us for another live stream here from monticello. i'm brandon dillard manager of historic interpretation here. and today we'll be starting a conversation about indigenous history and politics as they relate to jefferson monticello and the early republic of the united states. today's topic is far too broad to cover in one brief conversation. and we'll likely just scratch the surface of this complex enriched subject. in spite of a narrative of american history that is often told as though everything began in 1492. the history of north america is far older and more complex. it began at least 12,000 years ago although scholars argue on the origins and migrations of the first human inhabitants of these lands. and from millennia the history and political structures of indigenous america developed and solidified through long processes of power conflict collaboration and migration. thousands of cultures and nations have come and gone and thousands remain today. the post-colonial history of the americas it's a relatively recent development in the long view. the past several centuries have had profound impacts on the course of humanity. when european colonists came to what they called the new world they brought disease. warfare alien ideas about religion and morality and they created a concept that defined people by the colors of their skins and their regions of origins. concept that called race the co-developed along with african slavery an ongoing wars against indigenous peoples. centuries of conflict and struggle would follow and by the time thomas jefferson was born and what his english people called, virginia. this conflict had been ongoing for two and a half centuries. america was a very different place in the 18th century. jefferson was born and what was considered a frontier as far west as his british forbearers had yet settled. his closest national neighbors were the monacan and he referenced the political dominance of the iroquois to the north the cherokee muskogee to the south and scores of other indigenous national entities on the eastern seaboard were still negotiating political sovereignty with the colonial powers of europe. the american revolution in the emergence of the united states brought even more change. and native peoples in america were forced to continuously reassert their rights and reinvent how they survived in their own homelands. as an intellectual jefferson wrote about native people. he cataloged languages. he collected native art and artifacts maps and diplomatic gifts. he sought out more information about the people of the west of the lewis and clark expedition. and he had indigenous art and cultural artifacts displayed on the walls of monticello. as a national leader jefferson helped establish the military and political power of the united states and he helped to determine the new nation's policies towards american indians. today, we'll dig further into some of these subjects and we'll talk about jefferson's ideas and how early us developments impacted native america. and we're very fortunate to be joined today by an expert in native legal and political affairs. please join me and welcoming dr. david wilkins. dr. wilkins is the eclairborne robbins distinguished professor in leadership studies at the jepsen school of leadership studies studies at the university of richmond. professor wilkins is a citizen of the lumbee nation of north carolina. he earned his phd in political science from the university of north carolina at chapel hill and he concentrates much of his work on native politics and governance with particular attention on the transformations that indigenous governments have been both coercively and voluntarily engaged in from pre-colonial times to the presidency. the concepts of native sovereignty self-determination and diplomacy are at the heart of wilkins research and teaching and he has focused much of his work on the political and legal relationships between native nations and the intergovernmental affairs between native peoples and states and native peoples and the federal government. he's been a visiting professor at dartmouth college harvard university and wake forest university. is the author editor of a number of books including documents of native american political development red profit the punishing intellectualism of bind to worry junior and others before joining the university of richmond, dr. wilkins was the mcknight presidential professor and american indian studies at the university of minnesota where he also held appointments in law political science and american studies. thank you for joining us today, dr. wilkins and i say we jump right in so if you don't mind just tell us a little more about yourself your research and your work. appreciate that. thank you. i'm very happy to would you be joining you today? as you noted i belong to the lumbee nation of north carolina. i'm a citizen of that nation where the largest native nation east of the mississippi a population means that we're about the fifth largest tribe in the country. um, i was a military brat and spent much of my life traveling at reservations, but they were native reservations. they were military reservations, but when i got into college, i began to read the works of vinder laurie jr. who was the most powerful intellectual thinker of the time and if not the century and wound up studying under him for my master's degree and he was the one that convinced me that we needed more indigenous people studying the political affairs of our nations and intergovernmental relations as well. and so that's what led me back to chapel hill to get my phd and i began my teaching career university of arizona for nine years and then the desert heat finally drove me away from there. up to the cold viking country in minnesota where i spent when he winters and had a wonderful run there in both native studies political science and the law program as well as you noted my work really focuses on how indigenous peoples how we've always governed ourselves and how our governments were required to change because of the dominating influence of western colonialism and all the forces that that unleashed along with other factors. and so i want to understand how we govern and how we relate intergovernmentally with the states with the federal government and increasingly. my work is looking at the global world as well. i teach courses on indigenous peoples at the global level because a lot of activities are happening now in the united nations and indigenous people around the world are meeting regularly and having a meeting regularly since 1960s in my wife and i are on textbook, it'll be a comparative politics textbook on on peoples around the globe. but right now i made my main work is a book on native governance that officers going to publish it's going to be sort of my big book if you will on tracing how we govern pre-contact and how things have evolved from that point to the present time. that's that's fantastic segue. actually. it's a good question here. you know, you're talking about these global broad concepts and just important things that have to do with the whole cultural ramifications of humanity and here at monticello. we focus on a very specific historical period for the most part and it mostly is this period of jefferson's life that bridges the mid 18th century to the early 19th century and during that time indigenous peoples in america. so a major changes and both colonial and coachman on the traditional homelands, and of course later with the emergence of the united states itself a new nation state that forever alters how they interact with set or societies. you mentioned that your new book that you're working on starts sort of before that. so, could you speak a little bit about pre-american pre-united states states and pre colonial indigenous politics? yeah, i mean, we don't know exactly how many. native nations there were prior to european arrival the estimate somewhere between 600 and 650 the best population figures that we have today say that there were somewhere between seven to 12 million native people living in what we now call the continental united states and and they they range widely from very small fishing communities in the northwest to the large plains tribes in in the in the in the in the plain states. you have the problem communities in the southwest who are very village oriented in terms of the way the way they lived in really tight societies and then you have the major nations in the southeast the so called five civil rights as they would come to be called in the early 1800s the cherokee talk, chickasaw creek and seminal and then the northeast of course he had the mighty iroquois nation howdenashoni confederacy that had some influence on the founding fathers and their articulation and understanding of democracy of equality of fraternity and so on and then here in virginia, of course you have you've already mentioned the monica nation you have the rappahannock. you have a number of tribinations going back to the power tank confederacy whose people negotiated the earliest treaties that we have with european powers dating back this 16:07. and so the variation in the variability among native governing styles is just enormous and i'm facing that as i'm diving into this deep research on how we governed and of course, we don't know and we will never know exactly how we govern historically because the the calls of the arrival of the europeans and the diseases that accompany them. the devastating loss of life that accompanied them with the disease factor. we're all aware of the pandemic that we are suffering from right now will epidemic disease has took a dramatic and mighty toll on native nations and the estimate of population loss of some 90% of indigenous peoples throughout the americas all from the tip of canada all the way down to the tip of south america, and we know that population from population study if we accept the figure of seven to 12 million, we know that the first estimate in the 1860s is that they were about 600,000 native peoples left by 1890, which was when our population had bottom down the united states did an estimate of and they were only remaining 250,000 native people's left in the entire country. so seven 12 million down to 250,000. so imagine the loss of knowledge the loss of memory the loss of values to loss of institutions and there's no way that you can recover that and so the impact of birth first of so called discovery of our country and how that translated into the doctrine of discovery a legal doctrine that continues to inform our status today elevating the federal government as it's understood by by legal scholars and court justices to a standard a level of legal title. that is superior. to that of the indigenous people our rights being reduced because of our so called having been discovered by europeans you go from the the discovery doctrine to the disease episode and then following that you have the diplomacy that then unfurled and the negotiation of many hundreds of of treaties that were formed during during the period of time. and so it was just a mass of activity in that and and affairs going on and it was all lubricated by the attitudes and the values that europeans brought with them and indigenous people's equipped with their own attitudes and values trying to cope with the dramatic changes that they were immediately subject to by all the things that were unleashed once colonialism unfurl and began to spread across across the continent. so there's there's just so much history and i think that many of our viewers probably have this experience of having learned american history these little bits of highlights of things that happened and for my own experience. there's this fascinating blank period from you know, you've got 1607 something happened with the pilgrims and then 1776. that's a very long time 150 years of development you're describing and then of course from 1776 on the emergence of the new nation the new united states and in many ways, of course colonial influences impacted how the united states which used to govern with native people and you mentioned the doctrine of discovery talk a little bit if you don't mind about early federal indian policy like how that develops and when it began, yeah, well, emerging out of the the colonial era. i mean you have benjamin franklin with the with the albany plan where he acknowledges the political sophistication of the how do you know shawnee of the iroquois people and said, how is it that six nations of ignorant people can organize a confederacy that has them linked in such a way that they ended war into tribal warfare and they are now the dominant political actors of a great swath of northeastern america all the way down to virginia and parts of north carolina my own home state so we know that that was a huge a huge influence and so we go from that, you know, and then you look at the 1763 rural proclamation line that was established by by king george in the hopes that they could try to contain settlement while respecting at least having a measure of respect for the native nations both on these the line and western side of the line because they're trying to centralize political power because they're new that there was enormous amounts of conflict. happening and the best way to deal with that was to have central control of that of that situation. but by the time we get to the declaration of independence of and of course we know about that important clause in the declaration where jefferson and ask the author talks about native peoples as merciless in his savages his known rule of warfare is the youngest english destruction of all ages sexes and conditions. and so that sent a chilling message to indigenous peoples that that was one mindset of of the americans as they were getting ready to revolt against against king george and yet two years later in 1778 the united states congress on negotiates its first formal written treaty with the native nation the delaware people and in that tree the article 6 have the provision article 6 in encouraging the invites the delaware to create a native state and they were invited to have a representative in congress. so, how do we go from being mercilessality to kill everything and until years later being invited to create an indian state and have representation and that was a cause that reappears in several other treaties including ones with the cherokee and the choctaw as well and 1795 and in 1830 and 1835 as well. and so what you really have are these conflicting and biblical positions by federal policymakers and lawmakers understanding that we need to find a way to engage with indigenous people's because spain and france and russia even out in california had still had their own designs on on north america and so the united states was trying to find a to woo native people to negotiate with them become trading partners and military allies and political relatives with with the united states. while at the same time being steeped in ethnocentric an ethocentric mindset believing that native people's were culturally inferior that we were spiritually inferior that we didn't understand the concept of property ownership and that the darkness discovery had given them superior rights to our lands because they were and let a christian society and so you have these ambivalent of feelings played out as it did in the declaration of independence and first treaty with the delaware and so things have been in the state of inconstancy ever since then with some federal lawmakers, you know anxious to engage with native people and being willing to invite them to join the american democratic experiment and others still viewing us as savages and and as people who are inferior in various ways, and so this there's an inherent tens that is existed since that beginning time all the way to the present. and so when i look at the trump administration the outgoing trump administration's policies, he was of the mindset of the merciless indian savage kind of a person who believed that, you know, native people really are an inferior population. um, and that treaties were not to be respected that our lands could be taken that or pipelines could go under our territory. whereas other individuals had much more, you know, beneficial mindsets and president elect biden has already issued a 15 page policy proposal. that's much more steep in the tradition that recognizes native people as the original peoples and we're going to he's going to engage in diplomacy. it's going to renew the policy of meeting with tribes at the white house once a year as obama did during his eight year term and so see these historic ambivalencies can continuing to play out even to the present time. it seems like just such a perfect representation and conversation about a country that has a paradox at its core founding right, you know at monticello. we have this conversation a lot about how is it possible that the man who said all men are created equal could own human beings. it's a similar kind of paradox. then jefferson would hold in him both a simultaneous admiration for the nobility of american people the construct of that that native. noble native idea versus the native savage idea and it plays out just throughout the whole course one of the things that you said, that is very telling you mentioned the spanish in the west and and the russians in the west and of course part of the the mythology of monticello and the story that we tell here is is centered on the lewis and clark expedition. yes, journey to the unknown west and of course the reality is that millions of people are living there and even in the far west european colonial powers are already there. that's a diminish the actual challenges of the lewis and clark expedition, but there was a lot of diplomacy involved and they had to tread lightly as they were in many cases grossly outnumbered and far outweight and military superiority throughout the plains, but the louisiana purchase it helps further this tone and of course it opens up much of the center part of the united states of america for that further colonial in so could you talk a little bit about how the louisiana purchase helped pave the way for changes in tribal sovereignty? yes. yeah, i mean i i'm not a jeffersonian specialist, but i know enough about his policies um to and i i actually participated in a a lewis and clark conference a few years ago. and so when i was preparing for our conversation today, i went back and went through some materials about about jefferson and we know that he had long had an interest in indigenous lands and one of the positive aspects of jefferson, um, is that he understood that native people's actually the owners of their own land so we didn't buy into the doctrine of discovery definition which holds that native people's have no land title whatsoever or their land title is somehow inferior to that of whites. he recognized that it belong to us as the original inhabitants. and so i give him i give him credit for nevertheless he as an individual who would take become one of the leading founders of the american republic knew that american people needed additional lands and so he was certainly willing and and pushed and and sometimes prod and native people's to feed land through various treaties, right? and so he negotiated during his presidency at least 28 treaties from what i was able to gather and most of these were land session treaties and what's important about louisiana purchase on many people. or finally coming to understand that when that purchase was made with with france. it wasn't land that was exchanged. it was sovereignty or the governance that was exchanged. nothing more. nothing less on jefferson knew that the indigenous peoples that inhabited that vast swath of land still held title to their territory and he knew that they were going to have to be many many treaties negotiated to buy that land from them and that's what in in fact happened. and of course jefferson also with willing to put pressure on native peoples to so their land right he go ultimately he was the president of the united states which at that time did not include indigenous people's as part of its citizenry and that's a critical dimension to remember as well even though there were already treaties as early as 18 19 or natives were encouraged to become american citizens if they were willing to leave their nation arm and fully assimilate into the body politic. you could become an american citizen but the past majority of native peoples had no interest in they were parts and proud members of their own nations, but jefferson certainly use a lot of pressure on and on at one point. he mentioned in that one letter that he wrote that you know native people must be willing to negotiate lands or we will crush them. and so there was that constant pressure as well. so, you know, there was there that sense of paternalism there was a sense that native people are culturally inferior, even though we are territorily superior because the land belong to us and yet jefferson was going to use whatever powers he could muster to oak to help. americans continue their expansion west and if it meant putting pressure on native peoples to sell lens whether they wanted to sell them or not. he was not above doing that any certainly did that as well. and so we have purchase what the huge event because it really did open up. ending country to additional pressures from sutlers who were streaming out west and yet you know land was not exchange only, you know, only the sovereignty he calls the united states realize that it only had the right to be the preempt to purchaser of any land that tried my choose to sell and so that's how jefferson understood the adoption of discovery that he gave the united states the first purchase rights the preemptive rights to purchase, but they had to steal purchase them from the native communities whose lands they were moving into so the jefferson wrote several letters where he said similar kinds of things and one at one of the ones that you referenced there, which will lincoln put in our comments link for viewers. he writes in 1803. this is an offsided letter that he wrote to william henry harrison. it was then the governor of indiana territory. he was also the superintendent there's he says exactly what you just outlined they can you know, indian people can culturally assimilate or they can be removed west of the mississippi river. he uses that word and of course the concept of removal had profound consequences. i didn't talk for just a few minutes about this idea of removal and and what those consequences were. yeah. yeah, the removal. um, yeah, jefferson was an early proponent of that. he wasn't the first but he certainly soul that native peoples were going to have to be relocated in order to make additional lands available. and and so he you know talked about that quite a bit in his writings and in his policies and so on and ultimately of course when conditions arose in the southeastern part of the country, um particularly with andrew jackson's presidency and state of georgia's obstacy feeling as if they are entitled to all the lands including the lands of the cherokee whose territory georgians were now seeking to overrun particularly once they discovered gold in in those territories and so that said in in motion a chain of events that would ultimately culminate in the 1830 indian removal act which thousands upon thousands of native nations. we're relocated from all points of america, not just the southeast but other regions country as well and and were all shipped off. to what became oklahoma and kansas and the what the five civilized tribes did for their part was negotiate a series of removal treaties because they knew that they couldn't resist removal and and once the the cherokee cases have been handed down by the supreme court with john marshall authoring three huge cases johnson versus mcintosh in 1823, which elevates adoption of discovery to a status that really did elevate the federal government to have superior proprietary position. these are being native people's. um, and it also eliminated or denied tribes or right to negotiate with other treaty partners that they had long been negotiating with and then when you get to the two cherokee cases the one in 1831 cherokee nation versus georgia with the supreme court essentially said that sorry cherokees you do not have the right to bring a case directly to us. because you are not a foreign state what you are is a domestic dependent community a domestic dependent nation. and so that case also contains language that will over time reify into the idea that indians were awards of the government marshall youths and analogy in there where he said the relationship between tribes and the federal government resembles that of a guardian to award. it was a mirror analogy that he used indicta and yet over time and gradually that expanded and reified and by the time we get to the 1850s 1860s policymakers and in washington dc or referring to tribes as wards and they recing we had always been wards and yet interesting enough six months after the cherokee case marshall then authors the wooster opinion worcester versus georgia in which several missionaries had been arrested as having violated, georgia law by moving into any country at the cherokees invitation. and under color of federal law, which was designed to encourage tribes to accept christianity except prostitutation and the cherokee invited the missionaries there in georgia arrests them and says, they broke georgia law and we're going to send us them to um, penitentiary and when marshall finally has the case that he had been waiting to get and he finally renders the opinion that i think really reflected his real views about natives is that natives were not domestic or dependent? we were not wards we were to think independent political communities treaties where the supreme law of the land and state laws had no force inside of indian country. um, and so that was the opinion that he had always wanted to write but politics had kept him from writing it he was fearing he was fearful of what the jackson administration would do had decided to favorably with the cherokees in the first case and so he had rendered a political compromise opinion, um that acknowledged, you know, native people's had some rights and yet not rights that could challenge those of the federal government. and so and all this is said in motion, of course by jefferson's views on removal on that generated a lot of support from people who wanted indians relocated in part in their minds to save them right because they knew that native people's on immediate exposure to colonizing powers frequently led to their death or their depopulation whether it's the calls of diseases or alcohol or settler conflicts or any combination of that and so it really said in in process a chain of events that culminated in that very dark period the removal period you know and when we were preparing for this we said that we could speak to the these three legal decisions this marshall trilogy for hours. and i think i think that's right. i mean there's so many ways in which this is impacted federal indian policy at 200 years ago and on up through to today and for many of our viewers, you know, this happens right after jefferson's death for the most part this this is in the decades that immediately followed jefferson, but of course he knew marshall and he knew jackson and if you just sift through some of his writings you can get some of his opinions on both both of those men, which he had things to say about both. and you mentioned professor wilkins some of the the concepts about preserving native people by moving them west and you know, my own knowledge on this is almost entirely relegated to the cherokee nation, but there were internal divisions, of course within the cherokee nation about the best path forward which led to political divisions that also still have ramifications today and then of course the trail of tears followed right and one of the interesting and complex aspects of this conversation has to do with the ways in which the cherokees sought to negotiate their survival and lights of these colonial pressures and one of the things that they did is they enslaved african-americans who many of whom traveled with them on the trail of tears and monticello, of course, is this site of slavery over 400 african-american people were held in bondage here. and of course this cultural conflict of europeans indigenous americans people descended from africans, and of course, you know people who come from asia people who come later from the south and latin americans, there's just this broad and mixing of people and cultures that develops into who we are today the library how to profound impact and i was i was wondering if you could talk about how slavery played either a political or historical role and the development of indian relations here in the united states. yeah, that that really is a a dynamite topic of both figuratively and and more so um, because there's always been an inherent tension of particularly for native peoples in the easter part of the country where slavery was such a dominant enterprise that devastated lives of african african people's um, and you're right on the cherokee and members of the other so-called civilized tribes the planting class the elites those nations did in fact enslave african-american's and of course has been argued by some scholars that native peoples treated african slaves better than white slave owners. i'm not familiar with all that literature, but i don't i don't buy that. um, i do know that seminal people of florida the very name seminole itself means runaway slaves because they aren't amalgamation of numerous tribes including runaway slaves who who merged to form what became the seminole the seminal nation i know bind to lori and one of his books custer died your sins. wrote turbo chapters talking about this exquisite tension between african-american and indigenous peoples. but at one point he described african-american's historically. he said they reviewed by white people as draft animals and native people reviewed as wild animals right of both where animals that either in either case and yet for whites african-american's people who were told who were kept out of the american social contract on were as native peoples or at least some native peoples. cut face called the pressure to be forced into the american social contract. and so there is a sense of a measured inclusion that native people experience with african-american. it was measured exclusion. they wanted them to remain on the outskirts and but the problem with the african-american friedman in the case of the five civilized tribes once they mostly were relocated to what became oklahoma. we bring up to world war. we bring it up to the civil war the slave owning a leaders of several of those tribes signed treaties with the confederates in part because they wanted to keep african-american's enslaved. um, and as a result of their participation in civil war on the side of the confederacy when the united states negotiated new treaties with them in 1866 one of the provisions of their new treaty set that um, the the tribes had to in franchise had to give citizenship to their free slaves slavery had now ended. and as requirement of negotiating these new treaties the tribes had to grant citizenship rights to their former slaves and the tribes did that but they did it reluctantly and we see that clean played out even right now at the current moment on the cherokee nation beginning in 1970s sought to disenfranchise the african-american friedman the descendants of the freedmen and the friedman fought back and they challenged on their disenrollment by the cherokee nation it wound up going to a series of court proceedings. finally a federal judge out of washington dc. i think it was a 2017 issued a ruling that said definitively that the cherokee nation had to in franchise and restore citizenship rights to the freedmen and they did that and the cherokee nation is finally accepted that so for them. this is finally been resolved, but the creek people of oklahoma are still denying full citizenship to african-american's and they're still facing legal consequences and political consequences. because a bill has been introduced. just within this current congressional. time that would essentially strip the creek nation of federal resources, unless and until they grant. both internship to the freedmen and descendants. so it's an ongoing ongoing battle and yet simultaneously when the black lives matter movement erupted the spring and continues a number of native people's joined in as allies. and so when you saw confederate statues coming down here in richmond, and in other parts of the south we also saw columbus statues being torn down as well. and so we have these moments where these deep alliances can be formed between indigenous persons and african-american's um, but adult doesn't always happen the governmental level, unfortunately. so yet again, it seems like answer and a conversation. that's just as complex as every human being is from every other so many myriad different distinctions and you know, i would encourage our viewers here jefferson specifically wrote about some of the ideas that professor wilkins talked about there in the beginning with the european dominant view of africans versus american indians and check it out inquiry 14 on notes in the state of virginia. he speaks specifically to what professor wilkins is talking about the exclusion of african people and the inclusion of american indian. people and i think that you know we have time for one last question and this is just as broad and just as complex. so i'm going to do it to you again, but you've already brought us into it a little bit with the conversation about how some of these ongoing legal battles are still happening still taking place today and political unrest throughout the country with the black lives matter movement over the last few years has brought national attention into a broader and more publicly aware version of a discourse about race and what that means and this is also happened in indian country with the water protectors standing rock and and ongoing conversations about protection of indigenous women throughout the north and the rest of the indian country throughout. i'm curious if we could end just by having a bit of a conversation about bringing this history for just a little bit more about, you know, tribal relations today are the ways in which the history that we've talked about plays out today. do you think are important for tourism for all americans to know and to understand yeah. that's a good good a good question. i think what i what i would emphasize is that for native nations the concept of nation itself is critical. are because native people's who live in or on reservations and their governments which pre-existed the united states formation? we were not parties through the construction of the us constitution and our nations are still not subject in general to the us constitution proper and a lot of americans don't understand that they assume that the us constitution applies. uniformly across every corner of america, but it doesn't apply in the same way to ending people in the country. we called up our pre-existing sovereignty and that national identity that native people's embrace and in a very proud of you know, it traces back because it was formally recognized by jefferson and by the early founders and by the even going into the colonial era or the clear recognition that native people's are separate sovereign governments, and we must deal with them diplomatically through the negotiation of treaties and the ongoing importance of treaties they call while treating making ended in 1871 technically the treaty rights that it previously been established are still they still govern and most treaties even though provisions of every treaty have been violated by the federal government. very few treaties in toto have been abrogated. so the indigenous peoples our rights are protected not so much by the constitution as are as they are by the treaties that were negotiated and that certainly has its origin in the colonial and early american period that jefferson represented and then the other thing that continues to resonate and it also traces back to things we talked about at the beginning of today's conversation this tension between federal lawmakers who on the one hand support at times the inherent rights of native peoples their rights to land ownership their rights to beings to be self-governing to be self-determined and yet the same time a sense that the federal government knows what's best for natives as the idea of warship, even though is no longer a legal doctrine. they're still a political mindset that many federal policymakers have the native people still need. a paternal father to oversee them because they're still viewed as somehow culturally or legally incompetent. and so that tension still persists in the law and it traces back to those already documents that we talked about with the way we're depicted and declaration of independence as opposed to the first treating provision in the first provision and the delaware treaty which invites on the delaware to have representation in the us congress. so you have that ambivalence that continues to be to be a problem and the fact of citizenship itself right native people on have three layers of citizenship. i'm a member and a citizen of the lumbee nation, and i'm also now a citizen of the state of virginia and i'm also a citizen of the federal government. and so i always tell my students in theory native individuals should be the most protected class of people in the country layered with three layers of citizenship and yet because of our indigenous citizenship the federal government claims that it can do things to us by wielding virtually absolute political power. that's best it in the congress because of the commerce clause that leaves us without any recourse. um, so even though we are armed with all these layers of citizenship our rights our subject and are more tenuous and a more attenuated than those of any other group in this country and again that all traces back to the early early jeffersonian on period that's a fascinating and just makes me remember and and want to underscore again that as with every conversation we have here at monticello. it might be about the past but it's not really about right exactly helps us understand so much more about where we are today and where we still might go. right right. well professor wilkins, i can't thank you enough. thank you for just enlightening all of us with this conversation giving us a lot more to think about and study and i hope that this is as i reference in the beginning just the very beginning of what might be a long conversation for us at monticello. and for many people around the united states in the world. look forward to seeing your book when it comes out and hopefully we