Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, your
Speaker 2: weekly reminder that people can do good things as well
Speaker 2: as bad things. Sometimes they do the bad thing good
Speaker 2: good things because bad things have happened. I'm your host,
Speaker 2: Margaret Kiljoy and with me as my guest is Miriam.
Speaker 3: Hi. I'm Miriam.
Speaker 2: Miriam's one of our favorite guests. We don't have favorites,
Speaker 2: but you're my favorite podcast to come on. Oh and
Speaker 2: your favorite podcast to come on is produced by none
Speaker 2: other than Sophie Lichterman.
Speaker 1: Heh yeah, that's me, Hi.
Speaker 2: And it is audio engineered by Ian Hi Ian Hian.
Speaker 1: We remember to do it this time.
Speaker 3: It's important to say hi to Ian. We almost forgot
Speaker 3: last time, and then last episode had so much genocide
Speaker 3: in it.
Speaker 2: Yep. Our theme music was written for us by Unwoman
Speaker 2: and you can now find the theme song in full.
Speaker 2: It's only about a minute and a half long on
Speaker 2: on women's band camp.
Speaker 3: Un Woman is so good.
Speaker 2: I know. I was like, and people are like every
Speaker 2: now and then people ask like, what's the deal with
Speaker 2: the theme music? And I was like, I wanted something
Speaker 2: that sounded really funny when contrasted to the shit I'm
Speaker 2: going to be talking about.
Speaker 3: Can I tell you a true story about Unwoman that
Speaker 3: makes me super happy?
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: A while ago, I was I was working in a
Speaker 3: museum that incorporated a lot of like historical building, and
Speaker 3: some ghost hunters came to like film a TV show
Speaker 3: or something, and they were like skulking around the historical
Speaker 3: building hunting ghosts. It was a it was a whole thing.
Speaker 3: But I was musing on like my social media about
Speaker 3: how fun it would be to prank them, and this
Speaker 3: ended up with Unwoman recording a ghostly like a ghost
Speaker 3: the old timey version of Rick Astley's Never Going to
Speaker 3: Give You Up, with the idea being that I would
Speaker 3: conceal a small speaker somewhere to like draw the ghost
Speaker 3: hunters to this like eerie, creepy music that when they
Speaker 3: got very close they wit realize was Rick Astley's Never
Speaker 3: Going to Give You Up, which I did not end
Speaker 3: up doing because I think the ghost hunters were like
Speaker 3: out of the building by the time this idea had
Speaker 3: been hatched and this recording had been made. But Unwoman
Speaker 3: is a fucking delight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one of the first times I saw I'm not
Speaker 2: on a woman for a while, but during the Oakland
Speaker 2: General Strike of twenty eleven. There was on woman with
Speaker 2: a cello performing for the people like locked to a bank.
Speaker 3: It was so good, got the fucking best. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So this is part two of our four part on
Speaker 2: Lakota resistance to the American Empire. And this first week
Speaker 2: we're talking mostly about the nineteenth century. Next week we're
Speaker 2: gonna talk about the twentieth century. Mostly, there's a whole
Speaker 2: there's so many centuries that happened in the past. Do
Speaker 2: you know that there's many twenty of them.
Speaker 3: Century takes about a week in my experience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true. God, i'd be so far into the
Speaker 2: past anyway. Sometimes I think about, like how I haven't
Speaker 2: even been doing the show for two years, but I'm like,
Speaker 2: it's so much stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, really, like you've covered a lot. Yeah, and you're
Speaker 3: not going to run out.
Speaker 2: No, that's the other thing. I'm not worried.
Speaker 3: But what if you talk about all the cool people
Speaker 3: who have ever happened, We'll just have to make some more. Well.
Speaker 2: It's like even like like one of the reasons you know,
Speaker 2: I've been I've been intending to do this episode for
Speaker 2: a long time because I specifically want to talk about
Speaker 2: the American Indian movement because I've done so many things
Speaker 2: about radical late sixties early seventies social movements in the
Speaker 2: United States, and I'm like, I've gone through so many
Speaker 2: and there's still so many more. Any American Indian movement
Speaker 2: I knew I wanted to like really take my time
Speaker 2: and like dig into.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think. I don't think I've heard you
Speaker 3: touch on it in any of your other episodes.
Speaker 2: Yea, not as much so, But that's not what we're
Speaker 2: talking about this week where we're talking about that.
Speaker 3: That was a teaser.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we are talking about how the Black Hills is
Speaker 2: about to be invaded by Custer and some other motherfuckers
Speaker 2: because there's gold in it, and what a treatise matter
Speaker 2: when there's gold and people? I love how people talk
Speaker 2: about this like that's like a human condition, you know,
Speaker 2: But like all of the Indigenous voices at the time
Speaker 2: were like, what the fuck is wrong with these people?
Speaker 2: Do they not know what an agreement is? We had
Speaker 2: an agreement? Does that is that like a Do they
Speaker 2: just not know what that word means? Like it's their word,
Speaker 2: It's in English?
Speaker 3: Right, this this whole treaty signing thing was something like, yeah, not.
Speaker 2: That people were like wildly perfect and peaceful and whatever,
Speaker 2: you know, strange romanticization. People want to make it right.
Speaker 3: We're not like, you don't need to like make this
Speaker 3: into an imaginary utopia to be like, it's pretty fucked
Speaker 3: up to sign a treaty and then six years later
Speaker 3: to be like, oh, we've just new information has come
Speaker 3: to light which makes our promises trash.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally turns out we were white, therefore we were
Speaker 2: white people. The whole toxes are actually trash. It's really
Speaker 2: on you for not recognizing that. Oh god. Uh So
Speaker 2: there are two kinds of officers in the US Army
Speaker 2: at this time. There's guys like Custer who are just
Speaker 2: rotten to their fucking core, right, and then there are
Speaker 2: these like high minded noble guys who have complicated feelings
Speaker 2: about it all and want to be gentlemanly, improper and
Speaker 2: polite and even want to respect the treaties. But orders
Speaker 2: are orders. The guy in charge of this campaign, General
Speaker 2: George Crook, he's in the latter camp. This is not better.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was gonna say, if the end result is massacres,
Speaker 3: I don't really care how bad the person doing it
Speaker 3: feels about it.
Speaker 2: Doing what you know to be wrong? Is it better
Speaker 2: than doing wrong because you think it's right, it might
Speaker 2: be wor parguably worse. Yeah, yeah, And like look there's
Speaker 2: scales of that, right, Like, we all participate in capitalism
Speaker 2: and we know it's bad, you know, And so I
Speaker 2: think everyone knowing that it's bad is a good step, right,
Speaker 2: But when you're talking about the kinds of crimes that
Speaker 2: this man is going to directly oversee, like now, fuck him.
Speaker 2: So he gave this famous answer. He was asked basically,
Speaker 2: he's like, is it hard for you to gear up
Speaker 2: to go to another Indian? And his quote is, yes,
Speaker 2: it is hard, But sir, the hardest thing is to
Speaker 2: go and fight those whom you know are in the right. Oh,
Speaker 2: if only there were an alternative. Yeah, that's the military.
Speaker 2: That's that's lawful neutral right there, you know, which is
Speaker 2: the same as lawful evil. Because lawful evil.
Speaker 3: You I believe you have an essay called lawful Ain't Good,
Speaker 3: which I quote at at times in gaming circles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my theory is that there's only eight h eight
Speaker 2: alignments because lawful good is a contradiction. It makes me
Speaker 2: really popular.
Speaker 3: And yeah, you can tell we had cool childhoods.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. We didn't meet on a steampunk convention.
Speaker 3: We didn't. We met in the parking lot of a
Speaker 3: steampunk convention.
Speaker 2: That's right where Miriam was dressed up as steampunk im
Speaker 2: a goldman giving a pretty good labor speech.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Uh did you know that I got in trouble with
Speaker 3: the operator of that steampunk convention because I got people
Speaker 3: riled up about the fact that he was holding conventions
Speaker 3: at non union hotels.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, hell, yeah, good, which is to say, no
Speaker 2: matter what culture or subculture you're in, you can do
Speaker 2: fun things with it.
Speaker 3: Hey, you can function up anywhere. People won't stop you.
Speaker 3: That's not true. People will try to stop you. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but you can function up anywhere. Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know, crime is legal. You can just do anything
Speaker 2: you want sort of all right, So neither of us
Speaker 2: are lawyers. Yeah, that's right, but we are your lawyer anyway.
Speaker 2: In the Black Hills, all sorts of bands and tribes
Speaker 2: and folks are gathering forces to unite against this invasion
Speaker 2: that they know is coming. White historians call it the
Speaker 2: largest gathering of Nati American people in history. Up to
Speaker 2: that point. Indigenous scholars are like, no, we've had bigger
Speaker 2: you just weren't around.
Speaker 3: People were gathering.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Sitting Bowl had a vision of blue jacketed soldiers
Speaker 2: falling from the sky into his camp. Sometimes I see
Speaker 2: it phrase as like like grasshoppers and and so he's like,
Speaker 2: this is this is coming. So the indigenous rebels they attack.
Speaker 3: Which the like grasshoppers. That's like a image of like
Speaker 3: and of like a devastation, right, because these those like
Speaker 3: grasshoppers swamps that would fall out of the sky would
Speaker 3: like eat everything. Yeah, No, that makes sense, leave bare
Speaker 3: ground in their wake.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is pretty fucking accurate. What happens. So the
Speaker 2: indigenous rebels attack the invaders, and there are several successful battles. Uh.
Speaker 2: The one that's in the history books is called the
Speaker 2: Battle of Greasy Grass, only it's not under in history books.
Speaker 2: Under that name. There's a river that the Lakota called
Speaker 2: Greasy Grass, the Americans call Little Big Horn. This is
Speaker 2: the battle on Yeah, this is the single greatest victory
Speaker 2: in the Indian Wars for the good guy side. Arman
Speaker 2: Custer is in charge of the seventh Cavalry and he
Speaker 2: sees this huge indigenous village and He's like, fuck yeah,
Speaker 2: let's go kidnap everyone there. Let's just like like fuck
Speaker 2: it up. You know, We'll like we're like going to
Speaker 2: kidnap everyone, and then we'll take all the non combat
Speaker 2: and hostages and force their warriors to surrender. And also
Speaker 2: he's a mass rapist and I'll talk about that more later,
Speaker 2: and this would have been a massacre. He's like, let's
Speaker 2: go massacre this village basically, and the rest of the
Speaker 2: army was like, hey, Custer, you should lay wait for
Speaker 2: everyone else. And Custer's like, whatever, man, I got this shit.
Speaker 2: Fuck you dad. You know.
Speaker 3: Awesome, I mean, not awesome what he wanted to do,
Speaker 3: but like awesome that he didn't wait for backups.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, absolutely. It's the same fucking thing that Fetterman
Speaker 2: did a fun like, yeah, he had a bunch of
Speaker 2: orders like don't leave the group and don't whatever you do,
Speaker 2: don't go over this hill, and he's just like butt
Speaker 2: their butts. I can see their butts.
Speaker 3: I mean, and I mean Fetterman even Mors was like,
Speaker 3: I only need like eighty guys, like don't even send
Speaker 3: me more guys. And the American Army in this case
Speaker 3: is like Custer we are literally sending you more guys,
Speaker 3: and he's like, but I want to do murder now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like it's getting dark. I don't know what time
Speaker 2: of day it was. He had crow scouts with him,
Speaker 2: and the crow were on the US side during most
Speaker 2: of this because two generations prior to the Lakota kicked
Speaker 2: them out of where they were living, so they're kind
Speaker 2: of mad, you know. And one of his crow scouts
Speaker 2: is a guy named half yellow Face who was like, Yo,
Speaker 2: Custer as a bad call, you shouldn't do that. Specifically,
Speaker 2: he said, you and I are going home today by
Speaker 2: a road we do not know, and.
Speaker 3: That is a very very cool way to try to
Speaker 3: advise your shitty boss not to do this shitty thing.
Speaker 2: We're gonna die if we do that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe that was the problem. Maybe he was a
Speaker 3: little to a little too flowery in his language. I know,
Speaker 3: it was the nineteenth century, you know, but maybe Coster
Speaker 3: wasn't quite literate enough for that metaphor and he needed
Speaker 3: a like, yeah, you're gonna.
Speaker 4: Die real hard. Yeah, he wouldn't have listened. He was
Speaker 4: an no, he absolute would not have listened. And so
Speaker 4: they just wildly underestimated the numbers and the prowess of
Speaker 4: indigenous warriors, and the seventh Cavalry was wiped out. Custer
Speaker 4: had his last stand, and he did what he should
Speaker 4: have done way earlier, which is die.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No one knows exactly how his day went. There's lots
Speaker 2: of stories around it, but no one knows exactly because
Speaker 2: all of his buddies also died.
Speaker 3: Right because he The thing about getting all your buddies
Speaker 3: killed is there's no one left on your side to
Speaker 3: tell you the story of how cool you looked when
Speaker 3: you died, and it's yeah, and everyone's just gonna be like, yeah,
Speaker 3: probably pissed his pants.
Speaker 2: Yeah. That guy he got shot in the chest. He
Speaker 2: also had a bullet and his skull that was probably
Speaker 2: after he died. That was probably alike. Let's just fucking ma,
Speaker 2: this is Custer. We should work and make you want
Speaker 2: to make sure. Yeah, so died the man that Vine
Speaker 2: Deloria Junior called the iikemen of the planes because he
Speaker 2: was following a policy of genocide from his higher ups.
Speaker 2: General Sherman wrote, quote, we must act with vindictive earnestness
Speaker 2: against the Sioux, even to their extermination men, women and children.
Speaker 2: During an assault the soldiers cannot pause to distinguish between
Speaker 2: male and female, or even to discriminate against age.
Speaker 3: Sounds sounds about right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Custer was also a serial rapist of indigenous women,
Speaker 2: by all accounts, including the accounts of his own men.
Speaker 2: They didn't phrase it that way, but they described it,
Speaker 2: so it makes it extra nice that the Cheyenn account
Speaker 2: of the battle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was one thing. You promised me three wounds.
Speaker 3: I've heard about two. I would like to hear about
Speaker 3: the other way Custer died, please.
Speaker 2: Shayanne account of the battle says that it was a
Speaker 2: woman named Buffalo calf road woman who knocked him off
Speaker 2: his horse before he died. Fuck yeah, And she absolutely
Speaker 2: was present in the battle. You know, she fought as
Speaker 2: alongside her. Her husband, Black Coyote, fought alongside her in
Speaker 2: that battle. Also, they brought war journalists with them while
Speaker 2: they were like let's go massacre.
Speaker 3: These people, like like.
Speaker 2: An Associated Press guy was just with them, just like to.
Speaker 3: Let everyone know how how well this was going.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he died too.
Speaker 3: I a thing that I heard, and this is something
Speaker 3: I like learned very recently. I don't know if you
Speaker 3: if you also learned this in your research was that
Speaker 3: the women present at the battle level little big Horn
Speaker 3: stab Custers through like once he had been killed, stabbed him,
Speaker 3: I think, like through the ear drums with their needles,
Speaker 3: saying like like you will like basically next time you'll
Speaker 3: listen good something like that, or you like you will listen,
Speaker 3: you'll like you will hear us. Basically I could be
Speaker 3: totally butchering that story.
Speaker 2: No, I mean good, and like you know, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of accounts of the battle, but I have no
Speaker 2: reason to no particular reason to doubt the Shian versions
Speaker 2: or other versions of it. Like, and there's like all
Speaker 2: these things that people tried to be like he died nobly.
Speaker 2: He didn't. He just wrote off to go get murdered,
Speaker 2: and he got him murdered.
Speaker 3: Just losing real heart sometimes gets romanticized as dying nobly,
Speaker 3: like you know, have like that like that poem where
Speaker 3: the guys on horses ride against tanks in the Crimean
Speaker 3: war whatever, and it's like it's not necessarily heroic to
Speaker 3: lose real heart, Like sometimes you're just sometimes you're just
Speaker 3: Custer and you just suck and you die real hard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Dilate he lived shitty. Another guy who fought in
Speaker 2: that battle is a man named Black Elk, who's most
Speaker 2: famous these days for his book Black Elk Speaks, which
Speaker 2: was hugely influential on me when I was like a
Speaker 2: baby anarchist, and he's gonna he's sort of a background
Speaker 2: guy through a lot of this stuff. No good deed
Speaker 2: goes unpunished, and the reprisals from the destruction of a
Speaker 2: serial rapist genocider continue to this day. America has not
Speaker 2: gotten over the fact that some lady fucking killed a
Speaker 2: rapist who didn't consider her human.
Speaker 3: A rapist who didn't consider her human, who nobody on
Speaker 3: the American side particularly liked anyway. Yeah, Like everybody was like, man,
Speaker 3: that guy's a real piece of shit, and then some
Speaker 3: indigenous people kill him and were like, hey, that was
Speaker 3: our piece of shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Basically, so, the US more or less declares
Speaker 2: the eighteen sixty eight Treaty, which they've already broken the
Speaker 2: shit out of, invalid, and they were like, but we
Speaker 2: want to do it sort of paperworky. So they demand
Speaker 2: that the reservation give up the Black Hills and a
Speaker 2: ton of other land, all with like right of way
Speaker 2: through everything for roads and shit. Anyone who doesn't agree.
Speaker 2: Can fucking starve Red Cloud was forced to sign, as
Speaker 2: were the other chiefs who weren't at war, and twenty
Speaker 2: two point eight million acres were seated, which is a
Speaker 2: third of the total, but the best third of this
Speaker 2: particular reservation, and the remaining folks are forced to live
Speaker 2: in like clearcut areas and places that have already been
Speaker 2: resource extracted. There's absolutely no way that this could be legal.
Speaker 2: Three quarters of the men could not have signed this
Speaker 2: agreement because they didn't show up, because they were at.
Speaker 3: War, right, because they were actively fighting to defend that land.
Speaker 2: Right, and the signatures that do appear were coerced at gunpoint.
Speaker 2: But laws only a cudgel in the hands of the powerful,
Speaker 2: and it's never been anything but that. Sitting Bowl and
Speaker 2: some other war chiefs and their warriors retreated north into Canada,
Speaker 2: while Crazy Horse, Heat Dog, Little Big Man, Iron Crow
Speaker 2: and a few of the other war chiefs. In the end,
Speaker 2: they decided to surrender. Basically, they were like, like, I suspect.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like I'm a die if I don't surrender.
Speaker 2: It was like all my people are going to die.
Speaker 3: The people that I'm responsible for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, And they were promised that they could
Speaker 2: live like on good hunting reservations and shit if they
Speaker 2: would just surrender.
Speaker 3: And we've definitely got reason to trust those promises at
Speaker 3: this point.
Speaker 2: As soon as they show up to surrender in Nebraska,
Speaker 2: the US pretended like they had never made the offer,
Speaker 2: of course.
Speaker 3: I mean, and I can understand, like why you would.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's like that was the only thing on
Speaker 3: the table, right.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, because again it wasn't just for them, it
Speaker 2: was for the people that they're responsible for. And Crazy
Speaker 2: Horse spent four months living in like sort of captivity
Speaker 2: on a reservation and then he was arrested. He tried
Speaker 2: to resist and he was stabbed to death with bayonets.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of versions of how he died. I
Speaker 2: don't have a specific really reason to believe any of
Speaker 2: Them's a lot of arguing about it, So I'm just
Speaker 2: going to go with he tried to resist and he
Speaker 2: was stabbed to death bayonets.
Speaker 3: I mean, even whatever, whatever the particular account of his
Speaker 3: death is, he tried to resist and was murdered by
Speaker 3: the US army seems to sum it up.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Spotted Tail, one of the war leaders who'd signed
Speaker 2: away the Black Hills. He's living large, he has a
Speaker 2: three story house, and he starts demanding, well, he's been
Speaker 2: demanding tribut because it's chief, but he starts demanding tribute
Speaker 2: that of his subordinates. That is like, as far as
Speaker 2: I can tell, new and not part of tradition. He
Speaker 2: starts demanding women, sometimes including I believe married women, but
Speaker 2: I'm not certain. But so his cousin crow Dog was like,
Speaker 2: you know what, I'm gonna fucking kill you and then
Speaker 2: killed him.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah.
Speaker 2: That is one of the three motives that has been
Speaker 2: presented for crow Dogs killing of Spotted Tail. The another
Speaker 2: is an argument over like a specific one of the
Speaker 2: women who has taken a tribute, which might have been
Speaker 2: Crowdog's family. Another is that crow Dog was like doing
Speaker 2: the US's dirty work to break up the power of
Speaker 2: the chiefs by killing Spotted Tail. I find the first
Speaker 2: argument most convincing, and the historians that I've read, who, yeah,
Speaker 2: I find it most convincing that it was like you
Speaker 2: have fucking you're a cellar piece of shit. You gotta
Speaker 2: fucking go.
Speaker 3: It doesn't I mean, one one of the one of
Speaker 3: the many terrible things about state repression is that it
Speaker 3: turns any internal conflict into like somebody doing the dirty
Speaker 3: work of the state, right.
Speaker 2: Like totally.
Speaker 3: And like which you know it's it's that you made
Speaker 3: a convincing case that this that Krownok got a legitimate
Speaker 3: grievance and reason to kill this guy. Yeah, and without
Speaker 3: the US government being behind that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know what the US government also is
Speaker 2: behind isn't behind our ads? Some of them government no
Speaker 2: government not only make it better?
Speaker 1: Are the ones that we personally approve.
Speaker 2: Well, did you know that we're an ad supported podcast
Speaker 2: unless you have cooler zone media, in which case you
Speaker 2: just get to hear us talk about ads all the
Speaker 2: time and hopefully it's entertaining for you. I don't know
Speaker 2: what I would do if we didn't have ads, because
Speaker 2: I like doing my weird transitions.
Speaker 1: You're so good at it now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can just do the weird transitions and then
Speaker 3: not play any ads. I mean that's also kind of
Speaker 3: what we're doing sitting here, since it's it's not your
Speaker 3: job to actually put the ads in there, that's right.
Speaker 3: Do you ever feel tempted to do that in conversation?
Speaker 3: If there's an awkward pause? Because if you do, you've
Speaker 3: been podcasting too much and you should take a break.
Speaker 2: Know what I do is I do transitions while I'm
Speaker 2: like in meetings, I'm like speaking of and then like
Speaker 2: and Robert Evans.
Speaker 1: Robert Evans does this in real life. I just want
Speaker 1: you to know.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's.
Speaker 1: Especially under the influence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, listen. If Robert Evans is getting sponsored while just
Speaker 3: hanging out under the influence, more power to him.
Speaker 2: I know, if you want to, I'll shout out fucking
Speaker 2: ship in the middle of a conversation.
Speaker 3: I'll just I'll product place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally grey, here's some ads, and we're back. And
Speaker 2: so there's this whole big thing. There's a hole to
Speaker 2: do about this murder, because I mean, it is a murder.
Speaker 2: Whatever whether or not it's justified, it's not really going punished.
Speaker 2: And so the federal government is like, what why can't
Speaker 2: we punish it? And they're like, because this indigenous sovereignty
Speaker 2: and there's none of your fucking business. So then the
Speaker 2: federal government is like, what if it becomes our business?
Speaker 2: By when we passed the Major Crimes Act. No, And
Speaker 2: so this gives them jurisdiction over like fifteen specific major
Speaker 2: crimes that happen on reservations and it's just all part
Speaker 2: of stripping away. And so this is the like it
Speaker 2: does kind of like fock spotted tail, but like whatever,
Speaker 2: the government was going to do bad shit no matter what.
Speaker 3: So right, and the government having a federal jurisdiction over
Speaker 3: major crimes on Indian land will surely they will care
Speaker 3: about all of those major crimes. And there will not
Speaker 3: later be an epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women
Speaker 3: that the federal government doesn't give a shit about.
Speaker 2: Sorry, no, no, I just that's something I'll shout out earnestly.
Speaker 2: There's ways to there's like groups that you can follow
Speaker 2: that talk about the missing and murdered Indigenous women, and it.
Speaker 3: Is a.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the bad stuff continues.
Speaker 3: Yeah, spoiler alert. None of this goes none of this
Speaker 3: ends in the United States being great.
Speaker 2: Well, that's because we're not done yet. Not well in
Speaker 2: the United States.
Speaker 3: Get a little done, Margaret.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, But the space that the US currently occupies,
Speaker 2: I still have a lot of hope for Oh yeah, no,
Speaker 2: me too. So the blackaills are stolen at this point,
Speaker 2: gold mines open. The eighteen eighty Congressional record reads one
Speaker 2: talking about this quote. An idle and thriftless race of
Speaker 2: savages cannot be permitted to stand guard at the treasure
Speaker 2: vaults of the nation, which hold our gold and silver.
Speaker 2: The prospector and minor may enter, and, by enriching himself,
Speaker 2: enrich the nation and bless the world by the results
Speaker 2: of his toil.
Speaker 3: Oh, shut the fuck up.
Speaker 2: I know what.
Speaker 3: You're just reading a quote. I'm not talking to you.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, I know, but it means that this
Speaker 2: is Protestant work ethic genocide, right.
Speaker 3: And it's also like I love how it's like these
Speaker 3: people aren't even greedy.
Speaker 2: Oh that's gonna It's like more.
Speaker 3: The criticism that has it's like, you know, when you're
Speaker 3: like so racist that like you take the flaws of
Speaker 3: your own society that like are recognized as flaws, right,
Speaker 3: Like greed is a concept that people like have in
Speaker 3: the Unite in like white among white people in the
Speaker 3: United States, like, don't be greedy, that's a bad thing.
Speaker 3: And then they're like, man, fuck these people, they're not
Speaker 3: even greedy. We should kill them about it?
Speaker 2: You in two paragraphs, So this isn't enough, of course,
Speaker 2: stealing you know this this part doesn't work ethic genocide.
Speaker 2: The government has to wipe out the buffalo too, because
Speaker 2: they don't want anyone to be able to hunt them. Basically,
Speaker 2: they don't want indigenous people to continue to live as
Speaker 2: indigenous people or like in traditional ways.
Speaker 3: You know, when you're so racist you wipe out an
Speaker 3: entire environmental biome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, already scarce. By eighteen eighty three, the last
Speaker 2: herd of the northern bison is wiped out by the government,
Speaker 2: and in eighteen eighty one, the sun dance is forbidden,
Speaker 2: which is a plain's traditional ritual of self sacrifice, the
Speaker 2: very important part of a lot of different traditions and
Speaker 2: the hatred of plains people was also anti communism in
Speaker 2: name decades before the first Red Scare. One senator said
Speaker 2: that it was the indigenous people's communism and holding lands
Speaker 2: in common that was holding them back and said quote,
Speaker 2: there is no selfish, which is at the bottom of civilization.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, yeah, I okay. First of all, like
Speaker 3: I am, I'm like struggling to construct some kind of
Speaker 3: like shitty hipster joke about like, oh yeah, I was
Speaker 3: anti communist before Karl Marx even wrote the Communist Manifesto yeah,
Speaker 3: or I guess Karl Marx had written the Communist Manifesto.
Speaker 2: Well, but they certainly were already doing that thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but there's also Yeah, it's like you're just taking
Speaker 3: things that are normally regarded as flaws and vices and
Speaker 3: you're like, they don't even do selfishness. They're not even greedy,
Speaker 3: like what just like pick anything you would normally say
Speaker 3: to be like insulting about another person, Like they don't
Speaker 3: even cheat on their wives like what. Like it's just
Speaker 3: like like you're just saying flaws as like to lack
Speaker 3: of lack of flaws as reasons. Not that I'm saying
Speaker 3: like anybody is flawless, but you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: Like they're they're pointing out like a shitty thing to
Speaker 3: be like greedy or selfish and being like, well, they're
Speaker 3: not greedy or selfish. Guess we better kill them and
Speaker 3: take their shit.
Speaker 2: And to be clear, I agree that selfishness is at
Speaker 2: the bottom of civilization, but that's distinct my own negative
Speaker 2: feelings about civilization.
Speaker 3: You do live in the woods with your dog.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, and again it's definitions of things, And I
Speaker 2: also want to point out that it would be generally
Speaker 2: dangerous to specifically take Western European concepts and apply them
Speaker 2: wholeheartedly to different indigenous groups. It is absolutely true about
Speaker 2: things like being held in common and them not being capitalist.
Speaker 2: Absolutely it would be a I don't want to apply.
Speaker 3: To totally, Like I'm not trying to like put.
Speaker 2: No none of us, like giving them a hammer and sicks.
Speaker 3: I'm one hundred percent sure that there were, you know,
Speaker 3: people that there have been people in every civilization, every culture,
Speaker 3: every community, every house, like every every group of people
Speaker 3: bigger than one person who is like you've got somebody
Speaker 3: there who's the selfish piece of piece of shit.
Speaker 2: You know, you don't put them in charge of everything,
Speaker 2: and you try not.
Speaker 3: To put them in charge of everything and give them
Speaker 3: lots of guns and eighty guys. But like it's it's
Speaker 3: just so fascinating to me that like in this racist
Speaker 3: conception of indigenous people that like white Americans are coming
Speaker 3: up with, they are saying things that would normally be
Speaker 3: how you would say somebody is cool, like oh yeah,
Speaker 3: real selfless guy would be normally a thing you'd say
Speaker 3: about a great person.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Not in the Protestant worth ethic.
Speaker 3: Land, Yeah, not if they're doing it and not if
Speaker 3: they're doing it on land that we want.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, okay, And while we're talking about communism or
Speaker 2: while it's the.
Speaker 3: Are you gonna work the industrial workers of the world
Speaker 3: into this story?
Speaker 2: Yes, but it wasn't on purpose. But what I'm going
Speaker 2: to say is mostly right.
Speaker 3: Now, who's got the bingo cards?
Speaker 2: So we're into the eighteen eighties and labor movement in
Speaker 2: the US is starting to pick up and starting to
Speaker 2: kick ass. You want to know what the eighteen eighties
Speaker 2: radicals had to say about indigenous resistance.
Speaker 3: I think that it was bad.
Speaker 2: Nothing. I can't find anything.
Speaker 3: Yoh, that's bad.
Speaker 2: Actually that is bad. That's what I'm saying now. I'm
Speaker 2: certain it exists. I have not read every piece of
Speaker 2: eighteen eighties thing I but I talked to my like
Speaker 2: signal Chat of history nerds, and I like, the fuck.
Speaker 3: Am I not doing Signal Chat of History nerds.
Speaker 2: I'll talk about this later.
Speaker 3: This is the most unkind thing you've ever said to me.
Speaker 2: And what I do know is that in Mexico, we've
Speaker 2: talked about this before on the show, indigenous folks and
Speaker 2: anarchists are already working together, like ten years, twenty years,
Speaker 2: before this to resist the state and doing all this
Speaker 2: like amazing shit. In Mexico, you have the black indigenous anarchists,
Speaker 2: Lucy Parsons, who's doing stuff in Chicago. But this is
Speaker 2: not this is not tied into her indigenousity, and she
Speaker 2: is mostly tied into the labor movement of European immigrants.
Speaker 2: A couple decades later, the Industrial Workers of the World,
Speaker 2: Thank You, are founded in part by Lucy Parson. I
Speaker 2: knew it would fight for anti racist unionism with all
Speaker 2: sorts of folks, and this will include doing a lot
Speaker 2: of like organizing in the mines in the Southwest, with
Speaker 2: a lot of indigenous people and indigenous miners. But it
Speaker 2: is that is decades later. By and large, the thing
Speaker 2: that European radicals were doing in the US was colonizing.
Speaker 2: They were settling. And this was the era of utopian politics,
Speaker 2: the idea that anarchists and socialists and communists and shit
Speaker 2: would find quote empty areas and set up utopian societies.
Speaker 2: A bunch of these happened every now, and the people
Speaker 2: ask like, what am I going to cover this or
Speaker 2: that one on the show? And I'm like, never been
Speaker 2: quite sure because I'm kind of like I think they're bad,
Speaker 2: like I think that it's cool people doing bad things,
Speaker 2: you know. Yeah, and more or less all of these fail.
Speaker 2: A couple weeks earlier, I should this out at the
Speaker 2: end of the last episode on it could happen here.
Speaker 2: Mia Wong covered really well how the colonize and oppressed
Speaker 2: so quickly become the colonizers and oppressors. Like how Irish Americans. Eh,
Speaker 2: I told you I'd bring in Irish Americans in child.
Speaker 2: Irish Americans were so fucking shitty on colonization and race
Speaker 2: issues in the United States right and continue to be unfortunately,
Speaker 2: even while the Irish who stayed in Ireland are consistently
Speaker 2: the only large population of white people who weren't wildly
Speaker 2: fucking embarrassing right.
Speaker 3: Now, it's true.
Speaker 2: And in short, you've got a ton of communities that
Speaker 2: sometimes rule like the Quakers and the anarchists, and shit out,
Speaker 2: they're grabbing land like everyone else.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Once indigenous people got more caught up into the capitalist system,
Speaker 2: they were more involved in the anti racist unions, and
Speaker 2: in the modern political climate, there's a great deal of
Speaker 2: overlap between indigenous environmentalists and leftist and anarchist communities. Is
Speaker 2: Land back and decolonization and become more and more central
Speaker 2: to leftist anti authoritarian analysis.
Speaker 3: But it's often just lip service, though I know it's
Speaker 3: something that I see a lot of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm not trying to be to be like
Speaker 3: too overly critical, but I see a lot.
Speaker 5: Of verbal attention paid to the idea of like doing
Speaker 5: land acknowledgments versus you know, material change being pushed for.
Speaker 2: I'm speaking mostly with my experiences in kind of a
Speaker 2: direct environmental movement which has become more and more indigenous
Speaker 2: led and more and more like working hard to adopt
Speaker 2: a decolonial framework, and I challenge us to continue to
Speaker 2: do that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, it's totally out there.
Speaker 2: That's the culture that I'm more steeped in direct action wise.
Speaker 3: But I think you're right now, And if you're talking
Speaker 3: if we're talking about people who are actually like doing
Speaker 3: the direct action, then like, yeah, I think that's true. Yeah,
Speaker 3: not talking about my favorite people to organize with when
Speaker 3: I talk about the people who love to do land
Speaker 3: acknowledgements and don't love to do anything of material help.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, there's a lot of complicated conversations about around
Speaker 2: the politics of land acknowledgments. And I'll just point that
Speaker 2: out without weighing in. I just try and kind of
Speaker 2: keep on top of what's happening with it. But it's
Speaker 2: so back to the nineteenth century.
Speaker 3: Too early to insert a plug for going to landback
Speaker 3: dot org and giving them some money.
Speaker 2: No, you're never too never ever to Yeah.
Speaker 3: If you've ever done a land acknowledgment, go to land
Speaker 3: back dot or some money.
Speaker 2: And it's not inherently bad, it's just like it's complicated. No, No,
Speaker 2: it's a good thing to do Land acknowledgments.
Speaker 3: It should be accompanied by action, and in this that's
Speaker 3: an action you can do while you listen to this podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean you can do a lot of actions while
Speaker 3: you listen to this podcast. I'm not your dad. I'm
Speaker 3: not going to tell you not to you know, do
Speaker 3: anything else.
Speaker 2: But you've heard it here first, Miriam is your dad.
Speaker 3: I think I said I'm not your dad, but you
Speaker 3: know I can't check. I'm not going to verify that.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, I won't do a paternity test for
Speaker 2: everyone in the country like I keep trying to get
Speaker 2: you to do.
Speaker 3: Not until we're on live TV.
Speaker 2: All right, fine, all right, In eighteen eighty seven, Congress
Speaker 2: passed the DAWs Act, designed to destroy indigenous methods of
Speaker 2: land allocation. I mean, every male one hundred and sixty acres,
Speaker 2: with all the surplus going to the government to be
Speaker 2: distributed among white settlers. The surplus is most of the land.
Speaker 2: The Lakota refused the Allotment Act successfully until I think
Speaker 2: about nineteen sixteen to World War One. By eighteen eighty nine,
Speaker 2: the government is like, can we please have.
Speaker 3: No Well, hang a note about those allotments that I
Speaker 3: think is really important. The acreage given to people is
Speaker 3: not always or even I think usually contiguous. Oh shit, really,
Speaker 3: so like when you have one hundred and sixty acres,
Speaker 3: it could be like you have ten acres over here
Speaker 3: and like four over there, and like it's very far away,
Speaker 3: and like you can't work with that, right, it's not
Speaker 3: practical or even really possible to like use that land
Speaker 3: if it's spread out like that. And so that makes
Speaker 3: it easy for that land to be gradually sold off
Speaker 3: to white people, because that's really the one of the
Speaker 3: only ways to survive off of it.
Speaker 2: In a lot of contexts, No, that makes sense, and yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of it. This weird thing where like, oh,
Speaker 2: we're going to force you all to be farmers, but
Speaker 2: you also can't be farmers. We actually just wanted to
Speaker 2: starve to death.
Speaker 3: We're going to force you to be farmers on shitty,
Speaker 3: non arable land that.
Speaker 2: Is non contiguous.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not where you live.
Speaker 2: Yeah. By eighteen eighty nine, the government was like, can
Speaker 2: we please have nine million of your remaining acres? And
Speaker 2: Red Cloud and Sitting Bowl are like, what each shit?
Speaker 2: Fuck you?
Speaker 3: But since you asked so nicely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to quote Sitting Bowl directly, who said a little
Speaker 2: bit more eloquently than the words I just put in
Speaker 2: his mouth. When the white people invaded our Black Hills country,
Speaker 2: our treaty agreements were still in force, but the Great Father,
Speaker 2: the President of the United States, ignored it. Therefore, I
Speaker 2: do not wish to consider any proposition to seed any
Speaker 2: portion of our tribe beholdings to the Great Father, my
Speaker 2: friends and relatives. Let us stand as one family as
Speaker 2: we did before the white people led us astray. And
Speaker 2: so the land didn't sell. So the US was like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's fine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they were like, okay, we respect, we respect your No,
Speaker 3: if there's one thing we know how to do, here
Speaker 3: in the United States, it's take no for an answer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they just took it instead. Once again, they
Speaker 2: ignored the eighteen sixty eight treaty and President Harrison divide
Speaker 2: up the reservation into seven smaller reservations with like with
Speaker 2: lots of land that's no longer in it at all.
Speaker 2: The Oglalla people were forced onto the Pine Ridge Reservation,
Speaker 2: which is going to be central to the more of
Speaker 2: the story next week. And everyone is forced to abandon
Speaker 2: their language in old ways and send their kids to
Speaker 2: boarding schools. And it's just more fucking genocide. Fewer and fewer.
Speaker 3: I'm sure most people listening No, but like boarding schools
Speaker 3: in this context is like, oh yeah, yeah, child sized
Speaker 3: concentration camps.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And it's specifically, this is the this is the
Speaker 2: era of what it's always been. This is the era
Speaker 2: of kill the Indian to save the man. This is
Speaker 2: the era of like, we will strip away your culture,
Speaker 2: we will send you, we will make sure you never
Speaker 2: learn your language.
Speaker 3: What what organization better to trust your children with? The
Speaker 3: Catholic Church.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Fewer and fewer folks are able to remain traditionalists
Speaker 2: aka still doing shit the way that they've always done it.
Speaker 2: It's also this division of their land. It's about American
Speaker 2: fucking politics. I Like, the Republicans were losing control over
Speaker 2: the government and they were like, well, what if we
Speaker 2: made some new states, like a couple of Dakota's like
Speaker 2: named after the people were getting rid of, like we
Speaker 2: could hold on the power for a little bit longer.
Speaker 3: And over I hadn't even you know.
Speaker 2: That, I know, I like this one came out of
Speaker 2: left field when I when I learned this, because I'm like,
Speaker 2: over all, the Republicans in the nineteenth century are like
Speaker 2: usually the the better side, right, Like they're on like
Speaker 2: better has.
Speaker 3: Anyone who's ever argued with an idiot Republican knows, Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: But they were also the party of big business and
Speaker 2: monopolies and like anti populist, and they were the most
Speaker 2: aggressive against indigenous people because you can't win with an
Speaker 2: American political party.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're bad American political parties. They're uh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Any any that are good kind of fizzle out around
Speaker 3: the attempting to get somebody elected to local office.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, point. But you know what is good unreservedly
Speaker 2: and wholeheartedly, I can say products, Yeah, the concept of
Speaker 2: stuff love a product the accumulation of stuff.
Speaker 3: You never steered us wrong before.
Speaker 2: I see no reason why it would. Now here you
Speaker 2: go and we're back. So things are looking real bad
Speaker 2: for folks out west. The new reservations aren't big enough
Speaker 2: to support a nomadic hunting lifestyle. The land is really
Speaker 2: shit for crops. The government isn't giving them nearly as
Speaker 2: much food and food and tools as they promised. They're
Speaker 2: just trying to kill them, all right, They're just trying
Speaker 2: to fucking and people are really fucking down and out.
Speaker 2: When a great shaman stepped onto the scene out west
Speaker 2: further west with a new religious practice designed to unite
Speaker 2: the indigenous people, stopping their intertribal and inter nation war,
Speaker 2: designed to usher in a golden era of peace and
Speaker 2: reunite people with they're dead loved ones the Ghost Dance
Speaker 2: and the Ghost Dance is complicated and interesting. It is
Speaker 2: almost certainly a product of syncretism, the fusing of Christian
Speaker 2: especially Catholic beliefs, with local practices. The thing that comes
Speaker 2: up constantly on the show probably deserves a Bingos square
Speaker 2: right next to the industrial workers of the world. It's,
Speaker 2: at the same time entirely indigenous. It does not tie
Speaker 2: into the larger church structure from Europe at all, and
Speaker 2: it has developed out of traditional practices, but it takes
Speaker 2: theological concepts from Christianity. There's this northern Paiute guy named
Speaker 2: Wovoka or Jack Wilson when he's dealing with white people,
Speaker 2: and he was schooled in Christian theology as a kid,
Speaker 2: but he is at his heart a traditionalist. He's also
Speaker 2: renowned for his supernatural powers. Specifically, he can control the
Speaker 2: weather during a solar eclipse. He has a vision and
Speaker 2: has a vision of the resurrection of the dead and
Speaker 2: the departure of white people from North America. All folks
Speaker 2: had to do was live right peacefully by and large,
Speaker 2: and perform a new dance, the ghost Dance. There's more
Speaker 2: to it than that. About like in the sort of
Speaker 2: theological framework that is built out of this, the country
Speaker 2: would belong to indigenous folks under Wovoka, the other half
Speaker 2: would belong to white people under the president out East.
Speaker 2: Jesus is mentioned, but like all religious stuff, sounds silly
Speaker 2: when you take it out of context. And I believe
Speaker 2: very strongly in judging religions not on their stated set
Speaker 2: of beliefs. But rather what their institutions do and what
Speaker 2: their practitioners do. And the Ghost Dance was a traditionalist
Speaker 2: revival that united various tribes and nations in the hope
Speaker 2: of reversing colonization. So fuck you.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It spread across the country, and it helped unify groups
Speaker 2: of groups of people and helped people cope with just
Speaker 2: the incredible amount of trauma that they've been living through.
Speaker 2: And it came to the Lacota people and a lot
Speaker 2: of them were into it, especially traditionalists. This was not
Speaker 2: like universal. There are people who are like, some traditionalists
Speaker 2: are like, now, we're not into this, you know, like
Speaker 2: because it is well, it syncratic and it has like
Speaker 2: all of these other already.
Speaker 3: Say what what group the originator of this was?
Speaker 2: You did say, yeah, roughly you was now northern California.
Speaker 2: I believe the US freaks the fuck out over ghost Dance.
Speaker 2: This is like Satanic panic times a million. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: the thing that they're freaked out by is a almost
Speaker 2: completely pacifist, heavily Christian influenced movement. You think that the
Speaker 2: US government would be like, oh, this is what we want,
Speaker 2: but they hated it because it threatened to reverse genocide
Speaker 2: and cultural erasure because it was traditionalist and it united
Speaker 2: all the indigenous people. You know. Also, and there's like
Speaker 2: some stuff that people talk about how like people say
Speaker 2: that wearing the ghost shirt from the dance makes you
Speaker 2: immune to bullets, and so like that belief or the
Speaker 2: b like gets to the white people and they're like, oh, fuck,
Speaker 2: they're gonna attack us, you know. And there's some talk
Speaker 2: about this leading to armed resistance against the Americans, but
Speaker 2: most of that talk is coming from the aforementioned Americans.
Speaker 3: Oh that's interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is a resistance movement, but it is a
Speaker 2: peaceful resistance movement, and it is about let's live right,
Speaker 2: you know. Thousands of troops are mobilized and sent to
Speaker 2: like the Lakota specifically, just.
Speaker 3: Yeah, cartoonishly evil the United States again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's like all of these there's even some
Speaker 2: like id En ended up writing them into the script.
Speaker 2: But there's like occasional like I remember it's the Bureau
Speaker 2: of Indian Affairs at this point, but there's like occasional
Speaker 2: like government people who are part of this and like
Speaker 2: priests and shit, who are like, no, it's fine, they're
Speaker 2: not just leave them alone. It's fine, you know, and
Speaker 2: these are not the voices.
Speaker 3: That get listened to, right, the US is like, we
Speaker 3: never do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, totally. They go to arrest sitting bowl basically
Speaker 2: because he's a traditionalist and he's associated with ghost dancing.
Speaker 2: So they're like, sorry, but we got to take you
Speaker 2: to jail just just to you know, just we're gonna
Speaker 2: show up with like a fuck ton of guys and
Speaker 2: some machine guns just to take you to jail. Just
Speaker 2: to jail. Don't worry.
Speaker 3: That's the normal way people get arrested, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so. I'm like thinking about the times
Speaker 2: I got arrested. There were a lot of cops when
Speaker 2: I got arrested, but I've.
Speaker 3: Been arrested a few times and there were no machine
Speaker 3: guns in any of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, totally, And so oh god, they might have
Speaker 2: been cannon with grape shot. I don't want to like
Speaker 2: get my machine.
Speaker 3: Anywhere arrest or sitting bulls.
Speaker 2: No, no, I sitting bulls. Yeah no. If they had
Speaker 2: cannon and grape shot at my arrest, I uh hop
Speaker 2: back into my time machine and to be all.
Speaker 3: It's gonna say, I'm surprised I haven't heard that story before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I haven't come out of the time traveler yet.
Speaker 2: Oh no, wait, I was trying to convince everyone I'm
Speaker 2: a vampire has been around for a long time. I'm
Speaker 2: gott keep my story straight. I'm going to convince anyone
Speaker 2: of any bullshit plausible.
Speaker 3: All of those those tin type photographs you have of
Speaker 3: yourself should uh yeah, should help with that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly very few people who are born it is.
Speaker 1: Say, one hundred percent believable. Yeah, so unbelievably credible.
Speaker 2: I threw the bomb at Haymarket. That's the rumor I've
Speaker 2: been trying to spread. I like it.
Speaker 3: That's a good one. I mean you, I mean and
Speaker 3: this is this is more a function of your having
Speaker 3: been a cool a cool punk for like a lot
Speaker 3: of your life. But like you have enough stories then
Speaker 3: it's like a little plausible that Like, wait a second,
Speaker 3: is she telling me like three hundred years worth of
Speaker 3: stories of just trying to make it sound like she
Speaker 3: had a super wild teens to twenties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, yeah, Like it's nineteen eighties eight, not seventeen eighties.
Speaker 2: Don't worry, I got it.
Speaker 1: I got to accuse of being a vampire in high school.
Speaker 1: But that's because Twilight was popular, and I was pale.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, and Sparkle was that person hitting on you?
Speaker 3: Because I think that's what was happening with Twilight.
Speaker 2: Who knows, certainly not me as a teenager would not
Speaker 2: have known if someone was hitting on me. That's exactly
Speaker 2: my point. I was like, who knows?
Speaker 3: I barely tell if somebody's hitting on me right now?
Speaker 2: Now enough, all right? So they show up to arrest
Speaker 2: sitting bowl and these are Indian bureau cops, which is
Speaker 2: they are other Indigenous folks who are now working for
Speaker 2: the US government, which is like one of the things
Speaker 2: actually that we had talked about, for example, is that
Speaker 2: one of the reasons, like the British Empire, you know,
Speaker 2: conquered half the fucking world, and they had like a
Speaker 2: smaller standing army than like anyone else because they got
Speaker 2: the Indigenous people various places to become their cops, right, right.
Speaker 2: And so when they first show up to arrest sitting Bowl.
Speaker 2: There's a bunch of different versions of the story, but
Speaker 2: the one that I find most, you know, the one
Speaker 2: I'm telling and the one that feels the most accurate
Speaker 2: to me. They show up to arrest him and he's
Speaker 2: like fine, like fuck it, I'm like fifty six or whatever.
Speaker 2: I'm not looking for trouble. I'll come with you. And
Speaker 2: his son is like what no, fuck that, And then
Speaker 2: the other versions, he's like stalling. He's like, oh, let
Speaker 2: me get my things, which is fine too, Like, don't
Speaker 2: get me wrong, he could resist arrest as much as
Speaker 2: he wants. I don't care. Like I'm pro him, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm pro Sitting Bull, and I'm pro resisting arrest
Speaker 3: if that's a decision you're willing to make for yourself.
Speaker 2: Your dad has now told you, the listener, to resist
Speaker 2: arrest because we are not a lawyer, but we are
Speaker 2: your lawyer. We're not yours and we're not a lawyer.
Speaker 3: But hell, i am your dad the lawyer, and I'm
Speaker 3: here to say yeah.
Speaker 2: So a bunch of his supporters surround the hundred plus
Speaker 2: troops who had showed up to arrest Sitting Bull, and
Speaker 2: there's like maybe the sun shoots, like blah blah blah
Speaker 2: blah blah. A firefight breaks out. Sitting Bull is shot
Speaker 2: by a soldier, supposedly by accident, and he dies in
Speaker 2: the ensuing battle. Eight and eight resistors, including Sitting Bull,
Speaker 2: die and just because there's no other good place to
Speaker 2: shoe in, shoehorn in this quote by sitting bul that
Speaker 2: I like, I'm going to do it here.
Speaker 3: Every time you've stopped to read a quote, the quote
Speaker 3: has been fucking incredible. So yeah, I'm here for it.
Speaker 2: What treaty that the whites have kept has the red
Speaker 2: man broken? Not one? What treaty that the white man
Speaker 2: ever made with us? Have they kept?
Speaker 3: Not one?
Speaker 2: When I was a boy, the Sioux owned the world.
Speaker 2: The sun rose and said, on their land, and they
Speaker 2: sent ten thousand men to battle. Where are the warriors today?
Speaker 2: Who slew them? Where are our lands? Who owns them?
Speaker 2: What white man can say I ever stole his land
Speaker 2: or a penny of his money? Yet they say I
Speaker 2: am a thief? What white woman, however lonely, was ever
Speaker 2: captive or insulted by me? Yet they say I am
Speaker 2: a bad Indian? What white man has ever seen me drunk?
Speaker 2: Who has ever come to me hungry and unfed? Left unfed?
Speaker 2: Who has ever seen me beat my wife or abuse
Speaker 2: my children? What law have I broken? Is it wrong
Speaker 2: for me to love my own? Is it wicked for
Speaker 2: me because my skin is red? Because I am Lakota
Speaker 2: because I was born where my father died, because I
Speaker 2: would die for my people in my country. And yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: he didn't steal shit. So ghost dancers wildly impoverished Lakota
Speaker 2: folks trying to figure out how to fucking survive. They
Speaker 2: have some guns because they hunt.
Speaker 3: It's the nineteenth century. Everybody has a gun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well you know how gun control really exists in
Speaker 2: this country only for marginalized folks. Yes, the US was like,
Speaker 2: oh shit, we can't let have these We can't let
Speaker 2: these people who rely on hunting have guns.
Speaker 3: You can't let these people were trying to kill have guns.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So then there's a camp of people on
Speaker 2: the Wounded Knee. It's December twenty ninth, nineteen eighty. It's
Speaker 2: about three hundred people. They're mostly Mini Kanju Lakota, with
Speaker 2: some fugitives from the Hunk Papa Lakota, which is sitting
Speaker 2: both people who fled after his murder. Soldiers show up
Speaker 2: and are like, give up your guns, you ghost dancers,
Speaker 2: you evil scary ghost dancers and best again, a million
Speaker 2: versions of what's about to happen. They go around and
Speaker 2: they're like and some people are like, yeah, we've got
Speaker 2: some guns here, just like some guns. And they're like,
Speaker 2: all right, we're searching your shit. And then they like
Speaker 2: search and they find some more guns, and they're like
Speaker 2: mostly just old like shitty honeting rifles and stuff, right,
Speaker 2: And so most of the people end up disarmed. And
Speaker 2: there's one man. His name is Black Coyote, and there
Speaker 2: are a couple accounts of who he was. He was
Speaker 2: definitely young, he was probably deaf. He might have been
Speaker 2: the deaf mute son of Sitting Bul, but I don't
Speaker 2: believe that that's the case. I believe he was a mute. Sorry,
Speaker 2: I believe he was deaf, but not mute. And I
Speaker 2: don't believe he was the son of Sitting Bowl, just
Speaker 2: out of most of the versions of the story do
Speaker 2: not present him that way. But he doesn't know what
Speaker 2: the fuck is happening, and he doesn't speak English as
Speaker 2: far as I canna understand either, and so he's like
Speaker 2: what the fuck is happening, and he's like waving his
Speaker 2: gun around. He's like, you can't have this gun. It
Speaker 2: costs me a lot of fucking money, right, But he's
Speaker 2: not saying it English. And the soldiers probably wouldn't have
Speaker 2: cared anyway, and they're like, He's like, you gotta give
Speaker 2: me money for this gun. You can't just fucking have it.
Speaker 2: You know. There is a struggle where they try to
Speaker 2: take the gun. The gun goes off. I don't believe
Speaker 2: it hits anyone full support if he just also was
Speaker 2: like fuck you and shot them again. Whatever, But all
Speaker 2: accounts say that this was an accidental discharge if it
Speaker 2: was him who fired the first round at all. However
Speaker 2: it started, the army opened fire. Sometimes it's called a battle,
Speaker 2: sometimes it's not.
Speaker 3: And basically one side is being disarmed, like in the
Speaker 3: process of being disarmed. Battle seems like a right, real
Speaker 3: that's a real choice to call out a battle.
Speaker 2: The only reason that I sometimes like I have some
Speaker 2: sympathy for it is to be like to not just
Speaker 2: present people as victims.
Speaker 3: Totally and like people can fight back, yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: and but like still like calling it a battle, Like
Speaker 3: does that both sides came equally armed?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so this gets framed as the deadliest mass
Speaker 2: shooting in US history, And I think that that is
Speaker 2: a reasonable thing to say about it, because it is
Speaker 2: a mass shooting and is the largest one in US history. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And it's a massacre. I've read one hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: three and I've heard three hundred Indigenous people were killed.
Speaker 2: Twenty five US soldiers got got. Most versions agree that
Speaker 2: most either all over, most of the soldiers died from
Speaker 2: friendly fire because they didn't like start off in battle lines.
Speaker 2: They just were like shooting, you know, and they were like, ah, whatever,
Speaker 2: and they're just like shooting in the crowd and there's
Speaker 2: like cannons of grape shot and shit on the fucking hills,
Speaker 2: like shooting into it all and like and then even
Speaker 2: after the initial whatever, they are chasing people down and
Speaker 2: murdering non combatants and infants and shit in the snows.
Speaker 2: It's you know, at the end of December, like for
Speaker 2: miles around, they just do. It's bad, really bad. Is
Speaker 2: this a twenty of the soldiers were given the Medal
Speaker 2: of Honor.
Speaker 3: Jesus fucking Christ. Yeah, I think that is a fact
Speaker 3: that I knew at some point. It's just this isn't
Speaker 3: like a real piece of shit country. We got a
Speaker 3: real piece of shit nation. I don't want to say
Speaker 3: country because I feel like that could mean like the space,
Speaker 3: but nation, the political entity, real piece of shit. And
Speaker 3: I don't. I don't think it's as good.
Speaker 2: No, not not into it. I'm not excited whenever people
Speaker 2: are like, yeah, but you wouldn't be here of one
Speaker 2: for them, Like, okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for a
Speaker 3: lot of things, like.
Speaker 2: Or maybe I would and I just would be fine,
Speaker 2: or maybe I wouldn't. I don't fucking care whatever, Like.
Speaker 3: That's a that's a weird argument that brings into question
Speaker 3: a lot of things about causality that you, as a
Speaker 3: time traveler, are much better rep to speak on than me.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Black Elk was also at this and a bullet
Speaker 2: grazed his head, but he survived. There's no justice for it,
Speaker 2: of course.
Speaker 3: Yeah. When when twenty people are being given the medal
Speaker 3: of honor, I doubt that the other people they are
Speaker 3: being prosecuted for their crimes. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think later eventually the government like apologized or like
Speaker 2: one hundred years later, but they still didn't rescind medals
Speaker 2: of honor. You know, folks suffered badly, and I'm sure.
Speaker 3: There's like elementary goals named after those guys or some shit.
Speaker 2: Probably I don't fucking know. Oh, it's also it was
Speaker 2: the seventh Cavalry. It was the same unit that like
Speaker 2: got more or less wiped out in Customers Less Stand
Speaker 2: and uh and so it was like, this is part
Speaker 2: of why they're like fucking revenging and shit, you know, gotcha.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we have to take revenge for that time we
Speaker 3: charged headlong into a thing. No, you know, everybody told
Speaker 3: us not to do and got our asses handed to us.
Speaker 3: We must take revenge, yeah, for our mistake.
Speaker 2: Yeah, someone killed a serial rapist and now we have
Speaker 2: to go murder entire villages of people to prove that
Speaker 2: we're the good guys.
Speaker 3: It's a real, real strong sense of justice at work. Obviously,
Speaker 3: folks suffered badly. People died of tuberculosis, cooped up into
Speaker 3: towns with no amenities. They were forbidden from sweat, lodges,
Speaker 3: bead work, rituals.
Speaker 2: Of all kinds. Their children were stolen into boarding schools.
Speaker 2: It took until nineteen twenty four for Indigenous Americans to
Speaker 2: get American citizenship. This is, of course, also a trap
Speaker 2: to steal all their remaining land. In nineteen twenty seven,
Speaker 2: Mount Rushmore was announced by President Coolidge. In nineteen thirty four,
Speaker 2: the Indian Reorganization Act was passed that gave people the
Speaker 2: right to live in worship traditionally and give the reservations
Speaker 2: a certain amount of self governance. This supposedly nice thing
Speaker 2: also sucked. It was done for bad reasons. To quote
Speaker 2: the book In the Spirit of Crazy Horse by Peter
Speaker 2: Matheson quote. The traditional forms of tribal government were replaced
Speaker 2: by Indian chartered corporations, complete with constitutions set up for
Speaker 2: their benefit under the auspices of the Bureau of Indian Affairs,
Speaker 2: and an intensely democratic people was subjected to the unde
Speaker 2: democratic decisions of so called tribal councils that mostly reflected
Speaker 2: the wishes of the white man's church and state. While
Speaker 2: some tribal councils were and are strong and constructive in
Speaker 2: forwarding the best interests of their people, too many others
Speaker 2: became tame puppet governments. For the BIA and the Black
Speaker 2: Hills is now watched over by four great white heads
Speaker 2: carved into a holy mountain. Those mountains are in turn
Speaker 2: watched over like.
Speaker 3: A fucking ugly like bullshit like novelty roadside attraction is
Speaker 3: basically what Mount Rushmore is like. That was a not
Speaker 3: only like a vandalism of a sacred site on landstolen
Speaker 3: through genocide, but just real bad art.
Speaker 2: Yesso, No, just gaudy and it's and yeah, truly fuck it.
Speaker 2: And those fourheads are in turn watched over by a
Speaker 2: fuck ton of security less people determine that maybe the
Speaker 2: mountain will look better without them there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe maybe a big guillotine. They're on the lookout
Speaker 3: for big guillotines, are there?
Speaker 2: John fire Lame Dear said, what Mount Rushmore means is quote,
Speaker 2: it means that these big white faces are telling us. First,
Speaker 2: we gave you Indians a treat that you could keep
Speaker 2: these black hills forever as long as the sun would shine,
Speaker 2: in exchange for all the Dakotas, Wyoming and Montana. Then
Speaker 2: we found the gold and took this last piece of
Speaker 2: land because we were stronger, and there were more of
Speaker 2: us and than there were of you, and because we
Speaker 2: had cannons and gatling guns while you hadn't even progressed
Speaker 2: far enough to make a steel knife. And when you
Speaker 2: didn't want to leave, we wiped you out, and those
Speaker 2: of you who survived we put on reservations. And then
Speaker 2: we took the gold out a billion bucks and we
Speaker 2: aren't through yet, And because we like the tourist dollars too,
Speaker 2: we have major sacred black hills into one vast disney Land.
Speaker 2: And after we did all this, we carved up this mountain,
Speaker 2: the dwelling place of your spirits, and put our four
Speaker 2: gleaming white faces here. We are the conquerors. So completely
Speaker 2: unrelated to that. You see the clip of the Israeli
Speaker 2: media of settlers there saying that they should level the
Speaker 2: Gaza Strip and turn it into an amusement park.
Speaker 3: What an unrelated and yes and yeah random story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's almost like history is important to learn from.
Speaker 2: Yayh well that's part two.
Speaker 3: You're not Yeah that that's part two. Yep, Okay, you're
Speaker 3: gonna You're gonna make me wait a week. Make Usually
Speaker 3: usually when we like do a cliffhanger at the end
Speaker 3: of an episode, it's fake, it's fiction. Yeah, but Martyred
Speaker 3: is genuinely gonna leave me hanging until next week. I know,
Speaker 3: I know that the listeners are always in that position,
Speaker 3: but like in this case, it affects me.
Speaker 2: I know, you were supposed to be the privileged one
Speaker 2: and here you are.
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry, Miriam.
Speaker 2: And if you want a spoiler for it, Dear, dear listener,
Speaker 2: you can go read about Peltier and the support campaign
Speaker 2: and the campaign to get him freed. He's been in
Speaker 2: prison for almost fifty years and he shouldn't be and
Speaker 2: there's a lot of stuff that's happening now that also
Speaker 2: I think that people should pay attention to and remember that, Yeah,
Speaker 2: this is I don't know, I don't have a good
Speaker 2: rousing conclusion.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I think like it whether it sounds kind
Speaker 3: of like you're going is to say, like, I don't know,
Speaker 3: maybe I'm putting words in your mouth where I thought
Speaker 3: you were going. Is like the one of the biggest
Speaker 3: lies of American history about colonization is that like we
Speaker 3: did it and it's done, and like we did do it,
Speaker 3: and it is and it has been done, Like those
Speaker 3: crimes happened and those people are dead and those atrocities
Speaker 3: were committed. But like, colonization is not a static fact.
Speaker 3: It is it is something that can be undone, which
Speaker 3: I think we talked about at the end of the
Speaker 3: episode last week because it's kind of the only thing
Speaker 3: you can say at the end of something like this.
Speaker 2: Totally and then you know it's also worth looking at
Speaker 2: the world at where genocide's also happening and look to
Speaker 2: see what you can do to talk about it, to
Speaker 2: support people who are fighting it, and to fight it
Speaker 2: because that's just bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, we're taking a bold anti genocide stance over here.
Speaker 6: You would think that wouldn't be a bold stand fucking
Speaker 6: non controversial, right, You would think what a weird fighting
Speaker 6: And yet I, I mean, clearly I'm the party most
Speaker 6: affected by all of this, but it's really weird to
Speaker 6: just suddenly be like, wait, I'm used to having like
Speaker 6: kind of wild beliefs that most of the people around
Speaker 6: me don't support.
Speaker 2: But there's some I thought we agreed on, you know,
Speaker 2: like no genocide, collective punishment bad. I thought we all
Speaker 2: knew that.
Speaker 3: I thought we were against bombing hospitals as like a species.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, totally, that is what felt like a species
Speaker 2: wide thing. It should be the exception the people who
Speaker 2: are like that's good anyway, whatever, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Those people we shouldn't hang out with. Yeah, anyway, go
Speaker 3: to m AP dot or dot slash, dot slash. You
Speaker 3: can't add a fuck saying a URL is hard. Medical
Speaker 3: aid for Palestinians. Go there, give them money, yeah, fuck.
Speaker 2: And support people who are. If you're not doing some
Speaker 2: of the direct action that's happening where you live, support
Speaker 2: the people who are doing it. Boost voices, and don't
Speaker 2: let people make this into what it's not about. Don't
Speaker 2: let people either claim that it's antisemitic to fight on
Speaker 2: behalf of Palestinian people. And also don't let actual anti
Speaker 2: Semitic ideas creep into the yeah pople around you.
Speaker 3: Both of those. But you know, if anybody says you're
Speaker 3: being anti Semitic for saying that it's not good to
Speaker 3: bomb hospitals, tell him your dad, Miriam, who is also
Speaker 3: your lawyer, said that they were wrong.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, we'll see all the area.
Speaker 1: Miriam is dead dy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true. You're gonna have You're so glad you're
Speaker 2: not on social You're gonna be so glad you're not
Speaker 2: you're not on Twitter because you just said that you
Speaker 2: didn't know when people were going to hit on you.
Speaker 2: It is so many people would hit on you based
Speaker 2: on this.
Speaker 1: Miriam is daddy. It is known.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I made a terrible mistake, not the first, won't
Speaker 3: be the last.
Speaker 2: All right, see everyone next week.
Speaker 1: Bye bye, cool people who did cool Stuff is a
Speaker 1: production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia dot com, or check
Speaker 1: us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts.