What’s the Word?

National American Indian and Alaska-Native Heritage Month

To celebrate National American Indian and Alaska-Native Heritage Month (November 2009), What’s the Word?, the smart, engaging, and highly produced series from the Modern Language Association, presents two half-hour programs:

Voices from the Ojibwe Nation

• Anton Treuer talks about the Ojibwe oral tradition and his work to preserve the Ojibwe language;

• Kimberly Blaeser discusses poetry’s role in Ojibwe life and culture;
• Gordon Henry traces the roots of Ojibwe fiction and speaks about the work of Louise Erdrich.

American Indian and Alaska-Native Tribal Traditions

How do tribal traditions influence the writing and teaching of contemporary American Indians?

• Jeane Breinig discusses works from her Alaskan tribe, the Haida;
• Robert Warrior tells us about the history of the Osage and their 1881 constitution;

• Ofelia Zepeda reads her poetry, written in both English and her tribal language, O’odham.

  
  

Action Speaks: What’s Race Got to Do With It? - Action Speaks, from WRNI, looks at contemporary issues through the lens of history, using under-appreciated 20th-century dates that have changed America. Host Marc Joel Levitt and guest panelists discuss the 2000 Census where, for the first time, individuals could identify themselves as mixed-race citizens of the United States, blurring “traditional” racial and demographic lines in the U.S. and the world.
COST: FREE;  LENGTH: 58:50;  AVAILABLE: CD, PRX,CONTENT DEPOT

Elizabeth and Roger Wilkins: On Hope and Obama
Civil rights pioneer Roger Wilkins is joined by his daughter Elizabeth to discuss their reactions to Obama’s election.
Roger, 76, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, historian, and teacher.  Elizabeth was field manager for the Obama campaign in Michigan. They’re interviewed by host Mike Cuthbert. From AARP’s Prime Time Radio series.
AVAILABLE: CD, Content Depot, mp3 downloads, and Podcast; LENGTH: 59:00; COST: FREE

What’s the Word? Black History Month Specials

Texts of Resistance
How did slaves resist their oppression? Three works explore what it means to resist and to survive.
* John Bugg talks about an eighteenth-century slave narrative, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah     Equiano;
* Russ Castronovo tells us about Frederick Douglass’s novella, The Heroic Slave;
* Natasha Barnes discusses the novel The Known World by Edward P. Jones.
AVAILABLE on CD, PRX, and CONTENT DEPOT; LENGTH: 29:00;  COST: FREE

W. E. B. Du Bois
Considered by many the most important African American leader of the early twentieth century, sociologist, historian, author, teacher, and activist W. E. B. Du Bois had a profound effect on the way we talk about race.
* David Levering Lewis speaks about Du Bois’s early life and the years that led up to the publication of his groundbreaking The Souls of Black Folk;
* Marlon B. Ross explores the historical events that shaped Du Bois’s book and shares memorable passages;
* Cheryl Townsend Gilkes discusses the book’s continuing influence.
AVAILABLE on CD, PRX, and CONTENT DEPOT; LENGTH: 29:00;  COST: FREE

The Story of Lata – A 54 minute radio special that examines a culture reviving ancient traditions as possible solutions to sustain its communities. The forgotten arts of sailing and navigation may be the answer to rising fuel costs for Solomon Islanders in a remote corner of the South Pacific.

Liner Notes: Sand Still in My Shoes - For Labor Day, the 4th installment of the Liner Notes series of specials.

Saving the Sierra - A richly produced one-hour special about how unlikely allies are coming together to preserve rural culture from rapid residential growth, sustain local economies as recreation developments boom, and protect clean water and open space for future generations.

What’s the Word? : Hispanic Heritage Month – For Hispanic Heritage Month (15 Sept. – 15 Oct.), the smart, engaging, and highly produced literary series from the Modern Language Association, presents two half-hour programs celebrating Puerto Rican and Latin American literature.