America Amplified 2020: What National Politics Misses and What Gives

https://www.wvik.org/post/america-amplified-2020-episode-3-what-national-politics-misses-and-what-gives#stream/0

Join Anton Treuer as he breaks down what’s happening in American politics on America Amplified

Anton Treuer, an author, speaker and professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University in Bemidji, Minnesota, is 

the first guest.

Treuer’s work centers around equity, education and bridging gaps between cultures. He’s won numerous fellowships and awards, including from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Bush Foundation and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. We learned about his work and scholarship when he was mentioned in an America Amplified National Listening Session.

Treuer talks about the “marginalization and invisibility” of indigenous people and how his culture’s tradition of sharing with others — like how a successful hunter gives away the entire kill for a first kill feast — is missing in American culture. 

“In our politics, especially, we ‘other’ one another. We take an adversarial position with one another,” Treuer says. “I’ve heard some White folk who are really worried about the loss of cultural, political and economic power. That we’re going to flip roles between who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed. So they’re fighting with one another instead of working together to fight oppression.”