For Immediate Release: April 29, 2024
Rapid City, SD – Today, NDN Collective released the second episode of the LANDBACK For The People podcast, Season 2. The podcast, hosted by NDN Collective President & CEO Nick Tilsen (Oglala Lakota), is dedicated to the liberation of Indigenous Peoples’ and lands.
LANDBACK For the People is available on Spotify, Apple Music, and wherever you listen to podcasts – as well as with video available on YouTube.
Independent artist Benjamin Hammond Haggerty – better known by his stage name Macklemore – is the featured guest on this episode. He speaks vulnerably about his journey to understand the intertwined nature of white supremacy, colonization, oppression, land theft, and more. On the episode, Tilsen and Macklemore delve into how they met at a rally for Palestinian liberation, politically educating their children, reckoning with past cultural appropriation, the fear white people have of losing power, landback movements across the globe, and more.
“When you look at the civil rights movements of the 60s, 70s, 80s, music and culture was a core part of those movements,” said Nick Tilsen, president and CEO of NDN Collective. “It’s part of the settler colonial project to attack people when we’re speaking up. That’s why we don’t need allies – we need accomplices. Because white supremacy is a system that we all need to dismantle. We need to be arm-in-arm, and have the same analysis. White people have to give up power — we need to go from a pyramid structure to a circle, as it is in Indigenous cultures.”
“I see what you’ve built, and that’s why I’m riding with LANDBACK!” said Ben Haggerty, aka Macklemore. “There’s this idea of, if I say the wrong thing, if I mess up – cancel culture. I’ve been canceled before there was cancel culture. But I’m still here, because I keep showing up. I’m only here for a little bit of time, so what am I gonna do with it? October 7th happened, and it led me to research, to listen, to learn, about the last 75 years of occupation. I started to realize that all of these struggles are intertwined, just on different lands. Those silencing those who speak out against oppression, against genocide, are being exposed for what they are. There are no sides in humanity.”
Video for this episode of LANDBACK FTP will be available on YouTube Tuesday, April 30, 2024
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NDN Collective is an Indigenous-led organization dedicated to building Indigenous power. Through organizing, activism, philanthropy, grantmaking, capacity-building, and narrative change, we are creating sustainable solutions on Indigenous terms.