Changing the way we see Native Americans | Matika Wilbur | TEDxTeachersCollege

My prayer is that this experience stops. My dream is that our children are given images that are more useful, truthful and beautiful. I respectfully ask that you take this image instead smiling. hello jingle Zuni Pechanga persevering prosperous Baha Joni peaches Brandon and royal musician PhD elder and fashionista loving serve Havasupai - Layla Crowe businessman filmmaker scholar fisherman devoted lawyer fierce lawyer linguist veteran husband and wife we, you and I, the five-fingered beans have a lot in common we may look different on the outside, but inside we feel the same, we want the same things and together I believe we can change the way Native Americans are seen in the mass media.

We can make a conscious decision to reshape the way we imagine. Indian Country In my work I seek out and photograph positive indigenous role models of this century and today I would like to share some of those stories with you. This is Gloria Grant, she is the associate superintendent of the Chinle Unified School District, which is on the Navajo Nation. the land of the denied people her high school is the largest primarily Native American public high school in the United States, ninety-seven percent of the students are Danae and I loved visiting Gloria, she reminds me of my aunt, my Mom and my cousins, all wrapped up. on one lady and one thing I love about the downs is the way they always introduce themselves, they say she says I'm from the denied nation.

I was born for the total people of Cheney, the people of bitter water, the kyani, which is the clan of the wind when you present yourself like this it humbles you to recognize any of those people who have come before you it is also to recognize those sacred elements that make up who we are keeps us in line that we are humble people formed by these substances of the earth, that is Who I am for 15 years Gloria worked on creating a relevant Navajo curriculum in the Chinle Unified School District. She candidly reflected on the experience. I worked with nothing but healers, spiritual men, women and herbalists.

These were the people we should be amazed at they know a lot my academic degree was nothing compared to their knowledge they know the songs the prayers they know the ceremonies they had wisdom I have a degree actually I have a couple of degrees there is a difference you could I have all the knowledge of the world but it is wisdom that makes the change you need to believe in what you are doing this is my good desi friend little Rodriguez her Cheyenne name is very cute it means woman bearer and she is a member of the Northern Cheyenne tribe and OH he is fierce, he really fears that she has a master's degree from Stanford and sociology, social stratification and inequality and worked as a senior policy analyst in research and statistics at the Ministry of Māori Development in April.

She returns to New Zealand to finish. her PhD and one of the questions I ask all my participants is if there are any interesting details about their tribes that they would like to share, maybe some details that are not written in the history books. She says that, when she was young, it's difficult. to tell the story of the tribe, they really teach us as young people that we should listen more than we talk, they call us the fighting Cheyenne and they call us the fighting Cheyenne because we fight for everything we have here today. I have grown.

Knowing that we are here because 300 300 of our people returned from Oklahoma, they escaped in the middle of winter after being forced into Indian Territory, they were dying of starvation and disease, so two of our chiefs stole a knife and the little wolf He decided that they were going to run towards freedom and if they died on the way at least they died trying to get home. This is a truly amazing survival story of what a people would do to return home. They were chased by cavalry all the time. that is a reality that our people still live with, it is not something that is written in the history books, it shapes your entire life knowing every day that my ancestors died for us to be here, that really tells the story. strength of the Cheyenne people.

Gail, the little one, is a beautiful disease. mother, is a lawyer and worked for people for many, many years and when I spoke with Gail she told me something that really stood out to me: she told me that the Cheyenne people will always bring their people home, but after they pass away, even if they have been living on the reservation for many years, maybe they are living here in New York City, they will pay to bring them home for a Cheyenne funeral because that is where they belong, at home with the land, and you know when I ask you that .

What it means to be Indian enough. She said blood quantum measurements do not define who we are. It is through our connection to the land and the spiritual infection of our people that we become who we are and that is who we will always be. This is John Adele Jonna Santee Sioux and is a former American Indian Movement activist artist. She was a spokesperson for the Indian takeover of Alcatraz from 1969 to 1971 and later served as president of Target and was very excited to meet John. because you know, you hear about these rebel activists and I was like a little kid knocking on his door.

I was so excited and I didn't even know how to approach him properly, but I asked him, do you know what he learned about civil rights? movement of his time of his activism and said that he would have encouraged, he would not have encouraged Native pride as much, he would have encouraged more gratitude and humility, more something like Native and grateful or Native and grateful, pride is not our word, we are. We are not Indians, we are not human beings and all the tribes that you go to, none of them will identify themselves as Indian, they will identify themselves with the name of their tribe and that name usually means human beings and our own language and identity as beings.

Humans, the basis of everything is humility. Raymond Matz is one of my heroes. I didn't know until I met him. I didn't realize that the sacrifices he had made had already impacted my life. You see, he was. Arrested 19 times while fishing on the Klamath River, he was the first Native American to take his fishing rights case all the way to the Supreme Court and told me this story about how his net was out and they realized it was full of fish when a net full of fish will Bob and the feds were there with their big guns as were the reporters with their cameras and he knew if he went out and checked his net they would arrest him again so they are standing still. the shore and there was all this commotion he didn't know what to do and his grandmother left I'll do it and then she found out in her little canoe about two men singing in it singing a song of honor and she chose the net and the reporters came and took pictures and the cops came with their guns and that was on the cover of a magazine and then they won their court case, they won half of the wildlife fishing game in the Yurok tribe and then that set the precedent because Judge Bolt's decision and Judge Bolt's decision gives us half of the fishing and wild game in Washington, where I'm from and my parents are commercial fishermen as are my brother and my cousins ​​and most of the people in my town, so it was a true honor to have the opportunity to thank you personally.

This is one of my all-time favorite Cherokees. Her name is Adrian Keane and she is a fierce educator, a doctoral student in cultural communities and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and she is the author of Native Appropriations, which is a blog dedicated to talking about Native representation and I'm going to read one of my favorite quotes from your blog post titled Why Dumb Matters. We are taught every day explicitly in classrooms and implicitly through media messages. that our culture is something of the past, something that exists in negative contrast to Western values ​​and something that can be commodified and enjoyed by anyone who has twenty dollars to buy a cheap plastic headdress;

These stereotypical images like Johnny Depp's Tonto fuel the ongoing cycle and even We demand more of our contemporary existence and therefore the real problems in Indian Country simply do not exist in the minds of the dominant culture. How can we expect widespread support for sovereignty, self-determination, nation-building, tribally controlled education, health care, and jobs when 90% of Americans only see my people as one-dimensional stereotypes situated in the historical past or even more situated in your imagination. I maintain that we can't and that for me is why Tonto matters. This is Stephen Small Salmon, he works in inclusive Salish. immersion school in pend oreille in northeastern montana began working at the immersion school ten years ago because in her life she saw fluency drop from 100 percent to 10 percent her goal is to return the language to the Salish Kootenai people, He says I did the language all my life I went to boarding school but my mom, dad and grandparents spoke Indian to me when I came home so I felt honored by that.

I have a group of drummers. I dance to honor the elders who came before me. I enjoy working with them. The children, especially the little ones, are very happy all the time. I never thought we would lose our language today. I can truly say that we almost lost it and that is why today we are doing everything possible to save it. Tatanka means is Iguala Lakota Omaha and Navajo from Chinle Arizona is the son of the late Russell. It means I met Tatanka last year when he was in Albuquerque and my good friend Valerie said you have to meet Tatanka, he's a great leader and I was and I have to be honest with you.

You know, I just didn't think a 28-year-old actor was a leader and you know where I was wrong, he really was, there's something about certain people, I don't know if it's his family legacy or just who they are. are in, but Tatanka just spreads inspiration and doesn't really identify as an activist, he considers himself an actor, a comedian and a momentary motivational speaker and he says if you ever get caught in a room full of Indians and I'm really not sure you would said the right thing maybe you asked you know? Should I call you Indian?

Should I call you Native American? maybe you asked if you knew you were kissing your cousin. I found out about that at the reservation. always say, hey, it's an Indian joke for you, you can use it in the resolution, this is Winslow meddling, he's the former chairman of the San Carlos Apache tribe and a great spiritual leader to his people. Two weeks ago he was visiting him in San Carlos. Apache in Arizona took me to the prisoner of war camp that held the Apache people for many years and that is where I took this photo and when I went there I was overwhelmed by the same feeling I had when I was in Auschwitz and mr.

Nosy wanted to take a photo listening to the hollow ground formerly known as Hell's Whole 40 and we had a long conversation about the people, about the work they had done, the struggles they have faced to protect sacred sites, traditional ways of life and service to its people. and when I asked him how we recover from these historical traumas, he said that we have to remember that in the beginning there were four blessed gifts to the world and those are the four colors of the people if we go back to the ancient customs of the people. who are white, black and yellow, they are our relatives, that's why Apache there really isn't a word for other races except Tookie Tookie, which means they are our relatives, so you have to go back to the beginning and that beginning is when we knew . about harmony we knew that everything god created on earth has a spirit and when we all knew that and we were all together in sequence, we treated each other like brothers and sisters.

I have been traveling filming and collecting stories for over a year. and the experience has changed me. I really am not the same as I was before and the road has been hard for me. I have slept on people's couches and I have gotten tired and I have had to overcome my homesickness and the loss of my relationship is afraid of the lack of comfort, there is no juicer and I just got back from Louisiana where I photographed the Choctaw Kuna couple with an oak gazebo and an ax in the swamp like a couple. I arrived, you know, yesterday through nineteen tribes in the desert in Arizona and tomorrow we're heading up to upstate New York to photograph some tribes around here so you know my feet are on the ground.

I am war. Pony is moving and I have absorbed the stories of those who trusted me. its truth I felt the struggle and felt uplifted by our human desire to endure and that is why with these stories and images I would like to share some medicine with you, a new system of knowledge, a new way of thinking. new way of loving, appreciating and valuing, you know, and I felt like this was something I should do, you know, it's in my traditional way. I was this one Tulalip woman who omitted to offer final prayers among large groups of people, so I hope that You will take that, you will please me as I take a moment to do this to the creator grandmothers and grandfathers and the people of this place and those who came before that I and walked here.

We would like to ask for your special blessingtoday. I would like to say a prayer for the healing of our minds and hearts and for all of you here today. I would like to say a prayer for the two-legged ones, the four-legged ones, the winged beans, the sea creatures for the water. I would like to ask you to open our minds and hearts to take away the fear, take away the struggle and give us the courage to find a new way to respect each other, a new way to honor each other, so for all of you and for everyone. of my relationships I offer this humble prayer and I apologize for everything I did not say or should have said I am young and I still have a desire to learn and I hope you will have pity on me for that and with that I say teak wheat seed I raise my hand to you thank you everyone for being here