It's the Brian Larrow Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Today is Indigenous People's Day,

a widely accepted alternative or addition to Columbus Day, as many of you know,

which aims to acknowledge the perspectives and history of Native Americans in the context of colonization.

In 2021, President Biden became the first president to officially recognize the holiday.

Today, a total of 17 states plus Washington, D.C., honor indigenous people on the

second Monday in October, according to the Pew Research Center. You may have heard, however,

that over the weekend, President Trump refused to acknowledge Indigenous People's Day. Instead,

he released a fiery statement

reclaiming Columbus Day as a federal holiday and calling the explorer, quote, the original American

hero, despite a lot, some of which we'll talk about now, because in honor of Indigenous People's Day,

we are joined now by Julian Brave Noiscat. He's a writer, filmmaker,

you may have seen his Oscar-nominated documentary Sugarcane or heard him speaking to us about it on this show.

He's out with a new book, The Story of North American Indigenous People, through his reporting and his own story,

and he's written it in the style of a traditional coyote story,

as they call it. We'll ask him what that means. His book, We Survive the Night, is out tomorrow.

Hi, Julian. Welcome back to WNYC.

Chukh, Brian, it's always good to be on the air with you. What's a coyote story?

A coyote story is a traditional trickster narrative from my people's

culture. It's about a forefather of ours called coyote who was sent to the earth by creator to set

things in order. And while he did some good, he was often up to no good. So while he filled the rivers

with salmon and populated the land with descendants, he used the salmon to marry into as many native villages along the rivers as he could because he was a bit of a womanizer.

And then he abandoned all of his descendants because he was also a bit of a deadbeat dad.

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