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 the