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Ladies and gentlemen,

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I'm here representing
the element earth and Latvian identity.

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And yet the person who stands before you

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left her native city Riga at the age of 6

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only to return to it at the age of 60

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and to be elected president
8 months later.

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President of a country without ever
having belonged to a political party,

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without having undergone
an election campaign

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which we normally think of
as a part of a democratic process,

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without having spent a red cent
in election expenses,

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[is] not exactly
your typical political path.

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However, the path that I did follow

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has given me some unique
experiences and insights.

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And it is those
that I'd like to share with you,

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in spite of the fact
that the Earth on which I was born,

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the ground that my feet
were treading for most of my life,

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was not that of my native land,

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but was scattered
across 6 different countries

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on 3 different continents,

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where in the course of time

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I had to acquire 5 different languages

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and drop a few on the way
which I didn't quite master.

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How in all this strange pattern

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could one become president of a country

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and an expert in its identity

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would seem like a paradox,

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but, alas, it's but one of three
main patterns of identity

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that the Latvian nation has developed

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because of historical events

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as a consequence of the Second World War.

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After the first occupation
and the annexation by the Soviet Union,

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the following Nazi occupation,

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involvement of Latvians
in both sides of the warring parties

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against international conventions,

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and then three patterns developed.

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Some, like my parents
and those of my husband,

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left and went into exile
with their children, hoping to return

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when the international community
would ensure Latvia's independence again,

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which of course did not happen.

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Poor souls had never heard

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of the protocols
of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact

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and even less, of Yalta and Tehran
where the Allies had been involved.

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The second pattern was of those
who were forcibly deported to Siberia.

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Their lives have been documented
in films and documentaries;

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if you stay in Latvia,
you'll have the occasion to see

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during our Song Festival
which is upcoming in a few weeks.

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Finally, of course, the majority
of people stayed here in Latvia,

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but stayed here in a country
that was submitted to totalitarian rule,

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to a foreign occupation
and military presence,

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and an imposed ideology
and economic system.

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I speak mostly, of course,
from a perspective;

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first of those who went into exile,

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but then of those
who returned and tried to heal

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the various separate parts of our nation,

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the branches that had been cut off
from the common tree,

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to remind them all that they do grow
from the same historical soil,

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the same past,
the same cultural traditions,

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and that those are the ones
that essentially give us our identity.

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But my own identity formation
was by no means an easy path,

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and this is why I spent
much of my spare time

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- apart, of course, from my career,
my academic career

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as a loyal, contributing, and reasonably
successful Canadian academic -

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I spent much of my time
struggling to bring up my children,

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born abroad
from the Latvian point of view,

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born in Montreal,
native-born Canadians at that rate,

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and other:

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the children of many other Latvians
in different continents

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- South America, Australia,
Europe, the United States, Canada -

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to try and inculcate in them

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a sense of what it means
to be a Latvian and why.

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And I came to the conclusion
that identity is a complex process

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where being Latvian,

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or German, or American,
or Chinese, or anything whatever,

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is only one of the layers
of something like an onion in your psyche,

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where each of you, each of us

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are a part of many groups,

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conglomerates, associations, identities.

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We belong to many, many people

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with whom we can identify
in a multiplicity of ways.

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We are in fact more like the bulb
of a lily than that of an onion.

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Lilies having these different scales,

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and those are part
of different aspects of our personality.

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But there are some essential elements
of identity that remain constant.

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One of them is what I call the automatic.

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The natural, as it were, identity
that the children acquire as they grow up

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and are socialized by their family,
by their immediate surroundings,

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the extended family if they have one,

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later kindergarten, school,

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the other children on the street,
society at large,

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and nowadays increasingly

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by the electronic media
of communication of various sorts.

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The child develops a sense of self.

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Each child looks in the mirror
and at some point says:

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"Ah, that is little Annie,"
or little Susie, or little Tommy.

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They know that they recognize themselves,

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and they acquire a sense of who they are.

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But it's much later
that personal sense of belonging

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- of belonging to mommy or daddy,
or grandma, or grandpa,

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or of living on a certain street,
or in a certain countryside -

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is extended to a larger group.

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And this happens sooner or later
depending on the circumstances.

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For my generation, as exile children,

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when we first encountered children
belonging to different nationalities,

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we developed what I have called
a reactive identity.

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When somebody points their finger at you

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and calls you a dirty foreigner,
or a dirty Polak, and you say:

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"Hey, I'm not a Polak, I'm a Latvian,"

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you realize who you are
whether you would like it or not.

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Sometimes you like it

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because they're ready to play with you
and they're quite friendly,

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and sometimes you do not,

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because they're ready
to throw stones at you,

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run after you and try and beat you up.

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And you discover
that not all people are equal,

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and by much as among your own people,
you have some who, for instance,

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- in my case, going to a Latvian school
in a refugee camp in Germany -

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some are friendlier than others,
and so it is with foreigners.

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But when I befriended
a little Estonian girl

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who had a curious little knitted cap

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with a geometric pattern
and a sort of crown on top,

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- something like Anne Boleyn
if you can think of her portraits -

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but a knitted cap with geometric designs,

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I thought it was cute, and I asked her:
"How come you have such a cap,

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and I see all these
other Estonian girls have such caps?"

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I thought they were nice.

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She said: "Well, Estonians wear them."

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And when I asked my mother
could I get a cap like that,

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my mother told me:
"Estonians wear them, Latvians do not."

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It was as simple as that,
and much as I liked the cap,

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I was told: "No, you're not an Estonian,

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that is for Estonian girls,
Latvian girls do not wear them."

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Later, in spreading
across the different continents

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for refugee camps were closed in Germany,

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there were many almost tragic stories,
certainly sad ones,

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of little girls starting to go to school,
say, in Middle America,

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and being told by their mothers

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that decent little girls
when they go to school

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must have long braids with ribbons

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and dresses with white colours and cuffs.

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When they arrived in school,
they were shocked to see

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that everybody
was pointing fingers at them

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and they were absolutely different
from the other girls in school.

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When they told their mothers that's not
how American girls are dressing,

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their mothers said: "But you are not
an American, you are a Latvian."

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And the poor child
then had a choice to decide

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whether to remain different
and obey mamma,

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and remain within the Latvian community,

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or to rebel as soon as
her age would allow it,

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turn her back on Latvian society
and Latvian identity,

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and forget about it
as quickly as she could.

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What I spent my life doing

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was trying to convince
young people of Latvian origin,

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starting with my own children,

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but also convincing myself
as I myself grew up

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- since I did grow up abroad
and not in my native country -

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that there was a third form of identity
which was a freely chosen one.

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And that is the one where you realize
that belonging to a certain group

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- be it an ethnic group,
a cultural heritage, a linguistic group -

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you may define it in different ways,
but that what it does

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it opens doors to you
that would otherwise be closed.

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That learning the Latvian language

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- practically you might say,
spoken by so few people across the world,

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you'd be better off
learning Chinese, no doubt -

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but for your identity
and for your sense of well-being,

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for your roots being accessible to you,

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for that sense of belonging
that comes from belonging to a community

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in which you have birthrights,
- you belong to them by birthright -

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that is something
that cannot be replaced by something else.

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You can become a new Canadian,

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an American naturalized citizen,

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you can travel to many lands
and make a good living,

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and marry a local person, and fit in.

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And I have met many,
many Latvians who said:

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"I married an American girl,
I fell in love with her,

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but she did not like my going
with other Latvians

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to various Latvian events,

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she wanted me to turn my back
on them, and I thought to myself,

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'But she's turning her back
on my identity.

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She's turning her back on who I am'."

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But who I am is not so easily defined.

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One of the things that, I think,
defines who I am in that ethnic sense

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is, of course, that cultural heritage

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to which knowledge of language,
knowledge of history,

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in our case, knowledge of folklore

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- since that is a good part
of our heritage -

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those are the riches
that are available to those

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who open that door
of belonging to the Latvian nation

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quite freely and without having
to make that forced choice.

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Being different from the others,
one can blend in very easily.

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When you're a Latvian,

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in the great many countries
you can blend in very nicely,

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nobody will ever know by looking at you

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that you are a Latvian
or of Latvian origin.

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But you can keep

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- and this is what I tried to convince

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the youngsters from various countries
that I came in contact with -

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you can keep as it were
your secret garden:

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that Latvian identity that is your own.

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And that, of course,
we would be more than happy

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to share with the rest of the world,

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if somehow we could help them
to overcome the language barrier

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and they could get to know
about what it has to offer.

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In my own case, I have done that as well.

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I have done my own
small efforts, if you like,

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in terms of writing
scholarly articles and books

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about the Latvian heritage,
about the Latvian identity,

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and particularly about
what in our Latvian folk songs

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makes them so extraordinary, so special,

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and so worth getting acquainted with,
and so worth analyzing,

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and entering into that international
non-material heritage

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which UNESCO now for several years
has been recognizing.

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For those of you who are in Latvia
for the next few weeks,

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I quite recommend going
to the Latvian Song Festival,

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watching it on television,
seeing it on video.

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What we see in the Latvian Song Festival

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is something that embodies
the tradition of singing

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which had been
a pillar of Latvian identity

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for a great many centuries,

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before Latvia ever became a nation.

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In the 19th century,

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when Latvians were still largely
an oppressed class of society,

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they started singing in choirs.

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When the choirs got together regionally
and organized song festivals,

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they came to realize

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that one daughter was born in Riga
and another was born in Valmiera,

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but they were singing the same song,

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and they asked themselves the question
that one of the folk songs asks:

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"Are they daughters of the same mother?"

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And yes, they are daughters
of the same mother

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who is the Latvian nation.

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The singing and the coming together
was one element that allowed them

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to become conscious
of this Latvian identity.

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It allowed them
to become conscious of the riches

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that that identity offered them

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quite apart from the condescension,

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and, in fact, the denigration
that they had frequently suffered

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at the hands of those who had occupied
the upper levels of society

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in the various occupying forces
over the centuries.

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The Latvians recovered
their sense of pride in themselves,

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not just their sense of an awareness
of themselves as a nation.

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And through that awareness, they realized

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that they as a nation have the rights

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that belong to nations worldwide.

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And in many ways
this coming together and singing

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led to the thought
of Latvian independence,

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the creation of an independent
Latvian nation,

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and the tradition that managed to survive
through various foreign occupations,

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through various imposed ideologies,

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that managed to survive in Australia,
America, in Europe elsewhere,

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behind the Iron Curtain,
on the other side,

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the tradition helped us to maintain

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our sense of roots, our link with a past,

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the sense of inheritance and entitlement

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that being Latvian meant to us.

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And this sense of entitlement,
of course, makes us also fully European.

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This is why as a president
I worked so hard to ensure

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that Latvia became a member
of the European Union.

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This is why since leaving office
as president I have been

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such an ardent promoter
of European unity.

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But I must say that in addition to that,

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I find that from my experience
as president of a nation

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that I have acquired insights
that are welcome elsewhere in the world,

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and I'm part of at least 3 different clubs
and of great many organizations

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that have an international remit,

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that worry about the condition of women,

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that worry about transitions
to democracy in various countries,

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and I find myself now
with my Latvian identity

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laboring in the Lord's vineyards

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which are really those
of a citizen of the world.

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So that having returned
like Ulysses to the land of my birth,

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having been able to truly express
my Latvian identity

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in a way that being born here
should've predestined me for,

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I find myself also becoming
a very ardent European,

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but, most of all, I find
that all these experiences,

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those of my nation,
those of myself as an individual,

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those of my compatriots who suffered
by being deported or otherwise repressed,

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all those sufferings,

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that other nations both in Europe
and elsewhere have gone through,

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have contributed in each case

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to developing our own sense of humanity.

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And I would leave you with this thought

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that be your identity what it may,

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it must start with a sense
of your intrinsic value

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as a person, as a human being,

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as a citizen of the world,

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as a member of the human race.

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It is this belonging, this sense
of brotherhood or sisterhood

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with people who may look
entirely different from you,

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who have different values at times,

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certainly different experiences,

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but who after all have the same life path
that any human being has.

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From birth through development,

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growth, a career, experiences,
joys and sufferings,

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and then, of course, we leave
the stage as Shakespeare says,

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having been but actors on the stage.

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I wish you all to spend your life

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looking for that solid ground
under your feet,

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which is what your identity gives you.

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And remember, you don't have
just one of them, you have many,

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and constantly, in the course
of your life, you keep having choices.

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You can construct who you are
and who you want to be.

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Godspeed to you all.

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(Applause)