(Theme music) JENNIFER LOREN>> Coming up... Explore the exciting world of opera with Thaddeus Strassberger who works internationally to lift important voices.

THADDEUS STRASSBERGER>> Our voices matter no matter what that voice is.

And we have this sort of level of confidence, as well, that helps us to inspire large groups of people.

JENNIFER>> And buckle in with Kristin Treager as she takes us through her career full of twists and turns.

A former pro race car driver, she's now an assistant district attorney.

KRISTIN TREAGER>> I graduated law school, won a national championship, and passed the Oklahoma Bar Exam all in the same year.

JENNIFER>> Plus... BRENDA MALLORY>> Sometimes people ask me is my work Native.

And I always say, Well, yes, I'm a Native person and I made this work.

So, this must be Native work.

JENNIFER>> See how contemporary artist Brenda Mallory interprets the world around her and challenges her viewers to do the same through her mixed media visual art.

(Theme music begins) MAN 1>> The Cherokees.

WOMAN 1>> A thriving American Indian tribe.

MAN 2>> Our history... WOMAN 2>> our culture... WOMAN 3>> our people... MAN 1>> our future.

MAN 3>> The principles of a historic nation MAN 1>> sewn into the fabric of the modern world.

WOMAN 2>> Hundreds of thousands strong... WOMAN 3>> learning... WOMAN 1>> growing... MAN 1>> succeeding... MAN 3>> and steadfast.

WOMAN 1>> In the past, we have persevered through struggle, WOMAN 2>> but the future is ours to write.

MAN 1>> Osiyo!

WOMAN 2>> Osiyo.

WOMAN 1>> Osiyo!

MAN 1>> These are the voices of the Cherokee people.

(Theme music fades out) CHUCK HOSKIN JR.>> Osiyo.

Welcome to the Cherokee Nation.

I'm Principal Chief, Chuck Hoskin, Jr.

For generations others have told the Cherokee story.

But now, through this groundbreaking series, we're taking ownership of our own story and telling it as authentically and beautifully as possible.

I hope you enjoy these profiles of Cherokee people, language, history, and culture.

Wado.

JENNIFER>> Osiyo.

It's how we say 'Hello' in Cherokee.

I'm your host, Jennifer Loren, at the Will Rogers Birthplace Ranch near Oologah, Oklahoma.

It was here that Will Rogers spent his formative years before setting off to make his name in show business.

TAD JONES>> All of a sudden now, Will Rogers is a celebrity, and everybody wants to see this guy that basically saved people's lives in Madison Square Garden, this, this Indian cowboy from Oklahoma.

JENNIFER>> Learn about a heroic display that jumpstarted Will's rise to fame later in our Cherokee Almanac.

But first, Thaddeus Strassberger has a passion for all things opera.

From designing sets and wardrobes to directing, this Tulsa,Oklahoma, native is leaving his mark on the world stage.

(Upbeat music plays) THADDEUS STRASSBERGER>> I think the very first performance I can remember going to was a production of Peter Pan at the American Theater Company at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center.

And I remember sitting there thinking, I want to do that, whatever that is.

And I didn't know what a stage director was, or what a designer was.

I remember seeing technicians sort of running around on the sides and in the catwalks up above with the lighting and things, and I thought, Aah, those people must be doing that, and I want to be involved in that.

I'm Thaddeus Strassberger and I'm a stage director and designer for opera.

I was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I started going to the theater at a very young age, actually with my mother, which is where my Cherokee roots come from that side.

And I think growing up in Oklahoma, it didn't seem strange to me that I had these roots.

Going back now, you know, you think my great-grandmother who is a Cherokee speaker, I just thought, Well, that's very close to me.

That is part of my identity.

And my world has gotten bigger since then.

I live in the UK now in London.

And I found that people are really interested in your Native American side.

And you know, they wanna know more about the paintings, and the culture, and the music.

So, I was like, Wow, we have something to offer to the world.

So, I find in Europe, in Asia that people are respectful of that.

So, opera just is this big crazy beast that exists.

And it takes people, artists, to make all of the elements.

So, if people are wearing something on stage, if it's part of their clothing, then it's costume design essentially.

If it's an object that they can hold or move or a piece of furniture, that's kind of goes into props.

If it's the environment and the setting around it, then that goes into the scenic department.

And then there's the lighting, which is really important.

(Upbeat music ends) (Sound of horn) There we go.

Then the last thing that I, that I do that brings it all together, as the stage director, I'm responsible for the overall concept of the piece, like how you're gonna set it.

If you're gonna modernize it, or you know, what the time period that it's in, or sort of the, the tone and the mood.

And that informs all those other design elements.

I believe that I'm the first member of the Cherokee Nation that is directing an opera at Tulsa Opera where I've come back to direct Salome.

And I think that there is several good things about that.

And I would hope that my being aware and helping to, to promote my identity through this work that it could inspire somebody else that's from our community that could see themselves in that place.

Salome is an opera that's based loosely on a very short story in the Bible, wherein there's a king.

He's throwing a feast for his birthday, and it goes very, very wrong.

(Upbeat music ends) It's a big royal celebration.

(Upbeat music begins) So, how do you do that?

Are they costumes or are they clothes is sort of the big question.

And I think in opera sometimes people think about costumes as something that's sort of applied to the singer, almost like upholstery or something.

But for me, I really work with characters.

So, I'm the director, and the set designer, and the costume designer.

And I'm just trying to create a world that you believe in.

And every detail choice that I curate that goes into the production has to feel like it's part of the world and never pulls you out of that world.

So, it goes down to every little button and every rhinestone on it should make you feel like you're immersed in this totally other place.

And so, like where did I, where did I get all this stuff, and how did I have it made, and then how did we get it on stage?

There's really talented tailors and embroiderers that work in London that come from all over the world; from Pakistan, and from Bangladesh, and from all over India.

And so, I spent a lot of time working with specific people there that make these really beautiful things.

So, I try to take the sort of the DNA of all of those things and pull it together.

And you know, there's a lot of technical skill that goes inside to making these sort of garments.

These days everything is sort of online and we all just think we can order from Amazon.

But it really takes really talented human beings that can sit down with a needle and thread and a pair of scissors to put things together.

I just wanted to create other worlds that feel complete.

And so, in the beginning I started out as a designer, and then moved into directing because the people, of course, are the most important things in those worlds.

(Upbeat music ends) (Slow music plays) So, I wanted to bring some of that to, to Tulsa.

The way I do opera is very different than people did it thirty years ago or sixty years ago.

But that doesn't mean that you can't sort of learn and, and grow from that.

I'm always looking at how do I take this really important story and really beautiful music and aesthetic elements and turn them into something that actually moves us.

I think, yeah, the oral tradition of storytelling amongst Cherokees at least isn't to only remember how things were, but it's also it's about informing and it's a teaching tool, and about, you know, who we are as a culture, and identity, and how we can live our lives in a way that, you know, brings more light and positivity (Opera singing in background) or moving things forward.

Our voices matter no matter what that voice is.

And we have this sort of level of confidence, as well, that helps us to, to inspire large groups of people.

And I think that being born in Oklahoma and being born a Cherokee citizen that it gives me some grounding.

Even though I'm, I'm just from Oklahoma and didn't grow up with a big operatic culture, I became part of the stream of knowledge that gets passed down.

I feel really strongly that it's my responsibility and stewardship of (Audience applause in background) art and culture in media and music to modify and imprint our own lived experience on what we're doing and telling it forward.

(Slow music ends) (Theme music) JENNIFER>> Call it the road less traveled, becoming an assistant district attorney was full of twists and turns for Cherokee Nation citizen Kristin Treager.

That's because she worked her way through law school as a professional race car driver.

(Slow music plays) KRISTIN TREAGER>> I'm Kristin Treager.

I am an assistant district attorney in Dallas County, and also a retired professional race car driver.

I am from Tulsa, Oklahoma, raised in Sand Springs, and we lived on about 7-1/2 acres in Osage County.

So, we had motorcycles and a nice bit of land to have fun on.

(Fast music plays) (Sound of race car motors) So, my dad always loved racing.

He would watch Formula 1.

So, when I was a kid, when I was seven, my parents got me into racing school.

There was a retired BMW driver by the name of Alf Gebhardt, and he liked to mentor kids and get them involved in racing.

And so, that was really the start of it all.

I, I fell in love with it as a kid and had been doing it ever since.

When I was 11, I started racing full-size sports cars, and did that all through my teens.

And that's when I got connected with some sponsors who backed me to race professionally.

So, in 2013, I was running in the Porsche Club of America Series.

That year, I raced a Porsche Cup car.

And this was a national series.

It's, it's called a spec series which means all the cars are pretty much the same.

So, it really focuses on driver ability, because one car in theory is not going to be faster than the other in and of itself.

So, I did that for a season and I won the national championship, actually against like forty other male drivers.

I was the only female who was in that championship series.

(Fast music ends) So, that was probably the best achievement in my racing career.

(Slow music plays) And then, unfortunately, I had a very bad accident when I was racing at Road America in Wisconsin.

We were going into one of the very fast turns off of the long front straight away.

And he was behind me, and hit me right at the apex of the turn.

And my right rear wheel went onto the front part of his hood, which kinda slingshotted me straight up into the air.

And so, the first flip was end over end.

And then, started rolling side over side.

(Sounds of car rolling over) I was fine, thankfully, but the car was not fine.

We call it tubbing a vehicle when the frame of it is just too messed up to, to fix it and move forward.

So, unfortunately for my sponsors, it was just too much of a capital loss to continue.

So, that was unfortunately the end to my racing career.

Letting my racing career go was like grieving a loss.

Law was like my Plan B, but it's a pretty good Plan B. My last year of law school was the same time period in which I was running the Porsche Club of America National Series.

And so, I graduated law school, won a national championship, and passed the Oklahoma Bar Exam all in the same year.

I've moved to Dallas in 2015.

This was the start to my, really my professional career as an attorney and, and prosecutor.

I applied to the Dallas District Attorney's office.

It's like one of the top five largest DA's offices in the United States.

Right now I'm in the Crimes Against Children Division.

And so, we prosecute crimes where children are victims.

When I first go moved into the Crimes Against Children Division, it was very heavy for me, especially as a newer parent, a new mom.

I decided to really stick with it because I think the work that I do will have a really good impact on the community and get justice for our most vulnerable in our community.

I'm generally meeting with victims, talking to them about their experiences, preparing them for trial, if that's the route we're going, looking at my case load, evaluating cases, figuring out the best way to resolve them, and then preparing for trial, because that is a big part of my job.

And, and that's what I enjoy the most, actually is, is being in trial.

(Objection, Your Honor, facts not in evidence) Professionally, I would love to be a judge someday.

I think I could do a lot of good for the community.

Law is so important because, you know, in theory it treats everybody the same.

Now we know in practice that's not always the case.

But in theory, if we're all doing our jobs to the best of our ability, the law is supposed to treat all of us the same and give us all the same opportunities.

Of course, there are weaknesses and flaws in the system.

But, you know, we can effectuate change from the inside.

And that's what I hope to do going forward.

(Music ends) (Theme music) JENNIFER>> Will Rogers is a household name.

But what was his life like before the fame?

In this Cherokee Almanac, we take a look at the early career of Will Rogers, roping and riding through Wild West shows as a Cherokee kid.

(Upbeat music plays) Cherokee entertainer, Will Rogers, is a beloved, historic icon.

But a lot happened before he became known as Oklahoma's Favorite Son.

TAD JONES>> Will Rogers was born on November 4, 1879, near Oologah in Indian Territory in Cherokee Nation.

And his parents were Clem Vann Rogers and Mary America Schrimsher Rogers.

His dad was very well to do, was in the Cherokee Senate.

He was also a traveling judge, and was around in statehood in 1907, Oklahoma became a state.

He was one of the delegates there, too.

And of course, Rogers County was not named after Will Rogers.

It was named after Clem Rogers, his dad.

So, he was a very significant person in the Cherokee District.

JENNIFER>> From an early age, Will was drawn to stories of the Old West and the cowboy lifestyle.

Despite his enrollment in various prestigious schools, Will was often more interested in practicing rope tricks than his studies.

TAD>> There was a freedmen named Dan Walker.

He taught Will Rogers how to rope.

All of his entire career goes back to Dan Walker teaching Will Rogers how to do a rope trick and giving that encouragement.

But while he was in school, he liked to rope, and he liked to joke, and he and his friends would like to kid the girls.

And one of his favorite things to do was ropin' the girls.

And so, and he got many of his ropes taken away from him.

JENNIFER>> Despite his father's best wishes, Will's passion lay on the open range, not in the classroom.

TAD>> Clem really wanted him to be home and to run the ranch.

He wanted him to be a responsible young man, which any dad would like.

That was not what Will wanted to do.

And, but eventually, you know, Will came around and, and ran the ranch.

And he ran it for three years.

But again, he got a little restless 'cause bein' just a businessman and, and runnin' the ranch wasn't somethin' Will Rogers wanted to do.

He wanted to have a little more freedom.

JENNIFER>> It was around this time that Will heard stories of the cowboy lifestyle being alive and well in Argentina.

TAD>> He sold the ranch back to his dad, the cattle back to his dad.

He took the proceeds, and with a friend of his decided to head to Argentina.

JENNIFER>> Once in Argentina, the pair searched for work but were quickly disheartened.

TAD>> But when they got there, they found out life was not all romance.

It was very, very difficult.

It was hard for him to even get a job there.

His friend got disgruntled and decided to go back home.

So, Will was now in Argentina by himself, and he was not very happy with his station there in Argentina.

JENNIFER>> Desperate for work, Will found himself tending cattle on a boat to South Africa.

And it was there that his luck began to change.

TAD>> So, Will Rogers now is in South Africa and he's dead broke.

He has no money, he'd been robbed before, lost some of his stuff.

And so was kinda sittin' there wonderin' what he was gonna do with his life.

And then he sees a sign for Texas Jack's Wild West Show, and they needed somebody that could do the big crinoline which is a big rope trick.

And Will Rogers happened to be able to do it.

So, he went to Texas Jack and he showed him that he could do the big crinoline.

And Texas Jack hired him on.

JENNIFER>> With a glowing recommendation from Texas Jack, Will traveled back home in a round about way, roping in Wild West Shows in Australia and New Zealand before finally returning to Indian Territory in 1904.

TAD>> So, now Will Rogers is back in the states, and you know, he's lookin' for somethin' else to do.

And Colonel Mulhall had a Wild West Show.

And so, Will Rogers decided that he was gonna try it out with that.

And they traveled all over the Midwest doin' shows, and all over the country.

And that show eventually took them to the East Coast, and took 'em up to New York, and had a chance to be in Madison Square Garden for one of the big shows.

JENNIFER>> It was at this performance on April 27, 1905, that a particularly notable event took place, and the trajectory of Will's career was forever changed.

TAD>> They were doin' their show, and there's a bull that gets out and gets into the crowd.

Will Rogers is down there, and he went up into the stands and he roped the bull, and brought it down out of the stands and saved people's lives.

(Bull mooing) JENNIFER>> After this heroic display, Will's name appeared in national headlines for the first time.

TAD>> Because of that, all of a sudden now Will Rogers is a celebrity, and everybody wants to see this guy that basically saved people's lives in Madison Square Garden, this, this Indian cowboy, you know, from Oklahoma, which was completely new to a lot of the people there in New York.

JENNIFER>> Even in these early stages, the talent of Will Rogers was undeniable.

It was plain to see he was destined for the heights of fame he would achieve as time marched on.

(Upbeat music ends) (Language segment music begins) GASILA>> (Speaking Cherokee language) SINASD> (Speaking Cherokee language) GASILA>> (Speaking Cherokee language) SINASD>> (Speaking Cherokee language) GASILA>> (Speaking Cherokee language) SINASD>> (Speaking Cherokee language) GASILA>> (Speaking Cherokee language) SINASD>> (Speaking Cherokee language) GASILA>> (Speaking Cherokee language) SINASD>> (Speaking Cherokee language) GASILA>> (Speaking Cherokee language) SINASD>> (Speaking Cherokee language) (Language segment music ends) (Theme music) JENNIFER>> Brenda Mallory is a mixed media artist using found objects, textiles, and beeswax to create contemporary works of art.

We'll explore how she tackles themes of disruption and adaption as she sculpts new pieces of art.

(Upbeat music plays) BRENDA MALLORY>> There you go.

Thank you.

(Sounds of children talking) (Sound of hammering) I've always had creative outlets of all sorts.

I've taken drawing classes.

I'm a big gardener.

I've done lots of sewing of clothes, and fun costumes, and curtains, all that.

I'm just, I've always been a maker.

But at a certain point I had this like, unfulfilled, what am I doing?

I really need to do this art thing; 'cause I'd just been dabbling.

I'd been a dabbler all my life and I really decided finally I needed to get serious about it or I was going to be regretful.

I'm Brenda Mallory.

I'm an artist.

I live in Portland, Oregon.

I came into my art practice a little bit later than most people.

I went back to art school when I was in my 40's.

In 2015, I was the recipient of this GLEAN Artist in Residency.

And it's a program that's a partnership between Metro, which is a governing body here in Portland, and Recology, who is our waste management company, and Cracked Pots.

So, they've band together to make this program in which five artists get to go and be at the waste transfer station for five months and collect anything they want.

And then we have a show at the end of it.

So, I found some materials there that still to this day I use.

It's what, five or seven later, and I'm still using some of these materials.

They really affected my practice in a ongoing way.

And I've always worked with reclaimed materials.

But mostly it's this cloth that I've worked with.

(Upbeat music plays) (Slow music plays) I think the fire hoses appealed to me, initially just because they're fibers, and I've worked for years with some sort of fiber or fabric.

So, that was a quick appeal.

And then the honeycomb cardboard that I work with, that actually attracted my eye because it looked a lot like these prints that I had already been making where there were these vertical lines interrupted by a horizontal line.

So, to, to mix it up with all kinds of different things like firehoses, and honeycomb cardboard it, it's just really fun to see where I can go with that.

The honeycomb cardboard probably also appealed to me because for years I've been working with hexagonal shapes.

And I think I've been attracted to the hexagonal shape because when I was a kid growing up, my grandpa kept bees.

Sometimes people ask me is my work Native?

And I always say, Well, yes, I'm a Native person and I made this work.

So, this must be Native work.

And then there will be questions like, Well, it's not overtly about something.

I can't quite identify it as Cherokee art.

But if you know me and you know like my story, the deeper story, sometimes I like to say, is I, I work with this concept of making do.

That's important to me because as Cherokees that's what we had to do.

But on this bigger picture and how I think it represents me as a Cherokee artist, our people were uprooted from where they had lived for so many years.

And they knew the plants, the medicines, the animals.

And then shipped off to Oklahoma or forced to march there where everything's new.

But what happened?

We didn't just shrivel up and go away.

We're a thriving community; kind of that making do with what you have.

(Slow music ends) (Upbeat music plays) I'm a contemporary artist, so the work I make is very much about the time we live in now, materials wise.

It may reference issues from historical stories or points in, that I'm interested in.

But I consider myself a contemporary artist working a lot in abstraction.

It's a field I pursue because I feel like it's important to make your brain work a little bit.

I've worked in several themes over the course of my career.

One that is recurrent is this idea of systems that get disrupted in some way.

And while that often can destroy a system, more often systems adapt and go on to be another thing or look in a different way.

As time has gone on, I realize that in some ways it's, it's more of a universal like that can apply to people, to families, to cultures in general.

And some of the ways I manifest that is this making of pieces that are many pieces.

Sometimes they're something that I have created and then deliberately cut apart or torn apart so that I can put it back together again and make the repairs, the fixes, the connections be very obvious.

So, this red piece that is here is made out of waxed cloth again that's pigmented.

And all of it's sewn together with these little things called hog rings.

(Hammering sounds) Sometimes I have a very clear idea of what I'm going to make.

And sometimes it's a loose idea, and I just start working and see where it goes.

(Fast music ends) (Upbeat music plays) The idea that everything you make is a success, that is so not true.

There are so many failures I have in the studio and so many things I try.

It's almost like I have to let these materials dictate or tell me a little bit about what they want to do and inform the process a little bit.

I do think the materials have a say in what we do.

And honestly, I welcome that say.

(Sound of router) Becoming an artist at 40, you've gotta hit the ground running 'cause you've got a limited time to make art.

So, I really did, I've just been kinda kicking it ever since.

I really, I'm prolific and I work a lot.

So, I've been lucky to have shows and get grants and awards.

And I never take any of that for granted.

I have this huge family here now, and it's just (People laughing) great.

I really love it.

Well thanks, everybody, for coming to dinner.

WOMAN>> Thanks for having us.

(Others commenting inaudibly) BRENDA>> Cheers.

Here's to a nice fall evening dinner.

MAN>> Cheers.

(Other inaudible comments) JENNIFER>> We hope you enjoyed our show.

And remember, you can always watch entire episodes and share your favorite stories online at Osiyo.TV.

There is no Cherokee word for goodbye because we know we'll see you again.

We say, Dodadagohvi, Wado.

(Music) (Music)