welcome very much a conversation a really distinct personal honor and privilege you're welcome to the bro graham dear friend of mine and a good deal of the world particularly the caring part of the world in particular and that's being up pamela timmons and pamela timmons is relatively new to the men at neighborhood network family of course everyone seems new to me having been there for so very long but people who are involved with vents upstate but i wonder if maybe we could get a whole hour ok maybe you could share with myself and with the audience your own personal background that would be like where you were born and raised i know having visited your house there that is the house that just as i would say screams of real artistry and an artist and so we're going to share your own background born and raised a little bit in the listening about the human condition and particularly we want to talk about this to roll one from in the events that are going on just as we talk now on the th of august two thousand and thirteen with your own background now all right well i'm a native new yorker born raised to new glad to meet them the shoreline of kingston point and they can use to test run you know and right now this very moment there on the hudson river says paddling toward new york  you know welcome to come down and meet the onondaga nation hand me on and i will get there but i mean back to your beginning i mean you are a really fine artist both big and that and your my mother was a painter and a writer right and so she was really my mentor i st yeah what a wonderful person to have as your mentor yeah yeah yeah yeah it was interesting i was yeah and sizes and i work i started abstractly ok then i built it up to something that's it can be very realistic or somewhere in between i can work for my imagination and i  also photograph you do and now you're getting involved i think it is relevant because you're a very so you're are very serious videographer yeah and it is an art form is it not how long have you along have you been picking up on the video yeah single reflects you like both black and white and color or yes or for i develop some black and white presence so that's a wonderful medium to yeah and what i'm really focus again on the past twelve ok that's natural and i love the idea of story telling ok and adding musical soundtracks and so now i add it and i produce ok going yeah you do you didn't i mean you didn't as they say when i realized that i could go on to the world wide web that was you know that was it i had to do it truly is amazing is that you know that these things are developed so and everything like that so is about a dozen years ago can you remember how you became involved with the videography is an art form or was there an event or a person who introduced you or something i know it was my own curiosity  interest in you know working with community events and stories so i actually started with public access in kingston yeah the library yeah you  rebore so that's the thing so you got involved in that and can you remember the st things you shot st camera you got did you fall in love with it or was it yeah yeah i shot the scene so the city right right right right right it's very good i think that you all young people should keep a diary or a sketch book i think it's a good idea this we didn't have you won a couple days ago a long time ago and back  asimov great science fiction he kept a diary all of his life and he was really happy to have it i think that's a good idea ok well then and then your are are i'm glad to see you finally got around to videography because that brings you into manhattan neighborhood network for you so for you have started in kingston and were you doing things storytelling were you doing things political or what what what what how did you wade in i was really you have read some of community event and there's sculptors that live you know and new york state that participate how they put this sculpture throughout the city of kingston oh really ok yeah yeah i scheduled he's the greatest as i understand it he's and i have to get in touch with him he's there he's the preeminent in the world petard grapher and then not only photographer of sculpture and all the many dimensions of different forms and everything but also being able to write pun vividly and the meaning of the sculpture that is being conveyed by the artist in a way the some of the artists are living say hit the in terms of recognizing the art form a sculpture yes ok yeah i love the three dimensional quality oh yeah scholar yeah and that it brings us into a new vision yes i touch with it so then you're involved with that and then you're also involved with social issues and so forth and you were at the big getting we wanted to talk about it because here we are in august early august of two thousand and thirteen and there are all these events going on that you're putting a focus on and we want to talk about that you had you had a place upstate so you you're able to be in the environment do you want to be interned in the autumn and so beautiful  experimental film called fire and ice ok and it's like a meditation on the frozen hudson river arrives and then i come inside to have wood burning stove yeah it's up on you to see a lot of my shorts were recall within ten minutes ok ok good i got it yeah and carefully edited with the sound and yeah yeah it's all visual yeah i see that the vision is like a universal language yeah and then you put over maybe you know a little bit into your interests you have a great interest in justice i know that and you're very interested in improving the human condition all of these very human oriented kind of orientations as part of your personality and your vision that i really feel like i want to help wake up the consciousness and that can be done through the arts and meditation yes indeed and takes us into  you know just horrible events with the climate yeah i think it's really important for humans and you at least take part of the day to meditate or to be involved with an ar that we can get beyond the monday yeah yeah everything is not any of our day to day lives now that can bring you over into what is called political concern in that but you don't need magic can be there have you ever been involved with wampum you brought it up and so forth so we wouldn't cut right to that and you're very concerned about trying to let people know about possibilities for improving their condition and the human condition by paying attention to their situation right and that's  share who they are and all that you know they're one of the nations in the air quite confederacy ok upstate new york yes they're sovereign nation above sarah kiss they actually got onto the tomorrow the night of august two thousand and thirteen right and that's amazing and they're bringing with them and they're bringing canoes there is coming down the hudson river that's quite a thing and this and if i'm not i wanted to reach out to people throughout the spectrum of society with this effort from direct young people to elders and are trying to make that trip down the hudson something that people throughout that range can participate in so that there's families coming to join us including with quite young children my ten year old son will be with us for part of the journey we've heard from a number of native people from this region and some from further afield who see this is a tremendous opportunity to teach their children and expose their children to their cultural soul the power of this journey we're working with the american indian community house the main native organization in new york city that has a youth group that's interested in connecting with us in the hudson valley there's a group called building bridges that will be joining us with a couple of robots with teenagers joining in and so we're really excited  at for this to be an opportunity for young people to really learn and also as i said earlier for elders also to feel very much a part of this even if they're not able to to take on the rigors of paddling day after day but to have them join us reality we realized that it was important that we stop all along the way all down the hudson river and meet with people in different communities as an opportunity to reach out to educate to invite people to join in this experience with us and join in this commitment to protecting the earth this commitment to justice so as we travel down the river there will be events small and large and communities all along the way and will be ending in new york city landing there on august th the u n says international day of the world's indigenous peoples and then after what we hope will be a powerful welcome from community and political leaders in new york city will journey across manhattan over to the united nations where we've been working with people in the u n permanent form one indigenous issues to bring these same issues to the international arena as a result of the work we've done over the past fifteen years working closely with the  staff every night to have most of our nights ago you have the guts to invite the public to educate the public to speak about the campaign and about the tree that continues for thirteen days before we eighty co sponsor were those ations large educational institutions like circus university churches and face communities environmental groups social justice organizations that are opening event in new york city was held at the national museum of the american indian where we had great support from their staff wanting to honor this treaty wanted to look at how they are portraying these issues within their museum structure and what their role is as part of the federal government in honoring these treaties so we hope to continue to build those alliances and collaboration's with people and organizations for and i don't know if jefferson was or not but the founding fathers were influenced yeah and it had to do with the organizational principles of the iroquois nation yes democracy that had them up and they learned lessons of democracy from the euro class or high and i remember that from the the rounding principles of discount we have meaning politically and otherwise a good deal of that was from that inspiration from the peoples that were here i think on the whole the people of the new world were just shabbily treated by the europeans if you look at all into account but and that's the larger issue how does a conquering people or a technologically advanced people encounter people who are lester how do we work inability to sustain ourselves as a capitalist system with a corporate rule corporate rule rather than the crowned heads of europe that used to rule over a one thousand years after rome yes now they had a new things that up and now it's the the ruling elite are the one percenters in the words of the latin language of the occupy movement which has resonance around the world and this  onondaga nation but there were other nations and so for than different treaties and it seems to me almost without exception they were all broken by the political system that was to evolve from the four hundred years to the present they of what our founding fathers wanted for us and this country i hear at your words are i'm not as intrigued by the oh ok yes and there was in lightman in europe they were learning from john locke in the enlightenment and that sort of thing but on the whole it just seems i don't want to get off on some over dictum or some for opinion my own but i think it was just some rich people rich m they had slaves and there are all kinds of institutions that don't have very much for a whole lot of the least advantage people advantage and it continues in that pattern you have i saw plutocratic class running things and they like that jolly well and i don't have that much faith in theirs stablish right of those friends was they all pledge allegiance to with almost religious fervor or and tactically it's good to bring them to court or bring them before the bar of universal justice or something as a tactic but the conditions that were really able to realize liberation of everybody which would be the absolute democratic promising in terms of being able to liberate people technologically advanced and so weren't just as the dangers are greater as we have weapon systems that could wipe out the entire species so that we ought to be getting some new york city and this is a time for us to really wake up and consider what is it that we're doing and draw inspiration from where we can and to i'm is one of the places that we can give respect to some of these traditional ideas that have risen institute over the ages right you know when i think that my ancestors left their homeland and they took a great journey they left everything behind to have a new way of life you know and this actually embodies that new way of life where we were living side by side not interfering with each other's culture but in a spirit of cooperation you talking i share of the two on yes living side populations of the americas were treated very shabbily by most all of the europeans on the whole it seems to me well that's true but it doesn't mean that we can't drown doing fathers you know are sure shantung benjamin franklin that's very interesting in itself so we honor you we had repaired the iroquois nation but it got somehow something got lost on the way to history because they had chattel slavery women couldn't vote there were all kinds of things that were very very very far from democracy but as modern as it was here in the air quite nation you know women did have a say in their government now but we didn't follow that as a nation united states of america we followed the thing of some rich white men who set up this is going to benefit themselves as always a white man had done throughout most all of history were the ones rome or kings of england or divine right of kings or political proud people who heard about the resources and the greed and the control in the mid to late came but doesn't mean that our consciousness can't go beyond that back to the consciousness of the indigenous people that are right yeah drugs yeah right absolutely right and and that that has reading into the bird present moment yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah good idea could draw we will chalo down the river of life together which is our hudson river right now right and this is taken edwards and he's holding the wall pump out and this is the unity riders org ok and there's all kinds of literature there yes and yeah and that will be up for a long time this is a year long campaign good and they'll be teachings and boy that's where you'd find a bit of media coverage right now good  this yeah and i thank you for bringing that together i had a great friend vernon bellecourt used to be part of the american indian nation doctored your way it was a friend of mine a lot of people have been fighting you know kind of thing well listen it's so so interesting we've got to validity of a lot of the institutions we've held with almost sacred beliefs and so forth that seem not to be adequate the future either requires or even allows the new liberated capability that our system seem to let us realize and so it needn't spiration one of the problems in tyrannies of life being older i can tell you one of the tyrannies of life is time there's only so much time we only have an hour i could talk  of the americas a common sense of history bonds us well oral tradition lived experiences we found knowledge and gathered wisdom build unity and purpose among us we are connected and responsible for something generations the following statement calls for the media to action as to just use leaders we will set the agenda that will move it forward we will do it now and you will monitor and measure its progress our collective minds and hearts here by declare the following a living document one past present and future exploitation of our culture customs traditions and environment are no longer acceptable to indigenous languages are in alienable words of passage they are  ironically enough our own territory is what initially people are a severely segregated by that american and canadian border and so on it's kind of ironic that we're here today discussing those of those of those sort of issues the blackfoot people that i met the jews we do have a voice in our communities and i think that it is very important to recognize that voice because on all the decisions that everyone here is making and not people on leaders in the community are making will fact us the traditional wisdom schools and so forth i guess we could draw from a lot of those substances because we really need a break from the indigenous people and i really thank you a lot heard this and so timely right yeah yeah it's good to i think that's appropriate they be there because that's where a lot of the shenanigans are going on it seems to me particular when they let them give sixteen trillion dollars to bail those people out that have not yet been able to come up with a system apparently it seems increasing numbers there are failures in terms of being able to come up with a system that can be relevant to the great promise benefits for the human society and overcoming the limitations of the context in which they've been operating and so they ought to be all drawing challenge of how we're going to organize things in a way that can avoid the worst possibilities of our capability and realized the possibilities of our collective capability which has a challenge of this time which had as the guys you know who say this is the defining generation this may be the maturity of the final generation in terms of realizing a major qualit if i'm being pamela thank you very much thanks for being so i will be coming back again tomorrow that's it for this particular program one more time pamela thank you for all the good work for such a very very very well in life thank you see you tomorrow we'll be