S05E02: Exploring the Legacy of Vine Deloria Jr. on Native American Thought with Philip Deloria

Discover the transformative power of Native American thought and religious studies in our conversation with the esteemed Philip Deloria. Learn about the profound legacy of Vine Deloria Jr., whose influential works like God is Red have shaped the academic and theological landscapes. As we uncover the Deloria family's rich heritage of Indigenous advocacy, you'll gain a deeper understanding of how these experiences have informed their unique contributions to theology and Native American Studies.

Explore the intricate dynamics between Native American communities and Christianity as we reflect on Vine Deloria Jr.'s provocative texts Custer Died for Your Sins and his subsequent disillusionment with Christianity that led to God Is Red. Through these discussions, we highlight the enduring impact of colonialism and the resurgence of indigenous practices in contemporary Native life.

Unpack the unsettling phenomenon of "playing Indian" in both American and European contexts, exploring historical and contemporary examples from the Boston Tea Party to modern New Age movements. We also discuss the critical role of oral tradition and indigenous knowledge, emphasizing their dynamic nature. This episode provides valuable insights into the current trends in Native Studies, the intersection of indigenous rights with modern political movements, and the transformative potential of indigenous sovereignty and diplomacy. Join us for a thought-provoking and enlightening discussion with Philip Deloria.

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View the transcript and show notes at podcast.doctrineofdiscovery.org. Learn more about the Doctrine of Discovery on our site DoctrineofDiscovery.org.

Episode Transcript

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 now introducing your hosts,phil Arnold and Sandy Bigtree.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Okay, welcome back to Mapping the Doctrine of
Discovery.
My name is Philip Arnold.
I'm in the Religion Departmentand Core Faculty in Native
American Indigenous Studies atSyracuse University and the
founding director of the ScanoGreat Law of Peace Center.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
And I'm Sandy Bigtree , a citizen of the Mohawk Nation
at Akwesasne, and I'm on theboard of the Indigenous Values
Initiative and the PlanningCollaborative for the Scano
Great Law of Peace Center atOnondaga Lake.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
And we're coming to you, sponsored by the Henry Luce
Foundation.
We're coming to you sponsoredby the Henry Luce Foundation.
Today we're in Boda, Norway,Honored to be here with Philip
Deloria, who is a well-knownauthor.
For the last 25 years hasreally galvanized Native

(01:30):
American studies around issueshaving to do with stereotyping
and playing Indian.
I'll say so.
We're going to have awide-ranging conversation about
a number of things, but justwelcome Philip.

Speaker 4 (01:37):
Thank you, so great to be here.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
First I have to talk a little bit about Vine Deloria
Jr, your father, ella Deloria,your great-aunt, and Vine
Deloria Sr, who was anEpiscopalian minister, as I
understand.

(02:05):
So religion has always been avery important theme in your
family, in the Deloria family,and I wanted to raise this up
because particularly VineDeloria Jr has really
transformed my ideas and my work.
Just last month, for example, agrad student of mine who is
like a shaker and mover she'sdoing two PhDs, one in like
environmental studies and one inreligion had never read Vine

(02:30):
Deloria before African-Americanstudent and she said to me
excitedly you have to know herto really appreciate this.
But excitedly she ran up to meand she said I just read Vine
Deloria's God is Red and itexplains everything.
I mean, you know it still hasthis real impact on students and

(02:56):
I don't think it's as valued inreligious studies as it ought
to be, you know, or the work ofyour family.
I'm thinking, ella, you know aswell.
I mean, and I don't know, it'snot really a question, but it's
really just, you know, somethingthat I think needs to be that
we need to focus on in religiousstudies.

Speaker 3 (03:16):
But talk about your department quickly and how you
talk about it, you do it.
God has read your department,phil.
Okay, pause, okay, pause, okay,that's a good point.
No, oh God, that's funny.
Talk about your department.
You talk about my department.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
Yeah, the religion department at Syracuse
University, back in the area ofpsychology of religion,
philosophy of religion that'snot really what I do, but we
have a kind of secular theologyelement to our department and so
they were involved with thisdeath of God theology that hit

(04:25):
Time magazine cover and I'mthinking like 65, something like
that.
And then your father inresponse almost I'm not sure
what wrote God is Red and I'mnot sure how.
If it is connected, it's justpoetic in many ways.

Speaker 4 (04:47):
Um, I don't know if you have any like comments about
that, but yeah, I mean, I thinkit is connected, it's um, so
you're, you're completely rightabout the family.
Um, you know, my grandfatherwas an Episcopalian minister.
My great-grandfather, theperson I'm named for was an
Episcopalian minister.
My great-grandfather, theperson I'm named for, was an
Episcopalian minister, one ofthe first Native clergy in the
Episcopal Church, you know, at atime when the Episcopalians,

(05:10):
you know, were quite good atletting Native people take
leadership positions compared to, say, the Catholic Church you
know, which was not or some ofthe other Protestant
denominations.
So you know there's a longtradition of this kind of
leadership within the church,you know, of which the family's

(05:31):
been part.
And you know my dad went to,you know, theology school.
He studied theology, earned adivinity degree, you know, and I
think this was this would havebeen in the sort of late 1950s,
early 1960s, and you know it's.
I think there's a line to bedrawn between that moment of his
life and his training and histhought, where he read a lot of
classic religion and theology.
And if we skip over God is Redfor a moment and go to the

(05:53):
metaphysics of modern existencefrom the late 70s 79, as I
recall, what you can see there,I think, is this sort of
development of the ways that hewas thinking in the late 50s, so
20 years earlier, and it's akind of a.
That book is a reallyinteresting book and it, like
God is Red, doesn't really getmuch play either, but it's a

(06:15):
rereading of the kind of classictheological literatures right
that came out of the 40s and the50s.
So you can see, I think, theways that sort of religious
studies, theology, reallygrounded his thinking.
So if you think about thattrajectory and then you put him
back in the context of the RedPower Movement of the mid to
late 1960s, so you know he'dbeen the executive director of

(06:38):
the National Congress ofAmerican Indians.
He had written Custer Died foryour Sins, published in 1969.
And that's a really interestingbook for the ways that I think
it frames all the writing thathe did during that period.
He wrote something like fivebooks within the space of about

(07:00):
five years Amazing, and tons ofarticles, and so he was just
cranking out writing and youknow you can, you can see Custer
died for your sins.
He's learning to be a writer,you know it's.
It's a very important book butit's not exactly a taught,
well-crafted, you know throughline kind of book.
It's a set of kind of ramblingsand essays and things like that

(07:20):
.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
Yeah, I say that book as a kind of that he's writing
sort of in the trenches, youknow, literally in the trenches
in a car or whatever you know.

Speaker 4 (07:29):
You know he wrote this in.
We lived in a very small littlehouse on 2440 South Monroe
Street in Denver, colorado, andyou know this was a house that
had like two bedrooms for fourpeople and you for four people
and, um, you know he sat on aeasy chair with a typewriter on
a coffee table and kind ofpounded it out, you know, at

(07:50):
night, um, you know, so it wassort of, I mean, that was him
learning to be a writer, whichhe then sort of embraced over
the next, you know, the next fewyears.
Um, and in that sense, god isred comes out of his red power
kind of writing.
But it's also this book aboutreligion, right, and like so
many of his books, it startswith an explanatory chapter

(08:13):
where he's saying, like dearwhite people, let me explain to
you how you have understood us,how you frame native people, and
why that's all wrong.
And after a chapter or two ofthat, so when you think about
that red power context and youthink about where God is red
comes from, right, there's,there's in all of his writing at
this moment there's always thedeconstructive chapter where

(08:35):
he's telling people you, youdon't understand.
Now let me clear the ground andnow we'll move forward with an
argument, right, and so that'swhat he, you know, that's what
he does in God is Red.
And the argument there, right,is so much of a critique of
Christianity as a colonial kindof artifact, exactly, you know,
but it's not really a historicalargument.

(08:55):
No, it's not saying like, yeah,christianity and history came
together, you know things likethe doctrine of discovery.
He's not really saying that.
It's a theological andconceptual, you know kind of
argument.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
Where that really turns around questions about
time and space and how peoplekind of imagine those things.
Yeah, and I think you knowthat's the kind of the irony of
this.
You know that in a way becauseI think of him as a theologian,
but in sort of on the ground andchallenging the theological
superstructure that the academyhas built around religious

(09:33):
institutions.
I guess Is it something like anopen letter to church leaders
or something like that thatappears in God is Red, which
many, many of our collaboratorspoint to as theologically.

(09:56):
But then, on the other hand,he's very, very critical of the
church and its origins incolonialism, and I think it's
that kind of conundrum thatcreates this movement really in

(10:20):
the doctrine of Christiandiscovery, with all these
repudiations now coming after,you know, 2009.
So, and that's why I wanted tostart there, because I think
your dad helped all of us reallyframe these religious problems,
you know, and now we're lookingin archives and we're looking

(10:49):
historical and you know, allthese other kind of bringing in
these other materials.

Speaker 3 (10:52):
You know I mean, oh sorry, well, we have to look at
this too like you're talkingabout your great grandfather
being an Episcopalian ministeror priest.
But it was a different time.
It's not like Native peoplewanted to become Christian.
They really had no choice.
So this is giving a greatpathway through how Native

(11:14):
people have dealt with this andto get in a place of authority
like your father did.
He could then stay with hiscommunity and, you know, deal
with them and guide them throughsome of this stuff as well.
So it's a different contextthan today.
It's like I know the narrativewe turned around at Onondaga
Lake.
You know the county wasteaching our community that the

(11:38):
Onondaga practically begged tobe Christianized and that was a
fallacy because the Andaga madethe Jesuits leave within 18
months of their first arrival.
So it's a very brutal historyand you have to contextualize
this.
I don't want a listener comingin not knowing any of this and
hearing this conversation right.

(11:59):
So you know you didn't have thechoice and it was a place of
influence if you became aminister or a priest at that
time and thank goodness, withwhat your lineage did.
It's a complicated thing, itcould still guide us through
some of this history as well.

Speaker 4 (12:17):
Well, this is you know the story in our families
that my great-great-grandfather,sassouet, you know, had
basically said to his son,philip J Tipi Sapa.
You know, look, this is in thewake of the Indian Wars and this
is in the wake of, like all ofthis violent military, you know,
colonialism and domination andthe sort of restructuring around

(12:40):
reservations and allotment andassimilation policy.
And you know said to him look,you know, there's the old venues
of leadership, you know, havebeen under assault right and
they are crumbling and there'snew ways to imagine sort of
serving and leading, and one ofthem is through the church.
So, you know, maybe you thinkabout that.
And that you know that wholegeneration, that first
generation of Lakota and Dakotaministers.

(13:02):
You know I mean mygreat-grandfather.
You know he did his sermons inthe Dakota language.
He used the translated Dakotahymnal.
You know they used the DakotaBible, right, they were keeping
the linguistic and languagetradition alive, even through
literary kinds of means.
They'd have the annualconvocations which looked a lot
like the Sundance.
They'd have the men's societieswhich looked a lot like the

(13:23):
Sundance.
They'd have the men's societieswhich looked a lot like the old
men's societies.
They'd have the women'ssocieties.
So in some ways, you know it wasthe church became this kind of
umbrella through which you couldreconstitute and reimagine, you
know kind of older ways, oldersocial organizations and
structures.
And you know I mean mygrandfather sort of.
You know oftentimes you know,had critiques of the church

(13:50):
turned against the church.
You know thatmulti-generational thing by the
time you get to my dad, you know, and I think this helps put God
is Red in another kind ofcontext which you know Custer
Died for your Sins is in someways I mean it's read as being a
red power book in the samediscourses the American Indian
movement or the Indians of alltribes, but in fact it's really
not that he's very much aninstitutionalist.

(14:11):
Right in that book he is infavor of well-run tribal
government and he, you know,likes tribal chairs who know how
to negotiate with thegovernment, and so he's got an
institutionalist kind of vibe tohim how to negotiate with the
government, and so he's got aninstitutionalist kind of vibe to
him.
And in the early 70s he wasinvited to be on the National
Council of the Episcopal Church,which he did for six months,

(14:37):
nine months, something like that, floated all kinds of proposals
which basically went back tothat earlier structure, right,
sort of saying like you need torecruit, you know, native
ministers, you need to give themauthority to sort of move in a
native kind of way through thechurch, right, and the church
was just not having it right,you know, just was not doing it
and you know, so you can watchthe Episcopal church as it sort

(14:59):
of fades and declines from avery successful, you know kind
of I'm doing air quotes here youknow kind of very successful
organization in the late 19thand early 20th century to, by
the time you get to the midcentury, a kind of sad faded,
degraded, declining kind ofthing.
My dad thought, well, maybe thechurch could reinvigorate itself

(15:19):
.
He was watching black socialactivism which was so church
based, and sort of thinking likecould the churches actually
provide an infrastructure fornative folks?
You know as well.
And his conclusion was no.
And then he resigned from thechurch board and right at that
moment this movie sits down towrite Goddess Red.

Speaker 3 (15:37):
But, goddess, through that period where you had no
option but to congregate underthe authority of the church,
indigenous people were notallowed to congregate unless it
was at the church.
That's what we were hearingfrom Onondaga, that they got fed
in those places.
The best meals were served atthe church.
And these are community folk,you know, and so the church was

(15:58):
it, you know.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
I also.
I mean, we don't have to talkabout this, you know, because we
could talk for hours about thisbut I was also thinking about
Black Elk and his experience andthe whole controversy about his
being a catechist and thingswhich I love to teach, because
it is a complicated story, youknow, and there's so many twists

(16:19):
and turns.
But then that's the CatholicChurch, very different than the
Episcopal Church and I alsowanted to note that different
than the Episcopal Church.
And I also wanted to note thatit is the Episcopalians, in 2009
, that are the first torepudiate the doctrine of
discovery.
Right, this comes out of Maineand some interactions between

(16:40):
Episcopalians and the Penobscot,you know and they're the ones
that really are are the first,and it just creates this wave of
repudiations all throughdenominations, christian
denominations, religious orders,all kinds of places.
Now they have differentmotivations.

(17:01):
You know, episcopalians areconcerned about Cabot Charter,
the British kind of colonialsuperstructure around the church
and how that was used, and thatit diminishes the Christian
faith.
So they're concerned abouttheir own Christianity in some

(17:24):
ways.
Maybe they should be a littlemore concerned about what they
did to Native people.
I'm not sure, but you knowthere's a lot of different
motivations in theserepudiations.

Speaker 3 (17:34):
But we also hope, with this work, the Doctrine of
Discovery, they can reflect andsee what happened to them, what
happened to their indigenouslineages right In Europe.
In Europe.

Speaker 2 (17:45):
In Europe.

Speaker 3 (17:46):
You know this is all connected because when Europeans
came to this country, they knewdarn well what they were doing.
I mean, they attacked us andfocused right on how to make the
quickest, most abrupt change,you know, in the least amount of
time.
And you know we should talk,maybe, about the Irish yeah but

(18:08):
I just want to insert here theAmerican Indian Religious
Freedom Act did not pass until1978.
You know, you weren't reallyallowed to talk about anything
but Christianity in theseterritories.
All of them, so you know, andyour father and grandfather,
great-grandfather, so you know,and your father and grandfather,
great-grandfather, helped getpeople through this mire of

(18:30):
domination.

Speaker 4 (18:33):
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, the church was sort offor this period, was this
interesting kind of repository?

Speaker 2 (18:40):
I mean I didn't and what period were you talking
about?
Like what time period?

Speaker 4 (18:43):
Kind of late 19th through the mid to through the
Red Power Movement.
Oh really, yeah, I did aninterview one time with Albert
Whitehat from Rosebud and hesaid you know when we kind of
brought the Sundance back, youknow, in a kind of visible way.
He said the first day there wasa whole bunch of these Indian
Christians who sat on their lawnchairs and watched us and just

(19:05):
kind of folded their arms anddidn't say much.
And by the third day, and wesang the two songs that we'd
learned out of the ethnography,kind of thing, and he said, by
the third day they engaged usand brought out all kinds of
knowledge right, that they hadbeen keeping under the rubric of
the Christian church.
That's right, Right, you know.

(19:26):
So there are those ways inwhich these things are common
and I would say, you know, Imean, certainly my
great-grandfather was a personof Christian faith.
You know, I mean there was nodoubt about it and my
grandfather was episodically aperson of Christian faith, right
, I mean he mostly was, but thenhe wasn't.
And then there were thesemoments where he was questioning
and he always said you know,I'm interested in Jesus the man,

(19:49):
not Jesus the God, things likethat.
And he would take, he would say, well, these four Lakota values
and these four Christian values.
You know he had a lot offluidity kind of back and forth,
you know, kind of around thesethings.
You know, by the time you getto my dad right, you're in a
different political context.
It became, I think, quiteimportant to push back against

(20:13):
the Christian church in itslonger history, even while you
sort of admitted the interestingthings that had happened, you
know, in the previous 80-someyears.

Speaker 2 (20:22):
Jeez, there's so much that's popping into my head.
Just the Red Power Movement,you know, and how your dad was
involved with that.

Speaker 3 (20:31):
How do you make that transfer into Christianity,
though, when being indigenous isyour proper relationship with
the natural world?
Right, you know, and it'sregenerative.
You know your food, and you'regiving gratitudes to the food
and the forces of nature and allthe land, animals, and then
have Christianity come in.
You have this very alivesensibility of being human in a

(20:54):
very complex network of life, soyou already have this.
It's not so much a faith, butyou embody this power of knowing
something greater than yourself.

Speaker 2 (21:07):
And that's a trauma in and of itself, right, right,
just that.
That reality shift, you know.

Speaker 4 (21:13):
Yeah Well, and I think one of his points in God
is Red was really to sort of,you know, he wanted to draw a
pretty bright, categorical lineright In the midst of this kind
of murky murkier, more complexfamily history, right To say
look, you know, christianity isa religion of temporality and
time.
Right and native religions arepractices of space you know,

(21:34):
place making and you know, andif you take that seriously,
right, the Christian thing willalways be on a calendar, it will
always start with, you know,creation, it will always end
with redemption and everythingis going to be directed in those
kinds of ways.
Whereas in the native worlds hewanted to describe in large
conceptual terms, he's steppingoutside of any particular

(21:56):
religious tradition to makethese kind of theorizations.
The fundamental revelation ofthat is that the place itself is
alive, right, that the land isalive, that it has certain kinds
of characters and qualities toit, that you know.
If you are on a landscape thatyou know and live in intimately,

(22:17):
you understand like there'ssome good places.

Speaker 1 (22:19):
You want to go there's a few bad places.

Speaker 4 (22:22):
And why is that?
It's because the land itself hasa certain kind of character to
it, and in your human relationto that land, over time you
develop knowledges and thingslike that.
And so the second point here isthat for him, and for Native
folks in general, thatcategorical distinction between
religion and science iscompletely meaningless.

(22:43):
So to be in the place anddiscover the nature of the place
and to live it and tounderstand and put yourself in
an intimate relationship to it,right is both a science and a
religion, right in a way thatdestroys those categories.
Right is to understand, throughempirical life, right, that
there is a spiritual world right, of which you are, of which you

(23:04):
are a part, and and I think hisframing of that, it's a hard
critique of Christianity in thissort of sense, and we should, I
think, read it as such.

Speaker 3 (23:16):
And there's so much more beyond what we were limited
to become through the confinedand dominance of Christian
Christianity.
But yeah, the land identifiesus, Our identity comes from the
earth, which kind of leads toyour work as you continue on
with this legacy of scholarshipand identity.

(23:40):
So it's oh, is that aninvitation?

Speaker 2 (23:42):
to say something.

Speaker 4 (23:43):
I mean, I do see Identity politics.
So it's oh, is that aninvitation to say something?
I mean, I do see identitypolitics?

Speaker 2 (23:46):
I think we both see kind of that you're playing with
issues of identity.
You know, I thought playingIndian was provocative.
In many ways it was also acondemnation of.
I mean, last year we went towhat was that?

Speaker 3 (24:03):
it's Queen?
Oh okay.
Last year we went to what isthat?
It's a machine, oh Okay.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
It's a great machine, but it's noisy yeah.

Speaker 3 (24:16):
Are you done?
Okay?

Speaker 2 (24:20):
Last year we were in Germany and for six weeks, and
we were there, max PlanckInstitute, developing some
workshops on the Doctrine ofDiscovery, and we had some
Haudenosaunee people with us andof course we knew about Karl

(24:46):
May in Germany, and Karl May isstill just a phenomenon in
Germany, which, frankly, justblows my mind, and so his museum
is down near Dresden, and so wedecided there was going to be a
huge weekend Carl May event andwe decided to go, and then, and

(25:12):
frankly, I just don't know whatto make of it.
You know, we talked to thedirector of the museum, the Carl
May Museum, and he knew heknows a lot of Native people.
They all come over there.
They come there and they'reinvited, they're paid to, you
know, like perform.
We know some Haudenosauneeperformers that had come over
there in the past and they Imean I think some of them said

(25:36):
it just got too weird and youknow they just decided not to,
but they just love Indians, youknow, and trying to enter into
that whole kind of phenomenon issomething I'm still trying to
sort out, but I think that youprobably have.
You know, you've been dealingwith a lot of these, you know,

(25:57):
playing Indian things for solong.

Speaker 3 (26:01):
And this trumps them all.

Speaker 2 (26:03):
Yeah, it was, we could go on about it.
It was germany and we took lotsof film and you know, uh,
germans dressed up like you knowlakota people and the look.

Speaker 3 (26:15):
The lakota people actually came to perform and
they were at the event the nightbefore.
In this little village they hadthousands of germans dressed up
as cowboys and cowgirls in asaloon an old Western village
and then they had no designatedplace for the actual Lakota
people to dance and they had tocome in this like a crowd.

(26:37):
It was so intimidating.
The next day we're at themuseum.
There's this huge designatedspace for dancing, but the
Lakota were not invited there.
The Germans dressed up asLakota and they were dancing.

Speaker 2 (26:50):
And there were Confederate, you know, dresser.
They dressed up a whole unit ofConfederate soldiers, trump
caps.
There were Trump caps.
I don't know what's going on.
I mean, you know, I don'treally know what's going on in
Germany, that's one thing.
I mean, you know, I don'treally know what's going on in
Germany, that's one thing.

Speaker 3 (27:05):
But Karl May, Hitler was an enormous fan of Karl May
and distributed the books to hissoldiers.

Speaker 2 (27:12):
Probably even met him just before he died.

Speaker 3 (27:14):
Yeah, probably I mean try to unpack that playing
Indian.
I mean that's just beyondcomprehension.

Speaker 2 (27:19):
And his whole move into Poland which was seen as a
kind of eastward, you know,rather than the westward
migration, you know.
You know that epic story of,you know, moving west, manifest
destiny, that was kind of mappedonto Poland.

Speaker 3 (27:36):
Well, even referred to Poland as a reservation.
So this is so intertwined withthe psyche of all around the
world.

Speaker 2 (27:42):
I it's crazy, but it's serious, crazy, you know.
I mean it's serious.
And indians just play into thatwhole kind of thing.
Um now, I don't know if you,you know I'm, this is maybe
unfair, but but you know, theplaying indian thing just does
not go away, right?
No, no, that's true.

Speaker 3 (28:03):
That's not.

Speaker 4 (28:05):
So yeah, I, you know I mean so.
So one of the things you'llnotice in that book Playing
Indian is that I don't talkabout the Germans.
Right, right, right, and youknow, and it was a black hole,
that was a dissertation and youknow, one of the questions in
the dissertation to book processwas, you know, do I do Indians
who dress up like Indians forthemselves right and for others

(28:27):
right?
Do I do the European thing?
And you know, the answer for me, after not much thought, was a
resounding no.
Yeah right right.
Because the American thing iscomplicated enough and you know
so.
The American thing iscomplicated enough and in a way
it's, it's a.
It is a different story, right,it is a kind of.

(28:48):
It is a quintessential settlercolonial story.
You know, one of the greatmoments of my life was Patrick
Wolf coming up to me at aconference and saying I was
reading Playing Indian, as I waswriting my essay on settler
colonialism, and you know, andbecause there is a kind of a, I
wasn't theorizing settlercolonialism, but this sort of
sense of like you will erase theindigenous in order to assume

(29:11):
the identities you will perform.
And what I tried to bring intothe conversation was this aspect
of performance, that it's notjust once, it's not just um,
that you imagine a kind ofnative, other and you kind of,
but you actually internalizethrough performance, through
putting on masks, and this iswhat the Germans are trying to
do, and the Russians and theEnglish and all the Ukrainians
and all the other folks who dothis and they're devoted.

Speaker 2 (29:32):
Yeah, they're just devoted to this, yeah.

Speaker 4 (29:34):
I mean, it's really kind of cultic, you know.
So I wanted to distinguish insome ways between that odd weird
modernist, international cultykind of thing from the American
thing, which I think is just afundamental part of settler,
colonial practice.
You know that.

(29:56):
You know, one of the reasonsyou erase the indigenous is to
assume the, an indigenousidentity for yourself, right,
and to perform that identity.
So the erasure is absolutelyfundamentally a part of it.
And yet you don't fully erasebecause you're actually assuming
the identity.
So the people you're erasingare the material people, are the
actual people.
You get rid of those people, youkill them, you move them

(30:18):
further west, you contain them,you transform them, all of these
different kinds of things sothat you can be them, in order
to and this is sort of a littlebit where maybe there's some
affinities between some of mydad's work and some of my work
In order to claim that you areof the continent, that you are
of the place, you are ofyourself, and the only signifier

(30:40):
of that is the indigenous.
So that sort of habit ofdressing up like an Indian and
playing like an Indian, up likean Indian and playing like an
Indian, you know from the BostonTea Party through all the
fraternal things of the 19thcentury to campfire girls and
Boy Scouts and YMCA, indian guys, tammany societies, you know,
to the sort of, you know, 60scounterculture people, to the

(31:02):
kind of new age folks of the 80sand 90s, right, I mean, it's
just this continual thread,right, and it's so.
You got to've got to ask, I mean, if this is something that
plays out different forms,different practices, different
variations, but the continuityof the practice across American
history, why would that be?
Why would that be?

(31:23):
It's just very curious, youknow.
So it is an argument reallyabout the two-faced quality of
sort of settler, colonialism anddomination and conquest, right,
that you kill and displace andthen you take, right, you take
that identity because it ismeaningful, right, it is a
meaningful identity.

(31:44):
I mean, I oftentimes frame itthis way If you're an English
colonist sitting on the Atlanticseaboard, you look over your
shoulder and you think like, ohmy God, the king, these
parliament, they just dominateus.
I hate them, we're not them,you know.
And in order to sort of makethat argument back across your
shoulder, you say we're of thiscontinent, right, we're

(32:05):
aboriginal, we're indigenous.
We're American right, we'reaboriginal, we're indigenous.
American savages, exactlyfranklin says yeah, and then you
look westward and you say like,oh my god, these violent,
savage people, we're not themeither.
We're very civilized, we havetea in the afternoon and we're
part of the you know kind ofeuropean tradition.
So it positions the sort ofsettlers in that place to grab

(32:27):
both of these things as it suitsthem, right, and to reject them
as it suits them.
So it's a relationship of loveand hate, desire and repulsion,
right, that happenssimultaneously.
I think it's an incrediblygenerative social, cultural kind
of position that then leads togenerative political and
economic kinds of consequences.

Speaker 2 (32:46):
Yeah, it's a serious thing.
It's not just play Right.
It's not just playing Indian.
There are serious consequencesand I wondered if that you know,
if that's also true in terms of, like, you know place names.
You know, you know.
You know the erasure of nativepeople from Ohio or Indian, you

(33:07):
know in Illinois or you knowMassachusetts or whatever right,
and then so you name the placesafter the people that have been
destroyed and I wonder ifthat's similar to what you're
talking about.

Speaker 4 (33:24):
I mean it feels like it's a variation, right?
I mean you look across thegeography of the United States
and you see multiple kind ofstrands of practice.
Right, I mean you look acrossthe geography of the United
States and you see multiple kindof strands of practice, right?
One is to sort of appropriatethe indigenous place name and
make it your own, you know.
A second is to erase theindigenous place name and give
it, you know, new York, new.

Speaker 1 (33:43):
England, you know, to those things you know.

Speaker 4 (33:45):
and the third strand, which you know, you all know
from being in New York State, isto impose a classical
Greco-Roman.

Speaker 2 (33:55):
What is that?
Munich, syracuse?

Speaker 3 (33:58):
Rome.

Speaker 4 (33:58):
Ilium yeah.
Which is interesting that, thatsort of begins in a New York
thing and then sort of spreadsout, moves into Ohio Valley Is
that right?
It kind of moves a little bitwest.

Speaker 3 (34:09):
Well, I wonder if that's attached to the doctrines
of discovery which came out ofthe Vatican right?
I mean this lineage back toRome and the empire.

Speaker 2 (34:18):
Sure Choosing to be Romans.

Speaker 3 (34:22):
Conquest and empire building.
New York is the empire state.

Speaker 2 (34:28):
Yeah, this is going to be a little rambling, but one
of the things that we'reworking on.
So Sandy and I were involved inthe development of the Scano
Great Law Peace Center, which,as she just mentioned, was
formerly called the French Fort,and it was iconic from 1933.
And then it became St Maria ofMount Iroquois in the 70s.

Speaker 3 (34:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:56):
And that became kind of a friendlier notion.
But it still was the Jesuitrelations narrative of them
coming into Onondaga Nationterritory and essentially
welcoming, you know, theOnondaga begged, you know begged
them to come to beChristianized.

Speaker 3 (35:12):
In exchange for 600 square miles of land.

Speaker 2 (35:15):
Right, right, you know.
So the land, we have the landgrant, we have these documents,
and sure enough, they were justissued in Montreal, where they
came from, in Canada came intoOnondago Nation territory with
this land grant, which is theexample of the doctrine of
discovery, you know, taking landof non-Christian people when

(35:40):
Christian people enter thoselands, so automatically deeded
back to the sponsoring, you know, nation, in this case France,
the Vatican, enslaving thosepeople and taking all their
worldly goods.
Well, the Onondaga figured thisout pretty quick, you know,
because they were amassingweapons in this fort.

(36:02):
And all this, and eight months18 days, the Jesuits were
amassing weapons.

Speaker 3 (36:05):
Yeah, the Jesuits were amassing weapons.

Speaker 2 (36:08):
And what's the story?
Some little.

Speaker 3 (36:10):
A little French boy befriended the local Onondaga
and shared with them thatthere's a stash of weapons under
the altar, so he kind of leaked.
You know what was going on.
So I guess the Haudenosauneewent and, as Lauren said, they
told the Jesuits they had askedthem to leave prior.

(36:32):
They were not leaving, soapparently at this date and time
they took his hand and choppedoff one of their fingers and
said we mean business, you needto leave.
And apparently they left likethe middle of the night and that
was in 1658.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:49):
And this does not appear in the Jesuit relations.
However.

Speaker 3 (36:53):
Of course not Right.

Speaker 2 (36:55):
No textual resource for this at all.
There's a wampum belt thattalks about and this is an
example of oral tradition whichI think is a kind of strange way
to frame what a wampum belt hedoes, you know, and so you can
juxtapose the Jesuit relationsstory, which is, you know, those

(37:16):
lousy Mohawks were stirringstuff up and then we had to get
out of town really quick and wegot them all drunk and then they
you know totally differentstory, you know.

Speaker 1 (37:27):
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.

Speaker 2 (37:46):
One of the reasons that the Onondaga really wanted
this center transformed is thatthe French fort had told this
Jesuit friendly story.
And what we did, because itclosed, what we did was we
transformed the story toemphasize Haudenosaunee values.

(38:07):
Haudenosaunee values instead ofhistory.
And I'd be interested in whatyou as a historian, because from
our point of view we couldn'tbe a museum because the council
just said, you know, museums arejust repositories of stolen

(38:28):
goods, so we can't do that.
So then we had to be a centerand we had to organize it around
, you know, teaching peoplevalues of the Haudenosaunee
rather than a kind ofanthropological or historical

(38:48):
kind of approach.
And that's how we develop thisnarrative, sandy, and I largely
develop this narrative.
But you wouldn't understand theJesuit story without first
exploring those values of Scano,for example.
Peace can only be attained whenhuman beings are in proper

(39:09):
relationship to the naturalworld.
These are ancient values, thegreat law of peace, the
Thanksgiving address, and all ofthat I kind of explain or
explore in the book.
But then when you have that,you can start that kind of

(39:32):
archival historical work.
And it was through this what wecall the two row wampum
methodology.
This was the original treatyfrom 1613 in Albany, that we
were able to create a kind of amethod by which we could

(39:52):
validate each other and thereasons for why we were doing,
you know, this work at the ScanoCenter yeah yeah yeah, the two
row you know talks

Speaker 3 (40:03):
about parallel paths, where the Dutch would sail in
their ship and then theHaudenosaunee in their canoe,
without interfering with oneanother, down the river of life.
And so I always emphasize theriver of life was beyond
comprehension for the Dutch.
Because look at our environment, you know, because our Tata Dao
says peace can only be obtainedwhen you're in proper
relationship with the naturalworld.

(40:24):
So there isn't like whenChristianity came in, it forced
these dichotomies of good andevil, black and white.
They weren't interactional.
They were opposing forces,which was a setup for, like
warfare, because that's whatthey did when they came here.
So you're talking aboutidentity and you're dealing with

(40:44):
the perfectionists of theBritish and they're drinking tea
.
And then the savage Indians.
Again, that's that starkhistory lesson we've all been
taught, you know, and both sidesare just perceptions, they're
not interactional.
You know we're in opposition toone another, and I think that's

(41:06):
what your you know dad is tryingto do.
Is these identity politics.
They're all false identities.
People are trying to latch onto their preconstructions,
fantasies.
We're all living in some kindof an imposed fantasy on this
planet.

Speaker 2 (41:27):
And trying to get back to something.

Speaker 3 (41:28):
I guess, how do we?

Speaker 1 (41:30):
break through it.

Speaker 4 (41:31):
Well it's it's used to me.
It's like you know, you've gottwo things going on right.
One is the sort of you know,the 30,000 foot life of ethics
and morals and values and sortof the ways in which we live,
and and the other is the sort ofvery real kinds of social
differentiations, that andconflicts that just happen right
among people.

(41:52):
And how do you sort of navigatethose things?
Where's the moment where you'rein conflict and you reach up
and claim your values as beingthe ground of your, as opposed
to like, no, I just want yourland, I'm going to take it right
.

Speaker 2 (42:03):
Well, I think I think that's what I wanted to,
because values is a is a isslippery concept, because value
can also be valuation.
Right, it can be, you know,monetary valuation or gift
economy or whatever kind ofeconomies that you're working,
operating in that have very realworld consequences, you know.
So I tend to think ofceremonies, for example, as gift

(42:25):
economies, you know, orexpressions of value exchange
that's going on, you know, inbetween various beings.
So so values, it can be that30,000, you know, can be those
moral ethics and values, that.
But it also in in, you know, amonetary economy.

(42:46):
You know value is exchanged andthe meaning of land is
exchanged only monetarily.
So that becomes a different wayof value, kind of context.
But anyway, I just wanted tomake that case because that kind
of connects the two that youwere making.

Speaker 4 (43:05):
Well, it's also the moment where history has to
creep back in.
I mean Well you know, it's alsothe moment where history has to
creep back in, right, I mean,you know there's a lot of tribal
folks who would say, oh, thegreat law of peace looks great
for you all, but for us it meansjoin or die.
Right, I mean, we think aboutthe ways.
So the question you couldimagine a question that said how
is it that in some of theseearly treaty negotiations the

(43:28):
Haudenosaunee are taking theliberty of trading away other
people's lands, right?
Or claiming domination overother people, claiming people
who are minor parts of theConfederacy, right?
I mean, so is that?
Do we then have to turn to ahistorical explanation for that
and say well, you know, this ispart and parcel of the kind of

(43:48):
early colonial period, right,and the moment of the fur trade
and the competition that happensthere over land and territory
and trade.
And suddenly, right, and that'sthe point at which the
30,000-foot question about sortof values and transcendent
truths becomes really quitedifficult, because on the ground
people are having to navigateother kinds of things.

Speaker 2 (44:08):
I see what you mean yeah, people are having to
navigate other kinds of things.
I see what you mean, yeah, sohow do you use oral tradition
right in a historical context?
I mean, it's a very generalquestion, but you know what is
your thinking around.
What constitutes oral tradition?
You know in these NativeAmerican histories that we need

(44:32):
to develop.

Speaker 4 (44:35):
Yeah, it's a really hard question, you know.
I mean you can.
So I differentiate between oraltradition and oral history and
between memory.
You know these kinds of things,you know I did a whole series
of interviews with my dad, forexample.
60 hours worth of stuff, that'smemory work that blurs into

(44:58):
some oral history, right, thathe was hearing from his father
and from his aunts and stuff.
But then there's also olderstories that are part of that.
That kind of take you furtherback into time where suddenly
the kind of I mean I'm ahistorian enough to believe that
like there's not a clean, cleartrend, you know, translation
across these things across longstretches of time, but there is

(45:19):
a continuity across time, youknow for sure.
And so we imagine the ways inwhich oral tradition, um, you
know, continues to sort of holdtruths and values and stories
and memories and all kinds ofthings which have a ton of
legitimacy, you know, to them.
You know, is it clear that weshould read them literally?
To me it's not totally clearthat we should, right, as

(45:42):
opposed to things which you knowkind of fit within that oral
history category, which I'm muchmore interested in.
Sort of thinking like this isnot conceptual knowledge.
This is actual historicalknowledge, and we do what we do
as historians, which is we crossreference these kinds of things
and we sort of imagine, like isthere a moment where someone
else's oral history is going toconfirm or problematize this?

(46:03):
Is there a moment where adocumentary or archive is going
to actually do those kinds ofthings?
I mean, there was a moment, youknow, in this field 20 years ago
where, you know, a group ofyounger scholars said, like you
cannot use any written document,it's a document of the
colonizer, and so on.
It's like, well, that makes itreally hard to actually make
progress on land claims andthings like that, right, if you

(46:26):
can't use those things, ifeverything has to be oral.
You know oral kinds oftradition and you know, and what
you find is like, I think, alot of moments where oral
tradition starts to convergethrough its repetition, right,
that the things become simplerand simpler, right, where, in
fact, there's a ton ofcomplexity attached to this
stuff.
I've been working with thesewinter Plains, winter counts,

(46:47):
you know, for the last year orso, and if you go through this,
you know kind of the many counts, year after year after year,
what you see is this incrediblycomplicated world, right, that
was going to be transferred hishistorical knowledge through
oral stories, right Throughstories.
Here's a little, you know,picture of crows falling from
the sky, you know, and what isit?

(47:10):
Oh, that was the winter and itwas so cold that birds froze
while they were flying you know,and then what are the stories
that are attached to that right?
So you know, if you think about,like, what that universe of
stories must have looked like,right for the keepers of those
counts who would sit there andsort of swap these kinds of
things and tell those stories,you know, I mean this was an

(47:30):
incredibly complex historicalrecord right, incredibly
complicated kind of thing, andeach story generates other
stories.
Oh, I remember in that yearwhen that happened, this other
thing happened, or these otherpeople you know had this other
thing you know.
So there's all kinds ofinteresting stuff happening, you
know, in that universe, allkinds of interesting stuff

(47:51):
happening, you know, in in thatuniverse.
But I think you know whathappens in our contemporary
moment, you know, is sometimeswe're able to sort of you know,
um, connect up to that, to thoseworlds.
Other times we're ending upsort of just repeating things
that everybody says all the timeright and that's the way that
orality oftentimes work.
It's like I heard this thing, Iheard this thing, I heard this
thing, I heard this thing, Iheard this thing, and now I'm

(48:12):
going to distill it.
Like, for example, thecontemporary boarding school
discussion to me has simplified,has narrowed.
You know that.
You know you can hear todaypeople who were in boarding
schools in the 1960s repeatingtropes that were sort of
Carlisle 1890, 1890, 1890, right.

(48:36):
You know, as Brenda Child hasargued right, boarding schools
become kind of a metaphor forall the bad shit you know.
So, which isn't to say that,like, those memories are not
true memories, right, but theyare also part and parcel of this
kind of other world right ofthings which become metaphoric,
tropic, shared kinds of you knowkinds of memories.

(48:58):
Um, so you know, I I just thinkit's, it's, this is the world
in which we sort of live whenwe're going to deal with oral
tradition, that that we shouldjust admit it's a complicated
world, just like being a humanbeing in the world is a
complicated thing, just like anykind of knowledge of the past
where our memories and ourcollective memories get blurred

(49:20):
up and messed up and complicated, right.
I think to sort of valorizethis and say that it is pure and
unbroken and unquestionablejust doesn't make sense to me.

Speaker 3 (49:35):
Well, we're talking about values, though In oral
tradition.
If it's this connection to thenatural world, then you're
paying attention to these cycles.
You're talking about the birdsfalling and freezing, so you're
going to watch the cycles, notthe birds.
You're going to watch theflocks and take in consideration

(49:56):
the weather.
It's more complex History, therecorded history.
They came over here under thedoctrines of discovery to take
land.
So that's the motivation andhow it was all written and it
was a different orientation.
But if truly indigenoussensibility is understanding
that peace can only be obtainedwhen you're in proper

(50:20):
relationship with the naturalworld, food will be continued to
be provided.
You know you're going to get insync with these cycles.
It's just a differentorientation and we've been
extracted from participating inthat.
So I think, like your fathergot us through people, through
this horrific period ofdomination, we're not back there

(50:44):
yet.
We're not allowed to live inbalance with this earth because
the waters have been polluted.
There's been dams constructedon almost every single territory
.
You know, if we don't startbreaking down these dams and
start freeing the earth, we'renot going to become freed either
.
So we're talking about systemsand just ways of thinking and

(51:05):
being human.
You can't totally put it ineither camp right now because
we've all been so disrupted, butthings have to change.

Speaker 4 (51:15):
This is where you get a distinction between sort of
life practice in a spiritualworld right, of which there are
many, many sort of historicalaccounts right, those kinds of
things, and the practice ofhistory right, which is a
different.
These are different things,right.

(51:36):
I mean one is to sort oftheorize, a kind of way of being
.
Another is trying to figure outwhat happened, you know.

Speaker 1 (51:43):
And those are.

Speaker 4 (51:44):
you know they ask fundamentally different kinds of
questions, right.

Speaker 2 (51:48):
I mean the thing about wampum and I think wampum
is a good example for this, butI think there are other
indigenous media.
But the wampum belts have theirown kind of status, they have
their own kind of livingpresence.
And so, for example, whenwampum belts are returned,
peabody Museum at Harvard hasdozens of wampum belts and we

(52:14):
were there 25 years ago lookingat these wampum belts and I
collected all the photographs ofthese wampums and I showed
Tadadaho Sid Hill when we camehome and he said you know, know,
I was flashing through thedifferent ones and he said we've
been looking for that one, youknow, and it was.

(52:34):
You know it was.
It was collected by p buddy in,I'll say, 19, at least 100
years ago, um, and and yet thatwampum belt has a place, a
situation, where that was kindof extracted from its use.

(52:55):
It was a condolence belt.
So in the ceremony of raisingtheir leadership they used these
wampums Loyani.
They used these belts andstrings and it has to do with
condolence.
But then the return of thosewampum belts that have been

(53:18):
treated with arsenic and allkinds of things.
They have to reassemble themeaning of some of those things
and they do this through dreamsand other, you know, activities,
ceremonies and things like that, because the wampum itself has
some living presence.

(53:38):
So again, the complicatednature of what we're calling
oral tradition, you know, andhaving people who know about
wampum, who read wampum.
You know I can't read wampum,you know I only just sort of
communicate.
what other people have said likewhat Oren tells me about, like

(54:00):
wampum belts.

Speaker 3 (54:01):
It's such an intricate part.
Each title holder has aspecific wampum to identify
their title.
They're not elected chiefs,they're Loyani representative,
representative of the Klan, andit's a whole other process.
And this process is recognizedat the UN.
Their governance goespre-contact and still recognized

(54:23):
by the UN and the US.

Speaker 2 (54:26):
Yeah, and so what Sandy's talking about?
It's a different way to go abouttheir deliberations and
consensus that this kind ofongoing interrelationship with
the natural world is notsomething that is, you know,
just happens, like you know, ina discrete way, but is also
active in their recovering theirpast, you know, and where they

(54:50):
should go into the future.
So I don't know, I mean, Ithink this idea of oral
tradition is just such amisnomer in many ways.
I think more in terms ofreligion, you think more in
terms of history, but it's like,you know, there's a lot there.

Speaker 4 (55:09):
Yeah, well, maybe that the word tradition is kind
of the thing that's leading usastray, right?

Speaker 1 (55:14):
I mean, yeah, that, um you know, tradition is always
uh you know uh reliant upon apastness right, the possibility
of staticness, right thatknowledge doesn't change.

Speaker 4 (55:24):
I mean, I think repatriation is a great example
of the ways that knowledgeactually does change and
practice does change and thingshave continuities to the past.
But, like you know, lots andlots of tribal nations you know
who had a traditional ceremonyfor the return of ancestors.
Like people have to, people nowrecreate out of old content and

(55:46):
new things, looking forward tothe future, right, I mean, it's
a living tradition and I thinkthat's the thing that's most
important about it.
And it may just be that the waythat this debate got framed
sort of for me as a historian itkind of leads to a particular
set of critiques andcontemplations right as opposed

(56:06):
to sort of the ways that itmight work differently for you
as a religious studies scholar,right, I mean?
or people who are actually onthe ground doing practice.

Speaker 2 (56:15):
Right, right, I think .
Well, there's a lot there.
And then, finally, I'd justlike to talk a little bit about
where you see Native Studiesgoing, because I see it kind of
opening up into a lot ofdifferent kind of venues.
There's a lot of possibilitiesnow, and one of the things we're

(56:39):
working on is the 250celebration of Declaration of
Independence, of, you know,Declaration of Independence, and
we've been selected the ScanoCenter as a site for the

(57:00):
Smithsonian traveling exhibitcalled Voices and Votes, because
there's nothing there that youknow connects the founding of
Western democracy to theHaudenosaunee, which has been
formally acknowledged.
So I think that's kind of whereour work is developing too.

Speaker 3 (57:15):
And then also on the English side, when we were
looking at these documents, yeah, I think there's surprisingly
big interest coming from Europeinto what's going on in America.
I mean this conference beingheld here in Buda, indigenous

(57:35):
practitioners and scholars allcoming together and they have a
whole host of agendas, differentkinds of indigenous peoples
coming together.

Speaker 2 (57:46):
People are longing for something you know.
I'd just be curious.

Speaker 3 (57:49):
People are longing for something I mean clearly
something is wrong and there'sdefinite rise of fascism and
domination in the world.
It's happening all over theworld.
People are, I think, in shockand they're trying to find a
different way of living on theearth.
You know, maybe they're lookingto find a different way of

(58:11):
living on the earth.
Maybe they're looking to theUnited States, because the
indigenous people there wentthrough this genocide much more
recently and retain the memoryof what happened better than
they can.

Speaker 2 (58:23):
Yeah, so I'm wondering what you think of
where we're headed.

Speaker 4 (58:27):
you know, in this, in this area yeah well it's quite
a complicated question, rightand um.
It's simple, it's a simplequestion, simple question where
are we going?
So you know, I, my survey class, is a native studies class as
opposed to a native historyclass.
Oh, okay, and I you know, soit's sort of for me it's worth

(58:47):
sort of separating out thosethings.
There's some great stuff goingon in Native American history
right now, primarily economicanalysis, and this goes back, I
think, to the, you know, bobbyLee, tristan Atone, landgraab
University's study, which was ahuge, you know, giant database,
187,000 records, you know, andthat fantastic article, followed

(59:12):
by a fantastic article by EmilyConnolly, you know, called
Fiduciary Colonialism, whichreally sort of says, you know,
look, we used to go to the BIArecords and military records.
What if we went to Treasury?
You know, the Treasury recordsand all those things which are,
you know, in treaties are framedas annuities which I've always,
you know, read annuity, okay,it's plows, it's cattle, it's,

(59:34):
you know, it's like.
No, no, these are actualfinancial instrument annuities
and the management of those.
There's a moment, right, atwhich, you know, the federal
government stops deliveringwagon loads of specie, you know,
and starts saying we're settingaside a trust fund, a big pool
of capital for you, a trust fund, and we will pay you the
annuities off of this right, theinterest off of this.

(59:56):
So, you know, the management ofthat money turns out to be one
of the most important sort offacets of American slash, Indian
history.
Right, the southern states thatgo bankrupt after the panic of
1837, they're all bailed out byIndian money.
Right, their infrastructure isall built with Indian money
through these loan instruments.
So this is complicated economichistory, you know Michael

(01:00:19):
Wittgen's sort of, you know,political economy of plunder
Dave Beck has a new book coming.
So this sort of financialanalysis right, where we've
always said, you know, thewealth of the United States was
built around slavery, you know,and the extraction of labor from
black bodies, this is true,true, but we've not paid much
attention to the ways We'vealways sort of known like Indian

(01:00:41):
land, yes, was, you know,converted to property and et
cetera, et cetera, but likepeople are now really crunching
the numbers and doing the on theground fiscal analysis Right.
So this is like I think thisincredibly booming kind of, or
potentially booming kind of,area within American Indian
history Right, right, to sort offigure those kinds of things

(01:01:03):
out as well as the kind of workthat everybody's been doing, you
know, kind of eithercommunity-based kinds of stuff
and community collaborative kindof work that everybody's been
doing, you know kind of ethercommunity-based kinds of stuff
and community collaborative kindof work right where it's like
what do communities need?
How, his, how can historiansactually kind of help?
meet those needs.
So those kinds of things arereally, you know, kind of
important, as well as the kindof bigger views I think that

(01:01:24):
many people you know are taking.
I mean, it's, I think,coincidence that like we've had
three big, four big survey books, 600-page tomes Ned Blackhawk
won the National Book AwardPekka Amalainen's survey,
kathleen Duvall a book just cameout, margaret Jacobs.
So people are writing bigsynthetic things that are trying

(01:01:45):
to sort of reimagine andreposition the history.

Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
So you know, and I see a kind of convergence too
with, at least in in religiousstudies, a convergence with, um
you know, white evangelicalracism for example, uh, the rise
of christian nationalism andhow that connects to these

(01:02:08):
larger questions of thefoundations of of, you know, the
United States and other kind ofcolonial outposts.
So you know, I do think thereare, there are native academics
working with some other, youknow, non-natives around these
kind of more and more urgentissues.

Speaker 4 (01:02:28):
You know Well I think this is the other direction.

Speaker 1 (01:02:31):
I mean so maybe three directions for me?
No, no, that's a.
I mean the second directionwould be a sort of studies
direction, right, yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:02:36):
Which is like you know.
Now we've had Rutherford Fallsand Reservation Dogs and a bunch
of films.

Speaker 1 (01:02:40):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:02:41):
You know, we've got sort of and it's always, you
know, I, my dad, made thisargument, other people have made
this argument that Indians comeand go on a cycle of about 20
years, and the question iswhether in fact we've reached
the tipping point where Nativerepresentation and Native
production is actually.
Before these things came out,these people all trained

(01:03:02):
themselves making YouTube videosand things like that.
They've seized the means ofproduction which now anyone can
do.
So is it a new world for sortof thinking about native media,
and is it then that world partof a global indigenous world?
Right, that sort of plays intothe political formations of the
last 50, 60 kinds of years.
So I think there's a whole setof studies, dimensions that take
us into literature, art, media,you know all of these.

(01:03:25):
So these things, I think, areright for a new generation of
scholarship and then I'd say thethird thing is the kind of the
political situation of the nowright phil, so agreeing with you
on this, it's like you know,when you think about climate
change, we think about fascism,right, and you know kind of hard
right authoritarianism.
Native studies, native history,you know um, native sociology,

(01:03:46):
you know all these things havealways responded right, not only
to the histories but to thecontemporary political moment in
which we're in.
And I think one of the thingswe're seeing here in norway is
the ways that the green economy,which we can sit in the us and
celebrate wind turbines, all wewant, and we can see the ways
that it completely is attackingsami people exactly right and

(01:04:08):
left you left across all ofthese Scandinavian countries.
I mean there's a kind of hardslap in the face for me, kind of
hearing the accounts of whatwind energy is doing here.
So this is one of these momentswhere it's like, okay, we've got
to deal with not just climatechange in an abstract kind of
way, but we've got to deal withwhat the alternative economies

(01:04:29):
look like, what the greeneconomies look like, what
nuclear waste disposal lookslike for those who want to go
down the nuclear path, whatlithium mining looks like for
those who are building batteries, right, All of these different
kinds of things.
And then I think on thepolitical side you know it's
there is a real question about,sort of like, what our field has
to say to the kind of hardright turns that everybody is

(01:04:52):
making exactly, you know, andit's more than just playing
indian right.

Speaker 2 (01:04:57):
I mean, it's this, it's, it's that that indigenous
peoples are real practicalresource.
You know, you know for a future, if we're to have a future
right.

Speaker 4 (01:05:12):
You know, if we were to go back to the doctrine of
discovery and think about theways that it makes its way into
American politics throughJohnson v McIntosh, the Cherokee
cases.
You know these things.
I mean you know what you cansee, is you know?
I mean, I think, of it this wayright, indian folks show up in
the constitution as separate,individual tribal nations.

(01:05:35):
Right, they're excluded,they're written into the
constitution literally to beexcluded from the constitution.
You get to the cherokee cases,which are weird.
I mean we should just admit howweird they are right I mean.

Speaker 2 (01:05:45):
So marshall saw that they were weird too, too.

Speaker 4 (01:05:47):
Yeah, I mean, they all saw it.
Joseph Story saw how weird theywere Right.

Speaker 1 (01:05:50):
Everybody on that court was like what are we doing
?

Speaker 4 (01:05:52):
Yeah, but they were also quite willing to invent new
narratives.
Oh, they're all nomadic, theynever own property, they're all
roaming around, they inventstuff.
They just made it up right.
So you notice, you've got.
You've got the first case right, which really is the foundation
for american property law right.
Then you got the second big one, which gives you domestic

(01:06:13):
dependent nations, right.
Right, they're inside andthey're outside.
Maybe they're not, maybe wehave a trust responsibility
right.
Then you get the third casethat basically goes back to the
indigenous constitute elementsof the constitution and says
like yeah, actually.
So really you get thisinteresting trust sovereignty

(01:06:44):
kind of thing that emerges outof those cases and then is
developed over time as theUnited sovereignty movements of
you know.
I mean, you've got like anutterly unique political
formation.
It's not like anywhere else inthe world.
It's not like anywhere else inour history right it's this
intensely interesting politicalkind of structure that, um you
know, we we look back oftentimesand lament at how crazy it is

(01:07:08):
right and how much it is wrappedup in domination.
But you know, I mean I spenttime in Taiwan and Australia,
you know kind of other places.
Indigenous people around theworld.
They look over at the UnitedStates and go, damn, if I could
have those treaties, if I couldhave that, could I?
Get a treaty.
How could I have that, could we?
So I mean it's also we'rethinking about the ways that it

(01:07:29):
is something right that we oughtto kind of think about like
well, how do we actually leaninto this?
Do more with it, think abouthow it actually structures
American politics in ways thatno American politician will
readily admit.
Yeah, use it Like we've got afour-part kind of, you know
federal, state, local and tribal.

Speaker 3 (01:07:49):
Or anti-Indian law, anti, yeah, exactly.
Federal anti-Indian law, excepton Ndaga.
They don't fall under thatfederal Indian law case because
they never violated the treaty.
Nothing was held in trust forthem.
They never accepted any moneyfrom the federal government,
nothing was held in trust forthem.

Speaker 1 (01:08:09):
They never accepted any money from the federal
government.

Speaker 3 (01:08:11):
That's why your dad said the clearest line back to
the original relationship withthe US was through Onondaga.

Speaker 2 (01:08:16):
Yeah, and they have no BIA government.

Speaker 3 (01:08:20):
No BIA government.
They meet with presidents anddignitaries all the time and
whether that can serve as amodel for how to get back to
this I mean Orrin explained howthey stayed out of keeping the
BIA out of there.
Because it was the churches inthe different territories that
were talking to theirparishioners to vote in this BIA

(01:08:43):
government Because traditional,in the quotes those air quotes,
you know we were talking aboutthat the practitioners of this
culture didn't vote because itwas a foreign government coming
into their territories.
So Onondaga also heard aboutthis election, going up to vote

(01:09:03):
in the BIA government and forthe first time the traditional
people went knocking on eachother's doors, getting those
churches and voted down.
And so that's how they kept theBIA out of Onondaga and then
other territories across thenation.
You know it was voted in theBIA governments were voted in
through those churches and afterthe fact many nations said we

(01:09:28):
don't want it.
You know we should have donewhat you did.
How do we get it back?
And the US said too late, youvoted us in.

Speaker 4 (01:09:35):
Right yeah so then, yeah Well, I think you know the
variation across Indian country,the sort of you know, I mean,
and given all the troubles andhardships that are still present
, right, I mean the stuff thatis happening in Indian country
is interesting and it's in manycases revolutionary and radical.
And it's interesting from apolitical kind of perspective.

(01:09:56):
And if we're going to imaginethe sort of dissolution of the
United States in some kind ofweird way, right then we had to
got to be thinking like how dowe reimagine what happens next?
Right, what?

Speaker 1 (01:10:06):
does that?

Speaker 4 (01:10:06):
look like.
And you know, I mean, and Idon't know, I'm not a political
scientist, I don't think hardabout this stuff, it's not
exactly my jam, but it feels tome like this is one of those
places where, if we're thinkingabout the future of Native
Studies, we need to do some kindof good, hard thinking.
And people are doing it.
They are Right now About whatthe future looks like.
Yeah, they are Kind of rightnow, you know, about what the
future looks like, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:10:27):
But this federal Indian law category is a real
problem because if you're of thegovernment, then how do you
have treaties?
How are you sovereign if you'rea compartment under the United.
States, Federal state, federalIndian law.

Speaker 2 (01:10:43):
I mean, that's the dilemma.
Here it came later.

Speaker 3 (01:10:46):
That's not how this country was formed.
I mean, that's the dilemma here.
That came later.
That's not how this country wasformed First.
International treaties werebetween Indian nations and the
US, and only Congress had toratify any kind of land
transaction or trade amongstates throughout the country.

Speaker 2 (01:11:00):
That's the dilemma that the Sami have here, because
they're essentially wards ofwhatever nation.
Well, they're referred wards of, you know whatever nation.

Speaker 3 (01:11:08):
Well, they're referred wards of the US as well
, the United States.

Speaker 2 (01:11:12):
But yeah, but you know, the sovereignty issue then
becomes a slippery one to somedegree.
Right, you know to what degreeare you under the United States,
if they can?

Speaker 3 (01:11:24):
work towards at every stage, trying to assimilate
Indian nations into the contextof the United States.
Can we go in reverse andseparate from the US?
Why does it always have to movetowards assimilation?
You know Right.

Speaker 4 (01:11:39):
Well, you could argue really that I mean the
sovereignty movements of thelast decades have actually moved
further away from worship andmore towards.

Speaker 3 (01:11:47):
I hope so right, you know so I think this is why it's
an interesting moment.

Speaker 4 (01:11:53):
The story of the 19th century is the extension of
American jurisdiction,citizenship claims, all of these
sorts of things.
What's interesting to me in theAmerican context is usually the
extension of citizenship is agood thing.
This is what every immigrantwants.
It's what the African-Americanmovement was about.
But in fact for Native peopleit's actually quite a different

(01:12:15):
thing, right, and it's theextension of, you know,
surveillance, dominance, control, you know those kinds of things
.
But that's part of our historyand it's right there and you
know, there's a few folks whomanaged to evade it perhaps but,
most people not but theextension of sovereignty within
a trust relationship, you knowis.
Is this interesting?
It's a really interesting thingand I think you know far too

(01:12:38):
americans don't know anythingabout it, right?

Speaker 1 (01:12:41):
haven't thought about it and, like you know, I mean I
just you know I'd see this withyou.

Speaker 4 (01:12:45):
Know you're at your kid's soccer match right and and
you get these parents who arelike, can I build a casino on my
backyard?
It's like oh, my God.

Speaker 3 (01:12:53):
Yeah, no, no, they have no idea why that was Right.

Speaker 1 (01:12:56):
And then, of course, they think that's a funny
question.

Speaker 4 (01:12:58):
Yeah, so it's like it tells us exactly how much
educating there is to be doneout there before we can even
imagine some sort of alternativefutures out there before we
could even imagine some sort ofalternative futures.

Speaker 3 (01:13:10):
Anand Daghoyani Dasgahi went to the world courts
in Geneva in 1923 to protestthe violation of the US
violating all the treaties amongIndian nations.
It was the very next year theUS bestowed citizenship on
Native nations.
Coincidence year the USbestowed citizenship on Native
nations Coincidence.

Speaker 4 (01:13:30):
Really yeah, right, well, and you know, canada was
the evildoer in that wholeexchange, right, I mean the
Canadians.
This is the other thing that'sso interesting to me is and
we've seen this now with theboarding school you know kind of
revelations.
People for so long have sat inthe US and thought oh, you know,
Canada, they've got their acttogether.

Speaker 2 (01:13:48):
It's like actually not so much, not so much.

Speaker 3 (01:13:53):
We visited the Pope last year Not the Pope, the
third line to the Pope,sustituto Sustituto and several
other people individuallytalking about the doctrines of
discovery and they had made it.
The Pope had traveled to Canada.

Speaker 2 (01:14:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:14:11):
That's why that came out of my mouth.
But we just ask them in thefuture, can you please come to
Onondaga Nation territory,because they're not Christian
representatives, they're notCatholic.
When you speak to Catholictribal leaders, you're kind of
talking to yourself, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:14:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:14:32):
And we really need to move forward on all of this
stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:14:34):
So we're watching you you know Like yeah, risk
management versus.
You know real progress.

Speaker 3 (01:14:48):
Because we dealt with that at the Scano Center Before
the Scano Center, when it was aFrench fort, the county was
hiring Catholic Mohawks to giveall the tours and during that
period of time they wanted theGoodly to be canonized.
So they were all on board withthe Jesuit story.
And I went in there and said,but this is not Onondaga Nation
territory.
I mean, this is not Mohawkterritory.
You're on Onondaga Nationterritory, you can go west to

(01:15:10):
Orysville where the shrine isthere, and slowly they kind of
moved out.
I felt that I could say thatand I did.
But yeah, so it was prettydifficult breaking down that
foothold the county had on thatplace telling that erroneous
story.

Speaker 2 (01:15:30):
Yeah, so all these yellow buses would come into the
fort.
They'd learn about the Jesuitstory and all that that's.
You know, sandy's childhood.
You know People come.
We still have the fort, youknow.
It's still behind the ScanoCenter.
In fact, we had a papal bullburning ceremony there once in

(01:15:53):
2018.
That was very interesting,because they did that at like.

Speaker 1 (01:15:57):
Standing Rock.

Speaker 2 (01:15:59):
And I saw let's bring that guy out here and.
But now you know young kids arecoming to the Scano Center, so
they're learning a differentkind of way of thinking.
You know young kids are comingto the Scano Center, so they're
learning a different kind of wayof thinking, you know, apart
from that kind of colonial storythat they were learning before.
So actually we're pretty proudof the fact that we were able to

(01:16:19):
make.
You know it's a county facilityand so it's county backed.
Onondaga Nation is helping outwith.
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:16:29):
Yeah, right, where the Great Laugh piece was
founded at this lake.

Speaker 2 (01:16:35):
So anyway, I think there are people are making
different kinds of moves, youknow, and I remain hopeful, you
know.
Right it takes a continent andI remain hopeful in spite of the
fact, in spite of the fact thatit seems to be often times in
the news moving in the wrongdirection.

(01:16:56):
But you know, whatever, let'sdraw this to a close.
I want to thank you again,philip, for sitting here and
being our guest on Mapping theDoctrine of Discovery.

Speaker 4 (01:17:10):
It was my pleasure.
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 3 (01:17:12):
Thank you, hope to see you again soon.

Speaker 1 (01:17:16):
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 Hendricks Chapel
and the Indigenous ValuesInitiative.
If you like this episode,please check out our website and

(01:17:38):
make sure to subscribe.