[music] Title: Indigenous Peoples' Story

Brian Lehrer: Hey, it's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Today is Indigenous Peoples Day, a widely accepted alternative, or addition to Columbus Day, as many of you know, which aims to acknowledge the perspectives and history of Native Americans in the context of colonization. In 2021, President Biden became the first president to officially recognize the holiday. Today, a total of 17 states, plus Washington DC, honor Indigenous people on the 2nd Monday in October, according to the Pew Research Center.

You may have heard, however, that over the weekend, President Trump refused to acknowledge Indigenous Peoples Day. Instead, he released a fiery statement reclaiming Columbus Day as a federal holiday, and calling the explorer, "The original American hero." Despite a lot, some of which we'll talk about now, because in honor of Indigenous Peoples Day, we are joined now by Julian Brave NoiseCat. He's a writer, filmmaker. You may have seen his Oscar nominated documentary Sugarcane, or heard him speaking to us about it on this show. He's out with a new book, the story of North American Indigenous people through his reporting, and his own story. He's written it in the style of a traditional coyote story, as they call it. We'll ask him what that means. His book, We Survived The Night is out tomorrow. Hi, Julian. Welcome back to WNYC.

Julian Brave NoiseCat: Tsecwínucw-k, Brian, it's always good to be on the air with you.

Brian Lehrer: What's a coyote story?

Julian Brave NoiseCat: A coyote story is a traditional trickster narrative from my people's culture. It's about a forefather of ours called Coyote who was sent to the earth by creator to set things in order. While he did some good, he was often up to no good, so while he filled the rivers with salmon and populated the land with descendants, he used the salmon to marry into as many native villages along the rivers as he could, because he was a bit of a womanizer. Then he abandoned all of his descendants because he was also a bit of a deadbeat dad. He's kind of our account of why things are the way they are, and why we are the way they are. I would just add to all that that you can't tell me that this is not a world still spun around by tricksters,nd their tricks.

Brian Lehrer: Huh, so Coyote is not a made up sort of paranormal character who Native Americans broadly revere, but rather use as a vehicle to understand the complexity of the world?

Julian Brave NoiseCat: Exactly. Yes, he is both an ancestor, and an example of how we are not supposed to be. At least that was part of the purpose of the stories for the kids, and at the same time, he's our account of transformation, and what drives it, and why it happens.

Brian Lehrer: Your book begins with an introduction to your family. Can you give us a bit of your background?

Julian Brave NoiseCat: My father was born in August of 1959 at St. Joseph's Mission. It was the Indian residential school that my family was sent to to unlearn our Indian ways. He was discovered just a few moments after his birth in the trash incinerator by the school's night watchman, who described his cries for life as sounding like the noise of a cat, which is a crazy coincidence because, of course, my last name, our last name is NoiseCat, which is, actually, not the origin of the name. It's not that story. It's because the missionaries wrote our name down wrong.

From there, my dad, for probably understandable reasons, if you heard the story, tried to get about as far away from Canim Lake, the Indian Reserve that we come from, as he possibly could. We ended up actually in a suburb outside of New York City, where he met my mom in a bar in Westchester County called the Shadowbrook. She was the bartender. She's an Irish Jewish New Yorker. He took the golden feast ladle earring out of his left lobe and gave it to her at the end of the night. I guess that's how I came to be. [chuckles]

Brian Lehrer: Huh, so you didn't just adopt the name NoiseCat. This was in your father's name?

Julian Brave NoiseCat: Yes. When you get married, either party in a marriage can actually legally change their name, so when my father married my mother way back, he decided that he was going to reclaim his ancestral name, which was actually also the last name of my great-grandmother, the woman who raised him after he was found in the trash incinerator, Alice Newisket. The name essentially became NoiseCat over time. Then through the writing of We Survived the Night, I learned the story of actually my father's birth, and discovery in the trash incinerator, and so the name has taken on a new meaning in its survival. There's something in there, of course, about Indians, and our names as well. [chuckles]

Brian Lehrer: Wow. Listeners, anybody have a question for Julian Brave NoiseCat on this Indigenous Peoples Day? Or maybe if you're an Indigenous American, a coyote story of your own. 212-433-WNYC 212-433-9692. On the occasion of the release of Julian's book, We Survived the Night. I see that before turning full time to writing and filmmaking-- Now, am I getting this right? Is this you, or is this your father who was a political strategist, policing analyst, and cultural organizer?

Julian Brave NoiseCat: That was me. Yes. I used to do politics. That was my day job before I got to write and make movies for a living.

Brian Lehrer: What's the context of that? How did you become political, and what kind of politics did you do?

Julian Brave NoiseCat: Well, I would say that I was always kind of politicized because I grew up in a very political place. Oakland, California, a city that has often been on the forefront of progressive cultural and political change in this country. The birthplace of the Black Panther Party. Very involved in the history of the United Farm Workers, and of course, also for Native people. A very overlooked story is the occupation of Alcatraz by a group called the Indians of All Tribes, which was to a large extent a starting point for the contemporary resurgence of Native people. Actually, during the occupation of Alcatraz, President Richard Nixon, of all people, at the time, officially shifted the United States stated policy towards Native people from one of termination to one of self-determination, which is, last I checked, still the paradigm we're living under today. Although, you've got to check the news every day for that one. [chuckles]

I lived in DC for four years before I set about writing We Survived the Night. I was actually also involved in, I guess I could say I originated the idea of making Deb Haaland the first ever Native American cabinet secretary. I had no clue that it would actually happen when I wrote it down on a little white paper-type deal, sort of fantasy football style, draft your own progressive cabinet picks-type of document that I helped produce when I was in my 20s. It has always been politics, and culture, and why the world changes has always been something that I've been deeply interested in.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Deb Haaland, the former member of Congress who then went on to serve, I guess you might say, in the analogy you were giving us, she got through the brackets to get appointed as the 54th United States Secretary of the Interior under Biden 2021 to the beginning of 2025. This is how you put it in the book. "Once every long while, white absurdities become Indian opportunities. It's an old trick." Why did you put it that way?

Julian Brave NoiseCat: Well, I put it that way because of all the political outcomes in the broader world, the only one that I could probably ever say that I had some hand in was the appointment of Deb Haaland as the first ever Native American cabinet. The truth of the matter is that she was an outside candidate. Biden was probably going to pick Senator Udall from New Mexico.

In order to get her to that historic appointment, we had to use some outsider activisty-type tactics. We had to win a number of persuasive arguments in the political press. We also had to use a bit of trickery. [chuckles] I would say that Deb made a lot of that job as well. She actually related to the story in the book, inaugurated the first federal inquiry into Native American boarding schools where we started to finally learn a bit more about what happened at the institutions that native children were taken to for over 100 years, and why so much of our culture and language has been lost.

Brian Lehrer: You've piqued the interest of Joan in Manhattan with your description of the Coyote myth, and what it means to your nation of Native Americans. I think she has a follow-up question. Joan, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Joan: Yes, I wanted to ask, I know there were hundreds of different native nations, and I'm wondering what you know about what other nations might be using as their explanation. What I understood what the Coyote is explains why kind of bad things happen in the world. I'm also making the connection between the Judeo-Christian idea of why bad things happen in the world. Adam and Eve, did bad things. They have original sin. We're all born with original sin. Then, of course, the Christian idea comes along to rescue everybody where God sends His Son to die for our sins,nd we're somehow made okay by that. I'm curious to know what other traditions there are, and if you see the similarity that every culture maybe has to figure out, why are things not going right all the time? What did we do to deserve this?

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much for that kind of broad perspective question. Julian, do you have enough grounding in, should we call it comparative theology to answer Joan at all?

Julian Brave NoiseCat: I think most Indians have to be a comparative theologist by birth. That is kind of what colonization impressed upon us, so I'll give it my best shot. My understanding of my people's take on the Coyote stories, which I should just say is that Coyote was one of the most prolific tricksters in the history of all North America, and all tricksters. They told stories about Coyote all the way from Central America to West Canada. My people are on the northern end of all of the Indigenous peoples across the western half of the continent that told stories about Coyote.

I think what's really interesting about the trickster stories, rather than being just a straightforward account of good and evil, is that good and evil exist right side by side each other, embodied in the actions of the trickster. At the same time, for example, as Coyote leads the salmon up the river, an action that is incredibly consequential in the making of the world because our people to this day, still derive about half of our calories from salmon. This is a really important part of the creation of the world.

He's also using that action to his own benefit to marry into, as I said, as many villages along the rivers as will have him because Coyote's a bit of a womanizer. He's always out for his own personal interest, what's best for him and his legend. I think that in that account of how transformation happens in world, I think that there is a very capacious moral understanding of human nature, and the world more broadly, and also, I think a real account of both the good and bad sides of change. I'll just say that I feel that we are currently living in an era of tricksters and tricks once again. I think that this tradition that has captured the truth of this land in our lives as first peoples for thousands of years, still has something important to say to humanity, and to the humanities more broadly.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, I'm going to tell you, if you're enjoying listening to Julian Brave NoiseCat, there are going to be two opportunities this week to see him at in-person events. I'll say this again at the end of the segment in a few minutes, but one is taking place tomorrow, 7:30 PM at Pioneer Works. That's 159 Pioneer Street in Brooklyn. The other on Wednesday at seven clock at the downtown Strand, 828 Broadway in Manhattan. Getting back to politics, this may surprise some listeners. You wrote bipartisan consensus has allowed Indian affairs to remain one of the least polarized areas in American politics. Really?

Julian Brave NoiseCat: Yes, I think that that is a function of one of the things that your listeners might be somewhat aware of about Native people, which is that we're often invisible and erased in Native society, and there are lots of negative consequences.

Brian Lehrer: In non-Native society.

Julian Brave NoiseCat: Yes, in non-Native society. Excuse me. I think there are a lot of consequences of that erasure that are very harmful to our people. At the same time, not being fully visible in political discourse can actually have certain benefits in particular moments in time. One of the ways that that has functioned sometimes to Native peoples benefit in the United States States is that, because tribes are often located in very rural and conservative parts of the country, they have to work with Republican representatives in Congress and the Senate. When we need more funding for essential social services, we often end up going to the Democratic Party. Then when we need a little bit more freedom from Uncle Sam, who we view as a colonizer, we tend to have a little bit of a common cause with the Republicans who hate big government because they think that it's meddling in their ability to own guns, and pay too much taxes or whatever.

Brian Lehrer: This might really surprise people that bipartisanship on Native issues isn't just limited to Congress. You wrote about how Trump appointed Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, wrote what is widely considered the most favorable majority decision for tribal treaty rights in at least a generation in the year 2020. The ruling in the case called McGirt v. Oklahoma. You want to remind everybody briefly what that was.

Julian Brave NoiseCat: In 2020, there was a major Supreme Court case that acknowledged that a large swath of what is now the state of Oklahoma was actually still reservation land under the law, although it had not been recognized as such functionally for many, many decades. What is interesting to me about that ruling in what's called the McGirt case, is that a reading of the law that tends to have a very conservative bent that is used against abortion rights, that has been used against gay marriage, a sort of originalist take on the law. When you apply that to texts like treaties with the tribes who signed them with the federal government, giving them access to our lands in exchange for reservations, and social services, it actually has a very favorable reading because the original text of those treaties said a bunch of stuff that the United States government, as your listeners may be aware, went on to violate at every single turn.

I guess what I find myself often interested in is not just Native stories, but the way that they illuminate parts of our shared American story in ways that you might not expect, and see if you weren't paying attention closely to what's going on in Indian country.

Brian Lehrer: About the holiday, listener writes, "It is a terrible mistake to attempt to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day. Indigenous people should have their day, but not at the expense of Columbus Day and by close extraction, Italian Americans." What do you say to that? It was coupling these two, the best way to give Indigenous people a day?

Julian Brave NoiseCat: I don't set the calendar for the country, and they don't usually let me pick holidays, so I'm not so sure about, like, whether it should have been the same day or not the same day. What I can say is that I think that what we really are arguing about here is narrative, and culture, and whose culture gets to be visible. One thing that I find really fascinating about my own people's take on our "discovery" by non-Native people is we tell the story of the first white person to visit us, this fur trader named Simon Fraser, who made a very foolish decision in 1808 to try to take a couple of canoes down the roaring Fraser river in what is now British Columbia, Canada, as actually the return of the trickster coyote. It was a very foolish thing to do. It was the end of the spring melt, and so it was not only a deadly river to begin with, but also the most deadly time to attempt such an ascent the river.

By the time also Fraser reached the bottom reaches of that river, he basically had to resort to piracy because he'd run out of things to trade and wrecked all his canoes. He had to steal the canoe of a local chief in order to paddle all the way to what is now, basically, Vancouver. Then he got turned around and chased back up the river, and the journey was of no commercial use to his fur trading outfit.

I think that when you look at the way that these stories are narrated, here's my point of the arrival of white people on this land who we often saw as tricksters, because, of course, they pulled off one of the greatest tricks in human history, stealing an entire continent from its first peoples. I think that you actually get to understand the story in new, illuminating, and I would also add, sometimes entertaining ways.

Brian Lehrer: Last question, just 30 seconds. CBS News reported the other day, "Many tribal leaders said they feared that during the government shutdown that the Trump administration would use the shutdown to lay off federal workers responsible for ensuring that trust and treaty responsibilities are honored." Have you been in touch with either communities, or anybody in Washington? Is this happening?

Julian Brave NoiseCat: It's important to point out that this country does have founding documents that matter, and it's not just the Constitution. The treaties with the more than 570 federally recognized tribes that gave this country its landmass are also founding documents. I think that it's intensely hypocritical for us to selectively choose to abide by a very strict reading of the Second Amendment, and then to cast aside the dozens of treaties that were signed with native nations, which put the United States into a federal obligation to provide them with social services, with education for taking their land.

Brian Lehrer: Julian Brave NoiseCat writer, Oscar-nominated filmmaker, champion powwow dancer, I understand, and student of Salish art and history. His first book, We Survived the Night is out tomorrow. If you want to join him for an in-person event, one is tomorrow at 7:30 PM at Pioneer Works, 159 Pioneer Street in Brooklyn. The other Wednesday, exact seven o'clock at the top of the hour at the Strand in Lower Manhattan, 828 Broadway. Julian, thank you very much for joining us on Indigenous Peoples Day.

Julian Brave NoiseCat: Kukws-chem, Brian. It's always a pleasure.

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