Factually! with Adam Conover - Keeping Native Languages Alive with Anton Treuer

Episode Date: January 13, 2021

Aaniin - which is hello in the Algonquin language of Ojibwe! This week, Adam speaks with Anton Treuer, the professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University. He walks us through where Ojibwe language has historically been spoken - as well as where it is spoken now, why we should keep this and other indiginous languages alive, how native culture is both historical and modern, what we AREN’T taught about native communities, how stereotypes aren’t always incorrect, but are often incomplete, and why Anton is hopeful for continued culture change and growth away from oppression. Check out his book, The Language Warrior’s Manifesto: How To Keep Our Languages Alive No Matter The Odds, out February 1st. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You know, I got to confess, I have always been a sucker for Japanese treats. I love going down a little Tokyo, heading to a convenience store, and grabbing all those brightly colored, fun-packaged boxes off of the shelf. But you know what? I don't get the chance to go down there as often as I would like to. And that is why I am so thrilled that Bokksu, a Japanese snack subscription box, chose to sponsor this episode. What's gotten me so excited about Bokksu is that these aren't just your run-of-the-mill grocery store finds. Each box comes packed with 20 unique snacks that you can only find in Japan itself.

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So if all of that sounds good, if you want a big box of delicious snacks like this for yourself, use the code factually for $15 off your first order at Bokksu.com. That's code factually for $15 off your first order on Bokksu.com. I don't know the way. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. Yeah, but that's all right. Yeah, that's okay. I don't know anything. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover, and it's been a hell of a week in America. As this episode airs on January 13th, it's been exactly a week since the insurrection, the riot, the whatever you want to call it, at the United States Capitol. And, you know, that puts me in a bit of an awkward spot as a commentator. We had an episode that just came out that Wednesday, regardless of the facts on the ground. And, you know, now my next episode, it's a week later. There's already been thousands of people writing about what they think about

this. You've read article after article, I assume. So, you know, I don't have that big of a statement to make, but but let me say a couple words. OK, can I just say this? It is painfully clear that the state of our information ecosystem, the machine that brings facts, knowledge and opinions to the people of this country is in an absolutely terrible state. I mean, that wasn't obvious already. I think it is quite obvious now. And, you know, I think there's a tendency, an unfortunate tendency to treat the people

who are purveying misinformation and conspiracy in this country as clowns, you know? Like, oh, Alex Jones, you know, that guy's got his shirt off. He yells about frogs or whatever. That guy's funny. You know, who could who could listen to him? Well, guess what?

People are listening to him and to the other voices like him. And not only are they listening to them, the words that they're saying, the false facts, the misconceptions, the hatred, the conspiracy, those words are going into those people's brains and they're causing their bodies to move around. Does that make sense? The thoughts and ideas are being converted into beliefs and those beliefs are leading to actions. And the actions that they're leading to are, in this case, hundreds, if not thousands of Americans breaking into the United States Capitol and killing five people. not thousands of Americans, breaking into the United States Capitol and killing five people.

And not only that, but senators and congresspeople taking what was once a routine part of, you know, certifying an election, just certifying the electoral college's vote, something that I didn't even know needed to be fucking done until last week, and turning it into an opportunity

to hold the government hostage until they get their way, regardless of the fact that the facts do not bear out their assertions. Misinformation, lies and propaganda have led here to violence and to the near breakdown of our entire political system. And so, you know, I'm happy to hear that they're going to be prosecuting, you know, the the folks who broke into the Capitol building and killed people. But I'm afraid it's not going to solve the problem until we address the wellspring that these actions are coming from.

I have dedicated my career, you know, ever since I went from being just some asshole who tells jokes to some asshole who tells jokes about important shit you need to know to combating misinformation and lies of this sort. And I'm going to keep doing that. So far, me doing that hasn't stopped any bad things from happening. It hasn't stopped the vortex of misinformation we live in from getting worse. But I'm going to keep doing my bit.

That's all I know how to do. And I want to thank those of you listening to this show for being people who are committed to facts, to knowledge, to understanding the world as it is, to trying to get, as I always say, the inside of your head to match up with the world on the outside of your head. I think that's an important project now more than ever. And I think we need to bring more people into that project. I think that nothing is more important for the future of our country, not just our country, not just our society, but to humanity on earth. I think this is the project of our lifetimes, at least the project of my lifetime. And the events of the last week have more than anything else rededicated me to that mission. And I hope that you feel similarly. And the events of the last week have more than anything else rededicated me

to that mission. And I hope that you feel similarly. And I thank you for being here and listening to the show with me and being a part of this community. Okay, that's enough. Let's move on to the topic of the actual show this week, which again, is not about current events because we recorded this interview a week or so ago before the events of the week, because that's how we produce the show. So it's not topical, but guess what? It's still a fantastic interview. And I know you're going to want to hear it. Let's talk about it. You know, our globe spanning civilization, as amazing as it is, has also caused us to lose pockets of uniqueness around the world.

They've fallen by the wayside to a globalized, industrialized society. You know, we often think of, for example, the biggest example of this is endangered or extinct species, right? That's an obvious kind of loss. They're pushed out by invasive species from across the ocean who come in, occupy their niche, and animals go extinct. And we lose that unique thing that used to only exist in that one place. And now we have one thing that exists in multiple places. We're familiar with this pattern, but it's not just in the natural world. There are human cultural losses to huge ones. Take languages. In the 60 years following 1950, we lost an astounding 250 languages, 250 and a full one third of remaining languages have less than a thousand speakers left.

Isn't that incredible? A third of languages on Earth today have less than a thousand people speaking them. Well, what do I mean by that when I say that we lost languages? How do languages die? Well, one way is through force. Imperial powers, when they colonize an area, they might force indigenous communities to speak their language. This accounts for the loss of local languages among Aboriginal Australians after European settlement and in Nepal after it was annexed by China. But in other cases, languages aren't lost through force, but through choice or by natural adoption. Speakers of minority language might feel that there are benefits, cultural and economic, to their children speaking the dominant language.

In America, this helps account for why most second-generation immigrants, for instance, don't speak their parents' language fluently. And, of course, a language can just naturally fall into disuse when another language has become culturally, sociologically dominant in an area. If all business is conducted in one language, well, the other language loses prominence and slowly becomes less spoken. But even when it doesn't happen by force, it is still something that we should be concerned about because we lose a lot when a language dies. We lose, in fact, an entire galaxy of meaning and connotation. See, language is how we give form to thought in the most fundamental way.

It's a collection of ways to describe and structure the world. Think about a single word in the English language. Take the word human, for instance. Think of its sound, human. The different shades of meaning the word has. How it's similar to, but also totally different from the words person or individual, right? It means something different to you, that shade, how it leads down different roads of potential thought or expression,

how you might use it in one context or not another, how when you read it in a certain context, it brings certain associations to mind. Associations that you might have trouble even describing if you had to think about it. You just kind of know. Well, now consider the fact that every single word in the English language has that enormous payload of meaning and culture wrapped up in its syllables. And consider the fact beyond that, that every single word in every other language spoken on earth has the same. That is why learning a language can be so fulfilling because by doing so, you can get your head inside

of another culture, another way of being in a way that you can't otherwise. And it also means that when a language dies, a culture loses a crucial piece of its uniqueness, of its way of understanding itself, of its way of being in the world. And we as humanity lose a part of the human experience. But there's good news, because it's not like we can't do anything about it. Take Hebrew, for example.

150 years ago, it was a sacred but not a spoken language. It was only used for liturgical rites, things like that. Starting in the 1880s, though, linguists began working on expanding it for use as a contemporary popular language. They embarked on an unprecedented project of language revitalization. And today, Hebrew is a living language spoken

by millions of people. More recently, linguists and online activists have taken up the task of saving languages and alphabets across the world. And they're having enormous, inspiring success. So to discuss how that works, to discuss why it is so important to keep these languages close to us and how you save a language in distress, our guest today is Anton Troyer. He's a professor of the Ojibwe language at Bemidji State University and the author of a number of books, including The Language Warriors Manifesto. Please welcome Anton Troyer. Anton, thank you so much for being here. Thanks so much for having me.

So tell me a little about yourself. You're a professor of Ojibwe. What does that mean? Yeah, professor of Ojibwe. I teach the Ojibwe language, but also history and culture at Bemidji State University. Ojibwe is one of 500 or so indigenous languages that were spoken in the United States and Canada at the time of contact. And one of probably about 150 that are still spoken today. That's not something that as an American walking around, as a, you know, I'll be specific as a white American walking around that I really have a daily cognizance of that there are, we think of, you know, English, Spanish, a couple other languages in the United States. We don't think about there being 150 indigenous languages that are still spoken in the United States. Right. And many thousands when you look at Mexico and South America. Right. You know, ultimately, as we, you know, for me, it's ironic that mine is the indigenous language.

But when I say something in Ojibwe, people look at me like I'm speaking a foreign tongue, you know. And I think I'm at the point now where I have the president and deans at Bemidji State University convinced that if someone calls and asks for the Department of Foreign Languages to send them to the English department. Vince, that if someone calls and asks for the Department of Foreign Languages to send them to the English department. But yeah, I mean, this is the foreign language. The language that we're speaking right now is the language that came here more recently. Right. Yeah. English comes from England. A lot of people don't even think of it that way, but that's where it comes from. Yeah. And, you know, even if you look at, you know, all history, all cultures and languages change kind of rapidly. You look at the first attempts to write English down, like Geoffrey Chaucer, he was writing about 600 years ago. I can barely, barely read that stuff, you know,

but people think of English as an ancient, well-established, you know, font of civilization. And it's both new and colonial. Tell me more about Ojibwe. How many people speak Ojibwe? We don't actually know. Ojibwe is a big group. There are about a quarter million Ojibwe people scattered around the Great Lakes in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota. There's a mixed Ojibwe Cree community in Montana, and there are about 125 Ojibwe First Nations in Canada. So they're really kind of a large geographical area, pretty large population, number of speakers. Our best estimates are maybe 20,000 000 or so and most of the speakers are actually in canada so in the u.s it's a it's a much more endangered language the u.s dialects maybe a

thousand speakers left in the u.s wow just uh speakers of any kind is that native speakers and folks who just ojibwe got it so you've published a book this year called The Language Warriors Manifesto, How to Keep Our Languages Alive No Matter the Odds. Why did you write that book? You know, it was really a combination of one of my most personal books in my journey, reclaiming my language and culture. in my journey, reclaiming my language and culture, and also kind of a manifesto and a field guide for anyone else, whether it's their individual journey or looking at a collective effort. Ojibwe is one of several languages like Mohawk, Hawaiian, Cherokee, Blackfeet, that have a really

significant broad language revitalization effort that's showing some real fruit. And there are lots and lots of Indigenous people that are trying to figure this out. So, you know, looking at what an individual can do and what a group of people can do is really helpful. So I'm excited about it. It's something that has been a major passion of mine throughout my adult life. And I've been really privileged to work with a lot of people in this area. And it shifts perspectives. So I'm excited to see where it goes. Well, tell me what is so important about revitalizing a language like Ojibwe or any language? Right. So first of all, I think in a place like America, it's very tempting to think that if something doesn't

have an obvious financial value, it just doesn't have value. Right. How can you make money off Ojibwe? Yeah. And first of all, you can make money off Ojibwe. It's, you know, it's widely taught at colleges and universities now. That's how you make your living? Yeah. I mean, it's not just me, but there are Ojibwe medium schools, you know, numerous tribes and First Nations that are looking for people to teach, you know, in those schools, develop curriculum and materials. It's big business. It's big business for presses too. When they first were trying to get someone to publish an Ojibwe dictionary, they're like, we're going to sell three copies of this thing. And after they sold like 40,000 copies, they said,

wow, there's a market for this. People didn't realize. But much more importantly than that, every language embodies the unique worldview of a people. It's a different way of looking at things. And there are many beauties and benefits of a major colonial language like English. But the colonial way of solving problems has created a lot of problems. White folk were busy beating each other up in Europe for some thousands of years before they took it to the rest of the world. And in colonization, kind of the thinking is you're going to take one language, one culture, one way of solving problems, and use it to supplant others. And it's built into the way education is done, politics, so many different things. And ultimately, that way of doing things puts people in conflict with one another,

culturally, socially, politically, and militarily. Why would we think that all the problems created by the colonial way of solving problems are going to be solved by the colonial way of solving problems? There are more than vestigial remnants of some very different ways to approach these things. And when we look at major issues in our world today, whether it's climate change, race relations, and so forth, we have a lot to teach the rest of the world. And, you know, embedded in our languages are different ways of looking at things. Maybe an example will be helpful. I was about to ask you. Yeah, please.

Yeah. So like in Ojibwe, our word for an elder, gichiaya'a, literally means great being. Our word for an elderly woman, mindamuie, means one who holds things together and describes the role of the family matriarch. And in English, you got old woman, elderly woman, aged woman, hag,

you know, and no wonder, no wonder that like, like how many elders do you see on the cover of Cosmo? Right. You know, and we have this kind of not just awkward, but often really painful messaging to women, for example, that your primary value is your youth, physical beauty, and sexual attractiveness, because that's how you get a man. And that's the definition of success for a woman. It's just woven into the culture in so many unhealthy ways. And to me, like in Ojibwe, for example, there's a saying, you know, I hope you live so long that you can't even crush a raspberry between your gums. It's like a blessing, you know?

Or there's another one where like, if you do a good deed for an elder. Yeah. Adam's ready for this day when he can't crush the raspberry between his gums. It's very funny because it's partially, it's partially does sound like a blessing, but then it does. Well, that is very old. I mean, that's not a, it's not a pretty picture when you can't crush a raspberry.

I mean, can you, can you, can you still get to eat the raspberry? Sorry. Please go on. No, it's good. And, and, or like, you know, you do a good deed for an elder. They might touch their head and touch the, you know, young person's head and say,

like, I'm giving you a white hair. And it's a blessing. It's like, you know, your goal is not to stay 20 forever. Your goal is to live a long, healthy, happy life. And you're going to get there one good deed at a time. And that there are seasons in life, spring, summer, fall, winter, you know, and we should hope that everybody gets to see their seasons rather than try to be stuck in one. And it trips people up. You know, we

segregate by age. We send the elders to an old folks home. We keep the first graders with the first graders. We keep young people with young people. You know, we have culture wars between millennials and baby boomers. You know, it's just really unhealthy. And I think that intergenerational connection and communication is good for us. And we have a lot to learn from each other. And there's always something to look forward to if the goal is to become a great being, you know. And there's so many other approaches to life, death and dealing with drama and trauma, you know, in different cultures that, you know, these kinds of worldviews can and should pollinate the garden we're all trying to harvest from. Well, and there's a way in which knowing a language, understanding a language, speaking a language gives you access to a different way of thinking or a different worldview to a certain degree.

Like, I could push back if I felt like and I could say, well, we do have the word elder. You know, when people use the word elder in English, that is a more respectful way to speak of an older person, you know, and like, you know, in fantasy fictions, all the village elders, you know, there is sort of that idea. But that's not what we use in common speech. You know, the word exists, but it's not, I think, part of the broader culture of the language, at least here in America. I think, part of the broader culture of the language, at least here in America. And you could, you know, my I could teach my grandparents have passed away, but I could tell one of my grandparents, hey, touch me on the head and say that wonderful phrase that you said. I give you a white hair. You know, they could they could do that. But there's there's something lost, like when you are hearing it, when you're doing it in the in language, it's, I don't know, it's transportative. Like, it is

it goes from being a translation to being the real thing, in a way. Right. So I'd say, it's not like it's not possible to respect your elders if you're speaking English. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is that

in a language like Ojibwe, it's hard not to respect your elders or to find words to run them down the same way. Yeah. And especially at this kind of implicit level. It's the case both that a language reflects the values and views of a culture and also the case, it's one of the pillars of sovereignty. What makes a Frenchman French is having a land that is France and a language that is French and French traveling in China. And it's like that for all of us. You know, it's something that is foundational for a lot of our cultural practices and ceremonies and things like that. There's so many different things for academic inquiry, for access and use of oral history, for understanding the maps that are all around us and all the place names.

They have a unique perspective and way of looking at things. There's so many different dimensions to that. And, you know, ultimately you can look at what's, you know, the malaise in our current educational system. America's educational system is messed up. Like right now we have the majority of our students in America, 51% are students of color. That's who's here. It doesn't matter. Democrats, Republicans, build a wall, don't build a wall. Is that across public and private?

Those are the K-12 students in the U.S. Wow. The majority are students of color. Wow, yeah. That's who's here, right? Doesn't matter if you build a wall or don't. Doesn't matter Democrats, Republicans, any of that. Right. That's who's here. But the American educational system is only tracking about 60 percent of the students of color to the finish line of high school. Wow. Oh, my God.

Only 60 percent. And like the native students are only about 50 percent. Wow. are only about 50% getting to the finish line with high school. So if you had perfect racial equity in terms of economics today, of course we don't, but pretend we did for a second. Yeah, pretend we didn't have that property tax problem. Because there's this link between educational attainment and economic prosperity, our educational system alone would engineer racially predictable financial disparities. Yeah.

Right? And now just examine this with a counterpoint. Like you can look at the indigenous language revitalization effort in Hawaii, where there are 22 Hawaiian medium schools or in Hayward, Wisconsin. You know, there's an Ojibwe medium school that's had 100% pass rate on its state-mandated tests in English for the first 15 years of operation, when the pass rate's 50%, 5-0% for the Native kids in the English medium public school. So if someone is figuring this crap out, then maybe we should pay a little more attention to that. Yeah. Right? And it seems like assimilation is what we do in education. And when you provide an alternative and people get to learn about themselves as well as the rest of the world, they do better at everything. And when you say medium school, you mean the classes are

taught in Hawaiian and Ojibwe in whatever the language is, right? Yeah. It's the medium of instruction. And there are many other ways to look at, you know, that part of the equation, like the top seven U.S. states in aggregate test scores are Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Iowa, Michigan, and the bottom states in racially predictable disparities are the same states. Wow. So the whiter the states, the whiter the curriculum,

the whiter the body of teachers, the better the white students do and the worse everybody else is doing. And when you do something different, you get something different. I didn't think this episode was going to be about the crisis in the american education system but you're blowing my mind right now is it like that you that illuminates so much to me um but i i want to get back to the earlier

point you were making about you know what is what is it to be a frenchman other than to speak French. And I just, it's just making me think about how, you know, language is like the substrate of thought in a large way and in humanity, you know? I mean, my dog has thoughts and doesn't have a language, right? So it's not like you need a language to have thought. But for humans, the two seem like inextricably combined. And even if you had two languages that, uh, were, you know, even if we didn't have the cultural differences, the, the, the differences

of value that you were talking about embedded, um, even apart from that, there's a closeness to a thought that comes from understanding the language in which it was spoken. You know, I just think about when I was in college and I was studying German and I was reading, you know, the poet Goethe. This is such a fucking college boy thing to say. But I was reading it and I read the translation and then I got good enough of German to read it in the original. And I was like, oh, I'm closer to the original person's original thought. The translation can only get you so close, you know. And that's a very trivial version of of this phenomenon when you're talking about a culture and a people uh

it's very clear to me how being able to have the language be alive to speak it to understand it to to you know to to participate in it is like really vital to its existence to to like it it's it's transportative again that you're you know you're can partake in its essential what it is i'm i'm running out of words to describe what i'm talking about but it's an extremely profound closeness to it that i think the language gives you that you can't get any other way. I don't know. Does that make any sense to you? Right. Yeah. Some things don't translate that well. You know, like I spent a fair amount of time in Hawaii and they're kind of heroes to us in the indigenous language revitalization world. I mean, they have a word maoli, which, you know, you might translate it as something like positive self-esteem or something like that. But to them,

they describe it more like spiritual fire and that, you know, all human beings have, you know, sources of spiritual fire. And for them, they talk about three main ones, like the top of the head, the soft spot on a baby's head is where the soul resides. You know, there's your belly button is pico. That's your connection to your, you know, your mother and your ancestral line. There's a matrilineal culture. For them, genitals is like connection to your future generations. And they say, well-tended fires grow strong and neglected fires grow weak. And when you ask them, why do you do language revitalization? They say, so that our people can have strong Maoli,

so they can know who they are, so they can be successful in the world. And although you could translate that as like self-esteem, you know, and not provide all the kind of background that I was, there's a lot embedded in the word. And for them, like there's all this cultural context evoked with a word like that. So like the ancient Hawaiian custom, when a baby was born, you know, their umbilical cord falls off the belly button a week later.

And they'd go out to the lava beds and each family had their own places. And they'd dig a little divot and put the belly button there and put a rock on top, kind of bonding them to Mother Earth, and they'd remember their spots. And so, you know, if someone had multiple children, there'd be divots for each of their kids in a line. And when a girl grew up and became a mother, she'd put a circle around her divot, and then her kids would go there. It's kind of amazing when you go out to, like, the petroglyphs, and there's just acres and acres of divots and circles bonding people to one another, to their ancestral lines, to mother earth.

And so when you say strong Maoli, that's what they mean, you know, or it's one part of what they mean. And so, you know, I mean, I just talked about that in English and it conveys some portion of the meaning, but all of that's kind of packed into a word. And so every time you're saying, you know, Maoli, it's like a motto or a mantra that evokes those kind of feelings and connections. And you don't have to do a three paragraph explanation of it. It's built into the language. Yeah. That, that, that meaning and that connotation, like, you know, I always think connotation is amazing that we know you know

you said uh old woman versus aged woman right those are two words in english where they they bring a different image to mind you know there's a there's a slight different cultural association between those two words and um there's all this meaning that comes with them that is like hard to unpack uh that that's built in and and so yeah there's there's that level of subtlety to every single word um that and man there's something else that you said that made me think of that uh you know what is human culture but uh something that is passed down from generation to generation right like everything that is you're looking at if we all forget to teach the next generation then just human culture stops you know there's nothing

there's nothing going forward um and uh yeah that's how we keep what we are alive uh right and you know there are a couple things first of all all cultures change change over time. And there's always a tension about that. Like, I've never met an elder from any culture who didn't shake his or her head side to side and go, oh, kids these days. Right? Because there's this tension about cultural change. And at the same time, you know, we all want certain kinds of change. Maybe you look at innovations in healthcare or improvements in human relations and world peace and things like that. So those are kind of progressive thoughts,

change the way things are, but also keep things the same. And in any culture, they're a little bit at war with each other or in tension with one another. Something that needs to be said about the Native experience, first of all, most, like 87% of American school districts don't teach anything about Native anything after 1900. Wow. So a lot of people are enculturated in America to think that Natives are

something that happened in the past. So we are ancient, but we are modern too. We are many thousands of years of documented human history still in the making. And we get to change over time. We don't have to look like we stepped off the set from Dances with Wolves to be authentically indigenous, right? But at the same time, how much can people change and still be the same people? Yeah. It's a fair question. Yeah. And this is why a thread like language ends up being so important for maintaining cultural continuity and equipping people for a healthy way to navigate change. Yeah. And it, and by the way, I mean, it's, you can see it in how many colonial powers, not just, you know, here in North America, but around the world as one of their first projects would be to set up schools in which they would, you know, eradicate the language of the people who were colonized or or at least try to replace it with the colonizers. Like that was a specific project in many, many places to varying degrees because everyone understands that language is important.

Right. And I mean, that was at the heart and remains at the heart of the American experience. Yeah. Right. So it's not just that they took Native kids away from their families and sent them to residential boarding schools and beat them for speaking the only language that they knew. and sent them to residential boarding schools and beat them for speaking the only language that they knew. But, you know, just several years ago, Arizona banned the teaching of ethnic studies, you know, and there's a current political culture war about that, keeping languages other than English marginalized. Wow. Well, tell me a little bit before we go to break about Ojibwe and about, you know, what you're doing to keep Ojibwe alive and grow it. Yeah, I'm so lucky I get to wear many different hats. So, you know, I'm a professor of the language and I teach Ojibwe at a university with COVID response. COVID response, I'm leading Zoom life like so many other Americans, and I'm bringing in students from Vermont and Toronto and, you know, all over the place. So, you know, we've been adapting in that

environment. But I also am someone who officiates at a lot of our traditional ceremonies, including funerals. And we, you know, literally spend a couple weeks in a row in a wigwam in an Ojibwe-only environment, running medicine dance and doing other ceremonies. We'll do two sessions like that every summer. And so I'm kind of, you know, part in the ivory tower and I'm part in the wigwam. And to me, you know, the language and culture work intersects with a lot of other important areas. So social activism and education and racial equity. And so I get to wear a number of different hats and kind of travel in the different circles there. With that, let's take a really quick break. We'll be right back with more Anton Troyer. Okay, we're back with Anton Troyer. Let's broaden out the conversation a little bit.

with Anton Troyer. Let's broaden out the conversation a little bit. You know, you said earlier that most Americans have not had an education about Native American, the Native American experience since 1900. What do you think the biggest misunderstandings are? And by the way, is, I've had so many conversations with other white Americans about this, about the correct terminology or the preferred terminology. Native American, Indian, please break it. Your book is, you wrote a book that uses Indian in the title. Please just let me know your view on that so we can, I don't know if it'll settle it, but give me your view. Yeah, no, I'll give you my opinion and I think it's a good one. So this is an unsettled area, just like the Black community's gone round and around. Is it Black? Is it, you know, African American? It's not, you know,

colored people, but how do we be more inclusive and we come up with people of color? You know, it's, you won't have universal agreement. And there's nothing like not having a settled terminology question to, you know, completely paralyze a conversation. So, you know, is it Native American, Aboriginal, Indigenous, First Nation person or what? To me, I would love for us to have a big national conversation as they actually did do in Canada and come up with a term like the Canadians dead that's just a couple of syllables and it's really clear and everybody agrees with. That's First Nation. First Nation, yeah. So they use First Nation now instead of reserve for the places and First Nation people, you know, for the human beings who live there. And they went through a representative process and everybody's down with it.

We haven't gotten there. And some folks have even doubled down. So there are organizations like the National Congress of American Indians and the American Indian Movement, you know, who've really doubled down on Indian, even though, of course, Chris Columbus got lost and thought he was in China. No, Japan. No, India. Yes. Boom, and the label stuck. I'd say Native, Native American and Indigenous are probably more politically correct,

but they are sometimes ambiguous, like everyone's Indigenous to somewhere. And so you have to say North American Indigenous, which is clear, but you get a lot of syllables. And even what it means to be indigenous in Greenland is different than what it means to be indigenous, you know, whatever, in Arizona. So they can be a little ambiguous. Some organizations have used those, Native American Rights Fund and others. Native American Rights Fund and others. And, you know, what I usually tell people if we're working with a school or an organization is work it out with your Native stakeholders, have a conversation. And, you know, if you're like Native American parent committee for the school says use Native American, then you're safe to do that. And if anyone gives you a hard time, you can say,

here's how we vetted it and we'll have a regular conversation with them. So we'll be happy to bring your comments there when we talk about it again, you know, and that's kind of a good, you know, respectful way to handle it. For me, I tend to use them all somewhat interchangeably, but aware of their shortcomings as a means of creating safe space so we can actually get into the real topics. But words do matter. And, you know, even my thinking when I did the first, you know, version of everything you wanted to know about Indians, but were afraid to ask, you know, this was the word Indian was so stuck in the vocabulary.

I thought, we'll just go with that. And I've kind of been shifting even my own communication and using probably indigenous a little bit more, you know, contextually. When you're writing, usually you can capitalize words and it'll be clear that you're talking about people. But when you're talking, it's a whole different matter. Okay, well, we'll just, I really appreciate that. you're talking about people but when you're talking it's a whole different matter okay well we'll just uh i really appreciate that yeah it's uh i like i really like the advice to ask the person that you're talking to to ask the person who you're and to not you know so much of the time uh people uh white americans have a tendency to treat it as some kind of weird rule based game that either they, you know, are going to, you know, play or not play when really it's a matter of basic respect

with the others in your community. Sure. And I mean, a lot of people consider it a special American right to be politically incorrect and resist just to show how much freedom they have or something, you know, not always thinking about who they're in conversation with or how they'll be perceived of by others, you know, to me, yeah, respect. I really appreciate that. Well, I imagine that part of what's difficult about finding terminology like that is we're talking about truly so many different people on this continent. You know, I mean, you brought in like once you include Canada, South America, Mexico, you're talking about we're talking about the number of indigenous native folks pre-Columbian who are here. of indigenous native folks, pre-Columbian, who are here. You're talking about so, so, so many people from different cultures who hadn't even had contact

with each other for thousands of years before the Colombian explosion. And so that flattening is something that I imagine is one of the biggest misconceptions most Americans have, that they think you're talking about one group when you're talking about so many different nations, as you put it. Right. There's tremendous diversity within the indigenous population. So, I mean, just imagine if I asked a question like, what do white people think about abortion, good or bad? Right? Like, it's going to be that simple. Oh God. Oh God.

Well, my aunt thinks this. You tell me what all white people think. Yeah. So, I mean, I've got a house full of natives. I don't even know what they're thinking half the time. Yeah. You know what I mean? And so I represent one human being. And although I'm, you know, whatever, educated and well-traveled and spend a lot of time on the ground in different native communities, I can't speak for all of them. I can tell you what it looks like to me, you know, and ultimately that's the way it is. Like nobody sees the world the way that it is. We all see the world the way we are, and we're all different. Yeah. How are people's educations not serving them in terms of understanding the Native experience in America, especially since 1900?

Like, what is left out of the story that we are telling each other and teaching our kids? Oh, probably 99% of it. It's a small topic. Yeah. So for starters, you know, natives are often imagined, but infrequently well understood. America's always had a big imagining of natives from the Boston Tea Party, white dudes dressed up like Indians to dump tea into the harbor to say we're protesting taxes from the evil British monarch, you know. And, you know, for lots of

imagery and symbolism for the United States, and I think natives have on the one hand been admired as the most free. And then on the other other hand kind of vilified as like you know literally merciless indian savages as we're referred to in the declaration of independence so really that that line is in the declaration of independence it is yeah merciless indian savages right uh i wasn't taught that in school right holy they teach you they you about that document, but not the way that I've seen it. You know, I got the shirt like we wear them around merciless Indian savages. Yeah. But ultimately, it's like this.

There's a great TED talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie called The Danger of a Single Story. And in there, she says the problem with stereotypes is not that they're incorrect so much as they're incomplete. And if you just latch onto one piece of information, you'll just use it to confirm a bias that's already been enculturated. So for example, with natives, imagine these conflicting stereotypes.

One says, you know, we're all rich from casinos. And another one says, we're all living in squalor on reservations. How can they both be true? Yeah. The truth is, it's kind of complicated. Yeah. You know, so a state like Minnesota or a state like Wisconsin, both of those states have 16 counties each where tribes are not just big employers. They are the biggest employers of all. Be nice to natives. You're probably going to end up working for one someday. And then at the same time in both of those states, about 50% of the native kids are in poverty. Wow. Now you could take snapshots of white America too, and look at like white people in Appalachia and be like those poor people living in squalor. It's horrible. Being white sucks.

And then you could take a, you know, snapshot of white folk living on the, you know, whatever Upper East Side. You're like, man, privileged brats. And then you could think, how come those white people on the Upper East Side aren't taking care of their own people over there in Appalachia? And they're stingy. Right. You know what I mean? And sometimes those things just come up. And I think something that's made it a little tougher in Native space is that, you know, we are small in number relative to the general population, and our population tends to be concentrated in certain areas. So, you know, if you're from the

south or the east coast, it's a lot easier to just stick to the imaginings. You know, if you're in the southwest, you know, or even the northwest coast or parts of the Great Lakes or Plains, then you're going to be seeing more Native people and that impacts things. So it in part depends on that, but a lot of our best and brightest also come back home and, you know, want to work for their tribe and help their people. And so there aren't that many people who are out there, you know, interacting with the rest of the world, representing, you know, on a scale that you would see with the Black community or Latinx community, you know, or things like that. So as a result, it's easier for people to keep on with their imaginings and makes it harder to understand. But there are a lot of people doing

the work and there are a lot of great voices out there. And we're still left to caricature and things like Hollywood, you know, much more so than real authentic understandings. Shoot, they got white guys like Johnny Depp still playing most of the native parts, you know, in the movies. But it is improving. It's evolving, just not evolved. Yeah. Matt, every answer you give raises three more questions I want to ask about. Like one of the things that strikes me, I grew up on the East Coast. I grew up on Long Island. And yeah, not a lot of, you know, not a lot of natives in my, where I grew up. But then it wasn't until years later that I realized how much history was right there. So Canarsie, which is a neighborhood in Brooklyn, I believe, just a word you hear around

New York is named for a tribe. So many of the towns that I grew up in, you know, on Long Island, I grew up in a town called Wading River on Long Island. And that's a translation of I don't remember the tribe's name, but it was, uh, that was their name for the area because it was a marshy area. Um, and, you know, same in Los Angeles,

uh, that, you know, again, we don't think of this as an area with, with a, uh, large,

you know, with, but again, this is, uh, you, you know where I'm going with this. Um,

yeah. So, so the rendering invisible. Yes. Stuff. And it's not just that, you know, native people were here and provided a lot of the place names, although probably a huge percentage of the map in any U.S. state are indigenous terms. any U.S. state are indigenous terms, whether, you know, their terms for a place or names of people who are living in the place or even something just, you know, messed up in translation. A lot of that comes from indigenous people, but the people themselves are here. It's just that, you know, as part of the colonial effort, most of the folks from the South and the East Coast,

you know, were displaced and they're living in Oklahoma and stuff like that. You know, so the mighty Shawnee, I mean, still have a reservation in Oklahoma, you know, you know, even though they're not living in Eastern Pennsylvania, New York and places like that anymore. And there's a reason for all of that. But, you know, it's interesting, like, as a native person, I will experience sometimes hyper visibility. Like I'm a brown dude, you know, with a braid or a man bun, depending on how I'm feeling on a given day. And, you know, so I get racially profiled or something like that. And that can be one form of the pain or discomfort. And then another is just being invisible and marginalized.

And, you know, people assuming I'm something I'm not or looking for the beads and feathers. And if I don't show up with those, then, you know, being doubted in my authenticity or something like that. And although I'm a big boy and I kind of know who I am and, you know, that's not such an issue for me and how I see myself, navigating the world can be. And ultimately, too, you know, just the allocation of power in the United States makes it difficult when you are rendered invisible and, you know, to have traction on major issues that impact you. So, you can look at hot button topics, whether it's mascots, you know, and so forth. And it's just seemed like there's a lot bigger fight than it

needed to be, you know, all the fish to fry you know i'd consider that a somewhat smaller fish but holy cow why can't we just have it fried and done with yeah and uh and so that's just one of the the things that goes with that being rendered invisible last of the blank fill in the blank with whatever tribe you're talking about as we're talking the cleveland baseball team has announced that they going forward will be the cleveland baseball team for now they're going to pick a new name um but my god that took so long that yeah the the and what i i don't even know if i want to get into it that mascot like i knew as a child i was like what the fuck is this like how how did that that you're looking at that you're going my god this should have been should have gotten rid

of this in the early 70s you know like right um and uh it seems like it's been a long road but do do you feel that there has been a change in visibility. Do you feel that? Because I feel that there has been. You know, as my, again, experience as a, you know, random doofy-ass white guy walking around America, you know, I feel like conversations like the one we're having, I hear them being had more often. And I wonder if you... I do think there's change.

Yeah. You know, America's on the verge of another attempted racial reckoning. And I don't know if you ever read like Michelle Alexander's book, The New Jim Crow, you know, but among the things she says in there is that we've never really done away with racial caste in America. We just keep reinventing it. So, you know, we went from slavery to a progressive era, and then you got Jim Crow. Was Jim Crow better than slavery? Yeah. Was it still racial caste? Yeah. From there, you know, you go through civil rights movement, and then you get a school to prison pipeline, and they've, you know, reorganized racial caste again. Is that better than Jim Crow? Yeah. Is it still racial caste? Yeah. You know, and I feel like we're on the verge of another attempted effort now. And there are multiple factors at play. So for starters, you know, the social justice movements have matured and changed. Leadership is more diffuse and everyone's talking to each other. And so I think there are some really healthy connections in communication in mixed company,

you know, people of every racial group, including white folk who really want to see things change for the better. And so I do see some movement and momentum there. At the same time, you know, movement and momentum there. At the same time, you know, there's pushback, of course, you know, and ultimately, I think one of the attributes of colonization is the erasure of other cultures, right? And colonizing people and erasing their cultures. So one of the fears of people who are steeped in the colonial way of thinking is fear of their own erasure. And one of the things that some, not all, but some white Americans are really afraid of is white erasure. That there's been a basket of unearned economic, political, but also cultural benefits and powers that have disproportionately gone to white folk. And as we shift demographically, there's a fear

that it will result in white erasure and disempowerment. So some people want to protect this basket of unearned advantages that have gone to whites through what I would consider kind of unethical efforts. Make it harder. I would also consider them unethical. You're talking about the violence of white supremacy. I would also consider it unethical. Well, yes. And it's not just the violence of white supremacy. It's let's make it harder And it's not just the violence of white supremacy. It's let's make it harder for people of color to vote. Like in North Dakota, where they said you must now, you know, come up with an ID card that has your physical address on the ID card. And almost the entire indigenous population in North Dakota have P.O. boxes. So they removed them from the voting rolls, you know? And so, and because someone like Heidi Heitkamp had just been elected to office as a Democrat in a very Republican state.

And then once they did that change, out she goes. Yeah. Right. And so, you know, it's things like that, you know, Muslim bans and whatever, right, to preserve power and privilege. Yeah. And I think, you know, it's one of the greatest validations that we have a pretty oppressive system that white people are worried that we're going to now flip roles between who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed. I mean, I think instead of that, why don't we just fight oppression? who is the oppressed? I mean, I think instead of that, why don't we just fight oppression? I mean, it makes sense, but not to everybody. Well, what I was about to say is I think you literally put your finger on, you know, you go look at a white supremacist space on the internet, which I do sometimes, you know, I'm like, I want to go see what these people are talking about, or just look at the people, you know, who, you know, the March, the Charlottesville, you know i'm like i want to go see what these if people are talking about or just look at the people you know who uh you know the march march uh the charlottesville you know their chant

was jews will not replace us right there it's explicitly the fear that you're talking about is of being replaced um uh that that is but yeah why not just you just have that was the perfect comeback to that entire way of thinking that's why it made me laugh so hard. Why not fight oppression? And realistically, we're not going to get to Star Trek Next Generation where all the colors are in the room and nobody sees color. We're all going to be intermarried and it's going to be like brown soup. Yeah. You know what I mean? Everybody's grandkids are all going to be marrying each other and living and working together.

So why not prepare them for that world? Yeah. Race is primarily a social construct. Yeah. Right? Like, at first, Italians were considered non-white and persecuted for not being white. Yeah. But then the definition of whiteness changed to preserve the power of whiteness.

Yeah. The same thing's actually happening with the latinx community latinx doesn't mean brown even though there are a lot of brown people who are latinx right that's a racially diverse group that includes black brown white turn on a mexican soap opera it looks pretty white right you know go to the dominican republic everyone speaks spanish it's pretty black yeah you know right so it's it's a diverse group of people yeah my partner's mother is a uh white woman from argentina she's argentinian and she's a jewish woman as well and so it's like it's complex is what you're as she's you know for a spanish speaker uh it's complex is what you're as she's you know for a spanish speaker uh it's complex is what you're saying yeah right and argentina and america are the two whitest countries

in all of the americas a lot of people don't think in america don't think of argentina as white yeah i mean there are a lot of reasons why the nazis wanted to go there political ones and stuff like that the whiteness is part of it too i was surprised i went because we visited and i was like oh they don't even they don't even have spicy food here it's like uh defies what you think and yeah once you start people push back on this idea of of race as a social as a social construct um and we're not going to get, you know, we can't like give a full accounting of it today, but like when you start looking at any of these groups and the history of them, it's so complex and detailed as to how they, you know,

where the label came from, who's included in the label, and then just how the actual groups of people like moved from place to place. if you look at the history of any one native group like you said uh what was the uh one you said ended up in oklahoma remind me again shawnee shawnee yeah that's a group of people who you know were in a certain place had a certain relationship with the other groups around them uh had a certain uh you know interaction with uh the you know europeans who came over like you know moved from here to there had a certain interaction with the Europeans who came over, like moved from here to there.

You know what I mean? It's all so specific. Like I know in Canada, please correct me if I get this wrong, because again, this is me remembering something I read a couple of years ago, but there's the Métis group, did I pronounce it correctly, in Canada,

which is specifically a mixed race slash native group that like has a particular history. That's hundreds of years old. Like these are complex, nuanced divisions that are, if you look at them, yeah, they're come up with culturally.

They're, they're a product of culture and society. They're not a math or solely genetics or anything else. They are like come out of the way the decisions humans made about how we move and how we talk about ourselves and what labels we put on ourselves. Right. Right. But all of that stuff drives the misunderstandings and the resistance to advancing them. So, you know, you're going to see this racial reckoning, you know, you can already see it happening with art, statues, you know, Confederate flags on, you know, emblazoned

on state flags and symbols. You know, there's an effort to reconcile with all of that. And some of the pushback isn't even about the logic of those things, but it's just this feeling like I'm going to say no, because I still want to have the power to say no. Mm-hmm. You know, it's about that fear of erasure and shifting power dynamics, rather than even the issues themselves. And so, but I do think, you know, I know like Martin Luther King had his quote about, you know, the trend in history is long, but it arcs toward justice. Yeah. You know, that ultimately we are engineering positive change. It just doesn't always feel like it. And kind of like

the stock market or something, you know, that's going up and down all the time, but there's a long-term trend up. I do think that we are, you know, advancing as a society at the same time that we've had major setbacks and major pushbacks and things can come apart. We've seen major democracies come apart. But the real test for our democracy isn't our ability to like, you know, colonize everybody, but our ability to actually not just tolerate, but help everybody thrive with their differences.

Yeah. And it's such a positive thing when we do. You know, I just, I had this really profound experience. I don't know why I found it was so profound, but like, I, last year, went to Alaska with my family, the little boat tour of the, you know,

southeastern Alaska, the temperate rainforest there. We ended in Juneau. We had like half a day, and there was, there's a museum there that's like, I forget what it's called. It's an Alaska state museum, a native American museum. I went in and it was one of the best museums I have ever been to. It was like chronological about all the different, you know, tribes that were in that area and their history and specifically

their history with America as a colonial power. Like there were entire sections on here's, you know, here's like how, what we're talking about language erasure, like here's how the state carried out that practice. Right. It went from ancient to today.

Right. And I was like, this is one of the most thoughtful museums I've ever been to. I learned so much and it gave me really a cognizance that, you know, in that part of America, at least in the corner that I stepped into, I was like, oh my God, this is like a place that has reckoned way more than anywhere I've ever lived. Maybe someone from Alaska would tell me they still got a long way to go, but it was like, I could feel that reckoning was like in the air and it was so enriching to,

to be there and to experience it. You know, I was like, this is a, this is wonderful. It was, it was terrific. Yeah. And, and I really believe we, we need that, that kind of effort, kind of a truth and reconciliation. We, we can't get to reconciled and skip the reconciling and we can't get to healed and skip the healing. Yeah. You know, and so those are really important things to focus on. And really the, you know, the hot button issues, you know, that you see flashpoints, whether it's the Dakota Access Pipeline, you know, response or, you know, access pipeline, you know, response or, you know, mascots or, you know, any number of critical sovereignty fights or things like that. They're more like symptoms of the bigger issues that we're dealing with. And ultimately, you know, I have high hopes and I think we are

capable of doing some really great things. And we just kind of got to take them on one battle at a time. And, you know, a lot of the battles are building efforts too. You know, it's kind of how I look at language and culture revitalization, you know, building and strengthening sovereign native nations. You know, some of the work needs to happen within communities and some of it needs to happen in mixed company. But there's a lot of important work going on. Yeah.

And it, I don't know, again, just I had the sense being at this place, right? This particular museum I went to, I was like, my God, so many hard conversations went into the building of this place. Like someone got mad at somebody else. They had a lot of tense meetings.

You know what I mean? People said, no, no, no, you have to listen. Someone else said, I don't know if I've, well, come on, do I really have to? And then they came around. I was like, I just was there. I was like, this was the process of decades of activism and like difficult work. And my God, how rewarding it was. Just in that one little square, just that one building I was in in that one town.

Yeah, that's so cool. I had a very similar experience at the Canadian Human Rights Museum, which is in Winnipeg. And they had four floors. The first floor, they had several different pods where you could learn about, you know, a story of some sort of horrible mistreatment of humans. So, you know, I knew about the Canadian residential boarding schools. I didn't know that they had interned Japanese Canadians. I thought that was something that only happened in the U.S. in World War II. But they did.

There was a persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses. By the time you went through there, I think almost everyone could see themselves reflected in the history somehow. The second floor was about how this happens on scale, like genocide, you know, the Nazi Holocaust, stuff like that. The third floor was more, here are stories of great leaders trying to engineer change right now. So it was Mandela and King and things like that. And the fourth floor was all about the visitor. It said, do you have a story that you didn't see here? Tell your story right now.

It can be part of the record. Do you want to get involved? And here are different pods with all these different organizations doing great things. Do you want to get involved now? Sign up for newsletter, volunteer your time. Here's what's happening. And so it kind of took you through this like sobering reality through action to like, I am the change, you know, and it was just really powerful, transformative. So I'm, you know, I'm excited about that growing sentiment and the organizations, people and places that are trying to do it. Yeah. We need more of that in Hollywood, in my industry, man. That's something that I really feel that way. I'll tell you, to be honest uh me and my girlfriend recently watched dances with wolves i had never seen it she's watching every kevin costner movie in order as like a weird

project and i was like okay let's see this movie probably gonna be okay probably you know probably gonna be really problematic and you know lots of things about it that i think one one would take issue with but also i was like how does this movie still feel kind of revolutionary today like a movie with this many native actors where half the movie is in lakota and it's a story about it like how many westerns are there that are telling a story like this at all the western is one of the most popular movie forms in the history of the medium right and how And how many, how many movies are there that are told from a Native perspective at all, right? And still today, you know, and we've got, you know, it's, I don't know, it was baffling. I was baffling. It was baffling to me. I was like, this movie's 30 years old.

Yeah. And when it first came out, it was such a big deal, even in Native communities, because it was like one of the first sympathetic treatments of Natives. And we weren't just, you know, being shot by John Wayne or whatever. And so everyone was excited about it. And then there was like some authentic culture and language backdrop, you know, and real Native actors. And so it was like, whoa, this is so cool. Even though it had problems, like there were good Indians and bad Indians, and there's still a white guy better at being native than the natives and that kind of stuff. But, you know, it was seemed like it was the start of an evolution. And it's like steps forward and back, you know, you know, when whatever Johnny Depp was playing Tonto in the Lone Rangers, like they're still picking white actors to do this stuff, you know, or Lou Diamond Phillips,

they're still picking white actors to do this stuff, you know, or Lou Diamond Phillips, you know, or whoever it was in, in some of these other ones. And, you know, it, most of the good stuff is like still B films. It's not quite mainstreamed. I think we'll get there eventually, you know, but it's, um, it's been a long, hard road to climb. And I, but I think Hollywood is waking up. Like even when the movie black panther came out you know they're like wow we didn't have to have a white character that all the white people could identify with in the primarily black film you know centered you know last of the mohican style or whatever but uh we could actually have a show with black actors with a black story where black guys are good guys, bad guys and complicated and shift. Yeah.

You know, and and so that was like an eye opener and it made lots of money. And so, you know, the the awareness that Americans aren't just stupid, shallow, like I'm only going to watch movies about my people, you know. Yeah. Yeah. I think that awareness is huge. And telling these stories, just the richness we get from telling these stories from, you know, just coming back to that point about what stories are not being taught in our schools and what stories we aren't getting to hear, you know, whether you're talking about a modern story like Black Panther, right?

Or a retelling of history like like 12 years of slave, right. Which is as opposed to me learning about slavery from my white teacher in a textbook written by a white guy, we're watching a movie adaptation by a black director of a book written by a former slave, you know? Um, and, uh, and getting that perspective directly and telling that story, you know, like that enriches our experience so much. And yeah, I want to, I want more of it so desperately.

And I'll go yell, I'll go take a meeting with somebody in LA and yell at them about it and tell them to hire, you know, hire some native screenwriters to make these things come to life. But yeah, I don't know what these battles are so worth having, because when we come out the other side, we're all enriched by it. We really are. Yeah. And, you know, I think even like growth is not comfortable. And, you know, this is something like Robin DiAngelo lays out pretty well in her book, White Fragility. One of the things that makes it tough to talk about race in mixed company and stuff or for white people to talk about race is that, you know, they haven't gotten to the gym very much. they haven't gone to the gym very much. White folk have been so insulated from racial discomfort.

Like you can travel the world and someone will speak to you in English even, you know, that the musculature is atrophied and it just feels like it's too much lifting to ask. And then there's also this unreasonably high expectation to always be racially comfortable. But for someone like me, when I go in the store or to the school, you know, whenever I'm looking for whoever's in charge, I'm usually looking at somebody from a different racial group. Yeah.

And so I go to the gym every day. So I'm hulking out on you guys, you know, and that makes it, you know, both like I'm used to being racially uncomfortable. so I can navigate that space with a little more ease. And I'm ready. Like, let's go do some more lifting. Yeah. You know, and it's hard to get everyone else on board sometimes. But that's part of the what's in the way.

Yeah. I think. Yeah, I think about that experience all the time the experience of uh of a white person going to chinatown for the first time you know what i mean and having that experience of like oh no i'm i'd uh there's a different language here like uh-oh is the waiter ignoring me like having that experience and how yeah how a fragile is a great word for it. That is. So, okay. Let's bring ourselves in for a landing here for folks who are listening

who want to go to the gym more often. Right? How do you recommend they do that? Do you have any tips on getting yourself out there? Yeah. So this stuff isn't going to fall into your lap. You got to make your own luck, but it's getting easier. For starters, you know, if you know enough to know that there's something you don't know,

find out, read a book, talk to some people. If the favorites list on your phone is racially homogenous, get out of your bubble, talk to some other people. We're more segregated now than we were before desegregation. So we have to engineer those things for ourselves. But there's a lot of help out there. So there's some profound efforts underway on the racial equity front, on the climate change front. There's some really wonderful Indigenous authors. In the back of my book, Everything You Want to Know About Indians But We're Afraid to Ask, it's just a recommended reading list. Works by Native authors in any

number of the areas. If you're interested in, you know, the kind of hot button current events issues, there's stuff for that. But there's also a lot in the literature realm, in history, in, you know, legal status and things like that, kind of broken into different areas. And it's growing and shifting and changing all the time. So I'm really excited to see what's going on and lean in, be brave, be willing to experience discomfort. Think about something like, you know, parenting. If we all expected parenting to be comfortable, not only would we be miserable, we just wouldn't reproduce, right? But we know that raising kids, there's going to be fevers and puke, you know, and up all nights and cranky teenagers and

everything else. But because we know that and we're willing to experience discomfort, well, raising a kid can be one of the most beautiful and fulfilling experiences a human being can have. So if we adopt that view about engineering change in our world, that we should be willing to experience some measure of discomfort, then we can lean in and then we can be fulfilled in the process and make the world a better place. That's what I'm talking about. It really is worth it. Right. Thank you so much for being here, Anton.

I can't thank you enough. This has been really wonderful. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate the connection and opportunity and look forward to keeping it going. and opportunity and look forward to keeping it going. Well, thank you once again to Anton Schreuer for coming on the show. His book, again, is The Language Warriors Manifesto. That is it for us this week on Factually.

I want to thank our producers, Kimmy Lucas and Sam Roudman, our engineer, Andrew Carson, Andrew WK for our theme song. I want to thank the fine folks at Falcon Northwest for building me the incredible gaming PC that I record this podcast on and that I stream on on twitch.tv slash Adam Conover. To remind you, if you have a question for me, email it to factually at Adam Conover dot net and I will answer it on an upcoming episode of our Stitcher premium only podcast questions and Adam. That's right. An incredible, an incredible title. I love it so much. You can find me at Adam Conover wherever you get your social media or at AdamConover.net. Until next week, thank you so much again for listening.

And remember, stay curious. that was a hate gun podcast