Hello arrow, Hello, and good morning. How are you doing this morning,
Angeline? I'm good, how are you? I'm doing fantastic. I'm
going to start it off by saying this. I've been with many elders,
and I've been with many Native American medicine man and they've said, our stories
are going to go away because nobody wants to write them. And yet here
we are, we're sitting here today, Angeline, and you've got a story
that involves your Native American ancestors. Yes, it does. So my second
book is Warrior Girl Unearthed. It's out today and I pitched it as Indigenous
Lara Croft, but instead of rating tombs, the main character is rating museums
to retrieve stolen ancestors and sacred items and bring them back home. This is
very close to my heart because here in North Carolina, as they as they
go out there and clear out the land, we're finding a lot of Native
American arrowheads as well as tools that they use in order to survive. And
I keep telling people, you've got to give it to back back to the
people. It is not yours to keep you. Sure, it's a great
moment when you find it, but you've got to give it back to the
people that really truly own it. I agree for you to write about this,
what was the journey like, what did you feel like that there was
somebody standing beside you the entire way saying, Angeline, this is where we
got to go with this story. I think they're definitely were times where the
story felt bigger than me and that I felt certainly a sense of responsibility to,
you know, my ancestors. And and then there's so many great people
that are doing repatriation work, and so I really wanted to tell their stories.
You know, it's it's it's it's it's got to be an enormous feeling
as well. It's got to be energy because you're releasing it to those who
don't know the story, and there's a lot of those people that are going
to be in those shoes. I just want them to feel, you know,
like wow, she's sharing something that is very important to me. Yes,
And I think that's why, well, I love writing young adult and
us to have this sixteen year old girl, Perry, who is reluctantly working
this summer internship at her Tribes Museum and learning about this issue about repatriations and
all of the loopholes and her outrage and called to activism. I just really
wanted that to inspire other teen readers to really think about their communities and the
causes that they believe in. Oh, you see my favorite word community.
That is what it's all about. I am also in love with the title
warrior girl. We always assume only because that's the way we were taught that
warriors are guys. We don't see warrior girls. And I'm so glad that
you've empowered girls to have that that honor of being called a warrior. Yes,
And actually it's based on an actual ancestor who was a teen, and
she was buried with her knife, a flint blade, which was unusual,
and her body had shown some evidence that she had been in a fight before
and had sustained a knife wound and had recovered. And so really that's Perry
meets the warrior girl in a museum and is just called to action to try
to bring her back home. I have to be able to see the pictures
in order to present it on a page. How did you see it as
these scenes were starting to come out of your imagination? I'm like you,
Arrow, I really I'm a visual person. And so I really need to
see the scene play out in my mind, sometimes seeing it from a different
character's perspective, but really just trying to see how it unfolds visually, and
then describing that. You know, the way that you write, I gotta
I mean this is this is a writer to a writer here, and a
lot of people may not understand this, but the way you write, it's
almost like you took long walks in between different thoughts. Because because I walk
into a forest to get inspiration from the deer, well, I have hawk
in this forest that I live in. I've got all these different animals.
Do you find yourself doing that too, taking walks and really connecting with everything
around you? I do. I really love walking. And then I live
on Lake Michigan, and so to me, just being near water and the
sound of the waves and watching storms roll across the lake, I just feel
so nourished and creative. Yeah. Yeah. So then do you feel that
Warrior Girl Unearthed is giving readers an opportunity to see themselves? It's like,
oh my god, I'm not there are other people like me. I feel
like I am this person. Absolutely yes. In making that connection though,
what was your action in the in the real world before he stepped into the
writing world. For you to have this this this thing about you and the
way that you write that connects you to readers. Well, I was my
tribe's education director, and then for a while I also supervised our cultural division,
and we had staff that we're doing repatriation work, and we even were
able to repatriate one ancestor from a museum in Germany, which has no legal
obligation to return any of our ancestors, and it took a solid ten years
of relationship building before we were able to get that those remains back home.
Is there a favorite Native American tool or a piece of history that you cherish
because I have acoustic here that that was handmade by an elder that was given
to me. I love my acoustic, but at the same time, I
have so many other things that have been shared with me. What is one
of your favorite items that that really brings out the history in your soul.
I have a black ash basket that was made by my grandmother, and you
know, the weaving is just gorgeous, and the way that she used plants
to as dyes for the for the strips of the basket. Splints, and
I just you know, the basket's not in very good shape. But just
knowing that my grandma made it with her own two hands from trees that probably
came from Sugar Island, it grounds me and it connects me and makes me
feel close to her. Are we going to hear other stories from Sugar Island?
Because as you talk about you love watching the waves. It's almost like
the land is speaking directly through you. Yes. So I have a great
idea for my next book, and we'll see what happens in this book here.
What is the one thing that you want readers to take from it?
Because every writer likes to plant a seed in order for them to grow in
their own way. What is that one seed that you think you planted?
The ownership over native bodies past and present? And how wrong that is.
And even with legislation such as NAGPRA, we still have museums and institutions dragging
their feet to return ancestors whose tribes are saying we want them back. Ye
see, see this is what the elders were telling me. They need people
like yourself to to start that conversation. You know, don't don't be the
silent generation. Be the one that starts the conversation. I have faith in
our young people and um, and so I hope that my book ends up
in their hands, and I hope it inspires some of them to work on
this. Do you find yourself wanting to travel to other parts of the country
to hear their stories as well? And the reason why I bring that up
is because not even three miles from this house are these huge boulders where nations
lived in the fourteen hundreds, and I go there to feel the energy even
today. Do you find yourself doing the same thing. Well. I love
going across the country and engaging with readers, and I do like to hear
their stories and finding that we have some similarities, but then also being aware
that each tribe is so unique. And I just think we've always had great
storytellers, we just weren't necessarily getting the book deals. And so I hope
that right now we're in an exciting time because I know of many Native writers
that are finally getting wonderful book deals and we get to see their stories.
And you're doing it in a way Angel that isn't about Okay, this is
the way we once were. You're putting it in a in a moment where
it's like, oh my god, this could really happen right now. Yes,
exactly. I wanted you know, because we still exist. We are
here, and we live modern, dynamic lives, and if you only read
about us in the past, it's it's a serious miseducation. Yeah. Oh,
the great Creator has has blessed your soul. Oh my god, I
just cannot wait to talk with you more and more in the future. Angeline,
Oh I would love that. Arrow. Well, you be brilliant today.
Okay, all right, you too, all right me, Qutch,
thank you.