THE RED JUSTICE PROJECT

BY KIRSTIN L. SQUINT

RAVEN DIAL-STANLEY , the artist featured here, is an enrolled member of the Lumbee tribe of North Carolina. She graduated from UNC Greensboro with a degree in consumer, apparel, and retail product design and a minor in new media design studies. She was the president of the Native American Student Association and was inducted into Alpha Pi Omega Sorority, the first Native American sorority in the US. In 2018, she was selected as Miss Indian North Carolina, and in that role, served as an ambassador for all eight tribes and four organizations in North Carolina. Her platform was “Empowered Woman, Empower Women.” She also volunteers for the Indian Education Program in her community. See more of her art on Instagram @artistry_indigenous_angel.

The following is a Zoom interview that took place on November 16, 2021, as part of a lecture series hosted by Kirstin L. Squint, Whichard Distinguished Professor and Native American literature specialist in the Department of English at East Carolina University.1 The conversation focuses on the groundbreaking podcast, The Red Justice Project, co-hosted by Brittany Danielle Hunt and Chelsea Locklear, both citizens of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. The podcast spotlights the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous peoples in North Carolina and beyond. This interview has been edited for reading and style, but carefully, to remain true to the speakers’ voices. Squint’s conversation with Hunt and Locklear focused on the mission of the podcast, which is to bring awareness to the many cases of missing and murdered Indigenous people in North America and the way they are erased in American media. The interview also addressed Hunt’s and Locklear’s choices about how to tell the victims’ stories, particularly from an Indigenous point of view. Season One of The Red Justice Project launched on November 2, 2020, and its twenty-nine episodes aired weekly until June 14, 2021. Season Two, launched on April 24, 2022, and its ten weekly episodes concluded on July 25, 2022. At the time of this interview, The Red Justice Project was on a break between its first and second season.

Brittany Hunt is currently a postdoctoral research associate at Duke University and the owner of Indigenous Ed., LLC, through which she provides workshops, speeches, and consulting around Indigenous education. She is the author of the Lumbee children’s book, Whoz Ya People? and is a graduate of Duke, UNC Chapel Hill, and UNC Charlotte. Chelsea Locklear was raised in Pembroke, North Carolina, and is also a member of the Lumbee tribe. By day, she is a Client Services Manager for a private credit fund, and by night she’s a dreamer and schemer, planning her next passion project. She received her bachelor’s degree from NC State and an MPA from UNC Chapel Hill.