April 2021 - Parks & Recreation - 48

PROTECTING THE LAND

" I think, sometimes, conversations
don't happen because people are
afraid of revealing how little they
know, and that's ultimately really
damaging to everyone. So, find a way
to engage with that curiosity. There
are lots of resources out there to be
found more and more, " says Sinclair,
an oral historian of Cree-Ojibwa and
German-Jewish ancestry, a Columbia University professor and editor
of the book How We Go Home: Voices
from Indigenous North America.

" I think, sometimes,
conversations don't happen
because people are afraid of
revealing how little they know,
and that's ultimately really
damaging to everyone. "
As for Lozano, she is a tribal liaison for the Wisconsin Department
of Children and Families, which
works with 11 federally recognized
tribes located within the state to provide child welfare support for families and other critical services. She is
part of the Ho-Chunk Nation.
Recently, Sinclair and Lozano
shared their insights with NRPA
and Parks & Recreation magazine
about the tribal nations in North
America, how they define equity
as it applies to Indigenous people,
and why land acknowledgement
should be important to everyone.
Parks & Recreation: Could you
tell us a little bit about who you
are and the work that you're
currently doing?
Sara Sinclair: I was invited to be part
of the [TEDxCollegePark] conference [in March] to speak...about
a book that I've been working on
for the last few years. It came out in
October [2020 and] it's called How
48 Parks & Recreation

We Go Home: Voices from Indigenous
North America. The project actually
began as my thesis work; I came to
New York City to study oral history
at Columbia University. And while
I was in the program, I started interviewing other Native students that I
was meeting in the Columbia community, and then...people specifically from Native American reservations, who left their homes to come
and study at these elite academic
institutions and then moved home
again to work for their nations. But
in the context of doing that work, I
quickly envisioned putting these interviews together in a book, because
the people that I was interviewing
were such incredible narrators, storytellers and educators. I felt like they
were able to narrate North American history - not Native American
history - in a way that was really
lacking from most North Americans'
experiences. There's a lot of research
being done recently, in particular,
an organization called IllumiNative
(illuminatives.org). They've done
some research that shows that 87 percent of state-level history standards
fail to cover Native people after 1900.
That's crazy! We're in 2021 and 87
percent of people are not learning
anything about what happens to Native Americans after 1900. So, I was
really motivated by what I thought
was a real gap in the educational experiences across the continent.
Ultimately, I went to Voice of
Witness and said, " I want to do
this book. Do you want to do it
with me? " Voice of Witness is [a
nonprofit] organization that works
to amplify the voices of people impacted by and fighting against injustice. They said, " Yes. "
So, I was able to travel far and wide
across North America, speaking to
people about some of the most universal issues that are impacting Na-

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tive life today. These are issues that
include environmental injustices, the
legacy of the Indian residential school
system, the high prevalence of kids in
foster care today, extraction, treaty
violations, barriers to healthcare and
education, and on and on.
Stephanie Lozano: Before I came to
the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families, I worked for my
tribe [Ho-Chunk Nation] for several years doing child welfare work,
focusing on Indian child welfare.
And as a part of that experience, I
got to learn not only my language,
my culture, my kinship system and
how we're all interrelated, but I
[also] started learning a lot about
the history and how children were
coming into foster care as a result
of these federal Indian policies that
were impacting tribes back in the
1800s, and, in particular, how they
impacted my tribe, our children and
our families - some of that historic
trauma that we carried with us.
One of the things that I do for the
department...is provide a lot of training to them on tribal history and how
that impacts the programs and services that we're providing out there.
In particular, [we've] been focusing
a lot on...land acknowledgements,
making sure that folks [know] the
importance of why we need to start
understanding the history of the land
and how we're connected to it, who
was there before us and why that
changed. It's been really incredible to
see other departments look at establishing their own land acknowledgements...[and] being able to provide
them with the resources to do that
and do it with a level of accuracy.
P&R: Sara, at this writing, you'll be
speaking at TEDxCollegePark's
'An Equal Future.' One of the
things that will be discussed is

http://www.illuminatives.org

April 2021 - Parks & Recreation

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