[train sounds] [water sounds] When we lived in Wampanoag time the day began when the sun's light reached the colorful clay cliffs at Aquinnah and Moshup peacefully smoked his pipe.

Now time is told from Greenwich, England.

If anything at all Greenwich Mean Time is where the night began.

[music and bird noises] We were here for 10,000 years [sounds of gathering sticks] The land formations here Cape Cod, Boston Harbor, the Charles River all of that were formed by the glaciers And when it receded, it left in its path a very fertile land.

[train sounds] I believe that the Moshup stories are stories about my ancestors being there to witness that glacier as it moved away.

[train sounds] [seagulls and Wampanoag singing] Moshup was a giant.

He looked over the little people us little people.

He would empty out his pipe.

And that's how Martha's Vineyard was formed.

[Wampanoag singing] [lighting the fire and background discussion] [crackling fire] 2020 was the 400th anniversary of the pilgrims invading our land.

In 1617 sailors brought yellow fever to our people.

Anywhere from 200,000 to 500,000 people died in about six weeks.

[fire sounds] This is my calendar.

13 moons.

[fire sounds] Here's the poem that goes with that.

Entering the lodge is returning to the womb of Mother Earth.

Rocks taken from a bed of coals.

This is the first round of many that must be endured before exiting the lodge rejuvenated and reborn.

[fire sounds and music] Dayra: Robert Peters reminded me of my Indigenous side and I always seem to forget that I have that side.

The colors are from the original blanket that my mother used for me, which was used to carry babies.

So you know how theres an an earth core the mantle, the outer layer and stuff like that?

Yeah.

Theres a person's core as well, which is the heart and my connection with the Mayans.

Guatemala.

[music] Actually, I call my mom by the native word.

And it's Nan.

Robert: There is knowledge in the language.

You think differently.

Native people who speak their own language tend to do better.

Young Native people that don't have any connection to their language, they seem more displaced.

One of the reasons that we were able to put it back together and start speaking it again was it was written in Bibles.

I used to operate the trains on the orange line.

[approaching train] I really considered me having to live in a world that was contrary to our worldview.

You know that we are part of the environment.

[subway station sounds] To have to exist and pay my way through a society that just pushes the environment away and doesn't really care about the environment at all [train departing] to me felt like an exile.

So that's why this painting is called exile.

Carolyn: Gio, are you there?

Gio: Yes.

Carolyn: Do you not want Carolyn: to be in the shot?

Gio: No.

Carolyn: Okay.

[music] Robert: This is the one Robert: for April.

As you contemplate the universe, the universe contemplates you.

You meditate.

You dissipate.

You drift with the wind.

You flow with the water.

You sink .

You soar.

You salivate.

Eyes closed you see.

Hands reaching, giving, taking, fixing, breaking, building .

To the mind's eye you see the world in all its parts.

In the shadow of greatness, the impoverished wait to rise up out of poverty.

The powerful wait for more power.

The air waits to become wind and the sea waits to boil over.

All the while the universe looks back unmoved by feeble attempts to achieve what no man is meant to do.

You are a pebble dropping in water.

You are ripples pushing outward.

You are a leaf falling.

You are back.

Back from a brief, wakened dream.

Everything is exactly the same but different.

Gio: Basically, I experienced it as a huge like thought process.

You have this person who is going through something right now.

They tried to bring themselves up.

Thats why they start breathing slowly and they're calming down.

But then you have someone dive in and start drowning in their feelings, like the water boiling over.

And you're soaring.

But you have to consider like other people, which is the part where it's mountains.

And then you have the city, the alleys, you have that war torn town.

And then you have people in poverty.

Thinking about all those issues can be overwhelming, which is why you just go.

Which is why, despite the fact that you are thinking through all of this, you just go back to where you started.

Which is also helped in my decision to make it loop back to that position where he's just on his knees again.

Because like with all the, with everything going on you feel like the world's ending.

[dramatic music] [music and crackling fire] [sink sounds] [jazz music from radio] [sounds of washing hair] James: So what have you James: been up to, Selma?

Selma: Um, doing zoom school.

James: Yeah.

Oh, how is it?

[insect and bird sounds] Carolyn Walden: My friendship with Jim is very long lasting.

In a lot of ways, we're buddies particularly interested in things about art.

He is literally one of the people closest to my heart, and Im actually quite grateful that Jim is still here with me.

[Cat meows.]

[Cat Meows.]

Is that a kitty cat?

Is that your kitty cat?

Yes.

[Laughter.]

Nothing you could do about it.

No way of telling him.

No.

You can't muffle them.

[Laughter.]

James: She flatters me and that's one reason why I love her because of that kind heart and honesty, which is, I think, rare out there.

Through the years, you get to meet lot of people, but very few really stick and mean something special to you.

I would think of her as a muse.

[music] Chenaya: I used to move out of school a lot.

I told myself not to get attached to like some people because it kinda hurts to be friends with someone and you have to leave them.

This animation means a lot to me because the animals represent me and my friends.

You will see like first there was like no animal in the middle of the ocean.

But as time goes by, youll see it became more lively, like the middle of the ocean.

Where there are a lot of animal that are free to swim and stuff like that.

And they were happy.

And also this animation is dedicated to James Coleman and Carolyn Waldens friendship.

[music] James: A lot of my art takes the form of using ephemera.

Theyre like stories that are still here.

Mass marketing, it didn't always exist.

And so to get people to buy a particular product they would give you a little trade card with it.

But underneath those postcards they were sending messages Blacks as dangerous or blacks as simpleton or blacks as thieves undeserving of whatever sort of things that society was offering.

That they were now free, but what use was it?

They were children.

So they need to be watched over.

I just started collecting them because people were starting to destroy them.

And you have to document the past because it's so easily forgotten.

So when you change the ethnicity, how much does it change?

Carolyn W: To have it pointed out in this kind of way defangs it takes away its poison.

You don't have to settle for what someone else has projected when they decide to make a likeness of you and that you actually can control the impact and the feeling about these things.

[scissors cutting] [jazz music from radio] Carolyn W: I'm a Bostonian, born and bred.

With the exception of about a year and a half when I lived in Brookline I lived within the city limits.

[city sounds] [birds and insect sounds] Ive lived through a lot of historical stuff in Boston.

[Historical Singing; “Freedom!

Jamaica Plain wants freedom!”] Everything from going to Freedom School.

[Singing: ”Jamaica Plain wants freedom!]

To doing peace marches and post office square.

I grew up in a time when people were leaving town and taking busses going south to help with voter registration, and so on and so forth.

And, you know, that was always tempting.

But part of my concern was, you know, take my stand in Boston.

[city and bird sounds] Ill take a few pictures.

My dreams and wishes when I was younger was to be a writer.

I got to work at WGBH.

[gospel singing] And from there I went on to have a varied career in public relations, in production.

I was the media spokesperson for what was then called the Boston Department of Health and Hospitals.

I got out of it a real education about what public health is and can be.

[city sounds] And certainly during this time of this pandemic, I am comforted, if you will, by what I know about how good systems work.

Carolyn SL: Marie Liza?

Marie Liza: I feel like when we Marie Liza: go back Marie Liza: in public things are not going to be the same.

[baby in background] People are not going to want to be close to anybody.

People are going to be more cautious.

Its not forever.

We'll find a way.

You know, closeness will return.

[nature sounds] Whether we can touch each other or not, you know, social distancing notwithstanding, We can be kind to each other.

We can be caring of each other.

And the isolation granted is so hard to bear for so many people.

But there are things you can do.

We have to be bold and do stay in touch with each other.

[insect and field noises] My first animation was inspired by James Coleman and Carolyn Walden [music] As I was watching I was thinking that, you know, you start with friendship, you start with support, and that you become part of the larger group of protest and that you're certainly not alone.

And that it takes the same kind of commitment for friendship to follow and be committed to ideology.

I thought it was great.

[music] Tim: I'm a man now Tim: I'm 80 years old Tim: right now.

I'm 80 years.

And I feel good.

My eyes is good.

My sight is good.

and I feel good.

I feel real good.

I feel real good.

When I tell people my age.

They don't believe it, but that is my age.

[bird and nature noises] Ive been working in this place 18 years now and its some of the most wonderful people you could ever work with this Boston Nature Center This place is like a family.

Each buddy look out for one another.

And this does remind me so much about home.

[music and bird noises] In Trinidad where I grew up is different to here entirely different to here.

Everything we had was self-sufficient.

We plant corn, rice, peas We didn't know nothing about fridge and all this other stuff.

You pick up fruit it come directly from the tree to you.

You get a fish it comes from the sea to the pot.

That's that.

That's how we grow in our country.

[music fades and a bird calls] Right now were standing here and we are standing by the sumac tree.

This is a plant that they bring to plant on the roadside for landslide.

But the plant it have so much nutrition.

You can make tea with it and you have a lot of vitamin vitamin C, it tastes like a lemony taste.

Very nice.

This is what we call stinging nettle.

It good for cancer.

It good for diabetes.

It good for high blood pressure.

Take this and you you boil it and you drink it.

But if you touch it, it will sting you.

[nature sounds] We built this building.

They ask me to stay on because I know they building inside outside.

It's self-sufficient.

Everything that happens in that building it comes from solar energy.

It comes from the water, the wells.

Geothermal they call it.

The water that comes from the well cool the building.

In the wintertime, we reverse it.

It heat the building.

Got plenty energy in this place that we could live on and clean and pure air that you will live longer than youre supposed to live.

[music] [insect noises] I just like justice.

I think all people should be treated kindly and treated fairly.

The Dorchester youre living in now is a different Dorchester then when I was first come into this community.

I joined this organization.

Theyre called A.C.O.R.N.

fighting for equal opportunity.

I dont really like to get into politics.

But when I see what was going on, it was really unjust.

It like the banks and all of these people.

Black people couldn't get a loan in the bank.

Like Fleet and all these people.

They are turning you down.

You go for a job, youre qualified.

Theyre telling you you are overqualified.

So we decided to fight that.

We filed a suit with Fleet.

Fleet had to pay back millions and millions of dollars to this community.

And I think one of the things we have to look at We all is human being.

If I cut myself and I cut you, whats the color of your blood?

Whats the color of my blood?

Is it different?

Living here you get up in the morning.

When you get up in the morning, you hear the birds singing.

You could get up in the night.

If the moons out, take a walk and enjoy nature to the fullest.

You enjoy nature to the fullest.

You arent breathing no pollution.

No nothing.

Its fresh air.

I think that is what having me living so long.

That is what having me living so long.

Carolyn Ingles: The more you live, Carolyn Ingles: the more you can create the more of yourself you put into more of the world that you see.

But if you do what you love I tell you, that's happiness.

That's really happiness.

[jazz music plays] [vocalist sings:] I fell in love with you [vocalist sings:] the first time I looked into [vocalist sings:] them there eyes.

[vocalist sings:] Youve got a certain little [vocalist sings:] way of flirting with [vocalist sings:] them there eyes.

Carolyn: My husband was a musician.

I envied him.

His art was so much a part of his identity [vocalist sings:] Fallen in a great [vocalist sings:] big way for you.

Carolyn: Money?

Eh!

It was okay.

Money was important, of course.

But it wasn't the be all and the end all.

Does anybody here in this group know that that's what they would like to do with their life?

Vlad: Right now its a Vlad: dream to be an artist.

Carolyn: It's inspiring.

[jazz music] If you are a musician.

There were a zillion and I mean a zillion clubs.

You could gig every night of the week.

And my husband did for many years.

It was affordable.

There were spaces to do your art in.

[improv jazz music] There were painters.

There were dancers.

There were musicians There were poets.

There were composers.

And the art scene photographers.

[improv jazz music] Any figure, any kind of creative spirit was allowed to prosper.

And I'm not just going to say “live” prosper.

[music] You know, it was it really was a great time.

And I maybe you guys will do it again.

Maybe you'll be involved in something like that.

[music] My mother was born in the Azores.

Because of the pandemic, there were food shortages.

And my mother and my uncle developed diseases, because they were malnourished.

So, they decided United States.

[portuguese music] I loved my family.

We had a we had a great time.

We partied.

We did everything, everything that you could want growing up.

I never thought that my family was dull.

Holidays were always in my house.

We had a we had a big, big, big feed for all the major holidays.

There was a lot of prosperity for the people that I grew up with.

[Portuguese music continues] Erin: And I just Erin: related to that because right now I think for some people or a lot of people, a lot of things are going wrong outside of in the outside world.

I personally find tranquility with my family.

[music] Carolyn: You captured Carolyn: the love Carolyn: in their faces.

all of the warm colors wrapping yourselves in love.

It explains your foundation and your security in life.

Just stunning.

I want to follow your art.

Okay?

We have to stay in touch.

[music] Alberto: The only place Alberto: that you Alberto: really know Alberto: well is the place where you have grown up as a child.

Your heart is going to be always there.

[Venezuelan music] My parents separated when I was a very small child.

But my brother and I stayed with my father.

And we were taken care of by a family who provided lunches for us.

And my father would pay for them.

And there were five children there.

Two as the same age as my brother and I.

We became very close friends.

And then that family became, in a way, my family.

Once I graduated from college and I started my married life and I lost track of them.

One day I decided to go to Facebook and start to look for them.

Only two are alive.

But now I recovered my friends, but more important, I recovered all those years that are very vivid in my mind.

And it's a treasure for me.

[Venezuelan music] Erin: The next one Erin: I did, because I kind of visualized the security in family, I thought I'd do another animation about how maybe some people don't have that sense of security in family and they can find that elsewhere in friends and other people.

So that's inspired by Alberto's story.

[music] Alberto: Erin, Alberto: you touched something that is central to my life.

The lack of a biological family for a while and then the need to connect to others and to create extended families or live with extended families.

At the same time, I thought while watching what you draw I thought even when we have our own family and biological family, we are loved and cared we still need extended family.

For me thats a central message in my life.

[historical orchestral music] Those who know Venezuela knows that oil is the most important resource in the Venezuelan economy.

It is, but now I would say it was.

[historical orchestral music] I never thought to migrate.

I had a wonderful life in Venezuela.

Wonderful friends Wonderful connections.

I had my own apartment.

I belonged to a club.

It was a very good life but without future.

So I discussed it with my children.

I said I grew up in a country that was growing, prospering, offering opportunities for everybody.

But you are going to be adults in a country that is not offering that for you.

[airplane sound] I identified Boston as an area where I could get a second degree.

[Venezuelan music] [airplane sound] Café con leche.

¿Cómo se dice ‘Café con leche?

Dayra: Coffee with milk.

[music] So I come from a country where 99% of the people is mixed race.

Nobody think that they are pure white or pure anything.

Within a family, we have many colors.

If you see my brother, he looks totally different from me.

If you see my children, they are different colors as well, because the mixture of races was very different than in this country.

[airplane sound] Coming into this society where everybody is very conscious about who looks different was a bit of a shock.

[city sounds] Anita: I'm from Anita: Nigeria, but Anita: I live Anita: in Dorchester.

I think that a lot of people move here to live better lives.

When he moved to Boston he saw the racial division in a way was similar to my experience.

Because when I came here, I started in the sixth grade.

And then I learned about racism, discrimination, colorism, which was like a lot of new things for me because I never really thought about your color having to be like a limitation to what you could do in America.

[driving sounds] Alberto: I got a masters Alberto: in counseling.

We worked with families who had children who were facing emotional behavioral psychological challenges and supported them not only from that perspective, but supported them from the perspective of any other social issues that could be challenging the family.

[street sounds] [birds and city] I worked for the only state senator in Massachusetts who was of color.

Bill Owens: “...so that it will not allow large corporations to control people.” Carolyn: I saw very clearly how different it was to be a person of color in Boston then because the standards for health care were just like that.

Okay.

And you know who was on the low end and you know who was on the high end.

The power that people held was concentrated and not not shared with the communities of color.

I never took I never took how I lived how I grew up anything that was about me for granted after that, because what I never thought about other people couldn't get to.

They couldn't even get to it.

get to it.

[city sounds] I would like to call here as our first guest speaker, Senator William Owens.

Bill.

who since the seventies has been a tireless advocate for better jobs and better educations for the people of Boston and who has developed close ties with the Haitian community [Haitian folk song] Bill Owens: Black Americans Bill Owens: have long understood the relevance of the Haitian revolution.

[music continues] And it was Frederick Douglass who said.

Haiti had forced equality across the color line.

[Soprano sings in Haitian Creole ] Vlad: This was Vlad: an animation Vlad: of my grandmother Vlad: making Soup Joumou [music swells] It's to celebrate the Haitian independence in 1804.

[music contines] I decided to make my grandmother making it because she's from Haiti.

She keeps us in our traditions.

So she usually makes it.

And then we all have it on January 1st.

[Haitian music continues] [music fades] [train sounds] Rose: My animation is a memory, a memory of a Sunday morning that's that's that isn't just a Sunday morning.

I wanted to create an animation of how I grew up.

[Haitian guitar music] I have always woke up on a Sunday morning really early to the smell of coffee, something that I've really gotten used to and then to the smell of fresh hair grease and moisturizer on my freshly done hair, to the feeling of my womanly dress.

[music continues] In describing my past as a child growing up in a home where my Haitian heritage is always being used and appreciated.

[music continues] I think this is the part that I really miss the most is this altar.

A black man who had purchased his freedom, he was worshiping in St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia he along with other slaves.

They were asked to not pray at the altar.

They gathered up their things and walked out of the church and became the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

[birds and city sounds] In my work as a physician and in my work as an ordained minister, I would say the biggest struggle that people have in life is to be seen because for so many of us, were just not.

I had decided I was going to medical school when I was a little girl.

I was seven or eight and I was a reader and found a book called How to Be a Doctor.

I didn't know anybody who had ever seen a black doctor, anybody had ever seen a female doctor.

But I nobody told me I couldn't, and I'm really grateful for that.

[music] I want to be a general surgeon or like a thoracic surgeon.

And I came to this point, because I saw a book too about the human body.

And I was just like fascinated by the stuff inside us.

And also in science class, when we when we dissected a frog, I just wanted to know, like what was human and what's inside.

The intellectual stimulation that you get from studying medicine is is wonderful.

[music] I want to become an OBGYN just like you said you were.

Im very fascinated by that field, so I'm really interested if I'm able to actually achieve that goal.

Its going to be like a dream come true if I actually become an OBGYN.

Gloria: Black women still have higher what we call morbidity and mortality.

We lose our babies and that we suffer more complications in pregnancy and can die in pregnancy.

We havent addressed that.

well.

My husband and I initially thought we would go over to Africa and work in Africa, but by the time we were in our training, it was very clear to us that there was significant needs here in terms of addressing what we now call health disparities here in the US.

[music] It wasn't just medicine, it was healing.

Whatever I did was not going to be constrained to a particular career, but it was going to be a way of life.

[music] Shortly after I started at the health center, I met this family and this boy, Sean was probably eight, nine or ten when I first met him.

[bus honking] Now we would have a diagnosis for him we'd say he had attention deficit but back then he was just a bad kid.

And his mother had lupus.

So she was not healthy.

And his father was was not around.

[city sounds] But his mother was a fierce advocate for him.

And it was very frustrating for her, the challenges of Boston Public Schools.

And it never really served his needs.

He was finally placed in a school in New Hampshire, and I didn't see him anymore.

[man singing in background] [”...sweet memories...”] But he came for a, quote, “routine physical” years later at the end of the day.

And it was just wonderful to see him.

And he updated me on where he'd been over the years.

Well his mother had died of the lupus.

[city sounds] That particular day was his 18th birthday and he said that that was the first birthday in four years that he spent when he wasn't in jail.

[street sounds] [quiet music fades in] So, he was going to come back on Monday to get blood work, but he didn't.

And the reason he didn't come back was because on Sunday he was riding his bike down Mass Avenue in the South End and he was shot and killed.

[somber music] And that was very sobering for me, and I was glad that one of his last interactions was with us.

[music continues] [music fades] [crackling fire] [flames ignite] [crackling fire] [music begins with humming] Gio: So, I decided Gio: to take a huge chain of oppressive matters that restrict people.

As each thing was introduced, the chain just dropping along with it, and also modern elements like the the factory, planes, and cars.

The huge amount of emissions.

And the oil pipelines.

[music builds] Bury me face down.

It's just like take all those old values and use them to change.

[music builds] Carolyn Walden: The problem with having been here all your life is you do remember and you dont forget easily the stuff you've been through.

I am on the other hand equally happy that Boston is my home.

Heavily flawed place but also a place of very beautiful people.

[music builds] [music builds] [approaching train] [music fades] [city sounds] [Haitian Folk Song]