Activists Around the World: An Update on Past Awardees, Part 2

SMNTY asks 'where are they are now?' in part two of our check-in of those featured in past episodes. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to Stephane.
Never Told Your Protection of iHeart Radio and we're back
with part two of our Where Are They Now kind
of episode for some of the activists around the world

(00:25):
that we have covered, and today we're starting with Interior
Secretary deb Holland and just a quick review. Secretary Holland
made history twice, first becoming one of the first Native
women to be elected in the United States House of
Representatives and then being the first Native woman to not
only be nominated but appointed to a federal cabinet position

(00:48):
in the US as the Interior Secretary um And since
her official appointment on March, she's been working to make
initiatives to help protect the indigenous community as well as
working for or the environmental safety of the indigenous lands
around the country and when I say country, United States.
On the day of her confirmation, Secretary Holland made sure

(01:09):
to represent her community by wearing a traditional Laguna Pueblo
regalia and a colorful ribbon skirt which was custom created
for her by Agnes Woodward. The custom ribbon skirt was
created specifically for Secretary Holland and was created for a
purpose designer Actness Woodward told Craft Industrial Alliance about the skirt. Uh,
the skirt is mostly about representation and how Indigenous women

(01:32):
choose to represent themselves. And yeah, so if you look
up Agnes Woodward you will see that she is a
designer and actually sells these skirts. Be mindful, this is
an Indigenous custom. So yeah, and she has been a
fierce representative of the indigenous community. In April one, Holland
began a new unit with a Bureau of Indiana Affairs

(01:53):
which would finally work for the decades long cases of
missing and murdered Native Americans. She stated, we are fully
minute to assist in travel communities with these investigations and
the m M you will leverage every resource available to
be a force multiplier in preventing these cases from becoming
cold case investigations. And in June, Holland created the Federal

(02:14):
Indian Boarding School Initiative after the discovery of two hundred
and fifteen remains were found comm Loops Indian Residential School
in British Columbia, Canada. The initiative was started to investigate
the boarding schools to find and review pass records and
part of the results of the investigations. They were able
to get volume one of a hundred six pages report
which identified four hundred eight boarding schools and at least

(02:38):
fifty three burial size that was spread across the mainland
of the United States, Alaska and Hawaii in a hundred
fifty year period. And the report was able to dig
into the different policies laws that helped create these schools
to begin with, as well as looking at the awful
abuse and conditions that the Native children suffered. And I
believe this initiative is still ongoing. She has also announced

(03:01):
Native Languages Memorandum of Agreement or m o A, which
addresses the barriers to Native Language Revitalization UM. This would
integrate quote native language instruction and language into educational settings
and strengthen tribal consultation around Native languages UM. Along with that,
she's sharing Executive Order fourteen O four nine, which created

(03:23):
the Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity
for Native Americans and Strengthening Travel Colleges and Universities, which
is what we just talked about UM, and it says
which seeks to advance equity, excellence, and economic opportunity for
Native people through a variety of policy goals, and we

(03:43):
talked about that with got to Juney about UM restoring
native language that which has oftentimes been forgotten and as
a result of boarding schools and the harsh federal laws
that came to colonize the indigenous people. So very important.
I'm excited to see this. Yeah, me too. Next, we
want to talk about one of the first activists we

(04:03):
highlighted on our series. Jahaduk Dukara, has been working to
end female genital mutilation or f g M and child
and arranged marriages UM. She was appointed as the u
N Women Goodwill Ambassador for Africa and has been working
globally to end violence against women and girls. In our
original episode, we have reported that she was able to

(04:25):
prevent more than one million girls from having to go
through the painful and traumatic procedure of FGM and has
been working continuously to end the practice altogether. Though in
our country of Gambia, it is technically illegal, but it
is still practiced UM. Since since, she has been traveling
in different countries to help to end the abhorrent practices
like this. In November of two, Ducara started her mission

(04:48):
in working with Liberia to end the traumatic practices of
f GM and child marriage, and we wanted to include
a part of her speech she gave at the conference
in Liberia. We need to ensure that we are supporting
communities to lead that change themselves, because if we do
anything other than get communities to lead the change themselves,
twenty years from now, thirty years from now, we will

(05:09):
be back in the same communities talking about ending FGM,
ending violence against women and girls, and all these things
we have been talking about for decades. Right now, what
is crucial is handing power back into the hands of
communities and looking at different, better ways to build prosperity.
A lot of times we consider f GM and issues
like that as fixed traditional practices. The only way we

(05:32):
can change that is if we work hand in hand
with traditional leaders who understand our traditions and understand that
tradition is not static. Cultures change. We have a lot
of traditions, but once we realize as a community that
not all these traditions are good for us, we leave
them behind. Now it's time to ensure that no girl,
not only in Africa, but around the world, continues to

(05:54):
suffer as a result of f G m violence against
women and girls continues to happen in this continent because
women are not economically empowered. Until women are earning their
own money, we will not end violence against women. My
commitment to the people and government of Liberia is that
I will make myself available and I will work with
you to ensure that the lessons that we have learned

(06:16):
from other countries can be considered in relation to Liberia
so that we don't lose anything. It's a win win
for everyone. We stay strong, we uplift women out of poverty.
Right um and yeah, she has been working really hard,
oh with the U N as the ambassador to get
this message out and it's incredible to see her work
and how it's spread. And finally, anyway, for today, we

(06:40):
wanted to do a quick update on Gladys Reddick the
gets on what so eton. I'm so sorry if I
got that wrong. First Nations woman who has been working
tirelessly to fight for the justice for the M M
i G two s um and just a quick review.
She started the Grassroot Movements Walk for Justice with others
who had been affected by M and my w G

(07:01):
two as crisis. She's created the organization to bring awareness
to the movement by walking the areas um and the
first one was a four thousand kilometer walk from Vancouver
to Ottawa in two thousand and eight, and since then
she's continued her work to seek justice for those missing
and murdered a Native people, which caught the attention a
filmmaker Jalen Matthews, who debuted a short documentary in twenty

(07:23):
two titled Gladys Reddick Journey for Justice. The documentary is
a hard hitting glimpse into the life and perspective of
pioneer for Indigenous women's rights in Canada. Um. Matthews, who
grew up in Mission, met Reddick while working as a
news reporter in twenty seventeen after moving to Terrorists, which
is the area. In an interview with Tara Standard, Matthew

(07:44):
says she hopes to bring more attention to the missing
and murdered women through quote Raddick's powerful narrative. And as
for Reddick, she's still fighting and advocating for the m
m i w G. Two s on and she told
Terrorists the news organization people really need to hill right now.
Churches aren't going to heal us. They've done their damage.
When our people come up and start healing, then we'll

(08:05):
be better. Bring us back to our land, bring us
back to the way we used to be, where we
could live off the land, where we could believe in
Mother Nature and her role in providing for us everything
that we needed. Yeah, well, we always say at the
end of these uh, we do continue to check in
and everyone will feature which they're doing stuff. So sure

(08:27):
we'll have future updates about some of the other people
we've we've featured on this segment. But as always, if
there's something we missed, if there's someone we missed, if
there's someone we should talk about in this segment, we
would love to get your suggestions resources all those things.
You can email us Stuff Media, mom Stuff at i
heeart media dot com. You can find us on Twitter

(08:48):
at moms Stuff Podcasts, or on Instagram and TikTok at
Stuff I've Never Told You. Thanks as always to our
super producer Christina, Thank you, yes, and thanks to you
for listening Stuff I've Never Told You protection Heart Radio.
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