Indigenous Excellence is an episode of The Indigenous Revolt that centers the voice of Dr. Linda Tuhiwai Smith (Ngāti Awa and Ngāti Porou, Māori), one of the most influential Indigenous scholars and educators of our time. With her permission, this episode features her keynote from the 2025 World Indigenous Peoples Conference on Education (WIPCE) in Auckland, Aotearoa. WIPCE brought together 3,800 registered delegates, primarily Indigenous, from more than 25 countries, and became the largest academic conference in Aotearoa’s history. Dr. Smith has shaped Indigenous education and Indigenous research forgenerations, and her teachings refuse the myth that research is neutral. Her words remind listeners that knowledge is intergenerational, that stories and teachings carry responsibility, and that institutions do not get to define whatis ethical for Indigenous communities.

Music used with permission from Te Waiora Waikato.

Recorded on November 17, 2025.

Dickinson College Center for the Futures of Native Peoples (CFNP) held a Ground Blessing on November 8, 2024, marking an important beginning. In this episode, Trini, a Dickinson College student, Anna Nasser '25, and Ashley Ott, members of the local CFNP Advisory Board, reflect on their roles in helping host the Ceremony. They share what it means to support this moment, to be invited into Indigenous protocol, and to show up with care and responsibility as the Jim Thorpe Center for the Futures of Native Peoples took its first steps.

Recorded on November 10, 2025, in Carlisle, Penna.

In Their Dreams Are True, IndigenousRelatives who helped host the November 8, 2025, Ground Blessing at Dickinson College share their reflections on a Ceremony offered to set the land in a good way for the future Jim Thorpe Center for the Futures of Native Peoples.

Mary Thorpe (Sac and Fox, Absentee Shawnee,Prairie Band Potawatomi, and Kansas Kickapoo); Alejandro Higuera (Pascua Yaqui); Lynette Stant (Diné); Dr. Lydia Jennings (Pascua Yaqui); Perry Martinez (San Ildefonso Pueblo); MaredythSalazar (Laguna Pueblo); Gerilyn Tolino (Diné), and Dr. Amanda Cheromiah (Laguna Pueblo) speak from places of prayer, memory, and connection to the land.

Their voices remind us that our Ancestors dreamed thisfuture into being long before we arrived.

Song Credit: Cowboy Bosom by Fawn Wood

Recorded November 8-9, 2025, in Carlisle, Penna.

At Dickinson College in Carlisle, Penna., we are witnessing a profound moment: the unveiling of the Jim Thorpe Center for the Futures of Native Peoples rising just a mile from the grounds of the former Carlisle Indian Industrial School. This space will center Indigenous knowledge-keepers, ceremony, art, healing, and scholarly inquiry, a place built on our stories, our communities, and our futures.

The building will also house the Sam G. Rose ’58 Art Gallery, honoring a remarkable alumnus whose generosity is helping to make this vision real. Together, these spaces will honor a past marked by erasure and transform it into a foundation for presence, belonging, and creative resurgence.

In this episode, Dr. Amanda Cheromiah reads Dickinson College’s official announcement and sits with its words — allowing them to breathe, deepen, and guide us toward what is unfolding in Carlisle.

Recorded in Oklahoma, Grandma Dr. Henrietta Mann (Southern Cheyenne) shares heartfelt words for those who have taken part in repatriation ceremonies connected to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, PA, and for all who continue the journey of care, remembrance, and return.

Recorded on October 8, 2025

Photo by Rachel Valdez

Grandma Dr. Henrietta Verle Mann (Southern Cheyenne) speaks loving words to Our People in this special podcast episode. If you are having a tough day or navigating challenges, save this episode — her voice and presence will encourage and uplift you. Dr. Mann is a respected Native scholar, educator, and activist who has dedicated more than 40 years to advancing Native American higher education. Born in Clinton, Oklahoma, she helped establish Native American Studies programs at universities across the country, including UC Berkeley, the University of Montana, Haskell Indian Nations University, and Montana State University, where she held the Katz Endowed Chair in Native American Studies. She later served as the founding president of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribal College and now continues her commitment as a board member for the Center for the Futures of Native Peoples. Her leadership and scholarship have been honored nationwide, from a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Indian Education Association to being named one of the top ten professors in the nation by Rolling Stone. In 2023, President Joe Biden awarded her the 2021 National Humanities Medal at the White House, recognizing her lifelong dedication to strengthening Native education, uplifting Native voices, and ensuring that the histories and futures of Indigenous peoples are carried forward with integrity and power.

Dr. Ka'ow'dthu'ee sits down with Dr. Michael Kotutwa Johnson (Hopi) during his first visit to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he spoke at Dickinson College’s Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues. Dr. Johnson shares the brilliance of Hopi dryland farming and reflects on the responsibility to carry forward ancestral knowledge. Their conversation explores Indigenous ingenuity—how traditional farming practices embody innovation, resilience, and a deep relationship with the land in the face of climate and cultural challenges.

In this episode of The Indigenous Revolt, Dr.  Ka'ow'dthu'ee shares a personal journey from Carlisle to Gila River, witnessing President Joe Biden deliver a historic apology for the federal Indian boarding school policy. The episode begins on October 24, 2024, traveling from Harrisburg International Airport in Pennsylvania to Phoenix, Arizona, tracing the movement from the site of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School to the homelands of the Gila River Indian Community.

The journey includes reflections from the reception hosted by former Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland at the Huhugam Heritage Center on October 24, followed by the presidential apology on October 25, 2024.

Dr. Ka'ow'dthu'ee offers an on-the-groundperspective of what it felt like to be present—to listen, to witness, and to carry generations of survival and resistance into this historic moment. This is not just about an apology—it’s about remembrance, healing, and honoring thosewho came before us.

What might our ancestors have said, if they’d been given the chance to speakfreely? I’m Dr. Ka’ow’dthu’ee, your host of the Indigenous Revolt podcast. I’vespent over 14 months living, working, and praying in Carlisle,Pennsylvania—about a mile from the site of the former Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

This season of The Indigenous Revolt is made up of recordings I’ve gathered over the past year. I’ve carried these storiesfor months, sitting with them, and only now have I been able to bring these voices together and offer them the care and time they deserve. In this season, we witness former Secretary Deb Haaland’s October 2025 visit to Dickinson’s Archives and the Center for the Futures of Native Peoples. We reflect on the presidential apology delivered later that month at the GilaRiver Indian Community. We step into the National Archives for the first time—a powerful and intimidating experience— And we travel across the ocean to Italy, where original photographs of Carlisle and Hampton Institute Native students are held in a museum collection, raising questions about possession, memory, and healing.

Throughout the season, you’ll hear from fellow storytellers who offer their reflections on Carlisle and the broader experiences that shape their journeys. These are stories of reckoning, movement, and deep listening—across time, land, andocean.

Music courtesy of Fawn Wood

Song: For Sage (featuring Anthony Wakeman) from the Kikawiynaw album

In this episode, Dr. Amanda Cheromiah offers an unfiltered reflection on her first eight months living and working in Carlisle, Pennsylvania—the former site of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Through 20 personal and communal observations, she traces what it means to carry out Indigenous-centered work in a place shaped by historical trauma and ongoing presence. From healing ceremonies, student support, and repatriation to microaggressions, humor, and ceremony, these truths reveal the emotional, spiritual, and intellectual labor of staying rooted in a place of both harm and possibility. She invites listeners to witness the power of intertribal connection, the significance of Grandma’s House as a space of care, and the national momentum building around truth-telling and accountability. This episode is a call to action, a moment of gratitude, and a testament to the living presence of Native Peoples in a place too often spoken about only in the past tense.

This episode was recorded in December 2024.