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Episode 501: Julian Brave NoiseCat Aimed for a Woven Text
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"It's not actually about the questions you ask. It's about shutting up," says Julian Brave NoiseCat, author of We Survived the Night.
It’s episode 501 with Julian Brave NoiseCat, author of the memoir We Survived the Night. It’s published by Knopf. It’s a pretty spectacular debut and we have a lively chat about it and the writing and structuring of it. Julian is a writer, filmmaker, powwow dancer, and student of Salish art and history.
Julian, man, what a cool dude. He really came to play ball, which is fun for me. His memoir blends personal history, family history, cultural history, coyote lore, and even some journalistic spurs in the storytelling, which makes it a shapeshifting text, much like his coyote ancestors. The book has been getting a lot of attention and deservedly so.
His work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post. He has won many awards for his journalism and his debut documentary, Sugarcane, premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. He is a proud member of the Canim Lake Band. He is @jnoisecat on IG and in this conversation we talk about:
- His early vision for the book
- Hidden histories
- How he aimed for a woven text
- How the book was a study in transformation
- Non-uni-direction assimilation
- Writing what you don’t know
- And his Bob Caro story
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Recommended
Transcript
Opening & Offers
00:00:01
Speaker
OAC and Evers, if you want signed personalized copies of The Front Runner, you might have heard of it, for the holiday season, email me, creativenonfictionpodcasts at gmail.com, and I'll email you a PayPal invoice and ask you how you want your book signed.
00:00:14
Speaker
It'll be $30 total, and that covers media rate shipping. I know how to splurge. While supplies last, okay?
Upcoming Lecture Announcement
00:00:23
Speaker
Also, Thursday, December 4th, 7pm, I'll be at HodgePodge Books in Eugene delivering my now world-famous biography lecture. Come grab a drink or a mocktail at the best book bar in town and listen to me yuck it up.
00:00:39
Speaker
this This is the other fun thing about making art is you discover things about your art as you're going through it and as you're making it.
Podcast Overview
00:00:52
Speaker
OACNF is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I speak to primarily writers about the art and craft of telling true stories. And if we're lucky, how crappy we feel. I'm Brendan O'Meara. You're damn right.
00:01:06
Speaker
Got some really nice notes and emails and DMs and IG comments. Some men's underwear in the mail, JK. About reaching episode number 500 of the show.
00:01:18
Speaker
a great chat with the one and only John McPhee. How awesome was that? Thank you very much for all those messages. it means a lot after all these years that the show still remains in tune. It's got great tone.
00:01:33
Speaker
Great to tonality. Anyway, point being, thank you. the Point also being, we celebrate it but we move on.
Episode Introduction with Julian Brave Noisecat
00:01:41
Speaker
It's episode 501 with Julian Brave Noisecat, author of the memoir We Survive the Night. It's published by Knopf.
00:01:50
Speaker
It's a pretty spectacular debut, and we have... A lively chat about it and the writing and the structuring of it. Julian is a writer, a filmmaker, a powwow dancer, and a student of Salish art and history. That's a primer. I'll offer more in a second.
Website and Newsletters Promotion
00:02:08
Speaker
Show notes of this episode and more at brendanomero.com. Hey, hey.
00:02:12
Speaker
Bookmark it so you can browse for hot blogs and sign up for my two very important newsletters, the flagship Rage Against the Algorithm, which will include my 2025 holiday gift guide for the new issue, and Pitch Club. Welcome to pitchclub.substack.com. If you ever wanted to get know the ins and outs of crafting winning pitches to land your work,
00:02:36
Speaker
And make millions.
Patreon and Community Engagement
00:02:38
Speaker
Also, if you care to support the podcast with a few dollar bills, visit patreon.com slash cnfpod. We had a great procrastizum. Happy, hap, hap, hap.
00:02:48
Speaker
Be half hour with a few people, including me. And it was an international affair. We just hung out and talked about writing and went on our way. It's been a few weeks since I did it, but I'll do it again. Become a paid member to get access to these or more structured Zooms. Let me be the flax egg that binds together your bakes.
Social Media and Tech Views
00:03:10
Speaker
Patreon also rolled out its own kind of maybe not evil social media thing called Quips, and I've been shooting small little videos ah with these Quips, and they're getting a lot of impressions because I'm so something of an early adopter here.
00:03:27
Speaker
I think Jack Conte, who's the CEO and founder of Patreon, is ah more of a force for good than all the other tech overlords. So we'll see if he can avoid the slouching towards and shitification. I want to devote more time and attention to people, not algorithms. And with Patreon, it appears to be more people-focused.
00:03:48
Speaker
So says every social media platform ever.
Julian's Memoir and Cultural Challenges
00:03:52
Speaker
So Julian, ah man, what a cool dude. and he He really came to play ball, which is fun for me. His memoir blends personal history, family history, cultural history, coyote lore, and even some journalistic spurs in the storytelling, you know which makes it a very shape-shifting kind of text, much like his coyote ancestors.
00:04:14
Speaker
So it's of kind of a a meta kind of thing, if you, I think I'm using the term right. The book has been getting a lot of attention and deservedly so. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Washington Post.
00:04:27
Speaker
He has won many awards for his journalism and his debut documentary, Sugarcane, premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. He is a proud member of the Canham Lake Band. He is at JNoiseCat on Instagram. And in this conversation, we talk about his early vision for the book.
00:04:47
Speaker
hidden histories, how he aimed for a woven text, how the book was a study in transformation, non-uni-directional assimilation, writing what you don't know, and his Bob Caro story, which is pretty hilarious.
00:05:02
Speaker
I believe we're ready to rock and or roll, parting shot on being methodical, regimented, and not cramming. But for now, it's high time we cue up the montage riff.
00:05:20
Speaker
This is the question of my life. What are doing? Look at yourself. Look at what you're doing. Definitely louder than whatever dumb fuck question is that you want to ask. This is going to have to interest somebody somewhere other than me.
00:05:45
Speaker
Making a living and having a holistic career as an artist, you know, how do you navigate that? Well, I come at it from a distinct perspective culturally. You know, I feel that in America especially because I work in both Canada and the United States. Those are my two primary countries. I'm both Canadian and American. My nation is from Canada. I'm First Nations, as we say in Canada. but I grew up in Oakland, California. And so I work across two slightly different markets, so to speak, for storytelling about indigenous peoples. And there is a difference. you know In Canada, I was in a green room for a cable TV show with an
Indigenous Culture and Identity Challenges
00:06:23
Speaker
indigenous showrunner from Manitoba who was on the fourth season of his show. And I was thinking to myself, when on earth in the United States would I be next to an indigenous
00:06:35
Speaker
artist in the green room to a cable TV show. You know, that would never happen in America. I'm sorry. It just would not. Native people do not have that visibility in this country. This country, yeah I'm going to say it this way. This country really hates Indians, man. like It's hard to overstate the extent to which there was ah a true effort to kill off native people in this country. There were genocidal wars in multiple parts of the continent. and It's not like it was all concentrated in one part of these 450 states. It happened in lots of different locations.
00:07:07
Speaker
very significantly in the one I grew up in too, by the way, California, which is interesting because California is such a, it's considered like, you know, the most progressive state in a lot of ways. It's very diverse. Well, it also had the the most bloody history, right?
00:07:21
Speaker
in its relationship to native people. The gold rush was crazy. And by the way, there's a there's a football team called the 49ers out there. This is like still part of the state's history. Anyways, so I'm really aware of that cultural and antagonism, and's like some forms of latent subconscious hate towards native people that exists in our culture.
00:07:44
Speaker
and And is and is reflected in the cultural institutions insofar as they are still barely willing to tell our stories and to highlight them and to see them as fundamental to the American story. In America, you can be talking about race and you're you're talking about anybody other than Native Americans.
00:08:01
Speaker
and In Canada, it's actually kind of the opposite. If you're talking about race, like you're you're talking about indigenous peoples maybe first. mean Not that there aren't other racial conversations happening in Canada, but but the conversation about truth and reconciliation, the history of indigenous peoples and our cultural genocide in Canada is just a ahead of where it is in in in the United States. And that's just the truth. So I feel like i have to to make a living. You know, this is where the rubber meets the road for me. I feel like I'm paddling my little canoe up the torrent of American culture, which is, you know, we can say all the things that are impacting all of us is
00:08:38
Speaker
not interested as much anymore with long-form storytelling in any medium you know like hollywood just had its worst month on record since the 90s i believe with a number of box office hits i mean like sydney sweeney was out there with like But let's be real, like she's probably like one of the of the the it hot girls of Hollywood right now. Like that's just the honest way to put that. And they couldn't get people to go watch Sidney Sweeney at the movie theater this month. Like that is where the art is at. People. I listen to a podcast about a guy with an Academy Award. He's got one of the damn Oscars on his shelf.
00:09:17
Speaker
who has a $650,000 mortgage that just went into forbearance. And he was being responsible. You know, he didn't buy the million dollar house. He was paying ahead on his mortgage. And he has worked so little because so few films are being made right now in the last two years that that is his culture's in a recession.
00:09:39
Speaker
And, you know, the the same is happening. We're still seeing similar things with print culture because attention spans are are getting screwed. And literacy itself is on the decline. So, you know, those things are all for all of us. And then I feel this is just how I feel that I, I, on top of all that have to convince people to spend a long time with a people in a story that is not one that this country has, has usually spent a long time on because the lot, one of the logical conclusions of that is the mass culture of the country, the stories that this country wanted to hear about itself and its history and, and its land.
00:10:16
Speaker
were not often actually ones with natives in them, at least not ones with natives in them that weren't like dying at the end of a gun in a cowboy Western, which is, by the way, one of the genres of storytelling, the Hollywood Western that literally built the cultural factory of the free world, Hollywood.
00:10:32
Speaker
Yeah, and you bring up the 49ers,
Historical Injustices and Recognition Struggles
00:10:34
Speaker
too. And I i was ah reading last year the illustrated graphic novelization of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's Indigenous People's History of the United States. And speaking of sports teams, I didn't realize that the Texas Rangers were named after these Rangers who went out and committed these genocidal acts against the Indigenous and Native people. And I was just like, holy shit. Yeah. It's a name on its surface that doesn't elicit a degree of ah racial hackles the way the Washington football team did. But like, oh, my God, you're celebrating murderers in that regard. like that's a name that that truly needs ah its own reckoning, but it kind of hides in plain sight.
00:11:16
Speaker
It literally just happened that they decided to restore the medals of honor to the army veterans who committed the genocide against ah the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. This literally just happened in our culture. Like, I don't know how to interpret that in any other way than this culture is happy to celebrate with the highest distinction for a veteran in the land.
00:11:45
Speaker
the massacre of its indigenous peoples. That is the logical conclusion of that having just happened. Yeah, and you write about in the book too about the, I believe it's Dakota 38 of of the and the greater ah the great emancipator, like in the week of say freeing the slaves.
00:12:06
Speaker
Within six days. Yeah. Crazy. I think America has never grappled with this truth. And I'm not saying that one is more important than the other. I'm just saying that they need to be both contended with at the same time, which I swear is possible. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. But for some reason, we just seem not to be able to do it on this one. i mean, listen, we're all paying attention to like multiple screens at once now. Can't we just both acknowledge the genocide of indigenous peoples and the enslavement of African-Americans as the two original sins of this country? And here is my proof.
00:12:38
Speaker
The great emancipator, Abraham Lincoln, freed the slaves or began to with the Emancipation Proclamation six days after the largest mass execution in United States history of 38 Dakota combatants in a war.
00:13:01
Speaker
against the United States and militia in Minnesota that happened within the same week and Lincoln the great emancipator he signed he signed the deaths or the the the sentence he reviewed the sentence and he said yes you can kill these 38 ones his his office did at least It's stories like sobering and tragic stories like that that are are so integral to the book you wrote and these these hidden histories that so many of so many in this country don't want to look at. But I'm so you know grateful that some a writer of your skill and and taste and vision like brings that to the fore so we can learn from these things. But it's just like I always wonder, like, wow, what else what else are we missing? And I'm thankful that you're bringing this to the light, but what else are we missing, right? I completely agree with you. And I think that is ah one of the fundamental questions that I'm actually asking, I guess, in my work, because, you know, in both We Survived the Night, the book and my first documentary, Sugarcane, I talk about a pattern of infanticide at the Indian Residential School. That's the segregated indigenous, segregating segregated educational institution for indigenous people that my family was sent to. This one was near Williams Lake, British Columbia, Canada. And in the documentary, I co-directed about that with my my friend and and colleague, Emily Cassie. We found for the first time in any major work in any media as well, a pattern of infanticide at that institution, where in babies that there were multiple parts of it. But but the core part of it were babies born to students and sometimes nuns at this institution were being put in the trash incinerator. We know this happened because that is where my father was found.
00:14:47
Speaker
when he like minutes after his his birth and so if that was true at one of the 139 schools in canada where by the way there has been a 15 year commitment to what they call truth and reconciliation so they've actually been devoting resources to looking into and investigating and talking about this history and in the united states There was a federal inquiry under Deb Haaland for like three years of the Biden administration that is now over. And during that federal inquiry, the United States was still learning basic facts about its Native American Borg schools, like how many
00:15:24
Speaker
institutions were there that were federally funded by the federal government. Think about that for like one second until like two years ago, less than two years ago. We did not even know how many of these schools existed in America. They didn't have a census. They didn't know how many of them there were. Like they didn't know if there were 300 500 or whether there were or like they did not know which is wild, which I think begs the question, like, what else don't we know, man? And I think for indigenous peoples in our history, that question actually resounds in many directions and not all of them, not all of them are tragic. This is another important point.
00:16:01
Speaker
I think that actually when you are enlivened to the presence in history and and persistent reality of indigenous people, I think you are also enlivened to lots of other facts and realities about North American culture and history more broadly.
00:16:17
Speaker
And that I guess that is sort of the vantage point from which I try to tell my stories. Oh, for sure. Yeah, it's great and deeply and greatly illuminating, ah illuminating stuff. And, you know, ah just when you were when you were looking to tackle this book as a project, you know, which took you the better part of four years to do, what were you thinking as you were
Memoir Concepts and Transformations
00:16:43
Speaker
approaching it? What did it look like at its conception? And how did that evolve over the course of your writing and your was so lost the beginning, man. I mean, I... I didn't know what I was doing. I ah my initial idea, I'll say it because, you know, it's a podcast about nonfiction and craft. My initial sort of book model, because, you know, we all come into our project with like some version of like I saw this person do this and this person do that. And I'm like going to try to put them together in my own kind of a way. Yeah. My version of that was I thought I was going to be writing a foreign correspondent book about Indian country. So like a domestic
00:17:20
Speaker
foreign correspondent in a sense about a people who are seen as foreign in their own homelands in the vein of Age of Ambition by Evan Osnos. So firstly, i thought of it more as a reported book when I first got started, which I think is interesting. And he organizes that book into three thematic sections. And so when I started writing We Survive the Night, it began with three thematic sections, each that we're going to give an argument about contemporary indigenous life on this continent. one of The first one was called Apocalypse, and it was going to be about indigenous peoples as post-apocalyptic peoples who had already lived through the apocalypse of colonization, yeah which eliminated our world.
00:18:01
Speaker
I still think that's a good take, and I'm still trying to figure out a way to bring that out more in my work. second ah was odyssey uh which was about indigenous peoples returning to and reclaiming home and homelands and the third was going to be about trickster which is kind of the one that the whole book is now about uh which is about you know indigenous peoples as echoes of our trickster forefathers who you know were making the world uh means that were both altruistic and um like you know no good And as the trickster tends to, you know, the trickster is a transformer, a shapeshifter. They take primacy in our narratives. The trickster claimed the whole book. essentially When I set out to write it, I did something probably a little bit unusual, which is I didn't grow up with my dad. That's part of why I write about
00:18:50
Speaker
being indigenous all the time because I'm half actually my mom is white my dad is native so he left when I was six years old and I always had this sort of sense of loss because of that and trying to understand who I was because you know I came out looking the way I look I mean this is a podcast but I'll just say like i I'm brown I have long hair they also stuck just about as Indian a name on me as they could have Julian brave noise cat you know I mean like nobody hears that at the school attendance and it's like, what's your ethnic background? You know, like they might as well have been John Redcorn, man. Like that's the truth of the matter. And so, you know, here I was being raised by my white mom with my native dad in the wind, who was also, by the way, like a noted native artist. So he was kind of like out there in the wind, like I was seeing him, you know, but like he wasn't present in my life, which is another dynamic.
00:19:40
Speaker
And I was trying to figure out who I was, which is why I probably became a storyteller. You know, I think that that, sense has has sort of led me to, oh wait, here here's where I was. um That sort of sense led me to do something unusual, which was to move in with my dad to write this book, this guy who I hadn't lived with since I was six years old. I lived with him for two years while I wrote We Survived the Night so that I could figure him out and his story out in our relationship and who our people are and all these different things. And while I was doing that, I also had this notion that I was going to,
00:20:13
Speaker
learn more about my people's oral culture, our stories and stories. You know what I mean? Because I was working on this documentary about a system that nearly killed off my people and our way of life. And when you're doing that, you naturally ask yourself, like, what part of that do I have a responsibility to try to bring back to life? You know, like we survived genocide. We've got to come back from that genocide. We need our culture to come back. in a more powerful, strong way for the next generation. You know, I think all indigenous peoples feel that way about our about our ways. And how am i going to do that part of our responsibility?
00:20:49
Speaker
And so that led me to this is maybe a kind of this is funny to me. I had never heard someone except for once tell a coyote story in my entire life. And so the way that the truth of the matter is the way I learned these stories was I was reading articles on JSTOR. You've got to picture this. Like, I think it's funny, like native guy hunched over his you know laptop on JSTOR, devouring ethnographic texts from like 100 years ago that have in them the body of you know stories about his trickster ancestor, the coyote.
00:21:23
Speaker
And so there I was, you know, learning about my people through the Internet and like living with my dad. And one day it kind of just clicked for me. I was i was reading about the trickster coyote in the PDF, and it was describing him as this, you know, essentially deadbeat dad survivor, you know, epic creator destroyer.
00:21:44
Speaker
And then I was looking out at the carving studio where my dad was working, you know, with this deadbeat dad survivor, you know, epic creator destroyer. And it just clicked for me. I was like, Oh, my God, like my father is the trickster coyote, which of course he is, you know, like, that was our first ancestor. Of course, there's elements of the coyote in us. There's elements of the coyote in my dad. There's elements of the coyote in my grandfather who had 19 kids with seven different women.
00:22:10
Speaker
who like, as I joke in the book, like, you know, I don't want to make light of womanizing, but like this did give us our giant family of relatives. You know, he helped our people almost single handedly come back from a genocide, you know, and and so I'm just grappling with this thing. And ah the way that I did it was through was through our own tradition, was through finding and discovering stuff about our people and how we told stories that I never would have anticipated when I set out to write this thing. As I said, you know, I initially thought I was doing like Evan Osnos, who in turn was kind of doing like, i don't know, maybe his take on Marco Polo.
00:22:44
Speaker
Yeah. I love how you you kind of braid in the the coyote stories and in legends and how that really dovetails nicely with your own story and your father's story and your grandfather's story, you know, structurally, you know, how, how did you arrive at that, you know, or or the light bulb moment of like, Oh, this is the framing
Documentary Influence on Memoir Structure
00:23:07
Speaker
device. Yeah. That was so difficult to figure out, man. And, and, Here, I would say that editing a documentary was super helpful. I'll say two things. um So editing a documentary at the same time as make as writing We Survived the Night was super liberating for me, at least intellectually, in terms of how I thought about editing and structuring my work. Because when you edit a documentary, especially a verite documentary, which is an observational of the documentary where you're like,
00:23:32
Speaker
constantly trying to solve the puzzle of how this set of footage can be put together in such a way that is legible and also has the the filmic quality that you want of an observational documentary, which is to make it look more like a fiction film in a way. It's kind of like verite is like is as to documentary as narrative nonfiction is to nonfiction. You know what i mean? It's part of like documentaries turn to what towards what writing did in like the 60s and 70s with like Norman Mailer and all that. And so I realized that you could cut up a narrative and put it together like so many different ways before you figured out the right way to do it, which made me way less attached to the way that I was writing down the narrative at first for with for We Survived the Night. You know, I initially I think as writers, we often have a preciousness about our words and the way that we chose to set them down onto the page or into the Word document or Google Doc, or whatever you prefer.
00:24:26
Speaker
And I realized that like I could I could write it down and I thought it might be this way. I had some sense of how it might be structured, but like I could also try it lots of other ways, you know, and that that was super liberating. And so I started thinking about the the book as also, you know, because I'm working with these cultural forms at every level from the title of the book, at every level from the word to the structure, because the coyote stories are there. And and another way in which I structurally think about the book in in a cultural vessel or form from my own people is I think about it as and as a woven
Narrative Weaving in Memoir
00:25:03
Speaker
narrative.
00:25:03
Speaker
So in my people's arts and traditions, weaving is considered like the highest art form. My great grandmother was a weaver. My great great grandmother was a weaver. No offense to my father, who's a carver, but actually it's their work that is considered the prized heirlooms of our family. And so I thought about the book, which combines elements of memoir, family history, reporting, coyote stories as a sort of woven text in a sense that is honoring and echoing, you know, the weaving of my ancestors, which, you know, it's worth pointing out also that weaving, interestingly, is a feminine craft.
00:25:42
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. You're bringing up that that degree ah of weaving. And you I also got a sense that through the coyote stories and how the coyote is something of ah you know a shape shifter as well, the way you go about telling the story in the book has shape shifting elements because you are telling these personal stories. It does get into...
00:26:04
Speaker
Pure reporting. It gets into some like ethnography, even like profiles of you know prominent indigenous women like Deb Haaland and Mary Smith. Mary Simon. Simon. Mary Simon. So you have these all those elements of like, oh, the even the the mode of the storytelling, it changes shape and form throughout the whole thing.
00:26:26
Speaker
There were elements of this that were like planned or thought through, and there was other things that you know you kind of just, this is the other fun thing about making art is you discover things about your art as you're going through it and as you're making it. And so those were some of the things that I didn't initially, like wasn't initially thinking about. it I was just trying to figure out how the hell it would like make sense to put it together. you know But then I was also eventually thinking like a little bit of a meta way, Oh, like if I'm telling the coyote epic, what is the coyote epic really? You know, like what is at the core of this narrative? And one of the core things is definitely a study of transformation, you know, which is such a fundamental.
00:27:03
Speaker
i mean, want to just make the point that indigenous oral traditions have rarely ever been taken seriously as serious works of the humanities, you know, and yet they are contending with and giving explanations to some of the biggest questions that our species, our, our brains have ever asked. And one of the big ones is like, what's transformation really? And like, What drives it and and how does it happen and how should we think about it? And in a sense, like in the in ah in the most sort of pointy headed way to think about this, the coyote stories are contending with that question. The coyote himself is a shapeshifter. He's a transformer. And as he's going about his work in the story, he's engendering transformations in the environment, in the culture, in the life of our people, in the land itself. And, you know, in that sense, the you and if you want to take it even further, you know, the narrative itself is is is a transforming narrative, right? Like one thing piece about this that I've thought about a lot is like, what is the legitimate legitimate way to retell an oral tradition that remains true to it being nonfiction, which is how our people viewed it, while also saying like this narrative deserves to live in the present, which is to say that it deserves to do what it always did across time, which was a change. You know, like tradition is not like there's this notion that tradition is like you took a snapshot of the Indians when they met the first white man. And that's what their culture is and always has to be. But of course, our culture changed.
00:28:42
Speaker
all the time it was changing before white people showed up and it's changed a lot after they showed up. And yet it is still our culture. And so what parts of that culture are like inherent and and essential and need to be passed down and what parts of it deserve, you know, to to change and respond to the times, which is what any successful tradition, any successful culture does. Right. It it makes itself relevant to its people.
00:29:09
Speaker
in the generation and moment that it is living in. And that was something that I was kind of trying to think through as I was you know engaging with, in particular, the coyote stories in this book, but but the whole thing. yeah And there's ah a moment, too, of a myriad notes I have typed out, of of which we'll just get to a few, but it's ah so we're so really rich. And in in chapter 11, which is ah yeah Indian Acts, and you start that chapter by saying, like, I've told the truth, so it's only fair at this juncture as I start to look out at the Indian world with a loving yet critical eye that I
Family Dynamics and Personal Truths
00:29:41
Speaker
look in the mirror. And, i'm you know, structurally, you know, why wait 170 pages or so to to do that that, to gaze into the mirror?
00:29:50
Speaker
Well, I'll just be honest and and real and say that my experience across making Sugarcane and also writing We Survive the Night, because i ah I appear as a character in both the film and the book. is in the edit, the last character truly to emerge was me.
00:30:04
Speaker
And I don't know if this is true of everybody who writes, you know, nonfiction that includes themselves in it or write stories that have some of themselves in them. But I find telling a story about the self of understanding the self to be one of the hardest things to do, actually. Um, it's easier for me to look out at my dad and the world and to report on it and tell a story about it. But when I have to like, look at myself and really figure myself out and what it is that I want to say about myself that gets at the truth of the whole thing. It's hard, man. It took me a while to, to, it took us a while to figure it out with sugar cane. It took me a while to Indian acts was actually like the last chapter I wrote of this book. I think it was that and the epilogue or the, um, in the end as I call it. And so.
00:30:49
Speaker
Yeah, i it took me a while to get around to that. And also, I think it it was because I wanted to in the appropriate place in the memoir of the narrative, um because it it it isn't exactly chronological, but it does sort of begin in a way that begins with my father's birth and then sort of proceeds through my childhood. I wanted to contend with the way that I write about my dad and my grandfather.
00:31:13
Speaker
and other Indian men through the the character coyote who, you know, is a trickster who does does some good, but is often up to no good. And my dad is definitely the coyote in certain ways. As I mentioned, my grandfather was certainly the coyotes in his own the coyote in his own ways. You know, the coyote is like the father of our people. And, you know, my grandfather has a real case for being one of the fathers of our people, too. i mean, that man has, if I had to ballpark it, few hundred descendants already, like that many.
00:31:41
Speaker
So you know, and he's got another one on the way because me and my girlfriend are expecting. So you know he did his role for our people. And um that's a beautiful thing. Also, it's given us a big family and I love having so many relatives. It's it's cool. I mean, like on the one hand, the womanizing sucked for my mother, i mean, my my grandmother. And I know that it still hurts her to this day.
00:32:03
Speaker
And yet, Like, it's pretty awesome to have like 100 plus cousins out there, man. Like, it it just is cool. I really love it. And um I think therein lies an observation that I try to then and here I'm doing it again. It's hard for me to talk about myself. ah An observation that I try to observe, you know, in my own life, which is like,
00:32:24
Speaker
the forces that create the world and and and a lot of relatives is to me a good in the world are complicated and are sometimes connected to our id. Right. You know, the thing about the coyote is sorry to be vulgar, but he's like constantly feasting and fucking and like stealing stuff and getting his stuff stolen. Like, you know, that's kind of his whole deal, which is to say he's just like the appetite unleashed on the world. which like is true of the actual literal coyote out there, right? Like the coyote is just like constantly trying to get his next meal in a way we all are. Um, and, uh, and I think that acknowledging that in myself was something i I had done for my dad, my dad, my grandfather, and I needed to acknowledge it myself. And so for me, you know, there were two parts of me, um, maybe three, uh, where, and I was really driven that way. one of them,
00:33:14
Speaker
that I talk about explicitly is alcohol. So interestingly, my dad was an alcoholic, and I promised myself when I was a kid that I wouldn't become, you know, a drinker. And then I look back on parts of my 20s. And like, man, I was drinking with like, pretty hard. And like, you know, i there were moments in time where I got behind the wheel of a car and it's something that was like really foolish. Um, and there were moments in time where I actually did put myself in like significant bodily danger because of the decisions I was making and and other people too. And do I, did I want to be that person? Um, and so I write about that, which is a real thing for a lot of, lot of people. And, you know, I mean, it's one of the big stereotypes about Indians and I'm going to be honest with you, like,
00:33:53
Speaker
I don't condone stereotypes, but it is also true that like a huge number of my members of my family have struggled with alcoholism. My dad and myself included. I haven't had a drink now for five years. And the other one is, is, is relationships to women.
00:34:07
Speaker
You know, uh, I, I was kind of a child of two worlds, which meant that I would be, you know, in school during the year and and then eventually off at college and the university and trying to make a career in the white world. But then I would spend summers on the Canham Lake Res and out in the Indian world doing Indian stuff. And they are separate worlds to a huge degree, which made it possible for me to basically, i' I'm going to be honest about it, and I'm not like proud of this, but you know it is my truth to have started a pattern where and i would I would have like a girlfriend in this world. And then you know when I went off for summer, I'd go get another one over here and you know, in that sense, like while I was trying to not become my father, as so many of us are not trying to become our parents, I was becoming like my father. And, you know, if I look at my grandfather's pattern of behavior, which is the DNA evidence is strewn all across the province of British Columbia. In certain ways, I wasn't that I wasn't so different from from Ray Peters, you know, Zeke myself. And that is that's that's the truth of of of the coyote story for me and the coyote in me. And, um you know, at the same time, like I will say, I think that being a a trickster has has also like, you know, paid some dividends for me. Like I've I've I've gotten to do some some cool stuff in my life. And, and i you know, I got to contribute to some stuff that actually, know, sugarcane made it all the way to the White House. And and and and we were present for Biden's apology to the residential, the boarding school survivors here in the US.
00:35:40
Speaker
When I worked in politics, I, ah through some activism and mischief, helped make Deb Haaland the first ever Native American cabinet secretary. And, you know, same guy.
00:35:52
Speaker
there's There's a moment in the book as well where you you say like every time I fall so for someone who is an Indian, I feel like I'm staring down the barrel of assimilation. like It's like my heart and blood are are at odds. And it it was like such a – yeah, it was like such one of those moments that i just wanted to get you to like to unpack that that thread a bit because it is a very real thing that I imagine you're you're wrestling with.
00:36:16
Speaker
It's so real, man. um Me and my partner are both First Nations and and both we both have status under the Indian Act, which is relevant for the story I'm about to tell. And as I said, we have a kid on the way, so this is not a present concern of mine now. But um in Canada, there's this thing called the Indian Act, which is a federal piece of legislation that governs who does and does not count as Indian under the Indian Act of Canada.
00:36:40
Speaker
there are two designations of Indian under the Indian act. There's a six, one Indian and a six, two Indian, ah and it's not in height. Unfortunately, I'm more like five 11. And my dad is a six, one Indian. And that just means that both of his, his parents were Indians under the Indian act. My dad's fully native. My mom is an Irish Jewish New Yorker.
00:36:59
Speaker
Um, and if she heard her talk, she really sounds part. And so as the child of a status Indian, a six, one Indian and an, and an, non-Indian, I'm what's called a 6-2 Indian, which means that under the Indian Act, if I do not have kids with someone else who is an Indian under the Indian Act, our kid would not count as Indian, which would be mean that the it would mean the illegal death of my people. yeah know like Maybe I could still pass on the culture and stuff like that, but like a whole set of rights that and and and and someday maybe return of our land and all sorts of stuff that I am entitled to as a status Indian, like the ability to cross the US-Canada border with my Indian status card, which is a right I use all the time.
00:37:44
Speaker
the right to fish in certain times of year in certain places, et cetera, you know which is core to my people's culture and way of life. um I might not be able to practice, my kids, with my descendants would not be able to practice those, which is to say that I would not hand down my identity to them in some fundamental legal ways. yeah And there is no other, to my knowledge, ah race in North America that has their blood purity legislated in that kind of a way. And it makes dating as an Indian like ah a kind of crazy thing, especially if you're one in my position. because I am half, which does create, you know, like as someone who is half, I will say like, I feel a fear of, like I am basically the generational pivot point in a sense, right? Like I, the moment in time wherein my people assimilated and over time, you know, like one of the things that terrifies me is what i look at my grandkids and, and and be like my grandkids, ipa I did my part in passing down our culture and our people to them. And, you know, the the truth is, is like after even with the best intentions, after so many generations of not being intertwined with it, like with your partner,
00:38:59
Speaker
the likelihood that it gets handed down does decrease and decrease and decrease. I've seen it happen. I've faced, I've looked at that question myself, you know, which, you know, I think it's crazy to me. that They haven't made like an Indian dating show yet. Cause like that, like that is such an interesting premise for a reality TV dating show. And I think it's just another example of the persistent erasure of my people that we have not yet gotten my reality TV, our reality TV show. And that is what I'm resting my case on. Thank you. Yeah. You know, it's wild and and sad that you have to like kind of do that math, you know, in a way like now your your child will be like, OK, now it kind of it doesn't you know, they they don't have to make that distinction and decision about who they might who they should partner up with and and maybe bear a family in the same way that you you have to do that, do that math. Yeah, like my kid's going to be in a live in a in certain ways. My kid is going to live in a more simple, maybe not simple. That's not a fair way to put it. in a in a world wherein they are going to be more firmly rooted in their identity and culture than than I was.
00:40:06
Speaker
And, um you know, I think that's a really beautiful thing. i'm I'm so excited about that. And I hope that someday they will have the context to understand how lucky they are to be so rich in culture. You know, like a thought that I had just the other day is that like my kid, my and Joan's kid is going to be the most culturally rooted in our people.
00:40:30
Speaker
in maybe on my side of the equation, i wouldn't necessarily ballpark it for her side of the equation, but on my side of the equation, something like 100 years, like 150 years, maybe since since our people had this much integrity and pride in our culture.
00:40:44
Speaker
And that I think is a really profound thing. you know I think that's really beautiful. And and i do feel, if I feel a commitment to any project in my life, it is to it is to that project of my people and all indigenous peoples to make sure that our stuff our ways like continue to survive and to come back stronger than they were before, that the next generation has more than the prior, that they get closer to that return to our ancestors and their strength and power, because that is the core idea in a lot of our mythology, right? Like we we viewed our ancestors as complicated as they were, even if they were the trickster coyote and they were out there
00:41:20
Speaker
you know, up to no good, but making a lot of good in the world. Like there is just some inherent beauty and power in our ancestors and the way that they connect us to each other and us to our land and our place. And there is something that that I think indigenous peoples understand in that as being fundamental to our humanity and and and essential for us to continue to remember and honor and and pass down.
00:41:44
Speaker
Yeah, I think i I read somewhere and this is probably through like that white rubric that the indigenous story is always painted as tragic. And I love hearing the way you're articulating this like hopeful resilience. And I think that's like a key.
00:42:01
Speaker
the work that you're putting out there is so fundamental to that, that reconfiguration of the narrative, the, the, the seizure of it for, you know, for you and to broadcast it in a way that reframes it in a way of resilience and hope and, and, and empowerment. it's, I, I like, it's part of the reason why I love your book so much. And that's just, I think a re a fundamental reframing that I think so many of us have to grapple with.
00:42:29
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, I think it's interesting you brought up the word power because I'm going to be honest, that is actually one thing that I do think about. You know, part of the stories that I'm drawn to telling and we survived the night are stories where I see or or stories where I'm looking for, at least indigenous peoples expressing our power, you know, our our strength as a people, because we are almost never seen as that in the way that they tell the story about North America, you know.
00:42:56
Speaker
We are viewed as maybe history's greatest victims. You know, we were the ones who had to die for progress to happen. That's the way that the story was told for so much time, you know, and and and there's an element of truth to it. Like, you know, if you look at any statistical measurement of misery in the United States or Canada, you know,
00:43:15
Speaker
death rate, you know life expectancy, homelessness, addiction, alcoholism, abuse, violence against women, indigenous peoples fall to the statistical bottom of all of those yeah categories. So there is some truth to like, we are the poster children of of misery. And yet that is not the whole story because it couldn't be. Otherwise, why would we still be here? You know, they did try to kill us off. And yet we are still here living in our communities, in our cultures, you know, now starting to reclaim, you know, our our power. I mean, some of us are casino owners and operators who make billions of dollars. You know, I mean, that's not my people, but that is a huge part of the story of North America. And so, you know, I'm i'm interested in stories of indigenous peoples
00:43:58
Speaker
reclaiming and exercising our power in various ways. That's part of why I wanted to write about Deb Haaland, who I you know was involved with as well as ah as a political person, an activist, however you want to say that, a writer. And also about Mary Simon, who is an Inuk woman who rose to the office of the governor general, which is the embodiment of the crown, the representative of the sovereign in Canada. And many other stories in in the book where that is sort of the that is the part of the lens of of analysis is what is it for my people who are never seen as powerful but who have actually figured out ways to get back some power and to retain our power how are we doing that
00:44:38
Speaker
Yeah, there's, ah yeah, I think, you know, when you when you're writing about her, you know, she you quote her as saying and and this great point of, you know, there is a word in Inuktitut, and sorry if I butchered that pronunciation. that was actually good.
00:44:52
Speaker
ah It means to never give up, to keep going, no matter how difficult the cause may be. You never gave up. You continue to tell your stories. Together you confront this painful past. And I I just think, you know hearing you yeah talking about the the power in that reclamation and, you know, giving, having her give voice to it, like that that to me was one of those paragraphs of several throughout the book that kind of, and that illustrates sort of the beating heart of the entire text and ah and the fight that continues.
00:45:19
Speaker
Yeah, and you know, I'll just point out too that in that passage, I am trying to, I'm not Inuit, but I am trying to take seriously as a mode of analysis of this Inuk politician, the Inuit tradition that she is a part of, which, by the way, is also a political tradition. The Inuit have ah their own movement that has been nobody really knows about this like globally. But the story is, if you look at the northern part of the globe, the far northern part of it, you can't really understand it without understanding the Inuit people. First of all, in many parts of that part of the globe, they are still the majority population. So you can't tell the story without the majority population. I'm sorry. yeah As many times as we try to do it in different parts of the world, you just can't.
00:46:07
Speaker
They also have over the last 50 years been remarkably successful at advocating for themselves and their rights. They were core to making indigenous rights solidified in the Canadian Constitution. They were part of a group that got the first modern treaty in Canada after Quebec was going to erect a bunch of hydroelectric dams that were going to going to flood their territory and the neighboring Cree people's territory on James Bay.
00:46:34
Speaker
Through Mary Simon's work, the governor general of Canada, before she was the governor general of Canada, they reshaped international affairs at the arctic council where they have seats that are just below the level of nation states that are party to the arctic council which is only nations with territory in the arctic so that's like the united states canada russia inuit and indigenous peoples in the arctic have a non-state actor status that is actually given more primacy in the conversation than observer states like China, like the United Kingdom.
00:47:09
Speaker
So in when you're talking about the affairs of the Arctic, at least in the international bodies that that set some of the agenda there, Inuit get to speak ahead of have a little bit more leverage than the People's Republic.
00:47:23
Speaker
at least nominally, that's that's what the the system says is supposed to be the reality. And I can't speak to whether that's like the truth on the ground all the time. And I think that that is not a way that indigenous Inuit people are seen as powerful. And secondly, they did it through their own political tradition that has been effective at managing their relationships with white colonizers for a long time. you know It's worth pointing out that the Inuit were the first people to meet to meet Europeans in North America, despite the way that the story is told. They ran into the Vikings way back in the 1200s. And at the end of that encounter, who was still there?
00:47:58
Speaker
Not the Vikings. You see a similar thing, i think, in North Carolina with the Lumbee people and just like that um that lost lost colony, the chapter you write about, too. It's just like yeah the colonizers come in and like they couldn't hack it, but they kind of ah and it just probably were ah more or less absorbed into the culture where where they were. That was like a really riveting chapter to read that that story for sure. That one was such a prism of learning for me, man. I didn't know about the Lumbee story. So ah often, by the way, in the book, I'm not retelling histories and stories that I myself knew. I'm actually doing what the reader is also doing at the time, which is learning, right? There are a whole bunch of books out there that are doing kind of like what I describe as Indian 101. Like, you know, Indians are still here. We don't live all all and live in teepees. You know, we had our land and our culture stolen. We're trying to get it back. And those books are important and I'm glad that they exist, but that's not what I was setting out to do with this book.
00:48:56
Speaker
And so I'm really was really drawn to stories where I was going to learn something about indigenous life in North America, because I think there's so many to my point or to our conversation earlier, like there's so much we don't know, man, like there's so much to learn out there still like this is on the forefront of knowledge and culture and art in ah in ah in an actually significant way that is not seen. But but, you know, we're still learning stuff, man, like our people are still learning stuff about ourselves.
00:49:22
Speaker
and so you know the lumby story is such an interesting one to me because i didn't really know it but basically you know here's this tribe in north carolina that claims to be descended from the lost colony of roanoke which is to jog your listeners memory the first english settlement in north america that mysteriously this is the part that is in air quotes disappeared after being founded um but in fact actually just assimilated into the neighboring Algonquian peoples. So the fact that the lost colony of Roanoke was ever called the lost colony of Roanoke and was treated like it was some great mystery of American history is actually a bunch of bullshit because it was obvious at the time to the people and is obvious to historians now that they did the logical thing to do in that situation, which was that they assimilated into
00:50:09
Speaker
the neighboring indigenous cultures, which, by the way, is antithetical to the notion of whiteness and assimilation that we are usually told about race and history and in North America. yeah We are told that assimilation is unidirectional nu for Native people, that we always assimilate into non-native ness, into whiteness. But in fact, the first act of assimilation on this continent by English speaking people went in the other direction. And that happened all the time in in actual history. We just don't, we can't see it because for whatever reason, we cannot conceptualize people choosing to assimilate into indigeneity because we have this inherent bias against it being backwards and worse and less than and primitive. And in fact, that happened all the time.
00:50:57
Speaker
with great regularity in North American history and culture. And that is the history of the Lumbee people. And interestingly, because they are a mixed tribe, they are not able to under the racial blood quantum based regimes of who does and does not get to count as Indian. They, to this day, despite being the largest tribe by population east of the Mississippi, they, to this day do not have recognition as a tribe because they have this mixed background that didn't fit into the assumptions about racial purity that shaped these laws when they were written in the 1930s.
00:51:31
Speaker
And interestingly, now there might actually be about to get recognition for the first time because Donald Trump promised him them this, which is another whole layer to the story that we don't even can't even get into. But there's a whole other part of this that is like its own prism into The the bizarreness of race and culture and politics in America and in the South that I think gives you a different vantage point. And here's my point, more broadly speaking, gives you not just a different vantage point into Native people in our history and culture, but it actually gives you a different vantage point into the whole thing.
00:52:01
Speaker
The history of America, North America writ large, and its history and culture and presence. yeah And getting back to your father a little bit, there's a moment where you're like, don't get me wrong. I love my father. He may wound me, but I love him. So I let him wound me. And, you know, that's part of the the coyote story and and ah that you that you braid and weave through the through the book. But I wonder for you, like how you gird yourself against that kind of pain that you know is coming, though you still love him and always will.
00:52:32
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, i It's so was a hard thing for me. I still struggle with it for sure. And I guess I would put the responsibility usually the other direction. I actually felt a great responsibility to my dad and to my family, to my grandmother, and to not hurt them with the stories that I was going to tell. And I just took on a sort of an assumption in that, that it was going to be painful and hard for me. But here, you know, that is part of the privilege of getting to tell the story. Right. Is that it's a hard story for you, too. But you get you get the responsibility and and and and the role of of helping to tell it to the world, which is a huge thing. You know, like the fact that my people trusted me to tell a story that is relevant to indigenous peoples around the world about the cultural genocide that happened to us and that it got to travel across Canada, across the United States, to New Zealand, to Norway, to the Sami people, indigenous peoples of Scandinavia. Like, that's a beautiful thing to get to do. And so, you know, the the pain inherent in telling that story is is just, I think, part of what you commit to when you make the commitment to go all the way there with with a story about what happened to us and our people. So I felt more responsibility to my dad, really, and to my family and to them and and how it might impact them. And so I tried to put every bit of craft and intention into the way that I went about it. But but
00:53:59
Speaker
where that would maybe fall short or where you know you couldn't predict how your family would react to the story that you told both for and about them i filled that space with prayer man to be honest with you like i fa it filled it with ceremony and spirituality it's worth pointing out that the history of the indian residential schools was one of a spiritual colonization of our people wherein one way of life was attempted to be eliminated and replaced with another and The way that we've always told these stories has left open the possibility that that there is a spiritual part of our life and a spiritual explanation to events.
00:54:37
Speaker
And when you're engaging with questions of life and death, of the survival of your father biologically, of the survival of your culture, I think that those are inherently spiritual questions in a way that secular, purely secular approaches are not fully equipped to to answer.
00:54:53
Speaker
And also, like, it couldn't hurt to pray for for these stories to be easy with my family. you know, at the end of the day like I don't know if I didn't know if it was going to help, but it couldn't hurt, you know, to be also out there fasting for four days and four nights with no food and no water, you know, during the summer solstice to to pray that these hard stories that I felt called to tell her that I was put in the position to tell were easy with my loved ones and with my people. And also, you know, now I'm mostly on the other side of it I mean, the book's only been out for a month, but like mostly on the other side of it.
00:55:27
Speaker
I can say with with pretty strong certainty that they have been easy with my people and my family has embraced them and and other people have embraced them to a certain extent as well, too. And who's to say that the prayers weren't part of making that happen?
00:55:43
Speaker
Yeah. and late in the book as well, you know you have a conversation with your other father figure, Coco, and it's a tough conversation. And a lot of people who write memoir, you know they they might have to have very tough conversations in interviewing loved ones to try to get to the bottom of something. It's not like interviewing a source for journalism, which can be its own challenge, but there's a bit of distance. But when you're interviewing family and having those conversations, it's really hard and it's kind of awkward and its you don't want to push too hard. But how did you navigate those conversations, especially the one that you're kind of having at the end of the book?
00:56:18
Speaker
I think that I approach these conversations not as like a journalist in an interview, but more as just like a family member who's hanging out and trying to learn things and hear the story. And I think I try to come into things from an obtuse angle often. So rather than like putting the recorder on the table and like, you know, saying like, let's talk about the fact that you held a knife to my mother's throat, you know, to Coco, like I went and visited him and saw how he was doing. And we went fishing, you know, we did like all these like father son type things, which were implicit acknowledgement of what he was to me and when I was a kid for a number of years, which he was a father figure. You know, this was a man who helped raise me, who helped maintain my connection to my culture and identity through his
00:57:03
Speaker
actions when my dad was gone and while he was with my mom. Then, you know, after spending some time, like i I would be clear, like, hey, do you mind if I like record our conversation here? And, you know, as we got into it and different things like that, I would at a certain point, like ask the question in a obtuse way. You know, I'd ask about a certain story around that I knew was around. that or, you know, that sort of a thing as a way to sort of allow him in whatever way that he felt ready to do it to to to start going there with me.
00:57:37
Speaker
You know, I think that also a big part of it is like, and I learned this from from Bob Caro's writing about writing, you know. Oh, yeah. Great book. Actually, at a certain point, you just like listening and and nonfiction all this sort stuff.
00:57:49
Speaker
And this is true for documentary too. It's not actually about the questions you ask. It's about shutting up, you know, which is so weird now that you're on this part of this where we're just like talking constantly about the work and the promotion mode. But like actually the best way to be in an interview or with your subjects or anything else is to be quiet.
00:58:07
Speaker
Like you, what people choose to say or fill in silence or what in an image fills the silence, the emotion, the the reality of their physicality of their person, that is often going to speak just as loud, if not louder than anything they vocalize and definitely louder than whatever dumb fuck question is that you want to ask them. You know I mean? And sometimes the questions are like way off the mark is the other thing, right?
00:58:36
Speaker
Yeah. Yours have not been though. Oh, but then that's very, very kind of you to say, Julian. Well, a couple just a couple more things and I'll let you get on with your day. You've been very kind with your time and and everything. um ah Just as as it pertains to to writing, ah be it hard one or from ah from a mentor of such. always love getting a sense of like just writing advice you live by, something that's ah really struck you as resonant in your in your craft. um And like I said, be it hard one or from someone. that what What is something that... ah that you adhere by or here to? Well, I think that one, I just, I think I remember part of the reason why the Bob Carroll thing was sticking to my mind, because I remember you sent me the email about this question beforehand. And so I was like, oh, that Bob Carroll thing, I thought I have actually operationalized that in my work.
00:59:21
Speaker
And I have actually a Bob Caro story associated with with the making of the book. So maybe I'll get into that some point. We have to. It's the nonfiction podcast. gotta I want to answer your actual question first. And so what I would say an additional one to that is, and this is actually a piece of writing advice that I think people get a lot that I view very differently than the traditional wisdom. You know, there's this adage that's like one of like 10 commandments of writing or something like that. That's like, write what you know.
00:59:51
Speaker
And I actually feel pretty strongly that you should be writing what you don't know, which is to say that you should be writing what you're learning, what you're still figuring out, what you're sorting through in your material, that that is actually what is what at at its best, nonfiction is on the frontier. That's a bad metaphor for an Indian to use, but you know it's on the edge. It's on the cutting edge of of truth and knowledge and culture. you know We found ourselves on the frontier of culture and knowledge, my child. um We were just on the wrong side. um But, you know, like, like, in all seriousness, no, that's, that's, that is the project, man. It's the art form. Nonfiction, first and foremost, is the art form committed to truth and to learning the truth and figuring out the truth. And so I think that that's where you should be writing from. And that's where I'm trying to write from, which is not to say that you're not like fact checking your sources and all that sort of stuff. I'm just saying, like, I want to I'm more interested in what, like, you're still figuring out on the page. Yeah.
01:00:54
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. And what's the Bob Caro, uh, Uh, so while we were editing sugar cane, I was in New York for a couple of weeks is our first trip to New York to edit sugar cane. And I had one day in on a weekend when we weren't actually working. Uh, so I thought I'd go up to the American museum of natural history, which has a bunch of my people stolen artifacts in it. That's basically how they built the museum. Um, and while I was up there, it was like really busy for some reasons. was like, right, I'll check out the New York historical society first. which is across the street. And I happened to have the right credit card at the time to get me into the New York Historical Society. so I was wandering around the New York Historical Society and they happen to have a exhibition on about bob carrow on writing or on his writing process and i it's in like the hallway so i was in the hallway i was looking at the the bob carrow exhibition and on the on the wall there's a photo of bob carrow as a young man and then this elderly man comes walking in with two women on his arms and i'm looking at the photo and i'm looking at the elderly man and i'm looking at the photo i'm looking at the man i'm like Oh my God, I have walked into Night at the Museum, which by the way, Night at the Museum is set at the museum across the street. And Bob Carroll has just walked out of the exhibition into real life. And while I was thinking about that and I was like, should I go talk to him? I mean, this guy is like the goat of nonfiction.
01:02:13
Speaker
There was another guy in the in the, this is an inside joke for journalism people. There's another guy in the exhibit and before I can like commit to going up and talking to Bob Carroll, because like, you know, i've got to psych myself up here a little bit. It's like the Michael Jordan of writing biographies or whatever. um This other guy in the exhibit goes up to him and he says, Hey, Bob, I'm Jeff Toobin, which at the time was like within a year, i think maybe a little bit more, give or take of when Jeff Toobin had, um,
01:02:49
Speaker
ah jerked off his way out of a job at the New Yorker. I don't know if there's any real way to say that. We all read the articles. I don't know why we beat around the bush when we talk about it in public. He had jerked his way out of a out of a job. He'd gooned his way out of a job at the New Yorker on camera accidentally. And um e And so then my Bob Carrow night at the museum story suddenly became this like New York, two writers walk into a museum like bar story. And then I was like, after that, I was like, well, if Jeff Toobin is not ashamed to use his name in front of Bob Carrow, which it was unclear to me whether Bob Carroll knew about that controversy or not. I don't know how online of a guy he is. um
01:03:30
Speaker
I assume not that online. i I was like, I'll go up and talk to Bob Carroll. so I went up to him and I was like hey, man, like I'm a writer too. I'm writing my first nonfiction book. And like, it's such an honor to meet one of the greatest writers of all time. And one of the two women on his arm went, well, some would consider him the greatest nonfiction writer of all time. ah And I was like, chill, lady. Yeah, Jesus Christ.
01:03:55
Speaker
um But yeah, so that's my Bob Caro story, man, which I think is, you know, I think it is fun that I have a little story and and about running into like one of the greatest in our on our art form to ever do it, man. I'm i'm really grateful that the creator let me run into that guy on that day and like a true New York moment.
01:04:14
Speaker
That's amazing. Well, Julian, the last thing I want to ask you, and this what I love asking everyone as they bring these conversations out for a landing, is just a cool recommendation of some kind. That can just be anything you're excited about that you want to share with the listeners. And it's like ah it could be a brand of socks, a brand of coffee, or a long walk. It doesn't matter. So it's up to you.
01:04:33
Speaker
Oh, man, so many things to be excited about. I mean, the one that's sticking in my in my mind today that I'm excited to open is the new Ken Burns documentary on the American Revolution. um You know, I think that Ken Burns has been at the forefront. I mean, this is visual nonfiction, but it is nonfiction still. He's been at the forefront of nonfiction, producing a form of Americana.
01:04:53
Speaker
um for a long time and it was up for PBS, which is now an imperiled cultural institution. And ah so I'm really interested to watch that documentary and see what he has to say about the American Revolution in this moment. We're almost at 250 years since the Declaration of Independence. And I'm also curious to see what his sort of Burnsian, you know, liberal social democratic version of Americana, how that feels and how that watches in this moment when that sort of a thing also feels kind of antiquated and imperiled, you know? And so I'm i'm really curious to watch it. And also, you know, he's he's one of the best doc filmmakers. A lot of people who put him on a list of one of the best doc filmmakers all time. he's His filmmaking style is not my personal favorite, but i I have watched a lot of his stuff. And so I'm curious to watch it for like a learning and craft perspective because I'm starting on my next doc right now.
01:05:42
Speaker
Fantastic. but Well, Julian, this is so great to get to talk about your work and your approach to this amazing book you've written. So just thank you so much for carving out time to do this. This is awesome. Hey, man, I really appreciate it. And I sincerely meant what I said about the questions like this was a wonderful, wonderful interview and and conversation. i'm so grateful for how deeply and thoughtfully you engaged with me and and and my work and the subjects that we were talking about.
01:06:14
Speaker
Thanks to you. Thanks to Julian for coming on the podcast. Good times had by all. There's so much out there begging for your attention. So i appreciate any sliver you grant this podcast or the newsletters or Patreon.
01:06:31
Speaker
And in some of you some cases of you guys, it's and the podcast and the newsletters and the Patreon. So, hey, making a go of it as a creative person or journalist or creative journalist, creative journalism. Oh, shit. Did I just come up with a new sub, sub, sub genre?
01:06:49
Speaker
ah It's tricky these days and all we can do is muddle along, get our boots stuck in the mud and and then it gets sucked off our foot and the next thing you know your entire sock is covered in mud and it's wet and you're up to your elbow and grime trying to pull your boot out of the pit.
01:07:06
Speaker
Yeah, that's what it's like. Okay. As promised, here's a parting shot straight to your brain face. I'm in the throes, if you want to call it that, of ginning up material for the next book. I feel like I've been that way for months and months now, and that's actually pretty true, and the ginning has been slow going.
01:07:24
Speaker
I'd like to think I can announce it in a couple months. ah The idea itself is sellable. It's just I have to package it like I'm going on Shark Tank, you know? like When you're selling a book, it helps to think in those terms. Here's your book, product, and you're trying to sell agents or publishers to bankroll it.
01:07:42
Speaker
It's a different kind of maneuver. Anyway, we've heard on this very podcast how you can't write a book in one go. Same goes for the research. It's not to yeah be done in a fever dream, though at times there will be fever dreamy moments. You'll put what I like to call in NFL head coach hours.
01:08:02
Speaker
Which is to say you basically commit to the thing for the better part of 16 hours a day. Maybe even you sleep at the office in a cot right beside your computer. yeah Double sessions, film sessions, morning practice, broken marriage, afternoon practice, happy hour, evening sessions.
01:08:22
Speaker
Sometimes you even reason that if you can't dive in whole hog, then it's not worth diving in at all. to this I say, bad move, man. It's like cramming for the exam.
01:08:34
Speaker
We all did it. We may have gotten good at it. But in the rare moments of lucidity, those classes where maybe you did a little bit of studying every day, meant that when it was time for exams, the information was pretty sticky.
01:08:48
Speaker
And you didn't have to have those pulling all-nighter. Like Patio at UMass, when he had to, he just dicked around for an entire semester and then did his final papers in one night. He would just drink a couple 40s, play Ozzy Osbourne's Crazy Train, close the door, and come out.
01:09:10
Speaker
I'm not so sure he graduated. So with this new book I'm working on, threading it around the other tasks, I set a pretty simple goal. you know Catalog for now, 10 articles a day. That's 50 per week.
01:09:23
Speaker
That's 200 per month of very easy, very manageable and repeatable work that doesn't monopolize the entire day. And we often make the mistake as writers thinking that if we don't have those giant uninterrupted periods of time, hours, days,
01:09:42
Speaker
then we're maybe not real writers and maybe we don't even start. ah Cataloging 10 articles might take me an hour. you know Can I give the the new book in its uncertain gestation one simple hour a day to make the slow incremental progress?
01:09:59
Speaker
Can I make that happen? Same goes for when the reporting really heats up. You make, say, 10 phone calls a day, which is to say you leave 10 voicemails a day.
01:10:10
Speaker
And that's 50 calls a week, 200 calls a month. If you hit 25% of those calls, that's maybe 50 interviews a month. Over the course of a year, you've got 600 sources. That's serious biography material right there.
01:10:23
Speaker
And it comes from the slow accretion of these things, day by day, drip by drip. That bucket fills up, man. We often block ou ourselves or the scope of the project is so big that we don't start.
01:10:36
Speaker
It's like building a house. you You can't start until you've excavated the ground and leveled the ground and poured the foundation and dug trenches for septic drainage, electrical, whatever. With patience and rigor and perseverance, eventually you'll see a big-ass structure.
01:10:52
Speaker
You can't put seven things first. You can't roof the house without a foundation or walls. You can't install windows without walls, man. Last I checked... What's the simplest, most logical place to start?
01:11:06
Speaker
You start there until it feels logical to proceed. Yeah, much of this is working backwards, too. If you know you should speak to 500 people, how many per month is that? That's 42 people per month.
01:11:17
Speaker
Okay, divided by four weeks is roughly 10 per week. Divided by five days is two. Can you interview two measly people per day? On average. Yeah, I think you can. Well, I can.
01:11:30
Speaker
But you sure as fuck can't cram 500 interviews into a month if you've waited too long and dragged your feet. The quality of those interviews and those conversations will feel rushed. And here's a technical term. Not fucking good.
01:11:42
Speaker
I'm chewing on that. Maybe you can chew on it too. Like, not the same. That's gross. But you you follow me. Right? Stay wild. See you, Nevers. If you can't do interviews. See ya.