06/23/24 - Dr. Manuel Rozental (Repeat)
And now it's time for First Voices Radio with Tiokasin Ghosthorse. What makes you such a threat? We choose the right to be who we are. We know the difference between the reality of freedom and the illusion of freedom. There's a way to live with Earth and a way not to live with Earth. We choose the way of Earth. It's about power. .
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:This is First Voices Radio. My name is Tiokasin Ghosthorse. I want to take this time to give the best aloha to Ann Kayla Kelly, who was your guest host while I was away. You were listening to Kealakelle, who is Kanaka Maoli from the great people of Hawaii, ne, of and with Mana.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:My honor and thanks to you, Kayla, for being here. I appreciate your excellence. And this is, again, Tiokasin Ghosthorse, and I'm interviewing Manuel Rozental. And we're conversing today about Abiayala, which is South America, North America. And the question being, can indigenous peoples be both indigenous and capitalist?
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:And as Manuel refers to the book as we have always done by Leanne Simpson, who is Ojibwe from Canada, who says no. And so we're gonna answer and talk about that question. Also, an update of Abiayala, South America, where either the far right governments returning to power or or leftist progressive governments who promised dialogue and peace with indigenous peoples and also co opting their communities and social movements. And if they do not, as indigenous peoples, agree with the progressive governments, they are treated as criminals. And we're gonna talk about this and other topics in this conversation now with Manuel Rosenthal.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:It's always just a great honor to have you here, doctor Manuel Rosenthal, who is a longtime Colombian activist, researcher, and community organizer, and has been involved with grassroots political organizing with youth, especially indigenous communities, urban and rural social movements for decades. And part of the of, an initiative, Pueblo's encomino, if I say that correctly.
Manuel Rozental:Yeah. Yeah.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:People's people's on the path with a mandate to to weave autonomies and resistance between peoples, including the resilience to that colonization to draw us out of then keep us out of the colonial coma that we tend to fall prey to. That understanding comes with the work that you have done, Manuel, over the decade or so that I've known you through these interviews, and we've never met once physically as far as that concern.
Manuel Rozental:Not yet.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:And, we talk as much as we can from our hearts. And I'd like to thank you again, Manuel. An honor to have you on the support of this radio.
Manuel Rozental:It is my honor and these visits where I learn a lot from them in our exchange. And, yes, I do talk to you often, even when we don't meet and engage and wonder what you're thinking and what you're doing. And, you know, several things that I would like to share to begin with and then to exchange and visit. 1, one is I've been reading the, amongst other people and learning from, an Anishinaabe woman from what they call Canada, from Ontario specifically, Lianne. I don't know if I pronounce her name well.
Manuel Rozental:Betasamosaki Simpson, Lianne Simpson. They call her in brief, but she uses her Nishnabe name. Her name, her work is extraordinary. She's not unlike you. She's a musician.
Manuel Rozental:She she's a thinker and a wise woman who's learned her own language, and she lives with her children in their territory, and he has been trying all along to recover much of their knowledge from the elders and to live within this context in her own way, but she's also an academic that has rejected the academic environment. But she's inside of it in an extraordinary way. She she teaches the Denee people in Western Canada, in graduate programs, different things. But what I've been thinking about with her to talk to you is she wrote a book called As We've Always Done. It's an amazing, amazing piece of work, And I think it's part of I may be wrong, but that's something I wanted to ask you about.
Manuel Rozental:She she seems to be part of a wave of young or younger indigenous people in Turtle Island who are generating not only and expressing a lot of wisdom, but also strength, and they're proposing alternatives grounded in ancestral knowledge and wisdom and ways of acting, of living, of doing. This book, as we've always done, is extraordinary because she addresses in a comprehensive way what I've seen as one of the most comprehensive approaches to contemporary life exposing the the wisdom, the the validity, and the relevance of indigenous knowledge, and the attachment to territories. Just a couple of examples of many things that are in there, but one of them is, for example, her understanding of or their understanding as Anishinaabe people of the what international relationships are and have been. And she states clearly that these are based on relationships with the other clans and the other peoples, which are not only humans and even less nation states. Internationalism, as long as it involves and is related to nation states, is mistaken, is a misunderstanding of our relationship with mother Earth, especially at a time when we're about to experience if the our mentalities don't change, we're about to the destruction of the planet and life in the planet.
Manuel Rozental:And this is not something to scare people or frighten people, but it's a fact. So she she tells a story. I can't tell it as beautifully as she does, but she says the the some community in the past, this was an elder telling her this story, noticed that the the deer were leaving, and they couldn't hunt. And there was a season, a winter where the they sent people up north, southeast, west in the four directions to look for the deer and the deer spirit and to talk to them and understand why they had left them, and they couldn't hunt. And then finally, one of the elders found the deer way at the north end of the territory, and they were leaving.
Manuel Rozental:And he could understand that they had left because the of the behavior of the people that were hunting with another mentality, hunting not only to eat, not only with respect and to maintain a balance, but just hunting for accumulation, for power sakes, and that mistake was destroying them. So she says she learned from that story of an elder that they reached an agreement. They would return only if and when they were guaranteed respect and harmony, that they were willing to provide food and clothing and protection in exchange for some of their lives only if people would understand that they would have to protect them and hunt them in that respect, in that regard. From that story, as an example, she goes on to address the fact that we need to be children of mother earth today more than ever before. And then she asks a question, which is a chapter of her book.
Manuel Rozental:Can indigenous people be indigenous and capitalists? Is it possible to be capitalists and indigenous? And she, of course, answers the question saying, no. It isn't possible because that same mentality that exploits nature, mother earth, and exploits other people as much as nature, transforming us into labor and mother earth into resources can only end up destroying everything. Any indigenous person or community that becomes capitalist and thinks they can use it for their to their benefit is only committing suicide.
Manuel Rozental:Is the it ceases to be children of mother earth. So just an example of what she has done and how she lives and what she's trying to do in the midst of this. At the other end of the continent, in what we call Aviala, and it has other other names, the Mapuche territory in what we call Chile, and I remember you had guests from the Mapuche here, in conversation. There's a leader of, the Mapuche communities, called Hector Yaytul. Hector Yaytul is a very important leader, a very wise leader, and he was one of the first ones to say to state that the current government of Chile, the government of Gabriel Porridge, a young leftist, was not going to change anything.
Manuel Rozental:Because whenever you get to the state, it is the state that rules. There will be no change. You just attach yourself to the regulations, the mechanisms. And so now what would he was right. What we're seeing wasn't done by the right wing governments in the past in Chile.
Manuel Rozental:The total militarization of Mapuche territory. And in his specific case, he was captured a a year and a bit ago by the the police, and he was charged with having stolen wood from the big corporations that are taking over Mapuche territory to plant monocultures of trees for wood, paper, etcetera, and destroying that territory. So he's accused of stealing from them. And, the process there's they're going to be a sentence against me against him in early May. It was announced yesterday.
Manuel Rozental:And he's going to be condemned probably to 25 years in jail, not unlike Leonard Peltier. He there there is no proof that he committed this crime. None. There are witnesses that do not show their faces and are not known and cannot be interviewed by the defense. And this rigged judicial process is an intended to condemn a Mapuche leader whose position very clearly is these, transnational and national corporations that are coming to our territories in a with a forestry industry to destroy are killing all the other nations, not unlike Lian's, understanding, understanding.
Manuel Rozental:They're destroying our ways of life, and they're not harming us Mapuche people only. They're harming the planet. In that regard, they are our enemies, and it is our obligation to push them back to get them out of here, and we have to do that. So he's asked by a journalist if he supports armed struggle to do this, And his reply is very clear. He says, the ones that are carrying out armed struggle are the government of Chile and the colonial powers, and they force us to resist.
Manuel Rozental:And on occasions, they give us no other options but to arm ourselves, to protect ourselves from that. But what we aim to achieve is peace, peace with other nations, peace with mother earth. So that's an image I wanted to give you is you have the leftist progressive governments who promise dialogue and peace with indigenous peoples who actually actually are supporting corporate interests, and their argument in favorite of corporate interest is that progress depends on these corporations being successful in providing jobs and in carrying out what they're doing. So it's a summary of the kinds of things we're going through. It's either far right governments that are coming back and becoming very strong or progressive governments that in fact are either trying to co opt indigenous communities and social movements, capture them, or if they do not agree with this progress, then they're being treated as criminals and chased against and so on.
Manuel Rozental:So that that would be a starting point to to give begin to this conversation and this
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:I'm thinking in the experiences of native people and other people too, how long this has been going on, colonial governments, colonial coma that we have to be aware of, that we don't get caught up in a coma of colonialism. But also there is, the the overall sense is that, you know, of course, they dispossess us. But I'm cautious of using the word possess because a lot of that language doesn't really exist in indigenous languages. And so when I say they took everything from us, they they destroyed it all, our cultures, and try to get rid of us that way. But they also tell us what's wrong with us.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:Once they take everything away, then they say, this is your problem. They say you're poor because you're not following either the right or left left, mindset progressive mindset, And here's how you're gonna solve the problem. So they dole out solutions. We fall for it because we're we're hungry for our culture. And they say, oh, you can you can sell, in the states, you can celebrate Halloween.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:You can celebrate Christmas. You can celebrate, Saint Patrick's Day or 4th July, but none of that has to do with being native to this side of the planet. So we we fall for it because we're hungry as native people for our own cultures. And some go the mainstream, the mainstream route of this is how Americans see us. Pow wows, academia.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:I'm glad your friend Leanne is is is is doing what she the work she's doing. I have heard of the book, as we've always done, and I I wanna read it in the future. So those of you who are listening, take note of that title as we've always done by Leanne Simpson. My question would be to you, Ben, well, is that yeah. Sometimes the the language we're using is it's not deep enough.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:We're not making a deep dive into places. And part of that supporting is progressive or the unaware of who we are as native people is allowing artificial intelligence to seep into what we base language. I think all humans as all life you were saying to me is there's no such thing as artificial intuition. There's only artificial intelligence. So you see the colonialism is again artificial intelligence, which religions, governments, and sciences often describe as get away from who you are and accept the new.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:So then and, well, we are we are constantly being involved with not being here. In other words, we are we are speaking a present phobic language. We don't wanna be here. We're too far in the future or we want what we had in the past. So we wanna know the information about the future, make predictions, climate change, profits that could go 2 ways, or, nostalgia for who we were instead of who in the present moment are we.
Manuel Rozental:To add to what you're saying, which is the obvious is is there are two ways to discard indigenous ways of understanding life, indigenous wisdom, indigenous ways of living. The wisdom that comes from recognizing oneself as children of mother earth, and and that is by labeling recurrently indigenous peoples either naive or ignorant. Whatever. If you if they if somebody hears you speaking just as you did now about artificial intelligence, their immediate reaction is that is here to stay. You can't go back to the trees and living in the bushes, and you have to accept reality and deal with it.
Manuel Rozental:So, immediately, they are labeling you those 2. You're you're ignorant. You don't understand artificial intelligence, its benefits, its power, the necessity for it. But you're also naive because you want to think about now in fact in fact, given actually basic wisdom about the condition of this planet and humanity within the nations of this planet, those who are ignorant and naive are those who label indigenous ways of living, indigenous wisdom and mentality as being naive and ignorant because one can demonstrate with the clearest of evidence everywhere in the world that what is naive and ignorant is to consider that through artificial intelligence in a market based society for profit and, within a context where the accumulation of profit is about to kill nature and kill us, you cannot eat artificial intelligence. You cannot drink artificial intelligence.
Manuel Rozental:You we need water. We need harmony with mother Earth. It has to happen. Therefore, it's resourceful, ignorance, and naivety that are the essence of the colonial mentality and way of acting. They they discover that the wisdom of indigenous peoples, the attachment to mother Earth, the recognition of what is essential for us, not only to survive, but to be free together with the other nations in mother Earth, that that has to be treated as naive and ignorant in order to steal it.
Manuel Rozental:So these are resourceful thieves, and that resourcefulness transforms those who could protect life into naive and ignorant when it's the other way around. So now here's an example of somebody I'm thinking of right now. At the other end of the planet, Abdullah Ocalan, he's the leader of the Kurdish people. Now the way he's been in jail for 25 years. He's at the Imrali Prison Island of Turkey.
Manuel Rozental:He is if anyone is an indigenous person and an indigenous elder, that is Abdullah Ocala. He was captured in a trick. He was seeking to reach a peace agreement with the Turkish government in, 25 years ago when the CIA, the Mossad, and different governments in Europe tricked him, forced him out into Kenya where they captured him and put him into that prison, labeling him a a terrorist, which he's not. Now he began a process that he called his defense, and he wrote several books on his defense. And one of the of the essential components of his book, At the end of the largest volume of his defense written in jail in the nineties, at the end of it, he says this, when I was a child I'm paraphrasing, of course, because I don't know by heart what he says.
Manuel Rozental:But he said, when I was a child, I used to hunt birds. I used to cut trees. I used to damage mother earth. Not recognizing as I do now that the natural society, that's how he calls it, The natural society that turned around women who are the ones who are attached to mother earth. That natural society, in spite of colonial mentality and patriarchy, is still amongst us.
Manuel Rozental:And if we listen to it, it has resisted through indigenous peoples in the Americas and other peoples elsewhere, and it is there where we can find our survival. But I have to begin by apologizing If I could return the lives that I took away based on this mentality that harmed me so much, I would, and I'm doing it now. And it is the liberation of humanity with mother earth that is the only path for our survival. Now if that's naive and that's ignorant, then I don't know how we'll survive. And he the last 3 years, Abdullah Ocalan has not been allowed visits by his family or even his lawyers, violating every single one of the legal principles of the western system.
Manuel Rozental:A a person who has said from jail, the freedom of women is the freedom of mother earth because they can understand natural society. And around it, we can we can free ourselves. Now in jail, through his defense, his people, 11 sorry. 40,000,000 Kurdish people, which I think indigenous peoples in this continent have not 2nd largest NATO army in the planet 2nd largest NATO army in the planet. And a tyrant, Erdogan, the president of that country, they have resisted.
Manuel Rozental:They're seeking for peace. They've been forced to resist with arms, with weapons, and clearly stating and this is where I'd like to end this this part of the conversation is. Says clearly, we began as a guerrilla movement and a leftist guerrilla movement. We changed. We're neither.
Manuel Rozental:We do not believe in what the colonial powers did to us, which is if we win through military forces and we defeat the other one by force, then we would be entitled to take over everything because we won by killing and attacking. That isn't us. That's the colonial mentality. We are forced to defend ourselves, and we will, and we're doing that. But we will not be aggressors, and we will never be colonizers, 1.
Manuel Rozental:2, the liberation of women is the liberation of humanity, but it's not the liberation of women as in western feminism. It is the liberation of the female the women's spirit that we all carry. But but, yes, reconnecting ourselves to mother earth to care, to culture, to one another. So that he has said, and that's an incredibly powerful statement. And through that, for example, Northern Syria, in the Middle East, Rojava is now under Kurdish administration, assemblies, collective decision making, and its 3 components that guide this.
Manuel Rozental:1, I mentioned, liberation of women as liberation liberation from patriarchy, and patriarchy essentially came from hunters and priests who could not accept the knowledge of women and the connection to mother earth, and hunters and priests became hierarchies, governments as we know them now. That's Mesopotamia, the what they tell us. That's the Kurdish people. So they say, 1, the liberation of women mother earth. 2, the liberation of mother Earth, what they call ecology, and they're learning from us, from this continent and say indigenous peoples in Aviala and Turtle Island have a closer understanding that we are free with Mother Earth.
Manuel Rozental:It's inseparable. And the third one, they call democratic confederalism, which they think a confederation of nations that belong to territories is the only way we can weave ourselves to the freedom of mother earth with mother earth. For that, he's in jail for 25 years. And so that's another part of this same story.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:And we're speaking with Manuel Rosenthal, who's a longtime Colombian activist, researcher, and community organizer. We'll be right back here on First Forces Radio. My name is Tiokasin Ghosthorse.
Music:No one may torture you. No one can take away your human rights.
Narrator:Rebellion in our bones. We burn the cloth of the old. We risk our lives every day. To dress and act in a way, Freedom me. Freedom you.
Narrator:Freedom die for the true.
Music:Human beings are members of a whole, in creation of one essence and soul. If one member is afflicted with pain, other members uneasy will remain. If you have no sympathy for human pain, the name of humans you cannot retain.
Narrator:Freedom. Freedom come freedom now.
Music:Then, then Nikki, Ozodi.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:And that's Nick Mulvey with Freedom Now. And welcome back to First Voices Radio. My name is Tiokasin Go store. So we're going to finish out the second half of our conversation with doctor Manuel Rosenthal, radio on First Voices Radio. This is incredible.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:Thank you, Manuel Rosenthal. We see that it's just not focused in one area of the of the world. The term is colonialism is somewhat of a premeditated ignorance. It is brought to you by a system that is ultimately decided through a gavel. And many indigenous peoples are going to the UN, they're going to their system to decide what we can still possess or keep from that system that is doling out.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:Western colonial structures or systems often, control native peoples by allowing or banning sometimes many cases here in in the Western Hemisphere, especially North America, they banned our language. So part of this was not to allow the liberation of languages. And I'm hearing the colonial mindset that you talk about is a piecemeal mindset. Pick and choose what is good for this system, this this so called reality. On the other hand, languages to me, one is based on intuition, one is based on domination, and I know they cannot coexist.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:So what you're telling me is they will make decisions from that domination of the language, but then again, if native people speaking our language have a female and a male language and they bring them together, yet in the western mindset that it's a male dominated the feminist movement often taken on that male language to get equal rights within that male domination. And the other opposite of the male domination is earth. So it's true what you say about indigenous peoples to not lose that that heart set of earth with earth because that's in complete opposites of that domination. The language of domination often has opposites. Enemy, friend, we say territory, but we don't know the etymology of territory because the etymology of territory means a place subject to fear.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:That's what territory means. Here they say Indian territory. You don't go to that part because that's supposed to be held in fear. And so we to be held in fear. And so we often describe it even ourselves as native people.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:This is Indian territory. But what we're re recursing ourselves to keep using that same language. And one more thing is because of the domination where where intuition and and and domination cannot coexist, out comes the latest report, the value of earth. How much is Earth worth? And what they're saying now is that Earth has has been assessed to be $4,000,000,000,000,000 worth, and that's what's in Wall Street.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:So when when we're talking, this is no longer a legal system. It's more, our friend Steve Newcomb, would call lethality. So how much damage can we do the earth and a little piecemealing here and there is going to ultimately stop the earth from reforming, regenerating the systems of life. These are thoughts and summarizing and helping me to understand what you're saying, I can only understand it this way. I'm so glad you're multitalented thinking about ways of understanding the people that that you work with.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:Again, the native people there can feel it when you talk about them and their experiences as you experience the same thing. What do you think about the 2 things that I said, premeditated ignorance and that intuition and domination cannot coexist?
Manuel Rozental:I remember something that happened here and which was around where we met, and we began we had our first conversation where you supported us in a national mobilization, a MINGA, of indigenous peoples with an agenda of 5 points that we presented to this this so called Colombia, which we can't accept. It's Columbus. Yeah. We cannot yes. I I I wanted to give as you started with facts and numbers and how they're calculate in monetary terms than the entire planet.
Manuel Rozental:And I will give you a a context of what's happening here. General Laura Richardson is the US commander of the South Command, the US South Command. If people look in Internet interviews and conversations and declarations she's made recently, this is what she's saying about Abhyayala. This is what she's saying about this continent. Her statements, she says, China and Russia are competing with the US for the resources in these territories, and she quotes them.
Manuel Rozental:She quotes lithium and the countries where there is lithium, the territories where there is lithium territories in the sense that you mentioned. Terror, which is what they bring to steal. It's the resourceful theft that allows them to use that kind of language. So she said lithium, then she said the Amazon for all its its resources again. And so she mentioned 4 or 5 essential resources for the US economy, and she has developed a military plan and a military operation, including the establishment of 2 huge air force and military bases in Argentina just recently with a fascist government of Milan.
Manuel Rozental:The the, president of Argentina's fascists, he's attacking the Mapuche people, and he's delivering every bit of the Argentinian territory to transnational corporations and to to the US forces. The progressive president of Colombia has actually made an agreement with the Pentagon for the Pentagon to protect the Amazon. It's now the Pentagon is protecting the Amazon. I mean, that mentality that calculates how much economic wealth they can make out of exploitation is being delivered the Amazon to to destroy it. So that's one point I wanted I wanted to to make.
Manuel Rozental:This is happening now. The colonial mentality and activity is not something of the past as we've said a 1000000 times. It is happening right now. Right now, they there's nothing more colonial than the current US government. Anyone with 2 fingers of forehead can understand that the Biden administration has been the administration of the in military industrial complex.
Manuel Rozental:That's what it's doing. Transferring public US funds massively to military forces. Yesterday, as people in the US know, yesterday when we're talking today, congress approved 90 $1,000,000,000 in military aid for the Ukraine and Israel. I mean, is Trump any different? Contrast, the 48 cantons, the Mayan people in Guatemala, what we call Guatemala, last year, took to the streets because the president they had elected, who is the current president in Guatemala, progressive president, whose election wasn't going to be accepted by their own mainstream, structure and state.
Manuel Rozental:They mobilized the entire country in the streets for months months. But what really happened was not that. We could see it as an immobilization of the people in the streets to have an electoral process being respected. It wasn't that. It was the resurgence in Mayan territory of Mayan people and their authority based on their ancestral language and their respect for mother earth.
Manuel Rozental:In Mayan territory, I mean, the Mayan wisdom, what what has remained and is growing back again is a seed that is germinating and flourishing again. And this happened last year in Guatemala. And people might remember that the greatest, most horrendous massacre of all in the 20th century, proportionally, was carried out in Guatemala by Israeli and US forces together to silence a a a popular uprising in in Guatemala. So this happened last year and hasn't ended. Just 3 days ago, there was a short video coming out connecting the, the genocide in Gaza with the genocide in Guatemala from the Mayan indigenous perspective.
Manuel Rozental:So those who think these are dead languages of the past have to think again. Because in fact, if we don't learn native languages of the lands where we live, we will never understand ourselves. It is not somebody else's language. It has to be ours. No tree, no stream, no weather, nothing will understand nor will we survive if we don't learn those languages.
Manuel Rozental:And how do we learn them? Ceremony, song, storytelling, and learning to listen. Now I used to play during the pandemic with my daughter. We used to we were lucky that we were on the land and close to a river. And every day, we went to the river and spent hours in the river.
Manuel Rozental:And she used to get water into her hands and call it in in her in the native language, you, it's called. You is water. And she says think about it and say, you know, any drop of this water could have been in any human being anywhere or any plant or any flower anywhere in the world. She is the ambassador that weaves us together. She's the grandmother that keeps us alive.
Manuel Rozental:If a 7 year old could understand that, she can understand the native language. That's what native languages are, the voice of mother earth.
Music:And we
Manuel Rozental:have the opportunity to listen to it, to live by it.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:I know, you know, time construct here says that we have, like, 3 minutes here, But you perfectly described the intuition that lies within all of us. The truth is within us, that intuition, as my 90 year old mother would say, you cannot speak Lakota without intuition. And that's where she was taught. Your daughter was coming from that. And if trees and the in all other life life is based in from the heart of intuition, artificial intelligence, militarism, systems that are devised by humans will never work with earth.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:And we know that. And Earth is speaking louder and will continue. I really want to thank you just for bringing this. Time flies, and we are interdimensional, I would say. Yeah.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:Yeah.
Manuel Rozental:Yeah. Yeah. But that's what I I mean, it's always wonderful to visit. And there's we're around fire, and we're talking and close to water and exchanging. And, I did have a very close and dear Lakota friend who used to teach me lots lots, and I I would like yes.
Manuel Rozental:Time goes, but we keep exchanging. This doesn't end here. It's just going. And if if by what has come out of here, learning the language of mother Earth and living by it, if that is naive and that is ignorant, what we have to do is become as naive and ignorant as we can because life depends on it. Yeah.
Manuel Rozental:All life, everywhere. The war against mother earth, which is what this colonial system is about, has to end, and it will not end with 2 state or 200 state solutions. It's the end of nation states and the beginning of the freedom, our freedom with mother Earth. So I I really thank you for this. One doesn't feel as lonely when one has this opportunity.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:Thank you, Manuel Rosenthal, for working with, the people there with the land and, to always, cherish these conversations that there's that opportunity to all of us to think with mother earth. There's so much opportunity what they're feeling rather than a system that tells you how to think. Big honor to hear you, see you, and we'll talk again soon because this dialogue that we have is not a diatribe. Many people would think it is, but it's not.
Narrator:Yeah.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:No. Because we always have to deal with the murky waters of colonialism. You know? Yeah.
Manuel Rozental:And we took the snorkel off as it happens every time, and we went deep into what has to be heard. I here would like to see that we, for example, join in an effort to to demand the freedom of Abdullah Ocalan. He's one of ours, and we do need him. And there will not be peace in what they call the Middle East if he's not out and allowed to to help to find it. Thank you very much for this opportunity.
Manuel Rozental:It's really an honor, as you say. It is my my honor to be with you.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:Manuel Rosenthal, who's a longtime Colombian activist, researcher, and community organizer. We'll be right back here on First Voices Radio.
Narrator:It's still in San Diego. You can hear a baby cry
Tiokasin Ghosthorse:My name is. I wanna thank you for joining us here on First Voices Radio. And so thank you again, Keala Kelly, Maoli out in Hawaii. Thank you.
