From WXXI news.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour is made in the rural Nevada desert.

A teenage boy is running.

He is a remarkable runner.

You can see it immediately.

One of the best cross-country athletes in his region.

Qu Stevens has just set the record for his district's five K, coming in at 16 minutes and two seconds when he runs to my eye.

It looks easy, but for Qu, it's never easy.

17 years old, with a dream of competing at the highest levels of college.

A dream to run at Oregon.

Maybe the top track program in the country.

But that's not what makes it so difficult.

When he is running through the desert, he imagines he's running not on the road, but through sagebrush.

And he imagines that he is running to escape, running for his life the same way that his great grandfather took off running to escape the Indian boarding school where he had essentially been a prisoner.

Stevens is struggling with how he feels about competing and succeeding in a system that for so long denied his ancestors the opportunity.

In fact, it's a system that aggressively and violently tried to eliminate his ancestors identity.

At the boarding schools, Native American children were told they could not speak their own language.

They could not talk about their own cultures.

Some even had their skin physically scrubbed as a way of trying to bleach them into some vague sense of non-native or Americanness or whiteness.

A documentary tells the story of not only this athlete, but this powerful internal struggle.

It will show at the Little on Wednesday and Saturday.

The director of the film has Rochester roots and attended Ithaca College.

She's joining us in studio this hour.

And we've got a lot to talk about.

The film is called Remaining Native and Page.

Beth Min is the director.

Congratulations on the film.

Thank you for being with us this hour.

Thank you.

And Ansley Jemison is cultural liaison.

And with the National Heritage Trust in.

And again, it's great to have you back here.

Thank you for being here.

Could you back up and thank you.

And you've seen the film?

I have I've been fortunate enough to be able to see the film.

I had a chance to watch it this morning.

Fantastic.

And it's I mean, it's beautifully shot in a beautiful place, but with really tough, painful themes.

And, if you want a chance to see it.

I'm going to make sure I've got the right dates and time here.

Wednesday, remaining native as part of the One take documentary series at the little.

So screening on Wednesday and that will include an in-person Q&A with page.

And then again as a community partner for these screenings.

So that's happening 7 p.m. Wednesday night followed by the Q&A.

And if you can't attend, then, come out to the little at 3 p.m. on Saturday.

More information at the little.org.

And of course tickets at the box office if you want to get them there.

Page tell tell us a little bit about your own background.

You grew up in the Rochester area?

Yeah.

Yes.

I grew up in Henrietta.

Went to Henrietta High School.

My family is a part of the Shawnee community here.

And so it's very feel.

Feels like a good feeling to be able to partner with going on again where I used to work, actually, as a cultural interpreter.

Back in the day.

And, Yeah, it's, my whole family is from here.

So I went to Ithaca College.

Yeah, went to Ithaca College, studied film.

Moved to New York City afterwards and worked there for, you know, about seven years and film and media worked at, Vox Media for a long time.

I produced, documentaries for ESPN films and PBS.

So, yeah, this is my first independent, feature length film.

How does this story get on your radar?

So, friend of mine, Michael Galvin, who is the site director now again and again.

He is from Nevada and he is Paiute.

And in 2021, when the news was coming out of the 215 unmarked graves of indigenous children in Kamloops, Canada, there are a lot of community reaction.

And, you know, people like my own family who where my great grandmother went to a boarding school up in Ogdensburg, New York.

And then people who had no idea about this history.

And so seeing the breadth of response and lack of response, there was an article that was written that Michael had sent me, and it was about the 17 year old kid who was going to retrace the, you know, 50 mile escape of his great grandfather.

So his great grandfather, at eight years old, ran three times through the desert to get back home.

And visually, I could just see that in my in my head.

But I think emotionally I was so moved by the idea that this teenager, 17, so self aware, was doing something to honor his great grandfather.

And I thought to myself, you know, what do I do to honor my family with what skill set I have?

And so I reached out to his mom on Facebook and, I didn't want to dm Q and be this random lady, DMing a 17 year old kid.

But I told her my family's story, and my grandmother, who was very well known in the Rochester area, Barbara Pressman, she was a traditional Mohawk storyteller.

She was always adamant that we embraced our cultural heritage, our identity and know where we come from.

And so I shared that with his family, and they invited us to come out to the run.

So it was myself, my now husband, my cinematographer, who I convinced to come with me to the remembrance run.

And we, we filmed that, you know, over the weekend and really spent time with his family.

And then ultimately, in 2022, I decided to move to Reno full time.

I moved from New York City, and I was living in Reno for the last three and a half years to make the film.

And so the film is remaining native.

And I think it's interesting that you reach out on Facebook to his mother.

Got a good response.

They gave you a ton of access.

I mean, really, the film is beautiful and you get a sense for, right away for Natalie, who's talent.

But his anguish and some of what he is really wrestling with a really thoughtful.

I mean, now, you know, a few years later, he's an adult, but a thoughtful, not yet fully formed adult.

A really remarkably thoughtful person, isn't he?

Absolutely.

You know, he's, so far beyond his years.

At the same time, though, he is just a teenager, you know, he plays Fortnite.

He talks about his girl problems.

You know, a lot of the reasons why I moved to Nevada was because I needed to spend that time with his family and his community, but also to understand the land that they are from.

You know, it's not all of our stories are from the land.

And for me to be able to do the film justice in the way that I wanted to, I needed to pay that respect and understand where those stories are coming from.

But yeah, Q is, he's so, smart, talented.

He looks like a gazelle when he runs.

It's hard to show how much effort he puts in as a runner, because it's hard to just look like he's tired.

But, yeah, his family is just so supportive and lovely, and we've really become family over the last four years.

So let me ask both of you a similar question that came up last hour last hour, we talked about the legacy of Thurgood Marshall in this country.

And I was asking Sean Nelms, who nominated, moderated a panel at the little last week about a documentary about Thurgood Marshall and I said, you know, how many people on the street, if you just jump in, do you think know the story of Thurgood Marshall, first black Supreme Court justice?

They might say, sure.

Maybe they knew that he was a lawyer in Brown v Board of Education.

Maybe.

Probably don't know his really prolific legal career and remarkable story beyond that.

And I bring it up because as the decades go by, so many people are still connected to so many painful and difficult things, but the broader society might not be as educated, and so people might not know, you know, the story of native boarding schools and that history, especially if they're not part of a native community, depends on how with their education and I mean, enslave you and, you know, people from and again, Michael Galvin.

Peter, over the years, we've talked about what's, what's taught in schools and what's not.

So right now, if you bump into ten people on the street and you ask them about native boarding schools, how many have good knowledge of what happened, you think slim to none.

I would say like maybe zero, maybe zero, maybe one.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, they probably would be surprised that a native person was even asking them the question.

You know, I mean, most people have no idea or understanding that they're still native people that are here.

You know, I mean, they think that we all moved out to Oklahoma and we were marched off and the Trail of Tears, and that was kind of the end of us.

And, folks just aren't really aware of the fact that there still is a native indigenous presence that's here, you know, in the Rochester area, you know, you know, probably 50% of the native population of, you know, what's out there today actually lives off territory and is not on reservations and things.

So it's a really different, difficult type of thing to talk about here when, you know, Paige and I, we just did a podcast, you know, with my show and we talked about it in that like, you know, oftentimes when telling native stories, you have to kind of give this whole history in this sort of context in order to even kind of, you know, prime the conversation, to even get to any place where there's some sort of understanding or some level of understanding for people where where's your podcast, the original People's podcast?

Thank you.

Paige, same kind of question.

I mean, you agree with Nancy that maybe it's zero.

Maybe it's one who might know if you bump into ten people on the street about native boarding schools.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, it's not a part of our education system.

And I think the visibility that we have as native people is very limited.

And so I think it's it's sometimes difficult being in the industry and being an indigenous filmmaker when you think, oh, maybe people won't understand, you might have to provide the first, you know, 40 minutes.

The film has to be historical context or even, you know, 90, 90 minutes has to be historical context to even get to the point of the story that you want to tell.

And I think for my film, I really wanted to be intentional about not doing that.

You know, my film isn't meant to be a historical explainer of Indian boarding schools, but to tell a modern day story that talks about the themes and shows what happened and tells the truth.

But if you want to know an in-depth, you know, explanation of history, then you can Google it and you can educate yourself.

And what my message of the film was is to see, the children that experience the pain of, you know, forced assimilation.

So, this is going to be sort of a strange endorsement of the film, but I just want to say that what page is describing for people who are like, I don't know if I do, I want to go out and see a film about this.

If you're on the fence and you think it's just going to be like a historical documentary that hits you on the head, which, by the way, we need documentary, we need films of all kinds.

But this is a beautifully done story.

It is a modern story, primarily cuz story and his family's story.

And it is not that.

So you're still going to learn a lot, and you're going to learn a lot through the eyes of, you know, then 17 year old trying to grapple with it, and family and, and his birth.

But, it's just so well done.

So, it you can't help but learn through the film, but you don't walk away.

You walk away thinking like, that was a beautiful film.

I mean, that was powerful story.

I think something that really kind of shine through for me with the film was that everybody loves that underdog story.

You know, it's a very American type of thing, you know, and indigenous people being sort of, you know, the minority of the minorities in a lot of ways.

It's a really great story to see and to follow along.

As you know, page has really mastered, you know, just the idea of like, contemporary this young man's story bringing him to light really kind of showcasing him through his challenges and things like that.

But there's also sort of like layered sort of pieces that kind of fall into this.

All because the, you know, even just the culture around running and things like that, that was very much a very cultural aspect of like indigenous ways and indigenous thinking and thought.

And that's how messages were often sent, but also these are sacrifices as well that are kind of taking place and happening.

So there's a lot of different things that are going on here.

It's a flesh offering, you know, where your mind has to go, you know, and all those sort of things.

So if you're into running and things like that, this is certainly a movie for you.

You're going to kind of understand and feel the pains of all of this.

So yeah, but you know, one of the pieces that I really picked up on and I really appreciate, you know, I love the you're alluding to it evidence that, you know, the way it's shot, you know, the scenery, you can feel the texture and the land, as you mentioned as well, is that the stories come from the land.

But in picking her brain a little bit further and kind of digging a little bit deeper, listen to the soundscape, you know, cuz feet on the ground, running out in the desert.

I mean, just pick up on all of those things and try to just kind of tune into that when you come and see the film.

Because it's a beautifully shot film.

It takes you in, it's immersive, it's fun.

You know, there are some difficult moments, challenging moments, but it's not something that's going to kind of like it's not a Debbie Downer by any means.

No, no, not at all.

I mean, I, I couldn't think I could not think of a better way to describe it than I just did.

I love the natural sound, and I love the crunch of the feet and.

Yeah.

And the stones and the brush.

I mean, like, it's.

Yeah, really beautifully done.

So let me ask you, both of you though, then I think it's interesting that what you are describing is this kind of, this ignorance in the general population about a lot of these kinds of stories and these kinds of realities of history.

And so you feel the need to kind of do this context, this explainer.

So I'm going to ask you and say, for people who who don't know the story of native boarding schools, and you need to do that sort of all right, here we go.

Like, let's be real about it.

Where do you start?

What do you tell people?

You know, I mean, it's something that was intentional, you know, I mean, this is something that people have to understand that education was weaponized against indigenous people.

You know, the Colonel Pratt, the gentleman who actually started up the, you know, the boarding schools and things like that.

His idea and one of his messages was, you know, kill the Indian, save the man.

So that type of idea and that type of concept is to, like, whitewash the person and get them to assimilate.

They're no longer a problem of hearts, and now they're just part of the dominant society.

And so this really brings up an issue in conversation around sovereignty, you know, and that's what we talk about a lot going on again, in terms of, you know, treaty relationships, you know, those types of things.

Language reclamation, why it's important to, you know, still practice and have our cultures and things.

So there's a lot that really goes into that.

And it was intentionally whitewashed out of, you know, the education systems to not tell people what was being used and how they were trying to assimilate indigenous people and through resilience, through hard people, you know, difficult, you know, challenging stories and things like that.

It's awful.

You know, I mean, it really is a a cultural genocide that did happen right here in America.

And it was being done to children.

I mean, if you've ever visited Carlisle, you know, school where the famous Jim Thorpe went, you know, if people who know Jim Thorpe was one of the greatest athletes of, you know, the 20th century and things, I had the opportunity to go down there and speak one time, and they took me to a part of the school where the cemetery was.

Now, how many schools you know today that have a cemetery attached to them?

That kind of tells you a little bit about what these schools are about and what really happened.

A lot of these places.

But I got to take a look and see, you know, these schools operated for over 100 years.

Most of these schools I know, the Stewart School, you know, where whose grandfather was was over 100 years.

But we were in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, one of the one of the children that was buried in the Great in, in the cemetery at Carlisle had come from Alaska, and that child was five years old.

So imagine like how that child got there, you know, almost 80, 90 years ago.

I now have a five year old son, six year old son.

Excuse me.

I couldn't imagine that, like, my child was taken away from me, forcibly taken, removed from me, put onto a train and then carted down to Carlisle, Pennsylvania to be educated, to become now this productive citizen of the United States.

So this legacy of brutality in education is really a symptom for a lot of the traumas that are still kind of being experienced.

Today's where there's now this word around intergenerational trauma, where you know why things are so kind of like challenging and difficult within the reservation communities and things like that is where the survivors of the survivors of some of these experiences and some of these institutions, and it was brutal.

It happened here and, you know, the United States, but also in Canada.

And, it was intentional.

It was definitely driven to whitewashed children, change them as a people, as a as a human being, and then kind of try to assimilate them as best as they could.

I'm trying to remember the film.

If it's Ku or someone else, I think it's Ku talking about how sometimes, multiple people would show up to physically remove a child, sometimes just one person.

But I mean, it was four.

It was like the car shows up and we're rounding you up and you're in the van and you're gone.

It's amazing.

I mean, I think even from doing the research, with the Indian school, the amount of articles in the local newspaper that had wanted signs looking for kids, who were running away from the boarding school reporting that was done to where to locate, where they could get more children.

The advertising that the school, was doing, there was a whole newspaper, that was produced by Stewart called The Indian Advanced, and it explained all the benefits of boarding schools and why the community at large should send their kids there, or why it's a good thing to be able to get more federal funding for, it's it's all out there.

So it's really, sometimes it's shocking to me when people don't know about this history and, you know, there's a lack of knowledge or a lack of, you know, resources to find out information.

But it was so publicized back then as a good thing, as like propaganda.

And I think in the film, we use a lot of the photos that were taken at the school.

And we are trying to, you know, find Children's Agency in those photos.

Again, you know, those photos were intentionally shot to promote the school.

And in the film, we really try to work on focusing on the individual children, who had to attend there because they are individuals.

What happened to them as a collective also happened to each individual child on a personal level.

So it's extremely personal and they deserve to be seen that way.

So without giving too much of the film away, which our audience is going to come see on Wednesday night, yes, or Saturday afternoon at the little theater, can you describe a little bit about this kind of personal journey that kid was on, thinking about his great grandfather, thinking about his grandfather's escape run.

I mean, at one point, Ku was talking about when he is running, you know, he envisions not being on the road, but being in the brush and running for his life.

And can you just describe a little bit for listeners what they're going to see in terms of, how he tries to grapple with and understand his great grandfather story, the story of what has happened to his community, to his people, and what he can do about it, what he should do about it.

Yeah.

So I think in the film we really try to work on what is, you know, the visual language for the film and what Angela and I were talking about, how much of our stories come from the land itself.

And so as we were crafting the edit, we really wanted to bring that to life.

And when I was talking to Q in an interview, he mentioned to me, sometimes when he's running out there, he imagines what it would be like to be eight years old and running away and having to go through not only, you know, a 50 mile, you know, distance, but to have to climb over a mountain range to go through a river to, you know, navigate the really difficult terrain that is the Nevada desert.

And I thought about that idea of Q training every day on the literal memory of his great grandfather, who did that.

So in his homelands around his house, you know, those are the same roads in which his great grandfather, came from.

And so in the film, we really use that as a metaphor.

So when Q is training and he enters this state of, of memory and everything slows down, you know, his breathing, the sound design picks up and he's able to enter this memory.

And throughout that is a narration by Q talking about you know, imagine being eight years old.

But the reason why we use a second person tone of voice, though, is he says, you the whole time, imagine you're eight.

Imagine the government shows up at your house, is to really invite the audience in to experience what that might have been like for themselves, and to really put themselves in the shoes of Q's great grandfather.

Let me grab a couple of phone calls from listeners who want to weigh in here.

We're talking to Paige Beckman, the director of the film remaining native that you can see this week at the Little Theater.

Check the little.org for times.

There's a a screening on Wednesday at seven, followed by a Q&A with the director of the film.

And it's also Saturday afternoon at 3 p.m.. All the information there at the little.org.

Adam calling from Wayne County first.

Hey, Adam, go ahead.

I'm.

Well, I don't exactly know the exact film we're talking about.

I haven't seen it, but I, I understand this history of the native schools that, you know, we're a lot of them.

We're in the Southern Tier here in New York.

I think most of them were on like the Pennsylvania border, or some of them were Pennsylvania.

America in general obviously tried to indoctrinate, Native Americans into civilization.

But I do believe that there were a lot of Native Americans at the time, or indigenous people that were, they were dealing in business with, with folks of European descent.

And they they almost believed that their children should go to these schools.

And yes, there was traumatic, cultural ripping away going on.

But, a lot of these people believe the their children will be better off if they could assimilate to the new world that was going on.

And I'm not saying that the treatment was right, because we all know that religion in general, especially religious based schooling, is it ends up being the two faced.

There's a lot of bad stuff that went on, but the I I'd like to know from the directors if they thought that any people actually believe that they were doing better for the children and trying to bring them into the world.

So, am I just want to clarify a couple things so I understand what you're asking, and then I'll let our guests weigh in here.

First of all, I don't think there's any question.

I don't think there's any question.

I mean, there's no population of any human being that is a monolith.

Certainly there are some native people who probably would have said, yeah, I mean, assimilation is going to benefit us.

You know, maybe that is what we should be pursuing.

Maybe.

And it's sad.

Yeah.

Okay.

What happened?

I want to stipulate that there's no monolith of a population.

Yeah.

And and I also want to stipulate that I don't think most human beings go to bed at night thinking that they're, like, sort of evil and got away with it.

I think even people who hold views, whatever views that you find abhorrent, are going to bed thinking that they're on the right side of history.

So I think probably the people from the colonel on down who ran these kind of schools probably thought that they were doing good for the country, in the world, and for these kids, they probably did, because most people don't lie in bed going like, I'm the worst, but I got away with it.

They just think like, you know, I mean, they've arrived at their views for in different ways.

So stipulating that I want to understand what you are, what you are getting, are you getting at that?

The schools weren't like as bad as we think or you think that they've been.

No no no no no.

Just described that I just I guess I'm just pointing out the fact that at the time, nobody knew what to do.

And.

To tell the story is one thing, but to bring it into, like, a modern cultural, the like reclaiming.

I don't know.

I don't know how it works because the New York is one of the few places where I do believe that people existed.

You know, there was a lot of intercourse, between wars and also, trade between the, and the Shawnee, the, the, the Five Nations and then the Tuscarora, the Six Nations.

But, I find it all fascinating.

And I'm actually very happy that we're in an area where we can appreciate the people that were here before us, but still know that New York was kind of like.

I mean, I get it.

It was a it was a battleground.

It was a, it was a place where a frontier, where everybody was learning from each other.

And, this we're talking about, like the 1800s here now, not the not the 16 and 1700s, but when these schools were in place, there was it might not be religious per se, but it was also Anglo-Saxon white people trying to assimilate Indians, Native Americans, First Nations into the world that they were already part of by at this point.

So I find it interesting.

I just, I, I would like to hear if anybody feels that way or totally disagrees.

So, you know, thank you guys for taking the call.

Yeah.

And it's always a fascinating conversation when we can talk about Finger Lakes history.

Yeah.

New York history.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Adam.

Page Beth min, director of remaining native Ansley Jemison.

You can do it again.

You want to.

You want to start there?

Paige, what do you think?

It's your turn to answer.

God.

How is that in place?

Sure.

We talked a lot about this actually the other day.

Yeah.

Okay.

And it's it's challenging.

I mean, because, yeah, there were varying, experiences.

There's a spectrum of experiences that people did have at the boarding school.

So, I mean, I do want to kind of preface this answer with that.

But we also need to honor the fact that there was a lot of trauma.

There was a lot of, you know, degradation that happened.

I mean, to the point that, like, speak in your own language, you're going to be abused, you're going to have your mouthwash.

That was soap.

You know, when you first arrive at the, boarding school, you're going to be the loudest, you're going to have your hair cut, you know, you're gonna have your clothing and everything like that stripped away.

We haven't even touched on the sexual violence that happened, you know, that was happening, you know, from the from the adults that was going on there.

But there was also sexual violence and also, you know, lateral violence that was happening in and amongst the students and things like that.

So there was a lot of really dysfunctional things that were happening in these institutions, and these were there and designed to try to better people in a way.

And I guess that's what the intention of the school was.

But in actuality, I mean, it was horrible.

I mean, food was terrible.

There was malnutrition, there was different things that were happening.

I mean, children were being intentionally starved, you know, to the point that, you know, eventually they were either going to, you know, try to they were trying to steal things just to eat food and things like that or to be able to survive.

There's a story of a of a, the Mohawk Institute, which is up in, Canada, up in Ontario, just outside of Brantford, and they called it the Mush Hall.

If anybody ever wants to go and look up something about that, there's a lot of literature, there's a lot of video footage and things like that about the school.

But these children were actually having to do like a lot of field work and things like that, picking apples and doing different things that they didn't even have access to afterwards.

They weren't even allowed to eat some of these things.

And so, you know, malnutrition was something, you know, and also just to his point, you know, and his question around, you know, some of these, these boarding schools and things like that only existed in the Southern Tier.

These were proliferated throughout the entire country and then also into Canada, you know, and so each of them have their own horrific sort of, you know, backgrounds, histories and stories around how these things all happened.

A lot of them were brought in by churches, you know, but also why children were being sent off to some of these places is that, you know, in some communities there was an Indian agent and that Indian agent was the one that could, you know, you know, control the resources and things like that that were getting allotted to the individuals that were living on the reservation.

So we're going to cut off your your food supply.

We're going to cut off anything that you may be having coming to you if you don't give us your children, you know, so it was going against your head, we're going to send our children off just to try to hopefully save them.

But I mean, imagine the horror and the sorrow of like, a parent and a mother not having the ability to protect their child against, you know, these new rules and things like that.

And having a kid shipped off to wherever they're going to be taken to and you have no idea.

And oftentimes, you know, these kids were taken away from their families so far away that they couldn't even come home for like summer recess.

There was no summer recess.

So then they become indentured servants in and around the communities, wherever they are that are, you know, that like the Carlisle Indian School, for example, a lot of these kids were getting brought into it was a Carlisle Industrial School.

So these were young men who were being taught how to become farmers and become productive.

In that way.

Women were becoming sort of household, you know, caretakers and things like that.

And they were being farmed off to these rich families in and around Pennsylvania, down along the Susquehanna, where they were going to spend their entire summer being an indentured servant and then getting return back to this, you know, this private school and returning back to the horrors of all the abuses and things like that that were happening.

So it is a difficult thing to try to rationalize that this was a good thing.

But anyway or any means, however, you know, Paige and I talked about this is that we do also have to honor the fact that there are some people that came out of there and, you know, and Paige alluded to the fact that there was even sort of at different eras, different times where like there were some highs and lows and sometimes often times maybe some culture was incorporated.

But by and large, they were trying to completely assimilate these young people and turn them into, you know, dominant society at that time.

Yes.

Or we were intermingling.

There was a lot of sort of, you know, things that were happening, you know, in terms of the economic, you know, exchanges and things like that.

But by no means were we any more in a position where we were really kind of running the economies at that time or the trade and things like that.

This is now, you know, post Revolutionary War, we were now forced off into reservations and now you know, in a way, you know, it was going to be really difficult as far as, like how we were going to able to control our own destinies.

I would just say, you know, when I was doing the interviews at Stewart, there were some people that call themselves survivors and some people that call themselves alumni, and that just speaks to the idea that this is over.

100 year, 150 year history.

You know, the Stewart School was in operation for 90 years.

And throughout that time, you know, you had children being, you know, round up by the forces, the government being taken to these schools against their will, suffering horrific abuse.

And then you have other folks who really embraced that experience and, you know, learned how to sew, learned how to be, you know, become a domestic, worker, made all their friends but their husband, you know, with positive stories.

With a change in administration over the years when it became very normalized.

But when I was interviewing an elder and saying, you know, how do I like I can't tell this entire history and speak to everyone's experience, like, what do I do?

And she said to me, you know, there are people who are still alive today with good experiences that can share their stories.

Who is going to speak for the children who died at these schools, who was going to speak to the experiences of the abuse and the harm and the truth that we all need to understand, as a country and as a nation, that this harm was happening in these communities.

Over 408 boarding schools in the United States.

And so I thought about that and I said, okay, I can only do justice to the story that was told to me, which is through, you know, Coos great grandfathers story.

So let's keep this personal.

And I hope that more people will tell their, their stories of boarding schools.

I hope they're in way more films about it, because that's the only way we're going to be able to understand all the different perspectives.

So let me just also add to Adam, and I appreciate the call, and Adam and I appreciate the vulnerable vulnerability because I admit, you know, we're having a conversation.

At first, your call had the kind of sound to me like, the claim sometimes when people will say, well, you know, slavery was actually pretty good for black people.

I don't think that that's where you're going.

I don't I think what you're saying is, what's the totality of the story?

You're we are talking about the abuse and the trauma.

You're talking about the full picture.

And that's fair.

I think as long as it doesn't stand in for a so, you know, is a lot of good, mostly good, as a way of kind of absolving the undeniable abuse, not just the actual abuse that Ansley has been talking about and Paige have been talking about, but the the abusive idea that your identity needs to be destroyed, that your culture needs to be destroyed, kill the Indian, save the man is an abusive idea, and it doesn't get absolved.

In my view, because there are people who came through these schools and were not feeling abused and felt like the assimilation was a good idea or fine.

So it's complicated.

I acknowledge that journalistically, and I appreciate your larger point.

As long as you're not absolving because of some of that, if that makes sense.

So if you want to learn more and not just learn more, this film is not a learning tool.

I got to be careful with that.

If you want to see a great film.

Remaining native is shown on Wednesday night at the little and on Saturday afternoon, 7 p.m. Wednesday, 3:00 on Saturday afternoon.

Great chance for you to see just a film that you will enjoy, period.

Whether or not you learn anything.

But I think undeniably what you will learn is that there has been a legacy of pain and trauma and suffering that even generations now are going like, what do we do with this?

What's what's my part of this?

Like, what's my place in this and what can I do?

So, I appreciate the call, Adam, and thank you for that.

And let's take our only break.

We're going to come back.

We'll take another phone call.

Bob, I'll take your call on the other side of this break.

We've got some more, questions, comments that have come in on YouTube for those watching on the studios.

YouTube.

Thank you for that.

Paige Beckman, director of Remaining Native is here and Jemison cultural liaison with and again is here and we'll come right back on connections.

I'm Evan Dawson Tuesday on the next connections.

Doctor Ray Dorsey has joined us a number of times in the past on connections, talking primarily about Parkinson's disease.

It's a specialty.

He has a new book out that is turning some heads might even be controversial.

It takes aim at Parkinson's.

What might be causing Parkinson's, what we can do to try to protect ourselves and what we know about Parkinson's.

And we're going to talk all about it Tuesday.

Support for your public radio station comes from our members and from Bob Johnson, Auto Group.

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This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson, Sydney on YouTube says why can't we use native names instead of the name Iroquois, which was foisted upon them by the French?

We should use Houdini, Shawnee, the Seneca call themselves Onondaga.

Respect native names and say, what do you think?

Yeah, well, we've been trying to put that forward as best we can here.

You know, for, I guess, the dominant culture, I guess at times it's easy for them to first kind of understand that.

But we also do on a layer and get them to understand that we are still a people.

We are still here.

We do have a native languages, despite of what these boarding schools have done to us.

So, yeah, thank you for the for the message.

And, absolutely.

You know, you are in the territory of the unknown to walk people when you're here in Rochester.

And, we're not going to do a land acknowledgment or anything like that will, welcome you in as the and remind you that you are a guest here.

So please act accordingly.

Okay.

And how do you feel?

Yeah, absolutely.

I think there's a lot of movement going on right now with, land back with, renaming, territories with.

I wouldn't even say renaming.

It's kind of like going back to the original names that they that existed.

So, yeah, I think, you know, being able to support and follow movements led by indigenous people, led by Haudenosaunee people, to, you know, undo some of the harm that's done in this area is really important.

And the first is by acknowledging the truth.

And a lot of that comes in with our names.

Is is does the word Iroquois, you know, you, it's not the worst thing.

I mean, I've been called worse.

I think, you know.

Oh, boy.

Well, that's not what I was asking, but let's not go there.

But you prefer.

Sure.

Hope and Shawnee would be great, you know, or Onondaga and, you know, obviously, we're going to have some great we're going to have some understanding and things like that because we want to educate.

We also want people to understand who we are, that we are a generous people.

And that there was, you know, originally a great relationship that was, you know, that did occur early on with our, you know, now treaty partners and things like that.

But, you know, one thing I wanted to kind of touch on here, and I think it's important that we make sure we highlight is that this is an indigenous film done by an in through an indigenous lens, through an indigenous voice, through an indigenous woman and an indigenous woman who's leading the charge here and kind of bring this back, you know, full circle, in a way, as us as a matrilineal society, we have women that are leaders.

Women are the ones, the voices and things like that.

So pages film also kind of encapsulates a lot of that, but it kind of takes you through this ride.

That's not through like a typical filmmaker.

It's through the lens of an indigenous woman and her putting herself in a place where she's now going to capture and understand really what's important about this story and what's going to what needs to be shared, what needs to be told.

And so if you allow yourself that opportunity to kind of immerse yourself in there, the soundscapes, the feeling, the texture, the voices, the stories, take all of that in.

And also you're being led into a very kind of interesting place, because now you're seeing it through the eyes as to how an indigenous woman views and takes on the world and sees the world.

So let's grab another phone call here.

This is Bob in Rochester has been waiting.

Hi, Bob.

Go ahead.

Hey.

How are you doing, Evan?

Page.

And, I'm sorry I can't get the whole roll call in because I can't remember editing anymore.

But the thing is.

Hi, everyone in the studio.

Thanks for taking my call.

Sure.

I'm from Rochester, and I was fortunate enough to go to school in Indiana and live in an Indian normal school that was converted from the new normal school that had ceased to exist, and it turned into being a college dorm, you know, high ceilings, beautiful building, and eventually, oh, we had a lot of fun in that building in the water wars and stuff.

It's really a classic, beautiful building.

Mary Drexel built it.

Who I think now is been sainted by the Catholic Church.

Her father had deep pockets.

Big baker in Chicago.

Is she?

This was her project.

I think she also built a school down south somewhere.

But the one in Indiana, Rensselaer, Drexel Hall, it was called after her.

Her last name.

I was fortunate enough to go in with the help of the internet, because we didn't have it back in 73.

To look at the history on the building.

And I looked at the pictures of the group, pictures of the young men that were there.

There'd be 77 kids in this building.

They all had European suits and like clothing.

And not one kid is smiling.

They're not smiling at all.

They look like they were doing hard time.

And the Catholic, German priests, the Order of Priestly, Most Precious Blood.

They looked a little heavy handed.

They looked like kind of tough guys.

And it was stated in, in the in the description of the dorm that a lot of times coats and shoes had to be collected at night because kids were running away.

And to the untrained eye, that says it all to me.

These kids were not happy in that building.

There wasn't one student in their group picture day.

There's 2 or 3 group pictures, but there was this.

Usually in a group of 70 kids, someone's going to be Morgan for the camera and having a fun not one kid selling.

And I'm just saying if those walls could have spoke, I mean, I felt privileged to be looking back that I lived in that building because it was a majestic building and it's still being used today.

It's on the for sure.

It's on the Indiana National Historic Society, preservation and might even be national by now.

But yeah, I'm just sharing that.

I'm just spitballing this thing here that I lived in one, and I was always feeling fortunate that I was able to live there and experience it, and to give it thought because it didn't look like a happy place when the kids were living there.

Well, I appreciate the phone call, Bob.

Thank you.

And I probably lines up with some of what page has been describing your experience and understanding these these kind of stories.

What would you say to Bob?

Yeah, I think what there are no, those pictures say everything you need to see, you know, to see the archival material that has come from the boarding school era.

It's it's heartbreaking.

And there is actually a photo in the film.

I won't give too much away, but it's, a panoramic photograph that is really long, and we spend time looking at that photo.

And to be able to even take a panoramic, panoramic photo back in 1910 took hours to to do.

And so for me, thinking about all those children, you know, there were over like 100 children in that photo and to, to know that they had to stand there and, and pose for that amount of time.

And you look at every individual face in that photo and you can't see one person smiling.

Yeah.

It haunts you.

It haunts you because you can't you can only imagine what they had to go through.

And I think that's the point of the film, is that to ask the audience and for people who are witnessing the film, to think about that experience.

And while, you know, it's nothing's mutually exclusive, you know, you had a great experience and your, in that building that you're describing.

But there's a lot of history there.

And I think that's what we deal with as indigenous people.

We can't detach ourselves from the history, but we can learn ways in which we can be in parallel with it.

And I and we can come together as a community and we can practice our languages.

We can be on our home territories, we can go to dances, we can do things that we've done as traditional people and and know that that is healing for us.

And we can move forward many rights to the program to say, I'm embarrassed to admit that my knowledge about native boarding schools comes entirely from watching Yellowstone and then researching it further.

I took AP U.S. history in high school, and we did not cover this topic.

To my memory, that's from many I have not seen.

Yellowstone.

Yeah, I mean, Yellowstone, that's like I mean, Taylor Sheridan, we don't have to talk about that.

But, you know, the depiction of, what happens in Yellowstone with Tianna Rainwater, it is quite accurate to the experiences that had happened.

The the brutality, the violence, the horror of someone escaping a boarding school.

Those are stories that we've heard from many of our community members.

And you know what I heard in the process of making this film?

Have you seen Yellowstone?

No, I have not, actually.

And, you know, what comes to mind, though, is that, you know, in these accurate portrayals of, you know, that experience of that lived experience of what it was like, I believe that there's an indigenous artist from Canada that actually used sort of a VR sort of experience of actually capturing what it was like for like this Indian agent and, and the RCMP to show up and actually physically take children away from their parents.

Just to kind of put you in that mindset.

I don't know if you ever been to Atlanta, but there's a, a museum that's down there that talks about the African-American experience, and you actually get an opportunity to sit at a counter, right?

And you have headset on, and you have all these people screaming and yelling in your ear as to what it was like for an African-American person to sit at, like, an ice cream counter or whatever.

There, like a deli counter or, excuse me, a diner.

And, you know, it's a similar sort of view and vibe and things like that as to, like, get yourself into these mindsets in these places, to see and to think about, like, yeah, really think about what it is like.

I mean, if you have young children in your family, what it would be like is all of a sudden that that kid's just gone and you have no agency over, how do you get that child back?

And now they're within the system and they're now, you know, who knows what's happening to them wherever they're at.

And, you know, that's just such a really difficult place to put yourself in to think about.

And how challenging it is.

I mean, and, you know, with the idea that there are people today that are still doing the work to reteach the language, you know, put through ceremonies and things like that, this is all, you know, acts of resilience in order to do this.

I mean, 1978, it was illegal to practice any kind of religious, you know, ceremonial practices and things like that.

So when I was named in 1976, you know, my, my given my Indian name, I was actually breaking the law then, you know?

So 1978 is finally when these things start to get released and you're able to do some of these practices and things like that again.

And, it's just amazing that how recent this is.

And, you know, to your point earlier about the other callers, you know, question, you know, why don't they just get over it?

It wasn't so terrible and things like that.

It's like, no, this is very recent.

Still this is still occurring and happening today.

And a lot of this stuff really goes over resources.

It's over lands and things like that.

And that's a lot of what people have to understand is that, you know, when Paige had mentioned the land back movement, you know, there are still these treaties that have been, you know, blatantly violated that people haven't really acknowledged and thought about.

The ink hadn't already dried on the thing, and there are already trying to figure out ways to encroach on the lands and take back what it was.

I mean, per the Kennedy Treaty, you know, there's a commemoration every year, November 11th, you know, at Kennedy that all of Western New York from Kennedy.

Well, you know, out to Presque Isle, out towards Erie, that's all.

You know, Seneca Territory originally.

So imagine that both Rochester and Buffalo are still are you know, that's still our territory.

And again, as I mentioned before, you know, you're all guests here.

And it loves to remind us that we are guests there.

But I appreciate and know actually you you mentioned, land acknowledgments.

Yeah.

And it seems to me I'm not going to speak for you.

It seems to me that they sound like eulogies.

If they sound like either eulogies or kind of trite, you'd prefer to just say no.

Just as a reminder, your guests here act accordingly.

Well, and actually, we have a forum.

We have a way.

We have an edge of the woods ceremony that we actually put people through, that we can actually enact and actually process.

And really what it is, is this act of reciprocity where we see these people as, you know, having difficulties, having challenges, and we first want to set these people right again and wipe away the tears, unstopped their ears and clear their throat again, so that when we're having these messages in these conversations, these opportunities to spend time with one another, we can see each other clearly.

We can hear each other.

And you also have now a clear voice to be able to, you know, speak your words and we can hear each other truthfully, you know, and it's a condolence that we kind of that's where this comes from.

But it's really an act of, you know, this reciprocity that we want to care for people who actually want to welcome people in in a way.

And also we have a responsibility to each other as people to take care of one another while we're in each other's presence and time.

You think most land acknowledgment are hollow?

Absolutely.

I mean, they're poorly written.

They're read, you know, they're not they're there's not a lot of people that can read those things or, you know, kind of spitball that thing on their own to actually, you know, recite what it is that they have written.

And oftentimes again and again, we get these phone calls, hey, can you help us write a, you know, land acknowledgment?

Oh, I do think about that.

People are calling you saying, I want to do a land acknowledgment.

What do you say?

Oh, you want me to help you write an a eulogy for myself?

No.

Thank you.

I'll pass.

So.

Yeah.

And we have we've actually been very generous with people.

We've tried to craft some of these things, but, you know, like anything else, become sort of a fad type of thing, fad movement.

And, we've kind of step back from it a little bit, and we actually want to kind of welcome them into like come digging on again, come talk to us, come meet with us, and we'll talk to you about how and and how we want to be acknowledged and what's a good way to kind of move forward because, you know, give me the land acknowledgment.

Okay.

But like.

And what?

You know what then you see how serious people are.

Right.

Exactly.

Will they actually come together and again, will they take the time or do they just want to read a statement that's like 20s long and they're like, yeah, check the box.

We're good here.

Yeah.

Before we lose the hour, I just want to ask Paige one other question here, because I think it ties to these questions about the purpose of boarding schools.

And we talked about the erasure of culture and identity, but there's an undeniable economic reasons, too.

And when you look at what the trades that were going on, and can you just describe a little bit about what what you want people to understand about that aspect as well?

Well, I think the what I said earlier, so the boarding schools weren't, intentional, you know, it was to a cost savings on where you raging wars with tribes, if they could stop, you know, fighting in wars and and sacrificing their military and they could convert native people into American taxpaying citizens, that would be a cost savings.

And so the boarding schools are just another way to disenfranchize us from our lands, to reduce the size of our territories, to reduce our sovereignty, our ability to make our own incomes and money.

You know, like the caller mentioned earlier about the fur trades, you know, we we were a huge part of that.

And when all the children got sent to boarding schools and, you know, weren't learning how to be fur trappers anymore, where, you know, separated from that experiences and not contributing to their own communities, in the way that they were used.

I used to, yeah, it affected the tribes economically.

And so I think it's looking at the whole picture of not just, oh, you're going to learn the dominant culture, but we're going to do everything in our power to reduce any success in the communities, around this country.

And that stems from political, social, economic and cultural backgrounds.

So again, congratulations on a beautiful film.

Thank you.

As we wrap up here, a reminder to listeners that as part of the One Take documentary series, the Little Theater is screening remaining native on Wednesday night at £0.07 pm.

And, the debut screening will include an in-person Q&A with Rochester.

We're going to call you a Rochester native.

We're going to we're going to we're going to we're going to claim you even though that we're a guest on your territory.

Page Beth Bennett is going to be there.

And again and again is a community partner for those screenings.

If you can't be there at 7 p.m. on Wednesday night, you can go to the little at 3 p.m. Saturday afternoon, information at the little.org or at the box office.

I know they would love to see you there.

Paige, Beth and Director of Remaining Native.

Thanks for telling the story.

Thank you for being with us this hour.

Great having you.

Thank you so much.

And if you want to know more about our screenings, we're going to be in Buffalo in October.

So follow along on our website.

And there's many screenings, going around the country.

I should mention there.

We do even get to it.

Learn more about their impact campaigns.

Five K runs really cool stuff happening.

So, a lot tied to it.

Good luck with that.

I know that it's not easy in the filmmaking business, to get eyeballs on your work, but I don't know anybody who would see this film, and I think it is beautifully done.

It really is beautiful.

Thank you very much.

And see Jemison.

See it again and again.

Thank you for being here.

Thanks for letting us be a guest.

All the credit goes to Paige, you know.

Thank you.

Paige, this is amazing film.

Love your work.

Really excited to be a part of this.

You know, the opportunity.

And best luck with that.

Thank you, Anslee.

And thank you for listening from the whole team at connections.

Thanks for being with us.

Whether you're on traditional platforms, YouTube or wherever you are.

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