Ep 14: Prairie Rose Seminole, Level Forward: We Ride for Her

Equality Talks: The Official ERA Podcast

In episode 14 of the Equality Talks podcast, host Elisa Parker introduces us to Prairie Rose Seminole, Northern Cheyenne, Arikara and Dakota. Seminole is an educator, culture bearer and storyteller. She is the Co-Director of the film, We Ride For Her- a short documentary on the crisis of missing and murdered indigenous relatives. This powerful film is co-produced by Red Sand Project and ERA Coalition partner, Level Forward.

Elisa speaks with Seminole about the crisis, transforming grief into action, how the film crew created a trauma-informed, holistic approach to documentary filmmaking; one that supports the storyteller and the community they live in and the ritual and practice of storytelling within her community and how that translates in our media-focused lives. She talks about her experience with the Medicine Wheel Riders, over 200 Native American women who ride to bring awareness to the over 5,000 missing indigenous women and girls, to incite hope and call to action.

Today, and all days, we honor and remember stolen sisters, aunts, mothers, grandmothers, and two spirit relatives whose stories are too often ignored or forgotten. Together we are strong, resilient, and committed to ending this epidemic of violence. In memory of Khalid “Tašunka Ōta” Garreau (2000-2023) and to all the ones we’ve lost. May their memory be a revolution.

Hosted by nationally acclaimed radio host and Equal Voices/ERA Coalition, Elisa Parker, Equality Talks bridges the intersections of equality, justice, and social activism to unify as a collective and change the status quo.

Equality Talks focuses on the key facets of equality across all communities, including everything from gender, racial, economic and reproductive justice, to labor, immigrant, and LGBTQ+ rights.

For more information on Equality Talks go to www.ERACoaltion.org and www.EqualVoice.org.

Moving from silos to solidarity.

The ERA Coalition was founded in 2014 to bring concerted, organized action to the effort to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. The ERA Coalition has a sister organization, the Fund for Women’s Equality, which promotes public education and outreach on the need for constitutional equality. Composed of more than 290 organizations across the country representing millions of people, the Coalition is a movement of movements focused on overall equality in the United States.

While the effort to amend the constitution to include sex equality began nearly a century ago, our renewed efforts are centered on women of color (African American, Asian American/Pacific Islander, Latina, and Native American), gender-nonconforming and transgender women and girls, and nonbinary people – those who are most impacted by systemic inequities.

www.eracoalition.org | www.fundforwomensequality.org

About Prairie Rose

Prairie Rose Seminole - Northern Cheyenne, Arikara and Dakota. Seminole is an educator, culture bearer and storyteller. She is the Co-Director of the film, We Ride For Her- a short documentary on the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives. Seminole has served on the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, Midwest Advisory Board, and the Fargo Human Relations Commission. She currently serves on the Olamina Fund Advisory Board, the Midwest Innocence Project Board, Gender Justice US and Humanities ND and chairs the ND Native Caucus. Prairie Rose has been a part of efforts, institutions, and organizations that have seeded, supported, and strengthened public history, cultural heritage, civic education, and community engagement on local, state, and national levels. Prairie Rose grew up in North Dakota and is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of ND on the Fort Berthold Reservation. She lives with her partner, their 7 dogs and 10 horses in White Shield ND.

https://www.werideforher.com/

About Level Forward

Reimagining the ways storytelling, business practices, & social change can work together.

Story driven. Impact minded.

Our work fuels commitment, community, and change. As accomplished executives, creatives, and social change-makers, we acknowledge that stories alone neither sustain a business model nor change the world. They need to be nurtured, delivered, and extended beyond traditional goalposts to reach their full potential. A layered approach. A single film or show cannot change a system, so we take both a specific and comprehensive approach. At the project-level, we seize every opportunity to make decisions differently, as philosophy, business practice, and an ongoing assertion of values. This includes the what, who, how, where, and why questions of our work. System-wide, we work to break down the bottlenecks of financing, production, and distribution in ways which are iterative, repeatable, and open-sourced.

Level Forward