This episode is the second part of a three-part series on “Homelands and Histories.” Dr. Elizabeth Castle discusses her documentary film “Warrior Woman,” which follows generations of activism among Native American women, culminating in the recent Standing Rock Resistance Movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Dr. Castle is a scholar, activist, community organizer, and documentary film maker, whose work considers land use, indigenous activism, and cultural memory.
Transcript:
Jolie Sheffer: Welcome to the BG Ideas podcast, a collaboration between the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society and the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. I'm Jolie Sheffer, an associate professor of English and American culture studies, and the director of ICS. This is the second episode of a three part series on homelands and histories, in which we talk to people making big impacts on local communities through their work on land use and cultural heritage.
Jolie Sheffer: The word "homeland" evokes for some people comforting feelings of patriotism or shared cultural identity, but it has also been used to justify expulsion or even genocide. For this series, we deliberately use the plural word histories in order to call attention to the many points of conflict, debate, erasure, violence, and silencing that accompany efforts to describe and interpret the past.
Jolie Sheffer: Today we're joined by Dr Elizabeth (Beth) Castle, a scholar, community organizer and documentary filmmaker. She is from Mansfield, Ohio and is currently teaching at Denison University. Dr Castle is completing her film Warrior Women, which traces the history of women's activism in the red power and American Indian movements beginning in the 1970s up to the recent and widely publicized protests against construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Dr Castle has been researching and recording oral histories of Standing Rock community activists for almost 20 years. Her work has led to meaningful collaboration with Madonna Thunder Hawk, a Lakota community organizer, and cofounder of Women of All Red Nations.
Jolie Sheffer: Dr Castle's goal in this and other work is to facilitate a reciprocal flow of knowledge and resources intended to empower, liberate, and maintain indigenous communities. I'm very pleased to welcome Dr Beth Castle to BGSU as part of ICS's 2018 spring speaker series. Thanks for being here, Beth.
Dr. Beth Castle: Thank you.
Jolie Sheffer: One of the things that we are interested in discussing is the relationship between different kinds of knowledge and different modes of activism such as scholarship, art, grassroots organizing. Can you begin by telling us a little bit about your particular path to becoming both a scholar and a filmmaker? Did these start at the same time or did one lead to another?
Dr. Beth Castle: I would say that my path has been absolutely one that I have made up as I go along, and I'm still making it up, and I'm still trying to determine where I'm most effective and have a hard time maybe taking on particular descriptions of the things that I do. Working as a scholar, that's something that happened because I wanted to pursue the story and the stories of activists who changed the world for us in the sixties and seventies. And in the process of pursuing that story, in wanting know it, thinking about how I was going to be sort of a conduit, or an arbitrator, or one that could help then have other people learn from that story. I could amplify it. So it was that path that led me to be a scholar in as much that ... so I wanted to have people experience the feeling of seeing the ways in which their story can interrupt, intervene and reshape that master historical narrative tha
