New from Crooked Media: Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams

Stacey Abrams (0:08)

Welcome to Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams. When we launched the show, the mission was crystal clear. Understand what's broken, figure out who broke it and why, and then build what we actually need and deserve. During the 250th anniversary of this nation's founding though, our calling is more important and more relevant than ever. You see, in the same month that we welcomed visitors from around the globe to witness the World Cup, the American government committed extrajudicial killings of three men whose only known transgression was not being from here. ICE operated without a warrant, without body cameras, and without remorse.

250 years ago, we decried a king for flouting the law. We revolted because he refused accountability. And we refused to listen because he shrugged off the demands of conscience. We may have celebrated July 4th and that day may have passed, but we can't afford to stop reflecting on our history and trying to learn from it. Because how we have navigated our moral failures before can teach us so much about where we are today. And likewise, how we rose to our highest ideals reminds us that we are not mired in the morass that they would call permanent.

Joining me today are two people who can help us reconcile, reframe, and get to work on what's next. I'm thrilled to welcome back one of my favorite public intellectuals, Heather Cox Richardson, historian and author of several best-selling books, as well as being the author of the sub-stacked Letters from an American. And I'm delighted to welcome Rebecca Nagle, award-winning Cherokee journalist, author of By the Fire We Carry, The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land, and host of the podcast, First America.

Heather Cox Richardson and Rebecca Nagle, welcome to Assembly Required. And Heather, welcome back.

Heather Cox Richardson (2:21)

Such a pleasure to be here and get a chance to work with both of you, but I have not had a chance to work with Rebecca before. So what a joy.

Rebecca Nagle (2:28)

Yeah. Thank you guys both so much for having me. I'm really excited for this conversation.

Stacey Abrams (2:32)

Well, because we're going to do that and because Heather hasn't gotten a chance to know you well, Rebecca, why don't we start with you? Can you talk a little bit about what you do and why you do it?

Rebecca Nagle (2:43)

Yeah, totally. I'm a citizen of Cherokee Nation and I am a journalist and a writer. I would say my biggest driving force is as a Native person, I just feel invisible in the United States. When you turn on the TV, when you look at the news, when you scroll through your phone, you're almost never going to hear about Native people or see Native people.

That erasure, as a human being, it's hard to never see yourself and see your community reflected. But it also is just really harmful to Native people. It creates this stubborn stereotype in the minds of Americans that we only exist in the past, that we're not real, we're not part of modern society. That's the mission that I've been on as a journalist, as a podcaster. This past few years, heading up to the 250, normally I report on more contemporary events, but I worked with some Indigenous scholars to do this big history podcast. What I realized in that quest of just my own personal frustration of feeling erased as a Native person, which happens in history too. It's so ridiculous, but we tell the history of the United States where it's like, this continent was literally occupied by Indigenous people. Even huge swaths of this continent were controlled by Indigenous people into the early 1900s, and we tell that story without our tribes.

So just my personal frustration with that erasure, and it really shifted to this perspective of, oh, for a long time what I thought, what people were missing, what was missing from the story, what people couldn't see was just me and my community. And I think through this project, what I've realized is that actually what people are missing is America. It's like the story of our own country and the truth of our own history. So that's something I'm really excited to talk to both of you about.

Stacey Abrams (4:45)

And Rebecca, you set me up perfectly because Heather, the reason I wanted you back on the show, it was one of my most favorite episodes. Rebecca, you don't know, but I met Heather, she and I did a project together talking about just the nature of the 14th Amendment and voting rights. And I was struck then and remain very captivated, Heather, by how you contextualize what it means to be American.