Native As I Can Be: Between Two Cultures

Episode 2 is here with my super special guest Shelise Gieseke!

Shelise is an intercountry, South Korean, racially and culturally displaced (transracial) adoptee. She was adopted as an infant through an adoption agency and raised on a farm by a white family in rural Minnesota. She has three siblings who are her parents’ biological children. She has been to Korea to search for her family, but did not find them. Shelise has been involved with adoptee-centered projects and organizations such as Land of Gazillion Adoptees blog and the Gazillion Voices online magazine and Adoption Mosaic, where she participates in mixed-constellation groups and is a co-facilitator of the adoptive parent course, Transracial Parenting. She loves to connect with all members of the adoption community and welcomes opportunities to reframe the adoption narrative to center adopted people. In her free time, she likes to watch k-dramas, go to taekwondo with her family, and pretend she is going to learn to speak Korean. Find her on Instagram: @skmg_adoptee

I'm back!!

After many years away, I have decided to relaunch Native As I Can Be. Life gets heavy, but the stories kept calling me. The show will now include video, better social media presence, and better audio.

I wanted to kick it off with something near and dear to my heart, so of course I chose wrestling. I couldn't have asked for a better guest, Celestial! Celestial is a luchador (Mexican professional wrestler) from Mexico and currently residing in Seattle, WA. We talk lucha libre, identity and what it means to represent your people in and out of the ring. This episode sets the tone for what is to come.

Instagram:

@celestialluchadorofficial

Facebook: Viento Gonzalez

Facebook Fan Page: Celestial 天上の

I am getting around to favorite topic (besides hip hop or wrestling), cultural appropriation. What is it, what qualifies as appropriation, why (or why not) is it offensive, what can we do about it? I don't anticipate answering any of those questions definitively, but I am hoping they provoke a little conversation and thought. 

I did something a little different with this episode, I decided to record while broadcasting on Facebook Live. It was challenging, and unless you like long pauses and dead air, not great. It was an experiment, I would do it again but definitely with a topic I have more knowledge of and don't need to rely so heavily on notes to talk about. 

One more thing, I apologize for the amount of sorta white noise you hear while I am talking. I know it can be distracting, especially in headphones. I am tinkering with settings and levels and will improve the sound quality the more of these I do. If anyone has any tips let me know.

That's all for now, enjoy the show!

Guess who decided to drop a surprise episode of Native As I Can Be? Your homie Geno Effin Ray, that's who. I have been away for a long time trying to decide what to do with this podcast and if I want to keep going. Ultimately I decided to try and get a few more episodes out and give it another chance to grow and audience and hopefully provoke some thought.

My very special guest today is Duane Quintana. Duane is the founder of a.l.p.h.a. (https://alphaidaho.org/), a non for profit sexual health site founded in 2003 in Boise, Idaho. She is now currently located in San Francisco, CA  where she is a clinical research coordinator at AHHA, a research study aimed at developing guidelines to screen for pre-cancerous anal lesions caused by HPV. In  this episode, Duane will walk us through growing up in a small town in Idaho, her HIV diagnosis, her drag show persona B0nni33 Vi0l3t, the founding of a.l.p.h.a., her current work and combining queer lifestyle with spirituality. 

Duane can be found on youtube on the channel A Queer Chaplain and instagram at @sparkleisassparkledoes. 

Hey! It is Geno Ray, the host of Native As I Can Be: Between Two Cultures. This week, in honor once again of Adoption Awareness Month, I am bringing in my very, very, VERY special guest Karen Peck. What makes her so special? She is special because she just happens to be my mom. She agreed to come on the show and talk about her experiences entrusting a child in an adoption and later on adopting a child herself. I am excited about this episode because of lot of her story I will be hearing for the very first time right along with you guys. 

I am very happy to be back in my makeshift recording studio creating another episode for this week. I am pretty stoked to be able to make these shows and give people opportunities to tell their stories. And, I appreciate the side effect of getting to know my people better and learning things about them I might not otherwise would have.

Thank you for listening and checking out my podcast. I have so much gratitude for those who are taking time out of their day to listen to MY podcast when there are literally thousands to choose from. It means a whole lot to me and it is keeping me motivated to carry on. 

Hit play and check out my mom's story about being on both sides of the adoption coin. Let's go!

On this week's episode I speak with Janesara and Jeremy, an interracial couple founded in Thailand and now living here in the States. We discuss how Jeremy and I's unlikely friendship may have created a beautiful marriage and two kids. We also hit on being a White man in Thailand, A Thai woman in the United States, what keeps the relationship going and how all this was written in the stars.

Go check out the book Prison Writings: My Life is My Sundance by Leonard Peltier. It completely changed the way I viewed being Native and why being Native is something to be proud of. 

Big thanks to Kenji Nitta for making this episode possible as I ran into serious technical difficulties converting the file from MP4 to MP3. 

Stay tuned after the interview to hear the song History, the only musical collaboration between Jeremy and I!

Episode 11 is here! Thanks for listening, let's go!

Whoah, we made it to 10 episodes! Pretty stoked to have made it this far!

On this week's episode, I chat with Scott Morgan, a Dine (Navajo) Indian, about life on and off the Rez. We take a look at the negatives, the positives, what can be improved and what things people who don't live on reservations could learn from those living on one. Reservation living is not something I am familiar with firsthand, I would like to thank Scott sharing his insight with us.

Scott has numerous acting credits, go check out some of his work!

Film:

Leave No Trace, The Musicianer

TV:

Documentary Now!, Life Before First Failure, The Librarians

Commercials: 

Providence, First Interstate Bank, Oregon Lottery

Other media (YouTube, etc.):

Jag, Grayson Crockett, Blood Sky, Avicularia Lacarinus

Also I wanna give a HUGE shout out to Quinton Gardner and Full Metal Jackson (Episode 6) for releasing their brand new music video this week which is blowing the hell up and getting massive amounts of plays. Go check it out right here: https://youtu.be/k7XeCrIHsdY

In this episode, I welcome back Kenji Nitta, host of the podcast Reverend Kenji: Conversations and Sermons About Jesus and Other Stuff to have a discussion about activism, the American Indian Movement, #DAPL, and activism in the bible. Was Jesus an activist? Was the crucifixion a case radical activism? Is activism all bark and little to no bite? Is activism the best way to create change? We will probably have more questions than answers but it should be worth a listen anyway. Thanks for hitting that play button!