On this episode of Native Circles, co-hosts Eva Bighorse and Farina King speak with Anishinaabe author Amber Blaeser-Wardzala from White Earth Nation about her debut novel, Another Name for Red. The story follows Middle Sister as she searches for answers about her older sister’s disappearance while navigating grief, family, and community.

Amber discusses writing for Native readers while also inviting a wider audience to better understand the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) crisis. The conversation considers the power of names, relationships to land and language, healing through family and cultural connection, and challenging stereotypes about Indigenous people. Amber also shares how running, beadwork, and time outdoors help her care for herself while writing about difficult subjects and reflects on her hope that the novel inspires action toward justice.

Content note: This episode discusses the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) crisis, violence, and harassment.

Along with being a writer, Amber Blaeser-Wardzala is also a beader and Jingle Dress Dancer. She is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Fiction at Ohio State University. She received her MFA from Arizona State University and was the 2024-25 George Bennett Fellow at Phillips Exeter Academy. Her writing is published in the bestselling Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, The Iowa Review, Joyland, Passages North, CRAFT, and others. Amber is a 2022 Tin House Fellow and a 2021 Fellow for the inaugural Women’s National Book Association Authentic Voices Program. She has received support from Vermont Studio Center, Ragdale Foundation, the Hambidge Center, Storyknife Writers Retreat, the Virginia G. Piper Center, and Center for Imagination in the Borderlands. Her new novel Another Name for Red was published in October 2026, and her short story collection (Deer Women) is forthcoming from Pantheon Books.

Resources:

Amber Blaeser-Wardzala's website

Order Another Name for Red now available from Penguin Random House

Amber Blaeser-Wardzala's university webpage

This episode of Native Circles, with co-hosts Dr. Davina Two Bears and Dr. Farina King, features a conversation with Dr. Wade Campbell on Indigenous archaeology, Diné (Navajo) deep history, and how Diné communities have navigated relationships with ancient sites, land, and story over generations. Wade reflects on growing up in the Four Corners, reconciling Diné teachings with archaeological practice, and why he approaches ruins and ancestral places with respect rather than fear. He discusses his work on 18th-century Diné defensive sites, the importance of recognizing mobile Indigenous lifeways in the historical record, and how archaeology, oral history, and community knowledge together illuminate longer-term Diné histories that stretch far beyond the written archive.

Dr. Wade Campbell (Diné, Kinyaa’áanii and Bilagáanaa) is an assistant professor of Archaeology and Anthropology at Boston University. His research traces the historical relationships between Diné communities and other local groups in the US Southwest, including the Pueblos, Spanish, and Americans. Wade is engaged with a range of questions related to patterns of Diné settlement and economic activity across the greater Four Corners region, with a particular focus on incipient Indigenous pastoralism and related shifts in land-use, social organization, and diet/subsistence practices.

Resources:

Wade Campbell, assistant professor of archaeology and anthropology, Boston University webpage.

The Four Heavens: A New History of the Ancient Maya (2026) by David Stuart (see https://www.thefourheavens.com/)

Becoming Hopi: A History, co-edited by Wesley Bernardini, Stewart B. Koyiyumptewa, Gregson Schachner, and Leigh J. Kuwanwisiwma (University of Arizona Press, 2023).

Campbell, Wade, Thompson, K. F., & Begay, R. M. (2021). "Naasgo: Moving Forward—Diné Archaeology in the Twenty-First Century." Kiva, 87 (3), 253–267. https://doi.org/10.1080/00231940.2021.1951553

Campbell, Wade. (2024). "Collaborating with Diné communities: Reconsidering the 'pueblito' through a Diné-oriented archaeological lens." Archaeology Southwest Magazine, 36 (3&4), 24–27.

"Wade Campbell: Diné Pastoral Landscapes: A Lens on Power & Equity in the US Southwest" YouTube video (2023).

In this special episode of Native Circles, Dr. Farina King brings together Oklahoma-based contributors to COVID-19 in Indian Country: Native American Memories and Experiences of the Pandemic, co-edited by King and Dr. Wade Davies and published by Palgrave Macmillan. Their conversation reflects on the devastating effects of COVID-19 across Indigenous communities while centering stories of resilience, survivance, sovereignty, healing, humor, and the determination to carry culture and community forward.

King begins by remembering her Aunt Florence, a beloved Diné elder and bearer of language and culture who passed away during the pandemic. The episode then features contributors Dr. Kelly Berry, Midge Dellinger, and Jennifer Frazee, along with the voices and perspectives of RaeLynn Butler, Linda Dellinger, and Kiana Hamilton.

Kelly Berry reflects on working with Native elders and educators at Riverside Indian School during the pandemic, where teaching new technologies developed into opportunities for sharing food, humor, stories, and cultural knowledge. Midge Dellinger discusses her COVID-19 oral history work with Muscogee citizens and the importance of documenting the pandemic in Muscogee voices for healing and future generations. Jennifer Frazee, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, considers the effects of colonialism and intergenerational disruption on Native families while sharing how Indigenous “aunties,” language learning, and digital communities became sources of connection and resilience.

The episode also includes the reflections of Mvskoke elder Linda Dellinger and RaeLynn Butler, Secretary of Culture and Humanities for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and co-author of one of the book’s chapters with Dellinger, whose oral histories emphasize the importance of protecting elders, documenting Indigenous experiences, and caring for one another. Kiana Hamilton, an Osage and Cherokee graduate student in Native American Studies at the University of Oklahoma, reflects on how the pandemic exposed longstanding inequities while also demonstrating tribal sovereignty, innovation, and the enduring strength of Native governance and community.

Together, these voices ask us to remember COVID-19 not only as a period of extraordinary grief and loss but also as a story of Indigenous presence and continuance. The conversation highlights the ways Native peoples continued to adapt, teach, remember, laugh, govern, preserve language, care for one another, and move forward during one of the most difficult times of the twenty-first century.

Resources:

COVID-19 in Indian Country: Native American Memories and Experiences of the Pandemic, edited by Farina King and Wade Davies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)

"COVID Recollections: 'Documenting COVID-19: A Panel Discussion on Community-Based Research During the COVID-19 Pandemic,' Now Available Online," Library of Congress Blogs (March 2025)

"A Twenty-First Century Pandemic in Indian Country: The Resilience of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Against Covid 19," Mvskoke National Library Archive

Riverside Indian School

School of Choctaw Language, Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma

Diné Doctor History Syllabus by Farina King