It Could Happen Here - CZM Rewind: Indigenous Peoples Day

Episode Date: October 13, 2025

Daliyah Killsback joins us to do a (brief) walk through of the history of settler policy in America and introduce the concept of Land Back. Original Air Date: 10.10.21See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Hey, it's Ed Helms host of Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single episode. 32 lost nuclear weapons. Wait, stop? What? Yeah, it's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of fabulous guests. Paul Shearer, Angela and Jenna, Nick Kroll, Jordan, Klepper.

Listen to season four of Snafoo with Ed Helm. on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The murder of an 18-year-old girl in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved for years, until a local housewife, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. America, y'all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of heavyweight. And so I pointed the gun at him and said this isn't a joke. A man who robbed a bank when he was 14 years old. And a centenarian rediscovers a love lost 80 years ago. How can a 101-year-old woman fall in love again? Listen to heavyweight on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. I had the incredible opportunity to sit down with the one, the only, Cardi B.

My marriage, I felt the love dying. I was crying every day. I felt in the deepest depression that I had ever had. This shit was not given to me. I worked my ass off for me. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Chetty on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, this is Mia from the future. The whole crew is off this week, so you'll be getting a series of

episodes from our past, and this episode in particular, I wanted to rerun for Indigenous People's Day, but it is also from before I came out. So, hope you all enjoy, and we will be back next week. Welcome to It Could Happen here, a podcast that is on the cycle of being sort of okayly introduced. When this episode goes out, it will be Indigenous People's Day. And so to talk about that more, where we're going to talk to Dahlia Killsback, who is a member of the Northern Cheyenne tribal citizenship and has studied and worked in federal India tribal policy. Dalia, hello. How are you doing? Hi, I'm doing well. Thank you for inviting me here today. Of course. Garrison is also here. Garrison, hello.

Hello. I'm currently also doing writing about indigenous stuff, but within the context of Canada, which. people should we'll probably hear later this week so yeah i guess first thing i wanted to talk about is a little bit is about what indigenous people's day is and why it is that and not the other thing um yeah so indigenous people's day um as many people know is replacing i'm going to say it chris for Columbus Day. That is still like a federal holiday, but so multiple cities and states have opted to use indigenous peoples today instead. And the reasoning for that is acknowledging the atrocities that were committed by Christopher Columbus, who first of all did not discover America, but continue to not only use slavery, but commit different forms of gender.

genocide, rape, et cetera, all of these terrible atrocities. And so rather than celebrating somebody like that, Indigenous People's Day, has been implemented in order to recognize the people who are actually here first and indigenous peoples across the Americas, their histories, cultures, and contributions. Yeah, Columbus, real people. piece of shit, worse Christopher, like, yeah, like, really cannot be overstated how bad that guy was. Even, you know, even people in that era who had committed their own genocides, like Isabella

and Ferdinand, who, you know, expelled the Jews from Spain, where it's like, you know, once you've reached the sentence expelled the Jews from X, like, you're already in the, the shit list of the worst people in human history. And even they saw what Columbus was doing, it was like, what on earth? bad bad guy bad name things are going to continue to go badly and yeah that that was another thing that i wanted to talk about which is federal indian policy and you know this is an incredibly broad this is an incredibly broad area spanning like 300 years so we're not going to be able to go into like an enormous amount of depth in it but i think it's important that people

have an understanding of, I mean, A, just what the U.S. did and how everyone else has tried this sort of deal with it. And then also the fact that this is something that changes over time and has looked different. It's been bad in different ways. Yeah. And so when talking about federal Indian policy, I always like to contextualize it within a larger sort of like Euro-American teleology of colonial conquest and then moving on to settler colonialism and where we are with federal Indian policy currently. So how do we connect Christopher Columbus

to where we are currently? And this is the history of federal Indian policy and Western legal discourse. and how European powers throughout history have defined what it means to be an Indian person in relationship to indigenous people's rights to their own land and to self-governance. So when we're looking at the different periods of federal Indian policy, prior to there being a United States government, we have the colonial period, which is 1492. to 1776. This is how federal Indian policy legal scholars divide that. And it's really important to kind of give the difference between what is a colonial state versus a settler colonial state when you're talking about not just the United States government, but also the Canadian government and different governments globally.

but I want to talk just a little bit about what I mean by the difference between a colonial government and a settler colonial government because they're tied together. So by a settler colonial government, I mean, what I mean is that it is defined by the de-territorialization of indigenous populations. And so rather than in a colonial government, as you had with Christopher Columbus, and the Spanish and with the English, etc., is rather than a state and sovereignty being conceived as all these resources are going back to the metropole. All these resources are going back to England or to Spain, etc. And colonial occupation is conceptualized within this way

in settler colonial governments. the colonists come to these lands and stay and what they define as sovereignty is within this land that they define now as their own. And in order for that process to happen, there needs to be different forms of genocide of the indigenous populations. And so that's what we saw with Christopher Columbus

and throughout history was just the depletion of a lot of our indigenous populace. And so when, I mean about the United States, being a settler colonial state, I mean that this is current and ongoing. And so when we talk about federal Indian policy, federal Indian policy is always in this conversation with what started with Christopher Columbus as the doctrine of discovery. And so that's how we define the colonial period.

And feel free to stop me and ask me questions else I'm just going. to try to move quickly because there's a lot. Yeah. I think we probably should briefly talk about what the doctorate discovery is, at least before we get to sort of the Marshall trilogy and stuff. For sure. So what does that actually mean legally? So legally, it's the discovery of a quote-unquote newfound land by European colonial forces. and the reason why it's called the doctrine of discovery

was that indigenous peoples on these lands were deemed unable to govern themselves and they did not know how to utilize their land up to the definition of what the European powers thought land use was. Indigenous peoples didn't have the same concept of property and same with their relationship with, resources and resource extraction. So when Christopher Columbus and all of these other colonizers, conquistadors, came to the

quote-unquote new land, they saw all of this rich, plentiful resource and thought to themselves, well, obviously these people don't know what they're doing because there's just so much, they have not done anything with it, and we're going to take this back to to ours because obviously they're inferior beings and don't know what property is. So legally, the doctrine of discovery conveyed legal title to and ownership of American soil to European nations, a title that devolved to the United States. And so this definition is expansive and expansive discovery implies that Native nations have a right to lands as occupants or possessors,

but they are incompetent to manage those lands and need a, quote-unquote, benevolent guardian, such as a federal government who holds legal title. And so when we're talking about this legal title, it devolves to the United States later on in history after the American Revolution. And so rather than being colonial states, as the United States, like 13 original colonies, given the American Revolution and its own

constitution and its creation of itself as a nation state, then that turns into a settler colonial government. Yeah, and I think we can, yeah, we can get to what happens next then, because, yeah, you have, you have this elaborate legal framework that lets you steal people's land and murder them and then control it. And then the outgrowth of that is this sort of weird event where the colonies go into rebellion and suddenly, yeah, there's not a colony, they're not colonies anymore. They just are the state. And so, yeah, but what happens next after the sort of formation of the United States? So after the formation of the United States, so we have this period, the American Revolution, which I'll not really dive that into, is 1770.7. six to 1789 and it's called the confederation period but next we have the trade and intercourse act

era which is from 1789 to 1835 and so this is defined with the united states constitution and congress's exclusive right to regulate trade relations and make land secessions and enter into treaties with tribes So this is a treaty-making era with the tribes that only the United States federal government is able to. And there's a distinction there because there had been a lot of contestation between states and the federal government as to who is going to now deal with these nations that are within our own settler colonial borders. So whose job is that to solve this issue? So within the United States Constitution, there are three clauses that define the United States legal relationship to American Indians. And so these are the treaty making clause, the commerce clause, and the property clause. And so this movement from just relying on the doctrine of discovery and treaty making.

processes between different European powers now is between the United States, federal government, and tribes. And so what this does is now tribes are located within the United States territory, and this places Indians within the boundaries and jurisdiction of the United States, and now they're a matter of domestic interest. It's something that leads to one of the sort of complicated questions that changes to this whole era, which is about what does sovereignty mean? these tribes and to what extent to they even continue to possess it and how does that even

sort of how does that work when you have this new state that sort of just has has claimed control here right and also during this period um well later on when we have um sorry jumping ahead of myself when we have the extermination of the treaty making process and this completely um removes seeing tribes as independent sovereign nations. So I think that we'll kind of get more into that later. But the thing with federal Indian policy is that it's sort of self-proposizing. So as settlers are moving across America, the United States government also has to create these policies in order to legalize these land cessations and move.

And a pattern that we do see here throughout history and throughout time is that the United States federal government as a settler state is over the rights to land and rights of indigenous peoples themselves, you have a priority of the settler state in order to acquire land. So a lot of the reason why later these treaties will be broken, et cetera, is because settlers are moving into these lands and the United States is then breaking these treaties in order to have more land, more land secessions. Yeah. Yeah. So the law is sort of just following the violence. And it just becomes a sort of retroactive justification for just breaking everything.

It's a self-justifying sort of sovereignty. Yeah. Hey, it's Ed Helms and welcome back to Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single episode. 32 lost nuclear weapons. Wait, stop? What? Yeah.

Ernie Shackleton sounds like a solid 70s basketball player. Who still wore knee pads. Yes. It's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of guests. The great Paul Shear made me feel good. I'm like, oh, wow. Angela and Jenna, I am so psyched. You're here.

What was that like for you to soft launch into the show? Sorry, Jenna, I'll be asking the questions today. I forgot whose podcasts we were doing. Nick Kroll. I hope this story is good enough to get you to toss that sandwich. Let's see how it goes. Listen to season four of Snap-Foo with Ed Helms on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half-truth is a whole lie.

For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved. until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy Kilder, we know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people, and that got the citizen investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, And I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find.

I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y'all said. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Power struggles, shady money, drugs, violence, and broken promises. It's a freaking war zone. These people are animals. There's no integrity. There's no loyalty. That's all gone. In the 1980s, modeling wasn't just a dream. It was a battlefield.

Book, book, book, make deals. Let's get models in. Let's get them out. And the models themselves, they carried scars that never fully healed. Till this day, honestly, if I see a measuring tape, I freak out. The Model Wars podcast peels back the glossy cover and reveals a high-stakes game where survival meant more than beauty. Hosted by me, Vanessa Grigoriatis,

this is the untold story of an industry built on ruthless ambition. Listen to Model Wars on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of heavyweight, I help a centenarian mend a broken heart. How can a 101-year-old woman fall in love again? And I help a man atone for an armed robbery he committed at 14 years old. And so I pointed the gun at him and said, this isn't a joke.

And he got down, and I remember feeling kind of a surge of like, Okay, this is power. Plus, my old friend Gregor and his brother try to solve my problems through hypnotism. We could give you a whole brand new thing where you're like super charming all the time. Being more able to look people in the eye.

Not always hide behind a microphone. Listen to Heavyweight on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So this is the removal period and what a lot of people may have heard of. So it's from 1835 to 1861. And what we have is the extinguishment of Indian title to eastern lands and the removal of Indian tribes westward. So one of the most notable acts is the Removal Act, which was authorized by President Andrew Jackson, which moved Indians from the east to the west of the Mississippi River into what is. was called Indian Territory.

And what brought about this federal act was a series of three foundational statutes within federal Indian policy dictated by Chief Justice John Marshall. So first we have Johnson v. McIntosh, Cherokee Nation, v. Georgia, and Worcester v. Georgia. And I won't go into too much detail, but what these essentially did and legally defined tribes as being domestic dependent nations. And so it clarified more that, again, tribal nations are underneath the federal government's overview, not the states. So, yeah, it placed tribes above state jurisdiction. And what this was trying to do was solve some issues that tribes such as the Cherokee Nation had with different states when it came to land and jurisdiction over said land. But that is kind of the basis of a lot of federal Indian policy and still remains true today. And what is notable in each one of these statutes, I believe particularly in War Chester's,

v. Georgia, although it seems that it was supporting tribal sovereignty and that they were above state jurisdiction, a lot of these statutes cited racist president and the doctrine of discovery. So what you see for federal Indian policy is that a lot of the foundation for federal Indian policy based on president is the doctrine of discovery, which is reliant on the idea that, that American Indians were savages and needed federal benevolence and paternalism in order to regulate their own affairs. Yeah, and I think that's, well, okay, we should probably not just immediately get to allotment, but yeah, because there's also, yeah, this is also the pure abuse, yeah, the thing you were

talking about is the thing you probably know about, which is, okay, it's not sure to say this is when this starts, but this is Indian Removal Act, Trail of Tears, territory. And, you know, one thing that, you know, I think one of the sort of running themes of this is that, you know, the, the, the law in this context is just sort of, it becomes a sort of retroactive excuse to do whatever, like, needs to be done from the perspective, quote unquote, of the sort of, of the settler state to just take all of this land. Yeah. And I think maybe, like, what are the keystones of this? is Andrew Jackson just straight up telling the Supreme Court to fuck off so that he can do a trail of tears? Yeah. So the Removal Act happened after all of these statutes that you already had that supported federal Indian sovereignty.

And so the Cherokees in Georgia were one of the tribes that were removed. and so you kind of see what you talked about the retrograde kind of justifications for said removal despite the statutes that are there. So although that like Marshall in Warchester v. Georgia determined that the state of Georgia did not have jurisdiction over tariffy territory, although this territory was in the state's borders. later on you see with the Removal Act that although these statutes are still precedent in

federal Indian policy, those were null in order for there to be more expansion of settlers within these areas. So when it was decided that, oh, wait, we do need this land and we don't actually want these Indians here, let's put them to the side over past the Mississippi so that they're out of sight out of mind right so we see more of this um justification for settler expansion and so again we bring it back to these themes of like settler colonialism in order to um kind of gain more of this land and a lot of these statutes are still cited the doctrine of discovery in them and rather than supporting tribal policy the relationship between the united states federal government

government and American Indians was not based on the rights of Indians, but more that they can't, they can't govern themselves, right? And so, so, and that's the whole issue. It's like, people are like, they don't know what they're doing. So we're going to push them and, like, take their land again. So I, I don't know if you want me to go too much into the Trail of Tears, but, um, you're seeing a lot of patterns here. I think different forms of genocide, different forms of taking land. This is all around the same time as the Indian Act in Canada as well,

which did a very similar thing, especially starting in the 1900. It's starting in the 20th century as well with the expansion of the assimilation programs. Yeah, and I think, I guess, one other thing I want to point out about this is that, so one of the things that happens to trail us here

is that the Supreme Court, like, tells Jackson that he can't do this, and Jackson just does it anyways and I think that's a very interesting important moment because you know this is this thing right where the federal government can tell the Supreme Court to fuck off right

and there's nothing this Supreme Court could do about it and if you look at what they did it to do the thing they did it to do was genocide and it's I think it's this very sort of I don't know this incredibly grim like you know encapsulation of like what this state actually is

which is this sort of genocide machine and whatever sort of this is what sovereignty is, right? It's the ability to break your own rules in order to sort of maintain the system. So you break your own laws and as we're going to get to in a second, like you break your own treaties

continuously and you do this because you know, the genocide machine has to keep moving. Right. And there's a couple of federal policy theorists bind a lawyer junior who's one of the most famous ones and David E. Wilkins, who talks about how

there is no need for checks and balances within the federal Indian policy system. So you have Congress that is able to pass whatever act they want. And then you also have the Supreme Court and then you also have executive action. But it wasn't really delineated that well within, especially when it comes to this period as to who is going to be dealing with the Indians kind of thing. And so this kind of confusion and not really completely defining what it means to be a domestic dependent nation, I think, really just goes to show how much of a fragile edifice like settler colonial policy is within the system. But again, moving on, it comes back again to land. So the reservation era in 1861 to 1887, you have a lot of westward expansion of non-Indians, settlers, specifically to California. You also have the creation of Indian reservations and resulting Indian wars.

So during this era, what you see a lot of are different types of attempts at assimilation. And a lot of warfare. So you have a lot of the Plains tribes, my tribe, for instance, that are going through all of these battles fighting forced removal onto reservations. One of the most famous ones was the Battle of Recy Grass or the Little Big Horn, where General Custer was killed by Sue Cheyans and Arapahos and different instances of that. battles such as those and also where a lot of tribes were forcibly removed to areas that they weren't originally from. So like how the Cherokee's river moved to Oklahoma, there is attempts of my tribe, for instance, Northern Cheyenne to being moved down to Oklahoma as well. And that's why there's some Southern Cheyenne's in Oklahoma and then my tribe, the Northern

Shaians in Montana. Another thing that is happening during this period are boarding schools, the boarding school era. So this attempts at assimilation through education. And assimilation is also within the settler colonial kind of structure. It's defined as a process where indigenous people end up conforming to different constructed notions of settler norms. So if they're not absorbed within the state completely, then they're attempted, attempt to be assimilated culturally through education, through languages, in terms of economics. So now you have a bunch of different sort of bureaucratic structures on these

reservations, trying to make tribal governments appear to be, or. constructed as settler colonial governments are. So maybe it's the three branches in ways that aren't just compatible with different tribes culturally.

And you also have attempted eradication of different kind of spiritual and cultural practices and a lot of Christianity being forced onto different people and just kind of terrible things that I think more and more people are becoming aware of due to due to current movements, but we'll get into that later.

Hey, it's Ed Helms and welcome back to Snafoo, my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single episode. 32 lost nuclear weapons. You're like, wait, stop? What? Yeah. Ernie Shackleton sounds like a solid 70s basketball player. Who still wore knee pads.

Yes. It's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of guests. The great Paul Shear made me feel good. I'm like, oh, wow. Angela and Jenna, I am so psyched. You're here. What was that like for you to soft launch into the show? Sorry, Jenna, I'll be asking the questions today.

I forgot who's podcast. we were doing. Nick Kroll. I hope this story is good enough to get you to toss that sandwich. So let's see how it goes. Listen to season four of Snap-Foo with Ed Helms on the I-Hart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half-truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl. from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy Kilder, we know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national TV.

Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y'all said. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her.

From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our lives. legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Power struggles, shady money, drugs, violence, and broken promises. It's a freaking war zone. These people are animals. There's no integrity. There's no loyalty. That's all gone. In the 1980s, modeling wasn't just a dream. It was a battlefield. Book, book, book, make deals. Let's get models in. Let's get them out. And the models themselves? They carried scarcely. They carried scarcely. that never fully healed. Till this day, honestly, if I see a measuring tape, I freak out. The Model Wars podcast peels back the glossy cover

and reveals a high-stakes game where survival meant more than beauty. Hosted by me, Vanessa Grigoriatis, this is the untold story of an industry built on ruthless ambition. Listen to Model Wars on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of heavyweight, I help a centenarian mend a broken heart. How can a 101-year-old woman fall in love again?

And I help a man atone for an armed robbery he committed at 14 years old. And so I pointed the gun at him and said, this isn't a joke. And he got down, and I remember feeling kind of. kind of a surge of like, okay, this is power. Plus, my old friend Gregor and his brother try to solve my problems through hypnotism. We could give you a whole brand new thing where you're like super charming all the time.

Being more able to look people in the eye. Not always hide behind a microphone. Listen to heavyweight on the I-heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do we want to talk about a lot in brief? Because if I remember a quick, this is in the same period. Yes, a lotment period and force assimilation. So this is like 1871 to 1934.

And so this is the end of the treaty making process. So the whole idea of trying to force tribes onto reservations and sign these treaties were to, again, take land. make sure that the United States has more land and all the land, et cetera, that they possibly have. So at this end of treaty making, federal allotment of Indian lands also happened in the Dawes Act. And so what this was was an attempt to further shrink the reservation lands that tribes were. already guaranteed within treaties. So during this period, I think that somewhere like 9 million acres were taken from tribal reservations during the allotment process.

So what the allotment process did was it counted each and every individual Indian that was eligible. I think there were adults. Yeah, adults that were eligible. and each one of them were given a certain parcel of land, a certain number of acreage. And once all of this land was calculated, what you had was an excess of land, quote unquote, excess of land that the tribes obviously didn't need because they had still too many people. And so what the excess of land was utilized for is for pioneers and for settlers, if it didn't go to the federal government, it was to incentivize settlers to colonize a settle on Indian lands. So trying its hardest to not stay true to its tree making practices.

I think the other thing that was interesting to me about this is that, like, because one of the other goals of this is to sort of, like, oh, it's the civilizing mission. It's like, yeah, we're going to turn them into, we're going to turn all these people into, like, like, human farmers, like, true American frontiersmen or whatever. And it's just like, it just doesn't work because economically it doesn't make any sense. Like, you're breaking up all these, like, lands is like it doesn't, you can't just give someone, like, a small patch of, like, shitty land and have them farm. Like, this doesn't, like, it doesn't, it doesn't, like, it doesn't, like, it, like, they certainly. tried. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, like, that was one of the main thing, one of the main things in Canada was about getting them to adopt, like, like, European farming practices. Yeah. Which, which they, they already knew how to, like, get their own food, right? They were trying to change this whole system of, of, like, of food growth to, to this, like, to this European way of farming. And it just, and they were just forcing them to. And there's, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it gets, it gets, it.

gets it gets super like dark and horrible once you like look at like the letters that were being written by like the heads of these programs um like you know instructing like these agents were stationed at these like reservations to like force people to be doing doing this horrible farming for like all day every day and i think you know the the the sign that this was like this is like this is so bad that even the u.s government eventually is like wait, this, like, this is fucked up and doesn't work. So I think that's, yeah, you transition to sort of like the next phase, I guess. Yeah, a very short phase.

Yeah. So the next phase is the Indian Reorganization Act. And so this only lasted six years from 1934 to 1940. So this is when allotment ended, as you said, the United States government was like, wait, this isn't working. what else can we do? The Indians aren't dying off. They're not assimilating. They're not acculturating.

We don't know what to do with them. So maybe we'll have them adopt these constitutions. And a lot of them were just templates. So regardless of whether or not they were, I think, compatible with tribal, different tribes' way of life, They were like, you have these constitutions now, now you're a tribe, and this is what each tribe has to look like in order for us, the federal government, to recognize you as a legitimate entity. And then so you have the establishment of these tribal governments that consist of tribal councils and business committees, et cetera. However, this period is fleeting, very fleeting.

And next, you have the termination era. So this is the period of time where the federal government essentially even more so wants to just get rid of the quote unquote Indian problem, which is the existence of indigenous peoples that are reminders to the government essentially that they are a settler colonial force and they don't know what to do with us because they tried to commit genocide. they tried to remove us, et cetera, et cetera. It's still not working. They decided that our tribal governments aren't legitimate, and they just decided, well, it's too much to try to keep up with our treaties and what we promised them when it comes to health care, education, housing, et cetera, et cetera. How about we terminate our federal responsibility, our trust responsibility that are

delineated in federal ruling policy and in our treaties and give them off to this to the states to decide what to do with and says during this period you see sort of the the federal dissolution of some tribes such as the mononomy and other ones as well so this is another dark time The dark times just keep on coming. And what federal Indian policy scholars have characterized federal law policy as a pendulum. So swinging from side to side between this termination of tribes. So the federal Indian government as trying to get rid of tribes, especially as you can see in this era. And then the pendulum of the other side is self-determination.

But both of these are held within the context of goals of a civil. assimilation. So this is just another phase of terribleness. Yeah. Well, I think this phase also, like one thing I think that also like is important people understand is it like, like it's not like people aren't fighting this like the whole time. I mean, even going like even going like even going back to the stuff of the seventh cavalry like the seventh cavalry lose like boars. They lose bells all the time. People are fighting constantly. And this is this period determining. period is also where you see the rise of the American Indian movement. Yeah, a lot of these periods can be like dove into more and all of these different things. In every instance, in every instance of federal Indian policy, you have resistance,

which we're not covering here right now, but you have instances throughout history where indigenous peoples have fought for their rights to land, for their community, to being sovereign nations, et cetera. And that's why the federal Indian, the federal government, not federal Indian government, the federal government has not been able to eradicate us, much to their dismay. And so now I'm going to switch into the era

that we are considered to be in, which I had mentioned when I talked about the pendulum of federal Indian policy. So now we are in the self-determination era. which began in 1962 and we have the right it's characterized with the revitalization of tribal entities so going kind of back to when there was the Indian Reorganization Act so we have our tribal councils there's restoration of some tribes under federal recognition who were terminated again not all of them we also have the Indian Civil Rights Act so this this kind of guaranteed individual Indians, some rights, not just characterized by their tribes, also the self-determination policy. So this is when Nixon condemns the termination policy and gave more control to Indians

rather than the Bureau of Indian Affairs, it's just a federal bureau. And just kind of like other policies that have given the tribes more, rights to determine for themselves and their own people to a certain degree underneath the federal government as an ethnic dependent nations. And again, I think that we have seen a lot more movement, but within the context of being within a settler colonial state, it's always, I think, a possibility that the federal Indian government, or the federal government, I keep saying Indian,

the federal government will try to take more and more. And I think for instance, when it comes to issues of fishing rights, issues of hunting rights with states,

not even just with the federal government. So you have a lot of states throughout history, but still ongoing, that attempt to encroach on tribal treaties. And again, treaties are the basis of federal Indian policy. Without these treaties, the lands would have never been seceded to the United States. And so there's this sort of like legal conundrum, I would say,

of where all these, all treaties in the history of the United States with Indian tribes have been broken in some way, shape, or form. But still, American Indians have to live on their reservations instead of having their land back. And so nowadays, a lot of movement has been towards land back, what this means, what is this process. And I think it means a lot of different things for different people, indigenous people, because again, there's 574, for the federally recognized tribes. And so it's not one monolith of ideas, monolith of beliefs. But just by saying land back, that's like recognition that this is our, this was our land first. And you're not keeping your side of the deal and never have been. Could you maybe go a bit more into

land back as a topic? Because like specifically like the past five years, it has really gained a lot more like popularity as like a slogan. but I think for a lot of people who you like chanted and hear it don't always really know exactly what it means that there's a lot of like mixed opinions on what it means of course on like the more like reactionary side it's like people be like what you're going to like kick white people out of these areas like that's kind of that's what a lot of like the reactionary takes on land back is and I'm sure most people who are listening to this podcast that's not what they think. But they may not really know exactly what it means either. They may think it sounds a good idea, but they're not quite sure what it is. Do you mind kind of talking about how Landback has developed as an idea and what like you mean by it personally, at least? Yeah, I think I could talk about more about what I mean by it personally and what I've understood

it to mean to other people. Because I think Landback itself, it means like a lot of different things and I don't think that there has been a concrete kind of idea of what it means but I think a lot of the movement I want to like contextualize it within

a lot of the sort of activism that we've seen in the recent years so for instance no Jaffel the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016 and kind of I think that's one of the more

recent events that have really illustrated on a wide scale, like globally, about indigenous movements, sovereign movements, and especially when it comes to environmental justice. But what you saw there was encroachment on tribal treaty land within, when it had to do with the Dakota access pipeline. So although it didn't cross some of the current reservation borders, it was in treaty land. You know, that kind of thing. Same thing with stop line three, how it encroached on like the hunting land and the farmland

that was not technically in the like residential like not in like the reservation area where people live, but it's in the surrounding area that is for hunting that is specified in the treaty. So people are trying to use these like loopholes to get the pipelines through. Right, right. And so I think what you see is a lot of solidarity across tribes because this is not new. This has never been new. And a lot of tribes

can relate to that. And what you've seen and what I hope that I've highlighted throughout this kind of very brief overview of federal new policy is the different ways that indigenous rights to land and sovereignty has been attacked in different forms by settler and colonial governments. And I think that the day and age that we live in now has allowed for sort of more widespread solidarity, especially over social media. And so when we say land back, for me, how I interpret it as what people mean when they're saying it is recognition of our tribal sovereignty, of our right to this land that has not been respected. And then I also think that it means, well, if these treaties aren't being respected, then how is this treaty still valid, right? How come we aren't getting our land back because you're not upholding your end of the deal? Well, some people also might mean and recognize that this whole United States government is a settler state, right, based on the doctrine of discovery, which is based on...

denying tribes and American Indians of their rights to this land. So some people might take it to this whole other context of, yeah, well, maybe this is all of our land, et cetera, et cetera. But in practice, what does this look like? And I think in practice, a lot of people are seeing it with reparations or people buying land back for tribes and giving it back to tribes. And we have seen some of that, or also just people interrupting the narrative in their own mind of their Euro-American identity. So non-American Indians and primarily European settlers and their history of their own families taking part of this settler colonial process.

And how has that, what about their lands? There's everyone who descends, I guess, from these settlers. And I want to be specific when I'm talking about Euro-American settlers and how they currently benefit from these systems. And I think by saying land back, we're able to highlight this movement for tribal sovereignty and recognition on a global scale instead of searching for justice within the quote-unquote But like searching for justice within the courts of the conqueror, how do we expect for the conqueror to be held accountable for all of these atrocities, attempts of genocide, assimilation, et cetera, by taking it more towards a global scale such as no dapple highlighting these to other people as these are injustices. This is ongoing genocide.

I think that Landback has many like a plethora of meaning. in that sense. Yeah. Yeah. I hope that answers your question. I, myself, might use it in some different ways. Because land, as we conceive it to be property, that concept grew in conversation with Euro-American. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. Conceptions of property. So I think that moving forward, when we talk about decongrued, colonization as a process and not like a metaphor that thinking of land back not within that whole idea of your American property as well that's that's kind of another thing to consider yeah I think land back would just be a whole other thing that will pay someone more qualified than our team to talk about on this show um because yeah that's definitely like you know a Like all of the things we've discussed, they deserve their own deep dives by people that are not me, Robert, and Chris.

Let's see, is there any kind of resources, either books or stuff online that you would recommend for people wanting to learn more about this history and then any kind of ways to, I don't know, I guess, show support in these kind of like efforts that are going on? Yeah, for sure. So in terms of resources and reading, I have read Lorenzo Veracini's book on settler colonialism. That's really helpful when you're trying to understand that framework in terms of getting to know kind of more of the basics of like current issues impacting tribes, the National Congress of American Indians. does a lot of work on the federal level. If you want to talk more about kind of current lived experiences of American Indians, there's illuminatives and getting more involved in those as well. I think that they have some tips.

But I would recommend everyone getting more familiar with the land that they are on currently, the tribes within their state, and what they can do on not just, on the local level, but on the state level to support tribal sovereignty. Because a lot of issues, for instance, I worked on the state policy level in Washington and in Montana, and both of those have a significant amount of tribes. But you have a lot of legislation that's trying to happen that infringes on tribal treaty rights.

And the thing is, as ugly as it may be. be to say, but sometimes voices of non-Indigenous peoples are listened to you more within those contexts. So you need to get more involved on those levels, what sort of like at nonprofit organizations, work with your tribes, and what sort of issues are impacting tribes. And again, these are all going to probably be surrounding tribal sovereignty. So maybe it's fishing access, hunting rights, et cetera. I think that's a really good way to make some more tangible change to feel like you're doing something to support tribal sovereignty while you're also educating yourself and making

sure that their voices are at the forefront. And that's also applicable to the federal level, especially with, as you already said, like stop line 3 in Minnesota, contacting your legislators, et cetera, et cetera. And I think also when it comes to one of the larger issues besides environmental justice for indigenous peoples, such as pipelines, you have right now missing and murdered indigenous women. So looking into that a little bit more and who you can support, who is addressing those issues along with there is another movement with boarding schools right now because there's been a lot of bodies of young children that have been uncovered. and this is not an issue that happened a long, long time ago. Like, for instance, my grandmother went to a boarding school. There's still schools that, although they're not called boarding schools right now, that were boarding schools, but are still in operation under different names, etc.

So kind of familiarizing yourself with those histories. And then also there's a national, I think it's called the National Boarding School Healing Coalition based out of Minnesota. And looking into them and supporting their efforts with this issue is also a good place to start. Is there anywhere that people can find you online? Yes. I don't really use. social media that much. Good for you.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I try not to. I don't know if I want people to find me. Do not. Yeah. Don't do it.

They probably can't find me. It's better not. It's better that people don't find anyone online. It's better we're all just posting into the void. There's nothing. Just the void. Well, that is, I think, going to wrap up. what we have today.

Chris, do you want to close us out with a funny bit? Light your local gas station on fire. Wow. Jesus Christ. Killing it here. Oh, my God. Jeez. Wow. All right.

Goodbye, everybody. It could happen here as a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website. coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for it could happen here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. Hey, it's Ed Helms host of Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single episode. 32 lost nuclear weapons. Wait, stop? What? Yeah, it's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny,

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