Season 5: Ep. 2 Soul Wounds: Indigenous Survival and the Limits of Religious Freedom

Under the backdrop of our nation’s 250th anniversary, Our Seven Neighbors, season 5, explores the long, contested history of religious diversity in the United States—not as a feel-good celebration of pluralism, but as a hard-won achievement forged through conflict, exclusion, resistance, and moral struggle.  Episode 2 features host Reza Aslan in conversation with Dr. Farina King. Farina King, a citizen of the Navajo Nation, is the Horizon Chair of Native American Ecology and Culture and Full Professor of Native American Studies at the University of Oklahoma. Her research centers on Native American oral histories, especially among her Diné relatives and connections in Oklahoma. She received her Ph.D. at Arizona State University in History. She is the author of various publications, including The Earth Memory Compass: Diné Landscapes and Education in the Twentieth Century; co-author with Michael P. Taylor and James R. Swensen of Returning Home: Diné Creative Works from the Intermountain Indian School; and author of Diné dóó Gáamalii: Navajo Latter-day Saint Experiences in the Twentieth Century. She is a co-editor of The Lyda Conley Series on Trailblazing Indigenous Futures with the University Press of Kansas; co-editor of the Palgrave Studies in Oral History; and Editor in Chief of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Indigenous Studies. She is the past President of the Southwest Oral History Association (2021-2022).