Indigenous Politics: From Native New England and Beyond

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: 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 #3: 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 #4: 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 #5: 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 #6: 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 #7: 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 #8: 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 #9: 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 #10: 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# 11: 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 #12: 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 #13: 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 #14: 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.