Hosts Reflect

Looking back

Today we’re back with a hosts-only episode where we discuss turning knowledge to wisdom. Leah recently attended the MIT Indigenous Earth Day Summit, at her alma mater. She shares a few takeaways, connects them to what we’ve been hearing, and relates a bit of her own healing journey. This conversation is part of a much larger picture.

Article from MIT about some recent updates: https://news.mit.edu/2022/indigenous-scholarship-mit-0425

Young and Indigenous Podcast: https://settingsunproductions.org/young-and-indigenous-podcast

Leah:
Boozhoo, I'm Leah Lemm, citizen of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe.

Daniel:
Hau mitakuyapi. I'm Daniel Lemm, citizen of Lower Sioux Dakota Oyate.

Leah:
And this is Wisdom Continuum. We are bringing you conversations from awesome Native folks to celebrate Native wisdom for a healthier, thoughtful, more just future. Today we're doing another hosts' only episode. Woo!

Daniel:
All right.

Leah:
Again, we really enjoy talking with new people, people we've known, anybody who has wisdom to share. But again, we must take time to reflect and turn that knowledge into wisdom.

Daniel:
You had an opportunity recently, Leah, to hear from others and how what they're sharing may be something that you reflect on and implement some sort of wisdom from that, or have some takeaways from that too.

Leah:
Oh, yeah. I got to hear a lot of wisdom this last week. I traveled out to the East Coast, to Boston, Cambridge to visit my alma mater the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which as you can tell in the name is very focused on technology; it's very focused on science. I went to the MIT Indigenous Earth Day Summit, which was just an incredible panel of Native folks, which I had never witnessed while I was at MIT approximately two decades ago. Approximately two decades ago, when I was an undergrad at MIT, I felt pretty... I don't know how to say it, but lonely, I guess, is the most accurate term. Say it plain, right? Felt pretty lonely, a big culture shock. I did find community in my singing group while I was there, which was wonderful. But I also felt like I had wished for a bit more Native representation and I kind of found a bit now there.

Leah:
Like I said, I went to the Summit. I even got to talk to representative from the MIT Indigenous Language Initiative, which was very cool and just got more of an introduction into what's happening now with Indigenous folks at MIT. It's more than the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, which is great, but it's expanded. MIT is slowly acknowledging its history among Indigenous tribal people in North America, which is a whole other conversation in and of itself, which we did. We talked with David Shane Lowry a couple conversations ago on Wisdom Continuum that covered a lot of ground, and hopefully we can do a bit more. But I do have some takeaways from the week I spent out East.

Leah:
But first of all, Daniel, how did you and [Marvin 00:03:35] do at home without me?

Daniel:
We survived.

Leah:
You didn't thrive? You survived?

Daniel:
Right. That is an accurate way of putting it. Yeah, Marvin and I have been a little under the weather lately. So there wasn't a lot of extra excitement that we took on. Well, you were out of town. Really, the focus was on Marvin getting to school and me working and then lacrosse. So one of the activities that we have Marvin in right now is playing the Creator's Game. So we had several practices. We had a tournament, and we drove to the cities recently. So we didn't necessarily have time to clean up after ourselves or take care, go the extra step when it comes to picking up after ourselves.

Leah:
I bet y'all were playing on that Oculus though.

Daniel:
I don't know what you're talking about.

Leah:
That's okay.

Daniel:
Yeah, yeah. We found ways to have fun. But it's just, it's never the same without you, Leah.

Leah:
Thank you for noticing I was gone.

Daniel:
So Leah, you were mentioning that you were back in the Boston, Cambridge area after a few years of being gone and your experience is possibly a little different. Of course, your purpose for being out there would be different. Though I wanted to ask you, what was it being in that area after all these years?

Leah:
It was fun. I have to admit, a 20-year difference between being there as a struggling college student and then being there as a working professional adult with some resources and say-so behind how I spent money, what made a world of a difference. I definitely am recognizing that I have more privilege, more resources now, and how you experience a place is vastly different depending on your resources, and I mean money. Just being able to get through town and stay in a nice hotel and navigate the city, being able to pay for things as opposed to not being able to pay for things. That was a big difference. But that's not why I was there. I wasn't there to just experience what it was like to pay for things differently.

Leah:
Actually, before I answer that question, I want to talk about something that I learned from the MIT Indigenous Earth Day Summit. There was a panel and an older gentleman, an older person reflected on how the experience of being at MIT is like a fire hose. You're being shot in the face with a fire hose and you're trying to drink. It's a ton of information, a ton coming at you all at once. He said that it's moving so fast and you're trying to take so much in, that you can't have time to feel, or there's no room for feelings. I sat there in my feelings at that moment and was in complete agreement. I almost stood up and said, "Hallelujah!" Or, "Ho-lah!" Something like that. But it was exactly what, exactly how I... I don't even know how to say it. It's exactly how I didn't feel because I was there dealing with remaining feelings that I didn't know I had. I didn't know I had these feelings until after I left and then came back. Does that make any sense to you?

Daniel:
Yeah. Yeah, it does. It does definitely. What were some of those feelings?

Leah:
Well, initially I was very anxious. It's really hard not to feel like a failure. You see these incredible people that come out of MIT, right? Then you have, of course, people who do great things, but maybe at a different level, maybe not like nationally, but maybe more in their community. That's what I feel like where I am. It brings up those feelings of relative failure. Like, I failed because I didn't do something incredible on a national or worldwide level, but then realizing, like, "You know what? I don't think I actually failed. I do a lot of cool stuff. I get to live the way that I want to live, and then help people and help amplify Native voices, which is kind of the point of what I do."

Leah:
So I was walking along Memorial Drive, which is kind of where main campus meets the Charles River. And I was thinking to myself, "I didn't fail," and actually took time to thank who I was at MIT when I was struggling because it's a very tough program. At the time, I felt so lonely and kind of hanging on for dear life when it came to my studies, not really able to think of the future a lot because you're just in the moment. So while I was walking along Memorial Drive with the cherry blossoms and the river and my old dorm, just all this stuff around that was just bringing up these memories, I actually thanked my younger self, my MIT self for all the hard work, all the struggle, and told her that she did a good job.

Daniel:
Aww.

Leah:
That she didn't fail.

Daniel:
Man. There are definitely some feelings in there. Leah, I was thinking about here's someone who, you, that is, that graduated from one of the most prestigious technical institutes in the whole world. And you had a good GPA from what I understand.

Leah:
It was fine. It was respectable, yes.

Daniel:
So you graduated with a respectable GPA and yet you felt like a failure at the time.

Leah:
Well, there's so much expectation intertwined with attending prestigious universities, I think, that the pressure sure that others place on you and that you place on yourself, that I placed on myself, weren't necessarily in line with what I wanted to be and do.

Leah:
So another thing that I heard from somebody who was speaking on the panel was to recognize the privilege of going to an elite university. What I learned from that is not necessarily to make sure you just like break yourself trying to do anything and everything you can to be successful in the eyes of others, but it's you have the privilege to self-direct and take advantage of all that you've learned, all that the university name can provide in order to help your communities or help your community, just like people with incredible language knowledge, incredible cultural knowledge. Those are just as valid and just as important, if not more important. I'm not going to try to rank, okay? I'm not going to try to rank.

Leah:
It's what I could do at the time, and that is my privilege. I can use that to better my community. So it's what I try to do. I think that's where defining success has changed from that national... I don't even know what it would be. I always imagined myself, I remember this in high school, power walking in a Skyway with a briefcase and, I don't know, a ponytail or something like that. It was different times. It was different times.

Daniel:
Like a high ponytail?

Leah:
Not too high. Okay. I have a high ponytail right now, so don't out me. But, yeah, just this outward, I was looking at what does success look like from somebody else's point of view? I would imagine looking at myself and what does that look like? So taking time to reflect on what I need to do, how I'm compelled to serve my community and letting my university support that, is the goal. It's not letting the university decide how I support my community.

Daniel:
Leah, you talked about walking along the river and talking to your former self and saying that you're not a failure. I'm wondering if you could go back or if you could talk to 18, 19-year-old Leah knowing what you know now-

Leah:
So cute.

Daniel:
-what would you tell her?

Leah:
I think, "Don't worry about what other people want you to do." Like, I played rugby and I probably just should have quit that right away because it was painful. It took up a lot of time that I probably didn't have, and it didn't really serve me in any way or helped me really in any way. I'm not sure why I did it. I felt like I had started doing it and then was just sort of swept along to continue to play rugby because it was expected of me because I had made a commitment.

Leah:
I think that's an example of having agency. Make your decisions for what you want to do, knowing that what you want to do is to help others eventually or in the moment. But because I was worried about disappointing other people, I wanted to please other people, and I still do this right now. I still do this. This is still an issue for me. So maybe I should just tell my own dang self right now, "Stop trying to people-please and worry about how you're perceived. You don't have it all together and that's okay." But I think I probably would've had more space, more time for the things that I wanted to concentrate on. And I do do that better now. But I think if I learned that earlier on, I would've...

Marvin:
[inaudible 00:16:55]

Leah:
Okay.

Daniel:
[inaudible 00:16:59]

Leah:
Thanks, Marvin. If I had learned that earlier... Who doesn't want to learn some stuff earlier? But it took all that to learn it, I guess, because when I was at MIT this time... Okay, so I mentioned I was in a singing group, an a cappella group. I ran into them, some members of the a cappella group in the student center. I went to the student center to get some Dunkin' Donuts because right? It's delicious.

Daniel:
When you saw them were you're like, "A ca 'scuze me?"

Leah:
A ca what? A ca who are you? And I said, "Oh, my gosh, are you the Chorallaries?" Of course, they're wearing Chorallaries t-shirts. Hello, obvious. I was like, "I sang in your group. I'm an alum of the Chorallaries." And they're like, "No way. Blah, blah, blah." And they said that they were singing at a private event in a little bit. I was like, "I want to see them sing," and I'm sitting there imagining, like, I can't just go to some private event and elbow my way in. Who does that? Certainly not undergraduate MIT Leah. Certainly not. But does almost 40 Leah, who has a kid and a husband and has trained in Krav Maga and stuff like that? Does she do this?

Daniel:
Oh, you got to crash that event.

Leah:
I just went over there. I'm like, "Hi." It was such a perfect time to compare that self-confidence, that maturity level between 20-year-old and nearly 40-year-old Leah. So I just went up to the lovely person who was in charge of the private event and told her who I was, and if I could pop in to see my old a cappella group perform and she was just like, "Of course. You could come on in, and check out the presentations we have. We have food," and just like super inviting. Being able to do that more and more, I get to learn that things aren't as scary as they might seem. Talking to people isn't as scary as I might think it is. So I did. I got to enjoy the Chorallaries of MIT sing a four-song set at this private event. And I am so grateful that I just had a little bit of courage, a little bit, to elbow my way into that.

Daniel:
Because, I mean, what's the worst that could have happened?

Leah:
Right. Exactly.

Daniel:
They would've said "No." You would've been like, "All right. I'm going to go get some Dunkin' Donuts off then."

Leah:
Jokes on you. I'll stand outside the door and put my ear against the door and listen. Yeah, exactly. So that life experience, I think, helps.

Daniel:
That's part of the wisdom that comes with maturing and experiencing the world and becoming more of who you are. That's an interesting kind of takeaway that you can have when you go back after a few years. Sometimes I think about the movie Napoleon Dynamite and Uncle Rico. He's like, "Man, if I could go back to high school, I'd take state." It's like, well, okay. We're not talking about going back in time necessarily. It's just what have you learned? What have you reflected on in that time? And what is something that you could tell the next generation because at some point here our kid is going to be going off to college and what do we want to share with him before? Well, assuming he goes to college. What do we share with him from our own life experiences that he may listen to or not?

Leah:
He could benefit from.

Daniel:
He could benefit from it. And even if he doesn't know it in the moment as he's experiencing something, that's all part of maturing and learning from mistakes and also listening to others and what they have to share.

Leah:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yep.

Daniel:
So Leah, you talked about, you were on the coast for a Summit, and you also obviously took some trips down memory lane. But specifically about the Summit that you attended, you talked earlier about having some takeaways from that. I want to ask you now, what are some of your takeaways from the Summit?

Leah:
Well, I have been sprinkling them throughout, like the gentleman who talked about that you don't have time to feel when you're under so much pressure. So that method of learning isn't optimal if you're not connected to your humanity and also the person who talked about using our privilege for good. Those are two of the takeaways. But I also want to make sure I talk about the bigger takeaway of how necessary it is to include... I don't know if includes the right word, but to have story alongside the science that you're working on and learning.

Leah:
Oftentimes, what we're doing has long tendrils of effects that spread to places you might not expect. So you might be working on a project that involves creating a better... Oh, my gosh. I'm not going to be able to think of something on the spot. But just imagine you're working on creating a more efficient type of energy or something like that, and then what that energy requires is a lot more pollution or a lot more shady employment practices or just there are unintended consequences to your work. Whereas when you include story and the humanity of people without working in a silo or working with blinders on, you can see how your work is connected to the greater picture, to the greater landscape including humanity, including nature, environment, spirit, all of that stuff that needs to be taken into account instead of just, oh, I'm making this little nifty... Look, I made a new weapon. Isn't that cool? But understanding how this weapon might be used on the planet.

Leah:
By way of story, you might make different decisions in your work or how to use your intelligence. So that takeaway of including story, story is necessary to work in parallel, I might say, as foundational to the science that you're doing. That's necessary.

Daniel:
Through your work with the various podcasts and other audio consulting work that you do, wouldn't you say that's what you're doing?

Leah:
It's hard for me because I think I utilize technology to be creative as opposed to utilizing creativity to create technology. I'll say that again.

Daniel:
Yes, please.

Leah:
I'm using technology to be creative instead of using creativity to create technology. But we want to be on the healthy side of creativity, of technology. We want to be on the... It's hard for me to say the good side because that's dependent on whoever's talking. It's subjective. I think the healthy side of technology and creativity, because there's the other side, unhealthy, which is destruction, which is misinformation, lies, fake news, things like that that hurt humanity. So yeah, I think I utilize technology to be creative in a healthy way. I am trying my darnedest to do it in a healthy way, and it keeps me up at night if I think there's any bit of it that's unhealthy.

Leah:
But yeah, amplifying Native voices is... There was a person who asked the panel, "How can industries work in such a way that keeps this story in mind, that can gain a Native perspective, an Indigenous perspective without being extractive?" I would say listen to Native stories. Sit down with your friendly Native podcaster or radio host perhaps, or television or there are great documentaries and sit down and start absorbing Native wisdom and knowledge, Indigenous wisdom and knowledge.

Leah:
Each tribe is going to be different. We're all different, but there is a through line of being a part of nature, a part of the environment, being relatives with human and non-human beings. There are commonalities. So I would want to say to this person to find ways of listening to Native people, and that's what I believe Wisdom Continuum provides. That's what I believe the other podcast and radio programs I work on provides, is an opportunity for Native folks to be empowered, to be like, "We know all this stuff. This is awesome. We're strong. We have stuff to work on. We're purposeful," and for non-Native people to get a glimpse, a glimmer, and oftentimes a deep look into the wisdom that can benefit everybody.

Daniel:
Listening to your response there, has me thinking you may use technology to be creative and in doing so you are putting something out there in which someone else will take that to be creative and put technology to that.

Leah:
Whoa. A circle.

Daniel:
The circle.

Leah:
Oh...

Daniel:
So you may not be doing it yourself.

Leah:
Not directly.

Daniel:
You would be influencing that future technology and through the understanding that you have of how that circle or that cycle, or just how the system works-

Leah:
Well, and most importantly, the voices that we amplify, that I help amplify, who are the stars of the show.

Daniel:
That's right.

Leah:
We together are helping to influence how others do their work, perhaps. Wouldn't that be cool? And thank you for asking me all these questions because I often forget, and you might too, that we are also Indigenous people whose voices matter in the fabric of all of our stories. So being able to tell a little bit of my story, I think, is valid here. So thank you for asking me questions.

Daniel:
Of course. One more question.

Leah:
Oh, oh, oh. Yes?

Daniel:
Is there anything that we haven't talked about regarding the Summit or your experience recently in the Boston/Cambridge area that you wanted to share today?

Leah:
Well, there's a long conversation that's happening at MIT of its involvement in how tribal nations, their lands and all of this stuff was stolen from them. I definitely invite everybody to listen back to our conversation with David Shane Lowry about that. I think there's a lot of work that needs to be done and acknowledgement needs to be done. But I do think there are a lot of good people rattling the cage. I don't know if that's the right metaphor, but making noise, making good trouble that will slowly have an impact. Then let's see. Anything else I want to share? I think I had a lobster roll at Quincy-

Daniel:
Lobster.

Leah:
-at Quincy Market. It was delicious. And I had it the first day I got there and I knew it was going to be a good trip because I had a lobster roll to kick off the week in Boston.

Daniel:
Very good. Well, Leah, appreciate you sharing with us today your experience and your thoughts about attending the Earth Day Summit in Cambridge recently, as well as the reflections that you had taking a quick trip down memory lane.

Leah:
Yeah, it was awesome. Oh, and I learned about another podcast actually I'd like to make sure that I mention. One of the panelists was Santana Hazel Rose Rabang, I believe her name is. She's joining a podcast called Young and Indigenous. She's a young person and I'm really excited to listen to that podcast. So I just want to make sure to add that to our list of podcast recommendations. I'm going to put just a few links in our show notes, program notes that I think might help continue the conversation that we're having today and provide a bit more information about what I'm talking about today too. So those will be in the show notes.

Daniel:
We are talking with so many great people and we want to say that your input matters too. Do you know someone who's working on systems change or centering Indigenous values, or do you have a topic or interview suggestion? If so, then email wisdomcontinuum AT gmail.com.

Leah:
Find Wisdom Continuum online at wisdomcontinuum.com and on social media, on Instagram and Twitter @Wisdomcontinuum. Thank you to Wisdom Continuum's consulting producer Multitude. I'm Leah.

Daniel:
I'm Daniel. This is Wisdom Continuum.