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I'm Manoush Zomorodi.

0:56

So, a few years ago. I

0:58

was in my office here in Mississippi, it's

1:01

in Oxford, northern Mississippi, and an archaeologist

1:03

I work with came in and asked me if I wanted to help relocate a

1:05

cemetery. This is

1:07

Carolyn Freiwald. Normally

1:09

when someone asks you to move a body, you

1:11

wonder, okay, when are the police going to

1:13

show up? Or at least you should. But

1:16

Carolyn wasn't worried. Because

1:18

it sort of brings a person back to life. I

1:21

kind of hope somebody studies my bones if possible.

1:24

When I'm dead, though. That

1:27

day, Carolyn was asked

1:29

to examine

1:29

the bones from an abandoned cemetery near

1:32

Jackson, Mississippi. The cemetery was last

1:33

used about 100 years ago. And

1:37

it probably, you know, it's a very old cemetery. And it's

1:39

a very old cemetery. And it's a very old cemetery.

1:42

And it's a very old cemetery. And it's a very old cemetery.

1:44

And nobody had really been there for decades.

1:52

And my role

1:55

on the project was going

1:57

to be to help study the people themselves.

2:00

their skeletal remains to see

2:02

a little bit about how old they were, how

2:04

they were buried, if they had health conditions

2:06

or even what their lives were

2:09

like. Carolyn

2:11

thought they'd uncover the remains of just

2:13

a couple dozen bodies. But

2:15

as it turns out... It wasn't just 40

2:18

graves. It turned out to be more than 350.

2:22

And so the cemetery was a lot bigger than we originally

2:24

anticipated. So it turned out to be a really big

2:26

job. But with all of those graves, 15% of

2:29

the people

2:29

buried in the cemetery had

2:32

a name recorded either on a stone or

2:34

perhaps in historic records. And

2:37

we wanted to try and understand who the other people were

2:39

who had lived and died in that area.

2:44

So who were some of the people you found? What

2:47

do you know about them? So we know that some

2:49

of the people in the cemetery came from Eastern

2:52

states. So we have people whose gravestones

2:54

say, for example, like Richard M., he

2:56

was born in South Carolina. And we think that

2:58

he came through Alabama and then decided

3:01

to move his family and his household to Mississippi.

3:04

Historic records show that he was a planter. And

3:06

with him, he brought some of his family because

3:08

we know there were other people with his last name

3:10

in the cemetery. But we also know that he

3:13

held 31 enslaved people. And

3:15

it's pretty likely that he brought some or all of them

3:17

along from South Carolina

3:19

to Alabama to Mississippi to establish

3:22

a plantation here. That also

3:24

means that the Cherokee, the Chickasaw, the

3:26

people

3:26

who are living here were forced out. So

3:29

in a way, this is a snapshot of

3:31

how the U.S. was formed. You have people who

3:34

have European ancestry. You have people whose ancestors

3:36

came from Africa. And

3:39

we didn't expect to find that.

3:40

I didn't expect to be able to study migration in

3:42

Mississippi. But once we started to

3:45

look at the people here to try and figure out who they

3:47

were, that's what we found.

3:49

More than 10 to 15 percent of the people

3:51

who we were able to study in the cemetery weren't

3:54

from Mississippi. They weren't born here. They came here from

3:57

someplace else. So we're finding

3:59

that instead of my

3:59

migration being an anomaly, that it's

4:02

actually the norm. This is

4:04

what people do.

4:05

They move. Migration

4:13

is part of everyone's history, even

4:15

if you've never traveled far. 100,000 years

4:18

ago, our early ancestors began moving

4:20

within and then out of Africa,

4:23

spreading across the globe. Since

4:25

then, migration has shaped empires,

4:28

countries, and cultures, while

4:31

debates over borders and who can

4:33

and can't migrate continue

4:35

to this day. And so on

4:37

the show today,

4:38

migration, ideas about

4:41

the search for a place to call

4:43

home.

4:47

For bioarchaeologist Carolyn Frywald,

4:50

our bodies tell our migration

4:52

story. I want you to think about the

4:55

image that you see

4:56

when I say one word, migrant.

5:00

She continues from the TED stage. You

5:02

may have pictured a crowded boat in rough waters,

5:05

people clinging to the top of a freight train or

5:07

crossing a desert wearing worn out shoes.

5:10

This is what we see in the news cycle,

5:13

24 hours, day after day, story

5:15

after story, people who are desperate, fleeing

5:18

wars, fleeing climate change, fleeing poverty.

5:21

But

5:21

in reality, most people move for

5:23

more common reasons. To get a good

5:25

education, to find a job, to

5:28

find family members, or to fall

5:30

in love. And this is nothing new. Archaeologists

5:33

like me have been studying migration

5:36

and finding that people for hundreds and even thousands

5:39

of years have been moving around the globe, from

5:42

Europe's earliest farmers, to Vikings,

5:44

to pirates, Roman gladiators, and even Neanderthal

5:46

cavemen,

5:47

people like you and me. Mobility

5:50

is one of the things that makes us human. People

5:53

move. And we know this because of something

5:55

that you brought with you here tonight. You carry

5:57

it with you to many places, to work, to the

5:59

gym. to bed and even in the shower. It's

6:02

not your cell phone. It's you. It's

6:05

your body and your bones, all 206 of them. I

6:07

brought mine because your bones will tell

6:10

the story of your life, even a single

6:12

tooth.

6:16

Okay, so how is it that a

6:18

single tooth can tell the story

6:20

of my life? So for example, if you have

6:22

Native American or Asian ancestry,

6:25

the shapes of your teeth, like your incisors,

6:27

will be different than people whose ancestors

6:29

came long back, from Europe or from Africa.

6:32

So if you take your tongue and run it along the backside

6:34

of your teeth. Okay, I'm doing it now. Hang on, hang

6:37

on. Okay, yeah, running

6:39

it along. If you feel

6:42

just a flat

6:43

shape, you may have some European

6:45

ancestors. Yep. If

6:48

you feel a little scoop

6:50

shape, that can tell you that some of your ancestors

6:53

originally came from Asia, and

6:55

that can include having indigenous

6:57

ancestors here in the US.

7:01

If we go inside the tooth to the pulp cavity,

7:03

we may be able to extract the DNA and

7:05

see if your ancestors came from Egypt or

7:08

England or both.

7:10

But we're not interested as much in your family's

7:12

migration history as yours. And

7:15

that's where we go to the tooth enamel, what it's made out

7:17

of, to try and find out if a person moved, and

7:20

even when they moved. And it's

7:22

based on one simple idea, that you are

7:24

what you eat. All the minerals and

7:26

elements in the food, like calcium, oxygen,

7:29

which is the O and H2O, sodium

7:31

and salt, can tell us something about your diet.

7:33

So we know if you like cornbread or white

7:35

bread, if you prefer pork, chicken,

7:38

or if you really like seafood. There

7:40

are other elements that tell us where that food came from.

7:43

And that includes sulfur, strontium, oxygen, and

7:45

even lead, which of course you don't want very much of.

7:47

But these tell us where the food comes from.

7:50

And that can tell us where you were when you were eating

7:52

it. And that is what archaeologists use to

7:54

identify ancient migration. That's

7:57

fascinating. Do you think it would?

8:00

Would your work be

8:02

done differently if you were studying

8:04

the bones of migrants today?

8:06

I mean, I guess, you know, my own parents

8:09

are immigrants to the United States.

8:14

You'd know about

8:15

my flat front teeth. But

8:18

like, would you know that I—it's embarrassing

8:20

to say, but I had like vitamin D

8:22

gummies yesterday and

8:24

that this morning I had like five cups of

8:26

coffee. Would you be able to tell?

8:29

Well, you can think of—your body

8:31

tells stories in lots of ways. So with modern

8:33

people, you can look at your teeth. Your teeth

8:36

form during childhood. Your bones are forming continuously.

8:38

So

8:38

if I stop for a second, you

8:44

just form some new bone cells. So they'll

8:46

contain records of different things at different

8:48

parts of your life. And think, you know, your hair grows

8:51

pretty fast. So with, say, an inch

8:53

of hair growth, you might have a snapshot

8:56

of a month of your life. So scientists can

8:58

actually do things like look for extreme

9:00

stress and malnutrition.

9:02

That's recorded by some of the elements. If you

9:04

had a change in your diet from a major

9:06

food source, let's say you grew up

9:09

eating meat and then you decided that you

9:11

wanted to be a vegan or vegetarian for

9:13

a while, we could eventually see

9:15

those changes if you were willing to volunteer a

9:17

bit of your bone or hair.

9:19

But figuring out where someone comes from,

9:22

that's tricky because think about your food. If

9:24

you wrote down what you ate in the past 24 hours,

9:27

there's probably not much of it that came from

9:29

where you're living right now. Right.

9:33

Bottled water, you know, Fritos,

9:36

whatever your favorite snacks are,

9:38

we might be able to look

9:40

at combinations of food because people are doing

9:43

that to try and understand missing persons

9:45

and migrants today. In particular,

9:47

the problems of people crossing

9:49

the southern U.S. border, a lot

9:52

of times when they don't make it,

9:54

they don't have ID with them anymore. The

9:56

desert's a rough place. So we're trying

9:58

to understand where they came from. from to get at who

10:01

they were. And it becomes

10:03

really tricky, but we're trying to understand how to use

10:05

these technologies to bring the people

10:08

back home.

10:09

Oh, that's unbelievable. And

10:12

I guess I'm wondering that now that

10:14

you have this technology at your disposal,

10:17

is it common to examine a person's bones

10:19

and find that they come from somewhere else?

10:22

Yeah, that's one of the things that we've found with sort

10:24

of these new technologies, especially with the

10:27

advent of DNA and being able to look

10:29

inside people's bones, not just at the shapes

10:31

of their bones, is that people in the

10:33

past thought that, you know, societies

10:36

like the ancient Romans, they would write about

10:38

the census who

10:39

lived in their cities, and they were pretty cosmopolitan

10:42

areas. But in other places, especially

10:44

going farther back in time, we didn't

10:46

think people could move or we didn't think they

10:48

moved that much. But now people

10:51

are doing studies around the world from Mesoamerica,

10:55

the Aztecs, the people who are living

10:57

in North America, all across

10:59

time and across space, we're finding

11:01

immigrants. And sometimes you couldn't

11:04

differentiate them. You'd have a person

11:06

who was born locally and a

11:08

person who migrated into the

11:09

town buried right next to each other,

11:11

the same way that you'd treat family. So

11:15

do you think movement is a human

11:17

thing, a mammal thing, a living

11:20

being thing? Like, do we just...

11:22

is movement just inherent? It

11:25

must be. I mean, I don't know

11:27

if you can always know what people's motivations

11:30

are, but if we think about it, we can

11:32

go way back in deep time that

11:35

all of us, all of our families have

11:37

a migration story, one that we don't

11:39

think about because humans actually

11:42

originated in Africa. And at some

11:44

point they started to move, following,

11:47

maybe following the animals they hunted, maybe out of

11:49

curiosity, we don't know, but pretty

11:51

soon they were moving into the Middle East. Some

11:53

people went over to Asia, some

11:55

moved up into Europe, and over

11:58

thousands of thousands of years...

11:59

They got to the Americas. We've

12:02

even got to Antarctica now,

12:04

and people are talking about the moon and Mars.

12:11

When I think of migrant, I think

12:13

about what the people say about why

12:16

did you move. And if you look, for example,

12:18

at the migrants in Africa trying to come to Europe,

12:22

some of them talk about this thing like a hunger, but

12:24

they don't mean they're hungry. They mean

12:26

it's a hunger, it's a hope.

12:27

They want to see, you know,

12:30

what's better, what's life. It's a curiosity,

12:32

it's an adventurer. These are the modern-day

12:35

explorers. I don't think of Christopher Columbus.

12:38

I think of the people today who are

12:39

taking the risk of going, maybe

12:41

it's across an ocean, maybe

12:43

it's across a river, across a small road, or

12:46

maybe it's just a community

12:48

that's new, that's only 10 miles away

12:50

from where they grew

12:51

up. These are the people who are,

12:53

I think of, when I

12:55

think of migrants. That's

12:59

Carolyn Freiwald.

13:00

She's a bioarchaeologist,

13:03

and you can see her full talk at TED.com.

13:08

On the show today, ideas about

13:10

the search for a place to call

13:12

home. I'm Anousheh Zamorodi, and

13:14

you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from

13:17

NPR. Stay with us.

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That's the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

15:55

I'm Manoush Zomorodi. On

15:57

today's show, migration,

15:59

and And the idea that by choosing

16:01

to leave your home, to make life

16:03

better for yourself and your family,

16:06

you are making history. Maybe

16:09

without even knowing it.

16:11

I truly believe that migration

16:13

sets in motion, the life chances

16:15

and in fact the very existence of perhaps a majority

16:17

of human beings on the planet.

16:19

This is Pulitzer Prize winning author

16:22

and journalist Isabel Wilkerson. She

16:25

was born in Washington, D.C.,

16:27

but her parents were migrants, even

16:30

if they didn't call themselves that. They

16:32

had come from different parts of

16:34

the South. My mother from

16:37

Georgia

16:37

and my father from Virginia.

16:41

And growing up in Washington, D.C.,

16:43

surrounded by people whose

16:45

parents or grandparents had all

16:48

come up from the South. It was something that

16:51

was just part of the atmosphere.

16:53

It was in the food, it was in the accents, it was

16:56

in the culture, it was the language, it

16:58

was the music, it was everywhere. But no one was

17:00

speaking directly about, no one was giving

17:02

it a name.

17:03

But Isabel distinctly remembers that

17:05

there was a photograph. Yeah,

17:08

that picture was one of my

17:10

mother and a friend of hers, a childhood

17:12

friend, and they are in

17:14

their very best clothes. My

17:17

mother has her pearls on and they've

17:19

put, you know, the small town Jim

17:21

Crow South behind them. This

17:24

was like a passport for themselves

17:26

to document their having arrived,

17:29

to

17:29

be able to show and send back to

17:31

the folks back home to say, I'm

17:33

doing well in the new world. That

17:35

was what it felt to me. And that was

17:38

one of the photographs that I found that represent

17:40

that for my mother. It wasn't

17:42

until Isabel was an adult and

17:44

was reporting from cities across the country

17:47

that she put the pieces together.

17:49

Her family's story was a migration

17:52

story, the story of millions

17:55

of African Americans who had left

17:57

the South.

17:58

It began very soon.

20:00

in the South. But still,

20:02

I mean, the idea to leave your home,

20:04

to say goodbye to your family, who

20:06

you may never see again. I mean, the

20:09

conditions that motivated

20:11

six million African Americans to

20:13

break all ties

20:15

and leave, that

20:17

cannot be understated. Oh,

20:20

they were living under a regime in

20:22

which everything that you could and could not do

20:24

was based upon what you looked like or the group

20:27

to which you had been assigned. They were

20:29

living in a world where it was against the law for a

20:31

black person and a white person to merely play

20:33

checkers together. And Birmingham,

20:36

as one example, they were living in a world where

20:38

there was actually a black Bible and an altogether

20:40

separate white Bible to swear

20:43

to tell the truth on in court. The same sacred

20:45

object could not be touched by hands of different

20:47

races. And any breach of

20:50

that order, that social, political

20:52

and economic order that had been designed could

20:54

mean literally your life.

20:57

Every four days somewhere

21:00

in the American

21:00

South, in the first four

21:02

decades of the 20th century, someone

21:05

was lynched for some perceived breach of

21:07

that caste system. And so

21:09

this was what they were fleeing. I often

21:12

say that this migration was not

21:14

about geography.

21:15

It was about freedom and how far people

21:17

are willing to achieve it. It was really a defection,

21:20

you know, seeking of political asylum.

21:22

They became in some ways

21:24

like political refugees within

21:26

their own country. This great

21:28

migration began

21:30

when the North had a labor

21:32

problem. The North had a labor problem

21:34

because it had been relying on cheap labor

21:37

from Europe,

21:38

immigrants from Europe to work the factories

21:40

and the foundries and the steel mills. But

21:43

during World War I,

21:45

migration from Europe came to

21:47

a virtual halt. And so the North

21:49

decided to go and find

21:51

the cheapest labor in the land, which

21:54

meant African Americans in the South,

21:57

many of whom were not even being

21:59

paid for their heart. Many of them were

22:01

working for the right to live on

22:03

the land that they were farming. They

22:05

were sharecroppers and not even being paid.

22:08

So they were ripe for recruitment. But

22:11

it turned out that the

22:13

South did not take kindly to this

22:15

poaching of its chief labor.

22:18

The South actually did everything it could

22:20

to keep the people from leaving. They

22:22

would arrest people from

22:24

the railroad platforms. Remember, putatively

22:27

free American citizens. They

22:30

would arrest them from their train seats. And

22:32

when there were too many people to arrest,

22:34

they would wave the train on through. So

22:37

that people who had been hoping

22:39

and saving

22:40

and praying for the chance to get

22:42

to freedom had to figure out

22:45

how now will we get out.

22:50

And as they made their way

22:52

out of the South, they followed

22:54

three beautifully predictable streams,

22:57

as is the case in any

22:59

migration throughout human history. One

23:03

was along the East Coast to

23:05

Washington, D.C., to Philadelphia,

23:08

New Jersey, New York, and on up. There

23:10

was the Midwest stream, which carried people

23:12

from Mississippi, Alabama,

23:15

to Chicago, to Detroit, and

23:17

the entire Midwest. And then there

23:19

was the West

23:20

Coast stream, which carried people

23:22

from Louisiana and Texas

23:25

out to California. And when they

23:27

really wanted to get away, they

23:29

went to Seattle. And when they

23:32

really, really wanted to get away,

23:35

they went to Alaska, the

23:37

farthest possible point within the borders

23:39

of the United States

23:40

from Jim Crow South.

23:42

So

23:45

one of the people you write about is a woman

23:48

who took the Midwest stream, a

23:50

woman named Ida May. She

23:53

decided to go north because terrifying

23:55

things had happened to her, including family friends

23:58

who had been lynched.

23:59

And you know, Ida May is just an ordinary person,

24:03

but the details in her story tell

24:05

us so much about what was going on

24:07

in the US during Jim Crow. And

24:10

you spent a lot of time with her, right? Yes.

24:13

Ida May, Brandon Gladney, was a sharecropper's

24:15

wife in Mississippi

24:18

in the 1930s. And one

24:20

of the relatives of her husband

24:23

was accused

24:24

of having taken something

24:26

without proof, but he was accused of having

24:29

taken something. As a result of that, he

24:31

was beaten to within an inch

24:32

of his life. And after

24:35

seeing this happen, the husband, the two

24:38

of them, decided that this was going

24:40

to be the last crop they would be making. And

24:42

they had to set about planning

24:45

and figuring out how they were going to

24:47

escape.

24:50

And they could not go and tell

24:52

people of their plan. They could

24:55

only share it with a few trusted

24:57

people, her

24:57

mother and one of his cousins. And

25:00

they began to give away

25:02

or remove some of the things from

25:05

where they were living and quietly

25:07

went about their work

25:09

of harvesting the cotton from the field.

25:12

And then at the appointed hour, caught

25:15

the train to head north. And

25:17

really many of them said that they could not really

25:19

rest and exhale

25:22

until they had crossed out of

25:24

that state, really out of the even out of

25:26

the state of Tennessee going north. And

25:29

that's when they could feel that they were truly

25:31

on their way.

25:32

Yeah. And you write that even though

25:34

they made it out, they didn't end

25:36

up in some kind of northern utopia.

25:39

They basically had to live in squalor, at least

25:42

to begin with. Yes, they

25:44

ended up in Chicago. And

25:46

eventually they actually arrived in the midst of the depression,

25:48

which meant that it was very difficult going

25:51

for them. And there they

25:53

made an existence, made a family. And

25:57

she was not one to dwell

25:59

on what...

25:59

have been. She was one to think

26:02

about that everything was

26:04

meant to be, that things were for a purpose.

26:07

She lived what was called the

26:09

serenity prayer. She never looked back. I mean,

26:12

that's one of the things about the people in

26:14

the Great Migration is that a

26:16

lot of them... One reason

26:18

why it wasn't as well known as it otherwise

26:21

could have been is that the people did not

26:24

speak of this very much. They

26:26

didn't want to burden their children

26:28

with what they had suffered. They didn't want

26:30

their children to feel the same restrictions

26:32

that they had grown up under. So they really didn't talk about

26:34

it that much. And this

26:37

was necessary, you might say, because

26:39

of the post-traumatic stress

26:41

that they were experiencing. I mean, this is a traumatic

26:44

life that they had been

26:46

forced to lead. A

26:49

migration, I really

26:51

believe that every migration is a referendum

26:54

on the place that people are leaving. And

26:56

it's a vote of confidence and a leap

26:58

of faith and

27:02

hopefulness about the place that they are

27:04

going to. And in that

27:06

respect,

27:07

once you've made that decision, you want

27:12

to believe that it was the right decision to make.

27:14

And I say in the book that this was

27:17

the first big step that the nation's servant

27:19

cast made without

27:21

asking,

27:23

because the vast majority of time that African-Americans

27:25

have been on the soil, they were

27:27

not given the chance to have agency

27:29

over their lives. And that's really what migration

27:32

is. Migration is taking one's life

27:34

into one's own hands, making

27:36

decisions that you think will be best for your

27:39

family going forward and making

27:41

that leap

27:41

of faith into the unknown. Think

27:44

about those cotton fields

27:46

and those rice plantations and

27:49

those tobacco fields where

27:51

opera singers,

27:53

jazz musicians, playwrights,

27:57

novelists, surgeons,

28:00

attorneys, accountants,

28:03

professors, journalists.

28:07

And how do we know that?

28:09

We know that because that is what they

28:11

and

28:11

their children, and

28:14

now their grandchildren and even

28:16

great-grandchildren have often

28:18

chosen to become once they

28:20

had the chance to choose for themselves

28:24

what they would do with their God-given talents.

28:27

Without the great migration,

28:30

there might not have been a Toni

28:32

Morrison as we now know her to be.

28:35

Her parents were from Alabama and

28:37

from Georgia.

28:39

They migrated to Ohio, where

28:41

their daughter would get to do something that we

28:43

all take for granted at this point, but

28:45

which was against the law and against protocol

28:49

for African Americans at the time that she would

28:51

have been growing up in the South had they stayed.

28:54

And that is just to walk into a library

28:57

and take out a library book.

28:59

Merely by making the single

29:01

decision to leave, her

29:03

parents assured that their daughter

29:05

would get access to books.

29:07

And if you're gonna become a Nobel Laureate,

29:10

it helps to get a book now and then.

29:12

You know, it helps. Music

29:15

as we know it was reshaped

29:18

by the great migration.

29:19

As they came north, they brought

29:22

with them on their hearts and

29:24

in their memories, the music that

29:26

had sustained the ancestors, the

29:28

blues music, the spirituals and

29:30

the gospel music that had sustained them through

29:32

the generations. And they

29:34

converted this music into whole

29:37

new genres of music and got

29:39

the chance to record this music,

29:41

this new music that they were creating and

29:44

to spread it throughout the world.

29:49

Jazz was a creation

29:51

of the great migration. Starting with

29:54

Louis Armstrong, who was born in Louisiana

29:57

and migrated on the Illinois Central

29:59

Rail. road to Chicago, where

30:01

he got the chance to build

30:04

on the talent that was within him all along.

30:09

Miles Davis, his parents

30:11

were from Arkansas. They migrated

30:14

to Illinois, southern Illinois. John

30:17

Coltrane, he migrated at the

30:19

age of 16 from North

30:22

Carolina to Philadelphia,

30:24

where upon arrival in Philadelphia,

30:27

he got his first alto sax.

30:30

Thelonious Monk, Michael

30:33

Jackson, Jesse Owens,

30:35

Prince, August Wilson, Richard

30:38

Wright, Ralph Ellison,

30:40

Michelle Obama. These

30:43

are all a few of

30:45

the millions of people who

30:48

were products of this single decision

30:51

to migrate.

30:54

Isabel, knowing all you know

30:57

about the Great Migration, what

30:59

is your perspective on more recent

31:01

migrations within the US? The

31:04

most obvious example that comes to

31:06

mind is New Orleans. So many

31:08

people left the city after Hurricane Katrina,

31:11

and they never returned. Well,

31:13

I think that all

31:14

migrations share so much

31:16

in common in that one

31:18

thing that I was really excited to

31:20

discover in the process of working on the War of

31:22

the Sons was the work of E.G.

31:24

Ravenstein, who was a 19th century

31:27

geographer who

31:28

created what are known as the laws

31:31

of migration. He was basically

31:33

saying that people go no farther. They

31:35

go no farther than is necessary to

31:37

achieve their goals. So if a

31:40

family from New Orleans migrates

31:43

out and makes lives

31:44

for themselves and their families someplace

31:47

else, this is a decision that they made

31:49

that they felt was the best for themselves and

31:51

for their children. And I have

31:53

just the greatest sense of respect

31:55

and admiration for that. And I think

31:58

that when we look at any migration, and

32:00

we should always look at what is it that they're seeking

32:02

to achieve and to realize that

32:04

they are looking to

32:06

find freedom and success.

32:09

They're not doing this in order to not succeed.

32:11

There's too much at stake for them not

32:13

to succeed.

32:14

And you know, it could

32:16

take a different form based upon the

32:18

location and the group itself

32:20

and are you crossing national

32:22

or international borders. But essentially, I

32:25

think people all want the same thing. I think

32:27

that they're all seeking the same thing. And

32:29

if the more that we're able to recognize the

32:32

very human-centered

32:33

goals and nature

32:35

of migration itself, I think we would have greater

32:38

understanding for any migration

32:40

that we're looking at.

32:42

Do you think that lack of understanding

32:46

is part of the reason why there

32:48

is always a debate and such controversy

32:51

over different groups of people migrating

32:54

into the U.S.? It just comes up over and

32:56

over again. I

32:58

think that there's something that has to do with

33:01

how the people who are doing the migrating

33:04

are perceived in the first

33:05

place. I mean, if migration is something

33:07

that is in a way an

33:10

origin story for many Americans, then

33:12

that means that many Americans should already

33:14

have

33:14

a sense of appreciation for

33:16

the ways that migration affected

33:19

their own family lineage and thus

33:21

should be able to have more of an understanding

33:23

of other people who are migrating as well. I think

33:25

that it has to do with, in some ways,

33:28

a distancing from groups

33:30

that are seen as other.

33:32

It's a marginalization of the people who are

33:34

migrating who may not

33:36

be seen by some Americans

33:39

as similar to themselves. It's not recognizing

33:42

the common humanity of various

33:44

groups, and that is to the detriment

33:46

of everyone.

33:49

Isabel Wilkerson is

33:51

a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist.

33:54

Her most recent book is Cast, The

33:56

Origins of Our Discontents. You

33:59

can find her for more.

33:59

full talk at TED.com.

34:03

On the show today, ideas about

34:05

migration. I'm Manoush Zamarodi

34:08

and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from

34:11

NPR. Stay with us.

34:29

Want to stay up to date on all the news

34:31

but just can't find the time? Try NPR's

34:33

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34:53

It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

34:56

I'm Manoush Zamarodi. And often

34:58

when we hear the word migration, we

35:00

think of people escaping hardship, searching

35:03

for a new life for themselves and

35:05

their families. But that's

35:08

not necessarily the case for everyone.

35:11

Comedian Maeve Higgins moved from

35:13

Ireland to the U.S. eight years ago.

35:16

And in 2018, she gave a talk about her experience

35:19

because she noticed that not all immigrants

35:22

are treated the same.

35:23

I don't

35:25

know if you can tell by my accent. Usually

35:27

when I start talking, people are like, you're not from

35:30

around here. And I'm not from

35:32

around here. I'm Texan. I'm

35:34

from Texas. And as

35:36

we say back home, here

35:39

we are, big sky country.

35:41

Is that Texas? No,

35:43

I'm from a place called Cove,

35:45

which is a harbor town in Ireland.

35:48

It's a maritime town and there's a history of

35:51

immigration from my hometown, actually.

35:54

It's

35:55

the last place that Annie Moore ever saw

35:58

before she moved to America. America,

36:01

Annie Moore was the very first immigrant through

36:03

the brand new gates of Ellis Island

36:06

when that opened in 1892. Colve

36:09

is also the last place where over two

36:11

million Irish people left from when they

36:14

were fleeing sort of the worst years

36:16

of Irish history. They were kind of

36:19

running from famine in some cases,

36:21

oppression, or lots of people just left

36:23

to try and find a better life. So

36:26

we learned all about these people in school

36:29

growing up in history class, but I

36:31

never found out what happened to them when they arrived.

36:34

And I only got interested in immigrants

36:37

when I became one myself.

36:42

I moved to New York in 2014. I

36:46

moved here on an O-1 visa. It's

36:48

for people who've achieved a lot in their field

36:51

and it's often given to those of us who are

36:53

in sciences, sports, the arts. I'm

36:57

a writer so what I do really is I listen

36:59

to and then I tell stories. And

37:01

these days, immigrants I think

37:03

are the ones with the best stories. For

37:06

the past few years I've been travelling around

37:08

America and meeting with

37:10

immigrants and hearing stories of lives

37:12

left behind and started again someplace

37:15

new. And I think probably a lot of us

37:17

heard a very big immigrant story this year.

37:19

It was when France won the World Cup.

37:22

So France's

37:24

World Cup winning team was actually made up

37:26

largely of immigrants or the children

37:29

of immigrants from places like Angola,

37:31

Algeria, Cameroon, Zaire,

37:34

from everywhere. And people really went

37:37

bonkers over this.

37:38

There

37:43

was a CNN headline that read, France's

37:45

World Cup win is a victory for

37:48

immigrants everywhere. And

37:50

all these tweets and all these memes went

37:52

viral saying, look how great

37:54

immigration is. They won your

37:56

soccer match and you should welcome

37:58

them.

37:59

But I really worried about that. I really worried

38:02

about pointing out like how good these immigrants

38:04

were because I think by

38:06

doing so we're helping to build

38:09

the deadly and the disgusting case

38:12

that a lot of racists and anti-immigrant

38:14

xenophobes have of some lives

38:17

being worth more than others.

38:21

Every immigrant has a story of one

38:23

life left behind and another one started

38:25

anew. Annie Moore, the girl I was telling

38:27

you about, I don't think I mentioned she was only 17. So she was

38:29

an unaccompanied

38:32

minor, she was undocumented and when

38:34

she reached America she was safe.

38:37

She was allowed in, in fact the US authorities

38:39

gave her a gold coin to commemorate the

38:41

occasion and they reunited her with

38:44

her parents, as it should be. Annie

38:47

Moore never made a fortune, she never

38:49

wrote a book or invented a computer

38:52

and really why should she? Why

38:54

should immigrants have to prove themselves extraordinary

38:57

to deserve a place at the table, to deserve

38:59

a fighting chance? Constantly

39:02

having to prove yourself worthy of basic

39:04

human dignity is exhausting

39:07

and it's unfair.

39:08

People should not be considered valuable just

39:11

because they do something of value to us,

39:13

like pick our fruit or perform

39:15

our life-saving surgery or

39:18

win our soccer game. People

39:20

are valuable because they are people

39:23

and I think that we need to hold that close

39:26

because if we forget that or

39:28

if we deny it,

39:30

then terrible things happen.

39:36

That was comedian Maeve Higgins.

39:38

She's the host of the podcast, Maeve

39:40

in America, Immigration IRL.

39:43

You can find Maeve's full talk at

39:45

TED.com.

39:48

On the show today, migration.

39:51

And up until now, we've been talking about

39:53

human migration. But of course,

39:55

humans aren't the only animals that migrate.

39:59

hundreds if not thousands

40:02

of species of birds that migrate. There's

40:05

caribou across Canada, wildebeest

40:08

in Africa. There are migratory fish

40:10

like salmon and also a lot of marine

40:12

animals migrate long distances like sea

40:14

turtles and whales.

40:17

But right now, let's turn our attention

40:20

to the humble but tenacious monarch

40:22

butterfly. I think of monarchs as

40:25

the tanks of the butterfly world. So

40:28

they're small, they weigh only half a gram, but

40:30

they can travel thousands of kilometers in the

40:32

wild. This is Sonia

40:35

Altizer. I'm an ecologist at the

40:37

University of Georgia, so I study

40:39

the ecology of animal migration. And

40:42

Sonia says monarch butterflies are

40:44

different because their migration is

40:46

multi-generational.

40:47

So this same monarch

40:49

never makes the journey twice. It's

40:52

their grand offspring and

40:54

great grand offspring of

40:57

the migratory generation that will migrate

40:59

again the following year.

41:04

Sonia

41:04

is specifically talking about a

41:06

migration path east of the Rocky

41:08

Mountains. These monarchs travel

41:10

thousands of miles across international

41:13

borders every year. Ecologists

41:16

think they're looking for the precious

41:18

milkweed plant. Inarguably,

41:21

the most important driver for them is food,

41:24

and especially milkweed plants where

41:26

the females can lay their eggs. Another

41:29

reason why they migrate is to ride out

41:32

the winter in the Sierra Madre Mountains

41:34

near Mexico City. So

41:40

there might be ten million

41:42

butterflies or more in a single colony.

41:47

And these colonies would be densely

41:50

packed butterflies that are hanging in these

41:52

beautiful fur forests. And

41:55

so they're carpeting the trunks of trees, and

41:58

it's almost like the butterflies spend the winter in the wild.

41:59

winter in the refrigerator. And

42:03

then the temperature does warm

42:06

up, especially as the overwintering

42:08

season progresses into the spring. And

42:11

these clusters will sort of burst

42:14

open almost like orange confetti, fluttering

42:18

through the sky. Does

42:20

it make a sound when they burst open

42:22

like that? It does,

42:24

so it's almost like a very gentle wind

42:26

or rustling of leaves. And

42:31

sometimes the air is so thick with butterflies

42:34

that it might be hard to see a person

42:36

standing 50 meters away just

42:39

because there's so many butterflies flying through

42:41

the air.

42:47

By early March it's time to procreate.

42:50

So the butterflies leave the mountains for

42:53

northern Mexico and Texas to

42:55

lay their eggs on milkweed, the

42:58

only plant that their caterpillars will

43:00

eat. But by this time they're

43:02

really old so they've been alive for about

43:04

nine months and eventually

43:07

they die and then it takes time

43:10

for their offspring to develop.

43:13

But by May this new generation is

43:15

ready to continue the journey north.

43:17

And the part of the United

43:19

States that we refer to as the Corn Belt, so

43:22

Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota,

43:24

and even farther north into Michigan

43:27

and southern Canada. There the

43:29

butterflies have enough milkweed, nectar,

43:32

and sun to stay put and

43:34

cycle through one, even two, more

43:36

generations. But

43:38

then the last generation at the

43:40

end of the summer, it's the shorter

43:43

day lengths and the cooler temperatures

43:45

that signal to those butterflies

43:47

that generation that it's time to get ready

43:49

to migrate. And so

43:52

instead of producing eggs

43:54

and mating and hanging

43:56

out in milkweed patches, those butterflies

43:59

instead

43:59

that tank up on nectar, they

44:02

build up their fat reserves, and

44:04

they head south towards the overwintering

44:06

sites in Mexico. And so they have

44:08

to be in a special physiological

44:11

state to be able to successfully

44:13

make that migration. Huh. So

44:15

they keep the species going,

44:17

but it's this, I mean, I'm sorry, but describing

44:20

a butterfly as fat is like, I've seen fat

44:22

caterpillars, but I've never seen a fat butterfly.

44:25

Yeah. They are butterballs in

44:27

the fall and winter. And it's

44:29

important

44:29

that they build up those fat reserves

44:32

because they not only need

44:34

the energy to fuel the migration,

44:37

but they have to live off of their fat

44:39

reserves for five months

44:42

at the overwintering sites and also

44:44

use them to fuel that journey partway

44:46

back north again. Here's

44:49

Sonia Altizer on the TED stage.

44:52

Now, this migration of monarchs is one of the

44:54

Earth's last great migrations.

44:57

But around the world, a lot of these great migrations

45:00

have disappeared or are disappearing due to

45:02

things that we

45:04

as people are doing to them

45:07

and their habitats. Their losses

45:09

change the entire ecology of ecosystems,

45:12

and they're impossible to replace.

45:14

Like these other migrations, monarch migration

45:17

is declining too. In fact, the

45:19

last three consecutive

45:21

years have been the lowest numbers

45:23

of monarchs ever recorded in Mexico.

45:26

So low, in fact, that scientists

45:28

estimate migratory monarchs have declined

45:31

by 90%.

45:33

So if monarchs were people, this would

45:35

be like losing every person living

45:38

in the United States except

45:40

for those in Ohio and Florida.

45:43

Now, what are the causes of this monarch decline?

45:46

Well, unfortunately, there's a lot of different challenges

45:49

facing monarchs, ranging from

45:51

climate change and drought to deforestation

45:55

and illegal logging in Mexico, even

45:57

car strikes along roads. During

46:00

the fall migration,

46:02

one of the more ominous threats has

46:04

been the loss of milkweed

46:06

plants in agricultural habitats

46:09

due to shifting agricultural practices.

46:12

So it might surprise you to hear that what

46:14

we eat affects food that's available

46:17

to the monarchs.

46:18

So you actually link the monarch's

46:20

well-being to how we humans

46:23

grow our food. Can you just explain

46:26

what that link is, what the connection is between

46:28

the two? Well,

46:31

so monarchs need milkweed. Milkweed

46:33

isn't the only resource that they need. They also

46:35

need nectar plants. But milkweed

46:38

is the key resource that monarchs need

46:40

to reproduce, and it's an agricultural

46:43

weed. And so you would find it along

46:45

roadsides, even country roads or gravel

46:47

roads. It

46:48

would be growing in and around corn fields,

46:51

in and around other row crops and orchards.

46:54

And so one thing that has become popular

46:57

since the late 1990s

46:59

are crops that are genetically modified to

47:02

resist common herbicides like

47:04

Roundup. And

47:06

the herbicides can be sprayed on

47:09

crop fields of soybean or corn, and

47:11

the crops do just fine. But

47:13

milkweeds and other agricultural

47:15

weeds that would be providing nectar for monarchs

47:18

would die. So

47:20

you suggest that one way to help stem

47:22

the decline is to buy non-GMO

47:26

food. But GMOs

47:28

have been around for what, nearly 30

47:31

years now. Is that even possible

47:33

anymore?

47:34

That's an interesting question. I mean, certainly

47:37

we can use our purchasing power as consumers

47:39

to buy sustainably sourced

47:42

crops or agriculture. So buy

47:44

local, buy organic. It's

47:47

probably too late to turn the clock on

47:49

GMO crops. And it

47:51

is a controversial topic. So the

47:54

technology itself isn't harmful

47:57

or evil. It's just the way that these crops

47:59

have been deployed. and the scale at which they've

48:01

been deployed, it means that we're growing

48:04

food now in a way that doesn't leave room

48:06

for other biodiversity. And so

48:08

these agroecosystems have become really

48:13

almost ecological deserts, if you will. So

48:15

is there anything else we can do?

48:18

Like, I guess, plant monarch-friendly

48:21

gardens? Plant more milkweed? Definitely

48:24

planting milkweed, but especially native milkweeds,

48:27

is something that people

48:29

can do to help them.

48:29

And again, being

48:32

aware that it's not just milkweeds that monarchs need, it's

48:35

nectar plants and other resources too. And if you

48:37

plant habitats and gardens for monarchs

48:39

and other pollinators, you'll

48:43

be helping dozens of other species

48:45

as well. And so it's realizing

48:47

that monarchs are part of these complicated

48:49

food webs that involve birds

48:52

and spiders and ants and

48:55

other plant species, even

48:58

parasites that attack them. And

49:00

certainly milkweed is a critical part

49:02

of that, and there are other parts too.

49:08

One of my dreams is to be able to take my kids

49:11

to the overwintering sites in

49:13

central Mexico to let them be able

49:15

to see what it's like to stand

49:17

in a forest full of millions of butterflies.

49:20

And so to see that declining,

49:23

to see those migrations unraveling does make

49:25

me sad. At the same time, they

49:28

are resilient, and

49:31

they can acclimate or

49:33

adapt to a wide range

49:35

of conditions. And so they do

49:37

exist in places in

49:38

the world where they don't undergo long-distance

49:40

migrations. So there are native

49:43

resident monarch populations throughout

49:45

Central and South America and the Caribbean

49:47

Islands, and monarchs more recently

49:49

colonized the Pacific Islands.

49:52

They've also recently crossed the Atlantic.

49:55

They've crossed the Atlantic, like literally, do you think? Yes, they have. And

49:58

so one interesting thing,

49:59

fact about monarchs is that in England

50:02

people used to call them storm fritillaries

50:04

in historic times because they

50:06

would occasionally blow over with big

50:09

storms. People thought that they maybe

50:11

naturally just blew across the Atlantic in

50:13

storms. It also seems likely

50:15

that monarchs have hitched a ride with people to

50:18

different places around the world on trade ships,

50:21

for example. But in a

50:23

lot of these places monarchs breed

50:25

year-round and don't undergo long-distance migrations.

50:28

And so how these tiny insects

50:29

can show such a wide

50:32

range of behavioral responses

50:34

to different environments is fascinating

50:36

to me. And so I think a lot of us

50:38

are trying to figure out what's going to be the new

50:41

normal. Yeah, I mean

50:43

the new normal sounds like it's

50:45

not great for these butterflies.

50:47

There's a

50:48

lot we humans keep

50:50

doing to cause problems for them. So does that

50:53

mean that in addition to studying

50:55

them we also need to start enacting laws

50:57

to protect them? You

51:00

know,

51:00

one of the great challenges with

51:02

protecting migratory species is that

51:04

they don't see

51:07

or respond to or respect geopolitical

51:10

boundaries. And so we need to think

51:12

about ways of

51:14

engaging in conservation that cross

51:16

these boundaries, which are

51:19

really just artificial constructs of people

51:21

and nations. And you really

51:24

reflect on the fact that for most of life

51:26

on Earth, movement is

51:28

not only a

51:30

part of their life, it's

51:32

essential to the persistence

51:34

of these species. That's

51:37

Sonja Altheiser. She's an ecologist

51:40

at the University of Georgia. You

51:42

can learn more about her research and

51:45

what we humans can do to help the monarch

51:47

butterfly at ted.npr.org.

51:51

Thank

51:51

you so much for being with us this week

51:54

to talk about migration. To

51:56

learn more about the talks on today's show,

51:58

go to ted.npr.org.

51:59

And to see

52:02

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52:07

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52:09

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