Hello, good afternoon, everyone. My name is Angie Grove and I'm the executive director of the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum. Welcome to our monthly lecture. This is a free community program where we cover a variety of topics, all for your entertainment and education and we're very happy to have CCTV, also record these and then share them with an even broader audience and we also post these lectures to our YouTube channel, so you can watch it again if today is not enough. So I am going to introduce you to one of our board of directors who is then going to introduce today's lecture. So I'm going to introduce you to our secretary, actually, Doug Slebaugh, professor, Doug Slebaugh, and he is going to introduce our lecturer today, so please help me welcome Doug to the stage. Thank you for coming out on this beautiful afternoon. As Angie said, my name is Doug Slebaugh and before I retired, I was a professor of history at St. Michael's College for 32 years where I taught a variety of courses on US history and joined the board after I retired and become kind of immersed in all of our activities. Our speaker today is Dan O'Neill. I'm going to tell you a bit about his talk and his background, but I just wanted to mention that I first knew Dan a number of years ago when he taught adjunct courses for us at St. Michael's, a very popular course on the Middle East, in fact, and then later I got to work with him a bit when he was still the executive director here at the homestead. So first, let me just give his title and say a little bit about his topic today. The title is History May Be Over, but it is not complete, examining narratives and injustices in public history. Authors and historians typically interpret evidence to construct a narrative of history. Public historians design and condense narratives in a manner that is easily understood in a public-facing setting. Both narratives are highly dependent on the perspectives and biases of those groups. It is inevitable, it is inevitable that different historians will weigh different facts according to different criteria, and that multiple versions of events will emerge that are all true. What forces determine which narratives come to the forefront and which do not? Now let me tell you a little bit more about Dan. Dan O'Neill is originally from New Hampshire. He holds a bachelor's degree in history from Plymouth State University, a master's degree from the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and has done postgraduate work at the University of Vermont. He served in the United States Marine Corps and is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Dan was the director of the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum for 10 years, of which we are extremely grateful. And he has been involved in museum education for nearly 14 years altogether. He's worked on public history projects and designed exhibits in both New York and Vermont. And he's also published articles on public history, local history, and produced several short historical films for two historic sites in Vermont. Currently, Dan is working as an analyst for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. He lives in Essex Junction, Vermont, with his wife and two children. And he is a fan of Star Trek, music of all kinds, and is an avid historical reenactor. So please let us welcome Dan O'Neill. Hi, everybody. How are you doing? It's really great to be back here. This was kind of my home away from home. I started working here in 2009 and I only slept here twice, which I view as an accomplishment.  And glad that they asked me to come back every now and then. They didn't just say, hey, thank God he's gone. So, part of what I've learned over the past few years, what I've grown into is the power of stories. And stories, humans have evolved because of stories. Some of the earliest ways of transmitting our culture, our values, everything came through stories. When you think of, I'm going to ask for a show of hands, who's been camping here? Who's ever been camping?  Or how many people, let me try one that's a little more apropos, how many people have watched television here? Okay, so if you've sat around a glowing object and been told a story, it's no secret that a television occupies an important part of our home, it's almost like the campfire, where we sit around and stories get told. Well, this, it's no secret, it's no surprise, because that's how humans have evolved. The earliest form of us for millions of years ago, we would sit around fires and tell stories about something that happened or everything. So, a lot of our culture is transmitted through stories, and a lot of our values are transmitted through stories. And so, I really feel that as an historian, our job is to tell stories and elevate stories and understand stories. So, to begin with, one of the things about history, when I was going through graduate school, a lot of things that people would say to me is, well, what are you going to do with that? Why is it so important? Why is it so important that we study history? Why is it so important that we understand history? And everybody loves to invoke Orwell. And so, I try to, and they invoke Orwell for a number of reasons. Yes, that's a screen cap of the 1984 movie, which came out in 1984. And, but, one of the things that Orwell commented was that whoever controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past. So, in order to know where we're going, we have to know where we are. And in order to know where we are, we have to understand where we've been. We always look back to understand how we got to where we are now, and we try to think where we should go. And so, oftentimes, the stories about the past and who presents them to us are as much a function of power as they are of anything. And so, you're going to notice throughout this talk, I'm going to interweave certain stories that I've read or I've been exposed to that have had an impact on me on the way. So, to get to the next story, there's a book I read several years ago by one of my favorite authors. His name is Daniel Quinn. He passed away about two years ago. He wrote a book called Ishmael. And there is a, I do recommend people read it. It's a fascinating book. I'll get into it a little bit. But one of the things, one of the tools he used is a story is ultimately a journey.  And you need to carry some things with you that you're going to need along the way. Since we're going to be talking about how historians construct narratives, how public historians work, I felt like we needed to pack a bag because there are certain terms I'm going to use that you may not have been exposed to before. And so I just wanted to make sure everybody had everything they needed for this journey. So, first thing we're going to throw into the bag is, what's history? And it's one of those things like, how many people have actually sat down and wondered, what is history? What does it do? And history is the study of the past. It's an umbrella term that relates to past events. But it's also a collective memory. It's our collective memory as a society, and it's contextualized through interpreting several sources. So we have several different ways of looking at and constructing our history, and it's often formed into a narrative or a story. Another term that I'll mention a lot that I know very few people outside of academic history have heard is called historiography. And historiography is, how is history written? How do you write it? You know, how are you, what methods, philosophies, subjects, critiques, analyses are used? Because the events don't really change, but the historians do. And that's one of the things to always keep in mind is, what happened, happened. How we look at it is what changes. So events don't change, historians do. And so historians bring a perspective to their practice, to the way that they construct their narratives. And that is built of their lived life experiences, their background, their cultural background. Any number of things can have an impact on how that historian, their agenda, can all of that can have an impact on how that historian constructs their narrative. And then we have academic history. Academic history is exactly what you think it is. It's historical narratives produced and published by historians. It's a bit misleading because a historian doesn't necessarily have to be working at a university or in the academy to conduct academic history. However, though a large proportion are, it doesn't always require that a narrative be an intense philosophical study on a narrow subject. There are a lot of academic histories out there. I think a lot of people get put off by that, but there are a lot of academic histories that are incredibly accessible to anybody. Next one is public history. Public history, it's a very broad term, but it describes people who were trained in academic history but are working outside the academy. They work in places like museums, historic sites. They can work in archives. It is an incredibly evolving field, but their job is to sometimes take some of these ideas that are being discussed in the academy and make them accessible to the public at large. At historic sites and museums, this practice of taking that academic history and making it accessible is often referred to as interpretation. Physicianality, this is one that I use a lot, and positionality is the notion that your personal values, views, and location in time and space influence how you understand the world. When you look at any event or any phenomenon, it has an impact on how you view the world. If you pick a historic event, the way you perceive that historic event is different for every single person on this planet based on whatever their background might be. Sometimes this is your biases, and sometimes it may just be you have life experience. Let me give you an example. When I was teaching at St. Michael's one time, we were talking about the Iran hostage crisis. I shared an excerpt from a narrative from one of the hostage takers who was really baffled by the behavior of some of the diplomats that the hostage takers were holding hostage. And she was commenting that some of them would make these very odd misleading comments, like, oh, I heard this was happening, and something like that. And she's like, and I felt like I needed to correct them. Well, having been through training when I was in the military, I was like, oh, they're using their POW training. There's certain training where they say, well, you try to get information by saying, well, I heard this was happening, trying to get them to correct you. And I noticed that because I recognized the tactic. Another historian would be like, I don't know, there was just weird behavior going on. So it's like there are certain things that my background told me that's what I see going on here that another historian may have missed. And that's kind of what all this happens. Finally, just because we're talking stories, I'll give a accessible version. A story is a narrative, either true or fictitious, and prose or inverse, designed to interest, amuse, or instruct the hearer or reader, a tale. And then a, I want last one, a narrative. It's a spoken or written account of connected events or a story. So that's all I'm putting in the backpack. Let's move forward. So let me introduce myself. On this one. So to go back to Daniel Quinn, Quinn identified in his book Ishmael that humans live by enacting a story. We're all living within a story. We're all living within the human story. We're living within large stories. We're living within small stories. Big plots, subplots. And once you learn the cultural story that you are living in, you cannot help but see it everywhere you go. So the minute you accept like, okay, the minute I said my background having served in the Marine Corps taught me this, I began looking at these narratives. I'm like, did this happen elsewhere? Because now I'm seeing it everywhere. So the minute you accept a certain phenomenon or accept like, hey, my perspective is unique because of this lived experience, you'll see it everywhere around you. And this is an important thing to carry with you because those stories help you shape culture. With that in mind, some of the things that shape the way I look at history, I've already mentioned having served, but I also look at my background. I didn't come, so I look at how my own biography impacts how I look at stories. I didn't come, I grew up in rural New Hampshire. I didn't come from wealth, not at all. My grandparents came from, my parents were the first in their families to attend any schooling beyond high school. Please come in. My parents were the first in their families to attend anything resembling higher education. My grandparents came from immigrant families that grew up in Scots and industrial cities in New England. And the popular myth of the American immigrant family applied to us. So the myth is my ancestors who came here were day laborers. They later, the next generation became artisans and tradesmen. The next generation become professionals, which that's the popular myth of the immigrant dream here. And that story was drilled into my head from a very young age. I was taught, work hard, play the game, follow the rules, sacrifice, you're going to move forward because the system will work for people who follow the rules. That was what was taught to me from a very young age. That was the story. And history, that history impacted how I made my choices, how I reacted to events. And then when I looked at events, I was like, I, when I looked at historic events, I saw the same thing. I'm like, well, hold on. Why did this person bucked the system? So that's why this event happened, or this person didn't follow the rules, or this person wasn't living that story right. And so that impacted how I viewed certain things. And this carries out at almost every societal level. It carries out in your age. It carries out in your socioeconomic background, your race, your gender, your ethnic identity, any kinds of different things will have an impact on how you view the world and how you view events. History works in the way I was taught that history is our collective property. So when I think of pivotal events in history, I, growing up, I thought those events are pivotal for everybody across the board. Everybody thinks of those events as pivotal. So July 4th, 1776, for me, as an American, it's a pivotal event. So of course, I grew up thinking, well, July 4th, 1776, I mean, that's important everywhere. You go to places like rural Afghanistan, they're like, why, what, why? Or you go to a certain place of the world, July 4th, 1776 was like, what, what happened? It never occurred to me that like, that's not important for that as well. And I grew up in a society that reinforced this belief, but reality would eventually appear because I needed, as an historian and as a speaker and as a thinker, I had to examine and say, why is that event so important to me and not important to someone else? Why does that event look different to me and someone else? And so one of the threads that I'm going to suggest from this with a lot of these discussions about injustice and things within history, a lot of times people are wondering, what is the next step? Now that I see this, what is the next step? And one of the things I'm going to suggest is being honest with yourself is the first step towards moving through these things. And so I've had to look at a lot of the narratives and accept that some of these were created with a specific purpose in mind. Some of these events had a purpose of either establishing or supporting power structures or subverting them and that those power structures benefit some and are oppressive to others. But I've also become interested in counter stories, stories that oppose those. And a really great example is that founded mathematics for the math, I know there's one math teacher in the room, but I don't know if there are any other mathematicians in the room, but this is lines of symmetry within a circle. If you think of the point right there, I'm loving this laser pointer, by the way, the point in the circle as a historic event, lines of symmetry within a circle describes the complexity because everybody looks at this event from a different point on the circle and it looks different to every single person based on where on the circle they are standing. So if you are a point on this looking at this event, you're going to have a different perspective, a different view based on your life experience, based on how you categorize yourself. And it's infinite because there are an infinite number of perspectives. Now is this dizzying in certain ways to think that there are an infinite number of ways to interpret a particular perspective? Yes, incredibly. But we also live on this planet and getting dizzy from time to time just is inevitable. So one of the first challenges to place out is this notion that history is property. So when we look at history as hours, and you say our history, I'll say, who's who is ours? How do you define our history? How do you define who owns this history? Is history property? Who does it pertain to? So historians typically start with a topic, then they go to or they ask a research question and they'll analyze how other historians have dealt with that question or similar questions. They'll then critique those approaches either by critiquing which sources were used, how they were used, how they were interpreted. They'll form a theoretical framework that informs their own approach, gather data. Data can take the form of things other historians have written, primary sources of people who are there, and they will construct a narrative. Now this process, it's not universal. Every historian has their method. And it does have its limits. In the past historians concerned themselves with trying to discover a grand universal narrative. That thing that we're finally going to find out what really happened. And I'd like to believe that at this point in our cultural evolution, we'll say, there is no one single story of what happened. There's no, we're never going to know what actually happened. The narrative is always changing and it's always dynamic. In the 20th century you had what they called the fractionalization of the subject where all of a sudden everyone's looking at how different subjects perceive history. And each one is equal and valid. So you have political history, you have military history, you have women's history, which is all part of it. And all of it adds to the collective understanding of these narratives. And in many ways, if you look at how a certain event has become primary, how did July 4th, 1776 become such a critical event here? Well, because the country we're currently living in, it was considered the founding event for the country we currently live in. And that's a reflection of power. That's a reflection of our current government is born from that event. So it has an impact on the present. And a lot of people within the country look at that event as pivotal. And that is how power is created. And a historian's bias plays a major role in deciding what events are important and how they're perceived. So let me jump into an example. How many people here have heard of reconstruction after the Civil War? Now, would somebody mind throwing out a few one-word blips as to, if I were to say, reconstruct post-Civil War reconstruction, what are some of the things that you come to mind for you? Ignored in traditional history classes. Ignored in traditional history classes. It's a messy time in history, yes. Anybody else have any other thoughts? Unfinished. Unfinished? Imposed by the winning north side on the losing south side. Imposed. That's a very popular narrative. Segregation. Segregation. So we look at a lot of results on certain things. And how many people thought corruption? How many people thought mismanagement? How many people thought disaster? And what's interesting about that is when were all of those narratives come out? When did reconstruction become a failure? When did it become known as that? Well, it was interesting. A historian by the name of Eric Foner, who I don't know if any of you have heard of him, but I took, he has a massive open online course on the Civil War and Reconstruction that's available for free on YouTube. It's basically his lectures and I took an entire summer. That was my COVID entertainment when I was mowing the lawn here, actually. But he actually studied reconstruction and he found that he actually put his own employer on blast for this. He said that there was a school of historians at Columbia that formed what was known as the Dunning School. And the Dunning School was highly supportive in the early 20th century of segregationist policies that were occurring throughout the country. And so they wrote, a lot of them wrote that the reconstruction period was characterized by governments run by carpetbaggers and scallowags who ruled the defeated south through corruption and mismanagement. Foner actually postulated that the Dunning School glorified the failure of reconstruction and the white elite who resisted it as an attempt to justify Jim Crow laws. If you take a different perspective, who's ever heard of W.E.B. Du Bois? One of the most famous historians of the 20th century, he wrote Black Reconstruction in 1935. It's, I think it just recently passed into the public domain so you can get it online. I do recommend reading it. It is amazing. I know sometimes books written in the 30s can be, the language is a little weird. This one is really incredible. He framed reconstruction as a period of increased Black agency where former slaves were able to work to improve their rights as workers, gain the vote, and improve social services within the community. And he set this against attempts by the planter class to regain power and property that they had enjoyed and monopolized before the war and that the planter class used the threats of violence which allowed a split along racial lines and an eventual overthrow of the reconstructionist government. So two different narratives of reconstruction. One that the reconstruction period was a time where working class whites and former enslaved people enjoyed unprecedented access to government, opportunity for equality, and then resistance by the planter class to basically push those groups against each other and hold them back down and regain power versus the Dunning School which supported the power infrastructure. So when you look at both of those perspectives, now are both of those perspectives necessarily incorrect? The answer is no. They are supported by facts. However, the agenda and the bias and the experience of those historians has created two different versions of the same narrative. Everything that happened happened. So it's one of those things when you look at a particular interpretation, you have to ask yourself who wrote it, what agenda did they have, and how did that impact what is going on here? So the ability to construct a narrative and how it is constructed is a sign of power and privilege within a society. If a narrative is constructed with certain values and structures as a guide, those values can become institutionalized. So if enough people within a society or within an institution all subscribe to the same values, the same perspective, all of a sudden you have a standard turning point that will always keep coming out the same way. And that's a sign of institutional power. Narrative authors become an agent of either reinforcing or subverting that power. So the author of a historic narrative actually has unprecedented ability to construct a reality based on their own experience, positionality, biases, and agendas. And museums and historic sites, this is where the public historians come into it, have the ability to enter this arena not only in the textual analysis of objects but also the optics in which they're displayed. So what does that mean? Well, a museum and a museum curator and having been in that position and having had to make those decisions myself, I'm painfully aware of it. Sometimes a museum administrator has to make choices. What objects am I going to put out to tell this story? What story does it tell? Why am I making this decision? Is it because this is all I have? Is it because these are the items that I think are the prettiest, the ones that I think people are most interested in? Why do I think this object tells this story better than others? And those are some of the decisions that historic sites have to make. In addition, this is the other part that museums and historic sites have to consider is how am I displaying these objects? I'll give you an interesting example. Has anybody ever been to Belgium? Okay. In Belgium, if you go to the Royal Museum of Central Africa, and they display a lot of the objects that Belgian colonists brought back after colonizing Africa. If you're interested in reading or colonizing Congo and other parts of Central Africa, if you there's a great book called King Leopold's Ghost and it's pretty horrifying when you read it, but they displayed artwork and objects representing the Belgian colonization of Congo. And what they actually do is they presented all of these objects in a sealed glass container that was locked up in the center of a museum in Belgium. Now, psychologically, how could that be problematic? Well, the fact that Belgium held Congo captive as a colonizer for quite a long time, the fact that their cultural objects were literally being held captive in a display case kind of reflected that. So it, now I'm not saying that museum, like there are probably a number of reasons why they decided they didn't want things being touched or anything like that, but it's still when you look at that and you consider that these were objects that were brought from Congo to Belgium and put on display there, and then locked in this a kind of, when you consider that, you're going to look at other objects and think the same thing. The methodology also has a key role in this. How museum educators and administrators construct one. So let me go to another example. Has anyone ever been to the Smithsonian, Air and Space Museum? I love it. Sorry, I'm a space nerd. I am a Trekkie, so I love that the first space shuttle was named Enterprise, and I'm still forever disappointed that it never got to fly in space, but I'll get through it. But the Air and Space Museum did a whole display on the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States during the Second World War, and how it was presented caused a firestorm of debate amongst the staff. How do you present this? How do we do it? Some of the things, do they show the plane, the Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima as a centerpiece? Do they do a narrative that talks about why the U.S. decided that dropping the bomb was the only what was needed? And there's a number of different methods. Historians are still interpreting how that looked. The curatorial staff wanted to know, do they talk about the impact of dropping the bomb on the Japanese population? Do they talk about atrocities committed during the war? Do they talk about morality issues? Do they talk about the bomb's role and just how it ended the war?  They were elevating one narrative and silencing another. Do you, because you can't tell every single narrative in a museum display. So you have to pick, make choices and make, you can have multiple stories, but you can't have all of them. And a lot of, in this case, the article that I read about this, the curators kind of decided to go a middle of the road option that would anger the least amount of people. Um, and, you know, and unfortunately there are several stories that get suppressed because of that. Um, an interesting example on this one, if we go to Arizona, so Holbrook, Navajo County, Arizona. A researcher was doing work on, um, on a small museum in this town in Arizona. It was tiny. It was in an old, it was actually, the museum building is in an old prison. And she was doing work on, it's, it, the town is very close to the Navajo Reservation. And this town was the center of the Pleasant Valley Wars. Um, if you actually get to studying the, the history of some of the rural areas of the West, you'll see a lot of these cattle wars between ranchers. If you've seen the movie Young Guns, the Lincoln County Wars, there's a lot of different things, but this was kind of, you had ranchers versus indigenous cattle. Livestock rights, water rights, and this particular research, researcher went to this museum to study a little bit more. And she noticed that in this museum, that native people were mostly found in the natural history section. All, a lot of the stories of the native, of native people seemed to disappear once you got into the history part. They talk, and it was almost this interesting erasure of it. She found that indigenous people or Latinx people were existed in a natural past, not as part of an evolving present. In fact, most of the modern history of people in the Latinx or indigenous community were found in art drawn on the walls of the prison cells that the museum was in, which is telling in and of itself. They actually, a lot of the displays put these, some of the art that indigenous or Latinx prisoners drew on the walls of their cells as the display, not realizing that they mostly then were portraying the indigenous and Latinx community as, from a criminal perspective, not from a cultural perspective. This researcher decided to go a little bit deeper, examine how the museum was founded. She found that mostly the descendants of Anglo ranchers founded this museum. They designed the governing structures. They declared which objects were significant. And the museum was clearly without deep pockets and a lack of funding led the staff to make decisions that would preserve current funding. And one particular interesting story that came from this, there was a sheriff who is well known in this community as being the quintessential frontier sheriff. He was a fighting man who protected horses and property from renegades. The museum contains story after story of the lawman skillfully shooting people who are attempting to steal cattle or horses. And that was part of this community's founding narrative. The researcher began reading account, other accounts though. This sheriff appears in a lot of different areas. In records found on the Navajo reservation, this sheriff appeared as somebody who frequently showed up on the reservation and murdered people. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, the US government agency, recorded him as an outlaw. And the BIA agent actually wrote in his notes, and these are preserved in the National Archives, that he feared being assassinated by the sheriff for trying to enforce or protect Navajo people's water and cattle rights. And honestly the BIA was ready to prepare charges and ultimate against the sheriff for this, for intimidation and murder, and decided not to because they feared that he and his posse would murder them. So all of a sudden a very interesting narrative, depending on the perspective comes out, where one person's hero becomes another person's outlaw and exists primarily. Are the facts wrong? No, neither narrative is wrong. It's not inaccurate, but when you consider perspective, all of a sudden you're like, well, it gets more and more complicated and the rabbit hole gets deeper and deeper. Let's go to another hot button topic and how museums have displayed it. A lot of, has anyone ever taken a tour of a former plantation? When you're touring a former plantation, oftentimes a lot of those tours would take you through the big house through the rooms, tell you about how the family who lived there lived. They might talk about the people who were enslaved there, but that's usually a separate tour that you do separately. It's not the main tour. And so a lot of places don't necessarily, they talk about, when they talk about the people that were enslaved on these plantations, they talk about them in relation to the family that owned the plantation. If you go to the Whitney Plantation in Louisiana, they do it very differently. In fact, the Whitney Plantation is, they don't even talk about the family that owned the plantation at all. They tell it exclusively from the perspective of the people that are enslaved there. Near the exit of the Whitney Plantation in Louisiana is a lagoon with it, actually a very gruesome exhibit. In 1811, there was a large uprising of enslaved people through Louisiana, which it grew as large as 500 people at one particular point, until it was crushed in a battle with the local militia. Many of the ringleaders disappeared, and dozens were executed, beheaded, and their heads mounted on poles. I'm not going to show a picture of it because it is gruesome and I didn't want to... And so the exhibit displays 63 ceramic heads mounted on steel poles, represented the people that were killed in the aftermath of the uprising. The exhibit caused locals to cringe and complain that it was too disturbing. The museum's founder has argued that that's the point. This is what happened, and it needs to be displayed. The Whitney Plantation focuses exclusively on the enslaved people, and when you go into the big house, you mostly learn about it from the perspective of the people who actually had to work to keep the house functioning. So you'll see the beautiful dining room, but they won't tell you about this is where the family sat to eat. They'll say this is where these people had to cook and prepare for them like this opulence was possible because of the extracted labor. And part of their goal is to force visitors to confront some of the reality of the brutality of the slavery system. Each visitor, when they arrive, is given a card with the face of a child on it. And visitors, while they're at the Whitney Plantation for the day, or however long they're there, they're actually encouraged to find the child on the card that they're handed when they get their admission, and read about that child's story and what happened to that child, how that child lived, how that life was lived, what happened. The names, the origins, and trades of the people are one of the key exhibits. If you actually look right down here, a lot of times they will actually, these are the names of all the people that were enslaved on the Whitney Plantation over the years. What their names were, as best can be known, what their trades were, where they came from, so that their lives and their stories can matter, and their lives and their stories are told. And it also has a genealogical component because it brings it to the present so that people are encouraged to see how this, despite slavery ending in this country 150 years ago, it is not necessarily a distant past but a present day reality. Now, the Whitney Plantation's approach is not without critique. A lot of the museum administrators used the WPA slave narratives that were recorded in the 1930s. They did not always account for the fact that there were some problematic concerns with how those narratives were put together because they mostly, when that was done, there's also a problem with labeling enslaved people as always being spatially subject to enslavers. However, Whitney has been examined as a neo-slave narrative site to promote certain counter narratives that make people confront ways in which slavery was part of the country's economic system, how it intersected with the country's economic system, and ways in which even states that didn't have slavery still benefited from the system. And in fact, if you study some of the early American economy, the cotton may have been grown in the south but it was woven into cloth in the north and then sold. And there may have been degrees of separation but cotton grown by enslaved people in the south was made into cloth in the north and then sold for a profit. The next museum that I'll cover is the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. It's in New York City. And they began a program called Share Journeys where they took a common experience of being a new immigrant. So one of the things that a lot of museums are done, so you'll have museums that say acknowledge the perspective from which they're looking at things. You have museums like the Whitney Plantation which tell people, examine the role for which you're viewing things. How do you view slavery in the United States? Confront that on your own. Now we come to the Tenement Museum. They have a unique thing where everybody is working together to construct a narrative. Almost every single American has a story of, with the exception of Indigenous people, all of us came from somewhere else. So all of us have an immigration story that has intersected with our own story. And so at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, they actually encourage visitors to the museum to share their own personal family stories with regards to immigration and how it impacts certain things. For example, museum guests do not just hear a story about how an Italian family struggled to survive the Great Depression. They hear this Italian family arrived and they were undocumented for a time. They had to work odd jobs. How, even after gaining legal residency, the wife had to get a job off the record so as not to lose government aid. How the husband and wife never learned to speak English despite living in the United States for decades. And then patrons are asked, how does this connect with anything you have in your own personal family history? And some of your ancestors that came here. And I looked at that and I said, wow, one of my ancestors was known as a Bridget, which was one of an Irish domestic worker. Or I've heard some of the stories of immigrants being drafted to fight in the Civil War as soon as they got off the boat. I found out one of my ancestors was very that, got off the boat and arrived in Providence, Rhode Island and immediately was put into a blue uniform and sent to Virginia. And so people are, and when they're looking at these historic narratives, they're encouraged, does any of this sound familiar to your own story? And when you have a locale such as New York City that is so diverse, you actually find that while the stories can be drastically different, they're incredibly common. You could have someone who is a descendant of the Mayflower arribies, and I know we have at least one in the room, to someone whose parents had recently come here. And you will find intersections and you will find ways in which those narratives are common. And it increases empathy, but it also forces people, if they're willing to do it, to see things from another perspective. And so when confronted with a narrative that was contrary, what this museum found is, sometimes when people were confronted with a narrative that was contrary to their own view, there were a lot of different reactions to it. Sometimes they went silent, they just didn't say anything. Sometimes they became openly argumentative. And so museum interpreters had to open a space where the subjective view of the guests could exist on equal footing with their own. So this was an exercise not only in the museum administrators elevating other stories, but they had to let go of power over their interpretive power a little bit and allow those visitors to contribute their own ideas and contribute to the narrative. Speaking of, and when I read this at the time, as a museum administrator, I was like, oh, God, no. I was like, I'm sorry, that's terrifying, especially leading tours of Ethan Allen Homestead.  Who knows what will happen? But in a certain point, a lot of people arrive at a historic museum with a romanticized notion of the past as this insular thing that happened a long time ago that no longer matters to the present. And part of what public historians have to do through the stories is encourage people to make connections within that history to themselves and see how that history connects to their present. And so now the big question is, now we've pointed this out. Now I've got you all, every time you go to a historic site, you're going to ask yourself, okay, why are they doing this? What narrative are they elevating? What power structures are they supporting? What power structures are they subverting? You're going to ask yourself these questions. And the big question is, now what? I'll begin with this. History is complex, confusing, inspiring, depressing, heroic, and horrifying all at once. Why? Because humans are complex, confusing, inspiring, depressing, heroic, and horrifying all at once. And so when we're teaching history, it has to be equally complex and understand that you're not going to just get what happened from a single exhibit. And what is even more daunting is the concerns that presenting traumatic histories to the untraumatized can present. And what it can happen, what can happen when people are confronted with complicity. What I say to all of you is our next step is critical self-reflection is what you have to walk into history with and what you walk into a historic site is. Be honest with yourself. If you're hearing a historic narrative, and you're like, that narrative resonates with me. I like that narrative. I agree with it. Or you hear, I disagree with that narrative. Take a second and ask yourself, why do I agree or disagree with that? What is it that is leading me to agree and disagree with that? Because the minute you recognize that it's your own experience and your own bias that's coloring your interpretation, you understand more about your own perspective. And it allows you to recognize where your own perspective is influencing your interpretation of another person's. And it allows us to look at these events more fully in a more complex manner. And also keep in mind, no matter your race, your ethnicity, your identity, your gender identity, your socioeconomic background, all Americans especially, and I'm focusing this on Americans, carry historical baggage. We are all carrying the baggage of the legacies of colonialism, slavery, economic, depression, immigration in a lot of different ways. And this is a difficult knowledge for all of us to face. And so part of being honest with ourselves, as the way our own identities are intersecting with historic events and certain narratives, is a key way to understanding where other people are coming from and moving forward together in an equitable manner. For historic sites and museums, it's important for historic sites and museums to not just do what one of the previous mentioned examples do, which is try to pick the narrative that angers the least amount of people. And I'm not saying necessarily pick the narrative that angers the most amount of people. What I'm saying is historic sites and public history have to elevate stories and make sure that people have access to stories and that people are armed with the tools to look at stories and understand them. And people and the important thing I also feel is if you are seek out stories that make you uncomfortable, try to understand them. If you're reading a historic narrative and you're like, this kind of makes me feel uncomfortable, then try to understand it more instead of just snapping the book closed. Thank you. And I will take questions if people have them.  I'm just going to speak for the Homeset Museum here, which I've been involved about 18 years or so. I think we try to do what you suggested into the show Alternative Interpretations. For example, Deacon Allen, one of the former board members, Willis Ferrand Randall, is the one person who's written the latest biographer, Ethan, which we have in our gift shop. But we also have books by Nicholas Mahler and John Duffy, who wrote a book called Inventing Ethan Allen, which presents a very different interpretation of Ethan. We also have what called The Fuel Law, The Spagabons, written by David Bennett, who is an Englishman living in Ottawa. And will be the source of our hook club tomorrow night at seven. And we would invite anybody who would like to come. You don't have to have read the book ahead of time because you all have some knowledge of Ethan. But we would encourage you to come and join us as we talk about various interpretations of Ethan Allen. The only thing I will say and my great, I'm definitely purchased the books. And I'd also say to do a challenge, don't always think of another narrative as an alternative. Because if you say it's an alternative, you assume that there's a mainstream. So try to see if you can put narratives where Bennett's narrative goes right alongside Randall's narrative. Look at each one and be like, wow, I'm getting a very rich perspective of these people. And that's one of the opportunities this organization is giving, which is wonderful. Yes, sir. I absolutely agree that it's important to incorporate divergent perspectives into our understanding of history. Now, I'm wondering what do you say to those who would argue that in the process of doing that over the last several decades, we've actually lost a kind of shared sense of the meaning of the country, why it was important. And it's obvious that maybe this older understanding was romanticized. It was false in certain respects. But it was a way for people to experience a sense of a common purpose and the idea that America was founded on the basis of these great ideals. And to the extent that we start, in a sense, airing our dirty laundry, we leave people feeling, well, why be a patriot?  There's no point in trying to work together to make things as good as possible. It sort of makes it cynical about what America is and what it could be. Well, what I will say is ideals and values are things that we strive for, things that we live for. So a lot of that shared narrative was to, these are our values as a country. These are our ideals as a country, our collective ideals. We collectively mean to do better. We collectively, as a country, and one of the things I love about it, is as a society, we're constantly erasing and saying, okay, this didn't work, let's try again. And so I say values are one of those things that we strive for, we try to live up to, as much as we can. And when we look at and we're critical and we look at the different perspectives, what that actually does is, have we completely lived up to these ideals? No. This is an area where we have to recognize, be honest, and say, how can we do this better as a society? And I think that is one of the glues that holds our country together, is maybe we haven't always lived up to our ideals, but they're still our ideals, and we're going to keep working at it. And we're never going to give up. And I'm going to quote Star Trek because I never give a talk without quoting Star Trek. There's one where it says, we must always strive to be more than what we are, and it doesn't matter if we'll never actually reach the goal, the effort yields its own reward. And so that's what I would say to a lot of the people who say, are we losing that collective identity? I would say if we look at those and we say that collective narrative, if these are our values, if they were meant to bring the values and the ideals that we hope to live towards, I think being honest with ourselves in ways that we haven't lived up to it only support that value system, in my opinion. Yes, please. So throughout this, you talked a lot about equity and feelings and inclusion and diversity. And those things are all nice. But what place does objectivity and facts have in these stories? Because or as some people suggest, reason, objectivity, evidence are themselves the product of Western power structures which have been attacked throughout this presentation, which was very enjoyable. And then where does that then leave us? Because especially for historians, because I look at something like the 1619 project which as a historian of that period was very bad history. But was part of this celebration of we need to do this. And you know what I mean? In terms of like, I'm all about talking about those things but it's like we need to incorporate all stories all the time and that's better when we have to look at like, okay, looking at these facts, should we rank these stories? Or you understand what I'm trying to say? Bring this back on. It's a good question and I'm going to repeat it back just to make sure I understood what you were asking. You're asking like, is there a place for objective facts that is divorced from necessarily interpretive interpretation? I think a lot of this is about incorporating different perspectives, right? And the kind of question is, is that yeah, a lot of people have different perspectives, but some of them are not as valid, especially when trying to understand things about the past because they do not have, you know, facts or evidence necessarily on their own or something. Okay, I got it. I think there are going, I mean, ultimately, idea, we're going to have, there are going to be some people who are more informed than others and certain perspectives that are going to be more informed. And you brought up like the 1619 project. So you have a fact that 1619, the reason it's called that is because that's when the first enslaved African people were brought to Virginia and sold at market. And is the perspective of a Spaniard in Mexico who had no idea that was going on necessarily valid? Maybe not, but and so if you're reading the perspective of a Spaniard living in 1619 Mexico of that event, I'd look at that and say, okay, that's interesting. What did he know? I'd evaluate where that came from. Whereas I'd be very interested in the perspective of a working class person who saw this happening because who saw this happening on a plantation being like, what is this all about? So there are some perspectives that are more informed than others and absolutely those should be considered with different weight. As far as facts go, one of the things I say, what happened happened. So it always, so 1619, it will always be like, it always happened on this date that that ad was placed for the first enslaved Africans to be sold in Virginia or July 4th, 1776, that's always going to be when it was executed. Now, is every perspective of that event necessarily going to be informed to explain why it was pivotal to certain people? No. And actually the lack of that is just as telling as the presence of it. So the fact that there are people in the world who are like, what happened on that day is just as telling as other bits. I hope I've answered your question. It's one of those things like, I could probably write 20 pages just on that question. It was a great question. So any other questions, thoughts, comments, concerns? Well, please, if you have any more, please definitely come and ask me privately or tell me why you hate what I said or anything like that. I personally don't mind in the least, that's part of it. I need to acknowledge my own bias because I'm like, hey, I love this stuff, not everybody loves that. But part of just the whole purpose of what I'm saying is be honest with yourself and if something speaks to you, ask yourself why. And if you disagree with something, ask yourself why and start there. Thank you, folks. Thank you, Dan, for your presentation and thank you, everyone, for your amazing questions. One of the things that really stuck with me from the presentation, Dan, as the director of the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum, I heard you mention another museum, small, lacking major funding. And that highly influenced some decisions that they made in their interpretation of, to reinforce the funders that they had committed to them. So on that, that's something that as the director of this small, not highly funded museum, I personally, that resonated with me. So speaking of those funders who have helped this program develop, want to highlight a couple of them. So we have, wrong way. Homelight? John, I got a clicker, I can do it. You can stop pressing. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. So Homelight has been one of the sponsors of this program. So we want to thank them for their sponsorship, as well as Vermont Humanities and AARP Vermont. So those are the three sponsors for this program. And we're always looking for more, if anyone knows if anyone. Okay. I also want to highlight a couple of events coming up for our museum. Tomorrow night, we do have a book club. It's a casual discussion about a book, and we serve tea and cookies, which are complementary. It's a free event. It'll be held here in the Tavern. And we do this quarterly. It's a new program this year. And this quarter's book is A Few Lawless Vagabonds, which was mentioned earlier by David Bennett. And it's about Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys, and basically argues they were not American patriots. So if you want to come for that debate, tomorrow night here at 7 p.m. And the next big date to note is October 31st. Also known as Halloween is our last day open to the public for general admission before we close for the winter. And during the winter, we'll still host private groups or field trips if anybody still wants to come during that time. But if you want to come just to see the regular show, October 31st is your last chance. We're open daily from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. through that time. And then next month on the third Sunday in October at 2 p.m., right here again, we're going to have our last monthly lecture of the year. And that is called Feeding the Homestead, Fanny's Garden. And that presentation will be delivered by our head gardener, Tom Sharply, who is actually right behind these doors. So if you have any questions about that presentation, he is at the front desk right now, I believe, and you can ask him. So if you're a gardening enthusiast or just want to learn about how people fed themselves in the 18th century, and Fanny Allen, who's Vermont's first native known botanist, and whose garden we are replicating if you want to learn a little about her next month on the third Sunday in November, is the time to come for that. So I'm going to leave it at that, but thank you again everyone for coming and thank you, Dan, for presenting. And I hope everyone has a nice afternoon. Thanks.


Hi, my name is Lee Deforth and I'm the city's comprehensive planner and I am excited to be able to share some great news with y'all today. The city's comprehensive plan Columbia Compass Envision 2036 was recently awarded a South Carolina American Planning Association award for the outstanding planning project of the year for innovative use of technology and so we are thrilled to receive an honorable mention in this category and we are just really excited to see what Columbia Compass and continue to bring to the city of Columbia and the region. Just to a quick review of some of the reasons we think that it's GAPA, South Carolina American Planning Association, for short, went ahead and gave us this award or felt we were recognizable in this category was we really tested a lot of new technology during the planning process. So, we were lucky to be able to work with the folks in the city's public media relations department to really expand our use of technology, even pre COVID I mean now all these video chats and that sort of thing seem a little bit more normal but when we kicked off the project in 2018. This was not part of our daily planning approach right I mean we this was 2018 2020 and we were pretty much done with the public meeting process by the time that came around so we developed videos early on that we could share in social media the city could share on their YouTube and we made sure that those videos were captioned and it is amazing the number of folks that really commented that that made made a difference whether it was because they were hearing impaired or because they just didn't want their, their phone or their network. Speaking of them loudly. And so that was great. We also were really excited to be able to work with the team of flocking rally and Kate Maloney, creative to develop some really good branding and a very interactive and functional website for the project We're pretty proud of it's it's pretty phenomenal. It's easy to use and and we're able to continually update the content on there and they also suggested that we work with MailChimp to do some e-newsletters so while you're checking out that website if you can feel free please sign up for our Columbia Compass e-newsletter we send those out probably monthly but that's been a really great way for us to help folks stay engaged whether it's on planning efforts that we're working on or that are related to the plan Whether it's implementation at this point so we've been announcing some things in the departments and in other community organizations have been working on. We've also been able to get the word out on other community planning events so or related to the central Midlands Council government recently was working on their long range transportation plan so that's something that we were able to share with folks that were surprised that you might miss kind of in the hub above all of the news otherwise And you know we've also found that we've really dug into social media these past couple years and that's been a great way to reach folks you know just with a snippet here and there to try and keep folks engaged and educated about the plan, the recommendations and how we're moving forward with implementation So if you haven't had a chance, please do follow us at Cola Compass on Facebook and Instagram and we're pushing information out there as well. But just you know we really enjoyed the opportunity to Kind of work outside the box we had interactive online surveys that were online but also available at public meetings with laptop kiosks for people to be able to take surveys where we had streaming videos with captions during public meetings. So folks didn't feel like if they missed the presentation they couldn't just we see it so we could really spend that time getting to know folks and getting to know their concerns. So, and our hopes for Columbia so I guess that's a little bit of a snapshot of what we've done over the past several years to make sure that we were utilizing the technology we had at our disposal and of course now we're using zoom we're using it for public meetings we're using it for Boarding Commission meetings so we expect that with planning efforts going forward that technology will continue to be a huge part of how we reach people and we're just excited to have been recognized for our efforts. Thank you.


We don't want just one new relationship. We want them in the plural, many, many new relationships. I am committed to regular meetings and open, honest and frank communication with all of you and your leadership and to ensuring that you have the capital that you need to have this financial tools to secure your community's economic future. We have made a good start on this journey together, I think, and I'm committed to continuing that journey with you, no matter how large those challenges may seem sometimes to be. How can we demonstrate that change for the better is truly possible? How can we work together to demonstrate the value of collaboration and honest and frank dialogue to a future generation of leaders? How can we be their role models so that when they take over, they do a better job than we have? Another generation of leaders is watching us today and in the future, and one day they will take on that mantle of leadership themselves. And I believe that among us, with the goodwill and with the commitment and the open hearts that we bring to the table, I believe that we will not, that we will not disappoint them. Thank you very, very much. I'm honored by your time today.


SCP-809 is a heavily stained and worn pair of leather boots, designated SCP-809-1 and SCP-809-2, for the left and right boot respectively. Forensic analysis of the boots confirms that the stains are composed of clay-rich soil and human blood. The design of SCP-809 is consistent with those of the boots worn by French infantry in the last years of World War I. SCP-809 was discovered by Foundation personnel in the attic of an abandoned building in France. Investigation confirms that the building was used as a field hospital from 1915 to 1917. SCP-809 is activated by a subject donning both boots and closing his or her eyes for 5-10 seconds. Upon activation, subjects experience a vision from the point of view of a French corporal in battle.


Thank you so much for joining us. My name is Meena Alaraby and I am delighted that I get to moderate this session. The power of narratives. This session is being webcast and of course it's on the record because I think all of us here on stage are used to being on the record. So there are no politicians in sight, so we'll be speaking on the record. For those who are online and want to join the conversation, the hashtag is hashtag WEF20. I was told by the organizers to mention that. So power of narratives. We all come here with a story. It's always interesting at the World Economic Forum when we come to these events that we all have our name badges. So you know my name, my title, and the country I'm supposedly from. Often it's linked to where we work and it's always interesting that we had to take off our badges and suddenly we have to create new narratives of who we are. Yes. There's... So I will introduce my great panel with their titles. Of course, first I have Professor Robert Schiller who's a Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University. Angelique Kichou is a musician and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. Yo-yo Ma, who very humbly just calls himself a cellist. That's what he is. And Ken Roth, a human rights watch executive director. So Yo-yo, I'd like to start with you. We were talking about the power of narratives and what is the currency of different narratives we have. And you put it into great perspective. You said that currency of politics is power. The currency of economics is wealth and the currency of culture is trust. And so when we're working on all of these three, how do we develop those narratives as individuals? But also, how do we communicate them as societies? What a short question. I think in everything that we do, that we can build upon, we actually need a number of fundamental values. And I think trust is essential in any community, in any discipline, in any framing of anything. And certainly, I can't perform on stage with another musician if we don't trust one another. Because otherwise, we're just automatons producing something without a connection. So that's one thing. And I think I'm actually thinking that because there's a lack of trust in so many, from people to institutions to governments, that I'm very concerned about how we rebuild a trust into a world that actually is inclusive. So in terms of a narrative, I feel we need a planetary narrative these days because of the internet. And so because we have access, we can't hide, we can't have too many secrets. And so if we're to build a narrative which actually every time I perform, it is a narrative. And so I'm always experimenting with narratives and how it works, how it speaks to somebody in one place or another. And all these things change. And it's an awareness of the other. And in culture, you actually can turn the other into us. And so that's for me a good way to start building trust. And trust is so important, as you said, across the board, but we have people questioning the trust in our financial systems. And the narrative we've had, and many people speak about us here attending the World Economic Forum and the trust in the capitalist system, there are questions about that narrative. So Professor, I wanted to come to you about economic narratives and how people buy into a system that dictates our day-to-day lives. How do you build that narrative, but also how do you restore trust once that narrative is tainted? Again, it's a big question. Coming after Yo-Yo Mahtar, I have a book called Narrative Economics. You can read my book. It's 400 pages. But I draw a parallel between music and literature and stories and music. There's a human universal anthropologist especially by what's true of all human cultures. They all have music and they all have stories. So I think we're in the same dimension here. You're talking about how to build narratives. That's the marketing department. I've become a... I have become a... I'm in the economics department, where I teach. But I become an advocate of their understanding of narrative. Advertising is about creating a narrative about some product. So in my book, I tend to describe narratives as successful narratives or not generally the creation of some committee. In fact, you look at novels. Can anyone name a novel that was written by a committee? A successful novel? There's something about human spark and human spirit that impels narratives. And I'm thinking that economic narratives are just as important. Economics is not in the habit. Most economists are not in the habit of talking about what narratives are going on right now. They tend to like to talk about what is the central bank doing and they quote statistics like interest rates and price earnings ratios. I don't mean to malign my own profession. I was president of the American Economic Association. I admire these people a lot. But I gave my talk, my presidential address, on narrative economics. Because I think that profession can improve itself if we start to think more clearly about the impact of narratives on our economic lives. Because essentially narratives is story and it's the act of how you tell that story. And so your rights in some ways when people read just numbers or statistics or there's a very rudimentary way of telling that story, it does feel detached from people's individual lives. So how do you bridge that and not through marketing? Well, I'm a social scientist and I have been talking more to researchers than to narrative builders. That's called the journalism department. So for talking to financial analysts and economists, I see them as beginning a new adventure in economic theory that is spawned by data that we now have on narrative. We now have digitized newspapers, magazines, books, business briefs, legal briefs, church sermons and even personal diaries. And you can search all of these now. It's amazing what you can search. And I think you can find that narratives change through time and they are sometimes changed by governments because people who find themselves as leaders in government are people who already appreciate narratives. They already have a skill and they listen to other people and they discover narratives that are contagious and they pile onto them. So I'm thinking that if you were asking how can we create a narrative of trust, for example? Well, it's hard to give a prescription. It's a creative thing. I'll just close with one example. A man named Parsson Weems, right around 1800, published a biography of George Washington. Have you heard of this man? George Washington. And he told a story about George Washington, which was, it's very brief. George was 12 years old and an impulse. He took his hatchet and chopped down a cherry tree. His father came up to him and said, did you chop down the cherry tree? And George Washington, at the age of about 12, said, father, I cannot tell a lie. I chopped down the cherry tree. Now, that's the end of the story. Now, that is not a particularly great story, is it? But it's been remembered over 200 years. I grew up with that story. And maybe it helped promote trust. It helped promote trust in George Washington. Yeah. Give me a pop, baby. That's it. So Angelique, I want to turn to you. Because I think it was very interesting what Professor Schiller said, of course, about journalism. Because we journalists do believe that we write the first draft of history. Sometimes you write it accurately and sometimes it's opposed by the victors in that history. So I wanted to come to you about that, the idea of who writes the historical narrative and through your work what you've been trying to do to change some of those narratives. While for my work what I try to do is to create bridges between cultures because I grew up in a household where every time I ask a question it's answer. Because my father said if you don't ask the question and you don't have an answer you don't know. But what is interesting to me in history is most of our history books and a lot of them have lies in them. Especially the history of the creation of the rich countries. When you have people working for you for 400 years and you don't pay them and that they use human being as a collateral to have credit in the bank and the banking system everything about the economy is based on the sweat and the blood of a category of human being and that story is not told correctly that the people having done wrong too are made responsible for what happened to them. I'm talking about slavery simply because slavery is they always say Africans sell Africans. It was a business proposal at the beginning. So if we want to blame somebody we have to blame everything we call business. Because if you come with a business proposal to me and then I want to do business with you if it turns bad who to blame both of us. Right. So that history have defined the artist that I am. My engagement in that social entrepreneurship my engagement in music how do I turn that narrative around to tell my own story.  The look that give is that what are you doing here what you have to offer. We already own you. We own you because we tell your story and there's no way we can get out of this narrative. Every time we try to talk about it you have a response I tell you it's been in the past it's too far away. We can't talk about it and we are we are in that kind of no man's land where we have no words. We have no history. We are not human being. We have been dehumanized and that dehumanization have profited people till today. So that history create economy. The economy started with slavery. The money making tons of money making without paying no one have created the wealth of the rich countries. So as an artist how do I maneuver in that history is by creating music by doing collaboration with people. And I was raised which is very ironic in my story is that I grew up with parents both my father and my mother were educated and they will never stop telling me a human being is not a matter of color.  So I grew up being color blind basically because every kind of human being were welcoming at my house. It was the open forum for everybody. And then I get out in the world and then the wall just go bang. Yes. The door is slam on your face. Your story. No one want to hear it. Who you are. No one want to know about it. What you have to offer color culturally. Nobody want to know about it. So I'm like you know what I'm going to force my way through because I have a voice. I have a story to tell and I'm ready to work with any artist in the world. I just go everywhere. I'm going to work with your mom. She even is was nice to me and said let's work together when we met. I was not like you. That's it. I'm going to hit you up. Wow. No. No. No. No. No. Get down. Get down a little bit. I'm your joy. I want to follow up on this because I think it's really interesting what you said about your parents when they said actually there's no excuse. And you know there's there's many conversations amongst women about this idea of do we talk about you know being a woman and therefore being pushed forward or actually no women have to earn it themselves. And so it's always an interesting conversation with women when you have that. And so I wanted to ask you how would you tell a younger audience today who are who are traveling with history that we carry with us but also want to look forward. What is your advice to young people who are dealing with these narratives and the changes narrative. Well I'll give them the advice that my maternal grandmother gave me. 12 years old I was coming back from school because I started singing at the age of six. Suddenly out of nowhere people I don't know starts throwing stone speeding at me calling me prostitute because if you sing when people are kicking you are marriable. You're not supposed to be going to school. Not at all being on stage singing. And I came home that day crying telling my grandmother I don't want to sing anymore. She cleaned me up. She sat me down. She said stop sobbing and tell me your story. So I told my grandmother what happened. And my grandmother said to me I have one advice for you. Whatever you do with it is your choice. In this house did anyone tell you not to sing. I said no. Isn't everybody in this house supporting what you do. I say yes.  People you don't know the opinion can't matter.  You're no longer a human being. You just like a leaf that the wind blow from left to right. Let them speak about you bad or good because the day we stop talking about you it means you're six feet under. That's what I have to say to the young. So some marketing departments will say any publicity is good publicity. Right. So so maybe so along. Oh yeah. I mean how many times I've been calling different kind of name. I say yes bring it. So can I can I want to turn to you because you know these are powerful stories that we're hearing. But today of course the digital world is changing how narratives are told. Now here we've seen conversations about deep fakes and there's concern about narratives being twisted and the speed with which a story or a piece of misinformation can take over. And so how when we think about narratives in this digital era do we do we deal with that. And do we maintain the beauty of individual stories that we're listening. Well see I we've always had narratives and traditionally there were relatively few ways to disseminate them broadly. And this gave a huge advantage to governments for example because the government always has an audience. They usually would work through traditional media of which they were a handful and only relatively elite access to them. That was a real privilege in society. And so most people didn't have much of a role in shaping the national narrative. They had to kind of go with a few options that were were disseminated in the traditional way. Now social media has changed that. And you know I know social media is stubble edged and I you know I recognize the problems here. It can be divisive. It can spread hate. It can spread disinformation. You know governments are learning how to disseminate you know bots to try to you know take control of it. But you know nonetheless social media has been a huge plus in my view because it has democratized the ability to tell narratives and to disseminate them. And so I mean I'll just give one example that you know people will be familiar with from the current times. Trump liked to justify his effort to have nasty portations by portraying any undocumented immigrant in the United States as basically you know a rapist a drug dealer or a murderer. And you know that sounds pretty bad.  And so that was what the national narrative was and the traditional media dutifully recorded that. We were able to push back through individual stories. My organization even I thought we actually put people on the border. And with just a video we would record their stories as to who they were. And you know who they were reflected the reality which is that two thirds of them had been in the United States for a decade or more. They all had U. S. citizens spouses and kids. They had jobs. They had mortgages. They were Americans in every way but legal papers. And that is very powerful because that does change the narrative. And it has two big advantages that I see. One is that you know stories are always stronger than abstractions. And and so the public you know by operating through individualized narratives has that ability to push back against the abstraction and to show you know you may be saying it's this way but you know here's the person and people remember the person much more than the abstraction. So you've got to get the right person the right story. But also the fact that anybody can do this. Now I don't pretend that anything goes viral but anybody can get the word out. You know you you staffed if you had a different narrative from the official story you could you know say it around the kitchen table you could say it around the campfire. You know a handful of people would learn today at least in principle you can get it out widely. And that you know has huge advantages first because it enables us to learn what's happening in places where the government actually doesn't want you to know what the narrative is. They want to just keep us in the dark. And it's really hard these days to keep anybody in the dark.  But the you know it also just it allows people around the world to explain what is happening with their lives. And in a way that we've just never had before. And I you know our access to information and to powerful stories about what events mean in individuals lives is so much greater today than it was a decade ago. So despite you know all the evils and I know them social media has been hugely democratizing in terms of enabling all of us to state our narrative and have some chance of getting into the public domain. Yeah I want you to pick up from there because because that is that opportunity and for that democratization of information. But also I mean today almost anybody who has any social media account is a publisher.  When it comes to the arts there is still very much you know a way of getting your music out or reaching to greater people. But you can also be a great artist and go viral on a YouTube channel. And so how do we understand where the arts are going where music is going and the narrative of music with all those changes with that democratization between somebody who's got a whole machine behind them and somebody who's in their bedroom with a camera. Well I think this is a very good question. I can just very truthfully say that since 1998 I would not have been able to do any of the things I've done since that time without using the Internet. The Silk Road project was founded in 1998. None of going to Central Asia going to Aleppo in 2001 nothing would have been possible going to be and and getting Mongolian musicians out with with what you know with. And so that's one thing and the tour that I'm doing right now. The Bach project I'm going and playing music on six continents as a listening tour to find out what local populations are thinking and what they're what what they're concerned about and what they're proud of. And to Ken's point I think I think I agree with you and I hesitate to say this but because this may sound really awful and controversial but you know the NRA thing that says guns don't kill it's people that kill. Well I could apply that to you know social media internet. It's another trust issue. It's people that do the fake news. It's not the Internet that it enables it. We have developed such strengths in tools and that we can actually go either way because that's in our nature and that's what I worry about is how we educate ourselves with a sense of you know right and wrong gray areas trusting telling the truth and and really having a way of looking at our whole planet and asking the question who are we and how do we fit in the world. Because if everybody asked that we then actually start to get closer to looking at what the world looks like from many different points of view. So I think that's a beautiful sentiment but then politics and interests and harsh realities come into it. If we say we have I mean again if we talk about sustainability for example which has been such an important theme this year here at the World Economic Forum we are it's one planet there is no you know plan B this is it we have to take care of it. But then the way we're organized whether it's nation states or communities or companies there are interests and often it's hard to get that win-win scenario to be agreed upon by the actors. So how do we how do we bridge that between that narrative of I must win I must succeed I must be competitive and between yeah we want to create a win-win situation. Well you bring me to the most difficult part of my study of narrative. How do we we're actually at a point of relatively low trust. You seem to be positive about the internet creating allowing to create trust but it hasn't worked out that way so much and one thing is that we have many different voices on the internet many people or maybe most people listen to the ones that they favor yeah and and they can create an illusion that everybody agrees with me. So that is a fundamental problem that I agree with Ken though that the internet is wonderful for what it allows in fact checking. The problem is that many people don't do fact checking. They will but only in a limited domain. I think look we've the internet forces us all to become our own editors you know it used to be that you could you know trust to some degree the newspaper editor the TV show editor and there were problems there as well you know there's Fox News they have editors there too but they spew this newspaper editor is okay what about but I think the point you raise very important because that ability to get different sources. Yes so another we you know for better or worse relied on people to give us what was this you know this traditional portrayal of the truth. Now we're getting it without that intermediary. So we do have to educate ourselves as you know and pick and choose you know what sounds plausible and what doesn't. There is this sort of echo chamber effect although you know I mean I've seen studies that suggests that the Internet is actually less of an echo chamber than people's ordinary lives because your ordinary lives you tend to surround yourself with you know a relative handful of people who tend to similar views. The Internet is so easy to get different points of view so even if you know 75 percent of what you hear agrees with you you're going to bump into the other 25% and so that you know that forces a degree of critical viewing. But we do I think you know starting in grade school. We got to teach kids not to believe everything they see on the Internet and to be skeptical readers and but but there is you know that skill yes we have to learn it but it's within an environment that is much richer and has a much greater diversity of narratives than was the case you know less than a generation ago. Yeah but I have a different view about Internet. One thing that is really positive for me in Internet is as an artist Wikipedia is just one of the most powerful business cards you can have because what you put on Wikipedia is you have to what you put in there has to be accurate. You have to have a link of where the source of what you put in there. But apart from that Internet has been an abusive place for a lot of things. The right of artists single songwriter we don't have any right from the platform that use our music. YouTube all of those dog Spotify all of that is complicated. They pay the record company. The artists are the one that cut out of the the the the the the money. So if you are in your artist and you start today unless you have your own YouTube channel or whatever it is and you make money for another way if you are counting on your right as a writer you will not want to even get a penny. So that's one thing about Internet that is not good at all. And one thing also that is Internet and Internet is really scary for me is bullying people on Internet. Our children are subjected to it. You have predator on Internet and our government is not ready enough to put some safeguard in there to protect our children. Me I'm a mother. So for me all that is really my theory for me to think that. But if we go back I mean to the and these are all valid points but if we go back to the premise of this idea of the power of narratives because this idea is the narrative that the Internet allows you to do to be exposed to all these other things. But like you were saying it's a tool. And so the tool could also be used for bullying. So how do we take ownership. Could I make a point that maybe some of you might disagree with or might agree. But I'd like to make the point that everything that we have all the ways of thinking that we have all artists that have created things what. Politics. Economics. We invented. So basically we invented systems that worked at a certain time. And we as evolutionary beings have to live with the things we invented at a certain time. And we're always rechecking whether those things are actually serving our interests. That's the service part of it. You do economics but you think about how it applies. How it actually benefits people. Yeah. Eventually. And you're an artist because you are thinking about a narrative that you want people to understand. You're serving the people whose voices are not exactly powerful. And you use the tools at your disposal to make their voices heard. And all of these things all of these acts we invent. And I want to maybe posit the idea that we should invent the structures that fit the reality of our world. I say yes. For example when we invaded Iraq. Let's do it. Right. What killed me. Was. You know it was all about. Winning. And. And I have to say I grew up with the I think in fourth grade we study ancient civilizations. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Do you remember that. Was there ever a mention of the Tigris and Euphrates. You know the cradle of civilization. The museum that was unguarded with all the treasures looted. I mean what. What was the big idea of invading a place and actually and not safeguarding the very treasures that. We have we have declared were world. Class. I mean that defies. Everything everything that I've been taught. So thank you. So as an Iraqi I appreciate you raising that. I was I had warned my audience that I will bring Iraq into the conversation at some point. And you brought it in because you know we have demonstrations at the moment in Iraq. Since October and six hundred people have died. Six hundred young. Some of our brightest stars have died and over twenty thousand people have been wounded because they're fighting to own their narrative.  And they're fighting back to reclaim their narrative and be able to tell their own story. And so I'll segue to you. Professor about that because in in your research in your study on this issue of narratives you know we have not only societies and political structures but even politicians you know it became very famous when George Bush went out and said mission accomplished the end of the Iraq war for example. And if a politician goes out says the mission is accomplished and then whatever comes it's not a problem. And the headlines have to take what this official says because we as journalists have to report what people in power say how do we deal with that as a society or if you're if you're on the receiving end how do you deal with the fact that you may disagree. But that's what an official has said and declared. How do you change that narrative. Again it's difficult. What you have to do is come up with a counter narrative. If you want to be heard it's not enough to be on a new show once you have to generate word of mouth and that people trust people that they meet direct. That's why advertisements often simulate word of mouth. You know when they're advertising a product on TV they show someone like like your next door neighbor. Yeah yeah do you know do you like this. But they're trying to create it's called word of mouth marketing. And the problem is it's it's it's an art. It's not something that I can quantify. It relies on experimenting. You try some different story and see if it if it's contagious or not. And if it is you amplify it. What can I say that there was just give two examples of counter narratives that that. So in in the 1980s not that many people outside of South Africa knew Mandela's name. Right. So I was in school when there was you know students were talking about divestiture of investments and so this is like in the mid 70s. But since the 80s the the number of musicians that actually you know Harry Bellafonte onwards that actually brought awareness of apartheid and Mandela's name absolutely out so that it actually became something not an anonymous person. And that was huge and further back during the Civil Rights Movement when there was again another narrative out there and a counter one. And and I can't tell you that the power of young people who were were meeting life for the first time and and saying why is this that this way. Right. You don't and you question it and then it actually takes hold the power of musicians and so many the journalists the writers people that and and it's not so when there's gross injustice at some point like in Iraq and now people come out and say the piece that was before the Internet. Yeah. And so and those are cultural shifts that I think takes people with tremendous courage and stubbornness and maybe you know maybe bullheadedness it to change a narrative and the Internet in this era if we're again today at the place where we need it to free Mandela Internet we have amplified the message to the point where it would take less time to mobilize for him to get out. So it takes us longer time because I arrived in France in the 80s and I start going to the concert being there because I heard about Nelson Mandela when I was 15 years old and because we were switching to the TV in Nigeria and I was hearing Winnie Mandela talking about Nelson Mandela until then till I turned 15 I knew nothing about what was going on and I was so enraged and when I get to Paris I say I want to be part of this march and I will go everywhere sometime I'll just leave my school and just go free Mandela free Mandela I've done that all the time when he get out of jail I sat and just take a big it's like a broaden have been lifted from my shoulder. Can I can I follow up on the idea of activism and and the narrative of we must we must all you know be behind this particular cause and and you're right because pre-internet you might hear it through some foreign media and then there's a protest march and we all and we all have memories I guess of those sorts of things. But now people are quite distant from it and you almost worry about the narrative becoming oh I'm part of the community that supports X or Y with a hashtag and doesn't take you to the next level of actually being part of a movement beyond the digital.  And so the populace their classic evasion is to say oh yeah I know the problem the problem is those immigrants you know the problem is those Muslims the problem is the gays I mean it's always you know some minority I'm scapegoat scapegoat them yes and then so like me I'll serve the people. And so that's that's a very common narrative you see this many many times over and the antidote to that is to try to at a much more personalized level show what's going on in society. And you know we're in the middle of doing this right now in Hungary where Victor Orban with his liberal democracy says you know I'm serving the people I'm getting rid of all these Muslims and immigrants with a Soros fellow who was a Soros fellow he's kicked out Central European University but he so you know the European Union has been subsidizing him on a per capita basis more than I think any other leader in the European Union and he takes this EU money and he builds football stadiums which he then you know hires his cronies his contractors and half the money disappears and you have a bunch of football stadiums where you don't really need them. Now so we're in order to counteract this view that he's serving the people. We're talking to ordinary Hungarians and saying what's life like under the door but and we've decided to focus on hospitals because when you talk to ordinary people part of their narrative is you go to a hospital and there is nothing there. There's no medicine. You've got to bring in your own food. You've got to bring in your own toothpaste. There's like nothing. So why does this government have all this money to spend on football stadiums when it can't even provide basic health care. And that's you know we're just trying to change the narrative by entering into the reality of people's lives. And it's just it's a matter of you know I feel that my job between rights watches to you know you first of all figure out what are the most important stories to tell. But then you let you know individuals who really have you know relatively little voice tell their story and we project it and we projected in writing but these days we project it visually and through social media as well. And that just you know it is so powerful and it just takes you a handful of stories for that to register as people will then walk away and say there's nothing in those hospitals. What is this serving the people. You know so. So but if we flip that also I mean country societies do also need narratives that pull people together. They can be used in a in a negative way or in the various way. But then you also need to do whether it's nation building whether it's getting people excited around an idea and I remember London during the Olympics everybody you know whenever there's a big national thing to get people together. So how how do governments also use that in a way in this era when there are so many other voices. Well right now there is concerned in the European Union that it has lost its narrative which has held it together. And I've been meeting people here who it comes up repeatedly that somehow it has gotten lost. And so I look back at at the history of of narratives in the European Union type narratives. And I find that talk of one Europe or United Europe goes in and out of favor. There was a lot of talk of it around 1960 when we became when they became the European economic community and also a lot of talk in the 1990s with Maastricht and with the European the Euro currency. So I can't explain part of it is the forgetting of the World War two narrative. That was a horrible tragedy and so the European Union was counterposed as a counter narrative to that. But as that began to fade the European Union narrative needed some support. The idea of issuing a common currency seemed to me it was a brilliant stroke to put a visual image onto the narrative of one Europe. Because in fact they did it with such care of everyone knows this. They decided to put monuments to European greatness. But the in the form of bridges bridging people who are otherwise disparate. But none of those bridges is real because if they made them real they would have to people would figure out what country that was and they don't put any picture of a human being on their currency because that would again highlight one company. So that was carefully constructed narrative and they put it in so that you have everyone would be carrying around those notes Euro notes. Unfortunately we're not carrying them around any so much as we did before. And I think we need a new narrative but it has European Union needs a new narrative. But it has to be one that is somehow contagious and it has to again you can't you can't just dictate this narrative. You can't have a committee writing that there has to be some recognition of what is exciting to people. At your point no no committee wrote a novel that caught on was anyone know of a committee written novel but I do know of a piece of music that was written called F.A.E. as in Frey Aber Eindsum Free but Alone written by I think Brahms Schumann Joachim and it's a sonata and each person wrote a movement and it's played and it's beautiful. But but I think film is actually a collaborative enterprise in there. That's a lot of but still it tends to come from a novel written by one person maybe but some some scripts were actually so different mediums actually can allow for things and for example you know the giant telescopes or CERN are in fact massive collaborations by countries all around the world and without their contribution it would not be made technologicals as as well as as monetary. So we've only got them. OK. It is the one thing I just want to your response to how do governments build narratives. I think the challenge in this kind of illiberal age is that it's easy to build an exclusionary narrative. It's hard to build an inclusive narrative. And so if you look at the narratives that governments like to develop they are you know the flag waving kind we have an external threat. You got a rally behind the troops. We got to protect the nation and those easily define the nation in sort of monochromatic terms and it's harder for those of us who want to promote a more inclusive national narrative because you know you tend to fall back in abstractions like respect or liberalism or you know things that are a bit you know harder to to feel in the heart. And so I think the challenge for us is to find personal ways to portray that narrative to show the kind of different form of community that can develop from a you know a society that does respect differences respects the individuals and doesn't try to put everybody into some national nationalist form. Ken I think you actually said the word inclusive narrative. I think that's in a way key to forming an each narrative these days because that's what is demanded is needed. And I believe strongly that if that narrative that comes out whether it's written by one person or by a lot of people it comes out includes the values of of trust truth and service as in government of the people by the people for the people. Right. I mean it's it's not a new invention. But if that is is in that narrative and inclusive includes the Gen Zs that they're going to be 34 percent of the world population and that will inherit trillions and trillions of dollars and who are consuming based on trust of the companies that they buy from and the truth of what is there that they seek and that want to give service but not to institutions that are far away because they may be untrustworthy. I think working with them generationally at this point will make a huge difference in accelerating the possibility of the narrative for a planet that may come to be. Thank you. So on that note we have to wrap up because we're out of time. I would say that you're right about inclusiveness about how we build our individual story and learn how to tell it but also the importance of knowing how that gets passed on and how people understand narratives. And Ken to your point you know Benedict Anderson's book imagines communities as my favorite books and in it this idea of the imagined community and as a print journalist I love the idea that we were an imagined community of everybody read the news same newspaper and now that's all evolving of course if you're part of a certain social network online and so forth. So I'm glad to be part of this imagined community of thought leaders. Thank you so much for making the time and thank you so much for joining us.