Indianz.Com > News > Wes Studi explores family history on ‘Finding Your Roots’
Finding Your Roots with LeVar Burton & Wes Studi!This week on #FindingYourRoots we uncover stories that our guests #LevarBurton and #WesStudi have long wanted to hear. We introduce our guests to ancestors whose names they’ve never known and reveal connections to significant moments in history. Tune into PBS tomorrow at 8/7c for a brand new episode of #FindingYourRoots with #LeVarBurton and #WesStudi.
Posted by Finding Your Roots on Monday, January 15, 2024
Wes Studi explores family history on ‘Finding Your Roots’
Tuesday, January 16, 2024
Indianz.Com
Award-winning Cherokee actor Wes Studi is making history as the first Native person to appear on the long-running PBS television series Finding Your Roots.
Studi’s episode debuts on PBS on Tuesday evening. In a post on social media, he encouraged his followers to tune in.
“My episode is out today! What an honor to be a guest on the 10th season of of Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.” Studi wrote in a post tagging the show and the show’s longtime host, Dr. Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr.
Studi was born on the Cherokee Nation in present-day Oklahoma in 1947. The description for his episode of Finding Your Roots states that the acclaimed film and television star grew up without his biological father.
“I’d say things like, ‘I don’t have a Dad,'” Studi says in a clip of the show.
The clip also mentions the genocidal Trail of Tears. In the 1830s, the U.S. government forced the Cherokee people to leave their homelands in the southeast for the Indian territory now known as Oklahoma.
“We’ve lived with that pain for a long time,” Studi says of an era in which countless Cherokee people lost their lives and their lands.
According to Gates, filming for the episode took place in New Mexico in the spring of 2023. Studi has long maintained a home near Santa Fe, the state capital. “I’m doing his family tree, so I’m really excited about it,” Gates said of Studi during a lecture in Santa Fe back in April 2023. The 10th season of Finding Your Roots debuted on January 2. Until now, the show has never featured a Native person among the countless actors, athletes, celebrities and politicians whose family histories are explored through genealogical research and genetic testing. But Gates previously researched the background of author Louise Erdrich, a citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. In 2010, she appeared on a PBS show called Faces of America in which she refused to have her genetic material sequenced. Finding Your Roots can be viewed on PBS and on pbs.org.
indianz.substack.com
Search
Filed Under
Tags
More Headlines
‘Dark Winds’ returns for expanded third season
Daily Montanan: Man who bragged about killing eagles sentenced to prison
Arizona Mirror: President Biden apologizes for Indian boarding school era
Cronkite News: Tribal governments responsible for orphaned oil and gas wells
Native America Calling: The Lighthorse tradition of tribal law enforcement
United Keetoowah Band: Standing for truth and the future
Native America Calling: New Native books offer hauntings, murders and curses
Adria Jawort: ‘Snake Tongue Sheehy’ still won’t apologize to Native people
Daily Montanan: Polls show tight race for U.S. Senate seat in Montana
Democracy Now: President Biden apologizes for Indian boarding school era
Cronkite News: Senate candidates battle for youth vote in Arizona
Native America Calling: The Native National Humanities Medalists
Cronkite News: President Biden apologizes for Indian boarding school era
Native America Calling: Growing Indigenous business connections around the globe
National Council of Urban Indian Health: ‘The government attempted to wipe out our Native cultures’
More Headlines
Daily Montanan: Man who bragged about killing eagles sentenced to prison
Arizona Mirror: President Biden apologizes for Indian boarding school era
Cronkite News: Tribal governments responsible for orphaned oil and gas wells
Native America Calling: The Lighthorse tradition of tribal law enforcement
United Keetoowah Band: Standing for truth and the future
Native America Calling: New Native books offer hauntings, murders and curses
Adria Jawort: ‘Snake Tongue Sheehy’ still won’t apologize to Native people
Daily Montanan: Polls show tight race for U.S. Senate seat in Montana
Democracy Now: President Biden apologizes for Indian boarding school era
Cronkite News: Senate candidates battle for youth vote in Arizona
Native America Calling: The Native National Humanities Medalists
Cronkite News: President Biden apologizes for Indian boarding school era
Native America Calling: Growing Indigenous business connections around the globe
National Council of Urban Indian Health: ‘The government attempted to wipe out our Native cultures’
More Headlines