Latest / Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson / America Within America: Tribal Advocacy, Sovereignty & the Future of Native Nations | Jeff Tomhave | LFRF 48

Transcript

America Within America: Tribal Advocacy, Sovereignty & the Future of Native Nations | Jeff Tomhave | LFRF 48 · Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson

• 0:00
  Rupert Isaacson: Thanks for joining us.
• 0:01
  Welcome to Live Free, Ride Free.
• 0:03
  I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson, New York Times bestselling author of
• 0:06
  The Horseboy and The Long Ride Home.
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  books, and other courses, please go to rupertisaacson.com.
• 0:34
  So now let's jump in.
• 0:36
  Welcome back to Live Free, ride Free today.
• 0:39
  I've got Jeff, Tom Hay.
• 0:41
  He's a lawyer, he's Native American.
• 0:44
  He has a unique perspective not just on the American experience and, you know,
• 0:49
  the world experience of America, but also on the America, within America.
• 0:53
  And many of us who are not American, or at least not born there, have a
• 1:00
  perception of the USA usually based around what we see coming through
• 1:05
  the media of one kind or another.
• 1:07
  But the, the truth is that there are many Americans and that the Native
• 1:11
  American experience is something that I think is probably unfamiliar, hidden
• 1:16
  from most outsiders because it's just not what is presented front and center
• 1:23
  in the media experience to the outside world except in certain enclaves of
• 1:30
  Hollywood or a film dealing with the American West or something like that.
• 1:35
  But even then it would be through the, usually through the perspective of, you
• 1:40
  know, a, a non-native film director or so.
• 1:42
  So it's great to be able to have, you on Jeff, because you have spent
• 1:48
  your life as a lawyer for tribal advocacy, which I suspect probably
• 1:53
  has not made you a multimillionaire.
• 1:55
  Although I do hope it does one day.
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  And you are, if I have it right, hada Nation.
• 2:02
  Yes.
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  Same geographic area.
• 2:04
  You informed me as the Mandan and Aria Kiri, which those listening
• 2:11
  from outside the USA or outside that area would be like the upper Missouri
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  Basin sort of plains of the Dakotas.
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  Yes.
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  Would I be right in in, in thinking that?
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  Yes.
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  And so that is an America within America.
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  How does one live one's life as a tribal advocate?
• 2:35
  And maybe before we get into this, your name Tom, Tom Ha Tom ha Tom hav
• 2:44
  Jeff Tomhave: Tom ha
• 2:45
  Rupert Isaacson: Tom ha.
• 2:45
  Talk to us about the origin of that name, because I suspect that in
• 2:49
  the origin of names we can learn a lot and then we can go from there.
• 2:53
  Jeff Tomhave: Well, I'm, I'm glad you asked that because most people assume that
• 2:56
  Tom Hay is some kind of indigenous name.
• 3:00
  Mm-hmm.
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  It's actually German.
• 3:02
  Okay.
• 3:02
  One quarter German and.
• 3:06
  The German ancestors I'm sure you know this, Rupert a lot of German immigrants
• 3:12
  moved to, you know, the great the Great Lakes area and the upper plains.
• 3:18
  So Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota is filled with Germans and Germans.
• 3:23
  Germans and Scandinavians.
• 3:24
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 3:25
  Jeff Tomhave: Yes.
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  And, and I've been told it's because, you know, that part of the United
• 3:30
  States looks like where they came from.
• 3:32
  So in doing the, my own genealogy research, I found that Tom ha is actually,
• 3:39
  you know, the, the, the shortened version.
• 3:41
  It was originally Tom Haven.
• 3:43
  Ah, that would make sense.
• 3:44
  From like, from like, I don't know, like the 13 hundreds.
• 3:47
  It was Zh at one time.
• 3:49
  But anyway, anyway, that's, that's where that name comes from.
• 3:53
  And throughout my life you know, teachers and, and you know, other
• 3:58
  people have always assumed that it's it's some kind of indigenous name
• 4:02
  and Well, I just let 'em think that.
• 4:04
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 4:05
  Yeah.
• 4:05
  It's, but I mean it, I think one could be forgiven for thinking that because
• 4:08
  it's not an obvi, if it was Tom Haven, it one would automatically think Germanic.
• 4:13
  Yes, it's true.
• 4:14
  Tom Hay one does not.
• 4:16
  And I'm, I was actually busy googling it as you were talking there, and
• 4:20
  it, it also seems to possibly have a a Belgian, but it would be the,
• 4:26
  the Flemish, Dutch what's the area?
• 4:29
  Free Freezeland area.
• 4:31
  Mm-hmm.
• 4:32
  Name.
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  And then, then it actually does make sense to me.
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  And yeah, as you, as you say, that's, you know, rather, like me, I'm a
• 4:40
  product of the colonial experience.
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  My surname Isaacson was Lithuanian Jews who wanted to sound less Jewish and
• 4:54
  less starve in German, southwest Africa.
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  So they misguidedly changed their name from Mirko to Isaacson, thinking this
• 5:05
  would make them more, more accepted.
• 5:08
  I dunno why they didn't go for like, fun, Isaac or something like that.
• 5:12
  But no, they went with Isaacson, which of course didn't work.
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  And the other side we're all, you know, Dutch and English and
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  Scottish and you know, yeah.
• 5:19
  Here I am, the mishmash.
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  So, but you, despite the fact that the name is Germanic yes.
• 5:30
  Are Native Americans, so, and why did you decide to get involved in tribal advocacy?
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  Why not just go and live your life?
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  And also if you're gonna become a lawyer, why not just go off and
• 5:44
  become the kind of lawyer that.
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  Gets rich.
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  Why, why not just, you know, look after nice oil contracts in North Dakota or
• 5:50
  something like that, and then, you know, retire to Palm Springs and play golf.
• 5:54
  You know, like why did you choose the part you chose?
• 5:58
  Jeff Tomhave: These are all good questions.
• 6:00
  I'm gonna probably ask that every day.
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  First I wanna swing back to to you know, my own heritage.
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  So, so my father was, you know, he was half so he grew up on his
• 6:11
  reservation, the Fort Reservation in North Dakota, you know, as a half breed.
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  And so he was never, he wasn't Indian enough for the Indian kids, and he
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  was, you know, not white enough for the white kids and, and all of that.
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  But on my mother's side, my mother's maiden name is Kit,
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  and that is an indigenous name.
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  And that actually means lake Superior in, in Potawatomi because
• 6:38
  that's where she came from.
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  You know, that's where, that's where her tribe was from.
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  So on my mom's side, I am also Potawatomi and HoChunk which are two
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  tribes from was the Wisconsin area and.
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  Like most native people of my generation, and I am 62 years old
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  now, our parents probably met at some off reservation boarding school.
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  And so most Native Americans are this tribe and that tribe because their
• 7:12
  parents met at boarding schools.
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  And so, you know, I'm a product of that.
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  And that gets into, you know, why, why tribal advocacy.
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  My father worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and which if your audience is
• 7:28
  not familiar, that is the branch of the federal government that provides most of
• 7:36
  the services on Indian reservations that the federal government would provide.
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  And to give you a sort of a historical perspective getting into colonialism,
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  it would be like a a British, or I mean a European colony somewhere.
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  The governor of that colony would be the one, you know, administering
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  the programs for that colony.
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  That's essentially the BIA did.
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  And in, and in some part still does on different reservations
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  in the United States.
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  And so he worked for that, his entire, his entire professional career.
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  And ultimately, you know, made his way up the, up the organization where
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  they wanted him to be to run it in DC and he ac he actually refused to
• 8:31
  do so and, and he, he turned down promotion after promotion because he
• 8:36
  saw how you can't really do anything.
• 8:39
  I mean, you know, you, you, you can provide services, but you can't
• 8:43
  really help the people if, if the services aren't geared for the people.
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  Put it this way, if you're, if you are serving the federal government, you're
• 8:56
  not necessarily serving the tribal people.
• 8:59
  And that's sort of what he saw and that's what he told me.
• 9:02
  And and honestly, that's really what I've done.
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  And, and because I am this tribe and this tribe and this tribe, I
• 9:12
  sort of have a, a, a more global perspective of what tribes need.
• 9:20
  And I originally didn't want to do this.
• 9:24
  I actually wanted to get into, into media, into filmmaking and
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  was starting out doing that.
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  And along the way I, I had a found a mentor and this mentor told me.
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  He said, well, if you ever wanna have, if you ever wanna own a new car, and
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  if you ever wanna buy a house, find a profession, you know, get a, get a degree
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  and, and, and make that be what you do.
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  And then this can be your hobby.
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  And so I actually took his advice to heart.
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  And so, 10 years out of college, I went back to law school.
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  And I, I didn't wanna be a lawyer.
• 10:08
  I never wanted to be a lawyer.
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  'cause God knows the world is filled with enough lawyers.
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  But I wanted to have the law degree because it gives you an opening that
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  not having it wouldn't, wouldn't give you Oh, it gives you a Yeah.
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  Sort of, yeah.
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  There's a gravitas to having a, a JD behind your name and it opens doors and
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  it, and it keeps conversations going.
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  And that's what I wanted to do, is I wanted to have my law degree so
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  that I could help Indian people.
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  I had no idea how to do that.
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  But other than, you know, because the United States government, the whole
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  founding of it is based upon property law.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  The, the Bill of Rights, which is, you know, oh yeah, let's,
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  let's protect the people too.
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  That was sort of an add-on, you know, in order to get the Constitution
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  passed, they said, okay, we'll throw on the bill of Rights too.
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  But it's basically about property law.
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  It's about how to keep the property with the people who own it and
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  how to protect that property.
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  That's pretty much the United States government in a nutshell.
• 11:19
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 11:19
  Jeff Tomhave: And so I wanted to use that legal training for tribal people so that
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  they could use their own property, whether it was real property or intellectual
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  property for their own benefit.
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  And so that's really why, what I wanted to do with a law degree, not necessarily, you
• 11:38
  know, be in a courtroom arguing, you know, esoteric matters of the law, but getting
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  tribal people to start thinking about how they could really exercise their own
• 11:50
  inner power to do what they wanted to do.
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  And so that's, that's, that's really what I wanted the law degree for.
• 11:57
  Rupert Isaacson: And let me ask you, Anai, even perhaps to your mind,
• 12:00
  overly obvious question, but if you are listening to this, say in Germany or
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  New Zealand, it might not be obvious why Native American people might need that.
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  Why did you feel or still feel that Native American people
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  need that kind of access to.
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  The power to argue for their property rights?
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  What's missing that they don't have?
• 12:26
  Jeff Tomhave: Well, because there are 575 federally recognized tribes in the
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  United States, 236 have reservations.
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  So a, a land base that they call their home.
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  However, except for a handful of cases, they don't actually own that land.
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  The federal government owns that land and it's held in
• 12:53
  trust for the benefit of them.
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  So, for instance, Navajo Nation biggest reservation in the United States,
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  they don't own a, a, a bit of it.
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  Interesting.
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  They own parcels outside of it, you know, but they're like any other landowner.
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  They, they own that place.
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  They don't own their reservation.
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  And so the way that the, the federal laws have been designed is to disenfranchise
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  Indian people from pretty much everything from their land, from their culture,
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  from their language, from their history.
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  And so that's why it's important for me and, and professional
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  natives of my generation to get.
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  Indian people, especially elected leaders, to start thinking all
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  around the lines of, we don't need the federal government's permission
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  to do something, we can just do it.
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  Besides, they're gonna give it to us anyway, so why don't we just do it?
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  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
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  The question is, do what, what is the need?
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  Like if, if you were to put in a nutshell, the lack that spurred you
• 14:09
  as a younger man to say, look, I need to try and fill this gap here.
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  What is that gap?
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  What is the major disenfranchisement?
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  Jeff Tomhave: The major disenfranchisement is the fact that Indian people
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  have been so colonized that they've forgotten how they govern themselves.
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  What I mean by that is most tribal nations did not have jails.
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  You know, you dealt with a wrongdoing by having the, the, the person who
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  did the wrong make things right.
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  So, for instance, if you killed somebody for whatever reason, you know, accident
• 14:57
  on purpose, you were jealous, whatever, you then had the responsibility to
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  take care of that person's family.
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  For the rest of your life.
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  That was your sentence.
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  And so, so jump forward to present day.
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  When tribes run their own jail systems, they don't have the capacity
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  to do it the way it's done, say outside in the local county jail or
• 15:29
  in the state prisons or whatever.
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  They don't have the personnel.
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  They don't have the expertise, they don't have the programming.
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  For instance, they don't have healthcare in, in jails, in, in tribal jails.
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  There is no healthcare in tribal jails.
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  And so rather than trying to perfect jails, why not go back to the old
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  way of doing things of not jailing people and make the sentence more
• 15:58
  in line with how your worldview used to be and how it should be.
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  Because if you don't have the capacity to run a jail, then
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  you shouldn't be jailing people.
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  But if you do have the capacity to monitor somebody's penance
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  through their own atonement work, well then you could do that.
• 16:20
  The reason that I mentioned that tribes don't own their
• 16:23
  land, it's important because.
• 16:27
  Because they don't own their land.
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  They can't impose property taxes.
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  And without property taxes, you can't run government services.
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  And so everything that tribes do, jails for instance, all depend upon
• 16:39
  funding from the federal government.
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  And funding from the federal government is, it's haphazard.
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  It, you know, it happens every year.
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  Congress can fund programs for Indian tribes however they want to, and
• 16:53
  they usually are grossly underfunded.
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  And that's the situation is if you don't have the capacity to enact
• 17:01
  property tax to provide services for your people, then you gotta rethink how
• 17:07
  you are gonna provide those services and what kind of services you provide.
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  For instance, why run a jail if you don't have, if you don't have
• 17:15
  the revenue to run it properly?
• 17:19
  And why not do something that is more in line with your own traditional
• 17:25
  philosophy of how to deal with wrongdoing.
• 17:30
  That
• 17:31
  Rupert Isaacson: kind Is that, is that what you have?
• 17:32
  Is that where you have spent a lot of your career, is in that aspect of trying to
• 17:40
  change the relationship with wrongdoing?
• 17:46
  And if so, how on earth do you enforce that?
• 17:50
  Jeff Tomhave: Well, that is still an unrealized ambition of mine.
• 17:54
  Okay.
• 17:54
  But you asked why I wanted to get into this.
• 17:56
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 17:56
  Okay.
• 17:56
  So this is like in principle, right?
• 17:58
  Jeff Tomhave: Yes.
• 17:58
  In principle.
• 17:59
  In principle, yeah.
• 18:00
  And I just use the, the, the jail analogy because everyone understands jail.
• 18:05
  So no matter where your audience is, they all understand, you know,
• 18:10
  what they're supposed to be and usually what they actually are.
• 18:14
  So you could imagine in the tribal aspect, there're a lot more there're a
• 18:20
  lot more degraded than, than elsewhere.
• 18:23
  And I've toured tribal jails.
• 18:26
  They're, they're actually really pretty bad.
• 18:30
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, I'm sure they are.
• 18:31
  What, what is, what have you spent, like, talk us through the highlights
• 18:40
  of your career in advocacy then.
• 18:42
  What have been the things that you've worked on?
• 18:45
  What have you seen succeed?
• 18:49
  Jeff Tomhave: Well, most of what we've spent, or Brandy and I have
• 18:53
  spent the last 22 years working on is infrastructure development
• 19:00
  that most people take for granted.
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  For instance, you could live in any, any big city in America or any small, you
• 19:10
  know, rural county in America and you're probably going to have electricity,
• 19:17
  running water and a paved road outside.
• 19:20
  Now you may not be able to afford to hook up to that electricity
• 19:25
  or that running water, but you can walk on that paved road.
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  It's available to you whether you can afford it or not.
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  In a lot of places in Indian country, there still is not paved roads.
• 19:37
  There's still not running water, there's still not electricity.
• 19:40
  There are some places where there still not telephone service.
• 19:44
  Nowadays with cell phone service, that's pretty much over.
• 19:48
  But even 20 years ago, there were places you didn't have hardwire cell
• 19:54
  hardwire, landline telephone service just because it was too remote and too
• 19:59
  cost prohibitive to put it in there.
• 20:04
  Rupert Isaacson: So I'm just gonna play devil's advocate.
• 20:06
  'cause of course, when I was a kid growing up in the uk in the late
• 20:11
  seventies, early eighties, even on the farms a hundred miles from London, you
• 20:16
  didn't necessarily have electricity.
• 20:18
  People certainly didn't necessarily own a car.
• 20:20
  The road might not be paved, you know, and this happened somewhat slowly.
• 20:25
  You know, there'd been World War ii.
• 20:26
  Post-war austerity growth was slow.
• 20:30
  The, the general prosperity that one sees now in Western Europe wasn't there.
• 20:35
  The cities were filthy.
• 20:36
  They were, you know, falling down.
• 20:38
  That's changed now.
• 20:39
  But of course, if you, and when I was a kid in I have Portuguese family,
• 20:43
  and I remember in the countryside in Portugal, around then it was, people
• 20:48
  would still walk, women would walk a kilometer to get water pots on the head.
• 20:54
  And rural transport was Volkswagens.
• 20:57
  Not in, not in the capital in Lisbon, but outside in the mountain shore.
• 21:02
  Again, that changed.
• 21:03
  Then of course, I remember seeing Eastern Europe went through its thing and it
• 21:07
  went from, you know, horse agriculture to mechanized agriculture, kind of in
• 21:11
  front of my eyes after the war came down.
• 21:14
  So, and, and I remember even when I moved first to Texas 25 years ago or so, the
• 21:21
  community that we went were in certainly didn't have paved roads and, you know, and
• 21:25
  that was really just outside of Austin.
• 21:27
  But what you have said is true because in all of those cases, as
• 21:35
  soon as the governments could provide those services, they of course did.
• 21:39
  As soon as those revenues were there, you know, the pa the road
• 21:42
  outside our place in Texas did become bathed, et cetera, et cetera.
• 21:46
  And when I was working as a journalist in, say, on the Navajo reservation, back
• 21:50
  in the nineties, late nineties and so on.
• 21:53
  Yeah.
• 21:53
  The, the life that one saw was remotely rural in that way, that, that, you
• 22:04
  know, outside of certain places, there just were no services, period.
• 22:07
  People were self-sufficient and that was that.
• 22:10
  And I believe in, in many cases, probably still are.
• 22:14
  You have worked then trying to get that kind of infrastructure
• 22:19
  to these places, I presume.
• 22:20
  Yes.
• 22:21
  Have you done it and have you been successful at it?
• 22:25
  Jeff Tomhave: Yeah, we have because really when you you gotta find your champion
• 22:33
  whether it's in a member of Congress or it's someone in a federal agency.
• 22:39
  And once you do, and okay, this might not be how it is right now in
• 22:48
  Washington DC under this current, but
• 22:51
  Rupert Isaacson: who knows how it's right now in Washington,
• 22:53
  Jeff Tomhave: in, in our history, you know, in our experience.
• 22:56
  And, you know, we've been doing this brand and I have been doing this together
• 23:00
  for 22 years, but we've both been doing stuff like this for the previous 10 years.
• 23:07
  Just not with each other, not not our own company.
• 23:09
  Our experience has been that people come to DC because they
• 23:13
  want, they want to solve problems.
• 23:17
  They wanna, they want to fix things, they want to, they wanna leave a legacy.
• 23:22
  Rupert Isaacson: They wanna make things better.
• 23:23
  Yeah.
• 23:23
  Jeff Tomhave: They wanna make things better.
• 23:25
  And so you find that champion and you take, you know, in our case, our
• 23:30
  community story, and we usually begin in the local community and make, make it
• 23:39
  tell their story to that person that we eventually find as a champion.
• 23:43
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 23:44
  Jeff Tomhave: And make it be their story, because they wanna be the hero, they
• 23:48
  want to be the hero of, of whatever.
• 23:50
  And so that's how we've been able to do it.
• 23:53
  We've been able to say, Hey, all we need is, you know, a couple hundred
• 23:57
  thousand dollars to do the study.
• 24:00
  Everything with the infrastructure.
• 24:01
  You gotta do the preliminary studies, the environmental studies, the
• 24:05
  historical studies, everything first.
• 24:08
  And that's usually the first phase.
• 24:10
  And then afterwards, then you find the funding to actually do the project.
• 24:16
  But once you've done the first step, which is the studies, the, the second
• 24:23
  step is usually much easier because, oh, you've already done step one.
• 24:28
  Now we just move on to step two.
• 24:30
  And, and that's how the process used to work here in dc.
• 24:37
  Hopefully we'll get back to that someday.
• 24:40
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 24:41
  Jeff Tomhave: But yeah,
• 24:41
  Rupert Isaacson: so, so there you are based in dc you know, originally from deep
• 24:47
  within the American heartland, but then based in DC would a tribe then contact
• 24:52
  you or your firm, engage your services and say Jeff, we need this health service,
• 24:59
  we need this road, we need a better jail.
• 25:02
  We need a thing.
• 25:04
  Right.
• 25:04
  Can you help us to find a congressman or woman who will advocate for
• 25:10
  us and help us find that money to put into place this service?
• 25:16
  Is that basically describe what you would do
• 25:20
  Jeff Tomhave: Exactly.
• 25:21
  That, that's exactly how,
• 25:22
  Rupert Isaacson: okay.
• 25:23
  Exactly.
• 25:23
  Jeff Tomhave: How, how it works.
• 25:25
  Rupert Isaacson: Can you give us a couple of examples of where that succeeded?
• 25:29
  Jeff Tomhave: Sure.
• 25:31
  The I don't know how familiar you're with, with Navajo, but it's in three states.
• 25:36
  You know,
• 25:36
  Rupert Isaacson: I'm, I'm quite familiar with Navajo now.
• 25:38
  Primarily I'm coming to my own story with Navajo in a minute, but yeah.
• 25:42
  Jeff Tomhave: Okay.
• 25:42
  Primarily Arizona and New Mexico and a little, little part in Utah.
• 25:45
  Rupert Isaacson: Yep.
• 25:46
  Jeff Tomhave: The Utah section, there's a, there is a community
• 25:50
  there called Navajo Mountain.
• 25:53
  It's on Navajo Mountain.
• 25:55
  Mm-hmm.
• 25:55
  And there, it, it is in the Utah section, but the road to get to
• 26:02
  it starts in the Arizona section.
• 26:06
  There is no way to get to it from the Utah, from other places
• 26:10
  in Utah on U through Utah.
• 26:13
  The only road that goes there is in Arizona, so it's a 14 mile road.
• 26:20
  The
• 26:23
  students who went there were bused from all over the Utah section because in
• 26:29
  United States school districts work by, by, you know, districts, but they're,
• 26:35
  they're confined to their states.
• 26:37
  And so the Utah School District represented about half of the
• 26:41
  Utah section, the Navajo Nation.
• 26:43
  And in order for the kids to get to that school, they had to be bused through the
• 26:47
  Arizona section and then back up to Utah.
• 26:50
  It was about a four hour one way drive for some, if not most of the students.
• 26:56
  Rupert Isaacson: Wow.
• 26:56
  Jeff Tomhave: And the, the, the parents got frustrated because, you
• 27:03
  know, obviously when it rains there and the, the roads turn into mud bogs,
• 27:08
  the school bus can't get through.
• 27:11
  And so kids are missing all kinds of school missing so much school,
• 27:14
  in fact, that I believe if you miss.
• 27:18
  Something like 16 school days in a, in a school year, you actually
• 27:24
  have to be held back for the next year because you've missed too much.
• 27:27
  School kids were, that was happening repeatedly.
• 27:30
  Parents were frustrated and so they actually sued not only the the Bureau of
• 27:35
  Indian Affairs, but the Navajo Nation and the state of Utah to say, Hey, fix this
• 27:41
  road so that, you know, it doesn't take four hours to get there, you know, so that
• 27:47
  kids can get there in a normal, you know, school drive, you know, an hour at most,
• 27:51
  you know, or school bus drive an hour.
• 27:53
  At most.
• 27:55
  The lawsuit was actually successful.
• 27:57
  And all three of the parties, the Navajo Nation, the state of Utah, and the
• 28:03
  Bureau of Indian Affairs, they actually built a brand new school in Utah.
• 28:08
  Two new schools.
• 28:09
  In fact, the, the the primary school in the secondary school,
• 28:12
  brand new beautiful facilities, and they paved the road all the way
• 28:16
  from the school to the Utah border.
• 28:19
  Problem was the Arizona side was still a dirt road, so there's 14
• 28:24
  miles that was still a dirt road, so the problem was still in existence.
• 28:29
  So we took that issue and took it to Navajo's.
• 28:35
  Representative at the time and said, this is an obvious equal protection argument.
• 28:42
  This is a constitutional issue.
• 28:45
  These kids have a, have a constitutional right to get to school
• 28:50
  like any other kid in any other district school district in America.
• 28:56
  And that was the winning argument.
• 28:57
  Our member of Congress was able to get us the money for that.
• 29:02
  And in that time, in that process of, of getting the, the roadway
• 29:09
  paved, what had happened was that
• 29:14
  the local utility, the Navajo owned utility, put in new water lines
• 29:20
  along that right of way of the road.
• 29:23
  And they also put in new electrical and new internet lines.
• 29:27
  And so not only did we get this 14 sec, 14 mile section of road
• 29:33
  paved, but they got brand new infrastructure all the way because
• 29:38
  the road was actually not being used.
• 29:40
  And so they could do all of that maintenance work and all that,
• 29:43
  all that construction work.
• 29:44
  And so now, the Navajo Mountain schools are like state of the art.
• 29:49
  They're winning awards in Utah.
• 29:51
  They've got this robotics team that they do robotics
• 29:55
  competitions all over the country.
• 29:57
  And so that's sort of like one one example, another example we got a
• 30:02
  call from a local Navajo aids patient advocacy groups saying we can't get
• 30:12
  any treatment for HIV aids, you know, and, and, you know, our local Indian
• 30:18
  Health Service is not being responsive, you know, do something about this.
• 30:23
  So we actually looked into what that was, and we found out that
• 30:29
  treatment for HIV aids, that wasn't anything that the Indian Health
• 30:33
  Service was off, was authorized to do.
• 30:36
  They were authorized to provide prevention and awareness and
• 30:41
  screening, but not treatment.
• 30:43
  And so that was a, a pretty easy one.
• 30:46
  So when the reauthorization for the federal HIV aids treatment bill came
• 30:53
  through, we were able to get the internet health service included in that.
• 30:57
  And I say that as though that was easy.
• 30:58
  It actually took us about four years to do that.
• 31:01
  But it was a, it was a really easy fix because the local community thought their.
• 31:08
  Their local Indian health Service was being unresponsive, not knowing
• 31:13
  that they weren't, they weren't able to do this anyway, but we
• 31:16
  were able to get them to do this.
• 31:18
  And so now HIV AIDS treatment is available throughout Indian country
• 31:23
  because we were able to do that.
• 31:25
  Rupert Isaacson: What's interesting to me about that story is given that AIDS
• 31:28
  was such a big thing surely you as a Native American, you know, would've been
• 31:32
  aware that that service was lacking.
• 31:36
  Like would've heard someone saying about something about it somewhere.
• 31:41
  It's interesting.
• 31:43
  And, you know, I would've assumed, okay, it's a health, you know,
• 31:46
  there are health services.
• 31:47
  AIDS is the thing that would be sort of on the, and of course my background's
• 31:50
  in Africa, lots of it down there.
• 31:52
  So, you know, it's just front and center to find out that it
• 31:59
  wasn't, is, let's say, surprising.
• 32:03
  What were people doing?
• 32:04
  Were they just dying at home?
• 32:07
  Jeff Tomhave: Or they'd go off reservation to go seek treatment?
• 32:09
  Yeah.
• 32:10
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 32:10
  Okay.
• 32:12
  So if they could afford to find some health insurance somewhere, they could go
• 32:17
  and get it, but not on the reservation.
• 32:20
  If they were dependent upon the local reservation service, they might die.
• 32:27
  Jeff Tomhave: Right.
• 32:27
  Exactly.
• 32:28
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 32:28
  Wow.
• 32:30
  Okay.
• 32:30
  Tell us another one.
• 32:32
  Jeff Tomhave: Well, I, I know Brandy had mentioned this one but we were able to get
• 32:37
  the first cancer treatment center on a, on Indian Indian reservation at the Tuba
• 32:42
  City Hospital in on the Navajo Nation.
• 32:44
  And that was a 10 year process.
• 32:46
  Okay.
• 32:47
  But the finding the the oncologists and finding the
• 32:53
  pharmacy and all the specialized equipment, that was the easy part.
• 32:58
  The hard part was getting the federal government to reimburse the services,
• 33:03
  which they do everywhere else across the country except for Indian country
• 33:07
  because they weren't authorized to do so.
• 33:10
  And so it, it was a 10 year process for us to get the federal agency that does
• 33:15
  that, to get them authorized to do that.
• 33:17
  Rupert Isaacson: Why were they not authorized and why would it be
• 33:19
  difficult to get 'em to be authorized?
• 33:22
  Jeff Tomhave: Well, because
• 33:26
  pretty much everybody in the federal government assumes that, well, since
• 33:30
  there is a bureau of Indian Affairs right?
• 33:32
  And there's an Indian Health Service, they're the ones that do all that stuff.
• 33:37
  Not knowing that they actually don't do all of that stuff.
• 33:41
  They're very limited in what they can do.
• 33:44
  Even more limited in, in how they're funded.
• 33:47
  And so a lot of other federal agencies actually provide services
• 33:54
  for Indian tribes in Indian country through other programs.
• 33:59
  It's just that the leadership of those agencies and departments
• 34:04
  might not necessarily ever even know that or be aware of that.
• 34:08
  So they didn't, they didn't know that and they didn't wanna know about that.
• 34:15
  So that's why it took us 10 years.
• 34:18
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 34:19
  And what are you working on now?
• 34:20
  What's the current project?
• 34:22
  Jeff Tomhave: Well right now the the hospital is it's the hospital
• 34:26
  that where we were able to get the cancer services stood up.
• 34:30
  They their actual building is well over 50 years old and so
• 34:35
  they wanna get it replaced.
• 34:37
  It's gonna be about a billion dollars.
• 34:39
  And as I've told them, there's, there are no pot of money in Washington DC that is
• 34:45
  a billion dollars to replace a hospital.
• 34:47
  We're gonna have to do it in, in stages and in phases and, and, and all that.
• 34:51
  But no, we that's the big one that I'm working on right now.
• 34:55
  But also because of the work that we were doing with cancer.
• 35:00
  I'm starting a an organization that is gonna try to get cancer treatment
• 35:06
  on reservations more readily.
• 35:08
  Now that we've been able to get the services reimbursed, now we actually
• 35:12
  want to start providing services.
• 35:14
  And so I'm working with the handful of, of native oncologists across the country.
• 35:21
  And when I say handful, I mean a handful.
• 35:23
  There was only five that we know of, of native oncologists, and
• 35:28
  they're all willing to partner and, and get this thing going.
• 35:32
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 35:33
  You know, it's, it's very interesting when, I remember when I moved to
• 35:36
  the USA one of my first questions was, where do I find Indians?
• 35:42
  Where do I find Indian culture?
• 35:43
  And I moved to California when I first moved, and so, you know, it was
• 35:48
  San Francisco and my then partner's, you know, friendship Circle was very
• 35:56
  liberal, very progressive, very East Bay.
• 36:00
  Mm-hmm.
• 36:00
  So I thought, oh, they'll know.
• 36:02
  In the same way that if you, if you are Southern African, you, you know
• 36:06
  where the tribes live, you know that, you know the clauses are there
• 36:09
  in the Eastern cape, you know that.
• 36:11
  Tu are up there in Latu.
• 36:14
  You know that the su swazis are there In Su Swaziland, there're is zululand.
• 36:17
  There is, you know, up in Botswana it's the Botswana, there's Shauna
• 36:20
  and the end Bailey, that's Zimbabwe.
• 36:22
  You, you know this.
• 36:23
  And you, you might be unaware of some smaller tribes and know, and there also
• 36:27
  might be not so nice colonial reasons why they are placed, where they are placed.
• 36:32
  But you do know, I mean, you would know where to go, what you know, to, to see
• 36:39
  and experience the indigenous culture.
• 36:44
  What flummoxed me when I got to the USA was like, no, like not only did people not
• 36:51
  know, but they really didn't want to know.
• 36:53
  And so you would ask people including liberal, educated, you know, Northern
• 37:03
  Californians and the, the resistance to it and the dismissal of the question
• 37:12
  was almost a little bit hostile.
• 37:14
  And it was interesting to me.
• 37:17
  I thought, wow.
• 37:18
  And, and, and then I would ask, well, aren't you interested?
• 37:20
  I mean, you know, you're born here.
• 37:21
  I mean, you're born on that mountain and surely you'd kind of want to know,
• 37:24
  and that mountain kind of has an Indian name or the, the state has an Indian
• 37:28
  name, or the river has an Indian name.
• 37:30
  And aren't you kind of curious about, you know, just who the people were?
• 37:33
  I mean, aren't you curious about the history, even if
• 37:34
  they're not there anymore?
• 37:36
  No.
• 37:37
  The answer was like, no.
• 37:39
  And I think, what, what's the difference?
• 37:41
  Why, why were people so incurious?
• 37:45
  Almost deliberately incurious, and it's my journalist mind.
• 37:49
  It's like, I've gotta know this, you know?
• 37:51
  And then I realized, oh, I see.
• 37:52
  Because the colonial experience in southern Africa, while brutal was not that
• 37:58
  type of genocide there were genocides that happened, but overall, there wasn't enough
• 38:05
  overwhelming white settlement coming in.
• 38:08
  There weren't tens of millions of people getting on ships from Europe and
• 38:13
  going down to South Africa, there were, you know, maybe a couple of million.
• 38:18
  So just pure economics, you're not gonna go down and wipe out the labor
• 38:22
  force, and you couldn't, if you tried something might happen like a smallpox
• 38:27
  epidemic or a, a particularly brutal local war those things for sure happened.
• 38:33
  But in general, you were always gonna be outnumbered by the people who lived
• 38:37
  there, which of course meant that sooner or later they were gonna take it back.
• 38:40
  And that's of course what happened.
• 38:42
  But the story in North America was so different because the sheer volume
• 38:49
  of people coming in was greater than the number of people who were
• 38:53
  living there in the first place.
• 38:56
  Right.
• 38:57
  And so there was.
• 39:00
  No other way that it was gonna go.
• 39:02
  And I thought, I see there must be some sort of deep-rooted guilt about
• 39:07
  that, which makes people incurious, who even would, these would be the
• 39:13
  sort of people who would go to an anti-apartheid rally, you know?
• 39:16
  Or perhaps now it would be something for freedom for Palestine or something.
• 39:22
  Yes.
• 39:23
  But they wouldn't take up the flag for the local Indian tribe.
• 39:29
  And, and so I, I was asking people, well, who are the local Indians here?
• 39:33
  There must be, I mean, you know, there were people living here before.
• 39:36
  I mean, I know San Francisco's, you know, been a Spanish settlement for a
• 39:39
  long time, but before them, there were people here and I'm looking on the map.
• 39:43
  Look, there's reservations.
• 39:44
  Look, look, no, what's that tribe?
• 39:46
  You know, it begins with m it's you know, and have you been there?
• 39:50
  No.
• 39:51
  Do you wanna go there?
• 39:52
  No.
• 39:53
  Why not?
• 39:55
  Why are you asking these questions?
• 39:57
  Okay, interesting.
• 39:59
  So then, of course, I had to go and I found out about, so I, you
• 40:05
  asked me about Navajo Nation.
• 40:06
  I owe a debt of gratitude to Indian country and Navajo Nation.
• 40:10
  Now, I would say that anyone who's gone and lived in America, or benefited
• 40:14
  from America in any way, of course owes a debt of gratitude to Native
• 40:18
  America because they created America.
• 40:21
  And so if you have benefited from America, you have benefited from.
• 40:24
  The fruits of those peoples.
• 40:26
  But that's, but in a more direct way.
• 40:29
  I began a journalistic experience in Navajo Nation that started in the late
• 40:36
  nineties and then popped up again a couple of times where I was following
• 40:40
  various land rights issues there.
• 40:42
  In the same way that I was doing it in Africa and reporting on it, not for
• 40:47
  American press, but for British press because Brits are interested in it.
• 40:51
  By the time my son became diagnosed with severe autism and those of you, you know,
• 40:57
  who know my story that I went to Mongolia and there was a very big healing there.
• 41:02
  And then I was back in Africa and then I found myself in
• 41:06
  Australia in the rainforest there.
• 41:08
  But my, the final healing was actually on Navajo.
• 41:11
  And it was this guy called Chi who also went by the name of Blue Horse.
• 41:17
  And at the end of that healing where we sweated on behalf of my son my son
• 41:27
  became like properly conversational that day, not a week afterwards.
• 41:37
  That day.
• 41:38
  And he did it on I 40 driving out of Navajo reservation.
• 41:42
  He said something to me that was not what his previous scripted
• 41:49
  autism, you know, it was, we had just come out of the last ceremony,
• 41:53
  Jeff Tomhave: mm-hmm.
• 41:53
  Rupert Isaacson: Sunrise ceremony with, with pollen.
• 41:56
  And subsequently various friends of mine went to this healer for various things.
• 42:00
  And all of them ended up with a very, very positive outcome.
• 42:07
  And
• 42:11
  so I have this debt.
• 42:13
  And also professionally, I have a debt because my first break into journalism
• 42:18
  was actually given to me by the Cree Indians when I was living up in Canada.
• 42:22
  I reported on their land rights issue where the government, hydro company,
• 42:26
  hydro Quebec, was going to flood.
• 42:29
  It blew my mind an area the size of France
• 42:32
  Jeff Tomhave: mm-hmm.
• 42:33
  And
• 42:33
  Rupert Isaacson: area the size of France to sell this wa hydroelectricity
• 42:39
  to the New England states.
• 42:41
  And the flow of the water was going to be so big that it was gonna cause
• 42:46
  the earth's crus to shift and release all this mercury from the bedrock.
• 42:49
  And it actually had happened before in the seventies and a smaller.
• 42:53
  Way.
• 42:54
  So they, the Cree had managed to get a settlement from the government
• 42:59
  and they'd used it quite wisely.
• 43:01
  Quite a lot of their kids had ended up going off to law school 'cause
• 43:03
  they knew that it would happen again.
• 43:06
  And of course when it did, they were sort of ready.
• 43:08
  And I went and reported on that.
• 43:10
  Again, not for the Canadian press, not for the American
• 43:12
  press, but for the British press.
• 43:13
  And they were successful.
• 43:15
  And they gave me that story 'cause I went up there as a completely
• 43:19
  poverty stricken freelance journalist.
• 43:21
  And they flew me around on the, on the sea planes.
• 43:24
  And they got me out to the trapping camps on the snowmobiles.
• 43:28
  And all of this would've cost thousands.
• 43:29
  Thousands so I could get that story out.
• 43:32
  And so I owe so much to Native America, and I'm always intrigued by how
• 43:43
  invisible it is when you are in the USA.
• 43:47
  I was just in Florida, right?
• 43:49
  I was just in Florida and I went to visit a friend who lives in a
• 43:52
  place called Jupiter, Florida, which is just outside Palm West Farm.
• 43:56
  And I am driving around and then I see this little blo, you know,
• 44:02
  brown plaque about a battle.
• 44:04
  I'm like that battle, the date, it could only have been against
• 44:09
  Indians, it couldn't have been against the Spanish or anything.
• 44:13
  And I remembered, oh yeah, the Seminole Wars.
• 44:14
  I'd heard of the Seminole Wars.
• 44:17
  Yeah.
• 44:17
  Yeah.
• 44:17
  So I get on Wikipedia, I look up and I realized I'm in the
• 44:19
  middle of Seminole country.
• 44:22
  And there are actually semial reservations around me, but
• 44:25
  there is zero evidence of it.
• 44:28
  So why is this Jeff?
• 44:32
  Why, you know, somewhere like Navajo notion.
• 44:34
  Okay.
• 44:35
  In the southwest, huge areas, vast, you know, remote.
• 44:40
  Okay.
• 44:40
  And then when you get in there, oh yeah, okay.
• 44:42
  Here's a big intact culture.
• 44:44
  But we can understand that it's a schlep to get in there
• 44:47
  'cause it's a remote place.
• 44:49
  But when you're dealing with places like Upstate New York or California,
• 44:53
  or Florida, it's not remote.
• 44:57
  Jeff Tomhave: Yeah.
• 44:57
  Rupert Isaacson: These people are living right there in the communities.
• 45:00
  So why is it invisible?
• 45:01
  Why is Native America invisible?
• 45:04
  As you know, if you followed any of my work, I'm an autism dad and we have
• 45:09
  a whole career before this podcast in helping people with neurodivergence,
• 45:17
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• 45:19
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• 45:20
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• 45:22
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• 45:23
  Or are you somebody with neurodivergence?
• 45:27
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• 45:32
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• 45:34
  So I reached out for mentorship, and I found it through an amazing adult
• 45:39
  autistic woman who's very famous, Dr.
• 45:42
  Temple Grandin.
• 45:43
  And she told me what to do.
• 45:45
  And it's been working so amazingly for the last 20 years.
• 45:49
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• 45:54
  countless, countless thousands of others reach the same goal.
• 45:58
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• 46:03
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• 46:08
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• 46:10
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• 46:14
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• 46:17
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• 46:20
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• 46:24
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• 46:28
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• 46:33
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• 46:36
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• 46:39
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• 46:41
  Let us know how it goes for you.
• 46:44
  We really want to know.
• 46:44
  We really want to help people like me, people like you, out there
• 46:49
  live their best life, to live free, ride free, see what happens.
• 46:54
  Jeff Tomhave: Two reasons.
• 46:55
  I'm gonna give you the, the simple answer first is because Native
• 47:00
  Americans are also Americans.
• 47:02
  And so when you live in an urban area, say in Southern California or Phoenix
• 47:13
  or Albuquerque or Miami, you're gonna, it's hard to differentiate where the
• 47:21
  suburbs end and the reservation begins because you have the same businesses.
• 47:25
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 47:25
  Jeff Tomhave: And so, so Native Americans are Americans.
• 47:30
  They like the same fast food culture and, and big box store
• 47:36
  culture as everyone else.
• 47:37
  And so.
• 47:38
  That's the easy answer.
• 47:40
  The harder answer is because of the checkerboard system.
• 47:46
  Now, this goes way back in US history.
• 47:50
  Basically to get the railroads built, the federal government promised the
• 47:54
  railroads, Hey, every 10 miles we're gonna give you, you know, a 10 mile
• 48:01
  stretch and it can go for another 20 miles so that you can build your towns.
• 48:07
  And, you know, obviously, 'cause it was steam engines, they, they needed
• 48:10
  every, every 10 miles or so, they needed to get water for their engines.
• 48:14
  And so you could build that infrastructure there and put towns in and you,
• 48:19
  you could sell all that, lease, all that property to pay for all this.
• 48:22
  We'll give that to you.
• 48:23
  Well, where did those, where did that land come from?
• 48:27
  It came from reservations.
• 48:29
  It, it, the reservations that were negotiated, that's
• 48:33
  where that land came from.
• 48:35
  And so part of part of it was building the railroads, took a lot of Indian land
• 48:41
  and then the allotment act, which when public lands were open to homesteaders,
• 48:49
  they said, Hey, come and get all your, you know, your, your 40 acres and, and
• 48:55
  you know, you can prosper and, and.
• 48:59
  You'll succeed.
• 49:01
  And so that's where a lot of a lot of reservations became
• 49:04
  diminished because of that.
• 49:06
  And so
• 49:09
  I know that you've experienced this because I've, I've heard you
• 49:11
  speak about this where you're on a reservation and you don't know
• 49:15
  you're necessarily on a reservation.
• 49:17
  That's also because of right of way, if you're driving on a highway that is
• 49:22
  not the reservation, that's the right of way or of the state or the county.
• 49:27
  And so all of the billboards, all of the gas stations, basically everything
• 49:31
  in that right of way is gonna look as though it's any road, any place else.
• 49:37
  And it isn't until you get off of those roads and go a couple of miles into this,
• 49:41
  to the communities that you'll actually find the Indian settlements, the, the
• 49:47
  people you know, and, and, and that,
• 49:53
  but I also think that what you touched on earlier is also true.
• 49:57
  There's a lot of white guilt in Americans they don't wanna know,
• 50:01
  and so they don't want to see it.
• 50:03
  And so they're, they're, they're more than happy to go buy tax-free cigarettes
• 50:09
  and tax-free gasolines on reservations.
• 50:12
  But that's the extent of it.
• 50:15
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 50:16
  I've got a challenging question.
• 50:18
  So Colonialization is a two-edged sword.
• 50:23
  You know, have you ever seen Monty Python's life of Brian?
• 50:26
  You know, of course.
• 50:26
  And there's, there's the scene where it's the liberation front, you know,
• 50:31
  the ju the Judean Liberation front.
• 50:32
  What are the Romans ever done for us?
• 50:34
  Hey, hey, you know, so well
• 50:35
  Jeff Tomhave: roads
• 50:36
  Rupert Isaacson: aqueduct, apart from Aqueduct, what are they?
• 50:38
  Well, roads well apart from Rhodes, what are they?
• 50:41
  And then they go through the, well, apart from roads, aqueduct healthcare,
• 50:44
  you know, blah, blah, blah, you know, what have they ever done for us?
• 50:47
  And it's poignant because you said, you know, Amer native Americans are Americans,
• 50:53
  they like box store culture, they like fast food culture, et cetera, et cetera.
• 51:00
  And I'm curious about that because that is of course the hand of colonialism.
• 51:09
  If you like destroying culture and I'm, you and I both know that there are many,
• 51:16
  many enclaves of Native America within all over North America, where actually
• 51:21
  the original culture is very, very strong.
• 51:24
  To the point that, like I've been on the valley floor of Canyon Deha in Navajo
• 51:29
  country where it's like a traditional life from about a hundred years ago.
• 51:33
  But, and people living down there to some degree choose that, but by, that's
• 51:38
  by no means, you know, everywhere.
• 51:41
  Why do you, and, and then I remember when we met at the Quis
• 51:45
  Film Festival in Montana last year.
• 51:49
  And I remember there was a movie about the Blackfoot Nation and their relationship
• 51:56
  with horses and the land and so on.
• 51:57
  But as an outsider, I have to say it looked like just other normal
• 52:03
  American sort of semi ranch type people living in trailers, dressing like
• 52:10
  white people driving the same truck.
• 52:12
  You basically adopting the same culture the same.
• 52:16
  And there was a lot of talk about the culture in that movie, and then you saw
• 52:20
  like little snippets of it, but mostly what you actually observed as an outsider.
• 52:24
  It's like, no, look dude, it looks exactly the same as anywhere
• 52:27
  else in White Western America.
• 52:30
  What's the difference?
• 52:31
  Jeff Tomhave: Mm-hmm.
• 52:32
  Rupert Isaacson: Naive question.
• 52:33
  So my question is in a, in a state of being where one is fighting
• 52:40
  for advocacy, self-advocacy,
• 52:44
  why the wholesaler adoption of the colonial culture?
• 52:52
  Jeff Tomhave: Because the traditional culture has been taken away.
• 52:57
  And so a lot of people don't necessarily know it's not their experience.
• 53:01
  They don't know what their traditional culture is.
• 53:04
  Okay.
• 53:04
  And they're, they're like anyone else.
• 53:07
  They're searching, they're, they're looking at things, you know?
• 53:11
  And in order for culture to survive, it has to adapt.
• 53:14
  And so,
• 53:15
  Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
• 53:15
  Jeff Tomhave: I am gonna tell you a story and hopefully this'll,
• 53:18
  this'll illustrate what I mean.
• 53:20
  So, you know, Brandy, she's chota one of the five civilized tribes, and they're
• 53:24
  called civilized tribes because they were
• 53:27
  Rupert Isaacson: Brandy, by the way.
• 53:28
  Is, is, is, is Jeff's wife who runs a Native American Humane Society.
• 53:32
  Yes.
• 53:32
  Please go and check her interview out on Equine Assisted World.
• 53:37
  My other podcast.
• 53:37
  'cause it's, it's really a great interview, but just when he says
• 53:41
  Brandy, that's what he means.
• 53:42
  Okay.
• 53:43
  Sorry.
• 53:43
  Yes.
• 53:43
  Okay.
• 53:44
  Jeff Tomhave: So yes, so, so, should member of Choctaw Nation they're
• 53:48
  part of the five civilized tribes.
• 53:49
  They're called the civilized tribes because early on they adopted
• 53:54
  English, they adopted Christianity, they wrote their own constitutions.
• 53:58
  And like the rest of America, they had African slaves.
• 54:04
  And so they're called the five civilized tribes.
• 54:07
  Right.
• 54:08
  Speak English.
• 54:09
  Right.
• 54:10
  Became Christians really early in their history,
• 54:14
  Rupert Isaacson: settled in towns.
• 54:16
  Jeff Tomhave: Yes.
• 54:16
  Settled in towns, had newspapers.
• 54:18
  It looked
• 54:18
  Rupert Isaacson: like colonial towns.
• 54:19
  Jeff Tomhave: Yeah.
• 54:19
  Had constitutions, had to, had sheriffs and, and all that stuff.
• 54:24
  Right.
• 54:25
  And a couple of years ago we were driving through Oklahoma and
• 54:30
  we went to Durant, which is the capital of the Choctaw Nation.
• 54:35
  They had just opened their cultural center.
• 54:38
  It actually had opened just as COVID hit.
• 54:41
  So when they opened, they actually didn't open.
• 54:44
  And so we were there, you know, a few years afterwards when, you know it was
• 54:47
  safe to come out again and they were actually having their big opening.
• 54:50
  And so we were there.
• 54:53
  And when we got there, there was a Navajo woman who was the, the, the person,
• 54:58
  the hostess who, who introduced us.
• 55:00
  'cause she married a Choctaw guy.
• 55:02
  And she said, oh, here's, here's our programming here.
• 55:05
  Here's what you, you know, here's what you might wanna do today.
• 55:08
  And one of 'em was Choctaw language classes.
• 55:10
  And so, you know, brand new perked up immediately.
• 55:13
  And we went into 'em and they were singing hymns.
• 55:19
  And it finally dawned on me they became Christians so that they could hide
• 55:27
  their culture right out in the open.
• 55:31
  They were singing hymns in Choctaw.
• 55:34
  And it dawned on me right then and there.
• 55:36
  Ah, okay, now I get it.
• 55:40
  So, the Choctaw Nation has probably
• 55:47
  per capita some of the, the, the, the highest fluent speakers of anywhere.
• 55:53
  They are the, I believe they're the, the second largest tribe.
• 55:58
  Navajos being the first, and I know Navajos has a pretty big fluent
• 56:03
  speaker numbers, but I believe Chota is just right behind them.
• 56:08
  And it's not that they, they don't like say, oh, English is bad.
• 56:15
  No.
• 56:15
  It's that they've been able to keep their culture because they, they adapted this
• 56:22
  persona of being just like white people.
• 56:26
  And so they were able to shield it for themselves.
• 56:31
  And I think that that's, that's that is more prevalent than not.
• 56:36
  Now you said, you know, you, you, you've been to enclaves
• 56:39
  where there's thriving cultures.
• 56:42
  I've been to places where there are what are called unacknowledged
• 56:46
  tribes you know, federally recognized tribes, meaning, you know, you have a
• 56:50
  relationship with the federal government.
• 56:52
  You know, it's, it's based on a treaty or a statute or something, but there's
• 56:56
  some federal reason why the United States government deals with you as a
• 57:02
  tribe, as a separate political entity.
• 57:04
  And that's, that's called federal recognition.
• 57:07
  There are what are called unacknowledged tribes in that
• 57:12
  they never had that interaction.
• 57:15
  So they're just these small rural communities off in the
• 57:19
  mountains or wherever, you know, the desert floor, wherever.
• 57:24
  And they haven't ever had that experience.
• 57:27
  So they're completely intact.
• 57:29
  They've got their language, they've got their culture,
• 57:31
  they've got their, their religion.
• 57:33
  And even though they speak English and they go to schools and all that,
• 57:37
  they still have all of that, because that was never taken from them.
• 57:41
  And I've been there, I've seen it.
• 57:43
  It, it, it exists.
• 57:45
  And, and so I think there's, there's,
• 57:50
  there's the extreme way of, oh, we're gonna, we're gonna adapt everything
• 57:54
  that, that white American culture has, and we're gonna take it on as our own
• 58:01
  and hide our own truth inside that.
• 58:04
  Or, Hey, you never bothered to deal with us, therefore you
• 58:09
  never took anything from us.
• 58:10
  And I think most tribal people, they're definitely somewhere in
• 58:15
  between either end of that which is why, which is why, you know, the film
• 58:21
  on the Blackfeet reservation Yeah.
• 58:23
  They look like ranching people because they've always been ranching people.
• 58:27
  Even before horses.
• 58:28
  They were, they were doing animal husbandry with the wildlife, you know?
• 58:32
  Mm-hmm.
• 58:33
  This past summer we are in, we were in North Dakota, we went to
• 58:37
  a powwow, and we were both amazed.
• 58:40
  There's this brand new powwow dance that it's women and they're rodeo women,
• 58:48
  and they dance with, with the lariats.
• 58:50
  And the whole thing is to keep the lariat going up while they're dancing.
• 58:54
  Rupert Isaacson: That's like Gangnam style.
• 58:55
  Yeah.
• 58:56
  Jeff Tomhave: Yes, exactly.
• 58:57
  And it's, it's amazing.
• 58:58
  It's incredible because Indian people do rodeo a lot.
• 59:02
  I mean, you'd think, oh, that's a cowboy thing.
• 59:05
  And you know, Indian people have been doing that you know, basically forever.
• 59:11
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, at least since the colonial experience.
• 59:13
  I, I, I dunno if Indians were doing rodeos before,
• 59:17
  Jeff Tomhave: well, not rodeos,
• 59:18
  Rupert Isaacson: rodeo itself is a Spanish word, right.
• 59:20
  I mean it
• 59:20
  Jeff Tomhave: Yeah.
• 59:21
  But, but animal husbandry
• 59:22
  Rupert Isaacson: works.
• 59:23
  Yeah, sure.
• 59:24
  Absolutely.
• 59:24
  I guess, I guess, you know, I'm, I'm only asking these questions as
• 59:28
  devil's advocate because I think it, it's important for people to try
• 59:31
  and who are not familiar to kind of understand where Native America's at.
• 59:36
  And it's confusing because you can, you can meet, as you say, you
• 59:40
  can meet a tribal person and they come across to a large extent,
• 59:43
  just like any other American.
• 59:44
  And then you're like, well, then where's the lack?
• 59:47
  Why, why are you guys so poor?
• 59:48
  You don't look poor.
• 59:49
  You're wearing a nice thing.
• 59:50
  You're driving a nice car.
• 59:51
  There you are, you're living in Washington, dc you've got a, you know,
• 59:54
  you're a lawyer, you've got a job.
• 59:55
  Yeah.
• 59:55
  Where's the problem?
• 59:56
  And just as people from outside of America.
• 1:00:01
  Don't see white American poverty, which for sure exists.
• 1:00:05
  I've lived in rural Texas and you know, the rural south and or, you know,
• 1:00:10
  people might on the other hand have a perception and say, black America and
• 1:00:15
  think, well, black America's all ghetto.
• 1:00:17
  And it's like, well, some of it is, but no, a lot of it isn't actually.
• 1:00:21
  There's a lot of people who do very well and you know, blah, blah,
• 1:00:24
  blah, and all points in between.
• 1:00:27
  But I think because the Native American experience is so poignant, obviously
• 1:00:33
  the Black American experiences as well, but the Native American experience of
• 1:00:38
  dispossession, first of land, then of culture, as you said, you know, and
• 1:00:44
  then after the conquests even after the reservations then being put into these
• 1:00:49
  schools where you weren't allowed to speak your language and that, you know,
• 1:00:52
  and when you were saying, oh, well people are searching for their culture, someone
• 1:00:56
  listening to this might say, well, why?
• 1:00:57
  I mean, it, it seems that the culture's everywhere from what you guys are saying.
• 1:01:00
  There's 500 and something tribes, and there's this and there's that.
• 1:01:03
  But as you begin to recount the story, you go, oh, I see.
• 1:01:06
  Unless you were one of those, if you like uncontacted type tribes or happen to be,
• 1:01:12
  you know, cocooned by the geographical isolation of the middle of the.
• 1:01:18
  A Navajo reservation, which is the size of Ireland, you know, or
• 1:01:21
  something like that, then yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:22
  You know, you, you might well have actually found yourself in a
• 1:01:26
  cultural no man's land as a sort of alien within your own place.
• 1:01:31
  And I could see that leading to a kind of despair that, of course you see when
• 1:01:36
  you meet Native American homeless people in cities and all the substance abuse
• 1:01:41
  and all the, you know, the stuff that you see and then inherited trauma, we
• 1:01:44
  now know much more about epigenetics, you know, when one goes up into places
• 1:01:49
  like the Pine Ridge Reservation or the Rosebud Reservation than the Lakota
• 1:01:55
  tribes up there where you think, well, why would they be so f you know, effed up?
• 1:02:00
  Because they're the ones who came out with their, you know, spirit
• 1:02:03
  intact, their military spirit.
• 1:02:04
  They, you know, they beat Custer, they won all these battles, red Cloud
• 1:02:08
  and, you know, sitting Bull and all these people, and they, they're, you
• 1:02:12
  know, national heroes even outside of a, you know, bazillion movies.
• 1:02:17
  Why then are these the poorest and most effed up places in America?
• 1:02:23
  Well, yeah, they, they won those battles, so therefore the, the
• 1:02:28
  government was going to go in and make sure they didn't win anymore.
• 1:02:31
  And yeah.
• 1:02:32
  Which, which is interesting because in Zulu land in South Africa where
• 1:02:37
  my grandfather came from the Zulus.
• 1:02:41
  Beat the British Army Fair and Square, huge battle battle of Tijuana.
• 1:02:46
  They wiped out two British regiments had to climb over their own
• 1:02:50
  dead to do it, but they did it.
• 1:02:52
  And because of that, weirdly came out of the colonial experience with
• 1:02:58
  a real sense of pride and therefore, weirdly less animosity towards whites.
• 1:03:04
  But they didn't have the overwhelming immigration.
• 1:03:08
  They were still, of course, massively abused and under apartheid and so on,
• 1:03:12
  but it, it wasn't, I guess they just weren't so outnumbered and overwhelmed.
• 1:03:18
  So when you talk about,
• 1:03:24
  when one encounters people's attitudes towards Native America, there's
• 1:03:29
  often a, an assumption, particularly within white America, that the Amer,
• 1:03:34
  that the Native Americans actually do have money and they're just kind
• 1:03:38
  of lazy and have no work ethic.
• 1:03:40
  And you hear this a lot, like you hear, well, you know, they don't
• 1:03:43
  have to pay taxes, and they've got all this and they've got all that,
• 1:03:46
  and they have these casinos, and the casinos make, you know, billions.
• 1:03:50
  So where's all that money going, eh?
• 1:03:52
  And why should we, American taxpayers have to pay for these guys who don't
• 1:03:57
  pay taxes, who have all this money coming from, say perhaps oil and gas
• 1:04:01
  or perhaps from, casinos, et cetera.
• 1:04:06
  And I think a lot of those people are asking those questions in good faith
• 1:04:10
  because they themselves don't know, again, because of this invisibility issue.
• 1:04:16
  So can you answer that?
• 1:04:18
  Why are American reservations in Indian reservations so poor
• 1:04:22
  when huge natural resources, when gambling, et cetera, et cetera?
• 1:04:28
  Why?
• 1:04:29
  What, what's, what's the disconnect?
• 1:04:30
  What's going on?
• 1:04:30
  What's happening?
• 1:04:33
  Jeff Tomhave: Well, the short answer is that money doesn't
• 1:04:35
  stay on the reservations.
• 1:04:38
  Obviously with the resource extractions, it's the companies that are doing it,
• 1:04:42
  Rupert Isaacson: right?
• 1:04:42
  Jeff Tomhave: The tribe's getting a small royalty.
• 1:04:44
  I mean, there's been, you know, it's documented.
• 1:04:48
  There's court cases, you know, been going on for decades, if not, you know, a
• 1:04:54
  century now of how mismanaged the federal government is with with tribal resources.
• 1:05:01
  And that they don't even get market rates for them.
• 1:05:04
  They get, you know, less than that.
• 1:05:06
  And so, so that's sort of like the easy one.
• 1:05:09
  The other one is with gaming.
• 1:05:11
  You know, most people assume that it's the tribe that is, you know, running this
• 1:05:17
  and therefore getting all the profits.
• 1:05:19
  Well, most of these casinos, they're financed by outsiders.
• 1:05:23
  You know, some of them.
• 1:05:25
  The it's one of the tribes in Connecticut.
• 1:05:28
  I don't remember if it's the PWAs or, or, or the Ashing Tucket, but
• 1:05:34
  I believe the Sultan of Bruna is the one who put up money for that.
• 1:05:38
  And of course, you know, it's a long term, you know, like 30 year loan, and so
• 1:05:44
  the profits go to pay back the debt, you know, and part of the federal law that
• 1:05:52
  regulates gaming on Indian reservations it was actually crafted by the State
• 1:05:59
  Governor's Association so that they would get the lion's share of any profit.
• 1:06:06
  So that is why, if you are aware of this there are a handful of really,
• 1:06:14
  really profitable tribal gaming enterprises across the country.
• 1:06:20
  And they give money to, you know, the local volunteer fire
• 1:06:24
  department to build, you know, new stations, get new fire trucks.
• 1:06:28
  They, they put up the new little league ball fields, you know, new auditoriums
• 1:06:34
  for the local high school, all that stuff.
• 1:06:36
  That's because that's part of the federal law that.
• 1:06:40
  Regulates Indian gaming is a portion of any profits goes to
• 1:06:46
  the local adjacent community.
• 1:06:49
  And then there, and then, yes.
• 1:06:50
  And then eventually some of it does come down to the tribe providing for itself.
• 1:06:58
  And there are some there are some tribes where they're making
• 1:07:04
  obscene amounts of money and their individual members are getting tens
• 1:07:08
  of thousands of dollars a month.
• 1:07:10
  And there, there is that, that, oh, well they don't work.
• 1:07:14
  They're lazy.
• 1:07:15
  Well, they don't have to work.
• 1:07:17
  I mean, if I was getting $30,000 a month, I wouldn't work.
• 1:07:23
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:07:23
  Jeff Tomhave: But I'm not,
• 1:07:24
  Rupert Isaacson: but, but what, why are some, why are some gaming
• 1:07:27
  enterprises then able to pay tribal members 30,000 a month and others not
• 1:07:33
  Jeff Tomhave: because they are a bus ride from New York, or they're in,
• 1:07:38
  they're in suburban southern California.
• 1:07:42
  They're where people are who wanna gamble and most Indian tribes are not.
• 1:07:50
  And so, you know, they're, they're most Indian tribal casinos are on some, you
• 1:07:59
  know, not even a, a interstate highway.
• 1:08:02
  They're on some US highway.
• 1:08:04
  Out in the middle of, you know, ranch land where Yeah.
• 1:08:08
  If you're lucky, there's, you know, there's 50 people
• 1:08:11
  there that night, you know?
• 1:08:13
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:08:14
  Jeff Tomhave: So they're not, they're not where people are.
• 1:08:15
  That's, and that's why some of them aren't very successful
• 1:08:18
  Rupert Isaacson: if there, if there are a handful though,
• 1:08:20
  that are really successful.
• 1:08:22
  Jeff Tomhave: Yes, there are.
• 1:08:23
  Rupert Isaacson: Are you able, in your advocacy work, let's say you want to
• 1:08:28
  pave that road in Utah, or you want to build that new hospital for the cancer
• 1:08:34
  center, can you go to those other tribes?
• 1:08:38
  Is there, is there that kind of solidarity in Native America, or is there not,
• 1:08:43
  would, would a tribe, would the PWAs say, that's not our, that's not our concern.
• 1:08:48
  Would they say?
• 1:08:49
  No, that's definitely our concern
• 1:08:51
  Jeff Tomhave: there.
• 1:08:51
  It, it, it's a case by case basis.
• 1:08:53
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:08:54
  Most of them have philanthropic foundations, but they are, like any
• 1:08:59
  philanthropic foundation, they're, they're basically concentrating on,
• 1:09:03
  you know, their geographic area.
• 1:09:06
  So, you know, so you couldn't go to somebody in Connecticut for a project
• 1:09:09
  in, say, Arizona, you know, you could go to the Arizona tribes and say,
• 1:09:14
  Hey, can you do this thing in Arizona?
• 1:09:17
  And you know, if it, if it aligns with what their, you
• 1:09:21
  know, what their principles are, then sure, you could ask them.
• 1:09:24
  But it's, it's like anything else, you, you need to have that relationship
• 1:09:27
  already established with them.
• 1:09:29
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:09:29
  That takes the time.
• 1:09:29
  It takes time to cultivate and but yeah, so to answer your question, no, there
• 1:09:35
  isn't that general overall solidarity.
• 1:09:39
  But there, but you can find connection points if there philanthropic
• 1:09:46
  guidelines align with your, with, with what you're asking for.
• 1:09:51
  Rupert Isaacson: So the question again, as an outsider is why
• 1:09:53
  isn't there that solidarity?
• 1:09:55
  So if, if all Native Americans have had this same basic experience of
• 1:10:00
  genocide, colonialization, you know, just having a really, really awful time
• 1:10:05
  at the hands of European colonials, that's a common experience that
• 1:10:12
  presumably binds people together.
• 1:10:15
  And as you say, being thrown into schools where there's different tribes and and
• 1:10:19
  so on, and so, and so people are marrying across the tribes and, and so on.
• 1:10:22
  So why, what prevents that solidarity?
• 1:10:28
  Jeff Tomhave: Well, I think it's it's a it's a legacy of, you know, the whole
• 1:10:31
  divide and conquer, you know, practice.
• 1:10:34
  You know, the federal government, it deals with tribes across the
• 1:10:38
  country based upon which, which.
• 1:10:41
  Federally administered region that they are in.
• 1:10:44
  And so you'll have those tribes all get together and, you know, meet and discuss
• 1:10:50
  about their things the others, their own.
• 1:10:53
  And so there's never really a, a,
• 1:10:58
  a time or a place for tribes ever just to get together on their own.
• 1:11:04
  There are a few national tribal organizations but they're actually funded
• 1:11:10
  primarily by the federal governments that by the federal government
• 1:11:15
  agencies that these organizations are supposed to provide oversight to.
• 1:11:22
  But when, but when you're being funded by them, you don't really police them.
• 1:11:27
  And so that's really what happens.
• 1:11:30
  So I think there really hasn't, there, there really isn't
• 1:11:35
  that that avenue to do that.
• 1:11:38
  And hopefully that, that's, that's, that's kind of what I'm
• 1:11:43
  been trying to do is, is get.
• 1:11:45
  Elected tribal people or just tribal people in general to start thinking,
• 1:11:49
  Hey, just because the federal government told us we have to do it this way
• 1:11:53
  doesn't mean we have to do it this way.
• 1:11:55
  Rupert Isaacson: Right?
• 1:11:55
  I mean, there must have been people who had this vision.
• 1:11:58
  I mean, you would think, where is the Native American Martin
• 1:12:00
  Luther King that there has there?
• 1:12:02
  No, never been anyone who said, I have a dream.
• 1:12:05
  You know?
• 1:12:05
  And and also effectively, you know, listen, lads, these guys
• 1:12:09
  are always gonna do us up the backside unless we get together.
• 1:12:13
  And I can see how the legacy, it's not just divide and conquer,
• 1:12:18
  it was also divided before white people showed up, right?
• 1:12:22
  People have been at war with each other, nations have been at war with each other
• 1:12:26
  in Native America before, long before any, any anyone from Europe ever showed up.
• 1:12:30
  And I could see, of course that doesn't go away.
• 1:12:33
  The old rivalries exist in Europe.
• 1:12:35
  Why wouldn't they exist everywhere else in the world?
• 1:12:37
  But nonetheless, when you are getting, when you're really
• 1:12:43
  get, you are all getting it from the, the man in the same way.
• 1:12:47
  You would think at a certain point people would go all in the 500 year, 600 year
• 1:12:52
  history, you know, someone would go, alright, look, it's pretty clear that
• 1:12:56
  unless we present some sort of united front here, nothing's gonna change.
• 1:13:02
  Do you think that can happen?
• 1:13:05
  Will happen, will ever happen?
• 1:13:09
  And if so,
• 1:13:09
  Jeff Tomhave: I am, I'm, I'm optimistic that it can happen.
• 1:13:14
  I'm dubious that it will happen because people are people, people, you know, have
• 1:13:20
  their old animosities and Yeah, there is, there's definitely tribal animosities,
• 1:13:26
  which will prevent that from happening across certain, you know, certain divides.
• 1:13:31
  And that goes way back.
• 1:13:32
  That's all pre-contact.
• 1:13:35
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:13:36
  Jeff Tomhave: Animosities and warfare, and those probably will never be resolved.
• 1:13:41
  But people are, people and, and people, you know, have their
• 1:13:44
  own agendas and you are right.
• 1:13:48
  There is no Native American Martin Luther King.
• 1:13:52
  There hasn't been for hundreds of years.
• 1:13:56
  You know, and the last ones were, you know, military leaders who tried to,
• 1:14:01
  you know, create these tribal alliances.
• 1:14:02
  And some cases did, and some cases were not successful.
• 1:14:07
  But there hasn't been any in contemporary times.
• 1:14:12
  And it's a, it's a shame, but I also think that because the native
• 1:14:21
  population is so small mm-hmm.
• 1:14:24
  That.
• 1:14:25
  That
• 1:14:28
  the, you know, most tribes are just a collection of, you know,
• 1:14:31
  a handful of families and, you know, this family is in power once
• 1:14:36
  they're in the elected positions.
• 1:14:39
  And then that family gets power once they get an election.
• 1:14:42
  And so there's, there's those familial intertribal squabbles that
• 1:14:47
  will prevent that from happening.
• 1:14:49
  But I do think that because the population is so small that, that
• 1:14:56
  the vision for unity
• 1:15:01
  that conversation almost never happens because
• 1:15:07
  someone will say, oh, well, you know, we can't do this because of X, Y, or Z.
• 1:15:13
  And the other person will say, oh, and I wouldn't wanna do it with
• 1:15:15
  you because of this there or that.
• 1:15:19
  So, I think if the population was larger, that would be an easier
• 1:15:23
  conversation because those voices would just sort of be background noise.
• 1:15:28
  But right now they're prominent.
• 1:15:31
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:15:31
  It's, it's interesting to me you would have thought that the same
• 1:15:37
  issue would have pervaded in, in black America, because again, to the
• 1:15:44
  outsiders, oh, black America's a thing.
• 1:15:45
  But of course, black America's.
• 1:15:47
  Many, many, many cultures not all of whom were on good terms with each
• 1:15:51
  other, and yet they did manage to forge a movement that fundamentally
• 1:16:00
  shifted the political landscape.
• 1:16:06
  I'm optimistic.
• 1:16:07
  You know, I think, I think people can change.
• 1:16:10
  Like if you, it's really interesting if you look at say Scandinavia, right?
• 1:16:14
  We all look at Scandinavia as like, you know, Canada's the
• 1:16:19
  Scandinavia of North America.
• 1:16:20
  North America is the Canada, you know, it's, you know, yeah.
• 1:16:24
  They're, they're the Canada of Europe and, you know, enlightened liberal
• 1:16:28
  people who very have great, you know, policies of social this and social
• 1:16:33
  that, and look after their environment and was not always, so there was, there
• 1:16:37
  were these people called Vikings who committed all sorts of atrocities.
• 1:16:42
  And you could even argue that the Northern European colonial experience was just
• 1:16:48
  a continuation of the Viking tradition.
• 1:16:51
  Yet the, somewhere along the line.
• 1:16:56
  They stopped doing that and became transformed into a very different society,
• 1:17:02
  Mongolia, when I was in Mongolia, this was really interesting, you know, the,
• 1:17:06
  the most brutal and violent culture on the planet, you know, exploding
• 1:17:12
  out of Mongolian, like we killed everybody, you know, kill everybody
• 1:17:15
  from the Pacific to the Mediterranean, you know, once every 50 years.
• 1:17:19
  And then, whoa, that was a bit tiring, wasn't it, lads?
• 1:17:21
  You know?
• 1:17:22
  And so then they end up, you know, going back to the heartland and sort of
• 1:17:24
  recovering for a, a generation or so.
• 1:17:26
  Then they get everybody again.
• 1:17:28
  And you know, you got Genghis Kahan and Khan and Tamerlan and all these people,
• 1:17:31
  you know, and then somewhere in the 17th century you get these Tibetan monks
• 1:17:37
  wandering over the Altai plateau and talking about this thing called Buddhism.
• 1:17:43
  And like in one generation, the Mongolians go, yeah, you know,
• 1:17:46
  that's a good idea actually.
• 1:17:48
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:17:49
  Maybe we, yeah, maybe we should do that.
• 1:17:51
  Or the Berlin War coming down or the end of apartheid or whatever.
• 1:17:54
  So I, I just wonder,
• 1:17:58
  do you think that maturation process is round the corner
• 1:18:05
  somehow for Native America?
• 1:18:07
  Because it seems that as long as I've been involved in North America
• 1:18:11
  that those, the, the problems despite growing prosperity generally have
• 1:18:17
  remained really acute in Native America.
• 1:18:21
  The, the social problems, the.
• 1:18:23
  The poverty, the, as you said, all the things that you outlined, despite
• 1:18:27
  as, yes, as you say, some, some people of course, do very well, but
• 1:18:31
  we know that that's not the norm.
• 1:18:33
  Sooner or later there kind of has to be a collective pinching of the
• 1:18:40
  skin and kind of going, all right, listen, we, we, we gotta do it
• 1:18:44
  differently because we're still here.
• 1:18:46
  Right?
• 1:18:46
  I mean, that is an achievement, as you say, it's a very small
• 1:18:49
  population, but that is actually a testament to an achievement, because
• 1:18:53
  by rights you shouldn't exist.
• 1:18:55
  You know?
• 1:18:56
  I mean, if you think about the effort that went into annihilation
• 1:19:00
  of native community, you know, one just has to start reading the
• 1:19:06
  histories and it's, it's criminal.
• 1:19:09
  Jeff Tomhave: Mm-hmm.
• 1:19:10
  Rupert Isaacson: But it was also, it was final solution type criminal.
• 1:19:13
  It was very well thought out, mass death on an industrial scale.
• 1:19:16
  And just as Hitler couldn't kill all the Jews, though, he
• 1:19:19
  gave it good old college try.
• 1:19:22
  They couldn't obviously complete the genocides to the Native Americans,
• 1:19:26
  but they jolly well had a go.
• 1:19:28
  And, you know, I, I lived in Texas, you know.
• 1:19:31
  That's Comanche country, right?
• 1:19:32
  I lived in the middle of Comanche, not one Comanche, you know, within
• 1:19:37
  a hundred, 200, 300, 400, 500 miles.
• 1:19:41
  They, they got rid of them like really efficiently, but yet there's
• 1:19:46
  still some sitting up there in a Oklahoma where they shoved them.
• 1:19:49
  They're still there.
• 1:19:50
  You guys are still there.
• 1:19:52
  And there you've got people like you sitting in Washington,
• 1:19:54
  DC you know, advocates.
• 1:19:57
  You must have this dream somewhere in you.
• 1:20:00
  Jeff Tomhave: Oh, of course I do.
• 1:20:01
  Yeah, it's something that I've, I've wanted and thought about and contemplated
• 1:20:07
  and that's, and that's why when I started I said, you know, native professionals
• 1:20:10
  of my generation, because it is something that people do talk about.
• 1:20:16
  It's like, when are we gonna get over these, these petty squabbles
• 1:20:19
  and actually get into the game and, you know, do something about this?
• 1:20:24
  And so yeah, it, it is something that, that that I, I dream about.
• 1:20:32
  But I'm not sure how it's actually going to happen.
• 1:20:36
  Because as long as the federal government basically controls pretty much every
• 1:20:45
  aspect of tribal governments, and it does, that's not a conversation that's gonna
• 1:20:52
  happen at the tribal governmental level.
• 1:20:55
  It may happen elsewhere.
• 1:20:56
  And that's, that's where my optimism comes from, is it may happen
• 1:21:01
  at the community level, it may happen at the, the grandma level.
• 1:21:07
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:21:08
  Jeff Tomhave: It's gotta happen somewhere.
• 1:21:10
  Because I think the, the, it's too easy to distract a tribal
• 1:21:16
  government by doing something else.
• 1:21:18
  It's like throwing a, throwing a ball at a dog, you know, the dog's gonna go
• 1:21:22
  chase it, you know, rather than stay where they are, stay at the attention
• 1:21:27
  and, and do what needs to be done.
• 1:21:29
  So I think that that conversation, as far as I know, it hasn't happened
• 1:21:33
  yet, but it could happen just not in the arena of, of tribal government.
• 1:21:38
  Rupert Isaacson: I, I agree with you.
• 1:21:39
  I think that I think that I mean, let's face it, Martin Luther King didn't
• 1:21:42
  happen at the federal government level.
• 1:21:45
  And we also know what happened to him.
• 1:21:47
  But
• 1:21:50
  how, let's dream a little bit, okay.
• 1:21:52
  Let's say it happens at the community level.
• 1:21:54
  Let's say it happens at the grandma level.
• 1:21:57
  What happens fantasy scenario, what happens and how does it play out?
• 1:22:02
  And what does America then look like 50 years after that happens?
• 1:22:11
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• 1:22:15
  And we have been training horses for many, many years in the manner of
• 1:22:20
  the old classical dressage masters.
• 1:22:24
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• 1:22:27
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• 1:22:32
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• 1:22:37
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• 1:22:43
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• 1:22:45
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• 1:22:50
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• 1:23:00
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• 1:23:01
  com to unlock the secrets of the old masters.
• 1:23:06
  Jeff Tomhave: Well, I think it first starts off with
• 1:23:09
  with everybody airing their grievances, whatever they are, get them out in the
• 1:23:15
  open and done with because there is so much trauma that I, I, you can physically
• 1:23:24
  see people carrying this trauma with them.
• 1:23:26
  They're, they're hunched over.
• 1:23:27
  It's, it's, it's in them.
• 1:23:29
  Yeah.
• 1:23:29
  Yeah.
• 1:23:29
  You can see the pain in them.
• 1:23:31
  And I think once you start to let it out, I think it'll, it'll happen.
• 1:23:36
  And I think once people aren't overburdened with whatever the
• 1:23:43
  trauma is, whether it's immediate trauma from something they've
• 1:23:46
  experienced, or it's this historic trauma, you know, it's still there.
• 1:23:50
  It exists, it's real.
• 1:23:52
  And there isn't a way to, I think deal with it in a healthy manner.
• 1:23:58
  There are now Indian Health Service programs to deal with people's
• 1:24:02
  historic trauma, put it that way.
• 1:24:04
  Rupert Isaacson: Ah,
• 1:24:04
  Jeff Tomhave: you can't go to a local clinic and, and, and,
• 1:24:07
  you know, get that service.
• 1:24:09
  It doesn't exist.
• 1:24:10
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 1:24:11
  Jeff Tomhave: But once people have done that and, and, and they sort of relieve
• 1:24:14
  themselves, or at least, you know.
• 1:24:16
  Released some of that anguish and, and pain, you can start
• 1:24:21
  talking about, oh, okay.
• 1:24:22
  We can start dreaming, we can start thinking about possibility.
• 1:24:25
  We can start doing things differently.
• 1:24:27
  You know, perhaps we should stop disenrolling our members.
• 1:24:31
  I mean, that would be a great idea.
• 1:24:33
  Rupert Isaacson: Tell me about that.
• 1:24:33
  I wouldn't even know what that means.
• 1:24:37
  Jeff Tomhave: Because tribes have been successful with gaming some
• 1:24:41
  tribes have just started disenrolling their members because they, they
• 1:24:45
  don't wanna share the profits.
• 1:24:46
  They want to keep 'em all to themselves.
• 1:24:48
  And so there's a, it's a, it's a thing that's been going on for,
• 1:24:53
  you know, the past 20 years now.
• 1:24:55
  Tribes will just disenroll people.
• 1:24:58
  Rupert Isaacson: How does one, how does one get away with that?
• 1:25:00
  I mean, if you're born into that tribe, you're, that's like
• 1:25:02
  disen, that's like denying your ci stripping of your citizenship.
• 1:25:07
  How, how can that happen?
• 1:25:08
  How does that happen?
• 1:25:11
  Jeff Tomhave: Well, you, the current tribal government will say we no longer
• 1:25:18
  recognize these families as being, you know, legitimately members of our tribe.
• 1:25:25
  And they'll point to something, some historic, you know, thing about that
• 1:25:29
  family, that family line to say, that's why they're not a member of the tribe.
• 1:25:34
  And because it's the tribal government, they can do it.
• 1:25:38
  And the federal government says, oh, it's an internal tribal matter.
• 1:25:42
  We, we can't do anything about this.
• 1:25:45
  And so you've got this phenomenon now where, where tribes are disenrolling
• 1:25:50
  their members in the short term.
• 1:25:53
  What that does is that increases their, their own percentage of whatever, you
• 1:25:57
  know, gaming profits there are, but it also decreases their tribal members.
• 1:26:03
  And federal services are based upon how many members of the tribe you have.
• 1:26:08
  And eventually one of one of the consequences of a, of a federal law
• 1:26:13
  that's about a hundred years old now, it's called the Blood quantum.
• 1:26:18
  You know, only members of your tribe that have this amount of Indian blood in them
• 1:26:23
  are considered members of your tribe.
• 1:26:26
  Once they, you know, once they fall below that amount, they're
• 1:26:31
  no longer members of your tribe.
• 1:26:34
  They're no longer Indians.
• 1:26:36
  And so.
• 1:26:38
  The genocide, it still is going on, is just a paper legislative genocide.
• 1:26:43
  Now, whether the federal government does it through blood quantum or
• 1:26:46
  whether tribes themselves do it through disenrollment, it's happening.
• 1:26:50
  So basically the ultimate result of genocide is when you get people
• 1:26:54
  to kill them, kill themselves, which is what is happening now.
• 1:26:57
  And so if tribes can stop disenrolling people, that will be a big step
• 1:27:06
  into realizing a, a better future.
• 1:27:10
  Rupert Isaacson: Do you think, are you any part of trying to get that to happen?
• 1:27:13
  I mean, and is there some, is there an appeal process?
• 1:27:16
  And could you go and say, and get a DNA test and say, actually look, I am, you
• 1:27:21
  know, totally a member of this tribe because look, here's the DNA test.
• 1:27:25
  What are, yeah, what recourse would somebo do people have if, if that,
• 1:27:29
  and is it arbitrary and sudden?
• 1:27:30
  Does someone just like get a letter through the mailbox saying, sorry,
• 1:27:35
  you're not a member of the tribe anymore.
• 1:27:37
  And it like, yeah.
• 1:27:41
  So how does it happen?
• 1:27:42
  Is there an appeal process?
• 1:27:44
  What about DNA tests and how would people stop?
• 1:27:48
  How would you stop this process inside the genocide?
• 1:27:52
  Interesting.
• 1:27:55
  Jeff Tomhave: Yeah.
• 1:27:55
  Well, there is no appeal process as, as I mentioned before, if a, if a
• 1:28:00
  currently, you know, legitimate tribal government decides they wanna disenroll,
• 1:28:05
  you know, so many people they can do it.
• 1:28:08
  Right?
• 1:28:08
  And, and the federal government who's supposed to have oversight
• 1:28:12
  always says, this is an internal matter we're not gonna deal with.
• 1:28:16
  It's an internal tribal matter.
• 1:28:18
  We have no say over this.
• 1:28:20
  And of course, they like that because the less, the less tribal people they have
• 1:28:25
  to deal with, the easier their job is.
• 1:28:27
  Yeah.
• 1:28:27
  So there's no appeal process.
• 1:28:29
  As far as I know, there's no, you know, movement to try to rectify this.
• 1:28:35
  There is no, you know, DNA fight to, to, to, because there
• 1:28:39
  Rupert Isaacson: ought to be right.
• 1:28:40
  If there's a blood quantum, there ought to be a DNA answer to that, right?
• 1:28:44
  Jeff Tomhave: Yes.
• 1:28:45
  There, there should be.
• 1:28:46
  Well, and the thing too is, is, as I've been saying all along, is, you know,
• 1:28:50
  this federal law that says there's blood quantum tribes don't have to follow that.
• 1:28:55
  They can say, no, this is, this is what we consider to be a tribal member.
• 1:29:00
  Okay?
• 1:29:00
  And it could be somebody who's been a historic member of a tribe.
• 1:29:03
  I mean, historically you didn't even have to be Indian to
• 1:29:07
  become a member of a tribe.
• 1:29:08
  A tribe could just adopt you in, and then now you're a member of the tribe.
• 1:29:11
  I mean, it could get back to.
• 1:29:14
  That at some point.
• 1:29:16
  And I think for a lot of tribes where they're dwindling down to, you
• 1:29:20
  know, just a couple of dozen members, they need to do something like that.
• 1:29:23
  Otherwise, they're not gonna be a tribe anymore.
• 1:29:25
  They're not gonna exist.
• 1:29:28
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 1:29:28
  That, that would, yeah, that would seem to be logical.
• 1:29:32
  So it, it, you know, it's just, it is intriguing to me because let's say
• 1:29:39
  somebody is gonna get stripped of their citizenship for whatever reason, which is
• 1:29:43
  like one of the most extreme things that can happen, and it almost never happens.
• 1:29:47
  There would be all kinds of legal challenges that could and would be made,
• 1:29:52
  you know, if someone was to try and take away your American citizenship or
• 1:29:55
  your British citizenship or whatever.
• 1:29:57
  It's, it's so extreme.
• 1:29:59
  If it happens, you've gotta be a member of a terrorist organization
• 1:30:01
  or something, or something.
• 1:30:03
  Jeff Tomhave: Yep.
• 1:30:04
  Rupert Isaacson: So I'm, I'm a little bit stunned to know that
• 1:30:07
  there's no appeal process and that there'd be no DNA answer to it.
• 1:30:11
  But equally, as you say why not adopt people in?
• 1:30:17
  And then why not be very wise about who you adopt?
• 1:30:20
  Like why not adopt Warren Buffet?
• 1:30:23
  You know, why not adopt Jeff Bezos, you know, and say, alright, now
• 1:30:29
  you are, you are, you are a homie.
• 1:30:30
  So, you know, let's, let's see.
• 1:30:32
  Some of that money to.
• 1:30:34
  Build a hospital or two please.
• 1:30:35
  You know, which clearly they've got that money.
• 1:30:40
  Is that, is, is it something like that actually, is it something
• 1:30:45
  about no, no longer trying to protect culture and hold it apart?
• 1:30:53
  And coming back to my question about why would Native Americans adopt so eagerly
• 1:31:02
  white culture, but actually could there be a wisdom in that integration in order
• 1:31:10
  to sort of do a more successful version of what the Choctaws did to say, okay,
• 1:31:18
  well then, then let's swell our numbers and then let's decide, okay, if your
• 1:31:25
  family has been in America at all for some gender, or even if you've just got
• 1:31:31
  off the boat and we like you, maybe, you know, all, all new new American citizens.
• 1:31:39
  Like when I got my American citizenship, what if, what if 32 tribes had
• 1:31:42
  come to me and said, sort of made a little presentation to me and said,
• 1:31:45
  which one of us would you like to, you know, we'd love to have you.
• 1:31:48
  Of course if we have you, you know, we'd like you to.
• 1:31:52
  Rather like a church, we'd like you to pay a tithe and, you know,
• 1:31:55
  that would go towards, you know, some of the things that we did.
• 1:31:58
  But, you know, here, here are the benefits of being a member of,
• 1:32:01
  of, of this tribe or that tribe.
• 1:32:03
  It's very interesting, isn't it, that that isn't the way of thinking.
• 1:32:07
  Do, do you think something like that could happen?
• 1:32:14
  Jeff Tomhave: I I think it's possible.
• 1:32:16
  I don't think it's realistic.
• 1:32:17
  I don't think tribes would want to do it, but I definitely see
• 1:32:21
  the benefit of how you could
• 1:32:26
  increase your political reach if you had people who had different skill
• 1:32:32
  sets and different economic levels.
• 1:32:36
  Yeah, I, I de, I definitely see that.
• 1:32:38
  You know, and that's, you know, again, I go back to that's
• 1:32:41
  something that tribes used to do.
• 1:32:43
  You know, you used to adopt people, you know, the, you know, in my part
• 1:32:47
  of the country in North Dakota, you know, the first people that we, the
• 1:32:51
  first Europeans we met were the French, you know, and, you know, we adopted
• 1:32:57
  French people into our tribe, you know?
• 1:32:59
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:33:00
  And, you know, the Hadza knew French before they knew English, you know.
• 1:33:05
  So it's, it, it's not out of the realm of possibility.
• 1:33:10
  But I do like your idea of, of Warren Buffet.
• 1:33:12
  That's a, that's,
• 1:33:13
  Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
• 1:33:13
  I mean, why not?
• 1:33:14
  You know?
• 1:33:16
  Jeff Tomhave: But, you know,
• 1:33:17
  Rupert Isaacson: is every, is every American president an honorary
• 1:33:19
  member of a tribe, for example?
• 1:33:22
  They should be, shouldn't they?
• 1:33:23
  Jeff Tomhave: It should be.
• 1:33:24
  Exactly.
• 1:33:25
  Exactly.
• 1:33:25
  I think I think tribal people would probably be more comfortable with
• 1:33:29
  somebody like Mark ruffle because, you know, he's out there, you know, on on
• 1:33:33
  the front lines, you know, whenever there is a, whenever there's an issue.
• 1:33:38
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, sure.
• 1:33:39
  But
• 1:33:40
  Jeff Tomhave: having the Hulk would be, would be a, a big catch.
• 1:33:44
  But I, I don't know.
• 1:33:45
  You know, but seriously, I think that there are a lot of people who don't
• 1:33:51
  know that they do have native heritage.
• 1:33:54
  You know, it might be family lore, it might be suspected, and
• 1:33:58
  of course now with DNA, you know, you can be more certain of that.
• 1:34:02
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:34:03
  But I mean, I think to start the conversation, it would
• 1:34:05
  have to be something along, you know, that kind of mm-hmm.
• 1:34:08
  Scientifically, you know, sort of genetically there's gotta
• 1:34:12
  be a more than just, oh, you wanna be a member of a tribe?
• 1:34:15
  There's gotta be something there.
• 1:34:19
  I definitely like the idea of.
• 1:34:21
  What can you bring?
• 1:34:22
  Not tribes going to a new citizen and saying, Hey, here's what we can offer you.
• 1:34:26
  But people coming to the tribes saying, here's what you can, you know,
• 1:34:30
  here's what you can offer the tribe.
• 1:34:32
  Here's my skillset, here's my, here's my reach.
• 1:34:35
  You know, here's, here's everybody that I know who, who can, who will
• 1:34:42
  go to their member of Congress and do this thing for you.
• 1:34:45
  You know?
• 1:34:45
  Mm.
• 1:34:47
  I
• 1:34:47
  Rupert Isaacson: I think, yeah.
• 1:34:48
  I wonder if the tribes can have like a golden visa type thing.
• 1:34:50
  It's like, yeah, you can come in and you can, you know, live here and you
• 1:34:54
  can have a nice house and you can do all this and but you know, it's
• 1:34:58
  gonna cost you 500 grand and you know, you need to build that hospital.
• 1:35:03
  But it seems to me though that yeah, 'cause what we're dealing
• 1:35:06
  with the i is the idea of nations.
• 1:35:09
  Some people say tribes, some people say nation, right?
• 1:35:11
  Yes.
• 1:35:12
  And nations can nation build or they can decline and, and die or, or
• 1:35:18
  become absorbed into other nations.
• 1:35:19
  And we know that's the process of history.
• 1:35:22
  It just is intriguing that despite all attempts to extinguish it,
• 1:35:28
  native America is still there.
• 1:35:30
  And as you say, so many people who have lived for more than a
• 1:35:35
  couple of generations in North America do have ma native blood.
• 1:35:41
  And perhaps that is something that might bring.
• 1:35:46
  Things to a, a, a better person.
• 1:35:48
  You yourself.
• 1:35:49
  Now, are you, you've, you've lived a long time in DC doing this advocacy work, so
• 1:35:55
  you can obviously work and you and your wife are now moving back to the Dakotas.
• 1:36:00
  I mean, that's why you're sitting in that empty room.
• 1:36:02
  I happen to know 'cause you're moving house.
• 1:36:04
  Jeff Tomhave: Yes.
• 1:36:04
  Rupert Isaacson: You've gone, you've bought this old school on the is it
• 1:36:09
  the Mandan and reservation standing?
• 1:36:13
  Jeff Tomhave: No, we're, we're in we're in Eastern North Dakota.
• 1:36:15
  We're about four hours from my reservation.
• 1:36:17
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:36:18
  Jeff Tomhave: An hour west of Fargo.
• 1:36:20
  Rupert Isaacson: So you yourself are deciding to go back to Native America?
• 1:36:27
  Jeff Tomhave: Yes.
• 1:36:28
  Rupert Isaacson: Why?
• 1:36:28
  And what are you gonna do there?
• 1:36:31
  Jeff Tomhave: Well, as you mentioned, we bought this old school and
• 1:36:34
  we're gonna turn it into our house.
• 1:36:35
  But also it's gonna be, you know, where our businesses are located.
• 1:36:40
  So Tom Hay Group will be there, and Brandy is executive director
• 1:36:45
  of Native American Humane Society.
• 1:36:46
  That will be centered there.
• 1:36:48
  This new cancer treatment network that I'm creating that will be centered there.
• 1:36:53
  So not only it's gonna be our residents and the center of our businesses, but
• 1:36:58
  because it is an old school, we intend on keeping one of the classrooms as an
• 1:37:03
  old classroom, I mean as a classroom, so that we can invite, different tribal
• 1:37:09
  governments, different tribal entities and organizations there so that we
• 1:37:13
  can conduct trainings, they can have their own trainings and meetings there.
• 1:37:18
  Since we will be, you know, in North Dakota, you know, we are, we are just
• 1:37:25
  a couple of days drive from about half the reservations in the country.
• 1:37:31
  And so that is really important to us.
• 1:37:34
  Plus you know, when we made this purchase and I told my cousin who runs the hospital
• 1:37:40
  on, on my reservation, said, Hey, I'm gonna be four hours away from you.
• 1:37:44
  She said, great.
• 1:37:45
  She said, because, you know, other than her immediate family, you
• 1:37:48
  know, all of her extended family have left and she is so great.
• 1:37:52
  So you can come back for, you know, all of the birthdays and holidays, but especially
• 1:37:56
  the, the tribal ceremonies, which, because I've never lived there, I've
• 1:38:01
  never been able to participate in 'em.
• 1:38:02
  I've always lived, you know, a few times zones away.
• 1:38:05
  So it's never anything that was ever in, you know, my, my thinking.
• 1:38:10
  But now that she's thinking yeah, you can come for the tribal ceremonies, you know,
• 1:38:15
  to these you know, sacred ceremonies, which I've never been a part of.
• 1:38:19
  You know, that's really that's really something that I'm looking forward to.
• 1:38:23
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:38:24
  Especially since, you know, I'm getting older and, you know,
• 1:38:29
  Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
• 1:38:29
  Jeff Tomhave: We're, you know, none of us are gonna last forever, so I, I actually
• 1:38:32
  want to be able to, pass this stuff on to our son so that he knows it, you
• 1:38:37
  know, well before he's in his sixties.
• 1:38:40
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:38:42
  No, I mean, like I said, you know, further back in this conversation, I myself just
• 1:38:46
  personally owe several debts of gratitude.
• 1:38:50
  I talk, I, you know, to Native American ceremony.
• 1:38:53
  I told you about the one with my son.
• 1:38:56
  Previous to that also on Navajo Nation.
• 1:38:58
  I attended a, a sweat that was for the Bushman because I brought the
• 1:39:04
  Sun Bushman to the Navajo Nation as part of our attempts to help
• 1:39:09
  them get their legal title to their ancestral land back in, in Botswana.
• 1:39:14
  And it was indeed successful.
• 1:39:17
  The medicine man at that healing said to me, do you hunt?
• 1:39:24
  And I said, I do, but it might not be a, a type of hunting you
• 1:39:28
  are familiar with because I'm Fox hunting, British fox hunting.
• 1:39:31
  And he said, that's not important.
• 1:39:32
  I'm just getting it loud and clear from the spirit world that you
• 1:39:36
  have to give it up and it's somehow connected to your son's autism.
• 1:39:40
  I didn't even question it.
• 1:39:41
  I, I gave it up right there and then and then.
• 1:39:49
  A lot of really positive things in my life happened, like from that point when, and
• 1:39:54
  then when we were got into Washington, DC and we went into the State Department.
• 1:40:00
  Finally, we testified before Congress, congressional Human
• 1:40:03
  Rights Caucus and all this stuff.
• 1:40:05
  But it was when we walked into the State Department, we walked into the office of
• 1:40:13
  a man who had been, was gonna give us an interview, and he happened to be Apache.
• 1:40:21
  And he just looked at the guys that I was coming with.
• 1:40:23
  He said, he said, I know exactly what you're dealing with.
• 1:40:25
  I grew up on the reservation there.
• 1:40:27
  And he just picked up the phone and he called the Botswana land Minister
• 1:40:30
  in front of us and said, you guys are supposed to be our trade partners.
• 1:40:33
  I've got, you know, five guys sitting here from the counter house, said
• 1:40:36
  they've been tortured and da da da and illegally evicted, da da da.
• 1:40:39
  What's going on?
• 1:40:41
  And this had a massive se, seismic effect.
• 1:40:45
  The woman who set up that meeting was called Rebecca Adamson, who's Lumbee
• 1:40:50
  Indian from and ran First Nations Development Institute, which was basically
• 1:40:56
  the force in America that supported our work in Africa, again, native America.
• 1:41:05
  And then quite recently as recently as 2021, I was going through a personal,
• 1:41:10
  real personal crisis and, I ended up with a Lakota medicine man who put me
• 1:41:19
  through a ceremony that absolutely, absolutely dealt with the issue.
• 1:41:28
  And I walked into that ceremony with the issue and I walked out of
• 1:41:32
  that ceremony without the issue.
• 1:41:35
  So, and I, I wonder how many people have a story like that.
• 1:41:41
  I think more people, I happen to have a few of them, but I, I feel that Native
• 1:41:45
  America has been subsidizing, if you like, white America for a very long time,
• 1:41:52
  partly by simply virtue of geography.
• 1:41:55
  It's your place with, to some degree guests, but equally by still
• 1:42:02
  creating this sacred heartland.
• 1:42:05
  And you know, that feeling, you, you, you've spent time on Navajo, you know
• 1:42:09
  that when, particularly when you're down in the Southwest and you're on Navajo
• 1:42:13
  Nation, Hopi Nation and those places, and some of the surrounding ones, you
• 1:42:18
  absolutely feel that you are touching the living heart of the continent.
• 1:42:24
  And I don't, I know even very sort of conservative, skeptical people,
• 1:42:27
  white people would say the same thing.
• 1:42:28
  There's something about Monument Valley, there's something about those landscapes.
• 1:42:33
  There's something about Bryce Canyon or whatever.
• 1:42:37
  You are now going back in there.
• 1:42:39
  You have this dream, this quiet
• 1:42:46
  Luther King type dream, although I wish you a much better outcome personally.
• 1:42:52
  Do you, what do you see coming out of this place, this education and cultural
• 1:42:58
  and service center that you are going to start, as you say, at the heart of
• 1:43:04
  within two days drive of every Indian reservation, pretty much in the country
• 1:43:12
  dream irrationally.
• 1:43:14
  Please
• 1:43:16
  don't let rationality hamper you.
• 1:43:20
  Let's say 30 years after you die.
• 1:43:24
  What would you like to 50 years after you die, what would you like
• 1:43:28
  to see coming out of that place?
• 1:43:31
  What change landscape would you like to see?
• 1:43:34
  What's the legacy?
• 1:43:37
  Jeff Tomhave: Well, I'm glad you asked that because this is something that brand
• 1:43:40
  and I have been talking about and one of the things that I wanna do as Tom Hay
• 1:43:44
  Group, because as we, you know, mentioned before, you know, we do our advocacy
• 1:43:49
  in Washington DC and, you know, we've been, you know, basically guns for hire.
• 1:43:54
  You know, people have an issue, they hire us and, and we take care of it for them.
• 1:43:59
  I actually.
• 1:44:01
  Using the guns Slinger analogy.
• 1:44:03
  I don't wanna be the guns slinger, I wanna teach them how
• 1:44:05
  to, how to shoot on their own.
• 1:44:07
  Right.
• 1:44:07
  I want, I wanna teach them how to advocate.
• 1:44:10
  And ever since COVID being in DC doesn't matter because all meetings
• 1:44:18
  are, you know, virtual nowadays anyway.
• 1:44:21
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:44:21
  Jeff Tomhave: You almost never go in and have an in-person meeting anywhere in DC
• 1:44:26
  And even if you do, it's a hybrid meeting, you know, some people are there, the
• 1:44:32
  major principles probably are elsewhere.
• 1:44:35
  So being in DC doesn't matter anymore.
• 1:44:38
  And so I think us moving to North Dakota is, you know, we're gonna,
• 1:44:44
  we're gonna jump on that opportunity.
• 1:44:46
  You don't have to be in DC to do this work anymore.
• 1:44:48
  Right.
• 1:44:49
  And, and if we can teach younger people how to do this, younger
• 1:44:55
  people than me, obviously, who aren't jaded, is that what the
• 1:45:01
  Rupert Isaacson: jd, after your name stands for?
• 1:45:04
  Jeff Tomhave: We still believe that things can, can work well.
• 1:45:06
  You know, you have to have that optimism, you have to have that energy
• 1:45:10
  in order to, to realize those things.
• 1:45:13
  So what I'm hoping to do is, is train, you know, a couple of dozen of people.
• 1:45:19
  So they go back to their own home communities.
• 1:45:23
  And so that 50 years from now, they're the ones who are doing this for themselves.
• 1:45:28
  They're not hiring.
• 1:45:30
  Any of the big fancy, you know, white shoe law firms here in, in
• 1:45:35
  Washington, DC to do the work for them.
• 1:45:38
  And believe me, most tribes do, including the Navajo Nation.
• 1:45:44
  They hire the big DC law firms to do this stuff.
• 1:45:48
  And I've been in meetings with those people.
• 1:45:52
  They don't know anything that you've testified in front of Congress.
• 1:45:57
  They don't know anything that you don't know how to do.
• 1:46:00
  It's like, it's, it's, this is not rocket science.
• 1:46:03
  It's not, there's not an alchemy here.
• 1:46:06
  It's telling a good compelling story to a receptive audience.
• 1:46:11
  And if they're not receptive now, make them receptive in the future.
• 1:46:16
  That's a skillset that anyone has.
• 1:46:19
  But there's, there's, you know, there's some particulars, you know, how to
• 1:46:22
  do the dance steps, you know, so I'm wanna teach them the dance steps.
• 1:46:26
  But basically, once they know the dance steps, they can, they
• 1:46:29
  can do this however they want to.
• 1:46:32
  And it's, it will be more effective if the advocacy comes from the
• 1:46:37
  actual communities themselves.
• 1:46:39
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 1:46:40
  Jeff Tomhave: Because they're the ones who are gonna be impacted
• 1:46:43
  by whatever the outcome is.
• 1:46:45
  And they're the ones who have the more compelling story.
• 1:46:49
  And so, like I said, 50 years from now, I want them to have trained people so
• 1:46:54
  that they're all doing it for themselves.
• 1:46:56
  And maybe that that.
• 1:46:59
  That alliance of tribes that I'm hoping for, maybe that'll happen after I'm gone.
• 1:47:06
  Rupert Isaacson: I think it's a very, very logical first step.
• 1:47:08
  Are there other, Tom have groups out there doing similar stuff?
• 1:47:13
  Are you part of a growing network of people like you who are gonna start this
• 1:47:20
  up across Native America and bring that, you know, because it, it sounds like
• 1:47:26
  you, you are a, you guys would be a very important organ within a body of that,
• 1:47:33
  but you might need other organs as well.
• 1:47:35
  Do you, are there other people out there doing,
• 1:47:37
  Jeff Tomhave: I wish, I wish I could say there are tons of us, but in
• 1:47:42
  the almost 25 years that we've been doing this, we've never run across
• 1:47:46
  anybody who does exactly what we do.
• 1:47:49
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 1:47:49
  Jeff Tomhave: You know, and, and you know, to answer your, one
• 1:47:52
  of your first questions of, you know, why not just be a regular
• 1:47:55
  lawyer and make all kinds of money?
• 1:47:57
  And I think you couldn't find two jds, you know, me and Brandy who make
• 1:48:04
  less money because if you're gonna work in Indian country, you wanna do
• 1:48:11
  gaming or you want to do a resource extraction, that's where the money is.
• 1:48:15
  Yeah.
• 1:48:16
  And you know, that's, that is nothing that we want any part of.
• 1:48:20
  First of all, there are plenty of entities out there.
• 1:48:24
  Who are doing that already.
• 1:48:26
  We wouldn't, we wouldn't compete on that level, nor would we want to, we
• 1:48:33
  take the hard approach of working on problems that aren't very lucrative.
• 1:48:40
  You know, we've, we've actually had contracts where small communities have
• 1:48:44
  paid us just a few thousand dollars, and we've worked for them for years.
• 1:48:48
  And I mean, over those course of those years, they paid us a few thousand dollars
• 1:48:53
  just because no one else would do it.
• 1:48:56
  It's a, it's a relatively easy fix that they're asking for.
• 1:49:02
  It just takes time.
• 1:49:03
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:49:04
  Other people wouldn't do that on another, a big huge Washington DC
• 1:49:08
  law firm would not take a client on like that because they don't have the
• 1:49:14
  money to pay for all the time that it would take to do the, we need to do.
• 1:49:18
  But we've done it because no one else will.
• 1:49:20
  And, and so I'm hoping that it, as we train other people, you know,
• 1:49:27
  they can do it for themselves and, and they don't need to hire anybody.
• 1:49:31
  But as far as I know, there is nobody that does what we do.
• 1:49:36
  We know other consultants who are just, you know, single, sole proprietorships,
• 1:49:42
  but they're working on specific things.
• 1:49:44
  They don't do the advocacy like we do.
• 1:49:46
  So there might be a, a connection to, to work in different avenues.
• 1:49:50
  But nobody that we know of does what we do.
• 1:49:55
  Rupert Isaacson: So 50 years from now, we've got, if, if
• 1:49:59
  there's 500 and how many nations?
• 1:50:02
  Jeff Tomhave: 75?
• 1:50:03
  Rupert Isaacson: 575, then if you had 57.5,
• 1:50:09
  Tom have groups dotted about the place.
• 1:50:13
  Jeff Tomhave: Mm-hmm.
• 1:50:14
  Rupert Isaacson: You'd have a sporting chance of changing the social and
• 1:50:21
  political landscape to a lasting degree.
• 1:50:26
  I think you are actually enacting that dream.
• 1:50:30
  And it's interesting that the only other group I came across, which was
• 1:50:34
  First Nations Development Institute, who helped us so massively in Africa, run
• 1:50:39
  by Rebecca Adamson Lumbee Indian living on the East Coast was about the, one
• 1:50:45
  of the only other people I ever met who
• 1:50:48
  Jeff Tomhave: mm-hmm.
• 1:50:48
  Rupert Isaacson: Was doing something similar.
• 1:50:49
  And of course, of course I just had to be, you know, on your website
• 1:50:52
  while you were talking about all that, you know, and you kept saying
• 1:50:55
  jd, after the names I was, had to.
• 1:50:57
  Look up what that means because I'm British.
• 1:50:59
  And it's, as you, well, you know, it's Juris doctor, a graduate level
• 1:51:03
  professional degree for practicing law, similar to an MD for doctors
• 1:51:08
  signifying completion of law school, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:51:11
  But what is the difference between JD and a simple lawyer or attorney
• 1:51:18
  and why does it make a difference?
• 1:51:21
  Jeff Tomhave: Well, a JD is just what you get from law school,
• 1:51:24
  from graduating law school and you know, being a licensed attorney.
• 1:51:28
  You know, you pass the state bar, whatever jurisdictions bar you're practicing in.
• 1:51:32
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:51:33
  Jeff Tomhave: So that you can represent clients, you know, in
• 1:51:36
  that jurisdiction following that jurisdiction's, you know, procedures.
• 1:51:40
  So that's what it is.
• 1:51:41
  And so, you know, I never passed a bar.
• 1:51:44
  'Cause I told you I never wanted to practice.
• 1:51:46
  I just wanted to have the jd.
• 1:51:47
  Yeah.
• 1:51:48
  Rupert Isaacson: So if you had, again, those 57 jds, some of whom have 57.5
• 1:51:53
  actually some of whom have passed the bar, some of whom haven't, but all are working
• 1:51:57
  within jurisprudence to this degree.
• 1:52:00
  Yes.
• 1:52:01
  I think that you are actually fulfilling that, the progress towards that dream.
• 1:52:08
  And that's intriguing to me because in a politically very uncertain
• 1:52:12
  time whether you are sitting in Europe or whether you're sitting.
• 1:52:17
  Where you are sitting or whether you're sitting in other parts of the world.
• 1:52:20
  There's a feeling of instability at the moment that I think is, we haven't
• 1:52:23
  felt for 80 years maybe in the west.
• 1:52:28
  And
• 1:52:32
  there couldn't be a more optimal time for a dream like yours.
• 1:52:40
  That goes back to the heart, I think, of what it means to be American.
• 1:52:44
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:52:44
  I also wonder if
• 1:52:48
  something like Tom Hav group and the subgroups that come out of Tom Hav
• 1:52:53
  group, once you plant yourself back there in North Dakota, and I, I could
• 1:52:57
  see this having an international reach as well, where people might want to engage
• 1:53:05
  you and the groups that you inspire, similar to the way that the Kalahari
• 1:53:11
  Bushman engage first Nations Development Institute and also people practicing
• 1:53:17
  international law, wanting to come an intern, you know, and get a sense of that.
• 1:53:23
  You know, we, we benefited definitely from pro bono lawyers, many of whom were
• 1:53:28
  young lawyers in DC who wanted to come and do pro bono work for us in Africa.
• 1:53:33
  Get a real knowledge of how that whole thing worked.
• 1:53:37
  I could see that happening the other way as well.
• 1:53:39
  And people from other parts of the world wanting to come and work on
• 1:53:44
  these issues with you all to get an understanding to then bring home
• 1:53:49
  to their communities, even honestly within Europe we, we have these issues.
• 1:53:54
  I'm very intrigued to see how you and Brandy
• 1:53:58
  proceed.
• 1:54:00
  When are you guys officially landing there at that old school
• 1:54:04
  and hanging up the shield?
• 1:54:06
  Hanging up the
• 1:54:08
  Jeff Tomhave: sign?
• 1:54:09
  Well, as, as you can see, we're still in the process of moving out of here.
• 1:54:12
  So there's some stuff that we have to do to, to get this place, you know,
• 1:54:16
  Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
• 1:54:16
  Jeff Tomhave: On the market.
• 1:54:17
  But because it's it's winter here in, well, especially North Dakota right
• 1:54:22
  now is here in Baltimore, I think it was, it's in the thirties, but this
• 1:54:27
  morning when I went for a run and it was 25 degrees and I think that's what,
• 1:54:30
  like three or four CEL minus Celsius.
• 1:54:33
  Yeah, it's
• 1:54:33
  Rupert Isaacson: minus three or s
• 1:54:34
  Jeff Tomhave: so, so it's, it's still pretty cold.
• 1:54:36
  So we gotta wait till winter to be over in North Dakota before we can go in, because
• 1:54:40
  Rupert Isaacson: that's August, right?
• 1:54:43
  Jeff Tomhave: Well, April.
• 1:54:45
  April so probably mid-April is when we're finally gonna out.
• 1:54:48
  Be leaving here.
• 1:54:49
  So hopefully we'll have this place up on the market, you
• 1:54:51
  know, May 1st and we'll be there.
• 1:54:53
  And then we'll be, you know, rehabbing the school.
• 1:54:56
  And first we have to build our, our own, our own living space.
• 1:55:00
  'cause it is just a school.
• 1:55:03
  But once we do, we'll hope, hope you come by and have a
• 1:55:06
  Rupert Isaacson: I would love to.
• 1:55:08
  I would love to.
• 1:55:08
  And North Dakota's a state I've never been to, so I've never been
• 1:55:11
  to either of the Dakotas and I've, I've been intrigued by them forever.
• 1:55:14
  So I can see it on, on the horizon.
• 1:55:17
  And I wanna have you guys, both you and Brandy back on the show.
• 1:55:21
  Let's give it, you know, a year, 18 months and see where you guys are at, you know.
• 1:55:25
  I'll also be coming back to Montana in in September for the same event.
• 1:55:30
  So, you know, I dunno if you, and one thing I would love to do is
• 1:55:35
  get involved with what you are doing on the mental health, neuro,
• 1:55:40
  you know, neuropsychiatric side.
• 1:55:43
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:55:44
  And I know that there are also people out there within Native
• 1:55:47
  America doing that work very well, like Jessica White Plume and so on.
• 1:55:50
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:55:51
  And people like that, that I could learn a lot from.
• 1:55:53
  So, yeah, I think it's an ongoing conversation and I, I
• 1:55:56
  would love to work together.
• 1:55:58
  Yes, there's autism and there's all that stuff out there in
• 1:56:00
  Native America, you know?
• 1:56:02
  Jeff Tomhave: Yes.
• 1:56:02
  And I, and I believe Jessica is about four hours away from where, where we'll be.
• 1:56:06
  So yes.
• 1:56:07
  Perfect.
• 1:56:08
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay, so it's watch this space and Jeff,
• 1:56:12
  Tom have, has a dream lads.
• 1:56:14
  So let's let's dream it with him.
• 1:56:17
  Alright.
• 1:56:17
  Yeah.
• 1:56:18
  For a better world.
• 1:56:19
  Jeff.
• 1:56:19
  It's been amazing.
• 1:56:20
  Thanks so much for, for coming on.
• 1:56:22
  Well,
• 1:56:23
  Jeff Tomhave: thanks for having me.
• 1:56:24
  Rupert Isaacson: Just give us the, or I guess I can give it to you 'cause
• 1:56:27
  I'm on your website as I speak where I was and then I, I went to, so
• 1:56:32
  Tom hav group, T-O-M-H-A-V-E group.
• 1:56:39
  Dot
• 1:56:39
  Jeff Tomhave: com.
• 1:56:40
  Rupert Isaacson: Dot com, right.
• 1:56:41
  And the, the work is really broad.
• 1:56:47
  You know, I, I was, I was cruising around on your site.
• 1:56:51
  Looking at you, you, you've talked about some of the work that you've
• 1:56:54
  done, but you know, there's also roads, jails missing, an indigenous mi missing
• 1:57:00
  and murdered indigenous persons.
• 1:57:03
  How you do what you do, your cancer watch stuff.
• 1:57:06
  Your there, there, there's so much on here.
• 1:57:08
  I do really recommend listeners, viewers go on Tom have group.com
• 1:57:14
  and have a look at the work that they do.
• 1:57:17
  And if you are a young aspiring lawyer or other person who might like to.
• 1:57:24
  Get involved in some way and perhaps internal or something.
• 1:57:27
  I would suggest that you reach out to Jeff and Brandy through that website.
• 1:57:31
  Can they do that?
• 1:57:32
  Can people do that?
• 1:57:33
  Jeff Tomhave: Yes.
• 1:57:34
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:57:35
  Okay.
• 1:57:35
  Jeff Tomhave: Just look just email info@togroup.com
• 1:57:38
  and we'll get it
• 1:57:40
  Rupert Isaacson: info@tomhavegroup.com.
• 1:57:43
  Yep.
• 1:57:44
  Alright, brilliant.
• 1:57:46
  I look forward to the next meeting.
• 1:57:48
  Jeff Tomhave: All right, me too.
• 1:57:49
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:57:50
  Happy moving.
• 1:57:51
  Jeff Tomhave: Thanks.
• 1:57:52
  Rupert Isaacson: Bye bye.
• 1:57:53
  Bye.
• 1:57:53
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• 1:57:57
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• 1:58:01
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• 1:58:05
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• 1:58:10
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• 1:58:11
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• 1:59:02
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• 1:59:06
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