BUILDING HUMAN RIGHTS AWARENESS AT HOME

The Symposium is underwritten by Jean Dean Holland
Co-sponsored by Amnesty International UND, Multicultural Awareness Committee, a division of UND Student Government, with additional support by David and Julie Blehm.

The North Dakota Museum of Art is hosting a symposium of humanists, musicians, and scholars to engage the public in the larger human issues posed by the artists in The Disappeared, an award winning exhibition that will close its international tour at the North Dakota Museum of Art. The symposium will grapple with human rights issues including the role of the individual in defining, securing, and protecting the human rights of those within one’s own community, the United States and the greater world. The exhibition presents the history of the disappeared in Latin America and how those directly impacted by such monumental loss sought to come to terms with it.

The Museum needs your support in making this event a success. Consider an on-line donation today or send a check to the Museum. Write Human Rights Symposium in the memo line. If you give on-line, please check General Operating icon. Donations will be recognized on the website, Museum emails and publications.

See Symposium Schedule for full details. Tickets for evening performances held at The Empire Arts Center can be purchased by calling the Museum or at the door of the Empire the evening of the event. Seating is limited, so you get your tickets in advance.

Participants Include:

Click here to see Beah on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.	Ishmael Beah, born in 1980 in Sierra Leone, West Africa, is the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Way Gone, Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. The book has been published in over 34 languages and was nominated for a Quill Award in the Best Debut Author category for 2007. He is a UNICEF advocate for Children Affected by War, a member of the Human Rights Watch Children’s Advisory Committee, Advisory board member of the Center for the Study of Youth and Political Violence at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Co--Founder of The Network for Young People Affected by War (NYPAW), and President of the Ishmael Beah Foundation. He has spoken before the United Nations, the Council on Foreign Relations and many panels on the effect of war on children. He is a graduate of Oberlin College, Ohio with a B.A in Political Science. He currently resides in Brooklyn, New York City.
	There may be as many as 300,000 child soldiers, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s, in more than fifty conflicts around the world. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them. He is one of the first to tell his story in his own words. At the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. Eventually released by the army and sent to a UNICEF rehabilitation center, he struggled to regain his humanity and to reenter the world of civilians, who viewed him with fear and suspicion. This is, at last, a story of redemption and hope.
Sarah Cahill was born into a musical and academic family in Washington, D C At the age of five, her family moved to California where her father, James Cahill, became Professor of Chinese Art History at U.C. Berkeley. With free access to his extensive collection of rare historical recordings, she began formal piano studies at the age of six. Skipping her final year of high school, she went directly to the San Francisco Conservatory. She finished her academic studies at the University of Michigan, combining her studies of the history of music with performance. Early on, she began to commission new works from contemporary composers. According to New York Time Out, “Apart from being an exceptional pianist and muse to scores of inventive composers, Sarah Cahill is a first-rate communicator who specializes in connecting the music she plays to broader streams of everyday life.”	Performance description A Sweeter Music is a new project developed by pianist Sarah Cahill and video artist John Sanborn. Cahill has commissioned a group of composers to write new works exploring the themes of peace and war, for which Sanborn has created video responding to each new composition. The project’s title is from Dr. Martin Luther King’s Nobel Lecture : “We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic melody, that is far superior to the discords of war.” The composers include Terry Riley, Meredith Monk, Frederic Rzewski, Yoko Ono, Pauline Oliveros, Peter Garland, Phil Kline, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Jerome Kitzke, Carl Stone, The Residents, Kyle Gann, Paul Dresher, Mamoru Fujieda, Ingram Marshall, Michael Byron, Larry Polansky, and Preben Antonsen. The evening length performance consists of 6 to 8 compositions performed by Cahill on piano with a 3 channel, 3 screen synchronized video projection for each composition.
Cristian Correa is Senior Associate for the International Center for Transitional Justice. As a Senior Associate with the Reparations Unit, Mr. Correa serves as a consultant for reparations policies in a diversity of settings, including Peru, East Timor, Colombia, the former Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone, and South Africa. Previously, he was Legal Advisor to the Commission for Human Rights Policies of the Presidency of the Republic of Chile, created to investigate and provide remedies for the errors made on the identification of remains of the disappeared; to suggest reparation policies for victims of human rights violations of the 1973-1990 dictatorship, and to advise on the definition of a national human rights policy. He assisted the Home Ministry of Chile for the Congressional debate regarding the creation of the National Institute of Human Rights. He was also the Secretary of the Presidential Commission for Political Imprisonment and Torture (known as the Valech Commission), and later he coordinated the implementation of reparation policies for the victims identified by it. Previously, he was National Director of the Access to Justice Program at the Ministry of Justice of Chile, developing new strategies in legal aid and access to justice for under-served, low-income clients in rural and urban areas throughout Chile. Mr. Correa holds a law degree from the Pontificate Catholic University of Chile and a M.A. in International Peace Studies from the University of Notre Dame.
	Fr. Jack Davis has served in Chimbote for more than 30 years. His parish, Parroquia de Nuestra Soccorro (Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish) encompasses more than 30,000 parishioners, the vast majority of whom survive on pennies a day. Born in 1942 in Devils Lake, ND and ordained as a priest in 1969, Davis has made service to the poor in Chimbote his life mission. In his time in Peru, Fr. Jack has performed thousands of funeral services for children and adults killed by preventable diseases, lack of health care access, violence, and other poverty-related tragedies. He has been robbed at gunpoint, stabbed, and targeted for execution by Shining Path terrorists. He also has spent thousands of hours traveling and speaking throughout the U.S. and Europe in order to raise funds for Chimbote. Fr. Jack is a winner of the Citizen of the Year award, the President’s Award, and the Peruvian Medal of Honor.
Cosponsored by the Multicultural Awareness Committee, a Division of Student Government Emmanuel Jal performing at Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday celebration	"If I testify, I might prevent another kid from losing his childhood." Emmanuel Jal, international hip-hop artist, was born in war-torn Sudan. He was taken from his family when he was six or seven years old and sent to fight with the rebel army in Sudan’s bloody civil war. By the time he was 13, he was a veteran of two civil wars and had seen hundreds of is fellow child soldiers, reduced to taking unspeakable measures as they struggled to survive on the killing fields of southern Sudan. He was rescued by a British aid worker (Emma McCune) who smuggled him into Nairobi and raised him as her own. To ease his pain, Jal started singing in 2005. Jal performed at Nelson Mandela‘s 90th birthday party. Jal has a feature-length documentary on his life and times, which successfully toured the film festival circuit. His autobiography “War Child“ was released through St. Martin‘s Press on Feb 5, 2009. His critically acclaimed third album, “War Child“ was released on May 12, 2008.