First Person Radio
Originally aired on Wednesday, June 5th, 2013
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock as she talks about the book The Great Sioux Nation: Sitting In Judgment on America with book editor Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, attorney Larry B. Leventhal, author of an article reprinted in the book, "Indian Sovereignty, It's Alive", and William Means, former executive director of the International Indian Treaty Council. Amazon says, "It features pieces by some of the most prominent scholars and Indian activists of the twentieth century, including Vine Deloria Jr., Simon Ortiz, Dennis Banks, Father John Powell, Russell Means, Raymond DeMallie, and Henry Crow Dog. It also features primary documents and firsthand accounts of the activists’ work and of the trial."
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is Professor Emerita of Ethnic Studies at California State University, East Bay. Since retiring from university teaching, Dunbar-Ortiz has been lecturing widely and writes. Born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1938 to an Oklahoma family, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz grew up in Central Oklahoma, daughter of a sharecropper and a half-Native American mother. Graduating in History from San Francisco State College in 1963, she began graduate study in the Department of History at the University of California, Berkeley but transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles completing her doctorate in History in 1974. In addition to the doctorate, she completed the Diplôme of the International Law of Human Rights at the International Institute of Human Rights, Strasbourg, France in 1983 and an MFA in Creative Writing at Mills College in 1993. In 1974, she accepted a position as Assistant Professor in the newly established Native American Studies program at California State University at Hayward, near San Francisco, and helped develop the Department of Ethnic Studies,designing curriculum and teaching Native American Studies. In the wake of the Wounded Knee siege of 1973, she became active in the American Indian Movement (AIM) and the International Indian Treaty Council, beginning a lifelong commitment to indigenous peoples' right to self-determination and to international human rights. Her first book, The Great Sioux Nation: An Oral History of the Sioux Nation and its Struggle for Sovereignty, was published in 1977 and presented as the fundamental document at the first international conference on Indians of the Americas, held at United Nations' headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. The book was issued in a new edition by University of Nebraska Press in 2013. It was followed by two other books: Roots of Resistance: A History of Land Tenure in New Mexico (1980) and Indians of the Americas: Human Rights and Self-Determination (1984). She also edited two anthologies on Native American economic development, while heading the Institute for Native American Development at the University of New Mexico.
Larry Leventhal has represented Tribes in Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, Michigan, Oklahoma and other states in issues ranging from tribal government operations, gaming, business development, environmental issues, and litigation. He currently serves as legal counsel to several American Indian Tribes.
Bill Means, Oglala, founder of the International Indian Treaty Council that worked extensively with other indigenous groups on the passage of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples which was adopted by the UN General Assembly on September 13, 2007. Mr. Means is currently working to bring attention to newly introduced legislation to eliminate team names such as "Redskins" and leering mascot images. Thousands of amateur teams have given up such names and images.
Originally aired on Wednesday, May 29th, 2013
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock as she talks with Dr. Tiffany R. Beckman, Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe. Dr. Beckman is the Principal Investigator on a 5 year National Institutes of Health research grant for her study, "Neural Correlates of Food Reward in American Indian Women." She was a past participant in the National Institutes of Health funded Native Investigator Development program. She is also a co-Investigator on a Robert Wood Johnson Healthy Food Healthy Lives research grant, "Good Heart Grocery and Eat Right Deli Community Assessment & Strategic Plan," a feasibility study designed to help people living on Yankton reservation to have access to healthy low cost foods.
Originally aired on Wednesday, May 15th, 2013
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock for a conversation with contemporary dance choreographer Rosy Simas, Seneca who lives and teaches in Minneapolis. Her family is from the Cornplanter tract and Cattaraugus reservation. Simas’ choreography has been presented in Minnesota, New York, Wisconsin, California, Montréal and Vancouver. Most recently Simas’ work was presented in the New Dance Alliance Performance Mix in NY. She is a 2013 recipient of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Dance Fellowship, and an American Composers Forum Music for Dance grant. Her new work “We Wait In The Darkness” will be presented in Minneapolis by the Red Eye Theater and in Montréal by the MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels).
Originally aired on Wednesday, May 8th, 2013
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock for an exciting conversation with photographer Dick Bancroft, author of the just released We Are Still Here: A History of the American Indian Movement in Photographs, a powerful, insider’s history of the first decade of the American Indian Movement. Also joining the conversation is Michael Wong, nephew of the late Roger Woo whose photographs are going up for exhibit in the "I'm Not Your Indian Anymore" opening at the All My Relations Gallery on Franklin Avenue in Minneapolis.
Dick Bancroft is a lifelong resident of Minnesota. He grew up in St. Paul, graduated from St. Paul Academy and went to the University of Minnesota. He joined the Marines in 1945, just as World War II was ending. After the war, he worked in the insurance business where he was introduced to the richness and diversity of the African American community. They were customers of his insurance firm and he was invited to sit on one of their boards. Leaders in the African American community convinced him to go to Africa and experience that country. In 1970, after returning to Minnesota, he met members of the American Indian Movement and that became his focus for the last 43 years, chronicling the lives of American Indians. He has thousands of images, posters, and other memorabilia that he has collected from his years with AIM.
“Though he has passed, his vision will continue to live on. I believe that it is in his honor that I continue to show his vision.” – Michael Wong, nephew Roger L. Woo, born 1929 in Canton, China (Chang-zhou) to Charles and Bessy Woo. He was the oldest of five children. He migrated with his family to the United States as an adolescent and graduated from West High School in Minneapolis. He graduated from the University of Minnesota. He served in the infantry of the U.S. Army. He was a member of the AIM patrol in 1968 and too photographs of police brutality. He worked for the Minnesota Daily, MIGIZI Communications, and the Red School House in St. Paul, taking thousands of black and white photographs of American Indian people.
Originally aired on Wednesday, May 1st, 2013
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock for a conversation with LeeAnn Tallbear, Dakota, who has worked with the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate for many years in developing its education school system. The elementary school was dedicated in her name. She currently works for the Lower Sioux Community in Minnesota. She has had a distinguished career in Democratic politics, development in raising many millions of dollars for causes and programs, and helping bring American Indian positions into public understanding.
Originally aired on Wednesday, April 24th, 2013
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock as she talks with authors Professor Gwen Westerman and Bruce McCann White in a return visit about their book: Mni Sota Makoce, Land Where the Waters Reflect the Clouds, which examines narratives of the people’s origins, their associations with the land, and the seasons by drawing on oral history interviews, archival work, and painstaking comparisons of Dakota, French, and English sources. They consider Dakota interactions with Europeans and offer an in-depth “reading between the lines” of historical documents—some of them virtually unknown—and treaties made with the United States, uncovering misunderstandings and outright deceptions that helped lead to war in 1862.
Dr. Gwen Westerman, a professor of English and humanities at Minnesota State University–Mankato, specializes in multi-cultural and Native American literature. She serves as director of the Native American Literature Symposium, is the recipient of several prestigious grants, and has published widely on contemporary American Indian literature. Her poetry has been published in Yellow Medicine Review, Water~Stone Review, and other journals. Her award-winning quilts have been displayed in numerous venues. She is an enrolled member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota Oyate.
Bruce McCann White, of Turnstone Historical Research, is a prolific author about Indian life. His recent book is Pictures of the Ojibwe People A fascinating history of the Ojibwe people at home in the Minnesota landscape through 1950-as told through more than 200 vivid photographs. It was winner of the 2008 Award of Merit from the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) Leadership in History Awards
Originally aired on Wednesday, April 17th, 2013
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock as she talks with Dr. Clifford Canku, author of "The Dakota Prisoner of War Letters: Dakota Kaskapi Okicize Wowapi" published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press. The letters, translated by the author and Michael Simon, reveal the prolonged agony of warriors denied treatment as prisoners of war and instead treated like criminals without any rights whatsoever. Dr. Canku and Mr. Simon are both fluent in Dakota and provide to the public for the first time these transcriptions.
Dr. Clifford Canku is an assistant professor of Dakota studies at North Dakota State University. He is a co-author of Beginning Dakota and the Beginning Dakota Teacher’s Edition.
Originally aired on Wednesday, April 10th, 2013
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock as she talks with organizers of the first American Indian art exhibit featuring the photographs of Dick Bancroft and Roger Woo, two photographers who captured the images of the growing AIM organization in the Twin Cities, around the country, and internationally. Titled, "I'm Not Your Indian Anymore," from the song by the late Floyd Red Crow Westerman. Westerman took his inspiration from the 1968 book by his close friend, Vine Deloria: "Custer Died for your Sins." The exhibit runs from May 10 to June 30 2013 at the All My Relations gallery in Minneapolis.
Originally aired on Wednesday, April 3rd, 2013
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock as she talks with David A. Nichols, a native of Kansas. Dr. Nichols has his Ph.D. in history from the College of William and Mary. His dissertation, Lincoln and the Indians: Civil War Policy and Politics, was published by the University of Missouri Press in 1978. That book, still the definitive study of Lincoln’s Indian policies during the Civil War, was reissued as a paperback by the University of Illinois Press in 2000 and republished in 2012 by the Minnesota Historical Society Press. He contributed to a 2012 documentary commemorating the 1862 United States-Dakota War and has spoken widely on Lincoln and the corruption in the Indian System of the 1860s that led to that war.
Dr. David Nichols is a presidential historian and a leading authority on the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Dr. Nichols’ book on President Eisenhower and civil rights, entitled A Matter of Justice: Eisenhower and the Beginning of the Civil Rights Revolution, was published in 2007. His publisher, Simon & Schuster, describes it as “the definitive book on Eisenhower’s civil rights policies.” His book on the Suez Canal crisis, entitled Eisenhower 1956: The President’s Year of Crisis – Suez and the Brink of War, was released by Simon and Schuster on March 8, 2011. It is the most important book published on the Suez crisis in thirty years, using for the first time hundreds of declassified documents. He is currently working on a book about Eisenhower and Senator Joseph McCarthy. More recently, Dr. Nichols spoke about the Eisenhower presidency at conferences at the Harvard University Law School, Texas Christian University, a seminar sponsored in Washington, DC, by the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress and, on March 8, 2013, was a featured speaker at a major Eisenhower conference at Hunter College in New York City. Dr. Nichols is the former academic dean at Southwestern College in Winfield, Kansas, where he and his wife, Grace, live.
Originally aired on Wednesday, March 27th, 2013
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock as she interviews Bill Means, Oglala, founder of the International Indian Treaty Council that worked extensively with other indigenous groups on the passage of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples which was adopted by the UN General Assembly on September 13, 2007. Mr. Means is currently working to bring attention to newly introduced legislation. On March 20 Congressman Eni F.H. Faleomavaega and colleagues introduced H.R. 1278, the Non-Disparagement of Native American Persons or Peoples in Trademark Registration Act of 2013. This bill seeks to clarify certain protections provided by the Trademark Act of 1946 (Lanham Act), which prohibits registration of trademarks that use disparaging terms like “redskin.” The following Members of Congress are original cosponsors of H.R. 1278: Tom Cole (R-OK), Betty McCollum (D-MN), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Karen Bass (D-CA), Gwen Moore (D-WI), John Lewis (D-GA), Michael Honda (D-CA), and Donna Christensen (D-VI).
Bill Means has been a member of AIM since 1970 but a member of a family that sought to restore Lakota lands and justice for all Indian people. He has been leadership positions in AIM and other organizations. He was executive director of American Indian OIC and the MN state OIC office.
Originally aired on Wednesday, March 20th, 2013
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock as she talks with Associate Professor Shona Buchanan, author of Who's Afraid of Black Indians?. There is perhaps no other alliance greater between two groups than that between the native nations and first Africans and later African Americans. As colonialism progressed in the United States, the native nations were foreign in their own country. Then as African Americans were emancipated and later given the vote, native nations remained apart in their own separate lands. All during this period, American Indian and African American families were intermingling with the result that we have several tribes with notable representation of Indian/African lineage. David Nicholson will talk about this and the contemporary experience.
Shonda Buchanan is an award-winning poet and fiction writer. Also a creative nonfiction essayist, she is editor of Voices from Leimert Park: A Poetry Anthology. She is an Eloise Klein-Healy Scholarship recipient, a Sundance Institute fellow and a PEN Center Emerging Voice fellow. She has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and several grants from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. Former managing editor of Turning Point Magazine, Shonda is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Hampton University, teaching fiction, poetry, narrative nonfiction, senior seminar, composition and magazine writing. She has published three chapbooks of poetry.
Originally aired on Wednesday, March 13th, 2013
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock as she talks with returning observers of the 40th Anniversary of Wounded Knee: February 27, 1973. The village was held for 71 days against formidable U.S. marshals, the FBI and some military.
Originally aired on Wednesday, March 6th, 2013
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock as she talks with Jane Harstad about her new publication, the Native American Nonprofit Economy Report. Harstad is an enrolled member of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa . Before graduating from the Pennsylvania State University with her doctorate in educational leadership, she graduated from the University of Minnesota with a bachelors of science in elementary education with a concentration in American Indian studies . After teaching in St . Paul for 11 years, she attended the American Indian Leadership Program and continued on to complete her doctorate work . Having moved back to the Twin Cities, she is continuing to work and collaborate with American Indian communities in Minnesota
Jane Harstad is author of the just released Native American Nonprofit Economy Report, which is a joint project of Native Americans in Philanthropy and the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits. The Native American Nonprofit Economy Report is designed to provide an overview of an important part of Minnesota’s nonprofit sector, and to identify trends and challenges facing these organizations and the people they serve. Through interviews and community outreach, 89 nonprofit organizations and programs were identified serving the Native American community in Minnesota.
Originally aired on Wednesday, February 27th, 2013
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock as she talks with Melanie Peterson-Hickey and Autumn Baum about a Minnesota Department of Health report , "Adverse Childhood Experiences in Minnesota," findings and recommendations based on the 2011 Minnesota Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. Since 2000, Peterson-Hickey has been employed in the public health field as a Senior Research Scientist at the Minnesota Department of Health. Her work focuses on mortality and natality data analysis, health disparities among populations of Color, data support to the Office of Minority and Multicultural Health and the Elimination of Health Disparities Initiative. Her work involves analysis of data and reports on infant mortality, low birthweight births in Minnesota and measuring health disparities. In addition, Melanie is an independent research evaluation consultant for several non-profit organizations in Minnesota and serves as a trustee for the Minnesota Women’s Foundation. Melanie is a member of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians in Wisconsin.
Melanie Peterson-Hickey graduated from MSU in 1980 with majors in Sociology and Corrections. She completed her master's degree in Administrative Leadership in Education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1986 and her doctorate in Educational Policy and Administration at the University of Minnesota in 1998. Melanie worked for several years in institutions of higher education in student affairs, administration, and teaching including the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, St. Olaf College and the University of Minnesota. Since 2000, she has been employed in the public health field as a Senior Research Scientist at the Minnesota Department of Health.
Originally aired on Wednesday, February 20th, 2013
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock with guest Clyde Bellecourt as they discuss the 40th anniversary of Wounded Knee. Bellecourt, who was in Wounded Knee and part of negotiations to bring elders and chiefs to Washington, D.C. for talks directly with the Nixon government. Wounded Knee lasted for 73 harrowing days as FBI and federal marshals pinned the compound down with heavy artillery, including sniper fire. NPR reporter Kevin McKiernen reported from inside. We will include short clips from his reports.
Clyde Howard Bellecourt co-founded the American Indian Movement (AIM) in 1968. His Ojibwe name is Nee-gon-we-way-we-dun which means "Thunder Before the Storm." He is an enrolled member of White Earth Nation. He founded Heart of the Earth Survival School in 1972. In all, over 10,000 students attended the school in its 40-year history. Other organizations founded by Bellecourt are the Elaine M. Stately Peacemaker Center for Indian youth, AIM Patrol which provides security for Indian community, Legal Rights Center, MIGIZI Communications, Inc., Native American Community Clinic, Women of Nations Eagle Nest Shelter, and American Indian OIC (Opportunities Industrialization Center.
Originally aired on Wednesday, February 13th, 2013
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock for a conversation with Joe Horse Capture, Associate Curator of the Native American Department: Arts of Africa and the Americas. He has worked at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts since 1997 and he is the author of "Native American Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts," Tribal Arts, Spring 2012, Number 63 edition. He also wrote "Time-honored Expression: The Knowing of Native Objects," Shapeshifting: Transformations in Native American Art, Peabody Essex Museum, 2012.
Joe sits on the board of directors of the Otsego Institute for Native American Art History in Cooperstown, NY and the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective in Ontario, Canada. Selected exhibitions and projects include: Young People's Ofrendas: Expressions of Life and Remembrance"; Panelist, "Quality of Native American Art," State of the Art Symposium, Southwestern Association for Indian Arts, Indian Market, Santa Fe, NM 2012; Presenter, “By The People, For The People: The Presentation of Native American Art and Culture,” European Project RIME, Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico‘Pigorini,’ Rome, Italy, April 2012.;Co-Chair, “Expressions of Life and Remembrance: A Museum-School Exhibition Partnership,” American Association of Museums Annual Meeting, Minneapolis, MN, May 2012.; Presenter, “Receptacles of Power: Three Case Studies,” Otsego Institute of Native American Art History, Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, NY, May 2012.; Exhibition advisor, “Mni Sota: Reflections of Time and Place,” All My Relations Gallery, Minneapolis, MN, Feb-June 2012.
Originally aired on Wednesday, February 6th, 2013
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock as she talks with Kristopher Kohl Miner (Ho-Chunk Nation). He is the Executive Director of the First Nations Composer Initiative. Formerly, he has worked alongside Mark Murphy (current Executive Director of Disney Hall’s Red Cat Theater), and as Director of Development for Seattle’s ON THE BOARD’S, the Pacific Northwest’s premier performance space. He was also Director of Development for PAWS (Progressive Animal Welfare Society) and SAFEHOUSE, a program that provides housing to homeless individuals living with HIV/AIDS.
Kohl is a playwright & performer. He has performed with The New York City Hysterical Society, In the Heart of the Beast, The Ark Improv, The Blood & Milk Poets and American Indians in the Arts. His solo work includes; “Christopher Explained”, “Native Fruit”, “Left at Life,” “Heartflight Kohl Miner OR How my heart was hijacked by a handsome terrorist. This is my story.”, “Dreams of Cheerleading”, The Trip” and “The Semi-Conscious Memoirs of a Negligent Native” He has performed at Highways (Los Angeles), On The Boards (Seattle), Bumbershoot Wild Stage (Seattle), Alice B. Theater (Seattle), Josie’s Cabaret & Juice Joint (San Francisco), “In the Heart of the Beast Puppet & Mask Theater” (Mpls.), The Walker Art Center (Mpls.), Southern Theater (Mpls.), Red Eye Collaboration (Mpls.), ABC No Rio (NYC) and others. While attending U.W.-Madison (BA Theater) Kohl was a member of the ARK Improv, (a student comedy troupe with alums Joan Cusack and Jimmy Doyle). New office phone number for Kohl is: 651-336-8078.
Originally aired on Wednesday, January 30th, 2013
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock as she talks with artist Carson Waterman. Carson's artwork has been displayed at the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of the American Indian, the New York and Tennessee State Museums, the Ganondagan Historical Site in Victor, NY, the Seneca-Iroquois National Museum, as well as numerous other university and private museums and galleries throughout the Northeast. Carson has also illustrated two books, "Pow-wow" and "Cloudwalker," and has produced public art for the Niagara Frontier Transit Authority and the Southern Tier Expressway.
Carson Waterman grew up on the Cattaraugus Territory of the Seneca Nation. After graduating from Gowanda High School and serving in the Vietnam Conflict, he attended the Cooper School of Art in Cleveland, Ohio, eventually becoming an instructor at the Cleveland Museum of Art. After leaving Cleveland, Carson interned at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC and the New York State Museum in Albany, New York, where he specialized in model-making and exhibit preparation. In 1975, Carson became the primary exhibit manager, illustrator, and artist for the newly established Seneca-Iroquois National Museum, located in Salamanca on the Allegany Reservation of the Seneca nation. Since 1988, Carson has been self-employed as an artist at his gallery on the Allegany Territory. Carson's artwork is a deep reflection on his Seneca heritage. His paintings draw upon the relationships between Mother Earth and all living things, which are critical to the underlying traditional Seneca spiritual beliefs found in the Gaiwiio ("the Good World"). Through his art, Carson seeks to embody the richness and beauty of the Seneca and other Haudenosaunee Peoples that are unique to the northeastern United States. (from Seneca Nation website).
Originally aired on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2013
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock as FIRST PERSON RADIO features the news headlines of 2012 and announcement of the FIRST PERSON of the year.
Originally aired on Wednesday, January 16th, 2013
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock as she talks with guest Scott W. Berg, author of the new book: 38 Nooses: Lincoln, Little Crow, and the Beginning of the Frontier's End. The book looks closely at the events within the context of the Civil War, the history of the Dakota people and the U.S.-Indian Wars. First Person Radio has had several authors on the program who have written about the 150th Anniversary of the U.S.- Dakota War. Here is another account that examines other events as the Dakota struggled to save their lands and their lives.
Born and raised in St. Paul, Scott W. Berg is the author of two books, 38 Nooses (2012) and Grand Avenues: The Story of Pierre Charles L’Enfant, the French Visionary Who Designed Washington, D.C. (2007) He currently teaches nonfiction writing and literature at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, and since 1999 he has been a regular contributor to the Washington Post.
Originally aired on Wednesday, January 9th, 2013
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock as she talks with guest John Kane, Mohawk, host of "Let's Talk Native...with John Kane" which airs on WWKB 1520AM in Buffalo, New York and WQRS FM98.3 in Salamanca, New York. He takes pride in tackling the tough issues that face Native people and refuses to participate in speeches that dumb down Native culture and beliefs. John also writes the Native Pride blog which can be found at letstalknativepride.blogspot.com. His radio shows and appearances are posted on the blog as well as in articles, quotes and links. John also has a page on the WWKB website at kb1520.com and "Let's Talk Native with John Kane" group page on facebook.
John Karhiio Kane is a Mohawk from Kahnawake. His wife of 30 years is Oneida and they have three Oneida children, all of whom are married with children of their own (6 grandchildren in all). He lives On the Cattaraugus Territory of the Seneca Nation and has a direct connection to the people and territories of the Six Nations. John has been involved in Native issues and specifically defending Native sovereignty most of his adult life. He was part of the First Nations Dialogue Team in the late 90's and worked extensively with the League of First Nations in battles with New York State over taxation. He has been a frequent guest and guest host on First Voices Indigenous Radio which broadcasts from WBAI in New York City and a guest on The Nightwolf Show on WPFW in Washington D.C.. John is now 2 years into his own radio show, "Let's Talk Native...with John Kane" which airs on WWKB 1520AM in Buffalo, New York and WQRS FM98.3 in Salamanca, New York. His voice on Native issues has brought invitations to appear on The Capitol Pressroom with Susan Arbetter, a public radio program that airs from NY's Capitol in Albany and airs in 20 markets throughout the state. Ms. Arbetter has featured John on her television news segments (The Capitol Report) that air during local news throughout the state as well. John is a frequent guest on WGRZ Buffalo Channel 2's 2 Sides with Kristy Mazurek; called on as a voice on Native issues. John and "Let's Talk Native..." have been featured in Buffalo Spree Magazine and the ARTVOICE and have been mentioned in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. John participated in the UN's International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples program on August 9, 2012, in a program titled, "Indigenous Media, Empowering Indigenous Voices".
Originally aired on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock and guests who will talk about the Ride 38 and run. The runners went 80 + miles from Fort Snelling in St. Paul, MN to Mankato, site of the hanging of 38 Dakota patriots. We will also have the news headlines of the year. We will also present some Hawaiian music in honor of the late Senator Daniel K. Inouye, champion of American Indian legislation for decades. We will review some of the legislation he sponsored or over which he had a strong influence.
Originally aired on Wednesday, December 26th, 2012
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock and Miguel Vargas as they talk with David Nicholson, Program Director at Headwaters Foundation. David is driven by the possibility of creating justice by bringing together coalitions that will transform the current climate of hate, fear and inequity. Before joining Headwaters in 2004, he worked for the State Department of Education as director of the Children's Trust Fund, which partners with local communities to prevent child abuse. He is actively involved in the Native American community and has served on various local and national boards of directors, advisory committees and task forces that align with his passion for philanthropy, racial justice, environmental justice and the well-being of Native American families. He is part of the run from Fort Snelling to Mankato. This is the 150th anniversary of the hanging of 38 Dakota. The show will focus on the ride in 2012.
Originally aired on Wednesday, December 19th, 2012
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock as she talks with Mona Smith (Dakota) of Bdote Memory Map and Matthew Brandt, Vice President of of the Minnesota Humanities about their work and the recent national award for Why Treaties Matter. The Minnesota Humanities Center and its partners have been awarded the Helen and Martin Schwartz Prize from the Federation of State Humanities Councils for the traveling exhibition, Why Treaties Matter: Self-Government in the Dakota and Ojibwe Nations. The national award from the Federation of State Humanities Councils recognizes outstanding work in the public humanities. Why Treaties Matter is a unique partnership of the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council, the Minnesota Humanities Center, and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., which created an exhibit unique in its community-based approach as an educational tool for Minnesota audiences.
Mona Smith, Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate Dakota, is a multi-media artist, educator and co-founder of Allies Media Art. Her new media work includes art projects for the web, and multimedia installation work, most notably, “Cloudy Waters, Dakota Reflections on the River” (Minnesota History Center, 2005 and permanent audio installation at the Mill Courtyard at the Minneapolis Riverfront 2011), “City Indians” (Ancient Traders Art Gallery, Minneapolis, 2006-2007), “MniSota Dakota Home,” (Form+Content Gallery), “Presence,” a multimedia/performance event, (Mill City Museum, 2010 and 2011, and BV Studios, Bristol, England, 2011), “Between Fences,” (The Box Studio and Performance, Galway Ireland, 2012), “A Dakota Place,” (Nash Gallery, Minneapolis, 2012) and “Bdote Memory Map” (with the Minnesota Humanities Center). She owns the media art and research company, Allies, LLC and has headed up the media division, Allies Media Art since 1996. Mona is a member of the PLaCE (Place, Location and Context and Environment) Research Consortium based at the University of West England in Bristol, and is a member of the Mapping Spectral Traces International Network. Mona’s artistic and educational practice uses image, sound and place to work ‘between’ the place of healing, of relationship, of meaning, where spirit and physical, life and death, fear and strength, night and day intersect.
Matthew Brandt is the Vice President of the Minnesota Humanities Center. He has been a part of many ground breaking and innovative programs and partnerships, including a partnership with the National Museum of the American Indian supporting authentic instruction about indigenous cultures nationwide.
Originally aired on Wednesday, December 12th, 2012
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock for an exciting conversation with Waziyatawin a Dakota writer, teacher, and activist committed to the pursuit of Indigenous liberation and reclamation of homelands. Her work seeks to build a culture of resistance within Indigenous communities, to recover Indigenous ways of being, and to eradicate colonial institutions.
Waziyatawin is currently writing on the topics of Indigenous women and resistance and Indigenous survival in the collapse of industrial civilization. Waziyatawin comes from the Pezihutazizi Otunwe (Yellow Medicine Village) in southwestern Minnesota. After receiving her Ph.D. in American history from Cornell University in 2000, she earned tenure and an associate professorship in the history department at Arizona State University where she taught for seven years. Waziyatawin currently holds the Indigenous Peoples Research Chair in the Indigenous Governance Program at the University of Victoria. She is the author or co/editor of six volumes, including What Does Justice Look Like? The Struggle for Liberation in Dakota Homeland (St. Paul: Living Justice Press, 2008), which won the 2009 Independent Publishers’ Silver Book Award for Best Regional Non-Fiction in the Midwest, and the newly released, For Indigenous Minds Only: A Decolonization Handbook (Santa Fe: SAR Press, 2012).
Originally aired on Wednesday, December 5th, 2012
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock as she talks with Rhiana Yazzie and cast members from New Native Theatre (NNT), a sparkling addition to the arts community in Minneapolis.
New Native Theatre (NNT) is an organization dedicated to producing theatre and theatrical events by and for Native audiences and the broader community. It is, like its name suggests, a new way of looking at, thinking about, and staging Native American stories. It is the first Native American organization of its kind to emerge in Minnesota with ambitions to become a professional theatre. During the three years NNT has been in operation, it has greatly progressed the quality and quantity of Native theatre experiences in Minnesota. NNT is successfully invigorating the Native community and engaging non-Native communities through play productions, actor training, audience development, and the establishment of the first permanent home for Native theatre in Minnesota. Founder, playwright, Rhiana Yazzie has officially been calling the company and events she’s created in the Native community since October of 2009, “New Native Theatre”. Rhiana Yazzie’s work has been seen on stages from Alaska to Mexico with 5 new play productions across the US since 2008. She is a two time winner of a Playwrights’ Center Jerome Playwriting Fellowship (2010/2011 and 2006/2007) and is a Playwrights’ Center Core Member. Recently, Rhiana was jointly commissioned by the Ashland Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the NY Public Theater to write a play for American Revolutions: the United States History Cycle. Her newest venture is the creation of New Native Theatre, in the Twin Cities, a company dedicated to telling Native American stories in a new way. For more information email NNT at info(at)newnativetheatre.org or call (612)367-7639.
Originally aired on Wednesday, November 28th, 2012
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock as she talks with historian and writer Rhoda R. Gilman. Ms Gilman has published extensively in the fields of Minnesota and Upper Midwest history. She is a founding member of Women Historians of the Midwest and a former candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota on the Green Party ticket. As we come to a close of the 150th anniversary of the Dakota War of 1862 after which the largest public execution in U.S. history took place on December 26 of that year, we will discuss Henry Sibley's involvement and profiteering. We will also discuss her new book "Stand Up!" that also moves across 150 years -- but with a focus on the protest movement.
Rhoda Gilman's new book is "Stand Up," which an Amazon review says, covers the major protest movements of the last 150 years: the abolitionist Republican party, Grangers, antimonopolists, Populists, strikers, progressives, suffragists, Communists, Farmer-Laborites, communes and co-ops, abortion politics, and more. She profiles charismatic and quirky leaders like Ignatius Donnelly, Floyd B. Olson, and Paul Wellstone. Each movement, each personality, is part of the context for the others. She has also written a biography of Henry Sibley, the first governor of Minnesota, who except for his encounters with the Mdewakanton people, would have led a less remarkable life.
Originally aired on Wednesday, November 21st, 2012
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock as she talks with Tiokasin Ghosthorse from the Cheyenne River Lakota (Sioux) Nation of South Dakota and the bands of Itazipco/Mnicoujou and Oglala. He is the host of First Voices Indigenous Radio on WBAI NY - Pacifica Radio. Tiokasin has been described as “a spiritual agitator, natural rights organizer, Indigenous thinking pro cess educator and a community activator.”
Tiokasin has had a long history in Indigenous rights activism and advocacy. He spoke, as a teenager, at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. Ever since his UN work, he has been actively educating people who live on Turtle Island (North America) and overseas about the importance of living with each other and with Mother Earth.Tiokasin Ghosthorse is also a master musician and one of the great exponents of the ancient red cedar Lakota flute, and plays traditional and contemporary music, using both Indigenous and European instruments. He has been a major figure in preserving and reviving the cedar wood flute tradition and has combined “spoken word” and music in performances since childhood. Tiokasin performs worldwide and has been featured at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, Lincoln Center, Madison Square Garden, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and at the United Nations as well as at numerous universities and concert venues.
Originally aired on Wednesday, November 14th, 2012
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock as she talks with Rhiana Yazzie and Dawn Avery. Hear both women talk about their careers and their latest work.
Rhiana Yazzie’s work has been seen on stages from Alaska to Mexico with 5 new play productions across the US since 2008. She is a two time winner of a Playwrights’ Center Jerome Playwriting Fellowship (2010/2011 and 2006/2007) and is a Playwrights’ Center Core Member. Recently, Rhiana was jointly commissioned by the Ashland Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the NY Public Theater to write a play for American Revolutions: the United States History Cycle. A new play, written by members of the NNT Actor Ensemble is a look at the end of the world as we know it! Inspired by the hoopla of the end of the Mayan calendar, the New Native Theatre Actor Ensemble’s new play is about the year 2012 from a Native American perspective right from our own Franklin Avenue. Get ready for the return of Indian Alien ancestors who come to fix the ills of our Native people in the western hemisphere, complete with the arrival of rock star ancestors and dancing neon buffalo! Written by members of the NNT Actor Ensemble, Rhiana Yazzie, Inez DeCoteau, and Andrea Fairbanks.
he New York Times has called Dawn Avery a “daring cellist.” She is a composer and vocalist of incredible depth and passion, stands alone in her field as one of the most celebrated, original and passionate virtuosos of her time. Her decades’ long exploration of sacred music has led her to study the relationship between music and spirituality, especially in meditative practice. As a renowned and beloved workshop leader, Avery also uses meditation and 30 years of experience with shamans, healers, history, myth, world music and dance to help participants uncover their life's calling. Well known and respected in many musical worlds, Avery’s wide range of award winning musical works have been influenced by Indigenous thematic material, in particular her Mohawk heritage. Her works have been performed and supported by Lincoln Center, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, The Ford Foundation, and American Composers Forum.
Originally aired on Wednesday, October 31st, 2012
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock as she talks with two outstanding women who have worked together for several years. Before receiving her Ph.D. and Masters of Philosophy in History from Cambridge University Elizabeth. Castle received her B.A. in Race, Gender and Electronic Media from George Washington University. Dr. Castle was a professor in the Native Studies Department at the University of South Dakota and is the founder and Executive Director of The Warrior Women Project. Elizabeth Castle has numerous publications including “The Original Gangster: The Life and Times of Red Power Activist Madonna Thunder Hawk.” Madonna Thunder Hawk co-founded Women of All Red Nations (WARN) in 1978, organizing a health study of the drinking water on the Pine Ridge reservation. (WARN found the water to be highly radioactive, which led to the establishment of rural water supply system.) Thunder Hawk also helped organize the Black Hills Protection Committee (later the He Sapa Institute) whose goal is to protect the many sacred sites within the region's treaty lands.
Madonna Thunder Hawk is a member of the Oohenumpa band of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. Her life’s work has been guided by the goals of winning justice for Native Americans. Madonna is the embodiment of courage. She was an original member of the American Indian Movement, a co-founder of Women of All Red Nations (WARN), and is currently the Lakota People’s Law Project’s principal organizer and Tribal Liaison. Madonna has been featured in several documentary films including the recent PBS series We Shall Remain. She is a grandmother, both literally and figuratively, to a generation of Native American activists. Through her work, Madonna builds alliances and support for Child Welfare among South Dakota’s tribal leaders and communities. She is a veteran of every modern Native American struggle, including the 1969 to 1971 occupation of Alcatraz to the 1973 siege at Wounded Knee. Hailing from the Feather Necklace Tiospaye, which extends across the Lakota reservations of South Dakota, Thunder Hawk is also a long-time community organizer with a range of experience in American Indian rights protection, cultural preservation, economic development, environmental justice and Lakota social reclamation. Born and raised on a number of South Dakota reservations, she first became active in the late 1960s as a member and leader in the American Indian Movement (AIM). In addition to involvement in the national and international arena for Native sovereignty, she anchored much of her organizing at the community level. While on the federal relocation program in San Francisco she joined the occupation of Alcatraz and has since been forever consumed by the indigenous struggle for self-determination. Once drawn into activism, Thunder Hawk has been a voice of resistance ever since. She established the "We Will Remember Survival School" for Indian youth whose parents were facing federal charges or who had been drop-outs or “push-outs” from the educational system. This alternative home/school was part of the National Federation of Native-Controlled Survival Schools that was established during the movement as many alternative schools developed. Thunder Hawk was a co-founder and spokesperson for the Black Hills Alliance, which blocked Union Carbide from mining uranium on sacred Lakota land. An eloquent voice for Native America, Thunder Hawk has spoken throughout the United States, Central America, Europe, and the Middle East. She was an International Indian Treaty Council delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva. She also was a delegate to the U.N. Decade of Women Conference in Mexico City and in 2001 to the World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa.
Elizabeth Castle lives and works in Mansfield, Ohio. She has served as a consultant for the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University and as a consultant for The National Diversity Network 1999-2000 Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Between 1997 and 1998 she worked as a Policy Associate for President Bill Clinton’s Initiative on Race.
Originally aired on Wednesday, October 24th, 2012
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock as she talks with Marisa Carr and Sally Fineday about the campaign against the voter suppression amendment on the ballot in Minnesota. A coalition of multiracial, multicultural and American Indian communities are working together to defeat the legislation. Late last week they released American Indian Voices for Voting Rights. Sally’s interests with the photo id stems from her early work with the Native Vote Alliance of Minnesota. It was the Native Vote Alliance of Minnesota who in 2004 contacted the American Civil Liberties Union when American Indian voters were turned away from the polls because the only form of identification was their tribal identification card. Since then the photo id issue has come before the Minnesota legislature with each session.
Sally Fineday is a member of the Leech lake Band of Ojibwe. She resides within the Chippewa National Forest on her family’s treaty land (aka allotment). Sally currently works as a Planner/Developer for the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe. Sally served the American Indian communities of Minnesota as the Executive Director of Native Vote Alliance of Minnesota. Native Vote Alliance of Minnesota is a fledgling nonprofit whose work engages American Indians with electoral activities continues with a statewide table where American Indians representing their tribal communities to “Get out the Native vote” in 2012 elections.
Marisa Carr is an interdisciplinary artist and activist. She was born in Milwaukee, but lives in Minneapolis. She is Turtle Mountain Ojibwe, from the Turtle clan.
Originally aired on Wednesday, October 17th, 2012
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock on Wednesday, October 17th as she talks with Clyde Bellecourt about one of the most painful public displays to American Indians: Columbus Day celebrations. Clyde Bellecourt is the founder and continuing leader in local, national, and international projects either founded or inspired by the American Indian Movement. In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed Columbus Day a national holiday, in response to intense lobbying by the Knights of Columbus, an influential Catholic fraternal benefits organization. Originally observed every October 12, it was fixed to the second Monday in October in 1971. The image of Christopher Columbus as a discoverer has been challenged by the American Indian Movement since 1970. Columbus arrived in the Bahamas where he and his men forced native peoples into slavery. While serving as the governor of Hispaniola, he imposed barbaric forms of punishment, including cutting off noses and other torture to force native people to work. According to http://www.history.com/topics/columbus-day: several Latin American nations note the anniversary of Columbus' landing has traditionally been observed as the Dìa de la Raza ("Day of the Race"), a celebration of Hispanic culture's diverse roots. In 2002, Venezuela renamed the holiday Dìa de la Resistencia Indìgena ("Day of Indigenous Resistance") to recognize native peoples and their experience. Several U.S. cities and states have replaced Columbus Day with alternative days of remembrance; examples include Berkeley's Indigenous Peoples Day, South Dakota's Native American Day and Hawaii's Discoverer's Day, which commemorates the arrival of Polynesian settlers.
Clyde Howard Bellecourt co-founded the American Indian Movement (AIM) in 1968. His Ojibwe name is Nee-gon-we-way-we-dun which means "Thunder Before the Storm." He is an enrolled member of White Earth Nation. He founded Heart of the Earth Survival School in 1972. In all, over 10,000 students attended the school in its 40-year history. Other organizations founded by Bellecourt are the Elaine M. Stately Peacemaker Center for Indian youth, AIM Patrol which provides security for Indian community, Legal Rights Center, MIGIZI Communications, Inc., Native American Community Clinic, Women of Nations Eagle Nest Shelter, and American Indian OIC (Opportunities Industrialization Center.
Originally aired on Wednesday, October 10th, 2012
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock on Wednesday, October 10th at 9 am Central as she talks with a rising young talent in the arts: Missy Whiteman, Indigenous filmmaker, digital media consultant, director, producer and writer for Independent Indigenous Film & Media. Missy belongs to the Arapaho and Kickapoo nations and grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. While growing up Missy had an early exposure to artists, writers and filmmakers, where she found support and nurturing. Her main influence has been her father who taught her to be true to her vision as an artist and filmmaker and that artistic creation it is a spiritual process.
The foundation of Missy Whiteman's education is in visual arts, media arts, theatre, film & video and photography. As a teenager, Missy attended the Rudy Perpich Center for Arts Education and then The Minneapolis College of Art and Design for Filmmaking and Photography. Missy understands her work to be a voice for her ancestors to educate and to foster better understanding among all peoples as well as to promote change in Native and non-Native other communities. While based in part on traditional ways and ideas, her movies also address themes of loss in relation to larger cultural forces as well as the process of healing and redefining cultural identity.
Originally aired on Wednesday, October 3rd, 2012
Please join Laura Waterman Wittstock for a very special program on Wednesday, October 3, 2012 as she talks with Mankato Symphony Orchestra Music Director Kenneth Freed and David Larsen (Mdewakanton Dakota) tribal historian, educator, former tribal chairman of Lower Sioux Indian Community, and former director of American Indian Affairs at MNSU/Mankato On Sunday, November 18th, to bring public attention to the darkest time in Minnesota history – the U.S.-Dakota War and the hangings that took place in Mankato in 1862: the largest mass execution in American history – the acclaimed 80-member Mankato Symphony Orchestra will present two powerful pieces of music that will pay tribute to this tragedy while offering a message of optimism for the future of all Minnesotans. “To Be Certain of the Dawn” will feature two compositions – “Trail of Tears” by Michael Daugherty and “To Be Certain of the Dawn” by Stephen Paulus. The concert will take place on Sunday, November 18, 3 p.m., at Mankato West High School Auditorium.