Past Shows Archives » Native America Calling

The Trump administration is moving to undo a 20-year ban on oil and gas drilling near Chaco Canyon, a place of major cultural significance to pueblos in the Southwest. The threat of new oil leases on nearly 340,000 acres of public land surrounding Chaco Canyon has put the site on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s list of America’s Most Endangered Spaces. It is the second time on the same list for the land that is already a protected National Historic Park and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The moratorium was instituted in 2023 by then-Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who is a Laguna Pueblo citizen. We’ll hear about the options ahead for the land and the cultural significance it holds.

GUESTS

Charles Riley, governor of Acoma Pueblo

Brian Vallo (Acoma Pueblo), chairman of the Chaco Heritage Tribal Association and former governor of Acoma Pueblo

Mario Atencio (Diné), Navajo allotment stakeholder

Break 1 Music: Anasazi Sun (song) Injunuity (artist) Fight For Survival (album)

Break 2 Music: Cauyaqa Nauwa [Where’s My Drum] (song) Pamyua (artist) Drums Of The North: Traditional Yup’ik Songs (album)

Construction crews working on the wall on the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona significantly damaged a 1,000-year-old geoglyph located in Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. It’s one of a number of places tribes on both sides of the border say are damaged or are threatened by the fast-tracked construction process. Tribal leaders say such desecration is happening at a record pace after the Trump administration sidelined cultural and environmental barriers to construction. We’ll hear from cultural historians and policy experts about that is being lost and what can be done about it.

GUESTS

Emily Burgueno (Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel), chairwoman of the Kumeyaay Diegueño Land Conservancy

David Martinez (Akimel O’odham, Hia-Ced O’odham and Mexican), professor of American Indian Studies and Transborder Studies and director and founder of the Institute for Transborder Indigenous Nations at Arizona State University

Christina Leza (Yoeme and Chicana), professor of anthropology at Colorado College

Felicity Amaya Schaeffer, professor of feminist studies, critical race and ethnic Studies at the University of California Santa Cruz

Break 1 Music: Connections (song) R. Carlos Nakai (artist) Reconnections (album)

Break 2 Music: Cauyaqa Nauwa [Where’s My Drum] (song) Pamyua (artist) Drums Of The North: Traditional Yup’ik Songs (album)

Chelsey Luger (Anishinaabe/Lakota) and Thosh Collins (Onk Akimel O’Odham/Osage/Seneca) believe the best approaches to wellness are rooted in Indigenous knowledge. They draw from traditional teachings to find the most effective ways to improve one’s spiritual, physical, and emotional wellbeing. With their large social media presence, they educate others about healthy, traditional approaches to physical movement, sleep, masculinity, and parenthood. They are the authors of “The Seven Circles: Indigenous Teachings for Living Well” and are slated to publish a few more books on wellness. The married couple join us for a discussion about living a full and grounded life.

Break 1 Music: This Love (song) Edzi’u (artist) Tunnel Vision (album)

Break 2 Music: Traditional Side Step Song (song) Little Otter (artist) Side Step Songs (album)

The U.S. government and private mining corporations are ignoring the rights of tribes to free, prior, and informed consent when it comes to lithium mining in Nevada, according to a new report by Amnesty International. The report comes amid the Trump administration’s fast tracking of metals and minerals extraction. With more than 20,000 active mining claims across the state, tribes are having to weigh how every new proposal would impact their communities.

The Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals agreed with the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska that the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) applies to remains buried at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, which is under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army. The decision gets the tribe one step closer to repatriating two children from the oldest Indian boarding school, and could establish legal precedent for federal agencies to comply with NAGPRA in the future.

GUESTS

Chairman Coly Brown (Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska)

Beth Margaret Wright (Laguna Pueblo), senior staff attorney with the Native American Rights Fund

Fermina Stevens (Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone), executive director of the Western Shoshone Defense Project

Clifford Banuelos (Te-Moak Tribe of the Western Shoshone), tribal-state environmental liaison for the Inter-Tribal Council of Nevada

Break 1 Music: Chant Ancestral (song) Geneviève Gros-Louis (artist)

Break 2 Music: Traditional Side Step Song (song) Little Otter (artist) Side Step Songs (album)

Former U.S. Poet Laureate and musician Joy Harjo (Mvskoke) immerses listeners in a diverse array of jazz styles and deeply emotional poetry on her new album, “Insomnia and Seven Steps to Grace”. Co-produced by Grammy-winning artist Esperanza Spalding, the album features originals and covers, including a re-interpretation of Charles Mingus’s “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat”. Harjo also transforms her 2015 poem, “I Pray for My Enemies”, into a feverish, free-form composition, while “Rabbit Is Up to Tricks” draws on the power of traditional oral storytelling and “Stomp All Night” delivers a fun, funk-filled jam.

Acclaimed jazz vocalist Julia Keefe (Nez Perce) and the 16-piece ensemble of talented Native musicians known as the Indigenous Big Band make their album debut with “Incarnadine”. The album honors Native jazz pioneers like Mildred Bailey (Coeur d’Alene) and Jim Pepper (Kaw/Muscogee), as well as featuring innovative originals like “Wawasint8Da” and “Ddat Suite, MVT. 3 Iron Horse Gallup”. The ensemble continues to earn critical praise especially for their live performances, highlighted by their 2024 spring residency at the Kennedy Center.

We’ll speak with both Joy Harjo and Julia Keefe about their new albums in this episode of Native Playlist, our regular feature on Indigenous music.

Diné author Brian Lee Young puts much of his own experience in his first young adult novel, “Shards of Silence”. Protagonist Derrick Hoskie struggles with a grueling class schedule, homesickness, and the frustration over his classmates’ ignorance at a prestigious prep school. At the same time, he is researching the life of his ailing great-grandmother. It’s a story about coming of age, identity, and healing.

Native Hawaiian writer Keala Kendall offers a different view of what many vacationing outsiders consider paradise in the supernatural thriller, “That Which Feeds Us”. Lehua follows the trail of her missing twin sister to the secluded Kōpa’a Island Resort in Hawaii. She recalls the stories her grandparents told of their homeland, which is now a commodity to wealthy resort patrons. A series of terrifying visions teach Lehua an all-too-real lesson about the land’s brutal past.

We add both books to our Native Bookshelf.

Break 1 Music: Wahine U`i [Beautiful One] (song) Linda Dela Cruz (artist) Linda Dela Cruz Hawaii’s Canary (album)

Break 2 Music: Traditional Side Step Song (song) Little Otter (artist) Side Step Songs (album)

The U.S. Department of Interior just canceled grazing leases for hundreds of bison on federal land in Montana. The action halts the progress of a well-funded private group, American Prairie, that has been buying up land and acquiring leases in an ambitious conservation plan. The group often provides bison to tribes that work to revive bison herds. The canceled leases also indicate a change in federal policy away from accommodating bison in favor of domesticated cattle to make federal lands more agriculturally productive. Many tribes say such actions jeopardize efforts to restore the animal that is intrinsically associated with Native Americans from the Great Plains.

GUESTS

OJ Semans Sr. (Rosebud Sioux), executive director of the Coalition of Large Tribes

Heather Dawn Thompson (Cheyenne River Sioux), vice president of Native Nations Conservation and Food Sovereignty at the World Wildlife Fund

Dallas Gudgell (Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes), vice president of the Buffalo Field Campaign

Keegan King (Acoma Pueblo), founder and CEO of the Native Land Institute

Scott Heidebrink, director of landscape stewardship at American Prairie

Break 1 Music: Buffalo (song) Algin Scabby Robe (artist) Along The Way: Round Dance Songs (album)

Break 2 Music: Traditional Side Step Song (song) Little Otter (artist) Side Step Songs (album)

Raquel Montoya-Lewis (Isleta and Laguna Pueblos) built an impressive legal career that includes a foundation at tribal court systems in the Pacific Northwest. That career led her to become the first Native American to serve on the Washington State Supreme Court. She is only the second Native jurist in the country to hold a supreme court seat. That position is also a platform to educate others about her unique family lineage, offering a personal account of the history and policies that make up Native Americans’ shared experience.

Break 1 Music: Chant (song) Robert Mirabal + Ethel (artist) The River (album)

Break 2 Music: Fearless I Live (song) Courtney Yellow Fat (artist) The Lost Songs of Sitting Bull (album)

The U.S. Supreme Court has, in the words of the Native American Rights Fund, diluted Native Americans’ “ability to secure good schools, adequate infrastructure, health care access, environmental protections, and economic opportunity.” Louisiana is moving fast to redraw voting districts to further minimize the political power of Native Americans and other minorities. Other states are preparing similar changes. The High Court’s recent invalidation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act follows the 2013 decision striking down the Act’s Section 5. That eliminates the most powerful tools Native voters had in challenging the long history of demonstrated efforts to exclude Native voices from political dialogue. We’ll examine the looming implications of the Court’s decisions and examine the strategies Native voting advocates have going forward.

We’ll also discuss some important indicators for Native candidates in pivotal races, including the potential for history to be made in the upcoming Midterm Elections.

GUESTS

Patty Ferguson-Bohnee (Pointe-au-Chien), professor of law at Arizona State University and Native Vote Election Protection coordinator for the State of Arizona

Torey Dolan (Choctaw), assistant professor of law at the University of Wisconsin Law School

Samantha Blencke, senior staff attorney with the Native American Rights Fund

Mark Trahant (Shoshone-Bannock), journalist and former editor of ICT

Marjorie Childress, managing editor of New Mexico In Depth

Break 1 Music: Fool’s Paradise (song) Samantha Crain (artist) Gumshoe (album)

Break 2 Music: Fearless I Live (song) Courtney Yellow Fat (artist) The Lost Songs of Sitting Bull (album)

New infections aboard a cruise ship have thrust the hantavirus into the global spotlight. Hantavirus infections remain rare, with only about 1,000 cases reported in the U.S. in more than 30 years. What the world knows about the illness started in 1993 on the Navajo Nation. After struggling to identify the dangerous respiratory illness, medical researchers gained crucial insights from Navajo elders, noting that traditional oral histories had long associated spikes in deer mouse populations — driven by specific rainfall patterns — with deadly disease. That knowledge directly informed the scientific discovery of what we know now as the Sin Nombre virus. The discovery also offers a lesson in public notification of diseases. Early media reports labelled the pathogen as the “Navajo flu”, which stigmatized the community for years afterward. We’ll look at the history of the hantavirus and the current efforts to prevent its spread.

GUESTS

Dean Seneca (Seneca), CEO of Seneca Scientific Solutions+, adjunct professor at the School of Public Health and Health Professions at the University at Buffalo, and Adjunct Instructor at University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry

Dr. Steven Bradfute, associate professor in the Center for Global Health at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine Department of Internal Medicine

Dr. Erin Phipps, New Mexico State public health veterinarian

 Dr. Victoria Sutton (Lumbee), distinguished Horn Professor at Texas Tech University School of Law

Dr. Jonathan Iralu, Indian Health Service infectious diseases physician

Break 1 Music: Healing Song (song) Judy Trejo (artist) Circle Dance Songs of the Paiute and Shoshone (album)

Break 2 Music: Fearless I Live (song) Courtney Yellow Fat (artist) The Lost Songs of Sitting Bull (album)