend of ours, Jim Robertson, San Francisco, he met our Greenpeace ship when [name?] once sailed into San Francisco and [...] were just dying to give us this song, so I've been singing it ever since. I'm really pleased to be here, I see a lot of familiar faces although I can't see them right now, but I've been hanging around the college here for the last week, between talking to Mark Overland and doing trips next door and down on Beverly Beach with the Orcas, and we were called here to Olympia by Friends of the Dolphins, which is a group that just forming in Seattle and they're doing a really good job. And we were called to come and help with the orcas and we felt that we had to, even though most of our crew are out on the East coast right now, trying to stop the slaughter of seals, we had to send someone here, so here I am.
Normally I have a whole van called the Greenpeace Migrating Whale Medicine Show, and I'm it for now. Anyway, I'd like to thank Mary for giving us a talk, it was very uplifting and expressed pretty well what we believe in. I think the reason Greenpeace is becoming a very activist oriented ecological group is because we basically believe in things that Mary has been talking about, being close with the earth, this is why, on this t-shirt here, [reaches for t-shirt on rack] that's a [tribe name, sounds like quaalude] design depicting an orca, and the orca was considered a very sacred being, a very sacred sentient being and we believe the same thing, we believe everything is very sacred and sentient, even a tree or a rock. And we don't really have any right to disturb them. So anyway, it seems that we've had some affect by coming here and being with the Friends of the Dolphins and you people at Evergreen, and that demonstation that we had over there focused the media's attention on an ecological sore spot. And that's basically how Greenpeace tends to fight our battles for Mother Earth, is by doing just that.
Now, someone here asked what was happening with the seal hunt because they've already seen our slideshow, so I'll tell you what's happening there, but later on in the program, I'll be showing you a film of the seals, called 'sealsong'. Basically what has happened is this, the Greenpeace foundation heard from a fellow, Brian Dadies, who made this film 'sealsong', and he gave us some very scientific facts, one time there were 20 million seals and now there's less that a million, and that each year they harvest 130 thousand seals, mostly babies, and there's less than a million left now, and this year they're going to take 130 thousand more. It's pure ecological reason that you cannot take away the future generations, we're committing genocide on this race of sentient beings. Now what'll happen is, even if the slaughter is stopped now, perhaps five years from now, there'll be a drastic plummet in the seal population because the adult seals that are now existing will be past the age of giving birth. This is why we've gotta do this thing. So, we've got them back on the east coast, the original plan was to spray a tiny green cross on the white coat of the pup, which would grow out in about 3 or 4 weeks, and it wouldn't be left and you wouldn't be able to see it any more. Meanwhile the pup would be safe, because it's the white coat the sealers want and the dye would have spoiled the commercial value. However, it seems that the strategy has changed now, the Greenpeace crew of 15 went to a small place called St. Anthony's on the east coast, Newfoundland, and when they got there, they were met by 50 cars and sort of escorted the bus from [...] to the boardinghouse where they we supposed to stay, and the people, when they got there, were so irate and so uptight that they started rocking the van back and forth as though they were going to tip it over. Finally the crew got out and they went to the boarding house and they found that it had been closed down, they couldn't get in, but they talked to the owner of the place and he finally agreed to let them in. Then they arranged a meeting with the Newfoundlander, and a lot of these Newfoundlanders were sealers themselves, but they're what you call linesman, they go in off the shore, out onto the ice risking their life, they don't have any big factory ships waiting around for them or rescue services, and the seals that they do take, they use every part of, which is a native way of living. They use every part of that seal and they eat it and they wear the skins. So when the linesman found out that greenpeace was not against this perfectly natural type of thing, which is like a native ritual almost, or a tradition, but was against these massive factory ships that come in with over 1500 or 2000 sealers, and slaughter upwards of 120,000 seals, so when this crowd of Newfoundlanders heard what Greenpeace was really there for, then they just began cheering and it got really [...], and they decided to go out on the iceboats with Greenpeace. So they are now going back, I think there's about 40 volunteers of Newfoundlanders, and probably more happening, and they're going to go out on the boats with Greenpeace and act as their guides because they know the lay of the iceflow, and exactly where to walk and not to walk, and Greenpeace are pretty [...], don't know much about that. And they're going to go out there and blockade the sealers, and they should being going out on the ice, what's the date today, the 12th, they should be going out in a couple of days. So that's an up to date account of what's going on with the east coast Greenpeace crew, they're all out their, just myself and my friend Das here, and George and Rita, we were all that was left to come here. So, that's about the seals.
Now about the whales. You're going to see a slide presentation that we've made about what we did to try and save some whales, and we managed to save 8 against the Russian factory ships. And our object was to get our small rubber craft in between the killer boat and the whale in an effort to stop them from getting a good shot at the whale and perhaps stopping the operation entirely, and we managed to hold them off for about 40 minutes and finally they fired a harpoon over the heads of the men in the Zodiac and this, of course, made world media news, which brought down a lot of pressure on the Russians, and they even went so far as to say that they had cut down on their fleet because of pressures from conservation groups such as ourselves, and the Japanese apparently had thought so to, and the quota's been lowered, but they're still not low enough, so we have to go out next year, and next year we're going to have a faster ship, right now we're looking at a converted minesweeper in Seattle, so that's basically what our fellow George is up to while he's here. And we want a ship that'll go about 20 knots and you saw a picture of the ship with a couple of water skiers being towed behind us, so that seems like it's fast enough, so they're not going to be able to get away from us this time, as you'll see in the slideshow they did manage to give us the slip, they stopped their whaling operation in the area then took off. Now a lot of people have asked us why we went out to save the whales, and what we thought was so special about whales, and all of us had our own particular reasons why we wanted to go out and confront the Soviets and the Japanese and their killer boats and try to save whales. Some of it was based on scientific fact, that at one time there were 4 million of these beutiful creatures swimming the ocean, and they'd been there for 30 million years, 39 million years, and they never overpopulated the ocean. Now there's less the 400,000. So we have to stop this slaughter. And if the whale is taken out of the ocean, then we will have to assume responsibility for the whale's role in this ecological [harmonic(?)] system. See, a large blue whale, he consumes as much as 20 tons of plankton a day. If we take away the blue whale, that means that we have to consume that plankton, which is already being done in Russia, and the plankton is taken and made into a protein paste, and you eat that. So, all we are doing is demeaning ourselves and it's not a very pleasant thing. If we take away the whales who normally eat, some of them at least, non-commercial fish like [...], some of the seals, and we take them away and that population of fish will increase and wipe out the fish that we like to eat, then we'll end up eating the [non-commercial fish]. And so this is a scientific reason, there's another way of looking at it. The sperm whale has a brain that weighs 17 pounds, that's compared to our brains that weigh only 6 pounds. He has more convolutions in the cerebral cortex than we have, and even a third brain called a [paralytic (?)] lobe, he's a massive creature and he know's no fear, and unlike us, we've got out of ourselves with our hands, and we've created this technology above us, we have actually created our problems, that's what we've done, and now we have to deal with them. And the way [...] of going out, and we could call this microphone and all these lights, all of our technological devices, actually parts of our sensory apparatus, the whale doesn't need this, he has gone within this himself and and increased the size of his brain to increase his sensory apparatus. He is a being unto himself, he doesn't need these technological devices to exist, he is perfectly in tune with Mother Earth. So we have a lot to learn from our brother and sisters the whales, we have a lot to learn from the American natives, we have a lot to learn from all of the diversified forms of living on this planet.
I'm going to play the slideshow now and hope it works out. [applause] [slideshow plays, narration about the orca] I'd like to warn you that there's one part in this film, it's a beautiful film, it show's the seals underwater, and you can hear their singing, and they're just beautiful creature, there is one part in the film that is quite explicit as to how they are killed, and you will see one seal that appears to be still moving while it's being skinned, so for that part we just close our eyes or do whatever, or if you feel that you're going to turn green, when you see the factory ship coming along the ice flow you can probably leave. Usually people don't feel to much like talking after they see this, because the impact is so heavy on this film, so if there are any questions about what the greanpeace foundation is doing or anything at all, you may as well ask them now [tape ends]