[we all sit down with our
plates of NDN tacos]

Lydia
I’m pumped. This is so good.
This is exactly what I needed.

KB
Hey, Google, play my liked songs on Spotify. Hmm. I forgot. Hey, Google, pause radio.

Kalyn
A little background music never hurt anyone.

Lydia
Yeah. This is bomb. I’m like, native medicine is strong.

KB
The last batch I had, the bread1 was not this good. Theirs was really dark. They had overdone it, too

Kalyn
Keep it light.2

KB
They brought a bunch though.

Kalyn
I think a lot about Colony3 and
those people who brought the meat pies4.

Lydia
The meat pies! I was also thinking
of that taco truck, what was it?

KB
Mr. Nice Guys. And then we brought in that sauce truck.

Lydia
Yeah! I liked Sauce Boss. I mean, of course I like Mr. Nice Guys, too.

Kalyn
You guys. This is bomb.

KB
The spread is very good.

Kalyn
Yeah. I’m going to use this mix5 again.

KB
The lady who brought the pies was XXXXX. I can’t remember if the mom was XXXXX or the daughter was? Yeah. It’s XXXXX and XXXXX.6

Lydia
That’s cute.

KB
I think the mom was XXXXX.

Lydia
Meat pies all the time.

KB
Those weren’t even like, great meat pies.

Kalyn
I know. I’ve had better meat pies, but they were still good.

Lydia
Yeah, anybody who’s bringing meat pies to any bar is my friend.

Kalyn
Didn’t she only come there to visit you?7

KB
Our moms were the founders of the All Nations Indian Youth Group, which was my mom, XXXXX, XXXXX, someone that I can’t remember her name, and then XXXXX.

Lydia
Mmm. We did a good job. Simple.

KB
I was looking for bison. They always have it at Aldi’s, but they didn’t have it today. Today they had the lamb hamburger and I said I don’t want to do that. But it might be interesting.

Lydia
You mean Che?8

KB
I think it would be good!

Lydia
It’s so funny. How, like, I don’t know. Good food can just make you feel so good.

KB
Does XXXXX like fry bread?

Kalyn
He’s never tried fry bread. Oh wait. No, he has. Cause we went to Del Rancho9 once who actually has really good fry bread and you can eat it with a bucket of beans.10

KB
The steak sandwich is bomb.

Kalyn
Fried chicken is really good there, too. I love going there, but there was also a Del Rancho in Tulsa somewhere. Maybe 11th? If you go there and ask for fry bread, they get really confused.

KB
Wait – there’s a Del Rancho in Tulsa. What?

Kalyn
Yeah, there was one somewhere on 11th. Cause my mom tried to go to the drive thru there and thought like the menus were all the same at every location. And my mom was like, “I’d like some fry bread.” And the lady was like, “fry bread.” Then she was like, “yeah, fry bread.” Then the lady goes, “yeah. Okay. I think we got that.” And we got the bag and opened it and it was just some dry toast.11

Lydia
It’s crazy to me how in Oklahoma, even though there are so many tribes here –like, literally this is Indian territory, everybody was moved here – people in Oklahoma still be like native culture, what?12

KB
That’s deliberate. Every other, you talked to anybody who wasn’t born in the U.S. and they know more about Native American culture than anybody who was born here.

Kalyn
Yeah. That was like when I went to Denmark, everybody was obsessed with Native culture.13

Lydia
And that’s why I’m just like trying to go over to Europe and strike it big in Europe. Take these cheekbones14 across the pond. Ya know?

Kalyn
How do we decolonize the old world?

Lydia
You don’t, you burn it.15 I’m just kidding. You don’t, to be honest, though. I don’t think you can. Do you decolonize anything?

Kalyn
No. I said that to someone and all they said was it was an interesting take. I just don’t think you can do it. I believe you can decolonize your practices, but we’re all assimilated into a culture. So you can’t like, do that.

Lydia
Also to me, I feel like decolonialism or decolonization as a concept, it sounds remediative, but not in the correct way. Like this like idea that we can somehow go backwards, unlearn these things. And I do believe that you can unlearn bad behaviors or learn new patterns. But my problem with it is that it’s not facing forward. It’s facing backward. And I’m just like, instead of saying to decolonize stuff, why don’t we say Indigenize16 because we’re still bringing forth our ideologies. It’s not like we’re regressing to lesser ideologies. We’re just bringing forward the ideologies which have existed for thousands of years and that still have relevance.

Kalyn
Yeah, [referencing the remedial aspect of decolonization] it’s underscoring this stereotypical idea of us not existing past 1620.17 It’s interesting.

Lydia
I also think if we say decolonize and it has this kind of backwards notion, then it leaves room for us to be called antiquarians, which is what that white philosopher called me. And the thing is, I’m not an antiquarian. The cosmology I was raised in is so relevant that modern day science is just now catching up or verifying scientifically things that Indigenous cultures have known for thousands of years.18 So it’s like, how is that being antiquarian?

KB
What is an antiquarian?19

Lydia
Basically that you’re really concerned with antiquity and the things that have happened in the past. And you think that the best way is to repeat things that are old. But I don’t think natives are about that. I think we constantly are reinventing ourselves and adapting and changing with the environments around us.20 That we have these rooted ideas and they’re not antiquated they’re still relevant. We’re just living in a world where people don’t know how to be in relation with the world. And so to have a culture that knows how to be in relation with the world, actually isn’t antiquated. It’s really modern and necessary. Being out of that harmony is what has created climate change and also like classism and racism and all that other garbage.

Kalyn
That’s still crazy that they straight up called you antiquarian. Who was it? It was in your fellowship, right?

Lydia
So it was that guy who was trying to say the second Holocaust is coming and it’s coming for people who look like him. And I was just like, “Whoa, are you being for real?” Because I mean, it’s really, it’s actually concerning. I don’t believe that for a second, but it’s concerning to think that there are white men, white cis men who that is what they strongly believe.21 And that can’t just be ignored. Right? You have to acknowledge that there are some white men who really are convinced, first of all, that there’s only one genocide that’s happened. And the second one is for them. Like, that sounds like a lot of white guilt.22

Kalyn
Yeah. But you know, they’re acting from that place. They’re acting from that place of like, “someone’s trying to get us, someone’s trying to kill us the way that we killed other people,” and when it’s like that, that seems like a root issue.

Lydia
Yeah, this dude also had no idea that it wasn’t until just like within the last two decades that the Cheyenne people were able to go to the Smithsonian and get like their ancestors bones back through repatriation.23

KB
Is this a young kid?

Lydia
No, this is an old, I think tenure professor. Dusty.24 He brought this guy – I can’t remember this guy’s name, I’d have to look it up – but he brought a speaker to the university and I went just because I was going to everybody’s programs, whoever the fellows were bringing in. I went to the speaker that he brought and it was this guy who is, I want to say like a fundamental Christian or whatever. Some guy who basically said that, it was something that was really off base, about how Jesus was a humanitarian, but so is the devil.25 The devil is humanitarian and to be like someone who is considering all of humanity is to be like working for the devil. I mean, it was just something like so wild that I was just like, what is this man talking about? Like, I can’t believe that this is a speaker at a university. I got so mad. I literally had to like turn and face the wall because I couldn’t look upon this person as they were saying some of this stuff. And I remember going to the fellowship and being like, “Whoa, what was up with that speaker?” And some of the fellows were like, “Oh yeah. We should have told you not to go. That guy is crazy.” And I was like, “well, I went and felt physically harmed by his ideas.” But yeah, he was equating humanitarianism with being totally evil. And I mean, I’m just, I’m never going to understand that as a concept.

Kalyn
That is not even like a theory to play around with. It makes me want to pick his brain about like what community means to him.

KB
That’s like, one of the Izod guys. It’s the Tiki torch boys. It’s all of those guys. Right? I mean, its the guys who say the Jews will not replace us. It’s that same group and the same thing that’s happening with middle-age men and young white boys, these guys that hang out downtown at the bar where I work. It’s crazy. You see it in so many 21 year olds with that kind of mindset.

Lydia
It’s sad because it’s like, it’s both incredibly boring and unimaginative. They’re just following some sort of rhetoric that’s been spouted at them.26 And they don’t have like any type of like critical reasoning skills or obviously perspective of other human beings, which means in short, they’re not global citizens.27 They’re not learned, they’re not scholastic.

Kalyn
[referencing the frybread] I can’t do it. It’s too much.

KB
Leave some for the spirit, you know?28

Kalyn
Yeah, for that ghost who lives here. I seriously had a whole conversation with that ghost for you. I was like, “please, you have to leave my friend alone. He doesn’t like you guys, but I don’t mind you. But it’d be cool if you all just left for him.”29

KB
I know I had a video.

Kalyn
Please find it.

KB
I dunno how I lost that video. It’s ridiculous.

Lydia
Damn, we made a good dinner.

Kalyn
Yeah, we did. We did it. I almost hurt myself, but it’s fine. I hurt myself from fry bread.

Lydia
[mimicking old man telling story] I have this huge frybread scar down belly. How’d you get that one?

Kalyn
Well, from the war, the year was 2020.

Lydia
2020 was a bully year for Native Americans. I feel like we’re on the up and up. You know?

Kalyn
I agree.

Lydia
I mean, aside from the fact that like we’re dying at rates like 11 and a half times faster than our white peers, but you know.30 Issues to the forefront, please. And also white guilt is at a peak right now.

Kalyn
Guilt’s at a peak. I think our people made some money off that. I think. Reparations.31

Lydia
Yeah. And we’ve got elected officials. Deb Haaland’s up for Department of the Interior.32 The fact that nobody in America even knows what the department of the interior is. Even though it’s literally to deal with treaties. Also the fact that people will be writing these articles after Christmas about like, you know, Lincoln being this awesome man who just gets a bad rap for murdering all these people [referencing the Dakota 38].33 But it’s like everybody forgot that. The reason why there were treaties is because it was a nation to nation issue. So he didn’t even have the right to execute anybody because we34 weren’t considered citizens. And we weren’t a rebellion. We were nations, which were in an actual legitimized war. We had treaties that were nation to nation and none of that was honored. And the fact that people want to call him like some sort of hero when all he was doing was trying to save the union. Like that’s it, he couldn’t even act like a leader respecting another nation. So I’m just like, y’all, don’t even know what you’re talking about.

Kalyn
I guess you could say, in the end he did get his.

Lydia
John Wilkes Booth was a native advocate.35 Natives stan John Wilkes.36

Kalyn
[pulls out $1 lottery scratchers] Okay guys. Here’s the part of the evening where it gets crazy. I hope you’re ready. You got to pick a scratcher and a coin. You know like, the right coin. And yeah. I did jump into this.

Lydia
This is sacrit.37

Kalyn
Skoden.38 Where’s your bingo Dobber.

Lydia
Stoodis.39

KB
[Putting away dishes] What are y’all doing in there?

Lydia
We’re about to test our lucky sevens40 is all.

KB
All right. I’ve got some coins.

Lydia
We’re doing at-home casino.

Kalyn
At-home casino!

Lydia
Absolutely. Yeah. 100%.

KB
Don’t let me forget that the NDN tacos are in the fridge for you to take home.

Kalyn
Frybread is the best because it can be a meal AND a dessert bread.

Lydia
Yeah, cause it’s for people who like trying to survive.41

KB
It’s true. Yeah. Commods.42

Kalyn
Okay. Pick your poison. I have separated the coins for the scratchers by year.

Lydia
I want one of those bottom two pennies.

KB
I want a nickel.

Kalyn
There’s no nickel. I got two dimes, a quarter and some pennies.

Lydia
I’m going to do this 1975  penny because Lincoln’s more tarnished on this one. And that’s how I feel about him.43 [starts working on lottery scratcher.]

KB
[piling dishes in the dishwasher] That was such a good meal.

Lydia
Yeah. I feel similarly.

Kalyn
How do you even pile that many things into a dishwasher like that.

KB
You ever had a family of five and had to put all your regalia44 in the back of a van. You just gotta figure it out.

Lydia
Yeah. Just thought about how I was just this one little girl dressing and how many things we carried. Like my mom had like a whole suitcase and that was just part of all of it.

KB
You know, I had bustles45, uh, I had two bustles when we were young. My brother had a huge bustle, which is like spread out. It’s like this, like this big [spreads arms out wide] it’s huge. And then all of our suitcases and shit match. All my mom and sisters stuff were always hanging. You know, it’s like a thing that had to be like laid out like a body.

Lydia
Man. That’s another thing I can’t wait for is like, I can’t wait to get a business under me and start getting some like, passive income and stuff so that I can like get my regalia on again. I already have it in my mind.

KB
You guys only do cloth46, right?

Lydia
Hmm. Well, pretty much all our songs are actually war songs.47

KB
The men only do straight dance and the women only dress in cloth, right?48 Y’all don’t have buckskin or like jingle dress or fancy shawls.49

Lydia
Yeah. But that’s mostly because like we had to like shift a bunch of stuff because we were killing everybody when we got to Oklahoma that they like really put up – I mean the government, the US government, put a kibosh on that real quick. Cause one of our practices was like, when our warriors die, we go kill some other warrior to like, not make them have to walk the spirit path alone. So it was like in the “modern times” of being in Oklahoma, our people were going off and like killing the Keetoowah and killing Cherokee and being like, “peace out, take this warrior home!”50 Then the US government was like, ah, no, that’s murder.

Kalyn
Oh, is it? Cause I call that finding a partner for the end times.

Lydia
Yeah. But we only danced straight pretty much.

[later in the conversation]

Lydia
I love native internet.51 Native. Internet is the best. They’re hilarious. I love that. One of that woman who’s like talking about putting on makeup and it being war paint. And she’s like, “you think I want to walk in this world and let other people see my bare face? Oh, this is war paint. My face is for my family.”

Kalyn
I feel that actually. Did you guys see that there was a, it’s like a new X-Men movie, New Mutants and there’s a native girl in it. There is also Adam Beach in it.52


Lydia
Cause you gotta have Adam Beach in it. Every native movie.

KB
Smoke signals.53 Yeah.

Kalyn
He’s in this movie as the dad, but he dies immediately. But it’s a new movie, not a series.

KB
What is her mutant power?

Kalyn
She can conjure up this crazy Satan bear, but she doesn’t have control over it yet. So just like, wreaking havoc on herself and everyone else. But there’s the two bear thing in it, you know? Like, that quote that everyone has two bears in them or wolves or whatever.54 That’s why it lost me. I was like, this is boring. This is some “my great great grandma was a Cherokee princess” shit if I ever heard it.55 Makes me think of the time whenever I was in high school and I won the Trail of Tears56 district award. Felt super cheesy.

KB
What do you even win a Trail of Tears award for?

Kalyn
Just being the most native in high school, I guess? So they just gave me an award. I mean, I guess they thought I was a good “representative.” I played sports, I had good grades, I was involved. The Nation57 gave it to me.

KB
Thats like the show we did with All Nations58 in youth. But it was talking about, they would hire us to go to schools and go to corporate events and like basically dance. And I remember I’d have to talk about grass dance and like where the tradition came from.59 And then I would like perform it and then like, you know, we would all like take a turn and do an exhibition. Tokenizing.60 But growing up, you know, like I didn’t realize that all of our moms who were all strong native women were the ones who founded that were the ones that put that together.

Kalyn
Yeah. I mean, I think it’s just like, there’s this constant battle between like how do we make ourselves visible and how do we not tokenize ourselves or allow ourselves to be tokenized when really sometimes that’s what is required to get the visibility. That’s something we talk about a lot at Folk Alliance when I do the Indigenous Music Summit.61 Cause it’s like, I don’t want to be set aside to just play on a stage for Indigenous peoples. Like, that’s not the point.

Lydia
Yeah. It’s like when you get pigeonholed as an Indigenous visual artist and it’s like, that might not be the only audience my work is for.

Kalyn
Exactly and it shouldn’t be.

Lydia
But sometimes it is. Sometimes we are the only people who get it, but it’s frustrating.

KB
My uncle shared a video with me and at the end of the video is the sentiment of like sharing our culture with people. But my thing is, I don’t know what I want to share. I’ve always been taught that we keep it to ourselves because of what our grandparents were taught and why they were taught that because they weren’t allowed or forced not to.62 So like, I don’t know. I just, I hate talking to non-native people about any native shit and if they have any questions for me, I’m usually stoic about it. Like giving them the shortest answer. Never wanting to share it. But I know that sharing is like the only way to keep us in existence.

Lydia
I think, you know, like it is, it’s like it’s layered and there’s nuance. It’s like, I want to speak from the perspective of being Indigenous and centering it in. Like I was raised in this Indigenous cosmology. I was raised in these belief systems, but I don’t like to share specifics. Like I’m not going to tell people what our ceremonies are like. And even with making artwork, there’s certain imagery and things that I’ll stay away from because it’s like, why give this away? I don’t even want to share this for somebody to be inspired by it and for that then to ripple through them and become something different because if it’s something sacred, it may be too powerful to be open to interpretation. And I think that, that goes back to just something that my elders say, which is like, who gave you authority to share a thought or who gave you authority to share that certain thing? Or who gave you the authority to like, yeah, become someone who makes this kind of work that’s telling this kind of story. And so I think I often defer to like what our elders did and also just check in with the tribe because you know, even Anita63, she makes it very clear that it is a reinvisioning of an Osage wedding coat.64 But basically she also went to our tribe and has asked permission to share in that way. And there’s been things she’s been told that she can’t do. And there’s been things that she’s told that she can do. And I think it’s like, sharing books, sharing in those ways that still allows us to keep like, what is sacred, sacred and separate from what could just be beneficial to other people. Like, yeah, maybe that’s the best thing to share. And to me that’s like Robin Kimmerer sharing her ideas on plant kin and kinship ecology.65 They don’t need to know why we wear this thing, but they could maybe know how we interact with like plants and animals.

KB
Also most of the time I am just like, why do they want to know?

Kalyn
Yeah. I think it’s cool to like share the methodologies, the frameworks. And I think that’s cool because it gives them an opportunity to learn and like create for themselves. But giving away full on ceremony stuff or sacred belief systems is not.

Lydia
I also, I feel comfortable sharing things that are already out in the public. Like I don’t mind sharing the Osage creation story because we already got it out there for people.

KB
I don’t know. I guess I don’t know. I’m more for stuff being out there and texts somewhere. Someone who actually wants to learn and be kind and study it. But I feel like I’ve posed for pictures because people have never seen an Indian before. You know, like I did that without thinking what it meant – just zombie through the motions and then felt awful about it after.

Kalyn
I will say, I think like the text thing is good because anyone can take that information and pretend it’s their own. So it’s like good to have that down and to have it referenced.

Lydia
Intellectual property is real. I also think having text is important. And just because, even though I don’t necessarily love the written word, when you put something into text and people go find it, it’s because they’re interested and they care to do the work. When people just come to you asking invasive questions, man, that’s some lazy ish. Like, read a book. Seriously, I get, there’s definitely some things that you can’t learn from books about us, but maybe start with the book so that you don’t come with such ignorant invasive questions.

KB
Exactly. [pauses to think]
Well, ya’ll wanna go for a drive for a minute?