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power.
And also with recent happenings that wounded me.
I
Welcome to Native Earth's Radio Presents.
I'm awake and I'm your host, Wakunjahade.
Hey, Carragheeda, all my friends and relatives in four directions.
You are listening to Native Ritz Radio Presents I'm Awake and I'm your host Robert Pilat.
Hey, we discuss local, national, native news and events and as you know, native issues are human issues and human issues are native issues.
Hey, we're going to have our friend Robert Liligren on in just a little bit here, but I wanted to talk a little bit about what's going on at the Minneapolis American Indian Center on Friday and Saturday.
And this Friday, March 27th and Saturday, March 28th at 7pm at the Minneapolis American Indian Center, Rotunda.
That's a 1530 East Franklin Avenue in Minneapolis.
And this event is a
play and the play is called Soresfield Works 2026 Native Joy Play Festival.
And the play is different plays like one of the plays is Friends by the great Marcy Rendon who is just a great author, native author out there and people love her books and obviously this is a play.
And then the next one is Auntie is a Verb by Lee Cataluna, and that's another play.
And Dance by Jezmin Rochelle, Goodspeed.
And Slow Your Roll by P.C.
Vernon.
And this is all directed by Ernest Briggs, and it features Jelisa McKee, Roya Taylor, our friend Roya, and Nathaniel Two Bears, another Ho-Chunk.
So we got Jelisa McKee, Maihinu, which means in Ho-Chunk, my first daughter.
And so she'll be in this in Shana Sakati.
And again, it's March 27th at 7 p.m.
and then also Saturday, March 28th at 7 p.m.
at the Minneapolis American Indian Center.
So please get out there and support Native Arts and it'd be great to see you out there.
I'll try and make it out both days and and check it out.
A lot of other things happening at the
At the Minneapolis American Center on May 1st from 4 to 9, Save the Date Minneapolis American Indian Center, they're having an open house and it'll be the American Indian Month kickoff.
So that's going to be happening real soon and I'm going to put that on my calendar so I don't forget because we believe here at Native Ritz Radio every month is Native American History Month here.
Also, too, we have a homebuyer's network at the 2026 native first time homebuyer workshop at Minneapolis American Indian Center.
And that's April 4th, Saturday, 9 a.m.
to 5 p.m.
So first time buyer, home buyer, workshop network.
And so there's other things that are going on.
Go find out what's happening in Minneapolis at Minneapolis American Indian Center on Facebook and YouTube.
Before I get too far into this, let's bring our friend on Robert Lilligan.
We haven't seen Robert in a week or so.
And I miss you, Robert Peeneygeegee.
Thank you so much for being on.
My bad.
Oh,
a lot going on and geez Why don't we talk about first what's happening with the Native American Community Development Institute?
I know there's a lot happening and we got we got The the art galleries opening again.
So there's things that are they're happening and I was just talking about a few things that are happening on the avenue Do you have that in front of you by any chance what's happening with the with the?
with the art gallery?
We'll be opening up on... I'm sorry, I'm grabbing it here.
I was a little unprepared.
No, that's okay.
The artist's name is...
Danielle Seawalker and it's, is the name of the show and it is starting on April 10th.
So it's coming up and as some folks know, you know, our gallery went dark during the ice surge here because our gallery was the headquarters for resources, the protectors.
and things and so we had to cancel a show and a lot of other activities and so now we're coming back back online and this show is just incredible this artists work if you go to the all my relations arts website or Facebook page you can see a couple of examples and so it's about aunties right and the role that aunties play and Yeah, it should be really exciting and so
So that starts on April 10th.
There'll be an opening reception.
And then as we do with all of our shows, there'll be multiple community engagement opportunities, artists, talks, and things as well.
So if you just check out the All My Relations Arts website, you can get more information.
Yeah, and I also see too that the Native American Community Development Institute, we were talking about the play that's going on March 27th and 28th, but 11 to 3, there's a spring artist market happening at the
And where is this happening at all my relations arts?
Yeah, it's happening there.
That's right
Yeah, so that's at our gallery all my relations arts and our little yellow building on Franklin in 15th The address is 1414 East Franklin and after the As we reactivated the gallery and turned it back over from being a headquarters To to being a gallery again.
There was just a real strong feeling amongst
NACTI staff, and then the community that we do, some community focused things, kind of healing is our theme.
And one of the things was for a lot of the people, the entrepreneurs, the artists, they lost their ability to market their stuff during the federal occupation here.
And so this week we're having on March 27, 28,
a spring artist market and it's going to be artist kind of writ writ large but a lot of the community entrepreneurs a lot of our friends from our make voting a tradition project will participate but make voting a tradition and our all my relations arts are sponsoring it so we've been come by they can grab something to drink or from powell grounds coffee shops or the coffee shop
There'll be door prizes vendors.
So it's that all my relations arts gallery from 11 to 3 both days and They'll be beating sewing vendors from Little Earth of United tribes In just a lot a whole host of our Forces just farmers market vendors or other partners will be vending there.
So I would stop on down a good community event
And I'll tell you Robert, I've been saying this a lot.
I just had an opportunity this week to address a bunch of the commissioners, the heads of state agencies at what we call our Minnesota Interagency Council on Homelessness.
And these about a dozen of the state commissioners and our Lieutenant Governor, Peggy Flanagan, who chairs this effort, wanted to hear more about what happened in the community, what the response
was in the Native community, how we supported our relatives living unhoused.
And so I had just a few minutes on their agenda, but I was able to really lift this up with the Native community.
And I'll tell you this, Robert, and I've been saying this a lot in public, and I really feel that the Native communities approach that was peaceful, prayerful, people-based,
community-based really set the tone in a lot of ways and really contributed to the overall peaceful response to the federal occupation.
And I look back to the time after George Floyd was murdered here and parts of our city became very hot with a lot of illustrations.
I mean, hot literally.
Buildings were being burned and things.
And right there on the American Indian Cultural Corridor,
on Franklin Avenue we came together as a community and decided to use these data values our peaceful prayerful approach we didn't board up our buildings like a lot of parts of the city did rather
We organized our protectors.
So we have people from here at Little Worthy United Tribes and people from the community here.
A lot of people came into town from the reservations.
I think we had over 500 volunteers that participated in the protector movement during the George Floyd uprisings and
and we protected our community, we protected our native relatives, our non-native relatives, our native assets, our non-native assets, and the full extent of damage allowing East Franklin Avenue, or the American Indian Cultural Corridor, was one broken window in a storefront.
And this is while East Lake Street, which is less than a mile away and a very similar sort of community, was burning, right?
And so to me that really showed, okay, if we
If we really value and express our Native ways, we can actually protect people.
I know that we've just gone through this region, Twin Cities region-wide occupation.
That kind of showed the same thing.
And I think Native people should really embrace our role and really talk about it.
It was not easy.
It was very grim here.
It still is kind of grim, but it's getting better, but we did it.
Yeah, and it just goes to show to all the things that have happened and you know, I'm a big Bruce Springsteen fan and we got tickets to the concert and and really a big big Bruce Springsteen fan, especially what he did with the First Avenue concert and coming here and then putting making a song about how strong Minneapolis is and it's funny I had Benny Dion on yesterday and I saw that
And what's great is that, you know, what you were talking about, I really feel like everybody's kind of learned from standing rock to George Floyd about how to do this.
And really, really excited by, you know, our white allies showing up in a big way.
And because we're used to like protesting and looking behind us, going, where's everybody else?
It's awesome that the Twin Cities has really picked it up.
I agree in in this presentation to these state commissioners yesterday there there was this whole body the Minnesota Interagency Council on Homelessness and one of the really effective things that the Mitch it's called Minnesota Interagency Council on Homelessness and they employ
lived experience consultants, people who have experienced homelessness or are experiencing it to consult on the work and I will tell you their voices really impact
what's going on.
After I gave my little presentation to the commissioners, then they asked if any of the consultants wanted to add anything and just let every one of them did.
Several of them are native or indigenous people and they said,
They said the exact same thing you just did.
Just how impressive and empowering it was to see so many non-native allies, white allies, stepping up and stepping out with the community.
And that was different.
It just, yeah.
It felt like we were one community for a bit.
And it's actually, I think that is still, it still feels that way.
does they actually it does all you know, oh Yeah, and I really think that The no Kings rally here is gonna kind of lift up
The whole country.
I mean, it's it's gonna be big all over but Yeah, and then I saw I'm sure you I didn't hear the show I saw that Vinnie Deion was on and folks who aren't here don't know He and his wife Rachel Deion Thunder are founders of the indigenous protector movement.
It's kind of aim 2.0 20% ring they work very closely with American Indian movement here, but it's a
culture, native ways based, variety based, physical, spiritual, health initiative.
And some of their programs are Many Shield Society, which is a men's society, women's warrior society.
They were at the hub of organizing the resistance here.
um to the ice surge and they appeared with a governor yesterday our governor waltz i was the yesterday or day before
So it's the Profile and Courage Award is what it talks to.
And it's given to the people of Minneapolis for what we did.
And it is a big deal.
And yeah, I don't know how, I don't know what the logistics are and things.
I think it's, so in 2026, it'll be given to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Paul and then also the people of many of the Twin Cities.
for our defensive immigrant communities.
I mean, that's a big deal.
And that's the establishment, right?
Recognizing what we did here.
And then when you have the Trump administration and his supporters trying to paint us as a bunch of wacky radicals or whatever, being in community with each other and with this political violence here.
And, you know, he became a horrific school shooting community.
And there's a lot of ways we could respond as neighbors, and that fact that we're responding with care for each other.
As you pointed out, how allies stepped in, white allies, especially.
I was just talking to one of my board members today.
We had lunch.
A brilliant community development.
Mike Tamali is just named.
He's the founder of the Neighborhood Development Center.
And just kind of just talking about what this experience has been here and how how kind of influential we can be so yeah, so it's it's kind of our.
our time and how I've had the opportunity to meet with organizational leadership from urban Indian country across the nation and with Congress people, they're all asking, how did you do this?
They want to be really practical, logistical, because they all fully expect this to happen in their communities.
Yeah, you know an amazing thing too that they try to mess with Minnesota and stirring below zero weather and they didn't realize that That's kind of our jam at times not mine because I'm old but you know Well, you remember Standing Rock you could only go up on the hill It was called you Facebook Mountain.
Do you remember that?
I mean, they were literally, it came out after Standing Rock that they had these machines and they were doing that.
And to me, that's the beginning of all this coverted stuff that's happening and with the technology and everything.
to our path to go forward, right?
Oh, yeah.
Seven console players, Czechoslovak, Sequoian, that were moving the standing rock forward.
That was a council that hadn't been convened for 150 years.
Right.
And had La Greci Grass, which they prevailed.
And so, you know, custers I stand, and some people would know it.
But so that was kind of a starting point for me as well.
And, you know, we learned
Early here in the ice surge that This is a tracking device right your smartphone and so Tracking you and if you if you if they identified you in a cluster of other people they were Monitoring that that they could apprehend you and that's happened though.
That's coming out in the mainstream media Just in the area with their phones,
Robert, thanks again for being on.
Always great chatting with you and catching up.
Always a pleasure.
Me go out to gigaloblin.
I'll see you on the protest line or the celebration line.
Yeah, tomorrow Saturday.
I'll text you and tell you where I am.
If I got a good seat, I'll get you up there.
Oh, wow.
Hey, this is Native Rhetorator.
We'll be right back after the short break.
Please stay with us.
What is
up, everybody?
Hello, hello, hello!
Welcome to the Rational Revolution.
I am your host, Mark Becker.
Sorry about last week.
Guys, we had a guest and they canceled like last minute, literally last minute.
So we had a good rerun.
But you know what?
No rerun this week.
Let me tell you, and we've got a star studded show, not me, but we've got Rep Francesca.
Oh, he said first place, Francesca Hong.
Whoa, holy cow.
Three poles in a row.
What up?
was
That was not awesome But yeah, I think of the last time that we talked you were out you were in studio on the show and
Um, and I mean ever since like I've obviously follow you on all the socials But like you are everywhere you were making calls from a bathroom.
I saw that You're at a restaurant calling people that left their phone number, but
mean
Yeah, right.
Well, I mean, you're relatable as it is, but how is that going for you?
I mean, obviously, the polls are showing that your message is connecting with folks.
powered campaign.
I mean, none of this happens without the thousands of volunteers who have signed up to be on Team Hong.
And so when you have a campaign that works as hard as ours, and you've got all these amazing ambassadors talking about our campaign, it's been really, really amazing.
And I think my favorite parts are when I meet parents.
whose kids have sent them to our events to meet me and either haven't
heard
And they get excited that their kid is.
And in Walsa, I remember a young person, he's 15, brought his mom to this really great cafe we were at, Kin and Kind.
And they, yeah, she was just
I think she was excited that her kid was excited, and I was just stoked to get to meet her.
That's cool.
Yeah, and it's neat to see your message really connecting with people, and it's got to feel good to see the validation in the polls and all of that.
I don't think I asked you when you were here last, but what was the moment when you knew you had to do this?
A pivotal moment was when I had the conversation with my son, George is nine years old, and I had been thinking about it.
I've been making the calls to folks that I trust on whether or not this was the moment where a candidate like me needed to run, not just that I wanted to run.
And when George gave me the green light, because he was like, well, does this mean we might get, you know,
free lunches at our schools.
And I said, yeah, I think there are a lot of people in Wisconsin who want that too.
Well, that and when my family agreed was all systems go after that.
You're like, all right, baby, let's frickin' do this.
What do you think, what is driving the support that you're seeing right now?
I love alliteration.
It's chaos, crisis, and change.
A lot of times when folks are in this almost grieving time of uncertainty, we kind of knee-jerk is that I'm sure everyone just wants to figure out how to get stable.
But right now especially, people want change.
and they're fed up.
And there is this unifying, like we're uniting against the common villain, right?
And that's authoritarianism.
It's also the billionaires and everything that comes with authoritarianism, taking away people's freedoms and their ability to just live the life that they want.
And so when there's bipartisan opposition, there's actually a demand for change.
So I think meeting that demand, talking about permanent affordability, that we need a systems overhaul, folks are like, yeah, I think I could be done with that.
This is saying there's like little revolutions happening everywhere.
And I think it's going to lead to the big one.
And, you know, plug the rational revolution.
I think that's what folks want to.
Thanks.
Well, you know, and like I do, I think that
This is a time where big things can happen.
You look at the state senate district that Mar-a-Lago is in, and the woman who won the state senate district won on a message of affordability, health care, and fair taxes and all.
There's a huge wave that's coming, I believe.
It's so funny.
Oh my god, that's amazing.
He's like, man, it's not because of me.
Now, we're talking about State Rep.
Francesca Hong was running for governor.
Sometimes leading early in the polls makes you a bigger target.
Does that change strategy?
Does that change the approach?
It does, however,
require us to have some responses ready for the attacks.
But we have run a positive, almost joyful, exciting campaign that people see our vision and they see themselves in it.
And I think that's what's most important is that folks have to feel like they're a part of your vision and your plan.
And then they're down to learn
more.
when you're talking to voters all over, what are the things that they're saying?
I
Yeah.
Yeah.
I love that you're talking about education too.
Cause there's, I think there's 72 referendums.
Right now just this year about public school funding and it like I mean I know where we are It seems like the districts have to go to referendum almost every other year.
because they're their Budgets are getting siphoned off by these voucher schools.
Yeah, what can be done about that?
Like how does that change?
You know, property taxes are going up.
Schools are having to go to referenda because the Republicans in the legislature have abdicated their duty to fund our public schools.
It is in the Constitution.
It's why the state legislature is being sued right now.
And there's a lawsuit against the legislature because we have not upheld our constitutional responsibility to fund public schools.
I think that we have to look first at reimbursing special education and then have a plan for sunsetting vouchers.
We cannot afford to fund two different school
systems
Yes.
And it was born because we have underserved our black and brown students, our lower income students.
And it was meant to be an avenue for families and to have an alternative, right?
Another option.
But you ask Howard Fuller himself, like, this is not what he wanted was a privatization of our public school systems.
And it is what is being pushed
from the regime in addition to what the Republicans have pushed for for years.
Public education is one of our last remaining democratic institutions.
So you undermine public schools, you're undermining democracy.
And so changing the school funding formula and sunsetting vouchers has to be a long-term plan.
But in the immediate, we have to look at reimbursing special education and making sure that schools have
you know, uh, two thirds funding from the state.
And that will give like what's so needed as well is to make sure that schools have, uh, like they can forecast their budgets, right?
Like that they're, they know that there's, um, you know, there's, there's stable funding coming through and that can actually, uh, write their budgets because they know that there's predictable funding.
So it is
It's paramount that we change the school funding formula and sunset these voucher programs because it's a scam.
It is.
And it's so sad.
It's frustrating here in Northeast Wisconsin.
Like we have schools that are going to voucher are going to referendum.
Green Bay schools are having to make some really difficult decisions.
you know, between funding the arts or not giving teachers raises and all of that.
And meanwhile, we have a school that like looks like freaking Hogwarts, you know, it's like a castle and, you know, and they're like, it's, it's just, it's not okay.
No.
And it's, when I look at the, I think it's over $7 billion that have come to this program and it's costing us millions of dollars a year and
when folks see how much of their tax dollars are going to fund vouchers, when the students who are receiving these are already in private schools, it's not like they're moving from public schools to private
schools.
Yeah, and I gotta shout out to
the Green Bay School District and the folks in Green Bay that put that line on property tax bills
show how much is actually being taken off.
Because when all these voucher that program was put in, I think it was polished.
This is a great thing.
School choice.
And now here we are 15 years later, we're like, boy, that was stupid.
Yeah,
Right.
line with our values.
you know,
Yeah, there's so much that that I think that is.
a massive, massive topic that affects almost all communities in the state of Wisconsin.
We're sitting here with Rep Francesca Hong.
She's running for governor.
First place Francesca, I should say.
We have so much more to talk about.
We're going to talk about electability and how do we get the message out to moderates.
We're going to do some quick hits and talk about
Francesca changing a tire at a dirt track coming up here in the night.
So stick around on The Rash Revolution.
I'm Mark Becker.
We'll be right
You're listening to Civic Media.
Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website,
think that would be so much fun, you know, but then I would, I would say something political or stupid and I would get, I would lose my job, but you know, Hey, it's okay.
So you guys, guys got a dream, right?
Uh, I don't know.
I
depends.
It depends.
He's a producer.
Donald is like, yep, absolutely.
Yes.
It depends if Brendan Carr is listening or not, I guess.
We're talking about St.
Red Francesca Hong who's running for governor.
She's in first place in like three polls in a row.
So this is a big, I think a big moment for your campaign and a big moment for Wisconsin because there's so politics is changing.
I think the winds of change are blowing really.
I believe that very much.
And I think it's interesting.
how to how to get your message in front of people and When I was back in my Republican days, I was I always say I was a terrible Republican, but I don't think I was
so like I was someone who I believed in marriage equality and I believed in women's rights and I was very loud about those opinions in packed rooms that really didn't want to talk about that stuff, but I always
approached it like, you know, there is a conservative argument for marriage equality, right?
You know, it's the Republicans that don't want the big bad government telling them what to do.
What is more personal than the government saying, you cannot marry the person that you love, right?
So
Well, yeah, right.
Uh-huh.
Yes.
Uh, tear if me, daddy.
But so like...
Not
is going.
Yes, between tariffs and that.
We had a guy on who you should talk to too because there was a gentleman who, he's a farm consultant and it's like, I think one out of every six.
One out of every eight dairy cows in the country is under his care.
He's up in O'Connell.
He's brilliant.
He is freaking brilliant He was on the show.
He's a good friend of mine and he was saying about how Oh, yeah, for sure.
I'll connect you guys.
Absolutely His name is Dan.
He's awesome and he's so smart But he was talking about how ice is was decimating farms and like not
screw fertilizer, but they have to have someone to work the fields and to feed the cows.
He told a story about just a small dairy farm in Wisconsin.
It was a father and a daughter, and they had 10 employees.
One day, they were gone.
He was like, I can't do all of this work.
I don't know what to do.
Yeah, it's crazy.
So you're talking about expanding your message and all of that.
How do you get your message?
I mean, you know, Tom Tiffany's going, oh, Dane County Democrats, some BS like that.
How do you
Well, yeah, there's that.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Right.
mean, there's that.
It's having amazing volunteers who are ambassadors for the campaign, reaching people that I may never be able to reach, whether it's convincing a more conservative or someone who is just very skeptical about politics or Democrats.
When you have someone who's close to you talking about it, it doesn't always work.
I know families who have been torn apart by MAGA.
Yeah, I think especially the multi-generational aspect when you've got a young person and there's just so much like
People judge that young folks are not paying attention or they don't care.
They care so much because we are deciding their future for them when they should be a part of the conversation and look that as partners.
And we really, really appreciate all the young folks who are working with us and we're learning from them.
And they, like I said, they're sending their parents to our events.
So having those ambassadors is key.
And then the other piece is meeting people where they are includes on the internet.
And we invested very early in our digital program so that folks could know who I was and how to reach me and how I was accessible.
My Instagram DMs are still open.
That's
That's key, and we knew that I had low name recognition, and in order to get some of that name idea up, we had to reach folks through social media.
And the other piece is I have to be everywhere.
I have to meet people and have one-on-one conversations.
The town halls are more important to me than going into a space
Giving them a 10-minute stump and walking out and I'm not saying Canada to that but I do know that we People want to maximize their time and and get in front of a lot of folks but for me spending more time in front of a small group Answering questions for an hour much to the dismay Sometimes of the campaign because who knows what I'm gonna say But that gives me more time to show folks that I'm I'm just a average person
trying to make things a whole lot better for working class people because I am one.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think this is a, this is quite a moment to, to do a lot of things, you know, and I, you know what I mean?
But like, because, you know, and I want to talk about this on the other side of the break, you know, this, this could be a seismic moment for all of Wisconsin to do some big things.
This could be the year that the assembly flips and the state Senate flips.
And may God, if we got the governorship, you know, and, and this could be a big deal.
As Joe Biden once said, it's a BFD.
I can't.
So if I say that on the air, I will get fine, but I'm not going to Dominic.
I'm not going to know.
We're going to talk about this on the other end of the break here on the rational revolution.
You got Mark Becker, you got Francesca Hong, and we will be right back.
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