Paulette Moore 00:00
All I wanted on that show like my first step I was fully immersed in that world and just like I'm lucky to be here, right? Just do it, but was really feeling uncomfortable and it was really feeling uncomfortable with the that fetishization of violence on really what I was noticing it's like on people of color in these films.
LeAndra Nephin 00:25
Welcome to another episode of not invisible native peoples on the front lines. I'm your host, Leandra kniffin. Today's guest is filmmaker and host of the Auntie's dandelion podcast. Paulette Moore. The aunties dandelion is a group of strong Indigenous women who have created an amazing space to share, listen and receive so much love during a time in which we are all in great need of finding places to heal, to laugh and to grow. Thank you for joining us. Welcome, Paulette.
Paulette Moore 01:02
What do you say we're going to go gusta Cedric what Dae Jung gets can you get haga and Ewok when Jodha a swager Neither what Gano dunno where he coordinated Daniel Oswego to key the rune new moi. New Work a nap too. So my name is Gustus request a pilot more. My name means bright feather in Mohawk. So I'm a mohawk person enrolled at six nations of the Grand River, which is near Toronto. It's about an hour and a half south west of Toronto. And I am Turtle Clan. And I live in six nations and also here in a sled to pueblo. So that's a really nice migration circle, you know, to be going back and forth, and grew up in Niagara Falls. My grandfather grew up at six nations. My mother did not. And I don't know if you know, you probably know that a lot of Mohawk men are iron workers and like built New York City. And you know, those pictures of people sitting out?
LeAndra Nephin 02:11
Yeah. famous iconic photo. Yeah, that was my
Paulette Moore 02:15
grandfather and my uncle art and my cousin is still an ironworker. So we have that tradition in our family. And I grew up in Niagara Falls, and then went to Washington, DC, I always just loved storytelling. And really, that was from my, my uncle is an extraordinary storyteller. And very simple, like, he loves to just talk about being an ironworker, or walking in the woods and catching a raccoon. But I noticed from a really young age, how compelling His stories were, I was just so in love with that storytelling, and how it made me feel. And so I really started noticing how people tell stories, and wanted to do that from my, my career and became like a local news reporter. And, you know, like with your stand up, and I ended up in Washington, DC, and was a reporter there, in my first jobs in Washington, so very mainstream media reporter for a long time and economic news reporter with Westinghouse, television, and then I moved into right around, oh, I went to Japan for a year, and was a reporter there. And that was really fun, because it was a joint project between NHK, which is Japan's public broadcaster and PBS here on the on the US side, and this particular Seattle station. And so I was reporting from Japan, you know, and that was in my late 20s. And that was so much fun, and became more visual. When I started out, it was really hard news. And I considered myself a news junkie, you know, and I really felt like there would, there was power in that because we grew up without resources, we grew out grew up with, you know, no connections, no money, you know, for in my mind, you know, and so I really thought that, like, if I were to, like get power, it would be good for me to be where the power seems to live. And that seemed to be Washington DC. So when, you know, spent time in DC, then went to Japan and when I was coming back to DC from Japan is when Discovery Channel was taking off. And I started working with them very early on doing a long form documentary. So going from news very short, you know, with me in front of the camera, and then moving to longer pieces when I was in Japan and they had to be really visual because of the language barrier, right? Like they all had to just, and I was like, Wait, this visual side is So expanding, you know, it's expanding what I do. And then to come back and start working with geographic and then discovery first. And then geographic came into that long form. Not the specials, but the cable channel that came in later, like in 2000, early 2000. So started working with all of that group, the mainstream media, and then got into independent films, because really, I was not eventually I was not seeing my community, indigenous people, I wasn't seeing women, all of my shows were about the military about, you know, there's this show called rings on Discovery Channel, where it was, it's all about military airplanes. It's super fun to film, you know, really, except, but the stories are always about war, and planes and weapons of war. And then we moved into an era when I was doing just like police shows, you know, and I was like, the police show expert. And, but that was just making me physically ill honestly, and then moved into independent productions did a lot of films where indigenous people were standing up on the frontlines, like in northern Wisconsin, the Ojibwe bled this beautiful, successful pushback against what would have been the world's largest open pit mine, and based around food sovereignty. So, and I was really noticing that mainstream media was not covering these really, I'm like, I'm from mainstream media. This is a story, man, this is like, the world's biggest open pit mine on the shores of 10% of the world's freshwater, the world's largest wild rice bed. You know, I know what a story is, you have to work really hard to ignore that as a story. So that's what I really did start to notice. And so then Standing Rock happened. So I spent, I made two films, two major films up there with the Ojibwe, and there was so much ceremony that was going on there to push back against that mine. That was the key, and anyone you ask up there will say it is this education aspect that they had was, which was so powerful, like giving people the tools to harvest maple syrup. You know, like, hey, look, there's a, there's a wild onion, I'm gonna pick it up and eat it right now, guess what, I'm connected to the land. So brilliant, brilliant strategy. And all of the Ojibwe up there in northern Wisconsin are just, they're all educators. They're just so amazing. And so I just learned so much about protests, but, you know, I loved at Standing Rock, that it was protection, you know, it was protection, and then education. So then when standing rock hit, I was like, I'm, I'm really ready to access this story, and be in service to the story of from this perspective of ceremony. And from this perspective of strength of our people. And I think that this is what your work focuses on a lot, right? These narratives that have been so destructive to us, and I did see people out at Standing Rock these major platforms, yeah, they did show up. But they were like, where's the feathers? Where's the trauma, where's tucked in, like, literally cannot hear that, that way people are leading and just like, Listen, you know, so those were really formative important experiences for me, and then made my way back to six nations. I hadn't lived on six nations until it was in my early 50s. And so moved back. And I've been in language for the last well, really 10 years, but like in immersion, for the last three years, graduated, actually last year in Mohawk language immersion, so it was able to remember my language, be back in my community, and then start this organization called the anti stand the line that is all about these narratives of land and language and relationships. So that's where we are now.
LeAndra Nephin 09:38
Yeah, wow. Your story is just amazing, like and so inspirational to you. Because you think about that representation in media in journalism. I mean, these are really important roles that our people, you know, really needs to be occupying. And I guess it makes me think about our youth coming up, you know, and kind of what advice you would give to to Native youth that want to come up and do documentary filmmaking because we are seeing that we're seeing the emergence of that, aren't we with like, reservation dogs and Sterling harjot. And, you know, these kind of really made, they're starting to kind of hit mainstream and they're, they're popular. But you know, you were kind of, in that kind of journalism world as well, almost kind of straddling these two, you know, worlds in terms of documentary filmmaking and journalism. But what advice would you give to our Native youth that that wants to kind of get into the same thing that you're doing, and some of that filmmaking and journalism work?
Paulette Moore 10:38
I think that it's really important for people getting into the business now to really understand that they need to stay grounded. And I really just realized more and more like, that word is so important, because we're land based people, you know, so staying grounded, not just being a diversity hire, like an indigenous person that's filled in a slot. But someone who is bringing the beauty and the importance of our communities, especially in this world of chaos, that we're living in, I really do believe, are all of our own way communities have a worldview and philosophy that is that is missing, and that if the mainstream I call it the overt culture, could just listen just a little bit, you know, to the strength, and the expansiveness, you know, that exists in our way of viewing the world, then, and bringing that to the narrative. And I have to tell you, that is not easy. I'm not saying something that's easy. Because as someone who was completely invested, I really wasn't straddling two worlds. In DC, I was fully over, I was fully over on the over cultural side, you know, and when I look at what I teach this, I teach, like indigenizing media are, you know, how to bring ourselves into this dialogue. And it was so hard for me, because stories are told in a really particular way. And, you know, I have some video from the very first day of the first Iraq war, where I'm in DC, and I'm like, in front of the Capitol. And I'm like rat a tat a Tatta. You know, how they speak in that, really, that's not the way it speak. But I'm like, you know, and I'm like, 26, you know, but I'm acting like, I know what I'm talking about. And it's planes taking off, and I edited the whole thing. It's like planes taking off. It's like all these like war images, Wall Street. Wall Street's cheering. This is a story that I did on the first day of a war, right. And then, fast forward 30 years later to Standing Rock. And then I had this other clip of interviewing the drone pilot deemed dead men who really made big, they were that was just hugely experimental with the drones out there at Standing Rock. And just how much how my own style has changed. of listening to Dean, it's not my face that's on. I'm not rat a tat, you know, doing the bullet pointed story. I'm asking Dean because the pipeline was coming through right over he's from Standing Rock. So he was standing there, and there was a no fly zone after one of the big evictions. And he was just I was there with him, as he was looking at the footage the first time he had flown for a number of days, and he was heartbroken. And so we're showing his drone footage, and I'm interviewing him, and it's just a whole different pace. It's a whole different aesthetic. It's a whole different way and what my goal is when I'm with our own way who my people in these protection actions are no matter what the story is, it's I want our people to see themselves adored. You know, I put the camera low and look up to you know, involves the aesthetics, but it also involves the intention of what you want to bring to the story and still mainstream media is so it's so hard for them to understand it. And in this recent interview that I did with with Paige Bethmann, who's a mohawk Oneida filmmaker, she had that same experience. She was at Fox for a number of years and brought story after story after story super compelling. And they're like, ah, you know what, I don't What the stakes are about, like residential schools, right? And I was like, I know what that is about, I had the that same experience. And all these years later, it's really the same. So as far as continuing on that advice, stay grounded. Reservation dogs does an amazing job of bringing that joy and humor and wisdom in our communities in a way that isn't like, you know, preachy or pedantic in any way. So, look, look at what's really happening with reservation dogs is what I would say to the youngsters coming in. And why is that such a compelling? Because these are complex stories. It's not just fetishizing poverty in our communities. You know, but really, it's about the resilience of oh, gosh, and, and just the push back to a culture but all put in story. We're all but just like so many beautiful storytellers. And I, which is why I love doing the podcast, because of like, our people are, are just philosophers and storytellers and have a take on it have something to say. You know, just one more thing, like I'm part of this banth It's called a spark expel accelerator for women, media owners, media company owners. And, you know, that's, it's really exciting. We're gonna have, you know, time to pitch and we make a cohort. And that's really useful. And what I noticed from some of the speakers that are coming in, up and out of mainstream media for a long time, I still have a lot of those contacts. But they're still talking just about murder. Hornets are just like, the amount of money that is spent on these stories that are super fun. Like I I'm probably most famous for a show called. It's not called it's called. Yeah, I'll chupacabras is what the show is about the chupacabra. Right. And we spent so much money on that show, it was so much fun that was for geographic got promoted. It's still out there. I met people in Switzerland never like you did the duplicate show. And they were quoting lines from the show and stuff. And in the at the end of the day, it's like, what has this done? For our communities? It's so many resources. I'm glad I got to learn storytelling in that way in a mainstream vibe. And how is it that like, we have something to say, again, not in a pedantic way, we have great, beautiful stories in our communities that need to be accessed not just through the trauma of I don't want to be true, you know, I'm not avoiding the issues, the important issues. I don't want to trigger all of our community members, when I make sad stories about like drunk people. I'm just not, that's not what I see.
LeAndra Nephin 18:11
Yeah, and I guess that's kind of, you know, one of the things I suppose that, you know, distance kind of affords you as well, you know, you're able to really see the beauty in, you know, our communities and see the beauty in our people and our cultural ways. And, you know, for me, I can understand that pushback, particularly, because, you know, I work in a field that is based on Western science, you know, psychology, and it's incredibly marginalizing, and, you know, has been historically to people of color. And, you know, for me, I'm currently doing my research on fostering culturally competent therapists. And it's, it's, you know, it's a topic that I think a lot of people get a little bit reticent about, because when you talk about race and ethnicity and culture, people are are afraid to talk about those things, particularly as a therapist, how do you bring that up in the therapy room? And so I think in a lot of the, the fields that natives occupy, our worldview, is colored by our connection to land, our oral traditions, our ways of learning, you know, and when you talk about that connection to land, it just kind of reminded me of, you know, growing up with my, my dad, he was, he was a hunter, he was he's a he's known as, you know, a really good hunter on my community. And, you know, we grew up hunting and fishing and living off the lands and he would tell us stories, you know, and at the time when you're a kid, as you're kind of walking through the forest going, you know, for looking for mushrooms, we would specifically hunt morel mushrooms. When they're in season we used to love and look forward to to hunting for that. You would tell his stories, you know, he would say Okay, make sure you walk gently be there. are very quiet because the mushrooms will disappear, you won't, you won't find them. They'll only present themselves to you if you walk gently. And if you come in a humble way, and you look for them, and you're sensitive about how you're looking for them, because we would be, you know, walking through the forest stomping on everything and jumping in every puddle, or whatever it was. And so we took this really serious like, Okay, we've got to walk gently, we've got to tip toe through the forest. And notoriously, we would get the biggest mushrooms of our community. I mean, my dad was at the local newspaper and everything like these huge morel mushrooms that he would fry up in his famous beer batter recipes and everything. And when I was like, and this is no joke when I was 15, I was like 1314, like teenage years, he was talking to a friend of his about, you know, oh, it's mushroom hunting season, you're going to come out with us. And I made the comment. Yeah, but you need to be quiet because they'll disappear. Like I really believe this story in like, teenage years. And his friend just kind of looked at me like I was just completely crazy. And I thought at that time, I was so embarrassed. And I asked my dad about it. Like, he's no, no, I just said that to you as a joke. But having said that, there is an actual story in our tribe about walking gently so that the mushroom don't disappear from you. But it's like things like that, when you think about an indigenous kind of worldview, you sort of think, you know, these stories, they actually teach us broader issues in terms of reciprocity. We learned that reciprocal exchange in how what we take, we also give back, you know, so we would leave things, you know, but the way that we would learn that was through story, but it wasn't until it was much older, kind of reflecting back on it, that it started to kind of slot in and all make sense. And so I think as indigenous people, we always kind of bring that to the table. And that's an important perspective, in terms of, you know, media, in terms of therapy, in terms of filmmaking, you know, these are all really important perspectives that deserve to be heard and to be seen, and to be known. This is actually a difficult thing. And I think a lot of people probably struggle, and I'm sure you can probably understand in terms of being in academia, is I feel like there's these kind of compartmentalized parts of my life, right. So I work as a full time complex trauma therapist, my professional life, you know, there's this kind of plates spinning, and then I'm a university student studying for my masters. So I've got that plate spinning. And then there's this kind of advocacy activism work and you know, where my passion really lies. And so I'm constantly trying to merge these things into one. And I'm hoping that with my PhD, that might actually happen, but it's starting to kind of come together. So elements of my trauma work, I guess, informed my understanding, you know, around MMI, W, or mmm WP or MMI, WR and Ma MMIWG to st you know, all these kinds of, you know, layers that encompass missing and murdered indigenous relatives, you know, these all are born out of colonization, out of trauma, intergenerational trauma, residential boarding schools. So all of these pieces of the puzzle come together in terms of my understanding, but I'd like to do more work, where I can actually merge all three of my kind of projects that I'm involved with, you know, work, academic activism work, and hopefully, I might be able to do that with my PhD is what I'm hoping.
Paulette Moore 24:00
Hmm, it seems like it's all touching. It's
LeAndra Nephin 24:04
starting to line up. But yeah, I mean, you must struggle with the same I mean, with academia, how did you kind of, you know, navigate where you were coming? Because I know, you mentioned that you were sort of all the way over the line. And then how did you kind of start to move you know, I know you mentioned Standing Rock, but how do you kind of balance those two? You know, there's things
Paulette Moore 24:25
I would say that I got called back, you know, to the, to my own community, really, specifically and incrementally but notably, and it this the journey from being in mainstream media and DC to where I am now like with the anti stand the lion and the stories that were telling with the podcast and with the film's it couldn't just happen all at once. So this would be part of advice. I would give to people is that, you know, it's you're so steeped in that environment and who the heck does not work want to work for National Geographic, right? Like, that's what I really wanted to do. And I ended up there and it was heartbreaking, honestly. And I was describing one show that I worked on there where it was about indigenous people in the Amazon. And all I want on that show, you know, that I was feeling all this, like what, and it was very white savior, dude, who goes into the Amazon. And he's, he's, he's the dude, he's the dude. backdrop, and I actually had somebody say that on a different show, like the show isn't about the indigenous people, the show is about the host, you know, on a different show. So that mindset is very much there that indigenous people are backdrops to, you know, mainstream, tall, white dude hosts to, you know, to make that broad strokes, you know, but all I wanted on that show, like my first step, I was fully immersed in that world. And just like, I'm lucky to be here, right? Just do it. But was really feeling uncomfortable. And it was really feeling uncomfortable with the that fetishization of violence, on really what I was noticing, it's like, on people of color in these films, the cop shows were fetishizing the violence. And I watched somebody bleed out in a in an alley in Baltimore, on a on the southern show. And that really, really got to me because it was like, What the heck, what the heck am I doing here? And so on that Geographic show that was talking about in the Amazon, I said to the executive producers, I just can we just have a different voice? They really wanted that British voice of, you know, authority, overlaid on the, on the show. And oh, my gosh, there was no reason given, I was like, Can we even just start with a British woman? You know, just because I was like, once we start to change one aesthetic, maybe we can start to change other things. And they were like, No, it was just unequivocally No. And so I would say, that was such a huge turning point for me, of what I'm bringing to my own communities, by depicting the white savior, dude. And then these beautiful people, you know, in the Amazon that are just unequivocally stated as the props to, you know, to the sky that we were featuring, you know, you're young, and you're in those spaces that you've always wanted to be in, and then climbing down that corporate ladder is a whole other thing. So, you know, if you're just getting into the media business, just find your that's why I said, find your grounding now. Because that incremental, it's just been piece by piece, and I've been so unsure of myself for a really long time, about what is it look like? Like, do I smudge my camera? Like, what does it mean? You know, what does it look like? And I actually had this Ojibwe woman that was, you know, you don't want to be like, I'm smarter. My camera. Yeah, like, it's like, artifice. And the Soulja Boy woman said, no, no, no, yeah, you should be smudging your camera because those are the rock beings that are telling your story. And I was like, okay, like, I've been humbled, you know, because I'm like, Oh, I don't want to be that person. That's, you know, and she's like, No, no, no, she took it really, really seriously smudge the rock beings. So finding you have and I've been, you know, real, I've relied on philosophers like the work of Robin wall. Kimmerer. And what she went through to get her PhD because she's like, why are these? Why are these flowers so beautiful together? Basically, that was like, kind of the foundation of her of her thesis as a as a scientist. And, you know, her advisors were like, go somewhere else go to an art school, you know, that's not what we're doing here. And then, Brian Burkhart Burkhardt from University of Oklahoma that talks about indigenizing philosophy through the land. And what I love about him is he is so strong. He's like, here's what we're not going to do. Like, right in the beginning. He's like, you're not gonna ask me to work 18 times as hard as Rene Descartes, you know, to get my point across. I'm not gonna, you know, and this is what I find in my own. Studies is like Oh, well, that's cute, but you just, you know, that's not really a thing, you know. So, so Brian Burkhart, and then the work of sherry Mitchell as well, who is, she's a lawyer and just does beautiful work on original instructions and that intuition that comes up that we need to discuss and talk about how that plays out in our work. So, you know, backing out of something that I was so dedicated to, was twice as hard. Because when you like, Yeah, cuz, you know, it's the great undoing. And then for a long time, not knowing what that what's the replacement, and I didn't even think of leaving media because it was so hard, because I made those shows one after another after another, like 30 hour long documentaries, you know, and countless news stories. And those, when you start to deconstruct those, there is such a pattern and a way of telling a story that is just like air, you know, and starting to tell people that's not real, that's not air. You know, that's not the authority that I'm working from, and really having to lose what looks like opportunities, but will only be just a really painful experience for everyone involved. You know, it's like, so what's that line where you're educating? Or infiltrate, infiltrating, you know, a mainstream organization in order to just start to have a conversation? So it's like, how much capacity Do you have? How much time do you have? I think those are the choices that we're constantly making as indigenous people.
LeAndra Nephin 31:46
Yeah, absolutely. Trying to find the ACCA poise and the chaos, you know, in terms of navigating those spaces that can be really difficult. And,
Paulette Moore 31:57
and where are you getting your your PhD?
LeAndra Nephin 32:00
I haven't applied yet. Because I'm doing my masters at the moment. Okay. I'm doing my masters at the University of Oxford. But after this master's, I made the decision to take some time off, I was originally going to go straight into my PhD. But I've kind of decided that I just need to rest, you know, from academia for a little bit. So that will probably be a kind of a future project. But yeah, it's something that I'm kind of debating between going into continuing on the lines of, you know, cognitive behavioral therapy, or I'm looking at another university, a really great institution, University of Kent that has a center for indigenous and settler colonial studies. Yeah, it's really amazing. And I've made connections with them and thought about doing kind of more of an autoethnography this dissertation, about my life, you know, living here, as an indigenous woman in the United Kingdom in the colonial empire trying to forge away, you know, the heartland of empire.
Paulette Moore 33:08
I know, I just think that, you know, when you were talking about it right at the beginning, I was like, when's that book coming up?
LeAndra Nephin 33:15
For that documentary? You know, right, right, what Watch this space might, you know, 10, maybe 10 years from now, because, you know, I need to just take that break. And, you know, it's just really hard. You know, I think, as you were even kind of talking through your story, it just made me think of, you know, what was some of the pivotal moments in my life where, you know, because as you get older, you kind of reflect back to you a lot of experiences you've had, and, you know, regrets and successes and all of that. But I think for me, probably the one of most pivotal parts of my journey was back in 2000. He was in 2018, I was invited to speak at the 100th anniversary of the closing of Carlisle Indian School in in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. And I remember visiting there, and that, for me was such an impactful visit, because we it was you were just seeing in the documentary, it documented in the archives, these exact same stories that we're navigating of survivors and resistance, right, you know, trying to survive in these really uncomfortable and complicated spaces. And the kids. Yeah, babies. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that thing continues through, you know, multiple generations as we talk about the ripple effects of trauma and intergenerational trauma. But yeah, and I think it's just so refreshing to listen to your story and see here, you know, the obstacles and adversity And that you've had to overcome in the calling, you know, ancestor have a way of calling us back online in a very beautiful, but sometimes difficult way. And in that in that, you know, friction, I think, really is the space that creates a refinement. You know, it's a lifelong journey. And it's a beautiful life and I look forward to what the future has to hold for both of us. Thank you. This has been not invisible native peoples on the front lines a house on fire production. Our conversation with Paulette continues on the Auntie's dandy line podcast. Follow them on Instagram at the Auntie's dandy lion for episode links and more. And be sure to check out our show notes for links and more information. This episode is produced by Victor Mako spirit Buffalo and JB Hart. Our editor is Abby Franz, our theme song is another side by wild whispers produced by Ben Reno, Ely love and Meghan Lee. This season of not invisible is produced with support from Earth rising Foundation, our Patreon producers Cathy doer and Rena Krishnan and our friends at buy me a coffee. We'd like to give a special shout out to all of our Patreon supporters. You too can become a patron by finding us at Red House series on Patreon or buy us a coffee links on our website at Red House series.com wonky they read the HA I thank you all