"Get the Lead Out" with Doctor Chuck Stead

Living the Story: In this our final episode of the series, we focus on the cooptation of native culture, which is, in effect, the final Western cooptation of the indigenous community. As the Ramapoughs grapple with survival, they build a narrative of recovery. You can buy Chuck's original book "Get the Lead Out" by clicking this link: https://www.bkstr.com/ramapostore/product/get-the-lead-out--cus...

White Man’s Indian: Being a Nation within a Nation, our indigene find that the white world tends to think of them only as a people in the past. This episode relates the Story of Little Crow and investigates the white-washing of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. You can buy Chuck's original book "Get the Lead Out" by clicking this link: https://www.bkstr.com/ramapostore/product/get-the-lead-out--custom...

Nature or Disney: Having recorded at the home of Cindy and Jeff Fountain for the last three episodes, we are left with a strong impression of the indigenous world of Animist Spirit. In this episode, we investigate the traditional story of Turtle, Turkey, and Wolf. You can buy Chuck's original book "Get the Lead Out" by clicking this link: https://www.bkstr.com/ramapostore/product/get-the-lead-out-...

Animal Speak looks into the fundamentals of story medicine when Chuck reflects upon a medical crisis in 2009 which brought into focus the role of Animal Speak to the AmeriCorps students he was working with. Cindy Fountain offers her shamanic understanding of Butterfly and Dragonfly. You can buy Chuck's original book "Get the Lead Out" by clicking this link: https://www.bkstr.com/ramapostore/produc...

Muskrat Stories , with guest Cindy Fountain of the Ramapough Nation , Dr. Stead reflects upon his boyhood muskrat trapping and of a visit with Ramapough Keven Powell, who also trapped the little ‘musky’ along the banks of the Ramapo River. This introduces the idea of shapeshifting, which Fountain speaks of at length. You can buy Chuck's original book "Get the Lead Out" by clicking this link: https...

Vulture Stories with Cindy Fountain, Medicine Woman of the Ramapough Nation , and Doctor Chuck explore the vulture stories of our local native brothers and sisters. Going back to an early one shared by Chief Ronald Redbone, we hear of the medicine Vulture supplies to a damaged world. You can buy Chuck's original book "Get the Lead Out" by clicking this link: https://www.bkstr.com/ramapostore/produ...

In this episode, Dr. Stead asks us to consider the idea of being a Wounded Storyteller. He compares writer Arthur Frank’s objectives for being and coping with wounded story identity to the Ramapough's long history of being marginalized, demonized, and contaminated by industry. He suggests that it is their indigenous roots that give them the strength to sustain and to recover both their health and...

After a short visit to the Peter’s Mine site, we return to Vivian Milligan’s yard, and Dr. Stead’s intern now meets several other Ramapoughs. As we leave this site, intern Julie is taken with how personable and warm the Ramapoughs she has met are, nothing like the rumored persona that she had heard about these people. And she asks how folks so prejudiced against also deal with this massive contami...

In this episode, we visit the Good Sheppard Church and attend a service by pastor Stephen Rozzelle, who reminds us, “No slave can serve two masters!” We meet Clan's mother, Vivian Milligan, who brings us to her home and introduces us to her nephew Jack. Jack will lead us to the site of the Peter’s Mine, a hotbed of Ford Motor’s pollution. Guest: Chief of Ramapough Nation Dwaine Perry You can buy C...

In the final episode of this section of Get the Lead Out we breakdown a few other stories of the Ramapoughs, as told by others. Between documentarians and Hollywood screenwriters, we experience the stigmatization of our native brothers and sisters again and again. Here we come to appreciate that after five hundred years of occupation once again we return to the same old colonial crap. You can buy...

Digging further into the Mann v. Ford documentary on the case by the same name, we get down to the skewed justice offered the Turtle Clan with Judge Jonathan Harris’s lop-sided case management. And at the end of the film’s premier the Turtle Clan are told they have now been given a ‘voice,’ and once again white interlopers congratulate themselves. You can buy Chuck's original book "Get the Lead Ou...

As we deconstruct the HBO documentary, we look back to a March 2010 article by New Yorker writer Ben McGrath. We investigate how the urbane, sophisticated, and progressive publication with the best of intentions furthers the exploitation of the Ramapoughs, and we try to understand why this is. You can buy Chuck's original book "Get the Lead Out" by clicking this link: https://www.bkstr.com/ramapos...

We now investigate the dilemma of a ‘ story as told by others’ , with the premier of Mann v. Ford an HBO production in 2011, at the Ramapo College Berrie Center. This is a critical look at a less than satisfying legal action. Our guest Jan Barry will be with us for this and the next three episodes. You can buy Chuck's original book "Get the Lead Out" by clicking this link: https://www.bkstr.com/ra...

Reporters Alex Nussbaum and Tom Troncone lead this narrative that detailed the role Mafia haulers, and other corner-cutting-carters, had in dumping Ford waste. Ringwood residents, who advocated against industrial chemicals, medical waste, and Ford paint sludge being hauled to a private landfill in the woods, found their lives threatened. You can buy Chuck's original book "Get the Lead Out" by clic...

Staff writers Mary Jo Layton and Barbara Williams worked on this installment, which puts a personal face on the victims of Toxic Legacy. Punctuated with Thomas Franklin’s photographs of families, children, and elders telling their story of survival against great odds, the narrative reveals a people determined to hold their place, indebted to their forbearers, and focused on recovery. You can buy C...

The Bergan Record continued the Toxic Legacy series with a front-page headline that read, “The Watchdogs Failed”. This piece was primarily the work of Jan Barry, and it reviewed the dynamic of the working relationship between Ford and the EPA. Barry and his team uncover the failure on the part of the regulatory agencies. You can buy Chuck's original book "Get the Lead Out" by clicking this link: h...

This first installment of the Toxic Legacy series was riveting and quickly became the talk of Bergen County. Jan Barry’s persistence had come to fruition and the story of the Ramapoughs plight poured into the hearts of Record readers. A humble man who shied away from the lime light, Barry had cut his teeth on the Agent Orange story he researched back in 1977.You can buy Chuck's original book "Get...

Seasoned journalist Jan Barry remained on the story of the Paint Sludge when others had long since given it up. He returned to the Ringwood Superfund Site and made careful notes of the false promises from the EPA. In this first episode on the Bergan Record’s Toxic Legacy series, we meet Jan Barry investigative reporter and heroic figure in this tragic tale. You can buy Chuck's original book "Get t...

Acetone: The industrial solvent acetone, (also used in nail polish remover) was used in clearing out the gummed-up paint spray guns at Ford Motor Company, although it can evaporate this solvent was trapped in the ‘ever-flexible’ plasticizers of the paint sludge. Years later buried paint sludge releases this carcinogenic into the ground water, making the poisoned cocktail of chemicals Ford left beh...

In the 1950s Americans fell in love with plastics, from dinner ware to upholstery and to children’s toys, plastics were everywhere. Chemical plasticizers were added to increase the durability and flexibility of these ‘wonder’ products. The Ford Toxic Waste is riddled with these plasticizers which are now classified as endocrine disrupters creating hormonal havoc. You can buy Chuck's original book...

: Long before lead based paint was regulated in the market place, lead finishes were promoted as ‘safe, hygienic, and healthy’ by the Lead Industry of America . In this episode, Stead looks into the carcinogenic effects of lead paint and antimony, a lead alloy, which are the bounding agents in the Ford Toxic Waste dumped in the Ramapo Watershed. You can buy Chuck's original book "Get the Lead Out"...

Ford’s paint campaign which was developed by Dupont Chemical, was a complex cocktail of carcinogenic compounds, the lead base was just one of the toxins. This episode looks into the auto paint substance that has left its mark upon the Ramapo Watershed. In this first section Chuck initiates a discussion of story and policy: story the ever changing thread of history, and policy being the mechanics o...

Having grown up with the New York State Thruway and as it was discovered tens of thousands of tons of Ford toxic waste from the Mahwah NJ plant, Chuck shares his research into the emergence and impact of the Thruway and the Ford Plant. At best Fordism was a successful profit-making management system, and at worse it was the undermining of the American workforce. You can buy Chuck's original book "...

Ford had his critiques but his campaign to wash his public persona clean clearly worked its magic, his popularity with Adolf Hitler seemed to be tolerated by car driving public, and during the Second World War his arsenal of democracy was also an arsenal of fascism. His legacy of Fordism being worker management theory informed populace management, and carried on after his death into the second hal...

We continue our deep dive into Henry Ford, the American Industrialist, and examine the childhood roots of his deep-seated anti-Semitism. During his elaborately stage camp outings with notables Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, and John Burroughs, Ford shared his dark side and Burroughs made note of it. You can buy Chuck's original book "Get the Lead Out" by clicking this link: https://www.bkstr.com...