Shannon O'Loughlin is a native of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and is the Executive Director of the Association on American Indian Affairs, the oldest non-profit organization serving Indian Country. In this episode, she talks about the history of the American Indian Wars and how they affected the lives of Native Americans. She also discusses the impact of disease and colonization on the Native American population, and how the lack of a Native American genocide can be traced back to the removal of Native American lands and their removal from their lands by the U.S. government, as well as the loss of their cultural and economic value to the white settler-colonialist system. She also talks about how Native Americans have been affected by the policies and practices of the United States government and the way they treated Native Americans in the early 20th century, and why they continue to be so important in American history. She is a dedicated advocate for Native American rights and justice and justice for Native Americans and their rights today. We hope you enjoy listening to this episode and share it with your friends, family, and the ones you care enough to share it on social media! Thank you so much for listening and supporting this podcast! If you like what you hear, please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe, share, and tell a friend about what you think of this episode! We'll see you next week with your thoughts on our next episode on the next episode of the podcast. Cheers! Cheers, Caitlynne and Shannon O'Donnell Music: "I'm Too Effing" by John Rocha "The Good Ol' Joe" - The Good O' Joe "The Bad O'Joe" & the Good Ozzie "Peezy" Williams (featuring: "The Peezy & The Bad Owelek" (feat. "Mr. John Rizzi) and "The Man Who Can't See It" by The Good Olie (The Good Owelled Man ( ) by & "The Boy Who Couldn't Do It ( ) by "The Natives" ( ) ( ) and "Amber Sky ( ) . ( . & is a song written and produced and produced by: ) ( ) is a tribute to the late great singer-songwriter and song "Wendy Williams ( )
00:00:09.000I'm glad you're interested in the subject of American Indian history, and I'm glad to be here to talk about it.
00:00:16.000Yeah, I'm glad you were willing to come here.
00:00:18.000Yeah, I became fascinated when I, well, I've always been sort of peripherally interested, but never really delved into it until I read Empire of the Summer Moon.
00:00:29.000And then, you know, have you read that?
00:00:32.000SG Gwen's book about the Comanches and about the Texas Rangers.
00:00:36.000And it's such a crazy story that I just became obsessed.
00:00:40.000And then I read Son of the Morning Star and then I read Black Elk.
00:00:46.000The Black Elk one was particularly fascinating to me because it details life before Like before they killed Custer to living on reservations to the desperation.
00:00:59.000Why don't you, before we get started, tell people who you are and what you do.
00:01:05.000I'm a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.
00:01:08.000I've been a practicing attorney since about 2001. And I'm currently the executive director and attorney for the Association on American Indian Affairs.
00:01:18.000We're the oldest non-profit serving Indian country.
00:01:21.000We've been around since 1922. All right.
00:01:25.000And we should tell people, if you ever listen to this in the future, this is all going on right now when the United States is going through one of the craziest times ever in terms of dealing with a virus.
00:01:43.000All comedy shows are closed, all concerts are closed, clubs, bars, everything's closed, and some places are restricting travel.
00:01:54.000It's interesting to me that this is all going on, and we've never had to experience this before.
00:02:01.000It makes me think of what happened when the Europeans first came to North America and encountered the Native Americans, and they didn't have any immunity to all these diseases that the Europeans were bringing over, and in some cases wiped out as much as 90% of the people that were living here.
00:02:36.000I mean, really, it's one of the biggest times in human history where if you talk about the Europeans coming to North America and what happened to the Native Americans just from diseases,
00:03:39.000I want you to talk about everything you want to talk about.
00:03:43.000So let's go to that then, since this is...
00:03:47.000The United States has a very strange situation with Native Americans, where Native Americans have reservations, and on those reservations they have sovereignty, they have different rules, they can do what they want.
00:04:49.000But he was making decisions that set forward the kind of watershed principles that continue to affect who Native Americans and Indian nation governments are today.
00:05:03.000And so those three cases, the first one was called Johnson v.
00:05:07.000McIntosh and it was in 1823. And it didn't involve any Indians.
00:05:12.000It was non-Indians coming to court to try to determine who owned a piece of land in Indiana.
00:05:19.000And there was one guy, Johnson, who was a plaintiff, who had purchased the land directly from the Piankashaw Indians, who are related to the Miami tribe today.
00:05:30.000And then the defendant was McIntosh, and he purchased land from the U.S. government.
00:05:37.000And so the case, of course, was who had the proper rights.
00:05:41.000And through that case, through the narrative that Justice Marshall created, he We've brought forward a piece of international law that affects us today,
00:06:07.000Any Christian, civilized European nation has the right to conquer indigenous heathen peoples.
00:06:15.000So this was the principle that this case was based on, and it set forward this weird...
00:06:29.000So, if the US, if the Christian European peoples had the rights to take land away from tribes because they were an inferior race, which is, this is language from the case, they're inferior race,
00:06:45.000they're savages, they're unable to govern themselves, and they only have a right of occupancy.
00:06:53.000So that was the first of three cases that Justice Marshall decided and of course he was an interested party in the whole thing because he had purchased land from the United States and he wanted to make sure his land was secure.
00:07:06.000The second case was Cherokee Nation v.
00:07:09.000And this was the time during the Indian Removal Act that Andrew Jackson had gotten through Congress to remove the Eastern Indians west of the Mississippi River into Indian Territory, which is, of course, now Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas area.
00:07:27.000And again, this is a case that actually the Cherokee Nation tried to bring before the Supreme Court.
00:07:34.000And before the Supreme Court could even make a decision on the – and I just realized I didn't even tell you the facts of the case.
00:07:43.000So there was – I'm getting ahead of myself.
00:07:49.000This is an incredible experience to be here, so I'm a little bit nervous.
00:07:56.000So in Cherokee Nation versus Georgia, Georgia was trying to assert its laws over the Cherokee Nation.
00:08:08.000And so the Cherokee Nation brought this case before the Supreme Court to say, you know, the state does not have any right to assert any of its laws against us.
00:08:19.000And what Justice Marshall did is said, well, you're not a foreign nation, so you can't bring a case before the Supreme Court and determine that tribes were a pseudo-sovereign nation, that they were still under tutelage and they needed to be civilized.
00:08:42.000Again, the same kind of inferior, savage language in this case.
00:08:49.000And held that the federal government had plenary power over tribal affairs and that the Cherokee Nation couldn't bring this case to court.
00:09:02.000So what ended up happening is some missionaries who were serving the Cherokee Nation actually developed a case and violated Georgia laws So they could bring a case before the Supreme Court.
00:09:20.000And I think that was about 1832, 1831. And in that case, it was ruled that the United States had a guardian and ward type relationship with tribes.
00:09:42.000And that set up This weird dynamic that still exists today that Supreme Courts and other courts cite in decisions today to basically take away more and more rights.
00:10:00.000So that's the watershed basis for this weird relationship that we have.
00:10:59.000So Georgia wanted that land for themselves.
00:11:02.000They wanted to remove the Cherokee and, of course, the other quote-unquote civilized tribes that were in the southeast at that time.
00:11:10.000And that's what's so interesting is because you see throughout time – and this is a little bit why I have a problem with some of the books that you've read – It's because they've taken small pictures of what was going on and kind of removed the context of what was really happening.
00:11:31.000There are so many tribes across the United States that tried everything to resist or comply or assimilate so that they could maintain their way of life, maintain their lands, And continue to prosper as they had been.
00:11:49.000But the United States was obviously a formidable opponent.
00:11:55.000And regardless of, for example, the five civilized tribes and their tactic was to assimilate, was to go to school and educate themselves and learn English.
00:12:09.000And even though they did that and they did everything that the United States wanted them to do, they were forced off their land to the west into Indian territory.
00:12:20.000The Comanche, who you've learned about through the book, those events happened during a point in time and that was their effort at resistance.
00:12:32.000They saw how disease wiped out their brethren from other nations.
00:12:37.000They knew That folks were coming to get them.
00:12:41.000And so that was their way of resisting being assimilated and having everything taken away from them.
00:12:49.000In the defense of the authors of those books, they did cover a lot of that.
00:12:53.000These books are in no way taking the side of the United States government.
00:12:58.000The most amazing thing about Empire of the Summer Moon was just how special the relationship that the Comanches had to the land and about how when...
00:13:17.000She's the photo out there of the woman that's breastfeeding her child.
00:13:20.000She was kidnapped when she was nine and assimilated with the Comanches.
00:13:24.000And then was re-kidnapped by the United States government when she was in her 30s and didn't want to go back.
00:13:30.000She missed the Comanche life and through her and through her depictions and her descriptions of the way they lived and the understanding of it, they got a better sense of like what she missed about that life and that they had an incredible relationship with the land.
00:13:50.000They just followed around the buffalo and they had In her way of looking at it, a magical existence in comparison to this really boring life that these settlers had.
00:14:04.000And when she looked at it, it was interesting because she was a girl who was born a white settler.
00:14:16.000And then, from the age of nine on, lived as a Comanche.
00:14:21.000So she had, like, sort of a view of both worlds.
00:14:24.000And, you know, she very much took the side of the Comanches.
00:15:36.000And I think one of the major issues that American Indians have Is that we're often stereotyped into this picture, and if we don't fit that, then we're not legitimately Indian.
00:15:51.000When you first met me, what did you think?
00:15:54.000Did you think, well, where's her brown skin?
00:16:18.000So blood quantum is an imposition from the federal government that has been used to weed out Native Americans.
00:16:29.000So the whole idea of US federal policy has been to assimilate Indians, to rid themselves of the Indian problem So that land and resources could be obtained, right?
00:16:44.000And so blood quantum was one way that the US government could do that.
00:16:49.000So if you didn't meet what they thought was some kind of purity test, then they could write you off, right?
00:16:56.000But that is not how many Indian nations view tribal citizenship or membership.
00:17:05.000It's through other types of cultural continuity, family relationships, and it's not about race.
00:18:36.000That doesn't exist, but there's some kind of fantasy or myth that many people in the U.S. kind of believe about Indians because we don't know.
00:18:49.000It's not like it's taught well in school.
00:18:51.000It's not like this is part of a normal dialogue.
00:18:55.000And can you correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe that it can really clearly identify what nation you're from.
00:19:04.000It can identify whether you have certain genetic traits that might be from North America, like Canada, or might be from South America as well, right?
00:19:41.000And so each one of those tribes have their own laws.
00:19:44.000They have their own systems of governance, their own – whether it's more a traditional form of government or a written constitutional government.
00:19:52.000And each one of them have their own eligibility requirements for citizenship.
00:19:59.000And then if you do find who you may be affiliated with, then you go to that nation and you talk to them about what their eligibility requirements are.
00:20:07.000Some of them are residency, some of them are familial relations, and some of them are blood quantum.
00:20:52.000And for others, whatever, Cherokee, what have you.
00:20:54.000A lot of people use Native American, and that's...
00:20:58.000That's a broad term because that really can define folks from south of the invisible border, north of the invisible border and in the western hemisphere.
00:22:00.000One of the things that I got out of this recent obsession with American Indian culture and these stories was realizing how little I knew about the history of this country.
00:22:13.000You might have a A basic understanding of what happened that you learned in school.
00:22:25.000And then upon reading these books, it made me realize, like, what happened here?
00:22:31.000What happened here over the course of a couple hundred years?
00:22:36.000Is almost unprecedented in history, like that this nation was conquered by all these invaders that just kept coming in, kept changing the rules, kept breaking treaties, making treaties, breaking treaties, wiping people out, calling things battles when they were really just massacres of women and children.
00:22:56.000I mean, there's some horrendous, horrendous stories of the justification of these massacres that were No different than any other horrific barbarian slaughter that you might have heard about in history that's looked down upon,
00:23:12.000but for years in this country they were taught as if they were actual battles.
00:23:17.000The history of this country in regards to the tribes and the American settlers and the soldiers is terrifying.
00:23:26.000It's terrifying that this just happened a couple of hundred years ago and that people are capable of these things and that the ancestors of these people are just roaming around today and that's what this country was founded on.
00:23:39.000This country was founded on massacres.
00:23:41.000And that policy has been studied by folks like Adolf Hitler and was even included.
00:23:48.000He talked about studying how the U.S. treated American Indians in his book Mein Kampf.
00:24:17.000I mean, since the 1600s, Europeans have been trying to educate us and assimilate us and civilize us.
00:24:28.000And have passed laws once the United States became a new country in the 1800s, passed laws to take our children and move them far away and punish them if they spoke their language, cut their hair,
00:24:45.000put them in these schools that were military-based.
00:24:49.000And they studied academics in the morning, and then they did trade in the afternoon, and those trades were to help pay for the schools.
00:25:01.000So they were basically indentured servants, slave labor, making sure that the school could have enough funds to pay for their own education.
00:25:15.000The boarding school history in the United States and Canada has horrendous, horrendous stories.
00:25:24.000And these schools were funded by the U.S. federal government.
00:25:29.000And the association and other groups are trying to get the United States to release records Jesus.
00:26:01.000Some of this work has been done at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, which is now owned by the Army Corps, Army Corps of Engineers.
00:26:11.000And there are some tribes that are trying to repatriate their children that are in graves there and bring them back home.
00:26:21.000So this has been a process all over the country, trying to figure out, you know, who these children were, where they belong, and to bring them home.
00:26:30.000And it's been a really difficult process for the organizations.
00:27:03.000Probably has mismanaged a lot of the records regarding these boarding schools.
00:27:09.000And there were different times, there have been different eras of Indian policy where the federal government was like, oh, wait, this isn't working.
00:27:16.000Let's get out of this business of teaching Indians.
00:28:04.000To try to heal from that trauma that's not just theirs, but it's this intergenerational historic trauma that has been with our communities for a couple hundred years now.
00:28:18.000So there are a lot of stories like that.
00:28:21.000And this, again, this is US federal policy.
00:28:30.000While the US was building the reservation system and putting tribes kind of in these blockades, if you did not send your child to school, you weren't given rations.
00:28:45.000If you practiced your culture, You could be killed for practicing your culture, using your language, because this was the assimilation policy of the day.
00:28:59.000And this happened, I would say, 1850, 1870s through the 1920s.
00:29:06.000There was this horrific period of federal Indian policy of Trying to do away with language, communal-type living, cultural practices and religion.
00:29:20.000So this isn't just, you know, gun warfare.
00:29:24.000This has been a continuing policy that even affects us today.
00:29:30.000So it was gun warfare until they got the Indians to move into the reservation, and then it was basically an annihilation of the culture.
00:29:58.000When you hear them talk about it, especially because it's coming from the words of Black Elk, who was a guy that was there with the Battle of Little Bighorn.
00:30:07.000And then from then, now is an older man talking about what his experiences have been like.
00:30:31.000And most treaties had some similar language.
00:30:35.000A lot of them talked about they had bad man provisions.
00:30:39.000So bad man provisions were basically if our men, the U.S., if our men come into your jurisdiction and do something bad, we'll take care of it for you.
00:30:51.000You know, just some simple provisions like that, but that never was enforced.
00:30:58.000The U.S. let their people come in and take over what were supposed to be protective areas of land.
00:31:17.000A lot of beautiful provisions that tribes still talk about today, you know, as long as the grass grows and, you know, we'll have our lands.
00:31:27.000And none of these provisions were ever.
00:31:32.000And a lot of the East Coast tribes, their boundaries were changed and new treaties were made and accepted and removal happened and then there were new treaties and nothing was ever maintained.
00:33:17.000I think there were like 19 million acres that were removed this way of land.
00:33:23.000But what happened today, there is a criminal case before the Supreme Court that is actually addressing these issues because Even though our lands were allotted, the exterior boundaries of our reservations,
00:33:38.000the area that we had agreed to live in, they've never been extinguished.
00:33:46.000And so the Supreme Court is actually looking at this issue now as to whether we still have jurisdiction within the exterior boundaries of our reservations in Oklahoma.
00:34:28.000But what would actually happen, there's a lot of places in Indian country where there's allotment and there's non-Indian individuals who have fee land within the exterior boundaries of reservations and then individual Indians owning fee land within the exterior boundaries of reservations.
00:35:20.000So they own it, but they can't sell it without U.S. permission, right?
00:35:27.000Trust land is similar and it's treated the same as restricted fee, but it's held in trust.
00:35:32.000So the U.S. has more control of what happens on that land or has been seen to have a little more control than it would in just restricted fee.
00:35:43.000But within the exterior boundaries of the reservation, you can have this checkerboarded ownership of land of non-Indians and Indians, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the tribe has jurisdiction over the non-Indian fee land.
00:36:02.000And the civil and criminal jurisdiction issues On an area of land like that is extremely complex and continues to be argued in the courts.
00:36:18.000And most of the time, our jurisdiction...
00:36:22.000Most of the time we lose those cases, especially since...
00:36:31.000The 80s and 90s and up until today, there was really a change in kind of how the Supreme Court decided Indian law cases.
00:36:42.000So if we go back into the history of federal Indian policy, you see this kind of weird schizophrenic Those Marshall cases that I talked about, they really set forward kind of schizophrenic principles that Indians are sovereign but they're just a ward and they're uncivilized.
00:37:03.000So we have to take care of them but they're sovereign.
00:37:06.000And so you have at different eras of time policymakers who support tribal sovereignty and will use those cases to help support that sovereignty.
00:37:17.000And then there are other administrations that come around, not talking about any current administration, but that use those cases against us.
00:37:31.000And degrade policy and degrade any kind of rights that we may have gained in other eras.
00:37:38.000So it's really been, you know, Indians today live in this We live in such an insecure world.
00:37:48.000You know, our statistics are horrible.
00:37:50.000You know, the suicide rate for our youth, our high school graduates, everything that you could possibly think of that there's a statistic on, we're usually the lowest, we're the worst.
00:38:04.000And it's because we live in a society that is constantly changing.
00:38:08.000We can never depend on whether or not our rights are secured, whether or not we're going to have land, jobs, be able to practice our culture.
00:38:21.000There were periods of time in our history where people would steal our religious objects.
00:38:35.000There's a law called the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act that was meant to repatriate those stolen items and those stolen ancestors back to tribes so that we could help with our cultural revitalization as well as put our ancestors back to rest.
00:38:56.000There are still at least 200,000 ancestors in boxes and museums.
00:39:05.000That's just in the US. 200,000 in museums in the US? Just in the US. So our ancestors and our cultural items and religious objects have also been taken all around the world.
00:39:33.000French love to auction our sacred objects for some reason.
00:39:37.000There was a sacred shield of the Pueblo of Acoma in about 2016 that was being sold at auction in France.
00:39:52.000And the Pueblo fought and even went to court in France to try to stop that auction and get that item back because there was evidence that it had been stolen in contemporary times.
00:40:08.000And France said, you don't have standing in our courts.
00:40:13.000So even though they're considered sovereign or a pseudo-sovereign nation here in the United States, we didn't have standing in the French court and couldn't protect that item this way.
00:40:25.000So we had to use other means of negotiation and arm twisting.
00:40:32.000That item has finally been repatriated, but it took It took about four years for that to happen.
00:41:02.000And the association we were fighting with the Metropolitan Museum of Art last year and the year before because they were displaying items from a private collection that were sacred.
00:41:16.000One item was even a funerary object, was an item that is never supposed to be seen because it's buried with the ancestor.
00:41:30.000And without any kind of consultation with the tribes affected, It's horrendous the way we still look at Indian people and our cultures and our practices today.
00:41:48.000There was an article, I think just last week, there was a religious man saying that we're heathens because we The sage that I gave you, because we burn sage as one of our medicinal and spiritual practices.
00:42:07.000That was the reason why they were calling you heathens?
00:42:09.000Yeah, and this was just in an article last week from a Christian group.
00:42:20.000It seems like the issue of what we were talking about with youth suicide, high school graduation, drug addiction, all those problems, those are the most massive ones.
00:42:36.000And what could be done to try to mitigate these problems?
00:42:43.000Like, if you had a magic wand, and, I mean, it's been...
00:42:47.000I mean, if you talk about Native American reservations in this country, people talk about poverty, they talk about drug addiction and alcoholism, they talk about despair.
00:42:56.000I mean, this is something that was also brought up in the book Black Elk, so this seems to be something that started when they were forced into reservations in the first place, and then were ashamed of their heritage because of the fact they were subjugated by these, I mean,
00:43:12.000whatever you want to call them, The soldiers, the military.
00:43:26.000Well, there's no quick fix to issues like that and people have been trying to work with tribes regarding poverty and addiction and schools.
00:44:15.000But what also really needs to happen is we need to bring people like you along with us.
00:44:23.000So we need, if we can't clear away the myths that Euro America or white America, whatever you want to call it, If we can't clear away those myths that we continually face every day,
00:44:41.000every time I go into Washington, D.C., damn it, every time I go into the Wegmans, there's a big Washington football team Tostitos potato chips with the Washington football team name on there.
00:45:36.000Indian skins or scalps that have been taken from Indian people.
00:45:46.000It's an offensive—it's not just derogatory or demeaning, but it's— We should be really clear what you're saying when you're saying skins and scalps.
00:46:13.000The majority of people are not talking to someone who's deeply ingrained in Native American issues and culture like you are.
00:46:20.000So you could explain to us that, you know, it makes sense.
00:46:27.000Think about some derogatory term for someone I mean, even if it was kind of derogatory, like if they were called the Washington Krauts and it was all based on Germans, a lot of German people would probably be really pissed off at that.
00:47:06.000And there's been really a movement with high school, colleges, and I don't know the status of any, you know, as far as NFL or national teams.
00:47:21.000Syracuse University had a derogatory mascot that they changed some years back because of the tribes there that are now in the state of New York fought for that.
00:49:02.000To many of us, you would think it would open up a dialogue about Indian people and whether we're going to choose to do something different with this history because it is our history.
00:49:38.000It's crazy that it took so long to figure out that he was a sociopath and a murderer.
00:49:43.000I mean, when you read the accounts of the different religious people that were traveling with Columbus that wrote, I forget what they were, what their designation was, but there was one journal that detailed what they did to Native American babies,
00:50:03.000And shatter their heads on rocks and cut people's arms off if they didn't bring their weight in gold to them.
00:50:09.000I mean, horrific, horrific tales of torture and murder.
00:50:13.000And it's like, how is this the guy that we have a day off for?
00:50:18.000You realize, well, Columbus was a conqueror.
00:50:20.000I mean, he was just a symbol of the times.
00:50:25.0001492 was a brutal time in human history.
00:50:28.000And when they arrived, I mean, they really didn't even arrive here, but when they arrived wherever they did arrive, it was the worst thing that could have ever possibly happened to the people that were already living there.
00:50:39.000And that this guy is somehow or another, you know, a part of our folklore.
00:50:44.000You know, 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue and all that nonsense.
00:50:48.000And meanwhile, he's a fucking murderer.
00:50:50.000And it's kind of crazy that they knew this, but it took until now.
00:50:56.000I mean, didn't they change it to Indigenous Peoples Day?
00:50:58.000Well, there are still cities, counties, states that are still in the process of changing that.
00:53:18.000But what's interesting in these states like Indiana and Ohio where indigenous peoples have just been Removed wholeheartedly is that tons of archaeologists and other people that like to loot,
00:53:35.000they have taken so many things out of the ground.
00:53:40.000There was a case that the FBI actually got a hold of in Indiana, a gentleman by the name of Don Miller, who had a huge ranch house and farm, and it was just Full of Native American artifacts including human remains and there were even items from other countries that he had looted and taken.
00:54:07.000And the FBI actually investigated that and because the man was like 90 years old, they didn't prosecute him but they were able to Take back those items and through that Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act,
00:54:24.000they've been consulting with tribes to repatriate those items back.
00:54:28.000But that looting and collecting in areas like Indiana and Ohio and other places...
00:54:32.000Jamie actually has it up on the screen here.
00:54:34.000FBI finds 2,000 human bones among antiquities seized from man's home.
00:54:39.000So where did this gentleman get all this stuff?
00:54:42.000His collection was Native American, including the bone.
00:54:45.000Tim Carpenter of the FBI told media outlets that half it.
00:54:49.000Miller reportedly admitted he'd conducted illegal digging expeditions, but he'd never faced criminal charges before his death in 2015. So this guy was just digging stuff up and just showing it around his house.
00:55:44.000But just in state private lands, it's really dependent on what the state laws are and it's really inconsistent whether looting is protected or not.
00:56:00.000So that's where it's interesting because there's a lot of gigantic ranches in Texas that are privately owned that were originally Native American hunting grounds.
00:56:10.000There's ones that a friend of mine has hunted on that they have these pictographs.
00:56:15.000You go inside these caves and this is on private land.
00:56:36.000And people get real angry when Indians try to get involved in where there may be developments that will have an effect on a burial site, a sacred site,
00:56:56.000And so it's really hard for tribes to work to protect these areas, work to learn about what the areas are even about.
00:57:07.000There's been so much amateur archaeology, and this whole country was founded on amateur archaeology.
00:57:16.000Dig up a look at what we found in this grave.
00:57:19.000Everyone was looking for gold and other special things and oftentimes they just took whatever was in the grave and created the antiquities art market, which still is all over the world today.
00:57:35.000So the association is constantly looking at auctions and trying to return items that That private collectors have obtained improperly.
00:57:45.000We just got a human vertebra removed from a U.S. auction just a couple of weeks ago.
00:57:54.000They were selling it because they said it had an arrow point still in, you know, so that has value in some markets.
00:58:08.000And they had done DNA on this to prove that...
00:58:11.000No, they were selling it as a Native American vertebra.
00:58:15.000It was from a collector in Massachusetts.
00:58:20.000Well, how could they prove that it wasn't just a settler that was killed by an arrow?
00:58:27.000That's the thing about trying to work with auctions and private collectors is they often don't want to work with us because they're trying to make money.
00:58:36.000So oftentimes items, whether they're religious objects or human remains, they have a story or what's called a provenance associated with them that is often made up to drive the price of the item.
00:58:51.000So whether that was a legitimate vertebrae of a Native American, we don't know because we can't get that collector to talk to us.
00:58:58.000So the collector is under no obligation by law to talk to you?
00:59:04.000No, that's why we try to send the FBI and our friend Tim Carpenter to them.
00:59:51.000And the universities involved in the Army Corps who – We're good to go.
01:00:14.000Native Americans fought to get that ancestor, the ancient one, back.
01:00:19.000And finally, after a court case that deemed the item wasn't – that the ancestor wasn't Native American, DNA test was done and it was indeed Native American and the ancestor was finally repatriated.
01:00:59.000So let's look at the best case scenario.
01:01:03.000And a lot of museums have maintained records that may have human remains and associated funerary objects and have enough information to know where that came from, what site it was located at,
01:01:20.000And we know from tribal histories as well as federal U.S. documentation that that area was likely affiliated with, you know, this tribe or that tribe or maybe several tribes.
01:01:36.000And so consultation occurs under that law about those ancestral remains and funerary objects and it's determined where those items should go back.
01:01:49.000In the worst case scenario where there's not Any information, oftentimes evidence of, well, who were the collectors that were giving to that institution?
01:02:03.000What has been the history of the institution and where has it obtained different collections?
01:02:08.000And through that, you know, it's deduced who may be affiliated with those items or the ancestors.
01:02:18.000So it can be a pretty long, drawn out process.
01:02:22.000But what's interesting about it is museums and other institutions fought this law for a long time.
01:02:31.000And they said, well, you know, all of our collections will, you know, we won't be able to fulfill our purpose as a museum or an academic institution to study these things.
01:02:41.000It's like, well, hell, you haven't studied it in 100 years.
01:05:34.000But – But it is one of those things where it's like, okay, I gotta get it, right?
01:05:40.000So if you have the bones of Sitting Bull on display in some sort of a plexiglass case in a museum, and people are like, oh, wow, that's cool.
01:05:49.000Okay, would that be cool if that was Ronald Reagan?
01:05:52.000Would that be cool if that was someone from our lifetime that died?
01:06:34.000Can you go to Kennewick Man again and find out what the date is?
01:06:38.000I'm just curious as to what the date is of his demise, like what they date his skeleton back to.
01:06:47.000This is something that someone actually had brought up to me that there are many Native American cultures that don't believe the story of people coming across the Bering Land Bridge from Asia.
01:07:51.000He also wrote a book called Red Earth, White Lies, and he talks about Western science and its arrogance of creating these theories like the Bering Strait land bridge and never really considering – never going and asking indigenous peoples about Well,
01:08:24.000what is the story that most Native Americans accept?
01:08:27.000Is it the idea that they came from a bunch of different places?
01:08:45.000So being birthed out of the ground in a certain area.
01:08:49.000And then there's another migration story.
01:08:51.000So a lot of – I have one elder said, okay, you want to hear an origin story.
01:08:59.000Do you want the – The 5,000-year version, the 20,000-year version, the 40,000-year version.
01:09:04.000And he would go into the story about how many people in the southwest and southeast and up into the northeast actually came from the south and were slaves of Aztec and other civilizations down south that had been released and began migrating up through the north.
01:09:26.000And there are other stories that have us come from other places by boat.
01:09:35.000I mean, there were also great canoe and water fairs.
01:10:09.000And he talks about how there's theories of trees and horses at a certain period of time that migrated back and forth among the land bridge and how that could have occurred and how sometimes it doesn't seem quite logical.
01:11:12.000But the way the theory began, it was just a very small group of scientists who – Made a determination that this was the way that the Western Hemisphere was populated and what a lot of indigenous scholars contemplated was that was an easy way to basically Devalue our place in the Western Hemisphere.
01:11:42.000That we came from somewhere else, yes.
01:11:45.000The science behind it is that the oceans were lower.
01:11:49.000The oceans were lower during the Ice Age.
01:11:51.000And they believe that that area between Asia and North America was not just like a land bridge, but was a land mass that was populated with animals.
01:12:04.000And that it would have been a natural progression for human beings to make their way across that.
01:12:20.000So he did DNA tests on Native Americans and find out that they actually came from Siberia.
01:12:25.000That's one of the scientific substantiations of the land mass theory.
01:12:30.000But there are other migrations that are still left untested.
01:12:33.000I'm 100% convinced that people have been traveling the world.
01:12:38.000I mean, just like the Polynesians landed in Hawaii.
01:12:41.000People have done wild shit from the beginning of time.
01:12:45.000I mean, there's so many confusing artifacts and things in North America and South America, particularly the Olmecs, I believe are somewhere in the neighborhood of 6,000 years old that have very African-looking faces in their carvings or at least very thick lips and thick faces.
01:13:30.000But we have a tendency to take a few facts that we understand from science or a few sites that we're able to find.
01:13:38.000This happens a lot in North America and then base a theory on it without really critical investigation and not getting all the facts.
01:13:46.000And so that's what indigenous peoples have been left out of those stories, have been left out of Haven't been at the table to have those discussions about what they understand to be true about certain areas.
01:13:58.000Here's where my question's coming from.
01:13:59.000Is it offensive because the insinuation is that Native American people aren't really American anyway?
01:14:07.000They came from somewhere else as well?
01:14:09.000That everybody came from somewhere else?
01:14:11.000They just were here a little bit earlier so it's not theirs?
01:14:18.000You know, we've always been considered an inferior race, right?
01:14:23.000And the fact that we're still left out of decision-making about our own lands and our own rights and our own sacred spaces, we're still left out of decision-making.
01:14:39.000Our ideas are not even considered in science.
01:14:42.000They're not considered in journalism, they're not considered in medicine, or they're not considered...
01:14:49.000In what way they're not considered in science?
01:14:54.000There's traditional environmental knowledge That a lot of people who deal in environmental protection have utilized to help protect large areas,
01:15:16.000and it has to do with how different How different flora and fauna work together as a collective versus oftentimes in our Western way of thinking,
01:15:33.000we kill all the wolves or we kill all the predators.
01:15:37.000We get rid of all these plants and animals that used to all work together and Symbiotically in order to create a healthy environment and there's really important traditional environmental knowledge by many wisdom keepers across Native America that are trying to re-implement the
01:16:07.000things that have gone wrong in their environments and trying to replace what has been screwed up.
01:16:13.000When you hear an origin story like the one where you were talking about people coming out of the earth, how do you decipher that?
01:16:24.000Well, I've actually been to that origin site and It looks like a female.
01:19:29.000And we haven't been able to do what we were put here to do.
01:19:33.000Our purpose has been ripped away from us.
01:19:36.000So a lot of the work we do is to try to work towards environmental healing and try to Bring lands back into our landholding so that we can caretake for that land.
01:21:09.000How do you clear up all these problems associated with the...
01:21:15.000I mean, the horrific treatment, everything from alcoholism to the problems with schools to self-esteem issues, all these problems in North America, while also not...
01:21:31.000The Native Americans, the way I'm looking at it, they want to stay a member of their tribe and they don't necessarily want to be just Americans.
01:21:41.000They want to keep their heritage, right?
01:21:59.000Well, that's a freaking complicated-ass question that you just freaking ask.
01:22:05.000Even with a magic wand, I'm not quite...
01:22:08.000But it's a process, and part of it is these myths that we have to correct and that we have to find a new way to be able to tell our stories.
01:22:21.000And not rely on non-Indian authors to tell our stories, but you need to hear our stories from us.
01:22:31.000We need to be able to tell our stories and to reteach the general public about who Native Americans are, where we've been, and where we want to go.
01:24:16.000And after investigation, it was found that it wasn't just happening at Spirit Lake, but it was happening all over Indian country where state welfare workers were taking Indian children in a disproportionate rate.
01:24:33.000A quarter of all Indian children during that period of time were taken away from their own families and adopted out to white families.
01:24:43.000And so the Indian Child Welfare Act required state courts to do things before a child was taken away from its tribal nation.
01:24:54.000There are groups now that are working to dismantle that act.
01:25:08.000So it's like they've taken it and are looking through a backwards mirror.
01:25:15.000So instead of it being an act that was passed to protect our children and to make sure that children had ties to their culture and their families, they're saying that that's not in the best interest of children.
01:25:32.000So they're still looking at Indian tribes as we can't take care of our own kids, that our way of life is not acceptable and other adoptive families would be better.
01:25:47.000And what's interesting is that the Indian Child Welfare Act doesn't prevent non-Indian families from adopting children.
01:25:54.000It just requires a certain process to make sure that the affiliated tribal nation is involved In that placement and adoption process so that the child can maintain those connections or that they try to find a family that's more culturally appropriate for the child.
01:26:17.000So there's just been, actually it came out of the Goldwater Institute, which is a Goldwater, when he was a, what was he, a senator?
01:26:27.000He actually voted for the Indian Child Welfare Act, but today the Goldwater Institute is actually funding cases around the nation to attack the Indian Child Welfare Act.
01:26:40.000I mean, what are they trying to achieve?
01:26:42.000They say it's not in the best interest of Indian children.
01:26:45.000And even though there are child welfare organizations around the country that say the Indian Child Welfare Act is actually the gold standard in child welfare and that we should be utilizing those principles that are used in the Indian Child Welfare Act to protect all children to maintain familial connections.
01:27:04.000When I'm asking you this in terms of like if you had a magic wand, what do you do?
01:27:08.000The reason why I'm asking you this is because I've thought about it.
01:27:11.000I've sat down and tried to go over it myself and I don't see a solution.
01:27:16.000What's so strange to me is that we have nations inside of our nation and I don't want to end it.
01:28:15.000Like, I understand that these people have been massively fucked over, that genocide was perpetrated on their race, that they were wiped out both with disease and by military actions and soldiers and treaties were broken.
01:28:33.000The state they're in right now, when you look at what we're talking about with these reservations, the horrific conditions and the problems with drug abuse and alcoholism and suicide and despair and self-esteem and all these issues, what is the solution?
01:28:50.000If there was an unlimited budget, what would you do?
01:28:54.000If it's President Shannon, if you got elected, you could win, right?
01:29:02.000So if you won and you became the president and you ran on part of what your platform was, was fixing this gigantic sore that we have in this country, our relationship with the tribes, what would you do?
01:29:34.000I think if we're properly educated about history, I think if we really understand who Native people are and their importance here and their importance to continue as sovereign tribal nations And it has to start with public education.
01:29:59.000We have to recreate what's important to us here.
01:30:05.000And I think Indian nations have been here.
01:30:11.000I think they're a symbol of amazing prosperity that the country could have, and we've just never tapped into it.
01:30:20.000And I'm talking about just principles and values that we don't seem to hold anymore in this country.
01:30:30.000Appreciation of nature and our symbiotic relationship with it.
01:30:34.000I feel like you're kind of being sarcastic.
01:30:56.000And we're so interrelated to everything that happens on this earth.
01:31:03.000And we don't look seven generations ahead of us to see what our decisions today are going to do to us in the future.
01:31:14.000We're constantly looking for the dollar today and how that's going to reward our efforts today.
01:31:20.000And we're not looking how, you know, what the lives of our children are going to look like, what the lives of our great-great-grandchildren are going to look like.
01:31:30.000And I think those are the kind of values that we need in our country now.
01:31:34.000And I think that's what's being debated in the Democratic campaign right now.
01:32:02.000And it seems like corporate's winning, even though their spokesperson could barely talk, which is hilarious.
01:32:08.000I mean, it just shows you how strong money and media and the influence of the DNC is.
01:32:14.000What would all this education do, though, in explaining to people to...
01:32:20.000The American citizens that are outside the tribes, how is that going to help the tribes themselves?
01:32:25.000What could be done to help these problems that we've already detailed, the problems with alcoholism, the problems with suicide and despair and self-esteem, all these horrific conditions that exist on many, many tribes?
01:32:37.000Well, part of that is not anyone's problem but ours.
01:32:43.000That we have to deal with as sovereign nations within our own communities and how we choose to fix those issues.
01:32:51.000But I think looking outside how we can really affect change, there's something called prior and informed consent.
01:33:04.000And it's contained within the UN Declaration of Indigenous Peoples.
01:33:10.000And it requires a state or a government to include tribal nations in the decision-making processes that affect them.
01:33:22.000So this administration has been horrible at it, absolutely horrible at it.
01:33:29.000The Obama administration was much better.
01:33:32.000But we need to be part, we need to be the decision makers in the things that affect us.
01:33:39.000So if you are going to bulldoze and blow up our sacred sites to build your border wall, It seems like the proper thing to do first would be to have a conversation with us and for us to make a decision about how we can do that a little bit better to protect those sacred sites and natural springs and other things along the border instead of just blowing up everything.
01:34:06.000Where was the situation that was happening during the Obama administration where they were trying to put a pipeline through and they were hosing people down and it was on private land and they were going through private land and people were protesting it but they were forcing it through anyway.
01:35:47.000I don't know, but that administration really did a lot of work in Indian Country that had never been done before and they actually were looking to tribes and building a government to government relationship that no one had ever really done as well.
01:36:08.000Every year they would hold a big tribal consultation in D.C. where tribal leaders would come from everywhere.
01:36:15.000And consult with Obama and his administration.
01:36:20.000It was really unprecedented and it was a really happy time.
01:36:28.000And as soon as Trump got into office, The doors closed.
01:36:35.000So even though he appointed Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, Tara Sweeney, who's Alaska Native, that administration in the Department of Interior and under the president has just been so closed.
01:36:54.000It's been hard to get anything done or to get heard or even actually have that government-to-government relationship anymore.
01:37:01.000We've been left out of a lot of the decision-making process that's going on all over Indian Country.
01:37:09.000Well, that's a very good thing to hear about Obama that he did that.
01:37:14.000It's sad to hear that the Trump administration has abandoned that, but it's nice to hear that someone was making an attempt to do that.
01:37:22.000So what I'm getting is that there really is no...
01:37:34.000I think there's a lot of solutions and a lot of moving parts.
01:37:42.000Indian nations need to determine for themselves how best to handle the problems within their communities, but outward facing to have a strong government-to-government relationship that takes into account, not just takes into account,
01:37:58.000but actually requires the prior and informed consent of those tribal nations before affecting their rights or Or at least some diplomacy or negotiation with varying interests before decisions are made.
01:38:16.000I think that's the heart of what needs to happen outward facing.
01:38:21.000And also we need to take a new look at our curriculum in schools.
01:38:27.000All of our curriculum in public schools is about looking at Native American pre-1900.
01:38:36.000So, and not carrying that into today and who contemporary Native American tribes are and what they're doing to help their people and what's so wonderful about Indian country today is that though there are some places that are still,
01:38:58.000there are some anti-Indian hate groups out there that fight tooth and nail against anything a tribe in their area tries to do to develop economically.
01:39:10.000There are other communities where tribes have been able to bring in economic development, whether that's through gaming or otherwise.
01:39:18.000And by the way, Indian gaming is like no other type of corporate gaming.
01:39:24.000And I think a lot of people don't understand this.
01:39:27.000Go to Indian casinos because that money goes towards Indian nation governance.
01:40:05.000I mean if you look at – so Oklahoma – the state of Oklahoma is fighting Indian nations in Oklahoma about gaming, trying to get more money out of gaming.
01:40:17.000But Oklahoma tribes have brought in tons of money.
01:40:25.000100,000 jobs have been created in casino and other economic development.
01:40:33.000Trevor Burrus So who's fighting it and why?
01:41:16.000Federal Indian law, I mean, it has its own 25 U.S.C., this huge code of stuff, man.
01:41:24.000But the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed because Indians were finding success doing gaming and states were getting pissed off because they were doing it without any interference, which is their inherent sovereignty to do so.
01:41:42.000So this act came, which was kind of a compromise where tribes can do what's called Class 2 gaming, which is based on bingo.
01:41:53.000And there's electronic bingo games that are kind of like slot machines.
01:41:58.000So tribes can do Class 2 gaming without any interference with the state.
01:42:03.000But if they do Class 3 gaming, that's card games and other types Then the state, they have to work with the state in order to develop some kind of compact and revenue sharing for Class III gaming.
01:42:18.000So the state, the federal government again allowed state to interfere with that inherent tribal sovereignty to regulate their own economic development.
01:42:28.000Yeah, that's an issue with all of these Native American casinos, isn't it?
01:42:33.000They don't get the full Vegas treatment.
01:42:35.000They can't have all the games that Vegas can have.
01:43:25.000So if someone breaks the law in a Native American reservation, they're under the federal government's guidelines or the state government's laws.
01:43:35.000The tribe does not have criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians.
01:43:39.000So if someone comes in and robs a casino, then the state has to take care of it.
01:46:53.000So when you look at that situation, the casino situation, where now all of a sudden economically these tribes can thrive and the reservation that owns that casino can thrive, and as you're saying,
01:47:09.000the money goes straight back to the reservation and to the people that run it, and it legitimately helps the people that live on that reservation, correct?
01:47:22.000What other things like that can be done to also take advantage of the fact that they're a sovereign nation and allow them to economically thrive without things like fracking and shit that's bad for the environment?
01:47:35.000Are there other things that are being implemented that could also help?
01:47:40.000There are all different types of economic development going on in Indian country that can be very successful for external businesses too because there are certain benefits that an outside business would get if they did, for example,
01:47:58.000Within Indian Country, they could benefit from certain tax exemptions and rebates that they wouldn't get in a state.
01:48:12.000So if corporations would go into Indian Country instead of going across the border or going somewhere else, There would be great opportunities, and some tribes are taking advantage of those business opportunities,
01:48:30.000not just gaming, but out of gaming has grown a lot of investment, a lot of entrepreneurship in tribes, and a lot of the money has gone back to help educate and teach language and bring items back that are religious items and And ancestors and the things that are important for that tribal nation.
01:48:57.000So there's many different ways of investment that tribal nations look at.
01:49:05.000And it's not necessarily economic, but it's about healing their people and helping us survive and live better than we have in the past.
01:49:17.000So investment takes many forms in Indian country.
01:49:21.000Are there any good documentaries that can educate people on the reality of what happened to the Native American tribes?
01:49:32.000Because it seems like it's one of the best ways for people to absorb information and get people excited about things because it kind of entertains them as well as educates them.
01:49:41.000Is there anything that you can recommend?
01:49:44.000So much has been produced I think PBS has put on some really good – I mean if you look at PBS, even now there are some great stories that are being told.
01:50:11.000But it's got to be done in Indian country and it's got to be done with Indian country because so much has been done without us and without our even input.
01:50:23.000So much research and kind of one-sided storytelling.
01:50:32.000It doesn't have the cultural competency.
01:50:33.000It doesn't have the real-life lived experience and the flavor, I guess, for lack of a better word, to tell these stories properly.
01:50:43.000Ideally, when you look at the future of Native American tribes in the United States, and again, as you said, Native Americans that are in these reservations are United States citizens.
01:50:54.000But it's such an unusual situation that really we only have a comparison to Canada with their First Nations.
01:51:04.000What do you think happens in the future?
01:51:07.000When you go from 1900, you were talking about the past of 1900 to today, it's an abysmal 120 years, other than the economic success of the casinos.
01:51:18.000What do you anticipate happening in the next 100 years?
01:51:26.000I know a lot of tribes have been diversifying their economic development.
01:51:33.000Without our cultures, we won't survive.
01:51:36.000In fact, many elders, and you may have read it in Black Elk Speaks, that we're no longer who we are without our culture, without our languages, and likely we'll no longer be recognized by the federal government unless we are Indian enough.
01:51:56.000You know, so those things are really important to who we are in the next hundred years.
01:52:02.000And I think it's those things that we will be rebuilding over the next hundred years.
01:52:07.000Healing from the last and moving forward with a newfound understanding of who we are and a stronger identity and self.
01:52:19.000What that actually looks like and what's important, I think that We are still so dependent on the Great White Father and what happens with U.S. politics and whether we have a voice there or not.
01:52:37.000We've got great organizations that help advocate for Indian country in general.
01:52:43.000There's the National Congress of American Indians.
01:52:46.000Which has been around for about 75 years and it helps lobby and educate Congress and keeps tribes informed about what's going on in politics and advocate for many of those interests.
01:53:04.000There are groups like ours that are advocating for more cultural revitalization and strengthening identity and protecting our youth.
01:53:17.000So I think part of what we've been building is really a coalition of organizations and tribes to strengthen who we are and kind of correct the misfortunes of our history.
01:53:40.000We still have tribal nations out there that are living with egregious poverty and issues that still seem so far away from being corrected.
01:53:55.000But, you know, like my grandma always said, where there's life, there's hope.
01:54:00.000So I think we just continue to, I mean, we've freaking survived for this long and this coronavirus isn't going to take us out either.
01:54:09.000I mean, we're going to continue to push forward and try to have a better future for our kids, just like anybody else.
01:54:52.000I mean, whether you agree with walls and border walls, we're not looking at them as something...
01:55:01.000We're looking at them as another country.
01:55:02.000We don't look at Native Americans the same way we look at...
01:55:07.000Maybe it's because you're also United States citizens, We don't look at them the same way we have the same, like, the respect for people that live in a sovereign nation, another sovereign nation.
01:55:22.000Even though this is a sovereign nation inside of our nation, it doesn't, I think you would agree, it doesn't get the same respect that other sovereign nations do.
01:55:32.000Is there a great record, like a written record, of all of the origin stories like you were talking to me about and all of the various languages?
01:55:43.000I mean, is all this documented to make sure that we don't lose this?
01:55:48.000Some better than others, and a lot of that is done...
01:55:57.000There's no big text that I can give you and share with you that here's all what you ever needed to know about Indians.
01:56:10.000I think that's up to the tribal nation to decide whether they want to share that and how to best educate people about who they are.
01:56:22.000And that's what so many other people have told our stories and have taken down those histories and those people are telling the stories from a Western perspective and not having the cultural competency.
01:56:42.000And having lived and implemented that way of life.
01:56:48.000So it's really dependent on the tribes to determine for themselves how they want to put that forward.
01:56:54.000There are many tribes that actually have research protocols.
01:56:57.000If you want to study, you want to research, you have to get authority from the tribal nation to do that.
01:57:05.000And they have to have a say in whether it was done appropriately.
01:57:12.000So, again, it's back to us telling our own stories, us being part of our own narratives, and us being part of the decision-making that affects us.
01:57:29.000What I meant was, inside the tribe, is there a documented Version of all these stories and of the language so they can be passed down.
01:57:40.000The real concern seems to be when you're talking about these incredibly impoverished communities, the real concern is that some of these stories may be lost or some of the language may even be lost.
01:58:46.000Yeah, I mean, there's amazing histories and stories out there, but what happened with their languages is in the 80s and 90s, the Smithsonian had all these wax cylinders of Tribal languages and songs and dances.
01:59:06.000And they started repatriating those back to different tribal nations.
01:59:10.000So when the Chittimacha got these wax cylinders, they're like, oh, we have a responsibility here.
01:59:17.000And so they pulled their community together and everyone got their grandmas and their aunties and everyone to pull together words that they knew, stories that they knew, different cultural practices and building and crafting and all of those things.
01:59:38.000They pulled all that together with the wax cylinders.
01:59:40.000They got some money from Rosetta Stone and recreated their language that had been lost.
01:59:49.000And today in their schools, in their tribally run schools, they speak their language.
01:59:56.000Those children are speaking their language from kindergarten up.
02:00:01.000So an incredible success story, and they were able to do that because they had gaming revenue to help support that.
02:00:09.000And when you go to the school and when you hear the story about how that happened, it's incredible.
02:00:17.000So there are stories like that among all tribes of how they've been able to recover from what was lost.
02:00:26.000And so it's a long process to correct.
02:00:30.000What has happened, but there are warriors all over Indian Country and that's what they're doing every day is trying to recover what was lost.
02:00:43.000Well, that's a great success story and it's beautiful to hear.
02:00:48.000I just hope that that can continue with all the different stories.
02:00:54.000When you read books about Native American culture and you just get sort of like the most surface taste of what it must have been like, it seems like there's this incredibly rich history that could Could be lost in time.
02:01:09.000And that would be a horrible, horrible shame.
02:01:12.000It's right here in front of us and it's here right now.
02:01:15.000And the fact that someone like you worked so hard to get this message out here and to let people know what is actually happening and the plight of these American Indians and the tribes and what they're still going through today.
02:01:30.000This is not a battle that happened in the 1800s.
02:01:33.000This is a battle that's happening today.
02:01:57.000So, like I said, there's that law, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, that requires any institution that received federal funding or federal agencies to work towards repatriation of items that they've received over time.
02:02:19.000But there are also tons of ancestors and items in international museums.
02:02:26.000So we're working on developing strategies to go after those because a lot of those countries, there has been kind of a...
02:02:36.000A rethinking about the purpose of museums and public education regarding indigenous peoples and how do we decolonize these institutions.
02:02:48.000And so we're trying to work – and some countries are easier than others because if you have – Sacred religious items from American indigenous societies in some museums across the waters.
02:03:07.000Their country considers it their cultural property.
02:03:11.000So you need an act of their country's government in order to deaccession those items and return them home.
02:03:19.000So there are some countries that are much more difficult to work with than others, but we're in the process of developing strategy to help with international repatriation.
02:03:31.000We're also trying to watch private collectors and educate people about the importance of returning cultural patrimony and other sacred items that they've Received over time, whether or not there's a legal obligation to do,
02:03:48.000there's definitely an ethical and moral obligation to return these items so that cultures can be revitalized and that those items can be put back to use.
02:04:00.000We have a repatriation conference every year that we work together with tribes and institutions and foreign governments to work on these issues.
02:04:12.000I just was before the Indigenous Peoples Subcommittee in the House a few weeks ago talking about what's going on at the border and the Tohono O'odham chairman was there as well to talk about those issues.
02:04:28.000And as he spoke, he was telling the Congress representatives that He just found out that they were blowing up another section.
02:04:42.000And that is happening because there was a law in 2005 that allowed Department of Homeland Security to waive all these environmental laws and if there was an emergency to do so.
02:04:54.000And so the administration is saying that the border wall is an emergency that allows them to waive all these environmental laws.
02:05:02.000And so it's not just about protecting sacred sites, but all the other environmental concerns, all the animal migrations, birds, Plants and water quality that are being affected by this border wall because people strongly think we need a 30 foot,
02:06:16.000And the rhetoric around this is so detrimental because during that hearing, It was clearly about how do we protect sacred sites and how do we make sure that tribal consultation and other options can be presented so that environment and other areas are protected.
02:06:37.000And the Republican congressman that was there, who was really quite, seems like not a nice guy, basically said there is more damage caused by migrant traffic Trash and defecating than there is by blowing up the ground.
02:07:04.000And so that is the Department of the Interior, Homeland Security, and Republicans in Congress are saying about that border wall.
02:07:13.000Just stop and think about how that's unchallenged.
02:07:15.000How ridiculous a thing that is to say.
02:07:47.000Is it safe to say that there's many areas that you're talking about along the border that are probably undiscovered because you're dealing with things that are potentially thousands of years old?
02:07:58.000So remember, undiscovered has different meanings.
02:08:01.000So tribes may have understandings about certain areas that other people do not, that they try to protect.
02:08:09.000And so that's why consultation is so important.
02:08:13.000And working with tribes so you can understand what's going on on the ground.
02:08:34.000So even if they consult with the tribes, and the tribes say, this area is essentially a burial ground from a thousand years ago, and our ancestors used this.
02:08:58.000What's new here is that all of those environmental laws and those opportunities for public comment, so it's not just tribal consultation, but even public comment have been completely waived.
02:09:10.000Those stories always weird me out when someone's building an apartment building and they stop construction because they found some sort of a burial site underneath it and you're like, Like, how many of those are out there?
02:09:21.000I mean, how many areas where people are digging into the ground they are going to find Some incredible archaeological discovery and it's getting, you know, smashed by a bulldozer.
02:09:37.000And so a lot of the context for what was happening here before Europeans came is gone because we've just destroyed all the evidence of it.
02:09:50.000You know, so that's why often the way archaeological investigations have moved forward is they look at discrete sites without connecting the dots in a more holistic way about what's happened in a certain area.
02:10:10.000So most of our archaeological context and all that evidence is gone, and it continues to be looted by amateur archaeologists, and of course, you know, I've worked on many...
02:10:26.000Different developments across the country where, you know, the bulldozers come, oh, they see there's human remains there, and they just dump it into the fill.
02:10:58.000So you find laying around what should be these priceless archaeological record of Native Americans, and you can just pick them up?
02:11:08.000Yeah, just go to any little town across the country and you'll see a little antique shop somewhere and you go look on their walls and there's going to be archaeological evidence there without any context, without any understanding of where it came from, whether it's pieces of funerary object,
02:12:20.000And that's one thing I forgot to do when we started this interview is to recognize the land where we're standing now, which is original land of the Chumash and Tongva people.
02:12:39.000Everywhere where we stand are indigenous lands.
02:12:42.000And what's interesting is that we don't recognize that here.
02:12:46.000There are other countries, like for example in Australia, they have any kind of public event or governmental gathering or whatever, and they recognize who were there before them.
02:12:58.000You know, there's an acknowledgement, there's a recognition.
02:13:31.000California history and you're aware of the mission system, right, in California?
02:13:40.000The mission system mean religious missions?
02:13:42.000Yeah, the Spanish missions that were built up the coast in California and the effect that those missions had on the indigenous peoples that were here.
02:13:53.000I know about the effort to convert them to Catholicism.
02:13:56.000That was a huge issue at the turn of the 20th century, right?
02:14:27.000There are some teachers and professors that do different kind of work with their students, and there's this one kind of exercise of giving everyone in the class a role that you have in your society.
02:14:45.000You know, tending agriculture or you're making clothes or you're protecting the children or you're getting food or whatever it is.
02:15:03.000I mean, I can't imagine what so many of our ancestors must have lived through.
02:15:10.000And I know for myself personally, what's driven me in my life is my grandmother telling me those stories of what she and her family had to go through to be here and saying,
02:16:03.000I want to go wherever you tell me to go.
02:16:05.000So I think it would be important if you or anyone else would be interested.
02:16:11.000You know, most tribal nations have websites.
02:16:15.000Where you can learn about who they are, what their history is, and different policies and things that are important to them.
02:16:25.000I think it would be important to go to a more affluent tribe and also to go to a tribe that maybe doesn't have that same level of economic development.
02:16:52.000I have my friend Cam Haynes went to an Apache Reservation in Yeah.
02:17:16.000Just something like that is unbelievably fascinating, that this exists, and it just exists on this reservation, just sitting there, and that most people are not even aware of.
02:17:28.000This is like an unbelievably sacred part of history that's right there.
02:17:56.000So a lot of things like that have been published throughout time and so folks that are interested in doing that and make their living doing that, you know, they rely on those old documents and stories of where things are and are still looting and selling those items today.
02:18:17.000I think we in the West have this idea that if something is historic, we should be able to look at it.
02:18:27.000We should be able to go to a place, the Smithsonian or the this or the that, and go see it.
02:18:34.000I think what you're saying is we have to kind of re-look at that.
02:19:09.000And I think that's all tribal nations are asking people to do, is to think differently about these issues and recreate a new and more appropriate myth about our collective history.
02:19:26.000And let us decide for ourselves what we want to share and what we don't want to share.
02:19:34.000And I think what you'll find is that Indian nations have shared a lot.
02:19:41.000So this work on Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, where those museums thought they were going to lose all their collections and their shelves would be cleaned out and no exhibits anymore.
02:19:51.000What they found instead was that they actually...
02:19:55.000Figured out what the hell they've been holding on to this whole time.
02:19:59.000Because now they're actually talking to the people who have experience, expertise, and cultural knowledge about these items that are in their collections.
02:20:09.000So all of a sudden, information that they never had before.
02:20:16.000And so the relationships that have been built between museums and those institutions and tribal nations has built something completely different than nobody had contemplated before, just from talking to Native people and understanding what those things are and where they come from and what should be shared and what shouldn't be.
02:20:41.000There's still a lot of museums holding out though, and usually those are the big, well-funded institutions.
02:21:24.000And so the mission of many museums is to educate the public.
02:21:28.000And there is this kind of arrogant, what I would consider an arrogant way of thinking about the world, like everyone should have access to knowledge and tribes don't necessarily feel that same way.
02:21:48.000So there is that kind of that philosophy.
02:21:52.000And so those institutions will often use the law to work against the repatriation situation and delay, mostly delay.
02:22:05.000Most tribes don't want to fight against Thank you.
02:22:25.000Discord around these sacred items or around ancestral remains is difficult.
02:22:34.000So you don't want to bring, you know, bad energy around something that you need to care for and respect and put back in the ground.
02:22:45.000So, you know, there's a lot of reasons why these bigger institutions are getting away with not following the law and they take advantage of it.
02:22:58.000And so that's why my organization is important because we try to help bridge that.
02:23:03.000It seems like some sort of cooperative effort could be reached where the things that the tribes would like people to see and would like to educate people on could be displayed in maybe some sort of a national museum of Native American history.
02:25:59.000The Chickasar are kind of like our little brothers, but they have...
02:26:05.000See, our nations were heavily affected by Christianity, and so the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma is very proud of the fact that it's been able to maintain its languages through Christian hymnals and singing Christian music.
02:26:31.000But there are many other nations in Oklahoma that I've spent more time with than my own, and that's Chickasaw and Creek and Seminole nations that are also in Oklahoma that still maintain their stomp dances and other traditional pagan rituals.
02:27:21.000And it's been a very interesting dialogue because part of this is trying to figure out what is it that you want to know and you think that your listeners want to know about this.
02:27:31.000Because the last thing I want to do is Is to offend your listeners because I really want everyone to come away with learning about Native American history and what's going on in Indian country.
02:27:50.000Not offended and not with any kind of distaste because I think This is our history that we share together.
02:28:00.000And I think the only way we're going to change things is if we change the general public and how the general public sees Indian countries.
02:28:11.000Well, I don't think you have to worry at all about offending.
02:29:10.000And in just the three generations between my grandparents, my parents, and me, it's gone.
02:29:17.000It's essentially, being an Italian in this country, I mean, there's some people that have prejudice about all sorts of different cultures, but that's just rare.
02:30:10.000So, and not only that, I'm sure they share a lot of DNA. I mean, there's a lot of Mexicans that I'm friends with that look like they could be, you know, complete Native American.
02:30:36.000And just like what Spain did to everyone, they actually trained dogs to rip people apart.
02:30:50.000Maybe I'm getting off the subject now, but Catholicism came over here, and they had this thing called a papal bull.
02:31:03.000And it was basically the Catholic law.
02:31:06.000And so these Spaniards would hammer the papal bull into a tree and speak in Spanish to the indigenous world saying, if you don't convert, we will slaughter you.
02:31:21.000That's what, you're a heathen, you must convert or, you know, we're gonna kill you.
02:31:27.000And of course nobody knew what the hell they were saying because they didn't speak Spanish.
02:31:32.000And they would sic these dogs on them.
02:31:34.000I mean, there's these horrendous stories that are told by the missionaries that were there with the Spanish, you know, to bring their salvation.
02:31:45.000And it's just horrendous, some of the accounts of this.
02:32:24.000There's almost too much to teach, and it's very convenient since we, air quotes, are the victors.
02:32:31.000So we kind of can rewrite history, or at least make that part of history not important.
02:32:38.000You know, I had a bit that I did in my act about presidents, about electing presidents, and I was like, you just got to realize the United States was founded in 1776 and that people lived to be 100, and that's three people ago.
02:32:53.000We just got here, and now in the course of three people's lives, we have skyscrapers and planes and pollution, and we're sucking all the fish out of the ocean, and we've wiped out most of the history of the indigenous people.
02:33:46.000There's not many of us, comparatively, but we're out there and we're all doing double time to work to push this out into the public narrative and it's been really, really hard.
02:33:59.000Well, I really appreciate your efforts and I really appreciate you humoring me and coming here and teaching us and educating me about what's, you know, how you feel about things and the stories.
02:34:36.000Is there anything else we could talk about before you leave?
02:34:40.000We can talk about tons of stuff, but I think what I need to tell you is that the Association on American Indian Affairs has been around for a long time, and we are rebuilding our capacity to look into the next hundred years and how we want to move forward.
02:35:00.000I would love to have input from your listeners about what they think they need in it.
02:35:05.000Or what their questions are about Indian Country.
02:35:20.000There's so much we can do together and people who are interested in getting to know more about what's going on in Indian Country or getting involved and helping out.