January 28, 2025 • 77 mins
What if the key to protecting Native American sacred sites lies not within the confines of existing religious freedom laws, but in a reimagined legal strategy? Join us as we engage with Michael McNally, the insightful author of "Defend the Sacred: Native American Religious Freedom Beyond the First Amendment." Together, we unravel the complexities of how religious language, despite its colonial roots, can be harnessed to uphold Native American rights. Drawing on the American Indian Religious Freedom Act and the pivotal work of advocates like Suzanne Schoenharjo, McNally suggests a more adaptable interpretation of these laws that could empower Native communities and fortify their battles for sacred land protection.
Our discussion takes a profound turn as we examine indigenous treaties and their deeper meanings beyond financial arrangements. By highlighting the Dakota, Lakota, and Little Traverse Band of Odawa lands, we recognize these treaties as living expressions of an inherent bond with nature, advocating for a paradigm shift from ownership to stewardship. The episode delves into the Doctrine of Discovery, inviting indigenous voices to reshape the narrative and affirm the interconnectedness of all life. Through these conversations, we seek to bridge legal frameworks with universal principles, aiming for a holistic appreciation of indigenous perspectives.
The exploration doesn't stop there; we navigate the enduring impact of colonial legacies on Native sovereignty and governance. From the contentious history of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the inspiring traditional governance of nations like the Onondaga, we uncover stories of resilience and hope. As we touch on legal resistance, landmark cases, and international law strategies like the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, we emphasize the persistent struggle and triumph of Native nations. With reflections on contemporary resistance movements and the challenges of safeguarding sacred land, the discussion is both a testament to Native perseverance and a call to honor their enduring wisdom.
View the transcript and show notes at podcast.doctrineofdiscovery.org. Learn more about the Doctrine of Discovery on our site DoctrineofDiscovery.org.
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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 (00:31):
Welcome back to Mapping the Doctrine of
Discovery.
My name is Philip Arnold.
I'm faculty in religion atSyracuse University and core
faculty in Native AmericanIndigenous Studies.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
And I'm Sandy Bigtree , a citizen of the Mohawk Nation
up at Akwesasne and also on theboard for the American Indian.
No, and I'm also on the boardfor the Indigenous Values
Initiative.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Right, and we're grateful to be able to bring
this interview to you today,thanks to a Henry Luce
Foundation grant.
So we're very pleased today tohave an old friend and a guest,
michael McNally.
Michael and I have known eachother for decades, worked in
(01:27):
Native American Studies, andwe're coming to you from sunny
San Diego and the AAR meetinghere.
Michael, thanks for coming, andwhy don't you introduce
yourself?
Speaker 5 (01:41):
Sure, I'm Michael McNally.
I teach in the religiondepartment and I'm director of
American Studies at CarletonCollege in Minnesota, on lands
of the Mettowakanton DakotaNation, and I'm happy to be here
, and we're not just in SanDiego, but we're on something
like the 26th floor looking outover the harbor, and it's a
(02:03):
beautiful day and we're happy tobe inside talking.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Yes, absolutely it's very beautiful today, but at
night time that battleship outthere is lit with a christmas
tree and all kinds of colorfullights.
It's a little disconcerting.
So now let's talk about theDoctrine of.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Discovery.
So, michael, I love your bookDefend the Sacred.
Maybe you could tell us alittle bit about that and kind
of the relationship betweenreligion, law, native American
Religious Freedom Act, thosekinds of things that you were
(02:44):
trying to accomplish in the book, and then we can talk about
what has happened since then,you know, since your book was
published in 2020?
2020.
Yeah.
Yeah, and I think it was veryinfluential at the time.
So maybe we could start there,as you know, a way of kind of
framing Doctrine of Discovery,what that means for you.
Speaker 5 (03:07):
Yeah, sounds good.
So the book is entitled Defendthe Sacred and the subtitle is
as important as the title.
The subtitle is Native AmericanReligious Freedom Beyond the
First Amendment and the titlecomes from the famous banner
(03:52):
that was paraded around theStanding Rock protests was not
overtly religious or it would bereductive to like make it
religious.
It's the register of the sacredwas what galvanized the
movement and I thinkencapsulated what was really
moving about that movement for abroad American public Maybe not
everybody, but a broad Americanpublic.
And I thought that was reallyinteresting that even though the
(04:20):
Dakota Access protestlitigation lost, there was like
one modest victory but they lostin a religious freedom effort
to shut down the crossing in theMissouri River kind of
(04:47):
encapsulates what the book isabout, which is in some ways the
bankruptcy of religious freedom, discourse for the protection
of Native sacred places but onthe other hand the power of the
language of the sacred togenerate allies and to so what
(05:11):
might be legally bankrupt incourt still has legs and force
Right.
Good, and one of the ways thatin the research for the book
that really came through, one ofthe kind of the core chapters
of that, was work that wasmentored by our mutual friend
Suzanne Schoenharjo, who throughher career even before she went
(05:36):
to DC to be President Carter'sAmerican Indian congressional
liaison in the domestic policystaff, she had been centrally
involved with the major kind ofstatutory gains the American
Indian Religious Freedom Act,which President Carter signed
(05:56):
into law in 1978, the NativeAmerican Graves Protection,
repatriation Act of 1990, andthe Native I'm sorry the
National Museum of the AmericanIndian Act of 1989, which
predated and cleared the groundfor NAGPRA.
And I was really struck by howthe language of religion and
language of religious freedomenabled um native nations and
(06:24):
advocates um, kind of ledsignificantly by Suzanne
Schoenharjo, your mentor, orenLyons, um and others to like get
these really incrediblestatutes passed by a settler,
colonial congress on behalf ofless than two percent of the
(06:47):
population.
And so where the language ofreligious freedom sort of um has
failed kind of in courts toprotect sacred places, it's been
really powerful in advancing anagenda.
And so I kind of look at thatkind of doubleness there and
(07:09):
that's sort of what, on the onehand what the book is about and
another way that I think aboutthe book.
Since we've been teaching inthis space for a really long
time, we've probablyconsistently taught that the
language of religion doesn'treally work well for indigenous
traditions and in a way thisbook follows that definitional
(07:33):
problem into the law.
So a reader might say so whatLike?
Why bend native claims into thelanguage of religion if it's so
kind of laden with colonialismwhich it is, of course and
there's probably a good reasonfor that caution and that
(07:55):
concern.
And I'm not a lawyer, but Itook a couple of law school
classes to train for this book,and one of the things that I
learned in the civil procedureclass was when lawyers look even
at a set of rules, they don'tlook and read it for what it
(08:15):
means, they read it for what itcan mean what it might mean how
far they could stretch thelanguage of a given rule or
statute or whatever.
And then the courts of courseevaluate whether a meaning can
be wide.
They can narrow the meaning,the courts as interpreters of
the law, and so forth.
So that kind of insight, whatcan religious freedom law mean,
(08:37):
is what informs the book.
So while I'm surrounded at theAmerican Academy of Religion by
scholars who understandably seethe limits of religious freedom
discourse, the way that it'sexported as part of American
imperialism abroad, I sort oftry to contribute to that
(09:06):
conversation by listening to thevoices of a Suzanne Harjo who
is completely aware of thecolonial nature of religion and
religious freedom but has usedit strategically and you don't
want to say native folks whoengaged the language of
(09:27):
religious freedom were, you know, kind of dupes because, they're
smart people right yeah nothat's true.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Well if you're talking about Christianity, it
is this religion of law, youknow, because you're doomed to
hell and damnation if you don'tabide by these stringent, you
know, dictates of how to live inthe world.
And it's always this dichotomyof good over evil.
(09:57):
So it also involves war, youknow, and fighting and
oppression.
So when you try to superimposethat in courts of law, it fits
nicely, because law isconstructed of all these rules
and regulations.
But when you're talking toindigenous people, the
(10:18):
indigenous peoples of this landhad a form of democracy that was
about relationships to thenatural world.
It was not natural law by anymeasure, because it clearly does
not exist in the natural world.
It's all relational.
So that's why it's really, youknow, using the terminology
(10:42):
sacred, you know that uncovers awhole new interpretation of
religion.
Working with Native peopletraditional Native people not
the BIA chiefs that have alreadygone through the boarding
school experience and they'vebeen Christianized and groomed
(11:04):
to be the tribal leaders thatthe United States will recognize
and the only tribal leaders theUnited States will recognize.
Well then, they're going to fitin that context too, but we're
talking about traditional Nativepeople on this land who still
understand the importance ofbuilding proper relationships
(11:24):
with the natural world.
So we're talking about twodifferent galaxies here and if
we're going to communicate,clearly, the colonizers were
missing this point because theywere coming here to acquire
wealth and resources, right, andpart of that agenda was
(11:47):
Christianizing native people andthen deeming them the tribal
leaders so they could manipulatethem.
Honestly, so, we're entering now, where we're starting to
question these terms, and it'sthe only way we're going to
crack open a new future for allof us.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
I wanted to follow up a little bit on that because,
you know, one of the things thatI think captivated so many
people around the world reallyabout Standing Rock was the
simplicity of the message.
Right, and you know that wateris sacred, you know Water is
life, you know those kinds of.
(12:30):
They're not slogans, they'rejust statements of fact.
You know Biological fact andwho could argue with it?
Really, yeah, right, and, ofcourse, us being in religion,
being trained in religion, werecognize that as simply a
powerful universal truth, if youlike.
(12:52):
I mean, I don't use truth in akind of faith-based way, but a
kind of biological fact, and Ithink that's why, even though,
like you say, they lost thelegal battle, they sort of won a
kind of cultural status, war,or not a war, but a kind of
(13:15):
realization around the worldthat this is true, you know, and
people were attracted to that.
There were works of art thatcame out of there, people,
various artists, native artists,just sort of captivated that
movement in a certain way.
So I mean, I think I agree withyou, the legal terrain is kind
(13:41):
of one aspect of it.
Yeah, then there's a kind of amovement in religion or maybe,
or a movement among, you know,people who are sensitive to
religion.
That, uh, was a success yes,for sure.
Speaker 5 (13:59):
And then I mean the success in terms of terms of the
broad global publicunderstanding.
It was like the focal point ofattention for a while for the
globe right Right, and forLakota and Dakota folks for
(14:20):
whose that is their homeland, aswell as for anyone who visited
and stayed at the camps.
It was also this place ofreligious generativity.
It wasn't sort of a last standfor native religious pasts.
(14:40):
It was a generative place forindigenous religious futures,
and those futures aren't done inby a loss in court.
In fact, that's one of thethings that I sort of feel like
I didn't say enough in a bookthat reads a lot of case law and
(15:03):
tries to examine why Nativeclaimants lost in court cases.
And the point is that forNative peoples with the long
view of relationships withplaces and land, a loss in court
in the late 1980s, early 1990sis a blow, there's no question,
(15:26):
but it's not the end of thestory.
It's the end of the story fromthe perspective of settler law,
but it's just one strategy thatdidn't work and maybe even a
galvanizer of redoubled effortson behalf of what Sandy so
rightly put was the relationsand the obligations to those
(16:04):
places.
Not so much just sharpens,right?
Yeah, so yeah.
Another thing that came up when,sandy, you were talking about
responsibilities and obligationsand relationships with
everything my favorite passagequoted in this book passage
(16:31):
quoted in this book I thinkmight have come from any number
of people, but it came intofocus for me when I heard Frank
Edwagishik from the LittleTraverse Band of Odawa in
Michigan was talking about thecourt-protected treaty rights to
fish in the Great Lakes, soakin to the salmon,
(16:55):
court-protected treaty rights tosalmon in the Pacific Northwest
or in Minnesota, to wild riceharvests and access to fish and
stuff.
And the quote I'm just going toread it because it's brilliant
and I think goes to your pointis this Our ancestors who made
(17:19):
the treaties didn't say thoseare our fish.
Rather, they reserved the rightto fish.
That meant they reserved aright to sing to the fish, to
dance for the fish, to pray forthe fish, to catch and eat the
fish, but to live with the fish,to have a relationship with the
fish, and so that's in responseto a treaty-protected right
(17:43):
that had gotten interpreted to ashare of the take.
And that quote that I just readsounds really poetic.
And it is poetic, but it's alsosuper strategic because it's
saying that a treaty right toLake Michigan whitefish and lake
trout is a right that the laketrout and the whitefish have to
(18:09):
live healthy lives with healthywater and everything else.
It's not an economic right to apercentage of the take or the
harvest if the harvest has to bereduced because of pollution or
what have you.
It's arguably a treaty right ofthe fish, which I think is you
(18:36):
know.
It could come up in a wholebunch of other contexts to Sandy
your point, but it's one ofthose places where relationship
gets kind of asserted in thearena of rights.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Because the fish have their own system that they're
responsible for as well, andwe're talking about these
interactions between systems.
You have to respect them, aswe're all sharing life on this
planet.
Sharing life on this planet.
So if you think you can, youknow, manage this system and
(19:09):
control it, you're reallyinterfering with that system's
relationship with another system, with another system.
I mean it really plays out andis more disruptive than anyone
really can comprehend.
There's no way a human beingcan comprehend any of that.
Speaker 5 (19:26):
Yeah, and maybe you could say more about the
Haudenosaunee context.
But I know in the Anishinaabecontext in Minnesota there are
some Anishinaabe imaginativelegal thinkers who say that when
in the Treaty of 1837 or theTreaty of 1854, Ojibwe
signatories said we reserve theright to hunt and fish and
(19:48):
gather throughout ourterritories, not just on the
reservation, what they weredoing was making a stipulation
that they had a treatyobligation to the wild rice, a
treaty obligation to thenorthern pike, to the walleye,
that all those relationshipswere diplomatic in nature, and I
(20:14):
just find that to be a reallypowerful way of putting it.
It's different than rights?
Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Yeah, definitely.
And maybe to bring it back tothe doctrine of discovery a
little bit, we're not talkingabout the doctrine of Christian
discovery strictly as a kind oflegal tenet that needs to be
defeated in the Supreme Court orsomething like that.
Right that, with these kind ofinsights into the relationality
(20:47):
of all life, which is reallywhat we're talking about.
It's not just Native Americansthat benefit from clean water,
and you know fish that are happy, or wild rice that can be.
You know that requires you knowthe water to be pure.
It's all human beings, it's allliving beings, right?
(21:09):
So maybe the defeat to thedoctrine of discovery then might
come in more of these simplevalue systems that can be
articulated in something likewater, articulated at within,
something like water is life, orsomething like that right.
So outside of that, politicallegal arena we're also engaging
(21:36):
in issues around the doctrine ofdiscovery.
You know sort of bring it backto our.
You know the topic of ourpodcast.
You know a little bit.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Right.
Well, in talking about thedoctrines of discovery, you know
you're always being heldaccountable to the sovereign, be
it the Pope or these Christianmonarchs, and everything had to
transfer to them.
You know and increase theirwealth, transfer to them.
You know and increase theirwealth.
And to this day, you know, theHaudenosaunee use the word
(22:08):
sovereign.
They're sovereign people goingback to pre-colonial times.
They travel on their ownpassports to integrate into this
system and just stay relevant.
You know, in this world they'rein, but their sovereign is the
natural world.
And I have a friend.
(22:31):
I'll read this such a wonderfulwriter, sawadis Ruchel.
He wrote the land is mysovereign where.
I stand and or place my feet onthe ground is my sovereign.
I am the land, water and sky.
We are the same elements,structure and lasting
(22:54):
ingredients.
The land is my sovereign, whereI place my feet, and I refuse
to give that away.
I do not cede that familiarunrestrained.
Speaker 5 (23:09):
It's a beautiful passage.
This isn't about this book, butit goes back to my late Ojibwe
teacher, larry Cloud Morgan, andhe was a practicing Catholic.
He described himself as acatholic but not a christian,
because he had a consistencybetween his um.
(23:33):
I know it's a it's a jarringthing, for the face I'm trying
to sort that out.
I wish, I wish you were here.
I think what he meant by that.
For him, catholic didn't meanthe church.
Catholic meant the mystery thatthe Protestant tradition had
tried to paste into a flannelboard and that the Catholic
(23:56):
tradition had allowed to just beand not reduce it to words.
That's what he meant by it.
But where I'm going with thisis that he often spoke of the
Ojibwe language word or one ofthe words to talk about.
(24:17):
The creator is the owner ofeverything and that language of
lord.
We see that as onlyhierarchical.
But I think if we were goodmedievalists we'd probably see
(24:38):
that it's a lot more complicatedthan just who has power over
who.
It's sort of like nobodyultimately owns things because
it's all kind of deferred allthe way up to the sovereign.
But that changes in the time.
About the doctrine of discovery, where that's all kind of
hardening right around a nationstate and the head of a nation
state and kind of the god, partof that sort of disappears.
(25:02):
I don't know if this part mightbe edited out.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
No, you're on the hook for that one.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Oh look, it looks like Columbus is saying that
into the harbor.
I'm going to take a picture ofthis.
Speaker 5 (25:25):
I'm not kidding, there is a bark out there.
Oh, my God.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Right on cue, it's with a Santa.
Maria, santa Maria.
Speaker 5 (25:43):
Is this a first for the Doctrine and Discovery
podcast?
Absolutely a first.
Have a cheesy mock-up ofChristopher Columbus's sailing
vessel.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
We'll make it up.
I think we've got a new logofor our head.
It's like dying.
Oh my goodness.
So we've got to see where ithooks up so we can go take a
tour.
That is really funny Athree-hour tour.
Speaker 5 (26:14):
I'm not sure this is relevant to anything, but
there's been this uncanny thing.
With any time I've mentioned mylate Ojibwe teacher, there's
always something really funnythat happens or something really
odd that happens.
Is that right?
So, an example of that is InezTalamantes and I, or Inez asked
(26:36):
me to join her when at an AAR wewere asked to meet with the
state heads of chaplains.
Have you ever encountered thatgroup that meets here?
So it's the state officials whoare in charge of chaplaincy and
they're basically contractorsfor how chaplains work in
(26:59):
corrections facilities andthey're kind of the chief
diversity officers.
And so I was super nervous inthis thing because I don't have
an experience of incarceration.
I'm a white guy who doesn'tknow anybody who spent a lot of
time in an incarcerated thing,except this Hebrew teacher
friend of mine who was in prisonfor a civil disobedience action
(27:21):
.
And so I walked into this room.
I was super nervous.
I was there to kind of supportInez and we went around the room
and introduced each other andthe person who was kind of the
head honcha of the group was thehead of the federal chaplaincy.
It was a woman, religious, aCatholic nun, who was kind of
kick-ass.
And she said after it got to meand I said you know, I'm
(27:46):
Michael McNally, I teach atCarleton College.
I really don't have a lot ofexperiences with religious
freedom in the prisonspersonally, but my late Ojibwe
teacher was an inmate in TerreHaute for a civil disobedience
action with a nuclear missilesilo Broke into a nuclear
(28:08):
missile silo with an earshot ofa school in Kansas City.
And I'm interrupted and thiswoman says the person who's the
head of federal chaplaincy, shesaid Larry Cloud Morgan, he's
your mentor.
Larry Cloud Morgan, he's yourmentor.
(28:28):
And she said he was my mentorin my first job as a chaplain at
Terre Haute FederalPenitentiary.
So it was one of those thingswhere, like it just kind of came
up.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Yeah, wow.
So that kind of stuff happens.
When you're talking about yourmentor, it does it happens.
Speaker 5 (28:42):
It's so funny.
Columbus up columbus just as autter and complete joke.
Right, oh my gosh um too funny.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
I gotta go, we gotta go on that boat you do have to
go.
Speaker 5 (28:56):
I think the henry loose foundation should purchase
right now.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
We definitely need to do a tour.
Of course, it might be theMayflower, it could be that Well
, that works too, doesn't it?
Speaker 5 (29:10):
It's a friendly amendment, yes, I would say.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Do you need help catching up on today's topic or
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If so, please check our websiteat
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listen to podcasts.
And now back to theconversation.
Speaker 5 (29:33):
So, getting back to the Doctrine of Discovery, for
real one of the ways that comesinto the book is in the first
chapter, and the first chapterof this book, like most books,
is usually you're trying toprovide historical context or
whatever it is, before the realwork of the book gets going.
But this first chapter kind ofbecame its own book and the
(29:57):
Doctrine of Discovery wasExhibit A, and so I talk about
the different registers ofreligion in the book and the
first chapter is called Religionas Weapon and it's about the
Doctrine of Discovery and thecivilization regulations of
assimilation policy in the 1880sand so the fact that Native
(30:22):
peoples were determined to bewithout religion and therefore
had no rightful absolute titleto the land, etc.
Etc.
I was kind of trying to set up,like why would Native peoples
have anything to do with thisconcept, even if it's, you know,
legally powerful?
Like why would you even careabout it?
(30:42):
Because it's so shot throughwith colonialism and, of course,
the assimilation policy,civilization regulations from
1883 to 1934 are, you know, anupdate?
Just an update to that doctrineof discovery policy that
authorizes atrocity, religiousviolence, just to reiterate what
(31:09):
those are between 1883 and 1934, certain ceremonial practices
like the Sundance and thefuneral potlatch are singled out
and criminalized, and laterregulations suggest certain
fines or periods ofincarceration for people found
(31:32):
practicing these traditions.
They single out the practicesof medicinal healing or
ceremonial healing, and everyAmerican should know that this
happened on the watch of anation that was otherwise
(31:52):
committed to religious freedom.
It's jarring, right, I mean Idon't have to tell you.
It's jarring, right, I mean Idon't have to tell you.
And more than 50 years as aformal policy didn't really end
with the formal ending of it.
Right, and that's why the 1978American Indian Religious
Freedom Act had to affirmativelysay that government policies
(32:15):
continue to have the effects ofsanctioning native religion and
ceremony, even if they're notintended to.
Because in 1934 the formalpolicy was shut down and I
believe it was at that time theystarted calling them the
Religious Crimes Code.
(32:37):
At that time they startedcalling them the Religious
Crimes Code.
I think that is such animportant thing to really reckon
with, and not just to reckonwith in a kind of a thin way,
but to actually get down intothe weeds of how that was
enforced in various reservationcontexts around the country,
(32:57):
because it's huge, um, the, theOak Flat case in um, uh, arizona
, which, uh, uh, hopefully wecan spend some time talking
about um is uh emerges.
Um emerges in the context of thecivilization regulations and at
(33:24):
the San Carlos ApacheReservation, which is the
closest reservation to Oak Flat.
Part of the civilizationregulations is not just the
criminalization of theceremonial practices but it's
also the policing of theboundaries of the reservation so
that people don't have thefreedom of movement to go to
(33:44):
their sacred places.
And places like Oak Flat werenot only off the reservation but
in the I can't remember exactlythe date, but there's a General
Sherman's order that excuse me,general Crook's order that
anybody found at Oak Flat orother places off of the San
(34:09):
Carlos Reservation could besubject to death by military
patrols.
Absolutely, death by militarypatrols, because, yeah, so
that's.
You know, that's a deathsentence for practicing your
religion.
Going back to traditionalplaces, there are a number of
(34:30):
clans that have their origins inand around oak flat.
There's springs that need to bevisited, there's a whole host
of practices that were relatedto that, and that was yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
The US government, I don't think, really cares much
about that and I think that alot of the tribal governments
that have been created by theUnited States are not have,
through history, not really beenprotective of that either,
because they've lost theirculture through having gone
through the boarding schoolsituation.
(35:03):
It's those original treatiesthat hold the weight, because
we're talking about how we'regoing to live together and
protect our territory, protectyour territory and live along
the river of life and respectingthe natural world.
All these other I mean Suzanne,got in there.
She also was involved in theIndian Child Welfare Act.
(35:26):
She was very active in jumpinginto this court of law of the
United States to try to makethem behave.
Try to make them behave.
Those laws and amendments aremore so that the United States
behaves within their own legalconstruct.
You know they're not reallywriting those for Native people.
(35:51):
I think all those amendmentsare trying to reveal something
to this government, Because whogives you the authority to write
any kind of dictate on howwe're going to live beyond our
original treaties?
Anything else has been a way ofmanipulating their way out of
(36:12):
those obligations, includingestablishing the BIA puppet
regime.
Including establishing the BIApuppet regime.
I worked at NARF, I was auditingone law class with Charles
Wilkinson.
He was laying it out the firstday.
There are three areas of law.
There's federal law, there'sstate law and then there's
(36:35):
federal Indian law.
And I just my jaw hit the floor, I'm going no, that's not what
the treaties were about.
And then he went on to sayfederal Indian law is under the
guardianship of the UnitedStates.
And at that point I just got upand left the room and never
(36:55):
returned because no, that's amanipulation of these original
agreements between the federalgovernment and Indian treaties,
Indian nations.
So it's just been a ruse tocomplicate everything.
And now it's the way of life,now it's the world we're living
in total chaos.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
And really almost beyond that.
What gives anyone the right tokeep people from performing or
to fulfilling their originalinstructions?
Right.
To not letting them go to theirsacred places.
(37:39):
Who thought that up, I mean?
Or you could say, what's therisk, what's at stake there?
I mean it's absurd that theAmerican Indian Religious
Freedom Act was passed in 78.
(38:00):
When I tell my students thatthat's ancient history to them,
but that's not long ago, that'sright.
So I have a lot ofHaudenosaunee kids in my class.
Not a lot, but we'll say 10, 12out of a class of 45 or so in
my class.
Not a lot, but we'll say youknow 10, 12 out of a class of 45
(38:21):
or so in indigenous religions.
And you know, one of the thingswe do all semester long is try
to interrogate that idea of whatis authentic religion.
What does it mean?
And you know some smart Mohawkkids very smart kid was saying
(38:41):
we can't buy into that religionargument, right?
So that's the problem, right, wehave to.
So we were reading parts of mybook Values, so I try to insert
values as a way to think about alarger context outside of
religion, and he was saying weshould go that direction rather
(39:06):
than the religion direction.
But I think you're quite right.
We need to pick and choose onwhat sort of field we're going
to deploy these differentcategories, and the more we have
, the better it is.
Speaker 5 (39:21):
Yeah, the thing about religion is that it's
definitely a settler-colonialword, but it's a powerful
settler-colonial word because itis in the constitution.
And even those who kind of comefrom a conservative christian
(39:43):
viewpoint some of those folks,elevate the religion clauses of
the first amendment as the mostum important they're.
They're, they're, according tothis, they're the first words of
the bill of rights.
For a reason, because it's thefirst words of the Bill of
Rights.
For a reason because it's theultimate check on the power of
the state, the obligation or thebelief or the faith in a
(40:07):
supreme being that's higher thanthe state.
So that's kind of it's sort ofa strategic case for religion.
But what Sandy said is so righton that introducing religion,
especially as it's played out inthe law, supposedly applies to
(40:29):
everybody, and citizens ofsovereign native nations are not
just sort of anybody practicingas individuals their rights to
religion.
These are collectivities withsovereign rights, and that is a
(40:53):
place where the language ofreligion has been.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
Or sovereign responsibilities.
Speaker 5 (40:57):
Sovereign responsibilities thank you, yes,
correction is you're absolutelyright.
Yeah, and what's interesting,when you get into the weeds of
the American Indian ReligiousFreedom Act and particularly the
1994 amendment to the AmericanIndian Religious Freedom Act
which safeguards the right toceremonial use of peyote by
(41:24):
citizens of Native nations,that's how it kind of goes down.
The American Indian ReligiousFreedom Act by the courts has
been seen as only a resolutionof Congress to direct, to
mandate federal agencies tocomply.
That's what the courts havesaid, right that it doesn't have
(41:47):
legal teeth.
And Suzanne Harjo, who was partof that movement, is like well,
of course it didn't have legalteeth.
We knew it didn't have legalteeth.
But we knew that it wasimportant to have a declaration
by the US government that it hadscrewed up, even when it didn't
expressly mean to, and that theacknowledgement of federal
(42:14):
actions that had inhibited orprohibited Native religious
exercise was important in thefirst instance.
But in 1994, after thereligious practices of 40,000 or
so practitioners of the peyoteway were criminalized in the
(42:37):
1990 Employment Division v Smithcase, after they had using
religious freedom language, woncases in the court to protect
the sort of bona fide religiousnature of the peyote way, when
that Supreme Court decisioncriminalized peyote.
(42:58):
Supreme Court decisioncriminalized peyote.
An almost unanimous Congressfrom the left and from the right
came together to write theReligious Freedom Restoration
Act which restored religiousfreedom rights through statute
that the court at that time hadso narrowed that Congress said
(43:20):
the courts had lost touch.
Anyway, to make a long storyshort, native peoples were not
part of that Religious FreedomRestoration Act coalition.
They weren't invited and theydidn't want them there because
the point was not to sanctionpeyote in the Religious Freedom
(43:43):
Restoration Act.
And from what I understand frominterviews with Suzanne Harjo
is that they got together, theseleaders and thinkers it
included Walter Echo Hawk fromNARF and other Steve Moore from
NARF, the lawyers there and theydecided that they would get
Congress to pass an amendment tothe Native-specific Religious
(44:07):
Freedom Act, the American IndianReligious Freedom Act, and give
it legal teeth.
And they were able to do that.
And I think that's amazing.
What they, in my view, do thereis not to say amazing.
What they in my view do thereis not to say here is an
American Indian version of thereligious freedom rights of
(44:27):
everybody else, but it's becauseit's hardwired into the
treaty-based politicalsovereignty of Native nations
and their members.
They get the protection for useof peyote tied to citizenship
in Native nations.
Now that invites the wholerecognition process, which is
(44:52):
colonial and so forth, but itdoes put it's not sort of just
religion as everybody seems tounderstand it.
It's kind of a collectiverecognition of collective rights
and responsibilities toreligion that are secured there.
(45:15):
And something like that I thinkhappens also in the Native
American Graves Protection andRepatriation Act, where it's
tribes and members of tribes asI'm using the word tribe because
that's the language in the act,but it's sovereign nations
(45:38):
because that's the language inthe act, but it's sovereign
nations.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
But yeah you're reminding me of our colleague
Houston Smith's role in theNative American church right,
him working together with RubenSnake, you know, a road man, and
writing One Nation Under God,which had a profound effect in
that reversal of the US SupremeCourt.
One of the things that Houstonalways talks about, or talked
(46:09):
about at the time, was thatthere was such a broad base
coalition of really Christiandenominations across the board
that supported in amicus briefsor whatever it was, their
petition to the US Supreme Courtto overturn the criminalization
(46:33):
of peyote or the NativeAmerican church, that it was
religion as a kind of unifiedfront that pushed against that.
Yeah, because the idea was well, if you know, native American
church can lose their standing,it can happen to anybody, right?
(46:56):
So I don't know.
If that was a moment, you know,I don't know, but who's
determining it?
Speaker 3 (47:03):
The United States Again acting as the guardian
over Indian nations and what'sheld sacred.
This is really not defendingthe sacred held sacred.
(47:24):
This is really not defendingthe sacred.
It's trying to fit indigenousnations in some kind of loophole
where they can, you know, smokepeyote or it's.
It's really kind of a back doorapproach rather than just
honoring the treaties, thatwhich is also the Supreme Court
of the land according to theConstitution.
So why are we even movingforward?
Why is the US criminalizingNative people for smoking peyote
(47:49):
if that's their tradition?
I don't even know how this comesabout, and I worked at NAR for
a short while.
Like I said, I had problems withthat because they work in that
system where the US is theguardian of Native nations and
they work with the tribal chiefsthat are recognized by the
(48:10):
United States, who have gonethrough the boarding school
system and have pretty much hadtheir culture erased from them
Growing up.
I always assumed, because up atAkwesasne we have a BIA
government as well and I alsoknow there are traditional
people up there, but I grew upin the city of Syracuse, so in
my heart I believe the tribalgovernment was protecting the
(48:34):
traditional people, but that isnot the case, because these um,
elective systems were, wereforeign, they were new.
They disrupted, disruptedeverything in those territories
and silenced the voices oftraditional people, and that's
(48:54):
what's happened cross-boardthroughout history.
And so if these laws are beingrefined through NARF, they're
working with these tribalgovernments who are not the
ceremonial leaders in thoseterritories.
They're recognized by theUnited States of being
interlopers and to get you knowat resources or put in pipelines
(49:20):
, you know they weren't the ones.
The tribal leaders were not theones out there demonstrating at
Standing Rock.
I can assure you.
Speaker 5 (49:30):
Well, wouldn't that be like?
Maybe that's true of many,maybe it's even true of most,
but to the degree that at leastsome, maybe it's even true of
most, but to the degree that atleast some nations have, like,
revised their constitutions andtried to be at work on the
colonial nature of the BIAhistory and the earlier
(49:50):
constitutions that they had.
Speaker 3 (49:55):
I'm not arguing For one thing we had indigenous
forms of democracy all over theAmericas that had systems of
bringing people in agreement,forming a consensus among the
people.
We didn't vote.
Onondaga the Haudenosaunee donot vote within their clan
(50:16):
structure.
When the United States imposedthese BIA governments, the
Haudenosaunee do not vote withintheir clan structure.
When the United States imposedthese BIA governments all over
the country, they first of allestablished well, the church,
before the BIA governmentsestablished the patriarchy, and
then the government establishedthese voting systems, which is
(50:38):
really quite divisive.
It's not a unifying venture aswe see today.
It's pretty violent and dividesfamilies and friends.
And you know, I don't know howit's going to heal working with
these federally imposed systemsof domination all over the
(51:00):
Americas and working in thiscourt of law when this is not
how indigenous people operated.
They didn't operate under law.
Like I said, it was underrelational systems that sustain
each other the waters, the air,all of it.
So it's really problematic towork in law and think we're
(51:24):
going to resolve this disconnectbetween what's sacred and
what's religion.
So it's really problematic, butwe all need to be talking about
it.
So it's really, you know, it'stime we have to be talking about
where are we going?
Where are we going to continue?
Speaker 2 (51:44):
I think that's what On this path, really it's.
I think that's what the Mohawkstudent was saying essentially.
And you know, as you know,we've had you, you've been a
guest in Onondaga Nationterritory and we've introduced
(52:05):
you to their legal counsel andTatadaho and everything, and
being in Onondaga Nationterritory is quite fundamentally
different, which is whatSandy's talking about.
That is, you know, they arefederally recognized, they are
one of the 574 native tribalnations.
We'll say that are federallyrecognized, but they are not.
(52:32):
What?
Can you move your microphone?
Speaker 5 (52:37):
down a little, it's too high, because every time you
scratch your neck.
All I hear is you scratching?
Speaker 4 (52:44):
Oh no, you're scratching your neck.
I'm trying to keep my.
Speaker 5 (52:48):
So take it from the top with Onondaga Nation,
because I think that's important.
Speaker 2 (52:53):
As we know, onondaga Nation is federally recognized,
one of the 574 federallyrecognized Native American
nations, but it's one of onlythree that have not accepted the
Bureau of Indian Affairsgovernment on their territory,
(53:13):
the IAEA government.
So that means they're stillgoverned by their clan, their
natural Indian clan systemthat's been present for
thousands of years.
Speaker 3 (53:25):
It's not by the measure of blood, it's through
the matrilineal clanship,through the mother, yeah,
through the mother.
So very different.
Speaker 2 (53:38):
And they don't hold BIA cards Right, and they have
been very active internationallyas we know, and but there have
been a lot of native nations whohave accepted BIA, governments
that are very interested in howthey managed to do that right.
They have been consultants toother, as you were saying,
(54:02):
michael, you know that othergovernments have been wondering
well, how do we get out of this?
You know, how do we moreembrace those original
instructions and let those beour guide for the governance of
our territories?
So I think there is a kind ofmovement to unwind those kind of
(54:35):
domineering systems in some way, at least among some Native
leaders.
Speaker 3 (54:42):
Then we have some Native people who say it wasn't
until 1924 that we becamecitizens of the United States.
Well, the Onondaga, who's thecapital of the Haudenosaunee.
They went to Washington DC andsaid we do not accept this.
This could be interpreted, somesaid, as an act of war, because
(55:05):
if we are you, then ourtreaties become null and void.
You don't have a treaty withyourself.
Speaker 2 (55:14):
They've always taken that hard line Right.
And you know, one of theconsequences of that, like just
in September, was the return of1,000 acres of land the first,
really the largest return ofland to any Native nation in the
United States, in the UnitedStates.
(55:38):
And they insisted that it wouldnot be held in trust, because
there is no trust, I guess.
But then it would be notencumbered in any way.
It was a gift and it had norelationship to the state ever
(55:58):
again, right, wow.
So they managed to pull thatoff, and I think it had to do
with them sticking to theirvalues, right yeah, the values
of the great law of peace.
And I think other Nativenations are looking at this and
(56:19):
going hmm, you know, maybe thelegal pathway is not really the
best well, there's very strongmedicine societies around Indaga
.
Speaker 3 (56:30):
Very rigorous ceremonial cycle every month for
medicines and leaders ofdifferent species of life that
we interact with.
That's their main focus.
Speaker 2 (56:44):
And the reintroduction, as we talked
about, of the brook trout, whichis native to our area of the
country.
Speaker 5 (56:56):
Yeah, the country you know, uh-huh, yeah.
Well, it's also so instructivethat the Haudenosaunee were the
sort of original native set ofnations to go to international
law as international law startedto come into focus in the early
(57:17):
20th century with the League ofNations.
And I think it's important tomake sure that this conversation
doesn't sort of stop withfederal Indian law, because I
agree completely with you thatnothing is going to be resolved
through something that's sotilted against sovereignty.
(57:39):
So for sure that the UNDeclaration, the final chapter
of this book and what I supposeI have the most hope for and the
least ability to speak about,like um, speak about uh, is um,
(58:04):
the, the, the possibilities ofum, the UN Declaration on the
Rights of Indigenous Peoples, asat least a beginning step in
clarifying how um the scenarioin uh among Native nations and
the United States should gogoing forward.
And one of the things that Ispeak about in the book is that
(58:27):
to this definitional problem.
The word religion appears therea couple times, but it's not a
power word in the UN Declarationin the way that it is in the
United States Constitution.
Oh, that's a good point.
But the whole declaration, all46 articles, are shot through
with references to spiritualrelationships, to the sacred
(58:52):
really, and Article 25, for me,clarifies that land rights are
rights, among other things.
Land rights are not just sortof political or economic rights,
but they're also rights to aspiritual relationship and the
ability to maintain andstrengthen spiritual
(59:13):
relationships and obligations tofuture generations of those.
It's a beautifully put articleand I would love to talk to your
interlocutors in Onondaga thatwere part of that process to
find out like how did Article 25come about?
Because it's kind of a preambleto a series of articles that are
(59:33):
about land rights, but it sortof starts on a different
foundation than Western propertysystems and because of that it
also includes ongoingaffirmation of human rights,
indigenous human rights, torelationships with lands that
are traditional, lands andwaters that are traditional, but
(59:55):
where that nation may notcontrol those lands anymore,
which in Minnesota is verypoignant in the part of
Minnesota where we are, becausethe Dakota were formally exiled
in 1863 from their lands inMinnesota and all the treaty
rights of the Treaty of 1837 andthe Treaty of 1851 were
(01:00:19):
abrogated and all thoseannuities were steered toward
settlers who had been quote thevictims end.
Quote of the anti-colonialresistance that some not all
some Dakota people put when theywere starving because the US
wasn't paying its treatyobligations.
(01:00:39):
So the fact that there is aright to an ongoing relationship
to those lands, even ones thatare in private ownership, is
huge.
And.
Speaker 2 (01:00:53):
I mean, of course you know that it was behind,
according to the engine behindthe?
U the UN Declaration on theRights of Indigenous Peoples,
was Tonya Gunilla-Frichner, whowas Anand Vaga of the Snipe Clan
(01:01:14):
and the executive director ofthe American Indian Law Alliance
at the time and justimmediately before that.
This is kind of a footnote, butimmediately before that, the
Onondaga Nation filed their landrights action in federal court
and the preamble for that isthat the land rights action was
(01:01:36):
really focused on the rights ofthe land, not a land claims, you
know, which would be a kind ofshift in who owns the properties
, but rather you know therecognition that the land has
been mistreated in so many waysand that the Onondaga are
(01:01:58):
looking for recognition thatthis is their traditional
territory about 2.5 millionacres right through New York
State and that they need to beat the table in decisions that
are being made on behalf of theland right and the beings that
(01:02:18):
inhabit those lands.
So they were operating with thisagain.
They were operating at thelevel of sort of water is life.
You know that same kind ofresonance, right?
That so many people in our areajust thought, yeah, I'm on
(01:02:42):
board, right, and that's that'swhere we started doing
programming with neighbors ofthe onondaga nation or noon.
Uh, su got involved and nowit's 20 years on and we're going
to have another round of these,uh, sort these retrospective
and where we've come since, butanyway, so there is a kind of
(01:03:04):
legacy there.
Speaker 3 (01:03:06):
Right, but at Onondaga the traditional voice
has the political clout in theinternational stage because
they're recognized.
How do we empower all thetraditional voices all over the
Americas, you know, when thetribal governments are not that
(01:03:30):
voice?
They're not.
They're working in consort withthe United States and
negotiating all the time andreceiving funds from the United
States.
The traditional people wouldnot be doing that because
there's too much at stake withwhat they know about living as
(01:03:51):
human beings on this earth.
So many of them don't vote.
I know they don't vote amongthe Haudenosaunee.
Traditional people will notpartake of a foreign entity
that's been forced on them asystem of voting.
It's nothing they ever didbefore.
It's a consensus breakingrather than building.
(01:04:13):
So there are still traditionalpeople all over the Americas.
How do we strengthen thosevoices?
They were trying to do that atStanding Rock, but they had no
real political clout because theBIA government there was really
in control and it was throughembarrassing.
You know their own leadership,but it's dangerous too to get up
(01:04:36):
and demonstrate like that.
There's a lot at stake.
Well, there are a lot of peoplethat are thrown in jail, for
sure, absolutely we won'tmention wounded knee and what
happened, you know, in the earlydays, but you know but I do
think, like Michael was saying,I do think they were to a large
degree successful.
Speaker 2 (01:04:56):
In a way, they kind of won the.
I wouldn't want to reduce it toPR but you know they really
they were to a large degreesuccessful.
in a way, they kind of won the.
I wouldn't want to reduce it toPR, but they really did
galvanize a kind of globalattention because of the
simplicity of their message andit's very similar to what Anand
Dhaka was doing in 2005, justbefore UNDRIP came, you know,
(01:05:19):
was voted on in 2007.
So I think that there is a kindof lineage there that could be
unpacked and I hadn't thought ofit before.
You mentioned it.
Speaker 3 (01:05:31):
Yeah, and they also had allyship.
There were a lot of non-Nativepeople that were going out there
standing with them.
Yeah, you know.
So maybe that's what I'm tryingto get across.
Speaker 2 (01:05:40):
Yes, yes.
We need to support those voicesthat is Standing Rock as well
as the Onondaga Land Rights ActRight.
Speaker 5 (01:05:47):
One of the things that the UN Declaration in the
space of religious, the rightsto religious freedom, or the
rights to responsibility, thefreedom to continue to follow
original instructions or tofulfill your obligations to all
(01:06:11):
your relations.
One of the ways that goes downin the UN Declaration that's
worth a shout out here is that apower word, as you know, is
free, prior and informed consent.
So the Declaration recognizesthe sort of, at its best, united
(01:06:35):
States law calls inherentsovereignty, but the rights to
peoplehood of indigenous peoplesand with that the rights to
free, prior and informed consentto actions, development, et
cetera that happens on theirtraditional territories and
(01:06:56):
waters with impacts to theirrelations, as we've been
speaking, and that's a reallyimportant and powerful
corrective to the world that,sandy, you're criticizing.
That is in this book that I'mtalking about a lot, the world
(01:07:17):
of just consultation, which canbe done to varying degrees.
But there's a standard ofconsultation that the United
States holds itself to, thoughit's differentially enforced and
inhabited by different agenciesand et cetera, et cetera.
But there's a differencebetween consultation being able
(01:07:41):
to say you consulted with thenative nations, um, and what
that might look like if thestandard were free, prior and
informed consent.
And um, at least as Iunderstand it, um, the
irrational fear of that languageon the part of the United
States or other member states ofthe UN is that it's a veto
(01:08:03):
power to doing anything withinthe territory of the United
States.
And that seems kind ofirrational because what the
sovereign nations are saying isthey want to be respected and be
at the table.
Exactly sovereign nations aresaying is they want to be
respected and be at the tableright exactly, and and so they
may or may not be pushing, theymight veto something that that's
(01:08:27):
really matters to them, butthey might have another position
.
But just respect theirsovereignty and their ability to
speak from their sovereignposition.
It it's that irrational fearthat and that's part of the
problem with the sacred landprotection stuff, the slippery
slope fear of judges that well,if we grant this case at Oak
(01:08:50):
Flat or whatever, theneverybody's going to claim it
and that's kind of the languageof religion.
But the language of religion,but the language of representing
or respecting peoplehood andsovereignty, is, is a respect
for other people to be at thetable and say what their
priorities are and to give them,you know, full respect that
(01:09:13):
they they might approach itdiplomatically, not just like,
as you know, they're going toveto absolutely everything that
has anything to do with theirtraditional territories.
Speaker 2 (01:09:30):
After all, they know their territories better than
anyone.
So let me take a pause here andask is there anything else that
you want to talk about, or doyou want to get to something?
Speaker 5 (01:09:45):
Well, the one thing I do want to say and I'm not sure
how long it takes for thepost-production of your
broadcasts yeah, we're alllooking over to Adam and
grateful for the work that goesinto that.
Speaker 1 (01:10:00):
I have to say.
Speaker 5 (01:10:01):
I've not listened to every one of your podcasts, but
I really.
I really appreciate them.
Thank you, so good work.
But the one thing that I dowant to say is that this is an
interesting moment to be havingthis conversation because in the
Oak Flat case the losses incourt for a religious freedom
(01:10:29):
right to sacred place protectionfor Native peoples just got
kind of amped up by the NinthCircuit, which is in a way the
most powerful of the circuitcourts of appeal in the federal
court system, and it has becauseit was such a convoluted and
(01:10:50):
complex decision.
There was a 6-5 majority andthen a dissent which was also
six people, so there's likeoverlapping dissent.
It's the most.
I can't even describe to youhow complicated this thing is.
(01:11:10):
There were seven differentdecisions, there were 11 judges
and seven different decisionsconcurring opinion with this and
that it's just completelyobfuscatory.
And because of that, and alsobecause this particular
conservative Supreme Court mightbe looking for bona fides for
(01:11:32):
its own respectability onreligious freedom issues that
religious freedom is not justgoing to protect majority
Christians with a particularkind of angle of Christianity
there is a chance that the OakFlat case gets taken up by the
Supreme Court.
And if it does get taken up, Idon't think the answer is that
(01:11:54):
it's dead on arrival.
Honestly, because kind ofthrough the back door, because
Justice Gorsuch and JusticeRoberts and maybe some of the
other conservatives are keen tomake sure that they have some
respectability, especially inthis Trump moment, I think
there's a chance maybe that'sway too much faith that courts
(01:12:17):
are going to recognize a rightto religious freedom on native
sacred place protections.
I mean, the facts there arebreathtaking.
Right, the copper mine is goingto completely.
It's going to create a craterabout the size of a meteor
(01:12:38):
crater in this sacred terrain.
That's not disputed factuallyand yet somehow still the courts
are saying that there's nosubstantial burden to use the
term of art on the religiousexercise of native peoples when
it's going to destroy the sacredplace.
(01:13:00):
Yeah, um.
So who knows, maybe, maybe atsome point this, maybe there's a
surprise in it I'm looking atsome pretty, um, uh, skeptical
faces here um, that theS courtswould ever do anything.
(01:13:21):
But maybe in this instance,there's a little bit of a
victory through the back doorthat might make a huge
difference, even if it's not aresolution to the issues that
we're talking about, but mightreally change the nature of the
way that sovereign nations couldnegotiate their priorities.
Speaker 2 (01:13:41):
Well, I hope you're right.
That would certainly be amonumental decision, but I have
my doubts, especially in thismoment.
You know where I think we'rereally, because you know we're
(01:14:02):
not in the moment of NativeAmerican church right, or 1994,
right.
We're in the moment of 30 yearslater and kind of the rise of
white Christian nationalism,yeah so, and we have several of
those on the court.
(01:14:24):
So I'm not sure I hope that theycan see that this is a
religious issue that might havesomething to do with them, you
know, and their traditions.
Speaker 3 (01:14:35):
Well, that's a good place to end this session.
I think, Just a little bit ofhope.
Yeah, that's all we can doright now, the next few months.
Speaker 5 (01:14:50):
But again, a loss in court isn't ever the end of the
story for people who have thelong view and, like the Dakota
folks at Prairie Island that Iwork with, say we've been here
10,000 years, here, the last 200years of the doctrine of
discovery as it's been actuallylike in felt by them in
(01:15:11):
Minnesota, you know beginning inthe early 1800s, late 1700s.
It's a blip in the 10,000 yearmap and they have every
expectation that they're stillgoing to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:15:22):
That, I think, is correct.
Right, it's just a blip, andit's one that well you know
Americans in their idea, theirkind of triumphal narrative
about ourselves.
Right, as Americans we tend tocelebrate, but it's true, in the
(01:15:46):
long durée of the place itself,of the land itself, there is a
future, even if it's not with usin it.
Speaker 5 (01:16:03):
Let's get back on that sailing ship out in the
harbor.
Turn it around, get out of here, for vacation or something.
Speaker 2 (01:16:14):
Thanks for the opportunity.
Well, thank you, michael.
This has been great.
I knew it would be.
You know, and and I know we'llwork together on many of these
things, you know going forward,I hope so alright, definitely be
so, thanks the producers ofthis podcast were Adam DJ Brett
and Jordan Lone Colon.
Speaker 1 (01:16:35):
Our intro and outro is social dancing 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
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 (00:31):
Welcome back to Mapping the Doctrine of
Discovery.
My name is Philip Arnold.
I'm faculty in religion atSyracuse University and core
faculty in Native AmericanIndigenous Studies.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
And I'm Sandy Bigtree , a citizen of the Mohawk Nation
up at Akwesasne and also on theboard for the American Indian.
No, and I'm also on the boardfor the Indigenous Values
Initiative.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Right, and we're grateful to be able to bring
this interview to you today,thanks to a Henry Luce
Foundation grant.
So we're very pleased today tohave an old friend and a guest,
michael McNally.
Michael and I have known eachother for decades, worked in
(01:27):
Native American Studies, andwe're coming to you from sunny
San Diego and the AAR meetinghere.
Michael, thanks for coming, andwhy don't you introduce
yourself?
Speaker 5 (01:41):
Sure, I'm Michael McNally.
I teach in the religiondepartment and I'm director of
American Studies at CarletonCollege in Minnesota, on lands
of the Mettowakanton DakotaNation, and I'm happy to be here
, and we're not just in SanDiego, but we're on something
like the 26th floor looking outover the harbor, and it's a
(02:03):
beautiful day and we're happy tobe inside talking.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Yes, absolutely it's very beautiful today, but at
night time that battleship outthere is lit with a christmas
tree and all kinds of colorfullights.
It's a little disconcerting.
So now let's talk about theDoctrine of.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Discovery.
So, michael, I love your bookDefend the Sacred.
Maybe you could tell us alittle bit about that and kind
of the relationship betweenreligion, law, native American
Religious Freedom Act, thosekinds of things that you were
(02:44):
trying to accomplish in the book, and then we can talk about
what has happened since then,you know, since your book was
published in 2020?
2020.
Yeah.
Yeah, and I think it was veryinfluential at the time.
So maybe we could start there,as you know, a way of kind of
framing Doctrine of Discovery,what that means for you.
Speaker 5 (03:07):
Yeah, sounds good.
So the book is entitled Defendthe Sacred and the subtitle is
as important as the title.
The subtitle is Native AmericanReligious Freedom Beyond the
First Amendment and the titlecomes from the famous banner
(03:52):
that was paraded around theStanding Rock protests was not
overtly religious or it would bereductive to like make it
religious.
It's the register of the sacredwas what galvanized the
movement and I thinkencapsulated what was really
moving about that movement for abroad American public Maybe not
everybody, but a broad Americanpublic.
And I thought that was reallyinteresting that even though the
(04:20):
Dakota Access protestlitigation lost, there was like
one modest victory but they lostin a religious freedom effort
to shut down the crossing in theMissouri River kind of
(04:47):
encapsulates what the book isabout, which is in some ways the
bankruptcy of religious freedom, discourse for the protection
of Native sacred places but onthe other hand the power of the
language of the sacred togenerate allies and to so what
(05:11):
might be legally bankrupt incourt still has legs and force
Right.
Good, and one of the ways thatin the research for the book
that really came through, one ofthe kind of the core chapters
of that, was work that wasmentored by our mutual friend
Suzanne Schoenharjo, who throughher career even before she went
(05:36):
to DC to be President Carter'sAmerican Indian congressional
liaison in the domestic policystaff, she had been centrally
involved with the major kind ofstatutory gains the American
Indian Religious Freedom Act,which President Carter signed
(05:56):
into law in 1978, the NativeAmerican Graves Protection,
repatriation Act of 1990, andthe Native I'm sorry the
National Museum of the AmericanIndian Act of 1989, which
predated and cleared the groundfor NAGPRA.
And I was really struck by howthe language of religion and
language of religious freedomenabled um native nations and
(06:24):
advocates um, kind of ledsignificantly by Suzanne
Schoenharjo, your mentor, orenLyons, um and others to like get
these really incrediblestatutes passed by a settler,
colonial congress on behalf ofless than two percent of the
(06:47):
population.
And so where the language ofreligious freedom sort of um has
failed kind of in courts toprotect sacred places, it's been
really powerful in advancing anagenda.
And so I kind of look at thatkind of doubleness there and
(07:09):
that's sort of what, on the onehand what the book is about and
another way that I think aboutthe book.
Since we've been teaching inthis space for a really long
time, we've probablyconsistently taught that the
language of religion doesn'treally work well for indigenous
traditions and in a way thisbook follows that definitional
(07:33):
problem into the law.
So a reader might say so whatLike?
Why bend native claims into thelanguage of religion if it's so
kind of laden with colonialismwhich it is, of course and
there's probably a good reasonfor that caution and that
(07:55):
concern.
And I'm not a lawyer, but Itook a couple of law school
classes to train for this book,and one of the things that I
learned in the civil procedureclass was when lawyers look even
at a set of rules, they don'tlook and read it for what it
(08:15):
means, they read it for what itcan mean what it might mean how
far they could stretch thelanguage of a given rule or
statute or whatever.
And then the courts of courseevaluate whether a meaning can
be wide.
They can narrow the meaning,the courts as interpreters of
the law, and so forth.
So that kind of insight, whatcan religious freedom law mean,
(08:37):
is what informs the book.
So while I'm surrounded at theAmerican Academy of Religion by
scholars who understandably seethe limits of religious freedom
discourse, the way that it'sexported as part of American
imperialism abroad, I sort oftry to contribute to that
(09:06):
conversation by listening to thevoices of a Suzanne Harjo who
is completely aware of thecolonial nature of religion and
religious freedom but has usedit strategically and you don't
want to say native folks whoengaged the language of
(09:27):
religious freedom were, you know, kind of dupes because, they're
smart people right yeah nothat's true.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Well if you're talking about Christianity, it
is this religion of law, youknow, because you're doomed to
hell and damnation if you don'tabide by these stringent, you
know, dictates of how to live inthe world.
And it's always this dichotomyof good over evil.
(09:57):
So it also involves war, youknow, and fighting and
oppression.
So when you try to superimposethat in courts of law, it fits
nicely, because law isconstructed of all these rules
and regulations.
But when you're talking toindigenous people, the
(10:18):
indigenous peoples of this landhad a form of democracy that was
about relationships to thenatural world.
It was not natural law by anymeasure, because it clearly does
not exist in the natural world.
It's all relational.
So that's why it's really, youknow, using the terminology
(10:42):
sacred, you know that uncovers awhole new interpretation of
religion.
Working with Native peopletraditional Native people not
the BIA chiefs that have alreadygone through the boarding
school experience and they'vebeen Christianized and groomed
(11:04):
to be the tribal leaders thatthe United States will recognize
and the only tribal leaders theUnited States will recognize.
Well then, they're going to fitin that context too, but we're
talking about traditional Nativepeople on this land who still
understand the importance ofbuilding proper relationships
(11:24):
with the natural world.
So we're talking about twodifferent galaxies here and if
we're going to communicate,clearly, the colonizers were
missing this point because theywere coming here to acquire
wealth and resources, right, andpart of that agenda was
(11:47):
Christianizing native people andthen deeming them the tribal
leaders so they could manipulatethem.
Honestly, so, we're entering now, where we're starting to
question these terms, and it'sthe only way we're going to
crack open a new future for allof us.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
I wanted to follow up a little bit on that because,
you know, one of the things thatI think captivated so many
people around the world reallyabout Standing Rock was the
simplicity of the message.
Right, and you know that wateris sacred, you know Water is
life, you know those kinds of.
(12:30):
They're not slogans, they'rejust statements of fact.
You know Biological fact andwho could argue with it?
Really, yeah, right, and, ofcourse, us being in religion,
being trained in religion, werecognize that as simply a
powerful universal truth, if youlike.
(12:52):
I mean, I don't use truth in akind of faith-based way, but a
kind of biological fact, and Ithink that's why, even though,
like you say, they lost thelegal battle, they sort of won a
kind of cultural status, war,or not a war, but a kind of
(13:15):
realization around the worldthat this is true, you know, and
people were attracted to that.
There were works of art thatcame out of there, people,
various artists, native artists,just sort of captivated that
movement in a certain way.
So I mean, I think I agree withyou, the legal terrain is kind
(13:41):
of one aspect of it.
Yeah, then there's a kind of amovement in religion or maybe,
or a movement among, you know,people who are sensitive to
religion.
That, uh, was a success yes,for sure.
Speaker 5 (13:59):
And then I mean the success in terms of terms of the
broad global publicunderstanding.
It was like the focal point ofattention for a while for the
globe right Right, and forLakota and Dakota folks for
(14:20):
whose that is their homeland, aswell as for anyone who visited
and stayed at the camps.
It was also this place ofreligious generativity.
It wasn't sort of a last standfor native religious pasts.
(14:40):
It was a generative place forindigenous religious futures,
and those futures aren't done inby a loss in court.
In fact, that's one of thethings that I sort of feel like
I didn't say enough in a bookthat reads a lot of case law and
(15:03):
tries to examine why Nativeclaimants lost in court cases.
And the point is that forNative peoples with the long
view of relationships withplaces and land, a loss in court
in the late 1980s, early 1990sis a blow, there's no question,
(15:26):
but it's not the end of thestory.
It's the end of the story fromthe perspective of settler law,
but it's just one strategy thatdidn't work and maybe even a
galvanizer of redoubled effortson behalf of what Sandy so
rightly put was the relationsand the obligations to those
(16:04):
places.
Not so much just sharpens,right?
Yeah, so yeah.
Another thing that came up when,sandy, you were talking about
responsibilities and obligationsand relationships with
everything my favorite passagequoted in this book passage
(16:31):
quoted in this book I thinkmight have come from any number
of people, but it came intofocus for me when I heard Frank
Edwagishik from the LittleTraverse Band of Odawa in
Michigan was talking about thecourt-protected treaty rights to
fish in the Great Lakes, soakin to the salmon,
(16:55):
court-protected treaty rights tosalmon in the Pacific Northwest
or in Minnesota, to wild riceharvests and access to fish and
stuff.
And the quote I'm just going toread it because it's brilliant
and I think goes to your pointis this Our ancestors who made
(17:19):
the treaties didn't say thoseare our fish.
Rather, they reserved the rightto fish.
That meant they reserved aright to sing to the fish, to
dance for the fish, to pray forthe fish, to catch and eat the
fish, but to live with the fish,to have a relationship with the
fish, and so that's in responseto a treaty-protected right
(17:43):
that had gotten interpreted to ashare of the take.
And that quote that I just readsounds really poetic.
And it is poetic, but it's alsosuper strategic because it's
saying that a treaty right toLake Michigan whitefish and lake
trout is a right that the laketrout and the whitefish have to
(18:09):
live healthy lives with healthywater and everything else.
It's not an economic right to apercentage of the take or the
harvest if the harvest has to bereduced because of pollution or
what have you.
It's arguably a treaty right ofthe fish, which I think is you
(18:36):
know.
It could come up in a wholebunch of other contexts to Sandy
your point, but it's one ofthose places where relationship
gets kind of asserted in thearena of rights.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Because the fish have their own system that they're
responsible for as well, andwe're talking about these
interactions between systems.
You have to respect them, aswe're all sharing life on this
planet.
Sharing life on this planet.
So if you think you can, youknow, manage this system and
(19:09):
control it, you're reallyinterfering with that system's
relationship with another system, with another system.
I mean it really plays out andis more disruptive than anyone
really can comprehend.
There's no way a human beingcan comprehend any of that.
Speaker 5 (19:26):
Yeah, and maybe you could say more about the
Haudenosaunee context.
But I know in the Anishinaabecontext in Minnesota there are
some Anishinaabe imaginativelegal thinkers who say that when
in the Treaty of 1837 or theTreaty of 1854, Ojibwe
signatories said we reserve theright to hunt and fish and
(19:48):
gather throughout ourterritories, not just on the
reservation, what they weredoing was making a stipulation
that they had a treatyobligation to the wild rice, a
treaty obligation to thenorthern pike, to the walleye,
that all those relationshipswere diplomatic in nature, and I
(20:14):
just find that to be a reallypowerful way of putting it.
It's different than rights?
Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Yeah, definitely.
And maybe to bring it back tothe doctrine of discovery a
little bit, we're not talkingabout the doctrine of Christian
discovery strictly as a kind oflegal tenet that needs to be
defeated in the Supreme Court orsomething like that.
Right that, with these kind ofinsights into the relationality
(20:47):
of all life, which is reallywhat we're talking about.
It's not just Native Americansthat benefit from clean water,
and you know fish that are happy, or wild rice that can be.
You know that requires you knowthe water to be pure.
It's all human beings, it's allliving beings, right?
(21:09):
So maybe the defeat to thedoctrine of discovery then might
come in more of these simplevalue systems that can be
articulated in something likewater, articulated at within,
something like water is life, orsomething like that right.
So outside of that, politicallegal arena we're also engaging
(21:36):
in issues around the doctrine ofdiscovery.
You know sort of bring it backto our.
You know the topic of ourpodcast.
You know a little bit.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Right.
Well, in talking about thedoctrines of discovery, you know
you're always being heldaccountable to the sovereign, be
it the Pope or these Christianmonarchs, and everything had to
transfer to them.
You know and increase theirwealth, transfer to them.
You know and increase theirwealth.
And to this day, you know, theHaudenosaunee use the word
(22:08):
sovereign.
They're sovereign people goingback to pre-colonial times.
They travel on their ownpassports to integrate into this
system and just stay relevant.
You know, in this world they'rein, but their sovereign is the
natural world.
And I have a friend.
(22:31):
I'll read this such a wonderfulwriter, sawadis Ruchel.
He wrote the land is mysovereign where.
I stand and or place my feet onthe ground is my sovereign.
I am the land, water and sky.
We are the same elements,structure and lasting
(22:54):
ingredients.
The land is my sovereign, whereI place my feet, and I refuse
to give that away.
I do not cede that familiarunrestrained.
Speaker 5 (23:09):
It's a beautiful passage.
This isn't about this book, butit goes back to my late Ojibwe
teacher, larry Cloud Morgan, andhe was a practicing Catholic.
He described himself as acatholic but not a christian,
because he had a consistencybetween his um.
(23:33):
I know it's a it's a jarringthing, for the face I'm trying
to sort that out.
I wish, I wish you were here.
I think what he meant by that.
For him, catholic didn't meanthe church.
Catholic meant the mystery thatthe Protestant tradition had
tried to paste into a flannelboard and that the Catholic
(23:56):
tradition had allowed to just beand not reduce it to words.
That's what he meant by it.
But where I'm going with thisis that he often spoke of the
Ojibwe language word or one ofthe words to talk about.
(24:17):
The creator is the owner ofeverything and that language of
lord.
We see that as onlyhierarchical.
But I think if we were goodmedievalists we'd probably see
(24:38):
that it's a lot more complicatedthan just who has power over
who.
It's sort of like nobodyultimately owns things because
it's all kind of deferred allthe way up to the sovereign.
But that changes in the time.
About the doctrine of discovery, where that's all kind of
hardening right around a nationstate and the head of a nation
state and kind of the god, partof that sort of disappears.
(25:02):
I don't know if this part mightbe edited out.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
No, you're on the hook for that one.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Oh look, it looks like Columbus is saying that
into the harbor.
I'm going to take a picture ofthis.
Speaker 5 (25:25):
I'm not kidding, there is a bark out there.
Oh, my God.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Right on cue, it's with a Santa.
Maria, santa Maria.
Speaker 5 (25:43):
Is this a first for the Doctrine and Discovery
podcast?
Absolutely a first.
Have a cheesy mock-up ofChristopher Columbus's sailing
vessel.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
We'll make it up.
I think we've got a new logofor our head.
It's like dying.
Oh my goodness.
So we've got to see where ithooks up so we can go take a
tour.
That is really funny Athree-hour tour.
Speaker 5 (26:14):
I'm not sure this is relevant to anything, but
there's been this uncanny thing.
With any time I've mentioned mylate Ojibwe teacher, there's
always something really funnythat happens or something really
odd that happens.
Is that right?
So, an example of that is InezTalamantes and I, or Inez asked
(26:36):
me to join her when at an AAR wewere asked to meet with the
state heads of chaplains.
Have you ever encountered thatgroup that meets here?
So it's the state officials whoare in charge of chaplaincy and
they're basically contractorsfor how chaplains work in
(26:59):
corrections facilities andthey're kind of the chief
diversity officers.
And so I was super nervous inthis thing because I don't have
an experience of incarceration.
I'm a white guy who doesn'tknow anybody who spent a lot of
time in an incarcerated thing,except this Hebrew teacher
friend of mine who was in prisonfor a civil disobedience action
(27:21):
.
And so I walked into this room.
I was super nervous.
I was there to kind of supportInez and we went around the room
and introduced each other andthe person who was kind of the
head honcha of the group was thehead of the federal chaplaincy.
It was a woman, religious, aCatholic nun, who was kind of
kick-ass.
And she said after it got to meand I said you know, I'm
(27:46):
Michael McNally, I teach atCarleton College.
I really don't have a lot ofexperiences with religious
freedom in the prisonspersonally, but my late Ojibwe
teacher was an inmate in TerreHaute for a civil disobedience
action with a nuclear missilesilo Broke into a nuclear
(28:08):
missile silo with an earshot ofa school in Kansas City.
And I'm interrupted and thiswoman says the person who's the
head of federal chaplaincy, shesaid Larry Cloud Morgan, he's
your mentor.
Larry Cloud Morgan, he's yourmentor.
(28:28):
And she said he was my mentorin my first job as a chaplain at
Terre Haute FederalPenitentiary.
So it was one of those thingswhere, like it just kind of came
up.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Yeah, wow.
So that kind of stuff happens.
When you're talking about yourmentor, it does it happens.
Speaker 5 (28:42):
It's so funny.
Columbus up columbus just as autter and complete joke.
Right, oh my gosh um too funny.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
I gotta go, we gotta go on that boat you do have to
go.
Speaker 5 (28:56):
I think the henry loose foundation should purchase
right now.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
We definitely need to do a tour.
Of course, it might be theMayflower, it could be that Well
, that works too, doesn't it?
Speaker 5 (29:10):
It's a friendly amendment, yes, I would say.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
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 5 (29:33):
So, getting back to the Doctrine of Discovery, for
real one of the ways that comesinto the book is in the first
chapter, and the first chapterof this book, like most books,
is usually you're trying toprovide historical context or
whatever it is, before the realwork of the book gets going.
But this first chapter kind ofbecame its own book and the
(29:57):
Doctrine of Discovery wasExhibit A, and so I talk about
the different registers ofreligion in the book and the
first chapter is called Religionas Weapon and it's about the
Doctrine of Discovery and thecivilization regulations of
assimilation policy in the 1880sand so the fact that Native
(30:22):
peoples were determined to bewithout religion and therefore
had no rightful absolute titleto the land, etc.
Etc.
I was kind of trying to set up,like why would Native peoples
have anything to do with thisconcept, even if it's, you know,
legally powerful?
Like why would you even careabout it?
(30:42):
Because it's so shot throughwith colonialism and, of course,
the assimilation policy,civilization regulations from
1883 to 1934 are, you know, anupdate?
Just an update to that doctrineof discovery policy that
authorizes atrocity, religiousviolence, just to reiterate what
(31:09):
those are between 1883 and 1934, certain ceremonial practices
like the Sundance and thefuneral potlatch are singled out
and criminalized, and laterregulations suggest certain
fines or periods ofincarceration for people found
(31:32):
practicing these traditions.
They single out the practicesof medicinal healing or
ceremonial healing, and everyAmerican should know that this
happened on the watch of anation that was otherwise
(31:52):
committed to religious freedom.
It's jarring, right, I mean Idon't have to tell you.
It's jarring, right, I mean Idon't have to tell you.
And more than 50 years as aformal policy didn't really end
with the formal ending of it.
Right, and that's why the 1978American Indian Religious
Freedom Act had to affirmativelysay that government policies
(32:15):
continue to have the effects ofsanctioning native religion and
ceremony, even if they're notintended to.
Because in 1934 the formalpolicy was shut down and I
believe it was at that time theystarted calling them the
Religious Crimes Code.
(32:37):
At that time they startedcalling them the Religious
Crimes Code.
I think that is such animportant thing to really reckon
with, and not just to reckonwith in a kind of a thin way,
but to actually get down intothe weeds of how that was
enforced in various reservationcontexts around the country,
(32:57):
because it's huge, um, the, theOak Flat case in um, uh, arizona
, which, uh, uh, hopefully wecan spend some time talking
about um is uh emerges.
Um emerges in the context of thecivilization regulations and at
(33:24):
the San Carlos ApacheReservation, which is the
closest reservation to Oak Flat.
Part of the civilizationregulations is not just the
criminalization of theceremonial practices but it's
also the policing of theboundaries of the reservation so
that people don't have thefreedom of movement to go to
(33:44):
their sacred places.
And places like Oak Flat werenot only off the reservation but
in the I can't remember exactlythe date, but there's a General
Sherman's order that excuse me,general Crook's order that
anybody found at Oak Flat orother places off of the San
(34:09):
Carlos Reservation could besubject to death by military
patrols.
Absolutely, death by militarypatrols, because, yeah, so
that's.
You know, that's a deathsentence for practicing your
religion.
Going back to traditionalplaces, there are a number of
(34:30):
clans that have their origins inand around oak flat.
There's springs that need to bevisited, there's a whole host
of practices that were relatedto that, and that was yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
The US government, I don't think, really cares much
about that and I think that alot of the tribal governments
that have been created by theUnited States are not have,
through history, not really beenprotective of that either,
because they've lost theirculture through having gone
through the boarding schoolsituation.
(35:03):
It's those original treatiesthat hold the weight, because
we're talking about how we'regoing to live together and
protect our territory, protectyour territory and live along
the river of life and respectingthe natural world.
All these other I mean Suzanne,got in there.
She also was involved in theIndian Child Welfare Act.
(35:26):
She was very active in jumpinginto this court of law of the
United States to try to makethem behave.
Try to make them behave.
Those laws and amendments aremore so that the United States
behaves within their own legalconstruct.
You know they're not reallywriting those for Native people.
(35:51):
I think all those amendmentsare trying to reveal something
to this government, Because whogives you the authority to write
any kind of dictate on howwe're going to live beyond our
original treaties?
Anything else has been a way ofmanipulating their way out of
(36:12):
those obligations, includingestablishing the BIA puppet
regime.
Including establishing the BIApuppet regime.
I worked at NARF, I was auditingone law class with Charles
Wilkinson.
He was laying it out the firstday.
There are three areas of law.
There's federal law, there'sstate law and then there's
(36:35):
federal Indian law.
And I just my jaw hit the floor, I'm going no, that's not what
the treaties were about.
And then he went on to sayfederal Indian law is under the
guardianship of the UnitedStates.
And at that point I just got upand left the room and never
(36:55):
returned because no, that's amanipulation of these original
agreements between the federalgovernment and Indian treaties,
Indian nations.
So it's just been a ruse tocomplicate everything.
And now it's the way of life,now it's the world we're living
in total chaos.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
And really almost beyond that.
What gives anyone the right tokeep people from performing or
to fulfilling their originalinstructions?
Right.
To not letting them go to theirsacred places.
(37:39):
Who thought that up, I mean?
Or you could say, what's therisk, what's at stake there?
I mean it's absurd that theAmerican Indian Religious
Freedom Act was passed in 78.
(38:00):
When I tell my students thatthat's ancient history to them,
but that's not long ago, that'sright.
So I have a lot ofHaudenosaunee kids in my class.
Not a lot, but we'll say 10, 12out of a class of 45 or so in
my class.
Not a lot, but we'll say youknow 10, 12 out of a class of 45
(38:21):
or so in indigenous religions.
And you know, one of the thingswe do all semester long is try
to interrogate that idea of whatis authentic religion.
What does it mean?
And you know some smart Mohawkkids very smart kid was saying
(38:41):
we can't buy into that religionargument, right?
So that's the problem, right, wehave to.
So we were reading parts of mybook Values, so I try to insert
values as a way to think about alarger context outside of
religion, and he was saying weshould go that direction rather
(39:06):
than the religion direction.
But I think you're quite right.
We need to pick and choose onwhat sort of field we're going
to deploy these differentcategories, and the more we have
, the better it is.
Speaker 5 (39:21):
Yeah, the thing about religion is that it's
definitely a settler-colonialword, but it's a powerful
settler-colonial word because itis in the constitution.
And even those who kind of comefrom a conservative christian
(39:43):
viewpoint some of those folks,elevate the religion clauses of
the first amendment as the mostum important they're.
They're, they're, according tothis, they're the first words of
the bill of rights.
For a reason, because it's thefirst words of the Bill of
Rights.
For a reason because it's theultimate check on the power of
the state, the obligation or thebelief or the faith in a
(40:07):
supreme being that's higher thanthe state.
So that's kind of it's sort ofa strategic case for religion.
But what Sandy said is so righton that introducing religion,
especially as it's played out inthe law, supposedly applies to
(40:29):
everybody, and citizens ofsovereign native nations are not
just sort of anybody practicingas individuals their rights to
religion.
These are collectivities withsovereign rights, and that is a
(40:53):
place where the language ofreligion has been.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
Or sovereign responsibilities.
Speaker 5 (40:57):
Sovereign responsibilities thank you, yes,
correction is you're absolutelyright.
Yeah, and what's interesting,when you get into the weeds of
the American Indian ReligiousFreedom Act and particularly the
1994 amendment to the AmericanIndian Religious Freedom Act
which safeguards the right toceremonial use of peyote by
(41:24):
citizens of Native nations,that's how it kind of goes down.
The American Indian ReligiousFreedom Act by the courts has
been seen as only a resolutionof Congress to direct, to
mandate federal agencies tocomply.
That's what the courts havesaid, right that it doesn't have
(41:47):
legal teeth.
And Suzanne Harjo, who was partof that movement, is like well,
of course it didn't have legalteeth.
We knew it didn't have legalteeth.
But we knew that it wasimportant to have a declaration
by the US government that it hadscrewed up, even when it didn't
expressly mean to, and that theacknowledgement of federal
(42:14):
actions that had inhibited orprohibited Native religious
exercise was important in thefirst instance.
But in 1994, after thereligious practices of 40,000 or
so practitioners of the peyoteway were criminalized in the
(42:37):
1990 Employment Division v Smithcase, after they had using
religious freedom language, woncases in the court to protect
the sort of bona fide religiousnature of the peyote way, when
that Supreme Court decisioncriminalized peyote.
(42:58):
Supreme Court decisioncriminalized peyote.
An almost unanimous Congressfrom the left and from the right
came together to write theReligious Freedom Restoration
Act which restored religiousfreedom rights through statute
that the court at that time hadso narrowed that Congress said
(43:20):
the courts had lost touch.
Anyway, to make a long storyshort, native peoples were not
part of that Religious FreedomRestoration Act coalition.
They weren't invited and theydidn't want them there because
the point was not to sanctionpeyote in the Religious Freedom
(43:43):
Restoration Act.
And from what I understand frominterviews with Suzanne Harjo
is that they got together, theseleaders and thinkers it
included Walter Echo Hawk fromNARF and other Steve Moore from
NARF, the lawyers there and theydecided that they would get
Congress to pass an amendment tothe Native-specific Religious
(44:07):
Freedom Act, the American IndianReligious Freedom Act, and give
it legal teeth.
And they were able to do that.
And I think that's amazing.
What they, in my view, do thereis not to say amazing.
What they in my view do thereis not to say here is an
American Indian version of thereligious freedom rights of
(44:27):
everybody else, but it's becauseit's hardwired into the
treaty-based politicalsovereignty of Native nations
and their members.
They get the protection for useof peyote tied to citizenship
in Native nations.
Now that invites the wholerecognition process, which is
(44:52):
colonial and so forth, but itdoes put it's not sort of just
religion as everybody seems tounderstand it.
It's kind of a collectiverecognition of collective rights
and responsibilities toreligion that are secured there.
(45:15):
And something like that I thinkhappens also in the Native
American Graves Protection andRepatriation Act, where it's
tribes and members of tribes asI'm using the word tribe because
that's the language in the act,but it's sovereign nations
(45:38):
because that's the language inthe act, but it's sovereign
nations.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
But yeah you're reminding me of our colleague
Houston Smith's role in theNative American church right,
him working together with RubenSnake, you know, a road man, and
writing One Nation Under God,which had a profound effect in
that reversal of the US SupremeCourt.
One of the things that Houstonalways talks about, or talked
(46:09):
about at the time, was thatthere was such a broad base
coalition of really Christiandenominations across the board
that supported in amicus briefsor whatever it was, their
petition to the US Supreme Courtto overturn the criminalization
(46:33):
of peyote or the NativeAmerican church, that it was
religion as a kind of unifiedfront that pushed against that.
Yeah, because the idea was well, if you know, native American
church can lose their standing,it can happen to anybody, right?
(46:56):
So I don't know.
If that was a moment, you know,I don't know, but who's
determining it?
Speaker 3 (47:03):
The United States Again acting as the guardian
over Indian nations and what'sheld sacred.
This is really not defendingthe sacred held sacred.
(47:24):
This is really not defendingthe sacred.
It's trying to fit indigenousnations in some kind of loophole
where they can, you know, smokepeyote or it's.
It's really kind of a back doorapproach rather than just
honoring the treaties, thatwhich is also the Supreme Court
of the land according to theConstitution.
So why are we even movingforward?
Why is the US criminalizingNative people for smoking peyote
(47:49):
if that's their tradition?
I don't even know how this comesabout, and I worked at NAR for
a short while.
Like I said, I had problems withthat because they work in that
system where the US is theguardian of Native nations and
they work with the tribal chiefsthat are recognized by the
(48:10):
United States, who have gonethrough the boarding school
system and have pretty much hadtheir culture erased from them
Growing up.
I always assumed, because up atAkwesasne we have a BIA
government as well and I alsoknow there are traditional
people up there, but I grew upin the city of Syracuse, so in
my heart I believe the tribalgovernment was protecting the
(48:34):
traditional people, but that isnot the case, because these um,
elective systems were, wereforeign, they were new.
They disrupted, disruptedeverything in those territories
and silenced the voices oftraditional people, and that's
(48:54):
what's happened cross-boardthroughout history.
And so if these laws are beingrefined through NARF, they're
working with these tribalgovernments who are not the
ceremonial leaders in thoseterritories.
They're recognized by theUnited States of being
interlopers and to get you knowat resources or put in pipelines
(49:20):
, you know they weren't the ones.
The tribal leaders were not theones out there demonstrating at
Standing Rock.
I can assure you.
Speaker 5 (49:30):
Well, wouldn't that be like?
Maybe that's true of many,maybe it's even true of most,
but to the degree that at leastsome, maybe it's even true of
most, but to the degree that atleast some nations have, like,
revised their constitutions andtried to be at work on the
colonial nature of the BIAhistory and the earlier
(49:50):
constitutions that they had.
Speaker 3 (49:55):
I'm not arguing For one thing we had indigenous
forms of democracy all over theAmericas that had systems of
bringing people in agreement,forming a consensus among the
people.
We didn't vote.
Onondaga the Haudenosaunee donot vote within their clan
(50:16):
structure.
When the United States imposedthese BIA governments, the
Haudenosaunee do not vote withintheir clan structure.
When the United States imposedthese BIA governments all over
the country, they first of allestablished well, the church,
before the BIA governmentsestablished the patriarchy, and
then the government establishedthese voting systems, which is
(50:38):
really quite divisive.
It's not a unifying venture aswe see today.
It's pretty violent and dividesfamilies and friends.
And you know, I don't know howit's going to heal working with
these federally imposed systemsof domination all over the
(51:00):
Americas and working in thiscourt of law when this is not
how indigenous people operated.
They didn't operate under law.
Like I said, it was underrelational systems that sustain
each other the waters, the air,all of it.
So it's really problematic towork in law and think we're
(51:24):
going to resolve this disconnectbetween what's sacred and
what's religion.
So it's really problematic, butwe all need to be talking about
it.
So it's really, you know, it'stime we have to be talking about
where are we going?
Where are we going to continue?
Speaker 2 (51:44):
I think that's what On this path, really it's.
I think that's what the Mohawkstudent was saying essentially.
And you know, as you know,we've had you, you've been a
guest in Onondaga Nationterritory and we've introduced
(52:05):
you to their legal counsel andTatadaho and everything, and
being in Onondaga Nationterritory is quite fundamentally
different, which is whatSandy's talking about.
That is, you know, they arefederally recognized, they are
one of the 574 native tribalnations.
We'll say that are federallyrecognized, but they are not.
(52:32):
What?
Can you move your microphone?
Speaker 5 (52:37):
down a little, it's too high, because every time you
scratch your neck.
All I hear is you scratching?
Speaker 4 (52:44):
Oh no, you're scratching your neck.
I'm trying to keep my.
Speaker 5 (52:48):
So take it from the top with Onondaga Nation,
because I think that's important.
Speaker 2 (52:53):
As we know, onondaga Nation is federally recognized,
one of the 574 federallyrecognized Native American
nations, but it's one of onlythree that have not accepted the
Bureau of Indian Affairsgovernment on their territory,
(53:13):
the IAEA government.
So that means they're stillgoverned by their clan, their
natural Indian clan systemthat's been present for
thousands of years.
Speaker 3 (53:25):
It's not by the measure of blood, it's through
the matrilineal clanship,through the mother, yeah,
through the mother.
So very different.
Speaker 2 (53:38):
And they don't hold BIA cards Right, and they have
been very active internationallyas we know, and but there have
been a lot of native nations whohave accepted BIA, governments
that are very interested in howthey managed to do that right.
They have been consultants toother, as you were saying,
(54:02):
michael, you know that othergovernments have been wondering
well, how do we get out of this?
You know, how do we moreembrace those original
instructions and let those beour guide for the governance of
our territories?
So I think there is a kind ofmovement to unwind those kind of
(54:35):
domineering systems in some way, at least among some Native
leaders.
Speaker 3 (54:42):
Then we have some Native people who say it wasn't
until 1924 that we becamecitizens of the United States.
Well, the Onondaga, who's thecapital of the Haudenosaunee.
They went to Washington DC andsaid we do not accept this.
This could be interpreted, somesaid, as an act of war, because
(55:05):
if we are you, then ourtreaties become null and void.
You don't have a treaty withyourself.
Speaker 2 (55:14):
They've always taken that hard line Right.
And you know, one of theconsequences of that, like just
in September, was the return of1,000 acres of land the first,
really the largest return ofland to any Native nation in the
United States, in the UnitedStates.
(55:38):
And they insisted that it wouldnot be held in trust, because
there is no trust, I guess.
But then it would be notencumbered in any way.
It was a gift and it had norelationship to the state ever
(55:58):
again, right, wow.
So they managed to pull thatoff, and I think it had to do
with them sticking to theirvalues, right yeah, the values
of the great law of peace.
And I think other Nativenations are looking at this and
(56:19):
going hmm, you know, maybe thelegal pathway is not really the
best well, there's very strongmedicine societies around Indaga
.
Speaker 3 (56:30):
Very rigorous ceremonial cycle every month for
medicines and leaders ofdifferent species of life that
we interact with.
That's their main focus.
Speaker 2 (56:44):
And the reintroduction, as we talked
about, of the brook trout, whichis native to our area of the
country.
Speaker 5 (56:56):
Yeah, the country you know, uh-huh, yeah.
Well, it's also so instructivethat the Haudenosaunee were the
sort of original native set ofnations to go to international
law as international law startedto come into focus in the early
(57:17):
20th century with the League ofNations.
And I think it's important tomake sure that this conversation
doesn't sort of stop withfederal Indian law, because I
agree completely with you thatnothing is going to be resolved
through something that's sotilted against sovereignty.
(57:39):
So for sure that the UNDeclaration, the final chapter
of this book and what I supposeI have the most hope for and the
least ability to speak about,like um, speak about uh, is um,
(58:04):
the, the, the possibilities ofum, the UN Declaration on the
Rights of Indigenous Peoples, asat least a beginning step in
clarifying how um the scenarioin uh among Native nations and
the United States should gogoing forward.
And one of the things that Ispeak about in the book is that
(58:27):
to this definitional problem.
The word religion appears therea couple times, but it's not a
power word in the UN Declarationin the way that it is in the
United States Constitution.
Oh, that's a good point.
But the whole declaration, all46 articles, are shot through
with references to spiritualrelationships, to the sacred
(58:52):
really, and Article 25, for me,clarifies that land rights are
rights, among other things.
Land rights are not just sortof political or economic rights,
but they're also rights to aspiritual relationship and the
ability to maintain andstrengthen spiritual
(59:13):
relationships and obligations tofuture generations of those.
It's a beautifully put articleand I would love to talk to your
interlocutors in Onondaga thatwere part of that process to
find out like how did Article 25come about?
Because it's kind of a preambleto a series of articles that are
(59:33):
about land rights, but it sortof starts on a different
foundation than Western propertysystems and because of that it
also includes ongoingaffirmation of human rights,
indigenous human rights, torelationships with lands that
are traditional, lands andwaters that are traditional, but
(59:55):
where that nation may notcontrol those lands anymore,
which in Minnesota is verypoignant in the part of
Minnesota where we are, becausethe Dakota were formally exiled
in 1863 from their lands inMinnesota and all the treaty
rights of the Treaty of 1837 andthe Treaty of 1851 were
(01:00:19):
abrogated and all thoseannuities were steered toward
settlers who had been quote thevictims end.
Quote of the anti-colonialresistance that some not all
some Dakota people put when theywere starving because the US
wasn't paying its treatyobligations.
(01:00:39):
So the fact that there is aright to an ongoing relationship
to those lands, even ones thatare in private ownership, is
huge.
And.
Speaker 2 (01:00:53):
I mean, of course you know that it was behind,
according to the engine behindthe?
U the UN Declaration on theRights of Indigenous Peoples,
was Tonya Gunilla-Frichner, whowas Anand Vaga of the Snipe Clan
(01:01:14):
and the executive director ofthe American Indian Law Alliance
at the time and justimmediately before that.
This is kind of a footnote, butimmediately before that, the
Onondaga Nation filed their landrights action in federal court
and the preamble for that isthat the land rights action was
(01:01:36):
really focused on the rights ofthe land, not a land claims, you
know, which would be a kind ofshift in who owns the properties
, but rather you know therecognition that the land has
been mistreated in so many waysand that the Onondaga are
(01:01:58):
looking for recognition thatthis is their traditional
territory about 2.5 millionacres right through New York
State and that they need to beat the table in decisions that
are being made on behalf of theland right and the beings that
(01:02:18):
inhabit those lands.
So they were operating with thisagain.
They were operating at thelevel of sort of water is life.
You know that same kind ofresonance, right?
That so many people in our areajust thought, yeah, I'm on
(01:02:42):
board, right, and that's that'swhere we started doing
programming with neighbors ofthe onondaga nation or noon.
Uh, su got involved and nowit's 20 years on and we're going
to have another round of these,uh, sort these retrospective
and where we've come since, butanyway, so there is a kind of
(01:03:04):
legacy there.
Speaker 3 (01:03:06):
Right, but at Onondaga the traditional voice
has the political clout in theinternational stage because
they're recognized.
How do we empower all thetraditional voices all over the
Americas, you know, when thetribal governments are not that
(01:03:30):
voice?
They're not.
They're working in consort withthe United States and
negotiating all the time andreceiving funds from the United
States.
The traditional people wouldnot be doing that because
there's too much at stake withwhat they know about living as
(01:03:51):
human beings on this earth.
So many of them don't vote.
I know they don't vote amongthe Haudenosaunee.
Traditional people will notpartake of a foreign entity
that's been forced on them asystem of voting.
It's nothing they ever didbefore.
It's a consensus breakingrather than building.
(01:04:13):
So there are still traditionalpeople all over the Americas.
How do we strengthen thosevoices?
They were trying to do that atStanding Rock, but they had no
real political clout because theBIA government there was really
in control and it was throughembarrassing.
You know their own leadership,but it's dangerous too to get up
(01:04:36):
and demonstrate like that.
There's a lot at stake.
Well, there are a lot of peoplethat are thrown in jail, for
sure, absolutely we won'tmention wounded knee and what
happened, you know, in the earlydays, but you know but I do
think, like Michael was saying,I do think they were to a large
degree successful.
Speaker 2 (01:04:56):
In a way, they kind of won the.
I wouldn't want to reduce it toPR but you know they really
they were to a large degreesuccessful.
in a way, they kind of won the.
I wouldn't want to reduce it toPR, but they really did
galvanize a kind of globalattention because of the
simplicity of their message andit's very similar to what Anand
Dhaka was doing in 2005, justbefore UNDRIP came, you know,
(01:05:19):
was voted on in 2007.
So I think that there is a kindof lineage there that could be
unpacked and I hadn't thought ofit before.
You mentioned it.
Speaker 3 (01:05:31):
Yeah, and they also had allyship.
There were a lot of non-Nativepeople that were going out there
standing with them.
Yeah, you know.
So maybe that's what I'm tryingto get across.
Speaker 2 (01:05:40):
Yes, yes.
We need to support those voicesthat is Standing Rock as well
as the Onondaga Land Rights ActRight.
Speaker 5 (01:05:47):
One of the things that the UN Declaration in the
space of religious, the rightsto religious freedom, or the
rights to responsibility, thefreedom to continue to follow
original instructions or tofulfill your obligations to all
(01:06:11):
your relations.
One of the ways that goes downin the UN Declaration that's
worth a shout out here is that apower word, as you know, is
free, prior and informed consent.
So the Declaration recognizesthe sort of, at its best, united
(01:06:35):
States law calls inherentsovereignty, but the rights to
peoplehood of indigenous peoplesand with that the rights to
free, prior and informed consentto actions, development, et
cetera that happens on theirtraditional territories and
(01:06:56):
waters with impacts to theirrelations, as we've been
speaking, and that's a reallyimportant and powerful
corrective to the world that,sandy, you're criticizing.
That is in this book that I'mtalking about a lot, the world
(01:07:17):
of just consultation, which canbe done to varying degrees.
But there's a standard ofconsultation that the United
States holds itself to, thoughit's differentially enforced and
inhabited by different agenciesand et cetera, et cetera.
But there's a differencebetween consultation being able
(01:07:41):
to say you consulted with thenative nations, um, and what
that might look like if thestandard were free, prior and
informed consent.
And um, at least as Iunderstand it, um, the
irrational fear of that languageon the part of the United
States or other member states ofthe UN is that it's a veto
(01:08:03):
power to doing anything withinthe territory of the United
States.
And that seems kind ofirrational because what the
sovereign nations are saying isthey want to be respected and be
at the table.
Exactly sovereign nations aresaying is they want to be
respected and be at the tableright exactly, and and so they
may or may not be pushing, theymight veto something that that's
(01:08:27):
really matters to them, butthey might have another position
.
But just respect theirsovereignty and their ability to
speak from their sovereignposition.
It it's that irrational fearthat and that's part of the
problem with the sacred landprotection stuff, the slippery
slope fear of judges that well,if we grant this case at Oak
(01:08:50):
Flat or whatever, theneverybody's going to claim it
and that's kind of the languageof religion.
But the language of religion,but the language of representing
or respecting peoplehood andsovereignty, is, is a respect
for other people to be at thetable and say what their
priorities are and to give them,you know, full respect that
(01:09:13):
they they might approach itdiplomatically, not just like,
as you know, they're going toveto absolutely everything that
has anything to do with theirtraditional territories.
Speaker 2 (01:09:30):
After all, they know their territories better than
anyone.
So let me take a pause here andask is there anything else that
you want to talk about, or doyou want to get to something?
Speaker 5 (01:09:45):
Well, the one thing I do want to say and I'm not sure
how long it takes for thepost-production of your
broadcasts yeah, we're alllooking over to Adam and
grateful for the work that goesinto that.
Speaker 1 (01:10:00):
I have to say.
Speaker 5 (01:10:01):
I've not listened to every one of your podcasts, but
I really.
I really appreciate them.
Thank you, so good work.
But the one thing that I dowant to say is that this is an
interesting moment to be havingthis conversation because in the
Oak Flat case the losses incourt for a religious freedom
(01:10:29):
right to sacred place protectionfor Native peoples just got
kind of amped up by the NinthCircuit, which is in a way the
most powerful of the circuitcourts of appeal in the federal
court system, and it has becauseit was such a convoluted and
(01:10:50):
complex decision.
There was a 6-5 majority andthen a dissent which was also
six people, so there's likeoverlapping dissent.
It's the most.
I can't even describe to youhow complicated this thing is.
(01:11:10):
There were seven differentdecisions, there were 11 judges
and seven different decisionsconcurring opinion with this and
that it's just completelyobfuscatory.
And because of that, and alsobecause this particular
conservative Supreme Court mightbe looking for bona fides for
(01:11:32):
its own respectability onreligious freedom issues that
religious freedom is not justgoing to protect majority
Christians with a particularkind of angle of Christianity
there is a chance that the OakFlat case gets taken up by the
Supreme Court.
And if it does get taken up, Idon't think the answer is that
(01:11:54):
it's dead on arrival.
Honestly, because kind ofthrough the back door, because
Justice Gorsuch and JusticeRoberts and maybe some of the
other conservatives are keen tomake sure that they have some
respectability, especially inthis Trump moment, I think
there's a chance maybe that'sway too much faith that courts
(01:12:17):
are going to recognize a rightto religious freedom on native
sacred place protections.
I mean, the facts there arebreathtaking.
Right, the copper mine is goingto completely.
It's going to create a craterabout the size of a meteor
(01:12:38):
crater in this sacred terrain.
That's not disputed factuallyand yet somehow still the courts
are saying that there's nosubstantial burden to use the
term of art on the religiousexercise of native peoples when
it's going to destroy the sacredplace.
(01:13:00):
Yeah, um.
So who knows, maybe, maybe atsome point this, maybe there's a
surprise in it I'm looking atsome pretty, um, uh, skeptical
faces here um, that theS courtswould ever do anything.
(01:13:21):
But maybe in this instance,there's a little bit of a
victory through the back doorthat might make a huge
difference, even if it's not aresolution to the issues that
we're talking about, but mightreally change the nature of the
way that sovereign nations couldnegotiate their priorities.
Speaker 2 (01:13:41):
Well, I hope you're right.
That would certainly be amonumental decision, but I have
my doubts, especially in thismoment.
You know where I think we'rereally, because you know we're
(01:14:02):
not in the moment of NativeAmerican church right, or 1994,
right.
We're in the moment of 30 yearslater and kind of the rise of
white Christian nationalism,yeah so, and we have several of
those on the court.
(01:14:24):
So I'm not sure I hope that theycan see that this is a
religious issue that might havesomething to do with them, you
know, and their traditions.
Speaker 3 (01:14:35):
Well, that's a good place to end this session.
I think, Just a little bit ofhope.
Yeah, that's all we can doright now, the next few months.
Speaker 5 (01:14:50):
But again, a loss in court isn't ever the end of the
story for people who have thelong view and, like the Dakota
folks at Prairie Island that Iwork with, say we've been here
10,000 years, here, the last 200years of the doctrine of
discovery as it's been actuallylike in felt by them in
(01:15:11):
Minnesota, you know beginning inthe early 1800s, late 1700s.
It's a blip in the 10,000 yearmap and they have every
expectation that they're stillgoing to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:15:22):
That, I think, is correct.
Right, it's just a blip, andit's one that well you know
Americans in their idea, theirkind of triumphal narrative
about ourselves.
Right, as Americans we tend tocelebrate, but it's true, in the
(01:15:46):
long durée of the place itself,of the land itself, there is a
future, even if it's not with usin it.
Speaker 5 (01:16:03):
Let's get back on that sailing ship out in the
harbor.
Turn it around, get out of here, for vacation or something.
Speaker 2 (01:16:14):
Thanks for the opportunity.
Well, thank you, michael.
This has been great.
I knew it would be.
You know, and and I know we'llwork together on many of these
things, you know going forward,I hope so alright, definitely be
so, thanks the producers ofthis podcast were Adam DJ Brett
and Jordan Lone Colon.
Speaker 1 (01:16:35):
Our intro and outro is social dancing 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
make sure to subscribe.
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