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March 22, 2021 21 mins

Dylan experienced a childhood that most people don’t even know still exists and it ended up shifting his entire worldview for the rest of his life. 

Dylan references two amazing resources for Land Acknowledgment: 

https://www.verizon.com/about/news/whose-land-text-find-out

https://native-land.ca/

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dylan (00:00):
I think we could easily say that white people as a whole

(00:13):
do not understand what people ofcolor go through, do not
understand that experience ofwhat it is to be a person of
color in the country. And whatdoes that do to people when we
don't know? It prevents a senseof community across the country.
And really the work is on whitepeople. You know, white people
need to learn the history

DB Crema (00:35):
This is United States of Race, personal stories of how
our earliest memories determinea lifetime of relationships.
Each episode features one guestsharing their experiences with
race. Listen, without prejudiceto their real, uninhibited
stories, because, by sharingwhen we first learned we are all
different, we find the commonthread that shows us how much we

(00:58):
are all the same. I'm your host,DB Crema. Dylan grew up
somewhere many people don't evenknow still exists, and it ended
up shifting his entire worldviewfor the rest of his life. Check
out the show notes for links tothe websites mentioned in
today's show.

(01:19):
So when did you first becomeaware of race?

Dylan (01:23):
I first became aware of race - it had to have been when
I moved to the reservation, whenI was seven years old. And my
parents were kind of products ofthe 60s. They had lived in
Alaska and the first six monthsof my life was in a tent, in
Fairbanks, Alaska over thewinter. And it was the time of

(01:44):
the Vietnam War, you know, early70s. And I think they wanted to
just get away from society orget as far away as possible. And
then they traveled acrosscountry and eventually settled
in Salt Lake City, Nevada. Andthat's where my dad worked for
the post office. And then he gothired as postmaster on a

(02:05):
reservation. And so I rememberwhen they told us we were
moving, they said I'd have a newclass, and it would be all
Native Americans. And I didn'tknow what to expect. And in my
head, I didn't know what aNative American looked like. But
of course, I remember firstgrade in Salt Lake,
Thanksgiving, you know, dressingup, like Native Americans and

(02:26):
pilgrims. And I remember apicture of me with construction
paper and markers. And I wasdressed up like a Native
American, but I didn't know whata real Native American looked
like. In my head, in my littleseven year old head I imagined
black kids in a classroom. Youknow, that's, that's going to be
my new home. And I remembervividly driving to the

(02:48):
reservation, I remember arrivingthere seeing a young Native
American kid my age riding hisbike, looking at us. And, and
yeah, that was definitely thefirst time. I would say, you
know, who I am today wasabsolutely, hugely impacted by
that upbringing. You know, ingrowing up there, because I

(03:09):
lived there for 10 years. Veryformidable age, seven to 17. My
parents were there for over 23years. It's just such a part of
me. And sometimes I feel likeI'm the product of an
experiment. Because I'm white. Imean, I'm kind of the whitest
guy out there. And yet, I havethis background like and it

(03:32):
really gave me a different pointof view on the world.

DB Crema (03:37):
What did it feel like when you were growing up? Right,
you're in minority in a smallecology, and then in the grander
scheme of the country, you stillhold these certain privileges
that come with being themajority. And in some respects,
your father being thepostmaster, you're almost part
of the community in a permanentway, but you're still elevated

(03:58):
in a kind of removed sense frombeing in the community. How was
that? Like, just interactions?

Dylan (04:04):
Yeah, I mean, it was kind of thinking
growing up, okay, I'm gonnaleave this place like, this
isn't my place. And early on, Ifelt like a minority and
certainly, I heard lots ofstuff. I was called a, you know,
dirty white boy, white trash.

DB Crema (04:22):
All of the kids that you're in school with on the
reservation, they had seen whitepeople, but you had never seen a
Native American.

Dylan (04:29):
Yeah. And I remember, early on too, probably second
grade, we were in line in theschool and a kid came up to me
and said, you stole our land.
And he was really mad about it.
And I didn't know how to react.
I didn't know what to think orhow to react.

DB Crema (04:45):
Did you know what he was talking about?

Dylan (04:47):
No, not really. I mean it. It became clear over time.
And then there was also, justthe sort of the passive kind of
feeling where, somebody justdoesn't like you. Even from
teachers occasionally, you know.
I never really knew what it was.

(05:07):
And now that I'm older, Irealize it's probably because I
was white, you know. There werewhite people that lived on the
reservation, but they alwaysmoved on. You know, they were
always either doctors or theywere from a nearby town that was
sort of a mining town, ranching.
So there were white people thatcame, but they always went to my
parents just stayed there. Andas I was growing up, I always

(05:28):
kind of felt out of place like Iwas different. I don't know if
you ever heard of this famouschildren's author, Leo Leoni, I
think, but he wrote a book abouta fish. And, you know, this one
red fish in a school of blackfish just always felt different.
But in the story, the fish getthreatened by this big fish, and

(05:49):
the big fish is going to eat allthe little fish. But what they
do is they get into a shape of abigger fish, and Frederick is
the eye. So it's this big blackfish made up of these little
tiny fish. So I always reallyidentified with that story. And
I think over time, there wasdefinitely an acceptance and
definite kinship with them. Andand early on, I got in trouble

(06:15):
with a group of kids. And thatwas, I think, important to kind
of form a bond with my peers.
And I remember what it was, waslike six or seven of us kids
kind of got together in the backof the classroom, and they had a
pencil, like a pencil, and theywere putting the lead from the
pencil on the back of a brush.
And then they would take it andthey would put it on our, you

(06:38):
know, on our face, like it waswar psint. Kind of these marks.
We all did that and we got introuble and got taken to the
principal's office. And Iremember, he kind of scolded us
and took us all to the restroomso we could wash it off. And
then I remember him just yellingand screaming like, never do
this again. Or that he wouldstart giving swats you know. So

(07:00):
just like, the fear, and it wasa scary time, but at the same
time it kind of bonded me withwith my peers.

DB Crema (07:09):
Yeah.

Dylan (07:10):
In one sense on the living there is it's such a
sense of community, such a senseof love, and in a way, one big
family. And there were regularevents like powwows, and rodeos
were really big there. And justthese sort of community
ceremonial celebrations that wegot to take part in.

(07:33):
It was always, they were alwaysvery welcoming. And when I was
in seventh grade, I was in band,I played the trumpet in band,
and I was asked to play Taps, atfunerals for soldiers who had
passed on. And I did thatprobably three or four times. At
that age, I was maybe not thatexcited about doing it, but in

(07:55):
hindsight, I was like, Wow,that's really cool that I did
that. And so I had gone toseveral funerals for Native
American elders who had beensoldiers, and they wanted Taps
played at the funeral. And Iplayed it.

DB Crema (08:06):
What an honor.

Dylan (08:08):
Yeah, I mean, experiences like that, that are that are
priceless. And I, you know, whenI look back at my time, growing
up there, I have some of thebest memories. And now being
older, in my, you know, mid 40s,the more years go by, the more I
feel this kind of urgent,urgency to hang on to, it to

(08:28):
sort of maintain it to be a partof it.

DB Crema (08:30):
The urgent sense of holding on to what exactly?

Dylan (08:33):
I guess that experience, you know. The sense of urgency
now is that, you know, I didn'tknow, the history of Native
Americans, you know, the historyof this country. I didn't know
that growing up. And it wasn'ttill I left, and I went to
college, and I started readingbooks and educating myself that
I became aware of that part ofour history. And I think the

(08:54):
urgency is, is to do somethingto help, you know. Because you
learn the history, and it's apolicy of genocide by the US
government. And it's ongoing.
And that's what the urgency is.
To do something to make adifference. And, I think there's
a sense of- and I'm not speakingfor Native Americans, but I

(09:15):
think they might feel a sense ofinvisibility in society. Society
doesn't know. I mean, we've beenfed, I guess, I don't want to
say lies, but we've just been,we haven't been told the truth.
And it's this sort of theAmerican story, the American
myth, we've been fed thesemyths. And oftentimes, when I
would, people would ask where Iwas from. And I was always not

(09:37):
quite sure what to say. Like,because if I say I'm from an
Indian reservation, or a NativeAmerican reservation, first
question is, are you a NativeAmerican? I would say no. It'd
be like, why did you live there?
And, you know, when you meetpeople, they're always trying to
sort of size you up and to placeyou. And it always comes
inevitably. And people sometimessay that I have a different

(09:57):
accent and they're always tryingto say, Where are you from? And
whenever they guess they alwayseither guess Canadian or Irish.
And I think because I spent 10years there, you know I can,
there is a different way oftalking on the reservation. When
you go back there, all of asudden, I'm back and talking
with that accent in a reallystrong way. So the right answer
is the accent is Shoshone andPaiute, the two tribes there. So

(10:21):
that's why I was getting back tolike this feeling of maybe
invisibility, the idea thatsociety doesn't really know. And
the kind of, the reallyhorrifying thought is that maybe
society doesn't care. And justfeeling invisible. I think
that's a part of thatexperience.

DB Crema (10:45):
I mean, to your point, though, I've come across the
fact that there are a lot ofpeople in the US who don't even
realize that there arereservations in this country and
that there is a large, not largeenough, but large Native
American population.

Dylan (10:58):
Yeah. Not so much lately.
But when I was in college,people would ask me where I was
from? And I would tell them.
Oftentimes, the first questionwas, do they still live in
teepees? And just...

DB Crema (11:09):
Really?

Dylan (11:10):
Yeah, and that just shows how little is known about them.
When really, it's our country'shistory. It's like, you could
look at our, the state of ourcountry today and all of the
problems, I believe you couldtrace them back to the
beginnings of the country, andreally, the policies of
indigenous land theft andgenocide. It's almost like, if a

(11:35):
person commits a murder, andthey never come to terms with
it, they're never brought tojustice, they just kind of bury
it in their head and years go byand eventually it's going to
surface, right? Psychologically,that is going to come out. And I
think that might be what'shappening to America on a large
scale now with this racialreckoning. The intense divide in

(11:56):
the country. I think it's um, aculture of hate in America
that's been around since thebeginning. And it's in the
Declaration of Independence,right? Merciless Indian savages
is written in our Declaration ofIndependence.

DB Crema (12:10):
I didn't know that.

Dylan (12:12):
You know, and yet, you can't look at the country
without seeing native wordseverywhere, you know. Every
town, every river and mountainrange, you know. And if you
learn about the genocide, itreally is incredible that, yeah,
they're still here. There's anelement to kind of, because of
the scale of the loss, you know,I've heard various numbers, but,

(12:34):
you know, what's the scale ofthe genocide? 100 million or so,
over the course of a few 100years. But, it's almost a sense
of mourning, like a constantstate of mourning for those who
we've lost. And I currentlyteach at a community college, I
teach cinema. And I always liketo bring it up to my students

(12:55):
also. And, for the most part,when I ask them, what have you
learned about it?, it's not muchat all. I think the American
education system really needs anoverhaul. But I will say that
among younger college students,there's a really intense
curiosity. And I would say theywant to know. And for me,
growing up on the reservationwas one thing, but then leaving

(13:18):
and educating myself andbecoming aware of the true
history was also, it was mindblowing. Like when I was in Salt
Lake as a first grader, Iremember watching movies in
school about ChristopherColumbus and kind of the myth of
America. And then to contrastthat to living on the
reservation. And then we watchedmovies of Chief Joseph, one of

(13:41):
the battles and, you know, theywould show the aftermath. And
whenever they showed all thedead, white soldiers, everybody
cheered in the classroom. So itwas really these two kind of
polar opposites. One is a myththat sort of fed to American
kids growing up. And the otherone is, is really something that

(14:03):
people don't know about.

DB Crema (14:06):
Something I find fascinating is that, you know,
you were talking about yourparents kind of being the types
that wanted to get away fromsociety. But yet, then your dad
took a job with the government.
And you went to a place that hassimultaneously a ton of
government oversight, while asevere lack of government
services, often. It's just kindof the antithesis of getting

(14:29):
away from society.

Dylan (14:32):
Right.
It's a real paradox. I know.
Yeah. And maybe that's why Isort of wrestle with stuff on a
day to day basis. And you know,I think Native Americans on the
reservation feel like yeah, thegovernment might just come in
and take it all. They have inthe history. I mean, throughout
much of the 20th century, therewas the government pushing this

(14:54):
termination policies. So get ridof reservations and force Native
Americans to assimilate intosociety. Because there's a
movement called the land backmovement.

DB Crema (15:07):
Can you tell me about the land back movement?

Dylan (15:09):
Yeah, it's part of a contemporary indigenous
resistance school of thoughtwhere the government should
return lands to NativeAmericans. We should. America
should. And I think that's a waythat America could heal itself,
I think is to revisit theoriginal treaties, and what
would happen, why can't we startreturning this? If you want to

(15:31):
really heal the country, I thinkthat's a way to go. Because the
land was stolen. You know, inAmerica, the government entered
into treaties with nativenations. And if we believe in
the Constitution, the supremacyclause says essentially, treaty
law is the supreme law of theland. Governments don't make
treaties...they only maketreaties with sovereign nations.

(15:55):
So Native Americans andreservations, they are sovereign
nations. There's over 500 plussovereign Native American
nations. And yet, they've beenbroken, over and over. And, for
example, the big one, the 1868Fort Laramie treaty: that is a
size of land that covers much ofWyoming, Montana, and North

(16:18):
Dakota, South Dakota, the wholeBlack Hills. Like, it's
rightfully theirs. The SupremeCourt in, I think, 1980 or 1981,
they acknowledged. There's evena quote how there's no greater
example of just downright theft,then this. And they tried, they
wanted to pay the Lakota nation,like a billion dollars for it.

(16:38):
But Native Americans said, No,we want the land. So I think
something like the land backmovement, if we start returning
lands to Native Americans thatcould start putting us on the
right track.

DB Crema (16:52):
But what would that look like? You know, a land
restitution requires that thatland has to be taken now from
somebody else who has title toit. And so what would that look
like? And how do you respond topeople who, who say, you know,
right or wrong, what hashappened in the past is not
necessarily my responsibility tofix. I can't be accountable for

(17:14):
every single one of my ancestorsfrom the past 400 years and
their actions.

Dylan (17:18):
Yeah, but it's still something that the United States
government agreed to do. Hold upto your end of the bargain.
Because otherwise, America isnot what it wants to be America
is a great idea. We like to holdourselves out there as being the
sort of the highest, you know,in terms of morality in the
world. But if we're not abidingby our own treaties, our own

(17:42):
agreements, then we certainlycan't make that claim. So what
would it look like? That's whatI think America should set out
to do. I mean, I think it's, itwould be a matter of forming
Commission's and revisiting someof these original agreements,
and kind of just going throughin a very methodical way. You

(18:05):
know, because they'reall...there's 500 plus Native
American tribes in the countrythat are all sovereign nations.
They govern themselves justfine. And they will continue to
govern themselves. They wouldjust have more land.

DB Crema (18:20):
I mean, imagine that, in and of itself could be a
unifying process. If you broughteveryone together to go through
the process of how to enact it,how to roll it out what it would
look like, what happens to thosewho are leaving the land, what
that means for everyone. It canbe its own kind of
reconciliation process.

Dylan (18:39):
Absolutely. Yeah. When you look at the history that the
Dawes Act in the late 1800s. Thegeneral Allotment Act, where
they took these large swaths ofland that were Native Americans
by treaty law. Pretty much justdivided them up, gave them to
certain families, people, andthen whatever is the surplus,

(18:59):
they just sold to whitesettlers. Clearly, they didn't
have jurisdiction. Clearly. So Ithink we just, if we pride
ourselves on our laws and ourConstitution, we need to use
those to go back and, and Okay,what would it look like if we
did honor this agreement?
Somebody posted this articlewhere if you wanted to give your
house to the local tribe,there's like some people that

(19:21):
just do that when they pass on,if they don't have kids or so,
they just give it to the localNative American tribe. There's a
really cool map also that youcan text your location and it
will tell you what NativeAmerican land you're living on.
Oh, wow. And that's a kind of acool thing. And, the Oscars last
year. Taika Waititi, theDirector.

DB Crema (19:46):
The Kiwi actor, from New Zealand.

Dylan (19:48):
He gave a land acknowledgement when he spoke at
the Oscars. And I think that'ssomething that people could
start doing is just toacknowledge the land that you're
on. And it's a map that showsall the native nations in the
country. You know, you can pointto any area and sometimes there
are multiple nations if theykind of overlap. But you could

(20:11):
text in your location and it'lltell you what land you're on.
And so I think just Americanshaving an acknowledgment with
500 native tribes around thecountry, it's quite a new map.
It's not the map that we grew uplearning, but I think if people
did grow up with thisacknowledgement, then that
would, it would cause a world,it would cause a shift in our

(20:34):
worldview, I think.

DB Crema (20:46):
Thanks for listening to United States of Race. This
podcast was produced by me, DBCrema. Our artwork is designed
by Aly Creative, and ourrecordings are done via
SquadCast FM. With everythingbeing remote these days,
SquadCast delivers studioquality remote recording for all
your podcast needs. If you lovegreat storytelling, you can

(21:08):
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(21:30):
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