Native Circles

This episode features a conversation between Dr. Farina King and Sarah Newcomb about their first two years with the Native Circles Podcast, coming changes, and looking towards the future.

Learn more about the podcast at https://nativecirclespodcast.com/. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram (@nativecircles).

Two Japanese professors, Dr. Kumiko Noguchi and Dr. Yuka Mizutani, share insights from their experiences and work with Native American and Indigenous communities, which underscore the significance of Native American Studies in Japan and throughout the world.

Noguchi is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of International Studies at Meiji Gakuin University. She received her Ph.D. in Native American Studies from the University of California, Davis under the Fulbright Graduate Studies Scholarship Program. Her research interests include Native American Critical Theory, California Indian history, Tribal Sovereignty, Community Development, and Indigenous Movement. 

Mizutani is a professor at the Center for Global Education and Discovery, and the Graduate Program of International Cooperation Studies, at Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan. She holds a Ph.D. in Area Studies from Sophia University. As a doctoral student with the JSPS fellowship, she worked on her research at the Department of Ethnic Studies of the University of California, Berkeley. Mizutani was also a Fulbright visiting scholar at the Department of American Studies of the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Her current research interests include Indigenous people's experiences at geographical margins of the U.S. territory, the representation of Indigenous perspectives in museums and public spaces, and the relationship between Indigenous peoples and research institutions. 

Recommended Sources:

Publications of Kumiko Noguchi, including Indian and Gaming: American Light and Shadow (Tokyo: Chikuma Publication, 2019); A California Indian History the 'Invisibles' to a Federally Recognized Tribes (Tokyo: Sairyusha Publication, 2015); and “Keeping the Indian Tribal Community Together: Nation Building and Cultural Sovereignty in the Indian Casino Era,” The Japanese Journal of American Studies, no. 31 (2020), 133-156.

Esther Avila, "Researching the Tule River Tribe," The Porterville Recorder, November 10, 2011.

Rick Elkins, "Tule Tribe history in Japanese," The Porterville Recorder, September 16, 2015.

Yuka Mizutani's award-winning book (selected for the Award for Budding Scholar of the Japan Consortium for Area Studies), Integration of the Pascua Yaqui into the United States: Border Crossing and the Federal Recognition (Hokkaido University Press, 2012). Also see Mizutani, "Promotion of Gastronomic Traditions in the Sonoran Desert and Changes in the Representation of the US-Mexico Borderlands," The Japanese Journal of American Studies, no. 33 (2022).

Mizutani's recent interviews in English for ʻŌlelo Community Media in Hawaiʻi: http://olelo.granicus.com/player/clip/85731
https://olelo.granicus.com/player/clip/85723

Shozo Ssaito (斎藤省三), アメリカ先住民 アリゾナ・フェニックス・インディアン学校 (世界人権問題叢書) | Jr.トレナート ロバート.A., Trennert,Robert A.,Jr., 省三, 斎藤 |本 | 通販 | Amazon 

This episode features Dr. Elizabeth Rule and her work with Indigenous DC and guides to Native Lands. She discusses the myth of invisibility surrounding Native American contributions to the history of Washington DC and how it can and should be addressed. 

Washington, DC, is Native land, but Indigenous peoples are often left out of the national narrative. To redress this myth of invisibility, Dr. Rule's book Indigenous DC highlights the Indigenous people and sites that have been important to the history of Washington, DC and the United States more broadly. Inspired by American University professor Elizabeth Rule’s award-winning public history mobile app and decolonizing mapping project, Guide to Indigenous DC, her book is a valuable resource that traces the centrality of Native peoples to the history of the United States.

For more information about Dr. Rule's work and the app, please see articles from the Washington Post, Smithsonian Magazine, and WAMU. Dr. Rule has been interviewed on Matter of Fact with Soledad O'Brien, Code Switch, Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness, and more.

Details about her book, Indigenous DC: Native Peoples and the Nation's Capital (Georgetown University Press, 2023), can be found at https://press.georgetown.edu/Book/Indigenous-DC.

Also, check out the Guide to Indigenous Lands: A Digital Mapping Project and Elizabeth Rule's website for more resources and information.

Sasha Maria Suarez shares her thoughts and research with us about expanding what Native activism looks like. Suarez is a direct descendant of the White Earth Nation of Ojibwe and is the second generation from her family to be born and raised as an urban Ojibwe in Minneapolis. She is an assistant professor of history and American Indian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work focuses on Ojibwe gender history, Indigenous social movements, and urban Indigenous history. She is currently working on her first book tentatively titled, "Making a Home in the City: White Earth Ojibwe Women and Community Organizing in Twentieth Century Minneapolis."

Recommended Sources:

Sasha Maria Suarez, “Indigenizing Minneapolis: Building American Indian Community Infrastructure in the Mid-Twentieth Century,” in Indian Cities: Histories of Indigenous Urbanism, eds. Kent Blansett, Cathleen D. Cahill, and Andrew Needham (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2022).

Heartland History podcast episode (of the Midwestern History Association) featuring Dr. Sasha Maria Suarez (2022).

Sasha Maria Suarez, "At The Falls: An Urban Ojibwe Story Of Minneapolis Placemaking," The Metropole (the official blog of the Urban History Association), May 2022.

"Indigenous Activism: Past & Present," Presented by UW-Madison American Indian Studies Faculty including Matt Villeneuve, Jen Rose Smith, Sasha Maria Suarez, and Kasey Keeler (2022).

Listen to a conversation with Meredith McCoy and Matthew Villeneuve about historical and current strategies that Indigenous people used to repurpose the educational systems for Indigenous well-being. In this episode, we are also joined by a student audience Q&A.

Meredith McCoy is an Assistant Professor of American Studies and History at Carleton College. She is of Turtle Mountain Ojibwe descent, and her father, David McCoy, is an enrolled Turtle Mountain citizen. Meredith's research examines how Indigenous families, educators, and community leaders have long repurposed tools of settler colonial educational violence into tools for Indigenous life. Her first book, a history of Indigenous strategizing in federal education funding and policy, is currently under contract with the University of Nebraska Press.

Matt Villeneuve (Turtle Mountain Chippewa descent) is Assistant Professor of U.S. History and American Indian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he teaches courses in American Indian History, Native education, and environmental history. His research focuses on Native histories of education and schooling. His current book project, "Instrumental Indians: John Dewey and the Problem of the Frontier, 1884-1959," is an intellectual history of America’s most prominent philosopher of education and democracy and his relationship to the anti-democratic nature of federal Indian schooling.

Recommended Sources:

Meredith L. McCoy and Matthew Villeneuve, "Reconceiving Schooling: Centering Indigenous Experimentation in Indian Education History," History of Education Quarterly 60, no. 4 (November 2020): 487-519.

"Publications and Digital Projects," Dr. Meredith McCoy website, https://meredithmccoy.com/publications/.

"Publications," Matt Villeneuve website, https://mattvilleneuvephd.com/publications/.

Meredith McCoy's conversation with Roy Taylor on KFAI's Indigeneity
Rising

McCoy's Op-Ed in The Hechinger Report

This episode features the series editors, Farina King, Kiara Vigil, and Tai Edwards, of a new university press series related to Native American Studies. The University Press of Kansas is launching The Lyda Conley Series on Trailblazing Indigenous Futures, which King, Vigil, and Edwards highlight. This is one of the first press series named after a Native American woman.

Lyda Conley’s life and experiences are inspirational as one of the first Native American women known to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, which she did in defense of her Indigenous ancestors and people. Her case was also one of the first in which “a plaintiff argued that the burying grounds of Native Americans were entitled to federal protection.” One of Farina King’s students, Sarah (Wood) Fite James, brought Lyda Conley to Farina’s attention in her class research project, which the Museum of Native American History features on its website.

Please contact UPK senior editor David Congdon if you have any questions about the series and want to submit a proposal: [email protected].

Links:

Press release posted on October 6, 2022

A video presentation about Lyda Conley by Sarah (Wood) Fite James

Bio of Tai Edwards

Kansas Studies Institute webpage: https://www.jccc.edu/about/leadership-governance/faculty/scholarly-research/kansas-studies-institute/

UPK Lyda Conley Series on Trailblazing Indigenous Futures webpage: https://kansaspress.ku.edu/search-grid/?series=lyda-conley-series-on-trailblazing-indigenous-futures

Video Recording of the 29 March 2022 conversation with Sarah Deer, Kiara Vigil, Farina King, and Tai Edwards about the Kansas Open Books with Open Access Publishing and the Future of Native and Indigenous Studies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6X5bgFqD9A

4 April 2022 article of "The Iⁿ‘zhúje‘waxóbe/Sacred Red Rock Project Receives Mellon Monuments Grant": https://www.robinsonpark1929.com/

Ryan Lee highlights his current work with the American Indian Programs and Services (AIPS) and the American Indian Student Association (AISA) at the University of Oklahoma (OU) as well as his excitement for contributing to the available events and his hopes for future growth. Ryan also shares his early journey of growing up both in and beyond the Navajo Nation, including his experiences at Diné College and what led him to the path he is on.

Ryan serves as the Coordinator for AIPS at OU. In this role, he serves as the primary advisor for AISA. Ryan is a citizen of the Navajo Nation. He is a graduate of Diné College, the first tribally controlled and accredited collegiate institution in the United States, where he received a Bachelor of Business Administration.

Resources:

American Indian Student Association at the University of Oklahoma

OU American Indian Programs and Services 

Crystal Lepscier talks about how the history of education and racism tied to historically government sanctioned assimilation and similar genocidal practices ties into our traumas and experiences within the institution that is 'school.' This is profound when we think about Racial Battle Fatigue. This term explains the physiological and psychological harm that is a result of long term microaggressions, racism, and intergenerational trauma. This term carries a weight that, when confronted, has the potential to also help us open the doors to understanding and healing, which sets us on a better path to our human selves.

Lepscier is an enrolled citizen of the Little Shell Chippewa Tribe and a first line descendant of Menominee and Stockbridge-Munsee communities. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art and a Master of Science in Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis (ELPA) from the University of Wisconsin - Madison. She currently works at the University of Wisconsin - Green Bay (UWGB) as the First Nations Student Success Coordinator, supporting all Indigenous students at the institution. Lepscier recently completed her Ed.D. in the First Nations Education Doctorate (FNED) program at UWGB, where she focused her dissertation work on combating Racial Battle Fatigue in the Indigenous student population in higher education.

Learn more about the First Nations Education Ed.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.

See also Dan Ninham, “‘Learning is a Lifelong Journey’: Four Indigenous Educators in Wisconsin are the first in the nation with a new doctorate in First Nations Education,” Indian Country Today, July 12, 2022.

Frank Vaisvilas, “The first doctors of Indigenous education have graduated from UW-Green Bay. Here’s what they plan to do next,” Green Bay Press-Gazette, May 24, 2022.

Ernestine Berry shares parts of her journey seeking the history of her people, the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokees, and on becoming the founding Director of the UKB John Hair Cultural Center and Museum (JHCCM). Ernestine was pivotal in the establishment of the JHCCM in 2011, which is dedicated to sharing Keetoowah culture and history with the Keetoowah community and the public. She earned a master’s degree in education administration from Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and a master’s degree in museum studies from the University of Oklahoma. Berry focuses on researching and sharing tribal history and culture, growing the tribal archives, and helping revitalize the Keetoowah language.

On this episode we are also joined by guest co-host, Evelyn Castro Cox. Evelyn is CHamoru (also known as Chamorro), born on the beautiful island of Guåhan (Guam – island territory of the United States) and now lives in Oklahoma.  You can learn more about her at NativeCirclesPodcast.com.

Additional Resources:

John Hair Cultural Center and Museum - https://www.ukb-nsn.gov/john-hair-cultural-center-museum

Native Nations Center at University of Oklahoma - https://www.ou.edu/nativenationscenter

THPO with Sheila Bird (Podcast) - https://www.buzzsprout.com/1922460

Teagan Dreyer shares with us her personal experiences and research of Native identity and self-determination within reclaimed boarding schools.

Teagan is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma in her second year of the History PhD program at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma. She studies the experiences of Native American students in federal and tribally-run boarding schools post-World War II. In her research Teagan has focused on the experiences of students in Oklahoma but is also concerned with schools around the country. This research has led Teagan to study the implications of changing federal policies on boarding schools and tribal self-determination through education.

Additional Resources:

Chilocco Indian School History Project through Oklahoma State University - https://chilocco.library.okstate.edu/history

Graphic novel on Chilocco Indian School - https://chilocco.library.okstate.edu/graphic-novel

Chilocco Indian School Documentary - https://chilocco.library.okstate.edu/documentary

National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition - https://boardingschoolhealing.org/

Carlisle Indian School Project - https://carlisleindianschoolproject.com/

Returning Home: Diné Creative Works from the Intermountain Indian School co-authored by Farina King, Michael P. Taylor, and James R. Swensen - https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/returning-home