Klee Benally: Full Interview
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ต.ค. 2024
- In his existence, Klee left many gifts. In 2022, we had the pleasure of recording this interview with him for the docuseries. Though we had hoped to consult Klee for his insight while we edited, we’re now tasked with the responsibility of applying his wisdom and teachings as we carry forward in this work.
This interview is just a glimpse into the curiosity, warmth, mischievousness, and groundedness that Klee embodied. In it, he shares his experience as a Diné Anarchist, his thoughts on mutual aid, and his encouragements to everyone “constantly trying to bang their heads and tear down fucking walls.”
Please enjoy this gift. We’re deeply honored to pass it on.
Klee lives!
Diné Bizaad translations by Jaiden Willeto (@bb.jaiden on Instagram)
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Yá'át'ééh abíní, dear Klee Benally. You traveled to ancestry, I know you are with us in many ways. Thank you, I owe you so much thanks, my gratitude cannot be matched to words. Your message here was demonstrated with such selflessness in your last days. You taught me more than you can know. I'll see you later. Teacher, friend, comrade. I'm crying today.. tears from a huge reservoir of love and respect. I'll carry you close forever ❤️🖤 😭🏴
I agree with absolutely everything this dear soul said. I am so grateful this ended up in my feed. Amongst the dumpster of disastrous wasteful "content" this jewel appears. I hope everyone who stumbles onto this watches, and really takes it in. 🙏 ✌️
I am grieving cause I knew him.
@@dianeprigge595 I am so sorry. He has moved me in such a short time and through a screen no less, I can't imagine how massive his loss must be to anyone who knew him personally. Wishing healing to your sore heart.
Merci beaucoup pour cette magnifique et enrichissante interview, soutiens de France. Très apaisante et bienveillance. Que votre chemin soit paix, amour, lumière ne rien lâcher. 👍🌠🌞🦋
Beautiful video "potrait" of Klee and the Truth he's always spoken. The filming was beautiful, especially the close up shots - made me cry looking at his socks of all things.... I miss him and I'm gutted but grateful to have known him.
grateful i was able to listen to Klee’s voice and wisdom shared 🤲🏽 thank you for your efforts and this powerful message.
Ì miss my dear friend
Strangely I understand his message I am a nobody on the internet but somehow even I was able to grasp what he is saying almost as if drawn to this specific video weird 🤔 as the video title says REST IN POWER Klee Benally I can only imagine how the conversation would have gone if we met thank you for your wisdom and advice this is going to sit in my brain for a long time!🥹😮🤔
Rest well comrade, may your ancestors receive you warmly and proudly.
I loved everything about this talk❤🏴
Safe journey Klee, fly high 🙏
Magnificent! Eternally grateful for this.
#FreeLeonardPeltier
"Historically speaking, we went from being Indians to pagans to savages to hostiles to militants to activists to Native Americans. Its five hundred years later and they still cant see us. We are still invisible.
We’re not Indians and we’re not Native Americans. We’re older than both concepts. We’re the people, we’re the human beings.
I'm just a human being trying to make it in a world that is very rapidly losing its understanding of being human.
We're all human beings and we all have feelings. And we all live in this industrial meat grinder where we don't really understand love anymore.
The great lie is that it is civilization. It's not civilized. It has been literally the most blood thirsty brutalizing system ever imposed upon this planet. That is not civilization. That's the great lie, is that it represents civilization.
Protect your spirit, because you are in the place where spirits get eaten. It’s like there is this predator energy on this planet, and this predator energy feeds on the essence of the spirit. I think we live in an industrial dimensional reality where we're programmed to believe what we're told. We're programmed to believe them. We're programmed to believe what that ruling class wants us to believe.
Believing isn't thinking, but we've been programmed to believe that believing is thinking. To use our intelligence to think means we're keeping the energy active, we're thinking, we're really using the power of our intelligence in a thinking way. But when we've been programmed to believe, we're no longer thinking, because energy flows.
When we're believing, we're not really thinking, because the belief has walls: "This is what I believe." So what I believe is like a box, and we're taking the energy of our thinking and putting into a box of beliefs, pretending that we're thinking. But we're really stifling our own energy. We create these mental stresses and frustrations, because we're blocking our spirit, so to speak.
When I go around in America and I see the bulk of the white people, they do not feel oppressed; they feel powerless... and we understand the psychological genocide that they have already inflicted upon their own people.
Because you look at it, you know, and there's basically one set of rules that protect that industrial ruling class. That's what the governments do, that's what the religions do. They protect the interests of that industrial ruling class.
All human beings are descendants of tribal people who were spiritually alive, intimately in love with the natural world, children of Mother Earth. When we were tribal people, we knew who we were, we knew where we were, and we knew our purpose. This sacred perception of reality remains alive and well in our genetic memory. We carry it inside of us, usually in a dusty box in the mind's attic, but it is accessible.
Our bones, flesh and blood are made up of the metals, liquids and minerals of the earth and everything on this planet is made up of the same things. As humans we have being, so everything on the earth does too in our culture, because we are made of the same thing.
The thing is, it has to do with heart - we have to understand what hearts are for before we can get back to heaven or paradise or the power in our minds. No matter what they ever do to us, we must always act for the love of our people and the earth. We must not react out of hatred against those who have no sense.
As human beings it is time to take responsibility for the power of our Intelligence and use the power of our intelligence to think coherently This isn't about whether we can or we can't This is about whether we will or we won't.
We must go beyond the arrogance of human rights. We must go beyond the ignorance of civil rights. We must step into the reality of natural rights because all of the natural world has a right to existence and we are only a small part of it. There can be no trade-off. As human beings how we use our intelligence to perceive reality dictates how we will use the power of our intelligence.
We have power... Our power isn’t in a political system, or a religious system, or in an economic system, or in a military system; these are authoritarian systems... they have power... but it’s not reality. The power of our intelligence, individually or collectively IS the power; this is the power that any industrial ruling class truly fears: clear coherent human beings.
Every human being is a raindrop. And when enough of the raindrops become clear and coherent they then become the power of the storm. Sometimes when it rains, it's not that simple, when the sky has reasons to cry.
In the society of illusion, reality must manifest itself. The story songs of Joel Rafael are that manifestation... the essence of minstrel."
John Trudell
#MMIW
"We live in a society of an imposed forgetfulness, a society that depends on public amnesia. We have been basically persuaded that we should not talk about racism.
When children attend schools that place a greater value on discipline and security than on knowledge and intellectual development, they are attending prep schools for prison.
Prisons do not disappear social problems, they disappear human beings. Homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy are only a few of the problems that disappear from public view when the human beings contending with them are relegated to cages.
Jails and prisons are designed to break human beings, to convert the population into specimens in a zoo - obedient to our keepers, but dangerous to each other.
There is an unbroken line of police violence in the United States that takes us all the way back to the days of slavery, the aftermath of slavery, the development of the Ku Klux Klan. There is so much history of this racist violence that simply to bring one person to justice is not going to disturb the whole racist edifice.
Well for one, the 13th amendment to the constitution of the US which abolished slavery - did not abolish slavery for those convicted of a crime. Poor people, people of color - especially are much more likely to be found in prison than in institutions of higher education.
Racism is a much more clandestine, much more hidden kind of phenomenon, but at the same time it's perhaps far more terrible than it's ever been. Racism cannot be separated from capitalism. Racism, in the first place, is a weapon used by the wealthy to increase the profits they bring in by paying Black workers less for their work."
Angela Davis
#ReleaseLeonardPeltier
Poor people, especially those of color, are worth nothing to corporations and private contractors if they are on the street. In jail and prisons, however, they can each generate corporate revenues of $30,000 to $40,000 a year.
There are two sets of principles. They are the principles of power and privilege and the principles of truth and justice. If you pursue truth and justice it will always mean a diminution of power and privilege. If you pursue power and privilege, it will always be at the expense of truth and justice.
A society without the means to detect lies and theft soon squanders its liberty and freedom."
Chris Hedges
#MurdochGutterMedia
"The rich today are richer, there are more of them, they have round-the-clock propaganda factories in Rupert Murdoch's empire and rightwing talk radio, and corporate media have their back."
Bill Moyers
#LandBack
"Sex and race, because they are easy and visible differences, have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups and into the cheap labor on which this system still depends."
Gloria Steinem
#Cult45
If you put good apples into a bad situation, you’ll get bad apples.
Evil is knowing better, but willingly doing worse. Bullies may be the perpetrators of evil, but it is the evil of passivity of all those who know what is happening and never intervene that perpetuates such abuse.
What happened at Abu Ghraib was terrible. By understanding the processes we don't excuse it. These people are guilty.” But for Zimbardo, the military leadership that had implicitly condoned torture and averted its eyes from what was happening at Abu Ghraib prison deserved the bulk of the blame.
Heroism is the antidote to evil. To be a hero you have to learn to be a deviant - because you're always going against the conformity of the group.
Heroes are those who can somehow resist the power of the situation and act out of noble motives, or behave in ways that do not demean others when they easily can."
Philip Zimbardo
#PoliceBrutality
It's been a year since an activist was killed by the police while protesting the controversial Atlanta Public Safety Training Center/Cop City. A federal judge has shot down an attempt to halt construction of Atlanta’s public safety training center after an environmental group sued over alleged violations of the Clean Water Act.
The South River Watershed Alliance filed a lawsuit in August against the city of Atlanta and the Atlanta Police Foundation, claiming that “stormwater discharges from the Atlanta Training Facility construction site were not in compliance with the general permit.
They've decimated the forestry of Atlanta to build this monstrosity that's somewhat akin to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly known as the School of the Americas, a United States Department of Defense school located at Fort Moore in Columbus, Georgia, renamed in the 2001 National Defense Authorization Act.
The School of the Americas was charged by P.L. 100-180 (10 USC 4415) with the mission of developing and conducting instruction for the armed forces of Latin America. It was formerly @ Fort Benning, where the fascist bastards running many South American countries today were trained.
Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia, was the site of the School of the Americas (soa), a U.S. Army center that trained more than sixty thousand soldiers and police, mostly from Latin America, in counterinsurgency and combat-related skills since it was founded in 1946.
#PutinsPuppets
"The essence in obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to view himself as an instrument for carrying out another person's wishes and he therefore no longer regards himself as responsible for his actions.
A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act, and without pangs of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority.
Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.
I would say, on the basis of having observe a thousand people in the experiment and having my own intuition shaped and informed by these experiments, that if a system of death camps were set up in the United States of the sort we had seen in Nazi Germany, one would find sufficient personnel for those camps in any medium-sized American town."
Stanley Milgram
#MMIW
We humans are wired for empathy by evolution, but when children grow up in dominator families they internalize this male over female template for relations early on. They then automatically apply it to other differences, whether based on race, religion, sexual orientation, and so forth.
...gender relationships, which are tough for people to deal with, are key to whether a society orients to domination or partnership in all its relations. When the status and power of women is greater so also is the nation’s general quality of life; when they are lower, so is the quality of life for all.
What happened in the US is a regression to the domination side of the social scale. Trump claimed that he, as a "strongman," would solve all our problems, and was elected by fanning fear, hate, scapegoating, the debasement of women.
People from authoritarian, male-dominated, punitive families tend to vote for "strongman" leaders and for "hard" punitive policies (prisons, wars) rather than "soft" caring policies (healthcare, childcare). Not everyone from this background does. But many people do. And this conditioning can be exploited, as Trump's campaign did, especially in times like ours of economic, social, and technological upheaval.
If we look at the last decades, we see that the US rightist-fundamentalist alliance demonized partnership-oriented families and painted women's rights as a threat to "tradition" - which of course it is to traditions of domination. These people had an integrated political agenda that recognizes that a "traditional" authoritarian, male dominated, punitive family is foundational to an authoritarian, male dominated, punitive politics. We can see this connection in sharp relief in brutal top-down regimes, be they secular like Nazi Germany or religious like ISIS in the Middle East.
That both Muslim fundamentalists and the Christian right are today focusing their attempts to regain control in a rapidly changing world on frantic efforts to maintain control over women, particularly over women's sexuality. Moreover, given their mythologies about "holy wars," it is also understandable that they should use "divinely approved" violence to do so.
This notion that man can, and should, have absolute dominion over the "chaotic" powers of nature and woman...is what ultimately lies behind man's famous "conquest of nature" - a conquest that is today puncturing holes in the earth's ozone layer, destroying our forests, polluting our air and water, and increasingly threatening the welfare, and even survival, of thousands of living species, including our own.
Riane Eisler
"We came to realize that a civilization which rode roughshod over the way of life of other peoples was incorporating evil in its own way of life."
Margaret Mead
"A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
Albert Einstein
"The world which we perceive is a tiny fraction of the world which we can perceive, which is a tiny fraction of the perceivable world.
You are a divine being. You matter, you count. You come from realms of unimaginable power and light, and you will return to those realms."
Terence McKenna
A sense of a wider meaning to one’s existence is what raises a man beyond mere getting and spending. If he lacks this sense, he is lost and miserable.”
C.G. Jung, Man and His Symbols
"The real opposition is that between the ego-bound man, whose existence is structured by the principle of having, and the free man, who has overcome his egocentricity."
Erich Fromm, To Have or To Be
"The problem isn't testosterone and aggression; it's how often we reward aggression. And we do: We give medals to masters of the "right" kinds of aggression. We preferentially mate with them. We select them as our leaders."
Robert M. Sapolsky
"For the person and for the species love is the form of behavior having the highest survival value. The measure of man's humanity is the extent and intensity of his love for mankind.
All education should be directed toward the refinement of the individual's sensibilities in relation not only to one's fellow humans everywhere, but to all living things whatsoever."
Ashley Montagu
"Indians in America are yet to be considered human beings, even though the Pope issued a papal bull in 1898 that declared us to be human beings. But to show you the institutional racism, the sports teams are still using the Indians as mascots.
[There is] a mistaken belief that [the word Indian] refers somehow to the country, India. When Columbus washed up on the beach in the Caribbean, he was not looking for a country called India. Europeans were calling that country Hindustan in 1492.... Columbus called the tribal people he met "Indio," from the Italian in dio, meaning "in God."
Being an Indian means living with the land. And the only way we'll be able to do that is to gain our freedom.
True to your own ancestors, therefore true to yourself. That's our charge as ancestors of unborn generations: to once again become free.
So I'd much rather get across the concept of freedom. It's what's important to Indian children. The only way you can be free is to know is that you are worthwhile as a distinct human being. Otherwise you become what the colonizers have designed, and that is a lemming. Get in line, punch all the right keys, and die.
I find freedom to be the most important issue facing any human being today, because without freedom, then life is pointless. The more dependent you become on centralized power, the more easily you are lead around.
Freedom is for everyone, whatever lifestyle they choose, as long as it's peaceful and honest.
You can't talk about the environment, you can't talk about political correctness, affirmative action and all the other innumerable things that freedom is about, unless you have a free society based upon the integrity of the individual. If you have a responsible society, these other issues will not come up in a responsible society, and that is what freedom is all about.
All European tradition, Marxism included, has conspired to defy the natural order of all things. Mother Earth has been abused, the powers have been abused, and this cannot go on forever. No theory can alter that simple fact. Mother Earth will retaliate, the whole environment will retaliate, and the abusers will be eliminated. Things come full circle, back to where they started. That's revolution.
America always put forth this phony melting pot theory, but it's a reality now. They couldn't accomplish the melting pot economically; they couldn't accomplish it politically, or through education and science. But America has become a consumer society, and I see young people in the cities - of all colors and races - hanging out together over consumerism.
So Indian policy has become institutionalized and the result has been that American people have become more dependent on government and that the American people have become more dependent on corporations.
I had often wondered how to best decolonize my people... It must be done one human being at a time. Without that kind of help, Western society does not allow people to come to terms with their feelings. With honesty and therapy, my people can be made whole again.
It takes a strong effort on the part of each American Indian not to become Europeanized. The strength for this effort can only come from the traditional ways, the traditional values that our elders retain."
Russell Means
"There is probably a high percentage of Native Americans as well as non-Indians who feel that participating in this greater American economy that you mentioned is and has become a recipe for disaster in the long term, because the response to social and environmental problems has been responded to with a drug mentality, which is to say, anything for the quick fix. And it has trained the public to always believe they are one purchase away from happiness.
During that time period all of our tribes were suffering extremely from poverty and neglect. And the reason I say neglect is because the U.S. Government was neglecting its true responsibilities they agreed to in exchange for our land and resources. What I and others attempted to do, and in essence we did, was bring attention to our sovereign rights, the rights we had retained when the treaties were made.
I was like so many others passionately involved in trying to bring those truths to the world's attention. We did our very best to peacefully do that. The city, state, and federal governments did their very best to quell our efforts. They were used to using heavy-handed tactics to silence us.
It is difficult for me to talk about some of these things without reliving the extreme emotions and loss one always feels for the untimely deaths of acquaintances, family and friends, all because they stood up against the unlawful tyranny of non-Indian America.
In them days, it was just still not illegal to kill an Indian. If you killed an Indian, you'd be very unfortunate if you got probation - most of them were released immediately.
We have over the years proven again and again that every piece of evidence used to convict me has been false. The FBI with its unlimited resources has done everything it possibly can to keep me in prison.
They [Federal Government] don't care if I am guilty or innocent. I serve their purpose in here. Other than what I have mentioned, what fear could they possibly have from a old man with dimming eyesight, arthritis, diabetes, and other health issues that render me hardly a threat to anyone.
The government and its prosecutors are continually trying to block my efforts to win my freedom and expose their judicial wrong doings; they systematically try to block me from obtaining FBI files which I know would exonerate me. I don't know the exact conditions of everybody else, but I do know that I have been denied adequate and proper health care and I suffer greatly from that.
At this writing I can't even shut my lower jaw because of inadequate health care. I can't chew my food, I have trouble walking...the list goes on. But more than anything I want to go home. If you follow the laws at the time of my conviction I should have been released already. The FBI with their heavy influence on the judiciary system has successfully blocked me on every turn. The FBI has always supported big business and big government.
As to whether I will ever get out, it will obviously take some large measures of public opinion because the judiciary system of America is totally interlaced with bureaucratic influences that perpetuate FBI control over judges, prosecutors and court proceedings.
My supporters and family have limited resources, very limited resources; but the FBI has the unlimited resources of the most powerful government in the world today. It's amazing that they haven't successfully had me assassinated since I have been in here. There have been plots uncovered in the past that I know of to have me killed.
What I am is a father, a grandfather, a great grandfather, and an artist. I am a man who loves his people and wants to go home.
United States Government needs to acknowledge and respect our sovereignty, treaties, traditional Native American values, and our human rights as a people, which under the law as written we deserve, and which should be protected.
The Government honoring our treaties and sovereignty is first and foremost. These issues are still the top priority which [Barak] Obama, if elected, has promised us. For us, we should implement the most important programs right now: they are programs to teach the children a positive sense of dignity, self-worth, and the importance of sustaining their culture, history, language and honor as a people.
There are so many things that we could do but education would be our primary need in this regard. And in obtaining this education we need to also educate ourselves and others to the truths that we have possessed from the beginning that allow men to live in harmony with one another.
No human being should ever have to fear for his own life because of political or religious beliefs. We are all in this together, my friends, the rich, the poor, the red, white, black, brown and yellow. We share responsibility for Mother Earth and those who live and breathe upon her ..never forget that.
It is a written fact that our people had warned of all these consequences of wrongful environmental behavior since our very first contact with the non-Indians. There was a time when our elders used to say to us, "You can't function with one foot in the white man's canoe and one foot in the Indian's canoe." With these extreme environmental concerns taking place on the earth, mankind is all in the same boat. Or better be.
We need to do more than just what is right. We need to join together and right what is wrong. I don’t know how to save the world. I don’t have the answers or The Answer. I hold no secret knowledge as to how to fix the mistakes of generations past and present. I only know that without compassion and respect for all of Earth’s inhabitants, none of us will survive --- nor will we deserve to.
To heal will require real effort, and a change of heart, from all of us. To heal means that we will begin to look upon one another with respect and tolerance instead of prejudice, distrust and hatred. We will have to teach our children-as well as ourselves-to love the diversity of humanity....We can do it. Yes, you and I and all of us together. Now is the time. Now is the only possible time. Let the Great Healing begin.
I would like to say, historically, from the very beginning, our people have time and again expressed the need for people to live in harmony with the creator, the mother earth, fellow man, and respect our brother's vision. In the past and the present, we have been responsible for the greatest gains; cultivated foods and medicines; democratic government, and many other areas of concern."
Leonard Peltier