Dear, dear listener, hi, this is John Dupuy. I want to ask a favor of you. If you like the podcast Deep Transformation and you're getting a lot out of it, could you please help us by going to wherever you get your podcast, it's a Spotify or Apple or wherever it is, and write, write a review that would really help us to get this out. We really believe in what we're doing and we're really praying and hoping this is helping people and being part of the solution. So if you could do that, it would be greatly appreciated by Roger, myself and our team. God bless. Thank you. Welcome to part two of our conversation with Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo where we discuss their beautiful and heartbreaking film Where Olive Trees Weep. Welcome to Deep Transformation, Self, Society, Spirit, Life enhancing paradigm rattling conversations with cutting edge thinkers, contemplatives and activists. With Dr. Roger Walsh and John Dupuy.
Roger WalshLet's see, we could go a number of ways here, but to bring some threads together and also move into a very powerful recent, more recent part of your work. I've watched several of your films starting with Nisa Godada and out of all the films you made, the one that really impacted me, touched me, pained me so deeply was Where Olive Trees Weep, your film about the tragic mistreatment of some of the Palestinians in the west bank of Israel and the kind of apartheid there. What brought you to film this? How did this start?
Zaya BenazzoYou want to see it?
Maurizio BenazzoOnce we finished the Wisdom of Trauma with Gabor told us, what are you gonna do next? Said, we don't know. And he said, well, why don't you make a documentary about indigenous culture worldwide and intergenerational trauma and impact of colonization. So yes. And then, and then she said in the same breath, almost, oh, and by the way, in few weeks I'm gonna go to the west bank to, to lead a workshop for the healing workshop, a trauma healing workshop with the young women, Palestinian women released from Israeli prison. And we said, okay, we come.
Zaya BenazzoWe said, can we come? And he said, I don't know because it's not my space. You know, you have to ask the women who are inviting us. So we reached out and they were like, ah, we don't know. We're not sure at the beginning. But eventually we built a friendship and connection and we were able to go and film. We stepped into it. I mean we, we've known both of us the history and to an ex. We thought we knew, we thought we.
Maurizio BenazzoKnew, we thought we knew. But you Arrive there. If you arrive there in 24 hours, that really takes a minute. It's appalling. It's unbelievable. The amount of injustice, violence, disrespect of human rights. It's appalling. Appalling. And we are talking about 2021.
Zaya BenazzoBefore.
Maurizio BenazzoWe thought, this is insane. How can this be in a supposedly democratic society? How can that be? And now, obviously, the genocide. There is no. Now is hundred times worse.
Zaya BenazzoWe were weeping every day, crying with the people we're meeting and listening to the stories. Like, how is it possible? How is it possible we are allowing this to be happening now? And we thought, it cannot get worse? And it did get worse. Yeah. We stepped into a field that we knew that it's huge, but we didn't know how big it is. It was, again, bigger than us. And we were not even sure if we could make a movie. We left after two and a half weeks. We filmed pretty much day and night. We went everywhere. We could barely slept. We wanted to share as many stories as possible and capture as much as possible. We got back home and we were like, we don't know even if there is a movie. Like, there was so much pain that we carried in the footage that was like, anybody who watches this, they would just feel overwhelmed and they would not be able to even see it.
Maurizio BenazzoAnd we couldn't most of at the end, the move. Okay. The movie was part also of the idea of going around the world, make films about a film about the impact of colonization. And the idea was in our mind, oh, yes, we go now after Palestine, we gonna go to Brazil, to New Zealand, to Greenland, to Africa, to the United States. We go all over the world and we show these movies about what colonization is and the pattern. And then at the end, we're gonna show the movie about Palestine. People cannot deny that this is a settled colonial project with the same genocidal intent that has been done all over the world in the past few hundred years or even more. We saw. But then October 7th happened, and we find ourselves with this material in hand. They said, we cannot hold with this. We have to take it out. This is a document that we cannot to share. So we were able to take our main character, Ashera.
Zaya BenazzoAny of the stories we captured could not be there with the film to the people, because we knew that they will go after them. If the movie is seen and becomes popular, they will suffer. So a lot of the stories didn't make it to the movie. And the main character, we waited for her to be ready to leave Palestine. And then we released the movie.
Maurizio BenazzoHer and her family. We took her out, her and her family.
Zaya BenazzoAnd many people told us, like, are you sure you want to release this? Like, you know what's going to happen to you? You're going to be. Was dismantled. And we were, we were like, we were a bit naive, but people warned us and said, you, you, you will see. And basically we were getting like 200 hate mails, like per day, per day. And we answered every single one of them. We have a team that answers every email. The more hateful, the more we engage with that and we understand why they're hateful. It's clear. It's part of an identity. It's part of an indoctrination that so many people carry. It's loyalty to ancestors. It's everything. If we want an archetypal wound, this is it. This is the one. We can all learn and see ourselves in that.
Roger WalshYeah.
John DupuyI must say, preparing. Watch the film and preparing for this. It's been the hardest podcast to prepare for that I've ever done. It was deeply painful and deeply moving. And there is just. There's plenty of hatred and atrocities on both sides. And I searching, you know, what is the way out of this? How did you know? Northern Ireland, the Protestants and the Catholics finally just say, okay, enough of this and stop killing each other. And, and what I came to is that when you have religious fundamentalism of any type and the main people that are invading the west bank are fundamentalist conservative Jews who think that this was a land that was given to them by the promise Abraham, it was a promised land and they feel it's okay and they're the chosen people and the other people aren't, so they can get rid of them. And the other hand, the people in Hamas that went out and slaughtered all these innocents, they felt God was leading them. So these two parts aren't going to.
Zaya BenazzoBe more complex and nuanced than that which I.
John DupuyBut you have to, you have to include that that's true.
Maurizio BenazzoAbsolutely.
John DupuyIt's not. Not true.
Zaya BenazzoYes. And we do see. Yes. His religion, religion is being used because, you know, Orthodox Jews, they don't agree with us that there should be a state of Israel. It doesn't fit their scriptures. So is not even. It's a Christian Zionist who wants this project of Zionism. And you know, then it became a Jewish project and then it became. And it was, you know, connected to the colonial project of the British taking over Palestine. You know, they have such history. Well, it's politics but also it's 80 years in the making. We have to see that the genocide we are witnessing today has a history and has a history that many of us don't know. And that's part of the indoctrination and part of the work of the Zionist project is to erase every other narrative that doesn't fit the narrative of Israel being entitled to the Palestinian land. And one question we ask everyone, when we went there, we were naive and we're like, what about peace? We went to every, in every interview, he said, how about peace? And I said, yes, we want peace. How of our kids are called peace? Salam. This is what we dream of. But we cannot have peace without justice. We cannot have an apartheid and say we are for peace. We cannot have one set of law for Jewish people and another set of law which is military law for Palestinians. We can't pay 10 times more for water than the Jewish people on the land. The same land, the same water, we pay 10 times. So every aspect of their life is controlled and it's injustice. Their children can go to school and be shot in the knees on the way to school. And they don't know if their child will be back home alone. There is generations living in the same building because Israel doesn't allow Palestinian people to expand their homes. It's like everywhere you look at it, there is injustice. We can't talk about peace without addressing.
Maurizio BenazzoThe underlying yes, John, I can assure you that if you were there, if you were in the west, the little I know about you, if you were a Palestinian living in the west bank, you will not be silent. You will not be silent if you're somebody, if your grandparents house was taken 70 years ago, your grand grandparents were probably killed a lot of us and you, you were then sent to Gaza or the West bank. Then in those 70 years, you have no document, you have no, no jobs, no schools. You go to school, you are shot in the knees, you, you have no document, you cannot get a, you cannot go to, you cannot travel anywhere. You have not you, you have no nation, you are under military law. 70% of the west bank is called Area C. There is no law, it's only military law, which means you can be taken and put it in jail for up to three years, renewable. You will never see a lawyer without sentence there for three years. If you live in, they can come and demolish your house because it's military law. And this is a war territory. 70% of the west, which by the way includes all the farming, all the water, all the places that have any value, there are 70% in this area. They can demolish your house, demolish your village, and then by miracle, 24 hours later, there is a settlement that appear in your land. Now, now, two years ago, in the last 70 years, a settlement landed in 24 hours. They have water and electricity. You pay for water, as I said, up to 10 times for water. As a farmer in the west bank, if you don't farm the land, then they say, oh, you don't farm the land, then after three years they can take it. So you lose the land and all of a sudden because they don't give you the water, you pay more. It's completely absurd. Is the most apart. I don't know about South Africa. What I know a little bit, but I think this is even more extreme than South Africa.
John DupuyI mean, I hear your passion and the movie was very powerful. But I'm looking. It's like, what is the way out? I don't think a violence just works.
Zaya BenazzoJustice, justice.
John DupuyI don't think it can be achieved by violence. That just causes more suffering and more killing.
Maurizio BenazzoBut John, if you were in that situation, how can you not just accept the fact that some here in the US people get a gun and shoot everybody? Can you imagine if you had that kind of, of injustice on you? It's reasonable to expect that some. Not that I'm justified in any way, shape or form, but you can expect that somebody can get so frustrated that the only thing they can do is do some violence is trauma.
Zaya BenazzoWe agree.
Maurizio BenazzoIt's happening here.
Zaya BenazzoWe all need to really stand for justice and see what's happen.
John DupuyI know, but, but justice, how do we do it? How do we get there? Do we say it's so horrible and you're justified in being violent? I mean, that causes more suffering and more injustice.
Zaya BenazzoLet's look at what's happening in Gaza right now, in this very moment. Right? What's happening? Genocide and starvation. Well, if we want to do something, we have to stop the starvation. And the peace agreement that few days ago, that's really offensive because it ensured the hostages being returned and zero rights to the Palestinian. Palestinians are continuing to be killed every day and they start stopping the trucks, the food aid again. So if we want to do something, we want to stand for food, for human rights, for equality, start there, like, recognize Palestinians as worthy of dignity. Like every human being on this planet at this moment, they don't have the dignity that we all deserve. So I would say we start there, like, fight for their freedom and I.
John DupuyNeed to throw this in. Netanyahu is about is getting ready to be thrown out of power. Israel was rising up.
Maurizio BenazzoGood luck.
John DupuyYeah. Hundreds of thousands of people hitting the street every week. National Guard pilots were saying, we're not going to fly anymore. He had all these corruption charges and all this. And then the Hamas attack happened, and Egyptian intelligence knew it was going to happen. Israeli intelligence knew it was going to happen. The CIA knew was going to happen, and he'd get nothing. In fact, he stood down troops because he wanted him to do that.
Zaya BenazzoExactly.
John DupuyThat saved his political ass. And war is what saved him. And that was one of the results of October 7th. You empowered Netanyahu, you know, and it's just. It's been a war crime.
Maurizio BenazzoIt's in our movie. We say that.
Zaya BenazzoI want to say something. It's easy to say it's Netanyahu, but the recent pools in Israel, 62% of the people say that the genocide in Gaza should continue and don't use enough force.
Maurizio BenazzoThey haven't used enough force.
Zaya BenazzoEven if Netanyahu goes away, nothing is going to change because the apartheid is going to stay. The settlement will continue to grow. The Palestinians will still be oppressed and occupied. Netanyahu is not the problem. He's just like.
Maurizio BenazzoLike Trump is not the problem.
Zaya BenazzoExactly.
Maurizio BenazzoI mean, he's not Trump.
John DupuyPeople around there was Hitler wasn't the problem.
Maurizio BenazzoYeah, yeah. Those are puppets in a way. Those are, those are. You know, they're. They're the puppets. The front hand of, of a system is rotten at the core.
John DupuyWell, I just think October 7th was. Which is a terrorist attack justified or not? I don't think that behavior, rape, slaughter and all that's justified in any sense. But that made it very much worse for Gaza. And 60,000 people have died so far.
Zaya BenazzoYes.
John DupuyWhat happened when. When 911 happened in the United States directly from that, in our invasion of Afghanistan, almost a million Muslims were killed as a direct result of attacking the towers and the Pentagon. That doesn't solve things. That just kills the people you're trying to.
Maurizio BenazzoAnd it's not the Afghani or the Iraqi who bombed this. The 9 11, by the way, as you well know. I mean, it was the excuse. Let's do a war with somebody.
Roger WalshOh, they killed.
Maurizio BenazzoThose are all pretext.
Zaya BenazzoWe all agree that October 7th was violent violence and terrible. It's horrible, unacceptable. And before October 7th is October 6th, October 5th. How many people were killed in Gaza? You know, how many times there were peace agreements Israel violated and went back and killed Thousands of people. The march.
Maurizio BenazzoThe March of Return. The March of Return.
Zaya BenazzoPeaceful protest that Palestinians marched to the border and said, we want to go home to our homes or on the.
Maurizio BenazzoOther side of that fence, completely peaceful. 180 people.
Zaya BenazzoWhat happened? 200 people were killed. Nothing changed by snipers. Prisons of Israel are full of children, they're full of prisoners that are raped, they are abused daily. That's before October 7th. So it's important to keep seeing the big picture. Yes, the violence. Nothing justifies violence.
Maurizio BenazzoYes, but violence brings violence, which brings more violence. Yeah.
John DupuyWhat I'm looking for is a, is a way out and completely agreeing with everything you're saying. But it's not just enough to say we need justice. I mean, how are you going to do it? You know, how are we going to.
Zaya BenazzoChange and right now recognize Palestine and Palestinians human rights as humans? Equal rights for Palestinians and for Israeli.
Maurizio BenazzoIt's not even a two state anymore.
John DupuyThat was all destroyed. That was all destroyed. Yeah.
Maurizio BenazzoIt's one state democracy. Everybody can vote. Right, let's vote.
John DupuyBut. But things are turning against Israel in popular opinion because of Netanyahu's whatever. The attack on Gaza, you know, people that were always very pro Israel are starting to go, wait, this is not right. So that is happening. So what is. How do we come from a level that is beyond the religious hatred on both sides and despair and the, the trauma of the Holocaust and bring it all together and being attacked from all sides in Israel, and then they became very strong and very powerful and people attacked them. They hit back 10 times, 100 times, whatever. How do we move from that to a place of reconciliation and peace? And if, if it's just, you know, it seems very difficult, but I know that it has to be done from a level that's higher than from the level it was done at.
Zaya BenazzoI think it's already happening because the world sees it. We see what's happening even here. So many Jewish people have organized and they're standing in solidarity with Palestine. The world is waking up. There is no going back. We're seeing the reality. And we have to also remember Palestinians when we asked them, like, how do you leave? How do you, you know, you're not going to see probably justice in your lifetime. And said, yes, it's not going to be in my lifetime, but this is not something that started in my lifetime and it's not going to end in my lifetime. And that's what we've learned in every indigenous community we visited is like, that is intergenerational, that it's seen as something that is not mine to sow. Again, this is our little bit modernity mindset. How do we fix it? Can we fix it tomorrow, get over it and move on? No, this has been in the making for, you know, hundred years. More.
John DupuyYeah.
Zaya BenazzoA couple thousand.
John DupuyYeah.
Zaya BenazzoThen doing is not going to happen probably in our lifetime.
Roger WalshAnd still the question is with us, which is John's question. You know, the question, what can we do? Is really the colon of our time. And each of us, as you said, has our own. Each of us has our own path, and each of us has to find our own answer to that. But.
Zaya BenazzoExactly.
Roger WalshJust acknowledge what a beautiful contribution you found to make just by, as you said, I mean, this is a very hard film to watch. Where Olive Trees Weep. And I highly recommend that everyone listening watch it. It's really powerful. And this was before the October 7 horrific, which catalyzed a whole things to a whole new level. So the level of injustice there that you displayed in the film that was on was horrendous. And I also want to emphasize that one of the beautiful things about the film is that there you have some Jewish people there working for exactly the goals that you say are so important for justice and just not.
Maurizio BenazzoJudaism and Zionism are completely different things. There's nothing in common.
Zaya BenazzoAnd like what we did, we have filmmakers and we have spiritual communities. So we got back and we start speaking to our spiritual community. Listen, this is what we saw, this is what we experienced. And with the film now has been seen over, I don't know, thousands screenings people have organized all over the world. Schools, universities, and the film has also funded. We planted 2,500 olive trees in the west bank, because that's one thing. Also Israel does they go and burn like hundreds of years old olive trees, which is heartbreaking. And then we also provided 80,000 gallons of drinking water in Gaza, and we continue to do that work so each and every one of us can find our way to participate in the change, to participate in alleviating the suffering of Palestinian people in this very moment. As we continue to grapple with the question, how do we stop this bloodshed? How do we stop this wound from continuing to bleed? And how. It's a huge question. How do these children in Gaza right now, seeing what they're seeing, how would they carry life forward? The trauma it's gonna live for generations.
Maurizio BenazzoThey cannot carry hatred. I mean, if it was us there, John, I was saying to you, if it was us, you and I, seeing the conversation we had if you and I were there in school together now 80 years old kids in Gaza, how will we be when we are 18?
John DupuyAnd also we were walking through the streets on October 7th and seeing all the body parts and all the corpses around. How would we feel there?
Maurizio BenazzoIt's the same.
Zaya BenazzoSame.
Maurizio BenazzoYeah, it's the same because the October 7 is a date but October 6, 5, 4, there is been several and they call it mowing the law. Mowing the law. When the Israeli goes to Gaza, mowing the law every X amount of year, I think it's four or five years they go in and kill few thousand people. That's, that's a, that's a.
Zaya BenazzoIt's documented.
Maurizio BenazzoIt's documented. It's happening anyway. UN so yes, this didn't start October 7th. Please, this not start October 7th. And there is no beginning and I'm not. And there I don't know the solution. But the solution is to find a way in which we stop the violence on both side. I agree a hundred percent with you. How do we stop the violence? By bringing dignity, justice, food, education, freedom to each and every one on both sides. Yes, but if we continue, if we continue expanding. Expanding, expanding and bring more settler and kill more Palestinians because they call them, this primary called them, they're. Those kids should be killed because they are snakes. The kids should be killed because they are snakes. Poly high rank politician can say something like this and nobody, you know, bring him to the UN to the hug in person, it's appalling.
John DupuyBut I, I will say Einstein said that you can't solve a problem on the same level it was created.
Maurizio BenazzoAbsolutely.
John DupuySomehow we have to up level this thing or it's just going to not go away, it's just going to get worse. The hatred revealed and it just insane. And I don't think anyone would agree with, with what's going on in the settlements. That's illegal, that's horrible. I think most of the world agrees to that and I don't think many people agree what's going on in Gaza right now. It's just horrendous. And the world's turning against Israel by and large.
Zaya BenazzoAnd I just want to bring it to the spiritual community again because this is our audience, this is our community. At the beginning when we asked spiritual teacher, why don't you say something, why don't you address it? And you probably have noticed the silence in most spiritual communities and they're like oh that's politics. We don't want to deal with politics. So I think that goes also to the very essence of the issue of our times, that we have separated what we call justice, politics, spirituality, ecology, the kind of silos that, oh, I work on ecology now I do politics. And it's not like this. This is where we have to strip those labels. Labels and container.
Maurizio BenazzoYeah.
Zaya BenazzoAnd really see that if we really believe in interconnectedness, in oneness, if our brothers and sisters are suffering, we are suffering too, because we are connected. And just from that level, we need to turn towards the pain and be with the pain. Even though we can't solve it, we cannot look away, we cannot pretend it's not there. Which is very, very sad to see that still many therapists and spiritual teachers don't want to look that way. It's too uncomfortable. And that discomfort is the very essence of the issue on a psychological and archetypal level.
Roger WalshAnd clearly the first thing is to bring awareness to it. And. John's question of what can we do? We need to acknowledge that that's a very profound question. It's not like any of us will suddenly, oh, I have an answer or the answer. It's like, no. These are questions to sit with and for each of us to wrestle with and to look what's the most strategic thing we can do? And for you, your filmmakers, you made this incredibly powerful film which is just hot, moving, heartbreaking, and really does illustrate the apartheid like system that's operating, has operated for years way before the Hamas attack. So that's part of it. And our hope is that this podcast, having you speak to our audience, our growing audience, will have its impact and that, you know, I've. I've certainly been moved just in, in watching a film and being preparing for this. John has too. And, and hopefully there'll be people in our audience who will be moved in the same way. Hopefully a lot of people watch the film.
Zaya BenazzoSo it's a human issue, it's not a political issue. That's what we wanted with the film, to tell human stories. We did give some background, but the. It's a human, on a human level, it's a collective. We're losing our humanity in this.
Roger WalshYes, yes, and yeah.
Maurizio BenazzoAnd yes, this could be the blueprint of how this planet will look if we don't deal with it.
John DupuyWell, we've been doing the same thing for thousands of years. We just have the technology now that makes it all that much more doable.
Zaya BenazzoYes.
John DupuyAnd this makes it scary. It's like there wasn't a golden age where everybody treated each other kind never happened.
Maurizio BenazzoNo, no, no. But now also we see it.
John DupuyYeah. And it's right in our face. Exactly.
Maurizio BenazzoBecause in. In the past, my grand, grand, grand, grand, grand grandparents probably didn't know what was happening in the. In Australia, you know.
Roger WalshYeah.
John DupuyAnd I watched your film sitting where I am now on my computer, and it was just.
Maurizio BenazzoYeah, we see. It is undeniable.
Roger WalshYeah. Yeah. Well, first off, I want to just say thank you or. For the. For this film. And thank you for all your work, actually. But this film is a. It's just. It's just. Just to throw light on this, just to see what's happening is a first step. And I really appreciate the fact that you respond to all the hate. Hate messages you get. I think that's fantastic. Good for you.
Maurizio BenazzoIt's important.
Zaya BenazzoWe had to expand our customer service team and we respond with compassion.
Roger WalshSometimes we lose.
Zaya BenazzoSo it's when we. Very rare, but we. We feel the pain. So we try to connect to the pain. The hate comes from pain. We feel your pain. We understand and we'll share what we know and what we've experienced. And.
Roger WalshAnd do you get. Do you get a. Responses back to yourself?
Zaya BenazzoYeah. Oh, yeah. We go for months sometimes.
Maurizio BenazzoSometimes they are conversation. They last for a long time, and.
Zaya BenazzoThey evolve customer service. He's Jewish, and he was very much indoctrinated. He came when we went to Palestine. He was like, you shouldn't be doing this. And he. Through our journey, he learned and he opened and he studied. I mean, he spent months studying the history. And he was like, I can't believe I was so blind. So he's also answering from that point of view. It's like, I know I was there myself, and this is what I learned on the journey. So that's also a good way to help people understand, you know, you're not alone on that journey of unlearning indoctrination.
Roger WalshAnd does it diffuse some of the hatred?
Maurizio BenazzoOh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Some people.
Roger WalshSome people.
Zaya BenazzoSome. No. Some people came after a few months and said, we see what you actually did now. Like, I'm with you. We had people from Israel. I mean, we've done events with rabbis. Like a month ago, we did a Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb and several spiritual.
Roger WalshShe's wonderful.
Zaya BenazzoYeah, she's wonderful. And different spiritual teachers. So. Yeah.
Maurizio BenazzoAnd we also had characters in the movies that you will see two, let's say one character in the movie that she. Basically, when we came out with this, she lives with indigenous. She's Jewish and lives in indigenous culture in The United States. Because she wanted to live with the. With the real indigenous culture. Da, da, da. And she moved there 40 years ago. She has been. She's completely committed. You know, she understand everything. The colonial everything. Understand. We did the movie. She completely got berserk on us in an adorable way. I said, no, but this is completely different. And we say, okay, we start a conversation now. She's 100% on our side. I'm sorry, I didn't understand. I was so brainwashed and I was so. And it's amazing. Some people.
John DupuyYeah.
Maurizio BenazzoSome serious Zionist. Cause of the movie. They said. They started conversation and said, yeah, they were able to swap. That's really. People want to be heard. We all want to be heard. What else? We all want to be heard.
Zaya BenazzoWant someone to go deeper in this. There is Maytal. They. She. They were in the idf.
Maurizio BenazzoShe was IDF soldiers, a pilot.
Zaya BenazzoHer father was high rank, Very high rank.
Maurizio BenazzoVery high rank in the army.
Zaya BenazzoAnd she wrote a beautiful book called Bloodlines. Grappling with her bloodlines. And she's little. They are more extreme than we are. So I don't know. But she's a poet that speaks beautifully, spiritually connected.
Maurizio BenazzoCheck the book, Steve. You always get an introduction and you.
Zaya BenazzoCould have a conversation.
John DupuyYes, well, that would be really.
Zaya BenazzoYeah. Yeah. I mean, Tara Brack is very courageous. I don't know if you've interviewed Tara Brack.
John DupuyNo, we haven't, but I've listened to her a lot. She's. She's really a. My wife's favorite Buddhist teacher, by the way, and probably right up there with mine, too. So she's amazing.
Zaya BenazzoAnd she spoke right away like she was very early on. She spoke and to her community. She's one of the few spiritual teachers that was very courageous to address Gaza and to address the.
John DupuyBy the way, I have a song that I wrote and sang on Ukraine that's on YouTube. Well, I had a young Ukrainian girl did the video. And whatever you think of the song, you. You'll just weep. It's so powerful.
Zaya BenazzoHow do we find it?
John DupuyJust put Ukraine with an exclamation mark and John Dupuy.
Zaya BenazzoOkay, okay.
John DupuyOn YouTube.
Zaya BenazzoOkay.
Roger WalshYeah. Maybe as we come towards the end of the time, I'd like to ask you about what's next for you. You keep moving, you're missing. There's always a new thing. So what's on the horizons now?
Maurizio BenazzoWe are on the horizon. Well, where olive trees Weep was part of this series of film called the Eternal Song. And the Eternal Song is basically we Travel around the world after that in 13 different indigenous communities to make. We thought we were making one movie, the Eternal Song, which came out and is available eternalsong.org and then we realized instead that we have 12 different feature films, one in each location that we have been visiting. So we are now releasing every month, month and a half, two months, one of these films. The first one is being released yesterday. Maori M A U R I about the Maori culture in Aotearoa, New Zealand. And we'll.
Zaya BenazzoAnd the Eternal Song we released in June, and it's accompanied by collection, incredible collection of 50 conversation with indigenous elders from all over the world.
Roger WalshVery beautiful film. Yeah.
Zaya BenazzoSo very, very rich. In addition to the film, anyone can dive deeper and understand really what are the indigenous ways of relating, of healing, of dealing with pain. And again, the conversation as we see it, with send. We are moving from the individual to the collective journey to the collective process, from individual awakening. What's my practice to, like, how do we heal together? How do we heal in community? How do we surf? You know what?
Roger WalshYeah.
John DupuyAnd I think in the last part of this conversation, we tapped into the darkness. You know, my heart's broken over the whole thing. And you, obviously, you guys were. And it was pretty happy. And then it got really, you know, heavy. And I. I just feel that deeply in my heart. And you guys have lived a life well done, you know, and you. You made a bigger contribution than most of us have made. And the quality of the film, by the way, is not just the content. It's artistically and beautifully shot. It's just the. I mean, the opening sequence itself is just a masterpiece.
Zaya BenazzoWe wanted to see beauty no matter where we were. And there is beauty in the midst of pain. And we. Our films, I believe, captures that. And then the other films are also dark. I mean, they grapple with the impact of colonialism on indigenous communities. Residential schools, board schools, what happened to indigenous children. And because of Catholic Church, because of the. The religion, you know, these are also big questions to grapple and to. To sit with.
John DupuyI. I was connected to the Lakota tribe, so I know all these stories about the schools. And the man who became my mentor, they kept them away, lost back in the back parts of the reservation so they wouldn't get called off to these schools where they're trying to. Dead Indian eyes, Indians, Native American children. Wallace Black Elk, you probably have heard of him, but he was a very loving man in spite of all that history and everything he said.
Zaya BenazzoDid you say Black Elk?
John DupuyYeah. Wallace Black Elk Yes. And he said one time in a sweat lodge, he said, all of our blood is red. There it is.
Roger WalshThere it is.
John DupuySo he was sort of.
Zaya BenazzoYeah. We all have been indigenous to a place at some point in life.
Maurizio BenazzoYeah.
Zaya BenazzoAnd we had that relationship.
Maurizio BenazzoYeah.
Roger WalshMaurizio, as we come towards a close here, is there anything you'd like to add? Any questions that you would like? You don't usually get asked that you'd like to be asked.
Zaya BenazzoWell, I am just very grateful for the two of you for being in this conversation and for opening to the darkness, to the pain. I think that's. That's the gift of this time. And. Thank you because it takes courage to look in the direction that is not. Doesn't look good, and it's uncomfortable and it's painful. So thank you. And may that ripple through your community and many more hearts for people to wake up and say, no, we can't continue separating life into our silos to feel comfortable and to feel safe. If we truly believe we are one and we are interdependent. That's it.
Roger WalshMay it be so. Well you have done with your life's work and just so many, so much good. You've made so many contributions. You've touched so many people and opened a lot of hearts and minds in beautiful, beautiful ways. And now you're opening them to. In a bigger picture, to the historical forces, to cultural impact, to colonialism, and particularly your work with the west bank, the colonization there, the apartheid there. Enormous amount of suffering. And you've done it from a place of both your own hearts and making the hearts and feelings of people. Praise. You've really touched. You've really let them touch us. So it's a priceless gift you've given us all. So thank you so much. Yeah.
John DupuyAnd I've been deeply impacted by this. God bless you guys. Thank you.
Maurizio BenazzoAnd, oh, by the way, one thing we didn't say, that all the movies we make, 50% of the. Of the revenue coming from the movie goes back to the indigenous community that we met in the movie. We didn't say that beautiful is including $0 the donation. And then when we get the money, we cover the cost of the movie, and after that, we split 50% to project. They're initiated by the. That's important also because we.
Roger WalshPerfect.
Zaya BenazzoThank you so much.
John DupuyOkay.
Roger WalshDeep gratitude.
Zaya BenazzoThank you, Roger. Thank you, John.
Maurizio BenazzoThank you, Roger. Thank you. To the next.
Roger WalshYes. May your good work continue to flourish. Thank you so much.
Maurizio BenazzoLikewise, likewise, likewise, likewise. We are all little parts of a bigger system. We are all connected.
Zaya BenazzoYeah.
John DupuyThank you very much for being a part of this conversation. We hope that you were moved as we are moved being part of it ourselves. We'd also like to say that this is being funded by Roger and myself. It comes out of our pockets. So if you would like to help us to mainly to get this podcast out to more people because the bigger audience have which is steadily growing, but the more people we can reach and the more marketing can do, the more positive effect we can have on the world. So we've done that a couple of ways, but we'd like you to buy us a cup of coffee, very simple. And I do that with podcasts that I support and I find it's very satisfying. So thank you for your help, thank you for your presence and thank you for all you are and all you do. We love you.