Today, Explained - Indigenous Peoples' Delegate

Episode Date: October 14, 2019

Nearly 200 years ago, the Treaty of New Echota offered the Cherokee Nation representation in Congress. Kimberly Teehee just became its first nominee. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today is a holiday in the United States, but we wanted to explain something about it. This is a confusing holiday, because in one corner it's Columbus Day, in the other, it's Columbus Day. In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. In the other, it's Indigenous Peoples Day. But someone was already here. In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. It was a courageous thing to do, but someone was already here. We are not acknowledging Christopher Columbus all across the nation right now.

There are certain cities, like Los Angeles, just as past Indigenous Peoples Day, as well as Albuquerque, Seattle. This confusion can be frustrating for people like Tucker Carlson. It sounds like the city council of Portland is sending the message, it would have been better if the Europeans hadn't come to America in the first place. And that's why they're eliminating Columbus Day. But Tucker might be fighting a losing battle. City leaders here say emails are flooding in from residents, fed up with celebrating the man who they say brutalized the Native American people. Columbus sailed across the sea But someone was already here

Moving away from Columbus Day is one way of acknowledging the decimation and subjugation of indigenous people in the United States. But there's also a big push happening right now. A push to make good on some really old promises. In 1835, basically what you had was the United States government was looking to move all of the southeastern Native tribes further west because they wanted to settle and colonize these lands. Nick Martin writes about Native American communities, aka Indian country, for the new republic. This was met with resistance by tribal citizens all up and down the coast. You're talking about people who had been in these homelands for hundreds and hundreds of years.

What we all know the product of the Treaty of Nuachota was is the Trail of Tears. So many of them did not survive the trip, but the ones that did, they did so, and they were given these promises by the United States government, and that's all they had to cling on to as they went to this new land that would become their new homeland. The promise that was made, very basically, was that the United States would act as a steward. The Cherokee Nation hereby cede, relinquish, and convey to the United States

all lands owned, claimed, or possessed by them east of the Mississippi River. In exchange for the land that they ceded, it would provide the safety net for Indian country because it was put at such a disadvantage. Perpetual peace and friendship shall exist between the citizens of the United States signed with native nations, mainly the 19th century, what they provided them was the promise that we will protect you when we go to war, we will provide you health care, we'll provide you education, and just basic infrastructural necessities because they were displacing them from the places where they already had that. That promise was made and those documents were signed

and approved by Congress. In testimony whereof, we have this 31st day of December 1835, here unto set our hands and seals. And they just haven't been upheld. When it comes to like a promise, or in this case, a legal agreement, you either adhere to it or you don't. And the United States, for its entire history,

has not been doing it and is still shortchanging Indian country. Does the United States government, by your assessment, know that it's falling down on the job there? Yes. So in December of 2018, two days before the government shutdown went into effect, the Broken Promises report was released. And what this report detailed was that the United States government has been falling down, and this is specifically to Congress.

Congress has not been funding the Indian Health Service, the Bureau of Indian Education, Bureau of Indian Affairs, all these departments and institutions within Health and Human Services or the Department of the Interior that affect Indian country have not been upheld. But Indian country knows this because in 2003, the same office released a report called A Quiet Crisis. It laid out the exact same failures on the part of Congress to fund Indian country. And you can go back to 1969 when Robert and Ted Kennedy released the Kennedy Report from their Subcommittee on Indian Education. They showed how both tribal and public schools serving Native children were vastly underfunded. And Native children were coming out of these with such a lower rate of success than their white counterparts because of that.

And then that report was a follow-up to the Miriam Report from 1928. So Congress knows it's been failing Indian country basically as long as it's been interested in serving it. What does this mean for people on the ground that these programs are underfunded, that this promise has been broken? It ranges, right? I mean, because there are nearly 600 federally recognized tribes in the United States. So what this means is that you have a wide range of economic situations for these tribes. Some nations, like the Cherokee Nation, have done really well for themselves in

the past 20 and 30 years and become economically stable. They've assumed ownership and operation over some of their own Indian Health Service hospitals, but other tribes haven't been able to do that. And so what that looks like ultimately, I mean, basically you're looking at third world situations in terms of the health services and the safety nets and also just like the child welfare. You know, Frontline and Wall Street Journal did this really big investigative report recently looking at a doctor convicted of pedophilia that served on the Pine Ridge IHS facilities as well as tribal facilities in Montana. There was obviously a lot of people that knew something was going on.

And they didn't do anything. They just let him go. This was something that happened over the course of like 30 years. There were whistleblowers the whole time. Like people knew about it. And what this horrific thing showed us was like the IHS in some of these rural places, they just, they're not attracting enough nurses. They're not attracting enough doctors. And so what happens is you get extremely bad actors in these positions because they recognize these are marginalized

communities that sit on the outskirts of popular society and people get taken advantage of. That extends to the Bureau of Education schools with the Chimawa School, where students in the past few years have passed away or committed suicide as a result of their experiences there. Teresa Keith is the mother of a student who died at the Chumawa Indian School, a federally operated Native American boarding school. Lawmakers say they've been stonewalled getting no answers from Chumawa about the deaths of four students in recent years and a long list of other problems. I mean, you're talking about the missing and murdered

indigenous women's crisis, where jurisdictional issues have disallowed tribal police, the FBI, and local law enforcement to work together to get past and also stop some of these really horrific murderings and slayings of indigenous women and girls. Well, some people are calling it an epidemic in Washington state. They want to know why Native American women go missing or are murdered

at rates higher than the rest of the population. So how have members of Congress responded to reports that say the government basically isn't doing enough? What this produces, you produce hearings in Congress, and Congress, you know, they call a committee and they hold a panel, and they yell at the Bureau of Indian Education and they yell at the Bureau of Indian Affairs. You say that the goal here is to improve the patient experience. Well, the experience is people are dying in these facilities. But they don't really turn that rage inward. They don't say, okay, how are we failing? If you're

holding all these hearings and you're hearing all these people say, we don't have the money to staff our hospitals. We don't have the money to staff our hospitals. We don't have the money to ensure that students are being taken proper care of at these schools. What you're going to produce is a bunch of stories. Is part of the problem that these treaties are sort of old and therefore forgotten? Do they need to be like updated, refreshed for 2019? I mean, I think what needs to be updated and refreshed is America's memory. I'm a member of the Saponi tribe, but I grew up in a community that was, you know,

I don't know the exact demographic, but it's a very white community in rural North Carolina. And I can tell you that most people who don't live next to or know an indigenous person, a native person, their history and their understanding of native people ends in the 19th century. You're talking about Wounded Knee being basically one of the last memories for them. And so that is what needs to be refreshed. These treaties, I mean, we base our whole legal system, we base it on the Constitution. The Declaration of Independence is still standing. These are documents older than these treaties with these native nations.

We don't need to refresh the treaties. What we need to do is adhere to them, but also educate our public much better than we've been doing so far. Something Nick told me during our interview is that figuring out how to keep the promises made to Indian country just isn't glamorous for Congress members. He said Indian country needs representatives in Congress who aren't just working on native issues until they're promoted to work on higher-profile ones. It needs a representative that's fully invested in Native life. And now, for the first time in the history of the United States, it might finally get one.

The Cherokee Nation has named its first-ever delegate to Congress. Provided through the treaties of Hopewell, and Nuachota, and reaffirmed in the Treaty of 1866, I am asking the Council of the Cherokee Nation to confirm my nominee to delegate to the United States House of Representatives. I am proud Chief Hoskin has taken this initiative, and I am humbled he has chosen me

to represent the Cherokee Nation in the U.S. House of Representatives. After the break, I'll speak with Kim Teehee, the nominee for Cherokee delegate in the U.S. House of Representatives. I'm Sean Ramos-Verm. This is Today Explained. Ariel Zuemras. Why are we hearing this music? What is it? It's the theme of the new podcast that we're launching called Reset. You are the host of Reset.

I am. And people might know you from television? Yeah, I used to be the climate change and environment correspondent for HBO's Vice News Tonight. And now you're going to be hosting a tech podcast. I'm a technology and science reporter by training, and I'm really excited to get back into that. And what is Reset? Reset is a tech news podcast, and we're going to be covering how technology, science, and power mix together to sort of render our reality. So what stories are you most excited to tell?

We're going to cover a lot of different things. We're going to cover biohacking. We're going to cover AI technology and the way that it's being used to score essays for students. We're going to be doing some pretty quirky stuff. I'm excited. Great. And how often is this show coming out? I hear it's got some radical release schedule. Extremely radical. It's going to be three times a week. So that's going to be Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, which, yes, is highly unusual, but it's totally worth it. It's going to be great. I can't wait to hear the show. I can't wait to

hear this music three times a week. Can you tell the people out there how to find the show? They'll be so surprised. They've never heard this one before. No, this is super original. So you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, on Stitcher, or on your favorite podcast app. Okay, Reset from Recode and Vox, go subscribe right now. My name is Kimberly Teehee, and you can call me Kim. Great. And I guess we're talking right now because you were about to start a new job, or have you already started your new job?

I've not started my new job in the House of Representatives. The principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, Chief Chuck Hoskin, appointed me to be the delegate to the House of Representatives. And the tribal council confirmed me unanimously to be the tribe's delegate in order to assert our treaty right to have a delegate in the House of Representatives. When does it become official? We don't know the timing yet because Congress needs to take some action. You see, the treaty provision reads that the Cherokee Nation shall have a which is the last treaty with the United States, were ratified by the Senate and signed into law by the president, it still requires some action. And so we are working primarily with House leadership and with our delegation to try to figure out the mechanism. You think it'll for sure happen, though, or is it sort of uncertain?

I'm not uncertain about it. I don't think it's a matter of if it will happen as much as it's a matter of when it will happen. We are in a place in this country where I have been personally overwhelmed by the outpouring of support for the United States honoring its treaty rights with Indian tribes on our issue in particular. I mean, we've waited nearly 200 years up to this point. And part of us exercising our sovereign right and our treaty right was to get this process moving. And so we understand that it's unprecedented because the delegate represents the governmental interest of the Cherokee Nation. And that kind of delegate has not been seated yet in the House of Nation. And that kind of delegate has not been seated yet in the House of Representatives. And so we, you know, are just plugging forward. And I think that myself, having worked for Congress for nearly a dozen years, I've seen

the Congress resolve many other more complicated issues than this one. So I think we can get it done. Why is this the first time since 1835 when this position was sort of dreamt up, that the Cherokee Nation is sort of engaging with it? I think when I first came to D.C. and worked in Indian affairs, there were a lot of anti-tribal sovereignty measures that were sailing through the House, and they would be stopped in the Senate. That's why the Congressional Native American Caucus was formed in the first place, to avoid that scenario because there needed to be an entity who was charged with educating, on a bipartisan basis, members about every Native American issue under the sun that you can think of

to avoid those kinds of negative attacks. And so by the time I left the House of Representatives, after nearly 12 years of being on the Hill, those attacks had stopped the Congressional Native American Caucus working with its membership, defeated every anti-Indian proposals. We were getting proactive proposals through. And so I think we have a more educated Congress when it comes to Indian issues. Tell me a little bit about your work leading up to this, you know, watershed moment, I suppose, for the Cherokee Nation and why you were chosen to be the first delegate to Congress. Why I was chosen for this position is, I think, beginning with my background. I'm a Cherokee citizen, but also I served in several capacities in public service, both at the Cherokee Nation and in Washington, D.C.

I began as a summer youth intern for former Principal Chief Wilma Mankiller, who was the first and only elected female chief of the Cherokee Nation. At the time when I was her intern, she had become quite famous nationally. She was good friends with Gloria Steinem and others, strong women leaders who I got to meet and know. And it wasn't until I interned with Wilma that I knew you could be passionate about something. And so finding that passion and watching her work ethic, it makes me emotional, thinking about all of that. And helping her ability, not just desire, but her ability to work for the citizens, treating everybody equally and with respect and dignity, is something that was embedded deeply into me, and it was a life-altering thing for me.

And it trained. That summer changed my life forever, and she's the one that influenced me to come to D.C. so that I could come back home one day and help the tribe. Obviously, this means a lot to you and to Indian country. And I don't want to diminish that in any way, but you're going to be a non-voting member of the House of Representatives, right? How will you get this job done without a vote?

Non-voting delegates have, I say, a lot of authority and a lot of power and a lot of influence. Delegates can introduce legislation. Delegates can offer amendments. Delegates can speak on legislation. Delegates sit in committees. They can vote in committees. They can vote on markups, getting the bill out of committees. They can speak on the House floor. They can collaborate with their fellow legislators, and they can build up a coalition to provide

support for whatever it is they're trying to advance. And if your nomination is accepted, you get into Congress, and you're able to make good on some of these promises that have been made, what will that mean for Indian country? I think it would send a huge signal to not only our citizens, but to everyone, frankly, in the United States and internationally at least right a wrong, a wrong that represents such a dark chapter in our history. You know, for me, the opportunities to work with wonderful people who have had political success and have become famous for it, right? I worked for woman man killer, President Obama. You know, those have been amazing opportunities. But the thing I'm proudest most of is I'm a Cherokee woman. And my parents spoke Cherokee before they spoke English.

You know, they retired from the Indian Health Service. You know, my family are either, you know, retired teachers working at Cherokee schools, teaching children who are growing up in households where Cherokee language is spoken often. I mean, my culture is thriving. I love that it's so personal to me. That's what I'm proudest of. I don't ever want to lose that personal connection. And not everybody has to have that. I understand it.

But I'm sad for those who don't have it because it makes the work more meaningful, for me anyway. Kim Teehee is a member of the Cherokee Nation, and she's just been nominated to be the Cherokee Delegate to Congress. I'm Sean Ramos-Viram. This is Today Explained. Thank you.