Society featured

Jodi Archambault: “Relationships, Reciprocity and Resiliency”

March 17, 2023

(Conversation recorded on December 23rd, 2022)

Show Summary

On this episode, Jodi Archambault, a member of the Hunkpapa and Oglala Lakota tribes, joins the podcast to share her experiences as an activist, government official, and someone who has lived amidst many cultures. While this podcast is primarily dominated by a western and US point of view, there is a huge variety of perspectives and social models we neglect and can learn from. The many different indigenous tribes within the North American continent each have a unique viewpoint and are widely recognized as leading lives that are more in tune with the Earth – known to the Lakota people as Grandmother Earth. Can we learn to respect nature not as things to be exploited and used, but rather as living relatives that are too sacred to be sold?

About Jodi Archambault

Jodi Archambault is currently the Director of Indigenous Peoples Initiatives at Wend Collective, a social impact fund working across sectors to create positive change. Prior to joining Wend, Ms. Archambault was a Policy Advisor at Sonosky, Chambers & Sachse, a national Native American rights law firm. Between 2009 and 2015, she was a political appointee for President Barack Obama. During her tenure in the Obama Administration, Ms. Archambault served as the Special Assistant to the President for Native American Affairs on the White House Domestic Policy Council. Ms. Archambault holds a Bachelor of Arts in Government and Native American Studies from Dartmouth College and a Master of Public Policy from the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs. She is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

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Show Notes and Links to learn more:

PDF Transcript

00:45 – Jodi Archambault works + info

03:00Lakota

04:35Indigenous connection to place

06:19574 Federally Recognized US indigenous nations

06:47Turtle Island

06:59Ojibwa Turtle Island Folklore

08:18 – How trees are related to each other, fungi related to trees, and animals related to it all

09:21Black Hills illegal treaty violation by the US and Sioux refusal of ‘reparations’

12:07 Code-switching

12:15 European-centric viewpoint of possession

14:30Vandana Shiva + TGS Episode

15:15Territories in Pre-colonial North America

16:40Lack of objectification in most indigenous languages

19:10 Degradation of the Black Hills lands

20:33 Dave Archambault

20:43 Railroads and Oil Pipelines inhibition on Indigenous lands

21:20Dakota Access Pipeline

23:09Dammed Missouri River and flooding of Indian reservations

23:56Political status and sovereignty of native tribes and citizens in the United States

30:44 Tribes have the ability to retain power over domestic disputes

31:18It used to require the Federal government and courts to prosecute against a non-native person who domestically abused their native partner on while on reservation

32:22Land and Water Conservation Fund – inaccessible to tribes except through states

32:30Tribes are some of biggest contributors to land conservation and regeneration

35:05Betsy Taylor + TGS Episode

35:10 Regenerative Agriculture – Indigenous tribes have always practiced this way

35:38Gabe Brown

36:26Chaco Canyon

38:10Plans to eradicate indigenous populations by colonists

38:35 Most Native Americans died from disease brought by colonists

38:49 Russell Thornton

38:50Native American populations reduced by 90%

39:04Guns, Germs, and Steel

40:30John Trudell

47:02Native-led Conservation Organizations

48:28 Lyla June

50:09Native languages spoken more because of stay-at-home during COVID

50:15Michael Yellow Bird

50:40Buddhist teachings regarding fasting

51:05Fasting improves compassion and empathy

51:57 Humans are quite behaviorally plastic

59:10Loss of Indigenous languages

 

Teaser photo credit; Sky Woman (1936), by Seneca artist Ernest Smith, depicts the story of Turtle Island. By Ernest Smith – via https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0752/9/2/55/htm, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=107567479

Nate Hagens

Nate Hagens

Nate Hagens is the Director of The Institute for the Study of Energy & Our Future (ISEOF) an organization focused on educating and preparing society for the coming cultural transition. Allied with leading ecologists, energy experts, politicians and systems thinkers ISEOF assembles road-maps and off-ramps for how human societies can adapt to lower throughput lifestyles.

Nate holds a Masters Degree in Finance with Honors from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in Natural Resources from the University of Vermont. He teaches an Honors course, Reality 101, at the University of Minnesota.


Tags: building resilient societies, indigenous lifeways