Steph Littlebird: Hello. My name is Steph Littlebird, and I am an Indigenous artist, author and curator. I am a member of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, Oregon. And the story behind my name is interesting. My name is Stephanie, that's my given name, and my last name that I was born with is Fogel. And growing up, I only knew that I was an Indigenous person. And when I went to college, I learned that my last name, Fogel, was actually Jewish, and it means "little bird" in Yiddish. And so I have spent my entire life being an Indigenous person. I did not know that I had Jewish heritage, and then learned about that through this discovery. And so it's a way for me to incorporate this lineage that I have, that I don't know a whole lot about, but absolutely is connected to all of these other things in my life.

I've been surrounded by birds my entire life, and birds are important in my culture. And so, to be known as a little bird, it was just like a crazy kismet thing to know that about myself. And so I also use it because it confronts stereotypes. People make assumptions about Indigenous artists and what kind of names they should have. And so it's a way to subvert people's expectations about what it might mean. So yeah, I like to subvert people's expectations of Indigeneity.