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Speaker 1: Pushkin the idea that natives are not actually here. There's

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Speaker 1: sort of an insistence in our national storytelling on our disappearance.

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Speaker 1: That idea undergirded the exploitation and settlement of this entire continent.

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Speaker 1: That was a story that people told even way back

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Speaker 1: when as people were manifesting their destiny to justify the

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Speaker 1: theft of land, because it's not really theft if no

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Speaker 1: one is here to own it. History makes a lot

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Speaker 1: of noise in the United States. In this moment, the

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Speaker 1: noise seems louder. Ever. GOP activists are packing into school

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Speaker 1: board meetings demanding school curricula be wiped of historical truth

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Speaker 1: on race. GOP legislators are passing laws like the recent

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Speaker 1: one in Texas. Texas Republicans wanted to be sure teachers

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Speaker 1: aren't telling your kids that white people are inherently racist.

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Speaker 1: So this last session they made a list of concepts

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Speaker 1: public schoolers should and should not Lawn requirements were dropped

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Speaker 1: for students to read Martin Luther King, Junior United farm

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Speaker 1: Workers leader Sizar Chavez, and suffragists Susan B. Anthony, And

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Speaker 1: for good measure, the Texas Senate dropped requirements to teach

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Speaker 1: the Ku Kux Klan as morally wrong. Behind all the

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Speaker 1: loud arguments about history is something more insidious, the menacing

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Speaker 1: silence from history, the present silence echoing history. What's there

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Speaker 1: but we can't see what has been erased in plain view.

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Speaker 1: I'm abramax Kendy, and this is be anti racist. I

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Speaker 1: did not grasp the menace of silence when I went

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Speaker 1: to school as a child in Jamaica Queens. I could

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Speaker 1: see black neighbors, Latin X neighbors, Asian neighbors, and a

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Speaker 1: handful of white neighbors. But I couldnt see Native neighbors,

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Speaker 1: though they were there. What I saw was a fabricated mirage,

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Speaker 1: racist portrayals of uncivilized so called savages on TV and

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Speaker 1: in films, caricatures of Native men grinning as mascots for

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Speaker 1: sports teams. When Native Americans were mentioned in stories of

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Speaker 1: the past, we were served the trope of the Vanishing Indian,

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Speaker 1: a sad but semi romantic story of manifest destiny gone

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Speaker 1: too far in doing a way with a once noble people.

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Speaker 1: I wasn't alone being fed to vanishing Indian myth. A

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Speaker 1: twenty eighteen survey found that forty percent of Americans believe

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Speaker 1: that Native Americans no longer exist forty percent. But when

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Speaker 1: will Americans replace the vanishing Indian myth for the truth?

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Speaker 1: The vanishing history, or is it better to say banishing history?

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Speaker 1: The banishing of the relationship between settler colonialism, frontier wars,

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Speaker 1: state sanctioned genocides, Indian removal, and the spread of the

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Speaker 1: enslavement of Indigenous and African peoples. The banishing of the

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Speaker 1: inextricable link between anti Native racism and anti black racism.

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Speaker 1: The vanishing Indian trope was as misleading as the trope

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Speaker 1: of a happy slave. The Indian remained and the enslaved

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Speaker 1: remained angry. Both resisted robbers of their land and labor

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Speaker 1: and lives, neither in silence. But the silenced were never silenced,

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Speaker 1: just muted. I've been learning to hear the loudness of

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Speaker 1: Native history, their cultures, their stories, their lives, their ideas.

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Speaker 1: Let's listen today Welcome to be Anti Racist in Action podcast,

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Speaker 1: where we discuss how to diagnose, dismantle, and abolish racism,

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Speaker 1: How to save humanity from the divisiveness of racist ideas

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Speaker 1: and the destructiveness of racist power and policy, How to

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Speaker 1: free humanity through the unity of anti racist ideas and

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Speaker 1: the constructiveness of anti racist power and policy. On be

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Speaker 1: anti racist, we discuss how to make the impossible possible

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Speaker 1: and how to bring into being what modern humans have

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Speaker 1: never known, a just inequitable world. You ready, let's roll

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Speaker 1: the number one story. The dominant narrative about American Indian

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Speaker 1: people is that we were once great, and we are

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Speaker 1: great no more. And if there's a history written about us,

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Speaker 1: history is only that which we have endured and maybe

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Speaker 1: somehow survived. And nowhere in those accounts does it suggest

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Speaker 1: that we are actors in our own lives. David Troyer

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Speaker 1: is an Ojibway Indian from Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota.

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Speaker 1: His most recent book, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee Native

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Speaker 1: America from eighteen ninety to the Present, was a final

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Speaker 1: list for the National Book Award in the Carnegie Medal

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Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen. He is currently a professor of English

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Speaker 1: at the University of Southern California. Troyer has written powerfully

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Speaker 1: about the ramifications of historical erasure and anti Native racism.

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Speaker 1: We sent down to talk about his call for the

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Speaker 1: US government to return the National Parks to the tribes. David,

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Speaker 1: I've been looking forward to today for quite some time.

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Speaker 1: I have learned and grown and been inspired by your work.

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Speaker 1: You're one of those writers who when you publish, I

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Speaker 1: read thank you. Recently, Rick Santorum, who is a former

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Speaker 1: US Senator and CNN political contributor, talked about how European

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Speaker 1: colonists and settlers birthed a nation from nothing. We came

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Speaker 1: here and created a blank slate. We birthed a nation nothing.

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Speaker 1: I mean, there's nothing here. I mean, yes, we have

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Speaker 1: Native Americans, but candidly that there isn't much Native American

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Speaker 1: culture in American culture. When you heard those comments, I mean,

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Speaker 1: what was your first reaction? You know, the kindest thing

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Speaker 1: I can say is that statement is radically uninformed. It's

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Speaker 1: not that different from the most commonly held belief about

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Speaker 1: Native people. Our social utility in this country is to

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Speaker 1: have been here, but to have died off. The facts

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Speaker 1: of history are quite different from the sentiments that Centaurn

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Speaker 1: is expressing in that comment. As someone who was a

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Speaker 1: senator who should know something about the growth of the

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Speaker 1: American Republic and its institutions, he of all people should

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Speaker 1: know that, for example, the first act of the American

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Speaker 1: Revolutionaries was to dress up like Mohawk Indians and dump

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Speaker 1: tea in Boston Harbor. He should know that the American

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Speaker 1: Revolution was in many ways about who got to capitalize

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Speaker 1: off of exploiting Indian lands, the British Crown or the colonists.

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Speaker 1: That was one of the main reasons for going to war.

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Speaker 1: He should also know, as a former representative that the

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Speaker 1: legislature in which he served was in part modeled after

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Speaker 1: the separation of powers in the Iroquois Confederacy. It's to

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Speaker 1: the Iroquois Confederacy that the Young Republic looked for its

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Speaker 1: political organization. So to say that there's no Native American

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Speaker 1: culture in American culture is just one of the most

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Speaker 1: destructive but widespread fantasies that Americans in general have. When

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Speaker 1: I think of anti black racist ideas, there's so many

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Speaker 1: different tropes, but I would probably say that the idea

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Speaker 1: of black people is dangerous. It's probably the worst of all.

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Speaker 1: Is this idea of nothingness that Ricks and tom expressed

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Speaker 1: that so many Americans believe. Would you consider that the

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Speaker 1: most dangerous, the worst, or how would you contextualize that

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Speaker 1: specific idea within the larger gamut of anti nativeness. It's tough.

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Speaker 1: Do I have to choose the most damaging. If I

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Speaker 1: did have to choose, I'd say, yeah, that probably is

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Speaker 1: the idea that Natives are not actually here, sort of

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Speaker 1: an insistence in our national storytelling on our disappearance. That

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Speaker 1: idea undergirded the exploitation and settlement of this entire continent.

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Speaker 1: That was a story that people told even way back when,

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Speaker 1: as people were manifesting their destiny to justify the theft

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Speaker 1: of land, because it's not really theft if no one

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Speaker 1: is here to own it, and that has proven to

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Speaker 1: be a durableness. Absolutely. People who listen to this podcast

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Speaker 1: may not be looking at me, but I'm pretty white passing.

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Speaker 1: I'm not recognizably visibly Native. My father's Jewish, dark complexed

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Speaker 1: black hair, my mother is Native, dark black hair. And

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Speaker 1: then the four of us kids that they had. My

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Speaker 1: older brother looks like a Hollywood Native guy, very handsome,

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Speaker 1: dark skin, black hair. There's me. I look more like

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Speaker 1: Jason Statham for those of you who can't see me

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Speaker 1: right now, so like an action figure. This kidding, I don't.

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Speaker 1: But my younger brother is sort of somewhere in between.

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Speaker 1: And my sisters got blond here and blue eyes. So

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Speaker 1: growing up as we did on the Leech Like Reservation

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Speaker 1: and then moving out into the world, that idea of

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Speaker 1: native disappearance was something that we all experienced in different ways.

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Speaker 1: My brother went away to college in New Jersey at

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Speaker 1: Princeton and people say, well, what are you, where are

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Speaker 1: you from? He told him where he was from, and

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Speaker 1: he told them what he was, and he had people

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Speaker 1: say to his face, well, that can't be true. And

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Speaker 1: he said, what do you mean that can't be native

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Speaker 1: and said, no, we killed all of you. He said,

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Speaker 1: I think you missed one and maybe more than one.

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Speaker 1: And then I followed him there David troy or a

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Speaker 1: Native from the Leech Lake Reservation, and they say, we

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Speaker 1: can't be native. I said, why who? We'll look at you.

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Speaker 1: But the fact is that you have never once met

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Speaker 1: a Native person, So who are you to categorize what

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Speaker 1: I do and do not look like? You? Know? So

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Speaker 1: that invisibility myth functions in a lot of different ways,

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Speaker 1: and it's pernicious. As of the last Census, over five

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Speaker 1: million people identified as native or part Native on the census.

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Speaker 1: That means there are more Native people in this country,

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Speaker 1: not that you would know it, than there are people

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Speaker 1: who identify as Jewish, and that there are twice as

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Speaker 1: many Native American people in this country today as there

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Speaker 1: are people who identify as Muslim American. Not only are

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Speaker 1: we not gone, but we are here in numbers beginning

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Speaker 1: to approach the number of Native people who were here

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Speaker 1: in fourteen ninety one before Columbus showed up. We have

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Speaker 1: been reborn. What do you think the nation fears collectively

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Speaker 1: will happen if they give up that myth of invisibility,

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Speaker 1: of nothingness of this virgin American soil before the arrival

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Speaker 1: of European columnists. I think that if America collectively gave

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Speaker 1: up that myth and that story, they would be forced

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Speaker 1: to contemplate themselves in ways that are deeply unflattering. America

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Speaker 1: is not good at performing that kind of inward look.

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Speaker 1: It has never managed to let go both of our

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Speaker 1: invisibility and the myth of its own innocence in order

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Speaker 1: to properly interrogate this country's actions since its founding. The

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Speaker 1: story of Indian removal and the drive in Washington and

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Speaker 1: in the South to makes happened is usually told as

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Speaker 1: an attempt to get gold. But Andrew Jackson was a

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Speaker 1: real estate speculator, as were his friends. And when you're

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Speaker 1: looking at real estate in the South in the eighteen

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Speaker 1: twenties and thirties, you're not looking for gold, You're looking

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Speaker 1: for land to expand the institution of slavery. Indian removal

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Speaker 1: was all about expanding slavery. To recognize that to un

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Speaker 1: invisible us would mean that this country has to confront

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Speaker 1: its behaviors that drift pretty far from its stated ideals liberty, justice,

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Speaker 1: pursuit of happiness, of fair play people. I want to

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Speaker 1: see that. No, they don't into complicate the myth of

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Speaker 1: native invisibility even more. It seems to me that there's

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Speaker 1: almost two branches to that myth, and I'm going to

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Speaker 1: sort of articulate both branches based on barbaric things that

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Speaker 1: have been said about Native people. So of course Native folks,

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Speaker 1: like black folks, have been called barbaric and savages, when

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Speaker 1: in reality, the ideas themselves were barbaric. One is this

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Speaker 1: idea that the only good Indian is a dead Indian,

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Speaker 1: and the other is let's kill the Indian and save

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Speaker 1: the man. And so with the first, it's the literal

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Speaker 1: destruction of the body in the invisibility of the body

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Speaker 1: and the forced violent attempt to eliminate the body. And

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Speaker 1: then with the second is the violent, forced destruction of

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Speaker 1: the culture of the identity. I want to emphasize these

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Speaker 1: two because I think there are some Americans who will

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Speaker 1: recognize genocide of bodies as a problem as violent as

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Speaker 1: a crime against Native people, but they may not recognize

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Speaker 1: attacks of Native cultures and ways of life in being

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Speaker 1: in the world as violent. Do you see that in

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Speaker 1: your work. One of the ways that they tried to

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Speaker 1: destroy Native nations was to break up tribes by breaking

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Speaker 1: up families, and there was nearly compulsory attendance of Native

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Speaker 1: kids at government and religiously run boarding schools. The whole

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Speaker 1: point of them was, in the words of the founder

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Speaker 1: of the first one in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Colonel Pratt, to

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Speaker 1: kill the Indian to save the man. And this was

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Speaker 1: accomplished by beatings, near starvation, being punished for speaking one's

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Speaker 1: native language and practicing one's native religion, by being not

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Speaker 1: allowed to return home to visit family. I think it's

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Speaker 1: telling that these boarding schools, almost all of them, had

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Speaker 1: attached to them, not just cool rooms and classrooms and dormitories.

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Speaker 1: They all had cemeteries. Boarding school was in many ways

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Speaker 1: where you went to die, not just as an Indian,

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Speaker 1: but also as a person. There was another assault on

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Speaker 1: Native nations, on Native polity, and that was by trying

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Speaker 1: to mainstream us. The idea in the late nineteenth century

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Speaker 1: was that Native people, to the extent that we still existed,

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Speaker 1: were suffering because we couldn't get with the civilization program,

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Speaker 1: the primary component of which was the private ownership of land.

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Speaker 1: So Senator DAWs promoted and wrote legislation called the General

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Speaker 1: Allotment Act, or the DAWs Act. The DAWs Act, passed

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Speaker 1: in the late eighteen eighties, attempted to sever communal ownership

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Speaker 1: of tribal lands and to assign individual parcels to individual

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Speaker 1: Native people as a way to civilize us. That's the rhetoric,

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Speaker 1: but really, in fact, what that ended up doing because

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Speaker 1: our populations had suffered so much, because there have been

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Speaker 1: so much violence visited on our bodies, that individual parcels

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Speaker 1: were assigned to heads of household and the quote unquote

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Speaker 1: surplus land was open to settlement. So the passage of

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Speaker 1: the DAWs Act alone in the late eighteen eighties bled

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Speaker 1: over ninety million acres away from Native people's At the

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Speaker 1: same time, and as the result of legislation of the

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Speaker 1: same Senator, the National Parks were born. Roughly eighty seven

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Speaker 1: million acres of wild lands were put into national parks

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Speaker 1: and monuments. Bourgeou David Troyer and Naddish Nicaus Goobob and

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Speaker 1: Don and podcast nicodeg be Anti racist is nicodeg Minowa

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Speaker 1: dash ibramex Kendy. I want to share with you one

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Speaker 1: of my takeaways, particularly for your recent essay in The Atlantic,

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Speaker 1: which you argue for the returning of the national parks

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Speaker 1: to the tribes, and I want you to tell me

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Speaker 1: whether it's wrong, what needs to be complicated about it.

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Speaker 1: And so my general takeaway from the peace was, you tried,

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Speaker 1: but you couldn't take away our bodies. You tried but

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Speaker 1: you failed to take away our tribes, our cultures. But

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Speaker 1: you did take a tremendous amount of land, right, and

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Speaker 1: it was a tremendous amount of theft. And thereby the

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Speaker 1: only way to remedy that theft of land is with land. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that takeaway is spot on. My proposal in Atlantic is

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Speaker 1: something that should probably be done for Native people. It's

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Speaker 1: also something that should be done for American people. My impression,

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Speaker 1: I gotta call it my impression, because honestly, I don't

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Speaker 1: really speak for anybody other than myself. I'm not an

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Speaker 1: elected tribal leader. I'm not an hereditary lead of anything.

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Speaker 1: I'm just a guy who writes things and causes trouble.

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Speaker 1: That's what I do. I know the feeling, right, But

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Speaker 1: my feeling is that my tribe, other tribes, Blackfeet, Tongfa,

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Speaker 1: de Nay, Pueblo, Lakota, you name it, most of us

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Speaker 1: understand ourselves as being who we are because of where

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Speaker 1: we are. That's at the sort of foundation of our

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Speaker 1: tribal understandings, which are cultural and political. Everything that makes

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Speaker 1: me in a Jibwe person is about geography. It's about homeland.

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Speaker 1: You couldn't practice the remotest part of our culture really

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Speaker 1: someplace else. There's no place else, for instance, where wild

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Speaker 1: rice gross, where the things we harvest that feed us grow.

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Speaker 1: In my case, so the theft of land was aimed

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Speaker 1: at destroying us as a nation and feeding the growth

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Speaker 1: of the American nation. The only way that that can

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Speaker 1: be even partially undone is by the return of land.

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Speaker 1: There's also that misconception that the National parks were sort

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Speaker 1: of pristine and untouched and they were the most virgin

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Speaker 1: of all American virgin land. M Yeah, you're absolutely right.

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Speaker 1: The National parks were talked about and sort of conceived

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Speaker 1: of as these natural cathedrals, and people don't live in cathedrals, right,

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Speaker 1: they just worshiped there. The American habit in America's relationship

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Speaker 1: with land has always been one of both taming on

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Speaker 1: one hand and revering on the other. And frankly, that's

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Speaker 1: exactly how people kind of think about natives, right, disappearing

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Speaker 1: us on one hand and appreciating our innate qualities as

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Speaker 1: people imagine them. And we've kind of treated America can

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Speaker 1: land in a similar fashion. There's land that is to

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Speaker 1: be exploited, tamed, done in, and then the parks of

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Speaker 1: this land that is empty, primal, never touched. But the

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Speaker 1: fact is everything that Europeans and then subsequently non Europeans

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Speaker 1: who have come here, everything that they saw, had already

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Speaker 1: been shaped by native people for millennium. Those beautiful old growth,

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Speaker 1: shady forests on the Eastern Seaboard looked that way because

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Speaker 1: of controlled burns by tribes there who designed them to

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Speaker 1: look that way. Buffalo, New York is called Buffalo New

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Speaker 1: York because native tribes had burned forests to increase grasslands

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Speaker 1: and range lands as far east as Buffalo, to encourage

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Speaker 1: bison to live there because they're a great food source.

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Speaker 1: Yosemite Valley itself had been tended and cultivated for centuries

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Speaker 1: for acorn crops, for example, which is a primary food

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Speaker 1: source of many California tribes. So there's nothing untouched about

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Speaker 1: this landscape, nothing quote unquote virgin about it. This landscape

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Speaker 1: had been something that we had lived with, modulated, changed

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Speaker 1: shaped before anyone else got here, and have continued to

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Speaker 1: do so ever since. The most galling thing, of course,

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Speaker 1: is that they created these national parks as places outside

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Speaker 1: of time, as places outside of the reach of humans.

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Speaker 1: In order to facilitate that fantasy, they oftentimes forcibly removed

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Speaker 1: or excluded Native tribes for whom those particular parks were homelands.

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Speaker 1: That happened at Yellowstone, happened at Glacier, happened at the

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Speaker 1: Grand Canyon, among other places. So yeah, it's a problem

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Speaker 1: deeply embedded, so to return them would be something grand

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Speaker 1: justice is not just a recognition that a crime has

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Speaker 1: been committed, but there's also accountability, awareness of the scale

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Speaker 1: of the crime. But then there's also restitution. And one

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Speaker 1: of the reasons I was so blown away by your

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Speaker 1: anti racist proposal to return the National Parks to the

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Speaker 1: tribes is because you rightly framed the National Parks as

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Speaker 1: the most hollowed American ground. There's many different lands that

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Speaker 1: could be returned, but to convey the most precious of

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Speaker 1: all American lands to return what you've right are sometimes

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Speaker 1: called America's best idea. I think that speaks, at least

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Speaker 1: for me as a non native person. That is the

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Speaker 1: level of restitution that non Native people, that non Native Americans.

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Speaker 1: That's how big we need to be thinking. That's how

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Speaker 1: it seems to me. But and this is, you know,

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Speaker 1: the anti racist bit. America needs this to happen, not

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Speaker 1: just for our sake, but for its sake. I think

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Speaker 1: it's important for this country to remember and to become

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Speaker 1: acquainted with the idea that this country can still perform justice.

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Speaker 1: It needs to become a habit. I really feel like

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Speaker 1: this country is suffering in myriad ways because of its

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Speaker 1: insistence on its own innocence its reluctance to look at

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Speaker 1: what it's done and what it is still doing, not

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Speaker 1: just viaus of a Native people, by any stretch of

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Speaker 1: the imagination, it's suffering a crisis that justice and the

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Speaker 1: habit of justice could restore. So it needs to give

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Speaker 1: those parts back. I could not agree more. And so

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Speaker 1: why now, why make such a bold and critical and

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Speaker 1: precise proposal like returning the national parks to the tribes?

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Speaker 1: I think now, more so than probably any other time,

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Speaker 1: it's a time of reconsideration. There is, if not a

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Speaker 1: process and if not a place, there is certainly an

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Speaker 1: impulse at least to take stock. It's a bolder idea

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Speaker 1: to take away native lands and then mismanage them. That's

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Speaker 1: a bold idea. What's bold is leaving the parks at

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Speaker 1: the mercy of people like Donald Trump. President Obama had enlarged,

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Speaker 1: for example, Bearsier's National Monument and added further protections to it.

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Speaker 1: Two or three weeks after taking office, Donald Trump undid

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Speaker 1: all of that and reduced Bearsier's National Monument by eighty percent.

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Speaker 1: And he did this why because he was mad at

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Speaker 1: the Park Service for reporting the real numbers of his

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Speaker 1: inaugural festivities, which of course occurred on the National Mall,

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Speaker 1: which is a national monument and was monitored and by

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Speaker 1: the National Park Service. They reported the real numbers of

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Speaker 1: the people who were and were not there. Trump was

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Speaker 1: very mad, so he destroys the protections that Obama extended

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Speaker 1: to bears. Ears. It's bold to keep our parks in

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Speaker 1: such a vulnerable state, vulnerable to the whims of this

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Speaker 1: or that administration. That's a bold idea. My idea not

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Speaker 1: so bold. Returning the parks to a consortium of tribes

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Speaker 1: to manage on behalf of and for the benefit of

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Speaker 1: all Americans. That doesn't feel that bold at all, because

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Speaker 1: we're actually good at this practical That's what I would

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Speaker 1: call my idea. Oh, I would agree. And I think

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Speaker 1: we're living in a time in which the idea of

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Speaker 1: returning the best of American land to the tribes scares

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Speaker 1: people because they're like, what's going to happen to the land,

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Speaker 1: as opposed to I think what you're saying is what's

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Speaker 1: going to happen to the land if we don't return

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00:27:08,956 --> 00:27:13,196
Speaker 1: it to the tribes? Right. I could be biased, but

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Speaker 1: I don't think so. I think the last five hundred

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Speaker 1: years have shown us that Native tribes are better at

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Speaker 1: taking care of land than white colonial settlers. Whose hands

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Speaker 1: do you want to put it in? Ours or theirs?

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Speaker 1: I had put my money on us. I mean, my

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Speaker 1: money's on you too. As you write about Native people

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Speaker 1: have been tending to land for more than fifteen thousand years?

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Speaker 1: Did I get that? Recent archaeological surveys suggests it's been

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Speaker 1: much longer than that, much longer. For people who are inspired,

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Speaker 1: for people who see very clearly how the returning of

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Speaker 1: the national parks to the tribes could be a form

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Speaker 1: of restorative justice, how would you suggest they contribute to

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Speaker 1: what I suspect will very soon become a struggle to

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Speaker 1: make this idea a reality. Yeah, well, they can vote

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Speaker 1: with their feet, they can vote with their ballots, those

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Speaker 1: people lucky enough to not have their vote suppressed, and

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Speaker 1: they can take individual action. You might remember with greater

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Speaker 1: clarity than I do, who said it. But the sentiment

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Speaker 1: is that racism deforms the racist as much as the

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Speaker 1: people upon whom that racism is placed. The same is

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Speaker 1: true for theft, and so it's good to give back,

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Speaker 1: not just the people receiving the gift, but to those

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Speaker 1: giving it. On an individual level. After that article was published,

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Speaker 1: I had a guy from North Carolina reach out to

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Speaker 1: me and he said, I have I can't remember now,

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Speaker 1: forty fifty acres in North Carolina, and I would like

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Speaker 1: to find a way to give it back to the

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Speaker 1: Native people, the tribes in North Carolina. How do I

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Speaker 1: do that? And I said, that is wonderful. I put

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00:29:08,916 --> 00:29:14,076
Speaker 1: some calls out on the socials. Native Twitter, Native Facebook

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00:29:14,116 --> 00:29:17,876
Speaker 1: are vibrant. Shout out to Native Twitter and Native Facebook, right,

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Speaker 1: and that makes me feel really good. It's a tiny

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Speaker 1: parcel relatively speaking, right, forty acres, but that's something, and

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Speaker 1: it's profound. Yeah, that is something. There were slaveholders who

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Speaker 1: came across abolitionist literature who came to recognize the theft

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Speaker 1: of labor, the theft of the bodies that they were

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00:29:41,716 --> 00:29:46,636
Speaker 1: partaking in, and so they decided as individuals to do

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00:29:46,756 --> 00:29:50,876
Speaker 1: the unthinkable and free people. I see this direct connection

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00:29:50,916 --> 00:29:55,956
Speaker 1: between the manumenting of enslaved people and the returning of

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Speaker 1: land to Native people. And I think we as a nation,

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Speaker 1: we applaud those slaveholders who were able to do that,

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Speaker 1: but we can't make the connection right now in this

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Speaker 1: moment that there are people who can do something similar,

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00:30:13,236 --> 00:30:16,556
Speaker 1: or we as a nation can do something similar by

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Speaker 1: returning the national parks to the tries. And I just

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Speaker 1: hope that everyone really thinks deeply about what they personally

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Speaker 1: can do. And as you stated how, restorative justice and

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Speaker 1: this type of restorative justice is not just for Native people,

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Speaker 1: it's for people, it's for humanity. Back in the days

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Speaker 1: of intertribal warfare, when my tribe was fighting our neighbors,

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00:30:42,436 --> 00:30:45,836
Speaker 1: when a death was considered murder, there were a couple

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Speaker 1: choices open to you, and they follow kind of a

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Speaker 1: cultural script. The bereaved family who lost somebody to violence

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00:30:54,756 --> 00:30:59,716
Speaker 1: could either put the deceased person's spirit through a ceremony

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Speaker 1: to give them rest and to see them on. But

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Speaker 1: there is another path too. You could ritually and in

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Speaker 1: effect adopt a member, usually of the same sex and

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00:31:10,916 --> 00:31:14,196
Speaker 1: same age as the person you lost, to replace them

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00:31:14,196 --> 00:31:17,476
Speaker 1: spiritually as a member of the community. And there was

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Speaker 1: a third option, and the third option was called the

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Speaker 1: laying of gifts. If you killed somebody and you were

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00:31:25,316 --> 00:31:29,796
Speaker 1: terribly sorry, you would literally cover their body with gifts

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00:31:29,836 --> 00:31:33,756
Speaker 1: of incredible value to basically pay for that death. All

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00:31:33,796 --> 00:31:39,356
Speaker 1: three are different forms of restorative justice practiced by my tribe.

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00:31:39,596 --> 00:31:44,396
Speaker 1: And just as this country borrowed from the Iroquois Confederacy

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00:31:44,476 --> 00:31:48,876
Speaker 1: to shape their models of government, I invite this country

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00:31:49,396 --> 00:31:53,076
Speaker 1: to borrow our sense of what justice looks like and

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00:31:53,116 --> 00:31:55,956
Speaker 1: how to achieve it. That's a gift that I'm willing

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00:31:55,956 --> 00:31:59,956
Speaker 1: to give to this country. That would mean something. Think

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00:31:59,996 --> 00:32:03,116
Speaker 1: about what that kind of justice would look like. I'm

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00:32:03,156 --> 00:32:07,116
Speaker 1: happy you use that cultural reference point and spoke about

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00:32:07,116 --> 00:32:10,116
Speaker 1: it as a gift, because I think even when we

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00:32:10,236 --> 00:32:13,756
Speaker 1: think about our own personal lives in a very micro sense,

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00:32:14,516 --> 00:32:19,356
Speaker 1: when we have wronged someone and when we personally reach

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00:32:19,396 --> 00:32:23,716
Speaker 1: out to that person to declare to them our recognition

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00:32:23,836 --> 00:32:27,636
Speaker 1: that we wrong them, then we take that next step

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00:32:27,756 --> 00:32:32,596
Speaker 1: to heal and repair. Certainly that is beneficial for that person.

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00:32:33,396 --> 00:32:36,276
Speaker 1: But I don't know if there's a better word to

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00:32:36,316 --> 00:32:39,836
Speaker 1: think about the way in which we ultimately feel that's

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00:32:39,876 --> 00:32:43,076
Speaker 1: better than a gift, right, And that's a gift that

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00:32:44,156 --> 00:32:48,716
Speaker 1: communities of color, African American communities, Native communities, those are

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00:32:48,756 --> 00:32:52,556
Speaker 1: gifts that we have been giving to this country since

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00:32:52,556 --> 00:32:58,156
Speaker 1: the beginning, and despite being rejected and burned and gaslighted

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00:32:58,356 --> 00:33:02,356
Speaker 1: and so on, we keep giving it. Indeed, how can

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00:33:02,396 --> 00:33:06,756
Speaker 1: we begin to solve and repair and create this world anew.

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00:33:07,436 --> 00:33:11,276
Speaker 1: I think with your proposal to return to national parks

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00:33:11,316 --> 00:33:14,436
Speaker 1: to Native tribes, it gives the United States that ability

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00:33:14,476 --> 00:33:18,116
Speaker 1: to do that, and I think that's really incredibly important

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00:33:18,276 --> 00:33:21,196
Speaker 1: for us in this time. Well, David, it was just

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00:33:21,956 --> 00:33:25,316
Speaker 1: great to talk to you, to learn from you. Thank

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00:33:25,316 --> 00:33:27,836
Speaker 1: you so much. I really appreciate this time, in this

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00:33:27,956 --> 00:33:31,756
Speaker 1: conversation and your energies. It means a lot. Thank you

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00:33:31,796 --> 00:33:44,196
Speaker 1: so much. Shortly after my conversation with David Troyer, CNN

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00:33:44,356 --> 00:33:48,596
Speaker 1: fired their commentator Rick Santorum over his assertion that there

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00:33:48,716 --> 00:33:54,476
Speaker 1: isn't much Native American culture. In American culture is the

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00:33:54,556 --> 00:33:59,916
Speaker 1: vanishing Indian now the vanishing Indian culture. To mute history

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00:34:00,356 --> 00:34:03,956
Speaker 1: is to mute culture. On the other hand, to return

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00:34:03,996 --> 00:34:06,876
Speaker 1: the National parks to the tribes is to begin to

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00:34:06,996 --> 00:34:12,636
Speaker 1: vocalize Native American history three and culture and rights. The

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00:34:12,756 --> 00:34:17,556
Speaker 1: National Parks have been called America's best idea. They were

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00:34:17,596 --> 00:34:23,996
Speaker 1: created simultaneously with Native reservations. At the time, Oglala Lakota

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00:34:24,116 --> 00:34:28,796
Speaker 1: spiritual leader black Elk noted that the United States made

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00:34:28,836 --> 00:34:32,356
Speaker 1: little islands for us and other little islands for the

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00:34:32,436 --> 00:34:38,836
Speaker 1: Four Leggeds and always. These islands are becoming smaller, but

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00:34:39,076 --> 00:34:43,116
Speaker 1: native people remain, and Astroyer wrote, some of us have

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00:34:43,236 --> 00:34:48,316
Speaker 1: stayed stubbornly near the parks, preserving our attachment to them.

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00:34:48,356 --> 00:34:51,556
Speaker 1: It is time for the US government to preserve their

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00:34:51,596 --> 00:34:55,636
Speaker 1: attachment to them. Let us return the national parks to

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00:34:55,716 --> 00:35:00,996
Speaker 1: America's original people. Let us begin repairing America's racist past

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00:35:01,636 --> 00:35:06,916
Speaker 1: with an anti racist president. Let Us be anti racist,

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00:35:18,116 --> 00:35:21,556
Speaker 1: Be Anti Racist is a production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.

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00:35:21,996 --> 00:35:24,116
Speaker 1: It is written and hosted by doctor Ebram x Kindy

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00:35:24,116 --> 00:35:27,196
Speaker 1: and produced by Alexander Garratton, with associate producer Britney Brown.

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00:35:27,756 --> 00:35:30,476
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00:35:30,516 --> 00:35:33,996
Speaker 1: I show runner at Sasha Mathias, Our executive producers Jollie

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00:35:34,036 --> 00:35:36,716
Speaker 1: tam Willad and Me and Lovelle Many thanks to Tammy

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00:35:36,756 --> 00:35:38,836
Speaker 1: Wain and doctor Heather Sandford at the Sender for Anti

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00:35:38,956 --> 00:35:41,556
Speaker 1: Racist Research at Boston University. For all of the health

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00:35:42,076 --> 00:35:45,556
Speaker 1: at Pushkin, thanks to Heather Fame, Carli Migliori, John Schnars,

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Speaker 1: and Jacob Wiseberg. You can find doctor Kenny on Twitter

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