Speaker 1: This is Me Eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: folk bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
Speaker 1: can't predict anything. Presented by First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer.
Speaker 1: Everybody joined today by very special guest Taylor Keen. Oh Maha,
Speaker 1: Cherokee correct correct Part den is open, which we'll get into.
Speaker 1: I am I have part early homing it and then
Speaker 1: uh and then as all of us are. But you
Speaker 1: ever hear den is open? It's different, right, yeah, because
Speaker 1: you know you talk about folks like me wind up,
Speaker 1: Folks like me wind up throwing a little bit of Neanderthal.
Speaker 1: I've got Western Europeans. Oh you got a little of
Speaker 1: that too. Okay, we'll get to that. I've been a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't know what I'm not really clear
Speaker 1: what adnis open is other than I know it's another homedin.
Speaker 1: Like I did a fair better research last night because
Speaker 1: I really didn't know what it was. And I'm not
Speaker 1: saying I'm the expert now, but I had the same
Speaker 1: question just like if you were a dear today, if
Speaker 1: you were a dear today winding around, like let's say
Speaker 1: your white tailed deer and you wander around and like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's another kind of deer. It's a meal deer. He
Speaker 1: there's another kind of deer. It's a blacktail deer. Um. Once,
Speaker 1: by the time you could have been a homed in
Speaker 1: walking around, you have been Oh hey, it's another kind
Speaker 1: of homedy. We'll get to that. Um, Clay, you were
Speaker 1: on Rogan's podcast. Was that fun? Yeah? Well that's for sure,
Speaker 1: really unique experience. I listen to a little bit of it.
Speaker 1: I didn't quick because I got bored, mind you just
Speaker 1: I just haven't gotten through it yet. Oh you didn't quit.
Speaker 1: I thought you said you did quit because you got bored.
Speaker 1: I was like, well, okay, if if that was true,
Speaker 1: that was true, and it's not, I wouldn't have told
Speaker 1: you that. Yeah, let me give me a break. I
Speaker 1: have said something like, um, I just said something like
Speaker 1: good job, Clay. Yeah, I said that was a great job, Clay. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I I don't know. I thought it was good. We
Speaker 1: enjoy hanging out with him. Oh yeah, and and and
Speaker 1: I didn't get to spend a lot of time with
Speaker 1: Joe aside from just in the podcast. But unique experience
Speaker 1: going down there. I mean, you know, just being on
Speaker 1: his podcast was probably the it was. It was less
Speaker 1: It was less intimidating than I thought it would be.
Speaker 1: And I won't lie. I was slightly intimidated, but and
Speaker 1: and and just in a normal kind of way. But
Speaker 1: once once you got in there, Joe's a great guy
Speaker 1: to talk to, a great interviewer. He's very he's very
Speaker 1: generous and gracious. I did not know what he knew
Speaker 1: about me, so I didn't know what we were going
Speaker 1: to be talking about. You know. The conversation flowed along
Speaker 1: a pretty standard like Clay knew him talking point, you know,
Speaker 1: other than if there were a few there were a
Speaker 1: few curveballs which were fun, but no, Yeah, but Joe's
Speaker 1: like he's very I feel like he's as an interviewer,
Speaker 1: he's very sensitive to things. It's almost like he picks
Speaker 1: up things floating through the air. Like I feel like
Speaker 1: I could show him your thumb print and he'd be
Speaker 1: he'd tell you a bunch of like he tell you
Speaker 1: a bunch about the persons, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Like I feel like you could listen to episodes of
Speaker 1: bevery Grease podcast, listen to like two episodes of Grease
Speaker 1: podcast and kind of really like understand what to talk
Speaker 1: about what to ask. It's very sensitive that way. Sure,
Speaker 1: I can't tell what's there's a good there's good news
Speaker 1: and bad news. I want to talk about drought and heat,
Speaker 1: but I also want to talk about the t RCP
Speaker 1: land Access Appreciation thing. Here's the deal. Uh, this is
Speaker 1: gonna sound Montana centric, but understanding that it's it's not
Speaker 1: Montana centric. In the state of Montana, there's a program
Speaker 1: called the Block Management Access Program. And how it works
Speaker 1: is this. They take revenue drawn from people buying hunting licenses, okay,
Speaker 1: and they take this revenue and they enlist private landowners, ranchers, farmers,
Speaker 1: other private landowners. They enlist private landowners into the black
Speaker 1: Manager program. Once private land is in the Black Management program,
Speaker 1: you hunt it for free. So nonresident resident I mean
Speaker 1: everything we're talking about, everything from elk turkeys live on
Speaker 1: these places and you come and hunt Black management. And
Speaker 1: I think a lot of like a lot of things
Speaker 1: that are cool, such as national forests and other stuff.
Speaker 1: A lot of people kind of think that it must
Speaker 1: have like one day fallen from outer space and there
Speaker 1: it is, and they don't realize that's sort of like
Speaker 1: effort that goes into it. The landowners do get paid
Speaker 1: to enrolling black manage, but it trusts me, it is
Speaker 1: not enough to offset the inconvenience and in hassling risk.
Speaker 1: It's just like like, no one is going into black management, uh,
Speaker 1: licking their lips about how rich they're gonna yet it
Speaker 1: just doesn't work that way. It's an act of generosity
Speaker 1: to put your land in black management. Um. We got
Speaker 1: this idea from my brother who was involved in another
Speaker 1: carent incarnation. Where do you say carnation that's like a
Speaker 1: kind of condensed milk? What do you say like because
Speaker 1: it's not a reincarnation, which we got to talk about
Speaker 1: because that thing about weasels being doomed so well that
Speaker 1: some other days stay tuned for that. That's feel I'm
Speaker 1: gonna Phil get my interest meter out. When I talked
Speaker 1: about Phil hates that interest me. Um, what was I saying? Oh,
Speaker 1: so we're doing a thing called the t RCP Montana
Speaker 1: Farm and Ranch Hunter Access Appreciation Sweepsteaks finally crafted title
Speaker 1: Mind you Again, Montana. I think I came up with
Speaker 1: that was it was like, this is why happens on
Speaker 1: three people try to come up with the title together.
Speaker 1: It's called the Montana Farm and Ranch Hunter Access Appreciation
Speaker 1: sweep steaks. We have gone what what what? What are
Speaker 1: you smirking about over there? Phil, I'm just a mouthful
Speaker 1: of a name. Yeah, it's a great name. I like
Speaker 1: it because it lays it all out. You don't need
Speaker 1: a subtitle with a name like that, right. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: a sweepstakes donations. So we got all kinds of crazy things.
Speaker 1: You could win tons of things, and you buy tickets,
Speaker 1: and then what we're gonna do is we're gonna take
Speaker 1: all the money that we get from this, every last penny.
Speaker 1: We're doing this in conjunction with t RCP. Theodore rolls
Speaker 1: about conservation partnership in conjunctu with t RCP. You buy
Speaker 1: these tickets and you win a bunch of stuff, and
Speaker 1: then we're gonna take all the money and buy things
Speaker 1: to thank people who enroll their land in black management.
Speaker 1: We're not talking about sending them like coffee mugs and whatnot,
Speaker 1: like buying them farm and ranch equipment, gate mechanisms for
Speaker 1: you know, like uh, automatic gates, calf shelters, stuff people need,
Speaker 1: help them get stuff they actually need. That's going on
Speaker 1: right now up to when Kran entered by August one
Speaker 1: at midnight Eastern standard. Five dollars gets you one entry.
Speaker 1: Between ten and twenty four entries you can get for
Speaker 1: four bucks. If you buy more than twenty five entries,
Speaker 1: you get them for three bucks apiece. You can only
Speaker 1: do five hundred entries per person. Do this list like
Speaker 1: when I try to chain saws, meat grinders, meet craft
Speaker 1: knives full first like kit byan o'harness kit, Javelin, pro hunt, bipod,
Speaker 1: when I try to load all the things, like smoke
Speaker 1: comes out of my computer. That's how many things are available.
Speaker 1: We gotta tell him the link. That's a good idea.
Speaker 1: Tell him, uh, it's support dot t r CP dot org,
Speaker 1: forward slash b M A yeah. So if you hunt
Speaker 1: Montana and you use BLM, and if you live here,
Speaker 1: you're guaran almost guarant damn t you do, or you
Speaker 1: visit and use block management, jump in and start one
Speaker 1: of these in your own state to reward and thank
Speaker 1: people who open their lands up. Can now on to
Speaker 1: the bad stuff. Holy cow, the heat wave, an extreme drought.
Speaker 1: It's so bad they're air dropping air dropping water to
Speaker 1: keep big horn sheep alive in Nevada Nevada Department of
Speaker 1: Wildlife replenishing desert big horn sheep's only source of water
Speaker 1: for miles. Without intervention, animal populations will decline. Ecosystem viability
Speaker 1: is threatened. Nevada is experiencing intense drought for the second
Speaker 1: year in a row. Last year, I didn't know this.
Speaker 1: Las Vegas went two forty days without measurable rainfall. This
Speaker 1: year of the state is in what's called exceptional drought,
Speaker 1: which is the highest level of drought according to National
Speaker 1: Weather Service. Elk to Lee elk in California. There's a
Speaker 1: population of to the elk in California. They're dying from
Speaker 1: lack of water, dying of dehydration. They had a historic
Speaker 1: water source they would use at this point Rees National Seashore.
Speaker 1: How how does that pronounce raise rees? What is that?
Speaker 1: There's been an ongoing issue where the elk are using
Speaker 1: water and feed that was meant for cattle. So they
Speaker 1: put a fence up, but only some of these elk
Speaker 1: can get at this fence. About a third about a
Speaker 1: third of the population died of dehydration because they don't
Speaker 1: have any water source on their on their ground, they
Speaker 1: can't get around. Defense not to defense but around to
Speaker 1: get skate of the you know, food and water. This
Speaker 1: is a tricky one. I feel like, get into it. Well,
Speaker 1: one you have like a cattle lease, which is you know,
Speaker 1: the reason the fence went up because the elk are
Speaker 1: competing with these cattle, and so you got to start
Speaker 1: to think about whether, you know, what's more important, you know,
Speaker 1: these animals that we all own or someone's private cattle.
Speaker 1: You know, and again we don't know the nuances. They
Speaker 1: have a grazing lease. They have a grazing lease. But
Speaker 1: most places, I mean here, where you have grazing leases
Speaker 1: on public land, you don't fence out wildlife. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: so that's interesting. So it was for sure public land.
Speaker 1: It's National Park Service land. Mm hmm. They're being sued mhm.
Speaker 1: So the historic the historic water on their side of
Speaker 1: the fence usually would have been enough, but it wasn't. This. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: one of the you know, I gather it's like this
Speaker 1: like highly fenced area, and I also gather that it's
Speaker 1: like a pretty managed herd, but they're yeah, they're not
Speaker 1: able to get to water. Listen, man, I've tried this
Speaker 1: a lot. I've tried sitting around and telling myself about all,
Speaker 1: you know, the insane heat everywhere. I've tried sitting around
Speaker 1: being like there's no such thing as climate change, those
Speaker 1: such thing as climate change. It's just hot. But son
Speaker 1: of a bitch man. After a while, you can hide,
Speaker 1: you can hide. It's it's it's like getting hot. It's
Speaker 1: gonna be bad for wildlife. It's just yeah, you can
Speaker 1: say that. I don't think you can sit around saying
Speaker 1: it's not. You can say like, I don't care. You
Speaker 1: can argue about what's causing it. You can argue about
Speaker 1: the cause, but it's not if you like to hunt
Speaker 1: and fit. Change is coming. Yeah, yeah, dude. Another interesting
Speaker 1: thing this is this is a crazy one. Kevin Murphy
Speaker 1: sent this to me this morning. So San Jose, San Jose,
Speaker 1: California passed a gun like a really weird gun control
Speaker 1: measure that it's very puzzling to me. Basically that if
Speaker 1: you own guns, you pay a tax, and the tax
Speaker 1: is supposed to offset what it costs the city to
Speaker 1: address gun related phone call gun related crime. So you
Speaker 1: can imagine someone who's got like a pistol they bought
Speaker 1: on the corner, tucked down to the back shed and
Speaker 1: they're planning on, you know, doing armed robbery, and they're like, dah,
Speaker 1: I forgot to send him my tax money. Let me
Speaker 1: come on, we're supposed to get liability insurance. I think
Speaker 1: if you want to find a parallel San Jose, California
Speaker 1: at that struggle for a parallel thought of this would
Speaker 1: be like if you you could one could make the argument,
Speaker 1: they could say the First Amendment rights cost taxpayers money. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's say there's a there's there's there's a protest, there's
Speaker 1: a protest of Um, there's a massive protest to protest. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: give me something people. Let's say there's a massive protest
Speaker 1: to protest the outcome of the presidential election. And there's
Speaker 1: a massive counter protest to protest people protesting the outcome
Speaker 1: of the presidential election. So you have all these people
Speaker 1: with mixed ideologies exercising First Amendment rights. Okay, there's a
Speaker 1: police president, there's a police presence. They there's cost of
Speaker 1: business because business is closed. There's cost the police because
Speaker 1: police come out they monitor it. There's there's community meetings
Speaker 1: that are set aside to plan like safe protest spaces,
Speaker 1: to cordin people off. It's very expensive. So someone could say,
Speaker 1: if you want to exercise First Amendment rights, you need
Speaker 1: to pay at tax because it costs us money to
Speaker 1: have First Amendment rights. And someone would say, like, but
Speaker 1: the peaceful people aren't committing crimes and burning down buildings,
Speaker 1: why should they be paid tax to pay attacks, to
Speaker 1: which I would say, wonderful point. Yeah, it's absurd, It
Speaker 1: is absurd. Yeah, it seems like just a punishment, a
Speaker 1: punishments legal gun owners. It's just grasp and it's so well.
Speaker 1: Kevin Murphy made the point that it's it's like a
Speaker 1: path towards only that the rich and privilege have weapons. Mhmm,
Speaker 1: those that can afford shot and the Appalachians. Wait till
Speaker 1: the next podcast, Claire, can you give us the update
Speaker 1: on Brunal the Bear? So, first tell us about you
Speaker 1: told us before about Brunal the Bear. So, Bruno the
Speaker 1: Bear what I did a report on him on this podcast.
Speaker 1: He came from Wisconsin and traveled all the way down
Speaker 1: to Arkansas, and he gained national attention going through crop fields.
Speaker 1: Did you see that, Taylor? Do you remember that from
Speaker 1: He gained national attention like this black bear walking through
Speaker 1: corn fields and stuff, and and he was extremely uh,
Speaker 1: un unalarmed by people, so people would be masses of
Speaker 1: people would be following him and he just kind of
Speaker 1: mind his own business and he never got into any
Speaker 1: significant nuisance trouble. And like a thousand mile journey or
Speaker 1: however long it was, tell him the theory, tell him
Speaker 1: the theory about how he did. So there was there's
Speaker 1: lots of theories about why this bear made this journey,
Speaker 1: and you know, the biologists chimed in or like you know,
Speaker 1: bears only travel that far if they're looking for new
Speaker 1: home ranges, new mates, or food. There was theories that
Speaker 1: so he was heading from the north to Arkansas. We
Speaker 1: have a bear population in Arkansas, and he walked across
Speaker 1: all this country that did not have resident bear populations.
Speaker 1: So there was a theory that he climbed on a
Speaker 1: boat on the Mississippi River, a grain barge and was
Speaker 1: my garbage can last night. I'll believe that. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: was a theory that he climbed into a grain barge
Speaker 1: and traveled up north and got off the barge, which
Speaker 1: is bizarre, you know, probably and then he was just
Speaker 1: coming home. He was coming home the corridor. Yeah, homing
Speaker 1: instinct is really strong, like when they trapped bears like that.
Speaker 1: Bears very rarely don't come back to where they came from.
Speaker 1: That's like a good plot for a kid's movie. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: but we'll make it a pet dog that gets lost
Speaker 1: on vacation. It's already been done. So this bear, he
Speaker 1: wintered in northern Arkansas, as I understand it, This is
Speaker 1: where you left off last time, right, Yeah, he was
Speaker 1: just in northern Arkas and people were My mom was
Speaker 1: texting me and Clay, please don't kill Bruno because I'm
Speaker 1: in Arkansas. Un because people people were very worried about
Speaker 1: Bruno showing up in Arkansas because there's the he could
Speaker 1: have gone into a hunt. Yeah, that's right. And and
Speaker 1: so now this I don't have all the details on,
Speaker 1: but he was basically trapped as I understand it, in Arkansas.
Speaker 1: Potentially in Missouri. He may have gone back over the
Speaker 1: line of the Missouri He was trapped by gaming fish
Speaker 1: and relocated to northern Louisiana. Because basically, the bears out
Speaker 1: of Arkansas are spreading in like all directions, southern Missouri,
Speaker 1: northern Louisiana, East Texas, south eastern Oklahoma, and for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: they chose to release him in Louisiana. Sad story. Boys,
Speaker 1: he got hit by a car in Louisiana on Tuesday
Speaker 1: and they had to euthanize him. Yep, so Bruno's dead.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry the things he's seen, man, Yeah, no doubt
Speaker 1: there was. There was the theory that he was that
Speaker 1: he was a tame bear because of how unusual he
Speaker 1: was with his uh, how he interact with people. I
Speaker 1: mean tam like, not like habituated, but tame, like a
Speaker 1: circus bear. Yeah, like somewhat like it was a bear
Speaker 1: that had been like rest or something. But I don't
Speaker 1: buy that either, just zero fear of humans. Tame bear
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't have survived. No, and a tame bear would
Speaker 1: have gone and tried to get in somebody's refrigerator in
Speaker 1: their house. What was so amazing He traveled that far
Speaker 1: and never got in trouble, and so they were trying
Speaker 1: to do him a favor by taking him to Louisiana.
Speaker 1: So long live beast. They were trying to It's not
Speaker 1: common for bears to go north and south in their migrations, right,
Speaker 1: just not then far, just not that far. I mean
Speaker 1: they might travel. You know, there's documentation in Missouri and
Speaker 1: Arkansas Bears traveling like a hundred and fifty miles, but
Speaker 1: a thousand miles is very It's just not heard of.
Speaker 1: Maybe he wasn't an involved Bear. He was kind of
Speaker 1: an emissary or an ambassador for for the Bears. Perhaps, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a scout. He might have been a scout. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was something like, if I don't come back, don't
Speaker 1: go south. Uh yeah, I need tell about that mountainin
Speaker 1: you're telling me about m oh that last week I
Speaker 1: was with our buddy Bart George and we're filming his
Speaker 1: mountainlin hazing studying that he's doing over in North Spokane, Washington.
Speaker 1: Would you ought to explain real quick? Oh? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: remember we talked to me. Yeah, you know what. After
Speaker 1: being there and hang out with his whole crew for
Speaker 1: a week a couple of times, now I feel like
Speaker 1: we should go and do a podcast with the whole
Speaker 1: crew and ship chat with him because he's got Bruce
Speaker 1: Duncan as you know, is you know, a real wonder
Speaker 1: of this world. I found out the other day Bart
Speaker 1: thinks that he is the man living that has treated
Speaker 1: the most cats in this country right now, at roughly
Speaker 1: cats because all that research and government and just yeah,
Speaker 1: and all the outfitting has done and the fact he's
Speaker 1: been doing it for over fifty years. Um, yeah, pretty interest.
Speaker 1: Two names I'm not gonna say their names, we'll talk
Speaker 1: like but he shown does he win the cat Lady Trophy?
Speaker 1: I don't know about that. Uh. And then Jeff Blood
Speaker 1: who's the wildlife specialist for the county's up there. Very
Speaker 1: interesting guy, been trapping and doing stuff his whole life.
Speaker 1: But does Bart still with Yeah, the Callisbelt Tribe and
Speaker 1: so the Callisbelt Tribe is doing they're the ones that
Speaker 1: are funding the study, doing the study. But he's working
Speaker 1: um inca hoots with Washington Department of Game and Fish.
Speaker 1: And then like I said, the Stevens and uh, I
Speaker 1: can't remember the name of the other county now, but
Speaker 1: the Sheriff's office. Um, a lot of people are kind
Speaker 1: of chipping in to help on the study. But what
Speaker 1: he's trying to do is because they're having just they've
Speaker 1: got a real uptick in depredations and human mountain lion
Speaker 1: conflict and interactions, and so he came up with a
Speaker 1: study to see if hazing might help just kind of
Speaker 1: heap the mountain lions like away from humans a little bit.
Speaker 1: And so how he's doing it is they catch a lion,
Speaker 1: they put a collar on it, they come back a
Speaker 1: week later, they know exactly where the line is. They
Speaker 1: walk towards the lion with a speaker on Bart's chest
Speaker 1: on just hanging off his backpack. That's playing the meat
Speaker 1: eater pots. So he still plays the podcast to the lions.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's great. Yeah, no, I got it. While the
Speaker 1: problem is the lions are gonna hang out because they're
Speaker 1: so interested. You gotta give those lions interest film on
Speaker 1: top on the collar. Put an interest meter dial on
Speaker 1: on that. While while Sam was explaining the lobster uh
Speaker 1: debate that was recently on, we got to within I
Speaker 1: think eleven yards of the mountain. Yeah, I mean at
Speaker 1: eleven yards because you see it yet, No, because she's
Speaker 1: like in like you know, three or four furs that
Speaker 1: were all bushy, you know around the bottom. They were
Speaker 1: not that close. Yeah, because we're looking at the GPS
Speaker 1: like thirty three faiter, what's not any of the three
Speaker 1: lines that we did that too, that we walked up
Speaker 1: to the other one was like fifty and then one
Speaker 1: ran at like seventy yards and not kidding me, it's strippy.
Speaker 1: This one the closest one eleven yards and it left. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then that one literally has been living in this
Speaker 1: area that if you walk down the hill five minutes,
Speaker 1: you're on like a it's a rural highway. But right
Speaker 1: on the other side that road is basically like this
Speaker 1: little community on like it's like a lake community with
Speaker 1: all these little houses and condos and stuff. And there's
Speaker 1: a trail system where this cat's been hanging out. So
Speaker 1: that cat sits there in the trees and listens to
Speaker 1: dogs and humans and stuff going by her and cars
Speaker 1: all the time and like totally just you know, that's
Speaker 1: her home. Yeah, it was wild. So anyways, so what
Speaker 1: he's on to see if hazing works. So when he
Speaker 1: comes back, now he's got this cat on a GPS collar,
Speaker 1: so he walks towards it. Playing the podcast at eighty decibles,
Speaker 1: which is quite a loud mind you. I mean it's
Speaker 1: like my voice projected like if I'm excited, it's probably
Speaker 1: equal to roughly eighty decibles. And doesn't it feel like
Speaker 1: distinctly sort of post modern that that they will in
Speaker 1: the future be listening to you talking about them listening
Speaker 1: to this show. It's like staring into a mirror and
Speaker 1: there's a mirror behind you. It's getting deep deep um, God,
Speaker 1: he's totally lost. I'm just trying to stay on track
Speaker 1: with how so that everybody understand how this problem question
Speaker 1: that won't throw us off this particular cat had he
Speaker 1: been in trouble before, she had not been. So we're
Speaker 1: hazing a cat that's not been in trouble though. Okay, no,
Speaker 1: because you in in these parts are those parts where
Speaker 1: I was, if they've been in actual trouble, like, if
Speaker 1: there's been a depredation, they're dead. Kind of let me
Speaker 1: interject with the thing that Bruce told me, the Bruce
Speaker 1: you're talking about after that, when when you know, Washington
Speaker 1: had two summers ago had the first fatality from a
Speaker 1: mountalin first human fatality from mounta lion in state history.
Speaker 1: And then then shortly after, like a month or two later,
Speaker 1: Oregon had its first human fatality from a mountain lion
Speaker 1: in years. I mean, it just doesn't happen, right, but
Speaker 1: then it happens twice in one summer and to states
Speaker 1: you know, and then you're like, wow, what's going on?
Speaker 1: So you want to draw conclusions from this, but maybe
Speaker 1: there's nothing to be drawn. And when I put it
Speaker 1: to Bruce, I was like, what do you think about that?
Speaker 1: You know, on one hand, he's like, it's freak right.
Speaker 1: We'll go another hundred years and no one will get
Speaker 1: killed by mountainlin. But if there is something there, what
Speaker 1: he he put out is this like in his whole
Speaker 1: career of doing work on lion control for the state.
Speaker 1: In the early days of his career, if someone saw
Speaker 1: a line, you came out and killed it. People didn't
Speaker 1: want them around, and he'd be like, you see one
Speaker 1: on your porch, it's a deadline. It doesn't matter if
Speaker 1: it did anything wrong. Kill the dog, it's just dead.
Speaker 1: And he said, as tolerance has increased, and now you
Speaker 1: know you don't just like kill every single line that
Speaker 1: crosses the street in front of a car. Um he says,
Speaker 1: it's probably gonna be that there's just gonna be more
Speaker 1: interactions because our tolerance is shifted, and we don't just
Speaker 1: dust off every single thing we can dust off because
Speaker 1: someone's scared. And there's a lot more lines, there's a
Speaker 1: lot more people, there's a lot more people going into
Speaker 1: wild places, So yeahs wild because of you know, us
Speaker 1: moving into them and living in them. I'll tell you
Speaker 1: a podcast guest and I can't say his name, but
Speaker 1: I know the guy that tracked down that mountline and
Speaker 1: kills him and being serious, I know the trackdown what
Speaker 1: the lion. And I don't know if it was the
Speaker 1: fatality in Washington or Oregon. If it's if it's Washington
Speaker 1: we're talking about, we know the same person. Well, I
Speaker 1: think I think this was the Oregan lion. And I
Speaker 1: know the guy that went to that scene, track that
Speaker 1: line down, I mean went to the you know, the
Speaker 1: site where the person was killed. He said it was
Speaker 1: it was a wild story. Yeah, and he it was
Speaker 1: a was that the two mountain bikers? No, that was Washington.
Speaker 1: This was a lady, this was this was a woman. Yes, yes, anyway,
Speaker 1: we'll tell you. Yeah, you want to do one upsmanship
Speaker 1: on podcast? No? No, no, no bringing up, keep going. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We gotta hurry out because I think we have a
Speaker 1: great one sitting right here across us. More ut of
Speaker 1: time here. Um. So they walked towards him playing this podcast,
Speaker 1: and Bart's watching the GPS. And once the cat leaves
Speaker 1: its bed or wherever it's sitting or sleeping at the moment,
Speaker 1: he marks that distance from him to the cat. Then
Speaker 1: he watches the cat and the GPS and see how
Speaker 1: far it goes, how far it flees, which he's taking
Speaker 1: other um like environmental data points as well, and basically
Speaker 1: is trying to figure out how much energy is the
Speaker 1: cat willing to expend once it's been bumped, and then consequently,
Speaker 1: after it's been hazed multiple times, is it willing to
Speaker 1: expend more energy because it doesn't want to go through
Speaker 1: the hazing again. So once he picks up those two
Speaker 1: data points, uh, they cut the dogs loose, which usually
Speaker 1: come from however far behind, however far he had to
Speaker 1: walk to get to the lion. They track him to
Speaker 1: the where the fresh mountain lion track is. Then they
Speaker 1: run the lion. It's usually over pretty quickly. They jump
Speaker 1: the line into a tree. The hazing. The first hazing
Speaker 1: actually is via paintball, so they'll sit there and as
Speaker 1: many times the cattle take it. The dogs are gone
Speaker 1: at this point and as soon as the cat climbs
Speaker 1: and jumps out of the tree and runs, that's it.
Speaker 1: They that's the hazing. Then they repeat that with minus
Speaker 1: the paintballs three more times and see you know, they're
Speaker 1: again collecting those data points of how close did they
Speaker 1: get and how far did the cat run before it
Speaker 1: stopped and chilled out, you know, after it heard the
Speaker 1: meter podcast at eighty decibels, in order to determine if
Speaker 1: there is a problem line. Could is it possible to
Speaker 1: get it to change its behavior without euthanizing. Yeah, and again,
Speaker 1: it's probably never gonna happen with problem lins. It'll probably
Speaker 1: just happen with lions that like, like you were saying,
Speaker 1: across the street in a place where there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of little kids living around, or there's a lion that's
Speaker 1: been seen a couple of times near a boy scout
Speaker 1: camp or whatever. But like I said, as soon as
Speaker 1: they call them to help them not become problem lines. Yeah,
Speaker 1: right now, they're north of Spokane. There's a very very
Speaker 1: low tolerance for cat and public perception is down, like
Speaker 1: is negative right now with cats, unfortunately, and they aren't happy.
Speaker 1: A lot of them aren't happy with the way that
Speaker 1: the Washington Department Efficient Game has been handling it. And
Speaker 1: so there, you know, that's why Jeff Flood like it
Speaker 1: gets Yeah, it's it's socially, you know, complicated, but so yeah,
Speaker 1: probably it'll just happen with cats that are like in
Speaker 1: areas amongst people, they're seen and hopefully they can hate
Speaker 1: them a little bit and keep them alive. Talking about
Speaker 1: the super line, all right, So one, it has been
Speaker 1: tried in the past of relocating lions that were problem lines.
Speaker 1: And again there's so little research done onlines and known
Speaker 1: about lines that people just we just don't know enough yet, right,
Speaker 1: So a lot of times they thought, oh, it's like
Speaker 1: one lion causing the problem, you know, but they shoot
Speaker 1: the line and then you know, three two weeks later,
Speaker 1: you know, in the same zone, another sheep gets killed, right,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't the same line. Anyways, they tried relocating
Speaker 1: something one I forget the exact number, but it was
Speaker 1: up there. It was like miles. They moved it and
Speaker 1: it took the cat literally like two days, and it
Speaker 1: was back at the same farm and killed another sheep
Speaker 1: and it had been ear tagged or marked somehow, so
Speaker 1: they knew that it was the same cat. But what
Speaker 1: was interesting is that it's from that journey it's pads
Speaker 1: were just worn off, like there was almost no pad
Speaker 1: left on his palm m man. They know they wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I could pull that off if
Speaker 1: you blindfolded me and dropped me off from about just
Speaker 1: the mechanism that works inside of an animal to have
Speaker 1: that homing instinct, because it's got it's picking up data
Speaker 1: from somewhere. I mean it's not I mean they're they're
Speaker 1: picking up they have some there's something happening. I'd like
Speaker 1: to know the mechanics. And yeah, we had a pet
Speaker 1: pitches Is one time, and they the neighbor people were
Speaker 1: complaining about him shoot in everybody's house and whatnot. And
Speaker 1: my brother had to go to a work meeting. He
Speaker 1: went quite a way his way, I can't remember what
Speaker 1: it was, but almost a hundred miles away. You had
Speaker 1: to go to an overnight work meeting. So he took
Speaker 1: the pigeons up there and caught him loose. When he
Speaker 1: got home, they were already home. They beat him home.
Speaker 1: But they're famous for that. HM. A new paper published
Speaker 1: in the journal Nature details the release of new DNA
Speaker 1: evidence extracted from sediment in Dennis Over Cave. Oh that's
Speaker 1: where the Dennis Open name comes from, right, The vice
Speaker 1: versa versa it's a cave in Siberia. Oh it is.
Speaker 1: But did did did the cave get named that because
Speaker 1: of what's there? Or did the did the did the
Speaker 1: humans humans get named about? Help me out. Damans are
Speaker 1: named after the place because we don't really know what
Speaker 1: they were called. Okay, So that's so it wasn't that
Speaker 1: we knew. We named it somewhere else. There was a man,
Speaker 1: there was a modern man that lived in the cave
Speaker 1: that was somehow had a name that started with with
Speaker 1: the D as I understood it. So they called it
Speaker 1: that kind of cave. This is my understanding of it.
Speaker 1: And then they went in and found the stuff and
Speaker 1: they called the people that name of the cave. Is
Speaker 1: that what you remember? Yeah? I slept in the cave
Speaker 1: um no a southern to cave and Wyoming. They had
Speaker 1: been slept in. I slept into cave and Wyoming. They
Speaker 1: had been slept in by some cowboy that went crazy
Speaker 1: and ate some people, and they named it after him.
Speaker 1: I slept in that cave. You haven't eaten anybody yet,
Speaker 1: but you're still young. Okay. Let me back up. New
Speaker 1: DNA evidence extracted from sediment in Denisova Cave in Russian Siberia.
Speaker 1: Previous analysis of ancient DNA extracted from fossils found in
Speaker 1: Denisova Cave have revealed that it was inhabited by Neanderthals,
Speaker 1: which sometimes I think they're back to Thal, but for
Speaker 1: a while it's tall Neanderthal Neanderthals, falls, dennis Ovans, and
Speaker 1: a hybrid of the two. But few fossilized few fossilized
Speaker 1: remains have been found in the cave, so it's unclear
Speaker 1: when different groups visited and in what order. Mhm. But
Speaker 1: what's the time periods? To you? It's a long time ago. Now.
Speaker 1: This study provides a timeline of occupation with over seven
Speaker 1: hundred sentiments samples dated from three hundred thousand to twenty
Speaker 1: thousand years ago, so the cave could have sat there
Speaker 1: for quite a long time between visits comin. It's three
Speaker 1: hundred thousand years ago. That's interesting, right. I think part
Speaker 1: of the reasons that I have Dennisovan DNA because we
Speaker 1: don't know the story of how indigenous people's came to
Speaker 1: the America's truly do we. There's theories about the barn
Speaker 1: straight theory, but when you find DNA going that far
Speaker 1: back in Siberia in Siberia means that we're different in
Speaker 1: some sense, but we don't really know when indigenous people's
Speaker 1: came here. But to have that antiquity of DNA that
Speaker 1: flows into me today is fascinating. Right, tell me, tell
Speaker 1: me what you mean by that. I mean, like, are
Speaker 1: you saying that there was another You're saying they didn't.
Speaker 1: There's other theories of well, I know, there's other theories
Speaker 1: other than the Barren Land Bridge. You know, water access
Speaker 1: through the Northwest. Forbid that indigenous people's got on boats
Speaker 1: at some point. Figure that out. But we can get
Speaker 1: into anthropology and John Wesley Powell and the Powell doctrine
Speaker 1: later on, but it just bankes the whole question of
Speaker 1: how indigenous people's got here. Yeah, do you do you? Um,
Speaker 1: that's a good question or not a good question, but
Speaker 1: it's an interesting point. Do you do you contest or
Speaker 1: do you like if you look at sort of the
Speaker 1: academic consensus. Okay, the academic consensus being like some point
Speaker 1: in time, probably less than thirty thousand years ago, sometime
Speaker 1: around thirty to twenty years ago, the first Americans entered,
Speaker 1: you know, the New World, Okay, entered what's now North
Speaker 1: American South America via some sort of land bridge that
Speaker 1: connected Alaska with Siberia. Like when you hear it, like
Speaker 1: do you do you look? Is your viewpoint? I don't
Speaker 1: know is your viewpoint? That sounds right, that sounds wrong,
Speaker 1: It sounds right. But I think there's more to the
Speaker 1: story because now we found all sorts of anthropological evidence
Speaker 1: that indigenous peoples were here thirty two thirty five thousand
Speaker 1: years ago and beyond. So that goes beyond the Younger
Speaker 1: Drives event and makes you question how indigenous people's got
Speaker 1: here so so long ago? Where is that? Because I'm
Speaker 1: familiar with Cooper's ferry, which would have put things back
Speaker 1: to like seventeen thousand years ago, But thirty thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: where where is that? Thirty two thousand plus down and
Speaker 1: the tip of the Tierra del Fuego. I'll have to
Speaker 1: look at my nose to see exactly who was the
Speaker 1: researchers doing that. But the main fact that points to
Speaker 1: me is the actual multiplicity of tribal languages in the
Speaker 1: Americas as a function of mathematical time, ten thousand years
Speaker 1: was not enough to have the diversity of languages. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's an interesting point. Man explained that a little bit
Speaker 1: just going to that, just the variation. There's six or
Speaker 1: seven main tribal language families in the Americas, but to
Speaker 1: have them diversify into such distinct dialects and different language
Speaker 1: families would take a lot more than ten thousand years
Speaker 1: to do it. If you're assuming that the Foundation Group,
Speaker 1: if you have this assumption that the Foundation Group was
Speaker 1: some single wave of individuals who were that's not enough. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got you. But if there's multiple waves of it.
Speaker 1: But the questions for me is why is it so
Speaker 1: inherent that we can only look at the bearing straight
Speaker 1: language theory? Oh? Man, I feel like people looked at
Speaker 1: a lot of theories. You ever hear the Salutrian theory,
Speaker 1: which was dismissed on like I think like dismissed on. Well,
Speaker 1: let me it's real quick if you if I get
Speaker 1: it wrong. But there was this idea that if you
Speaker 1: looked at paleolithic, well use the word paleolithic. We're talking
Speaker 1: about your when you look at like paleolithic stone technology
Speaker 1: thirty thousand years ago, forty years ago was remarkable, similar
Speaker 1: to stone technology of Indigenous Americans from four years ago.
Speaker 1: So someone rather than being that different groups of people
Speaker 1: came up kinda with the same idea independently. There was
Speaker 1: this idea that ah ha, they had to have been
Speaker 1: influenced but Western Europeans or vice versus Dave or vice versa,
Speaker 1: and we don't know that. But that makes an interesting
Speaker 1: question of was there some type of knowledge that was
Speaker 1: inherent to both and then it came from somewhere else.
Speaker 1: Certainly there was a lot of Europeans here earlier on
Speaker 1: than Columbus. But again, that becomes one of those questions,
Speaker 1: why is the Columbus discovery doctrine such a big part
Speaker 1: of Western American thought? Do you have a theory on
Speaker 1: why it is? I've often wondered that, like why is
Speaker 1: it John Wesley Pale? First? Well, but because yeah, because
Speaker 1: like clubs never hit, he was never even he never
Speaker 1: hit that, he never hit what became the US? Like
Speaker 1: he landed in the West Indies? How how did it
Speaker 1: become to be that that that school children feel that
Speaker 1: Columbus it's a great marketing job. But what are they
Speaker 1: what were they marketing? How how Europeans discovered America and
Speaker 1: civilized it versus looking at the actual history of how
Speaker 1: many people were here in Americas and what they were
Speaker 1: doing prior to that. Um, we got a lot of
Speaker 1: balls in the air right now. But I want let's
Speaker 1: do this. I want let's talk about this one. We
Speaker 1: got into the we got into the question of how
Speaker 1: Indigenous Americans arrived and when they arrived the question mark.
Speaker 1: But let's talk for a second. If you could explain
Speaker 1: how many people were here? I was hoping we were
Speaker 1: going to get to that. Yeah, I mean, we're like
Speaker 1: out of you know, we're out of or I don't
Speaker 1: know for a we're not out of order. Whatever, how
Speaker 1: many people were here? A lot of different estimates, Um,
Speaker 1: A bunch of different camps from anthropology historically have gone
Speaker 1: over it. But it's been a matter of political debate. Though.
Speaker 1: To me, the question is why there seems to be
Speaker 1: an influence in anthropology, especially in amateur anthropology, to diminish
Speaker 1: the number of people that were here, and that gets
Speaker 1: to to make the crime not as severe. Right, So
Speaker 1: what's being ignored entirely regardless of how many estimates have
Speaker 1: gone up to over a hundred million, with the bulk
Speaker 1: of those being in in meso America, So the heartland
Speaker 1: of the food explosion in the America is whether it's
Speaker 1: Peru or or a Central America. That's a high extreme number.
Speaker 1: That is high extreme number, but that was for the
Speaker 1: most part, that number is in in Meso America. The
Speaker 1: numbers in North America the most liberal or around sixteen million,
Speaker 1: sixteen million people. Now this would have been at the
Speaker 1: at the peak pre European pre disease. Pre disease is
Speaker 1: the big point. So that's one of the things that
Speaker 1: most people don't understand when understanding the history of America
Speaker 1: is looking at what actually happened here before. So we
Speaker 1: have accounts from the Spanish counkyst doors of these advanced
Speaker 1: societies and vast numbers of people and then when they
Speaker 1: got their butts kicked and then came back upset that
Speaker 1: nobody was there. So one thing one of the things
Speaker 1: that anthropology has been able to uncover now national geographics
Speaker 1: doing a lot with this, but use of technology of light, art, etcetera.
Speaker 1: To find all these ancient villages, whether they're in Central
Speaker 1: America or in South America. Um, but a smallpox for
Speaker 1: the most part, you can throw in some plague, whatever
Speaker 1: else you want. There's been traces of it found. But
Speaker 1: whether it was Canada now the United States, Central America,
Speaker 1: South America. Nolan was immune to the impact of smallpox,
Speaker 1: and for the most part, those extremes go between eighty
Speaker 1: five and decimation. Rights of the population died. So when
Speaker 1: we're talking about and impact on these societies, um, if
Speaker 1: you know which five percent has left? Were they the
Speaker 1: most wise probably not. Are they the oldest story keepers?
Speaker 1: Probably not? But what was left out of the five
Speaker 1: percent leaves us with a cultural amnesia. Oh, like coming
Speaker 1: out of a pandemic, it sort of gives you and
Speaker 1: we're upset about what what actual percentage of people died
Speaker 1: from the pandemic and we were terrified, what's up? One
Speaker 1: match in the world of everyone you knew and cared
Speaker 1: and loved about was gone. But that's why I think
Speaker 1: that I'm not trying to draw a pair of Please
Speaker 1: don't think I was trying to draw a parallel between
Speaker 1: smallpox epidemic and COVID nineteen. But I was saying, like,
Speaker 1: for a year we were invited to imagine, right, we
Speaker 1: learned the sort of lexicon of pandemics. You know, a
Speaker 1: new generation learned to like think and talk about contagion
Speaker 1: and pandemics. Point being. If you imagine that of Americans
Speaker 1: were carried off by COVID nineteen, some amount of time
Speaker 1: elapsed and then someone showed up and wanted to sort
Speaker 1: of categorize and describe us culturally, you would probably want
Speaker 1: to say, oh, no, no, oh, there's a big misunderstanding. Um,
Speaker 1: we all just died, you see, and we're in the
Speaker 1: you know, we're in a period of tremendous turmoil right now. Mhmm.
Speaker 1: You know it would be similar to it because I
Speaker 1: think that you, I don't know if you have feelings
Speaker 1: about if you read he talks in there. I like
Speaker 1: Charles Mann's work a lot. He compares in their accounts
Speaker 1: of people traveling down the Mississippi side, um post smallpox,
Speaker 1: they can't find anybody, right, but they encounter like city
Speaker 1: or towns and cities and they're like all every but
Speaker 1: left was the idea well packed up a win somewhere
Speaker 1: was the best they could come up with. Or unfortunately
Speaker 1: that those best cities or trading networks were not made
Speaker 1: by them. So that's you have early anthropology trying to
Speaker 1: understand what happened, and they found all these this evidence
Speaker 1: of these mound builders or the Mississippian societies, and the
Speaker 1: first bit of evidence they did was to go to
Speaker 1: the local tribes and say, hey, what do you know
Speaker 1: about these and there we don't know. But when you
Speaker 1: put in to the equation that people died, there're gonna
Speaker 1: have culture amnesia of nearly everything, perhaps safe stories, cosmology,
Speaker 1: the remnants of agricultural life ways. If this all would
Speaker 1: have started happening in the fifteen hundreds pretty much when
Speaker 1: when pretty much Europeans started coming here and bringing smallpox.
Speaker 1: So what you're alluding to is that so that's when
Speaker 1: the decimation would have started. But then, like Cahokia, you're
Speaker 1: saying that even at that time, there were remnants of
Speaker 1: ancient civilizations that the natives that were alive knew nothing about.
Speaker 1: So there was some other, potentially some other catastrophic event
Speaker 1: that happened pre European arrival. Is that what we're is
Speaker 1: that what we're saying could be or could just be
Speaker 1: a major change in an urban experiment. So you see
Speaker 1: the rise of the Mississippian culture, uh somewhere around and
Speaker 1: then around one thousand, ten fifty fifty four was the
Speaker 1: big year. It was a big supernova in the sky.
Speaker 1: If we would see a star that hung there ten
Speaker 1: times brighter than than Venus for two or three months,
Speaker 1: and then hung out for another couple of years. Stars
Speaker 1: in the sky seemed to be a very important thing
Speaker 1: to human beings, influenced this religion, et cetera. And so
Speaker 1: you have at some of these places. First and foremost
Speaker 1: was Hokia. Of course we don't know what the name was,
Speaker 1: but that was a local name that they that they
Speaker 1: found from it, but began the rise of an urban
Speaker 1: population and a massive trading network, which goes back to
Speaker 1: the question of where did they get that model from.
Speaker 1: Was that an impact of Phoenicians, European societies coming Did
Speaker 1: it come from us and went over there? Very very fascinating,
Speaker 1: but regardless places like a Hokey in the Rise of
Speaker 1: the Mississippian cultures, um dispels the myth that America was
Speaker 1: untapped wilderness. That's what I love about Charles Man's work,
Speaker 1: especially he's talking about the impact of the Colombian exchange.
Speaker 1: Flora and faun are going over one direction, and flora
Speaker 1: and faun are coming back. How did the potato get
Speaker 1: to Ireland? How did baby corn get to China? Why
Speaker 1: was their corn found in the ark Ark of the Covenant.
Speaker 1: These are interesting mysteries. What happened to a lot of
Speaker 1: the copper in the Great Lakes that was mind out
Speaker 1: because it probably wasn't mind by indigenous people because there's
Speaker 1: no record of that being in in vast cases. So
Speaker 1: the mysteries of America go well beyond what our understanding
Speaker 1: is today. But hopefully between anthropology and history and conversations
Speaker 1: like this, you know, eventually we're going to figure it out.
Speaker 1: Can you explain Kahokia a little bit, but like just
Speaker 1: a little more detailed massive trading network. It was an
Speaker 1: empire for sure. There were boundaries, there were markers, there's
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff we have in the anthropological record.
Speaker 1: You have in the Mississippian cultures. The urban center that
Speaker 1: was Cahokia, and it's at the confluence of the Missouri
Speaker 1: Mississippi and the Ohio Rivers, which effectively give you north, southeast, east,
Speaker 1: and west water passage to bring things there. It was
Speaker 1: a massive trading network for sure because of the rivers.
Speaker 1: I didn't I didn't realize that. And it's just across
Speaker 1: from modern day St. Louis and Illinois. Yeah, yep. And
Speaker 1: it was it was a trading empire, and with it
Speaker 1: came boundaries um East coast marine shells, um arguably precious
Speaker 1: stones from the southwest Obsidian, many many, many things being
Speaker 1: being traded. But back to the what was happening there
Speaker 1: was these grand stories being told. Ultimately, the primary story,
Speaker 1: or arguably the oldest story in North America was about
Speaker 1: the first humans. So we have first Father and first Mother.
Speaker 1: Oftentimes she's known as Mother Corn or Earth's Mother, and
Speaker 1: they had a number of progeny depending on the tribes,
Speaker 1: and ultimately there were ten sons and two daughters. And
Speaker 1: that was in the time of giants, and the giants
Speaker 1: were competing with us as well, and we have evidence
Speaker 1: of this through the anspological record. Ancestors of my mother
Speaker 1: tribe um the Omaha, at a place called Picture Cave,
Speaker 1: about a hundred miles outside of the urban center of
Speaker 1: of Kahokia. It's one of these places that has been
Speaker 1: so desecrated that they won't tell you exactly where it is,
Speaker 1: but there's all these pictographs of all these stories battles
Speaker 1: between the giants and First Father, and within that tree
Speaker 1: of life, the first humans of a course, were from above,
Speaker 1: so they were part of the upper realm, and first
Speaker 1: Father he also carried the name of White Plume. But
Speaker 1: ultimately he became interested and understanding the powers of the
Speaker 1: lower realm. But probably that notion of Yen and Young,
Speaker 1: that there's a sacred balance and harmony. And he said,
Speaker 1: um a spirit wolf down to the lower realm to explore.
Speaker 1: But that was taboo, and so one of the water
Speaker 1: spirits ate it. First Father became upset with that and
Speaker 1: made his own journey from the upper realm down to
Speaker 1: the lower watery realm. And some of our stories he gambled,
Speaker 1: and some of the stories they dueled. But the water spirit,
Speaker 1: it was a beaver spirit. Ah won the battle, tuck
Speaker 1: his life and kept his head and his body, send
Speaker 1: it back up soulless without it. And thus enters the
Speaker 1: stories of one of the sons called Red Horn and
Speaker 1: his two sons, the twins. I'm referred to it as
Speaker 1: the Red Horn trilogy. But he was the one that
Speaker 1: you find all of these wonderful flint clay card figurines
Speaker 1: out of spy row in the outskirts of Kahokia. But
Speaker 1: tell the story of him. He had a clan name.
Speaker 1: It was probably along the lines of He who was
Speaker 1: hit with deer lungs, probably had to do with the
Speaker 1: clan taboo, probably a dear clan type of name. But
Speaker 1: think things that you can't touch, things that you have
Speaker 1: the rights to do, and things you can't do, and
Speaker 1: that's probably had to refer to that. And eventually he
Speaker 1: became a very very powerful character in this Mississippi cosmology
Speaker 1: and history, and ultimately the giants became agitated with the humans,
Speaker 1: and these battles occurred back and forth and contests. In
Speaker 1: one there was a race and the giants, being bigger,
Speaker 1: we're gonna win, except for the youngest one. He who
Speaker 1: was hit with deer lungs, turned himself into an arrow
Speaker 1: and won the race. Then they had a great stickball match,
Speaker 1: whether you look at the ball courts of meso America
Speaker 1: or the variations today amongst stickball of the Cherokee, we
Speaker 1: called it the little brother of warum versions of shinny,
Speaker 1: which is probably influenced a lot of field hockey and
Speaker 1: of course lacrosse. Little brother of war. Stick games were
Speaker 1: preparation for future yes or brutal I played when I
Speaker 1: was young brutal America there played to the death weren't there,
Speaker 1: and they did in this case too, and that's what
Speaker 1: happened was he who was hit with deer lungs became
Speaker 1: the most valuable player and they beat the Giants and
Speaker 1: VP and all of all of the Giants team we
Speaker 1: were killed except for one woman. And she was a
Speaker 1: red haired Giantist and she was said to have been
Speaker 1: very beautiful. The tribes of different names for her of
Speaker 1: what she wore, etcetera. And she said, you may kill
Speaker 1: me or I will take one of you as my husband.
Speaker 1: And so ultimately that's that union between her and the
Speaker 1: figure that was to become Red Horn. They had the
Speaker 1: thunder twins. Ultimately, in a scene of domestic bliss um,
Speaker 1: he who was hit with deer lungs was then married
Speaker 1: to the Giantists. And depending on the tribe, the stories
Speaker 1: changed a little bit, but ultimately she was teasing him
Speaker 1: as she was cleaning the deer and was going to
Speaker 1: take the lungs that was going to throw them at him,
Speaker 1: and he says, no, don't do that, and all the
Speaker 1: brothers said, oh, don't do that. We were just teasing,
Speaker 1: and he explains to everyone, no, you really shouldn't tease
Speaker 1: me because I'm not really your brother. I'm from the
Speaker 1: Upper Realm, and I was sent by Earthmaker. So he
Speaker 1: had a series of four trickster heroes that came here,
Speaker 1: and he was the fifth in the final to help
Speaker 1: Um Bringer of knowledge to humanity. And ultimately after that
Speaker 1: he explained his true form, and he spit into his
Speaker 1: hands and covered his big long braid, and it became
Speaker 1: the color of red ochre. Thus all things sacred back
Speaker 1: to the impact of the Neanderthal's Neanderthals, Dennis Ovans, all
Speaker 1: of these things about ritual and art, etcetera. That was
Speaker 1: our vision here. Ultimately, after becoming Um Red Horn, then
Speaker 1: he also became his star visage as well, became the
Speaker 1: Morning Star. And there's many many stories and all the
Speaker 1: Plains tribe and the Suing tribes about what that role was.
Speaker 1: But then became the ultimate Battles as his son's the
Speaker 1: thunder Twins went down and fought the water Spirit and
Speaker 1: defeated it and brought back the head of First Father,
Speaker 1: and so that his body became unified once again and
Speaker 1: became the great ascension story of North America. So all
Speaker 1: great spiritual destined reverse become the focus of cosmology and
Speaker 1: and religion for that matter, whether it's Jesus or Mohammed
Speaker 1: or First Father. In this case, this was the story
Speaker 1: that was celebrated at Khokia, was the spiritual ascension of
Speaker 1: First Father back to the Upper Realm. So our stories
Speaker 1: are Abraham and many sons said Father Abraham. I mean,
Speaker 1: I just think it's just so interesting that. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's something, it's something so big and giant, which because
Speaker 1: you're saying it's it possibly was the largest city ever
Speaker 1: on this continent or the earliest. At the time it
Speaker 1: was the third largest city in the world. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I've never heard of it. You ever heard of it, Steve, No,
Speaker 1: I only heard of you know what you would describe
Speaker 1: as like the Mississippian culture, the mound builders. But no,
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't. I'm not familiar. Can we get
Speaker 1: into the mounds a little bit? She's even reading your
Speaker 1: chapter of the book. I'm not a like sure, Like
Speaker 1: what were the mounds all about? And why are they
Speaker 1: associated with these people? You know, I visited that Serpent Mound. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can tell you a lot about that one too.
Speaker 1: It's absolutely fascinating with its links to Rko astronomy, as above,
Speaker 1: so below UM, so many of the mounds as as
Speaker 1: we're we're finding, especially through k astronomy, that it was
Speaker 1: very much looking to the stars and trying to take
Speaker 1: those stories and to plant them here, make a connection
Speaker 1: between the two. And you had the rise of places
Speaker 1: like Cochia. You see the role of corn and ben
Speaker 1: as squash coming to North America, and we're that those
Speaker 1: modes of agriculture were than population exploded of indigenous peoples.
Speaker 1: Tied that with the religion of the stories of First
Speaker 1: Father and the ascension, and then you have this this
Speaker 1: this recipe for civilization. Let's where food and their marriage
Speaker 1: came together to form civilization. At the confluence of those
Speaker 1: two is where you find civilization here. But it became
Speaker 1: a massive trading network and empire, and those stories were
Speaker 1: shared trading. For the most part. At the city center,
Speaker 1: you had fifteen to two people at the actual um
Speaker 1: epicenter of all those mounds there, and there were hundreds
Speaker 1: of them, and we've lost many of them um due
Speaker 1: to the can struction and progress of the St. Louis, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But ultimately you had this Grand Plaza and the Grand
Speaker 1: Mound itself now known as Monks mound. But all of
Speaker 1: those were built in fairly rapid succession. You see, the
Speaker 1: reign of Khokia from around ten fifty too, began to
Speaker 1: wane around twelve. And we're not exactly these mounds. Just
Speaker 1: to give perspective, Oh, I want to say that Monks Mount.
Speaker 1: I have to look at my notes. Um. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're they're big. They're big, maybe fifty feet in elevation.
Speaker 1: I'm just guessing off higher than that, probably a hundred
Speaker 1: fifties two hundred stairs up those and there. The question
Speaker 1: is how did they get built? You know, they're right
Speaker 1: well right, but like how did they or you know,
Speaker 1: one of the questions is how did they move that
Speaker 1: much earth? A lot of people, I know, the Serpent Mound,
Speaker 1: they didn't know it was there until air travel. It
Speaker 1: was recognized from the air. They thought it was like
Speaker 1: just a natural but from the air you could realize
Speaker 1: it was his hundreds of yards long serpent with the
Speaker 1: head and a tongue. Oh, I see, no one knew
Speaker 1: the people that the people who are living there didn't
Speaker 1: know it was there until someone's like, holy cow, it's huge,
Speaker 1: and we've got all there's all kinds of stuff about
Speaker 1: its orientation which is in this A lot of that
Speaker 1: comes from my dear friend Dr William Remain. He's probably
Speaker 1: the leading r Q astronomy expert and he's done work
Speaker 1: all around, but started in the eighties with Serpent Mound
Speaker 1: that the undulations of the curve on one side are
Speaker 1: are tied to movements of the Sun, on the other
Speaker 1: side movements of the Moon. But what he discovered even
Speaker 1: more importantly after that, along with others, was that its
Speaker 1: orientation is pointing towards stellar North, so the head and
Speaker 1: the tail lineup perfectly. But it also helps measure um
Speaker 1: what is at the center? What is the poll star?
Speaker 1: What is it today? What was it five thousand years ago?
Speaker 1: And regardless of the wobble or procession of the Earth,
Speaker 1: it's still different. Radiants could point to the same thing.
Speaker 1: But the story itself, you'll find within most of the
Speaker 1: tribes of Cherokees, we have a story about that, and
Speaker 1: it's about how the Serpent ain't the Sun, but it's
Speaker 1: a constellation that you see at sunrise on summer solstice,
Speaker 1: that that constellation would would move towards the rising Sun,
Speaker 1: and it appears that it was eating the Sun. But
Speaker 1: we still have those stories today, and that's there's some
Speaker 1: aspect of that in the Serpent mound too, or somewhere,
Speaker 1: or at least I think it was eating an egg
Speaker 1: or some mound effigy I thought was eating an egg.
Speaker 1: Then someone say's probably a sun. Yeah, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: hard to say. But then you also have had parallels
Speaker 1: between what does the egg mean metaphorically? Is it knowledge Sophia?
Speaker 1: And then you get these comparables to the rest of
Speaker 1: Europe as well. You know, what is the sacred feminine,
Speaker 1: what is the sacred masculine? And perhaps that mound work
Speaker 1: is a is a combination of both. At the very least,
Speaker 1: it was the rise of civilization in the Americas well
Speaker 1: before we knew about the same type of civilization from Europeans.
Speaker 1: So typically we define civilization as mass, food and religion
Speaker 1: coming together. So the rise of the three sister agricultural
Speaker 1: life ways probably came up from from meso America. In
Speaker 1: terms of cosmologies, that are, they're all very similar. But
Speaker 1: you had explained the term cosmology cosmology, you know just
Speaker 1: where we come from. Um, all of our stories are
Speaker 1: indigenous stories, so most part are are very well tied together.
Speaker 1: But our original stories talk about that originally our homelands
Speaker 1: were in the Seven Sisters constellation of ple eight s,
Speaker 1: and that we came here on what most of the
Speaker 1: tribes called journey of the souls, and and our and
Speaker 1: my mother's tribal cosmology. Um the story talks about that
Speaker 1: in the beginning, our souls were like stars in the sky,
Speaker 1: thought but no form. And eventually one of those souls,
Speaker 1: one of those stars, asked the question of itself, who
Speaker 1: am I? And that question burned within that soul, that star.
Speaker 1: So that star went to its mother, the moon, And
Speaker 1: that's part of the cosmology that all things sacred feminine
Speaker 1: come come from the moon, and said mother, who am I? Oh,
Speaker 1: my child, she said, I was afraid you were going
Speaker 1: to ask that question. Hurry before you forget, go ask
Speaker 1: your father. So he goes to his father, the son
Speaker 1: the sacred masculine father, who am I? And he immediately
Speaker 1: chastised him and says, my child, be very very careful
Speaker 1: with that question who am I? For that is the
Speaker 1: most important question we have as a soul. But that star,
Speaker 1: that soul was like us today, and gossipy can't keep
Speaker 1: a secret. And soon there were four of them that
Speaker 1: asked the same question, and that signals the beginning of
Speaker 1: the journey of the souls through the dark rift of
Speaker 1: the Milky Way to hear our. Stories say that were
Speaker 1: guided by Venus, the Morning Star to get here, the
Speaker 1: planet next to us. And when those souls landed, it
Speaker 1: was an all watery planet, and they took the form
Speaker 1: of four animals, and this story is basically referred to
Speaker 1: as the Earth Diver. Meth and his variations almost crossed
Speaker 1: all the tribes and they took the form of four
Speaker 1: animals and depending on the tribe, but ultimately one of
Speaker 1: them dives down into the deep waters and brings back
Speaker 1: up the clay in the earth, and Turtle was the
Speaker 1: first one that asked that question. The soul said, who
Speaker 1: am I? I felt so bad that gotten the other
Speaker 1: ones into this new mess, this new conundrum that asked
Speaker 1: to put the clay on its back, and then that
Speaker 1: became Turtle Island. And that's the story of this continent
Speaker 1: and us coming to this world and the first humans
Speaker 1: that came out of the water. After that, that's the
Speaker 1: beginnings of the cosmology, the beginning before the beginning. That's
Speaker 1: the story that's in the braiding sweet grass. Yes, because
Speaker 1: we all have different variations. As you told that story,
Speaker 1: I was, I was, I thought that's where you were going.
Speaker 1: But Robbins tribe, the Potawatoms, there have a variation of
Speaker 1: woman who fell from the sky sky woman. So is
Speaker 1: it fair to say and just just so unclear that
Speaker 1: then cosmology could be like an indig this religion based
Speaker 1: absolute stars. Absolutely, okay, And so we have all those variations,
Speaker 1: which is another function of time. Those stories. That story
Speaker 1: in his origin comes out of Siberia, so there are
Speaker 1: there's similar there's a similar narrative or that that's from
Speaker 1: people there. Yes, and then you can measure the variations
Speaker 1: of the story based over time to try to get
Speaker 1: an understanding of the antiquity of that story. Huh. From
Speaker 1: an an indigenous perspective, stories or everything the watery planet. Um,
Speaker 1: that's very common, right, and even in even even in
Speaker 1: like the Judeo Christian tradition, it's common. There's there's an
Speaker 1: element of it with the with the notions of the
Speaker 1: great flood like a watery planet. Huh. There were a
Speaker 1: lot of parallels that I saw in so the book.
Speaker 1: We discussed this earlier. Taylor and I did about this
Speaker 1: Brady sweet Grass brook uh Robin, how do you say
Speaker 1: your last name? Yeah, but I saw a lot of
Speaker 1: parallels between. I mean, you didn't have to stretch it
Speaker 1: very far to see parallels between that story at some point,
Speaker 1: and you know the Book of Genesis, I mean there
Speaker 1: was a tree that had that people were punished for
Speaker 1: for eating the fruit of and different things. But just yeah,
Speaker 1: it was it was two different trees, the Tree of
Speaker 1: Knowledge and the Tree of life. So back to the cosmology,
Speaker 1: the tree of life is what's at the centerpiece of
Speaker 1: an understanding of a of a physical attribute of that.
Speaker 1: So we have the great Tree of Life, and it
Speaker 1: is the axis moondy of the universe. And in its
Speaker 1: branches is the upper realm, ruled by the thunderbans, the thunderers,
Speaker 1: and there and their messengers, the thunderbirds. And then the
Speaker 1: roots of the Tree of life is the lower watery realm,
Speaker 1: which is inhabited by water spirits. Chief amongst them is
Speaker 1: the underwater panther or the underwater serpent Cherokees we call
Speaker 1: her Uktana, but parallels to stories from esso America for sure.
Speaker 1: Kukl Khan quite uniquotal etcetera. But these are the things, Steve,
Speaker 1: that I get immersed in. The stories and storytelling captivating
Speaker 1: to most people, children and adults alike. I've discovered if you,
Speaker 1: when you look at your history, the history of your people, Um,
Speaker 1: is it puzzling to you that that people like us,
Speaker 1: like Western Europeans. Is it puzzling to you that, uh,
Speaker 1: we're probably that were more drawn to those questions as well,
Speaker 1: like more drawn to the history, the deep history of
Speaker 1: of this continent, then we are to the deep history
Speaker 1: of our own continent, where our where our ancestors came from. Like,
Speaker 1: I really have no desire, you know, I don't have
Speaker 1: I don't wonder about Western Europe. I don't wonder about Paleolt.
Speaker 1: I mean a little bit, but I don't like pay
Speaker 1: attention to the Paleolithic tradition there. But I'm very interested
Speaker 1: in the deep history here. But I could, but I
Speaker 1: could see that you would view it as you might are,
Speaker 1: you might view it as like not my history at all,
Speaker 1: But but somehow I feel like it is. Is that
Speaker 1: is that troubling to you that I feel that way? Now,
Speaker 1: It's not troubling at all, because I think that's so
Speaker 1: important Um. One of the reasons that I want to
Speaker 1: come and share on podcasts like this and to learn
Speaker 1: from others is to have a deeper understanding of what
Speaker 1: is the provenance of this land. It's fascinating all those
Speaker 1: stories that I've just shared. I mean, yeah, truths is
Speaker 1: greater than any fiction. The stories that happened at these places,
Speaker 1: the stories that were told about the the giants and
Speaker 1: the thunder beings and all these different aspects of indigenous cosmology.
Speaker 1: It gives a provenance to this country that most people
Speaker 1: don't realize is there, but it belongs to us all
Speaker 1: a greater understanding what was happening here. There's lessons in history,
Speaker 1: things to be gleaned and to be learned. Um. Perhaps
Speaker 1: even with with Kahki and some of the others, there
Speaker 1: are forebodings of what happens with large urban experiments. Can
Speaker 1: you can you talk the giant people? I have heard,
Speaker 1: um Bigfoot enthusiasts here. We talked about this before this ship.
Speaker 1: Bigfoot enthusiasts like that story, and they will sometimes say, oh,
Speaker 1: you can find evidence of Bigfoot in the mythologies of
Speaker 1: Native Americans, because they talked about a race of giants.
Speaker 1: Has to have been Bigfoot's um Do you do you
Speaker 1: know I'm voicing I'm voicing, you know, a fringe gentleman
Speaker 1: of you know, I'm voicing the perspective of a fringe
Speaker 1: element of big Foot enthusiasts. Only two. I'm only doing
Speaker 1: that to invite you as a way of inviting you
Speaker 1: to um offer any insights. Is it a metaphor? Like?
Speaker 1: Is it a metaphor for something? What was the rate
Speaker 1: like in the mythology or in the cosmology? What was
Speaker 1: the race of giants? Do I mean? Does it refer
Speaker 1: to a specific thing? Um? You find these stories throughout
Speaker 1: a lot of the tribes um back home in Nebraska.
Speaker 1: But we say niska, that's the Omaha word for the
Speaker 1: Platte River means flat water. But niska, that's a that's
Speaker 1: a beautiful word. Yeah, and uh, I think it was
Speaker 1: called the plant or the Missouri River, which we call
Speaker 1: ni shuta, which you means smoke on the water and
Speaker 1: what and all the all the Plains tribes give it
Speaker 1: the same name in their language. But what it refers
Speaker 1: to is before that river was damned up and they
Speaker 1: had this powerful, you know, kinetic motion, especially in the
Speaker 1: winter back when winters used to be really cold. Then
Speaker 1: you would see this frozen fog bank that would go
Speaker 1: above the water. And that's what it means, smoke on
Speaker 1: the water. And uh, we have lots of stories around
Speaker 1: around that. I want to I want to get I
Speaker 1: gotta interrupt. So there's two questions. There's gonna be three
Speaker 1: in a second. Well, I want to hear him talking
Speaker 1: about Bigfoot, but also want him to answer your question
Speaker 1: about where the giants came from. Yeah, but I want
Speaker 1: him to say to say a whole sentence in in
Speaker 1: your native language. I don't care what the hell you
Speaker 1: could say something bad about me. I just want to
Speaker 1: hear because I like hearing the river names. Well, I
Speaker 1: would be truly remiss if I didn't introduce myself properly.
Speaker 1: There you go, who abe that wannga They we weat
Speaker 1: the Bugisha hunger shanu in case of a long la
Speaker 1: uma habbedy. So that's our standard introduction that we would
Speaker 1: say in our tribe about the name that we carry.
Speaker 1: So aw that wanda. That means that we're all related.
Speaker 1: So whether it's white man in Indian or from whatever
Speaker 1: part of the world you're from, you would mean this
Speaker 1: is meeting a new person. So you could say we're
Speaker 1: all one. Say it again, um abe that wanga they
Speaker 1: you're not off the hook on big Foot. We're gonna,
Speaker 1: We're gonna okay. So that's so that's the beginning of
Speaker 1: the greeting. And so that that translation. I carry the
Speaker 1: name of Bison Maine of the earth and Bison clan
Speaker 1: of the people that move against the current. That's what
Speaker 1: Omaha is. The corruption of um Maha means the people
Speaker 1: that move against the current. What it had to do
Speaker 1: with are brother and sister tribes within our language family,
Speaker 1: and at a certain point we separated from each other,
Speaker 1: probably in the diaspora coming out of the Great Lakes region.
Speaker 1: Um those movements probably referred to our separation along the
Speaker 1: Mississippi or the Great Old Man people to move against
Speaker 1: current because they because this is a group of people
Speaker 1: that traveled up river. We went up upstream is another
Speaker 1: yeah Oumaha. And then you have um no ship that's
Speaker 1: pretty good. Clapha um down from your neck of the woods.
Speaker 1: We say Gogapa. It means the downstream people. And then
Speaker 1: you have the o sage means children of the middle waters.
Speaker 1: So all of those I think Kore and I were
Speaker 1: talking abous about this before, but so many American place
Speaker 1: names are indigenous. Now we have we transliterated into English
Speaker 1: and say, oh sage and quapol. I like the word
Speaker 1: you used corruption, it's powerful. My kids are I was like,
Speaker 1: why is that play's name that? And I's doing like
Speaker 1: I'll probably some guy's name. Yeah, I mean like go
Speaker 1: through them. I mean it's like it's just the states, cities,
Speaker 1: every states, the cities Dakota, Missouri Highway, Kansas, Oklahoma. Cancer
Speaker 1: is interpretation of what we say conz A, which means
Speaker 1: the wind people. They were a clan of a larger
Speaker 1: group of of our of our language family. But it
Speaker 1: goes on and on and on. I assume Michigan, Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: It is kind of interesting though, that there was some
Speaker 1: sort of uh, you know, want or interest in not
Speaker 1: completely just renaming it and calling the next next state Steve.
Speaker 1: And then the after that well they well they did
Speaker 1: that up in the northeast. Sure certainly did. But it's right.
Speaker 1: I mean, some of some of those names would have
Speaker 1: been more European, like New York. But then the further
Speaker 1: they got, these territories were more wild and I know
Speaker 1: Arkansas is a is a native name, and I've heard
Speaker 1: the name translates into downstream people. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you have heard that before, but anyway, I'm just guessing. Uh,
Speaker 1: I grew up in Moskegon County. That's for sure indigenous, right,
Speaker 1: My my understanding. There's a huge swamp there and it's
Speaker 1: it's like the Moskegan River delta, but it's the Moskegan
Speaker 1: River flowing in the delta that the Moskegan River makes
Speaker 1: as it flows into Lake Michigan. So my understanding. Um,
Speaker 1: and you know the way everybody explains it, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a big swamp. Okay, look, swamp area whatever. But
Speaker 1: just to kind of give you this is I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna tell you anything new. Here's a joke that would
Speaker 1: be tray affect when I was a kid. It would
Speaker 1: be that, oh, uh, an Indian was water skiing and
Speaker 1: his ski broke here and he said mosquegone. Mhm right. No,
Speaker 1: it'd be like no, I'm just I'm like Taylor's laughing, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I'm not. I'm not telling them. I don't think
Speaker 1: he's going to be shocked that people tell Indian jokes
Speaker 1: that are derogatory. I mean, I didn't make damn thing up.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying it's like a thing people. It's like
Speaker 1: a stupid ass thing people say. And why is that
Speaker 1: do you think? I don't know. Wow, why do people
Speaker 1: like the blittle things? Maybe they don't know what the
Speaker 1: real history is? Yeah? Why why do you? Yeah? Why
Speaker 1: do you like to I can't explain why people like
Speaker 1: the bluttle stuff. I don't know why you want to? Like?
Speaker 1: Why would you want to diminish something? I don't know.
Speaker 1: That's that's why I wrote the chapter in my book
Speaker 1: manuscript called the Under's Dilemma of America. Why do we
Speaker 1: have to create stories like Thanksgiving when in reality, the
Speaker 1: majority of what we think about is Thanksgiving is a
Speaker 1: lie and definitely belittles Indian slave trade in in New England,
Speaker 1: the Mohegan Pequot Wars. There's so much history that we
Speaker 1: just don't know about. But it's much more convenient, much
Speaker 1: more easy to say, oh, well, there's the pilgrims and
Speaker 1: they were saved by the local Native Americans. A hell
Speaker 1: of a party, had a hell of a party. The
Speaker 1: only time Thanksgiving was used was the Governor Winthrop I
Speaker 1: believe was his name after he sent a military party
Speaker 1: to slaughter over a hundred different tribal warriors, and when
Speaker 1: they came back, that's when they had to Thanksgiving. So
Speaker 1: when you juxtapose reality versus the myths that we come
Speaker 1: up with. But this is also part of the myth
Speaker 1: of in Columbus selled the ocean blue. I don't know
Speaker 1: if they still teach that to children, but most of
Speaker 1: us know that right. As a parent who's raising kids
Speaker 1: in America, UM, I don't know how. I don't know
Speaker 1: how helpful it is to them to I'm not really
Speaker 1: interested in bringing them up in an atmosphere of self loathing,
Speaker 1: do you know what I mean? Like, I don't know
Speaker 1: that it's doing them, that it's setting them up in
Speaker 1: a good path. So I think that there are complexities there.
Speaker 1: There are astounding complexities to history. But I think that
Speaker 1: the way we communicate with kids is parable, sure, right,
Speaker 1: And if if you find there's if there's like there's
Speaker 1: a value in love of your place, there's value in
Speaker 1: love of your country, there's value and love of your
Speaker 1: fellow man. I think that it's it's like, but there's
Speaker 1: a pretty good argument to be made for giving them
Speaker 1: when they're young, somewhat of an optimistic vision, right. I
Speaker 1: think that that's probably that this is not like the
Speaker 1: Moskegan stupid ship like that, just communicating to them there's
Speaker 1: something here that you should that you probably want to
Speaker 1: take care of, right. But I mean they could be
Speaker 1: equally enthralled with the story of total saving this planet.
Speaker 1: I don't know this story other than Sturgil Simpson mentions
Speaker 1: it and turtles all the way down, but you know
Speaker 1: it now I've shared it with you. I'm gonna read off.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read up on it. I don't get the
Speaker 1: detail wrong, Listen, I'd love to telling that story. What
Speaker 1: I think you're saying, it's just that we we've distill down,
Speaker 1: We're distilled down our history into very simple, like you know,
Speaker 1: just flash points that are easy to communicate. So I mean, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: humans want to live in the now and sometimes want
Speaker 1: to look back the past and just see it as
Speaker 1: this like thing that could be subbed up in one sentence.
Speaker 1: And for whatever reason, Columbus was able to market the
Speaker 1: world marketed that Columbus found this place. So that's what
Speaker 1: we still teach. I mean, I think what you're I
Speaker 1: hear what you're saying. It's like it's easy to simplify
Speaker 1: things like really small and those things then become wrong.
Speaker 1: I mean because you can't tell complex stories with very
Speaker 1: simple things that you can't sit them all down and
Speaker 1: be like, you know, there's an arguments be made that, Um,
Speaker 1: there's no free will, right that everything's spelled out already.
Speaker 1: You're either gonna be the way you are or not.
Speaker 1: Nothing you can do about it. Um, people are horrible,
Speaker 1: good luck. That's I don't think that's not a good
Speaker 1: way of going about it. Why is it one or
Speaker 1: the other? And also what does it say to our
Speaker 1: collective consciousness if we exist on myth and continue to
Speaker 1: be okay with that? I don't know. Well, I think
Speaker 1: I think the thing is is that now because of
Speaker 1: the world we live, and we can find the accuracy
Speaker 1: and stories so here and you talk about Thanksgiving helps
Speaker 1: you know, and I've heard this before, but like that
Speaker 1: that helps us understand probably the way that we've been
Speaker 1: marketed well for sure been marketed to and so we
Speaker 1: can bring out more truth inside of the way that
Speaker 1: we exist from here on out, just because we know
Speaker 1: and I think you can find more separation between the
Speaker 1: optimism that you're talking about, Stephen, Like these bastardizations that
Speaker 1: are harmful and have implications today just stuff we tell
Speaker 1: our kids, and the truce shall set them free. Right Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I told you. Listen, what I'm saying is like, what
Speaker 1: I'm saying is probably like I'm not doing a good
Speaker 1: job of articulating it. I'm just trying to um. I'm
Speaker 1: expressing the idea that there are certain sort of legends
Speaker 1: and mythologies that are that are told because they're effective. Sure,
Speaker 1: and I don't think people sit around weighing out weighing
Speaker 1: them out too thoroughly. I guess that. Okay, It's it's
Speaker 1: much easier to have history tied up in a pretty
Speaker 1: little bus, right. It's like the blitz Creek hypothesis, Right,
Speaker 1: It's much easier to believe that there was one event
Speaker 1: that killed all the all the megafauna, right. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: m I was surprised to see that Wikipedia still is
Speaker 1: is really hangs onto the blitz Creek hypothesis. Academia has
Speaker 1: moved on. Wikipedia's doubled down. It's like the burying straight theory.
Speaker 1: That's and there's a lot of work been done. Graham
Speaker 1: Hancock did a wonderful job and America BC no America before.
Speaker 1: But he goes into this whole understanding of what you
Speaker 1: have an American anthropology around around the Clovis First people's
Speaker 1: and how anthropology just held onto that held onto that.
Speaker 1: Academics careers were destroyed whenever they found something counter to that,
Speaker 1: and so you have this whole um uncovered history, this
Speaker 1: provenance of America that may go back a lot, a
Speaker 1: lot longer than what most people are comfortable with. When
Speaker 1: I started, when I first started dabbling in anthropology, just
Speaker 1: like reading academic works, there was it was right around
Speaker 1: when the Clovis First idea was falling apart, and there
Speaker 1: were still people that held onto it, you know. But
Speaker 1: that was kind of like that. That was a debate
Speaker 1: that was half ring back then. But to get back
Speaker 1: to we're supposed to get you, is there is there
Speaker 1: a metaphor to be found in the Giant people? Like
Speaker 1: what do you think that that meant? And I think
Speaker 1: that they were giants, um they were a competing race
Speaker 1: from our stories that Earthmaker made before us, and they
Speaker 1: became they lacked humility and they were too pompous and
Speaker 1: then ultimately depending upon the stories, but there's an incredible
Speaker 1: place right outside of Omaha. The Skeety people to Panties
Speaker 1: and the rickers. Then it changes a little bit based
Speaker 1: on the dialect, but Paul Hook is what it's called,
Speaker 1: and it was the origin place for the Skiti people,
Speaker 1: and there was a number of the Council of the Animals.
Speaker 1: Out of the five sacred sites, only one of them
Speaker 1: is left, and that's Paw Hook. And from it it
Speaker 1: was said that back in the time of giants and sacrifice,
Speaker 1: that was a very important place. And ultimately that's where
Speaker 1: Earthmaker Creator decided to flood the earth to get rid
Speaker 1: of the giants, and he bade all of the human
Speaker 1: beings and the smaller animals to go underneath into the
Speaker 1: Council of the Animals, and therefore they wrote out the flood,
Speaker 1: and then they were led by yellow buffalo woman and
Speaker 1: they came back at and emerged there. So that became
Speaker 1: a very central place for a lot of the Plains people.
Speaker 1: They survived the flood, survived the flood by going underneath
Speaker 1: the ground. And you have a lot of those types
Speaker 1: of stories. Kaya was half those stories. There's biblical reference.
Speaker 1: The giants to the Anach and Genesis. Yeah, so that
Speaker 1: that's a theme, but not the kind of giant that
Speaker 1: Goliath was. Glass is the huge dude, wasn't he He
Speaker 1: was a giant? Yeah? He am and I they weren't
Speaker 1: all big he Yeah, he was a little bit of
Speaker 1: a of a phenomen amongst its people. But I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think they were all giants where they mean,
Speaker 1: but that that was the land of Canaan. Yeah. Is
Speaker 1: there any do you think there's any chance that um,
Speaker 1: that there could be cultural memory of um they would survive,
Speaker 1: like how many Neanderthal and years cultural memory that could
Speaker 1: survive long enough to recollect interaction with Neanderthals. It's an
Speaker 1: excellent question. But we find that legacy in our art,
Speaker 1: the use of red ochre can be tied back to
Speaker 1: the Neanderthals. And one of the hypotheses is who were
Speaker 1: the Denisovans? Were they some remnant of this giant race?
Speaker 1: We don't know, because that's different within my DNA than
Speaker 1: everyone else here. So what was that? I do know
Speaker 1: that there are some anthropological markers that make indigenous people's different,
Speaker 1: one of which is our teeth. And that's why I
Speaker 1: was so important about what was found in those caves
Speaker 1: in Siberia. But we have different types of teeth. The
Speaker 1: main thing is we have shovel shaped incisors, which is
Speaker 1: the only dominant genetic trait. But on the back side
Speaker 1: of front teeth or scooped um, we have the moo
Speaker 1: Mongolian spot that comes out of Asia, and I brought
Speaker 1: all my DNA stuffs the Mongolian spot. It's a little
Speaker 1: blue spot on the behind of babies and sometimes on
Speaker 1: the back or the stomach, and it's just a genetic
Speaker 1: marker we don't know and it fades and its m
Speaker 1: But we do have different DNA. We have different mitochondrial
Speaker 1: DNA as well. So the stuff that I when I
Speaker 1: originally got into the DNA stuff, when I was doing
Speaker 1: all my all my research for the book, was really
Speaker 1: trying to understand are we different and national geographic who
Speaker 1: seems to be a central player and all this. Have
Speaker 1: done an incredible job of trying to understand some of
Speaker 1: this ancient past and from the DNA perspective. They started
Speaker 1: this project called genomic which was trying to isolate the
Speaker 1: fact that we have different haplo groups for our mitochondrial DNA,
Speaker 1: So I have some of those markers that would be
Speaker 1: the dominant European ones. But then we have this motochondrial
Speaker 1: DNA that's very very different from others. What when you
Speaker 1: did so when you did a DNA test or what? What? What?
Speaker 1: What are the services have you done? I did the
Speaker 1: genomic project and then more recently, I think I did
Speaker 1: the ancestry one. So the genomic project was you were
Speaker 1: actually involved in research project? Yeah? I mean my my
Speaker 1: DNA was a part of that study. That's why I
Speaker 1: signed up for it. I see, So what can you
Speaker 1: What did it tell you about you? Um? One, that
Speaker 1: I had similar part of Neanderthal, which is probably my
Speaker 1: Irish heritage. Maybe some of the French or German I
Speaker 1: have in there as well. Um. But it also shows
Speaker 1: that I've got I've got to pointe of Neanderthal and
Speaker 1: one point seven DENI SOBN but probably most evidence through
Speaker 1: teeth and other other common amongst Native Americans and s
Speaker 1: is jealous? Are the percentages again two point three? You
Speaker 1: think that you have more Neanderthal? Remember told me I
Speaker 1: was a little light on Neanderthal man, But it goes
Speaker 1: back to your lighter average. I mean these. I guess
Speaker 1: it's natural within human beings to feel like one type
Speaker 1: of hominid is superior to the others. But I think
Speaker 1: it goes back to that core value that we have
Speaker 1: a indigenous people that were all related. So whether it's
Speaker 1: Homo sapien, Homo sapien, or Neanderthal or Dennis Ovan, all
Speaker 1: part of humanity as we now know it. But when
Speaker 1: you okay, has there is there enough information out there
Speaker 1: that you can get into Like my understanding when they
Speaker 1: do these projects is it kind of depends on how
Speaker 1: many samples are taken. So there's some spots on the
Speaker 1: planet that there just hasn't been enough people. They haven't
Speaker 1: done their genomes, haven't done their genetics, and so some
Speaker 1: spots are hazy. Some spots like what like Western Europe
Speaker 1: um a lot of participants, a lot of people have
Speaker 1: done it. You start getting these really detailed pictures, but
Speaker 1: you talk to people who um whose ancestors came from Asia,
Speaker 1: and it's like not as satisfying when you when you
Speaker 1: do it there because it's not filled in in a
Speaker 1: detailed sense, and you'll be told like, oh, you're kind
Speaker 1: of generally asian um. When you what with yours. Are
Speaker 1: they like, where is that at now? Are they able
Speaker 1: to talk about region within what's now the United States?
Speaker 1: I don't think it's going to ever be able to
Speaker 1: get that granular, because tribe is a fluid thing, you know.
Speaker 1: But I was really surprised. I mean, I know that
Speaker 1: I'm majority Native American, but the formal test, both of
Speaker 1: them came out around the same percentage um. But what
Speaker 1: I was surprised at was based off one of the
Speaker 1: tests that there was a lot more Peruvian bloodlines, and
Speaker 1: in both tests was consistent percentage of descendency from the
Speaker 1: I knew of Japan, the indigenous people's Japan, Chinese for sure, Peruvian.
Speaker 1: And the other one that was a big curveball was
Speaker 1: the nearly quarter percent that said I was Russian and
Speaker 1: then I was related to toll story. Can you track back?
Speaker 1: Can you track back? You're encouraging as a writer, so
Speaker 1: that's where I got there. You track back in your
Speaker 1: history where some of the stuff comes from. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: could you say, like my great grandfather was like a
Speaker 1: Caucasian guy. I mean, I I finally found people who
Speaker 1: know more a lot, but like your mother and father
Speaker 1: were members of the tribe. I mean, I mean, I
Speaker 1: can go back, you know, fourteen seventeen generations on almost
Speaker 1: both sides, but you're and there's nothing along those lines.
Speaker 1: But what when I finally did talk to somebody who
Speaker 1: knew what they were talking about a lot more than
Speaker 1: I did. Was probably had to do with this mixing
Speaker 1: of Siberian and Eurasian bloodlines. And I went back and
Speaker 1: forth for a time before they came over to Siberian.
Speaker 1: Arguably some of them maybe even came back. And oh
Speaker 1: so you don't think that was that was anything recent,
Speaker 1: like in the last couple of years. Yeah stuff, Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh wow, Okay, can I make a correction real quick?
Speaker 1: I said, anac in Genesis is Nephilim. Nephilim where the Yeah, yeah, irrelevant,
Speaker 1: But I just had to clear that uppilum. And I've
Speaker 1: been fascinated with all of you know, the understanding of
Speaker 1: what happened in Messo America, what happened in South America.
Speaker 1: I've been really enjoy reading about those British explorers who
Speaker 1: finally went down to South American and tried to find
Speaker 1: the Lost City of z Colonel Faucett. It's a fascinating story,
Speaker 1: but behalfs of the Royal Geographic Society. He went down
Speaker 1: in the early dred and began to explore in his
Speaker 1: hypothesis was there was the lost city of Zad, which
Speaker 1: was a complex society in South America. Charles Man in
Speaker 1: his book he talks a lot about um terra Pretta
Speaker 1: and some of the agricultural practices and involving the use
Speaker 1: of biochar and how to take very alkaline soils and
Speaker 1: turn them into you know, productive things. And these are
Speaker 1: ancient but much many years after pots disappearance into the Amazon,
Speaker 1: no one knows every what happened to him. That many
Speaker 1: people try to go and find out through the use
Speaker 1: of technology. We've we're finding all these ancient cities now
Speaker 1: and more and more evidence that population numbers were a
Speaker 1: lot bigger. But that's the first point in having any
Speaker 1: of these conversations about ancient America is how many people,
Speaker 1: how many bison, etcetera. All tho has become really interesting topics.
Speaker 1: But what happened to them? Why did they leave or disappear?
Speaker 1: What was the role of disease in genocide? How much
Speaker 1: of it was purposeful? I think all those things are
Speaker 1: important for people that understand so that the very least
Speaker 1: we don't repeat those bad portions of history. Tribal people's
Speaker 1: have them a prophecy. It's primarily in the plains, but
Speaker 1: it's all around. That has to do with the seventh
Speaker 1: generation prophecy. And ultimately you can look to sad symbolic
Speaker 1: events in history, such as the original Battle of Wounded Knee,
Speaker 1: which was putting down of very powerful um the Ghost
Speaker 1: Dance religion and in its profit well voca up around
Speaker 1: up around Pine Ridge there and I believe it's in
Speaker 1: the eighteen seventies, but it is such a horrific event
Speaker 1: that many viewed it as the breaking of the great
Speaker 1: sacred hoop of the Suian people's And at that point
Speaker 1: it was said that that was the beginning of very
Speaker 1: tough time for indigenous peoples, that for six generations we
Speaker 1: would suffer greatly, and Lord knows we've suffered, and that
Speaker 1: with the markings then, um, I think you wrote about
Speaker 1: this something too, stories about white buff low calf woman,
Speaker 1: that that she would return, and so we had those
Speaker 1: markings and actuality in the physical man manifestation of white
Speaker 1: buffalo calfs. So we had the first one in two
Speaker 1: thousand one, and by two thousand and seven there were
Speaker 1: four of them, and that means that that was the
Speaker 1: time for the return of the seventh generation. I had
Speaker 1: actually been right in a scholarly paper with a legal
Speaker 1: scholar who also happened to be a the coach to spiritualist,
Speaker 1: and she's the one who explained it to me at
Speaker 1: the time. But with the coming of the fourth White
Speaker 1: Buffalo Calftain, all of the children born after that would
Speaker 1: be of the seventh generation. So for those tribal people's
Speaker 1: that generation would be the ones that would lead them
Speaker 1: to those nations to stand tall again and be and
Speaker 1: be proud. For all those children that are non Indigenous
Speaker 1: that were born after that time, ram they're there also
Speaker 1: part of the seven generation, and as non Indigenous, they're
Speaker 1: going to be the population that's finally ready for our knowledge.
Speaker 1: And it was pointed out to me that I was
Speaker 1: a part of the sixth generation, that I was supposed
Speaker 1: to be a teacher and then I didn't know all
Speaker 1: my stories and she was right. So that began that
Speaker 1: joint that journey for me from going from um general
Speaker 1: person in Corporate America trying to find out who am
Speaker 1: I where do I come from, so then when it
Speaker 1: comes time, I can tell these stories and the hopes
Speaker 1: that it's gonna make the world a better place. Can
Speaker 1: you explain to people the uh, the Goal's dancers, because
Speaker 1: there there was two. There was kind of like two
Speaker 1: occurrences where someone tried to unite UM. What was the
Speaker 1: one like related to the you know he was he
Speaker 1: was from Indiana, right, clumsy, Right, there's yeah, there's two
Speaker 1: two separate stories. He well, like a person a sort
Speaker 1: of profit that wanted to unite people that would try
Speaker 1: to like patch up and inform an allegiance of confederacy
Speaker 1: to to fight. And then the ghost dance profit or
Speaker 1: teacher or whatever profit he was similar to he was
Speaker 1: trying to he was he was trying to communicate with
Speaker 1: the like with a bunch of historical enemies to bring
Speaker 1: to buying them together. It was derivation out of the
Speaker 1: potawatam Um Dreaming Dance Society and UM. Ultimately he had
Speaker 1: these visions where UM the followers could, through dance and song,
Speaker 1: could put themselves into a mental state where they could
Speaker 1: see the other side. And it was their hope that Um,
Speaker 1: despite what had happened with the loss of the bison
Speaker 1: and our and our traditional life ways, that the old
Speaker 1: world would come back, and that's what they were they
Speaker 1: were seeking. Of course, it was seen by the United
Speaker 1: States Militarius insurrection and they were summarily attacked and killed
Speaker 1: up at Wounded Knee and the prophet was killed at
Speaker 1: that point. What was the second Like, when did the
Speaker 1: second Wounded Knee massacre? That was the eighteen nineties, right, No,
Speaker 1: that was in in the nineteen seventies. That had to
Speaker 1: do with the Red Power movement and the American Indian Movement.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, okay, almost, I know. I thought that
Speaker 1: there was like two Wounded Knee things in close proximity,
Speaker 1: not that I'm aware of. The first one was pretty
Speaker 1: brutal and tribes didn't respond back from that till many
Speaker 1: many years later, and then wounded He became a became
Speaker 1: a focal point in the seventies, Yes, of the American
Speaker 1: Indian Movement. That's after they became militant, for sure. One
Speaker 1: other questions, Oh yeah, no, no, we covered off a
Speaker 1: big foot. No we didn't. You hadn't heard him talk
Speaker 1: about bigfoot yet. I don't think he's a big foot enthusiast,
Speaker 1: a big foot. No, he has something to say. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you nasty, because Bigfoot is not an American icon.
Speaker 1: It's a tribal icon. All the tribes we have Bigfoot,
Speaker 1: the omahas um Hinska Bay. It means the hairy race
Speaker 1: of people. Really all the tribes, many of the tribes,
Speaker 1: especially up in the Pacific Northwest. I mean it's it
Speaker 1: is a spiritual part of their formation. Um. They some
Speaker 1: of the clans up there are even responsible for protecting
Speaker 1: the anonymity and the sacredness of them. That has become
Speaker 1: something out of American popular lore. But that's what, that's what.
Speaker 1: That's what he said. That helped because we were walking
Speaker 1: up here, he said, what do you think about Bigfoot?
Speaker 1: And and he told me, he said, Bigfoot is not
Speaker 1: doesn't belong to America. I mean, you know America as
Speaker 1: in like white European culture that dominates America. He said,
Speaker 1: it belongs to the tribes. And then he I don't
Speaker 1: want to take your I don't want to tell what
Speaker 1: you're going to say about that he's a spirit being.
Speaker 1: But I just did. Many of our of our stories
Speaker 1: say that there's a relationship between them and the sky people,
Speaker 1: and so Um, perhaps they can move between different planes
Speaker 1: of existence. I mean, who were we to say what
Speaker 1: is real and what's not, what's happening in the spirit
Speaker 1: world and what's happening here. Many say that they move
Speaker 1: in between those those those realms. That's been adopted. That
Speaker 1: attribute has been also adopted by bigfoot researchers to explain
Speaker 1: why you cannot catch them on a trail camera because
Speaker 1: they they they like, move out of they move into
Speaker 1: the ethereal realm and can't be photographed. Do you believe
Speaker 1: Steve No, Mitch Edward, the comedian mit Chedward, thinks they're
Speaker 1: just blurry and it's not the photographer's fault. I think
Speaker 1: it's a barrel two legs. See what I what what
Speaker 1: I don't? I don't know to me what what he
Speaker 1: told me gave me. I mean, it just gave me
Speaker 1: another perspective that that explains this. And I knew that
Speaker 1: that bigfoot would have been connected to Indigenous Americans, but
Speaker 1: I guess I didn't know realized that it was something
Speaker 1: sacred and that it was something that's really valued. You know,
Speaker 1: that's kind of been you know, hijacked in a way
Speaker 1: because I told him, I said, no, I don't believe. Well,
Speaker 1: this is before a story. I said, No, I don't
Speaker 1: believe in bigfoot. I think people are seeing bipedal bears
Speaker 1: that have had wounded front feet and are walking on
Speaker 1: their back legs, which we know for a fact happens.
Speaker 1: That happens, for sure happens. But no, it just expanded
Speaker 1: this idea because I mean, the bigfoot or the the
Speaker 1: hairy hominid like bipedal lore goes so deep. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's bizarre how deep it goes. I mean, we were
Speaker 1: talking about the co Yukon. The co Yukon have a
Speaker 1: very distinct bigfoot like character that is up in Alaska.
Speaker 1: Every tribe does. Yeah, and we're all complex and deep
Speaker 1: and rich. So I know in southeast Alaska some of
Speaker 1: the groups have a there's an otterman, which Hida and
Speaker 1: Simpscian people have mentioned to me. M. The co Yukon
Speaker 1: have the woodsman. They call him woodsman, kind of a wilding, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's not exactly a bigfoot, but that's kind of
Speaker 1: how they treated it. And they said they were supernatural.
Speaker 1: They could move in and out of you know, being
Speaker 1: able to be seen and whatnot. But they were almost
Speaker 1: like a feral human that was real, Harry. And then
Speaker 1: of course you have the counterpart to the giants. We
Speaker 1: all have stories of little people as well, and there
Speaker 1: very powerful race and they move in and out of
Speaker 1: this existence. The story that I always like to tell
Speaker 1: about it I'm I'm I'm a descendant of Baptist Dorian.
Speaker 1: That's the French part of my Omaha bloodlines. And he
Speaker 1: was an interpreter for Lewis and Clark. And whenever Lewis
Speaker 1: and Clark met with the Iway and the Otto at
Speaker 1: what is now Council Bluffs, Iowa, which is where I live,
Speaker 1: h the Omahas were not present because they were on
Speaker 1: bison hunt. But eventually some of the translators and explorers
Speaker 1: went along, and my ancestra was a part of it.
Speaker 1: And they got up near Vermillion, South Dakota, and Lewis
Speaker 1: and Clark wanted to dispatch all of the all of
Speaker 1: the tribal representatives to go and to explore um. This
Speaker 1: um they basically a rock mounted spirit lake, and the
Speaker 1: Omahas dug in their heels and said, uh, we ain't going.
Speaker 1: And they asked him why, and they said, because we
Speaker 1: have a story. Uh. There were a number of our warriors.
Speaker 1: There were three hundred of them that were on a
Speaker 1: horse rating trip, which was not honorable, and on their
Speaker 1: return going past uh the rock edifice they're at Spirit Lake,
Speaker 1: that the little people came out and attacked them and
Speaker 1: killed over half of them. And so our stories about
Speaker 1: giants and little people. All the tribes have stories like that.
Speaker 1: I only know the ones that I've been told, but
Speaker 1: they go so far back into our history that there
Speaker 1: has to be something to them. But I mean, there's
Speaker 1: there's there's parallels with the Gaelic cultures and little people, etcetera.
Speaker 1: The mound builders. You find very strong similarities between the
Speaker 1: carnes and rock mounds of northern Europe and what you
Speaker 1: see in the Mississippian plane as well. So for me,
Speaker 1: it's just a lot of questions back to that whole
Speaker 1: tenant of we're all related, but how did all these
Speaker 1: things rise around the same time and then and then collapse?
Speaker 1: You know? I think when I when I hear you
Speaker 1: talk this kind of a broad general statement about here
Speaker 1: and you talk, is that we so bad want to
Speaker 1: be able to explain everything that we know, and in science,
Speaker 1: science is by very essence only able to discern, to
Speaker 1: understand what is physically observable. I mean, that's the definition
Speaker 1: of science. Like science does not delve into, you know,
Speaker 1: things that are metaphysical. And and what I like about
Speaker 1: hearing some of these, like ancient deep time stories of
Speaker 1: indigenous people is that we really like to think that
Speaker 1: we know everything and we just don't. I mean, I
Speaker 1: did an interview with one of the top wildlife biologists
Speaker 1: in the country that deals with with white oak trees
Speaker 1: and acorns, and he when I started drilling down questions
Speaker 1: about white oak trees, like he was like, Clay, you
Speaker 1: don't have to dig very far to you realize science
Speaker 1: does not know all the answers, even about something so
Speaker 1: simple and not that seemingly important. And just as I
Speaker 1: hear you talk about even qualms about how long humans
Speaker 1: have been in North America, and you know, are are
Speaker 1: the archaeology we know? You know, says X, you know
Speaker 1: we've been here this long. But and that's just the
Speaker 1: best that we've got. But your stories say that it
Speaker 1: goes way back further than that. And uh, and I
Speaker 1: just feel like we really don't know, and it's okay
Speaker 1: for us to say we don't know, and it's okay
Speaker 1: for us to say that the measurements of science do
Speaker 1: have limitations. Just back to the field of anthropology and
Speaker 1: its separation from folklore, because that was the scientific part
Speaker 1: of anthropology, which says we have to have physical evidence
Speaker 1: for everything, and it ignored folklore and it was only
Speaker 1: until the last ten years or so. That was one
Speaker 1: of the works that really inspired me to start my
Speaker 1: book was reading Tim poc Tat's work on on kah Kia,
Speaker 1: and he was the first mainstream anthropologist to bust out
Speaker 1: of the mold and say, hey, we need to we
Speaker 1: need to look at that tribal stories here to help
Speaker 1: figure out and that's that's how we come up with
Speaker 1: the stories of ostracizing people that have spoken against it.
Speaker 1: You can look back a thousand years and find that, right.
Speaker 1: So ye, stories for everything. Still, let me ask you
Speaker 1: how something. We've had this debate on and off over
Speaker 1: the years, and I just like to get perspective on it.
Speaker 1: Many of the earth mounds have been ransacked, Okay, Like
Speaker 1: you have a term like pot hunters, right, so people
Speaker 1: that would just go dig up caves, dig up um.
Speaker 1: It starts with arrowheads. Yeah, Well that's why I'm going
Speaker 1: so people would dig up caves, people would dig up
Speaker 1: effigy mounds, people dig up cities, haul off the stuff
Speaker 1: that they thought was a value and and and destroy
Speaker 1: it from an archaeological perspective, and then desecrated from religious perspective. Say, uh,
Speaker 1: let's put that at it an extreme, Okay. At the
Speaker 1: other end is you're out till in the field and
Speaker 1: up pops a broken arrowhead. Okay, and you put that
Speaker 1: arrowhead in your pocket because you're thinking until this field
Speaker 1: all the time. I just kicked it up my field. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So two questions for you, Um, what's your take on that,
Speaker 1: on that impulse? And then I want you to judge
Speaker 1: that impulse. Well, there's two different kinds of people in
Speaker 1: the world, right, There's people who want to lump everybody
Speaker 1: into two groups right right. The the the analogy that
Speaker 1: I thought was interesting at this at this point was, Um,
Speaker 1: if we all walked up and found a wallet and
Speaker 1: there was money in it, half of us are going
Speaker 1: to take it and give it to someone to of
Speaker 1: it back, right. The other half's gonna take take the
Speaker 1: money pocketed and to the wallet. Yeah, that's probably all right.
Speaker 1: So I think I think the same thing, right, But
Speaker 1: it goes to how we think about objects that we
Speaker 1: don't understand. Arrowheads would be one of those. On the
Speaker 1: one end of the extreme is you know people loved
Speaker 1: to collect arrowheads, Um, my dad did. I've got his
Speaker 1: collection and at home, your father did that. My dad did,
Speaker 1: and he loved it, and he like he actively hunted arrowheads.
Speaker 1: He did, and he gave them, gave them to me.
Speaker 1: And so I understand that. At the same time, I
Speaker 1: know that what is in that act? Why is that
Speaker 1: so important? Philosophically? When you're average American is walking somewhere
Speaker 1: and sees this arrowhead, what is it that compels them
Speaker 1: to want to pick it up and to take it
Speaker 1: for their own. Some may admire the beauty and the
Speaker 1: history as it is and was and says that's pretty powerful.
Speaker 1: And maybe if we leave it in the ground, maybe
Speaker 1: this was an important place. Maybe that arrowhead told the
Speaker 1: story of how these people lived. Maybe it explains the
Speaker 1: time period of when that was made. Maybe it's tied
Speaker 1: to an animal that was ancient that this arrow head
Speaker 1: went into. There's so much that could be there. And
Speaker 1: then there's the other perspective, is my land I found it,
Speaker 1: it's mine and perhaps or something will happen to it. Okay,
Speaker 1: been there a long time by itself. That's good point.
Speaker 1: But I think you can't discount the rarity of it.
Speaker 1: And that's what I mean compels a lot of people
Speaker 1: to not leave it because I don't know, I mean,
Speaker 1: did they want it's magic for themselves? Yeah, exactly. I
Speaker 1: was with some I was with some anthropologists who were
Speaker 1: doing work in the npr A, so the National Petroleum
Speaker 1: Reserve Alaska. What they were doing is the head of
Speaker 1: oil exploration, which is probably inevitable. They were trying to
Speaker 1: make a map of cultural sites. Um, because when they do,
Speaker 1: you know, e s a process and all the other
Speaker 1: processes to go on to extract oil. There needs to
Speaker 1: be an accounting of what might be destroyed, and it
Speaker 1: would and the finding of cultural sites would impact where
Speaker 1: you would build roads, put in wellheads, whatnot. Um, you're
Speaker 1: in a place that you can't even it's so far
Speaker 1: out you can't get a helicopter there on a tank
Speaker 1: of gas. You gotta like take a plane and kick
Speaker 1: out barrels of gas and then hop scotch from barrel
Speaker 1: to barrel in a helicopter that's how like remote you are.
Speaker 1: But anyways, there's just stuff laying out. Man, it's been
Speaker 1: sitting there thousands of years, like there's no one around
Speaker 1: to pick it up. Hasn't been And I'm telling you,
Speaker 1: those guys would photograph the actile points and they would
Speaker 1: draw the projectile points and they would stick them back
Speaker 1: in the moss. It was painful for me, painful. I
Speaker 1: would have visions of coming back out and getting them.
Speaker 1: I wanted him so bad. I don't know, man, it's
Speaker 1: just like, because it's so cool, I'd be like, oh,
Speaker 1: like every part of me. I mean, I would go
Speaker 1: and revisit, Like I remember one time at camp, leaving camp,
Speaker 1: walking down, not to take it, but leaving camp, walking down,
Speaker 1: getting it back out of the moss, looking at it
Speaker 1: for a long time, sticking it back in the moss,
Speaker 1: and just like yeah. They'd be like if I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: Like if you put a boxing nerds out on the
Speaker 1: ground and my kids found it, they'd be like, now,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what I can do with those nerds.
Speaker 1: It's very I can't explain it. Although there are a
Speaker 1: lot of things in the natural world that do connect
Speaker 1: us to you know, way back history. There's very few
Speaker 1: things that are that physical that you can just look
Speaker 1: at and hold and it takes you like, well, way back.
Speaker 1: It's not such a new go ahead. Actually, I want
Speaker 1: to this one thing. It's a lot of things I
Speaker 1: don't understand. I can tell you what it's not. It's
Speaker 1: not meant as an act of disrespect for the person
Speaker 1: to own that thing. For some and I want to
Speaker 1: get the opposite. I think it's a it's a it's
Speaker 1: a thing of like deep reverence curiosity about fascination with
Speaker 1: the person that made that thing. Sure, but if one
Speaker 1: takes that, you lose the context of where it was
Speaker 1: and whatever science might be able to tell us about it.
Speaker 1: I want to bring that's a good point. I want
Speaker 1: to bring up to serious things on this topic. So
Speaker 1: that's on one end of the of the extreme. And
Speaker 1: then you have in the wake of the passing of
Speaker 1: the legislation to protect um try remains and funerary Objects
Speaker 1: known as the Native American Engraves Repatriation Act in the
Speaker 1: ninety nineties, and prior to that, you have the Archaeological
Speaker 1: Resource Protection Act, and you have aberrations of this benign
Speaker 1: mindset about things like arrowheads. And on this other extreme,
Speaker 1: you have this event that happened with the National Park
Speaker 1: Service at Effigy Mounds in Iowa and as the rise
Speaker 1: of Nagpra and State of Iowa also passed an early
Speaker 1: law saying that you know, if if there are skeletal
Speaker 1: remains or funerary objects, and ultimately what became the language
Speaker 1: of Native American Graves and Repatriation Act is anything that
Speaker 1: is sacred needs to be returned back to the people.
Speaker 1: And what happened there was they had a number of
Speaker 1: skeletal remains and the superintendent of the site believe his
Speaker 1: name is Tom Munson, he was so frustrated with the
Speaker 1: potential that these objects would be out of their collection.
Speaker 1: And I believe it was combination of twenty four different
Speaker 1: human remains from different individuals that were on display, that
Speaker 1: were on display at different points, and as this the
Speaker 1: potential risk of this law taking them away from the
Speaker 1: anthropological archaeological collection, he stole them and tucked him to
Speaker 1: his house and then lied about it for years and
Speaker 1: ultimately there had to be an accounting of it. But
Speaker 1: we're talking about skeletal remains. What do you think what
Speaker 1: was going on in his head, Um, I have to
Speaker 1: take this so we don't have to give them back
Speaker 1: to the Indians, and eventually everyone's going to forget and
Speaker 1: then we can have them back. So you have this
Speaker 1: unhealthy relationship between objects that have a tribal provenance and
Speaker 1: what we would like to see happen to them, any
Speaker 1: skeletal remains. There's an exception in the America's because of
Speaker 1: archaeology and anthropology that science came in and says it's
Speaker 1: okay to take Indian bones. There's been numerous examples of
Speaker 1: cemeteries and that were damaged during construction, etcetera. They find
Speaker 1: the white people bones and they bury them properly, and
Speaker 1: the Indian bones go to the state archaeological societies. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: it took enforcement of Nagpra to come in and to
Speaker 1: convict him first keeping and stealing all those all those remains.
Speaker 1: The tribes were very upset about that and there was
Speaker 1: no accountability of it. Even further and more political goes
Speaker 1: to archaeological rich sites like um down in uh outside
Speaker 1: of Blanding, Utah, and there was a raid that there
Speaker 1: was twenty four individuals that were ultimately indicted and in
Speaker 1: between them they had forty thousand objects that they had
Speaker 1: illegally taken out of the ground, some of which had
Speaker 1: provenance to six thousand BC pottery shards, human remains, funerary sandals, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And foremost of those was a doctor by the name
Speaker 1: of James red And Uh. It was certainly viewed as
Speaker 1: an over zealous overreach of the FBI and the Bureau
Speaker 1: of Land Management, but the facts of the case are
Speaker 1: still the same. There was over forty thousand objects that
Speaker 1: were gotten in that sting. The economics of it is
Speaker 1: what is mind boggling to me, because this is the
Speaker 1: serious part about erahads, etcetera. Was of the two d
Speaker 1: forty objects that they found there, they used an informant
Speaker 1: um to try to lure these individuals who are illegally
Speaker 1: trading them and fuelling the black market and Native American objects. UM.
Speaker 1: I think they've spen around three thirty thousand, which averaged
Speaker 1: around forty dollars per object for those two fifty. So
Speaker 1: if we use that as a proxy and run the numbers,
Speaker 1: then that collection which they hauled away from those twenty
Speaker 1: four individuals, UH collection of forty thou would be over
Speaker 1: fifty three million dollars. So this is one subset of
Speaker 1: what happens with the black market trade around Native American objects,
Speaker 1: which have been fetishized beyond the object and the provenance
Speaker 1: into a horrible black market. So why would the individual
Speaker 1: who finds the arrowhead or the pottery shard? I can
Speaker 1: get a hundred bucks for this, And then it goes
Speaker 1: on and on and on, Doctor Red and the informant
Speaker 1: sadly committed suicide rather than face the charges. But one
Speaker 1: of the end the informant killed himself. He did a
Speaker 1: year a year later. And if you look at stories
Speaker 1: on this, you're gonna find more stories about the overreach
Speaker 1: of the federal government. But it certainly doesn't take away
Speaker 1: from the fact that this was an illustration of the
Speaker 1: huge black market around Native American objects, especially things that
Speaker 1: are sacred, human remains, funerary objects, things that should be
Speaker 1: sacred and left alone. So there's a serious side to
Speaker 1: hunting objects. Oh, I get the serious side for sure.
Speaker 1: And I think that you if you went and talk
Speaker 1: to people, um just like pulled people who are hobbyists
Speaker 1: you know about, they don't think they're doing anything wrong. Well,
Speaker 1: you I think you'd find if you said like, hey,
Speaker 1: you found human skeleton. What you do? I think, you know,
Speaker 1: the fast majority of people would would recognize it, they
Speaker 1: wouldn't take it, or they would tell someone or whatever,
Speaker 1: you know. But I think people sort of spread it
Speaker 1: out and a view the arrowhead isn't of significance or
Speaker 1: it was. It wasn't purposefully placed. It was perhaps lost,
Speaker 1: it was broken. It was just it was discarded and
Speaker 1: it wasn't like someone putting something somewhere the same way
Speaker 1: we might look at our own like we might look
Speaker 1: at a cemetery. Um, Like I might look at the
Speaker 1: cemetery that my ancestors were buried in and have a
Speaker 1: very different feeling about it than I would if I found, uh,
Speaker 1: like an old rusty pistol laying out in the woods,
Speaker 1: I'd be like, yeah, I can dig up the graveyard,
Speaker 1: but I just found old rusty pistol out in the woods.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take a home with me, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: like we we sort of hold these two like we
Speaker 1: distinct these things, and we we we separate these things
Speaker 1: out in our head. Um. I can't tell where the
Speaker 1: line falls for everybody, but I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people view their being some lines somewhere. It's the bone
Speaker 1: bone of a human leave it alone. Well, I think
Speaker 1: I think I really want some clarity from you, just
Speaker 1: your personal opinion. Like, so obviously there are some legal
Speaker 1: ramific I mean there there's legal boundaries that guide us,
Speaker 1: Like obviously we can't mess with human bones. You can't
Speaker 1: take any kind of artifacts off public land. So let's
Speaker 1: go to private land. Um, if I'm on my land
Speaker 1: and see an airhead, should should I pick that up?
Speaker 1: Should Clay nucom pick it up? If you found a
Speaker 1: wallet with bucks, would you pick it up or give
Speaker 1: it back? I would, I would pick it up and
Speaker 1: give it back. But but I don't. I just I'm
Speaker 1: I'm just being totally honest with you. I'm struggling to
Speaker 1: find the the complete Apples to Apple connection there. And
Speaker 1: because I mean, what am I supposed to if I
Speaker 1: find an airhead on my land? Am I supposed to
Speaker 1: call the you know, the the o s Age, the
Speaker 1: chucktaws that would have been there? And I'm would be
Speaker 1: interesting for you to do that though, for you as
Speaker 1: a landowner. And then that's one of the serious parts
Speaker 1: that I'm hoping comes out of That's a good point
Speaker 1: talks with people like me, is is that there's so
Speaker 1: much more to the provenance of this land. You've said
Speaker 1: that word. Can you tell me what that word means? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that there's a history. It's like in artwork
Speaker 1: or in wine or whatever. It's it's the ownership history.
Speaker 1: Ownership history, got it? Like you know, like some painting
Speaker 1: comes up, you know, the provence. People are very interested
Speaker 1: in its flow through times. So I'm Steve, you nailed
Speaker 1: that one. According to Marriam Webster. Number one because I
Speaker 1: had to Marriam Webster while we've been talking because he's
Speaker 1: used it so many times. And the the first definition
Speaker 1: is just straight origin or source. But then number two
Speaker 1: is the history of ownership of a valued object or
Speaker 1: work of art or literature. The reason it's really important
Speaker 1: in paintings and antiquities is the more solid the provenance is,
Speaker 1: the less worried you are that that it came that
Speaker 1: it emerged out of somewhere as a phony. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: all you know is like it just came out of
Speaker 1: the period, out of nowhere in Okay, let me ask
Speaker 1: you this, Like, so I'm from western Arkansas, close to
Speaker 1: where you're from originally, and there's a lot of airheads,
Speaker 1: you know, at laddle points, spear points, a lot of
Speaker 1: stone points everywhere. I mean, I'm convinced that they are
Speaker 1: distributed across the landscape everywhere, everywhere. And so think about
Speaker 1: this or this is just a thought pattern that I
Speaker 1: would have, Like we have destroyed so much of the
Speaker 1: earth surface through civilization, covered it with concrete, moved it
Speaker 1: crops crops like we've we so and I'm okay driving
Speaker 1: on a road that has destroyed Native American eraheads. Um,
Speaker 1: But in my mule pasture where my mules tear up
Speaker 1: the ground and they have trails of dirt that have
Speaker 1: exposed the ground, I find some stone points. And that's
Speaker 1: why I would ask you in it just a totally
Speaker 1: heartfelt question. Is like when I when I pick up
Speaker 1: a stone point that can out came off my place,
Speaker 1: which I have I have seen many, I call my
Speaker 1: kids and usually I'll call them out before I pick
Speaker 1: it up if they're home, and say look at that.
Speaker 1: I'll say, the last human to touch that was planning
Speaker 1: to cook his dinner over a fire with an animal
Speaker 1: that he killed with that point. I mean, we it's
Speaker 1: a moment, man, I mean it's just like, oh, look
Speaker 1: at this, does that count for for some value? Like
Speaker 1: what should I do with those? Well, I mean, what
Speaker 1: would you do with them? That's a good question. The
Speaker 1: example that I would point to was Steve's example of
Speaker 1: finding a bison skull. You go on a journey and
Speaker 1: you find out the two the true provenance of that
Speaker 1: animal in its histories, and I reported it and you
Speaker 1: reported it, but it's in my mouth. Yeah, after learning
Speaker 1: all that I've learned, I would want to leave it there,
Speaker 1: and at a certain point would want to introduce science
Speaker 1: into it to see what we could understand about what
Speaker 1: that piece was, Like, what period was it from, what
Speaker 1: were they hunting, who was doing the hunting, Just a
Speaker 1: lot of questions and hopefully layering into the history as
Speaker 1: we know it from the object that's looking at it
Speaker 1: on the ground, coupled with science and then a layer
Speaker 1: of indigenous history or provenance into it, can only add
Speaker 1: to the value of the history of the object. And
Speaker 1: that's my whole point with all of this, is that
Speaker 1: wherever you look across America, there's all these objects, there's
Speaker 1: all this history. It's there for all of us to
Speaker 1: understand and to help enhance our own experience as Americans
Speaker 1: speaking of history. Now that we haven't speaking about anything
Speaker 1: besides history, can you explain to everybody, UM, about the
Speaker 1: Sacred Seeds Project. Absolutely. When I began to write the book,
Speaker 1: became pretty apparent after doing a lot of research that
Speaker 1: the rise of the Mississippian mound builder culture had a
Speaker 1: lot to do with the food that they were eating.
Speaker 1: And around this the same time frame, actually a little
Speaker 1: bit earlier, Um, one of my mentors in life, Dr
Speaker 1: Dward Walker, is the chair emeritus of Anthropology see you Boulder.
Speaker 1: He began to watch some of the trends that was
Speaker 1: happening with some of the big seed companies like Monsanto
Speaker 1: cin Genta, and what they were doing in other countries
Speaker 1: like the country of India, and ultimately I mean like
Speaker 1: trademarking seeds and yes in intellectual property protection, but was
Speaker 1: also displacing them of their indigenous seeds and getting them
Speaker 1: their own contract bound genetically modified organism seeds and which
Speaker 1: is basically what the American farmer does, um loose seeds
Speaker 1: the corn that we see in fields as clones and
Speaker 1: it's uh one small variation of corn compared to the
Speaker 1: thousands of types of corn that were here before, and
Speaker 1: so I began to study the Mississippian record, and basically,
Speaker 1: where there was corn in abundance, there were people in abundance,
Speaker 1: and where there was corn, there were people, there was life.
Speaker 1: And so from a cosmological perspective, that was the gift
Speaker 1: of old woman who gave us seeds, and she gave
Speaker 1: us corn. And all the tribes have different stories, but
Speaker 1: it's so integral to our life ways and cosmology and
Speaker 1: survival that you can't get around it. And so I
Speaker 1: began my own journey of trying to find some of
Speaker 1: these ancient seeds and what it meant. Um. We were
Speaker 1: talking about about this before the podcast Johnny, about what
Speaker 1: happens when of your ancestors are gone at some point.
Speaker 1: Did it all happen at once, No, it was very devastating.
Speaker 1: The examples in Nebraska was because of our proximity to
Speaker 1: the middle of the country, the tribes there, we weren't
Speaker 1: hit until the late seventeen hundreds and early eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: It was a wave in late seventeen hundred, eighteen thirty,
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty, and perhaps more waves, but the cumulative effect
Speaker 1: was ninety present decimation rates. So it just may have
Speaker 1: happened in one place and eight hundreds in the other,
Speaker 1: but the net effect was not loss of knowledge for sure,
Speaker 1: and so whatever we can do to find our way
Speaker 1: back to that. What I found was starting with basically
Speaker 1: thirty seeds from the Cherokee Nation Seed Saving Project and
Speaker 1: planting those in the ground. There was something about understanding
Speaker 1: that history, understanding how we planted, when we planted, why,
Speaker 1: what shape, what seeds? How did you plant them? And
Speaker 1: began to piece together this companion planting agricultural life ways
Speaker 1: that was at the center center of how people survived
Speaker 1: on this continent for at least two thousand years ago
Speaker 1: and probably much beyond that. And by putting my hands
Speaker 1: in the soil, by understanding the rhythms, talking with elder
Speaker 1: is piecing together these things back I began to find
Speaker 1: all these little tidbits, um we're supposed to plant on
Speaker 1: the New Moon in May. There's a flower that grows,
Speaker 1: the first one that that flowers, that's when you plant
Speaker 1: other parts of the crop. When we left them, they
Speaker 1: were dropped resistant seeds. And all of these things began
Speaker 1: to impact how I felt, and I truly felt by
Speaker 1: doing these acts by having a good heart, by doing
Speaker 1: them for the right reasons, not for money. Back to
Speaker 1: the whole notion of Robin's work around sacred economies and
Speaker 1: sacred reciprocity, that it began to change me in a way.
Speaker 1: I'm very familiar with inter generational trauma and the impact
Speaker 1: of what colonization has had on indigenous peoples. And it's
Speaker 1: it's rough, it's really hard. But on the converse side,
Speaker 1: perhaps it has to do with epigenetic But by getting
Speaker 1: my hands and the soil, by growing these plants, by
Speaker 1: learning from them, that is healing me, and that it
Speaker 1: can heal others. And we have a notion of blood
Speaker 1: memory that somehow the ancestors through our DNA will help
Speaker 1: us understand how to put this all back together. How
Speaker 1: can we live better again? Um I look at the
Speaker 1: landscape and I see things differently, after doing all this work,
Speaker 1: after studying to be a teacher of the sixth generation.
Speaker 1: I look across this landscape and I see the lands,
Speaker 1: the land that once was. I see the land that
Speaker 1: could be again. I see bison herds massive where everyone
Speaker 1: could hunt them again. The food that they eat is
Speaker 1: back again, switch grass, the bison grass, it's buffalo commons
Speaker 1: um bing or action of all these things that we're
Speaker 1: begin to see again things that were important to tribal peoples,
Speaker 1: that are part of our clan systems. The role of
Speaker 1: wolf and elk and bison, and how these this is
Speaker 1: what the land here was meant two produced to sustain people.
Speaker 1: But I look and see every tillable acre planted. I
Speaker 1: see invasive species of cows everywhere. When those resources are scant,
Speaker 1: who wins who has priority? The private landholder and the cow,
Speaker 1: the elk, the natural order of things. These are the
Speaker 1: things that I ponder. But ultimately that's what Sacred Seat
Speaker 1: is about, is exploring those journeys going backwards in time,
Speaker 1: but also in the age of monocrop cultures, potential failures
Speaker 1: of those. Hopefully, someday people are going to be glad
Speaker 1: that people like me find all these diverse seeds, all
Speaker 1: these different types of corn um, that we have this
Speaker 1: multiplicity of seeds, so that someday we're gonna be glad
Speaker 1: that we have it, and not to mention just the
Speaker 1: richness and the beauty that comes from all these different
Speaker 1: type of seeds. Do you have somewhere of facility or
Speaker 1: you know, how are you storing these things and sort
Speaker 1: of codifying, you know, whatever knowledge is there. I brought
Speaker 1: some men. This is um. There's corn bean and squashing here,
Speaker 1: and this is um an ancient variety actually in my
Speaker 1: studies to find all this stuff. Ultimately we found these
Speaker 1: older collections and one of the things that I was
Speaker 1: so curious to find was an Omaha rainbow flint, which
Speaker 1: I couldn't find anywhere, and ultimately in the collections of
Speaker 1: Carl Barnes, the Cherokee individual who, over the course of
Speaker 1: his eighty five years here he collected over different types
Speaker 1: of seeds across Holiday America's and some of them are
Speaker 1: still viable when you're looking at some right here m hm.
Speaker 1: So yeah, he has a I mean it's like a
Speaker 1: jet black, deep purple, is red red, and those seeds
Speaker 1: corn it's about like the size of like what what
Speaker 1: you sort of considered to be a real big carrot.
Speaker 1: They can be a lot bigger than that. That was
Speaker 1: one of the smaller years. That's the only one that
Speaker 1: wasn't shelled. But that is a ruby flint, blood blood,
Speaker 1: blood red. What does it taste like? Uh, probably the
Speaker 1: difference between commercial white rice and wild rice that you'd
Speaker 1: find up around the Great Lakes just has a much deeper, richy,
Speaker 1: earthy taste to them. Uh. You know, sweet is one variety. Um,
Speaker 1: there's flower, there's flint, there's popping corn, and there's sweet corn.
Speaker 1: And uh, I've never had much luck with growing the
Speaker 1: sweet varieties because it's sugar and all things in nature
Speaker 1: like sugar. So bugs, raccoons, they love it. So you
Speaker 1: you these these seeds would have been, um, you don't
Speaker 1: think they would have been hybridized with modern varieties. I mean,
Speaker 1: as much as we can tell. I mean, they were
Speaker 1: all turned into hybrids to you know, grow well locally,
Speaker 1: which is basically what I'm attempting to do too. So
Speaker 1: the the version that I originally had was a rainbow flint.
Speaker 1: And some of these seeds are more sacred to others.
Speaker 1: So we were talking earlier about clan taboos, etcetera. So
Speaker 1: amongst my mother's tribe, the Omaha um my clan is
Speaker 1: responsible for keeping the sacred red corn. And now I'm
Speaker 1: glad to say that we have our own varieties of
Speaker 1: our sacred red back. One of the clan taboos is
Speaker 1: that who is better to keep the red corn than
Speaker 1: those that can't even touch it, which is why it
Speaker 1: was in the bag and why I didn't touch it
Speaker 1: because my clan is not allowed to touch that's one
Speaker 1: of the clan taboos. What do you do with it?
Speaker 1: I'm the protector of it. I mean, wouldn't eat that.
Speaker 1: I can't touch it. I can't eat it. So your
Speaker 1: clan would have grown it, and then what would they
Speaker 1: have done with it? Shared it with the rest of
Speaker 1: the tribe and every clan. So your clan is inside
Speaker 1: of your tribe. That's okay, so it's a bigger tribe.
Speaker 1: But your particular clan had this job. So that's like
Speaker 1: that idea, that too. Better to keep it than the
Speaker 1: one that can't touch it. A lot of people have
Speaker 1: trouble with that. It's good man, get him he can't
Speaker 1: eat it, right, It will be there when you come
Speaker 1: looking for it will be So what would they have
Speaker 1: used this corn for? Would they have grounded up? Could
Speaker 1: you boil that and eat it like corn on the cob?
Speaker 1: Like you could, but that's not the best way to
Speaker 1: make it healthy. Historically, as one of the things that
Speaker 1: we found from the anthropological record was that in its
Speaker 1: raw form or ground and flint's have a thicker I'd
Speaker 1: like to see that passing around. And there's also beans
Speaker 1: there that are from the Cherokee side. The trailer tear
Speaker 1: beans would literally sustained us. And those are indigenous squash
Speaker 1: seeds there. So the three grown together. It's very important.
Speaker 1: Corn takes a lot of nitrogen out of the soil.
Speaker 1: Beans put it back. Um. Squash keeps a lot of
Speaker 1: things out of their deer raccoon raccoons love corn, and
Speaker 1: so when you plant them all together, um, you have
Speaker 1: a whole different perspective of growing that is more sustainable,
Speaker 1: so to speak. Um, because when you look at the
Speaker 1: differences between Euro American agg methodologies, one is put them
Speaker 1: in rows and then switch out the fields, whereas ours
Speaker 1: rarely moved, um except for like a tenure time period.
Speaker 1: So I'm a little more sustainable from that perspective. But
Speaker 1: it's just been my journey with these seeds too. To educate.
Speaker 1: Going back to Robin's work on braiding sweet grass, she
Speaker 1: had a dream after visiting I believe it was a
Speaker 1: trading market in South America, and in her dream she
Speaker 1: went and money was no good, only the sacred currency
Speaker 1: of other things that you could trade, and my students
Speaker 1: caught caught that for sure. And when I began Sacred Sy,
Speaker 1: we looked at being a seed bank for money taken
Speaker 1: on U. S. D A grants millions of dollars and
Speaker 1: they finally said no, let's just leave it as it is,
Speaker 1: and that's how it got the name. So rather than
Speaker 1: trying to exploit the plant nation for corn here um,
Speaker 1: I just utilize it to to share and to educate
Speaker 1: and show people the beauty because this is not what
Speaker 1: we think of a corner. This whole plant is red purple.
Speaker 1: That's why I brought this in broken because you can
Speaker 1: see the cob is red and the stock is red.
Speaker 1: Stock starts green and then turned a deep purple red
Speaker 1: and usually we'll make it about three quarters away before
Speaker 1: the seeds are ready. So is there like this seed
Speaker 1: with the organization, would there be a way for I mean,
Speaker 1: are you distributing seed in any way to tribes or people?
Speaker 1: I do um. When we first started, it was really
Speaker 1: a matter of you know, I had just a handful
Speaker 1: of different type of seeds and I've got so many
Speaker 1: different stories of how seeds came to us. It was
Speaker 1: one fun story. There was a guy that was um
Speaker 1: descendant of the original homesteader. I want to say it
Speaker 1: was fifth grade grandfather. I don't know what it was,
Speaker 1: but he was a nice man and he had been
Speaker 1: digging on his land and found a noble corn grist stone,
Speaker 1: and he did the right thing, and he contacted did
Speaker 1: his research and found out the tribe that it came from,
Speaker 1: the Pawnees, and he contacted them and they told him
Speaker 1: it sounds like one of ours. Why don't you come
Speaker 1: on down and we'll talk about it. So he did.
Speaker 1: Mind you, that's a trip from western Nebraska down to Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: And when they got there there tribal historic preservation officer
Speaker 1: pulled out one similar and says, yep, that looks like
Speaker 1: one of ours. And in a true sacred reciprocity trading agreement,
Speaker 1: they said, you know what, we're gonna We're gonna take this,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna give you these being seeds here. And uh,
Speaker 1: I can't I never remember if it's spotted like a
Speaker 1: horse or painted like a horse beans, but they're absolutely
Speaker 1: gorgeous and it's a bush bean and it's what the
Speaker 1: Pawnees used, and uh I love it. I knew the
Speaker 1: story is for real. When he told me all these things,
Speaker 1: one they made him go down there. You know, there's
Speaker 1: no put it in a mail package and let's talk
Speaker 1: about it later. They're like, bring it down on this talk.
Speaker 1: Once they got there, Once they gave him the seeds,
Speaker 1: they said, no white man's ever had these before. Well,
Speaker 1: he was afraid to plant them. So when he heard
Speaker 1: one of my podcasts or stories, he contacted me and says,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm afraid to screw this up. And of course
Speaker 1: he's I said, well, wy don't you put him in
Speaker 1: the mail And he'sa no, why don't you come get him?
Speaker 1: I had to go get him. That's great. So there's
Speaker 1: all sorts of stories with this project. This has been
Speaker 1: really beautiful. It's an educational content to explain to people
Speaker 1: and ultimately, you know, keep finding all these different hybrids
Speaker 1: that ultimately should be helpful to us as human beings. Someday.
Speaker 1: Um I asked one question, got one. It's not an
Speaker 1: Ottle baby question, but I'm wondering because we talked about
Speaker 1: it while we're having our snacks before the podcast, and
Speaker 1: we're talking about this the problem of smallpox that really
Speaker 1: decimated population and thus decimated the oral history that was there,
Speaker 1: So knowing that that's sort of like a chink in
Speaker 1: the armor of this history cultural amnesia perhaps sure, and
Speaker 1: maybe that's just a part of it, and that's and
Speaker 1: then and then your people just accept that as a
Speaker 1: part of being people that do oral history. But now
Speaker 1: you as someone as in a historian, that you're gaining
Speaker 1: all these stories and you're learning more and more. Are
Speaker 1: you just going oral history or are you now writing
Speaker 1: it down and trying to preserve it in another way
Speaker 1: to prevent what's happened in the past. I think it's
Speaker 1: important to look at a combination of both someone who
Speaker 1: has written a book manuscript as Steve no It's just
Speaker 1: got to be the hardest thing I've ever tried to
Speaker 1: do and one of the coolest because that opens up
Speaker 1: so many doors. But hopefully it's gonna be a combination
Speaker 1: of both that I can in this research and in
Speaker 1: these teachings that I can help others understand things that
Speaker 1: we've missed. Just the understanding that there's a reason why
Speaker 1: we forgot so many things, the impact of colonization, impact
Speaker 1: of being acculturated into the American society, and there's a
Speaker 1: ton of history there and federal policies and a lot
Speaker 1: of us really sad. But regardless of that, you can
Speaker 1: still own your own history. You can find the seeds
Speaker 1: that you your people once eight and you can find them.
Speaker 1: Um a quick nod to the land back topic. I
Speaker 1: know that's originally how I was thought of m and
Speaker 1: coming onto here. But one of the richest examples that
Speaker 1: I can say not to do with public lands. It
Speaker 1: has to do with private lands. And one of the
Speaker 1: best examples I can point to was the author Roger Welsh,
Speaker 1: who's a long time in front of the Pawnee, and
Speaker 1: in the process of the anniversary of Lewis and clark Um,
Speaker 1: he gave the Pawnee Nation some of his private land
Speaker 1: out near Carney, Nebraska and asked them properly what they
Speaker 1: wanted to do with it. It was a really powerful moment.
Speaker 1: They said two things. They're traditional bands of chief. One
Speaker 1: was we want to plant our corn, which they've done
Speaker 1: and it's an incredible project, alcoholic and what she's done
Speaker 1: there is amazing. And two they said they wanted to dance.
Speaker 1: But ultimately that goes back to the call to arms. Um,
Speaker 1: what can people do who are interested in this topic
Speaker 1: and want to learn more at the very least, wherever
Speaker 1: your family lands might be, UM, your provenance is important.
Speaker 1: Perhaps your family has been there since homesteaders, maybe they've
Speaker 1: been there for seven generations in clearing Ugal western Arkansas.
Speaker 1: But if you go and look, you're going to find
Speaker 1: a provenance so much deeper. And if you have it
Speaker 1: within your heart to find those people that used to
Speaker 1: live there welcome them back with open arms, then only
Speaker 1: incredible treasures can await you and any American who wants
Speaker 1: to explore the provenance of this land in history, and
Speaker 1: it's only going to help us get along better and
Speaker 1: to have a richer history of the lands that we share.
Speaker 1: How do people find you specifically, if they're curious about
Speaker 1: your book that you've worked on, if they're curious about
Speaker 1: Sacred Seeds, if it's other tribal members who want to
Speaker 1: connect with you and share notes, share seeds absolutely UM.
Speaker 1: Sacredcy dot Org is the website for the project, and
Speaker 1: that's really what I'm wanting to support doing podcasts like this.
Speaker 1: But you can find me on Instagram. Taylor Keene seven
Speaker 1: put up a lot of images of the corn and
Speaker 1: plan that right now, so Taylor Keene is a full
Speaker 1: time instructor at Creighton AM I saying that right, That's right,
Speaker 1: Creton University's College of Business also the Founder's Sacred Seeds.
Speaker 1: So if you want to find out more, I'm sure
Speaker 1: you can dig in and that route. Can you repeat
Speaker 1: your Instagram handle? Oh? Yeah, I hit us with that?
Speaker 1: Is it? Taylor Keene seven? Taylor Keene seven t A
Speaker 1: Y l O R K double e N the number seven.
Speaker 1: All right, man, thanks so much for joining us. You
Speaker 1: gotta clay. I've got one last thing here that I
Speaker 1: wanted to share, big old arrowhead. Oh look at that.
Speaker 1: This is an ancient type of war club, and it
Speaker 1: was adorned by a member of my tribe. Those are
Speaker 1: objects that are used during our war dance for younger
Speaker 1: men than myself. But I'm wanted to share that with you, Steve.
Speaker 1: Oh it's beautiful man. Thanks for inviting me on the show.
Speaker 1: Like we get to have that in our studio, you do.
Speaker 1: Was this war club made of wood? It was always
Speaker 1: made out of wood, like a barrel typically, But it's
Speaker 1: origins go back to a symbol of power in ancient
Speaker 1: Native America, the symbol of the mace. What kind of feathers.
Speaker 1: Are these all kinds of different things in there. There's
Speaker 1: some pheasants, there's some um southern birds that are in there,
Speaker 1: some pretty colorful ones. Those are cockatoos or I can
Speaker 1: straighten those out a little bit. I just sneak it
Speaker 1: into my bag there. But it's beautiful. Man, that's cool,
Speaker 1: very cool. Thank you. Because we're as our wall works around,
Speaker 1: we're gonna that's gonna we're gonna find a good spot
Speaker 1: for that one. So would this be o Maha or Cherokee?
Speaker 1: That would have been just probably goes back to the
Speaker 1: Mississippian period because that symbol of the mace of power.
Speaker 1: When we talk about it in the future, what what
Speaker 1: would we say? How would we describe this when a
Speaker 1: podcast guest goes, what's that? That's a war mace? A
Speaker 1: war mace from the the planes traditions, Oh Maha, O sage.
Speaker 1: All of us would have used those, but you wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to get punked on the head with that. Then,
Speaker 1: all right, Taylor Keen, thanks very much for joining us, man,
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you.