Wiser With Age

Tag: wiserwithage

  • Ponca tribe councilwoman explains activism at Standing Rock and why it’s not over

    Ponca tribe councilwoman explains activism at Standing Rock and why it’s not over


    A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.
    Casey Camp Horinek speaks inside of the United Nations COP21 Climate Negotiations during a WECAN International event (Photo: Emily Arasim/Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network)

    Casey Camp-Horinek has a gentle demeanor, with her long, salt and pepper-colored hair and lyrical voice. However, there is searing fire behind her caring, dark eyes.

    She was born into the Ponca Nation, a Native American tribe originally from the Nebraska/South Dakota area, and which is now scattered throughout the U.S. Camp-Horinek lives in north central Oklahoma, where approximately 800 reside.

    In addition to being a mother, grandmother, and councilwoman of the Ponca Nation, Camp-Horinek – who turns 69 next month – is an activist for all of us.

    Camp-Horinek was one of the thousands peacefully protesting at against the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock, North Dakota, last year. And last month, she came to New York City accompanying other indigenous women leaders from across the U.S., and around the world, for the conference, ‘Indigenous Women Protecting Earth, Rights and Communities’, presented by the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) to educate the public, as well as CEO’s and shareholders, about renewable energy, earth awareness, and indigenous issues.

    “Many of us believe in a seven generation philosophy,†explains the indigenous leader about why she does not give up fighting for justice. “We believe that our people, the past seven generations before, have prayed for us to live in a good way. It is our responsibility in the decisions that we make that we should care for seven generations to come.â€

    Camp-Horinek hails from a large family. She’s been married 48 years and has four adult children, and over a dozen grandchildren.

    “I feel very very fortunate that our family is very integrated in terms of being able to hang out with one another,†she says. “Our grandchildren visit us regularly. We travel, pray, eat and laugh together. Intergenerational life is part of indigenous life. What drives me to activism and environmentalism is a duty of a grandmother, woman, wife, and daughter to carry on the relationships of all living things and caring about what happens to the generations to come.â€

    Going to Standing Rock, last summer and autumn, was part of that duty.

    “It was a horrible, racist, militarized situation,†says Camp-Horinek. “We had more than a thousand arrested, made into less than human feelings.â€

    On October 27, 2016, she says 141 people, including herself, and her sons, were arrested while praying.

    “They wrote numbers with markers on our arms…I’m Standing Rock 138,†says Camp-Horinek, adding that she’s not washing off the ink until she goes to trial in July so she can show the judge. “They put us in these bear cages in a basement…[and] they had militarized tasers, mace and pepper spray in containers the size of fire extinguishers.â€

    She says growing up on the reservation, she and her people have become used to living with racism, but now she feels they also have to deal with environmental racism.

    She describes a Taiwainese business that’s producing carbon, as well as Oklahoma gas lines, fracking, and earthquakes happening as a result of it, as “an environmental genocide†on her people.

    “We are one of the cancer capitals of the world – children and elders are dying of cancer,†says Camp-Horinek. “There is a long process that brought us to this. The way the federal government has failed its responsibility to the indigenous people.â€

    Her grandfather was born in northern Nebraska, where the original Ponca people came from.

    “In Oklahoma, there are 39 recognized tribes,†says Camp-Horinek. “The other six are there from forced removal. We had no choice but to leave to ‘Indian territory’ – putting us in one general location – on reservations. My grandfather was eight at the time of the forced removal.â€

    “In one generation, we had to leave our hunting, growing organic food and fishing,†she continues. “One in three of us died in our Trail of Tears, and we had to depend on the government commodity foods.â€

    She says being forced to have white flour, white sugar, and dairy – all foods that were foreign to the bodies of her people, caused them to develop all sorts of ailments.

    “Now we have the highest diabetic rate on earth,†says Camp-Horinek.

    As a councilwoman, she’s one of seven trying to make an economic and cultural way forward for generations to come for her people.

    “One of the reasons I’m here today is to stop the expansion of the Keystone XL pipeline,†says Camp-Horinek. “Our kids are 56 percent more likely to develop leukemia, and we already have rampant cancers, and diabetes, and other illnesses. We need to empower our children and great great grandchildren.â€

    She says she would like them to have basic necessities like clean water to drink.

    “In my youth, I could not imagine buying a bottle of water,†she says. “There were natural springs. In our case, there was well water. Now that same well water is completely contaminated from fracking.â€

    What is one piece of advice you wish you could tell yourself when you were 20 with the wisdom you have now?

    “I believe that growth is a healthy, organic, happening, and it has to happen in the manner which your spirit guides you. [You can’t be] constantly looking for the positive growth to take place, that change has to happen in its own way.â€

  • Bronx poet uses storytelling to educate others about their history

    Bronx poet uses storytelling to educate others about their history


    A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.
    Bobby Gonzalez (Photo/George Malave)

    Bobby Gonzalez has had practically every job you could think of — from a medical records clerk in a hospital to customer service at a utility company. However, he says it was at age 40 that he discovered his life’s calling and passion – storytelling. His favorite topic is his Puerto Rican and Taino heritage, which in turn, challenges his listeners to get curious about their own roots.

    Ever since that moment of enlightenment, storytelling is what Gonzalez devotes his life to. At 65, he still resides in his native Bronx, NY, with his wife Maria, but sometimes he doesn’t even know where he’ll end up the next day giving a workshop or lecture. So far, he’s spoken in 42 states — in the past two weeks alone, he’s been at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and Davidson College in North Carolina speaking about the racial and cultural diversity of Latinos. Next week, he’ll host his monthly spoken word event in Queens, NY.

    “When people ask me, ‘What do you do?’ I say, I’m an educator through lectures and poetry,†says Gonzalez, who has also authored two books, “The Last Puerto Rican,†and “Taino Zen.”  “I don’t know what’s going to happen the next minute. Occasionally, I get a phone call asking me, ‘Can you do this?’ and I do it. I’m not afraid to fail.â€

    His second favorite job in life, he says, was working at his family’s bodega, which they owned for more than 30 years.

    “That’s where I really polished my speaking skills, and I heard a lot of great stories,†says Gonzalez, about the place which birthed his purpose. “It was quite an experience.â€

    He says his parents also played an important role.

    “We were very fortunate, my brothers and I, to have had two Puerto Rican parents who always made the point to tell us where we came from and instilled in us a great pride of who we were,†says Gonzalez. “That inspired me to embark on a lifetime of personal research. I got my information from books and oral traditions – here and in Puerto Rico. When I was a little boy, my parents would take me to Puerto Rico, and I would sit at the feet of my great grandfather. He would tell me the stories of the old days, and I would roll my eyes, but I wish I listened more carefully.â€

    Gonzalez can see clearly now that his ancestors grew up in a different world, and that gives him the incentive to tell their stories. One story in particular which has marked him is one of his mother’s arrival to New York from Puerto Rico via a train from Miami in the 1940’s.

    “She was very light-skinned, and when she got to Miami, the conductor told my dark-skinned grandmother to sit in another car,†recalls Gonzalez. “I have to remind young people they take a lot for granted – even the right to vote.â€

    Gonzalez remembers the exact date he began documenting his family roots by writing poetry.

    “It was February 9, 1964,†he says without hesitation. “The Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, and the day after, millions of kids around the world bought their own guitars and started to write their own music.â€

    Storytelling came very naturally to him, he further explains.

    “Every day, I would go to the library, get some books, and then go down my block and tell stories,†says Gonzalez, who still has the same almost involuntary instinct years later. “I spend a lot of time in the Manhattan and the Bronx libraries,†where he sometimes also hosts spoken word nights for teens.

    He says one of his biggest career challenges also took place in a library while he was telling stories of his ancestors, the Taino people, who are an indigenous people of the Caribbean.

    “Once I was speaking in a library in Queens, and a man told me, ‘There are no Tainos left. I don’t know why you’re doing this.’ At the end, he came up to me and said, ‘I’m proud to be a Taino.’ I was taught by my parents never to say ‘You are wrong.’ We were all raised differently, so it’s important to dialogue in a civilized manner. We are all one.â€

    Gonzalez says he used this parental wisdom when speaking at the University of Mississippi last year, as well.

    “We can’t have the same perspectives, and that’s okay, as long we listen to each other with respect,†he adds. “I meet students from Latin countries, and they don’t know about their indigenous heritage, and people who lived here their whole life don’t know American history. My favorite moment is always when people say, ‘I didn’t know that.’â€

    Education is primordial for Gonzalez, even though his father only finished 2nd grade and his mom, 6th grade. He admits he never finished his bachelor’s degree in marketing, but he believes through his natural curiosity, he has learned so much more by devouring books on his own. And now he loves to share that knowledge with kids as young as pre-k, all the way to seniors.

    “I don’t have the sense of fear,†says Gonzalez about what has helped him the most in life. “The times now are nothing compared to what my parents went through. Police brutality was a lot more common back then, there were no bilingual services, and immigrant groups lived in one neighborhood. My brothers, and I went to college. We didn’t finish, but we did it, because my parents sacrificed for us.â€

    What is the one piece of life advice he wishes he could tell his younger self today?

    “It gets better every day if you make the conscious effort to improve yourself passionately and persistently.â€Â