Nontombi Naomi Tutu has been speak­ing out on mat­ters of injus­tice for more than thirty years.

The Globalization Initiative and Office of Diversity Inclusion brought Tutu to speak at Ferris’ Williams Auditorium on Tuesday, March 2.

Tutu, an activist for human rights, grew up dur­ing apartheid in South Africa. Apartheid was a sys­tem of legal seg­re­ga­tion enforced by the National Party gov­ern­ment in South Africa between 1948 and 1994. White res­i­dents deter­mined the rights of black res­i­dents dur­ing this period.

Being the daugh­ter of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nomalizo Leah Tutu, Tutu said her par­ents were for­tu­nate enough to send her to another coun­try. She has lived in Lesotho, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Tutu has been speak­ing at col­lege cam­puses about apartheid South Africa since the 1970s.

“I was raised in the sys­tem and peo­ple needed to know what was going on,” said Tutu.

The oppor­tu­nity to travel was what pushed Tutu to speak out on the effects of racism and seg­re­ga­tion, dur­ing apartheid and through­out the rest of the world.

Tutu said many “daily kinds of indig­ni­ties” took place in the sys­tem. She said she was not allowed to be free in her own country.

“We didn’t have free­dom of move­ment,” said Tutu. She said blacks had no access to beaches, as they were reserved for whites. Education sys­tems were seg­re­gated as well.

She said that she would reg­is­ter at the police sta­tion in order to see her grandparents.

“You had a pass­port telling you where could go and where you could be,” she said.

Tutu uses the South African model of “Truth and Reconciliation” to speak of South Africa try­ing to heal after the apartheid. Truth and Reconciliation is the model of sit­ting down and hear­ing one another, said Tutu. She said it was specif­i­cally a South African model, but it’s an idea to be used in other countries.

Stories of those who were killed and tor­tured, as well as the sur­vivors, are impor­tant to be told, accord­ing to Tutu.

Dr. David Pilgrim, Chief Diversity Officer, said Ferris was inter­ested in hav­ing Tutu speak in order to estab­lish con­nec­tions to South Africa.

“I want Ferris stu­dents to have the same oppor­tu­ni­ties to hear the great speak­ers that stu­dents at the University of Michigan hear,” said Pilgrim. “I want our stu­dents to be con­nected in mean­ing­ful ways.”

Todd Stanislav, Director of the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning, said it was a real col­lab­o­ra­tive effort between the Globalization Initiative and the Office of Diversity and Inclusion.

Stanislav said they were able to bring Tutu to Ferris because she was in Michigan and could fit a visit to Ferris into her sched­ule. He said she was “very gracious.”

Most of Tutu’s sto­ries focused on apartheid and the people’s expe­ri­ences in the sys­tem. In terms of racism, seg­re­ga­tion and injus­tices, there are par­al­lels with the United States.

“It’s not hard to see the par­al­lel,” said Stanislav.

One of the exam­ples Tutu used in ref­er­ence to the Truth and Reconciliation model was that in high school his­tory text­books, there is not a lot said about slav­ery in the United States. She said to not only focus on talk­ing about good things, but to talk about things peo­ple are ashamed of.

Tutu feels that wounds can be healed, but it takes courage and will­ing­ness to speak and hear the truth.

Stanislav said it was a great model of a way to resolve injus­tices, and “some­thing that we can learn from.”

Tutu said the step to all types of heal­ing is sit­ting down and lis­ten­ing to one another.

“My sense is that even if there is one per­son who hears it and asks about their life’s role, they can make a dif­fer­ence,” she said.