Native America Calling

Vaccines for the coronavirus have reduced the scope and severity of COVID-19 infections, but for as many as a third of the people who contract COVID, symptoms of the disease persist and cause potentially disabling affects day after day. Long COVID affects as many as 23 million Americans. Symptoms include persistent headaches, fatigue, shortness of breath, and memory and concentration problems. In addition to the personal and medical burdens, several studies indicate the global financial drain from long COVID is anywhere from $1 trillion to $6 trillion. The Trump administration just announced it is closing the federal office that facilitates research and information-sharing among medical institutions on long COVID.

GUESTS

Rebecca Nagle (Cherokee), writer, advocate, host of the podcast This Land, and author of By the Fire We Carry

Rita Bilagody (Navajo), activist and grandma

Troy Montserrat-Gonzales (Lumbee and Chicana), mental health therapist and health care consultant

Dr. Ivy Hurowitz, associate professor Division of Infectious Diseases at University of New Mexico Department of Internal Medicine

Dr. Douglas Perkins, professor of Medicine and director of the Center for Global Health in the University of New Mexico Department of Internal Medicine

Break 1 Music: Healing Song (song) Red Hawk Medicine Drum (artist) New Beginnings (album)

Break 2 Music: Beautiful Flower (song) Cree Confederation (artist) Kihtawasoh Wapakwani (album)

The unpredictable availability of salmon and other fish in Alaska is putting additional pressure on the practice of subsistence fishing for Alaska Native residents. A federal board just opened up subsistence fishing and hunting — something reserved only for rural residents — to all 14,000 residents of Ketchikan. The State of Alaska is fighting a federal panel’s approval of a COVID-era emergency subsistence hunt for citizens in Kake. Meanwhile, stakeholders are closely watching a legal conflict over fishing on the Kuskokwim River that has implications for decades of legal precedents over subsistence fishing access.

GUESTS

Ilsxílee Stáng / Gloria Burns (Haida), president of the Ketchikan Indian Community

Nathaniel Amdur-Clark (Citizen Potawatomi), partner at Sonosky, Chambers, Sachse, Miller, and Monkman, LLP

Break 1 Music: They Sing to Each Other (song) Pamyua (artist) Side A Side B (album)

Break 2 Music: Beautiful Flower (song) Cree Confederation (artist) Kihtawasoh Wapakwani (album)

Native Hawaiian writer Norma Kawelokū Wong tells us our current reality is “drifting haphazardly in the riptide of collapse”. Wong is both a Zen Master and an experienced political strategist, having advised prominent figures including Hawaii’s first Native Hawaiian Governor, John D. Waiheʻe III. She also offered guidance and mediation on some of Hawaii’s most high profile and vexing conflicts, including the U.S. Navy’s $344 million clean-up of munitions on Kahoʻolawe Island, telescope construction on Mauna Kea, and recovery following the devastating wildfire in Lahaina. In her new book, When No Thing Works, she weaves poetry, politics, and spiritual wisdom together into a lesson for navigating crises.

Break 1 music: No luna i Kahalekai (Hula ‘Ala’apapa) (song) Joe Kahaulelio (artist) Ancient Hula Hawaiian Style: Vol. 1 Hula Kuahu (album)

Break 2 Music: Beautiful Flower (song) Cree Confederation (artist) Kihtawasoh Wapakwani (album)

Mi’kmaq fiddler and songwriter Morgan Toney’s brand new album hopes to Heal The Divide for listeners. Shoshone poet and writer Tanaya Winder is releasing her first album of music, Call Back Your Heart, soon. And Navajo-fronted Tucson band The Reztones are bringing their high energy psychobilly sound on the road in their home state of Arizona and packing songs from their latest album, Chest Full of Arrows. We’ll add these artists to our Native Playlist and hear samples of their work.

GUESTS

Morgan Toney (Mi’kmaq), fiddler, singer, and songwriter

Ace Begay (Diné), vocalist for The Reztones

Tanaya Winder (Southern Ute, Pyramid Lake Paiute, Diné, and enrolled with the Duckwater Shoshone Tribe) musical artist, writer, and motivational speaker

Break 1 Music: The Calling (song) Morgan Toney (artist) Heal the Divide (album)

Break 2 Music: Honor Song (song) Blackfoot Confederacy (artist) Hear the Beat (album)

Ahtna Athabascan elder Katie John’s efforts to get the state of Alaska to open up subsistence fishing in her Native Village of Batzulnetas turned into a series of legal and policy decisions that continue to protect Alaska Native fishing rights to this day. Daring Chickasaw aviator and legislator Eula Pearl Carter Scott was the youngest person in the country to fly an airplane solo. By age 14, she was working as a commercial pilot. She retired from flying to go on to work as the tribe’s Community Health Representative, and later as a tribal legislator. We’ll learn about the contributions of these and other notable Native women.

GUESTS

Jeannie Barbour (Chickasaw Nation), Chickasaw Nation creative development director

Heather Kendall-Miller (Dena’ina Athabascan [Curyung tribe]), Native American Rights Fund attorney

Liz Lovejoy Brown, executive director of the Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte Center

Break 1 Music: Grandmother’s Song (song) Fawn Wood (artist) Iskwewak (album)

Break 2 Music: Honor Song (song) Blackfoot Confederacy (artist) Hear the Beat (album)

The Donald Trump Administration is using the full force of the federal government to compel colleges and universities to do away with scholarships, recruiting, academic programs and any other initiatives that help Native students succeed. Schools risk losing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding in addition to defending against investigations by the Department of Justice and other agencies. At least 50 schools are facing such investigations for what the U.S. Department of Education calls “race exclusionary” practices. We’ll get a look at the sweeping changes the Trump Administration is bringing about and how Native education advocates are responding.

GUESTS

Cheryl Crazy Bull (Sicangu Lakota), president and CEO of the American Indian College Fund

Carrie Billy (Diné), education consultant and former president and CEO of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium

Zonnie Gorman (Diné), historian and daughter of Dr. Carl Gorman, one of the original Navajo Code Talkers

Break 1 Music: Mean Things Happenin’ in This World (song) Blackfire (artist) Woody Guthrie Singles (album)

Break 2 Music: Honor Song (song) Blackfoot Confederacy (artist) Hear the Beat (album)

Author Marcie Rendon (White Earth Nation) continues to put her favorite Ojibwe protagonist, Cash Blackbear, into a nail biting search for another murderer in Broken Fields. It’s the fourth in Rendon’s Cash Blackbear series about a tough independent young woman who loves working the land of the Red River Valley as a farm hand and has a special intuition for solving crime.

There’s more than the usual slots and tables at the ocean-themed Hidden Atlantis Casino on the fictional Languille Lake Reservation. Something dark has the power over casino patrons and only Marion Lafournier and his cousins know what’s up. Passing Through a Prairie Country by Dennis E. Staples (Red Lake Nation) takes readers through dimensions that Marion must navigate to save the souls of his people.

Break 1 Music: Ojibwe Honor Song (song) Darren Thompson (artist)

Break 2 Music: Honor Song (song) Blackfoot Confederacy (artist) Hear the Beat (album)

Two Native students are among the recent winners of one of the most prestigious science research competitions for high school students. Logan Lee (Native Hawaiian) and Ava Grace Cummings (Lumbee and Coharie) placed in the top 10 among thousands of contestants in the Regeneron Science Talent Search. It’s the first time two Indigenous students were awarded prizes in the competition’s 83-year history. We’ll hear about their drive for science excellence.

We’ll also check in with the author of Kindred Spirits: Shilombish Ittibachvffa. It’s a children’s book by Leslie Stall Widener and illustrator Johnson Yazzie highlighting the enduring connection between the Choctaw Nation and Ireland.

GUESTS

Ava Grace Cummings (Lumbee and Coharie), senior at North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics

Logan Lee (Native Hawaiian), senior at ‘Iolani School

Leslie Widener (Choctaw), author of Kindred Spirits: Shilombish Ittibachvffa

Break 1 Music: Eagle Dance REMIX (single) Jason Brown/Decontie & Brown (artist)

Break 2 Music: Honor Song (song) Blackfoot Confederacy (artist) Hear the Beat (album)

At least 1.2 million Americans have died from COVID-19; thousands of them just since January. As the nation marks five years since the pandemic-causing virus appeared in this country, we’ll look at how Native Americans have recovered — and how they haven’t. Businesses closed down or have yet to regain their pre-pandemic levels, school enrollment remains weakened, and trust in medical science — something Native Americans already lacked — is diminished. We’ll examine what we learned from the unprecedented public health emergency five years later.

GUESTS

Gwendena Lee-Gatewood (White Mountain Apache), former chairwoman of the White Mountain Apache Tribe

Dr. Rebecca St. Germaine (Lac Courte Oreilles), director of tribal health care administration at St. Germaine Data Innovations

Jonathan Nez (Diné), former Navajo Nation President

Lavinia Cody (Diné), certified school Diné counselor

Break 1 Music: The Gift of Life (song) Randy Wood (artist) The Gift of Life (album)

Break 2 Music: Old Alberta (song) Blue Moon Marquee (artist) Scream, Holler, and Howl (album)

An entire wall of one school building is buckling after a leaky roof went unattended for 19 years. Students at another school have to go home to use the bathroom during the day because the school’s water pipes burst. Exposed insulation hangs from the ceiling in another school. For more than a quarter century, the Alaska legislature has devoted only a fraction of the funds needed to keep the public school buildings that serve a predominantly Alaska Native student population functioning properly. We’ll hear about the investigation by KYUK in collaboration with ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network and NPR’s Station Investigations Team that exposed a problem many years in the making.

GUESTS

Emily Schwing, KYUK senior reporter

Jason Dropik (Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa), National Indian Education Association executive director

Break 1 Music: They Sing to Each Other (song) Pamyua (artist) Side A Side B (album)

Break 2 Music: Old Alberta (song) Blue Moon Marquee (artist) Scream, Holler, and Howl (album)