How have universities become the focal point of inclusive religious dialogue? Join us for a captivating episode as we converse with Winifred Sullivan, a professor at Indiana University, who brings a wealth of experience from her dual careers in law and academia. Learn about her pivotal role at the Center for Religion and the Human, where diverse voices collaborate on addressing contemporary issues such as climate change, political conflicts, and technological advancements. Sullivan underscores the importance of public universities as venues fostering robust discussions on religion and its intersection with today’s most pressing challenges.
Travel back in time with us as we unravel the complex history of religious freedom in the United States. Our exploration starts from the inception of the Constitution and its evolution through the Bill of Rights and the Reconstruction Amendments. We delve into James Madison’s evolving views on federal power and citizen rights, leading to the 20th-century incorporation doctrine that transformed state governance. This legal journey is intricately tied to America’s religious diversity, highlighting pivotal cases like Johnson v. McIntosh and the doctrine of discovery’s enduring influence.
In our deep dive into indigenous influences on democracy, we spotlight the Haudenosaunee Confederacy’s profound impact on Western democratic models. Discover how early recognition of Native American nations shaped governance and treaties, and how these indigenous roots resonate in today’s interpretation of religion in public life. We also reflect on the tragic self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell and its implications for understanding radical dissent. Rounding off the episode, we examine Joan of Arc’s political theology and the significant, yet often overlooked, contributions of the Haudenosaunee to American democracy, showcased in the Smithsonian’s "Voices and Votes" exhibit. This episode promises an enriching narrative that bridges historical insights with contemporary relevance.
View the transcript and show notes at podcast.doctrineofdiscovery.org. Learn more about the Doctrine of Discovery on our site DoctrineofDiscovery.org.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hello and welcome to the Mapping the Doctrine of
Discovery podcast.
The producers of this podcastwould like to acknowledge with
respect the Onondaga Nationfirekeepers of the Haudenosaunee
, the indigenous peoples onwhose ancestral lands Syracuse
University now stands, and nowintroducing your hosts, phil
(00:27):
Arnold and Sandy Bigtree.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Okay, welcome back to another episode of Mapping the
Doctrine of Discovery.
My name is Phil Arnold.
I'm faculty member in theReligion Department at Syracuse
University, core faculty memberin Native American Indigenous
Studies and the foundingdirector of the Scano Great Law
of Peace Center.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
And I'm Sandy Bigtree , a citizen of the Mohawk Nation
at Akwesasne.
I'm on the board of theIndigenous Values Initiative and
the Academic Collaborative ofthe Skano Center.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
This podcast, this whole series, is sponsored by
the Henry Luce Foundation andwe're greatly appreciative of
Henry Luce Foundation and theircontinued support of this work
in the Doctrine of Discovery.
Today we're going to have aconversation with an old friend
who I went to graduate schoolwith in the University of
Chicago Divinity School,winifred Sullivan, or Winnie as
we know her.
Winnie, I'll let you introduceyourself, but first I just want
(01:37):
to say a couple of things that Iremember.
Winnie was one of those amazinggrad students that you always
wanted to emulate.
As I recall, you had alreadygone through law school and at
some point were a practicinglawyer there in Chicago and
(01:59):
decided you wanted to go backand do a PhD in religion, to go
back and do a PhD in religion,and so you're just kind of the
perfect person to give us areally kind of wide look at the
role of law and religion andthose relationships culturally
speaking.
But really a pleasure to seeyou here today.
(02:20):
But why don't you introduceyourself where you are now and
what you're doing?
Speaker 4 (02:25):
Thank you, phil and thank you Sandy.
So I teach at IndianaUniversity in Bloomington,
indiana, which is a large publicuniversity in the middle of the
country with a large religiousstudies department.
I'm also affiliated with thelaw school and I run a center
called the Center for Religionand the Human, and I've been at
(02:48):
Indiana for 12 years.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Thanks, thanks for that.
Maybe we could just start there.
So can you, as a lawyer, or alawyer at one time, an academic
in the academic study ofreligion, someone who is steeped
in those different kind ofdisciplines Can you talk about
your new center of religion andthe human and how that's
(03:13):
connected to your work inreligion and law?
Speaker 4 (03:17):
Sure, and maybe I'll start by saying that we also
have the Henry Luce Foundationto thank.
We also have the Henry LuceFoundation to thank.
Our center, the Center forReligion and the Human began
five years ago with a grant fromthe Henry Luce Foundation, and
(03:49):
so we're enormously grateful totheir support of our work.
And it comes out of the work ofthe grant to our center, an
insight by Jonathan VanAntwerpen at the Luce Foundation
, that public universities werea very important place in which
to have a conversation aboutreligion, about religious
freedom, about religion inpublic life, and that they were,
in a way, very well suited tosuch a conversation.
We think of what we do at theCenter as teaching religion in
(04:13):
public.
That is, we are, you know, allemployees of the state of
Indiana and we regard our workas public work on behalf of the
people of Indiana.
We teach students largely fromschools, high schools all over
Indiana, and we think it's awonderful place to teach
(04:36):
religion.
A very open conversation thatneeds to take into account many,
many perspectives and find waysto articulate what we do and
talk about religion in a waythat's accessible to everyone.
So this is something we prideourselves on.
(04:56):
The Center comes out of aninsight.
The original founders of theCenter were Lisa Sedaris, who's
now at the University ofCalifornia at Santa Barbara,
who's an environmental ethicist,constance Fury, who's an early
modern scholar at IU, and myself.
(05:19):
Was that, given the manycontexts that we all live in and
this was before the pandemic,the pandemic in some ways, and
recent wars and crises havedeepened this context that we
live in a time when what itmeans to be human is of
particular interest because ofclimate change, because of
(05:44):
social and political conflict,because of the pressure on the
human from technology.
And today is where we startfrom, and it's our argument that
(06:12):
the human is essentially areligious question in a very
broad sense.
So here I use religion in thebroadest sense.
Maybe I'll say a couple morethings about our center hosts a
number of different projects,but what really they all have in
common is that they're allcollaborative.
We believe very strongly incollaborative work, and so much
(06:37):
of what our center does is toconvene, bring together
different voices arounddifferent topics, bring together
different voices arounddifferent topics.
Yeah, I could go and I couldtalk more about the different
projects, but maybe that'senough of an introduction for
now.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
That's fascinating, boy.
I wish New York State would getthis memo.
I mean it's always been adifficulty for our students
really to crack into SUNYschools for some reason or
another, because it's alwaysviewed with suspicion.
Right that you know that you'reteaching religion at a public
(07:12):
university would smack ofcertain kind of violation of the
you know the dividing linebetween church and state.
But then you're in a, franklyin a red state that you're able
to do these kinds ofinvestigations in a more kind of
you know, expansive way onreligion and the human.
(07:32):
I mean that's just fascinatingwhat you've sort of developed
there at IA.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
Yeah, I think there isn't.
I mean, naturally there arethose who are uncomfortable with
talking about religion in apublic university, but this
department has been strong for,you know, a very long time and I
think in a way it sells itself.
You know, when I first camehere 12 years ago to be the
(08:02):
chair, I would meet people oncampus from every department and
they say oh, the religiondepartment, that's a great
department.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
Everybody knew it.
It's interesting.
So we in a way made our ownargument for ourselves.
But I think partly one of theadvantages of a public
university, at least in ourdepartment, is that our
department was never a seminary.
There was never the sort ofBible, theology, church history.
(08:32):
We study and teach all thereligions of the world and the
peoples of the world throughtime and space.
There's no remnant really ofthat version of religious
studies here.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
In this part of the country, being so close to
Onondaga and upholding theirancient traditions they've not
been violated by the US and tohow they live.
It's a stark awareness.
Coming into this area andtrying to use the term religion
is coming into this area andtrying to use the term religion,
phil recently published hisbook the Urgency of Indigenous
(09:09):
Values, because, working withthe Haudenosaunee, it's very
difficult to have thiscollaboration when you're
talking about the category ofreligion, because religion
played such a key role inundermining, trying to
completely obliterate who weunderstood ourselves to be as
(09:32):
human.
You know it's really changedthe way.
You know Phil's done his workand how I do my work too.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
Yeah, I think that's very present with us as well.
Of course there are Nativecommunities in Indiana as well
with whom we're working.
We have a new IndigenousStudies program at Indiana and
actually in the center ournewest initiative is a being
Human Indigenously projectproject, so very much in
(10:12):
conversation across those olddivides.
I'm not in any way to discountwhat you say, sandy.
For sure the category ofreligion as a legal category as
well as an intellectual categoryhas been very problematic.
I think there are ways in whichit can still be useful.
I'm not one of those who wouldcompletely ban it.
I think it's a difficult, it'soften problematic to just ban
(10:35):
words, but I think that historyhas to be to come with it for
sure, and I respect those forwhom the word remains too
problematic.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Yeah, this really isn't about my book, but I did
want to update History ofReligions right.
I kind of wanted to challengeit a bit.
I don't want to ban religion byany means.
I have admiration for those whotaught us at, you know, the Div
School at University of Chicagoand I want to be able to
(11:09):
utilize those ideas that that Ilearned there was inspired by
and bring it into a conversationwith you know indigenous
peoples.
So I think that's so.
I think you're, I'm with you onthat.
I don't want to ban religion,but on the other, or the
category of religion, I do thinkwe need to have a more
(11:32):
sophisticated historicalunderstanding of what, how it's
been deployed.
And in that regard, winnie, Iwonder if you could just talk a
little bit about.
You know you're one of theforemost scholars on religion
and law and can you just talk totalk us through some of those
(11:53):
fundamental features of theAmerican experience you know of?
On the one hand, you knowfreedom of and freedom from, and
, and you know how you seereligion and law operating in
the world today.
Speaker 4 (12:11):
Those are very big questions.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
That's what we deal with here.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
Maybe one thing I would say, as a sort of
amendment to what I just said,is that I do think that religion
is I'm inclined to think thatreligion should not be used as a
word in law.
I think it can be used inacademic and public
conversations, but I don't thinkit has proved to be helpful as
(12:38):
a legal category.
So I Say more about that.
Well, one of the distinctivethings about the US, of course,
is that the way religion appearsin the US Constitution, that
the US Constitution, in itsfirst form, did not mention
(12:59):
religion at all, and one of thereasons for that was that the US
Constitution was understood tobe creating a government of
limited competency, right Ofenumerated powers, but not
plenary power.
I would say that one of thethings I've learned I think
(13:22):
that's most important is howdistinctive the US is compared
to Europe, for example, wheremost of the countries of Europe,
most of the states of Europe,as you know, modern secular
states, democratic states,inherited their ideas of
themselves, their sovereignpower, from kings, from the
(13:44):
prior royal, you know,governments that governed them,
and kings were understood tohave all the power.
There was right Sovereignplenary power, and they also
were understood to have all thepower.
There was right Sovereignplenary power, and they also
were understood to have a kindof paternal, in a good sense,
care for their people.
I mean an obligation, whetherthey actually did it or not, but
(14:08):
that there was understood thatthe best kings, virtuous kings,
would care for their people.
The US is not that kind ofstate.
It does not have the UnitedStates federal government does
not have plenary power.
The sovereignty in the UnitedStates is understood to rest in
the people we, the people andoriginally had nothing to do
(14:32):
with religion and originally hadnothing to do with religion.
A religion was not in theoriginal plan because the
federal government was onlyunderstood to have power was
left to the states individually.
(14:54):
But over time, and particularlysince the Civil War, the
federal government became morepowerful, more and more powerful
.
And what happened with religionand it's hard to tell this in a
brief way because it's acomplicated story In order to
get the Constitution, in orderto come into effect, had to be
(15:17):
confirmed by each of theoriginal colonies, the 13
colonies.
And the politics of thatcampaign led to people saying
well, you have nothing in thisConstitution that says that the
federal government, you know,can't do certain things to
citizens.
There's nothing about therights of citizens in this
(15:39):
constitution.
And the answer of people likeJames Madison was we don't need
to have those in there becausethe federal government has no
power over those things, youknow, so we don't need to
mention them because that's allleft to the states.
But it was impossible to havethe Constitution be confirmed
(16:01):
without adding in those 10amendments that we think of as
the Bill of Rights.
So that was a politicalAccommodation.
Accommodation right, which wasregarded as basically
unnecessary by the others, whosaid this is not the business of
the federal government.
We'll put this in here, butthey don't have that kind of
that's not their job Right.
(16:21):
And so the the two clauses thefree side clause and the no
establishment clause areaddressed to Congress.
Congress shall have no powerand they are addressed to the
federal government.
So in a way, they're what wewould call jurisdictional.
(16:42):
In their original form, theywere just saying the federal
government has no authority overreligion.
All of that was left to thestates, and so what happened is
that then this gets complicatedat the time of the Civil War
(17:03):
with the passage of theReconstruction Amendments, the
13th, 14th and 15th Amendmentsthat were passed after the Civil
War to guarantee rights to thenewly enfranchised, enslaved
persons, you know, ban slaveryand give the right to vote to
formerly enslaved persons, andalso to guarantee equal rights.
(17:26):
What happened then between 1865and the first third of the 20th
century, as we all know, is thatthe promise of those amendments
was not met right, that,through the resistance of the
South and other parts of thecountry and entrenched racism
(17:46):
and Jim Crow laws, in fact,african Americans were not given
the rights that were by thebeginning of the 20th century
and into the beginning of the20th century, the pressure to
enforce those amendmentsincreased, and so, as we know,
eventually you're going to getto Brown versus Board of
(18:08):
Education and the kind ofinsistence on equality between
African-Americans and whiteAmericans.
Also, though, what happened isthat, when the Supreme Court
finally gets to enforcing the14th Amendment and the guarantee
that two of equal rights to allAmericans, the question came up
(18:32):
well, what rights are theseexactly?
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
And they said, oh, we have them listed in the Bill of
Rights.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Right.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
So over the first half of the 20th century, those
various elements from the Billof Rights get changed from just
being federal to also beingapplied to the states.
This is called the incorporationdoctrine.
So as a kind of literary legalmatter, these various parts of
(19:05):
the Bill of Rights getincorporated into the 14th
Amendment, such that the FirstAmendment no longer means, you
know, congress shall make no law, but neither Congress nor the
states shall make any law.
So, beginning in the middle ofthe 20th century 1940, suddenly
(19:27):
the Supreme Court gets in thebusiness of deciding what
religion is, gets in thebusiness of deciding what
religion is, and it comes aboutvia the 14th Amendment and
through what we still know is adeep tension in American
constitutional life betweenstates' rights and federal
rights, between what is thematter of the states and what is
(19:50):
the matter of the government.
Up until then, issues aroundreligion are decided state by
state and each stateconstitution has its own mini
First Amendment.
They're not all the same, buteach one has its own
constitution, and that's themain way in which religion gets
(20:13):
governed in the US up until 1940, when it suddenly becomes
nationalized and that creates anew politics.
This is a very complicatedstory.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Fascinating.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
It is very interesting, and you know, phil,
from the point of view of thoseof us who did degrees in
religious studies, particularlyfor me, in American religious
studies.
If you think about the religiousmakeup of the US at the end of
the 18th century, when theConstitution was written, the
(20:48):
people who were present in theUS were Native Americans,
african Americans and mostlywhite Protestants, some
Catholics, some Jews.
But when you so if you thinkabout that demography then and
we could talk about religion andlaw, then then we would be
(21:10):
talking very much state by state.
Yeah, and we would be talkingvery much state by state, right,
(21:34):
because different legalcultures in different states,
different colonial histories atthat point, very different
colonial histories, which iswhen these now we're talking
about the Second World War we'veis that it becomes completely
(22:00):
inadequate as a way to thinkabout how religious diversity,
really complex religiousdiversity, might be accommodated
and how what we might callpeaceable coexistence could work
.
Because they're stuck with aword that meant something.
At the end of the 18th centuryMost people understood what it
(22:23):
meant.
It doesn't mean it includedeverybody, but everybody knew
what it meant to a time when itwas bewildering to the Supreme
Court to have this word.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Yeah, I think that's one of the challenges that we
all face, you know, in religiondepartments, because it seems as
if the media today knowsexactly what religion means, but
it's such a complicated historyand complicated word, I mean.
But I would like to go back toJohnson.
(22:55):
You know our conference lastDecember was focused on Johnson
v McIntosh, and you know how thedoctrine of discovery really
enters US law, right, because,interestingly, marshall really
doesn't talk about religion Imean, just listening to you even
(23:17):
though he's drawing on Catholictheological principles from the
15th century, right, and reallyBritish colonial documents and
justifications for colonialism,doesn't really talk about
religion, talks aboutcivilization, talks about this
project, you know, of theAmerican project, and how, then
(23:41):
he incorporates the doctrine ofdiscovery, or the discovery
doctrine as he calls it, into USlaw.
And I wonder then how thatslots into your really important
narrative about the problem ofreligion and US law, or does it?
(24:02):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
Well, you also have to consider that the
hierarchical structure was inplace in Europe, going from the
line from popes to themonarchies, and then being
transferred to england duringthe reformation and it became
like uh, european or english lawthrough the cabot charter.
And so there's all theseconnections, religion is
(24:26):
embedded in these hierarchicalstructures of domination before
they even come here.
Then there's the glimmer ofencountering indigenous people
here and there's many ordersthat go to Europe and they like
what you're saying, they observe, they're going.
You talk about freedom, butyou're only free under the
umbrella of your monarch.
(24:48):
You're not experiencing freedom.
We experience freedom in theAmericas or in our homelands.
And then the founding fathersin the late 18th century.
They're talking to the foundingfathers how to structure, you
know, around their model ofseveral entities unifying under
(25:10):
this.
You know the Haudenosaunee, youknow and being under the great
law of peace.
But it's a whole other structure.
It's not hierarchical at all.
So that opens up newpossibilities for establishing a
new form of governance, whichhas indigenous roots to this
(25:31):
democracy that influenced theWestern world.
Speaker 4 (25:35):
So I think what you bring up is really, really
important, sandy, and stayingfor a moment with this, at the
end of the 18th century, youknow, this is, you know, in
spite of Marshall's reallystrong supremacist rhetoric.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Right.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
The fact is, at that point the US is nothing, right.
I mean, this is, it doesn'thave any power in the world at
this point.
And you know what you point to,I think, sandy.
And I think this is actually insome ways weirdly evident in
Marshall's opinion, far morethan any later opinions, in the
(26:17):
sense that Marshall doesacknowledge that Native American
peoples are peoples withgovernments, rights, ways of
living in the land, ways ofliving with each other, rights,
ways of living in the land, waysof living with each other.
He doesn't shrink them down topeople who might have a religion
(26:39):
or a this or that he talksabout.
I mean, I don't know if youagree, but I think that's one of
the strange things about theJohnson versus McIndosh opinion
is that you know he was a man ofthe frontier, he grew up in
Western Virginia, he was not acitified guy, so he had some
(27:01):
sense of the reality of themultiple governing structures
and communities that existed atthe time of the making of the
Constitution.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
As did many of the founding fathers.
I'll say yeah.
Speaker 4 (27:19):
Yes, and so I think this is really important to sit
with because, as you say, sandy,there was a possibility.
Then there were actually robust, you know, coexisting, robust
structures for thinking aboutwhat it means to be human in
community.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
But more than community, these are nations,
they're indigenous nations andall the treaties were drawn up
as nation to nation agreementsand it empowered the federal
government.
When it's having all thisseparation of the state like
pulling away and trying to havetheir own autonomy, yeah, no,
absolutely.
Speaker 4 (27:58):
Absolutely, and I think I mean Marshall does not
use the language of nationsthere, although other people did
and you know, and so Aconstitution.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
It's the law of the land Right.
Speaker 4 (28:13):
Absolutely, absolutely.
A constitution, it's the law ofthe land, right, absolutely,
(28:38):
absolutely.
But I think that there's a wayin which that is so much more
real there than it's now.
Almost 100 years after theincorporation doctrine that I
was talking about, thefederalization, and 50 years
since I was in law school, thechange to the word religion in
public life in the US is verydramatic.
In the last 30 years, the wordhas shrunk in meaning in ways,
(28:59):
and I do think that there areways strategically to use to try
to recover or to maybe find away to invest in this word as an
alternative to certain.
And so for me, you know, on theone hand, there is the media
(29:24):
today in the US, which largelyunderstands religion in a very
binary way, so that the liberalmedia regards religion as being
evangelical Protestantsexclusively, and that makes it
impossible to talk aboutanything of what we have in
common, in my view, other thanneoliberalism.
(29:47):
That's what we have in common.
Unless we can expand ourunderstanding what it means to
be human, I really worry.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
That's fantastic.
Yeah, I think.
Yeah.
Well, let's talk about that.
You recently wrote this piecefor the Marty Center on the
immolation.
Who is the man's name?
Aaron?
Speaker 4 (30:08):
Bushnell.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Bushnell, yeah, and at one point in the piece you
say I argue that protest invokesreal law, law founded in
religious understandings of thehuman and of human community, as
well as of conceptions ofjustice and culpability, law
(30:31):
that rivals the claims of modernsecularist law.
I wondered if you can talk alittle more about that, because
I think in that you'rechallenging both categories in a
way.
You know religion and law andwhat that means for the meaning
of being human today.
Speaker 4 (30:53):
So maybe for the hearers, I might just very
briefly explain who AaronBushnell was.
Aaron Bushnell was an Americanairman who was stationed near
the district of Washington DCand about two and a half weeks
ago he set fire to himselfoutside the Israeli embassy and
(31:17):
he filmed himself.
He live videotaped himself on aFacebook post.
Before he did this, he said thefollowing.
He said what would you do ifyour country was enforcing
apartheid?
What would you do if yourcountry was enforcing legalized
(31:40):
slavery?
What would you do if yourcountry was committing genocide?
And then the next sentence wasyou are doing it now.
I found this very, verypowerful.
And then, as he, just before heset himself afire, he announced
(32:02):
that he was protesting thegenocide in Gaza and that he was
, and as he burned he shoutedfree Palestine.
So many things have struck meabout this event.
First, it was not reported verymuch.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Right, I noticed, yeah, that you mentioned that.
Speaker 4 (32:25):
Which I find kind of astonishing and scary, and there
are many ways we could talkabout that.
But I think one of the wayswhich I tried to address in my
piece was that I think peopleare scared.
I mean even people that wemaybe don't have a political
view of this, that people arescared by this kind of thing,
(32:47):
but also they don't understandit.
And one of the strange thingsabout the video is that in the
video, as he burns, you see alaw enforcement officer holding
a gun on him, pointed at him ashe burns, so it's as if.
And then there's another lawenforcement officer comes up
with a fire extinguisher,holding a gun on him, pointed at
(33:09):
him as he burns.
So it's as if.
And then there's another lawenforcement officer comes up
with a fire extinguisher.
But in the way that that act hasbeen written about, it seems,
both from what the, from the gunand other things that have been
written in the press, thatpeople assume either he was a
terrorist or he was mentally illand that's been the main way
that people have addressed it.
Or for those who admire him,there's a sense, there's a sort
(33:31):
of he's an individual conscience, he's a single person who
somehow has a sort of saintlyconscience, and that that's all
you can say about this.
For me, this was and you know,phil, from history of religions
this is not something that isindividual, this is something
that is communal, and so I triedand, very importantly for me,
(33:55):
it's legal.
It is not just a question ofconscience, but that what he is
doing, what he was doing andwhat other people who have done
acts like this were doing, ismaking a legal claim on us,
shifting the burden and on, ofcourse, the Israeli government
(34:17):
and the US government, but alsoon us and that there's a legal
structure to what he does.
This would be called in law ashifting of the burden of proof
that now it's on us.
That's what he's done, andalways.
For me now and this is one ofthe projects we're doing in our
center is called UnstatelyReligion.
(34:39):
Always, we're interested indescribing lifting up.
This connects, of course, toSandy's earlier invocation of
nations that preceded the US,that of alternative
sovereignties and coexistingsovereignties.
Always there is legal pluralism, always, if you listen to the
(35:02):
nation states today, they act asif they have a monopoly on law
and a monopoly on violence.
They do not, but they do notever.
There's always multiple lawsand every individual is
responsible to multiple legalorders.
Sorry, I got a little bitcreaky there.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
No, no, no, that's great.
I get a better sense of whatyou're talking about when you
invoke law.
Now, it's not, you know,plenary power of the state.
Yes, it's that, but it'ssomething else as well.
I mean, one of the things thatyou know, we've been talking
(35:42):
about lately, or I've beentalking about in my conquest
class, is that, you know,Indigenous people do diversity
really well, they understanddiversity and they have
protocols that have been inplace for millennia to deal with
.
You know, like, you know anothernation, that's 100 miles.
(36:04):
That way, you know down, youknow the path, or through the
woods or whatever.
And there are all theseprotocols for other nations that
will come.
You receive them.
You, you know it's what it'scalled the edge of the wood
ceremony for the Haudenosauneethey, they, what they call, they
(36:25):
, they brush them down, they,they acknowledge their
difficulties, their struggles,that sort of thing.
There's food, there's all kind,but there's the acknowledgement
that those nations have undertheir purview, their
responsibilities are to thosestories.
(36:48):
Right, they live in theirplaces that have their own
languages, their own customs,their own, you know, their own
ceremonial traditions thattransact with other spiritual
beings there.
So there's always thisacknowledgement of kind of
radical plurality that's goingon in Indigenous nations.
(37:14):
So I mean and that's one of thestriking things when you're
dealing with Indigenous peoplesthis tremendous plurality of
different traditions and thatsort of thing.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
Going back to the Haudenosaunee, the first treaty
was with the Dutch in 1613,known as the Two Row Wampum, and
it's an agreement that showstwo rivers, so to speak, where
the Dutch would be sailing onone and the Haudenosaunee would
be in their canoe on the other,and they traveled down the river
(37:48):
of life without interferencewith one another and respecting
each other, understanding ofwhat the river of life means.
So all got really lost intranslation, because the
Haudenosaunee lived that waywith their neighbors.
They were welcoming to colonistscoming in so they could
everyone could cohabitate in anew existence, but you have to
(38:12):
be in proper relationship withthe natural world and that just
went right over their heads yeah, yeah and that's very deep,
very deep part of the cultureand understanding what it means
to be human, because the naturalworld identifies each and every
one of the Haudenosaunee asthrough their clan and who they
(38:34):
are in relationship to thenatural world know, we, we have
a, we have a kind of strangeunderstanding of, of plurality
or diversity, I guess.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
Uh, because when we're talking about diversity,
we're not just we're not talkingabout this kind of level of
radical diversity, you know no,or diversity of of geographies
or landscapes, right, um yeahright.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
Your, your identity comes from the land where you
reside, and the land is diverseand it's ever-changing, and the
waters are always changing andit's this regenerative energy
that we're just part of, andwhen you go outside of it and
start disrupting it, it's justgoing to create mayhem.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
Do you need help catching up on today's topic or
do you want to learn more aboutthe resources mentioned?
If so, please check our websiteat
podcastdoctrineofdiscoveryorgfor more information and, if you
like this episode, review it onApple, Spotify or wherever you
listen to podcasts.
And now back to theconversation listen to podcasts.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
And now back to the conversation.
Does that coincide with someidea of the human or your
reworking ideas of law, religionand the human?
Speaker 4 (39:56):
Absolutely.
I mean, I hope you'll forgiveme if I bring up my favorite
subject right now, which is Joanof Arc.
Yeah, please.
I mean my interest in Joan ofArc.
I've been teaching her trialfor many years.
You know, joan lived before thecreation of the modern state.
(40:16):
She lived at the beginning ofthe 15th century and my book is
about her political theology,what I'm calling her political
theology, but her ideas ofgovernance, which I think have
been obscured by the ways inwhich she became a figure for
(40:37):
nationalism in the 19th century.
But this was not the world shelived in.
There was no France at the time.
There was no France at the timeof Jones.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
There was no Europe.
Speaker 4 (40:48):
No, no.
And what she sought was peace.
What she sought was relief forthe people of the French
territories from thearistocratic wars that had been
going on and ruining the land,principally the war between
England and France, but alsothere were civil wars involved.
(41:10):
This was an aristocraticpolitics which was destroying
the lives of ordinary people.
She sought, you know, arestoration of a place in which
people could live.
This is, you know in part whatyou're talking about, sandy an
attention to the possibility forpeople living in peace, in
(41:31):
community, caring for oneanother, you know, at the level
of the land and in places.
You know, one of my favoritediscoveries was the day I
realized that she wasn't French,that this is all myth-making.
So she came from on the edge ofwhat now is France, but was not
(41:54):
part of France then, and thevoices she heard, as a young
girl, said go to France.
And I don't know, I've beenreading this for years and
finally I went oh right, she'snot French, she's not in France.
She went to France, which thenwas not anything like what we
(42:15):
think of France today, but tothe French court to help restore
peace.
And in a way you know, sandy,you might say this is maybe a
little fanciful.
She you know she was went as aperson and she was not.
She's often described as anilliterate peasant, as if she
(42:36):
was brainless and, just you know, a dumb girl.
Her family were farmers,well-off farmers, very involved
in local politics.
She was a smarty pants girl whoknew what was going on when she
got to court.
She knew what she was talkingabout.
So she brings a very strongnotion of what it means to live
(43:02):
in peace and to be responsibleto your neighbors and to your
place.
And probably she expected to goback there, you know.
But she gets captured and, aseverybody knows, burned.
But that's what they did.
That wasn't what she was.
That was not her project.
(43:23):
I sometimes get frustrated bypeople who only focus on her
martyrdom and don't focus on herpolitical project, which I
think is much closer to whatwe're talking about, something
that was still possible beforethe invention of the modern
state.
That's interesting.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
Yeah, or she's mentally ill or something like
that.
You know she's just like acrazy person or something.
Speaker 4 (43:51):
Women who are always Right right right, yes exactly,
exactly, exactly.
But you know, she's so smart,she's so funny and she was
really beloved by the soldiersthat she led.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
And evidently a threat, you know.
Speaker 4 (44:09):
She was a threat to the English.
For sure they were very scaredof her.
Speaker 3 (44:15):
Well, when the Jesuits first came into our
territories, I mean they werewriting about the women being
the firebrands of hell.
I keep repeating this in somany of these interviews because
it's so amazing so they wouldtarget the women, but they came
here knowing how to do that.
So obviously you know they hadgood practice and worked out
(44:35):
that system of patriarchytakeover.
Speaker 4 (44:40):
But it is important to notice that there were, until
she got to, the judges whopersecuted her at the end, and
for sure that was misogynist andum, motivated by misogyny.
But you know the men, captains,who fought with her, they, they
(45:00):
respected her, and that therewere people in the church who
supported her too.
So it was a complicated worldbut she had many supporters and
friends who really admired herand accepted that she
(45:22):
cross-dressed.
That's another thing.
You know, people often say ohwell, she was condemned because
the church condemnedcross-dressing.
Well, those priests did.
But before she got there therewere plenty of people who
accepted it.
So it was complicated.
There was, as some historianstalk about, the queer medieval.
(45:44):
Joan in a sense belongs as apart of the queer medieval In a
very interesting way,politically queer, in a very
strong sense.
So not just her clothes, but inher political sense as well.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Well, I look forward to that, that book coming out.
That should be great as well.
Well, I look forward to thatbook coming out.
That should be great.
I did want to mention, too,that you might be interested.
So we're coming up on the what?
250th anniversary of thefounding of the United States,
right, and there are a lot ofland, and one of the things that
(46:22):
we've been working on at thescano center actually is, um,
this smithsonian exhibit that'straveling, called voices and
boats.
That is sort of a celebrationof of american democracy.
Um, you know, it's very red,white and and blue, and you know
it's.
It's this traveling exhibit, umand um.
(46:45):
The Museum Association of NewYork, which is managing this for
the Smithsonian, is um,specifically selected the Scano
Center as one of the sites thatum that they want to have this
Voices and Votes exhibit in, andthe reason is because there's
no mention of the Haudenosauneeinfluence on American democracy.
(47:10):
And so Sandy, mostly Sandy andI have been involved in creating
like these banners, but youknow, I mean these banners of
like talking about the influenceof the Haudenosaunee the great
law of peace.
Speaker 3 (47:26):
We get four banners to accompany the tour.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
Yeah, these kind of supplemental you know addendum.
Yeah.
So I mean and so it's going tobe, I think, in 12 different
places around New York Stateit's already like in Tennessee
and other places state it'salready like in Tennessee and
other places.
But that, so what we're doingis, is what?
Not pushing back but I'd saysupplementing that narrative,
(47:56):
that kind of myth history thatwe all have to deal with?
We're pushing a little, yeah,we're pushing quite hard, but
but you know, but from this,from this point of view, that
you know that this didn't justjump out of the heads of these
white guys, fully formed, youknow, you know Haudenosaunee,
but also other confederaciesaround the, around what's now
(48:28):
the United States.
So I mean, I mean, I mean thishas pretty much been proven in a
variety of ways in, you know,george Washington papers and
things like that.
So we're quoting, we're liftingsome of these quotes right out
of American history and I meanit's like this.
(48:50):
We have to grapple with our ownmyth.
History too, right, I mean notjust Joan of Arc's, but you know
it's like you know, like, howdo we push back?
I think we're.
I think we're pretty wellpositioned in religious studies
to think mythically and to thinkyou know how we can re-narrate
this story of America and allthat.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
Right, the local historical association sent out
the first draft for each bannerand they had to be nearly
completely rewritten.
You know, using things like theOnondaga had to cede their
territories to, you know,washington, and so not exactly
(49:33):
unceded lands, and so it had tobe a whole revision envisioning
of this project.
So it was interesting.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
Yeah, we don't know how it's going to, but if it, if
it lands in a town near youjust know that you've got these
other kinds of supplementalbanners that we've been on Maybe
it's already in Indiana, Idon't really know.
It's going all over the place.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
Our banners aren't ready yet, though they're final
Almost.
Yeah, they're just aren't readyyet, though they're final
Almost.
Yeah, they're just about readyto go.
Speaker 4 (50:06):
Yeah, you know, as we get this our own Indigenous
Studies Project off the ground,we should find some ways to talk
together.
It's being led by my colleague,michael Ng, who's a Native
Hawaiian and who's working onNative Hawaiian histories and
philosophies and issues, and mycolleague, alexis McLeod, who's
(50:32):
working with some Mayan eldersin the Yucatan Very much.
One of the objects of ourcenter is to talk about America
as a hemispherical project andnot just to really push against
(50:53):
limiting America to the USborders.
And obviously the Haudenosauneeand the Onondaga are way ahead
of us on that, I know.
Speaker 2 (51:02):
Well, we're fortunate , I mean we're fortunate to be
here.
I mean it's not like so.
You know, we used to live inMissouri and you know Chicago.
I mean, I grew up in Michigan,really didn't know anything
about, you know indigenouspeoples there, you know.
I mean, in fact, when we werein Missouri we discovered that
(51:23):
it was illegal, for in terms ofthe state constitution, illegal
for Native Americans to actuallyreside in Missouri, I mean
because they'd all been removed,you know, or that was the
fiction that they were operatingunder.
So the Midwest is a strangeplace here.
There you are in Indiana, youknow, and then you know, and
(51:43):
then you know, what does thatmean?
You know, I can just kind ofstart there.
But we're fortunate in New York, oddly enough, to be located
near, you know, one of the lastor few federally recognized,
(52:08):
federally recognized NativeAmerican nations that do not
have a Bureau of Indian Affairsgovernment on their territory.
They resisted that.
They have their own passports.
They, you know, they stick tothis kind of sovereignty
narrative, you know.
And so in a way it's easy, in away it's difficult because
they're very mistrustful ofpeople, just generally.
Speaker 3 (52:31):
But we've been able to work through it Well, very
protective, yeah, veryprotective, maybe it's a better
word yeah that's right, you'reright.
Speaker 4 (52:36):
I got to see one of those passports when we were in
Japan together, you may remember.
Speaker 2 (52:41):
Oh, that's right.
Gosh, that was like oh five,something like that, that's
right.
Yeah, so so we're, we'refortunate in a way, and we, with
the Scano Center, we're able toshare some of that.
They explicitly so, so they'renot.
(53:01):
They're not interested insharing their language.
They've got all the languageprograms and those kind of
revitalization programs going onat the nation, but at Onondaga
Lake they wanted this to be muchmore of a public kind of effort
that pushes out their story,you know, to others, you know
(53:21):
all kinds of others.
So, yeah, it makes it a littlebit easier than other
territories.
Speaker 3 (53:29):
That aren't surviving and they're united on the front
.
They don't have a competing BIAgovernment that silences their
traditional people, which wasthe case at Standing Rock.
I mean, the BIA leadership wasnot really entirely supportive
of what the traditional peoplewere trying to accomplish there
(53:49):
and stopping the pipeline yeah,that's, that's a.
It's a long story there's greatclarity here at onondaga.
They know who they are and theyspeak with a united voice.
Yeah, it's unique, so I'll.
Speaker 2 (54:02):
So I'll be very interested in what you're doing
there, Winnie, at your center.
It's very, very interesting.
I got a better sense of it inthis conversation.
Speaker 4 (54:13):
Well, I've enjoyed the conversation and great to
see you too.
Thank you, great to see you.
Speaker 2 (54:18):
Thanks, all right.
Speaker 1 (54:20):
The producers of this podcast were Adam DJ Brett and
Jordan Lone Colon.
Our intro and outro is socialdancing music by Oris Edwards
and Regis Cook.
This podcast is funded incollaboration with the Henry
Luce Foundation, syracuseUniversity and Hendrix Chapel
and the Indigenous ValuesInitiative.
If you like this episode,please check out our website and
(54:42):
make sure to subscribe.
Hello and welcome to the Mapping the Doctrine of
Discovery podcast.
The producers of this podcastwould like to acknowledge with
respect the Onondaga Nationfirekeepers of the Haudenosaunee
, the indigenous peoples onwhose ancestral lands Syracuse
University now stands, and nowintroducing your hosts, phil
(00:27):
Arnold and Sandy Bigtree.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Okay, welcome back to another episode of Mapping the
Doctrine of Discovery.
My name is Phil Arnold.
I'm faculty member in theReligion Department at Syracuse
University, core faculty memberin Native American Indigenous
Studies and the foundingdirector of the Scano Great Law
of Peace Center.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
And I'm Sandy Bigtree , a citizen of the Mohawk Nation
at Akwesasne.
I'm on the board of theIndigenous Values Initiative and
the Academic Collaborative ofthe Skano Center.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
This podcast, this whole series, is sponsored by
the Henry Luce Foundation andwe're greatly appreciative of
Henry Luce Foundation and theircontinued support of this work
in the Doctrine of Discovery.
Today we're going to have aconversation with an old friend
who I went to graduate schoolwith in the University of
Chicago Divinity School,winifred Sullivan, or Winnie as
we know her.
Winnie, I'll let you introduceyourself, but first I just want
(01:37):
to say a couple of things that Iremember.
Winnie was one of those amazinggrad students that you always
wanted to emulate.
As I recall, you had alreadygone through law school and at
some point were a practicinglawyer there in Chicago and
(01:59):
decided you wanted to go backand do a PhD in religion, to go
back and do a PhD in religion,and so you're just kind of the
perfect person to give us areally kind of wide look at the
role of law and religion andthose relationships culturally
speaking.
But really a pleasure to seeyou here today.
(02:20):
But why don't you introduceyourself where you are now and
what you're doing?
Speaker 4 (02:25):
Thank you, phil and thank you Sandy.
So I teach at IndianaUniversity in Bloomington,
indiana, which is a large publicuniversity in the middle of the
country with a large religiousstudies department.
I'm also affiliated with thelaw school and I run a center
called the Center for Religionand the Human, and I've been at
(02:48):
Indiana for 12 years.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Thanks, thanks for that.
Maybe we could just start there.
So can you, as a lawyer, or alawyer at one time, an academic
in the academic study ofreligion, someone who is steeped
in those different kind ofdisciplines Can you talk about
your new center of religion andthe human and how that's
(03:13):
connected to your work inreligion and law?
Speaker 4 (03:17):
Sure, and maybe I'll start by saying that we also
have the Henry Luce Foundationto thank.
We also have the Henry LuceFoundation to thank.
Our center, the Center forReligion and the Human began
five years ago with a grant fromthe Henry Luce Foundation, and
(03:49):
so we're enormously grateful totheir support of our work.
And it comes out of the work ofthe grant to our center, an
insight by Jonathan VanAntwerpen at the Luce Foundation
, that public universities werea very important place in which
to have a conversation aboutreligion, about religious
freedom, about religion inpublic life, and that they were,
in a way, very well suited tosuch a conversation.
We think of what we do at theCenter as teaching religion in
(04:13):
public.
That is, we are, you know, allemployees of the state of
Indiana and we regard our workas public work on behalf of the
people of Indiana.
We teach students largely fromschools, high schools all over
Indiana, and we think it's awonderful place to teach
(04:36):
religion.
A very open conversation thatneeds to take into account many,
many perspectives and find waysto articulate what we do and
talk about religion in a waythat's accessible to everyone.
So this is something we prideourselves on.
(04:56):
The Center comes out of aninsight.
The original founders of theCenter were Lisa Sedaris, who's
now at the University ofCalifornia at Santa Barbara,
who's an environmental ethicist,constance Fury, who's an early
modern scholar at IU, and myself.
(05:19):
Was that, given the manycontexts that we all live in and
this was before the pandemic,the pandemic in some ways, and
recent wars and crises havedeepened this context that we
live in a time when what itmeans to be human is of
particular interest because ofclimate change, because of
(05:44):
social and political conflict,because of the pressure on the
human from technology.
And today is where we startfrom, and it's our argument that
(06:12):
the human is essentially areligious question in a very
broad sense.
So here I use religion in thebroadest sense.
Maybe I'll say a couple morethings about our center hosts a
number of different projects,but what really they all have in
common is that they're allcollaborative.
We believe very strongly incollaborative work, and so much
(06:37):
of what our center does is toconvene, bring together
different voices arounddifferent topics, bring together
different voices arounddifferent topics.
Yeah, I could go and I couldtalk more about the different
projects, but maybe that'senough of an introduction for
now.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
That's fascinating, boy.
I wish New York State would getthis memo.
I mean it's always been adifficulty for our students
really to crack into SUNYschools for some reason or
another, because it's alwaysviewed with suspicion.
Right that you know that you'reteaching religion at a public
(07:12):
university would smack ofcertain kind of violation of the
you know the dividing linebetween church and state.
But then you're in a, franklyin a red state that you're able
to do these kinds ofinvestigations in a more kind of
you know, expansive way onreligion and the human.
(07:32):
I mean that's just fascinatingwhat you've sort of developed
there at IA.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
Yeah, I think there isn't.
I mean, naturally there arethose who are uncomfortable with
talking about religion in apublic university, but this
department has been strong for,you know, a very long time and I
think in a way it sells itself.
You know, when I first camehere 12 years ago to be the
(08:02):
chair, I would meet people oncampus from every department and
they say oh, the religiondepartment, that's a great
department.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
Everybody knew it.
It's interesting.
So we in a way made our ownargument for ourselves.
But I think partly one of theadvantages of a public
university, at least in ourdepartment, is that our
department was never a seminary.
There was never the sort ofBible, theology, church history.
(08:32):
We study and teach all thereligions of the world and the
peoples of the world throughtime and space.
There's no remnant really ofthat version of religious
studies here.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
In this part of the country, being so close to
Onondaga and upholding theirancient traditions they've not
been violated by the US and tohow they live.
It's a stark awareness.
Coming into this area andtrying to use the term religion
is coming into this area andtrying to use the term religion,
phil recently published hisbook the Urgency of Indigenous
(09:09):
Values, because, working withthe Haudenosaunee, it's very
difficult to have thiscollaboration when you're
talking about the category ofreligion, because religion
played such a key role inundermining, trying to
completely obliterate who weunderstood ourselves to be as
(09:32):
human.
You know it's really changedthe way.
You know Phil's done his workand how I do my work too.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
Yeah, I think that's very present with us as well.
Of course there are Nativecommunities in Indiana as well
with whom we're working.
We have a new IndigenousStudies program at Indiana and
actually in the center ournewest initiative is a being
Human Indigenously projectproject, so very much in
(10:12):
conversation across those olddivides.
I'm not in any way to discountwhat you say, sandy.
For sure the category ofreligion as a legal category as
well as an intellectual categoryhas been very problematic.
I think there are ways in whichit can still be useful.
I'm not one of those who wouldcompletely ban it.
I think it's a difficult, it'soften problematic to just ban
(10:35):
words, but I think that historyhas to be to come with it for
sure, and I respect those forwhom the word remains too
problematic.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Yeah, this really isn't about my book, but I did
want to update History ofReligions right.
I kind of wanted to challengeit a bit.
I don't want to ban religion byany means.
I have admiration for those whotaught us at, you know, the Div
School at University of Chicagoand I want to be able to
(11:09):
utilize those ideas that that Ilearned there was inspired by
and bring it into a conversationwith you know indigenous
peoples.
So I think that's so.
I think you're, I'm with you onthat.
I don't want to ban religion,but on the other, or the
category of religion, I do thinkwe need to have a more
(11:32):
sophisticated historicalunderstanding of what, how it's
been deployed.
And in that regard, winnie, Iwonder if you could just talk a
little bit about.
You know you're one of theforemost scholars on religion
and law and can you just talk totalk us through some of those
(11:53):
fundamental features of theAmerican experience you know of?
On the one hand, you knowfreedom of and freedom from, and
, and you know how you seereligion and law operating in
the world today.
Speaker 4 (12:11):
Those are very big questions.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
That's what we deal with here.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
Maybe one thing I would say, as a sort of
amendment to what I just said,is that I do think that religion
is I'm inclined to think thatreligion should not be used as a
word in law.
I think it can be used inacademic and public
conversations, but I don't thinkit has proved to be helpful as
(12:38):
a legal category.
So I Say more about that.
Well, one of the distinctivethings about the US, of course,
is that the way religion appearsin the US Constitution, that
the US Constitution, in itsfirst form, did not mention
(12:59):
religion at all, and one of thereasons for that was that the US
Constitution was understood tobe creating a government of
limited competency, right Ofenumerated powers, but not
plenary power.
I would say that one of thethings I've learned I think
(13:22):
that's most important is howdistinctive the US is compared
to Europe, for example, wheremost of the countries of Europe,
most of the states of Europe,as you know, modern secular
states, democratic states,inherited their ideas of
themselves, their sovereignpower, from kings, from the
(13:44):
prior royal, you know,governments that governed them,
and kings were understood tohave all the power.
There was right Sovereignplenary power, and they also
were understood to have all thepower.
There was right Sovereignplenary power, and they also
were understood to have a kindof paternal, in a good sense,
care for their people.
I mean an obligation, whetherthey actually did it or not, but
(14:08):
that there was understood thatthe best kings, virtuous kings,
would care for their people.
The US is not that kind ofstate.
It does not have the UnitedStates federal government does
not have plenary power.
The sovereignty in the UnitedStates is understood to rest in
the people we, the people andoriginally had nothing to do
(14:32):
with religion and originally hadnothing to do with religion.
A religion was not in theoriginal plan because the
federal government was onlyunderstood to have power was
left to the states individually.
(14:54):
But over time, and particularlysince the Civil War, the
federal government became morepowerful, more and more powerful
.
And what happened with religionand it's hard to tell this in a
brief way because it's acomplicated story In order to
get the Constitution, in orderto come into effect, had to be
(15:17):
confirmed by each of theoriginal colonies, the 13
colonies.
And the politics of thatcampaign led to people saying
well, you have nothing in thisConstitution that says that the
federal government, you know,can't do certain things to
citizens.
There's nothing about therights of citizens in this
(15:39):
constitution.
And the answer of people likeJames Madison was we don't need
to have those in there becausethe federal government has no
power over those things, youknow, so we don't need to
mention them because that's allleft to the states.
But it was impossible to havethe Constitution be confirmed
(16:01):
without adding in those 10amendments that we think of as
the Bill of Rights.
So that was a politicalAccommodation.
Accommodation right, which wasregarded as basically
unnecessary by the others, whosaid this is not the business of
the federal government.
We'll put this in here, butthey don't have that kind of
that's not their job Right.
(16:21):
And so the the two clauses thefree side clause and the no
establishment clause areaddressed to Congress.
Congress shall have no powerand they are addressed to the
federal government.
So in a way, they're what wewould call jurisdictional.
(16:42):
In their original form, theywere just saying the federal
government has no authority overreligion.
All of that was left to thestates, and so what happened is
that then this gets complicatedat the time of the Civil War
(17:03):
with the passage of theReconstruction Amendments, the
13th, 14th and 15th Amendmentsthat were passed after the Civil
War to guarantee rights to thenewly enfranchised, enslaved
persons, you know, ban slaveryand give the right to vote to
formerly enslaved persons, andalso to guarantee equal rights.
(17:26):
What happened then between 1865and the first third of the 20th
century, as we all know, is thatthe promise of those amendments
was not met right, that,through the resistance of the
South and other parts of thecountry and entrenched racism
(17:46):
and Jim Crow laws, in fact,african Americans were not given
the rights that were by thebeginning of the 20th century
and into the beginning of the20th century, the pressure to
enforce those amendmentsincreased, and so, as we know,
eventually you're going to getto Brown versus Board of
(18:08):
Education and the kind ofinsistence on equality between
African-Americans and whiteAmericans.
Also, though, what happened isthat, when the Supreme Court
finally gets to enforcing the14th Amendment and the guarantee
that two of equal rights to allAmericans, the question came up
(18:32):
well, what rights are theseexactly?
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
And they said, oh, we have them listed in the Bill of
Rights.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Right.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
So over the first half of the 20th century, those
various elements from the Billof Rights get changed from just
being federal to also beingapplied to the states.
This is called the incorporationdoctrine.
So as a kind of literary legalmatter, these various parts of
(19:05):
the Bill of Rights getincorporated into the 14th
Amendment, such that the FirstAmendment no longer means, you
know, congress shall make no law, but neither Congress nor the
states shall make any law.
So, beginning in the middle ofthe 20th century 1940, suddenly
(19:27):
the Supreme Court gets in thebusiness of deciding what
religion is, gets in thebusiness of deciding what
religion is, and it comes aboutvia the 14th Amendment and
through what we still know is adeep tension in American
constitutional life betweenstates' rights and federal
rights, between what is thematter of the states and what is
(19:50):
the matter of the government.
Up until then, issues aroundreligion are decided state by
state and each stateconstitution has its own mini
First Amendment.
They're not all the same, buteach one has its own
constitution, and that's themain way in which religion gets
(20:13):
governed in the US up until 1940, when it suddenly becomes
nationalized and that creates anew politics.
This is a very complicatedstory.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Fascinating.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
It is very interesting, and you know, phil,
from the point of view of thoseof us who did degrees in
religious studies, particularlyfor me, in American religious
studies.
If you think about the religiousmakeup of the US at the end of
the 18th century, when theConstitution was written, the
(20:48):
people who were present in theUS were Native Americans,
african Americans and mostlywhite Protestants, some
Catholics, some Jews.
But when you so if you thinkabout that demography then and
we could talk about religion andlaw, then then we would be
(21:10):
talking very much state by state.
Yeah, and we would be talkingvery much state by state, right,
(21:34):
because different legalcultures in different states,
different colonial histories atthat point, very different
colonial histories, which iswhen these now we're talking
about the Second World War we'veis that it becomes completely
(22:00):
inadequate as a way to thinkabout how religious diversity,
really complex religiousdiversity, might be accommodated
and how what we might callpeaceable coexistence could work
.
Because they're stuck with aword that meant something.
At the end of the 18th centuryMost people understood what it
(22:23):
meant.
It doesn't mean it includedeverybody, but everybody knew
what it meant to a time when itwas bewildering to the Supreme
Court to have this word.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Yeah, I think that's one of the challenges that we
all face, you know, in religiondepartments, because it seems as
if the media today knowsexactly what religion means, but
it's such a complicated historyand complicated word, I mean.
But I would like to go back toJohnson.
(22:55):
You know our conference lastDecember was focused on Johnson
v McIntosh, and you know how thedoctrine of discovery really
enters US law, right, because,interestingly, marshall really
doesn't talk about religion Imean, just listening to you even
(23:17):
though he's drawing on Catholictheological principles from the
15th century, right, and reallyBritish colonial documents and
justifications for colonialism,doesn't really talk about
religion, talks aboutcivilization, talks about this
project, you know, of theAmerican project, and how, then
(23:41):
he incorporates the doctrine ofdiscovery, or the discovery
doctrine as he calls it, into USlaw.
And I wonder then how thatslots into your really important
narrative about the problem ofreligion and US law, or does it?
(24:02):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
Well, you also have to consider that the
hierarchical structure was inplace in Europe, going from the
line from popes to themonarchies, and then being
transferred to england duringthe reformation and it became
like uh, european or english lawthrough the cabot charter.
And so there's all theseconnections, religion is
(24:26):
embedded in these hierarchicalstructures of domination before
they even come here.
Then there's the glimmer ofencountering indigenous people
here and there's many ordersthat go to Europe and they like
what you're saying, they observe, they're going.
You talk about freedom, butyou're only free under the
umbrella of your monarch.
(24:48):
You're not experiencing freedom.
We experience freedom in theAmericas or in our homelands.
And then the founding fathersin the late 18th century.
They're talking to the foundingfathers how to structure, you
know, around their model ofseveral entities unifying under
(25:10):
this.
You know the Haudenosaunee, youknow and being under the great
law of peace.
But it's a whole other structure.
It's not hierarchical at all.
So that opens up newpossibilities for establishing a
new form of governance, whichhas indigenous roots to this
(25:31):
democracy that influenced theWestern world.
Speaker 4 (25:35):
So I think what you bring up is really, really
important, sandy, and stayingfor a moment with this, at the
end of the 18th century, youknow, this is, you know, in
spite of Marshall's reallystrong supremacist rhetoric.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Right.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
The fact is, at that point the US is nothing, right.
I mean, this is, it doesn'thave any power in the world at
this point.
And you know what you point to,I think, sandy.
And I think this is actually insome ways weirdly evident in
Marshall's opinion, far morethan any later opinions, in the
(26:17):
sense that Marshall doesacknowledge that Native American
peoples are peoples withgovernments, rights, ways of
living in the land, ways ofliving with each other, rights,
ways of living in the land, waysof living with each other.
He doesn't shrink them down topeople who might have a religion
(26:39):
or a this or that he talksabout.
I mean, I don't know if youagree, but I think that's one of
the strange things about theJohnson versus McIndosh opinion
is that you know he was a man ofthe frontier, he grew up in
Western Virginia, he was not acitified guy, so he had some
(27:01):
sense of the reality of themultiple governing structures
and communities that existed atthe time of the making of the
Constitution.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
As did many of the founding fathers.
I'll say yeah.
Speaker 4 (27:19):
Yes, and so I think this is really important to sit
with because, as you say, sandy,there was a possibility.
Then there were actually robust, you know, coexisting, robust
structures for thinking aboutwhat it means to be human in
community.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
But more than community, these are nations,
they're indigenous nations andall the treaties were drawn up
as nation to nation agreementsand it empowered the federal
government.
When it's having all thisseparation of the state like
pulling away and trying to havetheir own autonomy, yeah, no,
absolutely.
Speaker 4 (27:58):
Absolutely, and I think I mean Marshall does not
use the language of nationsthere, although other people did
and you know, and so Aconstitution.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
It's the law of the land Right.
Speaker 4 (28:13):
Absolutely, absolutely.
A constitution, it's the law ofthe land, right, absolutely,
(28:38):
absolutely.
But I think that there's a wayin which that is so much more
real there than it's now.
Almost 100 years after theincorporation doctrine that I
was talking about, thefederalization, and 50 years
since I was in law school, thechange to the word religion in
public life in the US is verydramatic.
In the last 30 years, the wordhas shrunk in meaning in ways,
(28:59):
and I do think that there areways strategically to use to try
to recover or to maybe find away to invest in this word as an
alternative to certain.
And so for me, you know, on theone hand, there is the media
(29:24):
today in the US, which largelyunderstands religion in a very
binary way, so that the liberalmedia regards religion as being
evangelical Protestantsexclusively, and that makes it
impossible to talk aboutanything of what we have in
common, in my view, other thanneoliberalism.
(29:47):
That's what we have in common.
Unless we can expand ourunderstanding what it means to
be human, I really worry.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
That's fantastic.
Yeah, I think.
Yeah.
Well, let's talk about that.
You recently wrote this piecefor the Marty Center on the
immolation.
Who is the man's name?
Aaron?
Speaker 4 (30:08):
Bushnell.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Bushnell, yeah, and at one point in the piece you
say I argue that protest invokesreal law, law founded in
religious understandings of thehuman and of human community, as
well as of conceptions ofjustice and culpability, law
(30:31):
that rivals the claims of modernsecularist law.
I wondered if you can talk alittle more about that, because
I think in that you'rechallenging both categories in a
way.
You know religion and law andwhat that means for the meaning
of being human today.
Speaker 4 (30:53):
So maybe for the hearers, I might just very
briefly explain who AaronBushnell was.
Aaron Bushnell was an Americanairman who was stationed near
the district of Washington DCand about two and a half weeks
ago he set fire to himselfoutside the Israeli embassy and
(31:17):
he filmed himself.
He live videotaped himself on aFacebook post.
Before he did this, he said thefollowing.
He said what would you do ifyour country was enforcing
apartheid?
What would you do if yourcountry was enforcing legalized
(31:40):
slavery?
What would you do if yourcountry was committing genocide?
And then the next sentence wasyou are doing it now.
I found this very, verypowerful.
And then, as he, just before heset himself afire, he announced
(32:02):
that he was protesting thegenocide in Gaza and that he was
, and as he burned he shoutedfree Palestine.
So many things have struck meabout this event.
First, it was not reported verymuch.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Right, I noticed, yeah, that you mentioned that.
Speaker 4 (32:25):
Which I find kind of astonishing and scary, and there
are many ways we could talkabout that.
But I think one of the wayswhich I tried to address in my
piece was that I think peopleare scared.
I mean even people that wemaybe don't have a political
view of this, that people arescared by this kind of thing,
(32:47):
but also they don't understandit.
And one of the strange thingsabout the video is that in the
video, as he burns, you see alaw enforcement officer holding
a gun on him, pointed at him ashe burns, so it's as if.
And then there's another lawenforcement officer comes up
with a fire extinguisher,holding a gun on him, pointed at
(33:09):
him as he burns.
So it's as if.
And then there's another lawenforcement officer comes up
with a fire extinguisher.
But in the way that that act hasbeen written about, it seems,
both from what the, from the gunand other things that have been
written in the press, thatpeople assume either he was a
terrorist or he was mentally illand that's been the main way
that people have addressed it.
Or for those who admire him,there's a sense, there's a sort
(33:31):
of he's an individual conscience, he's a single person who
somehow has a sort of saintlyconscience, and that that's all
you can say about this.
For me, this was and you know,phil, from history of religions
this is not something that isindividual, this is something
that is communal, and so I triedand, very importantly for me,
(33:55):
it's legal.
It is not just a question ofconscience, but that what he is
doing, what he was doing andwhat other people who have done
acts like this were doing, ismaking a legal claim on us,
shifting the burden and on, ofcourse, the Israeli government
(34:17):
and the US government, but alsoon us and that there's a legal
structure to what he does.
This would be called in law ashifting of the burden of proof
that now it's on us.
That's what he's done, andalways.
For me now and this is one ofthe projects we're doing in our
center is called UnstatelyReligion.
(34:39):
Always, we're interested indescribing lifting up.
This connects, of course, toSandy's earlier invocation of
nations that preceded the US,that of alternative
sovereignties and coexistingsovereignties.
Always there is legal pluralism, always, if you listen to the
(35:02):
nation states today, they act asif they have a monopoly on law
and a monopoly on violence.
They do not, but they do notever.
There's always multiple lawsand every individual is
responsible to multiple legalorders.
Sorry, I got a little bitcreaky there.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
No, no, no, that's great.
I get a better sense of whatyou're talking about when you
invoke law.
Now, it's not, you know,plenary power of the state.
Yes, it's that, but it'ssomething else as well.
I mean, one of the things thatyou know, we've been talking
(35:42):
about lately, or I've beentalking about in my conquest
class, is that, you know,Indigenous people do diversity
really well, they understanddiversity and they have
protocols that have been inplace for millennia to deal with
.
You know, like, you know anothernation, that's 100 miles.
(36:04):
That way, you know down, youknow the path, or through the
woods or whatever.
And there are all theseprotocols for other nations that
will come.
You receive them.
You, you know it's what it'scalled the edge of the wood
ceremony for the Haudenosauneethey, they, what they call, they
(36:25):
, they brush them down, they,they acknowledge their
difficulties, their struggles,that sort of thing.
There's food, there's all kind,but there's the acknowledgement
that those nations have undertheir purview, their
responsibilities are to thosestories.
(36:48):
Right, they live in theirplaces that have their own
languages, their own customs,their own, you know, their own
ceremonial traditions thattransact with other spiritual
beings there.
So there's always thisacknowledgement of kind of
radical plurality that's goingon in Indigenous nations.
(37:14):
So I mean and that's one of thestriking things when you're
dealing with Indigenous peoplesthis tremendous plurality of
different traditions and thatsort of thing.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
Going back to the Haudenosaunee, the first treaty
was with the Dutch in 1613,known as the Two Row Wampum, and
it's an agreement that showstwo rivers, so to speak, where
the Dutch would be sailing onone and the Haudenosaunee would
be in their canoe on the other,and they traveled down the river
(37:48):
of life without interferencewith one another and respecting
each other, understanding ofwhat the river of life means.
So all got really lost intranslation, because the
Haudenosaunee lived that waywith their neighbors.
They were welcoming to colonistscoming in so they could
everyone could cohabitate in anew existence, but you have to
(38:12):
be in proper relationship withthe natural world and that just
went right over their heads yeah, yeah and that's very deep,
very deep part of the cultureand understanding what it means
to be human, because the naturalworld identifies each and every
one of the Haudenosaunee asthrough their clan and who they
(38:34):
are in relationship to thenatural world know, we, we have
a, we have a kind of strangeunderstanding of, of plurality
or diversity, I guess.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
Uh, because when we're talking about diversity,
we're not just we're not talkingabout this kind of level of
radical diversity, you know no,or diversity of of geographies
or landscapes, right, um yeahright.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
Your, your identity comes from the land where you
reside, and the land is diverseand it's ever-changing, and the
waters are always changing andit's this regenerative energy
that we're just part of, andwhen you go outside of it and
start disrupting it, it's justgoing to create mayhem.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
Do you need help catching up on today's topic or
do you want to learn more aboutthe resources mentioned?
If so, please check our websiteat
podcastdoctrineofdiscoveryorgfor more information and, if you
like this episode, review it onApple, Spotify or wherever you
listen to podcasts.
And now back to theconversation listen to podcasts.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
And now back to the conversation.
Does that coincide with someidea of the human or your
reworking ideas of law, religionand the human?
Speaker 4 (39:56):
Absolutely.
I mean, I hope you'll forgiveme if I bring up my favorite
subject right now, which is Joanof Arc.
Yeah, please.
I mean my interest in Joan ofArc.
I've been teaching her trialfor many years.
You know, joan lived before thecreation of the modern state.
(40:16):
She lived at the beginning ofthe 15th century and my book is
about her political theology,what I'm calling her political
theology, but her ideas ofgovernance, which I think have
been obscured by the ways inwhich she became a figure for
(40:37):
nationalism in the 19th century.
But this was not the world shelived in.
There was no France at the time.
There was no France at the timeof Jones.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
There was no Europe.
Speaker 4 (40:48):
No, no.
And what she sought was peace.
What she sought was relief forthe people of the French
territories from thearistocratic wars that had been
going on and ruining the land,principally the war between
England and France, but alsothere were civil wars involved.
(41:10):
This was an aristocraticpolitics which was destroying
the lives of ordinary people.
She sought, you know, arestoration of a place in which
people could live.
This is, you know in part whatyou're talking about, sandy an
attention to the possibility forpeople living in peace, in
(41:31):
community, caring for oneanother, you know, at the level
of the land and in places.
You know, one of my favoritediscoveries was the day I
realized that she wasn't French,that this is all myth-making.
So she came from on the edge ofwhat now is France, but was not
(41:54):
part of France then, and thevoices she heard, as a young
girl, said go to France.
And I don't know, I've beenreading this for years and
finally I went oh right, she'snot French, she's not in France.
She went to France, which thenwas not anything like what we
(42:15):
think of France today, but tothe French court to help restore
peace.
And in a way you know, sandy,you might say this is maybe a
little fanciful.
She you know she was went as aperson and she was not.
She's often described as anilliterate peasant, as if she
(42:36):
was brainless and, just you know, a dumb girl.
Her family were farmers,well-off farmers, very involved
in local politics.
She was a smarty pants girl whoknew what was going on when she
got to court.
She knew what she was talkingabout.
So she brings a very strongnotion of what it means to live
(43:02):
in peace and to be responsibleto your neighbors and to your
place.
And probably she expected to goback there, you know.
But she gets captured and, aseverybody knows, burned.
But that's what they did.
That wasn't what she was.
That was not her project.
(43:23):
I sometimes get frustrated bypeople who only focus on her
martyrdom and don't focus on herpolitical project, which I
think is much closer to whatwe're talking about, something
that was still possible beforethe invention of the modern
state.
That's interesting.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
Yeah, or she's mentally ill or something like
that.
You know she's just like acrazy person or something.
Speaker 4 (43:51):
Women who are always Right right right, yes exactly,
exactly, exactly.
But you know, she's so smart,she's so funny and she was
really beloved by the soldiersthat she led.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
And evidently a threat, you know.
Speaker 4 (44:09):
She was a threat to the English.
For sure they were very scaredof her.
Speaker 3 (44:15):
Well, when the Jesuits first came into our
territories, I mean they werewriting about the women being
the firebrands of hell.
I keep repeating this in somany of these interviews because
it's so amazing so they wouldtarget the women, but they came
here knowing how to do that.
So obviously you know they hadgood practice and worked out
(44:35):
that system of patriarchytakeover.
Speaker 4 (44:40):
But it is important to notice that there were, until
she got to, the judges whopersecuted her at the end, and
for sure that was misogynist andum, motivated by misogyny.
But you know the men, captains,who fought with her, they, they
(45:00):
respected her, and that therewere people in the church who
supported her too.
So it was a complicated worldbut she had many supporters and
friends who really admired herand accepted that she
(45:22):
cross-dressed.
That's another thing.
You know, people often say ohwell, she was condemned because
the church condemnedcross-dressing.
Well, those priests did.
But before she got there therewere plenty of people who
accepted it.
So it was complicated.
There was, as some historianstalk about, the queer medieval.
(45:44):
Joan in a sense belongs as apart of the queer medieval In a
very interesting way,politically queer, in a very
strong sense.
So not just her clothes, but inher political sense as well.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Well, I look forward to that, that book coming out.
That should be great as well.
Well, I look forward to thatbook coming out.
That should be great.
I did want to mention, too,that you might be interested.
So we're coming up on the what?
250th anniversary of thefounding of the United States,
right, and there are a lot ofland, and one of the things that
(46:22):
we've been working on at thescano center actually is, um,
this smithsonian exhibit that'straveling, called voices and
boats.
That is sort of a celebrationof of american democracy.
Um, you know, it's very red,white and and blue, and you know
it's.
It's this traveling exhibit, umand um.
(46:45):
The Museum Association of NewYork, which is managing this for
the Smithsonian, is um,specifically selected the Scano
Center as one of the sites thatum that they want to have this
Voices and Votes exhibit in, andthe reason is because there's
no mention of the Haudenosauneeinfluence on American democracy.
(47:10):
And so Sandy, mostly Sandy andI have been involved in creating
like these banners, but youknow, I mean these banners of
like talking about the influenceof the Haudenosaunee the great
law of peace.
Speaker 3 (47:26):
We get four banners to accompany the tour.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
Yeah, these kind of supplemental you know addendum.
Yeah.
So I mean and so it's going tobe, I think, in 12 different
places around New York Stateit's already like in Tennessee
and other places state it'salready like in Tennessee and
other places.
But that, so what we're doingis, is what?
Not pushing back but I'd saysupplementing that narrative,
(47:56):
that kind of myth history thatwe all have to deal with?
We're pushing a little, yeah,we're pushing quite hard, but
but you know, but from this,from this point of view, that
you know that this didn't justjump out of the heads of these
white guys, fully formed, youknow, you know Haudenosaunee,
but also other confederaciesaround the, around what's now
(48:28):
the United States.
So I mean, I mean, I mean thishas pretty much been proven in a
variety of ways in, you know,george Washington papers and
things like that.
So we're quoting, we're liftingsome of these quotes right out
of American history and I meanit's like this.
(48:50):
We have to grapple with our ownmyth.
History too, right, I mean notjust Joan of Arc's, but you know
it's like you know, like, howdo we push back?
I think we're.
I think we're pretty wellpositioned in religious studies
to think mythically and to thinkyou know how we can re-narrate
this story of America and allthat.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
Right, the local historical association sent out
the first draft for each bannerand they had to be nearly
completely rewritten.
You know, using things like theOnondaga had to cede their
territories to, you know,washington, and so not exactly
(49:33):
unceded lands, and so it had tobe a whole revision envisioning
of this project.
So it was interesting.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
Yeah, we don't know how it's going to, but if it, if
it lands in a town near youjust know that you've got these
other kinds of supplementalbanners that we've been on Maybe
it's already in Indiana, Idon't really know.
It's going all over the place.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
Our banners aren't ready yet, though they're final
Almost.
Yeah, they're just aren't readyyet, though they're final
Almost.
Yeah, they're just about readyto go.
Speaker 4 (50:06):
Yeah, you know, as we get this our own Indigenous
Studies Project off the ground,we should find some ways to talk
together.
It's being led by my colleague,michael Ng, who's a Native
Hawaiian and who's working onNative Hawaiian histories and
philosophies and issues, and mycolleague, alexis McLeod, who's
(50:32):
working with some Mayan eldersin the Yucatan Very much.
One of the objects of ourcenter is to talk about America
as a hemispherical project andnot just to really push against
(50:53):
limiting America to the USborders.
And obviously the Haudenosauneeand the Onondaga are way ahead
of us on that, I know.
Speaker 2 (51:02):
Well, we're fortunate , I mean we're fortunate to be
here.
I mean it's not like so.
You know, we used to live inMissouri and you know Chicago.
I mean, I grew up in Michigan,really didn't know anything
about, you know indigenouspeoples there, you know.
I mean, in fact, when we werein Missouri we discovered that
(51:23):
it was illegal, for in terms ofthe state constitution, illegal
for Native Americans to actuallyreside in Missouri, I mean
because they'd all been removed,you know, or that was the
fiction that they were operatingunder.
So the Midwest is a strangeplace here.
There you are in Indiana, youknow, and then you know, and
(51:43):
then you know, what does thatmean?
You know, I can just kind ofstart there.
But we're fortunate in New York, oddly enough, to be located
near, you know, one of the lastor few federally recognized,
(52:08):
federally recognized NativeAmerican nations that do not
have a Bureau of Indian Affairsgovernment on their territory.
They resisted that.
They have their own passports.
They, you know, they stick tothis kind of sovereignty
narrative, you know.
And so in a way it's easy, in away it's difficult because
they're very mistrustful ofpeople, just generally.
Speaker 3 (52:31):
But we've been able to work through it Well, very
protective, yeah, veryprotective, maybe it's a better
word yeah that's right, you'reright.
Speaker 4 (52:36):
I got to see one of those passports when we were in
Japan together, you may remember.
Speaker 2 (52:41):
Oh, that's right.
Gosh, that was like oh five,something like that, that's
right.
Yeah, so so we're, we'refortunate in a way, and we, with
the Scano Center, we're able toshare some of that.
They explicitly so, so they'renot.
(53:01):
They're not interested insharing their language.
They've got all the languageprograms and those kind of
revitalization programs going onat the nation, but at Onondaga
Lake they wanted this to be muchmore of a public kind of effort
that pushes out their story,you know, to others, you know
(53:21):
all kinds of others.
So, yeah, it makes it a littlebit easier than other
territories.
Speaker 3 (53:29):
That aren't surviving and they're united on the front
.
They don't have a competing BIAgovernment that silences their
traditional people, which wasthe case at Standing Rock.
I mean, the BIA leadership wasnot really entirely supportive
of what the traditional peoplewere trying to accomplish there
(53:49):
and stopping the pipeline yeah,that's, that's a.
It's a long story there's greatclarity here at onondaga.
They know who they are and theyspeak with a united voice.
Yeah, it's unique, so I'll.
Speaker 2 (54:02):
So I'll be very interested in what you're doing
there, Winnie, at your center.
It's very, very interesting.
I got a better sense of it inthis conversation.
Speaker 4 (54:13):
Well, I've enjoyed the conversation and great to
see you too.
Thank you, great to see you.
Speaker 2 (54:18):
Thanks, all right.
Speaker 1 (54:20):
The producers of this podcast were Adam DJ Brett and
Jordan Lone Colon.
Our intro and outro is socialdancing music by Oris Edwards
and Regis Cook.
This podcast is funded incollaboration with the Henry
Luce Foundation, syracuseUniversity and Hendrix Chapel
and the Indigenous ValuesInitiative.
If you like this episode,please check out our website and
(54:42):
make sure to subscribe.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.