In this episode, Dr. Blaire Morseau joins Dr. Davina Two Bears and Dr. Farina King to discuss her work with Neshnabé (Potawatomi) knowledge systems, focusing on birch bark, language, and archives. Dr. Morseau highlights the significance of Simon Pokagon's nineteenth-century birch bark books, featured in her edited volume As Sacred to Us: Simon Pokagon’s Birch Bark Stories in their Contexts. The conversation explores how traditional cultural knowledge and ecological wisdom are preserved and revitalized through these archival works.

Dr. Blaire Morseau, a citizen of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Michigan State University. Her research spans Indigenous science fiction, traditional ecological knowledge, digital heritage, and Native counter-mapping. Her forthcoming book, Mapping Neshnabé Futurity (May 2025), explores how Native environmental activism and traditional knowledge intersect with Indigenous speculative fiction to reclaim Indigenous spaces in the Great Lakes region.

Additional Resources:

Blaire Morseau (Topash-Caldwell) website

Blaire Morseau, Michigan State University directory webpage

Blaire Morseau, ed. As Sacred to Us: Simon Pokagon's Birch Bark Stories in Their Contexts (Michigan State University Press, 2023)

Blaire Morseau, Mapping Neshnabé Futurity: Celestial Currents of Sovereignty in Potawatomi Skies, Lands, and Waters (University of Arizona Press, 2025)

Ah-in-nist, also known as Clifford, Sipes is Cheyenne with family ties in both Oklahoma and Montana. His father was the last authorized historian of the Cheyenne People, and a respected Chief and Pipe Carrier. His Mother is a citizen of the Caddo Nation. Ah-in-nist currently resides and works in Oklahoma. He writes and speaks publicly, working most recently on the "Calling Back the Spirits" initiative to "preserve by art and the written word what was previously learned only through the oral recounting of the story of Fort Marion by the descendants" of the warriors and Indigenous people imprisoned there. Ah-in-nist is one of the descendants who supports this work with his relatives. Dr. Farina King and Dr. Davina Two Bears talk with him, in this episode, about the path that led him to this "calling back home."

Learn more with these resources:

"Calling Back the Spirits," Cassville Democrat article written by Sheila Harris (December 28, 2023)

"A look at local sculptor Lew Aytes and the Calling Back the Spirits Project," written by Adriana Keeton (November 29, 2023)

"The Native American warriors whose 'faces' are in museum storage: Robbed of their freedom on the Great Plains, imprisoned and used as models for plaster 'life masks' that forced them to breathe through tiny straws in their NOSTRILS," article written by Sheila Flynn (February 12, 2018)

Co-founders of the Native Circles podcast Sarah Newcomb and Farina King co-host this session introducing Dr. Melanie ("Mel") Fillmore (they/them/she/her) who is urban mixed Hunkpapa, Lakota of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North and South Dakota. Mel is an assistant professor of Native American Studies at the University of Oklahoma (OU).

Their work is an iterative approach to understand the political engagement of Indigenous communities in policy and data. They envision a future of collaborative governance led by Indigenous ancestral wisdom and lived experiences. Melanie was the lead researcher on the 2020 HCR33 Report on Idaho’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons (MMIP). Their 2024 dissertation, “Redefining Missing in the Third Space of Sovereignty,” considers how US federalism is fundamentally changed in collaborative structures and are created between tribes, states, and the federal institutions, particularly when tribes are leading collaborations on agreements or policy initiatives.

Prior to joining OU, Mel has taught University Foundations and Anthropology courses at Boise State University on social change, political violence, Native American and Indigenous studies, and Indigenous Methodologies. They have worked as a data analyst for the Idaho Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence to understand the impacts of domestic violence on Indigenous families across Idaho. In this episode, Mel emphasizes the importance of knowing and being "with her ancestors."

Resources:
Mel Fillmore professional OU webpage
HCR33 Report on Idaho's Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons (MMIP)
Idaho Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence