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We were honored to interview Dakota professor, author and activist Waziyatawin. Land and power are the core of capitalist development projects like the Upper Harbor Terminal and there is no way to understand the dynamics of land ownership and power in Minnesota without understanding the genocide of the Dakota people and the dispossession of their homeland. Waziyatawin discusses this history, the present state of settler colonialism in Minnesota and potentials for liberation both in Minnesota and beyond. Please donate to the Dakota Land Recovery Project Waziyatawin is a Wahpetunwan Dakota from the Pezihutazizi Otunwe (Yellow Medicine Village) in southwestern Minnesota. She received her Ph.D. in American history from Cornell University in 2000 and earned tenure and an associate professorship in the history department at Arizona State University where she taught for seven years. Waziyatawin currently holds the Indigenous Peoples Research Chair in the Indigenous Governance Program at UVic. Her interests include projects centering on Indigenous decolonization strategies such as truth-telling and reparative justice, Indigenous women and resistance, the recovery of Indigenous knowledge, and the development of liberation ideology in Indigenous communities. She is the author or editor of five volumes including: Remember This!: Dakota Decolonization and the Eli Taylor Narratives; Indigenizing the Academy: Transforming Scholarship and Empowering Communities; For Indigenous Eyes Only: A Decolonization Handbook; In the Footsteps of Our Ancestors: The Dakota Commemorative Marches of the 21st Century; and, her most recent volume, What Does Justice Look Like? The Struggle for Liberation in Dakota Homeland. She is a compelling speaker and is often invited to give talks and interviews, appearing on many radio and television programs.
John Stoesz carries a ministry advocating land reparations with indigenous peoples as he has traveled 1000's & 1000's of miles on his recumbent trike, working with Dakota peoples in Minnesota, working with and alongside Unsettling Minnesota, coalition for Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery, and Waziyatawin, author of What Does Justice Look Like.
This is the third and final episode in a series titled, "Farming on Stolen Land." These three episodes were developed by LSP staff member Elizabeth Makarewicz as a guide to exploring issues of native land justice and equity in Minnesota's food system. In this episode, writer and scholar Waziyatawin shares with Elizabeth her vision of land justice for the Dakota people. Source
This is the third and final episode in a series titled, "Farming on Stolen Land." These three episodes were developed by LSP staff member Elizabeth Makarewicz as a guide to exploring issues of native land justice and equity in Minnesota's food system. In this episode, writer and scholar Waziyatawin shares with Elizabeth her vision of land justice for the Dakota people.
Pastor Amy remembers the words of Waziyatawin, who told our congregation: These words do violence. The "Great Commission" in Matthew 28 is used to uphold the Doctrine of Discovery and has given white European colonizers a supposed reason to subdue and subjugate indigenous people and claim indigenous resources. But when we, Jesus' disciples, follow everything he's taught us, if the Greatest Commandments are to love God and to love our neighbor, maybe Jesus' final instructions to his disciples don't mean what we've always thought they meant. Read the full sermon text here.Learn more about Waziyatawin and find her writing here.In the time with children, Pastor Amy read Big Cat Little Cat, by Elisha Cooper. A big cat teaches the little 'what to do, how to be, what to eat, where to go' etc. Like Jesus he's discipling the little cat.
Pastor Megan invites us - like Jesus did when he retreated for prayer in the dark early morning hours - to dwell with the Psalms as we begin to process together having heard a challenging word from our Peace Lecture guests last Sunday, Waziyatawin and John Stoesz.
In this episode, Waziyatawin reads "Cry Your Tears" by John Trudell (pictured above) and explores the complexities of solidarity. Waziyatawin is a leading Dakota intellectual, activist, and the executive director of Makoce Ikikcupi, a non-profit dedicated to Dakota land recovery. Her influential book, What Does Justice Look Like? is available from Living Justice Press. "Cry Your Tears," by John Trudell, appears in his collection, Lines From a Mined Mind, © 2008, Fulcrum Publishing, Golden, CO. The music in this interview is excerpted from Trudell's song "Cry Your Tears," from the album Madness and the Moremes. As always, the Haiku Hotline (612-440-0643) is open for your short poems and poetic musings. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Subscribe on RadioPublic, iTunes, or Stitcher.
In this episode, we (Sarah Lynne Anderson and Mark Van Steenwyk) continue our interview Dakota scholar Waziyatawin. Be sure to check outpart one. In this part of the interview, we continue to grapple with how Christianity needs to come to terms with its imperial history. We need to repent with more than just words. Our ecclesial bodies (especially denominations with land holdings) may want to ask themselves “what does justice look like?”We know that, until this podcast, most of you have never heard of Waziyatawin…but this interview raises more questions (in a starkly eloquent way) than any interview with a high-profile Christian provocateur. Please take the time to listen–we promise that it will mess with your head in amazing ways.You might be interested in a series that has developed as a response to the challenges Waz issues to Christians in the interview: Christianity is Empire. That series will engage the imperial nature of historic Christianity and seek, we hope, to offer a chastened, faithful, alternative.Waziyatawin is a Wahpetunwan Dakota from the Pezihutazizi Otunwe (Yellow Medicine Village) in southwestern Minnesota.Waz currently holds the Indigenous Peoples Research Chair in the Indigenous Governance Program at the University of Victoria (British Columbia). Her interests include projects centering on Indigenous decolonization strategies such as truth-telling and reparative justice, Indigenous women and resistance, the recovery of Indigenous knowledge, and the development of liberation ideology in Indigenous communities.She is the author or editor of: Remember This!: Dakota Decolonization and the Eli Taylor Narratives, Indigenizing the Academy: Transforming Scholarship and Empowering Communities, For Indigenous Eyes Only: A Decolonization Handbook,In the Footsteps of Our Ancestors: The Dakota Commemorative Marches of the 21st Century, and What Does Justice Look Like? The Struggle for Liberation in Dakota Homeland.
In this episode, we (Sarah Lynne Anderson and Mark Van Steenwyk) interview Dakota scholar Waziyatawin. This is the first of a two part interview. For part two, go here.This is an intensely challenging two part interview (part two will air in two weeks); we discuss how Christianity is intrinsically unjust, how justice requires the entire dismantling of civilization, and how denominations, if they are sincere in their apologies to Indigenous peoples, should take the first step of handing over unused lands to the tribe upon whose land they occupy. You'll definitely want to forward that to your denominational headquarters. Waziyatawin is a Wahpetunwan Dakota from the Pezihutazizi Otunwe (Yellow Medicine Village) in southwestern Minnesota.Waz currently holds the Indigenous Peoples Research Chair in the Indigenous Governance Program at the University of Victoria (British Columbia). Her interests include projects centering on Indigenous decolonization strategies such as truth-telling and reparative justice, Indigenous women and resistance, the recovery of Indigenous knowledge, and the development of liberation ideology in Indigenous communities.She is the author or editor of: Remember This!: Dakota Decolonization and the Eli Taylor Narratives, Indigenizing the Academy: Transforming Scholarship and Empowering Communities, For Indigenous Eyes Only: A Decolonization Handbook,In the Footsteps of Our Ancestors: The Dakota Commemorative Marches of the 21st Century, and What Does Justice Look Like? The Struggle for Liberation in Dakota Homeland.