Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Thank you all for joining us this afternoon.
My name is Ikumi Kawamata and I come from Japan.
I am a social work major here at Gallaudet
and I'm in my senior year.
I'm incredibly honored to be here
and welcome our two very special presenters
who have traveled a long way from South Africa to participate
in our celebration of the Deaf President Now anniversary.
We know that this semester we have had a lot of events
to celebrate D.P.N. and through all of these events
we've learned a great deal about what transpired
during that protest.
And we've also been able to recognize
how important the event was for our deaf community.
We know that the event impacted the deaf history
here in the United States and we also know that it impacted
the life of deaf people throughout the world.
The world looked towards Gallaudet and that movement.
The world together claimed
that deaf people can do whatever they intend to do.
The world together stood up for the rights of deaf people
all over the globe.
It's a perfect ending to have these two speakers
with us today offering that international perspective.
The names of our two presenters are
our Honorable Wilma Newhoudt-Druchen.
And this is how we sign her name.
Oh, so sorry.
I didn't do that quite right.
And our second presenter is Bruno Druchen.
First let me tell you who Wilma is.
She is a graduate of Gallaudet.
She graduated in 1992 in social work on this campus.
She went back to South Africa as an advocate and making sure
deaf people had access to services in South Africa.
She became the director
of the South Africa Deaf Federation
and later became the president of that organization.
And she is now a member of the parliament
and she is serving her third term as a parliament member.
In that capacity, she is responsible
for the Committee for Youth, Children and Disabled people
to make sure the quality of life improves for them.
Now she serves as the vice president
for the World Federation of the Deaf.
And she is also a board member
of the World Federation of the Deaf.
She has received innumerable awards,
including an honorary doctorate of law degree from Gallaudet
as well as others.
Welcome Wilma.
Please come to the stage.
Thank you for that introduction.
Thank you so much.
Hello everybody!
Thank you Gallaudet.
I am very happy to be here.
I really am honored to be here again at Gallaudet.
And thank you for the invitation.
I'm sorry that Dr. *** isn't able to join us this afternoon.
Because he's the one who wrote the letter of invitation,
and I wanted to thank him personally for that.
He wrote it to me in November of last year
and I of course responded affirmatively.
I hadn't actually looked at the actual topic
until time came a little bit closer
and I knew I was coming here for this presentation
and I looked at what I was being asked to present about.
I looked a little closer at the topic was for today
and how I could approach that.
Normally in South Africa I'll do some research
and explain about these different terms
and make some definitions and so forth.
But when I was thinking about coming to Gallaudet
and Gallaudet University, I knew I didn't need to do that.
You can all look up terms
and figure out the definition on your own.
So I thought I should take a different approach.
Here we are in the 25th anniversary
of Deaf President Now.
With that, I thought that I should take an approach
that really ties together all of the these events
and makes it clear how they are related.
Okay?
Okay, here's an example.
In order to understand today you have to understand yesterday.
That means if you want to understand today,
you have to understand history.
History is VERY important.
The history of the Deaf President Now movement
is VERY important.
We must never forget that history.
This is how I sign "history," if you see that sign.
Again, remember how important it was.
And how important it is.
You know, I've made a lot of presentations
around civil rights and human rights and the Bill of Rights
and we have all sorts of iterations of what are rights.
Why do we have these things?
Why have these events taken place?
Why is it so important
we have these types of declarations and documents?
Why was it so important for us to have the movement
called D.P.N.?
I don't have the answer.
You have the answer.
Especially since those of you who are here.
Now when we talk to our children and youth,
you have to understand the movement
so you can teach them about that.
You have to explain to them why these things happened.
So I came to Gallaudet in 1988,
which means I missed the protest just by a hair!
It happened in March and I came in August.
So I missed it just by a few months.
But that doesn't mean we didn't know what was going on here.
We absolutely knew.
The protest was televised there and we all saw you marching.
I want to tell you I came from South Africa.
And if you remember at the time
Apartheid was part of that canvas of the country.
I came here at the age of 24.
Now remember most of you come to college
when you're 17 and 18.
So I came as an older student.
And I remember it was my second semester.
I was sitting in a history class.
And the professor was Dr. Joe Kinner.
And I looked around the class at my classmates
and it seemed like I had perhaps said something wrong
by what I was seeing.
Remember I was coming from Apartheid where black people
were oppressed and laws absolutely supported that.
So they were talking about the history of the world.
And I happened to love history.
And I love in particular the French revolution
and the protest that took place.
Now we have to think about why that protest took place
and hold onto that for just a second.
Okay?
Now also think about Russia.
They engaged in a protest,
and we need to understand why that happened.
Remember communism was part of that picture.
There I was in my class in 1988 and Kinner smiled at my comment
and the other students had a less positive response
when I talked about communism.
And I had to explain I didn't necessarily support communism
per se, but I did support people fighting against oppression,
just like the French revolution.
These people were poor and they needed to fight against that.
And then China is another example.
And there's a lot of examples of oppression there.
Mao was the leader and they were forced to follow
through oppressive tactics.
And it wasn't so much about philosophy
as it was about fighting oppression.
That's why I supported any of those movements.
Here, again, fighting oppression and uprising, a protest.
We have to ask ourselves why do these happen?
And for D.P.N., we have to ask ourselves why it happened.
It happened because deaf people were oppressed
for years and years and years.
It was time to resist.
That is something we have to remember.
Sometimes people look at the protests
that are happening throughout the world
and they think they're silly or invaluable.
But you cannot make that kind of assessment
without knowing why those types of protests happened.
Poverty in and of itself is a cause
for these types of protest over and over again.
And we have to understand what's behind that.
Some people don't like unions.
Worker unions.
But again, why do we have those unions?
The unions are important.
They are the organizations that fight back,
stand up and protest for the rights of people.
Was D.P.N. important to us?
Yes or no?
Absolutely!
It was hugely significant!
Regardless of the fact that it happened 25 years ago.
We have to remember.
We have to remember its importance and its significance.
I already mentioned the French Revolution
and a number of these other movements or revolutions.
And again, we need to not just look at the face
of these movements, we have to look very closely
at what caused them and what were some of the complaints.
When every revolution starts,
there's people coming together and they're thinking
about how to stop war or how to stop oppression
or how to make sure that workers have rights
or children have rights or migrants have rights.
And that people have freedom.
Okay?
So often these conversations start with the government.
But they're not the ones who really take action.
It's the people.
It's the grassroots.
It's the American people.
It's the South African people.
It's these people who developed the conventions.
Now for me, in my country,
does my country accept these conventions?
Does my congress ratify this or not?
If not, we need to say why.
Conventions about rights of children.
Are they ratified?
What about people with disabilities?
And then is it signed or is it ratified?
When it's ratified, it has more power.
If it's signed, it's nice for show but it doesn't have teeth.
When it's ratified, we know it can be enforced.
My country has adopted these.
Okay?
You need to know that.
So the World Federation of the Deaf.
I am honored to see a former president of the WFD
right here in our audience today, a great honor.
So who is the World Federation of the Deaf?
And why do we need them?
What are they about?
What are they for?
Why do they even exist?
And how is it that W.F.D. works?
W.F.D. does very important work.
They go out to government officials,
they speak to them in person, they knock on their doors,
they have arguments and debates
and try to get them to understand our plight.
And that's W.F.D.
They have done incredible work.
You know government officials
don't really understand the experience of deafness
or understand why deaf children need to go to a special school,
or especially why a deaf girl would need to go to school
in many countries so we need to explain these things.
We need to talk about our sign language
and how it's important and why it's important.
And we need to explain why it is
that we don't use American Sign Language.
We need to help people understand our experience
and our culture and why we are oppressed in particular.
Again, who is W.F.D.?
These are the board members.
And the board members hail from all over the world.
This gentleman is from Nepal.
He's a teacher.
This person is from the United States and also Norway.
He is from England, the U.K.
He used to be involved with media.
This gentleman is from Turkey.
Bosnia.
Yeah, Bosnia.
Mexico.
Finland.
Norway.
Russia.
And this is the W.F.D. president from Australia.
So you can see how they come from all parts of the world
and we're able to share our experiences with each other.
We are able to work together to get our government
to adopt these conventions that will support
the wellbeing of deaf people.
Again, I speak of history.
Why is history so important?
I want to be sure that my children
and my children's children and the generations after them
understand our history.
That they understand deaf history.
That they understand that the fights took place
to get us to where we are.
And books that document history offer such value to us.
So WFD serves a certain group of people.
In our world, we have 6 billion people.
From that 6 billion, there are 72 million deaf people.
And the board really likes to remind us
that we represent 72 million people.
And he says please dress appropriately,
because you represent a lot of people and you never know
when you might be representing
in front of some very important people
and/or government officials.
Okay, so of those 72 million people throughout our world,
80% of them live in developing countries.
80%.
Are living in developing countries.
That means, oh, in addition only 17%
of those 72 million are receiving an education.
You know, we always hear
that Gallaudet is the cream of the crop.
I sign this a little bit weird.
That's what they say, right?
That's true.
You all have access to education
and you should really understand how important that is.
And really remember that there are a lot of deaf children
out there who do not have education.
So when you get your education here,
you're responsible to go out there and make sure
as many other deaf and hard of hearing children
can do the same.
When I was young, I didn't have education.
Government officials thought that it wasn't important.
The deaf, young child,
they thought it was an absolute waste of money.
And there are many governments who still think that way.
I entreat you, when this celebration is over,
don't stop your work.
Continue your work, especially in the area of education.
And only 3% of that 72 million are bilingual
which means they're getting accessible education.
Okay, and I repeat
that Gallaudet is the cream of the crop.
It is.
Education is so valuable.
You know I have hearing children.
And I tell them, the education for deaf people
is not nearly as good as it is for you.
I tell them I had to work really hard.
And I continue to work hard to elevate education
for deaf children.
And I know that deaf children don't read the same
as my hearing children do.
So again, only 3% are bilingual.
And receiving education through sign language.
This is so important.
Government officials do not understand this.
They don't understand any of this
and it's upon us to make sure that they do.
Even when they change every year or two,
we have to explain it again and again and again.
And our work continues.
And our work is cyclical.
So once again, when the celebration is over,
our work is not.
The inspiration that came from the protests must continue.
So we know that W.F.D. is an international organization.
Some of the things that they do is hold
conferences and workshops.
Every year we have a full conference and we host it.
And then we plan the next four years.
This is the vision of WFD.
Deaf people have full human rights in an equal world
where they and their sign languages are protected
and included as part of human diversity.
This is emphasized for us
because the world does not see us as equal yet.
They do not see sign language as equal
to spoken language yet.
Society does not see us as equal citizens.
So we must uphold this vision and share this vision.
Can you imagine if we were able to accomplish this mission.
But that's essentially what it is.
A real joining of all deaf people throughout the world.
And this is our mission in words.
The World Federation of the Deaf advances
and promotes deaf people through cooperation
with the United Nations and its agencies.
The National Organization of Deaf People
and other partners and affiliates.
This is why I mentioned those conventions.
W.F.D. needs to be familiar with the conventions
that are out there and how to take advantage of them
to boost the rights of a deaf child.
The millennium goals.
Are deaf people mentioned in them?
The W.H.O. recently put out a statement
that was oppressive to deaf people.
And it was the World Federation of the Deaf
asked them to revise it.
We couldn't insist on it.
We had to go in and make some recommendations.
This is the World Health Organization.
UNESCO, we had to step in and help them understand.
We do a lot of this.
We have to understand the role of these people
who play in the international fields.
So we have four primary goals for our next four years.
International human rights advocacy
and this is everywhere.
When we go to a board meeting,
we meet government officials there
and we take the opportunity to advocate there
and explain and educate.
Help them understand what's available within their area,
who they're responsible for.
Human rights training activities.
We look for funds from human rights organizations
and then use that to teach throughout the countries.
We recently added a human rights official
who happens to be deaf.
We want to make sure that any information we get
is shared at UN meetings to make sure
that we're all communicating with each other
and have the same information.
Our fourth goal is to strengthen the federation.
We are not a rich organization.
We need your support.
We need your financial support
so that we can do the work that we want to do.
We only receive funds from the Finish government
at this time.
So we are really looking toward other countries
to help support us.
For when I attend for the board, W.F.D. doesn't pay for that.
It's the South African federation that pays for it.
And that's the case with the other board members, too.
Those meetings and the travel for that is not funded
by the world federation, but by the individual nations.
These meetings happen twice a year.
Of course when we're there, we take advantage
of building leadership and doing education and advocacy.
It can be wearisome.
But other times it is completely inspirational.
We know that we can develop our community further.
Some of you know this.
But I have adapted it for the human rights perspective.
Okay.
This is really visual.
Any information that we get, we need to make sure
that it's done visually and that it's done in sign language.
Deaf people need a visual language.
We all know that.
We also know that access is often provided
through interpreters, but the government does not understand
why they need a whole other body
and sometimes a whole other two bodies in the room
to make access happen.
And we are responsible to go to government officials
to make sure they do understand why we need that.
Bilingualism or multi-lingualism,
however you say that.
Whether you have one or many languages.
We know that we need to make all languages work
so that deaf people can get access to information
and knowledge regardless of how the language plays out.
W.F.D. is very focused on accessibility
and we are working with other disabled organizations
within our nations and other nations
to break down any barriers to access.
WFD works very closely
with the International Disability Alliance
and if for any reason a W.F.D. representative can't go,
someone from the ISD does go,
and we work very closely with them
and other disabled organizations.
I'm not going to go into each of these articles with you.
I just want to highlight.
There's a few conventions that are VERY significant.
These five listed here
specifically mention sign language.
We worked very hard for eight years to get the language
in these articles.
And they're here.
We succeeded.
There were eight ad hoc meetings attended
by a number of nations and they did advocacy work as well
and we succeeded.
Article II, the definition.
Article IX, accessibility.
Article 21, freedom of expression and opinion.
Article 24, related to education,
which of course is of primary importance to us.
And then article 30, entertainment, cultural life,
recreation, access to movies, theater and whatnot.
So the first step was for the government to sign off on it.
But signing it is not enough.
It doesn't really give power to these documents.
So I go back to my country to implement it.
And it needs to be ratified
and it's only when it is ratified
that it has the type of power that we're after.
And let me explain to you how that happens in South Africa.
So we have the president with the staff,
ministerial staff, like you.
Secretary of state and so forth.
That's within the president's office.
And the staff is the one who attended those meetings.
And then when the conventions were done
and we had a final draft
and the government needs to sign off on it.
And the ministers, the president, the ambassadors
also need to sign off on it.
And then that letter is sent to parliament
and it's the speaker of the parliament house
that reads the letter and decides which committee
the letter should then be referred to.
The letter was sent to my committee.
I was the chair of that in 2004-2009.
So we received this letter saying that we needed
to consider this convention.
The committee did adopt the convention
after discussing it for sometime.
We invited a human rights official because
we do have a human rights office in South Africa.
We invited an official from them and we wanted them
to understand why this was important.
We also invited the Department of International Relations
and Cooperation.
We work very closely with them any time
there's an international treaty or convention,
they're very much involved.
And they will want to know why we're doing the work
that we're doing and they work very closely
with the president.
We would also invite the public and get their response
on whether they see it as a positive or a negative.
And the committee reconvenes.
We decide whether it's important enough to adopt.
Once we do that, it goes to parliament.
From there, it goes out to opposition parties
to see if they would be in support of it.
Then the speaker calls me up to read the declaration.
It's a short statement.
It goes out and then parliament will say
whether they vote, oppose, support.
Nobody opposed it by the way.
And it was ratified.
And then we get a letter that goes off to the minister
and that happened in 2007.
And it was ratified and effective.
But that was just the beginning.
We were very happy it was ratified
and it was certainly something we could celebrate,
but we had to ask ourselves what comes next.
In my position, I needed to call people in.
The president needed to call staff in and take a look
at the convention and ask ourselves
if it would become a disability law or another type of law.
Depending on what the law is,
it goes into different categories of law.
So that was a whole other layer of conversation for us.
One advantage is I'm sitting in parliament.
I can say, "Hey, I want to use our public
whatever means you have to communicate with the public."
And if I were to say that the U.N. convention
ratified this in 2007 but you're opposed this now,
why are you doing so?
And they realized that they lost the argument
and they did need to provide captioning
for the televised parliament meetings.
So again, government officials
don't even have to be there for ratification
but we do have to use the conventions
and help them understand what they're responsible for.
There's a child act that was signed in 2005
and there was a convention and that was in the act.
And although it was related to deaf people
it's a very complex process and we have
all these departments coming in presenting to each other.
So we can use these conventions and these processes.
It's a powerful tool once they're ratified
and I would really encourage all of you
to ratify your conventions.
I now you have laws.
I know you have the ADA.
Is it a strong law though?
Do you need conventions?
I personally think you do.
I always say that you do.
The reason for that is we have varied governments
all over the world that continue to look
to the States for leadership.
If nothing is taking place here, then they don't feel
like they have anything that they need to do.
I beg of you.
If it means another D.P.N. and another protest, do so.
Please ratify all of your conventions.
But you know the protest happened many years ago.
You don't have to tell me why the protest happened.
But the work isn't done.
The world needs America.
They do look to the states.
D.P.N. happened 25 years ago.
What's happening now?
We need to focus on these conventions.
And they can apply to SO many things.
And I look to you to do that in the future.
And I'm hoping that we'll see that in the near future.
Now there are many countries who are in the process
of signing and ratifying their conventions.
Let me give you some of that information.
So 130 ratifications.
130.
And we have 155 signatories.
That's work in process for ratification.
This is one of the most important
human rights conventions ever drafted.
We needed 20 to implement the work.
And we got 20 instantly as you can see.
We have 130.
And 155 signatories.
It does mean that there is more work and all of these countries
need to ratify these conventions.
And W.F.D. is working very hard at doing so
by providing workshops and educating people and advocating.
In Australia they're doing this.
You know our original members all over the world
are doing this work so that we can really understand it.
And some of this stuff is really complicated to read.
Some of these conventions are not optional provisions
because the optional provisions
actually force reporting to the U.N.
So there are some folks who avoid that.
You want to sign and ratify.
Not do one or the other.
So it's very important that you do both.
This is my question to you.
What is today?
What is tomorrow?
It has been 25 years.
And soon we'll be celebrating the 150th birthday of Gallaudet
maybe with some more ratifications.
I leave this question with you.
The world is looking towards you
and we're looking towards each other.
Maybe Russia or Norway will have deaf leaders in place.
But again I entreat you as leaders to ratify
and force the government to do what they need to do.
You have to take that responsibility.
So let me hand the floor over to Bruno.
And then we'll take questions
after he's done with his presentation.
Okay?
Thank you Wilma for sharing such incredible information with us.
Next we would like to invite Bruno Druchen
who is currently the National Director
of the Deaf Federation of South Africa.
He's also got a long history of association
with the World Federation of the Deaf,
organizing the congress, the WFD expert groups
on accessibility and technology.
He's also had a great role in lobbying for language rights
of South African countries.
Long advocated to have African Sign language
as an official language.
Revised tax laws in South Africa for deaf people
to include deaf medical and interpreter expenses.
Please welcome Bruno.
I just want to make sure
that everything is set with the interpreters.
And first I would like to open as I always do, "Viva."
And it means "long life."
This is the sign.
Viva!
Follow me!
Viva!
Viva Gallaudet!
Viva Dr. Hurwitz!
Viva D.P.N.! Beautiful.
So everyone understands this.
Viva.
And viva to Vicki Hurwitz, the first lady.
So any time you see me sharing this, it's very important
to recognize the impact of Deaf President Now.
I remember 25 years ago watching the events of D.P.N.
on television, an inspiring experience
for myself watching this.
Watching the students and the faculty
and the community members protesting.
That became a life-long inspiration for me.
And it was one that I held very close to my heart.
And it continues to remain in my heart
and has become an impetus for all of my work.
We need to always remember, recognize and honor
those who were a part of the movement 25 years ago.
And the movement was so important because it recognized
the oppression that deaf people were experiencing.
And it became a catalyst for change.
It created a very strong community here at Gallaudet
and Deaf President Now not only impacted the United States
but for all of us across the world.
Those in China, Japan, Europe, South Africa.
You all should be proud.
And so this is why I open with viva.
Viva D.P.N.!
And I use that and I share that example with those who can hear.
A lot of hearing people --
and that's incredible that you all have D.P.N.
and that experience from which to work.
We share those experiences with other countries
to let them know they have this opportunity as well.
We're proud supporters of D.P.N.
So I would like to share with you how D.P.N.
has made an impact in South Africa.
So when we talk about civil rights,
civil rights are protections and privileges
given to all citizens by law.
For those experiencing any oppression,
laws are then created to protect them.
I would like to share a little bit of history
of South Africa.
We initially had a South African
National Council for the Deaf.
And that was in 1929 which was run by a group
of hearing people.
There were no deaf members at that time.
And at that time, it was Apartheid
and they became a council for the deaf.
And the perspective was that deaf people
wouldn't be able to represent themselves.
And it was their own Apartheid in the deaf community.
Fast forward to 1979.
We had the first deaf executive member.
Then in 1981,
it was still predominantly run by hearing members.
1988 is the Deaf President Now movement.
It was a movement that shook the world.
And it became a catalyst for other movements
across the world including South Africa.
And those of you in America had a great impact
on the deaf communities across the world
and in South Africa we gathered as a community.
We have 12 different languages
that we communicate with in our regions.
We all gathered and developed the skills
and the experience and the pride
that we needed to create change in our own provinces.
But I don't know that South Africa was ready for that.
We went out into the communities.
We provided deaf culture workshops.
We asked for changes
in what types of rights were given to us.
And we were able to do this because those of you
in the Deaf President Now movement
planted the seeds for us
and then we were finally had
our first deaf chairperson in 1990.
So from 1929 to 1990, the council was administered
by hearing people.
And we finally protested that and demanded
that we have a council run by deaf people.
And we then had the first deaf national director.
Just like you all did at D.P.N.
So we have 12 different languages.
We have interpreters for each language.
And so when we have councils, we have 12 interpreters working.
And in 1997, we had our first congregation
of all of these representatives.
Where our deaf association in South Africa was born.
We have now adapted our languages
so that we rely and share one language.
Then in 1997 we met with the World Federation of the Deaf
and we learned leadership skills
and were able to continue our movements from there.
During that time of Apartheid, the governments
marginalized black people as well as deaf people.
And because of that,
we were never able to make it to the WFD.
And in 1999, we were finally able to attend.
And that was also when we demanded that 90% of the people
who were working in our council in South Africa were deaf.
We had the appropriate representation of deaf people
on our council.
And that's when we were able to join
the World Federation of the Deaf.
There have been a lot of changes since 1994.
We also created laws for equity between men and women.
From 1929 until 2007 we always had male deaf leaders
of the deaf council.
And finally in 2007 we had our first female chairperson.
And that was Wilma.
So D.P.N. made a significant impact on all of these events
that occurred in South Africa.
This is some of the history of deaf education
in South Africa.
In 1863 we had the first programs taught in sign language
by Irish nuns.
And then we move onto 1880 where there was the adoption
of oralism in the schools.
People thought that was a good idea
and that sign language was not.
Because then we can learn how to communicate
like the mainstream society.
Then in 1881, we had the first white deaf school established.
And at that time there were no deaf black schools.
And it wasn't until 1941 that we finally had
the first school for the black deaf established.
So we had these schools established, but other schools
for the hearing in 1976 had their own protest
because the language that was enforced in mainstream schools
were that of the Dutch.
And hearing students in the mainstream schools
had their own protest and demanded their own language
be used in the classrooms.
Then in 1984, the medium of education changed
from the native tongue to English.
Here you see Deaf President Now on the time line.
And as a result of that, those of us
in our own deaf community fought for the right
of having sign language as a means of instruction
for our deaf children.
So at that time there was a movement against using oralism
in the schools of the deaf.
And there were 42 deaf schools involved in that protest.
And now in South Africa it is recognized
that we use South African sign language.
And D.P.N. was the catalyst for all of this.
So you see this banner here that says
deaf education system must change now.
And those ideas initially came from the work
here at Gallaudet from the Deaf President Now movement.
And we made these demands in the deaf education system
and we were honored and given the changes that we needed.
And we thank you for doing that work in D.P.N.
so that we could also apply such changes in South Africa.
And here I share some other international positions
in sign language and deaf education.
There's 1993.
The U.N. convention.
1994, Salamanca statement.
In 1995, we have the World Federation of the Deaf
working together for the rights of deaf people
and deaf education.
In 1996, South Africa made significant strides.
And I'm not going to go through this entire list.
But I would like to share with you
the South African constitution.
The Sign Language Act was a part of it.
In 1997, that was when we had our protest.
And that was where in those 9 provinces,
like you have the 50 states here in America,
we have the 9 provinces.
That made a huge push for change in the human rights
of deaf people.
And that the human rights of deaf people
must be equal to those of hearing people.
And that means instruction happens
in sign language in the schools.
And that education for deaf people
is just as important for education of hearing people.
So that protest in 1997 became the impetus
for a lot of change thereon after.
2003, we had a deaf march, a deaf education march.
It was impossible then at that point for government officials
to resist any of our requests.
They knew that our community had grown strong
and that we would not accept them sitting down,
having a nice cup of tea and having discussion.
And so we believed in our coalition
and having this coalition would create the power
that we needed to make such change.
So that we could provide a better education
for all future generations of deaf children.
So it took us a long time to become a member of the WFD.
And we finally became members
and we were able then to host the W.F.D. in 2011.
It was an incredible experience for those.
It was an incredible experience for those in South Africa,
but not only South Africa, but in all countries of Africa.
And often those in African countries don't have access
and also had a difficult time
even attending the W.F.D. because of Visa issues.
But we managed to have a large congregation there.
We shared ideas.
We shared cultural heritages.
And it was there that we became a global community.
So it became a rich contribution to global prosperity.
As Wilma had talked about before in terms of human rights.
We had the deaf federation in South Africa
and we use these human rights instruments as a way
to lead our work.
We're still very busy.
We're still working to make changes
including creating sign language as an official language
for deaf people.
So we have the parliament, the constitution.
We look for issues of equal justice and equal rights.
We want to ensure that these rights are included
in the U.N. convention
and we're still working now on making sign language
an official language.
In the past, there was a lot of resistance
to listening to our views, but now there seems to be
much more transparency and more willingness
to establish sign language as an official language
as well as all of these other human rights requests.
And we try to teach the government
that we need to have equity in our constitution and our laws
that include deaf people.
And we have to advocate for the fact
that these laws are not equal
for those of us in the deaf community.
And certainly we cannot forget our youth.
You know, Gallaudet had created a relationship
between the NIPON foundation in Japan,
and we used that as a model to set up our own W.D.L.,
World Deaf Leadership program.
We've had some of you from Gallaudet come
and lead workshops on leadership skills.
We've had Jordan and Kubi, and Joe Kinner, myself, and Wilma
and other team members work collaboratively
to develop this program so we can then develop our youth.
And then when those of you who come from Gallaudet leave,
we continue to work.
We share the skills of leadership
and knowledge with our youth.
We give them the skills that they in turn need
to become leaders themselves and to be successful citizens.
And still today we share the legacy of D.P.N.
We even share the story of the four deaf student leaders.
So that our youth know that they are able to do
the same thing to fight for their rights
so they can be successful in their own right.
We focus on women, youth, and the open society
for initiatives for South Africa.
So these are several different areas that we work in.
And we teach.
We teach skills.
We teach leadership skills
and again all of this wouldn't have been possible
without the experience that we had from Deaf President Now.
I have always traveled across the world
and people ask me is South Africa a country,
and is Nigeria a part of South Africa or are they separate?
I want to show you a map of where I live.
This is South Africa and these are the nine provinces.
And we have deaf organizations now
in all of the nine provinces.
And this is where we have the different areas
and offices of deaf South Africa.
So these are the key focus areas
that we work with in South Africa.
So we actually revised them just recently.
We had focus areas in the past, but they became quite outdated.
We focus now on South African sign language.
Deaf education.
Accessibility.
And empowerment.
We ensure that these focus areas are in line
with the conventions, the U.N. conventions.
This will be what we focus on in our work
for the next four years.
We have different programs that focus on women, youth.
Sometimes they have a social focus,
which is the S.A.W. training that you see here.
And then we also have E.C.D.
That's early childhood education or early childhood development.
So you see all of these programs
link back directly to the U.N. conventions.
So we're always looking at the progress
that we're making in South Africa.
We are continuously communicating
with the many different provinces in our space,
in our areas to ensure that we're able to make progress
in all of these different focus areas and the conventions.
What we have learned from W.F.D.
we then share to our community.
So they can continue to fight for the human rights
of deaf people.
So Nelson Mandela made a statement
that I have posted here.
We often keep this at the forefront as we work.
It's important to remember that the fight continues.
The work never ends.
It's a long journey.
It's hard work.
But we see the progress.
Our work continues.
This concludes my presentation.
And before I leave the stage,
I just want to say viva Gallaudet, viva D.P.N.,
viva the first lady, viva Gallaudet president,
viva to my international sign language interpreter.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Truly amazing for us to understand
how D.P.N. has impacted the world.
Your outstanding leadership has contributed to that.
Looking at bilingual education.
We know we need to make progress and inroads
in that area all over the world.
We do, you know.
We planned for a Q&A., but we really have very little time.
We're going to have two or three questions.
We'll take two or three right now.
Our speakers are willing to stay for informal Q&A's
after two or three.
Is this an okay place?
What an outstanding presentation.
Outstanding and powerful.
Really so grateful for you being here.
I have a couple of questions for both of you.
When you talk about the C.O.P.D.,
the Conventions for People with Disabilities,
and it has not been ratified here in the states.
And one of the biggest problems here is political.
And it is the oral factions.
A.G. Bell is a very strong lobby against ratification.
They are proponents for oralism
and have alliances with cochlear implant corporations.
So do other countries have these same types of bodies,
and if you do, how do you fight against them
and how do you get ratification going?
What's your advice us here in American and to Gallaudet
about how it can be more active in getting things ratified.
Again, thank you very much to both of you for that.
I'm the government,
so you should ask the lobbyist how he lobbies.
Okay?
Thank you.
As I said before, policy the like weather.
You know, it changes all the time.
Sun one day, rain the next.
The first thing you have to do is take the first step.
And what you need to do here in the states,
you need to know who are your allies in the house.
Are they Democrats or Republicans?
I'm not talking about oral, not oral.
The reason is there might be philosophical conflicts.
We're not sure it's worth working all that out.
First understand if it's the Democrats or the Republicans
who may be more likely to be in support with you.
Then call in a meeting.
Meet a lot.
It takes years possibly, one or two years.
It's not a single meeting.
And remember that policy doesn't have time for you to just say,
"I need my rights because I'm a deaf person."
It's not like that.
You need to go in there and talk and you need to advocate
and you need to convince people
and talk with the staff people for the other folks
who don't have enough time to talk with you.
You need to build the foundation and the network
and then you'll get the support that you want.
You think about all the things that you need to think about.
It's beside the point.
In South Africa, the way we work is the first thing
we did was talk with the A.N.C.
We did have teas with them and we did get them
to understand our cause.
Then we went to all different kinds of disability groups
and all disability groups need to work with each other.
People out there need to support us in the work.
With that kind of support then you are able to advocate
and you are able to succeed.
If I could add to that.
On an international level, eight meetings.
Okay?
W.F.D. was there.
I.D.A. was there.
The International Alliance of Disabilities was there.
Other international organizations were there.
Other associations who had done a lot of work out there
and they had signed and ratified.
Lots of officiates were there.
But I don't know that there was a representative from America.
From the government or anybody?
Was anyone there from the United States?
I don't think so.
It's all about access, where is access?
And it's important that the disabled groups work together.
And when you have those kinds of alliances,
you can get these laws passed.
At that initial meeting, the government officials
came in to talk with these different groups
of disabilities.
We could hash it out right there.
Whether we agreed or disagreed with it.
We could hash out terms.
We were all together.
Government officials were there.
The disability community was there.
And that process has to take place.
Thank you.
We'll take one last question.
Yes?
Thank you for your presentation.
It was inspiring.
You know I like your analogy
with the sneeze heard around the world.
I feel like here in America, we only sneezed once.
I would like for there to be some more of that.
What could that be?
What would that look like?
And you know that fish live in water.
They don't even realize that they're living in water
until they come outside of the water
and they can see that they're living in water
and often we're doing that here.
We're living in a fishbowl.
So what, from your perspective, do you see
that we could do to make some more, further change?
You know here in the states you have countless opportunity.
Right here on this campus is a wonderful example of that
and then Gallaudet itself provides you
to yet more opportunities to visit other countries.
A lot of our children have never seen educated deaf adults.
They need to see you.
They need to see me.
They need to know that they have a path
that they can follow.
Gallaudet offers all of those opportunities
and remember you are all part of that small three percent
who has real access to education.
When you talk about a catalyst or a sneeze,
there's lots of different ways to do that.
There's building awareness and you have these celebrations
that are taking place.
Sessions around deaf awareness are very minimal.
Maybe I'm wrong.
But I don't think there's enough of that.
Seminars or weeks of deaf people.
We used to have a week.
Now we have a whole month because we've recognized
that schools are closed or there are holidays
and it's just not enough.
So now we have a full month to celebrate
the heritage of deaf people.
That's one of the tools that we use
and that needs to be done here, too.
Not just in one place, but everywhere.
I could sit here and list a number of ideas.
But the Gallaudet President is sitting right there
and he might wonder where all the money is coming from
for all these wonderful ideas.
So instead of doing that,
it is true that D.P.N. was a powerful catalyst.
And I expect all of you to think about how to continue that.
I do.
And I expect you to do so for the future generations
of deaf children.
And as Wilma said, there needs to be
more consciousness raising.
And not just here in the states.
As W.F.D. grows, we need to continue that.
We need to pass on the legacy of D.P.N.
And the national deaf associations
and black deaf advocates.
You have a number of organizations right here.
You have organizations for women.
They all need to work together
and continue to get the word out there.
If new people come in, that's fine.
We all have to work together.
We go to the conferences,
continue to get the word out there.
And eventually we will succeed.
And eventually we will create a better world for deaf people.
Thank you, thank you, thank you so much!
Viva D.P.N.! I can see that other folks have some questions,
but I'm so sorry.
We are out of time.
We are going to officially close for today.
Thank you for taking those long trips to be with us
and to the audience.
And a special thank you to Dr. Greenwald for organizing
all of these special events.
And anybody else who has supported this event,
thank you as well.
If you have more questions,
our speakers have agreed to stay and address them.