And Oh, um, oh, oh,

oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,

ooh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, Greetings to you listeners, this is Lenique O'Leary, Citizen Minicange-O-Lakota of Cheyenne River Sioux Nation in South Dakota

and member of the Oak Lake Writers Society, a Tribal Writers Organization of Ochetti-Shakoi. Today, our guest for this Native Reads podcast is Monica Brain.

She will offer us special insights and sensibilities about the book entitled Witness

a Hunkpapa historian's Strong Heart Song of the Lakotas

by Josephine Wagner and edited by Emily Levine.

Greetings to you, Monica.

Will you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself.

Thanks, Linneko. I'm excited to talk with you today. I'm a little bit nervous. There's a lot of people in my family that know a lot about

Josephine Wagner and I'm not sure I'm the best person to do it, but I'm happy to jump in and talk about it.

So I am a senior producer for a radio show called Native America Calling, which is a live call-in

radio show that's on about 70 stations across the US, mostly tribal and community

stations.

I've been doing this for about 10 years and it's,

radio is my passion.

I love it so much.

I love podcasts, which is like the next version of radio.

Our show has been on the air for 25 years which I think is pretty remarkable considering that it's on five days a week, and all we do is talk

about issues that are relevant to Native Americans. So when I think about my great-great-grandmother,

Josephine Wagner, I just wonder, you know,

what she would think about what I'm doing today and about how we're sharing the stories and messages and the history of Native people to a national audience.

...