It Could Happen Here - Indigenous People's Day

Episode Date: October 11, 2021

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 Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 Peoples Day. And so to talk about that more, we're going to talk to Dahlia Kilsback, who is a member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribal Citizenship and has studied and worked in federal India tribal policy. Dahlia, hello. How are you doing? I am 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 will probably hear later this week. So yeah. I guess first thing I wanted to talk about is a little bit is about what Indigenous Peoples Day is and why it is that and not the other thing. Yeah, so Indigenous Peoples Day, as many people know, is replacing, I'm going to say it, Christopher Columbus Day. Christopher Columbus Day. That is still like a federal holiday, but multiple cities and states have opted to use Indigenous Peoples Day instead. And the reasoning for that is acknowledging the atrocities that were committed by Christopher, but commit different forms of genocide, rape, etc., all of these terrible atrocities. And so rather than celebrating somebody like that,

Indigenous Peoples 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 piece of shit. Worse Christopher. Like, yeah, it really cannot be overstated how bad that guy was like even 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 if once you've reached the sentence expelled the jews from x like you're already you're already in

the the 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 was another thing that that i wanted to talk about which is federal indian policy and you know this is an incredibly broad area spanning 300 years. So we're not going to be able to go into an enormous amount of depth in it, but I think it's important that people

have an understanding of A, just what the US did and how everyone else has tried to 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? 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 peoples' 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 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, et cetera. And colonial occupation is conceptualized within this way in settler colonial governments um the colonists come to these lands

and stay and they're what they define as sovereignty is within this land that they define now as their own so and in order for that process to happen um there needs to be different forms of genocide of the indigenous populations and so that 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 me questions else i'm just going to try to move quick yeah quickly because there's a lot yeah i i think we probably should briefly talk about what the just the doctor discovery is um at least before we get to sort of the marshall trilogy and stuff for sure so what does that actually mean legally um 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. 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. Um, 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, um, legally, um, it, it, the doctrine of discovery conveyed legal title to an ownership of American soil to European nations, 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 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 yeah you 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 1776 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 successions 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 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. Something that leads it to one of the sort of complicated questions that changes through this whole era, which is about what does sovereignty mean for these tribes? And to what extent do they even continue to possess it? And how does that work when you have this new state that sort of just has claim control here?

Well, later on when we have, sorry, jumping ahead of myself, when we have the extermination of the treaty making process, and this completely 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-prophesizing. 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 movements. 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 of 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 secession.

Yeah. Yeah. So the law, the law sort of just following the violence and it's just becomes a sort of retroactive justification for just taking everything. It's, it's a self-justifying sort of sovereignty. Yeah. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows,

presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network,

available on the iHeartRadio 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. 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 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. 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 sub-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 Worcester 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 precedent is the doctrine of discovery, which is reliant on the idea 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 period we used, yeah, the thing you were talking about earlier, the thing you probably know about, which is, okay, it's not true 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 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, one of 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 Warchest Review Georgia determined that the state of Georgia did not have jurisdiction over 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 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 and american indians um 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 is 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 you're seeing a lot of patterns here. I think different forms of genocide, different forms of taking land. This was all around the same time as the Indian Act in Canada

as well, which did a very similar thing, especially starting in the 20th century as well with the expansion of the assimilation programs. I guess the like expansion of the like assimilation programs yeah and i think i guess the one other thing i want to point out about this is that you know so one of the things that happens to trailers 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 is this thing right where the federal government can tell the supreme court to fuck off right and there's nothing the 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 i think this is very sort of i don't know this incredibly grim like you know grim encapsulation of what this state actually is, which is this sort of genocide machine. And this is what sovereignty is, right? It's the ability to break your own rules in order to maintain the system.

So you break your own laws. And as we're going to get to in a second, you break your own treaties continuously. And you do this because the genocide machine has to keep moving. Right. And there's a couple of federal Indian policy theorists, Vine Deloria Jr., 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. 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 Recygrass or the Little Bighorn, where General Custer was killed by Sioux, Cheyennes, and Arapahos

and different instances of 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 Cherokees were moved to Oklahoma, there was attempts of my tribe, for instance, Northern Cheyenne to be moved down to Oklahoma as well. And that's why there's some Southern Cheyennes in Oklahoma and then my tribe, the Northern Cheyennes 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 um settler norms um so if they're not absorbed within the state completely then they're attempted attempt to be assimilated um culturally um through education through languages in terms of economics, and how 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 the 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 we'll get into that more later Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America.

From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do we want to talk about allotment? Because if I look at this, it's in the same period. Yes, allotment period and forced 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 and make sure that the United States has more land and all the land, etc. that they possibly have. etc that they could possibly have um so at this end of treaty making um a federal allotment of indian lands also happened in the um the dawes act um and so what this was was an attempt to um further uh shrink the the reservation lands that tribes are already guaranteed within treaties. So during this period, I think 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 pioneers and for settlers. If it didn't go to the federal government, it was to incentivize settlers to colonize, essentially 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 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 it's 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 this it doesn't it doesn't 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 European farming practices. Yeah. Which they already knew how to like get their own food, right? They were trying to change this whole system of like food growth

to this like to this European way of farming. And it just and they were just forcing them to. And there's yeah,'s it's yes it gets it gets it gets super 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 this horrible farming for like all day every day and i think you know the the the sign that this was like like this is like this is so bad that even the u.s government eventually is like wait this 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 um yeah so the next phase um is the indian

reorganization act and so this only lasted six years from 1934 to 1940 um so this is when allotment ended as you said the, 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 um i think compatible with tribal different tribes way of life they were like you have these constitutions now um now you're 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 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 um that are reminders to the government essentially that um 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 etc etc it's still not working they decided that our tribal governments aren't aren't legitimate and they just decide, well, it's too much to try to keep up with our treaties and what we promised them when it comes to healthcare, education, housing, et cetera, et cetera. How about we terminate our federal responsibility, our trust responsibility that are delineated in federal running policy and in our treaties, um, and give them off to this, to the states to decide what to do with. And so during this period, you see, um,

sort of the, the federal dis, um, dissolution of some tribes, such as the Menominee, um, and other ones as well. So this is another dark time. The dark times just keep on coming. But federal Indian policy scholars have characterized federal Indian policy as a pendulum, so swinging from side to side between this termination uh 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 assimilation so um this is just another phase of terribleness yep well i think this this phase also like one

thing i think that also like is important people understand is that like like it's not like people aren't fighting this like the whole time i mean even going like even going back to the stuff the seventh cavalry like the seventh cavalry lose like the seventh cavalry lose like boars, they lose bells all the time. People are fighting constantly. And this is this period, the termination period is also where you see the, the,

the rise of the American Indian movements. 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, etc. 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 um and we have um the right it's characterized with the revitalization of tribal entities so um 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 kind of guaranteed individual Indians some rights, not just characterized by their tribes, also the self-determination policy. So this is when Nixon condemned the termination policy and gave more control to Indians rather than the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which is 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 domestic 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 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 federally recognized tribes and so it's not one monolith of ideas a monolith of beliefs but by 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 specifically the past five years, it has really gained a lot more popularity as a slogan. But I think for a lot of people who chant it and hear it don't always really know exactly what it means. There's a lot of mixed opinions on what it means. Of course, on the more reactionary side, it's like, people will be like, what? You're gonna kick white people out of these areas? That's what a lot

of 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 um but they may not really know exactly what it means either um they may think it sounds like a good idea but they're not quite sure what it is do you mind kind of talking about how land back has like developed as as an idea and what like what like you mean by it personally at least yeah i think i could talk about more about like what i mean by it personally and what i've understood it to mean to other people

um because i think um land back 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 Jaffa, 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 um the when it had to do with the dakota access pipeline um so although it didn't cross some of the current reservation borders it was in treaty land you know yeah that kind of thing yeah same thing

with stop line three how it encroached on on the hunting land and the farmland that was not technically in the residential, not in 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 loopholes to get the pipelines through. 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 Indian 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. sort of more widespread solidarity especially over social media um 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? 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, etc, etc. 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 the settler colonial process. 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, like, searching, assimilation, etc. By taking it more towards a global scale, such as NoDAPL, highlighting these to other people as these are injustices. This is ongoing genocide. I think that Land Back has many, like a plethora of meanings in that sense. Yeah.

Yeah. I hope 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. that concept grew in conversation with euro-american yeah absolutely yeah conceptions of property so i think that um moving forward when we talk about decolonization as a process and not like a metaphor um that thinking of land back not within that whole idea of euro-american

property as well that's that's kind of another thing to consider. Yeah. I think, 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. Because yeah, that's definitely like, you know,

like all of the things we've, we've discussed, they deserve their own deep dives by people that are not me, Robert, and Chris. 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 um that's really helpful when you're trying to understand that framework um in terms of getting to know kind of more of the basics of like current um issues impacting tribes um the National Congress of American Indians does a lot of

work on the federal level um 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, 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 to say, but sometimes voices of non-Indigenous peoples are listened to more within those contexts. So you need to get more involved on those levels.

What sort of like nonprofit organizations work with your tribes or and what sort of issues are impacting tribes and again these are all going to probably be surrounding tribal sovereignty so maybe it's um fishing access hunting rights etc um 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 three 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. such as pipelines you have right now missing and murdered indigenous women um so looking in looking into that um a little bit more and who you can support who's addressing those issues along with um there is another movement with boarding schools right now um because there's been a lot of, um, bodies of young children, um, 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. Um, there's still schools that, um, although they're not called boarding schools right now that were boarding schools, but are still in operation under different names, et cetera. Um, so kind of familiarizing yourself with those histories. And then also there's a, um, national, um, 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 is 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. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow.

Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.