We're Still Here with Simon and Julie

·44 min·4 clips

Julie Franchella reveals how 1,800 missing ICE detainees mirror indigenous children lost in boarding schools.

John Fugelsang opens with an ad for Quince before introducing the episode's focus on indigenous issues and resistance. He welcomes back guests Simon Moya-Smith, an Oglala Lakota and Chicano journalist, and Julie Franchella, an Ojibwe mental health professional. The discussion begins with reports of 1,800 missing detainees at Florida's Alligator Alcatraz ICE camp, with Julie drawing parallels to historical indigenous children lost in boarding schools. Simon critiques media coverage, noting the disparity between attention given to Savannah Guthrie's missing mother and murdered and missing indigenous women. A caller named Marie connects Sherman's burning of slave records to current ICE record-keeping issues, highlighting a pattern of accountability evasion. The conversation shifts to Bad Bunny's Super Bowl halftime show, which Julie and Simon praise as a representation of indigenous joy and resistance across the Americas. They then discuss a prayer camp established by indigenous activists outside an ICE detention center in Minneapolis, operating under traditional consensus governance and serving as spiritual and political resistance. Simon explains the historical context of such camps outside boarding schools. The episode also covers an Alaska Native lawsuit against the Trump administration for stripping caribou protections, framing indigenous subsistence as 'non-use' to allow oil development. Callers ask questions about visiting the prayer camp, indigenous governance practices like banishment, and personal resilience. Julie and Simon share insights on maintaining hope through community, humor, and ancestral connections. The episode concludes with contact information for the guests and final caller interactions.

As heard by us

A detention-records crisis meets Indigenous survival, where joy, a banned flag, and preparation for ICE belong to the same urgent conversation.

The episode draws its urgency from detainees missing from public records at Florida's so-called Alligator Alcatraz concentration camp, then widens into a conversation with Simon Moyes-Smith and Julie Franchella about performance as Indigenous presence across North and South…

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Why you'd press play

Press play for a conversation where a banned light-blue flag, Florida detainee records, and Minnesota ICE arrests meet Indigenous joy.

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