The Aunties Dandelion

Indigenous Women’s Leadership with NMAI Director Cynthia Chavez Lamar and co-hosts Kahstoserakwathe and Taiawentón:ti'

It’s an Awesome Auntie co-hosting collaboration this month as Taiawentón:ti' Chelsea Sunday (Kanyen’kehà:ka) joins Kahstoserakwathe to visit with Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian Director Cynthia Chavez Lamar (San Felipe Pueblo, Hopi, Tewa, and Navajo).
Cynthia is the first woman director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, including its three locations in Washington, D.C., New York City, and the Cultural Resources Center in Maryland.

Taiawentón:ti' and Kahstoserakwathe first met Cynthia last summer at the 2025 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Taiawentón:ti'’s land-based language revitalization organization, Ionkwahronkha’onhátie’, was one of four groups featured for their language, place, and ways of learning. Kahstoserakwathe was there co-producing a documentary about their work.

When Cynthia came to visit the group on the National Mall, Taiawentón:ti' noticed her openness and the path she has taken as an Indigenous woman in leadership. That moment sparked this conversation.

In this episode, the three talk about leadership, creative direction, and building institutions that remain accountable to Indigenous communities.
Cynthia is a curator, author, and scholar whose work focuses on Southwest Native art and collaborative practice with Indigenous communities. She has served on national arts and cultural boards, including the Institute of American Indian Arts and Alaska Native Culture and Arts Development and the New Mexico Arts Commission.

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The Aunties Dandelion Season Five begins with a full house, a generous conversation, and stories grounded in land, memory, and care. Last fall at the Cambridge Public Library, Kahstoserakwathe moderated a sold-out evening with celebrated author and media creator David A. Robertson of Norway House Cree Nation. This was TAD's first episode recorded with a live audience.

Together, they explored how land shapes emotional health, how identity unfolds through writing, and how family stories guide us across time.
David is a two-time winner of the Governor General's Literary Award, recipient of the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award, and the Writers' Union of Canada Freedom to Read Award. In this conversation, he shares tender memories of his father, Dr. Donald Robertson, a pioneering educator whose influence continues to shape his work and life.

We also speak about David’s powerful six-part podcast Kiwew (S/he returns home), which became an unexpected and moving tribute to his father after he passed away during its creation.
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What a dynamic visit this month with Tuscarora Turtle clan scholar, curator, historian, and artist Dr. Jolene Rickard. At Cornell University, she teaches in the History of Art and Visual Studies and Art Departments, where she has long guided students through Indigenous studies leadership and practice. She co-curated two of the four permanent exhibitions at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. Across her work, Dr. Rickard centers Indigenous knowledge, lived experience, and visual sovereignty.

Jolene is the curator of the ambitious outdoor exhibition Deskaheh in Geneva 1923 to 2023: Defending Haudenosaunee Sovereignty, which opened along the Quai Wilson in Geneva in 2023. The exhibition marks 100 years since Deskaheh Levi General sought to speak for the Haudenosaunee Confederacy at the League of Nations. Working with the Haudenosaunee External Relations Committee, the City of Geneva, and Docip, Dr. Rickard highlights the ongoing struggle for Indigenous sovereignty. Her work also addresses the health of her homeplace, including the impacts of the Niagara Falls Power Project and Love Canal on the Tuscarora community, bringing these conversations into museums, classrooms, and public life.
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Betty Osceola (Miccosukee, Panther Clan) grounds us in the spectacular land and life of the Everglades in this visit with host Kahstoserakwathe. She explains how the region’s natural filtration system protects fresh water for millions, carries cultural memory for the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, and sustains plant, animal, and water relatives.

Betty is well known for her prayer walks that became especially urgent when the cruelty of the “Alligator Alcatraz” outdoor immigrant detention camp surfaced last summer on traditional homelands in South Florida, and her research is instrumental in ongoing lawsuits around the facility. She says our struggle for equitable treatment cannot be separated from the health and well-being of the natural world.

Betty spent decades living what environmental justice looks like from an Indigenous perspective: caring for water as kin, community mobilization as a responsibility, and finding joy in walking, guiding, laughing, and listening. She asks us to consider how we reconnect to our own sources of care and to show up when the land says it needs us. This conversation is a clear invitation to walk our lands and raise our voices to protect the natural world and the humanity of our hearts. Stay to the end for her cute stories about mama ‘gators and their babies.

Key Takeaways from Our Conversation with Betty Osceola

1. The Everglades is a living relative, not a resource.
Betty reminds us that the River of Grass is alive, speaking, and essential for the fresh water that sustains millions of people. Protecting it is not just an environmental act; it is a kinship responsibility. The "river" is a slow-moving sheet of water, full of swamp grasses, that flows from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay, moving only about a quarter-mile per day.

2. Ceremony is a form of resistance.
Through prayer walks and gatherings, Betty and her community practice ceremony as a form of activism. Each step, song, and offering re-centers human presence within a network of life that has been disrupted by extraction and control.

3. Alligator Alcatraz is part of a larger pattern.
Betty describes the proposed detention facility as one more example of how industrial and political systems see Indigenous land as empty or disposable. Her organizing through prayer, education, and direct presence helped bring national attention and legal action to pause construction.

4. Environmental justice and Indigenous rights are inseparable.
The conversation links the Miccosukee Tribe’s struggle for full federal recognition with the broader movement to restore balance between governance, ecology, and Indigenous sovereignty. Justice begins when Indigenous knowledge leads.

5. Joy and community are forms of survival.
Even amid ongoing fights for land and water, Betty’s stories centre laughter, family, and collective prayer. Joy is not a distraction from struggle; it is what keeps the work alive.

Photo by Lisette Morales, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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Here is our lates Aunties Emergent episode, hosted by Cayuga curator and media artist Alex Jacobs-Blum. This is the second Aunties Emergent episode Alex has hosted this year - the first was with Grandmother René Thomas-Hill and her grounded approach continues to nurture the next generation of Indigenous storytellers. In this episode, Alex visits with Jaime L. Montour, an Indigenous woman of the Delaware, Turtle Clan, and Lenape Nations who lives in the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory.

Jaime, whose name Iotenerahtatenion means “leaves scattered by the wind,” brings a lifetime of experience connecting law, wellness, and spirit. She is a paralegal and the founder of JLM Professional Outsource and JLM AWAKENS, initiatives that weave together legal advocacy, holistic healing, and ancestral knowledge. With over 13 years of experience in family law and community service, Jaime shares powerful reflections on restorative justice, trauma-informed advocacy, and spirit-led reconciliation. Her voice reminds us that healing and accountability are deeply connected, guided by wisdom of land, language, and ancestor. ATTENTION: This episode includes stories of addiction and healing.
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