Episode #1: Tribal Recognition, Acknowledgment, and Termination: U.S. State and Federal Policy
Join your host, J. Kehaulani Kauanui for a selection of presentations from the first Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) conference held May 21 – 23, 2009 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which drew more than 600 scholars from 16 countries and dozens of tribal nations to exchange research and professional support. The presentations featured on the program include: “Altered State?: “Recognition”, Native Rights, and the Maneuverings of Indian Policy in Connecticut,” by Amy Den Ouden and Ruth Garby Torres; and “State Recognition and ‘Termination’ in Nineteenth-Century New England,” by Jean M. O’Brien. O’Brien is an enrolled member, White Earth Reservation, Mississippi Band, Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. She is an Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Minnesota, and author of a book titled, Dispossession by Degrees: Indian Land and Identity in Natick, Massachusetts, 1650-1790. Torres is a Citizen of the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation, former tribal councilor & treasurer who also served on STN Constitution Revision Committee. Den Ouden is associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. For over a decade she worked as a researcher and consultant for the federal acknowledgment projects of the Eastern Pequot Nation and the Golden Hill Paugussett Nation. She is the author of Beyond Conquest: Native Peoples and the Struggle for History in New England.
Original air-date: 1-09-09.
Episode #2: The International Indian Treaty Council Implementing the UN Declaration
Join your host, Dr. J. Kehaulani Kauanui for an interview with Andrea Carmen (Yacqui Indian Nation), Executive Director of the International Indian Treaty Council. The International Indian Treaty Council (IITC) is an organization of Indigenous Peoples from North, Central, South America, the Caribbean and the Pacific working for the Sovereignty and Self Determination of Indigenous Peoples and the recognition and protection of Indigenous Rights, Treaties, Traditional Cultures and Sacred Lands. In 1977, the IITC became the first organization of Indigenous Peoples to be reorganized as a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) with Consultative Status to the United Nations Economic and Social Council. Andrea Carmen, will be speaking about the IITC’s New Year’s mission, objectives, and priorities for 2009 with a focus on implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Carmen has been a staff member of the IITC since 1983 and IITC’s Executive Director since 1992. Beginning in June 2006 has served as the North America regional caucus co-coordinator, and as a member of the Global Indigenous Peoples Steering Committee for the adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples representing the North American Region.
Original air date: 1-13-09.
Episode #3: Crisis on the Schaghticoke Reservation
Join your host, Dr. J. Kehaulani Kauanui for an episode focuses on a crisis on the Schaghticoke reservation in Kent, CT. A non-Indian male intruder who claims to be the spokesman of an un-enrolled Schaghticoke woman who says she is the chief of the Schaghticoke Indian Tribe is bull-dozing land to create road, cutting down trees, and even desecrating sacred sites. The reservation land is held in trust by the state Department of Environmental Protection. However, state officials and even state police have refused to stop the non-Native trespasser. Guests will discuss the course of events, and the barriers they face in trying to get the attention of state officials who claim their hands are tied because of a “leadership conflict.” Hear from: Katherine Saunders, Chair of the Preservation Committee for the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation; esteemed Schaghticoke elder, Trudie Lamb Richmond, Connecticut Native American Heritage Advisory Council, and the Preservation Committee for the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation; Nicholas F. Bellantoni, the state archaeologist with the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History and Archaeology Center at the University of Connecticut; and the Chief of the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation, Richard Velky.
Original air-date: 1-27-09.
Episode #4: The Constitutional Referendum in Bolivia and its Implications for Indigenous Peoples
Join your host, Dr. J. Kehaulani Kauanui for an episode that focuses on recent developments in Bolivia, where a national referendum held on January 25, 2009 passed after a long and contentious road in order advance a new constitution under the leadership of Bolivian President Evo Morales, the first Indian president of a South American country. On the show, we will hear from Dr. Victoria Bomberry (Muscogee) and Dr. José Antonio Lucero about the politics of the new constitution and its implications for the indigenous peoples of Bolivia, and the ongoing democratization project. Dr. Victoria Bomberry is an assistant professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside where she teaches Native American Studies. She is the International Coordinator of Movimiento de Mujeres Originarios y Indigenas de Qollosuyu, Bolivia, and the Project Director of Abya Yala Women’s Circle. Dr. José Antonio Lucero is an assistant professor at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington, Seattle. He is the author of a new book, Struggles of Voice: The Politics of Indigenous Representation in the Andes (University of Pittsburgh Press).
Original air-date: 2-10-09
Episode #5: Hawaiian Case Before the US Supreme Court
Join your host, Dr. J. Kehaulani Kauanui for a special edition of Indigenous Politics that will examine the Hawaiian land case that will go before the US Supreme Court on February 25, 2009. The Court will hear oral arguments in the case of Hawaii v. Office of Hawaiian Affairs, et al, since the state of Hawaii has asked the Court to rule on whether or not the state has the authority to sell, exchange, or transfer 1.2 million acres of land formerly held by the Hawaiian monarchy as Crown and Government Lands. This land base constitutes 29 percent of the total land area of what is now known as the State of Hawaii and almost all the land claimed by the State as “public lands.” Prior to the state government’s appeal to the Supreme Court, the Hawaii State Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the state should keep the land trust intact until Native Hawaiian claims to these lands are settled, and prohibited the state from selling or otherwise disposing of the properties to private parties; and did so based on the 1993 Apology Resolution, in which Congress acknowledged and apologized for the United States’ role and affirmed, “the indigenous Hawaiian people never directly relinquished their claims to their inherent sovereignty as a people or over their national lands to the United States, either through their monarchy or through a plebiscite or referendum.” The guest on the show is Dr. Jonathan Kamakawiwo`ole Osorio (Kanaka Maoli), an original plaintiff in the case who sued the state to prevent the sale of these lands. He is now a defendant in the appeal to the Supreme Court and will speak to the complex issues raised by the case including the origins of the lawsuit, land title from a pro-Hawaiian independence position, the politics of the Apology Resolution, and the Hawaiian Nation’s claim to these lands under international law. Osorio is an associate professor at the Kamakakuokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies, University of Hawai`i at Manoa, and author of Dismembering Lahui A History of the Hawaiian Nation to 1887.
Original air date: 2-17-09.
Episode #6: Unkechaug Indian Nation and the Legal Battle with New York City
Join your host Dr. J. Kehaulani Kauanui for an episode that focuses on a legal battle being fought by the Unkechaug Indian Nation as the tribe fends off attacks by the City of New York. City officials claim that the tribe has become a “tax evasion haven” and a drain on the city’s coffers because it sells tax-free cigarettes at its Poospatuck Smoke Shop & Trading Post located on the Poospatuck Indian Reservation on Long Island, NY, which is part of the Sovereign Territory of the Unkechaug Indian Nation. The Bloomberg administration says the city and the state lose more than $1 billion a year in tax revenue because of what it calls bootleg cigarettes distributed on Indian reservations in New York. As part of their legal challenge, city lawyers have asked a federal judge to block the smoke shops from selling untaxed cigarettes to non-Indians without collecting state and city taxes from them. The show will feature an interview with Harry B. Wallace, Chief of the Unkechaug Indian Nation, who is an attorney and member of the New York State bar. He give background on the legal battle, historical context for this form of economic development, and a status report on the case. Chief Wallace suggests that this is simply an attack on legitimate Indian livelihood that is an exercise of tribal sovereignty, and the result of elected officials feeling the economic downturn and blaming the budget crisis on the smallest reservation in the state.
Original air-date: 2-24-09.
Episode #7: Joy Harjo: Winding Through the Milky Way
Join your host, Dr. J. Kehaulani Kauanui, for an interview with Joy Harjo (Mvskoke), a poet, playwright, musician, and singer who will discuss her new CD, Winding Through the Milky Way. The program will include some musical selections from her new music, as well as news about the opening of her one-woman play, Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light, which opens later this month at the Wells Fargo Theater in Los Angeles. The interview will also include a discussion about the relationship between poetry and song in Harjo’s creative work, her journey to becoming a singer and saxophonist, the politics of cultural hybridity and Native music, and her ties to Hawai`i, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. Harjo’s seven books of poetry include: She Had Some Horses, The Woman Who Fell From the Sky, and How We Became Human, New and Selected Poems. She has released three award-winning CDs of original music and performances: Letter from the End of the Twentieth Century, Native Joy for Real, and She Had Some Horses. Her poetry has garnered many awards including a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Award: the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas; and the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. A song from her forthcoming CD, Winding Through the Milky Way, just won a New Mexico Music Award. She has received the Eagle Spirit Achievement Award for overall contributions in the arts, from the American Indian Film Festival and a US Artists Fellowship for 2009.
Original air-date: 3-10-09.
Episode #8: Philip J. Deloria on Family, Scholarship, and Politics
Join your host J. Kehaulani Kauanui for an interview with Philip J. Deloria (Dakota Heritage) – a professor in the Department of History and the Program in American Culture at the University of Michigan, where he has been instrumental in building a Native American Studies program. Deloria discusses his current book-length project, “Crossing the (Indian) Color Line: A Family Memoir,” which documents tensions surrounding a triangle of figures-his grandparents and great-aunt Ella Deloria, a pioneering Indian ethnographer-relating to “racial crossing, the authority of men and women, the preservation and recording of Native cultures, and the possibilities for reconciliation among histories and memories defined by the dispossession of Native North America.” Other topics for the interview include: his own personal and professional trajectory as a scholar; the political and intellectual legacy of his late father, Vine Deloria Jr.; the relationship between activism & politics and scholarship & Native American Studies; cultural politics and decolonization; and his utopian political dreams. Philip Deloria is the author of Playing Indian, which was the winner of a Gustavus Myers outstanding book award for the study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America, and, Indians in Unexpected Places, the 2006 winner of the John C. Ewers prize of the Western History Association. Among other honors, he was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in 1999.
Original air-date: 3-24-09
Episode #9: The Court of the Conqueror
Join your host J. Kehaulani Kauanui for an episode that examines three recent U.S. Supreme Court cases, in which the opinions of the court ruled against the Native claims pertaining to: the Narragansett Tribal Nation (Carcieri, Governor of Rhode Island, et al v. Salazar, Secretary of the Interior, et al), a question before the court regarding Hawaiian lands (State of Hawa`i v. Office of Hawaiian Affairs, et al), and the Navajo Nation (United States v. Navajo Nation). The program features critical analysis of the latter two cases by Rebecca Tsosie (Yaqui), Professor of Law at Arizona State University, and two presentations on the history of the U.S. Supreme Court vis-à-vis Native Nations: the first by Steven Paul McSloy, Co-chair, Native American Practice Group, Hughes Hubbard & Reed L.L.P., and the other by Professor Robert Odawi Porter (Seneca), Professor of Law, Syracuse University. Tsosie, McSloy, and Porter all presented at a recent event hosted by the Harvard University Law School, “Tribal Justice: The Supreme Court and the Future of Federal Indian Law.” The gathering set out to examine the U.S. Supreme Court’s treatment of American Indians, and to assess a series of recent cases that signal to Native nations a disturbing paradigm shift to that of a judiciary now openly hostile to tribal interests. The conference brought together leading scholars and practitioners for a frank discussion regarding the impact the Roberts Court is having on Indian Country.
Original air-date: 4-14-09.
Episode #10: Indigenous Language Revitalization: The Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project
Join your host, J. Kehaulani Kauanui, for an episode on with special guest jessie little doe baird, co-founder of the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project which began in 1993/94. This is an intertribal effort between the Mashpee, Aquinnah, Assonet, Herring Pond, and Chappaquidick Wampanoag. The aim of the project is to reclaim Wôpanâak as a spoken language after there were no speakers of the language for six generations. little doe is a citizen of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe and Wampanoag Women’s Medicine Society. She lives in Mashpee, MA. She also teaches Wôpanâak in Aquinnah and Mashpee. little doe received her Master of Science in Linguistics from MIT in 2000. She has completed a lay person’s grammar of the language as well as a curriculum for teaching and is currently working toward the completion of a dictionary and expansion of the curriculum. Currently she is also rebuilding the Pequot language and teaching at Mashantucket, CT.
Original air-date: 04-28-09.
Episode #11: Part I – Palestinian Sovereignty and the BDS Campaign Against Israeli Apartheid
Join your host, J. Kehaulani Kauanui for Part I of a two-part series that explores Palestinian self-determination as question of indigenous sovereignty and the politics of Israeli occupation and settler colonialism with a specific focus on the Boycott, Divest, Sanction movement. This installment features interviews with Omar Barghouti, a founding member of the Palestinian campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, and Steven Salaita, an assistant professor of English at Virginia Tech and author of The Holy Land in Transit: Colonialism and the Quest for Canaan, along with several other books. Barghouti will tell us about the conditions that compelled him to co-found the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). Salaita will address issues of settler colonialism in Palestine and how they compare to the colonization of Native North America. The BDS campaign against Israel is growing around the world. The Palestinian Campaigns have inspired similar campaigns in France, Spain, Belgium, Norway, Australia, South Africa, and the United States among other countries, ranging from boycotts of everything from Israeli produce to Israeli academic institutions. Tune-in to learn about the boycott of Israel – and hear answers to frequently asked questions: why “single out” Israel? Doesn’t an academic boycott create more barriers when we should be “building bridges”? What does the boycott entail? How does this relate to issues of academic freedom? How can we productively critique Israel and Zionism and stand firm against all forms of anti-Semitism? Israeli state violence against the Palestinians is fully supported by the US government through military aid and diplomatic oversight. But many people of conscience believe they have a moral obligation to speak out in solidarity with the Palestinian fight for nationhood and protest Israel’s illegal apartheid regime. As author Naomi Klein writes, “the best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa.”
Original air-date: 05-12-09.
Episode #12: Part II – Palestinian Sovereignty and the BDS Campaign Against Israeli Apartheid
Join your host, J. Kehaulani Kauanui for Part II of a two-part program that explores Palestinian self-determination as question of indigenous sovereignty and the politics of Israeli occupation and settler colonialism with a specific focus on the Boycott, Divest, Sanction movement. This second installment features interviews with: Sherna Berger Gluck a founding member of the U.S. Committee for and Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, author of An American Feminist in Palestine: the Intifada Years, and producer and host of “Radio Intifada” (KPFK/Pacifica fm radio, Los Angeles); Katherine Fuchs, National Organizer for the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, a national coalition of more than 280 organizations working to change U.S. policy toward Israel/Palestine to support human rights, international law, and equality; and Stanley Heller, Chairperson of the Middle East Crisis Committee and host of “The Struggle,” which is a TV news magazine shown weekly on 20 cable stations and on the internet.
Original air-date: 5-26-09.
Episode #13: Crisis in Peru: State-Back Massacre in Response to Indigenous Resistance
Join your host J. Kehaulani Kauanui for a special edition that focuses on the recent state-backed police massacre of indigenous peoples in the northern Amazon of Peru. On Friday, June 5th, which happened to be World Environment Day, some 600 riot police and helicopters attacked a peaceful indigenous blockade outside of Bagua a northern Peruvian Amazonian province. According to leader Miguel Palacin, president of Coordinadora Andina de Organizaciones Indigenas (CAOI) or the Andean Coordination of Indigenous Organizations, the police killed at least 250 indigenous Peruvians and injured more than 150. Witnesses attest that the police fired live ammunition and tear gas into the crowd who were engaged in a peaceful blockade to protest oil and mining projects in the region as part of the Peru Free Trade Agreement with the United States. Reports in the U.S. state that over 30,000 indigenous people have been blockading roads, rivers, and railways to demand the repeal of new laws that allow oil, mining and logging companies to enter indigenous territories without seeking their prior consultation or consent. Our guest is Shane Greene who joins the show by telephone from Lima, Peru. Greene is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Indian University where he is a Faculty Associate, Anthropological Center for Training and Research on Global Environmental Change (ACT). He is the author of a book just released this year titled, Customizing Indigeneity: Paths to a Visionary Politics in Peru, which examines indigenous activism among the Aguaruna, an ethnic group at the forefront of Peru’s Amazonian Movement.
Original air-date: 06-16-09.
Episode #14: For the Seventh Generation: American Indians, Youth, and Education
Join your host, J. Kehaulani Kauanui for an episode that will focus on the politics of education, representations, and youth. The first guests is Debbie Reese (Nambe Pueblo Tribe), publisher of an Internet blog and resource called American Indians in Children’s Literature that is used by parents, librarians, teachers, and college professors in Education, Library Science, and English Literature. Reese will offer critical perspectives of indigenous peoples in children’s books, the school curriculum, popular culture, and society-at-large. Reese is an assistant professor in the American Indian Studies program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she teaches courses including: Politics of Children’s Literature, Introduction to American Indian Studies, and History of American Indian Education. Her current research projects include a book titled, Indians as Artifacts: How Images of Indians are used to Nationalize America’s Youth. The second guest is Loren Spears (Narragansett), the Founder and Executive Director of the Nuweetooun School, Rhode Island. Nuweetooun is a Native school open to all children that has a core curriculum of Native culture and history combined with environmental studies. Spears received her Masters in Education from the University of New England in 2002. She spent 12 years teaching under-served youth in Rhode Island public schools. She was a Narragansett Tribunal Judge, and is currently serving her people on Tribal Council.
Original air-date: 06-23-09.
Episode #15: Militarization and Indigenous Women
Join your host, J. Kehaulani Kauanui, for an episode that will focus on the gendered effects of militarization on indigenous women. The first guest is Vivian Newdick, co-founder of the Comité pro-Reparaciones de para las Hermanas Gonzalez de Chiapas, which was formed in the Fall of 2008 by former volunteers at the Chiapas Women’s Rights Center, a Mexico-based nonprofit. The Comité is organizing to create political pressure on the Mexican government in support of the González sisters. On June 4th, 1994, in the town of Altamirano, Chiapas, three indigenous Tzeltal sisters, one of whom was a minor, were detained by members of the Mexican military, and were tortured and raped by the soldiers. The case was presented to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 1996, which led to a ruling from the Commission in 2001 that found the Mexican State had violated a range of fundamental human rights contained in the Convention. In March 2009, the OAS human rights commission has weighed in on the case. The Comité is committed to linking the Gonzálezes with US-based organizations that struggle against state violence against indigenous women. The second guest is Margo Taméz, co-founder the Lipan Apache Women Defense with her mother, Eloisa G. Taméz. The US government has seized their family’s land – held in title from an agreement with Spain in 1767—without consent or consultation for the US/Mexico border wall. The official government estimate for the wall is 7.5 million per mile. This is an 18-foot high cement and steel border scheduled to cross all 1,969 miles of the dividing line between Mexico and the US, 1400 miles of which is claimed by the Apache as traditional homeland. Taméz has been a guest on the show before and returns to give us an update on the case since Obama took office. Taméz is Lipan Apache and Jumano-Apache from two Texas-Mexico border communities.
Original air-date: 07-14-09.
Episode #16: Decolonizing Indigenous Masculinity
Join your host, Dr. J. Kehaulani Kauanui, for an episode featuring Dr. Ty Kāwika Tengan (Kanaka Maoli), author of: Native Men Remade: Gender and Nation in Contemporary Hawai’i, published by Duke University Press. Native Men Remade is an ethnography of the Hale Mua (men’s group) that explores the ways in which Hawaiian warriorhood and masculinity have been re-articulated in the Hawaiian cultural nationalist movement. As a member of the group and an ethnographer, Tengan analyzes their practices in the context of indigenous decolonization, and Polynesian traditions. Tengan is from Maui and attended Kamehameha High School and Dartmouth College. He received his PhD in anthropology at UHM and currently holds a joint appointment as Associate Professor in ethnic studies and anthropology.
Original air-date: 07-28-09.
Episode #17: Free Leonard Peltier
Join your host J. Kehaulani Kauanui for an episode featuring the ongoing struggle to free Leonard Peltier (Anishinabe, Dakota, and Lakota) from prison. On July 28th the U.S. Parole Commission in Lewisburg, Penn. reviewed the case of American Indian Movement activist who has been held in prison for over three decades. Peltier was convicted in 1977 and sentenced to two consecutive life terms for the murder of Special Agents Jack R. Coler and Ronald A. Wiilliams, killed in a June 26, 1975 shootout on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. Debate has continued since then over Peltier’s guilt and the fairness of his trial; supporters consider him a political prisoner. On the show we will learn about the ongoing work of The Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee, which has 37 branch support groups throughout the United States. Our guest is a man named Wanbli (descendant of Sioux Valley Dakota) who is the National Spokesperson for the Committee who will give us an update on the Peltier case.
Original air-date: 8-11-09.
Episode #18: Everything You Know About Indians Is Wrong- Paul Chaat Smith
Join your host J. Kehaulani Kauanui, Ph.D. for a an episode featuring Paul Chaat Smith (Comanche) who will discuss his new book, Everything You Know about Indians Is Wrong (University of Minnesota Press, 2009). Everything You Know about Indians Is Wrong is a collection of essays written from 1992 to 2008, which chronicles the evolution of his views on the politics of being a Native American, beginning with his involvement as a committed activist within the American Indian Movement to his present employment with the federal government. Lowery Stokes Sims, Curator, Museum of Arts and Design, said of the book, “Paul Chaat Smith pulls no punches and delivers not a few body blows. Smith’s clear and at times sardonic voice expresses everything Indians might have wanted to say but up to now didn’t feel they could.” In 2001 Smith joined the National Museum of the American Indian, where he currently serves as Associate Curator. His projects include the permanent history gallery, performance artist James Luna’s Emendatio at the 2005 Venice Biennial, and Fritz Scholder: Indian/Not Indian. He is currently organizing Brian Jungen: Strange Comfort, which opens in Washington in October, 2009. Back in the 1970s Smith was the founding editor of the American Indian Movement’s Treaty Council News, and in 1996, with Robert Warrior, he co-authored Like a Hurricane: the Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee.
Original air-date: 8-25-09.
Episode #19: Native Written Literacy, Resistance, and the Recovery of Native Space
Join your host, Dr. J. Kehaulani Kauanui for an episode featuring Dr. Lisa Brooks (Abenaki) on the program to discuss her new book, The Common Pot: The Recovery of Native Space in the Northeast. In The Common Pot, Brooks focuses on the role of writing as a tool of social reconstruction and land reclamation. She documents and analyzes the ways in which Native leaders-including Samson Occom, Joseph Brant, Hendrick Aupaumut, and William Apess-adopted writing as a tool to assert their rights and reclaim land. Brooks is an Assistant Professor of History and Literature and of Folklore and Mythology at Harvard University, where she teaches courses in Native American literature, with an emphasis on historical, political, and geographic contexts. She also serves on the Faculty Advisory Board of the Harvard University Native American Program (HUNAP). She co-authored the collaborative volume, Reasoning Together: The Native Critics Collective (2008). She serves on the Editorial Board of Studies in American Indian Literatures, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) Council, and on the Advisory Board of Gedakina, a non-profit organization focused on indigenous cultural revitalization, educational outreach, and community wellness in northern New England.
Original air-date: 9-08-09.
Episode #20: Gedakina: Revitalizing A Native Way of Life
Join your host, J. Kehaulani Kauanui, for an episode featuring the community work of a non-profit organization called Gedakina (g’ dah keen nah), which means, “Our world, a way of life” in the Abenaki language. Gedakina is a multigenerational endeavor to strengthen and revitalize the cultural knowledge and identity of Native American youth and families that are rural, urban and reservation communities from across northern New England. Our first of two guests on the show will be Rick Pouliot (Megantiquois Abenaki), the Chair and Co-founder of Gedakina. Over the past sixteen years, he has focused on programs and initiatives that positively impact First Nations youth and families. The second guest will be Jesse Bowman Bruchac (St Francis/Sokoki band of the Abenaki), who has worked extensively over the past two decades in projects involving the preservation of the Abenaki language, music, and traditional culture. In 2009 Jesse launched http://WesternAbenaki.com –a website offering a keyword searchable database of the language, lessons and a variety show produced entirely in Abenaki.
Original air-date: 09-22-09.
Episode #21: High Stakes Indian Gaming and Sovereignty
Join your host J. Kehaulani Kauanui, Ph.D. for a special episode featuring Jessica Cattelino who will discuss her new book, High Stakes: Florida Seminole Gaming and Sovereignty (Duke University Press, 2008). In 1979, Florida Seminoles opened the first tribally operated high-stakes bingo hall in North America. At the time, their annual budget stood at less than $2 million. By 2006, their net income from gaming had exceeded $600 million. This dramatic shift from poverty to relative economic security has created substantial benefits for tribal citizens, including employment, universal health insurance, and social services. In High Stakes, Cattelino documents how this economic strength has also enabled renewed political self-governance that has transformed decades of U.S. federal control. At the same time, this development has brought new dilemmas to reservation communities and triggered outside accusations that Seminoles are sacrificing their culture by embracing capitalism. Cattelino is an associate professor of anthropology at UCLA. Her research and writing center on indigenous sovereignty in Native North America, the social meanings of economic action, environment, and settler colonialism. Her current research project explores citizenship and territoriality in the Florida Everglades, with focus on the Seminole Big Cypress Reservation and the nearby agricultural town of Clewiston.
Original air-date: 10-13-09.
Episode #22: Brothertown Indian Nation Rejected for Federal Recognition
Join your host, J. Kehaulani Kauanui, for an episode featuring an interview with Kathleen A. Brown-Pérez (Brothertown Indian Nation) who is the Chair of her tribe’s Federal Acknowledgment Committee and liaison to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Office of Federal Acknowledgment. On August 17, 2009, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) issued a “proposed finding against acknowledgment” of the Brothertown Indian Nation because, according to the office, “the petitioner does not meet five of the seven mandatory criteria for federal acknowledgment.” These seven criteria are part of the U.S. federal procedures for “Establishing that an American Indian Group exists as an Indian Tribe” and determining whether any petitioning group is an Indian tribe within the meaning of federal law. The BIA’s finding that the tribe was terminated by the 1839 act of Congress is the most controversial because one of the seven criteria is that the petitioning tribe must not have been terminated by Congress. The Brothertown Indian Nation was formed in 1785 by members of various eastern coastal nations-Mohegan, Pequot, Narragansett, Montauk, Niantic and Tunxis-who moved to Oneida territory in upstate New York where the Oneida Indian Nation had set aside land for them. The Brothertown was formalized in 1785, and later moved to Wisconsin where a majority of members still live. Kathleen A. Brown-Pérez teaches American Indian Studies at Commonwealth College, the honors college at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She has a B.A. in political science from Augustana College (IL), and a Juris Doctorate degree and an MBA with a concentration in discrimination law, both from the University of Iowa. For three decades she has worked with her tribe, the Brothertown Indian Nation (Wisconsin), on their quest for federal acknowledgment.
Original air-date: 10-27-09.
Episode #23: Hawaiian Independence and International Law
Join your host J. Kehaulani Kauanui (Kanaka Maoli) for an episode that will feature two presentations from an event recently held at the Kamakakuokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawai`i, in Manoa, called “`Ike: Historical Transformations: Reading Hawai`i’s Past to Probe Its Future.” The first is by Keanu Sai (Kanaka Maoli), and the second is by J. Kehaulani Kauanui. They each presented on a panel called, “International Routes: De-occupation, Decolonization, and the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.” The mission of the session was to discuss the modern trajectory of the Hawaiian Islands within the context of Hague Regulations on the law of occupation, the U.N. Decolonization Protocols, and the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Keanu Sai earned his Ph.D. in Political Science specializing in Hawaiian Constitutionalism and International Relations. He is a founding member of the Hawaiian Society of Law & Politics. Sai served as lead Agent for the Hawaiian Kingdom in arbitration proceedings before the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, Netherlands, from November 1999-February 2001. He also served as Agent in a Complaint against the United States of America concerning the prolonged occupation of the Hawaiian Kingdom, which was filed with the United Nations Security Council on July 5, 2001. Besides producing the radio show “Indigenous Politics” J. Kehaulani Kauanui is an associate professor of American Studies and Anthropology at Wesleyan University. She is the author of Hawaiian Blood: Colonialism and the Politics of Sovereignty and Indigeneity (Duke University Press, 2008). She is also the co-founder of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, and was recently elected to a three year term on the governing council.
Original air-date: 11-23-09.
Episode #24: Nahuacalli, Embassy of the Indigenous Peoples
Join your host, J. Kehaulani Kauanui, for an episode of “Indigenous Politics” featuring Tupac Enrique Acosta – general coordinator of the indigenous human rights organization, Tonatierra, which focuses on cultural education initiatives. He also serves as a custodian for the Nahuacalli, Embassy of the Indigenous Peoples, which supports “local-global holistic indigenous community development initiatives in accord with the principle of Community Ecology and Self Determination.” It has operated over the past eleven years from Phoenix, Arizona as an instrument of communication for and coordination of the Indigenous Peoples movement for self determination.
Original air-date: 12-08-09.
Episode #25: Indigenous Librarianship and Native Literacy
Join your host, J. Kehaulani Kauanui, for an episode that features Dr. Loriene Roy, Professor in the School of Information, the University of Texas at Austin. She is Anishinabe, enrolled on the White Earth Reservation, a member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. Roy will discuss issues of indigenous librarianship, and how the role of cultural custodian is a key part of helping to preserve Native languages, memories, and lifeways. She will tell us about the current state of tribal libraries, and work as director of “If I Can Read, I Can Do Anything,” A National Reading Club for Native Children, a Native literacy project she founded in 1999. Roy is the former President for the American Library Association (2007-2008). Since 2001, she has served as member of the International Indigenous Librarians’ Council. She was given the 2009 Leadership Award, National Conference Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums.
Original air-date: 12-22-09.