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[APPLAUSE]

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Hello everyone.

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My name is Jillian Godinez.

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I'm a junior here at
Mount Holyoke College.

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I study economics and history
with a minor in public history

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and archives.

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And I'm going to tell you all
about my internship on Rapa Nui

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this summer.

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You guys might know
it as Easter Island.

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So first off, before I tell
you about the internship,

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where is Easter
Island or Rapa Nui?

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Anyone have an idea?

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Shout it out.

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Yes, Mom?

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[LAUGHTER]

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2,000 miles west of Chile.

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3,000 miles.

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So it's over here
in this region.

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You could see it zoomed
in a little more.

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And fun fact, some
of the locals call

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it the belly button of
the earth because if you

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look at it this way, it kinds
of looks like a little navel.

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So I was working with a
non-profit called Terevaka

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Archaeological Outreach.

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It's a program that
focuses on filling

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the gaps in the education system
that the kids on the island

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have.

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Because Rapa Nui is on the
Chilean education system,

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all of the classes, curriculum,
books and everything

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is based off of what the
students in Chile learn.

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And that doesn't really
leave much for them

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to learn about their own island.

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So the point of the program
is to do a two week intensive

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camping summer camp.

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Well, it's our summer,
but their winter.

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And they live on the
campsite and just do

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intensive work learning
about their own history

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and the island.

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And it's completely
free to all the students

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and it's totally inclusive.

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And they have to apply to do it.

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So it's really students
that want to do it.

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This is us on a
field trip going out.

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Right now, that is Ahu Akahanga.

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And you can see they're getting
a tour and learning about it.

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And the cool thing about the
island, it's 63 square miles.

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So it's very small and isolated
like you saw on the map.

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But there's no sort of
public transportation.

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So unless your family has
a car, kids aren't really

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getting to all the sites.

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So when we went on
the field trips,

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there were a lot of the places
that the kids were like,

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oh, this is my first time here.

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I've never been here.

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So it's really opening them
up to their own island,

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which they already know so well.

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And at these sites, we go
through oral history and talk

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about whatever they know
about it from their parents

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and grandparents.

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And then we would have
some of the leaders

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that we have, like
right over here.

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We had [INAUDIBLE] and then
my two bosses [INAUDIBLE]..

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And they'd talk
about all the sites.

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We even went when
it was raining.

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So that's [INAUDIBLE] to high.

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And see the kids right here
are writing in their notebooks.

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They have these little
field notebooks.

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And they'd go around
recording all the information

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of the lectures.

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And then they'd go
into a google document

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and add what they learned
from the lesson and also

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the oral history that they
know from their family.

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So we could have it all
collected in a database, which

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is really exciting.

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As I said, we were
all camping together.

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So this is right outside
of the camp grounds.

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The camp was divided
into two parts.

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I was working with the
archeology section.

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But another section was with
conservation and engineering.

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So at the end of the day,
we would all get together

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and talk about what we learned.

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The kids that were working
with the engineering program,

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they were doing sustainability.

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So they were thinking
about how could they

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get wind turbines on the island
or how would solar energy work.

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Just because it is so
isolated and the island does

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run off of generators.

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So they're trying to think
of more sustainable solutions

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to keep the island
running, especially

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because of the tourism
that they have every year.

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This is the campsite again.

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All the kids hanging out.

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We were to say, glamping.

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So glamorous camping.

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There were bathrooms and there
was a wonderful Hotel Explora

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which donated all
the facilities to us.

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So we were camping
outside the whole time,

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but we had bathroom
facilities and we had

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chefs cooking all our meals.

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So it wasn't as intense as
two weeks of camping sounds.

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I was camping for
a month though.

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So the reason I'm
showing you another map

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is because like I
said, a lot of the kids

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don't know all of the
places on the island.

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And it makes sense
because there are

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over 800 moai, which are
the big statue heads that I

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can talk about more later.

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There scattered all
throughout the island.

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And we were camping
around right here

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and we would go on
these walking field

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trips all around the coast.

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So my group would go down
here and we'd go up the coast

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or we'd go here.

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Other days, we hiked the
northern coast all the way up

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here.

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And really going by foot,
you can see so much more

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because the whole
island is just dense

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with archaeological sites.

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That just walking
for five minutes,

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you can find something
new and write about it

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and study and learn.

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Which is really exciting.

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So we went out on trips and
we'd find moai on the ground

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like that.

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And we'd take our GPS units
and record the decimal degrees

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of where we were and what we
found and the students would

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do a scaled drawing of
the sites that they found.

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And then we'd go back into
books or to this [? toponimia ?]

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document, which is
an old 19th century

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book which recorded all of the
history of when the Dutch found

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the site.

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And then we'd make
an Excel sheet

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comparing the history we could
find on the sites already.

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And then the history
that the students

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knew from their family
and their grandparents.

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And we'd record it all in
this giant Excel document that

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was just tracking the
transformation of all

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the ahus and sites.

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So these are the kids
working in the archives

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and what's really special
about this moment right

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here is the students were
prepping for a debate

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that we gave them a topic and
forced them to argue one side.

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And the topic that
they were arguing

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was should a moai,
which is very famous

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and has significance
to the island, which

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is in the British
Museum, should it

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be brought back to the
island or should it

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stay where it is, where
it's safe and protected?

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And it was really interesting to
hear the local students having

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that argument where
some of them truly

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felt like it deserves
to be somewhere

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else so other people can learn.

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And others thought
no, we've been robbed.

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This is not right.

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We need it back.

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So just getting that
perspective from the students

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was really exciting.

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That's ahu to high, just
another wonderful ahu.

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So I was really going
for the internship

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to facilitate and basically
be a glorified camp counselor

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and teach the kids
about their own island.

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But quickly I learned
I knew nothing.

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And they knew everything, and
I was really learning from them

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the whole time.

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So it was really exciting.

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And it was a symbiotic
learning process.

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So I was teaching
them how to use

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books and research
and my history side

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and helping them out with that.

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But they were really
teaching me all about what

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it means to know world history.

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And the problem
with world history

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is if it's not saved or
recorded or passed down,

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it's lost forever.

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So that's why the Excel
sheet that we were doing

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was so important because it's
really preserving history that

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would otherwise be forgotten.

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So all in all, it was
a wonderful experience.

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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