♪♪ ♪♪ My name is Kelly Montijo Fink and I am a singer/songwriter, I am an educator, wife, mother, kind of a little bit of everything.

(Native drum music) Kelly: My mother's family is from New Mexico and that is where we trace our lineage, our Apache lineage.

♪♪ ♪♪ Kelly: I think I have always had a song in my heart, if that makes sense.

I always remember singing, sitting in the back seat of the car when my parents were driving and just singing whatever was on the radio, whatever was in my mind and I remember spending summers out in Colorado actually with my grandmother and she had a very old piano and I would love spending hours just trying to plink out songs and making things up.

I didn't know what I was doing, but what sounded right to me.

So I just have all these early memories of music in my life and then trying to create my own.

And that was from an early age too.

And I don't think I got really serious about writing songs until maybe my late 30s, so kind of a late bloomer.

(laughs) Kelly: But better late than never, right?

I was thinking about this the other day when somebody asked me to describe our music.

I think I should start responding this way.

It's like the weather in Iowa -- you know what comes next, right?

If you don't like it, wait five minutes, it'll change.

Tonight you're going to hear multiple genres because to me every song has a personality and expresses itself in a different way.

Kelly: I think it's just really important generally speaking for us to hear each other's stories because then we can connect better.

I have a friend who is an Inuit elder, he used to travel a lot more now too, but every time he would go to speak somewhere they're like, and we have a special speaker tonight and this is who he is.

He says, once I was introduced as a special listener.

I said, that's really powerful.

And it made such an impact on him because you have to listen to be able to speak well, to interpret what you hear.

And so I think just being willing to listen, if I would encourage people, listen to people whose stories are different than your own.

And I think part of the problem is we think it's not my story, it's not my experience, so that couldn't have happened, that couldn't be real.

But you'd be surprised.

(Native drum music) (Native drum music) (Native drum music) Kelly: I think with the general population here in Iowa many people don't have that experience or have never heard Native drum music unless they're going out maybe to the Meskwaki Powwow that they have twice a year out at the settlement.

I think the general population just is unaware.

We've been here for such a long time and to be allowed to come in and asked even to share stories and share songs that are maybe out of the ordinary for a typical Iowan, I think it's a great honor and it's a great responsibility to share because it's part of you, it's part of your person and any time you do that you're being vulnerable whether you'll be received, whether you won't be received.

But it's nonetheless your story.

(Native drum music) (applause) Kelly: The general population just thinks Native Indian, that we're all the same, we have the same traditions, we have the same languages and none of that is true.

And I know many cultures say, I'm not a monolith, which is very true with Native folks.

Native is just such a broad term.

I mean, most Native people would identify themselves by saying their tribal name, I'm Apache, I'm Chiricahua Apache, and they would self-identify that way.

And even then so many names that are known for the tribes are really misnomers or names given to them by somebody else.

So for example, Apache is not even actually from the language that our people speak, it is from the Zuni Tribe.

Maybe somebody came along, maybe the Spanish came along and said, hey who are those people?

Are those your people too?

No, they're Apachu, they're enemies.

So, so many names are derogatory or derivative of another language.

Sioux actually came from another tribe calling them Little Snakes and so it's Lakota.

And if you look at the original language and the names the people had for themselves it was simply the people or the human beings or like the Meskwaki, the people of the Red Earth.

There is a human, very human aspect to what we call ourselves, not what other people call us.

♪♪ ♪♪ Kelly: I think we're still here, if nothing else we're still here.

We may be invisible to you but we're really still here and we don't all look alike, we don't all sound alike.

And the other thing I think is a lot of times when we see this public replication of Native people it's, we know what you look like, we know what you sound like, this is it, so just agree with that and be fine with it.

♪♪ ♪♪ Kelly: Since I think 2013 now I have been serving on the Iowa Commission for Native American Affairs.

I know early on for the Commission I felt a little bit like a duck out of water because we have social activists, we have lawyers, we have people with these different experiences.

And I thought, where do I fit here?

Because I'm a creative, I'm an educator, I'm a songwriter.

And I thought, well I guess that's what is missing, right?

And so there wasn't a committee within the Commission for education and the arts.

So I said, can we add this to what we do?

And so I thought this is a good way to kind of bridge that gap with the community.

We serve our Native communities within the state of Iowa but we also serve the general public to try to educate.

♪♪ Kelly: Get to know people that are different than you and find those commonalities, find those connections.

I know I have come in with some preconceived ideas talking about culture-to-culture interactions, most of my students are Congolese or Sudanese.

The thought in my head was because of everything I had heard on the news and in the media was, are the men that are Muslim going to receive me as a teacher because I'm female?

And I was surprised.

They are probably the most respectful students I've ever had.

That is a powerful interaction, that is a powerful community builder is when you take the time, of course it's my job to take the time to do that, but I think in general there is more of a richness that happens when you integrate and you understand other people's lives and other stories.

Now, you don't necessarily have to be best buddies, but you at least get a better revelation of what their lives have been.

♪♪