In this episode, DMP collaborator Basil Wiering interviews Professor  Brittany Hunt, a member of the Lumbee Tribe, and doctoral candidate at  UNCC. She highlights the erasure of Native Americans and how rampant  cultural appropriation is in the fabric of our society. Oftentimes,  indigenous people are not credited for their many cultural  contributions; one example is that they're the original Southerners who  created regional food staples like grits and hushpuppies, and another is  the phenomenon of white people's unsubstantiated claims to Native  lineage, such as thinking they have a Cherokee great-grandmother.  Stereotypes drive many interpersonal interactions and exude the core  myth that the indigenous are people "in the past" and they are  subsequently excluded from race conversations about systemic problems,  like police brutality and mass incarceration. Prof. Hunt further points  out how academically sanctioned racism functions to justify racist  attitudes and how many remain complicit. She offers listeners some  specific strategies she is always prepared with when faced with  microaggressions, such as exposing underlying absurdity and asking  questions to reveal intent, and she calls us all in to action so that we  can analyze how we contribute to the racial erasure of indigenous  people, be more critical and decolonize our language, and decolonize  curriculum for educators in decision-making positions, all good goals  whether or not there are indigenous people represented within institutions.