Allison Waukau: Empowering Native Stories Through Community Service and Podcasting

Transcript

[sound element: Native Lights theme music]

Allison Waukau: Driving back from the Menominee reservation quite a few years ago, I stopped at a gas station. We were all getting out, and I was just into this podcast, and I was like, Oh, what if I did a podcast, and I would call it like aunties with authors, or authors with aunties, or whatever. And honestly, besides my son, this is like a dream come true.

Leah Lemm: Boozhoo, hello. Welcome to Native Lights, where Indigenous voices shine. I'm your host, Leah Lemm.

Cole Premo: And I'm your other host Cole Premo. Miigwech for joining us today. Native Lights is more than a podcast and radio show. At its core, it's a place for Native folks to tell their stories. Each and every week, we have captivating conversations with great guests from a whole lot of different backgrounds. We're talking musicians, community leaders, educators, language warriors, you name it. They have a wonderful mixture of passions, and we talk to them about their gifts and how they share their gifts with the community. And it all centers around finding purpose in our lives and amplifying Native voices. How you doing, Leah.

Leah Lemm: Good. How are you?

Cole Premo: I'm doing great. You know, I've just been recently thinking about the podcast and just how great it is to take time and amplify voices and hear from great people and kind of not only lift up ourselves, but lift up, you know, others who are listening to the podcast. It's just such a great privilege we have. And I can't imagine it being some type of debate show where we're going back and forth and all that craziness.

Leah Lemm: It's so nice, it's so exciting, because by doing this, we are also celebrating our own gifts, and it's nice to be reminded of that regularly.

Cole Premo: But who are we speaking with? Let's rock.

Leah Lemm: Yeah. We are revisiting one of our past guests today. I really like doing this, because, you know, we've been doing this for several years now, so some of our guests are onto different things, or have done a bunch of stuff since we last talked to them. So it's always nice to catch up. And today, we are excited to speak with Allison Waukau. She is Menominee and Navajo. She currently serves as the Tribal Liaison and Native Relations Coordinator at the Metropolitan Council. She previously worked at the Hennepin County Library, which was when we spoke to her last and Roseville School District as American Indian Community Liaison. And just last year, Allison started up a podcast. She's the co-host of Books Are Good Medicine, which aims to increase knowledge for educators and libraries about Native American books and materials. We need more of that. We love hearing of other podcasts. It's so exciting because, you know, doing similar things, amplifying Native Voices, which is our mission. So it's always lovely to hear of even more. So we'll get to all that and even more. Hi, Allison.

Allison Waukau: Hello.

Cole Premo: All right. Boozhoo. Allison, could you please start by introducing yourself, giving us a little background, and telling us where you're joining us from.

Allison Waukau: Allison Waukau, I'm Menominee Navajo. My clans are Ta'néészahnii and Awaehsaeh and also Nakai Dine. I'm here in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Grew up in New Mexico and Wisconsin, and the last 10 years have landed here in the Twin Cities. I am currently the Tribal liaison and Native Relations Coordinator for the Met Council, but I'm also on the board for the American Indian Library Association. Makerspace is also a board that I sit on, and I'm also part of the Native Governance Center Rebuilders cohort 14 program, and then also co-host of a podcast Books Are Good Medicine. So I definitely am keeping busy.

Cole Premo: We also like to ask, how are you doing? How's the family doing?

Allison Waukau: Really good. My son is growing like a weed and a good weed, like a dandelion or something. The other day, he came up and he, like, hugged me and he touched the bottom of my glasses with his head. And I was like, that's never happened before, so he's getting tall.

Leah Lemm: Awesome. Well, we like to kick off our conversation by asking if there's something you're concentrating on or thinking about these days. Is there anything that's top of mind?

Allison Waukau: Yeah, I just got out of a meeting with the American Indian Library Association Board. We had an emergency meeting earlier today about how to support tribal libraries and their staff and all our tribal citizens that rely on the library resources that are supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services grant. So there's two grants that really support tribal libraries, and that's the enhancement grant and the basic grant. And they were run by a wonderful person named Jennifer. I can never say her last name, but I mean, you couldn't have someone that was more organized, more passionate about Native libraries and supporting Native libraries. So it's been a hard week, but you know, the bright side, I think, is seeing everybody come together, it's just made me more--I feel like empowered when the Asian Pacific American Library Association comes together and supports us and the American Library Association and at home as well, which is the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries and Museums, is now doing kind of a survey of like, where's the deficit going to be now, without, without those grants? This past week, we had a lot of ALA members here in Minneapolis for a conference, and we all got together at Red Lake Nation College here in Minneapolis, and it was beautiful. Oh my gosh. It was just it's so nice. They have this balcony that you can go out on, and they have those little heater things. And it was just really neat to have us all together and be like, You know what? We have survived so much worse. And if anybody can survive that, like anything that's going on right now, it's us, right? But it's just navigating, like, how do we continue to support the tribal libraries, because a lot of times it's the only funding that some of them get. So how do we figure that all out?

Leah Lemm: Can you say a little more about what happened?

Allison Waukau: The current administration cut the funding for the IMLS Institute of Museum Library Services and the grants they do, and so everyone was within 20 minutes, told to return their badges and their tech, and they were done. So it's just been really hard hearing that when you don't have—I guess the issue too is people that are currently receiving this grant, are they not going to get the next installment? Do they still need to do reporting? What's the status now? When you receive a grant, you definitely want to do the reporting. You definitely want to follow through with your end, right? So if they're not able to submit their status and so forth, is that going to affect them later on? Right? So if they apply for another federal grant or whatever it shows up. But given absolutely no information, it's been great to see like state libraries step up and ALA the American Library Association, and we have a wonderful president, Cindy Hohl. She's Native and just pulling together all really examples of how IMLS support is supported, supporting the different tribal libraries most of the time it's a lot of non-Natives that use those libraries as well, because they're in rural areas and they're also tribal libraries. So they'll be usually like college libraries alongside a public library, so they're two in one. So it affects a lot of folks that are in rural areas as well. So it's not just Native folks and community members.

Cole Premo: So clearly, you're facing a hard reality, but there's just positivity at the same time, when you guys come together and meet. And where do you go from here?

Allison Waukau: One of the things that we're concentrating on is really bringing our members together. So our next membership meeting is in a couple weeks, and we concentrate on just being support for one another, looking to our past like, what did we do? IMLS started like in the 90s, right? And AILA was running like 20 years before that. So what does that look like? What did we used to do? And how can we look and see, really, just how to navigate these few years and understand that's only a few more years, right? And I think the biggest thing that we're doing is next steps, is creating space for folks to how can ALA help? Do we need a letter of support, and do we need to help with, like providing zoom links, or what is the things that we can come forward and help with?

Cole Premo: You're listening to Native Lights, where Indigenous voices shine. Native Lights is produced by Minnesota Native News and AMPERS, with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. Today we're speaking with Allison Waukau, Menominee and Navajo. She currently resides in Minneapolis, and she is the Tribal Liaison and Native Relations Coordinator at the Metropolitan Council. All right, so we talked to you on Native Lights. About three years ago you were working at the Hennepin County Library. Please, you know, give us a little update on what brought you to here and all the fine details along the way.

Allison Waukau: Oh my gosh. Hennepin County Library. It was an amazing time in my life. It brought me a lot of happiness working there, but it was very tough. It was really tough to navigate the library system. So after COVID, things really shifted there. The job was shifting more to being in the library and not so much outreach in the community. And it really wasn't where my heart is, right? So I ended up at Metropolitan Council, which at the time of applying, I really didn't even know what they did. I just was really interested in the job description, so working with tribes and community engagement. So at Hennepin County, I really didn't have the opportunity to work directly with tribes. I was excited about that at Met Council and come to find out, you know, they run transit and housing and the sewer system, water treatment, and so a lot of things that are really important here in the Cities, and it's just been a really wonderful institution to work for. The leadership is amazing. We have chairs and our new regional administrator, Ryan O'Connor. He comes from Ramsey County, did wonderful work there for Natives in the community, and really bringing that over. Just, yeah, really, really happy to be here. We have council member Lilligren. So he started some land acknowledgement work before I came on. And once I came on, they're like, hey, guess what? I got to bring over from Hennepin County, I worked on their land acknowledgement, so I really kind of just expanded my work here. So we just recently passed the land water and people acknowledgement. And what was really cool about that is we have a really wonderful Advisory Council. It was only to be for last year, but Ryan actually kind of extended it indefinitely, which is really, really amazing. Nice to see that support. And one of the things with the advisory council members, Dr Kate Beane, the first thing that happened was she was like, I'm tired of action items. I need commitments. And so that's what we did. We really re-evaluated, brought in each division, and they presented to the Advisory Council what they do, and then the advisory council came up with the commitments. So one of the comments, like with housing, was the housing runs, except for St Paul and Minneapolis, housing vouchers, they run majority of the other ones outside of those two right and so for the housing vouchers for Section Eight, they changed their policy so that they will give-- 10% of their housing vouchers will be reserved for Natives. And there's nothing ever done like that before. I don't know of any other institution. I think Milwaukee might be starting something similar, but for us to take that step and do it, it was just, it's just mind blowing to see leadership follow through. I just, I mean, it's really nice to see what's happening. And parks is working on cultural landscape designation, so making Indian Mounds not a park for recreation. So having that cultural respect placed on different parks, and now we are working on Franklin Avenue Transit Station, which, if anybody knows it's at the American Indian Cultural Corridor. So right down from NAC and Native American community clinic and Minneapolis American Indian Center. It's a very busy transit station. Unfortunately, it's very dated. So the RFP is calling for business organizations that have experience in the Native community and ties to the Native community. And so this station will be an extension of that American Indian Culture Corridor. So it's really, really neat to see, I was sitting in this meeting, and the folks that I work with, they were talking about, I don't know if anybody's ever been on the train there, but you know, it says, “Next up Franklin Avenue” or whatever, right? This computer voice. And they were like, Well, why don't we put it in Dakota and Ojibwe and what? And honest to god, I just, I really cheered up because to sit somewhere and you're not the one bringing up, oh, let's do the language, right? They are these, these white folks. And it may be hard, it may not even happen, but just even to have that conversation, I really would not have seen this happen. Like 10 years ago, right? There's been so much change in movement forward for our kids to be sitting on the train in here, Dakota and Ojibwe and like, it's just really neat to see Met Council and what they're bringing forward the ideas. So that’s my long story short or short story long, I don't know.

Leah Lemm: That's great. Sorry, when did you start there again?

Allison Waukau: So a year and a half ago

Leah Lemm: A year and a half ago, okay, yeah, the time goes by so fast, you know? Yeah. Wow.

Allison Waukau: So fast. I feel like I'm still brand new at Met Council.

Leah Lemm: Well, we want to talk about the Books Are Good Medicine podcast as well. You co-host with…

Allison Waukau: Odia Wood-Krueger. She is such an amazing human. We complement each other very well. You know, she's way more organized, and she does a lot of the education curriculum. I'm more, maybe not so organized, but we, we really make a great team, and it's been so awesome to work alongside her. Driving back from the Menominee reservation quite a few years ago, we were all camping there over the weekend, and I stopped at a gas station. We were all getting out, and I was listening to this podcast by Bob Rice, he's up in Canada. And I was like, Oh, what if I did a podcast? And I would call it like aunties with authors, or authors with aunties or whatever. And I just really wanted like women to come in and share their stories, and because I feel like it was, it's more authentic to create change when you share stories. I have seen, when I share my stories, non-Natives and Natives, they understand why it makes a difference, right? My sister was running a book club, I think I mentioned on the last podcast, but at the time, and she was driving behind me, and we had all stopped, and I was like, hey, and she's like, Oh my gosh, that's a good idea. I really need to do it. And then I talked to Odia, like, a few weeks later, just mentioning it, she was working with the Understand Native Minnesota Campaign with Shakopee. We wrote up a proposal and submitted it to Shakopee, and they approved it. Honestly, besides my son, this is like a dream come true to work, besides Odia and with [unknown name], who has been helping, and you all understand this, like I can't do the editing, I can't do the music intro, and all the cool stuff with podcasts, and so they have been just an amazing team. I get to sit back and interview authors, and it's just been really, really, really awesome. And sharing stories. There's been a lot of tears, but a lot of laughter too, and we've just had some really great responses. The priority was educators and library staff to hear why it's important to have those Native authored books and why it's important to have Native programming. We've just had some really, really wonderful feedback. So it's been a lot of fun.

Leah Lemm: Seriously, driving is such a great time to have just ideas, just pop. Yeah, oh, I drive so much, and I'm like, I can't take all these ideas. Ah, too many. But that's so cool. Like, I just want to hear from every Native person on the planet. Every podcast out there is such a wonderful treasure to have, because I mean, now versus 20 years ago, right?

Allison Waukau: Wow, yeah, the stories of other Natives and the way that we connect with each other, we have something special, and it's really neat to share that with others.

Leah Lemm: I would ask a question that I would hate to be asked, which is: What's a favorite interview or whatever, but like, do you have, like, a memorable moment?

Allison Waukau: Oh my gosh. You know when I talk about my family in those episodes, and that's when I really feel more of a connection to them. So like when talking about lacrosse, and my little son, you know, playing lacrosse, he is so happy. He's so happy when he goes out there. So then talking to Art Coulson and Nicholas DeShaw about their books, lacrosse gets into the mix. Or we did one with Murdered, Missing and Indigenous Women. And we were talking about, like, how, how young can you start teaching? I was sharing that my niece, she did a presentation on it for her fifth grade, like, exit, whatever graduation thing. I honestly was scared. I was like, This is too young for her. She should be protected longer, right? No, she ran with it. She learned all she could, and she was so empowered after that, too. She went and did a run with, I think it was with Native women, Native women run, but she did a run, and then had us all come along and just how proud I was of her. I don't think that we give kiddos enough credit sometimes that they know that these are their relatives as well. And also to non-Natives, like, how can we continue to give examples that we are people? We are actual humans that have blood in our veins and thoughts and so forth, right? That we are even just still living and that we go missing. And so recently, at the Minnesota Indian Education Association Conference, we did three podcast recordings in a row. That was a really good day. I feel like Odia and I really got our vibe going, and we did one about burns, wildfire and like controlled burns. We had two folks on for that, and one of them is Dr Mike Dockry. He's at the U but he and I worked together at the College of Menominee Nation many years ago together, and I would just go and visit his office. And I just remember always wanting to walk by his office so we could talk trees, right? And he is so smart, and he worked in our Menominee Forest for many years, right? And he learned all about it, and worked alongside my dad as well. And so it's just really cool to see these circles of life come through, right? This guy I used to work with is now on podcasts that I'm hosting, right? It’s kind of surreal. And then also with Dream of Wild Health having them on and just seeing the inspiration in really good ways, right? And so I, yeah, I could go on and on about every, every single one, but the one we did with Heid [Erdrich?], it was just like my cheeks were, like hurting after from laughing and, you know, but all, all good things. We’re at 25 episodes so far, I think, and a few more to come. Our contract was for 30 episodes. We thought it was gonna take a full two years. We had so much to cover. There's like five more to come.

Leah Lemm: You're listening to Native Lights, where Indigenous voices shine. Native Lights is produced by Minnesota Native News and AMPERS, with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. Today we're speaking with Allison Waukau. Allison Waukau is Menominee and Navajo. She currently serves as the Tribal Liaison and Native Relations Coordinator at the Metropolitan Council.

Cole Premo: All right? And you were also in the Native Governance Center’s Rebuilders Program, and you were part of cohort 14, right?

Allison Waukau: Oh my gosh, yes. I have been really sad over the years, just simply, because I was never eligible, because I'm Menominee and Navajo, they would only take tribes from North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, and although I live here, I was none of those tribes, right? They finally opened it up, and I was like, that application is in I'm the first one that is none of the tribes from, but I am from here now I you know, this is my home. Super happy, just really excited. Been in the government kind of work for a long time, and so really wanted to see what the next steps were in order to support tribes in my communities. And we've had one in person so far at Prairie Island, and then a virtual session. We'll have another in person at Standing Rock in June. And I think I'm the oldest in the group, and there's a quite a few younger ones, like the 20, early 20s, you know. And I'm almost like and beyond that, it's just really cool though to see the mix of us and the individuality that we have, but also the talent that we have and the experiences that we have, oh gosh, they're just so amazing. What a great group of people. And to be able to learn alongside these folks. And I would say that, yes, there's like, a lot of learning from the presentations and speakers and so forth, but a lot of the learning has just been coming from us sharing and talking with one another. It's really neat to see these youth. I can call them youth, right, that are speaking their language. Wow, because I'm kind of in that generation where, you know, my mom wasn't able to speak Navajo, and she can understand it, like, if you're to speak Navajo to her, but she can tell you when you're saying something wrong, she'll be like, No, it's this way, like, but she can't necessarily have like a full blown conversation, right? And so I was in that generation where you really didn't learn it, right? And now to see this next generation, they're learning it, and they're speaking it full on conversations, and how confident they are, and what a change it takes and like does in their ability to be themselves, and their strength. I was like, Oh my gosh, I gotta get more intentional about learning my language and this and that and so they really inspired me. And I took a American Sign Language class taught by a Red Laker, awesome. You know, I would have never done that if I hadn't been inspired in this cohort. I honestly, I would have been too scared. I would have been like, no, too nervous to learn another language is so hard, especially when it's, like, connected to DNA and everything. But it was neat. We had a class, and to say Ojibwe is like this, like the puck or toe moccasins and like Native and, oh, Dreamcatcher is fun. So Dreamcatcher is like, you're going, like dream and then you catch it. I mean, it just was really neat to learn these things and with an Indigenous lens. And one of the things that we have to do with Rebuilders is do a project for communities. I have, like, a three-phase project. The ultimate goal is to have an info shop, or, like, a maker space. So info shops are basically like alternative libraries in urban spaces. And they're like, where rebels used to put up shop, right? And like, share the information and but now they're a little more modernized, right? And I really hope to have one. My colleague or friend in Arizona, Phoenix, Alex Soto, he's a librarian at the Labriola, which is the Native library at ASU. Every time I talk to him, he just inspires me, and so we had this conversation about an info shop and how tribal libraries are really on reservations. And how can we make tribal libraries in urban settings, that's where a majority of us are now. How do we have access to materials? And one of the things that was hard at Hennepin County Library was, yes, we had Native programming, but it couldn't necessarily be Native-only programming, right? When you are able to learn your culture and traditions around other Natives, it just makes such a difference. And so like a dream. My next dream to create something like that in the Twin Cities. It'll probably start off very small. But how can I create that in different variations here in the Cities? Because sometimes you get so lost in your day to day, right? Like, laundry, oh, I'm out of yogurt, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know? And this cohort gives you some time to go and process and journal and like, think of things. The kiddo is taken care of. Your time is good. You're given food. And you can think. Sort of like being in the car, but like, all day,

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Leah Lemm: Allison Waukau.

Cole Premo: It’s always great to hear from our guests on a weekly basis and hear their gifts. But you know, these revisits have been awesome too, because we get to hear how they've grown, evolved, and all the updates along the way. And really thank Allison Waukau for coming on.

Leah Lemm: Yep, yeah, she's such a great light, great convo and person to talk to. Chi miigwech. Allison Waukau, Tribal Liaison and Native Relations Coordinator at the Metropolitan Council. And she's Menominee and Navajo. I'm Leah Lemm.

Cole Premo: And I'm Cole Premo. Miigwech for listening. Gigawabamin.

Leah Lemm: Gigawabamin. You're listening to Native Lights, where Indigenous voices shine. Native Lights is produced by Minnesota Native News and AMPERS with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.