Tai Edwards 00:02
Okay, got it, cool.

Chester Hubbard 00:04
So my name is Chester Hubbard, and this is for the Kansas Land Treaties Project. And I'm interviewing with Tai Edwards today about her work with the, you know, the Indigenous peoples here in Kansas, including the Kaw Nation as well the, oh yeah, just the Indigenous peoples including, you know, I mean, there's quite a bit of Indigenous peoples that have been through Kansas with...

Tai Edwards 00:29
That's true.

Chester Hubbard 00:30
All types of relocations of the original people, yes, but so let's see, you have anything to say for the recording?

Tai Edwards 00:38
Nope, I'm Tai Edwards. I'm happy to be here. And I have, I consent to recording and doing this interview, so I'm happy to be here.

Chester Hubbard 00:45
Okay, cool, so I'll go ahead and start then. So you said that, oh, you—Well, you said I saw, I've seen, like, a lot of your work so far, and Lisa and Mary shared, like, a lot of your stuff, like I read the Osage Woman and Empire.

Tai Edwards 01:03
Great. Thank you.

Chester Hubbard 01:04
And then also, I've gone over Like a Rock and a Hard Place and several other different pieces of material, right? So just kind of like regarding those, because, like, as we know, like Native American—like, just now, and as well as well as our history isn't really taught in school. What should educators be sharing with their students about the histories and treaties pertaining to the land?

Tai Edwards 01:29
Excellent question. Yeah, go on.

Chester Hubbard 01:32
That Kansas State stands on as well as, you know, just basically that everything stands on.

Tai Edwards 01:38
Yeah. So if we think about K-State, or, like you're saying, anywhere in Kansas. I think, I think for educators, the biggest challenge is that they have not been taught this themselves, so it's hard to teach your students if you don't have a good background in it. And so I think that leads to these ideas that at the—at least at the collegiate level, we need to think about general education, including Indigenous—at least North American—history, right? Or if we could be more specific, you know, K-State could have a, you know, Indigenous Peoples of Kansas, or a course like that, that really can center people in getting a handle on these issues. And our bigger goal, of course, would be that you didn't just first confront that information in college, right? You would have that knowledge in a K-through-12 context. But I think before we can get to a K-through-12 context, we do have to give teachers more information so that they—because I think teachers a lot of times know that—they don't know, right? They're aware that they don't know things. And as a result, it makes it difficult to teach something that you don't know much, but you know enough to know it's complicated, right? And—but the trouble is, and as we've talked about, the Kansas Association of Native American Education, or KANAE, which is a majority Indigenous educators group, especially from the K-through-12 part of the state. You see through that group and a lot of the federal programs that they work with and that they use to serve students, Indigenous children are in basically all of our schools, right, all of our K-through-12 schools. So the problem with waiting until you're in a collegiate setting to learn this is you've harmed all the K-through-12 students, but especially the K-through-12 Indigenous students who see the invisibility of themselves and their families and ancestors and their histories in learning that. And so what—how can we teach that? I think your question was right, like, what? What histories can we teach? How do we teach these—so I think that a lot of people, including teachers, including the public, are very hungry to know this complexity. And in my experience with my students, they want to know hard things. And the reason why I think that is because we're all living a hard, complicated life, right? So it's not that people can't manage—right—intellectually this complexity. They can. They live with it, and so they're hungry for the knowledge and the baseline that can help them make sense of the world that they're in. So when we think about K-State, and I would say in Kansas, K-State would be a great way for us to teach this to our—to our students broadly, because most young people, including young children, know what K-State is, right, its role in athletics, its role as an alma mater for some of the people they might know in their community, and just its iconography, right, like you see K-State stuff right around our state—it makes it a good tool for teaching. And if we could use K-State as an example, or we can use a lot of other things, but this place exists from—and the way I would probably explain it is speculating or flipping. It is the phrase I often use with my students, right—speculating in or flipping Indigenous land, right? So you get it cheap or free. And therefore don't compensate, therefore, right, the people whose land it is, and you use this to profit and build other institutions that don't serve that population. And so I always think—and this is my bias as a historian—I study Indigenous history in the context of colonialism. So, you know, I don't know if you've heard about a lot of the arguments about, like, critical race theory. Critical Race Theory and other things that have sort of been politicized in the last year, which is something that I don't teach either because I don't need to, because I teach colonialism, right? And so I think colonialism is a—is often a non-threatening framework to teach it in, because people don't understand it well. And once you start to understand that colonialism informs this relationship, then you start to see the things that happen inside that framework, and it helps you understand—and I would argue, once you understand colonialism—which, I mean, I deal with—my children are elementary school children, and I've talked to them about colonialism—once you start to get that frame, then you can see how colonialism manifests even in the present, right? So what histories can we be teaching? At the very baseline, we can be talking about the Indigenous peoples that have lived here historically, and the Indigenous people that have been forced to live here because of colonial policy, like the Potawatomis, right? And I think that young people can understand that. I think the public can understand that, but we do need to have some curriculum assistance to get teachers to be comfortable with it and then to teach it. And KANAE is doing a lot of that work. So there are people that are part of that organization, that are—including myself—who are applying for grants where we can hopefully layer over the state curriculum standards to give people resources to do that work.

Chester Hubbard 

06:50
See, yeah, just to kind of bring it back right to the beginning. I forgot to mention I was a, I was an elementary education major at one point at Haskell Indian Nations.

Tai Edwards
07:02
Oh, wonderful.

Chester Hubbard
07:03
So I actually got to see, you know, see how our school system works along with our curriculum, which, I mean, it's the curriculum. So it was a pretty good opportunity to, like, just kind of see about how, you know, we teach stuff. Because I, I mean, Lawrence is pretty progressive, and how they, you know, talk about stuff. So I had a—Oh, so I have the experience to kind of like, see, like, the other side of the coin, because I was raised in a rural community, so, I mean, and they were pretty cool about a lot of things, because my—I, they—my grandparents did a lot of presentations when I was young. And so we would go to, like, schools or like festivals and all that. And so we would, you know, talk about, you know, our people's history and all that. Tell them some, you know, kind of like some creation stories and, and along with—so, like, we would talk about our regalia for Powwows and all that. You know exactly what the dances mean. And people always loved it. Like the teachers loved it, the kids loved it. Because, like, we would also do, oh, some dances where they—the crowd—participate in, like, some, some round dances, and all that, they always love that. It's always fun.

Tai Edwards
08:17
Exactly, yeah. I mean, I think people are hungry for this, and they know they don't know. And like you said, so I think you just have to have those kind of partnerships, like you're talking about. But that took the leadership of your grandparents probably to engage in that, right?

Chester Hubbard
08:32
Yeah.

Tai Edwards
08:32
So that burden falls disproportionately on the Indigenous communities to engage, right? And how can we build that engagement to putting more work maybe on the population that needs to do more of the work, right?

Chester Hubbard
08:46
Yeah, and yeah, like, because yeah, there—I remember, like, my grandparents would always be calling around or like—but then there's also times where, like, they would get to, cause like, there's a couple times where the—I forget, like, the full name of it—the Kansas History Museum outside of Topeka.

Tai Edwards
09:04
Yes.

Chester Hubbard
09:05
They called them a couple times, you know, asked if they could come present and all, all that dance. And we also had a drum group at one point in my life, where we would, you know, sing and all that. I would sing a song about Scooby-Doo and, like, the kids would love it.

Tai Edwards
09:24
That's wonderful. That's really good.

Chester Hubbard
09:26
Yeah, because, because, yeah, like, a lot of round dances nowadays, like, you know, they have a lot of English words in them, and they—they're just kind of about, oh, don't want to say random stuff, but, you know, their songs... just life, right? It's just life? Yeah. Just about fun things and, like, the wise would sing, would be the ones for kids and kids—kids would find it funny. It's just—it was a good time. Yeah, no, you said you're like, people are hungry, and, like, there's just not—seems like there's not, like, a whole lot of chances where, you know, people can, like, find out about it. Because, I mean, like, say I was—I had the fortunate luck of my grandparents presenting in all these schools, so my friends got to learn about that, or just people through that and then—but if my grandparents didn't do that, then I'm—would anything have been learned through that? Or, who knows?

Tai Edwards
09:49
It is a good time. Right, right?

Chester Hubbard
10:27
But, like, just kind of seeing, like, the part—you know, nothing may have been learned, or if, you know, if it weren't, if they didn't come through, or nothing.

Tai Edwards
10:36
Exactly, right? And that's a heavy burden, right, for them to carry, and it's—what about all the kids that didn't have that access, right? Yeah.

Chester Hubbard
10:45
Yeah. And, like, it's funny because some of my lifelong friends I have had then, they're just still learning stuff about Indigenous history just through me, because I'll just bring something up. They're like—they just kind of look at me. They're like, what are you talking—I'm like, you didn't know this? Have I not brought this up before?

Tai Edwards
11:02
Well, I will say this might be off topic a little bit, but I teach North American Indigenous History at JCCC, and a lot of the students that take that class are actually Indigenous, and they usually don't identify to me until about halfway, you know, or later in the semester. And it's because assimilation efforts, you know, have really assaulted their families and they haven't had access to a lot of the Indigenous history that they also want. Because colonialism has worked, right? I mean, it has assaulted their families and their histories. So, you know, I think Indigenous students are also hungry for contextualization of their own histories. So, yeah, that's a great example.

Chester Hubbard
11:43
Yeah, and, like, for sure, about the Indigenous students who had, like, their—who are separated from their history and cultures. Because I am sure, you know, met several, multiple people like that. And every time I talk with them, they're talking like, oh, you know, I just learned that. I am, oh, and so and so tribe—like, one of the members of the Native American Student Body Council here at K-State, she learned of her heritage and all that, and she was adopted. And so she found that she was from a tribe—Alaska Native tribe—and so, or one of the Indigenous peoples from Alaska, and so they—and so she's, like, it's just kind of tough trying to figure out, find out, you know, my history and culture, because, you know, such a long distance. And, like, she has obvious, you know, want to, to learn everything about it. But, like, you know, it's just such a long distance.

Tai Edwards
12:41
Exactly right, and that's a—that's a trauma for her, right? Like, that's kind of an assault on her identity. And so, yeah, that's—that's extremely difficult.

Chester Hubbard
12:52
Yeah, I mean, that's without even getting, like, called, oh, the adoption process that the government inflicted—that became a little bit off topic.

Tai Edwards
13:04
Yeah, we are off topic. But it is important. Yeah, you're absolutely right.

Chester Hubbard
13:07
Yeah, because, like, certainly, like, all these communities—because, you know, educators do have a lot—we'll, we'll have Indigenous students that are disconnected from their culture and history and just don't know, like, a lot of these things, which is really unfortunate, but, you know, it's just how it is.

Tai Edwards
13:28
That’s right, that’s right.

Chester Hubbard
13:30
Because, I mean, for, like, you know, everyone knows, like, I mean, I won't say that I'm the most well-versed in all my people's ways, but I'm pretty, you know, knowledgeable about a lot of things. But, you know, for every one of me, there's like, you know, a couple that were separated because also, a large number of the Native population is actually in urban areas.

Tai Edwards
13:53
That's right, yeah.

Chester Hubbard
13:55
And just as a geographer, that's interesting to me, I bet, which is actually a thing that I've—my research on for my grad studies.

Tai Edwards
14:05
But that's wonderful, good.

Chester Hubbard
14:07
But, that's for another time.

Tai Edwards
14:09
Ah again, we're off topic. Go on, yeah, yeah.

Chester Hubbard
14:12
But so, like, there's always a thing, like, about how urban Natives aren't as, like, well-versed in their ways, which, I mean, it's true, because the reservations are, like, major cultural centers. And, like, even if, like, the language—language is endangered—like, the language is still there. And so if you're not with your tribe, like, your family themselves aren't well-versed in the language, or, you know, even just speak a couple words here and there—by—that's, you know, just more language not there.

Tai Edwards
14:43
Right? Totally, yeah, totally.

Chester Hubbard
14:47
And so, yeah, just, like, Natives being disconnected, and educators just kind of—Oh, I feel like educators just see, like, disconnected, or see the Native students and like—kind of think they should, like, know, yeah.

Tai Edwards
15:04
There's an assumption there, yeah. And there's an assumption that that Native student might even need to educate everyone else, which is also not their job, right? So that's putting a lot of pressure on a young person who is not the teacher in the classroom, right? Yeah?

Chester Hubbard
15:17
Because, for a quick example, that when I was a student teacher in the public school district at Lawrence, I had an Indigenous kid in my classroom. He, he's real funny. I always liked talking with him, especially since we had that, you know, the—the connection, the Indigenous connection.

Tai Edwards
15:37
Yeah.

Chester Hubbard
15:38
And so, like, we would always talk and, like, oh, the teachers would always be asking him about his, you know, culture and all that. And, like, in my mind, was like, he's only in, like, fourth grade, like, you know, he knows stuff, but, like, he doesn't know everything.

Tai Edwards
15:53
Right, well, and it's just that burden, right? Like, now he's got that—he's had to take responsibility for that. And, you know, are you doing that with any of the other students in the class? I bet not, right? Like, there's, there's a fine line between, you know, elevating student voices and putting pressure on them to educate everyone else.

Chester Hubbard
16:12
Yeah. Like, it was just, yeah. Like, we’ve certainly gotten better as time has gone on. But there's still, like, you know, that nano sort of, like, disconnect between, like, educators and, like, their Indigenous students and just kind of, like, their students as well.

Tai Edwards
16:30
Agreed, yeah.

Chester Hubbard
16:32
But, like, they're like—but, like, like you said earlier, like, you know, there's, there's—they're wanting to learn, like, there's just, like, you know, not—like—and there are more, like, resources becoming available, but, like, there's still, like, not a whole lot being done.

Tai Edwards
16:47
Right, and we've got to institutionalize it, right? Like, it can't just be something the teacher has the burden of researching on their own. Right. Like they need access to that, and maybe required access to that.

Chester Hubbard
16:58
Yeah, see, but yeah, I think we may have gone a little bit longer for that question, but it's just, uh, I like talking with people like me, because you're really knowledgeable about—and I talk and share experiences.

Tai Edwards
17:15
Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. I love your teaching. You should write about your teaching experience. That would be a great piece to read, frankly.

Chester Hubbard
17:25
It probably was. Wouldn't be all that interesting.

Tai Edwards
17:28
Well, you think that. It sounds like it'd be great to use with my students, right, to sort of teach these complexities.

Chester Hubbard
17:34
See, but I guess we'll go see. Is there? Is there anything else that you want to say about how my educators should be sharing or?

Tai Edwards
17:43
I think that's good.

Chester Hubbard
17:45
Okay, cool. So we'll just go on, go on, go on ahead. So you worked on A Rock and a Hard Place, and so that's, you know, a landmark for the Kaw people. Well, not landmark, but a sacred spot.

Tai Edwards
18:01
Right?

Chester Hubbard
18:02
I didn't even know that was in Lawrence. I lived in Lawrence for five years.

Tai Edwards
18:07
I didn't either.

Chester Hubbard
18:09
I went to Haskell, yep. So, like, just kind of, like, it kind of really surprised me when I read that, that piece that, you know, there's like, a really sacred thing like that, because I try, like—no, I try to take those things seriously.

Tai Edwards
18:26
Uh huh.

Chester Hubbard
18:27
But, like, it really just surprised me. But so, like, like, what? What? What are some, like, other, like, landmarks and nodes in Kansas that you know of, because there's also the springs that, like, uh, the Kaw, like, oh, sacred and like, good in those ways, but like that got filled up with a lake. Like, oh, why? Like, why are those landmarks important? Like, well, like, yeah, just this basic, yeah.

Tai Edwards
18:54
Yeah.

Chester Hubbard
18:56
Yeah.