Guerrilla History - Settler Colonial Law & Sue the T. rex w/ the Leninist Lawyer

Episode Date: December 8, 2023

In this episode of Guerrilla History, we bring on The Leninist Lawyer to discuss settler colonial law, and use the case study of Sue the T. rex, which was extracted from native lands, to help demonstrate how this works.  A really interesting conversation, and while we are using a dinosaur fossil as the case study, this conversation is much more about settler colonial law generally, and therefore should be relevant for all of you regardless of whether you find dinosaurs interesting or not! *Note, this episode was recorded before October 7, 2023, and has had its release delayed while we have been creating materials for understanding the history and ongoing conflict in Palestine* The Leninist Lawyer is an anonymous lawyer from Georgia that specializes in tribal law and worker's compensation law.  While we cannot provide more details than this about him, you should follow him on twitter @MarxistLaw and @LovelyLeninist! Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory

Hello, guerrilla history listeners, this is co-host Henry with a small introduction to this episode to explain the context in which this episode was recorded and the context in which it is being released. This episode featuring the Leninist lawyer on the topic of settler colonial law using the case study of Sue the T-Rex, and yes, listeners, these two topics are related, and you will learn all about it in the episode. This conversation was recorded just before October 7th. as a result, you will not hear any references to the ongoing situation in Gaza during the

conversation. This episode was originally scheduled to come out on October 13th, but as a result of the events that have taken place since October 7th and the ongoing genocidal bombardment of Gaza, we had switched our release schedule to focus very heavily on the history of Palestine, the history of the Palestinian resistance movement, the ongoing situation in Gaza, and more, as I'm sure you have seen if you've looked at our feed. This episode, we've held on our Patreon until now. We're going to release it now, as we feel it is unfair to the Leninist lawyer to hold the episode for much longer as we continue to put out more Palestine content. But listeners, do not worry.

If you were looking for more Palestine-related content, we do have more coming up very soon. And we have already several very important episodes that we've put out on the time. topic that you can go back to and listen. These episodes feature guests like Max Iyle and Patrick Higgins, Rabab Abdul Hadi and Ariel Saltzman, Tara Alami, Karina Mullen, and Ali Qadri. We also have more episodes planned to be coming out very soon, featuring, again, Ali Qadri, Rania Khalik, Alex Savinia, and much more. So be sure to subscribe.

Stay tuned if you are looking forward to more. of that Palestine coverage. We certainly have more coming out soon. This episode is a great episode, though, and we do want to thank the Leninist lawyer for being understanding in the necessity for us to hold the release of this episode for almost two months at this point, longer than we were originally planning on as a result of the current events and the need to help contextualize these events for listeners. So, listeners, take that into account as you listen to this episode, enjoy the conversation, with the Leninist lawyer, and we're going to kick it over to the actual episode right now.

You remember Din Ben-Boo? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello and welcome to guerrilla history, the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Huckimacki, unfortunately flying solo without either of my usual co-hosts today as both Adnan Hussein, who of course is a historian and the director of School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, as well as Brett O'Shea, who of course is host of Rev.

Revolutionary Left Radio and co-hosts of the Red Menace Podcasts, my two other usual co-hosts. They both had to drop out due to extenuating circumstances in Brett's case. A little bit of a family thing. In Adnan's case, he is doing research in a place that has almost no connectivity. So he was just unable to join us today, despite both of them really wanting to be here for the conversation that we're going to have. But I'll do my best to hold down the fort in their absence, and I'm certainly looking forward to having them both back. with me for the next conversation. We do have a great topic and a great guest today,

but before I introduce that topic and the guest, I want to remind the listeners that they can help support the show, keep us up and running, and allow us to make more content like this by going to patreon.com forward slash gorilla history. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. There you'll get bonus content like a mini-series that Adnan and I are doing on the religious cultures

of the medieval Mediterranean, I know Brett is going to be putting up a bonus episode very soon, and he and I will also be doing another bonus episode very soon. So you do get some things in return for the Patreon, but the main reason for the Patreon is to help us pay for platform fees and software and things like that so that we can keep this show and make as much of the content for free as possible, because this really is our way of doing some political education for people. and we think that we have some useful content for that means. You can also follow us on Twitter or whatever it's called these days at Gorilla underscore Pod. Again, Gorilla is G-U-E-R-R-I-L-L-A-U-A-U-Square. On there, you'll get all of the latest updates for what Adnan, Brett, and myself are up to individually, as well as what the show is up to collectively, as well as our spin-off show,

Gorilla Radio, which just put out another episode the day before we're recording this. So also make sure to subscribe to Guerrilla Radio wherever you get your podcasts. Now that I've got that housekeeping stuff out of the way, I can introduce our guest. Those of you who are on Twitter slash X slash whatever will know our guest almost certainly. We have the Leninist lawyer, which of course is a pseudonym. I don't think your parents named you that Leninist. But the Leninist lawyer, one of the best follows on Twitter in my opinion. And so it's a really great pleasure to have you on the show.

I know all three of us were looking forward to talking with you. And it's my pleasure to get to talk with you today. Well, it's an honor to be on. I've been a fan and a patron of the show for a while. And it's just fantastic to be on and be able to talk about something like this. Yeah, absolutely. And I know before we hit record, we even made some plans for future episodes that we can do together. So listeners, you know, enjoy this episode.

and if you enjoy this episode, which I'm sure you will, look forward to some of those future recordings that will also do with the Leninist lawyer. So, Leninist, I guess I'll call you this. Why don't you give a brief introduction to yourself for the listeners? Now, I know that we want anonymity for you, so we can't be super specific in terms of your background and, you know, what exact kind of law you do and things like that. But in broad strokes, can you just briefly introduce who you are, what your background is? things like that for the listeners, you know, kind of an introduction to you.

Absolutely. Well, yes, I'm the Leninist lawyer. It is a pseudonym. Surprisingly, the American Bar Association is not too happy with openly communist lawyers. Surprise. Like shock. I know, exactly. So, but the background that I can give is what's on my,

Twitter account is, you know, I'm from Georgia. I practice law. And the, I dabble in tribal law, I'll say. And, and the other law that I would say is my, my primary specialty would be workers compensation law, which is a not so interesting subject, but something that that, that, That's important that that exists out there to help some people when they get injured on the job. But besides that, I've been, goodness, I've been a communist for, I don't know, about six years now. It seems like longer. But I think one of the things that kind of brought me to this, although my name is the Leninist lawyer, I am not a strict. Leninist, but, but I do like the alliteration.

And, but law was something that, that I kind of, I learned in tandem with, with Marxism. And because of that, you end up having a bizarre experience in law school. You end up kind of sitting there and hearing a lot of things and going, that's not really how it works, really? Like, I don't think that's how it goes. You know, I've seen that differently, you know. So it definitely shaped, shaped me as a lawyer and shaped me as a communist as well or as Marxist. And besides that, employment law and tribal law are my main two focuses. Yeah.

And we'll be talking about tribal law today just before we get into the topic at hand. I do want to mention you said working with. with workers' compensation law is not the most exciting thing, but it is useful. I mean, we really do have to underscore how useful that is in a capitalist world where the impetus on businesses to maximize profit, not to maximize well-being of their employees that they're extracting labor power and profit from. I'm somebody who used to work an annual labor job. I know that, you know, maybe listeners get the impression, oh, Henry was a scientist, now he's an educator, you know, I always grew up in a cushy, no, no, I had a manual labor job, and we

had numerous people who had to take workers' compensation for a small period of time. I was on workers' compensation. This is a critical subject. Like, you know, maybe for most people hearing workers' compensation law, yeah, maybe it's not the most exciting thing in the world. It's not as interesting as reading about like revolution and the global south or whatever. But it is worth underscoring that this is a really critical field and you are doing quite a bit of good by working in that field because in the capitalist world, it is crucial that we protect workers' rights and worker safety as much as we possibly can. So I salute you for doing that. But to the topic at hand, the listeners probably are seeing the title of the episode,

which is going to be something along the lines of Sue the T-Rex and Settler Colonial Law and are wondering what on earth is going on here? Why do we have Sue the T-Rex and Settler Colonial Law? But, I mean, really, this is an interesting story. And even the story of how this topic came to be in terms of when we decided that we would record this is kind of funny. So I'll give the background into why we decided to record this episode. And then I'll let you give an overview of this case.

So listeners, if you look at our feed, you will see one of our latest episodes is on decolonizing paleontology, cultural restitution, things like that with a trio of Brazilian paleontologists, which went over really well. We've heard a lot of really positive feedback on that episode, which, you know, we're talking about dinosaurs and, you know, colonial science. Like, it's kind of an esoteric topic, but people were really interested. and we heard a lot of nice things about it. But shortly after we put that episode out there, we got a message from you that said something along the lines of, well, you know, I actually worked on a case that involved tribal law and, you know, dinosaur remains and things like this. And again, just to reiterate something that I said in the past episode, so listeners,

if you've already heard it, I apologize for, you know, saying the same thing twice. I also studied paleontology and anthropology in the past. Just kind of like on the side. And so I still follow paleontology news and check out some of the papers and things like that. So I was thinking to myself like, oh, well, you know, I know because I see it. There's always disputes about fossil law. And so I figured, well, you know, it's great that we have the Leninist lawyer who I've been following for a long time and enjoying the stuff on Twitter from saying that he worked on one of these cases.

And I was expecting it to be one of the many, many cases. kind of slip under the news radar but are in the paleontology literature because there really is a lot of them and they don't really capture the public's imagination. So I reached out and said, okay, Leninist lawyer, you want to tell me anything else about this case that you worked on? And you said, yeah, it was Sue the T-Rex, which was like, oh, that is the case of, you know, settler colonial law and, you know, tribal law and dinosaur remains coming together in the U.S. context at least. That one did make the news and was huge news. And so it was really, you know, kind of serendipitous that we had that episode. You reached out to us and that was the case that

you worked on because that really is one of the best case studies for this. So listeners are probably wondering what is sued T-Rex? What is this case? You know, how does it relate to tribal law? And I'm sure even listeners, if you haven't seen Sue the T-Rex, you probably have. And the reason I say that is because Sue the T-Rex is one of the most complete T-Rex skeletons. It's over 90% complete by bulk, which means like if you weigh the

fossils that are present versus what you would expect. Over 90% of the weight is there. It's not by number of bones because some of the bones and these dinosaurs are really, really tiny. And of course, those are the first that get lost to time. But 90% by bulk, really a tremendous specimen.

And originally it was housed in the Black Hills Institute in South Dakota and then eventually ended up in the Field Museum in Chicago, the story of which the Leninist lawyer is going to take us through because it's a wild story. But the reason I say that even if you don't think you've seen Sue the T-Rex you probably have, many, many of the T-Rex skeletons in natural history museums around the world are replicas of Sue specifically. So if you've been in a museum and you've seen a T-Rex and it wasn't like a legit, T-Rex skeleton that was dug up from the ground, but is a replica, which you may not know, you may not

know, but most of them are. There's very few that are like publicly displayed, well-preserved actual T-Rex skeletons. If you saw a replica, the odds are pretty good that it was sue. Okay. So Leninus lawyer with that very long, uh, kind of explanation of why we're doing this episode out of the way. Why is this case a case? How does it relate to tribal law? You know, don't you take us from back when Sue was discovered and kind of take us up to the legal case itself? And I might have some things to butt in with. But go ahead. Absolutely. So it's an, it's an interesting story. So it starts simply by the names, of course, in this case are public record. So I'll use the names because it's not an issue. But so.

a property owner on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation, which is in South Dakota. It's located about almost in the middle of it. And it's about the size of Connecticut. So it's a big, it's a big, big piece of land. Well, this gentleman owned a ranch on the reservation. And he was a native member of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe. And he decided that he was going to allow the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research come on to his land to do some possible digging and see if they could find some fossils. So just briefly what the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research is, because that sounds like a very, very legitimate name. and and sounds like it must be something really, really great for the world. And it sounds government funded as well.

Doesn't it? Yes. But it is, it's a private corporation that by its own admission on its website, still to this day, they say they're experts in fossil excavation, sales, and the creation of museum models. So that just gives you a basic rundown of who you are dealing with. Just to bud in very briefly. I've been to the Black Hills Institute in South Dakota. And I was young when I went there, not like two years old, but I was a lot younger.

I don't recall there being like big banners talking about how it was a private corporation, which of course it is, as you mentioned. And, you know, if you look even for a second on the internet, you see that. But when you're in there, it's kind of this, you know, this grand hall of dinosaur fossils that's presented as like, you know, this scientific achievement rather than this like profit-seeking achievement. Exactly. No. And they definitely are, they purposely portray themselves as such, you know, the Black Hills Institute. And they're, you know, they get a large amount of funding from the Black Hills Museum of Natural History Foundation, which is a nonprofit. So they can put. that above it and make themselves look even better. But at the end of the day, they find fossils, dig them up, and then they sell them for astronomical prices, as you'll see going a little bit further. So Maurice Williams, this gentleman who has the property, he invites Black Hills Institute

to come and excavate. And they weren't originally there to excavate a T-Rex skeleton at all. It was just supposed to be a possibility of other bones and other fossils, which they did find, which is kind of funny. Those aren't mentioned. They got to keep those. But they after cleaned the story goes in the field museum, they have it, you know, perfectly written out and almost copy and paste it onto Wikipedia is the same story is that this one of the members. of the team whose name is Sue, Sue Hintrickson, and that's what the T-Rex is named after. She wandered off and apparently saw jutting out of a hill, something that looked like a fossil, and she went over there and started, you know, immediately excavating and immediately could tell it was, you know, something amazing, and they started excavating. again. Well, they know what they have found. I mean, they know exactly what they found. It would be

absolutely impossible for them to not know. The other thing is it also is impossible for them to not know that they were on tribal land doing this excavation. It's the size of Connecticut, it's a big place, and they knew. So, Well, they dig it up and they go to Maurice Williams and they say, well, we'll give you $5,000 for the skeleton, really full for everything here. And Maurice Williams, just keep that number in mind, listeners, $5,000 because you're going to see another number a little bit later. That's, yes, $5,000, just to underscore that. Oh, yeah. This case has so many twists and turns.

I swear it's a funny thing. But so, yeah, they give him $5,000. Now, Maurice Williams claims that he did not believe that this was $5,000 for the fossil itself. He thought that this was them paying him $5,000 to be able to excavate and be able to take the bones back to clean and to inspect and do things like that. well they pack up the bones and they and they take them you know day up that it's fast as possible um well maurice williams um this word gets out to the actual tribal council of shyan river sue which it shouldn't have been hard for it to get out because one piece that's not mentioned which is an upsetting piece

as Maurice Williams happened to be the head of land acquisition for Cheyenne Rivers Sioux Tribe at the time and took a little while for this information to reach the council

for reasons unknown. But once it reached the council, the council knew exactly what to do was they were like, well, that can't, that's illegal. You can't do that. You can't. One, you can't

just take fossils out of the ground, really anywhere, and just take them, let alone do it on tribal land, mainly, unfortunately, mainly because technically tribal land is also federal land. And so when this occurred, Maurice Williams joined with Shion River Sioux, and Shion River Sioux contacted the federal government. And the federal government, you know, you would imagine that they would react. I don't know, maybe an issue and injunction, meaning, you know, asking for, you know, Black Hills Institute to stop what they're doing, you know, until the investigation can be done. They took a little bit more of a drastic measure. And this is why the case gets a little bit more information is the federal government actually sent the FBI. the National Guard and the State Guard of South Dakota, all of them at once to raid the Black Hills Institute. And they did. They raided the Black Hills Institute. And they took the Sioux fossil and any other fossils that they could find that they thought were illegitimately got. And they put it in the South Dakota, I believe it was, oh goodness, it's the. the South Dakota like a mine, the mine research department. I can't remember the specific name. But they ended up taking it there, which was a fine place for it to be kept. There were many fine, fine places. Well, all of that goes down. And that is when the actual legal cases start.

Just before we get to the legal case for a second, I just want the listeners to envision this for a second. So, again, we've got this massive, just to underscore how massive, Sue is about 45 feet long. Yeah. The head, the skull of the fossil, alone weighs about 600 pounds. Just the skull. Now, think listeners, just close your eyes and envision this because, like, really, it's a very funny thing to imagine. you have this this quote unquote institute which again is just a you know fossil kind of I don't want to say smuggling but you know they are just like digging up fossils from all over

the place in order to sell them for profit which in many countries especially in the global south is illegal we talked about that in our episode with the three Brazilian paleontologists that we had that's been illegal in Brazil for ages it's been illegal in Mexico for a very long time most of those global south countries that have, you know, fossil rich reserves have put those things in place because they know that things like what we're going to talk about are going to happen if they don't. But, of course, in the United States, it's like the Wild West still. You know, you find something in the ground.

You can sell it for whatever you want, which again, we'll get to the legal case in a second. But just, again, listeners, close your eyes for a second. And imagine you've got this, quote unquote, institute housing all of these fossils. These paleontologists, you know, kind of ethically challenged. paleontologists sitting there working and then one day all of a sudden the FBI comes in and starts carting away these like 600 pounds skulls and whatnot into the back of their FBI trucks that cart over to somewhere else in the state like almost comical to think of these FBI agents with tons and tons of fossil material you know I don't think that when they

woke up you know that that morning or the day before before they knew that you're going in like if you told them you're going to be carrying a couple tons of fossils today boys i i don't think that that was going to be on their on their bingo card you know so to say but in any case that's just to let the listeners you know think about how crazy this is uh this is in what 92 if i remember correctly yes this was all occurring in 1992 yeah yeah okay so feel free to to go ahead with the legal case itself now that we're in that period but one one legal case that uh is is separate from from the suitcase, but but is also important to note, which is just shows the extent that the Justice Department went with all of this is, is the Justice Department actually charge

the head of the Institute, Peter Lars, Larson. They charged him with conspiracy, obstruction of justice, a legal collection of fossils, theft, of government property, wire fraud, making false statement to government agents and customs violations. They tried to get him on all of those, which, I mean, that's intense even for the Justice Department to levy on him. I think he ended up serving 15 years or something. He is also still president of the Institute, by the way. But. So, So that legal case went was technically separate. But when you talk about the sue case, we end up talking about many cases, a journey of what lawyers would call case law, you know, looking at where it went in the courts and it's kind of long path there.

But it first came up that the, you know, the Geological Institute, of course, when these fossils were seized, they wanted preliminary injunction requiring that the federal government actually returned the dinosaur fossils for safekeeping pending the resolution of the ownership. And the reasoning for this was they argued that, oh, you know, the federal government does not how to take care of fossils. is ridiculous where they have them stored they're going to get damaged you know we the scientists the institute we know how to take care of them better you know that's how it should be oh the circuit judge was like no you know and uh you know he he decided uh that you know um he was he was that that wasn't going to go through well they appeal that i mean so so this this institute has a lot of money behind them is one thing that this should say. They are hiring attorneys to appeal cases that are being struck down on very basic grounds. And so while they're asking the federal

government to do this, of course, Maurice Williams and Cheyenne River Sioux are joined into the case, but being represented by the federal government. That's a interesting way that our legal system works in this kind of area and also one of the ways of how we can later go on into the ramifications of this case. But anyway, it was remanded and it ended up coming back. And they, they, you know, are, they appeal it. They argue the same exact thing, and it's, you know, affirmed in part, but also remanded, which means they're like, oh, okay, finally, you made some sort of good argument. And then finally, it comes down to ownership of this fossil. Not only was it, you know, the Institute immediately fought for its return, even for a short,

amount of time, which is odd. But they wanted the fossils for safekeeping. And then it has to go on to property law. Who actually owns this fossil? And that's when you get into one of the core things that if it can be, you know, expressed to the listeners is that, you know, American law, is based around property. It ownership, the ability to own property, the ability to do with property what you want. That is the cornerstone. Now, there are instances where that seems to not be the case, but it is a very, very important structural part of the justice system. You know, just also to underscore that when you're talking about how American, and again, this case is taking place in the United States, American law is based on property. We can say that law in capitalist

countries generally is based on property. Absolutely. But also in the case of the United States, not only is the law based on property, but it is deeply settler colonial in nature, which, of course, we'll talk about more later in this conversation, but it's also worth underscoring here listeners you know, to think about the settler colonial roots of the United States and how that informs legal code, because that really does play a role in this story. And then also just to underscore one other quick thing, when you say that it comes down to the question of ownership, and I'm sure you'll get into, you know, the intricacies of this. It's not as simple as you think, listeners.

It's not just like this side or this side. No, no, no. There was a lot of competing claims to it. The federal government had claims to it. The tribe had claims to it. The land owner had claims to it. The institute had claims to it. It was like four or five way struggle to see where this fossil would end up.

So as you continue with this story, be sure to explain. Oh, yeah. Why there was so many competing claims and how, you know, why the ownership ended up going the way that it did, because there was so many competing claims to this fossil, which, of course, at this point, after, and again, sorry to, you know, extend my kind of digression here, but it's just worth underscoring to the listeners, once again, that in the United States, you can sell fossils. It was quite clear that basically anybody other than, you know, maybe the tribe that ended up with it would have a vested interest in selling

that fossil. And this was the most beautiful and complete T-Rex fossil ever found at that time. And still really is one of the best specimens of Tyrannosaurus Rex, which is, you know, the most famous dinosaur in the world. So obviously, when it sold, it was going to be one of, if not the most expensive fossil sales of all times. So there was also this financial interest in, I mean, like really oppressing financial interest in who this was going to end up with. So just again, worth keeping that in mind as you go ahead with your answer, Leninist. Oh, absolutely. And that's very important to note because that that's the whole crux of all of this, is that this was found. The institute knew what it was and they saw dollar signs. And then they took it back. And then when the

federal government was informed, the federal government saw dollar signs. and also when the tribe was informed. The tribe saw dollar signs. Everyone saw this as, you know, a way to be able to make money. Now, we'll get into later what each person wanted to do with it. But the figuring out a property was split in, you know, every which way direction. But also to your point about settler colonial law, I mean, to kind of look back at some of the things that I've already said, I mean, why is the federal government involved in this in the first place? Shouldn't the reservation, shouldn't the tribe, the nation, the sovereign, you know, nation be able to to handle this on their own terms with their own legal counsel? No, no, no, no, they can't. federal government has to come in. Federal government controls how it's going to go. They'll be

your counsel. The other will be co-counsel. They can advise, but they won't be able to make any big decisions on anything. So, I mean, already there, you get a taste of some of the ways in which, I mean, the reservation system and the system of law applied to indigenous Americans and also to these these native nations is a settler colonial nature and still to this day is but back to the case so so after the you know skeleton was you know discovered blah blah blah blah it comes down to the land it always comes down to the land well as I had already said you know it was on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation Now, there is something that can be done that Native Americans could do on reservations is they can put their land in trust to the federal government. Almost all land, native land, is held in trust by the federal government. Now, what this means is you get the quote-unquote gifts of you don't have to

pay taxes, you know, and you get some other legal benefits. Now, this is what Maurice Williams had done. He had a, the land was held in trust. And also specifically, the laws in the United States that talk about the federal government holding land in trust are specific to say that they hold it for the benefit of, and I apologize, in the legal world, Indian is still used throughout everything. It is enshrined in code in the administration, and it's terrible that, I mean, indigenous clients have to go up and argue their case using that language to begin with. Heck, it's the Bureau of Indian Affairs still. This is, you know, it's everything in the law.

Anyway, sorry for that interruption again. No, absolutely. I mean, yeah, exactly. So, but what it says is that for the sole benefit of the Indian. And so what that is translated into is that the federal government owns the land. but at the same time, you know, any benefit that comes from the land will still go to Maurice Williams in the end. And the federal government doesn't try to really fight that. And we'll talk about why that is.

But in the end, the court determines that the land was held in trust and therefore the land was federal. land and that was decided. Now, the interesting thing is they then had to decide, and this is where everybody just has to love law, but they had to determine whether a fossil is land or not, because the problem is that they didn't have a definition in federal law for really what a fossil would be if it was the land or not. So what they did is they went to South Dakota law. Just to quickly underscore something for the listeners here, it's not just an esoteric point. It's actually like a very interesting point that you just raised in terms of what is a fossil.

The reason that this is interesting, and I bring this up because I'm well aware that most listeners are not going to have a background in science or paleontology and things like this. fossils were from living things they were biological material note the past tense usage here they were biological material the vast majority of fossils that we find have zero biological material remaining in them the fossilization process is the replacement of the biological material with mineral material. And so what you're seeing when you see a fossil, if you study the chemical composition, it's rock. You know, like it's not, it's not something that was alive if you just look at the chemical composition of it. That's not all fossils. There are some, you know,

soft tissue preservation and things like that. Again, I don't want to get too much into the paleontological side of things because, again, I know I'm well aware that the vast majority of The listeners are here for settler colonial law in this case and not, you know, Henry Chats paleontology again. No, that's important. But it is important because as you mentioned in the law and in this case in particular, you know, what is the fossil? Is it land? Is it something that was on land? Like at this point, what is it?

Because it was biological, but it is no longer biological. It's kind of mineral now, which is land, but it's also under the land. Like, you know, there's a lot of, it's a lot more complicated than it sounds listeners is really all I'm trying to underscore here. It's not really as black and white as you would think. Like, oh, fossil was living thing. You know, now it is under the ground, but it was a living thing. Right. Like, there actually is some other processes that play here.

Exactly. And, and, you know, for to kind of, uh, for listeners to, to give them something to kind of model it off of is, you know, the complexities of American property. or Western capitalist property law is, you know, there will be blood, you know, the fact that, you know, at the, you can, you can drain, you know, the oil from underneath someone's property. And that's completely legal. It's not their property. It naturally drained. It's drainage. But anyway. Sorry, just a quick other thing. I'm very sorry for all of the interruptions, but like this conversation is really great. You know, when you're talking about draining oil from under the ground, you know, that was kind of the impetus for the first Gulf War, you know, like not to not to kind of put too fine a point on it, but if we look at what, you know, what was happening between Iraq and Kuwait, drilling of oil from under the ground where it was, you know, located if you looked straight down from the surface to where the oil reserve is, it was in one country, but it was being extracted to the other country under the ground, which then led to. to an invasion of that country and then led to, of course, blowback by the United States. You know, that is in many ways the impetus for the first Gulf War, but we don't really talk about that. It's always like, you know, incubator babies. If people don't know about, you know, the fact that that was propaganda or like, you know, Saddam was absolutely a madman.

This is not to say that he was a good guy, but like, you know, the fact that people don't know that a lot of the reason for this was because the oil was being drained from under the ground with this kind of justification that, you know, hey, it's under the ground, but now it's over here. That was why that happened. Anyway, that's a history for a different day listeners, but, you know, it's not aware. There it is. Oh, exactly.

It's, I mean, it's everywhere. This kind of legal logic, capitalist logic, is found everywhere and used to justify so many things. but so they had to figure out who owned this and in order to figure out who owned it they figured out who owned the property so it was the federal government so after they decide that they then need to decide whether the fossil is part of the land and so they didn't have a proper definition for land in the federal sense and since this is in federal court they they had to go down to south dakota law and look at it. And so in South Dakota law, it basically says that, you know, it needs to be, land is, quote, solid material of the earth, which I love that that, that's, that is the vagueness of American capitalist law perfectly put. I mean, it's just ridiculous. Solid material of the earth. it's poetic almost. So the fossil, of course, meets this definition because it is solid material of the earth. And as a component of land, the court determines that it was currently movable personal property at the time the fossil was discovered. And that means that it was part of Williams's land. And thus subject to the applicable laws of

real property that should have been done. Now, we get into an interesting thing in that Williams starts getting brought into the case as being a little bit under the hook. Maurice Williams, the gentleman whose property it was. Now, he starts getting a little under the hook because if he was, you know, going to allow people to come on and excavate and take fossils, he knew good and well, especially as the head of land acquisition for the tribe and had been for multiple terms, that he needed to seek permission from the United States government to figure out the right of the fossil and to also contact the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Not saying that that's a good thing, because that shows you again, the red tape that, you know, native individuals have to do to do anything on what is supposed to be their land. It is their land. So that that just underscores the ridiculousness. But he was supposed to do that. Now, it's curious why he didn't do that. Not really. He didn't do that

because he wanted this to be cut and dry, very, very simple. He wanted to be able to get money for the dinosaur, and he wanted it to not really be known by the tribal council or anything. He wanted this to be something that went through him. And so he got in a little trouble because Williams was required to, you know, seek all this permission. So the attempted sale to Black Hills by Williams was made Nullin Boy. So that's what the case determined. It determined that because of all of these circumstances, it being federal land, the fact that the fossil is technically of the earth, that all of this comes together to make it to where that sale for $5,000 was illegitimate.

And this, of course, you know, it is nearly the end of the case. Thank goodness for everybody. But now everybody's wondering, well, what's going to happen with the fossil? You know, the sale was null and void. Does that mean that it's just take it back to Maurice Williams's property and, you know, dump it there? Like, what do you do? Well, so the Research Institute, you know, wanted, wanted it to, again, they're like, we want it to be brought back to us for some other

reason. For some reason, they thought that they had a right to it still. The court got really angry. They actually, they gave them a rule of insanction, which you probably don't know what that is, but it's a nice slap on the risk from the court saying you guys need to act more professionals. It's pretty funny. But anyway, so they ended up determining that the ownership of the fossil was going to go to Maurice Williams. And now this sounds at first like a win. The gentleman who had the property, you know, where it was found, a member of the tribe. He's the one who gets the fossil and to choose what to do with it. Well, the tribe during this entire time was also arguing with separate attorneys. The federal government was mainly representing

Maurice Williams, not the tribe. But the tribe did have legal counsel. And they were fighting for the fact that the tribe should have some say in what happens with this fossil, because it found on the reservation and that you know if anyone should benefit from it it should be the entire tribe um and they're immediately cut out of the case they're immediately pushed out of the case which is common and just a quick question for you because i want the listeners to also understand this can you briefly explain what the economic situation for the tribe is like, because as you mentioned, they were hoping that they would be able to collectively benefit from this remarkable specimen that everybody knew was going to be selling for a

tremendous amount of money. They wanted to collectively benefit from it. I think that it's worth at least mentioning briefly what the economic situation at the reservation is like. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's one of the main things that upsettingly many, I'd say most Americans do not know, is the real struggle that it is to live on a reservation. It's not easy. And Shire and River Sioux Reservation, so it was created in 1889. It was done by breaking up of the Great Sioux Reservation. And currently today, it's, it's, you know, in South Dakota. But a total, total area, as I said, was about the size of Connecticut. So it's the fourth largest native reservation in the country. But at the same time, it is the counties that are.

are within it are some of the poorest counties in the entire United States. The difficulty of being able to accumulate capital on a reservation is, I mean, it's nearly impossible. When you think about it, you have an island surrounded by a state, surrounded by a federal government. And they have a treaty that is based on sovereignty, which tribal attorneys, that's what we go to, because that is the law that we are fighting for is the law that was guaranteed to tribes. That's what tribal attorneys have to do. But this whole situation makes it next to impossible for for. for businesses to thrive on reservations. It makes it extremely difficult for people to have any type of sustainable jobs on the reservation.

Most of the people who live on the reservation will, if they make money on the reservation, they won't be spending it on the reservation because there's no businesses there. It literally is built to hemorrhage money and built to make it to where. where the reservation system keeps the Native nations powerless economically so, which in a capitalist society is one of the most important things. So absolutely the tribe wanting to benefit from this. In fact, the tribe's idea was not even to sell it. The tribe's idea, the council at the time, and also the legal team at the time, had been discussing, you know, how much money it would be to build a museum in Eagle Butte, South Dakota, where they're the capital in Cheyenne River Sioux. could you imagine the the economic boom that that would bring to to a reservation to have to have not just a T-Rex skeleton but to have the best i mean the best and they had already said um uh one of the the attorneys for the tribe mark van norman uh great attorney uh he he is quoted, you can find him in a New York Times article. It's one of the rare times that anyone

during this entire coverage of the case actually talked to anyone who was representing the tribe. And it's funny because they only put in a little blurb of what his response was. And basically he was like, what do you think we're going to do with this thing? Sell it to Japan. He's like, we're not going to do that. We're going to have it available to scientists. and on display, and that's all they put, which is funny on its own, but it's even funnier when you know that the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research literally had already stolen a triceratops skull from Cheyenne River Sioux and sold it to Japan a few years prior. So it had, you know, they had already had precedent with doing, you know, messed up things with bones.

and Shire and Rivers, who also knew not to be dealing with these people. It also is, just to add in, it's horribly ironic that this is the Black Hills Institute. And we can get into that more when we get to settler colonial law, but really terrible stuff. But in the end, Maurice Williams is the one who ends up with the father. He is immediately contacted by the wonderful auctioneering house, Sotheby's. And Sotheby's says, you should put this on auction immediately. Maurice Williams, you know, he's not going to complain. Well, it goes up for auction, and it's a big deal.

I mean, it's televised people are, I mean, this was a really, really big deal when it happened. And museums from around the country from around the world came to bid on this thing. And the Fields Museum, the Chicago Fields Museum, many people know this museum. It's known as one of the best in the country. I've been there twice. It's a beautiful museum. It has some wonderful, you know, wonderful exhibit. Well, they decided that they wanted this thing.

They wanted it so bad. They actually got funding from folks like McDonald's and other private corporations that seemed to have really no connection to fossils or anything having to do at the Fields Museum, but giving the Fields Museum money to bid on this. And it ends up selling in the end for the just whopping sum of $8.3 million. Now, going back, as you were kind enough to know, was, yeah, the original price that they offered was $5,000 to Maurice Williams. So the Black Hills Institute was like, hey, here's $5,000. And they knew, they knew that this was, maybe not this much, but they knew it was around around this much. It was in the millions, they knew for sure. But 8.3 million.

It was the highest amount ever paid for a dinosaur up until, I think, in 2020, Stan, the T-Rex Stan was for like 30 million or something like that, a crazy amount. But the Fields Museum receives this, this Sioux skeleton, and it's still there today. You can go visit it, and I went and visited it for the first time. And I don't know why. I assume the exhibit would have at least one mention, just one, of where it was found, being native land. Or at least maybe one mention of the Sioux Nation. the Lakota people, Chey and Rivers Sioux specifically, and the entire exhibit, there is not one mention, not one at all. In fact, it says that it was found outside of Faith, South Dakota. I mean, technically it was found outside of Faith, South Dakota, a border town, bordering the reservation. Yeah, it was found nearby there.

It just shows the just purposeful, just erasing of all the shoddy, you know, work that they ended up doing. And so Maurice Williams did receive that money and Maurice Williams promptly left the reservation and that money, none of it went to the reservation. And they thought about fighting it because, you know, there was good proof that he had, you know, gotten the land through fraudulent means being, you know, head of land acquisition. And also that he had a motive for not informing the Bureau of Indian Affairs and also not informing the federal government. But in the end, federal government had already approved the land and trust to him, and that would end up being shy and Riversou tribe versus the federal government fighting over, you know, basically saying, hey, federal government, you've been defrauded, but the government wouldn't care because they got what they wanted in the end. they got it they you know you might think that that what they wanted was was the money from the the skeleton but what they really wanted was the fact that it could be sold the fact that it could go to an american museum that that was the goal of the federal government and they they did it

perfectly yeah just to add one thing in something that you said a little bit earlier so i I apologize for backtracking a bit when you mentioned that the tribe wanted to, was looking into making a museum and, you know, what kind of economic boom that would be. So again, listeners, we're talking about a fossil that's sold for $8.3 million at the time, the most pristine, the largest, most well-preserved T-Rex skeleton. And again, T-Rex is the dinosaur. If you were going to have a dinosaur on display, that's the one you would want because that's the one people are going to come to see. At the time, that was the best one. You know, now there's a couple others out there that, for example, there's another

T-Rex name Stan, which sold for $31 million, $32 million, something crazy like that. If I remember correctly, a museum in the UAE, like it's an airport museum in the UAE. Yeah. Because, you know, in Dubai, they just spend money on what they want. But so that one is now the most expensive, you know, T-Rex fossil. But at the time, Sue was the one. And even in terms of like replicas, replicas are a big business into themselves. For example, and again, you know, speaking of somebody who looks at things like this in their free time,

things that I will never have enough money for but you know things that I look at nonetheless a replica if you want to get it from like an official you know something like the Black Hills Institute not that they're official but you know what I mean like they're professional in what they do or if you wanted to get it from the field museum and their curators if you want to just a replica of the skull just the skull which you know I appreciate is both the largest and kind of most iconic piece of a T-Rex skeleton. So, like, I'm not just picking a random bone. I am kind of picking, or, you know, series of bones.

I am picking this strategically. But just, I mean, that's one part of the T-Rex. We're talking, you know, a couple feet long out of a 45-foot-long skeleton. If you wanted to buy a replica, you know, a replica, there are no real fossils in there. It's for a reasonably price. one, $10,000 to $13,000 for a replica of the skull. By the way, Dwayne, Dwayne the Rock Johnson has a replica of Stan's skull. He paid $12,000 for that because apparently the rock likes rocks, which, of course, fossils are,

but his is a replica, so it's not a rock anyway. That's neither here nor there. The point is that, you know, let's assume, you know, kind of like thinking back, let's assume that that museum had been made. Not only are we talking about the best preserved at the time, the best preserved T-Rex fossil, you know, complete skeleton in the world, and a museum built around that. And of course, there is plenty of other, you know, again, listeners who are aware of paleontology at all would know, South Dakota is an incredibly rich state in terms of paleontological remains. And that reservation has been the site of many finds. If they had built a museum, it would have been very easy over the next few years to populate it with more and more finds that had been found on that site.

Think about how many people would have gone there. I mean, if you wanted to see AT Rex, in the world, that would have been the best place to go. All of the other places would have looked at that place and tried to get a replica of the one that was housed there. And if they then had gotten into kind of, you know, the business of selling replicas themselves, having, you know, a professional, you know, fossil preparator, replicator person on site who could make those kind of things. I mean, we're talking $13,000 per skull replica that's going out. And there's more than a few of them. Like every natural history museum wants one. And there's a lot of natural history museums in the world.

That's all over the place So if that had been there Like not only do you have the economic pool of people coming there And having this remarkably valuable specimen on site But you know think of all of the other things that you could have done Replicas merchandise blah blah blah blah blah blah blah And in one of the most poor areas of the country as you said like remarkable It that's what makes this case so nauseating

And, you know, I talked to somebody from Chyana Rousseau just a few weeks ago, and I mentioned the suitcase, and immediately, I don't think they had had any actual administrative role behind it, but just immediately, just hand over the face, just, oh, gosh, I, you know, just. Everyone knew. Everyone knew what that could be, what that could do. And, you know, I guess kind of going into the conversation of just, you know, the ramifications of this case. I mean, the fact that the tribe did not, didn't get this. You know, they, they lost something that that would have. been as as we've been describing an amazing resource financially scientifically um it it would have been an amazing thing it could have gone into help it could have gone into funding a school of paleontology nearby it could have gone into a school to you know have you know it supply jobs i mean there is i won't go on a political stump speech you know but like yeah i mean it It would do amazing things. And it was on purpose.

That is why they could not have it. And that is one of the things that is very important for people in America to understand. And they don't get, you'll have a lot of people that are like, well, you know, settler colonialism doesn't exist in America anymore. Because there's no more settling going on. And it's like, Jesus Christ. But the stealing away of that actual piece of property, that piece of real property under what even under what the United States law says, you know, this real piece of property, the theft of that robbed the reservation from the accumulation of capital.

that would have been existing for decades. It would have been a revenue source that would have rivaled South Dakota itself. I mean, it would have been, I mean, I don't know how many of the listeners have ever been to South Dakota. I'm from Georgia, and so I'm used to gas stations every 15, you know, miles or, you know, at the most. In South Dakota, you know, you're at half a tank and you see a gas station, you get gas, you know, kind of thing, you know. And one of the biggest things you'll see is like wall drugs, which is, you know, if nobody knows that, that's like the biggest tourist attraction. Just look it up. But anyway, you know, South Dakota doesn't have, you know, a large tourism base,

except based around their natural parks, which you have some beautiful. beautiful ones. Yeah, Mount Rushmore and, you know, like, Mount Rushmore, the Black Hills, Custer State Park, Custer State Park, just going to underscore the name of Custer State. I love South Dakota in terms of like the natural beauty of it. I've been there many times and actually my wife and I are planning a trip there this summer.

So, you know, guerrilla history listeners, perhaps if you happen to be in South Dakota this summer, it's not confirmed yet. But, uh, because I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm in Russia right now. Nothing is kind of as of now. But in any case, like beautiful state, but you're right. Like the tourist attractions are like, you know, you drive, you look at this mountainside with old white slaveholders heads on it. And then you drive to a state park elsewhere that's named after a genocide air. And then you, what, you walk up Harney Peak. Like, that's, that's about it. You know, you got the, the world's ball. biggest ball of twine in the corn museum. By the way, these are not just things I'm making up, listeners. Like these are the tourist attractions of South Dakota. This is what is built is bringing revenue to this state. Right.

This is building enough revenue. And for this state to function and, and, you know, on top of, you know, exports and other things. But, but when you just think about, you know, Shire and River Sioux has, has tons of, of, you know, other economic, you know, things that they do. They, they have a buffalo herd that they have, you know, for, they've been raising for years now. It's beautiful, absolutely beautiful to see. And they, they sell the buffalo meat to, to places that want ethically sourced buffalo meat. And that's a wonderful, you know, income source. But this is stuff

that they have to fight for every single bit of it they have to fight for if they want their cattle to be able to graze somewhere they have to ask the Bureau of Indian Affairs you know they I mean it is just insane and then to put on top of that just to kind of get the listeners to understand the situation that Cheyenne River Sioux is and many reservations because this is how many reservations are, is they are put purposefully in the worst part of the state land-wise. They are put in usually the most desolate, some of the hardest portions of the state. Where Shai and River Sioux sits, during the winter, everything shuts down, everything. They have to figure out how to move tribal members who are on dialysis to the capital because they know the power will go out and they can't get generators all the way up to north of, you know, the reservation.

It's the size of Connecticut. On top of that, they only have five police officers for something the size of Connecticut. And it's not because they don't want it. It's because they have no income. They don't have the ability to do this. And also, you know, how many people are you going to attract to, you know, do a job in a place where it's, you know, there's not much around. You're probably not going to be paid the most. It's, you know, they are in such a difficult situation. And that that goes to the settler colonial, you know, nature of all of this is they are I mean I do not think it is an

overstatement to say that you know the reservations were created for I mean they are open air concentration camps to contain and limit you know

the moving of Native Americans around the country, which it's their land. It limits them on being able to leave their land. People don't realize, you know, in the 90s, you had to have slips to leave reservations. And if you weren't back by a certain time, they'd arrest you. I mean, crazed. I mean, stuff like that. It was only 30 years ago, 20 years ago. But, Yeah, just to add in briefly, and this is not to plug the book, but it's something that actually we've been thinking about quite a bit, we being Salvatore, Engel de Maro, and myself, in the Stalin book, which I know you have as well, there's this discussion of the concentrationary universe, which is the creation. You know, Salvatore explains it much better than I do, so you can listen to any of the interviews that we've done, Rev left, you know, guerrilla history, millennials are killing capitalism, actually existing socialism. We'll have an episode coming out with us soon. We discussed this in almost all of them, but I'll do my best. You know, the concentrationary universe is the creation of like, like you're describing this almost concentration like, concentration camp like conditions, whether that's inside of a camp itself

or whether that's just the conditions of society and the way that it's perpetuating itself. And when we had been describing it previously, you know, in the first, you know, the first interview that we were doing about the book and we were discussing this, the first things that popped to mind are Palestine. Of course, I mean, you know, the apartheid settler colonial state of Israel is absolutely imposing a concentrationary universe on occupied Palestine. I talked about how the mass incarceration system, of the United States is absolutely a concentrationary universe or creating a concentrationary universe in many ways. And again, I'm not going to get too deep into this, you know, discussion of this because we do discuss it elsewhere. Look at the episodes on Stalin history and critique of a black legend that we've done on these various podcasts that I've talked about with more coming soon. But after we did the first interview about it and we didn't mention the reservation systems. And, of course, this is something that I had thought about, but we didn't mention it in the episode.

One of the listeners kindly wrote in and said, you know, you might want to lead with the reservation systems. Because while the other examples that you used are, of course, examples of the creation of a concentrationary universe within these various places, the reservation system was the, you know, the impetus for creating a concentrationary universe within the, settler colonial United States and Canada, and it is perpetuated to this day. And of course, when they said this, I said, you know, you're absolutely right. It was in my mind. I just, you know, in the moment when the question came up, it wasn't what came out. But absolutely, you are right. And so in every interview that we have had subsequently, when the issue of the concentrationary universe comes up, I consciously have to make the note.

like lead with the reservation system because there almost is no better explanation of the concentrationary universe than that. And again, I'm kind of digressing a little bit too much. But when we talk about how the Nazi legal code is in many ways, the Nuremberg laws is based off of the United States's legal code and legal decisions that had been made in the past. And again, I'm going to pitch the book, Hitler's American model, the author of, name of whom I always forget, unfortunately, but it's a great book, and I contacted them before to see if I could interview him. He was very busy at the time. Maybe eventually again, I'll reach out again. But he's an Ivy League law professor. He's not like some crazy radical guy, but it's a great book that discusses how the Nuremberg laws were based off of American law. And one of the

sterling examples that they used was, of course, the reservation system. Like, that system. That was very inspiring to the Nazi regime and in many ways informed how they would carry out creating a concentrationary universe, which of course, you know, the eventuated the concentration camps themselves, but even prior to that they were creating a concentrationary universe. The reservation system was one of their main inspirations for that. And so I just want to underscore what you're saying. The settler colonial nature of the American legal system and the reservation system is a sterling example of this. It is perpetuated today and it is critical that we foreground this, not just put it off to the back and say, well, you know, we have these reservations that are in the country, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like critical.

So, you know, again, that just I know that this is your episode. I'm talking far too much today and I'm very aware of that listeners. I do apologize, but you know, you're bringing out so many interesting threads. So, you know, I'm enjoying, you know, hey, it's a casual conversation. We're having a good time. You know, I mean, it's, it's, it is so, people feel like they, they can't make that comparison, but, but it is, it, it, it absolutely is. It's this idea of having an open-air concentration camp.

I mean, in the older days, or it's still today, but more so in like 80s, 90s, 70s, you know, native people that left the reservation were considered, you know, rebellious. They were the ones that, you know, they were told to go back to the reservation, go back to the res. You know, what are you doing out here? Nick Estes and Red Nation have done a phenomenal, amazing work on talking about border town violence, which is something that the majority of people in the West do not know. And the fact that the left in the West doesn't know that is, in my opinion, one of the most horrific and embarrassing things that they could possibly. I mean, it's chainful. But to compare it to, you know, to Palestine, you know, what's happening right now, I mean, people, people may not hear about all the deaths that occur to indigenous people in this country. But it is astronomical. I mean, native women, up to 30 percent of all police killing of women in just one year.

was 30% Native women. And Native Americans make up 1% of our population. And that's just the report it. I mean, we have, you know, just insane numbers. And on top of that, to go into a little legal aspect, you know, if a, you know, a bad man, a non-indigenous, a white man colonizer comes on to the reservation and kills a native individual and then leaves, well, what would you imagine would happen? Oh, well, the tribe would open an investigation. They'd be able to figure it out because they know best. They know the land. They know the person. They know all this stuff.

No, no, no. They don't get to touch it. In fact, their sovereign nation gets invaded by the United States and the FBI gets to conduct the investigation because it's a homicide. And they didn't like how the tribes dealt with homicides because they had a different legal system for handling it. And that's that's a story for a different time that that's very interesting of just different legal systems and how America has seen them and gone. That doesn't compute with our economics. You know, we can't have that. But, you know, if. It really is, is, is terrifying, you know, border town violence is, is still a thing today. Border town violence and harassment is still a thing today.

I, I was traveling with, with some colleagues, and we, we stopped in Sheridan, Wyoming on our way to, it was a victory day celebration, celebrating the, the victory of, battle over Custer. So we were driving over there. And we stayed in Sheridan. And one of my friends, I'm in the hotel room and he walks outside to smoke a cigarette. Well, you know, it's like maybe 12 o'clock at night. Well, he goes out there and he's looking for his lighter. Sure enough, blue lights turn on. And a police car comes up to him immediately. How much have you been drinking tonight you know and he's like i haven't been drinking anything you know i'm looking for my lighter you know do you have a light you know kind of thing and uh you know the police officer's like well i'm going to need you to do a sobriety test and he's like what for i'm

standing on the sidewalk i have no alcohol on me standing well intoxicated you know exactly a very very pernicious charge yeah outside of a hotel and he even tells him he goes you know i have a buddy in the hotel. That's why I don't have my, you know, hotel card on me. It's because I just have to knock on the door. He's going to let me in. We're watching a movie, you know? He's like, I don't even have shoes on. That's why. He's like, I'm just trying to smoke a cigarette. He had to do every single test that they had. He did a breathalyzer. He did sobriety, you know, walking test everything. And then they let him go. And, uh, I was about to leave the hotel room because I was like, shit, something happened you know because it had been so long and uh i couldn't believe it when he came back

he was like you won't believe what just happened and i mean still this stuff happens every day and that's a benign example of it and it's it's it's terrifying um but that's but that's the nature of of you know uh cellular colonialism is is the idea is to not only eliminate the culture, but to eliminate the people and to also eliminate their view of even having a place in society and also eliminating the entire population's idea of their existence. That is really how American settler colonialism works. And it was actually interesting. I was listening to a Red Nation podcast. I can't remember what day it was, but they were, but they were talking about, and I didn't even know this happened, but the Fields Museum. Fields Museum has a, an exhibit right now.

Now, many, many Native historians worked on it, and there are aspects of it that are very, very nice from what I've heard. But at the end of the day, it's odd that we put Americans in museums. They're still here. They exist. They are fighting for their survival. And we put them in museums as a relic of the past. It's insane. And to quote, I guess a good figure to quote here. about how America is viewing this. Fiattaire Hurtzl said famously, you know, if I wish to substitute, you know, a new building for an old one, I must demolish before I construct.

And this has been the slow reduction of territory, reduction of them as a population in this country, and a reduction of even the populations knowledge of their existence in Georgia, if I walked across the street right now and asked my neighbor, have you ever met a Native American? They would say no. Because I haven't. And, yeah. Just to add in when you're talking about the purpose of settler colonialism is to eliminate a people's feeling of belonging or their culture, their place in a place. It reminds me, I mean, of course, it should remind many people because this is not something that's like exactly hidden anymore. It was, but it's not anymore. The residential school system, the whole purpose of the residential school system, this is in the United States and Canada, was to rip native children away from their families, put them up into usually a Catholic or, you know, otherwise Christian school with missionaries as they're teaching.

teachers to completely strip away any sense of cultural belonging, any sense of cultural history, any sense of belonging to a group of people, to completely shear that away from their life experience from a very young age so that when they were released from the residential school system, they didn't belong. They were never going to belong in a colonial white society you know the people within settler colonial white society are not going to see them as part of that society and now they no longer fit within their cultural society that is destroying a culture through what education that's the guise of it but you know this yeah yeah it's propaganda i think you know when i was in when i was in my undergrad and i was fortunate that you know in the university i went to

They had courses in indigenous languages at the university. I took more than one elective in Native American history and cultures. My professor was a remarkable woman, Betty Kay McGowan, just in case anybody wants to look her up. I was in touch with her for years after I finished and tell some health problems and things like that. But she, just to tell her story briefly, which I know is, you know, like an anecdotal example. And this is not, you know, the kind of program where we do anecdotes and blah, blah, blah. But, okay, this is indicative. Kay McGowan, and she had a twin sister as well, who also was a professor at the university.

Lovely ladies, absolutely lovely ladies. They were elderly Mississippi Choctaw women. Just the kindest ladies he ever met. I loved them. That's why I stayed in contact with them for years. But their experience was this. Their family had been forcibly removed from Mississippi, you know, at the time when most of those individuals are being removed from Mississippi. And they were growing up on a reservation.

At the same time, you know, this is just the show how recent history this is because, okay, listen, I'm 28. I know a lot of listeners are like under the impression that I'm a lot older than I am because I'm lame and you know old sounding and whatever but no I'm I'm pretty young so like when I say in my undergrad we're not talking about ancient history like I graduated what 10 seven years ago six years ago seven years ago something like that from my from my undergrad and you know so she's like you know she only retired a few years ago um so in her childhood The Bureau of Indian Fairs was sending agents around to round up children. I mean, this is in my professor's childhood. Her family had to hide her like under blankets on their property so that they wouldn't steal her and her sister away from the family. All of the other children in the area were taken to residential schools. Her family had to go like more or less like on the lamb for a while, you know, until they had forgotten, nay, that there was two girls in this family and, like, where are they?

And their experience was one of, like, fear and constant hiding because they knew, they knew that if they were found, that they would be brought to this residential school. And they knew that when people came out from these residential schools, they were not the same people, and they did not belong anywhere. They were people without a cultural home. Absolutely. Even if they came home. If they came home exactly, I mean, and we know now about how many deaths occurred at these residential schools, most of which were covered up and hidden and never reported until they found mass graves decades later. And then it's like, hey, there was a school here that was, you know, sanctioned by the government of the United States or Canada. And we have like mass grave full of children. Why didn't we know about the? No, because they knew. They didn't want you to know. They knew. The government knew this. They were the ones who sanctioned the covering up of this mass.

child grave. This is again, recent history. My professor's childhood was this period of time, and I am not an old person. Today, tribal attorneys are still fighting cases having to do with children who have been taken from indigenous families and relocated, and they desperately want custody of their children back or want to know where their children even are. It is, it's terrifying. I mean, there's, there's a, a famous criminal law case that is, is just, it's a very, very fat, sad fact pattern. So I, I apologize to listeners for the sad back pattern. But the, the facts of the case, and I wish I could give the name, but I cannot remember it off the top of my head. But the facts of the case was this native family had a child and the child had a toothache. The child was crying from

this toothache and they were giving the child pain medication to help the tooth and that was helping for a few days. But then it started back up and the baby was, you know, crying again. Well, Well, they were reluctant to take their child to the hospital. And the reason they were reluctant to take their child to the hospital was the law at the time. And this only ended in the 90s. But the law at the time was that if there were any signs that a native child was being mistreated and under mistreatment is also, malnourishment if any child

was seen to have that they would be taken away from their parents and then given to a white Catholic family right well they didn't want to take their child to the doctor because they were afraid that was going to happen

they let two days go by and then they finally took the child out to the doctor because they were worried the child ended up passing away because of a tooth abscess and both the parents were sentenced prison.

Yeah, for criminal child negligence and that's a big charge. Exactly. And that just shows that it's one thing to mention about law. One of the greatest things to kind of

weak people's brains out with American law is everyone's heard the neutrality under the law. everybody has neutrality under the law you know and that's very true it's you know uh there's there's the wonderful uh american neutrality of that just just like uh you know uh a poor man a rich man can also be put in prison for stealing bread or being forced to live under a bridge you know it's that equality of of of criminalizing specific acts that will only be perpetrated possibly out of necessity in these kind of situations.

And it truly is, I mean, it's just terrible. It really is. Yeah. No, so I just want to briefly, you know, mention a couple of Betty Kay McGowan's achievements because she was a big inspiration to me during my undergrad. I mean, she was, I mean, she was fairly radical. She wasn't, you know, like a communist or anything like that. But I mean, she was a very inspirational figure to me. And so I just want to mention this. And I want to be respectful of your time. So we'll close out the conversation pretty much here. But we do have plans for other conversations in the future that I think kind of will even start up from this point. Really. So, but yeah, Betty Kay was just a remarkable individual. She not only was like,

constantly involved on campus with trying to raise these sorts of things through classes, through seminars and things like that. But she also was like perpetually at the United Nations advocating for indigenous rights, not only in the United States, but internationally. She was, I think, I think she went 25 consecutive years, something like that until, again, she had, you know, some health problems that she got into her older age and then wasn't able to make it anymore. But, you know, she was constantly delivering testimony at the expert mechanism on the rights of indigenous people. She was talking about water as a human right and how, you know, tying this into, so I went to university at Eastern Michigan University, which is an Ipsilani,

right next to Ann Arbor, somewhat near Detroit. And this is around the time when water shutoffs were happening pretty frequently in Detroit. And of course, she's talking about tying in water a human right based on indigenous concepts and then indigenous experience with water being cut off from them by the settler colonial government. And then what is still happening in major cities like Detroit, tying these experiences together to advocate not only for indigenous rights to water, but human rights for water, things like this. She was involved with the creation of the UN Declaration on the rights of indigenous people, you know, like pretty. intimately involved with that she was involved with collaboration with indigenous groups from

around the world uh you know everything from indigenous groups in rural chile to the the sami people in scandinavia like she was at the forefront engaging with these people and trying to come up with consents because again you know it's worth there's almost sometimes a fetishization of uh you know you see the word indigenous and many people think like must be progressive must be like you know thinking in terms of like anti-colonial anti-settler colonial like you know very militant this is not the case in many in many cases like you know fetishization of any group of people can be troubling so you know let's not do that so she's trying to band together you know all of these people with different experiences but experiences that are united under the experience of settler colonialism and in

in almost every instance and coming together with some sort of consensus of what kind of rights do we believe in that should be extended to the people of the world I mean that is a really

important thing to do and something that is very difficult given the diversity within indigenous groups across the world much less even within the United States but across the world I mean a remarkable diversity

and so you know she's also she was involved with things like anti-Vietnam war protests and things like that as well, like things that extend beyond indigenous resistance to settler colonialism. But that really was a thing. And she eventually ended up making a documentary, her and her sister, about the residential schools. And I don't remember the name of the thing. But if you look up Betty Kay McGowan, and I think her sister's name was Fay, Fay McGowan,

residential school documentary, you should be able to find. it. But remarkable people that were constantly standing up against the sort of settler colonial law that we're talking about in this conversation, which is why I bring her up. It's not just to like break, hey, I had classes with this person and I want to talk about their achievements. Like, no, it's directly related. Settler colonialism is an ongoing process regardless of whether some people want to acknowledge that or not. It is the basis for the foundation of the United States as well. And it's absolutely worth underscoring this. that as we think about how law works in the United States because the legal code of the

United States is settler colonial in nature. And I think that that is kind of like the overarching theme of this whole episode, which we were basing on the example of a T-Rex skeleton that was dug up from the ground. But really what unifies this whole conversation is that law in settler colonies is settler colonial law. Absolutely. I mean, it- Go ahead with any final thoughts, by the way. The only things that I would add is just to mention, you know, one more instance of, of, you know, the divergence of, you know, Western law with the views of Native nations and, you know, how that's actually been shown in the outcome of cases very famously, many people will know, know this case, the United States versus the Great Sue Nation. And this was, this occurred in 1980, 80, 1980. Yeah. Yep. Yep. For all, for all the viewers, 1980. So they sued the federal

government saying that the original Fort Laramie Treaty, which is the treaty that was signed to create a peace between the Sioux Nation in the United States because the United States was getting their ass kicked by the Sioux Nation. And so they signed this treaty and it gave them the Black Hills, their homeland. And then they were never given it. They were never permitted. That is off limits. It's not permitted to be their land.

it's been made into parks it's where Mount Rushmore is all of that stuff well they sued them saying hey this treaty needs to be upheld it goes all the way up to the Supreme Court and they determine you're right

you're 100% correct we stole the land from you and we did not compensate you for it so here is what the American government has decided is the proper remedy. We will give you the monetary amount for that land. And the Cheyenne River Sioux

Council and the tribe said, no. That's not what we asked for. We want the land. If we take that money, we lose any legitimate ownership of that land. But if we don't take this money, then we just have a court record that says, you stole it, you didn't compensate us. The end. Let that just beyond the record. And that money that they actually were awarded is still held in trust in the federal government and worth a lot of money to this day. But Cheyne River Sioux and the other Sunations will, they have no desire to ever accept that money for obvious reasons. But no, I would, And I would just end it with saying that it's important to understand that American law is so old that so many portions of it even come from English common law. In fact, the majority of it does.

And it's important to remember that because that means every anti-vagrancy law that you remember, you know, that happens. in London or any type of these laws that have occurred in the United States, those laws still exist in ideology and they can be made to be material at any moment. You know, one of the biggest things that I would like all the listeners to know is the laws during the McCarthy era are not gone. They're still on the books. They're just not enforced. And that's how the majority of American laws are. It's law is a scary, scary thing. And especially when it is, you know, based on settler colonialism, genocide, and just to create the complete dictatorship of capital. It really creates a very scary legal system.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's why we are very pleased that we have a communist lawyer on our side, you know, and we need far more of them, listeners. So if you're a young person who's considering getting into law, but thinking like, you know, I'm not sure. You have to deal with a lot of really terrible people in law school. But after you get done that, guys, uh, We need it, though. I mean, if we're going to create some sort of, you know, movement for the future, we do need people who know law and work within law. I mean, even if you look at your favorite revolutionaries, many of them were lawyers. Lennon was a lawyer, Fidel was a lawyer, you know, law is something that we need.

We can't just completely abandon it and say, you know, that's for, you know, bourgeois scholars and people. that. Like, this is, it's an important field. And I appreciate that you brought up the example of the Black Hills. That's actually why I mentioned it explicitly earlier when I was talking about tourist attractions of South Dakota, but I didn't really bother to get into why I brought that up. But that's exactly why. You know, it's a stunningly beautiful area. It's one of the tourist attractions of the state. It's indigenous land. Yeah. It's, it's indigenous land, but they don't have access to it. It's not only their indigenous homeland. It is in their religion where they believe life began. That was one of the reasons why they decided that Mount Rushmore should go there.

Exactly. They wanted to dance on that religion and say, look, we are superior to you. We can do what we want. That was one of the reasons, listeners. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And you'll never have a more interesting experience and going to see Mount Rushmore with an indigenous person. It's quite fun to have, I had a friend point to each of the faces and had a wonderful quote for each one of them of just the deplorable things. He's like, Teddy, I believe he's the one that said, you know, the only good Indians a dead Indian, you know, like, oh, well, Lincoln killed, you know, he's actually most executions one day and it was all Lakota soldiers you know and then it's like you know let's go over here you know and it's it's it's terrible and it's carved into to something

that is holy and then in response to the the anger about it they're like oh here's what we'll do we will carve into another mountain crazy horse because you guys like crazy horse because you guys like crazy horse. And then, of course, you being in Georgia, we'll carve into a mountain down here as well. Of course, talking about Stone Mountain. But the less said about that for now, I think, the better. Hopefully, at least some listeners get... One day, it will be sandblasted.

Hopefully, hopefully. All right. Well, let's wrap up this conversation. Like I said, I do have some other ideas for future conversations, including one that we talked about before recording that I really am looking forward to. So again, listeners, our guest was the Leninist lawyer. Can you tell the listeners how they can follow you? Like I said at the beginning of year, one of the best follows on Twitter.

So, you know, listeners, I mean, it'll be in the show notes too, but get ready to listen and find him. Well, you can find Linus Lawyer. I'm the Linnaeus Lawyer on Twitter or X, whatever that. God, I hate that. But the Leninist Lawyer at Marxist Law, I do have a YouTube channel. It has nothing on it unless you like revolutionary music. And I do have a playlist on there of just my favorite revolutionary music. But hopefully one day I might upload some analysis of some cases because I think that might be useful. But as for now, you can you can follow me on Twitter and see any updates about me and what I'm up to there. excellent highly recommend that listeners of course you can follow my co-hosts on twitter adnan is at adnan a hussein hus a i n follow his other podcast the mudgeless i'm sure he'll have more content coming out soon as like i said he's doing his research right now so i'm sure he's going to have some updates that he'll be able to provide there that is based on the islamic world and muslim diaspora issues so listen to that if you're interested in those topics brett all All of his work can be found at Revolutionary Left Radio.com. That would be guerrilla history, Revolutionary Left Radio, and The Red Menace.

All of the content for each of those three shows would be available there as well as social media information, Patreon information. You know, help support Brett. As for me, listeners, you can find me on Twitter at Huck, 1995, H-U-C-1-995. I'm going to pitch the Stalin history and critique of a black legend translation at Salvatore Angoldi Morrow, and I did of Domenico Lassurdo's classic work. It's available from Iskra Books.org. You can get it, paperback, hardcover, or freely available PDF. That's right.

We worked on it for a year and a half just to make it available for free for you. So, you know, do check that out. Of course, you can buy the print edition too. I recommend that, but it is available for free. And you can help support guerrilla history by going to get Patreon.com forward slash gorilla history with Gorilla being spelled, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history, and on Twitter at Gorilla-U-R-R-I-L-A-U-R-I-L-A-U-R-I-L-A-U-N-Score pod. And until next time, listeners, Solidarity.

Thank you. Thank you.