00:00.29 heritagevoices Welcome to heritage voices episode 85 I'm Jessica e quinto and I'm your host and today we are talking about the catherine m booder center for american indian studies at Washington University in St Louis before we begin I'd like to honor and acknowledge that the lands I'm recording on today. Ah, part of the nooch or you people's treaty lands the Dana and the ancestral puebloan homeland and today we have Eric Pinto on the show. Eric is a native american descendant of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and o sorry okay, ah. I might actually switch it to pueblo of Zuni because that's how I'm used to calling it if that's okay, um. 00:41.60 Eric Pinto Yeah, okay. 00:55.59 heritagevoices So today we have Eric Pinto on the show. Eric is a native american descendant of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and Pueblo of zuni and is the assistant director at the catherine m buder center for american indian studies at Washington University in St Louis Missouri ah is that going to be confusing actually since it's Washington University in St Louis should I take out the Missouri. Okay, okay, as soon as I said that I was like no, that's part of the name of the college like that doesn't work. Okay, um, um. 01:17.16 Eric Pinto Yeah, me just leave out Missouri it doesn't yeah. 01:31.40 heritagevoices And is the assistant director at the katherine m booder center for american indian studies at Washington University in St Louis where he supports buder scholars recruits prospective native american students collaborates with community partners on native american projects and events and provides educational presentations throughout Missouri. So welcome to the show Eric. Thanks. 01:51.64 Eric Pinto Yeah helito hello yeah, thank you I'm excited about this my very first podcast ever participating in it. 02:00.37 heritagevoices Um I love it. That's awesome. Um, well I'm very excited to have you as well. You came very highly recommended from a fabulous past guest. So I'm very excited to talk to you and also I'm really excited because. We always touch on a lot of the topics that you're going to be talking about today. Um in our in our work in heritage and and cultural resources. Um, but not directly from this angle. Um, which is well I'll I'll let you introduce what the the booter center does I won't get too into it. But. I think it's going to be really important for people that that work in heritage and cerm and anthropology and land management um to have some understanding of some of the things that that you guys work on so I'm I'm very excited to have you. So. 02:52.19 heritagevoices Speaking of me being super vague about what it is that you do what got you interested in what it is that you do yeah. 03:00.96 Eric Pinto Yeah, so um I guess it all stems back to when I was actually a personal trainer. This is prior to covid I was actually a personal trainer in St Louis for 10 years working through golds gym and within that. Um. You know I wanted to find out a way to reach native communities on helping improve their ah um health disparities and um, increasing opportunities to access to ah you know. Gyms and waste ah exercise improve physical activity resulting in better health outcomes. Um I kind of think it was also divine and intervention that ah I one day I went and visited coke mounts which is right next door to me and. I was going up there to visit some ah native ours who are friends to the family and I ran into at the time the director of the booter center and you know we just got to got to talk and everything and ah. She was asking. you know what? I do and everything and you know what what would I like to do and maybe how I could maybe contribute to giving back to our people and stuff and so from there. Ah yes, she kind of promoted ah the booter center and how it offers ah scholarships to native students and. 04:25.56 Eric Pinto Um I had the fortunate opportunity to apply for a scholarship and um, get tuition paid for and go to yeah Washington University in St Louis and ah, um, be part of the brown school of social work public health and social policy and. Ah, within that I was part of the american indian Alaska native concentration. Um, this is all through the social work program and yeah I was kind of looking at ways to develop my skills enhance my knowledge on ways to um, create these types of programs health programs um to help native people out. And from there it kind of was going towards that direction until the pandemic happened and then from here things were halt installed and um, but luckily you know when I graduated through from the program back in 2020? Um, the booer center um, wreckit you know I kind of acknowledged that. Yeah you know, hey you live here in St Louis and you do great work and how about you hop on board with the booer center and you know, ah do some community-based projects and research and so I've held multiple positions here at the booer center. 05:31.12 heritagevoices He. 05:37.26 Eric Pinto Um, and it's still in the back of my head to still work on what I originally came. 05:54.34 heritagevoices You mean you couldn't like go put a whole bunch of indigenous people in a gym and 2020 and figure out some research there. Why not right. 06:31.87 heritagevoices So all of a sudden I'm getting an air message on your side. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to stop this recording just for that like last little bit is when I got the air. Um, it's gone now but just to be on the safe side I'm going to stop the recording and restart it. Okay, okay. Um, so it's probably definitely going to give you ah kick you out and you'll have to prompt. So yeah, one second.