Oral history interview with Nathan Young

Little Thunder: This is Julie Pearson-Little Thunder. Today is Monday, November 20, 2017. I'm interviewing Nathan Young for the Oklahoma Native Artists project, sponsored by the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program at Oklahoma State University. We're at the studio provided to Nathan by the Tulsa Artist Fellowship in downtown Tulsa. Nathan, you're Delaware, Pawnee, and Kiowa. You work and teach in a variety of media, including installation, sound and music composition, performance, film, and video. You've done a number of projects with the group Postcommodity, and your art has traveled to many places around the world. As you mentioned in the panel last week, one reason you're so happy to have this fellowship is that it gives you a platform to work and exhibit here in Oklahoma. Thanks for taking the time to talk with me today. Where were you born, and where did you grow up?

Young: I was born in Hastings Hospital, in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, in 1975. I grew 1:00up in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, my entire adolescence and childhood until I went to college and moved to Stillwater and then Norman, Oklahoma.

Little Thunder: What did your mom and dad do for a living?

Young: My mother was an educator at Northeastern State University. She retired as the Director of the Center for Tribal Studies. She was the chairperson of the Indian Symposium for thirty years, most of her tenure there. My father was an attorney, specializing in Indian law, and so he--. It was one reason why we lived in Tahlequah, was because he worked closely with Ross Swimmer, Bill Keeler, and Ralph Keen, some of the people who were reorganizing the Cherokee 2:00Nation at the time. My father, the Youngs, are originally, we're Delaware. I'm Delaware on my father's side. We're from the Delaware Tribe of Indians in the eastern part of Oklahoma. I'm a tribal council member at this moment. I was elected last year. We're Delaware Tribe of Indians. We're from Manhattan in the Delaware River Valley, and my mother is Pawnee and Kiowa from Pawnee, Oklahoma.

Little Thunder: Do you have any brothers or sisters?

Young: I have two sisters. My brother is an attorney at the Cherokee Nation. He's an expert in Indian law and federal Indian law policy, as well. He followed in my father's footsteps.

Little Thunder: How about your relationship with your grandparents on either side?

Young: I was quite close with my grandmother on my mother's side. Her name was 3:00Bernice Chapman. She was a Kiowa and Pawnee. She was born in Carnegie, Oklahoma, and then was raised in Pawnee, or grew up part of her life in Pawnee because her mom was Pawnee. Her dad was Kiowa. His name was Gilbert [Cawley]. Her name was Anna Walker. I was really close with my grandma. My brother and I were a handful when we were young. My parents were also very busy doing their work, so my grandmother moved down to Tahlequah to help raise us. I was very close, spent a lot of time and was very close with my Grandma Chapman, Lucille Bernice Chapman. I spent a lot of time with her. She had a huge influence on my life. My Grandpa Chapman, who when I was born was the president of the Pawnee Business Council, 4:00passed away when I was in college.

On the Young side, the Youngs also moved to Tahlequah to keep an eye on us kids. My grandfather was the treasurer of the Delaware Tribe of Indians for twenty years. My aunt was on the tribal council of the Delaware Tribe of Indians. My father is on the council, as well, and now he's a judge for the tribe. My grandfather was an executive of Phillips Petroleum and was very close with Bill Keeler, who was the first elected modern chief of the Cherokee Nation. The Delaware Tribe of Indians and the Cherokee Nation have a very complicated relationship. We share no cultural ties, (they're purely legal) however my grandfather and Bill Keeler were close. My Aunt Wathene was on the Cherokee 5:00Tribal Council. My father worked government-to-government relations for Ross Swimmer, so I grew up around Ross Swimmer and Wilma Mankiller. I grew up in their homes. I remember going to parties at their houses and stuff, and so I was very fortunate.

I'm very blessed to have been raised in Tahlequah by my parents. My mother, being the chairperson of the Indian Symposium at Northeastern State for so long, I was able to meet a lot of authors, artists, be around a lot of very--. They were very interesting, very important tribal, American Indian intellectuals and leaders, spiritual leaders and things like that. Tahlequah is not just a mixing pot of Indians and non-Indians, but intertribal. You'll meet more Kiowa 6:00Cherokees there. I'm surprised. I meet more Kiowa Cherokees--I'm shocked. At one time, I heard there were more Pawnees living in Tahlequah than there were in Pawnee. I probably shouldn't say that, but it was a purely--it happened. It was really, really great growing up there, and I think I'm a reflection of that.

Little Thunder: Really rich background. What are your earliest memories of seeing Native art?

Young: I don't really remember seeing Native art. Native art was in my home all the time, and I grew up--. My mother's uncle, who passed away just last week, Charlie Chapman, Charles Chapman, was a really well-known painter. Because of my 7:00parents' work, or who they--they had a lot of his paintings. My grandmother, my Grandma Chapman, Lucille, her uncle was Charlie Rowell, who painted in a Native American Church, painted Peyote art style. He painted in a flat, what they call, studio style that came out of the Kiowa Five, whereas Charlie was Western art. The images on my parents' walls were Peyote paintings by Mars Biggoose, Charlie Rowell, paintings by Charlie Chapman--. David Williams lived in Tahlequah, all of these guys from the ʼ70s. I remember knowing and copying Tiger paintings 8:00when I was in--. We had Indian art in my junior high class, taught by a very accomplished Indian artist. It was a very, very interesting place, Tahlequah. Those are my first memories of it, seeing it in my home.

Little Thunder: Who was the artist?

Young: Mr. Daniels. He's a potter; he's a ceramicist. I'm blanking on his first name right now.

Little Thunder: Mike.

Young: Mike Daniels, yeah. Another Cherokee artist was my mother's--. Actually, my godfather in the Catholic Church is Harry Oosahwee. He painted in that flat style, the studio flat style with gouache, like Charlie Rowell and the Kiowa Five. Harry Oosahwee and Mary Oosahwee, they were also very important people in 9:00my upbringing. They were my parents' best friends. I grew up with Harry Oosahwee's paintings on my parents' walls and things like that. Still hanging up in their house today.

Little Thunder: Neat. What are your earliest memories of making art?

Young: My earliest memories of making art are when my Grandpa Chapman drew a tattoo of an eagle on my arm for me. He was in the Marine Corps. He fought at Iwo Jima, had a Purple Heart from that battle, and he had a Marine Corps tattoo. I wanted to copy his Marine Corps tattoo when I was a little-bitty kid. I was not even in kindergarten yet, and he showed me the basics to draw a bunny on a hill. He showed me how to draw a wing and an eagle, but I couldn't draw the eagle. I remember it stayed with me, and later on, I could. Other than that, I 10:00could always draw. It was a natural talent I had for copying things. That's the first art I remember ever making. Then in junior high, I started to copy album covers from heavy metal and punk, and even classic rock album covers like the Grateful Dead, skulls and things like that. I would obsessively try to make a facsimile of them and got pretty good at it, and I still have a collection of those.

Little Thunder: You were exposed to art classes throughout the Tahlequah public school system?

Young: Yeah, I was, only in junior high. Mike Daniels only taught at the junior high. In high school, I was primarily interested in literature. I was a voracious reader. It was your typical, young, rebellious kid stuff, learning about the Beats, Charles Bukowski, [William] Burroughs, Kurt Vonnegut, things like that. I really didn't read what they were teaching in my classes, but it was such a small place at that time, teachers supported my interests in those things. I did not take any art classes in high school whatsoever. I couldn't even tell you who taught art. I don't even know if they had it, honestly. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: How did you end up at the University of Oklahoma for college, and what was your major?

Young: I started my long undergraduate career at Oklahoma State University, and I was a history major. I was interested in history, however the workload was very, very intense. I was starting to develop more of a serious interest in art. Things were changing then. It was the mid- to late ʼ90s. There was identity art. Multiculturalism was becoming a thing. I was starting to notice different forms at that time. Today, OSU's art facilities, it's a different story than it was in 1996, '97, so I decided to transfer to University of Oklahoma. That's 13:00where I met Dr. Mary Jo Watson, who had a major influence on my life and my work, as well as Edgar Heap Of Birds. I decided I wanted to leave history and study art history. I did not know who Mary Jo Watson was, and I met her and learned some things. I had my eyes opened by her and Edgar. That's where Kade Twist and I met. We were both studying in all of those fields, but particularly the Native languages at University of Oklahoma.

I had an interest in the--I took all of the Native language courses available, except for Kiowa. That was just because I wasn't the best student. The class 14:00would fill up, so I never got to study with Gus Palmer. I studied Cherokee with Bobby Jo Blossom, and continued. I have an interest today, even still. I work for the Cherokee's television show called Osiyo TV. My niece is in the Cherokee language immersion, and that led me on even more. I guess what I'm trying to get to is that at the same time where I was learning about Native languages and my mother was involved in what was called ONLA, the Oklahoma Native Languages Association, with Dr. Akira Yamamoto, I knew them. I was going to their conferences while I was also studying Cherokee. My mother's impetus for working with them was she grew up around her Grandma Annie, hearing Pawnee.

It disappeared there for a little while, or it became endangered or dormant, and so she was a part of ONLA. She's not a native speaker; neither am I. Nobody in my family is, but as I started to learn how languages work, I was also learning from Edgar Heap of Birds the language of contemporary art, and learning from Mary Jo Watson the problematics of art history, the canon of art history, anthropology, ethnology, and things like that. Again, that's what led to the birth of Postcommodity was working with or really learning from Edgar and also those Cherokee language classes, thinking about how the language of arts, how symbols work, and how people think about things and describe things and how 16:00symbols have meaning and how that changes, depending upon your worldview.

Little Thunder: Are you saying--did Postcommodity start with you and Kade at University of Oklahoma?

Young: Both Kade and I were both too sensible to think that we could make a career in art, (Laughter) and we were probably right. We were not able to start to pursue any types of--. I moved back after college. Three of us started Postcommodity. It was Steven Yazzie, me, and Kade Twist. After college, Kade moved to Washington, DC, and worked for a think tank. I moved to Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, and worked in Indian education. I met a guy named Joseph Herb, an animator, and I started making--. Joseph Herb taught me how to animate and how 17:00to edit. At Fort Gibson, which is a very, very excellent public school, they had a Cherokee language teacher named Victor Wildcat. Tom Stiles, the superintendent, knew that I had this opportunity. Joseph Herb had this vision to help save the Cherokee language. He was an animator. He'd just graduated, MFA, from Penn. He knew we couldn't do computer animation. He was making computer animations in Cherokee, but he wanted to teach students, and he wanted to make curriculum materials.

He worked for my Aunt Wathene at American Indian Resource Center. They had a grant where he went around to Dahlonegah, Bell, all these other small Cherokee communities, and he would do animations in those special animation projects. I worked for Fort Gibson Public Schools. Mr. Stiles had me do an internship, 18:00basically, with Joseph one summer in Tahlequah. We made a feature film called The Messenger, a feature stop motion animation. I learned how to make stop motion animations. We had Victor Wildcat there. Joseph was running around, going to five different schools a week. I worked at Fort Gibson Public Schools with a language speaker, with one of the best cultural teachers in the state, Victor Wildcat. Our animations were really nice. We would work with the theater department. We would work with the art department. We worked with classes as young as second grade, which was a challenge, different.

Little Thunder: And you'd never done any film work before?

Young: I'd never done any film. It wasn't available. The cameras were becoming cheaper, handy. Macintosh computers or Apple computers were opening the door to filmmaking. I did that for three years at Fort Gibson. Then I got nominated for a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation.

Little Thunder: You're nominated by someone else?

Young: I was nominated anonymously.

Little Thunder: Okay. Was it a surprise?

Young: I just saw it as an opportunity. I saw it as an opportunity. I have always played music. I've always cared about art. I've always traveled to see 20:00art. It was my hobby, and I really always cared. My brother, who is an attorney, he still reads Artforum.

Little Thunder: You'd been playing music, you say--

Young: I'd been playing in music.

Little Thunder: --concurrently, with what instruments?

Young: I played classical piano for ten years. I studied with a professor at NSU that taught also secondary students. Always played the guitar and had an interest in heavy metal. Was a skateboarder, but also played sports. Tahlequah, you could do whatever you wanted. There were no rules. It wasn't like a big school. You could be a cowboy and skateboard if you wanted. I grew up listening 21:00and playing heavy metal and things like that. Always had that spirit, but I was always a little bit too sensible. The reason why I studied art history and my degree is in art history, because I knew that I could be an administrator. I thought I can be involved and have a good life and be an administrator. I used to say that art chose me, but I don't know if that's really the case. I just landed here. I'm lucky. I've learned from my peers. That's really it. I learned documentary filmmaking from Dustinn Craig.

I learned that because I was teaching animation, and we were teaching a concurrent workshop. That's also how I met Sterlin Harjo and started to collaborate with Sterlin. I'm really fortunate that I've been right place, right 22:00time. I've been able to be long-term friends with a lot of really talented people. I've been able to maintain a foot in the filmmaking world, though I'm not producing anymore. For ten years, I had a production company, but really what happened was, though, I got the Rockefeller Fellowship. It gave me the ability to spend more time in the Southwest with Kade and Steven Yazzie to start Postcommodity.

Little Thunder: The purpose of the fellowship was to allow you to pursue a particular project?

Young: Yeah, the Rockefeller was to pursue a particular project that I never was able to complete, actually. It was a story about the origins of Pawnee medicine. I was not able to complete the film, but it wasn't a--. There were no 23:00deliverables while that was my proposal. Maybe you would say that that film is still in progress.

Little Thunder: In the interim, then, what happened was you got together with Kade and--.Young: Started to do--I also wrote a screenplay called Heavy Metal Indians, about the murder of Donnie Beartrack, a guy that I grew up with and I'm distantly related to through my Kiowa family. That's what I was told by my grandmother. I grew up in the same period, skateboarding with him. He was murdered under a bridge not far from Tahlequah. He wrote the tag numbers on his arms. Otherwise, they would have gotten away with it. Was a skateboarder in Tahlequah. He was a very, very quiet person. I researched the legal records 24:00exhaustively. I knew most of the players, most of them through my dad's relationships in the area. I was able to talk to judges, prosecutors. I talked to other people who knew Donnie. Again, he was a very quiet person. He was a very private person.

I wrote this screenplay, went through Sundance, workshopped. Went through Tribeca but didn't really feel comfortable in feature and narrative filmmaking. Kade and Steven Yazzie and I were thinking of--. We were becoming more 25:00interested in starting to submit proposals to museums, and starting to network with curators like Joe Baker, who had a big influence to help us start the collective. From there, we started doing residencies, started doing these interventions. I felt that I was just a better fit in the fine art world than I was in the filmmaking world. That being said, I still do them both. I work more as a technician today in filmmaking. That's not to say that I won't ever create another documentary again, but right now I primarily work as an editor and a sound recordist.

Little Thunder: What was one of the more important interventions, do you think, 26:00you guys did with Postcommodity in the early days, I guess?

Young: The most important piece, the work that really cemented Postcommodity as important in art was a piece called Do You Remember When? It was at Arizona State University at the Ceramics Research Institute, which is a museum on campus at Arizona State University. It no longer exists, actually. There is still the Ceramics Research Institute, but they knocked the building down. What we did was cut a hole in the floor to expose the ground underneath. Worked with some members of the Piipaash community. Buried a speaker in the ground, recorded a Piipaash song, had that Piipaash song coming out of the ground, out of the dirt, 27:00to remind people of the original stewards of the land. Really, the opportunity arose because there was a sustainability conference at Arizona State University, and we felt there was not an Indigenous voice. Somebody felt that; we felt that. Then we were invited to create an intervention, so Do You Remember When? was the first mature work of Postcommodity, in my opinion.

Little Thunder: How about one of the more important projects that was toured, or interventions that was toured that went out of the country?

Young: Again, Do You Remember When?, we had another opportunity to do that in the--. I'm blanking on Australia's biennale. Australia has a biennale. The 28:00Sydney Biennale. It's the third-oldest biennale in the [world]. The Museum of New South Wales, which I guess you could compare to the Met in New York City, we had an opportunity to cut a hole in that floor, whereas at Arizona State, they laughed at us. Then we went through the administrative slog and were able to do it. Once we did it once, then we were starting to be invited. Otherwise, I would say some of the other more important pieces that I worked on were [Promoting a More Just, Verdant and Harmonious Resolution]--. Also, there's a piece called Gallup Motel Sheep Butchering that is a very powerful work, but the entire body 29:00of work of Postcommodity is very impressive. It's hard to choose one. When I was working with them, we were primarily working in Canada. A lot of our major works were in Canada. One of them was--I'm blanking on the names of all these pieces. It's been years and years.

Little Thunder: I don't know if it was your first solo installation, but you did one in their space, (of course, they love plays on words) in their space in Albuquerque, Spirit Abuse. You did, I read, Drone Video Altar. Was that your first?

Young: Yes, our space in--yeah.

Little Thunder: Was it a solo installation, and was it your first installation?

Young: I think so. I think that was probably some of my first. They were called Drone Videos. Spirit Abuse is something that I brought to the collective, the concept. Working in American Indian Health and Social Justice, I was on a reservation, and I saw on a poster, I saw there was elderly abuse, drug abuse. Then I saw spirit abuse. I asked somebody, I said, "What is spirit abuse?" They said, "It's when a medicine man or somebody who would put themselves forth as a medicine man will take somebody into a sweat lodge, maybe take advantage of them sexually, or take and manipulate people using spiritual things and stuff." That's where that name came from, Spirit Abuse. I lived in Albuquerque for the year 2011. It didn't open until 2012, and I moved to Texas, outside of Austin. 31:00That was called Drone Videos, Drone Video Altar. "Drone" is not a reference to the now ubiquitous, flying, small planes with cameras. Drone is a type of music that is related to minimalism, the most popular modern strain of classical music, minimalism.

It's music that is very unchanging. It has a very slow attack and has a very slow release, or it's very repetitive. That's droning. There are drones all around us all the time. There's a drone in this room right now. I have been developing an interest in La Monte Young, Phill Niblock, and other minimalist composers, and Terry Riley. In 2009, when Postcommodity first started to do our 32:00mature work, Raven Chacon, who was a composer, became a member of the collective. He had a very big influence on my practice. We were both part of an underground, a noise underground. It's an extension of punk and a do-it-yourself community. It was very extreme music, a lot of dissonance in playing. It's very experimental and avant-garde, but it also has very close connections to our music, such as La Monte Young, Tony Conrad, and Phill Niblock, and those guys. Raven had been studying with those people at Cal Arts.

Through this web of underground people who work in high and low music, I ended 33:00up at Bard. That's how I ended up there to study that. Those are my drawings, my drone videos. They're animations that I do. I do draw. I make sketches and things, but they're mostly just ideas for sculptures. I consider that my drawing practice. It's a way for me to also stay sharp, animating, so they're very subtle animations, oftentimes with colors that change. I'm interested in trance, also, things like that, altered states. That has to do with tying my interest in ceremony and ritual and things like that. I don't want it to sound mystical, whatever, but like it or not, it is a part of a lot of non-Western traditions 34:00and even some Western traditions. Repetition, trance, slow-moving things, that's where the drone videos came from. I still make them today. I fold them into records. They become records; they become videos; they become visual art pieces. They're my drawing.

Little Thunder: It looked, from reading online, like you released a lot of CDs with Postcommodity. I was wondering, are those then these kinds of musical experiments you've been talking about?

Young: Yeah, very much so, those are noise and free and improvised musics. Again, that tradition is also connected to Western, classical avant-garde. It's 35:00connected to black radical movements of the ʼ60s, and Amiri Baraka, Albert Ayler, and John Coltrane's later work which is called free jazz. There was a very successful underground record label here in Tulsa called Digitalis, and I developed a collaborative relationship with a guy named Brad Rose. We released close to fifty cassettes on different underground record labels; they released our music on about fifty cassettes. I had my own underground record label. That's where the connection with Raven came from. That music is not far off. It's noise music, but my part in it in most of that, sometimes I would use 36:00antlers, non-traditional instruments. Until eventually on We Lost [Half] the Forest, that was my voice. That was primarily my instrument then.

Little Thunder: Do you have--are they open access? Do you produce open access music, or what's your philosophy behind the music and then the CDs? How do they work?

Young: I license my music. Say, for instance, the beginning of Sterlin Harjo's film Mekko, that's my music. I'll create music, or I'll license it to anyone. It's not a money-making endeavor. I do it now here in Tulsa where there's not a space for that. Even Brad Rose and Digitalis, who I was in Ajilvsga with, he's 37:00more well-known in Europe and in Australia and in New York City and in LA, where they have a festival for his label, than he is here in Oklahoma. Nobody knows who he is here whatsoever, but he's very well-known in these other spaces. It's not a money-making deal. I've never been able to or tried to monetize it, other than for film, and that's purely the nature of the business. I don't focus on recording and releasing music. Primarily, I've been curating shows here, putting together music shows of experimental music, trying to create a space for that type of expression here, mostly in Tulsa. In my opinion, it was this hardcore, 38:00heavy metal town, so the DIY spaces were dominated by that type of music. They do let some experimental music be part of it, but at the bars and things, they want to sell beer.

Raven's very notable in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for making a space for avant-garde and creative outsider music there. I've been traveling for the past couple, three, four, five years, performing at noise festivals. Now I'm curating a festival here in Tulsa of minimalism. It's called Tulsa Noise, Drone, and Sound Art. I think we're bringing some major luminaries in for this first year, and I have support from the Kaiser Family Foundation. The Philbrook Museum and the Bob Dylan Archive are also partners in this endeavor. That'll be in the 39:00spring of this year. By living here and knowing how difficult it was to find a way, to find that community, we've had to make that community here. We've had to find collaborators that aren't even necessarily people living in Tulsa. They might be living in Tahlequah or Stillwater. I had to go to Detroit to meet other noise artists from Tulsa, but they were so young, I just didn't know them. I'm in Detroit; I see these guys with Tulsa shirts on. (Laughter) I'm like, "What do we know? Who are you?"

Little Thunder: Yeah, I was wondering if any of the pieces also had been created in conjunction with an intervention but not necessarily. That's what you're saying.

Young: The Drone Altar?

Little Thunder: The music on the CDs, yeah, Postcommodity.

Young: Yeah, well, the very first album that has the antlers on it, (I'm blanking on the names of them) it was a part of this large-scale intervention installation in Ice House in Phoenix, Arizona, which is, again, one of our earliest works. It was more of an intervention. It was site-specific. We played in the dark. It was when we were starting to use things like antlers and animal calls and things like that. I'm blanking on the names of the albums and titles.

Little Thunder: -- Working in collaboration with other artists requires a different skill base, or requires a specific skill base. I'm wondering, as 41:00opposed to working solo, what are some of the challenges of collaboration, and what are some of the rewards?

Young: I still work collaboratively. I'm trying to, in my own individual practice, I'm trying to construct a very complex narrative in my own type of creative mythology. I'm trying to mythologize and reimagine this kind of world, these reflections, so others can see this experience that I think was really unique and important. I think through the micro, you can see the macro, and I'm trying to express that. Working collaboratively is natural for me as a filmmaker, as my original training as an artist. One of the great things about 42:00working collaboratively and one of my experiences in Postcommodity is that you can engage these very large-scale projects--unless you're Christo or somebody. I'm not saying those are not possible, but we were able to engage in--. That was the reason. Why do small projects? Why does it take five people to do a small project? It would take four people to create these very large-scale interventions. The difficulties in working in a collective is that oftentimes you're competing for ideas. The great thing about it is, your ideas--I'll rephrase it.

Your ideas are competing. It's going to look like something, and somebody's idea is going to have the most influence on it. I had always heard art by committee 43:00was the worst type of art. I guess that applied more to city councils and murals and things like that. To us, in my experience and my days in Postcommodity, it was more of a bonus. The work became richer from the ideas. We were constantly critiquing each other's input or suggestions and things. That was an observation that somebody said to me. "It must be really hard to have your ideas competing." I never really thought about it until somebody articulated it that way, but that's one of the few drawbacks. The other is that you oftentimes have to explain that you're an artist in your own right if you don't have your own individual practice. Another part of what I found difficult in Postcommodity was 44:00finding a balance between giving time to my own individual practice--. I was not at a level where it was supporting me, monetarily, so I still was working as a filmmaker, creating documentary films in health and social justice.

That's the balance that everybody has to find. I think nobody is unique in that it's hard to make a living as an artist. I think today in 2017, we talk about these new models of making art, and collectives are one of the first things that people talk about. The other problem is for the collectives, their personalities, things like that. We were all very, very close friends in Postcommodity. That was part of the strength and, I still think, today is part of the strength of their work. Ultimately, like anything else, it's a mixed bag. 45:00It has its own struggles. When we were first beginning our practice as a collective, awards like the Eiteljorg--Native Arts Cultural Foundation, they did not acknowledge collectives. You could not apply as a collective. Now it's become standard or conventional practice. It's great to see a collective. I'm still very interested. [Yams], I don't think is working anymore, but the Otolith Collective--. I'm very proud of being a part of Postcommodity. I know that they're still influencing and leading edge of Indigenous people working in the 46:00contemporary art vernacular. --

Little Thunder: Yeah, and you yourself, you're not a member anymore. Around 2015 is when you said you stopped.

Young: I left the collective in 2015.

Little Thunder: Can you talk a little about the--your website features a couple of installation pieces. It was cool. It looked like the Round House, which is undergoing another incarnation now. It was set on a rooftop here in Tulsa to photograph it. Was that right above the Ahha building? I was trying to figure out where it was.

Young: The Round House really comes from my work the last couple of years and 47:00really what I wanted to focus on. One reason why I was having a hard time finding a balance between my own individual path and Postcommodity is because I'm an Oklahoma Indian. I have deep, deep roots in this state, and I have a great affection for my community here. I believe in service, and I wanted to be here. I'll go wherever opportunity takes me, but I want to be here. I want to be around Pawnees, Delawares, Shawnees, Kiowas. I want to be around Comanches. I want to talk about families. I want to talk about who married who. I want to talk about who's from where, whose folks are--things like that. The Round House represents this intertribalism that I feel that I'm really--.

I'm not trying to say I'm trying to represent tribalism, but I am trying to express an intertribal experience, a very Oklahoma Indian experience. The Round House that I built is really from both sides. It was inspired by both sides of my family. On my father's side as a Delaware, the Delaware and Shawnee Peyote people, they were called prophets back then. Oftentimes built these round houses as shelter to create a space to practice the Native American Church or Peyote religion. They're still built and used today, building them right now. They're also influenced by my Pawnee heritage. There's a round house in Wichita, Kansas, 49:00that has a recording of my great-grandfather Henry Chapman telling a story, a Pawnee story.

What I was doing with that piece, with that round house, which is going through a number of different iterations, (it's about to go through its third iteration right now) I performed with it. I built it. I just wanted to build it. I wanted to make Indian architecture. It's not Indian architecture, but it is my imagining that, reimagining it. I tied ropes around it, put contact mics on it, shook it with specialized speakers, and as part of this music series that I curated through my first year here, I performed with it as a musical instrument. Really, the first iteration of that round house was as a musical instrument, and 50:00now I'm using it more purely as a visual art sculpture.

Little Thunder: That's really interesting. Native American Church is a theme of your work at different times, too, and you have a piece that's on your website. There's a cedar box; there's some other things associated with NAC; and there's also a pearl-handled Derringer. I wondered if you could talk about--.

Young: Yeah, that became a very controversial piece, which I totally understand and am fine with and was prepared for, but it's really about a story. It's really a story that I was told about a young boy who really liked Peyote meetings. He liked to have play Peyote meetings in his backyard. His uncles and his parents would set up a tent in the backyard, and they took a little tool 51:00box. They put a little gourd in there, a little thing, and he would do these play Peyote meetings. His uncle, a good friend of mine, went in there and was singing songs with him and playing, doing a play Peyote meeting. Oftentimes in ceremonies, you're corrected. You might do something wrong, just because you don't know. His uncle said to this little boy, he said, "No, you're doing that wrong." That little boy didn't like it. He reaches into his Peyote box, and he pulls out a cap gun. He points, and he says, "Get out of here." His uncle was telling me, "What kind of Peyote man is that?" Really, what I'm doing with that piece is, one, I'm trying to tell that story.

The other thing is that I'm trying to engage the conventions of ethnology and anthropology, how work is represented and packaged or musealized, how it is used in museums. I have a large collection of Peyote boxes and Native American Church fans that I've inherited. I don't make them, but I've inherited them through my family. I take them to Peyote meetings. I wanted to remake and problematize. It's really, in a sense, a critique on these types of conventions of anthropology and ethnology, telling this story, as well. I have another piece called The American Indian Cultural Center and Museum Forty-Nine. It's basically 53:00inviting people to sing forty-nine songs, Plains Indian singers, powwow singers, to play, to use their hoods of the cars instead of a drum, and sing forty-nine songs in front of that museum, which has been a problematic space that's been moth-balled. Now Jim Pepper Henry is working on trying to open it, but it's been almost twenty years, a twenty-year project. This building is just the bones of the building, so I wrote an intervention for that.

Again, what I'm doing is I'm trying to musealize these things that generally are not ever brought into museums, low art and high art, these lows and highs. Just like in Postcommodity, we're trying to push the boundaries of what's possible in 54:00a museum, say, like cutting the floor of it. I'm trying to push at the boundaries and make complex these forms of representation. I'm not trying to give the impression that Native American Church or Peyote people carry guns in it. I'm trying to tell a story, a cute story that I heard, but it's art. It's going to be received and translated in a number of different ways, no matter what you do. I don't know if that's the beginning or the ending of those types of work, those Peyote boxes. I have a number of drawings for other Peyote box pictures in that style. There's been a magazine, also. The Gilcrease Museum did 55:00a magazine on Peyote boxes. It's something that has been anthologized quite a bit, but I don't know. I don't know if it's a beginning or an end, but I'll see where it takes me. I do have suggestions from Peyote people on what to do. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: I bet. (Laughs) So you've said that you've never sold a piece of art, that that's not your orientation. In market-oriented work, knowing who produced the art is, of course, important. The artists find various ways to inscribe their names on whatever it is, but I'm curious about installations. Is there such a thing as signing an installation, or is it simply that--.

Young: No. I think there is a way because there's infinite possibilities with installations. You can create anything, so it's totally possible to sign an installation. I forgot--I lost my train of thought. -- Yeah, I think that it's a possibility because you could do anything with an installation.

Little Thunder: But you don't do that?

Young: No, I don't. I mean, I make prints--

Little Thunder: You sign them?

Young: --yeah, and I'll sign them. I'm not really making them--. They're a part of a larger context, I'm sure. There's a concept of ambiance that's very closely 57:00connected to installation art. You're trying to create an ambience. You're trying to create an atmosphere. With Postcommodity with Do You Remember When?, the museum walls are like the painting. You could compare it to the painting. They become the painting themselves. No, but I do put my name. I do incorporate my name into the work. I do incorporate family photos. I create photos, or I recreate photos. I use found photos. I create flags. I create things you could sell, however (this might sound a little pretentious or whatever) I want to be free to do whatever I want to do. That's really my main concern is to have 58:00unencumbered freedom of expression. That's really my goal in my work, and that means pushing the boundaries of things.

That comes from my upraising in Tahlequah, and watching Indian gaming happen, and growing up around people that are the descendants of outlaws like Starr and Barkers and Ned Christie, descendants of those people. There's a spirit there where I'm from. We cherish our freedom. (Laughter) I've tried to reflect that in my artwork. I know sometimes the things that I do and that we've done in Postcommodity have been risky, say, with some of my work and the Native American Church and Gallup Motel Sheep Butchering. I'm not trying to represent myself as a Peyote man. I'm more of an art historian and an artist working, engaging one 59:00subject, which I think really represents intertribalism in Oklahoma, but I would like to sell work. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: At the same time, I think it requires a definite skillset to be able to continue that creative freedom because then your focus, rather than on selling, is basically on putting in proposals, right, answering calls for proposals. What kinds of skills do you need?

Young: Yeah, I lost my train of thought, and that takes me back to it, actually. That's really what we learned in Postcommodity was that in installation art, really, while your audience may only be for an intervention, which is a general 60:00term for those type of work, especially as political work, multicultural identity type of stuff that we did, or that I did with them, we learned the importance of documentation. There's a second life to installation art, and it's very important. Probably as important or more important is the artist's statement. If you look at Postcommodity's website, there's a lot of--the artist statements are usually very complex, articulating very complex ideas. Writing is what I say is probably the most important skillset that you need as an artist that's not working. If you're not market-based, writing is probably the most important skillset you have.

Even as a tribal council person, my tribe is not traditional in the sense that 61:00our main form of communication is through our Delaware Indian News. My ability to communicate and speak to each individual Delaware depends on my ability to articulate what I think is important to them, to keep them up to date on what we're doing, to explain what we're doing, to be transparent. In art making, it's the same thing. That sharpens my ability to do that. I know that my work, my time in Postcommodity, my time writing grants for proposals for documentaries in health and social justice, writing the Tulsa Artist Fellowship grant, they sharpened my ability to be able to communicate to Delaware Indians, to let them know what my concerns are for our tribe and our community, what I want to work on, what I think is important for us, the same thing. I think writing.

I have an interest in poetry. I'm not a poet. Again, members of the collective are. I'm more interested in the poetics of space. I'm interested in the etymology of poetry as how things work. I'm interested in how things work. I was a visiting artist at a poetics workshop this summer in New Mexico. I did a sound performance, but I do engage text in my work. I have a piece called We Are Making a New World, which is about my experience back east, where my Delaware Tribe comes from. I used a found poem using our language archive. I constructed a found poem, trying to move through time and space, and explain what our experience was like. We didn't have a Trail of Tears. We went through nine states.

We never stayed in one place more than thirty years. If you think about that, some people never got to die where they were born. Most people did experience a removal. We were constantly emigrating, forced to emigrate from spot to spot. I was able to--that's the reason why I move across a lot of mediums and materials is because in that case, that was the best way for me to tell that story. I wanted people in upstate New York to understand that these were the northernmost edges of our territory, where we turned from Unami speakers into Munsee speakers. It was the northernmost edge of my people into the mountain people. I wanted to explain to them that this is our homeland, and the best way to do that was through using our language archive and creating a found poem and a 64:00multi-channel sound installation.

Little Thunder: Yeah, that sounds really neat. You just made a trip, right, about a week ago. Where did you go? As part of the fellowship, I guess, did you go give a lecture, or were you traveling for research?

Young: No, I was just giving a lecture about my work, at University of Missouri, there at Columbia, and it was about my practice in general. It was Native American Awareness month there, and I was invited to give a lecture there. I'm about to travel in two weeks to Omaha, Nebraska, to the Bemis Center [For Contemporary Arts] to do a sound installation there. I'll engage my Pawnee experience and a family archive that my Chapman family has amassed to create a 65:00sound piece and to bring Pawnee voices and Pawnee people, talk about our experience there and remind people that while Omaha wasn't necessarily the capital or wasn't exactly where we lived, we were from Nebraska. I want to engage that experience and that space in an art show called Monarchs, curated by Risa Puleo at the Bemis Center.

Little Thunder: That sounds really great. What kinds of--what's your creative process, from the time you get an idea?

Young: It's really hard for me to articulate my creative process because I feel like I'm working all the time. If I'm listening to an album, it could lead to me doing something.

Little Thunder: Are you writing things down when you get--.

Young: I mostly create drawings for ideas. I'll have an idea, and mostly I'll do a very unskilled, a really sloppy drawing of something. A lot of times, people inspire me. Most of the time--. The latest iterations of this round house that I've been working with are inspired by stories that I've heard going to Peyote meetings. I'm inspired by my family history and my own experience. I look at things like infrastructure. My experience watching my father and my grandfathers help reorganize the Delaware Tribe and the Pawnee Tribe and the Cherokees, they 67:00were providing services. We were using--. Today, we're building infrastructure. We're trying to serve people, and so that's my experience. I like to use things like cement. I like to use things like pipe because I'm obsessed with public address systems. I'm obsessed with tornado sirens, so I'm constantly looking around at tornado sirens. The infrastructure around us, how electrical grids work, how workers are able to navigate electrical grids are an influence on my work that's kind of cryptic.

I use it in printmaking, and I use it to compose. I'm really inspired all the time. I'm kind of a maximalist. I love the language of minimalism, but I'm fascinated. I'm a lifelong learner. I'm enthusiastic. I feel like I'm a happy 68:00person. I feel like things that bring me joy are things that I want to express through my art because the energy they create, the energy for me to make the piece, I feel an impetus. My music, my sound dirgy, like a dirge, and dissonant and ugly and sad and things, but generally I feel like I'm wanting to celebrate, in a sense. I'm trying to be didactic, but I'm not trying be goofy and say that this is all so beautiful. Even the problems and the problematics of it, there's something to be gleaned good from it. I'm inspired by my community, and that's 69:00really what a lot of my work is about, too.

A lot of my work is about not being able to express something, that ability. It's hard to say; it's hard to explain. Again, that goes back to poetics. Looking back at Native languages, installation art, learning from Edgar, learning how, like, say, Pawnee, how they dealt with the car, how the Cherokees deal with how to say "computer," those types of things are my inspiration. They go through this weird process to where it becomes sublimated, just like in Postcommodity. These ideas become sublimated; they would come out some other way. I really don't have a natural process that I can follow. I wish I did because I would try to monetize it. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: This is your second year at the fellowship, right?

Young: This is my second year with the Tulsa Arts Fellowship.

Little Thunder: How has the experience changed for you?

Young: I lived in Tulsa before the fellowship, before I'd even heard of the fellowship. I heard of the fellowship through the Cherokee Phoenix, actually. When I first moved here, my wife, at the time, and I had a boutique. We had a performance space, an improvised or provisional gallery there. I was friends with the filmmaking community here, but really nobody knew me. I was friends with an experimental collaborator, and Brad Rose, and Digitalis, and Ajilvsga, doing these cassettes. I worked with Sterlin Harjo doing filmmaking, so I knew those guys, two different worlds. I moved back here, and there was really not a space for this type of work even. It was very much people--and I'm not trying to 71:00be unkind or anything, but when people thought of art, they only thought of painting and sculpture. Even today, I have a little bit of difficulty expressing my practice to people who want to make it very simple. Whether my medium is wood or my medium is ceramics or something like that, I tell them that I'm trying to tell a very complex story.

People in contemporary art in this vernacular have worked very hard to open up art, to make it plural, and to make it to where art can be many different things. It can be your intervention in a museum or something like that. I've really seen the town change, the pure or the sheer number of people, the artists 72:00that they've brought in, even the first year. It seemed like the first six months, everybody was trying to get their footing and trying to figure out what was going on where they were. At that six months, it felt like there was a tipping point, and everybody started to figure out how they could work here, how they could maneuver here because a lot of them came from major arts centers. I was one of the few. In my class, I was the only Oklahoman that got it, although Chris Ramsey got it as a fellow, but I was the only Tulsan. I've seen a huge change in the city, not only the buildings and things, but I've seen how people's practices, all the wide diversity of practices at the fellowship have had an influence on people here.

I've been able to teach a sound art workshop at the University of Tulsa. Now I 73:00teach sculpture at the University of Tulsa. I'm adjunct, but I teach their sculpture class. I'm able to expose my students to artists who I think otherwise they might not have been able to engage their practices. I know that the networks of the other artists, it's like a very large web that extends out to Kansas City, Dallas, Houston, all the way to Los Angeles, around the world. I've seen it make a difference in the city. I've seen it transform the city physically, but I've also noticed the change in the conversation. I feel like the conversation has become much more sophisticated or cosmopolitan in a sense that it's not about whether this is art or is this not art. People are much more--. It's changed. It's changed the community. I can attest to that. I've 74:00seen it. It's just my opinion, but I've seen it.

Little Thunder: What has been one of the high points in your career so far?

Young: I don't know. I don't have any kind of high points. I'm really proud of my experience. I decided to go in 2014 to Bard College, or 2013. I started to attend Bard College. Nothing had more of an influence on my art practice than Bard College, Postcommodity then Bard. I feel very fortunate to have been able 75:00to attend that school. It changed my life. I've been very fortunate to be around great Native Americans and Indians. I've been around amazing peers. I'm in the right place at the right time, most of the time. Bard is something that was really a high point for me because I would walk into critiques or walk into people's studios and be intimidated and inspired. It felt like it was something like doing art push-ups. It gave me a new vernacular. It taught me how to read and to understand art better than I had already been trained to do. It changed 76:00my life.

It changed my understanding of what I could do in art, and exposed me to a network otherwise that I don't think I could have accessed. I'm paying for it through student loans, but I don't regret it one bit. I do miss that community here. That's one of the downsides of being so far away from there is I miss the conversation. I miss seeing the development of the work of all those people. They're spread out. Some people are in LA; some are in New York; some are Chicago, Milwaukee, other places. Really, I loved working at Postcommodity, and I loved my time at Bard College. Those are really--rather than one type of installation, one art piece, or anything like that, I would say that those two experiences have been high points in my art career.

Little Thunder: How about a low point?

Young: A low point, (Laughs) I think the low point is being immature. When you're young, you expect everything to happen immediately. You feel entitled. When I was writing screenplays like Heavy Metal Indians, I wondered why I wasn't getting the chance to make a feature film. I don't think, looking back now, I was mature enough to make that feature film. Things are different today. There's other filmmakers that I still work with today are getting those shots, but it took us ten years, watching, working under others. Now when I look back, there's so much emphasis placed on these wunderkinds, these young stars. There's so much emphasis placed on youth, the youth market and things like that. I think that's 78:00something that a lot of young people relate to is they think that they're not getting their chance, but it's just really not their turn yet.

I don't think I've had a low point. I think that I probably expected too much too quick when I was a young man. That's something I've been realizing as an adult or as I've gotten older and aged. I know that I'm fortunate and really blessed to be able to do this kind of work. I have worked hard to get here. I think that anybody that is as fortunate as me, I can't call it a low point 79:00because me, personally, I try to use it as a learning experience. I might not have felt like that at the time, but today I try to look back and try to take a lesson from those times when the phone wasn't ringing, when the bank account was in the red or something like that. No low points, really, just being immature and being a punk. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: I think we'll pause for a minute, and then, we will look at a couple of examples of your work. -- Okay, Nathan.

Young: What we're standing in front of here is an example of me using photography and my own family archive or my own family photography in my 80:00artwork. Like I said earlier, I'm trying to construct a complex narrative, a mythology that I'm trying to reimagine things. This was part of an installation called Infinite Peyote Road. I always like to give a disclaimer about my work with the Native American Church. It's not about me. It is about my experiences, but I'm not trying to represent myself as any type of expert Peyote man or anything like that. I'm a member of a chapter, and I go to meetings, but I've always been fascinated by the work. I've always been obsessed with the Peyote paintings in my parents' house. I've always known who Peyote people were, and then eventually started to go back.

This is me, receiving my name during a Peyote ceremony from the last Delaware language name-giver and speaker, Nora [Thompson Dean]. I've altered the photo 81:00quite a bit. The idea of that installation was really to think about the freedom of expression, freedom of religion, that whole idea that the Native American Church, the legal battles that the Church has gone through and the importance, how important it is for all Americans and for all religions, as the vanguard for the freedom of religion. If it wasn't for the Native American Church, we would be repressing religions. At one time, it was an outlawed religion, and that's one reason why I first--. Something I try to do was something that was natural, 82:00was using the vernacular of rock and roll, or underground music, or punk rock music. There was a design firm called Hipgnosis that made these album covers. It was famous for co-opting these bars to hide the eyes of the innocent or the guilty.

This is me getting my name, my Delaware name, at a Peyote meeting. It was actually also documented in a journal of anthropology about Delaware naming ceremonies. It's my understanding that my brother and I were some of the last people to receive names from Nora [Thompson Dean]. It looks like a little gun in 83:00my hand there, but that was at a Peyote meeting. Those are some of my earliest recollections. It's my experience. I'm trying to--I'm inserting myself in it because it's based around my experience, but my thing is I'm engaging the archive. It already exists in this anthropological journal, so I'm really just mixing it up. I could do another iteration of it with that article or whatever, but that's probably all I have to say on that.

This, what we're looking at here, is a homemade flag. Again, I put all of these different pieces together to create this. Out of this large body of work about the Native American Church, I've been creating this installation called Infinite Peyote Road. What I'm doing here is I'm trying to imagine or reimagine logos of the Native American Church. Part of the problematics of the Native American Church, or not problematics, if you're carrying peyote with you--and again, I'm trying to tell the story of the Native American Church. I want people to understand the beauty of the religion. I'm not trying to be pious and say that I'm some kind of great Peyote person, but I want people to know how important 85:00this religion is in my community. What I'm trying to do is reimagine these logos. What you would do is if you were driving down to what are called the Peyote Gardens, there are all types of bureaucracies and paperwork you need, to carry large amounts or any amount of peyote with you.

People would have these cards. We have chapters. A chapter is like a church, and so I'm trying to reimagine or create these imaginary chapter symbols. This is a crude, based on a Peyote jewelry design, off a German silver design, which is a very popular form of expression and art form in the Native American Church and in general Indian art in the ʼ70s. I took a silver Peyote pin that I have, and 86:00tried to cut out or reimagine it for a flag. What I'm trying to do, though, with this work is to make these images knowable through repetition. While I don't expect the layperson to come in, (of course, nowadays there's always a didactic panel) I want people to learn through repetition what these images are. That's how I'm working. That's what my practice--that's how I'm trying to communicate with people is through repetition.

Around the bulbs that look like petals, or they're really more bulbs of the peyote are, again, these moons which are these altars that are the part of 87:00the--. There's two strains of the Native American Church. There's half-moon, and then there's big moon. I'm more familiar with the half-moon ceremony that came from Quanah Parker. This is an imaginary flag. I don't know. I've never heard of anybody creating a flag for Native American Church, but I have seen cards with the logos on it. Again, it's probably just my interest in looking at tribal seals, thinking about where tribes come from today. It's about the Native American Church, but it's Indian in general. Really, ultimately, I was thinking about Brummett Echohawk and my grandpa Tom Chapman and the Pawnee Tribe, creating their flag, and the lady who created the first Pawnee flag.

My mom, who is a Pawnee-Kiowa woman, she makes Plains Indian dance regalia, and so my mother and I collaborated on that. I cut out all the pieces, and she sewed them on, just like she sews a shawl. While she doesn't get credit, that's a privilege that I get because it's my mother. (Laughter) She's made outfits for other Native American performance artists and things. I thought, "Everybody else is collaborating with my mom, so I should start collaborating with my mom." This is my first reimagined Native American Church flag. It's imaginary. It's not anything I've seen anybody do. I've never heard of it, but I have an interest in flags. Somebody said it reminded them of the flags from Akira Kurosawa films. I 89:00like the scale, and also I like the deeper symbols and meaning of community and organization, and representation, and things like that. --

Little Thunder: Nathan, you want to talk about your panels?

Young: Yeah, these are plaster panels. They are a motif that is very common in Native American Church art. If you look at the work of Stephen Mopope or [James] Auchiah, they would have these moons in their prints and paintings as a central 90:00figure sometimes. There's a famous mural that Stephen Mopope painted in Anadarko of a moon with feathers on top of it. What I'm trying to do--I grew up at a time when that art was ubiquitous, or seemed ubiquitous to me. -- Now the devotional art of the Native American Church, the fans, the boxes, those things, they're very much being made and used today, and people are making beautiful work. I felt that this type of experience was missing, or not missing, it was very rare. My inspiration is the Kiowa Five. Blue, yellow, and red are the colors of the robes of Roadmen, the men who lead the ceremonies of Native American Church meetings.

The Native American Church, it's probably--. With Nora, (I saw a quote from Nora [Thompson Dean], who was a Peyote person) said that she believed they were the most sincere prayers she's ever heard. Really, what I'm trying to do is pay tribute in a way, in this really abstract way, to these men, people who were keeping this tradition alive. The Native American Church came from a time of great spiritual crisis when we were losing our original indigenous religions. The Native American Church was this vessel where we could keep very important 92:00parts, or we could hide parts of individual religions in it. In my experience, Peyote people are very, very humble. That's when I go back to the sincerity. It's a very, very humble religion. Oftentimes, the men and the people who are the primary or that compose a community, in my experience, work at our housing authorities. They build homes. They're craftsmen. They're mechanics. I've even heard people use the word "mechanics," talking about Native American Church things.

What I'm trying to do is, again, use repetition. I'm also thinking about the history of contemporary art. There are these very simple colors, minimalism, 93:00things like that in a very crude way. These things in real life, real altars--I call these altars, but they're not. They're ethereal. They're dirt. They go away, and you would never know they were there. What I'm doing is I'm thinking about the people who make them, who make those altars, thinking about the Kiowa Five and those motifs, trying to put my own take on it and make something that I think is interesting. I don't necessarily think this--I don't know who this work is for. I'm not trying to make this for Native American Church people to come 94:00and to give me any accolades for it.

I'm trying to reflect my experience as an Oklahoma Indian, as an intertribal person who grew up around these people and do this practice. I think of them and these guys who I know run these meetings. It is very gendered. They are Roadmen. They build homes. They're homebuilders, and they're people that work with their hands and stuff. This is something natural that I've done. I've done them in concrete, drywall. It also is an influence of Bard, where people were doing paintings or drawings on walls and then cutting the piece of the wall out with 95:00them. I'm mixing all kinds of artistic languages or vernaculars together to try to express my experience as an Oklahoma Indian.

Little Thunder: Thank you so much for your time today, Nathan.

Young: You're welcome. Thank you.

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