Wednesday, Oct 14, 2009

High Stakes Indian Gaming and Sovereignty

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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.

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Thursday, Sep 24, 2009

Gedakina: Revitalizing A Native Way of Life

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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.

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Tuesday, Sep 15, 2009

Native Written Literacy and The Recovery of Native Space

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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.

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Thursday, Aug 27, 2009

Everything You Know About Indians Is Wrong- Paul Chaat Smith

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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.

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Wednesday, Aug 12, 2009

The Leonard Pelitier Defense Offense Committee

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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. Williams, 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.

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Tuesday, Aug 04, 2009

Decolonizing Indigenous Masculinity

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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.

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Friday, Jul 24, 2009

Militarization and Indigenous Women

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Join your host, J. Kehaulani Kauanui, for an episode that will focus on the gendered effects of militarization on indigenous women. The first guest will be 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, who co-founded 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.

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