Encounter Culture Podcast
Season 8

#57 Connecting People Through Time – Makowa: The Worlds Above Us with Misha Pipe and Kaela Waldstein

Season 8 Episode 6

For as long as humans have been on this earth, we have looked to the cosmos for information and direction. The Indigenous people of North America used the skies to make sense of their environments and to guide them in planting crops, building villages, and conducting ceremonies. The new exhibition at the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture, Makowa: The Worlds Above Us, showcases a wide range of art, photographs, videos, and more to center the wisdom and longevity of Native astronomy and to remind us that we are all interconnected.

With Kaela Waldstein and Misha Pipe

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#56 Uplifting Cultural Knowledge with Navajo Picture Book Author Daniel Vandever

Season 8 Episode 5

What does it mean to tell a story that your community has never seen reflected back at them? In this episode of Encounter Culture, host Emily Withnall sits down with Navajo children’s book author Daniel Vandever, whose picture books Fall in Line, Holden! and Herizon weave imagination and joy together with the weight of boarding school history and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women crisis. Daniel shares how a career in higher education, and a stubborn love of rhyme, led him to write the books he wished had existed growing up, why he chose to let one book speak entirely without words, and how he’s already dreaming up a story you can 3D-print as you read it. It’s a conversation about creativity, representation, healing, and the quiet power of a bedtime story.

With Daniel Vandever (Irish/Navajo)

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