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Powerlands
Jun21

Powerlands

On this week’s Making Contact, we feature an extended interview with Ivey Camille Manybeads Tso, a queer Diné filmmaker and director of the award-winning documentary Powerlands. Powerlands traces how multinational energy corporations extract resources and profits while displacing and harming Indigenous communities around the world. The film follows Indigenous activists in Navajo Nation, Colombia, Mexico and the Philippines who...

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The Fight Over the Indian Child Welfare Act Is Not Just A Custody Battle (ENCORE)
Jun07

The Fight Over the Indian Child Welfare Act Is Not Just A Custody Battle (ENCORE)

It’s a lesser-known case in the docket for the Supreme Court, but if The Indian Child Welfare Act is overturned, it could have massive implications for the laws that govern Indigenous sovereignty in the United States. We talk with author and activist Rebecca Nagle about the case of Baby O and the Librettis and how their story led to Halaand v. Brakeen. But, we also investigate the money and interests behind the lawsuit....

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The Fight Over the Indian Child Welfare Act Is Not Just A Custody Battle
Feb01

The Fight Over the Indian Child Welfare Act Is Not Just A Custody Battle

It’s a lesser-known case in the docket for the Supreme Court, but if The Indian Child Welfare Act is overturned, it could have massive implications for the laws that govern Indigenous sovereignty in the United States. We talk with author and activist Rebecca Nagle about the case of Baby O and the Librettis and how their story led to Halaand v. Brakeen. But, we also investigate the money and interests behind the lawsuit....

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The Way Home (Encore)
Nov23

The Way Home (Encore)

  We visit two distinct projects working with food to revitalize identity and ancestry: Part one: In many Indigenous communities, there’s a gap in knowledge about growing and cooking traditional foods. On the Blackfeet Nation in rural Montana, Mariah Gladstone and Kenneth Cook are trying to change that. They launched an online cooking show called Indigikitchen and in this episode, we follow them into the field as they...

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Ollas Populares- Lessons from Lockdowns
Nov02

Ollas Populares- Lessons from Lockdowns

Reporter Rosina Castillo takes us to her Buenos Aires neighborhood. There, a community arts organization called La Casona de Humahuaca hosts an olla popular, a community kitchen, to feed hundreds of hungry neighbors during pandemic lockdowns.  In turn, La Casona learns more about their own identity and purpose while transforming how they operate. And, we sit down with architect and urbanist, Belen Desmaison. She explains how the...

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70 Million: Tribal Land, Banishment, Rehabilitation and Re-Entry
Oct26

70 Million: Tribal Land, Banishment, Rehabilitation and Re-Entry

  This week on Making Contact – with assistance from our podcast partners, 70 million – we head to the state of Alaska, where statewide increases in violent crime and substance abuse have led to increased incarceration rates among Native Americans. Making use of their legal sovereignty, some Alaska Native leaders issue “blue tickets,” documents that sentence offenders to legal expulsion. Journalist Emily Schwing looks...

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