Today, we’re excited to welcome Dr. Samantha Majhor to Native Lights. Samantha is a direct descendant of Fort Peck. She’s Dakota and Assiniboine and is an assistant professor in American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota. She focuses on Native American literature, particularly literature by Dakota and Ojibwe writers around the Great Lakes region.
Samantha gives us an inside look at the creation of the Oceti Sakowin Story Map Project, which she is co-developing. It’s a digital archive of oral narratives connecting Dakota and Lakota stories across the Oceti Sakowin diaspora. She also discusses the challenge of archiving this valuable resource online, while trying to keep it out of the reach of AI searches and web results, and how the stories spoken in the Dakota language might be their own best protection.
She talks to us about rematriation, what it is, how it’s different from repatriation and why it’s important to use this term when thinking about land back.
And, of course, we couldn’t talk with American Indian Studies and literature professor Samantha Majhor without asking her to share the books on her to-read list as well as some recommendations:
To the Moon and Back by Eliana Ramage
Back for Blood: Never Whistle at Night Part II edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst JR.
The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters
Python’s Kiss by Louise Erdrich
The Grass Dancer by Susan Power
Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese
Whereas (poetry) by Layli Long Soldier
There There by Tommy Orange
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Hosts / Producers: Leah Lemm, Cole Premo
Editor: Britt Aamodt
Editorial support: Emily Krumberger
Mixing & mastering: Chris Harwood
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