Native America Calling

Ya Tseen pushes the boundaries of the musical collaboration’s signature psych-pop sound with their latest album, “Stand on My Shoulders.” It’s the second full-length album led by musician, visual artist, and totem carver Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit/Unangax̂) under the Seattle-based Sub Pop Records label. The music features diverse collaborations from the indie rock group Portugal. The Man, famed singer-songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello, and the experimental hip hop artist Pink Siifu. It explores themes of kinship and collectivism but also pays homage to Galanin’s late father – lauded Tlingit silver carver and musician Dave Galanin.

Cochemea Gastelum‘s latest offering, “Vol. III: Ancestros Futuros“, completes an album trilogy that explores dreams, oral history, memories (both real and imagined), and Gastelum’s Yaqui identity. The new recording brings together the fruits of Gastelum’s 25 years in the music business performing with the likes of Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, avant-garde jazz saxophonist Archie Shepp, and the popular rap-duo Run the Jewels.

Do Native Americans need more encouragement to consume saturated fats? Native nutritionists are wondering how the new federal dietary guidelines just unveiled by U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. intersects with decades of scientific research urging the population with the highest rates of heart disease to limit their saturated fat intake. The new federal food pyramid shows up in recommendations for programs like Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), Head Start, Indian Health Service, and the National School Lunch Program.

Tribes in the Pacific Northwest are stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to seals taking a bite out of the salmon populations they worked decades to preserve. The seals are protected by the Marine Mammal Protection Act. They feast on fish that on which the tribes rely. We will look at how this situation affects tribal treaty rights and what tribes are doing in response.

A handful of organizations are working to strengthen traditional connections between urban Native residents and buffalo. Organizers in Chicago and Denver are among those working to put the animals closer to Native people who might not otherwise have exposure to a significant traditional source of food.

GUESTS

Dr. Tara Maudrie (Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians), assistant professor at the University of Michigan in the School of Social Work

Cecilia Gobin (Tulalip), conservation policy analyst with the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission

Dnisa Oocumma (Eastern Band of Cherokee), community engagement coordinator for the American Indian Center

Lewis TallBull (Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma), co-founder and president of Sacred Return

Dr. Valarie Jernigan (Choctaw), professor of medicine and director of the Center for Indigenous Health Research and Policy at Oklahoma State University’s Center for Health Sciences

Thaioronióhte Dan David (Kanehsatà:ke Mohawk) launched the news department for Canada’s Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN). In doing so, he gave Indigenous voices a national public platform they did not previously have. He started his career with the CBC covering the Yukon Territory. He reported on the Oka Crisis, among many other historic events. After establishing APTN News, he spent a decade reshaping a national newsroom in post-apartheid South Africa. We’ll speak with David’s family, friends and colleagues about his many accomplishments and the importance of putting Indigenous voices front and center in news coverage.

We’ll also hear from a founder of the Lakota Times newspaper on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The independent weekly newspaper ceased publication this month after decades in operation, leaving a blank space for Native news in the Great Plains region.

GUESTS

Marie David (Kanien’kehá:ke Mohawk), sister to Dan David

Karyn Pugliese (Pikwàkanagàn First Nation), host and producer Nation to Nation of APTN News

Drew Hayden Taylor (Curve Lake First Nation), playwright and author

Bruce Spence (Opaskwayak Cree Nation), producer at APTN National News

Sylvia Vollenhoven, journalist and filmmaker

Amanda War Takes Bonnett-Beauvais (Oglala Lakota), public education specialist at the Native Women’s Society of the Great Plains and former editor and publisher at the Lakota Country Times



Break 1 Music: Stomp Dance (song) George Hunter (artist) Haven (album)

Break 2 Music: Mahaha: Tickling Demon (song) PIQSIQ (artist) Legends (album)

President Donald Trump appears to have backed off his most urgent rhetoric, for now, around acquiring Greenland against the will of nearly every European nation and the vast majority of Americans. But the threat of a potential takeover of Greenland and other sovereign nations remains, with Trump officials also putting Cuba, Columbia, and even Canada and Mexico on notice for what Trump himself refers to as the “Donroe Doctrine”, a reference to the 200-year-old foreign policy asserting America’s dominance in the Western Hemisphere. The momentum for such imperialistic rhetoric is a reminder of a dark time for Native Americans and other Indigenous peoples potentially in Trump’s path.

GUESTS

Dr. Sara Olsvig (Inuk from Greenland), chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council and holds a Ph.D in Arctic studies

Andrea Carmen (Yaqui), executive director of the International Indian Treaty Council

Tillie Martinussen (Inuit), former member of Parliament of Greenland

Malu Rosing (Inuit), advisor on Arctic and global governance for the International Work Group on Indigenous Affairs



Break 1 Music: Tikitaummata (song) Susan Aglukark (artist) The Crossing (album)

Break 2 Music: Mahaha: Tickling Demon (song) PIQSIQ (artist) Legends (album)

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth says he is taking a “sledgehammer” to a federal program that many tribes and tribal businesses rely on. He is referring to the Small Business Administration’s 8(a) Business Development Program that extends contract priorities to disadvantaged business owners. Hegseth uses words like “fraud” and “scheme” to describe what he says is an outdated diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiative. His is part of an overall scrutiny of the program by the federal government. Hundreds of Native small businesses have accessed the program over the past 60 years, and some Alaska Native corporations have multi-million dollar contracts.

GUESTS

Jon Panamaroff (Native Village of Afognak), co-chair of the Native American Contractors Association and CEO of Command Holdings

Kevin Allis (Forest County Potawatomi), founder and president of Thunderbird Strategic and former CEO of the National Congress of American Indians

Nick Grube, investigative reporter at Honolulu Civil Beat



Break 1 Music: Shawnee Stomp Dance (song) Little Axe Singers (artist) Traditional Voices: Historic Recordings of Traditional Native American Music (album)

Break 2 Music: Mahaha: Tickling Demon (song) PIQSIQ (artist) Legends (album)