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Speaker 1: Previously on Withian House, and so that's.

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Speaker 2: What we're really trying to do with this film is

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Speaker 2: center the voices of live experts, elevate those voices, and

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Speaker 2: do some meaningful what I've come to call homelessness narrative work.

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Speaker 2: We can't solve a problem as a society that we

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Speaker 2: don't understand. We need to make sure that we as

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Speaker 2: a broader society and then therefore as a body politic,

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Speaker 2: are understanding this problem so we can address it, so

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Speaker 2: we can vote in people into positions of power, making

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Speaker 2: these funding allocations and decisions that actually address the problems

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Speaker 2: and don't just serve to uphold states of oppression, and

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Speaker 2: in the perfect world, even elevating these voices so high

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Speaker 2: that they are the electeds.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Wiian House. I'm your host, Theo Henderson. I

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Speaker 1: would like to start this episode by sharing a quote

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Speaker 1: from the incomparable Ralph Ellison. I am an invisible man.

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Speaker 1: No I am not a spook like those who haunted

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Speaker 1: Edgar Allan Poe, nor I am one of your Hollywood

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Speaker 1: movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance of flesh

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Speaker 1: and bone, fiber and liquids. And I might even be

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Speaker 1: said to possess a mind. I am an invisible man

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Speaker 1: simply because people refuse to see me. This episode would

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Speaker 1: explore what it means to be invisible in a very loud,

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Speaker 1: visible world. But first, on House News, our first story

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Speaker 1: begins with a number of people who could be forced

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Speaker 1: out of the street. In Los Angeles. Fourteen, five hundred

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Speaker 1: people could be forced out of their current subsidized housing

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Speaker 1: and onto the streets or into the shelter next year

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Speaker 1: due to loss of federal funding. This dearth of funding

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Speaker 1: will roll back progress on lowering the number of people

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Speaker 1: on housed. Since twenty twenty three, Los Angeles Council member

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Speaker 1: Nitthie Raman states, there is a potential for the entire

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Speaker 1: houseless services team that we have built up here to

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Speaker 1: fall apart. Here is a more specific breakdown. Between five

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Speaker 1: thousand and seven thousand additional households could be common house

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Speaker 1: because their rent and permanent homes is paid by a

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Speaker 1: separate federal program known as Continuum of Care. About three thousand,

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Speaker 1: five hundred households are at risk, mostly because of state funding,

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Speaker 1: and additional six thousand households could lose housing because a

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Speaker 1: federal emergency housing voucher program, which was launched during the pandemic,

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Speaker 1: is set to expire next year, four whole years ahead

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Speaker 1: of schedule. The Trump regime announced it with flashing the

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Speaker 1: amount that programs would distribute for permanent housing and shift

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Speaker 1: dollars to temporary housing options that mandate people enroll in

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Speaker 1: such services as job training and mental health treatment. As

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Speaker 1: we've talked about on the show many, many times, these

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Speaker 1: programs are not helping the unhoused, but rather forcing car

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Speaker 1: through solutions and stripping the community of their ability to

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Speaker 1: choose and direct their own lives, all the while putting

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Speaker 1: up more roadblocks to permanent housing. The local government will

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Speaker 1: then be beholden to Trump's aggressive enforcement of camping bands

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Speaker 1: in order to keep their funding. The Trump administration is

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Speaker 1: also holding the Continuum of Care funding hostage and putting

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Speaker 1: it up for competitive bidding. This will force cities to

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Speaker 1: comply with his demands, just as they have for so

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Speaker 1: many other marginalized communities in the last year. It's yet

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Speaker 1: another example of how normalized has become to openly disparage

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Speaker 1: communities like the Young House. I'll remind you that just

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Speaker 1: a few months ago, Fox News hosts Lawrence Jones and

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Speaker 1: Brian Kilmead said this on the air.

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Speaker 3: They have given billions of dollars to mental health and

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Speaker 3: the homeless population. A lot of them don't want to

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Speaker 3: take the programs. A lot of them don't want to

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Speaker 3: get the help that is necessary. You can't give them

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Speaker 3: a choice. Either you take the resources that we're going

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Speaker 3: to give you and or you decide that you're going to.

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Speaker 1: Be locked up in jail.

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Speaker 3: That's the way it has to be now, or involuntary

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Speaker 3: lethal injection or something.

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Speaker 4: Just kill them.

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Speaker 1: They experienced no professional repercussions. Our last story ends with

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Speaker 1: ex Los Angeles police officer Clifford Proctor, who killed an

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Speaker 1: unarmed hun house man in Venice in twenty fifteen. He

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Speaker 1: was arrested at Liaxis past October. The man Procter shot

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Speaker 1: and killed on May fifth, twenty fifteen, was named Brendan Glenn.

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Speaker 1: Following an apparent dispute that occurred between Glenn and a

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Speaker 1: bar bouncer, Proctor intervene and placed Glenn on his back

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Speaker 1: when he stepped back, and shot him twice. At the Times,

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Speaker 1: then police Chief Charlie Beck recommended that Proctor be charged,

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Speaker 1: but former District Attorney Jackie Lacy declined the press charges

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Speaker 1: back in twenty eighteen, the case was reopened with a

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Speaker 1: different former district attorney, George Gaston, shortly after he took

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Speaker 1: office in twenty twenty. Charges were filed last year, prompting

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Speaker 1: Proctor to flee to Trinidad. When he returned, he was

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Speaker 1: finally arrested for the murder of Brendan Glenn over ten

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Speaker 1: years later. And that's on House News. When we come back,

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Speaker 1: I speak with Indigenous activists and author Dina Jillio Whittaker.

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Speaker 1: Welcome back to Weedian House. I'm Theo Henderson. My guest

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Speaker 1: this week is prolific writer, educator, and activist Dina Jillio Whittaker.

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Speaker 1: A member of the COVID Confederated Tribes, Dina has spent

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Speaker 1: her career reporting on and educating the public on Indigenous issues,

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Speaker 1: the colonization, and environmental justice. She's written books like All

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Speaker 1: the Real Indias, Died Off and Twenty Other Myths about

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Speaker 1: Native Americans and As Long as Grass Grows. She also

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Speaker 1: lectures on American Indian studies at California State San Marcos.

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Speaker 1: Dina joined me to discuss her new book, Who Gets

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Speaker 1: to Be Indian? Ethnic fraud, is enrollment, and other difficult

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Speaker 1: conversations about Native American identity. Let's jump into the conversation.

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Speaker 1: Today's guest is a professor, a lecturer at cal State

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Speaker 1: University of San Marcos, and a journalist who has written

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Speaker 1: a book, and I encourage you wall to go out

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Speaker 1: and read it. It is Who Gets to Be Indian?

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Speaker 1: I apologize, I'm not trying to mislabel ethnic fraud and

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Speaker 1: other difficult conversations about Native American identity. Thank you very

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Speaker 1: much for your time. Can you tell us a little

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Speaker 1: bit about the book.

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Speaker 4: Let me properly introduce myself. Why hustle halt pia Ea

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Speaker 4: Squeistina Julia Whitaker and I am a descendant of the

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Speaker 4: Callville Confederated Tribes of Washington State and born and raised

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Speaker 4: in Southern California, Los Angeles, currently teaching at cal State

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Speaker 4: San Marcos in San Diego Go, where I am also

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Speaker 4: the assistant director of the California Indian Culture and Sovereignty Center. So,

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Speaker 4: you know, aside from all my other outside school pursuits

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Speaker 4: like writing and being a journalist and those kinds of things,

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Speaker 4: so Southern California based this book, Who Gets to be

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Speaker 4: Indian is, and I appreciate your reluctance about using that term,

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Speaker 4: and I know why you were reluctant to use it,

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Speaker 4: because there's a lot of confusion about like what's the

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Speaker 4: right word to call Native Americans right or American Indian people,

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Speaker 4: And so I appreciate your sensitivity to that. This is

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Speaker 4: the third book that I've written. The first book I

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Speaker 4: wrote was called All the Real Indians Died Off and

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Speaker 4: Twenty Other Myths about Native Americans in which we talk

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Speaker 4: about what is the right term to use for Native people.

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Speaker 4: That's one of the chapters in that book. So I

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Speaker 4: recognize where you're going with that. The second book that

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Speaker 4: I wrote was called As Long as Grass Grows The

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Speaker 4: Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice as from colonization to Standing Rock.

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Speaker 4: And so this new work, it's related to those previous topics,

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Speaker 4: but it is a topic all on its own, and

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Speaker 4: how I come to that topic is a direct result

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Speaker 4: of who I am. The book is equal parts academic study, storytelling,

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Speaker 4: and auto ethnography or memoir. So it comes out of

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Speaker 4: my personal lived experience as a Native person, like a

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Speaker 4: mixed ethnicity Native person who was born and raised away

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Speaker 4: from my tribal community in California at a certain place

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Speaker 4: and time, and so that leads to a lived experience

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Speaker 4: that really forms how I understand myself in my own

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Speaker 4: native identity and my own liminality within that, and how

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Speaker 4: nativeness is. We often say in an Indian country that

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Speaker 4: being Indian and identity is very complex, and there's a

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Speaker 4: lot of reasons for that, you know, having to do

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Speaker 4: with the historical processes of colonization, you know, settler colonialism,

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Speaker 4: being dispossessed. So you know, I mean, I'm thinking about

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Speaker 4: the theme of this podcast being unhoused and the through

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Speaker 4: lines of that, like what does it have to do well.

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Speaker 4: Native American people in this country are the first unhoused people. Absolutely,

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Speaker 4: we are the first people to be to be rendered homeless,

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Speaker 4: to be dispossessed of our lands. And it's that beginning

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Speaker 4: point that creates all the other problems that we have,

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Speaker 4: including the problems of identity and why we are in

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Speaker 4: this conundrum of how we identify, how what our identities

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Speaker 4: are based on what kind of documentation or lack thereof,

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Speaker 4: like all, there's so many complexities of this issue that

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Speaker 4: you know, It's one of the things that Native people

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Speaker 4: write about a lot because it hits us all, like

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Speaker 4: there's nobody that's not impacted by it. So this book

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Speaker 4: is an attempt to even though there have been you know,

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Speaker 4: you know, numerous books written on this topic, my starting

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Speaker 4: place was the need to create a historically based trajectory,

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Speaker 4: like how did we get here? Like an analysis? So

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Speaker 4: I wanted to create an analysis. We don't have enough

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Speaker 4: analysis in these spaces, but also to to create this

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Speaker 4: historical context trying to understand how do we get here?

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Speaker 4: Why is it that ethnic fraud is so prevalent in

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Speaker 4: Indian country as a group of people. There is no

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Speaker 4: other group of people who is whose identities are so

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Speaker 4: co opted wrongfully bar none. That's the point of the

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Speaker 4: book is to like understand, like how do we get here?

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Speaker 4: And why is this just a growing problem? And what

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Speaker 4: are the what are the implications for it?

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Speaker 1: You mentioned something to two things, one ethnic fraud and

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Speaker 1: two there's something that connects with today's time. There's no

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Speaker 1: way around it. This Trump regime has taken an active

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Speaker 1: role in minimizing people of color, particularly African Americans. Contributions

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Speaker 1: or historical I want to say lineage or historical existence,

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Speaker 1: and I want to say that some of the similarities

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Speaker 1: is the same thing I'm seeing with the indigenous community

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Speaker 1: is that they go out of their way to try

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Speaker 1: to erase everything from the language from uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: the culture from closing and things of that nature, and

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Speaker 1: the difficulty to set or right what historical is fact

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Speaker 1: because if what they say and the African culture, until

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Speaker 1: the lamb or the gazelle writes the book, the story

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Speaker 1: is always going to be from the perspective of the lion.

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Speaker 1: So so obviously the stories has been narrated or truncated

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Speaker 1: in many respects to favor the white supremacist culture and

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Speaker 1: in white supremacist narrative in order to advance that narrative

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Speaker 1: in the community. What was the awakening or how aha

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Speaker 1: moment for that where when you started to notice a

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Speaker 1: lot of which I have to say, many white people

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Speaker 1: will always claim that they had native Indigenous blood and

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Speaker 1: it can be the most virulent races that you could

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Speaker 1: ever meet. But I digress.

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Speaker 4: So, yeah, no, I mean, there's so much there in

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Speaker 4: what you just said, a lot of a lot of

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Speaker 4: things to unpack. But as as far as when I

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Speaker 4: first noticed it, it's been probably in the nineteen eighties,

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Speaker 4: when it really started, I started to go really deep

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Speaker 4: into my culture as somebody who was disconnected. And my

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Speaker 4: research on what I show is that the history of

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Speaker 4: ethnic fraud, it's over a century old. It begins here

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Speaker 4: in California with the film industry, and it has to

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Speaker 4: do with the way that subtler colonialism and capitalism intersect

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Speaker 4: and it led to the commodification of nativeness. And so

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Speaker 4: you know, there would have been no reason for although

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Speaker 4: cultural appropriation is as old as the Boston Tea Party,

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Speaker 4: when it comes to the right, so you know, people

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Speaker 4: rebels are, you know, dressing up as Indians in dumping

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Speaker 4: tea in the Boston Harbor, and that sets fire to

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Speaker 4: the to the revolution, right, it creates the American Revolution.

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Speaker 4: So that there's a history that goes back a long

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Speaker 4: long ways for cultural appropriation. But cultural appropriation is only

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Speaker 4: part of this equation. At some point, cultural appropriation just

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Speaker 4: taking the aspects of native cultures and using them for

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Speaker 4: various purposes, at some point turns into becoming Indian. So

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Speaker 4: you know, when people are culturally appropriating nativeness, like in

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Speaker 4: the example of the Boston Tea Party and other there

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Speaker 4: are many other examples in early American history where that

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Speaker 4: was happening. At the end of the day, it was

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Speaker 4: cosplaying and the costumes came off and people went to

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Speaker 4: their white lives. Right, there's no need to really be Indian.

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Speaker 4: There's no advantage in it because Native people were being

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Speaker 4: genocided against and their land stolen and their children stolen

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Speaker 4: and all of that stuff. So but at some point,

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Speaker 4: and it's during and after the Civil Rights era, that

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Speaker 4: nativeness it loses its stigma, where it had a stigma,

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Speaker 4: you know, all the way up until the nineteen sixties.

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Speaker 4: Then we have the Civil Rights era. The Civil Rights era,

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Speaker 4: you know, includes not just the black communities, but you know,

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Speaker 4: Hispanic communities and Native communities, and they all form their

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Speaker 4: own ethnic nationalist movements. Well, that's the moment that becoming

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Speaker 4: Indian becomes cool, or that being Indian becomes cool. Prior

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Speaker 4: to that, you know, there was a lot of reasons

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Speaker 4: people would would not want to be out front with

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Speaker 4: their nativeness, and in fact did lie. But for several

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Speaker 4: complicated reasons, it becomes sheep and trendy to be Native American,

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Speaker 4: And it has a lot to do with the counterculture, bohemianism.

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Speaker 4: As I write about it, in the book, especially in California,

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Speaker 4: that draws from lots of different kinds of cultures, especially

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Speaker 4: Native cultures, that morphs into the New Age movement. But

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Speaker 4: then it all has become an industry, and so the

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Speaker 4: commodification of nativeness has carries through the twentieth century in

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Speaker 4: the with the these different inflection points and different reasons.

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Speaker 4: Sorry I'm getting off, I'm rambling.

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Speaker 1: No, No, you're not, actually, because this is like a

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Speaker 1: great history lesson because when you were saying this, there

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Speaker 1: are a couple of things that I'm remembering from my

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Speaker 1: own childhood. I'm really dating myself now. I was watching

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Speaker 1: the original Long Ranger. You ever remember the stereotypical native

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Speaker 1: partner that yeah, Himu Sabi and all of that. And

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Speaker 1: then I remember, too, is when I was growing up

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Speaker 1: to the always the negative switch that made it sound

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Speaker 1: like similar to like black people at any moment, they're

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Speaker 1: going to come around and surround you and start killing

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Speaker 1: you for no reason at all. And it never it

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Speaker 1: was never elucidated that what the heck, why would why

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Speaker 1: would they just for no reason start attacking you until

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Speaker 1: my father, Juicer says, well, look at it like this,

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Speaker 1: why would someone start to attack someone just for no

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Speaker 1: reason at all, and this is their land. These people

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Speaker 1: were taking their land without permission or whatever. Whatever thefarious activities,

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Speaker 1: of course they're going to be said. Of course, if

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Speaker 1: if someone comes and breaks into our home, you're going

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Speaker 1: to fight. So why do of course he was, in

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Speaker 1: his way militant and so before that was a word

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Speaker 1: that was so he was always questioning that because of

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Speaker 1: I don't know if the blackface movement and the parodying

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Speaker 1: of African Americans was really rubbed him rob So he

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Speaker 1: definitely didn't. So he definitely was always on a different

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Speaker 1: type of understanding where it was generally accepted by people

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Speaker 1: that didn't question it. And when you were saying this,

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Speaker 1: I saw that metamorphosis too, going into schools learning how

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Speaker 1: to make moccasins and all of these things that didn't

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Speaker 1: really touch on why it was important for the culture

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Speaker 1: and to also disabuse of the narrative that they had espoused.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, so like there's there's so many layers of this

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Speaker 4: that we can analyze, like what is the psychological mechanism,

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Speaker 4: what's in play? What's at work here for people to

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Speaker 4: you know, I mean beginning with cultural appropriation to cause

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Speaker 4: play being Indian. I mean, it's a very American phenomenon.

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Speaker 4: The Boy Scouts of America was started out as a result,

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Speaker 4: you know, YMCA camps. There were all kinds of you know,

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Speaker 4: a century ago, people were you know, were playing Indian

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Speaker 4: in all these different kinds of ways. It was just

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Speaker 4: a thing that Americans did. But again, like at some point,

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Speaker 4: like the costumes come off and people go back to

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Speaker 4: their lives, but at some point it turns into becoming Indian.

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Speaker 4: People have this need to become Indian. Well, what's behind that?

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Speaker 4: What's this fascination with Indians? Especially when Indians have been

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Speaker 4: reviled and throughout American history native people have been hated.

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Speaker 4: As Philip Deloria, who wrote this seminal book called Playing Indian,

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Speaker 4: he said that, you know, Americans simultaneously reviled but also

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Speaker 4: respected Indians. And it wasn't respect. I can't remember the

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Speaker 4: word that he used, but there was a tension between

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Speaker 4: hating Indians and needing to get rid of them, but

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Speaker 4: also needing to emulate them. And it comes down to

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Speaker 4: the need for Americans to form their own identities. As

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Speaker 4: they move out of Europe, they come to this land,

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Speaker 4: taking over this land in the name of freedom and democracy,

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Speaker 4: right and justice, come here with all these high ideals,

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Speaker 4: but proceed to commit genocide against the people here to

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Speaker 4: take their land. Like, these things don't match up, they

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Speaker 4: don't square. So it's about the need to create a

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Speaker 4: new identity, to become indigenous, to become legitimately belonging onto

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Speaker 4: a land that is not legitimately theirs. So it's the

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Speaker 4: psychological process that's always been here in this country, and

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Speaker 4: it's done nothing but like kind of grow and shift

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Speaker 4: and change. So a lot of the way a lot

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Speaker 4: of scholars have written about it all also is about

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Speaker 4: the need to disavow whiteness and to not be part

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Speaker 4: of that ugly history. Like if I'm native, then i

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Speaker 4: can say that it wasn't me that did it, or

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Speaker 4: it wasn't my ancestors. I'm on the side of the

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Speaker 4: people who were wronged. I'm a victim here, right, So

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Speaker 4: regardless of who your people are, where your family came from,

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Speaker 4: it's a way out, it's a way to disassociate from

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Speaker 4: this horrible, horrible history. And so that's one level of

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Speaker 4: how we can you know, understand this phenomenon. But it's

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Speaker 4: also about how settler colonialism is a system. It's a

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Speaker 4: structure that is predicated on eliminating native population. Settler colonialism

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Speaker 4: is always about the elimination of the native in order

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Speaker 4: to get the land, and when they do that, they

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Speaker 4: then replace the native population. So there's this thing that

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Speaker 4: we call replacement narratives. And so all of this thing

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Speaker 4: about you know, coming here and needing to form this

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Speaker 4: authentic American identity is wrapped up in the need to

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Speaker 4: become indigenous to a place where you just aren't indigenous

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Speaker 4: to it and then disavow the injustices and the heinous

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Speaker 4: things that we're done. There's another term that we use

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Speaker 4: too that is related that has been called subtler moves

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Speaker 4: to innocence. That's another way of understanding oneself is not

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Speaker 4: complicit with these histories of profound violence and injustice. So

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Speaker 4: all of these things, you know, and more set the

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Speaker 4: stage for this bizarre phenomenon where people have evolved stories

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Speaker 4: about themselves being native, being indigenous, and often it's just

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Speaker 4: family lore, is just people saying, yeah, we have you know,

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Speaker 4: we have my Cherokee princess great grandmother. That's the most

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Speaker 4: common one, but there's lots of versions of that. Story

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Speaker 4: that people latch onto. It's it's this again. It's just

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Speaker 4: a bizarre phenomenon that people hold onto so deeply, even

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Speaker 4: in the face of absolutely zero evidence. I remember one

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Speaker 4: time I was in a conversation with somebody that that

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Speaker 4: had that story about oh, yeah, we're Cherokee and these

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Speaker 4: are white people, right, and yeah, we're Cherokee. And my

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Speaker 4: friend it was her mother, and she one of my

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Speaker 4: professor friends actually, and so we were at this event

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Speaker 4: and her mom is at the table telling me the story,

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Speaker 4: and my friend was mortified. She said, Mom, remember you

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Speaker 4: did that DNA test and there's absolutely no Native American

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Speaker 4: DNA that in that test. Like the tenacity of these

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Speaker 4: stories is like beyond logic, you know, Like in that example.

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Speaker 1: I was going to mention too, that it's two things, like,

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Speaker 1: for example, the feeling the only time, like when you're

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Speaker 1: saying to the shift to innocence is like, for example,

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Speaker 1: the Thanksgiving holiday when I was in high school, I

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Speaker 1: wrote again, I could say, I think it was influenced

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Speaker 1: by some of the militancy of my parents that looked

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Speaker 1: on a skew about the holiday and how it has

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Speaker 1: been perpetuated like a bunch of Native people came up

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Speaker 1: and seeing this downtrodden people, and they offered to help.

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Speaker 1: And then that was it. Everyone was just you know,

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Speaker 1: dancing down the street the way it's pictured. It was

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Speaker 1: of course to white sensibilities, and I spoke out against it.

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Speaker 1: I was like, okay, on the part of the native,

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Speaker 1: they probably extended the hand of courtesy welcoming, but you

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Speaker 1: certainly didn't dance down the street. You guys went and

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Speaker 1: had a plan and wiped them out. Be course, the

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Speaker 1: white teacher that I had set this whole essay against

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Speaker 1: my the newspaper and tried to debunk it or tried

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Speaker 1: to really willfully will it away. That that was what happened.

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Speaker 1: That when you know, they all were in had skills together,

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Speaker 1: they just held hands and they said Kumbaya and all

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Speaker 1: of this kind of stuff. And it is excellent point

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Speaker 1: to to see how this is enacted in regular times,

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Speaker 1: even in the educational environment. I was in high school.

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Speaker 1: In order for me not to get you know, expelled

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Speaker 1: or get called to the principal's office, I had to

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Speaker 1: just let it go because the way he basically just

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Speaker 1: tried to eviscerate or decimate my arguments was it was

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Speaker 1: messed up, but it was, but it may imprint on

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Speaker 1: me on understanding how willful and how determined people can

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Speaker 1: try to cast a different narrative, which I have to

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Speaker 1: say this again, it ties into today with the Trump

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Speaker 1: magiene erasing every culture, not only just African American, but

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Speaker 1: other people of culture's achievement and existence into a white

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Speaker 1: approved kind of you know, happy kind of state where

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Speaker 1: they have used now that say about slaves, slaves were

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Speaker 1: unpaid workers and that kind of thing.

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Speaker 4: Okay, writing of history exactly, yeah, But but it's like,

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Speaker 4: it's not just the rewriting of history. But we know,

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Speaker 4: as people of color, as people who are other than white,

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Speaker 4: you know, European descendant people, we know that our histories

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Speaker 4: were written without us, like they were, and until our

395
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Speaker 4: ancestors became educated in those white systems, they learned to

396
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Speaker 4: speak that language, they learned to think in that way.

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Speaker 4: They and you know, as people, as people of color,

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Speaker 4: And I don't even like the use. I don't like

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Speaker 4: the phrase people of color when it comes to Native people.

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Speaker 4: And there's there's a reason for that, as Native people

401
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Speaker 4: racializing us. It's not the right way to think about it.

402
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Speaker 4: But sometimes there's no other phrase to understand ourselves as

403
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Speaker 4: having a similar historical experience of oppression. We know that

404
00:27:12,040 --> 00:27:14,800
Speaker 4: our histories were written for us before we had the

405
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Speaker 4: ability to write them for ourselves.

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Speaker 1: Exactly.

407
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Speaker 4: We have ancestors that go back as early as the

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Speaker 4: seventeen eighteen hundreds that got educated. Were writers, we're philosophers,

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Speaker 4: we're thinkers, and we're pushing against the systems that they

410
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Speaker 4: were trapped by. But those were the outliers, right, They

411
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Speaker 4: were not common until we get to the mid twentieth

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Speaker 4: century in the civil rights movement and we really start

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Speaker 4: to see systemic change, right, and our communities take charge

414
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Speaker 4: of our education systems. We get college educated, so we

415
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Speaker 4: start to write the books ourselves. We start talking about

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Speaker 4: our own lived experiences and get those perspectives validated for

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Speaker 4: what they are from our own lived experiences. So we've

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Speaker 4: written our histories. We've changed the narratives to be more truthful.

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Speaker 4: But we are also in a moment of major backlash

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Speaker 4: to the civil rights era, and that has been the

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Speaker 4: case since the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties. The conservative

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Speaker 4: movement as we know it is built on that backlash.

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Speaker 4: That's how we get the Southern strategy under Nixon, we

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Speaker 4: get not new racism, but racism continuing to rear its

425
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Speaker 4: head because of the gains that were made with the

426
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Speaker 4: Tea Party movement, you know, the post Reagan years. White

427
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Speaker 4: America has been in backlash ever since. And that's how

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Speaker 4: we get Trumpism, That's how we get Mega, you know.

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Speaker 4: So it is not new, It is just the regurgitation,

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Speaker 4: but re entrenchment of whites premisey, the pervasiveness of it.

431
00:29:03,080 --> 00:29:07,160
Speaker 4: It has never gone away, and we know that it

432
00:29:07,720 --> 00:29:11,440
Speaker 4: just got emboldened with the Mega movement, and that's what's

433
00:29:11,440 --> 00:29:14,680
Speaker 4: so disturbing about it. But of course, now that they

434
00:29:14,720 --> 00:29:17,880
Speaker 4: have power, they're going to try to rewrite the histories again,

435
00:29:18,520 --> 00:29:21,760
Speaker 4: and they have. They've gone after the museums, they've gone

436
00:29:21,800 --> 00:29:26,680
Speaker 4: after the education systems. The book binds all of those things.

437
00:29:27,240 --> 00:29:32,560
Speaker 4: It's desperation because they know that the browning of America

438
00:29:32,640 --> 00:29:36,280
Speaker 4: is a real thing and they can't do anything about it.

439
00:29:36,880 --> 00:29:41,680
Speaker 4: This country is based on immigration, but it's actually based

440
00:29:41,680 --> 00:29:44,960
Speaker 4: on subtler colonialism. But settler colonialism is not the same

441
00:29:45,000 --> 00:29:49,680
Speaker 4: as immigration, but that's a different conversation. But the United

442
00:29:49,720 --> 00:29:55,280
Speaker 4: States is a country of multiplicity and that's just the

443
00:29:55,280 --> 00:29:57,320
Speaker 4: way it is, and it's getting that way more and

444
00:29:57,400 --> 00:29:59,800
Speaker 4: more and more, and white people are afraid of losing

445
00:29:59,840 --> 00:30:03,000
Speaker 4: their power, and that's why we are in this position

446
00:30:03,120 --> 00:30:06,600
Speaker 4: now with the rewriting of our history. And god, I mean,

447
00:30:06,720 --> 00:30:09,520
Speaker 4: what's so crazy is next year is the two hundred

448
00:30:09,520 --> 00:30:13,000
Speaker 4: and fiftieth anniversary. You know, they are going to completely

449
00:30:13,040 --> 00:30:18,000
Speaker 4: erase any you know, Native history of the Revolution. And

450
00:30:18,240 --> 00:30:23,600
Speaker 4: this is all about whitewashing, you know, whitewashing and upholding

451
00:30:23,720 --> 00:30:27,600
Speaker 4: American exceptionalism, and not in a good way. You know.

452
00:30:27,720 --> 00:30:31,040
Speaker 4: We when we hear that term American exceptionalism, that's used

453
00:30:31,080 --> 00:30:33,320
Speaker 4: in two different ways. One of them is that, yes,

454
00:30:33,360 --> 00:30:37,000
Speaker 4: America is an exceptional place and we deserve to be

455
00:30:37,080 --> 00:30:40,240
Speaker 4: and we should celebrate it in and it's and we lauded, right,

456
00:30:40,320 --> 00:30:45,680
Speaker 4: it's laudatory. But for people with different perspectives, we look

457
00:30:45,720 --> 00:30:50,720
Speaker 4: at American exceptionalism when we say no, American exceptionalism, it's

458
00:30:50,880 --> 00:30:53,600
Speaker 4: based on the oppression of lots of other people. And

459
00:30:53,640 --> 00:30:56,760
Speaker 4: we have to push back against that. And we have

460
00:30:56,880 --> 00:31:01,640
Speaker 4: to recognize that the United States is founded on some

461
00:31:01,680 --> 00:31:05,920
Speaker 4: of the most profound injustice, and we have to advance

462
00:31:05,960 --> 00:31:07,400
Speaker 4: our counter narratives to.

463
00:31:07,320 --> 00:31:18,280
Speaker 1: Those absolutely when we come back more with Dina, Welcome

464
00:31:18,320 --> 00:31:21,560
Speaker 1: back to Wittian House and THEO Henderson, Let's get back

465
00:31:21,560 --> 00:31:27,360
Speaker 1: into the conversation with Dina, Jilli O Whitaker. They're going

466
00:31:27,440 --> 00:31:31,680
Speaker 1: to do everything in their power to erase the realities

467
00:31:31,800 --> 00:31:34,960
Speaker 1: of what depression looks like. And it also fosters another

468
00:31:35,000 --> 00:31:37,360
Speaker 1: thing that I hate that I hear people doing is

469
00:31:37,400 --> 00:31:40,800
Speaker 1: like both side argument or making it sound like it's

470
00:31:40,840 --> 00:31:43,800
Speaker 1: okay to oppress, but when someone fights back, they are

471
00:31:43,920 --> 00:31:48,560
Speaker 1: the ogre. They are the ones that should be justifiably so.

472
00:31:48,880 --> 00:31:50,600
Speaker 1: And I think that's one of the lynch pins of

473
00:31:50,640 --> 00:31:55,640
Speaker 1: what the American exceptionalism and American narrative that is pervasive

474
00:31:56,160 --> 00:31:59,080
Speaker 1: in our society. We can't seem to figure out that,

475
00:31:59,440 --> 00:32:01,280
Speaker 1: you know, if we go over let's say, for example,

476
00:32:01,360 --> 00:32:04,000
Speaker 1: we go over to Iraq and start bombing people's homes

477
00:32:04,000 --> 00:32:07,880
Speaker 1: over there, and then they decide to create a makeshift

478
00:32:07,960 --> 00:32:11,320
Speaker 1: kind of military or militia to fight back, and then

479
00:32:11,400 --> 00:32:14,760
Speaker 1: we have the propaganda that the Middle East hates America.

480
00:32:14,800 --> 00:32:16,880
Speaker 1: And again it goes back to what my parents said

481
00:32:16,920 --> 00:32:19,200
Speaker 1: when I was younger, like you go in someone's house,

482
00:32:19,520 --> 00:32:22,320
Speaker 1: tear off their house, attack their family, members. You think

483
00:32:22,360 --> 00:32:24,080
Speaker 1: they're going to be sitting ready to sit down and

484
00:32:24,080 --> 00:32:26,320
Speaker 1: have a meal with you, or skip down the street

485
00:32:26,360 --> 00:32:28,720
Speaker 1: with you. Of course they're going to fight back. They

486
00:32:28,720 --> 00:32:32,120
Speaker 1: don't have the mic necessarily all the military wherewithal like

487
00:32:32,440 --> 00:32:35,680
Speaker 1: America has, so they have to be creativist, and so

488
00:32:35,800 --> 00:32:38,719
Speaker 1: you can't judge how they're going to go after you

489
00:32:38,800 --> 00:32:41,800
Speaker 1: after you've gone through them every kind of way. So

490
00:32:41,960 --> 00:32:45,080
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the driving points of whitewashing,

491
00:32:45,520 --> 00:32:48,120
Speaker 1: is to always paint that the other side was the

492
00:32:48,120 --> 00:32:51,800
Speaker 1: guilty party, or if you can't do that, things make

493
00:32:51,840 --> 00:32:54,320
Speaker 1: it sound like it was both sides. And that's one

494
00:32:54,320 --> 00:32:56,080
Speaker 1: of the things that really drives me crazy when I

495
00:32:56,120 --> 00:32:58,520
Speaker 1: hear people do that, Like, no, it wouldn't be a

496
00:32:58,600 --> 00:33:00,960
Speaker 1: side at all if you wouldn't bother you know.

497
00:33:01,080 --> 00:33:05,080
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, that's absolutely right, and we've certainly seen that

498
00:33:05,240 --> 00:33:09,600
Speaker 4: throughout our histories and in the United States. I mean

499
00:33:09,640 --> 00:33:12,440
Speaker 4: it's even written in the Declaration of Independence, I mean

500
00:33:13,040 --> 00:33:16,240
Speaker 4: the Declaration of Independence, you know, all it is is

501
00:33:16,280 --> 00:33:20,560
Speaker 4: a series of grievances that the colonists had against the king,

502
00:33:20,800 --> 00:33:23,880
Speaker 4: right the twenty seventh grievance, I think it's the very

503
00:33:23,960 --> 00:33:26,920
Speaker 4: last one or The second to the last one is

504
00:33:27,320 --> 00:33:30,880
Speaker 4: where they talk about the merciless Indian savages and how

505
00:33:31,560 --> 00:33:34,000
Speaker 4: I don't remember exactly the word, but they're blaming the

506
00:33:34,120 --> 00:33:39,040
Speaker 4: king for supporting the Indians to bring violence on the colonists.

507
00:33:39,480 --> 00:33:42,920
Speaker 4: It's in one of our foundational documents. Like that's never

508
00:33:43,000 --> 00:33:45,960
Speaker 4: going to go away, you know, unless somebody decides to

509
00:33:46,040 --> 00:33:48,440
Speaker 4: change it. I don't see that ever happening. But Native

510
00:33:48,480 --> 00:33:55,080
Speaker 4: people have been frozen in our institutional frameworks as savages

511
00:33:55,840 --> 00:33:59,440
Speaker 4: that needed to be defeated. Why did they need to

512
00:33:59,440 --> 00:34:03,120
Speaker 4: be defeated because they were fighting to defend their lands.

513
00:34:03,280 --> 00:34:06,480
Speaker 4: Just what you're describing, thank you, I mean exists. I mean,

514
00:34:06,520 --> 00:34:09,080
Speaker 4: so we're we're always going to be frozen as that.

515
00:34:09,239 --> 00:34:12,840
Speaker 4: And throughout the rest of American history it's been the same,

516
00:34:13,040 --> 00:34:14,759
Speaker 4: Like you know, it was. It was a war of

517
00:34:14,840 --> 00:34:20,320
Speaker 4: aggression to get native lands, and when Native people fought back,

518
00:34:20,440 --> 00:34:22,960
Speaker 4: they were the aggressors. They were the ones who were

519
00:34:23,200 --> 00:34:27,320
Speaker 4: the bloodthirsty savages. And and it's always been that way,

520
00:34:27,400 --> 00:34:30,640
Speaker 4: and you know, we can even see it even today,

521
00:34:30,840 --> 00:34:33,640
Speaker 4: you know, I mean in mainstream society there is still

522
00:34:34,000 --> 00:34:38,960
Speaker 4: an idea that Native people were uncivilized, they needed to

523
00:34:39,000 --> 00:34:42,960
Speaker 4: be christianized. What was the white man's burden to bring

524
00:34:43,040 --> 00:34:47,719
Speaker 4: civilization and Christianity to the ignorant savages? And you know,

525
00:34:48,000 --> 00:34:50,920
Speaker 4: sorry for all the trouble, but you know that was

526
00:34:51,040 --> 00:34:54,200
Speaker 4: just inevitable, like it was just the way that it was.

527
00:34:54,480 --> 00:34:59,160
Speaker 4: And yeah, and get over it. You know, that's still

528
00:34:59,320 --> 00:35:02,759
Speaker 4: really prevail in so much of American society.

529
00:35:03,400 --> 00:35:05,040
Speaker 1: I was going to ask, too, do you think that

530
00:35:05,080 --> 00:35:07,719
Speaker 1: there's a link to that, because I mentioned earlier on

531
00:35:07,760 --> 00:35:10,440
Speaker 1: the top of the interview about the incident that I'm

532
00:35:10,480 --> 00:35:14,120
Speaker 1: starting to see is ICE agents are running up on

533
00:35:14,440 --> 00:35:18,000
Speaker 1: Native people and you mentioned this more than one case

534
00:35:18,040 --> 00:35:20,800
Speaker 1: I seen just release it I think yesterday where this

535
00:35:20,920 --> 00:35:24,040
Speaker 1: is a Native family was just minding their business, they

536
00:35:24,080 --> 00:35:27,080
Speaker 1: you know, and they tried to deport them, and they

537
00:35:27,160 --> 00:35:29,920
Speaker 1: kept telling them, we are native people, you know where

538
00:35:29,960 --> 00:35:32,120
Speaker 1: you're going to deport us back into our own home land.

539
00:35:32,480 --> 00:35:35,520
Speaker 1: This is it, you know. So they're just looking justifying

540
00:35:35,560 --> 00:35:39,960
Speaker 1: some reason, to justify the narrative that America is being

541
00:35:40,000 --> 00:35:43,400
Speaker 1: overrun by Again, what you mentioned the savages or the

542
00:35:43,480 --> 00:35:47,120
Speaker 1: criminals or whatever, is if you can demonize a person,

543
00:35:47,400 --> 00:35:49,839
Speaker 1: then you can criminalize them. I've always said that that's

544
00:35:50,560 --> 00:35:52,480
Speaker 1: a quote I always in is particularly what they're in

545
00:35:52,520 --> 00:35:54,880
Speaker 1: the house, and the African American and you know, the

546
00:35:55,000 --> 00:35:58,560
Speaker 1: Native and his Latino community. These are things that seem

547
00:35:58,640 --> 00:36:02,160
Speaker 1: to be running much more truur than I ever imagined.

548
00:36:02,560 --> 00:36:06,680
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's always some boogeyman hiding behind the next bush,

549
00:36:07,320 --> 00:36:10,920
Speaker 4: coming to get you. And and it's all such a projection.

550
00:36:10,680 --> 00:36:12,719
Speaker 5: Right, I mean it's like, you know, the people that

551
00:36:12,880 --> 00:36:16,960
Speaker 5: came here and genocided against the indigenous populations were the

552
00:36:16,960 --> 00:36:21,120
Speaker 5: ones who were perpetuating all the crimes against humanity, and

553
00:36:21,320 --> 00:36:24,120
Speaker 5: yet they're projecting that onto everybody else.

554
00:36:25,080 --> 00:36:28,440
Speaker 4: You know. It's I've been hearing a phrase lately and

555
00:36:28,920 --> 00:36:33,600
Speaker 4: in the media. I'm really a news junkie, and so yeah,

556
00:36:33,760 --> 00:36:37,640
Speaker 4: so I've been hearing this phrase lately that says, their

557
00:36:38,520 --> 00:36:44,279
Speaker 4: accusations are their confessions in the Trump administration, So all

558
00:36:44,320 --> 00:36:47,560
Speaker 4: the things that that they accuse other people of doing

559
00:36:47,719 --> 00:36:52,479
Speaker 4: are what they're actually doing themselves. They're always looking for

560
00:36:52,719 --> 00:36:56,080
Speaker 4: some enemy. It's some enemy to fight, some enemy to

561
00:36:56,120 --> 00:36:59,800
Speaker 4: be to be aggressive forward so that they can maintain

562
00:37:00,040 --> 00:37:03,320
Speaker 4: their white American state. I mean, that's what it comes

563
00:37:03,360 --> 00:37:06,239
Speaker 4: down to. It's you know, pure and simple white supremacy.

564
00:37:06,280 --> 00:37:10,160
Speaker 4: But with the ice I mean they've you know, green

565
00:37:10,239 --> 00:37:14,040
Speaker 4: lighted racial profiling, and the Supreme Court green lights.

566
00:37:14,080 --> 00:37:16,200
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, I've pelt it yep right.

567
00:37:16,400 --> 00:37:21,239
Speaker 4: So Native people And this is why, you know, racializing

568
00:37:21,320 --> 00:37:25,120
Speaker 4: Native people is such a slippery slope because a lot

569
00:37:25,160 --> 00:37:28,160
Speaker 4: of people look a lot alike. A lot of American

570
00:37:28,200 --> 00:37:32,520
Speaker 4: Indian peoples can look like Iranians, or can look like Filipinos,

571
00:37:32,920 --> 00:37:34,759
Speaker 4: or can look like you know, there are a lot

572
00:37:34,800 --> 00:37:38,319
Speaker 4: of brown skinned people that are really hard to tell

573
00:37:38,360 --> 00:37:42,080
Speaker 4: the difference, like you know what they are, you know

574
00:37:42,160 --> 00:37:45,239
Speaker 4: what their their ethnicity or their nationality is. And that's

575
00:37:45,280 --> 00:37:50,399
Speaker 4: true for Native American people. There was a case back

576
00:37:50,440 --> 00:37:52,319
Speaker 4: a couple of months ago when it was there were

577
00:37:52,360 --> 00:37:56,359
Speaker 4: a lot of wildfires in the state of Washington. There

578
00:37:56,440 --> 00:38:00,239
Speaker 4: was an incidence of ICE agents. I don't have you

579
00:38:00,280 --> 00:38:02,960
Speaker 4: heard about this one that they raided people fighting on

580
00:38:03,000 --> 00:38:03,960
Speaker 4: a fire line.

581
00:38:04,360 --> 00:38:06,080
Speaker 1: Yeah. I heard that two.

582
00:38:05,920 --> 00:38:09,200
Speaker 4: Of the people that they took away were tribal members

583
00:38:09,200 --> 00:38:10,400
Speaker 4: of the Umatulation.

584
00:38:11,160 --> 00:38:12,000
Speaker 1: Not doubting that.

585
00:38:12,520 --> 00:38:17,120
Speaker 4: Yeah, So they were in Washington fighting fires, trying to

586
00:38:17,160 --> 00:38:21,239
Speaker 4: protect their homeland and they get raided by ice and detained.

587
00:38:22,120 --> 00:38:24,560
Speaker 4: And you know, of course they don't, you know, they

588
00:38:24,880 --> 00:38:27,960
Speaker 4: they try to say they're tribal members, but they don't care.

589
00:38:28,080 --> 00:38:31,480
Speaker 4: These ICE agents, they're not they're they're not checking identities,

590
00:38:31,520 --> 00:38:35,680
Speaker 4: they're not checking people's status. It's just round them up.

591
00:38:36,760 --> 00:38:40,480
Speaker 4: Why because Stephen Miller has a quota of three thousand

592
00:38:40,480 --> 00:38:42,520
Speaker 4: people a day which they haven't been able to meet.

593
00:38:43,560 --> 00:38:49,720
Speaker 4: So of course they're going after anybody that looks suspiciously ethnic.

594
00:38:50,239 --> 00:38:53,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, and has an accent or God forbid or it's

595
00:38:54,000 --> 00:38:57,680
Speaker 1: like it's it's spilling over in different communities. But not

596
00:38:57,719 --> 00:39:01,960
Speaker 1: only that, it is our populist that is wilfully resistant

597
00:39:01,960 --> 00:39:04,360
Speaker 1: to seeing the reality unless it happens to them. You know,

598
00:39:04,520 --> 00:39:08,000
Speaker 1: I would say what happened to many of the communities,

599
00:39:08,200 --> 00:39:10,520
Speaker 1: like for example, I don't know who we've seen in Atlanta.

600
00:39:11,040 --> 00:39:13,600
Speaker 1: These workers were h I believe H one or H

601
00:39:13,680 --> 00:39:19,600
Speaker 1: two workers. They were literally working, and they went in

602
00:39:19,640 --> 00:39:23,080
Speaker 1: there and after off the the insistence of someone that

603
00:39:23,280 --> 00:39:26,440
Speaker 1: was running for office running there and rounded all of

604
00:39:26,480 --> 00:39:29,440
Speaker 1: them up, and it's caused such a it's still an

605
00:39:29,640 --> 00:39:33,799
Speaker 1: international incident and embarrassment toward the Trump regime that they

606
00:39:33,800 --> 00:39:36,160
Speaker 1: are trying to get them to come back, and many

607
00:39:36,200 --> 00:39:38,040
Speaker 1: of them are not wanted to come back. Well, I

608
00:39:38,080 --> 00:39:40,560
Speaker 1: can't blame them because you know, the treatment that they

609
00:39:40,760 --> 00:39:45,000
Speaker 1: endure at these these centers really negates the narrative that

610
00:39:45,000 --> 00:39:47,920
Speaker 1: they keep playing, making it sound like it's just holding

611
00:39:47,920 --> 00:39:51,600
Speaker 1: people temporary. The second one was the incident where they

612
00:39:51,600 --> 00:39:53,400
Speaker 1: were trying to rush off children in the middle of

613
00:39:53,400 --> 00:39:55,320
Speaker 1: the night and they had to get an emergency in

614
00:39:55,400 --> 00:39:58,279
Speaker 1: joction to stop them from deporting them to places where

615
00:39:58,320 --> 00:40:01,439
Speaker 1: these kids are not from saying the parents wanted them back.

616
00:40:01,440 --> 00:40:04,080
Speaker 1: And all of these these kind of atrocities that are

617
00:40:04,080 --> 00:40:06,920
Speaker 1: happening in front of my eyes, and there's also a

618
00:40:06,960 --> 00:40:10,120
Speaker 1: swath of people that are trying to justify this. You know,

619
00:40:10,160 --> 00:40:11,920
Speaker 1: it's just deplorable.

620
00:40:12,440 --> 00:40:15,400
Speaker 4: Yeah, it really is. I mean, it's just it's hard

621
00:40:15,480 --> 00:40:20,360
Speaker 4: to get one's head around what's happening in this country

622
00:40:20,400 --> 00:40:23,319
Speaker 4: and how it's gotten to this point. I mean, it's

623
00:40:23,360 --> 00:40:27,800
Speaker 4: full blown fascism. And I remember I saw it coming,

624
00:40:28,440 --> 00:40:32,440
Speaker 4: you know, in twenty sixteen when Trump got elected the

625
00:40:32,480 --> 00:40:35,399
Speaker 4: first time. The writing was on the wall. I mean

626
00:40:35,560 --> 00:40:41,480
Speaker 4: in that first term, in all his campaign speeches, all

627
00:40:41,480 --> 00:40:44,000
Speaker 4: of it was there, and I think people of color

628
00:40:45,000 --> 00:40:48,120
Speaker 4: could see it much more easily than white people could.

629
00:40:49,440 --> 00:40:52,000
Speaker 4: I think they heard what they wanted to hear, they

630
00:40:52,040 --> 00:40:54,640
Speaker 4: saw what they wanted to see. And I don't think

631
00:40:54,680 --> 00:40:57,480
Speaker 4: people believe that it could get this bad, but I

632
00:40:57,600 --> 00:41:01,320
Speaker 4: knew then that It's like, oh, you know, it didn't

633
00:41:01,360 --> 00:41:04,479
Speaker 4: happen as fast as I thought it would. But here

634
00:41:04,520 --> 00:41:09,800
Speaker 4: we are nine years later and in Trump two point zero,

635
00:41:10,280 --> 00:41:15,399
Speaker 4: you know, and now the full fascist agenda is upon us.

636
00:41:16,040 --> 00:41:19,719
Speaker 4: And of course, in fascism, one of the key components

637
00:41:19,760 --> 00:41:25,720
Speaker 4: of it is the criminalizing of people of color, people

638
00:41:25,800 --> 00:41:31,520
Speaker 4: who don't fit a white profile, you know, or Christian

639
00:41:31,880 --> 00:41:35,520
Speaker 4: white Christian, so you know, white Christian nationalism, of course

640
00:41:35,600 --> 00:41:40,560
Speaker 4: is what we get. And you know, it's just crazy

641
00:41:40,600 --> 00:41:44,839
Speaker 4: that we are here and in this moment when it

642
00:41:44,880 --> 00:41:47,520
Speaker 4: felt like we made so much progress right in the

643
00:41:47,600 --> 00:41:50,960
Speaker 4: last half century, and in many ways we did. But again,

644
00:41:51,280 --> 00:41:56,880
Speaker 4: the backlash, the white resentment toward the rights gained by

645
00:41:57,040 --> 00:42:02,960
Speaker 4: people of color and women and gendered alternative people, right,

646
00:42:03,200 --> 00:42:06,880
Speaker 4: I mean, yes, it's the resentment that's at the bottom

647
00:42:06,920 --> 00:42:13,760
Speaker 4: of all of this, that is driven by religious fanaticism.

648
00:42:14,760 --> 00:42:18,279
Speaker 1: Well, you've said a mouthful. Let me parse some of

649
00:42:18,280 --> 00:42:20,960
Speaker 1: the things that you mentioned that I wanted to talk

650
00:42:20,960 --> 00:42:24,799
Speaker 1: about about the fires and how a native because I

651
00:42:24,840 --> 00:42:27,040
Speaker 1: live in Los Angeles and as you know, they're the

652
00:42:27,040 --> 00:42:31,799
Speaker 1: indigenous group here that the fires that impacted the native community.

653
00:42:32,160 --> 00:42:35,560
Speaker 1: Do you think our society has addressed the issues correctly

654
00:42:35,719 --> 00:42:37,560
Speaker 1: or do you think there's room for improvement.

655
00:42:38,600 --> 00:42:41,040
Speaker 4: Well, there's always room for improvement.

656
00:42:41,200 --> 00:42:43,080
Speaker 1: Spoken like a lecturer, but okay.

657
00:42:45,480 --> 00:42:49,480
Speaker 4: As somebody who lectures on and teaches about environmental issues

658
00:42:50,040 --> 00:42:54,880
Speaker 4: and traditional knowledge, indigenous knowledge. California has always been a

659
00:42:54,960 --> 00:43:00,200
Speaker 4: landscape that was managed by Native people. It was not

660
00:43:00,520 --> 00:43:06,640
Speaker 4: the pristine, untouched environment that Europeans thought they were looking at,

661
00:43:07,280 --> 00:43:10,239
Speaker 4: and nowhere was it like that on the continent, and

662
00:43:10,880 --> 00:43:15,520
Speaker 4: especially in California. It wasn't that way. Indigenous people managed

663
00:43:15,560 --> 00:43:20,239
Speaker 4: the landscape with fire for thousands of years, and they

664
00:43:20,320 --> 00:43:22,800
Speaker 4: understood what it meant to live in a healthy environment.

665
00:43:23,280 --> 00:43:28,280
Speaker 4: They always understood fire's medicine. Fire is medicine on the land.

666
00:43:28,719 --> 00:43:35,680
Speaker 4: And when settler populations outlawed native burning in the nineteenth century,

667
00:43:36,239 --> 00:43:41,399
Speaker 4: they imposed a regime that was about fearing fire and

668
00:43:41,480 --> 00:43:46,120
Speaker 4: it was about managing land in order to maximize timber

669
00:43:46,160 --> 00:43:52,440
Speaker 4: production in forests. That's when they stopped native cultural burning.

670
00:43:52,920 --> 00:43:56,279
Speaker 4: So it's really it becomes forest's mismanagement, and that's how

671
00:43:56,320 --> 00:44:01,840
Speaker 4: we get to a condition now driven by climate change

672
00:44:01,920 --> 00:44:07,560
Speaker 4: or exacerbated by climate change that has put us at

673
00:44:07,640 --> 00:44:12,880
Speaker 4: risk of these dramatic, out of control megafires. So, you know,

674
00:44:13,200 --> 00:44:19,040
Speaker 4: restoring indigenous knowledge onto the land is a key component

675
00:44:19,160 --> 00:44:22,560
Speaker 4: of what it means to keep land managed in a

676
00:44:22,560 --> 00:44:26,279
Speaker 4: healthy state. What does it look like in urban environments.

677
00:44:26,320 --> 00:44:29,200
Speaker 4: That's a whole other conversation. It's a whole other question.

678
00:44:30,239 --> 00:44:35,040
Speaker 4: What if the land around Pacific Palisades in Malibu had

679
00:44:35,560 --> 00:44:41,839
Speaker 4: been subject to managed control birds, would that have made

680
00:44:41,880 --> 00:44:48,920
Speaker 4: a difference in potentially preventing the fires from from January.

681
00:44:49,040 --> 00:44:54,040
Speaker 4: I don't know, but their questions worth pursuing. And we're

682
00:44:54,080 --> 00:44:58,120
Speaker 4: seeing that throughout California. Where native knowledge is being restored

683
00:44:58,160 --> 00:45:02,360
Speaker 4: to the land, we are seeing the restoration of some ecosystems.

684
00:45:02,880 --> 00:45:06,520
Speaker 4: I'm thinking now about the dam removals on the Klamath River.

685
00:45:06,600 --> 00:45:08,319
Speaker 4: I don't know how much you know about that, but

686
00:45:09,719 --> 00:45:12,279
Speaker 4: there were six dams built on the Klamath River in

687
00:45:12,320 --> 00:45:16,120
Speaker 4: the twentieth century, And anytime you build dams, it leads

688
00:45:16,200 --> 00:45:21,040
Speaker 4: to different kinds of ecological impacts. In the case of

689
00:45:21,120 --> 00:45:24,600
Speaker 4: the Klamath River, as in other rivers like the Columbia

690
00:45:24,680 --> 00:45:29,759
Speaker 4: River up north it leads to the collapse of salmon populations.

691
00:45:30,600 --> 00:45:34,239
Speaker 4: Salmon is a keystone species, and when you lose a

692
00:45:34,320 --> 00:45:40,440
Speaker 4: keystone species, it causes a cascade of other impacts to

693
00:45:40,480 --> 00:45:45,400
Speaker 4: other species. And so anyway, Native people led a campaign

694
00:45:45,640 --> 00:45:49,840
Speaker 4: for over twenty years to remove four of the major

695
00:45:49,960 --> 00:45:53,439
Speaker 4: dams on the Klamath River in order to restore salmon runs.

696
00:45:53,480 --> 00:45:55,920
Speaker 4: That happened this year. So in fact, that was one

697
00:45:56,000 --> 00:45:59,880
Speaker 4: of the reasons that they Trump said that he turned

698
00:46:00,360 --> 00:46:03,640
Speaker 4: turned on a water faucet, Like, remember what he said

699
00:46:03,680 --> 00:46:06,640
Speaker 4: about the fires. He turned on a water faucet, and

700
00:46:06,680 --> 00:46:09,879
Speaker 4: that's what they like, beat the fires. And Jesse Frick

701
00:46:09,960 --> 00:46:13,359
Speaker 4: and Jesse Waters on Fox News actually came out and

702
00:46:13,400 --> 00:46:16,239
Speaker 4: said he said the reason for those fires was the

703
00:46:16,280 --> 00:46:19,640
Speaker 4: fault of Indians because they wanted the dams taken out.

704
00:46:20,239 --> 00:46:22,920
Speaker 4: Like he actually said that. He said it was Indian's

705
00:46:23,000 --> 00:46:27,920
Speaker 4: fault that there was no water in southern California to

706
00:46:28,000 --> 00:46:32,080
Speaker 4: fight the fires. But anyway, so the dams have come

707
00:46:32,120 --> 00:46:37,120
Speaker 4: out this year and and it's led to almost an

708
00:46:37,120 --> 00:46:41,440
Speaker 4: instant restoration of salmon population. Some species of salmon that

709
00:46:41,520 --> 00:46:45,000
Speaker 4: hadn't been seen in the river for over a century

710
00:46:45,360 --> 00:46:49,600
Speaker 4: are now filling those rivers, and and and and so

711
00:46:49,680 --> 00:46:55,040
Speaker 4: it's a beautiful story of recovery at restoration by you know,

712
00:46:55,080 --> 00:46:59,240
Speaker 4: eliminating dams and restoring indigenous knowledge onto the land.

713
00:46:59,719 --> 00:47:03,000
Speaker 1: That's impressive. When you said Fox News, I'm like, well,

714
00:47:03,560 --> 00:47:07,239
Speaker 1: their solutions for unhoused people is to involuntarily eject them,

715
00:47:07,239 --> 00:47:10,600
Speaker 1: to kill them off. So it's it's not I saw

716
00:47:11,320 --> 00:47:13,960
Speaker 1: that insane. I could believe it, but you know, then

717
00:47:13,960 --> 00:47:16,760
Speaker 1: I could believe it. This is Fox News. And they

718
00:47:17,160 --> 00:47:19,680
Speaker 1: basically gave a half hearted apology and just kept right

719
00:47:19,719 --> 00:47:23,120
Speaker 1: on going, and just you know, it's so normalized. They

720
00:47:23,160 --> 00:47:26,480
Speaker 1: might make a shock in first about trying to kill

721
00:47:26,480 --> 00:47:29,400
Speaker 1: off unhoused people, but more and more that they're like

722
00:47:29,440 --> 00:47:32,720
Speaker 1: there was a mayor talking about giving fentanyl to unhoused

723
00:47:32,719 --> 00:47:35,879
Speaker 1: people and killing them off in his neighborhood. So there's

724
00:47:35,920 --> 00:47:39,399
Speaker 1: a little bit more of outrage, but it's time is gone.

725
00:47:39,520 --> 00:47:43,040
Speaker 1: When people make these kind of solutions or the final solution,

726
00:47:43,160 --> 00:47:45,960
Speaker 1: if you will, in this time, then it's going to

727
00:47:46,040 --> 00:47:48,759
Speaker 1: be like, you know, you stretch it off, you know,

728
00:47:48,800 --> 00:47:52,080
Speaker 1: that's hyperbole whatever, And then look what that happened with

729
00:47:52,239 --> 00:47:55,279
Speaker 1: the hyperbole of Trump in this regime. Look where we're

730
00:47:55,280 --> 00:47:58,040
Speaker 1: at at this point. You know, it's that's the things

731
00:47:58,080 --> 00:48:01,440
Speaker 1: that us as a society where must be vigilant, We

732
00:48:01,520 --> 00:48:03,879
Speaker 1: must guard against it, and we must fight with every

733
00:48:04,080 --> 00:48:06,240
Speaker 1: fiber of our being to stop this from happening.

734
00:48:07,280 --> 00:48:12,480
Speaker 4: No, absolutely right, because it's the other ring, right, it's

735
00:48:12,520 --> 00:48:18,040
Speaker 4: the other ring of non mainstream people, and it can happen.

736
00:48:18,160 --> 00:48:21,879
Speaker 4: It has happened to people of all kinds of ethnicities

737
00:48:21,920 --> 00:48:25,160
Speaker 4: in the history of this country. Think about the Irish.

738
00:48:25,600 --> 00:48:31,239
Speaker 4: How the Irish were considered non white and persecuted in

739
00:48:31,280 --> 00:48:36,080
Speaker 4: the nineteenth century and they were white people, right, So

740
00:48:36,120 --> 00:48:41,799
Speaker 4: there's this whole study of how how the Irish became white, right,

741
00:48:41,920 --> 00:48:46,680
Speaker 4: in order to fit in and to basically say themselves.

742
00:48:46,719 --> 00:48:52,239
Speaker 4: And they were pitted against black populations in Boston, right,

743
00:48:52,440 --> 00:48:55,920
Speaker 4: So you know, during a time when there was stiff

744
00:48:55,960 --> 00:48:58,680
Speaker 4: competition for jobs. So people are always going to be

745
00:48:58,680 --> 00:49:03,120
Speaker 4: pitt against each other, the most vulnerable. But yes, it's

746
00:49:03,160 --> 00:49:07,600
Speaker 4: the other ring of people who are the undesirables in

747
00:49:07,680 --> 00:49:13,760
Speaker 4: a society. In this society, that leads that demonization and dehumanization.

748
00:49:14,920 --> 00:49:18,320
Speaker 4: So when you can see somebody is nonhuman, that that

749
00:49:19,080 --> 00:49:25,040
Speaker 4: leads to rationalizations and justifications of all kinds of atrocities,

750
00:49:25,320 --> 00:49:28,480
Speaker 4: and that's what settler colonialism did in this country. The

751
00:49:28,520 --> 00:49:32,000
Speaker 4: way that the land was taken, you know, so violently

752
00:49:32,040 --> 00:49:36,640
Speaker 4: from Native people was through dehumanizing them, which provided the

753
00:49:36,719 --> 00:49:43,000
Speaker 4: rationalization for the violence that was unleashed for four hundred years.

754
00:49:43,600 --> 00:49:47,880
Speaker 1: Absolutely well, I enjoyed having this excellent talk with you.

755
00:49:48,160 --> 00:49:49,280
Speaker 1: Where can we find your book?

756
00:49:49,640 --> 00:49:52,680
Speaker 4: The book can be purchased any place where good books

757
00:49:52,760 --> 00:49:56,200
Speaker 4: are in LA I would recommend Skylight Books. I did

758
00:49:56,200 --> 00:49:59,040
Speaker 4: a reading there a few weeks ago. It actually launched

759
00:49:59,080 --> 00:50:02,160
Speaker 4: a book launch there. Oh okay, so you know, visit

760
00:50:02,200 --> 00:50:07,320
Speaker 4: Skylight Books which is on Vermont, and it can be

761
00:50:07,600 --> 00:50:10,280
Speaker 4: you know, it can be ordered online through be Compressed.

762
00:50:10,280 --> 00:50:13,880
Speaker 4: That's the publisher. I don't do a lot of social media.

763
00:50:14,160 --> 00:50:18,080
Speaker 4: I've tried to distance myself from social media because I

764
00:50:18,080 --> 00:50:21,360
Speaker 4: think it's a very unhealthy space. But I can be

765
00:50:21,440 --> 00:50:26,080
Speaker 4: found there, and you know, I just really encourage people

766
00:50:26,160 --> 00:50:30,279
Speaker 4: to read the book, especially if you are somebody who

767
00:50:30,400 --> 00:50:34,880
Speaker 4: has a family story about being Native American that you're

768
00:50:34,920 --> 00:50:37,799
Speaker 4: sticking to, but you have absolutely no connection to a

769
00:50:37,880 --> 00:50:41,040
Speaker 4: Native community, or if you're somebody who does have a

770
00:50:41,120 --> 00:50:44,120
Speaker 4: liminal identity, you know you are Native, you are you know,

771
00:50:44,280 --> 00:50:48,240
Speaker 4: you are, but you've been disenfranchised for whatever. This book

772
00:50:48,280 --> 00:50:52,719
Speaker 4: will appeal to a wide audience, so I really recommend

773
00:50:52,920 --> 00:50:54,440
Speaker 4: if you're interested in this subject.

774
00:50:55,000 --> 00:50:57,520
Speaker 1: Well, thank you again for taking time out to talk

775
00:50:57,560 --> 00:51:02,000
Speaker 1: with me, honest and I enjoyed that conversation. And I

776
00:51:02,080 --> 00:51:04,960
Speaker 1: want to thank our audience for listening in. Thank you

777
00:51:05,080 --> 00:51:05,919
Speaker 1: very much for your time.

778
00:51:06,239 --> 00:51:08,120
Speaker 4: All right, thank you Theo.

779
00:51:10,680 --> 00:51:13,239
Speaker 1: Thanks so much to Dinna for her time and her

780
00:51:13,280 --> 00:51:16,640
Speaker 1: continued work. To get your own copy of Who Gets

781
00:51:16,640 --> 00:51:19,480
Speaker 1: to Be Indian and follow her on social media check

782
00:51:19,480 --> 00:51:23,480
Speaker 1: out the links in the description. Before we sign off

783
00:51:23,480 --> 00:51:25,760
Speaker 1: this week, I'd like to share a few more words

784
00:51:25,800 --> 00:51:30,640
Speaker 1: from mister Ralph Ellison. Life is to be lived, not control,

785
00:51:31,200 --> 00:51:34,279
Speaker 1: and humanity is won by continually to play in the

786
00:51:34,320 --> 00:51:38,480
Speaker 1: face of certain defeat. Thank you once again for listening in.

787
00:51:39,000 --> 00:51:41,280
Speaker 1: If you have a story you'd like to share, please

788
00:51:41,320 --> 00:51:44,880
Speaker 1: reach out to me at Weedianhouse at gmail dot com

789
00:51:45,080 --> 00:51:48,759
Speaker 1: or weedian House on Instagram. Until the nd May we

790
00:51:48,840 --> 00:51:54,920
Speaker 1: again meet in the light of understanding. Weedian House is

791
00:51:54,960 --> 00:51:58,520
Speaker 1: a production of iHeartRadio. It is written, hosted, and created

792
00:51:58,560 --> 00:52:04,120
Speaker 1: by Me Theo Henderson, our producers Jamie Loftus, Hailey Fager,

793
00:52:04,480 --> 00:52:08,800
Speaker 1: Katie Fischer and Lyra Smith. Our editor is Adam Wand,

794
00:52:09,400 --> 00:52:13,759
Speaker 1: our engineer is Joel Jerome, and our local art is

795
00:52:13,840 --> 00:52:17,480
Speaker 1: also by Katie Fischer. Thank you for listening.