1
00:00:04,320 --> 00:00:08,160
Speaker 1: From Futuro Media and PRX. It's Latino USA. I'm Maria

2
00:00:08,200 --> 00:00:13,120
Speaker 1: in Josa today, a Native American reservation in Washington State

3
00:00:13,760 --> 00:00:17,959
Speaker 1: where Latinos and Latinas are the majority of the population,

4
00:00:18,239 --> 00:00:21,279
Speaker 1: and also the tensions that flew up because of that.

5
00:00:26,440 --> 00:00:29,680
Speaker 1: Welcome to Latino USA. I'm Maria in Hoossa. In the

6
00:00:29,760 --> 00:00:34,279
Speaker 1: late nineteen seventies, Guadalupe Marquez was living in Alto Jalisco, Mexico.

7
00:00:34,880 --> 00:00:37,240
Speaker 1: Her husband was gone most of the year in the

8
00:00:37,360 --> 00:00:39,440
Speaker 1: United States doing farm work.

9
00:00:39,280 --> 00:00:45,840
Speaker 2: Mid Sevenia Cestawaki orso on River Mezes, Wuidalupe's husband would

10
00:00:45,840 --> 00:00:48,559
Speaker 2: spend eight or nine months working hard to make a

11
00:00:48,600 --> 00:00:52,519
Speaker 2: living to provide for his family across the border, and

12
00:00:52,840 --> 00:00:56,160
Speaker 2: like thousands of other labor immigrants before and after him,

13
00:00:56,600 --> 00:00:59,400
Speaker 2: he would then take time to go back to Mexico

14
00:00:59,760 --> 00:01:01,120
Speaker 2: and visit his family.

15
00:01:01,600 --> 00:01:04,800
Speaker 1: He'd stay for a month before leaving to the US again.

16
00:01:05,720 --> 00:01:10,040
Speaker 1: But nine months after every visit, something big would happen,

17
00:01:10,400 --> 00:01:13,600
Speaker 1: Whilalupe would end up giving birth to a new child.

18
00:01:14,080 --> 00:01:17,600
Speaker 1: And not once or three times did this happen, It

19
00:01:17,680 --> 00:01:22,440
Speaker 1: happened sixteen times, Yes, sixteen times.

20
00:01:22,720 --> 00:01:24,039
Speaker 3: What is Amilia?

21
00:01:24,400 --> 00:01:28,800
Speaker 1: That's why our family's so big? Wadalupe says, of course,

22
00:01:29,120 --> 00:01:33,680
Speaker 1: sixteen kids. But finally, one day, Whadalupe decided enough was enough.

23
00:01:33,840 --> 00:01:36,920
Speaker 1: She didn't want to keep raising her large family on

24
00:01:37,040 --> 00:01:40,000
Speaker 1: her own. She wanted her husband to be a permanent

25
00:01:40,040 --> 00:01:42,800
Speaker 1: part of their life too, not just as a visitor,

26
00:01:43,440 --> 00:01:46,000
Speaker 1: and so she convinced her husband to take her with

27
00:01:46,200 --> 00:01:49,920
Speaker 1: him to the United States for good. They ended up

28
00:01:50,000 --> 00:01:54,320
Speaker 1: joining some relatives in Washington State. They rented a house

29
00:01:54,640 --> 00:01:59,960
Speaker 1: in a tiny town surrounded by fruit orchards. Whidalupez daughter, Yesing,

30
00:02:00,360 --> 00:02:03,320
Speaker 1: was five years old when they arrived. Her most vivid

31
00:02:03,400 --> 00:02:08,720
Speaker 1: memory of that first house was finding these tiny little clues.

32
00:02:09,320 --> 00:02:12,359
Speaker 4: And I remember in the closet of the house there

33
00:02:12,520 --> 00:02:18,120
Speaker 4: was beads, like Native American beads. I just remember finding beads.

34
00:02:18,160 --> 00:02:19,920
Speaker 4: For as long as we lived in that house, there

35
00:02:19,960 --> 00:02:21,320
Speaker 4: was always beads in the closet.

36
00:02:22,360 --> 00:02:25,000
Speaker 1: It took you, Senya years to realize what made this

37
00:02:25,120 --> 00:02:28,400
Speaker 1: town Wapato different from the rest of the country.

38
00:02:28,639 --> 00:02:32,280
Speaker 4: It wasn't really evident to us that we lived on

39
00:02:32,360 --> 00:02:35,520
Speaker 4: a reservation. That wasn't something that we were conscious about.

40
00:02:36,360 --> 00:02:39,079
Speaker 4: It was just something that we figured Indians lived here.

41
00:02:43,880 --> 00:02:48,600
Speaker 1: But she was on a reservation. The Yakama Nation. Ten

42
00:02:48,680 --> 00:02:51,920
Speaker 1: years ago, the Yakama Nation was home to about eleven

43
00:02:52,040 --> 00:02:57,959
Speaker 1: thousand tribal members and three times as many Latinos and Latinas.

44
00:02:58,880 --> 00:03:02,880
Speaker 1: Now this divine it has increased, with nearly four times

45
00:03:02,919 --> 00:03:06,800
Speaker 1: as many Latinos and Latinas as there are tribal members

46
00:03:07,680 --> 00:03:11,960
Speaker 1: outnumbered on their own land. I wanted to know what

47
00:03:12,000 --> 00:03:16,040
Speaker 1: does that look and feel like. So in twenty fifteen,

48
00:03:16,560 --> 00:03:19,480
Speaker 1: I spent about a week in the Yakuman Nation reporting

49
00:03:19,560 --> 00:03:20,240
Speaker 1: along with my.

50
00:03:20,200 --> 00:03:23,320
Speaker 5: Producer, I'm Rowan more Garrity.

51
00:03:23,240 --> 00:03:26,680
Speaker 1: And today we're teaming up for a special edition all

52
00:03:26,800 --> 00:03:31,240
Speaker 1: about the Yakuman Nation, a Native American reservation where Latinos

53
00:03:31,320 --> 00:03:51,240
Speaker 1: are the majority. Now, just so you know, there are

54
00:03:51,320 --> 00:03:54,000
Speaker 1: moments in our story where you're going to hear language

55
00:03:54,080 --> 00:03:57,160
Speaker 1: around race that will be offensive to some listeners. So

56
00:03:57,480 --> 00:04:00,880
Speaker 1: that's just a heads up. But before we go any further,

57
00:04:01,120 --> 00:04:03,400
Speaker 1: I think it might be helpful to paint a picture

58
00:04:03,440 --> 00:04:06,280
Speaker 1: of what the Yakama Nation is now. To get there,

59
00:04:06,480 --> 00:04:10,240
Speaker 1: I drove about three hours east of Seattle, So Rowan

60
00:04:10,320 --> 00:04:12,280
Speaker 1: tell us what does this area look like.

61
00:04:12,640 --> 00:04:15,640
Speaker 5: So, first of all, the Yacma Nation is in eastern Washington,

62
00:04:15,760 --> 00:04:19,680
Speaker 5: and it's pretty big, wide open country. The reservation lands

63
00:04:19,720 --> 00:04:22,560
Speaker 5: cover more than two thousand square miles of plains in

64
00:04:22,600 --> 00:04:26,680
Speaker 5: the lowlands and then forested mountains. Most people live in

65
00:04:26,720 --> 00:04:30,160
Speaker 5: a cluster of towns along the Yakima River, so there's

66
00:04:30,160 --> 00:04:33,040
Speaker 5: a big Latino population along with the tribe, and then

67
00:04:33,160 --> 00:04:36,400
Speaker 5: there are also Filipinos and white people, so it's a

68
00:04:36,400 --> 00:04:37,000
Speaker 5: real mix.

69
00:04:37,360 --> 00:04:39,719
Speaker 1: Right after I got to Yakima, we met up with

70
00:04:39,760 --> 00:04:42,039
Speaker 1: a woman who grew up right in the middle of

71
00:04:42,080 --> 00:04:42,400
Speaker 1: all of this.

72
00:04:42,680 --> 00:04:44,160
Speaker 3: I got two little ones. I got to get out

73
00:04:44,160 --> 00:04:44,440
Speaker 3: of my car.

74
00:04:44,600 --> 00:04:44,920
Speaker 6: Okay.

75
00:04:45,880 --> 00:04:51,039
Speaker 5: That's Rena Marquees, Guadalupe's granddaughter and Yessenia's niece. Rena is

76
00:04:51,080 --> 00:04:54,040
Speaker 5: twenty seven years old. Her father is Mexican and her

77
00:04:54,080 --> 00:04:57,760
Speaker 5: mother is Yakima and Filipino, and she's got four kids

78
00:04:57,800 --> 00:04:58,240
Speaker 5: of her own.

79
00:04:58,560 --> 00:05:00,400
Speaker 7: She's totally well.

80
00:05:00,520 --> 00:05:02,040
Speaker 3: Princess Medal Indian one.

81
00:05:02,240 --> 00:05:04,040
Speaker 8: She loves to be barefoot, come back to me.

82
00:05:05,440 --> 00:05:07,960
Speaker 1: Rena says there are a lot of people in her

83
00:05:08,000 --> 00:05:11,520
Speaker 1: generation who are part Yakima and part Mexican, and she

84
00:05:11,600 --> 00:05:14,359
Speaker 1: never saw a problem embracing both sides of her heritage.

85
00:05:15,000 --> 00:05:17,479
Speaker 1: But back when she was a kid, she felt like

86
00:05:17,520 --> 00:05:20,440
Speaker 1: there was a war between Native Americans and Latinos on

87
00:05:20,480 --> 00:05:21,120
Speaker 1: the reservation.

88
00:05:21,360 --> 00:05:25,400
Speaker 3: There were some Native men that would fight with my dad, so,

89
00:05:25,560 --> 00:05:27,560
Speaker 3: you know, because it was Hispanic, just you know, go

90
00:05:27,680 --> 00:05:32,680
Speaker 3: back to your own country. And then on the other side,

91
00:05:32,880 --> 00:05:37,880
Speaker 3: I always heard, you know, dirty natives, drunks, bumps.

92
00:05:37,480 --> 00:05:40,120
Speaker 1: And when you would hear those things, what was going

93
00:05:40,160 --> 00:05:40,880
Speaker 1: on in your mind?

94
00:05:41,360 --> 00:05:44,679
Speaker 3: I didn't understand it. There was just so much hate here,

95
00:05:44,839 --> 00:05:46,839
Speaker 3: just hearing it on both sides, and it was like

96
00:05:47,240 --> 00:05:48,880
Speaker 3: they just they really didn't like each other.

97
00:05:49,520 --> 00:05:52,360
Speaker 5: And Rena says, this still goes on.

98
00:05:52,360 --> 00:05:55,480
Speaker 3: One of my sons gets in trouble for fighting, and

99
00:05:55,520 --> 00:05:57,040
Speaker 3: I'm like, why are you fighting kids.

100
00:05:57,160 --> 00:05:59,599
Speaker 5: Rina's son, by the way, is in fourth grade.

101
00:06:00,160 --> 00:06:02,159
Speaker 3: Well, he called me a dirty Indian. He gets in

102
00:06:02,200 --> 00:06:05,239
Speaker 3: trouble for that. He's taking a look from nobody.

103
00:06:05,360 --> 00:06:08,159
Speaker 1: Rita's kids are mixed like her. Her son's father is

104
00:06:08,200 --> 00:06:08,920
Speaker 1: mostly Native.

105
00:06:09,760 --> 00:06:11,720
Speaker 3: You know, I've told my kids, you know, you guys

106
00:06:11,720 --> 00:06:14,920
Speaker 3: are Hispanic and you guys are Native. They'll make comments

107
00:06:15,000 --> 00:06:17,560
Speaker 3: like we're not Mexican, we're Indians, and mom, like you're

108
00:06:17,600 --> 00:06:20,360
Speaker 3: a Mexican. I don't know if they just don't think

109
00:06:20,440 --> 00:06:23,800
Speaker 3: I look Native enough or something, but they always make

110
00:06:23,839 --> 00:06:25,800
Speaker 3: little comments like that and they just laugh about it.

111
00:06:35,360 --> 00:06:38,200
Speaker 5: Being Native isn't just about how you identify or what

112
00:06:38,279 --> 00:06:41,880
Speaker 5: you look like. Tribes are officially sovereign nations, and there

113
00:06:41,920 --> 00:06:44,400
Speaker 5: are specific rights that come with being a member of

114
00:06:44,440 --> 00:06:47,160
Speaker 5: a tribe. You can vote in elections for the tribal government,

115
00:06:47,240 --> 00:06:49,640
Speaker 5: you can visit parts of the reservation that aren't open

116
00:06:49,680 --> 00:06:51,920
Speaker 5: to everyone, and you can receive a share of the

117
00:06:51,960 --> 00:06:54,760
Speaker 5: tribal income that comes from things like the casino or

118
00:06:55,040 --> 00:06:56,040
Speaker 5: the logging industry.

119
00:06:56,480 --> 00:06:59,080
Speaker 1: But here on the Yakama Nation, I learned it's more

120
00:06:59,200 --> 00:07:02,520
Speaker 1: complicated because a lot of the land is actually owned

121
00:07:02,640 --> 00:07:03,440
Speaker 1: by white people.

122
00:07:03,640 --> 00:07:06,400
Speaker 5: And the reason there are so many white people here

123
00:07:07,080 --> 00:07:09,640
Speaker 5: is that it's a great place for making money from

124
00:07:09,680 --> 00:07:10,480
Speaker 5: growing apples.

125
00:07:10,800 --> 00:07:14,280
Speaker 1: All over the reservation. There are these huge warehouses, bigger

126
00:07:14,320 --> 00:07:16,960
Speaker 1: warehouses than any I've ever seen, I think in my

127
00:07:17,000 --> 00:07:19,880
Speaker 1: whole life, that are filled with apples.

128
00:07:20,120 --> 00:07:23,640
Speaker 5: That's right, The Yakama Valley is the nation's apple capital.

129
00:07:25,800 --> 00:07:28,520
Speaker 9: This is the biggest apple backing facility on Earth.

130
00:07:28,600 --> 00:07:31,520
Speaker 5: That's mikey Hanks, he's my tour guide at Washington Fruit.

131
00:07:32,400 --> 00:07:35,960
Speaker 5: It's this massive concrete warehouse filled with the whirring and

132
00:07:36,000 --> 00:07:40,400
Speaker 5: clicking of all these giant machines. So you'll see here

133
00:07:40,440 --> 00:07:42,560
Speaker 5: it's just kind of like a river of apples.

134
00:07:42,600 --> 00:07:44,400
Speaker 9: The easiest way to get the apples out of the

135
00:07:44,400 --> 00:07:45,920
Speaker 9: bind let's put the bin in water.

136
00:07:46,640 --> 00:07:49,120
Speaker 5: About three and a half million apples go through here

137
00:07:49,240 --> 00:07:49,840
Speaker 5: every day.

138
00:07:50,600 --> 00:07:53,480
Speaker 1: Three and a half million apples are worth a lot

139
00:07:53,520 --> 00:07:56,280
Speaker 1: of money. And to understand how white people came to

140
00:07:56,320 --> 00:07:59,440
Speaker 1: own these fruit factories on native land, you have to

141
00:07:59,440 --> 00:08:00,239
Speaker 1: go way back.

142
00:08:00,520 --> 00:08:02,680
Speaker 10: So this is just a valley floor, and you could

143
00:08:02,680 --> 00:08:06,240
Speaker 10: see there's a lot of areas in here that aren't

144
00:08:06,280 --> 00:08:07,360
Speaker 10: owned by the acamanation.

145
00:08:07,640 --> 00:08:10,360
Speaker 1: This is Matthew Tamaskin. He's a part of the tribal

146
00:08:10,400 --> 00:08:13,440
Speaker 1: government and today he's showing us a huge map of

147
00:08:13,480 --> 00:08:16,480
Speaker 1: the reservation on the wall at the Yakama Nation headquarters.

148
00:08:17,000 --> 00:08:19,400
Speaker 1: The map is divided up into a big grid and

149
00:08:19,440 --> 00:08:22,239
Speaker 1: some of the squares are yellow, others are pink and blue.

150
00:08:22,280 --> 00:08:25,280
Speaker 10: So what you see is the yellow parcels. Those are

151
00:08:25,320 --> 00:08:26,800
Speaker 10: tribal lands and they have numbers.

152
00:08:27,080 --> 00:08:30,240
Speaker 5: In eighteen fifty five, the Yakma people signed a treaty

153
00:08:30,280 --> 00:08:33,439
Speaker 5: with the federal government that created the reservation, and it

154
00:08:33,559 --> 00:08:37,120
Speaker 5: set aside land where only the tribe could live. But

155
00:08:37,160 --> 00:08:40,920
Speaker 5: the Feds didn't keep their word. Not long after that,

156
00:08:41,040 --> 00:08:44,199
Speaker 5: Congress passed something called the Allotment Act, and basically what

157
00:08:44,240 --> 00:08:46,400
Speaker 5: that did is it took land that belonged to the

158
00:08:46,440 --> 00:08:49,960
Speaker 5: tribe and broke it into little pieces. The goal was

159
00:08:50,000 --> 00:08:53,000
Speaker 5: to give those little pieces of land to individual tribal

160
00:08:53,040 --> 00:08:55,040
Speaker 5: members as a way to get them to assimilate.

161
00:08:55,120 --> 00:08:57,080
Speaker 10: So some of that was was they wanted us to

162
00:08:57,120 --> 00:08:59,560
Speaker 10: be farmers. We're not farmers, we're gatherers.

163
00:08:59,640 --> 00:08:59,720
Speaker 11: Now.

164
00:09:00,000 --> 00:09:02,960
Speaker 1: Government's idea was that tribal members who agreed to move

165
00:09:03,000 --> 00:09:06,079
Speaker 1: on to those individual allotments could become citizens of the

166
00:09:06,200 --> 00:09:09,400
Speaker 1: United States, and any land that wasn't given out in

167
00:09:09,440 --> 00:09:12,800
Speaker 1: allotments would be sold to non Indians. But by the

168
00:09:12,800 --> 00:09:15,640
Speaker 1: turn of the century there were whole real estate offices

169
00:09:15,679 --> 00:09:18,880
Speaker 1: here just specializing in selling reservation lands.

170
00:09:19,080 --> 00:09:21,400
Speaker 10: The tribal members owned the land, but yet you know,

171
00:09:21,800 --> 00:09:24,040
Speaker 10: you hear these stories of hey, chief, we'll give you

172
00:09:24,080 --> 00:09:27,560
Speaker 10: a bottle of whiskey for that land, booms turned over,

173
00:09:28,000 --> 00:09:28,560
Speaker 10: we lose it.

174
00:09:29,000 --> 00:09:31,720
Speaker 1: When you think of a reservation, you probably think of

175
00:09:31,800 --> 00:09:35,240
Speaker 1: land that's set aside just for Native people. But there

176
00:09:35,240 --> 00:09:38,120
Speaker 1: are actually a bunch of reservations like the Yakiman Nation,

177
00:09:38,240 --> 00:09:41,480
Speaker 1: where the majority population isn't Native American at all.

178
00:09:41,679 --> 00:09:45,120
Speaker 5: Within fifty years of the Allotment Act, tribes all over

179
00:09:45,160 --> 00:09:47,719
Speaker 5: the country lost ownership of more than two thirds of

180
00:09:47,760 --> 00:09:51,040
Speaker 5: their land. The Accamanation has been trying to buy their

181
00:09:51,120 --> 00:09:53,920
Speaker 5: land back ever since. But it's a lot easier to

182
00:09:53,920 --> 00:09:56,400
Speaker 5: take a piece of land out of tribal control than

183
00:09:56,440 --> 00:09:57,880
Speaker 5: it is to bring it back in.

184
00:09:58,280 --> 00:10:01,600
Speaker 6: So that's how you start having what we call now

185
00:10:01,640 --> 00:10:03,319
Speaker 6: a checkerboard reservation.

186
00:10:03,760 --> 00:10:07,079
Speaker 5: That's sister Kathleen Ross. If you can imagine the checkerboard

187
00:10:07,120 --> 00:10:09,520
Speaker 5: she's talking about. Let's say some squares are owned by

188
00:10:09,559 --> 00:10:12,000
Speaker 5: the tribe, and a lot of other squares are owned

189
00:10:12,000 --> 00:10:15,040
Speaker 5: by white farmers and growers, and that's made it harder

190
00:10:15,040 --> 00:10:17,360
Speaker 5: for the tribe to control what happens on the reservation,

191
00:10:18,040 --> 00:10:20,280
Speaker 5: even for something as basic as who lives here.

192
00:10:20,760 --> 00:10:24,760
Speaker 1: That checkerboard has also enabled discrimination against Native Americans on

193
00:10:24,840 --> 00:10:25,640
Speaker 1: their own lands.

194
00:10:25,760 --> 00:10:28,680
Speaker 6: The settlers that came in that started the towns to

195
00:10:28,800 --> 00:10:33,200
Speaker 6: support the agriculture that was starting up. People that started

196
00:10:33,240 --> 00:10:35,680
Speaker 6: a restaurant would put up a sign that said no

197
00:10:35,840 --> 00:10:37,800
Speaker 6: dogs here and no Indians.

198
00:10:38,040 --> 00:10:40,679
Speaker 5: In the first part of the twentieth century, white settlers

199
00:10:40,720 --> 00:10:43,280
Speaker 5: from all over the country moved onto the reservation to

200
00:10:43,360 --> 00:10:47,000
Speaker 5: start farms and take advantage of a new federal irrigation project.

201
00:10:47,240 --> 00:10:50,560
Speaker 10: They're creating these farms, but they didn't have workers. So

202
00:10:50,880 --> 00:10:54,199
Speaker 10: prior to the Mexicans coming and being workers, we were

203
00:10:54,240 --> 00:10:57,880
Speaker 10: the workers. Our elders were out there picking hops or

204
00:10:57,960 --> 00:11:01,360
Speaker 10: harvesting grapes or harvesting apple. Those are harvesting peachers, what

205
00:11:01,400 --> 00:11:04,960
Speaker 10: have you. We were that. We were their workforce, you know,

206
00:11:05,120 --> 00:11:08,280
Speaker 10: cheap labor. That's where we were, just as ys today.

207
00:11:08,240 --> 00:11:10,120
Speaker 7: And you see some of that work depicted on the

208
00:11:10,200 --> 00:11:11,840
Speaker 7: murals here in Toponish.

209
00:11:12,040 --> 00:11:14,520
Speaker 1: Ricardo Garcia has been an advocate in the Latino farm

210
00:11:14,520 --> 00:11:17,560
Speaker 1: worker community for more than forty years. When you drive

211
00:11:17,600 --> 00:11:21,400
Speaker 1: through downtown Toponish, one of the reservation's main towns, you

212
00:11:21,440 --> 00:11:25,320
Speaker 1: see whole buildings painted with scenes of Native American families

213
00:11:25,520 --> 00:11:26,559
Speaker 1: doing farm work.

214
00:11:26,679 --> 00:11:30,720
Speaker 7: But they don't do that work anymore. The agricultural industry

215
00:11:30,800 --> 00:11:34,840
Speaker 7: kept growing, and it continued to expand to the times

216
00:11:34,880 --> 00:11:39,040
Speaker 7: when they needed to recruit workers from Texas.

217
00:11:38,679 --> 00:11:41,360
Speaker 1: Families like Garcia started to come north for a few

218
00:11:41,400 --> 00:11:44,880
Speaker 1: months out of the year, and gradually, he says, Mexicans

219
00:11:44,880 --> 00:11:49,240
Speaker 1: and Mexican Americans started to replace Native Americans as the

220
00:11:49,280 --> 00:11:51,760
Speaker 1: main workforce on the farms on the reservation.

221
00:11:52,160 --> 00:11:54,360
Speaker 7: The Native American was a good worker, but they also

222
00:11:54,480 --> 00:11:57,600
Speaker 7: celebrated the times when they would go fishing and they

223
00:11:57,640 --> 00:11:59,960
Speaker 7: would take off, perhaps in the middle of a harvest,

224
00:12:00,679 --> 00:12:04,040
Speaker 7: and the industry didn't like that very much, so they

225
00:12:04,880 --> 00:12:11,560
Speaker 7: started to prefer and recruit and hire labor from Mexico

226
00:12:11,920 --> 00:12:12,920
Speaker 7: as well as Texas.

227
00:12:13,000 --> 00:12:14,760
Speaker 1: Right now, this is something that I learned by being

228
00:12:14,760 --> 00:12:18,440
Speaker 1: on the reservation that there are certain seasonal activities that

229
00:12:18,480 --> 00:12:22,119
Speaker 1: are really central to tribal life and identity, like fishing

230
00:12:22,240 --> 00:12:24,800
Speaker 1: or foraging for roots and berries, and it happens on

231
00:12:24,960 --> 00:12:28,240
Speaker 1: very sacred land, and so when it's time to do that,

232
00:12:28,240 --> 00:12:29,040
Speaker 1: that's what you do.

233
00:12:29,360 --> 00:12:33,520
Speaker 5: Yeah, And that shift to Mexican farm workers means that

234
00:12:33,600 --> 00:12:36,720
Speaker 5: over time, more and more single men were coming here

235
00:12:36,760 --> 00:12:40,080
Speaker 5: and putting down roots, and eventually their families came too.

236
00:12:40,200 --> 00:12:43,080
Speaker 1: And it was the beginning of a demographic shift that

237
00:12:43,120 --> 00:12:47,240
Speaker 1: would profoundly change the Yakma Valley. Latino settled in the

238
00:12:47,240 --> 00:12:51,360
Speaker 1: reservations towns in large numbers, bringing their language and their

239
00:12:51,400 --> 00:12:55,520
Speaker 1: culture with them, and with new neighbors they're came and

240
00:12:55,600 --> 00:13:20,960
Speaker 1: new tensions coming up on Latino USA are Latinos. Pushing

241
00:13:20,960 --> 00:13:22,440
Speaker 1: the Yakama people out.

242
00:13:22,520 --> 00:13:24,200
Speaker 10: When I'm going out to launch with my friends is

243
00:13:24,240 --> 00:13:27,880
Speaker 10: like we're gonna have Mexican, Mexican or Mexican. If you

244
00:13:27,920 --> 00:13:30,840
Speaker 10: think about it, you know what does topplers have to offer?

245
00:13:31,440 --> 00:13:32,520
Speaker 10: Are they the Mexican fact?

246
00:13:32,880 --> 00:13:33,560
Speaker 5: Stay with us?

247
00:13:34,160 --> 00:13:49,920
Speaker 1: Yes, Welcome back to Latino USA. I'm Maria Ino.

248
00:13:49,760 --> 00:13:51,840
Speaker 5: Jossa and I'm rowin more Garrity.

249
00:13:52,320 --> 00:13:56,439
Speaker 1: And today we're revisiting a special episode from twenty fifteen

250
00:13:56,840 --> 00:14:01,480
Speaker 1: about the Yakama Nation in Washington State, a Native American

251
00:14:01,559 --> 00:14:07,839
Speaker 1: reservation where Latinos have expanded to become the majority population. Now,

252
00:14:07,880 --> 00:14:10,040
Speaker 1: when we left off, we were talking about how the

253
00:14:10,080 --> 00:14:15,600
Speaker 1: reservation lands became dominated by farms, mostly owned by white

254
00:14:15,600 --> 00:14:20,520
Speaker 1: folks and worked mostly by Mexicans and Mexican Americans.

255
00:14:21,120 --> 00:14:24,800
Speaker 5: Today, agriculture in Yakoma County is an industry worth almost

256
00:14:24,840 --> 00:14:28,440
Speaker 5: two billion dollars a year, and almost everyone we spoke

257
00:14:28,480 --> 00:14:31,160
Speaker 5: to in the Latino community here has spent some time

258
00:14:31,200 --> 00:14:35,080
Speaker 5: working in the fields. Yesenia Navarette Hunter, that's the woman

259
00:14:35,120 --> 00:14:37,560
Speaker 5: who found the native beads in her house as a child.

260
00:14:38,200 --> 00:14:41,000
Speaker 5: She says the hardest part of doing farm work was

261
00:14:41,280 --> 00:14:42,880
Speaker 5: just trying to get enough sleep.

262
00:14:43,080 --> 00:14:44,960
Speaker 4: My mom would have us get to bed, you know,

263
00:14:45,000 --> 00:14:47,720
Speaker 4: at maybe eight or nine. And in the summertime, it

264
00:14:47,760 --> 00:14:49,960
Speaker 4: was even harder because still light out and you're trying

265
00:14:49,960 --> 00:14:52,320
Speaker 4: to sleep, but you know that in just a few

266
00:14:52,320 --> 00:14:53,360
Speaker 4: hours you're going to get up again.

267
00:14:53,720 --> 00:14:57,360
Speaker 1: During asparagus season, Yesenya says, the day started at two

268
00:14:57,440 --> 00:14:58,840
Speaker 1: or three in the morning, and.

269
00:14:58,800 --> 00:15:01,360
Speaker 4: We'd get ready and run out out to the cars

270
00:15:01,480 --> 00:15:03,040
Speaker 4: because there were always several.

271
00:15:03,080 --> 00:15:06,600
Speaker 1: Remember we're talking about a family with sixteen kids here.

272
00:15:06,840 --> 00:15:09,280
Speaker 4: And the way that we pulled this off because how

273
00:15:09,280 --> 00:15:12,000
Speaker 4: do you pick in the dark. So my dad would

274
00:15:12,440 --> 00:15:16,640
Speaker 4: he would park his jeep facing the asparagus rose and

275
00:15:16,720 --> 00:15:18,800
Speaker 4: leave the lights on, and so you pick as far

276
00:15:18,800 --> 00:15:21,240
Speaker 4: as you can see, and then you come back, and

277
00:15:21,280 --> 00:15:22,760
Speaker 4: then you pick as far as you can see, and

278
00:15:22,840 --> 00:15:24,640
Speaker 4: about that time the sun's coming up, so you go

279
00:15:24,680 --> 00:15:26,160
Speaker 4: back and you finish the rest of the rose.

280
00:15:27,080 --> 00:15:29,600
Speaker 5: So what that means is that the kids would work

281
00:15:29,640 --> 00:15:32,360
Speaker 5: five or six hour shifts in the fields and then

282
00:15:32,520 --> 00:15:35,840
Speaker 5: they would rush home, shower off their morning work, and

283
00:15:35,920 --> 00:15:36,680
Speaker 5: head to school.

284
00:15:37,080 --> 00:15:40,640
Speaker 1: Yasenya's niece, Rina Madkez, had a different kind of childhood though.

285
00:15:41,120 --> 00:15:44,160
Speaker 1: Remember Rena is the part native part Mexican woman that

286
00:15:44,200 --> 00:15:47,440
Speaker 1: we heard from earlier. Growing up, Rena says she saw

287
00:15:47,680 --> 00:15:49,840
Speaker 1: the worst of both of her parents.

288
00:15:50,000 --> 00:15:53,440
Speaker 3: My mom left me in a hospital when I was firstborn.

289
00:15:54,080 --> 00:15:57,520
Speaker 1: Both her mom and her dad drank heavily and used drugs,

290
00:15:57,560 --> 00:15:59,640
Speaker 1: and her dad was in and out of jail.

291
00:16:00,120 --> 00:16:02,960
Speaker 3: So my grandma got me out of the hospital and

292
00:16:03,040 --> 00:16:05,640
Speaker 3: she would tell me stories that or your mom would

293
00:16:05,640 --> 00:16:09,240
Speaker 3: come see you as a baby, and like my baby's age,

294
00:16:09,280 --> 00:16:12,000
Speaker 3: the little one, she said, your mom would push you away.

295
00:16:14,280 --> 00:16:16,760
Speaker 5: When she was seven, Rena moved in with her parents.

296
00:16:17,200 --> 00:16:19,680
Speaker 5: They lived in one of the low income housing projects

297
00:16:19,680 --> 00:16:22,360
Speaker 5: owned by the tribe. A lot of the adults there

298
00:16:22,360 --> 00:16:25,760
Speaker 5: were unemployed and struggling with addiction, and from the time

299
00:16:25,840 --> 00:16:28,520
Speaker 5: she was eight or nine, Rena was responsible for getting

300
00:16:28,560 --> 00:16:30,960
Speaker 5: her little sister fed and dressed in the morning and

301
00:16:31,000 --> 00:16:34,320
Speaker 5: then walking her to school. At the time, though, Rena

302
00:16:34,360 --> 00:16:36,920
Speaker 5: says she and her siblings were just used to it all.

303
00:16:37,080 --> 00:16:39,200
Speaker 3: There's a lot of stuff as a child. I don't

304
00:16:39,240 --> 00:16:41,560
Speaker 3: really remember a lot of stuff that I've blocked out.

305
00:16:42,040 --> 00:16:44,160
Speaker 1: There were a lot of kids in the projects like her,

306
00:16:44,360 --> 00:16:48,320
Speaker 1: with mixed parents, mostly Mexican fathers and Native American mothers,

307
00:16:48,880 --> 00:16:52,120
Speaker 1: but she still felt alienated at school. Most of the

308
00:16:52,240 --> 00:16:54,520
Speaker 1: kids were one hundred percent Mexican.

309
00:16:54,160 --> 00:16:59,520
Speaker 3: American around here, It's like his Phoenix almost the way

310
00:16:59,520 --> 00:17:02,760
Speaker 3: that week, you know, they were almost like the white people,

311
00:17:02,920 --> 00:17:05,240
Speaker 3: like they dis acted like better than everybody else.

312
00:17:05,840 --> 00:17:08,920
Speaker 1: When Rena got into arguments with Mexican kids, she says,

313
00:17:09,200 --> 00:17:11,680
Speaker 1: just being viewed as Native felt like an insult.

314
00:17:12,000 --> 00:17:14,439
Speaker 3: I felt a lot of anger towards those people, and

315
00:17:14,480 --> 00:17:19,200
Speaker 3: I was ashamed sometimes to be like some people would

316
00:17:19,200 --> 00:17:21,440
Speaker 3: be like, oh, you don't look Native American, you look Mexican.

317
00:17:21,560 --> 00:17:23,800
Speaker 3: But sometimes that made me happy, like knowing that I

318
00:17:23,800 --> 00:17:26,040
Speaker 3: didn't look like a Native, because I knew how people

319
00:17:26,080 --> 00:17:26,920
Speaker 3: looked at Natives.

320
00:17:27,240 --> 00:17:30,760
Speaker 5: Things were tough at home too. Her mom wasn't around much,

321
00:17:30,880 --> 00:17:32,280
Speaker 5: and her dad was abusive.

322
00:17:32,480 --> 00:17:35,040
Speaker 3: My mom had already left the home, so he would

323
00:17:35,080 --> 00:17:37,920
Speaker 3: fight me, like physically fight me, and I fought back

324
00:17:37,920 --> 00:17:39,880
Speaker 3: because I didn't know any other way to survive.

325
00:17:40,600 --> 00:17:43,560
Speaker 1: The last straw came when Rena was fourteen, and her

326
00:17:43,600 --> 00:17:47,240
Speaker 1: father hit her so hard she went deaf in one ear.

327
00:17:47,960 --> 00:17:50,520
Speaker 1: After that, Rena's little brother called their aunt to come

328
00:17:50,560 --> 00:17:51,080
Speaker 1: pick them.

329
00:17:51,040 --> 00:17:53,760
Speaker 3: Up, and so she came and told my dad, if

330
00:17:53,800 --> 00:17:55,040
Speaker 3: you don't let me take her. I'm going to call

331
00:17:55,080 --> 00:17:55,720
Speaker 3: the cops.

332
00:17:56,520 --> 00:17:59,480
Speaker 1: She has, in fact, forgiven both of her parents, and

333
00:17:59,560 --> 00:18:00,360
Speaker 1: she's up.

334
00:18:00,280 --> 00:18:03,359
Speaker 5: Her life absolutely. Her mom even comes to stay with

335
00:18:03,400 --> 00:18:06,040
Speaker 5: her at her house sometimes. Now, she was really able

336
00:18:06,080 --> 00:18:08,200
Speaker 5: to turn the corner. She got through college, she's got

337
00:18:08,200 --> 00:18:10,320
Speaker 5: a pretty good job now working as an auditor at

338
00:18:10,320 --> 00:18:12,720
Speaker 5: the tribe's casino, and she's got kids of her own.

339
00:18:13,080 --> 00:18:15,479
Speaker 3: You know, I was fortunate enough to be pulled out

340
00:18:15,520 --> 00:18:18,879
Speaker 3: of my dad's home and see a different life. I

341
00:18:18,920 --> 00:18:20,840
Speaker 3: think a lot of people. I just feel like some

342
00:18:20,880 --> 00:18:22,479
Speaker 3: people don't ever see a way out of it.

343
00:18:28,600 --> 00:18:28,800
Speaker 5: Now.

344
00:18:28,960 --> 00:18:33,240
Speaker 1: Those tensions between her Mexican and her Native American communities

345
00:18:33,560 --> 00:18:37,120
Speaker 1: were very real for Rena. But one person who says

346
00:18:37,119 --> 00:18:39,919
Speaker 1: he's trying to remind them of what these two communities

347
00:18:39,920 --> 00:18:43,800
Speaker 1: have in common is Matt Tumaskin. He's the legislative laison

348
00:18:43,880 --> 00:18:46,480
Speaker 1: for the tribal government that we heard from earlier.

349
00:18:46,280 --> 00:18:48,680
Speaker 5: And he's also a teacher at the tribal school. A

350
00:18:48,720 --> 00:18:50,960
Speaker 5: couple of years ago, Matt was talking to his Native

351
00:18:50,960 --> 00:18:53,040
Speaker 5: students and he wanted to see what they knew about

352
00:18:53,040 --> 00:18:56,040
Speaker 5: Mexican culture. Justa heads up, you're about to hear some

353
00:18:56,160 --> 00:18:57,840
Speaker 5: offensive language.

354
00:18:57,359 --> 00:18:59,280
Speaker 10: When I say, Mexican, what do you think? So all

355
00:18:59,359 --> 00:19:02,919
Speaker 10: of those those negative annotations came up, went back, you

356
00:19:02,960 --> 00:19:06,199
Speaker 10: know this that whatever, solo's whatever. You know, there's just

357
00:19:06,200 --> 00:19:08,919
Speaker 10: those stereotypes. But I started educating and I say, you

358
00:19:08,920 --> 00:19:12,320
Speaker 10: know what, they're indigenous, just like Eve and me. They're

359
00:19:12,320 --> 00:19:14,960
Speaker 10: from the south and we're from the north. We need

360
00:19:15,000 --> 00:19:19,239
Speaker 10: to realize that that the border was created by the

361
00:19:19,240 --> 00:19:19,840
Speaker 10: white people.

362
00:19:20,880 --> 00:19:24,600
Speaker 1: A few weeks later, Matt brought an indigenous Mexican congresswoman

363
00:19:24,640 --> 00:19:27,560
Speaker 1: to his class. At first, she spoke to the students

364
00:19:27,560 --> 00:19:32,440
Speaker 1: in Spanish while someone translated, but then she switched to Puripicha,

365
00:19:32,480 --> 00:19:36,040
Speaker 1: an indigenous language, and the interpreters sat down.

366
00:19:36,080 --> 00:19:38,600
Speaker 10: And hip couldn't interpret it. So that's what I told him,

367
00:19:38,720 --> 00:19:42,280
Speaker 10: was like, we speak English down there, they speak Spanish.

368
00:19:42,480 --> 00:19:45,160
Speaker 10: They they're not Spanish, they're put Apache.

369
00:19:45,480 --> 00:19:48,560
Speaker 1: And when you say that to the people, you know,

370
00:19:49,160 --> 00:19:51,600
Speaker 1: there is a brotherhood between us, there's a sisterhood. And

371
00:19:51,680 --> 00:19:54,000
Speaker 1: they say, yes, I believe it, or they say I

372
00:19:54,040 --> 00:19:54,720
Speaker 1: don't think so.

373
00:19:54,920 --> 00:19:56,960
Speaker 10: It's a little bit of both. They don't believe it yet,

374
00:19:57,000 --> 00:19:59,080
Speaker 10: but yet you know, when they heard her, they knew

375
00:19:59,119 --> 00:20:01,359
Speaker 10: the difference. So classroom full of students that I was

376
00:20:01,400 --> 00:20:05,800
Speaker 10: teaching government at that time. It clicked, you know that,

377
00:20:05,880 --> 00:20:07,879
Speaker 10: you know, they are indigenous.

378
00:20:07,400 --> 00:20:18,240
Speaker 12: Just like us malec Yeah, Yankasas Marlvetx, Yeah, Yankasas.

379
00:20:22,160 --> 00:20:26,840
Speaker 5: It's undeniable that Mexicans have transformed this area. The Hispanic

380
00:20:26,880 --> 00:20:31,480
Speaker 5: population in Yakoma County, which includes the reservation, has quadrupled

381
00:20:31,600 --> 00:20:34,919
Speaker 5: in the last generation, from about twenty five thousand to

382
00:20:35,080 --> 00:20:37,680
Speaker 5: well over one hundred thousand today.

383
00:20:37,680 --> 00:20:41,600
Speaker 1: And Matt says Latinos have become a convenient scapegoat for

384
00:20:41,760 --> 00:20:45,399
Speaker 1: the spread of crime and drugs. Toponish and Wapato, the

385
00:20:45,440 --> 00:20:48,760
Speaker 1: two main towns on this tribal land, have both had

386
00:20:48,840 --> 00:20:52,440
Speaker 1: trouble with addiction and gang violence as the Latino community

387
00:20:52,480 --> 00:20:55,760
Speaker 1: has grown, and a lot of Yakima people have absorbed

388
00:20:55,880 --> 00:20:58,840
Speaker 1: mainstream stereotypes about Latinos.

389
00:20:59,000 --> 00:21:02,600
Speaker 10: That's what we were told by the dominant societies. They're bad,

390
00:21:02,640 --> 00:21:07,200
Speaker 10: They're no good. So that learned hatred is still there.

391
00:21:07,800 --> 00:21:10,080
Speaker 10: So we need to come to a point where let's

392
00:21:10,119 --> 00:21:11,000
Speaker 10: break that cycle.

393
00:21:11,960 --> 00:21:15,160
Speaker 5: But even for Matt Tamaskin, it's not easy to see

394
00:21:15,160 --> 00:21:17,560
Speaker 5: the towns where he grew up looking more and more

395
00:21:17,640 --> 00:21:21,880
Speaker 5: like Mexico. In downtown. Top of it, the reservation's biggest town.

396
00:21:22,320 --> 00:21:27,679
Speaker 5: There are Mexican businesses everywhere, restaurants, bakeries, music shops, car repair.

397
00:21:27,880 --> 00:21:29,719
Speaker 10: When I'm going out to launch with my friends, is like,

398
00:21:29,920 --> 00:21:33,440
Speaker 10: we're gonna have Mexican, Mexican or Mexican. If you think

399
00:21:33,440 --> 00:21:36,680
Speaker 10: about it, you know what does Topiners have to offer?

400
00:21:36,800 --> 00:21:37,880
Speaker 10: Are there than Mexican food.

401
00:21:38,320 --> 00:21:41,280
Speaker 1: For some people, there's a feeling of a takeover on

402
00:21:41,320 --> 00:21:45,159
Speaker 1: the reservation, a second wave of Mexican and Mexican American

403
00:21:45,200 --> 00:21:48,680
Speaker 1: settlers taking the place of the white settlers who moved

404
00:21:48,680 --> 00:21:49,760
Speaker 1: in one hundred years ago.

405
00:21:50,080 --> 00:21:52,879
Speaker 5: Someone who hears a lot of that resentment bubbling up

406
00:21:53,000 --> 00:21:59,280
Speaker 5: day to day is Carla Ernandez. Carla and her sister

407
00:21:59,359 --> 00:22:02,720
Speaker 5: are manager at Western Gas, a gas station in Toponish,

408
00:22:03,119 --> 00:22:06,880
Speaker 5: and outside there are these murals of Native American dancers.

409
00:22:06,920 --> 00:22:09,679
Speaker 5: Inside it's a convenience store and a tac area where

410
00:22:09,840 --> 00:22:14,000
Speaker 5: literally everything is in Spanish. Carla is from Hajalisco and

411
00:22:14,080 --> 00:22:15,920
Speaker 5: she came to the US when she was fifteen.

412
00:22:16,119 --> 00:22:19,560
Speaker 13: It was a gift for my fifteen birthday for Kinsenera.

413
00:22:20,960 --> 00:22:22,760
Speaker 13: I always wanted to have a big party, but I

414
00:22:22,840 --> 00:22:26,600
Speaker 13: knew we couldn't afford it, and my mom asked me

415
00:22:26,600 --> 00:22:28,520
Speaker 13: if I wanted to come over and miss it with

416
00:22:28,560 --> 00:22:32,440
Speaker 13: my family, with my grandma, and I just didn't go back.

417
00:22:32,840 --> 00:22:35,960
Speaker 5: That first visit was to Arizona, but her father was

418
00:22:35,960 --> 00:22:39,000
Speaker 5: a migrant worker in Topenish, so before long she ended

419
00:22:39,080 --> 00:22:41,960
Speaker 5: up on the Yakoma Reservation, and she likes it.

420
00:22:42,160 --> 00:22:45,520
Speaker 13: You get to know everybody, You see their kids grow older.

421
00:22:45,680 --> 00:22:50,000
Speaker 13: I mean you used to feel comfortable, you used I

422
00:22:50,040 --> 00:22:53,359
Speaker 13: mean even though they casted you, sometimes it still feels

423
00:22:53,400 --> 00:22:53,840
Speaker 13: like home.

424
00:22:54,320 --> 00:22:57,439
Speaker 1: The day Carla is talking about are a subset of

425
00:22:57,440 --> 00:23:01,520
Speaker 1: her Native American customers. Regulars come in every afternoon to

426
00:23:01,560 --> 00:23:03,960
Speaker 1: buy beer and to drink in a park nearby.

427
00:23:04,280 --> 00:23:06,119
Speaker 13: Let's say that I don't want to sell alcohol to

428
00:23:06,200 --> 00:23:09,560
Speaker 13: someone who's already intoxicated. Then the answer back to you

429
00:23:09,600 --> 00:23:11,640
Speaker 13: and said you would back go back to your country.

430
00:23:11,880 --> 00:23:15,840
Speaker 13: So that's when you feel more the resentment. If they

431
00:23:15,840 --> 00:23:19,720
Speaker 13: don't get their way in anything, then they're added to changes.

432
00:23:20,000 --> 00:23:22,840
Speaker 13: Then they start insulting you, and then they start making

433
00:23:22,840 --> 00:23:24,639
Speaker 13: it a point for you to know that you're on

434
00:23:24,760 --> 00:23:25,399
Speaker 13: their land.

435
00:23:26,400 --> 00:23:28,960
Speaker 1: How often do you get insulted and told you shouldn't

436
00:23:29,000 --> 00:23:31,760
Speaker 1: be around? Once a week, once a month.

437
00:23:32,480 --> 00:23:35,400
Speaker 13: M I would say it happens once a day.

438
00:23:36,600 --> 00:23:39,119
Speaker 1: The customers who drink and insult her are only a

439
00:23:39,320 --> 00:23:43,120
Speaker 1: tiny fraction of the tribe, but they have shaped Carla's

440
00:23:43,160 --> 00:23:46,679
Speaker 1: impression of the Yakama people, and a lot of Latinos

441
00:23:46,720 --> 00:23:50,480
Speaker 1: here hold the same stereotypes about Native Americans and alcoholism.

442
00:23:50,760 --> 00:23:53,359
Speaker 5: In the past, the tribal government has actually tried to

443
00:23:53,400 --> 00:23:57,520
Speaker 5: make the reservation dry by stopping stores from selling alcohol altogether,

444
00:23:58,080 --> 00:24:01,040
Speaker 5: but many of the stores wouldn't go along, and that's

445
00:24:01,080 --> 00:24:04,239
Speaker 5: one of the problems with the Checkerboard reservation. There's no

446
00:24:04,359 --> 00:24:07,200
Speaker 5: way for the Yakima to enforce tribal law on land

447
00:24:07,240 --> 00:24:08,640
Speaker 5: they don't own, and.

448
00:24:08,480 --> 00:24:11,679
Speaker 1: Not everybody who lives on the reservation wants to follow

449
00:24:11,720 --> 00:24:12,359
Speaker 1: tribal law.

450
00:24:13,160 --> 00:24:14,479
Speaker 13: This is a letter we got.

451
00:24:14,880 --> 00:24:17,480
Speaker 1: The latest flare up came a few months ago when

452
00:24:17,520 --> 00:24:19,719
Speaker 1: the tribes sent out a letter to all the shops

453
00:24:19,720 --> 00:24:21,280
Speaker 1: and restaurants on the reservation.

454
00:24:21,680 --> 00:24:25,919
Speaker 13: It says their Quickpick Quickpick has been identified as a

455
00:24:25,960 --> 00:24:27,560
Speaker 13: business operating with this The.

456
00:24:27,600 --> 00:24:30,960
Speaker 5: Letter says that non tribal businesses operating on Yakama Nation

457
00:24:31,160 --> 00:24:33,800
Speaker 5: lands have to pay an annual two hundred dollars fee

458
00:24:33,800 --> 00:24:37,360
Speaker 5: to the tribes, but most businesses haven't paid it so far.

459
00:24:37,920 --> 00:24:41,160
Speaker 5: Carla says people worry that paying the licensing fee means

460
00:24:41,160 --> 00:24:43,680
Speaker 5: they'll have to answer the tribal government for all kinds

461
00:24:43,680 --> 00:24:44,440
Speaker 5: of things, and.

462
00:24:44,440 --> 00:24:46,919
Speaker 13: If at any point they fail that you are not

463
00:24:47,040 --> 00:24:52,280
Speaker 13: in compliance with their regulations, then they have the right

464
00:24:52,320 --> 00:24:53,359
Speaker 13: to come and shut you down.

465
00:24:59,480 --> 00:25:02,679
Speaker 1: In the Latin community, there is talk that all of

466
00:25:02,680 --> 00:25:07,080
Speaker 1: this is some kind of retaliation against outsiders living on

467
00:25:07,119 --> 00:25:07,760
Speaker 1: the reservation.

468
00:25:08,160 --> 00:25:11,320
Speaker 13: I understand it from the perspective of a Mexican that

469
00:25:11,480 --> 00:25:14,960
Speaker 13: still feels resentment from when Mobsuma and all that. You know,

470
00:25:15,359 --> 00:25:17,800
Speaker 13: people come and in by your land, and people come

471
00:25:17,880 --> 00:25:21,320
Speaker 13: and take stuff from you, and what do you get.

472
00:25:21,720 --> 00:25:25,560
Speaker 13: They just kind of got pushed away. I mean, I

473
00:25:25,680 --> 00:25:31,199
Speaker 13: do relate to them.

474
00:25:31,240 --> 00:25:34,320
Speaker 1: But even if Mexican farm workers are the quote unquote

475
00:25:34,440 --> 00:25:38,520
Speaker 1: colonizers here, the tribe does rely on them. For example,

476
00:25:38,800 --> 00:25:41,800
Speaker 1: the tribe has been building its own farming business. Now

477
00:25:41,800 --> 00:25:44,959
Speaker 1: they've got big apple orchards and a packing house just

478
00:25:45,000 --> 00:25:46,320
Speaker 1: like the one we visited before.

479
00:25:46,480 --> 00:25:49,720
Speaker 13: Even if they don't like the Mexicans who's working the land.

480
00:25:50,040 --> 00:25:53,320
Speaker 13: You see all these signs looking for pickers during the

481
00:25:53,359 --> 00:25:57,280
Speaker 13: harvest season. You don't see the accommodation going and applying

482
00:25:57,320 --> 00:26:01,040
Speaker 13: for those shops. Even they have their own wreckage company

483
00:26:01,080 --> 00:26:04,960
Speaker 13: for fruit and the warehouse, and who's working those businesses.

484
00:26:05,119 --> 00:26:08,119
Speaker 13: Go to the casino, there is Mexicans working.

485
00:26:07,880 --> 00:26:09,960
Speaker 5: There, or go at the end of the work debt,

486
00:26:10,080 --> 00:26:12,400
Speaker 5: when everyone's done working in the field, you.

487
00:26:12,440 --> 00:26:15,639
Speaker 13: Find ninety percent of the people who're spending their money

488
00:26:15,640 --> 00:26:19,760
Speaker 13: there is still Mexicans. So it's kind of contradictory for

489
00:26:19,800 --> 00:26:22,199
Speaker 13: them to say, get out of my land. But then

490
00:26:22,240 --> 00:26:25,119
Speaker 13: they open the doors and they give you jobs and

491
00:26:25,160 --> 00:26:26,840
Speaker 13: they take your money.

492
00:26:26,920 --> 00:26:31,320
Speaker 5: So the Carla Mexicans are the engine of the reservation's economy.

493
00:26:31,640 --> 00:26:35,159
Speaker 5: But for Matt damaskin the tribal liaison, it's a different story.

494
00:26:35,400 --> 00:26:37,879
Speaker 10: There are special concessions that are set aside for the

495
00:26:38,400 --> 00:26:42,160
Speaker 10: Mexican people when it wasn't for us. The balance being

496
00:26:42,160 --> 00:26:46,320
Speaker 10: written in Spanish. When we go to events, you know,

497
00:26:46,359 --> 00:26:47,360
Speaker 10: they have interpreters.

498
00:26:47,720 --> 00:26:51,320
Speaker 5: The Yakama never got any of that. He says, instead,

499
00:26:51,600 --> 00:26:53,520
Speaker 5: there were no special concessions for us.

500
00:26:54,359 --> 00:26:57,400
Speaker 10: Our elders were beaten. Our elders. You know, you see

501
00:26:57,400 --> 00:27:00,199
Speaker 10: me today, I have long hair. You know, they were

502
00:27:00,280 --> 00:27:02,399
Speaker 10: forced to cut their hair, they were forced to speak

503
00:27:02,440 --> 00:27:06,399
Speaker 10: English basically at gunpoint. I don't hate it It's just

504
00:27:06,520 --> 00:27:09,479
Speaker 10: I see a disparity there. How do I get that

505
00:27:09,520 --> 00:27:18,200
Speaker 10: special treatment too?

506
00:27:18,720 --> 00:27:22,000
Speaker 1: Now, there are some things that you do get by

507
00:27:22,040 --> 00:27:25,400
Speaker 1: being a member of a tribe. For the Yakima and

508
00:27:25,440 --> 00:27:28,040
Speaker 1: for a lot of tribes all over the country. Those

509
00:27:28,080 --> 00:27:32,120
Speaker 1: special rights and the privileges like, for example, healthcare or

510
00:27:32,160 --> 00:27:36,200
Speaker 1: employment preferences for a tribal job, all of that depends

511
00:27:36,560 --> 00:27:38,120
Speaker 1: on this one thing.

512
00:27:38,200 --> 00:27:41,080
Speaker 3: Okay, So that's my tribal id.

513
00:27:41,400 --> 00:27:44,159
Speaker 1: This is Rena Marquez again, and she's showing us her

514
00:27:44,240 --> 00:27:46,000
Speaker 1: Yakama Nation enrollment card.

515
00:27:46,320 --> 00:27:49,320
Speaker 3: It says Confederated Tribes and bands of the yakam Nation.

516
00:27:49,640 --> 00:27:56,200
Speaker 3: It has my enrollment number, my Social Security number, birthdate, birthplace,

517
00:27:56,440 --> 00:28:00,200
Speaker 3: my degree of Yakama blood. Yeah, I'm about thirty three

518
00:28:00,200 --> 00:28:01,280
Speaker 3: percent Yakima.

519
00:28:01,320 --> 00:28:05,600
Speaker 1: Why does the blood percentage the bloodline matter? And the

520
00:28:05,640 --> 00:28:07,760
Speaker 1: fact that it's so specific.

521
00:28:08,160 --> 00:28:13,199
Speaker 3: Because to be enrolled as a Yakama you have to

522
00:28:13,240 --> 00:28:16,000
Speaker 3: be a quarter Yakima.

523
00:28:16,480 --> 00:28:20,080
Speaker 5: This is called a blood quantum. Every tribe has different

524
00:28:20,119 --> 00:28:22,879
Speaker 5: requirements for membership, and most of the time they're based

525
00:28:22,880 --> 00:28:25,520
Speaker 5: on this very thing. Who your parents are or your

526
00:28:25,520 --> 00:28:27,080
Speaker 5: grandparents and ancestors.

527
00:28:27,400 --> 00:28:29,919
Speaker 1: Can you tell me how they drew your blood?

528
00:28:29,920 --> 00:28:33,239
Speaker 3: At some point no, they take a family tree, so

529
00:28:33,320 --> 00:28:35,280
Speaker 3: I actually have them for my kids.

530
00:28:35,600 --> 00:28:37,720
Speaker 1: The way it works is that you have to prove

531
00:28:37,840 --> 00:28:40,640
Speaker 1: to the tribal government that your native lineage can in

532
00:28:40,680 --> 00:28:43,120
Speaker 1: fact be traced back to specific people.

533
00:28:43,400 --> 00:28:46,560
Speaker 3: So like my kids's dad, the guy that was here

534
00:28:46,600 --> 00:28:51,400
Speaker 3: when you guys pulled up, he's twenty four percent and

535
00:28:51,440 --> 00:28:54,000
Speaker 3: I was thirty three percent. So when we had our

536
00:28:54,120 --> 00:28:57,120
Speaker 3: kids together, they were twenty seven percent.

537
00:28:57,360 --> 00:29:00,520
Speaker 5: Just enough to be in the tribe. Those area's two

538
00:29:00,560 --> 00:29:05,520
Speaker 5: older children, they're both boys, but her daughters, Malika and Ariela,

539
00:29:05,640 --> 00:29:10,280
Speaker 5: their father is Latino, so Rena says they're seventeen percent Yakima,

540
00:29:10,560 --> 00:29:13,240
Speaker 5: not quite the quarter needed to be enrolled.

541
00:29:13,560 --> 00:29:16,480
Speaker 1: And all of those numbers go out the window when

542
00:29:16,560 --> 00:29:18,520
Speaker 1: it comes to actual relationships.

543
00:29:19,000 --> 00:29:20,960
Speaker 10: You can't pick and choose who you love and who

544
00:29:21,000 --> 00:29:21,640
Speaker 10: you don't love.

545
00:29:21,880 --> 00:29:25,400
Speaker 5: That's Matt Tamaskin again, the government liaison for the Accamanation.

546
00:29:25,800 --> 00:29:29,320
Speaker 10: So if my relative, my sister, my brother, my cousin,

547
00:29:29,400 --> 00:29:31,640
Speaker 10: my niece, my nephew, they fall in love, you know,

548
00:29:33,120 --> 00:29:33,920
Speaker 10: I can't tell them.

549
00:29:33,920 --> 00:29:34,200
Speaker 3: Now.

550
00:29:34,760 --> 00:29:36,960
Speaker 1: If people live in the same towns and go to

551
00:29:37,000 --> 00:29:40,000
Speaker 1: the same schools, it seems inevitable that some of them

552
00:29:40,040 --> 00:29:43,120
Speaker 1: will end up starting families together, like Rena and her

553
00:29:43,160 --> 00:29:46,640
Speaker 1: ex husband or like her own parents. Now most of

554
00:29:46,720 --> 00:29:49,120
Speaker 1: us would see that as a good thing. You get

555
00:29:49,120 --> 00:29:52,560
Speaker 1: to love who you love, right, But you could also

556
00:29:52,640 --> 00:29:56,440
Speaker 1: see these love stories as a kind of existential threat

557
00:29:56,560 --> 00:29:59,800
Speaker 1: to the tribe. Matt to Maskin says, sure, love happens,

558
00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:01,400
Speaker 1: it's a wonderful thing, but.

559
00:30:01,640 --> 00:30:05,920
Speaker 10: It's killing us, killing us. You know, I have nieces

560
00:30:05,920 --> 00:30:08,320
Speaker 10: and nephews that you know their dad is from Mexico,

561
00:30:09,000 --> 00:30:11,200
Speaker 10: and I love them, I love them to death. But

562
00:30:11,280 --> 00:30:13,880
Speaker 10: yet what happens is their blood is diluted.

563
00:30:14,360 --> 00:30:17,400
Speaker 5: Besides, it can be hard to figure out a family tree.

564
00:30:17,760 --> 00:30:20,920
Speaker 5: Matt has one friend who spent forty nine years just

565
00:30:21,000 --> 00:30:22,479
Speaker 5: trying to get her daughter enrolled.

566
00:30:22,640 --> 00:30:24,880
Speaker 10: The Indians are the only race that have to prove

567
00:30:24,960 --> 00:30:29,320
Speaker 10: they're Indians. You know, you can say you're Mexican, Your Mexican,

568
00:30:29,560 --> 00:30:32,080
Speaker 10: that's it. Boom, there's a magic wand. But yet with us,

569
00:30:32,440 --> 00:30:34,360
Speaker 10: we have to produce an enrollment card.

570
00:30:34,920 --> 00:30:37,880
Speaker 5: A lot of people face pressure to marry within their culture,

571
00:30:38,080 --> 00:30:40,880
Speaker 5: but Matt says, for the Yakima, it's different than it

572
00:30:40,920 --> 00:30:44,480
Speaker 5: is for say Mormons or Cuban Americans. Keeping tabs on

573
00:30:44,560 --> 00:30:47,280
Speaker 5: enrollment is part of what makes the Yakama Nation a

574
00:30:47,400 --> 00:30:50,160
Speaker 5: tribe in the first place. That's how they can figure

575
00:30:50,160 --> 00:30:53,040
Speaker 5: out who's eligible to vote in tribal elections or to

576
00:30:53,160 --> 00:30:56,440
Speaker 5: visit sacred landmarks that aren't open to outsiders. It's how

577
00:30:56,440 --> 00:30:58,440
Speaker 5: they figure out who can inherit land to.

578
00:30:58,440 --> 00:31:01,800
Speaker 1: A lot of elders within the tribe. Is the best

579
00:31:01,840 --> 00:31:05,560
Speaker 1: way to preserve Yakima culture, but even that has its

580
00:31:05,560 --> 00:31:09,840
Speaker 1: obstacles for starters. There are only eleven thousand tribal members,

581
00:31:09,880 --> 00:31:11,080
Speaker 1: and a lot of them are related.

582
00:31:11,400 --> 00:31:14,120
Speaker 10: When when I was growing up, my dad was a

583
00:31:14,160 --> 00:31:16,680
Speaker 10: tribal leader. So with my dad, you know, we would

584
00:31:16,720 --> 00:31:18,520
Speaker 10: go places. You know, we'd go to how I was

585
00:31:18,560 --> 00:31:20,720
Speaker 10: here and there, you know, just because he wanted to

586
00:31:20,760 --> 00:31:23,720
Speaker 10: visit to people there. I would come up with, Hey,

587
00:31:23,760 --> 00:31:25,880
Speaker 10: this is my new girlfriend. He goes, oh, hey, who's

588
00:31:25,920 --> 00:31:26,480
Speaker 10: your parents?

589
00:31:26,920 --> 00:31:27,080
Speaker 14: Oh?

590
00:31:27,120 --> 00:31:28,840
Speaker 10: My parents? You know, he's talking to this to this

591
00:31:28,920 --> 00:31:31,120
Speaker 10: girl because oh, my parents are so so it's like, oh,

592
00:31:31,120 --> 00:31:36,160
Speaker 10: you're my niece. So that's what we're stuck with is,

593
00:31:36,200 --> 00:31:38,760
Speaker 10: you know, either we're making babies with their own.

594
00:31:38,600 --> 00:31:43,080
Speaker 1: Cousins, or or they're making babies with non tribal members

595
00:31:43,280 --> 00:31:46,560
Speaker 1: who aren't Yakim up and that puts the tribe's very

596
00:31:46,640 --> 00:32:03,560
Speaker 1: existence in jeopardy. Latino, USA, we dive deeper into blood quantum.

597
00:32:03,760 --> 00:32:05,480
Speaker 8: I know they do refer to people who are not

598
00:32:05,520 --> 00:32:09,320
Speaker 8: full blood, ads breeds or half breeds as if we

599
00:32:09,400 --> 00:32:11,720
Speaker 8: were like you know, dogs or horses or some sort

600
00:32:11,760 --> 00:32:12,160
Speaker 8: of stock.

601
00:32:12,360 --> 00:32:14,920
Speaker 1: And we hear what teenagers on the reservation have to

602
00:32:14,960 --> 00:32:26,080
Speaker 1: say about all this notes. Welcome back to Latino, USA.

603
00:32:26,280 --> 00:32:28,000
Speaker 1: I'm Maria Ino Jossam.

604
00:32:27,680 --> 00:32:29,520
Speaker 5: And I'm rowing more garrity. Now.

605
00:32:29,520 --> 00:32:32,200
Speaker 1: When we left off, we were talking about something called

606
00:32:32,360 --> 00:32:37,440
Speaker 1: blood quantum. How for many Native Americans, the exact amount

607
00:32:37,520 --> 00:32:40,640
Speaker 1: of tribal blood that you have decides if you're in

608
00:32:41,320 --> 00:32:44,040
Speaker 1: or if you're out, if you're part of a tribe

609
00:32:44,440 --> 00:32:45,040
Speaker 1: or if you're not.

610
00:32:45,520 --> 00:32:47,840
Speaker 5: And to learn more about blood quantum, we met with

611
00:32:47,920 --> 00:32:48,360
Speaker 5: this guy.

612
00:32:48,480 --> 00:32:51,440
Speaker 8: I'm Grayson Squaawks, thirty three years old. I grew up

613
00:32:51,480 --> 00:32:52,560
Speaker 8: in top Nish, Washington.

614
00:32:52,800 --> 00:32:55,720
Speaker 1: Grayson is an enrolled member of the Yakama Nation and

615
00:32:55,840 --> 00:32:58,160
Speaker 1: he has a different idea of the direction the tribe

616
00:32:58,160 --> 00:32:59,240
Speaker 1: should go in the future.

617
00:33:00,120 --> 00:33:03,600
Speaker 5: Says, the tribes themselves always intermarried at least a little bit.

618
00:33:03,840 --> 00:33:08,840
Speaker 8: You know, I have myself Cowlitz Nez Perce and Caulville.

619
00:33:09,280 --> 00:33:12,400
Speaker 5: So let's say Grayson were to marry a Callville woman.

620
00:33:12,600 --> 00:33:15,520
Speaker 8: My son would then be, you know, part Caulville and

621
00:33:15,560 --> 00:33:18,840
Speaker 8: part Yakima, and he could potentially not be enrolled on either.

622
00:33:19,400 --> 00:33:22,400
Speaker 5: In the past, he says, claiming your tribal identity wasn't

623
00:33:22,440 --> 00:33:25,080
Speaker 5: so rigid. It was more about who you lived with,

624
00:33:25,280 --> 00:33:26,800
Speaker 5: what you did, what you believed in.

625
00:33:26,960 --> 00:33:30,240
Speaker 1: But in the nineteen thirties, the federal government began forcing

626
00:33:30,320 --> 00:33:34,600
Speaker 1: tribes to use blood quantum, and so legally speaking, being

627
00:33:34,680 --> 00:33:39,280
Speaker 1: recognized as Native American would hinge on proving exactly where

628
00:33:39,360 --> 00:33:41,360
Speaker 1: your Indian blood came from.

629
00:33:41,480 --> 00:33:44,840
Speaker 5: These days, there's almost a generational split within the Akama

630
00:33:44,960 --> 00:33:47,840
Speaker 5: nation about the best way to deal with this. Today,

631
00:33:47,920 --> 00:33:51,400
Speaker 5: when some elders see young people marrying outside the tribe.

632
00:33:51,040 --> 00:33:56,680
Speaker 8: They're frightened of it because of their perspective of identity.

633
00:33:57,080 --> 00:33:59,600
Speaker 8: I think comes down to the blood quantum.

634
00:33:59,640 --> 00:34:01,280
Speaker 5: But there are a lot of younger people in the

635
00:34:01,320 --> 00:34:04,120
Speaker 5: tribe like Grayson. Mixed couples are a sign that people

636
00:34:04,160 --> 00:34:04,920
Speaker 5: are getting along.

637
00:34:05,480 --> 00:34:09,040
Speaker 8: To me, I think blood quantum is something that should

638
00:34:09,080 --> 00:34:10,719
Speaker 8: be removed.

639
00:34:10,960 --> 00:34:13,960
Speaker 1: He says. The tribe's identity should be its own choice.

640
00:34:14,040 --> 00:34:18,280
Speaker 1: And it could start something more like a citizenship program.

641
00:34:17,680 --> 00:34:21,920
Speaker 8: Basically, you know, mimicking that of the American government, saying like,

642
00:34:21,960 --> 00:34:23,839
Speaker 8: you know, if you're eighteen years of age, you can

643
00:34:23,880 --> 00:34:28,279
Speaker 8: stand before counsel and say I have contributed culturally to

644
00:34:28,360 --> 00:34:32,720
Speaker 8: the community by ABC and dee whatever.

645
00:34:32,960 --> 00:34:36,240
Speaker 5: But he knows that's a hard conversation to have, he says,

646
00:34:36,360 --> 00:34:39,040
Speaker 5: partly because some people try to uphold the kind of

647
00:34:39,120 --> 00:34:41,120
Speaker 5: racial hierarchy within the tribe.

648
00:34:41,320 --> 00:34:45,240
Speaker 1: Grayson says social status often goes along with your degree

649
00:34:45,480 --> 00:34:49,040
Speaker 1: of Yakima blood. So for example, his father was full

650
00:34:49,120 --> 00:34:52,680
Speaker 1: Yakima what people call four forts, but his mom is

651
00:34:52,719 --> 00:34:56,600
Speaker 1: mixed with white and Yakima blood and she isn't enrolled.

652
00:34:57,000 --> 00:35:00,960
Speaker 8: So clearly I am not full Yakima. But and there

653
00:35:01,000 --> 00:35:05,080
Speaker 8: are like derogatory terms associated with that, Like I mean,

654
00:35:05,600 --> 00:35:09,120
Speaker 8: I haven't necessarily had people call it to my face,

655
00:35:09,160 --> 00:35:12,080
Speaker 8: but I know they do refer to people who are

656
00:35:12,120 --> 00:35:16,000
Speaker 8: not full blood, ads breeds or half breeds as if

657
00:35:16,000 --> 00:35:18,200
Speaker 8: we were like you know, dogs or horses or some

658
00:35:18,239 --> 00:35:21,799
Speaker 8: sort of stock animal like where you can state your lineage.

659
00:35:22,040 --> 00:35:24,600
Speaker 5: Grayson says, holding on to blood quantum is bound to

660
00:35:24,680 --> 00:35:29,040
Speaker 5: backfire over time. After all, it only takes three generations

661
00:35:29,080 --> 00:35:31,440
Speaker 5: to go from one hundred percent Yakama to kids that

662
00:35:31,520 --> 00:35:34,200
Speaker 5: can't be part of the tribe at all. And that's

663
00:35:34,200 --> 00:35:37,880
Speaker 5: what's actually happening in Grayson's own family. He married a

664
00:35:37,880 --> 00:35:40,840
Speaker 5: white woman, and his one year old son, Remy, is

665
00:35:40,920 --> 00:35:43,560
Speaker 5: only one fourth Yakima.

666
00:35:42,960 --> 00:35:46,320
Speaker 8: And so if he makes the decision to not marry

667
00:35:46,800 --> 00:35:50,959
Speaker 8: a Yakima woman, specifically a Yakima woman, their children will

668
00:35:50,960 --> 00:35:54,680
Speaker 8: no longer federally be recognized as a Native American, even

669
00:35:54,719 --> 00:35:58,160
Speaker 8: though he may be very immersed in the culture and

670
00:35:58,239 --> 00:36:02,120
Speaker 8: consider himself a traditionalist, but federally he wouldn't be considered

671
00:36:02,120 --> 00:36:06,440
Speaker 8: a Native American. And that's something that my wife and

672
00:36:06,480 --> 00:36:09,000
Speaker 8: I actually have a very difficult time with. It's something

673
00:36:09,000 --> 00:36:12,560
Speaker 8: that is just I kind of have to accept.

674
00:36:18,920 --> 00:36:22,240
Speaker 5: What the federal government considers Native American. Isn't the last word.

675
00:36:22,600 --> 00:36:25,239
Speaker 5: Life on the reservation is changing pretty quickly, and in

676
00:36:25,280 --> 00:36:28,840
Speaker 5: a way everyone is engaged in a kind of soul searching. Yeah,

677
00:36:29,040 --> 00:36:31,360
Speaker 5: so let me ask you this, then, is there a

678
00:36:32,080 --> 00:36:35,880
Speaker 5: Mexican element to Yakima identity today if we're honest about

679
00:36:36,040 --> 00:36:38,120
Speaker 5: the place and time.

680
00:36:38,239 --> 00:36:43,560
Speaker 8: Yes, absolutely, I mean even older generations will halfheartedly like

681
00:36:43,680 --> 00:36:46,960
Speaker 8: tribal cultural gatherings, there will be you know, discussions, you know,

682
00:36:47,200 --> 00:36:51,080
Speaker 8: people joking about eating menudo at a traditional meal.

683
00:36:53,040 --> 00:36:56,040
Speaker 5: And Grayson says, you do sometimes see Mexican food at

684
00:36:56,080 --> 00:36:59,560
Speaker 5: family gatherings along with traditional native food like salmon and

685
00:36:59,600 --> 00:37:00,600
Speaker 5: forage berries.

686
00:37:00,719 --> 00:37:04,280
Speaker 1: Even the boundaries between people themselves can be pretty fluid.

687
00:37:04,800 --> 00:37:08,879
Speaker 1: Sometimes people don't know who's what, who's Mexican, who's Yakima,

688
00:37:09,000 --> 00:37:12,920
Speaker 1: who's both? And are the differences more important than what

689
00:37:12,960 --> 00:37:13,840
Speaker 1: they have in common?

690
00:37:14,000 --> 00:37:17,359
Speaker 4: If we look back far enough and not really that far,

691
00:37:19,040 --> 00:37:22,520
Speaker 4: my indigenous roots are very similar to the indigenous roots

692
00:37:22,520 --> 00:37:23,399
Speaker 4: of the Yakama nation.

693
00:37:24,040 --> 00:37:27,400
Speaker 1: That's Yasenya Navarete Hunter, the Mexican American woman who we

694
00:37:27,440 --> 00:37:29,640
Speaker 1: heard from earlier who talked about getting up early to

695
00:37:29,680 --> 00:37:32,080
Speaker 1: do the farm work with her family. Now, what was

696
00:37:32,160 --> 00:37:35,400
Speaker 1: unusual about meeting Yasenya was that she was clearly proud

697
00:37:35,480 --> 00:37:38,840
Speaker 1: of her Latina roots, but she was also really proud

698
00:37:38,920 --> 00:37:42,920
Speaker 1: of her Mexican indigenous roots. She listens to Herochro music.

699
00:37:43,160 --> 00:37:46,160
Speaker 1: She was wearing her Camisa bordada, which is an indigenous

700
00:37:46,160 --> 00:37:49,120
Speaker 1: shirt from Mexico. But she says, when it comes to

701
00:37:49,120 --> 00:37:51,800
Speaker 1: the Yakama people and the Latinos in the valley.

702
00:37:52,200 --> 00:37:56,120
Speaker 4: We see ourselves completely different, but we're much more alike

703
00:37:56,440 --> 00:37:58,759
Speaker 4: in the desires that we have for our families and

704
00:37:58,840 --> 00:38:02,360
Speaker 4: our mothers being so and our grandmother's being key to

705
00:38:02,920 --> 00:38:07,759
Speaker 4: maintaining culture and ritual and tradition, and in needing to

706
00:38:07,800 --> 00:38:18,400
Speaker 4: be grounded to the earth and to our language.

707
00:38:19,080 --> 00:38:21,440
Speaker 1: What's going to happen on this reservation in the future

708
00:38:21,920 --> 00:38:25,000
Speaker 1: all depends on the young people, and so we wanted

709
00:38:25,040 --> 00:38:27,680
Speaker 1: to find out how the next generation of Yakama and

710
00:38:27,760 --> 00:38:31,600
Speaker 1: Latino kids is grappling with these very same questions of identity.

711
00:38:32,080 --> 00:38:34,360
Speaker 1: We went to a high school in a town called

712
00:38:34,560 --> 00:38:38,239
Speaker 1: White swan, Oh.

713
00:38:39,480 --> 00:38:43,240
Speaker 5: It's pretty remote and it's also the last majority Native

714
00:38:43,280 --> 00:38:46,480
Speaker 5: town on the reservation. We stop buy a classroom where

715
00:38:46,600 --> 00:38:50,120
Speaker 5: kids are learning the Yakama language ichieskin.

716
00:38:49,880 --> 00:38:57,240
Speaker 13: Pa qua.

717
00:38:56,480 --> 00:39:00,960
Speaker 5: Pa alkus. That word you just heard by It means

718
00:39:01,120 --> 00:39:02,839
Speaker 5: forkhuck o us.

719
00:39:03,520 --> 00:39:05,879
Speaker 15: They are muscles that they're not used to using when

720
00:39:05,880 --> 00:39:08,840
Speaker 15: they're speaking English, and so I purposely pick some of

721
00:39:08,840 --> 00:39:12,160
Speaker 15: those hard words because if they get those, everything else

722
00:39:12,239 --> 00:39:12,760
Speaker 15: is easy.

723
00:39:12,920 --> 00:39:15,399
Speaker 1: This language class is being taught by an ex cop

724
00:39:15,520 --> 00:39:19,440
Speaker 1: named Hollyanna Littbull. She's one of about fifty people who

725
00:39:19,480 --> 00:39:22,799
Speaker 1: are truly fluent in the language of Ichiskin. And the

726
00:39:22,880 --> 00:39:25,560
Speaker 1: reason for that is simple. Most everyone else in the

727
00:39:25,600 --> 00:39:27,920
Speaker 1: tribe never had the opportunity to learn it.

728
00:39:28,000 --> 00:39:30,719
Speaker 5: Starting in the late eighteen hundreds, the federal government would

729
00:39:30,760 --> 00:39:34,520
Speaker 5: actually send Native American children to boarding schools by force

730
00:39:34,680 --> 00:39:37,279
Speaker 5: and an effort to get them to assimilate. Right through

731
00:39:37,280 --> 00:39:40,400
Speaker 5: the nineteen seventies, kids were taken out of their homes

732
00:39:40,440 --> 00:39:43,239
Speaker 5: and made to wear Western clothes and speak English.

733
00:39:43,400 --> 00:39:47,480
Speaker 15: I'm first generation not boarding school raised. And one of

734
00:39:47,520 --> 00:39:48,799
Speaker 15: the stories I told the.

735
00:39:48,880 --> 00:39:51,520
Speaker 5: Schulitla that means students was.

736
00:39:51,560 --> 00:39:54,040
Speaker 15: How I grew up speaking in the language was because

737
00:39:54,040 --> 00:39:57,399
Speaker 15: my uncle, who lived down the road, told me these

738
00:39:57,440 --> 00:40:00,359
Speaker 15: are very strict rules. You don't break these rules. Only

739
00:40:00,400 --> 00:40:02,480
Speaker 15: allowed to speak in the house when it's just me,

740
00:40:02,640 --> 00:40:03,400
Speaker 15: you and your auntie.

741
00:40:03,640 --> 00:40:07,360
Speaker 1: The consequences could be severe. Sometimes families were broken up

742
00:40:07,400 --> 00:40:10,000
Speaker 1: when kids were heard speaking their indigenous language.

743
00:40:10,080 --> 00:40:13,359
Speaker 15: That's why some of us, some of the kids, they

744
00:40:13,360 --> 00:40:16,080
Speaker 15: don't speak the language because the elders were protecting them.

745
00:40:16,320 --> 00:40:19,400
Speaker 5: Now, she says, people are finally feeling secure enough to

746
00:40:19,440 --> 00:40:22,120
Speaker 5: reclaim their language so they can talk with their elders.

747
00:40:22,760 --> 00:40:26,160
Speaker 5: But for students like Kristin himsa her Yakama name is

748
00:40:26,239 --> 00:40:29,120
Speaker 5: a Lahat. There's another reason too.

749
00:40:29,200 --> 00:40:32,960
Speaker 11: So that me and my two cousins can have a

750
00:40:33,040 --> 00:40:37,399
Speaker 11: conversation that nobody else can hear. Like the Spanish, they

751
00:40:37,600 --> 00:40:40,600
Speaker 11: talk in their language, and sometimes it's about us and

752
00:40:40,719 --> 00:40:43,440
Speaker 11: we don't like it, like we can tell but not

753
00:40:43,520 --> 00:40:48,040
Speaker 11: what they're saying. So I'm actually happy we had those class.

754
00:40:48,440 --> 00:40:51,719
Speaker 1: Even with feelings like that, we still got a sentence

755
00:40:51,760 --> 00:40:54,560
Speaker 1: from a few people that this next generation is actually

756
00:40:54,640 --> 00:40:55,800
Speaker 1: getting along just fine.

757
00:40:55,920 --> 00:40:59,040
Speaker 16: One of my favorite things around here is Indian tacos.

758
00:40:59,239 --> 00:41:03,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the principal. Joey Castilleja. He introduced us to

759
00:41:03,239 --> 00:41:05,800
Speaker 1: a few of his tenth grade Latino students.

760
00:41:05,880 --> 00:41:08,640
Speaker 5: I haven't had one taco. What's in India?

761
00:41:08,680 --> 00:41:10,000
Speaker 16: Taco guys, It's.

762
00:41:09,800 --> 00:41:13,640
Speaker 5: Like, literally it's so big.

763
00:41:14,680 --> 00:41:17,919
Speaker 14: It's like, uh well yeah, like they're saying their vision

764
00:41:17,960 --> 00:41:20,680
Speaker 14: of the sofa, but it's fried bread with them, you know,

765
00:41:20,800 --> 00:41:23,920
Speaker 14: meet on top and basically taco salad. I guess.

766
00:41:25,520 --> 00:41:28,440
Speaker 1: That last voice you heard is of Oscar Swatis. He

767
00:41:28,480 --> 00:41:30,400
Speaker 1: and his friend spoke to us about what it's like

768
00:41:30,440 --> 00:41:33,319
Speaker 1: to grow up Latino in the heart of the Yakama nation.

769
00:41:33,600 --> 00:41:37,520
Speaker 5: Over the holidays, Oscar's family swaps food with Native American friends.

770
00:41:37,840 --> 00:41:40,200
Speaker 14: My dad, you know, my mom will be making tamals

771
00:41:40,280 --> 00:41:42,640
Speaker 14: and he gets like twelve reps him up and he's

772
00:41:42,680 --> 00:41:49,520
Speaker 14: like Frank, Frank India. I mean my dad. I know

773
00:41:49,520 --> 00:41:51,200
Speaker 14: it's a little bit of English, but whenever they see

774
00:41:51,239 --> 00:41:53,759
Speaker 14: each other, you know they'll spend like thirty minutes it's

775
00:41:53,800 --> 00:41:55,399
Speaker 14: trying to try to talk.

776
00:41:55,680 --> 00:41:59,400
Speaker 5: But for Alejandro Dame, what brought them all together was sports,

777
00:41:59,760 --> 00:42:02,360
Speaker 5: and her case, the middle school volleyball.

778
00:42:01,920 --> 00:42:04,080
Speaker 17: Team, because in sports you have to bond, You have

779
00:42:04,160 --> 00:42:08,000
Speaker 17: to somehow tolerate each other, and you forget why you

780
00:42:08,040 --> 00:42:10,160
Speaker 17: don't like each other. You try to find a reason,

781
00:42:10,200 --> 00:42:12,640
Speaker 17: but there's not really a reason why you guys weren't

782
00:42:12,680 --> 00:42:13,720
Speaker 17: bonding all those years.

783
00:42:14,000 --> 00:42:17,719
Speaker 5: Principal Joey Castieha told us about a special moment at

784
00:42:17,840 --> 00:42:19,680
Speaker 5: last year's homecoming dance.

785
00:42:19,840 --> 00:42:22,839
Speaker 16: And the homecoming dance started up just like every other

786
00:42:22,880 --> 00:42:27,000
Speaker 16: homecoming dance in America, and I remember about halfway through

787
00:42:27,800 --> 00:42:31,640
Speaker 16: there was a round dance, a Native American round dance.

788
00:42:33,080 --> 00:42:36,000
Speaker 5: The dance. Round dances are a kind of traditional song

789
00:42:36,200 --> 00:42:39,719
Speaker 5: usually played at family gatherings. You dance in a big circle.

790
00:42:39,480 --> 00:42:42,359
Speaker 17: And you go around for the entire song, and as

791
00:42:42,400 --> 00:42:44,200
Speaker 17: you're going, you're shaking everybody's hand.

792
00:42:44,600 --> 00:42:45,600
Speaker 5: I about teared up.

793
00:42:45,719 --> 00:42:47,400
Speaker 16: I don't know if you guys saw that. I choked

794
00:42:47,480 --> 00:42:53,759
Speaker 16: up because everybody did the round dance and not a

795
00:42:53,800 --> 00:42:57,320
Speaker 16: single adult had anything to do with that.

796
00:42:57,320 --> 00:43:00,680
Speaker 1: That round dance was the talk of the school for days.

797
00:43:00,960 --> 00:43:03,919
Speaker 1: The group of Latino students we met with also told

798
00:43:03,960 --> 00:43:07,600
Speaker 1: us about that other part of high school culture dating.

799
00:43:08,040 --> 00:43:10,959
Speaker 9: I personally like the American girls more.

800
00:43:12,600 --> 00:43:13,680
Speaker 5: It's just a personal thing.

801
00:43:15,040 --> 00:43:21,360
Speaker 1: But why, why why? I don't know, there's just something,

802
00:43:21,400 --> 00:43:23,880
Speaker 1: I mean, there must be an intrigued what.

803
00:43:24,239 --> 00:43:28,200
Speaker 9: They're really Sometimes they're really strong, they're really they've been

804
00:43:28,200 --> 00:43:28,680
Speaker 9: through law.

805
00:43:29,080 --> 00:43:32,440
Speaker 1: That's Danny Carrillo. He and the other Mexican teenage boys

806
00:43:32,440 --> 00:43:35,680
Speaker 1: say they look up to their Native American classmates because

807
00:43:35,680 --> 00:43:38,080
Speaker 1: they've had to rely on themselves a lot growing up,

808
00:43:38,520 --> 00:43:41,920
Speaker 1: mainly because Native families have had to endure so much.

809
00:43:42,280 --> 00:43:44,200
Speaker 14: And it's not like Hispanics.

810
00:43:44,280 --> 00:43:45,359
Speaker 5: You know, we're prout here.

811
00:43:45,440 --> 00:43:47,480
Speaker 14: Our parents tell us what they've been through, and the

812
00:43:48,680 --> 00:43:51,080
Speaker 14: tell us, you know who we came here for for.

813
00:43:51,200 --> 00:43:54,399
Speaker 14: You guys are kids, don't mess up.

814
00:43:54,800 --> 00:43:57,400
Speaker 9: There's a girl that Oscar's going Hong Kong with She

815
00:43:57,480 --> 00:44:00,279
Speaker 9: has one of the best personalities that I've seen ever.

816
00:44:01,000 --> 00:44:01,760
Speaker 9: And she's funny.

817
00:44:02,080 --> 00:44:03,000
Speaker 18: She has.

818
00:44:04,640 --> 00:44:10,120
Speaker 9: Beautiful, very very beautiful, and she just thinks differently than me,

819
00:44:11,640 --> 00:44:13,239
Speaker 9: and she thinks differently than all of us.

820
00:44:14,120 --> 00:44:18,279
Speaker 5: All these kids are genuinely attached to their town, White Swan.

821
00:44:18,400 --> 00:44:21,239
Speaker 14: This is my home. You know, I believe I'm Mexican first,

822
00:44:21,239 --> 00:44:23,239
Speaker 14: American second, but this is my first home.

823
00:44:23,520 --> 00:44:26,880
Speaker 1: For Oscar, even though he's Mexican. A lot of that

824
00:44:26,920 --> 00:44:29,680
Speaker 1: connection has to do with the fact that White Swan

825
00:44:30,239 --> 00:44:34,440
Speaker 1: is a majority Yakima town, a town on tribal.

826
00:44:34,080 --> 00:44:37,440
Speaker 14: Land, and I'm proud of that. I'm proud to know

827
00:44:37,520 --> 00:44:40,680
Speaker 14: that wake up every day on her reservation and I

828
00:44:40,760 --> 00:44:44,719
Speaker 14: meet good people, and I never want to forget that.

829
00:44:44,960 --> 00:44:46,680
Speaker 14: I mean, I know there's gonna be times where I'm

830
00:44:46,680 --> 00:44:49,960
Speaker 14: gonna leave for school, but I mean, I want to

831
00:44:49,960 --> 00:44:50,839
Speaker 14: get a house down here.

832
00:44:51,120 --> 00:44:51,960
Speaker 5: I got a rough planed out.

833
00:44:51,960 --> 00:44:53,880
Speaker 14: I want to get a house down here, and I

834
00:44:53,920 --> 00:44:55,600
Speaker 14: want to raise my family down here. I want them

835
00:44:55,640 --> 00:44:57,920
Speaker 14: to go to school here. Because I used someone to

836
00:44:57,960 --> 00:44:58,640
Speaker 14: forget this place.

837
00:45:06,400 --> 00:45:09,319
Speaker 1: Before we let the Yakima reservation, we paid a visit

838
00:45:09,360 --> 00:45:12,880
Speaker 1: with Rina Marguiz. She's the mixed Yakima and Mexican woman

839
00:45:12,960 --> 00:45:15,680
Speaker 1: that we've been speaking with throughout our program, and we

840
00:45:15,719 --> 00:45:24,000
Speaker 1: went to her grandmother's house. That dog does not scare me.

841
00:45:24,680 --> 00:45:27,360
Speaker 1: And then Rena sat down with her who was teaching

842
00:45:27,360 --> 00:45:30,600
Speaker 1: her how to embroider or bor that just the way

843
00:45:30,600 --> 00:45:36,840
Speaker 1: that my grandmother used to try to teach me. Rena

844
00:45:36,960 --> 00:45:39,919
Speaker 1: really hopes that her kids will feel proud of being

845
00:45:40,000 --> 00:45:42,160
Speaker 1: both Mexican and Yakima.

846
00:45:42,239 --> 00:45:47,480
Speaker 3: But I also want them to to have the acceptance

847
00:45:47,520 --> 00:45:52,239
Speaker 3: of one another, you know, the differences, and just not

848
00:45:52,480 --> 00:45:55,879
Speaker 3: be like what I've I've known growing up and what

849
00:45:55,920 --> 00:45:58,839
Speaker 3: I hear now. You know, I don't want to see

850
00:45:58,880 --> 00:46:00,960
Speaker 3: my kids ever been that way.

851
00:46:01,320 --> 00:46:04,200
Speaker 5: You might remember Rena's oldest son has been getting into

852
00:46:04,239 --> 00:46:07,640
Speaker 5: fights with his classmates. Mexican kids have been calling him

853
00:46:07,680 --> 00:46:11,560
Speaker 5: a dirty Indian. Still, Rena says she feels good about

854
00:46:11,560 --> 00:46:13,680
Speaker 5: the little changes. She sees it as school.

855
00:46:14,120 --> 00:46:17,080
Speaker 3: And they also do like a little power my boys'

856
00:46:17,120 --> 00:46:22,960
Speaker 3: school where they'll celebrate the yacmanation. They have drummers that

857
00:46:23,000 --> 00:46:25,759
Speaker 3: will come in and sing, and the kids can wear

858
00:46:25,800 --> 00:46:30,799
Speaker 3: their regalia and dance in a little assembly. It's pretty cool, now,

859
00:46:30,840 --> 00:46:32,360
Speaker 3: you know, I thought when I was growing up. We

860
00:46:32,400 --> 00:46:34,719
Speaker 3: would have never thought, you know, I would see this

861
00:46:34,760 --> 00:46:35,480
Speaker 3: for my kids.

862
00:46:35,600 --> 00:46:38,520
Speaker 5: For her kids, Rena hopes it won't be so tricky

863
00:46:38,600 --> 00:46:41,919
Speaker 5: to be both Mexican and Yakima, that more and more

864
00:46:42,120 --> 00:46:45,240
Speaker 5: it will be normal. Two of her children are enrolled

865
00:46:45,239 --> 00:46:48,680
Speaker 5: in the tribe. The other two don't qualify, but all

866
00:46:48,719 --> 00:46:49,799
Speaker 5: of them love to dance.

867
00:46:49,880 --> 00:46:52,279
Speaker 3: Tell me, mom, put on a power music you know.

868
00:46:52,920 --> 00:46:55,520
Speaker 3: Do you guys want to hear some music? Yeah, like

869
00:46:55,600 --> 00:46:58,640
Speaker 3: your brothers.

870
00:46:56,480 --> 00:46:56,640
Speaker 11: Yea.

871
00:46:59,200 --> 00:47:01,279
Speaker 3: What do you do when you hear that?

872
00:47:10,360 --> 00:47:13,239
Speaker 1: With close to eleven thousand members, the Yakima Nation is

873
00:47:13,280 --> 00:47:16,799
Speaker 1: among the larger tribes in the United States. But the

874
00:47:16,880 --> 00:47:20,040
Speaker 1: hard truth is if the rules about blood quantum and

875
00:47:20,160 --> 00:47:24,200
Speaker 1: membership don't change, and perhaps even if they do, the

876
00:47:24,239 --> 00:47:26,759
Speaker 1: future of this tribe is uncertain.

877
00:47:27,360 --> 00:47:31,320
Speaker 5: At the same time, something new is emerging on the reservation,

878
00:47:31,880 --> 00:47:35,480
Speaker 5: a culture and a people that's Yakima and Mexican and

879
00:47:35,560 --> 00:47:37,040
Speaker 5: American all at once.

880
00:47:38,280 --> 00:47:40,279
Speaker 3: Good Dad not lacked I better than a tha.

881
00:47:41,560 --> 00:47:45,240
Speaker 1: Rina's daughters don't have enough Yakima blood to be enrolled

882
00:47:45,280 --> 00:47:48,440
Speaker 1: in the tribe, but that doesn't stop them from feeling

883
00:47:48,480 --> 00:47:52,000
Speaker 1: something deep when they hear power on music. Even at

884
00:47:52,040 --> 00:47:56,160
Speaker 1: such a young age. Maybe one day there Abulida will

885
00:47:56,200 --> 00:48:07,880
Speaker 1: teach them how to make enchileas and bosolito. And we

886
00:48:08,080 --> 00:48:11,359
Speaker 1: have some updates for you, dear listener, because since we

887
00:48:11,440 --> 00:48:15,040
Speaker 1: aired this story in twenty fifteen, members of the Yakaman

888
00:48:15,080 --> 00:48:18,560
Speaker 1: Nation have entered into a new battle for their land.

889
00:48:19,400 --> 00:48:24,120
Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen, the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued

890
00:48:24,160 --> 00:48:29,080
Speaker 1: a preliminary permit to build a hydropower facility. The Goldendale

891
00:48:29,239 --> 00:48:33,240
Speaker 1: Energy Storage Project would generate clean energy for the Pacific

892
00:48:33,280 --> 00:48:39,760
Speaker 1: Northwest and California. The facility, however, is located at Bushpoom,

893
00:48:39,880 --> 00:48:45,200
Speaker 1: a sacred site for the Yakamanation. In twenty twenty two,

894
00:48:45,360 --> 00:48:50,120
Speaker 1: seventeen tribal leaders from across Washington State sent a letter

895
00:48:50,320 --> 00:48:54,600
Speaker 1: to the Governor Jay Insley. They asked him to reject

896
00:48:54,680 --> 00:48:58,799
Speaker 1: the building permit, saying they were quote a violation of

897
00:48:58,880 --> 00:49:05,239
Speaker 1: yakamanations in parent sovereignty and treaty reserved rights. However, the

898
00:49:05,280 --> 00:49:10,759
Speaker 1: project has continued to clear regulatory hurdles, and in February

899
00:49:10,800 --> 00:49:16,600
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission recommended moving

900
00:49:16,719 --> 00:49:31,440
Speaker 1: forward with the plans to build the facility. This episode

901
00:49:31,520 --> 00:49:34,640
Speaker 1: was produced by Rowan Moore Garrity and Marlon Bishop. It

902
00:49:34,680 --> 00:49:38,600
Speaker 1: was edited by Rita Hartman. It was mixed by Michael

903
00:49:38,640 --> 00:49:41,360
Speaker 1: Simon Johnson with engineering support from J. J.

904
00:49:41,520 --> 00:49:41,960
Speaker 11: Krubin.

905
00:49:42,520 --> 00:49:47,160
Speaker 1: The Latin USA team also includes Julia Gruso, Jessica Ellis,

906
00:49:47,239 --> 00:49:52,360
Speaker 1: Victoria Strada, Rinando Lanos Junior, Stephanie Lebau, Andrea Lopez Grusavo,

907
00:49:52,680 --> 00:49:57,000
Speaker 1: Luis Luna, Jori mar Marquez, Marta Martinez, Nor Saudi, and

908
00:49:57,120 --> 00:50:01,720
Speaker 1: Nancy Truquillo. Benilei Ramirez is our co executive producer along

909
00:50:01,760 --> 00:50:05,120
Speaker 1: with myself and I'm your host. Join us again on

910
00:50:05,160 --> 00:50:07,120
Speaker 1: our next episode. In the meantime, I'll see you on

911
00:50:07,200 --> 00:50:11,919
Speaker 1: all of our social media, especially at lest gem. Yes

912
00:50:12,440 --> 00:50:19,880
Speaker 1: Joe Latino USA is made possible in part by the

913
00:50:19,960 --> 00:50:23,719
Speaker 1: Ford Foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of

914
00:50:23,760 --> 00:50:26,560
Speaker 1: social change worldwide, the John D.

915
00:50:26,840 --> 00:50:31,920
Speaker 18: And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Heising Simons Foundation

916
00:50:32,640 --> 00:50:39,000
Speaker 18: unlocking knowledge, opportunity and possibilities. More at hsfoundation dot org.

917
00:50:42,920 --> 00:50:46,440
Speaker 5: Good Morning, YV Tech. Hold on quick announcement. We are

918
00:50:46,520 --> 00:50:49,880
Speaker 5: resetting alarmed, so I'll keep myself muted when I'm not

919
00:50:49,960 --> 00:50:52,520
Speaker 5: reading in case we get ambushed by a fire alarm.