American Colonialism: A Shockingly Modern Story 11.21.23

the av cluv teen Vogue. You've heard her on Pop Culture Happy Hour, and most importantly on this podcast. It's Joe Elmony Happy Tuesday, Tabby Tuesday. Have you Tuesday, Joel? Yes, that's right? And what you you will be having? Turkey Columbia. Yeah, it amazing.

so worth your time? Please welcome back to the show, Doctor June Lance Twitch.

Aces of Bassis. When when you say blizzard conditions and you're talking Alaska, what are we looking at?

And so for us to get a bunch of snow kind of messes us up a little bit. And so we're talking like sixteen to twenty four inches in a day, which is a lot for us.

You gotta It's like when I watch people in Russia and they're like, no, it's fine, I have a fur coat walking around. It's gonna like this is the human body is incredible.

and they had to just sleep in the school. But yeah, but we get snow, like they'll be out plowing this stuff. They're out there right now. Like the people who like the city of Juno and the and the state of Alaska, the folks who like work on roads, they'll get this stuff cleared out. Although there's a community anchorage which they are not good at plowing their streets, but in.

And so now the streets don't get plowed. And so there was some sort of it was a great little Internet picture and it showed like be careful what you asked for was one of his campaign signs, and so there's a picture of him it says be careful what you ask for, and like just a ship ton of snow, like on the roads because you people and people can't

really get around. But the school's here, Like they'll usually send us a text like six in the morning and they're like, yeah, just dust it off, bro and get your kids to school. But the after school stuff will be closed because you know, get too wild. But the school itself like, let's go get.

every time you come on the show. So we're going to devote a whole episode to kind of talking about We're going to get into Buffy, Saint Marie, the concept of pretendians or Native movies, what's the new Scorsese movie Killers of the Flower Moon, And then just indigenous languages and the role that language has played in genocide, among many other things. But before we get to any of it, we do like to get to know you a little bit better and ask you what is something from your search history?

And so we're doing some There's a group that I'm involved with, a council called the Alaska Native Language Preservation and Advisory Council, and we're talking about the history of boarding schools and what they were for Native American peoples and for a lot of people that might not be something that they have to think about on a regular basis is that there were schools where children were forcibly taken from their parents and brought to these places and

completely stripped of their identity. And so if you want to just sort of like think of scenes from movies about Auschwitz or about the Holocaust that was happening here just to brown people. And so a lot of people don't pay attention to it. So sometimes we got to

take a look at this stuff. And so some of the things that we've been searching for is could we make a list of every boarding school that was running in Alaska, and then could we have some sort of acknowledgment in healing ceremony with these places because they were run by the United States government, and they're also run by religious organizations, Christian organizations in the United States who were colonizing and trying to eliminate Indigenous languages and indigenous cultures.

And so there's a wonderful colleague of mind. His name is doctor Waki Charles, and he teaches the Yuchten language, the Yupik language. He's at Fairbanks and he was at one of these schools. So it did happen long time ago, but it happened for a long time as well. So there are people alive today who went to these schools, and he talks about how he went there and how his mother had no idea where he was going. She didn't speak English, she had no idea when he was

coming home. They just took him and they took his clothes and they put a number. His name was taken, and his new name was number twelve, and number twelve was written on all of his clothes. Number twelve was written on all of his belongings, and that's what he was referred to. And so he talked about, you know, and where he went. So his family is from western Alaska, which is very far from where we are, but he was brought here to a community called Wrangele, to a

school called Wrangel Institute. And at some of these schools, these teachers have written books. I'm not going to say their name. I'm not going to say the name of the book because it's trash. But in the book they say, you know, so this is basically their memoir of teaching

in Alaska. They said, we couldn't get them to stop speaking their own language, and we wanted them to learn English, but we developed and this is their where its a heroic remedy, which was to take these two chemicals, one that's very bitter and one that burns the inside of your mouth, and we would soak a rag in that and then when one of them started speaking their language, we would stuff the rag in their mouth.

And they had belt buckles on their hats or something.

this stuff. But the colonizer also must dehumanize in order to do that kind of stuff, because on a day to day basis, you don't just I don't think you don't just walk into someone's kitchen and eat all their food and slap them in the face and just like claim their kitchen as theirs as yours. But we've done that collectively, right, Like colonizers have done that to indigenous peoples.

And so I think there's opportunities when you embrace decolonization for the descendants of the colonizers to also reconnect with humanity. But I think they're really terrified to I was given some talks the other day and I was saying, I

really like science fiction films. I like horror films, but sometimes if you watch a science fiction movie, it's like there's these white people and then aliens come or some kind of monster and they're gonna like take their take all their stuff and take their language and take everything. It's like this it's a horror you know. Or there's some huge apocalypse, right, And so these post apocalyptal kind of films I think about them, but I watch them,

I'm like, yeah, yeah, that's we've lived that. We've done that, right, Like they came, they took the stuff like, you know, it must be scary for you, but it's our reality. But I think about that stuff a lot because I think as we talk about concepts like decolonization, there are probably quite a few white people who think, oh, now they're gonna put us on reservations and make us stop speaking always.

we become something else? Like there's you know, about five hundred languages that were on this continent in California was the most diverse, is the most linguistically diverse part of North America, and every one of those languages is almost gone. And so as we look at that, like what happens when a language is gone? What happens when a species

is gone? And I want to be careful with that because a lot of times Native Americans, you know, if you go to some big museum, we're not there with like Monet and these you know, whoever else is making a bunch of art. Right, We're over by the wolves and the moose and you know, we're by the animals.

people get science and we get ecological knowledge. Right, and so trying to sort of also just say now let's just like everything is a thing, and let's just sort of say, yeah, we can have multiple perspectives, and then you can also but you know, one of the things where science has a hard time with us is they'll say, oh, oh, is that a medicine? But like, yeah, that the thing that comes out of a tree. You could put it on a wound and they'll seal it right up. Oh well,

how do you guys know that? Like, oh, because Raven got that information from the sea otters and he tricked them and now we know it. And that's that's fine for us, But I think for science they need some sort they need They need probably a white guy in a lab coat.

for first of all, we talked. We started off this episode talking about Thanksgiving, and I'd just be interested in hearing, like as to your metaphor of the person who burns down your house else and then it is just like expects you to be cool with it, and it continues living there and then they're like, hey, we're having a party to celebrate that time I burned down your house and you are cool with it. Do you want to come over or don't come over and just just continue

being cool with it? What is Thanksgiving like for you? And like where you live? Yeah?

people get, but that's something Indigenous people get. And that tells you whether or not you qualify for things or if you can go shoot a seal. And so a lot of times as we look at that stuff, and blood quantum is what it's called, and so sometimes we'll be like, fuck blood quantum, man, you can't measure me, can't measure my indigenous identity. But then we got a dog and I'll be like, this dog is one hundred percent German shepherd. I'll show you the papers. It's a

pure bread, right, right. So some things we reject in some things we accept and sometimes those are similar things. And so for us, we we eat, we throw down a turkey. I mean, that's just something I grew up with. And then we'll we'll do stuffing, we'll do all that stuff.

They have thinget names, and the thlinget names are not great because when we saw that turkey and it had you know, and turkey is are indigenous to North America, but they're not indigenous to where we are, and so it's got that sort of long thing that hangs down from its beak or whatever. I don't always called the gobbler gobbler. Yeah, so they called it, which means it's not news, which is not a nice name. We're usually so respectful to our food. But then I had an

elder over. We had this big Thanksgiving dinner and we were stuffing the bird, or maybe we're pulling stuffing out of the bird because we're having the dinner. I said, and thing in I said, well we gonna call this the stuff because you know, I don't that's not a great word either, just in English. And then we're like, well, you know, I think you kind of put it in the turkey's ass. And then then you like, you know,

we mix a bunch of stuff. It's yummy, And so we were we started up with like the bread that's in the turkey's butt, and then we end up with like turkey poop. Yeah, and so it's like like, okay, we're just gonna have to stick with stuffing for somebody.

don't we have fall break instead of Thanksgiving break? And what was interesting again coming back to colonial overreactions, which are you know, this was a classic colonial overreaction, I think.

So we pitched this idea, everybody's on board and was like, yeah, that's that's great because not everybody acknowledges, you know, the story behind Thanksgiving, which was you know, sometimes they'll say, oh, well, these Native Americans and these pilgrims had a great meal and they they really shook hands and figured it out. I guess you know which is. I remember I saw this some sort of little clip. I can't find it anymore. I have to do some internet digging, if you all

can do some deep dives. There was this little skit of these kids re enacting the first Thanksgiving and the pilgrims murder all the Indigenous people, and it's it's you could laugh at it because it's so horrible, but it's also like just sort of goes in the against what we're usually taught, which is these artificial narratives of just how nice white people were here.

that changes. And then he said, well, I think people should be able to gather with their families over this break and I said, I never said they, Like, I don't know where you're getting this information, Like it's literally just changing what the thing is called on a calendar. I'm not going to go into your house and like

make you disperse, like I don't understand. There's no there's no Gestapo coming for your Thanksgiving gathering and so and then that same person he wanted to talk to me more, so I gave him my phone number, and when I picked up the phone, he said, thanks for taking the time. I was like, yeah, like I'm happy to talk about this stuff. He said, I just don't think you know how hard it is to be a Christian these days. And I'm thinking, this is not the conversation I want

to have, but okay, let's listen. Because you know, the same thing with the War on Christmas and this this idea that Christianity is under threat, Like I can drive this one loop in town and I think I hit like twelve churches.

you can't because that will destroy my home. Like and I don't know, it's just really resonated to me as just someone who lives in this culture, Like you know the things I've been hearing in conversations around Gaza as well, and you know that people aren't able to continue to live there because somehow their continued existence is devaluing to the existence of the people who are kind of forcing

them off their land. And it just it seems to have this same corrupted, overall logic over and over again repeatedly.

feelings of hatred or otherness. And so I think it's really hard because they're like, oh, well, what side do I pick? Because these guys look kind of like me, so they pick those guys. But also, you know, there's just so many different things that are coded in language, that are coded in film and entertainment, where we're supposed

to like just hate these people and other them. And so I think it's when people look at this stuff, we see so much violence, and we hear about violence, and we like, well, yeah, they're in hospitals, so we got to blow up the hospitals so that we can we can get the bad guys, you know. And so but I don't know if that's really a heroic tactic.

I don't know if that's a tactic that's really has an ethical sort of grounding, and you know, to say, like it doesn't matter who's there we need to get this small group of people, and so we'll kill all these people to get them. And so there's some things I think that really ring true for a lot of Indigenous peoples, which is battle over land. But then there's some things that I think for a lot of our indigenous communities might be difficult for us to understand, like well,

whose land is it? Because they crossed an ocean to get here, and so that was pretty clear. You know, I know there's some people who someone people like to tag me in things. And so there was this wonderful news article about a Native American language center that was starting an organ but then it was through an organ newspaper.

And then all these people from Oregon, which is a place with its own problems because I think until not too long ago, it was like illegal for black people to live there, and like, you know, it's it's a complicated place. That was in southwest Organ and there was there's a road there called Dead Indian Memorial Road, and they have this, yeah, they have this big sign that says, you know this place, this road used to be called

Dead Indian Road. We realized that was not a sensitive name, so we changed the name to Dead Indian Memorial Road and.

are Muslim and you don't understand that. And so instead of sort of looking into who are these people and what do they do and how can I get.

And it's something that you hear a lot in the in you know, accounts of people who are being actively oppressed and who not not just in physically, but you know, in these ideologically like philosophical ideological conditions that are inhospitable to the human like to human life like that, and I just I feel like that is clarifying in a way that this erasure of identity and the choking off of the ability to create meaning for oneself and identity

for oneself causes people to actually lose their lives, causes children to like harm themselves, and that just connecting those two things, Like there are a lot of schools of philosophy and psychology that identify the search for meanings like one of the most important human needs, like it will sustain you through the prison camps in Auschwitz, but without it you can't survive anything. You know, you can't survive

daily life. And it feels like a lot of the things that you're talking about in the boarding schools and just throughout the history of colonization are very systemic exams samples of attacks on those things that make a life possible, make it possible to live and find mean it.

a long time. They closed his church because he would do his sermons and fling it as well as English, and so I guess like but on that note, the Presbyterian Church, who has a hand in language and culture suppression, a bunch of horrible stuff in this part of the world. They they held a community listening session, and they held several of them. Then they came back a month or two later and they said they made a public apology

and they said they were wrong. It was racist, and they said, you know, like, it wasn't our decision, but it was our institution, and we recognize that and we apologize. And then they made a million dollar commitment to language and culture revitalization in our region. And that stuff is important because Walter Soboloff he used to say, people who

know who they are don't kill themselves. And when we look at suicide rates and Alaska Natives, it's a very horrifying thing because it's the leading cause of death among Alaska Native youth. The suicide rates are by far the highest in the nation. I remember I was listening to you Guys podcast and you had a guest on this is years ago who said, like, white males are the ones with the highest suicide rates, And I just remember thinking, oh, not even close, maybe by like just like the number

of people. But if you're talking like per capita, if you're talking like per person, if we were white people, it would be a national emergency. There would be there would be movements, there be posters, they'd be all kinds of stuff. But it's a native problem, so you know, people just look the other way at this kind of stuff.

But coming back to the boarding schools, like they came and they took the children, Like, so they taking your children out of your home is huge, Like we cannot overlook the impact of this because then the parents like what are they going to do, because then they're also losing the land, and so they they turned to alcohol, they turned to you know, things to try and fill

those voids. And so it's it's we're connected with this group called the Polynesian Voyaging Society and sometimes they're called the Kalaya because one of their one of their canoes called the hook leya Hawaiian voyagers who have brought back their traditional way of navigating way out in the open ocean, just incredible, incredible indigenous science. And so we had them over here and there was a guy named Uncle Billy who was just really breaking it down for me. He's like,

here's Colonialism's complicated. It's complicated because what they did simultaneously was they banished our warrior society, so they kept us from defending ourselves and our own peoples. And then they began to rape and murder the women. Like we have

lots of stories in our community. When they built a naval base there, that's when our women started washing up on the beaches dead, you know, and so they and we gain our clans through our mothers, and so when they started to take out our mothers and our sisters, and our aunties and our daughters, it really began to crush us. And this is where we talk about colonialism

and the absolute inhumanity that it was. Is there's a place it's called they call it Seduction Point, and I have a real problem with that because it's called k the place where a dog cries, which is there's nothing wrong with that name. But the story that we were told was there was a thinget settlement there. They were running a fish camp and the men went out to fish and to work on stuff, and these navy soldiers showed up and they sexually assaulted the women. And then

they gave it that name Seduction Point. And so the level of disgusting is very high when we look at some of this stuff. So then you separate the people from the land by saying you have to live here. Now, this is ours. You have to move over here. And in Alaska's, especially southeast Alaska, they would form these Indian towns like y'all got to go live here. Now, y'all got to go live there. Now, y'all got to go live there. And again like this is not ancient history.

There's a village just across the way. Well, there's a town. It's called Douglas, and it used to be a village. And when the people, like our lifestyle was we would go to a fish camp in the summer, fish and put up your foods and pick berries and do all this stuff. Then you come back to your homes in the winter. So they're gone in the summer. And so white people burn their homes down. This is the nineteen sixties. And then they built the city on top of it.

Because then and then your language is banished. And one of the big, big problems is, but if you think about, like all these movements to try and make English just a nicer language, right, because some people will say, how come they can call themselves out but I can't. And I was like, let's have that conversation. Because this was a weapon, This was a social weapon, and people took control of it. And we've got all kinds of communities.

And so the queer community, the black community, were they, the Asian community, they have these different things that were derogatory terms for them and they take them. They say, oh, yeah, we'll call each other that. Well, you can't, and there's a whole history behind that. But so if we look at this kind of stuff, and we look at English is trying to get nicer as a language, and some people get really angry, right they call it politically correct.

And so if you say politically correct, you probably need to work on yourself and your your understanding of how the world works and your sense of humanity. But if you think of what was English one hundred years years ago, what was English two hundred years ago, probably a lot worse in terms of talking about Native Americans, talking about black people. And if that's the language you're replacing our language with. Like our language, we love ourselves in our language,

we love each other in our language. And then we have this other, this English, that is not capable of doing it the same way. So then one of the other sort of things. And this is called inward banishment. So for Native American people, you take this child, you cut their hair, you make them wear, you know, white people clothes, and you give them a number instead of a name, and then eventually you just give them an English name or her, and then you put them through

the school. And these schools are horrible. There's so much torture that happened at them. There's such gross food and such physical and sexual abuse at these places, and people kids got killed. And then you say, okay, now you have to be white. You have to be white. If you are yourself, I will physically punish you, I will torture you, all stuff, things in your mouth, all kinds of stuff. We got all kinds of stories of what

kids have gone through. But then when they try to be white, then they'll say, who are you trying to be us? You're just a second class citizen. There's this one elder she said, my teacher's never hit me for speaking my language. But when I was a little girl, this one school teacher called me over every day and she'd say, you know, you, people think you're just as good as us, but you're not and you never will be. You're a second class citizen.

just looking for a little bit of balance. And so but I think trying to look at that stuff is very terrifying because then you have to rectify it somehow. Yeah, And you know, and for us, if we have to carry the burden on our own, you know, people they're just killing themselves. And if we look at this, we say, you're going to let these kids just completely lose themselves and it's hard. It's hard to figure out what to

do now. But I think if we can get more people on board with conversations about what could decolonization look like and what could a place that's not assimilating anymore look like, and we might have a more equitable place.

or trying to overcome civil rights. Usually like these are the spaces you can occupy as a black man. So seeing you know, black dudes get to be silly and goofy and funny with each other. There's an element of recognization like, oh no, that's actually what my family and

my friends look like. There's a feeling of at least for speaking just for myself, like hopefulness of oh this is something cool that children can watch and see themselves, because I remember when there was almost nothing on TV for me to watch where people looked like and as we're seeing I think more obviously not enough indigenous representation in medias're like, what is feeling good for you? How

are you feeling vollkulors of the flower moon? And what do you hope the future of indigenous representation looks like?

broadcast television. So I get that because you know, you could have shit ass in there like a million times, and so which is what they call each other, and so as indigenous peoples as well, Like sometimes you have these endearing terms that a lot of people might be offended by. But some of the things I think about, like I understand the conversations about, you know, is this just trauma porn for white people where they get to watch us suffer, and you know, and it does. It's

triggering to see Native women. There's whole movements about missing and murdered Indigenous women because Indigenous women, they experience violence at rates per capita higher than probably anybody in the United States, and eighty percent of those perpetrators are white.

And you know, when there was a study that came out from the Department of Justice that said that, like, if you look at major sort of racial groups in the United States, Native Americans are the only ones who experience the majority of violent crimes from outside their own group, and it's by white perpetrators. And so it's very difficult to see. But I remember when the Watch Sahman series came out on HBO, and like, how many people got alerted to the Tulsa race massacre and would they have

known about that otherwise? And so to have a production like this and say you got to see how brutal these white people were, and I started to get really interested once I started seeing the trailers and they're saying they're using this book and saying like, can you can you see the wolf? Can you see the wolf? Or something like that, right, and they're really and then they showed these pictures of these white guys and I look at that old pitia.

we need those types of movies. But I think we also need some movies that are going to push it into the national conversation as well, because we have someone, you know, if you look at Lily Gladstone, her performances

as out of this world. It's amazing. And to see her walking around with you know, big time actors and big time movie makers is incredible because there's going to be Native people out there and say, oh, I could do that, and then maybe that opens the door for a Native production, and maybe that opens the door for a Native story to hit that level of you know, and I hate to use those sort of stepping stone type of metaphors, sure, but that door's not open for us.

It just isn't. But it's starting to get open. So we have children's shows like Malia of Dnale and I've been a cultural consultant and a writer on that show for since it began almost and so it's been really amazing that my children could turn on PBS and there's a lead character who's an Alaska Native girl and she's got agency, and she's smart, and she's cool and she's funny, and so we're able to sort of like break some

of the stereotypes through the children's programming. And then hopefully by time those kids are grown up, they're like what they used to not be, like major motion pictures about Native people. That's crazy, yeah, you know. And so because we go back to like Dances with Wolves, which is groundbreaking, yes, but it's about two white people who fall in love in Native America, and then we've got wind River, which is groundbreaking. Yes, it's about two white people who fall

in love in Native America. So I'm like, well, being a background your own story, Yeah, there's two white people didn't fall in love in this movie. Like it's like, okay, we just get crumbs. We'll make what makes a fucking damn good pie these chroms and we have for Thanksgiving dinner. But it's a little bit more than like take what we can get, because there's a lot of consultation in

this film. And what I hope is that people will watch it because the other the danger is that people say, I don't want to watch it because just a white guy tells these stories. I don't want to watch it because it's people. There's violence against Native people there, and that's triggering, and it is like get yourself ready. It's also three hours, three and a half hours long figure out like don't drink a whole bunch of water before

you go in. But also if people don't go then it just allows Hollywood to say I told you people don't watch movies Native people.

I'm not ashamed of how we were able to take that experience and evolve as a community and survive and thrive and be where we are now. None of that, to me is shameful or something I want to look away from. I am exhausted by slave narratives that focus

specifically on like demonic white masters. Specifically. I'm tired of seeing enslaved people depicted only by the grueling work they were forced to endure, when we know that we were writing beautiful music, when we know we were dancing and having loving relationships, and there was culture preserved and created during this time, and I think a lot of people I understand the instinct to be like, I don't want to invest in anything that makes my culture look less

than or that doesn't aspire to our best selves. For example, some people had a real problem with Like Boys in the Hood when it came out, even though we know that film is a masterpiece, where they were like, you're just showing like young kids doing gang violence. Why would

you want to promote that. It's like, well, people are actually living and leading these lives, and exploring them and giving them humanity allows you to understand why when you see you know, there was a murder and Compton tonight, you can't just write it off as like, oh, that's what happens there. They're individual beings and it's important to examine that. And I think you know to your point

earlier about these horrifying schools. The first time I ever saw that depicted in media was in the Netflix and a green Gable series, which I think came out like twenty fifteen, if I'm not mistaken, and it was so like it brings you to you because it's like, Oh, there's this happy story about this orphan and she finds a good family and it's kind of rough for her.

Oh she made a friend with like this indigenous girl who is also like living and thriving with her family, and then in the middle of the last season, she's just taken and you're like, wait, what's happening? And you kept like, at least I kept expecting, like, oh, there will be a resolution to this, Like they will win because it's Anna Green Gables and she's plucky and she

can do it. And what I really admired about that show, for you know, that has faut It's not a perfect show, but what I admired about that show is its ability to be like, no, it wasn't resolved and it was just horrible, and her parents had to leave the land so that they could just camp outside of her school in the hopes that they could be close to her

and one day find a resolution. And I think when we get visual representation like that, it's like sometimes, you know, people's best access to these stories is through entertainment media. I think there's a lot we can say about that versus the educational system goes and where we should be learning these things, but knowing that, you know, I think getting a variety of stories that explore both the trying times we've had and the weird, awesome, amaze and places

we are now. I think I just think it's like vitally important.

really told on big, big screens where these are. You know, there's a whole bunch of commercials about this, there's a whole bunch of press, and I know the writers strike, which I'm glad it happened because there needs to be equity for folks who are working in the movie industry. But it also just it impacted the opening of this film because you know, they couldn't really heavily promote it, and especially actors who were in it. But I think people should engage in it and people should should go.

But I think also there's there's movies like Skins and smoke signals and on tanajuat the Fast Runner, and even outside of North America, there's a film called Rabbit Proof Fence, Like if you want to really get the boarding school experience, like watch that movie. It is heartbreaking and incredible. It's about these these kids who were taken from boarding school and they they run away and it's it's amazing. It's

based on a true story. They have the you get to see images of these little girls as the elders that they became. And you know, and when we think about our elders, when we think about our ability to stand up and speak our language, and we just had a cultural ceremony this weekend, it was wonderful, like we can do that stuff because people went to these boarding schools and found a way to be themselves. They found a way to hold on to who they are and

what they are. And when we look at some of the things and Killers of the Flower Moon, like, there was an incredible amount of Indigenous agency in that film, which I think, you know, that's what brought the FBI there, and I think there was a real temptation, probably because once the FBI stepped in, it was like, oh is this gonna be about this guy, and it kind of wasn't like it was like a still kind of a

side character. And you know, there's certainly things that I would I would want more out of, Like I just wanted more Indigenous depth and character. But there was a lot of depth and there was a lot of character, and so I think it's for me.

you and all that good stuff. Who nae.

some of the stuff that we're doing. We're really trying to like just keep it casual and also enjoyable because these conversations are difficult, but that doesn't mean you can't have fun and still laugh and enjoy life and think about a potentially brighter future.

lovely energy. And as I was listening to that, my own children, like I was just kind of sitting in bed listening to that, it was bedtime, and my own children just like ran over to me where I was laying in bed and lay on me and started to fart on me while telling me that they were farting on me and that I was their bed, and so it was just a real it was like listening to this, oh man, I aspired like this lovely energy, and then my kids were like, you know, letting me know that

I was their bed and they were free to fart on me whenever they wanted.

I think especially got her master's degree. And it's it's a lot about about a lot of things, but essentially, a boy is created in China and brought back by a professor who says, hey, you've got just enough language to translate, but I've removed you early enough that you have no connection to your culture. You'll now translate all of your language for me so I can use it as I need to basically invade China. And he has to figure out he's raised in Europe in England, trying

to figure out who he is as an individual. He gets to school and meets a lot of other kids who are similar to him, and his world explodes, and yet he's still under some of this horrible professor. And it talks about what is revolution, how does it happen? When is violence a necessity? And what does that do to the soul? And it's so beautiful and difficult, but ultimately I think inspiring feels like a weak word, but it really set me a light. I love that book.

I like it's one of the books. I'm like, I can't wait to read this.