Category Archives: Culture

TRIBAL JUSTICE: Anne Makepeace & Yurok Tribal Judge Abby Abinanti

Two judges… two tribes… one goal: restoring justice.

The Honorable Abby Abinanti
Abby Abinanti, Chief Judge of the Yurok Tribe on the North Coast of California, is the first Native American woman to pass the California bar exam. She established the first tribal-run clean slate program in the country to help members expunge criminal records, and focuses on keeping young people out of jail, in school and with their people. She has also served as Appellate Judge for the Colorado River Indian Tribe; Judge for the Hopi Tribal Court and Shoeshone-Bonnock Tribal Court; Chief Magistrate on the Court of Indian Offenses for the Hoopa Valley Tribal Court; and Tribal Courts Evaluator for the Indian Justice Center and the American Indian Justice Center.

The Honorable Claudette White
Judge White has served as Chief Judge for the Quechan Tribal Court since 2005. She also rides circuit, serving in tribal courts throughout Southern Arizona and California, including the Fort McDowell Indian Community, Ak-Chin Indian Community, Salt River Pima Maricopa Indian Community and Tonto Apache Tribal Courts. She is President of the Arizona Indian Judges Association, and is a member of the Arizona Tribal, State and Federal Court Forum and the newly formed California Tribal Court/State Court Forum. She works closely with families, state court judges, probation officers and social workers to ensure the best outcomes for families and children.

Anne Makepeace has been a writer, producer, and director of award-winning independent films for more three decades. Her new film, Tribal Justice, premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival just this past February 2017. Her previous documentary, We Still Live Here: Âs Nutayuneân, about the return of the Wampanoag language, had its broadcast premiere on the PBS series Independent Lens in 2011. The film has won many awards, including the Full Frame Inspiration Award and the Moving Mountains Award at Telluride MountainFilm for the film most likely to effect important social change. The $3000 MountainFilm prize went directly to the Wampanoag Language Reclamation Project, enabling them to launch their first-ever language immersion camp for children. We Still Live Here was funded by ITVS, the Sundance Documentary Fund, the LEF Foundation, and the National Science Foundation, among others. Makepeace was able to complete the film with fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Other recent films by Anne Makepeace include: I. M. PEI: Building China Modern ,(PBS broadcast on American Masters in 2010), and her Emmy nominated feature documentary Rain in a Dry Land (lead show on PBS P.O.V. 2007), which chronicled the journey and resettlement of two Somali Bantu refugee families from Africa through their first two years in America. She won a National Prime Time Emmy for her American Masters/PBS documentary Robert Capa in Love and War, which premiered at Sundance in 2003. Coming to Light, her documentary about Edward S. Curtis, also premiered at Sundance, was short-listed for an Academy Award in 2000, broadcast on American Masters in 2001, and won many prizes, including the O’Connor Award for Best Film from the American Historical Association, an Award of Excellence from the American Anthropological Association, a Gold Hugo from Chicago, Best Documentary at Telluride, and many others. Her first documentary, Baby It’s You, premiered at Sundance, was broadcast as the lead show on P.O.V. in 1998, and screened at the Whitney Biennial 2000.

Yurok Tribal Judge Abby Abinanti with Humboldt County Judge Christopher Wilson

Quechan Tribal Judge Claudette White & Imperial County Judge Juan Ulloa

Judge Abby Abinanti presiding in the Yurok Tribal Court.

“The tribal courts both incorporate traditional values and hold up an example to the nation about the possibilities of alternative dispute resolution. [They] have much to offer to the tribal communities, and much to teach the other court systems operating in the United States. ” —

The Honorable Sandra Day O’Connor, former Supreme Court Justice

A California Law School Reckons With the Shame of Native Massacres https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/27/us/hastings-college-law-native-massacre.html

Finding Kukan/Big Sonia

As we have done each May for the last 10+ years, Forthright Radio is going to the movies, specifically reviewing documentaries from the upcoming Mendocino Film Festival. Today our show is in 2 parts. In the first, we interview Robin Lung, producer/director of FINDING KUKAN, a sort of detective story to find a long forgotten, lost film, and the almost forgotten woman who produced it, Li Ling-Ai.

In the second segment, we speak with Leah Warshawski and Todd Soliday about their film, BIG SONIA. It’s about the amazing Sonia Warshawski, who survived 3 concentration camps, 2 beatings from SS guards, each of which almost killed her, and then, on the very day Bergen Belsen was liberated by the British, a bullet to the chest, which also almost killed her. Today, she is not only alive in her nineties, but she is a thriving, beloved member of her Kansas City community. And if you think this is just another depressing story of cruelty and brutality, you don’t know Sonia. We hope you’ll stay tuned to hear about her.

Among the things that unite these two films are: they are both about women with indomitable spirits, who are determined to get the truth out about unimaginable cruelty and atrocities. They are both about events that happened in WWII, one in Europe the other in Asia. They are both about women with unique fashion sense, of great longevity and spunk.

FINDING KUKAN:
It’s about an Academy Award-winning color documentary about World War II China, that has been lost for decades. An uncredited female producer from the early days of Hollywood. The mystery behind their disappearance from history. In the 1930s, China risked collapse under the onslaught of Japan’s military juggernaut. Chinese-American firebrand Li Ling-Ai decided to jolt Americans into action with a new medium: 16mm Kodachrome color film. She hired photojournalist, Rey Scott, to travel to China and document the war-torn country, including the massive bombing of the wartime capital. Their landmark film, Kukan: The Battle Cry of China, was screened for President Roosevelt at the White House, and received one of the first Academy Awards for a feature documentary in 1942. So, how come we have never heard of Li Ling-Ai? And why have all copies of Kukan disappeared? Our guest, Filmmaker Robin Lung, turns detective to uncover this forgotten story.

Robin Lung is a 4th generation Chinese American, who was raised in Hawai‘i. For over 15 years, she has been bringing untold minority stories to film. A graduate of Stanford University and Hunter College in NYC, Robin Lung made her directorial debut with Washington Place: Hawai‘i’s First Home, a 30-minute documentary for PBS Hawai‘i about Hawai‘i’s historic governor’s mansion and the home of Queen Lili‘uokalani. She was the associate producer for the national PBS documentary, Patsy Mink: Ahead of the Majority (aired October 2008), Hawai‘i unit producer for acclaimed film Vivan Las Antipodas!, unit producer for NOVA’s Killer Typhoon, and producer/director for numerous short documentaries for the Historic Hawai‘i Foundation.

BIG SONIA:

In the second segment we move to the other theater of WWII, the Nazis’ march across Europe, specifically the invasion of Poland in Sept. 1939, and what we have come to know as The Holocaust.

Here’s some of the description of the film on the Mendocino Film Festival website:
A “diva” known for wearing leopard print and high heels, Holocaust survivor Sonia Warshawski, serves as a bridge between cultures and generations, while continuing to run her late husband’s tailor shop in Kansas City. She miraculously survived concentration camps, death camps, and being shot in the chest on Liberation Day, but now she faces new challenges: the mall, where she works at her shop is about to close its doors, and the risk of forced retirement looms on the horizon. And unbelievably, the voices of Holocaust deniers seem to be getting louder & stronger. What will she do?

Leah Warshawski
Producer | Co-Director
Leah Warshawski produces documentary-style features, television, commercials, and branded entertainment in remote parts of the world. Her first feature, FINDING HILLYWOOD (2013) won 6 awards, and screened at more than 65 festivals. Leah’s career in film began in Hawaii, working in the marine department for LOST and HAWAII. She is currently working on the feature doc PERSONHOOD (2017-18), and advises filmmakers on outreach, marketing and hybrid distribution plans. In addition, Leah co-founded rwandafilm.org.

Todd Soliday
Co-Director | DP | Post Supervisor | Editor | Motion Graphics
Todd Soliday is a jack-of-all-trades with 25 years experience in production and post production. He specializes in documentary storytelling and adventure films such as PLATINUM (2007). He was post-production supervisor for FINDING HILLYWOOD. Recent feature documentary projects include OUT OF LUCK (2015) and THE BREACH (2014). He and Leah are married.

Benjamin Madley – AN AMERICAN GENOCIDE: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe 1846-1873

Benjamin Madley is an historian of Native America, the United States, and genocide in world history. Born in Redding, California, Professor Madley spent much of his childhood in Karuk Country near the Oregon border, where he became interested in the relationship between colonizers and indigenous peoples. He writes about American Indians, as well as colonial genocides in Africa, Australia, and Europe, often applying a transnational and comparative approach. He is a professor of history at the University of CA at Los Angeles. An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873 is his first book. It is published by Yale University Press. Professor Benjamin Madley, We welcome you to Forthright Radio.

The place we now call CA, was unknown to non-Indians until March 1543, when Spaniards first explored the coast, but it wasn’t until 226 years later, in 1769, that Spain sent soldiers and Franciscan missionaries north from Mexico to colonize it, to preempt British, Dutch and Russian expansion, and to protect northern Mexico’s silver mines. At that time, there were about 310,000 native people living there, which seems small compared to California’s current population of almost 40 million, but he writes that it was actually the densest native population north of Mexico in North America. We began by discussing this pre-European CA population, and how they lived on the land.

The Mendocino Indian Reservation was a former Indian reservation in Mendocino County, of the early ones to be established (Spring, 1856) in California by the Federal Government for the resettlement of California Indians, near modern day Noyo, which was the home of the Pomo Tribe. Its area was 25,000 acres (100km²), but Yuki, Yokiah, Wappo, Salan Pomo, Kianamaras, Whilkut and others were forced off their ancestral lands and removed there.The Mendocino Indian Reservation was discontinued in March 1866 and the land opened for settlement 3 years later.

nativa-american-pomo-woman-the-vault--edward-curtis.jpg

California and the Indian Wars The Mendocino War of 1859-1860 http://www.militarymuseum.org/Mendocino%20War.html#a http://www.militarymuseum.org/Mendocino%20War.html#c http://www.militarymuseum.org/Mendocino%20War.html#d

The ethno-geography of the Pomo and neighboring Indians https://oac.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/hb9779p385/?brand=oac4

A California Law School Reckons With the Shame of Native Massacres https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/27/us/hastings-college-law-native-massacre.html

What Happened to the Tribes of Europe John Trudell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2wGOlVDsRw

David Quammen- Spillover: Animal Infections & the Next Human Pandemic

In this edition of Forthright Radio, originally broadcast on May 1, 2013, intrepid journalist, David Quammen, discusses his book, SPILLOVER: ANIMAL INFECTIONS& THE NEXT HUMAN PANDEMIC, in which he tracks down the animal origins of such diseases we humans are now susceptible to, including viruses such as HIV-AIDS, SARS, EBOLA, HENDRA, MARBURG, and INFLUENZA, and bacteria such as LYME DISEASE and Q FEVER.

Among the questions he investigates are: Why do new diseases emerge when they do, where they do, as they do, and not elsewhere, other ways, at other times? Is it happening more now than in the past? And perhaps the biggest question: What sort of deadly bug, with what unforeseen origins and what inexorable impacts, will emerge next?

David Quammen is the author of four books of fiction, and seven acclaimed books of nonfiction, including THE RELUCTANT MR. DARWIN and THE SONG OF THE DODO. He served as the Wallace Stegner Chair of Western American Studies at Montana State University from 2007 – 2009. He is a contributing writer for National Geographic magazine. SPILLOVER: ANIMAL INFECTIONS AND THE NEXT HUMAN PANDEMIC is more than a page turner about how microbes cross from animal species into humans and evolve into infectious diseases, it is also a chronicle of the many far flung journeys David Quammen has taken to some of the most remote parts of the globe, to interview the scientists in the field, who search for the animal reservoirs from which they come.

david_wide-a960150228d34236c602f3043f38a988ba363451.jpg

Articles pertinent to this interview:

Infection of Wildlife Biologist Highlights Risks of Virus Hunting https://theintercept.com/2022/07/02/virus-infection-bat-biosafety/

As Covid recedes in US a new worry emerges: wildlife passing on the virus https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/11/us-covid-wildlife-virus

Matthew Wolf-Meyer- The Slumbering Masses: Sleep, Medicine & Modern American Life

This edition of Forthright Radio from November 11, 2012 came up in conversation (12-11-17), so we thought it might be of interest to our web listeners, as well.

As the nights grow longer, and the season approaches of long winter naps, it seems like a good time to discuss one of the inevitable aspects of life – sleep. And this seemingly simple topic is not so simple for more and more people in the modern world. And it really is quite mysterious. Neither doctors nor scientists can even tell us what sleep IS, much less what natural sleep might be. And then, there are the effects of capitalism on sleep.

To discuss these things and more, we have with us Matthew Wolf-Meyer, who was (then) a Professor of Anthropology, at UC Santa Cruz. Matthew Wolf-Meyer received his Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota, specializing in medical anthropology, and the social study of science and technology. He holds previous degrees in Literature, Science Fiction Studies, and American Cultural Studies.

In January, 2016, he joined the faculty of the Anthropology Dept. at SUNY Binghamton. His work focuses on medicine, science and media in the United States to make sense of major modern-era shifts in the expert practices of science and medicine and popular representations of health. His book The Slumbering Masses: Sleep, Medicine and Modern American Life, published by The University of Minnesota Press, was the first book-length social scientific study of sleep in the United States and won the New Millennium book prize in 2013. It offers insights into the complex lived realities of disorderly sleepers, the long history of sleep science, and the global impacts of the exportation of American sleep.