Reckoning & Reconciliation Discussion Circle Part 3

Center for Great Plains Studies Author

08/15/2022 Added

7 Plays

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Replay of discussion circle part 3 - Aug. 11, 2022

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[00:12:51.605]Hey, Matt.
[00:12:58.320]Can you hear me, Matt?
[00:12:59.850]Oh, there you are.
[00:13:00.806](Margaret laughing)
[00:13:01.639]Yeah, can you hear me?
[00:13:02.700]Yes, how are you?
[00:13:04.050]I'm doing okay.
[00:13:06.030]We still don't have our guest of honor tonight,
[00:13:09.330]but we'll-
[00:13:10.163]Oh, no.
[00:13:10.996]We'll make due if something happens.
[00:13:13.500]He texted me yesterday that everything was set, so,
[00:13:17.850]but he is the president of a nation so.
[00:13:20.412](Margaret laughing)
[00:13:21.245]Yeah, that's a legitimate reason.
[00:13:23.861](Matthew laughing)
[00:13:24.810]Yeah, it is.
[00:13:26.790]So I've give him a little bit of slack there.
[00:13:30.078](Margaret laughing)
[00:13:31.200]Cool. How are you doing?
[00:13:32.760]I'm doing okay, we're getting ready for classes so.
[00:13:36.420]Can't believe it already.
[00:13:37.320]Busy times.
[00:13:38.460]Yeah. (Matthew laughing)
[00:13:40.343]But I'm looking forward to it.
[00:13:43.440]What are you teaching this semester?
[00:13:46.684]I just was actually working on my courses today.
[00:13:49.710]So I'm doing my American lit survey part one,
[00:13:53.880]which goes up to civil war.
[00:13:55.830]And then I do introduction to literature
[00:13:58.860]and a comp class.
[00:14:00.900]My comp classes the last few years
[00:14:03.030]have been focused on environmental issues.
[00:14:05.880]And then I do a what they call an FYI class,
[00:14:08.670]which is a first year inquiry class
[00:14:11.760]for our incoming first year students.
[00:14:14.700]We're actually reading your book in that class.
[00:14:16.850]Which book?
[00:14:18.000](Matthew laughing) (Margaret laughing)
[00:14:19.680]The one about the 100 summers,
[00:14:22.321]for winter. Oh, yeah.
[00:14:23.233]That's the brand new one, so,
[00:14:25.310]oh, cool. Yeah.
[00:14:26.143]Oh, wow, thank you.
[00:14:27.528]Oh yeah, we're, you know, it's a service learning class,
[00:14:31.080]so we're- Yeah.
[00:14:32.340]Thinking about being in service,
[00:14:36.360]so I thought that-
[00:14:37.193]Yeah, oh, cool, cool.
[00:14:38.026]Might be a good context for it, yeah.
[00:14:40.860]So we don't have Walter.
[00:14:44.700]We have five people in the waiting room.
[00:14:46.920]We could just go ahead
[00:14:48.870]and have a great discussion.
[00:14:52.170]Sounds good to me, whatever works for everybody else.
[00:14:54.169]Yeah, (Matthew laughing)
[00:14:55.002]so maybe I'll just,
[00:14:56.220]I'll just admit everybody.
[00:14:57.450]And when Walter shows up,
[00:14:59.880]we can just admit him in
[00:15:01.980]and so go ahead and do that.
[00:15:04.804]Sounds good.
[00:15:05.828]Okay.
[00:15:36.775]Good evening, everybody.
[00:15:38.070]How are you doing?
[00:15:43.620]We don't have our guest of honor here yet today.
[00:15:49.650]I was just joking with Matt
[00:15:52.350]that he's the president of a nation.
[00:15:54.750]So he may have something else really pressing
[00:15:57.720]and may not be able to join us just yet so,
[00:16:01.710]but I figured,
[00:16:03.390]we all could get started and talking,
[00:16:07.290]let me stop sharing my screen,
[00:16:11.460]so we can see each other.
[00:16:17.190]We have a really nice small group tonight
[00:16:20.280]so we can all see each other if you'd like,
[00:16:22.200]and we could all
[00:16:24.660]open our videos.
[00:16:26.400]And if that's okay with you all.
[00:16:37.470]Is anybody having any technical difficulties?
[00:16:39.780]I see a couple people trying to connect to audio.
[00:17:05.550]Hmm, there we go.
[00:17:09.865]Good evening.
[00:17:26.490]Hi, there.
[00:17:40.560]If anybody is having technical difficulties,
[00:17:43.020]if you put something in the chat, we'll try to help you out.
[00:17:51.735]Hi, I'm just checking to make sure
[00:17:53.550]my speaker isn't reverberating into.
[00:17:57.810]You're good, Beth.
[00:17:59.220]In a weird way.
[00:18:00.840]No, it sounds good, Beth.
[00:18:02.370]Yeah. Okay.
[00:18:07.830]I'm wondering,
[00:18:08.760]Patsy, are you having trouble connecting,
[00:18:13.020]and Betsy too?
[00:18:17.910]If you are,
[00:18:18.743]you could try disconnecting and connecting again
[00:18:22.650]and see if that helps you.
[00:18:29.820]Oh, good.
[00:18:31.800]We got you, Patsy.
[00:18:36.210]Now we're just waiting to see if Betsy will make it on.
[00:18:49.925]Well, maybe we'll get started,
[00:18:51.660]and Betsy, just,
[00:18:53.460]if you're still having problems,
[00:18:54.900]you might try to reconnect in a little bit.
[00:18:59.910]I know you have a question tonight, Betsy,
[00:19:01.620]so I hope you can make it on.
[00:19:08.640]This is our final study and discussion circle.
[00:19:14.370]Oh, okay, Patsy, you have a question.
[00:19:16.260]I'm sorry about that.
[00:19:20.190]Okay, Patsy, thank you for letting us know.
[00:19:25.800]So this is our final study circle.
[00:19:27.810]I just wanna introduce myself for those of you
[00:19:29.757]who haven't met me yet.
[00:19:30.900]My name's Margaret Jacobs.
[00:19:32.160]I'm in the Director of the Center for Great Plain Studies.
[00:19:35.280]And this study circle has been part of
[00:19:38.490]a year long series we're doing on
[00:19:40.650]reckoning and reconciliation on the Great Plains.
[00:19:43.920]We kicked off the series in February,
[00:19:47.400]and Walter Echo-Hawk was one of our premier speakers
[00:19:53.190]at our summit in April.
[00:19:55.800]And I think many people were inspired
[00:19:58.590]by his lecture in person.
[00:20:01.890]It's also available on our website
[00:20:04.350]if you haven't seen it yet.
[00:20:06.360]And so as a result of that,
[00:20:08.460]we decided to read Walter's book together.
[00:20:14.190]We've been reading it in three parts.
[00:20:15.900]We read the last part for today,
[00:20:21.180]and Walter is supposed to be joining us.
[00:20:24.570]But as I mentioned,
[00:20:25.410]he is the president of his nation,
[00:20:28.170]and so we just talked yesterday.
[00:20:31.260]I know he intends to come,
[00:20:32.580]so hopefully, he'll make it soon.
[00:20:35.736]But before we get started in earnest,
[00:20:39.450]I thought I would start as I always do
[00:20:42.330]by acknowledging the land that we're on,
[00:20:45.360]at least that I'm on in Lincoln.
[00:20:46.950]I know that all of you are not coming in from Lincoln,
[00:20:49.200]but many of you are.
[00:20:51.960]I wanted to say that we,
[00:20:54.210]oh, welcome Betsy, you made it ye-hey.
[00:20:55.743](Margaret laughing)
[00:20:57.330]We want to acknowledge that we are living
[00:20:59.550]on the past, present, and future homelands
[00:21:02.220]of the Pawnee, Otoe-Missouria, Omaha, and Kansa peoples.
[00:21:08.070]And here in Lincoln,
[00:21:09.600]the salt basin attracted many Indigenous nations
[00:21:13.347]to this region.
[00:21:15.690]The Omaha called this area Niskithe or salt water,
[00:21:21.240]and their women used eagle feathers to collect the salt,
[00:21:25.140]which they used then to cure buffalo meat.
[00:21:28.440]Under pressure from federal officials and settlers,
[00:21:31.020]the Otoe-Missouria seeded the land that became Lincoln
[00:21:34.680]to the Federal Government in 1833 and 1854.
[00:21:38.520]And this forced out the tribal peoples,
[00:21:40.950]who'd called the Niskithe home for many generations.
[00:21:45.360]Native peoples of many nations live in Lincoln today,
[00:21:50.100]and contribute to our community's vitality and diversity.
[00:21:53.310]And today, we want to thank them
[00:21:55.170]for their stewardship of these lands.
[00:21:59.400]So until Walter joins us,
[00:22:03.951]I'm a professor,
[00:22:05.220]so I've always come prepared with lots of questions.
[00:22:09.090]And I thought since we're a very nice small group,
[00:22:13.290]that it'd be great if we could introduce ourselves
[00:22:16.230]and share with each other,
[00:22:18.496]what has drawn you to participate in this circle?
[00:22:22.050]Many of you have been at every
[00:22:25.530]session that we've had,
[00:22:26.730]and many of you have been at many events that we've had.
[00:22:30.270]So if you wanted to share a little bit about
[00:22:33.420]your background, I know Patsy,
[00:22:35.144]you said your mic is broken,
[00:22:36.960]but the rest of you,
[00:22:38.190]if you wouldn't mind sharing a little bit about yourselves,
[00:22:40.830]maybe showing us your face on video,
[00:22:44.280]although that's not required
[00:22:45.330]if you don't wanna do that, that's fine.
[00:22:48.270]So I'm just gonna call on somebody
[00:22:50.130]if that's all right with you.
[00:22:51.150]And I'll begin in my left corner and that is Matt.
[00:22:55.410]Matt, do you wanna introduce yourself?
[00:22:58.023]Hi, everybody.
[00:22:59.250]I'm excited to be in the third of these discussions.
[00:23:02.790]I've been very enlightening,
[00:23:04.890]and it's forced me to go outside of my comfort area
[00:23:08.640](Matthew chuckles)
[00:23:09.473]'cause it's a lot of legal stuff,
[00:23:10.860]but I teach literature here at Chadron State College,
[00:23:13.470]and we've been involved in a process that we're calling
[00:23:16.230]recognition and reconciliation on our campus.
[00:23:20.670]So a lot of this discussion has been informing
[00:23:22.386]my work with that.
[00:23:24.506]That's great.
[00:23:26.040]Thank you, Matt.
[00:23:26.873]And Matt has been a stalwart at this session,
[00:23:30.720]and I think you've attended some other things as well,
[00:23:33.390]so thank you for all your interest and support.
[00:23:37.560]Next on my screen is Beth.
[00:23:42.750]Hi, I'm all the way over in Tennessee
[00:23:46.440]an the other side- All right.
[00:23:47.509]Of the continent. (Margaret laughing)
[00:23:50.019]I actually just stumbled across the
[00:23:53.502]reckoning and reconciliation conference back,
[00:23:58.059]I guess it was in February or March.
[00:24:00.960]I was reading Indian Country Today,
[00:24:03.000]and I came across a little blurb about it.
[00:24:06.360]So I joined virtually and followed the conference there.
[00:24:10.710]And then I actually somehow missed the invitation
[00:24:15.000]to the first two of these discussions.
[00:24:17.430]But I did watch the second,
[00:24:19.830]the recording of the second one.
[00:24:21.030]So I teach history at a small liberal arts college
[00:24:25.470]in East Tennessee,
[00:24:29.190]there is not even the smallest shred
[00:24:31.950]of acknowledgement of land
[00:24:35.850]having been taken from Native peoples,
[00:24:38.700]which would be the Cherokee people,
[00:24:40.740]I think for the most part in our region.
[00:24:43.980]So I'm just trying to understand,
[00:24:47.880]I'd really develop a completely different view of
[00:24:50.940]the history that I teach.
[00:24:52.740]I teach predominantly white students in East Tennessee,
[00:24:57.810]and I teach United States history or largely
[00:25:01.620]larger American history and also I teach world history.
[00:25:03.990]So I do a lot of with Indigenous people,
[00:25:06.600]but I feel like I'm really inadequate.
[00:25:08.130]So I'm trying to learn and change my own perspective,
[00:25:12.150]so that's why I'm here.
[00:25:14.370]Thanks, Beth.
[00:25:15.203]And what is the,
[00:25:17.610]what are the Indigenous peoples
[00:25:18.900]that are Native to your area?
[00:25:21.600]Primarily Cherokee.
[00:25:24.810]This whole area was really Cherokee land.
[00:25:27.889]Yeah.
[00:25:28.722]Yeah, great.
[00:25:29.850]So welcome, we're so glad you're here.
[00:25:31.878]Thank you.
[00:25:33.690]Next on my screen is Marilyn.
[00:25:38.026]I'm gonna come back at you Margaret.
[00:25:40.950]I was at on Sunday afternoon service
[00:25:44.880]and there was Omaha man, Taylor King,
[00:25:47.880]who started his speech by saying,
[00:25:49.830]you should read Margaret Jacob's book.
[00:25:52.410]Oh, God.
[00:25:53.460]So yes, I know, it's way of celebrity, Margaret,
[00:25:59.803]but I wanted to mention that.
[00:26:02.310]I come at this from so many different angles.
[00:26:04.560]I don't know exactly which one to talk about.
[00:26:10.140]One that might catch people's attention is that
[00:26:12.900]a friend of mine who has family in Ohio where I grew up,
[00:26:17.160]gave me a copy of "The Pioneers" by McCullough
[00:26:21.330]who died just in the last couple of days.
[00:26:23.370]And with much praise, he thought to be like,
[00:26:25.770]sort of a freemen of American historian.
[00:26:33.060]He talks about the area that I'm from.
[00:26:35.220]He barely mentions that there were people there before.
[00:26:38.820]I mean there's a couple of battles that are described
[00:26:41.148]and from a distance that's it,
[00:26:44.970]and then you sort of never hear from those people,
[00:26:47.250]about those people again.
[00:26:50.820]So that was one thing that made me think,
[00:26:53.160]I really needed to know considerably more.
[00:26:58.350]I was also in Lincoln during the
[00:26:59.646](Marylyn faintly speaking)
[00:27:01.810]and I sat through a lot of that.
[00:27:05.250]And that also set me in my first round of reading
[00:27:11.206]during my
[00:27:12.039](Marylyn faintly speaking)
[00:27:13.230]was a complete shocker to me,
[00:27:16.560]and I'm still learning and I'll stop there.
[00:27:38.850]So Marilyn, I missed your whole thing, I'm sorry.
[00:27:40.993](Margaret laughing)
[00:27:42.330]I was talking,
[00:27:44.490]I was talking to Walter on the phone
[00:27:46.410]and he just,
[00:27:48.240]he misplaced the link.
[00:27:49.620]He's on a different email, et cetera.
[00:27:51.420]So he's joining us shortly,
[00:27:55.249]but I do know you a little bit, Marilyn,
[00:27:56.850]so I'm glad you shared with everybody else here.
[00:28:00.480]Jean, you're next on my screen.
[00:28:05.070]I think that I will choose to introduce myself
[00:28:09.870]from a personal perspective
[00:28:12.390]or that's what brings me here.
[00:28:16.216]I'm very much a settler
[00:28:20.550]and a part of the problem,
[00:28:27.570]I had an aunt,
[00:28:30.580]a sister of my mother,
[00:28:31.590]who was basically a generation older than my mother,
[00:28:35.370]who was a deaconess in the Episcopal Church.
[00:28:38.580]And she worked in a school as I understood it
[00:28:43.260]on the Navajo reservation.
[00:28:45.510]I think she was a librarian in this school and that was,
[00:28:51.000]she was doing this when I was a young child
[00:28:53.850]and she sent me various gifts from the Navajo people.
[00:28:59.100]And I had a handmade doll that was on a cradle board
[00:29:05.310]and have boost and I had a couple of
[00:29:08.760]little Navajo dressed figures.
[00:29:13.320]So these are part of my formative years
[00:29:15.600]and probably played a part in leaving me
[00:29:20.070]to adopt a couple of Native children
[00:29:23.910]after I moved to Nebraska,
[00:29:29.085]I was a very naive young mother
[00:29:34.846]of a couple of little girls already.
[00:29:38.730]And somehow just saw myself taking in
[00:29:43.140]children who didn't have a home.
[00:29:46.140]And I didn't not know the big story.
[00:29:49.470]It was years later before I knew that whole story of
[00:29:54.570]taking Native children from their families,
[00:29:58.170]so I came out of very great ignorance.
[00:30:04.620]And I dearly love my two Omaha sons.
[00:30:09.690]One of whom is no longer living but
[00:30:15.750]I feel a deep connection
[00:30:17.250]and I'm grateful for all that I've been able to learn
[00:30:21.150]more recently
[00:30:26.070]about the part that I really played in this.
[00:30:29.190]Anyway so this very much,
[00:30:32.580]I just feel a heart connection with
[00:30:35.291](Jean laughing)
[00:30:38.010]with Native people and it's not abstract.
[00:30:43.055]It's alive in my relationship- (Jean laughing)
[00:30:46.262]Yeah.
[00:30:47.820]With my sons and grandchildren and great grandchildren,
[00:30:55.189]and so that's why I'm here.
[00:30:56.040]Yes, great, thank you, Jean.
[00:31:01.320]Walter has been able to join us,
[00:31:03.090]but I think it'd be great
[00:31:04.440]if we continue to introduce ourselves.
[00:31:06.390]So Betsy, would you like to introduce yourself?
[00:31:13.380]One second.
[00:31:14.220]Yeah, I grew up in Sturgis, South Dakota
[00:31:17.730]and my first recollection was
[00:31:22.350]when I was a girl in Girl Scouts,
[00:31:24.090]the rapid city council girls were all invited to a Powwow,
[00:31:28.050]and that was very enlightening,
[00:31:31.050]and those inviting us were very welcoming,
[00:31:35.580]but, you know, we saw parts of the culture
[00:31:39.090]we weren't aware of,
[00:31:39.930]like the gifting and so on,
[00:31:41.250]not just the dancing.
[00:31:42.780]So that kinda sparked my interest.
[00:31:45.840]I continued to look into the Lakota primarily
[00:31:53.580]in that part of the country.
[00:31:57.720]Also as I traveled West, the Napier say,
[00:32:02.010]and all kinds of,
[00:32:06.240]I lived in Philip, South Dakota for a long time.
[00:32:08.520]So then we've got Oglala.
[00:32:12.030]And when I moved to Nebraska,
[00:32:13.800]then I got interested in Ponca.
[00:32:19.024]I have an author that I started reading a long time ago,
[00:32:21.900]that actually talks a lot about Navajo, Navajo culture.
[00:32:27.690]And so I did some additional reading beyond that,
[00:32:31.140]but the fictional stories do include
[00:32:34.920]a lot of culture from what I've seen otherwise.
[00:32:38.584]So I was really happy to find this.
[00:32:42.810]And also Nebraska,
[00:32:45.960]University of Nebraska at one time
[00:32:47.970]did have like some bones that-
[00:32:53.087]Yes.
[00:32:53.920]So I was aware of that,
[00:32:55.860]so just,
[00:32:58.410]all those things.
[00:32:59.243](Betsy laughing)
[00:33:01.320]Thanks Betsy.
[00:33:02.153]And if you're not already aware, Walter Echo-Hawk
[00:33:06.690]was very involved in
[00:33:09.747]getting back repatriation of
[00:33:14.370]all the mini Pawnee ancestral remains
[00:33:17.220]that were held in the historical society,
[00:33:20.610]as well as advocating for other Native peoples in Nebraska
[00:33:24.780]and across the country and advocating for NAGPRA,
[00:33:28.170]maybe we can talk a little bit about that later.
[00:33:31.576]Rebecca, do you wanna introduce yourself?
[00:33:35.370]Hi, I'm Rebecca Phillips Amen.
[00:33:40.770]I am somewhat trying to continue my education
[00:33:44.490]at the University of Nebraska Lincoln
[00:33:48.510]in cultural anthropology,
[00:33:53.760]picking up also pre-law after I have experienced
[00:33:58.890]a lot of stuff in trauma
[00:34:02.430]trying to advocate for my people.
[00:34:04.260]I am enrolled in the O'Mahony and I am Ponca also,
[00:34:09.000]and I am biracial.
[00:34:10.800]So I'm also an ethnic minority on the Germans from Russia.
[00:34:16.560]And I've always worked for the federal government,
[00:34:19.140]the state, city,
[00:34:22.170]and also my Native people, my Indigenous people.
[00:34:24.690]So it's really important to me for sovereignty
[00:34:28.920]and self-determination and law
[00:34:31.560]and for our people to understand that we do have rights.
[00:34:37.380]I mean, understanding that we just became citizens,
[00:34:42.499]not that long ago,
[00:34:44.880]and then just were granted our voting rights,
[00:34:50.430]not that in like 1950s
[00:34:54.090]and some nights later on like '60s.
[00:34:58.320]So it's really important to me to expand my knowledge
[00:35:01.740]and to share and to be active.
[00:35:04.980]And so expanding my knowledge and understanding.
[00:35:11.610]I try to do what I can.
[00:35:13.590]It's been a difficult journey.
[00:35:15.690]And so self-education,
[00:35:18.000]also reading such authors as in the justice of,
[00:35:26.483]"In the Light of Justice" from Walter E. Echo-Hawk
[00:35:29.910]NARF, Native American Rights Fund being part of that.
[00:35:35.760]So I'm just here to pretty much listen and
[00:35:40.580]if I have questions and,
[00:35:43.950]so it is very difficult to voice your opinion in this world
[00:35:49.230]that doesn't recognize Native American sovereignty
[00:35:53.850]or self-determination or self-governance.
[00:35:56.880]And so
[00:35:58.530]you have to bring that to light
[00:36:00.030]and even our own people,
[00:36:01.920]Indigenous people don't realize that.
[00:36:04.380]So we need to bring that to light too.
[00:36:06.690]So I'm just here to, you know, also learn.
[00:36:10.260]So I don't know everything,
[00:36:13.830]so, all right, but thank you.
[00:36:16.470]And so is there anyone next up, are we ready?
[00:36:20.278](Rebecca laughing)
[00:36:21.111]Yeah, we do have one more person,
[00:36:23.850]but Patsy said her mic is broken.
[00:36:26.250]So Patsy, maybe you can just
[00:36:28.290]put a little bit of information in the chat,
[00:36:30.810]so we know a little bit more about you
[00:36:32.550]and while you're doing that,
[00:36:33.510]I can introduce our speaker,
[00:36:35.940]or our guests tonight.
[00:36:38.010]We are just,
[00:36:39.660]oh, Patsy, are you okay?
[00:36:42.240]No, okay.
[00:36:46.050]It's such a treat to have Walter join us tonight.
[00:36:49.380]When I told Walter that I was,
[00:36:51.660]we were going to do this study circle this summer.
[00:36:54.600]He just sort of out of the blue just said,
[00:36:57.030]oh, well, I can join you sometime.
[00:36:58.710]And I just thought, oh, how wonderful.
[00:37:00.120]I mean, it's such a treat to have you again.
[00:37:03.000]And so if for those of you who don't yet know
[00:37:07.560]all about Mr. Walter Echo-Hawk
[00:37:09.900]let me just give you a little bit of background about him.
[00:37:13.500]As I already mentioned,
[00:37:14.550]he's President of the Pawnee Nation Business Council.
[00:37:19.350]He's an author, an attorney, a legal scholar.
[00:37:23.010]He was the Dan and Maggie Inouye
[00:37:25.590]Distinguished Chair on Democratic Ideals
[00:37:28.710]at University of Law School
[00:37:30.870]University of Hawaii Law School in 2018.
[00:37:35.100]He's written mini books.
[00:37:37.260]You've all read this one,
[00:37:40.200]but he's also authored a wonderful novel about his family.
[00:37:44.880]His Pawnee family called, "The Sea of Grass,"
[00:37:48.300]which was published in 2018.
[00:37:50.850]He's written a book that I find incredible called
[00:37:53.707]"In the Courts of the Conqueror,"
[00:37:55.897]which is like the,
[00:37:57.600]is it the 10 worst Indian law cases ever?
[00:38:01.200]Is that the subtitle, Walter?
[00:38:03.990]10 worst cases?
[00:38:07.440]Oops, you're muted.
[00:38:09.690]Yes, the 10 worst cases ever decided,
[00:38:12.630]Indian cases ever decided.
[00:38:14.181]That's an incredible book.
[00:38:17.670]And I also really love the book
[00:38:20.280]that you co-wrote with your brother,
[00:38:22.357]"Battlefields and Burial Grounds,"
[00:38:24.270]which is way back from the 1990s.
[00:38:26.670]But it's such an informative book
[00:38:29.760]about the ways in which Native American graves
[00:38:34.020]have been looted and
[00:38:37.380]including, of course, the Pawnee Nation
[00:38:41.626]and all the ways in which Native peoples
[00:38:43.530]have been working to repatriate their ancestors.
[00:38:49.740]So Walter Echo-Hawk holds a BA in political science
[00:38:53.790]from Oklahoma State University
[00:38:55.440]and a JD from the University of New Mexico.
[00:38:58.380]He practices law in Oklahoma.
[00:39:01.410]He worked for years at the Native American Rights Fund.
[00:39:05.700]And now in addition to his tribal government duties,
[00:39:09.510]he's Chair of the Board of Directors
[00:39:12.510]of the Association of Tribal Archives,
[00:39:14.340]Libraries and Museums.
[00:39:15.660]And he's on knowledge givers advisory board member
[00:39:19.350]for the First American Museum,
[00:39:21.150]which recently opened in Oklahoma City.
[00:39:24.510]So Walter,
[00:39:26.730]welcome and thank you.
[00:39:28.110]Thank you so much for being here tonight.
[00:39:32.550]Is there anything you wanna add to your intro?
[00:39:35.580]Oh, no, I can't wait to meet him with.
[00:39:38.705](Walter laughing) (Margaret laughing)
[00:39:41.340]I know he sounds so impressive, doesn't he?
[00:39:44.100]Yeah, that's for sure.
[00:39:46.620]But no good evening everyone.
[00:39:48.480]And thank you so much, Margaret,
[00:39:50.460]for my invitation to be with you tonight.
[00:39:54.930]I would just say that I am very, very flattered
[00:39:59.310]and honored that you all would be reading,
[00:40:03.240]reading my book this summer, "In the Light of Justice."
[00:40:06.810]And so I'm just elated and just happy to be here,
[00:40:13.620]so looking forward to our evening together.
[00:40:16.830]Yeah.
[00:40:18.690]Well, as we've done in the past couple sessions,
[00:40:23.130]we have a lot of questions that I've created for Walter,
[00:40:27.450]but I'm sure the rest of you have questions as well.
[00:40:32.370]So I guess I'd wanna ask you first, Walter,
[00:40:35.340]I mean, you wrote this book back in 20,
[00:40:41.280]2013, so it's almost been 10 years.
[00:40:46.020]Has your perspective on the drip,
[00:40:50.190]that's what Robert Miller calls it,
[00:40:52.250](Margaret laughing)
[00:40:53.083]the drip,
[00:40:55.200]has it changed
[00:40:57.150]or has your hope for its implementation changed at all
[00:41:02.370]since you wrote it?
[00:41:03.240]And if so, how?
[00:41:07.290]No, I think I still,
[00:41:10.890]I view this UN declaration as a very landmark
[00:41:16.710]transformative legal document,
[00:41:20.730]international law document that holds the promise of really
[00:41:26.850]changing the way the world views
[00:41:30.540]Indigenous peoples around the world.
[00:41:36.185]I believe also that it holds great promise
[00:41:41.460]as a lifeline for pathway, I guess,
[00:41:45.330]for reforming the dark side of federal Indian law.
[00:41:51.210]And so
[00:41:53.010]it's all about restorative justice
[00:41:59.310]and making things right
[00:42:01.560]with the world's Indigenous people
[00:42:04.080]so that they might survive as a
[00:42:08.400]flourishing part of the human family
[00:42:11.100]with their inherent Indigenous rights intact
[00:42:15.660]in every nation in which they live.
[00:42:19.410]And so it holds a great promise, I think,
[00:42:23.370]for the well-being and the survival
[00:42:26.850]and the dignity of the world's Indigenous peoples
[00:42:30.990]as well as Native Americans.
[00:42:34.080]And, of course, all of the tribal nations
[00:42:38.040]that have ties to the great State of Nebraska.
[00:42:41.400]And so it is a transformative document.
[00:42:47.670]And I think that
[00:42:52.710]it is now being implemented here in North America,
[00:42:59.250]up in Canada, for example,
[00:43:01.230]with the last summer's Canadian parliament
[00:43:06.810]passed the law that implemented,
[00:43:10.440]endorsed and implemented this declaration
[00:43:13.530]into the national law and policy of Canada
[00:43:17.850]and directed the prime minister to develop a national plan
[00:43:22.080]to implement its provisions into domestic Canadian law
[00:43:27.690]in consultation with the First Nations.
[00:43:30.840]And so that,
[00:43:33.360]that puts Canada as the First Nation
[00:43:39.180]in North America to implement it.
[00:43:43.680]This declaration has been endorsed
[00:43:46.020]by 150 nations around the world,
[00:43:51.540]which really makes it the new order of the day.
[00:43:57.030]And so I have great hopes for this document
[00:44:04.806]and it's a harbinger of a change.
[00:44:08.880]It's a harbinger of
[00:44:13.200]providing a restorative justice for the first Americans
[00:44:17.430]in the United States,
[00:44:19.860]and it would allow us to write the final chapter
[00:44:24.180]in our great American experience in democracy,
[00:44:29.340]experiment in democracy, you know,
[00:44:31.650]by bringing Native American people into the body politic
[00:44:40.530]with the full measure of our Indigenous rights intact,
[00:44:46.594]and so it's an awesome document.
[00:44:48.210]I've taught law classes,
[00:44:49.980]entire class is devoted simply to that study
[00:44:53.190]and that,
[00:44:54.180]that declaration.
[00:44:57.060]And, of course, that the task of implementing it is,
[00:45:04.140]is gonna call for probably the work of the next generation
[00:45:11.370]in a social law reform, social justice movement,
[00:45:16.890]where Native tribes work with all Americans of goodwill
[00:45:23.490]to coax our great nation into embracing
[00:45:28.440]the human rights principles in our law
[00:45:31.770]and policy pertaining to Native people.
[00:45:34.770]So that Native people could enjoy all of the human rights
[00:45:43.140]that the rest of us take for granted,
[00:45:45.900]and so this is a historic time
[00:45:50.220]and it's a historic opportunity for each and every one of us
[00:45:54.240]to act, to do the right thing.
[00:45:58.560]These kinds of opportunities only come along once
[00:46:04.170]in the course of a great while.
[00:46:06.930]And when these opportunities of this kind arise,
[00:46:12.720]I think it's really incumbent upon all of us,
[00:46:15.300]all of our citizens,
[00:46:17.220]especially the ones of goodwill to act,
[00:46:21.390]to do the right thing,
[00:46:23.310]because it is an opportunity to contribute to,
[00:46:26.760]I think a great social movement of the kind that would rival
[00:46:33.690]the civil rights movement, the women's movement,
[00:46:36.540]the environmental movement, labor movement,
[00:46:41.850]that would rank alongside
[00:46:43.320]all of the great American social movements
[00:46:46.290]that mark our proud history.
[00:46:48.690]And so this gives us that opportunity,
[00:46:52.590]and so that's my thoughts.
[00:46:56.846]Back in 2013, when this book came out,
[00:47:00.450]I was not involved in the making of the declaration.
[00:47:04.590]I did watch it from afar,
[00:47:07.410]being made over the decades at the UN.
[00:47:11.130]And I had thought to myself that this,
[00:47:13.770]this could provide a lifeline for strengthening
[00:47:18.090]the dark side of federal Indian law.
[00:47:23.157]That body of law that defines the rights of Native people
[00:47:27.510]in the United States has a good side to it,
[00:47:31.080]to be sure
[00:47:33.120]with protective features like the doctrine of tribal,
[00:47:37.200]inherent tribal sovereignty,
[00:47:39.660]the trust relationship with the United States Government
[00:47:43.890]under our treaties
[00:47:45.870]that are very protective
[00:47:48.150]and under which
[00:47:51.690]we've witnessed the rise of our modern Indian nations
[00:47:55.380]by coaxing the courts and the Congress
[00:47:58.740]and the executive branch into
[00:48:03.330]applying these protective features to our modern day issues.
[00:48:08.430]And we've witnessed rise
[00:48:09.600]of our modern Indian nations under that,
[00:48:12.660]but at the same time,
[00:48:15.480]there is a dark side to that body of law
[00:48:19.920]that comes to us from the law of colonialism
[00:48:24.660]that was imported into our domestic legal system.
[00:48:28.170]And that really contains a very, very big
[00:48:32.490]anti-indigenous functions, you know,
[00:48:35.190]that were aimed at dispossessing
[00:48:38.460]and subjugating the Native people
[00:48:42.870]and stamping out their cultures
[00:48:46.440]and occupying their lands and that sort of thing,
[00:48:50.880]during the rise of our Republic.
[00:48:53.670]And these features
[00:48:57.667]really they're outmoded,
[00:49:01.080]they're obsolete.
[00:49:02.385]They trace all the way back to medieval Europe
[00:49:05.606](Walter laughing)
[00:49:06.750]and have resulted in colonizing our Native people,
[00:49:13.020]and conquering them
[00:49:16.800]and colonizing and subjugating them in a lawful way.
[00:49:22.320]Everything that was done to the Indians was perfectly legal
[00:49:26.460]under this dark side of federal Indian law.
[00:49:29.820]And so now in the year 2020,
[00:49:33.300]all of these legal doctrines and notions,
[00:49:38.160]they're really outmoded
[00:49:41.280]and really no longer have a place in our society.
[00:49:44.940]And so we need to discard them and kind of replace
[00:49:50.700]those nefarious legal doctrines with notions of justice
[00:49:58.230]that come to us not only from this United Nations,
[00:50:02.760]but also from the American notions of human rights,
[00:50:08.370]because human rights really are as American as apple pie.
[00:50:15.270]And it was these kinds of inherent inalienable,
[00:50:20.970]indefeasible human rights that come to us
[00:50:25.950]from a higher source that the founding fathers
[00:50:31.290]had in mind when they wrote the declaration of independence
[00:50:34.860]and when they wrote our Constitution
[00:50:37.530]and our bill of rights,
[00:50:39.120]that these are the kinds of rights,
[00:50:42.600]human rights that no nation can take away,
[00:50:46.620]that they come to us from a higher source.
[00:50:48.990]And that
[00:50:52.847]the kinds of rights that for which nations
[00:50:57.540]are formed to protect.
[00:50:59.700]And so our founding fathers were clearly aware
[00:51:05.400]of human rights when they wrote the constitution
[00:51:09.390]and at every juncture in American history
[00:51:14.010]where our democracy expanded and grew,
[00:51:19.290]it was these human rights precepts
[00:51:22.200]that were on the lips of the people.
[00:51:25.200]And so we need only to look to our human right legacy
[00:51:31.050]and we don't have to look to the UN declaration,
[00:51:34.800]but we can look to our own splendid human rights record
[00:51:38.310]and say, let's extend this to the Native people.
[00:51:42.180]And so we have a number of compelling reasons to do that,
[00:51:47.736]but my view of the declaration is it remains important.
[00:51:52.800]And we are beginning to see some movement,
[00:51:57.150]towards gearing up,
[00:51:58.830]towards the standing at the foot of the mountain,
[00:52:01.860]but gearing up towards a marching towards justice,
[00:52:07.500]and reconciliation
[00:52:10.680]and I think that Nebraska has a big role to play in that,
[00:52:18.360]and could take a leadership role
[00:52:21.480]in letting the rest of the nation
[00:52:24.600]know what needs to be done here,
[00:52:27.300]and Nebraska has done that in decades past,
[00:52:31.170]and I know that the people
[00:52:33.240]and the political leaders in the unicameral,
[00:52:37.853]and they've demonstrated that character to me.
[00:52:41.160]So I would hope that Nebraska would
[00:52:46.410]conceivably pave way here, you know,
[00:52:48.930]for the rest of the nation,
[00:52:50.520]like they did in the repatriation loss
[00:52:54.630]back in the early '90s,
[00:52:56.554]that led to a lot of social change.
[00:53:01.091]And so I know that,
[00:53:02.310]that we have it within us,
[00:53:06.055]this
[00:53:08.490]knowing innately
[00:53:13.681]that a justice can
[00:53:14.940]and should be extended to our Native people
[00:53:17.250]and acting on it.
[00:53:19.200]And so, anyway,
[00:53:20.310]I think I've (Walter laughing)
[00:53:22.680]elaborated too long on your question, Margaret,
[00:53:25.440]but I still hold that this is an important.
[00:53:29.737]Yeah.
[00:53:31.410]Legal development for our nation that will help us,
[00:53:37.380]I think write the final chapter, the last chapter
[00:53:41.250]in our great American experiment and democracy.
[00:53:45.540]Thank you, Walter.
[00:53:48.150]So one of the points I took away from your book was
[00:53:52.350]you have that great chapter about lessons to be learned
[00:53:55.980]from the civil rights movement.
[00:53:58.110]And you make the point that
[00:54:01.620]you'd like to see Indigenous nations working together
[00:54:05.520]to sort of mobilize
[00:54:08.310]and get behind
[00:54:12.960]the UN declaration and work toward it.
[00:54:16.176]And I know just recently you shared with me
[00:54:19.170]that the Pawnee Nation has been
[00:54:21.540]sort of taking a leadership role in that.
[00:54:23.340]Would you share with the group
[00:54:24.780]what the Pawnee Nation recently has done?
[00:54:28.650]Yes.
[00:54:30.660]Well,
[00:54:32.070]I think that
[00:54:37.429]when I wrote that book, "In the Light of Justice,"
[00:54:40.020]I was trying to think,
[00:54:41.250]I saw the task of reforming federal Indian law
[00:54:47.310]and implementing the declaration
[00:54:49.470]to be a very big undertaking.
[00:54:59.100]And I look to as an example of the
[00:55:05.310]civil rights movement
[00:55:08.970]from a Supreme Court decision that was handed down
[00:55:12.720]in Plessy v. Ferguson in the late 1890s,
[00:55:17.760]all the way to 1954,
[00:55:21.000]when the Supreme Court finally handed down
[00:55:23.760]the Brown v. Board of Education decision,
[00:55:26.730]that was like a 50,
[00:55:29.940]more than 50 years, 55 years,
[00:55:32.670]it took Black America
[00:55:35.370]to overturn
[00:55:38.040]the separate but equal doctrine
[00:55:40.830]and stride towards equality under the law.
[00:55:44.730]In other words,
[00:55:45.563]to change their legal framework for Black America,
[00:55:49.230]from the law of segregation
[00:55:52.500]to equality under the law,
[00:55:54.870]which put our nation on a brand new path.
[00:55:57.660]And so
[00:55:59.970]I analyzed,
[00:56:03.561]how did they do that?
[00:56:04.656](Walter laughing)
[00:56:06.300]Because, you know, a lot,
[00:56:08.520]a lot of that work is still going on to the current day,
[00:56:15.330]and I think it provides an example of how we might consider
[00:56:21.810]implementing this human rights provisions
[00:56:25.890]of the declaration.
[00:56:28.740]You have to have a build a social justice campaign,
[00:56:32.580]a movement of some kind,
[00:56:34.920]usually entailing a lot of lawyers
[00:56:38.190]and then tribal leaders
[00:56:41.100]and tribal nations,
[00:56:43.740]tribal citizens along with
[00:56:47.700]Americans or other citizens of goodwill,
[00:56:52.200]and that's kind of what the NAACP did,
[00:56:58.290]but
[00:57:00.480]we now have
[00:57:03.360]a movement that is organized
[00:57:05.310]and being led by the Native American Rights Fund
[00:57:08.490]out of Boulder, Colorado.
[00:57:10.920]It formed a joint project with CU law school.
[00:57:15.210]It's called a national implementation project
[00:57:19.050]for the declaration.
[00:57:21.750]And so we found our champions,
[00:57:25.620]we need to raise money to help fund that project,
[00:57:30.030]'cause justice is expensive.
[00:57:31.930](Marilyn laughing)
[00:57:36.930]You know, we found, I think our legal leaders
[00:57:41.610]because of the Native American Rights Fund
[00:57:44.520]has its fingerprints on all
[00:57:46.860]of the modern Indian legislation that has been enacted
[00:57:51.450]since 1970 down to the present day.
[00:57:54.360]It's worked on just about all of them
[00:57:57.180]and participated in most of the Supreme Court cases,
[00:58:00.450]kind of like Thurgood Marshall.
[00:58:04.470]He was the best Supreme Court litigator ever known.
[00:58:09.690]He won like 21 out of 23 cases.
[00:58:14.280]And that is an awesome record,
[00:58:17.820]but our movement now has found
[00:58:20.550]its champions in Boulder, Colorado.
[00:58:26.070]And so they're trying to educate Indian country
[00:58:30.240]about this declaration
[00:58:32.280]and urging tribes
[00:58:36.330]to also embrace this human rights principle
[00:58:40.170]of enacting a tribal legislation,
[00:58:43.650]endorsing the declaration and calling upon all of the states
[00:58:49.230]and the federal government to do the same thing.
[00:58:52.560]Because if our tribal nations don't endorse the declaration,
[00:58:57.450]why should anyone else bother to do it?
[00:59:00.300]And so
[00:59:02.850]our thought is that if we go,
[00:59:05.580]can spark a tribal government legislative movement
[00:59:10.110]to endorse this declaration
[00:59:12.930]and call upon the President of the United States
[00:59:16.140]to develop a plan to implement it,
[00:59:19.110]as well as other jurisdictions,
[00:59:22.050]along that way, we will be educating all of Indian country,
[00:59:27.750]all of the tribal leaders,
[00:59:29.940]all of the tribal attorneys
[00:59:34.980]to begin motivating to do that.
[00:59:37.380]And there has been issues in the past
[00:59:40.200]where Indian staff motivated themselves nationally
[00:59:44.310]to get social change in the past legislation,
[00:59:48.030]nag prepping one of 'em.
[00:59:53.490]I did a lot of work in the prisons
[00:59:56.880]in Nebraska and other places,
[01:00:00.335]where we sued the prisons to
[01:00:04.440]have them be accountable to their Indian inmate population,
[01:00:08.520]their cultures and their rights to equality
[01:00:12.300]and First Amendment rights
[01:00:14.970]and going around the country to do that.
[01:00:22.050]The Indian Child Welfare Act case that was passed in 1979,
[01:00:28.320]a lot of inter tribal lobby about our children
[01:00:34.110]that were one in four of our,
[01:00:36.840]one in four of every Indian child had been removed
[01:00:40.890]from their families in the communities
[01:00:43.579]and placed into non-Indian families
[01:00:47.190]and institutions by the early 1970s.
[01:00:53.100]And there was a crying need to develop
[01:00:56.611]and no culture can survive prolong
[01:00:58.650]when all of its children are systematically taken.
[01:01:02.460]And there's this UN genocide convention that includes
[01:01:08.610]in the definition of genocide
[01:01:11.640]is a systematic taking of the children.
[01:01:15.000]And so that was affected each and every tribe
[01:01:19.710]in one in four families across the country,
[01:01:23.280]and it led to the enactment nationally
[01:01:26.700]of a very extraordinary law called
[01:01:29.070]the Indian Child Welfare Act
[01:01:33.750]that was passed into law that gave tribes jurisdiction
[01:01:37.470]over their children,
[01:01:38.490]no matter where in the country they're located,
[01:01:41.850]to adjudicate their custody,
[01:01:44.880]and what would be their disposition
[01:01:47.220]for those broken families,
[01:01:49.710]instead of having the non-Indian welfare system
[01:01:54.960]that was driven by ethnocentric standards
[01:01:59.130]to make those kinds of decisions that was really pulling
[01:02:02.640]all of our kids out of their families
[01:02:05.310]and communities and their cultures.
[01:02:08.520]So in this instance,
[01:02:15.930]this national project is trying to format or foster
[01:02:22.260]or encourage a tribal legislative movement
[01:02:26.130]across the country that would
[01:02:31.410]enact tribal statutes through our own governments
[01:02:35.640]that would endorse this declaration.
[01:02:41.042]I call on other jurisdictions to do the same thing.
[01:02:44.160]As a way to begin a national campaign,
[01:02:47.310]we think along the way,
[01:02:49.560]there may be low hanging fruit in other
[01:02:52.770]state legislatures along the way
[01:02:55.020]that would possibly do the same thing.
[01:02:58.350]For example, in Canada,
[01:03:00.000]as a result of first nation's advocacy there,
[01:03:04.560]they first got a province to pass a law,
[01:03:07.740]British Columbia in 2019,
[01:03:10.110]that endorsed the declaration
[01:03:13.050]and aligned all of the laws of British Columbia.
[01:03:17.520]And that provided a legislative precedent
[01:03:20.670]for the enactment of a national law in Canada last summer,
[01:03:26.100]to do the same thing on a national basis.
[01:03:29.007]And so it just may take one or two states to pass this,
[01:03:34.140]and maybe a couple dozen tribal nations to do,
[01:03:38.220]do the same thing.
[01:03:40.680]I know, so here at the Pawnee Nation
[01:03:45.960]in June,
[01:03:48.300]or excuse me, in May of this spring,
[01:03:51.540]we passed a resolution that did two things
[01:03:55.140]our business council,
[01:03:57.270]and this followed a lot of internal tribal education
[01:04:01.080]about human rights and the declaration.
[01:04:06.180]And we enacted a resolution on May 12
[01:04:10.560]that
[01:04:13.260]endorsed
[01:04:14.547]and it did two things.
[01:04:16.500]First, it enacted a tribal law entitled
[01:04:22.980]the Pawnee Nation Declaration
[01:04:25.470]on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act.
[01:04:32.285]And I'll go into that act here shortly.
[01:04:35.700]And then the second thing this resolution did is that it,
[01:04:39.600]and I'll just read it.
[01:04:42.360]Be it further resolved, henceforth,
[01:04:47.430]it shall be the policy of the Pawnee Nation to endorse
[01:04:53.400]and consult the UN declaration standards
[01:04:56.970]as a moral compass that provides,
[01:05:01.110]that provides sound guidelines
[01:05:03.540]for making just laws and policies
[01:05:08.250]that protect the well-being
[01:05:10.020]and survival of the Pawnee Nation and its citizens.
[01:05:14.640]And so
[01:05:16.920]we passed this policy,
[01:05:19.830]a prospective policy that utilizes the declaration
[01:05:24.900]as our moral compass in passing laws
[01:05:28.380]that pertain to our,
[01:05:31.920]our well-being and our survival,
[01:05:35.100]that we would consult the declaration
[01:05:38.160]to make sure we're aligned with it.
[01:05:40.867]And I would say this that every democracy,
[01:05:46.230]it seems to me needs a moral compass.
[01:05:50.010]We need a moral compass to guide
[01:05:54.510]the legislation,
[01:05:56.550]legislation by and for the people.
[01:06:00.360]And so our moral compass going forward
[01:06:03.300]is gonna be this UN declaration.
[01:06:06.360]And it's an internal policy of our council
[01:06:09.630]from where the sun now stands,
[01:06:13.461]that's just what we're going to follow
[01:06:15.780]when we're passing policies and statutes.
[01:06:21.600]And then as to
[01:06:24.381]the legislation that we passed,
[01:06:28.320]it
[01:06:31.680]has a number of findings about the need for human rights,
[01:06:40.920]to reform federal Indian law and strengthen it
[01:06:44.130]and so on and so forth.
[01:06:47.220]And then
[01:06:52.170]the crux of it is in section six
[01:06:56.010]and I'll just read it.
[01:06:57.270]It says,
[01:06:59.220]it says Pawnee Nation endorsement
[01:07:01.140]and support for the UN,
[01:07:03.840]the UN declaration on the rights of Indigenous people.
[01:07:07.080]Section one,
[01:07:08.940]the Pawnee Nation falls upon the United States
[01:07:13.830]and states of Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas, and Colorado
[01:07:20.160]to implement the declaration provisions
[01:07:23.700]into their laws and policies.
[01:07:28.620]And the reason why we included Nebraska and Kansas
[01:07:33.330]and Oklahoma and Colorado is that
[01:07:37.320]the Aboriginal homeland of the Pawnee Nation
[01:07:41.670]spans those states.
[01:07:44.130]We have holy places, burial grounds, village sites,
[01:07:49.710]historic sites, cemeteries, et cetera,
[01:07:56.430]throughout that region
[01:07:57.780]in the central plains of North America,
[01:08:00.750]and deepest, darkest North America in the heart of the
[01:08:06.600]Great Plains is where the Pawnee Nation was created
[01:08:12.270]according to our origin story.
[01:08:15.000]There's no archeological evidence of us
[01:08:17.970]ever living anywhere else.
[01:08:23.730]When the world was young and created,
[01:08:26.820]our Adam and Eve were conceived by
[01:08:33.931]the morning star and the evening star,
[01:08:36.840]and then the sun and the moon.
[01:08:39.270]And they were brought to earth
[01:08:40.770]on the West bank of the Missouri River
[01:08:43.890]by a whirlwind and went on to people, this region.
[01:08:48.510]And so we spanned all the way from the Missouri River
[01:08:53.520]to the front range of the Rocky Mountains.
[01:08:58.920]One of our holy places in the West there is,
[01:09:01.980]of course, Pikes Peak in the realm of the evening star,
[01:09:06.630]the mother of all things.
[01:09:08.310]And so we want the states of this region to acknowledge
[01:09:13.800]our human rights.
[01:09:14.820]We're still here,
[01:09:16.470]despite warfare,
[01:09:20.400]starvation, pandemics of every description.
[01:09:25.620]Our people I'm proud to say,
[01:09:27.330]we're still here in the Great Plains of North America,
[01:09:30.507]and we don't plan on going anywhere,
[01:09:33.360]but we want our human rights, Indigenous rights,
[01:09:36.360]the full measure of our Indigenous rights to be honored
[01:09:39.930]and respected, especially when these states,
[01:09:44.580]they're the current stewards of our holy places,
[01:09:49.230]and we want them to be protected.
[01:09:53.100]These are our cathedrals.
[01:10:00.840]Then section two here in this act,
[01:10:04.260]it says, the Pawnee Nation requests
[01:10:07.590]the president of the United States
[01:10:09.540]to develop a national plan
[01:10:12.120]to implement the UN declaration in partnership
[01:10:16.110]in consultation with tribal nations, Alaska Natives,
[01:10:20.190]and Native Hawaiians.
[01:10:23.490]And so that's pretty much what the act does.
[01:10:27.300]It falls in line with a handful of other
[01:10:31.988]tribal legislation.
[01:10:39.780]For example, in Oklahoma,
[01:10:41.850]the big, the big five civilized tribes,
[01:10:46.530]the largest in the country, the Cherokee Nation,
[01:10:50.520]the Choctaw, Chickasaw,
[01:10:56.190]Muscogee Creek nation, the Seminole nation,
[01:10:59.460]they have, you know, probably several,
[01:11:07.140]half a million members.
[01:11:11.172]They have passed a joint resolution
[01:11:14.670]calling on the United States to implement this declaration
[01:11:19.260]and President Biden to work with the tribes
[01:11:21.960]to develop a national plan for doing so.
[01:11:26.220]And then on the national level,
[01:11:28.290]the National Congress of American Indians,
[01:11:32.040]it's an inter tribal organization of
[01:11:34.860]some 300 tribal governments,
[01:11:37.530]they've passed similar resolutions as well.
[01:11:43.440]So there is a movement a foot to,
[01:11:48.240]to ask our government to coax our president,
[01:11:55.050]the United States did endorse this
[01:11:57.930]under the Obama Administration in 2010,
[01:12:03.060]but stop short of implementing it.
[01:12:07.440]There's been an agency
[01:12:11.580]here or there that might have referenced it
[01:12:14.030]in some of their policy making,
[01:12:15.900]but there's been no major movement to implement it.
[01:12:23.130]And so
[01:12:25.830]we're thinking that this,
[01:12:29.280]we have a little window of opportunity here
[01:12:32.130]in the Biden Administration to
[01:12:35.550]go to the White House hand in hand
[01:12:37.860]and bended knee and ask the president to
[01:12:42.990]develop a national plan here to implement this.
[01:12:48.780]Maybe someday,
[01:12:51.810]we'll get some grownups in Congress
[01:12:54.180]that will (Marilyn laughing)
[01:12:55.500]that worked on a bipartisan basis to
[01:13:02.610]pass the national law.
[01:13:04.650]Right now, you know,
[01:13:08.250]all I see in the halls of Congress is,
[01:13:11.913]is a lot of dysfunction and partisan strike
[01:13:16.650]and gridlock, you know,
[01:13:17.850]so I'm not looking for anything there at the moment,
[01:13:20.520]but someday, we'll have a grownups back in Congress
[01:13:24.930]like we used to have, I hope. (Marilyn laughing)
[01:13:26.833](Walter laughing)
[01:13:31.231]But I think the executive branch can do a lot
[01:13:34.500]and be developing a national plan on the executive branch
[01:13:38.880]and see what bring Congress along
[01:13:43.140]at some point in the future.
[01:13:45.300]And I think if a number of states were to pass laws on this,
[01:13:52.500]on a partisan bipartisan basis
[01:13:55.080]possibly it would show,
[01:13:56.490]it would show that it could provide some precedent
[01:14:00.150]for national action.
[01:14:02.700]The United States,
[01:14:05.250]a lot of its foreign policy is based on human rights.
[01:14:10.710]Our presidents go around the world,
[01:14:14.130]chiding other nations for their human right violations.
[01:14:24.554]I think as it was the President Eisenhower
[01:14:29.580]once said, that whatever America wants in the world
[01:14:34.770]has to take place in its own backyard first.
[01:14:37.916](Walter laughing)
[01:14:39.300]And so we can't deny human rights to our Native peoples.
[01:14:44.940]And then with the straight face, go to China,
[01:14:47.730]and chide them
[01:14:49.800]for violating the human rights of their people.
[01:14:52.680]So there's a national interest in,
[01:14:57.766]from a foreign policy standpoint
[01:15:00.480]to make sure we're on strong human rights footing
[01:15:03.300]with all sectors of our society,
[01:15:05.430]that includes the Native people.
[01:15:10.920]We proclaim to the world proudly
[01:15:13.980]and with a lot of
[01:15:17.850]correctly so I think in my view that we're the leading,
[01:15:21.960]or we were the leading democracy in the world today,
[01:15:25.350]and people depended on us.
[01:15:28.110]And so to be that beacon of light,
[01:15:31.980]of freedom, unprecedented freedom,
[01:15:34.680]and so
[01:15:39.480]I think it undermines our reputation in the world,
[01:15:48.120]to not accord our Native people,
[01:15:51.240]their full measure of their inherent Indigenous rights,
[01:15:55.410]human rights.
[01:15:56.670]And so
[01:16:00.060]I think,
[01:16:02.160]and that's the whole purpose I think of
[01:16:04.320]reckoning and reconciliation.
[01:16:06.270]You have been torn us under,
[01:16:09.570]by some sort of a wrong that needs to be healed.
[01:16:14.460]And when you go through all of the steps of apology
[01:16:18.210]and acceptance and atonement,
[01:16:21.870]it brings us together.
[01:16:24.510]A reconciliation is affected
[01:16:27.990]and we're stronger.
[01:16:29.880]We're reunited into a stronger people,
[01:16:34.590]stronger society and stronger nation.
[01:16:39.150]There's a lot of reasons to implement it.
[01:16:42.483]And so I don't,
[01:16:44.202]I forgot Margaret what the question was,
[01:16:46.559](Walter laughing)
[01:16:47.392](Margaret laughing)
[01:16:49.500]It doesn't matter.
[01:16:51.240]It's fascinating to hear you talk, Walter,
[01:16:54.000]and I guess,
[01:16:56.340]I mean, you have a lot of people on the call tonight.
[01:16:59.310]We do have somebody from Tennessee,
[01:17:00.900]but I think the rest of us are from Nebraska.
[01:17:04.200]And so I would love to get a sense from you
[01:17:08.250]about how could we Nebraskan support our state
[01:17:14.010]adopting this
[01:17:17.250]and implementing it at the state level.
[01:17:20.130]I mean, we have a very conservative governor,
[01:17:22.860]but we do have a legislature that,
[01:17:27.210]it's not entirely conservative,
[01:17:31.290]and besides many conservatives
[01:17:33.660]have supported Indigenous rights over the years,
[01:17:35.820]including people like Barry Goldwater and-
[01:17:38.730]Yeah.
[01:17:39.563]John McCain.
[01:17:41.760]So-
[01:17:42.593]Yes.
[01:17:43.426]So what advice could you give us for how we can get this,
[01:17:46.680]how we can support this in Nebraska?
[01:17:50.370]Yes.
[01:17:51.203]That's an interesting question, it really is.
[01:17:59.730]There's a number of things I think that could be done.
[01:18:04.530]And I think part of the ball is in the part of
[01:18:07.890]the Nebraska tribes that are still in Nebraska
[01:18:13.350]and also in the court of the other Great Plains tribes
[01:18:18.270]that are closely connected with Nebraska.
[01:18:23.160]And so they,
[01:18:24.330]I would think that the Nebraska Indian commission
[01:18:28.860]would be in a position to get convene the tribes,
[01:18:33.720]and talk about this declaration
[01:18:36.360]and see what the tribes wanna do.
[01:18:42.060]Then we have this national project in Boulder
[01:18:45.030]that can provide education background, educational material,
[01:18:52.110]and possibly play a role.
[01:18:54.150]But I would see some sort of a coalition,
[01:18:57.360]a grassroots coalition of the people and the tribes,
[01:19:02.100]who
[01:19:04.860]possibly develop some sort of a reckoning
[01:19:08.130]and reconciliation process.
[01:19:15.467]There's a number of reckoning
[01:19:17.280]and reconciliation processes that are going around
[01:19:20.820]right now that we could think about.
[01:19:23.940]For example, up in Canada,
[01:19:26.340]one of the impetus for the national law
[01:19:29.430]that they passed in 2021 summer, last summer.
[01:19:35.160]They had a national truth telling and reconciliation process
[01:19:42.600]with the First Nations that was centered
[01:19:45.660]on the boarding school experience.
[01:19:49.200]And it kind of led to a national apology
[01:19:53.820]to the First Nations for that
[01:19:57.180]traumatic experience there.
[01:20:01.320]And I think played a role in motivating the march to justice
[01:20:05.940]that we're now seeing and that democracy in Canada,
[01:20:09.900]which may well be the leading democracy in our hemisphere,
[01:20:15.960]given all the dysfunction that we're facing.
[01:20:19.380]I think we've lost the title of being a leading democracy
[01:20:22.770]in our own North American Hemisphere here.
[01:20:26.340]But that reconciliation process,
[01:20:29.820]I think played a role there,
[01:20:33.630]because it involved truth telling,
[01:20:37.560]coming to terms with a painful past,
[01:20:42.720]kind of a reckoning and bringing discussions.
[01:20:48.863]In our society,
[01:20:52.230]we have had a serious national conversation about
[01:20:56.370]slavery, for example.
[01:20:58.950]And a troubling aftermath of slavery
[01:21:02.610]and discrimination and that kind of thing.
[01:21:05.700]We've never had
[01:21:08.040]a similar public discourse about Indians or Native peoples,
[01:21:15.240]do they have human rights,
[01:21:17.010]and if so what is the content of those human rights,
[01:21:20.250]and that sort of thing.
[01:21:23.460]What did we do to the Indians at the history of our nation?
[01:21:29.970]How do we deal with this legacy of conquest
[01:21:35.910]and colonialism upon which the nation was built?
[01:21:41.460]What were the impacts of that on the Native peoples
[01:21:45.900]and what could we do to make amends
[01:21:50.100]and make things right,
[01:21:51.720]so that whatever
[01:21:54.184]the lingering ill effects of that history might be,
[01:22:00.030]that we could make things right,
[01:22:04.200]and through acts of atonement
[01:22:06.780]and then go forward as a stronger nation
[01:22:09.450]and a stronger state of Nebraska.
[01:22:12.690]And I'm thinking that
[01:22:17.250]if we had some sort of a process of some kind,
[01:22:20.490]maybe it could be sponsored by a Senator,
[01:22:24.450]working with a citizen group
[01:22:27.360]or the Indian commission could be involved,
[01:22:30.600]or whatever,
[01:22:33.060]we could bring in the national project
[01:22:35.550]and the tribes and have a discourse,
[01:22:38.640]a state discourse of some kind.
[01:22:42.150]The universities would have a role.
[01:22:47.100]I'm just thinking out loud here.
[01:22:51.870]But if we could get to the point to where
[01:22:55.620]we could all acknowledge
[01:22:58.230]that there are lingering ill effects from our legacy
[01:23:01.860]that we inherited, we didn't commit 'em,
[01:23:04.410]but we inherited this legacy of conquest and colonialism,
[01:23:11.880]and that some of those
[01:23:15.076]ill effects remain,
[01:23:16.530]still linger are still with us today
[01:23:19.230]and can still be seen in the law
[01:23:21.533]and the social ills, the Indigenous communities, et cetera.
[01:23:28.350]Then the enactment of endorsement of this human,
[01:23:34.080]this declaration
[01:23:35.940]would be an act of atonement,
[01:23:40.110]an act of atonement to try to heal that past,
[01:23:46.620]by recognizing and
[01:23:54.360]trying to align some of our laws and policies
[01:23:57.270]to make sure that never repeats again,
[01:24:00.444]that our Native people can be comforted
[01:24:03.840]that these
[01:24:09.600]clasmatic traumatic history will not be repeated
[01:24:14.130]because we'll have human rights,
[01:24:17.160]would guide state policy of Nebraska,
[01:24:21.210]state laws and state policies.
[01:24:24.450]And I know that Nebraska
[01:24:28.350]can govern itself quite nicely
[01:24:32.430]without the need to travel on human rights of anyone,
[01:24:37.170]much less it's Native people.
[01:24:39.641]There's what?
[01:24:41.520]A couple thousand in the whole state,
[01:24:45.330]what do we have to fear by
[01:24:48.270]acknowledging their Indigenous rights?
[01:24:50.817]And we don't need,
[01:24:52.110]we can govern ourselves without traveling
[01:24:54.360]on the human rights of anyone quite nicely,
[01:24:57.270]and I'm sure of that.
[01:25:00.060]It's not like you're in Oklahoma here
[01:25:02.250]where you got 39 good sized Indian nations
[01:25:06.630]that could cause a little bit of pause,
[01:25:08.820]but you guys are talking about two or three
[01:25:11.580]fairly small tribes.
[01:25:13.380]And so there's really nothing
[01:25:16.920]from a practical governance standpoint,
[01:25:20.326]that should cause much concern,
[01:25:27.491]and furthermore, there's not any history of Nebraska
[01:25:30.960]of really traveling on human rights.
[01:25:34.920]It was the same way with the Pawnee Nation.
[01:25:37.230]We had no history of violating the human rights to anybody,
[01:25:41.190]but yet we were able to align our laws
[01:25:44.640]with that going forward.
[01:25:45.990]And Nebraska could do the same thing.
[01:25:48.930]if you had a long history and your whole way of life,
[01:25:52.470]and your whole form of government was an economy
[01:25:56.610]was based on exploiting and oppressing the Indians,
[01:26:01.350]then, you know, there would be some political
[01:26:04.500]and economic reasons why there's no way we could
[01:26:08.345](Walter laughing)
[01:26:10.050]live without oppressing somebody,
[01:26:11.940]but Nebraska has none of that.
[01:26:13.980]So I think you guys could be low hanging fruit here,
[01:26:18.930]and take a soldier stance
[01:26:22.470]and passed the law, get a law passed,
[01:26:26.430]that would really be no skin off your backs
[01:26:30.000]because, you know, you haven't really created this problem.
[01:26:37.530]It's something that our generation inherited
[01:26:40.620]from generations past,
[01:26:44.220]and we've moved on,
[01:26:46.200]but we're left with this,
[01:26:48.270]this traumatic history that we,
[01:26:50.773]a painful pass that we wanna try to heal as best we can.
[01:26:54.330]We know we can't turn back the hands of time,
[01:26:58.170]but we can do everything within our power
[01:27:01.560]to try to make things right.
[01:27:03.390]And I think it's in our self-interest to do so,
[01:27:07.650]because we want to heal any form of trauma in our society,
[01:27:15.000]no matter what sector is experiencing trauma,
[01:27:18.810]we need to try to heal it if we can,
[01:27:23.910]because why?
[01:27:24.840]Because that makes us a stronger society, you know.
[01:27:33.159]So I think,
[01:27:34.530]and I would also add that
[01:27:38.730]Secretary Deb Haaland,
[01:27:40.920]Secretary of Interior, Deb Haaland,
[01:27:43.320]the First Native American Woman,
[01:27:46.380]or Native American period
[01:27:48.600]to be the secretary of interior
[01:27:52.170]has initiated a one year tour of the Indian boarding schools
[01:27:58.530]or nationally going around the country
[01:28:02.550]to hear about the exporting school experience
[01:28:06.990]of Native people.
[01:28:13.290]Because there was a lot of very horrific
[01:28:16.920]and traumatic things that went on in those boarding schools
[01:28:21.210]to those kids that were forcibly removed
[01:28:24.750]from their families,
[01:28:26.490]often shipped across the country to spend 10, 15 years
[01:28:31.680]away from their parents,
[01:28:33.780]away from their cultures to be,
[01:28:37.170]where they tried to kill the Indian,
[01:28:39.150]to save the man or person,
[01:28:43.590]and lots of brutality took place within those walls.
[01:28:47.970]A lot of children died.
[01:28:49.920]There's cemeteries,
[01:28:52.590]in these schools all the,
[01:28:54.630]and just,
[01:28:56.490]I attended a Secretary Haaland's,
[01:29:01.230]her first stop on this tour
[01:29:03.930]was the Riverside Indian School in Oklahoma,
[01:29:07.830]and I and about four or five of my tribal government
[01:29:12.120]went down to Anadarko, Oklahoma
[01:29:15.750]to the Riverside Indian School
[01:29:19.770]to hear what was going on there.
[01:29:22.410]And there was a whole gymnasium
[01:29:25.500]that was full of Indian school survivors,
[01:29:32.820]and they spent all day,
[01:29:37.530]hearing from one after the other.
[01:29:40.620]And it's one thing to read about
[01:29:43.140]some of those traumatic boarding school experiences,
[01:29:47.220]but it's quite another to sit there
[01:29:49.800]and listen to it all day,
[01:29:51.930]very horrific
[01:29:55.620]stories,
[01:29:57.090]and it was very,
[01:29:58.380]it was quite,
[01:29:59.580]it was hard to hear,
[01:30:01.500]it kind of gut wrenching,
[01:30:04.800]kind of thing to go through.
[01:30:10.020]I made a few comments there.
[01:30:12.420]I said, it's good you're wanting to heal that painful past.
[01:30:17.040]And I'm looking forward to your one year effort to do so.
[01:30:23.580]But if you're going to try to heal it,
[01:30:28.260]it's not enough just to hold,
[01:30:30.990]let these Indians talk about their experience.
[01:30:36.000]You have to go forward.
[01:30:37.320]You gotta at some point,
[01:30:38.610]you have to say, I'm sorry.
[01:30:44.328]I have to issue,
[01:30:45.330]get on bended knee, hat in hand
[01:30:50.010]with a heartfelt, sincere, honest apology,
[01:30:55.980]and say, I'm really sorry what we did to you,
[01:31:01.770]to these living people.
[01:31:03.000]They're all about my age, you know,
[01:31:07.271]and they were saying, I will never,
[01:31:10.110]I could never forgive the Bureau of Indian Affairs
[01:31:14.670]for what they'd done to me as a young kid,
[01:31:20.430]but it all begins with an apology.
[01:31:22.980]And then the Indian kids,
[01:31:27.960]they're now old folks like me,
[01:31:31.050]they have to find it the strength within themselves
[01:31:33.720]to accept that apology and forgive,
[01:31:38.190]which is equally hard to do
[01:31:40.470]as to render an apology,
[01:31:43.890]so that, you know,
[01:31:47.880]and knowing that to forgive is probably
[01:31:52.860]the most powerful thing that a human being has
[01:31:57.330]is to actually forgive someone,
[01:31:59.550]any religious tradition will tell you that.
[01:32:03.660]But once that's done,
[01:32:07.590]the burden shifts back to the BIA in this instance,
[01:32:11.700]and this is what I told him,
[01:32:12.840]I said, the BIA tried to stamp out our languages,
[01:32:23.436]and to strip us from our culture
[01:32:28.500]and to remake us into white farmers,
[01:32:33.450]and there was a lots of atrocity,
[01:32:35.670]people being stripped down and covered with
[01:32:41.070]chemicals, you know,
[01:32:42.720]so they weren't gonna have any lies
[01:32:45.502]and just, you know, sexual abuses,
[01:32:48.630]and just,
[01:32:49.463]it was just horrendous, you know.
[01:32:54.563]And so, you know,
[01:32:57.120]I said that
[01:33:02.610]the BIA is gonna have to come up with some acts of atonement
[01:33:06.450]and what would they,
[01:33:07.530]what will they be,
[01:33:09.090]if we're going to actually try to heal this?
[01:33:12.300]One of it is to give BIA funding,
[01:33:16.320]to restore the languages that they tried to destroy.
[01:33:20.880]BIA doesn't give a dime out to help tribes.
[01:33:25.920]The government went to great lengths for
[01:33:28.530]several generous races trying to stamp out
[01:33:31.800]Indigenous language.
[01:33:34.770]And one thing they can do is to give funding to the tribes
[01:33:38.610]that are trying to restore it to our former proficiency.
[01:33:43.740]And then I said,
[01:33:44.573]and then the second thing you can do is to endorse
[01:33:49.800]this human rights principle,
[01:33:51.390]to make sure that this never happens again,
[01:33:56.790]and hope that could
[01:34:04.290]try to bring us to the reconciliation.
[01:34:08.160]And so she's going around the country
[01:34:11.460]in that truth telling and reconciliation process,
[01:34:16.140]and it's supposed to be,
[01:34:17.400]it's time to heal it.
[01:34:18.900]And I hope she's able to do so.
[01:34:21.240]But that went on in Canada
[01:34:23.040]and it did lead to a national apology
[01:34:26.940]and the enactment of the law
[01:34:30.690]to endorse this declaration
[01:34:32.580]and to begin implementing it as a way to make sure that
[01:34:36.450]that Canada's painful treatment of its Native people
[01:34:41.490]during the growth of that democracy
[01:34:43.800]is never gonna take place again,
[01:34:45.810]and to accord the Native people the same rights
[01:34:48.813]that the rest of the Canadians take for granted.
[01:34:52.560]And so
[01:34:55.680]I don't know,
[01:34:57.390]but I'm thinking that
[01:34:59.760]we could, Nebraskans could do something like that
[01:35:02.670]on a statewide basis in some fashion.
[01:35:05.880]You've got a lot of really good institutions there
[01:35:09.810]that conceivably could band together to sponsor something
[01:35:13.950]of that nature and maybe have a steering committee
[01:35:18.510]with all of the tribes involved.
[01:35:29.908]It could be done,
[01:35:32.985]and as I mentioned,
[01:35:34.230]it would really cost the state government
[01:35:37.890]very little to actually endorse it.
[01:35:40.470]There's really not a whole lot of changes
[01:35:42.870]that I would imagine
[01:35:44.790]if the state in Nebraska were to pass the law
[01:35:47.970]adopting the declaration and implementing it,
[01:35:52.850]it probably wouldn't,
[01:35:55.500]they'll probably be very little change
[01:35:57.630]to existing state law and policy,
[01:36:00.510]because you guys haven't been into that business
[01:36:03.030]since
[01:36:03.965](Walter laughing)
[01:36:05.790]building the Union Pacific Rail Road across the state,
[01:36:11.970]and fighting with the Indians that we're trying to take,
[01:36:16.560]burn the rail road track
[01:36:18.935]is quicker than it could be laid,
[01:36:21.547](Walter laughing)
[01:36:23.047]but that's, you know,
[01:36:25.560]I think Nebraska could do it,
[01:36:27.030]and it would,
[01:36:30.420]And there's a, you know,
[01:36:31.470]a number of tribes that are from Nebraska,
[01:36:33.870]all of our neighboring tribes down here are Nebraskans,
[01:36:38.280]Pawnee, just our next door neighbors are the Otoe-Missouria,
[01:36:42.960]and then just up the road from them are the Poncas,
[01:36:48.480]and gosh,
[01:36:52.980]but we were once some of the predominant tribes there,
[01:36:58.080]then you got the newcomers, the Lakotas,
[01:37:01.740]that came in at some time later in history.
[01:37:05.040]And you've got the three tribes that are there.
[01:37:07.950]And a lot of other tribes came through the area as well.
[01:37:11.940]There's a connections there.
[01:37:13.650]But all of the Great Plains tribes are still here.
[01:37:18.480]None of them went extinct and they're still here,
[01:37:22.200]many here in Oklahoma (Walter laughing)
[01:37:24.930]that were removed
[01:37:26.160]or whatever.
[01:37:31.128]But this would be something that could be done.
[01:37:35.130]It would be very interesting to see that take place.
[01:37:37.980]I know in 1989,
[01:37:44.070]I came up as a young,
[01:37:46.200]I had black hair back then,
[01:37:47.835](Marilyn laughing)
[01:37:48.668]Staff attorney with the Native American Rights Fund
[01:37:52.380]and representing the Pawnee Nation.
[01:37:56.820]And our people had spirit sickness
[01:38:01.020]when we found out that all of our graves
[01:38:05.640]and cemeteries had been unearthed
[01:38:07.740]and the remains taken
[01:38:08.940]to the Nebraska state historical society.
[01:38:13.230]And so we worked with the Winnebagos
[01:38:16.050]and the Omaha truck to try to get our remains,
[01:38:23.790]our ancestors returned or so they could be reinter.
[01:38:26.610]Most of 'em are in Genoa now at the city cemetery.
[01:38:31.650]But along that way, it was a hard fought legislative battle.
[01:38:36.150]And I wouldn't envision that today in Nebraska,
[01:38:40.440]but it did produce one of the first
[01:38:45.420]and most extensive state laws protecting unmarked burials,
[01:38:51.660]and also requiring museums and institutions to return,
[01:38:57.510]repatriate their dead Indians and funerary objects,
[01:39:03.270]and that sort of thing, back to their tribes of origin.
[01:39:10.080]Ernie Chambers,
[01:39:11.220]and there was a couple other senators that were
[01:39:14.548]the champions.
[01:39:16.620]It was probably the biggest legislative issue
[01:39:20.460]of that session.
[01:39:24.000]There was probably about 55 hostile amendments
[01:39:28.980]that were fought off,
[01:39:30.570]that were proposed during that session,
[01:39:34.020]that were resisted successfully.
[01:39:36.540]And it was in the newspapers and everything.
[01:39:39.750]But it was a hard fought legislative measure,
[01:39:45.390]but it was very uplifting to hear the words of the senators
[01:39:49.650]in the unicameral regarding that matter,
[01:39:55.020]and to see it signed into law.
[01:39:59.160]And then one year later in 1990,
[01:40:03.330]Congress passing the national legislation,
[01:40:08.070]the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act,
[01:40:12.570]which basically took what Nebraska did
[01:40:17.070]and made it a national law and policy.
[01:40:20.765](Walter laughing)
[01:40:21.960]And it all came from Nebraska.
[01:40:27.030]I know that Nebraska's,
[01:40:29.070]Nebraskans have got it in because these issues,
[01:40:32.340]whether you be a conservative or middle of the road
[01:40:36.510]or a liberal or whatever,
[01:40:38.220]you know, everybody appreciates,
[01:40:42.330]especially and there are Great Plains region here,
[01:40:45.390]because the creator, Atí'as Tirawa
[01:40:51.090]wants strong hearted people
[01:40:54.510]to be here in the Great Plains.
[01:40:56.280]It's an unforgiving land,
[01:40:59.310]but he wants us to persist and persevere.
[01:41:03.600]And so he instilled strong heart and bravery in all of us
[01:41:10.560]who live here in the Great Plains of North America.
[01:41:14.550]That's the way he wanted it to be.
[01:41:17.490]I know that this could be done in Nebraska
[01:41:21.210]'cause you guys had done it before,
[01:41:23.280]and it could send a signal to the rest of the nation
[01:41:29.580]to let's get this done so that America could be
[01:41:32.580]among the First Nations to pass a national law
[01:41:37.290]as a leading democracy
[01:41:39.150]and not be one of the last nations on earth
[01:41:43.380]to be grudgingly be drag into this human rights era
[01:41:47.130]for its own tribal people.
[01:41:50.190]We need to be among the First Nations,
[01:41:52.440]if we're a leading democracy and we go around the world
[01:41:57.030]honking our human rights for.
[01:42:00.390]We need to get this done for our Native people
[01:42:03.870]and be among the first to do so and not among the last.
[01:42:08.587](Walter laughing)
[01:42:10.260]And I think Nebraska could help
[01:42:12.900]prompt our government to do so.
[01:42:15.407]And, you know, a lot of people,
[01:42:17.550]a lot of people think that
[01:42:20.250]it's a hopeless case,
[01:42:22.260]you know that, oh, these are just rednecks
[01:42:25.020]or farmers or whatever.
[01:42:27.540]I've gone into legislative hearings in Kansas
[01:42:31.290]where some of the lawmakers would show up in overalls,
[01:42:35.112](Walter laughing)
[01:42:37.080]but yet they understood the basic human sentiments
[01:42:43.380]about burial and the repose of the dead
[01:42:48.450]and the sensibilities of the living,
[01:42:51.180]because it's a universal thing.
[01:42:54.210]And so they, you know,
[01:42:56.640]we're in the American Heartland,
[01:42:59.220]and people sell us short,
[01:43:00.903](Walter laughing)
[01:43:02.700]but I think Nebraska's,
[01:43:04.470]Nebraskans can see these universal sentiments,
[01:43:08.310]human rights,
[01:43:13.411]and so our nation has gone to war,
[01:43:18.570]for example, to protect human rights
[01:43:20.517]and to punish human rights violators that
[01:43:24.090]we take it seriously.
[01:43:25.290]So I think we need to get this taken care of,
[01:43:30.810]for our Native people.
[01:43:33.210]Anyway those are my thoughts on that.
[01:43:35.880]Yes, Ma'am,
[01:43:36.930]Marylyn.
[01:43:38.688]Could I toss in a question?
[01:43:40.860]Yes, please.
[01:43:45.600]I've heard it said that sometimes
[01:43:47.070]when you've got a problem,
[01:43:48.240]a way to strategize is to make it bigger.
[01:43:50.940]And that's what I wanna suggest,
[01:43:53.640]although I love your strategy.
[01:43:56.130]Everything you've described so far,
[01:43:59.070]Nebraska was the first state to disinvest from South Africa.
[01:44:04.680]And once we had done that,
[01:44:05.940]it started a whole cascade of states taking some action.
[01:44:13.590]I don't think we would've won in South Africa
[01:44:15.870]if there hadn't been the international pressure
[01:44:17.970]on investment from corporate,
[01:44:19.470]with the corporate and banks.
[01:44:22.110]And it seems to me that we need to take advantage of
[01:44:28.800]the technology we have now,
[01:44:31.440]which is, I mean, if it puts the climate movement,
[01:44:36.540]I think of as kids from the Swedish kid
[01:44:40.290]to all the other kids in touch with each other easily.
[01:44:47.190]We've got email,
[01:44:48.360]we've got ways to have these discussions.
[01:44:51.810]I'm really, I mean, I completely support the local action,
[01:44:55.020]but I wonder about
[01:44:57.690]making this an international campaign.
[01:45:04.110]It's an international,
[01:45:05.940]you know, law.
[01:45:06.939](Marilyn laughing)
[01:45:08.460]Yes, I mean, this did come to us
[01:45:10.860]from the international realm
[01:45:13.320]and I know that Indigenous peoples that had a seat
[01:45:17.460]at the table at the UN during the making of it.
[01:45:20.910]There's a distinct international flavor to it.
[01:45:25.920]I know from the Indigenous standpoint.
[01:45:27.990]And in fact, as international human rights law,
[01:45:32.640]it really dramatically grew and expanded after World War II
[01:45:38.370]with the Nazi atrocities that were committed,
[01:45:44.310]behind the shield of state sovereignty,
[01:45:49.410]and a big part of that growth of that body of law was on
[01:45:55.140]around Indigenous rights,
[01:45:56.610]especially nowadays I've never attended anything
[01:46:00.480]with the UN,
[01:46:01.313]but I hear that a lot of the Indigenous forums
[01:46:05.760]and meetings that are held are among the most,
[01:46:09.810]the biggest gatherings whenever the UN convenes.
[01:46:14.325]But
[01:46:15.840]yeah, there,
[01:46:16.890]and I think there's,
[01:46:18.810]I know our Native people have a lot of,
[01:46:22.800]not as much as they should,
[01:46:24.360]but there's a lot of interest
[01:46:27.060]and growing interest in working across borders,
[01:46:30.030]with our Native relatives in other nations,
[01:46:34.380]but there's a place for that.
[01:46:36.870]I, myself have been a domestic legal practitioner.
[01:46:45.900]I've done some legal work up in Canada
[01:46:48.030]however, but
[01:46:51.600]by and large, I'm basically a domestic attorney,
[01:46:58.230]but there is that,
[01:46:59.823]there is that dimension.
[01:47:01.620]And I think we can have a lot to learn
[01:47:03.840]from Natives and other countries too,
[01:47:07.110]because each of the members of the UN the 150 nations now
[01:47:12.360]have endorsed this declaration
[01:47:14.850]and all of them are on different pathways
[01:47:17.760]towards beginning to implement the declaration.
[01:47:22.740]And as I say, we've endorsed it,
[01:47:24.870]but we haven't taken a step to begin implementing it.
[01:47:30.360]So I'm gonna break in here.
[01:47:34.050]I feel like we could go on for many hours
[01:47:37.290]and learn so much from you Walter,
[01:47:39.630]but it is seven o'clock.
[01:47:41.100]And so we are at the end of our time,
[01:47:44.820]but we hope we can bring you back to Nebraska soon
[01:47:48.256]and hear more from you in person someday.
[01:47:51.750]I know we all have a lot more questions,
[01:47:53.400]but we just wanna thank you so much
[01:47:55.860]and give you a round of virtual applause.
[01:47:58.435](Margaret laughing) (Walter laughing)
[01:48:03.480]Yeah?
[01:48:04.320]Well, I just wanted to thank you and thank everyone.
[01:48:08.490]As you could tell, this issue is near and dear to my heart.
[01:48:12.060]And again, I was so, so honored
[01:48:15.960]and pleased to hear that you all were reading
[01:48:19.034](Walter laughing)
[01:48:20.010]my book.
[01:48:22.920]I was very flattered.
[01:48:24.510]I very flattered that you done so.
[01:48:29.430]I appreciate my opportunity to be with you.
[01:48:32.850]Yeah.
[01:48:33.683]As you can see, I'm kind of a long-winded person,
[01:48:37.006](Margaret laughing)
[01:48:39.402]but I'm doubly cursed here as a gas bag
[01:48:42.090]because I'm not only an attorney,
[01:48:45.540]but now I'm a politician,
[01:48:47.730]a tribal politician,
[01:48:49.500]so I am a gas bag.
[01:48:52.230]I'll confess.
[01:48:53.135](Walter laughing)
[01:48:54.630]but I enjoyed it.
[01:48:55.767]And I appreciate it.
[01:48:59.280]I'm hoping that the rest of your summer goes well,
[01:49:05.340]and your gatherings here,
[01:49:08.190]and that the great spirit,
[01:49:10.637]Atí'as Tirawa will be at everyone's side
[01:49:16.317]for the rest of the summer and going forward.
[01:49:19.230]So God bless and thank you so much.
[01:49:22.380]Thank you, Walter.
[01:49:23.820]And good night, everybody.
[01:49:26.820]Take care.
[01:49:28.434](Walter laughing)

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Reckoning & Reconciliation Discussion Circle Part 3

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