certificate degree of indian blood, right? it shows i haven t. i have one as well. they are still a car that shows what your name is and shows what tribal affiliation you are, and what degree of blood quantum you are. amber, with your indian blood there s, like, several different tribes listed. how do you make sense of your indigenous identity? it s really just the way that i was raised. and i definitely relate to, like, what janee said, even the experience of your mom because i didn t grow up on my reservation i did grow up with my culture and i grew up with my language, and grew up with ceremony. and so, it has been an experience for me, but like, that was the most important thing in my life is to learn that culture and preserve that, and do everything that i can to go out into the world and to spread it, and to fight for it, and to represented well. ali? that s all i knew growing up. i didn t travel for a very long time and honestly, when i left my community and i me
tickets today about, what do they call us? any thoughts andres leading the way to refer to us as indigenous people, janee? my mom was white and my dad was full blooded so i was kind of losing a sense of identity and who i am, where i came from. and it was on me, losing my father at a young age, to kind of have that search and to learn the correct history, and to learn about comanche nation. but it was always a check box to college or health forms, medical things. what is that check box? for me, it s just been native american, american indian, that s who i am and how i identified myself. that s so interesting because that s one of the first things. americans just, like, walk around on eggshells around us. like, what do we call you guys? they don t quite know. and so, back in 2020, we actually did a national survey called the indigenous futures survey, and we pulled almost 6000 native people from all 50 states to ask, like, how do you want to be referred to? the number one answer a
well, it s the images that people see in tv and film, it s the media that they consume that really shapes their worldview and how they perceive different communities. jane, to your point, i remember growing up, i come home every day and watch, like, bugs bunny, elmer fudd. i will never forget they would always be wild west of, but there was, like, a native guy and, you know, big belly, big red nose. like, this neurotypical thing. but he had a sash on and it said, vanishing american. i will never forget, he walked across the screen and he disappeared. and now the work i do, to really understand how profoundly a people is and if you live in certain parts of this country, you re not even sure if native people still exist. we partnered with nielsen last year and they found that 53% of men that answered their survey said, the only time that they ve ever seen anything related to native peoples s when they are watching sports and see racist sports mascots. and that s people running around
doesn t escape me that we are here at the suquamish indian reservation, and i disseminate the supreme court rendered a decision called off on versus suquamish. that court decision took away the rights of tribes to assert criminal jurisdiction over non-indians who perpetrate crime on indian reservations. that single-handedly led to law enforcement voids that exist to this day on indian lands. because that is still a lot today. every woman, every, child every person deserves to be able to feel safe and to be able to ask for help from law enforcement if that s what they need. that s not necessarily what s afforded tornadic people. i ve noticed you ve done some advocacy work in hollywood terms of bringing where is this issue. there s no words for how important this is. like krystal said, it s truly an epidemic. i feel like i with this cause we will to bring light to these issues, we have to. one of the most important things we can do as people is to use our voice. we are important.
janee in that, when we don t fit a certain image of what a native person looks like, then sometimes, we can even be not considered indigenous. what are the thoughts on determine of us of being indigenous going forward? we continue to be mixed race native people. well, that s always a touchy subject, you know? because our tribe goes by the 1929 treaty. and so, people that were on that role, their descendants get enrolled. even if they have no indian blood, and. this is part of the problem because the american public knows so little about us. and so, everything becomes about blood quantum. it gets flipped, and so, you hear, like, the governor of oklahoma, who s enrolled cherokee citizen, will often just make light of blood quantum, people with blue eyes and long hair, that s not what it s about. it s about a political status we have as citizens of our respective tribal nations and this is not just about that blood. i think that s, like, the biggest educational piece i think we have