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Native American Reservations · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and that makes this stuff
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: you should know that, doodle Lee do.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: That's great.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Thanks, You're welcome. It has nothing to do with what
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: we're talking about. I don't believe, but it was worth saying.
• 0:30
  Speaker 4: I think, uh, do you know what does what? The
• 0:36
  Speaker 4: season three of Reservation Dogs.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why I figured you were Probably you suggested
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: this topic.
• 0:44
  Speaker 4: It's not why actually, because I suggested this a long
• 0:47
  Speaker 4: time ago.
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: I've been sitting on this one. I kind of forgot.
• 0:51
  Speaker 4: But then Reservation Dog season three, the finale season started,
• 0:55
  Speaker 4: and I know talked about the show a lot, but
• 0:57
  Speaker 4: big recommendation. A show shot and crewed up and written
• 1:03
  Speaker 4: and directed and acted entirely by Native Americans. I believe
• 1:08
  Speaker 4: it's shot inside the Muscogee Nation Reservation.
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: And it's great. It's one of the best shows ever. Wow.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: That's full throated endorsement. Man, I'll have to check it out.
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: It's awesome.
• 1:22
  Speaker 4: It's funny and heartwarming and sweet and meaningful, and it's
• 1:26
  Speaker 4: just really really good.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: I would also direct people to the movie Smoke Signals
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: that was made not too long ago. That, oh, yeah,
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: reservation life in a fairly lighthearted manner, but pretty accurately too.
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:39
  Speaker 4: And we also want to caveat this by saying, this
• 1:41
  Speaker 4: is a very broad overview of Native American or American
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: Indian reservations. There's a lot to it, and certainly could
• 1:50
  Speaker 4: have been you know, like five or six episodes long.
• 1:53
  Speaker 4: But as we do, we try to give a good
• 1:55
  Speaker 4: broad overview.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: That's how we do.
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 1:58
  Speaker 4: And if this episod, so does band in schools in
• 2:01
  Speaker 4: Florida listened to it outside of school.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: Just go travel to Valdosta and download it and go
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: back to Florida exactly. That was an odd thing to say.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: What's said is I have no idea what you're talking about,
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: but I can totally believe what you just said is real.
• 2:20
  Speaker 4: Well, the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, is on a
• 2:25
  Speaker 4: push to keep children from being indoctrinated by true history
• 2:30
  Speaker 4: of our country. I see, and so he has, and
• 2:35
  Speaker 4: I believe it was in the Guba editorial debate, the
• 2:38
  Speaker 4: last one, he was saying that his opponent said it
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: was okay to teach that you know, some of the
• 2:45
  Speaker 4: land in America was stolen from the native indigenous people,
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: and he said, that's not appropriate for our schools, and
• 2:52
  Speaker 4: it's not true.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not true at all.
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: No, it's not.
• 2:56
  Speaker 4: And I'm not sure how you get away with just
• 2:59
  Speaker 4: saying completely entruy things on a debate stage.
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: But yeah, that's where we are these days, for sure.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: So the very fact that reservations exist prove that that's true.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: Because the entire reservation system that we still have today
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: that dates back to the nineteenth century and actually earlier,
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: it was and is entirely a way of removing Native
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: Americans from their traditional lands, putting them somewhere they probably
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: had never been and didn't know anybody, and then taking
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: that land away and increasingly shrink the land that they
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: have so that European colonists and then eventually Americans settlers
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: colonists could take that land for themselves. And the reservation
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: system is just proof that that is this. It was
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: this ongoing century plus long process that still has just
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: very fresh wounds today, like it's not like, Okay, that
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: happened in the past and things are good now. That
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: is not the case. In a lot of a lot
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: of places. It's that happened in the past and the
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: effects of it are still being felt generations later.
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure, and before we get emails from people
• 4:19
  Speaker 4: that say, you know, much of much of that land
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: was negotiated for and there were treaties over it and
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: deals made. That is that is certainly true, but much
• 4:28
  Speaker 4: of it was also outright seized. And that's that's just
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: a fact of what happened here.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: You know, dude, we don't need to debate somebody who's
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: trying to tell us that the Amerenta didn't steal land
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: from the Native America. They don't even deserve our attention, let.
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: Alone our breath, I agree these days.
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: Just to start off with a stat for you, and
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: big thanks to Olivia for helping out with this one.
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: In the twenty twenty census, nine point seven million people
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: in these United States, yeah, identified as either Alaska Native
• 4:59
  Speaker 4: or American Indian.
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: And although we'll talk a little bit about.
• 5:04
  Speaker 4: The fact that the census isn't always accurate when it
• 5:07
  Speaker 4: comes to Native populations. Yeah, but one point two million,
• 5:13
  Speaker 4: thirteen percent of those people live on reservations today as
• 5:17
  Speaker 4: of you know, a few years ago.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: Right, So we have yeah, a big population of Native Americans.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: I think there's something like five hundred and thirty four
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: tribes recognized by the federal government as their own tribe.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: But yeah, the vast majority do not live on reservations.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: The reason that some people live on reservations because they
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: were born there, their parents were born there, that's just
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: where they were raised. But another reason that a lot
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: of Native Americans live on reservations is because that is
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: the place where they can still do whatever they can
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: to keep their culture alive in whatever ways that they can,
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: and they have a certain amount of self determination there
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: because in the United States, reservations are considered sovereign nations.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: They're ruled by the tribe that whose reservation that is.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: So that's why there's casinos, and that's why you can
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: buy cigarettes for super cheap on a reservation and all
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: sorts of other stuff. Why the state can't prosecute somebody
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: for a crime that happened on the reservation if they're
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: a member of the tribe, it's because it's like little
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: pockets of independent nations that exist in the United States.
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a little convoluted, but generally it's there under
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: federal law. And purview, but not under state law. So
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: like you were saying, that's why you can have casinos
• 6:37
  Speaker 4: in states where you otherwise could not.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I saw that even the federal law is
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: usually kind of just the big stuff. Sure, yeah, but
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: states have almost no jurisdiction. And Oklahoma was really really
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: pushing recently to I guess, gain more jurisdiction over members
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: of tribes there, because Oklahoma is about half reservation these days.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: But there was a Supreme Court ruling in McGirt versus
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Oklahoma in twenty twenty that said, no, states, including Oklahoma,
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: have no jurisdiction to prosecute tribal members of crimes that
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: happened on tribal land, and they're having to dismiss tons
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: of cases just outright because Oklahoma, I guess kind of
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: went buck wilde and started arresting people on tribal land,
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: knowing full well that this has been recognized for nearly
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: a century if not longer, that the tribe whose reservation
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: that is is essentially a sovereign nation.
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So I say we kind of start with.
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: After maybe the quickest overview of how this happened to
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: begin with, start with the with how the system evolved
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: to begin with. We don't need to go over everything
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: before that because we have covered a lot of it
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: before in our are really, if I may say so,
• 7:56
  Speaker 4: really great two part episode on the Trail of Tears
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: from twenty twenty seventeen I think twenty seventeen, and that
• 8:06
  Speaker 4: was the one where Hulk himself, Mark Ruffalo tweeted out
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: about that one.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: Remember that's right, Yeah, yeah for sure.
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: And we were like, holy cow, doctor Banner listens to
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: our show.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: Right, the Hulk doesn't, Doctor Banner does?
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, of course Hulk Smash when.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: He turns into the Hulk, he's like, what is this crap?
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: When you know when it's still playing, So.
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: Hulk Smash podcast.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: I would also I would also direct people to the
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: Louisiana Purchase one too, that had a lot to do
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: with this as well.
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: Sure that was a good one, but I will just
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: say in like a sentence that Native Americans were generally
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: forced west and further west, and then as we decided,
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: well we actually want to live west now, they were
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: squeezed into smaller and smaller spaces because you know, we
• 8:56
  Speaker 4: renigged on deals on like hey, this is your land.
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: We kind of actually want that now, And.
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: They were squeezed into smaller and smaller territories in what
• 9:04
  Speaker 4: was known as Indian Territory, much of which ended up
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: in Oklahoma, right.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: And there was from the outset basically too pronged effort
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: to move Native Americans further and further west. And that
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: was through violence and through treaties essentially. And like you said,
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: those treaties would be negotiated, but they would also be broken.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: But some of them are still intact. There's actually reservations
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: that are state recognized because of a treaty that the
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: tribe had with the state that goes back sometimes to
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: colonial days. But a lot of them were broken, for sure.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: But it was a patchwork of different localities and different
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: colonies and different states that were negotiating with the tribes
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: they needed to negotiate with to get their land. It
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: wasn't until eighteen fifty one that the federal government said,
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: forget this patchwork stuff. We're going to create like a
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: federal system of recognizing and moving Native Americans on to land,
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: settling them onto reservations. It was the Indian Appropriations Act
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: of eighteen fifty one.
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and that was basically, here's some funding. We're going
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: to move you where we say you should go, and
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: you should become more like us. Basically, you should live
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: your life a little more like us. You should farm
• 10:22
  Speaker 4: like us.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: Shop at the Gap, Yeah, the gap.
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: Where podcaster Chuck worked for a couple of months. Sure,
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: how many times did I talk about that yesterday at
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: our book events?
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: A lot?
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: I came up, like four times. Yeah, be a little
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: bit more like us.
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: Eat the stuff that we eat, even though it's not
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: the stuff that you usually eat. And you know what,
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: maybe we'll even send you some food sometimes and supplies
• 10:46
  Speaker 4: when we feel like it. And so what if some
• 10:49
  Speaker 4: of that food shows up spoiled, and so what if
• 10:52
  Speaker 4: it's not very good for you. And also this tribe
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: that may have been your long long term rival, maybe
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: that's your neighbor now. And good luck working all that out.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's a big deal though, that they said
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: they would supply them with food. The reason why they
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: said they would supply them with food is that they said,
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: you can't you can't hunt any longer. You can't do
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: what you used to do as a Native American tribe
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: to support yourself, to sustain yourselves, You're going to have
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: to rely on us, the federal government, and by the way,
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: we're going to take shabby care of you in return
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: for you agreeing to that.
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: And that was over a roughly thirty year period from
• 11:32
  Speaker 4: eighteen fifties through the late almost into the eighteen eighties,
• 11:35
  Speaker 4: and you know, involved all the planes tribes Apache, Comanche, Kickapoo, Kiowa, Cheyenne,
• 11:42
  Speaker 4: among many others.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: Did we do did we do a whole Apache or Geronimo?
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: Was it a Durnimo episode because that's when he was fighting.
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: I don't remember what? Does it sound familiar?
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: But you know me, don't you remember he like personally
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: lobbied Teddy Roosevelt, and Roosevelt just basically patted him on
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: the head.
• 11:58
  Speaker 4: And I think that's sound familiar.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: It was a Geronimo or an Apache or was it
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: it was the Apache Wars, I think is what it was.
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: Okay, Well, they eventually settled again in the eighteen eighties
• 12:13
  Speaker 4: in Oklahoma. They were squeezed down to a smaller and
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: smaller area. There were twenty seven tribes by that point
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: in this you know, relatively small part of land. And
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: in the ensuing decades there was a lot of changes.
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: There were a bunch of different policy shifts. There was
• 12:30
  Speaker 4: the DAWs Act of eighteen eighty seven. This is just
• 12:33
  Speaker 4: a for instance. Basically, there were all kinds of changes. Yeah,
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: but the DAWs Act was when they said, all right,
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: let's not do reservations, let's break them all up. Let's
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: give families plots of land, because we want you to
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: be more like us. Like here, like we're Americans. We
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: like to own our own little small pieces of land,
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: and we find that that's pretty awesome. So this is
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: how you should do it too. So here's little pieces
• 12:57
  Speaker 4: of land for each of your families. And a lot
• 13:00
  Speaker 4: of it wasn't great land. A lot of it couldn't
• 13:02
  Speaker 4: be farmed or they're not from there, so they didn't
• 13:05
  Speaker 4: know how to farm that land. They were further displaced.
• 13:09
  Speaker 4: And then finally, in nineteen thirty four, there was the
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: Indian Reorganization Act as part of the Indian New Deal.
• 13:16
  Speaker 4: They reversed that policy and said, all right, here's some
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: funds you can repurchase some of your original tribal lands.
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: But this started the termination era of the nineteen fifties
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: and sixties, when they said, but you should really move
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: to cities, Like why don't you just assimilate with everyone
• 13:34
  Speaker 4: and be a lot easier if you moved into urban areas.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the termination policies referred to termination of tribes,
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: like the federal government stopped recognizing tribes, broke up reservations,
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: and it was a concerted effort to just get rid
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: of Native American tribes in the United States and make
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: everybody assimilate into cities, like you said, And that's one
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: reason why the Native American movement, the American Indian Movement
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: AIM alongside the Civil Rights era or Civil rights movement
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: as a response to that and saying like, no, you're
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: not going to terminate our tribe. And they were largely successful,
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: and finally, in nineteen seventy five, thanks in large part
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: to AIM and other activists in the Native American community,
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: the Indian Self Determination and Education Act said, Okay, we're
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: not doing termination anymore. We're officially going to keep recognizing tribes,
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: We're going to support reservations, and like that is that?
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: That's right? I think that's a robust intro.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: I think so too. You want to take a break,
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: then yeah.
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: Let's take a break that kind of brings us up
• 14:39
  Speaker 4: to the modern system and we'll get back into that
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: right after this.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: I find it interesting that every time we study this stuff,
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: it seems like there were just periods from the beginning
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: where every so often someone else would come into you know,
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: a new president or a new administration, someone would come
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: into power, and it was always like, oh Jesus, like,
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: what do we do with a what do we do
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: with the Indians? And out right, and they would just
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: change policies and you know, let's not do that, let's
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: do this. So not only had they been displaced to
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: begin with, but then it was just a series of
• 15:35
  Speaker 4: like shuffling around and moving and consolidation and now we
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: want to do this with you and that with you,
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: and the whole time we were just like, man, we
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: we were here.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: First, Yeah, for sure, and all that that whiplash going on,
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: you know, back and forth between totally termination and reservations
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: that took place over like the course of less than
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: a century. Yeah, I can't imagine that. That means that
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: there are people who lived almost entirely through that, you know,
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: that's that's just crazy. You can't treat people that way.
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: No, And it's it's just it's amazing to think about
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: the fact that like if someone tried to, uh, not
• 16:12
  Speaker 4: calling out any particular politicians, but if they thought about
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: their family all of a sudden being told, well, you
• 16:18
  Speaker 4: have to leave, and we're going to tell you where
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: to go, and we're gonna make it hard for you
• 16:22
  Speaker 4: to get by in a place that you're not familiar with,
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: maybe next to your enemy that you've always had. It
• 16:29
  Speaker 4: just is hard for someone to imagine that happening. And
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: that's exactly what happened.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: But that's precisely why the United States has tucked Native
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: Americans away on reservations and forgotten them, because they don't
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: we don't want to imagine that happening to We can't
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: imagine that happening to our families. And so the brain goes, well,
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: it didn't happen to your family, so you can stop
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: thinking about that now.
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and not and let's not even teach that in
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: schools just because let's just not do that. Let's just
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: say just a lie.
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: I know, oh boy, all right, I need to bring
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: my blood temperature down. So I'm doing a little mental
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: stretch right now.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: Drink some mice water.
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: I've got some right.
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: Here under today's system, and we're going to go through
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: a lot of sort of staty things right now as
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: we tell this sort of early story, But there are
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: three hundred and twenty five tracts of land that the
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: US government now holds in trusts. Some are called reservations,
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: some are called villages, some are missions, some are pueblos. Yeah,
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: rancheria is in California, which sounds kind of nice, but
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: sounds like a top menut.
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: It totally does.
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: The largest is the today is the Navajo Nation. It's
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: about twenty seven thousand square miles. I think the smallest
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: is one of those ranch areas. It's called the Likely
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: Rancheria in California. It's in the upper upper tippy top
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: northeast corner of California, and it is one point three
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: to two acres. And there are also some state some
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: land held by state trust. There are also reservations, but
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: generally this is a federal government thing.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: That trust thing is a big that's a big point,
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: these reservations. The land that the Native American tribes live on,
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: that belongs to them, that's their sovereign land. That land
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: is held in trust by the US federal government for them,
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: and that seems pretty precarious if you think about it.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: But the reason that that is held in trust is
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: because if it weren't held in trust by the US
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: government and was just owned by the Native American tribes
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: that lived there, then it would be subject to the
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: laws and the taxes of the state that the reservation
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: is in. So by removing that land from ownership and
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: putting it with the federal government for the benefit of
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: those sovereign tribes, it cuts that out entirely.
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, very very thought out, singly.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I deally on paper, it's not supposed to
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: be a paternalistic arrangement. It's supposed to be a fiduciarial arrangement,
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: where like the US government has a very important responsibility
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: to take care of that land and meet its obligations
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: and taking care of the people on the reservation. They
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: just don't do it typically, that's right.
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: Not every tribe has their own reservation. Sometimes they share
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: a reservation. Some of the larger tribes may have more
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: than one if they're a little more spread out.
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: This is something I.
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: Actually didn't know until yesterday, is that non native people
• 19:39
  Speaker 4: can live on reservations, and some of them are majority
• 19:43
  Speaker 4: non native, And I never knew that I just I
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: knew that you could pass through and do your thing.
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: And a lot of them are you know, have businesses
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: and like you said, casinos and much more as we'll
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: see in the state of Florida. But I did not
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: know that you could just live there. And there's in
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: fact one in upstate New York where I believe this,
• 20:02
  Speaker 4: the Oneida Indian Nation, and they have about five hundred
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: American Indians living there in about sixty thousand total residents,
• 20:12
  Speaker 4: so very few Native Americans and mostly not.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the Ononeida tribe is one of the largest,
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: if not the largest employer of Upstate New York thanks
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: to their Turning Stone Resort and casino and veronas York.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: All right, and they're actually one of the success stories
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: of a Native American tribe becoming self sufficient and actually
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: wealthy in a lot of cases.
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: We mentioned Oklahoma a lot, and that's because about half
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: of the land in Oklahoma, legally speaking, is reservation land.
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: And California we mentioned those rancherias that you can get
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: on special at Taco Bell.
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: These are usually I mean, that's why they call them rancherias.
• 20:59
  Speaker 4: They're usually really small, like the one we talked about,
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: the likely rancheria. They were created because you know, California
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: did the California thing and created these in the twentieth
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: century when after those genocidal campaigns worked out to the
• 21:13
  Speaker 4: ones that were left over, and they're like, listen, we
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: got to give you some land.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: I guess, right. And if you're starting to notice there's
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: a pattern that this is all kind of patternless, you're correct.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: Like there's not one reservation system that the federal government administers.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: They kind of have developed on their own, ideally to
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: meet local needs or kind of jibe with the tribe's culture.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: An example of that is in Alaska.
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, very unique.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: There's two hundred and seventy nine federally recognized tribes. By
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: my account, more than half of the federally recognized tribes
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: in the United States all live in Alaska. But there's
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: only one reservation that they all share. And so rather
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: than living in a kind of a paternalistic relationship with
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: the United States on a reservation, instead all of those
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: Alaskan Natives get I guess dividends.
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: Well, if you enroll, which most of them have right.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: From the mineral rights in Alaska and other resource rights.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: So when you extract something in Alaska, when you cut
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: down a tree, when you remove a fish, I believe
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: you are contributing to that fund that benefits those two
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: hundred and seventy nine tribes.
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and Hawaii I think has a similar system, right, I.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: Guess, but they don't have any reservations at all.
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So you mentioned that they are recognized as sovereign nations.
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: That was in the Constitution from the beginning, and that
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: basically says, you know, we can engage with you like
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: a foreign country if we want to. Chief Justice John
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: Marshall in eighteen thirty one, in a pretty landmark case
• 23:00
  Speaker 4: for everything that followed, wrote that tribes possess a nationhood
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: status and retain inherent powers of self government, but they
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: are domestic dependent nations that are award to his guardian,
• 23:14
  Speaker 4: which is it's all a little confusing if.
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: You just sort of read the words.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: That's a big butt.
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you're a sovereign nation, but you're also dependent on
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: us essentially.
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That just opens up the gate for all sorts
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: of weird interpretations and misinterpretations and all sorts of stuff.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: And as a result, that's kind of what goes on.
• 23:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's sort of like a patchwork of
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: because it works different. You can't summarize, like all reservations
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: are like blank and it's kind of like a patchwork
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: because in Reservoir Dogs, the one of my favorite character
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: Reservation Dogs.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: What I say, you said, reservoir Dogs. It's understandable.
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: No one cuts any ears off in reservation.
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: That is what it is, you know, named for obviously,
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: and in the I think in the pilot they sort
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: of mimic that great opening shot of Reservoir Dogs, the
• 24:06
  Speaker 4: sort of slow my walk.
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: But on Reservation Dogs, one.
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: Of my favorite characters, although it's hard to say because
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: I love them all, but is the sheriff that the
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: actor is on McLaren and he's just great and hysterical
• 24:20
  Speaker 4: and he's the local sheriff and in at the res
• 24:23
  Speaker 4: as they call it, he's very just sort of low
• 24:26
  Speaker 4: key and doesn't want to arrest anyone, and it's usually
• 24:29
  Speaker 4: like I'd rather just take someone home who's disturbing the
• 24:32
  Speaker 4: peace and tuck them into bed than you know, cause
• 24:34
  Speaker 4: any real trouble. But that kind of got me thinking
• 24:37
  Speaker 4: about the modern system and it's really kind of patchwork,
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: But it all depends some tribes have their own courts.
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: If they don't, then there are five Regional Courts of
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: Indian Defenses that kind of gather up what tribes don't
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: have their own courts and serve them, right.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And they also very frequently operate their own law
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: enforcement agency, although they also may have a Bureau of
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: Indian Affairs police agencies patrolling as well. Sometimes it can
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: be a combination of the two. In Alaska, they have
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: the Village Public Safety Officer program, so there is they
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: have their own court system, they have their own law enforcement.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: They also have their own school districts there as well. Again,
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: they can be administered by the Bureau of Indian Education
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: or they can be run themselves like a charter school
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: would be or a private school would be. But these
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: are often public schools in the reservation. And they also
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: have boarding schools.
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: Still, yeah, that needs to be a whole episode. I
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: think that would kind of be a nice way to
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: finish this trio.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: Definitely. So, I mean the boarding schools that kids go
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: to today are sometimes the same boarding schools that treated
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: the younger Native Americans in the late nineteenth and early
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: twentieth centuries, like just like they were disposable and often
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: killed them and did everything they could, yeah to beat
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: the Native American out of them and just remove them
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: from their tribe. Sometimes they never saw their family again.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: But those still exist. They're not doing stuff like that anymore,
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: and in fact, they're trying to figure out how to
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: kind of make amends. And in one way that they're
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: making amends, as we'll see, is there's a big revitalization
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: of Native American culture, specific tribal cultures around the United
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: States right now, and it's being taught on the reservations
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: and schools. It's also being taught in the boarding schools.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: It's the exact opposite of what the United States has
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: been trying to do since the nineteenth century, reinstilling Native
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: American culture into the tribes that had been had had
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: that culture stripped and beaten and killed out of them
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: for a cent Now it's like, hey, let's teach you
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: about your culture that you would have already known about
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: had we not made you go to this compulsory boarding
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: school and teach you to forget just break that lineage
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: of cultural transmission. Now it's like, let's give that back
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: to you. Let's make sure you know what you're talking about,
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: and then they'll bring in elders of the tribe to
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: teach it. Because there are some people who didn't go
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: to the boarding schools. Typically they might have been hidden
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: and they escaped, and those people are fonts, incredibly valuable
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: reservoirs of the cultural information that when those people die,
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: if they haven't passed down what they know, that information
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: dies with them and the culture dies in that way,
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: slowly but surely. So there's a big push among Native
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: American schools to prevent that from happening.
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, especially I mean the culture as a whole, for sure,
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: but especially with efforts for saving and preserving the languages
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: these native tongues. One good example is the Cherokee Nation
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: in Oklahoma. Two thousand or fewer fluent speakers left, and
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: most of them are older. They're losing about one hundred
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: and fifty Native speakers a year. And what they're trying
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: to do. They have what's called the Durban Feeling Language Center,
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: named after the skuy durban Feeling, who wrote the Cherokee
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: English Dictionary. Among other things, he put symbols of the
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: Cherokee language into Unicode. So they could be used on smartphones,
• 28:42
  Speaker 4: and he was kind of he might be worth a
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: shorty at the very least doing one on durban feeling.
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: He really led the charge and was sort of probably
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: the leading person in history as far as preserving at
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: least the Cherokee language. But they have a fifty two
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: thousand square foot building at the language center there where
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: they're you know, they're doing everything they can. Their goal
• 29:05
  Speaker 4: is to basically, within the decade to gain more speakers
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: than the elders that know the language are dying off.
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and again, the reason why they're so gung ho
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: about doing this is because the as the language dies,
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: the culture dies. Because there are a lot of Native
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: American languages that weren't written. They were all oral. So
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: not only do they have to make sure that that
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: oral tradition gets passed down, they then have to figure
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: out how to turn it into something tech space as well.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: So it's a huge challenge. And finally the United States
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: government has started to kind of show some signs of
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: trying to help out. I mean, it's not very much
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: if you think about it, but in twenty twenty two,
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: the US government donated seven million dollars in grants to
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: forty five different tribes to support their preservation of their language.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: So there's there's a movement for that for sure, and
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: it has this sense that like they're racing against the clock,
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: which they pretty much are the biological clock.
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and if I may hear for a minute now,
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: we try not to get super overtly political, but there's
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: really been a tale of two really three administrations over
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: the last fifteen ish years, with the Obama administrations, then
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: the Trump administration, and now the Biden administration. Of course,
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: in twenty twenty two, like you said, the seven million
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: that's under the Biden administration, they also delivered twenty one
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: million dollars for road safety on tribal lands because a
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: lot of these roads they don't have like street lines
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: and rumble strips and the little reflective signs and reflective
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: markers on the roads, just sort of basic infrastructure things
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: that keep driving safer.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: Right, and that's the main roads don't even get on
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: the side streets.
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 30:56
  Speaker 4: Absolutely, also one hundred and thirty five million dollars to
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: help relocate tribes affected by climate change, and also deb
• 31:05
  Speaker 4: halland the first Native American to ever serve as Secretary
• 31:09
  Speaker 4: of Interior as the current Secretary of Interior. Donald Trump,
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: on the other hand, he delivered well. He likes to
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: say he delivered three million dollars in twenty twenty for
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: a language and one point two million for broadband grants,
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: but those were an actuality pushed through by Senate and
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: House Democrats. But Trump failed to re establish Obama's Council
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: on Native American Affairs, which ran for the eight years
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: Obama's in office until his final year in office, because
• 31:38
  Speaker 4: people kept saying, like, why aren't you doing this over
• 31:41
  Speaker 4: and over.
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: He never held a White House Tribal Leaders.
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: Conference at the White House, which you had for eight
• 31:48
  Speaker 4: years under Obama. And just after COVID, a couple of
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: things happened. He pushed to exclude reservations from the Cares
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: Act in the wake of COVID, and he de established
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: the Wannapogue Reservation outright, which is the first time that's
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: happened since the Termination era.
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: And like not only that, he removed.
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: Just kind of plowed through sacred burial sites to build
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: that wall and on when people were protesting that wall
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: and the sacred burial lands, they used sent you know,
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: people in there with rubber bullets to fire on them
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: on Indigenous People's Day of all.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: Days, No way.
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, wow.
• 32:30
  Speaker 4: So they're not big fans. You can look up for yourself.
• 32:32
  Speaker 4: If you think I'm being too political. You can just
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: look up Donald Trump's administration and Native American peoples and
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: they are not big fans of what happened during those
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: four years.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: Oh it does.
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, But also I've seen they're not necessarily fans of
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: any political party because neither one is paying enough attention
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: to their obligations to help people on the reservation make
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: better lives for themselves.
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, So I say we take a break, okay, and
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: then the people who are still with us can come
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: back and we'll talk some more about reservation life today. So, Chuck,
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: we're we should talk about a few different examples of
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: reservations in the United States today, because just between the
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: Navajo Nation, the Oglala Sioux Nation, and the Seminole, you
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: got just a really distinct contrast between those three big spectrum.
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: You said that the Navajo was the largest of all
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: of the reservations, right, yeah, I think did you say
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: it's larger than Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island. Put together.
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: No, but you just did, my friend. So the Navajo there,
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: it's quite a stack.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're also the DNA. Their land, their reservation spans Utah, Arizona,
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: and in New Mexico.
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: If you look at the at their reservation on a map,
• 34:16
  Speaker 4: it is I mean, I know you said all the
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: states combined, but just check out a map. Sometimes it's
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: it's quite quite large.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: Yes, and there's been an ongoing like dispute with them
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: and the Hopie over whose land is who's And I
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: think that they have it relatively settled geographically, but culturally
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: it's still not very settled.
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: But the Navajo, they're also the largest tribe in the
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: United States. They have four hundred thousand enrolled members, one
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: hundred and seventy thousand of which live on the reservation.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: And what makes them really unusual is that they were
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: removed along with just about every other tribe in the
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: United States as America was expanding, and within four years
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: they managed to negotiate a treaty to get that land
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: back and move back to their ancestral lands. That's really
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: rare among Native American tribes. Their reservations very frequently are
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: not their ancestral lands. They're just land that they were
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: given one hundred years ago by the US government in
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: an entirely different part of the country.
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: Yeah, they said, you know, you can build your railroad
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: through here. If you're settling and your wagon train is
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: coming through here, you can pass through.
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: We'll let you pass through.
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: We will accept the schooling, which I think probably at
• 35:37
  Speaker 4: the time sounded like a good deal, even though it
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: ended up being that boarding school, that shameful boarding school situation.
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: And I know, by the way, we've gotten a lot
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: of I know, we'll hear from some Canadians. Canada has
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: their own shameful background with the same kind of thing,
• 35:53
  Speaker 4: and we've gotten a lot of emails from them over
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: the years to cover that. So maybe when we do that,
• 35:58
  Speaker 4: when we can tackle them both.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So the Navajo, I've lived back on that land
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: since eighteen sixty eight. And what they formed essentially is
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: as a large government. There's twenty four districts in this huge,
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: huge reservation and they have delegates at this legislative council.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: There's an executive a president that runs the executive branch.
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: They have their own court system with eleven districts, and
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: their largest city, Tuba City, is home to nine thousand people,
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: which is pretty enormous. The problem is where it starts
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: to kind of get reservation y at least standard or average,
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: is that thirty six percent of those households in the
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: entire Navajo Nation are below federal poverty level and about
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: the same amount have no running water none. And the
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: reason why Donald Trump the Great Father made such a
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: big deal about getting broadband access as part of the
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: package he delivered to the Native Americans himself is he signed,
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: is that internet access is really patchy at at absolute
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: best on a lot of reservations, and if you don't
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: have the internet today, you might as well not bother
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: sending your kids to school to In a very hyperbolic sense.
• 37:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, Elon Musk should swoop in there and
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: send much of those starlink dishes. Sure grantits just say, well,
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: here you go, I'll do my party. Well, not a
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: bad idea. He's lunching tho satellites all over the place.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, help in Ukraine.
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah for a service that isn't even that good. What else, Well,
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: we're talking about the spectrum, So I guess we go
• 37:48
  Speaker 4: from one end to the other end, and then we'll
• 37:51
  Speaker 4: talk about the other farthest end at the end.
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: Is that confusing enough?
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: Yes, dude, And I even know you're talking about I.
• 37:58
  Speaker 4: Know the Pine Ridge Reservation is the largest Lakota reservation
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: and that's who you're speaking of earlier when you were
• 38:06
  Speaker 4: talking about the Oglala Sioux tribe who governs them. And
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: it's about four thousand square miles in South Dakota. And
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: again the census is probably really wrong. They listed as
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: nineteen thousand people, but most people say it's probably more like,
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: you know, mid thirties or so.
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: And it is.
• 38:24
  Speaker 4: Well, first of all, they were one of the people
• 38:26
  Speaker 4: that were squeezed out of their original land. It's not
• 38:28
  Speaker 4: their original land. They were nomadic people and they where
• 38:33
  Speaker 4: they are now. It was originally your prisoner of war
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: camp in eighteen eighty nine, and Wounded Knee took place,
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: the Wounded Knee massacre in eighteen ninety.
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: A lot of things happened on Pine Ridge. It's actually
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: been really culturally relevant for a long time, starting with
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: Wounded Kna for sure, that was where one hundred and
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: fifty I think largely old people, women and children were
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: massacred by the US government for not living where they
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: were told.
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a very symbolic place kind of for those reasons.
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: That's where they protested in the early seventies with the
• 39:09
  Speaker 4: sort of earliest American Indian movement, and that's where remember
• 39:13
  Speaker 4: the twenty fifteen Dakota Access pipeline Standing Rock.
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: That's where they protested there.
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: But we talk about Pine Ridge being the other end
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: of the spectrum, because if you want to talk about poor,
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: that is sort of.
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: The place to focus on. It is very poor.
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: They have an infant mortality rate five times five times
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: the national average infant mortality rate, which is just horrifying
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: that that's allowed to happen in this country. The unemployment
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: rate is eighty percent.
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: I saw eighty to ninety on Al Jazeera.
• 39:49
  Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, you're if you have ten to fifteen
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: percent of your people working like that, that's just poverty stricken.
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: They live in trailers, they live in shacks.
• 39:59
  Speaker 4: Some have no like many of them have no running
• 40:02
  Speaker 4: water or electricity, and it's not a hospitable place for
• 40:06
  Speaker 4: either a growing thing or for an industry to come
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: in and set something up and maybe share profits. They
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: have a little casino that doesn't generate a lot of revenue,
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: and it's just not a very great scene there.
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw that the casino, if it divvied up
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: its profits, it's revenue. Among the members of the tribe
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: living on the reservation, they'd each get something like fifteen
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: cents a month. And poverty stricken just does not even
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: begin to get it. Across saw there's a site called
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: the Red Road Project. It's like Native American Voices kind
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: of articles. It's really interesting. They said that on Pine
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: Ridge the average number of people in a house is
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: seventeen because homelessness is a really really big issue on reservations,
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: so you kind of get in where you fit in,
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: which leads to huge amounts of overcrowding, and that includes
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: the kids who are going to school the next day.
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: Because the employment is so low again eighty to ninety
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: percent unemployment, people typically turn to diversions of despair, basically drugs, alcohol, crime.
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: And there's a town that I read about in that
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: Al Dazeer article called White Clay, Nebraskas, just across the
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: line from the Pine Ridge Reservation, and they sell something
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: on the average of twelve thousand cans of beer a
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: day to the Lakota who come across from the dry
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: reservation by the beer and take it back. And the
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: big kicker is that White Clay is not an actual town.
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: It's a town on paper only. There's one street and
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: it's all shops basically, and those shops all sell beer
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: to the Lakota Sioux. And I saw it described by
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: one activist as liquid genocide. That's been going on really
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: long time. And so when you add all this stuff together,
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: the life expectancy on Pine Ridge, are you ready for this?
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: Now?
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: Forty eight years for men, fifty two for women. It's
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: the second lowest not in the country in the Western hemisphere.
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: The only country that has a lower life expectancy is Haiti.
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: This is Pine Ridge in the United States.
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: Does that include the infant mortality rate?
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure it does. It's dragging it down big
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: time for sure. Regardless. I mean, like forty eight and
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: fifty two is just appalling. And again the reason you
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: might be like, I don't care about welfare, welfare sucks.
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: These people should be figuring out themselves, and a lot
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: of them do. A lot of people make it off
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: the reservation, go get it a college education. A lot
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: of them come back and share that college education. A
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: lot of people get killed. There's I think the rate
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: of suicide is four or five times is the national rate.
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: So the problem with that argument is that these are
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: the descendants of the people who are stripped of their culture,
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: stripped of their ability to support themselves, and their only
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: choice is to go be white, go assimilate into white culture,
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: or stay on this reservation and hold on to your culture,
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: be one of the last bastions of your culture, and
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: just pay every day for that with joblessness, with despair,
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: and rely on the United States government to take care
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: of you. But then don't expect things like running water, internet,
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: good schools, law enforcement that's going to take care of
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: drug problems, new job prospects, like that stuff. It's just
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: not delivered. And so as a result, we have a
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: group of people who have the life expectancy second only
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: to Haiti here in the United States.
• 43:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's sort of the worst end of the spectrum.
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: Now to a tribe that is actually thriving these days.
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: The Seminole people who in the eighteen fifties, after a
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: bunch of warring, were forced west of the Mississippi kind
• 44:12
  Speaker 4: of like everyone else. But there I saw about three
• 44:15
  Speaker 4: hundred hid away in Florida and the swamps of Florida
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: and hit there for a while and eventually sort of,
• 44:24
  Speaker 4: you know, showed their faces to society in the late
• 44:27
  Speaker 4: nineteenth and early twentieth century. In the nineteen fifties, they
• 44:30
  Speaker 4: adopted their own constitution and gained recognition as a Seminole
• 44:35
  Speaker 4: tribe of Florida. And they are thriving in a big,
• 44:39
  Speaker 4: big way in South Florida, largely because of business and
• 44:44
  Speaker 4: largely because of the casino business, the Seminole Classic Casino
• 44:48
  Speaker 4: and Hollywood, Florida. They opened the hard Rock casino down
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: there in Hollywood. I saw the Rolling Stones there a
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: few years ago.
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a big, big time. It's shaped like a guitar.
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: It is.
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that stands up from the hotel like a guitar
• 45:03
  Speaker 4: and just a little insider thing. If you ever want
• 45:06
  Speaker 4: to see like what could be like a stadium act
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: in a comparatively small venue, that's where you should go.
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: It was a really good experience.
• 45:14
  Speaker 4: And you couldn't I don't know how many people it is,
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: but I feel like it's about the size of like
• 45:20
  Speaker 4: the Fox Seat or in Atlanta, whereas you know, they
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: were playing like stadiums and then all of a sudden
• 45:26
  Speaker 4: it's maybe like five thousand people or so. So it's
• 45:29
  Speaker 4: intimate by that standard. And I had a great time,
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: and I keep that on my list now to check
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: out because it was a fun trip down there. And
• 45:38
  Speaker 4: the Seminole Tribe is making a lot of money. They
• 45:43
  Speaker 4: have about two thousand, and this is one reason why
• 45:45
  Speaker 4: is because they only started out as a few hundred.
• 45:48
  Speaker 4: There are only a couple of thousand now and they're
• 45:51
  Speaker 4: splitting up that dough in a big, big way.
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: Did you know this that the Seminole Tribe of Florida.
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: We have to differentiate because there's a Seminole Tribe of
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: Oklahoma that were the ones that moved out there, the
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: ones that say the Seminole Tribe of Florida own hard
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: rock everything. They owned the brand. They bought the brand
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: in two thousand and six for nine hundred. I don't
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: know about the whole brand. They're wearing a hard Rock
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: Cafe shirt that's owned by the Seminole Tribe of Florida.
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: They owned the hard rock franchise.
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: Do you know where the very first hard rock was?
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: Trivia questions?
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: I'm going to say San Francisco or London.
• 46:29
  Speaker 4: No, And the only reason I know this is because
• 46:33
  Speaker 4: of my family. It is in I believe it was
• 46:36
  Speaker 4: in Jackson, Mississippi.
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: What Yeah. Wow, that is a great trivia question. You
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: can even do multiple choice, and I don't think a
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: lot of people would get that.
• 46:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right, because I was like, I'm gonna get
• 46:49
  Speaker 4: in big trouble here if this is wrong. But the
• 46:52
  Speaker 4: first hard rock was at the old Hickory Mall in Jackson, Mississippi.
• 47:00
  Speaker 4: And my uncle had something to do with it somehow.
• 47:03
  Speaker 4: That's how I know about it.
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: Oh is his last name hard rock?
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: Uncle? Well, he sounds like a flintstone.
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: All he does.
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: Oh no, I'm sorry.
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: Jackson, Tennessee, which is even better because that's where my
• 47:18
  Speaker 4: dad lives.
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: That's good.
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: You can put down.
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: For some reason, I thought it was Jackson, Mississippi.
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: You can put down your sharpened sticks Jackson, Tennessee. Chuck
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: came through.
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: You're my people. My dad is a Union University graduate.
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: So with all that money that they're making among the
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: two thousand tribe members, they divvy up enough that each
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: person gets one hundred and twenty eight thousand dollars a
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: year that includes babies. The baby's money is held in trust,
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: so by the time they turn eighteen, they're they're worth
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: a couple of the three million dollars already unbelievable. This
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: is a Native American tribe. And one of the reasons why,
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: a big, big reason why to Citrus Groves cigarette making
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: and selling is the casino. They were the first ones
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: to have a casino. They were the first ones to
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: try it. The state tried to shut it down. They
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: sued the state, they won, and from that point on,
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: Native American casinos, starting in the seventies were a thing,
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: and it made the Seminole rich, It made the Oneida rich,
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: It made a bunch of different tribes rich. And I say, good.
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: Going, totally. Yeah.
• 48:29
  Speaker 4: I bumped into Mark Marin at that Rolling Stone show
• 48:32
  Speaker 4: and he acted like he didn't know me, like he
• 48:33
  Speaker 4: always does.
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: Really, oh yeah, it's funny every time it happens.
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: That's hilarious. So I say, that's reservations. What do you say?
• 48:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I got one more quick thing that we failed
• 48:46
  Speaker 4: to mention as earlier when I was talking about different
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: policies of different administrations. Native Americans that live on reservations
• 48:54
  Speaker 4: can vote in federal elections, of course, but it bears
• 48:58
  Speaker 4: pointing out because only sixty something percent of the eligible
• 49:03
  Speaker 4: Native American population is registered to vote, and there's a
• 49:06
  Speaker 4: push called the the Million Vote Opportunity where they are
• 49:11
  Speaker 4: trying there's over a million eligible Native American voters who
• 49:15
  Speaker 4: do not vote and who are not registered, and they're
• 49:17
  Speaker 4: trying to get them registered, and it's a good cause
• 49:21
  Speaker 4: to support.
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: You can go to.
• 49:24
  Speaker 4: Native Voter Impact or vote dot NARF dot org and
• 49:29
  Speaker 4: check it out. Maybe throw a little dough their way
• 49:31
  Speaker 4: and see if we can get them registered to vote
• 49:32
  Speaker 4: so they can, you know, try and speak up for
• 49:35
  Speaker 4: themselves and ensure they're right.
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: It's awesome. Nice work, Chuck, Nice work, Josh, and nice
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: work to you guys for hearing us out. If you
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: want to know more about Native American reservations in the
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: United States, you can start reading about it. A good
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: place to start wild be the Red Road Project, I say,
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: And since I mentioned the Red Road Project again, I
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: think that's time for a listener.
• 49:59
  Speaker 4: May I'm going to call this this.
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: Is from our Diary episode.
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: You have to start it with dear Diary.
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: Dear Diary.
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: Nice thank you.
• 50:14
  Speaker 4: Just listen to the Dear Diary podcast, and I love
• 50:16
  Speaker 4: that you guys mentioned that women have a large part
• 50:17
  Speaker 4: in the history of diary writing, so I want to
• 50:20
  Speaker 4: put another female diarist on your radar. One of my
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: favorite historians is named Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. She of well
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: behaved women rarely make history, fame often misattributed to less
• 50:31
  Speaker 4: well known women than her hahaha. The original context of
• 50:35
  Speaker 4: that quote is related to Puritan settlers of New England
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: and how women who live ordinary lives are often forgotten
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: even though they quietly make the world go round. Or
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: Rich's most famous book, A Midwife's Tale, is about one
• 50:47
  Speaker 4: of these women, Martha Ballard, a midwife who lived in
• 50:50
  Speaker 4: what is now Augusta, Maine. Martha Ballard wrote in a
• 50:53
  Speaker 4: diary almost every single day from the time she moved
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: to Augusta, Maine in seventeen eighty five until she died
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: in eighteen twelve. Her diary chronicles the life of women
• 51:01
  Speaker 4: and men in frontier America along with the inner thoughts
• 51:04
  Speaker 4: of an ordinary and relatable person. Martha's ordinary life lifts
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: me up, even though she was a very average person,
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: because it shows her working and living like people have
• 51:13
  Speaker 4: always done. That's what is so awesome about diaries. It
• 51:16
  Speaker 4: humanizes the past and reminds us that people have always
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: been and will always be just people. Thanks for highlighting
• 51:22
  Speaker 4: diaries and for trying to bring different perspectives. Always do
• 51:25
  Speaker 4: the podcast. The episode inspired me to be more consistent
• 51:28
  Speaker 4: and chronicling my own ordinary life. All good things. It's
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: another great site, tak.
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we've been getting a lot of those lately.
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: So good. I mean, I don't even say anything. I
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: just type my dumb name.
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: I don't even do that. I'm like, figure it out yourself.
• 51:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 51:44
  Speaker 4: That is from Casey McClellan and that's a great, great email, Casey.
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: Way to go, Casey, thank you for pointing our way
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: to something new that we had not heard about. We
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: love that kind of stuff And if you want to
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: hook us up like Casey did, you can send us
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: an email to send it off to Stuff podcast at
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: iHeartRadio dot com.
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.