With approximately 6,000 remaining non-domesticated buffalo relations, a severe tragedy occurred on December 29th, 2022, when a semi-truck, on HWY 191 in West Yellowstone, Montana, took the lives of 13 bison and yearlings. Despite the legal speed limit on HWY 191, the semi-truck was traveling too fast to stop in time before colliding into the buffalo family. For years, Montana has refused to lower the speed limit in accordance with scientific recommendations and the Buffalo Field Campaign, Native American nations and allies are calling for the construction of ecological corridors over the highway as a remedy to prevent future accidents and the taking of animal relations lives. Had there been an ecological corridor over the highway near the Madison River crossing to Horse Butte, Montana, - a popular migratory pattern of the buffalo – the accident could have been prevented. In addition to this recent tragedy, hunters throughout the state of Montana in the past have escalated the taking of non-domesticated buffalo relations lives. In other words, more buffalo relations lives were taken in 2022 than in 2021.    

Guest:
Our guest, Tom Woodbury, Communications Director of the Buffalo Field Campaign joins us for the hour in this two-part interview and provides listeners with update on the work of the Buffalo Field Campaign, the recent tragedy, the call to action of for creating an ecological corridor over HWY 191, the Buffalo Treaty between Native American nations, and more. 

Archived programs can be heard on Soundcloud at: https://soundcloud.com/burntswamp

American Indian Airwaves streams on over ten podcasting platforms such as Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, Audible, Backtracks.fm, Gaana, Google Podcast, Fyyd, iHeart Media, Player.fm, Podbay.fm, Podcast Republic, SoundCloud, Spotify, Stitcher, Tunein, YouTube, and more. 

American Indian Airwaves is a volunteer collective and public affairs Native American public affairs program that broadcast weekly on KPFK FM 90.7 Los Angeles, CA from 7:00pm to 8:00pm.

Protecting the Buffalo Relations, Critical Updates, and Native American Solutions

Part 1
Nuclear Colonialism with Leona Morgan (Dine’ Nation) is a three-part interview that will broadcast over three consecutive episodes of American Indian Airwaves. The series focuses on our guest’s community work since 2007, which includes combatting against many aspects of nuclear colonialism. 

Today’s program concludes our three-part interview on Nuclear Colonialism. In this episode, our guest covers several important issues such as working at the grassroots level and activism, addressing activist “burnout,” the complications and frustrations working with non-Indigenous peoples in allyship, and moving forward on the denuclearization of Turtle Island, plus more.   

Nuclear Colonial is one aspect of settler colonialism that remains highly censored in the American mass and digital media landscape. With approximately 11% of all abandon uranium mines located in “Indian Country,” Nuclear power plants average life-span ranging from 40 to 50 years, the promotion of nuclear power as “green energy,” the United States Department of Defense endorsing the next generation of mini-nuclear power plants (small modular reactors) to over 800 military bases throughout the world, the allocation of $1.7 trillion to reconstitute the U.S. nuclear weaponry system, and the permanent, unresolved, and enduring issue of addressing over 60 years of nuclear waste production, Native American nations continue to be on the frontlines of nuclear colonialism and future generations are at risk unless there is an immediate nuclear decolonialization across Mother Earth.

Guest: Leona Morgan (Tó dich’íí’nii, Tsé nahabiłnii, Kiyaa’áanii, Tó aheedlíinii; she/her) is a Diné activist and community organizer who has been fighting nuclear colonialism since 2007. Leona Morgan co-founded and works with the Nuclear Issues Study Group www.fb.com/NuclearIssuesStudyGroup), Diné No Nukes, which contributes to the Haul No! initiative (www.fb.com/HaulNo), and Radiation Monitoring Project (www.radmonitoring.org). Our guest collaborates nationally with many groups to address the entire nuclear fuel chain in the United States and is part of the international campaign Don’t Nuke The Climate (www.dont-nuke-the-climate.org) that focuses on nuclear energy as a global climate issue. 

Part 2
Mother Earth is wounded and everything she sustains is also afflicted by more pernicious forms of settler colonial violence. In additional, global current events, the possibilities of nuclear war and/or nuclear fallout, economic devastation, the unaffordability to survive for 99% of the world’s population, extreme declines in biodiversity, and the world’s Indigenous peoples on the frontlines of the intergenerational tyranny of settler colonialism, places the future of all life in an uncertain situations that requires an immediate global change for peacefully healing Mother Earth. Meanwhile, the Montana state legislature is moving forward with plans to vote on legislation that would violate numerous treaties and “terminate” Native American nations within the state of Montana. Our guest for second half of today’s program address all these critical issues, plus more. 

Guest: Chief Arvol Looking Horse (Lakota Nation), 19th Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe, speaks of the forthcoming February 4th & 5th, 2023, Woope Omnic’iye (Spiritual Law Meeting) at Dakota Magic (Sesseton Wahpeton Oyate) Nation and peacefully healing Mother Earth, plus more. 

Archived programs can be heard on Soundcloud at: https://soundcloud.com/burntswamp

American Indian Airwaves streams on over ten podcasting platforms such as Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, Audible, Backtracks.fm, Gaana, Google Podcast, Fyyd, iHeart Media, Player.fm, Podbay.fm, Podcast Republic, SoundCloud, Spotify, Stitcher, Tunein, YouTube, and more. 

American Indian Airwaves is an all-volunteer collective and Native American public affairs program that broadcast weekly on KPFK FM 90.7 Los Angeles, CA, Thursdays, from 7:00pm to 8:00pm.

Nuclear Colonialism: Part 3, Allyship in Moving Forward & Peacefully Healing Mother Earth

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Bathsheba Demuth, an associate professor at Brown University, about the history of the Bering Strait, which separates Alaska and northeastern Russia. Demuth discusses the ecosystems, peoples, and economic systems in the region and how interactions between Indigenous peoples and colonial settlers affected the local environment and social and political life around the Bering Strait.

References and recommendations:

“Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait” by Bathsheba Demuth; https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393635164

“Wolfish: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear” by Erica Berry; https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250821621/wolfish

An Environmental and Economic History of the Bering Strait, with Bathsheba Demuth

Thursday, 8/31/2023, on American Indian Airwaves on KPFK, 7pm to 8pm (PCT)

“The Living Histories of Lahaina and Self Determination for Hawaiian Nation and Cannabis: From Gold Rush to Green Rush”

Part 1:
The living histories of Lahaina are told through the intergenerational means of passing traditional stories, songs, language, and life from one Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) generation to the next. Despite the media, national, and international attention on the recent August 8th, 2023, deadly Lahaina fire, many critical questions and concerns are missing from various media reports about the self-determination of the Hawaiian nation in recovery and healing from the violence stemming from United States militarization, the illegal over through of the Hawaiian Kingdom by the United States, corporatizing the land and water for tourism, plus more. Through the settler colonial history of what is called Lahaina, the Kanaka Maoli are resilient in survivance and now more than ever are organized in working to ensure that decolonization and healing takes place as part of the recovery from the Lahaina fire. 

Tune in today on American Indian Airwaves to hear enriching, important, and real stories from a Kanaka Maoli perspective on the living histories of “Lahaina,” Maui, and the Hawaiian nation, plus more. 

Guest:
•	Kepā Maly, Cultural Ethnographer - Resource Specialist of Kumu Pono Associates LLC (https://www.kumupono.com/). Kepā was raised on the islands of O’ahu and Lanaʻi. While growing up on Lānaʻi, Kepā was taught the Hawaiian language and cultural practices and values by kūpuna (elders). Kūpuna spoke of, and practiced many aspects of Hawaiian culture, including land and ocean management practices, mele and hula (chants and dances), material culture, traditions, and ethnobotany. 


Part 2:
The long legacy of settler colonial violence against California Indigenous nations, the lands, waters, and more continues in northern California where the informal and formal cannabis industry is harming the Peoples, lands, waters, and more. The Cannabis industry is just one industry out many contributing to systemic forms of colonial violence. 

Tune in today on American Indian Airwaves to the author of a new published book titled  Settler Cannabis: From Gold Rush to Green Rush in Indigenous Northern California (2023). The book is the first to cover the environmental consequences of cannabis cultivation in California by foregrounding Indigenous voices, experiences, and histories. It’s not intended as an expose of cannabis growers, but rather meant to inform the path toward an alternative future, one that starts with the return of land to Indigenous stewardship and a rejection of the commodification and control of nature for profit.

Guest:
Kaitlin Reed (Yurok/Hupa/Oneida), Associate Professor of Native American Studies at Cal-Poly, Humboldt and the author of the newly published book: Settler Cannabis: From Gold Rush to Green Rush in Indigenous Northern California (2023).

Archived programs can be heard on Soundcloud at: https://soundcloud.com/burntswamp

American Indian Airwaves streams on over ten podcasting platforms such as Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, Audible, Backtracks.fm, Gaana, Google Podcast, Fyyd, iHeart Media, Player.fm, Podbay.fm, Podcast Republic, SoundCloud, Spotify, Tunein, YouTube, and more. 

American Indian Airwaves is an all-volunteer collective and Native American public affairs program that broadcast weekly on KPFK FM 90.7 Los Angeles, CA, Thursdays, from 7:00pm to 8:00pm. Financially support KPFK by visiting KPFK.org and pledging a dollar amount or call 818-985-5835 (KPFK) to support.

The Living Histories of Lahaina and Cannabis: From Gold Rush to Green Rush

Today on American Indian Airwaves, we will hear highlights on what happened at the 30th Anniversary of the Beginning of the War Against Oblivion, the armed uprising of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) on January 1st, 1994, against the colonial state of Mexico and global capitalism. The anniversary-gathering was organized by thousands of Zapatista support bases, Mayan men, women, boys, girls, elderly and older men and women who celebrated three decades of resistance to the capitalist, settler colonial system with cultural sports, arts, music, food, popular dance, and other forms of living cultural expressions. 

The Mayan peoples’ traditional homelands were recovered after the armed uprising of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in 1994 and are concrete evidence of how Zapatismo in Chiapas has improved the living conditions of the communities based on organization, autonomy, and self-determination. Tune in and listen to hear about the EZLN’s major announcements reflecting major changes in self-determination, autonomy, and independence in anti-colonial and anti-capitalism struggles. In addition, listeners will hear about the legacy of Indigenous women, their roles, contributions over the past four generations changing oppressive systems of heteronormative cis-gendered patriarchy. Also, well hear updates on the globalized and militarized Cartels and major megaprojects that threaten the Mayan peoples’ traditional homelands and all life systems in Chiapas, MX. All that and more.  

Guest:
•	Richard Stahler-Sholk, a retired Professor of Political Science at Eastern Michigan University, and community activist involved with the School of Chiapas which is an organization of grassroots activists and communities working to support the autonomous, indigenous Zapatista communities of Chiapas, Mexico. Schools for Chiapas was created the mid-1990’s by individuals searching for ways to make the world a better place and working to create a world where all worlds fit.

Archived programs can be heard on Soundcloud at: https://soundcloud.com/burntswamp

American Indian Airwaves streams on over ten podcasting platforms such as Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, Audible, Backtracks.fm, Gaana, Google Podcast, Fyyd, iHeart Media, Mixcloud, Player.fm, Podbay.fm, Podcast Republic, SoundCloud, Spotify, Tunein, YouTube, and more.

The EZLN 30th Anniversary Gathering: Resistance, Reflections, and Growth in Chiapas

Thursday, 01/25/2024, on American Indian Airwaves 

“Defiling Mother Earth: Stopping the Mountain Valley Pipeline”

Today on American Indian Airwaves listeners will hear an update the $6.6 billion Mountain Valley Pipeline construction struggles and how the Mountain Valley Pipeline, LLC, a joint venture of several companies operating in the extractive industries, could desecrate Native American sacred and cultural sites with the planned construction of the Southgate portion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline into what is called the state of North Carolina. Meanwhile, listeners will be informed about the how the Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC. is presenting suing over 40 land defenders, and two organizations (Appalachians Against Pipelines and Rising Tide North America) with Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (S.L.A.P.P.) lawsuits. 

SLAPP lawsuits are often instigated by wealthy corporations and sometimes the state. It is powerful legal tactic used to silence and censor Native Americans, U.S. citizens, grassroots peoples, activists, and even organizations. SLAPP lawsuits result in violating peoples U.S. Constitutionally protected Free Speech rights and their right to assemble while the lawsuits move through the court system. Moreover, SLAPP lawsuits are financially expensive for Native Americans, U.S. citizens, activist, land defenders, water protectors, and grassroots and non-profit organizations, that result is systemic financial harms. 

The Mountain Valley Pipeline, LLC is a joint venture of Equitrans Midstream, NextEra Energy Resources, Consolidated Edison, and RGC Resources, and other companies. The pipeline is six years behind schedule, about half a billion dollars over budget, and, despite promises that it would be done by the end of last year, delayed once again. The remaining construction is over rugged terrain, with hundreds of water crossings left to bridge. The pipeline runs through the states of West Virgina, south Virgina, and possibly into North Carolina, including through and adjacent to mostly Native American communities, POC neighborhoods, and poorer white communities. Beside the land and water damages, if the pipeline is fully constructed, the long-term, irreversible danger is releasing 90 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from producing, transporting, and burning all that methane over the 40 to 50 years the pipeline’s life expectancy. 

Tune in to hear more about the struggle over the Mountain Valley Pipeline, the U.S Congress political back deals and the U.S. Supreme Court’s complicity in sanctioning the original pipeline route’s contrition, and what listeners can do to defend the sacred. 

Guest:
Dr. Crystal Cavalier-Keck, member of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, co-founder of Seven Directions of Service, and chair of the NAACP Environmental Justice Committee.

Archived programs can be heard on Soundcloud at: https://soundcloud.com/burntswamp

American Indian Airwaves streams on over ten podcasting platforms such as Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, Audible, Backtracks.fm, Gaana, Google Podcast, Fyyd, iHeart Media, Mixcloud, Player.fm, Podbay.fm, Podcast Republic, SoundCloud, Spotify, Tunein, YouTube, and more.

Defiling Mother Earth: Stopping the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP)

As of September 10th, 2024 (Tuesdays), estimates are that the 2024 fires have burned 2,247,356 acres with seventy-one (71) large active fires presently active across Turtle Island (the United States) such as in the politically defined borders of California, Nevada, Oregon, Idaho, and Wyoming. In California alone, there are approximately more than twenty (20) active fires and thousands of people are currently under mandatory evacuation orders in numerous counties such as Lake County, Orange County, Riverside County, San Bernardino County, and within the foothills of the Los Angeles National Forest.     

Today on American Indian Airwaves our guest discusses the 2024 fires impact on California Indigenous peoples, nations, and their homelands; how the historical and contemporary legacies of settler colonial violence contributes to the present form of the climate crises, how Indigenous relations and cultural sustainability for future generations face insurmountable and compounded risks provided the perpetrators and collaborators of the climate crises maintain their violent behaviors and operations, and how traditional forms of Indigenous fire-management practices are not only different compared to common United States fire management practices, but also with Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), Indigenous Stewardship (IS), along with climate resilience through ecocultural stewardship, new possibilities for reindigenizing Mother Earth, centering and balancing the trajectory for cultural sustainability, and healing are tenable. In fact, many Native American nations, organizations, and communities within the state of California are already performing the hard work of Indigenous Stewardship while facing settler colonial obstacles, yet they provide direction for the future.  All this and more is covered on today’s episode of American Indian Airwaves.

Guests:
o	Don Hankins (Miwok Nation), Professor of Geography and Planning at California State University, Chico State, co-founder of the Indigenous Stewardship Network (https://www.indigenousstewardship.org), and author and contributing author of numerous publications such as “Climate Resilience through Ecocultural Stewardship” (2024), and “Realignment of Federal Environmental Policies to Recognize Fire’s Role” (2024).

Archived AIA programs are on Soundcloud at: https://soundcloud.com/burntswamp

American Indian Airwaves streams on over ten podcasting platforms such as Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, Audible, Backtracks.fm, Gaana, Google Podcast, Fyyd, iHeart Media, Mixcloud, Player.fm, Podbay.fm, Podcast Republic, SoundCloud, Spotify, Tunein, YouTube, and more

Climate Resilience through Ecocultural Stewardship: The 2024 Fires and California Indigenous Peoples

American Indian Airwaves (AIA), an Indigenous public affairs radio porgram and, perhaps, the longest running Native American radio program within both Indigenous and the United States broadcast communication histories. Also, AIA broadcast weekly every Thursday from 7pm to 8pm (PCT) on KPFK FM 90.7 Los Angeles (http://www.kpfk.org).  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aiacr


American Indian Airwaves is produced in Burntswamp Studios and started broadcasting on March 1st, 1973 on KPFK in order to give Indigenous peoples and their respective First Nations a voice about the continuous struggles against Settler Colonialism and imperialism by the occupying and settler societies often referred to as the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Latin and South America countries located therein.

American Indian Airwaves operates as an all-volunteer collective with no corporate sponsorship and no underwriters.

Resources Radio is a weekly podcast by Resources for the Future. Each week we talk to leading experts about climate change, electricity, ecosystems, and more, making the latest research accessible to everyone.

New tracks tagged #Native Alaskan