Oral History Interview with Arigon Starr Interview Conducted by Julie Pearson-Little Thunder March 13, 2017 Spotlighting Oklahoma Oral History Project Oklahoma Oral History Research Program Edmon Low Library ● Oklahoma State University © 2017 Spotlighting Oklahoma Oral History Project Interview History Interviewer: Julie Pearson-Little Thunder Transcriber: Dakota Daves Editors: Rosalie Swingle, Micki White The recording and transcript of this interview were processed at the Oklahoma State University Library in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Project Detail The purpose of the Spotlighting Oklahoma Oral History Project is to document the development of the state by recording its cultural and intellectual history. This project was approved by the Oklahoma State University Institutional Review Board on April 15, 2009. Legal Status Scholarly use of the recordings and transcripts of the interview with Arigon Starr is unrestricted. The interview agreement was signed on March 13, 2017. 2 Spotlighting Oklahoma Oral History Project About Arigon Starr… Arigon Starr took her middle name for a last name because her family moved constantly with her Navy father and she got tired of coaching new teachers and her friends on how to pronounce Wahpecome. Kickapoo, Creek, Cherokee, and Seneca, Starr is equally at home in music, theater, comics, and graphic novels. After high school, she worked a variety of office jobs in Hollywood while performing her original music on the side. She is a long-time member of Native Voices at the Autry, which first tapped her as an actor and later helped promote her singing and composing talents in her one-woman musical, The Red Road, which also became a radio play. Today, Starr is perhaps best known for the Super Indian comic book series. She has edited and contributed stories and drawings to several comic anthologies including Tales of the Mighty Code Talkers. Twice honored by First Americans in the Arts, once for acting and once for her original music, she was also among the first group of recipients of the Tulsa Artist Fellowship for writers in 2017, awarded by the Kaiser Foundation. In this interview, the artist explains how she fell in love with theater and bass guitar while living on a naval base in the Philippines. She remembers the intertribal education she received while living in LA and how her secretarial stints at Viacom and Showtime, among others, taught her how to promote her own work. She discusses the importance of Native comic and graphic novel collectives in producing and promoting Native-written and illustrated comic books and graphic novels. She also talks about creating a series of graphic novels based on the outlaw stories by Cherokee writer Robert Conley. 3 Spotlighting Oklahoma Oral History Project Arigon Starr Oral History Interview Interviewed by Julie Pearson-Little Thunder March 13, 2017 Tulsa, Oklahoma Little Thunder My name is Julie Pearson-Little Thunder. Today is Monday, March 13, 2017, and I’m interviewing Arigon Starr for the Oklahoma Native Artist Project, sponsored by the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program at Oklahoma State University. We’re here at the OSU Tulsa Campus. Arigon, you’re Kickapoo, Creek, Cherokee, and Seneca, and you excel at many things. You’re a singer-songwriter with her own record company, as well as an actor and playwright. I had no idea, really, of your graphic art skills until your first Super Indian comic book came out. Thank you for talking with me today. Starr You’re welcome. My pleasure to be here. (Laughter) Little Thunder Can you tell me first about your unusual name? Starr Sure! My unusual name actually came out of thin air one day. My given name is Wahpecome. It’s tacked on the end, W-A-H-P-E-C-O-M-E. That’s my dad’s name; he’s Kickapoo. Going through school was like, “Oh, that name, oh, my gosh.” Nine letters of fun, fun, fun! I don’t mean to make light of that name because it means “white water.” It has a meaning, and it’s traditional. That was the name of an ancestor. That was his whole name. How things happen in Oklahoma with naming and Indians, so that name followed me around. It was tough because I grew up all over the country. Every two years, it was a new experience of, “Whapa, hopa, he.” Nobody could get that, so I dropped it, and I use Starr. Starr is my middle name, and that made sense. That name come from my mother. She was given that name by her kinfolk. The tradition was the youngest daughter got the name Starr. That Starr goes all the way back to Tom Starr and Henry Starr and Belle Starr, so I got a lot of outlaws. Little Thunder Outlaw blood. (Laughter) 4 Starr Yeah, I got some ratty kinfolk. (Laughter) They’re rugged, but that’s all right. That’s where my stock comes from. Little Thunder How about Arigon? It’s wonderful. Starr That, like I said, came out of the air. That was like, “I love this!” I don’t know what…. Little Thunder Maybe for Lord of the Rings? Starr Maybe because my mom read that book to me when I was a kid. Little Thunder Oh, interesting. (Laughter) So where were you born? Starr I was born in Pensacola, Florida, very randomly, as my dad was stationed in the Navy. That was where his duty station was. Born on the road. I feel like that song, “Born in a Trunk.” That’s kind of how it happened. (Laughter) Little Thunder You grew up in these different places that your dad…. Army brat, as we say. What did your mom do for a living? Starr She got her degree at Oklahoma Baptist University in music. She was also the secretary to the dean, so she had a lot of office skills. She was smart, and then had this musical education thing. She sometimes worked as a teacher of music at different schools. She was also really instrumental, I think, in working with the government’s Equal Opportunity program. She did a lot of that work back in the day to make sure that things were better for us ladies now. She worked her entire career. I think she got to GS-13 [pay scale] or something when she finally retired. She worked alongside where my dad was stationed. She would work at the public works, or work at this, that, and the other office. Yeah, she always worked. Little Thunder That’s very cool. How about brothers or sisters? Starr I have one sister who’s since passed. Her name was Gay, Gay Lynn, and she was older than me and was wonderful. She was my best friend. I miss her every day. Her and I were thick as thieves because of that moving situation. We had to be friends because when you move to a new town and you don’t know anybody, it’s like, “What do we do?” We’d get into trouble. (Laughter) She was great. We loved the same kind of music and books and TV shows. All that kind of stuff, we shared. Like I said, she passed away in 2010, and I miss her. Little Thunder How about your relationship with your grandparents on either side? 5 Starr My dad’s folks passed away early. I think his parents were gone by the time he was twelve. I never did get to meet them, but my mom’s parents lived here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Every chance we would get, wherever Dad was stationed, he would get his time off. He’d get his week off; it was like, “Okay, we’re getting in the car.” Many times, we would drive from the East Coast all the way to Oklahoma in the snow in a VW Bug. (Laughter) We would drive from San Diego or Gallup or wherever we were. Sometimes they would come out to visit us, and that was a lot of fun. They liked to travel, as well. They were wonderful people. David Cornell was born down in Holdenville [Oklahoma]. He was from that community. My mother, Flora Snow, was Cherokee and Seneca. The story was, her father was a Seneca that came out from New York to work in the oil fields, so that’s how that all came to be together. They were just folks, but my grandpa knew everybody in town. I had this experience last week when we went on a tour of Tulsa with the Historical Society. We went over by Ziegler’s art store, and I was looking at the floor of this studio. There was an art studio right across the street, and I was like, “This floor looks familiar.” The guy who was doing the tour said, “This used to be a TG&Y [store].” I said, “I thought so because I remember Ziegler’s, and coming over here to this place and buying comic books.” All things are related because my grandpa would give us a buck and say, “Knock yourselves out.” He would talk to the people behind the counter and buy his cigars. My sister and I would get our Archie, Superman, Spiderman, whatever, and then go back. It’s weird, the things that you remember from when you were a kid, like the floor. Little Thunder You remembered the floor. That’s amazing. Starr I know we sat there, looking, reading the comic books that we didn’t buy. (Laughter) Little Thunder Were you around Creek language a little bit? Starr Yeah, a little bit around Creek language. My grandpa spoke it fluently, but he had no inclination to teach my mother or me.