On Topic: Ifrah Mansour Episode Five

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Sanjit: I'm fortunate to be joined today by Ifrah Mansour, Somali artist, cultural provocateur, maker, playwright, installation artist, and more. Ifrah’s work is more than just about representing the Somali experience but about a broader notion of a cultural discourse that really transcends any single medium. Ifrah I'm so glad to have you join me this afternoon.

Ifrah: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. You know I’ve never been called a cultural provocateur, I don't even know what that means but it's so fancy.

Sanjit: I'm glad you like it. When I’m looking at your work and I’m sorry we're not able to meet right now in person, I like the way it pokes and prods and nudges people with a degree of satire but also it’s pointed, it's acerbic. And so that's why I felt like the label applied but by all means feel free to change that around. Well I’d love to just talk to you a little about what the transition was like for you, I think you came to Minnesota to do high school, is that right? And you grew up in Somalia before then, is that correct?

Ifrah: So my family danced around in America always looking for a better community, for a better job. So the first state or the first city that we lived in was actually Dallas and Houston in 1998, and then my family felt like we were isolated and didn't see any black people so we literally fled to Seattle, Washington which we learned that there were few other Somali families that had resettled there. I lived in Seattle, Washington for the better parts of my American beginning years and then my family moved to Minnesota cause my dad was having a hard time finding a job in Seattle and also my parents were separated. I was a recent immigrant and a high schooler who finally just learned English and made best friends. I was not happy about moving to Minnesota. I remember just crying and wishing that I knew the idea of getting emancipated from my parents so I can still stay in Seattle, Washington and unfortunately that didn't happen. So my family came to Minnesota in 2003. I think what's really interesting is that in Seattle, Washington there are very few Somali’s or black Muslims out there and I remember being sometimes like the only Muslim, the only Refugee, the only immigrant kid in a school versus coming to Minnesota where I instantly would be like the 5th Ifrah in a classroom. So I always like to talk about the double cultural shock of coming to Minnesota, coming to a state that has so many beautiful Somalis in it. In a weird way I felt like darn it, I'm not the special Somali kid in this class or in the school, those are things that I remember from my beginning years of being in America. So yeah my family danced around in the States.

Sanjit: You know I think that the way you mention in that transition especially between Seattle um and Minnesota had to have been just so challenging especially when you're at that age your building such strong social bonds but like you mentioned too, you're in a city where for better or for worse you’re exotic, you’re an individual until, you felt like you had a unique identity and then you come to the the largest congregation of Somalis in the United States like you mentioned and you’re one of four or five Ifrah’s so all of a sudden that special lost a little bit.

Ifrah: Absolutely, no wonder I wanted to flee back to Seattle right away. But what's really interesting is that another culture shock is I felt like an immigrant especially as a kid, like you were rushed to become American so when I came here I just looked like another super Americanized teen. So it was also like a cultural shock within my community of having a bunch of Somali Elders yelling at me saying ‘okay where is your hijabi? where are your skirts?’ And so I’ve been reminiscing back to those times.

Sanjit: I think you were born in Saudi right if I'm not mistaken? Have you been back to Saudi Arabia or to Kenya where you were in a refugee camp before then?

Ifrah: You know I have not. That's something I feel I don't have in common with all the other beautiful Somali folks. I feel like especially Minnesota Somalis, they're so good at having such strong ties with their mother country. A lot of them, a lot of families make a point to do a family vacation or a cultural education or islamic education during the whole summer by going back to Somalia or going back to Kenya or even going back to the Saudi Arabia for business. Unfortunately I feel like my family never had enough financial means to be able to do that so an adult I've never gone back. My dad was recently in Somali and he came back. It was like eight months that I could have gone and visited Somalia. But I think for me, I feel like I have this deep spiritual need to do it in a right way and I never felt ready, I never felt ready to go back home.

Sanjit: Well it's gotta be nice to be able to try to make that entrance on your own terms right? Not to do a familial outing or a sense of routine but I'm sure when you do, it will have a greater degree of gravity for you.

Ifrah: Oh absolutely, absolutely.

Sanjit: So I’d love to know and I know you’ve mentioned this in different places where you've been interviewed or you’ve written about, which is that at a certain point in time as you’re part of this larger diasporic community here and it's cold beyond belief and there's kind of a broader, kind of white, hegemonic presence here. You start to tilt towards creative practices as being something that helps sustain you. And I guess I’m just wondering if you can just talk a little bit about that shift? I can imagine it wasn't overnight but I just wanted to know if there are maybe specific moments in time that you thought I looked back on that one point in time where I realized that I was starting to make this shift or this turn towards a more creative practice.

Ifrah: Yeah, well I think as I’ve been creating the show How to Have Fun in the Civil War, it has made me dig through my childhood experiences. With that I noticed all the memories that I've always just like bypassed and said those are not important. Like when I was a kid I was notorious for making things with my hands and I would make dolls. And then of course my two older brothers were these arch nemesis who would destroy my dolls, so I would be constantly either fixing or making them. And I think at one point I even set my mother's lovely kitchen on fire because I had decided to make a full meal for my doll that I had created a story for. So it was interesting to notice how I, as a child, I exhibited all this creativity. But I think people were focused on more important things like surviving a Civil War and about getting us to a safer place.

Even in high school I remember I used to doodle so much and I think only then when I got to college and I was on track to be an elementary school teacher that I've gotten a job at a theater and at that theater I saw African American actors and actresses on stage just breathing life to stories and I also I remember not thinking right away then, that's what I wanted to do with my life, I remember just like having just visceral awakening of just watching these beings that look just a little bit like me and I think that working at Mixed Blood Theatre was a critical and important place that helped me awaken my passion. But I do feel throughout my life there all these little nuggets that no one noticed around me, including myself until I've gotten old enough and was creating artistic work about it and noticed oh boy if only someone noticed that early on where would I be right now and had nurtured that talent right away.

Sanjit: Well who did notice it and when?

Ifrah: I always think back to my grandmother who actually took care of me and my siblings more when we were in Somalia. I think my grandmother didn't necessarily say go be an artist, I think what she did is that she nurtured our interests. I remember I wanted to tell lavish stories and my grandmother would, after a long day of farming, come home and at night we would all be sitting outside and she would tell stories and then she would always give me time to tell a story. Then sometimes I would be retelling a story that she told but a lot of times she would allow me to make a silly one. I think that was just a minor way my grandmother gave me the blessing to do what I would end up doing 20 years later as an adult. And I think folks who have given me my first opportunities, given that I was when I was finishing college and was ready to start teaching and there was no way I was going to go back and grab another degree, grab another loan for acting. So all the theaters that gave me my first opportunity like Mixed Blood Theater, Bedlam Theater and InterMedia Arts, Patrick's Cabaret and unfortunately most of these theaters don't exist anymore except Mixed Blood. So these theaters that practically drove themselves to the ground nurturing talent and artists like me and other artists that are creating amazing community work right now, it makes you think about how there is a greater conversation about the Minnesota Arts access resources and fundings.

Sanjit: It sounds like your creative and visual sensibility was evolving almost at the same time as your desire to go ahead and start to think about narrative as another form of creative expression. Beyond talking about your grandmother, and that sounds really powerful when you talked about her telling you stories and her you know indulging in you to make up your stories too, were there other mentors that came into your world that you felt were supportive and if so what was the connection that you think they helped provide you with?

Ifrah: Yeah, oh boy there's so many humans to count. I think the person that's coming to mind is the person who read the first text, the first badly grammar filled that doesn't even make sense text for the play How To Have Fun In The Civil War. And that's the wonderful Maren Ward, who was the co-artistic director of Bedlam Theater. I remember like 6 years ago I had gotten my first big opportunity as a beginning artist to perform out of state but I needed to share something that was cultural, something that was my crowd. I knew that the theaters that have given me my first opportunities were like these beautiful white-led spaces that often gave you resources to create but that also meant like you had playwrights that were creating stories that weren't necessarily about my lived experience. So most of my artistic creation or experiences for my first three years was just being in other people's production and predominantly, all these amazing things that didn't really directly speak to my work.

So this out-of-town opportunity was the first time where I was told ‘hey you could not only perform but you can perform something about your story’ and I'm like yikes I don't have anything nor do I know how to do that yet. And prior to that I had just started dabbling in writing and I think that little bit of writing that would become the play is what I brought. It was literally, I think maybe four pages long like full of bad grammer's. I brought it to Maren Ward and I was like ‘Maren, we gotta turn this into Somali’ and then simultaneously I had created the puppet. I created my first puppet who is now called grandma and the puppet commemorates my grandmother's life and surviving a Civil War and farming and living up to see the fifth of her generation. I think with the puppet and this bad grammar text, Maren was able to make something just intriguing and exciting which got even myself and others to be excited for what would become this play that is still alive with me. And the thing is like whenever I do kids shows and I'm talking to kids and I'm like ‘all of you save all your free writings cause you'll never know if it will turn into a full-on production that goes out to perform throughout the states’ which is what is beautifully and miraculously happening.

Sanjit: That’s a wonderful arc that you talk about there and for me what I appreciate is something that I really believe in, which is the mentorship. Unfortunately I think it's been typecast as someone with more experience giving advice to someone with less experience but what I found is that true mentorship is really about an exchange of ideas and perspectives from two individuals with distinctly different life experiences. I guess one of the things I’m wondering is that as you're continuing on this arc as a maker whether it's through plays or installations or puppets. Are you starting to find opportunities where you’re mentoring others and if so, how are you reflecting on not being a mentee but more of a mentor yourself?

Ifrah: What’s interesting is that even the inclusion of the puppet spoke to the deep need and the lack of nurturing of young East African Talent. To this day I feel like I can't think of another Somali female actor who wants to be on stage as much as I do and I think that just speaks of our larger community disconnect. And that the art is still not reaching to people of color in a way that could greatly impact their lives. I think it was so powerful for me to see and to continue to see all these African-American artists cause I feel like mentorship feeds you in different ways. There is the mentorship of you simply noticing someone who has a similar look and life experiences and that giving you the courage to say ‘if they can do it and they're almost just like me I can do it’ there is that and there is the person who actually holds your hand and listens to you and gives you advice. And there's the person you emulate from afar of course like the great Beyonce and the great Oprah and like these beings just feed you in different ways. They affirm your existence, they sort of give you somewhat of a template of where to follow and where to be.

I do feel like every now and then I get frustrated that I didn't get to see an actual Somali performance female artist here in the states or in Minnesota but at least I've gotten this next best beautiful thing. And for me there are a lot of young poets, a lot of young Somali poets, a lot of future filmmakers. I'm connected to this young Somali girl who wants to make a series and before the epidemic hit she actually created a playwriting club in which she would write the stories and she would let others act. And I thought this is just so beautiful like I'm just going to come and just be in space with you all and I feel like sometimes you just need someone to be in the audience, to be around you, just to let you know that what you're doing is okay. Because a lot of times I feel like as minority communities we don't even get that, which is like step one. Validation of what you want to do with your life is equally important as all the siblings that are going to be doctors and engineers and saving lives.

Sanjit: That validation is tough, right? I think that balance between wanting to be validated but also probably not wanting to be typecast. I’m wondering if there are times for you where you don't want to hear someone say the Somali American Artist but rather just the artist? And then I’m wondering if you can just talk about some of those identity struggles where on one hand there are some fantastic opportunities to start to talk about the broader cultural discourse but if you feel like there's a point in time where the pressure expectation that the work that you're doing is supposed to speak about a Somali voice or Middle Eastern voice or a female Middle Eastern voice.

Ifrah: Yeah, I think that there is a double-edged sword about your identities and all the complexities your identities come with into existence. And for me I'm more so thinking about the ways that it has been a blessing, because at least someone noticed that the Somali voice is missing from this room and let's go find someone who is from that community. Because that itself means a growth I feel like 5 years ago even 10 years ago we weren't thinking about these communities. In fact most of us were saying that these people don't even care for the arts, let’s not even waste resources on them. And I think that is huge progress and I think for me I've gotten the beautiful opportunity to be on stage and in beautiful prestigious spaces in the States and we are slowly but surely getting ourselves outside of the States. And it's just been really beautiful to have all this learning and growth and to recognize organizations that would be honest with you and say ‘hey we've never done this before you are coming from a unique culture that is very different from ours, please let us know if we make mistakes, which we will make mistakes.’ And I think the thing of being tokenized is either you are the expert in your community or you are the representative or you must know everything that's happening with your community. There was one time where I’d gotten, I'm usually like a quiet and peaceful person, where someone was like ‘so what do you think of what Ilhan posted last time’ and I am not a politician so why are you asking me?

So I feel like all of us, we do feel the pressure that we are lumped together and we have to represent for the country that is huge and it has so many diverse Somali’s and languages and it is lumped together. But I think there are times where I feel like I am grateful for all the identities I list on my artist bio because I feel like our identities come with these elements of shame, these elements of not feeling proud. It's so important for me to add the word refugee cause I felt like there were times when new Americans were made to feel ashamed because they come from a refugee background. There are times when Somalis are made to feel like terrorists or people that are up to God knows what. And it's a point of privilege and I’m proud to let the world know that I come with these identities and that I create this work and I'm truly about seeing people's interesting, odd, weird connections.

Sanjit: You mentioned on one hand when someone's asking you what you think about what a specific a congress person said and your response is you're not a politician; you know you're not being political and at the same time I think a lot of your work really provides a tremendous degree of searing commentary on the type of xenophobia and sexism and classism that we see around us. I'm wondering how you balance that focus on the craft that has strong aesthetic leanings for you and when you start to feel like you're engaging in a response. I'm thinking in particular of How To Have Fun In A Civil War but a lot of your other work feels like it’s really putting the spotlight in many ways on the audience, not just on the performer.

Ifrah: This is where I have to give credit to one of my least favourite jobs, working at a daycare. I think I am like utterly fascinated and I'm almost always attempting to recreate this child’s wonder and child's innocence and child’s intrigue and curiosity. I feel inherently like all human beings as much as we carry ourselves to be glamorous and fancy and prestigious, I think at the end of the day we all want to be curious about something. We all want someone to feed our curiosity. So when I'm creating work I am looking for things like ‘oh I didn't know it was that’ or ‘what is that?’ So I’m generally looking for that aha moment from fancy adults to smart adults to God knows what adults and kids as well. I think for me that's how I sort of remove the politics, even though I know we live in a politicized world and everything is political.

But as an artist I can imagine a world where everyone is like seven-years-old again and all we want to know is how the world works and just be in this utter bliss of figuring something out, knowing something, being curious. I remember the first time I ever saw a monk at a library, I was so fascinated. I did the bad stare like the stare that makes people uncomfortable. Till this day I pray for that fellow I'm like ‘oh I hope you forgive me’ but I use that as a bad example, that's not what I want. A lot of times I take my artwork on public transportation and I have these really interesting puppets and the human connection I get is out of this world. All these adults and sometimes kids they all turn into this curious kid and I think that's what I'm really curious about, bringing the curiosity out of people and reminding them that this whole silliness about division and about ‘you're so different, I have to fear you’ doesn't really serve anyone.

Sanjit: It seems like there are so many different metabolisms that you have as you're working and as you’re responding. I'm wondering whether the kind of metabolism for writing a script for a play or practicing lines in a role of being an actor or going ahead and designing and planning and thinking about an installation—and here we are in this really bizarre moment in time as we’re in this global pandemic—and I’m wondering, have you been thinking about how your practice has been shifting, has it been shifting? Are there things that you're discovering about your own practice now that you didn't know a few months ago?

Ifrah: Two months ago I did not care about scrolls. Now my latest art is making scrolls and making sort of poems that go along with the scrolls. I realized that just like everyone else, I was stuck in this culture of hurry and just being stress high. In fact I noticed like I'm missing something very important, that stress from having to constantly be working for the future. Like that show I need to be there, I need to take that airplane to get me there, my puppet is in Arizona right now someone needs to go get it and it's just been really interesting to notice how we've all become, I'm trying to use better positive words. It's just been really interesting to think of like I've been creating and in a culture of pressure, in a culture of hurry and I'm like ‘oh I wonder if my work had the depth and the tender care it needed?’ I was just looking at all my latest works and all that got created in a hurry, that is missing a tooth, that is not fully done. So it's just been really interesting to just notice creatively and to see the odd blessing in disguise within this like horrific pandemic. And I think perhaps maybe everyone else is sort of like noticing that as well. We're all noticing whether it's the relationship we have with the planet over the relationship we have with our loved ones or with the money or with time or with stress. So I'm calling it the great pause for reflection.

Sanjit: The great pause, I like that. I like that you mentioned kind of going back, looking over projects that you’ve hurried over in the past. Are you thinking about using this time to do some mending? You know to go ahead and to take out projects that maybe you felt like we're done in a hurry or that got frayed over time, is this a time where you want to revisit some of these?

Ifrah: Well I’m a very anxious person so part of me is having to find ways to deal with the growing anxiety of what I will be doing two months from now, given that most of my work is canceled. And so a lot of the time I'm spending time on looking for resources, applying for fellowships, applying for grants. I think the other thing is to honor the work as is, cause I feel like as artists especially for me, you honor the work as it is and the idea of editing does not exist. But the idea of adding on exists, so what does it look like to sort of add on to those works and honor how they were.

Sanjit: You know I start to wonder if one of the points of reflection that we have as a broader community, certainly as a community of makers, is a little bit more precious about things now than we were before. You know everyone's making sourdough bread because you can't buy yeast, people are thinking about channeling a pre generational, you know for people that have been in this country intergenerational, their ancestors, their grandmother that survived the Great Depression, they want to be more resourceful. And I start to wonder about that cultural nature of being scrappy and resourceful and what does it mean from a cultural practice sense to conserve all the stuff where as before we were always focused on producing and expositing and talking and maybe we’re just being a little bit more precious and holding up the little morsels a little bit more closely.

Ifrah: Absolutely, I definitely feel like there's going to be this deep need to sort of unearth an indigenous lifestyle or indigenous skill-sets. I'm weaving right now and my grandmother was just a phenomenal weaver, and when I was a child and wanted to play around and run around and never paid attention to her patterns and her skills. I wonder if others are doing the same sort of unearthing. I don't want to call it simple, cause that is insulting, I think it's more of a harmonious way of living. I know some friends are fermenting things right now, they're making their own, just like you said, they're making their own sourdough. Because hey we all got time, no one needs to be in a hurry cause no one needs to go anywhere.

Sanjit: Yeah it's an interesting point for connectivity. I'm wondering if, as you're starting to think maybe because you're thinking about what's next for you and how your craft and your creative practice is going to move through this pandemic alongside you and get to the other side of it, I guess I'm wondering if you'd given thoughts about what leadership feels like? Cause in many ways, when you start talking about the arc of expositing a voice that may include aspects of what it means to be a Somali-American, it includes aspects of what it means to be a woman in this society, to be a woman that is following specific religious details. Are you starting to think about your voice as leadership and cultural leadership in particular?

Ifrah: That is always a scary question because when I applied for the Bush and I failed, that's the question they asked. I think for me like if you were to ask me the question of what kind of impact you want to have on people's lives, I would be more like oh here are all the things I want to do. I think I connect deeply more with the word impact than leader for some reason. Cause I feel like artists, we are in the background as much as we are in front of people, and I think at the end of the day what we truly want is to impact people's behavior, people's hearts. We want people to be kinder to each other, we want people to see each other and I think those are like those are things, at least for me, I feel like these are things that are accomplished in a way that is just so mysterious even to the artist. I would make an art and I would just be amazed at the kind of connections, the kind of people who would connect to it. Like in a hundred years I would not have thought to target for this person to make this connection and you're just like the art is the seed and the people in the way they connect with it is the earth cause you don't know when that seed is going to come out and how the Earth is going to impact it. So for me I feel like that is the legacy or impact that I want to have.

I create work that's really about human connection and building people's hearts. My latest art was placed in an area that normally experiences violence and human disconnect and I think what the art did was that it created this tiny little cultural comfort that everyone in the neighborhood just had so much admiration for. Like I would look at it, I would look at somebody walk into it and I could literally see their face just lighting up, the smile just growing. That's just it you know, my tired aching back and my legs that I can't feel anymore, my throat that's closing, like that's nothing if I could just bring that tiny little joy to someone. And I truly believe that art has the ability to impact people throughout their lives. I'm thinking about all the art that I saw in the beginning parts of my life, which wasn't really that long ago and to think about the impact that it's had on me. I think that's when I'm more curious about and what I get excited about.

Sanjit: Now what I appreciate about that is that you started off by saying that was a kind of dangerous and scary, but what I appreciate is kind of a really, eloquent response to talk about some of those nuances. And what I'm struck by too is that much of your work really seems like it delves into a territory of collaboration in the world that still tries to privilege the kind of individual artists and the individual voice. You seem like you're working a lot with communities of other writers, of other actors, of other artists in, I think, some of the group exhibitions you've been in and I’d love to hear you talk about this degree of collaboration. It always sounds great and it sounds noble but I'm sure that's also been fraught with a degree of tension of sometimes maybe misunderstanding of someone else's intention. I’d just love to hear your talk a little bit about the experiences you've had with the ins-and-outs that you had with collaboration

Ifrah: Yeah I think it's not just collaboration, it's just like my beginning years was walking into spaces and fully knowing that nobody really knows you and if people know you then they know all these stereotypical things. I think there is the discomfort and the weight of reading the room and reading the energy and walking in and saying that today am I an artist or am I a peacemaker or am I a cultural educator or am I a stereotypical debunker? So there is alway that weight and that extra added scrutiny and I know a lot of artists of color get burned by this extra work that you have to do. And I want whatever rooms I walk into, I want to make it better for the next brown person. So I'm willing to do some cleaning, some educational work. So I do feel like the beginning parts of my career I’ve definitely gotten some burns and like emotional exhaustion and just a general feeling of like I'm overworked but not with the art just with the human relationship building.

I think art desperately needs a good human connection. If the relationship is good then the art and the presentation is going to come off. I'm pretty sure you have walked into exhibits where certain artists names are not even spelled right and this speaks to people that didn't do the due diligence and they didn't do their relationship building, they just rushed and now the artist is suffering. I've had several experiences of that but I think for me,I feel like the big takeaways and the learnings is that most of us are all new to each other, we all come from different walks of life. And I feel like if the mistakes are not happening then it almost feels like we're not risking and unfortunately we are not going to grow. We're just going to go back to the cycle of continuing to ignore one of our largest communities.

And so I think for me like I've just been welcoming a lot of whether its organizational mistakes or it's just another artist, I welcome the growth and I want it. I feel like I can't pinpoint an exact example but I see that that's also like the growth part of it. You’re like I have so much respect and honor for the organization and the person, that this was made out of like a genuine mistake. I feel like that one time I did the bad stare at the Monk, I feel like there are mistakes that are going to be made because we are coming from different cultural backgrounds. Something you deem very normal and okay might be completely wrong and a prohibited thing in my culture. And I'm like how are we going to learn that? Is that going to come up in a random art conversation? It’s going to come up in a mistake, so yeah learning with the mistakes.

Sanjit: That learning is something that I'm wondering, have you thought about and have you had opportunities to impart that on others? Is there specific advice that you got for creative practitioners and maybe other women like yourself that are coming into a kind of finding their own way? Maybe they're balancing cultural assimilation but they're also thinking about how they're living in a world where there is an intense amount of political vitriol and an intense amount of discourse. What advice do you have for them to hold space in and rise above that?

Ifrah: Yeah, I think I get invited to panels and interviews like this and I'm always just like expelling. And there was a wonderful poet, I think his name is Jackson and is a phenomenal poet. I honestly asked him for feedback of performance I did a long time ago and I think he gave me advice that is to give all of your energy and everything for the work, because it’s like this beautiful baby. And so it feels like for me I prioritize the art, like most of my art has names and everybody who works with me knows their names, they exist as these like full-on identities. And that's exactly what I tell young artists or anyone that asks for my advice because then I feel like then everyone gets to care and love for this art and we are all going to do whatever we need to make this art happen. I think the more that I prioritize that, the more it sort of shuts down whatever ego things that I feel like someone scratched it. It just shuts down because it is not about me, it's about this work. And it's about somebody who desperately needs it, who could heal from it, who could finally see themselves in it and I think once we all— like it's the same thing as this epidemic, we all have to do the uncomfortable because we love our elders. And so we are doing the uncomfortable and that we're all locking ourselves in our home for people that we love and I think it's the similar practice of like you know prioritize, give your whole heart and attention to the art and then everything else will fall in line including the other humans.

Sanjit: That focus on one hand talking about your own individual voice and at the same time feeling like you're paying a degree of recognition and acknowledgement to your intergenerational past that's a part of you. And I'm thinking about that part of our conversation talking about your grandmother, talking about her care and love but also her storytelling in her transmitting that knowledge. I think that's something that you do see in Asian and Middle Eastern, African cultures where on one hand it’s that acknowledgement of respect and at the same time feeling like you can build your own unique voice.

Ifrah: Absolutely, yeah our elders, our historians from communities that come from oral storytelling. Um, so you know if a thing comes and tries to threaten our history, of course we are going to listen to the Health Care officials and do everything they tell us. And I do feel grateful that our Minnesota state is doing great and we are all listening and just caring for each other and doing the right thing.

Sanjit: That's fantastic. I'm so grateful we got a chance to talk together today, thank you.

Ifrah: Absolutely, thank you so much for having me.