Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is solvable. I'm Ronald Young Jr. These representations
Speaker 1: are more than just like it makes me personally as
Speaker 1: a Native person, feel bad. It's actually a lot deeper
Speaker 1: than that. Our existence as Native people really challenges the
Speaker 1: fundamental values of what we know as the United States.
Speaker 1: The existence of Native people and the challenges to the
Speaker 1: fundamental values of the United States partially came to a
Speaker 1: head in July twenty twenty when the Washington football team
Speaker 1: finally decided to change its mascot and name from a
Speaker 1: harmful and violent slur against Native people. While this was
Speaker 1: a highly visible and highly publicized move, applauded by many,
Speaker 1: for Native folks, this fight is about a lot more
Speaker 1: than professional sports teams making symbols and icons without permission.
Speaker 1: When we define it as just taking from a culture
Speaker 1: that is not your own, that misses the whole power
Speaker 1: piece of it. The United States has a long and
Speaker 1: violent history of oppressing Native and Indigenous people. There are
Speaker 1: over five hundred and seventy four federally recognized tribes in
Speaker 1: the United States and many others not recognize by the
Speaker 1: federal government. That represents a lot of land and a
Speaker 1: lot of life and beyond the government. In television, film fashion,
Speaker 1: native culture is regularly depicted or appropriated without an eye
Speaker 1: toward accurate or respectful representation. Doctor Adrian Keane thinks it's
Speaker 1: time for a shift, and that the shift is both
Speaker 1: urgent and possible, moving the conversation from just sort of
Speaker 1: like representation matters for representation's sake, to representation matters because
Speaker 1: you need to know of the people who's land you
Speaker 1: are on. You need to know about your relationship to
Speaker 1: this land. And for Indigenous folks, our identities as indigenous
Speaker 1: are so deeply tied to being from the land and
Speaker 1: from a place that it's kind of one and the same.
Speaker 1: Sionagad Adrian Keene docadi squad de la juila Diega tongva
Speaker 1: di Gega. I am Adrian Keene. I'm a citizen of
Speaker 1: the Cherokee Nation, and I'm a Cherokee writer and scholar
Speaker 1: and author of Notable Native People. Indigenous erasure and invisibility
Speaker 1: is a solvable problem. So I know that you grew
Speaker 1: up in California, but you grew up around a lot
Speaker 1: of non Cherokee folks and a lot of around a
Speaker 1: lot of white folks. Can you tell me a little
Speaker 1: bit about that experience. Yeah, so I am a citizen
Speaker 1: of the Cherokee Nation, which is based in what is
Speaker 1: currently known as Oklahoma, and that is where my grandma
Speaker 1: grew up with her siblings on like rural Cherokee allotment land.
Speaker 1: And then she moved to California when she was eighteen
Speaker 1: and met my Armenian grandpa when she first moved there,
Speaker 1: and they got married and she stayed in California the
Speaker 1: rest of her life. She's still alive, she's ninety four.
Speaker 1: That's how I ended up in California. But I grew
Speaker 1: up in San Diego, which is Kumiai homelands, but that
Speaker 1: was not even something that I was aware of. So
Speaker 1: I grew up completely surrounded by non natives, and as
Speaker 1: someone who's very like white coating, white passing, it was
Speaker 1: so easy to be just completely invisible and not receive
Speaker 1: any narratives at all about Native existence, especially with the
Speaker 1: California state curriculum around Natives is like awful in elementary school,
Speaker 1: high school. So yeah, just never received any messages about
Speaker 1: the continued existence of Native people. When do you think
Speaker 1: you started to connect with your identity as as a
Speaker 1: Native person yourself, Like when do you do you have
Speaker 1: an earliest memory when that started to happen for you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think I always knew that I was
Speaker 1: Native and knew that I was Cherokee, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: something that I really understood what that meant. And I
Speaker 1: have like a few sort of small formative moments when
Speaker 1: I was really young, Like I remember, in I guess
Speaker 1: it was fifth grade, we were doing the Native American
Speaker 1: unit in our class, and our homework was to go
Speaker 1: home and come up with a quote unquote Indian name,
Speaker 1: which was the like very stereotypical adjective like plus noun idea,
Speaker 1: you know, like running elk or whatever. And I remember
Speaker 1: I remember like knowing that I could do the assignment
Speaker 1: and that that would be fine, but like feeling uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: But I was young and not really you know, activisty,
Speaker 1: so I didn't know what to do. And my mom
Speaker 1: was like, well, why don't you say your great grandma's name,
Speaker 1: Like why don't you just say, like Mona May McDaniel
Speaker 1: is your Indian name, because that's your family and that's
Speaker 1: where it comes from. And I was like okay. So
Speaker 1: I remember standing up in class and everyone had done
Speaker 1: the like running antelope or whatever because they're fast and whatever.
Speaker 1: And I stood up and was like, my name's Monamey
Speaker 1: McDaniel because that's my great grandma and she's Cherokee. And
Speaker 1: I remember the teacher looking at me like uh okay,
Speaker 1: and I sat down and everyone just like continued on
Speaker 1: with the activity. But that was kind of one of
Speaker 1: my earliest memories of being like, no, like this is
Speaker 1: me as well, like it's I'm not that separated from it.
Speaker 1: But it really wasn't until honestly, like college time, that
Speaker 1: I really had the opportunity to engage more deeply because
Speaker 1: I was an adult with the ability to travel and
Speaker 1: to do my own research and to ask the right
Speaker 1: questions of my family and that kind of stuff. So
Speaker 1: it took a long time because the erasure is real
Speaker 1: and colonization has deeply affected all of us. I remember
Speaker 1: one year of elementary school they had us do an
Speaker 1: assignment where for Thanksgiving where we had to take the
Speaker 1: paper bags and turning to vest and you did a
Speaker 1: headdress thing. And I remember like, even as a kid,
Speaker 1: just being like, it just seems weird that every single Indian,
Speaker 1: as we were saying at the time was all the same,
Speaker 1: and I hated that at the time, but I didn't
Speaker 1: know why. I was like something about this, but I
Speaker 1: couldn't put my figure on it. All of the depictions
Speaker 1: that I saw of Native folks were always negative, whether
Speaker 1: in the media and music whatever around us. What was
Speaker 1: it like for you besides having an experience like that
Speaker 1: yourself in elementary school, but what was it like for
Speaker 1: you to see yourself depicted or to see Native folks
Speaker 1: depicted in that way in media? Growing up? There was
Speaker 1: not a single positive reference that I remember in media
Speaker 1: or popular culture or anything. Like I grew up with
Speaker 1: Peter Pan and like the whole like what makes the
Speaker 1: Red Man red? And then we got Disney Spokehonists, which
Speaker 1: everyone thought was a sort of good depiction of natives,
Speaker 1: and it did make some limited strides, But then that
Speaker 1: meant that everyone would just when I said I was Native,
Speaker 1: would like sing Colors of the Wind to me or
Speaker 1: like whatever, so they're really there was such a big
Speaker 1: disconnect for me where I would look at my family
Speaker 1: like in Oklahoma and my grandma and be like, this
Speaker 1: isn't represented in anything that I see. These messages don't
Speaker 1: resonate with anything that I know about my family and
Speaker 1: where I come from. It wasn't even really until graduate
Speaker 1: school where it all kind of came together, and I
Speaker 1: realized that because I moved from California to the East Coast,
Speaker 1: and in California, I mean where I went to undergrad
Speaker 1: there was a very large Native population on campus. We
Speaker 1: had the large student run of pow Out in the US,
Speaker 1: and there was a Native American Studies department, and so
Speaker 1: there was at least an awareness of my classmates that
Speaker 1: like Natives existed in contemporary times and were their classmates
Speaker 1: and their friends and that kind of thing. But when
Speaker 1: I moved to the East Coast, it was absolute erasure.
Speaker 1: And so being in grad school and I was at Harvard,
Speaker 1: which you know, is this bastion of knowledge and everything,
Speaker 1: and to have faculty and fellow students in my doctoral
Speaker 1: program tell me to my face that they had never
Speaker 1: met a Native person before. Or to walk around Harvard
Speaker 1: Square and see we had an urban outfitters and that's
Speaker 1: where my blog Native Appropriations came from, was walking through
Speaker 1: urban outfitters and seeing just all of the like stereotypical
Speaker 1: and culturally appropriated stuff, and there are still plenty tons
Speaker 1: of Native people on the East Coast, but it's just
Speaker 1: like such a deep invisibility that I hadn't ever experienced.
Speaker 1: So to me, that's where the connection was finally made,
Speaker 1: where I was like, these representations are more than just
Speaker 1: like it makes me personally as a Native person feel bad.
Speaker 1: It's actually a lot deeper than that. Our existence as
Speaker 1: Native people really challenges the fundamental values of what we
Speaker 1: know as the United States, and so it goes all
Speaker 1: the way to our origins. Let's talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about your blog, Native Appropriations. You started that almost twelve
Speaker 1: years ago, and you mentioned starting it after the reaction
Speaker 1: to the things you were saying in culture, especially in
Speaker 1: urban outfitters. How's that work resonated amongst folks. I know
Speaker 1: you have a large following, but was this a useful
Speaker 1: tool to get people to see you to feel seeing Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was wild. I started it solely as a kind
Speaker 1: of like personal project. I mean back in two thousand
Speaker 1: and ten when I started it, everybody had a blog
Speaker 1: like that was the thing we were all doing. It
Speaker 1: wasn't a rare thing to the blog. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: the height of the personal blogging revolution. But for me.
Speaker 1: I wanted it to be a place where I was
Speaker 1: just going to catalog these misrepresentations and sort of have
Speaker 1: a place where I could point to it and be like,
Speaker 1: look at how ubiquitous this is, look at how deep
Speaker 1: it runs. And then as I was doing it, I
Speaker 1: realized that I myself didn't even really have the language
Speaker 1: to talk about why saying like this makes me uncomfortable
Speaker 1: wasn't enough. So then it kind of forced me to
Speaker 1: start articulating the language around this is harmful for these reasons.
Speaker 1: And part of the reason I wanted to do it
Speaker 1: is that I'm someone who is very uncomfortable with direct confrontation,
Speaker 1: which surprises some people because in the early days of
Speaker 1: the blog, I was super forceful with what I was saying,
Speaker 1: like very confrontational, like calling people out right and left.
Speaker 1: But in real life I'm an introvert who is very
Speaker 1: shy and has a hard time with that. So I
Speaker 1: wanted to create something that people could just send a
Speaker 1: blog post to their boss or to a friend, or
Speaker 1: to a faculty member or something to explain a feeling
Speaker 1: that they were having without having to say it in
Speaker 1: the perfect words in the moment. And why these images,
Speaker 1: why cultural appropriation is harmful or hurtful, and how to
Speaker 1: move past it. When I started, I was entering into
Speaker 1: a conversation that existed, Like I wasn't the first one.
Speaker 1: I was building upon the legacy of activists who came
Speaker 1: before me, like Suzanne Shone Hard Joe and like all
Speaker 1: the amazing largely Native women who had been fighting against
Speaker 1: Native mascot simist representations for decades. But the conversation around
Speaker 1: cultural appropriation was still pretty new then in twenty and ten,
Speaker 1: Like it was still an academic e term that had
Speaker 1: come out of anthropology and wasn't really in the mainstream.
Speaker 1: So to see the impact of that conversation now, to
Speaker 1: see every single day there's some headline about cultural appropriation
Speaker 1: is wild to me, Like that was not a conversation
Speaker 1: that existed a decade ago. To see that is really amazing.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about appropriation. Would you talk about specifically how
Speaker 1: it reinforces systems of power and actively erases Native culture?
Speaker 1: Absolutely so. I think a lot of the conversation about
Speaker 1: cultural appropriation misses out on some of the key parts
Speaker 1: of it. When we define it as just taking from
Speaker 1: a culture that is not your own. That misses the
Speaker 1: whole power piece of it. And so for Indigenous people specifically,
Speaker 1: we're living in a settler colonial society. Colonization was not
Speaker 1: something that happened a long time ago and now we're
Speaker 1: past it. Like colonization is every structure that we live in,
Speaker 1: every structure we interact with, like the fact we're speaking
Speaker 1: English right now, like all of these things. We are
Speaker 1: in an active settler colonial society. So that power structure
Speaker 1: of the colonizer and the colonized still deeply exists in
Speaker 1: everything that we do. So I have written about smudge
Speaker 1: kits and the fact that white sage is being sold everywhere.
Speaker 1: And cultural appropriation is not just about like that's an
Speaker 1: uncomfortable thing or like that's something that we've been working on.
Speaker 1: It's not acknowledging the systems of power that are in place.
Speaker 1: It's not allowing Indigenous peoples the power to represent ourselves
Speaker 1: in the way that we want to be represented. Native
Speaker 1: spiritual practices were prohibited by law until nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 1: That wasn't that long ago. Like I was born in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five, Like that really was not that long ago.
Speaker 1: So before that we could be like fined or sent
Speaker 1: to jail or insane asylums for practicing our religion, our spirituality,
Speaker 1: and so now to see those things in stores or
Speaker 1: oliver Etsy or whatever, it is completely ignores that history
Speaker 1: and doesn't acknowledge the fact that this is something we're
Speaker 1: actively having to protect and reclaim. So there are plenty
Speaker 1: of things that Native folks are willing to share and
Speaker 1: are very active about sharing and are very open about sharing,
Speaker 1: but there are certain things that we should be able
Speaker 1: to have the power to say that's just for folks
Speaker 1: within the community. You know, as a black person, I
Speaker 1: think that's that's always a tough conversation to have with
Speaker 1: anyone when you talk about culture or in your cases,
Speaker 1: some of the spiritual practices that are important, and it
Speaker 1: seems like there's a lack of education there from the
Speaker 1: folks who are taking from the dominant culture, who are
Speaker 1: taking from these subcultures or from these cultures that they're
Speaker 1: unfamiliar with. One part of fixing this could be found
Speaker 1: in education. And I see there's a lot of debate
Speaker 1: right now about talking about black folks in history and
Speaker 1: what that looks like to each proper history to teach
Speaker 1: where black folks were in the place of history. What
Speaker 1: does that look like for Native folks? What does it
Speaker 1: look like to reinsert Native culture and Native history into
Speaker 1: the larger American historical narrative and the world historical narrative.
Speaker 1: There is so much space for being able to do
Speaker 1: that work, because right now the narrative that we do
Speaker 1: learn in schools is so limited and so one sided.
Speaker 1: And I think the challenge is that that history does
Speaker 1: not paint much like the black history in the US
Speaker 1: does not paint the US in a good light. It
Speaker 1: does not, But I mean, the United States would not
Speaker 1: exist without the genocide of indigenous people. And so I
Speaker 1: think that's where a lot of the challenge comes from,
Speaker 1: is that if you start unpacking this history, it's not
Speaker 1: a good and positive history. But the work I want
Speaker 1: to do is not just dwelling on these like horrific
Speaker 1: acts of the past, but also the ongoing resistance and
Speaker 1: amazing work of Indigenous people all throughout these types of
Speaker 1: history that were so devastating for indigenous people, there have
Speaker 1: always been Native folks working for change, working for cultural reclamation,
Speaker 1: working for protection of lands and waters. And to me,
Speaker 1: a way to bring non natives into the conversation is
Speaker 1: to focus on those stories of resilience and strength and
Speaker 1: let people see that. Well, we can talk about Sarah Winnemucca,
Speaker 1: who was a Piute translator and go between settlers and
Speaker 1: her community, and the amazing work that she did, and
Speaker 1: how she was an activist and really protected her community,
Speaker 1: and through her story learn about all of those horrible
Speaker 1: policies that the US was inflicting against her people, the
Speaker 1: removals of her people from their homelands, and the things
Speaker 1: that she was fighting against. We can learn about that
Speaker 1: painful history through the strength and resilience of someone like
Speaker 1: Sarah Winnemucca. I mean, we as humans like to connect
Speaker 1: with other humans, so I think that there's a way
Speaker 1: to use those stories as a way to bring other
Speaker 1: folks into the conversation. Speaking of stories, you just published
Speaker 1: a book called Notable Native People, and in it there
Speaker 1: are so many names and stories that you are bringing
Speaker 1: to the forefront and allowing us to kind of round
Speaker 1: out history. How far do you think that work like
Speaker 1: this needs to go and does it only need to
Speaker 1: come from Native people. It can't just be the work
Speaker 1: of Native people's. Everyone who is on the lands in
Speaker 1: what is currently known as the US is on indigenous land,
Speaker 1: and you have a responsibility as a guest on those
Speaker 1: lands to form a good relationship with the land and
Speaker 1: the people from that land. It's imperative that non native
Speaker 1: folks begin to do this work on their own too,
Speaker 1: of uncovering those stories of why the curriculum is so bad,
Speaker 1: or why they only learned about Sitting Bull and Geronimo
Speaker 1: and not the millions more Native stories, and why most
Speaker 1: of the histories that we learn and in the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: And that was also what I was really trying to
Speaker 1: push back on with this book, is I wanted to
Speaker 1: bring forward stories of the past that we're not as
Speaker 1: well known, but then also really focus on the present
Speaker 1: and say, here are fifty Indigenous people that are doing
Speaker 1: incredible things today. I mean, there are five hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy seven federally recognized tribes and one hundreds more state
Speaker 1: recognized non recognized tribes. And then there's Alaska Native communities
Speaker 1: and Kannakamali in what is currently known or well what
Speaker 1: has always been known as Hawaii, and the vast diversity
Speaker 1: of experience and stories in those communities definitely can't be
Speaker 1: represented in just the fifty profiles that I did in
Speaker 1: the book, so plenty, plenty more work to do on
Speaker 1: that front. One thing that I noted while you were
Speaker 1: talking is that there's been sub changes. There's been some
Speaker 1: high profile changes, I'll say, and I'm saying changes. I
Speaker 1: say that very carefully because you know, change is a
Speaker 1: long thing that happens over time. It's not something that
Speaker 1: happens overnight. And I think about things like the Washington
Speaker 1: football team changing their name, or Deb Holland being in
Speaker 1: the cabinet, or even a show like Reservation Dogs being
Speaker 1: on FX. Yes, I think it's very easy for people
Speaker 1: to stop at those milestones and say, we did it. Now,
Speaker 1: let's let's let's move on. How do you encourage people
Speaker 1: to push beyond that. Yeah, I think that's a really
Speaker 1: important question because I think that's often where the representation
Speaker 1: conversation gets criticized by folks from within community. Is that
Speaker 1: thinking that representation in itself is the end goal, and
Speaker 1: that of course can't be farther from the truth. So
Speaker 1: if we had Native folks represented at every sector of
Speaker 1: society in every TV show and every movie, that would
Speaker 1: be cool. That would be important, And the visibility comes
Speaker 1: with an acknowledgement that Native people still exist and are
Speaker 1: here and will always be here. But none of that
Speaker 1: is really meaningful without actionable change on things like land back,
Speaker 1: Like bringing land back into indigenous stewardship is kind of
Speaker 1: the ultimate goal of all of this and all of
Speaker 1: the changes that would come along with that. But to me,
Speaker 1: visibility is really the first challenge that we as indigenous
Speaker 1: people have to overcome, because we've purposely been erased and
Speaker 1: made invisible, because our presence is a challenge to the
Speaker 1: values of what is currently known as the United States.
Speaker 1: So in order to begin these conversations about deeper issues
Speaker 1: of relationship to land, to one another, to non human relatives,
Speaker 1: there has to be an acknowledgement that we are still
Speaker 1: around and here and engaging in these practices, Doctor Kane,
Speaker 1: what would that look like? What are some actionable steps
Speaker 1: beyond working for representation? To me, moving beyond it is
Speaker 1: really starting for every non native person to begin a
Speaker 1: relationship with the land that they're on and the people
Speaker 1: from that land. And that can look like well, first
Speaker 1: of all, figuring out who that is, who the people
Speaker 1: are whose land you occupy, and then looking up ways
Speaker 1: to support their sovereignty to support the issues that they're
Speaker 1: engaged with. Every community has a different set of challenges
Speaker 1: that they're facing based on their local lands and governments
Speaker 1: and things like that. There's a website landback dot org,
Speaker 1: which is a good place to start. It has a
Speaker 1: great manifesto that sort of lays out why this idea
Speaker 1: of land back is so fun to mental to processes
Speaker 1: of decolonization. And I use that word decolonization very carefully
Speaker 1: because I think it's something that gets misused a lot
Speaker 1: to just mean like social justice or like indigenous rights,
Speaker 1: and that's really not what it's about. It's about the
Speaker 1: rematriation of Indigenous land and life ways. So reading landback
Speaker 1: dot org, it's understanding how that sort of phrase really
Speaker 1: represents a lot. There are amazing resources, like in the
Speaker 1: Bay Area there is the sogorotea land trust run by
Speaker 1: a group of Indigenous women. There are ways for settlers
Speaker 1: to pay rent for the land that they're on in
Speaker 1: different cities. So I think moving the conversation from just
Speaker 1: sort of like representation matters for representation's sake, to representation
Speaker 1: matters because you need to know about the people who's
Speaker 1: land you're on. You need to know about your relationship
Speaker 1: to this land, and for Indigenous folks, our identities as
Speaker 1: indigenous are so deeply tied to being from the land
Speaker 1: and from a place that it's kind of one and
Speaker 1: the same in a lot of ways. So learning about
Speaker 1: us through books and media and all of these things
Speaker 1: is a start of that relationship to the land. I
Speaker 1: have two questions about allyship, and I mean and I
Speaker 1: want to talk specifically about non native folks and allyship
Speaker 1: with Native folks. The first is that last summer, I
Speaker 1: noticed that a lot of the momentum that came for
Speaker 1: the Washington football team changing their name came out of
Speaker 1: the momentum that came after the fervor of George Floyd.
Speaker 1: And I remember even myself tweeting at the Washington football
Speaker 1: team because they posted a black square on Blackout Tuesday,
Speaker 1: which is what a lot of people were posting in
Speaker 1: solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. They posted a
Speaker 1: black square and I immediately said, how could you post that?
Speaker 1: If you with your name being a slurt, like, how
Speaker 1: could you post that? And people went after them, and
Speaker 1: it looked like a lot of that momentum snowballed into
Speaker 1: them actually making the decision because then some of the
Speaker 1: larger corporations pulled their funding for the Washington FOTBA team,
Speaker 1: and someone or threatened to pull their funding for the
Speaker 1: Washington football team, and that paved the way for them
Speaker 1: to change their name. What does that allyship look like
Speaker 1: in a perfect world? Knowing that natives were doing a
Speaker 1: lot of that work early on. I saw them on
Speaker 1: television shows. I saw folks on John Stewart many years
Speaker 1: ago talking about the names that need to be changed,
Speaker 1: whether it be Cleveland, whether it be you know, Florida State,
Speaker 1: whether it be the Blackhawks, any of these teams. So
Speaker 1: what does that allyship look like? When is the success?
Speaker 1: Does it only come in large inflection points like the
Speaker 1: death of a very public death of a black man,
Speaker 1: or or are there other ways in which we could
Speaker 1: do a better job of being an allyship? You're absolutely
Speaker 1: right that the momentum around Black Lives Matter is really
Speaker 1: what pushed a lot of these issues that had kind
Speaker 1: of been like on the precipice of change for a
Speaker 1: long time. That pushed them over the edge. And I
Speaker 1: think that is a powerful message that especially for marginalized
Speaker 1: communities or even more specifically for Black and Native communities
Speaker 1: that when we come together on a lot of these issues,
Speaker 1: than we're an unstoppable force. I don't even like the
Speaker 1: term ally anymore. I feel like it's something that people
Speaker 1: kind of like slap on as a button that says
Speaker 1: they're doing a good job, and they don't they don't
Speaker 1: really think about action, I like accomplice or like co conspirator.
Speaker 1: So I think, yeah, historically our communities have been purposely separated.
Speaker 1: Within Black and Native communities, there's a lot of listening
Speaker 1: and learning that needs to happen and unlearning a lot
Speaker 1: of the messages that we have been taught through colonization,
Speaker 1: through the media. Native communities have a lot of internalized
Speaker 1: anti blackness that we really need to address and work on.
Speaker 1: And for black communities, black folks have received the same
Speaker 1: media messages that everyone has received, stereotypical things as well
Speaker 1: as the intense and erasure. So there's work to be
Speaker 1: done within black communities about learning a lot of those misrepresentations.
Speaker 1: Even though there's a ton of overlap in our communities,
Speaker 1: tons of black Native folks that don't really get represented
Speaker 1: in a lot of these conversations. But I think we
Speaker 1: need to look for those spaces and uplift them and
Speaker 1: join the work that is already happening, and not pretend
Speaker 1: like this is a brand new conversation that's happening for
Speaker 1: the first time in twenty one. To me, that's the
Speaker 1: dream is to be able to figure out the pathway
Speaker 1: forward where all of our identities and connections to this
Speaker 1: land can really be honored and we can build a
Speaker 1: world that we all feel safe and represented and can
Speaker 1: move forward in that good way in relationship to the land.
Speaker 1: I think the biggest struggle that I've ever had talking
Speaker 1: to other Black folks about Native issues, especially when you
Speaker 1: talk about things like land sovereignty. It's very easy for
Speaker 1: black folks to be like and me included and actually
Speaker 1: just talk about myself. There were times that I struggled with, well,
Speaker 1: I didn't choose to be backing, which is always the
Speaker 1: hard question when people talk about land sovereignty. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd love for you to have it back, but then
Speaker 1: where do I go, Like there, it's hard to trace
Speaker 1: it back for some folks, especially in the black community,
Speaker 1: and I imagine there's some ways in which Native folks
Speaker 1: feel the same way about Black folks and issues of
Speaker 1: blackness where they're just like I am Native, I have
Speaker 1: my own stuff to deal with here. Can you talk
Speaker 1: more specifically about bringing that together and what is it?
Speaker 1: Because we know it would be effective, but how do
Speaker 1: we convince both sides that it is because we're both
Speaker 1: struggling that we need to come together. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: it's an ongoing challenge and conversation, and I think Land
Speaker 1: Back is a conversation as a movement is not about
Speaker 1: replicating what was done to Indigenous peoples in terms of genocide, displacement,
Speaker 1: all of these attempts to destroy cultural practices. And that's
Speaker 1: another thing that like a lot of black communities share,
Speaker 1: is this like story of constant displacement from land. It's
Speaker 1: about creating a new system where we all can live
Speaker 1: in a way that honors our relationship with the land,
Speaker 1: and that includes descendants of enslaved peoples, that includes immigrants,
Speaker 1: that include settlers. That's a conversation that is going to
Speaker 1: be many, many years and decades in the making. Is
Speaker 1: not something that's going to happen tomorrow. But I think
Speaker 1: if we can start collectively dreaming together about what that
Speaker 1: future would look like, if we can acknowledge the harm
Speaker 1: that has been done and has continued to be done
Speaker 1: to our communities separately but also together, and the ways
Speaker 1: that our own communities engage in harm against one another.
Speaker 1: Those are all important places to start, but of course
Speaker 1: coming back to the idea that our communities have not
Speaker 1: historically always been separate, contemporarily have not been separate. There's
Speaker 1: so much solidarity work happening, there's so much co organizing happening,
Speaker 1: and so many people who embody both of those identities.
Speaker 1: So I think it's a myth that we're incredibly separate.
Speaker 1: I feel like you're talking about intersectionality and that a
Speaker 1: rising tide lifts all boats. Yes, let me ask you
Speaker 1: about your your own personal relationship to the land. How
Speaker 1: did that change as you became more in tuned with
Speaker 1: your identity and you begin to do more of the
Speaker 1: work you especially said, especially in grad school, were there
Speaker 1: any types of differences that you made in your relationship
Speaker 1: to the land and the communities around you as you know,
Speaker 1: grew more into this work. The biggest thing that has
Speaker 1: helped me move as an indigenous person and feel like
Speaker 1: I am moving in a good way in the world
Speaker 1: is to build and maintain a relationship with whatever land
Speaker 1: I'm on. So I've grown up in very suburban spaces
Speaker 1: where the land is supermanicured and been completely taken over
Speaker 1: by cookie cutter houses and things like that. I've lived
Speaker 1: in very urban cities, and I think the knowledge and
Speaker 1: recognizing that even those places that have been so separated
Speaker 1: from the indigenous people who come from those lands, that
Speaker 1: is still native land. And so understanding whose land I'm on,
Speaker 1: knowing their name, knowing where they are now, knowing the
Speaker 1: stories like from that land is really important to me.
Speaker 1: And then finding ways for me to reconnect with the
Speaker 1: land has also been very important. So making sure that
Speaker 1: I build in and it's been hard in the last
Speaker 1: couple of years because of the pandemic, but making sure
Speaker 1: I build in travel that takes me back to my
Speaker 1: traditional homelands, which prior to the Trail of Tears, are
Speaker 1: in what is currently known as North Carolina and Tennessee, Georgia.
Speaker 1: Being able to take trips back there is like really
Speaker 1: transformative and stand on the land that my people have
Speaker 1: been on for since time immemorial, and that we have
Speaker 1: these sacred sites that we know our ancestors stood at
Speaker 1: and prayed at and we're there is really powerful. And
Speaker 1: then I've also been doing I'm working on a new
Speaker 1: kind of art project around my own family's land displacement
Speaker 1: to be able to understand that story of like where
Speaker 1: did this disconnection happen for my family in particular, so
Speaker 1: I mean Trail of Tears, And then we had allotment
Speaker 1: land in Oklahoma, but then that land was flooded out
Speaker 1: for the building of a lake, and so thinking by
Speaker 1: the department engineers. Yes, And that's another thing that like
Speaker 1: a lot of black community shares this like story of
Speaker 1: constant displacement from land, and so in learning the history
Speaker 1: and sort of uncovering it, that also helps me to
Speaker 1: build a relationship to the land, and that's really important
Speaker 1: as well. And to understand why I have grown up
Speaker 1: so disconnected is that, like, this wasn't a choice that
Speaker 1: I or my family made. This was a series of
Speaker 1: policies and events by the settler government that forced me
Speaker 1: to grow up in this way. So that's a powerful
Speaker 1: kind of reclamation as well. Do you feel optimistic about
Speaker 1: Native erasure being solved? I think on this show we
Speaker 1: say things are solvable, But do you see an endpoint
Speaker 1: here or do you do you feel like there's a
Speaker 1: point where you'll say I've done enough, I can pass
Speaker 1: the baton on what does that even look like for you?
Speaker 1: It's actually been kind of amazing in the last decade
Speaker 1: that like I thought I was going to be fighting
Speaker 1: Indian mascots for like the rest of my life. I
Speaker 1: thought I was going to be like fighting Halloween costumes
Speaker 1: and like these really low hanging things that to me
Speaker 1: just seemed so painfully obvious were harmful. And I for
Speaker 1: ten years on the blog was like every year at
Speaker 1: Halloween had to do another blog post about how you
Speaker 1: shouldn't dress as a Native person for Halloween. And even
Speaker 1: like this year I was watching on Indigenous People's Day
Speaker 1: that a lot of my Native friends and like the
Speaker 1: students at at Brown where I'm a faculty member, like
Speaker 1: they took the day to actually just rest and like
Speaker 1: being with their friends and their family and like be
Speaker 1: on the land or do whatever it is they wanted.
Speaker 1: And in years past, it's always had to be the
Speaker 1: big rally, the big talk, the big education campaign that everything.
Speaker 1: So those kind of small gains to me, like they
Speaker 1: seem I mean, they're not insignificant, Like the fact that
Speaker 1: we can now be having a meaningful conversation about land
Speaker 1: back where a decade ago I was having to say,
Speaker 1: please don't wear a sacred headdress to Coachella. Like these
Speaker 1: are progress? Yeah, I think, Like I said, I don't
Speaker 1: think representation is the end goal. But I do think
Speaker 1: if we get to a point where I and all
Speaker 1: the other folks who write and talk about representations don't
Speaker 1: have to keep saying the same things about representation mattering.
Speaker 1: If folks just recognize that Indigenous folks exist and still
Speaker 1: exist and will always be on these lands, then it
Speaker 1: means we can have the more deeper, meaningful conversations, So
Speaker 1: that to me is solvable. Doctor Keane, this has been
Speaker 1: an incredible conversation. Thank you so much for coming on
Speaker 1: the show. Oh it's my absolute pleasure. Thank you. Doctor
Speaker 1: Adrian Keane is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. She's
Speaker 1: an assistant professor of American Studies and Ethnic Studies at
Speaker 1: Brown University, co hosts the podcast called All My Relations,
Speaker 1: and she's the author of the new book Notable Native People.
Speaker 1: It's an inspiring collection of profiles of Native American leaders.
Speaker 1: It's available now. It has beautiful illustrations. Go get it
Speaker 1: wherever you get your books, and check out our episode
Speaker 1: notes for links to additional resources that doctor Keene mentioned
Speaker 1: in this episode. Stay tuned for future episodes that dive
Speaker 1: into additional solutions from native luminaries. Solvable is produced by
Speaker 1: Jocelyn Frank, research by David Jah, booking by Lisa Dunn,
Speaker 1: editing help from Keyshell williams. Our managing producer is Sasha Matthias,
Speaker 1: and our executive producer is Mia LaBelle. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Heather Famee, Carly Migliori, Eric Sandler, Maggie Taylor, and the
Speaker 1: whole Pushkin team. I'm Ronald Young Jr. Thanks for listening.