The Jiffy Newsletter Podcast
Explore the unique stories of upstate New York with The Jiffy, the official podcast and newsletter of the James Instagram Feed! In every episode, James Cave explores New York by asking things like: What makes a Hudson Valley home a “Hudson Valley home"? Is the Kinderhook Blob real? What is Mud Season? and more.
The Jiffy Newsletter Podcast
The Bodega Cat Room and Beyond
In this episode, we tour the Jiffy-Mart, the official digital bodega of the James Cave Instagram Feed.
Then we dive into a thoughtful exploration of land acknowledgments with Indigenous expert Heather Bruegl, who shares insights on creating meaningful statements that honor ancestral lands and their original stewards:
- Native-land.ca serves as a starting point for researching whose land you're on
- Tribal territories often overlapped, unlike modern state borders
- Research should include archives, libraries, land records, and the National Archives
- Always do preliminary work before approaching tribal nations for collaboration
- Land acknowledgments require months of research, reflection and action behind the words
- Heather shares the experience of returning to her ancestral homelands in New York
- Museums need better support systems for BIPOC workers presenting hard histories
- Even as an Indigenous person, Heather acknowledges her role in colonization
- A meaningful acknowledgment should feel like entering a form of ceremony
Heather Breugl can be reached at https://www.heatherbruegl.com.
You can upgrade to a Jiffy Premium account (aka J'Fay Supreme) here: https://thejiffymart-shop.fourthwall.com/pages/memberships
If you like the podcast, please share it with a friend. You can also send me a text through the link in the show notes. I read all messages!
Follow me on Instagram: @jamescave
Visit the website: thejiffy.xyz
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Jiffy Audio Newsletter podcast. It's a podcast about upstate New York that really takes you places, including where we are right now. And, um, now you might be hearing some construction noise behind me in the background. That's because I'm standing in front of the future site of the official bodega of the James Cave Instagram feed. It is the Jiffy Mart here at the corner of Commerce and Exchange Place. And if I, if I say so, it is a really good location. In fact, you can access it anywhere from your device. All you have to do is go to the link in my show notes or thejiffy.xyz. But here, I'm so sorry. I don't where are my manners? Let's go in. Let me give you a tour. Come on in. Come on in. We'll just open this door here. That's the course, that's the, the bell, You know, every bodega has to have a good doorbell. In fact, uh, this was the first thing that I had them install right before they started construction. And, um, let's see, over there you've got the register or where the register will be. I'm just sharing you my vision here. Uh, as far as it goes, not, it's not here. It's all taking, taking place, coming together. But as we're walking on, see, we've got the hall of mirrors over there and over here's the Bodega Cat room. It's actually where all the world's bodega cats come from. It's a. A little known fact, but this is where it is. Okay, let's keep going. I'm gonna go back to, um, back to the back of the Jiffy Martin. I wanna show you something special. I'm gonna walk through these beaded curtains behind the hot dogs. Uh, there's the cigarette spinner over there. Okay, here we go. Here we are Now, if I can remember you, you gotta pull the, the mop and then knock, knock twice. Uh, yep. Oh, here we go. There we go. Should swing right open. Yeah. And here we are. Step right in. We are now, this is the Jiffy Mart members lounge and as you can see, it's fully furnished already. It's the first thing I invested in. And we've got a statue of Joan Didion right here. Joan is welcoming us in. What's up Joan? Um, she's pointing to a three rows of Sixpenny sofas and a wingback boucle chaise longue for all of your sleep hiking so you could come lay down and relax. Go on a sleep hike. And if you look up, you'll see my collection of Noguchi paper lanterns. Watch your head. There's about 14 of them there. Uh, so just be careful as we go on right here. We're gonna go over to, um, oh, it's a commemorative bench to the actor Walton Goggins. I always love seeing those and. Over to the back of the wall here. This bank of TVs is streaming all 14,126 hours of Love Island USA season two. Yeah. So what do you think? I mean, I tried to make it as exclusive as possible, but still keep that cozy membersy vibe. And um, over here we've got our coffee table book coffee table. By the way, there's no coffee allowed. This is strictly for coffee table books. This is a table for coffee table books, so it only Rizzoli books right now. And on top of it, we've got, it looks like the Grab Bag Of Goods. Actually every paying member of the J'Fay Supreme gets to download the digital grab bag of goods. Uh, so if you want to get your Grab Bag Of Goods, go ahead and join the membership tier right now. It's the Grab Bag Of Goods. Let's see what's inside. You actually never really know what's inside one of these until you dive in. So, um, let's go, let's, let's, let's dive into the Grab Bag Of Goods. Okay. When the Grab Bag Of Goods now, and it looks like the first stop, the Grab Bag has taken us to, in our series of episodes, the grab bag series is, uh, is my office. Actually, you can see the Grab Bag is taken us here. Um, I'm thinking's because we need to check back in on my ongoing series that's focused on writing a meaningful land acknowledgment statement. As you can see, I've got my notepad here. Um, but I don't really have any, just have here at the Jiffy. I don't really have anything else written because I don't really know how to go about writing a land acknowledgment statement. if you remember last year in my series, this old vibe, I traveled throughout the Hudson Valley to see if I could answer the question, what makes a Hudson Valley house, a Hudson Valley house? And I visited antique stores, mansions and historic homes, and I noticed that a lot of these places posted land acknowledgments or statements meant to confront the history of stolen land and acknowledge that the Indigenous nations remain despite centuries of erasure. For example, here I am outside the Thomas Cole Site in Catskill, uh, reading their statement, which is prominently featured on a big sign as you enter the park. And I am sure you've seen or heard similar statements in museums or on restaurants' websites or in people's Instagram bios. And since I've now got this online store and all the other Jiffy channels taken up all this digital space, I'm wondering if I should include a statement for the Jiffy. I mean, I produce most of my podcast videos and newsletter issues in my office on what historically is the ancestral lands of the Stockbridge-Munsee community. So if I should offer a statement of acknowledgment, uh, what, what should it say? How can I even make sure it's actually meaningful to the Stockbridge- Munsee Band of Mohican Indians? I mean, could anything I write. Really make any difference. Well, for guidance, I called up Heather Bruegl. she's a public historian, activist, and consultant who teaches decolonial education and works with organizations for Indigenous sovereignty. She's a citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin in a first line descendant of Stockbridge-Munsee, and she's presented and participated on panels throughout the Hudson Valley and across the country. She's presented on topics ranging from how to center Indigenous voices in historic house museums to investigating the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women. And in my show notes to this episode, I've included a lot of information on how to find Heather's work. But for now, here's my conversation with Heather on how we might think about land acknowledgment statements that could actually mean something. Let's give her a call.
Heather Bruegl:Hello?
James:Hey, Heather.
Heather Bruegl:Hi.
James:How's it going? It's James.
Heather Bruegl:How are you? I'm good.
James:I'm doing well. Hanging in there, I guess. So, yeah. Thank you so much for, uh, jumping on the phone with me to talk about this.
Heather Bruegl:Oh yeah, totally. My pleasure.
James:So first I would like to just hear, um, you know, your, I guess, well the sort of idea for this clip is, is to think about like, how do you go about even getting started for something like this? And maybe for my specific use case, which is to also at the end of it, hopefully have a land acknowledgment statement that makes sense for what I'm doing, like where I work and where I live, and sort of just looping it into having a land acknowledgment statement for a newsletter. Um, but hopefully taking the readers and the listeners along to understand really what all goes into it. And so here I am faced with a, you know, a blank Google document with a blinking cursor. So can you tell me a little bit about the work you do as it relates to this type of work.
Heather Bruegl:Yeah, well my name is Heather Bruegl. I'm a citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin and a first line descendant, Stockbridge-Munsee. I'm a public historian and I work as an independent consultant, lecturer, researcher, writer, um, all sorts of things. But You know, when organizations or people come to me and they're like, I wanna do a land acknowledgment. How do I do it? Um, and they're very excited. One of the things I, I don't like doing necessarily because I feel like it, um, like maybe crushes them a little inside, but I'm like, you gotta slow down. And you gotta do some research first. Um, so it's really talking about, you know, researching whose land that you're on, because oftentimes what I don't think people realize is that tribal territory overlapped each other. So it's not like, you know, you know that New York is New York because of the borders, or Massachusetts because of the borders. You know, like each state has its borders, but tribal territories, they overlapped. So sometimes you could have multiple tribal nations in one area. So it's, I always wanna tell people, you know, slow down first. Let's do some research. Let's talk about this. Let's think about this before you even get to the point of writing a land acknowledgment. So that research, is really important first, and then I always have people go in and do some reflection. Why are you writing this land acknowledgment? What is it meant to do? What are you trying to accomplish in this land acknowledgment? Because there's gotta be more than just the words, and it's gotta be more than absolving white guilt, there has gotta be some action behind it. So what are you doing? So research and reflection I think are the two big things that I have people do first before they even start the writing process.
James:Okay. Yes, we love, I love research and I have also have a lot of white guilt, so I'm glad we're getting ahead of that right now, so, okay, good. So, so in terms of research, where do you, where do you begin? To even start looking into this, what are some good resources that I could use or that people could really start going in finding? Is it land record? I mean, how are these records gen- generally kept.
Heather Bruegl:Right. So one of the first things I like to do, um, and I even do it myself, is there's this really cool website called nativeland.ca. and it's just a super general generalized website. You can go in, type in your location and it'll pop up like what tribal nations were in that area. That's just a starting point because you've gotta go in then and do further research because that website even tells you that it's still a work in. They're still continuously adding things and learning more information. So I like to have people go there first. But then also once you think you have an idea of who was in the area, because that website will give you, an idea. You gotta take that, and now you've got to dive deeper and go to your, archives or, Libraries, research areas, land records. Sometimes you can go to your county, clerk's office and look at land deeds and records. And so those are those, actually, I find those quite fascinating. But, um, I also think that they can really give you some insight into what was going on. How was the land lost or taken or sold or what have you. I also recommend people go to the National Archives website because the National Archives is also within the last decade, digitized over 300 treaties that were made between tribal nations and the United States. And a treaty can tell you a lot. A treaty can tell you what lands were seeded, what lands were sold, what was the payment or agreement that was made between the United States and a tribal nation? So that can give you a lot of information and it can help put in context, you know, what happened to the land and, and where did it, you know, whose hands did it go through? So there's a, there's a lot you can do.
James:Got it. Okay. Okay. So I will, I'll dig into all those things and then I'll come up with some information. And then, and then once you have, you know, collected these, all this contextual info and, and a sort of a lineage, you can, you can sort of connect some dots here. I still, now I'm approached with this blank. Google document. So
Heather Bruegl:yeah.
James:Do you, is it like, is, I can't imagine that there's a formula for these things, so like how do you, what is the, how does one go about writing you know, if you have access to a spokesperson from the tribe, it's always helpful to consult with them. But by the way, they're not a lot of people on those teams and they're always very busy. So don't over overload them with your request. So, yeah, so like, I'm assuming that most people would go about this on their own, right? And so, yeah. How do you, how if, if we could bring Heather into our, into my, into my mind and think, okay, what would Heather do? How would Heather do this?
Heather Bruegl:Right. Yeah. So I would take a stab at writing it first. and you start super basic, okay, who is on the land? Put that in your document first. Where are they located now? Put that in your document next, and then you can fill in the in between, with history of how long were they in the area, you know, what happened, while they were in the area, what events forced them from their lands, and to where they're located now. I always try to encourage people to have some sort of foundation or bones written before going to a tribal nation, because you do eventually want to go to that tribal nation, whoever you're honoring, because you want them involved in the process, but you don't need them doing all of the work. You should have done some of the work beforehand, and presenting it that way because when you come with that blank Google Doc, you're asking them to do all of the work and sometimes it's not feasible, nor is it right to, to do it that way. You wanna make sure that you're coming to them with, even if it's just an outline of what you think might work. Before approaching them because you are showing them that you have done some of the work, you are serious about it and you want their input. 'cause you wanna do it in, in a community way, in a way that builds relationship, that builds community. And you want to say, you know, if I were to put this land acknowledgment into action, you know, by. You know, having people who read it, maybe they wanna learn more about whatever tribe it is you're honoring. What resources would you like me to include in this land acknowledgment? Do you have an approved set of books? Do you have a history page on your tribal website? Do you, you know, what can I include? But you always wanna make sure that you've done some of that groundwork before you go to the tribal nation, because as stated earlier, yes. They are grossly understaffed and super busy and always inundated with requests. So we wanna make sure that we're covering some of the bases before we go to them. But it is imperative to go to a tribal nation at some point.
James:So it is important and, and to go and seek out some collaboration. Don't do it on your own. Yeah. Got it.
Heather Bruegl:Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Come already having done some of that homework. There are too many times where I've worked with institutions who are like, well, we went to the tribal nation, but they didn't have time for us or whatever, and we don't know you know what to do. And they. When I dig deeper, I find out they went to the tribal nation with nothing, with just a request. Hey, we want you to write a land acknowledgment for us, or we want you to help us write a land acknowledgment without having done their own homework first. And that is way too much to put on. Any, underrepresented community, because we're already doing so much work to begin with.
James:Can I, can I ask you do, when you see land acknowledgment statements in people's websites or Instagram bios, can you tell if it's like, like, can you, do red flags fly for you? Like, can you tell if it seems a little lazy or half baked?
Heather Bruegl:So Instagram bios, I know a lot of people like put what land they're living on. Like in my Instagram bio it says, you know, where I'm living, but I'm also doing a lot of work behind the scenes. when I look at people's websites, organizational websites, you can definitely tell if it is just thrown together or if it's not really something that was thought through. It was something that to put that was to put up there because you needed to check a box, right? and then you can look at other websites and you can go, wow. This is really in depth. They're providing a lot of resources. They're telling me how they came about doing their land acknowledgment. They're telling me how they're putting it into action. They're telling me how they collaborated with or are in process of collaborating with a tribal nation. They're showing me what's up, and I really like that, and that tells me that you've done months and months and months of work. But if you write a land acknowledgment in one day and you call it good, you did something wrong.
James:Gotta have follow through. You got, yeah. You gotta talk about more than just the land acknowledgment statement. I mean, you must, do you feel, do you feel something different when you come back to this area? Like, than, than, than maybe where you feel when you live Where in, in Wisconsin? Like is it, what is that like when you come back and visit?
Heather Bruegl:Yeah, so the first time I came to the homelands was in the summer of 2021. And I, drove out there and, the first time I came across what is called the Hudson River and being on that land, it was just a different feeling. It was a feeling of being calm, being still, being present and not realizing that I was missing something until I was there. It was just this absolute powerful feeling. And so while I live back in the Midwest now, I live in the Land of the Three Fires Council. In, Detroit, Michigan. So the Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi peoples. I, when I go back to New York, when I go back to Western Massachusetts, there is that still that sense of belonging and being home. It's almost as if the land didn't forget who we were. And so when we step back on it, it's like, okay, you're here now. You're home now. So it is very much a different feeling, a feeling that I don't get really anywhere else. You know, other than when I'm in my own living space here in Michigan, there is a sense of community. And a sense of like home feeling when I am, you know, in Wisconsin on the reservation, visiting elders, talking with family and friends. But it's nothing like what you experience when you go back to the land from which you originated from. And for me, that's New York and, it's, it's super powerful. Yeah.
James:Can we, can I talk a little bit about the research that you're doing? Because I, I'm reading on your website, your bio says, dissertation research focuses on how museums and cultural institutions can support BIPOC workers doing, as you say, the hard history. Yeah. I, I would love to hear what, what you mean by the hard history and how you're talking about it in your work.
Heather Bruegl:Yeah, absolutely. So, oh gosh, I went back and forth on my dissertation topic a number of times and finally landed on that one just because of the current work that I do now and how I see, you know, we live, we live in a unique time in the United States. That's what I'll say. It's a unique time where we see, curriculums being banned and we see books being banned and we see cultural workers, museum workers accused of. being quote woke or pushing some sort of indoctrination agenda or whatever, when all we're really trying to do is present facts because as, as historians and as curators, that's what we do. We present facts and museums are spaces that are not neutral, right? They tell the good, the bad, and the ugly. All too often though, certain histories fall upon workers of color. So whether that is an Indigenous person working on Indigenous history, a Black person working on Black history, Asian, you know, even women working on women's history. And sometimes those histories are not the most pleasant to work on. They tap into emotional trauma, generational trauma, and things like that. Because at the end of the day, our identity is very much, On our skin, right? It's who we are. We can't take off, period clothing. If you were dressed in, you know, if you were working in a, in a, in a village and you were wearing period clothing, you can't just take that off and then just go on your merry way. Go to Target, go to Starbucks, get coffee, whatever, and be whoever you know you are. Because our identity is part of who we are as work, museum, and cultural workers of color, and there's no really great support systems within cultural institutions that help support us emotionally, support us with community, whether, it's put on by the institution or not, that help us do these hard histories. We're just asked to do them and do them well, which we all do, but there's no follow up, there's no support given to us. And so what I'm really wanting to look at and even looking at my own experience is. How does the lack of support affect your mental wellbeing? Right? Do you deal with racial battle fatigue? Are you exhausted consistently all of the time? Because the work that we're being asked to do is generational. It is trauma inducing. Are you given tools and supplies? Is there even just a safe space in your institution that you can go to, maybe do some meditating, maybe do some breathing, exercises, but also is your leadership being held accountable and are they themselves looking into their own bias? And their own lack of cultural sensitivity training to make sure that they're providing safe spaces for their BIPOC workers. And a lot of institutions, unfortunately, are not doing that. Are there institutions that are doing that? Yes, there are. And so I'm hoping to talk with some of those as well. But more often than not, it's not happening. And I think that's something that we really need to look into because museums now are trusted more than ever to provide truth, history, facts. and that is something that I think we shouldn't take lightly, but we also have to be protecting and supporting the staff inside the museum who are talking about those hard histories. And so that's something that I'm really looking forward to. To working on and talking with museum workers and finding out what works, finding out what doesn't work, um, and what they need to make sure that they do feel supported.
James:Do you find that, um, you're received well? Or do some of these institutions, are they resistant? Are they, is it, are they open-minded? Like what has your experience been in coming into the, with this, with this approach?
Heather Bruegl:Yeah, so it's, Unique. I've talked to, some museum workers who are like, oh my gosh, this is so needed. Um, I haven't quite yet, approached museum administrators yet, so I'm not sure how that's gonna go. But I do know, that there are some museum administrators that I have talked to across the board who are very interested. Who are wanting to learn more because they're wanting to do more and wanting to be better. and maybe they're not seeing, you know, that there is a miss, you know, because sometimes museums, there are some super large institutions, right? So you don't know, you could have like a couple thousand people on staff and not know when somebody is hurting or when somebody is, is struggling. And so. You know, there have been, uh, people that I have spoken to who are like, yeah, I wanna be part of this work. I also wanna know what you're finding out because I want us to be better. I want us to do better. And so I'm hoping that it's received well and the ultimate goal is. To from that dissertation work is to produce a podcast not a very long one, maybe like a six to eight episode podcast where I am talking with other museum workers and that can be used as part of a toolkit for institutions to learn how to do better by their cultural workers and museum workers to help create spaces of support. So I'm hoping you know that that helps the in the field museum field. Go further. Do better. Um, that'd be great. And help out people. Yeah.
James:Do you have a timeline for that? 'cause that's an instant Subscribe for me. Do you have a name that we can look out for? Love That
Heather Bruegl:I don't yet. I don't yet. Um, I'm gonna be working over the next year on that. Um, so 2025 will be like hardcore year of like getting that stuff done. But when I figure all of it out, I, you will be the first to know.
James:Oh, oh, breaking news. Love
Heather Bruegl:that.
James:Okay, so my final question, uh, thanks so much for all your time talking with me here, is I kind of wanna look at your statement that you have on your website. Um, the one that where, you know, it starts out, "Heather respectfully acknowledges" and I'd love to hear you, you know, read that and talk to me about what you did in, in the works of putting your own acknowledgment statement together and, Did it just come naturally? Like was it just so, so fast? Or like, how do you think about your own acknowledgment statement as someone who, encourages and advises people to write theirs?
Heather Bruegl:Yeah, so for me, it, for me it was very important to acknowledge, where I work. Live and, the land that I'm on. So my acknowledgment on my website is: Heather respectfully acknowledges that she works and resides on the unceeded traditional and ancestral lands of the Three Fires Council, the Ojibwe, the Odawa, and the Potawatomi, along with the Peoria, Miami, and Wyandot. Through forced removal, these nations are now located throughout the United States, including parts of Michigan, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Kansas, and part of Canada. For me, that's important because even as an Indigenous person, I, am part of the process of colonization, right? You know, I'm not living on my own ancestral homelands. I'm not even living on the reservations that we were removed to. So it's important for me to acknowledge that I am living as a guest in these lands and acknowledging that for me means that I am trying to get in touch and be in touch and be mindful of the ancestors who are buried on this land, who lived on this land, who called this land home, for me. It's consistently entering in a form of ceremony, right? It's saying, Hey, I hear you. I feel you. I see you. And I'm acknowledging that because that's important. And for me, when it comes to the action part of the acknowledgment of where I live and work for me, I put that into action as often as I can. By doing public lectures, doing interviews like these, talking about the land, keeping these ancestors alive as much as I possibly can, and making sure people don't forget about them. So that's the action that I put into play every single time I enter a workspace. you know, even in my home, I try very much to, you know, be a good mind, good heart, and make sure that I'm. Acknowledging the hardships that were on this land and saying, Hey, you didn't move by choice. but I had the choice to move here. And so I want to acknowledge that, understand my own role, even as an Indigenous person in the colonization process and say, you're not forgotten, and I won't let people forget you. And so that's kind of how I feel about it. people entering into land acknowledgments. I just, I really have to stress. You need to enter it into more than just checking a box. Don't just check that box. Go beyond it. You know, do more, uh, be better because we could all be better. and then tell someone else about it, right? Go through your process and then tell somebody else your process, because the more information gets out there. The better. And acknowledging that hard history is so important. And I think if we all do it together, we just make this entire place better. And I think that's important. that's Heather Bruegl on the process of writing land acknowledgments that actually mean something. And as I continue my re research into this, I will keep sharing my process of writing a land acknowledgment statement for The Jiffy. Um, in fact, I think it'll be an ongoing series here at the podcast and on the Instagram feed, so I hope you'll follow along for that. Now, coming up in our next episode, we are still deep in the Grab Bag Of Goods. It's our series exploring the Jiffy Mart and its many wonders. And one of those wonders is a magical refrigerator that when we open the door, it transports us into the heart of the Catskill forest. That's right. We're gonna go deep into the woods and look at some trees. So I'll see you right here in about a week, the Jiffy Audio Newsletter podcast. If you like the podcast, could you mind sharing it with a friend? Word of mouth really does help. Also, uh, I have a new feature as well. You can send me a text right here at the show. You can find a link in the show notes that says, send a text and then you can shoot me a message. I read them all because so far I just started this and I haven't had any messages, so you're definitely gonna be right at the top of my inbox. OK, Until next time, I'll see you on the Instagram feed.
