Officially in full swing. It was a time of great change but it was sort of the beginning of what we think of as modern america. And the end of what we think of as native american bought those thing were untrue. Why do you 1890 to by that dividing line. 1890 was the year of arguably the last conflict, Armed Conflict between native folks and the American Government. At the massacre another wind knee in south dakota where between 150 and 300 lakota men, women and children, principally women and children were massacred by the reconstitutioned cavalry, and that moment, that moment came to stand in for so much of American History up to that point. Host december 28, 1890, what happened . Guest there was this is on the tail end of the murder of sitting bull. Things were unsettled around the on the agency and people were looking for shelter, and there was a band of native people who were going to find shelter with another band ask they left where they were and they were on foot and horseback, heading to the agency, and they were intercepted by the cavalry, who rounded them up and tried to disarm them, and unclear what happened next but the cavalry started shooting, opened fire with guns, and murdered about 150 people. The government was really nervous about what they were convince weed be an indian uprising because of the ghost dance and other things going on in the plains, but really they just murdered a bunch of people trying to find shelter. Host whats the ghost dance. Guest the ghost dance was a religion that was group never plains in mid19th century, a fundamental List Movement in some ways. The precepts of the movement if you dehas to dances, wear shildts are you abstain from alcohol, work hard and get along with white people, you will he saved. Kind of populistic movement, a cleansing of the earth youll be lifted up and saved. And the white people will be wiped out. You can see why it bee an attractive religion to tribes. Host how reported was what happened at wounded knee. Guest widely reported. The author of wizard of oz, he was a reporter for various south dakota papers and he said thats a good start. We should wipe out all the indians and other reporters said this is just another instance in a long list of injustices against native people. There was coverage, wide coverage, some pro master, some antimassacre. My book isnt just but the stat ijust wanted to get start thread before we move on. A book came out in 1970, bury my heart at wounded knee. You book is the heartbeat of wind anymore. There is a connection between the two book. Guest there is. I read the browns classic bury my heart at wounded knee in 1990 on the 100th anniversary of massacre of wind knee, and the book is to this day the best selling book about american nip e Indian History ever published. There are over 7 million copies in print. Its never been out of print. Its published in 17 different languages. And in the book he says on the very first page, this book is about the plains wars and the plains tribes and started in 1850 and ended in 1890 at the massacre at wounded knee, where quote, the culture and civilization of the American Indian was final he destroyed, end quote, and guess on, on the second page to say so if you happen to travel to a contemporary reservation you notice the poverty me and hopelessness and squalor, perhaps by reading my book youll understand why. And i read that when i was 20 years old. And i had left my verse vacation in minnesota, leech lake reservation, i was in college, and i was so upset because theres more to my life and theres more to my regs sir vacation than poverty and hopelessness and squalor, and our cultures and civilizations were not destroyed in 1890. It was perhaps a low point but a point from which native people across the country have been working and striving and living. We have been since than point making our own history, not always with tools of our choosing but making our own history. Making our own lives but dee brown was expressing a pretty widely held belief that america has an indian past and a modern present that indians are necessarily of the past and are disappeared and gone, in order to make way for america. And thats just not true. Host in your book you write i launched my life as a fiction write and i was oppositional at that time. I abhorred the publishing industrys presence to make multicultural fiction engage in cultural show and tell. What does that mean . Guest well, in fiction, and movies, people and in life people like their indians but only in very specific ways. Pipe like indians to be dead, of the past, necessarily spiritual, some sort of ethnic and ethical alternative to the ruination of western society if youre a liberal. People like us to be exotic. People dont like to imagine us as lawyer, look my mother, an American Indian woman lawyer and judge. They dont us to be professors, dont like us not to wear feathers. Dont like to us be modern americans, native and modern at the same time. And so ive always sort of written against the grain, always tried to upset the apple cart just a bit. Host you write about your life as leech lake and how much you miss evidence it when you went off to college. Guest yes, i did. I mean, like a lot of kids, when i was living my life in my parents home and my community, i could not wait to leave. I hated it. And i think in many ways, just as most americans persist in this thinking about indians that were again, were necessarily the past, that indian life if it exists now is not life, its just a state of perpetual suffering. Thats what most americans think but i income many ways us native folk have internalizes the thoughts, too because thats how i felt. Nothing good happening here where im from. Theres nothing happening here except suffering and i want out. I want to get out. But as soon as i left, as soon as i left, and i went away to college in jersey, i missed it. I didnt miss the suffering. I didnt miss the poverty. Didnt miss all that crap. I missed what i could only then recognize as the richness of my community, the sort of complexity of it, the energy, cultural, spiritual, professional, energy of the place i was from. Its a beautiful place. Full of interesting people. But i thought where i was from was where good idea goods to die and only after leaving did i realize that theres life here. Nobody understands that and even i didnt forward it and this book is not just me explaining our life to outerred. This was a written for me to understand for myself what our lives mean. Host different treuer, the u. S. , continental u. S. , 2. 4 billion with a b acres. How much of that is controlled by Indian Tribes . Guest now . Win one and two 1 publishes and 2 publish are lets than 5 been years ago. Host you used the word indian in your book. I do. Some people care a great deal. Some native people prefer native american, some prefer American Indian, some dont like either and want to be referred to in their tribal languages. I just use all of them for verisimilitude. Have to use all the word and im not beholding to any one but this is my opinion. Not anyone elses. Host we have some callers line up to take some calls. Lets hear from jeff in providence, rhode island. Hi, jeff. Caller he local, good afternoon, can you hear me . Host were listening, sir. Caller okay. Thats good. I know a little bit about this subject. His situation, my ancestry, i would say is culpable a lot of this were germanic ancestry, and it happened. The indians, native americans, were evict. From their land but that it were vanquished. And the gentleman is very bright individual, but the United States, a lot of people dont realize, was formed through conquest. You take a look. We were going west, the indians were removed, and or killed and we went toy hawaii and we told the queen there were going to take it over and theres nothing you can do about it. She was smart host jack, im going to what . Host im going. Guest he im game into interrupt and injury expect and push back. My tribe, ojibwe, our tribal home landed on great lakes and we still live there our native communes are still there. In hawaii you last mentioned theres still communities of nate different hawaiians in hawaii and this is the thing. Right . People think about native tribes as being sort of just demolished and destroyed by first colonialis and then American Society with think of what remains as Little Island native communities in an american sea bus threat not the case, jack. Thats the first thing the american colonialists do the dumped tea in Boston Harbor and i tresses dress up it an indians and dumped tea in the harbor. Have the revolution when the Founding Fathers were looking around for an alternative form of government . They looked to the iroquois con con fed was simple. America has been made in relation to us ever since the beginning. Youre wrong, dude. Host we are going to go to our next call because we only have a few minutes with our guest, david treuer. Well hear from iris, and iris fliss south lyon, michigan go ahead, please. Caller sure. Ow dont look indian, whatever indian is supposed to be and i wonder how they came here in the first place, because they didnt grow out of the ground. Theyre not turnips. They, we, none of us are human are turnips. So we all came from someplace, didnt we not, and do a lot of people who are indians speak words in hebrew . I know wyandotte indians have hebrew expressions and want to know didnt we all come from someplace . None of us grew from the ground. Host irish in south lyon, michigan. Mr. Treuer. Guest well, no, were not turnips, and the only native people who speak any hebrew are native people who are mixed maybe native and jewish, like myself. My father is jewish, yet i dont know any hebrew. Where do native people come from . Depends on who you ask. Argueolists and biologists think there was a migration to new world, although new arrangeol evidence is push thing date back to 20 to 40, now souther america they found archaeologyol evidence going back 55,000 years. But if you ask native people, we emerged here as people accord, tower legends, according to my tribe we were lowered down here and were meant to be here according to the comanche, they arose out of the ground. According to den anyway, they engaged in a long migration and emerged in southwest where they currently live. Where we emerged as human organisms is one question. Where we emerged as people is a different question. One i ans by science maybe. The other answered by culture. Host when did the American Indian movement begin. Guest the American Indian movement ban in the late 60s and gathered steam in the early 70s and then reached a cries moment around 1975. A crisis moment around 1975. Host what did it chief. Guest the Indian Movement was a complicated political movement. Started in urban areas. That myth but native people is wisconsin we only live in rural or reservation commune out but over half of all native people live in cities like chicago, cincinnati, d. C. , l. A. , denver. And the American Indian movement was largely an urban movement, it was largely a protest sort of activist movement meant to draw americas attention to our continued existence, so, jack, the American Indian movement is speaking to you. And it was meant to sort of also draw peoples attention to the ways in which the American Government has refused to honor itself treaties and agreements with native tribes. Which are in perpetuity and should continue to honor. To do that it engaged in lots of really public, really highly visible theatrical takeovers. Protests and marches and they took over the Bureau Indian affairs here in d. C. And occupied the building, i forget how many days in 71 or 72. They accomplished a lot i think. And they were very effective at grabbing americas attention. Host david treuer you mentioned your folks. Mom, lawyer, judge. Native american, father, jewish, survivor of the holocaust. Hough did they meet . Guest they met at leech lake. When they were host in minnesota. Guest yes niksch reservation, my moms reservation, my father moved there to teach high school, and they met back then, and then my mom became a nurse and was working on a Health Care Initiative on the reservation my father stopped teaching by that point and was working on the same Health Care Program so they were coworkers, both trying to improve health care on minnesota reservations, and fell in love and had my brother and me and my younger brother and sister. Host next call for david treuer, from denice in new jersey. Hi, denice. Caller good afternoon. A pleasure to speak to mr. Treuer. One off my favorite books war bury my heart at wounded need and i would like to know if he can tell me how his book compares and contrasts to dee browns mo is one of my heroes. Second part of my question is, i have seen some programming on mostly on the pbs channel but what has happened to lakotas, indian is believe thats the tribe that in north dakota. And thirdly, theres been some standoff but pipeline and federal government trying to push indians off of their sacred ground. And has a lot of press but sort of been in the back burner as far as i can see. So in terms of indian affairs, history has how our present author feels as a continuing of dee brown, a special set of highlighted issues of the women, indian women and what is going on with host denice, im going to cut you off there thats a lot to work with. Mr. Treuer, go. Guest i think youre asking how my book is related to dee browns book. Host that was the original question. Guest dee browns book, his focuses on the plains wars and he starts like he says in 1850 and end inside 1890 where as i mentioned he says, native american life, the culture and civilization was destroyed mitchell book starts in 1890 in the year that dee browns left off with the opposite thesis. That 1890 was not the ennorth the owned of temperature culture or civilization or communesle might have ban low point from which we have been emerging ever since. 1890, our populations were the lowest theyd had ever been, fewer than 200,000 native people left in the United States. Now there are over 3 million. Our land base was the smallest it had ever been, it has since regrown. Our communes lack infrastructure, a political organization, our religions were under attack and now our religion being reborn and flourishing, our political systems are becoming healthier and happenier and people are living longer and longer and thats what my book is about. My book is about not about about indian death. My book is about native american life. And thats the crucial difference. Host soming else crowley is indian casinos. Are those a Success Story . Guest everyone asks about casinos. And. Host thats a lot of peoples only connection. Guest fair enough. And people ask people usually have strong opinion when they ask the question. Theyre lucre gets more often than not, not what are kinds like but how have they destroyed American Indian life. People think of them as negative. I you can tell mel how apple destroyed anglo life. ll tell you how to casinos have destroyed native life. Tell me how microsoft destroyed french culture, ill tell you how casinos have destroyed native culture. Its no so simple little. Are corporations generally good for, say, the country of madagascar . Its mixed. Are corporations good for america . Well, decidedly mixed. Are casinos good for native communities . Mixed. They provide revenue. Theyve provide funding for infrastructure and schools and Retirement Homes for our elders. They provide funding for arts initiatives and powwows and language revitalization programs but its also not a lifestyle economy. Like taxfree cigarettes or like maybe not the healthiest. Forcommunitys that always already in some ways struggle with addiction. So its a mixed bag. Some community he have been radically reshaped by the advent of indian game neglect the 80s and some have barely changed. Mine is barely different and we have two casinos. Host what isster but native americans today that doesnt get out. Guest the story that doesnt get out in my opinion is the story that i mentioned this easterly karl marx said all men make history just not always with tools of their choosing, not always as they please. And thats the thing that gets lost in most of americas myths about us. About our suffering, about our disenfranchisement, according ao our friend, jacks, our complete destruction. What gets missed or the ways in which we have been always making our own history and in doing so shaping the fabric of this country herself. So, for example, between 19 the 60s through the 1990s, the United States Supreme Court heard more cases about federal indian law than any other genre of law. And the post watergate years, in the post vietnam years, as america was trying to rethink what kind of country it wanted to be, the most vexing, perplexing, legal questions through chit remade itself and reimaged itself involved native people. The first test of states rights versus the federal government was not over the question 0 slave rhythm it was over the were oremoval of the civilized trained in southeastern United States in the 1820s and 30s. Which pitted the federal government against the state of georgia and the cherokee, seminoles, choctaw tribes of the region. That was the first test of states power versus federal rights and that was gooded in relation to indian communities. America has been making its and its history since the beginning through its relation to us, and the protests in north dakota at Standing Rock in 2016 and 17, that was a protest of native people trying to protect native homelands, but by extension, what they were doing was protesting on behalf of all americans what kind of country do we want to live in the one that values extracktive capitalism or that privileges the common good. That was the fight we saw at Standing Rock it and was native people leading the fight for all americans. So thats what people miss. Host the biked caution the heartbeat another wounded knee, nativemer from 1890 to the preempt
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