Roadtrip Nation

>>Narrator: How do I know which path is best for me?

Is it possible to take on these challenges and obstacles?

Where do I even start?

What should I do with my life?

Sometimes, the only way to find out is to go see what's possible Since 2001, we've been sharing the stories of people who ventured out and explored different career paths and different possibilities for their futures.

This is one of those stories.

This is Roadtrip Nation.

[MUSIC] >> Isaac: With our traditions and our lifestyle as Native American people, we identify with the land, and we're always mindful of our impact spiritually and within the community.

We're so closely connected with the land that we live on.

>> [MUSIC] >> Kimberlee: Sometimes I feel like the weight weighs on my shoulders, as a mother, and a daughter, and a student.

I want my children to live in a different kind of world than I grew up.

>> Elizabeth: It's really easy to get caught up in everybody's expectations of you.

It's really easy to want to pull after success, and pull after the validation of people who you feel like should be validating you.

When really, at the end of the day, it's your life, and you're the one who has to live with it.

So you are the one who has to decide what you want to do.

>> [MUSIC] >> Kimberlee: [FOREIGN] Hi, I'm Kimberlee Blevins, I'm an enrolled member of the Mandan Hidatsa Arikara Nation.

My traditional name is Sunlight Woman.

I am a graduate student studying Environmental Science at Sitting Bull College in North Dakota.

I have a background in pre-engineering and Native American leadership.

I have two beautiful babies, I have a 13 year old and a toddler that keeps me on the go all the time.

I'm anxious to just get to interview these game changers that in their own right are changing the world.

Me and two other roadtrippers are gonna be spending time together on this RV.

Liz and Isaac, I haven't had a chance to meet them yet.

I'm super excited, I'm anticipating what kind of great people they're gonna be.

>> Elizabeth: My name is Elizabeth Zingg.

I graduated from ASU in the fall of 2017 with a degree in speech and hearing sciences, and a minor in Romanian.

Do you guys know about the buffalo?

This white lady in Custer State Park decided to approach a buffalo on the side of the road.

And she walked up to it with her camera phone, she was gonna take a picture of it.

And the buffalo attacked her and trampled her.

And she's mostly okay, but the buffalo absolutely ripped her pants off, and then just ran around with her blue jeans stuck to its horn.

>> [MUSIC] >> Elizabeth: I'm hoping to meet some really cool people and to learn from them, and to hear what they have to say about their lives.

And what kind of wisdom they've gleaned from their years of being here.

I'm excited for the bus.

I love road trips.

>> Isaac: My name is Isaac, I'm from the Hopi Reservation.

I grew up in Flagstaff, Arizona.

It's just a good opportunity to step out of my world, and get a perspective that I haven't known yet.

So in a lot of ways, I'm honestly not sure what to expect, because I haven't traveled like this, and I'm just going in with an open mindset.

>> [MUSIC] >> Elizabeth: I brought sweet grass for the bus.

I think we're gonna meet it.

>> Kimberlee: Yeah, definitely on this.

>> Isaac: We're gonna have to put some Native stickers in here, though, to represent.

>> Kimberlee: So we're about to embark on this trip for a couple weeks.

We're going to hit Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, and Oklahoma.

>> [MUSIC] >> Elizabeth: [FOREIGN] My name is Elizabeth Zingg, I live in Phoenix, Arizona, and I'm an enrolled member of the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin.

I graduated from ASU in the fall of 2017, with a degree in speech and hearing sciences.

I worked in speech therapy for a few years.

My challenges I think are mostly educational.

I'm not sure what kind of education I need.

I feel like I have really big aspirations.

I really want to empower our youth and uplift the Indigiqueer people.

What can I do as a water protector, or what could I do to help land sovereignty, or food sovereignty?

I want to be able to help with all of that.

My mom was born in the 60s.

She was born before ICWA.

ICWA is the Indian Child Welfare Act.

ICWA protects Native children from just being adopted outside of their nation and their families.

Cuz what was happening in the 60s is social workers would come into a Native home.

I mean, they would be trained to go ahead and look for any reason they wanted to get that child removed and placed in a white family.

So that way they would lose touch with their culture, and be assimilated very quickly and efficiently into America.

And that happened to my mom.

And they moved her all the way to Arizona, which was tragically outside of the realm of her nation and her culture.

But my grandmother never hid from her where she came from.

My mom always knew she was Native.

So I grew up in a really tiny private Christian school that was really racially aggressive.

And I got teased a lot as a kid.

And so being this brown Native kid in this white private Christian school, I definitely was typecasted in all the different games that we would play at recess and everything.

>> [MUSIC] >> Kimberlee: Our first interview is with Bobby Wilson.

It doesn't sound like he's had the easiest path, but those are always for me the best paths to listen to.

>> Bobby: [LAUGH] Are we started?

>> Isaac: Yeah [LAUGH] >> Bobby: I'm from Minnesota originally.

>> Elizabeth: What part?

>> Bobby: Twin Cities, born and raised, Dakota homeland.

>> Isaac: What was your home life like?

>> Bobby: I was arrested for graffiti.

I was 16 and then I was sentenced to live in a county boys home for two years, till I turned 18.

And was in and out of jail, mostly for graffiti stuff, or trespassing, or shoplifting, stuff like that.

That continued on into my twenties.

[LAUGH] I just took a look at my life, and I saw the people that I wanted to be like, who were my mentors.

And I saw the people that I was hanging out with.

>> Kimberlee: So then when was your transition to start to, I guess, be productive or make change?

>> Bobby: When I was in the county boys home, you could only leave if you were going to school or if you were going to work.

And my probation officer hooked me up with some youth art programs in St. Paul and in Minneapolis, and there I ended up meeting some really amazing teachers.

The high school I ended up going to was called Creative Arts High School, and those teachers too they super helped me out big time.

And that's when I met my now dear friends Ryan RedCorn and Sterlin Harjo.

Working with those guys, we started making YouTube videos and started a comedy troupe called 1491s.

And it completely altered my life forever, completely changed the direction of everything I was doing.

There's a woman named Sierra Teller Ornelas, who grew up here in Tucson, and she has been a Network Comedy TV writer for the last ten years.

And she reached out to me on Instagram, she said, send me just something that you wrote, so I did.

And then she had me meet with her and a guy named Ed Helms, he's a big TV star, movie star guy, anyway, and they were creating a show called Rutherford Falls.

And I guess, they liked my interview, so they hired me and I started working for them in January of 2020.

And then the pandemic hit.

[LAUGH] And I got to keep working out of the second bedroom in our little house here in Tucson.

So I've been writing Hollywood TV shows from a tiny little desk that I got for 20 bucks on Craigslist.

And I got to write that show, a whole season of it, I got to be in the show, I learned a whole, whole, whole hell of a lot from those guys.

And then our dear friend and co-1491 got his own show called Reservation Dogs, and he hired me as a writer on that one as well after I was done with Rutherford Falls.

And then after that got finished up, I had an interview with Marvel Studios, and they hired me to be a writer on one of their TV shows, which is what I'm working on right now.

>> Kimberlee: So you have this super awesome path, and from what I experienced from great people is they're never settled with where they're at.

So what do you aspire to be now?

>> Bobby: Rich.

>> Kimberlee: [LAUGH] >> Bobby: [LAUGH] I aspire to be rich.

>> Kimberlee: [LAUGH] >> Bobby: Give it all to me.

>> Elizabeth: [LAUGH] >> Bobby: My whole life, I've made my entire life about art, and that means beading, that means painting, that means writing, that means acting, that means all of that stuff, it's all, in my head it's all of the same thing.

And the goal for that is to just keep it building, but also to keep collaborating.

Building family, building community, and also bring other Indians into the fold as best as I can, cuz freaking like it's our time, finally.

>> Kimberlee: [LAUGH] >> Elizabeth: I have a college degree, I have a bachelor's, and I hate what I got my bachelor's in, and I have- >> Bobby: What did you get it in?

>> Elizabeth: Speech and hearing sciences.

In college, I really wanted to switch my major at one point to art, and then everybody discouraged me from doing that.

>> Bobby: Yeah.

>> Elizabeth: But you have education with art in a formal sense, do you think that's important?

>> Bobby: You know, folks go to art school, totally cool, I've got a lot of, a couple of my mentors went to art school, one of them teaches art at an art school now.

And so there's nothing wrong with that, it just was not what I was able to do financially with my own life.

That said, I knew it's what I wanted with my life, so I sought people out who could teach me, yeah.

I always really cringe when people are like, you're self-taught?

Cuz, no, I am not self-taught, I am taught by a lot of different people.

>> Elizabeth: Bobby Wilson was really cool, he was a cool guy, he's super funny, I really enjoyed talking with him.

>> Kimberlee: For me, that was just a lot to take away of how many struggles he went through and he just kept being persistent.

>> Isaac: It was cool to see that he was able to find a balance, he was able to work hard and keep focused despite his past and his upbringing.

I think my biggest takeaway was always be ready for when an opportunity comes your way, and to always be learning, and growing, and training yourself, and hanging out with the right people.

>> [MUSIC] >> Isaac: I work at a nonprofit organization called Teen Challenge, it's a faith based discipleship program that helps people struggling with life controlling addictions.

I think what's exciting for me is being able to go into those high activity areas in the neighborhoods where there's a lot of drug transactions going on, high activity of sex workers, and things like that.

We go out there, we give them sack lunches, we give them clothes, and we give them resources to get off the streets if they choose to.

Doing outreach, feeding the homeless, going into the juveniles or into the prisons, and just hanging out with those people there and just loving on them.

Letting them know that they're worthwhile and that there is opportunity to change your life if they choose to.

So, I like to pull from my own personal story of overcoming drug addiction and homelessness.

And breaking through those barriers and trying to motivate someone else to do the same.

Growing up in this environment, I quickly fell into that mold.

A newspaper article, not super proud of it, but I happen to have it, the first time that I got arrested for joy-riding in a stolen car.

After getting into amphetamines and getting caught after running away, I went into juvenile, I remember getting out just to go back in.

This cycle lasted ever since I was 12 till I was 19 years old.

And I was arrested about 13 times and did about three and a half years total in juvenile, so that's where my youth was at.

There was a pastor that I met in juvenile and he was an art teacher, so he would come teach art class, and by the time I was 18 years old, I was homeless.

And I found out that he lived right in the middle of my neighborhood, and he took me into his house, and I lived with him for a year, and he helped me to get on my feet.

And that's when I enrolled in GED classes and eventually moved on to community college to get my associates degree, and now I'm attending ASU.

I'm seeking a bachelor's in nonprofit leadership and management with a concentration on American Indian Studies.

I'm trying to meet people, I'm trying to figure out in my mind what it looks like to possibly establish a nonprofit.

>> [MUSIC >> Isaac: We're going to Page, Arizona.

>> [MUSIC] >> Kimberlee: I grew up on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.

The Fort Berthold Indian Reservation is near the center of the Bakken oil play.

The Bakken oil play is the oil infrastructure that has basically invaded North Dakota.

And has completely impacted the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.

And with those impacts, you come to a demographic where there's, not a lot of money.

I don't think there was time for question to say what will be negative impacts, I think there was just focus on the positive impacts.

Our tribal lands, both economically, physically, they've all changed, due to this new infrastructure that's come in is dominating our world.

>> [MUSIC] >> Kimberlee: We have scientists built into our DNA.

We had a way to do things that was along the lines of the scientific method.

>> [MUSIC] >> Kimberlee: One of our first interviewees was Dr. Carrie Joseph.

She's an environmental PhD scientist, and she does research on her reservation, she does STEM outreach.

And she went through her schooling with her child, and she made it all the way through to her PhD.

One of her highlights is data sovereignty.

That is something that is at the forefront of my research right now.

So when did you jump into I guess even your undergrad?

Was it right after, did you do high school and then jump in or?

>> Carrie: When I went into my program at U of A, it wasn't a straight shot.

It wasn't always environmental science, I was exposed to a lot of health sciences, I played a lot of sports in high school.

And so naturally, you want to do something that involves sports, or sports medicine.

And so that's basically what my career pathway was when I finished high school.

I got some scholarships to this local college border town in Northern Arizona University.

I pursued an exercise science degree, because I wanted to be a physical therapist.

And I played a lot of sports and so that's really all I knew, I knew I liked science.

[LAUGH] And so I think that's one of the things that we need to change early in higher ed is just exposing our Native students to so many career pathways that are out there.

At my level and in my age and in my era in high school, I didn't get that.

But where I got that, when where it was very strong for me was in my home.

In my own personal space under my roof, and I'm sure you're very familiar with some of the challenges of becoming a young mother at a young age.

I had a lot of people in my community actually, they had high hopes and dreams for me.

And then all of a sudden they find out, man she's pregnant, her dreams have ended.

So it was very difficult to kind of look past that cuz I always had aspirations, always they were always there.

And then of course our people are just, we farm, and so that was kind of that influence there for me to go into environmental sciences.

And I didn't get into that field until I had to finish my undergrad degree.

So I'm saying to you sometimes you can spend so much effort, time, and resources in this field and then choose something else, and you can totally do that.

>> Kimberlee: I read in your bio that when you started your graduate program, you brought your child with, what was that like?

>> Carrie: Yeah, that was challenging because it was just me and her.

I'm gonna tell you as well, being born and raised on the Hopi Reservation, we deal with a lot of disparities back home.

And a lot of challenges in regards to alcohol and substance abuse.

My daughter's father was actually that's basically what took his life, he wasn't able to overcome those obstacles and challenges, and- >> Kimberlee: I'm so sorry, Ryan, can we stop?

>> [MUSIC] >> Kimberlee: There's just something to say about your child losing their parents.

And not wanting them to, just not wanting them to struggle, not wanting them to have that emptiness or that, >> [MUSIC] >> Kimberlee: Questioning or that loneliness.

And especially being an Indigenous woman, being a mother and a student at the same time, that's just so intense for me.

I didn't even think I was gonna go to college once I had my child, I couldn't even think beyond just watching him grow.

She mentioned that her child's father, who she wasn't with, had passed away due to the drugs and alcohol, and that's something that my older son and I went through.

And, just, she's gone through all these challenges and all these hurdles and she's still, she's positive, she's doing STEM outreach, that's just everything where I wanna be.

You, have a lot on your plate a lot of great things that you're doing, how do you balance that with family?

>> Carrie: I think that doesn't come without a lot of regrets.

There's still a lot of times that I look back and say, dang I really neglected some things here and there that maybe I should have been present for as a mother first.

But at the same time, you have to realize you're taking a sacrifice to think of the bigger picture.

You know what your passion is and that's basically what has to drive your path.

Because it does get really challenging if you don't have that passion to keep going forward, it's really easy to quit.

>> Kimberlee: So I think with Carrie, I found my new superhero.

And so to see her do all these things and I physically see her footprints like in front of mine.

That she's crossed these barriers and these paths and she's doing it, and I see myself taking those next steps for my PhD.

>> [MUSIC] >> Isaac: Yeah, so check this out, every time you leave the reservation, there's a couple things you gotta have, man.

Let me just show you by my drawer here, sunglasses, COVID test, battery pack.

But most importantly, you gotta have the hot Cheetos, this is what's gonna get you through.

>> Kimberlee: [LAUGH] >> [MUSIC] >> Kimberlee: So we had the opportunity to go visit Rose Simpson at her studio.

That was pretty mind blowing.

>> Rose: How do we build a larger conversation with a contemporary art world that's sort of beyond the Indigenous art world or market, right?

And how do we use clay as something that everyone around the world has a relationship to Earth and dirt?

And how does that turn around and reflect to us our internal processes and allow us to build a stronger aesthetic muscle so that we make more conscious decisions about our relationship to each other and our planet, right?

Bringing up what makes us hurt each other, right?

If we don't have compassion for ourselves it's a lot easier to go around and hurt somebody else.

It's like the root of colonization.

>> Isaac: From your perspective, how can implementing culturally relevant art positively impact youth in Native American communities?

>> Rose: I think often about like when I was a rotten teenager in the 90s, [LAUGH] what I was getting into and what I needed, and what needs weren't met for me.

And what caused that troubled youth thing that was happening within myself, right?

And I went and found community, right?

And I found community in an aesthetic world which was like graffiti art and spray paint stuff, right?

So I found like-minded people who needed to express themselves and feel heard and seen in a certain way, right?

And so I used that skill set and that practice to turn around and go work with young people.

>> Isaac: Do you think art gives youth the ability to express things that they wouldn't be able to?

And does that help them?

>> Rose: I think so.

I think that a lot of our cultural spiritual practices are based in aesthetic creativity, right?

And for Indigenous peoples, we can't go to the store and buy our regalia or whatever we need for ceremony, you have to make it, right?

And so from the beginning, you're kind of given the tools to really engage in those practices, right?

And so, I think often about the differentiation between art and life, and how that's a very European idea, right?

And the more that we can engage art back into everything that we do in our life, then it feels like it's a very empowering place.

And some people are like, well, I can't draw or I can't do this or that, and I'm all, think about the aesthetic in other ways like food, fashion, music.

There's so many other ways that we can express ourselves creatively.

>> Kimberlee: So you talk a lot about communities and I can feel how important that is to you.

>> Rose: Yeah, I travel a lot right now because of my work.

And so a lot of my work is on the coasts of the country and in New Mexico in the middle, but I choose to be home and that's so, so important for me to stay here.

I feel like it's a privilege for me to have grown up with the perspective of what I want to preserve, what I love and what I value, and what matters to me.

And in the end, I think the core of that is it's really place and land, and our culture is very much, you know, the land here is the parent of our culture.

How I feel like I can make change is to be here and feel myself, and remind myself of the thing that I love the most, which is this place.

And then put that passion into the tools that go out into the world to go make change.

And so the intention is very much, we heal the people, and those people will make conscious decisions about our land and our parent, which is our place.

>> [MUSIC] >> Kimberlee: Her way of talking is just so universe-conscious of how everything comes to interconnect and interplay, and it just, she just speaks so beautifully.

>> Elizabeth: I loved how Rose talked about, with historical trauma or trauma in general, that you have to sit with it, cuz that's something that I definitely struggle with.

I like to kind of just laugh things off or like numb out and not deal with it, cuz it seems easier.

But then she even mentioned how it just like comes back and you have to like sit with it and process through it to make any sort of progress.

>> [MUSIC] >> Isaac: While we were in Santa Fe, the RV started to have mechanical issues.

So in order to finish the trip safely, we had to leave the RV behind and get some rental vehicles so we can finish our trip.

>> [MUSIC] >> Isaac: So, leaving Santa Fe, we went to Denver, Colorado, and we went to a restaurant called Tocabe, which was really amazing.

So Ben Jacobs, he was super nice, probably one of the coolest people I've ever met.

So I'm still trying to wrap my head around how a Native American-owned restaurants, or just businesses in general, impact the community around them and the people.

>> Ben: So for us specifically, like a restaurant is a community-based environment, like that's what it's supposed to be.

So Native foods specifically, we've had the question before, what is American Indian cuisine?

It can't just be my, Ben's, specific idea of what Native food is.

It has to be many people bringing their ideas, ingredients to the table, recipes to the table.

But then also it's the community in general that comes in that supports that environment and creates the culture that we've developed here.

For us specifically, there's not a lot of Native restaurants, as you guys know, around the country, and some people have a certain idea of what Native people are or should be, and we try and break that stereotype.

But we have people to come in with a certain idea of what Native imagery is.

So where are the buffalo heads?

Where are the dreamcatchers?

Where are the bow and arrows?

Where are the moccasins?

Which is like, cool, there's a time and a place for all those things, right?

It's just, we do food, we're not gonna put it all over the walls because that's not what we do.

So we try and do other things as well.

So I feel like we get people that walk away with some form of education, or at least ideas of what they want to go find out about.

Some of that is like the music that we play, or the artists on the wall, who is that?

And then hopefully they'll go look into it.

We're here to be like an actual image of the community and not what you want it to be from some historical context.

>> Kimberlee: So you're talking very much about the front end on how you impact the community.

Are you supporting Native produce, Native- >> Ben: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> Kimberlee: Food?

>> Ben: Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Our specialty ingredients are all Native sourced, Native specific, Native produced.

We do Native first, local second, and then everything on, so the goal for us is to create a cyclical economy, like keep money within our own communities.

>> Kimberlee: So you've already touched base on some challenging areas.

>> Ben: Yeah.

>> Kimberlee: That you as a business have overcome, but are there other challenges that you face stepping your Indigenous business and Indigenous restaurant into white spaces?

>> Ben: Like getting noticed as a restaurant specifically, we were noticed as a Native restaurant, which is cool cuz that's what we do.

But then it was like almost not a part of the restaurant industry.

In order to compete, kind of like you're saying, our food needs to compete with everyone else's food.

It's not our image needs create with their food, so that's the thing.

That's why I said, when people come in, it's not about what's on the walls.

It's about the interaction of the food that you have, because that's truly the like, where we create the competition.

We can be one of the best restaurants in the city because our food's really good, not because of the image that you want to see.

>> Elizabeth: Ben was amazing to talk with and everything.

>> Kimberlee: He was just as amazing as his food likes his concepts of something that's coming across through talking with how far we've come with the leaders that we've interviewed.

Something that's clearly coming across is community and investment in community.

>> Isaac: The whole concept I think can be taken further, rather than just food, of evolving.

Like having the foundation be traditional Native American culture, whatever it is, whether it's business or fashion, or the restaurant industry, like the foundation is Indigenous, but it also evolves.

>> Elizabeth: Now, I am opening up a coffee shop in the valley, and we converted a short bus into a mobile coffee shop.

We are really looking forward to using it as a way to display Indigenous and Native excellence.

And like groceries or in art or advocacy for certain community issues.

And we really want to use the coffee shop to act as a sort of mobile art installation that can display all of that to the crowds that we're a part of.

>> [MUSIC] >> Kimberlee: So we decided to go get tattoos.

I got a Lakota floral design in my ear, for which is just a representation of me being an environmental scientist.

>> Elizabeth: I got LANDBACK on my fingers, so that way, everybody could see them.

Because more people should be aware of the Land Back movement, it's really important.

The Land Back movement also empowers reclamation of language, culture, kinship, as well as land.

After Lawrence, we made our way to Oklahoma and we had the privilege of visiting Wilson Pipestem.

>> Isaac: Can you tell us a little bit about your background as far as your educational path and your career path?

>> Wilson: Sure, sure.

So I went to Norman High School here in Oklahoma, and then from there, I went to Oklahoma State University.

And I majored in English and relied on a track and field scholarship, a cross country scholarship.

And after that, I went to Stanford Law School in California.

And after that, I kind of, I went to Washington DC to work.

So I worked in Washington DC for 18 years.

Now, after law school, all I could think about is I'm getting crushed by debt, right, I got help from the Tribe.

I got some pretty good financial aid, but I thought I'm gonna be swimming in debt for the rest of my life.

But I changed what I did based upon my fear of that debt, so I went right to a great opportunity at a big law firm.

So I thought I've got to make as much money as I can, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna survive here.

Well, that was not smart thinking.

I wish I would have thought about getting a clerkship or something that would enhance my experience as a lawyer.

For my career path, it's worked out for me.

So if I want to be a doctor and work part time at a hospital, you may decide that's the last thing in the world I want to do, right?

Or if you want to be a lawyer, we've had a number of undergrads come and work here for the summer, and to decide whether or not this is the environment for me.

This may not be what you think so you can make a judgment about whether that's really something I wanna do or not.

>> Isaac: I feel like I have some education gaps because I didn't have a lot, I didn't have any high school really.

I was born into an environment of drug addiction and substance abuse.

So I bounced around the system, was in and out of juvenile throughout my youth, was in foster care and in group homes.

>> Wilson: Well, first of all, you're an amazing story already.

When you talk about education gaps, I don't think you have any.

Typically, even a school as good as ASU, you don't learn about those things, that's when you get out into the public sector or nonprofit sector and you learn by doing.

When you say a gap, you don't, you have a life experience that is more valuable and harder.

I'm sure these were hard times.

So I would say, don't look at those your life story as a disadvantage.

I would say, look at it as part of just your story and the advantage that you can create from that.

Because in my mind, your story is one of great strength, courage, and I can't wait to see what the rest of that story is gonna be.

>> Isaac: He just pretty much reaffirmed me that the life lessons that I've learned are more valuable because they're real life experiences.

And he just affirmed to me that that's what makes me unique and it's actually a strength that I should draw from.

That was really encouraging to hear him say that.

>> Kimberlee: That was totally a sense of pride for me was hearing that, we're just like the sisters just beaming like, yeah, that's Isaac.

[LAUGH] >> [MUSIC] >> Kimberlee: Our trip comes at a really convenient time on the trails of a lot of unmarked graves being discovered and coming across all those babies.

I call them babies because they didn't get a chance to get very far.

So in talking about boarding schools and the boarding school trauma, the federal government helped to fund these boarding schools and they were often run by churches.

>> Isaac: Because I'm really active in the church, and I'm involved in ministry, I can see the manipulation of religion for power.

Cuz I believe that culture, Native American culture specifically, is the way that God created them or us to be, to be able to express ourselves through tradition, through art, through music, through dance.

And for someone to say that it's God's will that we strip you of these things because it's detrimental to your relationship with God.

I see a major breach and a false belief system.

>> [MUSIC] >> Elizabeth: I feel like the influence of boarding schools has made a line of my ancestors really paranoid and really mistrustful and >> [MUSIC] >> Elizabeth: Especially of authority or any discrepancies in the validity of a given authority figure, it's like very deeply rooted.

>> [MUSIC] >> Kimberlee: Final interview was with Ben Barnes.

>> Elizabeth: Before I'd met Ben Barnes, I'd heard that he was gonna be a really cool person who was gonna be willing to address the really heavy and important issues.

>> Isaac: I think I was just gaining an understanding there and having a moment of revelation.

As we stood there at the Haskell graveyard, and thinking of all the mistreatment that our ancestors endured.

>> Chief Ben: Our kids, they started to get missionized in 1830s.

Our first building that we built for the residential school is built in 1839.

So we have kids that still haven't been accounted for that died in that residential school.

No cemetery was established for those kids.

Right now in Canada, there's more than 150 residential schools I believe, if I remember the numbers correctly.

Only 20 of them have started to account for the missing kids, and they're already at 5,000.

Think about the scores and scores of residential schools we have in the United States, and we haven't even begun to look for our missing kids.

In 1850, Secretary Cornatz from the Shawnee tribe wrote Congress, and said that our children are lice-ridden, they're ill kept, they're not clothed properly, they're not fed properly.

And parents went there to inquire after their children only to learn that they had been dead for some time.

And there was no accounting of those children, so, it's not that long ago.

>> Kimberlee: Us three wouldn't be here on this journey together if we weren't rising Indigenous leaders.

I've spent enough time with them to see that we're each a rising Indigenous leader in our own right.

Given that you're an Indigenous leader, what advice would you give yourself when you were a rising Indigenous leader?

>> Chief Ben: What is it that I'm trying to do and who else stands behind me?

Because it's not just my ceremonial ground.

It's not just the people of White Oak, Oklahoma, who I'm a member of that traditional religious community.

It's not just the Shawnee Tribe and all of its citizens.

It's all the folks that came before.

It's the Tecumsehs, Tenskwatawas, Black Hoofs, all those people from history that are named and all those people from history that were never named in the history books.

All those people are counting on us to make sure that we advance our interests.

I think we live in a time now that's more hopeful than it has been.

I think in my own community, we see people coming back to traditional, our traditions, our culture, our religion.

More people are wanting to speak and learning to speak their language.

If you look at our stories close enough, it's always a reminder to take care of each other, to take care of the orphans, to take care of your elderly.

This is what we're told and taught.

And I wish those that are not Indigenous, I wish that kind of wraparound communal love that we have for one another, that's what they should take from us.

Take that from us.

>> [MUSIC] >> Kimberlee: He blew it out of the water.

All the subjects that he talked about was just so intense and you felt this weight in the room the way he talked.

We're dealing with so much as tribal people.

As Indigenous people there's so much that we have to deal with on everyday life that regular people don't, and it feels unfair.

And I often feel like how do I make my impact, or how am I even making a change?

So by the time the interview was done with Ben, although there were these very heavy, impactful things he was talking about, I felt like I can't wait to make change.

I can't wait to break ground and to start tackling these things, and I can't wait to have my impact on the world with these topics.

>> Isaac: Yeah, so Kimberlee had to leave early.

She got a phone call from her family, and at the end of the day family comes first.

And I know that that's where her heart was at, and it was hard for her to be on this trip for three weeks.

And I totally get that.

So I'm glad that she was able to go home and tend to that, to her family.

>> Elizabeth: I really miss her being on the trip.

It kind of worked out timing-wise because we finished all of our interviews together, which I think was really critical.

I don't really know what we would have done in another interview without her.

[LAUGH] But we're gonna stay in contact and I know that she's like a lifelong friend now.

>> Isaac: She was a great asset on this trip, and I really enjoyed getting to know her, and we're definitely gonna stay in contact.

Bye, Kim!

>> Kimberlee: Bye, guys!

>> Isaac: I feel good about it.

I don't think she missed out on a whole lot after she left.

We went skydiving, but she wasn't gonna go skydiving anyway.

[LAUGH] And so.

>> [MUSIC] >> Elizabeth: People ask me all the time cuz I do all these crazy things, so you're gonna do skydiving or whatever, like try it out?

And I'd always just be like, I'm not gonna go jump out of a plane.

>> Isaac: Me personally, I've always wanted to go skydiving.

It always just looked like a lot of fun.

>> [MUSIC] >> Speaker 10: All right, we're gonna go up there, we're gonna kiss the sky, let's go have some fun.

>> Elizabeth: Yeah.

>> Speaker 10: Here we go.

>> Isaac: The plane pulled up and we're just looking at the plane.

And they grabbed the back of our harness, and then they escorted us.

>> Elizabeth: I was so manhandled, that I didn't like at all.

>> Isaac: Yeah.

>> Elizabeth: [LAUGH] It was fun.

I'm really skeptical of men.

I really don't like them.

And so I really didn't want to like this man who I was gonna have to jump with.

But he was really cool.

And it was really fun.

And he was like very dad-like, he had massive dad energy.

And I was just like, okay, I'll jump with you.

This is gonna be fun.

[LAUGH] >> [MUSIC] >> Isaac: When we jumped off, right when we jumped off, that was the best part for me.

Like going from the plane into the free fall was really exciting.

>> Elizabeth: We were free falling and it was really fun, and [COUGH], I had this beautiful scenic view, of [LAUGH] country's largest testament to environmental disaster.

We just jumped out over a mass of oil storage tanks.

>> Elizabeth: Across this road trip, we've talked to just so many people, and the theme has been kind of consistent about being mindful of environmental impact and sustainability, and the oil industry really just destroys all of those things across the country for a lot of communities.

>> Kimberlee: As Indigenous people, we are the land.

As Indigenous people, for people in the US, they're on Indigenous lands.

And it's kind of like that showing through from our experience, is how critical and how important Indigenous lands are.

And Indigenous lands are not just reservations.

And the whole continent is originally Indigenous land.

>> [MUSIC] >> Elizabeth: [LAUGH] My god, aah!

>> [MUSIC] >> Elizabeth: Isaac just has so much grace for people.

I don't trust Christians, I don't trust religious people to respect me or to show me whatever their type of love is.

Just been something that's been super harmful and abusive, spiritually, mentally, emotionally, physically, and sexually.

It's hard for me personally to justify having any sort of respect, or love, or friendship with somebody who is faithful like that.

>> [MUSIC] >> Elizabeth: That I'm wrong and that's nice.

>> [MUSIC] >> Isaac: I think I was just able to see firsthand the values of Indigenous leaders and how they carry themselves and what they prioritize.

I've gained a lot of really cool friends, Liz and Kimberlee.

And even the leaders that shared their contacts with me.

It's been a really good experience and I feel like my community has definitely gotten larger [LAUGH].

>> [MUSIC] >> Kimberlee: It gave me some confidence in myself.

It gave me some self-worth, that I am worthy and I have things to offer.

And so I'm excited to embark on this new-found self.

>> [MUSIC] >> Elizabeth: So this trip has showed me that I'm super capable and that I can accomplish any and everything that I want to do.

I feel like I can do everything now, which is really nice.

I also am excited to go back to school, which is something that I wasn't excited for.

When I started this journey, I had no confidence in myself.

And I didn't really believe that I could do much.

I didn't see a whole lot in myself, either.

>> [MUSIC] Wondering what to do with your life?

Well we've been there and we're here to help Our website has some awesome tools to help you find your path And you can check out all our documentaries, interviews and more Start exploring at roadtripnation.com >> [MUSIC]