>>Lizz Toombs: We're going to talk about Native literature, particularly about Oklahoma and
Native women writers in Oklahoma.
>>Dr. Kimberly Wieser: Now, it's because Native women write about our experiences and our
lives, of course all of the issues that everyone has brought up come up in Native literature
in one form or another, and and we've got a rich history with Native women writing in
Oklahoma. In fact, the first novel written by an American Indian woman and published,
Wynema, was written by a Creek woman, Alice Callahan, in I think 1891. So and so we've
got a long history of that, and the concerns that she wrote about in that book dealt with
social justice issues, and the same sort of social justice issues we're still struggling
with: with attempts by non-Natives to assimilate the main character, Wynema Harjo, who's a
young girl in the book who befriends her non-Native teacher, Genevieve Weir. And so they they
struggle with Indian rights issues and with rights for women in general in that book.
And and we see that on through today with writers like Joy Harjo, also Creek, a well-known
poet, award-winning poet, Jazz musician has got a play. Joy deals with a lot of issues
of domestic violence in her work and women's struggles. I think particularly of social
issues that we see in a poem like "Deer Dancer" or in a poem like "The Woman Hanging from
the Thirteenth Floor Window" as well. So we see that in her work. We see it these environmental
concerns in the work of Chickasaw writer Linda Hogan, who who does a lot of writing about
the imbalances that we're seeing in nature from a Native perspective and a Native science
approach. And in fact, Linda Hogan's very involved in the Native science community.
LeAnne Howe, whom you mentioned, and you know, while she writes about the history of Native
people in the state of Oklahoma, and and goes from before removal with books like Shell
Shaker, where she's looking at a Choctaw family, the Billys, in a pre-removal in Mississippi
in the 18th century, and then looking at their descendants today in Oklahoma in 1991. She's
writing about history, about corruption, inter-tribal corruption, and things coming up from the
outside, outside influences leading to corruption. But she's also writing about Native science
because the there's a strong implication in that book that we are literally our ancestors
in some sense, that we're recycled in some way. And then in a book like Miko Kings, which
is on one hand about Indian baseball in Ada, Oklahoma in 1906, and about an older Indian
gentleman in a nursing home in 1969, but it's really a quantum mechanics book at the same
time. I mean, you can, one of my students wrote out an equation on the board to explain
the title of the book, and it it actually worked. It's so very Native science-based,
but we've got lots of Native women writing now in the state. Less known writers as well:
Annette Arkeketa, she's Otoe-Missouri and Creek playwright; Juanita Pahdapony, a Comanche
poet and artist. We've got Margaret Behen, who at least originates from Oklahoma, Cheyenne-Arapahoe
short story writer. So there's a lot of diversity in what's going on in Native women's writing.
And some of that stuff is coming out of small presses, not necessarily here in Oklahoma.
Some of them, like Mongrel Empire Press, have a history of being in Oklahoma, and may returned
to Oklahoma. But some of them are presses like Aunt Lute, and some of them are major
university presses as well.
>>Paulette Blanchard: I would like to reflect on some of your points you've brought up about
Native literature and and the sciences that are written into Native writers. One of the
challenges I've been faced with as a social scientist in the in the geography field is
is acknowledging the relationship between Native studies and geography or political
ecology or even climate science. And I've been trying to show this this relationship
that between the two that has been historically considered anecdotal, but in the reality,
these are these are real stories. These are experiences. These are relationships between
people written about and and documented. And it's really nice that we, you know, these
science journals have often relegated these experiences of of of place to Native studies,
and it's been kind of kept in the in the closet as a as a program or instead of the the respect
it deserves. And because of academic journals like Wíčazo Ša, American Indian Culture
and Research Journal, American Indian what's American Indian Law--
>>Group: --Quarterly.
>>Paulette Blanchard: --Quarterly, and yeah. It's given Natives an opportunity to submit
to the Academy these these science-based stories and connect them, and I'm really advocating
as a social scientist to push these these relationships, these acknowledgments between
the disciplines because it's so critical that these disciplines get recognized and acknowledged
and given the the respect they deserve because there's a lot we can learn from both directions.
>>Dr. Kimberly Wieser: I think it has somewhat to do between differences between—and I'm
going to use a big word—epistemology--
>>Paulette Blanchard: Oh, absolutely.
>>Dr. Kimberly Wieser: --and pedagogy in Native communities because, you know, we're talking
about coming from cultures where our our entire life was a classroom, we're--and of course,
we do this today. We're always continually learning. But in Western academia we tend
to segment things out. You're going to go learn this subject here. You're going to learn
this subject in this class, and this subject in this class. When I don't know that that's
how any of us humans actually function, but certainly stories being attached to place
and the knowledge that is embedded in those stories. You know, we've got at leased 30,000
years' worth of culture, and history, and stories, and knowledge. At least, maybe 70,000,
depending on which scholars you talk to, that's largely unexplored by Western academia here.
You know, I think it was I think Jose Marti, Jose Marti said, you know, "Why do we study
the Greece and Rome that are not ours, instead of the Greece and Rome that are?" So, you
know, this is this is one of the nice things about Native studies. I was I was blessed
before I taught here to teach in the third oldest Native studies department in existence
at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta. And and we're just beginning when I left there
to work on these things. How do we learn from place? How do we learn from place? And that's
the nice thing about Native studies programs and departments because we can work together
across the disciplines, not just students, but also instructors and scholars because
that's the kind of work that we could all be doing collaboratively. What knowledge about
Native laws? What knowledge about--and and when we think about laws, you know, we're
thinking about things differently because we don't even know that these English terms
are actually even appropriate for what we're describing about our own cultural ways and
histories here, but our ways of living in balanced ways in this universe with each other,
where we're conducting ourselves with respect towards other entities, human or not. Where
we're acknowledging that these relationships exist, and you can't have something happen
to one party in a relationship without it affecting all the other parties in a relationship,
and that that we're supposed to have reciprocal relationships that work together. These things
are embedded in our stories. They're embedded in artifacts. They're embedded in in that
knowledge, Native knowledge is embedded in all kinds of aspects of our culture because
we didn't express things in the same ways necessarily that Western academia does. Things
are expressed through story and through lived experience, and they're encoded in everything
around us and things as simple as moccasin patterns. You know, there's there's a great
deal of knowledge that's just been left untouched that the time has come that these things are
brought to the table, so that that kind of discourse is going on, that dialogue is going
on between Western academic structures and this huge knowledge base that the world needs
honestly, if we're to survive as a planet, if we're going to work together to ensure
that common survival. And the kinds of things that we're concerned about as Native writers
all the time, and Native scholars, and as Native women, and Native mothers, what are
we leaving for future generations? You know, what's going to be here for future generations?
That's a conversation, the time has come that we've got to have it. We've got to have it
or we're we're missing a moment here to affect the future and create a better place and a
sustainable place for all of us.
>>Paulette Blanchard: Well, part of that requires creating a place for Native students to be
in these other disciplines. And that's one of the challenges that, you know, I'm sure
you'll speak to quite clearly is that there's—like, for me coming from Haskell, where the in education
environment is indigenized and decolonized, and then to come to the University of Oklahoma
where they're putting me back into the box and trying to relineate me. It's it's been
a challenge. So we need to make sure we create these spaces for Native students to transition
into these multidisciplinary areas, so that we can incur or infuse our indigenuity into
these these areas.
>>Dr. Kimberly Wieser: Well, and non-Native students as well, I would think, because I
mean, this isn't just knowledge that impacts Native people.
>>Dr. Heather Shotton: Right.
>>Dr. Kimberly Wieser: This is all of this impacts, and I think that that's one of the
dangers with the Academy is that non-Native people don't see how Native studies perhaps
impacts their lives, but it it--
>>Dr. Heather Shotton: Well, not just Native studies, I think Native people. Native people
and Native knowledge--they don't see how that's relevant, and and that's what we're really
talking about is relevancy on a number of levels. And so the things that you're talking
about, not just Native students but Native scholars, and so the things, the struggles
you're talking about in terms of being in the sciences I've experienced in education.
So it's the legitimizing Native knowledge and across so many disciplines, and it's the
reason that Native American studies is often kind of relegated back here is because it's
still challenged, and in terms of the Academy not quite accepting that we have legitimate
knowledge as Native people. And I experience that as a scholar in education. The way that
I write, the way that I discuss issues for Native students, and and--but you're all,
you know, you're right. We we do have that knowledge, that understanding. We do have
theories, and even though from a Western perspective and from the Academy's perspective, it's not
necessarily considered legitimate because it's not written. So when we talk about the
oral tradition, when we talk about that knowledge being passed down through stories, I think
Bryan Brayboy, who has who came up with tribal critical race theory, talks about our our
stories as theory. And our because our stories are theory, they are legitimate knowledge,
and the indigenous knowledge is legitimate. And so I think that that's something that
we continually push for. And as a scholar, both as a professor and then also our students
as scholars push back against constantly, to really, I guess, push the issue that that
our knowledge is legitimate. Our knowledge as Native people is valuable, and we have
something to offer.