Description:
This Land's Rebecca Nagle talks podcasting, activism, and language preservation
Transcript:
SB: I’m Sheldon Beach with the Metropolitan Library System. Today is August 8th, 2019 and I am here in Tahlequah today with Rebecca Nagle
RN: Thanks for having me
SB: So we’re just going to talk about you.
RN: Oh wow
SB: You’re probably an expert so you didn’t have to study or anything
RN: Yeah, that’s true
SB: Are you from Oklahoma originally?
RN: I grew up in Joplin, MO so right across the border
SB: So what brought you here?
RN: I moved to Tahlequah… I went to school on the east coast and was out there for a decade and I was looking to move closer to home to be closer to my family. So I have family in Tulsa, family in Joplin. My family is originally from around Jay right outside Southwest City, MO, if you want to get specific about it, on the Oklahoma side right on the very, very corner of the state, and then I grew up in Joplin. So I just wanted to be closer to family and I was looking for jobs in northeastern Oklahoma and I found out about this language program, which is a two year adult immersion program that Cherokee Nation has where you spend two years, forty hours a week learning the Cherokee language from master speakers, and I really wanted to do it. I thought that they would never give the job to me, they’d be like, “who is this chick who lives in Baltimore of all places?” I was living in Baltimore at the time. But I got the job and I moved to Oklahoma and it’s been great. It’s not quite back since I grew up in Joplin, but it’s nice to be back in the area, and being more connected to Cherokee Nation and being connected to my tribe.
SB: Tell me about that a bit. What does that involve, learning a language full time?
RN: It’s hard! Cherokee is really different than English. It’s amazing in its complexity, but it’s really simple so when you say something… I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s like when you say something you say exactly what you mean. And like a sentence is one word because our words have so much information in them. Two sentences sometimes are just like one word. And you can change little things about the word and change the meaning and its tonal and so as somebody that only spoke English before the program it’s been very challenging to learn but it’s been amazing. Our speakers have the patience of gods. They are so patient and so helpful and so they just sit there for hours while we completely butcher everything and say the words over and over and over again and repeat. So toward the beginning it’s like you’re basically just learning words, we learn introductions, we learn how to say, “my name is…” in Cherokee and where you’re from and where you live and introduce your family and things like that and then we move more into having a conversation and so that’s kind of where we're at now. We play games or we do different scenarios or we might learn a word and try to put it in a sentence so… yeah, it’s been an amazing experience.
SB: It seems like kind of a big change from living on the east coast
RN: It is
SB: Because Tahlequah’s not a huge city
RN: No it’s not
SB: Not a lot of Cherokee speakers over around Maryland
RN: None
SB: How’s that different? Is there any kind of… I know you grew up in this part of America so the culture shock must not be as much but just dealing with a different language all of a sudden every day all day long
RN: Yeah, I definitely at first in the program would get headaches and I would feel tired, and now every now and again days like that still happen where you're almost kind of like you’re just making so many new pathways in your brain. I don’t know, I feel dazed and confused sometimes when I get off of work so if I don’t make any sense in this interview that’s why.
Yeah, but so, it was harder at first but then I think… I think too it felt overwhelming at first just because you’re sort of, you know, you’re trying to get across this vast ocean of Cherokee and you're in a little paddle boat. I think, not that I’m anything close, I mean I’ll never be like a first language speaker, and I hope to be conversational, but I think that now I know enough and I feel like I have enough of a foundation that I feel like when I’m learning new stuff there’s… I don’t know how to describe it. Almost like there’s a place to put it. Like at first it just felt like I was getting a word and I was in a dark room and I was just setting it down wherever and I didn’t know where it went and now the room is kind of like it’s halfway lit so it’s like, “Oh, this word goes here, and it means this and that other word means this and it’s kind of close to that word,” you know, it’s like things like that.
SB: Why do you think learning your language is important?
RN: I think that as Cherokee people we’re not Cherokee if we don’t have our language. I think that we’re not… I think that when we talk about tribal sovereignty, which I think is a word that gets thrown around a lot, it’s kind of a legal word, it’s kind of a symbolic word… You know it’s hard, because there are so many ways that our sovereignty has been limited over the years, to talk about our sovereignty sometimes, because it can feel like it’s not what we would want it to be, but when I think about sovereignty I think about how it means that we can self govern according to our way of life. We can maintain our way of life. We can self govern according to our world view, and our language holds that. Our language holds like 95 percent of it so if we lose our language what do we have left? We don’t really have much left of our culture. We don’t have much left of our world view, we’ll lose our medicine, we’ll just lose a lot. There are different ways to be Cherokee and to think about what it means to be Cherokee. Obviously I didn’t grow up speaking Cherokee and haven’t my whole life until now, and so I don’t mean to sound hypocritical, but I do think if we lose our language as a tribe we lose what it means to be Cherokee.
SB: One of the things I’ve talked to people, while I’ve been doing this project, about is I’ve talked to Native people about art, about education, about activism, and I’ve found that a lot of artists are activists, in fact, all of them. Education tends to lend itself to that as well. I appreciate that you’re educating yourself in your language, it’s important. Speaking of art and activism, do you want to talk about underwear for a bit?
(several seconds of laughter)
RN: I didn't know we were going to go back, like, way back.
SB: Oh, I did a little research
RN: Someone’s been on Google. Um sure.
SB: Can you explain that to anybody that doesn’t know what I’m talking about?
RN: Yeah, so I used to be part of, I guess a collective, really more like an organization, called FORCE Upsetting Rape Culture and it actually kind of started from this prank we did. The idea of the organization was to create pop culture or artistic intervention in public spaces to promote consent and to counter the culture of rape. Rape culture, when we talk about rape culture, that’s where it seems normal for sex to be coersive or violent. So that could be like a beer commercial or a movie. It’s where victims of sexual assault or surivivors of sexual assault are judged or blamed or told, “you shouldn’t have been there,” or not believed and in a rape culture also very rarely are perpetrators held accountable. And we see that it happens all over the place. And so me and my friend created a line of underwear that had consent slogans on it. Victoria Secret had this line of underwear that was being basically marketed toward teenage girls and even younger than that like middle school age girls and it had slogans on it like, I’m trying to remember what some of the more offensive ones were. They were like “Stop peeking” or it was like they were using words like “no” and “stop” to flirt so it was being kind of sarcastic with that, which I felt was really problematic. So we made underwear that just had a play on those slogans that said like, “no means no,” and also things like “consent is sexy,” and made a fake website pretending to be Victoria Secret and then a bunch of people found it and thought it was real and shared it and Victoria Secret had to say no it’s not real. But basically it, you know, it was exciting on the internet for about a week and then what it did was create a conversation. I think a lot of times we think that talking about consent is for a social justice space or like a lecture at a college, where what we were trying to help people envision is a world where our pop culture and our everyday surroundings promote healthy sexuality and promote consent.
SB: I’m not going to ask something stupid like, “why is that important,” but I know especially with it being in the news all the time with the me too movement and everything like that, I know a lot more attention’s been brought to it, but I know one thing that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention is violence and sexual assault toward Native women. Was that something that played into you doing that?
RN: Yeah, and with that same organization it grew. So that was like a one off thing that we did as a project, and then it got a lot of media attention, we got a following on social media from it and so we actually created an organization out of it and then basically from that project we decided to start an organization and then as FORCE we did a lot of work in Indigenous communities so we actually traveled the country with a quilt where we would collect stories from survivors of rape and abuse and so we went to a lot of tribal communities. We actually worked a lot with a coalition here in Oklahoma, the Native Alliance Against Violence, we worked with Muscogee Creek Nation in Oklahoma, with the Quapaw tribe. It was actually one of the first times we showed the quilt in public was in Quapa, OK with the Quapaw tribe. And so we would gather survivors in Indigenous communities and do talking circles and create healing space for survivors, and also use the quilt as an advocacy tool. So there was a Supreme Court case up in 20.. I think it was 2015. The oral arguments were in 2015 and the decision would have come out in 2016 I believe, I’m just saying this without looking it up, but maybe it was 2016. I think it would have been 2015/2016, but anyway the Supreme Court case was called Dollar General v. Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and it was a case that originated in the sexual assault of a child at a Dollar General store. And because tribes don’t have criminal jurisdiction over the perpetrator, basically the perpetrator got away with it, and so the family and tribal court sued the perpetrator and sued Dollar General. And so Dollar General counter sued and said you guys can’t sue us. We’re a non-Native corporation and even though we were in a contract with the tribe and even though we were doing business on tribal trust land, you can’t touch us. And that decision went all the way to the Supreme Court. And so when that case was out in front of the Supreme Court we made all of these shawls that had slogans on them about sexual assault and supportive messages for survivors, but also why this was an important issue for Indian Country and we had a rally basically outside of the Supreme Court on the day of the oral arguments and tried to get meida attention because a lot of times when these big issues are being debated by the Supreme Court nobody pays attention.
Another thing that we did, I went to Standing Rock and I worked with Gracie Horn and some other really bold and awesome women and we created talking circles and healing space for survivors there at the camp and then we did a walk to honor survivors and to really bring awareness to that issue there in that space.
SB: I’m curious, I’ve seen some stuff online, but the quilt physically…
RN: How big is it? I think it got to be… So it had the final display a few months ago and I wasn’t there for the very end because I moved back here and I changed jobs, but I think it got up to about 3,000 quilt squares so it was huge. I think the last tour that I was on with it, it was about, I think half of a football field. So it’s very big when it’s all laid out. And I think it was a platform that, as a Native woman who was helping organize a project and helping lead the project, it was a non-Native project, but as a Native woman who was in it I worked really hard to try and make sure Indigenous communities were really centered in the conversation because I think that that’s something that a lot of times whether it’s the me too movement or time’s up, I think the issues in Indian Country are unique and are something that we really need some policy change around and so it’s important to raise that awareness with non-Native people.
SB: What kind of reaction did you get to it?
RN: That’s a good question. It depended because we would do stuff in public spaces so there would be people who would come who were planning to be there, who had planned their day around doing it, and then there would also be people who would stumble upon it, and I think that the range of responses is infinite in the way that, how people process trauma is infinite. Like there’s no one way. But I do think that it’s a space where people process their trauma, and I think one of the things we were thinking a lot about is that… I’m a survivor, and I feel like all of the ways that I’ve been given to heal have been like talking with a person in a closed room and having confidential conversations, but part of what was harmful about being a survivor is that it didn’t just wound my relationship with that one person, it wounded my relationships with lots of people because it was harder to trust people and I felt really isolated and I felt like the models or the tools I was given to healing were always in private. And so really the idea was about creating a public space where survivors can gather together in public and have that space be healing that’s more communal than individual and that basically that we can find power in each other. And so I found that very healing in my own process, and then I also think to be able to make something out of your grief, I think that’s something that a lot of people either, it can be losing a loved one, it can be surviving sexual assault, a lot of times when these things happen in our lives that make no sense, one way to make sense out of them is to be able to do something with it. That was my experience personally with the quilt, and I also think that it was a lot of other people’s experience because to be able to make a quilt square about your own story, but to know that it’s going to travel and be seen by other survivors, that it’s going to be part of this bigger movement lets you tell your story in a way that’s not just about your own healing but is about helping others. And I think that a lot of other survivors found meaning in that, that I think is different than traditional forms of counseling. Which I think, I went to counseling and it was helpful, but I think that there are limits to it especially when, particularly for Indigenous communities, but I think for everybody too, it’s like so much of what makes us human is community and relationships and one thing trauma does to survivors is it makes people feel isolated. It cuts people off from their relationships and so then all of the ways you have to process that trauma are supposed to happen behind a closed door. I don’t know if that answered your question.
SB: Did you talk to other people that kind of went through the same feeling, and things like that where they would recognize, yes this is something where we can have a public conversation about it? Because it is a topic a lot of people will just keep to themself. I mean, it’s one of those things where you’ll know somebody for years before you’ll find out about it. It’s not like that when somebody has a limp and they say, “Oh, I broke my leg as a child.”
RN: Or when somebody loses a loved one, like when you think about when someone loses a parent or a sibling everyone gathers around them, you know. You're with them those days leading up to the funeral and you’re checking in on them and you’re making sure they’re okay. But you go through the trauma of sexual assault and even the people who are closest to you might not know what’s going on. Yeah, I talked to a lot of people like that. I think one of my favorite stories from traveling with the quilt was, we showed it in Daley Plaza in Chicago which is like, huge, in the middle of downtown, bustling with people and surrounded by skyscrapers and there was this older man, I’d say he was probably in his sixties who didn’t know what was going on, just saw it from like the 20th floor or whatever and came down and talked with us and he was a survivor and he hadn’t talked about it in years. It happened to him when he was a kid. And he, from seeing it from that far away, knew what it was and knew it was for him. And I think a lot of people had a visceral reaction, or I guess visceral isn’t the right word, more like an instinctual reaction of recognizing or seeing themselves in it and knowing what it was. So yeah, I would say I talked to people with a similar experience.
SB: It does seem like that’s one of the few, maybe the only, really violent acts that people go through where they don’t just get comforted.
RN: Yeah, and if you think about other crimes or just, you know, if you have a house fire or you have a bad car accident, it’s like people in your life know about it and visit you or help you raise money to recover or something. Sexual assault has a profound impact on people’s lives and it’s this think that people are asked to carry alone. And I think that that’s one thing that I hope shifts in our society, that I see shifting. I think that like me too is a really excellent example of that, but I think that instead of sexual assault being a burden that the survivor alone has to carry, that it’s something that we as a community, we learn how to carry with people.
SB: After the quilt have you done anything interesting?
RN: Yeah, so I am a writer and I made a podcast and I’ve been learning Cherokee.
SB: So the reason I found out about you is that I started listening to the podcast. I love it. I thought it was great. It was very Informative.
RN: Thank you.
SB: I think I actually listened to it the first day the first episode came out.
RN: Oh really?
SB: Yeah, I listened to it every Monday.
RN: Oh, wild. Cool.
SB: I think I read about it when I was looking for OKlahoma podcasts,and most of them were either religion or sports, sort of the same here I guess, but that was the most interesting one that came up. Why did you start doing that?
RN: So the story behind it was it wasn’t my idea, but I was really excited about it. I’ve been following the Murphy case for years and I’m really hopeful and I really care a lot about the outcome and what it means for the impact for all five tribes, you know. Obviously Muscogee Creek Nation, their reservation is at the center of it, but I think for the Chickasaws, the Choctaws, the Cherokees and the Seminoles it’s going to have a lasting impact on our land rights and the decision could be written in a way that directly impacts and very clearly talks about our land rights. And so I had just been following it and I wrote an op ed for the Washington Post the week of the oral arguments talking about my own family history and about the case and why it’s important that in 2019 basically after everything that's been taken from our tribes, and using my own family story to kind of highlight that, like why it’s important in 2019 for the Supreme Court to follow the law and to uphold our treaty rights and a media company called Crooked Media saw the podcast, or not the podcast but the article, the op ed, and they thought it would be cool as a podcast and so they contacted me and then the rest is history.
SB: Okay, well we’re going to talk about that history a little bit. How long did it take you to do all of that? It seemed like a lot of work.
RN: It was! Oh my god, it was so much work. I had no idea how much work it was going to be, but it was obviously worth it. We worked on it for basically six months, so at the end of January I went to Los Angeles and met with the media company and a production company called Neon Hum that also worked on the podcast and then we started production basically in February and then like it was full on. I even moved to LA for like 6 weeks to work on it and so it was intense. I think it was a quick turn around because it’s not a podcast where you’re just sitting around and talking, it’s a documentary style podcast. We would write out the scripts. We would make scratch mixes. We would edit them. It’s almost like making a documentary film or a documentary TV series and so it was a lot of work but what I think what was really neat about the format is the way it lent itself to storytelling and so I feel like we were able to break down the legal issues, the legal history of this case and really take people through it in a way that’s captivating and keeps you hooked and keeps you engaged, but at the same time people are getting a lot of information about the history here in Oklahoma and the history of our tribes.
SB: One thing I really liked about it was how you tied your own family's story into it. Where did you get the idea to do that? Was it just something that jumped out at you automatically?
RN: Yeah, I guess it probably started with that article that I wrote. You know when I sat down to write the article about why the Murphy case mattered to me personally, I think a lot about, and I think about it just in general, it can sound kind of cliche, Native people because we say it a lot, but it’s kind of important to remember the sacrifice that our ancestors made. My family members specifically, I know it’s controversial, but I believe, made sacrifices to maintain the sovereignty of Cherokee Nation. And they made some really difficult decisions at a moment in our history to do what they thought would preserve Cherokee Nation and preserve our sovereignty, and so they were assassinated for signing that treaty, and that land that the treaty guaranteed Cherokee Nation in perpetuity is part of the land that is now in dispute. So I think for Oklahoma to not recognize Cherokee sovereignty and to not recognize our reservation for this long, and a hundred years later for the possibility for our state to recognize that to me just means a lot and I think that you can’t take out the importance of that. You can’t separate it out from the history.
SB: And for anybody that happens upon this library oral history that hasn’t listened to your podcast, you’re a descendant of the Ridges.
RN: Yes, so I’m a direct descendant of Major Ridge and John Ridge.
SB: Which means you’re related to Elias…
RN: Boudinot, yeah.
SB: I’ve seen it written but I’m not exactly sure how to say it.
RN: He actually went to a boarding school and the person that paid for him to go was named Elias Boudinot and so he took on the name.
SB: I grew up in Muskogee County and being that close to Tahlequah I would hear things sometimes, but I didn’t know a lot of that story. I’d heard some of it. Some of it sounded familiar, but I didn’t know a lot of it and I really found it fascinating.
RN: Oh, thank you. When you dig into history there’s just so much, and I think it’s like, you look at their lifetimes and so much changes, in just that one to two generations
SB: So are you going to do another episode?
RN: I’d actually really like to do another season. I’d like to do a season about violence against Native women, focusing on that. So we’ll see, but for the actual podcast This Land we’ll continue to have update episodes because as you know, the Supreme Court postponed their decision so there’s no decision that’s coming out yet and they're going to reargue the case so we will have update episodes when that happens.
SB: And nobody has any idea?
RN: Not to get all into the weeds about the Supreme Court, obviously I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about it, they haven’t scheduled it for oral arguments yet, which I think is kind of telling because they publish these monthly calendars of what cases they’re going to argue, which day, usually they argue two cases in a day, and they’ve published them for October and November and it’s not on either of those months, which is kind of surprising because you would think if they were close to making a decision but they just ran out of time or they were stuck… There was some additional briefing last year after the oral arguments and maybe say they had a few follow up questions or additional briefing, but they were mostly on their way to making a decision that they would schedule it early and then we would hear the decision early and they would move it along, but that they haven’t scheduled it yet makes me think that they’re maybe more stuck than it being a few follow up questions. But that’s all speculation. The Supreme Court is an opaque institution. It’s not like congress or the state legislature where you can see. You know their conversations happen behind closed doors. The public doesn’t get to hear what they’re thinking. They’re not coming out and making statements to the press like people in congress and so in terms of where they are in their process we won’t know until we see the decision. There might be some other signs along the way like if they ask for some additional briefing, what kind of questions are they asking for so we can try and follow and read the tea leaves, so to speak. I would say that I was pretty surprised to see both October and November come out and it not be scheduled either of those months. I found that really surprising.
SB: Do you ever find yourself at parties and surprised to find out that you’re kind of the expert at the party, about the judicial process?
RN: Yeah, it’s funny. I feel like I had to eat my own words because as it got closer and closer to the last day of the decisions there were some people on twitter that were like, “what if they just don't come out with a decision this time?” and I was like, “Pfft. That’s not how it works. Yes technically they could postpone it, but that never happens.” I think I said that to somebody, like that’s very, very unlikely, and then that’s exactly what happened. I think everybody that was watching the court and watching the case did not expect this to happen. It’s very unusual. And so I’ve even, in reporting on it, learned some things about the inner workings of the Supreme Court, when cases are reargued, how rare it is when that happens and stuff. One of the things that I… the other job I had in Baltimore, I did community organizing and public policy advocacy around racial and economic justice, and from that, and now being more of a journalist, I think one thing I’m really passionate about is making the law accessible. The law controls so much of our lives, but it’s this very specialized area of expertise that you have to go to this really expensive school to get. I think it’s opaque and hard to understand and complicated, and I think in a way that’s purposeful so that it’s hard for average people to leverage it and change it. One thing in my writing that I try to do is talk about issues like the Murphy case, talk about issues like challenges to the constitutionality of ICWA (Indian Child Welfare Act), talk about things that are maybe complicated legally, but in ways that are accessible. And half of what makes it complicated legally are words that are a bunch of jargon. So you don’t have to cross leaps and bounds to put it in everyday language. That is one thing that, as a lay person that’s not a lawyer, I think it’s important that average citizens can understand the law, access the law and what’s going on, and then advocate on their own behalf so that’s something I try to do as a writer. And I think especially for Indian Country because federal Indian law is this really unique area of the law a lot of non-Native people don’t know about so a lot of educating is people that don’t even understand what legally a tribe is and have no concept of that. And then I think for those of us in Indian Country some of the articles I’ve done like what’s in the violence against women act, when you have a huge bill that’s complicated that people are adding things in at different stages, it’s helpful to just have like that overview of like, “oh okay, this is what I know is in this bill and this is the impact it would have on my community if it passed.
SB: One of the things I was surprised about is how little people know about, not just tribal sovereignty because I know plenty of Native people that argue about, what is tribal sovereignty all the time, but to me it was really, really surprising, and yet at the same time not, how little the people that are supposed to be in charge and making the rules and that know things, know about Native laws.
RN: Yeah, I think that judges can be really ignorant. If you think about it, it’s not like it’s an individual judge that’s a bad person, or any individual that’s ignorant about Native issues. It’s systemic. If you go to law school it’s not really taught that much except maybe in specialized classes. Are there questions about federal Indian law on bar exams? When federal judges are confirmed, especially when they’re going to be hearing cases that have to do with tribes depending on what region of the country they’re in, is Congress asking them hard questions about federal Indian law. You know, in all those places it just doesn’t come up, and so I think that it’s kind of not surprising,but it is disappointing. That was one thing I tried to sneak into, well not sneak into the podcast, but a point that I wanted to make while telling the story of Murphy. One of the takeaways I hope from the podcast is that more people feel like it’s an area that they should be paying attention to.
SB: Since you did have to do so much work and learn so much, what were some of the most surprising things to you that you learned?
RN: So one thing I learned in doing the podcast, and this actually didn’t make it into the podcast and I want to do some reporting on it afterwards, but in a lot of the briefs… this is going to be so in the weeds but anyway, in a lot of the briefs oil and gas companies, and Oklahoma said this too, there are federal environmental protection laws that give tribes almost like the authority a state would have to regulate clean air and drinking water within a reservation. So oil and gas companies were saying if you affirm the reservations we’re going to have all these extra regulations because of the clean air act and things like this. Well in the early 2000s Congress passed a bill, it was like a transportation bill, and ads on a rider that was this carve out for reservations in Oklahoma, so if Oklahoma pulls the trigger Oklahoma has to enact the law and put it into effect, but then tribes can’t exercise those powers that are granted by Congress. And Oklahoma is alone in that. It’s just like over and over again people, especially the people that don’t want the tribest to win, would make these arguments that sound convincing on the surface, like “Oh yeah, it would change regulations maybe,” but if you actually, one understand how reservations work, understand criminal appeals and things like that, when you really dig into the law the impact of the case on non-Natives in the state of Oklahoma is so minimal. And I think I just kept finding out other layers to that. The other thing Oklahoma has said in their briefs and their arguments is they've made this argument that the jailhouse doors will fly open and criminals like Murphy, basically Indians that committed their crimes on reservations would be set free. Criminal appeals are actually really complicated and there’s a lot of burden put onto the person that wants to appeal and there’s a lot of criteria they have to meet and some of that criteria has timelines, some of that criteria is, “have you already made an appeal and didn’t bring up the reservation argument?” because if you didn’t bring it up, or if you brought it up and you lost, there are all of these exceptions, and you have to even want to appeal because a federal sentence could be even longer than one by the state. And we did report on that in the podcast, when you peel back the layers the sort of fear mongering that Oklahoma did was just a bunch of smoke and mirrors. I was surprised as to how little the arguments held up under scrutiny.
SB: I recently heard that something like 60% of America will say that they’ve never met a Native person. Do you think that that has kind of played into the way things have worked with all of this, with ignorance? I mean, obviously it has to an extent.
RN: I think we’re just invisible so people don’t see us. There’s a sociologist, Stephanie Fryberg who’s done around it and I think it’s really great to look at her writing on it. It’s a weird stereotype to confront in people, is the idea that we are no longer here and that we no longer exist. I think that a lot of average, everyday Americans don’t know the very basics about contemporary Native issues. Sometimes I make this analogy that it would be like if I as a feminist were talking to people about feminist issues and they said, “You know, it is so messed up that you can’t vote,” I’d be like, well that was our issue as wome in the United States a hundred years ago but that’s not what we’re dealing with today. I just feel like people’s understanding of Native history, Native rights drops off circa 1890. When it comes to allotment, when it comes to boarding schools, when it comes to the Indian adoption project all of these issues that are even from the past century, let alone what’s happening today, I think most people don’t know thing one. And I think it absolutely impacts cases like the Murphy case or issues like VAWA and just our ability to advocate for tribal sovereignty because people don’t have an understanding of what contemporary tribes are.
SB: Sometimes it surprises me that people don’t have an understanding that there are contemporary Native people. And again that goes back to people saying they’ve never met a Native person. Has that happened to you, and you’ve had to tell them, “In fact you have because we’re talking right now?”
RN: Yeah, definitely. I’ll hear that from a lot of people. We’ll be out and they’ll be like, “Oh my god, I’ve never met a Native person before.” And I feel like I’ve had people just say some of the craziest stuff to my face. They’re just like, “Wait, what?”
SB: Sometimes it’s hard to hear what people say and not get mad at it, but you just have to realize it’s coming from a place of ignorance.
RN: Yeah, and I think that’s like, that’s one thing I try to keep in mind is that people don’t know. It’s not an individual failing, it’s a systemic failing. So how would people know. Where would they have gotten the information. They didn’t get it from school, they’re not getting it from pop culture, they’re not getting it from news and media and so I think what I get bothered by sometimes is when people come from that place of ignorance but maybe don’t want to admit it. I’ve run into that some. And that can be tricky and hard to have a conversation with someone, but I think for people that just don’t know because they don’t know, that’s something where I don’t feel mad at them for that, you know?
SB: So what’s next for you?
RN: That’s a good question. So I graduate from my Cherokee class in December and then I’m hoping that I can continue to work for my tribe in language. I will still have a lot to learn as a second language learner. Eventually I’d really like to teach or create teaching materials. Making this podcast we incorporated some Cherokee. We have a radio show made by Dennis Sixkiller so that exists, but TV shows in Cherokee, more books in Cherokee, more things in our language, teaching, I would love to do things like that, but I think I’m a few years out from that so I’d like to get a job where I’m still learning or working with fluent and first language speakers where I can helping them, doing things at my ability, but still just absorbing the language and being around it. And then I hope to keep doing journalism and keep writing. It’s funny, but I’m actually kind of new to freelance writing and I feel like things have happened kind of quickly with the podcast and with some other things like that. I came from doing organizing, more like community organizing, and I feel excited for the impact that writing can have on pop culture and I think specifically because of what we were talking about how one of the biggest issues we have in Indian Country is pervasive invisibility, and trying to find places where we can leverage visibility and covering issues and talking about issues in a different way, that changes that narrative that I think is that narrative change that we need for policy change. So that’s one thing I’m really excited about continuing to work on so yeah, I don’t know. Hopefully more podcasts, more writing, and more Cherokee language, but we’ll see.
SB: Seems like a lot of things you’ve been involved with, they’re important and I appreciate that you do them, but they are… maybe kind of heavy?
RN: (laughs) yeah
SB: I say that and you start laughing, but with all of that I guess the last question I’ll ask is, what makes you laugh?
RN: Oh, that’s good. I think through this interview I do the awkward laugh thing, which is a habit I need to break, but… I mean, lots of things. Learning Cherokee will make you laugh. It is a hilarious language. Being in a room full of Cherokee speakers is laughing constantly. I went to a speakers’ lunch today and the speakers were helping me come up with a word list and while doing that they were just cracking jokes, making fun of me, making fun of each other… I think a lot of people probably feel this way about their family or their community, but there’s a lot of very good teasing that goes on. So that’s one thing. I don’t know how else to answer that. I mean, my dad is really funny. My dad is one of the funniest people I know and so I feel like, and my mom is funny too, but she’s more goofy. My dad is where he can just crack a joke and you’re like, “I walked right into that,” you know? He’s like one of those people and my mom is really goofy, and so I feel like my family has just always been kind of like, we are silly with each other and so I feel like that’s just always been a part of my personality. If that makes sense.
SB: One of the stereotypes I have of Native people, being Native, that I don’t think a lot of (non-Natives) have is that Native people tease each other a lot.
RN: Oh my god, it is constant. Yeah. And it’s a sign of like, oh, okay we’re cool. If you can tease.
SB: Well thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. I really appreciate it.
RN: Yeah, thank you.