Nation to Nation: 06 Interview - Treaties Matter

• published: 23 Sep 2014
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This special symposium celebrates the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian’s landmark exhibition, Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations, and the notable book of the same title that accompanies the exhibition. In this segment, Judy Woodruff, Co-Anchor, PBS NewsHour, and Mark Trahant, Atwood Chair of Journalism, University of Alaska Anchorage, interview Kevin Gover, Director of the National Museum of the American Indian, and Suzan Shown Harjo, Guest Curator, about the exhibition. Judy Woodruff is the Co-Anchor and Managing Editor of the PBS NewsHour with Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff. A distinguished broadcast journalist, she has covered politics and other news for more than three decades at CNN, NBC, and PBS. For 12 years, Woodruff served as anchor and senior correspondent for CNN, where her duties included anchoring the weekday program, “Inside Politics.” At PBS from 1983 to 1993, she was the chief Washington correspondent for The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. From 1984-1990, she also anchored PBS' award-winning weekly documentary series, “Frontline with Judy Woodruff.” In addition, she anchors a monthly program for Bloomberg Television, “Conversations with Judy Woodruff.” Mark Trahant (Shoshone-Bannock Tribes) is at the University of Alaska Anchorage where he currently serves as the Atwood Journalism Chair. An independent print and broadcast journalist, he blogs and posts often on Twitter. Trahant was recently a Kaiser Media Fellow and was previously editor of the editorial page for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. A former president of the Native American Journalists Association, Trahant is the author of The Last Great Battle of the Indian Wars, about Henry Jackson, Forrest Gerard, and the campaign for American Indian self-determination. Kevin Gover (Pawnee) is the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and a former professor of law at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University (ASU). He served on the faculty of the university’s Indian Legal Program and was co-executive director of ASU’s American Indian Policy Institute. From 1997 to 2001 Gover was the assistant secretary for Indian Affairs in the U.S. Department of the Interior. His tenure in that position is perhaps best known for his apology to Native American people for the historical conduct of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Suzan Shown Harjo (Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee), president of The Morning Star Institute, a national Indian rights organization founded in 1984, is a writer, curator, and policy advocate who has helped Native Nations recover sacred places and more than one million acres of land. Since 1975, she has developed key federal Indian law, including the most important national policy advances in the modern era for the protection of Native American ancestors, arts, cultures, languages, and religious freedom. A poet and an award-winning columnist, her work appears in numerous publications, and she received the Institute of American Indian Arts’ first honorary doctorate of humanities awarded to a woman. Dr. Harjo is a founder of the National Museum of the American Indian and has served as a guest curator and editor of this and various museum projects. This symposium was webcast and recorded in the Rasmuson Theater of the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. on September 18. 2014.