That will be speaking with us throughout the next month so i encourage everyone to stop by the questions desk and grab an event calendar. Before we get started, i like to remind everyone to silence your devices. We prefer not to have any interruptions. Make sure to use the microphone located there by the pillar. We dont use on microphone, your question will not be picked up on the recording. If you have not purchased the book, they are available at the register. Hold up your chairs at the end of the event. We have an extinguished event with us. The jewish holocaust survivor. He grew up on the reservation in northern minnesota. He teaches literature currently at the university of socal. His writings have appeared in publishing such as the new york times, Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post among others. In addition, hes previously written four novels, one of which is named best book for 2006 by the Washington Post. He discusses his newest book. Im not going to spoil it for you but the book is a fundamental challenge for the widely accepted idea that native american resistance to u. S. Imperialism ended at the devastating massacre. Instead, he highlights the incredible resilience. You are obviously very excited and honored to have them here with us tonight. Give us a warm welcome for them. [applause] thank you all for coming on this beautiful warm. [laughter] d. C. Evening. Microphone close. Doesnt need to be closer . I can. I have to eat the mic. All right. Is a good . Okay. You know these things. Anyway, thank you for coming out on this beautiful day. Feels like spring. Im sure there are a lot of daffodils poking their way out. They are already coming up . There you go. Im very happy to be in this city of my birth. I was born in d. C. , i spent my first few years here. A lot of important things happen to me in this town i was born. Lots of good things happening. I was hit by a lunch lady. As if the school lunch wasnt bad enough. [laughter] we had to top it off with getting run over. But im really happy to be back and to have family here and have classmates from college here, to have friends from childhood here in all of you lovely people i dont know yet so thank you so much. Colby most fun for us, i think, would for me to talk a little bit about how the book came to be. Then read, not terribly long so we have lots of time to have a conversation. Frankly, thats the best part of these things. A chance to come together over some ideas and a legitimate conversation. Thats where i would like to spend most of our time. As a disclaimer, i never had the ambition to be a nonfiction writer. I always wanted to be on novelist. Thats all i ever wanted to do. I thought falsely that novels, thats where the action was. Why the presidency is where the tower is. I felt similarly about fiction and novels in particular. Have no ambition beyond being a novelist. I was content for many years doing what novelist do which is just making it up. In the laboratory of my office are whatever cafe i found myself in. I was content doing that but for something that happened close to home in 2005. Im from a reservation in northern minnesota and just up the road is a reservation. There was a School Shooting at the red light reservation. This kid from red lake, same time as mine, by the way. Lots of family the, lots of friends there. I worked for the school where the shooting took place. Her father worked for the scho school. This kid killed his grandfather, he was a tribal policeman and killed his grandfathers girlfriend. I had been in new york visiting friends at the time and my brother called me and gave me the news and he said, he told me what happens. So i turned on the tv and cap flipping channels and the more i flipped, the angrier i got. They couldnt figure out why i was so upset beyond the fact that 11 people died. A place that was important to me, i felt connected to the place. I started to curse the stations, the television and he said well, whats the problem . I said they are not reporting the news. Thats the problem. On every station and subsequently, all the media thereafter and the weeks after. They just told the same story. I said they are not reporting the news. But they were reporting on a pork remote innovation, tragedy strikes. Thats what they said. Thats not the news. Thats not what happened. Thats not what happened to or how it happened. This is the same old sad story about reservations that everybody already thinks they know. This is storytelling. This is not news. I want to know what happens. Who died . How . Whos hurt . Where are they . I was really upset. In the days after, i had meetings about unrelated things. I was telling them, when columbine went down, nobody said a fairly affluent suburb, they just told you where it was. They didnt remark about race or class. I thought that was interesting. He said, i cap think this is not the story of reservations. Its awful. I dont love it because it suc sucks. There are real reasons i care about this place. There are things that happened here that are important beyond the sad stories that people tell over and over again. I said i dont know but its more than that. Then he said well, ive always wanted to publish a book about reservation life and what reservations are and what they mean and where they are going and visits career advice. Life through your teeth. [laughter] he said ive always wanted to publish a book but what makes them right nonfiction . And i said sadly, im the only one. [laughter] i have never written nonfiction in my life. I had never attempted this ever. I saddled with this misconception but the big kids wrote novels. I thought, how hard could it be to right nonfiction . Really, i just had to talk people and read some stuff and get facts and i would be good and put together. So i agreed to write this book for him. I spent a few years on it and i handed it in and i didnt hear from him. For some months, he finally got back to me and said i want to have time for everyone to read the manuscript. I said thats generous of you. He said yeah, we decided you should start over. [laughter] i said yeah right. I should go back to some parts that need some work and i could really focus on some details and rework certain sections. He said thats what i said and if you were listening, he would have heard me say we are not going to publish this and cancel your contract unless you write us a good book. And that really hurts. [laughter] no one had ever said that to me before. He was right though. I knew the kind of story i did not want to tell but i have no idea how to tell the story i wanted to because i didnt know what it was. Some other life events intruded of a painful nature and actually unlocked the book, my own thinking. About where i was from and who i was. What our lives mean. What happens is, a couple of years later after the shooting, my mothers father committed suicide. 83yearold veteran, dodged thousands of bullets and then shot himself in the head and died on his bedroom floor. My grandmother asked me to do two things. She asked me if i would write a eulogy to meet at the service. Ive never written a eulogy but i said i would do that. She said, would you go up to his house where he did it . Your uncles cant handle that. I dont know why she thought i the fact. I think she sought in comparison to other members of the family, he and i hadnt been close. I dont know what she thought i said okay. Im not going to refuse that request so i spent the day she didnt mean cleanup, she meant stripped down to the floor boards, rip up the carpet. Anything with blood on it. She didnt want anyone to know about it. I dont know why so i spent the day doing that. I kept thinking about what i want to do say about him. It would have been so easy and i was so wrong when i finally sat down to write the eulogy. To wallow in or sort of embrace my rage, my disappointment, my sadness over his suicide. It would be so easy to go up there. I wanted to go there. I was thinking as i was feeling all the things, i was wondering what the purpose of eulogy is. It seemed to me that ike eulogy has two purposes. One, you have to Say Something true about the deceased. Theres nothing worse than going to a funeral for somebody you love and hearing terms that have no bearing. The sweetest soul, always had a kind word and you think to yourself, charming . He was an hole. [laughter] cant say that, it wasnt true. You have to Say Something true. Even if its uncomfortable. You have to do that. The second thing a eulogy has to do, it has to be used to the living because ultimately, thats who its for. It doesnt matter to them too much. It does for us. For those of us would have to carry on, we have to get used to it. I was thinking about that and my grandfather and i knew in my heart, it would have been so easy to just tell the story of his life as a story of loss and poverty and hardship. It wouldnt have been an accurate exactly but that wasnt the full picture. Eightythree years and the only place in the world that matter to him which was the small village in minnesota on the reservation, he didnt care about anyone else. He did not care. That was it. He got to spend 80 of his 83 years and the only place that mattered to him. Thats not hardship. Eighty of his 83 years surrounded by the only people in the world that mattered to him. His parents, his siblings, his kids, grandkids, cousins. His neighbors and he did not spend a day except for the days he was in the army fighting. When he didnt see someone he loved. I thought thats not poverty, thats surplus. Thats plenty. I thought whats all that measured against a split second the bullet was in his head . Actually outweighs the 83 years, outweighs a fraction of a second the bullet was in his head. Why he put it there, i couldnt begin to know. Those years had to count for something more. Thats what i talk about in the eulogy. And that, i realized i was the framework i was missing in my thinking about my reservation and community more broadly. You seem thinking of innovations as places where theres less of everything. Tragic places, places hope goes to die. Thats the story we know. But what if i could turn that around and wean myself from my own reliance on tragic telling . What if i could see my community as a place, not where theres less of everything but more . Maybe more suffering but i think thats fair. More humor and creativity as well. Maybe more poverty but more hostile. Maybe more crime but also more laws. We have a lot of laws. We have tribal laws, more constitutions than you have. We have our tribal constitution and u. S. Constitution. More law enforcement, more of everything. If i could see that place that way, then i could see some new way to tell the story of that place. Part of the problem is, a big problem i think is a week make people suffer from scarcity. Theres lots of stories told about us but there are not that many different kinds of stories. We suffer from scarcity. The dominant way we have of understanding our past is through the tragic. Aristotle reminds us that tragedy is a story of intense emotion between feelings of pity and fear which results in emotional unburdening. Thats always the mode for telling stories about native people. People can then get into our history as a kind of liberal community service. We took all of his land. Read a book about it. Ive done my part. Kind of. I dont want the status quo. Im going to change that. So this tragic mode is the one in which we are stuck and have been stuck for so long. After my grandfathers death with this idea of surplus, i was able to write the book my publisher wanted and it worked out. That led me into writing nonfiction. Thats my first book of nonfiction. I thought or probably thought there was problems with the way people saw reservations but theres also problems with the way we see the past. We see American Indian history as a sideshow to American History. We see American Indian people as being in america but not of it. We see native community as suffering and native people as victims of history and not the makers of it. I was thinking about all of that and it was all around my memory of reading classic which was published in the year of my birth in 1970. He primed it that way. [laughter] on the very first page, the best selling book published. Translated into 17 languages. Its a bestseller. The very first pages, he said im focusing on the American West in the years of the planes were. I ended the massacre in 1890, the culture and civilization on the American Indian was destroyed. He goes on the next page. If you happen to travel to a contemporary indian reservation and noticed the poverty and hopelessness, perhaps by reading my book, you will understand why. I read that book on the 100 and the bursary in 1990. I had contrasting feelings. On one hand, i felt really happy that someone of browns energy, enthusiasm and compassion devoted considerable effort thinking about us and bringing our history into the light. We shouldnt forget that. That was a noble thing he did. I felt lifted up on one hand and pushed in my grave with the other. Death and disappearance in 1890. I began thinking in the last few years, we needed to followup in counter narrative. Other facts, other dates, thats not enough. I wanted a counter narrative. This tragic narrative on which we rely so much, turns our lives into statistics and conditions. It erases the fact that native people have been making our own history all along. Karl marx has a great quote, im sure its on everyones reading list, one of the greatest hits. He says Something Like all men make history but they dont always make it as they please. They dont always make it with tools out there to zinc but they make it nonetheless. That seemed really apt to me. Native people, we always have the luxury of making our history as we please. But we have made it nonetheless and continue to make it. Continue to evolve as modern people. Its very hard to accept. A smart person interviewed me recently and he was very concerned about assimilation. That was the beat in his bonnet. He said so, speak english and youve been to princeton, how do you feel about your own assimilation . I was like you want to know something funny . Youve heard of them, you know they were once a with contrived . Didnt always live on the plane. Hes like i didnt know that. Yeah, its true. They lived around the great lakes and they did traveling and hunting and things like that. We displaced them, my tribes did. It was a tough life to live on the planes. After the results, one of the side effects in which the horse escaped and they were keen on making sure they did not escape. They wanted to be mounted against tribes who werent. All these horses spread across the plains and said they adopted the horse. He became a horse culture. Its nuts. They adopted the gun and became to what we know now in the group. Isnt that cool . Yeah, princeton is my horse. English is my gun. Why is that so hard for you to understand . Why is that so hard . But scarcity. Problem with that narrative, to, too much about professor to peel otherwise. The way we tell stories, the stories we tell shape our reality and shape that. So if we rely on much reduced version of who we are and what we mean and what we have done, future will be bleak. We need a different way of thinking. So i gave it a shot. Ill read a little bit if thats okay. From the very end of the book, spoiler alert we are still here. Ive ruined the ending. [laughter] someone asked me recently, maybe not crazy to them but somebody asked me, do you think the election in kansas is a sign of hope . Im not interested in stories of hope, by the way. Thats not the opposite of tragedy. She understands the structural inequality as a native person growing up where she did. She understands these things and what it feels like to live at the pointy end of policy. She understands what it means to have a lack of access to capital and credit. She understands those things in between you and me and you heard it here first that is where america is headed. That is where Middle America is headed. It is increasingly difficult for Middle Americans in places like kansas and nebraska and wisconsin, south dakota to have access to healthcare, education, capital. Was is it just good news for native people for 150 years wasnt just happy for native people but anyway i will read a little bit and then we will talk. There were a few skirmishes and Wounded Knee New mexico minnesota nevada and most of the famous chief sitting bull crazy horse drawn amo red cloud, most are either dead or in prison or in retirement. At the time and populations have been according to sober estimate is a 5 million is a sober estimate. The tribe spread over the entire continent from the florida keys to the Aleutian Islands the desert of the american southwest is the advanced social groups and if anyone asks you the oldest continually inhabited city is pueblo. Not saint augustine. Im here to correct the record. At the confluence of the missouri and mississippi were st. Louis stands with 20000, along the resource rich eastern seaboard from florida to newfoundland slowly free and starvation took its toll 237,000 indians in the United States in 1800. The story of the land parallels that of the population United States comprises 234 billion acres by 1900 they control only 78 million acres or 3 percent it wasnt the outcome of a single regime or episode or factor in it didnt happen overnight but wounded knee came to stand for all of that a. To a long sentence. Wounded knee was not only as the end of indian life but also american life. The front tier made america what it was but it was closed and the memory was already turned into novels and westerns indians were put out for golf but not so fast. Trying to show in the preceding pages native people lived on as more than the relics of a once happy people increasingly invested in to do our best to change the american character it pains me to think about wounded knee it also pains me to read about it in books what hurts is not just 150 people were truly and viciously killed along Wounded Knee Creek in 1890 but and our sense of their lives we know next to nothing about them or who among them was funny where they unfaithful or vain or fond of sweets those details are what make us who we are and again and again when we paint over them with the tragedy of as an indian in this sentence the victims died twice once at the end of again and again at the end of ipad. We in our own minds this is the saddest death of all we are so used to telling the stories of our lives in the tribe and the tragedy to necessarily diminish once we were great once we ruled everything now we rule nothing now just a ghost that haunts the American Mind but to deprive ourselves of others i cannot understand the way we shape our reality shapes the reality telling makes the world and if we tell the story as a tragedy we consign ourselves to a tragic future if we insist on raging against our dependency on the United States and modernity we miss something. As much as our past was shaped by the wind and the violence of evolving America America has been shaped by us. The violence itself is influenced by the shifting front tier as america emerged in the early 18 hundreds the question of how the federal government could work against the states by the indian removal in the southeast the power between the states and the federal government was resolved in the marshall trilogy of decisions about cherokee removal. America has always understood its self in relation to us to treat history as a sideshow is to apprehend and misunderstand American History in this countrys temperature you cannot take its measure without thinking about us. One of americas first revolutionary acts was to deep dumped t in Boston Harbor thats just not all that they did but they dressed up as mohawk indians after the victorious revolution we try to figure out what shape to give their new government they borrowed liberally from the makeup of the confederacy that was the blueprint of our balance of power with the democratic institutions. If you dont believe me then fast forward to the 1980s and 19 nineties. Also parts of the seventies the Supreme Court heard more cases of indian law than any other more the reproductive rights, immigration, banking, as the country tried to rethink itself after the pentagon papers in vietnam and watergate at least in the Court America was in self regard to tribal sovereignty. Some america has been shaped by us in ways large and small since the beginning not a sideshow sorry i deviated from my script. [laughter] the modern Supreme Court was shaped by the government and sovereign indian nations at Standing Rock more recently of a more pressing modern question to our National Identity wet loan what and who to what degree should government and private property have interest over the common good . The Standing Rock protest was framed as cowboys versus indians as the case of the white man getting indians down again it is true but not completely. The bigger conflict between privileging profit and enterprise over the common good and once again native people were there to bring the fight to our attention once again we were put in the position to make america a better and safer from herself a new way to think it is up to us to dream a new one. To help its always useful to invoke the late great Walter Bennett dean also on everyones reading list. Come on. The german critic and thinker . Know . He says to articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize that the way it really was a means to seize hold of the memory that in every era of the attempt must be made to arrest tradition away from conformism that is about to overpower it only that historian has the gift of the past two is firmly convinced even then it would not be safe from the enemy if he wins. I think today is that moment of danger i think today we can see and we can feel it is particularly true for you who live in dc that america has always been at war with itself. Since the beginning it has been in a war over its character. And native people have been at the center of that conflict since the beginning. Theres always been a war between what version of a country do we want . We want to country. Are one that powers and protects the most vulnerable communities . What kind of country do we want . That is the heart of our electoral politics right now what will win . America is appetite so in any event it is to rescue by looking beyond wounded knee its not so much the cold ground of south dakota about the heart that beats on and all the other tribes around the country and while wounded knee was a last conflict there were many battles fought by indian parents to keep their children for those to remember to keep their families close to their hearts battles of indian leaders to defeat destructive legislation and activists to make good that they would not honor to be indian and modern at the same time we are the children and grandchildren and greatgrandchildren of those who survived wounded knee to do what was necessary to survive at first how we see the people shapes the present and the future this is to tell the story of native history to render them more than a catalog of paid i have tried not to catch in the act of dying bed is living because now what is in the enormous country that we lov love, what kind of country do we see . Is this government of ours one that should get out of the way . Or is it meant to be the angel of our better nature . And the very idea paying attention or knowing history is the compassion of the dogooder as a voluntary Public Service like volunteering at an Afterschool Program but if we treat the stories this way we do more than relegate the natives ourselves to history if only to the deep and dark past we miss the measure of the country itself if you want to know america and see it for what it was you have to look at Indian History and the present. If we do we will see all the issues posed at the founding of the countries still persist how do the rights of the many relate to the rights of the few . That should be the furthest extent how has the relationship between the government and the individual evolved . What are the limits of the executive to execute policy how does that matter as we go about our daily lives . I probably dont need to explain this to you here but i do have to say it elsewhere often if you are acidic, dont be. If youre a cynic who says it doesnt really matter its all just a game, if you think politics is a game to win or lose, think again it doesnt matter if i show up thats untrue. Fabulously untrue and those of us who live at the far end of policy are here to tell you this is not true it does matter deeply that we show up it matters deeply whom we empower it matters a great deal but if you are acidic, knock it off. How do we have the stated ideals given to those silent acts against communities and individuals . To what degree the privilege enterprise over people how does it shape our understanding and to what extent should it . What other limits for those living within the borders . To ignore the history of indians in america is a myth of how power itself works. John adams writing to Thomas Jefferson urged him to remember that power thinks it has a great soul beyond comprehension of the week. If anything the struggles and success at surviving remind us that souls have great power. We need to recall the indian woman whose name is lost in history objected by columbus given to his friend, sold and traded and raped and dumped in the sea. Remember the strength and dignity of those who responded to the commissioners trying to take his land in 1873. He said we are not children. We are met but i never thought i would be treated as so when i made this treaty remember that english of the indian father who received news of his daughters death in 19 oh six. The letter read those say she did not suffer that passed away as one asleep one of our best girls i am very sorry you could not have seen your daughter a lifer she had quite grown quite a lot since you left are here with me. To remember these and others is to remain humble in power to be called to the troubled soul of the country and that our very lives exist on the far side of policy to remember the good and the bad the personal and the social and the large and the small is not to capture indians per se but our lives for better or worse we are the body of our republic and we need to listen to it to hear beyond the pain and anger and resentments beyond the bombast and rhetoric stronger at others in a heartbeat goes on. Thank you. [applause] so now is the fun part. I have a very specific question. You mentioned in your talk of the mississippi cultures. Have not read the book yet so the answer could be inside but so those that go after the demise do we have an idea of the people and where they have dispersed to crack. I bet some people know but i dont know at the top of my head. This book is mostly after 1890 because when i sat down to write the book i thought i thought i shouldnt i should go back a little bit i kept going back and then i was 20000 bce. So its a very quick flyover and i dont know at the top of my head but there is some guesses why the city was abandoned disease or warfare may be all of those things combined with Climate Change but they dispersed in many different direction through mississippi and missouri. There are far smarter people than i on this subject. Earlier in your talk you mentioned the word assimilation. There it is again. It seems to me that indians are proud they have not assimilated except when you visit a reservation you can see they drink coke and watch television and sitting on a lazboy. It is not what you would expect. I went to the Pine Ridge Reservation and i asked whether or not there was a way i could help on the designer exhibits i thought i could help them display their wonderful artifacts that are now in cardboard boxes. They didnt want my help and here i was hoping i could bring more visitors to see the way that they live. They said we dont want any more visitors. We dont want busloads of chinese tourists. What they needed in some way was to be left alone. They had a Visitor Center but the idea of joining and assimilating, i did not get an answer so are they proud to be separate . They are the most patriotic people ive been to a powwow anyone is dressed to the nines in their uniform. You kind of lost me when i think youre trying to take away my lazboy. [laughter] but the rage you just ascended that you deprive me of a comfortable chair. So im not so sure what youre asking how people feel about assimilation . There are millions of us we all have different experiences and outlooks based on different things. Right . I am not a typical representative most of my tribe is not as handsome. [laughter] thats just the way it goes. But i try to point out there is incredible diversity. Why the people at pine ridge did not want your help . I dont know. But they know. They know what they want and what they need. And so good for them. They are doing what they want. Do they resent europeans . At that they call the white people . Do they want our help . Or is helping demeaning crack. This doesnt make any sense to me. My dad is not native he moved to northern minnesota he married a native woman and he was amazing. The reason my dad was amazing is because he worked for bureau of Indian Affairs the reservation he worked a lot of the different communities in minnesota he was below it will beloved because as a matter fact that intelligent capability with whom he was working this is during johnsons war on poverty with the Community Action program. So what do you want . According to people from my reservation he was the first to show up and actually ask that question most assume that they knew what was best for us which is at the heart of federal policy that the governments continual attempts but there is no indian problem is just a federal government problem. So my father shows up and wants to know what do you want . And they say we dont have electricity in our village we want electricity. What are you prepared to do to get it . He just automatically i dont know why he evolved this way, but he treated the people he met as people who knew what was best for them. He was a great role model for collaboration and he had a long life and lifelong relationships and was beloved by many people and many people hated his guts. I dont know how to answer the question about assimilation but people do get mad. You do have to drive cars. They are not writing a fucking village donkey to go to the market. Until then i will drive a car. [laughter] you should not have a lazboy or goretex. But that is one of the points of the book we are not only stuck in the past this is not the land that time forgot. We are ancient and modern. Are susceptibilities are different because our cultures are different but i dont see a conflict. Thank you for mentioning my greatgreatgrandfather. And as an example of stereotypes indians look like everybody. We have red hair and blue eyes but what interested me since i retired from the fbi we are not the enemy. We tried. But i try to get acting jobs. In the last couple of years you can register yourself to be available for acting jobs i checked American Indian. Now people started to call because they needed indian for that part just a regular european with the same situation of black people now you have to hire a black person as an actor. So we were in this really weird stereotype so how often do you run into that yourself . All the time. My older brother hes 13 months actually but nobody is counting. He looks like a stereotypical Hollywood Indian dark skin and black hair with braids he said you shave your head a set i dont do the braid over. [laughter] thats what native men do their age. [laughter] i have more selfrespect. [laughter] but we had very different experiences growing up. He would get so much overt racism so his experience as an indian was different than mine and someone with me like white skin privilege was different than his. Different in native communities. I guess that occupied my mind a lot when i was younger but it stuck this way. I worked on the Constitutional Commission make cap saying what is comanche . It is a state of mind. Thank you so much. I read almost all of your book thank you for writing it i appreciate it. I know you have to get home and the roads are dreadful. [laughter] my father was swept up by the orphan trade and put in the Childrens Home society which was part of a group i found through research because everybody is in the family is dead and nobody can tell me anything. They took a lot of native kids and put them in there as well. It was policy he was raised in a border town in south dakota which is no longer there anymore but i could find people who were there then specifically during the depression. And we have many family stories of the interaction of my father and his adopted brother with the native americans. I want to talk to them and interview them and find out what their life was like. How do i do that . Do i just go there and find somebody quick. Trying to find a living relatives. I want a living oral history. Malware on a dusty windswept plane do i start . The saloon is still there and the farewell trading post but i dont know where to start and i mindful of the gentle man before me i just want to appear as a white woman. But this is your family history. This is the story. So many people are adopted out. And it happens so often. And i know with the chip away people have come back and have moved back after their birth family is found. It is difficult and complicated of course because they have to live part of their childhood and also meeting with a variety of responses some people are welcoming and some people are jerks. Where do you start . I dont know. Start in chicago they have genealogical records you could also go talk to people. People have long memories. They might remember stuff. If they are upset so what forgot i want to talk to about my grandfather and my father. Know. Okay. So just go and ask. Go and ask. Thank you. Thank you for being here my High School History teacher it has taken me a couple years but i finally got a course on American History next year specifically culture i wanted to do native american studies in general and i thought to myself to do cultures but you spoke to some of this already , now that i have this approved a very conscious of the way of the stories are coopted and using wounded knee as a text. So what i want to ask for anything in general for those of us who are teachers to teach this in our classrooms to almost entirely nonnative students, how can we do right by this history . What would you like to know we are doing in the classroom for the take away . Watcher tents and stick with the present tense the lakota lived versus they live. There is politics. That is one thing. Be skeptical if you read black heart, make sure you think how that entire story was framed and shaped send your students back one more degree close to the source and look at the original transcripts that are published and it is a remarkable difference between the two. Always think about the frame. And think about fighting back and always the lakota. [laughter] everybody likes you. But we are cool. Digit lawn to teach dances with wolves. The movie the writer is beautiful. There is a movie about this rodeo guy. It is such an amazing movie because nobody ever talks about what it means to be lakota they just want to ride bulls. Those are the immediate needs and wants. All these people in the past and present interpret it as an indian remember as a human as well. There are multiple subjectivities happening simultaneously but this movie is beautiful. Because its interesting to these characters and to get back on a bowl and doesnt think hell ever do it again. Its a beautiful movie i think its one of the best so to avoid anything worse anyone says my people. You would be surprised how often that happens. According to my people. Stop it or if they never laugh like they avoid it like the plague. [laughter] those are some things. Lakota history will be next year. [laughter] good evening i want to introduce myself to you. Im actually from leech lake i was an planted i came on my own by just want to give you one fact you could all identify wit with. I have a degree from harvard. [laughter] not assimilated thank you very much. Thank you for coming. [applause] [inaudible conversations] to see the two planes going for the twin towers i understood the totalitarian. They may not be communist but they are totalitarians. If you read the works like al qaeda it is clear america is once again facing totalitarian ideology. So many people have no idea how unions help to bring pensions and the work week and those who brought us the weeken weekend. I want to explain to people you have achieved a lot and American History that they have really taken it on the chin and as a result things are considerably worse for workers than they were 40 years ago