Indigenous Politics: From Native New England and Beyond

Episode #1: 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 #2: 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 #3: 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 #4: 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 # 5: 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 #6: 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 # 7: 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 #8: 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 # 9: 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 #10: 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: 05-12-2009.

Episode #11: 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.