Colloquium for Racial Justice, March 10, 2021

Institute for Ethnic Studies Author

04/06/2021 Added

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Colloquium for Racial Justice, March 10, 2021.

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[00:00:01.379]Welcome everyone, it is so great to see you.
[00:00:04.560]We've had a few technical problems getting Lori Dance
[00:00:08.070]on that is not Timothy Mohawk there in your screen.
[00:00:12.759]It is Lori dance and we're thrilled
[00:00:14.301]that everything worked because she is our moderator today.
[00:00:17.180]Okay, welcome,
[00:00:19.840]we're so glad that you've joined us
[00:00:21.770]for our colloquium on racial justice,
[00:00:24.100]what is indigenous sovereignty and why does it matter now?
[00:00:28.330]The opening event of our three-day spring celebration.
[00:00:32.100]I'm your host, Joy Castro,
[00:00:34.100]and I direct the Institute for Ethnic Studies
[00:00:36.701]at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln,
[00:00:39.700]Nebraska's flagship research one institution.
[00:00:43.410]Here to give our land acknowledgement
[00:00:45.830]is Dr Colette Yellow Robe.
[00:00:49.530]Hello everyone,
[00:00:53.277](Colette speaking in Cheyenne)
[00:00:54.877]My name is ceremonial woman in Cheyenne,
[00:00:57.370]I respond to that, so please feel free,
[00:01:00.130]if you can learn how to say it,
[00:01:01.320]I would love to hear it more often, believe me.
[00:01:05.100]So I have the pleasure of giving our land acknowledgement
[00:01:07.860]and my dear friend and colleague Dr. Margaret Huettl,
[00:01:11.450]composed it for us,
[00:01:12.860]and I asked her for permission the other night
[00:01:16.163]if I could read her, because this is special,
[00:01:17.920]and everyone else who contributed as well.
[00:01:20.450]So the University of Nebraska is a land grant institution
[00:01:24.440]with campuses and programs
[00:01:26.120]on the past, present,
[00:01:27.570]and future homelands of the Pawnee,
[00:01:30.430]the Oconee, Ponca,
[00:01:33.160]Ho-Chunk or Winnebago, where I grew up,
[00:01:36.140]the Iowa, the Arapaho, the Kaw or Kansa,
[00:01:40.720]the Sioux and Tsitsistas,
[00:01:42.590]that's my people, the Cheyenne,
[00:01:44.403]the Omahan or Omaha people,
[00:01:47.359]and the Lakota and Dakota Nations,
[00:01:54.220]and we also want to recognize the Sauk and Fox
[00:01:58.083]of Missouri, and Kansas,
[00:02:00.300]and Nebraska as well.
[00:02:01.530]Thank you everyone for coming, and
[00:02:03.384](Colette speaking in Cheyenne)
[00:02:05.123]Dr Joy for letting me do that.
[00:02:06.980]Thank you so much, Dr. Yellow Robe.
[00:02:10.660]The Institute for Ethnic Studies founded in 1972,
[00:02:15.000]is an academic interdisciplinary unit
[00:02:17.380]comprising 22 faculty members
[00:02:20.270]from six disciplines whose work occupies the nexus
[00:02:23.870]where traditional academic fields, such as history,
[00:02:27.190]and psychology intersect with issues of race,
[00:02:30.570]ethnicity, and social justice.
[00:02:33.390]With programs in African and African-American studies,
[00:02:36.980]Latinx and Latin American studies,
[00:02:39.830]and native American studies,
[00:02:42.020]we offer two majors, seven miners,
[00:02:45.210]including a brand new minor
[00:02:47.999]called racial justice, equity, and inclusion,
[00:02:49.850]and graduate specializations
[00:02:51.610]at the MA and PhD levels,
[00:02:53.920]as well as co-curricular programming.
[00:02:56.880]We're proud and grateful to be our 49th year
[00:03:01.050]at the University of Nebraska.
[00:03:04.240]Our moderator today will be Dr Lori Dance,
[00:03:07.430]the associate director of the Institute,
[00:03:09.600]who's cross cultural and transnational research
[00:03:12.780]and activism include issues of indigeneity,
[00:03:16.390]education and displacement.
[00:03:18.880]She's joint appointed within the African
[00:03:22.559]and African-American studies program
[00:03:23.590]and the department of sociology.
[00:03:26.570]Our first speaker will be Dr. Margaret Huettl,
[00:03:31.460]who is joint appointed within Native American studies
[00:03:32.293]and the department of history.
[00:03:34.540]Her book, "Our Land and Our People:
[00:03:37.340]Ojibwe People Hood in the North American West 1854-1954",
[00:03:43.270]is forthcoming from Michigan State University press.
[00:03:47.530]Our second speaker will be Jessica Shoemaker,
[00:03:51.460]professor of law at the Nebraska College of Law,
[00:03:53.600]Who's recent law review articles include,
[00:03:56.162]transforming property,
[00:03:59.721]reclaiming modern indigenous land tenders
[00:04:01.600]in the "California Law Review",
[00:04:04.290]Our third speaker will be Dr Collette Yellow Robe
[00:04:08.060]who welcomed us so warmly.
[00:04:10.297]Dr Yellow Robe is an academic retention specialist
[00:04:13.260]at UNL whose research focuses on Native American education,
[00:04:18.010]social justice, and indigenous futurism.
[00:04:21.950]Our fourth and final speaker,
[00:04:24.130]Lakota critic, Dr Tom Gannon is joint appointed
[00:04:27.790]within Native American studies
[00:04:30.921]and the department of English.
[00:04:31.754]His scholarly work includes
[00:04:33.410]the monograph "Skylark Meets Meadowlark:
[00:04:36.140]Reimagining the Bird in British Romantic
[00:04:39.270]and Contemporary Native American Literature"
[00:04:41.820]from the University of Nebraska press,
[00:04:44.170]and his new memoir life look,
[00:04:46.795]"Confessions of a Cross Blood Birder:,
[00:04:49.780]is forthcoming from the Ohio State University press.
[00:04:53.530]Each panelist will speak
[00:04:54.930]for approximately five minutes
[00:04:57.120]after which Dr. Dance will facilitate
[00:04:59.530]a conversation and eventually open up the discussion
[00:05:02.960]for audience questions,
[00:05:04.400]so please be sure to write your questions in the Q&A.
[00:05:08.740]Dr. Huettl?
[00:05:11.778]Yes, I was going to start today
[00:05:16.040]with some working definitions of sovereignty,
[00:05:20.310]but instead I'm going to start with a picture.
[00:05:27.380]This is sovereignty, these are also sovereignty,
[00:05:37.400]and so is this, let me explain.
[00:05:42.400]So sovereignty is difficult to define,
[00:05:45.480]or maybe it's that there are too many definitions
[00:05:49.060]of sovereignty to pick from.
[00:05:50.540]It is kind of a slippery term, but it's one
[00:05:54.400]with real political, economic,
[00:05:56.960]and everyday consequences.
[00:05:59.700]Sovereignty is the animating force
[00:06:02.820]behind a nation or a people.
[00:06:06.900]When historians talk about sovereignty,
[00:06:09.450]we tend to use words like autonomy,
[00:06:12.400]self governance, and authority.
[00:06:16.540]And I have some definitions by indigenous scholars
[00:06:21.880]that I have found useful in grounding
[00:06:24.160]my understanding of sovereignty.
[00:06:26.740]So Chickasaw scholar, Amanda Cobb defines sovereignty
[00:06:31.641]as essentially "A nation's power to self-govern,
[00:06:34.430]to determine its own way of life,
[00:06:36.470]and to live that life,
[00:06:38.280]to whatever extent possible - free from interference."
[00:06:44.065]And another definition that I like to use
[00:06:47.241]because it offers, I think,
[00:06:49.450]a useful and tangible understanding of sovereignty
[00:06:52.990]is Dine scholar, Jennifer Nez Denetdale's definition,
[00:06:56.720]which is that sovereignty is the inherent right
[00:07:04.559]recognized right to "self government,
[00:07:07.780]territorial integrity, or land,
[00:07:09.961]and cultural autonomy."
[00:07:11.700]So I think that from these definitions
[00:07:15.254]it's obvious why sovereignty matters.
[00:07:17.480]It touches every aspect of life
[00:07:20.130]from citizenship to self-expression,
[00:07:23.050]from land to law, from the environment to education.
[00:07:27.753]Legally speaking, indigenous peoples
[00:07:31.150]within the United States are sovereign nations.
[00:07:34.780]United States recognizes that sovereignty,
[00:07:39.273]it's embedded in the US legal system,
[00:07:41.020]it's in the constitution.
[00:07:43.020]You see it in nation to nation treaties,
[00:07:46.875]you see it in court cases, and in legislation.
[00:07:50.100]But that's a legal system that serving colonial interests
[00:07:55.834]and it's full of contradictions.
[00:07:57.270]The United States is also constantly eroding,
[00:08:00.870]limiting, and trying to deny indigenous sovereignty.
[00:08:04.410]And if others don't touch on that,
[00:08:06.350]I'm happy to expand on that in the Q&A,
[00:08:12.070]but what I want to focus on today
[00:08:14.570]is an idea of indigenous sovereignty that exists
[00:08:18.780]beyond Western legalized definitions of the concept,
[00:08:23.380]definitions that tend to be rooted
[00:08:25.960]in exclusive control of territory
[00:08:29.000]and focused on centralized assertions of state power.
[00:08:33.540]So I'm a historian, I'm an Anishinaabe historian,
[00:08:37.380]who is living far away from my homeland,
[00:08:40.030]and I don't claim to speak with any authority
[00:08:43.270]or authenticity beyond my own perspective.
[00:08:47.210]But by looking to Anishinaabe history
[00:08:49.740]and looking at contemporary voices from Anishinaabe people,
[00:08:53.470]I've learned to understand sovereignty as both autonomy
[00:08:57.520]and interconnectivity, or to put it another way,
[00:09:02.755]from an Anishinaabe perspective,
[00:09:05.440]sovereignty exists in relationships.
[00:09:09.320]It's the relationships and responsibilities that make
[00:09:12.910]up being a people with a capital P.
[00:09:15.941]Relationships with land, language,
[00:09:20.800]sacred history, ceremony, and can both human
[00:09:24.720]and other than human.
[00:09:26.380]Anishinaabe, like many of the names Native Americans use
[00:09:31.590]to identify ourselves means quite simply "The People".
[00:09:37.425]So I always go back to an explanation that was given
[00:09:42.558]by Turtle Mountain Ojibwe legal scholar,
[00:09:43.920]Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark,
[00:09:46.290]when she was asked for a definition of sovereignty
[00:09:49.410]or a word for sovereignty in Anishinaabe land
[00:09:52.770]or the Anishinaabe language, she said,
[00:09:56.150]quite simply, it's Anishinaabe.
[00:09:59.073]Anishinaabewi or being Anishinaabe,
[00:10:05.380]being "The People" is to inherently be sovereign.
[00:10:11.720]Another Anishinaabe scholar,
[00:10:13.610]Leanne Betasamosake Simpson,
[00:10:15.880]received a similar answer from an elder
[00:10:18.460]when she asked him to translate sovereignty
[00:10:21.340]and his translation was what you see here,
[00:10:24.230]kina Gchi-Anishinaabe-ogaming,
[00:10:27.810]which means "The Place Where We, Anishinaabe,
[00:10:32.500]All Live and Work Together."
[00:10:34.570]So sovereignty then is a series
[00:10:37.640]of outward looking responsibilities.
[00:10:40.835]It's political, cultural,
[00:10:43.630]and economic ecology, hence,
[00:10:46.210]why I like this plant imagery to identify,
[00:10:50.810]to embody sovereignty, rather than state authority.
[00:10:57.240]In my own research, I look at Anishinaabe treaty rights,
[00:11:01.130]labor, and relationships with land
[00:11:04.660]in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
[00:11:07.670]and understanding sovereignty as all about relationships,
[00:11:12.740]lets me see how Anishinaabe sovereignty has continued
[00:11:16.010]unbroken in this period that's better known for loss
[00:11:21.200]and destruction.
[00:11:24.018]Courts can deny sovereignty,
[00:11:26.676]and they do deny sovereignty, maps can erase sovereignty,
[00:11:30.719]but when Anishinaabe people dance or drum
[00:11:32.810]on the edges of ancestor waters,
[00:11:35.870]when they fed wild rice to children and elders,
[00:11:38.959]when they went out each spring
[00:11:41.210]and set their traps for muskrats in the same marsh
[00:11:44.100]where they'd been setting traps for muskrats
[00:11:47.991]for generations, the relationships
[00:11:49.340]that they interacted with the land
[00:11:51.690]and its resources connected them
[00:11:54.690]within a network of Anishinaabewi,
[00:11:57.997]of being Anishinaabe that continues
[00:12:00.730]to be kina Gchi-Anishinaabe-ogaming,
[00:12:03.717]"The Place Where Anishinaabe All Live and Work Together".
[00:12:08.280]So there are all of these stories that illuminate,
[00:12:11.680]that help us understand the enduring reality
[00:12:16.010]of these relationships that create a body of law
[00:12:21.150]and sovereignty that has continued to flourish
[00:12:25.010]in the cracks of settler colonial systems.
[00:12:28.476]Dr. Huettl, we're at seven minutes.
[00:12:31.276]Oh, wow. Sorry.
[00:12:32.690]That was my end,
[00:12:33.523]so I am good, thank you.
[00:12:36.700]Sorry to cut you,
[00:12:37.730]I feel bad. No, that's fine.
[00:12:41.064]Thank you Dr. Huettl.
[00:12:45.720]Powerful, I hope you all took notes.
[00:12:49.138]So next we're going to hear from Jessica.
[00:12:51.150]Yeah, thank you so much, Dr. Huettl,
[00:12:53.713]that was incredible,
[00:12:54.780]and it's hard to go after that for sure.
[00:12:56.750]But now I know I'm going to listen to my five minutes,
[00:12:58.870]so hopefully the clock starts now.
[00:13:01.180]So I'm Jess Shoemaker,
[00:13:02.150]I'm so grateful to be here,
[00:13:04.495]and I just want to express my appreciation
[00:13:06.633]to ethnic studies and to Dr. Castro
[00:13:08.370]and others for including me here.
[00:13:10.030]I think that this is a really big
[00:13:12.120]and incredibly important conversation
[00:13:14.090]about what indigenous sovereignty is,
[00:13:16.190]and what it means, and why it matters?
[00:13:18.400]And I also think it's really important
[00:13:20.936]for me to position myself
[00:13:23.077]in this conversation as a person who is not indigenous,
[00:13:25.450]who can't speak to indigenous sovereignty
[00:13:27.370]from a lived experience or from a personal experience,
[00:13:30.130]and also I'm a legal scholar, right?
[00:13:32.420]So I'm going to speak from the legal frame,
[00:13:34.860]about legal definitions of indigenous sovereignty.
[00:13:39.290]So I will start where Dr. Huettl also touched on,
[00:13:42.040]which is that one of the things that sets
[00:13:43.950]the United States apart from other settler colonial,
[00:13:47.070]particularly Anglo colonial systems,
[00:13:50.260]is that the United States
[00:13:52.199]has recognized in its jurisprudence,
[00:13:54.802]in its American legal system,
[00:13:55.700]clear resounding endorsement and acknowledgement of the fact
[00:13:59.410]that indigenous sovereignty exists.
[00:14:01.970]So the famous case is Worcester v. Georgia from 1832
[00:14:06.640]in which Chief Justice Marshall says
[00:14:09.120]in just as clear of terms as could possibly said,
[00:14:13.602]that indigenous nations are nations,
[00:14:15.770]are distinct political communities
[00:14:18.310]with inherent rights to territory,
[00:14:20.730]self-determination, self-governance.
[00:14:23.230]That words like treaty, that words like nation
[00:14:26.500]were words that we as Americans chose
[00:14:28.820]and they had specific meetings and they meant the same thing
[00:14:31.500]for indigenous nations as they mean for other nations
[00:14:34.350]of the earth, to use Justice Marshall's language.
[00:14:38.200]So I think
[00:14:39.680]that that's a really important place to start, right?
[00:14:41.160]Indigenous sovereignty exists in American law
[00:14:44.030]and is recognized in American law.
[00:14:45.830]And really importantly, it's not a delegated
[00:14:49.863]or in any way sort of derived from American authority,
[00:14:54.790]but instead is inherent to indigenous people
[00:14:57.330]and indigenous territory, it's pre constitutional.
[00:15:00.960]Now that's, that's a good place to start, right?
[00:15:03.610]That's a solid endorsement of indigenous sovereignty
[00:15:06.642]as this powerful force in American jurisprudence.
[00:15:09.240]But, you know, as Dr. Huettl also said,
[00:15:11.810]there's is full of contradictions in practice,
[00:15:14.890]and so I want to kind of be careful
[00:15:16.560]about the extent to which we applaud or endorse that notion
[00:15:21.550]of American recognition of indigenous sovereignty.
[00:15:24.800]And so Dr. Huettl talked about relationships
[00:15:27.970]from sort of an indigenous sense of sovereignty.
[00:15:30.250]You know, another frame that kind of makes sense
[00:15:31.980]in American jurisprudence to think
[00:15:33.500]about indigenous sovereignty is to think
[00:15:35.160]of it more in a frame of a relationship
[00:15:37.790]in a pluralistic, multi-jurisdictional,
[00:15:41.110]jurisprudence, in which there are multiple sources
[00:15:43.780]of sovereignty in this country,
[00:15:46.103]and sovereignty is expressed
[00:15:47.942]through these relationships in which
[00:15:49.442]we recognize the rights
[00:15:50.597]and the political autonomy of of each other.
[00:15:53.860]And this kind of relationship
[00:15:55.800]is being negotiated and renegotiated
[00:15:59.868]on an ongoing basis and is full of contradictions.
[00:16:02.946]So my research and my scholarship has really focused
[00:16:06.620]on indigenous property systems on land tenure,
[00:16:10.270]property law and land governance,
[00:16:12.310]particularly within reserved territories
[00:16:14.990]within the United States,
[00:16:16.720]and so I just thought I would highlight three kind
[00:16:18.620]of brief examples of this kind of contradiction
[00:16:20.730]or this tension of kind of law on the books,
[00:16:23.290]which just exists on a shelf until we enact it.
[00:16:27.100]And then the kind of practical lived experiences
[00:16:28.910]and the power of that kind of practical de facto,
[00:16:31.450]expansive, expressed indigenous sovereignty.
[00:16:35.250]So one comes from Worcester itself,
[00:16:37.230]so Worcester is this 1832 cases
[00:16:39.300]that so resoundingly endorses indigenous sovereignty
[00:16:42.703]and has this big win for tribal sovereignty.
[00:16:44.510]I think it's important to acknowledge
[00:16:45.720]that even in that very case in which Chief Justice Marshall
[00:16:48.770]says political communities are distinct
[00:16:51.940]and independence and have natural rights to possession
[00:16:55.343]of territory since time immemorial,
[00:16:56.620]also completely endorses the idea of American jurisprudence
[00:17:00.910]that the doctrine of discovery is a valid route
[00:17:03.270]of all real property titles in the United States.
[00:17:06.120]And of course the doctrine
[00:17:07.290]of discovery is this racist notion of European,
[00:17:10.110]what Justice Marshall calls,
[00:17:11.270]the feeble settlements on the sea coast,
[00:17:13.840]how could that be extravagantly absurd idea
[00:17:16.340]of giving European claims through territory actually exists,
[00:17:19.670]but then moves on
[00:17:20.503]to what he calls the actual state of things, right?
[00:17:22.730]And we see this kind of tension between law as words
[00:17:25.810]and then the sort of practice on the ground
[00:17:27.700]and the relationship between the two.
[00:17:29.810]Now my work is actually on modern
[00:17:33.158]kind of reservation land tenure systems
[00:17:35.237]and the modern trust land system,
[00:17:36.901]modern tribal governance systems.
[00:17:38.223]And this is another example of this kind of contradiction
[00:17:40.564]or kind of speaking from two sides of the mouth.
[00:17:42.210]So on the one hand, just recently,
[00:17:44.600]the Department of the Interior endorsed new regulations
[00:17:48.070]to try to promote tribal self determination
[00:17:50.370]and self governments with respect to tribal lands.
[00:17:53.160]And in those regulations, said as clearly as they could,
[00:17:56.290]that tribal sovereignty is essential
[00:17:58.060]to tribal economies, tribal cultures,
[00:18:00.770]tribal identities, the language is that it is,
[00:18:03.823]the key lever without which American Indian communities
[00:18:07.140]and perhaps even identities
[00:18:08.820]would be untenable over the longterm.
[00:18:11.130]And then at the same time,
[00:18:12.620]so tribal governance of land tenure
[00:18:14.830]was going to be acknowledged,
[00:18:17.284]but only if it was consistent with federal law.
[00:18:19.284]So in the sort of self-determination,
[00:18:21.226]it is self-determination if it's what the federal government
[00:18:22.750]says self-determination should look like.
[00:18:24.920]And then my last example actually comes
[00:18:26.750]from a year and a half ago, maybe almost two years ago now,
[00:18:30.350]I spent a year in Canada studying land tenure,
[00:18:32.482]and land governance, and reconciliation processes in Canada.
[00:18:36.930]And one of the things that I think is most interesting
[00:18:38.800]is that Canada in many ways
[00:18:40.180]is the flip of the United States.
[00:18:41.950]So in Canadian jurisprudence
[00:18:44.320]they have the strong sense of unified crown sovereignty.
[00:18:47.710]They don't recognize indigenous sovereignty,
[00:18:49.990]they've accepted the doctrine of discovery,
[00:18:52.080]but didn't adopt Worcester,
[00:18:53.530]to kind of put it in American Supreme Court language.
[00:18:56.543]So sovereignty remains unreconciled,
[00:18:59.470]but yet it is Canada that has opened modern treaty tables
[00:19:02.810]for active renegotiation with first nations
[00:19:05.520]and other indigenous groups
[00:19:07.090]over land governance, over territory,
[00:19:09.260]over land claims,
[00:19:10.270]and recognize this valid and persistent Aboriginal title
[00:19:14.090]in the way that United States jurisprudence has not.
[00:19:16.463]And so, again and again,
[00:19:18.324]we see this kind of pattern of,
[00:19:21.840]the point, I think,
[00:19:22.700]is that a law is really important,
[00:19:25.220]that it's important to endorse and appreciate the ways
[00:19:29.010]in which American law recognizes indigenous sovereignty,
[00:19:32.300]but to also think really critically,
[00:19:33.790]about the practice, and the implementation,
[00:19:36.120]and all of the ways that our actions
[00:19:38.260]are not living up to our ideals or to our words.
[00:19:41.020]I think here with, I really appreciated Dr. Huettl's
[00:19:44.760]other scholars works on sort of what other definitions
[00:19:47.706]of indigenous sovereignty might be,
[00:19:49.960]I would just add one more,
[00:19:51.160]so Kyle White, who's a indigenous philosopher
[00:19:54.070]at the University of Michigan,
[00:19:56.484]a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation,
[00:19:58.780]he talks about what's justice
[00:20:00.920]and this multi-jurisdictional relationship,
[00:20:04.196]and this negotiation
[00:20:05.386]between American and indigenous sovereignties,
[00:20:06.550]and he says that justice. You're at seven minutes now.
[00:20:09.670]Okay, very last thing,
[00:20:11.260]he says, "Justice requires
[00:20:12.741]that one society not rob another society
[00:20:17.170]of its capacities to experience the world as a place
[00:20:20.570]of collective life that its members feel responsible
[00:20:23.280]for maintaining into the future."
[00:20:25.460]And I think that's really powerful,
[00:20:26.830]and beautiful, and I hope that we can live up
[00:20:28.530]and create space for that in our country going forward.
[00:20:31.450]Thanks.
[00:20:32.940]Sorry to go over. It's okay.
[00:20:33.880]So thank you, Jessica, thank you so much.
[00:20:36.750]I feel so bad about cutting people,
[00:20:38.460]'cause everything's being said is so important,
[00:20:40.540]but now we turn to Dr. Yellow Robe,
[00:20:44.030]Colette you're on.
[00:20:45.650]Okay, let me know when hit that stopwatch,
[00:20:48.290]you know I played sports,
[00:20:52.040]so I don't appreciate the pressure.
[00:20:54.530]I'm kidding everyone, give me one second.
[00:20:56.500]Okay, I wanted to bring pictures.
[00:20:58.370]So let's start with the story, everyone.
[00:21:02.010]This is who I do it for,
[00:21:04.557]this is very simple for me, tribal sovereignty,
[00:21:07.280]a complicated invasive colonial, yes,
[00:21:10.710]my two previous colleagues did are very eloquent job
[00:21:14.270]of outlining the legal, the scholar,
[00:21:18.220]the history, but this is who it's really about for me.
[00:21:21.950]And I'm sorry, everyone,
[00:21:23.030]you've probably already seen my son's cat
[00:21:24.740]make an appearance already tonight,
[00:21:26.350]and so he'll do that from time to time.
[00:21:28.239]So this is my dear sister, our first cousin Linda,
[00:21:33.040]on the left, and then the middle is my mother,
[00:21:35.830]her name is Ameohtsehe'e,
[00:21:37.530]that means "Walking Woman" in Cheyenne.
[00:21:40.190]And on her, lets see,
[00:21:42.200]be her left will be my right,
[00:21:43.500]would be my first cousin or sister Leanora.
[00:21:47.220]They are language keepers, of course,
[00:21:49.980]fluent in the language,
[00:21:51.479]and my mother or Bernice, is her English name,
[00:21:53.660]she received her name, the English name at school,
[00:21:59.310]the Mennonite missionaries gave her an English name.
[00:22:04.600]So she was born by a creek,
[00:22:06.510]literally in a tent that would be in the old,
[00:22:08.570]they call it midwifery now,
[00:22:10.760]the old days when you were delivered
[00:22:12.759]by the sort of the healing woman
[00:22:16.010]or the delivery woman in the camp.
[00:22:20.430]She was subjected to discipline
[00:22:24.350]when she would speak Cheyenne at school
[00:22:27.140]in the Busby Day School at the time is that they call it,
[00:22:30.810]and she was also told she was not good enough as an Indian.
[00:22:38.530]She was sent away in her teen years
[00:22:41.580]to the State of Washington to live with wheat farmers,
[00:22:44.170]Mennonites, white people,
[00:22:46.900]to make it better.
[00:22:49.170]So she was subjected to direct boarding school efforts,
[00:22:52.700]assimilation efforts, and later our family name
[00:22:58.410]was changed from Yellow Rob to Bailey,
[00:23:00.330]because there were too many Yellows
[00:23:02.420]and they couldn't get the mail to my grandpa.
[00:23:06.937]I knew Tom would like that, I knew he would like that one.
[00:23:09.400]I share this with you because it is the very
[00:23:13.770]essence that she taught me of who I am as a Cheyenne woman
[00:23:17.660]that has kept me so fiercely devoted
[00:23:20.680]to advocating for tribal sovereignty.
[00:23:24.210]That's what it's all about
[00:23:25.940]is that we're affording the original peoples,
[00:23:29.020]and more importantly, the language keepers,
[00:23:34.600]the space and the ability to carry that on in our country.
[00:23:39.690]That's what it's all about for me.
[00:23:41.970]So I wanted to give homage
[00:23:43.510]to them because that's how I was taught,
[00:23:46.098]that's how I was raised to be.
[00:23:48.360]So let's talk a little bit more
[00:23:50.896]about sovereignty and education.
[00:23:52.030]I alluded to some issues
[00:23:53.850]and some major riffs in my family story.
[00:23:58.580]My grandfather was sent to Carlisle,
[00:24:01.190]yes, that Carlisle in Pennsylvania,
[00:24:03.810]and that's a long trip from Busby, Montana,
[00:24:06.190]if you think about it.
[00:24:07.750]We lost a family member up in Flandreau,
[00:24:11.839]she died up there, unfortunately,
[00:24:13.360]since suspicious circumstances.
[00:24:18.383]And my family went through a lot,
[00:24:21.055]but you know, we kept our ways and we kept our essence
[00:24:22.910]of who we are and we're fighters.
[00:24:25.460]I had to say this the other night, on Monday night,
[00:24:28.090]if you don't know Northern Cheyennes or Lakotas,
[00:24:31.270]you need to ask somebody, ask Custer,
[00:24:35.178]he knows what happens there,
[00:24:36.680]okay, and our Arapaho relatives.
[00:24:39.170]What I'm saying is we will defend what is right
[00:24:42.695]and what is morally just.
[00:24:45.940]This is a picture of the sacred medicine wheel,
[00:24:48.840]it's in Lovell, Wyoming.
[00:24:51.634]I was able to take a trip,
[00:24:52.467]I co-taught a class with my dear colleague, Dr. John Raible,
[00:24:56.530]and we did a tour of IEF, a Indian led all,
[00:25:01.320]and this is where I insisted we start the trip.
[00:25:04.054]We must start here, you have to understand
[00:25:08.270]why it's not just land to us.
[00:25:11.070]You got to understand it's not just
[00:25:12.550]about real estate or property.
[00:25:15.196]And I took a lot of risks as a person,
[00:25:20.070]technically I'm a staff,
[00:25:21.070]I have a hybrid position teaching and stuff,
[00:25:24.070]I don't have, well,
[00:25:26.497]not that I am not that I'm saying
[00:25:28.198]it's a lot of protection,
[00:25:29.196]but I don't have tenure protection.
[00:25:30.029]I don't have a lot of protections,
[00:25:32.250]but I had to do what was right.
[00:25:33.850]And that was accepted and it was honored,
[00:25:36.740]and it was a powerful experience for our class.
[00:25:40.370]Very diverse, amazing class that we took,
[00:25:42.830]I called them the delegation, I still do.
[00:25:47.270]And we learned so much about how fighting
[00:25:51.030]for the sovereignty of the rights in our ceremony
[00:25:54.970]is so intricate to Native American education.
[00:25:59.960]It's one in the same, it's not divorced out,
[00:26:03.210]it's not separated.
[00:26:04.430]It's all inclusive, it's truly what we would call holistic.
[00:26:10.471]I share that with you
[00:26:12.820]to show you modern issues in education.
[00:26:18.100]I am inclusive, indigenous wise,
[00:26:20.030]I'm open to it, but yes,
[00:26:22.210]I didn't hear anyone say it, but Native American
[00:26:23.723]is a legal term in this country, it is,
[00:26:26.758]and I am very distinct about saying I'm an enrolled citizen
[00:26:29.540]of the Northern Cheyenne Nation.
[00:26:31.798]I'm very distinct about my dual citizenship.
[00:26:35.070]However, in honor of someone who got me
[00:26:37.650]through my dissertation, we need to remember
[00:26:41.350]that stories or the passing down of narrative
[00:26:44.830]is so intricate to Native American education as well.
[00:26:48.330]And that's not just a North American thing,
[00:26:51.390]this is our relatives across the world as well.
[00:26:58.260]Modern examples of sovereignty,
[00:27:00.160]this was a garden that we did last summer
[00:27:02.390]here at the Indian Center in town.
[00:27:03.920]We did a traditional, I'm sure Margaret,
[00:27:06.476]Dr. Huettl recognizes the style,
[00:27:07.730]yes, our Northern relatives
[00:27:10.838]came down, they had heirloom seeds.
[00:27:12.716]It was a wonderful, wonderful project,
[00:27:14.896]got in or, you know,
[00:27:16.394]those try to walk in ally ship.
[00:27:18.497]This one would be another example
[00:27:19.330]of how gardening can be tied
[00:27:21.710]into other lesson plans in the community.
[00:27:24.230]It doesn't all have to happen,
[00:27:25.350]know I'm a very proud educator,
[00:27:27.836]but it doesn't all have to happen in that building.
[00:27:30.917]It's time to start to really deconstruct
[00:27:32.010]what we consider education, not just for our children
[00:27:35.190]but also our community as well.
[00:27:39.640]And this is a traditional garden
[00:27:43.054]from our relatives up North.
[00:27:48.060]Another recent example, taking this from my dear friends
[00:27:50.740]at IllumiNative, and please feel free to take pictures,
[00:27:54.716]I don't mind, I'm all about sharing,
[00:27:55.937]education we share, you know,
[00:27:56.770]we borrow from one another all the time.
[00:27:59.290]So the biggest problem, IllumiNative,
[00:28:03.920]of course, Dr. Echo Hawk and such have
[00:28:06.880]are still on the campaign to get mascots eradicated,
[00:28:10.860]it's a ratio.
[00:28:13.197]That's our number one issue that we're facing.
[00:28:15.794]Collette, you're at seven minutes.
[00:28:19.010]Yes, I know,
[00:28:20.250]I put a timer on and I was just going to pass it
[00:28:22.860]on to my dear friend and elder Tom.
[00:28:26.110]Shake it up, I'm counting on you.
[00:28:30.640]Elder. Okay, Tom.
[00:28:35.117]Tom, Dr. Gannon, you're on.
[00:28:39.480]Thank you, Dr Yellow Robes.
[00:28:49.777]I thought I'd talk about another aspect of sovereignty,
[00:28:51.830]literary sovereignty.
[00:28:52.920]This'll be the most bookish of the afternoon.
[00:28:57.673]Applying sovereignty to English studies,
[00:29:00.000]I thought I'd do that,
[00:29:01.230]and so we have this binary
[00:29:02.300]of Western imperialism versus tribal sovereignty.
[00:29:05.470]I'm just gonna throw out some terms
[00:29:06.930]for you and we can discuss them later.
[00:29:08.530]How about that?
[00:29:10.080]I don't want to go over my five minutes,
[00:29:12.354]I mean, my seven minutes.
[00:29:13.700]First of all, in the most general sense,
[00:29:16.980]language as rhetoric, Scott Richard Lyons
[00:29:20.010]comes up with this notion of rhetorical sovereignty
[00:29:22.430]versus of course so much rhetorical imperialism
[00:29:25.700]that's gone on in this country, in this world for centuries.
[00:29:30.957]Hilary Wyss looks at using a barsian distinction here.
[00:29:36.990]She looks at the "Readerly Indian"
[00:29:39.550]a lot of the Federalist period,
[00:29:40.860]early 1800s to the consumer of imperialist ideology,
[00:29:47.690]the missionaries, etcetera.
[00:29:49.710]Guess what?
[00:29:51.332]Over the other side, in terms of 70,
[00:29:52.914]we have the "Writerly Indian",
[00:29:53.747]you know what if the Indian actually wrote back,
[00:29:56.830]you know, against the empire as it were?
[00:29:59.720]And we get to a literary studies and Gerald Wizner's
[00:30:04.498]the big name there.
[00:30:09.090]Considering the discourse
[00:30:10.500]of manifest destiny as something special,
[00:30:12.390]how about, let's call it manifest manners?
[00:30:14.960]And so what's the opposite of that?
[00:30:16.630]Well, he coins this really obscure phrase survivance
[00:30:19.520]or survivance, if you will.
[00:30:21.378]I'll talk about what these terms mean in a minute.
[00:30:24.800]So over the years I've just been using kind of,
[00:30:27.000]I think they're fairly synonymous terms,
[00:30:29.290]pretty related, literary colonialism,
[00:30:31.597]for this stuff in the left-hand column.
[00:30:35.020]And over here, well,
[00:30:36.140]let's call it literary sovereignty,
[00:30:38.330]that's the title of my PowerPoint here. (coughs)
[00:30:45.510]Let's take these now in chronological order,
[00:30:47.810]back in 1994, Gerald Vizenor
[00:30:51.230]came up with this book called "Manifest Manners",
[00:30:54.100]and what is manifests manners?
[00:30:55.420]Well, it's the literature of dominance,
[00:30:57.460]honestly, this was about 99% of American discourse,
[00:31:01.900]of course, I mean think manifest destiny only in discourse.
[00:31:05.133]This is business term for Euro-American colonial discourse
[00:31:08.630]that includes a racist essentializing of indigenous peoples.
[00:31:11.510]And of course that's only part of it,
[00:31:14.757]it is the whole ideology of colonialism, imperialism.
[00:31:17.400]Here's a prime example, how about the word Indian itself?
[00:31:21.070]You know, guess what we all know now it's a Western
[00:31:23.830]essentialist reduction invention
[00:31:26.540]of hundreds of tribal cultures.
[00:31:29.370]And so visitor can off other people
[00:31:31.970]in Native American studies by saying,
[00:31:34.061]you know what the Indians an invention,
[00:31:37.000]I think we're all pretty clear
[00:31:37.833]that that's the case nowadays.
[00:31:39.980]Well, what's the opposite of that.
[00:31:42.470]How about survivance?
[00:31:46.260]Think this is a combination of survival plus resistance.
[00:31:52.540]Vizenor identifies this in a lot
[00:31:54.570]of contemporary Native American literature.
[00:31:57.690]Of course, this is Native American literature in writing,
[00:32:01.980]but it invokes the oral, the spoken word.
[00:32:05.031]Colette was talking about stories,
[00:32:09.017]you know, tribal memories,
[00:32:09.850]and so there are these kind of Derridean traces
[00:32:14.660]that works through the crack.
[00:32:20.180]So what is it?
[00:32:21.960]Six years later, here's Lyons
[00:32:25.378]notion of rhetorical sovereignty.
[00:32:26.211]You know, we ask,
[00:32:27.630]what do American Indians want from writing?
[00:32:29.250]well, there's rhetorical imperialism,
[00:32:31.250]but you don't want that.
[00:32:32.430]I mean, that's the same old, same old,
[00:32:33.850]that's the dominant power asserting control
[00:32:35.580]of others by setting the terms of debate in language.
[00:32:38.073]He gives a treaties, court decisions, etcetera
[00:32:41.210]as examples of this.
[00:32:42.313]I mean, American colonialism set the rules of the game.
[00:32:46.700]I mean, this is so true Native American literature
[00:32:49.260]right now, still.
[00:32:54.040]On the contrast, let's have rhetorical sovereignty.
[00:32:56.890]And again, this evokes the legal definitions,
[00:32:59.300]the inherent right to ability, etcetera.
[00:33:01.910]I liked the point he makes here though,
[00:33:04.290]it's resistance with simulation through the act of writing.
[00:33:08.720]And I think that's key.
[00:33:10.170]He has some more qualifications or important aspects
[00:33:14.850]that are over here.
[00:33:15.850]It should require ideally, and for him,
[00:33:18.930]rhetorical sovereignty isn't ideal,
[00:33:20.990]ultimately,
[00:33:23.913]it requires the presence of an Indian voice,
[00:33:25.013]speaking, writing, etcetera,
[00:33:26.280]ideal that voice would employ a native language,
[00:33:29.305]so that's important too.
[00:33:32.360]And note this, this really opens
[00:33:33.193]a whole nother can of worms,
[00:33:34.170]some native self representations are better than others.
[00:33:37.360]Whoever the author, ie,
[00:33:39.850]whoever the Native American author.
[00:33:48.120]Rhetorical imperialism occurs in natural science too.
[00:33:51.060]I spent most of my life opening up my bird guide
[00:33:53.410]to picture this duck in it and saying the name Oldsquaw.
[00:33:57.058]How about that for rhetorical imperialism?
[00:33:58.300]AKA racist ideology, working through the natural sciences,
[00:34:01.816]they finally changed the name
[00:34:03.210]to long-tailed Duck in the 90s. (coughs)
[00:34:09.096]Finally, Hilary Wyss is working on literacy
[00:34:12.140]in the early United States.
[00:34:14.793]And of course, first of all,
[00:34:16.590]we have the "Readerly Indian".
[00:34:18.350]This is the passive convert to Christianity consuming
[00:34:20.810]religious texts, docile,
[00:34:22.637]presumably they didn't possess
[00:34:27.930]the skillset to actually express themselves.
[00:34:31.500]Note, of course this figure
[00:34:33.870]is a completely Euro-colonial construct invention.
[00:34:38.480]But what if the native did right back?
[00:34:41.037]Then we have the "Writerly Indian",
[00:34:42.877]who is an agent, a speaker, and actor.
[00:34:46.050]Above all of course,
[00:34:47.180]there was this genuine astonishment on the part
[00:34:48.950]of white missionaries when natives actually
[00:34:51.460]started controlling their own representation,
[00:34:55.310]as they do now to a very great extent
[00:34:57.540]in Native American literature,
[00:35:00.440]or I should say it literatures.
[00:35:02.380]I noticed Wyss's ideas come straight from Lyons,
[00:35:05.830]she acknowledges.
[00:35:07.895]And so if the "Readerly Indian" is
[00:35:09.656]a construction of the missionary imagination,
[00:35:12.000]Writerly figure is all about this contested,
[00:35:15.580]as we've been talking about all day,
[00:35:16.470]this contradictory, contested notion of sovereignty
[00:35:19.710]that's so central to Native American intellectual lives,
[00:35:22.130]to Native American cultures,
[00:35:23.670]and to Native American literatures.
[00:35:26.090]Of course, we're talking about written discourse here.
[00:35:30.850]And so in my own teaching and pedagogy,
[00:35:32.937]I've just been using the term literary colonialism
[00:35:36.014]without thinking much about it.
[00:35:37.760]I think somebody else has probably used it first.
[00:35:41.400]I'd say, I mean,
[00:35:43.017]it's pretty much manifests manners,
[00:35:44.480]rhetorical imperialism as evidence in literature,
[00:35:47.690]I don't know what literature means anymore,
[00:35:49.120]so I won't get into that can of worms.
[00:35:53.730]Literary sovereignty in contrast
[00:35:55.580]would be survivance, or Lyons rhetorical sovereignty
[00:35:59.993]at work in specifically, you know,
[00:36:03.300]that awful academic body of texts
[00:36:05.600]called Native American literatures.
[00:36:09.076]I just got done talking teaching "Black Elk Speaks" again,
[00:36:12.115]and I think I use the term literary colonialism,
[00:36:16.470]so-called I mean, this is supposedly the central text
[00:36:19.580]of Native American literature, the fundament or the origin.
[00:36:23.550]And of course, supposedly,
[00:36:26.040]the story might have been, Nicholas Black Elk,
[00:36:30.890]no, it's John G. Neihardt,
[00:36:33.214]this white guy who basically erases
[00:36:35.520]the native culture, the Lakota People,
[00:36:36.960]if people's dream died in the body of snow,
[00:36:38.870]that is the plot line of "Black Elk Speaks".
[00:36:41.200]That probably comes to a great surprise to the people
[00:36:44.935]reviving culture on on Pine Ridge Reservation,
[00:36:48.020]Rosebud, etcetera. Dr. Gannon,
[00:36:50.560]you're now at seven minutes, just letting you know.
[00:36:53.630]Okay, well,
[00:36:56.170]I thought I'd be the first to make it, but I didn't.
[00:36:59.430]So are these then literary sovereignty?
[00:37:02.030]More recent works of Native American literature,
[00:37:05.534]all of which I think attain some degree
[00:37:08.478]of literary sovereignty.
[00:37:09.311]Go back to 1928, Luther Standing Bear's
[00:37:11.487]"My People the Sioux".
[00:37:14.100]How about Leslie Silko's, Yellow?
[00:37:16.210]I meant "Story Teller"?
[00:37:19.860]How about James Welch's "Fools Crow"?
[00:37:22.840]Finally, how about the poet lord of the United States,
[00:37:26.270]Joy Harjo "In Mad, Love And War"?
[00:37:28.890]Thank you very much, I'm done.
[00:37:37.270]Whoo, my head is spinning,
[00:37:41.430]I don't know where to start.
[00:37:43.670]So I'm going to give people a chance to put things
[00:37:46.880]in chat because I got questions on my own too,
[00:37:51.610]but what powerful presentations
[00:37:54.830]of the complexities, layers,
[00:37:58.090]nuances, contradictions
[00:38:00.440]of sovereignty with particular attention from Dr. Huettl
[00:38:07.380]on why we need to look
[00:38:09.910]beyond legal concepts, among other things.
[00:38:13.657]Also we have from Jessica,
[00:38:18.640]I'm sorry, Jessica,
[00:38:20.958]Dr. Shoemaker, thank you. Shoemaker.
[00:38:24.180]Just Jess is fine. Okay, sorry,
[00:38:25.990]yeah, that's why we need to not trust the law,
[00:38:29.460]because it's contradictory and all over the place.
[00:38:32.790]Powerful, complex stories,
[00:38:36.740]lived experiences from Dr. Yellow Robe
[00:38:39.780]about why starting with family,
[00:38:42.330]starting at home with how this term resonates is important.
[00:38:45.900]And then Dr. Gannon's the symbolic literary damage done
[00:38:51.977]by Western imperialism and literary colonialism
[00:38:57.570]versus the power of survivance or survivance,
[00:39:01.230]and how indigenous people write back and push back.
[00:39:06.220]So I'm sorry,
[00:39:07.737]I'm sure I did some damage and tried to grasp at basics,
[00:39:10.857]but let me see what's going on in the chat.
[00:39:13.881]'Cause it looks like we got some questions coming.
[00:39:18.601]Everybody is, thank you,
[00:39:19.434]thanks.
[00:39:20.270]Okay, so one of the questions in the chat,
[00:39:23.480]and since it's addressed to a single person,
[00:39:28.697]I'm going to say,
[00:39:30.420]what are some of the oral traditions related to sovereignty?
[00:39:40.730]Well, let me, you know what,
[00:39:42.281]I'm going to read three questions
[00:39:43.114]and then let you all respond to which of the ones.
[00:39:45.810]So we have one question, that I just said,
[00:39:49.040]what are some of the oral traditions related to sovereignty?
[00:39:52.150]Another question, does anyone want to talk
[00:39:56.201]about the law as story and story as the law?
[00:40:00.798]And how can people be good allies in regard to sovereignty?
[00:40:08.500]So those are three questions.
[00:40:09.950]I'll let whoever wants to start jump in.
[00:40:16.750]Well, I can talk a little bit
[00:40:19.390]about the story and law and oral traditions questions,
[00:40:23.930]'cause I mean, they're tied together,
[00:40:26.970]and I mean, again,
[00:40:28.150]I'm not like an expert in oral tradition or anything,
[00:40:31.410]but from an Anishinaabe perspective,
[00:40:34.840]story is law, law derives from
[00:40:38.340](Dr. Huettl speaking in foreign language)
[00:40:39.830]or sacred stories, and like,
[00:40:43.100]normally I would start by talking
[00:40:44.960]about sovereignty with a story, but that's not
[00:40:46.930]something that you can do in five or actually seven minutes,
[00:40:50.680]because Anishinaabe stories are long,
[00:40:53.198]but stories contain stories about relationships
[00:41:01.110]and they give us lessons for how to live
[00:41:05.253]in the world and how to relate to human
[00:41:08.810]and non-human people.
[00:41:11.700]So there's, you know,
[00:41:13.720]there's the basis of Anishinaabe law is
[00:41:17.300]story of the basis of Anishinaabi sovereignty,
[00:41:20.214]Anishinaabe story.
[00:41:25.719]Thank you.
[00:41:26.552]Anybody else want to respond to either of those questions
[00:41:30.810]in regard to story and law and law and story?
[00:41:34.030]Oral traditions for those to be good allies.
[00:41:38.745]How about oral traditions related to sovereignty?
[00:41:42.361]I can sort of tack that peripherally
[00:41:43.470]by giving another example
[00:41:46.217]of what a Gerald Wizner calls a sort
[00:41:48.280]of survivance, am I changing my pronunciation?
[00:41:54.287]One of the first things he did in his academic career,
[00:41:57.737]in his journalistic work, and his activism,
[00:41:58.680]I guess would say, was writing a book called Gerald Vizenor
[00:42:01.417]"The People Called Chippewa".
[00:42:03.410]It basically, he said one act of sovereignty
[00:42:07.780]in language is to change the names of the tribes
[00:42:11.977]from those given to us there by white people
[00:42:16.350]from the Chippewa to the Anishinaabe,
[00:42:19.330]from the Sioux to the Lakota, etcetera,
[00:42:22.240]which are certainly an act of sovereignty,
[00:42:26.760]and it's certainly part of the oral traditions.
[00:42:35.260]Thank you, Dr. Gannon.
[00:42:40.130]We have another question here,
[00:42:42.390]I'm thinking of the latest resistance
[00:42:45.560]the XL Keystone Pipeline,
[00:42:49.770]so many native tribes came together,
[00:42:50.640]can you talk about how sovereignty among tribes
[00:42:54.640]and coming together worked toward change
[00:42:57.300]and saving the land? That's a great question.
[00:43:10.596]I mean, I guess I can talk a little bit
[00:43:13.407]about pipeline citing generally,
[00:43:15.572]both in the context of Dakota access,
[00:43:18.750]for of course the pipeline was not saved, right,
[00:43:22.780]is in place in Keystone
[00:43:24.810]where it has not been built.
[00:43:26.850]You know, are really powerful examples
[00:43:29.320]of tribes coming together,
[00:43:30.820]including in ways that the law
[00:43:33.260]didn't necessarily recognize or anticipate, right?
[00:43:36.290]So those were powerful direct action experiences,
[00:43:39.930]particularly in Keystone with the return
[00:43:42.330]of the Pawnee and the Ponca,
[00:43:44.440]and other indigenous peoples to land that had otherwise
[00:43:48.270]been in a tremendous amount of conflict.
[00:43:51.471]And so, I mean,
[00:43:52.700]I think that those are powerful examples,
[00:43:55.310]but I think they also both show just the limits,
[00:43:57.630]of course, I look at things through a legal perspective,
[00:43:59.900]but I think both of those examples show
[00:44:03.210]how disappointing the law can be
[00:44:05.470]in responding to things that are outside
[00:44:07.720]of the boxes that the legal system creates.
[00:44:10.980]So in the Dakota access example, you know,
[00:44:13.891]th the rights of the Standing Rock or the Cheyenne River,
[00:44:17.660]or other tribes were so limited because
[00:44:21.191]of the ways in which the law constructed property
[00:44:23.280]in the sense of ownership or not ownership.
[00:44:26.335]And so ancestral claims, sacred sites,
[00:44:29.135]territorial, even treaty claims, right,
[00:44:32.920]the Black Hills that have been stolen
[00:44:35.300]and are still claimed by the Sioux people,
[00:44:39.250]you know, that's insufficient.
[00:44:40.480]And so, you know, the irony is
[00:44:41.880]that the law gives the rights to consult
[00:44:44.650]that fall under something as offensive
[00:44:47.611]as the National Historic Preservation Act, right?
[00:44:50.287]And I guess my hope is
[00:44:51.740]that those sorts of political actions bring more light
[00:44:54.348]to these injustices, right?
[00:44:57.470]That these systems are not built for this and the way
[00:45:00.120]in which we continue to rebuild them is just
[00:45:02.350]ongoing perpetuation of what's been wrong from the start.
[00:45:07.780]Thank you, Dr. Shoemaker.
[00:45:11.510]There's a question about the future of sovereignty,
[00:45:13.560]but before we get to that, 'cause I think
[00:45:16.793]that would be a wonderful ending point,
[00:45:19.270]although I don't want this to end,
[00:45:22.300]segwaying from the question about the XL Keystone Pipeline,
[00:45:26.690]I'm going to also ask about the recent,
[00:45:30.831]although it hasn't happened, the DC Football Team,
[00:45:34.000]you know, finally Dan Snyder giving in
[00:45:38.550]to the reality of needing to change
[00:45:44.163]a very racist name for a football team.
[00:45:47.450]I want to know if any of you have any reflections
[00:45:50.530]on how that relates to sovereignty?
[00:45:52.660]Another question would be how the four nations,
[00:45:57.055]the US, Canada, New Zealand,
[00:45:59.950]and Australia initially refused to sign
[00:46:07.788]the United Nations declarations
[00:46:10.190]of the rights of indigenous people,
[00:46:12.210]and what they have in common,
[00:46:14.450]settler, colonial nations, and sovereignty.
[00:46:17.890]And then my third question would be about
[00:46:21.401]how ancient sovereignty is?
[00:46:24.490]You all mentioned this, it exists before Columbus,
[00:46:27.970]before Leif Erikson it,
[00:46:30.073]it's not given to indigenous peoples by the US.
[00:46:34.591]So again, anybody want to comment on the Redskins?
[00:46:37.820]Anyone want to comment on the United Nations?
[00:46:44.348]And how a declaration for the rights of indigenous peoples,
[00:46:46.175]and how long the US in particular took?
[00:46:48.212]It was under the Obama administration
[00:46:49.711]that they finally signed that.
[00:46:50.544]And then this notion of how ancient sovereignty is?
[00:46:58.780]I want to see if Dr. Yellow Robe wants to jump in first.
[00:47:05.855]My text messages were going on,
[00:47:08.420]I'm sorry about that everyone.
[00:47:10.730]Oh, let's see, we'll come back to the mascot thing.
[00:47:16.920]I think Dr. Gannon laid that out pretty clear
[00:47:25.391]as to how that's complete fiction and BS,
[00:47:29.673]that's a projection
[00:47:30.692]of the distortion in the American psyche.
[00:47:32.071]So I don't want to center white supremacy.
[00:47:32.904]So I'm not going to address that.
[00:47:34.330]But what I will address is yes, the ancient knowledge.
[00:47:38.010]So it's important from an education point of view,
[00:47:41.810]it's important that we stop, first of all
[00:47:44.700]that we continue to teach Native American history
[00:47:47.370]past the 1890s, passed the Homestead Act,
[00:47:51.160]passed the Dawes Allotment Act,
[00:47:53.500]and continue to put us in a contemporary perspective.
[00:47:58.610]And then at the same time
[00:48:00.452]I heard someone use a buzz word on here tonight, ecological.
[00:48:03.820]Right now we have a big swift charging force
[00:48:07.750]from our science relatives and friends,
[00:48:10.740]I use that very playfully, who are co-opting,
[00:48:16.120]and they're starting to patent it,
[00:48:17.930]and they're starting to steal ancient knowledge,
[00:48:21.010]indigenous, Native American, American Indian,
[00:48:24.130]whichever legal term people feel good with right now,
[00:48:26.880]first nations, Alaska native knowledge,
[00:48:29.410]right now that's a big danger that we have.
[00:48:32.540]So that's where I get very activist driven,
[00:48:37.900]that's where all my bells and whistles are going off,
[00:48:41.370]we have to be very very clear
[00:48:44.390]when we're citing those models
[00:48:46.070]that we're giving citation credit
[00:48:48.550]back to traditional tribes when we're doing that.
[00:48:53.840]So if you want to hear about ancient teaching,
[00:48:55.951]I was taught you don't know,
[00:48:58.670]there's nothing you're going to say
[00:49:00.550]that has not been already said,
[00:49:03.060]it may be getting repackaged in a cute way
[00:49:05.740]and science or whatever we're doing now, you know,
[00:49:08.320]but always excuse yourself in front of your elders.
[00:49:11.100]So thank you everyone for letting me, yes,
[00:49:13.670]Dr. Tom, that's you,
[00:49:15.050]thank you for letting me be free
[00:49:17.490]in front of my elders tonight,
[00:49:18.970]but we did that as a cultural way to have humility
[00:49:23.405]and to honor those who came before us.
[00:49:27.375]I was just talking about this last night on the other panel,
[00:49:28.940]we're standing on their shoulders,
[00:49:31.370]the titans of our ancestors,
[00:49:34.090]and for some of us, like my tribe,
[00:49:36.330]that wasn't too long ago when we were fighting that battle.
[00:49:40.430]So it's you talk about the neuroscience of it,
[00:49:43.950]it's in my epigenetic structures,
[00:49:46.300]it is inside of me.
[00:49:48.030]So when I hear embodiment and sovereignty,
[00:49:51.311]I'm it, you're looking at it right now.
[00:49:55.380]That's an act of resistance in my opinion,
[00:49:59.190]I'm breathing, I'm here.
[00:50:02.880]Thank you.
[00:50:03.910]And since we have five minutes left,
[00:50:05.600]I'm going to leave those questions that I pose up for,
[00:50:08.230]I think Dr. Gannon is going to go next,
[00:50:10.100]but we also had a very important question about the renaming
[00:50:14.170]of places and all the monuments that must fall.
[00:50:19.353]Yeah, I just wanted to address the notion of sovereignty,
[00:50:22.710]and I would play maybe radically
[00:50:24.940]that there was no sovereignty before Euro-Americans came.
[00:50:31.200]It's a completely Western philosophical concept
[00:50:33.660]and maybe the best way to decolonize our way
[00:50:37.700]of thinking is to move beyond that ultimately.
[00:50:42.135]Thank you. I'm sorry.
[00:50:44.079]I'm not. I'm just kidding.
[00:50:50.587]Anyone else?
[00:50:52.477]I love Dr. Gannon,
[00:50:54.460]I'm like, why is he apologizing?
[00:50:56.650]So this book would be good
[00:50:59.657]for that Dr. Gannon, "Yellow Bird",
[00:51:01.556]you know, that's a practical way of education.
[00:51:04.550]I can put it in chat for everyone,
[00:51:06.336]and I saw a question, Dr. Castro,
[00:51:10.380]or Dr. Gannon about international,
[00:51:12.500]they touch on that too, global,
[00:51:14.196]that's kind of what I like to say.
[00:51:17.520]Yeah, and there are two other questions
[00:51:19.680]that have come in since I asked.
[00:51:21.839]So Ponca were federally recognized, or is this a statement,
[00:51:25.230]until 1960s when they were terminated as a tribe?
[00:51:29.530]Okay, I think,
[00:51:31.560]how does indigenous sovereignty
[00:51:33.520]reconcile the rejection of state/federal laws
[00:51:36.994]as a violation of their integrity and a dependence
[00:51:42.070]of indigenous sovereignty on the state court systems
[00:51:46.060]and law to protect their rights?
[00:51:47.370]And we've got about three minutes left.
[00:51:50.130]So.
[00:51:59.520]I guess I'm not sure,
[00:52:00.450]I don't know if I understand that question,
[00:52:02.200]I don't see dependence on state court systems
[00:52:04.420]and the expression of indigenous sovereignty.
[00:52:06.590]So I'm not quite sure how to respond to that.
[00:52:09.770]Yeah, I think, oh, sorry,
[00:52:11.090]go ahead, Dr. No, you go Dr. Huetll,
[00:52:13.096]you go. I was just going to say
[00:52:15.410]that I think a lot of indigenous nations reject that idea
[00:52:18.775]and that's why redefining sovereignty,
[00:52:23.040]and I mean, as Dr Gannon said,
[00:52:25.500]it's the term sovereignty that gets us into
[00:52:27.440]some of these sticky situations,
[00:52:28.810]because what does it really mean
[00:52:30.638]from an indigenous perspective?
[00:52:32.720]Can we redefine a Western concept from
[00:52:36.090]an indigenous perspective?
[00:52:38.516]But I think more and more native nations
[00:52:41.500]are putting their bodies on the land,
[00:52:43.970]and they are finding ways to reclaim sovereignty,
[00:52:48.310]to express sovereignty, to maintain sovereignty
[00:52:51.130]outside of any sort of dependence on state,
[00:52:55.560]and I mean, that's not to say that state
[00:52:57.650]doesn't continue to violate sovereignty
[00:53:00.020]by taking native lands and resources,
[00:53:03.076]there's that like inherent colonial system
[00:53:09.710]that is still in place,
[00:53:10.700]but I don't think sovereignty is dependent on the state,
[00:53:14.990]native people increasingly reject that idea.
[00:53:17.980]And thank you, Dr. Huetll.
[00:53:20.290]And as we're winding down,
[00:53:22.520]I've failed to look at questions in Q&A,
[00:53:25.040]so let's see if we can get a couple in
[00:53:27.500]and a couple of quick responses,
[00:53:28.930]or if you want to respond to either one of these,
[00:53:32.773]because I have to wind down by 6:00,
[00:53:34.150]but I'm willing to give up a little bit
[00:53:35.430]of my wind downtime to you all.
[00:53:37.053]So what potential could you see
[00:53:39.280]in the impact of sovereignty with the hopeful confirmation
[00:53:41.853]of Deb Haaland to the secretary of the Interior?
[00:53:48.536]And would this bring divergent more
[00:53:52.350]into the national conversation?
[00:53:56.211]Or how can you put sovereignty
[00:53:58.380]in an international perspective
[00:54:00.610]with other indigenous peoples?
[00:54:10.460]Well I think that Deb Haaland's question is interesting.
[00:54:15.410]So as long as, right now,
[00:54:17.210]the federal policy, even the current administration
[00:54:20.740]has emphasized consultation with native nations.
[00:54:24.300]The thing is consultation doesn't mean consent,
[00:54:27.920]and as long as the official federal policy
[00:54:30.700]is only content consultation and not consent,
[00:54:34.330]I'm not sure like how much practical legal difference
[00:54:41.737]it will make having an indigenous person
[00:54:48.560]who is secretary of the Interior,
[00:54:49.760]not that it will make no difference,
[00:54:51.090]it's a big deal,
[00:54:52.330]but there are policy limitations there that remain
[00:54:56.880]in place as part of the larger federal system.
[00:55:02.430]Thank you. I guess,
[00:55:08.070]I know you're almost out of time,
[00:55:09.063]I mean, I feel pretty optimistic
[00:55:10.970]about the secretary of Interior appointment.
[00:55:13.260]I completely agree with Dr. Huettl,
[00:55:14.560]that there are core limitations
[00:55:16.210]in the way in which the federal agencies operate
[00:55:19.433]and it's still within the system.
[00:55:20.950]But things like the Bears Ears National Monument,
[00:55:23.370]which was diminished under the last administration
[00:55:25.790]with the new secretary of Interior,
[00:55:27.120]I mean, that is a really true expression
[00:55:28.920]and this opportunity and the potential
[00:55:31.817]for new kinds of partnerships like that.
[00:55:33.180]So I feel optimistic about that,
[00:55:34.840]it actually answers into the last question
[00:55:36.450]about international perspectives, right?
[00:55:38.756]The international norm would be free
[00:55:39.720]and informed prior consent.
[00:55:41.700]That is not the US law
[00:55:43.210]or other settler colonial countries have not adopted
[00:55:47.500]that or enforced that.
[00:55:50.090]And I think international UN drip
[00:55:52.996]and things like this are really more
[00:55:54.953]about kind of moving the needle in terms of discourse
[00:55:56.300]and motivating discourse to try to move things
[00:55:58.570]in a more iterative way and in a more helpful way,
[00:56:01.993]I hope, as well.
[00:56:02.826]Thank you. Maybe I'm just a little
[00:56:04.470]salty about the Enbridge Pipeline stuff
[00:56:07.160]going on in Minnesota right now,
[00:56:09.097]and that like, you know,
[00:56:12.231]there's great progress happening
[00:56:17.340]and there's still, you know,
[00:56:19.120]other ways that the same things are continuing
[00:56:21.770]and it's been a month or two months,
[00:56:24.430]I can be patient.
[00:56:29.072]So I have a completely different view on that with.
[00:56:32.756]We actually have to wind things down Dr. Yellow Robe,
[00:56:36.540]did we get kicked off at 6:00, Joy?
[00:56:39.733]That's interesting. I think we do.
[00:56:43.454]Yeah, so I'm going to ask you all
[00:56:45.993]in 30 seconds or less,
[00:56:49.294]some statement about the future of sovereignty.
[00:56:54.600]Please keep it short.
[00:56:56.600]If I only have 30 seconds,
[00:56:57.820]I need to give this disclaimer,
[00:56:59.934]I stole my whole presentation
[00:57:02.414]from a grad student, her name's Lydia Presley,
[00:57:05.210]she's writing her dissertation on re rhetorical sovereignty
[00:57:09.930]and tracing it from Indian Boarding School,
[00:57:12.871]writing to her own pedagogy in the classroom today.
[00:57:16.630]Thank you.
[00:57:17.690]Thank you for sharing that work.
[00:57:21.833]Anyone else?
[00:57:23.113]Thank you, and that was less than 30 seconds,
[00:57:25.315]30 seconds or less.
[00:57:27.428]And Lydia is here today
[00:57:29.795]and she put a great question in the chat.
[00:57:31.476]So thanks a lot.
[00:57:33.017]Yep, go ahead, others.
[00:57:38.020]Okay, I guess I would just say the future
[00:57:40.470]of sovereignty is indigenous and leave it at that.
[00:57:43.876]Excellent.
[00:57:46.180]Anyone else?
[00:57:50.450]Well, thank you all.
[00:57:52.530]Thank you.
[00:57:54.057]I mean, I think we're like being left wanting more.
[00:57:57.810]Well, there is more,
[00:57:58.950]it's just not on this important and crucial topic,
[00:58:02.860]because the more will happen tomorrow at 5:00 PM,
[00:58:07.367]and that would be the IES spring celebration
[00:58:10.996]colloquium on racial justice,
[00:58:13.740]when Tiffany Midge, who is an award winning poet
[00:58:18.720]and author will engage us, will teach us,
[00:58:21.750]will share her compelling lecture and stories,
[00:58:26.357]"Attack of the 50ft Lakota Woman".
[00:58:30.810]I guarantee you,
[00:58:31.643]it will be an act of literary sovereignty.
[00:58:34.580]I would just add that the link to register
[00:58:37.150]for that if you have not yet done so already,
[00:58:39.370]can be found through our website at ethnicstudies.unl.edu.
[00:58:45.120]And Emily is very good question that came
[00:58:47.890]up earlier about how can I be a good ally?
[00:58:51.092]There's another session, the third and final session
[00:58:54.650]of our spring celebration on Friday at noon,
[00:58:58.480]and it's all about intellectual allyship when
[00:59:01.450]the culture you study, work for,
[00:59:04.300]and so on is not your own.
[00:59:06.800]So that link to can be found through
[00:59:08.970]the ethnic studies website ethnicstudiesthought.unl.edu.
[00:59:13.240]We encourage you all to join us again,
[00:59:15.470]and thank you very much for your presence this evening.
[00:59:18.760]Thank you to Dr. Dance and to all the speakers,
[00:59:21.147]you were fantastic, this was a very rich session.
[00:59:25.673]Thank you all and good night.
[00:59:36.567]Thank you. Thank you Jess,
[00:59:38.000]really great to meet you.
[00:59:39.510]Yeah, thank you so for including me,
[00:59:41.200]I hope I can attend some of the other events this week,
[00:59:43.960]they sound really great. I hope so too,
[00:59:46.080]and let's just stay in touch to see
[00:59:48.553]if there's more work that we can do
[00:59:49.400]where your work overlaps with the Institute's work,
[00:59:51.690]that would be super. Yeah,
[00:59:53.350]it's amazing, I learned so much,
[00:59:55.090]I was trying not to answer questions
[00:59:56.720]'cause I just wanted to hear others speak,
[00:59:58.550]and so I appreciate you so much for including me.
[01:00:01.100]Thank you. Alright, thank you.
[01:00:04.810]Very well done Tommy,
[01:00:06.410]how stressful that must have been to not be able to get on.
[01:00:10.770]I don't know what went wrong,
[01:00:12.230]I don't know why it didn't work, you know?
[01:00:14.807]I don't know, but glad that we had Tim on the line,
[01:00:19.010]because you know, hopefully we won't need him on Friday,
[01:00:22.010]but I think we should keep him on call.
[01:00:24.490]Yes, I think good idea, just in.
[01:00:27.050]I just tried everything so.
[01:00:30.450]Well, that's weird and unfortunate.
[01:00:33.593]So yeah.
[01:00:35.769]Thank you, you did a lovely job
[01:00:38.730]all things considered, a very lovely job.
[01:00:41.490]We really appreciate it.
[01:00:42.870]Well, so did you,
[01:00:44.532]I thought this was a wonderful kickoff, so thank you.
[01:00:46.460]And I'm trying to see if they're going to kick us off.
[01:00:48.750]Yes, I'm curious about that,
[01:00:51.200]We might have like two or three minutes leeway,
[01:00:54.070]but yeah, they said finish up, so.
[01:00:57.300]You want to chit chat for another two minutes
[01:00:59.020]and see what happens just so we can see?
[01:01:00.869]How long it goes.
[01:01:02.640]Yeah. Yes,
[01:01:04.530]I think that would be fine,
[01:01:05.700]it looks like we still have some attendees on here,
[01:01:08.510]so we want to be discreet.
[01:01:10.340]Hello, Laura, Mickey, Sam and so on,
[01:01:14.887]but yeah, we can just sort of test
[01:01:16.580]out the timing thing for a little while.
[01:01:19.000]Yeah, I'm just curious,
[01:01:21.572]like when they, it's 6:02 now,
[01:01:23.593]I guess I'll go to 6:03 and then we'll know
[01:01:24.560]that we got at least three minutes.
[01:01:27.236]Yeah.
[01:01:29.614]And now for tomorrow afternoon at five o'clock,
[01:01:33.540]you're not a co-host for that, right?
[01:01:36.000]I never asked. But it also
[01:01:38.673]wouldn't let me log in when I tried to register,
[01:01:46.090]it wouldn't let me register, so I don't know what happened.
[01:01:49.880]This is really strange and a little frustrating.
[01:01:52.770]I mean, I've had a very difficult time
[01:01:54.852]with the whole webinar set up.
[01:01:57.480]I mean, it worked on the whole,
[01:02:00.720]so I'm very pleased, but you know,
[01:02:03.150]this was my first rodeo, our first rodeo,
[01:02:06.473]at one of these and there were some hitches,
[01:02:10.650]there were some, we got bucked off a couple of times.
[01:02:14.252]Yeah, that's to be expected,
[01:02:15.085]but I'm hoping I can get them on.
[01:02:16.260]So we'll see what happens.
[01:02:18.090]And now I got Tim's number,
[01:02:19.520]so I'm going to save it. That's right.
[01:02:21.669]Okay, well it's. It's 6:03
[01:02:24.356]and we're still on,
[01:02:25.753]okay, thank you,
[01:02:27.012]thanks for your wonderful leadership.
[01:02:28.390]Talk to you later.
[01:02:29.828]Goodnight. Goodnight.

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Colloquium for Racial Justice, March 10, 2021

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