Native Lights: Where Indigenous Voices Shine

Host Leah Lemm (Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe) is back exploring how Indian Country in MN is responding and adapting to the current pandemic health crisis.

On today’s show, we celebrate successful vaccine rollouts in Indian Country!  And we hear from two dedicated health care professionals about their experiences providing good medicine to community members throughout the pandemic. 

Dr. Angela Erdrich (Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe) is a Pediatrician and Laz Carreon, RN, heads the COVID team at the Indian Health Board (IHB) of Minneapolis. Dr. Erdrich and Laz speak about the yearlong challenges brought on by the pandemic, and now, how the vaccine rollout is being received by the community members the IHB serves. 

Dr. Erdrich shares many resources and recommendations, including information about the extra protection offered by KN95 masks. Laz Carreon describes the deep emotions and relief felt by both staff and community members as vaccines are being administered. 

We also hear from White Earth Nation, Chairman Michael Fairbanks, who proudly shares the wonderful news that more than 87% of their elders have now been fully vaccinated!

Plus, tag along with Leah and her spouse Daniel as they receive their first dose of vaccine, thanks to Leech Lake Tribal Health in partnership with Indian Health Service. Now that all the elders and healthcare workers have been offered vaccines, the tribe is now reaching out to tribal and community members who are 18 and up.

We listen in as Leah and Daniel reflect on finally arriving at this hopeful and historic moment, as so many have faced loss and hardship over the past year. 

You can find the information Dr. Erdrich and Laz Carreon spoke about, here on our website: https://minnesotanativenews.org/health/ 

Listen to past COVID-19 Community Conversations here: https://minnesotanativenews.org/category/community-conversations/

Today we’re talking with Samsoche Sampson (Mvskoke Creek/Seneca) who is an interdisciplinary artist, powwow and hoop dancer, performer, musician, as well as a father and partner.  Samsoche and his brother, Luhme, make up the world-renowned hoop dancing team known as the Sampson Brothers, who over twenty-five years have performed throughout the world: on stage in big cities and at powwows in remote Indigenous communities.

Samsoche tells the story of how he first started hoop dancing and the many ways he and his family shared their passion for dancing at powwows, rodeos, and schools, and then eventually led to performing with major music artists touring the world, blending contemporary Indigenous culture while honoring tradition.

We loved hearing about Samsoche’s enthusiasm for sharing his artistry with others, and how he loves to spark interest among the younger generation, encouraging them to embrace traditional and contemporary Indigenous fusion dance. Miigwech Samsoche for sharing your love of the arts!

Sampson Brothers website: https://sampsonbrosarts.com/

Sampson Brothers TEDxMinneapolis - How indigenous hoop dancers see the world:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaZbaPQnXE0&feature=emb_rel_pause

Native American Hoop Dancing in Minneapolis - If Cities Could Dance - KQED Arts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd6uo6o9nNM&feature=emb_logo

Native Lights: Where Indigenous Voices Shine is produced by Minnesota Native News and Ampers, Diverse Radio for Minnesota’s Communities with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage fund. Online at https://minnesotanativenews.org/

Host Leah Lemm (Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe) is back exploring how Indian Country in MN is responding and adapting to the current pandemic health crisis.

Today we talk with Melissa Walls, Ph.D. (Bois Forte and Couchiching First Nation Anishinaabe) a social scientist and the Director of the Great Lakes Hub for the Center for American Indian Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Melissa Walls discusses how tribal communities provide much knowledge and perspectives, aimed at keeping our communities healthy and safe, even during the most difficult times. She talks about how research is at its best when it includes community members, intending to help and not exploit. And Melissa shares ways tribal communities confront stress and loneliness during the pandemic, by emphasizing the care and support of one another.

First speaker and elder Bill Premo (Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe) shares the Ojibwe word Ningii-pajiishka’wigoomin, which means “we got our shot”. 

Plus, Antony Stately (Ojibwe/Oneida) CEO of the Native American Community Clinic, offers advice about drawing on tradition and gifts from our Ancestors, to help make good decisions about keeping healthy and whether to get the vaccine. 

Check out the Center for American Indian Health Great Lakes Hub at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health here: https://caih.jhu.edu/locations/great-lakes-hub

Sign up for the Minnesota COVID-19 Vaccine Connector here: https://mn.gov/covid19/vaccine/connector/

Native Lights: Where Indigenous Voices Shine – Weekly Radio Show

Native Lights is a weekly, half-hour radio program hosted by Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe members and siblings, Leah Lemm and Cole Premo. Native Lights is a space for people in Native communities around Mni Sota Mkoce -- a.k.a. Minnesota -- to tell their stories about finding their gifts and sharing them with the community.

Native Lights – A Gift for Storytelling with Hope Flanagan

Today we speak with Hope Flanagan (Seneca) a Native elder, a storyteller, teacher of plants and wild plant gathering.  All through her life, Hope Flanagan shares stories of Native culture, traditions and connecting with nature, and all the healing and mystery it offers.  For more than a decade, Hope Flanagan taught in an Ojibwe immersion classroom, and before that, she was a storyteller at Minneapolis Public Schools in drug and alcohol prevention. Now Hope works at Dream of Wild Health as a community outreach and culture teacher. 

Settle in and enjoy this delightful conversation with Hope Flanagan as she enthusiastically shares stories and life lessons.  Find out some ways our communities continue to share in storytelling during the pandemic.  Learn why many Ojibwe stories can only be told when the snow is on the ground. And hear how Hope is always on the lookout for the next generation of storytellers who will carry on this ancient tradition. Chi-Miigwech to Hope Flanagan for sharing her rich gift of storytelling with all of us!

Native Lights: Where Indigenous Voices Shine is produced by Minnesota Native News and Ampers, Diverse Radio for Minnesota’s Communities with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage fund. Online at https://minnesotanativenews.org/

Native Lights: Where Indigenous Voices Shine – Weekly Radio Show

Native Lights is a weekly, half-hour radio program hosted by Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe members and siblings, Leah Lemm and Cole Premo. Native Lights is a space for people in Native communities around Mni Sota Mkoce -- a.k.a. Minnesota -- to tell their stories about finding their gifts and sharing them with the community.

Native Lights – A Gift for Storytelling with Hope Flanagan

Today we speak with Hope Flanagan (Seneca) a Native elder, a storyteller, teacher of plants and wild plant gathering.  All through her life, Hope Flanagan shares stories of Native culture, traditions and connecting with nature, and all the healing and mystery it offers.  For more than a decade, Hope Flanagan taught in an Ojibwe immersion classroom, and before that, she was a storyteller at Minneapolis Public Schools in drug and alcohol prevention. Now Hope works at Dream of Wild Health as a community outreach and culture teacher. 

Settle in and enjoy this delightful conversation with Hope Flanagan as she enthusiastically shares stories and life lessons.  Find out some ways our communities continue to share in storytelling during the pandemic.  Learn why many Ojibwe stories can only be told when the snow is on the ground. And hear how Hope is always on the lookout for the next generation of storytellers who will carry on this ancient tradition. Chi-Miigwech to Hope Flanagan for sharing her rich gift of storytelling with all of us!

Native Lights: Where Indigenous Voices Shine is produced by Minnesota Native News and Ampers, Diverse Radio for Minnesota’s Communities with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage fund. Online at https://minnesotanativenews.org/

February 14th marks a day of honoring relatives lost in the ongoing epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives (MMIWR). 

A recent report from the Minnesota Task Force on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women reveals a heartbreaking statistic: while Indigenous people make up just 1% of the state’s population, a stunning 9% of all murdered girls and women in Minnesota over the last ten years were American Indian.

Today we talk with Jessica Gidagaakoons Smith (Bois Forte Band of Chippewa) who is a mother, survivor, Two-Spirit warrior, Indigenous scholar, and researcher, MMIWG2S Legal Advocate, and so much more. Jessica shares how her own experience seeking healing as a survivor of domestic violence and human trafficking, led her on a path to become a national speaker, leader, and advocate for others.

We hear Jessica’s powerful story of how her “Inner Warrior” pushed her to step forward and speak up, sharing her own story of survival, to advocate for legislation aimed at strengthening law enforcement’s ability to track and solve cases of murdered or missing Native Americans.

We are thankful for Jessica Smith’s powerful voice and for all the work she is doing to help others find safety, healing, and their own voices.  You can learn more about Jessica Smith and her work at www.gidagaakoonsresearch.com

Sovereign Bodies Institute (SBI) builds on Indigenous traditions of data gathering and knowledge transfer to create, disseminate, and put into action research on gender and sexual violence against Indigenous people. www.sovereign-bodies.org

If you or someone you know needs help right now, you can reach out to these hotlines:

StrongHearts Native Helpline provides culturally appropriate support and advocacy for American Indians and Alaska Natives, including resources for victims, families affected by domestic violence and dating violence, and it is anonymous and confidential at: 1-844-7NATIVE or 1-844-762-8483.  

National Human Trafficking Hotline serves victims and survivors of human trafficking and anti-trafficking community in the US: 1-888-373-7888

Native Lights: Where Indigenous Voices Shine is produced by Minnesota Native News and Ampers, Diverse Radio for Minnesota’s Communities with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage fund.

This week, we continue our focus on how Indian Country in Minnesota is responding to the pandemic, now that COVID-19 vaccines are rolling out, with another Special Edition of Native Lights: Visiting Vaccines. In this show we check in with the Indian Health Service, we learn more about COVID resources, and we hear a firsthand account of going through the whole vaccination process from a Minneapolis firefighter.

Daniel Frye (Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians) is the Director of Indian Health Services in the Bemidji Area. That service area of IHS includes Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the urban center of Chicago. Daniel shares the latest on how the vaccine roll-out is going for tribes, and how he is seeing “vaccine hesitation” shift toward “vaccine acceptance” as more elders receive their doses, share pictures on social media, and converse with family and community. 

We also hear from Jenn Hall (Leech Lake), a Minneapolis Firefighter who just completed both doses of the Moderna vaccine.  As a firefighter, Jenn is on the front lines responding to medical emergencies, in addition to fighting fires, and she shares how she wrestled with the decision to get vaccinated, and why she chose to do so. We also hear how Jenn and her colleagues reacted to the vaccine. 

Plus, more from Kelly Miller (Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe), who is the Director of the Department of Indian Work at Interfaith Action of Greater Saint Paul. Kelly stepped up to become one of the Minnesota Department of Health's COVID-19 Community Coordinators. In this role, Kelly provides a hotline for Native community members to answer all sorts of questions including scheduling, testing, safety, and economic resources.  Hotline info and more is on our website at https://minnesotanativenews.org/health/ 

Many thanks to Daniel Frye, Jenn Hall, and Kelly Miller. We appreciate all you do to inform us and to keep our relatives safe, as we go through this pandemic together.

Native Lights: Where Indigenous Voices Shine is produced by Minnesota Native News and Ampers, Diverse Radio for Minnesota’s Communities with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage fund. Online at https://minnesotanativenews.org/

Today we talk with Ramona Marozas (Bad River Band of Lake Superior) a multiplatform producer with over a decade of journalism experience, currently working in public television in Duluth, on the nationally syndicated news program, Native Report. 

Ramona Morazas’s gift for uplifting Native voices through storytelling has been evident throughout her media career.  As a former board member of the Native American Journalists Association (NAJA), Ramona encourages Native storytellers to pursue journalism and work in newsrooms across a wide range of media platforms.  Ramona tells us about some of her most meaningful moments, making documentaries about the opioid crisis and unsolved cases of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives.  We appreciate Ramona’s gift for uplifting Native Voices by sharing stories on television and online. 

Opiods: Crisis in the Nortland documentary: https://opioids.wdse.org/

Missing and Murdered: An Invisible Epidemic: https://kbjr6.com/2020/02/12/watch-missing-and-murdered-an-invisible-epidemic/

Native Report: https://native.wdse.org/

Native Lights: Where Indigenous Voices Shine is produced by Minnesota Native News and Ampers, Diverse Radio for Minnesota’s Communities with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage fund. Online at https://minnesotanativenews.org/

This week, another Special Edition of Native Lights: Visiting Vaccines, where we get a pulse on Indian Country’s response to COVID-19 vaccines, here in Minnesota.  On this show we hear from two people deeply committed to the health and well-being of Indigenous people and Native communities.Dr. Mary Owen speaks about working with other Native health experts to get the word out that the COVID-19 vaccine is safe and crucial for Indigenous people who have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.

We also hear from Briana Michels (Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe) who is part of the American Indian Resource and Resiliency team at the University of Minnesota Extension, which holds workshops on trauma and healing.  Briana Michels works on the Remembering Resilience podcast which explores Native American resilience through and beyond trauma. In our conversation, Briana speaks about the significance of historical trauma, especially during this past year and now with the rollout of COVID-19 vaccinations.

Many thanks to both Dr. Mary Owen and Briana Michels for sharing their knowledge and insights.

Below are links to organizations and information mentioned in this episode:

MN Dept. of Health COVID Community Coordinators: https://covidcommunitycoordinators.web.health.state.mn.us/

Association of American Indian Physicians Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/aaip1971

Association of American Indian Physicians YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwCrT22n5B484jRZESdpiWQ

Association of American Indian Physicians: www.aaip.org

Remembering Resilience podcast: https://rememberingresilience.home.blog

Briana Michel’s workplace: https://opioid.umn.edu/about/american-indian-resource-and-resiliency-team

Native Lights – The Gift for Building Supportive Environments with Kwe Pack

This week we revisit an earlier Native Lights episode which highlights Kwe Pack, a spectacular group of Native women supporting each other to run long-distance trail races. Kwe Pack has been featured on Good Morning America, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, and Oprah Winfrey’s World Vision Tour.  This group encourages each other to draw on their inner strength; to heal and flourish in all areas of their lives. You can check out this episode, which is part of Native Lights Season Two, to hear more about the significant work being done to build supportive environments for Native people to heal and thrive. 

Native Lights: Where Indigenous Voices Shine – Weekly Radio Show

Native Lights is a weekly, half-hour radio program hosted by Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe members and siblings, Leah Lemm and Cole Premo. Native Lights is a space for people in Native communities around Mni Sota Mkoce -- a.k.a. Minnesota -- to tell their stories about finding their gifts and sharing them with the community.

Native Lights: Where Indigenous Voices Shine is produced by Minnesota Native News and Ampers, Diverse Radio for Minnesota’s Communities with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage fund. Online at https://minnesotanativenews.org/