Food is at the center of everything, writes University of Washington professor of American Indian Studies Charlotte Coté. In A Drum in One Hand, A Sockeye in the Other: Stories of Indigenous Food Sovereignty from the Northwest Coast (U Washington Press, 2022), Coté shares stories from her own experience growing up and living in the Pacific Northwest. From salmon, to wild berries, to community gardens, the food abundance of this region is central to Indigenous decolonization and sovereignty. Coté connects protecting the free movement and ecological health of salmon runs to issues as global as climate change, arguing that in order to understand the big picture, you need to start with what people put on their dinner tables. A Drum in One Hand, a Sockeye in the Other is a book about resilience, healing, and sustenance in the face of challenges, and about the real, material, work people are doing to decolonize their diets and in doing so, healing the land and their communities.
Dr. Stephen R. Hausmann is an assistant professor of history at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota and is the Assistant Director of the American Society for Environmental History.
Cynthia Sylvester's The Half-White Album (University of New Mexico Press 2023) is a collection of stories, flash fiction, and poems revolving around the journey of a travelling band, The Covers. The stories are songs on the album, beginning with “Live at the House of Towers,” about a woman’s memories of her mother and home. The story of Shima (and her husband Claude) begins with all of her six daughters being taken by missionaries. The 10-year-old youngest, whom she calls The Last One, and the missionaries call Ruth, keeps running away. Shima is afraid because the missionaries will teach them to forget the songs and stories of their people. In Live at the House at the Edge of the World, Ruth is grown and eating dinner with Albert. We meet Margarita, who was born with cerebral palsy and is confined to a wheelchair and a parade of other characters who struggle to love, live, and survive in a harsh world. These are stories of hope and despair, family and banishment, based out west in what was once the wide-ranging country of native American tribes.
Cynthia Sylvester is born into the Kiyaa’áanii Clan for the Bilagáana Clan and is an enrolled member of the Diné. She is a native of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her work has appeared in numerous literary magazines. She received the Native Writer Award at the Taos Writer’s Conference. She graduated from the University of New Mexico and received her MFA in creative writing from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Cynthia hosts Albuquerque DimeStories—3-minute stories written and read by the author. Hosting DimeStories is a way to give back and foster a writing community. A community of writers is at the core of what she attributes to her success, endurance, and joy in writing. Writing is a solitary endeavor. “So much of what we writers write never sees the light of day.” A DimeStorie, fiction or non-fiction, is a way to have an achievable goal each month (about 500 words) and provides a venue to read the work to a receptive audience. Having a community of writers is important because Cynthia, like many writers, works a “9 to 5.” Her profession for over thirty years has been physical therapy. She comes from a line of “medicine women.” Her mother and aunts were nurses, and she and her sister have health professions. Cynthia’s career in medicine is often reflected in her work as a writer. When not working as a writer or a PT, Cynthia loves to box, take walks with her wife and their dog, Zeus, hang out with friends and family and talk about writing, TV shows, movies, books, sports, what happened last week or last year, whatever if there is a story involved, Cynthia is in her happy place.
We'll tell you how a mix-up may have led to the attack that killed three American soldiers.
Also, a new storm system could cause more monumental flooding on the West Coast.
And an unprecedented international sports drama seems to be ending with new gold medals for Team USA.
Plus, how Amelia Earhart's long-lost plane may have been found, why the creator of ChatGPT is working with a children's safety organization, and what Americans streamed more than anything else last year.
A bipartisan immigration deal in Congress could be announced as soon as this week. The agreement would give the executive branch the legal authority to suspend asylum when migrant crossings surpass a certain threshold, among other things. That’s the part of the deal that President Biden referred to when he said late last week that he’d “shut down the border” if this new bill makes it into law.
A new report by the Associated Press found that prison labor is connected to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of food and agricultural products sold by some of the country’s biggest brands. It’s the latest indication that prison labor is used more widely than many people realize – and that these companies benefit from it while also trying to shield their connection to the public.
And in headlines: Illinois could be the next state to take Donald Trump off their presidential primary ballot, Bayer was ordered to pay $2.25 billion to a man who said he developed cancer from using the company's weed killer, and a New Jersey animal shelter said it would neuter feral cats named after people’s exes for Valentine's Day.
President Joe Biden says the U.S. “shall respond” after a drone attack Sunday left three U.S. Army soldiers dead and more than 30 others wounded at a base in Jordan.
Iran-backed militias were reported to be responsible for the deadly drone attack, and in response, Robert Greenway says, the U.S. needs to make Iran “feel the cost” of its actions. (Iran denied any responsibility for the attack.)
Greenway, director of the Allison Center for National Security at The Heritage Foundation, says the attacks will continue if Iran does not feel swift and certain consequences. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
Greenway, who served on the National Security Council in the Trump administration, says he would advise Biden, first, to “stop paying them [Iran] money. Two, we need to stop paying other governments money that ends up in the hands of perpetrators like Kataib Hezbollah.”
And finally, Greenways says, the "[Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] serving officers, the arm of the Iranian government that executes these attacks … need to be attacked, and they need to be held accountable for the attacks.”
Greenway joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to share what we know about the attack on the U.S. base in Jordan and how the Biden administration is likely to respond.
What’s powering LVMH, the largest luxury company on earth? It’s Sephora (LVMH’s favorite child) — Because great luxury builds ladders.
FanDuel just started trading on the New York Stock Exchange with a $200 promo code if you download — So we’re looking at sports bettings biggest bet (yet).
Roomba-maker iRobot was supposed to be acquired by Amazon, but the deal was just canceled #StockBlocked — But we gotta ask: How does this make consumers better off?
With the execution of Kenneth Smith, Alabama became the first state to carry out the death penalty with nitrogen gas. According to Smith’s spiritual advisor, who witnessed the execution, this is not a “humane” future for capital punishment
Guest: Rev. Jeff Hood, pastor, theologian and activist living and working in Little Rock, Arkansas, and the Convener of Clergy United Against the Death Penalty
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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Madeline Ducharme, Anna Phillips, Paige Osburn, and Rob Gunther with help from Kathryn Fink.
On Trump's orders, Republicans in Congress double down on killing the bipartisan border deal. Both Joe Biden and Nikki Haley hit Trump's memory lapses while campaigning in South Carolina. And, the Biden Campaign starts to preview its 2024 strategy—including a big surrogate operation, empowering social media influencers, and—maybe!—an endorsement from Taylor Swift.
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