Entrevista na íntegra

P - First of all we would like to thank you for the opportunity to make this interview and first, would you tell us your name, your parent’s names and where did you born and the date of your born.

R - My name is Ziba Cramer, I was born in March 14th of 1972. I’m 37. My parents, my mom is Susan and I have two dads. How is that possible? (risos) My biological father is Sherok Hatami, he is from Iran. And my stepfather is Michael Kramer, from America.

P - Ok. First, can you tell us about your parents, their origins and their activities and, I don’t know, when you were young? (risos)

R - I was born in London, in UK. My father, like I said, is Iranian and he is a photographer. He is a fashion photographer and also a photojournalist. He works for Paris Match and Life magazine, and a lot of big European and American publications, and he covered a lot of the Middle-East, like the Iranian Revolution and the peace agreements, and a lot of Hollywood type of stuff also. My mother was a model, when she was young, and then when she met my stepdad she became a carpenter because my step dad was a carpenter. So she was one of the first women carpenters. In America we have informal carpenters, the privates, and we have people that work in the union. And my mom and my stepdad were union carpenters. So they worked in big projects in Boston, so I grow up in Boston, I came from UK to America and we lived in Boston. Both my dad and my mom were carpenters and it was difficult to my mom because she was one of the few women and there were not very women and the men did not like very much the women being in the carpentry profession and the way you learn to be a carpenter in the union is by being an apprentice. So you only learn if the head carpenter teaches you how to use the tools, so I think I grow up with a strong awareness of equality and the struggle for equality because of my mother own experience with being a carpenter. And she and my stepfather worked together sometimes when they were assigned to the same job. Often they were not assigned to the same jobs so she was on her own. They retired two years ago and they live in Maine, which is North of Massachusetts near Canada. Now they do organic gardening and farming and stuff like that. So they really like to be close to the earth.

P - Interesting

P - Ok. Very interesting And you learned all this carpentry…

R - …No My mother said only over her dead body would her children become a carpenter (risos) It was so hard for her and you know, she was dyslexic as a teenager so she had difficulties at school but she was always very good with her hands but she didn’t succeeded in the main system so she did never went to college and she was very insistent with myself and my sister about going to college. I think that economically it’s difficult to be a carpenter because it’s a cyclical work and sometimes you work, sometimes you don’t and you can’t plan so she wanted us to have more stability. Now we work for a company. (risos)

P - How many sisters do you have?

R - I have five sisters. My father stayed in Europe and he lived in France. Before my mom he married a Danish woman so I have other sister that is half Iranian half Danish. After my mom he married a French woman so I have a sister that is half French half Iranian. Then I have three sisters from my American family.

P - Great Eu vou pular já... How is the sport’s presence in your life?

R - Sports have been always critical in almost every single moment and truly important in my life. So I had always been an athletic and my mom played sports, my two other sisters both had full scholarship at the college for basketball and then they went to play in Europe, so they are really good, they are taller than me (risos) And my uncle is a soccer football coach, and my other uncle races bicycles, my other uncle plays ice hockey, and he still plays, he’s like 50 years old so it’s a very much part of my family and who we are, a very physical family and then… I always played sports growing up and we usually settle in a specific game, and I played lacrosse. Lacrosse is a very American game.

P - It’s an American game. They use a stick with a net and they catch the ball and throw the ball…

R - …Yeah

P - It’s very interesting But it’s more for women than for men.

R - No It’s both

P - Both of them?

R - Yes. But it’s a different game because it’s a field game and everybody has this stick with a net at the end and we throw the ball in the air. It’s a solid rubber ball. But historically it’s a Native American game and nobody know this because it’s a very upper-class game, it has been in the past in America and in England because the English came and they saw the natives playing and the Native Americans used to play over many, many miles with huge teams. And they used it to settle disputes between tribes and also for medicine so when somebody was sick in the community… they called The Creator’s Game so they would play for The Creator and then that would hopefully cure the illness in the community. So nobody knows it as a spiritual game and interestingly the women in the native communities were not allowed to play lacrosse.

P - Really?

R - Yeah. So what happens is that they used to play with wooden sticks and what happened is that the English came and they made of it a field sport and they took it to their private schools and that’s why they play in England and for some reason the girls started playing in England and then it became part of the private schools in America but it’s much more East Coast because that’s where the Iroquois used to play, so that is why is in that area. So I played that game and I absolutely loved it. And then I played the basketball but my sister is really good and…

P - You’re a professional?

R - No, no Not professional. (risos) But in America when you play in the high school and college, you play every day for at least three hours, two to three hours, so it’s much more structured than in other countries. Anyway, I played lacrosse and then I studied in the Middle East at least, because of my dad, in college, in Conflict Resolution and then I went to Palestine to study the Palestine-Israel conflict and I started to play basketball in the team in the West Bank and then I had to study in both sides of the conflict and my Israeli Politics professor was a champion swimmer and she was supposed to be on the team that went to Munich in 1972, remember the team that was attacked by the Palestine, so she was a big peace activist so I used to play basketball in Ramallah, in the West Bank, but I was also staying with my Israeli Politics professor’s family in Jerusalem so I did a lot of work with bringing ____________ (9:41) together to play sports and then the sports communities of both places, then I graduated from school and I started working with the UNDP but in Palestine and I was put in the Ministry of Youth and Sport in Palestine right when they started their government so it was right after the peace agreement with Israel and their politics of receiving their governments and I was hired to help them with the sport department, working on women sports. It wasn’t because I knew anything, because I didn’t I just played basketball (risos) and nobody else did. The sports are very small for women there and I had a lot of energy because I was quite young so I got my first kind of prominent job with the UN through sports. And then I went to business school and then I started working on labor work rights because of my parents. I went to business school but I was interested in the social applications of business and through that I ended up going to Vietnam and working on with work rights in manufacturing communities and Nike has factories in Vietnam, so then I met the Nike people and that was how I started working at Nike. But through all my life then, when I came to Nike, lacrosse was the fastest growing sports in the US. So it used to be Native American, East Coast’s private but now is everywhere. So when we started working on it I said, “you know, it’s a Native American game” and nobody knew that and we have a group at Nike that works on Native American community issues because there is high rates of diabetes and obesity in the native communities of America so we have a special program to help Native youth activity and the Iroquois asked Nike to sponsor their national team and they are sort of a nation in America. When they travelled for the world cup of lacrosse they travelled with their own passports. That’s really interesting. So I started working with them on lacrosse with Nike and the Native communities have a strong commitment with sustainability because of their history so we created a special logo called Nike 7, N7, for seven generations because it’s supposed to be created for seven generations in the future environmentally and friendly product so again to support sports as a connection to my past and the experiences and relationships that helped me to work a lot so…

P - Very interesting.

P - So you attached the Native culture to play a game in nowadays, plenty in the future with the… generation in the future. It’s really interesting

R - Yes. Anyway, sport is big for me

P - I’m very curious. Would you tell us your biggest challenge in life?

R - Biggest challenge?

P - Yes. Professional or personal. The biggest challenge in your life, what was it?

R - Like one moment or just general?

P - You choose.

R - I think that the biggest challenge is slowing down. So I always worked at the UN, I worked in Nike, a big company, and Nike is a very open dynamic and innovated company but they still move very slowly sometimes and I believe in changing, I think I believe, right now I believe, sort of in changing from the inside out, you know, of working with institutions and you have to make compromises on the way for the big picture. But sometimes the big picture doesn’t arrive soon enough.

P - The time isn’t as fast as you plan to.

R - Well, you are living according to a set of beliefs that is better to have the evolution then the revolution and you’re waiting for the future when the things will really change. But I think fundamentally it’s gonna be, I don’t know, I think the biggest challenge is knowing that the system that you live doesn’t make any sense. You know?

P - Yes, I know. Living in Brazil I have the same feeling. (risos)I can say __________ (15:26) and politicians…

P - You know a lot of places and countries, right? Could you describe to us something very different or a situation… Can you describe for us?

P - We want you to tell us what was the most important, impacting difference from the cultures that you lived, in all the countries that you lived…

R - It’s definitively living in Palestine and spending a lot of time in Jerusalem, which is obviously controlled by Israel. But I think I was really drawn to that place because people have strong beliefs and you have to be ready to live or die for those beliefs. But there’s a couple things, one is that I have a lot of sympathy for the Palestinian cause I think but I also understand the history and the struggles of the Jewish people and I think that was the most impacting thing of living in different cultures, there were two different things that were really challenging, one was the way women are… the status of women in Arab societies, it was difficult for me to live within and be respectful with other people culture and not agree with how it’s… But I also really loved the Arabian culture and became very attracted to it. Then also at the same time the issue of people’s beliefs. We don’t have strong cultural identity in America, I mean, being American it’s sort of a melting pie, you know, where’s the Jews and the Palestinians it’s very much assort their mentality and ______ (18:10) not understanding their mentality.

P - Ok. What have you done in your life that you are most proud of?

R - That’s really difficult. It’s probably coaching. I mean, I was a lacrosse coach and I think that knowing that I had an impact every year on 30 girls that I coached for four years when I lived in Oregon but that was the strongest connection and just knowing that… and I still keep in touch with a lot of the girls and I see them like sort of girls from high school being adults which is really strange. (risos) I think that you can be proud of small things when they’re personal and when ___________ (19:09).

P - Ok. To finish, what’s your big dream?

R - (risos) It’s sort of strange. It will sound very strange but my big dream is that capitalism will be replaced by a different model as the dominant force in the world. Because it is, even if you’re not American, even if you live in a socialist country, you’re affected by the rules of the global stock market and that is what rides the behavior of the companies which is really for material wealth and that’s not sustainable.

P - Ok. It was real nice. Great Thank you very much (risos)

R - Your welcome This is going to a museum and nobody is going to see it, right? (risos)

P - It’s just for the records (risos)

R - It’s not going to show up in the media, right?

P - No, no