This week on TTBOOK we’re revisiting “What is Tribal Sovereignty?,” an episode that delves into our complicated national history of Native American rights. The show begins with a story close to our home in Wisconsin, as Anne interviews Mary Mazzio, who directed the documentary “Bad River,” about a small Wisconsin tribe, the Bad River band of Lake Superior Chippewa, and their legal battle over an oil pipeline.
As a national show, we try to represent and reach listeners in cities, towns, and rural communities, just like our state-wide network of WPR covers all of Wisconsin. Our colleagues at WPR continue to follow this story, and reporter Danielle Kaeding has been at the forefront reporting each new development. Check out Danielle’s stories on wpr.org, including her detailed coverage of court cases, water standards, and the fast-tracking of projects in the Great Lakes and Wisconsin.
Later in our show we talk with the Bad River documentary’s narrator Quannah ChasingHorse about the next generation of Native land rights. She told us about how she felt doing a recent photo shoot for National Geographic. “I genuinely felt the presence not just of my ancestors, but of my little brother and his lineage and ancestors there, and in reality it spoke to this vision of how we are not separate from the land. We’re not above or below nature; we are in nature.”
– Shannon