Interview with Roo George-Warren, November 29, 2018

Partial Transcript: Roo George-Warren: Cool so will you tell me a little bit more about the project that you are working on? Just as we get into it?
Blair Atkinson: Yeah just for some context yeah so basically, this is for a class called Introduction to Global Leadership Studies-
RGW: Cool
BA: -and what we are doing is- my professor, she is really into digital humanities work, that is sort of where her area of focus is outside of the classroom, which I think is like wicked cool. And she has reached out to this online oral history archive at the University of Kentucky, and so we have partnered with them so they actually have a subsection in their archive which is titled Belmont University Leadership Studies. And so each class when she does this project, we choose someone who we think is a leader in some kind of context. We are supposed to choose a subject who sort of exemplifies what we emphasize in class.
RGW: Great
BA: Do you have any questions or concerns about it before we get started?
RGW: Nope, I am happy to talk to you.

Segment Synopsis: The interviewer, Blair Atkinson, discusses the Fall 2018 Global Leadership Studies final project with interview subject Roo George-Warren.

Keywords: Archive; Belmont University; Digital Humanities; Global Leadership Studies; OHMS; Oral History

Partial Transcript: BA: Perfect so I prepared a little bit of an introduction just based on what I know of you and from your website, in case you did not feel comfortable , I dont know, talking about yourself, but if you want to just go ahead and give a little bit of an introduction to your work that you do and, sort of, the grant that you have and the work that you are doing.
RGW: Yeah, Im always happy to talk about myself.
BA: Yeah I had a feeling.
RGW: Yeah so my work- I work in a lot of different areas. If you go to my website, you will see that a lot of my work has been in performance and installation art, and also around community education. So I was working mostly in Washington, D.C. on that up until 2017, but I have also traveled a good bit for it, including to the College of Charleston, Ithica College, The New School, up in New York City, and the Utah Museum of Fine Art. And in 2017 I decided to leave Washington, D.C. and come back down to the Catawba Indian Reservation. So I am a citizen of Catawba Indian Nation- I did not grow up on the reservation, but I grew up on traditional Catawba land about 15 minutes away from the reservation. My family has been very involved in the tribe, my grandpa was the assistant chief for 30 years, my mom was the tribal administrator for almost a decade, and my aunt runs our cultural center, so I kind of grew up right in the midst of the cultural and social and political life of the tribe. In 2017 I received a grant from Running Strong for American Indian Youth to come back to my community and work on the Catawba Language Project. So, the Catawba Language Project seeks to revitalize the Catawba Language. We are in a pretty unique situation with our language in that our last fluent speaker died in 1959, but my mentor is the granddaughter of that speaker. And so we have a really well-documented language from pretty much the 1700s up until the early and mid 1900s when the last speaker died. And so we are kind of face with this situation of how do you turn a dictionary back into a living language. So that is kind of where I work, and so I bring in a lot of the skills I have learned elsewhere so, namely, a lot of graphic design and artwork because my approach to it is to create a lot of material culture around the language, so creating games, creating online resources, creating posters and things like that to help re-assert the language in our everyday lives. So that is one area that I work in. After coming back to the reservation, I realized really quickly that one of the most pressing issues for us in addition to language and education which is kind of what I was brought back for, food sovereignty is also a really big issue. So all of people are not really familiar with the term food sovereignty; its very similar its similar to food security, so a lot of people know what that term is, just the idea that like all humans deserve the right to have food, and deserve the security to know that they are going to have food tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. Food security is a lot more common of a term, but for us being a sovereign tribal nation, we have this history we have this past of being able to feed ourselves and our loved ones and our community for thousands and thousands of years, but through colonization, and losing that kind of sovereign independence of that Catawba food system. So our goal is to revitalize a sovereign Catawba food system, and so we are doing that in a lot of different ways. One way is through re-planting a lot of indigenous fruit and nut trees and other plants that are used for medicine and food. Another way is by doing a lot of education on how to use the existing plant resources around here, and also doing a lot of education on how to grow crops. And so, when I came back, it was interesting because I had this idea of you know we are work on food sovereignty and we are going to create this initiative, but I quickly realized that a lot of different areas of the tribe are already working on food sovereignty, its just that they were not really talking to each other about it. And so what I have done, and its not just me, its always more than me its all the groups of people working on it, its just getting all those people together in a room to start talking about it, and there have been some really cool things that have come out of that that I am really excited about. So that is kind of the general overview, the 5000 foot overview of what I am working on right now. That being said, I still keep up with a lot of my lectures and performances and some installation art, and travel for those kinds of things as well.

Segment Synopsis: Roo George- Warren discusses his work at the Catawba Indian Nation cultural center including current projects and partnerships.

Keywords: 2017; Catawba; Catawba Indian Nation; Catawba Language Project; Catawba land; Cultural Center; Family; Running Strong for American Indian Youth; Tribe; Washington DC; art; collaboration; communication; education; food; food security; food sovereignty; graphic design; growing crops; indigenous plants; installation art; language; language revitalization; living language; material culture; medicine; performance; performance art; plant resources; right to food

Partial Transcript: BA: Yeah awesome, so you actually kind of answered the first couple of my questions that I had about your personal biography and sort of what led you back in a sense to what you are doing now. Then also the cultural identities surrounding your work and your leadership in what you are doing. If you would speak a little bit more to the cultural identities that you are holding and sort of how that is influencing your work so if you just want to maybe talk about your identity in a native context, and also if you hold any other identities that are motivating you or drawing you or calling you to the work that youre doing?
RGW: Yeah so Ill start with, like I said, I grew up with a very solid idea that I am a Catawba citizen, like that was never really in question for me, but because we have no tribal school, it’s a major for issue for kids who are in the school system, particularly the public school system although I went to private school, the most that they can get in terms of cultural education is maybe like 2 hours a week, or if they have time on the weekends, sometimes then so we are really fighting this uphill battle of trying to keep the culture going, and its really something that needs to be happening all the time, but we are just not getting that type of support yet from the surrounding school system, you know we can talk about some of the conflicts that weve had with the school system if you want to. But I grew up with this strong idea that I am a Catawba citizen because of the involvement that my family had, but then theres this other experience of being in a school where almost every single person was non-Catawba, and so just constantly getting these messages from my teachers and from other students that like catawbas don’t exist, or that I don’t “look” Catawba, all these things because I am definitely white-coded. But, by the time that I was graduating from highschool, when I applied for college I almost didn’t mark Native American on my application until my mom saw and then she kind of yelled at me and was like you know “I spent my entire life fighting for your rights to exist as a Catawba and youre not even going to mark Native American on your college application” so you know, I marked it, but then when I went off to college, really my first year of college and a little but of my second year, I really wasn’t identifying as Catawba to anyone that I met, or as Native American because I had left my community really disillusioned, you know seeing all of the issues, the poverty, the unemployment, health issues, alcoholism, you know just the stuff that we hear about Native Americans all the time. But I was really lucky because I had a great professor my freshman year, Dr. Robby Fry (Blair School of Music) who, when I mentioned that I was Native American and I wanted to write one of my papers on pow wow music, he recommended this book called Custer Died for Your Sins, and reading that book was the first time that I kind of got this that my community existed in a historical context and that the issues that were facing are not because we ourselves are inherently bad or broken, but because of the system of colonization that exists around us and that has existed up until this point. So from there I just starting diving really deeply into a lot of Native American writing, looking really deeply at the history of my tribe in particular, trying to understand how we got to the point that were at. The other big reason that I left my community to go off to college is because our reservation is in South Carolina, and I- Im trying to figure out how to- I don’t even know how to describe how I identify, I usually identify as queer, and particularly when I was younger it was a very hostile environment to lgbt people. So the possibility of going to Nashville, for example, where I knew that there were more queer folks, was really appealing and then thats also the reason that after college I moved up to Washington, D.C. so I could experience that side of my identity as well and be affirmed in that way. That being said, being in a lot of queer spaces I quickly realized that I actually experience a lot more anti- native shit in queer spaces than I necessarily experience homophobia in my tribal community. So I dont know if that answers your question-
BA: No yeah absolutely, because I do know you personally that’s actually what I was looking for because it does lead into some of my other questions:

Segment Synopsis: Roo George-Warren discusses some of the cultural identities that he holds and how that has influenced him in returning to his work at the Catawba Indian Nation.

Keywords: Catawba; Catawba Citizen; Catawba Indian Nation; Custer Died for your Sins; LGBT; Nashville; Native American; Queer; South Carolina; Tribal History; Tribal school; Washington, DC; alcoholism; anti-native sentiments; college; colonization; cultural education; discrimination; erasure; historical context; homophobia; native erasure; poverty; public school system; unemployment

Partial Transcript: so you talked about how after living in D.C. sort of recognizing some harmful patterns there, you came back to South Carolina and I know you mentioned the work that you’re doing there, but just in more clinical terms I suppose, what is your title, what does your grant give you the scope to do, and in what ways do you consider yourself a leader?
RGW: Oh yeah sure. So, my title is Special Projects Coordinator at the Catawba Cultural Preservation Project, and so I actually oversee a lot of different projects and most of then are funded through grants. I have this language revitalization grant through this organization Running Strong for American Indian Youth, the grant is called the dreamstarter grant, so every year they select 10 young people from across Indian country to give $10000 grants to make a dream in their community come true, so thats the grant that I started this language work on. Since then weve gotten two other language grants which is great because one grant will last us through the rest of this fiscal year, the other grant will be for two years so were starting to build some sustainability into our language program which Im very excited about. For the food sovereignty, we are funded through whats called the Presbyterian Grant for the Self-Development of People. The idea is to give communities the fiscal support that they need to live a dignified life so our project was on this kind of food sovereignty/ plant revitalization work. So that’s what ive been working on in terms of food sovereignty where that’s actually going to run out in January so were trying to figure out how to make that more sustainable. Thankfully a lot of the work that we did during this year sets us up so as long as we have money to pay staff were going to be able to keep doing that project which is really exciting. I also work on several other grants. One of the other grants I work on is called the Catawba Cultural Fellows, and so we were looking at how theres this thing in my community and Ive heard it in some other tribal communities as well that young people don’t care about culture. And being in the space kind of at the older range of “youth”, I don’t see that to be true. Sure there are people who don’t care but that’s true in every context. There are a lot of youth who do care, but they have to spend all this time at school and then on top of that, people on the reservation arent rich, like a lot of these teenagers have to go and work so its not that they don’t want to be immersed in culture and work on culture and work for their community, its just that the economic opportunity to do so just isnt there. And so, with the cultural fellows program, we selected 4 young Catawbas, 3 are in highschool, theyre hs seniors and then one is in college hes a college senior, and they each choose a specific area of Catawba culture so language, traditional agriculture, dancing and regalia-making, or clothesmaking. And they spend the year with different mentors who teach them these skills and then during the summer they come and work in our summer program where they work with the younger kids so these are like kids K-6th grade, and they teach them some of what they learned. So its this really kind of inter-generational approach to developing the next generation of cultural leaders for the tribal community. Now in terms of leadership, Ive been involved in leadership, well really since highschool, but it really ramped up in college when I was in college, I was the president of the school of music, I was on the board for the tour guides organization at my university and all this stuff and what I came to learn about leadership is that its really- I think a lot of the time in popular culture we tend to think of leadership as being the person who stands at the front and talks the loudest and tells people what to do, but what ive experienced to be true is that leadership is more about being a good facilitator and helping other people become successful. Its helping other people articulate their goals and take the steps that they need to take to reach those goals. And so when I do leadership stuff in my community, I try to be very aware of that because theres also this stuff about we really lift up and honor elders. So a lot of the time its not appropriate for a young person to speak over anyone thats older than them. So for me, leadership in this context is really about helping facilitate the process, connect the things that are already working- connecting them together so that we can coordinate those resources better. I also am really really passionate about this aspect of youth development. We have an amazing after school program and summer program and I work with kids in that, but it’s a lot more informal. For example if Im in the garden usually like 10 kids will come beg me to let them work in the garden with me, and that’s great, I love that. But I really like the aspect of like working with older highschoolers and college age and just-out-of-college young people to help them kind of make that next step and start thinking about their pace in the world and their place in the Catawba nation, and how they can develop their skills so that they too can become leaders. Because to me the worst idea in the world is for me to be the only person who knows how to do, for example, this food sovereignty stuff, or this language revitalization stuff. The only way that we can ever get sustainability is to spread that knowledge out among as many people as possible. For me, leadership isn’t about being that one person its really just about helping other people become the people that we need.

Segment Synopsis: Roo George-Warren discusses what he has learned about leadership and what leadership means to him.

Keywords: Agricultural; Catawba Cultural Fellows; Dancing; Grant; Grant funding; Intergenerational; Language; Organizational Sustainability; Regalia-making; Running Strong for American Indian Youth; Summer Program; Young People; Youth; Youth in culture; after-school program; cultural education; cultural immersion; cultural leaders; economic opportunity; enabling others; facilitation; goal setting; k-6; leadership; resources; youth development

Partial Transcript: BA: -So how would you define or measure success, and what, as a leader, how do you learn from your failures?
RGW: Yeah so this kind of goes back a little bit to what I was talking about before but for me, I mean Im kind of like a nihilist or existentialist, I don’t think that success is a static thing, I don’t think there is a single idea of what success is. I think success should be and is always defined by the person whos talking about it and so for me the most crucial part about being successful is defining what it means, and defining what it means in very concrete ways. So for us, for example, with the food sovereignty thing, success isn’t just having a sovereign food system because that’s an ongoing process. Theres never going to be a point in time in which we say “well, we have a sovereign food system”, its going to always be happening. Even if we get to the point where were producing all our food, were cooking all of our food, you know all of that stuff- its an ongoing process. So for us its about making very specific goals. For example, one of our goals was to plant 1000 indigenous fruit and nut tress and plants, and weve planted 500 this year and were planning on planting 600 in april. And so being able to reach that goal for me is success because we set a goal and we were able to reach it. What was the other question you had?
BA: Maybe personal failures, how you can overcome times when youre not successful, or don’t, you know, achieve your goal.
RGW: Yeah so I studied music in college and its always interesting to me when people- because I get this all the time particularly when I was a tour guide- of people just being like “what are you going to do with that” and just “theres nothing practical in music” and to me it was actually a really really practical degree because the thing that I did every single day was collaborate with people, so I learned really quickly how to communicate with people, how to work together toward a common goal. The other things that I think is super key that I don’t think is taught enough is the ability to give and get criticism. This has been an underlying thing that ive seen in every place that I’ve worked. Most people never ever ever learn how to get criticism. And in music, I was a voice major, so literally every day I was having someone listen to me sing and then tell me what I did wrong, right? So very quickly you start to have to develop a relationship to criticism that goes beyond just pouting about it or rejecting and you have to start being really intelligent about what criticism does. And to me, the way I look at it is like criticism is free advice. And, you can decide to take it or you can decide not to, but the one thing you cant do is just say no youre wrong, because then no ones going to want to give you feedback every again. So that aspect of being able to get criticism I think is so so important. I think anyone who ever wants to be a leader, that is something they need to learn how to do because everytime youre taking a step forward, trying to make things happen, you are going to get criticism and the ability to deal with that criticism in a constructive and healthy way is the only way youre going to be able to get out of it alive. The other aspect of it is being able to give criticism. Very early on in our music degree we had conversations with our teacher about “what is good criticism”. A lot of us, like most Americans, like most people, we came in and we would be having a class where we were listening to a certain type of music, and you know that first couple weeks of school we would say, “I don’t like it”, or “I like it”. And very quickly our teachers pointed out that’s actually a very useless criticism. That’s great that you like it or don’t like it but that’s not actually helpful for ayone. So we quickly learned how to give constructive criticism, how to talk about, “you know I noticed on the top note you were a little bit higher on the pitch than the one that’s actually written in the music.” And that way youre not accusing someone of being wring, youre just pointing out what happened because maybe that was their choice, maybe they wanted to go sharp on that pitch, right? And so its about being able to get criticism but its also about being able to give criticism, and that’s the one I see- the one thing I wish more people were good at, because that’s where I see ost friction happening in my workplace now, and in all the workplaces ive been in before in community organizations its just a constant ongoing theme. Part of that is because our education system equates criticism with something- like the way that the school system works is you take a test, and if you miss something, it isn’t just “oh you missed this lets talk about why its wrong” its “oh you missed this now you have something marked on your record because of this. Its just so high-stakes all the time, so I think were just trained to be really bad at criticism in our school system. So I think its something that people need to be really aware of, and really work toward changing because, like I said, that’s where I see the most friction.

Segment Synopsis: Roo George-Warren discusses his definition of success and how he deals with criticisms and failures.

Keywords: collaboration; communication; constructive criticism; criticism; dealing with criticism; feedback; friction; giving criticism; goal setting; ongoing; school system; shared goals; success; tension

Partial Transcript: BA: Right. So I was hoping to talk a little bit about some actions we can take to enable others to be leaders, or if not leaders then to be successful for whatever that means to them in their own regard. So you kind of talked about reframing criticism and even a bit reframing failure, you know we kind of tend to think of failure as this end all thing. Are there any actions that you like to be really intentional about with people in terms of helping them develop their own leadership characteristics?
RGW: Yeah and I didn’t speak too much about failure but I mean I fail all the time, that’s just the process, that what learning is. You do something wrong, you figure out what you did wrong, and you do it better next time. I think we just, going back to that primary schooling system, its not really how were taught, were taught that if you fail at something there’s like substantial consequences of it, instead of creating a process where we can just learn from those mistakes. Just this idea of like switching that switch in your head from saying “oh I failed at this, Im never going to be good at this, Im just bad at this thing” and switching it to “oh well I failed this time- why did I fail? What choice could I have made differently, and then trying to implement those. In terms of developing leadership in other people you know this is something that I’m still definitely working on, like I said I work with a lot of older youth who are really in the prime moment in their life to start taking a lot of responsibility for themselves and becoming a leader and starting to learn from their mistakes in those ways. Im still trying to figure out what the best way of doing that is, but I think it has to come from a baseline of respect, and a baseline of really listening to them because, I mean, particularly for youth who are in highschool they spend 8 hours a day 5 days a week being told what to do all the time. So part of it is just flipping that and saying you know what DO you want to do? How I can help them make use of that space and make use of that autonomy is something that Im still trying to figure out myself, but I think it always has to come from a place of respect, of listening, and of recognizing their own personal sovereignty.

Segment Synopsis: Roo discusses strategies for developing leadership in other, namely, young people.

Keywords: Failure; growth mindset; leadership development; learning; personal sovereignty; respect; young leaders; youth; youth development

Partial Transcript: BA: Yeah so you sort of touched briefly on how you were observing the biggest cause of friction within your organizations to be sort of the lack of being able to give and receive criticism in a helpful way. So that could maybe be a way that the relationships in the organization could have room for improvement. Do you have any other advice on building strong relationships and maybe even trust within an organization?
RGW: Just like in organizations in general?
BA: Yes, organizations in general, and I know you mentioned that collaborative a lot with different people and delegate across several projects, so how do you build strong communication and relationships in that way?
RGW: Yeah I think it comes down to communication, like Im a fan of just lots and lots and lots and lots of communication, and I know that it gets on people’s nerves sometimes when I just constantly insist on us having lots of communication but that’s how you avoid mistakes with consequences that are difficult to deal with. Most of the issues I see in projects that don’t turn out well, or where people aren’t working well together is just them not communicating, and not communication effectively. And so going back to that idea of success, just making sure that everyones on the same page about what success means in that context. So like when I was preparing a piece with people, we had to have conversations about “what is our goal here” “what is the outcome that we want from this”. And the same with projects that I work on now, and its nice when you can do that because then as youre going through the process you can always refer back to those conversations and say well you know we said this, are we wanting to change that now, and if were wanting to change it, lets have a conversation about it and figure out together if that’s something we actually want to do. Yeah I know it sounds cliché but communication is just a thing that were not doing enough that we need to do a lot more of.

Segment Synopsis: Roo George-Warren discusses developing strong organizational relationship through effective communication.

Keywords: Communication; building trust; collaborating; defining success; success

Partial Transcript: BA: For sure. I have two last questions, theyre a little more, I don’t know, romantic, do you have anyone who you would consider to have been your greatest influence in the work that you do, or in life in general, and then moving on from that, what would you hope that your legacy would be, and hope that other people would be influenced by you in what way?
RGW: I think one of my strengths, just as a person, is my ability to synthesize lots of disparate pieces of information or different areas of thought. And so for me Im just like inundated with inspiration all the time, and I love learning new things and learning from new people. Some of the people that are inspiring me, particularly right now, would be Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, she wrote Braiding Sweetgrass, which is a really beautiful book, and I just love the way that she’s able to synthesize- shes a botanist, but shes also a poet, and shes also a citizen of the Potowotome tribe, and so she brings all these things together to make something that is just a really holistic view of the world. Im also really inspired, well I obviously have criticisms of electoral politics, but Im really inspired by the influx of women in particular in the political sphere and women from very diverse backgrounds including Deb Haaland and Sherice Davids who are the first two native women elected to congress. And the way that theyre able to be incredibly honest in that process and not try and hide aspects of who they are in that and recognizing that the diversity of their experience is actually their strength. Im such an emotional person like I cry like all the time happy inspired tears, so those are just some of the people that ive been inspired by recently. In terms of my legacy, I really hope that I can help build the sovereignty of my community in very concrete ways, so one of the ways that I visualize this Is all the trees that were planting- a lot of these trees with live 5, 10 times as long as I live, and what a beautiful thing that I get to be a part of planting these trees that can provide sustenance or medicine for many generations of Catawbas to come so theres this very concrete sense of building sovereignty for my tribal community. On the other hand, theres this more nebulous sense of approaching our sovereignty and our issues in a way that lifts up everyone in the community and that doesn’t fall back on this like very colonial line of thought that our success means that someone else is going to have to not succeed. I really believe in the idea of abundance, and that we can create a world in which were not playing this zero sum game. We can create a world in which everyone has food to eat, everyone has a place to live, everyone has the support that they need. And so I really hop I can instill that in a lot of people in my community and help build that ethic in my community and not just in a universal way but in a very specific Catawba way, because I look at our history and I see so many examples of that ethic playing out in the way that our tribal ancestors approached problems, so I hope we can get back to that and get rid of this very recent idea of we have to make sure others don’t get things so we can get ours. So yeah I don’t know if that answers the question.

Segment Synopsis: Roo George- Warren discusses his current inspirations, as when as what he would like his legacy to be.

Keywords: Deb Haaland; Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer; Learning; Native women; Sharice Davids; abundance; braiding sweetgrass; build community; colonial; community; diverse; diversity; diversity of experience; electorial politics; learning new things; legacy; sovereignty; strengths; women in politics

Partial Transcript: BA: No absolutely it does. Well that’s really all I had prepared is there anything you wanted to mention about I don’t know, leadership or the work that youre doing?
RGW: I think its good to also talk about leadership. I think we need to have more conversations about it because we have this kind of mythical idea of what leadership is in American culture. Like “leaders aren’t made theyre born”, is how I kind of think a lot of people think of it. And I mean theres nothing particularly special about me, just I learn a lot of lessons and have been thinking about it and have had some really great mentors, and going back to that influence question, I kind of jumped over this but I was obviously really lucky to have family members who got degrees and who dedicated their adult lives to our community so I grew up with really great role models in my mom and grandfather and aunt- and also my dad but he doesn’t work with the tribe- in prioritizing service and prioritizing people. Because sometimes this idea of “you need to serve other people because it’s the right thing to do” and I come at it from a much more utilitarian way, which is I need to serve my community because Im a member of that community. The work that I do benefits me while it benefits everyone else as well. So I think those are my only last thoughts.
BA: Absolutely. Yeah, I agree I think a lot of the time when we talk about leadership its such an iron fist, “American”, way. And I think youre absolutely right that by talking about it more we can re-frame it and just sort of shift how we think about it.
RGW: Well thanks, Blair, for asking me to do this
BA: Of course, Thanks again for helping me out with this I really appreciate it.

Segment Synopsis: Roo George-Warren shares his final thoughts about redefining leadership.

Keywords: American; American Culture; born vs. made; influence; leadership; mythology; prioritizing others; service; utilitarian; what is leadership