September 7, 2023 • 52 mins
Today we dive into the history and current state of Native American reservations. This serves as a nice follow-up to the Trail of Tears double-ep from 2017.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and that makes this stuff
you should know that, doodle Lee do.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
That's great.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Thanks, You're welcome. It has nothing to do with what
we're talking about. I don't believe, but it was worth saying.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
I think, uh, do you know what does what? The
season three of Reservation Dogs.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Yeah, that's why I figured you were Probably you suggested
this topic.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
It's not why actually, because I suggested this a long
time ago.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
I've been sitting on this one. I kind of forgot.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
But then Reservation Dog season three, the finale season started,
and I know talked about the show a lot, but
big recommendation. A show shot and crewed up and written
and directed and acted entirely by Native Americans. I believe
it's shot inside the Muscogee Nation Reservation.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
And it's great. It's one of the best shows ever. Wow.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
That's full throated endorsement. Man, I'll have to check it out.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
It's awesome.
Speaker 4 (01:22):
It's funny and heartwarming and sweet and meaningful, and it's
just really really good.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
I would also direct people to the movie Smoke Signals
that was made not too long ago. That, oh, yeah,
reservation life in a fairly lighthearted manner, but pretty accurately too.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
And we also want to caveat this by saying, this
is a very broad overview of Native American or American
Indian reservations. There's a lot to it, and certainly could
have been you know, like five or six episodes long.
But as we do, we try to give a good
broad overview.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
That's how we do.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
And if this episod, so does band in schools in
Florida listened to it outside of school.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Just go travel to Valdosta and download it and go
back to Florida exactly. That was an odd thing to say.
What's said is I have no idea what you're talking about,
but I can totally believe what you just said is real.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
Well, the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, is on a
push to keep children from being indoctrinated by true history
of our country. I see, and so he has, and
I believe it was in the Guba editorial debate, the
last one, he was saying that his opponent said it
(02:42):
was okay to teach that you know, some of the
land in America was stolen from the native indigenous people,
and he said, that's not appropriate for our schools, and
it's not true.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yeah, that's not true at all.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
No, it's not.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
And I'm not sure how you get away with just
saying completely entruy things on a debate stage.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
But yeah, that's where we are these days, for sure.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
So the very fact that reservations exist prove that that's true.
Because the entire reservation system that we still have today
that dates back to the nineteenth century and actually earlier,
it was and is entirely a way of removing Native
(03:25):
Americans from their traditional lands, putting them somewhere they probably
had never been and didn't know anybody, and then taking
that land away and increasingly shrink the land that they
have so that European colonists and then eventually Americans settlers
(03:45):
colonists could take that land for themselves. And the reservation
system is just proof that that is this. It was
this ongoing century plus long process that still has just
very fresh wounds today, like it's not like, Okay, that
happened in the past and things are good now. That
(04:06):
is not the case. In a lot of a lot
of places. It's that happened in the past and the
effects of it are still being felt generations later.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Yeah, for sure, and before we get emails from people
that say, you know, much of much of that land
was negotiated for and there were treaties over it and
deals made. That is that is certainly true, but much
of it was also outright seized. And that's that's just
a fact of what happened here.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
You know, dude, we don't need to debate somebody who's
trying to tell us that the Amerenta didn't steal land
from the Native America. They don't even deserve our attention, let.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Alone our breath, I agree these days.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
Just to start off with a stat for you, and
big thanks to Olivia for helping out with this one.
In the twenty twenty census, nine point seven million people
in these United States, yeah, identified as either Alaska Native
or American Indian.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
And although we'll talk a little bit about.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
The fact that the census isn't always accurate when it
comes to Native populations. Yeah, but one point two million,
thirteen percent of those people live on reservations today as
of you know, a few years ago.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Right, So we have yeah, a big population of Native Americans.
I think there's something like five hundred and thirty four
tribes recognized by the federal government as their own tribe.
But yeah, the vast majority do not live on reservations.
The reason that some people live on reservations because they
were born there, their parents were born there, that's just
(05:40):
where they were raised. But another reason that a lot
of Native Americans live on reservations is because that is
the place where they can still do whatever they can
to keep their culture alive in whatever ways that they can,
and they have a certain amount of self determination there
because in the United States, reservations are considered sovereign nations.
(06:03):
They're ruled by the tribe that whose reservation that is.
So that's why there's casinos, and that's why you can
buy cigarettes for super cheap on a reservation and all
sorts of other stuff. Why the state can't prosecute somebody
for a crime that happened on the reservation if they're
a member of the tribe, it's because it's like little
(06:24):
pockets of independent nations that exist in the United States.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
Yeah, it's a little convoluted, but generally it's there under
federal law. And purview, but not under state law. So
like you were saying, that's why you can have casinos
in states where you otherwise could not.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Yeah, and I saw that even the federal law is
usually kind of just the big stuff. Sure, yeah, but
states have almost no jurisdiction. And Oklahoma was really really
pushing recently to I guess, gain more jurisdiction over members
of tribes there, because Oklahoma is about half reservation these days.
(07:01):
But there was a Supreme Court ruling in McGirt versus
Oklahoma in twenty twenty that said, no, states, including Oklahoma,
have no jurisdiction to prosecute tribal members of crimes that
happened on tribal land, and they're having to dismiss tons
of cases just outright because Oklahoma, I guess kind of
(07:22):
went buck wilde and started arresting people on tribal land,
knowing full well that this has been recognized for nearly
a century if not longer, that the tribe whose reservation
that is is essentially a sovereign nation.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Yeah. So I say we kind of start with.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
After maybe the quickest overview of how this happened to
begin with, start with the with how the system evolved
to begin with. We don't need to go over everything
before that because we have covered a lot of it
before in our are really, if I may say so,
really great two part episode on the Trail of Tears
from twenty twenty seventeen I think twenty seventeen, and that
(08:06):
was the one where Hulk himself, Mark Ruffalo tweeted out
about that one.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Remember that's right, Yeah, yeah for sure.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
And we were like, holy cow, doctor Banner listens to
our show.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Right, the Hulk doesn't, Doctor Banner does?
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Yeah, of course Hulk Smash when.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
He turns into the Hulk, he's like, what is this crap?
When you know when it's still playing, So.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Hulk Smash podcast.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
I would also I would also direct people to the
Louisiana Purchase one too, that had a lot to do
with this as well.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
Sure that was a good one, but I will just
say in like a sentence that Native Americans were generally
forced west and further west, and then as we decided,
well we actually want to live west now, they were
squeezed into smaller and smaller spaces because you know, we
(08:56):
renigged on deals on like hey, this is your land.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
We kind of actually want that now, And.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
They were squeezed into smaller and smaller territories in what
was known as Indian Territory, much of which ended up
in Oklahoma, right.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
And there was from the outset basically too pronged effort
to move Native Americans further and further west. And that
was through violence and through treaties essentially. And like you said,
those treaties would be negotiated, but they would also be broken.
But some of them are still intact. There's actually reservations
(09:31):
that are state recognized because of a treaty that the
tribe had with the state that goes back sometimes to
colonial days. But a lot of them were broken, for sure.
But it was a patchwork of different localities and different
colonies and different states that were negotiating with the tribes
they needed to negotiate with to get their land. It
(09:54):
wasn't until eighteen fifty one that the federal government said,
forget this patchwork stuff. We're going to create like a
federal system of recognizing and moving Native Americans on to land,
settling them onto reservations. It was the Indian Appropriations Act
of eighteen fifty one.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
Yeah, and that was basically, here's some funding. We're going
to move you where we say you should go, and
you should become more like us. Basically, you should live
your life a little more like us. You should farm
like us.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Shop at the Gap, Yeah, the gap.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Where podcaster Chuck worked for a couple of months. Sure,
how many times did I talk about that yesterday at
our book events?
Speaker 1 (10:32):
A lot?
Speaker 3 (10:32):
I came up, like four times. Yeah, be a little
bit more like us.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
Eat the stuff that we eat, even though it's not
the stuff that you usually eat. And you know what,
maybe we'll even send you some food sometimes and supplies
when we feel like it. And so what if some
of that food shows up spoiled, and so what if
it's not very good for you. And also this tribe
that may have been your long long term rival, maybe
(11:00):
that's your neighbor now. And good luck working all that out.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Yeah, so that's a big deal though, that they said
they would supply them with food. The reason why they
said they would supply them with food is that they said,
you can't you can't hunt any longer. You can't do
what you used to do as a Native American tribe
to support yourself, to sustain yourselves, You're going to have
to rely on us, the federal government, and by the way,
we're going to take shabby care of you in return
(11:25):
for you agreeing to that.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
And that was over a roughly thirty year period from
eighteen fifties through the late almost into the eighteen eighties,
and you know, involved all the planes tribes Apache, Comanche, Kickapoo, Kiowa, Cheyenne,
among many others.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Did we do did we do a whole Apache or Geronimo?
Was it a Durnimo episode because that's when he was fighting.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
I don't remember what? Does it sound familiar?
Speaker 2 (11:52):
But you know me, don't you remember he like personally
lobbied Teddy Roosevelt, and Roosevelt just basically patted him on
the head.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
And I think that's sound familiar.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
It was a Geronimo or an Apache or was it
it was the Apache Wars, I think is what it was.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
Okay, Well, they eventually settled again in the eighteen eighties
in Oklahoma. They were squeezed down to a smaller and
smaller area. There were twenty seven tribes by that point
in this you know, relatively small part of land. And
in the ensuing decades there was a lot of changes.
(12:27):
There were a bunch of different policy shifts. There was
the DAWs Act of eighteen eighty seven. This is just
a for instance. Basically, there were all kinds of changes. Yeah,
but the DAWs Act was when they said, all right,
let's not do reservations, let's break them all up. Let's
give families plots of land, because we want you to
be more like us. Like here, like we're Americans. We
(12:48):
like to own our own little small pieces of land,
and we find that that's pretty awesome. So this is
how you should do it too. So here's little pieces
of land for each of your families. And a lot
of it wasn't great land. A lot of it couldn't
be farmed or they're not from there, so they didn't
know how to farm that land. They were further displaced.
(13:09):
And then finally, in nineteen thirty four, there was the
Indian Reorganization Act as part of the Indian New Deal.
They reversed that policy and said, all right, here's some
funds you can repurchase some of your original tribal lands.
But this started the termination era of the nineteen fifties
and sixties, when they said, but you should really move
(13:31):
to cities, Like why don't you just assimilate with everyone
and be a lot easier if you moved into urban areas.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Yeah, and the termination policies referred to termination of tribes,
like the federal government stopped recognizing tribes, broke up reservations,
and it was a concerted effort to just get rid
of Native American tribes in the United States and make
everybody assimilate into cities, like you said, And that's one
reason why the Native American movement, the American Indian Movement
(13:58):
AIM alongside the Civil Rights era or Civil rights movement
as a response to that and saying like, no, you're
not going to terminate our tribe. And they were largely successful,
and finally, in nineteen seventy five, thanks in large part
to AIM and other activists in the Native American community,
(14:20):
the Indian Self Determination and Education Act said, Okay, we're
not doing termination anymore. We're officially going to keep recognizing tribes,
We're going to support reservations, and like that is that?
Speaker 3 (14:33):
That's right? I think that's a robust intro.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
I think so too. You want to take a break,
then yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
Let's take a break that kind of brings us up
to the modern system and we'll get back into that
right after this.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
I find it interesting that every time we study this stuff,
it seems like there were just periods from the beginning
where every so often someone else would come into you know,
a new president or a new administration, someone would come
into power, and it was always like, oh Jesus, like,
what do we do with a what do we do
with the Indians? And out right, and they would just
change policies and you know, let's not do that, let's
(15:30):
do this. So not only had they been displaced to
begin with, but then it was just a series of
like shuffling around and moving and consolidation and now we
want to do this with you and that with you,
and the whole time we were just like, man, we
we were here.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
First, Yeah, for sure, and all that that whiplash going on,
you know, back and forth between totally termination and reservations
that took place over like the course of less than
a century. Yeah, I can't imagine that. That means that
there are people who lived almost entirely through that, you know,
that's that's just crazy. You can't treat people that way.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
No, And it's it's just it's amazing to think about
the fact that like if someone tried to, uh, not
calling out any particular politicians, but if they thought about
their family all of a sudden being told, well, you
have to leave, and we're going to tell you where
to go, and we're gonna make it hard for you
to get by in a place that you're not familiar with,
maybe next to your enemy that you've always had. It
(16:29):
just is hard for someone to imagine that happening. And
that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
But that's precisely why the United States has tucked Native
Americans away on reservations and forgotten them, because they don't
we don't want to imagine that happening to We can't
imagine that happening to our families. And so the brain goes, well,
it didn't happen to your family, so you can stop
thinking about that now.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Yeah, and not and let's not even teach that in
schools just because let's just not do that. Let's just
say just a lie.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
I know, oh boy, all right, I need to bring
my blood temperature down. So I'm doing a little mental
stretch right now.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Drink some mice water.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
I've got some right.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
Here under today's system, and we're going to go through
a lot of sort of staty things right now as
we tell this sort of early story, But there are
three hundred and twenty five tracts of land that the
US government now holds in trusts. Some are called reservations,
some are called villages, some are missions, some are pueblos. Yeah,
(17:27):
rancheria is in California, which sounds kind of nice, but
sounds like a top menut.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
It totally does.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
The largest is the today is the Navajo Nation. It's
about twenty seven thousand square miles. I think the smallest
is one of those ranch areas. It's called the Likely
Rancheria in California. It's in the upper upper tippy top
northeast corner of California, and it is one point three
(17:56):
to two acres. And there are also some state some
land held by state trust. There are also reservations, but
generally this is a federal government thing.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
That trust thing is a big that's a big point,
these reservations. The land that the Native American tribes live on,
that belongs to them, that's their sovereign land. That land
is held in trust by the US federal government for them,
and that seems pretty precarious if you think about it.
But the reason that that is held in trust is
(18:29):
because if it weren't held in trust by the US
government and was just owned by the Native American tribes
that lived there, then it would be subject to the
laws and the taxes of the state that the reservation
is in. So by removing that land from ownership and
putting it with the federal government for the benefit of
(18:50):
those sovereign tribes, it cuts that out entirely.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
Yeah, yeah, very very thought out, singly.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Yeah, and I deally on paper, it's not supposed to
be a paternalistic arrangement. It's supposed to be a fiduciarial arrangement,
where like the US government has a very important responsibility
to take care of that land and meet its obligations
and taking care of the people on the reservation. They
(19:20):
just don't do it typically, that's right.
Speaker 4 (19:24):
Not every tribe has their own reservation. Sometimes they share
a reservation. Some of the larger tribes may have more
than one if they're a little more spread out.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
This is something I.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
Actually didn't know until yesterday, is that non native people
can live on reservations, and some of them are majority
non native, And I never knew that I just I
knew that you could pass through and do your thing.
And a lot of them are you know, have businesses
and like you said, casinos and much more as we'll
see in the state of Florida. But I did not
(19:56):
know that you could just live there. And there's in
fact one in upstate New York where I believe this,
the Oneida Indian Nation, and they have about five hundred
American Indians living there in about sixty thousand total residents,
so very few Native Americans and mostly not.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Yeah, and the Ononeida tribe is one of the largest,
if not the largest employer of Upstate New York thanks
to their Turning Stone Resort and casino and veronas York.
All right, and they're actually one of the success stories
of a Native American tribe becoming self sufficient and actually
wealthy in a lot of cases.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
We mentioned Oklahoma a lot, and that's because about half
of the land in Oklahoma, legally speaking, is reservation land.
And California we mentioned those rancherias that you can get
on special at Taco Bell.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (20:56):
These are usually I mean, that's why they call them rancherias.
They're usually really small, like the one we talked about,
the likely rancheria. They were created because you know, California
did the California thing and created these in the twentieth
century when after those genocidal campaigns worked out to the
ones that were left over, and they're like, listen, we
got to give you some land.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
I guess, right. And if you're starting to notice there's
a pattern that this is all kind of patternless, you're correct.
Like there's not one reservation system that the federal government administers.
They kind of have developed on their own, ideally to
meet local needs or kind of jibe with the tribe's culture.
(21:36):
An example of that is in Alaska.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Yeah, very unique.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
There's two hundred and seventy nine federally recognized tribes. By
my account, more than half of the federally recognized tribes
in the United States all live in Alaska. But there's
only one reservation that they all share. And so rather
than living in a kind of a paternalistic relationship with
the United States on a reservation, instead all of those
(22:04):
Alaskan Natives get I guess dividends.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
Well, if you enroll, which most of them have right.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
From the mineral rights in Alaska and other resource rights.
So when you extract something in Alaska, when you cut
down a tree, when you remove a fish, I believe
you are contributing to that fund that benefits those two
hundred and seventy nine tribes.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Yeah, and Hawaii I think has a similar system, right, I.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Guess, but they don't have any reservations at all.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
Right.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
Yeah, So you mentioned that they are recognized as sovereign nations.
That was in the Constitution from the beginning, and that
basically says, you know, we can engage with you like
a foreign country if we want to. Chief Justice John
Marshall in eighteen thirty one, in a pretty landmark case
(23:00):
for everything that followed, wrote that tribes possess a nationhood
status and retain inherent powers of self government, but they
are domestic dependent nations that are award to his guardian,
which is it's all a little confusing if.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
You just sort of read the words.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
That's a big butt.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Yeah, you're a sovereign nation, but you're also dependent on
us essentially.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
Right.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Yeah. That just opens up the gate for all sorts
of weird interpretations and misinterpretations and all sorts of stuff.
And as a result, that's kind of what goes on.
Speaker 4 (23:36):
Yeah, I think it's sort of like a patchwork of
because it works different. You can't summarize, like all reservations
are like blank and it's kind of like a patchwork
because in Reservoir Dogs, the one of my favorite character
Reservation Dogs.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
What I say, you said, reservoir Dogs. It's understandable.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
No one cuts any ears off in reservation.
Speaker 4 (23:57):
That is what it is, you know, named for obviously,
and in the I think in the pilot they sort
of mimic that great opening shot of Reservoir Dogs, the
sort of slow my walk.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
But on Reservation Dogs, one.
Speaker 4 (24:10):
Of my favorite characters, although it's hard to say because
I love them all, but is the sheriff that the
actor is on McLaren and he's just great and hysterical
and he's the local sheriff and in at the res
as they call it, he's very just sort of low
key and doesn't want to arrest anyone, and it's usually
like I'd rather just take someone home who's disturbing the
(24:32):
peace and tuck them into bed than you know, cause
any real trouble. But that kind of got me thinking
about the modern system and it's really kind of patchwork,
But it all depends some tribes have their own courts.
If they don't, then there are five Regional Courts of
Indian Defenses that kind of gather up what tribes don't
(24:53):
have their own courts and serve them, right.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Yeah, And they also very frequently operate their own law
enforcement agency, although they also may have a Bureau of
Indian Affairs police agencies patrolling as well. Sometimes it can
be a combination of the two. In Alaska, they have
the Village Public Safety Officer program, so there is they
(25:16):
have their own court system, they have their own law enforcement.
They also have their own school districts there as well. Again,
they can be administered by the Bureau of Indian Education
or they can be run themselves like a charter school
would be or a private school would be. But these
are often public schools in the reservation. And they also
(25:37):
have boarding schools.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
Still, yeah, that needs to be a whole episode. I
think that would kind of be a nice way to
finish this trio.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Definitely. So, I mean the boarding schools that kids go
to today are sometimes the same boarding schools that treated
the younger Native Americans in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, like just like they were disposable and often
killed them and did everything they could, yeah to beat
(26:07):
the Native American out of them and just remove them
from their tribe. Sometimes they never saw their family again.
But those still exist. They're not doing stuff like that anymore,
and in fact, they're trying to figure out how to
kind of make amends. And in one way that they're
making amends, as we'll see, is there's a big revitalization
of Native American culture, specific tribal cultures around the United
(26:33):
States right now, and it's being taught on the reservations
and schools. It's also being taught in the boarding schools.
It's the exact opposite of what the United States has
been trying to do since the nineteenth century, reinstilling Native
American culture into the tribes that had been had had
(26:56):
that culture stripped and beaten and killed out of them
for a cent Now it's like, hey, let's teach you
about your culture that you would have already known about
had we not made you go to this compulsory boarding
school and teach you to forget just break that lineage
of cultural transmission. Now it's like, let's give that back
(27:17):
to you. Let's make sure you know what you're talking about,
and then they'll bring in elders of the tribe to
teach it. Because there are some people who didn't go
to the boarding schools. Typically they might have been hidden
and they escaped, and those people are fonts, incredibly valuable
reservoirs of the cultural information that when those people die,
(27:43):
if they haven't passed down what they know, that information
dies with them and the culture dies in that way,
slowly but surely. So there's a big push among Native
American schools to prevent that from happening.
Speaker 4 (27:59):
Yeah, especially I mean the culture as a whole, for sure,
but especially with efforts for saving and preserving the languages
these native tongues. One good example is the Cherokee Nation
in Oklahoma. Two thousand or fewer fluent speakers left, and
(28:19):
most of them are older. They're losing about one hundred
and fifty Native speakers a year. And what they're trying
to do. They have what's called the Durban Feeling Language Center,
named after the skuy durban Feeling, who wrote the Cherokee
English Dictionary. Among other things, he put symbols of the
Cherokee language into Unicode. So they could be used on smartphones,
(28:42):
and he was kind of he might be worth a
shorty at the very least doing one on durban feeling.
He really led the charge and was sort of probably
the leading person in history as far as preserving at
least the Cherokee language. But they have a fifty two
thousand square foot building at the language center there where
(29:02):
they're you know, they're doing everything they can. Their goal
is to basically, within the decade to gain more speakers
than the elders that know the language are dying off.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Yeah, and again, the reason why they're so gung ho
about doing this is because the as the language dies,
the culture dies. Because there are a lot of Native
American languages that weren't written. They were all oral. So
not only do they have to make sure that that
oral tradition gets passed down, they then have to figure
out how to turn it into something tech space as well.
(29:33):
So it's a huge challenge. And finally the United States
government has started to kind of show some signs of
trying to help out. I mean, it's not very much
if you think about it, but in twenty twenty two,
the US government donated seven million dollars in grants to
forty five different tribes to support their preservation of their language.
(29:54):
So there's there's a movement for that for sure, and
it has this sense that like they're racing against the clock,
which they pretty much are the biological clock.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
Yeah, and if I may hear for a minute now,
we try not to get super overtly political, but there's
really been a tale of two really three administrations over
the last fifteen ish years, with the Obama administrations, then
the Trump administration, and now the Biden administration. Of course,
(30:27):
in twenty twenty two, like you said, the seven million
that's under the Biden administration, they also delivered twenty one
million dollars for road safety on tribal lands because a
lot of these roads they don't have like street lines
and rumble strips and the little reflective signs and reflective
markers on the roads, just sort of basic infrastructure things
(30:48):
that keep driving safer.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Right, and that's the main roads don't even get on
the side streets.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:56):
Absolutely, also one hundred and thirty five million dollars to
help relocate tribes affected by climate change, and also deb
halland the first Native American to ever serve as Secretary
of Interior as the current Secretary of Interior. Donald Trump,
on the other hand, he delivered well. He likes to
(31:19):
say he delivered three million dollars in twenty twenty for
a language and one point two million for broadband grants,
but those were an actuality pushed through by Senate and
House Democrats. But Trump failed to re establish Obama's Council
on Native American Affairs, which ran for the eight years
Obama's in office until his final year in office, because
people kept saying, like, why aren't you doing this over
(31:41):
and over.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
He never held a White House Tribal Leaders.
Speaker 4 (31:44):
Conference at the White House, which you had for eight
years under Obama. And just after COVID, a couple of
things happened. He pushed to exclude reservations from the Cares
Act in the wake of COVID, and he de established
the Wannapogue Reservation outright, which is the first time that's
(32:05):
happened since the Termination era.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
And like not only that, he removed.
Speaker 4 (32:10):
Just kind of plowed through sacred burial sites to build
that wall and on when people were protesting that wall
and the sacred burial lands, they used sent you know,
people in there with rubber bullets to fire on them
on Indigenous People's Day of all.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
Days, No way.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Yeah, wow.
Speaker 4 (32:30):
So they're not big fans. You can look up for yourself.
If you think I'm being too political. You can just
look up Donald Trump's administration and Native American peoples and
they are not big fans of what happened during those
four years.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Oh it does.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Yeah, But also I've seen they're not necessarily fans of
any political party because neither one is paying enough attention
to their obligations to help people on the reservation make
better lives for themselves.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
Absolutely, So I say we take a break, okay, and
then the people who are still with us can come
back and we'll talk some more about reservation life today. So, Chuck,
(33:31):
we're we should talk about a few different examples of
reservations in the United States today, because just between the
Navajo Nation, the Oglala Sioux Nation, and the Seminole, you
got just a really distinct contrast between those three big spectrum.
(33:51):
You said that the Navajo was the largest of all
of the reservations, right, yeah, I think did you say
it's larger than Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island. Put together.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
No, but you just did, my friend. So the Navajo there,
it's quite a stack.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
Yeah, they're also the DNA. Their land, their reservation spans Utah, Arizona,
and in New Mexico.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:14):
If you look at the at their reservation on a map,
it is I mean, I know you said all the
states combined, but just check out a map. Sometimes it's
it's quite quite large.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Yes, and there's been an ongoing like dispute with them
and the Hopie over whose land is who's And I
think that they have it relatively settled geographically, but culturally
it's still not very settled.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
But the Navajo, they're also the largest tribe in the
United States. They have four hundred thousand enrolled members, one
hundred and seventy thousand of which live on the reservation.
And what makes them really unusual is that they were
removed along with just about every other tribe in the
(34:57):
United States as America was expanding, and within four years
they managed to negotiate a treaty to get that land
back and move back to their ancestral lands. That's really
rare among Native American tribes. Their reservations very frequently are
not their ancestral lands. They're just land that they were
(35:19):
given one hundred years ago by the US government in
an entirely different part of the country.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
Yeah, they said, you know, you can build your railroad
through here. If you're settling and your wagon train is
coming through here, you can pass through.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
We'll let you pass through.
Speaker 4 (35:34):
We will accept the schooling, which I think probably at
the time sounded like a good deal, even though it
ended up being that boarding school, that shameful boarding school situation.
And I know, by the way, we've gotten a lot
of I know, we'll hear from some Canadians. Canada has
their own shameful background with the same kind of thing,
and we've gotten a lot of emails from them over
(35:55):
the years to cover that. So maybe when we do that,
when we can tackle them both.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Yeah. So the Navajo, I've lived back on that land
since eighteen sixty eight. And what they formed essentially is
as a large government. There's twenty four districts in this huge,
huge reservation and they have delegates at this legislative council.
(36:20):
There's an executive a president that runs the executive branch.
They have their own court system with eleven districts, and
their largest city, Tuba City, is home to nine thousand people,
which is pretty enormous. The problem is where it starts
to kind of get reservation y at least standard or average,
(36:43):
is that thirty six percent of those households in the
entire Navajo Nation are below federal poverty level and about
the same amount have no running water none. And the
reason why Donald Trump the Great Father made such a
big deal about getting broadband access as part of the
package he delivered to the Native Americans himself is he signed,
(37:07):
is that internet access is really patchy at at absolute
best on a lot of reservations, and if you don't
have the internet today, you might as well not bother
sending your kids to school to In a very hyperbolic sense.
Speaker 4 (37:24):
Yeah, you know, Elon Musk should swoop in there and
send much of those starlink dishes. Sure grantits just say, well,
here you go, I'll do my party. Well, not a
bad idea. He's lunching tho satellites all over the place.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Yeah, help in Ukraine.
Speaker 4 (37:38):
Yeah for a service that isn't even that good. What else, Well,
we're talking about the spectrum, So I guess we go
from one end to the other end, and then we'll
talk about the other farthest end at the end.
Speaker 3 (37:53):
Is that confusing enough?
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Yes, dude, And I even know you're talking about I.
Speaker 4 (37:58):
Know the Pine Ridge Reservation is the largest Lakota reservation
and that's who you're speaking of earlier when you were
talking about the Oglala Sioux tribe who governs them. And
it's about four thousand square miles in South Dakota. And
again the census is probably really wrong. They listed as
nineteen thousand people, but most people say it's probably more like,
(38:19):
you know, mid thirties or so.
Speaker 3 (38:21):
And it is.
Speaker 4 (38:24):
Well, first of all, they were one of the people
that were squeezed out of their original land. It's not
their original land. They were nomadic people and they where
they are now. It was originally your prisoner of war
camp in eighteen eighty nine, and Wounded Knee took place,
the Wounded Knee massacre in eighteen ninety.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
A lot of things happened on Pine Ridge. It's actually
been really culturally relevant for a long time, starting with
Wounded Kna for sure, that was where one hundred and
fifty I think largely old people, women and children were
massacred by the US government for not living where they
were told.
Speaker 4 (39:03):
Yeah, it's a very symbolic place kind of for those reasons.
That's where they protested in the early seventies with the
sort of earliest American Indian movement, and that's where remember
the twenty fifteen Dakota Access pipeline Standing Rock.
Speaker 3 (39:17):
That's where they protested there.
Speaker 4 (39:19):
But we talk about Pine Ridge being the other end
of the spectrum, because if you want to talk about poor,
that is sort of.
Speaker 3 (39:26):
The place to focus on. It is very poor.
Speaker 4 (39:32):
They have an infant mortality rate five times five times
the national average infant mortality rate, which is just horrifying
that that's allowed to happen in this country. The unemployment
rate is eighty percent.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
I saw eighty to ninety on Al Jazeera.
Speaker 4 (39:49):
I mean, yeah, you're if you have ten to fifteen
percent of your people working like that, that's just poverty stricken.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
They live in trailers, they live in shacks.
Speaker 4 (39:59):
Some have no like many of them have no running
water or electricity, and it's not a hospitable place for
either a growing thing or for an industry to come
in and set something up and maybe share profits. They
have a little casino that doesn't generate a lot of revenue,
and it's just not a very great scene there.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
Yeah, I saw that the casino, if it divvied up
its profits, it's revenue. Among the members of the tribe
living on the reservation, they'd each get something like fifteen
cents a month. And poverty stricken just does not even
begin to get it. Across saw there's a site called
the Red Road Project. It's like Native American Voices kind
(40:39):
of articles. It's really interesting. They said that on Pine
Ridge the average number of people in a house is
seventeen because homelessness is a really really big issue on reservations,
so you kind of get in where you fit in,
which leads to huge amounts of overcrowding, and that includes
the kids who are going to school the next day.
(41:01):
Because the employment is so low again eighty to ninety
percent unemployment, people typically turn to diversions of despair, basically drugs, alcohol, crime.
And there's a town that I read about in that
Al Dazeer article called White Clay, Nebraskas, just across the
(41:23):
line from the Pine Ridge Reservation, and they sell something
on the average of twelve thousand cans of beer a
day to the Lakota who come across from the dry
reservation by the beer and take it back. And the
big kicker is that White Clay is not an actual town.
(41:43):
It's a town on paper only. There's one street and
it's all shops basically, and those shops all sell beer
to the Lakota Sioux. And I saw it described by
one activist as liquid genocide. That's been going on really
long time. And so when you add all this stuff together,
(42:04):
the life expectancy on Pine Ridge, are you ready for this?
Speaker 3 (42:10):
Now?
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Forty eight years for men, fifty two for women. It's
the second lowest not in the country in the Western hemisphere.
The only country that has a lower life expectancy is Haiti.
This is Pine Ridge in the United States.
Speaker 3 (42:26):
Does that include the infant mortality rate?
Speaker 2 (42:29):
Yeah, I'm sure it does. It's dragging it down big
time for sure. Regardless. I mean, like forty eight and
fifty two is just appalling. And again the reason you
might be like, I don't care about welfare, welfare sucks.
These people should be figuring out themselves, and a lot
of them do. A lot of people make it off
the reservation, go get it a college education. A lot
(42:49):
of them come back and share that college education. A
lot of people get killed. There's I think the rate
of suicide is four or five times is the national rate.
So the problem with that argument is that these are
the descendants of the people who are stripped of their culture,
stripped of their ability to support themselves, and their only
(43:12):
choice is to go be white, go assimilate into white culture,
or stay on this reservation and hold on to your culture,
be one of the last bastions of your culture, and
just pay every day for that with joblessness, with despair,
and rely on the United States government to take care
(43:32):
of you. But then don't expect things like running water, internet,
good schools, law enforcement that's going to take care of
drug problems, new job prospects, like that stuff. It's just
not delivered. And so as a result, we have a
group of people who have the life expectancy second only
to Haiti here in the United States.
Speaker 4 (43:55):
Yeah, so that's sort of the worst end of the spectrum.
Now to a tribe that is actually thriving these days.
The Seminole people who in the eighteen fifties, after a
bunch of warring, were forced west of the Mississippi kind
of like everyone else. But there I saw about three
(44:15):
hundred hid away in Florida and the swamps of Florida
and hit there for a while and eventually sort of,
you know, showed their faces to society in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth century. In the nineteen fifties, they
adopted their own constitution and gained recognition as a Seminole
tribe of Florida. And they are thriving in a big,
(44:39):
big way in South Florida, largely because of business and
largely because of the casino business, the Seminole Classic Casino
and Hollywood, Florida. They opened the hard Rock casino down
there in Hollywood. I saw the Rolling Stones there a
few years ago.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
Yeah, it's a big, big time. It's shaped like a guitar.
It is.
Speaker 4 (45:00):
Yeah, that stands up from the hotel like a guitar
and just a little insider thing. If you ever want
to see like what could be like a stadium act
in a comparatively small venue, that's where you should go.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
It was a really good experience.
Speaker 4 (45:14):
And you couldn't I don't know how many people it is,
but I feel like it's about the size of like
the Fox Seat or in Atlanta, whereas you know, they
were playing like stadiums and then all of a sudden
it's maybe like five thousand people or so. So it's
intimate by that standard. And I had a great time,
and I keep that on my list now to check
(45:35):
out because it was a fun trip down there. And
the Seminole Tribe is making a lot of money. They
have about two thousand, and this is one reason why
is because they only started out as a few hundred.
There are only a couple of thousand now and they're
splitting up that dough in a big, big way.
Speaker 3 (45:54):
Right.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
Did you know this that the Seminole Tribe of Florida.
We have to differentiate because there's a Seminole Tribe of
Oklahoma that were the ones that moved out there, the
ones that say the Seminole Tribe of Florida own hard
rock everything. They owned the brand. They bought the brand
in two thousand and six for nine hundred. I don't
know about the whole brand. They're wearing a hard Rock
(46:15):
Cafe shirt that's owned by the Seminole Tribe of Florida.
They owned the hard rock franchise.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
Do you know where the very first hard rock was?
Trivia questions?
Speaker 2 (46:24):
I'm going to say San Francisco or London.
Speaker 4 (46:29):
No, And the only reason I know this is because
of my family. It is in I believe it was
in Jackson, Mississippi.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
What Yeah. Wow, that is a great trivia question. You
can even do multiple choice, and I don't think a
lot of people would get that.
Speaker 4 (46:46):
Yeah, that's right, because I was like, I'm gonna get
in big trouble here if this is wrong. But the
first hard rock was at the old Hickory Mall in Jackson, Mississippi.
And my uncle had something to do with it somehow.
That's how I know about it.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
Oh is his last name hard rock?
Speaker 3 (47:09):
Uncle? Well, he sounds like a flintstone.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
All he does.
Speaker 3 (47:13):
Oh no, I'm sorry.
Speaker 4 (47:14):
Jackson, Tennessee, which is even better because that's where my
dad lives.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
That's good.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
You can put down.
Speaker 3 (47:19):
For some reason, I thought it was Jackson, Mississippi.
Speaker 2 (47:21):
You can put down your sharpened sticks Jackson, Tennessee. Chuck
came through.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
You're my people. My dad is a Union University graduate.
Speaker 2 (47:29):
So with all that money that they're making among the
two thousand tribe members, they divvy up enough that each
person gets one hundred and twenty eight thousand dollars a
year that includes babies. The baby's money is held in trust,
so by the time they turn eighteen, they're they're worth
(47:49):
a couple of the three million dollars already unbelievable. This
is a Native American tribe. And one of the reasons why,
a big, big reason why to Citrus Groves cigarette making
and selling is the casino. They were the first ones
to have a casino. They were the first ones to
(48:09):
try it. The state tried to shut it down. They
sued the state, they won, and from that point on,
Native American casinos, starting in the seventies were a thing,
and it made the Seminole rich, It made the Oneida rich,
It made a bunch of different tribes rich. And I say, good.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
Going, totally. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (48:29):
I bumped into Mark Marin at that Rolling Stone show
and he acted like he didn't know me, like he
always does.
Speaker 3 (48:34):
Really, oh yeah, it's funny every time it happens.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
That's hilarious. So I say, that's reservations. What do you say?
Speaker 4 (48:43):
Yeah, I got one more quick thing that we failed
to mention as earlier when I was talking about different
policies of different administrations. Native Americans that live on reservations
can vote in federal elections, of course, but it bears
pointing out because only sixty something percent of the eligible
Native American population is registered to vote, and there's a
(49:06):
push called the the Million Vote Opportunity where they are
trying there's over a million eligible Native American voters who
do not vote and who are not registered, and they're
trying to get them registered, and it's a good cause
to support.
Speaker 3 (49:21):
You can go to.
Speaker 4 (49:24):
Native Voter Impact or vote dot NARF dot org and
check it out. Maybe throw a little dough their way
and see if we can get them registered to vote
so they can, you know, try and speak up for
themselves and ensure they're right.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
It's awesome. Nice work, Chuck, Nice work, Josh, and nice
work to you guys for hearing us out. If you
want to know more about Native American reservations in the
United States, you can start reading about it. A good
place to start wild be the Red Road Project, I say,
And since I mentioned the Red Road Project again, I
(49:57):
think that's time for a listener.
Speaker 4 (49:59):
May I'm going to call this this.
Speaker 3 (50:07):
Is from our Diary episode.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
You have to start it with dear Diary.
Speaker 3 (50:11):
Dear Diary.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
Nice thank you.
Speaker 4 (50:14):
Just listen to the Dear Diary podcast, and I love
that you guys mentioned that women have a large part
in the history of diary writing, so I want to
put another female diarist on your radar. One of my
favorite historians is named Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. She of well
behaved women rarely make history, fame often misattributed to less
well known women than her hahaha. The original context of
(50:35):
that quote is related to Puritan settlers of New England
and how women who live ordinary lives are often forgotten
even though they quietly make the world go round. Or
Rich's most famous book, A Midwife's Tale, is about one
of these women, Martha Ballard, a midwife who lived in
what is now Augusta, Maine. Martha Ballard wrote in a
diary almost every single day from the time she moved
(50:56):
to Augusta, Maine in seventeen eighty five until she died
in eighteen twelve. Her diary chronicles the life of women
and men in frontier America along with the inner thoughts
of an ordinary and relatable person. Martha's ordinary life lifts
me up, even though she was a very average person,
because it shows her working and living like people have
always done. That's what is so awesome about diaries. It
(51:16):
humanizes the past and reminds us that people have always
been and will always be just people. Thanks for highlighting
diaries and for trying to bring different perspectives. Always do
the podcast. The episode inspired me to be more consistent
and chronicling my own ordinary life. All good things. It's
another great site, tak.
Speaker 2 (51:34):
Yeah, we've been getting a lot of those lately.
Speaker 3 (51:36):
So good. I mean, I don't even say anything. I
just type my dumb name.
Speaker 2 (51:39):
I don't even do that. I'm like, figure it out yourself.
Speaker 3 (51:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (51:44):
That is from Casey McClellan and that's a great, great email, Casey.
Speaker 2 (51:47):
Way to go, Casey, thank you for pointing our way
to something new that we had not heard about. We
love that kind of stuff And if you want to
hook us up like Casey did, you can send us
an email to send it off to Stuff podcast at
iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (52:05):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and that makes this stuff
you should know that, doodle Lee do.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
That's great.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Thanks, You're welcome. It has nothing to do with what
we're talking about. I don't believe, but it was worth saying.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
I think, uh, do you know what does what? The
season three of Reservation Dogs.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Yeah, that's why I figured you were Probably you suggested
this topic.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
It's not why actually, because I suggested this a long
time ago.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
I've been sitting on this one. I kind of forgot.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
But then Reservation Dog season three, the finale season started,
and I know talked about the show a lot, but
big recommendation. A show shot and crewed up and written
and directed and acted entirely by Native Americans. I believe
it's shot inside the Muscogee Nation Reservation.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
And it's great. It's one of the best shows ever. Wow.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
That's full throated endorsement. Man, I'll have to check it out.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
It's awesome.
Speaker 4 (01:22):
It's funny and heartwarming and sweet and meaningful, and it's
just really really good.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
I would also direct people to the movie Smoke Signals
that was made not too long ago. That, oh, yeah,
reservation life in a fairly lighthearted manner, but pretty accurately too.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
And we also want to caveat this by saying, this
is a very broad overview of Native American or American
Indian reservations. There's a lot to it, and certainly could
have been you know, like five or six episodes long.
But as we do, we try to give a good
broad overview.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
That's how we do.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
And if this episod, so does band in schools in
Florida listened to it outside of school.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Just go travel to Valdosta and download it and go
back to Florida exactly. That was an odd thing to say.
What's said is I have no idea what you're talking about,
but I can totally believe what you just said is real.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
Well, the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, is on a
push to keep children from being indoctrinated by true history
of our country. I see, and so he has, and
I believe it was in the Guba editorial debate, the
last one, he was saying that his opponent said it
(02:42):
was okay to teach that you know, some of the
land in America was stolen from the native indigenous people,
and he said, that's not appropriate for our schools, and
it's not true.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yeah, that's not true at all.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
No, it's not.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
And I'm not sure how you get away with just
saying completely entruy things on a debate stage.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
But yeah, that's where we are these days, for sure.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
So the very fact that reservations exist prove that that's true.
Because the entire reservation system that we still have today
that dates back to the nineteenth century and actually earlier,
it was and is entirely a way of removing Native
(03:25):
Americans from their traditional lands, putting them somewhere they probably
had never been and didn't know anybody, and then taking
that land away and increasingly shrink the land that they
have so that European colonists and then eventually Americans settlers
(03:45):
colonists could take that land for themselves. And the reservation
system is just proof that that is this. It was
this ongoing century plus long process that still has just
very fresh wounds today, like it's not like, Okay, that
happened in the past and things are good now. That
(04:06):
is not the case. In a lot of a lot
of places. It's that happened in the past and the
effects of it are still being felt generations later.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Yeah, for sure, and before we get emails from people
that say, you know, much of much of that land
was negotiated for and there were treaties over it and
deals made. That is that is certainly true, but much
of it was also outright seized. And that's that's just
a fact of what happened here.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
You know, dude, we don't need to debate somebody who's
trying to tell us that the Amerenta didn't steal land
from the Native America. They don't even deserve our attention, let.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Alone our breath, I agree these days.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
Just to start off with a stat for you, and
big thanks to Olivia for helping out with this one.
In the twenty twenty census, nine point seven million people
in these United States, yeah, identified as either Alaska Native
or American Indian.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
And although we'll talk a little bit about.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
The fact that the census isn't always accurate when it
comes to Native populations. Yeah, but one point two million,
thirteen percent of those people live on reservations today as
of you know, a few years ago.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Right, So we have yeah, a big population of Native Americans.
I think there's something like five hundred and thirty four
tribes recognized by the federal government as their own tribe.
But yeah, the vast majority do not live on reservations.
The reason that some people live on reservations because they
were born there, their parents were born there, that's just
(05:40):
where they were raised. But another reason that a lot
of Native Americans live on reservations is because that is
the place where they can still do whatever they can
to keep their culture alive in whatever ways that they can,
and they have a certain amount of self determination there
because in the United States, reservations are considered sovereign nations.
(06:03):
They're ruled by the tribe that whose reservation that is.
So that's why there's casinos, and that's why you can
buy cigarettes for super cheap on a reservation and all
sorts of other stuff. Why the state can't prosecute somebody
for a crime that happened on the reservation if they're
a member of the tribe, it's because it's like little
(06:24):
pockets of independent nations that exist in the United States.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
Yeah, it's a little convoluted, but generally it's there under
federal law. And purview, but not under state law. So
like you were saying, that's why you can have casinos
in states where you otherwise could not.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Yeah, and I saw that even the federal law is
usually kind of just the big stuff. Sure, yeah, but
states have almost no jurisdiction. And Oklahoma was really really
pushing recently to I guess, gain more jurisdiction over members
of tribes there, because Oklahoma is about half reservation these days.
(07:01):
But there was a Supreme Court ruling in McGirt versus
Oklahoma in twenty twenty that said, no, states, including Oklahoma,
have no jurisdiction to prosecute tribal members of crimes that
happened on tribal land, and they're having to dismiss tons
of cases just outright because Oklahoma, I guess kind of
(07:22):
went buck wilde and started arresting people on tribal land,
knowing full well that this has been recognized for nearly
a century if not longer, that the tribe whose reservation
that is is essentially a sovereign nation.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Yeah. So I say we kind of start with.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
After maybe the quickest overview of how this happened to
begin with, start with the with how the system evolved
to begin with. We don't need to go over everything
before that because we have covered a lot of it
before in our are really, if I may say so,
really great two part episode on the Trail of Tears
from twenty twenty seventeen I think twenty seventeen, and that
(08:06):
was the one where Hulk himself, Mark Ruffalo tweeted out
about that one.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Remember that's right, Yeah, yeah for sure.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
And we were like, holy cow, doctor Banner listens to
our show.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Right, the Hulk doesn't, Doctor Banner does?
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Yeah, of course Hulk Smash when.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
He turns into the Hulk, he's like, what is this crap?
When you know when it's still playing, So.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Hulk Smash podcast.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
I would also I would also direct people to the
Louisiana Purchase one too, that had a lot to do
with this as well.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
Sure that was a good one, but I will just
say in like a sentence that Native Americans were generally
forced west and further west, and then as we decided,
well we actually want to live west now, they were
squeezed into smaller and smaller spaces because you know, we
(08:56):
renigged on deals on like hey, this is your land.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
We kind of actually want that now, And.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
They were squeezed into smaller and smaller territories in what
was known as Indian Territory, much of which ended up
in Oklahoma, right.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
And there was from the outset basically too pronged effort
to move Native Americans further and further west. And that
was through violence and through treaties essentially. And like you said,
those treaties would be negotiated, but they would also be broken.
But some of them are still intact. There's actually reservations
(09:31):
that are state recognized because of a treaty that the
tribe had with the state that goes back sometimes to
colonial days. But a lot of them were broken, for sure.
But it was a patchwork of different localities and different
colonies and different states that were negotiating with the tribes
they needed to negotiate with to get their land. It
(09:54):
wasn't until eighteen fifty one that the federal government said,
forget this patchwork stuff. We're going to create like a
federal system of recognizing and moving Native Americans on to land,
settling them onto reservations. It was the Indian Appropriations Act
of eighteen fifty one.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
Yeah, and that was basically, here's some funding. We're going
to move you where we say you should go, and
you should become more like us. Basically, you should live
your life a little more like us. You should farm
like us.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Shop at the Gap, Yeah, the gap.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Where podcaster Chuck worked for a couple of months. Sure,
how many times did I talk about that yesterday at
our book events?
Speaker 1 (10:32):
A lot?
Speaker 3 (10:32):
I came up, like four times. Yeah, be a little
bit more like us.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
Eat the stuff that we eat, even though it's not
the stuff that you usually eat. And you know what,
maybe we'll even send you some food sometimes and supplies
when we feel like it. And so what if some
of that food shows up spoiled, and so what if
it's not very good for you. And also this tribe
that may have been your long long term rival, maybe
(11:00):
that's your neighbor now. And good luck working all that out.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Yeah, so that's a big deal though, that they said
they would supply them with food. The reason why they
said they would supply them with food is that they said,
you can't you can't hunt any longer. You can't do
what you used to do as a Native American tribe
to support yourself, to sustain yourselves, You're going to have
to rely on us, the federal government, and by the way,
we're going to take shabby care of you in return
(11:25):
for you agreeing to that.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
And that was over a roughly thirty year period from
eighteen fifties through the late almost into the eighteen eighties,
and you know, involved all the planes tribes Apache, Comanche, Kickapoo, Kiowa, Cheyenne,
among many others.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Did we do did we do a whole Apache or Geronimo?
Was it a Durnimo episode because that's when he was fighting.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
I don't remember what? Does it sound familiar?
Speaker 2 (11:52):
But you know me, don't you remember he like personally
lobbied Teddy Roosevelt, and Roosevelt just basically patted him on
the head.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
And I think that's sound familiar.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
It was a Geronimo or an Apache or was it
it was the Apache Wars, I think is what it was.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
Okay, Well, they eventually settled again in the eighteen eighties
in Oklahoma. They were squeezed down to a smaller and
smaller area. There were twenty seven tribes by that point
in this you know, relatively small part of land. And
in the ensuing decades there was a lot of changes.
(12:27):
There were a bunch of different policy shifts. There was
the DAWs Act of eighteen eighty seven. This is just
a for instance. Basically, there were all kinds of changes. Yeah,
but the DAWs Act was when they said, all right,
let's not do reservations, let's break them all up. Let's
give families plots of land, because we want you to
be more like us. Like here, like we're Americans. We
(12:48):
like to own our own little small pieces of land,
and we find that that's pretty awesome. So this is
how you should do it too. So here's little pieces
of land for each of your families. And a lot
of it wasn't great land. A lot of it couldn't
be farmed or they're not from there, so they didn't
know how to farm that land. They were further displaced.
(13:09):
And then finally, in nineteen thirty four, there was the
Indian Reorganization Act as part of the Indian New Deal.
They reversed that policy and said, all right, here's some
funds you can repurchase some of your original tribal lands.
But this started the termination era of the nineteen fifties
and sixties, when they said, but you should really move
(13:31):
to cities, Like why don't you just assimilate with everyone
and be a lot easier if you moved into urban areas.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Yeah, and the termination policies referred to termination of tribes,
like the federal government stopped recognizing tribes, broke up reservations,
and it was a concerted effort to just get rid
of Native American tribes in the United States and make
everybody assimilate into cities, like you said, And that's one
reason why the Native American movement, the American Indian Movement
(13:58):
AIM alongside the Civil Rights era or Civil rights movement
as a response to that and saying like, no, you're
not going to terminate our tribe. And they were largely successful,
and finally, in nineteen seventy five, thanks in large part
to AIM and other activists in the Native American community,
(14:20):
the Indian Self Determination and Education Act said, Okay, we're
not doing termination anymore. We're officially going to keep recognizing tribes,
We're going to support reservations, and like that is that?
Speaker 3 (14:33):
That's right? I think that's a robust intro.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
I think so too. You want to take a break,
then yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
Let's take a break that kind of brings us up
to the modern system and we'll get back into that
right after this.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
I find it interesting that every time we study this stuff,
it seems like there were just periods from the beginning
where every so often someone else would come into you know,
a new president or a new administration, someone would come
into power, and it was always like, oh Jesus, like,
what do we do with a what do we do
with the Indians? And out right, and they would just
change policies and you know, let's not do that, let's
(15:30):
do this. So not only had they been displaced to
begin with, but then it was just a series of
like shuffling around and moving and consolidation and now we
want to do this with you and that with you,
and the whole time we were just like, man, we
we were here.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
First, Yeah, for sure, and all that that whiplash going on,
you know, back and forth between totally termination and reservations
that took place over like the course of less than
a century. Yeah, I can't imagine that. That means that
there are people who lived almost entirely through that, you know,
that's that's just crazy. You can't treat people that way.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
No, And it's it's just it's amazing to think about
the fact that like if someone tried to, uh, not
calling out any particular politicians, but if they thought about
their family all of a sudden being told, well, you
have to leave, and we're going to tell you where
to go, and we're gonna make it hard for you
to get by in a place that you're not familiar with,
maybe next to your enemy that you've always had. It
(16:29):
just is hard for someone to imagine that happening. And
that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
But that's precisely why the United States has tucked Native
Americans away on reservations and forgotten them, because they don't
we don't want to imagine that happening to We can't
imagine that happening to our families. And so the brain goes, well,
it didn't happen to your family, so you can stop
thinking about that now.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Yeah, and not and let's not even teach that in
schools just because let's just not do that. Let's just
say just a lie.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
I know, oh boy, all right, I need to bring
my blood temperature down. So I'm doing a little mental
stretch right now.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Drink some mice water.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
I've got some right.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
Here under today's system, and we're going to go through
a lot of sort of staty things right now as
we tell this sort of early story, But there are
three hundred and twenty five tracts of land that the
US government now holds in trusts. Some are called reservations,
some are called villages, some are missions, some are pueblos. Yeah,
(17:27):
rancheria is in California, which sounds kind of nice, but
sounds like a top menut.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
It totally does.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
The largest is the today is the Navajo Nation. It's
about twenty seven thousand square miles. I think the smallest
is one of those ranch areas. It's called the Likely
Rancheria in California. It's in the upper upper tippy top
northeast corner of California, and it is one point three
(17:56):
to two acres. And there are also some state some
land held by state trust. There are also reservations, but
generally this is a federal government thing.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
That trust thing is a big that's a big point,
these reservations. The land that the Native American tribes live on,
that belongs to them, that's their sovereign land. That land
is held in trust by the US federal government for them,
and that seems pretty precarious if you think about it.
But the reason that that is held in trust is
(18:29):
because if it weren't held in trust by the US
government and was just owned by the Native American tribes
that lived there, then it would be subject to the
laws and the taxes of the state that the reservation
is in. So by removing that land from ownership and
putting it with the federal government for the benefit of
(18:50):
those sovereign tribes, it cuts that out entirely.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
Yeah, yeah, very very thought out, singly.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Yeah, and I deally on paper, it's not supposed to
be a paternalistic arrangement. It's supposed to be a fiduciarial arrangement,
where like the US government has a very important responsibility
to take care of that land and meet its obligations
and taking care of the people on the reservation. They
(19:20):
just don't do it typically, that's right.
Speaker 4 (19:24):
Not every tribe has their own reservation. Sometimes they share
a reservation. Some of the larger tribes may have more
than one if they're a little more spread out.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
This is something I.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
Actually didn't know until yesterday, is that non native people
can live on reservations, and some of them are majority
non native, And I never knew that I just I
knew that you could pass through and do your thing.
And a lot of them are you know, have businesses
and like you said, casinos and much more as we'll
see in the state of Florida. But I did not
(19:56):
know that you could just live there. And there's in
fact one in upstate New York where I believe this,
the Oneida Indian Nation, and they have about five hundred
American Indians living there in about sixty thousand total residents,
so very few Native Americans and mostly not.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Yeah, and the Ononeida tribe is one of the largest,
if not the largest employer of Upstate New York thanks
to their Turning Stone Resort and casino and veronas York.
All right, and they're actually one of the success stories
of a Native American tribe becoming self sufficient and actually
wealthy in a lot of cases.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
We mentioned Oklahoma a lot, and that's because about half
of the land in Oklahoma, legally speaking, is reservation land.
And California we mentioned those rancherias that you can get
on special at Taco Bell.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (20:56):
These are usually I mean, that's why they call them rancherias.
They're usually really small, like the one we talked about,
the likely rancheria. They were created because you know, California
did the California thing and created these in the twentieth
century when after those genocidal campaigns worked out to the
ones that were left over, and they're like, listen, we
got to give you some land.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
I guess, right. And if you're starting to notice there's
a pattern that this is all kind of patternless, you're correct.
Like there's not one reservation system that the federal government administers.
They kind of have developed on their own, ideally to
meet local needs or kind of jibe with the tribe's culture.
(21:36):
An example of that is in Alaska.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Yeah, very unique.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
There's two hundred and seventy nine federally recognized tribes. By
my account, more than half of the federally recognized tribes
in the United States all live in Alaska. But there's
only one reservation that they all share. And so rather
than living in a kind of a paternalistic relationship with
the United States on a reservation, instead all of those
(22:04):
Alaskan Natives get I guess dividends.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
Well, if you enroll, which most of them have right.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
From the mineral rights in Alaska and other resource rights.
So when you extract something in Alaska, when you cut
down a tree, when you remove a fish, I believe
you are contributing to that fund that benefits those two
hundred and seventy nine tribes.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Yeah, and Hawaii I think has a similar system, right, I.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Guess, but they don't have any reservations at all.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
Right.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
Yeah, So you mentioned that they are recognized as sovereign nations.
That was in the Constitution from the beginning, and that
basically says, you know, we can engage with you like
a foreign country if we want to. Chief Justice John
Marshall in eighteen thirty one, in a pretty landmark case
(23:00):
for everything that followed, wrote that tribes possess a nationhood
status and retain inherent powers of self government, but they
are domestic dependent nations that are award to his guardian,
which is it's all a little confusing if.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
You just sort of read the words.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
That's a big butt.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Yeah, you're a sovereign nation, but you're also dependent on
us essentially.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
Right.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Yeah. That just opens up the gate for all sorts
of weird interpretations and misinterpretations and all sorts of stuff.
And as a result, that's kind of what goes on.
Speaker 4 (23:36):
Yeah, I think it's sort of like a patchwork of
because it works different. You can't summarize, like all reservations
are like blank and it's kind of like a patchwork
because in Reservoir Dogs, the one of my favorite character
Reservation Dogs.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
What I say, you said, reservoir Dogs. It's understandable.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
No one cuts any ears off in reservation.
Speaker 4 (23:57):
That is what it is, you know, named for obviously,
and in the I think in the pilot they sort
of mimic that great opening shot of Reservoir Dogs, the
sort of slow my walk.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
But on Reservation Dogs, one.
Speaker 4 (24:10):
Of my favorite characters, although it's hard to say because
I love them all, but is the sheriff that the
actor is on McLaren and he's just great and hysterical
and he's the local sheriff and in at the res
as they call it, he's very just sort of low
key and doesn't want to arrest anyone, and it's usually
like I'd rather just take someone home who's disturbing the
(24:32):
peace and tuck them into bed than you know, cause
any real trouble. But that kind of got me thinking
about the modern system and it's really kind of patchwork,
But it all depends some tribes have their own courts.
If they don't, then there are five Regional Courts of
Indian Defenses that kind of gather up what tribes don't
(24:53):
have their own courts and serve them, right.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Yeah, And they also very frequently operate their own law
enforcement agency, although they also may have a Bureau of
Indian Affairs police agencies patrolling as well. Sometimes it can
be a combination of the two. In Alaska, they have
the Village Public Safety Officer program, so there is they
(25:16):
have their own court system, they have their own law enforcement.
They also have their own school districts there as well. Again,
they can be administered by the Bureau of Indian Education
or they can be run themselves like a charter school
would be or a private school would be. But these
are often public schools in the reservation. And they also
(25:37):
have boarding schools.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
Still, yeah, that needs to be a whole episode. I
think that would kind of be a nice way to
finish this trio.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Definitely. So, I mean the boarding schools that kids go
to today are sometimes the same boarding schools that treated
the younger Native Americans in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, like just like they were disposable and often
killed them and did everything they could, yeah to beat
(26:07):
the Native American out of them and just remove them
from their tribe. Sometimes they never saw their family again.
But those still exist. They're not doing stuff like that anymore,
and in fact, they're trying to figure out how to
kind of make amends. And in one way that they're
making amends, as we'll see, is there's a big revitalization
of Native American culture, specific tribal cultures around the United
(26:33):
States right now, and it's being taught on the reservations
and schools. It's also being taught in the boarding schools.
It's the exact opposite of what the United States has
been trying to do since the nineteenth century, reinstilling Native
American culture into the tribes that had been had had
(26:56):
that culture stripped and beaten and killed out of them
for a cent Now it's like, hey, let's teach you
about your culture that you would have already known about
had we not made you go to this compulsory boarding
school and teach you to forget just break that lineage
of cultural transmission. Now it's like, let's give that back
(27:17):
to you. Let's make sure you know what you're talking about,
and then they'll bring in elders of the tribe to
teach it. Because there are some people who didn't go
to the boarding schools. Typically they might have been hidden
and they escaped, and those people are fonts, incredibly valuable
reservoirs of the cultural information that when those people die,
(27:43):
if they haven't passed down what they know, that information
dies with them and the culture dies in that way,
slowly but surely. So there's a big push among Native
American schools to prevent that from happening.
Speaker 4 (27:59):
Yeah, especially I mean the culture as a whole, for sure,
but especially with efforts for saving and preserving the languages
these native tongues. One good example is the Cherokee Nation
in Oklahoma. Two thousand or fewer fluent speakers left, and
(28:19):
most of them are older. They're losing about one hundred
and fifty Native speakers a year. And what they're trying
to do. They have what's called the Durban Feeling Language Center,
named after the skuy durban Feeling, who wrote the Cherokee
English Dictionary. Among other things, he put symbols of the
Cherokee language into Unicode. So they could be used on smartphones,
(28:42):
and he was kind of he might be worth a
shorty at the very least doing one on durban feeling.
He really led the charge and was sort of probably
the leading person in history as far as preserving at
least the Cherokee language. But they have a fifty two
thousand square foot building at the language center there where
(29:02):
they're you know, they're doing everything they can. Their goal
is to basically, within the decade to gain more speakers
than the elders that know the language are dying off.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Yeah, and again, the reason why they're so gung ho
about doing this is because the as the language dies,
the culture dies. Because there are a lot of Native
American languages that weren't written. They were all oral. So
not only do they have to make sure that that
oral tradition gets passed down, they then have to figure
out how to turn it into something tech space as well.
(29:33):
So it's a huge challenge. And finally the United States
government has started to kind of show some signs of
trying to help out. I mean, it's not very much
if you think about it, but in twenty twenty two,
the US government donated seven million dollars in grants to
forty five different tribes to support their preservation of their language.
(29:54):
So there's there's a movement for that for sure, and
it has this sense that like they're racing against the clock,
which they pretty much are the biological clock.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
Yeah, and if I may hear for a minute now,
we try not to get super overtly political, but there's
really been a tale of two really three administrations over
the last fifteen ish years, with the Obama administrations, then
the Trump administration, and now the Biden administration. Of course,
(30:27):
in twenty twenty two, like you said, the seven million
that's under the Biden administration, they also delivered twenty one
million dollars for road safety on tribal lands because a
lot of these roads they don't have like street lines
and rumble strips and the little reflective signs and reflective
markers on the roads, just sort of basic infrastructure things
(30:48):
that keep driving safer.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Right, and that's the main roads don't even get on
the side streets.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:56):
Absolutely, also one hundred and thirty five million dollars to
help relocate tribes affected by climate change, and also deb
halland the first Native American to ever serve as Secretary
of Interior as the current Secretary of Interior. Donald Trump,
on the other hand, he delivered well. He likes to
(31:19):
say he delivered three million dollars in twenty twenty for
a language and one point two million for broadband grants,
but those were an actuality pushed through by Senate and
House Democrats. But Trump failed to re establish Obama's Council
on Native American Affairs, which ran for the eight years
Obama's in office until his final year in office, because
people kept saying, like, why aren't you doing this over
(31:41):
and over.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
He never held a White House Tribal Leaders.
Speaker 4 (31:44):
Conference at the White House, which you had for eight
years under Obama. And just after COVID, a couple of
things happened. He pushed to exclude reservations from the Cares
Act in the wake of COVID, and he de established
the Wannapogue Reservation outright, which is the first time that's
(32:05):
happened since the Termination era.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
And like not only that, he removed.
Speaker 4 (32:10):
Just kind of plowed through sacred burial sites to build
that wall and on when people were protesting that wall
and the sacred burial lands, they used sent you know,
people in there with rubber bullets to fire on them
on Indigenous People's Day of all.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
Days, No way.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Yeah, wow.
Speaker 4 (32:30):
So they're not big fans. You can look up for yourself.
If you think I'm being too political. You can just
look up Donald Trump's administration and Native American peoples and
they are not big fans of what happened during those
four years.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Oh it does.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Yeah, But also I've seen they're not necessarily fans of
any political party because neither one is paying enough attention
to their obligations to help people on the reservation make
better lives for themselves.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
Absolutely, So I say we take a break, okay, and
then the people who are still with us can come
back and we'll talk some more about reservation life today. So, Chuck,
(33:31):
we're we should talk about a few different examples of
reservations in the United States today, because just between the
Navajo Nation, the Oglala Sioux Nation, and the Seminole, you
got just a really distinct contrast between those three big spectrum.
(33:51):
You said that the Navajo was the largest of all
of the reservations, right, yeah, I think did you say
it's larger than Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island. Put together.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
No, but you just did, my friend. So the Navajo there,
it's quite a stack.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
Yeah, they're also the DNA. Their land, their reservation spans Utah, Arizona,
and in New Mexico.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:14):
If you look at the at their reservation on a map,
it is I mean, I know you said all the
states combined, but just check out a map. Sometimes it's
it's quite quite large.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Yes, and there's been an ongoing like dispute with them
and the Hopie over whose land is who's And I
think that they have it relatively settled geographically, but culturally
it's still not very settled.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
But the Navajo, they're also the largest tribe in the
United States. They have four hundred thousand enrolled members, one
hundred and seventy thousand of which live on the reservation.
And what makes them really unusual is that they were
removed along with just about every other tribe in the
(34:57):
United States as America was expanding, and within four years
they managed to negotiate a treaty to get that land
back and move back to their ancestral lands. That's really
rare among Native American tribes. Their reservations very frequently are
not their ancestral lands. They're just land that they were
(35:19):
given one hundred years ago by the US government in
an entirely different part of the country.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
Yeah, they said, you know, you can build your railroad
through here. If you're settling and your wagon train is
coming through here, you can pass through.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
We'll let you pass through.
Speaker 4 (35:34):
We will accept the schooling, which I think probably at
the time sounded like a good deal, even though it
ended up being that boarding school, that shameful boarding school situation.
And I know, by the way, we've gotten a lot
of I know, we'll hear from some Canadians. Canada has
their own shameful background with the same kind of thing,
and we've gotten a lot of emails from them over
(35:55):
the years to cover that. So maybe when we do that,
when we can tackle them both.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Yeah. So the Navajo, I've lived back on that land
since eighteen sixty eight. And what they formed essentially is
as a large government. There's twenty four districts in this huge,
huge reservation and they have delegates at this legislative council.
(36:20):
There's an executive a president that runs the executive branch.
They have their own court system with eleven districts, and
their largest city, Tuba City, is home to nine thousand people,
which is pretty enormous. The problem is where it starts
to kind of get reservation y at least standard or average,
(36:43):
is that thirty six percent of those households in the
entire Navajo Nation are below federal poverty level and about
the same amount have no running water none. And the
reason why Donald Trump the Great Father made such a
big deal about getting broadband access as part of the
package he delivered to the Native Americans himself is he signed,
(37:07):
is that internet access is really patchy at at absolute
best on a lot of reservations, and if you don't
have the internet today, you might as well not bother
sending your kids to school to In a very hyperbolic sense.
Speaker 4 (37:24):
Yeah, you know, Elon Musk should swoop in there and
send much of those starlink dishes. Sure grantits just say, well,
here you go, I'll do my party. Well, not a
bad idea. He's lunching tho satellites all over the place.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Yeah, help in Ukraine.
Speaker 4 (37:38):
Yeah for a service that isn't even that good. What else, Well,
we're talking about the spectrum, So I guess we go
from one end to the other end, and then we'll
talk about the other farthest end at the end.
Speaker 3 (37:53):
Is that confusing enough?
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Yes, dude, And I even know you're talking about I.
Speaker 4 (37:58):
Know the Pine Ridge Reservation is the largest Lakota reservation
and that's who you're speaking of earlier when you were
talking about the Oglala Sioux tribe who governs them. And
it's about four thousand square miles in South Dakota. And
again the census is probably really wrong. They listed as
nineteen thousand people, but most people say it's probably more like,
(38:19):
you know, mid thirties or so.
Speaker 3 (38:21):
And it is.
Speaker 4 (38:24):
Well, first of all, they were one of the people
that were squeezed out of their original land. It's not
their original land. They were nomadic people and they where
they are now. It was originally your prisoner of war
camp in eighteen eighty nine, and Wounded Knee took place,
the Wounded Knee massacre in eighteen ninety.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
A lot of things happened on Pine Ridge. It's actually
been really culturally relevant for a long time, starting with
Wounded Kna for sure, that was where one hundred and
fifty I think largely old people, women and children were
massacred by the US government for not living where they
were told.
Speaker 4 (39:03):
Yeah, it's a very symbolic place kind of for those reasons.
That's where they protested in the early seventies with the
sort of earliest American Indian movement, and that's where remember
the twenty fifteen Dakota Access pipeline Standing Rock.
Speaker 3 (39:17):
That's where they protested there.
Speaker 4 (39:19):
But we talk about Pine Ridge being the other end
of the spectrum, because if you want to talk about poor,
that is sort of.
Speaker 3 (39:26):
The place to focus on. It is very poor.
Speaker 4 (39:32):
They have an infant mortality rate five times five times
the national average infant mortality rate, which is just horrifying
that that's allowed to happen in this country. The unemployment
rate is eighty percent.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
I saw eighty to ninety on Al Jazeera.
Speaker 4 (39:49):
I mean, yeah, you're if you have ten to fifteen
percent of your people working like that, that's just poverty stricken.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
They live in trailers, they live in shacks.
Speaker 4 (39:59):
Some have no like many of them have no running
water or electricity, and it's not a hospitable place for
either a growing thing or for an industry to come
in and set something up and maybe share profits. They
have a little casino that doesn't generate a lot of revenue,
and it's just not a very great scene there.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
Yeah, I saw that the casino, if it divvied up
its profits, it's revenue. Among the members of the tribe
living on the reservation, they'd each get something like fifteen
cents a month. And poverty stricken just does not even
begin to get it. Across saw there's a site called
the Red Road Project. It's like Native American Voices kind
(40:39):
of articles. It's really interesting. They said that on Pine
Ridge the average number of people in a house is
seventeen because homelessness is a really really big issue on reservations,
so you kind of get in where you fit in,
which leads to huge amounts of overcrowding, and that includes
the kids who are going to school the next day.
(41:01):
Because the employment is so low again eighty to ninety
percent unemployment, people typically turn to diversions of despair, basically drugs, alcohol, crime.
And there's a town that I read about in that
Al Dazeer article called White Clay, Nebraskas, just across the
(41:23):
line from the Pine Ridge Reservation, and they sell something
on the average of twelve thousand cans of beer a
day to the Lakota who come across from the dry
reservation by the beer and take it back. And the
big kicker is that White Clay is not an actual town.
(41:43):
It's a town on paper only. There's one street and
it's all shops basically, and those shops all sell beer
to the Lakota Sioux. And I saw it described by
one activist as liquid genocide. That's been going on really
long time. And so when you add all this stuff together,
(42:04):
the life expectancy on Pine Ridge, are you ready for this?
Speaker 3 (42:10):
Now?
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Forty eight years for men, fifty two for women. It's
the second lowest not in the country in the Western hemisphere.
The only country that has a lower life expectancy is Haiti.
This is Pine Ridge in the United States.
Speaker 3 (42:26):
Does that include the infant mortality rate?
Speaker 2 (42:29):
Yeah, I'm sure it does. It's dragging it down big
time for sure. Regardless. I mean, like forty eight and
fifty two is just appalling. And again the reason you
might be like, I don't care about welfare, welfare sucks.
These people should be figuring out themselves, and a lot
of them do. A lot of people make it off
the reservation, go get it a college education. A lot
(42:49):
of them come back and share that college education. A
lot of people get killed. There's I think the rate
of suicide is four or five times is the national rate.
So the problem with that argument is that these are
the descendants of the people who are stripped of their culture,
stripped of their ability to support themselves, and their only
(43:12):
choice is to go be white, go assimilate into white culture,
or stay on this reservation and hold on to your culture,
be one of the last bastions of your culture, and
just pay every day for that with joblessness, with despair,
and rely on the United States government to take care
(43:32):
of you. But then don't expect things like running water, internet,
good schools, law enforcement that's going to take care of
drug problems, new job prospects, like that stuff. It's just
not delivered. And so as a result, we have a
group of people who have the life expectancy second only
to Haiti here in the United States.
Speaker 4 (43:55):
Yeah, so that's sort of the worst end of the spectrum.
Now to a tribe that is actually thriving these days.
The Seminole people who in the eighteen fifties, after a
bunch of warring, were forced west of the Mississippi kind
of like everyone else. But there I saw about three
(44:15):
hundred hid away in Florida and the swamps of Florida
and hit there for a while and eventually sort of,
you know, showed their faces to society in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth century. In the nineteen fifties, they
adopted their own constitution and gained recognition as a Seminole
tribe of Florida. And they are thriving in a big,
(44:39):
big way in South Florida, largely because of business and
largely because of the casino business, the Seminole Classic Casino
and Hollywood, Florida. They opened the hard Rock casino down
there in Hollywood. I saw the Rolling Stones there a
few years ago.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
Yeah, it's a big, big time. It's shaped like a guitar.
It is.
Speaker 4 (45:00):
Yeah, that stands up from the hotel like a guitar
and just a little insider thing. If you ever want
to see like what could be like a stadium act
in a comparatively small venue, that's where you should go.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
It was a really good experience.
Speaker 4 (45:14):
And you couldn't I don't know how many people it is,
but I feel like it's about the size of like
the Fox Seat or in Atlanta, whereas you know, they
were playing like stadiums and then all of a sudden
it's maybe like five thousand people or so. So it's
intimate by that standard. And I had a great time,
and I keep that on my list now to check
(45:35):
out because it was a fun trip down there. And
the Seminole Tribe is making a lot of money. They
have about two thousand, and this is one reason why
is because they only started out as a few hundred.
There are only a couple of thousand now and they're
splitting up that dough in a big, big way.
Speaker 3 (45:54):
Right.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
Did you know this that the Seminole Tribe of Florida.
We have to differentiate because there's a Seminole Tribe of
Oklahoma that were the ones that moved out there, the
ones that say the Seminole Tribe of Florida own hard
rock everything. They owned the brand. They bought the brand
in two thousand and six for nine hundred. I don't
know about the whole brand. They're wearing a hard Rock
(46:15):
Cafe shirt that's owned by the Seminole Tribe of Florida.
They owned the hard rock franchise.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
Do you know where the very first hard rock was?
Trivia questions?
Speaker 2 (46:24):
I'm going to say San Francisco or London.
Speaker 4 (46:29):
No, And the only reason I know this is because
of my family. It is in I believe it was
in Jackson, Mississippi.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
What Yeah. Wow, that is a great trivia question. You
can even do multiple choice, and I don't think a
lot of people would get that.
Speaker 4 (46:46):
Yeah, that's right, because I was like, I'm gonna get
in big trouble here if this is wrong. But the
first hard rock was at the old Hickory Mall in Jackson, Mississippi.
And my uncle had something to do with it somehow.
That's how I know about it.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
Oh is his last name hard rock?
Speaker 3 (47:09):
Uncle? Well, he sounds like a flintstone.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
All he does.
Speaker 3 (47:13):
Oh no, I'm sorry.
Speaker 4 (47:14):
Jackson, Tennessee, which is even better because that's where my
dad lives.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
That's good.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
You can put down.
Speaker 3 (47:19):
For some reason, I thought it was Jackson, Mississippi.
Speaker 2 (47:21):
You can put down your sharpened sticks Jackson, Tennessee. Chuck
came through.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
You're my people. My dad is a Union University graduate.
Speaker 2 (47:29):
So with all that money that they're making among the
two thousand tribe members, they divvy up enough that each
person gets one hundred and twenty eight thousand dollars a
year that includes babies. The baby's money is held in trust,
so by the time they turn eighteen, they're they're worth
(47:49):
a couple of the three million dollars already unbelievable. This
is a Native American tribe. And one of the reasons why,
a big, big reason why to Citrus Groves cigarette making
and selling is the casino. They were the first ones
to have a casino. They were the first ones to
(48:09):
try it. The state tried to shut it down. They
sued the state, they won, and from that point on,
Native American casinos, starting in the seventies were a thing,
and it made the Seminole rich, It made the Oneida rich,
It made a bunch of different tribes rich. And I say, good.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
Going, totally. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (48:29):
I bumped into Mark Marin at that Rolling Stone show
and he acted like he didn't know me, like he
always does.
Speaker 3 (48:34):
Really, oh yeah, it's funny every time it happens.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
That's hilarious. So I say, that's reservations. What do you say?
Speaker 4 (48:43):
Yeah, I got one more quick thing that we failed
to mention as earlier when I was talking about different
policies of different administrations. Native Americans that live on reservations
can vote in federal elections, of course, but it bears
pointing out because only sixty something percent of the eligible
Native American population is registered to vote, and there's a
(49:06):
push called the the Million Vote Opportunity where they are
trying there's over a million eligible Native American voters who
do not vote and who are not registered, and they're
trying to get them registered, and it's a good cause
to support.
Speaker 3 (49:21):
You can go to.
Speaker 4 (49:24):
Native Voter Impact or vote dot NARF dot org and
check it out. Maybe throw a little dough their way
and see if we can get them registered to vote
so they can, you know, try and speak up for
themselves and ensure they're right.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
It's awesome. Nice work, Chuck, Nice work, Josh, and nice
work to you guys for hearing us out. If you
want to know more about Native American reservations in the
United States, you can start reading about it. A good
place to start wild be the Red Road Project, I say,
And since I mentioned the Red Road Project again, I
(49:57):
think that's time for a listener.
Speaker 4 (49:59):
May I'm going to call this this.
Speaker 3 (50:07):
Is from our Diary episode.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
You have to start it with dear Diary.
Speaker 3 (50:11):
Dear Diary.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
Nice thank you.
Speaker 4 (50:14):
Just listen to the Dear Diary podcast, and I love
that you guys mentioned that women have a large part
in the history of diary writing, so I want to
put another female diarist on your radar. One of my
favorite historians is named Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. She of well
behaved women rarely make history, fame often misattributed to less
well known women than her hahaha. The original context of
(50:35):
that quote is related to Puritan settlers of New England
and how women who live ordinary lives are often forgotten
even though they quietly make the world go round. Or
Rich's most famous book, A Midwife's Tale, is about one
of these women, Martha Ballard, a midwife who lived in
what is now Augusta, Maine. Martha Ballard wrote in a
diary almost every single day from the time she moved
(50:56):
to Augusta, Maine in seventeen eighty five until she died
in eighteen twelve. Her diary chronicles the life of women
and men in frontier America along with the inner thoughts
of an ordinary and relatable person. Martha's ordinary life lifts
me up, even though she was a very average person,
because it shows her working and living like people have
always done. That's what is so awesome about diaries. It
(51:16):
humanizes the past and reminds us that people have always
been and will always be just people. Thanks for highlighting
diaries and for trying to bring different perspectives. Always do
the podcast. The episode inspired me to be more consistent
and chronicling my own ordinary life. All good things. It's
another great site, tak.
Speaker 2 (51:34):
Yeah, we've been getting a lot of those lately.
Speaker 3 (51:36):
So good. I mean, I don't even say anything. I
just type my dumb name.
Speaker 2 (51:39):
I don't even do that. I'm like, figure it out yourself.
Speaker 3 (51:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (51:44):
That is from Casey McClellan and that's a great, great email, Casey.
Speaker 2 (51:47):
Way to go, Casey, thank you for pointing our way
to something new that we had not heard about. We
love that kind of stuff And if you want to
hook us up like Casey did, you can send us
an email to send it off to Stuff podcast at
iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (52:05):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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