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Life After Leaven w/ Tamice Spencer-Helms
As a follow up to her debut book, Faith Unleavened: The Wilderness Between Trayvon Martin & George Floyd, Tamice Spencer-Helms is joined by folx from all walks of life and society to talk about picking up the shattered fragments of a faith we used to know. Life After Leaven is a podcast for those seeking to heal from the damage caused by toxic Christianity and rebuild something new and life giving in its place.
Life After Leaven w/ Tamice Spencer-Helms
Indigenous Justice and the Reimagining of Faith with Randy Woodley
Join us in a profound celebration of wisdom as we sit down with Randy Woodley, a beacon of knowledge in sustainable living and indigenous justice. Alongside his partner Edith, Randy has woven a remarkable narrative of life, merging the threads of his indigenous heritage with his Christian faith. As we honor the tapestry of experiences that have shaped him, from overcoming a challenging childhood to his impactful role in spiritual education, Randy's journey is not only inspiring but a profound lesson in resilience and the power of transformation.
Venture with us as we navigate the complexities of community through the lens of Randy Woodley's teachings and Dietrich Bonhoeffer's insights on authentic relationships. As Randy discusses the shifts in Christianity, moving away from rigid doctrines to a practice rooted in authenticity and well-being, we uncover the delicate dance of redefining faith identity. Together, we probe the distortions of Western Christianity and reevaluate what it means to walk the Jesus Road in our modern world, embracing harmony and restoration beyond the boundaries of traditional labels.
Wrap up your listening experience with a call to reconnect with our sacred Earth, guided by Randy's latest publications that challenge the destructive dualism of Western thought. We confront the harsh realities of how this ideology has affected global Indigenous cultures and delve into the complexities of missions and evangelism amidst white supremacy. Randy leaves us with an invigorating sense of respect for Indigenous wisdom and a charge to steward the land with the honor it deserves. His parting gift is a wealth of resources, from his website to his podcast "Piecing It All Together," for those eager to continue this enlightening journey.
Life After Leaven is sponsored by Sub:Culture Incorporated, a 501c3 committed to eradicating cultural, social, spiritual, financial, and academic barriers for Black College Students. If you are interested in giving a tax deductible donation toward our work with black college students, you can do that here. Thank you for helping us ensure temporary roadblocks don't become permanent dead ends for students with marginalized identities. You can follow us on Instagram: @subc_incorporated, Facebook: facebook.com/subcultureinco, and Twitter: @subcultureinco1.
Our episodes are written and produced by Tamice Namae Speaks LLC.
Don’t miss out on what Tamice has planned next! Follow her on Instagram and Twitter, or subscribe to her Patreon page.
What's up everyone, welcome back to this episode of Life After Eleven. I'm your host, timmy Spencer Helms, and very, very excited to have Randy Woodley here to speak with us. Hello, welcome.
Speaker 2:Hi, and I should probably say happy birthday, thank you and congratulations on your book.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. I appreciate it. I really do.
Speaker 2:I'm just a farmer, yeah, mostly.
Speaker 1:Just a farmer who's had a profound impact on lots of folks, and so I would love for you to just kind of share with people what you've done, like kind of your corpus of like the things that you've written and things like that, what you and Edith are doing right now with Elohei, and then we'll jump into the questions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm glad you mentioned Edith. We partner in just about everything we do, so we're both co-sustainers of Elohei Indigenous Center for Earth Justice and Elohei Farming Seeds, and we do that out of conviction, I guess you would say, of trying to create a model of how to live better with the land. And then we have a. This is place is also a place of teaching, so it's a teaching center, learning center, and we have schools and all of that.
Speaker 2:I was in academia for 15 years. I'm now a distinguished professor of faith and culture, emeritus at George Fox Seminary or Portland Seminary, george Fox University, so those days are behind me. Now I'm doing most of the teaching setting around a campfire or on the porch in the mornings or something like that, as people come, which is much more my style. Let's see, we've been on this journey a long time. We've got a few books, came out with three in 2022 and two chapters, so that was like a sort of a stellar swan song year for me, if you will. Yeah, so that was fun. And Edith and I are actually writing another book right now. We're actually editing the final draft of it, which is called Journey to Elohei, which is sort of our story and all the values, our Indigenous values, we picked up along the way. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1:I remember hearing the story when I came to visit, so I'll share how I met you and how I came to just learn from you. The book that I was going to talk about is the Book you Wrote in 2012, the Shalom and the Community of Creation, because that was the book that had the most profound impact on me, seeing as that 2012 was the year that Trayvon Martin was killed, and that was a profound moment for me in terms of my experiences in evangelicalism, with realizing that there was something had been added to what I had been given in terms of what truth and faith looked like, and so I had to go on a journey of sort of understanding that whiteness had infiltrated what it meant to extract that. But by the time I met you, it was 2018. 2017 or 2018, I came out there with Brandy Miller and Erna, and there was a Justice Conference we did, and I just remember sitting across from you and saying I don't even care about hell anymore, I just need theology that will get me out of bed in the morning.
Speaker 1:I had been so depressed because of all of the police brutality that had happened from Trayvon up until that point, and so just some of the things that you pointed out to me about Shalom, about the things that I was learning from you in the garden, as I'm learning how to do things, was just so profound and really in a lot of ways I do believe, saved me. I was in a really, really bad way at that time, pregnant with my daughter, and just felt like I kind of came back to life during that trip and I think it was so. I just I'm forever grateful to you for that. But could you tell us about your early life and how it shaped your views, particularly your understanding of the world, before you entered into like evangelical spaces?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that was all very kind of you say. I'm sure we're just one, one small influence, but thank you so much for for saying that anyway. And yeah, I think I grew up in a pretty rough place. Hell, it was a very multi ethnic, multi racial, multicultural surroundings place called Willow Run, michigan, new Detroit, and you know, I really had an experience with Jesus at age I think it was 1010. And, and then by 12 years old that sort of went away, but it was a real thing, and then I wandered, you know, for a long time and then at age 19, you know, come back and start walking on the Jesus Road again. So that was a, you know, an early influence on my life and a later influence on my life, and I kind of like that.
Speaker 2:I was always walking this sort of path between indigeneity and whiteness, right, so so those two worlds. And so it took me a long time to sort of sort all that out. I became what I call for two years in Alaska a missionary oppressor to indigenous people, and now I walked away from that saying I've got to learn to do things differently. And so that's when I decided to go get a master divinity at what was then called Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary but now called Palmer and and that was really helpful Went through some tragedies there as well. Came a single dad and then came out to Oklahoma and to real Indian country, living in Anadarko, oklahoma, and met my wife and, as they say, the rest is history. So we've been on this path together now for almost 34 years.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so there's something that you wrote that I wanted to read and then I'd love to talk about it, and it's on page 98 of the book and it says traditional Native American education is designed to produce fundamental cooperation among the group, group cohesion, sharing of knowledge and resources, respect for those with more experience, respect for the community, respect for diversity, a Fundamental sense of relatedness and a sense of humility.
Speaker 1:And I remember hearing just even the way that I experienced I wouldn't even, I wouldn't even call what I experienced a lo hey when we came out there at conference, but I never. When I read this passage and what I experienced when I was out there was such a different frame On even the way that I had done. Christian gatherings, christian conferences, to sit around in a store Is sit around in a circle to tell our stories, to share gifts from our people Back and forth, was just such an amazing experience for me. And I guess my question is when you talk, when you think about an indigenous wisdom and the ways that that kind of confronts or pushes up against Evangelicalism, what do you think is the way forward in terms of us learning how to really throw off some of that Individualism and enter in more of to a shalom type of space.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that that cooperation from the group is really important, but it's hard to hard to get to if people don't have those values right. So you got to be around people who do those. Part of that is just our original values that all our people's come from. As indigenous people, you know we had to survive and and even learn to thrive and to do that it takes everybody doing their part. So selfishness and greed and that sort of thing would be like the worst thing a person could be accused, right. So so for us, like we learned sort of living in different native communities, the real value of that relying on one another and and and I think it's sort of all within us, but it takes a lot of humility and and that whole part about elders also is Realizing that as young people, you know, maybe we know a lot but haven't seen it as much, and so relying on the wisdom of some of our elders, yeah, it's, it's a it's a difficult space, like one of the things we see when we see White people try to form communities. They sort of all live together and which kind of makes doesn't make a lot of sense. It does economically maybe, but somehow they never seemed to last. It's sort of like like our old Cherokee way was every family had their own fire, right. For, yeah, you, you want to go home to your own privacy at some point, and egos get in the way, and you know like. And then rules are set down and it's sort of like you know, there's some mechanics to it, but it can't be mechanical. So, yeah, I, it's all a grand experiment, right?
Speaker 2:I read a book in seminary and I it was a life together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and I. There was a quote in that that just really made me mad. I just I, I really hated it and I was like it took me about, you know, like 15 years for it to really sink in. And and the quote was something like as soon as we interject our own ideas of what a community should be, we've ruined the community. Oh, in other words, it has to be done organically and it has to be done almost without agenda, and that that frees it up for creator to sort of guide and lead and people to make mistakes and and go. Okay, well, we tried that, but that didn't work. Let's do this and and so, yeah, that, that sense of you know, oneness, that that we, we had to have it's in our DNA. You know, we just have to. We have to find it again.
Speaker 1:I guess I have two questions I'm trying to think of which one to ask first what you talk about. You know every family has their own fire. I'm wondering how do you, how do we think about? Okay, I'll ask this one first when do you see the Jesus road going?
Speaker 1:So I know that let me talk a little bit about my listeners are very much people who have I've I've been kind of staying close to the, the sinking ship to make sure that every last person that is leaving you know Toxic Christianity, that they at least have a ride out of there. So I feel like I'm still in conversation with folks who are just beginning to ask some of these questions, just beginning to realize that something is off, and so I guess my question would be the theology that has changed for so many of us. I think we're struggling with the meaning of Jesus. What does it? We know what it used to mean to follow Jesus and essentially you know you confess Jesus as Lord and you follow Jesus, and then you, you don't go to hell and you know you try to do good things and make more Christians, like that was essentially life. But when you think about the Jesus way, the Jesus road, where is this all going?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I was really fortunate to come across some people early on in my experience and it sort of created a theology inside me that was really different than most of the people around me at least, and that was, you know, like I. I, really early in my experience, I Realized that, you know, the doctrine of original sin was, was something that was made up to basically keep people afraid, as was the doctrine of hell, as was the idea that God has foreknowledge and knows everything that's gonna happen and God has all power and can just Reach down and change something if God wants to do that. You know, all of those kinds of things were, were sort of I lost early on, and so I was an early heretic. I guess you'd say, but but then what does it mean then? That to have a creator who is, in my estimation, the most vulnerable being who exists, that's how I understand God to be, and Certainly that's the life that Jesus lived, and so of complete vulnerability, so, so, like what that's, that's, you know, a creator I can follow. That's, and that's where I can learn to be the most human being that I can be. To be Vulnerable is to be human, and to be human is to be spiritual and so to Walk in my own spirituality as a human being, not trying to be more, not trying to be God or be perfect or be any of that kind stuff, but learn from my mistakes and just keep, you know, getting up and walking forward. That's sort of been my experience, and then I've watched Sort of as the layers of the onion skin of Christianity or peel back In the last 20 years and to see that, yeah, things are changing. There's a great change coming. It's already taking place.
Speaker 2:We have generations of people in the last several generations who who are not happy at all With the paradigm that was handed down to them. They're looking for community, they're looking authenticity, they're looking to do good in the world, and those are the exact things that creator wants us to be doing. You know our, our foundational Personhood, who we are as human beings on this earth, is to basically tin the garden, to take care of the earth and to take care to bring about harmony when it gets disrupted, and that that can mean, you know, like things like you know, feeding people or growing food and Taking making sure people clean water, missing, murdered, indigenous women, black lives matter. You know all of these different things that are trying to restore harmony in the world. That's our job as human beings. That's our fundamental purpose. We don't have to do it, but it makes us more human to do it. It makes us more Of who we were meant to be.
Speaker 2:I see Generations coming into that awareness, leaving Christianity behind. So my wife and I haven't called ourselves Christians for I don't know, 12, 15 years, and we're okay with that, because we practice our traditions. We're still, you know, involved in our native spirituality, but we also understand Jesus to be involved in that, and so we follow Jesus through our own, our own ways. I Reminded a group I was speaking at in Orange County a couple weeks ago.
Speaker 2:Jesus never became a Christian indeed and and, and I don't think he actually wanted to start a religion, and If he did, it would look nothing like Western Christianity. So I think we're pretty safe by like leaving Christianity behind. But Creators example, to us at least, is to follow Jesus, and that means to understand what his purpose was, which you know. It's kind of like that, that movie, princess bride you ever see that?
Speaker 1:My partner has seen it. I haven't seen it, but I've heard a lot of people talk about it.
Speaker 2:Okay, and me, go my toy. It says to the, to this other guy, you know, because it keeps using a particular word. You know, you keep using that word, but I don't think that word means what you think it means. You know, and that's what I think. When we're talking about Jesus in the church, I don't think we're talking about you know the same thing. I don't think we know what that really means. If we understand Jesus, and that's what I tried to lay out in shalom in the Community of creation, his mission was to actually Make us more human, be there for those who are more marginalized and who are more, you know, desperate and who are more, you know, disenfranchised and and who have less to eat. And that's what shalom is all about, and that shalom is not just something that the ancient Hebrews did, it's something that all peoples have been given, those original instructions. So that that puts us on pretty safe ground when we say we just want to be Human beings, the best human beings we can be it's just.
Speaker 1:It's going so yeah, I mean, I I'm hearing this and it feels sweet to my spirit and I remember the first time hearing that and just feeling washed, because there was something to Feeling like I was stuck in a religion that I really felt was killing me, killing my sense of identity, my sense of self, my sense of purpose in the world. And I think about kind of the things that you're bringing up about the Jesus way, and even thinking about Hebrew and how the Concept of mending the world of the to Kunalom and this idea it's very similar and what it did for me and what I hope it does for those who are listening, was it at least gave me the permission to think outside of Western Christianity for the first time, because I, the person that I am, am in love with and following Jesus was. He was a Jew, so I obviously need to go especially back to like what context was he brought up in? What would he been a been expecting from people based in his context, based in the way they did religion, and then, on this end, you know, having done evangelicalism and finding my way into indigenous wisdom Created a path for me to come back to my own African spirituality and that has been. I Don't even think I have words, but but the amount of native people who have helped facilitate my own Reconciliation to land and body started. It started at you and eat his farm. But this process of coming back to myself, you know I Write a view.
Speaker 1:I quote you in the chapter that talks about my me leaving abuse.
Speaker 1:I was in an abusive marriage during that time. I was even out there and there was something about going back to like, well, jesus the Nazarene like he's gotta be grounded, he's gotta be rooted in whatever was indigenous to him, and then over here like, wait, so there are Western ways of thinking and indigenous ways of thinking and you just are not. People don't tell you, you don't know. So then it was like all the things that were starting to bother me and starting to kind of I was having dissonance when I got there and hearing, oh, you're having dissonance because that's not the way, like that's not the way that we hold spirituality, we don't hold it in binary, we don't hold it in Western ways of thinking. And I'm hoping, if you wouldn't mind, for those who are not familiar with it, kind of the dichotomies there or the differences there could you talk a little bit about. You mentioned in the beginning of the episode how indigenous wisdom was bumping against whiteness. Can you talk a little bit about, comparatively, what you mean by that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so even though you may know or not know Native Americans and the listeners around them and go, well, they dress like us and they drive cars like us and they have houses like us. But actually indigenous people in America and other places have very different worldview, and that worldview is everything. We don't know that we're born with a particular worldview until we begin to sort of bump up against people who have a different worldview. And it's not just culture, it's much deeper than culture. Culture is sort of the collective artifacts in a community that you can tangibly see whereas and how they practice them. But worldview is really like how you think about those things, like your feelings about them, how they relate to your life and all those kinds of things.
Speaker 2:And so we've been given a particular worldview, a Western worldview that took between 2,500 years and 3,000 years to sort of develop from ancient Greece and without going into a whole lot of detail. But basically we've bought into something called Platonic dualism and that Platonic dualism creates those binary choices and creates a sort of a privilege for the ethereal world, those things that are of the mind or the soul or whatever, and the physical world. And so the physical world is seen as less, and so our bodies and the earth and all creation and those things are seen as like less important, right? Well, that's an actual break in reality when we understand, through our Western worldview, we're not looking at the world as a real world, we're looking at it as a false dichotomy. And so for Indigenous people, we haven't been affected as much by that Western worldview we're all affected by it, but not as much and so been able to obtain that sort of holistic view and, as in other Indigenous peoples around the world, holistic view of looking at life and saying it's all important, the physical is spiritual, et cetera, and not have that dualistic break.
Speaker 2:And so that dualism is sort of the foundational fallacy for everything else that comes about, such as hierarchies like racial hierarchies and gender hierarchies and all those kinds of things. It's the foundation for white supremacy, it's the foundation for what we call extrinsic categorization, having to break everything down into such detail, false categories, and then living out of those categories as if they're reality, the whole of reality which they are. It's all of these kinds of things. The whole idea of why we're not taking care of the Earth comes out of this dualism, because we think the Earth is not as spiritual as everything else, and so, yeah, all of those things come out of Western dualism. I'm gonna plug a couple of books now, if I can.
Speaker 1:That was my next question.
Speaker 2:I just wanna talk about the three books that I did in 2022.
Speaker 2:So the first one was called Becoming Rooted 100 Days I have it right here 100 Days of Reconnecting with Sacred Earth, and it's basically 100 vignettes, short vignettes of how to sort of walk in this way right.
Speaker 2:The second book is which is the one I thought of when we were talking is called Indigenous Theology in the Western worldview, and that's when I really break this stuff down and talk about the difference between an Indigenous worldview and that and sort of like who Indigenous people have been, who we are and sort of what's why the Western worldview, aka the white male Western worldview, has sort of destroyed the world that we're living in right now. And then the last book is called Mission and the Culture Other, and that's really for anybody who wants to understand what mission is all about. I'm a misciologist, I've been a missionary and I've been the victim of those things as well, and so this is basically trying to help people understand how the American modern mission that we hold near and dear in all our organizations and denominations and everything, is really a project of white supremacy, and so I go through that and talk about that and talk about what is our role then, as human beings? About sharing with others and things like that.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness, you have to answer the question for me now. I'm a suspense. I mean, I will get the book I have becoming rooted in the other one, but what is the answer? I mean, what do we do when we think about evangelism and missions? I mean, I think that's something people are wondering about, like how do we think about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we have to realize first and at the end of the book I say this is not a like fix it book, right? This is like to understand how deep the problem is, but why it's a project of Western white supremacy and why and part of the history and part of the results. And so I'm really reticent to give a like an answer, because I think we have to really set with the problem for a long time first, and that's the really point of the book. So I'm not going to give you the answer.
Speaker 1:Oh man, sounds about right. So OK, I have one more.
Speaker 2:We're going to answer those answers ourselves, right? I don't want to give you the answer. I don't need to read the book now because I got the answer.
Speaker 1:That's right and I'll include it in the links and everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my answer is not the sum all correct answer for everyone either, so this is my own experience.
Speaker 1:I do find, though, that those of us who, especially as I, think about being black American and thinking about you, know the complicated history that we have with this place, I do feel like part of the way forward for us is reconnecting with mother earth, with our mother, and I had my friend Sarah the first time I even thought about that. We were in a conference, and she said hey, I'm hearing a song and my mother's mother tongue. I want to teach it to you. But I also feel like you should know that the trees are saying they remember, and because we were in a particular part of Virginia, that would have been. People would have been lynched there, and you are welcome to visit this.
Speaker 1:She said I just feel like you need to know that the trees remember. And then she sang this song and it was this beautiful moment of kind of realizing like the way forward for me, in terms of being free from white evangelicalism and being grounded, was like completely facilitated by the fact that I was in conversations with native believers. And so I will. I just don't know how to Express the, the gratitude, and I think you and Sarah quints are some of my favorite people to teach me about the way forward, because it isn't Programmatic, it's not scripted, it's really Today, be present to today. And then we found out we were living on her land, which was even more amazing, so we steward it differently, knowing that it's her people's land.
Speaker 1:So okay, so then I'll ask you this you've been involved in in activism, so what are the changes that you've seen? And you know, what do you hope to see at this point? Obviously, this is my 40, 40 birthday Season, so I've been thinking about in my age, like I'm not old, but in my age, like I really am now thinking, what can I craft for the generation behind me? Most of my thinking is about when folks will land. Will there be robust theology for them to work with once this system of evangelicalism spits them out? And so I'm constantly thinking about the next generation, the next generation. What have you seen that makes you hopeful about your work, and, and what do you still hope to see in the generation coming behind you?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I Think the there's a couple things that make me hopeful. One is the thing I already mentioned about the, the last couple generations rejecting the paradigm of you know that was handed to them. When you reject a paradigm, you're basically saying we're gonna change everything. Now, that's what my generation did back in the 60s and early 70s. You know they rejected the stuff and there were some good things that came out of it, you know, like women's movement, the ending of the Vietnam War, earth Day, you know some things like that, but they basically my generation eventually sold out and Then came the dot-com generation and everybody wanted to get rich.
Speaker 2:So we'll we're yet to see where this generation will end up. But the kind of activism that I've been seeing, I'm real hopeful about. You know I'm it wasn't that long ago and it seems like a long time, but that the Occupy movement was going on right and and that was a real Beacon-hoek because it went worldwide, and so we have to connect. One of the things that that the United States does is it really doesn't broadcast what's going on with world protests or what's what's happening.
Speaker 2:I guess you know, go to like places like democracy now or Other alternative radio and television to find out what's going on. But we need to connect. We need to connect with those people in Latin America and in Africa and other places who are making a difference and learn from them. And. But the bottom line, though, is is what you know the heroes of the civil rights found out is that if you want to make a difference, you got to take away the dollar. Mm-hmm, I think maybe we need to relearn that lesson. Corporate America is running things. Corporate America is ruining our earth. It's ruined our political system. You know all of these things, and so the only way corporate America will ever listen to anyone is when they start losing money. Open that we can sort of reorganize around those principles. So the thing of follow the dollar right.
Speaker 2:Indeed that's how you make. That's how you make change indeed, wow.
Speaker 1:Well, that's a really good note to end on I. The last question I ask every guest that's on the podcast is what are you bringing from the rubble? So the rubble of all the things you had to work through, all the things that had to collapse For you to be where you are now. Was there anything worth keeping from that time? The second question is what are you binging so like, is there a TV show or an album or a series that you're really interested in right now? And then, lastly, our words to live by. And so, whenever you're ready, I'd love to have you answer those three what are you bringing, what are you binging and what are some words to live by?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, like as I talked about, I converted early to some different ideas and so I didn't have a lot of the baggage you know that I know a lot of my friends had, but I did have some and I had a real experience with the one I called upon, who was Jesus, being delivered from drugs and looking at his life and going well, that's a good life to emulate, you know, and to stay in contact with the spirit. You know Jesus, and so I bring that with me. I don't ever feel like there was a time when I doubted my faith, and that's different than a lot of people. I never had that sort of thing. I was like this was real. It's still real. I still feel the realness of everything that happens, and sometimes more than others. But, you know, and so I'm bringing that with me, I'm bringing, you know. I guess we just say I'm bringing Jesus with me, right?
Speaker 2:But, Christianity really didn't offer me a whole lot. So what am I bingeing, oh my gosh. So a couple of things are going on. One is we just finished yesterday a two year, because during COVID you're like what can we watch? Because we're going to be shut up for a long time right, exactly. So we're looking for a series that had like eight, nine seasons and I'm on called the Blacklist, that had like 23 episodes each, right. So we did that for two years and just finished it yesterday. I a couple other things. I've been playing my guitar again and messing around, doing some singing. I've been writing some movie scripts and I'm really excited about that's probably one I'm most excited about and I just was a finalist and one of the big screenplay contest and that was the Santa Barbara International Film Contest.
Speaker 1:Wow, oh, goodness Wow.
Speaker 2:And so I'm wanting my movies, of course, to be made. I found a band the other day I liked and I thought I discovered them, and then I come to find out everybody else knew about them. They were called the Luminers, my daughter's. Like dad, I went to a concert five years ago and I didn't know if it was going to be another one. Yeah, so just having a good time, we're enjoying the last season of Reservation Dogs.
Speaker 2:They keep putting these Indian shows on and then taking them off, like Alaska Daily, which was a great show about missing and murdered indigenous women and Rutherford Falls and now Reservation Dogs and they give a flash and I guess they feel like, well, we've done the thing for Native Americans. Now we can be over with that right.
Speaker 2:So, we're enjoying those while they last, yeah, and then the last thing, you know, there's, I think one of the last things in the black list that was said is sort of, I think, rings true, and something like it's better to live in risk than to not risk and live, you know, and so that that's probably something like words that I live by and have lived by for a long time, and maybe the other one is through one of our old Cherokee prophets, redbird Smith, and he said you know, my religion doesn't teach me about what to do about tomorrow, only what to do today. So we're living for today and that's, I guess that's my religion, if you will.
Speaker 1:Thank you, thank you. Thank you so much for this birthday present and for being on the show, and I will definitely make sure that I link all of the books and all of the writing and where can people find you if they want to follow you or hear more about what you're doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I got a couple websites. We got Randy Woodleycom for speaking and things. We got a la hayorg, e L O, h E H, that or so, a la hayorg. But between those two we also have a podcast called piecing it all together P E A C I N G, not P E, p, I, e P, whatever that is. So, yeah, so we're all over. Just put my name in. It comes up in places like you'll read good and you'll read bad, you know so thank you so much for being on the show.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening. To Pick your Money In your Heart is. Don't Need To Subquatch your Ink and clear the path for black students today.