We went live on location at Dante's in beautiful downtown Portland Oregon. In this episode of 'Native As I Can Be,' I talk with Jason Moore, Native drummer of Dead Animal Assembly Plant. We discussed Jason's musical journey, his upbringing on a reservation, the influence of his family, and the challenges he faced after losing his father. Jason shares how his cultural heritage shapes his music and drumming style, and how he uses his platform to raise awareness about important issues, including the crisis of missing Indigenous women. The conversation also touches on the evolution of his stage persona, Scorn, and the importance of community in the Montana music scene.
This is my first attempt at filming on location. It was a lot of fun and hope to do it again soon. It will only get better from here!I apologize for the lack of closed captioning, as soon as I start mucking with it too much, the audio and the video stop syncing. There's also a little bit of dead air at the beginning, just power through.
Jason Moore on the internet:@deadanimalassemblyplant
@skorndaap
Geno Ray on the internet:
@thunderlips_pdx
@n8ive_as_i_can_be
YouTube
@ThunderlipsPDX
TikTok
@thunderlips_pdx
Geno Ray - personal
Geno Ray Nativeasicanbe - show page
This week, my guest is Dr. Beverley Jacobs!
Dr. Jacobs has carried stories that most people could never bear. A Mohawk lawyer, scholar, and advocate, she has worked with Amnesty International, Native Women's Association of Canada, the Sisters in Spirit movement and pushed for a National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Women across Canada.
Dr. Jacobs took time out of her very busy schedule talk about loss, legacy, and the long fight for justice. It’s a story of grief and power — of a woman who turned pain into purpose, and a community that refuses to be silent. This is definitely one of my most powerful interviews ever.
Geno Ray on the internet:
@thunderlips_pdx
@n8ive_as_i_can_be
YouTube
@ThunderlipsPDX
TikTok
@thunderlips_pdx
Geno Ray - personal
Geno Ray Nativeasicanbe - show page
Native As I Can Be, episode 6 is here! We talked about growing up as a Native adoptee, finding her birth parents, and her connection and career communicating with relatives from the unseen world.
This week, I interviewed Melissa L. Bennett. Melissa is a domestic transracial adoptee and descendant of the Umatilla, Nimiipuu, Sac and Fox, and Anishinaabe Nations. She is a writer, storyteller and story listener, an educator, spiritual care provider, spirit worker, tarot reader, and ancestor whisperer. Melissa currently resides in rural Oregon where she lives with two cats, a lot of art supplies, and plenty of snacks.
Some of her essays can be found here:
https://expositionreview.com/flash-405/river-of-stars/
https://www.oregonhumanities.org/rll/magazine/joy-and-pain-spring-2023/creation-stories/
https://www.oregonhumanities.org/rll/beyond-the-margins/sema/
She can be found on Instagram @lostbirdtarot
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If you want to contribute to helping this podcast grow byleaps and bounds, head over to Kickstarter! I am attempting to raise money to get better cameras, mics, laptop and advertising. Every little bit, even $5, helps out a ton!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nativeasicanbe/native-as-i-can-be-between-two-cultures
Geno Ray on the internet:
@thunderlips_pdx
@n8ive_as_i_can_be
YouTube
@ThunderlipsPDX
TikTok
@thunderlips_pdx
Geno Ray - personal
Geno Ray Nativeasicanbe - show page
I sat down with a friend I have known all the way since the early 2000s (!), Jade Jesser.
Jade is an author, actor, former stand-up comedian, and a yoga instructor.
Couple things to know about this episode... this was recorded via Zoom and on Jade's TikTok Live stream, and my computer couldn't handle melding those two things together. So, you are seeing the TikTok version. I also couldn't get the captions to work.
Business stuff:
Jade Jesser:
TikTok
@baelfire.books.jj
Baelfire: Innocence Lost: Jesser, Jade: 9798551220602: Amazon.com: BooksIf you want to contribute to helping this podcast grow byleaps and bounds, head over to Kickstarter! I am attempting to raise money toget better cameras, mics, laptop and advertising. Every little bit, even $5,helps out a ton!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nativeasicanbe/native-as-i-can-be-between-two-cultures
Geno Ray on the internet:
@thunderlips_pdx
@n8ive_as_i_can_be
YouTube
@ThunderlipsPDX
TikTok
@thunderlips_pdx
Geno Ray - personal
Geno Ray Nativeasicanbe - show page
This week, I sat down with my very special guest, David Velarde.
David is an actor, screenwriter, and life enthusiast. He’s an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation and strives to bring tribal authenticity to his acting roles and screenplays.
YouTube: @davevelarde8261
Instagram: @david.a.velarde.3
Facebook: David Anthony Velarde
If you want to contribute to helping this podcast grow by leaps and bounds, head over to Kickstarter! I am attempting to raise money to get better cameras, mics, laptop and advertising. Every little bit, even $5, helps out a ton!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nativeasicanbe/native-as-i-can-be-between-two-cultures
Geno Ray on the internet:
@thunderlips_pdx
@n8ive_as_i_can_be
YouTube
@ThunderlipsPDX
TikTok
@thunderlips_pdx
Geno Ray - personal
Geno Ray Nativeasicanbe - show page
This week I sat down with my very special guest, Crystal Nicholson. She is a biracial author from Sacramento, CA that I *kinda* share some family ties with. We had a great conversation about growing up mixed, trauma, white supremacy, and, of course, children's books.
She can be found on TikTok at @the.rebel.author and her children's book Naya's Little Lionheart is available on Amazon.
Go check out my Kickstarter! I am working feverishly to make this podcast as large as I picture it my head and heart. I am trying to upgrade my equipment and get some more eyes/ears on the project. Check it out here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nativeasicanbe/native-as-i-can-be-between-two-cultures
A couple $5 donations and shares would really make this thing pop. Every little bit helps!
Episode 2 is here with my super special guest Shelise Gieseke!
Shelise is an intercountry, South Korean, racially and culturally displaced (transracial) adoptee. She was adopted as an infant through an adoption agency and raised on a farm by a white family in rural Minnesota. She has three siblings who are her parents’ biological children. She has been to Korea to search for her family, but did not find them. Shelise has been involved with adoptee-centered projects and organizations such as Land of Gazillion Adoptees blog and the Gazillion Voices online magazine and Adoption Mosaic, where she participates in mixed-constellation groups and is a co-facilitator of the adoptive parent course, Transracial Parenting. She loves to connect with all members of the adoption community and welcomes opportunities to reframe the adoption narrative to center adopted people. In her free time, she likes to watch k-dramas, go to taekwondo with her family, and pretend she is going to learn to speak Korean. Find her on Instagram: @skmg_adoptee
I'm back!!
After many years away, I have decided to relaunch Native As I Can Be. Life gets heavy, but the stories kept calling me. The show will now include video, better social media presence, and better audio.
I wanted to kick it off with something near and dear to my heart, so of course I chose wrestling. I couldn't have asked for a better guest, Celestial! Celestial is a luchador (Mexican professional wrestler) from Mexico and currently residing in Seattle, WA. We talk lucha libre, identity and what it means to represent your people in and out of the ring. This episode sets the tone for what is to come.
Instagram:
@celestialluchadorofficial
Facebook: Viento Gonzalez
Facebook Fan Page: Celestial 天上の
I am getting around to favorite topic (besides hip hop or wrestling), cultural appropriation. What is it, what qualifies as appropriation, why (or why not) is it offensive, what can we do about it? I don't anticipate answering any of those questions definitively, but I am hoping they provoke a little conversation and thought.
I did something a little different with this episode, I decided to record while broadcasting on Facebook Live. It was challenging, and unless you like long pauses and dead air, not great. It was an experiment, I would do it again but definitely with a topic I have more knowledge of and don't need to rely so heavily on notes to talk about.
One more thing, I apologize for the amount of sorta white noise you hear while I am talking. I know it can be distracting, especially in headphones. I am tinkering with settings and levels and will improve the sound quality the more of these I do. If anyone has any tips let me know.
That's all for now, enjoy the show!
Guess who decided to drop a surprise episode of Native As I Can Be? Your homie Geno Effin Ray, that's who. I have been away for a long time trying to decide what to do with this podcast and if I want to keep going. Ultimately I decided to try and get a few more episodes out and give it another chance to grow and audience and hopefully provoke some thought.
My very special guest today is Duane Quintana. Duane is the founder of a.l.p.h.a. (https://alphaidaho.org/), a non for profit sexual health site founded in 2003 in Boise, Idaho. She is now currently located in San Francisco, CA where she is a clinical research coordinator at AHHA, a research study aimed at developing guidelines to screen for pre-cancerous anal lesions caused by HPV. In this episode, Duane will walk us through growing up in a small town in Idaho, her HIV diagnosis, her drag show persona B0nni33 Vi0l3t, the founding of a.l.p.h.a., her current work and combining queer lifestyle with spirituality.
Duane can be found on youtube on the channel A Queer Chaplain and instagram at @sparkleisassparkledoes.
Hey! It is Geno Ray, the host of Native As I Can Be: Between Two Cultures. This week, in honor once again of Adoption Awareness Month, I am bringing in my very, very, VERY special guest Karen Peck. What makes her so special? She is special because she just happens to be my mom. She agreed to come on the show and talk about her experiences entrusting a child in an adoption and later on adopting a child herself. I am excited about this episode because of lot of her story I will be hearing for the very first time right along with you guys.
I am very happy to be back in my makeshift recording studio creating another episode for this week. I am pretty stoked to be able to make these shows and give people opportunities to tell their stories. And, I appreciate the side effect of getting to know my people better and learning things about them I might not otherwise would have.
Thank you for listening and checking out my podcast. I have so much gratitude for those who are taking time out of their day to listen to MY podcast when there are literally thousands to choose from. It means a whole lot to me and it is keeping me motivated to carry on.
Hit play and check out my mom's story about being on both sides of the adoption coin. Let's go!
On this week's episode I speak with Janesara and Jeremy, an interracial couple founded in Thailand and now living here in the States. We discuss how Jeremy and I's unlikely friendship may have created a beautiful marriage and two kids. We also hit on being a White man in Thailand, A Thai woman in the United States, what keeps the relationship going and how all this was written in the stars.
Go check out the book Prison Writings: My Life is My Sundance by Leonard Peltier. It completely changed the way I viewed being Native and why being Native is something to be proud of.
Big thanks to Kenji Nitta for making this episode possible as I ran into serious technical difficulties converting the file from MP4 to MP3.
Stay tuned after the interview to hear the song History, the only musical collaboration between Jeremy and I!
Episode 11 is here! Thanks for listening, let's go!
Whoah, we made it to 10 episodes! Pretty stoked to have made it this far!
On this week's episode, I chat with Scott Morgan, a Dine (Navajo) Indian, about life on and off the Rez. We take a look at the negatives, the positives, what can be improved and what things people who don't live on reservations could learn from those living on one. Reservation living is not something I am familiar with firsthand, I would like to thank Scott sharing his insight with us.
Scott has numerous acting credits, go check out some of his work!
Film:
Leave No Trace, The Musicianer
TV:
Documentary Now!, Life Before First Failure, The Librarians
Commercials:
Providence, First Interstate Bank, Oregon Lottery
Other media (YouTube, etc.):
Jag, Grayson Crockett, Blood Sky, Avicularia Lacarinus
Also I wanna give a HUGE shout out to Quinton Gardner and Full Metal Jackson (Episode 6) for releasing their brand new music video this week which is blowing the hell up and getting massive amounts of plays. Go check it out right here: https://youtu.be/k7XeCrIHsdY
In this episode, I welcome back Kenji Nitta, host of the podcast Reverend Kenji: Conversations and Sermons About Jesus and Other Stuff to have a discussion about activism, the American Indian Movement, #DAPL, and activism in the bible. Was Jesus an activist? Was the crucifixion a case radical activism? Is activism all bark and little to no bite? Is activism the best way to create change? We will probably have more questions than answers but it should be worth a listen anyway. Thanks for hitting that play button!