Speaker 1: I didn't know we were sneaking. I just thought we're hanging,
Speaker 1: and so we would go over there and we would hunt.
Speaker 1: I didn't know right at first, but at some point
Speaker 1: I realized it wasn't our land. Whose land is he
Speaker 1: my dad? Like some Texas ranchers, but they're never here early.
Speaker 1: We're gonna hunt it, you know. So we would go
Speaker 1: over there and we'd hunt it.
Speaker 2: On this episode, we're traveling to the big city of Tulsa, Oklahoma,
Speaker 2: to meet its most famous filmmaker, a member of the
Speaker 2: Muskogee Creek and Seminole Nation, Sterling Harjoe. He's forty four
Speaker 2: years old, a lifelong resident of Oklahoma, and has risen
Speaker 2: to the top tier of his craft, taking an unconventional path.
Speaker 2: After taking a big swing at the Hollywood filmmaking scene,
Speaker 2: he ditched it and went home to Oklahoma to make
Speaker 2: honest movies about his people, and it ended up being
Speaker 2: the best thing he could have ever done. His work
Speaker 2: has recently risen to national prominence, receiving multiple awards, even
Speaker 2: nominated for an Emmy, and it seems there's only more
Speaker 2: to come. I'd say he's a unique guest for Bear
Speaker 2: Grease and say you might, how does this fancy filmmaker
Speaker 2: have anything to do with gritty, rural Americano livin. Well,
Speaker 2: you're about to find out. Sterling and his people fit
Speaker 2: right in here. And this story is replete with deer hunting,
Speaker 2: beauty salons, taekwondo, trespassing, leasing from rich dudes, and Sterling's
Speaker 2: very serious problem with owls and cracking into the film industry.
Speaker 2: I really doubt that you're gonna want to miss this one.
Speaker 2: And hey, deer season's coming up, and if you're looking
Speaker 2: for the best all around deer call, check out the
Speaker 2: Acorn Pro that's spelled a ker n spelled the right way.
Speaker 2: Acorn Pro from Phelps. It's the industry's only inhale, exhale,
Speaker 2: grunt and bleak call. Me and Jason Phelps and the
Speaker 2: team work together built this call. It's my favorite call
Speaker 2: and it's just in time for hunting season on the
Speaker 2: Phelps website.
Speaker 1: I didn't know making films would be possible. I didn't
Speaker 1: know it was a job, but I was always interested
Speaker 1: in I remember when Michael Jackson's Thriller came out of
Speaker 1: the making of Thriller, I was fascinated. I was just like,
Speaker 1: what like there's makeup artists that turned them into a
Speaker 1: werewolf and all of that. You know, I was really
Speaker 1: fascinated with behind the scenes, but I never thought I
Speaker 1: could do it. It was like, I'm from Oklahoma. I'm
Speaker 1: an Indian from Oklahoma. You know how am I going
Speaker 1: to make movies like you gotta be? You gotta be
Speaker 1: in Hollywood or something.
Speaker 2: My name is Clay Nukem and this is the Bear
Speaker 2: Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search
Speaker 2: for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the
Speaker 2: story of Americans who lived their lives close to the
Speaker 2: land by FHF gear, American Maid, purpose built hunting and
Speaker 2: fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the
Speaker 2: places we explore. I've found myself on the fourth floor
Speaker 2: of an office building in downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma, and on
Speaker 2: the door it says, screaming Eagle Media, this is Sterling
Speaker 2: Harjo's office. It's on the top floor with access to
Speaker 2: the roof, with lots of big windows overlooking the city,
Speaker 2: couches a kitchen, sterling things that used to belong to
Speaker 2: an oil company in the seventies, and they entertained.
Speaker 1: People up here.
Speaker 2: There's a guitar propped up in the corner, and on
Speaker 2: the walls are posters of the show reservation dogs with
Speaker 2: varying images of four sharply dressed teenagers. I'd say they're native.
Speaker 2: Sterling's a stout fella. I'd say he's a touch taller
Speaker 2: than me, and he's wearing a cool felt hat with
Speaker 2: a band of Indian beadwork. His shirt looks like Hawaiian print,
Speaker 2: but when you look closely, it's got tepees and drums,
Speaker 2: Indians riding horses and tomahawks in the pattern. Kind of
Speaker 2: jealous of it. His arms are covered in tattoos, and
Speaker 2: upon closer inspection, one is of a black panther. I
Speaker 2: told you he'd fit in here, and wait till you
Speaker 2: hear about the owls. But what stands out to me
Speaker 2: most about Sterling is what a nice and inviting guy
Speaker 2: he is. He's ordered the best barbecue in Tulsa that'll
Speaker 2: be here in just a little bit. I'm learning that
Speaker 2: when you go to Oklahoma and want to break bread
Speaker 2: with you. But for now, I'm pretty much gonna let
Speaker 2: Sterling tell us his life story.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, my name's Sterling. Harjoe, I am Muskogee Creek
Speaker 1: and Seminole, and also Italian and Scottish and German and
Speaker 1: other things. But well, I was born in Holding the
Speaker 1: Oklahoma and I grew up Holdenvills in Hughes County. It's
Speaker 1: on the Muscogy Creek and Seminole nation line, and so
Speaker 1: a lot of us that are native down there are
Speaker 1: both Seminole and Creek, which is like, you know, it's
Speaker 1: a pretty good deal because the two tribes are very
Speaker 1: intertwined and to the point where we speak the same language.
Speaker 1: The Moscogy Creeks were a confederacy. I always heard that
Speaker 1: the Muscogee language was a trade language, and so all
Speaker 1: of the all the different bands and groups that made
Speaker 1: up the Muscogee Creek Nation, they all had like a
Speaker 1: shared trade language. The customs in the way of life
Speaker 1: is very similar, and so that's where I grew up.
Speaker 1: I now live in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I'm the filmmaker. I
Speaker 1: created the show Reservation Dogs as an independent filmmaker before that,
Speaker 1: sort of just grinding making no budget movies with an
Speaker 1: insatiable sort of need to tell the truth and stories
Speaker 1: about who we are as Native people and what I
Speaker 1: saw growing up which led me to making the show
Speaker 1: Reservation Dogs, and it's been a very successful show and
Speaker 1: we were just nominated for our first Emmy's. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: been a crazy couple of years. My life sort of
Speaker 1: turned upside down. Very happy that I still live here
Speaker 1: in Tulsa and I'm able to sort of be close
Speaker 1: to my family and friends and that's who I am. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I grew up in Holdenville. Holdenville was you know, it
Speaker 1: was a cool place. I have nothing but like the
Speaker 1: best memories from growing up in Holdenville. I mean rural Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it was just sort of an idyllic place
Speaker 1: to grow up. I mean it was so diverse. I
Speaker 1: had white friends, black friends, native friends. We all got along.
Speaker 1: Everybody knew each other's grandma. It was just like I
Speaker 1: would never pick another place to grow up. You sort
Speaker 1: of get those values of being from a rural area.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, if the zombie apocalypse happened today,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't hang out Tulsa. I would go to my hometown,
Speaker 1: you know, where somebody could like grow their food and
Speaker 1: ring a chicken's neck, you know, like that's where I'd go.
Speaker 1: I had it the best of both worlds where I
Speaker 1: had just giant Native family and then I had my
Speaker 1: white grandma, who was a smaller family, but like both
Speaker 1: sides were the best storytellers ever, you know, and we
Speaker 1: come from like people that were poor. And from a
Speaker 1: young age though, I always wanted to be an artist,
Speaker 1: and my dad and my uncle taught me how to draw.
Speaker 1: And I remember I won a competition for drawing at
Speaker 1: the first National Bank and I won ten dollars and
Speaker 1: I thought I was rich. And it was about pollution.
Speaker 1: And I drew this like lake with all these fish
Speaker 1: and animals, you know, dying, and I would I got
Speaker 1: a picture of the you know, my picture is like
Speaker 1: cover of the whole Middle newspaper. And from the very
Speaker 1: beginning of my memories, that's what I knew I wanted
Speaker 1: to do. What I didn't know is I was also
Speaker 1: really getting into movies. The whole time. I just didn't
Speaker 1: know it was possible to make movies. And so one
Speaker 1: thing that's interesting. My grandma on my mom's side, who's
Speaker 1: my Native grandma, and then my grandpa on mother's side,
Speaker 1: was Native and both full blood Native, which made my
Speaker 1: parents half which two haves together make me which I'm
Speaker 1: half and so my native grandma, Johnny May was her name,
Speaker 1: Johnny May Kalinach. There was a thing called the Relocation Act,
Speaker 1: and back in the day, and it was sort of
Speaker 1: this way of hey, Indians, come work in the city.
Speaker 1: You'll get a good job, you know, and be able
Speaker 1: to pay your family. I kind of think it was
Speaker 1: more to hey, Indians, get away from your community, assimilate
Speaker 1: into America, because there was such a threat to America
Speaker 1: the community community aspect of our lives, you know there
Speaker 1: and there was like so many government policies that were
Speaker 1: in direct assault of that community. The DAWs Act, you know,
Speaker 1: we'll give you one hundred and eighty acres of individual land.
Speaker 1: You can do whatever you want with it. Well, in
Speaker 1: a couple of years somebody's going to come and try
Speaker 1: to swindle you out of it as well, if you
Speaker 1: look at like Killers of the Flower Moon and all
Speaker 1: of that stuff's connected. But really it was to break
Speaker 1: up the fact that these all of the tribes had
Speaker 1: communal living. There was no homelessness, there was no there
Speaker 1: was no body gone hungry, you know, we worked together
Speaker 1: to feed each other. Something about that offended I think
Speaker 1: the US government. There was a lot of policy towards
Speaker 1: Native Americans to disrupt that. My grandma and then went
Speaker 1: to Chicago to work in factories. Luckily they all came
Speaker 1: back home, but not before my grandma fell in love
Speaker 1: with an Italian man named Rock clinicch Nor. George was
Speaker 1: his name, but he went by Rock and they fell
Speaker 1: in love. Had my uncle em my mom in Chicago,
Speaker 1: and then they all aunts and uncles, everybody moved back
Speaker 1: home to rural Oklahoma. There's a giant Native community in
Speaker 1: Chicago still, but down in rural Oklahoma now there is
Speaker 1: a gang and ens with the last name Kalinich, so
Speaker 1: you know. And then my dad's Harjo. Harjo is a
Speaker 1: from a Moscoi word. The original word is hajo, which
Speaker 1: means crazy in battle, crazy for short. So that's what
Speaker 1: my last name means. And so I grew up in
Speaker 1: this pretty fascinating place. My mom was a hairdresser. She
Speaker 1: permed ever's eighties. She permed every cheerleader's hair. She gave
Speaker 1: every football player a haircut before the Friday night game.
Speaker 1: And she ended up having to quit because she was
Speaker 1: allergic to perm chemicals and it messed her hands up.
Speaker 1: But I grew up kind of in this salon, this
Speaker 1: barber shop, and I just kind of grew up with
Speaker 1: the community coming through this place. My dad was a
Speaker 1: construction worker but also martial arts in my town, and
Speaker 1: so he became a Taekwondo instructor when I was four
Speaker 1: years old. I remember the first lessons were taught in
Speaker 1: a basement of church, and I fought competitively with my dad,
Speaker 1: who just retired the school hard dressed martial arts last year.
Speaker 1: And my dad's kind of like he if my dad
Speaker 1: could choose his way of life, he'd be in the
Speaker 1: middle of the woods without a road as long as
Speaker 1: he had cable, you know, like come outside and hunt
Speaker 1: whatever and then come back and watch football or whatever.
Speaker 1: And and my dad was kind of a hippie, you know,
Speaker 1: Natives were like the best hippie, like a Southern hippie, though,
Speaker 1: like like we're very I think Southern hippies are very
Speaker 1: different California hippies, you know, like Southern hippies will still
Speaker 1: like eat a squirrel, you know, but like wore bell bottoms,
Speaker 1: you know. And you know, my dad had long hair
Speaker 1: because he was a hippie and he was Native, and
Speaker 1: he would go to school and you couldn't have long hair,
Speaker 1: so my dad would wear a wig. That it would
Speaker 1: be our late sixties in holding the and my dad
Speaker 1: wear a wig to school. And one of the principles
Speaker 1: was like on the hunt for my dad for growing
Speaker 1: his hair out too long. And one day he yanked
Speaker 1: the yanked the wig off my dad, and my dad's
Speaker 1: hair comes out, and my dad quit school. You know,
Speaker 1: he was a sophomore and he quit school, and he
Speaker 1: was kind of a football star and he quit, and
Speaker 1: he's always I think he always regretted that. You know,
Speaker 1: my mom is a very outgoing person who is like
Speaker 1: she taught me what it's what it means to be
Speaker 1: a part of a community. She is a person that
Speaker 1: no matter what, if somebody died, even if they weren't
Speaker 1: our family, she was taking food to them. My mom,
Speaker 1: I for me, really represents that communal aspect of Native
Speaker 1: life where she's always like taking me with her to
Speaker 1: events and gatherings and feasts and wild onion dinners is
Speaker 1: a big thing that we have in the spring. She
Speaker 1: was always taking to me these things and every time
Speaker 1: we walked in, she'd say, go shake everybody's hand, and
Speaker 1: I have to go shake everyone's hand in that room,
Speaker 1: and she'd be like, that's because and that's because, and
Speaker 1: that's because, that's because, that's because that's causin that's just
Speaker 1: a cous you know. It's like how many cousins do
Speaker 1: I have? And how am I going to get married?
Speaker 1: You know, And so I'd have to go through it
Speaker 1: to shake everybody's hand, and I hated it then, but
Speaker 1: now it's like it's I'm so happy because everybody knows me.
Speaker 1: And it translated into me getting a lot of respect
Speaker 1: and trust with making movies and stuff. And that's a
Speaker 1: big reason why I also didn't leave, is because when
Speaker 1: I make these films, I'm telling stories about my people,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to incorporate them into what I'm telling
Speaker 1: because I want it to be real. And I don't
Speaker 1: think enough people in Hollywood and modern sort of entertainment
Speaker 1: to care about that enough, because it's about money, it's
Speaker 1: not about trying to tell the truth. So, like, I
Speaker 1: grew up with pretty fascinating people and community driven people,
Speaker 1: but they were very supportive. My parents are still together,
Speaker 1: I've got two brothers, two sisters, and yeah, it was
Speaker 1: just it was a cool existence. I mean, I felt
Speaker 1: very much like stand by Me. You know, like growing
Speaker 1: up it was like we walked all over town looking
Speaker 1: for a dead body. You know, It's like anything interesting
Speaker 1: that could happen, you know. I think growing up in Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean like I grew up with
Speaker 1: my dad was always hunting. I mean, here's the thing.
Speaker 1: The sort of more conscious conservation came to me later.
Speaker 1: When we were young. It was like, it's our land, well,
Speaker 1: wherever we want, and what are you talking about? You know,
Speaker 1: like we got to report in with you, like who
Speaker 1: are you? You know, like I think that when I
Speaker 1: was young, it was like what fish and holl are
Speaker 1: we going to sneak into? And me and my cousin
Speaker 1: were fourteen, driving my dad's car and like dirt roads
Speaker 1: and like we'd go fishing and somebody's land like whatever.
Speaker 1: And then you know, there's an episode, episode six or
Speaker 1: the first season where it's just the father and daughter hunting.
Speaker 1: That's all it is. And that's kind of the north
Speaker 1: star of my first season was I want to be
Speaker 1: able to get the audience to where I can just
Speaker 1: film a father and daughter in the woods.
Speaker 2: Here's a short clip from Reservation Dogs. A father and
Speaker 2: his teenage daughter are dressed in camo and hunter's orange.
Speaker 2: Their faces are painted and both have a rifle in
Speaker 2: their hand. In this scene, the daughter realizes that they
Speaker 2: don't own the land that they're hunting on.
Speaker 1: Where'd you get the picture of a trail camp? I
Speaker 1: don't own a trail camp? What what do you mean?
Speaker 1: Whose is it? Then it's probably the owners? Eh, owners, Yep,
Speaker 1: don't we own this line? No, we're Indian. We don't
Speaker 1: own a land.
Speaker 2: The father then explains to the girl that this land
Speaker 2: used to be theirs, but her great grandfather had sold it.
Speaker 2: She asked if they'll ever get it back, and the
Speaker 2: dad basically says Texas ranchers don't give anything back. She
Speaker 2: then says that she saw some images of people on
Speaker 2: the trail camera, and the father tells her that they
Speaker 2: were probably poachers, and then he pauses for a minute
Speaker 2: and he goes, well, different poachers than us. And it's
Speaker 2: a brilliant scene and one that Sterling lived. I appreciate
Speaker 2: his honesty.
Speaker 1: And it's very much based on me and my dad
Speaker 1: because we would sneak over I thought it was our land.
Speaker 1: We'd sneak over across the road this giant acreage of
Speaker 1: land across our dirt road where we lived on a
Speaker 1: hill outside of Holtonville. I didn't know what we were sneaking.
Speaker 1: I just thought we're hanging. And so we would go
Speaker 1: over there and we would hunt. And I didn't know
Speaker 1: right at first, but at some point I realized it
Speaker 1: wasn't our land. Whose land is? He my dad like
Speaker 1: some Texas ranchers. But we're never hearing. Really we're gonna
Speaker 1: hunt it, you know. So we would go over there
Speaker 1: and we'd and you know, my dad even told a
Speaker 1: story one time he was he was in a tree
Speaker 1: and he heard these two guys walking by, and this
Speaker 1: is in that episode. He heard these two guys walking by,
Speaker 1: and it was the Texas ranchers walking underneath him. My
Speaker 1: dad's in came. I just watch it and walk by
Speaker 1: and they're talking about their wives. But they would never
Speaker 1: show up. And then they sold it to someone and
Speaker 1: this person leveled it. But those woods to me were
Speaker 1: like magical, like that's where I hunted, that's where I camped.
Speaker 1: I was always with my dad killing deer. I kill
Speaker 1: rabbits and stuff, I remember, but I never killed a
Speaker 1: deer until I was later in high school, and I
Speaker 1: remember the first time I was skinned a deer myself
Speaker 1: and feel dressed and everything just feeling. I always tell
Speaker 1: people that I felt the warm the warmth of the blood,
Speaker 1: and you know, you have this feeling of like sadness
Speaker 1: a little bit, but also the over riding feeling. I
Speaker 1: remember in my head saying, I'll do this the rest
Speaker 1: of my life. This is what I'm supposed to be doing,
Speaker 1: like of anything, this is what I'm supposed to do,
Speaker 1: and I'll do this the rest of my life. And
Speaker 1: I remember when I went off, I was moving away
Speaker 1: to Oregon. I was dropping my dad off to hunt,
Speaker 1: and I drove around kind of a section line and
Speaker 1: came down to this creek where my dad was going
Speaker 1: to walk in, and I just remember him getting out
Speaker 1: of us, saying bye, and me driving down the dirt
Speaker 1: road in the rearview, watching my dad sort of disappear
Speaker 1: into the woods. And it was just like this place
Speaker 1: that I grew up, you know. But it was kind
Speaker 1: of weird being native and having to because then after
Speaker 1: that we started leasing land and it's like where is
Speaker 1: our land? And how do I hunt? It was always
Speaker 1: like I'm leasing it from you. Know, some white guy
Speaker 1: with money and you know they're nice, but like it
Speaker 1: was just always like what does this all mean? You know?
Speaker 1: But I remember just quick this story. I remember we
Speaker 1: were releasing land outside of Holding Bill. It was kind
Speaker 1: of sectioned out. This land was kind of sectioned out,
Speaker 1: and we were me and my dad were walking. This
Speaker 1: pickup truck pulls up. It was this guy who was
Speaker 1: also leasing the land, a white uh, and I remember
Speaker 1: him just really being suspicious of us, and and my
Speaker 1: dad's the type of guy he'll talk, you know, you know, hey, yeah, boy,
Speaker 1: may we ain't seen nothing down there?
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: It's like just chatting the guy up, and I'm I
Speaker 1: can feel that he's like things that were not supposed
Speaker 1: to be there, even though I've paid the lease, and
Speaker 1: I can feel it, and I mean the rage and
Speaker 1: me is going like you say it, just please say something,
Speaker 1: you know, and I'm just like, but I could tell
Speaker 1: the way he was talking to us, like he didn't
Speaker 1: believe that we were releasing it. And he's calling the
Speaker 1: owner and my Dad's like, yeah, I get me call.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: My Dad's just chatting them up, and I'm just over
Speaker 1: there like, oh, you know, like you know. And then
Speaker 1: when I whenever I bought my land outside of town
Speaker 1: that I hunt on, it was pretty big. I remember
Speaker 1: we were driving it was It was right when I
Speaker 1: was about to buy it hadn't all went through, and
Speaker 1: I took my dad there and we were we were
Speaker 1: driving out there, and I think he thought it was
Speaker 1: just some land outside of the city. It wasn't gonna
Speaker 1: be good, you know, And like he said, he's like,
Speaker 1: are you sure is that there's woods there? Like you
Speaker 1: think we can hunt on it? Like I'm like, dude,
Speaker 1: we can't. So we get out there. We got on
Speaker 1: the side by side he's just blown away. Were driving.
Speaker 1: He said, oh my god, he's just like we're driving
Speaker 1: away and he just starts yelling, like at the top
Speaker 1: of his lungs, got a cuss on this. Can you
Speaker 1: bleep it out? Can I bleep? Can? I I'll blieve it? Okay,
Speaker 1: And he's yelling, we don't need your fing land. We
Speaker 1: got our own land now. And he was talking about
Speaker 1: hunt on the land and it was a big deal.
Speaker 1: And I just remember like he was pumped and he
Speaker 1: was yelling, and you know, our whole life we'd never
Speaker 1: had our own but we'd always say that, you know,
Speaker 1: we'd be on somebody else's land. We'd be like, man,
Speaker 1: I should be cool if we had our own. You know.
Speaker 1: That wasn't until you know, honestly, like watching meat Eater
Speaker 1: and the stuff that you do, Like my dad really
Speaker 1: got into that because it was more like how we
Speaker 1: hunted as far as like the respect that we gave
Speaker 1: towards the hunt, the animal and all of that. Like
Speaker 1: I felt, I don't know, all the emotions that go
Speaker 1: with it and the importance of it felt. It just
Speaker 1: felt real to me. It just felt like the way
Speaker 1: reservation dogs feels to me about native life. You know,
Speaker 1: it was real, and you know, I knew the time
Speaker 1: that I first got one that I was going to
Speaker 1: do it. You know. Yeah, but you know, like obviously,
Speaker 1: like watching the shows and stuff, it's like, man, y'all
Speaker 1: walk a lot, you know, Like we don't walk that much,
Speaker 1: but I'd like to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Oklahoma was sort of a reservation.
Speaker 1: I was in a territory at one time, so it
Speaker 1: was all Indian land and eastern Okahama, which would have
Speaker 1: been holding Bill in Tulsa and Talaqua and everything was
Speaker 1: at one point going to be a Native state. It
Speaker 1: was lost by one vote, which is obviously crooked. You know,
Speaker 1: they somebody rigged that, but it was going to be
Speaker 1: called the state of Sequoia. And very interesting thing that
Speaker 1: happened a few years back is Oklahoma versus McGirt, which
Speaker 1: basically my tribe, the Muscoge Creek, in a court case,
Speaker 1: in a criminal court case, they found that it's still
Speaker 1: reservation land and so it reinstated the reservation. So you're
Speaker 1: on the Muscogee Creek Reservation right now, literally as we speak,
Speaker 1: your feet are. And then that opened the door for
Speaker 1: a lot of other eastern Oklahoma tribes. So if you
Speaker 1: go that way about two miles, you'll be on Cherokee
Speaker 1: Nation Reservation land and then Seminole Nation Land is about
Speaker 1: an hour and a half south.
Speaker 2: Did you grow up on the Seminole Reservation or no?
Speaker 1: I mean technically yeah, but it's not a reservation like that.
Speaker 1: I think that you would be thinking.
Speaker 2: Which is like a closed just be like a town.
Speaker 1: I'm in a town and I'm town in the south,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of brown people here, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Like yeah, and I think that we
Speaker 1: technically at reservation. But because Oklahoma was I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just a crazy history of Oklahoma's like the most unique of
Speaker 1: all the states. It used to be in in territory
Speaker 1: and then you know, you look at all of the
Speaker 1: you know, you watch True Grit, We're going into the territory.
Speaker 1: You know, Hanging Judge Parker, that was all into terrors. Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: It was placed where criminals went because they get away
Speaker 1: with stuff, and there was it was lawless because it
Speaker 1: was it wasn't the nation of the United States. It
Speaker 1: was a no man's land. I didn't know making films
Speaker 1: would be possible. I didn't know it was a job,
Speaker 1: but I was always interested in I remember when Michael
Speaker 1: Jackson's Thriller came out and the making of Thriller, I
Speaker 1: was fascinated. I was just like, what, like there's makeup
Speaker 1: artists that turned them into a werewolf and all of that.
Speaker 1: You know. I was really fascinated with behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: And I never thought I could do it. It was like,
Speaker 1: I'm from Oklahoma. I'm an Indian from Oklahoma. You know,
Speaker 1: how am I going to make movies? Like you gotta
Speaker 1: be you got to be in Hollywood or something. And
Speaker 1: I'd been interested in movies. I started watching independent films,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, that's cool, like maybe I
Speaker 1: could tell the story back home. And I remember I
Speaker 1: went to Oregon and I got a letter from my grandma.
Speaker 1: They didn't know how long I was gonna be gone.
Speaker 1: They thought I was moved away forever. I'd written a
Speaker 1: story and it was about her and a man that
Speaker 1: she married that burned himself alive and crazy story. But
Speaker 1: I gave it to her. I wrote this story about it,
Speaker 1: and she read it and kind of realized I was
Speaker 1: a writer. And then when I moved to Oregon, she
Speaker 1: wrote me a letter and said, someday you ought to
Speaker 1: come back home and tell some stories about these Indian
Speaker 1: churches around here. And that stuck with me and I
Speaker 1: started writing a script because of it, and I wrote
Speaker 1: my first script and it's awful, but it was just
Speaker 1: like it kind of gave me the confidence to do this.
Speaker 1: I started asking friends. I was like, I want to
Speaker 1: make movies. And my friend lived next door to the
Speaker 1: head of the film and video studies at the University
Speaker 1: of Oklahoma. I got a meeting with him, gave him
Speaker 1: a script, told him I wanted to make movies, and
Speaker 1: he gave it back to me. And he said it's
Speaker 1: not for minute ride. I won't read it, and he's like,
Speaker 1: you should take this class. So I took this class.
Speaker 1: It was intro to Film and Video Studies by this
Speaker 1: Hungarian teacher filmmaker named Misha Nadelkovich, and yeah, I was sold.
Speaker 1: After that. It was just like he had this infectious
Speaker 1: way of talking about movies where it was like, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, it wasn't just pointing a camera randomly
Speaker 1: at something, it was the camera could tell a story.
Speaker 1: You use shots to tell a story. And once I
Speaker 1: realized that, I was sort of hooked and I got
Speaker 1: into all of these he started showing me movies by
Speaker 1: John Cassavetti's or you know, the French New Way of
Speaker 1: Movies or whatever. I was just like blown away that
Speaker 1: all of these voices were out there, and I was like,
Speaker 1: no one's ever told stories about where I'm from and
Speaker 1: the people that I come from. No one has. And
Speaker 1: I saw that as a plus not a minus, that
Speaker 1: I have a leg up and that I can tell
Speaker 1: a story that no one's told before, which is rare.
Speaker 1: That's I had my heart set on it. After that,
Speaker 1: I just began writing, and I remember telling my friends.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm wanna make a movie in two years,
Speaker 1: and they all right, and I made it. At four
Speaker 1: or four years, I made a movie, you know, and like,
Speaker 1: so what happened is I started writing them. This guy
Speaker 1: named Bird running Water who's a Cheyenne, Rapaho and Mescalero
Speaker 1: Apache guy that grew up in Oklahoma, New Mexico and
Speaker 1: he graduated from the University of Oklahoma. He was working
Speaker 1: for the Sundance Institute. And the Sundance Institute is kind
Speaker 1: of they're connected to the festival. But Robert Redford started
Speaker 1: it as a way to like basically support independent film
Speaker 1: because you can't just look for independent filmmakers in Hollywood.
Speaker 1: You have to have scouts, and so they have basically
Speaker 1: people that scout in Europe, in South America, in Indian country,
Speaker 1: you know. And this Skybird running Water was basically scouting
Speaker 1: Native America storytellers. He came and spoke about Sundance. I
Speaker 1: went and heard the talk, and afterwards I said, I
Speaker 1: really want to make movies, and he was like, well,
Speaker 1: let's figure it out. I wrote a script, tried to
Speaker 1: get into the Sundance Writer's Lab, got rejected. I mean,
Speaker 1: but it was good enough. That two years later, he
Speaker 1: was asking me if I had anything new. I sent
Speaker 1: in a script called Four Sheets to the Wind. I
Speaker 1: got accepted, and I went to the writer's lab and
Speaker 1: I left school, went to the writer's lab and director's lab,
Speaker 1: and they started making my films, you know, and taught
Speaker 1: myself how to edit, got student loans, bought a camera computer.
Speaker 1: My friend had a band. I would make music videos
Speaker 1: for his band, and I learned how to edit that
Speaker 1: way and shoot. And then the Sundance Lab. I had
Speaker 1: no idea what I was doing, but I just had
Speaker 1: to pretend and go along with it. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: meeting some fascinating people. Robert Redford, Ed Harris, Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm hanging out with him, all these people
Speaker 1: that I admired, and you know, we're heroes of mine,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden giving me advice. After that, I
Speaker 1: went to LA to do some meetings. So I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, cause Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson, all these
Speaker 1: filmmakers came out of the labs. So I thought, oh man,
Speaker 1: I'm next, Like I'm next on line. What I didn't
Speaker 1: know is independent film and basically crashed at that point.
Speaker 1: This is post reservoir dogs, pulp fiction all that. It
Speaker 1: was like there was no money for independent film and
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. And I go to LA and
Speaker 1: I'm just like, I think I'm in the toast of
Speaker 1: the town where I'm just like, oh, man, doors are
Speaker 1: going to be open. I'm gonna be making movies now.
Speaker 1: And I remember going in and just like getting the
Speaker 1: worst feedback, whereas your script's great. If there was any
Speaker 1: way that we could get someone like Philip Seymour Hoffman
Speaker 1: on the poster, you know, it was like an all
Speaker 1: Indian movie, you know, and like I don't know how
Speaker 1: to do that, you know. And then or like people
Speaker 1: would say, like Indian movies don't sell, or they'd say
Speaker 1: like this is Indian enough, or it's two Indian. And
Speaker 1: so I was like, I'm gonna go back home and
Speaker 1: make movies in Oklahoma. I came home. I got my
Speaker 1: first film funded here in Tulsa, and I did two movies,
Speaker 1: a short film called good Night Irene and then a
Speaker 1: movie called four. She's the one that I went to
Speaker 1: the labs for and I made them so low budget.
Speaker 1: I didn't you know, one got paid. I didn't get paid,
Speaker 1: but they did well enough that they went into the
Speaker 1: Sindance Film Vestval in other places around the world, won
Speaker 1: some awards, got critical acclaim and I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: now's the time I'm gonna be making movies now, you know,
Speaker 1: and instilled nothing two thousand and five around there, and
Speaker 1: then you know, nothing would happen a couple of years
Speaker 1: ago by I got a new idea. I want to
Speaker 1: make a new movie. I wrote a movie called Barking
Speaker 1: Water I think that was two thousand and nine and
Speaker 1: got that funded. I mean, these are like one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollar movies, you know, no one's getting paid, and
Speaker 1: a small crew, and you know, I get some actors together,
Speaker 1: and then the actors are so appreciative because, like you know,
Speaker 1: Richard Ray Whitman and Casey cam Hornet were both the
Speaker 1: elites and Barking Water, you know, Richard's like, you know,
Speaker 1: he's been a lot of movies, but he's always a
Speaker 1: silhouette with a gun on a horse, you know. And Casey,
Speaker 1: you know, she's an older woman now, but whenever we
Speaker 1: made Barking Water, she was like, you know, I've been
Speaker 1: a dead Indian and almost all the tribes, but my
Speaker 1: own she's I'm really good looking dead outside of a tepee,
Speaker 1: you know. And so they had these two roles where
Speaker 1: they were able to express emotion and be truthful and
Speaker 1: be human. And that premiered at sun Dance and played
Speaker 1: at the Venice Film Festival in Italy and all these things,
Speaker 1: and it was a you know, very low budget. Again,
Speaker 1: I didn't make money. But at one point I worked
Speaker 1: for an organization here called This Land Press and it
Speaker 1: was a long form magazine and I did documentaries for him,
Speaker 1: short documentaries, So I just kind of constantly was shooting.
Speaker 1: What I really loved about that is to make money.
Speaker 1: To do with doing these short documentaries is I learned
Speaker 1: how to be a better filmmaker because doing the documentaries,
Speaker 1: you got to walk in a room it's like I'm
Speaker 1: shooting this scene. I got to know where the camera
Speaker 1: goes like that, you know, I got to be able
Speaker 1: to pull the performance out of you and I don't
Speaker 1: know you, you know, it's like so it all helped
Speaker 1: in training me kind of become the filmmaker that I am.
Speaker 1: And I just kept doing it. Man, And then like
Speaker 1: I did This Land, I did all these documentaries for
Speaker 1: this Land. They're all online, they're short documentaries. I'm very
Speaker 1: proud of all that work that I did. It was
Speaker 1: taking telling stories and changing a community that was right
Speaker 1: here where I'm at locally. This Land also produced the
Speaker 1: documentary This Maybe the Last Time, which is about songs
Speaker 1: and it's about my family and things like that. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a point where I was going to quit. There
Speaker 1: was a point where I wanted to start a nonprofit
Speaker 1: that was gonna kind of teach Native youth how to
Speaker 1: hunt wild game again, and also a food exchange where
Speaker 1: we get elders like a processing plant and then you
Speaker 1: give the meat to elders and also kind of reintroduce
Speaker 1: wild game into their diet and teach them how to
Speaker 1: cook it again. It was this idea that I had
Speaker 1: that I was like, filmmaking is not paying the bills.
Speaker 1: I got to do something else, and this would be
Speaker 1: the second thing I'd wanted to do so and I
Speaker 1: was really inspired. I was doing research for a documentary
Speaker 1: and my friends up in the Northeast. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of organizations like that with the Northeastern tribes where you know,
Speaker 1: kind of a salmon exchange where they would reintegrate salmon
Speaker 1: fishing back into their communities. You know, through colonization and whatever,
Speaker 1: you get stripped away from traditional practice and modernization and whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, your natural way of providing for your family
Speaker 1: gets disrupted obviously, and so it's like, you know, they
Speaker 1: were doing things reintroducing salmon fishing and cooking back into
Speaker 1: the community. So I was like very inspired by that.
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm gonna do that back home. And
Speaker 1: then things changed, and I'd always gambled that they would change.
Speaker 1: I just like, I'm gonna make movies in Oklahoma, and
Speaker 1: I think at some point they'll want to make native
Speaker 1: stuff at some point. And then what changed was streaming,
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, you didn't have to have
Speaker 1: Tom Cruise on your poster to fund your stuff. Like
Speaker 1: TV became this thing where you don't have to have
Speaker 1: name actors. No one knows who they are, and it's okay,
Speaker 1: Like it's kind of like benefits the show a little bit.
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, I started getting work and TV.
Speaker 1: And I never thought I'd make TV, but like, I
Speaker 1: started getting work in TV, and I was like, oh man.
Speaker 1: And then like I would go to a meeting and
Speaker 1: they'd be like Wow, you've done all of these films,
Speaker 1: like you're so experienced. Where have you been? I'd been
Speaker 1: like I've been here, man, like where have you been?
Speaker 1: And so I don't know, like I saw it changing,
Speaker 1: felt it changing. And then my friend who is Mallory
Speaker 1: from the Indigenous people of New Zealand, Tackle y t
Speaker 1: t who basically become you know, we're good friends. We
Speaker 1: met in festivals with our films. We would show films
Speaker 1: together at indigenous festivals throughout the because there's also the
Speaker 1: indigenous circuit where we kind of hang out. And then
Speaker 1: we'd find ourselves at a big festival and you automatically
Speaker 1: find the indigenous crowd and you're like, I'm hanging out
Speaker 1: with y'all, you know. And so me and Tackle became
Speaker 1: really good friends. And then he became kind of a
Speaker 1: superstar in front of me, like you know what we
Speaker 1: do in the Shadows and thor Ragnarock, and you know,
Speaker 1: people recognizing me. You can't walk down the street all
Speaker 1: of a sudden with them. You know. I saw a
Speaker 1: lot of people want things from him with that. Fame
Speaker 1: comes to that, and so I never wanted him to
Speaker 1: feel that way with me. So I was very much,
Speaker 1: always like we're just friends. I'll talk to you about life,
Speaker 1: you know. And one day he said, you know, I
Speaker 1: have an overall deal at FX if you have any ideas,
Speaker 1: like I need to pitch them shows. So if you
Speaker 1: have any ideas, let me know. And he and I
Speaker 1: had been reading each other's work for a long time,
Speaker 1: so in very similar humor and all of that, and
Speaker 1: so I was like, what if we took your script?
Speaker 1: I talked about a specific script his and a script
Speaker 1: that I had. I was like, what if we took
Speaker 1: those two and combined him and made a show. And
Speaker 1: we came up with the idea for reservation dogs that night,
Speaker 1: and then basically he opened the door for me to
Speaker 1: affects got a show, and he was like, I see it, buddy,
Speaker 1: you go hope you do, hope you make it. You
Speaker 1: hope you make it good, and you know, and obviously
Speaker 1: I owed a lot to him and felt like I
Speaker 1: didn't want to disappoint my friend who had put his
Speaker 1: you know, walked me in and kind of helped open
Speaker 1: a door for me. And so so I went and
Speaker 1: made the show and it did well. And yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it was a long story of how I became
Speaker 1: a filmmaker. I don't tell stories in a way that
Speaker 1: excludes people. I grew up from a bunch of different
Speaker 1: people that ended up in this continent, a bunch of
Speaker 1: different ways, from many different cultures. I happened to be
Speaker 1: a part of a very vibrant culture that sort of
Speaker 1: took over the essence of my life because I was
Speaker 1: born into it, and being native, it's big and I
Speaker 1: would not choose to be anything else. But I grew
Speaker 1: up in rural Oklahoma where there were a lot of
Speaker 1: people from a lot of different backgrounds, and my family
Speaker 1: from a lot of different backgrounds, and I found a
Speaker 1: way to talk to everybody. And I really enjoy people
Speaker 1: that don't come from where I come from, or know
Speaker 1: everything about me, or have the same feelings and politics
Speaker 1: and whatever is me. I think that I'm a more healthy,
Speaker 1: well rounded person when I have a bunch of people
Speaker 1: from different places coming in at once. And for me,
Speaker 1: telling stories is my way of kind of pulling that
Speaker 1: together and creating community that I grew up in. And
Speaker 1: I feel like I miss the community that I grew
Speaker 1: up in the town that I grew up in, and
Speaker 1: I'm constantly creating that and you can't be divisive and
Speaker 1: create that. For me, it was not a divisive place.
Speaker 1: It was a very welcoming place. So when I tell stories,
Speaker 1: I want to invite people in, and that means also
Speaker 1: educating and teaching about where I'm from and who I am.
Speaker 1: There's some things that I wouldn't teach about, you know,
Speaker 1: like some of our ceremonial stuff I wouldn't talk about
Speaker 1: and show because it's not meant to be shown. But
Speaker 1: people trust me, and Native people trust me here, and
Speaker 1: I like the cultural exchange of teaching other people and
Speaker 1: telling stories from where I'm If I was telling stories
Speaker 1: just for the people that I grew up with, that'd
Speaker 1: be pretty boring to me. Like I'm trying to tell
Speaker 1: stories about who we are to people that might have
Speaker 1: a different idea of who we are and trying to
Speaker 1: tell the truth about who we are a little bit more.
Speaker 1: And with that, for me, I find the best way
Speaker 1: is to be open and to be inviting and have
Speaker 1: some sort of cultural exchange with people, and through that
Speaker 1: I think that, uh, I think the world would be
Speaker 1: better if we all did operated more like that, you know.
Speaker 1: And that's why I also was a fan of this podcast.
Speaker 1: And that's why I recognize you telling the story of Tokumsea,
Speaker 1: and I don't have to agree with everything you say
Speaker 1: or whatever, like the fact that you put it on
Speaker 1: a podcast that caters towards usually I'm sure most of
Speaker 1: your fans are white and outdoors people, and I think
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of division between the outdoor world
Speaker 1: and Native people, and I think that there's a lot
Speaker 1: more similarities than we think, and so I think putting
Speaker 1: those stories, these stories on your podcast is exactly what
Speaker 1: I do by showing an how with blurred out eyes,
Speaker 1: showing and telling you about my culture and trying to
Speaker 1: share that just so there's more understanding between all of this.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: So in Reservation Dogs, there's a viral scene where Stirling
Speaker 2: blurred out the eyes of an owl that was in
Speaker 2: a tree. There's really no explanation given in the show
Speaker 2: of why he did this, but it's very much an
Speaker 2: inside cultural joke. In all the Native people knew exactly
Speaker 2: what it meant. Owls are bad news to almost all
Speaker 2: North American Indian tribes, and Stirling was making light of it.
Speaker 1: Again.
Speaker 2: It was brilliant. I asked him to expound on his
Speaker 2: doctrine on owls, which, as you all know, is a
Speaker 2: beast that's close to my heart. I really hope this
Speaker 2: doesn't mean that we can't be friends.
Speaker 1: You grew up with a especially in my tribes, we
Speaker 1: grew up with a healthy fear of owls. I mean really.
Speaker 1: I was my buddy Jacob Tovar, who's a musician here
Speaker 1: in town. He was at my house the other day.
Speaker 1: We were outside, sitting on the deck, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, I heard an owl, and you know, one's fine,
Speaker 1: but then I heard two. They were talking to each
Speaker 1: other in my backyard verse three or four, and I'm
Speaker 1: freaking out. At this point, I'm like, and Jacob's cracking up.
Speaker 1: Jacob's cracking out. He's like, are you like, no, it's
Speaker 1: not an owl. For you know, it was like, dude,
Speaker 1: I'm going in, Like I'm going inside, and like he
Speaker 1: thought it was the funniest thing, just because he knows
Speaker 1: he's grew over enough indiens that he knows how we feel.
Speaker 1: But he's also like, it's just an owl. And I'm
Speaker 1: just like, I'm going in, you know. And but we
Speaker 1: grew up like, especially in my tribe, there's a couple
Speaker 1: of things. It was a messenger of death and it
Speaker 1: was telling you somebody's going to die. Also, we have
Speaker 1: a sort of our biggest boogeyman. It's a stickinny and
Speaker 1: that is a shape shifter, a person that could turn
Speaker 1: themselves into an owl and get up to no good.
Speaker 1: You know, there's sounds. So so that is like our
Speaker 1: one of our biggest sort of that is the boogeyman.
Speaker 1: For us, it's like watch out for stiguineas you know,
Speaker 1: and so nothing good is happening when you hear it owl.
Speaker 1: It's either you know someone's gonna die or someone has
Speaker 1: shape shifted into one and they're coming for you.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Any way, you're screwed. I guess it didn't.
Speaker 2: It didn't make it into the Native American tribes that
Speaker 2: the barred owl is one of the greatest turkey shop
Speaker 2: gobbles of all time.
Speaker 1: That's true, it is. But yeah, exactly see that even
Speaker 1: freaks me out. But you know, it's like there's a
Speaker 1: reverence and a respect for the animal, you know, where
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, a lot of people will say
Speaker 1: that it's a messenger of change, not just death. But
Speaker 1: my dad's only memory of my grandpa died when he
Speaker 1: was five. It's him shooting an owl out of a tree.
Speaker 1: You know. I've been hiking with a friend and an
Speaker 1: owl starts calling at us, and it feels like it's
Speaker 1: kind of following us. We're both like, God, he's a
Speaker 1: lask native, you know, and I'm but same they. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're up there, we're down here. They had the same views.
Speaker 1: And so we're hiking out of there, going We're gonna
Speaker 1: get out of here and all this could be coincidence,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's like how you grow up. You
Speaker 1: choose to believe what you know. We're we're a quarter
Speaker 1: mile down the road. Once we got to the car
Speaker 1: and he got a phone call, and it's like your
Speaker 1: cousin that grew up like his brothers killed and so
Speaker 1: it's like you see, you see stuff enough. Or maybe
Speaker 1: if we had the same feeling about a robin, it
Speaker 1: also would connect in ways that I'm saying the owl does.
Speaker 1: But I'm saying the owl connects in ways that in
Speaker 1: my life that that has happened, you know. So so
Speaker 1: if I hear four talking to each other in my backyard,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go inside. Yeah, so we put an owl
Speaker 1: there was an owl outside of a Uncle Brownie's house
Speaker 1: hanging there, and we as a joke as a for
Speaker 1: the natives that blurred the eyes out, you know, which
Speaker 1: I just thought was hilarious and like a good visual joke,
Speaker 1: you know, but also like what I didn't realize is
Speaker 1: how many non natives would be really curious about what
Speaker 1: that meant. It's one of the biggest questions that I get.
Speaker 1: It's like, what was it with the blurred out eyes
Speaker 1: on the owl? You know? And then like I've seen
Speaker 1: it on Facebook and different chat things where someone will
Speaker 1: ask and the native people on there will be very
Speaker 1: patient sort of describe why, you know. Like it's kind
Speaker 1: of a beautiful exchange of like culture, and it's kind
Speaker 1: of the best thing about the show is like it's
Speaker 1: a welcoming show and people are curious about things, you know.
Speaker 1: It doesn't feel like it's talking down to anyone or
Speaker 1: I had originally written in there that it was a
Speaker 1: taxidermy now, but my friend that directed it is Navajo.
Speaker 1: Well Navajos could even be more superstitious, you know, and
Speaker 1: he's like, there's no tax derval, Like we're gonna get
Speaker 1: We're gonna get a porcelain now, and so you know,
Speaker 1: it's not a taxi every now, it's just like a
Speaker 1: it's a porcelain or something. You know, it's a plastic.
Speaker 2: I think, Yeah, what's the future going to be like
Speaker 2: for you?
Speaker 1: There's some stuff that I want to meg. I'm working
Speaker 1: on this Jim Thorpe project. I have this new show
Speaker 1: with Ethan Hawk that I'm doing. It takes place in Tulsa.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to build more of an industry here. That's
Speaker 1: part of what I want to do. I want to
Speaker 1: bring education in for film as well. I have a
Speaker 1: thing called the Tulsa Artist Tulsa Film Collective that we
Speaker 1: show films and bring artists in the filmmakers. If I'm
Speaker 1: doing an animated movie that's actually down in Florida Seminole,
Speaker 1: I just you know, kind of want to I'm raising
Speaker 1: my kids here, you know, and it's like I want
Speaker 1: to make the place better and I want to make
Speaker 1: Native people more visible in the city. I mean, when
Speaker 1: I first came to Tulsa, I have a film called
Speaker 1: Miko and it's about a homeless community and Natives and
Speaker 1: Tulsa because when I first got here, that's the only
Speaker 1: place I remember, like I was missing home. The only
Speaker 1: place I could find Native people faces was in the streets,
Speaker 1: and I made this movie about that fictional but it's
Speaker 1: changed a lot since then. I think that Tuls has
Speaker 1: taken more pride in that side of things, and I
Speaker 1: hope to kind of be a part of more of that.
Speaker 2: You know, I hope you've enjoyed hearing from Sterling as
Speaker 2: much as I did. He has an unassuming and honest
Speaker 2: way of communicating that's unique and draws you into the circle.
Speaker 2: I think what he's doing for his community and for
Speaker 2: people outside of his community is important. This is actually
Speaker 2: just the beginning of a focus we're going to have
Speaker 2: on the Seminole people, and specifically a leader in Sterling's background,
Speaker 2: the famed Floridian Seminole Osceola. It's a story of how
Speaker 2: he and his people put up the most difficult military
Speaker 2: resistance to America in history, and how they never lost
Speaker 2: and remain what they call unconquered. It's a wild story
Speaker 2: that I know you'll enjoy. I can't thank you enough
Speaker 2: for listening to Bear Grease. I look forward to talking
Speaker 2: to everyone on the Render next week, and don't forget
Speaker 2: about that akron ak er n pro inhale exhale grunt
Speaker 2: Call by Phelps. Thank you so much for listening to
Speaker 2: Bear Grease and my commercial fishing on assignment undercover agent
Speaker 2: Brent Reeves, this country life podcast. We really put our
Speaker 2: heart and soul into all this, and we thank you
Speaker 2: guys for listening. Keep the Wild Places Wild