Okay, so you're recording, correct? Yes. Hi everybody, Happy St. Pat's Day. My name is Sandy Baird and we're here with this Vicki session on Brexit as it influences still Scotland, Ireland and England itself. I'm here tonight to say Happy St. Pat's Day and introduce my friend to talk about Ireland. My friend Graham Clark who I met a numbers of years ago, probably a lot of years ago, though it seems like yesterday, I believe I met Graham about 1985 or 86 when he introduced me kind of to the whole issue of Ireland. I'd always thought about Ireland some degree because I'm a Scott and after all, the Irish and the Scots, although sometimes they don't seem to like each other very much, are really basically kind of the same people with a big religious difference usually between the Irish were Catholics and the Scots who were a majority Protestant. But I met Graham at a seminar that he gave with numbers of his Irish friends in Montpelier and that seminar was about how England had created these overseas areas of influence that were done by England that were very similar. And those similarities that he pointed out in that seminar were between England and Ireland, England and Palestine and England and South Africa which I found very interesting. And so I followed that kind of issue for ever since then about this treatment of England toward its then empire which included the beginnings of its empire in the UK itself in Scotland and in Ireland and then later in Palestine and in South Africa. So Graham is here because he worked has worked as a much part of his life on the Irish situation. He knows a great deal about it. He was active in organizing what was called the McBride principles in our state legislature. And he has a lot to say about Ireland particularly in how it affects how Ireland has been affected and how Scotland has been affected by Brexit and will continue to be influenced by that. And I wanna point out that with us tonight is Ian Stokes who is originally from England and he's a British man. And so I'm happy that he is here. He also is an activist on the Palestinian question. So I'm sure that he will have stuff to say. So here's Graham to begin our session. We're expecting at some point to have Greg Delanti who is an Irish poet from Ireland who taught at St. Mike's for years to perhaps chime in because after all this is a celebration of a big holiday in this country usually which is St. Patrick's Day kind of the beginning of spring. Okay, so Graham, where are you? I am in Charleston, South Carolina. Yeah. Yeah, making my way back to Vermont from Vieques, Puerto Rico. So somebody can just alert me if and when Greg joins us. And I will not introduce him until that happens. So Sandy, thanks for the introduction. Asked me to talk a little bit about Brexit, about Ireland and about Scotland. So here we go. Graham, can I just intercede for one minute and maybe do you want the map? I was just going to say Beth, can you put a map up because this is all about manmade lines of division. Yep. Okay. Just as a historical note, and I didn't do any research on this, but the word gerrymander does come from British rule in Ireland where there was a, my memory serves me correctly, a British landowner who, whose name wasn't gerrymander. Maybe it was a mandor gerry. But anyway, the British have had a long history of borders and colonies and the like. The United States used to be part of that great empire. So as we talk today, we're talking about two islands. And to the west on the left of the map is the island of Ireland, which was partitioned by the British in the early 1920s. And they took, there were four historic areas of Ireland. Ulster was the farthest to the north and it was comprised of nine counties. So they gerrymandered the three most Catholic counties because they knew that it wasn't going to be politically viable and sustainable to have domination over the native Irish. And so the most northern county in Ireland is in the south and that you can see on the map. So we had a partition in Ireland, became six counties called Northern Ireland and by 1937, many iterations became the country of Ireland, sometimes called the Republic of Ireland. And then you have the larger island to the east which the largest land mass is England, Scotland to the north, Wales. So Great Britain today is comprised of Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England. And sometimes they'll be referred to as the four countries of Great Britain, although no one in Northern Ireland refers to themselves as a country. The Scottish certainly do. So there's our divisions. You can see that within Northern Ireland you have a division of north-south and then within the Irish and Northern Sea you have kind of an east-west division between three out of the four political entities of Great Britain and Ireland. So 800 plus years of history between England and Ireland is not going to be covered in 15 minutes. So I'm going to skip right ahead to 1973 when the United Kingdom joined what was then called the European Community or European Communities. That entity evolved into the European Union by 1993. For a whole bunch of nationalists make Great Britain great again thinking, English sensibilities of pride a lot of financial reasons as we all know in any political entity, not all organizations pay in the same. So in Vermont when we have school funding we find out that towns like Sherburne and Killington have historically paid in more than they've received back from the state. So England traditionally has paid in more to the European Union than they have received back. So that I think was part of the dialogue as well which led to the idea of let us Britain exit the European Union aka Brexit. So that referendum took place in 2016. It passed within the United Kingdom 52 to 48. Scotland overwhelmingly voted to remain in the European Union. The city of Edinburgh was upwards almost close to 80% stay, 20% leave. Northern Ireland also voted to stay with it, did not vote in favor of Brexit, voted to stay within the European Union and Metropolitan London did as well. So it was Wales and other cities within England and the rural areas of England. So that led to many years of negotiation as to how in the heck would we do this? Because one, it's not easy to withdraw from a political and economic trade partnership that is 40 to 50 years going. And then you have this thing called the partition of Ireland. So we'll just freeze Brexit for a little bit other than to say it all got on paper worked out such that the United Kingdom had one year of transition after everything was agreed to. There was David Cameron's government fell because of Brexit, Theresa May's government fell, Boris Johnson was in and out. So long story short, there was a year transition which ended on New Year's Eve just this year. So we're only about 10 weeks into the reality of the United Kingdom not being part of the market, political entity and the trade markets of the European Union. Graham, Graham, could I ask a question? Sure. All right, one of the things that you didn't mention was the religious difference between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. And is it correct to say that the Northern Ireland is majority Protestant and Southern Ireland or the Republic is majority Catholic? Is that true? That would be a true statement, yep. And that that has been a running difference between the two Ireland's for a very long time, right? In other words, the struggles between the two Ireland's is also a religious struggle, correct? Of sorts, sure. I mean, the Scottish Protestants, my grandfather was Ebenezer MacIver born in Scotstown, Quebec. So I have on my mom's side a very strong Scottish Protestant background. My dad's side's very Irish Catholic, but the Scots were not indigenous, the Scotch Irish were not indigenous to Northern Ireland. They were brought over, they were planted there, the Scottish planters to create a beach head, if you will, on the island of Ireland. But yes, so politically, you have the majority of people in the repartitioned Ulster of only six counties when it was historically nine that identify with the United Kingdom politically and have a religious affiliation of the Church of England and Protestantism, yes. Thanks, thank you. And so what other questions are there to date? So what I was going to do is just try to touch on how the peace treaty, if you will, how the troubles, the civil war, the IRA put down their guns and the British, the Unionist paramilitaries put down their guns in the late 90s and then move that into present day issues relative to Brexit and the border, both the border on the island of Ireland and the east-west border of the Irish Sea. Great, that'd be great. Does anybody else have any questions of anything that I've said? Anne, feel free to say that I'm giving a revisionist history or whatever. Well, Sandy kind of put me on the spot, I guess. No, no, I'm just inviting you to add. Yes, for sure. Well, yeah, I grew up in England. My mother was from Scottish parenthood and I've always identified with Scotland and I have a nephew who lives in Wales and so he's bilingual, Welsh and English. And of course, Ireland has its own language, the Republic of Ireland. And so this idea of the United Kingdom is, it's almost like the United States now. We're still fragment, both places still somewhat fragmented. I mean, Scotland, my Scottish grandfather, the thing he was always telling me about was the Battle of Cullodenmore, which was very significant event in Scotland. The clan system was broken up and the English took over. I mean, the English crown always sort of struggled to maintain control of Scotland. And the Scottish Nationalist Party, which is now the strongest party in Scotland and it represented in Westminster. You know, I don't think they have it anymore, but they used to have a song which goes, Scots were hard with Wallace Bled. And this is a reference to William Wallace who actually beat the English in a battle. And it was then, oh, it's a long story, it was considered treasonous what he did. And he said, well, it was never treason because it was never a subject of the British crown. I mean, the United Kingdom was probably reached its highest level of unity when it was part of the European Union and also Ireland. I mean, we're focusing on Ireland. Ireland, I think the Republic benefited hugely from the European Union economically, but at the same time, Ireland as a whole benefited because I think it was a major element of the troubles of the kind of undeclared war between the North and the Republic. All of that sort of became irrelevant or at least manageable. So one of the big concerns, I mean, I said I grew up in England, I lived for 30 years in England and I still read the newspapers and I talked to my brother who lives there. So I've been trying to understand Brexit, but I think that really what it comes down to is it's a tragedy in my mind because it's destroyed not just an element of the European Union, it doesn't destroy it, but it's just made it very much more difficult to trade, to travel, to do everything else between the UK and the rest of Europe or the rest of the world that you use. Go to the Scottish Nationals Party that you referenced and also the Good Friday Agreement which was formalized in 1998 after many years of negotiation in part by Senator George Mitchell bringing Ireland, England and the two communities within Northern Ireland to a point where the troubles, the war between both the communities as well as between the British Army and the British military and politics against the nationalist Republican community created what is now 22 years of relative peace, although the peace walls still remain between the two communities in Belfast. They're talking about maybe they'll come down in three years, but they're 30 feet high, they've been more to divide the two communities and keep them at bay from each other. But just in this past month, the loyalist unionists slash Protestant paramilitaries have said they're withdrawing from the Good Friday Agreement because of Brexit. So Brexit, it was far too complicated. On the Irish side, I have no idea what folks were thinking about how that might work, but clearly they weren't thinking about their so-called fourth entity across the sea called Northern Ireland. And today being St. Patrick's Day, Joe Biden, who's Irish-American and was obviously a long-time colleague of George Mitchell and a long-time proponent of the Good Friday Agreement. Both in his talks with Sinn Fein, which is the Republican Party throughout Ireland, strongest in the North, their deputy leader met virtually with Joe Biden today, talking about the concerns that exist this very month about the really fragile nature of the peace, of the Good Friday Agreement, of the North-South borderless trade that goes on in Ireland. And also what's interesting is in two months, Scotland will be having their elections. So what happened as part of the Good Friday Agreement was England devolved powers to the Welsh for their parliament, devolved local control powers to the Scots for their parliament. Currently, the Scottish National Party is by far and away the largest party in their parliament. They do not have a majority, they're very close. And Northern Ireland has a parliament that was suspended for three years until a year ago when Sinn Fein rejoined the government in partnership with their previous archrivals, the Unionist DUP being the largest party of the Protestant Unionist section. So it'll be very interesting to see what happens in Scotland because not only is Brexit not off to a smooth start in Ireland, the Scottish Nationalist Party is running on a platform of an independent country that would join the European Union. And if they regain their majority, which they had previous to this past election, the intention is to put up for referendum a withdrawal of Scotland from the so-called United Kingdom. The last Scottish referendum was in 2014 and it lost 55 to 45. But with so many things going on since then that will be very interesting. To Ireland, 300-mile border, which was manned heavily, womanned heavily by the British army with electronic surveillance, helicopters, every military piece of equipment you could have. And that border went from a hard border to a soft border with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, such that you can cross the border like you can cross the Vermont-New Hampshire border.  Well, let's say it's, I don't know, Bob, why don't you weigh in? It's easier than Vermont-Quebec, that's for sure. Yeah. But basically, yeah, it's a line on a map and it's not a border like it used to be and like we normally think of borders. So that trade of goods and people and ideas north and south, how does that work in Brexit? Yeah, yeah. Because Europe's like, hey, you're not gonna get an entrance to the European market through your borderless border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.  So that is the conundrum and the conundrum has been most recently the Single Market Act, right? So if Britain is not part of the European Union, what market are they part of? Well, they created a Single Market Act of the four countries in the UK to have free flowing of goods, except the Europeans are like, well, that's fine. You can have free flowing goods, but you can also have free flowing goods between Northern and Southern Ireland because then now you're just in the EU. So what they did is they set up an East-West border and the Irish Sea and no goods were coming in smoothly in January and February into Belfast and the Unionists went nuts and said, no, no. This ain't happening, we're part of the UK. So how this is going to work remains to be seen. Can I have a quick question? So the Republic is part of Europe still, right? Absolutely. Okay. And the North is still part of the UK? Correct. And Scotland is part of the UK and the UK is not part of the EU because of Brexit. Okay, so that's a problem, as you say. And Scotland's like, well, we'll see where we stand soon. We have less than two months away national elections. So it's- So it's saying in Scotland if Edinburgh, if the, in the Scottish Parliament, if the Scottish Nationalist Party wins a majority, what you're saying is there going to be another referendum on the independence of Scotland? That's what they're saying, yes. That's what the SNP is saying, yep. And you're also saying that Scotland, at least as far as anyone knows, wants to remain in Europe, right? The Scottish Nationalist Party is very clear that there will be a referendum to be an independent country that is affiliated with the European Union. Right. Not an independent country affiliated with the United Kingdom. Wow. But it won't necessarily happen or it wouldn't necessarily be on it by Westminster because, well, Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the UK has said, no, we're not going to have another referendum in Scotland. Right. Yeah. So, you know, those are statements of intent. Obviously, Brexit was voted on in June of 2016 and it's taken five years just to get seven weeks of implementation, which is incredibly complicated. So, you know, you don't withdraw from long-standing political entities easily. And without... But I think it's fair to say that that long protracted negotiation process, the sticking point was always the problem of the border in Ireland. And that was apparently something that was never really anticipated when people went and voted for Brexit. They weren't aware of the reality of what this was doing to Ireland and that's been the sticking point throughout those negotiations. Right. The partition of the island and its subsequent border, without a doubt, has been the hardest nut to crack in the very simple idea of, oh, let's have Britain exit. Be fine. Ireland has always been a sticking point for the English, hasn't it, throughout history? Sure. I mean...  Yeah, I mean, yes, self-determination of the Irish and their will to do that by peaceful land or other means has been an ongoing part of the history, yep. And it seems also part of the religious wars which consumed Europe for generations too with the Protestant Reformation a lot. It seems to me. However, I'm not an expert in that. Okay, well, what's gonna happen, Graham? What do you think is gonna happen? I mean, what does this mean for England, really, also? That England is no longer in the EU. Does that... I mean, there are definitely consequences for England itself. Is that right? Sure, I mean, yeah. Well... A lot of consequences. Yes. Like what? Yeah, well, what's the viability of that political state? You know, it's hard to... I don't know. I think the Scottish vote will be very telling. If it remains a 55-45 and that's not going to become an issue, that certainly makes things seemingly a little easier for the British politicians in Westminster. If the SNP Scottish National Party wins a majority and wins a solid one, then that'll certainly complicate things all throughout that map. Yeah. There is a question to Graham. Are you seeing it in the chat from Jane? From Jane? Jane, I think she's muted and now I don't see the question anymore. Yeah, I wanted to ask about, sorry, about how Brexit is affecting trade with the rest of the world, and how has that affected, yeah, anyway. Okay. So I can share a little bit. I mean, this obviously, this is far more complicated than I understand but I can share some bits of information relative to that question. The majority of trade for Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland is with England, is with the UK, primarily with England. The majority of trade for England is not within the UK. So that's there. In January of this year, trade, primarily exports, but also imports, was off 30%. Trade with the EU was 30% less this January than a year ago. Trade with the EU. So those are, some of the early returns on that trade. Clearly the United States has a trade agreement with the EU, but they, because this is all eight weeks in, the United States does not have a trade agreement with the UK. They did, because the UK was part of the EU. So Biden had made it clear in, his campaign and again today, both to the Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland and the Sinn Fein vice chair that there will not be a trade agreement with the United Kingdom unless the Good Friday agreement is absolutely adhered to. We've already seen, the conundrum and the tensions there. Certainly historically, the Northern Irish Protestants have felt like, you know, the, the Brits will jettison them in a minute for their own self interests. You know, united until we don't need to be united. So there's that concern. And, and at times perhaps paranoia. So that, you know, the United Kingdom doesn't have trade agreements with anyone because it's, it's, it's a kingdom that is seven weeks into no trade agreements. It has trade agreements with the European Union. That was right. That was part of the deal, but the European Union two days ago sued. The UK over there. Not following the trade agreement relative to Northern and Southern Irish flow of goods. So. So, you know, and Boris Johnson's like, well, we, we have, we have the ability to do that. The, the government of Ireland, the. Sinn Fein and the SDLP, the main nationalist Republican slash Catholic parties and the Scottish national parliament. I don't know where Wales stands on this Scottish nationalist party are all saying. Westminster's in a power grab. The whole idea of these devolved local control powers. They're, they're running rough shot over because they're saying we have to impose the free flow of goods within the UK. And yeah, they're trying to impose the free flow of goods within the UK. And they're trying to impose the free flow of goods within the UK. And they're trying to impose devolved stuff from 1998. That doesn't quite work so well anymore. Okay. So the English. In other words, what you're saying is they are trying to reimpose their rule. On these rather unruly peoples who regard themselves. As. Other nationalities as members of other nations, Scotland and Ireland. And they're trying to impose the free flow of goods within the UK. As of this week. And the Irish government agrees with that, that England's not. Playing by the rules relative to the. EU UK trade. And. The devolved. Parliaments in at least in Scotland. And elements in Northern Ireland. Are also saying. England is not. Not upholding their agreement to local control. Devolved powers that came about in the late 90s. So both of those things have been. Coming to the four just in the last month. Because of Brexit. Because of Brexit. Okay. Any other questions? Okay. I would like to ask. Oh, there's somebody else. There's three people in the chat, but I don't know who they are. And I just like to say for Armando, I think the Yankees bullpen looks really weak this year. So I think. The Red Sox are in good shape. Armando. Well, that's good because. And it's kind of tied because the Red Sox represent an Irish city. Boston. Correct. But let me ask, ask you something else. So what will happen in Scotland. If a referendum passes for independence. And it passes. What are the, what are the, what's Westminster going to do with that? First of all, what could they do if Nicholas, Nicholas Sturgeon, who is the leader of the SMP, what if she says we're going to put this referendum on the ballot in Scotland. You think England will say you can't do that. And if England says you can't do that, then what? It sounds like the Catalonians putting independence on the ballot in Barcelona. No, not so fast. Right. Except that the English aren't perceived as, as, as draconian as I don't think the Spanish. I don't know, King, I guess. But nevertheless it is kind of the same situation of Scotland declares itself independent. What will the, what will Westminster and Morris Johnson do about it? What do you think? Probably have a crisis and call for snap elections. I don't know. It will not be welcomed and it will, whatever happens will not happen. All that quickly. Right. Stating the obvious what. You know, the, the larger question might, well, who knows, will be, you know, does, does the British, do the English citizens. Come to realize that this idea of Brexit actually. Is far more complicated and, and not in their self interest as much as 52% of them. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Thought. And what anyway, what if the citizens, I mean, the citizens of England, if you want to call them citizens, and they are still a monarchy. Yeah. Well, there you go. Right. The citizens of England. Voted for Brexit. Right. So what, what can they do now? I mean, if there's another election that says, no, we want to rejoin Europe, Europe's not going to be happy about that. I wouldn't guess. And you want to weigh in on what your thought of that is? Well, I'm not. Particularly close anymore to what's happening in, in Scotland. I mean, I read about it. But actually, if, if, if, if, if you allow me to, just to go back to Ireland. Maybe. Graham, you could speak a little bit about. The history of Ireland, which as I understand it. Was ruled. The whole of Ireland was ruled by Britain. Until. I think 1918 or there about. Until 1922, right? Okay. So after the First World War. Yeah. And that was the result of. Revolution or an insurrection or something in, in Ireland. And the British just couldn't keep control of Ireland and, and had to give Ireland its independence. And it became a republic. So completely independent of, of the British crown. With the exception of this. The British crown. The British crown. With the exception of this little piece in the North, the Northern Ireland. But I, I mean, are we still, and well, and, and of course the history of, of Ireland also economically was, it was incredibly disadvantaged. And while Britain was ruling Ireland. They really exploit as I understand it exploited the agriculture of, of Ireland so that there were terrible famines. And Irish people emigrated to the United States in huge numbers. And that really only that emigration, I believe really only stopped. With the. With Republic of Ireland joining the European Union. So, so, um, you know, Ireland is, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a different place from the, from the, from the UK. And with a history which, you know, not surprisingly, because it was a very difficult time for Ireland. When it was ruled by Britain. And subsequently. So, you know, the. There are, there are strong. Feelings in, in, in Ireland. I mean, I think maybe more so than Scotland. Although, you know, we've been talking about Scottish independence. That's a, that's a big movement. But Ireland has a history over the last 100 years, which really I think form this current situation. Well, one thing that I wanted to bring up too is what Ian is talking about. Yes, this struggle with Ireland has been going on for a very long time, probably since the middle ages, really 800 or 900 with the, with the English translation. Ireland. And that I believe erupted in the civil war during the first world war. When there was a war between, I would get between Northern. The Protestants and the Catholics on the island and, and against England. As a result of that war, there was a compromise. That was a subject of a great movie called Michael Collins. And so that war. Was a compromise with the Northern Irish, more Protestant part of Ireland's siding with England. And then this Republic of Ireland. Largely Catholic was created independent of England. I want to point out something else. This is where the roots of the IRA, isn't it Graham? The IRA was the. Irish Republican army. It was deemed a terrorist group by the United States. But I want to mention this because it hit me one time. It was the Irish Republican army, which meant that it was also anti monarchical or anti King and Queen. Southern Ireland is a republic. Northern Ireland is a republic. Southern Ireland is a republic. Northern Ireland is still under the control of the monarch. And the monarch is not terribly in favor right now. Anywhere, but it never has been in the Southern, in Southern Ireland. It's so, I mean, this struggle has its roots so far back. And also the English. It seems to me as never have, there's a large percentage of English people who've never wanted to be part of Europe in the first place. And so once again, why was it that the English voted for Brexit? Very. And that's, and that's what I was curious on your take what, what. So. Before we go there, just. A couple of things there was. Home rule came about. In Westminster home rule for Ireland. I think the first home rule. Legislation was maybe 1912. It was the fourth home rule. The third home rule passed, but it was during. World War one. And that was 1918. That was two years after the. World War one. The Republican army led the Easter uprising, which was an effort to militarily in Dublin, overthrow and kick the British out. Led to mass executions and, and whatnot. Subsequent to that. The British like, all right, the Irish problem. World War ones going on. So by 1922. Finally. Home rule came about, but it wasn't for Republic of Ireland. It was the free state. Right. Which led to a, so it was partitioned. Six and 26. Ulster. It's the three most Catholic counties in the North become part of. The free state of Ireland. And the two political parties. Were the different IRA political parties, the different shin fame. Political parties that supported. Total independence. Versus. Those that did not support total independence. That led to the Irish civil war. Amongst the free Southern Irish, if you will. The Republic of Ireland came about 15 years later in 1937. Okay. I think there's some people in chat and I don't know how to do it. Beth, do you know how to. Oh, yes. Beth, if she's still there. Well, I don't know. Jane is asking how the Brexit effects trade with the rest of the world outside of the EU. Right. She already asked that, I think, Beth. And that has been discussed. There seems to be five. I see you the number five. Diane, did you want to jump in your. Providing some information. Okay. All I was doing was I was checking on how long. Ireland was part of the UK. Great Britain. And it looks like it was only 122 years. It's not like it went back to the Middle Ages. It goes prior to 1800. Ireland was its own independent place. No. That's not true. No. That's what history shows. When I looked it up. It was, it was probably not part of the United Kingdom because there wasn't a thing called the United Kingdom. Ireland. Those were my words. Yeah. Ireland. Was indigenous. Tribal. Clans. Much like Scotland. Right. By the. You know, that. The thing is the 800 year war. That's not true. So 1200s, 1300s. The Irish plans start losing their independence to. Elements coming over from England. It wasn't the UK at the time, but. Yeah. So you're saying Ireland was intermixed with England. It was subjugated by. Yeah. As was Scotland and Scotland in 17, I think. Oh, seven was finally subjugated by the English. Maybe at the battle of Culloden actually. Graham, which you mentioned. And Scotland was basically out war with the English and they won. Frankly. And will William Wallace was a rebel against that, but Scotland was finally in an act of union. And that's not true. I'm not certain that the Scots ever really wanted it that way. Or the Irish wanted it that way. It just kind of happened because England has always been the stronger Imperial power. In fact, in the entire world. Until really. Well, well, well, well, World War two. No, that's an exaggeration because the Spaniards and the, and the Portuguese before England. So, right. Right. But so we're, if you go back to Scotland, Mary, Queen of Scots. Right. And she was Catholic also. Right. That was the critical piece. Right. Right. Right. So, okay. Any other, any other, there's other people that seem to have questions or comments. No. Well, Bob doesn't have his microphone. Otherwise he'd be weighing in, but he wrote that partition happened under the threat of all out war from England. Right. And that partition was 1922. Correct. 23. Right after World War one, which was one of the results really also of World War one that were all over the planet. That was a very important war with numbers of borders drawn. Orders changed by the victors or England, France. The United States, although the United States did not play a huge part in the treaty of their side as the other two did. Anyway, any other questions. To me, this is a really important subject because it also goes to, can Europe survive the exit of England and what is happening in the EU? Is it a good thing that the English got out for good for the English? Is it good for Europe? Is it damaging to Europe? Is it damaging to Europe? I think that's a really broad implications for the whole idea of keeping Europe together. Anyone else have any, any other thoughts? Ram, any final?  Plenty of, you know, the wars in Europe. Weren't all that long ago. Right. Right. When you, when you look at. When you look at the war in the United States in 1973, starting to come together. It's, it's a very. New concept. I was talking with a friend of mine. Who? Who? Who was once getting a tour of Venice or. Florence rather. And he said to the tour guy, boy, you know a lot about Florence. And he said, no, my family's Venetian. We just moved here. 600 years ago. He was being dead serious. No, so the, those. How people identify. Right. I was just in the island of the acres off of Puerto Rico. Do not call anyone on that island, Puerto Rican. They will quickly. Skulled you and say, no, we're, we're vacancies. So, right. We. People have a long, long history of identifying themselves. Religiously, politically, geopolitically. And. And those roots. Usurp and go over. Borders. And in many, many ways. So. Finding common ground. Climate change really doesn't care about borders, right? And. The, the human beings working together to. Solve some of our. Human created problems are absolutely essential. As people jockey to. Identify and. To. Try to create both their self-determination within their. Political states, but also hopefully we can. See the commonality that we have around. The precarious nature of our planet. But I want to just say one other thing and thank you very much, Graham for doing this and for all you others who did. Enter the discussion. However, the Irish, you know, did emigrate massively here. And I want to kind of recall to all of us on this St. Patrick's day that the Irish were incredibly oppressed here as well in this country. Largely because I guess because they were poor. And Catholic. And the country at that time, which was probably. Pretty early on. During the civil war. And after the country was largely. Identified as Protestant. And so the Catholics really formed a minority. And I want to remind us of that because we've only had one Catholic president before Biden, that Catholic president, of course, was JFK. And do you remember those of us who are old enough to remember the kind of prejudice that existed when John F. Kennedy was became president of the United States. And this is only the second Catholic president that we had. And so the notion of Ireland has been in our history as well as in the history of the UK and Europe. Any other final thoughts before we call it a day till next week. Next week, we're going to be talking about the fourth amendment. Of our US Constitution and T.J. Donovan is going to give a talk on the fourth amendment. The fourth amendment is the amendment in our constitution that guarantees. Our privacy in our homes and in our bodies. And the third amendment is the amendment in our constitution. That the government cannot search either. Without a search warrant. And that search warrant has to be granted by a judge who says there's probable cause. That the government should have that authority to break into our houses. And then maybe into our bodies. All right. So thank you. Andy, I would just invite everyone and anyone to go online. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I want to look at Greg Delanti's work. He is considered the. Oh, yeah. Lowry yet of the Irish in America. I. Greg has a long history of social justice and environmental justice. Spending time with the Sue and standing rock. It's one of the most outwardly generous groups of people. The world over both in terms of government spending. And when you go on to the Hopi Navajo COVID. Go fund me page. I think we have a lot of people that have come from Ireland because of the Irish. Oral history, knowing that the Cherokee nation stood by them. When they were being. In the so-called famine, which was really just British agricultural rule. And so. We have a lot to learn. I think from the people of Ireland. Agreed. Thank you. Thank you. This is Lou. Greg Delanti is was on. He is right now teaching a class to my roommate. He's the St. Mike's professor. Correct. Yes. Yeah. So that it was just a coincidence that we just. My roommate just came downstairs for a break. And that's what she said. There we go. Nice. Anyway, thank you. Yeah, thank you. All of you have some Irish luck. See you later. Yeah, good luck to us. Yeah. Bye-bye everyone. Bye.


And it's not that benchmarks are inherently inaccurate, it's often because they test for the wrong things. You really have to tune the benchmark to match your workload. So what I wanna talk today is about storage tuning. Now there's other tools out there for Windows, but I spend more of my time in the Linux world and virtualization world setting things up and we wanna make sure our storage is optimized for that type of workload or even the workload that I'm using right now, which is video editing workload. How do you make sure that your system is tuned for it and how can you validate that tuning? Now, there are extensive tools like Veronica's benchmarks that gives you really cool graphs, but I wanted to have something simple. I've talked about FIO before. FIO is a really simple utility in Linux that is also available on TrueNAS. And I have a little script I put together. You're gonna find the links down below just to make the testing easier in a bash script. Cause I wanted something, you know, simple and repeatable that I can also share with the audience and go, hey, put these parameters in, let me know what you get and then we can come to a common agreement when we're discussing things in a forum of what we're testing for or not just a general speed mark, but the parameters that went into generate that speed. So let's get started. Now we're gonna start by talking about the system and I'll be doing the testing on because that question will probably come up in the comments, but this is my TrueNAS Mini R that has an Intel, Atom, CPU 3758 at 2.2 gigahertz. No, this is not a particularly high-performance CPU, but that makes the test more interesting cause we're gonna use net data, which is an app that we have here in TrueNAS scale to show some of the performance in a more visual way, but we're gonna show how the script runs. But one last thing I wanna comment on is when we look at the storage pool here, we have the flashy and rusty pools. Each one of these have different shares on them. One of the shares on there is going to be my video archive that's on the rusty pool. That's where I store all my videos when I'm done with them. And then we have the flashy, that's just the SSD pool, which is where all the active videos that I'm working on go. I'm using these folders as demos because I've mounted them from my system and we're going to test the speed of each of these different ones. And this is a good way to test the script and compare the difference between the spinning rust and the SSD drives. And yes, I know it's not actually spinning rust anymore. That's a throwback to the way they used to make them. To take a quick look at the storage dashboard, we see that the SSDs are a RAID-Z1, four wide, and the data VDevs on the HDDs are RAID-Z2, eight wide. So the question might be, what is the performance difference between these two when I'm attached to them? Well, that's what we'll test real quick here with this FIO tool. Now, the prerequisites for this script are pretty simple. You need to have FIO and BC installed if you're using a Debian or Ubuntu-based distro after you install FIO and after you install BC. The test directory is a parameter we pass at the command line, the block size. Now, I'm going to set this to one meg and a file size of one gig and a number of files to five. I have some little explainers here, but you can certainly spend a lot more time reading about all of these with some Google search to dive deep into all the different parameters in FIO. But this is a pretty good base for setting up to similar to my video editing load. But if you wanted to change this, and we could change this to like 64K, for example, this would be more indicative of smaller writes that you might see with 64K files, or even if you're running a workload that might be more like a virtualization workload where there's smaller block writes being committed from the virtualization system. So it comes down to what you want it to optimize for. We're going to switch this back to the one meg. And the reason I'm leaving the file size at one gig is because, well, generally speaking, video editing files are much larger as I produced them. Now, down here at the bottom is all the tests that's going to run. It says run these tests and we have a random write, random read, sequential write, sequential read, and then the read write test. You can simply comment any of these out if you don't want them to run. So if you only wanted to do sequential or you only want to do random, just comment the ones out that you don't want. But I'm going to ahead and have it run all the tests. Now, here's the different mounts that I have on my system. So the LTS video is mounted to that flashy pool and this one's mounted to the rusty pool, the LTS video archive. That's why there's so much more storage available on it. We'll run the first test on this LTS video. So we're just going to kick off the tool. I have a directory under that mount called SSD test. All it's going to do is write some files into there that it cleans up later. The last part of the script actually deletes the files but let's go ahead and kick this off and see what the performance looks like. Now, going through the results, you can see that it gives us the test that was run and the parameters it was run with. So we have our random write and then our random read and our sequential writes and sequential reads and then these simultaneous sequential reads and writes down here at the bottom and we see all the different results but let's visualize them a little bit better with net data. Now, looking here at Churnas, we're able to see that the inbound traffic because it was the first block was random writes were CPU intensive but we're able to saturate the inbound network at the 9.3 gigs here. Then we can see that the reads also 8.2. So reads were doing quite well off of these and then we have the sequential writes a little bit different to CPU profile on here but the sequential writes also were able to saturate the bandwidth and then these sequential reads and then the reads and writes here are the peaks and valleys you see and this was all done on an SSD test. So we can see how much CPU load was put on the system for each one of these tests and say, okay, it did quite well. Now we're running the same test again but this time we're pointing at the video archive which is on the rusty pool that is built from HDD. So we're gonna run the same test again and see what the results are. Now something that may surprise people is that eight HDDs actually perform quite close to the same performance level I got out of the SSDs on here but let's go ahead and go back to net data and let's take a closer look and we can see slightly different CPU performance and that comes down to there were more drives to write to so there's a little bit of a different activity as it wrote them on here but nonetheless we were still able to see bandwidth right here total network in down of 8.6 and if we go to the outbound 8.2 gigs here it was certainly able to push most of the bandwidth out that was needed to make this a pretty performance system. Now my goal of this video is just to leave you with this simple script with some tunable parameters so you can have repeatable tests when you're doing tuning. These are the same tools net data and FIO that led me to the discovery of the way single threaded performance works on TrueNAS scale with the atom processor and why I had to switch my stuff over to unencrypted data sets to get the performance I was looking for out of this particular system. I just wanted to share the knowledge of how I look at things and how you can look at them too and then send you down the rabbit hole of changing all the parameters and seeing how it impacts CPU or impact performance or maybe using the same parameters and then changing things on TrueNAS like your sync or not sync or maybe the block size of a data set and see how that affects performance. Let me know in the comments below. Let me know if you love or hate the script. I'm not the best writer of scripts. It's all done in bash and now feel free to bash on me in the comments. If you don't like it, I'll take that criticism as well. Like and subscribe to see more content from this channel. Head over to my forums to see this script and engage with me on this topic on our topic you're seeing on a channel and how to learn systems.com if you would like to connect with me and whatever socials are available that you find there. All right and thanks.


Hey everybody, Dr. O here, let's talk about the external genitalia of the female. Collectively all the external genitalia are usually going to be called the vulva or the pudendum, so I usually say vulva. You can't see this here, but the mon's pubis would be the pad of fat that's located in the anterior over the pubic bone, and then behind that you'll see everything we're going to talk about here. So we have the labia majora and the labia minora, so labia means lips, majora means larger and minora means smaller. So the labia majora, they're going to have hair, that's one of the key differences. The labia majora do have hair, the labia minora are going to be hairless. The labia minora are also going to be usb darker and more pigmented. So the labia majora and the minora, they're both there to protect the opening to the urethra and the vagina. So that's going to be their primary function. What else? On the top there, the superior and anterior portion of the labia minora actually will come together to form that prep use over it, which is the same name we'd use for the foreskin of the male to cover the clitoris.  That seems to be their primary function there. Another thing you can't see here with external genitalia is the hymen. So the hymen is a partial membrane that covers the opening to the femur reproductor system. Lots of conversation about the hymen being used to tell if someone's a virgin, these kind of things. But it doesn't have to be there. It can be ruptured by lots of other things, including strenuous exercise. So I certainly wouldn't use that as any sort of marker for virginity, but that's the hymen. You've probably heard that term. So that's what it is. And lastly, you see the opening to the vagina is going to be in between the opening to the urethra and the anus. And then we see what else? We have the opening of the Bartholens glands. So the Bartholens glands or the greater vestibular glands, they're going to release their secretions during sexual arousal to lubricate the area. Okay, so those are your external genitalia. Hope this helps. Have a wonderful day. Day. Be blessed.


Day Iblis Swiss. Day Iblis Swiss, I'm a member of the Staling Buffalo First Nations here in Port Patel. My Indian name is Sakhan Kanoni, based on a dream my mother had a month, one month before she went to Spirit World. She had a dream and she called me home from over there to have a naming ceremony and a giveaway. I got my Indian name. That was a long time ago. One month later she left us. It was meant to be before she left, but that name was when the father took place. So I still carry it. I still carry that name probably because it came from my mother's dream. How did our people live before treaties? I think for me what little I know about our cultural background is there were no ban. They had their own areas and they lived from place to place like that and they lived off the land. And leadership was something that they had that was I think the old people had a very strong spiritual connection directly connected to the spirit which is kind of stretched now. But back then I think they were much closer and I think that's where they got their direction from because they had the original astronomers I guess that watched the movement of the Star Spirit direction down here just like the schedule of Kalman of events. So I think that's how that's kind of how I visualize based on what little I heard, which is meaningful. It's a light. How were the leaders picked? I think in leadership there were spiritual leaders that were that led through guidance and support and I think they had a they had a system of that kept them together that were selected from I think it was like a pie and there were different departments I guess for lack of a better word that everybody had a responsibility to keep balance in amongst the tribe. But I think the leaders were selected by the people as a whole so that before election time, before election, they would go to whomever they saw that had a good leadership qualities, they would fill the pipe and they would go to offer to that person. And if he accepted then he was acknowledged as a leader by the tribe like that and he was not he was he served the people there was no self-serving in it except to help the people. So that's kind of how I understand that they function. And then the election thing came in and now now what? That's as far as I'll come at that. What kind of qualities did a leader have to have? Courage, wisdom, fortitude, spiritual connection, balance, humility. I think that's what the people saw looked collectively at towards a leadership. I guess a lot of them had it but I think some of them that were a little bit more directed by the creator to the leadership role because I think the creator was never out of the picture. I think that's where the direction came from. Through the dreams of the vision, through the the wise ones, the medicine people that were acknowledging someone to lead them. We think of leaders such as sitting bull from the Lakota and crazy horse. Those were guys that were strongly very strongly spiritual and they had along with that the good leadership qualities that I just mentioned that. So there was a balance there and that's how they led the people and other other leaders like that too. So I think those are good leadership and I think today people don't necessarily have to be an elected leader to be a leader. I think the power of example works well to anybody that is spiritually mostly balanced. So when we have a sweat we touch down with a waterpill onto the rocks before the first round and we ask for blessings for us and they're too clear away our stuff that we can have something to share with others. And I think that's how leaders come in different variations other than those elected leaders or there's other people that are good role models I guess today.  Do you see traditional governance in communities today? There may be some but it's hard for me to see personally I I think there's a starting to show itself again like it used to one time I think it was uh I think it was spiritually balanced at one time and there may be yet you know but there's other contemporary issues and struggles I think that kind of are necessary to deal with today. So the spiritual part I think the thing about reservations, reservation system and residential school has kind of made a great area there that beautiful. I'm trying to work their way out of now to to put it back the way it used to be. So hopefully that will come in time maybe it'll be so valuable. What were the changes that occurred with treaty signing that you've seen or heard about what kind of changes happened? Well I'm from the Canadian Sioux people and we've never officially signed a treaty with the government so uh technically we're considered treaty and in another sense we're not included in treaty some treaty or other so there's a little a little confusion there for me but I think the treaty made a made some change that kind of brought restrictions that was kind of almost like a one-sided deal so that we were limited like our our our freedom was limited to reservation system and all the rules that came with it such as permission to go to another reservation permission to make a business deal with someone else to sell a load of wood to buy or to do any trading like that was very limited and restricted at one time. And then I think it'll be interesting to explore the underlying reasons why those rules were in place towards native people like that. I've never heard a whole lot share but there may be some assumptions but it'd be nice to clear it up and people say this is why those rules were in place this is why you couldn't trade a horse or visit your friends on the other reservation these are why those rules were put into place so it'd be interesting to hear see. How did people's lives change? Oh man you know I work in a I work in a I contact with Corrections Service Canada and our institutions have a lot of Aboriginal people like lots and young people and we have other areas in life such as poverty and people who are suffering from a lack of education and I think there's something that displaced the spirit way back then that distorted our whole picture today so we set the way we are and just a while ago we talked about politics and spirituality to get a balance to help our leadership in our communities and I think if we can backtrack a little bit and and review those those things when when all that took place and so that reservation system took away a lot of stuff like that so I think it kind of it kind of took the window out of our sales I guess as a people to try to keep that balance in place and I believe some people say well it's just like turning a light switch just pull the switch and everything will be different but it's not like that there's a whole process spiritual process of change and social social changes that social dynamics that took place that kind of rolled backwards a little bit and I think what we're trying to do is roll them back over this way again that's I think that's the process that's starting to show itself and I think it's so good that we have a lot more native people educating themselves and sharing that awareness with other parts of society so that we all can understand and I think that if the treaties were signed like that long ago maybe it wouldn't be like this but on the other hand as a result of the treaties being signed and put into a society the way they were maybe there's some character building to be gained from that by all of us I guess in particular Aboriginal people to rediscover our true natural selves how things used to be before pre-contact and along the way up to today I think there's a good review process in place that can make a brighter picture I hope anyway. How did the role of women change? I think overall there's so many women that are victimized you know you read the paper you do the studies and you contact with women's rights groups and it's so sad to see the the the things that are working against the ladies and on the other hand there's there's so much women's women's wellness movement to counteract that and I think about you know they say that in a cultural sense that the guy that leads the ceremonies are not the actual true leaders they're kind of like serving the ladies and the true power comes from the ladies because this my friend one time told me about how he went to see a doctoring and this guy used to take these he had a necklace with that four empty rifle cartridges laced in there and when he went to doctor people he would take those cartridges and he would swallow them and his doctoring he would shoot them out onto the patient to help the patient and this one time he said he was watching the ceremony where this old timer was doing the doctoring like that and he had three of those cartridges he managed to eject them out onto the patient to doctor they were sitting on the floor and the fourth one he had lots of trouble trying to bring it out he had lots of difficulty and the old cocoon was sitting behind him and while he was struggling to bring the fourth one out she was taking off her old black and white running shoe this friend was telling me and as he was struggling she just went him right on the back like that and the fourth one just came off and he was telling me the real power is with the old lady that she was supporting him even though she didn't look like she was actively involved and i think like that about all of the ceremonies we're just on our way to sunday at ceremony right now and i think like that about the ladies you know because when we remember our old brandies and the old people that that encouraged us they were not loud like the the male leadership the male leadership to all the announcing and the loud noises but i think the true power came from the ladies because in a in a culture that i come from and in many other cultures as well the the sacred pipe was brought from the spirit world by a lady and when we go to sunday after the young girl being groomed right now where we're going and the very first ceremony of the of the sundances our leader is going to walk out of the harbor and he's going to pray and around the bush this young girl who represents white buffalo cappleman he's going to come with the pipe she's going to bring it to the people and she's going to stand there for the duration of the four days and when the sundance is over she's going to take the pipe and walk on the circle oh she's going to leave the pipe and walk around the circle and go back from where she came from four days later so she come dressed in white and she leaves dressed in red because now she's had human contact and she's our grandmother white buffalo cappleman you know and it's so emotional when she leave people just cry openly loud because it was four days of the sundance we experience rejuvenation we experience identity who we who we are and to be proud of that in a humble way what was given to us by the creator and the lady is a big big big part of that so it's unfortunate that the lady suffer as much as they do in our society today that has changed so much you know but at the same time there are ladies who are making a change a difference again and that's really hopeful to see I have a granddaughter that just finished high school about a month ago here and she wants to send us she'll be going to sundance so there's two things there's education there's a cultural perspective coming together you know and there's a statue of the praying hands like that you ever see statue of the praying hands I believe that they hold something in there like that you know just like the bringing together of the pipeline I think the ladies that should be quite of a thing I never forget my granny and my mother they were so instrumental in all of our lives in our family so that's that's the changes that I've seen both kind of hurtful changes and recovery changes and remembering before like long ago when things were pretty fellow long ago people how did the people make a livelihood before the trees as in how did they live off the land as well before diabetes yeah diabetes by itself has made such a big dent in our society there's so many people epidemic that suffer from from the changes and I think about going to a residential school and the different foods that we were introduced to and forced to eat like that you know and I think before that when I was a kid I remember having a there were we had no access to Moosemeat or or elk back then but there were a lot of deer a lot of fish a lot of rabbits and a lot of berries and my mother when we were very poor could make a excellent meal out of vegetables vegetables too we had my mom couldn't whip up a really good healthy meal from next to nothing as well as probably other people eh but there were hard times along the way as well there was there was a kind of wedges of cracking our culture apart away there were outside influences that we were already trying to contend with and struggling to contend with and eventually they broke like for the wheels came off for my family in particular anyway that I'm aware of as well as others eventually there was found fragmentation that fragmentation and people left and people started to pass away and people started to suffer from malnutrition and coping with them you know I think people that are in recovery some people in recovery will substitute junk food or sugar for alcohol or smokes or cigarettes or food because we suffer from obesity and a lot of you know things like that that we try to cope with deep-seated issues and without realizing it we turn to food sometimes for comfort food eh smells good tastes good looks good must be good so let's have some and pretty soon we're addicted and hope into it and pretty soon we're getting overweight and the next thing you know we have health health issues eh which is which is I think spiritually affecting us as well I don't think it's just the deep emotional turmoil or or trauma that we experience but the coping things that we try to use as well to keep ourselves afloat also kind of how do you say that compounded that the problem added on to the to the to the underlying problems of of survival I guess what kind of foods did they pick from the land eh I remember we used to go when I was living in Montana we used to go pick wild turnips we used to drive around a little hills and a little spade and say stop here and I knew how to pick them back then and there was different kind of berries there was dried meat there was dried fish smoked fish like that there was a lot of wild meat and very little and all of a sudden we discovered just like in that movie dances with wolves on that the guy tasted sugar how his face went we were all looking like that all of a sudden and we didn't see what was coming behind don't now look at us today and we really pay for it had we known then had we had influence had we had some kind of support to say this could cause you problems but who was going to tell us that you know until we learned the hard way so I think now the thing is to advocate for a healthy lifestyle I think we have healthcare professionals from Aboriginal communities that are trying to help us to get things back on track and some of which we can't undo but we can prevent the other ones coming behind from like yeah you know so in my travels I try to tell people that I how I got became diabetic when I changed my lifestyle and let the addiction to alcoholism go I started picking out Big Macs and lots lots of sugar and lots of Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola and two packs of cigarettes a day for a while there and I was 260 something pounds and I could barely breathe tie my shoe laces and I didn't realize I in the back of my mind there was a little yellow flag going but I thought nah and what happened to me and then I was sun dancing one year and I I stayed tied to the tree for a couple of days and I thought I was dying out there it was maybe a hundred and six hundred eight degrees I thought was the heat but it was something else inside because I was craving and this guy came and checked on me and he said how are you doing and I said I need a drink I need to drink his sun dance and no food no water and he said you're you pray then he left and he was coming in the house and I see that little styrofoam cup oh good he's bringing me something to drink he brought a little tiny little bit of choke cherry juice just enough to cover that styrofoam cup the bottom and he gave me none and I took him and I just threw it back more and more like that and he said no you pray you pray so I made it through the sun dance and when when it was over those guys told me when you go back to Canada you should go check there may be other problems and reluctantly I went kind of half thinking you know like there's there is a problem and I went for tests and it was like a death sentence when they told me it said you're diabetic I had dreams about I death traditional traditional power dancer I had dreams about from my knees down I had artificial wounds with my outfit on it it was terrifying at the beginning because I couldn't understand how to cope with it yet and it was almost like the end of the world for me and other people have spoken to as well have told me when they found out discovered that told that they were diabetes that it was game over but you know what we have in place today helps us to to cope with those problems like that and a lot of it has stems from improper nutrition for me I was coping with something else and I was using not the best thing to cope rather than doing a better food selection and eating the right foods I was adding to the problem without realizing it until too little too late so I think all the information sessions that we have and we have I've seen pamphlets and stuff on on good food selections in different different health departments to give information out there that's very helpful in in helping us to make a selection but the thing about it looks good it smells good it tastes good so let's have some of this hard thing to break from because it's another addiction I think and it's a coping mechanism because there may be deep there's some issues within that are still on on dealt with and we need to find another way to cope with them rather than to and I think that's probably one of the reason why people relapse and go back running over using you know who said it is a relapse so as a leader you would have to deal with those kinds of issues from your own people what kind of traditional teachings would help a leader I think I think the sweatlog is starting to make a comeback there are great areas yet because we have underlying issues again that need to clear the way if we can take our time and do it thoroughly and carefully and honestly then it'll come stronger their creator will push a little bit more goodness but if we push too fast and grab something that we may not be ready for a for and for us yet then it kind of jumbled it up it take a little bit longer and we may have to go back and reload and start over again but I think because we're desperate for goodness in life we grasp at whatever sometimes we grasp at whatever comes first and we hang on to it we put a death grip on it because we've suffered for so long and that's all we've ever known and it's a first light of hope come like this it may be a little bit real yet we describe it and we hang on like a drowning person and it may not be quite in place yet so we have to go really slow and that's a hard thing to do because we've struggled we suffered people suffered for a long time and they went out and where's the doorway you know so I think that's on those are some of the things that maybe leadership could learn a little bit more about themselves and lead us out like that because when I worked in the treatment center one of the chiefs came to treatment to try to break trail for his people because they were reluctant to to look at themselves look at the addiction and he was trying so he role model for them he came to treatment and then they started to come there were a number of people leaders that came in like that which was a really good thing you know so I think our our I don't know how to motivate or to suggest to leadership that they're our leaders and we come to them to help us you know like that not so much to tell us because it's nice to know something and tell other people what to do but we also have to try to our our moxons have to be moving as their mouth moves I think sometimes so it makes a difference that what teachings will help leaders today in a in a community that I'm from we I think I'm guessing we have roughly 1200 members of our band and out of those 1200 maybe 10 can speak our language fluently if that so out of all those people the language has been lost and I think the language is in harmony with nature it's a connectedness from our spirit to our surroundings our environment in everyday life and I think if we can recover our language I think it would make a difference for me I couldn't speak my language for a long long time I'm not 100 flu that it but I know enough to understand and when I hear it it makes a spirit move the spirit the sense of identity becomes it starts to move again and then start to be to know to realize who I am and to be proud of that person it's not you know not bragging proud but just to be humbly aware of my relationship to the creator through the language like that so there's a connector there I think I just like that tobacco is connected like that I think the language and the and the culture ceremonies like that if we knew those it would kind of help to to turn things back in place that's what that's what I believe in it and I hope for it really because in my own personal life it's made a big big difference that I'm so happy with the things that are there are things to deal with you know but at least if I didn't know what I know about the culture the language like that the ceremonies then I think life would be still kind of gloomy for me so I'm assuming it's like that for all of us if we could kind of get ourselves going like that and I think sometimes I wonder if there's uh if there's differences amongst say our people if they have little personal you know little sharp edges there those those need to be kind of rounded also they're not so sharp so that you can start to get along a little bit more and the work to get on the same page and it used to be like that long ago when the old people I was in a community where uh the elder and the native worker were having we were having a talking circle and there was another elder that had been sober for a long long time and he was talking about uh you know we have a nice shiny office here he said and we sit here and some of our people that are struggling with an addiction will come close to this building and they'll turn and they'll walk right by they'll go past they won't come in for whatever their reasons as to we know that when we were drinking we had not very strong self-esteem and he said they'll come again and long ago we used to go visiting we never locked our doors we would go house to house and we would have tea and vatic and we would socialize we don't do that no more I might as well say it he said you and you and he pointed at the elder and the native worker you guys know that too like you guys sit in your office and say well they can come here they're afraid we should be going out the way we used to and visit them we don't have that no more what's the reason for that so that was quite an interesting lesson he was honest about what he felt you know and he didn't do it in a threatening way he was supportive like that so coming from a community member and I think a large part if our community members had more of a say and I think that that that lack of uh and it's starting to grow but however those people who are still a little bit timid or afraid to speak out there's a history to that that may not have to do with the presenting issue right now it may be coming from some place in their past where they've had struggles you know with courage spiritual courage like that and I think that's why if we could speak the language because I've been to hearings where the elder and the offenders speak the same language and they help the rest of the circle to understand the elder interprets where the people you know the other people like that so I'm pretty fine with this language thing I'm I want to learn more you know and other ceremonies as well the role of the women it's like uh more time more time that that's a very high interest for me because it involves sacredness and life uh and the ceremony like that the high honor of the ladies like that I don't know that we understand enough of that to have to to make it because people get embarrassed or uncomfortable when the issue comes up but when you really look at it closely there's so special I was in another hearing where a lady from another culture was sitting in a in a sharing circle like that and we were discussing the the moon time thing the sacredness of moon time and after break she said you know what for me where I grew up there was nothing but shame involved in moon time it was considered a bad thing and I thought that's unfortunate like there's another there's another perspective on something very special you know to life so I don't know if I'm going off track or not here so what I hear you saying is these ceremonies are important for leaders even for today the language the traditions and ceremonies yeah because you see we're all equal we have all of us have roles in life just like that pie I described a little bit earlier all the pie pieces of the pie are the same they're equal all the tobacco things that here are equal there they don't sit near they get out here who put you in here like that and they're all equal so in terms of leadership and when we talked about leadership long ago when people presented the pipe that didn't put that one elevate that one on a platform but if he accepted it he stayed equal to everybody and served everybody equally not to dominate manipulate or anything like that you know good leadership was very humble and honest so I think I think knowing those things will help to make it better we need more talking in circles like this or people socializing in order to bring it back down to grassroots level the way it used to be like that and I think there are bits and pieces from what I understand that are starting to be like that you know where people are starting to mix and mingle a little bit more yeah how do you say chief in dakota ithansha we charge to ithansha I'm not quite sure what ithansha means but it's a leadership figure it's a leadership figure yeah I'm not at least it's a leader did it change after treaty that term yeah I think it's still it's still it's still verbalized the same way but technically and spiritually it may have moved a little bit sideways because prior to election time it was clear it was clear it was spiritual and then after that there came a competition thing yet tried to happen and then what else followed power and everything else and amostiz in regards to maybe almighty dollar I don't know but it changed you know because I don't think our leadership was given a salary or anything back then I think they were helped everybody was helped somehow I don't think he had extra extra anything I don't think maybe he did because he used to say a ball of twine or box of shells or a suit of clothes if the young people could be taught this how do you think they should be taught I wonder sometimes if the if the caregivers and guardians could be taught as well so that when the child is taught wherever you be at a school or a sharing circle or whatever that when he when the student goes home the child goes home that the adults are there to compliment and add on to what he's learned in school because there's a I think there's a couple of generations that are still wounded and and I think the more that that we deal with our issues the stronger that relationship will grow these kind of roles they say but it kind of rolls back a little bit and ahead again you know to to mend the whole process of change I think that I think that we need adults because sometimes when adults are still struggling with different issues and the child is going to school to learn something he comes home and the support may not be there and because of ongoing struggles like that which is not saying people are bad on whether you're undeserving you just struggle to like you know that are still need to be challenged I guess how did the treaties do you think changed all of that with the Indian Act and how we changed the lives of people on reserves I think there was I think it like we said previously I think it really brought a limit to what people could do in terms of freedom like that's why I said we touched out the water onto the rocks that's what we're asking for that ability to for a free expression and not be so restricted into how we could live what we could say what we could do or not do and I think this thing about authority figures kind of snuck in there somehow because when we went to residential school like my mother I think was only allowed to go up to grade six in residential school there's a reason behind that as well that I've not heard expressed enough in different circles there was she was limited to grade six and she had to do something else people had to go into the workforce or be a farm work on a farm or something but they couldn't go beyond grade six and that has never been explained that I'm aware of why it was like that so there were the words that when we talk about limitations that there was a rule in place like that I believe that was not designed or even consulted with Aboriginal people as to why they could only go so far be educated so far and I wondered if the if the if this dropout rate or something is kind of like influenced by that experience somehow because the spirit is connected like this from one generation to the next and what it's like a mother who's expecting who's pregnant who's drinking alcohol or smoking drugs or feeding the baby good the baby benefits from the mother's experience and I think somehow the same happens from generation to generation in that we feel the ripple effects of what they experienced over there be it a good spiritual experience it was going good until there was a change in the whole thing that came with the with the signing of the treaties and that in itself was an experience because when people signed the treaties I don't know if it was explained clearly what was involved in that because you wonder if it's not one sided by people who are educated who have maybe a different agenda from the people that were believing and led to believe that it was going to be equal or even because after the treaties were signed came those restrictions to reservation and residential school and eventual incarceration and all those other things that were not discussed I don't think yeah consequences of our choices or like that which were very limited I think because if you're allowed to go to grade six grade school and that's it like where is that coming from why would it like that you know or if you can't go and visit your friends in the next community there those need to be unraveled I think address them how I so I don't know about this apology I think there's a lot of little loose ends sticking out all over like that I think and I'm not prejudiced or have anything against anybody it's just not clear with me it's right I know you know understand yeah it needs to be clarified some more I think if you could tell the young people who will be listening to this DVD if you could tell them how to use these traditions and leadership qualities and skills into the future what would you like to say to them I was I was looking at a little article and somebody shared with me a while back that there was a study done on Native American youth three groups of Native American youth in the terms of I think it was addictions and the group that did not so good were the group that were only in a contemporary world and the group that was a middle group was made of those that are only following the traditional way but the group that did the best were by cultural multicultural so that as much as we want to succeed and we educate ourselves I think we need to be grounded in our own traditional backgrounds one of my friends came with me to Sundance one time from the Kree people we were going to South Dakota for fasting and Sundance and he said before we leave on the way down we're going to stop I want to stop on my grandmother so we passed through his community and he went to visit his grandmother who gave him a lecture about grounded in our beliefs what creator gave us and she said you go with your two friends and you support him and you pray the way they pray over there but you'll never let go of what the creator give us our people as well so you have two now but I want a good lesson she shared with him you know and then he went to her for direction he just didn't bypass and said okay let's go he said I want I wish to see my grandmother on the way down so we stopped and she gave him the little talk she supported him she supported me by being biculture in her one way like that and she was very strong in her her beliefs you know then when we went to Sundance she came she came to support us and then when he finished his four-year here dad came and we they honored us we were dancing around his dad was in the middle dancing and shouting like he's doing that Sundance you're so proud of your son that is a neat experience I'll never forget those those are learning lessons in life no so I think you as much as we we want to advance to the contemporary world the other part of that is to stay grounded in our own world like that and I think it makes a more of a rounded person we have that much more to offer and to experience and to understand we're sensitive to the world in a wider scale I think you know because our natural identity is active in all of that so we can have the best of two worlds or how many worlds we wish to be involved and I think like that so it's I think that's a good thing for young people to learn to you know to and then who do we follow who is there to follow you know like who are our role models when I work for corrections and then sometimes when the young men leave they they say I don't know where to go to to find a sweat I don't know where to go for this I don't know who to follow like that so I believe it's like the other cross the board not just the guys that are incarcerated I think many there may be but hopefully there are people like I don't know a lot of people in terms of the cultural sense so there may be some good strong cultural people all over the place that I'm not aware of because my world is limited where I like that where but where I live I see some there's some good cultural support if needed I think and I me I go to the where my the cultural people like the the two people that look the Dakota guy because that's where my was given to us not to ignore and I go to all ceremonies but for my own growth I go to the Dakota people that give me lectures and kick my butt when they need to look at that we're just getting started there's so much there's so much to discuss like this you know and sometimes I wonder if you had a few people in that in that in a little circle like this yeah that they could more ideas could come out like this you know because we could feed off each other oh I remember something else too like that you know like that because in recovery we we asked people would you guys be interested if we had a video camera you know how rare the Dakota elders are David you're very rare you know what long ago go to university and the teacher after about 250 students in the room and I was so timid I just I was living in a halfway house yet and I was trying to sneak out of the room because I felt unworthy of being there and I didn't want to like any direction I tried to be in particular and all these people saw it in a bunch and I was walking and he would look and excuse me he said oh heck my university days are always really kick me out that's how I thought he called me over and he said I've been watching you for a while and there's something I'd like to share with you this is bracing myself for the worst he said you know when I was a younger guy I used to ride with bikers that's how I tried to make my statement in life and there was still incompleteness inside and I reviewed my life he said and I decided you know I'm going to go to school so I went back to school now I teach I make a much stronger statement and he said if you ever decide that you wanted to do something man you've got so much to offer here's a guy I don't even know I gotta go I gotta go and then that kind of followed me because I said what does he see like what is like doing what and the last time I went to black hills I was talking to my friend Charles pastores and there was a couple of our ladies sitting there and he was sitting on the couch and I was sitting here with a nightlifter and then he turned to me slowly and he said my friend why aren't you doing it I said doing what you know he said don't tell me you know what you're supposed to be doing and he told me in the code of day they know have something for you doing why are you not doing it and I started to cry and I said well I feel so mixed up inside yet because in my last episode of drunk I was I was trying to take another guy's life and I had a very hard time to overcome that I went to the Sundas tree number of times and I don't know if that's still a little shadow in my life you know I've been cleared that almost 30 years ago now and but still sometimes I'm wondering and I need to clear that up so that's why I try to keep in contact with those guys to help me encourage me rejuvenate me and tell me I'm okay and I sabotage some things sometimes you know but at the same time from the from the progress I made from the my last time I drank up to today just the end like this sitting like this the last time I sat like this was a police there and I had a number of cops on it easier I got that some place in my wallet to you so keep that because they say never forget where you came from


What can we do to instill some consistency in our farming practices that will help us predict our outcomes? And the the no-killing is just become a no-brainer. Dave Ollala from Butte County operates in a land of extremes where regenerating the soil is an essential part of his thinking. Yeah, and in these conditions, Dave says that no-till is a no-brainer. And we were curious about what got him to change to no-till. Yeah, expense, time, two big things. And at the same time, it was making sense, quit loosening soil and hold it. And so I bought into a lot of those ideas, but the system of soil health is so complex that you need a lot of parts and pieces, and none of them can stand alone. And so I bought a no-till drill, and I got a sprayer, but you need them, but that's not no-killing. There's all the other parts that go with it, and that's where it takes time to figure that out. Here it is again. It's a system. No-till isn't just about equipment. It truly is one of mindset. And changing one's mindset isn't just like flipping a switch. It takes time, and we get that. But Dave said it's a complex, yet simple system. How does one unpack that? I think the best way to do that is to get back to basics. We're going to visit with the ARS's Dr. Randy Anderson, who will walk us through his spiral of soil regeneration. See you soon.