Native America Calling

Denise Lajimodiere (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe) is approaching her fifth decade in education as an elementary school teacher, principal, and college professor. She is among the founders of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. A vote by North Dakota’s legislature has just named Lajimodiere the state’s first Native American poet laureate.

Ojibwe inventor Danielle Boyer is on a quest to make technology more accessible to interested Native students. She’s given away some 8,000 robots through her program Every Kid Gets A Robot. She’s also developed a low-cost, wearable robot that helps teach Indigenous languages. She’s among groups of creative, science-savvy Native young people working to make connections between robots and education. 

GUESTS

Danielle Boyer (enrolled citizen of the Sault Ste Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians), robotics inventor 

Myra Mendez (Mescalero Apache and Gros Ventre), elementary secretary for Mescalero Apache Schools 

Nate Raynor, high school science teacher for Mescalero Apache Schools

The Shinnecock Nation is seeing their first cannabis dispensaries opening. They are among a rush of weed businesses among New York tribes as the state starts welcoming recreational use sales. The same is happening all across the country—in Minnesota, New Mexico, California, and Nevada—as tribes see new economic development opportunities in places where cannabis is no longer prohibited by state law.  

GUESTS

Mary Jane Oatman (Nez Perce and descendant of the Delaware Tribe), founder of the Indigenous Cannabis Coalition & THC Magazine and the executive director of the Indigenous Cannabis Industry Association 

Rob Pero (Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa), founder and president of the Indigenous Cannabis Industry Association and owner of Canndigenous

Chenae Bullock (enrolled member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation), managing director of Little Beach Harvest

Gary Farmer (Cayuga, Tuscarora and Mohawk), actor and musician

As the nation continues to debate restrictions on guns, a number of Native nations have their own gun laws that visitors aren’t always aware of. A number of tribes, including the Navajo Nation, prohibit possessing guns of any kind, even in vehicles on their reservations. Violating the law could mean permanently forfeiting your firearms.  At the same time, proposed federal legislation would make it easier for tribal citizens to acquire guns using only their tribal ID.

GUESTS:

Joe Talachy (from the Pueblo of Pojoaque), owner and founder of Indigenous Arms

Katherine Florey, Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law at UC Davis

Ann Tweedy, professor at the University of South Dakota School of Law

It’s coming down to the wire for the South Dakota State Board of Education Standards to decide on the social studies standards submitted by the state Department of Education. Those standards took out many references to Indigenous history recommended by a workgroup comprised of tribal representatives and educators from across the state. Tuesday on Native America Calling, we find out why South Dakota’s nine tribes and the state School Superintendents Association oppose the standards as written with Dr. Sherry Johnson, education director for the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate (enrolled member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate); Sarah White (Oglala Lakota), executive director of the South Dakota Education Equity Coalition; and Josie Green (Oglala Lakota), executive director for Waawanglake, the South Dakota region of Teach for America.

Researchers and environmental advocates don’t know much yet about mining minerals off the bottom of the ocean floor, but the race to learn is on because large mining companies will soon start scooping up unrefined cobalt, manganese, copper, and nickel from the sea bed to help satisfy growing demand for such metals for things like batteries. The environmental activist group Greenpeace lists Indigenous groups from at least 34 nations that have come out against the practice. Today on Native America Calling, we do a deep dive with Dr. Brittany Kamai (Native Hawaiian), astrophysicist, water woman, and ocean advocate, and Noah Paoa (Rapa Nui), Ph.D candidate with a focus on sea level rise at the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology.

When the United States took action to preserve what is now known as Yosemite National Park, they encountered a major problem: it was home to a number of Indigenous people from several tribes. The federal government expelled the Native residents. Some right away, others over time. It’s a scene that continues to play out across the globe. Today on Native America Calling, we take a look at a new graphic comic by Gord Hill (member of the Kwakwaka’wakw nation) and a series of articles from Grist which reveal the bloody legacy of conservation in light of the current push to preserve 30% of the Earth’s land by 2030 with Tristan Ahtone (Kiowa), editor-at-large at Grist; environmental journalist Blanca Begert; and Maria Parazo Rose, spatial data analyst at Grist.

The nation’s largest federally-owned public utility is making moves to repatriate nearly 4,800 human remains and 1,400 ceremonial objects. It is just a portion of what ProPublica reports is the 8th largest collection of unrepatriated Native American remains in the U.S. held by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). TVA collected the remains it encountered as it developed land in at least three states. The agency, and five affiliate institutions including the University of Tennessee, are holding the remains. Today on Native America Calling, we learn more about this major repatriation effort with Shannon O’Loughlin (Choctaw), attorney and CEO of the Association on American Indian Affairs; Meg Cook, TVA senior archaeologists and NAGPRA; and Marianne Shuler, TVA senior specialist and tribal liaison.

After removal from their home and an arduous and deadly forced march, the Muscogee (Creek) Nation arrived in Oklahoma with little more than a promise that they could revive and rebuild their homeland. Now, a century and a half later, the U.S. Supreme Court re-established the keystone of that promise in the McGirt v. Oklahoma decision that reasserted Muscogee agency over the land provided in treaty. Today on Native America Calling, Robert Miller (Eastern Shawnee), law professor at Arizona State University and tribal judge. and Robbie Ethridge, professor emerita of anthropology at University of Mississippi, explore the importance of the decision in its historical and legal context, as laid out in their new book A Promise Kept: The Muscogee (Creek) Nation and McGirt V. Oklahoma.

A new study confirms many tribes’ oral histories that Native Americans utilized horses long before Europeans entered the picture. Previous theories attributed Spanish settlers with introducing horses to the Indigenous people they encountered in North America. Today on Native America Calling, we dig into a new study, published in the journal Science, that finds anthropological evidence which suggests tribes domesticated horses almost a century before the Spanish brought horses to tribes in New Mexico with Chance Ward (Lakota from the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe), grad student at the University of Colorado Boulder and a graduate research assistant at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History; Carlton Shield Chief Gover (Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma), assistant professor of anthropology at Indiana University and curator of public archaeology at the Indiana University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology; Yvette Running Horse Collin (Oglala Lakota Nation), Executive Director and Principle Science Officer of Taku Škaŋ Škaŋ Wasakliapi: Global Institute for Traditional Sciences; and Will Taylor, Assistant Professor, Curator of Archaeology, University of Colorado Boulder.