WEBVTT - Reservations 0:00:04.320 --> 0:00:08.160 From Futuro Media and PRX. It's Latino USA. I'm Maria 0:00:08.200 --> 0:00:13.120 in Josa today, a Native American reservation in Washington State 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:17.959 where Latinos and Latinas are the majority of the population, 0:00:18.239 --> 0:00:21.279 and also the tensions that flew up because of that. 0:00:26.440 --> 0:00:29.680 Welcome to Latino USA. I'm Maria in Hoossa. In the 0:00:29.760 --> 0:00:34.279 late nineteen seventies, Guadalupe Marquez was living in Alto Jalisco, Mexico. 0:00:34.880 --> 0:00:37.240 Her husband was gone most of the year in the 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:39.440 United States doing farm work. 0:00:39.280 --> 0:00:45.840 Mid Sevenia Cestawaki orso on River Mezes, Wuidalupe's husband would 0:00:45.840 --> 0:00:48.559 spend eight or nine months working hard to make a 0:00:48.600 --> 0:00:52.519 living to provide for his family across the border, and 0:00:52.840 --> 0:00:56.160 like thousands of other labor immigrants before and after him, 0:00:56.600 --> 0:00:59.400 he would then take time to go back to Mexico 0:00:59.760 --> 0:01:01.120 and visit his family. 0:01:01.600 --> 0:01:04.800 He'd stay for a month before leaving to the US again. 0:01:05.720 --> 0:01:10.040 But nine months after every visit, something big would happen, 0:01:10.400 --> 0:01:13.600 Whilalupe would end up giving birth to a new child. 0:01:14.080 --> 0:01:17.600 And not once or three times did this happen, It 0:01:17.680 --> 0:01:22.440 happened sixteen times, Yes, sixteen times. 0:01:22.720 --> 0:01:24.039 What is Amilia? 0:01:24.400 --> 0:01:28.800 That's why our family's so big? Wadalupe says, of course, 0:01:29.120 --> 0:01:33.680 sixteen kids. But finally, one day, Whadalupe decided enough was enough. 0:01:33.840 --> 0:01:36.920 She didn't want to keep raising her large family on 0:01:37.040 --> 0:01:40.000 her own. She wanted her husband to be a permanent 0:01:40.040 --> 0:01:42.800 part of their life too, not just as a visitor, 0:01:43.440 --> 0:01:46.000 and so she convinced her husband to take her with 0:01:46.200 --> 0:01:49.920 him to the United States for good. They ended up 0:01:50.000 --> 0:01:54.320 joining some relatives in Washington State. They rented a house 0:01:54.640 --> 0:01:59.960 in a tiny town surrounded by fruit orchards. Whidalupez daughter, Yesing, 0:02:00.360 --> 0:02:03.320 was five years old when they arrived. Her most vivid 0:02:03.400 --> 0:02:08.720 memory of that first house was finding these tiny little clues. 0:02:09.320 --> 0:02:12.359 And I remember in the closet of the house there 0:02:12.520 --> 0:02:18.120 was beads, like Native American beads. I just remember finding beads. 0:02:18.160 --> 0:02:19.920 For as long as we lived in that house, there 0:02:19.960 --> 0:02:21.320 was always beads in the closet. 0:02:22.360 --> 0:02:25.000 It took you, Senya years to realize what made this 0:02:25.120 --> 0:02:28.400 town Wapato different from the rest of the country. 0:02:28.639 --> 0:02:32.280 It wasn't really evident to us that we lived on 0:02:32.360 --> 0:02:35.520 a reservation. That wasn't something that we were conscious about. 0:02:36.360 --> 0:02:39.079 It was just something that we figured Indians lived here. 0:02:43.880 --> 0:02:48.600 But she was on a reservation. The Yakama Nation. Ten 0:02:48.680 --> 0:02:51.920 years ago, the Yakama Nation was home to about eleven 0:02:52.040 --> 0:02:57.959 thousand tribal members and three times as many Latinos and Latinas. 0:02:58.880 --> 0:03:02.880 Now this divine it has increased, with nearly four times 0:03:02.919 --> 0:03:06.800 as many Latinos and Latinas as there are tribal members 0:03:07.680 --> 0:03:11.960 outnumbered on their own land. I wanted to know what 0:03:12.000 --> 0:03:16.040 does that look and feel like. So in twenty fifteen, 0:03:16.560 --> 0:03:19.480 I spent about a week in the Yakuman Nation reporting 0:03:19.560 --> 0:03:20.240 along with my. 0:03:20.200 --> 0:03:23.320 Producer, I'm Rowan more Garrity. 0:03:23.240 --> 0:03:26.680 And today we're teaming up for a special edition all 0:03:26.800 --> 0:03:31.240 about the Yakuman Nation, a Native American reservation where Latinos 0:03:31.320 --> 0:03:51.240 are the majority. Now, just so you know, there are 0:03:51.320 --> 0:03:54.000 moments in our story where you're going to hear language 0:03:54.080 --> 0:03:57.160 around race that will be offensive to some listeners. So 0:03:57.480 --> 0:04:00.880 that's just a heads up. But before we go any further, 0:04:01.120 --> 0:04:03.400 I think it might be helpful to paint a picture 0:04:03.440 --> 0:04:06.280 of what the Yakama Nation is now. To get there, 0:04:06.480 --> 0:04:10.240 I drove about three hours east of Seattle, So Rowan 0:04:10.320 --> 0:04:12.280 tell us what does this area look like. 0:04:12.640 --> 0:04:15.640 So, first of all, the Yacma Nation is in eastern Washington, 0:04:15.760 --> 0:04:19.680 and it's pretty big, wide open country. The reservation lands 0:04:19.720 --> 0:04:22.560 cover more than two thousand square miles of plains in 0:04:22.600 --> 0:04:26.680 the lowlands and then forested mountains. Most people live in 0:04:26.720 --> 0:04:30.160 a cluster of towns along the Yakima River, so there's 0:04:30.160 --> 0:04:33.040 a big Latino population along with the tribe, and then 0:04:33.160 --> 0:04:36.400 there are also Filipinos and white people, so it's a 0:04:36.400 --> 0:04:37.000 real mix. 0:04:37.360 --> 0:04:39.719 Right after I got to Yakima, we met up with 0:04:39.760 --> 0:04:42.039 a woman who grew up right in the middle of 0:04:42.080 --> 0:04:42.400 all of this. 0:04:42.680 --> 0:04:44.160 I got two little ones. I got to get out 0:04:44.160 --> 0:04:44.440 of my car. 0:04:44.600 --> 0:04:44.920 Okay. 0:04:45.880 --> 0:04:51.039 That's Rena Marquees, Guadalupe's granddaughter and Yessenia's niece. Rena is 0:04:51.080 --> 0:04:54.040 twenty seven years old. Her father is Mexican and her 0:04:54.080 --> 0:04:57.760 mother is Yakima and Filipino, and she's got four kids 0:04:57.800 --> 0:04:58.240 of her own. 0:04:58.560 --> 0:05:00.400 She's totally well. 0:05:00.520 --> 0:05:02.040 Princess Medal Indian one. 0:05:02.240 --> 0:05:04.040 She loves to be barefoot, come back to me. 0:05:05.440 --> 0:05:07.960 Rena says there are a lot of people in her 0:05:08.000 --> 0:05:11.520 generation who are part Yakima and part Mexican, and she 0:05:11.600 --> 0:05:14.359 never saw a problem embracing both sides of her heritage. 0:05:15.000 --> 0:05:17.479 But back when she was a kid, she felt like 0:05:17.520 --> 0:05:20.440 there was a war between Native Americans and Latinos on 0:05:20.480 --> 0:05:21.120 the reservation. 0:05:21.360 --> 0:05:25.400 There were some Native men that would fight with my dad, so, 0:05:25.560 --> 0:05:27.560 you know, because it was Hispanic, just you know, go 0:05:27.680 --> 0:05:32.680 back to your own country. And then on the other side, 0:05:32.880 --> 0:05:37.880 I always heard, you know, dirty natives, drunks, bumps. 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:40.120 And when you would hear those things, what was going 0:05:40.160 --> 0:05:40.880 on in your mind? 0:05:41.360 --> 0:05:44.679 I didn't understand it. There was just so much hate here, 0:05:44.839 --> 0:05:46.839 just hearing it on both sides, and it was like 0:05:47.240 --> 0:05:48.880 they just they really didn't like each other. 0:05:49.520 --> 0:05:52.360 And Rena says, this still goes on. 0:05:52.360 --> 0:05:55.480 One of my sons gets in trouble for fighting, and 0:05:55.520 --> 0:05:57.040 I'm like, why are you fighting kids. 0:05:57.160 --> 0:05:59.599 Rina's son, by the way, is in fourth grade. 0:06:00.160 --> 0:06:02.159 Well, he called me a dirty Indian. He gets in 0:06:02.200 --> 0:06:05.239 trouble for that. He's taking a look from nobody. 0:06:05.360 --> 0:06:08.159 Rita's kids are mixed like her. Her son's father is 0:06:08.200 --> 0:06:08.920 mostly Native. 0:06:09.760 --> 0:06:11.720 You know, I've told my kids, you know, you guys 0:06:11.720 --> 0:06:14.920 are Hispanic and you guys are Native. They'll make comments 0:06:15.000 --> 0:06:17.560 like we're not Mexican, we're Indians, and mom, like you're 0:06:17.600 --> 0:06:20.360 a Mexican. I don't know if they just don't think 0:06:20.440 --> 0:06:23.800 I look Native enough or something, but they always make 0:06:23.839 --> 0:06:25.800 little comments like that and they just laugh about it. 0:06:35.360 --> 0:06:38.200 Being Native isn't just about how you identify or what 0:06:38.279 --> 0:06:41.880 you look like. Tribes are officially sovereign nations, and there 0:06:41.920 --> 0:06:44.400 are specific rights that come with being a member of 0:06:44.440 --> 0:06:47.160 a tribe. You can vote in elections for the tribal government, 0:06:47.240 --> 0:06:49.640 you can visit parts of the reservation that aren't open 0:06:49.680 --> 0:06:51.920 to everyone, and you can receive a share of the 0:06:51.960 --> 0:06:54.760 tribal income that comes from things like the casino or 0:06:55.040 --> 0:06:56.040 the logging industry. 0:06:56.480 --> 0:06:59.080 But here on the Yakama Nation, I learned it's more 0:06:59.200 --> 0:07:02.520 complicated because a lot of the land is actually owned 0:07:02.640 --> 0:07:03.440 by white people. 0:07:03.640 --> 0:07:06.400 And the reason there are so many white people here 0:07:07.080 --> 0:07:09.640 is that it's a great place for making money from 0:07:09.680 --> 0:07:10.480 growing apples. 0:07:10.800 --> 0:07:14.280 All over the reservation. There are these huge warehouses, bigger 0:07:14.320 --> 0:07:16.960 warehouses than any I've ever seen, I think in my 0:07:17.000 --> 0:07:19.880 whole life, that are filled with apples. 0:07:20.120 --> 0:07:23.640 That's right, The Yakama Valley is the nation's apple capital. 0:07:25.800 --> 0:07:28.520 This is the biggest apple backing facility on Earth. 0:07:28.600 --> 0:07:31.520 That's mikey Hanks, he's my tour guide at Washington Fruit. 0:07:32.400 --> 0:07:35.960 It's this massive concrete warehouse filled with the whirring and 0:07:36.000 --> 0:07:40.400 clicking of all these giant machines. So you'll see here 0:07:40.440 --> 0:07:42.560 it's just kind of like a river of apples. 0:07:42.600 --> 0:07:44.400 The easiest way to get the apples out of the 0:07:44.400 --> 0:07:45.920 bind let's put the bin in water. 0:07:46.640 --> 0:07:49.120 About three and a half million apples go through here 0:07:49.240 --> 0:07:49.840 every day. 0:07:50.600 --> 0:07:53.480 Three and a half million apples are worth a lot 0:07:53.520 --> 0:07:56.280 of money. And to understand how white people came to 0:07:56.320 --> 0:07:59.440 own these fruit factories on native land, you have to 0:07:59.440 --> 0:08:00.239 go way back. 0:08:00.520 --> 0:08:02.680 So this is just a valley floor, and you could 0:08:02.680 --> 0:08:06.240 see there's a lot of areas in here that aren't 0:08:06.280 --> 0:08:07.360 owned by the acamanation. 0:08:07.640 --> 0:08:10.360 This is Matthew Tamaskin. He's a part of the tribal 0:08:10.400 --> 0:08:13.440 government and today he's showing us a huge map of 0:08:13.480 --> 0:08:16.480 the reservation on the wall at the Yakama Nation headquarters. 0:08:17.000 --> 0:08:19.400 The map is divided up into a big grid and 0:08:19.440 --> 0:08:22.239 some of the squares are yellow, others are pink and blue. 0:08:22.280 --> 0:08:25.280 So what you see is the yellow parcels. Those are 0:08:25.320 --> 0:08:26.800 tribal lands and they have numbers. 0:08:27.080 --> 0:08:30.240 In eighteen fifty five, the Yakma people signed a treaty 0:08:30.280 --> 0:08:33.439 with the federal government that created the reservation, and it 0:08:33.559 --> 0:08:37.120 set aside land where only the tribe could live. But 0:08:37.160 --> 0:08:40.920 the Feds didn't keep their word. Not long after that, 0:08:41.040 --> 0:08:44.199 Congress passed something called the Allotment Act, and basically what 0:08:44.240 --> 0:08:46.400 that did is it took land that belonged to the 0:08:46.440 --> 0:08:49.960 tribe and broke it into little pieces. The goal was 0:08:50.000 --> 0:08:53.000 to give those little pieces of land to individual tribal 0:08:53.040 --> 0:08:55.040 members as a way to get them to assimilate. 0:08:55.120 --> 0:08:57.080 So some of that was was they wanted us to 0:08:57.120 --> 0:08:59.560 be farmers. We're not farmers, we're gatherers. 0:08:59.640 --> 0:08:59.720 Now. 0:09:00.000 --> 0:09:02.960 Government's idea was that tribal members who agreed to move 0:09:03.000 --> 0:09:06.079 on to those individual allotments could become citizens of the 0:09:06.200 --> 0:09:09.400 United States, and any land that wasn't given out in 0:09:09.440 --> 0:09:12.800 allotments would be sold to non Indians. But by the 0:09:12.800 --> 0:09:15.640 turn of the century there were whole real estate offices 0:09:15.679 --> 0:09:18.880 here just specializing in selling reservation lands. 0:09:19.080 --> 0:09:21.400 The tribal members owned the land, but yet you know, 0:09:21.800 --> 0:09:24.040 you hear these stories of hey, chief, we'll give you 0:09:24.080 --> 0:09:27.560 a bottle of whiskey for that land, booms turned over, 0:09:28.000 --> 0:09:28.560 we lose it. 0:09:29.000 --> 0:09:31.720 When you think of a reservation, you probably think of 0:09:31.800 --> 0:09:35.240 land that's set aside just for Native people. But there 0:09:35.240 --> 0:09:38.120 are actually a bunch of reservations like the Yakiman Nation, 0:09:38.240 --> 0:09:41.480 where the majority population isn't Native American at all. 0:09:41.679 --> 0:09:45.120 Within fifty years of the Allotment Act, tribes all over 0:09:45.160 --> 0:09:47.719 the country lost ownership of more than two thirds of 0:09:47.760 --> 0:09:51.040 their land. The Accamanation has been trying to buy their 0:09:51.120 --> 0:09:53.920 land back ever since. But it's a lot easier to 0:09:53.920 --> 0:09:56.400 take a piece of land out of tribal control than 0:09:56.440 --> 0:09:57.880 it is to bring it back in. 0:09:58.280 --> 0:10:01.600 So that's how you start having what we call now 0:10:01.640 --> 0:10:03.319 a checkerboard reservation. 0:10:03.760 --> 0:10:07.079 That's sister Kathleen Ross. If you can imagine the checkerboard 0:10:07.120 --> 0:10:09.520 she's talking about. Let's say some squares are owned by 0:10:09.559 --> 0:10:12.000 the tribe, and a lot of other squares are owned 0:10:12.000 --> 0:10:15.040 by white farmers and growers, and that's made it harder 0:10:15.040 --> 0:10:17.360 for the tribe to control what happens on the reservation, 0:10:18.040 --> 0:10:20.280 even for something as basic as who lives here. 0:10:20.760 --> 0:10:24.760 That checkerboard has also enabled discrimination against Native Americans on 0:10:24.840 --> 0:10:25.640 their own lands. 0:10:25.760 --> 0:10:28.680 The settlers that came in that started the towns to 0:10:28.800 --> 0:10:33.200 support the agriculture that was starting up. People that started 0:10:33.240 --> 0:10:35.680 a restaurant would put up a sign that said no 0:10:35.840 --> 0:10:37.800 dogs here and no Indians. 0:10:38.040 --> 0:10:40.679 In the first part of the twentieth century, white settlers 0:10:40.720 --> 0:10:43.280 from all over the country moved onto the reservation to 0:10:43.360 --> 0:10:47.000 start farms and take advantage of a new federal irrigation project. 0:10:47.240 --> 0:10:50.560 They're creating these farms, but they didn't have workers. So 0:10:50.880 --> 0:10:54.199 prior to the Mexicans coming and being workers, we were 0:10:54.240 --> 0:10:57.880 the workers. Our elders were out there picking hops or 0:10:57.960 --> 0:11:01.360 harvesting grapes or harvesting apple. Those are harvesting peachers, what 0:11:01.400 --> 0:11:04.960 have you. We were that. We were their workforce, you know, 0:11:05.120 --> 0:11:08.280 cheap labor. That's where we were, just as ys today. 0:11:08.240 --> 0:11:10.120 And you see some of that work depicted on the 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:11.840 murals here in Toponish. 0:11:12.040 --> 0:11:14.520 Ricardo Garcia has been an advocate in the Latino farm 0:11:14.520 --> 0:11:17.560 worker community for more than forty years. When you drive 0:11:17.600 --> 0:11:21.400 through downtown Toponish, one of the reservation's main towns, you 0:11:21.440 --> 0:11:25.320 see whole buildings painted with scenes of Native American families 0:11:25.520 --> 0:11:26.559 doing farm work. 0:11:26.679 --> 0:11:30.720 But they don't do that work anymore. The agricultural industry 0:11:30.800 --> 0:11:34.840 kept growing, and it continued to expand to the times 0:11:34.880 --> 0:11:39.040 when they needed to recruit workers from Texas. 0:11:38.679 --> 0:11:41.360 Families like Garcia started to come north for a few 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:44.880 months out of the year, and gradually, he says, Mexicans 0:11:44.880 --> 0:11:49.240 and Mexican Americans started to replace Native Americans as the 0:11:49.280 --> 0:11:51.760 main workforce on the farms on the reservation. 0:11:52.160 --> 0:11:54.360 The Native American was a good worker, but they also 0:11:54.480 --> 0:11:57.600 celebrated the times when they would go fishing and they 0:11:57.640 --> 0:11:59.960 would take off, perhaps in the middle of a harvest, 0:12:00.679 --> 0:12:04.040 and the industry didn't like that very much, so they 0:12:04.880 --> 0:12:11.560 started to prefer and recruit and hire labor from Mexico 0:12:11.920 --> 0:12:12.920 as well as Texas. 0:12:13.000 --> 0:12:14.760 Right now, this is something that I learned by being 0:12:14.760 --> 0:12:18.440 on the reservation that there are certain seasonal activities that 0:12:18.480 --> 0:12:22.119 are really central to tribal life and identity, like fishing 0:12:22.240 --> 0:12:24.800 or foraging for roots and berries, and it happens on 0:12:24.960 --> 0:12:28.240 very sacred land, and so when it's time to do that, 0:12:28.240 --> 0:12:29.040 that's what you do. 0:12:29.360 --> 0:12:33.520 Yeah, And that shift to Mexican farm workers means that 0:12:33.600 --> 0:12:36.720 over time, more and more single men were coming here 0:12:36.760 --> 0:12:40.080 and putting down roots, and eventually their families came too. 0:12:40.200 --> 0:12:43.080 And it was the beginning of a demographic shift that 0:12:43.120 --> 0:12:47.240 would profoundly change the Yakma Valley. Latino settled in the 0:12:47.240 --> 0:12:51.360 reservations towns in large numbers, bringing their language and their 0:12:51.400 --> 0:12:55.520 culture with them, and with new neighbors they're came and 0:12:55.600 --> 0:13:20.960 new tensions coming up on Latino USA are Latinos. Pushing 0:13:20.960 --> 0:13:22.440 the Yakama people out. 0:13:22.520 --> 0:13:24.200 When I'm going out to launch with my friends is 0:13:24.240 --> 0:13:27.880 like we're gonna have Mexican, Mexican or Mexican. If you 0:13:27.920 --> 0:13:30.840 think about it, you know what does topplers have to offer? 0:13:31.440 --> 0:13:32.520 Are they the Mexican fact? 0:13:32.880 --> 0:13:33.560 Stay with us? 0:13:34.160 --> 0:13:49.920 Yes, Welcome back to Latino USA. I'm Maria Ino. 0:13:49.760 --> 0:13:51.840 Jossa and I'm rowin more Garrity. 0:13:52.320 --> 0:13:56.439 And today we're revisiting a special episode from twenty fifteen 0:13:56.840 --> 0:14:01.480 about the Yakama Nation in Washington State, a Native American 0:14:01.559 --> 0:14:07.839 reservation where Latinos have expanded to become the majority population. Now, 0:14:07.880 --> 0:14:10.040 when we left off, we were talking about how the 0:14:10.080 --> 0:14:15.600 reservation lands became dominated by farms, mostly owned by white 0:14:15.600 --> 0:14:20.520 folks and worked mostly by Mexicans and Mexican Americans. 0:14:21.120 --> 0:14:24.800 Today, agriculture in Yakoma County is an industry worth almost 0:14:24.840 --> 0:14:28.440 two billion dollars a year, and almost everyone we spoke 0:14:28.480 --> 0:14:31.160 to in the Latino community here has spent some time 0:14:31.200 --> 0:14:35.080 working in the fields. Yesenia Navarette Hunter, that's the woman 0:14:35.120 --> 0:14:37.560 who found the native beads in her house as a child. 0:14:38.200 --> 0:14:41.000 She says the hardest part of doing farm work was 0:14:41.280 --> 0:14:42.880 just trying to get enough sleep. 0:14:43.080 --> 0:14:44.960 My mom would have us get to bed, you know, 0:14:45.000 --> 0:14:47.720 at maybe eight or nine. And in the summertime, it 0:14:47.760 --> 0:14:49.960 was even harder because still light out and you're trying 0:14:49.960 --> 0:14:52.320 to sleep, but you know that in just a few 0:14:52.320 --> 0:14:53.360 hours you're going to get up again. 0:14:53.720 --> 0:14:57.360 During asparagus season, Yesenya says, the day started at two 0:14:57.440 --> 0:14:58.840 or three in the morning, and. 0:14:58.800 --> 0:15:01.360 We'd get ready and run out out to the cars 0:15:01.480 --> 0:15:03.040 because there were always several. 0:15:03.080 --> 0:15:06.600 Remember we're talking about a family with sixteen kids here. 0:15:06.840 --> 0:15:09.280 And the way that we pulled this off because how 0:15:09.280 --> 0:15:12.000 do you pick in the dark. So my dad would 0:15:12.440 --> 0:15:16.640 he would park his jeep facing the asparagus rose and 0:15:16.720 --> 0:15:18.800 leave the lights on, and so you pick as far 0:15:18.800 --> 0:15:21.240 as you can see, and then you come back, and 0:15:21.280 --> 0:15:22.760 then you pick as far as you can see, and 0:15:22.840 --> 0:15:24.640 about that time the sun's coming up, so you go 0:15:24.680 --> 0:15:26.160 back and you finish the rest of the rose. 0:15:27.080 --> 0:15:29.600 So what that means is that the kids would work 0:15:29.640 --> 0:15:32.360 five or six hour shifts in the fields and then 0:15:32.520 --> 0:15:35.840 they would rush home, shower off their morning work, and 0:15:35.920 --> 0:15:36.680 head to school. 0:15:37.080 --> 0:15:40.640 Yasenya's niece, Rina Madkez, had a different kind of childhood though. 0:15:41.120 --> 0:15:44.160 Remember Rena is the part native part Mexican woman that 0:15:44.200 --> 0:15:47.440 we heard from earlier. Growing up, Rena says she saw 0:15:47.680 --> 0:15:49.840 the worst of both of her parents. 0:15:50.000 --> 0:15:53.440 My mom left me in a hospital when I was firstborn. 0:15:54.080 --> 0:15:57.520 Both her mom and her dad drank heavily and used drugs, 0:15:57.560 --> 0:15:59.640 and her dad was in and out of jail. 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:02.960 So my grandma got me out of the hospital and 0:16:03.040 --> 0:16:05.640 she would tell me stories that or your mom would 0:16:05.640 --> 0:16:09.240 come see you as a baby, and like my baby's age, 0:16:09.280 --> 0:16:12.000 the little one, she said, your mom would push you away. 0:16:14.280 --> 0:16:16.760 When she was seven, Rena moved in with her parents. 0:16:17.200 --> 0:16:19.680 They lived in one of the low income housing projects 0:16:19.680 --> 0:16:22.360 owned by the tribe. A lot of the adults there 0:16:22.360 --> 0:16:25.760 were unemployed and struggling with addiction, and from the time 0:16:25.840 --> 0:16:28.520 she was eight or nine, Rena was responsible for getting 0:16:28.560 --> 0:16:30.960 her little sister fed and dressed in the morning and 0:16:31.000 --> 0:16:34.320 then walking her to school. At the time, though, Rena 0:16:34.360 --> 0:16:36.920 says she and her siblings were just used to it all. 0:16:37.080 --> 0:16:39.200 There's a lot of stuff as a child. I don't 0:16:39.240 --> 0:16:41.560 really remember a lot of stuff that I've blocked out. 0:16:42.040 --> 0:16:44.160 There were a lot of kids in the projects like her, 0:16:44.360 --> 0:16:48.320 with mixed parents, mostly Mexican fathers and Native American mothers, 0:16:48.880 --> 0:16:52.120 but she still felt alienated at school. Most of the 0:16:52.240 --> 0:16:54.520 kids were one hundred percent Mexican. 0:16:54.160 --> 0:16:59.520 American around here, It's like his Phoenix almost the way 0:16:59.520 --> 0:17:02.760 that week, you know, they were almost like the white people, 0:17:02.920 --> 0:17:05.240 like they dis acted like better than everybody else. 0:17:05.840 --> 0:17:08.920 When Rena got into arguments with Mexican kids, she says, 0:17:09.200 --> 0:17:11.680 just being viewed as Native felt like an insult. 0:17:12.000 --> 0:17:14.439 I felt a lot of anger towards those people, and 0:17:14.480 --> 0:17:19.200 I was ashamed sometimes to be like some people would 0:17:19.200 --> 0:17:21.440 be like, oh, you don't look Native American, you look Mexican. 0:17:21.560 --> 0:17:23.800 But sometimes that made me happy, like knowing that I 0:17:23.800 --> 0:17:26.040 didn't look like a Native, because I knew how people 0:17:26.080 --> 0:17:26.920 looked at Natives. 0:17:27.240 --> 0:17:30.760 Things were tough at home too. Her mom wasn't around much, 0:17:30.880 --> 0:17:32.280 and her dad was abusive. 0:17:32.480 --> 0:17:35.040 My mom had already left the home, so he would 0:17:35.080 --> 0:17:37.920 fight me, like physically fight me, and I fought back 0:17:37.920 --> 0:17:39.880 because I didn't know any other way to survive. 0:17:40.600 --> 0:17:43.560 The last straw came when Rena was fourteen, and her 0:17:43.600 --> 0:17:47.240 father hit her so hard she went deaf in one ear. 0:17:47.960 --> 0:17:50.520 After that, Rena's little brother called their aunt to come 0:17:50.560 --> 0:17:51.080 pick them. 0:17:51.040 --> 0:17:53.760 Up, and so she came and told my dad, if 0:17:53.800 --> 0:17:55.040 you don't let me take her. I'm going to call 0:17:55.080 --> 0:17:55.720 the cops. 0:17:56.520 --> 0:17:59.480 She has, in fact, forgiven both of her parents, and 0:17:59.560 --> 0:18:00.360 she's up. 0:18:00.280 --> 0:18:03.359 Her life absolutely. Her mom even comes to stay with 0:18:03.400 --> 0:18:06.040 her at her house sometimes. Now, she was really able 0:18:06.080 --> 0:18:08.200 to turn the corner. She got through college, she's got 0:18:08.200 --> 0:18:10.320 a pretty good job now working as an auditor at 0:18:10.320 --> 0:18:12.720 the tribe's casino, and she's got kids of her own. 0:18:13.080 --> 0:18:15.479 You know, I was fortunate enough to be pulled out 0:18:15.520 --> 0:18:18.879 of my dad's home and see a different life. I 0:18:18.920 --> 0:18:20.840 think a lot of people. I just feel like some 0:18:20.880 --> 0:18:22.479 people don't ever see a way out of it. 0:18:28.600 --> 0:18:28.800 Now. 0:18:28.960 --> 0:18:33.240 Those tensions between her Mexican and her Native American communities 0:18:33.560 --> 0:18:37.120 were very real for Rena. But one person who says 0:18:37.119 --> 0:18:39.919 he's trying to remind them of what these two communities 0:18:39.920 --> 0:18:43.800 have in common is Matt Tumaskin. He's the legislative laison 0:18:43.880 --> 0:18:46.480 for the tribal government that we heard from earlier. 0:18:46.280 --> 0:18:48.680 And he's also a teacher at the tribal school. A 0:18:48.720 --> 0:18:50.960 couple of years ago, Matt was talking to his Native 0:18:50.960 --> 0:18:53.040 students and he wanted to see what they knew about 0:18:53.040 --> 0:18:56.040 Mexican culture. Justa heads up, you're about to hear some 0:18:56.160 --> 0:18:57.840 offensive language. 0:18:57.359 --> 0:18:59.280 When I say, Mexican, what do you think? So all 0:18:59.359 --> 0:19:02.919 of those those negative annotations came up, went back, you 0:19:02.960 --> 0:19:06.199 know this that whatever, solo's whatever. You know, there's just 0:19:06.200 --> 0:19:08.919 those stereotypes. But I started educating and I say, you 0:19:08.920 --> 0:19:12.320 know what, they're indigenous, just like Eve and me. They're 0:19:12.320 --> 0:19:14.960 from the south and we're from the north. We need 0:19:15.000 --> 0:19:19.239 to realize that that the border was created by the 0:19:19.240 --> 0:19:19.840 white people. 0:19:20.880 --> 0:19:24.600 A few weeks later, Matt brought an indigenous Mexican congresswoman 0:19:24.640 --> 0:19:27.560 to his class. At first, she spoke to the students 0:19:27.560 --> 0:19:32.440 in Spanish while someone translated, but then she switched to Puripicha, 0:19:32.480 --> 0:19:36.040 an indigenous language, and the interpreters sat down. 0:19:36.080 --> 0:19:38.600 And hip couldn't interpret it. So that's what I told him, 0:19:38.720 --> 0:19:42.280 was like, we speak English down there, they speak Spanish. 0:19:42.480 --> 0:19:45.160 They they're not Spanish, they're put Apache. 0:19:45.480 --> 0:19:48.560 And when you say that to the people, you know, 0:19:49.160 --> 0:19:51.600 there is a brotherhood between us, there's a sisterhood. And 0:19:51.680 --> 0:19:54.000 they say, yes, I believe it, or they say I 0:19:54.040 --> 0:19:54.720 don't think so. 0:19:54.920 --> 0:19:56.960 It's a little bit of both. They don't believe it yet, 0:19:57.000 --> 0:19:59.080 but yet you know, when they heard her, they knew 0:19:59.119 --> 0:20:01.359 the difference. So classroom full of students that I was 0:20:01.400 --> 0:20:05.800 teaching government at that time. It clicked, you know that, 0:20:05.880 --> 0:20:07.879 you know, they are indigenous. 0:20:07.400 --> 0:20:18.240 Just like us malec Yeah, Yankasas Marlvetx, Yeah, Yankasas. 0:20:22.160 --> 0:20:26.840 It's undeniable that Mexicans have transformed this area. The Hispanic 0:20:26.880 --> 0:20:31.480 population in Yakoma County, which includes the reservation, has quadrupled 0:20:31.600 --> 0:20:34.919 in the last generation, from about twenty five thousand to 0:20:35.080 --> 0:20:37.680 well over one hundred thousand today. 0:20:37.680 --> 0:20:41.600 And Matt says Latinos have become a convenient scapegoat for 0:20:41.760 --> 0:20:45.399 the spread of crime and drugs. Toponish and Wapato, the 0:20:45.440 --> 0:20:48.760 two main towns on this tribal land, have both had 0:20:48.840 --> 0:20:52.440 trouble with addiction and gang violence as the Latino community 0:20:52.480 --> 0:20:55.760 has grown, and a lot of Yakima people have absorbed 0:20:55.880 --> 0:20:58.840 mainstream stereotypes about Latinos. 0:20:59.000 --> 0:21:02.600 That's what we were told by the dominant societies. They're bad, 0:21:02.640 --> 0:21:07.200 They're no good. So that learned hatred is still there. 0:21:07.800 --> 0:21:10.080 So we need to come to a point where let's 0:21:10.119 --> 0:21:11.000 break that cycle. 0:21:11.960 --> 0:21:15.160 But even for Matt Tamaskin, it's not easy to see 0:21:15.160 --> 0:21:17.560 the towns where he grew up looking more and more 0:21:17.640 --> 0:21:21.880 like Mexico. In downtown. Top of it, the reservation's biggest town. 0:21:22.320 --> 0:21:27.679 There are Mexican businesses everywhere, restaurants, bakeries, music shops, car repair. 0:21:27.880 --> 0:21:29.719 When I'm going out to launch with my friends, is like, 0:21:29.920 --> 0:21:33.440 we're gonna have Mexican, Mexican or Mexican. If you think 0:21:33.440 --> 0:21:36.680 about it, you know what does Topiners have to offer? 0:21:36.800 --> 0:21:37.880 Are there than Mexican food. 0:21:38.320 --> 0:21:41.280