Native Mascots: Really, Still?

In 2018 there are still over 2000 schools and professional sports teams with Native mascots, despite decades of activism and academic research demonstrating the harms of these images. Today Matika and Adrienne are in conversation with Amanda Blackhorse, Navajo social worker and mother, who was the lead plaintiff in the supreme court case against the Washington Redsk*ns, and Stephanie Fryberg, who is the top psychological researcher on these issues and has demonstrated through lab experiments and surveys how harmful these mascots are to Native youth and how they reinforce negative stereotypes.

Guest Bios

Dr. Stephanie Fryberg is a member of the Tulalip Tribes, and an expert on the psychological and educational affects of social representations of race, class, and culture. She got her PhD in Psychology at Stanford University, where she is a member of the Multicultural Hall of Fame. Just last month, she was appointed as a Gerberding University Professor at the University of Washington, recognizing her exceptional research, contributions, and accomplishments in the field of American Indian Studies and Psychology. Dr. Fryberg’s research on stereotypes, race, class and psychological development led her to testify in front of the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs on the impact of racist stereotypes on Indigenous people. My favorite title of a recent paper would be hands down: “We’re honoring you dude: Myths, Mascots and American Indians.” She is also one of the hardest workers I have ever known, and one of my most influential thought leaders.

Amanda Blackhorse is from Big Mountain on the Navajo reservation, and is a Dine’ a social worker, activist, and mother. She was the lead plaintiff in Blackhorse vs. Pro Football Inc, a 2012 case which sought to revoke trademark protection of the term Washington R*dsk*ns. She attended haskell and received her Bachelor’s degree in social work at the University of Kansas and her Master’s degree at Washington University in St. Louis. While her training and work history includes focuses on substance abuse treatment, health care, and adult mental health in the Native communities, she has fiercely fought against the use of Native American imagery and stereotypes as sports team mascots. After filing her case against Pro Football Inc., Amanda founded Arizona to Rally Against Native American Mascots, and later launched the website NoMoreNativeMascots.org. Both entities are dedicated to spreading education, organizing protests, and working towards the elimination of sports mascots based on Native American imagery. She is a badass warrior woman, and this week was standing on top of a car in Arizona protesting Native Halloween costumes.

Resources

Stephanie Fryberg

Article: Monuments that Romanticize Conquistadors

NPR Article:

Transcript

Adrienne Keene: 0:00

Welcome friends and relatives we're so happy to have you here with us today and tuning back into this next episode of all my relations and today we are in the presence of greatness. Matika and I are so excited to have these warrior women scholars, sisters here with us. Our mentors are idols to talk about the issue of Indian mascots,

Matika Wilbur: 0:24

so Dr Keene, I thought maybe we could just take a moment to talk about the history of the r word and why this term is so offensive to so many of our people.

Adrienne Keene: 0:35

Well, I think there is dissent within the scholarly community about like when the r word was first used to refer to Native folks. It definitely is a word that throughout history was used in a derogatory and negative way towards native peoples. There's some folks who say that it initially was used to refer to the actual scalps of native peoples. There are plenty of ads and newspaper articles that from the 18 hundreds that refer to native peoples by The r-word, never in a positive way. It's one of those words that has evolved throughout history, regardless of its initial use or origin to definitely mean a racist phrase towards native peoples. It's not a positive term by any means to the point that most of my friends who are native won't even say the word. Um, and I know a lot of us feel that way, that it really is a racial slur.

Matika Wilbur: 1:37

Absolutely. I, I can say in my own life that, that anybody has ever used that term towards me in a loving way. Yeah, I know.

Adrienne Keene: 1:49

I bet. Can't even, I'm trying to picture what that sentence would sound like and I, I can't even picture that.[inaudible]

Matika Wilbur: 1:56

and you know, what else is that? It's not a term that I think is that we've like taken back and I have like popularized and to contemporary culture and, and changed its meaning to mean something other than, you know, a word that has a very deep, ugly racial slur attached to it. And it's not used in any other way. And you know, if somebody was to walk up to me and call me the r word, those would be fighting words, you know?

Adrienne Keene: 2:26

Yeah. I often, yeah. Supporters of the word who seem to think that it's not, um, not a problem in articles when they're quoted, they never refer to native peoples as The r word in the article. So if they're interviewing a fan who's like, yeah, I'm such a big, r skins fan and everything is great, then those native Americans came and they say that they're against the name, but they never say those r words came and they say they're against the name. So if it's not offensive, why wouldn't just use it to refer to us all the time? Hmm.

Matika Wilbur: 3:02

Good poem.

Adrienne Keene: 3:03

It's also a dictionary defined racial slur. Like it says in the Webster Merriam Webster Dictionary offensive often slur and I feel like white folks care very deeply about dictionary definitions for some reason. So there you go. It's in the dictionary.

Matika Wilbur: 3:21

The best thing about this episode to me is that we have the opportunity to talk with Doctor Freiburg and Amanda, who are two folks that have really done a lot of research around the ways that mascots and imagery affect our lives with doctor Freiburg, but also with Amanda in the ways that she's dedicated, you know, a dozen years of her life to trying to get rid of the r word from a public team and is still in that fight.

Adrienne Keene: 3:53

So I, um, I find that people often will say to me, get over it, or they'll say to me that it doesn't actually affect people's lives. Move on. The point is, is that people often tell us that it doesn't affect our lives and that it's not in any way harmful to our people and that they're honoring and attempting to, uh, respect us in some sort of way by having, um, uh, characterized savage looking creature as their mascot. And, and I just, I just can't believe that that's still an argument and that there's false data to support it. One of the important things to know is that with having Doctor Freiburg cure and Amanda, we have two different perspectives of how we can fight against these native mascots. Dr Freiburg is um, doing her research in the psychological and social psychology realm and education world and Amanda was involved in the court case against the Washington football team and that court case was one that started out by Suzanne shown Harjo. She decided with a group of folks that they would go after the actual trademark of the team because we know that money talks and so if you can hit the team by canceling their trademark, that means they can't make any money off of that logo or that name ever again because anyone could just make our words shirts and sell them or whatever and making money off marketing is a huge part of the NFL. They found this law that said that you couldn't hold a trademark on a racist term or phrase. They decided to use that to go after the Washington football team and they actually won. They went all the way through the court system and ruled in favor and said that the name was disparaging and therefore it couldn't have a trademark on it, but then they lost on a technicality and Suzan Harjo, they said that she waited too long to file her lawsuit that she was too old at the time of injury. Basically it was too long, so they relaunch the lawsuit again with young people, people ages 18 to 24 cause they were like, okay, if that's the only thing that you said we lost on, then we're going to do it again with younger people. That court case worked its way all the way through and they won again and then it started working its way through the appeals court because of course the NFL is not going to take that decision lightly. During that time, a band in California called the slants, it's an Asian American band. They named themselves the slants. They went to court to say that they should be able to hold a trademark on their band name because they wanted to reclaim that slur for their band and the court ruled in favor of them and so then it immediately canceled the case that was still pending on the Washington. Our words, because the thing that they were using to argue was deemed unconstitutional, so it meant that the case was lost. Can we just acknowledge it? This is not our responsibility to have to regroup and go back to court again over a racial slur. This is the responsibility of every single person supporting the NFL and supporting their, the the fans, the fans actually wearing this inappropriate clothing and participating in a very racist behavior. They have a responsibility as well. What do we say to the fans, Adrian? The research shows that over 60% of Americans have never met a native American. If you talk to fans one on one, they're not thinking of us as real people. Education is a big part of it, but I also think that there are signs of positive change. I think the Cleveland Indians is a good example that they have finally after like 70 years or something, decided to stop using chief Wahoo on their uniforms, which is blatantly racist image. And there has been little fan outcry for that. Like people are kind of it, at least to me, it doesn't seem like people are that angry about it. So I think it's going to take a change from the top. And unfortunately the top right now for the Washington football team is Dan Snyder who has said on the record you can use all caps that we will never changed the name. We see you Dan, get it together.

Speaker 3: 8:36

Yeah,

Speaker 4: 8:36

sorry.

Speaker 3: 8:48

Oh, my relations

Adrienne Keene: 8:52

joining us here today, we have Dr Stephanie Fryberg and Amanda Blackhorse. So welcome to both of you. Thank you. Hello. Thank you for having me. So let's just start with just introducing both of our guests today and I'm going to introduce Dr Stephanie Fryberg who is a member of the Tulalip tribes and an expert on the psychological and educational effects of social representations of race, class, and culture. She got a phd in psychology at Stanford University where she is a member of the multicultural hall of fame. Just last month she was appointed as the Gerberding University professor at the University of Washington recognizing her exceptional research contributions and accomplishments in the field of American Indian studies in psychology. Dr Fibers Research on stereotypes, race, class and psychological development led her to testify in front of the U S Senate Committee on Indian Affairs on the impact of racist stereotypes on indigenous people. My favorite title of a recent paper would be hands down. We're honoring you dude myths, mascots and American Indians. She is also one of the hardest workers I've ever known and one of my most influential thought leaders. And we're super excited to have you here. Amanda Blackhorse is from Kayenta, Arizona on the Navajo Rez and as a Denay social worker, activists and mother. She was the lead plaintiff in the black horse versus Pro Football Inc uh, 2012 case, which sought to revoke the trademark protection of the term Washington. Our words. She received her bachelor's degree in social work at the University of Kansas and her master's degree at Washington University in Saint Louis. While her training and work history includes focused on substance abuse, treatment, health care, and adult mental health and native communities, she's fiercely fought against the use of native American imagery and stereotypes as sports team mascots. After filing her case against pro football, Amanda founded Arizona to rally against native American mascots and later launched the website. No more native mascots.org both entities are dedicated to spreading education, organizing protests and working towards the elimination of sports mascots based on native imagery. She's a Badass warrior woman and just this week was standing on top of a car in Arizona protesting native American Halloween costumes. Welcome Amanda. Thank you. Thank you. Well, we're really excited to have you here and our season one of this podcast. It means so much to us to have you here. So we decided to title the project. All my relations and as you know, that's a really common theme throughout Indian country, not such a common theme throughout non Indian country. And so, you know, we are really interested in exploring our relationship based identities and our relationship to land, our relationship to water and our relationship to one another. And so a part of, uh, what we're doing in this show is asking each one of our participants if they could elaborate on, on that topic. And we realize that all over Indian country, we have these, these ways of recognizing all of our relatives. And so if you could sort of talk about that personally, what that to you

Speaker 5: 11:54

and also, um, if just, if you just take a moment to introduce yourselves as you would to a large group of people, uh, in the way that you feel most comfortable way to appreciate that. Well, I'm Stephanie Fryberg and I, on my father's side, I'm Talayla, but on my grandmother's side, I'm actually not Tulalip. I'm Snohomish, I'm still hopes. And on my grandmother's side, I'm corn, Alton Yakima, and I grew up in Tulalip and am very, uh, I think I've spent my whole life being influenced by what elders have said about the need to get an education and come back and help our children. Um, the term, all my relations for me, it has two, two, it brings, I think it brings to commitments to mind for me. One is that I have a commitment to every indigenous community, not just my own, and we are all related. We're all connected in some way, whether it's, you know, over hundreds of years of intermarriage, um, or really just that we stand in a time, a place where our futures depend on each other. And so that relationship, um, and holding up that responsibility to one another is really important. The other way in which I think about all my relations is going forward and going back. So when I think back in my past, my ancestors, I feel a responsibility to the fight that they took on to make us who we are today. And then I look at my children and I think about future generations and think about the commitment and the responsibility I have to make society today a better place so that our future generations have a better life than perhaps we have now. So that's beautiful. Thank you

Speaker 6: 13:57

all that, that's what pops into my head. Amanda. What about you?

Speaker 5: 14:08

Hmm.

Speaker 7: 14:09

So yet,[inaudible], Amanda Blackhorse,[inaudible] touch any buses chain sitting at any eventually chain though she ain't[inaudible] in. And we talk about something called care. Um, you know, everything that we do is supposed to be around and they fake Ebin on steam. And that means, you know, we have to, everything that we do is intertwined with how we relate to other people, um, in our relatives around this. And so I always try to live by the mantra of love for our people. Um, and sometimes I can be really hard. Um, you know, are, we're so complex and there's so many different layers to our community. Um, and you know, I'm sure just, you know, given where I come from and where everyone here comes from, we know we have our challenges in our communities, um, within our families, within our relationships. And so sometimes it's, it's hard to, um, to really just love our people, um, and stand by that and also have love for ourselves as as well and learn how, you know, what that really means so that we can, you know, be better role models for our kids and stuff. So that's kind of what I think about when I think about all my relations and it's so, it's so neat to see everyone here from very different backgrounds, very different tribes. And um, we all kind of share that same belief.

Speaker 8: 15:38

Awesome. Thank you.

Speaker 5: 15:41

So I think we just want to kind of dive into it and I'm curious to hear from both of you, sort of what brought you to this work. This is something that has been a lifelong passion for both of you, a project that you've been working on for a long time. So what first brought you to this work around representations and around mascot specifically?

Speaker 7: 16:01

Well for me, I kind of just fell into it. You know, it's not something that I thought I would ever do just happen that happens to us and know what we ended up working on throughout our lives are based on the struggles that we go through. And for me it was just experiencing it and seeing the, the detrimental effects of native mascots. For a lot of people, they don't truly understand the issue until they've actually experienced it or seen or have been affected by stereotypes and some sort of negative way. And for me, you know, I think it was a combination of me growing up on them, on the Navajo Rez, really sheltered and then leaving and then going, you know, to a completely different state and experiencing what I experienced, um, with theme, what happens at these games, the type of culture that is there, you know, the, the football culture and the, the toxic masculinity and the way that people see us and mock or culture and it's socially, socially acceptable and that's okay to do in society. I think that was the biggest shocker for me. And that's what led me to, to pursue those.

Speaker 8: 17:15

Hmm.

Speaker 5: 17:18

Yeah. I mean I think my experience has much the same. I have sort of the experiences as a young person and then the sort of academic awakening I think I would say. So as a young person, I went to Marysville Pilchuck high school and we were the Marysville Pilchuck Tomahawks and there was always this moment at games where, you know, they would do the Tomahawk chant. Um, and I remember in those moments feeling, ah, God to fit in, I'm supposed to do this. And then often at pep rallies, they, the ASB president who was always white would come out with this chief headdress on. And again, like I remember feeling just very uncomfortable with it. Um, but you know, it was back in a time when people didn't really talk about race and discrimination in the same way. And you know, I would watch many of my peers from the reservation disengaged. And I just remember sitting in that space, not, not sure, I mean not understanding and feeling uncertain, but then feeling like, oh, this is what we're supposed to do and is this who we are? Like why is this how we're representing our people. But then for me, I could, as an academic, I actually came about this and kind of a sideways piece. So I was very interested, again connecting back to the responsibility to the elders telling me to get an education and come back and help our children is I was really interested in how do these public representations of natives influenced native children. And so a lot of my early work in Grad school where we expose native students to public representations and looked at what effect they had. Well we determined the representations based on what was most popular in society. Like what were the most common images. And so one of them happened to be chief Wahoo because the Cleveland Indians were actually a good baseball team then. I don't think they've been sent, I could be wrong. Um, but they were real, I mean world series. And there was even a time period then when it was actually the Atlanta Braves and the Cleveland Indians. And so w we included chief Wahoo and the very first study we did it had chief Wahoo and Pocahontas and each of them was a different condition. Um, and then these negative stereotypes are really common. And so what really drew me to the mascot issue, which I had been an, I mean I'd certainly been around through the college environment, different cases that had come up. Um, but the results of that study surprise me. So the very first study we did showed that exposing native high school students to chief Wahoo lowered self esteem. And as we continued to do more work, the strength of that particular image continued to shine through. And so that for me, I mean, I've taken the role of really being the scientist. I haven't gotten so involved in activism because I think it's really important to separate those roles. And, and so, you know, we've really worked hard in my lab to, you know, have different people do stay statistics. I mean really working to maintain integrity of the work we're doing on bias. But I think for me it really came about by seeing how much it harmed native children.

Matika Wilbur: 20:58

Yeah. Processing. Yeah. I've, um, I, I remember when I first became familiar with that study and I was teaching until I love at the time and, uh, Shelly had asked me to put together a curriculum of a year's worth of photographic representations of native people, of contemporary representation so we could teach our kids, you know, in a way that was respectful and, and something they feel excited about. And I couldn't find enough material to, um, to expose them to positive indigenous folks from all over the country that wasn't photographed by nonindigenous people. And, and when I learned about your work, I was just at the time feeling so overwhelmed by the sadness and the community and by going to so many funerals in our community and um, and thinking like if, if negative representations are affecting the self esteem of our kids and I'm constantly having to lay my kids to rest because of, of early death for whatever reason, suicide or whatever it is that, that leads to those things in our community. I, um, I realized I had to be a part of creating an image that was different, you know? Yeah. But it was really, it was like somebody kind of just like a scientist saying out loud, like, this is true. Like, we're not making this up and this is real. This is the data. It was really meaningful for me. Yeah. And so I really appreciate you talking about that and doing that work. And, and I think it made waves throughout Indian country. Um, you know, that, I mean, that's how it affected me and I can't even imagine how it affected so many others.

Speaker 5: 22:42

Well, but I mean, I honestly see you and I as having very similar projects, right? Because part of what we're trying to do is to say, look, there's, I mean I love this James Baldwin quote that is about you have to make the world see us as who we are, not the idea of us. They envision, and that's not an exact quote of how he says it, but the content is there that you know, so much of the work we need to do now is making people see us as who we are as contemporary native people and not continue to allow them to see us through their ideal of us. So they liked the romanticized image. They like the Pocahontas, the chief, Wahoo. I mean, I've just been so surprised over the years. You know, you hear the common arguments that people make, for example, it's just a mascot. Don't need, if people have more important things to deal with. And what you just said is exactly why the mascots important that you're playing with our identity. When you look at health research, psychological wellbeing, education, it all comes down to how we're represented. All of those literature basis tie back to identity. And so how our identity as being used by mainstream society matters. And not because we don't have strong identities, but because we have to negotiate that public identity out there. And when we're not shown in these really highly capable ways as being contributing members of society, there are consequences for that. And that's the omission. You know, that's the what it allows non natives to feel good about American history. It allows them to feel good about, um, their, their lot in life where they're situated and not have to realize that they got there as a result of what they've done to other groups. And so it's, I mean, I really see us as engaged in a very similar project, right? Is How do we, how do we maintain an understand and change that representational space?

Matika Wilbur: 24:50

And I learned about your research from Adrian's.

Speaker 6: 24:55

There you go. And that's funny because aging was writing

Matika Wilbur: 24:59

that is from Stanford and I was reading about it on my Rez and we're from the same Rez. So that's it. That's all my relations.

Speaker 6: 25:10

Here we go.

Adrienne Keene: 25:12

Amanda, you said that you just sort of fell into this world and we're kind of thrust into it and you've been at the forefront of the fight for now, like going, I mean it's almost a decade at this point. Uh, but the ways that you've seen the conversations change either for the better or I know you face personally a lot of blow back from your activism and involvement in this issue. So maybe talking about, uh, if there's ways you've seen the conversation change in the time you've been involved and also the challenges that come with doing this work.

Matika Wilbur: 25:46

So for me, it's been about 13 years now. I've been involved and about, well, the year since the case started,

Adrienne Keene: 25:56

unfortunately our Skype connection wasn't that great. So much of Amanda's recording as inaudible. So we're going to summarize some of what she says and offer the best of the audio that came through

Matika Wilbur: 26:06

Amanda, along with other defendants. Marcus Briggs, cloud Phillip, go over. Julian poupon and Courtney's out. Guy have been actively fighting against the Washington, our words for over a decade now. Her court case was filed in 2006 it was tricky because it was pending Suzanne Hard Joe's case, which she eventually lost because of a technicality. The Supreme Court said that she should have filed the case when she was the majority age. Basically they said she was too old, which led to Suzanne and helping Amanda and other young people filing suit. For those folks who don't know. The case initially started with the trademark law. It was the underwriting administrative

Speaker 7: 26:44

court and the purpose was to cancel the federal registrations of the Washington team name, The r word and a logos to, you know, to get rid of their name so that the team no longer has rights to that and they can no longer profit off of the name and the logo.

Adrienne Keene: 27:03

When Amanda's case was filed, she was only 23 she just graduated and was off to the University of Kansas and around this time she started her family. She says the entire court case shaped her twenties.

Speaker 7: 27:14

I kind of grew up with the case. I feel like my young adult years, all of those years where you know, I grew up with it and so did my kids

Adrienne Keene: 27:23

in 2009 Susanne's case was officially thrown out and that's when their case picked up steam. And then finally, yeah,

Speaker 7: 27:30

point 2014 was when we won, when our big victory, they won their case.

Adrienne Keene: 27:37

It was a huge victory in Indian country. But then it went into the appeals court and just this last year they lost

Speaker 7: 27:45

and we eventually lost this year because of the separate case that has to do with the constitutionality of the piece of legislation that we use. In our case, it was deemed unconstitutional. Um, so we had no foundation and we had no real legal footing to move forward without words. It died in a courtroom.

Adrienne Keene: 28:08

The whole thing has not been easy on Amanda. She had to relocate. People have been horrible to her. She's encountered real bullying and it even affected her stability if that were happening

Speaker 7: 28:18

and eventually ended up losing my job because of all of it fell into some really hard times, lost my job. I had to relocate to Phoenix, which is why I'm here. Just so much, you know, because of the way that people feel about this case, people's opinions about this are so polarized, they're there for it or they're against it. That that's just the type of feeling that it evokes and people, from what I've seen,

Adrienne Keene: 28:47

she's still trying to regroup from the whole fiasco.

Speaker 7: 28:50

Definitely been a long journey and I kind of went through my mourning period and now it's like, okay, now you need to have your ceremony and figure out what to do next. You know? It's okay to just, it's okay to mourn for awhile and now you need to figure out what we'll need to do moving forward.

Adrienne Keene: 29:11

Amanda has been incredibly resilient and has continued to stay in the good fight, pushing native causes around representation all around the country,

Speaker 7: 29:19

feeling that invisibility, the invisibility of native people so strong, you know, were so invisible in this world. We have done everything. We're supposed to have done everything right. We have, you know, we, we have, um, Don our speeches. We've done our peaceful protest thing and it's like, what's next? I'm really glad that you touched on visibility because

Matika Wilbur: 29:42

you know, um, Dr Fiber guys, you've said that often you say you, that you like to think about how to make the invisible visible and, uh, you know, how has your research and your, your recent research with native truth and reconciliation, how have you, um, been working towards that in your own work?

Speaker 5: 30:01

Yeah, and that's really been the focus. Um, I think what we, the way we've shifted is that now we feel we have enough evidence to show that invisibility is the modern form of discrimination against native people. And that there's really been a practice of actively writing us out of contemporary life. And I, you know, I really appreciate what Amanda was saying because you know, it's touching us at the everyday level. And I think what people, I mean again, it always comes back to people think that the mascot issue is not a big issue, but actually it's a huge issue because it's very emblematic. It represents the way that we're being treated on every other issue. It just happens to be the most public issue. So when you think about the Megan Kelly issues last week, it's very similar. So there was outrage over black face, not outrage over red face. And You look at the Elizabeth Warren President Trump's situation. I mean here are two people who keep locating contemporary issues around whiteness and not around what's happening to native people. And we have to take control of that narrative. And what I love about the reclaiming native truth project and now illuminative right? Our next stage is really about taking that back, taking control of the narrative, working to both understand. So in our own work we've been looking much of the research. So they're kind of two really interesting pieces as we've continued to push that work forward. One is that many of the issues about bias against native Americans is actually about how white people feel about themselves. So once again it's about whiteness but it's about nationalism and the extent to which people identify as being American and how important that identity is. The more, um, the more American people identify with, the more comfortable they are and actually prefer the invisibility of native people. Um, the end, the less support they have for any social issue. I mean, it holds for the mascot issue for a material inequity. So poverty issues, issues related to sovereignty. This is a really big issue. And so not only have we been able to show those relationships, but what we show is that what underlies it. Like what mediates or explains these relationships is how people connect it to racism. And so there's this denial of racism when it comes to native people. We don't discrimination, African Americans experience discrimination. And I want to be really clear here because to me they do, this is not a African Americans really don't or you know, the, the oppression Olympics. This is really about a recognition that discrimination is discrimination and people, um, of all groups in America are experiencing it. But there are many indicators by which we are experiencing discrimination at much higher rates than any other group. You look at violence against women, you look at, um, police brutality. I mean they're just, you know, issues around health and psychological wellbeing, suicide, um, kids dropping out of school. I mean there are many ways in which that isn't about us. It's about how the world is responding to us. And so we have to get more vocal in, in setting that narrative, setting the story. And what's exciting about illuminating is we're going to do that. And so I think the work that, um, Crystal Echo Hawk and her team are doing, um, you know, the other research teams that have been involved in this work, it's just a really exciting time because they think we are coming together and native people are coming together in this country. And now really recognize that these narratives have to change and that we need for our own wellbeing. We need to take charge of setting that narrative and we need to push back against these situations that keep coming up. Like we have to be really swift and how we respond to things like the Megan Kelly issue and the Elizabeth Warren issue. And I mean honestly the Donald Trump tissue. Um, and so yeah, there's a lot of work to be done, but I'm, I feel optimistic. I mean, I think more than ever before, I do feel like we are coming together and it's because of activism like what Amanda is doing. It's because of the representational work that you guys both do through your blogs, through your websites, through creating new imagery. Um, I use it my class all the time because it's really important that we start to help people see that the mascot has one representation, but it's actually not so different than the Halloween costume and it's not. And we have to do a better job of also educating people in our own communities. So there's work to be done. Well, first of all, thank you so much for taking this time. We've been asking some of our guests like pretending it's 200 years from now, it's 22, 18. What do our communities look like and what's kind the world that you hope

Adrienne Keene: 35:38

for your, uh, the future generations in 200 years around some of these representations issues?

Speaker 7: 35:48

I think that it would be great to be in a world where we're not so invisible. Our kids can grow up. I'm not have to battle every corner outside of their community have to battle misrepresentation of themselves. I mean it's everywhere. It's, and my kids, they understand this stuff. I don't have to explain it to them more than a couple of times. They understand it. They're actually even more than I am. I mean, you'd give them some information and they just get it. Their minds are, are very, are very pure. They haven't been exposed to the things that we have. And so they're able to make these decisions just based on what is good and what is bad. But I think it's everywhere. You know, they come home from school and they say, look at what we're learning today. And it's about Christopher Columbus. It's about thanksgiving. It's about, you know, we went to a birthday party recently and they were, you know, the men were over here talking about how do they couldn't wait for the Washington team and, um, the cowboys to play for Thanksgiving in Dallas. And there's so many times where I just had to literally just keep my mouth shut because it's a kid's birthday party. I'm not going to, you know, upset these kids. But, um, and eventually I'm like, you know what, I, you know, I'm like, you know, it's a terrible tradition. And you know, we kind of went back and forth on the mascot thing with the parents, but, and then it just got super awkward and then they ended up leaving and it's like, Gosh, can I just go to, oh, can we just go to a party and not have to, you know, experience some things. But I think that once we have that sort of lifted, we can then, you know, there's so many different possibilities even with just empowering our people. And the reason why I went into social work practice is because, you know, when I went through my sort of colonization sort of awakening, where I'm like, wow, you know, if everyone can learn this, we could do so many things in our communities. You know, if we can all have this realization, this is the answer. Bringing, you know, people's Ma, you know, people who haven't necessarily thought about this, their lives change and then they affect other people. They affect other issues. You know, that's the type of world that I want to see what tribe, what comes out of that. The possibilities are endless and I can't even predict that. But that's just, I think the very basic level. That's what I would like to see and I can meet any

Adrienne Keene: 38:23

word fall. Thank you, Amanda. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us. We're so appreciative for the audience. Are there places where folks can support your work if they want to learn more

Speaker 5: 38:36

or support your work, where should they go?

Speaker 7: 38:38

Yes, visit us. Our website is www.nomorenativemascots.org Arizona to rally against say a mascots is my group here in Phoenix. And that you can follow us on Facebook. You can follow me, Amanda Blackhorse on Facebook and Twitter and incent Graham. Yeah, that's it. And I just want to say thank you to you guys. You guys are so inspirational. You are definitely people I look up to for sure that you do. Oh the feeling's mutual. That's why we asked you. I look up to you so much. Thank you. And we all kind of do our own, you know, sort of work and it all compliments each other and I think that that's awesome. And that's amazing. So I'm kind of a, been a fan girl right now, just like Danny out a little and trying to contain myself. But thank you guys so much. And you know what I am really appreciating right now and this time with our people is that the female empowerment and the dismantling of toxic masculinity and the dismantling of misogynistic behaviors in our community. So I look to you guys and I see that this is, this is what, that's what we're doing here and it's, it's great.

Speaker 3: 39:52

Oh Wow. Is that right? No. Oh yeah. I look forward to meeting you in person, Amanda. I hope that can happen soon. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Let me know. We should meet up. Yeah, I'm there all the time. So I'll look you up girl. Come on it. Okay. Awesome.

Speaker 5: 40:16

Can we switch gears? Education? Sure. Okay. I really like your concepts about identity safe spaces and I'm wondering if you could sort of break that concept down and talk about, uh, those small indicators that you're talking about changing and shifting. Cause I think the audience could really benefit from implementing some of that into their own classrooms, into their own spaces and, and so I'll give you the floor for that one. Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, identity safety, the way that we utilize it. And in all of the work that we do is identity safety's important for everyone. So even if we think about this representational battle that's going on, we can't move people if they don't feel safe. And so more and more we're recognizing that we need to be better at taking people where they are and then helping people to understand you could only know what you know and then we help you move from there. And so there are certain factors we know that influence identity safety. One is stereotypes, right? But there are stereotypes about all groups. So it's not just stereotypes about natives, but white people also have stereotypes. And when it comes to race and cultural issues, a lot of the stereotypes are that they're not good at these issues. And that also puts them in a position of threat. And so as we think about building allies, part of what we want to do is build identity safety, which means we need to have a good theory of making mistakes. We need to allow people to grow and to make mistakes and to recognize, I mean, I don't know everything about every other group. And I have a phd in this area. And what we really want is people to be able to have real conversation, have, have talk. And I, you know, when I think all the time about, you know, you hear people talk about white privilege, um, and the problem white vulnerability, the problem with that is that also makes white people feel threatened. And part of the work that we need to do is to help people to feel like they can be our ally. So other issues, um, another indicator of identity safety as cultural matching. It turns out the way that a context or an environment such as a school classroom or a school, the way the valid cultural values and norms that come through, they match for some kids and not for others. And so when it matches, when you know, the, the ways of being that are being expressed in that environment match how you've been brought up, that feels like a really safe environment. But when it doesn't and you're getting all these subtle messages about you don't, you know, you don't speak up enough or you know, why do you not care so much about choice or whatever the issue is, then those children are left to basically figure out why don't I fit in here? And there are these subtle cues in the environment that essentially say not you and children cold. These were extremely social beings. And so there are these wonderful stories. If you look at, uh, Patricia Greenfields work, Barbara Rogoffs work, there are these wonderful examples of the ways that teachers undermine young children of color simply by not allowing them to finish their thought because it's not the thought they wanted. A, one of my favorite examples from Patricia get greenfields work is the teacher holds out an egg and the egg is going to hatch. And she asked the child to explain the properties of the egg. And a young five year old Latina girl says, well, in the kitchen with my grandma, and she says, no, no, no, no. The Egg, the egg. And again, the little girl says, well, in the kitchen with my grandma and identity safety is in this case that teacher needed to step back and say, okay, I'm going to let this child finish and see where she's going. And so we call it an interpretive power. We need to help expand the interpretive power of people in positions of privilege. And so for that little girl each time the teacher said, no, just the egg. No, that five year old is coding. Oh, I don't belong here and my grandma doesn't belong here. And the story doesn't belong here. And it becomes this little indicator that pushes that child one step out the door. And it's all these subtle cues. We also get them through positive representation. So, and this is something that for native children is particularly a big issue because of the way in which we've been omitted from contemporary life. So it's really hard for native children to look out on social media, on television and the film industry and see our people, representatives, doctors, and lawyers, teachers, you can really across the spectrum nurses. And the problem with that is that we all go about a process of building identities. And so when you're omitted from that space, it's a little bit harder for you to figure out how to be in that space. But more importantly, it denies for children the contribution that our people have made. And often people think, oh, you know, native people, we have to give them things. And but tribes all over this country are giving millions and millions of dollars to states and local schools and working, you know, building infrastructure with no appreciation whatsoever. And that's important because when we deny that contribution, we also deny it for a young children and they don't get to see that I can stand up, I can take a stand, I can work hard. Our community, we give back and we do. Um, and so identity safety is about how do we control those three sets of it and of factors, this negative stereotypes, positive representation that allowed them to see themselves in the future, see what's possible for them. And then these cultural matching features. And so we've worked with teachers through a variety of interventions to really help teachers build a model that works for all kids, um, and that allows for greater variation in the classroom. So it's good for native kids, it's good for low income kids. And so it's something I feel very passionate about. It's kind of, it may seem like a totally different part of my research, but actually both the native bias work and the work we do in schools is about representation and what at the end of the day we're just trying to understand how can we change environments, how can we queue kids who generally don't feel like they belong, but you do belong here and you can be successful in this space.

Adrienne Keene: 47:02

Yeah, I can just listen to you talk. It's listening to you talk. I just keep thinking about the power of research in moving the needle on these conversations. And Matea told the story of her first kind of encountering your work. And for me, I was at Stanford in 2004 as an Undergrad and I think that was when you were a grad student. They actually just left. Just left. Okay. Yeah. So I was taking psych one, um, the intro psych class at Stanford and we had to for our final design a study and we had watched in whose honor, she's a documentary that follows Charlene teters in her fight against the University of Illinois Mascot. And that watching the, the, uh, documentary combined with my experiences at Stanford, which used to have the Indian mascot and would pop up all the time when I was a student there. Um, I decided that my final, I was going to write this study that was groundbreaking about how a native mascots influenced how native college students thought about themselves. And I presented it to my ta and he graded it and he gave me like a decent grade and he's like, have you heard of Stephanie Frankie? And I was like, no. Who's that? He's was like, she just left. All right. So it must've been, she just left here. Um, and this is the work that she is doing. Like you should reach out to her, you should talk with her because this is what she does. And I was a freshman and I was too afraid. Like the idea of reaching out to this native person who had just graduated was too much for me. But that was when I was first made aware that there was a native woman doing this work. And then when the study came out, everything clicked into place where I could be like, no, there's actual data. Like, let's point to this. I can send this file to people, like we can talk about it. And now as the things have moved forward from that first initial mascot study to thinking about these ideas of bias and about the ways that the end visibility piece comes into it, and talking to focus groups about the ways they think about this and all the pieces coming together to be able to have that tangible data and those stories that come with it. So we've all been there, but to be able to have that tangible data and the stories that come with it is so powerful and points to the need for more native researchers in these areas so that we can tell the research stories through our voices. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, I'd love to hear just broadly like your thoughts about the role of research in these processes of changing the narrative.

Speaker 5: 49:37

Yeah. Well, I mean obviously I'm a researcher and so I see some utility, but I mean it's also been very clear to me both in the work I've done with schools and the work around the mascot issue and other issues, right? I mean we're, we're doing work, my team is looking at a variety of different issues. Um, how do we talk about and build alliance with non natives around the lives that contemporary native people experience and, and really like how can we do that in useful and important ways that allow us to, to bridge that gap, right? So, you know, really building those intergroup relations. Well, for me science has been okay. Do you know Beyonce song? Listen. Yeah. Okay. One of my favorite songs. Right. Great. Well, I mean there's, there's a piece in it, there's a, a line in there about being at a crossroads and you need to listen. Right. My relationship was science is somewhat like that song. I feel a bit like, you know, science has an research has problems, right? We have gatekeepers and you know, it's hard for people to get into the field and it's hard to do research on a group that's small and it's hard to get data. And then at the same time you have this clock that you're working against and I mean, you're all too aware of. Um, but on the flip side of it, data has power. And so what I've really come to recognize is that 10 years ago I couldn't imagine being allowed to have the voice in spaces that I do today. And we do need more native scholars to step up young people to step up and become researchers because data gives us power. It's one thing to say, Oh, you know, we are the three of us. We stand together and this is wrong. It's another thing to be able to say when we have this undermines the wellbeing of native children. That's a very different and very powerful story. And so as we think about the work that we do, we have to think about what are the social issues we're trying to address, how do we, how do we address those? And then I have in the last 10 years really moved into intervention research and where we're actually taking what we know from research and trying to change these environments and contexts. And so we searched as important. It's, I mean, I feel like, you know, in my team I'm constantly giving my Grad students a little pep talk because it's hard and it seems scary and a lot of research is very independent space. Then you know, that's hard because you know, native people, a lot of people color word snot really independence, you know, we're doing it for our community, we're doing it for others. But then I have to sit in a cubicle by myself and do it like that feels. And so we're trying to also build new models of research. Um, so in my lab we run our lab two teams. So I have two teams, one team for each of the big research projects. And then we run all of our sub projects who that so that my younger Grad students, they have a team of people to work with. They have other people to connect with, um, to ask for help when they're struggling. Um, and, and I think it's really important that we start to also take back that space. It doesn't have to be the way it's been created. That's just sort of how, you know, the sort of middle class educated white influence. But as you know, a native woman, I can bring a sense of tribal collective as to to academia and create those spaces. For some students it's not easy, but we definitely need more native young people to step up and become researchers. And anytime I see a great applicant, I'm, I want them. So come on, work with our team because we want you to do well that's actually a perfect segue when you brought up independence, because I was into, I was reading about how you, you found that um, 25% of students do better in education when they are thinking about it in terms of community and tribe and tribe. And so can you talk, tell people more about that study? Yeah, so I mean what we did is we expose native middle schoolers to either a native or a white role model that was always the same gender as them, and then we varied the message as being very independence. Getting an education can benefit you in the future or more interdependent. Getting an education can benefit your family or your community or tribe in the future, and it increases motivation for native kids. When you use, first of all, the native role model and getting an education will benefit your community or tribe in the future is much more motivating to our children. And of course, not every single one, like there's variation among our kids, and of course, data reflects that too, right? We have a standard variance standard air that we report in the data, but nonetheless, it gives teachers a tool that they can use, right? Utility becomes a framework. There's no reason that a teacher can't say we're going to learn x and it's useful for you and your family and your community in this way. And really engaged children in that learning process. It takes that took like what, five seconds to say. Um, we all have time for it, but we all come to learning spaces with different motivational needs. And what we have shown in our work is that native kids, and actually one of my collaborators and former Grad students, um, Rebecca Covarrubias has done a number of studies that we've published together with Latin x kids and also with native kids around belonging and different ways that we can increase belonging by tapping into utility framing for a family, doing it for community and getting away from, it's a whole bout chew because for us it's not all about us. It never is all about us because all my relations[inaudible] it always comes back because you said that universities are making about making individuals independent. That's right. And that I would say that that's much of the problem in western belief system and that maybe that's why

Matika Wilbur: 56:24

we, you know, and also your level, you also made the association that our independence is linked to our ability to be successful. And so how do we encourage our communities to manage and maintain a sense of interdependence or a sense of relationality relationships or have a relationship based identity. It when, if we're having to choose independence to be successful in the Western model or interdependence to be successful in a tribal model. How do we, how do we integrate those two concepts?

Speaker 5: 56:55

Well what's nice is that I don't even think we have to integrate them. We can have context dependent identities and I think more and more, you know it's not that I went to college and became independent and forgot who I was as a tribal person. I grew up on the reservation. I learned, you know, through participation in my family and our community how to exist in the world. What I did is built another self. And what's true for me is over the years I've never ever felt like my academic self is my true self. That always feels like a self I'm having to put on. Um, and then when I go back to the community, that's what I get to be my real self from hanging out with my cousins. You know, we're joking around, you know, I'm spending time with my great uncle writing a book and listening to him. And in that moment that's when I feel connected and grounded in a way that I know a lot of other people who don't know what it's like to belong to a tribe and a community can't understand. But I think it's also really important for us to recognize, even as we work to push educators to realize that there are these other ways of being. We also want to be careful not to say the independence is a problem, right? Independence is one way of being and it works for a lot of people and it's connected with a lot of positive outcomes. But so too is interdependence. And so we have to get, because of the diversity in American society, we have to get educators to branch out and see beyond just their own. So again, we get back to this idea of interpretive power, that what we want from our allies, what we want from our educators, lawyers who work with our communities, people, social workers who come in is we want them to have an expanded cultural toolkit. We want them to not default to their way is the only way. There's many ways to be in the world and we can all learn, right? We need native kids to be able to see, oh, that actually wasn't about me, that was about, and they're just being, they're hyper independent self. That's just not my way. Then. It's not a subtle cue that's blowing us out as something that we can say, oh yeah, that's just them and I'm going to, you know, keep moving forward. And so there's a lot of really cool and exciting work we can do with this. We've been working with seven school districts and um, you know, really doing very, very tedious intervention work really with the goal of making this but collecting data on kids before the intervention, after the intervention, videotaping before and after collecting data with teachers. And at the end of the day we are going to learn how to give this away with fidelity so that it can be done well and we are going to create educational spaces that are identity safe for all kids, middle class, white kids, African American kids, low income native kids. Everyone is included in this. And it's a model that I think educators have been looking for, but it really just gives them a tool kit to work with so that they can, you know, engage their kids and feel like they have some, some tools to work with. So I offer you Matico a choice and your responses, I don't care. Right, because you don't, you don't live in a choice world. That's not a problem. I, as a teacher, I'm going to go back and say, okay, next time I'm going to try a different strategy with Metallica. And so I might come back next time and say, Matea I thought about you last night and I was thinking you might like and make the choice for you at the end of the day, you don't have to accept my choice. I actually won the day. The minute I told you I thought about you last night. And it's really helping teachers to understand that for some kids it is about recognizing that you're in a hierarchical relationship and you have that comes with responsibilities. And when you give them a choice, you're essentially saying, I don't know you. So what do you want? Um, and so it's really teaching teachers to see kids through a different relationship framework. Um, but the end goal is exciting, right? Cause I think we can take these studies we've done around belonging, role models, different kinds of utility framing and we can turn it into really meaningful work for, on behalf of native kids.

Matika Wilbur: 1:01:18

[inaudible] I love it. There's two things that I was really taken by when you were talking about this one that you said that pushing back against mascots is an essence. Protecting ourselves, you know, to kind of summarize this idea, when you say that, what, what are you, what are you really talking about there?

Speaker 5: 1:01:33

Well, I mean, one, we have evidence that when native people disagree with the use of Indians as mascots, it protects them. It buffers them from the negative effects of this stereotype. And so we do need our people to understand that literature. But of course the part of the problem is, is that pushing back also comes up against in visibility. So for some of, for some native people, they'd rather be visible through a mascot then completely invisible, which is just a terrible choice fall. Right? Um, but at the same time, teaching our young people, especially that pushing back actually protects you, it benefits you. Um, and then helping educators to also understand that we need to keep these out of educational spaces because we have a responsibility to native kids to protect them and to give them the best opportunity to be successful. And so we can educate them about the way representations work. We can also simply like be okay when they are against it. Right. I mean, it's interesting how, how much pushback are our children get when they try to stand up against the Indian mascot and we have to do more. And it shouldn't come down to native kids having to go stand in front of school boards and do things like that. School boards needs to take responsibility for protecting native kids. This is a stereotype. It's discrimination. I mean, there are laws in this country that say this is not allowed in educational spaces. This should not be a community debate. Right. Um, and when they do that, often the families that pay the price, our native families. Yeah. So we have to do better work.

Speaker 3: 1:03:23

Wow.

Speaker 5: 1:03:27

Okay.

Adrienne Keene: 1:03:28

Next we're going to be moving to Skoda, Skoda, which is our lightning round on any anti. Um, basically all it means is we have some questions in this basket and we're going to pull him out and answer them. Um, you're allowed to pass or also answer the person's question before you, if you feel so inclined. The rules are loose.

Speaker 3: 1:03:49

Okay. Oh, I used to pick. Okay. We're answering too, so don't worry.

Speaker 5: 1:03:56

Okay. What is your favorite book of all time? Ooh, good one.

Speaker 3: 1:04:01

Do I answer this? I thought I got to ask you

Adrienne Keene: 1:04:06

my favorite book of all time. I think that influenced me the most was first care whack. That because on the road like got me when I was like 13 that gave me this life. I have to go chow and then do heroin.

Speaker 3: 1:04:24

And then the next book,

Adrienne Keene: 1:04:26

James, you was the alchemist when I, it made me believe that the world wants me to succeed. I was like 16 and so those aren't my favorite like literature, but they changed my life than my right. Yeah. Right. Um, I had a really hard time. We had this question before in the basket and I like, I can't answer it. I have so many books that have been like so foundational from, uh, like I think about Harry Potter as being something that was really change my mind set on being able to imagine like a different world. Um, there's this book from the 1930s called I capture the castle, which is like so problematic on some levels, but it's also just beautiful. And I love it. And my sister, my sister and I have read it like a hundred times between us. I think we even stole the library book version of it. Um, and then all of the like native literature. So I could just go on and on. I love to read. I read a lot. Yeah. I,

Speaker 5: 1:05:17

I mean I definitely, I also love to read and I loved, I mean it's been fun having young kids and getting to read books with them. Um, but two books I think for me that were really, like, they came around at the right time in my life. Um, so one was women on the edge of time and it's really about, it's, it's an imagined world that has that kind of Walden, you know, feel to it. But it was really about how would the world be different for women if you could change some of these social structures. And for me, it really was the first time I really started to rethink the interface between inequality and identity. And so it was a really powerful, and it's the main characters are like, you know, this Chicana woman in this African American woman. And, and so, you know, it, it just, I just remember being in college and being like, wow, right. And so really powerful. Um, and then there were really sort of two authors, so yellow raft on blue water. I mean, I know there were problems with Michael Doors, but that book, the way that it talked across three generations and the experience for me really helped me to see the ways in which, um, the transmission of trauma, um, the way that history gets transmitted across generations, but then also the way that we come to identify through generations and our connection to both the past and the future. And, and so, I mean, the other is some poetry by, um, Harjo um, that I just absolutely, I, I've heard her so many times, like, um, there's one about the, what is it? The window on the set. Like, so they're standing at a window in Chicago on the south side. I mean like you know, so as someone who's not like a poet at all, but I heard her voice, I could just always here like I could hear the struggle. I had been there, I could feel it, I could see it in my community and it was the first time where I could connect literature to what my experience was like on the reservation and growing up there. I could seriously go on about like a hundred other books. So just stop there. Think of

Adrienne Keene: 1:07:42

one, I thought of one that is more specific and that is Wilma Mankiller his autobiography and it was as you were talking, that was the book for me. That was the first time I kind of saw myself reflected in a story because I just knew of Wilma Mankiller as this amazing leader in our tribe. The first like female principal chief, but I didn't know that she had grown up away and came back to the community and that she had this story of reconnection and that I'm in the book she talks about like all those experiences of like going to the stomp dances and going to these spaces. And completely resonates

Speaker 5: 1:08:16

with my own experiences too. And so to be able to think like this person that I admired so deeply actually shared a lot more with me than I thought was super powerful. And I returned to that book pretty often. Total side story about Wilma Mankiller um, I met her at every stage of my career and by the time I was faculty at Arizona and we, it was like the third time we got to sit down and share a meal together. I was like, you make me feel like I'm in the right place all the time because it's like, you know, I was at Kenyon, I was the only native there. We've got to have dinner together. And I just remember asking her like, how do I know that I'm not losing who I am as a native person here? And she was like, are you kidding? Like you are so much more than any one experience. You are a collection of values and, and stories and histories and you carry all that new. And I was like, okay, I got it, I'm good. And then I saw her when I was at Stanford and again got to have a conversation with her and so I just felt like she wasn't someone, I mean she's not from my community, but she was just very powerful, meaningful woman in my life. Elder who just, every time I talked to her it was like, okay, she's saying to me what I needed to hear right now. Okay, I'm good. We can, we can keep moving moving on. It's so amazing. I found out she and my auntie wrote letters to each other like later in her life when she was sick, my auntie wrote her a letter that was like, I admire you, thank you for your work. I'm sorry, like you're going through these things. And she wrote back and they had a correspondence and that Andy has not super involved in native stuff at all and she just felt like she was moved to right there. And as someone who gets a lot of correspondence from people, I don't know, like I don't think I would take that time. So she just totally, I wish I would have had the opportunity to sit down and meet her. She seems amazing. Yeah. As a side note, see that's why this is not really a lightning round. It's much anyone living or dead. Who would it be and why? I'm going to go with Trump today. I don't think it would help. It would help at this point, but maybe, I don't know. I feel like I can't answer that question because to be honest, I feel pretty down on a lot of different domains and I can't quite figure out like who do I need to stand up to be powerful in this space? And when I think about, like to me smudging has sort of both, it's sort of getting rid of the bad, but it's also like giving one strength and so then they're like people, I sort of, I want Michelle Obama to have more strength and I want, you know, and I start to think of like people who have stood up, who we need allies and that I think of people in our community who I want to stand up. Some of the elders I wish would stand up more and you know, speak up against things that are going on. Um, so I can't actually, I'm struggling to like put it in any one place. Um, but really like the world as it is right now is not the world that I feel comfortable in. And so I sometimes feel like it feels like the world is upside down and we all know what's upside down. Um, and we agree not to talk about the fact that it's upside down, but we just keep walking through the world and you know, things just keep dropping to the sky and at the end of the day you're like, why? Why can't we write this? And so there's sort of a very deep, unsettled feeling that I have about the way the world is right now. Um, but I keep hoping that ship is going to write itself or maybe we need to do a whole lot of work to write it.

Speaker 9: 1:12:28

Wow. Relatives. That's a wrap for the native mascots conversation. We want to take a moment to thank doctor Freiburg and Amanda Blackhorse for visiting with us these strong indigenous resilient women. Man, they've been an incredible source of light and inspiration for both a Jane and I and now hopefully for you too. Thank you listener. Thank you so much for joining us. We hope that you enjoyed this conversation. We love you and we're glad you're here with us. Be sure to subscribe and come back next week for a discussion with doctors. Kim, tall bear getting a DNA test. Native American. It's the spicy one. You're going to like it. Uh, you know, it takes a lot of work to put something like this together and I just want to thank our team that make it possible. Teo Gigliotti thank you Brooke and one Nida. TPJ Tennell no sponsors. We raised your hand too. We're so grateful for you. Peace and love friends. See you next week.