Speaker 1: Hello the Internet, and welcome to Season three, fourteen, Episode
Speaker 1: two of Daily Zai Guys Stay production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: This is a podcast where we dig.
Speaker 1: A deep avenue Marria's share Council. It is Tuesday, November
Speaker 1: twenty first, twenty twenty three, and my name is Jack
Speaker 1: O'Brien aka Potatoes O'Brien. Let's go with a savory potato
Speaker 1: dish for this Thanksgiving week and I'm thrilled to be
Speaker 1: joined by a guest co host who is the producer
Speaker 1: behind shows like Fake Doctor's Real Friends and along with
Speaker 1: Anajosea and other and many others, the Next Up podcast Initiative.
Speaker 1: She's a brilliant writer who you can read a Vulture,
Speaker 1: the av cluv teen Vogue. You've heard her on Pop
Speaker 1: Culture Happy Hour, and most importantly on this podcast. It's
Speaker 1: Joe Elmony Happy Tuesday, Tabby Tuesday. Have you Tuesday, Joel? Yes,
Speaker 1: that's right? And what you you will be having? Turkey Columbia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it amazing.
Speaker 3: Play some bake rolls. You know we're keeping it simple.
Speaker 3: I think we ordered a ham. Yeah you know, I.
Speaker 1: Think we're order a ham. Yes, have ordered it yet?
Speaker 1: I need to go order some ham. Hold on and
Speaker 1: we're back. The ham's all sold out. I'm coming to
Speaker 1: your Thanksgiving. My wife's family is coming into town. So
Speaker 1: we usually have a Korean feast and then a handful
Speaker 1: of kind of small traditional Thanksgiving sides and like one
Speaker 1: sort of meat.
Speaker 3: But like an American tapas.
Speaker 1: I think, oh, for sure, it's so good. But yeah,
Speaker 1: my kids are like starting to call it Turkey Day,
Speaker 1: and like mashed potatoes Day was something says this morning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I showed him the damn Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and that
Speaker 1: blew it for me because I do typically serve popcorn
Speaker 1: and little little things of candy instead of just whatever
Speaker 1: I have and on the shelves.
Speaker 3: I like calling it Turkey Day because then it's just
Speaker 3: the day we eat turkey, and there's nothing else counting around.
Speaker 3: It's just this is the day we eat turkey. It's
Speaker 3: a day that's been solidified to eat turkey with your family.
Speaker 3: I take no joy in anything Unit says has ever
Speaker 3: done in its entire existence. It's a hot mess over here.
Speaker 3: But you know, then there's a turkey on the table
Speaker 3: and that's always nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it's pretty and it's not letting us
Speaker 1: who don't prepare well off the hook. It's like there
Speaker 1: better be some fucking turkey. All right, well, Joelle, we
Speaker 1: are thrilled to be joined in our third seat by
Speaker 1: one of our favorite guests on the Daily Zeitgeist, a
Speaker 1: professor of Alaska Native languages at the University of Alaska
Speaker 1: Southeast and the host of the podcast The Tongue Unbroken,
Speaker 1: which will be dropping season two on all our asses
Speaker 1: in the not too destined future. Season one is us
Speaker 1: so worth your time? Please welcome back to the show,
Speaker 1: Doctor June Lance Twitch.
Speaker 4: I saw the saw and it opened up my eyes.
Speaker 4: D colon Nizes, nothing can stand it. White supremacies underhand.
Speaker 4: I saw the sigh and it opened up my eyes.
Speaker 4: De Calonnize. When you're gonna smarten up and give the
Speaker 4: land back to whom it belongs, come tell me where
Speaker 4: does it belong?
Speaker 1: Why all the bomb drops? I was?
Speaker 4: I thought of that while I was walking my dogs.
Speaker 4: I walk my dogs at night and it's snowing, like
Speaker 4: we got blizzard conditions, which is fine because it's Alaska.
Speaker 4: But I was just thinking, it's like, I gotta have
Speaker 4: some kind of cute like jingle or something. I like
Speaker 4: my goal is to take a whole bunch of pop
Speaker 4: songs and just make them decolonial anthems.
Speaker 1: So they're working on over here. I wonder if Bass
Speaker 1: would approve. I'm not sure. I haven't you know, I'd
Speaker 1: like to, just haven't checked with them.
Speaker 4: I'll reach out, say what's your standpoint on this whole
Speaker 4: colonization thing. Then I'll decide whether or not.
Speaker 3: Have a secret. I don't know if I'm just talking
Speaker 3: internet rumors right now.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's Internet rumors are not, but
Speaker 1: I do think that one of the members had a
Speaker 1: Nazi pass and there is like some weird similarities between
Speaker 1: like Ace of Basses, it was like the name of
Speaker 1: the Nazi submarine base during World War Two.
Speaker 4: If they turned out to be like Nazi supporters and
Speaker 4: I just took their ship for.
Speaker 1: The Yeah take yeah. Adam Todd Brown from Unpopular Opinion
Speaker 1: podcast has written wrote a really cool article about that
Speaker 1: for us back at Cracked and has a lot of
Speaker 1: It's worth checking out because it's definitely makes you to
Speaker 1: take a look. And also like All that She Wants
Speaker 1: Is Another Baby was their other hit and it was
Speaker 1: basically a portrait of a welfare Queen. It was kind
Speaker 1: of what first song, Yes, those aces of Bassis, The
Speaker 1: Aces of Bassis. When when you say blizzard conditions and
Speaker 1: you're talking Alaska, what are we looking at?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so Juno is not the snowiest place in Alaska.
Speaker 4: We are We are the most how did you say it?
Speaker 4: We get the most precipitation per day.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 4: So there's some there's some communities south of us that
Speaker 4: get the most rain. We're talking like one hundred and
Speaker 4: forty inches a year, and so we don't really compare
Speaker 4: to that, but we have the most rainy days I think,
Speaker 4: out of anywhere on the Northwest coast.
Speaker 1: And so we've got some folks.
Speaker 4: Who are not from Juno, and when that came out
Speaker 4: in the paper, they're kind of walking around head down sad,
Speaker 4: you know, because I think what I try to tell
Speaker 4: people is the weather is not an emotional barometer. So
Speaker 4: just because it's raining doesn't mean you had to be sad.
Speaker 4: I don't care what the commercials say. And so I
Speaker 4: was like, we're the champions. Because on the newspaper says
Speaker 4: Juno has the most rainy days on the Northwest coast.
Speaker 4: I was like, we did it. We did it folks.
Speaker 4: And so for us to get a bunch of snow
Speaker 4: kind of messes us up a little bit. And so
Speaker 4: we're talking like sixteen to twenty four inches in a day,
Speaker 4: which is a lot for us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's a lot for most people. That is,
Speaker 1: in my professional opinion, too much snow.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So this and so this will also see like
Speaker 4: how much have you been putting off for winter? Because
Speaker 4: we've got to get ready for winter here. You got
Speaker 4: to get your heating system looked at. You got to
Speaker 4: get your shovels out from wherever they are. You got
Speaker 4: to put the broom thing in your car. You got
Speaker 4: to make sure you've got wipers that are worth the
Speaker 4: dam and aren't you know, just faded pieces of cracked
Speaker 4: rubber that are trying to like scratch some stuff off
Speaker 4: your windows.
Speaker 1: Coming for me with that description that is you're coming
Speaker 1: from my wipers, I guess because my wipers are like
Speaker 1: curved and only making contact with the windshield at the
Speaker 1: very edges right now. But you can get away with
Speaker 1: it in Los Angeles, you know.
Speaker 4: For for Youno again, like we're really wet and it
Speaker 4: does get cold, like we're right on the ocean, so
Speaker 4: if it gets twenty ten zero, that's cold because it's
Speaker 4: just something about the humidity and the cold that does it.
Speaker 4: And if you go out boat on the ocean, that's
Speaker 4: that's pretty serious stuff, the.
Speaker 3: Coldest you've ever experienced.
Speaker 4: But so if you go inland from here, like so
Speaker 4: we have Thlingett communities that are in what is now
Speaker 4: Canada for some reason. I say, for some reason, because
Speaker 4: it's all thing get onie, like it's all our land.
Speaker 4: And then they come and like cut it in half
Speaker 4: and say you need a passport to get to this side.
Speaker 1: And so to go down the street.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but we'll have language classes. We have folks who
Speaker 4: call in from Canada and we'll start, you know, having
Speaker 4: conversations and we'll be complaining about the weather, as humans
Speaker 4: like to do, and we'll say, yeah, it's cold, and
Speaker 4: then they'll say, yeah, it's forty below here and that's
Speaker 4: celsius and forty below is like the level point. It's like, yes,
Speaker 4: a matter if you're doing fahrenheit or cel.
Speaker 1: Fahrenheit and celsius meet. I just discovered this. Yeah, fahrenheit
Speaker 1: and celsia should never meet in a in a temperature.
Speaker 3: The coldest i've ever experienced. It was like twenty eleven
Speaker 3: there was snow apocalypse in Chicago, so it's snowed all
Speaker 3: day and then overnight the temperature just plummeted, so like
Speaker 3: cars like froze on. Like Short Drive, which is our
Speaker 3: longest street that runs along the lake, it was bare.
Speaker 3: I was like, this is new levels of just complete
Speaker 3: icy coldness. I can't even I can't imagine that being like, yeah,
Speaker 3: this is sort of our average around here every days.
Speaker 3: You gotta It's like when I watch people in Russia
Speaker 3: and they're like, no, it's fine, I have a fur
Speaker 3: coat walking around. It's gonna like this is the human
Speaker 3: body is incredible.
Speaker 1: Fur coat, jogging pants. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Two fun things about like forty to fifty below is
Speaker 4: because we lived in Fairbanks for a while, my family
Speaker 4: and I, And so if you open the door, you
Speaker 4: can see the cold roll in like fog like it
Speaker 4: just like rolls in really quickly into the house. Like
Speaker 4: you can see the cold, see.
Speaker 1: The air like kind of it has a different quality
Speaker 1: to it. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then amazing you could take a hot beverage
Speaker 4: like coffee or tea and go outside and throw it
Speaker 4: in the air and it just turns into steam. It
Speaker 4: just turns into like a little cloud.
Speaker 3: We tried the experiment when it was very cold with
Speaker 3: bubbles where we would try to freeze bubbles instantly, which
Speaker 3: was kind of fun. And you just blow a bubble
Speaker 3: and then it icicles will just form around it because.
Speaker 1: It just falls to the ground like you.
Speaker 3: Blow it on like a surface where your mouth canch.
Speaker 3: I guess you could be ground level. We had like
Speaker 3: a little ledge on our patio so that it had
Speaker 3: some time to cross over, but it took like seconds.
Speaker 2: It was crazy.
Speaker 1: Turns into Christmas tree ornaments.
Speaker 3: Basically perfect, yes, exactly exactly. Prepare for winter. Everybody is coming.
Speaker 1: Not for me. I'm not doing fuck all that. I
Speaker 1: have to assume that, like all the schools are closed
Speaker 1: down with sixteen inches of snow.
Speaker 4: Like, uh no, the schools are like they you know,
Speaker 4: everybody was talking last well, I guess there's these like
Speaker 4: Facebook groups and so people were saying, hey, school canna
Speaker 4: be canceled, and I think a bunch of kind of
Speaker 4: old schoolers this part were like nah, man nah, and
Speaker 4: you know, and people are like, well, I got to
Speaker 4: figure out what to do. How am I going to
Speaker 4: get my kids there am I going to get them home?
Speaker 4: I lived in this one place and the school closed
Speaker 4: and they had to just sleep in the school. But yeah,
Speaker 4: but we get snow, like they'll be out plowing this stuff.
Speaker 4: They're out there right now. Like the people who like
Speaker 4: the city of Juno and the and the state of Alaska,
Speaker 4: the folks who like work on roads, they'll get this
Speaker 4: stuff cleared out. Although there's a community anchorage which they
Speaker 4: are not good at plowing their streets, but in.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's like some local it is. It's
Speaker 1: so it's yeah, there's anchorage sucks plowing their streets.
Speaker 4: Well, there was a guy and he's like this super
Speaker 4: conservative politician and he won. He won, and his whole
Speaker 4: thing is like budget cuts, and I think he ran
Speaker 4: on this these platforms of kind of hate and budget cuts,
Speaker 4: which which seems to be kind of a conservative platform.
Speaker 4: And so now the streets don't get plowed. And so
Speaker 4: there was some sort of it was a great little
Speaker 4: Internet picture and it showed like be careful what you
Speaker 4: asked for was one of his campaign signs, and so
Speaker 4: there's a picture of him it says be careful what
Speaker 4: you ask for, and like just a ship ton of snow,
Speaker 4: like on the roads because you people and people can't
Speaker 4: really get around. But the school's here, Like they'll usually
Speaker 4: send us a text like six in the morning and
Speaker 4: they're like, yeah, just dust it off, bro and get
Speaker 4: your kids to school. But the after school stuff will
Speaker 4: be closed because you know, get too wild. But the
Speaker 4: school itself like, let's go get.
Speaker 1: To tunnel and get tunnel in folks. That's that's amazing.
Speaker 1: I lived in Kentucky for a while and it's like
Speaker 1: thinks of itself as southern, but it still gets snow
Speaker 1: most winters and it just has to be the rumor
Speaker 1: of snow and they will shut down school for like
Speaker 1: a week. They're just like, we're gonna be this is
Speaker 1: this is a mess. We're a mess during a snowstorm.
Speaker 3: Their highways are already terrible, so even the hint of
Speaker 3: snowfall is just chaos.
Speaker 1: Forty eight hours of traffic down exactly. It's like that
Speaker 1: exact longitudinal or latitudinal line of like Lexington, Kentucky, Atlanta.
Speaker 1: You don't want to get caught there during the snowstorm. Well,
Speaker 1: we're going to get into some of the things, some
Speaker 1: of the things just generally that we wanted to. We've
Speaker 1: been talking about wanting to talk to you about hun
Speaker 1: every time you come on the show. So we're going
Speaker 1: to devote a whole episode to kind of talking about
Speaker 1: We're going to get into Buffy, Saint Marie, the concept
Speaker 1: of pretendians or Native movies, what's the new Scorsese movie
Speaker 1: Killers of the Flower Moon, And then just indigenous languages
Speaker 1: and the role that language has played in genocide, among
Speaker 1: many other things. But before we get to any of it,
Speaker 1: we do like to get to know you a little
Speaker 1: bit better and ask you what is something from your
Speaker 1: search history?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so my search history is usually a lot of
Speaker 4: policy for the United States government and trying to get
Speaker 4: to the bottom of it, you know. So there's some
Speaker 4: different things I was thinking about with boarding schools and
Speaker 4: how did these boarding schools run, who was running them?
Speaker 4: And so we're doing some There's a group that I'm
Speaker 4: involved with, a council called the Alaska Native Language Preservation
Speaker 4: and Advisory Council, and we're talking about the history of
Speaker 4: boarding schools and what they were for Native American peoples
Speaker 4: and for a lot of people that might not be
Speaker 4: something that they have to think about on a regular
Speaker 4: basis is that there were schools where children were forcibly
Speaker 4: taken from their parents and brought to these places and
Speaker 4: completely stripped of their identity. And so if you want
Speaker 4: to just sort of like think of scenes from movies
Speaker 4: about Auschwitz or about the Holocaust that was happening here
Speaker 4: just to brown people. And so a lot of people
Speaker 4: don't pay attention to it. So sometimes we got to
Speaker 4: take a look at this stuff. And so some of
Speaker 4: the things that we've been searching for is could we
Speaker 4: make a list of every boarding school that was running
Speaker 4: in Alaska, and then could we have some sort of
Speaker 4: acknowledgment in healing ceremony with these places because they were
Speaker 4: run by the United States government, and they're also run
Speaker 4: by religious organizations, Christian organizations in the United States who
Speaker 4: were colonizing and trying to eliminate Indigenous languages and indigenous cultures.
Speaker 4: And so there's a wonderful colleague of mind. His name
Speaker 4: is doctor Waki Charles, and he teaches the Yuchten language,
Speaker 4: the Yupik language. He's at Fairbanks and he was at
Speaker 4: one of these schools. So it did happen long time ago,
Speaker 4: but it happened for a long time as well. So
Speaker 4: there are people alive today who went to these schools,
Speaker 4: and he talks about how he went there and how
Speaker 4: his mother had no idea where he was going. She
Speaker 4: didn't speak English, she had no idea when he was
Speaker 4: coming home. They just took him and they took his
Speaker 4: clothes and they put a number. His name was taken,
Speaker 4: and his new name was number twelve, and number twelve
Speaker 4: was written on all of his clothes. Number twelve was
Speaker 4: written on all of his belongings, and that's what he
Speaker 4: was referred to. And so he talked about, you know,
Speaker 4: and where he went. So his family is from western Alaska,
Speaker 4: which is very far from where we are, but he
Speaker 4: was brought here to a community called Wrangele, to a
Speaker 4: school called Wrangel Institute. And at some of these schools,
Speaker 4: these teachers have written books. I'm not going to say
Speaker 4: their name. I'm not going to say the name of
Speaker 4: the book because it's trash. But in the book they say,
Speaker 4: you know, so this is basically their memoir of teaching
Speaker 4: in Alaska. They said, we couldn't get them to stop
Speaker 4: speaking their own language, and we wanted them to learn English,
Speaker 4: but we developed and this is their where its a
Speaker 4: heroic remedy, which was to take these two chemicals, one
Speaker 4: that's very bitter and one that burns the inside of
Speaker 4: your mouth, and we would soak a rag in that
Speaker 4: and then when one of them started speaking their language,
Speaker 4: we would stuff the rag in their mouth.
Speaker 1: So it's stuff like that.
Speaker 4: But every now and then I'll be on the internet
Speaker 4: looking for something that's not horrible. But I think people
Speaker 4: need to look at this and not be afraid of
Speaker 4: examining it, because as a nation, if we don't say, like,
Speaker 4: this was part of our history, this was something that
Speaker 4: we did. This is what education was for Native people.
Speaker 4: I think if you don't examine that, then it never
Speaker 4: fully changes into something else.
Speaker 3: I can I ask you about acknowledgement, and because I
Speaker 3: feel like every time he knows part of like the
Speaker 3: black community, there are a lot of times people like,
Speaker 3: what does acknowledging slavery do for you? There's like this
Speaker 3: very it happened forever ago, it's history. Why do we
Speaker 3: need these things? And I'm just curious. You know, you're
Speaker 3: such a large part of your community organizing, and what
Speaker 3: does for you? What do these acknowledgments mean?
Speaker 4: Well, part of these acknowledgments are to say. Colonization is
Speaker 4: an act of like complete dehumanization on every possible aspect.
Speaker 4: So you have to dehumanize the people that you're doing this.
Speaker 4: And when we talk about colonization, we're not talking about like, oh,
Speaker 4: let's go move over here and build a house and
Speaker 4: search for our own personal freedom, which is usually what
Speaker 4: we're sort of sold on is life was tough. So
Speaker 4: they found this place where they could make it work.
Speaker 4: And they had belt buckles on their hats or something.
Speaker 1: You know, we're not really taught a whole lot about that. Shoes,
Speaker 1: everything was covered in belt buckles. Just get us more buckles.
Speaker 1: How the fuck am I going to find enough belt buckles?
Speaker 1: Maybe that was a problem, and they keep expanding.
Speaker 4: They see all these native people, like these motherfuckers, they
Speaker 4: don't got no buckles.
Speaker 1: We gotta wipe them out, you know.
Speaker 4: So there's probably more complic But the problem is is
Speaker 4: in order to really like completely try to annihilate someone,
Speaker 4: you have to dehumanize them because the population has to
Speaker 4: figure out how to be on board with that. Because
Speaker 4: you can get individuals who can subscribe to bascist beliefs
Speaker 4: and say, yeah, like fucking wipe them out. But to
Speaker 4: get like a whole population to do that, you have
Speaker 4: to sort of create this collective denial, which I think
Speaker 4: the United States is very good at collective denial.
Speaker 1: And so we're not.
Speaker 4: Just a shining example, right, And so one is just saying, Okay,
Speaker 4: this happened, and this is something we have to rectify.
Speaker 4: Because if I burned your house down and then we
Speaker 4: were going to stay friends or just even live next
Speaker 4: to each other, and if I never talked about it
Speaker 4: and nothing ever happened to me, that would be so
Speaker 4: it would be awkward at the minute least, right, see me,
Speaker 4: like burn my house down, your fucker, And I was
Speaker 4: just like, hey, I'm just getting my newspaper.
Speaker 1: What why you gotta yell at me? Right?
Speaker 4: And so, but then also like how if that is
Speaker 4: part of the foundation story of the United States of America,
Speaker 4: then how do you reconcile with ending that violence against
Speaker 4: people's if you'd never even look at the thing. And
Speaker 4: so to say like, let's let's actually look at that
Speaker 4: one of the things that can be really tremendously healing,
Speaker 4: because I don't think we talk enough about any of
Speaker 4: this stuff. But the colonizer also must dehumanize in order
Speaker 4: to do that kind of stuff, because on a day
Speaker 4: to day basis, you don't just I don't think you
Speaker 4: don't just walk into someone's kitchen and eat all their
Speaker 4: food and slap them in the face and just like
Speaker 4: claim their kitchen as theirs as yours. But we've done
Speaker 4: that collectively, right, Like colonizers have done that to indigenous peoples.
Speaker 4: And so I think there's opportunities when you embrace decolonization
Speaker 4: for the descendants of the colonizers to also reconnect with humanity.
Speaker 4: But I think they're really terrified to I was given
Speaker 4: some talks the other day and I was saying, I
Speaker 4: really like science fiction films. I like horror films, but
Speaker 4: sometimes if you watch a science fiction movie, it's like
Speaker 4: there's these white people and then aliens come or some
Speaker 4: kind of monster and they're gonna like take their take
Speaker 4: all their stuff and take their language and take everything.
Speaker 4: It's like this it's a horror you know. Or there's
Speaker 4: some huge apocalypse, right, And so these post apocalyptal kind
Speaker 4: of films I think about them, but I watch them,
Speaker 4: I'm like, yeah, yeah, that's we've lived that. We've done that, right,
Speaker 4: Like they came, they took the stuff like, you know,
Speaker 4: it must be scary for you, but it's our reality.
Speaker 4: But I think about that stuff a lot because I
Speaker 4: think as we talk about concepts like decolonization, there are
Speaker 4: probably quite a few white people who think, oh, now
Speaker 4: they're gonna put us on reservations and make us stop
Speaker 4: speaking always.
Speaker 3: To go to They're like, well, if we acknowledge it,
Speaker 3: then there'll be white slavery, Like I don't want to
Speaker 3: own slaves, like my answers to survived, you, why would
Speaker 3: I put someone use in such a ridiculous thought?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean there was a survey that came out of
Speaker 4: Harvard a while ago and there was like interviewing I
Speaker 4: guess people in the South, and they're saying, do you
Speaker 4: think that white people have it harder now than black
Speaker 4: people did during the era of slavery, and that there
Speaker 4: was a lot of them that checked the box yes, Like, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's real hard for us. People are real mad at us,
Speaker 4: so that's got to be really hard, right. So, but
Speaker 4: I think the acknowledgment, as well as saying like could
Speaker 4: we become something else? Like there's you know, about five
Speaker 4: hundred languages that were on this continent in California was
Speaker 4: the most diverse, is the most linguistically diverse part of
Speaker 4: North America, and every one of those languages is almost gone.
Speaker 4: And so as we look at that, like what happens
Speaker 4: when a language is gone? What happens when a species
Speaker 4: is gone? And I want to be careful with that
Speaker 4: because a lot of times Native Americans, you know, if
Speaker 4: you go to some big museum, we're not there with
Speaker 4: like Monet and these you know, whoever else is making
Speaker 4: a bunch of art. Right, We're over by the wolves
Speaker 4: and the moose and you know, we're by the animals.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, you taught you said the different distinction
Speaker 1: between art and artifact and the tongue unbroken.
Speaker 4: But yeah, yeah, right, And so we see like the
Speaker 4: way that dehumanization enters into academics as well, where you know,
Speaker 4: like white people get literature and we get stories, and
Speaker 4: white people get art, and we get artifacts, and white
Speaker 4: people get science and we get ecological knowledge. Right, and
Speaker 4: so trying to sort of also just say now let's
Speaker 4: just like everything is a thing, and let's just sort
Speaker 4: of say, yeah, we can have multiple perspectives, and then
Speaker 4: you can also but you know, one of the things
Speaker 4: where science has a hard time with us is they'll say, oh, oh,
Speaker 4: is that a medicine? But like, yeah, that the thing
Speaker 4: that comes out of a tree. You could put it
Speaker 4: on a wound and they'll seal it right up. Oh well,
Speaker 4: how do you guys know that? Like, oh, because Raven
Speaker 4: got that information from the sea otters and he tricked
Speaker 4: them and now we know it. And that's that's fine
Speaker 4: for us, But I think for science they need some
Speaker 4: sort they need They need probably a white guy in
Speaker 4: a lab coat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, story of a white guy and a lab coat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: with like a bad mustache and like weird glasses that's
Speaker 1: strapped to his ears or something. All right, let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break and we'll come back. We'll keep talking
Speaker 1: about this. We'll be right back, and we're back. And
Speaker 1: for first of all, we talked. We started off this
Speaker 1: episode talking about Thanksgiving, and I'd just be interested in hearing,
Speaker 1: like as to your metaphor of the person who burns
Speaker 1: down your house else and then it is just like
Speaker 1: expects you to be cool with it, and it continues
Speaker 1: living there and then they're like, hey, we're having a
Speaker 1: party to celebrate that time I burned down your house
Speaker 1: and you are cool with it. Do you want to
Speaker 1: come over or don't come over and just just continue
Speaker 1: being cool with it? What is Thanksgiving like for you?
Speaker 1: And like where you live? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, And colonization is so interesting because there's some things
Speaker 4: I think Indigenous peoples accept and some things that they reject.
Speaker 4: And so one of my examples is, you know, we
Speaker 4: get people keep track of our blood quantum, the government
Speaker 4: keeps track of I've got a card, I've got to
Speaker 4: actually let's say what my fraction is of my indigenous identity.
Speaker 4: And so that's not something I think that very many
Speaker 4: people get, but that's something Indigenous people get. And that
Speaker 4: tells you whether or not you qualify for things or
Speaker 4: if you can go shoot a seal. And so a
Speaker 4: lot of times as we look at that stuff, and
Speaker 4: blood quantum is what it's called, and so sometimes we'll
Speaker 4: be like, fuck blood quantum, man, you can't measure me,
Speaker 4: can't measure my indigenous identity. But then we got a
Speaker 4: dog and I'll be like, this dog is one hundred
Speaker 4: percent German shepherd. I'll show you the papers. It's a
Speaker 4: pure bread, right, right. So some things we reject in
Speaker 4: some things we accept and sometimes those are similar things.
Speaker 4: And so for us, we we eat, we throw down
Speaker 4: a turkey. I mean, that's just something I grew up with.
Speaker 4: And then we'll we'll do stuffing, we'll do all that stuff.
Speaker 4: They have thinget names, and the thlinget names are not
Speaker 4: great because when we saw that turkey and it had
Speaker 4: you know, and turkey is are indigenous to North America,
Speaker 4: but they're not indigenous to where we are, and so
Speaker 4: it's got that sort of long thing that hangs down
Speaker 4: from its beak or whatever. I don't always called the
Speaker 4: gobbler gobbler. Yeah, so they called it, which means it's
Speaker 4: not news, which is not a nice name. We're usually
Speaker 4: so respectful to our food. But then I had an
Speaker 4: elder over. We had this big Thanksgiving dinner and we
Speaker 4: were stuffing the bird, or maybe we're pulling stuffing out
Speaker 4: of the bird because we're having the dinner. I said,
Speaker 4: and thing in I said, well we gonna call this
Speaker 4: the stuff because you know, I don't that's not a
Speaker 4: great word either, just in English. And then we're like, well,
Speaker 4: you know, I think you kind of put it in
Speaker 4: the turkey's ass. And then then you like, you know,
Speaker 4: we mix a bunch of stuff. It's yummy, And so
Speaker 4: we were we started up with like the bread that's
Speaker 4: in the turkey's butt, and then we end up with
Speaker 4: like turkey poop. Yeah, and so it's like like, okay,
Speaker 4: we're just gonna have to stick with stuffing for somebody.
Speaker 1: Stuff.
Speaker 4: But at our university, some of our students had a
Speaker 4: great idea, which is, you know, there was a time
Speaker 4: when universities usually had Thanksgiving break and Christmas break and
Speaker 4: Easter break, right, and so as we look at that,
Speaker 4: we say, well, a university is not a Christian institution,
Speaker 4: so we don't need to have those we can have.
Speaker 4: So at our university, we had winter break and then
Speaker 4: we had spring break, and so we said, well, why
Speaker 4: don't we have fall break instead of Thanksgiving break? And
Speaker 4: what was interesting again coming back to colonial overreactions, which
Speaker 4: are you know, this was a classic colonial overreaction, I think.
Speaker 4: So we pitched this idea, everybody's on board and was like, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's that's great because not everybody acknowledges, you know, the
Speaker 4: story behind Thanksgiving, which was you know, sometimes they'll say, oh, well,
Speaker 4: these Native Americans and these pilgrims had a great meal
Speaker 4: and they they really shook hands and figured it out.
Speaker 4: I guess you know which is. I remember I saw
Speaker 4: this some sort of little clip. I can't find it anymore.
Speaker 4: I have to do some internet digging, if you all
Speaker 4: can do some deep dives. There was this little skit
Speaker 4: of these kids re enacting the first Thanksgiving and the
Speaker 4: pilgrims murder all the Indigenous people, and it's it's you
Speaker 4: could laugh at it because it's so horrible, but it's
Speaker 4: also like just sort of goes in the against what
Speaker 4: we're usually taught, which is these artificial narratives of just
Speaker 4: how nice white people were here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's also in Adam's family values, by the way.
Speaker 4: Oh that's right, that's right where she's you know, she
Speaker 4: burns down the village, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And so, but as we had this one meeting, we said, yeah, well,
Speaker 4: all we're doing is on the calendar of the university,
Speaker 4: it won't say Thanksgiving closure, I'll say Fall closure. That's
Speaker 4: all we're trying to do, right, And someone says, well,
Speaker 4: I think the students should be able to eat turkey,
Speaker 4: and I said, bro, I never said anything about turkey,
Speaker 4: Like I don't. Yeah, like the like they could serve
Speaker 4: whatever kind of food they want to no one suggesting
Speaker 4: that changes. And then he said, well, I think people
Speaker 4: should be able to gather with their families over this
Speaker 4: break and I said, I never said they, Like, I
Speaker 4: don't know where you're getting this information, Like it's literally
Speaker 4: just changing what the thing is called on a calendar.
Speaker 4: I'm not going to go into your house and like
Speaker 4: make you disperse, like I don't understand. There's no there's
Speaker 4: no Gestapo coming for your Thanksgiving gathering and so and
Speaker 4: then that same person he wanted to talk to me more,
Speaker 4: so I gave him my phone number, and when I
Speaker 4: picked up the phone, he said, thanks for taking the time.
Speaker 4: I was like, yeah, like I'm happy to talk about
Speaker 4: this stuff. He said, I just don't think you know
Speaker 4: how hard it is to be a Christian these days.
Speaker 4: And I'm thinking, this is not the conversation I want
Speaker 4: to have, but okay, let's listen. Because you know, the
Speaker 4: same thing with the War on Christmas and this this
Speaker 4: idea that Christianity is under threat, Like I can drive
Speaker 4: this one loop in town and I think I hit
Speaker 4: like twelve churches.
Speaker 1: I'm like, where are they going? Right?
Speaker 3: I think what's particularly wild about that? Is Thanksgiving is
Speaker 3: not a Christian holiday in Rome. The Vatican's not preparing
Speaker 3: a Thanksgiving. Damiel bizarre to equate the two. I don't
Speaker 3: that's wild to me, that's wild.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you made this metaphor in season one of the
Speaker 1: Tongue I'm broken about they take your land, the colonialists
Speaker 1: to take your land. And when you say, and then like,
Speaker 1: build a beautiful home on it. And then when you say, like, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to also build a home here, they say,
Speaker 1: you can't because that will destroy my home. Like and
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's just really resonated to me as
Speaker 1: just someone who lives in this culture, Like you know
Speaker 1: the things I've been hearing in conversations around Gaza as well,
Speaker 1: and you know that people aren't able to continue to
Speaker 1: live there because somehow their continued existence is devaluing to
Speaker 1: the existence of the people who are kind of forcing
Speaker 1: them off their land. And it just it seems to
Speaker 1: have this same corrupted, overall logic over and over again repeatedly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think some of the things that are happening
Speaker 4: over there are really difficult for people in the United States,
Speaker 4: because I think the United States, it's very easy to
Speaker 4: hate people who are Jewish, and it's very easy to
Speaker 4: hate people who are Muslim and so, and that's very
Speaker 4: easy to hate people who are brown. It's kind of
Speaker 4: baked into the culture, and you have to you have
Speaker 4: to consciously move against these things at all times in
Speaker 4: order to sort of not by default have these these
Speaker 4: feelings of hatred or otherness. And so I think it's
Speaker 4: really hard because they're like, oh, well, what side do
Speaker 4: I pick? Because these guys look kind of like me,
Speaker 4: so they pick those guys. But also, you know, there's
Speaker 4: just so many different things that are coded in language,
Speaker 4: that are coded in film and entertainment, where we're supposed
Speaker 4: to like just hate these people and other them. And
Speaker 4: so I think it's when people look at this stuff,
Speaker 4: we see so much violence, and we hear about violence,
Speaker 4: and we like, well, yeah, they're in hospitals, so we
Speaker 4: got to blow up the hospitals so that we can
Speaker 4: we can get the bad guys, you know. And so
Speaker 4: but I don't know if that's really a heroic tactic.
Speaker 4: I don't know if that's a tactic that's really has
Speaker 4: an ethical sort of grounding, and you know, to say,
Speaker 4: like it doesn't matter who's there we need to get
Speaker 4: this small group of people, and so we'll kill all
Speaker 4: these people to get them. And so there's some things
Speaker 4: I think that really ring true for a lot of
Speaker 4: Indigenous peoples, which is battle over land. But then there's
Speaker 4: some things that I think for a lot of our
Speaker 4: indigenous communities might be difficult for us to understand, like well,
Speaker 4: whose land is it? Because they crossed an ocean to
Speaker 4: get here, and so that was pretty clear. You know,
Speaker 4: I know there's some people who someone people like to
Speaker 4: tag me in things. And so there was this wonderful
Speaker 4: news article about a Native American language center that was
Speaker 4: starting an organ but then it was through an organ newspaper.
Speaker 4: And then all these people from Oregon, which is a
Speaker 4: place with its own problems because I think until not
Speaker 4: too long ago, it was like illegal for black people
Speaker 4: to live there, and like, you know, it's it's a
Speaker 4: complicated place. That was in southwest Organ and there was
Speaker 4: there's a road there called Dead Indian Memorial Road, and
Speaker 4: they have this, yeah, they have this big sign that says,
Speaker 4: you know this place, this road used to be called
Speaker 4: Dead Indian Road. We realized that was not a sensitive name,
Speaker 4: so we changed the name to Dead Indian Memorial Road and.
Speaker 1: Oregon. I was you were so close and you landed
Speaker 1: so far.
Speaker 4: And so some of the problems I think that are
Speaker 4: present in a lot of Native American communities, which are
Speaker 4: probably present all through the United States, is we don't
Speaker 4: get educated on the history of the Middle East. We
Speaker 4: don't get educated on why are people in this fight
Speaker 4: over the land and about nations and belonging. And people
Speaker 4: are very quick to say, oh, you're anti Semitic just
Speaker 4: because you're saying, like, don't blow up hospitals.
Speaker 1: And then that seems to be the one point that
Speaker 1: you can just whether you know a lot about the
Speaker 1: history or not. It just feels like the one thing
Speaker 1: that I feel like we've been consistent on on this
Speaker 1: show is just like, but anytime there's killing of innocent people,
Speaker 1: like there wasn't October seventh or has been since in Gaza,
Speaker 1: like that's pretty self evidently not the way to go,
Speaker 1: and like something that should be opposed in all its forms.
Speaker 4: But yeah, yeah, and it's complicated too, because you've got people,
Speaker 4: you've got people of color over whether you've got it's
Speaker 4: a real mixing zone. It's a real mixing zone. And
Speaker 4: so but also, like you guys are talking about this
Speaker 4: the other day, we grew up in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 4: like who are the bad guys in films? It was
Speaker 4: Russians and Muslims, right, and so probably more Muslims and Russians.
Speaker 4: And so I think there's a lot of stuff that
Speaker 4: you can attach to to just hate people because they
Speaker 4: are Muslim and you don't understand that. And so instead
Speaker 4: of sort of looking into who are these people and
Speaker 4: what do they do and how can I get.
Speaker 1: To know them more?
Speaker 4: And again can you connect to humanity? But it all
Speaker 4: gets very quickly twisted as well, through a bunch of
Speaker 4: different distorted lenses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one thing that I wanted to drive home is
Speaker 1: just you know, in talking about the you know, erasure
Speaker 1: of cultural value and languages as a cultural and linguistic genocide.
Speaker 1: Like you mentioned throughout the first season of The Tongueunbroken
Speaker 1: that youth suicide rates among Native Alaskan youse is tragically high.
Speaker 1: And it's something that you hear a lot in the
Speaker 1: in you know, accounts of people who are being actively
Speaker 1: oppressed and who not not just in physically, but you know,
Speaker 1: in these ideologically like philosophical ideological conditions that are inhospitable
Speaker 1: to the human like to human life like that, and
Speaker 1: I just I feel like that is clarifying in a
Speaker 1: way that this erasure of identity and the choking off
Speaker 1: of the ability to create meaning for oneself and identity
Speaker 1: for oneself causes people to actually lose their lives, causes
Speaker 1: children to like harm themselves, and that just connecting those
Speaker 1: two things, Like there are a lot of schools of
Speaker 1: philosophy and psychology that identify the search for meanings like
Speaker 1: one of the most important human needs, like it will
Speaker 1: sustain you through the prison camps in Auschwitz, but without
Speaker 1: it you can't survive anything. You know, you can't survive
Speaker 1: daily life. And it feels like a lot of the
Speaker 1: things that you're talking about in the boarding schools and
Speaker 1: just throughout the history of colonization are very systemic exams
Speaker 1: samples of attacks on those things that make a life possible,
Speaker 1: make it possible to live and find mean it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, last week was the birthday of a man Noeled
Speaker 4: Kajakte's English name was Walter Sobolev and he lived to
Speaker 4: be one hundred and two years old, and he was
Speaker 4: so fun to talk to, like his Thlingate was so
Speaker 4: good and he was a pastor in a church for
Speaker 4: a long time. They closed his church because he would
Speaker 4: do his sermons and fling it as well as English,
Speaker 4: and so I guess like but on that note, the
Speaker 4: Presbyterian Church, who has a hand in language and culture suppression,
Speaker 4: a bunch of horrible stuff in this part of the world.
Speaker 4: They they held a community listening session, and they held
Speaker 4: several of them. Then they came back a month or
Speaker 4: two later and they said they made a public apology
Speaker 4: and they said they were wrong. It was racist, and
Speaker 4: they said, you know, like, it wasn't our decision, but
Speaker 4: it was our institution, and we recognize that and we apologize.
Speaker 4: And then they made a million dollar commitment to language
Speaker 4: and culture revitalization in our region. And that stuff is
Speaker 4: important because Walter Soboloff he used to say, people who
Speaker 4: know who they are don't kill themselves. And when we
Speaker 4: look at suicide rates and Alaska Natives, it's a very
Speaker 4: horrifying thing because it's the leading cause of death among
Speaker 4: Alaska Native youth. The suicide rates are by far the
Speaker 4: highest in the nation. I remember I was listening to
Speaker 4: you Guys podcast and you had a guest on this
Speaker 4: is years ago who said, like, white males are the
Speaker 4: ones with the highest suicide rates, And I just remember thinking, oh,
Speaker 4: not even close, maybe by like just like the number
Speaker 4: of people. But if you're talking like per capita, if
Speaker 4: you're talking like per person, if we were white people,
Speaker 4: it would be a national emergency. There would be there
Speaker 4: would be movements, there be posters, they'd be all kinds
Speaker 4: of stuff. But it's a native problem, so you know,
Speaker 4: people just look the other way at this kind of stuff.
Speaker 4: But coming back to the boarding schools, like they came
Speaker 4: and they took the children, Like, so they taking your
Speaker 4: children out of your home is huge, Like we cannot
Speaker 4: overlook the impact of this because then the parents like
Speaker 4: what are they going to do, because then they're also
Speaker 4: losing the land, and so they they turned to alcohol,
Speaker 4: they turned to you know, things to try and fill
Speaker 4: those voids. And so it's it's we're connected with this
Speaker 4: group called the Polynesian Voyaging Society and sometimes they're called
Speaker 4: the Kalaya because one of their one of their canoes
Speaker 4: called the hook leya Hawaiian voyagers who have brought back
Speaker 4: their traditional way of navigating way out in the open ocean,
Speaker 4: just incredible, incredible indigenous science. And so we had them
Speaker 4: over here and there was a guy named Uncle Billy
Speaker 4: who was just really breaking it down for me. He's like,
Speaker 4: here's Colonialism's complicated. It's complicated because what they did simultaneously
Speaker 4: was they banished our warrior society, so they kept us
Speaker 4: from defending ourselves and our own peoples. And then they
Speaker 4: began to rape and murder the women. Like we have
Speaker 4: lots of stories in our community. When they built a
Speaker 4: naval base there, that's when our women started washing up
Speaker 4: on the beaches dead, you know, and so they and
Speaker 4: we gain our clans through our mothers, and so when
Speaker 4: they started to take out our mothers and our sisters,
Speaker 4: and our aunties and our daughters, it really began to
Speaker 4: crush us. And this is where we talk about colonialism
Speaker 4: and the absolute inhumanity that it was. Is there's a
Speaker 4: place it's called they call it Seduction Point, and I
Speaker 4: have a real problem with that because it's called k
Speaker 4: the place where a dog cries, which is there's nothing
Speaker 4: wrong with that name. But the story that we were
Speaker 4: told was there was a thinget settlement there. They were
Speaker 4: running a fish camp and the men went out to
Speaker 4: fish and to work on stuff, and these navy soldiers
Speaker 4: showed up and they sexually assaulted the women. And then
Speaker 4: they gave it that name Seduction Point. And so the
Speaker 4: level of disgusting is very high when we look at
Speaker 4: some of this stuff. So then you separate the people
Speaker 4: from the land by saying you have to live here. Now,
Speaker 4: this is ours. You have to move over here. And
Speaker 4: in Alaska's, especially southeast Alaska, they would form these Indian
Speaker 4: towns like y'all got to go live here. Now, y'all
Speaker 4: got to go live there. Now, y'all got to go
Speaker 4: live there. And again like this is not ancient history.
Speaker 4: There's a village just across the way. Well, there's a town.
Speaker 4: It's called Douglas, and it used to be a village.
Speaker 4: And when the people, like our lifestyle was we would
Speaker 4: go to a fish camp in the summer, fish and
Speaker 4: put up your foods and pick berries and do all
Speaker 4: this stuff. Then you come back to your homes in
Speaker 4: the winter. So they're gone in the summer. And so
Speaker 4: white people burn their homes down. This is the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 4: And then they built the city on top of it.
Speaker 4: Because then and then your language is banished. And one
Speaker 4: of the big, big problems is, but if you think about,
Speaker 4: like all these movements to try and make English just
Speaker 4: a nicer language, right, because some people will say, how
Speaker 4: come they can call themselves out but I can't. And
Speaker 4: I was like, let's have that conversation. Because this was
Speaker 4: a weapon, This was a social weapon, and people took
Speaker 4: control of it. And we've got all kinds of communities.
Speaker 4: And so the queer community, the black community, were they,
Speaker 4: the Asian community, they have these different things that were
Speaker 4: derogatory terms for them and they take them. They say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: we'll call each other that. Well, you can't, and there's
Speaker 4: a whole history behind that. But so if we look
Speaker 4: at this kind of stuff, and we look at English
Speaker 4: is trying to get nicer as a language, and some
Speaker 4: people get really angry, right they call it politically correct.
Speaker 4: And so if you say politically correct, you probably need
Speaker 4: to work on yourself and your your understanding of how
Speaker 4: the world works and your sense of humanity. But if
Speaker 4: you think of what was English one hundred years years ago,
Speaker 4: what was English two hundred years ago, probably a lot
Speaker 4: worse in terms of talking about Native Americans, talking about
Speaker 4: black people. And if that's the language you're replacing our
Speaker 4: language with. Like our language, we love ourselves in our language,
Speaker 4: we love each other in our language. And then we
Speaker 4: have this other, this English, that is not capable of
Speaker 4: doing it the same way. So then one of the
Speaker 4: other sort of things. And this is called inward banishment.
Speaker 4: So for Native American people, you take this child, you
Speaker 4: cut their hair, you make them wear, you know, white
Speaker 4: people clothes, and you give them a number instead of
Speaker 4: a name, and then eventually you just give them an
Speaker 4: English name or her, and then you put them through
Speaker 4: the school. And these schools are horrible. There's so much
Speaker 4: torture that happened at them. There's such gross food and
Speaker 4: such physical and sexual abuse at these places, and people
Speaker 4: kids got killed. And then you say, okay, now you
Speaker 4: have to be white. You have to be white. If
Speaker 4: you are yourself, I will physically punish you, I will
Speaker 4: torture you, all stuff, things in your mouth, all kinds
Speaker 4: of stuff. We got all kinds of stories of what
Speaker 4: kids have gone through. But then when they try to
Speaker 4: be white, then they'll say, who are you trying to
Speaker 4: be us? You're just a second class citizen. There's this
Speaker 4: one elder she said, my teacher's never hit me for
Speaker 4: speaking my language. But when I was a little girl,
Speaker 4: this one school teacher called me over every day and
Speaker 4: she'd say, you know, you, people think you're just as
Speaker 4: good as us, but you're not and you never will be.
Speaker 4: You're a second class citizen.
Speaker 1: So this is how.
Speaker 4: School teachers used to talk to kids, and so trying
Speaker 4: to sort of look at that and just dealing with it.
Speaker 4: And you know, I know white people get scared that
Speaker 4: people are coming for them, which is you know, I
Speaker 4: think there's a lot of guilt there, just because like,
Speaker 4: oh man, we would fucking everything up, but someone gonna
Speaker 4: come fuck us up to Yeah, but I think it's
Speaker 4: not nobody's. Well, there probably are some people, but collectively,
Speaker 4: I don't think indigenous peoples are looking for that. We're
Speaker 4: just looking for a little bit of balance. And so
Speaker 4: but I think trying to look at that stuff is
Speaker 4: very terrifying because then you have to rectify it somehow. Yeah,
Speaker 4: And you know, and for us, if we have to
Speaker 4: carry the burden on our own, you know, people they're
Speaker 4: just killing themselves. And if we look at this, we say,
Speaker 4: you're going to let these kids just completely lose themselves
Speaker 4: and it's hard. It's hard to figure out what to
Speaker 4: do now. But I think if we can get more
Speaker 4: people on board with conversations about what could decolonization look
Speaker 4: like and what could a place that's not assimilating anymore
Speaker 4: look like, and we might have a more equitable place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, let's take let's take another quick break.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back, and we're back.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: I wanted to ask you about representation in the media.
Speaker 3: Killers of the Flower Moon is out right now. Lots
Speaker 3: of stories going around about that film. You and I've
Speaker 3: talked a lot about reservation dogs and about the impact
Speaker 3: that has had on you, and you know, I'm curious,
Speaker 3: as you know, I think a lot of like in
Speaker 3: my community, we talk a lot about seeing black boy
Speaker 3: joy first time. A lot of times black men are
Speaker 3: either depicted as being very hard or the femal system
Speaker 3: or trying to overcome civil rights. Usually like these are
Speaker 3: the spaces you can occupy as a black man. So
Speaker 3: seeing you know, black dudes get to be silly and
Speaker 3: goofy and funny with each other. There's an element of
Speaker 3: recognization like, oh no, that's actually what my family and
Speaker 3: my friends look like. There's a feeling of at least
Speaker 3: for speaking just for myself, like hopefulness of oh this
Speaker 3: is something cool that children can watch and see themselves,
Speaker 3: because I remember when there was almost nothing on TV
Speaker 3: for me to watch where people looked like and as
Speaker 3: we're seeing I think more obviously not enough indigenous representation
Speaker 3: in medias're like, what is feeling good for you? How
Speaker 3: are you feeling vollkulors of the flower moon? And what
Speaker 3: do you hope the future of indigenous representation looks like?
Speaker 4: Yeah, gonna cheese. Everyone should just go see reservation docs,
Speaker 4: like that's that's a good like starting point. Just get
Speaker 4: into indigenous stories and indigenous television. It's such a wonderful
Speaker 4: and groundbreaking thing to have. And but also like it's
Speaker 4: not quite mainstreamed, you know, it kind of is what
Speaker 4: you got to have a Hulu subscription, I think. And
Speaker 4: so it's and maybe we're beyond the days of what
Speaker 4: sort of these types of shows would have been and
Speaker 4: you could do a lot more if it's not on
Speaker 4: broadcast television. So I get that because you know, you
Speaker 4: could have shit ass in there like a million times,
Speaker 4: and so which is what they call each other, and
Speaker 4: so as indigenous peoples as well, Like sometimes you have
Speaker 4: these endearing terms that a lot of people might be
Speaker 4: offended by. But some of the things I think about,
Speaker 4: like I understand the conversations about, you know, is this
Speaker 4: just trauma porn for white people where they get to
Speaker 4: watch us suffer, and you know, and it does. It's
Speaker 4: triggering to see Native women. There's whole movements about missing
Speaker 4: and murdered Indigenous women because Indigenous women, they experience violence
Speaker 4: at rates per capita higher than probably anybody in the
Speaker 4: United States, and eighty percent of those perpetrators are white.
Speaker 4: And you know, when there was a study that came
Speaker 4: out from the Department of Justice that said that, like,
Speaker 4: if you look at major sort of racial groups in
Speaker 4: the United States, Native Americans are the only ones who
Speaker 4: experience the majority of violent crimes from outside their own group,
Speaker 4: and it's by white perpetrators. And so it's very difficult
Speaker 4: to see. But I remember when the Watch Sahman series
Speaker 4: came out on HBO, and like, how many people got
Speaker 4: alerted to the Tulsa race massacre and would they have
Speaker 4: known about that otherwise? And so to have a production
Speaker 4: like this and say you got to see how brutal
Speaker 4: these white people were, and I started to get really
Speaker 4: interested once I started seeing the trailers and they're saying
Speaker 4: they're using this book and saying like, can you can
Speaker 4: you see the wolf? Can you see the wolf? Or
Speaker 4: something like that, right, and they're really and then they
Speaker 4: showed these pictures of these white guys and I look
Speaker 4: at that old pitia.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, yeah, those those guys are all bad.
Speaker 4: And then to sort of see these characters and what
Speaker 4: they would do to try and get the land, because
Speaker 4: to get the land you have to engage in complete
Speaker 4: in humanity again, coming back to that, and I think
Speaker 4: it's important to have that conversation.
Speaker 1: And it's tough.
Speaker 4: It's tough to sort of say, Okay, do we have
Speaker 4: to have a white guy come and tell our story
Speaker 4: and do we have to have of these prominent white
Speaker 4: characters in there, especially male characters, And the answer is
Speaker 4: probably yes, because I don't know if there's an if
Speaker 4: there's a feature film about just Native people, it's going
Speaker 4: to go direct to it's a direct to DVD thing,
Speaker 4: whatever the whatever the equivalent of that is, and so
Speaker 4: that that's for the indigenous eyes and we need that,
Speaker 4: we need those types of movies. But I think we
Speaker 4: also need some movies that are going to push it
Speaker 4: into the national conversation as well, because we have someone,
Speaker 4: you know, if you look at Lily Gladstone, her performances
Speaker 4: as out of this world. It's amazing. And to see
Speaker 4: her walking around with you know, big time actors and
Speaker 4: big time movie makers is incredible because there's going to
Speaker 4: be Native people out there and say, oh, I could
Speaker 4: do that, and then maybe that opens the door for
Speaker 4: a Native production, and maybe that opens the door for
Speaker 4: a Native story to hit that level of you know,
Speaker 4: and I hate to use those sort of stepping stone
Speaker 4: type of metaphors, sure, but that door's not open for us.
Speaker 4: It just isn't. But it's starting to get open. So
Speaker 4: we have children's shows like Malia of Dnale and I've
Speaker 4: been a cultural consultant and a writer on that show
Speaker 4: for since it began almost and so it's been really
Speaker 4: amazing that my children could turn on PBS and there's
Speaker 4: a lead character who's an Alaska Native girl and she's
Speaker 4: got agency, and she's smart, and she's cool and she's funny,
Speaker 4: and so we're able to sort of like break some
Speaker 4: of the stereotypes through the children's programming. And then hopefully
Speaker 4: by time those kids are grown up, they're like what
Speaker 4: they used to not be, like major motion pictures about
Speaker 4: Native people. That's crazy, yeah, you know. And so because
Speaker 4: we go back to like Dances with Wolves, which is groundbreaking, yes,
Speaker 4: but it's about two white people who fall in love
Speaker 4: in Native America, and then we've got wind River, which
Speaker 4: is groundbreaking. Yes, it's about two white people who fall
Speaker 4: in love in Native America. So I'm like, well, being
Speaker 4: a background your own story, Yeah, there's two white people
Speaker 4: didn't fall in love in this movie. Like it's like, okay,
Speaker 4: we just get crumbs. We'll make what makes a fucking
Speaker 4: damn good pie these chroms and we have for Thanksgiving dinner.
Speaker 4: But it's a little bit more than like take what
Speaker 4: we can get, because there's a lot of consultation in
Speaker 4: this film. And what I hope is that people will
Speaker 4: watch it because the other the danger is that people say,
Speaker 4: I don't want to watch it because just a white
Speaker 4: guy tells these stories. I don't want to watch it
Speaker 4: because it's people. There's violence against Native people there, and
Speaker 4: that's triggering, and it is like get yourself ready. It's
Speaker 4: also three hours, three and a half hours long figure
Speaker 4: out like don't drink a whole bunch of water before
Speaker 4: you go in. But also if people don't go then
Speaker 4: it just allows Hollywood to say I told you people
Speaker 4: don't watch movies Native people.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I also think you know, you're just speaking for myself,
Speaker 3: seeing like in the Micainia have similar conversations around like
Speaker 3: slaves narratives. People are like, we are always depicted as slaves,
Speaker 3: which I think is a slight exaggeration, but I hear you,
Speaker 3: and then there's frustration at that and as like, I'm
Speaker 3: not to me personally, I'm not ashamed to come from
Speaker 3: people who were enslaved. I'm not ashamed of our survival.
Speaker 3: I'm not ashamed of how we were able to take
Speaker 3: that experience and evolve as a community and survive and
Speaker 3: thrive and be where we are now. None of that,
Speaker 3: to me is shameful or something I want to look
Speaker 3: away from. I am exhausted by slave narratives that focus
Speaker 3: specifically on like demonic white masters. Specifically. I'm tired of
Speaker 3: seeing enslaved people depicted only by the grueling work they
Speaker 3: were forced to endure, when we know that we were
Speaker 3: writing beautiful music, when we know we were dancing and
Speaker 3: having loving relationships, and there was culture preserved and created
Speaker 3: during this time, and I think a lot of people
Speaker 3: I understand the instinct to be like, I don't want
Speaker 3: to invest in anything that makes my culture look less
Speaker 3: than or that doesn't aspire to our best selves. For example,
Speaker 3: some people had a real problem with Like Boys in
Speaker 3: the Hood when it came out, even though we know
Speaker 3: that film is a masterpiece, where they were like, you're
Speaker 3: just showing like young kids doing gang violence. Why would
Speaker 3: you want to promote that. It's like, well, people are
Speaker 3: actually living and leading these lives, and exploring them and
Speaker 3: giving them humanity allows you to understand why when you
Speaker 3: see you know, there was a murder and Compton tonight,
Speaker 3: you can't just write it off as like, oh, that's
Speaker 3: what happens there. They're individual beings and it's important to
Speaker 3: examine that. And I think you know to your point
Speaker 3: earlier about these horrifying schools. The first time I ever
Speaker 3: saw that depicted in media was in the Netflix and
Speaker 3: a green Gable series, which I think came out like
Speaker 3: twenty fifteen, if I'm not mistaken, and it was so
Speaker 3: like it brings you to you because it's like, Oh,
Speaker 3: there's this happy story about this orphan and she finds
Speaker 3: a good family and it's kind of rough for her.
Speaker 3: Oh she made a friend with like this indigenous girl
Speaker 3: who is also like living and thriving with her family,
Speaker 3: and then in the middle of the last season, she's
Speaker 3: just taken and you're like, wait, what's happening? And you
Speaker 3: kept like, at least I kept expecting, like, oh, there
Speaker 3: will be a resolution to this, Like they will win
Speaker 3: because it's Anna Green Gables and she's plucky and she
Speaker 3: can do it. And what I really admired about that show,
Speaker 3: for you know, that has faut It's not a perfect show,
Speaker 3: but what I admired about that show is its ability
Speaker 3: to be like, no, it wasn't resolved and it was
Speaker 3: just horrible, and her parents had to leave the land
Speaker 3: so that they could just camp outside of her school
Speaker 3: in the hopes that they could be close to her
Speaker 3: and one day find a resolution. And I think when
Speaker 3: we get visual representation like that, it's like sometimes, you know,
Speaker 3: people's best access to these stories is through entertainment media.
Speaker 3: I think there's a lot we can say about that
Speaker 3: versus the educational system goes and where we should be
Speaker 3: learning these things, but knowing that, you know, I think
Speaker 3: getting a variety of stories that explore both the trying
Speaker 3: times we've had and the weird, awesome, amaze and places
Speaker 3: we are now. I think I just think it's like
Speaker 3: vitally important.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think for some for a lot of
Speaker 4: Indigenous people, and you know, I'm not going to speak
Speaker 4: for anybody, but sometimes I wonder like, are you mad
Speaker 4: because you're seeing this thing that happened to people? Are
Speaker 4: you mad about the movie itself? Because sometimes it's hard
Speaker 4: to separate that stuff because we don't get our story
Speaker 4: really told on big, big screens where these are. You know,
Speaker 4: there's a whole bunch of commercials about this, there's a
Speaker 4: whole bunch of press, and I know the writers strike,
Speaker 4: which I'm glad it happened because there needs to be
Speaker 4: equity for folks who are working in the movie industry.
Speaker 4: But it also just it impacted the opening of this
Speaker 4: film because you know, they couldn't really heavily promote it,
Speaker 4: and especially actors who were in it. But I think
Speaker 4: people should engage in it and people should should go.
Speaker 4: But I think also there's there's movies like Skins and
Speaker 4: smoke signals and on tanajuat the Fast Runner, and even
Speaker 4: outside of North America, there's a film called Rabbit Proof Fence,
Speaker 4: Like if you want to really get the boarding school experience,
Speaker 4: like watch that movie. It is heartbreaking and incredible. It's
Speaker 4: about these these kids who were taken from boarding school
Speaker 4: and they they run away and it's it's amazing. It's
Speaker 4: based on a true story. They have the you get
Speaker 4: to see images of these little girls as the elders
Speaker 4: that they became. And you know, and when we think
Speaker 4: about our elders, when we think about our ability to
Speaker 4: stand up and speak our language, and we just had
Speaker 4: a cultural ceremony this weekend, it was wonderful, like we
Speaker 4: can do that stuff because people went to these boarding
Speaker 4: schools and found a way to be themselves. They found
Speaker 4: a way to hold on to who they are and
Speaker 4: what they are. And when we look at some of
Speaker 4: the things and Killers of the Flower Moon, like, there
Speaker 4: was an incredible amount of Indigenous agency in that film,
Speaker 4: which I think, you know, that's what brought the FBI there,
Speaker 4: and I think there was a real temptation, probably because
Speaker 4: once the FBI stepped in, it was like, oh is
Speaker 4: this gonna be about this guy, and it kind of
Speaker 4: wasn't like it was like a still kind of a
Speaker 4: side character. And you know, there's certainly things that I
Speaker 4: would I would want more out of, Like I just
Speaker 4: wanted more Indigenous depth and character. But there was a
Speaker 4: lot of depth and there was a lot of character,
Speaker 4: and so I think it's for me.
Speaker 1: I look at it.
Speaker 4: I'm like, this is a worthwhile thing, and this is
Speaker 4: a thing that I hope gets people talking and that
Speaker 4: they think about what happened to these people who did it?
Speaker 4: What happened to the people who did it, because even
Speaker 4: though you know, the FBI gets involved and there's investigations,
Speaker 4: like white people get away with things back then and
Speaker 4: they still do now.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I feel like every time you come on, we
Speaker 1: say like that we could keep talking for hours. In
Speaker 1: this case, we're breaking a record because we only got
Speaker 1: to the search history. We didn't even get to the
Speaker 1: Overrated or Untraded within the first hour. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean truly until next time, because I feel like we
Speaker 1: could just keep this conversation going indefinitely. But yeah, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you for coming on. This has been an amazing conversation.
Speaker 1: Where can people find you and follow you and hear
Speaker 1: you and all that good stuff. Who nae.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So the Tongue Unbroken does come out season two
Speaker 4: so excited is coming out in mid January, and we've
Speaker 4: got I've just been able to really track down some
Speaker 4: great people and have some amazing conversations with them, and
Speaker 4: so like this is this is just a taste of
Speaker 4: some of the stuff that we're doing. We're really trying
Speaker 4: to like just keep it casual and also enjoyable because
Speaker 4: these conversations are difficult, but that doesn't mean you can't
Speaker 4: have fun and still laugh and enjoy life and think
Speaker 4: about a potentially brighter future.
Speaker 1: But you can find me on.
Speaker 4: Twitter what is it x Twitter?
Speaker 1: You can find me on Twitter, which is right and
Speaker 1: tell you by a fascist Twitter the end of the
Speaker 1: search box stops working, and then maybe I'll change what
Speaker 1: I refer to it as.
Speaker 4: But right I'm not as active on there, just because
Speaker 4: it's such a disappointment that a racist person can just
Speaker 4: buy the whole thing. But you know, it's also go
Speaker 4: America what you're all about? And I'm also on Facebook
Speaker 4: and Instagram. I find me under my think at names,
Speaker 4: which we'll just have to link to it's funny or
Speaker 4: do anicao danuk And then I would say the piece
Speaker 4: of media. I don't know if you ask about that,
Speaker 4: and you guys usually do I do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, is there a work of media that you've been enjoying.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a comedian Sheng Wang who has this opening.
Speaker 4: I think it's it's in his comedy act on Netflix.
Speaker 4: It's about Costco is bigger than all of us. It's
Speaker 4: so funny, like just really going into like you haven't
Speaker 4: really given up on life until you walk around in
Speaker 4: some Kirkland pants and he is. So it's so hilarious,
Speaker 4: so funny, and you could find it on social media,
Speaker 4: but they they cut all the space out of in
Speaker 4: between his talking, which kind of drove me a little nuts.
Speaker 1: It's like just like yeah that YouTube edit, hurry yeah,
Speaker 1: Like have you seen the YouTube ddit of Killers of
Speaker 1: the Flower Moon. It's like forty five minutes. It's just
Speaker 1: every every space, just all words just from together. I'm
Speaker 1: not a fan of the YouTube d like, let there
Speaker 1: be space.
Speaker 3: We need silence.
Speaker 1: I just want to say about The Tongue Unbroken. I
Speaker 1: was re listening to season one this weekend. One of
Speaker 1: the things I love about it is getting to hear
Speaker 1: you interact with, you know, other teachers of children and
Speaker 1: like talk about your experience teaching your own children and
Speaker 1: children in general, and then getting you to getting to
Speaker 1: hear you interact with your kids. There's just like this gentle,
Speaker 1: lovely energy. And as I was listening to that, my
Speaker 1: own children, like I was just kind of sitting in
Speaker 1: bed listening to that, it was bedtime, and my own
Speaker 1: children just like ran over to me where I was
Speaker 1: laying in bed and lay on me and started to
Speaker 1: fart on me while telling me that they were farting
Speaker 1: on me and that I was their bed, and so
Speaker 1: it was just a real it was like listening to this,
Speaker 1: oh man, I aspired like this lovely energy, and then
Speaker 1: my kids were like, you know, letting me know that
Speaker 1: I was their bed and they were free to fart
Speaker 1: on me whenever they wanted.
Speaker 4: It sounds about right. I really love working with teachers
Speaker 4: because we could joke about all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 4: We're like, you know, someone put up a meme and
Speaker 4: they'd say Native people in public, the children are our
Speaker 4: future Native people at home, Dan, these kids are messy.
Speaker 1: Joel, thank you so much for joining and co hosting
Speaker 1: with me today. Where can people find you? Follow you?
Speaker 1: And what is work a media you've.
Speaker 3: Been enjoying y'all mean Joel Monique find me all over
Speaker 3: the internet at Joel Monique. It's j O E L
Speaker 3: L E M O N I q u E pieces.
Speaker 3: I've been reading a lot. I think you talk about
Speaker 3: this last time I was on. I've been picking up
Speaker 3: more books, reading a lot, listening to a lot of
Speaker 3: audio books. Ar Kong wrote this absolute stunner. It's called
Speaker 3: Babbel or The Necessity of Violence, which is a fictionalized
Speaker 3: history of translators at Oxford, a school she actually attended,
Speaker 3: I think especially got her master's degree. And it's it's
Speaker 3: a lot about about a lot of things, but essentially,
Speaker 3: a boy is created in China and brought back by
Speaker 3: a professor who says, hey, you've got just enough language
Speaker 3: to translate, but I've removed you early enough that you
Speaker 3: have no connection to your culture. You'll now translate all
Speaker 3: of your language for me so I can use it
Speaker 3: as I need to basically invade China. And he has
Speaker 3: to figure out he's raised in Europe in England, trying
Speaker 3: to figure out who he is as an individual. He
Speaker 3: gets to school and meets a lot of other kids
Speaker 3: who are similar to him, and his world explodes, and
Speaker 3: yet he's still under some of this horrible professor. And
Speaker 3: it talks about what is revolution, how does it happen?
Speaker 3: When is violence a necessity? And what does that do
Speaker 3: to the soul? And it's so beautiful and difficult, but
Speaker 3: ultimately I think inspiring feels like a weak word, but
Speaker 3: it really set me a light. I love that book.
Speaker 3: I like it's one of the books. I'm like, I
Speaker 3: can't wait to read this.
Speaker 1: It's too soon.
Speaker 3: I don't want to burn out on it. But I
Speaker 3: really really enjoy reading it. And ar Quang I think
Speaker 3: just hit thirty. This is her fourth book. They're all phenomenal.
Speaker 3: She's an incredible, incredible writer. So if you have time,
Speaker 3: if you're into reading Babbel or The Necessity of Violence,
Speaker 3: I highly recommend it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: That sounds amazing and intense. It's so good. You can
Speaker 1: find me on Twitter at Jack Underscore O'Brien Working Media.
Speaker 1: I've been enjoying kim at Kimmy Monty tweeted the person
Speaker 1: who named tits really nailed it.
Speaker 3: Success.
Speaker 1: You find us on Twitter at Daily Zeigeist. We're at
Speaker 1: the Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram. We have a Facebook fanpage
Speaker 1: and a website Daily zeikeist dot com, where we post
Speaker 1: our episodes and our footnotes link off to the information
Speaker 1: that we talked about in today's episode, as well as
Speaker 1: a song that we think you might enjoy. A super
Speaker 1: producer Justin is there a song that you think people
Speaker 1: might enjoy? First of all, if you listen to the
Speaker 1: new Andre three thousand, Yes, that.
Speaker 5: Was actually one of the songs I was gonna recommend. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: So New Blue Sun just came out on Friday.
Speaker 2: It's amazing.
Speaker 5: I know people really wanted a rap album from Andre,
Speaker 5: but still do.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I mean, but I love the fact that his take
Speaker 5: on this is I'm forty eight, I don't be knowing
Speaker 5: what to talk about, you know, And it's just I
Speaker 5: love that self awareness and a lot of other artists
Speaker 5: should take note.
Speaker 1: This is a very meditative, ethereal.
Speaker 5: Song and the title of the track is a mouthful
Speaker 5: that in honor of hun being here. It also posits
Speaker 5: a linguistic question, not one you need to answer, but
Speaker 5: a question nonetheless. It's called the slang word pussy rolls
Speaker 5: off the tongue with far better ease than the proper
Speaker 5: word vagina.
Speaker 2: Do you agree?
Speaker 5: And both the statement and follow up is maybe something
Speaker 5: you can ponder as you sit back, relax and explore
Speaker 5: with this damn near fifteen minute long song has to offer.
Speaker 1: Wow, the whole album is incredible. By the way, me
Speaker 1: saying I still want to rap aubum from them doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that I don't appreciate this. As we talked about
Speaker 1: on Yesterday's a Weekend Trending episode, it's an incredible word. Yes,
Speaker 1: and it's exactly what you because you you wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to predict what was going to come from him,
Speaker 1: So in that way, this is the predictable thing that
Speaker 1: would come from three thousand. It's like that some somehow
Speaker 1: so perfect, unpredictable, exactly right.
Speaker 5: And exactly what the world needs right now. Yes, it's
Speaker 5: very calming. If you really need to relax, just please
Speaker 5: this on and turn your brain off and you can
Speaker 5: find this song in the footnook.
Speaker 1: And who do you agree? Because yeah, well so song.
Speaker 4: The thing it word for for vagina is goose. And
Speaker 4: so sometimes around here, like we got to sort of stop,
Speaker 4: kids are playing duck duck goose, we got to step
Speaker 4: in out, you know what, Like our kids are going
Speaker 4: to have a really different interpretation of how this game
Speaker 4: is working. Or a someone says, oh, yeah, silly goose,
Speaker 4: and well yeah, if we're all over here chuckling, then.
Speaker 1: You know what's going on.
Speaker 4: But yeah, it's a nicer term, I think, and so amazing.
Speaker 1: Well we will link off to that song in the footnotes.
Speaker 1: The Daily Zeitgeist is a production of iHeart Radio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: That is going to do it for us this morning,
Speaker 1: back this afternoon to tell you what is trending and
Speaker 1: we will talk to you all then.
Speaker 2: Bye.
Speaker 1: Two children, A two children,