The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens - Jodi Archambault: "Relationships, Reciprocity and Resiliency"

Episode Date: March 15, 2023

On this episode, Jodi Archambault, a member of the Hunkpapa and Oglala Lakota tribes, joins the podcast to share her experiences as an activist, government official, and someone who has lived amidst many cultures. While this podcast is primarily dominated by a western and US point of view, there is a huge variety of perspectives and social models we neglect and can learn from. The many different indigenous tribes within the North American continent each have a unique viewpoint and are widely recognized as leading lives that are more in tune with the Earth - known to the Lakota people as Grandmother Earth. Can we learn to respect nature not as things to be exploited and used, but rather as living relatives that are too sacred to be sold? About Jodi Archambault: Jodi Archambault is currently the Director of Indigenous Peoples Initiatives at Wend Collective, a social impact fund working across sectors to create positive change. Prior to joining Wend, Ms. Archambault was a Policy Advisor at Sonosky, Chambers & Sachse, a national Native American rights law firm. Between 2009 and 2015, she was a political appointee for President Barack Obama. During her tenure in the Obama Administration, Ms. Archambault served as the Special Assistant to the President for Native American Affairs on the White House Domestic Policy Council. Ms. Archambault holds a Bachelor of Arts in Government and Native American Studies from Dartmouth College and a Master of Public Policy from the University of Minnesota's Humphrey School of Public Affairs. She is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. For Show Notes and More visit: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/62-jodi-archambault  

You're listening to The Great Simplification with Nate Higgins. That's me. On this show, we try to explore and simplify what's happening with energy, the economy, the environment, and our society. Together with scientists, experts, and leaders, this show is about understanding the bird's eye view of how everything fits together, where we go from here and what we can do about it as a society and as individuals. While this podcast is primarily dominated by a Western and U.S. point of view, as that's the culture I've lived in my whole life, there are many cultures with a different perspective and social explanation for what's going on. One example is the many different indigenous tribes within the North American continent. Today, Jody Arshambo, a member of the Hank Papa and Oglala Lakota tribes, joins me. me to share her experiences and cultural observations. Jody currently serves as the director for indigenous people's initiatives for Wend Collective and a strategic advisor for the Bush Foundation.

Prior to that, Jody worked in the Obama administration serving as the special assistant to the president for Native American affairs. This topic is potent, containing a lot of history that is still yet to be resolved. While there's still much to do to come to terms with the past, there's also much we can learn from the indigenous people with whom we co-inhabit the land. With that, I'm pleased to present Jody Arshambo. Hello, Jody, good to see you. Good to see you, too. How are things today in North Dakota? It's pretty cold and windy. Yeah, here too. Better today than it was yesterday. But

tonight it's supposed to get bad again. So I have a lot of questions to ask you, and I'm really looking forward to this because this is not a topic that I often talk about, because it's a topic I don't really know that much about. So maybe we could start by you just giving a little overview of your current work on what you're trying to accomplish. Okay. I first have to introduce myself to the public. How many, do you, wachia, yon te us, up, jodi, Roshambo and Machiappe, I just said, hello. I greet everybody with a, hello relatives. I greet everybody with a warm handshake.

I am Jody Arshambo, and I'm from Standing Rock. And that was what language? Lakota. I'm a Lakota citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, but I'm a person who's always lived on the plains, always lived in North Dakota, it. And weather like this, we went further south when it got this cold or in the river ravines. And, you know, this is home. This is regardless of how cold or windy it gets,

this has always been home for us. As in always, as in always. Always as in millennia. Even if we weren't here, we originated from the Black Hills. So we're always coming back here for millennia, when I say millennia, for thousands and thousands and thousands since time immemorial as people often translate what our understanding of where we come from is. So getting back, what are you doing? What is your professional work? What are you trying to change in our culture and our world? So my professional work, I work with a lot of different indigenous communities, indigenous people, some tribal nations. And, I've been looking at ways that tribes are better for the land in ways that is not widely known by most people in the United States.

And there's a lot of things that we know intuitively, I guess, or innately about the land and place. that just is what we've always done. And for some reason, that kind of deeper connection to place is something that goes completely unrecognized, unknown, not very widely even understood by not just the federal government, but by Americans writ large. A lot of that is the result of deliberate erasure of our people from the history, the land, the, I guess, the American lore of not just yesterday but today as well. And that's just something that is a part of America as well. It's not just the violent past, but it's the continuous erasure.

That's problematic. and something that I work on, but mostly I work on trying to help the land and the water, trying to help the relatives that live on that, not just the humans, but as a whole, there's a lot of species that don't have a human voice. And so that some of the undertakings that our ancestors have charged us with and take it very seriously. Well, among other reasons, that's probably one of the things that brought us together and that we both care about. deeply. Is it true then that your culture views, what I often refer to in my talks, is our nieces, nephews, and cousins in nature as your relatives, as family? Because that is a non-anthropocentric

viewpoint that is different than our modern Western culture. That's correct. And whenever I talk about mine and our culture, I would have just clarified that there are 574 different nations in the United States that are federally recognized. There's more that are not federally recognized, and there's a ton of diversity in those nations. That's probably would be about half of the nations that were here before the Europeans came, and everybody has a very distinct and unique way of living on what I call Turtle Island. I should say what my people understand as Turtle Island. What's Turtle Island? It's just a, it's unchimaka, it's Mother Earth. It comes from kind of a common understanding, but I would say I think it's more Ojibwe-based that we're on the back of a turtle and that the earth is basically the back of a turtle.

And we're on this island that is how we look at the land. Another thing, we knew it was curved. We didn't think it was flat. But for my people, we, for Lakota, we say, Unchimakaa, that means grandmother Earth, not just Mother Earth, but. but Grandmother Earth. And I would say that the understanding of how we relate to, like I said before, place goes a lot deeper than just human relationships. And that's because we've been here for a long time.

And we know the dependency, the interdependency that humans have on the land and the water. And we have just a different worldview, a different paradigm. of how things work together. And I think it's been erased. I think a lot of people held a similar worldview centuries, maybe even millennia ago, but they've forgotten that relationship, that deep relationship that is now scientifically being proven. Scientifically, there's a lot of, a lot more understanding happening about how trees are related to each other and how fungi is related to trees and how animals play into that equation and also humans.

Humans actually have played into that equation as well and not in a negative way. And that's the balance that we understand and that's hardwired into our culture and our belief system. Our values are about reaching that balance. I think not only is it scientifically proven, but I think it's starting to a way. awaken in a lot of other people in our culture that they, they sent some missing, something lost in our daily lives. And we had this, you know, binge of fossil magic that allowed us to do all kinds of things. But now that, that rock is coming back down to earth. And that's scary in a way, but it's also exciting in a way because some people can maybe find some of those

connections that were lost. Getting back to what you said about the land, in 1868, there was a treaty that gave the Sioux and the Arapaho people's exclusive use over a large range of land. You mentioned the Black Hills, which is also called Paha Sapa, and soon after that, gold was found in the Black Hills. And so the United States illegally took the Black Hills by force. And in 1980, which is now over 40 years ago, a court ruled that this was illegal and granted the Sioux Nation $100 million in reparations, which has been kept in the U.S. Treasury and has since grown to over a billion dollars. So the Sioux Nation has refused to touch this money. Can you unpack this story and why your people have rejected this large sum of dollars? So I was like to start with semantics because,

how we talk about something really matters, especially in the English language. And nobody gave the tribes anything. This is the whole entire, the entire continent. If you want to put it in terms of European understanding of title and land base, it was ours. It was our possession. And so there's a lot of people who will say, well, the United States gave the Sue this land. But we have pre-constitutional sovereign rights that are still in place today, and nobody gave us any land. What we have is what we have left after treaty negotiations with the United States. And the reason that we had treaty negotiations with the United States, and this is well documented in U.S. Indian law, is that European nations were making treaties with Indian tribes on the United States, and this is well-documented in U.S. Indian law, is that European nations were making treaties with Indian tribes on the the Eastern Seed Board in the 1600s. That's England, Spain, the Dutch, the French. They were over here making treaties with us and recognizing us. And that was at the beginning of the European international law.

And so I just like to clarify that the way the United States gained its international status as a nation when it separated from Europe. And the way that the United States separate itself from Spain and the others is that it also began to negotiate and ratify treaties with Indian tribes. So before that, did anyone own the land or you just used the land and the flows or was their ownership? So this is interesting. So we have to do this sort of code switching because our understanding of the land, this is a very Eurocentric. view. We have to say that we possessed it. We have to say that we had title to it because we did. In the Europeans understanding, if we are human beings, if you and I, if you believe Nate that I'm a human being, human being, that this land was mine, all of it. If I'm not a human being, then no, I was just existing here. I was just inhabiting and kind of floating around like a

butterfly. Like, there is a huge difference in the way that Europeans talk about our possession prior to Europe coming here. If we didn't possess it, if we didn't own it, then it was yours to take without just compensation, without fairness or treatment as human beings. So the more people create this understanding of it. So I say, like, as a European in the United States, United States, when you guys came, this land was ours, and we were full human beings, and we still are. And because you have a different understanding of law and the title and relationship with land, we have to speak in your terms because it is absolute and it's the only thing that stands up when it comes to protecting it. So if I own land, I have dominion over it, and I get

to say what happens and doesn't happen on it. I understand what your question is. before the Europeans came, did we possess the land? We had a different kind of understanding of the land. It wasn't, we didn't possess it. There's a lot of people that will say we belonged to the land. Everybody belongs to the land. We do not. It is not possible to possess air.

It is not possible to possess the stars. It is not possible to possess water. But if you have to protect it, then you have to put it in the terms of how the colonizers think. Otherwise, they'll say, oh, the wolves lived here too. So did they possess it? The beavers. So it becomes a very slippery slope to continuing the dehumanizing bias against Native Americans. So earlier this week, I had a call with Van Dana Shiva.

I don't know if you know who that is. She lives in India and she's very active in anti-pesticides and in regenerative agriculture. And she told me that up to 1789, no one owned the land in India until the British came there. And then all of a sudden, they had famines for the first time because the people had to pay in grain and crops, their taxes. And there wasn't enough for people. And the ownership structure that happened, like changed everything. I'm sure you know that story. So it's similar here, yes?

It is similar here. I would also say that tribes did have territories. We did not get along with each other, much like Europe and the rest of the world, we had territorial wars over hunting grounds over waterways. And so it wasn't like, oh, this is, we're just out here kind of like living and, you know, in harmony and perfect harmony. You know, human beings, you know, we're across the globe. We have cultures and we all believe we're the center of the universe. And that's no different for my people. Like we do believe that everybody kind of is them. You know, it is that us and them. But at the same time, there's a lot of commonality with indigenous peoples worldwide that is different than the, I guess, the colonizer mindset. And so when I talk about, did you own the land? I have to put it in a framework because otherwise it's very easy in just an everyday person's thinking that haven't gone beyond their own European paradigm to think that, well, you didn't really own it.

Is there no language in traditional Lakota that like we own the land, it like translates differently like we're part of the land or something? I guess you could say that the language is just not translatable. So even Unchimakah, we don't call the land the land. It's not an object. It's a grandma. Like, it's not, like you asked the question earlier, do you think of things as relatives like I think of my, yes. But we absolutely do. And we treat it as such. We know that the earth is where you go back to. We all come from the earth and we all go back there. And there's a lot of understandings that still exists today about. how we treat our grandmother. And when we talk about the Black Hills, we had a lot of elders who stood up and they protested when that court decision came down. They were upset and they would put up signs.

This is when I was a little girl. They would have their protest signs would say, never sell your grandmother. Never sell your grandmother. The land is sacred. The sacred is not for sale. And we just adhere to that. We're poor.

We don't want that billion dollars. So you've done something that the global economy is unable to do because we're selling our grandmother as a global culture right now in very large ways, as you're aware. So is that discussed these days or is it a badge of pride that there is money that a poor area? could access, but you're choosing to take the high ground and treat the Black Hills and the land as sacred? It's a huge source of pride. It's as important today as it was 40 years ago. I would say that there are some people that would say, like, we could do a lot with that

money, and we're not monolithic. Like any people, like, we have people who will say, like, we should probably take that money. And I would say that by and large, I don't know. any of those people. Most of the people that I know say it's a cohesive understanding of what we're going to do and what we're going to pass on to our grandchildren to do, and that is to fight for the return of the lands and refuse the money. If they want to give us the land, if they want to give back the land that they stole, they should also give us some kind of compensation

for destroying it in so many ways with the mining and the different kinds of. of degradation, the water. The water's been really contaminated with mining and, you know, it's been very hurt. It's not destroyed, but it's been under assault for a long time. So mitigation is going to be necessary. But by and large, people are pretty unified on refusing that funding. And I would say that it's not just about what the money could buy. It's about the land. We want the land back. We know that that's something that over and over our ancestors told the government that that part was it for sale. That was like a non-starter. And they agreed with that until they found gold. Yes. They agreed with it and this is what often happens. And we talk

about this is that oftentimes we're the sacrifice zone. We become the sacrifice zone. in the name of American prosperity. So the gold stake mine in the Black Hills is one of the biggest gold deposits found on the continental United States. And that supposedly was part of, you know, we have to, it's the U.S. Treasury, it's national security. It's part of what we need to exist as a nation. And my brother talks about this, Dave Archamboy. he talks about how this has always been the case. So when they're coming to take something,

it's always in the name of the national security. They did it with the gold in the Black Hills. They broke up our reservation for the gold in the Black Hills, and they took that land. Even though the treaty said they needed three-fourths of all males to consent, they never got that. And this was part of the way that we won the court case. But there's also the railroads.

That was national security. That was in the interest of the good of the nation, the good of the order, utility lines, and then oil pipelines. And surprisingly, our people have been able to fight oil pipelines for a long time. And we are still fighting the Dakota Access pipeline. The EIS process is still pending. And the judge ordered them to do an EIS before they did a environmental assessment for the policy. pipeline. Now they have to do an environmental impact statement, the Army, they, meaning the United States government Army Corps engineers. And we've been litigating that. We've, we've been litigating and we've been somewhat victorious, but, you know, it's the, the oil is flowing because the judge wouldn't stop the construction wouldn't stop the flow. And the thing that people will cite, the energy transfer partners and the Army Corps of engineers is this. national interest of having to have oil come out of the Bakken and to the tune of 600,000 barrels a day.

And then they're doubling the capacity without another environmental impact statement. They're doing all of this and the interest of the United States. And so it has a capacity for 1.2 million barrels a day. And it's now they're going to increase it to that. they're going to double it. Again, they didn't put it north of Bismarck, which is, you know, 80,000 people, the capital of the state. They put it right north of our reservation, less than a mile from our reservation border, and then said nobody would be impacted if it broke. Because the Army Corps and the company, and people know this story well, but it's the same thing. These infrastructure projects, the gold, they always say it's for, The United States always says it's for the national interest. The dams, they dammed our Missouri River, only where reservations are. Bismarck doesn't have inundation.

They're not underwater. They have Missouri River banks that have been there for a long time. They've only flooded Indian reservations. And so, again, why? Because of commerce downstream in Missouri on the Mississippi. be. How is the fight for civil rights of indigenous people different from other social activism issues? And what can anyone trying to make systemic change learn from the difference? So I think there's one fundamental difference that really sticks out. And that's that legally, Indian tribes have a different

kind of status than all Americans. We're minorities, but we're not only minorities. We have political status in the United States. So our tribes, our reservations, our citizenship with our nations is one that is political in nature, meaning that the federal government deals with us in a nation-to-nation context. And so the Indian tribes have, they have sovereignty, that's unique and different and pre-exist state, city, and county sovereignty and even federal sovereignty. And this has been recognized by the courts. So we have, and they call it a political status, not meaning like, you know, politically charged. Political means like we don't have to deal with the strict scrutiny around race because we're politically tied to our own tribes. And that

nation-to-nation relationship is what sets us apart from other minorities. So in the context of civil rights, there is a difference because rebuilding our nations within the United States. And we're also not trying to be equal to other people. We're not trying to achieve the American dream. And the reason that I say that is not because we do want to have the same access and we want to be treated, we want to be treated. We have some of the same difficulties with the law enforcement and education attainment and all of that. So we do stand in solidarity with a lot of the other minorities, women, LGBTQ, a lot of other communities that are locked out of opportunity. However, culturally, the idea of us assimilating and becoming full-on American bourgeoisie.

Jouazzi, middle class with a big house, fancy car, and a bunch of money in the bank is not exactly possible with the resources. There's like a common sense thing. Like, oh, everybody has to live lavishly. That's not possible with the resources constraints. And we have our own culture. We have our own language. We have our own belief systems.

So we're not trying to be equal to anybody. We're trying to have equal access to opportunity for, like, I went to school at an Ivy League. I'm glad that I had equal access to that Ivy League institution because it gave me a type of education that opens doors. And I used that door opening for the good of my people, not to advance myself. So there's a very different, there's a community. collective that when we're talking about gaining access and equal opportunity, we're trying to do it to better our people so that we can all be better off, not just my family or my kids. It's about everybody in our extended family, our community, our tribal network. And some people,

you know, do go, the American dream has been attained by a lot of Native American. who were force, forcibly removed from the reservation, either through boarding schools or government policies and pushed into the urban mainstream, and they've had to survive. But just like any other population, it's few and far between, and most of our people are living with disparities in housing,

employment, income, education attainment. And so there's a great need for civil rights, but I think, like, what is different about when we, talk about civil rights and social justice, we're talking about it from the standpoint of a collective understanding of we want to be here in another 150, 200 years as Lakota people, collectively, not as somebody who has like a bunch of houses or we're not like capitalism is not something that is the goal. The goal is to serve our people and to make things better and ease the suffering that's been here for a while.

But at the end of the day, there are similar problems, and we do stand in solidarity. It's nuanced, though. It's different. But I was just going to say that. I worked in the United States government. You were in the Obama administration. Yep. I worked in the White House for five years, and I worked in the Department of Interior for one.

And I was in the domestic policy council when I left. And I worked with, you know, I was in charge of the president's relationship policy-wise. First, it was engagement. And then I got promoted and became the policy lead for President Obama. So the stuff that I'm talking about are things that a lot of Indian law experts would know. A lot of tribes know. But outside of that, it's pretty complex and complicated and not widely known. But yes, it's distinct relationships.

There isn't a national sort of like, oh, we're going to go to this group. And there is a national org that's like that. But the federal government is obligated to work with each tribe differently or uniquely or how they, I mean, you can't say one size fits all. Even though that's how a lot of the policy is written, there's usually like the provisions where tribes can opt in. tribes can decide how they're going to relate with the United States government not be hold into any other nation and any other tribal nation. You know, one of the reasons I invited you to talk today is I want your thoughts on the great simplification and what's coming and leverage points there. But before we move into that, looking back at your time in the federal government in the Obama administration, you know, what did you learn? In terms of what kinds of things need to be changed.

I mean, I think there are a number of issues that are sort of parsed and pulled apart and made very difficult. One of the things that tribes have asked for is to have parity with other governments. And so an example of that is being able to protect our women when somebody from the outside, is abusing them. And from the outside, meaning tribes have the powers. They've retained the powers to deal with domestic violence and domestic disputes among tribal members of all tribes. They have jurisdiction over domestic disputes. And there's been a series of court cases that have whittled away at non-tribal members, non-Indians.

And so non-Indians, there's this weird thing that non-Indians could abuse their native partner on reservation. And it would take the federal government, the FBI, the U.S. attorney to prosecute for a simple domestic violence issue. And those would escalate. And eventually people would, some people would get shot or perish. So that's one place where it's like, well, if we put all of these requirements in place, if we reach these legal requirements for, you know, a jury trial, competent legal counsel on prosecution and defendants, if we put all these things in place, can we hold and prosecute non-natives? And that was something that was returned by when I was in the White House, as we did get that restored. It was there before. We did it during the treaty times or after treaties, but it was something that was whittled away by Congress and Supreme Court.

And that's how many of these things are. So the people get a lot of funding, states, cities, counties get funding. We don't get any money to do conservation, but we do a ton of it. There's a land and water conservation fund that is funded at $900 million a year. We don't have access to that except through states and states. over the 40 years that thing has been in place, they've given tribes less than a half a percent of that funding. And so we're doing the work of restoring waterways, you know, fish habitat. We're in repair mode a lot of times with the lands, and we don't get hardly any resources.

How does that work? People sit around and they notice the ecological damages and they're like, well, we're not getting paid for this, we're going to go out and help repair it anyways? I don't think. Is that just, is that how that? Like, we never got paid for it before the United States was in existence. So that's like a really Western thing to say like, oh, I need to get paid if I'm going to do something. It's a very Western thing. I just was a part of, in my own community, there's a red willow that we use for our prayers.

We use it for tobacco. We don't use tobacco. We used this bark from this willow, and it was getting depleted. And so elders and they came together with some younger people, and I was only a part of it because I helped with some of the resources and I helped with some of the connections. But, you know, they just went out and replanted it. They started replanting it in some of the sloughs that are on the land. Army Corps land, not even our own land. So people sit around and say, like, let's go do this.

Let's go pick up the trash. But when you have an Army Corps project that is the worst thing for the landscape, it kills, destroys on high water, everything in a watershed. And then it, on a drought year, it turns into a sand dune. You know, like there's a mile wide of sand that has been deposited there from that. So like we're having to, we're like, okay, how do we do this? How do we do that? We don't get any money. We didn't even know that there was this money.

Like most people, if you talk to tribes and say, did you know states get like this much money? They'll say like, really? Like, we don't even know people get money for that kind of thing. We always think that people are just doing it. And like, what if we had machines? What if we were able to do some of the things like a government in the United States does? But, you know, I know there's a movement to do land-based. education with indigenous peoples. And I listened to one of your podcasts. I think it was with the

founder of 360. Yeah, Betsy Taylor. Betsy Taylor. So she was talking about regenerative ag. We call it regenerative ag because we know that's what other people call it. But it's really just taking care of the land. Like this is just doing what we always have done like for millennia. Like it's the term that you can use as part of your outward strategy. But this is how we're going to Orient. And it's interesting that, you know, I do think that it's, it happens a lot. So this, you know, regenerative ag, we work with Gabe Brown. And Gabe Brown is, you know, a huge proponent of regenerative agriculture. He lives 10 miles from Bismarck. He's local. He's so good to us. He helps us so much. And he always says, this is your people's approach to ag. Like,

we're just trying to follow your lead. But I never hear anybody say that. I never hear anybody, but Gabe say that, you know, a lot of regenerative ag and the principles, at least, are drawn from native people. And how did we learn it? Did we have, like, soil samples and water? And, like, no, we had to live. We had to grow food to live. And so there's a trial and error that you find in a certain place with a certain amount of rainfall and water. And, like, there's certain things that you learn after millennia.

And this is Chalko Canyon. This is like there's evidence of farming practices all over the, all over the United States, the, you know, southeast. And this is like very indigenous to think about natural systems as being the way, you know, look at the Inca, you know, the Inca irrigation and the terracing. Like, wow. Well, you know my work, Jody, that we're going to have to, as fossil fuels, deplete. We're going to have to do different non-fossil-intensive agricultural processes in coming decades and centuries. We're going to have to. I mean, not only did European descendants take your land, but also the living arrangements.

When you and I first met, I was giving a presentation about the Great Simplification, and you asked some questions, and you offered that Native peoples already had a story. this regard. And when you said that, I thought you meant that when Europeans came to North America, there was some sort of collapse happened to Native Americans. But in talking to you afterwards, I think you meant that there is a similar story about a collapse or a great human transition exists in your culture. Can you tell me that? There's a lot of stories. And, you know, a lot of nations have different stories. They're very unique from each other. So I don't want to say that I'm speaking for other tribes or anything like that. But definitely, I'm just going to talk about the first statement you made that, like you thought I was talking about the collapse of our cultures when Europeans

came. And that did happen. It was an attempted genocide. And I'm not going to mince words about it. You know, when there was a plan that we would be eradicated. The Indian problem would cease to exist by physical erasure, not just the one that existed. And I think that when we, sit back and and look at what collapse looks like. You know, when COVID happened, what we said was this isn't the first pandemic we've been through. Most of our people perish from disease. So there was disease and there was also warfare. But by and large, most Native Americans perish.

And I think you know the numbers. Maybe you don't. But Russell Thornton has the best analysis of how many people were here before Europeans actually. showed up. We were reduced by a power of 10. 90% gone. Yep. And that was mostly by disease. So there's a few people that talk about it, popular books, guns, guns, germs, and ammo. That's one of them. But there's the academic books talk about the clearing. This is massive for our medicines, for our understandings, all of our knowledge. Like, we lost a lot of people. And so when we talk about our our prophecies and our what has been passed down generation to generation.

We don't have what we had back then, but we definitely still have stories about another time that's coming. And they're called prophecies. And some of these prophecies have come recently, not, you know, haven't been passed down. So what people think is like the static Native American that's mystical that exists in the past, and then we all have to get our knowledge from them. but actually we're constantly still dreaming.

We're constantly still in touch with our ancestors and we're constantly in a spiritual state that when we do what we're supposed to to take care of the earth, then we get messages back. And our message in the past couple of decades is that a hard time is coming for all of humans. And then they give us instructions on what we should do. And those hard times are tied.

to the confusion that's out there. And I keep saying confusion that's from John Trudell. One of the, I talk about him a lot with you on offline here, but if people want to know more about this virus that's entered human ways of being, he speaks very eloquently about that. He's a poet and, you know, one of the best intellectuals I know. But these prophecies have been here for a while that we are going to face. even greater suffering than we've ever seen before and that we should get ready.

So indigenous people have been through apocalypse before, as you point out, they've been through collapse before. How do you think native people built resiliency and community in the face of that not only in the last 150 years but now? And what are some lessons or takeaways from the past, you could maybe share that you think might help carry us to a future that holds potential for a greater simplification for everyone, everywhere. Well, I think what I haven't talked a lot about are the values that when I say I've been talking about them in terms of an abstractness, like very abstract. You know, when I say value-based place-based decision-making, an example of value-based.

decision making is the idea around generosity. So in an abundant mindset, you can give it all away. It doesn't matter because it'll come back to you. And if everything's in a circle and your mind's in a circle and you're not just depleted until you can't walk anymore, like there's actually, and I don't know where this comes from, I think, I'm not sure somebody could probably tell me where it comes from, but I've heard people say, you know, you give until it hurts. Like, you give and you give and you give that level of generosity that I witnessed in my lifetime, the generosity that I see across Lakota people and how they take care of each other. And that comes from a very long line of understanding of like when people would bring back,

Warriors would bring back buffalo. And so the distribution of that buffalo would not be, I want this and I'm going to hoard it. The idea would be, okay, we're going to sit in a circle and the headsman is going to decide how much each family or each person gets. And they would go around and give different parts of the buffalo to the families. and everybody was felt good about it because if it was a good leader, then they would always take care of everybody. That is really what abundance is. That is like knowing that like I'm not going to be starving because I know that

what I'm getting is going to be enough and it is, it's good. And that they also did this thing where they would rotate the parts of the Buffalo. So they'd sit around a circle and they'd say you got this part last time so you'll get a different part. And if you have a favorite part of the buffalo, then that would eventually come to you. You don't have to try to fight for it or scheme or manipulate. Like all of that. That's abundance. That's patience.

That's survival was based on that like patience and that generosity. Like you give your best. You give your best away. nothing, you can't take anything on this earth with you to the grave. So you give your best. You give your favorite. And that's the opposite of mainstream America. Even the rich people act like they're living in scarcity.

So in modern culture and in the media and our discourse, conventional American discourse, we define wealth and poverty using material boundaries. but one could argue in comparison to other humans and social structures that many less materially rich groups of people could actually be much richer in other aspects of life and the inverse also holds true that materially rich humans are often poor in terms of community, social connection, time and nature. What do you think about that? I totally agree completely. I used to say that when I was at Dartmouth, I would say that I might not have gone to the best school in the United States, but I couldn't be happier to be raised in a place else other than the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

The community of Kyle Pejutahaka, which means Medicine Route District, because there's so much culture, there's so much richness, vitality around human beings that are just incredible. and they're not wealthy, but there's such good people. There's such, like, I'm really proud of the way that our people treat each other. And no, it's not perfect now. Like, we're further away than when I grew up, but it's definitely the case. And I've been in the other side, too. I've been in, like, these elite institutions, like the White House and Dartmouth. I work for a philanthropist now.

And I don't think that there's that understanding of, of when we talk about community and really in the non-Indian context, it all seems very surface. In a native community, there's such a bond, and it's not a trauma bond either. It's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful tie we have to each other in the land. And it's indescribable.

So what can those maybe listening to this program who are currently materially rich, learn from people in communities who the great simplification has kind of already occurred? What are some teachings that have made your people more resilient, more community and that beautiful bond you just described? Can you give us some advice on how to start that in other communities? I think that people should be giving to native-led organizations that invest in really cool things. Tribes are doing with the land and the animals. And we shouldn't be the last ones to get on the regenerative ag train.

Like when Betsy was talking, I was like, that's what we're trying to do, but we're poor. When do we, oh, we'll get that in 25, 30 years because we don't have any funding. Like, fund us for the dreams that we have that are tied to the land. Like, you get both. You get like environmental feel good and you get social impact. I mean, people can donate to those causes and they can learn. Like, we can't help other people figure themselves out if we're hurting. We can't. We have to like repair and like our cultures are thousands of years old. This American one is super young. It's super, super young. It's very immature. So invest in the cultures. And I say culture. with the plural, because like biodiversity, cultural diversity is just as important. We do care about the whole ecosystem. It's led mostly by the medicines, mostly by the understandings of what we have to do in our ceremonies and what we're supposed to eat and what we're supposed to gather at different times.

And there's a really awesome person who I think everybody should watch, and it's Lila June. She talks about every human can get back to that. Like it's it's not just for indigenous people to do these things. Like every human has the potential to live with these values about land. And just because you don't have them or you haven't had them in the past 100 years or 1,000 years, does it mean that you don't still have the genetic understanding of what's supposed to be there? And people feel it and they see it, but there's no English words. A lot of that stuff's been erased by the hegemony in feudal monarchies and churches.

Well, and the massive energy surplus caused a great forgetting of who we want. I mean, all humans used to be closely tethered to the land and the soil. And I think we're going to not directly, though possibly directly, we're going to gradually go back there as fossil fuels deposition. So in many ways, the way that as hard as it is, the way that many native people and many people in the global South are living now today is an example of where a lot more people are heading. So the resiliency that you've somehow managed over these decades and century is pretty impressive and important. Yeah, I think when COVID hit, it's funny because the, I just, I kept saying it's an opportunity for us to become more indigenous than ever. You know, people were talking about gardens and language.

Our language was being spoken more because kids weren't having, you know, having to go to school. But when I talk about the suffering part, that's something that Dr. Michael Yellowbird discusses. And that is, in a lot of our ceremonies that it, like, talked about it being about fasting, and a lot of physical endurance. And I don't know that it's similar to the Buddhist culture or the Buddhist teachings. I don't know that it is because I don't know that those teachings very well. But, you know, what they're finding is what Michael talks about in his research is that. And I've never seen it published, so I just heard him talk about it.

But when you go through ceremonies that we've been doing for thousands, of years, you know, going through like fasting does as it teaches, it actually grows the part of your brain that has compassion and empathy. So when you're suffering and you're willfully going without food and water, it's easier for you to have compassion. That part of our brain is like really developed. So I think the generosity part and like being able to understand other people that might not be doing so that's pretty well developed over years. And I think, like, you know, that's something I think about that we're, just because, like, we suffered through a lot of this colonialism, does it make us, like, pitiful?

It's actually, I see it as resiliency. I see it as, like, a source of strength. And it takes a lot. I mean, it really does take a lot to pull us down. No, I agree, which is the whole purpose of my podcast, is, I think we are much more behaviorally plastic and adaptive than we fear, but we're not thinking about the real future that's coming. And yeah.

So I may have to have you back in the future because your answers to my questions made me have a lot more questions that I don't know and I think would be important to share and discuss. But in interest of time, I hope you're okay with me asking some. personal questions that I close each interview with. So given your lifetime of work on these issues, Jody, do you have any personal advice to the watchers and listeners of this program at this time of global ecological crisis and systemic change? I think, I wish, this is my wish. This is my aspiration for America is that people know where their water comes from. People really

should understand it doesn't come from a faucet. That would be great. That would be great is if people would follow the pipelines, the water canals. Most people live in cities, but if they don't live in cities, if they live in towns, if they live, the only people that really get the whole water thing are people who work the land, like the farmers and the ranchers. Like, they really get the water. And that's where I feel like, I feel very aligned with farmers and ranchers of North Dakota because they get it. Like they get the water thing. And it's very important.

But that's an anomaly. And so I wish people would understand their water. And I wish that they would adopt it like it's their relative. I wish that they would, that's what our, the Missouri is here in Bismarck. And she's my auntie. She's very powerful and I have to go and take her tobacco and make sure that she knows I remember our relationship together. And I wish that everybody could do that and do it in a way that they would do it with their own aunt or their own loved one. Do you think it's possible that 50 years from now, 200 years from now that humans, whatever race, color or nation that they're living in would universally look at the world that way?

maybe from learning through the chaos that we're enduring right now, that lots more humans would view the river as their auntie and the animals as their cousins? Everything's possible. I wouldn't talk about it if I didn't think it was possible. Because when I say that, people do get it. People are like, yeah, that makes sense. We should know where our water comes from.

And when you know where your water comes from, you might learn where your food comes from. If you know where your food comes from, you might think about your grandchildren. Like nobody's thinking about their grandchildren. Nobody's making decisions. I talk about the ancestors a lot, but I'm also thinking about my grandchildren

and my great-grandchildren and their grandchildren. What if people started thinking about their grandchildren? What kind of lives are they going to have? What kind of earth are they going to have? People say this, like other tribes, I don't know where this is from, but they say we're just borrowing everything from our grandchildren. It's not ours.

Everything meaning the earth, the waters. Yep, the climate, the biosphere. Everything. Yeah. So what specific recommendations do you have, Jody, for young humans, either native peoples or any peoples who become aware of the economic, ecological constraints of our current path? I would say for young people, I would say that it's pretty important to learn what would be important to invest in, and that is like the food, water, and that kind of thing. Like learning those basic skills, there's a lot of skills, like you can say, we're going to become self-sufficient, but there's a lot of things like carpentry, plumbing, and I don't even know if solar is going to make it, but how are you going to get your end?

energy, windmills will, you know, like, how are you going to get your energy? How are you going to, like, continue to live? And I think picking up that stuff, you can do higher education degrees, but picking up a lot of that, lot of those trades is going to be important. I also think that rejecting new materialism is going to be important. There's plenty of used and, you know, there's plenty of stuff out there. There's, there's lots of things that have been produced and can be refashioned. And I, and I, and I, and I, and I just, hope that the new, the new malls, the new, like, Amazon packages, the new new, like, that's a pretty big order. I mean, I'm guilty.

Like, I'm not living that way. But my hope is that younger people will start to reject that because you really actually don't need most of that stuff. You actually don't. Yep. I agree. What do you care most about in the world, Jody? I guess what I care most about in the world is community.

And I think that community is everything. You make your community. In this world, in this time, you can make your own community. But I see a lot of this stuff online because I'm still in social media. I'm probably going to quit pretty soon. But it's really pushing towards me and capitalism in big ways where you can just cut people off. And that's toxic. And I don't want to do that anymore.

And that kind of like self-empowerment, healing kind of culture that's out there is very separating. And it's conflict avoidant. And so I'm not saying people should bend over backwards for their family member that might be addicted to drugs. I'm not saying like staying an abusive relationship. I'm not saying that at all. But I'm saying how in a community are we going to work through these conflicts? in a way that brings us greater balance and understanding that every single human being is not perfect and right all the time.

But that's kind of where I feel like we're really falling down as a society. We're really moving more and more. Me, me, me. I'm right. I'm right. And then it's easy to say, like, I deserve this. I'm going to just buy it from Amazon. Like, I get this.

This makes me feel good. Personally, what issue in the next decade or so worries you the most or gives you the most anxiety and trepidation about the future? This is going to sound weird, but it's loss of language, Lakota language. That gives me the most trepidation. Climate change does as well, but I think given the levers that we have at our disposal, I think tribes are going to continue to do what we do. And in the places where we do have dominion control ownership, we'll keep doing that. And I think by increasing tribes control over land, that will increase other people's

understanding of how they can also be doing it. But I just don't know that people are going to choose things like regenerative ag or I don't know that people are going to choose. choose biodiversity. If it comes to biodiversity over market, it's not going to happen. Well, that's a microcosm of the whole planet right now, as you know. So do you have any story or personal experience that's happened to you that gives you hope about the coming decade or so? Yeah, I just think young people are amazing. I think young people are far more open to the imagination, the imagination and the dreaming than what I was open to or what was

available to me when I was young. I think people are more willing to bug precedents and do what's right and not be afraid of saying it, not be afraid of doing it. And I think that's really hopeful for the planet. I think older people get sit in their ways and they don't even know where those waves came from. Maybe they had dreams or hopes or a wild streak back in the day. But I mean, all of that is good for the possibilities for change, for changing behavior.

If we don't change behavior, then there's a great saying by John Tridale. And he says, what species would, destroy their own life support system. An entire species is trying to destroy their own life support system. Who does that? That's an insane being. That's an insane species. And that's where he talks about the confusion.

Last question, Jody. If you were benevolent dictator or had the ability to act as one, and there was no personal recourse to your decision. What is one thing you would do to improve human and planetary futures? Give full human rights to species, waterways, mountains, and sacred places. Okay, you have my vote. This has been a very long conversation, and I've learned a lot. Thank you for your continued work and grace on these issues.

Do you have any closing words for those people listening? I guess I would just say that there's a lot of people like me. I'm very ordinary. And I think people are in Minnesota. People are in all different parts of the U.S. Indigenous people. And I just don't think that people know what they have. Like there's a lot of knowledge out there and there's a lot of ways that we could be leading on.

We are leading on solutions. We just don't get credit for them. Thank you. And to be continued and stay warm, my friend. Yep, you too. Take care. Nate, thank you for having me. If you enjoyed or learned from this episode of the Great Simplification, please subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform and visit the great simplification.com for more information on future.

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