I'm so happy to welcome Simon and Julie Beck.

Julie Franchella is a mental health professional with over 30 years of experience in handling complex trauma with indigenous youth and families.

Julie's an enrolled member of the Ojibway of Batchewana First Nation Reserve.

She teaches indigenous studies at Durham College, focusing on the

impacts of colonization on First Nations people, and I highly recommend her paintings at Julie

Franchella.com. Ms. Franchella, welcome back. Thank you so much for having us back. Always

happy to be here. I'm so glad to have you back. It's our last normal segment of the year,

and Simon Moyes Smith is with us. He's an Oglala Lakota and Chicano journalist. Simon is a contributing writer at NBC News and The Nation.com. He's the author of the forthcoming book, Your Spirit Animal is a jackass, an adjunct professor of indigenous studies at the University of Colorado, Denver. And more importantly, he's a freezing cold East Coaster now, too. Simon, how are you?

Happy Christmas.

I'm cold.

Yeah.

This is cold.

Yeah, tell me about it.

My flu agrees with you.

I'm so glad you guys are with us.

I just look and I just see Indian country is being asked again to carry the moral weight of decisions that are made under

federal pressure and state overreach and corporate temptation while also modeling what accountability

and sovereignty and cultural survival really look like. And this week, Julie, this story about

the prairie band Potawatomi Nation firing executives after this ice contract was fascinating.

I'd love you to break this down for us because when the news broke, the response from

indigenous communities was immediate and loud. What's the background here? Why did this ice detention

contract strike such a deep nerve across native nations? Well, first of all, what happened

...