Native Circles

Dr. Michael Kaulana Ing shares with us Kanaka/Hawaiian philosophy as well as what it means to be Kanaka/Hawaiian living away from Hawai'i. He also shares his experiences and knowledge with Philosophy and Religious studies and the need for Indigenous thinking in Philosophy Departments.

Michael Kaulana Ing was raised by the ʻāina (land) of Mānoa on the island of Oʻahu. He currently resides on the land of the Miami, Delaware, Potawatomi, and Shawnee where he is a professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University. He completed his PhD in 2011 at Harvard University, where he studied Chinese thought. More recently, he has been working on ʻike Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian thought) and bringing it into conversation with other philosophical traditions.

Resources:

Information about Dr. Michael Ing and his publications can be found on his faculty page at Indiana University here:  https://religiousstudies.indiana.edu/about/faculty/ing-michael.html.

Dr. Michael Ing's article, "Ka Hulikanaka a me Ka Hoʻokūʻonoʻono: Davida Malo and Richard Armstrong on Being Human and Living Well" can be found in the Journal of World Philosophies here: https://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp/article/view/5473.

To learn more about Kanaka/Hawaiian culture, language and stories please visit https://ulukau.org/.

Jennifer Frazee shares her experiences with teaching history and living history, as well as why it is important to continue for future generations. Jennifer pursued a degree in history to be able to care for the histories of her families, and then she found a calling to preserve the histories of others as well. She graduated with a Masters in American Studies at Northeastern State University and worked on the educational and living history programming at Hunter's Home in Park Hill before taking the position of director at the Fort Gibson Oklahoma Historic Site in 2021.

We are also joined by a guest co-host, Rachael Cassidy. Rachael is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of New Mexico. Her public history background includes developing original educational programming in consultation with Indigenous community members for the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C., and for the American Indian Area at the Rock Ledge Ranch Historic Site in Colorado Springs, CO. Her dissertation researches the social history of Native residents of Washington, D.C., tracing Indigenous  Washingtonians from the 1830s through the 1960s and celebrating their diverse stories and contributions. Her work demonstrates that Native people have had a consistent presence in the U.S. capital city based on kinship networks and community service. Additionally, Rachael is also involved in oral history, educational film production, publishing and editorial work.

Resources:

American Association of State and Local History - https://aaslh.org/

Fort Gibson Historic Site - https://www.okhistory.org/sites/fortgibson

Hunter's Home - https://www.okhistory.org/sites/huntershome

Recommended Books:

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Link: Click Here

Silencing the Past by Michel-Rolph Trouillot
Link: Click Here

Join us as we speak with Dr. John Little, a Standing Rock Dakota, about his research, work, and various projects, which support Native Americans. Dr. John Little is currently the Director of Native Recruitment and Alumni Engagement at the University of South Dakota. He earned his Ph.D. in History at the University of Minnesota. His dissertation is titled, "Vietnam Akíčita: Lakota And Dakota Military Tradition In The Twentieth Century," which examines Native American Vietnam War veteran and military experiences.

He has taught in Native American Studies, Leadership and Sustainability, and History. He has also developed a variety of student success and retention programs and developed national and statewide recruitment networks for students. He was a past director of the Indian University of North America, a Native American college readiness program for high school graduates at the Crazy Horse Memorial in the Black Hills of South Dakota. His interests are broad but include history, Native student success and retention, leadership, education, Native Studies, Lakota and Dakota language, and film. He has co-directed a feature length award winning film, titled More Than A Word, and several other short pieces. His film work has supported the movement to change the name of the Washington national football team mascot, emphasizing issues about Native American-themed mascots and cultural appropriation.

More Than a Word (2017, directed by Kenn Little and John Little) official website: http://morethanawordfilm.com/

Dr. John Little's "SpeakOut" Profile with more details and information: https://www.speakoutnow.org/speaker/john-little

This episode features a conversation about San Carlos Apache history with Dr. Marcus Macktima, a San Carlos Apache scholar. He received a BA in History with a minor in Native American Studies in 2015; and his MA in Native American Studies in 2018 at the University of Oklahoma. Marcus received his doctoral degree in History at the University of Oklahoma in 2023. His dissertation is titled, “Issues of Forced Political Identities: The San Carlos Apache Peoples.” In 2022, he accepted a position at Northern Arizona University as a pre/post-doctoral fellow.

Look for his chapter, “Sacred Space and Identity: The Fight for Chi’chil Biłdagoteel (Oak Flat) and the History of the San Carlos Apachean Peoples,” in The North American West in the Twenty-First Century (November 2022) edited by Brenden W. Rensink.

At the time of this conversation, Dr. Bridget Groat was an assistant professor in the Native American and Indigenous Studies and history departments at Fort Lewis College. She is originally from Naknek, Alaska, which is a village located in the Bristol Bay region. She is Inupiaq, Alutiiq, Yup'ik, and Dena'ina. Her research focuses on salmon, Alaska Natives, food sovereignty, land and water, environmental history, Indigenous women, and Indigenous people.

She earned her doctoral degree in History at Arizona State University. Her dissertation is titled, "The Changing Tides of Bristol Bay: Salmon, Sovereignty, and Bristol Bay Natives" (2019). In 2022, she started a position as the Director of Native American and Indigenous Studies at the University of Wyoming.

Resources and ways to support:

United Tribes of Bristol Bay - www.utbb.com

Patagonia - www.patagonia.com

Trout Unlimited - www.tu.org

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)