Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 713 ｜ The Unspoken Truth About Indian Reservations ｜ Guest： Naomi Schaefer Riley

00:00:00.000 What's the truth about Native American populations and Native American reservations in the United

00:00:06.060 States? Why are there rates of crime, of poverty, of abuse, of alcoholism so much higher than the

00:00:15.200 general population? What policies, what court decisions are driving this? And is there anything

00:00:21.440 that we can do to help? Today, I am talking to author Naomi Riley. She wrote a book called The

00:00:29.120 New Trail of Tears. It is an absolutely fascinating, heartbreaking, but fascinating conversation

00:00:36.060 about the Native American population and how progressive policy has driven these populations

00:00:43.560 into destitution and how desperately things need to change. And we can be a part of that change. So

00:00:52.120 we're going to be talking about that today with Naomi. And this episode is brought to you by our

00:00:58.380 friends at Good Ranchers. You can go to GoodRanchers.com slash Allie. But before we get into it,

00:01:04.820 I do want to say one more time that we have got, we've got new merch, we've got Christmas merch out

00:01:12.060 for you. And we've got a Black Friday deal for you 30% off. And you can use promo code Black Friday

00:01:20.040 at checkout. We'll put the link in the description of this episode. It's really, really like a sweet,

00:01:25.480 beautiful design on a crew neck sweatshirt. And so you're absolutely going to love it. I can't wait

00:01:30.480 to rock mine and know that you're going to like yours as well. All right, without further ado,

00:01:34.660 here's our friend Naomi. Naomi, thank you so much for joining us again. Last time we talked about the

00:01:50.160 foster care system. Such an interesting episode. I love when people uncover kind of the talking

00:01:57.220 points and reveal what's really going on in a system. And you do that really well. And a few

00:02:03.540 years ago, a few years ago, before your foster care book and about the adoption system, you did the same

00:02:10.400 thing with our treatment of Native Americans and what's really going on there. So tell us about the

00:02:18.420 book that you wrote a few years ago and why you wrote it.

00:02:22.740 Sure. So the book was called The New Trail of Tears, How Washington is Destroying American Indians.

00:02:28.480 And for a long time, I had been reading the stories that I think a lot of Americans read about just the

00:02:33.880 tragedies of what's going on on Indian reservations and Indian territories, about the extreme poverty that

00:02:41.020 exists in these places, about, you know, some of the abuse that goes on, the levels of alcoholism

00:02:47.540 and substance use. And I really kind of wondered what what was behind that. You know, I think the

00:02:54.180 narrative out there is that, you know, we took the land from these people, and we are not giving them 1.00

00:02:59.920 enough in return. And so I, you know, eventually managed to sort of get some, some funding to do

00:03:08.300 some traveling. I went to a bunch of different reservations all over the country, South Dakota and

00:03:13.140 Montana and upstate New York. And I did a lot of interviews and a lot of research. And I came away

00:03:19.120 with a much different impression about what are the things that are ailing American Indians. And so I,

00:03:26.020 in the book, sort of divided them into three categories. I think the first and most important

00:03:30.180 is kind of understanding the economic situation on reservations. So, you know, most people don't

00:03:35.520 understand really what a reservation is. It means that the land is held in trust by the U.S.

00:03:41.460 government for American Indians. Now, the only other people that we hold things in trust for

00:03:47.000 are children or people who are mentally incompetent. So just sort of the infantilization that goes on of

00:03:53.140 American Indians by the fact that we have these reservations, I think is important to understand.

00:03:58.940 And while I think many on the left and many Americans generally have embraced the idea of

00:04:04.480 reservations as a way of protecting Native American communities, unfortunately, they're actually a way 0.97

00:04:10.600 of keeping them in poverty. So they don't own, they don't own the land, the U.S. government owns the

00:04:16.760 land. Got it. They don't have any property rights, which as you and I know, is so important to economic

00:04:22.560 prosperity. So not only do they own the land, it means that, you know, the same way you and I might get

00:04:28.200 a mortgage from a bank, they can't get regular mortgages to build a home, for instance, because they

00:04:34.260 don't own the underlying land. So there's no collateral. Similarly, if they wanted to open a small

00:04:39.680 business, a lot of Americans use the land that they have or their house in order to take out a

00:04:44.740 second mortgage or home equity loan in order to open a small business. Again, because they don't

00:04:49.420 own the land, they can't do that. And so that lack of property rights really makes those communities

00:04:55.360 much more like a kind of third world socialist country than a part of the United States. And that

00:05:01.380 has ripple effects, which we can talk about on everything from education, to the way families

00:05:07.540 operate, to the unemployment rate. It really does change the entire structure of the society.

00:05:14.500 Yeah. Before we get into some of those consequences, maybe that this is a dumb question, 0.97

00:05:19.880 but why don't they, if they can't really own the property on these reservations and they can't gain

00:05:26.200 equity the way you or I could, why don't they just move? Why do Native Americans stay on these 1.00

00:05:31.660 reservations? So there are about two million American Indians in this country,

00:05:36.060 and about half of them live on reservations and about half of them don't. There's nothing ever

00:05:41.040 stopping them from leaving. They are American citizens. They are free to live anywhere in this

00:05:45.820 country, free to move anywhere in this country, just like you or I could. Unfortunately, what happens

00:05:50.520 is because there is so much in the way of kind of government subsidies and a kind of cycle of

00:05:55.540 dependency and poverty, a lot of people do end up staying. You know, they are close to family there

00:06:01.760 and they feel like, you know, that's, that's sort of what they know. And so, you know, a lot of

00:06:06.700 Americans, you know, don't necessarily leave the place that they're living, even if it's, you know,

00:06:11.840 an inner city or a dangerous neighborhood, because that's what they know and that's what they're used

00:06:15.860 to. But, but the cycle of kind of government dependency also sort of keeps them in this particular

00:06:21.840 place, you know, again, not legally, but sort of culturally. And I think that has the effect of,

00:06:28.340 of continuing the cycle. And unfortunately, what happens sometimes also is that you get a little

00:06:33.180 bit of a brain drain. So the people who are most competent and most ambitious and most interested

00:06:38.100 in escaping the cycle actually leave. And then the remaining people there are caught even more

00:06:43.740 in the cycle because there's no one there to kind of push them out of it. Right. Which is the same

00:06:48.880 problem with a lot of global migration as well. Interesting. Yeah. Let's talk about some of the

00:06:54.280 ripple effects, some of the repercussions of this. You've talked about the, the alcoholism and the

00:07:00.360 abuse and the crime that goes on there really at a disproportionate rate compared to the rest of the

00:07:06.500 population off of these reservations. Why does that happen? So just to sort of take it, you know,

00:07:14.720 to take it from the economic part into the sort of cultural part. So one thing to understand is why

00:07:20.300 education is so terrible on these reservations. Um, so because there are so few jobs, because there's

00:07:26.760 no, you know, real private sector economy, the only real jobs are jobs that are government provided,

00:07:32.100 you know, government subsidies and, and, and public school teaching, like teaching at a tribal school,

00:07:37.960 um, or at a BIA Bureau of Indian affairs school is actually one of the few real jobs on the

00:07:43.820 reservations. But those jobs are not given often based on competence or based on whether you're a good

00:07:49.420 teacher. They're given based on whether you happen to have a relative who is on the tribal council.

00:07:54.220 There's an enormous amount of nepotism that occurs there. And the schools are absolutely terrible. The

00:07:59.580 outcomes for kids are again, you know, worse than what you imagine in the worst inner city public

00:08:05.100 schools in America. Because there's just no incentive and there's no outside accountability.

00:08:10.200 Are they, are the schools there, are they different? Are they apart from our public education system in the U.S.?

00:08:17.140 Are they kind of their own entity? So there are different, um, there are different kinds of

00:08:21.840 schools that American Indians can attend. So about 10% of the schools are federally run. They're called

00:08:27.760 Bureau of Indian affairs schools. Those are some of the absolute worst of public schools. They're

00:08:31.860 absolutely falling down. Um, and we spend many times the amount per student on those schools that we do

00:08:39.220 on a typical American public school. Um, they, the Bureau of Indian education, I think has something

00:08:45.360 like 26 different leaders in 24 years. Um, because, and so many of those people were pushed out because

00:08:52.460 of corruption and incompetence. Um, and so that's one type of school. Another type of school is not

00:08:58.380 sorry to interrupt, but just so people know, because we hear this a lot for our public schools, that it's

00:09:02.880 lack of funding. It's lack of funding. That's what Democrats seem to always say. And yet that's not even

00:09:07.120 true of our public education off of these reservations. I mean, we spend a ton of money,

00:09:12.380 have increased our spending that unfortunately has just not gone to the students and has gone to

00:09:17.340 bureaucratic bloat and corruption in a lot of cases. So you're saying that that is also true of these

00:09:22.820 federally run reservation schools, but even worse because maybe, I don't know, I don't know why,

00:09:29.660 I don't even know why it would be worse.

00:09:31.220 Well, um, to begin with, there's almost no competition. Um, so there are almost no private

00:09:37.060 schools around a couple of the reservations that I visited, like, uh, Pine Ridge, um, and one of the

00:09:42.240 reservations in Montana, um, do have Catholic schools that are located on or near the reservation.

00:09:47.300 Um, they're small, they are often, uh, criticized incredibly by the council, by the tribal councils,

00:09:54.200 but frankly, those are the only schools that are actually giving a real education. Um, but they're,

00:09:59.160 they're deemed too white. Um, and a lot of parents don't want to send their kids there because they

00:10:04.100 don't feel like they're, they're authentically Indian enough, or that's what they've been told

00:10:07.820 by their tribal leaders. Um, so there's no competition. Also, a lot of the states that

00:10:12.180 have the largest American Indian populations don't, um, have charter schools allowed in their states.

00:10:17.460 Um, so that, as we know, has provided competition and has improved public schooling in places like,

00:10:22.820 you know, New York city or Los Angeles, you know, where there has been at least some competition

00:10:27.060 that is often not allowed, uh, near reservations. So the combination of those things has made,

00:10:33.700 um, you know, the education just deplorable. And what you get is a situation where, you know,

00:10:39.400 again, you can't escape, um, uh, because you don't have the credentials, the competence in order to get

00:10:45.060 out. Um, and that, that in, you know, the, the economics is in part feeding the cultural problems

00:10:50.500 and the cultural problems are feeding some of the economic problems. So just as, again, just as you have

00:10:55.920 in, in different inner city areas and in very poor rural populations, um, you have a high rate of

00:11:02.500 unwed motherhood. Uh, you have a lot of broken families. Um, you have a great deal of crime and

00:11:08.220 violence, uh, substance abuses through the roof, um, sexual abuse of, uh, both women, the, the rates

00:11:15.160 of sexual assault by women, uh, of women and the rates of sexual abuse of young children are

00:11:20.080 extraordinarily high. Um, so all of these things together, and that, that has to do with family

00:11:25.280 structure. It has to do with, um, the history of the way, uh, these families have, have evolved.

00:11:30.600 And in some cases it has to do with how they've been treated by outsiders, but the way that these

00:11:36.080 things have been perpetuated now is, is almost entirely by, um, American Indians themselves.

00:11:43.080 Um, 75% of the people who work for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington are themselves Indians.

00:11:48.660 So there is a complaint, you know, Oh, the white people are treating us badly. You know, these are,

00:11:54.460 you know, tribal councils and Bureau of Indian Affairs are run by American Indians. Um, but they're 0.99

00:11:59.580 perpetuating a lot of these harms on their own people.

00:12:13.200 I think if I'm correct, these Native Americans populations tend to vote for the party that is

00:12:20.740 guaranteeing kind of more government interference and protection and welfare, correct?

00:12:25.660 Absolutely. And, and, and so you see, this is again, an interesting parallel with, you know,

00:12:30.220 a lot of the civil right quote unquote civil rights leaders who are in America today, you know, they're,

00:12:34.540 they're telling, you know, for instance, African American population, you know, vote for us and we

00:12:38.540 will, you know, give you more money and more government benefits. And similarly among American Indians,

00:12:43.100 you have these leaders who claim to speak for the population. But, you know, as I found,

00:12:47.760 there were lots of people on these reservations who really questioned these ideas, but there wasn't

00:12:53.600 a lot of a political alternative there. Um, and, and so all these leaders who say, you know,

00:12:59.200 we'll bring home the bacon and that's, what's the most important thing. Um, you know, they promise

00:13:03.480 year after year that, you know, all this, all this reservation needs is more money and that problem

00:13:08.560 will be fixed. And, you know, we pour billions upon billions of dollars into these reservations

00:13:13.140 and you don't see anything improving. Um, you know, it was really interesting. One of the places

00:13:17.880 I went to was the Seneca territory, which is an upstate New York. Um, so they have sort of some,

00:13:23.080 uh, I guess what you might call private industry in that they have a large casino there. Now,

00:13:27.760 most Indian casinos don't make much money. And a lot of people have said to me like, Oh, why don't

00:13:31.980 they just use their casino money to succeed? But, you know, if you open a casino in the middle of South

00:13:36.740 Dakota, no one's there, no one's going to come. So it's not really very helpful. But the one in

00:13:41.480 upstate New York has been very successful. And over the course of 10 years, um, Seneca has earned

00:13:46.760 about a billion dollars, um, on their casino, which interesting is if you go, um, you know,

00:13:52.360 to the territory, what you find is they're still living in a lot of poverty. And what has happened

00:13:58.500 is that money, the proceeds from the casinos just get distributed the same way welfare checks get

00:14:04.800 distributed. Um, you know, when I was there, I think the number was when you turn 21, they'll give

00:14:10.620 you a check for $25,000 just, you know, for being a member of the tribe. And, um, you know,

00:14:16.740 and you can imagine what a 24, 20, what a 21 year old does when you just hand them that kind of money,

00:14:21.700 they blow it. And, and so it doesn't ever improve the economic situation on the reservation. It's

00:14:27.380 just like money falling from the sky. My goodness. I have so many questions in that. Okay. Let's see.

00:14:33.960 I guess my first, yes. My first question is, and I'm not sure how much you talk about this,

00:14:41.940 um, how much you talk about this or have written about this, but can you talk a little bit about

00:14:46.680 the history of how these reservations, how Native Americans came to depend on the gambling industry?

00:14:55.580 Like where, where does that, where does that go back? Why is it that Native Americans run so many 1.00

00:15:00.980 of these casinos? So what's, what's, what's happened is that you have had these, um, court

00:15:08.680 rulings that have allowed American Indians to get into certain industries that, um, states may have

00:15:16.420 deemed illegal. And so they've kind of, in various ways, they, they would corner the market on

00:15:22.300 industries. Um, they're often, they often tend to be industries that you or I would not want in our

00:15:27.120 backyard. So there was a time where they were able to sell cigarettes tax-free or sell liquor tax-free,

00:15:34.160 um, or they were able to open these casinos when other people in the state could not.

00:15:39.460 Is this just like a form of reparations basically?

00:15:42.720 Well, it, it, I mean, it effectively has turned into that, but it started off as just kind of these

00:15:48.500 legal loopholes that technically these were sort of sovereign territories in some ways. And so the

00:15:54.940 state laws did not apply to them in the same way that they would apply to other residents of the

00:15:59.920 state. And now they're actually getting into the marijuana business.

00:16:03.720 Yes, I've heard a little bit about that.

00:16:06.560 Yeah. So again, you know, industries that you or I do not want in our neighborhood and, and they are,

00:16:12.400 you know, really grasping and, and, and holding onto these, you know, because they are providing

00:16:18.140 such an enormous flow of money, but they're not industries that help a community. Um, and often

00:16:24.600 they encourage not only bad behavior on the part of the residents of the community. I mean, a lot of

00:16:30.700 the people who frequent the casinos are Indians themselves. Um, but also they're bringing in even 0.99

00:16:36.840 a kind of worse element of, you know, people, Oh, they're the people who want to come buy pot from

00:16:41.620 us. Like that's, that's not what you want to encourage coming to your neighborhood.

00:16:46.580 Yeah. So when we hear from left-wing activists and gosh, I mean, everything that you say,

00:16:52.620 it parallels so much kind of like you were talking about the inner city communities,

00:16:58.120 black lives matter advocacy. It's, they're so similar because we also hear, so we hear from BLM

00:17:05.200 that more money needs to be poured into these communities and all of that disparities are evidence

00:17:09.800 of racism. And then we also hear that when it comes to the native American population,

00:17:14.140 that there needs to be more, there've been no reparations paid. Um, there's been no justice

00:17:20.360 exacted for these people. And we hear like this phrase land back, they need to get their land back.

00:17:27.200 So what exactly are these activists talking about? Like what do the left-wing activists say

00:17:33.460 that native Americans deserve that in their mind would make things better? 1.00

00:17:39.800 Um, well, more money to begin with, but they also talk about sovereignty in this particular way,

00:17:46.260 um, that I think doesn't make a lot of sense, um, in the modern context. I mean, you know, I,

00:17:52.440 I would go to some of these reservations and, and they would say, well, we want to be treated like,

00:17:57.100 um, they had a, uh, one on one reservation. They had a team that had competed in like a worldwide

00:18:03.000 lacrosse tournament. And they were like, well, you know, we were just treated like another country.

00:18:08.080 And we were just like France and said, well, legally, that's not what you are. No one thinks

00:18:13.920 that American Indian reservations are like a separate country, um, because American Indians

00:18:19.720 are American citizens. And that's something that's important to remember both in terms of how we treat

00:18:25.700 the leadership of these, uh, of these reservations, but also in terms of how we ensure the protections

00:18:31.740 for their citizens. Like if, if there is all this crime and violence and substance abuse and child

00:18:37.740 abuse going on, on these reservations, you know, they, these American citizens are owed the same

00:18:43.440 protections that you or I are. And we can't pretend that they're like France and that's their problem.

00:18:49.520 Right. But they're not, they're not offered the same protections. Women and children are not, 1.00

00:18:54.140 or even men, anyone who is really a victim of a crime there is not afforded the same protections.

00:18:59.380 Can you talk a little bit more about that? I mean, how did that happen and what does that look like?

00:19:05.460 Well, just to sort of give you one story, um, I went to the Pine Ridge reservation,

00:19:10.060 for instance, in South Dakota, which is basically the poorest County in the United States. Um, and I

00:19:15.400 went to visit a school there and the principal of the school was talking to me about how on one weekend

00:19:20.600 a month, um, the school has, uh, what they call a lock-in, but she sort of made it sound like it was

00:19:27.740 this sort of cultural festival. The kids stay for the weekend. It's very exciting. They celebrate all their

00:19:33.220 traditions. And, and I said, um, you know, like, tell me more, why, why do the kids have to stay over

00:19:40.160 for the whole weekend? And she explained that they keep them there because that is the weekend that their

00:19:44.360 parents receive their checks from the government and often get drunk and abuse their children.

00:19:48.880 Wow. So I just, you know, I, I tell that story because I think people don't understand when I'm talking

00:19:55.000 about the level of abuse that's going on and how deeply connected it is to the cycle of dependency, um,

00:20:01.660 from the government and the substance abuse that's going on there. Um, and we are not, you know, there is

00:20:06.720 not enough law enforcement on these reservations. There's often jurisdictional confusion about who is in

00:20:12.800 charge. I mean, I remember sitting down with, um, with three guys who, uh, you know, were involved

00:20:18.760 in the education system on Indian territories. And I asked one of them, like I asked all three of them,

00:20:24.040 who would you report it to if you thought a child was being abused? And one person said he would report

00:20:29.280 it to the tribal authorities. One person said he'd report it to the state authorities. And one person

00:20:33.780 said he'd report it to the federal authorities. So there's so much confusion about who is in charge

00:20:38.700 that it leads to a kind of wild west situation where, you know, the most vulnerable people are not getting

00:20:43.980 protected.

00:20:55.560 One thing that was brought to my attention a few months ago, um, by Governor Sitt from Oklahoma was the McGirt

00:21:01.820 decision by the Supreme Court in July of 2020, a 5-4, uh, ruling that basically said,

00:21:08.180 a large chunk of Eastern Oklahoma remains in American Indian reservation. And the reason, um, 0.67

00:21:16.520 why this went to the Supreme Court. So in 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the conviction of child

00:21:22.500 rapist Jim C. McGirt on the grounds that the Creek Nation's reservation was never disestablished for criminal

00:21:27.560 jurisdiction. State courts no longer have the authority to prosecute crimes committed by or against

00:21:33.140 Oklahomans who are also tribal members. Now, until the governor talked to me about this, I had no idea

00:21:40.880 that this was the case. And you might have heard in the news recently, um, there was a debate, a gubernatorial

00:21:46.900 debate when the governor was campaigning, um, where his opponent said, you know, actually Oklahoma's crime

00:21:55.300 is even higher than New York's crime, um, per capita, which is not necessarily true based on FBI reporting and things

00:22:03.480 like that. But what a lot of people don't realize is that one of the reasons why Oklahoma's crime rate is so high is

00:22:10.360 because such a large chunk is reservation Native American territory, and they are able to commit these crimes with 1.00

00:22:19.020 near impunity, correct? That is absolutely true. The crime rates on the reservations are, are just,

00:22:25.800 they're mind boggling. And the McGirt decision is just, it's outrageous. I mean, the idea that, um, you know,

00:22:33.140 we want a large number of non-Natives to be under the jurisdiction of, uh, you know, of a, of an Indian 1.00

00:22:41.240 territory and that we can't prosecute natives for crimes, um, especially these very serious crimes, um, is,

00:22:48.600 is crazy. And I have talked to a number of, of women who are sort of activists on these reservations

00:22:54.140 who are deeply concerned about what this is going to mean for prosecuting sexual assaults, um, for

00:23:00.680 prosecuting child abuse, because what they have seen is the corruption that often happens in the tribal 0.99

00:23:06.620 courts, um, of their, again, the nepotism is there to a large extent, but it's not just that. It's also

00:23:12.940 that the, you know, the, the, the punishment for serious crimes is often, you know, sort of what

00:23:19.360 they would call culturally appropriate, you know, that you're, um, that you're asked to, uh, you know,

00:23:24.740 to, to do things that, that don't involve jail time, um, that are supposedly, you know, going to put

00:23:30.400 you more in touch with your tribal traditions. Um, but, but again, American citizens, American laws,

00:23:37.380 American protections, that's what we are losing sight of. Um, and the most vulnerable Indians are

00:23:43.340 the ones who are suffering as a result of our desire to be somehow more politically correct and

00:23:48.940 sensitive, um, about the needs of these communities. And what do you say to those who say, okay, yes,

00:23:55.240 all of these are problems, the abuse, the alcoholism, the crime, but all of these are just

00:24:00.540 inherited from the oppression that was inflicted on them by the United States. The reason why they've

00:24:06.600 never been able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps is because, you know, we conquered and

00:24:11.960 took their land. I mean, I have my own thinking in response to that, but what do you say? Cause I'm

00:24:16.360 sure you're kind of confronted with that accusation. Yeah. I mean, I don't really believe in historical

00:24:22.140 trauma. I mean, I think if you look at groups in this country around the world, you know, it, it,

00:24:29.300 what, what is traumatic is what happens to you as an individual. And so the idea that, you know,

00:24:35.840 we would look to, you know, something that happened to your family three generations ago

00:24:41.220 to explain some of the, the behavior, some of the dysfunction that is going on in your life today,

00:24:47.480 I think is, is a cop-out. And I don't just mean it's a cop-out in the sense of you should take

00:24:52.540 responsibility. I'm saying we're not looking at the more proximate causes of the dysfunction.

00:24:57.960 You know, there was a story I remember, uh, on NPR when I was, around the time I was writing a book,

00:25:02.620 that was talking about some of the drug smuggling that was going on, uh, across some of the

00:25:08.040 reservations close to the Mexican border. Um, and, and so it, the story was ostensibly about some of

00:25:14.440 the high crime rates and abuse rates. Um, and, and the first explanation they had was historical

00:25:20.340 trauma. But later in the story, you find out about all this drug smuggling that's going on,

00:25:25.260 on these reservations. You say, well, you know, maybe it's a substance abuse. Maybe it's the high

00:25:29.880 crime rates. Maybe it has nothing to do with the fact that your grandfather, you know, was forced

00:25:34.760 to go to a boarding school, uh, you know, by, by the American government. I mean, I think that the

00:25:40.660 way that that oppression, the way that that dysfunction does get passed on sometimes is

00:25:45.580 through child abuse. I mean, I, you know, if, if you have been abused as a child, you know,

00:25:50.600 it's not unlikely that your parent was abused as a child and their parent was abused as a child.

00:25:54.820 But then the answer is, you know, how do we stop that? I mean, one thing we need to do is by

00:25:58.740 prosecuting it and ensuring that people who are, you know, committing these horrific crimes against

00:26:04.240 women and children, you know, need to be taken away and put in jail or rehabilitated in some way. 1.00

00:26:09.700 Not that we ignore it because we're trying to be sensitive and we just say, well, you know,

00:26:14.380 you don't know what happened to them a hundred years ago. Yeah. It's, I mean, it's again, just so

00:26:19.000 similar to the social and racial justice narrative that we hear outside of these reservations that in

00:26:24.840 order to create equal outcomes, when it comes to like incarceration populations, we have to simply

00:26:31.440 not jail people of certain races or not arrest them. And we think that that is going to create 0.99

00:26:37.540 equality of outcomes. But in the case of the black population, you're just creating more black victims 1.00

00:26:42.440 because intraracial violence is the most, you know, likely kind of violence. And it seems to be the 0.94

00:26:48.340 same in the Native American population. You're not protecting them from compounded trauma or whatever 1.00

00:26:56.160 the left wants to say that it is. You are just creating more victims. It's a giant virtue signal,

00:27:02.080 like what all of social justice is. It's a way to throw money at the problem and then to say that, 0.99

00:27:08.520 you know, you're fighting for the rights of these people when really you're not, you're hurting them.

00:27:15.640 Um, yeah, perfect. I wanted to say the perfect example of this, you know, the Supreme court last

00:27:20.520 week heard a case about the Indian child welfare act, um, which is really just should outrage all

00:27:25.980 Americans. I mean, so the Indian child welfare act was passed in the 1970s. It was specifically to

00:27:31.160 apparently address, you know, this historical trauma. Um, but the result is that today, you know,

00:27:36.580 if a child who is of Indian descent is removed from their home because they have been abused or severely

00:27:42.460 neglected, um, we have a standard in court that is different for, you know, proving that abuse than

00:27:49.580 we have for white children or black children or Asian or Hispanic children. It's higher. It's harder

00:27:53.280 to prove. It is higher. Yes. We, we leave these children in unsafe homes longer because of our desire

00:27:59.360 to be sensitive. And we make it almost impossible for them to be adopted because the tribes get to say,

00:28:06.300 if that child has a drop of Indian blood in them, the tribes can say, no, no, no. We want them to be 1.00

00:28:12.320 with an Indian family. And so if there's no Indian family, we will leave that child in foster care 1.00

00:28:17.640 indefinitely because again, Oh, we're being sensitive to their historical trauma. What about

00:28:23.040 the trauma that child is experiencing today on a personal level? Why are we concerned about what

00:28:28.840 happened to that child's great grandfather and not what is being perpetrated against him or her today?

00:28:33.660 Yeah, it's exactly what you said a couple minutes ago. You are focusing on these intangible and far

00:28:40.620 off potential, but unlikely causes of trauma for today. Uh, and then ignoring the proximate cause

00:28:48.900 of trauma and the very tangible cause of trauma. And it's, it's really hard for me to understand what

00:28:54.840 the motivation is behind that. I think we both understand kind of how left-wing social justice

00:28:59.360 ideology works. And that's that effect on many kinds of communities in the United States,

00:29:05.320 but it's still hard for me to understand how a human could see, okay, this child is being abused.

00:29:12.200 It is, it is more important that this child stays in foster care and with a potentially abusive or

00:29:19.460 negligent tribal family than it would be for them to, you know, be adopted by maybe a white family

00:29:27.260 who actually loves them. I just don't under, I don't understand what's behind that. It's really

00:29:31.520 difficult for me to grasp.

00:29:33.400 I know. I mean, I think there are very powerful, special interests at work here. I mean, the tribes

00:29:37.320 were the one who were ones who were in court arguing for the Indian Child Welfare Act this week. And

00:29:42.460 they were really sort of, you know, they're the ones who you think would be protecting, you know,

00:29:46.960 their own most vulnerable children, but they're not. And it's, um, it is hard to understand,

00:29:51.220 but you have to understand like all sorts of other organizations, including the American Academy

00:29:56.340 of Pediatrics actually signed amicus briefs to side with the tribe saying, again, we should leave

00:30:02.900 children in abusive homes longer, and we should make it harder for these kids to be adopted. The,

00:30:07.480 the pediatricians of America. So, you know, it's hard to, you know, it's, it's, it's hard to understand

00:30:12.700 on the one hand, why ordinary Americans would think this law is a good idea, but a lot of Americans

00:30:17.480 think, oh, well, pediatricians think it's okay. So why not? Of course, what is their interest?

00:30:22.300 Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's what, that's what I don't know. Like, what is their interest? But I

00:30:26.080 guess, you know, we ask the same questions about, well, what is their interest in pushing puberty

00:30:30.560 blockers? What is their interest in pushing mask mandates without any data? I guess it's just,

00:30:35.460 you know, institutional capture that's happened to a lot of institutions in America.

00:30:41.500 Political virtue signaling. Absolutely. That's what it has in common. You want to know why the AAP

00:30:46.020 wants masking? You want to know why the AAP wants puberty blockers? You want to know why the AAP wants

00:30:50.700 ICWA? It's all because they have been captured by political interests. They are willing to sell their

00:30:56.080 name, basically, in order to participate in these cases. And, and the victims are the children.

00:31:02.660 Yeah, but we're told to trust the science. And if we don't trust them,

00:31:05.960 then we're seen as some kind of conspiracy theorist.

00:31:16.020 I just want to put a fine point on what you're talking about, about the violence and the proximate

00:31:26.600 trauma that these communities are facing. Indian reservations nationwide face violent crime rates

00:31:31.180 more than 2.5 times the national rate. And some reservations face more than 20 times, 20 times the

00:31:37.780 national rate of violence. More than one in three Indian women will be raped in their lifetimes and two

00:31:43.020 in five will face domestic or intimate partner violence. So most people do not know that this is

00:31:51.540 happening. I mean, they have no idea. When I talk to friends in Oklahoma, you look at the crime rates

00:31:55.740 is terrible. But if they live out, I mean, they all live outside of these reservations, Oklahoma City,

00:32:00.500 Tulsa, things like that. They don't feel unsafe. They feel like they have a very safe and secure

00:32:06.180 home and they don't even really know. They might live right next to these reservations and they don't

00:32:11.120 know. It's almost like the best kept secret. Well, yeah, I mean, one of the things I started

00:32:16.780 thinking about as I was going to these reservations, particularly, you know, I remember thinking this

00:32:21.180 while I was in Montana, I was I visited the Crow Reservation there. You know, inner city poverty and

00:32:29.880 dysfunction is something that at least in New York and other cities like that, you know, people at least

00:32:36.920 sort of drive through or see or, you know, even if you're taking the train from Westchester to New York

00:32:42.720 City, you go through the Bronx like you have some idea of what happens there. But it's very easy to

00:32:49.080 ignore some of these rural communities that are just so impoverished, so filled with crime and

00:32:56.020 dysfunction. But the flip side of that, I think, is also important, which is that American Indians are 1.00

00:33:02.100 also very isolated. And so they don't often have a sense of the way the rest of the country operates,

00:33:09.000 that this is not the way most Americans live. This is not the education system most Americans have.

00:33:16.680 Most Americans go to work every day. I mean, if you're a child growing up on the Pine Ridge

00:33:21.600 Reservation, the likelihood is that there's no adult in your life who has a steady job.

00:33:26.200 Wow. And so what is the what are the chances that you will look around and think there could be

00:33:32.480 something better for me? And so I just you know, I just want to make the point that the isolation

00:33:37.520 kind of goes both ways. It's in terms of the way we ignore the problems. But it also makes it much

00:33:43.100 more difficult for American Indians to pull themselves out of any of this. One one kind of 0.94

00:33:49.300 inspirational story. I mean, there has been talk about trying to open some of the high performing

00:33:56.020 charter schools near Indian reservations. And there was one charter school group that actually

00:34:03.000 flew a few adults on the Pine Ridge Reservation out to Denver to see some of the charter schools

00:34:09.320 there and how well they were doing. And I interviewed some of the folks who went on that trip, and they

00:34:14.500 were just aghast. They could not believe that there were kids in Denver who come from poor families,

00:34:21.640 some of whom, you know, don't even hear English at home. And they were able to achieve these

00:34:26.720 extraordinary academic results because these Indians had been told by their leaders for so long

00:34:32.180 that it was impossible for them to get these results, that it was just it was poverty that was

00:34:36.860 keeping them down, that it was a lack of money and resources. And when they understood that other

00:34:41.800 models were possible and that there are ways of teaching poor children from, you know, difficult

00:34:47.940 upbringings and broken families, how to teach them to successfully, they thought, well, why can't we

00:34:54.700 have that? And I think, you know, fixing these problems is going to take a lot of that attitude,

00:35:01.200 a lot of a sense of what what else is possible for us. Yeah, that is inspiring. And I hope that that

00:35:07.520 leads people down a path of difference making. Because I mean, it could just giving the opportunities to

00:35:15.520 people that they have always been told that they can't have, or maybe that if they took those

00:35:19.020 opportunities, that they're abandoning their culture. I think there's a lot of emotional

00:35:22.740 manipulation there, too. One thing I wanted to talk to you about before we kind of close out,

00:35:27.140 I do want to hear a little bit more about what we can do and what we should know about this. But

00:35:32.140 you wrote a new forward to your book after COVID. And you just point out using statistics that things

00:35:39.060 really have only gotten worse during COVID. Were these reservations, I mean, were they under the

00:35:45.800 same kind of lockdowns and things like that? I mean, what caused some of these disparities to

00:35:52.180 widen during the COVID era? So one of the biggest reasons for the difficulties that these reservations

00:36:00.060 experienced was that the health system on Indian reservations is called the Indian Health Service.

00:36:06.200 It is a federally run health program. And if you ever wanted to know why we should not let the

00:36:11.240 federal government run healthcare in this country, go visit an Indian reservation. They are terribly run 1.00

00:36:18.700 and managed. Again, you see instances of doctors and nurses engaged in abuse. The Wall Street Journal

00:36:26.920 did a whole expose with PBS in the last few years about moving around how just different doctors who they

00:36:35.180 knew were engaged in horrible behavior were moved from one clinic to another. Some of these places

00:36:41.340 don't even have computerized records. And again, by the way, it is not because we've not given up money

00:36:46.940 to the Indian Health Service. It's just, it's terribly run. And so the outcome, the health outcomes on these

00:36:54.580 reservations are in part because of that. And in part because of all of the other, you know,

00:37:00.720 co-occurring, you know, illnesses and health out and health problems that American Indians have, which

00:37:07.040 you also saw in poor communities in America, you know, high rates of obesity, high rates of substance

00:37:12.720 abuse, you know, diabetes, heart problems, all those things that made COVID much worse, combined with a

00:37:20.260 health system that didn't know how to adequately serve these people, I think made that much, much worse.

00:37:25.500 The lockdown issue was kind of less of an issue, in part because these are very rural communities.

00:37:31.740 But really, just because the health outcomes start in such a bad place to begin with, COVID made it much worse.

00:37:49.020 Wow, so many people don't know anything about this. I really didn't. I'm thankful for your work on it.

00:37:54.640 I think a lot of people just don't say anything because, well, one, we don't really know, but also we are

00:38:01.420 either consciously or not. I mean, we're kind of pummeled into silence by saying, you know, you don't

00:38:08.220 understand. And even kind of given this romantic history of Indigenous life in the United States, that there are

00:38:15.920 Indigenous ways of knowing, there are Indigenous ways of education, there are Indigenous ways of doing, and all we can do

00:38:22.740 is honor those. And any kind of interference by state law enforcement is seen as just, you know, reactivated

00:38:30.900 trauma or oppression or white supremacy. So I think some of us have even, like, imbibed those narratives

00:38:36.660 without realizing it. But what should we be doing is people who are aware that, wow, there are a lot of

00:38:42.740 women and children who are subjects of violence, victims of violence with impunity. Is there anything that we

00:38:49.220 can do, especially now that the Supreme Court has ruled that basically they can commit these acts

00:38:54.560 of violence and state law enforcement can do nothing?

00:38:58.140 Yeah. So I just I want to emphasize your point that we have a vast misunderstanding in this country

00:39:03.100 about what American Indians mean. Like, there's this there is this myth out there that they're the

00:39:08.860 original environmentalist socialists.

00:39:11.040 Yeah. And, you know, if you talk to American Indian leaders, they're like, you know, we are just we are

00:39:16.880 like any other people. We many of them, like have long records of property rights before white people 0.90

00:39:23.880 came here. So it's not like they were, you know, oh, we're just we all just all share tribes were, of

00:39:29.640 course, warring against each other before we got here. They're American Indians are just like other 0.88

00:39:35.160 Americans. And and the idea that somehow, you know, they they love the environment more than we do and

00:39:41.880 they share and care and are collected more than we are, I think, is just this myth that really was

00:39:47.440 propagated a lot in the 1960s and 70s and kind of took hold in terms of what we can do. I think it's

00:39:54.380 it's very hard to come up with positive solutions for this. I mean, I I think from a legal perspective,

00:40:00.760 we should be exploring ways to give more Native Americans property rights. We should be interfering 1.00

00:40:06.660 less in their economic development. I mean, first of all, you know, a lot of these reservations,

00:40:11.020 when Indians were first pushed onto them, were kind of worthless pieces of land. Now, of course, 1.00

00:40:16.320 we've discovered the level of natural resources of oil, of fracking that can go on on these

00:40:22.760 reservations. And we should be opening these things up instead of blocking pipelines, because some

00:40:28.400 leader says like, oh, you might come within 100 miles of, you know, my ancestors burial ground

00:40:35.040 is just hurting Indians today. So getting the federal government out of the business of micromanaging

00:40:41.160 American Indians, I think, is very important in terms of education. I would love to see more

00:40:46.000 competition changing charter school laws. You know, if you're an American and you want to, you know,

00:40:52.500 want to help, want to give a small donation. You know, there are some some Catholic schools like Red

00:40:57.960 Cloud, which is on the Pine Ridge Reservation, which actually try to educate these kids, and I think

00:41:03.100 do an enormous job, and they're entirely privately funded or funded by the church. So I think, you know,

00:41:08.880 that's sort of one small way you can try to ensure that there is some good education going on in these

00:41:15.080 places. You know, the laws, it's, it's very hard to change the laws that protect American Indians. And, you know,

00:41:22.320 it, it, it, it concerns me that more Americans don't understand the McGurk decision, and they don't

00:41:27.980 understand the fight over the Indian Child Welfare Act, because, you know, those are not only are those

00:41:33.360 important decisions for protecting American Indians, but there are left wing activists who want to use

00:41:38.600 those kinds of things to change the entire legal system. Like, there are people who want an Indian 1.00

00:41:44.400 Child Welfare Act for black children, so that we can treat black children differently than everyone else. 0.99

00:41:49.200 Again, it's prioritizing sensitivity over child safety. 0.90

00:41:54.140 Yeah, and wow, we could have a whole other extended conversation about that. I know that the term critical

00:41:58.840 race theory can be, or some people think it's overused or misapplied, but that really is this ideology that

00:42:04.900 in order to make up for what is perceived as past racism or discrimination, or real past racism or

00:42:10.320 discrimination, you have to then kind of, you have to do the same thing today, but in a different direction. You have to

00:42:18.400 make up for that today, with present discrimination going the other way. So because they would say

00:42:25.120 black and indigenous families were broken apart by the white man, well, now we have to rewrite the

00:42:31.740 law so it goes a different direction, so that you cannot adopt them, and you cannot punish them for

00:42:36.620 crimes, as if that's going to help anyone. And wow, there seems to be a lot of intersection,

00:42:41.620 by the way, between your most recent book about, you know, no way to treat a child.

00:42:45.600 That's how I got started on the most recent book. Yes. Yes. I mean, it's just so much corruption at

00:42:50.200 the expense of the most vulnerable in our society. So thank you. Thank you so much for the work that

00:42:56.080 you do on that. I really, really appreciate it. Everyone can go out and buy both of your books.

00:43:00.620 Highly recommend. Anywhere books are sold, and where can they follow you, and all that good stuff.

00:43:05.360 So yeah, the books are The New Trail of Tears and No Way to Treat a Child, and they can follow me on

00:43:11.700 Twitter at Naomi S. Riley, and get all the stuff at the American Enterprise Institute, which is where

00:43:17.740 I am based. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Naomi. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - November 23, 2022

Ep 713 ｜ The Unspoken Truth About Indian Reservations ｜ Guest： Naomi Schaefer Riley

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