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The Current Transcript for July 9, 2018

Host: Duncan McCue

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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VOICE: Good morning and how are you pronounced in English and Inuktitut.

DUNCAN MCCUE: Those are some excellent Inuktitut phrases to know or to learn if you're planning to celebrate the anniversary of the creation of Nunavut today. It is not a Nunavut Day and social media giant Facebook is marking it by unveiling a new Inuktitut translation tool. We'll find out how it works and whether it will help the urgent effort to preserve Indigenous languages across Canada. Then.

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VOICE: Before the earthquake I was a renter. After the earthquake we were in camps. After that, a friend of mine brought me here and helped me get this block.

DM: What was once a barren patch of land in Haiti is now home to 250,000 people who built homes, schools, businesses, all by themselves. Born out of disaster, it's a city without government. We're discussing the potential and the perils of ungoverned cities, in half an hour. Plus.

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VOICE: Being a refugee is much more than political status. It is the most pervasive kind of cruelty that can be exercised against a human being.

DM: Always outspoken Chinese artist, Ai Wei Wei, has turned his lens on his massive scale of the global refugee crisis in a powerful documentary and he joins us in an hour, to explain why. But first, we head to Thailand to get the latest on the dramatic cave rescue. I'm Duncan McCue and this is the summer edition of The Current.

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Journalist describes 'eerily silent' scene as first of boys rescued from Thai cave

Guest: Stephen Boitano

DM: The next stage in the effort to rescue 12 boys and their soccer coach from a flooded cave in northern Thailand is underway with reports of other boys being brought out safely. Yesterday the rescue effort took a dramatic and heart-warming turn when four of the boys were brought out safely, aided by Thai Navy Seals and a team of international cave diving experts. The question on everyone's mind is how will the restocked rescue effort will unfold today. Stephen Boitano is a freelance video journalist who's been reporting from Tham Luang caves where the rescue operation is taking place and that's where we've reached him. Hello.

STEPHEN BOITANO: Hi. How are you doing?

DM: Tell us what happened today when the rescue operation resumed.

SB: OK. 11:00 a.m. local time, they were the divers got into the cave and they started the extraction and the rescue effort from there. And around 5:40 p.m. local time, the first boy came out. I was there when the ambulance came, drove him up to the helipad, under heavy police and military security, and he took off in a helicopter to Chiang Rai, in transit to the hospital there. And just recently, boys 6 and 7 came out. So that's 6 and 7, 6 left. Let's hope they can get a lot more today.

DM: And do we have any updates on how the sixth and seventh boy are doing?

SB: As far as I know everyone's doing fine, but it will all be confirmed when they're at the hospital.

DM: And then yesterday four boys were taken out, how do we know about how they're doing?

SB: Well the reports are that they're doing fine. They're under, they're in quarantine because of possible infections and what I've understood they had not met with the parents yet, but they are doing well in the hospital.

DM: What was the scene like yesterday as those first four boys were brought out of the cave and brought by ambulance to hospital?

SB: OK. I was right at the exit of the cave complex and it was really strange. It was eerily silent. No one was saying a word and lots of media across the street up on a hill. Strong police and military presence in the roads you know, lined up every 10 metres. And the ambulance came out with lights on very quietly, pulled out to the main road, turned and the siren went off and it sped up and went away. And it wonderful to see that.

DM: Stephen can you describe how the divers got them out?

SB: Yeah. It was a tethering method. They had one diver in front that had a rope tied on to the boy and the diver in front along with his, he had his own tank on his back and he was carrying the boy's tank with a breathing hose to the boy and there was another diver in the back and they went through the caverns and the diving manoeuvres in the tight spots they would, he would take his tank off, push the tanks through and the boy would follow after.

DM: It is an absolutely incredible operation to watch and the world is watching it. I mean with bated breath, no one watching it more so than the parents and the family members of the boys I imagine though, what are you hearing from them?

SB: They're very, very happy. So happy. Related, everyone's coming out and it seems that everyone is doing well and this is quite a miracle that it's all working out so well. And from what I heard that the first four boys were the ones in the worst health. So they've got the first four out and they're doing OK. That gives us hope that the stronger boys in the end will be fine.

DM: Before Sunday's rescue, a letter that the boys had written to their family was published on the Thai Seal's Facebook page. What did it say?

SB: The letters had a general tone was that basically telling the relatives don't worry, we're strong, we're doing OK. And some of the letters were saying you know mom and dad, sis, don't worry. You know, I'm doing great. Tell the teacher we don't want too much homework when we get back.

DM: Amazing. What, I mean weather is such a big factor here in terms of what will happen next, what's the forecast calling for?

SB: Well the forecast is calling for rain, but it's been sporadic. I mean we some heavy rains last night and today, almost nothing. It was very sunny most of the day. So you know we're due for more rain. It's definitely coming, but it hasn't been the absolute monsoon that they were expecting. But I know these water levels have been rising because of the rain. I mean it has gone up in the past few days. But they are continuing the pumping and diverting efforts to get the water out of the cave and they're doing a good job with that.

DM: I know everybody is watching this, so I'll let you get back to reporting it. Thank you very much Stephen Boitano.

SB: You're welcome.

DM: Stephen Boitano is a freelance video journalist, who's been reporting on the rescue operation to free 12 boys and their soccer coach from a flooded cave. He talked to us from the scene at the Tham Luang caves in northern Thailand. There are now reports that an 8th boy has been rescued. And you're listening to the summer edition of The Current on CBC Radio One. I'm Duncan McCue.

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Facebook marks Nunavut Day with Inuktitut translation tool in Canada

Guest: Aluki Kotierk, Perry Bellegarde

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Madeleine Allakariallak reporting in Inuktitut.

DM: That's our colleague at CBC North in Iqaluit, Madeleine Allakariallak. She's the host of the program Igalaaq, which brings news and current events to viewers in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. The CBC has long broadcasted for radio and TV in Inuktitut. But last week CBC North published its first ever web story completely in the language. It arrived just in time for today's holiday, Nunavut Day, marking 25 years since Inuit people welcomed then prime minister, Brian Mulroney, to Iqaluit to sign the Nunavut agreement, recognising it as a territory in Canada. And Facebook is marking the day by inviting users to help translate its platform into Inuktut. That's an umbrella term for two Inuit languages, Inuktitut is spoken in most Inuit regions and Inuinnaqtun is spoken in western Nunavut and part of the Northwest Territories. It's the first time in Canada that the platform is opening up itself to translation into an Indigenous language. Kevin Chan is the head of Public Policy at Facebook Canada. Here's part of what he had to say about the move.

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VOICE: This initiative was really a key piece of feedback we heard very clearly coming out of a roundtable on Indigenous culture and content online. We organized last May with Indigenous leaders and organizations. We heard pretty loud and clear the importance of Indigenous languages online and the importance of Indigenous peoples being able to communicate and interact using their own languages. And we're really excited to be able to launch this initiative with Nunavut Tunngavik and the Nunavut Language Authority on July 9, which is of course Nunavut Day.

DM: Kevin Chan is the head of Public Policy at Facebook Canada and we spoke with him earlier. My next guest played a central role in spearheading the new initiative, Aluki Kotierk is the president of Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated, a Nunavut land claims organization. Earlier this year she was part of a Facebook roundtable on Indigenous culture online that helped lead to today's announcement. She's in our Iqaluit studio. Ublaahatkut. Hello.

ALUKI KOTIERK: Ullaasakkut Duncan or should I say Ainngai to you.

DM: Ainngai. Why is this announcement that Facebook is opening itself up for translation into Inuktut languages so important to you?

AK: First of all, I'd like to wish everyone a happy Nunavut Day. Today marks 25 years since the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act and the Nunavut Act were adopted and received assent in the Canadian parliament. So that's very significant for us here in Nunavut and the reason that Facebook providing the ability to provide the interface in Inoke is very important is because Nunavut is a jurisdiction where homogeneously the public majority speak a language that is neither of the two official languages that are recognised by Canada and the language spoken by the public majority is Inuktut.

DM: And so many people in the north use Facebook now to communicate, how will the community be involved in making sure that these translations across dialects are accurate?

AK: So from what I understand, the process will be individuals within communities across Nunavut will be able to say just words, suggest Inuktut words for words like "like" or "profile" etc., things that would be shown on the interface and then there'll be an opportunity for the general public to vote on them and say whether which one they think would be the best, most appropriate term to be used.

DM: And so they'll be able to post in Inuktut, why is that important?

AK: It's important that Inuit who speak Inuktut are able to see and hear Inuktut used in all aspects of their lives and social media has become such a large part of our lives. When we have such expensive air flights to go within communities, across our 25 communities, it's important that people are able to communicate in the language that they would prefer to communicate in.

DM: And as you mentioned, it's been 25 years since Nunavut was recognised as a territory. How well would you say that Inuit languages are protected or enshrined there?

AK: So Inuktut, there's two territorial languages, languages acts, the Official Languages Act and the Inuit Language Protection Act within Nunavut and both of them recognise Inuktut, which is great. One of the things that I've been advocating for is that there should be a recognition federally of Inuktut as a founding language of our territory. I think that would be very important and I know that there's been correspondence in 1998 that speaks to the fact and discussion about how to make Inuktut the working language of the territorial public government and at that time, the federal finance minister indicated that it would have to be discussed at a later date. And my fear is that because that later date has never arrived, our language is declining at 1 per cent per year and in a very short span of our lifetime, only 4 per cent of us will be speaking Inuktut in our homes, at that rate, by 2050.

DM: Last year the Federal Government committed $15.8 million to Nunavut between 2016 to 2020 to support Indigenous language services, what language related gaps do you see in the territory?

AK: In my view, when you look at that amount and you compare it to other federally recognized languages such as French, the equity I think is quite apparent and actually quite frustrating as an interactive speaker who really wants to ensure that Inuktut continues to thrive as a language in our territory and I think one of the areas that I'm most concerned about is in terms of essential public services. And I know that as Canadians, we should be able to expect comparable, essential services to other Canadians across this country. And yet, many Inuktut speaking Inuit are unable to receive health services in Inuktut or unable to receive the education system in Inuktut.

DM: So you're lobbying to have Inuktitut recognised as a founding language, what's at stake if we don't see any movement on this on the part of the government to protect the language?

AK: My fear, as I said, it's declining at 1 per cent per year and my fear is that the richness and the vocabulary and the world view will be lost of Inuit that is captured in our language.

DM: Aluki, thank you very much for joining us. Naqurmiik.

AK: Have a good day.

DM: Aluki Kotierk is the president of Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated, a Nunavut land claims organization. She was in our Iqaluit studio. Perry Bellegarde is the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations and he's also in the midst of campaigning for re-election to that role. He's in our Calgary studio. Hello.

PERRY BELLEGARDE: Good morning.

DM: What do you make of this announcement today from Facebook?

PB: Well I think it's a good start again. You know we've got to look at all tools we can to revitalize and bring back and showcase all the Indigenous languages across Canada. So it's a welcome step.

DM: Last week we heard that CBC North also published its very first web story entirely Inuktitut, why are initiatives like this important in your view?

PB: Again it's as Indigenous peoples, you know we talk about one of the most important rights we have is the right to self-determination. We have the five elements: we have our own languages, our own lands, our own laws, our own people and our own identifiable forms of government. So if we lose that language how do we know that you're Anishinaabe, how do you know you're Cree, how do you know you're Haida or Gitxsan or Shuswap or Gwich'in? So it's part of that right to self-determination and even studies have shown that when young people are fluent, when they're fluent in their language, they're more successful in school. They know who they are, where they come from and therefore more successful in life. So it's very important to our survival as Indigenous peoples.

DM: We know that so many young Indigenous people though are going to online to get their information to communicate. How does that make efforts to preserve and revitalize Indigenous languages more complicated?

PB: Well it's a plus and minus thing, I think we can use technology to help promote our Indigenous languages and a good example is what Facebook is doing. So we can use that as a tool to really revitalise it and capture that essence and capture the excitement amongst our young people and use it as a tool. I see it more as a positive thing than a negative thing, even though there's more challenges when you have technology coming in you know that TV, movies, you know how they communicate on social media, but if we can use that in a positive way I think we can use it to be a tool to help promote and revitalize Indigenous languages.

DM: The Trudeau government has made a commitment to develop new legislation in the form of an Indigenous Languages Act. Do we have a sense of the shape of that legislation yet?

PB: While we're working in partnership with Minister Joly's office and we're working with ITK and MNC, you know President Natan Obed and President Clement Chartier and for us at the AFN, we've talked about the importance of revitalising our Indigenous languages across Canada for years. We have over 58 distinct languages, with over 90 dialects. So we're working in partnership to try to get this language legislation introduced by October of this year and because we have October 2019, a federal election. So we want to get this legislation passed before the next federal election comes about. So we want to get this done because it's really a priority.

DM: You just heard Aluki Kotierk talk about wanting Inuktitut to be recognised as a founding language, will that be part of the Indigenous Languages Act?

PB: Well what we've been saying is our 58 languages, our original languages of this country, and we want to make sure that we have all the resources necessary to revitalise and maintain and preserve and protect the languages because they're, I've always said, our languages as First Nations people should be viewed as Canada's national treasures. They're not spoken in any other country in the world and we know the government spent decades trying to eradicate our languages, so we said at least as much effort should be spent revitalising, restoring them. So.

DM: You talk about the need for resources, language keepers have complained in the past for years now that the money that the government sets aside for language preservation is really hard to access. They have to go through paper work and grants, is that still an ongoing issue?

PB: Well that's the whole point about getting legislation in place, so it's statutory funding. You know we have Section 35 of Canada's constitution existing Aboriginal treaty rights are there, so this is one of those rights we believe. And we say you need to have a law in place so that programs and policies, they can be changed so easy, but when you have legislation in place, it's more difficult. And so we want to make sure that those resources are in place because you need a whole range of strategies to bring it back, depending on the state of the language across Canada. From you need immersion, you need Aboriginal headstart, you need language nests, master apprentice models, so you need resources to make these things happen.

DM: But are there discussions ongoing? I mean there were 20 per cent of the funds that had been set aside for Indigenous languages, ended up being unspent last year because groups couldn't access them. Are there discussions about how to improve that access?

PB: Always. That's always good. It's good to have the resources in place, but you have to find more effective and efficient ways to access and utilize those resources, so they have a meaningful impact in the community. And so the answer is yes, we have to find more effective and efficient ways and that's part of the dialogue going forward.

DM: There's an extra interpretation booth that's being added to the House of Commons next fall, where specialists will be able to interpret Cree, Ojibwe in real time. What do you make of this step on the part of the government?

PB: I think things are starting to move in the right direction, but we want to keep the momentum moving forward. That's a good step. Even within our Assembly of First Nations, you know we have a committee on languages that's working very hard to provide the political oversight on this Indigenous Languages Act and it's so important to have that oversight and it's so important, even in our Assembly of First Nations. You know we speak mainly English, you know in some cases French and then we provide translation. But at our last assembly, we had speakers speak their own Chiefs speak their own language and we had interpretation. So we ourselves as an organisation have to start leading in that way. And so the House of Commons is doing it, we as well as the Assembly of First Nation should be doing that as well.

DM: You mentioned working together with the federal government in partnership. You're running for re-election as AFN chief, some criticized you for a top down approach to Indigenous issues, what's your response to that criticism?

PB: No, we always take direction from our chiefs in assembly and as a national chief, you're an advocate for First Nations people. And the people are the highest office, the grassroots people, and they elect their chiefs and councils. So that's who we take our direction from, the chiefs and assembly, and as an AFN national chief, you have to work with whoever gets elected into that office as Prime Minister and Cabinet. So I've got a good relationship with Prime Minister Trudeau, but I also have a great relationship with Andrew Scheer from the Conservatives and Jagmeet Singh from the NDP and Elizabeth May from the Greens because we have to work with all of them. All the policy and legislative decision makers that are there, we have to work to make sure that inherent rights and title are implemented and treaty rights are implemented and so that's the challenge going forward.

DM: Thank you very much Perry Bellegarde. Perry Bellegarde is the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations. He was in our Calgary studio. CBC News is next and then we're headed to the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where an ungoverned city has risen up in the wake of the 2010 earthquake. The story of Canaan, Haiti in our next half hour. I'm Duncan McCue and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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Why Canaan, a Haitian city without a government, is at a crossroads

Guest: Jacob Kushner, Rose-May Guignard, Gonzalo Lizarralde

DM: Hi. I'm Duncan McCue and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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DM: Still to come, the Chinese artist, Ai Weiwei, has worked in many mediums, but the ongoing global refugee crisis inspired him to try something new and work with film. In half an hour, Ai Weiwei on his globe spanning documentary, Human Flow. But first, the human flow of a single city as it continues to grow.

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Choir singing at Lacroix St. Joseph church in Canaan, Haiti.

DM: Music from the congregation at Lacroix, St. Joseph, a Baptist church in the Haitian city of Canaan. Less than a decade ago Canaan was a barren patch of land north of the capital Port-Au-Prince. Today it's home to 250,000 people.

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VOICE: Before the earthquake I was a renter. After the earthquake we were in a camp. After that a friend of mine brought me here and helped me get this plot. When I got this plot, I came to live on it with a tent. After the tent I built a cistern and then built one room above it. After that, I worked on the rest of the house to get to the level I am now and it's not completely finished yet.

DM: That was Canaan resident Maurice Aristilde speaking with local reporters training with Internews, an international non-profit media organization. Canaan was settled after the earthquake of January 2010 and eight years later, it looks much like many other Haitian cities. There are houses, schools, markets, churches, but all of it was built by its residents. There is no governing body overseeing Canaan. No one to collect taxes to pay for infrastructure or municipal services. No one to formally recognize that residents own the land they've built their homes on. Now some residents of Canaan are calling on the Haitian government to step in to govern, igniting a debate around whether ungoverned cities can prosper without state intervention. In a few minutes we'll hear from a Haitian urban planner and a Canadian architect, who know the debate well, but first Jacob Kushner is a freelance journalist who's been covering Haiti for years. His latest story for the online news site OZY, offers a view into what's at stake for residents of Canaan. Jacob Kushner joins us from Berlin. Hello.

JACOB KUSHNER: Hi Duncan.

DM: Can you take us inside the community and paint a bit of a picture of what Canaan looks like.

JK: Sure. To those who aren't familiar with Haiti or the cities there, Canaan might feel a little underdeveloped. The roads are not paved to the extent that the roads exist, some are more like dry alleyways. There's many different houses that are being built and typically these are concrete structures, sometimes even just one room structures. There's lots of plots that have just a foundation of a house. So if you're imagining going into Canaan on motorcycle or walking around, you might see people with their livestock you know, a few goats or other animals that they keep, chickens. People have small gardens that they tend to. There's marketplaces where people have stalls selling anything you can imagine, from gasoline to clothing and food and all that. There are soda shops, there are you know barbershops all over the place. My reporting colleague, photographer Allison Shelley, even met a man who started a business making dentures by hand. He hand makes dentures in front of little shops somewhere in Canaan. So there's a lot of creativity, but it's the type of thing you see from people all over Haiti really, but it's fascinating to see it in a place that just several years ago didn't even exist.

DM: Take us back to 2010, after that devastating earthquake, when this was just a dusty patch of land north Portu-Au-Prince, how did it come to be settled?

JK: Well Haiti's president at the time, Rene Preval, he made a declaration that all of that land, this huge expensive land north of the capital, was public domain. Now that doesn't mean that it's free land for the taking, but that's the signal that his message sent to thousands of Haitians who had lost their homes in the earthquake. And so thousands upon thousands of people began moving out to Canaan, looking for a little plot of land to call their own, putting a border around it and starting to live there in a tent or eventually in a home as best they could.

DM: There are now tens of thousands of people living there and building homes and businesses, schools with their own hands. There hasn't been a government there.

JK: That's right. There was a study that found that Haitians themselves who moved to Canaan, spent a hundred million dollars of their own money in Canaan, in the first few years of its existence. I mean people put everything they had into building their homes, building businesses and trying to make this a liveable community. People had never had this opportunity before, to have a piece of land to call their own. Land tenure in here in Haiti is a very complicated and very political issue. Most people rent and it's not even clear who they're renting from. A given piece of land might be owned by 10 different people or at least 10 different people might claim to own it. And so it's very complicated and so you suddenly have this piece of land that your government is telling you, well we own that land and you move out to it and I mean the dreams just kind of take off from there. People imagine the businesses that they can create. They imagine a home that they could pass down to their children some day and use that to build a future for your family.

DM: If there is no government there, who is providing services like water or schools. So unfortunately, much of Canaan, there aren't services like waters and schools. Now a lot of schools in Haiti are private, so individuals have started schools and they've started churches. And a lot of water is trucked in just by private companies and you have to pay for it. There have been a couple projects by the federal government that have you know brought water to just a couple different points and now next month there's going to be the inauguration of what I believe is the first public school in Canaan, but that's you know almost nine years after the earthquake. And so really, the governance in the city was taken on by the residents themselves. These people who just moved to the place and leaders would emerge in different neighbourhoods. They would start to organise others to try to advocate for their neighbourhoods. Try to get funding and projects from aid organizations, try to go and build their own infrastructure. There were people, Allison the photographer and I came across in Canaan, who were erecting electricity poles and wires and literally wiring the neighbourhoods themselves and trying to connect that to the public grid. There are these real communal projects that you see where different people in Canaan help each other out and try to govern themselves and also build the city on their own.

DM: You mentioned Jacob, this remarkable city that has started to grow without any certainty in land tenure. Early on it was declared that the land was public domain, but the Haitian government has not purchased the land. So what is, how are the residents feeling about their land tenancy?

JK: In many ways, everything in Haiti comes down to land. The problem that most Haitians face is that if you do have land and you don't have a title to that land, then you have really no collateral by which to go get microfinance, loans or grants or other things to go start a business, to start a job, to try to do something for your family. You also have just no security, I mean for all you know if you don't own land, you might get kicked out by your landlord. So this is a problem throughout Haiti and in Canaan, it's a source of much uncertainty. And so really the first step toward turning Canaan into a different sort of city, one with you know a future in which people can really take it into their own hands, according to all the experts I've spoken with, is for the government to come in there and recognize that people are occupying this land.

DM: They're living in an ungoverned city, what did they tell you about what they want when it comes to government oversight?

JK: You look often at Haiti and look at the failures in governance that we're familiar with in Haiti and yet that's what's so remarkable to me is that almost everyone I speak to in Canaan, says that they want to be governed. They want that government, as imperfect as it is, to have a presence there. People want to pay taxes. They say yes, I want to, I have no where to pay taxes to, but I want to pay my taxes so they can have a sense of legitimacy.

DM: Any thoughts on what might happen to Canaan, if the Haitian government doesn't step in?

JK: It's going to be a lot harder in the future to make Canaan a pleasant city to live in. So if you're thinking of trying to put roads in, water pipes underneath those roads, electricity, anything you name it, requires land and so the price of doing that is just going to multiply. And year after year it's going to be more cost prohibitive to do any of these services. I think that's why it's so important that Haiti's government start doing that now and that you know international donors continue to step up to the plate and donate. A lot at the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, has you know slowly scaled down its funding for Canaan. Other private charities that received a lot of money after the earthquake, such as the Red Cross, no longer has as much money for Canaan and I think the urgency, the sense of urgency is that things are only going to get more expensive. The same infrastructure, the same roads, the same governance is only going to be harder and more expensive down the line than it would be now, if international donors and Haiti's government were to work together to do even more now than they are doing currently.

DM: Thanks for sharing this with us.

JK: Yes. Thanks for having me.

DM: Jacob Kushner is a freelance journalist, his many years of reporting from Canaan, were supported by the Pulitzer Center for crisis reporting. We reached him in Berlin. The rapid growth in Canaan is seen by many as a sign of hope. Even in the face of disaster the community has seen remarkable growth and investment, but for governments and urban planners, Canaan also poses a serious challenge. For some insight into that, I'm joined by Rose-May Guignard. She's an urban planner who returned to Haiti after the earthquake. We reached her in Port-au-Prince. Hello.

ROSE-MAY GUIGNARD: Hello. Good morning to all your listeners.

DM: How does Jacob Kushner's description of Canaan compare with what you've seen?

RMG: I think it's fairly accurate, although I think there's a bit of naysay about who is living in Canaan and who's behind all the transactions going on in Canaan. Canaan is a very complex story, but it's not the story of folks fleeing the earthquake and picking a plot of land. I think what we all need to acknowledge is that, for lack of a better word, I'm going to call them the real estate entrepreneur or the land mafia in Haiti, who has been really driving the selling of the land in Canaan and in Canaan today, find everybody. You find folks who were affected by the earthquake, but you also see families leaving cities in other parts of Haiti, moving to the Port-Au-Prince area. And then you see some property in Canaan, where the wall around the property is over $40,000, U.S. dollars and you know that this is somebody with means and also taking a claim in Canaan. So this is a very complex story. But I wanted to jump in and talk about what it means for an urban planner. The reality of the metropolitan area Port-Au-Prince is that after the earthquake, we had sprawl of around 30 per cent. And it's not only Canaan, it's all around the Port-Au-Prince metropolitan area. The story of Canaan is drastic because it was bare before the earthquake and now it's habited. So that's one point is that we're dealing with people sprawl, we're dealing with sprawl at a scale that services, public services will have difficulty to keep up in the near future.

DM: What about security and law enforcement. Does the lack of governance make Canaan more dangerous?

RMG: Well I think danger in Haiti, you need to, it's not. The danger in Canaan, the police has had an outfit in Canaan, really steady at the beginning. But the problem with security in Canaan is that you have the land mafia selling land, giving false titles to folks who are buying land in good faith and then you have this incredible story. I think we need to talk about of folks self-governing and all the community planning taking place where we see the population is saving land for future public use, for the church, for the school, for the public place. And they are fighting off the land mafia for preserving that piece of land that they want to keep for their new city to have public equipment. For me that's really the key issue with security. Of course as in every city in Port-Au-Prince, you will have all kinds of petty crimes. And this also happens in like every city in Port-Au-Prince, the police is not able to really come in and help communities with petty crimes.

DM: Well what about this issue of land tenancy, what challenges does that pose from an urban planning perspective?

RMG: Well you know, from an urban planning perspective is that as an urban planner, I don't who's the true real estate developer is. So I don't I cannot identify - say listen there are laws in this countries about subdivision and you have to follow the law on subdivision. That's the issue number one and I think that we identify a way to slow down the process. But the other thing that also from the urban planning that's welcome is that as long as we have certainty on land tenure, this investment can not gain value, proper value. So in a way where some people who have shown that willing, the the capacity to invest, to claim the right to the city, to have access to opportunities only available in the metropolitan area, is that this investment they made they don't lose. Or they may never gain from it in the future. And for me that's the most tragic part because if their investment, this real estate investment is not gaining growth, you can not really get into a process of prospering.

DM: Rose-May Guignard what difference would it make if Canaan became its own municipality?

RMG: I think it will make all different. Right now Canaan is at the outskirts of three major communes, that's the administrative division here. And it's at the outskirts, right? And contrary to what Jacob Kushner says, people in Canaan are paying property taxes to three different municipalities. And one of security issue is the fight of each municipality to come and get those property taxes. So regularly we hear a problem. And I think the future of Canaan is to give it a statue, a legal statue and so that it can have elective representatives. So that the choices that populations have made, we've had incredible investments in planning and in urban planning with the community. We have incredible investment with public services, notably in water and we need to make sure there is a governing structure to continue and validate and protect all those work.

DM: Thank you for your analysis on this. Rose-May Guignard is an urban planner in Haiti. We reached here in Port-au-Prince. Our next guest says Canaan is a unique example of how communities develop and rebuild after disasters and one that provides important lessons about the process of post-disaster reconstruction and city building. Gonzalo Lizarralde is a professor at the School of Architecture at the University of Montreal, and Director of the Canadian Disaster Resilience and Sustainable Reconstruction Research Alliance. He's been involved with research that looked specifically at Canaan and how it developed and he joins us from our studio in Montreal. Hello.

GONZALO LIZARRALDE: Good morning.

DM: As someone who studies disaster development, what stands out to you about the case of Canaan?

GL: Well this is a unique case of very rapid urban development. This is also a unique case in which after disasters, community really starts building by themselves and they develop a massive scale something that as Jacob says looks like a city now. This always happens after disasters, but what is unique here is the speed and scale at which this process happened.

DM: Are there other examples of urban development around the world that are comparable to Canaan?

GL: There are many examples of how people started rebuilding by themselves after disasters, but the case of Canaan is quite special. Again, because of the magnitude, the size of the development, but also the speed at which it was developed. So no, we don't have a case similar to this in this part of the world, at least in Latin America or the Caribbean, that will compare in terms of scale or the rapidity of construction.

DM: What about the makeshift city that emerged out of the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya. How does it compare to that?

GL: Well there, exactly, there are cases of for example refugee camps that get developed or temporary housing that becomes permanent. So at moment become part of the real city of the formal city, but here this is a little bit different. It's different in terms of the role of organizations, for example. What we find in refugee camps, for example is that there are organizations planning the territory, there are organizations that are providing aid, there are organizations that are delivering temporary shacks or temporary housing. Here we found something different. There was originally a camp that was developed and that triggered the development, but the majority of the development was built informally. Was built by people themselves and what Rose called in a proper way, land mafias.

DM: We've heard people talk about some of the drawbacks of being ungoverned. They can't do things like get bank loans, there are worries about crime. How long do you think a community like Canaan can survive if it remains ungoverned?

GL: Well this is going to be a very important moment for a Canaan. I guess, the next five years will be crucial. Canaan can go in two different directions in the near future. It can become a slum, one of another slum in Haiti and this is likely to be the largest slum in Haiti, if it takes that away. Or if there are some interventions that happen quickly and proper interventions, then it can go through a different direction and it can become a liveable formal city that eventually will help in solve the housing crisis that exists in Port-au-Prince and many other cities in the country.

DM: You said there need to be interventions, but how difficult is it going to be to integrate the informal structures that exist in Canaan right now, with a more formal government structure?

GL: It is difficult, but one of the things that is required now is infrastructure. Basically what is needed is that NGOs, government and organizations in general, take care of infrastructure in Canaan. We have to see roads being built. We have to have electricity grids being completed. We have, we need water supply. There is need for more formal schools. If infrastructure happens quickly, there is possibility of changing that route and becoming making sure that Canaan becomes a formal city. Then integration will happen slowly. There is already some kind of integration with governance structures. The local community has been very engaged in calling up for aid from the government and starting to create structures that can eventually have some form of legitimacy. So this process is already happening. What we need to do is to encourage that process so it happens in a proper way and happens quickly.

DM: It's all happened so informally, what do you think Canaan can tell us about the relationship between people and cities and their governments?

GL: It tells us that if government is not there with infrastructure, if government is not there to provide the legal structures that are required for cities to function, eventually people will develop them themselves. There will be bottom up solution coming out, there will be bottom up solutions emerging and eventually those bottom up solutions have to catch up with formality and have to become legitimate. This is telling us that if formal structures and government doesn't develop the city as we know it, then the city will happen anyhow and then there is need to catch up later on to integrate this formal development into formal cities into structures into government mechanisms.

DM: So if another country is faced with a disaster, on the kind of scale that the earthquake in Haiti experienced, what can it learn from Canaan?

GL: One of the things that I think is crucial to learn from here is that governments have to be very careful about land after disasters. I agree with Jacob and I agree with Rose-May when they say that land is playing a crucial role in this process and this is likely to happen in other places. Land is a crucial aspect of the development after disasters. It is important before the disaster and it plays a fundamental role in the recovery of people in the sense of security they have in their opportunities to eventually develop new businesses and reach a certain level and quality of life.

DM: Thank you for this.

GL: Thank you very much.

DM: Gonzalo Lizarralde is a professor at the School of Architecture at the University of Montreal, who holds the Fayolle-Magil Construction Research Chair there. He joined us from our Montreal studio. Coming up in our next half hour, one of the greatest artists of our age trains his eye on one of the greatest human stories of our time. Ai Weiwei on the migrant crisis and his film, Human Flow. I'm Duncan McCue and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

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Ai Weiwei's new documentary showcases humanity and scale of the global refugee crisis

Guest: Ai Weiwei

DM: I'm Duncan McCue and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

AI WEIWEI: Yeah, just going those kids walking there. Yeah, that’s him, I want to interview him. Where’s your daddy or mom?

CHILD: My dad and mom is in Afghanistan. I’m with my aunt. They are in Afghanistan, I’m with my aunt, I’m here because they don’t have money to come here.

AI WEIWEI: Do you miss them?

CHILD: Yeah, I miss them. They are in Afghanistan.

AI WEIWEI: You’re such a smart boy, you must be a very good student in school.

CHILD: Yeah, thank you. I am in first position in school.

DM: The sound of two different worlds encountering each other. That was the great Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, meeting a young Afghan refugee at a makeshift refugee camp in Europe. Ai Weiwei has been getting to know a lot of refugees right around the world of late. That meeting was behind the scenes of his new film, Human Flow. The documentary was filmed on the frontlines of the global refugee and migration crisis and took him to 23 different countries. It's a subject very close to his heart as a dissident and activist, he's tasted exile more than once in his life, including today. After being surveilled, arrested, jailed and beaten by the Chinese government, Ai Weiwei and his family now live in Berlin, Germany. Last September he was in Canada to receive the Adrian Clarkson Prize for Global Citizenship at 6 Degrees Citizen Space, an event hosted by the Institute for Canadian Citizenship. Ai Weiwei joined Anna Maria Tremonti in our Toronto studio. Here's their conversation.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: I was very moved by your film, but I also found it very disturbing, I couldn't stop thinking about it. Is that what you wanted?

AI WEIWEI: It's a film not to please people but rather to alarm the society. What kind of time we’re in and what kind of potential human crisis can develop.

AMT: 23 countries.

AIWEIWEI: Yeah, and 40 camps, 900 hours of footage, 600 interviews. It brought me a more profound knowledge about the so-called refugee crisis. Under the history and the geographical difference, refugees can be defined as war casualties, also can be environmental problem and famine and a lot are religious problems. So it's a very broad topic and it affects everybody.

AMT: You call it a human crisis not a refugee crisis.

AI WEIWEI: Yes I think this is in every respect is a human crisis. And not only telling the story about the one who is victimized, also telling the story of 21st century, the world, let this happen, right in front of our eyes. And not come up a clear resolution, our leaders are not even have the vision and courage to stop crisis like this.

AMT: You say it was very profound for you. I'm wondering if it also made you cry sometimes?

AI WEIWEI: I'm a sentimental person. You know, I can easily have tears when I see the situation. But this is much deeper than that. It's really touches very deep understanding about who we are and how we can, our society can really live together. And that to see all those the values we treasure the most can easily be deteriorated and also be betrayed. So it's more than just sadness, sometimes it's anger, sometimes it’s disappointment. But still I believe individuals possibility because I think in every individual's mind and heart there's a universe that can be clearly defined and be through our act, our behaving, we can tell the world who we are and what kind of world we want to be.

AMT: For those who have not yet seen this film, because it's not available yet everywhere, but it will be soon. Give us a sense of the scope of this project. What did you, beyond the actual countries and everything else, in terms of shooting and what you were trying to bring to the fore?

AI WEIWEI: The film started as a personal journey. I went to Lesbos, which is a Greece island, about almost a million refugees come from Turkey and landed in this Greece island. Then they start to walk through the Balkan road, you know. And then go to Turkey to see what's it like, because about three million refugees are settled or deported, you know, into that nation, which already is very troublesome with it’s own civil wars, you know, against the Kurdish people. And then it brought us to Lebanon, Jordan, has a long history in dealing with refugees, and also not only in the past with Palestinians but also with Syrians and today. And then Israel, Gaza, and then we sent teams to Bangladesh, which is still developing in shocking speed. In the past months or so over 420,000 refugees has been pushed away from their home.

AMT: The Rohingyan refugees.

AI WEIWEI: Yeah, then the one thing we cannot avoid to go is Africa. So we went to Kenya, see the camps there, has been a long time even forgotten because of the Syrian war. But the refugees there are in very crucial condition and the environmental situation is getting worse. And, you know, the population is getting bigger. So it is going to be the next wave of refugees and a still, now what happened in Yemen. And, you know, the refugees across the Mediterranean Ocean to Italy, which already have about 4-5,000 people dead in this year alone. So it's all shocking numbers. And then you have, you cannot avoid to go to Iraq, which war created by Americans. And the war still going on, the casualties is tremendous, because the war creates extremists such as, you know, still active in many many cases. And Afghanistan, the long-time war between, you know, also America involved, Russia was involved, and Pakistan. And many other places in Europe, Germany, and Calais in Paris, and Italy. So it's many many locations, very very broad view about refugee condition. Of course it's not never complete because it’s just one artist’s effort, everything in one year. And we start knowing nothing about refugee situation, completely from zero. So that's how it started.

AMT: And you go, as an artist, you go very very wide and you show us the scope of it and then you go very very small. And we see their faces up close. You’re, talk to me about how you use those images and you juxtapose them.

AI WEIWEI: As a film structure, to cope with such a broad and complex story, so we have to design a visual structure, under how to telling the story, not to get the audience totally lost. But at the same times to reflects the real condition. You can see this whole film is a broken mirror. So every pieces reflects the reality. And then also functions more like a poetry, sentence, vocabulary, and a paragraph, and it jumps. And but structures a huge amount of sensitivity, emotion, and texture, colours, and beautiful scenery, and a sad sad human face, you know, detailed children's and the women and the desperate conditions in those camps. So you have so many senses put together as it become a blanket of such a very very dense and textured condition.

AMT: You have spoken about growing up in a communist country in how you see, how you can show the collective and the individual. Can you talk to me a little bit about that?

AI WEIWEI: Yes I, the society I grew up basically there's no individual. There’s always being seen we are unified for one ideology, for one nation, one idea. So that kind of thinking defines what authoritarian society is about. And I grew up in this kind of society, and know how those power functions and how individual, why individual [unintelligible] doesn't function in society. My father was victimized by being a poet. And his generation millions of people has been crushed without a single voice can be heard. So that gave me some kind of perspective in how those people in power are trying to dismiss the senses of individual, which is most dangerous for this kind of society. But at same time, you look at the world more broad, in the more, you know, you have a world point of view always trying to figure out what is the reason, what is, you know, you have this kind of critical thinking, you know, how those refugees become a refugee? What is the reason? You know, how those can be stopped? You have to come out this kind of thinking.

AMT: You have, again, you did this in other places in your art is well, with the sunflower seeds. It's one big installation but it's individual little porcelain seeds.

AI WEIWEI: Yeah, the seeds consists about a hundred million individual pieces made by hands independent years with thousands of craftmen. And each of them are different, none of the two are the same. But in this massive exhibition it looks identical and structured a large massive installation for people to experience it. Is always have struggled to think from a visually or to trying to imagine how those words relate to the real life.

AMT: There's a shot I keep thinking about in your, in Human Flow, I thought I was looking at a full screen of what looked like some kind of a screen or a barrier with little ants or flies walking on it. And the camera gets closer and closer and then I realized to my horror that I'm looking from above, the camera’s above and it's descending, and those lines that I think are a screen are actually individual, all uniform squares of refugee shelters and those things moving in between are the refugees moving in between. It's shocking.

AI WEIWEI: It is shocking. But it offers you perspective, how fragile the human condition can be. You know, we are often over exaggerating our own existence, because we think we are most powerful and we’re masters of the Universe, and we often have these kind of wrong wrong illusions. But it come to a certain point, we’re just like ants or we are almost invisible. So it's really matter of perspective. How we look at ourself and how the examine our positions in the much larger landscape and towards nature, and, you know, planet. And then we have to balance out our decisions and then to have respect for others.

AMT: You talk about respect a lot. At one point we see you, you're joking with the man, you're trading passports, and you give him your Chinese passport, he gives you his Syrian passport. And you're smiling and then you said to him I respect you.

AI WEIWEI: Yes, I said I respect you, I respect your passport. And ironically, his passport even he values the most during this kind of escape. It means nothing. Nobody would recognize that passport. And my passport, I just get for a few months, before for years the authorities would never give this personal identification paper to me.

AMT: Talk to me a little bit about why identity matters so much then? What you saw, the people you met going through, and how you relate to that as a man who has experienced so much exile yourself?

AI WEIWEI: Identity is such a profound question we all face. Doesn't matter rich or poor or fortunate or unfortunate people or high position or lowest bottom of the society. We all face an identity questions or crisis it can be. So you see nation like United States or Germany, now, or England, extremely troubled by self-identity. What values that society represent and who is speaking. And in those values, you know, in defining those values whose rights has been violated, would never be heard of, and who is defending what? So all those things make, not only make we understand ourself but also make how the other people judge about us. And which is very essential form for life or for being, to have those identity. Because that's the form of life. It's the course, the life itself. So the whole struggle about nationality, border, and fences, really is part of our self-identity.

AMT: It's interesting huh, when a whole mass of humanity is denied an identity, those who think they can hold an identity in a piece of paper try to like put walls around that identity.

AI WEIWEI: If anyone’s identity being ignored or to be, you know, to see as not as important, that is really threaten situation to human as a whole. The humanity is one thing, it cannot be separated. Men, women all created equal. This is a very fundamental idea about human being as identity itself. But once someone being pushed or excluded because the nationality, because of their religion, because different language, that only hurt everybody because it touches the very fundamental beliefs about who we are.

AMT: I want to ask you a little bit more about humanity, because you go out of your way in this film to show us joy amongst refugees who are really suffering and really feeling isolated, but you find moments of joy as well. Why was that important to you?

AI WEIWEI: That joy is about who we are. If you’re cold then you need a cup of tea in any place, you know, you need a jacket, if your socks are wet, you want to give your dry pair to your son because you feel that will cause him coughing whole night. And if you see somewhere is leaking, running, maybe you think oh it’d be nice to have a light in the night time, but they don't have a light at nighttime in many of the camps. So when they're holding these first refugee, the film cannot tell but I can tell, that guy has no arm, just one arm. So then you think about what happens when a young man just have one arm and what kind of future can that man has? So all those things are so essential, you know, end of the film in Iraq, this man also walking with one arm. And if those things doesn't touch us, doesn't raise questions about all those are warfare, you know, all those arms selling, you know, all those crazy craziness, you know, about nuclear you know, bombs still existing. And if we don't ask those questions why? Why we cannot get rid of it? Then you are already ready to accept all those horrible conditions is going to happen for next generation and the generations to come. If we're not conscious about global environmental change, the ecosystem, then easily, very easily the mankind can be wiped out. This whole miracle can just come to the end. Then there’s nothing to talk about. The world, why we need freedom of speech? Because basically the world is silent, the Universe is silent. You know, we never find a planet and a species like human, and to talk about freedom of speech.

AMT: I want to ask you about your activism and the way you think, and the issues you want to bring forward. You could have been an activist of a different kind but you chose, or maybe you didn't, you chose art to bring these to the forefront. Was that a choice or was that just in you? Why do you?

AI WEIWEI: It happened to be just in me because my father was a poet. So I try to think if he's not a poet, if I don't grow up in this hardship with him, to be pictured as an enemy of the nation and not to follow him to clean all those public toilets, not to see him being [unintelligible] by my classmates, throw stones to him, and the right guard would pull the basket of ink from his head and to make him totally black, to come home at midnight. You know, through all those ironic conditions, I would never think I can become artist. Artist is not easy job. You know, I'm not a decoration just to make pretty images. I'm always learned about human condition and humanity and what moral and philosophical level we are in. And if we talk about [unintelligible] judgment what are we really talk about? So those things are so important for me, to hold on is to survive, you know, to find myself identity, to give my own practice a reason.

AMT: You talk about your father. You were you were like an infant when your father was forced into exile. You were born when he was in exile.

AI WEIWEI: I was born in the same year he was exiled. For 20 years he's not allowed to write words. And I grew up in these not refugee, but these kind of exile camps.

AMT: Do you think of yourself as a refugee today?

AI WEIWEI: I never really think that way but we have so many similar or identical qualities, such as being pushed away from your own country or language. And also you still have to fight for your own existence for quite some time. I never get recognized, like, I'm 60 but my first exhibition started 13 years ago, but before that time I was doing many other jobs, you know, with architects or as a construction builder and a street artist, babysitter, and house cleaning, do house cleaning quite often. And, you know, I have been through everything and I enjoyed every moment actually when I was doing it, you know, it brings me tremendous joy.

AMT: Well, and even after in those 13 years you have been arrested, you've been jailed. How many days was it you were in a cell with two guards who never left your side?

AI WEIWEI: I was being secretly detained, from taken from airport, they put a black hood over my head to take a secret military camp which nobody knows where, and two soldiers, military soldiers, stand in front of me, 80 centimetres away, look at me at 80 centimetres away, just stare at me without blink, 24 hours a day, even when I take a shower, they were still stay so close. And midnight standing right next to my bed, you know, the light is always up. So that's not most difficult. The most difficult is you start to feel you are at someone's hands, which make your life has no meaning, because they don't recognize your existence and you have absolutely no connection to anybody. Your mom doesn't know where you are. Not anybody, no lawyers you can contact. It just clearly tell you how vulnerable you are. It's kind of like a training or some kind of through this kind of abusive behaving. But to think about a state kidnapping their own citizens and only because I have different ideas about what a society should be. You know, I peacefully post those ideas on the internet. That bring me in such quite absurd situation.

AMT: Can you go back to China now? Or would you?

AI WEIWEI: I’m a Chinese citizen. I have a Chinese passport, that means I can go back to China but two of my lawyers serving sentence, One is five years, one is over ten years and it clearly tells me and many many of my friends, activists, are in jail or hold without trial in secret place. So send me a clear signal they can do anything, it's unpredictable. That's the power of these kind of society, to let everybody know there is no law, there's no rule. Everybody is vulnerable.

AMT: That's where the refugees we meet in your film intersect with you, huh? So many of those people would have been jailed. They came from countries where they could disappear, no one would know.

AI WEIWEI: Yeah, they all have same sad story. Nobody even want to repeat because it's just beyond belief.

AMT: And so many children. I was really struck by the numbers of children in refugee camps.

AI WEIWEI: Around 65 million refugees, at least will be 20-30 million are children. Think about those children would have, you know, average refugees would have this status for over 20 some years. That's their life. So think about that generation growing up, they never learn anything. All they learned is how indifferent human or how crude different human can be. So what are you expect?

AMT: You brought your son with you when you shot some of this.

AI WEIWEI: I did. I often bring my son to experience, you know, it's real life, it's about his father. And I think it’s privilege to spend time with your children and show them real life.

AMT: How old is he?

AI WEIWEI: He, the time when we went to refugee camps, he was around almost six and now he's eight.

AMT: What kind of conversations have you had with him around the kinds of things that you showed him?

AI WEIWEI: I always carefully show him the reality, but the same time not to influence him, not to give my ideas to him. And I think children are smart enough to make their judgment and later those information may help them to look at the world.

AMT: What does he ask you?

AI WEIWEI: He of course many things could not, it’s beyond his understanding, you know, why, why those wars happening. It's beyond my understanding. You know, why people are so indifferent to other people's tragedy. You know, why we celebrate ourself but same time we know that celebration has casualties. And who can answer those things? I'm trying to learn those and I'm trying to cope with my learning.

AMT: And as you try to cope with your learning, those of us who watch this film are also learning new things and seeing through your eyes, and seeing what you've shown us. But I'm wondering what has this journey taught you? Or what has it made you ask maybe that you weren't asking before?

AI WEIWEI: It taught me several things. First I have a much deeper or profound understanding about the human condition in the global sense. It breaks through from Ai Weiwei as a dissident of Chinese authoritarian society into a global citizen. You know, to really see humanity in global condition. Which is so valuable for me because that always is something I always wanted to do, is to redefine humanity and human dignity in a much larger perspective. Which is challenging but it’s worth every bit of it.

AMT: Ai Weiwei, thank you for your work and your vision.

AI WEIWEI: Thank you so much to have me.

DM: Ai Weiwei is the director of Human Flow. He spoke with Anna Maria Tremonti last September, when he was in Toronto to accept the Adrian Clarkson Prize for Global Citizenship. If you've been following Ai Weiwei's work and Instagram page, you know he loves his selfies. So have a look on our website for Ai Weiwei's selfie with Anna Maria Tremonti. That's at cbc.ca/thecurrent. And that's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q. British writer Caitlin Moran is on the show to talk about her new novel, "How to Be Famous." And remember, you can always take The Current with you to go on the CBC Radio app. It's free, free from the App Store or Google Play. We started today's show off with a look at the efforts to keep the Inuktuk languages alive and thriving online. We'll leave you with some music from Inuk artist, Kelly Fraser. Based in Ottawa, she's found an audience online for her recordings of popular English language songs, translated and sung in her traditional language. Here she is singing one of her most popular ones, "Diamonds" by Rihanna, as performed in Inuktitut by Kelly Fraser. I'm Duncan McCue. Thanks for listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Song: "Diamonds" by Kelly Fraser]

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July 9, 2018 episode transcript

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