Date: April 17, 2023 (Season 5, Episode 12: 1 hour, 7 minutes long).  Click here for the Utah Dept. of Culture and Community Engagement version of this Speak Your Piece episode. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click Here. The episode was co-produced by Brad Westwood, Chelsey Zamir, and Dr. Katherine Kitterman, with sound engineering and post-production editing from Jason T. Powers, from the Utah State Library Recording Studio.

In this Speak Your Piece episode, we hear from Dr. Constance Lieber, author and historian, on her book Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon: Suffragist, Senator, Plural Wife (Signature Books 2022), with SYP host Brad Westwood, and co-host Dr. Katherine Kittermann, Utah State Historical Society’s women’s history coordinator. In this episode, Dr. Lieber discusses the subject of her book, Martha “Mattie” Hughes Cannon, who in 1896, became the first elected female state senator in the United States, an extraordinary accomplishment as she was elected 24 years before most women in the United States could vote. 

A groundbreaking late 19th-century woman, Cannon vacillated between her goals, her public ambitions, being a devout Mormon, a polygamist wife (she was the fourth of six wives), an attentive mother, and a practicing physician.  Cannon was a standout suffragist locally and nationally, a compelling writer and orator, and a pioneering public health leader for the state.

In this episode, hear Drs. Lieber and Kitterman discuss a myriad of insightful details compiled by Lieber after many years of research. A statue of Dr. Hughes Cannon is slated to be installed, sometime in 2024, within the U.S. Capitol National Statuary Hall, to represent Utah,  among likenesses of prominent Americans, from across the United States.

For the speakers' bios, please click here for the full show notes plus additional resources and readings. 

Do you have a question? Write askahistorian@utah.gov.

Date: August 29, 2022 (Season 5, Episode 1: 53 minutes long).  Click here for the Utah Dept. of Culture and Community Engagement version of this Speak Your Piece episode. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click Here. The episode was co-produced by Brad Westwood, James Toledo, and Chelsey Zamir with sound engineering and post-production work from Stephen Morris (Studio Underground) and Jason Powers (Utah State Library Recording Studio).

The opinions shared in this podcast episode reflect the historical research of the guests and not the official views of the state of Utah.

Content Advisory: This SYP series is about Utah’s Native American boarding school era, which spanned from the mid-1800s to approximately 1980s, when Native American children (ages 5 to 18+) were removed, then later encouraged, to leave their families and communities, in order to receive a 1-7 and later K-12 education. This history can be emotionally challenging for any listeners but even more so for those who experienced it, either first-hand or through multi-generational impact. If you or someone you know needs to talk to someone regarding the traumatic effects related to this history, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline for Native Americans and Alaska Natives at 1-800-985-5990.

This Speak Your Piece episode is the introduction to a five-part series. Historian Farina King takes questions from co-producers James Toledo and Brad Westwood, offering a basic national, then an Intermountain West story, about the Indian boarding school era. The interview offers insights, as both King’s and Toledo’s parents and grandparents were survivors and/or participants in these schools; or the foster-parent and school program known as “the Indian Student Placement Program (ISPP),” which involved tens of thousands of Native American children across the Intermountain West, from 1947 to 2000, in a program offered by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

As with most history, this is a complex story that cannot be generalized in one or two paragraphs. The SYP series is not an all-inclusive telling; rather it is an initial public conversation and historical inquiry. Further historical studies across Utah are needed. The Department of the Interior’s Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative has preliminarily identified seven Utah Indian boarding or day schools so far (as of 2022); others might be discovered as researchers bring this historical topic into focus.

Part 1: Native American Boarding Schools in the Am. West & in Utah (ca. 1870s-1980s) with Dr. Farina King (Diné)  – an Introduction

Part 2: American Boarding School Policies with Native American College Adviser Franci Lynne Taylor (Choctaw) (Season 5: Episode 4) 

Part 3: Matthew Garrett on “Making Lamanites: Mormons, Native Americans, and the Indian Student Placement Program, 1947-2000” (Season 5: Episode 5)

Part 4: Diné Elders Rose Jakub (Diné) and Gayle Dawes (Diné) on Their Boarding School Experiences (Season 5, Episode 6)

Part 5: James Toledo on Multi-Generational Impacts from Boarding Schools and on the Need for Healing (Season 5, Episode 11) - Series Conclusion 

For the speakers' bios, please click here for the full show notes plus additional resources and readings. 

Do you have a question? Write askahistorian@utah.gov.

Date: September 26, 2022 (Season 5, Episode 4: 54 minutes and 19 seconds long).  Click here for the Utah Dept. of Culture and Community Engagement version of this Speak Your Piece episode. Are you interested in other episodes of Speak Your Piece? Click Here. The episode was co-produced by James Toledo, Chelsey Zamir, and Brad Westwood, with sound engineering and post-production editing by Jason T. Powers, from the Utah State Library Recording Studio.

The opinions shared in this podcast episode reflect the historical research of the guests and not the official views of the state of Utah.

Content Advisory: This SYP series is about Utah’s Native American boarding school era, which spanned from the mid-1800s to approximately 1980s, when Native American children (ages 5 to 18+) were forcibly removed, then later encouraged, to leave their families and communities, in order to receive a 1-7 then later a K-12 education. This history can be emotionally challenging for any listeners but even more so for those who experienced it, either first-hand or by its multi-generational effects. If you or someone you know needs to talk to someone regarding the traumatic effects related to this history, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline for Native Americans and Alaska Natives at 1-800-985-5990.

This Speak Your Piece episode is part two of a five-part series on Native American boarding schools in the Western United States and in Utah. In this episode, Franci Lynn Taylor (Choctaw), former Executive Director of the University of Utah’s American Indian Resource Center, tells a story of Indian educational policies, with series hosts James Toledo and Brad Westwood. Taylor covers the post-Civil War-era boarding school policies inspired by the Carlisle Industrial School of 1879, the Dawes Act (1887), the Indian Relocation Act (1956), the Indian Self Determination Act (1975), and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (1978). Taylor traces policies to the present day, including the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ schools, tribally-run schools, state-run schools, and state-access schools.

Throughout these federal policy attempts at Native American assimilation, Taylor describes a history of resiliency, generation after generation. The love for the community is the thread that weaves through this narrative. She concludes by tracing some of the healing initiatives for Native American communities which Taylor hopes will make sure many will never forget what happened, so history won’t repeat itself. 

Part 1: Native American Boarding Schools in the Am. West & in Utah (ca. 1870s-1980s) with Dr. Farina King (Diné)  – an Introduction

Part 2: American Boarding School Policies with Native American College Adviser Franci Lynne Taylor (Choctaw) (Season 5: Episode 4) 

Part 3: Matthew Garrett on “Making Lamanites: Mormons, Native Americans, and the Indian Student Placement Program, 1947-2000” (Season 5: Episode 5)

Part 4: Diné Elders Rose Jakub (Diné) and Gayle Dawes (Diné) on Their Boarding School Experiences (Season 5, Episode 6)

Part 5: James Toledo on Multi-Generational Impacts from Boarding Schools and on the Need for Healing (Season 5, Episode 11) - Series Conclusion

For the speakers' bios, please click here for the full show notes plus additional resources and readings. 

Do you have a question? Write askahistorian@utah.gov.