Podcasts about euro american

“At first the Euroamerican settlers could not fathom the tallgrass prairie. Stepping into it from cropland-speckled woodlands to the east, they entered a land of sky and horizon, wind and light, flower and scent, a surging sea of grasses that staggered the imagination. The prairie grasslands seemed to stretch on forever, a landscape that promised no enclosure, only intensity and exposure…” So writes Cornelia (Connie) Mutel in her book, The Emerald Horizon: The History of Nature in Iowa, a modern classic of natural history. Mutel has spent her life chronicling the fantastic and beleaguered landscape of her home state, and the place that she knows and loves like no other. Her life's work- seven books written or edited, all on different aspects of Iowa's natural history- could be viewed as a requiem: only 0.1% of the native tallgrass prairies remain in Iowa, over 97% of its' once wildly biodiverse landscapes have been converted to human use, agricultural runoff and toxic spills have poisoned over half of the state's waterways and thousands of its residents' wells, the draining of wetlands causes massive, budget-breaking floods, topsoil loss is at crisis level. The current model of Iowa's agriculture does not work for anyone, and there seems to be no political will to change it. But Connie Mutel, a writer steeped in the understanding of time, nature, and change, does not believe in requiems. We discuss her latest and perhaps most important work, Tending Iowa's Land: Pathways to a Sustainable Future, where she brings together a diverse selection of expert voices from across Iowa, all focused on the very possible and very practical goal of fixing that which is broken, and restoring the miracle that is Iowa.   --- The Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring is brought you by Backcountry Hunters & Anglers and presented by Silencer Central, with additional support from Decked, Dometic, and Filson.  Join Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, the voice for your wild public lands, waters, and wildlife to be part of a passionate community of hunter-angler-conservationists.  BHA. THE VOICE FOR OUR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS AND WILDLIFE. Follow us: Web: https://www.backcountryhunters.org Instagram: @backcountryhunters Facebook: @backcountryhunters

A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists. Tonight on APEX Express join host Miko Lee as she talks with Asian American theatre artists with works coming up soon. Miko talks with Sunhui Chang and Joan Osato about their world premiere at the Magic Theatre. She speaks with Ethnotech's Nancy Wang and Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo and finally we hear from playwright Jiehae Park on the world premiere of the Aves at Berkeley Rep. Though we may be immersed in a complicated, challenging and very disturbing world, as Grace Lee Boggs said, “A people exercising their creativity in the face of devastation is one of the greatest contributions to humankind.”     Our Guests discussed: April 2-20, 2025 Magic Theatre The Boiling, a tale of american nihilism tickets, wheelchair accessible Joan Osato SFFILM Cedar Road Iyagi Grant Applications:  sffilm.org/artist-development Ethnohtec May 22 Ethnohtec https://sfpl.org/events/2025/05/22/panel-strong-bamboo-3-part-1 Strong Like Bamboo SF Library Koret Auditorium Free https://sfpl.org/events/2025/05/25/performance-strong-bamboo-3-part-2   Coming Up Next Transcript   Opening: [00:00:00] Apex Express Asian Pacific expression. Community and cultural coverage, music and calendar, new visions and voices, coming to you with an Asian Pacific Islander point of view. It's time to get on board the Apex Express.   Ayame Keane-Lee: [00:00:34] Tonight on APEX Express join host Miko Lee as she talks with Asian American theatre artists with works coming up soon. Miko talks with Sunhui Chang and Joan Osato about their world premiere of the boiling at the Magic Theatre. She speaks with Eth-Noh-Tec's Nancy Wang and Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo and finally we hear from playwright Jiehae Park on the world premiere of the aves at Berkeley Rep. Though we may be immersed in a complicated, challenging and very disturbing world, as Grace Lee Boggs said, “A people exercising their creativity in the face of devastation is one of the greatest contributions to humankind.” So join us on APEX Express as we join some creative conversations.   Miko Lee: [00:01:17] Tonight on Apex Express, we have the collaborators behind Magic Theater and Campo Santo's, world Premier of the boiling: a tale of American nihilism. Welcome playwright Sunhui Chang and video artist Joan Osato.    Joan Osato: [00:01:30] Thank you for having us on, Miko.    Miko Lee: [00:01:33] Yes. First I'm gonna start for each of you with a personal question, which is an adaptation from the amazing Chinaka Hodges. And my question for each of you, and let's start with Joan first, is who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you?    Joan Osato: [00:01:49] I consider myself a child of immigrants in this country. My lineage Japanese, Japanese American by way of Hawai'i a lot of my lineage is carried by that diaspora, but also by my history at Youth Speaks for a couple of decades. And so I consider that my family also and Camp Santo.    Miko Lee: [00:02:12] Yay. Love that. And then Joan, what legacy do you carry with you?   Joan Osato: [00:02:17] A legacy of resilience and I know how to farm. I like to think of myself as a gardener and a great farmer. so that's the legacy I carry with me.    Miko Lee: [00:02:29] Thank you so much, Joan. Sunhui, what about you? Who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you?    Sunhui Chang: [00:02:36] Well, I'm part of the diaspora, the Korean American diaspora that happened in the seventies. My family immigrated to the island of Guam in 1976, as part of developing the island of Guam. As, you know, the Korean diaspora at that time in the seventies, we were kind of shipped around the world a little bit, for our labor. There's a huge Korean population of workers that also went to West Germany and other places, Guam is not as well known, but it was definitely part of that. So in 76, our family landed on the island of Guam.    Miko Lee: [00:03:11] Wow, that's so interesting. And then what about what legacy you carry with you?    Sunhui Chang: [00:03:16] I think my legacy I have to say is that definitely of the immigrant working class, you know, as with a Korean diaspora, there's some things of, like the East Coast Koreans, as you may know, have a different history of being much more educated whereas kind of the west coast and the Korean diaspora during the seventies towards islands like Guam, we were much more working class. So that is my legacy. I have working class roots that, I never seem to be able to get away from and I don't want to.   Joan Osato: [00:03:47] Shoot. That's the same for me too, my working class roots.   Miko Lee: [00:03:51] So it sounds like you two have some commonalities there and that seem to have flowed over into the creation of this play. Sunhui can you talk about an overview of this brand New World premier, the boiling.    Sunhui Chang: [00:04:05] Simply put, it's a story of a tracker and a tracer, a government team that was formed to track and trace down carriers of the virus called the Boiling. and it actually. starts out as a chase, but what we really dig into is more about, identity, home, what it means to be, what is home and what it means to be, at home, and also, about redemption, you know, through our lives, you know? So it's multi-layered, so it's hard to kind of explain in a log line. but it's a chase story that kind of delves into the characters.    Miko Lee: [00:04:40] And I understand this was inspired by a real news story. Can you tell us about that real news story?    Sunhui Chang: [00:04:46] Oh, yeah. the genesis of this we have to kind of go back to the beginning of the pandemic back to December, 2019. I had just finished a gallery installation in San Francisco and then at the end of that I flew back to Seattle. Now at that period of time, there was this talk that there's this virus that's in China. That might affect us, we're not quite certain, but it could be something that could lead to a global pandemic, but we didn't quite know at that time. But then when I landed in Seattle, March 17th, 2020 was the date that Governor j Insley shut down the state of Washington. So that is a big take 'cause, As you know, we all hunkered down at that point. And then in one of the hunkering down is of course, I was watching the news and one of the news story, happened to come across where they were talking about a Econo Lodge motel that the state of Washington had purchased to turn into a quarantine motel, a voluntary quarantine motel where people who, felt that they were infected could check themselves in, to be evaluated. So the story goes that two people had actually checked into this motel totally voluntarily, but one of them the morning after. And this is captured, with a surveillance video. We actually see this one person walking out of their room at the motel. We see them walk across the street to a gas station with a market. Now the surveillance actually then switches over to the gas station surveillance, which shows him walking to the gas mart, walking inside, making a purchase, and then actually walking out. And then we see another footage of the surveillance that's going from the outside surveillance of the store. We actually see him, walk towards the bus stop, get on a bus. And then just the bus leaves and that is it. And the news story ends with that. They had no idea where this person drifted off to. and for me it just, it had this weird, eerie fascination that just grabbed me. and remember at that time, Seattle was such a hotbed for Covid. It was where the nursing home happened, where so many of the elderly had passed on, and we didn't even wanna secondhand touch a surface, so there was a real heightened sense of alarm that was happening. So seeing this story of this potential infected person just drifting off. And then what made it eerie was that I wanted to see what followed up. So for days after I kept watching the news, what is the follow up? What happened? It was never brought on again. Never. Another mention I. and for me that actually made it even more eerie. So it really sat with me, to the point where I had to actually just write down the first words of my, the first line of my story, the boiling. And the first line was, “Carrier X stepped out of the tightness of his room and breathed deeply the soft drizzle of the Pacific Northwest to cool his body from the growing fever.” So those were the first words that I wrote. and then it was just kind of off to the races 'cause the way I write Miko is that I'm very much organic. I kind of set a story and then I become a vessel of the story. I don't come to the story with agendas or anything of that nature. After the first sentence, it just kind of took a life of its own. So that's it.    Miko Lee: [00:08:18] That is amazing. I did not hear that story. and the real news story. That is wild. That would've sat with me too. Joan, had you heard of that story before being brought onto this project?    Joan Osato: [00:08:29] Well, when we did a reading during the pandemic. I did hear parts of that story, but I think it's also a story that a lot of us can relate to, because like here in the Bay Area, of course, we also experienced severe lockdown. Whereas in other parts of the country, I think that the type of lockdown, although being, you know, trying to be really safe for people also induces this sense of isolation and paranoia. And so wanting to get information about who's getting affected and like, where's it happening? I think that was all like kind of a mini obsession of like. Everyone who experienced the pandemic, you know what I mean?    Miko Lee: [00:09:10] How do you think that pandemic has had an impact on theater and on audiences?    Joan Osato: [00:09:16] Well on the most basic levels, you know, like what theaters are grappling with, just in terms of coming out of and recovering from pandemic, I think everybody understands that, you know, theater in general is struggling because of the changes that happened in terms of, Perhaps what people place importance on the isolation that we went through, the kind of, paranoia about being in groups of people and in space and in community together. And so, that affects, you know, theaters and you can, you can see that since the pandemic some have closed. But I also think that, the effects are also that, groups like The Magic or Campo Santo during the Pandemic, we never stopped working and we just figured out innovative ways to, you know, support artists, do radio plays, do, amalgamations of like filming. And so a lot of us became like very, very adept at different types of media that are theatrically based, like Sunhui's play, but that we had to carry out, like online or, you know, through other types of media.    Sunhui Chang: [00:10:30] I just wanted to add on that is that, the pandemic, you know, there there was definitely things that really affected us as humans in such a negative way, but what I also found admiring was, with Joan and Camp Santo and the artists and trying to find creative ways of, still letting, having an outlet. it really was that the story of the boiling would not have taken place if artists such as Joan and Camp Santo. If they didn't, if they weren't able to pivot and make these kind of online transitions at the moment, such as doing readings and such, cause that's how the story was first brought about. So, in many ways it was hard. But also I do appreciate these artists who have been able to kind of keep going and didn't shut down and kept letting the creative creativity somehow flow. I so appreciated that.    Joan Osato: [00:11:20] Yeah, it was definitely a beautiful thing. And then, you know, Miko, throughout the pandemic, you know, we would have like online viewings of our archives or we would sit with audience members, who were joining us and basically hang out for like three, four hours online. So trying to create the space not only to kind of generate support for artists who are. Completely outta work, but also to, just connect us even though we were. You know, obviously under these conditions where we couldn't see each other in person and it wouldn't have been advisable for us to even try to gather, you know, because, I consider us, you know, in-inside of our community extremely vulnerable. So, you know, just grappling with that tension, was really hard.    Miko Lee: [00:12:09] Yeah. And I kind of hear both of you saying that in those really tough times, there was this push to get more creative, to find more ways of reaching people and, and to look at ways that we can, um, innovate given that, and I'm wondering, given our current political climate where things are changing every hour now. I mean, the first Trump administration, it was kind of every week and now it feels like every hour a new kind of devastating thing is happening. I'm wondering how you both think theater can be used as a tool for social change.    Sunhui Chang: [00:12:41] For me Theater and, and really the arts, what I do love about it, is this really, and I kind of touch upon it with the story and such, and it really hit me during, COVID, during the pandemic, is that it's really for me, what it does is listening.  I know as artists, we love telling our story. We love telling what we see, our interpretations and things like that. but I think what I have really come about with the arts is the fact that I like the other side of it is the listening part, for me with my collaborators, that I have to listen. You know, it's not about just me talking, but just listening. So for me, the theater aspect of it and the art aspect of it is that I hope that, as we go through these tough times, what it really has us doing is listening to each other more. One of the things that I really feel in that way and appreciative of listening is the fact that without listeners, there's no storytelling. Listening is really the foundation of our humanity. You know, I mean, just talking really gets us nowhere. What really makes us move forward collectively is listening.   Joan Osato: [00:13:50] Mm, Sunhui heard that. Yes, I heard that. [laughs] As far as theater and kind of responding to the moment. I think, you know, the type of theater that we embody is always speaking to politics is always speaking to, you know, the culture of the moment and especially it's speaking, because a lot of Campo and the Magic's work is like based inside of, theater companies that live, work, breathe, are about by and for the communities, like in the Bay Area right. So there's just no way of separating the kind of politics from what happens like inside of these plays. For the boiling in particular though, I think there's a lot of stuff that, that people can think about and here inside the play that will resonate with them. One, we're, we're talking about a hypothetical, but it's not really a hypothetical situation about a pandemic, a very, harmful, very urgent, current conditions. You know, when there's no CDC to have, get your information from when there's no public health that's functioning in this country, we can, we can see what happened during the last pandemic and just make that comparison and draw those comparisons, you know, what would happen in the next one. Right. also that, you know, to me and Sunhui, you can totally. speak to this, but to me, Carrier X, the person that represents is this kind of violence and nihilism that exists inside of the, you know, the current, you know, psyche or administration right at this moment. this real like. It's definitely violent to the point of not caring whether people live or die and so I, you know, I think that's very striking about the play and it happening right now as premiering it right now, because I think people can draw a lot of parallels between. Like this personality, this complete disorder that seems to be going on, like not only in American politic, but amongst the large population in America itself. You know what I mean? That kind of disregard.    Miko Lee: [00:16:18] Joan, that is so interesting. I wonder if you both can talk a little bit more about Patient X as this kind of figure of narcissism and selfishness that we're seeing that's happening in our broader politics right now.   Sunhui Chang: [00:16:31] Yeah, Carrier X, he does, you know, he does kind of represent this nihilism of American nihilism, which to me it's really historical and cultural. we could go all the way back to the nihilism of manifest destiny, feeling like we have something to do that it was even, maybe. God's order, you know, a higher order that was given to us. And we have to take on this task and finish the task at no matter what cost, right? By any means necessary in a way. and that nihilism for me, I. historical, but when I see it currently that happens now, is that I see nihilism in the fact that people want to cut off Medicaid, Medicare, these social programs that are not just help people actually are crucial and it's really, it's a survival. So for me, when I see that kind of disregard, yes, it's not this overt violent nihilism, but I do find it to be so nihilistic in the damage that it does to all of us, you know? And I do find That this nihilistic violence, there's two flip side to it. The people who are directly affected, and harmed by it, but also the people who carry it are out, who carry out these acts of nihilism they do get damaged as well. So for me, so yeah, the nihilism, it's taken on a different life, but. It's a part of America and it seems to continuously carry forward through our days.    Miko Lee: [00:18:00] And Sunhui with the intentional characters, the lead being Korean American adoptee, and, the detective being a black woman, and then carrier X being white. Share with me a little bit about the racial element and your intention behind making those characters of those, ethnic backgrounds.    Sunhui Chang: [00:18:20] You know, there was no intention, as I said, I just write very organically. So there was never this thought of, oh, here's the three characters. One's gonna be a Korean adoptee, one's gonna be a black homicide detective, and another's gonna be a white carrier. It was never that I. It's hard for me to explain the process, but those were the characters that just kind of naturally came out. for me, it just felt fitting to it. So, I don't have agendas as I write, as I said, so there was none of that. It was just for me, as a vessel of the story, as a story was coming out, it was just. Oh yeah, this character is this, this character is that, and this one is this. so no intention. But, once those things came alive, then the story kind of, evolves around what's, organically happening. So yeah, there wasn't intent, but at the end of it all, of course, I go, oh, I see what has come about and how the story is so, In hindsight now going, oh yeah, I did this. for me, it feels right in the, in the fact that for me, this is America Miko. To me, I, I don't write with an Asian American kind of pen, or, or a brown person pen for me, I actually first and foremost say I'm an American. There's no way around it. and it's simply put too, is that. I am an American. so for me, these characters are just. Natural. And when I know about me being American and knowing about American history, these characters just naturally fit in, you know?    Miko Lee: [00:19:50] Yep. Thank you so much. I've read that you talk about new Americana theater. Mm-hmm. And also Joan, you were talking about how during the pandemic, you know, everybody's learning new techniques, new ways of storytelling, just because everybody was forced to with the lockdown. Sunhui, can you talk more about what you believe New America Theater is all about?    Sunhui Chang: [00:20:12] For me, the reason why I kind of see it as new Americana theater, first off, 'cause it's, it's American, the stories that come out of me is very American. you know, and I recognize it. And for me, I, it is, this is part of the American fabric, so that's why it's called Americana. And for me, I say it's new. 'cause what's new is the perspective that it's coming out from. perspective, which brings on different characters, a different storyline, you know, different message. So yeah, that's, that's it for me when I refer to it as New America in the theater. It's just that, that it's, it's an American tale that now we've been able to incorporate new voices into.   Miko Lee: [00:20:54] I noticed there's a really large list of collaborators. Of course the two of you, but then there's a lot of other people as well. Can you talk about that creative process, how you all were able to work together, how you made decisions about, oh, this is the part we're gonna use film, this is the part we're gonna use, movement.   Sunhui Chang: [00:21:11] Like I said, it's very much organic. Our third major collaborator is Ellen Sebastian Chang. she is the director of the show, and when me, Joan and her, we first started delving into it, we did. It was just sitting down and talking a lot. Going through the scripts, the different skill sets that we bring in. And really it was through the dialogue miko and of us talking with each other, but also listening to each other. and that was a big part is that as we started listening to ourselves, we came out with this direction.    Miko Lee: [00:21:47] And what would you both like the audience to walk away with after seeing the boiling?   Joan Osato: [00:21:52] I think, you know, as Sunhui talked about this, ritual of deep listening and so, the play doesn't guide anyone towards some natural conclusion that they should have about, you know, it's, it's not saying you, you must believe this, it's really leaving it up to the viewer, the listener, to draw their own conclusions. And, I think that, that people who come to this will be incredibly moved. I think that they will see a lot of parallels with what we're going through now and what we've gone through. And examine there is a kind of shameful history that we all need to grapple with, whether we own it or not. You know, Sunhui had talked about manifest destiny and that being like one of the founding, you know, kind kinds of principles that this country is founded upon. And there are many, many others That I think the play touches on which give pause and, and give the people who are engaging with this, room to think and reexamine their own actions in the world and how they approach it.   Sunhui Chang: [00:23:02] I'll just mention as an aside, you know, some of the things that we're looking at is. Our disconnect from the natural world and how that has impacted the natural world. Right.  I think Joan is spot on in, in that about, yeah, first and foremost, I do find this so important once again to say about listening. I do. I, that is the big thing that I would love is that for us to, if we really wanna truly have dialogues, and especially with people who we disagree with, and there is a lot of disagreement in this world right now. and for me, yeah, to, Get us back to a place where we could really listen to each other and not be in such a place where all we wanted to do is kind of say what we have to say. It's almost this thing of, oh, you know, the other has to listen, the other has to listen. And I really would like it that it becomes kind of more inward that we all say, Hey, it is time for me to listen. And then of course just the fact that when, as we listen to each other, what I do find and what I hope that others find as well, is that we're much more connected and we have so many things that tie us together than separate.   Miko Lee: [00:24:19] Well, thank both of you so much for joining us on Apex Express. Is there anything else you wanna add?   Sunhui Chang: [00:24:24] Just one thing, Miko, one of the elements of this play, is this natural world with birding and I would love to just, one of the big inspiration is that it's just a quote from Emily Dickinson and the quote is, “hope is the thing with feathers.” For me, I would love for people to kind of sit with that and think about that and what that means for us as human beings in relationship to the natural world, you know, and the importance of that.   Miko Lee: [00:24:52] Oh, that's such a beautiful visual image. Thank you so much for sharing that. I appreciate both of you for sharing your time with me.    Joan Osato: [00:24:59] Thank you, Miko.    Sunhui Chang: [00:25:00] Thank you Miko    Miko Lee: [00:25:01] The Boiling is a brand new play, and it's a story of a Korean American adoptee Brian, who's a virologist from the Midwest, and a former homicide Detective v, a black woman who lives in the Pacific Northwest, and they're partnered to do this trace and track from north to south. They're following David, a white nihilistic carrier of a feverish virus called the Boiling. This world Premier Show opens to the magic theater and runs from April 2nd through April 20th. You can get more information about this show, including links to buy tickets at our show notes on kpfa.org/programs/apexexpress.   Ayame Keane-Lee: [00:25:42] Next we'll listen to an excerpt from The Camp, the first opera on the Japanese American Concentration camps during World War II. The camp premiered from February 22nd to March 2nd, 2025 at the JACCC Aratani Theater in Los Angeles. Composed by Daniel Kessner, who combines modern classical with Japanese instruments, A libretto by Lionelle Hamanaka, directed by Diana Wyenn, with Associate Director John Miyasaki, 11 singers and a 22 piece orchestra conducted by Steve Hofer. The incidents in The Camp Opera were drawn from different camps where over 126,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned to see the many Japanese American groups that supported this project, including JANM, DENSHO and Raf Shimpo see the camp opera.com and if you know a place where The Camp can be performed near you, please contact the campopera.com/support.    MUSIC   Miko Lee: [00:27:53] Welcome to Apex Express. I'm so glad to have Eth-Noh-Tec once again, we get Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo and Nancy Wang.   Nancy Wang: [00:28:03] Yay. Yes. Hi. Hello. So glad to be here with you Miko.   Miko Lee: [00:28:07] We have been friends and colleagues for, it feels like a hundred billion years. The times that we're in are so complicated right now. But I just wanna first start with the question I often ask people, which is for each of you to tell me who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you?   Nancy Wang: [00:28:27] Well, I am Chinese American, and I am fifth generation on my mother's side. And. So we go all the way back to 1850 when our family first came on a junk boat and started the fishing industry in the Monterey Bay area.    Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo: [00:28:45] And I am, half Japanese, half Filipino, born in San Francisco, raised in Concord, California, and living in the Bay Area for all my life.   Miko Lee: [00:28:50] And what legacy do you carry with you?    Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo: [00:28:58] Well, I guess the identity I have as an Asian American, Japanese, and Filipino, um, I embrace all of that. The legacy is, as an artist, a performer. I've dedicated my life to creating works that reflect an Asian American consciousness, social, political, cultural. Both traditional works as well as new modern stories and music as well.    Nancy Wang: [00:29:25] And I was also a psychotherapist, so my work in the arts, whether it's dance, which I started out being a dancer and then a playwright, and then storytelling. I always weave in the healing aspect of what we all need to do in our communities. And so I use my art to also bring solace and bring celebration and bring, Depth and and the breadth of who we are as Asian Americans, as human beings, as part of this world, this country, then this city, so that we can celebrate who we are together.   Miko Lee: [00:30:04] Thank you for that. I hear you talking about activism, Asian American history, who we are and healing. I'm wondering if you could give me an update about what you're working on right now.   Nancy Wang: [00:30:14] Well, we have several things in the pipeline. I, for one, just finished writing and has now published Red Altar, which is the story of my ancestors. Three generations are followed in this book, about how they established the fishing industry in the Monterey Bay area. All the ways they had to reinvent themselves as laws were passed against them. The people try to get rid of them. And it's really a story of courage and determination and persistence, ingenuity and obviously success. Because I'm here. So I'm gonna be doing some more readings and that can be found on our webpage. Right. And Robert,    Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo: [00:30:55] I am focusing on archiving our work and after working with Nancy and creating Eth-Noh-Tec for the last 43 plus years, we have developed over 200 stories, and we put them on stage. We've written them, some of them are now being written as a compendium of stories. These are Neo-traditional folk tales and myths from Asia. And, people don't know much of this, but I am also an artist, so I'm creating illustrations that depict these stories. That's one project.   Nancy Wang: [00:31:23] Yeah, that's our next book. but what we're really excited about is our second Strong Like Bamboo, stories of resilience in the era of Asian American hate, but it's really broadened beyond Asian American because this year on May 22nd, will be a gathering of Latino and Asian artists and musicians, storytellers, and activists to just sit around and really share our stories, share our music, share our concerns, and to build bridges with each other because it, we will need to increase, our coalitions during this era. It's gotten worse, so we really need to come together.   Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo: [00:32:08] and we titled it strong like bamboo because of the Asian anecdote about, you know, one bamboo can snap, but together binding many bamboo together we're much stronger. So it's a call out to the community to bring all of our constituents and broaden that so that we are strong, as people of color.    Nancy Wang: [00:32:25] And of course we're gonna have food, which always brings us all together. But also bamboo can bend. Without breaking, so that's on a Thursday, May 22nd. But on May 25th, I have curated four other storytellers to tell their stories of their racist experiences and how they came through it to a healing place.    Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo: [00:32:48] There's a gathering of Asian American storytellers, both from the Chicago area and also from the west coast.    Nancy Wang: [00:32:53] And there'll be a panel so they can ask questions and we can have discussions. But after that, the people in the audience will have the opportunity to break up into small groups of three in which they get to share their own stories, their own concerns, and that's really the whole thing is about inspiring people to come through what they're going through and coming out, on the other side with some hope and healing. Because when we share our stories, we lift that particular burden of, say our story about our racist experience. We lifted off our own shoulders and we get to share it. With someone who's listening with compassion and we don't feel alone anymore. It's really a powerful, powerful way to find community connection, relation, and strength.   Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo: [00:33:45] And we'll have also in both of those events, resources in earlier years, I was an Asian American songwriter and did a lot of songs of not just identity, but of unity. I'm also gonna be singing a theme song called Bamboo, which is part of the title and also, a work by Chris Jim, famous of the Chris and Joe Asian American Duet from years ago. the one song we're still here, though it was written 30, 40 years ago. It's still pertinent to what's going on now, especially declaring that America is a multiracial, multiethnic, texture of society.   Nancy Wang: [00:34:20] and, in 2026 we're gonna bring on, African-American and Euro-American, storytellers also, so that we really have a multicultural representation of all who we are and how we still will need to come together. I hope things will be better by 2026, but who knows?    Miko Lee: [00:34:39] Thank you so much for sharing about how storytelling can really be a tool for social change. Is there anything else you wanna share with our audience?   Nancy Wang: [00:34:47] Yeah. please come to our strong like Bamboo on May 22nd and 25th is gonna be at the San Francisco Public Library Main Library, both are free to the public May 22nd the Thursday at May 22nd, it's gonna be in Hispanic room,    Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo: [00:35:05] and what time?   Nancy Wang: [00:35:06] Six to seven-thirty. And on Sunday it'll be in the presentations, the performances in the panel will be in the Koret auditorium, and then small groups will convene in the Hispanic room, which is right next door, and it's got elevators. So no problem, in getting there. Plus Bart and the bus is, it's easy to get there. And so that's what we wanted so that people could feel welcome.    Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo: [00:35:35] And that second show on Sunday Strong like Bamboo will feature our guest artist storytellers, professional storytellers. One of them being a local Eleanor Clement Glass who's half African American and Filipino, talking about her experiences. And then also, two guest artists from Chicago, one of them being Lillian Ji, who is a Japanese American hapa. Then third is, Archie Jun, who is a Thai American gay comedian storyteller who is a total riot. we are really wanting to blend many of our communities together to hear this talent Yes. And to deal with the topics.    Nancy Wang: [00:36:10] So we would love for the LGBTQ plus community to come out as well and support him and feel proud because all of the stories will, will really showcase our strength and our ability to deal with these things and come out the other side. So we are hoping that in the process of telling our pain, but coming out, on the other side, that it will be an inspiration for everyone to keep going during this difficult, very difficult time.    Miko Lee: [00:36:41] Thank you so much for joining me today.    Nancy Wang: [00:36:44] You're welcome. Thank you   Ayame Keane-Lee: [00:36:46] You are listening to 94.1 KPFA and 89.3 KPFB in Berkeley, 88.1 KFCF in Fresno, and online worldwide at kpfa.org.   Miko Lee: [00:37:05] Welcome Jiehae Park to Apex Express. I am so excited to talk to you about the world premier of the aves opening at Berkeley Repertory Theater, May 2nd through June 8th. Welcome to Apex Express.    Jiehae Park: [00:37:19] Hi, Miko. It's so nice to be here. Thanks for having me.    Miko Lee: [00:37:22] I wanna just first start with a personal question, which is, who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you?   Jiehae Park: [00:37:31] Hmm. I love the phrasing of that question. I was born in Korea and I came to the states when I was three years old with my parents who came to go to graduate school. And my father's family fled the north during the war. And my mother's family had always been in the south. And I definitely think that who they are and where they came from is a big part of who I am and the questions that I think of. And in a lot of ways, not just, racially and culturally, but also in terms of their interests. They're both scientists. This play deals, I hope thoughtfully with questions of identity and consciousness, that I've always been interested in.    Miko Lee: [00:38:18] And what legacy do you feel like you carry with you from them?   Jiehae Park: [00:38:22] Hmm. I mean, I write a lot about immigrants. This play isn't specifically about that, but in a lot of my previous work, I, I have. have written a lot about immigrants and I feel like my parents, you know, they came to this country when they were in their twenties. They didn't speak the language. They came from a generation of folks and at that time in the country where they were really, they had to be a certain way to survive. And I think that, intensity of work ethic, and the things that you also have to give up in order to get to where you think you wanna be, that question is, is part of their legacy to me. It's a, it's a gift and also something that, like a lot of other immigrants, I think I'm always sort of turning over in my mind and, and trying to look at from other angles.    Miko Lee: [00:39:12] Thank you for sharing. I'm wondering if you can talk to us about, first this title of your, world Premier, the aves. Where did this title come from? What is it about?    Jiehae Park: [00:39:23] So the title is the Latin word for Birds. And, the play there's a mystery that sort of unspools early on. So without, without giving too much away we see this old couple on a bench, on a park bench, and they have clearly been together for a long time and they are having a conversation that seems like a very ordinary conversation. And over the course of the first scene, we soon learn that they are discussing, doing something that will have ramifications throughout the rest of the play. And the aves is a word that I loved because of the association with birds. There, there are birds that make an appearance in this play, in both pedestrian and unexpected ways, in mysterious ways, and hopefully humorous ways. and then the connotation also of Ave Maria and this, this feeling of the sacred, which also infuses the play, which has a lot of humor, but also when I was writing it, I was thinking a lot about nature and the passage of time and this feeling of awe that I get when engage with nature. And I think that word also has those connotations for me.    Miko Lee: [00:40:46] And that sounds like a mystery that people need to come to find out more about. Can you tell us what inspired this work?    Jiehae Park: [00:40:54] I used to live on the northside of Central Park in Harlem, and I had this tiny, tiny little window that looked out, onto the north side of the park. And every day I would sit down to write and through my tiny window, I would see the same man sitting on this bench every day. And as the seasons changed and the leaves changed and the light changed, but still every morning there was the consistency of seeing the same person. And I think I I was thinking a lot about the passage of time and of nature shifting And I think subconsciously I was thinking about getting older myself. This was a time before I had children, but I was starting to become aware of my parents aging and generationally My peers, also our parents were aging and, and starting to have, you know, the complications and the beautiful things that can come with that. So I think all of that was a big soup in my subconscious. and I sat down and I wrote the first scene very quickly and then. I didn't know exactly what the rest of the play was gonna be, but I knew structurally that the first scene would be this old couple and that the second scene would be, a slightly different configuration of, of bodies. But that was hard to be so mysterious, um, and that the nex scene would be a different specific configuration of body. So I was thinking about the age of the bodies that you're watching and the story evolved from that. And I guess I should say that the play is set in a moment sort of best after now. So it's not the present, but it's not the distant future. It's certainly not like hard sci-fi by any means, but I think it uses some tools of speculative fiction. To ask questions that hopefully are illuminating about ourselves now.    Miko Lee: [00:42:59] Interesting. Did you ever talk with the man in the park that inspired this piece?   Jiehae Park: [00:43:05] You know, it's so funny. After the first couple of weeks of watching him, I realized he lived in my building and I hadn't noticed him before.    Miko Lee: [00:43:18] Wow. That's amazing.    Jiehae Park: [00:43:20] And I think that that's also something that. I had been thinking a lot about at the time this question of presence and attention, especially in New York, which is a city that is so loud. I mean, I love, I love New York and there's so many things that I love about New York, but it is such a loud city and it is hard to hear yourself think and, and the quality of attention in any. I was gonna say in any city, but in like any moment in our extremely chaotic world, I mean, especially now, that sort of quiet present quality of attention that I think is so beautiful and so rare, and I associate with, I'm not religious, but, but when I was a kid, I was, and this, this quality of, of sacred space, I think I was, I was really curious about that. And at the time, I think I had also that year gone on a silent meditation retreat. so trying to bring that quality of attention to my ordinary life as a urban citizen, I think was also part of the experience of writing the play. But yeah, he lived in my building and I hadn't noticed him before. And so this question of what do we notice and what do we need to shift in ourselves to notice what's in front of us and has been in front of us.    Miko Lee: [00:44:44] I am hearing you talk about a sense of presence and, and time passing. I'm wondering if that is what you want the audience to walk away with or are there other things that you're interested in provoking with this piece?    Jiehae Park: [00:44:57] As an audience member, when I go to any play, I always hope to leave a little bit different than how I entered and. That shift can be really subtle. In fact, for me as an audience member, sometimes it feels more profound when it is subtle. So on, on like at like a really baseline level. We've been having a lot of conversations with the design team about how to create this. Quality of space that feels different from the mundane so that when we enter the space of the theater, so for our body chemistry changes and that we are being asked by the play to lean in and pay attention perhaps in a way that we're not asked to pay attention, in, in the world outside of that room. And to be able to request that of an audience and share that with an audience. Together, I think is such a beautiful thing. And, and one of my favorite things about any collective experience when, when it all feels like we're breathing together. And my hope is that that's something that we can create, at a, like a biochemical level in our bodies, on a sort of more. Intellectual, emotional, philosophical level. I think there are questions that the play is asking about, what makes us, us and memory and the ability of a person and a relationship to change over a long period of time. And over the course of events that. May require forgiveness. those were certainly things that I was thinking about while I was writing it. So there's also that, that more character relational level of questioning that, that I think, will resonate with people, in different ways depending on where they are in their lives. And then I think especially because, you know, there's a lot of conversation about sandwich generation now, like folks, I. Who have dealt with aging themselves or aging parents and, the complexities and possibilities that can create. I think that there's another layer of the play that stirs up some of those questions as well.   Miko Lee: [00:47:04] Speaking of complexities and possibilities, I understand that you studied music and that you're also an actor and then you also write for Marvel's Runaways. Can you share a little bit about how these different elements impact you as a writer, as a creator?    Jiehae Park: [00:47:20] Yeah, so I started as an actor, which I think a lot of people do, mostly because it's the most accessible thing. Like you can audition for a play. You can't sort of audition to write a play. you can just write a play. But that, I think, came later for me. I don't really perform a ton anymore, although I did love it. and then the shift to television happened eight or so years ago. There's a big movement of playwrights moving into television, during peak tv. And they're very different. there is some shared similarity in storytelling instincts and craft. but the mediums are just really different, so I feel like I get very different things from, from all of them. I feel like I learned being a performer for a long time. As an artist, it's just getting to bump up against people who you think are fascinating and learn from them what you like and what you don't like, and who you wanna be and who you don't wanna be. and from tv I think I learned, To not be so precious. It takes a really long time for me to write a play. and I used to think, oh, I have to go into the woods and like be silent for a month and then like a play will emerge. And like sometimes it happens and it, that feels like a blessing when it does. But in TV, because there's so much money at stake and so much time pressure that you know, when something's due, it's just due and you turn it in. And if it's not perfect, you just deal with it and you make it as good as you can. And I think that there's a certain amount of shedding of perfectionism, which has been really healthy for me. but I do. Love the theater for the ability to spend a long period of time contemplating something and, and making it with a group of people who feel inspiring and we're all moving towards the same thing. and I think there's a little bit more space or a lot more space in the theater for things that may feel. mysterious or more open. whereas in television especially these days with the sort of decline of peak TV, there's an expectation of propulsion. Like overt propulsion, if that makes sense. That is not a criticism like, you know, I also love TV. but it is, it's like the pace of it is different and the ask of it is different than the ask of a play and and the baseline thing of just, you're not in the same room with the people experiencing it that is so special in theatre.    Miko Lee: [00:49:45] How do you go about shifting that mindset for that kind of speed of TV that you're describing versus the kind of longer meditative state of creating theater?    Jiehae Park: [00:49:55] Yeah, I mean, I think there's hopefully a two-way exchange. Because I also think that bringing some of those qualities of thoughtfulness and deliberation to the world of TV within the container, within the boundaries of it, can be incredibly useful. And ultimately a lot of the things that delight people, delight people regardless of the format. So that, like, that feeling of inevitable but surprising, like that's something that is of tremendous value in all mediums, right? I think for me personally, when I write a play. I try to make a space in my life that is a little more still. and I have a toddler now, so that's challenging. But in a way, working in television has been really helpful for that because, you know, I don't have five hours in the middle of the day to, you know, be with myself and listen to the trees. I maybe have like 30 minutes, but to try to drop into that as. quickly and without angst, without like working myself up about it. 'cause that's a waste of time. That's been a useful lesson to learn. Whereas working in television can feel a lot less lonely also than playwriting because in a writer's room, most shows in the states are written in the writer's room, there are few exceptions, and you're with a group of people. And so there's a sort of energetic exchange happening there that in a play only happens much, much later when you're in rehearsal and ideally in production. there's a sort of joyful energy and exchange that can happen in a writer's room, both when you're breaking the story and then ultimately when you're in production. And there's like many, many more people involved. And there's the crew and the cast and you know, all of the technical departments and producers. I feel like you mentioned, Code switching earlier. And, humans are so adaptable and I think we automatically sort of shift our brain chemistry and our body chemistry in response to the environment around us. sometimes very consciously, sometimes unconsciously, sometimes both. so I think a certain amount of that is just, okay, these are the given circumstances. And then, you become who you need to be in that space.   Miko Lee: [00:51:54] Thank you for sharing. Okay. I have one last TV question, which is that given that everybody's in this writing room together and you're, there's kind of a speed that's attached to it, do you feel like things get thrown out more quickly and with less kind of emotion attached to it than in theater?    Jiehae Park: [00:52:10] It's possible. I think it depends on the person. So I just worked on season four of the morning show last year. And there is a real need on that show because it deals with the news to be absorbing what's happening in the world and shifting the story based on that. And so that there has to be a sort of lightness around that. So in that kind of environment, absolutely. but I've also been in other rooms where someone got really attached to an idea, and maybe it was clear that that idea wasn't gonna work out, but there was, there was still like something, in it that wanted to be held onto and, and it may be hung on for a long time. And that process. Also could have happened, like that exact parallel process could have happened in a play. And actually in neither of the situation, is that necessarily a bad thing? Like is there something about that idea that maybe is not the idea itself, like the emotional core underneath it or the deep, deep idea underneath it that is useful? That even if the manifestation of the thing doesn't continue, if the manifestation gets thrown out, but like the real thing that was underneath it was important gets folded in in some unexpected way. I don't think it's a bad thing either way. It just is the peculiarities of any particular process.   Miko Lee: [00:53:22] And it sounds like it's about the people too, right?    Jiehae Park: [00:53:25] Yes, definitely. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I've certainly been in that book where I'm like, oh, I really think it's like this. It's gotta be this, it's gotta be this. And then, you know, two years later, I look at the draft, I'm like, oh, no, no, no. It, it is definitely not that. Like let me take that entire thing out. and it just was in that particular moment, I wasn't ready for whatever reason to let go of that idea. And that's okay. I am now, and then it moves on.    Miko Lee: [00:53:48] We're circling back to the beginning of the conversation about the aves, which is about presence and being in that moment. And where you are in that moment might be, no, this isn't right. And then years later you say, oh yeah, that wasn't right. Or that was right.   Jiehae Park: [00:54:03] Yeah, exactly, exactly. To listen to yourself is a, you know, I, I am, I've been doing this for a long time now and, that is still something that I feel like I always have to learn, that I think just is a human.   Miko Lee: [00:54:15] Yes. The perennial lesson of Yes, intuition. I'm wondering if you could tell our audience why they should go see the aves.    Jiehae Park: [00:54:24] My hope is that if you are curious about a certain kind of experience and attention in the theater, that you'll accept our invitation to this play, which is an unusual play. I don't think that everyone should see this play, just like, I don't think everyone should see any particular work of art, but if the things that we've been discussing, if the sort of vibe that you're getting from this conversation resonates with you, then the experience of seeing this play with a group of people who are also curious about that kind of experience may be something. That is enjoyable for you and would probably therefore also be enjoyable for that audience to be together with you and for the play to be together with you in that space.    Miko Lee: [00:55:17] Thank you so much for spending time chatting with us. Folks can see the aves at Berkeley rep May 2nd through June 8th. Thank you so much, Jiehae.   Ayame Keane-Lee: [00:55:26] For you Asian American film makers out there: SFFILM announced a new annual filmmaking grant in partnership with Cedar Road. The SFFILM Cedar Road Iyagi Grant is dedicated to fostering bold, original feature film projects that amplify Asian and Asian American perspectives on screen. In Korean, iyagi means “story”—a word that embodies the heart of this grant's mission: to champion storytelling as a powerful bridge connecting people across cultures and perspectives. A link to the grant application will be available in our show notes.    Miko Lee: [00:55:58] Please check out our website, kpfa.org to find out more about our show tonight. We think all of you listeners out there. Keep resisting, keep organizing, keep creating and sharing your visions with the world because your voices are important.    APEX Express is created by Miko Lee, Jalena Keane-Lee, Preeti Mangala Shekar, Anuj Vaidya, Swati Rayasam, Aisa Villarosa, Estella Owoimaha-Church, Gabriel Tangloao, Cheryl Truong and Ayame Keane-Lee.  The post APEX Express – 4. 3.25 – Coming Up Next appeared first on KPFA.

Painting US Empire: Nineteenth-Century Art and Its Legacies (University of Chicago Press, 2025) by Dr. Maggie Cao is the first book to offer a synthetic account of art and US imperialism around the globe in the nineteenth century. In this work, art historian Dr. Cao crafts a nuanced portrait of nineteenth-century US painters' complicity with and resistance to ascendant US imperialism, offering eye-opening readings of canonical works, landscapes of polar expeditions and tropical tourism, still lifes of imported goods, genre paintings, and ethnographic portraiture. Revealing how the US empire was “hidden in plain sight” in the art of this period, Dr. Cao examines artists including Frederic Edwin Church and Winslow Homer who championed and expressed ambivalence toward the colonial project. She also tackles the legacy of US imperialism, examining Euro-American painters of the past alongside global artists of the present. Pairing each chapter with reflections on works by contemporary anticolonial artists including Tavares Strachan, Nicholas Galanin, and Yuki Kihara, Dr. Cao addresses important contemporary questions around representation, colonialism, and indigeneity. This book foregrounds an underacknowledged topic in the study of nineteenth-century US art and illuminates the ongoing ecological and economic effects of the US empire. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Painting US Empire: Nineteenth-Century Art and Its Legacies (University of Chicago Press, 2025) by Dr. Maggie Cao is the first book to offer a synthetic account of art and US imperialism around the globe in the nineteenth century. In this work, art historian Dr. Cao crafts a nuanced portrait of nineteenth-century US painters' complicity with and resistance to ascendant US imperialism, offering eye-opening readings of canonical works, landscapes of polar expeditions and tropical tourism, still lifes of imported goods, genre paintings, and ethnographic portraiture. Revealing how the US empire was “hidden in plain sight” in the art of this period, Dr. Cao examines artists including Frederic Edwin Church and Winslow Homer who championed and expressed ambivalence toward the colonial project. She also tackles the legacy of US imperialism, examining Euro-American painters of the past alongside global artists of the present. Pairing each chapter with reflections on works by contemporary anticolonial artists including Tavares Strachan, Nicholas Galanin, and Yuki Kihara, Dr. Cao addresses important contemporary questions around representation, colonialism, and indigeneity. This book foregrounds an underacknowledged topic in the study of nineteenth-century US art and illuminates the ongoing ecological and economic effects of the US empire. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Painting US Empire: Nineteenth-Century Art and Its Legacies (University of Chicago Press, 2025) by Dr. Maggie Cao is the first book to offer a synthetic account of art and US imperialism around the globe in the nineteenth century. In this work, art historian Dr. Cao crafts a nuanced portrait of nineteenth-century US painters' complicity with and resistance to ascendant US imperialism, offering eye-opening readings of canonical works, landscapes of polar expeditions and tropical tourism, still lifes of imported goods, genre paintings, and ethnographic portraiture. Revealing how the US empire was “hidden in plain sight” in the art of this period, Dr. Cao examines artists including Frederic Edwin Church and Winslow Homer who championed and expressed ambivalence toward the colonial project. She also tackles the legacy of US imperialism, examining Euro-American painters of the past alongside global artists of the present. Pairing each chapter with reflections on works by contemporary anticolonial artists including Tavares Strachan, Nicholas Galanin, and Yuki Kihara, Dr. Cao addresses important contemporary questions around representation, colonialism, and indigeneity. This book foregrounds an underacknowledged topic in the study of nineteenth-century US art and illuminates the ongoing ecological and economic effects of the US empire. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

Painting US Empire: Nineteenth-Century Art and Its Legacies (University of Chicago Press, 2025) by Dr. Maggie Cao is the first book to offer a synthetic account of art and US imperialism around the globe in the nineteenth century. In this work, art historian Dr. Cao crafts a nuanced portrait of nineteenth-century US painters' complicity with and resistance to ascendant US imperialism, offering eye-opening readings of canonical works, landscapes of polar expeditions and tropical tourism, still lifes of imported goods, genre paintings, and ethnographic portraiture. Revealing how the US empire was “hidden in plain sight” in the art of this period, Dr. Cao examines artists including Frederic Edwin Church and Winslow Homer who championed and expressed ambivalence toward the colonial project. She also tackles the legacy of US imperialism, examining Euro-American painters of the past alongside global artists of the present. Pairing each chapter with reflections on works by contemporary anticolonial artists including Tavares Strachan, Nicholas Galanin, and Yuki Kihara, Dr. Cao addresses important contemporary questions around representation, colonialism, and indigeneity. This book foregrounds an underacknowledged topic in the study of nineteenth-century US art and illuminates the ongoing ecological and economic effects of the US empire. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/geography

Painting US Empire: Nineteenth-Century Art and Its Legacies (University of Chicago Press, 2025) by Dr. Maggie Cao is the first book to offer a synthetic account of art and US imperialism around the globe in the nineteenth century. In this work, art historian Dr. Cao crafts a nuanced portrait of nineteenth-century US painters' complicity with and resistance to ascendant US imperialism, offering eye-opening readings of canonical works, landscapes of polar expeditions and tropical tourism, still lifes of imported goods, genre paintings, and ethnographic portraiture. Revealing how the US empire was “hidden in plain sight” in the art of this period, Dr. Cao examines artists including Frederic Edwin Church and Winslow Homer who championed and expressed ambivalence toward the colonial project. She also tackles the legacy of US imperialism, examining Euro-American painters of the past alongside global artists of the present. Pairing each chapter with reflections on works by contemporary anticolonial artists including Tavares Strachan, Nicholas Galanin, and Yuki Kihara, Dr. Cao addresses important contemporary questions around representation, colonialism, and indigeneity. This book foregrounds an underacknowledged topic in the study of nineteenth-century US art and illuminates the ongoing ecological and economic effects of the US empire. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Painting US Empire: Nineteenth-Century Art and Its Legacies (University of Chicago Press, 2025) by Dr. Maggie Cao is the first book to offer a synthetic account of art and US imperialism around the globe in the nineteenth century. In this work, art historian Dr. Cao crafts a nuanced portrait of nineteenth-century US painters' complicity with and resistance to ascendant US imperialism, offering eye-opening readings of canonical works, landscapes of polar expeditions and tropical tourism, still lifes of imported goods, genre paintings, and ethnographic portraiture. Revealing how the US empire was “hidden in plain sight” in the art of this period, Dr. Cao examines artists including Frederic Edwin Church and Winslow Homer who championed and expressed ambivalence toward the colonial project. She also tackles the legacy of US imperialism, examining Euro-American painters of the past alongside global artists of the present. Pairing each chapter with reflections on works by contemporary anticolonial artists including Tavares Strachan, Nicholas Galanin, and Yuki Kihara, Dr. Cao addresses important contemporary questions around representation, colonialism, and indigeneity. This book foregrounds an underacknowledged topic in the study of nineteenth-century US art and illuminates the ongoing ecological and economic effects of the US empire. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comMalheur means “misfortune”. It comes from French-Canadian trappers who applied the name to the SE Oregon area, when in 1818, a cache of beaver furs was believed to be stolen by local indigenous people. Malheur River, Malheur County and Malheur National Wildlife Refuge all take their names from this origin story.Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is a wonder. Its main geologic feature is the basin lake: Malheur Lake. It's similar in one way to The Great Salt Lake, a closed basin lake, but Malheur is technically an intermittent basin lake. In wetter years the water flows outward and onward from the lake. This prevents salts from building up, keeping it a fresh water habitat. For this reason, and because is surrounded by arid lands, it is a migratory bird haven. The refuge was created in 1908, partly in response to the wholesale slaughter of egrets and herons for their plume feathers, which were used as ornamentation on women's hats of the time. Eventually the reserve grew to 293 square miles in size. It's a beautiful, quiet country. Sagebrush uplands surround the lake and riparian habitats. It really is something to realize that when you boil it down, the Euro-American expansion in to western North America was hastened by hat fashion. Before gold, there were beavers, herons and egrets. That's where the easy money was. Showy hats with little practical value. Beaver hides were felted and often dyed black for bowler, fedora and top hats.Today, in wet years, high numbers of nesting colonial birds, including White-faced Ibis can be found here. I associate Florida and the gulf coast with ibises, not Oregon. Observing these birds here feels novel to me. Ibis can be heard in this recording, on the wing, ranging by. There's all kinds of shorebirds too, on the shorelines and mudflats. The melodious Western Meadowlark, welcomes in the day. As for Malheur, it's arguably a word more apropos to the fate of the Native Americans than the trappers and settlers. In the winter of 2016 a different kind of “malheur” played out, but we'll save that for Part 2, next week. The environmental audio was recorded from the sagebrush uplands pointed towards the vast shallow lake wetlands. This soundstage was truly large; on the order of 1000 acres across the auditory horizon. The instrumentation is familiar for a Listening Spot recording. (This is 7th such effort.) String-like sounds with slow attack and decay rise and fall in movements. Among the more novel sounds are undulations; gently percolating guitar voices and fuzzy textures. It gets very quiet and sparse at the 19 minute mark (Track 9) near the end. A Whimbrel can be heard in the distance, while high thin tones punctuate the ambience in a plaintive sort of way. It seems like the quietest moments are usually my favorites. I hope you'll check it out.Thanks for reading and listening. I'm grateful for you. Malheur Suite I is available under the artist name Listening Spot on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) Friday, March 14th.

Painting US Empire: Nineteenth-Century Art and Its Legacies (University of Chicago Press, 2025) by Dr. Maggie Cao is the first book to offer a synthetic account of art and US imperialism around the globe in the nineteenth century. In this work, art historian Dr. Cao crafts a nuanced portrait of nineteenth-century US painters' complicity with and resistance to ascendant US imperialism, offering eye-opening readings of canonical works, landscapes of polar expeditions and tropical tourism, still lifes of imported goods, genre paintings, and ethnographic portraiture. Revealing how the US empire was “hidden in plain sight” in the art of this period, Dr. Cao examines artists including Frederic Edwin Church and Winslow Homer who championed and expressed ambivalence toward the colonial project. She also tackles the legacy of US imperialism, examining Euro-American painters of the past alongside global artists of the present. Pairing each chapter with reflections on works by contemporary anticolonial artists including Tavares Strachan, Nicholas Galanin, and Yuki Kihara, Dr. Cao addresses important contemporary questions around representation, colonialism, and indigeneity. This book foregrounds an underacknowledged topic in the study of nineteenth-century US art and illuminates the ongoing ecological and economic effects of the US empire. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/art

We discuss the epistemologies of prominent thinkers such as Noam Chomsky, Jeffrey Sachs and others, and its significance in understanding this moment of beginning of the end of the American Empire.

I haven't yet said this, but my intention with this and the previous three recordings was a hopscotch survey of Pacific Coast soundscapes. To recollect now, these have been Yoakam Point on the Oregon Coast, Copalis Ghost Forest on the Washington Coast, Keahou on the Big Island of Hawaii and now Preston Island in Crescent City, on the Northern California Coast.This reflection on Preston Island leads me to ponder sites along the lower Columbia River at length, for reasons which will soon reveal themselves.Preston Island is weird. For starters, it's not what anyone would call an island. You can walk right out onto its strange rocky surface from the mainland. The view from the island is breathtaking though, and I thought it made a better album cover than the island itself: The island is relatively flat, but also boulder-strewn and cracked. When I visited, it was foggy, and I felt like I was on the surface of another planet. Something about it seemed unnatural:It all clicked when I found this historical photo:Preston Island was carted off. It was mined down to a nub. Let's get our bearings. Here's an 1880's Crescent City map, and a modern satellite photo. (I guess cardinal north pointing up wasn't yet the rule.)On the map you'll see Preston Island clearly drawn as a landmass, and Hall's Bluff, appearing much less prominently than it does today. I outlined the locations on the satellite image. Here, all the rock contained in those geographical features was mined and dumped in the ocean to create the jetty you see on the upper right of the satellite image. They really moved mountains.This is what Preston Island used to look like, and here it is today, courtesy of Google Street View:Our soundwalk takes us from West 5th Street in Crescent City, over to the beach and up over what's now called Half Butte, to about where this old photo of Hall's Bluff (aka Lover's Rock) was taken in 1876. Look at the tiny figures on top for a sense of scale:The massive Lover's Rock headland, was also carted off to build the jetty. It's harder to match the original photo vantage point with Street View, but it's also just completely gone. But let's get back to Preston Island, that weird scab-land of a place. Let's take a closer look at it, because it gives our soundwalk such unique character about 17 minutes in. At a glance, it seems lifeless. A green hue, coming from chalky veins in the rock, adds to the otherworldliness of the landscape.Tide pools form on the perimeter, among the cracks and fissures in the rock substrate. It's here that I place my recording hat down and the soundscape is instantly transformed. The skitter of crabs and the capillary clicking sounds of tiny shellfish erupt to fill the high frequencies, while the surf sound is attenuated by the topography of the rocks.It's another world. A 2021 article in the Bandon Western World states, “Preston Island has a long history in Crescent City. Originally Preston Peak, the area was a sacred site for the Tolowa Nation.” It is not well known, but the Tolowa were the subject of the most persistent and possibly worst massacres of Native Americans in the USA, starting in 1853, in the Crescent City area. Now, I couldn't corroborate the name “Preston Peak”, but I have to admit I was not surprised to hear that a sacred place to Native Americans was destroyed. There have been others.Pillar RockConsider Pillar Rock (briefly “Pilot Rock”) in the Columbia River. Once a monolith upwards of 75 feet tall, it was dynamited and flattened at the 25 foot level to install a navigation light:The Chinookan name for the monolith was Talapus. A cannery built nearby in 1877 used a likeness similar to Talapus for its canned salmon label, Pillar Rock brand. The rock was dynamited by 1922 when, according to the shipping news, a red navigation light was established. Like Talapus, the spring Chinook fishery in the Columbia was a diminished remnant of what it once was when Pillar Rock Cannery suspended operations in 1947.In a surprising epilogue Pillar Rock is still an actively used trade mark today, in 2025. The company now fishes the waters of Alaska for wild Sockeye to fill the modern day tins.It's remarkable how Euro-Americans changed the landscape and practically wiped out the fishery, but the brand is the thing that perseveres. What does it say about us that this is the way things are?Let's consider the intriguing story of Mount Coffin, up the Columbia River about 40 river miles.Mount CoffinThe geological feature that was first described to the historical record by Lieutenant William R. Broughton in 1792, and given the name “Mount Coffin”, was a Chinookan canoe burial ground. It would have appeared much the same a half century later, when Charles Wilkes visited in 1841, but quite different than the 1900 image above. Imagine, if you will, thousands of dugout cedar canoes perched in the trees on the prominent outcrop, about five feet above ground, in varying states of decay, all with bows pointed more or less toward the ocean. Within these canoes lay the interned bodies of Chinookans of the Skilloot tribe, wrapped in cedar blankets with their belongings placed beside them. That scene came to a swift end in 1841.The U.S. Exploring Expedition, led by Charles Wilkes, camped on Mount Coffin in 1841. When the men accidentally let a campfire spread, it destroyed an estimated 3,000 burial canoes. The Chinookan Indians were distressed to discover that their burial site had been destroyed by the negligence of whites and, according to visiting artist Paul Kane, “would no doubt have sought revenge had they felt themselves strong enough to do so.” (Stealing from The Dead, Oregon Historical Quarterly)Many Upper Chinookan villages were by 1841 entirely depopulated following devastating waves of malaria in the early 1830's, so Paul Kane's observation rings true.Within a century this lowland was completely transformed. The largest lumber mill in the world was built upriver from Mount Coffin.Mount Coffin was completely dynamited and quarried, beginning in 1929. The site is a now home to a chemical plant. Flat as a pancake.Finally let's consider the monolith in the heart of the Columbia Gorge that few realize barely escaped dynamite. So we are told…Beacon RockTo the natives it was Che-che-op-tin. When Lewis & Clark mapped the area in 1805 it was referred to as “Beaten Rock” and on return a year later “Beacon Rock”. Later, the 1841 Wilkes Exploring Expedition labelled it “Castle Rock”, which stuck for the better part of a century. Since 1916, it's been Beacon Rock.Just west of Beacon Rock was a large village Captain Lewis in 1806 called Wah-clel-lah (a Watlala winter village):This village appears to be the winter station of the Wah-clel-lahs and Clahclellars…14 houses remain entire but are at this time but thinly inhabited, nine others appear to have been lately removed, and the traces of ten or twelve others of ancient date were to be seen in the rear of their present village. There was also another village at the very foot of beacon rock. Traces of it remained visible to the trained eye into the 1950's.“BIG BLAST WILL WRECK IT”“Castle Rock to Go” and “Whole Rock is Doomed” read the subheadings in a March 16th, 1906 article in The Oregonian. The article outlined how the owners, a coterie of eight businessmen including Dan Kerns, acting as the Columbia Construction Company, had already cut three 20 to 30 ft. tunnels under the southern aspect of the monolith in preparations to dynamite “the shoulder” of the rock and quarry the stone for building material, eventually removing it entirely. A Wikipedia entry states (without citation), “The United States Army Corps of Engineers planned to destroy the rock to supply material for the jetty at the mouth of the Columbia.” This appears to be incorrect. The Army Corps didn't have that plan. The Columbia Construction Company purported to have a plan to mine an initial two million tons for building material (possibly to include jetty material—there were no contracts) in 1906. Columbia jetty work began 20 years prior to that. The Columbia Construction Company was taken to court, and a jury sided with Portland & Seattle Railway, who argued the tunnels were part of an elaborate ruse to “claim damages from $100,000 to $500,000” from lost mining activity due to the rail line going through their intended quarry site. According to the plaintiffs, it was just a scheme to get the railway to pay dearly for the right of way. The jurors dashed that plan, stipulating a $5000 settlement. Was it an elaborate ruse? Or was the jury predisposed not to trust city businessmen? What was clear, according to The Oregonian, was that, “clergymen, leading citizens, women, teachers, and all classes in Portland and throughout the state were horrified as the proposed destruction of such a majestic landmark.” “I should judge Castle Rock contains 10 million tons of first class building stone,” Kerns said in 1906. Interestingly, that wouldn't have been enough for the massive Columbia jetty system, which ultimately required 13 million tons of rock, when competed in 1939, after half century of construction. Henry J. Biddle took ownership of Beacon Rock from the Columbia Construction Company in 1915, under the condition it would be preserved, and set about realizing his dream to build a trail to the summit.Henry J. Biddle purchased the rock in 1915 for $1 and during the next three years constructed a trail with 51 switchbacks, handrails and bridges. The three-quarter mile trail to the top, completed in April 1918, leads to views in all directions. (Wikipedia)Thanks for listening and reading. I'm thankful for your attention. Preston Island Soundwalk is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) on Friday, February 21st.Thanks for reading Soundwalk! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe

From one of the world's leading historians comes the first substantial study of environmentalism set in any country outside the Euro-American world. By the canons of orthodox social science, countries like India are not supposed to have an environmental consciousness. They are, as it were, “too poor to be green.” In Speaking with Nature: The Origins of Indian Environmentalism (Yale UP, 2024), Ramachandra Guha challenges this narrative by revealing a virtually unknown prehistory of the global movement set far outside Europe or America. Long before the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and well before climate change, ten remarkable individuals wrote with deep insight about the dangers of environmental abuse from within an Indian context.  In strikingly contemporary language, Rabindranath Tagore, Radhakamal Mukerjee, J. C. Kumarappa, Patrick Geddes, Albert and Gabrielle Howard, Mira, Verrier Elwin, K. M. Munshi, and M. Krishnan wrote about the forest and the wild, soil and water, urbanization and industrialization. Positing the idea of what Guha calls “livelihood environmentalism” in contrast to the “full-stomach environmentalism” of the affluent world, these writers, activists, and scientists played a pioneering role in shaping global conversations about humanity's relationship with nature. Spanning more than a century of Indian history, and decidedly transnational in reference, this book offers rich resources for considering the threat of climate change today. About the Author: Ramachandra Guha is the author of many books, including India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy and Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, 1914–1948. Guha's awards include the Leopold-Hidy Prize of the American Society of Environmental History, the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography, and the Fukuoka Prize for contributions to Asian studies. He lives in Bangalore. About the Host: Stuti Roy has recently graduated with an MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies at the University of Oxford.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

From one of the world's leading historians comes the first substantial study of environmentalism set in any country outside the Euro-American world. By the canons of orthodox social science, countries like India are not supposed to have an environmental consciousness. They are, as it were, “too poor to be green.” In Speaking with Nature: The Origins of Indian Environmentalism (Yale UP, 2024), Ramachandra Guha challenges this narrative by revealing a virtually unknown prehistory of the global movement set far outside Europe or America. Long before the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and well before climate change, ten remarkable individuals wrote with deep insight about the dangers of environmental abuse from within an Indian context.  In strikingly contemporary language, Rabindranath Tagore, Radhakamal Mukerjee, J. C. Kumarappa, Patrick Geddes, Albert and Gabrielle Howard, Mira, Verrier Elwin, K. M. Munshi, and M. Krishnan wrote about the forest and the wild, soil and water, urbanization and industrialization. Positing the idea of what Guha calls “livelihood environmentalism” in contrast to the “full-stomach environmentalism” of the affluent world, these writers, activists, and scientists played a pioneering role in shaping global conversations about humanity's relationship with nature. Spanning more than a century of Indian history, and decidedly transnational in reference, this book offers rich resources for considering the threat of climate change today. About the Author: Ramachandra Guha is the author of many books, including India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy and Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, 1914–1948. Guha's awards include the Leopold-Hidy Prize of the American Society of Environmental History, the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography, and the Fukuoka Prize for contributions to Asian studies. He lives in Bangalore. About the Host: Stuti Roy has recently graduated with an MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies at the University of Oxford.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

From one of the world's leading historians comes the first substantial study of environmentalism set in any country outside the Euro-American world. By the canons of orthodox social science, countries like India are not supposed to have an environmental consciousness. They are, as it were, “too poor to be green.” In Speaking with Nature: The Origins of Indian Environmentalism (Yale UP, 2024), Ramachandra Guha challenges this narrative by revealing a virtually unknown prehistory of the global movement set far outside Europe or America. Long before the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and well before climate change, ten remarkable individuals wrote with deep insight about the dangers of environmental abuse from within an Indian context.  In strikingly contemporary language, Rabindranath Tagore, Radhakamal Mukerjee, J. C. Kumarappa, Patrick Geddes, Albert and Gabrielle Howard, Mira, Verrier Elwin, K. M. Munshi, and M. Krishnan wrote about the forest and the wild, soil and water, urbanization and industrialization. Positing the idea of what Guha calls “livelihood environmentalism” in contrast to the “full-stomach environmentalism” of the affluent world, these writers, activists, and scientists played a pioneering role in shaping global conversations about humanity's relationship with nature. Spanning more than a century of Indian history, and decidedly transnational in reference, this book offers rich resources for considering the threat of climate change today. About the Author: Ramachandra Guha is the author of many books, including India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy and Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, 1914–1948. Guha's awards include the Leopold-Hidy Prize of the American Society of Environmental History, the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography, and the Fukuoka Prize for contributions to Asian studies. He lives in Bangalore. About the Host: Stuti Roy has recently graduated with an MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies at the University of Oxford.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

From one of the world's leading historians comes the first substantial study of environmentalism set in any country outside the Euro-American world. By the canons of orthodox social science, countries like India are not supposed to have an environmental consciousness. They are, as it were, “too poor to be green.” In Speaking with Nature: The Origins of Indian Environmentalism (Yale UP, 2024), Ramachandra Guha challenges this narrative by revealing a virtually unknown prehistory of the global movement set far outside Europe or America. Long before the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and well before climate change, ten remarkable individuals wrote with deep insight about the dangers of environmental abuse from within an Indian context.  In strikingly contemporary language, Rabindranath Tagore, Radhakamal Mukerjee, J. C. Kumarappa, Patrick Geddes, Albert and Gabrielle Howard, Mira, Verrier Elwin, K. M. Munshi, and M. Krishnan wrote about the forest and the wild, soil and water, urbanization and industrialization. Positing the idea of what Guha calls “livelihood environmentalism” in contrast to the “full-stomach environmentalism” of the affluent world, these writers, activists, and scientists played a pioneering role in shaping global conversations about humanity's relationship with nature. Spanning more than a century of Indian history, and decidedly transnational in reference, this book offers rich resources for considering the threat of climate change today. About the Author: Ramachandra Guha is the author of many books, including India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy and Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, 1914–1948. Guha's awards include the Leopold-Hidy Prize of the American Society of Environmental History, the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography, and the Fukuoka Prize for contributions to Asian studies. He lives in Bangalore. About the Host: Stuti Roy has recently graduated with an MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies at the University of Oxford.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

From one of the world's leading historians comes the first substantial study of environmentalism set in any country outside the Euro-American world. By the canons of orthodox social science, countries like India are not supposed to have an environmental consciousness. They are, as it were, “too poor to be green.” In Speaking with Nature: The Origins of Indian Environmentalism (Yale UP, 2024), Ramachandra Guha challenges this narrative by revealing a virtually unknown prehistory of the global movement set far outside Europe or America. Long before the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and well before climate change, ten remarkable individuals wrote with deep insight about the dangers of environmental abuse from within an Indian context.  In strikingly contemporary language, Rabindranath Tagore, Radhakamal Mukerjee, J. C. Kumarappa, Patrick Geddes, Albert and Gabrielle Howard, Mira, Verrier Elwin, K. M. Munshi, and M. Krishnan wrote about the forest and the wild, soil and water, urbanization and industrialization. Positing the idea of what Guha calls “livelihood environmentalism” in contrast to the “full-stomach environmentalism” of the affluent world, these writers, activists, and scientists played a pioneering role in shaping global conversations about humanity's relationship with nature. Spanning more than a century of Indian history, and decidedly transnational in reference, this book offers rich resources for considering the threat of climate change today. About the Author: Ramachandra Guha is the author of many books, including India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy and Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, 1914–1948. Guha's awards include the Leopold-Hidy Prize of the American Society of Environmental History, the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography, and the Fukuoka Prize for contributions to Asian studies. He lives in Bangalore. About the Host: Stuti Roy has recently graduated with an MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies at the University of Oxford.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies

Bureaucratic Archaeology: State, Science and Past in Postcolonial India (Cambridge UP, 2022) presents a novel ethnographic examination of archaeological practice within postcolonial India, focusing on the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) as a site where scientific knowledge production intersects with state bureaucracy. Through granular analysis of ASI's quotidian operations, this monograph demonstrates how archaeological micro-practices materially influence the construction of political and religious identities, while simultaneously serving as empirical evidence in India's highest judicial proceedings. This unprecedented study illuminates the epistemological ecology of postcolonial knowledge production from within the bureaucratic apparatus itself. As the first book-length investigation of archaeological practice beyond the Euro-American tradition, it reveals how non-Western archaeological theory and methodology generate distinct forms of knowledge, thereby expanding our understanding of archaeology's role in postcolonial state formation. About the Author: Ashish Avikunthak is a distinguished scholar working at the intersection of archaeology, cultural anthropology, and avant-garde filmmaking. He is Professor of Film Media at the University of Rhode Island's Harrington School of Communication, where his research bridges theoretical and practical approaches to cultural production. His experimental films have been exhibited internationally at prestigious institutions including Tate Modern, Centre Georges Pompidou, and Pacific Film Archive, as well as major film festivals such as Rotterdam and Locarno. About the Host: Stuti Roy has recently completed her MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies at the University of Oxford. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Bureaucratic Archaeology: State, Science and Past in Postcolonial India (Cambridge UP, 2022) presents a novel ethnographic examination of archaeological practice within postcolonial India, focusing on the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) as a site where scientific knowledge production intersects with state bureaucracy. Through granular analysis of ASI's quotidian operations, this monograph demonstrates how archaeological micro-practices materially influence the construction of political and religious identities, while simultaneously serving as empirical evidence in India's highest judicial proceedings. This unprecedented study illuminates the epistemological ecology of postcolonial knowledge production from within the bureaucratic apparatus itself. As the first book-length investigation of archaeological practice beyond the Euro-American tradition, it reveals how non-Western archaeological theory and methodology generate distinct forms of knowledge, thereby expanding our understanding of archaeology's role in postcolonial state formation. About the Author: Ashish Avikunthak is a distinguished scholar working at the intersection of archaeology, cultural anthropology, and avant-garde filmmaking. He is Professor of Film Media at the University of Rhode Island's Harrington School of Communication, where his research bridges theoretical and practical approaches to cultural production. His experimental films have been exhibited internationally at prestigious institutions including Tate Modern, Centre Georges Pompidou, and Pacific Film Archive, as well as major film festivals such as Rotterdam and Locarno. About the Host: Stuti Roy has recently completed her MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies at the University of Oxford. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

Bureaucratic Archaeology: State, Science and Past in Postcolonial India (Cambridge UP, 2022) presents a novel ethnographic examination of archaeological practice within postcolonial India, focusing on the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) as a site where scientific knowledge production intersects with state bureaucracy. Through granular analysis of ASI's quotidian operations, this monograph demonstrates how archaeological micro-practices materially influence the construction of political and religious identities, while simultaneously serving as empirical evidence in India's highest judicial proceedings. This unprecedented study illuminates the epistemological ecology of postcolonial knowledge production from within the bureaucratic apparatus itself. As the first book-length investigation of archaeological practice beyond the Euro-American tradition, it reveals how non-Western archaeological theory and methodology generate distinct forms of knowledge, thereby expanding our understanding of archaeology's role in postcolonial state formation. About the Author: Ashish Avikunthak is a distinguished scholar working at the intersection of archaeology, cultural anthropology, and avant-garde filmmaking. He is Professor of Film Media at the University of Rhode Island's Harrington School of Communication, where his research bridges theoretical and practical approaches to cultural production. His experimental films have been exhibited internationally at prestigious institutions including Tate Modern, Centre Georges Pompidou, and Pacific Film Archive, as well as major film festivals such as Rotterdam and Locarno. About the Host: Stuti Roy has recently completed her MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies at the University of Oxford. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/archaeology

Bureaucratic Archaeology: State, Science and Past in Postcolonial India (Cambridge UP, 2022) presents a novel ethnographic examination of archaeological practice within postcolonial India, focusing on the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) as a site where scientific knowledge production intersects with state bureaucracy. Through granular analysis of ASI's quotidian operations, this monograph demonstrates how archaeological micro-practices materially influence the construction of political and religious identities, while simultaneously serving as empirical evidence in India's highest judicial proceedings. This unprecedented study illuminates the epistemological ecology of postcolonial knowledge production from within the bureaucratic apparatus itself. As the first book-length investigation of archaeological practice beyond the Euro-American tradition, it reveals how non-Western archaeological theory and methodology generate distinct forms of knowledge, thereby expanding our understanding of archaeology's role in postcolonial state formation. About the Author: Ashish Avikunthak is a distinguished scholar working at the intersection of archaeology, cultural anthropology, and avant-garde filmmaking. He is Professor of Film Media at the University of Rhode Island's Harrington School of Communication, where his research bridges theoretical and practical approaches to cultural production. His experimental films have been exhibited internationally at prestigious institutions including Tate Modern, Centre Georges Pompidou, and Pacific Film Archive, as well as major film festivals such as Rotterdam and Locarno. About the Host: Stuti Roy has recently completed her MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies at the University of Oxford. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

Bureaucratic Archaeology: State, Science and Past in Postcolonial India (Cambridge UP, 2022) presents a novel ethnographic examination of archaeological practice within postcolonial India, focusing on the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) as a site where scientific knowledge production intersects with state bureaucracy. Through granular analysis of ASI's quotidian operations, this monograph demonstrates how archaeological micro-practices materially influence the construction of political and religious identities, while simultaneously serving as empirical evidence in India's highest judicial proceedings. This unprecedented study illuminates the epistemological ecology of postcolonial knowledge production from within the bureaucratic apparatus itself. As the first book-length investigation of archaeological practice beyond the Euro-American tradition, it reveals how non-Western archaeological theory and methodology generate distinct forms of knowledge, thereby expanding our understanding of archaeology's role in postcolonial state formation. About the Author: Ashish Avikunthak is a distinguished scholar working at the intersection of archaeology, cultural anthropology, and avant-garde filmmaking. He is Professor of Film Media at the University of Rhode Island's Harrington School of Communication, where his research bridges theoretical and practical approaches to cultural production. His experimental films have been exhibited internationally at prestigious institutions including Tate Modern, Centre Georges Pompidou, and Pacific Film Archive, as well as major film festivals such as Rotterdam and Locarno. About the Host: Stuti Roy has recently completed her MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies at the University of Oxford. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies

Bureaucratic Archaeology: State, Science and Past in Postcolonial India (Cambridge UP, 2022) presents a novel ethnographic examination of archaeological practice within postcolonial India, focusing on the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) as a site where scientific knowledge production intersects with state bureaucracy. Through granular analysis of ASI's quotidian operations, this monograph demonstrates how archaeological micro-practices materially influence the construction of political and religious identities, while simultaneously serving as empirical evidence in India's highest judicial proceedings. This unprecedented study illuminates the epistemological ecology of postcolonial knowledge production from within the bureaucratic apparatus itself. As the first book-length investigation of archaeological practice beyond the Euro-American tradition, it reveals how non-Western archaeological theory and methodology generate distinct forms of knowledge, thereby expanding our understanding of archaeology's role in postcolonial state formation. About the Author: Ashish Avikunthak is a distinguished scholar working at the intersection of archaeology, cultural anthropology, and avant-garde filmmaking. He is Professor of Film Media at the University of Rhode Island's Harrington School of Communication, where his research bridges theoretical and practical approaches to cultural production. His experimental films have been exhibited internationally at prestigious institutions including Tate Modern, Centre Georges Pompidou, and Pacific Film Archive, as well as major film festivals such as Rotterdam and Locarno. About the Host: Stuti Roy has recently completed her MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies at the University of Oxford. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Bureaucratic Archaeology: State, Science and Past in Postcolonial India (Cambridge UP, 2022) presents a novel ethnographic examination of archaeological practice within postcolonial India, focusing on the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) as a site where scientific knowledge production intersects with state bureaucracy. Through granular analysis of ASI's quotidian operations, this monograph demonstrates how archaeological micro-practices materially influence the construction of political and religious identities, while simultaneously serving as empirical evidence in India's highest judicial proceedings. This unprecedented study illuminates the epistemological ecology of postcolonial knowledge production from within the bureaucratic apparatus itself. As the first book-length investigation of archaeological practice beyond the Euro-American tradition, it reveals how non-Western archaeological theory and methodology generate distinct forms of knowledge, thereby expanding our understanding of archaeology's role in postcolonial state formation. About the Author: Ashish Avikunthak is a distinguished scholar working at the intersection of archaeology, cultural anthropology, and avant-garde filmmaking. He is Professor of Film Media at the University of Rhode Island's Harrington School of Communication, where his research bridges theoretical and practical approaches to cultural production. His experimental films have been exhibited internationally at prestigious institutions including Tate Modern, Centre Georges Pompidou, and Pacific Film Archive, as well as major film festivals such as Rotterdam and Locarno. About the Host: Stuti Roy has recently completed her MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies at the University of Oxford.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comNothing like a trip to the ocean to start a new year! I feel so fortunate to live just over an hour away from one of the most beautiful coastlines on this planet.This recording was made at Yoakam Point, near Coos Bay Oregon, about 4 hours down the coast. It's a uniquely beautiful sounding surf here, I have to say.And you might think to yourself, all beaches sound nice, Chad. And well, it would be hard-hearted of me to try to argue with you on that point. They all do sound nice, but some just sound more nice. The tuning here must have something to do with the rocks that reach into the ocean lake a giant hand, as if playing the surf like so many harp strings. The scarp ridges reflect the sound waves of the tumbling surf like a giant instrument, but not in a way that sounds like mush. The contours are clean and the details are sharp. If you listen closely you'll hear the distant moan of a fog horn on the low end (though I did soften it considerably with a low scoop EQ) and the peals of Pigeon Guillemot on the high end of this soundscape. Now if you're like me, you might wonder, why is it called “Yoakam Point”? And, if you're like me, not finding an answer at the ready makes this one of life's little mysteries that needs to be solved. I expected it to be named for some ship captain or crew mate. If not that, then certainly a white man, probably a pioneer or politician, or both. So, wading through numerous Google results for modern country singer Dwight Yoakam, I finally chanced upon a couple fascinating stories tracing the Yoakam surname in Coos County. And, to my surprise these stories enobled no man, but spoke to the perseverance of two generations of Yoakam women. How refreshing!Tragedy of the Burning TreeIn 1855 newly arrived settlers Eliza and John Yoakam lost five daughters to a tree aflame falling on their home, as detailed in this 1906 obituary:In 1855 they moved to a homestead about six miles from Empire City on [what] is now known as the Cammon wagon road.It was here that the awful tragedy of Mrs. Yoakam's life occurred—one that would only be possible in pioneer days, when a large, burning tree fell with terrific force upon their little cabin, shattering it and instantly killing five of their children, one a babe in its mother's arms. The accident happened in the evening, when the children were nearly all asleep, and when later the anguished parents searched amid the ruins of their little ones, they found four of them dead where they had slept. Two little boys, Jasper and George, aged 7 and 5 years, still missing, were found in their little trundle bed alive and fast asleep. The branches of the tree had fallen in such a manner as to shield their little bed, and the commotion had not even awakened them. The scene of the accident is known as Yoakam's Hill, and stately firs, spreading cedars the graceful rhododendron now grow in wild luxuriance where these hapless children lie in their dreamless sleep.The homestead was abandoned, as the poor mother could find no happiness there, and after a few sad months in Empire City and Eastport, they moved to the Coquiller River, where they remained until 1867, when they bought the William Jackson farm on South Coos River, and literally hewed for themselves a home out of the wilderness. In this home probably the happiest years of Mrs. Yoakam s life were spent; other children came to her almost empty arms, and listening to their happy laughter, her old sorrow gradually faded away. For many years “Yoakam's” was synonymous with good cheer and hospitality.Mrs. Yoakam was a woman of rare type, well fitted by nature for the struggles and adventures of pioneer life. Mr. Yoakam died in 1876, and for many years his widow successfully managed the farm, failing health finally compelling her to leave it. She was the mother of twelve children, five of whom survive her. (Coquille Herald)One of her children, George Yoakam, died in 1901, gored by a neighbor's wayward bull, leaving his wife Sarah, three daughters and a son. Taking a page from her mother-in-law, Sarah successfully managed the family farm in the wake of the tragedy.Sarah Yoakam Forges AheadThat a woman can conduct a dairy farm most successfully is nicely proved in the case of Mrs. Sarah Yoakam of Coos county, near Marshfield, Ore., whose husband, a prominent rancher, was killed by a vicious bull some thirteen years ago. In the years Intervening since she and her two daughters have conducted and developed the dairy business in which her husband was engaged. For a good share of the time they have done all the work on the farm, including the care of the dairy herd and the securing of the farm crops. (Union Star)Indeed Sarah not only succeeded on her farm, but went on to become a leader in the trade.Sarah Yoakam, who ran her husband's Coos County dairy upon his death seven years earlier, was voted the first female vice-president of the Oregon State Dairyman's Association. The next year she became the superintendent of the Dairy Department of the Oregon State Fair. (cooshistory.org)Now, how exactly this headland came to be known as Yoakam Point is not crystal clear. The acreage was one of 19 locations purchased by the state in 1968. The state wayside simply carried over the accepted name. Oregon Geographic Names suggests the name was in use for “many decades” prior to 1952, attributed to the pioneer family:For many decades this name has been applied to a small promontory about a mile west of Coos Head just south of the entrance to Coos Bay. It commemorates a family well known in the history of the county. (Oregon Geographic Names, 1952)Mussel ReefI think it's important to include the settler prehistory here. Before the name Yoakam Point gained acceptance among the settlers of the area, it seems like “Mussel Reef” was in play. The area was inhabited by the Coos people from time immemorial. This particular shoreline was an abundant intertidal zone rich with mollusks and crustaceans used for both food and regalia. Sites of archeological importance are documented here. A half mile west of Yoakam Point, sits Chiefs Island, on which stands the defunct Cape Arago Lighthouse. The island was repatriated to the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw in 2013. That site contains a very large, deep midden, indicating an extended presence on the island. It is closed to the public.Coos Bay was a distinctly rich cultural area prior to Euro-American settlement. it brought together five tribes speaking as many different languages (or dialects) within short distance each other: Miluk (Coos), Hanis (Coos), Quuiich (Lower Umpqua) Nasomah dialect (Lower Coquille) and Athabaskan (Upper Coquille).Noting the abundant natural resources and prospects for establishing a port, early settlers converged on the peninsula in the center of the bay, incorporating the town of Empire City next to a Miluk village, about 10 miles inland from Yoakam Point. Empire City is today the Empire neighborhood of the city of Coos Bay. Within just a few years of the first settlers arriving, the tribes were forcibly removed and eventually relocated to the Siletz Agency of the Coast Reservation. Like most treaties in the west, promises were broken when the US congress systematically failed to ratify them. Thanks for reading and listening. I'm grateful for your interest. Coast Headland Suite is available under the artist name Listening Spot on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) Friday, January 17th.

At the end of the ancient mythology section we discussed last time, the Popol Vuh (here paralleled by the Title of Totonicapán) depicts the restoration of militaristic class society in the K'iche' corner of the Maya world in the 13th c. CE, after some centuries of relative freedom and equality following the overthrow of the Classic Maya around 950. The founders of the new ruling class are an itinerant, mountain-dwelling secret society who begin their attack on the stateless, classless society around them by prosecuting a covert campaign of ritual serial murder. For perhaps obvious reasons, this passage seems practically untouched in modern scholarship—the most recent English translation of Popol Vuh silently cuts it entirely!—but we of the Kingless Generation have all the right tools to make sense of it in our own little way: the immortal science of historical materialism, the anthropological theories of Brian Hayden regarding the roots of ruling classes in secret society religion, and leftist parapolitics research on Fort Bragg, Marc DuTroux, the Atlanta child murders, and many other modern instances of ritualized abuse and murder for which good evidence exists for the involvement of a wider network of Euro-American military, intelligence, and high bourgeois elements. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Queerness, labels, and allyship are central themes in this moving collection of stories set in Turkey, where Middle Eastern and Euro-American expressions of identity collide and naming one's orientation is a fraught endeavor. An eleven-year-old undergoes hand surgery that will allow him to wear a wedding ring in adulthood. Two college roommates reach an erotic understanding as they indulge in dessert. A sex worker travels with an American same-sex marriage activist through the Aegean countryside. A passionate hookup during Istanbul Pride ends in tear gas. Two friends' tempers flare over cold red wine on a hot summer night by the Dardanelles. A father bonds with his son and his son's drag-queen boyfriend over classic Turkish cinema on the Mediterranean coast. In Sweet Tooth and Other Stories (UP of Kentucky, 2024), Serkan Görkemli weaves together interconnected narratives of four Turkish characters—Hasan, Gökhan, Nazlı, and Cenk—who search for clarity, love, and acceptance amid social change. Set in a rich mixture of urban and rural locales, the stories take place from the 1980s through the 2010s against the backdrop of Turkey's transition from military-backed secularism to the rise of the religious right, local and global media representations of queer individuals and culture, and the emergence of affirming LGBTQ+ identities. Görkemli creates a complex, engaging network of plots about his characters' struggles and triumphs in navigating families, communities, and themselves. Braving discrimination, they strive to embrace their identities and find joy, solace, and approval within a society that marginalizes who they are and how they love. Serkan Görkemli (he/him) is the author of two books: Sweet Tooth and Other Stories (University Press of Kentucky) and Grassroots Literacies: Lesbian and Gay Activism and the Internet in Turkey (SUNY Press; winner of the 2015 Lavender Rhetorics Book Award presented by the Conference on College Composition and Communication). His creative nonfiction is forthcoming in Image; his fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, the Iowa Review, Epiphany, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Joyland, Foglifter, and Chelsea Station. He was a 2023-24 faculty fellow at the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute, a contributor in fiction at the 2019 Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and a fiction fellow at the 2018 Lambda Literary Writers Retreat. Originally from Türkiye, he has a PhD in English from Purdue University and is an associate professor of English at UConn Stamford. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Queerness, labels, and allyship are central themes in this moving collection of stories set in Turkey, where Middle Eastern and Euro-American expressions of identity collide and naming one's orientation is a fraught endeavor. An eleven-year-old undergoes hand surgery that will allow him to wear a wedding ring in adulthood. Two college roommates reach an erotic understanding as they indulge in dessert. A sex worker travels with an American same-sex marriage activist through the Aegean countryside. A passionate hookup during Istanbul Pride ends in tear gas. Two friends' tempers flare over cold red wine on a hot summer night by the Dardanelles. A father bonds with his son and his son's drag-queen boyfriend over classic Turkish cinema on the Mediterranean coast. In Sweet Tooth and Other Stories (UP of Kentucky, 2024), Serkan Görkemli weaves together interconnected narratives of four Turkish characters—Hasan, Gökhan, Nazlı, and Cenk—who search for clarity, love, and acceptance amid social change. Set in a rich mixture of urban and rural locales, the stories take place from the 1980s through the 2010s against the backdrop of Turkey's transition from military-backed secularism to the rise of the religious right, local and global media representations of queer individuals and culture, and the emergence of affirming LGBTQ+ identities. Görkemli creates a complex, engaging network of plots about his characters' struggles and triumphs in navigating families, communities, and themselves. Braving discrimination, they strive to embrace their identities and find joy, solace, and approval within a society that marginalizes who they are and how they love. Serkan Görkemli (he/him) is the author of two books: Sweet Tooth and Other Stories (University Press of Kentucky) and Grassroots Literacies: Lesbian and Gay Activism and the Internet in Turkey (SUNY Press; winner of the 2015 Lavender Rhetorics Book Award presented by the Conference on College Composition and Communication). His creative nonfiction is forthcoming in Image; his fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, the Iowa Review, Epiphany, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Joyland, Foglifter, and Chelsea Station. He was a 2023-24 faculty fellow at the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute, a contributor in fiction at the 2019 Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and a fiction fellow at the 2018 Lambda Literary Writers Retreat. Originally from Türkiye, he has a PhD in English from Purdue University and is an associate professor of English at UConn Stamford. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Queerness, labels, and allyship are central themes in this moving collection of stories set in Turkey, where Middle Eastern and Euro-American expressions of identity collide and naming one's orientation is a fraught endeavor. An eleven-year-old undergoes hand surgery that will allow him to wear a wedding ring in adulthood. Two college roommates reach an erotic understanding as they indulge in dessert. A sex worker travels with an American same-sex marriage activist through the Aegean countryside. A passionate hookup during Istanbul Pride ends in tear gas. Two friends' tempers flare over cold red wine on a hot summer night by the Dardanelles. A father bonds with his son and his son's drag-queen boyfriend over classic Turkish cinema on the Mediterranean coast. In Sweet Tooth and Other Stories (UP of Kentucky, 2024), Serkan Görkemli weaves together interconnected narratives of four Turkish characters—Hasan, Gökhan, Nazlı, and Cenk—who search for clarity, love, and acceptance amid social change. Set in a rich mixture of urban and rural locales, the stories take place from the 1980s through the 2010s against the backdrop of Turkey's transition from military-backed secularism to the rise of the religious right, local and global media representations of queer individuals and culture, and the emergence of affirming LGBTQ+ identities. Görkemli creates a complex, engaging network of plots about his characters' struggles and triumphs in navigating families, communities, and themselves. Braving discrimination, they strive to embrace their identities and find joy, solace, and approval within a society that marginalizes who they are and how they love. Serkan Görkemli (he/him) is the author of two books: Sweet Tooth and Other Stories (University Press of Kentucky) and Grassroots Literacies: Lesbian and Gay Activism and the Internet in Turkey (SUNY Press; winner of the 2015 Lavender Rhetorics Book Award presented by the Conference on College Composition and Communication). His creative nonfiction is forthcoming in Image; his fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, the Iowa Review, Epiphany, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Joyland, Foglifter, and Chelsea Station. He was a 2023-24 faculty fellow at the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute, a contributor in fiction at the 2019 Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and a fiction fellow at the 2018 Lambda Literary Writers Retreat. Originally from Türkiye, he has a PhD in English from Purdue University and is an associate professor of English at UConn Stamford. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comWelcome back. Let's finish our stroll along the Columbia and find out more about this intriguing place. In the first installment we learned how Warrior Point got its name, and about and the rock formation that became the geological cornerstone of Sauvie Island. In this conclusion we arrive at Warrior Rock Lighthouse, the smallest lighthouse in Oregon, and the only one in operation far from the coastline. For this installment I must thank the kind folks at warriorrock.org for sharing several hard-to-find photos and shedding light on some scarcely known stories about the lighthouse. Pre-contact The closest Native American village to Warrior Point on Sauvie Island was Namuit, unmentioned by Lewis & Clark, excepting “2 Houses” drawn on a map in the vicinity of the Warrior Point trailhead is today. I suppose it is worth pointing out that “Warrior Rock” and “Warrior Point” describe two different geological places about a half mile away from each other, and are often interchanged. In 1959 amateur archeologist Emory Stone said of Namuit, “Originally a very large village, it is now completely washed away. Banks of camp rock extend for a quarter of a mile along the river bank. Large collections were made from it as it was eroding away about the turn of the century.” He added, “[It] must have been quite old, for traces of fire are found eight or more feet deep beneath the silt.”Warrior Point was a canoe burial ground. Native Americans practiced this form of burial all along the lower Columbia at promontory sites. Canoes were elevated or placed in trees with the dead wrapped in cedar bark blankets with their belongings. The bows of the canoes pointed toward the ocean.John Kirk Townsend described Mount Coffin, a canoe burial site 13 miles downriver, in his 1841 narrative: "[the burial site] consisted of a great number of canoes containing bodies of Indians, each being carefully wrapped in blankets, and supplied with many of his personal effects in the form of weapons and implements...wrapped in his mantle of skins, laid in his canoe with his paddle, his fishing-spear, and other implements beside him, and placed aloft on some rock or eminence overlooking the river, or bay, or lake that he had frequented. He is fitted out to launch away upon those placid streams…which are prepared in the next world.”Warrior Rock LighthouseThe light house was erected in 1889, a wood framed building with a shed roof on a tall sandstone foundation. The original 1500 lb. fog bell, cast in 1855, tolled for 30 years in a lighthouse at Cape Disappointment prior to installation at Warrior Rock. In 1912, the Lighthouse Service requested $2,000 to purchase 1.61 acres near the lighthouse on which stood a “fairly good dwelling,” which was being occupied by the keeper. The desired amount was appropriated on October 22, 1913, and the dwelling and other buildings on the adjoining land were acquired by the government. (lighthousefriends.com)Looking closely at this photo we can see quite a number of buildings, including a large mill building in the right background, where there are now none.When the river was high, the tower's sandstone foundation and surrounding land would often be underwater. At those times, DeRoy rode an aerial tram he concocted by stringing a cable from a tree near the dwelling to the lighthouse (lighthousefriends.com)Waterway WoesWarrior Rock Lighthouse has seen its share of incidents.1898 - US revenue cutter Commodore Perry ran on a reef a short distance above Warrior Rock. “Pilots familiar with the river always give the reef a wide berth. The steamer Manzanillo had her bottom torn out there 10 years ago, and about 20 years ago the old steamship Sierra Nevada was impaled on the reef.” 1910 - US Lighthouse Tender Heather ran aground on rocks near Warrior Rock. Not badly damaged.1927 - The tug Cricket was sunk near Warrior Rock lighthouse when she collided head on with the steamer Wapama.1928 - A new light to aid river navigation was established on a sunken rock about one fourth of a mile above the Warrior Rock Lighthouse.1930 - The tug Dix which propelled the barge Swan and provided electric current to the floating dance pavilion was found in 50 feet of water a short distance above Warrior Rock lighthouse. Eight people were killed in the collision with the schooner Davenport. 1969 - The lighthouse was struck by a barge. While surveying the damage, the 1500 lb. bell fell to the shoreline and cracked.The bell now resides at the entrance of the Columbia County Courthouse.The current lighthouse owners added, “The lighthouse gets hit by boats more frequently than we would expect. We've heard of two instances in the 90's.”The Warrior Rock formation creates an unusual depth near shore of about 50 ft. Possibly more. “We've seen fishermen catch and release some crazy huge sturgeon there,” the owners shared. One wonders what detritus may have found repose in those waters. Lighthouse Keeper's Home For SaleIn my research I found a 1973 Oregonian real estate ad listing the lighthouse caretaker's home, a shop, and two acres offered at $39,000. Perhaps we can conclude this was the government liquidating obsolete structures, following lighthouse rebuilding and modernization?Adjusted for inflation that's about $280,000 in 2024 dollars. That may sound cheap to some now, but I suspect it would have required a unique buyer then. Here is another photo showing the bungalow in relation to the lighthouse from the early days, circa 1905. Looks like a peaceful homestead!Here is a closer look at the home—date unknown—but given the size of the trees in the background and what looks like a composite shingle roof, I'd guess the 1960's? Here it is today: The house burned down in the early 1990's. The current property owners say, “We've heard from one of the people involved who hiked out to see the place one day that a couple of teenagers were out there when they accidentally caught the place on fire. They tried to get the Sauvie Island Fire Department out there, who announced it wasn't their jurisdiction, and then the St Helens/Columbia County services also claimed it wasn't theirs. They finally got their fathers out there to try to put it out but at that point it was too late.”The trail to the lighthouse today leads by a discretely positioned shipping container near the freestanding chimney and foundation of the old home. It is still private property. The current owners have a website about the lighthouse and environs at warriorrock.org. Much to my surprise and delight, one of them is a musician, sound artist, composer, and educator. So cool!St. Helens Shipbuilding Company, Island Lumber CompanyMany derelict features of post-Euro-American settlement human activity can still be found all around the point: pilings, bricks, concrete, rotting wood and rusting pipe. The pilings on Warrior Point represent the remains of the Island Lumber Company, part of a large complex of lumber industries located on the northern part of Sauvie Island and directly across Multnomah Channel at St. Helens during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Sawmills were established as early as the 1850s in St. Helens. By 1874, Charles and James Muckle operated a mill in that city and owned interests in nearby timber. In 1904 the mill burned and in 1909 the Charles R. McCormick Company bought the site and constructed a new mill. The new mill proved to be extremely productive. To accommodate larger ships than the schooners, that were the most common means of shipping, Charles McCormick formed the St. Helens Shipbuilding Company at a site just south of Warrior Point on Sauvie Island. After the acquisition of additional timber lands, he and his brother Hamlin formed the St. Helens Timber Company in 1912. In 1920, the McCormicks contracted to produce 250 million feet of railroad ties. To fill the order they formed the Island Lumber Company and built a mill and a shipping pier at Warrior Point on Sauvie Island. (ifish.net)One of the most storied ships turned out by the St. Helens Shipbuilding Company was the Wapama, launched in 1915, surviving almost 100 years before being dismantled in 2013. Once part of the National Maritime Museum in San Francisco, it was the last example of some 225 wooden steam schooners that served along the Pacific coast. The NMM still hosts a PDF of the Wapama brochure. Detail-oriented readers may recall it was Wapama that was involved in a collision that sunk the tug Cricket off Warrior Rock in 1927.Between 1912 and 1927 the St. Helens Shipbuilding Company on Sauvie Island just south of Warrior Point launched 42 wooden ships. (Wikipedia)ConclusionAnd so we come to an end in our learning and listening series in this place once called the Wapato Valley. Little more than 200 years ago it was the domain of the Chinookan people. Today it is a bustling corridor of commerce, industry, and recreation too. Here Sauvie Island Wildlife Area, Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge and Shillapoo Wildlife Area create an aggregated wildlife conservation area on both sides of the Columbia measuring about 20,000 acres in total. In many ways, these lands are little changed.Warrior Rock Soundwalk Part 2 is notably quieter than Part 1. In truth, the soundscape isn't particularly quiet here. It feels quiet, but there is a low frequency hum produced by I-5 and Hwy 30 that settles in here like a fog. I removed much of that with a low shelf EQ to approximate a less industrialized time. And, much like the nearby Oaks to Wetlands Trail Soundwalk yielded an anthropogenic alternative soundscape with Four Trains, I could have made a nautical version from the cut-outs here: Four Ships? Another time, perhaps.On the way back we hear the groaning of sea lions out in the middle of the river. This is a photo I snapped on a the opposite shore five days earlier. I love the sweetening of the acoustics at this distance. Thanks for joining me on this survey of sights, sounds and stories from the Wapato Valley!Warrior Rock Soundwalk Part 1 is out now on all streaming services.Warrior Rock Soundwalk Part 2 is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) tomorrow, Friday, December 20th.

Neil Marcus described himself as “a poet, humorist, writer, actor, and adventurer-a fantastic spastic creatively endowed with disability.” He is best known for his groundbreaking autobiographical play, Storm Reading, which he performed nationwide from the Kennedy Center in Washington DC to the Doolittle Theater in Los Angeles. He was commissioned to write a poem on disability by the Smithsonian Institute. He is the author of his autobiography with the contribution of S.H. Chambers. S.H. Chambers is the contributor of I, Spastic.  They is a cis-gender Euroamerican writer, cartoonist, and composer.  Currently they is the editorial cartoonist for the Coast News. The post The Life of Neil Marcus: Society, Arts, and Disability appeared first on KPFA.

((Recorded Live)) As America prepared for one of the most pivotal elections in recent history, I went live to break down the stakes, the key players, and the issues that could shape the future of the nation. Join me as we explore what's at risk in the 2024 election, from the candidates' platforms to the critical choices facing voters. Whether you tuned in live or are catching the replay, don't miss this deep dive into the upcoming election and what it means for all of us! We are live Monday through Friday! Find me and the show on social media. Click the following links or search @DrWilmerLeon on X/Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube! -Please consider donating to keep us on the air. -Patreon.com/WilmerLeon Announcer (00:00:07): Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge. Wilmer Leon (00:00:15): Good morning. Good morning. And as most of you know by now, this coming Tuesday, November 5th will be as the Constitution states, the Tuesday next, after the first Monday in November is election day. What are you all going to do? Are you going to vote? Are you going to abstain? If you decide to vote, who are you going to cast your ballot for? Let's talk and let's talk live. We're live today. I want to welcome you all to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me. I am Dr. Wiler Leon. And here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they occur in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historic context in which most events take place. During each episode, my guests and I have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between these events and the broader historic contexts in which they occur, thus enabling you to better understand and analyze the events that impact the global village in which we live. (00:01:26): On today's episode, it's just me, it's me, no guests. I'm live today. And I know this is very, very short notice, but here we are. So the issues or the issue before us is or are this Tuesday, as I said in the tease, November 5th will be as the Constitution states, the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November is election day. Folks, what are you all going to do? Are you going to vote or are you going to abstain? If you decide to vote, who are you going to cast your ballots for? And for me, here's the real important salient question, why vote or abstain? I strongly suggest voting. I don't think that you can abdicate your duty as a citizen and sit this one out. And I firmly believe that the primary responsibility of a citizen is to participate in the electoral process to determine who you select to represent your interests in government. (00:02:48): Folks, I believe America is recklessly muddling its way through these incredibly, incredibly perilous times, very, very recklessly. As America muddles its way through these perilous times, there are too many Americans that appear to be more confused than ever. Many of us have traded our interests in for electability or anybody. But Trump, former NAACP board chairman Julian Bond, told us that in the African-American community, we have no permanent friends. We have no permanent enemies, we have just permanent interests. Malcolm called them permanent agendas. And as we look at this whole issue of America muddling its way through these perilous times, I think it's very, very important for us to understand what this really means and who is responsible for the peril that we find ourselves in. Many of you all may take exception to what I'm about to say, but I think the data supports disposition. The American empire is on the wane. It is failing. Some will say it has already failed, and what we are experiencing are the last kicks of a dying mule. I think the African proverb says the last kicks of a dying mule are or can be the most dangerous. (00:04:26): The United States started this war in Ukraine. The United States is backing the genocide that we see playing itself out right before our very eyes in the Zionist colony known as Israel. The United States is trying to provoke a fight with Venezuela by not recognizing the democratically elected president Nicholas Maduro as the president of Venezuela. The United States is trying to start a fight with China over Taiwan. So that's why I say that we are in incredibly, incredibly perilous times and most of this peril is at our own doing. And I see sister Sandra Muhammad, thank you so much for tuning in greatly, greatly appreciated. So again, incredibly reckless. Too many of us are confused more than ever again. Many of us have traded in our interests for this concept of electability and anybody but Trump. Well, we have to ask ourselves, what are our politics really all about? (00:05:53): And this question not only applies to those of us in the African-American community, but it applies to the country overall. Candidates right now are out on the campaign trail asking us for our vote. But what are they offering us? Even more important than that, even more important than what are they offering? What are we as citizens demanding from them? For the most part, I'm hearing racist diatribes of I'm hearing, I'm hearing racist diatribes. I'm hearing offers of higher taxes that are really masking themselves as tariffs on imported goods. I'm hearing anti-immigrant rhetoric, and I'm hearing a lot of ideas being floated as policy. They sound great, but they'll meet stiff opposition if they make their way to Congress. Let me just quickly jump back to the anti-immigrant rhetoric because both sides from the Trump campaign as well as from the Harris campaign, there's a whole lot of clamoring. There's a whole lot of chatter that we're hearing regarding the border immigration. (00:07:21): Oh, our country's being overrun by immigrants. I Trump tells you they're eating our pets. And Vice President Harris talks about building the wall funding for more border agents. All of this stuff about keeping people out. What I don't hear anybody talking about, I don't hear anybody asking the question, why are these people trying to come in the first place? Why are Mexicans trying to cross the border? Why are people from Honduras? Why are people from Guatemala risking life in limb, spending thousands of dollars that they've spent years saving, trying to come across this border? I don't hear anybody asking that question. Donald Trump and JD Vance made this horrifically racist, unsupportable false accusation that Haitian immigrants, who by the way, are in Springfield, Ohio legally, who by the way, salvage the economy of Springfield, Ohio. Nobody's asking the question, why are Haitians there in the first place and nobody talks about American foreign policy? (00:09:00): Do you think Mexicans just want to come to the United States because they woke up last week and said, you know what? I think I'm going to risk life and limb and go to the United States. Do you think Guatemalans, do you think Hondurans? Do you think El Salvadorians are saying to themselves, you know what, I ain't got nothing else better to do. I'm going to pay some Mule $3,000 that it took me five years to save to risk life and limb to try to sneak into the United States only to run the risk of being deported and wasting all that money. Do you think that maybe they're making these decisions because their economies have been decimated by American foreign policy and they're coming. So you don't hear the immigration czar as Donald Trump loves to call Vice President Harris. You don't hear her talking about that. You don't hear Donald Trump talking about that. They talk about failed solutions such as building the wall and all that other foolishness. They don't talk about the real crux of the problem, which is American foreign policy in their countries. What happened with Mexican corn? Well, it got decimated because of nafta importing American yellow corn into Mexico. And that brown multicolored Mexican indigenous corn got decimated through cross pollenization by the American yellow corn that was imported because of nafta, decimating agriculture in Mexico. So what are those farmers to do? Nobody's offered them any assistance. What are those farmers to do? (00:11:09): Chiquita brands, about a month ago was convicted in federal court in Florida for funding death squads in Columbia. Chiquita brands now has to pay millions of dollars, millions of dollars to families in Columbia because they were backing death squads in Columbia. So if you are a Colombian, what are you to do? Stay in your native country, running the risk of being murdered by death squads funded by Chiquita brands or do everything in your power to get out of Columbia and go someplace else. And where is that someplace else? The United States as Donald Trump is using these, I see Steve, I'm getting to Haiti right now. Steve, stay out of my head, man. Stay out of my head. Steve. I'm getting to Haiti right now. (00:12:22): As Donald Trump and JD Vance are extolling these racist diatribes about Haitians eating dogs and cats. Steve, here we go. Nobody's asking why are the Haitians in Springfield, Ohio in the first place? Nobody's asking why'd they leave Haiti and come to the United States? They should be sitting on the island drinking barbering court five star rum in Eaton Grill. No, they've left their lovely country come to the United States. Why? Here's the answer. As during the debate, you saw Vice President Harris wring her hands and twist contorting her face and showing the utter disgust for that racist diatribe that she should have shown. But nobody asked her Vice President Harris, why did you go to Racom last year and try to convince the leaders of Racom, the organization of Caribbean states to be the tip of the United States spear as the United States is trying to rein, invade Haiti, recolonize Haiti? Nobody asked her that question. And I think that's a very, very important question to ask. I call that minstrel diplomacy, black faces on Euro-American foreign policy, menstrual diplomacy. Nobody asked Hakeem Jeffries, Congressman Jeffries, why did you go as a black man? Why did you go to Caron with Vice President Harris, a black woman to convince black countries to invade another black country? (00:14:41): Nobody's asking that question. So it's not simply building a wall. It's not simply enforcing the border. It's not simply funding for more border agents. It's not simply building internment camps to house these individuals and their children. It's not simply deporting people. And by the way, I think former President Barack Obama deported more people than anybody in the last 50 years. It's about American foreign policy decimating the economies of Mexican, central American and South American countries. That's why these individuals are doing everything in their power to come to this country. Now, really quickly, I really quickly, it's also a matter of going back to Haiti. Why such a focus on Haiti? (00:16:03): A couple of reasons. One is geographic the United States is trying to do, has been trying, I think for about a hundred or so years to build a naval base in Haiti, and it has met incredible resistance by Haitians. Why does the United States want to build that naval base in anticipation of China gaining a greater foothold in the region? China right now is talking about building a canal. I believe it's through Honduras, building a canal through Honduras, which would make it easier for Chinese ships to circumnavigate the globe. And that would also be a direct challenge to the Panama Canal. (00:17:10): So you have a number of geopolitical aspects to this as the United States further alienates China, the United States is anticipating the need to replace that cheap Chinese labor with another cheap labor source, and where are they thinking of getting that labor? Haiti. So those are just two very current examples of why the United States is so focused on recolonizing Haiti. Of course, we can go back to the overarching issue of the Haitian Revolution, the successful Haitian revolution, the United States, I'm sorry, Haiti throwing out France as a result of the Haitian Revolution and the belief that no European country, we'll consider you the United States because it's founded by Europeans, would ever allow the successful revolution of a black country. So that's also part of this calculus as well. Those are just a couple of examples of what I'm talking about in terms of these politics and permanent friends, permanent enemies and permanent interests. Again, candidates they're asking us for are vote, but what in fact are they offering us? And again, more important than that is what are we demanding from 'em? (00:19:00): Where are the substantive policies that are focused on making the lives of each American better? Where's the plan to fund them and to get these ideas turned into legislation submitted, brought before Congress, passed by Congress and signed by the president. There are a lot of ideas being floated out there, but one of the things I'm not hearing, particularly from the Harris campaign is how are you going to get this stuff funded? Where's the money going to come from anyway? By failing to develop, understand and articulate our permanent interests, our agendas, we then fall victim to the problem of what I call binary politics. The simplistic either or scenario. Yes, this is a two party system, but being stuck in the mindset of binary politics, the simplistic either or scenario, continues to leave us with simplistic and deadly choices of the status quo. Do you want lead in your drinking water or mercury? (00:20:21): Do you want arsenic on your grits or baby? Do you want mama to sprinkle a little bit of strict nine on them? Grits for you, the dangers of binary politics, this rant of anybody. But Trump is a perfect example of the dangers of binary politics, especially for the African-American community. And please, please, please, baby. Please baby, baby. Please don't get this twisted. Yes, Trump is disgustingly ignorant. He's vile, he's gosh, he's racist. He's an admitted sexual predator and a convicted felon. However, following the simplistic narrative of anybody but Trump as the basis of your analysis will not ipso facto lead you to a better alternative as sporting life said in Porgy and best, it ain't necessarily. So folks, I unapologetically see the world through. We're doing live radio, so I got to every now and then check my messages here to be sure that I'm staying on course, staying on track. Okay? So anyway, folks, I unapologetically see the world through the lens of an African-American man, and I focus on the interests of the African-American community. But my analysis I applies to every demographic across the board. (00:22:09): Let me pause here and just say, Steve, you're right. We're talking about Haiti. Sandra, you said you don't know. It looks as though folks would rather remain in Lala ignorant about many issues, the Western individualism value. Oh, you're absolutely right, Sandra. You're absolutely right about that. And that really gets to the crux of my point. And as I talked about the decline of the empire, this is all part of that western individualist value. And by the way, which is a conservative construct, and Sandra, help me out here if I'm on track with this, is that too many of us in the African-American community have bought into this whole idea of I've got mine. Now you have to get yours. We have lost track of the power of the collective. We have lost track of how we as a community, as we as African-Americans with a distinct history, with a distinct culture, have been able to make it through the challenges that have been imposed upon us by the dominant culture. (00:23:41): Look, I say this all the time. Du Bois wrote The Souls of black folk, not the soul of some guy. Mrs. Hamer dedicated her life championing the right for us to vote. She did not dedicate her life simply so that she could vote. And now what too many of us are looking at, what too many of us are confused about and confused by is the progress of some at the expense of the many. I got mine. You got to get yours. That has never worked for us. It will never work for us. And then there are too many of us like Richardson down in North Carolina, and who's the brother that from Florida that appeared at that Trump race Fest 2024 in New York. He comes on stage after the dude, before him played, Dixie played, what's his name? (00:25:07): I'm drawing blank on a guy that sang it, but what kind of cery was that? A black man going to come on stage, Elvis Presley after a white cat before him, his bumper music was Dixie. And instead of coming to the mic saying, oh hell, to the na Bobby, hell to the na, I'm not going to stand here and follow that racist foolishness. He just goes along, buck dancing, cooning shining, and you know, any of you all that have spent any time listening to me, rarely will I use those types of references when I'm talking about Buck dancing coons. But that just shows you the depths and the utter depravity that our community has fallen into global insight perspectives. You ask, what do I say to African American voters who say, if you vote third party, you'll enable Trump to, ah, okay, global insight perspective. Great question. I was going to get to that a little later, but let me do that right now. (00:26:37): That gets back to my point of the dangers of binary thinking because right now we're stuck in this duopoly Republican and Democrat thinking that there are truly substantive differences between the parties when in fact it's a duopoly. They are two wings on the same bird. They are two sides of the same coin. The Democrats to a great degree, they will couch their racism, they'll couch their militarism in slightly softer language. They'll bring black faces to the forefront to sell you that bs. Linda Thomas Greenfield at the UN championing genocide, right? Kamala Harris going to Kom as I mentioned earlier, Hakeem Jeffries go to Racom, who's the head of africom. It's a black general. Lloyd Austin goes to Kenya to convince William Ruto the president of Kenya. They show him given the check to Ruto, to invade Haiti on behalf of the United States. So the Democrats, they'll roll out black faces to Barack Obama, they'll roll out black faces to sell you basically the same policies that the Republicans, they just Bogart. They go hard in the paint. They go hard in the paint. No, easy layups, hard fouls. They don't care. Democrats try to be, they try to give you a kinder, a kinder, softer militarism. (00:28:50): And Daniel dvi Du Bois said, race is not biological. It's cultural. Oh, that's very, very true. That's why you don't hear me usually speaking in the context of race. I speak in the context of ethnicity and I speak in the context of culture because there is absolutely no biological proof, scientific, empirical data to support the construct of race. Race is a eugenic construct, and I was just in London lecturing on this at Oxford and at Westminster Universities just got back Saturday. Thank you to Dr. Chantel Sherman for putting on that conference. Yeah, race doesn't exist. It just doesn't. It exists only in the warped mind of those that have been convinced that race is real. Race is an artificial construct that was created to a great degree by Christians in order to rationalize the dehumanization of enslaved Africans because they had to figure out if we can consider ourselves to be Christian, then how can we rationalize and justify enslaving other human beings? (00:30:26): Oh, here's an idea. We create this construct of race. Therefore, we can say they are an inferior group of people. And Calvinism played a very, very key part in this because one of the elements of Calvinism is predestination, predetermination. So they then were able to say, oh, these people were predetermined by God to be inferior and subservient to us, the white European. So that's where the whole construct of race comes from. Daniel, thank you so much for that. Byron Donalds. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Rell. I think that's, if I pronounced that correctly, yeah, Byron Donalds is who I was trying to think of again, folks, you have never even heard me call Clarence Thomas a coon, but Byron, Donald Coons coon, anybody that comes on stage on a stage at an event where Dixie was played. I don't care what time in the lineup, you are supposed to come on stage and shut that rascal down. (00:31:47): You're supposed to come on stage and quote that brilliant African-American, that late African-American philosopher Whitney Houston, and say, oh hell, to the Nall Bobby held to the Nall. We ain't going for this. But anyway, oh well, Daniel, excellent, excellent. Thank you. I appreciate your critique of that analysis. Okay, so let me try to move a little further here. Again, as I said, I see the world in unapologetically so through the lens of an African-American man. And please understand this my saying that my being pro me do not ever, and this is something that people do all the time. Black Lives Matter was an example of this. Never equate my being pro me with my being anti you, my being pro me is me being pro me. (00:32:50): The retort to Black Lives matter was, well, all lives matter. Yeah, that's true. But if that were a reality in the United States, if all lives in the United States actually mattered, then we wouldn't have to highlight the fact that Black Lives Matter. The reason that Black Lives mattered was developed was because we saw on our phones, on our television screens, on our computer monitors, black people being slaughtered in the street, and I'm not even going to say shot down in the street like dogs, because if I went out into the street and shot a dog in the street, I would be immediately arrested. (00:33:41): That's why I don't say shot down in the street like dogs, because in many communities, they seem to hold the lives of dogs in higher regard than they do African Americans. So anyway, I see the world through the lens of an African-American man and as a political scientist, I go back to the piece by Mac Jones, a message to a black political scientist where he says, as such, it's my obligation to develop a different wean Chung, a different worldview that I view the world through the prism of my experience, historical, current and personal as an African-American human being, and that I can never allow my analysis to deviate from that because that's what is the most relevant to my community. So vote or abstain, back to that point, I strongly suggest voting. I don't think that you can abdicate your duty as a citizen and sit this one out. We as American citizens, we can no longer afford to leave the management and governance of this country and system to those that we have elected to represent our interests. And I think that little element, that little kernel right there, is what unfortunately is being overlooked, and I'll say particularly in the African-American community, we keep hearing vote for Kamala vote, and I'm not saying vote or don't vote for him or her. (00:35:45): I'm not going to do that. If you want me to, I will tell you who I think is going to win this. I'll get to that in a minute, but I'm not saying vote for him or vote for her, vote for them or not them. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying though is that too many of us have been bludgeoned with you have to vote for her because she's a black woman. If you don't vote for her, you hate black women. You have to vote for her because Donald Trump is the reincarnation of the devil, which by the way, he is. (00:36:21): No, no, no. I need to know. I need her to tell me what she's going to do for me and how she's going to do it. That's all I've been demanding. Kamala, vice President Harris, tell me very, I need you to come on up to stage and say, Wilmer, look. This is what I'm going to do. This is how I'm going to do it, and this is how we're going to pay for it. I need her to do that. Folks, you can't abdicate your duty as a citizen. You can't sit this one out at a campaign event. This past Thursday evening in Arizona, former President Trump said to Tucker Carlson, she, Liz Cheney, she's a radical warhawk. Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. Okay, let's see how she feels about it. When the guns are trained on her face, they're all warhawks. When they're sitting in Washington with a nice building, Trump continued. (00:37:35): What he might think that casting that in the light of put a rifle in her hand and train nine at her face is some kind of military construct. No, Donald, you're not really that smart. We understand that's the context of a firing squad, and no matter how you try to spin that one, that's just disgusting. That's just disgusting. Torito, we did a show last talking about my SiriusXM show. Yes, there was a show it was a best of because I was in London at the time. I will be live tomorrow, tomorrow on SiriusXM 1 26 from 11 to two Eastern. Hopefully that answers your question. Where am I here? (00:38:46): So Kamala had an interview on Fox. She was asked about her platform and she didn't know it. She said, go to my website and read it. Well, yeah, that one speaks for itself, and that's what I've been saying during the whole campaign is folks, politics is not about phenotype. Politics is not about skin color. Politics is about policy, policy initiatives, policy output, policy results. I'm a political scientist. Public policy is my primary area, public policy and black politics, or it was supposed to be a political economy, but that's a whole nother conversation. That's why I'm so stuck on policy. That's what I do. That's what I do. Meg, yo from Baltimore, thank you for joining us. Get me a crab cake if you wouldn't mind. How do I feel about Dick Cheney supporting Kamala Harris? Carl, how do I feel about Dick Cheney supporting Kamala Harris? Let's understand. Now, this is my opinion. I don't have any data to support this point, but this is my opinion, and I think this is fairly accurate. I don't think that Dick Cheney in the middle of the night opened his eyes as a light was shining upon him in a voice of power and majesty filled the room and said, Announcer (00:40:35): Dick Cheney, purveyor of evil war criminal, you must repent and endorse Vice President Harris. And then Dick Cheney pushed back the covers Wilmer Leon (00:40:53): And sat up in the bed and said, oh my God, I have been saved. No, didn't happen. I think the Republican elite have come to the realization that the Frankenstein monster that they have created, Donald Trump is now ravaging and pillaging their village, and they see Kamala Harris as the last ditched attempt to salvage their party as they've known it to exist. Look, you can go back and find the language from, what's it? The Senator from South Carolina. What's the dude's name? I'm drawing a blank on that. Anyway, who told us that Donald Trump was a racist, narcissistic, xenophobic, bigot. (00:42:10): The record is replete with the examples of Ted Cruz. Lindsey Graham, what's her name from South Carolina, Nikki Haley, all of these Republicans, traditional members of the traditional Republican elite telling us that Donald Trump is everything but a child of God. They created this monster. You can go back to the Tea Party and one of the founders, Tom Tan credo. Remember Tom Tancredo back in 2020 or 2016 talking about we want our country back. Tom, who had your country? Tom Tancredo. I don't have your country. I don't know anybody that does Remember that. I also believe that Sarah Palin being on the ticket with what's his name from Arizona, was the precursor to Donald Trump and Carl, this is a very long way. I'm getting to your question because she made you comfortable with stupidity. She made you comfortable with ignorance. (00:43:48): She made you comfortable, and the you is a generic general. You as the country, she made the country comfortable with an ignorant person being a heartbeat away from being the leader of the free world. She tilled the soil, she laid the groundwork for Donald Trump, and then he came in and just bogarted the whole damn game. So Carl, getting back to your point, your question. So again, Dick Cheney didn't find Jesus. What Dick Cheney realized is looking at the policies of the Biden Harris administration, particularly foreign policy, particularly militarism, because remember where he came from. Lemme see if I got the book. Remember where he came? I got over here somewhere. Oh, wait a minute. Here it is. (00:44:58): Sorry. The shadow world inside the global Arms trade. See if I can quickly, after Cheney left the defense department in 1992, his appointment as CEO of Halliburton in 1995 led us to a remarkable improvement in the company's fortunes, especially with regard to federal contracts. In the five years prior to his arrival, Halliburton received the poultry 100 million, paltry 100 million in government credit guarantees under Cheney. Halliburton received 15 times that amount, 1.5 billion. Cheney was paid well for her services for 48 months. He received $45 million from Halliburton, the shadow world inside the global arms trade, Andrew Feinstein. Okay, so Dick Cheney, again, it wasn't divine intervention. The hand of God didn't touch Cheney on his shoulder. No, he realized backing her, he, Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney and all those other Republicans that are now on the Harris bandwagon, they're not on that bandwagon because they're coming closer to her. They're on the bandwagon because she has come closer to them. That's my opinion. Hopefully, Carl, that answers your question. Now is that a good thing or a bad thing? It depends on who your candidate is, but I think that's the reality because when you look at Liz Cheney and Kamala Harris on stage, that's not a good vibe. I don't think I've ever seen them embrace. They may have. (00:47:06): I haven't seen it. It there's a distance between them because I don't think personally they really like each other beyond politics. Again, that's my opinion. I could be as wrong as the day is long. Yes, Ramel sense. They are all war mongers and war criminals based upon the international criminal court standards. They are all, not only are they war mongers, they are also war criminals. Carl, please listen tomorrow. I think I got a hell of a show for y'all tomorrow, but anyway. Oh, okay. Who do I think will win the election and why? You know what, Fred? Hold that. I'm going to get to that in a minute. I, because I have an answer for you. So lemme go back to Trump's what I call the racist hate fest. 2024 in Madison Square Garden. This was a six hour eugenic, racist hate-filled rant, and there was one in particular, which I'm sure most of you now are familiar with this. (00:48:29): So-called comedian, I'm not even going to mention this guy's name called Puerto Rico, a floating island of garbage. He said there's a lot going on. I don't know if you know this, but there's literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it's called Puerto Rico. Now, there is actually a floating island of garbage in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Hawaii. Why not talk about that? Why not talk about the impact that there is truly a floating island of garbage off the Pacific, not the Atlantic coast, and it's full of plastics that are decimating the ecology. Fish are now being found to have microparticles of plastics in them. Sea turtles are getting caught up in all kinds. You could have talked about that in terms of a floating island of garbage, but no, you have to take that ecological disaster called a floating island of garbage off the Pacific Coast, and you have to turn that into this racist eugenic diatribe targeted at Puerto Ricans. Well, lemme tell you this, homie, Pennsylvania is a swing state. (00:50:03): Pennsylvania has 20 electoral votes in the electoral college. Trump won the state in 2016 by a narrow margin of 0.72%. Biden was able to reclaim the state in 2020, winning it by a similarly narrow 1.17% margin or about 80,500 votes. See folks, I use data. When I take a position, when I tell you something, if it's my opinion, I'm going to tell you very clearly I don't have the data for it. Here's my opinion. When I have the data, I'm going to give you the data. So Biden was able to reclaim Pennsylvania and he won it with a 1.17% margin or about 80,500 votes. (00:51:12): Pennsylvania's Latino eligible voter population has more than doubled since 2000 from 206,000 to 620,000 in 2023. Now, Biden won with a margin of 80,500 votes in 2020. Now in 2016, there are 620,000 Latinos, and this is according to Census Bureau figures, and more than half of those voters, about 310,000 are eligible voters who are Puerto Rican, and they are pissed. They are pissed to the highest of Tivity. They are pissed. That's not good, Mr. So-called funny man, racist, funny man. That's not good. You didn't do your boy, you didn't do Trump any favors by going down that alleyway as Richard Pryor would say, because it may not be the voice of God. (00:52:34): Here's what's overlooked by a number of people. Too many of us believe that once you've cast your vote or once you've cast your ballot that your job is done. But folks, casting your ballot is just the beginning of the process. Once you've cast your ballot, your job isn't done. It's only just begun. You have to stay engaged. You have to hold those you voted for or didn't vote for accountable. You have to stay engaged. You can't abdicate your duty as a citizen and sit this one out and if you vote, you have to stay engaged. You've got to, folks, there are many, getting back to the Puerto Rican issue. There are many who will tell you, Dr. Anthony Montero, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant brother out of Philly, who will tell you that the disenchanted African-American, particularly black male community in Philly, that many of them are going to sit this out, and as a result of that, it's going to cost vice president heresy election. (00:53:50): I wonder if those disenchanted African-American males and females who are going to sit this out will now be offset by these angry Latinos, specifically Puerto Ricans. Again, this so-called Mr. Funny Man, I don't think at the end of the day this is going to prove to be, prove to be too funny. Harrison Wall said, claim that they're charting a new way forward to a future where everyone has the opportunity to get by, not just get by, but get ahead. I'm sorry. Her articulation of the opportunity economy is so that you don't just get by, you get ahead. They're proposing, for example, $25,000 as a down payment assistance for first time home buyers, small business entrepreneur assistance, tax cuts for the middle and working class. That's all great, that's all great and it's damn sure need it. (00:55:05): My question is, how's it going to be paid for? Again, I'm a policy guy. How's it going to be paid for? Has anyone publicly asked that question? How much is it going to cost? What's it going to do to the budget? What's it going to do to the deficit and how are you going to pay for it? Because with billions of dollars going to Ukraine, 8 billion about 10 days ago, 8.7 billion, about 10 days ago, going to Israel, 600 million going to Taiwan, that's 17 billion in one day last week or 10 days ago to the settler, 8.7, going to the settler colonial Zionist, settler colonial state called Israel, trying to pick a war with China. Where's this money going to come from? She's made the promise, the campaign promise. My question is, if she wins, will you hold her accountable to deliver on that promise to those who are so offended by the genocide being committed against the Palestinians and rightfully so, many of those of you believe that the answer to that atrocity is a protest vote for Trump. This gets back to the third party question. I believe my opinion that by failing to develop, understand and articulate our permanent interests and agendas, we are falling victim to the problem of binary politics. The simplest either or scenario. You're angry with Biden Harris, the Biden Harris administration for backing funding, participating in the genocide and Gaza. (00:57:15): So you believe that the answer to that is a vote for Trump to our Muslim brothers and Arab brothers and sisters who are rightfully appalled by these genocidal policies, I don't think your viable option is a protest vote for Trump, because remember his son-in-law, Jared Kushner is articulating plans to turn Gaza into beachfront Mediterranean condos, and Jared Kushner is a key advisor to his father-in-law. So if by chance you vote for Trump thinking, you're voting for Trump as a protest against the Biden Harris administration, I personally believe you're making a big mistake because yes, this is a two party system, but there's also third party candidates out there as well. (00:58:25): You've got Dr. Cornell West and Dr. Molina Abdullah. You've got Dr. Jill Stein and Dr. Butch Ware. Two examples from the Green Party. So if you're going to make a protest vote, then in my opinion, I believe in you cast a protest vote. Think about third party the real signal, in my opinion. If you want to really send a message, let the duopoly see a third party campaign. Get 20% of the vote, let a third party get enough to qualify for public campaign funding. Let a third party get a significant enough vote to qualify to be on the debate stage. Can you imagine Dr. West on stage debating Donald Trump? Can you imagine Dr. West on stage debating Vice President Harris? Can you imagine Dr. Butch Ware on the stage debating JD Vance, folks, I'm talking peace shooter at a gunfight. That's what you would be witnessing. And I'm not saying that Dr. West on stage against Kamala Harris. In fact, I'm wrong to put it in that kind of conflict scenario because it's all about the best interest of the American people. It's not about protecting one person's image against and using another person to tarnish that image. That's not what this is about. (01:00:10): Thank you, Sherry, for coming back and agreeing with me. This is about you. This is about America. This is about our country. This is about social security. In fact, to that point, let give y'all, let me give you a very simple example of this. We keep hearing that social security is in jeopardy, right? You've got George W that wanted to privatize social security, which we know was just grant theft auto. Here's the solution, and you can do the math yourself. This one is so simple, a 10-year-old can figure it out right now, the social security contribution that comes out of your paycheck every month if you have a paycheck gets capped at, I think it's either 140 or $144,000. Every dollar you make after 140 or $144,000 is exempt from the Social Security payroll tax. (01:01:49): You want to salvage social security, which by the way isn't really in jeopardy, but if you want to salvage social security, raise the ceiling on the Social security payroll tax, raise it to, I don't know, pick a number, raise it to $500,000 of salary, raise it to a million dollars of salary, raise it to 1.5 million of salary. If you are making $500,000 in salary, you can afford an additional 10%, 15%, or 10% on that. Whatever the payroll tax is, I don't have it in front of me. And what you would be able to do by doing that, you would ensure the sustainability. That's not the word I was looking for, but anyway, sustainability of social security, you ready for this? Lower the retirement age, you could lower the retirement age and don't send your money yet because there's a bamboo steamer that comes with this deal. You could expand benefits, raise benefits. (01:03:19): They right now are talking about what? Raising the retirement age to like 72 and what's the life expectancy of the average American about 67 years. So now you got to work five years beyond your death. Does that make sense? No, not at all. That's a very simple fix, folks. The math is simple. Raise the social security ceiling from 140 or $144,000 to a million if you make a million dollars in salary. We're not talking about return on investments, we're not talking about all those other revenue generating elements in your stock, in your portfolio, just salary. You could salvage social security, you could lower their retirement age, you could increase benefits. Why isn't Kamala Harris talking about that? Well, because as son Ray says, if we hold her accountable, they will send her the, oh, that's not one. (01:05:03): Oh, I'm sorry. It was JJ Mars who says the American oligarchs will never allow it. Well, JJ Mars, that's why I'm saying it's not about what the oligarchs will allow. It's about what you as American people and voters and constituents will demand so that a candidate cannot come forward and win unless they commit to doing that. And then you have to ensure that the members of Congress understand if that doesn't happen, they no longer have jobs. See, I'm not going to concede this to the American oligarchs. If I were doing that, then I'm wasting my time talk. I've wasted an hour and six minutes of my day talking to you. I could be playing golf. I could be a shaan right now on number seven, teeing off on number seven. It's beautiful outside, right? Shit, it's 80 degrees outside. (01:06:12): So jj, if I'm going to concede that to the oligarchs, then why have I been sitting here doing this? I'm about to fight, man. JI don't know if you're male or female, so please forgive me. I'm about to fight. I'm about to struggle. I'm about kicking ass and taking names. I'm not throwing the towel in because I'm going to succeed or die trying. The Powell memo, Sherry, what was the Powell memo and the chamber? Okay, Louis Powell, former Supreme Court Justice before Lewis Powell was nominated and appointed to the Supreme Court, Lewis Powell was the chairman or president, I don't remember the title of the National Chamber of Commerce. He was out of Richmond, Virginia. And Powell wrote what has now become known as the Powell Memo in, I want to say in the mid seventies. And the crux of the Powell memo was corporate America. Remember, he was the chairman or the president of the National Chamber of Commerce. (01:07:43): It was his position that corporate America had to get more involved in American politics, that corporate America had to invest more money into candidates, had to invest more money into parties, had to invest more money into the machinery. Sherry, thank you, 1972, had to invest more money into the machinery of the American political process in order to ensure that their corporate interests prevailed in the legislative system. And so that's how you now wind up with, oh, shoot, I'm drawing a blank on the Supreme Court case that now comes out and says that corporations are people too, and that corporations have interest and voices that should be allowed, and you can now contribute ungodly amounts of money into the American political system. Corporations can donate all this money to candidates. Thank you. Thank you, Zach. The Citizens United Case. Thank you. That's how you wind up with the Citizens United case. (01:09:20): And Sherry, I'm glad you No, I'm not talking about Elon Musk, jj. I'm talking about talking Powell. But look at how long it took. It took from 72, I think this is right to 2010 for the Citizens United case to be passed however many years that is. See, they play it for the long game. Powell writes this memo in 72, gets a Supreme Court case validating that position in 2010. Look at how long it took. They play it for the long game. We play it. I wouldn't even say for the short game. We play it. We play it an inning. We're happy with an inning at a time. They're looking at series. (01:10:23): So hopefully, Sherry, does that answer your question about the Powell memo and what has also become, well, some call it the Powell Doctrine. Others associate the Powell Doctrine with General Colin Powell and the You break it, you own it thing. But anyway, do I think Trump and Harris are both fascists? Yes. Yes. Yes. And how so? Because look at the industrialists that are actually controlling the policies, and what does Kamala Harris say? We are going to have the most, she didn't use the word dominant. I can't remember, Sherry. Oh, yes, sir. I have a PhD. Well, you know what, Sherry, to that point, PhD, my son says, it means two things piled higher and deeper, and it also means, please help dad. Anyway. (01:11:36): Now, what was I talking about? Oh, fascism. It's the corporate interests controlling policy and using the police force slash military in order to support it domestically and internationally. And so I believe that Trump is just a more vocal fascist than Kamala Harris, but I believe that she's just as fascist as the rest of 'em, as Barack Obama was, as well as was George. I mean, I don't see how you get to the exalted position of president without being a fascist, because that's one of the basis of American foreign policy is fascism. You can put a, okay, to those of you that are now up in arms, Wilmer, how can you call Kamala Harris a fascist? She's a kinder, gentler, fascist. Remember in a more attractive fascist. Remember George HW Bush and his kinder, gentler conservatism. Remember that? Well, we are now dealing with a kinder, gentler fascism. So let me look to wrap this up for now. (01:13:24): Anybody but Trump, I believe that whole mantra ignores the fact as a US president that he's a functionary. A US president is a functionary of the United States government. An American president is a functionary of the interests of the elite. Look at Trump's position on Venezuela. It was the same as the Biden administration. Both Democrat and Republican administrations have had policies that included US interference and other Central American and South American countries. Trump's position on tax cuts and cuts to social programs builds upon tax policy and social policy cuts from previous administrations. Remember Bill Clinton and ending welfare as we know it. (01:14:18): And remember, Obama's failed grand bargain. Again, folks, I'm not talking with you now saying that any candidate is the right choice or the wrong choice. I'm merely asking you, what do we get for our loyalty? What do you get for your vote? Do you get more hope without substantive and systemic change? What do you get by settling for the status quo through the willful ignorance of supporting a candidate that has a proven track record on issues that aren't in the best interest of the American people that aren't in the best interest of the African-American community? We, as Baldwin said, are merely making peace with mediocrity without substantive systemic change. Are we believing that we are really what the white world calls a nigger? (01:15:34): This should never become our reality. So with that, let me say to all of you all that have invested the last hour and 15 minutes of your morning with me, with us, my phenomenal, phenomenal producer, melody Graves. I would not be able to do any of this without her. Let me see. S one. All we can hope for is a president that will give us the softest landing for this dying empire. Create your own strategy to save you and your loved ones as many others as you are able to do. You're absolutely right. Oh, oh, oh, oh, right. Who do I think is going to win the election? Thank you for bringing me back to that. This is what I see you ready. (01:16:34): I believe that either at the end of Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning, the 47th president of the United States is going to be Kamala Harris. I believe it's going, and I've consulted with a former classmate of mine, Dr. Bari Jahi, who's a brilliant, brilliant brother, and I agree. The numbers will be around 2 93 Harris, 2 45 Trump. Remember, you need two 70 to win. I don't even think Trump's going to win the popular vote. He got 75 million votes against Biden. I don't think he'll get 75 million this time. It could go to three 19 Harris, because I think that she's going to win North Carolina and I believe that she's going to win Arizona so she could go as high as three 19 or three 20. This hate fest, racist diatribe 2024 that he held in New York, I think did him incredible damage, and what he said Thursday yesterday about Liz Cheney, I think it is going to do him incredible damage. Also, I don't believe that the polling numbers that we're seeing, excuse me, I don't believe that the polling numbers are anywhere near accurate. I think you're, if you look at the polls, I think you're being sold a pig and a poke. (01:18:41): Remember, I forget the year in the first Obama campaign, the polling and all of the analysts and everybody, la, and everybody was telling us that Mitt Romney was going to defeat Barack Obama and that Romney was going to win by seven to nine points. Didn't happen even election night. They were still talking about Romney seven to nine point victory didn't happen. Their polling is skewed. Some of it is intentional, some of it is inherent in the systemic nature of it. Let me go through these real quickly. Please tell you who, doctor, please tell me this live will be uploaded. It will be so you can watch it again, Jackie. Thank you. Sandra believes Kamala will win as well. Trump wins with 300. Okay, Zach, we'll see. You say Trump wins with 300 plus, it might happen. Let's see, jj, whoever wins will not be able to complete their four year term. I can't speak to that. I can't predict the future. My crystal ball right now, unfortunately, is in the shop. (01:20:08): Sherry, I will not be voting for Harris or Trump. Okay? There are viable third parties out there, and when you think third party, you got to think long game, which I think if you really want to send a message, if you really want to have a vote protest, let the elite see a significant increase in support for third parties, and I think that'll do this. Democracy and incredible service, big C. Hey, you want to thank me for my brilliant commentary? Oh, brilliant. You're too kind. I think you just need to get out more. You believe Harris will win. Okay, so with all that and a bag of chips, here's what I want to do. I got to thank you all so much for listening, for participating in the Connecting the Dots podcast, this live podcast, we are going live, and I hope to start it next week, but there'll be more posted on that one. (01:21:07): Thank you again for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wier Leon. Stay tuned for new episodes, hopefully every day Monday through Friday. Please follow and subscribe. Leave a review. Folks, we're going live that costs and it costs big. I need help. I need your help. Leave a review. Share the show. Follow me. Follow us. Again, without the wonderful, brilliant Melody Graves, I would just be sitting here talking to myself. You can follow us on social media. You can find all the links below in the show description. Remember that this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge, because talk without analysis is just chatter. I don't chatter here. We don't chatter here on Connecting the dots. Tomorrow. Saturday, my show Inside The Issues with Wilmer Leon on SiriusXM 1 26, urban View, 11 to two. Got a great lineup for y'all tomorrow. Check it out. You'll be really interested and surprised, and folks, I'm going to see you again next time. Until then, I am Dr. Wilmer Leon. Have a great, great one. Peace. I'm out Announcer (01:22:28): Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.    

In this episode, we speak with distinguished professor, Elliott West, a Pulitzer Prize nominee, and winner of the Bancroft Prize for his book Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion. We talk about the changing relationship between the United States government and American Indians influence Euro-American lives. We look at the ways westward expansion affected native cultures and freedom as well as their portrayal in American popular culture. We challenge some of the popular mythologies around Native Americans, especially common in Westerns and other popular culture surrounding cowboys. Confronting these issues unveils some of the dehumanizing ideologies, stereotypes, and atrocities experienced by Native Americans. The views expressed are meant to illuminate and unravel these issues.

Send us your Florida questions!This week, Florida Spectacular takes a deep dive into DeLeon Springs. Rick and Cathy talk about the first people who lived in the area, EuroAmerican settlers, and the history of the sugar mill and plantation that formed around the spring. They end the podcast talking about the more "roadside Florida" aspects of the spring, including, of course, waterskiing elephants and make-your-own pancakes.Links We MentionedDe Leon Springs State ParkOld Florida's Finest: DeLeon SpringsA deeper dive into the springStetson project abut enslaved people at DeLeon SpringsQueenie the Waterskiing elephantWaterskiing elephants at DeLeon SpringsLiz and QueenieUntethered & Wanderwise: Female Travel Over 45A travel podcast for women over 45 who want to explore this big beautiful world.Listen on: Apple Podcasts SpotifySupport the showSupport the podcast! For $5/month, you get premium Florida Keys history and travel tips with Brad Bertelli and Cathy Salustri.Subscribe to The Florida Spectacular newsletter, and keep up with Cathy's travels at greatfloridaroadtrip.com. Find her on social media: Facebook.com/SalustriCathy; Twitter/IG: @CathySalustri Question or comment? Email: cathy@floridaspectacular.com. Free, weekly episodes of "The Florida Spectacular" are co-hosted by Rick Kilby.Get Rick's books at rickkilby.com/ and http://studiohourglass.blogspot.com/. Connect: Facebook.com/floridasfountainofyouth, Twitter (@oldfla), and IG (@ricklebee).Premium, biweekly episodes of "The Florida Keys" Spectacular are co-hosted by Brad Bertelli. Find Brad's column in The Keys Weekly newspaper, ch...

Author and scholar Dr. Mohamed Abdou returns to the podcast, one year after October 7, 2023. Our discussion flows across various subjects: Al-Aqsa Flood and the US-Israel genocide of Palestinians in Gaza; Islam and the crusading Euro-American imperial project; anti-colonial struggle as resistance, decolonization as "creating the world of many belows"; and Abdou's participation in the Palestine solidarity encampment at Columbia University, where he was targeted, threatened, and slandered by Zionists in the university administration, United States Congress, and by prominent media figures. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/mohamed-abdou-2 // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comWapato Park is pretty great, partially because it's easily overlooked and therefore never crowded. Its full name is Wapato Access Greenway State Park. It's a sleeper park, the kind you stumble on if you like studying maps. The small gravel parking lot trailhead is on a dead end road, and easy to miss. Interestingly, it's the only trailhead on Sauvie Island that you don't have to pay $10 ($30/yr) to park at. In the winter the trail can be quite muddy, in the late spring and summer it can get buggy, and if you're really unlucky, your car can get busted into. Still, it's worth a visit.On a mild February day earlier this year I strolled around its shores, and down to the dock on the river. This soundscape records the wildlife and ambience of winter. You'll hear Common Raven, spirited and unusual vocalizations from Stellar's Jays, a Pileated Woodpecker, Ruby-crowned and Golden-crowned Kinglets, and all kinds of water birds. Sometimes you even see Tundra Swans in small numbers here.Reminiscences of Louis Labonte (1900) recalls life on Scappoose Creek near Sauvie's Island, as a teenage boy, from about 1833 to 1836. Labonte [Jr.] was the son of Astor expedition member Louis Labonte [Sr.] and his native wife, daughter of Clatsop Chief Coboway.Game on the ponds of the island was very abundant, consisting of deer, bear, and panthers and wildcats; and beaver were still plentiful; but the waterfowl of the most magnificent kind, at their season of passage, and, indeed much of the year, almost forbade the hunter to sleep.Indeed, the lake was so covered by the flock as almost to conceal the water.So we can forgive Capt. William Clark for his 1805 journal remark referring to the swans, geese and cranes: “they were emensely numerous and their noise horrid.” Here we have another recollection of wildlife din riotous enough to make sleeping difficult.And, here I am thinking about this place prior to Euro-American settlement again, prior to industrialization and the inescapable anthropogenic noise coming from the commercial aircraft corridor above, the highway to the west, and the motorboats in the channel.Now, you might be thinking to yourself, boy Chad sure brings up indigenous people a lot, for being a field recording and music guy. It's true. I think it's because I get so tuned into natural soundscape, that I'm curious to imagine all the details of what life was like two hundred-plus years ago. When I'm editing my field recordings with splices and EQ filters and cut & paste techniques to approximate a pre-industrial quietude, I can't help but think people used to be much more in tune with wildlife and weather. In the vicinity of Wapato Park, human history goes deeper than is often discussed. According to amateur archeologist Emory Strong, there are three archeological points of interest nearby:MU 6. Cath-la-nah-qui-ah. six houses and 400 inhabitants.  Nathaniel Wyeth built Fort William near this town but the residents had all died in the pestilence by then. Dr. Mclaughlin had all the houses burned.  Excavations reveal everything covered with a film of cedar charcoal.MU 7. The site of Wyeth's Fort WilliamMU 8. One of the prehistoric sites that appears to be very old. There are no game or fish bones, and the midden has a different character from the more recent sites. (Stone Age on the Columbia River, 1958)[“MU” here is just an archeological prefix indicating Multnomah County. The modern trinomial standard now includes a code for Oregon as a prefix: 35 MU 6 and so on.] Each is an interesting story. Let's discuss. (35 MU 6) Cath-la-nah-qui-ah (or Gat-la-na-koa-iq), was a Multnomah tribe village on Multnomah Channel. The size estimate of 400 inhabitants belongs to Lewis and Clark. This would have been about half the size of the main Multnomah village on the other side of the island, in that time period. This is what that milieu looked like on the day I visited.This is what the plank houses looked like 200 years ago. They varied in size from 15' x 30' all the way up to 30' x 400':This is what the inside of a plankhouse looked like:Today, if not obliterated by erosion, or dike building, one would only expect to see slight depression in the soil on the site where one of these plankhouses stood. In the early 1800's there were hundreds of them on the lower Columbia. The pestilence of the 1830's is now widely regarded to have been a malaria epidemic. Sauvie Island tribes—perhaps owing to the marshy landscape— were particularly devastated. The Indians believed it had been introduced by an American ship involved in the salmon trade, the Owyhee, commanded by John Dominis. They may have been right, as the ship had visited malarial ports before sailing to the Columbia. The impact of fever and ague on Native people in Oregon was earthshaking. In the 1820s, they had been by far the majority population in the region; by the early 1840s, they were in the minority. (Disease Epidemics among Indians, 1770s-1850s)Dr. McLoughlin was the Chief Factor of Fort Vancouver, upriver about 10 miles. This was the center of operations and trade for the entire Pacific Northwest, on behalf of French-Canadian Hudson's Bay Co (HBC). In addition to the to the Cath-la-nah-qui-ah village, HBC men also burned the larger Multnomah village (35 MU 2, 800 inhabitants, originally much larger) on the east side of the island, presumably in an effort to curb the epidemic.In an 1895 article for The Oregonian, pioneer John Minto reminisced about the “old Multnomah nation” and its appearance fifty years before, in 1845. We landed and camped for the night at the site of the last Multnomah village, but at which that time there were no Indians nor sign of recent Indian life. There was however an extensive city of the dead, a cemetery laid out in streets as wide as the plat of Riverview Cemetery at Portland. The dead were deposited on structures of wide split cedar boards three or more inches thick, set upright; sometimes three tiers of horizontal boards one above the other, mortised into and secured by twisted inner bark of cedar. On these the dead were laid wrapped in cedar bark. He included this remark about what he heard:It was rare that a traveller should pass a village at night without hearing at the same time the women wailing for the dead and the monotonous beat of a tom-tom. Now, I know that maybe this all seems like a tangent. But, these are testimonials both to the look and sound of that time that I think is not just interesting, but worth sharing, particularly on public lands where these events happened. And for my part, why not include them with narratives about my soundscape recordings also bearing witness to the land?Just 8 years after Minto's observations of the Multnomah village site, in 1853, Simon Morgan Reeder settled the donation land claim (originally belonging to one N. D. Miller) on which once stood the largest village of the island. Today the main road on the east side of the island, Reeder Road, bears his name. Now let us turn to (35 MU 7) Fort William, the abandoned effort to set up a trading post on Sauvie Island by Nathaniel J. Wyeth, rivaling HBC, on behalf of American investors in 1834. Two roadside monuments have been erected nearby. Let's be clear: these are monuments to a failed business venture. Upon arrival, Wyeth saw opportunity in the Natives' misfortune, writing in his journals "providence has made room for me and with doing them [Natives] more injury than I should if I had made room for myself viz Killing them off."[3]Wyeth had many setbacks in his attempt to establish Fort William. In 1835 one of his men was killed at the hands of another. Reading a correspondence from his investors, one might surmise Wyatt was a poor communicator, if not lacking the temperament of a leader.Finally there is (35 MU 8) “a prehistoric site that appears to be very old. There are no game or fish bones…” Here we are to understand the bones decomposed in the intervening time span. These weren't the original vegans of the Portland basin. My best attempts to research this further yielded nothing. Were these the ancestors of the Multnomahs, the Chinookan peoples? The landscape holds a lot of mysteries. I think about them when I listen to it. Thank you for reading and listening. I hope you enjoy Wapato Park Soundwalk. Wapato Park Soundwalk is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) tomorrow, Friday, October 18th.

On today's episode, Jessica talks with Friar Francisco Nahoe and Mata'u Rapu about how a priest and a filmmaker got involved in repatriation efforts for Rapa Nui (Easter Island). We learn how 19th and 20th Century European sheepherding ventures circulated Polynesian crania from Rapa Nui across the world; how UNESCO recognition can harm indigenous communities; the close relationship between environmental protection, cultural heritage, and indigenous rights; and most of all how the Rapanui people themselves provide an outstanding example of resilience in the face of environmental precarity and Euro-American colonization. Finally, we explore the challenges of living up to the leadership and legacy of both ancient ancestors and living elders in the effort to find a collective, multi-generational Polynesian voice.Transcripts For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/heritagevoices/91Links Heritage Voices on the APN Eating up Easter Eating up Easter on PBS (Amazon) Eating up Easter (PBS) British museum public access catalogue Moai: Contest Objects from the British Museum Collection Article about British Museum Employee who Stole Artifacts from Collection Another film made by another Rapanui documentary filmmaker, Leo Pakarati, about Hoa Haka Nana Ia. Smithsonian Moai Stone Figure Head and Shoulders Smithsonian to return ancestral remains to Indigenous Australians https://www.instagram.com/smrapu/ https://linktr.ee/smrapuContact JessicaJessica@livingheritageanthropology.org@livingheritageA@LivingHeritageResearchCouncilArchPodNet APN Website: https://www.archpodnet.com APN on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/archpodnet APN on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/archpodnet APN on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/archpodnet Tee Public StoreAffiliates Motion

On today's episode, Jessica talks with Friar Francisco Nahoe and Mata'u Rapu about how a priest and a filmmaker got involved in repatriation efforts for Rapa Nui (Easter Island). We learn how 19th and 20th Century European sheepherding ventures circulated Polynesian crania from Rapa Nui across the world; how UNESCO recognition can harm indigenous communities; the close relationship between environmental protection, cultural heritage, and indigenous rights; and most of all how the Rapanui people themselves provide an outstanding example of resilience in the face of environmental precarity and Euro-American colonization. Finally, we explore the challenges of living up to the leadership and legacy of both ancient ancestors and living elders in the effort to find a collective, multi-generational Polynesian voice.Transcripts For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/heritagevoices/91Links Heritage Voices on the APN Eating up Easter Eating up Easter on PBS (Amazon) Eating up Easter (PBS) British museum public access catalogue Moai: Contest Objects from the British Museum Collection Article about British Museum Employee who Stole Artifacts from Collection Another film made by another Rapanui documentary filmmaker, Leo Pakarati, about Hoa Haka Nana Ia. Smithsonian Moai Stone Figure Head and Shoulders Smithsonian to return ancestral remains to Indigenous Australians https://www.instagram.com/smrapu/ https://linktr.ee/smrapuContact JessicaJessica@livingheritageanthropology.org@livingheritageA@LivingHeritageResearchCouncilArchPodNet APN Website: https://www.archpodnet.com APN on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/archpodnet APN on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/archpodnet APN on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/archpodnet Tee Public StoreAffiliates Motion

For thousands of years, American Indian tribes lived in what is now North Dakota with their own systems of government and economy. They were pushed out of their traditional lands as Euro-Americans began to arrive. The Homestead Act of 1862 attracted new immigrants with promises of cheap land, while tribes were confined to reservations as new settlers established their homes.

A brand new international business conference is coming to our state soon, building on the growing presence of German and other European companies in our state.

A brand new international business conference is coming to our state soon, building on the growing presence of German and other European companies in our state.

It's Oct 2nd as I write. The Oak Island area on Sauvie Island, near Portland Oregon closed to recreational use for the season yesterday. For the coming Fall and Winter, it will serve as a haven for the birds, save for the occasional hunters. Last winter, when I brought my Soundwalk podcast to Substack, I embarked on a series touching down at certain points in the greater area I referred to as the Columbia Lowlands. I'm pleased to say I'm taking us back there, covering some spots that I didn't get to last time through. Lewis and Clark called this area the Wappato Valley, after the edible tuber, Wapato, that the Native Americans harvested here on Sauvie Island. The island was also named Wappato Island, the geographical center of Wappato Valley. (Both the double P spelling and the geographic names didn't really take.) Today, this area is also referred to as the Portland Basin.Oak Island in the early 1800s would have looked pretty similar to what it looks like now—only without pastures—and the name would have made more sense than it does today, because the land mass used to be surrounded by shallow lakes. Today it more resembles a peninsula. Like the lakes of the Columbia Bayou (slough) on north side of Portland, many lakes on Sauvie Island were drained in the early 1900's, and dikes were built, hardening the river bank. Now, as far as I know, the only marker honoring the stewardship of this land by Native Americans is found a few steps into the Oak Island Nature Trail. There you will see wood post with a line drawing of a two people in a canoe with a QR code underneath. Focusing on that QR code with a smartphone will pull up a page, offering the following:Two hundred years ago, Native Americans walked on this very spot. Each year, just before winter, tribes from up and down the Columbia and Willamette rivers gathered on Oak Island for a trading fair which included dancing and festivities.I want to know more about that. I want to imagine what that looked like, what that sounded like. Of the environmental sound, Capt. William Clark leaves only this description on November 5th, 1805, from the vicinity of Sauvie Island:I could not sleep for the noise kept by the Swans, Geese, white & black brant, Ducks etc. on a opposit base, & Sand hill Crane, they were emensely numerous and their noise horrid. Immensely numerous and horrid. Ha! We will hear numerous birds soon enough in our extended soundwalk survey. For now, on our Oak Island Road Soundwalk, we hear just a handful of bugling Sandhill Cranes, small flocks of geese, wintering songbirds, Pacific tree frogs and light rain showers. Anything but horrid to my ears. Dig a little deeper and you'll discover 200 years ago is just the tip of the iceberg. Native Americans lived in various village sites on the island dating back 2500 years; one thousand generations! (Archeological sites upriver near The Dalles increase that time horizon to human occupation of the area going back well over 10,000 years ago). And all they got was a QR code.How do we know Native Americans lived on Sauvie Island so long? Well, less than a mile south of Oak Island is Merrybelle Farm. Several archeological digs occurred here, beginning in 1958. Analyzing the projectile points and found here with others found on the island and throughout the region, Richard Pettigrew points to an estimated timeline of village occupation at the Merrybelle site from 600 BCE to 200 CE. There were 16 known village sites on Sauvie Island. Several have been the subject of formal archeological excavation. Many were picked over by amateur artifact collectors. Some were buried or partially buried under tons of dike soil. One was “sunken”, preserving woven baskets in the mud for up to 700 years. Today there's no physical reminder of the civilization that existed here before Euro-American settlers; no formal mention or marker, save for a recently renamed bridge. Wapato Bridge. It's a start. Scholars believe the Wapato Valley once sustained the highest population density north of Mexico in aboriginal times. Isn't this a story that should be told?In fourth grade we had a “Pioneer Day”. We came to school in costume: bonnets for the girls. Cowboy hats for boys. Did some boys bring toy guns? Did anyone dress up as an Indian? Seems plausible. We rolled out pasta from scratch, cutting broad noodles for chicken noodle soup “like the pioneers did”. We pledged allegiance to the flag every morning. We did not learn we were inhabiting what was once the cradle of the largest Native American population center, in the Portland Basin, in the United States. When I walk around on Sauvie Island, I try to picture the long house villages, and the multitude of dugout canoes. When I went paddleboarding on Sturgeon Lake a month ago my feet sank up to my calves in mud as I clumsily launched my craft. I imagined Wapato growing there, plentifully. I imagined Native Americans loosening the root bulbs with their toes, harvesting them in floating baskets. The land of plenty. People of the river.This soundwalk was recorded on mild December evening last year, on Oak Island Road, adjacent the Wildlife Area. There are half a dozen farm houses on this quiet spur road. It was very relaxing, and nourishing. I totally recommend this to anyone in the area. Like last time, the composition is almost entirely solo performances strung together. Four voices: piano, a clean Wurlitzer electric piano, a modified Wurlitzer electric piano, and a piano with heavy tape effects. All taking turns. It won't always be like this, though. In fact, next week I have a whole new direction I'm excited to unveil! Til then, thanks for reading, for listening, for joining me here.Oak Island Road Soundwalk is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) today, Friday, October 4th. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe

Professor Gerald Horne discusses his book, The Counter-revolution of 1836: Texas Slavery & Jim Crow and the Roots of American Fascism. Prof. Horne explains his thesis that Texas was a goldmine for Euro-Americans since it provided the dual economics of land speculation and the expansion of slavery, praxis for settler colonialism, and a built in […]

Send us a textToday, we all know—assume—that the Mississippi River begins at Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota. How did we figure this out? Why does it matter? In this episode, I dig into the history of how European and American explorers searched the swamps and forests of Minnesota trying to figure out exactly where the Mississippi River springs to life, as well as what motivated their searches. Henry Schoolcraft is usually credited as the person who figured it out, but he had a lot of help, wasn't even the first Euro-American to visit the lake, and doubters continued to challenge his claim for another 60 years. I finish by asking what exactly we mean by a river's “source” and wondering if it's time to think much more broadly about how and where rivers begin.

John Muir is widely and rightly lauded as the nature mystic who added wilderness to the United States' vision of itself, largely through the system of national parks and wild areas his writings and public advocacy helped create. Critics say that vision, however, came at a cost: the conquest and dispossession of the tribal peoples who had inhabited and managed those same lands, in many cases for millennia. Muir argued for the preservation of wild sanctuaries that would offer spiritual enlightenment to the conquerors, not to the conquered Indigenous peoples who had once lived there. “Somehow,” he wrote, “they seemed to have no right place in the landscape.” Cast Out of Eden tells this neglected part of Muir's story—from Lowland Scotland and the Wisconsin frontier to the Sierra Nevada's granite heights and Alaska's glacial fjords—and his take on the tribal nations he encountered and embrace of an ethos that forced those tribes from their homelands. Although Muir questioned and worked against Euro-Americans' distrust of wild spaces and deep-seated desire to tame and exploit them, his view excluded Native Americans as fallen peoples who stained the wilderness's pristine sanctity. Fortunately, in a transformation that a resurrected and updated Muir might approve, this long-standing injustice is beginning to be undone, as Indigenous nations and the federal government work together to ensure that quintessentially American lands from Bears Ears to Yosemite serve all Americans equally. MLF Organizer: Andrew Dudley   A People & Nature Member-led Forum program. Forums at the Club are organized and run by volunteer programmers who are members of The Commonwealth Club, and they cover a diverse range of topics. Learn more about our Forums. This program is part of our Good Lit series, underwritten by the Bernard Osher Foundation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Langmia's book Black 'Race' and the White Supremacy Saga (Anthem Press, 2024) examines the conundrum that has haunted the Black and White ancestry for ages on what supremacy actually means. Is it Black or White supremacy? Granted, the term "White supremacy" has occupied the sociopolitical, cultural and economic discourse for ages, but what does that really imply? All other ancestries on planet earth have been coerced to believe that conformity to Euro-American lifestyle is the way to become 'civilized' on planet earth.  But the term civilization owes its genesis to the African cultural and educational achievements in Egypt. Consequently, Black ancestry, the first human specie on planet earth, should lead humankind to cultural and epistemological supremacy--but that has always been met with skepticism. This book examines this debate, especially between the Black and the White ancestry. There appears to be a pejorative connotation associated with the term Black. It has been 'inferiorized' because of the stain of slavery, servitude and brutal murders suffered by those from the continent of Africa that are overwhelmingly Black. Dr. Kehbuma Langmia offers “counter arguments on ‘inferiority' and ‘superiority' designations” (p. 181) that have been applied to particular groups and have prevented the unity of the entire human "race."  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Dr. Langmia's book Black 'Race' and the White Supremacy Saga (Anthem Press, 2024) examines the conundrum that has haunted the Black and White ancestry for ages on what supremacy actually means. Is it Black or White supremacy? Granted, the term "White supremacy" has occupied the sociopolitical, cultural and economic discourse for ages, but what does that really imply? All other ancestries on planet earth have been coerced to believe that conformity to Euro-American lifestyle is the way to become 'civilized' on planet earth.  But the term civilization owes its genesis to the African cultural and educational achievements in Egypt. Consequently, Black ancestry, the first human specie on planet earth, should lead humankind to cultural and epistemological supremacy--but that has always been met with skepticism. This book examines this debate, especially between the Black and the White ancestry. There appears to be a pejorative connotation associated with the term Black. It has been 'inferiorized' because of the stain of slavery, servitude and brutal murders suffered by those from the continent of Africa that are overwhelmingly Black. Dr. Kehbuma Langmia offers “counter arguments on ‘inferiority' and ‘superiority' designations” (p. 181) that have been applied to particular groups and have prevented the unity of the entire human "race."  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Dr. Langmia's book Black 'Race' and the White Supremacy Saga (Anthem Press, 2024) examines the conundrum that has haunted the Black and White ancestry for ages on what supremacy actually means. Is it Black or White supremacy? Granted, the term "White supremacy" has occupied the sociopolitical, cultural and economic discourse for ages, but what does that really imply? All other ancestries on planet earth have been coerced to believe that conformity to Euro-American lifestyle is the way to become 'civilized' on planet earth.  But the term civilization owes its genesis to the African cultural and educational achievements in Egypt. Consequently, Black ancestry, the first human specie on planet earth, should lead humankind to cultural and epistemological supremacy--but that has always been met with skepticism. This book examines this debate, especially between the Black and the White ancestry. There appears to be a pejorative connotation associated with the term Black. It has been 'inferiorized' because of the stain of slavery, servitude and brutal murders suffered by those from the continent of Africa that are overwhelmingly Black. Dr. Kehbuma Langmia offers “counter arguments on ‘inferiority' and ‘superiority' designations” (p. 181) that have been applied to particular groups and have prevented the unity of the entire human "race."  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Dr. Langmia's book Black 'Race' and the White Supremacy Saga (Anthem Press, 2024) examines the conundrum that has haunted the Black and White ancestry for ages on what supremacy actually means. Is it Black or White supremacy? Granted, the term "White supremacy" has occupied the sociopolitical, cultural and economic discourse for ages, but what does that really imply? All other ancestries on planet earth have been coerced to believe that conformity to Euro-American lifestyle is the way to become 'civilized' on planet earth.  But the term civilization owes its genesis to the African cultural and educational achievements in Egypt. Consequently, Black ancestry, the first human specie on planet earth, should lead humankind to cultural and epistemological supremacy--but that has always been met with skepticism. This book examines this debate, especially between the Black and the White ancestry. There appears to be a pejorative connotation associated with the term Black. It has been 'inferiorized' because of the stain of slavery, servitude and brutal murders suffered by those from the continent of Africa that are overwhelmingly Black. Dr. Kehbuma Langmia offers “counter arguments on ‘inferiority' and ‘superiority' designations” (p. 181) that have been applied to particular groups and have prevented the unity of the entire human "race."  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Joy Reid leads this episode of The ReidOut with Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis claiming small victories in the Iowa caucuses, even though they each got walloped by the inevitable nominee--Donald Trump. Also in this episode, Democratic Michigan Governor and Biden campaign co-chair, Gretchen Whitmer, joins Joy to discuss the Democrats' view of the Republican race and whether President Biden has a "Michigan problem." Plus, Joy takes on the war on Dr. King's memory, as there is more to his legacy than just that one speech that Republicans often misuse for their own political aims. All this and more in this edition of The ReidOut on MSNBC.