Welcome to all about change. Now is a great time to check out my new book about activism. Find Your Fight. You can find Find Your Fight wherever you buy books, and you can learn more about it at JRuderman.com. Today. My guest is Lani Anpo. Lani is a multi-tribal Native American, a diaspora Jew whose family found refuge in America after fleeing the Russian pogroms in 1905. Lani’s family history includes colonial violence and indigenous resilience of two ancient peoples from opposite sides of the earth coming together in America. Her advocacy work combines grace and strength, engaging audiences with a balanced tone, compelling narrative, and critical calls to action. Lani inspires healing and recognition for indigenous and marginalized communities and is dedicated to the relentless pursuit of creating a better world for future generations. Lani Anpo, thank you so much for being my guest on all about change.

Thank you so much for inviting me, for having me.

So I’m looking forward to this discussion. I think it’s a really important one to have at this time, which is an extremely tense time in our country and around the world. You refer to yourself as indigenous and you connect two different identities that you have, and your work shows many connections between being Jewish and Native American. But can you talk in your own words about these connections and how you put them together?

Yes. So indigenous is a word that I embraced out of necessity, a necessary act of resistance and reclamation and empowerment, not just for myself, but for the indigenous lineages that I carry and represent on a personal side as a mixed person, not only racially mixed, but ethnically and Indigenously mixed. I endure constant invalidation of my identity, my experience, and my belonging. And because of this, I’ve struggled immensely with how I see myself with feeling confident and secure in my identity. Embracing the term indigenous was an act of embracing my full self. I’m not part native and part Jewish. I’m 100% both.

And in terms of my advocacy work where this comes into play, it’s about reclaiming truth and reclaiming the Jewish people’s rightful place among indigenous nations and within indigenous advocacy spaces, it’s about pushing back on the hypocrisy that I see in advocacy spaces, spaces that want to monopolize or support indigeneity for some while disenfranchising others who don’t meet Eurocentric narratives or stereotypes. You can’t celebrate land back for native nations here in the US and turn around and call Jews colonizers and illegal settlers in our indigenous homeland. You can’t claim to advocate for indigenous rights while actively denying Jewish indigeneity just because we don’t fit the colonized stereotype that you’re comfortable with. So IndiJewnous is the name for the space that I occupy and an unapologetic reclamation of belonging for all of the indigenous nations that I represent.

I want to talk about sort of what I see as hypocrisy, and I think most Americans will say America is a colonized nation that white people came to America, there were Native American people living here. We forced them off their land, we forced them onto reservations. But I have an interesting story. My daughter goes to Columbia and we were on one of these pre-visits where we were touring the campus and a student was leading the tour. During the tour. He said, “We are on the land of a Native American people and I want to pay respect to that. And every year we meet with the people and we come together and we have a dialogue.” And I’m thinking to myself, if you’re on their land, why don’t you give it back to them? And it’s just, I see this all the time. I go to films and people say, “We’re on the land of such and such nation.” How does that make you feel?

Frustrated? It’s performative. It’s a way to bypass any actual responsibility or change. While I think that there is some positive aspect to land acknowledgments, because for so long that was some of the erasure that we faced, just simply not acknowledging that we existed or that various nations had specific sovereignty and territories across the U.S. But in reality, it’s a way to make people feel good without actually honoring our sovereignty and self-determination on the land.

I interviewed a guy a long time ago on the podcast, Ben Friedman, who’s from Scotland, who’s an activist. And his position is, which is I think my position Jews are not white. And I’ll tell you another story. When my daughter was applying to school, she had to check off what she was. Was she Black? Was she white? Was she Hispanic? There was nothing there for Jewish. Now, my ancestry, my grandparents, great-grandparents came from Eastern Europe, what is now either Belarus or Russia, Poland, and we’re never part of those societies. We’re always the other in those societies.

But my wife, her family comes from India and Iraq and Iran, and if you look at my wife, she does not look white at all. So I said to my daughter, “Check other. There’s nothing else for you on this application. You are not white.” We had this whole discussion about this, but can you talk a little bit about this narrative that’s out there that’s so prevalent in so many people who I saw as my allies saying, “You have no right to be in your ancestral homeland.”

Because of the color of your skin.

Right.

Colorism is something that I’ve experienced. I have a sister who she’s far more lighter in complexion than I am. She has blonde hair, blue-green eyes, but our bone structure is almost identical, and she deals with a level of colorism and invalidation of her indigeneity that I’ve never had to deal with, even though I deal with it all the time. And what we’re seeing right now is kind of this revival of colonial tools of indigenous erasure and weaponization of the conditioning that we’ve had under colonial societies race. While there’s many layers to the history of racism, it was also implemented to erase indigenous identities and indigenous peoples along with blood quantum policies. These were used to eliminate indigenous societies on a genetic level, and eugenics were used to breed us to be more white or exclude us through being black.

What I see, especially across social media spaces, are people using this to dictate people’s identity, especially indigenous people’s identity. And so this isn’t something that is new or revolutionary, it just died down for a little bit, and then it’s risen back up within our society. And what I see is it’s strongly connected to the agenda against Jews and against Israel, and it’s extremely frustrating to witness because the rhetoric that’s being used against Jews is going to blow back on indigenous people globally. It’s not just a Jewish problem, it’s an indigenous problem.

So what do you mean by that? How are indigenous cultures approaching this issue and why will it blow back on them?

Let’s talk about what indigeneity or what indigenous means according to UNDRIP. This is the most widely accepted criteria or standard for determining indigenous peoples and indigenous rights. So indigenous people are people who have maintained or revived their pre-colonial or Pre-Imperial identity, land-based identity, culture, language, peoplehood, self-identification, and systems of self-governance that are distinct from the colonial or imperial society. Skin color and blood quantum or DNA or the amount of ancestry that you have are not considered legitimate factors for determining indigeneity. And yet those specific things, skin color and the amount of DNA Jewish person has, or whether they have spent too long in diaspora are always to limit our indigenous status and our indigenous rights. So when I see indigenous people in mass supporting the agenda against Jews in Israel, it’s concerning to me because these are all weapons that can be used against our societies everywhere else around the globe.

But how did we become more white than white people?

It’s because of success. Indigenous people are not allowed to be successful, and we’re definitely not allowed to have a sovereign nation that operates at an international level. That’s what colonizers do. That’s what we’ve been conditioned to believe. We’ve been conditioned to believe that we must maintain a position of oppression. And because Jews, according to some people’s perspectives, are successful and some of our international alliances are historically colonial. Well, we must be an extension of colonialism, but that’s not accurate. Any nation that has international recognition is going to have to engage in international political allyship, and we’re one of the only indigenous nations in existence. Who else are we supposed to ally with? You know what I mean? Right. We’re being put in an impossible position, but it’s also something that I think indigenous nations everywhere be aware of and paying attention to. And instead of jumping on the bandwagon to attack Israel, we need to look at what does this mean for our sovereignty? What does this mean for our future? Are we being put in a box? Are we being manipulated? Are our rights being diminished? And the answer is yes.

And I know that you’ve had a complex personal history, but in your Native American community, when you tell people I’m Jewish, how do they react to that?

It’s very complicated. So I am reconnecting to my Jewishness. I always grew up knowing that I was Jewish on my dad’s side and Native American on my mom’s side. We grew up very connected to my mom’s side of the family and very what I believed at the time, culturally connected to my native side. On my dad’s side, we didn’t really have any engagement with his family or Jewish culture. He simply always said that we were Jewish. And that was that. Growing up, I would constantly get asked, “What are you?” And I would reply, “I’m Native American and Jewish.” And I would, depending on who is asking, I would get met with, “So you’re a mutt, you’re mixed. You’re a half-breed. You don’t look native, you don’t look Jewish.” Or they would laugh and say, “Jewish is just a religion, that’s not your ethnicity.”

And because I didn’t have a strong connection to that part of me, I eventually became embarrassed and ashamed. I thought I sounded stupid for saying I was Jewish when I wasn’t religious. That’s something that has continued to this day. Only now in the current climate, I often feel very nervous about acknowledging my Jewishness, even though I refuse to hide it I have been met with extreme backlash from native communities. And many, if not most of the extremely hateful messages and death threats that I’ve received have come from other Native American individuals. And so engaging in my community right now is scary. It’s extremely disappointing to be on the receiving end of it, but it’s disappointing because I know that there are so many other Native American Jews, especially youth that are experiencing this. And as someone who’s an adult and has experienced this my whole life, it still impacted me deeply. And to know that there are younger generations of Native American Jews being faced with this, it’s heartbreaking for me.

So we talked a little bit about the Native American community and some of the discrimination that you face because you’re Jewish. Talk about the Jewish community. What have you faced in the Jewish community when you say, “I’m Native American?”

For the most part, I am met with excitement and curiosity. And in the same breath, there’s often an undercurrent of anti-Indigenous or anti-Native rhetoric or belief that people aren’t fully aware of. A lot of times I am met with infatuation, I guess is the correct term to use, and people want to tell me about all the native artifacts that they own. A lot of times people have this expectation that I know everything there is to know about every native tribe, not realizing the pressure that I feel as someone who is also somewhat reconnecting to my native side or people claim to support indigenous rights but it’s one of those things where as long as it doesn’t actually impact them and the comforts that they’ve become accustomed to.

One issue I can point to right now is what’s happening at the border and the rhetoric of illegal immigrants. Jewish content creators are pushing this basically criminalization of immigrants, but the immigrants that are disproportionately targeted with this propaganda are people who are visibly or ancestrally indigenous to this continent. But one of the things I find most frustrating is that as Jewish people, we can recognize that it’s problematic to be called illegal settlers in our indigenous homeland. Yet we can’t recognize that we contribute to the criminalization of indigenous presence on U.S. soil by calling people who are visibly indigenous, ancestrally indigenous, illegal aliens and illegal immigrants. Many indigenous peoples of this continent have been migrating across these areas and have family and kinship systems across these regions that predate current colonial borders. And I think we need to unpack some of the anti-Native biases that we might subconsciously hold due to the conditioning of U.S. society.

So I think there’s this whole erasure, and I wanted to get into this theme of erasure that your activism has touched upon. What forms of erasure do indigenous people face today? Also, not just in Israel, but here in the United States, and what are people doing to protect themselves?

Indigenous erasure is the systemic attempt to eliminate indigenous people’s existence, identity and connection to their ancestral lands and cultures. And this operates on many different levels. There’s physical erasure, which is actual elimination through violence, forced removal, genocide or sexual violence. Sexual violence like what we witnessed on October 7th. Militarized sexual violence is a tool that is exclusively used in times of conquest, colonization in genocide or the criminalization of indigenous presence such as illegal settlers and illegal immigrants.

Cultural erasure, which is destroying languages, spiritual practices, making policies that criminalize indigenous peoples, practicing their cultures, boarding schools, things of that nature. There’s legal and political erasure denying sovereignty, historically erasure, rewriting or omitting indigenous presence from historical narratives. This is something that’s ongoing. It’s not one event. It’s something that indigenous people are facing still to this day and have experienced from the onset of colonization. This is something that Jewish people experienced since the Romans and the renaming of their traditional territories.

There’s a film that I’m an executive producer on called Bad River, which is about the Bad River Band, the Chippewa people in northern Wisconsin and their fight to remove a oil pipeline coming out of Canada. But part of the movie talks about these cars would come through their territory and would just grab kids, take them off and put them into schools and try to Americanize them.

Yes.

Throughout the movie, people talk about they remember that happening and they remember the terror or encouraging Native Americans to move off of their land to Chicago or different cities to get a job, but then all the problems they had, not being able to get a job or fit in, and the pain that they felt being removed from their land. And I don’t think Americans are aware of that. I think there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what we’ve done as Americans to Native American people.

Yes, there’s a significant either denial or ignorance of the history of America. One of the tactics that’s currently being used against Jews in Israel is the long diaspora period of the Jewish people. If that is something that can invalidate indigeneity, what does that mean for Native Americans in the US? Because as you said, many of us don’t actually live on our ancestral territory. We are in diaspora despite living within USA borders. And if our diaspora status invalidates our indigeneity and de-legitimizes us as indigenous people and our rights, where does that leave us?

I want to talk to you a little bit about navigating this period and what allyship means because I know as a Jew I struggle with it. I struggle with people that I’ve worked with for decades as allies who have not been there for me during one of the most traumatic times for my people since the Holocaust and worse, working against my people. So what do you see allyship being these days and how has it impacted you?

It’s been a struggle to process. Recent events have completely changed my understanding of the world and of my own indigeneity and connections with my own indigenous communities and allyship. I think true allyship means addressing, taking the time to reflect and address your internal biases before blindly taking action. That’s something that I myself had to do a lot of. When I started reconnecting to my Jewishness, I had a lot of internalized biases that I didn’t know I carried. As long as we refuse to step outside of ourselves, as long as we refuse to listen to one another and take the time to get the facts, I don’t know if real allyship can exist in that world.

Lani, I want to end with, I interviewed Joe Bates from the Bad River Band about, we talked about his tribes fight to protect their ancestral land and their water rights, and he said that they’re protecting the water for the seventh generation and looking forward to the future to where their descendants will be healthy and safe. What are your hopes for both Jewish and in American indigenous peoples seventh generations from now?

I hope that they inherit more than trauma. I hope that they inherit the land that we’ve held onto and fought for and the languages that we’ve revived, the stories that we’ve protected that want them to know that they come from a people who never surrendered to erasure. I want them to experience true joy and the ability to express their indigeneity fully, not the constant demand for resiliency, and I want our passports to represent our indigenous nations.

Lani, I want to thank you so much for being my guest on All About Change.

Thank you. Thank you for having me, and thank you so much for your support. I deeply appreciate it.

Thank you for being part of the All About Change community. We aim to spark ideas for personal activism, helping you find your pathway to action beyond awareness. So thank you for investing your time with us, learning and thinking about how just one person can make the choice to build a community and improve our world. I believe in the empower of informed people like you to drive real change, and I know that what we explore today will be a tool for you in that effort. All right, I’ll see you in two weeks for our next conversation, but just one small ask, please hit subscribe and leave us a comment below. It lets us know that you value this content and it supports our mission to widely share these perspectives. If you’re looking for more inspiration, check out this next video. I chose it for you and I know you’re going to enjoy it. I’m Jay Ruderman. Let’s continue working towards meaningful change together.

Today’s episode was produced by Tani Levitt and Mijon Zulu. To check out more episodes or to learn more about the show, you can visit our website Allaboutchangepodcast.com. If you like our show, spread the word, tell a friend or family member, or leave us a review on your favorite podcasting app. We really appreciate it. All About Change is produced by the Ruderman Family Foundation.