Dr. Candessa Tehee is a Cherokee Nation citizen from the Locust, Tehee, Pumpkin, and McLemore families who earned her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Oklahoma. She is also an accomplished artist who was recognized as a Cherokee National Treasure for fingerweaving in 2019. 

She previously served as the Executive Director of the Cherokee Heritage Center and the Manager of the Cherokee Language Program, and she worked in the Office of Curriculum and Instruction at the Cherokee Nation Immersion Charter School. 

She joined the faculty of Northeastern State University (NSU) in Fall 2016 as a professor in the Department of Cherokee and Indigenous Studies. She has served as the Coordinator for the Cherokee Cultural Studies and Cherokee Education degree programs, and she is the Chair of the Department of Cherokee and Indigenous Studies at NSU. In 2021, she was elected as the District 2 Tribal Councilor of the Cherokee Nation Tribal Council.

See Candessa Tehee, "ᎪᎩ ᎤᏗᏞᎩ ᏗᏛᎪᏗ ᎾᏂᏪᏍᎬ ᎶᎶ: You can hear locusts in the heat of the summer," in Allotment Stories: Indigenous Land Relations under Settler Siege (2021) edited by Daniel Heath Justice and Jean M. O'Brien. Find the book at the following link: https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/allotment-stories

Samuel Villarreal Catanach is from and grew up in P'osuwaegeh Owingeh (the Pueblo of Pojoaque). He serves as the director of the Pueblo of Pojoaque's Tewa Language Department. Samuel's goal is to give back to his community while continually defining and strengthening his identity and role as a Pueblo person. 

In this episode he shares his passion and personal experiences with language revitalization within the process of decolonization, why it matters for all Indigenous peoples to learn and use our languages and histories, the challenges within the field of language revitalization, and some uplifting observations that he has had during his time in this line of work.

Resources: 

First Peoples’ Cultural Council – fpcc.ca  

Where Are Your Keys – whereareyourkeys.org

The Language Warrior's Manifesto: How to Keep Our Languages Alive No Matter the Odds by Anton Treuer

How to Keep Your Language Alive: A Commonsense Approach to One-on-One Language Learning by Leanne Hinton, Matt Vera, and Nancy Steele

The Routledge Handbook of Language Revitalization by Leanne Hinton (Editor), Leena Huss (Editor), and Gerald Roche (Editor)

Becoming Fluent: How Cognitive Science Can Help Adults Learn a Foreign Language by Richard Roberts and Roger Kreuz.

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Davina Two Bears, a  Diné (Navajo) scholar from Diné Bikéyah (Navajo land) of Northern Arizona. Two Bears is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Postdoctoral Fellow at Swarthmore College. She shares with us her knowledge and research of the Old Leupp Boarding school, a federal American Indian boarding school on the Navajo reservation. She emphasizes the survivance and resistance of Diné youth and people.

Dr. Two Bears has volunteered as a DJ playing Native American traditional and contemporary music, which you can learn more about at https://www.dublab.com/djs/davina-two-bears.

You can watch some of Dr. Two Bears's presentations via the following links:

"Shimásání Dóó Shicheii Bi’ólta’ - My Grandmother’s and Grandfather’s School," Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA, posted September 3, 2020.

"Researching My Heritage Diné Navajo Survivance / The Old Leupp Boarding School with Davina Two Bears," School for Advanced Research, November 6, 2019.

In this episode, we feature the book Returning Home: Diné Creative Works from the Intermountain Indian School.  We speak with the authors Dr. Farina King, Dr. Michael P. Taylor, and Dr. James Swensen, who share their thoughts and experiences from working on the book and with the Diné (Navajo) people.

Returning Home works to recover the lived experiences of Native American boarding school students through creative works, student oral histories, and scholarly collaboration. The book reveals a longing for cultural connection and demonstrates cultural resilience. Despite the initial Intermountain Indian School agenda to send Diné students away and permanently relocate them elsewhere, Diné student artists and writers returned home through their creative works by evoking senses of Diné Bikéyah (Navajo land) and the kinship that defined home for them.

You can order the book through the University of Arizona Press at https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/returning-home.

Here are some recent related stories:

Sierra Alvarez, “No More Silence: Boarding School Survivor Anita Yellowhair Shares Her Story, Over 60 Years Later,” Cronkite News, May 8, 2023.

Jon Reed's article, "Native activists hope for probe of Utah boarding school," AP, August 14, 2021.

"‘Some Lost Their Lives, Some Found Their Lives’: Remembering The Intermountain Indian School," KUER 90.1, August 6, 2021.

Historian Midge Dellinger is a Muscogee citizen and oral historian for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. At the core of her work as an Indigenous historian, Midge advocates for an authentic remembrance of Indigenous ancestors. 

Her work focuses on the need for a revised and expanded rendering of America’s long-standing hegemonic narrative concerning Indigenous and U.S. histories. Midge is currently engaged in projects that shed light on the disconnects between Indigenous histories/peoples and public memory. She wrote her thesis about the Battle of Honey Springs (1863) in Indian Territory during the Civil War. She earned her MA in American Studies at Northeastern State University.

Reference links include:
 
"Names to faces: Uncovering The University of Tulsa's Indigenous history" (April 2021), https://artsandsciences.utulsa.edu/turc-stevens-presbyterian-school-indians/

"Muscogee (Creek) Nation National Library and Archives receives grant" (January 2021)

Alaina E. Roberts discusses the intersection of Black and Native American life from the Civil War to the modern day. She talks about her personal family history, Black and Native history in the West, slavery in the Five Tribes (the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole Nations), and her book - I’ve Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land.

Alaina E. Roberts is an award-winning historian currently working as Assistant Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Roberts holds a Doctorate in History from Indiana University and a Bachelor of Arts in History, with honors, from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Links to resources:

• https://alainaeroberts.com/
• https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/09/us/tulsa-massacre-native-history-alaina-roberts/index.html
• https://time.com/5954759/slavery-in-indian-territory/ 
• https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephvlee/seminole-oklahoma-black-freedmen-vaccines

Samantha Benn-Duke, PhD, has been a public educator for more than 30 years, serving 17 of those years in public classrooms and 7 years as an administrator. She was named the 2017 Oklahoma Indian Educator of the Year by the Oklahoma Council for Indian Education. She also served as the president of the Oklahoma Council for Indian Education and was the first Gaylord-McCasland Teacher Fellow for the Oklahoma Hall of Fame Museum. Samantha’s research and passion include advocating for Native American and other minority children and more effectively meeting their learning needs.

In this episode, she discusses her research with Native American women educators in Oklahoma, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

See this Cherokee Phoenix article (2017) featuring Dr. Benn-Duke titled, "Benn-Duke named 2017 Oklahoma Indian Educator of the Year."

You can also watch this hyperlinked short video (2020) highlighting Dr. Benn-Duke for her Teacher Fellowship through the Oklahoma Hall of Fame.

Join us for our conversation with oral historian and ethnographer Dr. Ryan Morini as we discuss the importance of oral history and what drew him to it. Dr. Morini received his BA and MA in Comparative Literature from Penn State University, and his PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Florida. His main research focus is on heritage politics and social memory among Newene (Western Shoshones) of central and eastern Nevada. 

Links related to episode: 

·  Noowuh Knowledge Center - a Newe-run cultural center based out of Elko that is doing great work and that people should support. (https://www.noowuhkc.org/)

·  Great Basin Indian Archives was assembled by Newe oral historian Norm Cavanaugh, and it includes scans of archival documents as well as a fairly extensive collection of oral histories with Western Shoshone, Goshute, and Paiute elders. (https://www.gbcnv.edu/gbia/)

·  Brief YouTube previews of Broken Treaty at Battle Mountain (https://youtu.be/jiDxPSg4KZs) 

·  To Protect Mother Earth (https://youtu.be/_hzbFGISYVQ). 

·  Was She Murdered?: "Jailed Girl Driver, 13 Hangs Self" by Marion Miles (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B095KYLFJC/ref=dp_kinw_strp_1).

Join us for our conversation with guest Marsha Small, who is Tsististas (Northern Cheyenne), as she speaks to us about the unmarked graves of children at boarding schools across the nation. She discusses her work in identifying the graves with ground-penetrating radar, current projects, and answers questions about how to help Indigenous communities heal. 

She earned her M.A. from Montana State University. Since 2016, Marsha Small and Jarrod Burks have been conducting geophysical investigations to identify the locations of over 200 unmarked burials at the Chemawa Boarding School in Salem, Oregon. The school originally opened in 1880 and today is one of four remaining off-reservation boarding schools funded and operated by the federal Bureau of Indian Education (BIE).

Links mentioned in this episode:

https://boardingschoolhealing.org/

http://www.montana.edu/lettersandscience/news/18658/

More resources:

'Starting the truth-telling': Northern Cheyenne woman's search for indigenous children's remains taking on new significance

Indian Boarding Schools with Marsha Small | The Extreme History Project: The Dirt on the Past

Marsha Small, Tsististas (Northern Cheyenne)

A Keeper of Knowledge: A Voice for the Land and People

Dr. Farina King (Diné) and Sarah Newcomb (Tsimshian) introduce their new podcast Native Circles and discuss Indigenous perspectives and experiences of boarding schools from Native Americans and First Nations' communities.