020: omg / lost & found
Nins accesses a higher power through the song and music video "Me & U" by Tems. Arns delves into a piece of Native American history and the truth about belonging through documentary Daughter of a Lost Bird.
referenced in this episode:
"Me & U" by Tems (Spotify)
"Interview: Tems Is Ready to Help You Find Healing" on OkayAfrica by Nelson C.J.
"Even Fame & Stardom Can't Take Away Tems' Peace of Mind" interview on Billboard by Carl Lamarre
"I met Tems, she used to be a loner" YouTube interview by korty eo
Documentary Daughter of a Lost Bird (available for purchase on Documentary Channel)
This Land podcast, Season 2
All My Relations podcast, episode "Native Children Belong in Native Homes"
0:00 - Intro
7:37 - Nins: "Me & U" by Tems
31:50 - Arns: Daughter of a Lost Bird
54:30 - Outro
summary
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(00:00) hi I'm Angela Non I'm Ariana Kempis and this is brb [Music] crying hello everyone welcome back to brb crying I'm Ariana also known as Arns and I'm Angela also known as Nins and we're back we're on the couch the couch the couch where we bear our souls we cry a little bit mhm we spit out some wisdom mhm and you listen in love it I really just pulled that one out that one was good beautiful thank you thank you uh speaking of couches I know we've talked about maybe doing away with this one getting two chairs I don't know I keep thinking
(00:59) about it because I know we both kind of sink into this one yeah and it's like really hard to yeah yeah yeah like you said down and then like I fly in the air and then I sit down yeah it's it's wild uh so I don't know maybe next season you'll see us with a different probably not snarly in the budget but just going to [ __ ] out some money to buy two new chairs we'll start a GoFundMe and oh there you go there you go yeah you all can contribute so if you guys see a change Don't Panic we will walk you through it we will hold
(01:32) your hands through our furniture changes and your makeshift set makeshift this is a set that's true this is a real set this is a this is a whole production this is a whole ass thing yes yeah right before you hit record we were just talking about nobody wants this on Netflix and we were saying that who seems to be doing the editing who's doing the marketing who's doing the social media I don't know they're just showing up and talking so you know props to us props to us cuz we know what really happens behind the
(02:05) scenes grueling work I love that like so many people have like have you seen this this is so you guys and I'm like is it that's insulting anyway how are you oh how am I how are you uh I am exhausted I'm exhausted I'm not going to lie my energy levels are pretty low today okay it's just been really busy at work it's just been very energy consuming mhm so uh yeah I don't know I'm [ ] here you're here you showed up speaking of [ ] stuff out I'm just going to [ __ ] out the story too it'll be a it'll be a theme today just
(02:52) me you know what else to tell you what are you saying right now [ __ ] pulled up in sweats I love it though it means you're comfy and you're you're ready to just take that mask off and yeah yeah yeah yeah the real me now the real stories start you know yeah everything else I've said in the last several episodes just no no no nah how about you I'm pretty good that's great I think that my answer usually just depends on the amount of sleep I've been getting okay and I slept a lot last night so so I feel good today that's great yeah
(03:28) congrats thanks what's that like let me tell you it's good like life is good no I've actually I haven't been down on sleep it's more like the waking hours are just Perpetual anxiety you know yeah you're social battery so I'm so tired that by the time my head hits the pillow it's like you know o what's that like it's been a while since I fell asleep right when my head hits the pillow oh yeah yeah I love it we going switch places for bit and then you can like yeah yeah that sounds good yeah I can do your job I think oh yeah yeah
(04:10) okay okay same same yeah something with like numbers right okay just laptop and yeah yeah got a little Excel sheet going on I'll put like a couple numbers in one row and then at the end I'll put equals some you know yeah that's good you know what no your your Excel sheets are pretty nice you play around with the colors the fonts they're good I feel like I took that from you our Career Center job in college where we had to make a bunch of data spreadsheets yeah yeah and we were so particular about like oh well April is more of like
(04:47) spring so we I still do that I still think about the month and what that color like what what that evokes in me what's the vibe yeah you got it I do that with my like travel spreadsheets too love a travel I love our travel spreadsheets oh so good right if any of you need a template um we got you um I got some announcements hit me so we are nearing the end of the season everyone we were not kidding we are going to follow the quter system academic calendar we're going to take a long ass winter break and this is going
(05:21) to be our last episode then we'll have a bonus little Saab Story episode and then we're going to dip for like 2 months we're going to hibernate yeah oh that's cute let's use that we're going to hibernate and you'll see us in January the best month it's like the worst month but it's my birthday month so I was like who literally no one but for you I'll let you have that Jan 7even everyone our favorite Capricorn oh I can't wait for January um oh and also we got more hats sold out of our first batch came back bought even
(06:09) more and they are ready for you so go to our link and bio on Instagram we're at beb crying. podcast on all socials and you will find a link there and also sign up for the newsletter because if you signed up for the newsletter you would already know this mhm come on don't you want your hands on that cute [ __ ] hat it's so cute I don't know if you've been seeing this people have been posting themselves and tagging us in their stories and I love it they they've been like so vulnerable and I'm like oh my God this is this is
(06:45) exactly I'm not asking them you would think I was paying them I'm not I'm not asking them to do this and they're just doing it on their own accord and they're like yeah I we with me so proudly everywhere when I God stop I love it I'm going to cry please we welcome it so yeah if you want to join the crew boohoo crew shout out my husband for coming up with that a little too late you know we were halfway through our second season he was like why not boohoo crew why not why didn't you [ __ ] tell me that we asked for suggestions we didn't get any
(07:18) response so we went with crybaby is what I'm saying you know what that's fine it's okay boo crew is when you have the Hat you know let's let's do that all right that's all I got all right okay bye [Music] by you starting this off today I guess going to [ ] out a story uh yeah I'll [ ] one out for you hold on she loves it here everyone she's so happy to be here right now hey hey hey you've had your fair share as well oh yeah of episodes where you're just like oh [ __ ] yeah yeah yeah yeah those are rough okay
(08:00) easy cry level today solid one o okay I've had some Heavy Hitters this season I'm just G to today please give me give me something easy I'm going to [ __ ] chill okay I'm going to start off with a fun fact for you ooh can I guess it yeah and I'll until you get it right no not that one not even like hot or cool just like nope keep going try again try again okay I'm sorry I'm sorry please hit me okay okay did you know that my name Angela is derived from the word Angel oh I did not did you know that no I didn't it's hard right like you wouldn't
(08:52) suspect like you wouldn't what does that me what does Angela mean have you ever looked up what your name meant m yeah but I don't remember okay it's most holy Most Holy excellent me pure sacred okay it's giving like pure blood though you know yeah I don't know how I feel about that well anyway I like to think that even if we don't go to like the Google meaning of our names I feel like the sound of the name and like the vibe of the name does set a precedent for what kind of person they'll be mhm 100% right yeah did your
(09:34) parents ever consider another name for you yeah well my dad's name is Ben so he wanted to name me Benita can you imagine no can you imagine no I can't hi everyone welcome to beby crying I'm Benita also known as Benny oh oh no no no I can't imagine right right I don't think my parents ever considered another name they were like Angela mhm so why do I bring this up why do I bring up names well because today I will be talking to you about a musician and her name is temps which is short for tamade which in Nigerian means the crown
(10:26) is mine oh right oh like can you [ ] imagine if that's your [ ] name really cool you [ ] know like this is someone who's meant for something [ ] big ooh okay uh so sources for today a 2020 interview TS did with Nelson CJ for ok Africa a 2022 interview TS did with Carl lamari for billboard and a 2024 interview TS did with Cordy EO so TS is an afro beats and R&B singer from Nigeria and she's been breaking through the music industry for the last like four to 5 years and she's just [ __ ] killing it she is in the middle
(11:12) of a world tour right now in fact I just went and saw her last month in SF is that who you saw that's who I saw I went with my sis shout out tiny and uh duh incredible show oh my God so good so good I came across her music maybe 2 or 3 years ago I had like a few of her songs in my Spotify library but it wasn't until I came across her tiny desk M it was at the time when they were doing the atome desk concerts because it was covid so it was kind of cool cuz it was longer videos people were doing like five six songs and her set was [ __ ]
(11:58) gorgeous so yeah I got caught up in her tiny desk and I was like wo this looks aesthetically so beautiful and then I was like uh also every song is a [ __ ] Bop like it's just I love her sound so yeah she's just great and as I've delved into her a little bit more in all of these live performances and all of these interviews that I've seen her give and all of these clips of her she just gives off such a grounding presence like she's just very rooted to who she is and it's almost like she's unbothered by any sort of like outside
(12:40) noise or any sort of unnecessary [ ] there's like a inner peace to her energy and she just exudes such a calm confidence and you can very clearly hear that in the music that she creates so for my story today I want to highlight one of her songs I actually wanted to highlight two but I just did not have the bandwidth to do both Okay the reason I wanted to do more than just one of her songs is because I genuinely feel like so much of her music is almost like a spiritual experience which I know sounds [ ]
(13:22) dramatic but like you'll see you'll see not dramatic at all yeah I just feel like her music has this ability to translate these very specific feelings into sounds and then the lyrics or the messages of her songs they make you think they make you realize like God she has so much insight to offer and I think it just speaks to the Rarity of her Artistry so I'll cover one song today I'll eventually cover the other song I have in mind in a future episode at some point but first before we dive into the song Some context so TS was born in Nigeria in
(14:11) 1995 she actually lived in the UK for the first 5 years of her life and then she moved back to Nigeria where she graduated from college with a degree in economics okay she's an academic and she describes her childhood as a lonely one or maybe not lonely I think it was an intentional choice for her to be alone a lot of the time she talks a lot in her interview with Cordy EO about being really shy as a kid and being very selective about who she chooses to spend time with can you imagine having that maturity boundaries such a young age she said
(14:57) that she found a lot of reasons to not like people and wasn't very interested in other people's Petty dramas which is like I cannot relate because give me every single Petty drama that you have to share I want to listen again at a very young age just very sure of who she was and what she was worth Lonely at the Top wearing that crown of hers you know mhm okay so after graduating from college she starts working for this digital marketing firm and she talks about how she did everything right she did everything that she was supposed to
(15:34) do everything that her family expected her to do but she was like dude I [ __ ] hate this which is like what like what do you mean you hate working it's so fun you know so all throughout her life music had always been her safe haven and specifically the joy in making music it gave her such peace and she was like this is what I have to offer the world so in 2018 she quit her job and she was like okay I'm going to give this a real honest shot like I really think I have something here wins a Grammy 5 years later but
(16:13) okay so this song that I want to talk about today is from her first studio album called Born in the wild which was released this year in 2024 and the song is called me and you so I want to spend a good amount of time talking about both the song and the music video M uh which she directed herself very casually of course so I'm not going to tell you anything about the song yes we're going to go in blind but for those of you listening if you want to watch this before we dive into it again this is the music video for me and you by
(17:02) that was so cool um arens do you have any guesses as to what the whole meaning and message of the song was if you could summarize it I don't know if I want to because I that's fair what you were saying about it feeling spiritual it's like I don't want to butcher you know what I mean the sanctity of whatever that was well I mean you're on the right path this song is about her relationship with God and her relationship with herself oh I'm already oh okay so we will dive into why those two separate relationships can
(17:47) actually be interchangeable I'm telling you she's like on an elevated plane you know that [ __ ] crown of hers I'm crying already [Music] so kind of new territory for our podcast I know that we haven't really talked about the existence of God or organized religion or even spirituality as a whole we kind of skirted around it when we talked about journey of souls but this is definitely coming at it from a different angle today and I'm I'm a little nervous about kind of delving into this territory mainly because I'm clearly not an expert at all
(18:36) on this subject and I also know that it can be a sensitive one where people kind of I don't even want to go there but maybe just some background on me and hopefully that kind of establishes that this is a safe space straight up like you and me product of [ __ ] what 20 years of Catholic private school and you know my family very typical Filipino Catholic Family and a lot of that was embedded in my childhood and kind of forming my moral compass and I think now that I'm older I do feel pretty detached from a lot of the traditions and structures and
(19:27) beliefs around Catholicism and this is by no means a unique experience I think I know a lot of people who feel the same level of I don't really know and I think that's totally fine that's totally normal and it's it's to be expected but with all of that aside I I do still prescribe to this wonderful idea that there is a bigger meaning to all of this I don't know what it is and I'm not going to call it God and I'm not going to advocate for a certain way of thinking over some other idea nor am I trying to convince anyone
(20:12) listening that there is this one and right way to do it but I will say for me that I still believe and feel that there is some higher power out there and whatever it is is my personal relationship to this Cosmic force is just between me and this Force period and this is what TS is saying in this song the first lines in her song are this is my decision this is my decision and she's she's upfront about it this is up to me to decide what to believe what to take from this relationship I don't need to abide by any set of rules or an established
(21:11) formula and the chorus repeated all throughout the song is just one lyric only me and you this is between me and God and that's it and as you're watching this [ __ ] gorgeous music video you see temps in various settings scenes of her standing in the middle of the ocean her gazing up at a sunset her on the balcony of this high-rise building all of these scenes jux toose her against this vastness these physical settings that hint to the magnitude of a higher unknown and she's alone it's just her and this endless expanse and then as we get into the
(22:14) second verse and chorus we get scenes of her in this candlelit Temple and it's the only house of worship that you see in this whole music video but still when she's in this Temple she's alone and she's dancing and she's praying and she's meditating and she's surrounded by all these candles and it feels intimate and it feels personal and it feels private and that's what spirituality should be and should feel like and finally this last setting that were introduced to in kind of the latter half of the song it's an homage to her
(23:07) Nigerian culture there are scenes of her participating in some sort of cultural dance with what appears to be a village or a tribe and there are other women playing drums while TS dances and it's almost like it's almost like she's tapping into this Divine femininity stemming from all of these women who surround her you know her Roots her her people and in this setting I always tear up when I see this very brief clip of her where she's actually playing the drums with this little girl and TS is sitting down while the
(24:06) girl is standing over her and they're both beating this drum together and TS is looking up at this girl and it could be several things it could be this awe that you experience as a mother raising a child it could be you looking at the younger version of yourself your inner child and it's like all these Snippets in this music video are alluding to this idea that there are just so many ways to access this power all of these things are ways that we experience a connection to something beyond words and that's it that's that's the
(24:56) relationship with God when you no longer have the words T says that me and you is about discovering the real me building a genuine relationship with the Creator and getting a true perception of self and I think it's perfect the way that she puts these two hand in hand and you'll see that in the video too these visuals of like her walking on water or her wearing all white these very direct symbols of her being the Divine and I think for you and me we talk so much about our own journeys of self-improvement and understanding ourselves and facing
(25:51) our feelings I mean that's why we made this pod you know like that's why we talk about these things week after week but at some point we have to ask ourselves why are we doing this what's it all for like what is tying all of this together and whatever your answer to that question is that's for you religion Faith spirituality whatever it is we'll never know 100% we'll never get it right completely and we're not meant to but if at some point in this life if you have even a tiny semblance of feeling a connection to something that is greater
(26:45) than you then that's yours to treasure it's personal it's private it's not for us to enforce on anyone it's not Something That We're obligated to broadcast for the masses but if we want to it's there for us to tap into no one can take that from us so thank you temps for reminding us all and giving us a [ ] Bop in the process that is such a Bop right if I heard that at like the [ ] club I'd be like right and that's the thing I was listening to it because I like was [ __ ] Dy and it was Tiny who was like you know what the song is about right
(27:37) and I was like no what's it about I was like oh my God like imagine having the wisdom and the talent yeah to share that that is such a common thing in everything we talk about like having that knowledge and being able to transform it into something that we can just like look at and be in such awe of yeah I like how you started this by saying I'm just going to [ __ ] out a story that was so beautiful and I I really appreciate you touching so delicately on this matter of organized religion and spirituality because you're
(28:20) right we definitely don't talk about and I feel like it's been kind of intentional and not necessarily bringing it up it's been on my mind too like you know because this is something that I feel is really big to us off screen and we've had a lot of conversations about it in private mm mhm but I appreciate the way you phrase that because I think for me personally when I look back on a lot of that there's a lot of hostility mhh and I love what you did here and what TS has done because it's it's a reminder that religion and spirituality doesn't have
(29:03) to be something that I'm angry about and in my past it can be something that I can look at differently mhm it's something for you to reclaim yeah in whatever way you want to mhm you don't have to be told anymore you can forge your own path like there's a freedom there yeah I will definitely I could just like reimagining the video now knowing the full depth of yeah I knew I didn't want to give a [ ] shot at what is this about what were you going say no it's just that like I don't think any [ ] that was going to come out of my mouth would have
(29:44) measured up to yeah yeah but you know what I mean by like it just feels like oh wow we're we're on a different plane right now yeah you know what I mean MH yeah I [ ] love her I not really familiar with her stuff so I'm excited to like get into it mhm oh that was so good cuz you know how every week it's like oh wow our stories actually tie well together yeah when you first started saying yours I was like no no no ours is very different but then like but then you [ ] brought it around and I was like okay okay [ __ ] hold on let me
(30:25) Linger on TS a little bit do you want to watch it again let's just [ ] watch it [ ] it I mean we haven't done this before but again I feel like I know that you like going in blind but now that you have the context it's even more I will cry now okay I feel like we could do it an entire season on this kind of [ __ ] like there's so much what do you mean like I feel like there's like for a lot of of us there's a lot buried there around this entire topic I think that it's sensitive for a reason and I think it is because it's it is so private when
(31:11) it comes down to it yeah like there's just so much that I there's so much I could say right now but again you don't need to it's yours I genuinely feel like I'm in therapy like this is oh Tams girl you got me you got me with that one well I'm glad you liked it I did yeah that was pretty good I mean it's [Music] okay oo all right okay all right I'm going to sit [ __ ] back kind of a hard pivot but not really we'll figure something out to pull them together oh it's there okay it's there but contextually feels like a hard pivot
(32:06) that's fine okay so I know you and I joke often about being academics joke see this that's what I'm saying where's the joke yeah um we are what am I saying but I would like to say you guys don't know we're being like sarcastic when we say like oh yeah we're academic yeah I mean it's because we're really like not okay let me just please okay fine if you don't if you don't understand if you haven't been tuning in for the past 18 episodes we're frauds okay we're frauds okay okay I think some of that is our fault
(32:42) but I genuinely think a lot of it it's due to our our education and How Deeply flawed the education system was especially when it comes to history we were almost always taught history from the colonizers first perspective very rarely from an indigenous perspective or the perspective of any colonized people for that matter but now that we're older and more learned it's November we're approaching Thanksgiving we know that it's not just about the [ __ ] cornicopia you know it's not about the little pilgrims the Mayflower ploth
(33:22) Plymouth no no no no no we know that it is Native American history month so today I'm going to be talking about a documentary called daughter of a lost bird my sources for today are an episode from a podcast called All My Relations and it's titled native children belong in Native homes that episode aired on March 8th 2023 and honestly really good episode they're so smart and funny they even cried I was like okay yeah uh friend request add me add me um and then I also reference season two of a different podcast called this land and then my
(34:09) last source is the documentary itself daughter of a lost bird side note I had the hardest time figuring out how to watch this okay I wanted to watch it so badly but I could only find like purchase this academic license for $400 I was like no I can't but I can't afford that so so finally I was like um I like emailed the film like their General email I was like hey yeah and they sent me a link it was $2 on the documentary Channel yeah I will link it there so all of you can watch it it's pretty short it's like an A little over an hour
(34:45) okay so some cook context I want to give a little brief history lesson before I dive into the documentary because I think this is really really important [ __ ] so as we know as I hope we know after centuries of genocide and stealing native people's land the US government in a Las ditch effort to eradicate all native peoples started the Indian adoption project in the late 50s have you heard of this okay is what I'm saying you know right right right right so the goal was to displace native children and put them in white
(35:25) homes huh yeah what I'm saying yes yes so the as quoted in the documentary the goal was to absorb and assimilate these children so they would literally like people would come home from the grocery store and their kids would be gone like they would come up and they would literally like snatch a kid and who the put them in yeah it's so it's so [ ] up yeah no I started doing some background trying to put the story together and I was [ ] riveted cuz I was obviously outraged I kept finding different podcasts to listen to and I
(36:01) was like I have to put together my story but I can't stop like this is crazy yeah yeah it's really [ ] up what was the ACT called it was called the Indian adoption project oh my God so for two decades pretty much around 30% of native children were in foster homes yes yeah see the shock is like this shouldn't come as a shock to us because this is so [ ] up and we were just never taught this stuff oh my God yeah yeah and so the narrative was that they were saving these children from savagery and barbarism and obviously we see now it
(36:36) was cultural genocide they were trying to hopefully assimilate these kids into white homes so that pretty soon there would be no more native peoples [ ] [ ] so in 1978 native activists pushed the Indian Child wealth for ACT through legislation and the point of this was to protect native children from being separated from their tribes and this is so important 1978 yes no like 20 years later yeah what the [ ] yeah okay sorry I'm just like in shock exactly yeah listeners this is [ ] and this is why this is this is
(37:15) why this [ ] is important okay anyway so the Indian Child Welfare act known as IA for short it's been hailed as the gold standard for positive outcomes in the child welfare system and this all resurfaced in the news about a year ago because it was being challenged in the Supreme Court I could get in I could [ ] get into this you just did like the biggest AR of my life yeah I didn't write this down but it all started because of a white family who was like that's racist that we can't adopt this native child
(37:51) who we've been fostering that's not fair it's so [ __ ] you're supposed to make me cry I'm so I'm am sorry I did cry okay anyway so thankfully it was it was challenged but it upheld in court and I said in my sources this podcast called this land their entire season 2 is kind of following this whole progression incredible I'll link this all in the show notes yeah and so basically these native children were just Pawns in this grand scheme to dismantle the tribal sovereignty so with that said we'll into the documentary so
(38:29) daughter of a lost bird follows a woman named Kendra Potter and it was produced by another woman named Brook pepian sweny who is herself native and she's an enrolled citizen of the black feet Nation this was filmed over the course of seven years and some background on Kendra so she's native and she was adopted by a white family but she was raised in such a loving environment that it really wasn't an emotional void that was pushing her to dig up her Roots it was more when she was pregnant with her first child it caused her to sett all on
(39:07) this journey so after a [ __ ] ton of paperwork and bureaucracy she finally makes contact with her biological mother named April and they write letters they send these emails back and forth and Kendra finds out that she's lumy which is a tribe in Northwest Washington State and it's sit ated on the water and having discovered this part of her identity Kendra wants to claim being native but she doesn't really know what that looks like because she spent her whole life you know being white so at this point in the
(39:41) documentary you know it's 2013 she's pregnant with her first child and she has this realization that I have never seen my own blood she says this is a quote from the documentary I can't fathom how somebody would go through this experience of feeling someone move inside of them and not be changed forever so again years of back and forth lots of [ __ ] we finally get to see their first phone call and then eventually their first reunion and that's one of the scenes I wanted to show you okay so I'm about to show n a
(40:17) scene and this is Kendra and April's first phone call see I told you I cried um yeah so I just showed n's two scenes from the documentary and in the first scene it's April and Kendra's first phone call and you can hear April saying you're so loved you're the one thing I did right for many many many years you are the one thing that I did right and I'm so honored that you came back just to let me know and then it transitions very quickly into the reunion scene when they meet for the first time so this is 1 month later
(40:58) and Kendra is like I'm going to puke I'm going to puke I'm going to puke and she's so you can like feel how nervous she is and she's like I don't want the elevator door to open but when she finally sees April they linger in this beautiful hug and this isn't a sound effect I learned this through the podcast All My Relations that sound that was Kendra's heart beating like the microphone was picking it up and you can hear a heart beating and then like it's slows down cuz it starts to sink with April's heartbeat it's just it's really
(41:35) beautiful I really thought that was like sound that was her heart beating yeah yeah so we find out more about April's backstory and she herself was adopted because she was born to a white mom and a native dad and so it was this special case because she didn't have a formal affiliation with the tribe so she wasn't protected by so on top of this she was born during a time when adoptions had a very little paper trail so this generation was known as lost Birds it was named after lost bird who was a Lakota woman and she was
(42:12) adopted by a general after she was found alive among victims of the Wounded Knee Massacre and so April struggled for decades with substance abuse and lived on the streets in Portland for years and years you know she suffered abuse growing up and at 6 years clean so this is well after she had Kendra gave her up for adoption at 6 years clean she got a letter from her birth mother and her birth father she says she was a little bit like what the [ __ ] when she got her dad's letter because it was like I hope this talking paper finds you in a good
(42:50) place I go by the name of chadis gum witch Tatum and she was like what is this and then at the end it says I believe I am your father she says when she first met her dad he walked up and he took his left hand and he swiped her down from shoulder to hip she's kind of like whoa what's happening and he was like I'm claiming you like a Bearpaw and then her brother hugged her and said welcome home we've been looking for you my whole life so in this documentary we watch Kendra and April travel to lumy for um the lumy stommish Water Festival this is
(43:31) in 2016 now they're going around they're hugging all their relatives everyone is telling Kendra welcome home I hope you had a good life and there's one scene which I'll play for you now and it's Kendra in a car listening over the stereo system to this sacred recording of her grandfather singing and it's this beautiful moment where you can just feel how loved she is just for existing in the car with her is her I guess her great uncle who is her grandfather's brother so it's a sacred recording so we can't hear it but her great uncle is
(44:13) kind of tapping the feather on beet and then she slowly starts to tap it too and then he takes the feather and he brushes her head softly and then her hands almost like he's blessing her and she feels tentative at first but it's like God it's so it's so beautiful so after that scene Kendra is kind of reflecting on how she used to see native Anger from a distance like yes like it's so tragic but you know let's be compassionate and loving like all we can do now is move forward but now she has this deeper understanding of
(44:57) that anger so she's struggling like what do I do with all this inside of me and she says I identified as white the strange confusion of white guilt native anger where does it sit in me how do I sit with both of these things and she has this tragic realization towards the end of the documentary that she is the Pinnacle of assimilation she is the perfect example of kill the Indian save the man there's so many feelings and it's just so like uted and painful and at the end of the documentary Kendra is struggling to obtain Lami citizenship
(45:34) she does eventually in the Years following obtain it but there's so many hurdles and again paperwork but it ends so beautifully with the tribe wrapping up Kendra and April in these blankets in this welcome home ceremony and this is the last scene I wanted to show you and this is almost at the very end of the documentary so in that last scene I just showed nins they say at the beginning we have a ceremony that we want to do because I know that hole is still there for both of you whenever they feel like they're
(46:11) alone or they don't have a sense of belonging they can wrap themselves in this blanket Auntie and Uncle are going to sing the honor song and I want everyone to come and welcome them home and then each person goes up and takes turns hugging them and then Brooke the filmmaker ends with this narration and saying this story can't be wrapped up in a neat bow because it's such a complex experience to be native in this country and sometimes painful but also beautiful and powerful and a million other things and this is Kendra's Journey not mine
(46:42) neither one of us know the end of the story so prior to this whole documentary and kind of doing this deep dive I did not fully grasp all those atrocities that we were talking about everything that happened in the ' 50s with the Indian adoption project and again maybe it wasn't necessarily our fault that we didn't learn about this that this wasn't part of our curriculum but it is certainly our responsibility now to understand how grave and widespread this was and still is whether it's genocide here on American soil or in Palestine or
(47:25) anywhere else in the world if are truly truly committed to Collective Liberation then it's our responsibility to understand and take on the plight of all oppressed people and acknowledge the role that our countries our colonizers play in perpetuating harm we talk a lot about our Journeys as individual souls and you know choosing the bodies that we want to inhabit but I think that there's so much to gain from knowing where you come from and there's so much to lose when that's stripped from us last year joar and I took SAA to the
(48:09) Philippines for the first time and it was also our first time in Jar's Province and it was so special to see them in this land both of them for the first time in this land where they come from and meeting all these people all their relatives for the first time and obviously SAA is not going to remember it but it still felt really important to give her that opportunity to you know lay claim to her land and her people and for them to lay claim to her and if we give her that chance to keep doing that for the rest of her life
(48:50) it will completely shape her sense of self of course this is obviously not the same thing as what native people have experienced you know our people weren't forcibly removed from our homes and we didn't endure genocide and stolen land and active attempts to obliterate our people at least not to this extent at least not on American soil but that feeling of reconnecting with the people and the land that we come from and understanding their stories it might not tell us everything that we need to know know but it can be a step in healing and watching
(49:32) Kendra and April persist through this honestly like [ __ ] journey of identity and arriving at a place that probably begets more questions than answers you can see at the end that Kendra is like I don't what am I going to do with this like how do I move forward with this it's so messy and it's so heartbreaking but God their lives are so much richer because of it I know that they don't regret setting out on this journey and I think that for those of us who straddle multiple identities we may never feel entirely
(50:12) this or entirely that but maybe belonging isn't some sort of destination that we're trying to that we try to spend our whole lives arriving at maybe it's just a series of moments that we look back on and we say oh there it was there it was when I stepped onto my homeland and in those waters for the first time when I held my loved ones long enough for our heartbeats to slow and then sink up when they wrap me in that blanket and welcome me home all of these Snippets and these memories and these feelings like maybe that's maybe that's
(51:00) belonging so thank you Kendra and Brooke and April for sharing and capturing this story and for giving us all the chance to witness this journey that's so uniquely native but at the same time so familiar for anyone who searching for themselves beautiful it is so important I mean I think you and I with all of these things that interest us like astrology and all of these methods of telling us who we are like we so desperately want to know all of us you know who are we who are we and that is such an important part of
(51:51) it and it's it's heartbreaking that that's the story because not only are you trying to ask this huge question but then it opens up the well what if then who would I have been you know yeah in that podcast episode on All My Relations they ask Kendra why is it important that native children stay in Native homes and she says that her child she has two children now her daughter has never not been native and she has so much more of an understanding of what that means than Kendra now in adulthood and again like it shapes us I think that sometimes
(52:33) we don't really think about it that deeply because it's so embedded in us especially our own Heritage it's like we're so sure of it yeah but that's not always the case all right so tie it together [ __ ] I was going to ask you to do that well I think searching for meaning and belonging is kind of one and the same I mean like you said we are just trying to understand ourselves and how we fit mhm but it is such a personal Journey like what the filmmaker says at the end like this is Kendra's story exactly and then it's like those moments
(53:20) where you are discovering yourself or where Kendra is discovering herself and she's realizing all of this love that she had always had she just didn't know it was there that's God like that's that power yeah and it's for her yeah I appreciate your bravery in telling that story too I know that it's kind of similar to mine where should I open this door but if we don't who will then we'll continue not knowing about this we'll continue not wanting to face these topics but why how do we how do we grow how do we evolve how do we
(54:09) learn if we don't this was kind of a heavier one or weighty in its magnitude I I don't know how to say heavy I feel like it's more complex more thinking that we have to do AC [Laughter] well listeners crybabies I think we did it yeah I think we did a good job I think so too maybe our Spirit guides are like tell this one and I'll tell her to tell this one you know yeah I bet you probably I bet you yeah well thank you for listening our cry babies we appreciate you joining us on thisam journey of self-discovery and facing these hard
(55:04) topics these complex topics and just giving us Grace as we try to navigate it together beautifully said I know it says comedy podcast but sometimes we have [ ] to say [ ] [ ] [ ] to pull out [ __ ] to pull out of our asses mhm well you know where to find us beb crying.
(55:33) podcast on all socials sign up for our substack get the Deets on the merch hear from US Weekly send us your SOB stories send us cry recommendations give us those ratings those reviews I did see a couple ratings you did yeah so it's working people are listening wow I didn't check okay appreciate it you guys truly truly truly I know it's so annoying when every single content creator is shouting in your face for rates and reviews but we have less followers than them so and also there's a reason why they're telling you to do it because it's important yeah truly and it's so so
(56:19) appreciated it helps us so much all right all right I think you [ ] went out I did I [ ] went out you did it was both beautiful shits beautiful shits so that's it for today mhm I'm going to get some well-deserved rest you do that you are going to get some well-deserved rest I will and then we will come back mhm but until then BRB crying [Music]
Until next time…brb crying :’)