Native Women's Justice Forum

Richard Moberly, Margaret Huettl, Danelle Smith, Claudette White, Jacki Rand, and Shirley Sneve Author

12/13/2017 Added

32 Plays

Description

On November 27, 2017, Richard Moberly introduced a panel discussion on Native Women's Justice moderated by Margaret Huettl with discussion from Danelle Smith, Claudette White, Jacki Rand, and Shirley Sneve. The event was sponsored by Native American Studies, Department of History, College of Law, Institute for Ethnic Studies, OASIS, College of Arts & Sciences, and Women's & Gender Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

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[00:00:03.545]Good afternoon and welcome to the University of Nebraska
[00:00:07.289]College of Law.
[00:00:08.917]My name is Richard Moberly and I'm the dean
[00:00:10.691]of the College of Law.
[00:00:12.156]It's my honor and privilege to welcome you here
[00:00:14.799]to kick off the spring two day event
[00:00:16.914]in the Tribal Justice Forum.
[00:00:19.159]And specifically today the Native Women's Justice panel.
[00:00:22.966]The event is sponsored by the Native American Studies,
[00:00:25.773]contributions from the Department of History,
[00:00:28.138]College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Law,
[00:00:30.724]the Institute for Ethnic Studies, Oasis,
[00:00:33.882]and the Women's and Gender Studies Program.
[00:00:37.099]The forum's goal is to attract and audience drawn
[00:00:39.199]from our shared campuses, our overlapping disciplines,
[00:00:42.794]and our broader community.
[00:00:44.629]And the school is reflected in the makeup of the panelists
[00:00:47.660]of today and tomorrow.
[00:00:50.046]I'd also like to highlight that the program
[00:00:52.222]reflects a shared commitment across our campuses
[00:00:54.946]to explore social justice concerns that affect Nebraskans
[00:00:58.526]and to discuss critical issues that are being taken up
[00:01:01.459]by legal practitioners and their community partners
[00:01:04.316]throughout the country.
[00:01:06.177]And here at the College of Law ...
[00:01:07.896]I have to do a little promotion, right?
[00:01:09.340]This is why I get to be here.
[00:01:10.789]So at the College of Law we engage in these issues
[00:01:13.077]in a variety of ways I wanna make sure we recognize.
[00:01:17.402]Federal Indian Law remains an important part
[00:01:19.666]of our curriculum, in which we offer both
[00:01:21.821]a Federal Indian Law class and an advanced seminar
[00:01:24.577]on the topic.
[00:01:25.959]We also set up and sponsor numerous tribal externship
[00:01:29.105]placements for law students to work for a legal council
[00:01:32.089]representing five different tribal governments
[00:01:34.763]over the last few years.
[00:01:36.564]In these externships, law students have done things like
[00:01:39.720]helping draft tribal legislation under a range
[00:01:42.023]of legal issues, shadowing tribal prosecutors
[00:01:45.290]in tribal courts, assisting the rule
[00:01:47.868]and procedure development for tribal courts,
[00:01:50.366]and assisting in a project to propose and formulate
[00:01:53.205]a tribal constitution, all while learning to respect
[00:01:56.606]and incorporate indigenous law revered and desired
[00:01:59.909]on behalf of the tribal client.
[00:02:02.462]Professor Jessica Shoemaker has been instrumental
[00:02:05.407]in setting up and supervising these externships.
[00:02:07.882]I'd like to specifically recognize her
[00:02:10.285]and thank her for her work in this area.
[00:02:12.199]So Professor Shoemaker.
[00:02:13.032](audience applauds)
[00:02:17.147]Additionally, this spring Professor Shoemaker
[00:02:19.076]had a student working for the Okinawa Sioux tribe
[00:02:21.738]with our alumna, Jennifer Beareagle,
[00:02:24.965]to help us in formulating and researching a possible
[00:02:28.106]will writing program for tribal citizens
[00:02:30.410]on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
[00:02:33.191]So once again, we are honored and privileged
[00:02:36.236]to host tonight's panel, and I'm so pleased
[00:02:38.569]to see all of you here.
[00:02:40.648]And now I'd like to introduce Dr. Margaret Huettl
[00:02:43.446]who will introduce the entire panel to you.
[00:02:45.634]Dr. Huettl is an Assistant Professor of History in UNL
[00:02:48.850]and Native American Studies with a joint appointment
[00:02:51.607]in the Institute for Ethnic Studies,
[00:02:53.815]and she'll moderate tonight's event as well.
[00:02:56.197]So, Dr. Huettl.
[00:02:57.128]Thank you.
[00:02:57.961]I'd like to start by saying thank you to my fellow panelists
[00:03:01.843]for being here this evening,
[00:03:03.474]and thank you to all of you for coming
[00:03:06.449]and to the Law School for hosting us.
[00:03:10.515]I'm going to start by introducing our panelists
[00:03:13.979]and then each of them will have a few minutes
[00:03:16.815]to tell you a little bit more about themselves
[00:03:18.584]and then we will open things up to question and answer
[00:03:22.803]from the audience.
[00:03:25.610]So I'm gonna go down the line here and introduce
[00:03:28.703]the panelists.
[00:03:30.657]Danelle Smith is a partner with the Law Firm
[00:03:33.242]of Fredericks Peebles & Morgan.
[00:03:35.377]She practices primarily in the area of tribal federal
[00:03:39.155]Indian law with an emphasis in governmental affairs
[00:03:42.643]and economic development.
[00:03:45.098]In this capacity she currently serves
[00:03:48.170]as General Council to the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska
[00:03:51.332]and its subdivisions including Ho-Chunk, Inc.,
[00:03:55.004]the tribe's economic development corporation.
[00:03:58.268]Ms. Smith has extensive experience in a broad range
[00:04:01.180]of tribal governance and tribal economic development
[00:04:03.947]matters, including financing, gaming, real estate,
[00:04:08.250]employment, and intergovernmental relations.
[00:04:12.282]She also works with tribal constitution
[00:04:14.369]and enrollment issues.
[00:04:15.922]She is a member of the Winnebago nation
[00:04:20.586]and we are happy to have her here today.
[00:04:27.486]Sorry, I have this on my phone and it's not cooperating.
[00:04:30.614](audience chuckles)
[00:04:31.964]I'd hoped of course.
[00:04:33.254]Okay.
[00:04:34.087]And then we have Claudette White.
[00:04:38.759]Judge Claudette White has served as the chief judge
[00:04:41.115]for the Quechan Tribal Court since 2005.
[00:04:43.777]She's an enrolled member of the Quechan Indian Tribe
[00:04:46.469]and also descends from the Cocopan
[00:04:48.338]and Digueno Mission Indian Tribes in California and Arizona.
[00:04:52.763]She also serves as a judge at the Fort McDowell
[00:04:55.667]Indian Community, Ak-Chin Indian Community,
[00:04:58.592]Salt River Pima Maricopa Indian Community
[00:05:01.277]and Tonto Apache Tribal Courts.
[00:05:03.680]She is President of the Arizona Indian Judges Association,
[00:05:07.038]is an appointed member of the Arizona Tribal,
[00:05:09.966]State and Federal Court Forum and was appointed
[00:05:13.037]to the newly formed California Tribal Court,
[00:05:15.716]State Court Forum.
[00:05:17.480]She served as faculty for the South West
[00:05:19.633]Indigenous Women's Coalition Sexual Response Assault Team
[00:05:23.109]training program and faculty for the Arizona
[00:05:25.799]Bar Association's Leadership Series.
[00:05:28.649]Judge White was the youngest member ever elected
[00:05:31.740]to the Quechan Tribal Council where she served
[00:05:34.785]from 1995 to 1998.
[00:05:37.811]Following her Tribal Council tenure,
[00:05:39.502]she practiced as a legal advocate in
[00:05:41.645]the Quechan Tribal Court.
[00:05:44.688]Judge White, the first in her family to graduate
[00:05:46.801]from college, received her Bachelor of Science degree
[00:05:49.614]from Arizona Western College
[00:05:51.097]and Northern Arizona University,
[00:05:53.216]and her Juris Doctorate and a Special Certificate
[00:05:56.253]in Indian Law from Arizona State University's
[00:05:59.162]Sandra Day O'Connor School of Law.
[00:06:05.687]Jacki Rand is an Associate Professor of History
[00:06:08.461]and coordinator of American Indian and Native Studies
[00:06:11.262]at the University of Iowa.
[00:06:13.138]Professor Rand is the author of Kiowa Humanity
[00:06:16.285]and the Invasion of the State, articles,
[00:06:18.843]and numerous essays.
[00:06:20.641]She currently works on several projects,
[00:06:22.789]including a book manuscript on violence against
[00:06:25.497]American Indian women.
[00:06:27.249]Professor Rand teaches courses on federal Indian law
[00:06:30.374]and policy, on the history of U.S. policing,
[00:06:34.223]on the politics of museums and representation,
[00:06:37.295]and on public history.
[00:06:39.102]Her academic career follows a decade of work
[00:06:42.485]at the Smithsonian Institution which culminated
[00:06:44.708]in four years of community engagement work
[00:06:47.712]throughout the U.S. in support of planning
[00:06:50.084]for the National Museum of the American Indian.
[00:06:53.087]Her work informed the architectural programs
[00:06:55.270]for the Suitland collection facility
[00:06:57.230]and for the Mall museum.
[00:06:59.718]Her current research, using conventional archival sources,
[00:07:02.637]newspapers, tribal records, and oral history,
[00:07:05.059]examines violence against native women
[00:07:07.573]in a late 20th-century tribal community.
[00:07:10.580]She is also the coordinator of a collaborative
[00:07:12.952]digital project, Iowa Native Spaces,
[00:07:15.770]which will be released in January 2018,
[00:07:18.571]and the faculty advisor to History Corps,
[00:07:20.812]a student-led digital project housed
[00:07:24.011]at the Department of History.
[00:07:26.422]Rand is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.
[00:07:30.522]And last but not least, Shirley Sneve is
[00:07:33.490]the Executive Director of Vision Maker Media,
[00:07:36.107]whose mission is to empower and engage Native People
[00:07:39.252]to tell stories.
[00:07:40.538]An enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe
[00:07:42.810]in South Dakota, she has been in Nebraska for 10 years.
[00:07:46.719]She has served as director of Arts Extension Service
[00:07:49.543]in Amherst, Massachusetts, and the Washington Pavilion
[00:07:52.689]of Arts and Science's Visual Arts Center in Sioux Falls,
[00:07:56.106]South Dakota.
[00:07:57.584]Shirley was assistant director for the South Dakota
[00:08:00.461]Arts Council, and she was a founder of Northern Plains
[00:08:03.881]Tribal Arts Show, the Oyate Trail cultural tourism byway,
[00:08:08.061]and the Alliance of Tribal Tourism Advocates.
[00:08:11.183]She started her career as a producer
[00:08:13.203]for the South Dakota Public Broadcasting.
[00:08:16.081]She serves on the boards of The Association
[00:08:18.185]of American Cultures, the Friends of the Mary (stammering).
[00:08:24.248]Mary Riepma Ross.
[00:08:25.485]Mary Riepma Ross, thank you, Media Arts Center,
[00:08:27.564](audience chuckles)
[00:08:29.147]I should know that.
[00:08:29.980]The South East Nebraska Native American Coalition,
[00:08:32.441]and the Arts Extension Institute.
[00:08:34.189]She chairs the board of Native Americans in Philanthropy.
[00:08:38.039]Shirley is also a consultant
[00:08:39.899]with Creative Community Builders.
[00:08:41.783]So our panelists today come from a variety of perspectives,
[00:08:45.642]and I gave them a couple of questions
[00:08:48.129]to spark our conversation, so these are the questions
[00:08:51.881]that I sent them ahead of time.
[00:08:53.907]I asked what do you think are the most critical issues
[00:08:56.689]native women are facing today?
[00:08:59.940]Can you talk about your own work on issues related
[00:09:02.978]to native women's access to justice
[00:09:05.322]within and beyond tribal communities?
[00:09:09.068]I asked them what led them to this work,
[00:09:12.546]and what advice they might have for people
[00:09:15.417]who want to pursue a career related to tribal justice,
[00:09:19.056]in particular native women's justice.
[00:09:21.161]And finally, what people, students, and the community
[00:09:24.741]at large can do to help?
[00:09:27.769]So those are the starting point for this conversation
[00:09:31.596]but they'll all address these questions
[00:09:33.876]from their unique perspective.
[00:09:35.770]And we will start with Professor Rand.
[00:09:40.243]Thank you.
[00:09:41.610]Hello.
[00:09:43.060]I'm so glad to be here and very appreciative
[00:09:45.919]of the invitation to participate in the panel.
[00:09:53.995]I don't know which one of these questions
[00:09:55.977]to go for (laughs).
[00:09:58.021]I think I'm going to explain that I come at this
[00:10:02.723]from the perspective of a historian,
[00:10:05.662]and that it began,
[00:10:10.177]I'm going to say 10 years ago
[00:10:14.551]when I was hanging out with some young scholars
[00:10:18.953]who were working on violence against native women
[00:10:22.188]and some of them were law people
[00:10:27.641]and some were American studies people
[00:10:30.669]and some were American Indian studies people,
[00:10:33.613]and it was just about the time
[00:10:39.465]that Andrea Smith's work came out,
[00:10:43.628]and made such a splash about the subject.
[00:10:50.093]And so I was going to their workshops
[00:10:52.520]and I wasn't really participating,
[00:10:54.925]I was just kind of hanging out with them
[00:10:59.373]and what I came away with from those gatherings
[00:11:04.944]was that I would like to work on this subject,
[00:11:09.274]but from a very different perspective.
[00:11:13.604]I would like to do a grandmother study
[00:11:18.280]that is very community based and very grounded
[00:11:21.810]in a community if it would be possible to do that.
[00:11:28.742]When I got around to doing that
[00:11:30.712]I first went to Oklahoma, and Oklahoma was a horrible place
[00:11:35.534]to do this for a lot of complicated, technical reasons.
[00:11:43.602]And so I was really still determined to do this
[00:11:46.406]and for reasons too long to go into here,
[00:11:50.143]I had decided to go to Mississippi
[00:11:52.700]and I spent several summers, a number of summers,
[00:11:57.310]working in Mississippi in Neshoba County
[00:12:02.742]with the Choctaw people there.
[00:12:07.097]I just stumbled into a case that I found
[00:12:14.656]and I was doing a lot of oral history,
[00:12:17.655]and I stumbled into a case that happened in 1971.
[00:12:27.480]It just led me to the point where I had amassed
[00:12:33.318]a lot of primary sources, records that had been lost
[00:12:39.254]related to this case, and I had a lot of access to people,
[00:12:49.216]largely because I happened to mention
[00:12:51.390]that my grandfather was Mississippi Choctaw,
[00:12:54.802]he was in the last removal to Indian territory in 1902,
[00:13:01.319]inadvertently on my part people were very kind to me
[00:13:06.333]and so I'm just now starting to write this book.
[00:13:13.814]I put it aside, it's very intense,
[00:13:17.655]and I put it aside because I got involved in working on
[00:13:22.759]this digital project, which I was happy to do
[00:13:25.836]so I could just look away for a minute
[00:13:28.807]and work with my graduate students on this digital project.
[00:13:34.918]And so all of that is to say that what this does for me
[00:13:38.677]as a scholar, and also as a native woman,
[00:13:45.033]is that it sort of satisfies my own frustration
[00:13:52.331]with the work as it stands now,
[00:13:57.680]and this case allows me to disaggregate some
[00:14:00.810]of that information, to really get into a case
[00:14:05.899]on a granular scale and to say something significant
[00:14:10.287]about the security of native women
[00:14:13.574]in a time when it seemed that many things were possible
[00:14:18.012]under the emergent policy of self-determination
[00:14:22.966]and that's where these two things intersect,
[00:14:26.022]my work intersects.
[00:14:29.196]So it's complicated, it's about stuff that I didn't
[00:14:33.550]really know anything about because I've had to do
[00:14:35.506]a lot of extra reading.
[00:14:38.346]And I want to say with all due respect to some
[00:14:41.583]of these people, Sarah Deer, and some of these other people
[00:14:46.704]who do this work, they got me started on this
[00:14:53.862]and I stand on their shoulders,
[00:14:58.626]so anyway, I'd be happy to take more questions
[00:15:01.883]about it later.
[00:15:06.162]Thanks Jacki.
[00:15:08.025]Next, Shirley will share her ...
[00:15:10.770]Sure. Yeah, thank you.
[00:15:13.723]First I'd like to acknowledge that we're on
[00:15:15.621]the traditional territory of the Pawnee, Otoe, Ponca,
[00:15:19.229]and Omaha people.
[00:15:21.876]And it's Native American month, so I'm happy to be here.
[00:15:26.933]I'm a storyteller and I come from generations
[00:15:30.045]of storytellers.
[00:15:32.374]My mother's an author.
[00:15:34.264]I'm an author too but I mostly just write grants.
[00:15:36.666](audience laughs)
[00:15:38.174]I'm in this business because I'm angry.
[00:15:42.568]And I'm angry because our stories have been
[00:15:45.934]so misinterpreted by so many people
[00:15:49.401]and the truth is really hard to find,
[00:15:52.531]and that's why we do these documentaries for PBS,
[00:15:56.666]and Tribal Justice is one of them
[00:15:58.620]and it was on the program POB, and you can watch it
[00:16:01.915]streaming live on the internet right now
[00:16:04.440]for a limited time only.
[00:16:08.666]Some of the issues that I think we're facing
[00:16:11.740]as tribal women right now is
[00:16:16.484]the generations.
[00:16:18.223]I mean the first time somebody called me an elder
[00:16:20.519]I was so offended,
[00:16:21.924](audience chuckles)
[00:16:22.972]and I have to own this now.
[00:16:27.094]I am the one now that has to teach my grandchildren
[00:16:30.718]about what it is to be Native American,
[00:16:32.698]what it is to be Rosebud Sioux,
[00:16:34.995]what it is to be Northern Ponca,
[00:16:37.491]and what it is to be half Norwegian.
[00:16:40.559]And these stories that we talk about,
[00:16:42.679]and the Tribal Justice movie is one of them,
[00:16:45.871]is that there's an awful lot of baggage that we carry
[00:16:50.602]forward from our history,
[00:16:53.927]and I just love learning about tribes
[00:16:56.732]all across the country, and there are things
[00:16:59.200]that have happened in our history that happened
[00:17:01.765]when I was little, and so you all weren't around then
[00:17:05.028]some of you guys, and so you don't have
[00:17:07.640]that kind of context to put into why things are
[00:17:11.756]the way they are.
[00:17:12.589]And I've got two quick examples.
[00:17:14.820]One is the Seneca Nation in Upstate New York.
[00:17:22.054]They have a casino at Niagara Falls.
[00:17:25.344]It's gorgeous, it's beautiful land,
[00:17:30.129]but the reservation is split into two parts.
[00:17:33.352]And I'm just like what this is nuts.
[00:17:35.635]Well the reason it's nuts is because in the early 1960s
[00:17:40.819]there was a flood in Pittsburgh,
[00:17:43.284]and anybody know a famous family from Pittsburgh
[00:17:47.561]that makes catsup?
[00:17:49.347]And my favorite Heinz 57 Sauce?
[00:17:52.019]Well, they didn't like the fact that they got flooded
[00:17:54.563]and they thought that a dam needed to built
[00:17:57.386]so that Pittsburgh wouldn't be flooded.
[00:17:59.500]So where did they put the dams?
[00:18:00.992]So that it took away the land of the Seneca Nation,
[00:18:05.178]and this happened in the 60s.
[00:18:07.196]So a lot of people just weren't around to understand
[00:18:10.619]why is this reservation split into two areas
[00:18:12.986]that are an hour apart?
[00:18:14.691]And why is the economy the way it is?
[00:18:16.953]And that has a lot to do with it.
[00:18:19.631]Another water-related tragedy is that
[00:18:23.287]of the Blackfeet Nation in Montana,
[00:18:28.592]and they had a devastating flood in 1964
[00:18:32.245]that displaced many people for the rest of their lives
[00:18:36.238]and really upset the housing situation,
[00:18:38.644]the family structure, and who knew?
[00:18:43.352]Are these things being taught to kids today?
[00:18:46.039]To the descendants of these events?
[00:18:48.373]And I don't know if they are,
[00:18:50.275]but I'm just really happy that we can play that part
[00:18:53.083]in educating even tribal members about what's going on.
[00:18:58.035]So our documentaries are all based in deep history.
[00:19:03.852]Some of them we like to call evergreens.
[00:19:07.417]For example, the Medicine Woman documentary
[00:19:10.113]that we did on Susan La Flesche Picotte
[00:19:13.743]that documents her life and the trials and the tribulations
[00:19:16.652]that she had.
[00:19:19.070]And then we have other programs like On a Knife Edge,
[00:19:26.035]changed titles three times during its production,
[00:19:29.546]and it's about the Dull Knife family from Pine Ridge
[00:19:32.971]and it's about George's story,
[00:19:35.049]and George is now just turning 21 but the producers
[00:19:39.246]and directors followed him since he was 14 years old,
[00:19:42.654]and so you really see this guy growing up
[00:19:45.267]and his father is Guy Dull Knife,
[00:19:47.159]and a big AIMster right?
[00:19:48.764]American Indian Movement.
[00:19:50.333]Was a big protestor, so he taught his kids
[00:19:54.521]to honor the tribal traditions and they speak their language
[00:20:00.424]and they participate in ceremonies.
[00:20:03.070]And the other thing that is important to those people
[00:20:05.859]is (muffled by coughing).
[00:20:07.416]And we hear a lot about the aftermath of Whiteclay
[00:20:11.155]and the fact that those liquor stores were ...
[00:20:13.472]I can't even believe this, now that I'm a Nebraskan,
[00:20:15.995]what an embarrassment that whole thing was.
[00:20:18.448]You would never find anything like that happening
[00:20:20.336]in Lincoln, Nebraska.
[00:20:22.269]But anyway, they protest a lot about that
[00:20:27.070]and really documented a lot of the things
[00:20:29.162]that were going on.
[00:20:31.327]And I just think that people need to know
[00:20:36.309]people think about Pine Ridge as being
[00:20:38.496]just a bunch of drunks.
[00:20:40.202]Pine Ridge has of the highest rates of abstinence
[00:20:44.178]from alcohol in the country.
[00:20:47.332]And those are some things that you just don't know about
[00:20:49.627]because you don't hear that kind of story
[00:20:52.131]because it's not what we call poverty porn.
[00:20:55.521]It's not oh the poor Indians, we need to go save them.
[00:21:00.795]A lot of Indians are trying to save themselves,
[00:21:03.476]and here's a bunch of them right here.
[00:21:05.243](audience chuckles)
[00:21:06.970]So thanks for the panel, I appreciate being here,
[00:21:10.050]and it's just so great to see you guys and meet you guys.
[00:21:13.158]Thank you.
[00:21:15.298]Next, Judge White.
[00:21:17.381]Yes, good evening everybody, or afternoon.
[00:21:20.745]I think you're an hour ahead of me from where I'm at.
[00:21:24.441]Again, my name is Claudette White,
[00:21:26.400]I have served on the Quechan Tribal Court
[00:21:28.639]as their chief judge for the last 11 years.
[00:21:31.515]I'm born into the (speaking in foreign language) clan,
[00:21:33.645]it means Frog Clan on my father's side.
[00:21:37.859]Shirley was referring to a film called Tribal Justice.
[00:21:40.396]I participated in the film and it's a documentary
[00:21:43.245]that I believe we'll be showing on campus tomorrow,
[00:21:46.346]and I believe it's still open for registration and free.
[00:21:50.419]You don't need to register first.
[00:21:54.092]6:30. Just come and show up.
[00:21:57.492]If you have the opportunity.
[00:21:59.499]I'm not sure what disciplines you come from,
[00:22:01.966]what your interest here is today in terms of
[00:22:04.694]just hearing what we have to say.
[00:22:06.997]But in terms of the questions that were given to us
[00:22:12.644]I would say some of the issues effecting tribal women,
[00:22:16.087]indigenous women here in this country, would be ...
[00:22:22.306]and it's kind of titled, there's some social media campaign
[00:22:25.458]following it and giving information out to the public
[00:22:28.429]trying to gain more interest,
[00:22:31.109]and that's for missing and murdered indigenous women
[00:22:34.073]and girls.
[00:22:35.663]I think that is something that's ignored in the media,
[00:22:40.119]social media you don't see a whole lot of shares about it
[00:22:42.773]or information related to it, but it's an epidemic
[00:22:45.890]in this country in terms of per capita the amount of women
[00:22:50.070]and girls that we're losing, literally going missing,
[00:22:54.299]never found, or if they're found,
[00:22:56.436]they're found generally mutilated and die horrible deaths.
[00:23:01.813]And most often those crimes go unsolved.
[00:23:05.950]And so for whatever reason it's occurring,
[00:23:08.953]and like I said it's basically at an epidemic proportion.
[00:23:12.341]Just recently Congress has initiated a discussion about it
[00:23:17.175]to try to find out why this is occurring
[00:23:19.372]and hopefully put an end to it, but along with that issue
[00:23:23.211]comes violence against Indian women.
[00:23:25.052]It's still an issue that's still being researched
[00:23:27.678]and not well funded in this country.
[00:23:30.897]There are some programs, Violence Against Women Act,
[00:23:33.601]that deal specifically to help protect Indian women.
[00:23:37.095]There are a lot of jurisdictional issues
[00:23:38.806]that lead to why Indian women in this country
[00:23:42.220]are not protected.
[00:23:43.937]And so with regards to the legalities of that,
[00:23:47.139]the last president, President Obama,
[00:23:49.594]had passed a legislation called the Tribal Law and Order Act
[00:23:55.335]that gave greater jurisdiction to tribes
[00:23:57.873]to prosecute against non-Indian defendants
[00:24:02.473]in relation to criminal matters coming up with violence
[00:24:05.717]against Native women.
[00:24:07.555]That's generally a jurisdiction or an authority
[00:24:10.058]tribal courts and tribes do not have.
[00:24:12.733]We don't prosecute non-Indian people in tribal court
[00:24:16.294]and in criminal aspect, we generally only deal
[00:24:19.006]with non-tribal people when we're dealing
[00:24:21.318]with civil tort cases and other domestic cases
[00:24:24.856]that might come up under the bodies of law
[00:24:28.229]that we have adopted in each tribal court.
[00:24:31.507]So again, not knowing your background, or what understanding
[00:24:34.410]you have about tribal courts and tribal jurisdiction,
[00:24:37.944]each tribe has the autonomy to establish their own laws
[00:24:42.674]and ordinances and rules and procedures with regards
[00:24:45.687]to how they govern themselves through the judicial branch
[00:24:48.774]of their government, and I believe the last count,
[00:24:52.994]there are over 562 federally recognized tribes.
[00:24:56.534]So each tribe has the opportunity,
[00:24:59.412]so you might have 562 models of tribal justice
[00:25:03.266]that all look different.
[00:25:05.193]Sometimes those are very modernized,
[00:25:07.780]following American jurisprudence and so it might
[00:25:10.456]look like a state court, something that you might be
[00:25:13.434]commonly familiar with.
[00:25:14.681]It might look like a tribal model,
[00:25:17.124]where you're incorporating more restorative justice
[00:25:20.142]processes or either concepts that are
[00:25:23.346]closely linked to the tribe beliefs and traditions,
[00:25:26.504]and so it's a wide array of things
[00:25:29.293]that you might be encountering in tribal courts,
[00:25:31.898]but like I've said we have the limitation,
[00:25:35.067]unless we've opted into adopting
[00:25:37.057]the Tribal Law and Order Act, implementing under
[00:25:39.859]a certain set of guidelines that particular jurisdiction
[00:25:43.430]of the federal government has established
[00:25:45.240]for tribes to apply in tribal courts,
[00:25:49.138]most often in many places when our women are killed
[00:25:54.688]there is no justice for them
[00:25:56.498]and primarily that's because in most states
[00:26:01.943]the United States attorneys will be the ones prosecuting
[00:26:05.206]and they quite often don't take the cases.
[00:26:07.860]They don't take them to trial, they just close them out
[00:26:10.523]without any real explanation, peace, or justice
[00:26:14.546]to the families or to that victim.
[00:26:16.936]And so I would say that's probably one of the most
[00:26:19.315]prevalent issues that we face as indigenous women,
[00:26:22.901]is the loss of our women going missing and murdered.
[00:26:26.492]There are a lot of concepts and discussion behind that
[00:26:29.933]as to why that's occurring.
[00:26:32.814]There's a movie out right now called Wind River,
[00:26:35.295]it kind of gives you an opportunity to see
[00:26:38.858]one type of case that might ...
[00:26:42.819]Whatever women might encounter or be victimized from.
[00:26:46.705]Sometimes I think when you look at what's occurring
[00:26:51.335]in different states, especially in the Dakotas,
[00:26:54.235]part of the argument against the Dakota access pipeline
[00:26:58.072]was concern for the safety of Indian women and children
[00:27:01.353]was because lots of times the oil companies coming in
[00:27:04.717]they have man camps and generally non-tribal people
[00:27:09.198]and a lot of the women and children are victimized
[00:27:11.765]through that process.
[00:27:13.860]I was talking to one of my co-panelists, Professor Jacki
[00:27:17.230]on the way in, just about what we thought collectively
[00:27:21.423]between ourselves, what are some of the issues?
[00:27:23.998]And one of the things that I don't even know
[00:27:26.878]how to really explain, is just the invisibility of our women
[00:27:29.874]in this country.
[00:27:32.341]And I think that's why the issue of murdered and missing
[00:27:34.894]indigenous women is just that,
[00:27:37.412]because of the invisibility of us as women
[00:27:40.894]here in this country.
[00:27:43.266]You figure statistically all of the different things
[00:27:46.890]that one population or one
[00:27:50.952]group might encounter and how you might be effected.
[00:27:54.941]You could take the race you might identify with
[00:27:57.763]and think statistically where do I fall in
[00:28:00.279]in national averages?
[00:28:02.069]Well when we factor ourselves in as indigenous people
[00:28:05.242]or tribal people, our statistics are guaranteed to be worse
[00:28:09.536]than yours, and that's not something I say with pride,
[00:28:12.666]it's just a reality.
[00:28:14.221]We have high infant mortality rates,
[00:28:16.004]we have high suicide rates among our children.
[00:28:18.864]Life expectancies for native people was at 55.
[00:28:23.720]People are just becoming grandparents
[00:28:26.432]and just really starting life sometimes at that age
[00:28:29.773]and that's our life expectancy.
[00:28:33.061]We have so many social ills and among that
[00:28:35.768]social justice issues that come about.
[00:28:38.582]Lack of access to healthcare, lack of access to
[00:28:42.845]federal programs, county and state programs.
[00:28:45.855]In my particular jurisdiction, my tribe is located
[00:28:50.512]right near Yuma, Arizona.
[00:28:52.301]We're in Winterhaven, California, our reservation
[00:28:54.718]encompasses two different states all the way up
[00:28:57.150]to the Los Algodones port of entry in Mexico.
[00:29:01.098]So Mexico's about 10 minutes from my reservation
[00:29:03.575]and before borders, our people lived within that whole area
[00:29:07.976]as traditional lands.
[00:29:09.974]We're still on a part of our traditional lands,
[00:29:12.006]we got over 60,000 acres.
[00:29:14.269]Historically we had over a million acres
[00:29:17.360]and we were able to make a demonstration
[00:29:19.165]and we actually won a federal case against
[00:29:20.902]the United States government for land taking.
[00:29:25.623]But that doesn't restore our people in terms of
[00:29:28.938]who we were and what we had.
[00:29:31.292]But those are just some of the issues I see affecting us
[00:29:33.587]as indigenous women.
[00:29:36.676]And in terms of how you all can help,
[00:29:39.848]be conscious.
[00:29:41.725]Be considerate.
[00:29:43.756]Take the time to look and read and learn more
[00:29:46.529]about some of the issues that I'm mentioning.
[00:29:50.145]It's difficult though sometimes to look up
[00:29:52.491]the information because there's not a lot of data,
[00:29:55.172]not a lot of statistics or research being done.
[00:29:57.640]So I think that's probably one of the things we need done
[00:30:00.174]is more research.
[00:30:01.680]Ways you can help, if you have the opportunity
[00:30:04.166]to become researchers, authors, teachers,
[00:30:09.827]whatever it is you're going into.
[00:30:12.050]Keep us in mind, remember us, be conscious
[00:30:14.615]and take the time.
[00:30:15.908]We're right here, we're neighbors,
[00:30:18.460]we're often friends, sometimes we're family,
[00:30:21.284]and we're right here in your communities.
[00:30:24.463]Historically the United States was once ours
[00:30:28.505]in terms of what we inhabited,
[00:30:31.268]not in terms of what we owned.
[00:30:33.100]I don't like to apply the concept of ownership to land
[00:30:36.678]and to water, but we still very much
[00:30:39.121]feel that responsibility,
[00:30:40.304]when I say we meaning indigenous people,
[00:30:42.499]to be caretakers of the land and the waters
[00:30:44.852]and we fight vehemently to protect it
[00:30:49.384]using sometimes all of our resources towards
[00:30:52.547]those types of causes.
[00:30:54.192]But those are some of the issues I see affecting
[00:30:57.413]our people and in addition to that, access to justice.
[00:31:01.039]I talked a little bit about the
[00:31:05.307]difficulty in terms of determining jurisdiction.
[00:31:10.629]Where I live we have tribal jurisdiction,
[00:31:13.758]we also have state jurisdiction.
[00:31:15.452]We have in the state of California
[00:31:18.313]it's called a Public Law 280 state
[00:31:21.520]and it's a piece of federal legislation.
[00:31:23.685]The federal government had passed federal legislation
[00:31:26.862]to allow certain states and grant them the authority
[00:31:29.999]to exercise jurisdiction over tribes
[00:31:32.838]within their jurisdiction over major crimes.
[00:31:35.004]And I happen to live on a reservation
[00:31:37.314]where the state of California still
[00:31:39.457]exercises criminal jurisdiction along with our tribe.
[00:31:44.869]Our tribe is limited again to crimes not in
[00:31:48.325]the Major Crimes Act and so issues involving molestation,
[00:31:53.099]murder, major felony cases, you can probably think
[00:31:57.440]in that bracket in terms of what might fall into that,
[00:32:00.628]but we have a limitation on that.
[00:32:02.063]We don't prosecute those cases in our court
[00:32:04.691]and those cases are handled by the state.
[00:32:06.855]If it happens to be on the Arizona portions
[00:32:08.777]of our tribal lands then
[00:32:12.482]United States attorneys would be responsible for
[00:32:15.785]exercising jurisdiction and they may do that
[00:32:18.496]concurrently with the tribe as well,
[00:32:20.084]but the tribe would be limited again to not anything
[00:32:23.315]within the Major Crimes Act.
[00:32:25.291]And so in our jurisdiction when we have women
[00:32:28.428]who apply for a restraining order,
[00:32:30.382]they might come into tribal court and apply
[00:32:32.221]for a restraining order or an order of protection,
[00:32:36.830]sometimes that's not enforced.
[00:32:40.995]According to the federal law of
[00:32:42.680]the Violence Against Women Act, it's supposed
[00:32:44.166]to be enforced, but what's happening in California
[00:32:46.918]in my jurisdiction is there's a lack of access to justice
[00:32:50.421]in the enforcement of tribal court orders.
[00:32:53.298]We actually had to develop and one of the ways
[00:32:56.021]we were able to get an immediate fix to it
[00:32:59.239]was we worked with our local county sheriffs office
[00:33:02.975]to talk to them about the issue
[00:33:04.615]and we just established a protocol,
[00:33:06.525]but that protocol is not required by law.
[00:33:09.532]By law they're required to enforce it,
[00:33:11.390]but they were unwilling to enforce it
[00:33:13.028]because of the lack of understanding
[00:33:15.079]and in my opinion they're remiss with regards
[00:33:18.476]to not enforcing the law because the federal law
[00:33:21.731]that's in place actually applies to the state
[00:33:24.618]as well as the tribes and we're supposed to enforce
[00:33:27.400]orders of protection when it's dealing with women
[00:33:29.980]in domestic violence, but a lack of access to justice
[00:33:33.946]is still very much alive, and the complexity behind it
[00:33:37.002]I understand it, but the law is the law
[00:33:39.715]and it's not being enforced, so I think that's
[00:33:41.475]another issue that we face.
[00:33:44.358]Thank you.
[00:33:45.636]And last but not least, Danelle Smith.
[00:33:49.828]Good evening everybody.
[00:33:50.901]I'm really glad to be here and to see all of you here
[00:33:54.396]this evening, and I agree with many of the things
[00:33:58.093]that these ladies already shared
[00:34:00.985]in terms of issues that are facing native women today
[00:34:04.254]and the importance of those.
[00:34:07.931]So I am a member of the Winnebago tribe
[00:34:11.788]and I grew up on the reservation in Winnebago
[00:34:15.156]and that is about two hours north of here in Lincoln,
[00:34:19.254]so I'm a Nebraskan.
[00:34:21.874]I am also a first generation high school graduate
[00:34:26.522]and college graduate.
[00:34:29.496]And when I was growing up one of the challenges
[00:34:32.799]that I faced and I see native women still facing
[00:34:37.733]in my community and I think the same holds true
[00:34:41.862]in a lot of tribal communities throughout the country
[00:34:44.165]is just the lack of role models
[00:34:47.356]and the lack of expectations for ourselves
[00:34:53.789]as to what we can accomplish,
[00:34:58.162]what we can achieve, what we can be.
[00:35:00.876]That seems pretty basic, but I think that is very true.
[00:35:04.781]So when I was growing up there wasn't anybody
[00:35:06.881]who knew how to apply for college
[00:35:10.269]or how to apply for a Pell Grant
[00:35:12.109]or anything like that, so I had to kind of figure
[00:35:15.012]all of that stuff out on my own
[00:35:16.832]and to navigate that.
[00:35:19.124]And when your parents haven't been through that process,
[00:35:23.889]it's really difficult for them to assist you
[00:35:26.549]in getting to college and really even understanding or
[00:35:34.714]believing that you can achieve those types of things.
[00:35:38.261]So I had to really look around and look far and wide
[00:35:41.638]to find role models throughout my educational path.
[00:35:46.474]So fortunately for me, I was able to figure it out.
[00:35:51.188]Kind of took the long way route.
[00:35:53.877]I was also a teenage mother, so kind of did everything
[00:35:58.580]backwards, so to speak.
[00:36:00.087]I had a child first, then I got married,
[00:36:01.857]before I ever finished college.
[00:36:04.728]So I don't recommend that (laughs).
[00:36:06.656](audience laughs)
[00:36:08.771]Not a good route to take.
[00:36:10.851]So when I talk to young women in our community
[00:36:15.084]I try to share my story, and I think it's important
[00:36:19.061]because I did grow up there and my family's there
[00:36:23.863]and people know me and I lived there
[00:36:27.040]and after I finished college, finished law school,
[00:36:29.379]I came back to my community and I worked for my own tribe
[00:36:32.424]and I'm very fortunate to have that opportunity.
[00:36:35.887]But I think it matters to have young Winnebago women,
[00:36:40.413]young native women have those types of role models
[00:36:43.319]and to ask basic questions or to see that
[00:36:48.006]that is something that you can accomplish.
[00:36:50.586]So I think that's pretty critical.
[00:36:53.581]I decided at a really young age
[00:36:55.820]that I wanted to go to law school.
[00:37:00.221]Not even necessarily that I wanted to be a lawyer.
[00:37:03.823]I have been practicing now for quite some time
[00:37:05.975]as an attorney.
[00:37:08.177]But Shirley mentioned earlier a phrase that I've had
[00:37:12.585]in my mind for a long time, even as a young girl
[00:37:16.596]growing up and all through high school,
[00:37:19.982]and that is understanding why things are the way they are.
[00:37:23.960]To me that is always in my mind, why is it this way?
[00:37:28.938]What happened? Why do we live on an Indian reservation?
[00:37:33.165]Why is it different in a tribal community
[00:37:37.305]than it is any place else?
[00:37:39.885]And I didn't have much experience off the reservation
[00:37:44.407]until my junior high/high school years
[00:37:48.875]as I had more opportunities to travel.
[00:37:51.399]I didn't even realize that we were really
[00:37:53.140]that much different, I thought that's just the way it was.
[00:37:56.285]So my worldview was very small,
[00:38:00.033]and as I had more opportunities in life
[00:38:05.014]that I was able to gain through my college education,
[00:38:09.287]opportunities to travel, to attend conferences.
[00:38:13.380]In my work experience my worldview has grown tremendously
[00:38:17.924]in terms of what's possible.
[00:38:19.869]And I try to use all of those opportunities and
[00:38:25.277]that knowledge and the people that I meet
[00:38:27.213]and bring that back home and use it to try to figure out
[00:38:31.136]how we can solve problems for ourselves
[00:38:33.660]in our own tribal communities.
[00:38:35.709]And I think that is pretty critical.
[00:38:38.846]That is very important, because it is very unique.
[00:38:42.728]There's so many tribes in the country
[00:38:45.945]and everyone's in a unique situation,
[00:38:47.848]everybody has their own story, their own history
[00:38:50.325]about why things are the way they are
[00:38:52.618]for that particular tribe, so there's lots of variations
[00:38:56.149]on that.
[00:38:57.839]So I think that's been very helpful in my career
[00:39:04.441]to have that educational opportunity,
[00:39:07.004]to have that desire to come back home,
[00:39:10.245]and to work in my own community and to have
[00:39:12.615]that understanding.
[00:39:15.368]My undergrad is in business and I have a law degree
[00:39:18.547]and to me that was pretty important.
[00:39:20.512]I thought the combination of those two things
[00:39:22.539]would be helpful regardless of what job
[00:39:24.660]I ended up having in the longterm,
[00:39:26.789]was having that background could be helpful.
[00:39:29.697]Cuz I always knew that I wanted to work for a tribe,
[00:39:32.340]if not my tribe, I wanted to help tribal people.
[00:39:35.949]So that's what I've been able to do throughout my career
[00:39:38.592]and it's been extremely rewarding.
[00:39:41.453]There's a lot of work to be done,
[00:39:42.686]there's a lot of work that remains to be done
[00:39:45.077]and I'm excited that I have that opportunity
[00:39:49.149]to be a part of that.
[00:39:53.323]Through my experience in growing up on a reservation
[00:39:56.927]and coming back later and working in the capacity
[00:39:59.181]that I do, another thing that I have observed
[00:40:02.555]quite a lot lately I think is the challenge
[00:40:05.293]for native women and for our tribal communities
[00:40:07.669]is not just our expectations for ourselves and in general,
[00:40:12.117]but our expectations even of our men.
[00:40:15.470]So a challenge for native women is our native men.
[00:40:17.814](panel laughs)
[00:40:19.311]And it's kind of funny but ...
[00:40:22.422]It's true.
[00:40:23.255]I think it's true because historically
[00:40:28.195]in our tribal communities we had clan systems
[00:40:33.411]and there were roles for men and there were roles for women
[00:40:37.430]and it functioned and there was also
[00:40:41.651]we also had kinship systems, so as a mother,
[00:40:45.534]as a grandmother, as a father, as an uncle,
[00:40:49.052]it was the whole system that worked
[00:40:52.442]and it helped to create our society in a way
[00:40:55.830]that was very functional.
[00:40:58.063]And because of all of the history and things
[00:41:01.039]that have happened over the last 200 plus years,
[00:41:06.265]it's broken, and it's become very dysfunctional.
[00:41:12.547]It's fragmented also.
[00:41:14.190]Some of it still holds true, but only bits and pieces of it
[00:41:17.379]and we don't know all of it, and it doesn't quite fit
[00:41:23.238]always in a modern day society.
[00:41:26.057]So I think that's a major challenge for us because
[00:41:29.141]I look around in my tribal community
[00:41:31.564]and I see a lot of single mothers
[00:41:34.249]and I see that the fathers are either absent
[00:41:37.446]or they're not participating, or in some way
[00:41:41.379]they're just not stepping up and doing their part,
[00:41:44.152]and so I see our mothers and our grandmothers
[00:41:47.145]trying to fulfill what they've been taught
[00:41:49.977]as a native woman, as a mother, as a grandmother,
[00:41:53.036]to take care of their family
[00:41:54.954]and it sometimes crosses over I think into
[00:41:57.963]sort of an enabling type situation,
[00:42:02.894]which you want to help and you want to fulfill that role
[00:42:06.491]of being the caretaker, but you have to balance that with
[00:42:10.113]also providing for your family, if the males
[00:42:14.499]in your family aren't stepping up and fulfilling their role.
[00:42:18.274]So I think that it's complicated,
[00:42:20.531]but I think that it's very prevalent
[00:42:24.169]and I'm not sure how we solve that
[00:42:26.386]or how we put that back together,
[00:42:28.771]but I think that's something to be recognized
[00:42:31.163]and to work on, on how we can support our native women
[00:42:35.536]in those roles, but also support our sons
[00:42:38.673]and our husbands and fathers and so forth
[00:42:41.827]so that they can I guess come back to the table
[00:42:45.383]and fulfill the roles that they were meant to fulfill
[00:42:48.482]in this modern day society, given all the social ills
[00:42:53.508]and the various demands and
[00:42:57.434]this blending and figuring out what it means
[00:43:00.721]to be Indian today.
[00:43:04.820]Thank you.
[00:43:05.653]I think this was a really great start to this conversation.
[00:43:09.380]Before we open it up for audience questions,
[00:43:12.020]does anybody have anything else they want to add?
[00:43:15.640]Any thoughts that came up while other people were speaking?
[00:43:19.795]If I could? Yeah.
[00:43:20.953]I'd just like to clarify a little bit about
[00:43:23.421]what the last panelist was presenting to you.
[00:43:27.227]When we talk about history,
[00:43:30.030]what we really mean is colonization.
[00:43:32.235]The change of this country and the change
[00:43:34.234]of the responsibilities and roles that our men
[00:43:37.155]used to have as opposed to what they're supposed to have
[00:43:39.366]today if we're colonized and living in normal society
[00:43:43.868]or the majority of society.
[00:43:48.169]And we had this conversation about
[00:43:52.415]why is it so difficult for a lot of our indigenous men
[00:43:55.198]to adapt and to find their place in this world?
[00:44:00.226]And I can't explain why it's difficult other than
[00:44:02.928]some of the traditional things that they would do
[00:44:04.981]and their roles and responsibilities don't exist.
[00:44:07.619]They would go out in war parties and protect us,
[00:44:10.608]they would hunt, they would do all of these other things
[00:44:13.245]that we don't generally do today or have access to do today
[00:44:18.452]and so I think some of those changes,
[00:44:21.784]even though we've had an opportunity and time to change,
[00:44:26.580]we as women have just kind of responded and done
[00:44:29.702]what we've always done, which is take care of our families
[00:44:32.663]however that's been.
[00:44:34.323]But aside from maybe contributing or enabling,
[00:44:39.086]I think that certainly that's not our intention,
[00:44:43.169]but that has to change at some point
[00:44:46.766]and it's difficult.
[00:44:47.687]That's one of the things I had written down,
[00:44:49.420]but I didn't even know how to begin to explain
[00:44:52.670]what it is we deal with in terms of trying
[00:44:54.503]to help our sons and our men.
[00:44:55.991]I just wrote down earlier raising our sons to be warriors,
[00:45:00.378]how do we do that in this day and age and this society?
[00:45:03.174]And what is the definition of a warrior
[00:45:05.051]in today's society?
[00:45:06.170]Exactly. I mean it's not
[00:45:07.147]going out and shooting up and drinking and being ...
[00:45:11.281]That's not what a warrior is. Yes.
[00:45:13.851]A warrior is providing for your family.
[00:45:16.773]Yeah we have to look at that in different ways
[00:45:18.681]and different terms, but some of the things,
[00:45:21.374]and I heard every panelist touch on,
[00:45:24.113]when we talked about history, but we didn't really talk
[00:45:26.641]about what history does to us or how it changed us
[00:45:28.968]and I'm not sure if you're familiar with the common term
[00:45:32.639]amongst Indian people, but there's a term called
[00:45:35.153]historical trauma, and if you have the opportunity
[00:45:38.902]I would look that up to find out how it is
[00:45:41.191]that we're affected and what kind of place we're coming from
[00:45:46.171]to try to find our place and our balance in this world today
[00:45:50.118]and it's a difficult place in terms of trying to
[00:45:52.616]heal the past and move forward in a positive way
[00:45:56.319]and walking a balanced life where we're still who we are
[00:45:59.881]as indigenous women, we're still who we are as a part of
[00:46:03.857]functioning society, and I think that's difficult.
[00:46:07.519]We don't always conceptualize it to be an issue
[00:46:10.934]that we deal with, we just do it.
[00:46:13.028]But I think if you look back into the historical traumas
[00:46:16.475]that our people have faced in terms of all the different
[00:46:19.659]federal policies that have came out that we've had
[00:46:22.160]to deal with, endure, and literally survive,
[00:46:27.019]that's a lot to deal with.
[00:46:28.817]The federal government has gone through a whole series
[00:46:31.344]of policies, starting with termination,
[00:46:35.935]meaning literally to try to wipe us off
[00:46:37.967]the face of the earth.
[00:46:40.029]We have relocation, self-determination.
[00:46:44.402]Boarding schools.
[00:46:45.349]Boarding schools, yeah, there's just a whole series
[00:46:47.728]of policy that was not good for us,
[00:46:49.950]that we weren't meant to survive.
[00:46:52.264]In our unique capacities as indigenous people
[00:46:55.215]with our culture and tradition, the goal was
[00:46:57.747]to assimilate us if they could not terminate us,
[00:47:00.637]and it's really a miracle that we've been able
[00:47:02.895]to survive that policy and that period of history.
[00:47:09.472]I know the argument I hear often
[00:47:12.145]when I get engaged in this kind of conversation
[00:47:14.867]with people who are not tribal is
[00:47:16.722]well you've had the last 200 years to figure it out
[00:47:20.588]and to make peace and to be like everybody else,
[00:47:22.827]like get over it.
[00:47:24.188]I think we see that on social media all the time:
[00:47:26.584]We're not responsible for what our ancestors did,
[00:47:28.688]get over it.
[00:47:30.049]You weren't there.
[00:47:31.362]And those kinds of arguments, we weren't there
[00:47:34.029]but our grandparents were and our grandparents' grandparents
[00:47:37.359]were and you look at generationally,
[00:47:38.899]that's not too far back.
[00:47:41.323]In terms of what our people had to survive,
[00:47:43.835]or our elders or ancestors had to survive.
[00:47:47.161]So it's a very short period of time.
[00:47:49.447]You look at the American Indian Citizenship Act,
[00:47:53.003]1924, we were barely recognized as citizens
[00:47:56.090]of the United States.
[00:47:57.957]You look at voting laws, we didn't even have the right
[00:47:59.757]to vote until the mid 1950s, and even then
[00:48:02.718]that wasn't enforced.
[00:48:04.291]We're still fighting voting issues.
[00:48:07.081]And so in terms of being a viable part of society
[00:48:11.003]in being able to have the same rights afforded
[00:48:14.990]as everybody else, it doesn't happen consistently,
[00:48:19.031]and so those are some issues that we deal with.
[00:48:23.154]Thank you. Anybody else?
[00:48:25.570]Yeah, I guess I'll just add a couple things
[00:48:27.461]to tag onto what she just said, in terms of
[00:48:29.884]how little time has passed I guess,
[00:48:33.645]in terms of all of these major shifts
[00:48:35.803]in federal Indian policy.
[00:48:41.525]1934 was the Indian Reorganization Act
[00:48:44.697]when the federal government first started recognizing
[00:48:47.318]tribal governments as actual governments.
[00:48:50.304]It wasn't till the 1970s and
[00:48:52.106]the Indian Self-Determination Act,
[00:48:53.666]where the tribes really had additional authorities to
[00:48:58.859]govern and dictate how their governments
[00:49:01.581]and how the money is spent, and how programs and services
[00:49:05.083]are offered for Indian tribes themselves.
[00:49:08.879]So tribal governments are really very young
[00:49:11.801]and the system that we live in and have to operate under
[00:49:15.127]is very complicated, and it is very new.
[00:49:19.480]And oftentimes when laws and statutes are passed
[00:49:22.646]in the United States they don't even think about
[00:49:24.892]how it affects Indian tribes and so it's not addressed
[00:49:27.747]and we have to figure it out later on how it applies
[00:49:30.340]and it has to be sorted out in the courts,
[00:49:32.123]or we have to come up with some other creative solution
[00:49:34.939]or we have to as a tribe come up with a solution
[00:49:38.329]that's not directly addressed in the law
[00:49:41.937]or in the funding source or whatever,
[00:49:43.555]we have to create those solutions internally
[00:49:46.778]in terms of how we're gonna operate.
[00:49:49.993]That's one of the things I actually love about my job
[00:49:52.690]is just the amount of creativity
[00:49:57.867]and just the creativity that we have.
[00:50:02.975]So there's something new that's always coming up
[00:50:05.576]in terms of what we have to do,
[00:50:08.129]problems and challenges, and it's not just cookie cutter,
[00:50:12.110]there's no rule book that just spells it all out
[00:50:15.610]how you accomplish something on an Indian reservation,
[00:50:18.236]you kind of have to figure it out from scratch
[00:50:21.025]and come up with your own solutions that work for you.
[00:50:24.046]There's great models, you can learn from other tribes
[00:50:27.762]and you can borrow and you can see what works over here
[00:50:31.343]but really it's just a matter of asserting
[00:50:34.737]tribal sovereignty in terms of coming up
[00:50:36.732]with our own solutions.
[00:50:41.602]Okay, I think that's a great time to open it up
[00:50:44.239]for questions.
[00:50:45.875]Does anybody want to be the brave soul and go first?
[00:50:54.339][Female Audience Member] I'm currently studying
[00:50:56.297]food insecurity in the Navajo nation
[00:50:58.839]in terms of lack of grocery stores
[00:51:01.452]and lack of access to healthy foods and how
[00:51:05.360]colonization destroyed their roots and their lifestyle
[00:51:08.312](mumbles).
[00:51:09.823]Has there been within your work that you've seen
[00:51:12.570]any (mumbles) food insecurity, specifically in (mumbles)?
[00:51:18.330]I can address that.
[00:51:21.761]In Iowa, there's one tribe that has actual land there,
[00:51:26.512]it's the Meskawki Settlement and in the time
[00:51:29.681]that I've lived in Iowa, the Meskawki Settlement,
[00:51:32.709]the women of the settlement, have developed a
[00:51:36.631]food sovereignty project.
[00:51:38.996]And of course there are many food sovereignty projects
[00:51:43.338]and now there's a national food sovereignty organization.
[00:51:50.634]I'm fascinated by it and it's something
[00:51:52.766]that I wanna do research on when my book is done (laughs).
[00:52:00.141]I find that we've known about food deserts for a long time
[00:52:06.338]in urban contexts,
[00:52:13.366]I mean we can talk about in terms of health
[00:52:16.606]and all of that, but also it is about sovereignty
[00:52:21.627]because it is about indigenous knowledge,
[00:52:24.001]it is about specific knowledge,
[00:52:27.438]and while we frequently talk about indigenous knowledge
[00:52:30.641]as knowledge that is lost because of colonization
[00:52:33.579]and there's no doubt about that,
[00:52:36.168]there's also a thing called knowledge recovery
[00:52:39.236]and you can see that so clearly through these
[00:52:41.664]food sovereignty projects.
[00:52:47.033]Then it of course relates to health and diabetes
[00:52:49.893]and other problems.
[00:52:52.744]So I think it's good to look at a problem scenario
[00:53:00.599]but also to pull back and see the bigger picture,
[00:53:07.984]what women in so many tribes are doing right now,
[00:53:11.823]which is food sovereignty, not only in the United States,
[00:53:14.082]but in Canada too.
[00:53:16.042]We have a documentary series that will be out next year
[00:53:18.890]called Growing Native, and it's about tribes that are
[00:53:21.973]reclaiming old ways.
[00:53:25.204]When my mother was growing up on the reservation,
[00:53:28.068]they all had community gardens
[00:53:29.752]and they all canned and they all took care of each other
[00:53:33.995]and shared.
[00:53:35.904]And then with the advent of some of the policies
[00:53:38.744]that we're talking about, and the access to fertile land.
[00:53:48.615]Kit Carson burned all the Navajo peach orchards,
[00:53:52.804]I mean what a goofball right?
[00:53:56.129]So you've got generations of people
[00:53:59.907]that have been removed from their traditional food sources
[00:54:02.951]and it's just so wonderful to see
[00:54:05.867]tribes really taking this into their own hands,
[00:54:07.923]saving seeds.
[00:54:10.394]My husband's a gardener and I've been blessed
[00:54:14.222]to be able to do some research all around the country
[00:54:16.796]about some tribes that are doing this
[00:54:18.707]and I went on a harvesting trip and I learned about
[00:54:21.371]wild ginger and I learned about this and that
[00:54:23.459]and cannabis and my husband goes
[00:54:26.084]oh yeah we've gotten that in our garden,
[00:54:28.655]oh yeah we've got that in our garden.
[00:54:30.479]Can I harvest it?
[00:54:31.312]No no, we're waiting for it to establish some more.
[00:54:34.521]We grow sage and sweet grass and mint and other herbs
[00:54:38.835]that we use traditionally and this guy is a Mormon
[00:54:41.276]from Utah.
[00:54:43.151]But it's really important that we reclaim that.
[00:54:45.381]Just the biodiversity for the safety of our food.
[00:54:49.535]The other part of this that's so fascinating
[00:54:52.022]is we had Brenda Child and Bunky Echo-Hawk come to
[00:54:57.828]the Iowa campus to do this weird idea I had about
[00:55:02.115]a joint presentation while he draws,
[00:55:05.616]she talks about her scholarship and it worked.
[00:55:10.775]I ended up spending a lot of time with Bunky
[00:55:13.274]who's Pawnee and he was telling me
[00:55:16.531]these fascinating stories about how families in his tribes
[00:55:20.004]are starting to bring ancient seeds out.
[00:55:24.296]And so this is also happening is that when people become
[00:55:28.562]more confident that they can see some success
[00:55:32.007]with food projects, and they feel more confident
[00:55:35.672]about sharing not just the seeds,
[00:55:39.885]but knowledge from their families, this is starting
[00:55:43.152]to happen too.
[00:55:44.351]And he was telling me some really cool stories
[00:55:46.223]about some strings of corn that were found
[00:55:49.207]growing down at Pawnee because people were bringing
[00:55:52.392]old seeds that they had kept in their families
[00:55:54.772]for a really long time.
[00:55:56.264]And some of them wouldn't grow there
[00:55:58.072]because it's too far south. Right.
[00:55:59.723]So they're growing Pawnee corn up here in Nebraska.
[00:56:02.248]Right.
[00:56:03.081]If I may real quick just to add in,
[00:56:04.754]it's not as simple as reclaiming and repatriating
[00:56:07.790]what we would do in terms of food sovereignty
[00:56:10.607]and independence, because part of that ties into water
[00:56:13.535]and water is a valuable resource, especially in my area.
[00:56:18.157]My tribe was involved in a case called Arizona vs California
[00:56:21.745]where we had to learn how to figure out how to
[00:56:23.933]quantify water in terms of perfecting decrees
[00:56:27.366]and deciding who was going to get water
[00:56:30.039]and so I wish it was as simple as doing that,
[00:56:34.788]especially on a large scale to sustain ourselves.
[00:56:38.527]Anytime we have projects related or remotely
[00:56:42.881]the water districts think it's going to be connected
[00:56:45.276]to water, we get demand letters, we get lawsuits,
[00:56:49.009]we get all these letters of interest
[00:56:52.002]with regards to whatever kind of activities
[00:56:53.805]we're gonna do on our own reservations with our own
[00:56:56.932]water allocation, because there's such a reliance
[00:57:00.707]on taking whatever we have that we're not using
[00:57:04.634]and so there's a lot more to that issue.
[00:57:12.493][Female Audience Member] First thank you so much
[00:57:13.882]for coming.
[00:57:14.718]This has really opened my eyes to a lot of things
[00:57:17.438]I hadn't really considered before.
[00:57:20.523]I'm planning to be a social worker in foster care
[00:57:23.504]for a few years after I graduate
[00:57:25.786]and ICWA has been a source of study for me
[00:57:30.345]for years now, something that really fascinates me
[00:57:32.890]and I want to be as sensitive as I can as I implement it,
[00:57:37.300]however, as I've done other studies and it's been shown
[00:57:41.233]the most effective forms of foster care and child welfare
[00:57:45.549]advocates are when native people administer to native people
[00:57:50.430]and so as a white person, I don't share the same culture
[00:57:54.446]or traditions, how can I in practice invoke
[00:57:58.483]a very historically sensitive perspective
[00:58:01.601]and really if I do work with native people,
[00:58:05.649]how can I really apply the perspective of knowing
[00:58:08.849]the historical trauma and having this both legal history
[00:58:13.343]and also social science kind of perspective?
[00:58:21.507]Well I think you just right there ...
[00:58:25.859]I shouldn't even be talking about this
[00:58:27.514](panelists laugh)
[00:58:28.347]Cuz I'm not the law person here.
[00:58:29.816]But you know a lot of judges and people
[00:58:31.706]that are in the system don't even know
[00:58:33.233]about the Indian Child Welfare Act.
[00:58:35.272]Just understanding it is a big help,
[00:58:37.527]so I'll shut up now.
[00:58:38.515](audience laughs)
[00:58:39.821]That's what I would say, I mean you're already
[00:58:42.598]starting down the right path in terms of just studying
[00:58:45.471]the Indian Child Welfare Act,
[00:58:48.231]cuz there are lots of situations in Nebraska, Iowa,
[00:58:52.058]and in other places where our tribal children
[00:58:55.678]are sometimes involved in child welfare cases
[00:58:58.557]where the judges don't know, the social workers don't know,
[00:59:01.950]and as a social worker you're gonna be right there
[00:59:04.399]on the front line and the minute that you think
[00:59:07.980]that there might be an Indian child in a case,
[00:59:11.448]the fact that you know what the Indian Child Welfare Act is
[00:59:13.844]and you understand what those rules are
[00:59:15.434]and what things come into play when there is
[00:59:18.002]an Indian child involved, that is half the battle
[00:59:24.187]in terms of service delivery, it's knowledge,
[00:59:27.551]it's understanding, it's asking questions,
[00:59:30.122]it's developing resources and contacts who can help in that.
[00:59:36.021]That is huge.
[00:59:38.441]Go ahead.
[00:59:40.346]I think that just as a general point,
[00:59:43.618]you probably don't think it's that amazing that you do this,
[00:59:48.082]but it's always amazing to me when a non-native person
[00:59:51.314]is willing to try to understand the history.
[00:59:55.585]I have issues with social work programs
[00:59:58.151]because of this very same thing
[01:00:01.167]and they have students who wanna work with,
[01:00:07.292]for example, the American Indian community
[01:00:09.198]but I never see those people in my Federal Indian Policy
[01:00:11.833]class, and they're not required to take it.
[01:00:15.435]And you can't understand, as you know, just from
[01:00:21.120]understanding ICWA, you can't really understand
[01:00:26.535]what's happening with a family if you don't understand
[01:00:29.406]all that history that comes behind it.
[01:00:36.401]I think the most radical thing you can do
[01:00:38.601]is to learn the history.
[01:00:44.892]Plenty of people have tried to be our friends
[01:00:47.565]and help Indians without knowing anything about us
[01:00:53.031]and all they've done is create horrible damage
[01:00:56.727]or wasted our time.
[01:00:59.092]So I think you're already well on your way to
[01:01:03.953]doing a better job than a lot of other people do.
[01:01:07.370]So that's what I would say.
[01:01:09.576]If I could just add in terms of the practicality
[01:01:11.979]of the work that you're gonna be doing,
[01:01:13.739]there are a lot of organizations out there
[01:01:16.612]that are doing the work and doing it well,
[01:01:19.344]in terms of teaching and educating about the roles
[01:01:22.666]and responsibilities that you would have
[01:01:24.148]as a social worker.
[01:01:26.334]I would imagine you'd probably be in the state system
[01:01:28.736]as opposed to the tribal system, because each would be
[01:01:31.258]very different.
[01:01:32.499]In terms of the tribal system we would invoke ICWA
[01:01:35.830]in terms of wanting to bring our children
[01:01:38.033]back into the tribe through our tribal courts
[01:01:41.542]and probably transfer jurisdiction if that's a possibility.
[01:01:44.860]If you're on the state side then you have the obligation
[01:01:47.252]under federal law to apply the Indian Child Welfare Act
[01:01:50.435]and you'll learn a series of things
[01:01:52.304]and the primary thing you'll be learning is notice
[01:01:55.176]and right now the Bureau of Indian Affairs
[01:01:58.045]had issued new regulations with regards to
[01:02:01.046]the Indian Child Welfare Act, so I would follow that
[01:02:03.427]and track legislation as it changes
[01:02:05.665]because there have been several law suits
[01:02:09.816]with regards to the notion that the Indian Child Welfare Act
[01:02:14.730]is discriminatory and so you should follow that legislation,
[01:02:18.527]those cases, to see what the outcomes are.
[01:02:22.216]And then I would throw out the Casey Family,
[01:02:25.825]a nonprofit foundation, they do a lot of work
[01:02:27.961]with the Indian Child Welfare Act
[01:02:29.363]and they have a lot of collaborations between states,
[01:02:33.550]state departments and then tribes try to bring in
[01:02:36.508]a collective opportunity to learn together and to build
[01:02:40.380]and then I would follow Tribal State and Court Forums,
[01:02:43.467]there are a number of them developing in different states
[01:02:47.234]that have tribes in them, Arizona and California
[01:02:50.438]being two of them, and so there are a lot of,
[01:02:53.940]through that collaboration process, opportunities to learn.
[01:02:57.227]Then there's also a program in the state of California
[01:02:59.817]called Tribal Star, and they do a lot of good work
[01:03:02.772]about teaching about historical trauma.
[01:03:05.038]I know they have literature, they've got DVDs,
[01:03:07.511]a lot of things you could probably just write
[01:03:08.754]and ask for.
[01:03:10.275]And many states, depending on the population
[01:03:13.140]of tribal people in a state, even have Indian units
[01:03:17.218]they call them, within their social service structures.
[01:03:21.741]We have two documentaries coming out that address this.
[01:03:24.272](audience giggles) One called Dawn Land
[01:03:26.305]and one called Blood Memory.
[01:03:28.756]It'll be three years before they hit the air.
[01:03:31.447]If you come see Tribal Justice,
[01:03:32.968]we do a transfer of jurisdiction in that documentary.
[01:03:43.063]Yeah, we'll go there and then back to Jess.
[01:03:45.009][Female Audience Member] Okay thanks.
[01:03:45.978]I'm sorry I forgot your name in blue,
[01:03:48.155]so I apologize first.
[01:03:49.325]You talked about inspiring the native american children
[01:03:52.752]to do more.
[01:03:53.585]What are you doing in that field?
[01:03:55.362]What do you guys recommend, what have you done,
[01:03:57.773]what do you see has worked well, what has not,
[01:04:00.452]are there programs out there to inspire them?
[01:04:07.181]There's lots of different leadership programs,
[01:04:09.718]those types of things, opportunities to go and speak
[01:04:13.124]in the high schools.
[01:04:17.175]Our tribe has a education program
[01:04:20.640]that provides scholarships to tribal members
[01:04:23.836]who do want to pursue higher education there.
[01:04:27.809]At Winnebago Ho-Chunk, Inc.,
[01:04:29.928]the tribes economic development program
[01:04:32.267]has an internship program, so if tribal members
[01:04:36.993]who are in college want to come back and have an opportunity
[01:04:39.263]to gain some work experience and learn on the job
[01:04:43.099]and explore different areas of the economic development side
[01:04:47.918]or various subsidiary companies that they have,
[01:04:50.037]there's internship opportunities.
[01:04:51.953]So there's lots of different kinds of programs like that.
[01:04:55.622]There could be more, and I think the more opportunities
[01:04:59.969]that we can take to go in and just talking
[01:05:03.958]in those formal settings, but also in one on one situations
[01:05:07.552]that is helpful.
[01:05:09.553]I ask specifically because my pastor at my church
[01:05:11.628]is American Indian and he just started a group
[01:05:14.546]called One Tribe and he created a children's book
[01:05:17.961]that my husband illustrated to take to the reservations
[01:05:20.949]and inspire young children and it has pictures
[01:05:24.009]of astronauts and the vice president
[01:05:26.117]who was Native American and a bunch of different things
[01:05:28.808]and I didn't know if that was information you would like
[01:05:31.797]to reach out to them.
[01:05:33.142]It's a phenomenal book and I feel it's very inspiring
[01:05:36.900]to any child.
[01:05:38.410]But to see in specifically Native American individuals
[01:05:41.441]who have succeeded that nobody knows about.
[01:05:44.240]Right, yeah. That would be wonderful.
[01:05:46.165]I would love to have that information.
[01:05:47.825]I think that any types of projects like that
[01:05:49.729]are better at putting that information
[01:05:52.516]at varying age levels for children in the schools
[01:05:54.875]and it's great.
[01:05:56.409]I also participated in a project at UNL
[01:05:58.864]called Native Daughters.
[01:06:01.361]It was in a journalism school a few years ago
[01:06:03.714]and they brought in Native women who were professionals
[01:06:07.206]in all different fields and they published
[01:06:11.628]both a magazine and online media website
[01:06:15.482]and video components to that too
[01:06:19.853]and there was a whole curriculum that was developed
[01:06:21.926]and distributed to schools.
[01:06:27.669]In terms of what I'm doing,
[01:06:29.516]I'm trying to live every day in a good way
[01:06:32.662]and live the best life I can live
[01:06:34.338]because I know there are young people watching me
[01:06:37.137]and there are young girls in my community.
[01:06:40.450]I came to you in my traditional regalia and clothing
[01:06:44.845]because it's probably the truest representation
[01:06:47.540]of who I am.
[01:06:48.907]I packed a nice suit, and we'd probably be twins tonight,
[01:06:51.018](panel laughs) I had a nice blue blazer
[01:06:52.760]I was gonna wear and I was like no,
[01:06:54.518]you know what every opportunity I have
[01:06:55.997]I'm gonna try to truly represent who I am.
[01:06:59.535]And so in terms of what I'm doing personally,
[01:07:01.549]that's what I'm doing is trying to live the best life I can,
[01:07:04.866]trying to teach and engage, I'm trying to be accessible
[01:07:09.965]to tribal girls not just in my community,
[01:07:12.422]but in other communities as well
[01:07:14.646]and for non-tribal people in terms of how you can help.
[01:07:19.203]And it doesn't necessarily need to be a role model
[01:07:21.333]that is an indigenous person,
[01:07:24.136]but even just a positive role model in general.
[01:07:27.066]If you have young tribal women around you
[01:07:29.789]or young women, reach out to them, mentor them,
[01:07:33.412]and provide enrichment opportunities.
[01:07:36.236]I think one of the questions that none of us really touched
[01:07:39.337]is how did we get involved and do the work that we're doing?
[01:07:43.118]I actually only went to law school because I wanted
[01:07:45.242]to go back and lead my people some day
[01:07:47.601]in terms of being our chairperson or our president
[01:07:52.732]for my tribe.
[01:07:53.962]When I was on my tribal council at the age of 21,
[01:07:58.093]we were working on a really large environmental campaign
[01:08:01.435]to try to stop a low-level nuclear waste facility
[01:08:03.974]being put into the Mojave Desert that actually went into
[01:08:08.400]a spiritual path, our dream cycle, and our end cycle
[01:08:10.989]in our life, that we would migrate back to a mountain,
[01:08:14.922]it's several hundred miles away from our reservation,
[01:08:17.738]but the mountain is called (speaking in foreign language),
[01:08:20.109]which is where we believe we were created according
[01:08:22.877]to our creation story.
[01:08:27.013]And so when we were fighting to save this piece
[01:08:29.255]of the desert from this low-level nuclear waste facility
[01:08:32.419]we would often travel to Washington D.C.,
[01:08:34.692]meet with our congressmen and senators
[01:08:37.181]and different legislators and staff,
[01:08:39.459]and they weren't interested in hearing what we had to say
[01:08:41.608]as tribal leaders or tribal people,
[01:08:43.826]even though we were making a traditional
[01:08:45.925]and spiritual argument, they wanted to hear
[01:08:47.609]from our non-Indian attorneys and so I went to law school
[01:08:52.407]primarily just as a segway to open the door
[01:08:55.207]and speak the same language when we sat to the table.
[01:08:58.557]And so that was my reason for going to school
[01:09:01.518]and so in terms of having that opportunity to go to school,
[01:09:05.495]I went to I think congressional workshops for teens,
[01:09:10.401]and that really empowered me and taught me about
[01:09:14.204]the things that could happen,
[01:09:15.483]and one of the senators happened to know my uncle,
[01:09:17.327]who was our tribal chairperson at the time,
[01:09:20.137]because of the close work they did
[01:09:21.440]and hearing that, and I went with my teacher,
[01:09:25.968]a social studies teacher who was non-tribal,
[01:09:29.624]but her giving us the opportunity
[01:09:32.128]and empowering us in that capacity,
[01:09:34.243]it was life changing seeing the opportunities
[01:09:36.571]that were out there.
[01:09:37.404]So if you have the opportunity to reach out to
[01:09:40.272]young people around you, be it boys or women,
[01:09:42.955]and especially tribal children because of the lack
[01:09:45.337]of resources many have, I talked to you about
[01:09:47.242]the social ills and social justice issues.
[01:09:50.659]On my reservation, quite often I'd probably say
[01:09:54.760]a majority of our children don't even leave the reservation,
[01:09:57.711]they stay primarily on reservation.
[01:10:00.093]We have San Diego two hours away, Phoenix two and a half
[01:10:03.223]hours away, and I recall my son when we returned home
[01:10:06.732]from law school where I went to school in Tempe, Arizona,
[01:10:10.383]he would say oh the kids are all excited
[01:10:12.694]because I'm going to Phoenix again,
[01:10:14.780]and I was like what's the big deal,
[01:10:16.389]we're just going to Phoenix?
[01:10:17.673]But they don't even go anywhere, Mom.
[01:10:19.798]They don't leave, most of them have never even left home.
[01:10:23.488]And so if you have the opportunity to create
[01:10:25.563]these kind of enrichment activities
[01:10:27.610]and opportunities for our children, please do so.
[01:10:33.734][Male Audience Member] (speaking softly)
[01:10:42.700]Sometimes we (speaking softly).
[01:10:54.295]So when it comes to the youth,
[01:10:56.383]the youth wanna be treated like humans,
[01:10:58.801]they want solutions to the problems.
[01:11:02.536]There's limited resources as far as outreach,
[01:11:04.908]there's lots of programs with outreach,
[01:11:07.240](speaking softly).
[01:11:10.553]And so, being in America in an age where a lot of places
[01:11:16.146]are multicultural, we don't treat somebody different
[01:11:18.799]because they're asian or they're black
[01:11:21.494](drown out by coughing).
[01:11:23.621]So a lot of these kids don't understand
[01:11:25.508]how they fit into the fabric of america (speaking softly)
[01:11:28.879]because they don't have any television.
[01:11:31.737]They don't see native cartoons,
[01:11:34.073]they're supposed to be (mumbles) and get shot off horses.
[01:11:37.991]So the kids don't understand how they fit into this fabric.
[01:11:42.342]And so you as adults have an opportunity to go
[01:11:45.495]and interact with the native youth
[01:11:47.326]to treat them like human beings
[01:11:49.217]and show them how they fit into the fabric
[01:11:51.197]of being successful by seeing opportunities
[01:11:55.957]and solutions that are provided to them.
[01:11:59.257]So I would encourage all of you to interact
[01:12:02.979]with native youth and show them that there's
[01:12:05.511]a bigger picture of just being successful
[01:12:07.853]human beings on this earth.
[01:12:10.724]Because race is a big issue in this country
[01:12:12.846]and everybody thought that because Obama was president
[01:12:15.722]there was no racism, but we have Trump
[01:12:18.446]who made a very derogatory statement today about
[01:12:21.769]Pocahontas, and he's in Washington so
[01:12:26.245]if I can encourage you to treat them like humans,
[01:12:29.156]they can treat us like humans.
[01:12:31.997]I'd like to add something, because I think that
[01:12:35.689]my story is that ...
[01:12:39.302]I frequently will share this story with students
[01:12:44.359]at some point in the semester if it seems like
[01:12:48.126]an appropriate moment.
[01:12:51.862]I just really enjoy being a teacher
[01:12:54.690]of undergraduate students.
[01:12:56.639]They're so weird but ...
[01:12:57.930](audience laughs)
[01:13:00.405]I kind of get into them.
[01:13:01.767]Of course my children are finishing up their 20s
[01:13:05.488]so I've been through all of that with them and
[01:13:11.262]everything is just so hard in your 20s
[01:13:13.898]and so I can relate, but I never went to high school.
[01:13:19.440]And I think that's what you need to really
[01:13:21.512]completely understand when you look at this panel up here.
[01:13:25.098]We really shouldn't be here.
[01:13:28.770]Right?
[01:13:31.125]We really shouldn't be here.
[01:13:37.133]I came from a family of survivors of
[01:13:39.573]the boarding school system in Oklahoma and
[01:13:46.142]it was just not good.
[01:13:49.220]So when I was quite young I thought
[01:13:52.022]I think I can take better care of myself
[01:13:53.926]than any of these people can.
[01:13:56.430]So I left.
[01:13:58.498]And I wasn't doing anything bad,
[01:14:00.033]I was working as a waitress in this really bad restaurant
[01:14:04.496]and then I just talked my way into a university.
[01:14:11.746]I talked to the director of admissions for an hour
[01:14:13.900]and I told them that I read a lot of books
[01:14:16.688]and that I could write and that I thought I could do
[01:14:19.675]whatever they wanted me to do, and it was so crazy,
[01:14:24.717]cuz he let me in.
[01:14:28.384]And I got a 4.0.
[01:14:32.318]And I kept looking over my shoulder for the entire time
[01:14:35.549]I was in that undergrad program,
[01:14:37.875]cuz I just thought somebody was gonna come grab me
[01:14:40.170]by the scruff of the neck and say what are you doing here?
[01:14:44.774]So I think it's really important
[01:14:47.700]that even though I have a little dress store in Iowa City
[01:14:52.091]where I buy these funky little dresses and
[01:14:56.348]I know how to buy a fancy scarf
[01:14:58.732]and I know my language sounds very mainstream,
[01:15:05.302]but none of us should be here
[01:15:08.725]and we're only here ...
[01:15:11.204]And it wasn't like anybody was hanging around
[01:15:14.105]trying to give us a lot of help,
[01:15:18.177]not really.
[01:15:21.002]I mean my relatives couldn't help me,
[01:15:22.941]there was not gonna be any help from my relatives.
[01:15:26.214]I was fortunate in that they were really proud of me,
[01:15:30.310]sometimes you don't even get that.
[01:15:34.679]And so I wanted to be a historian,
[01:15:40.733]and after I became a historian I saw how ridiculous
[01:15:43.436]my idea was that somehow my being a historian
[01:15:46.598]was somehow gonna help Native America somehow.
[01:15:55.679]I thought that if people could hear
[01:16:00.264]the history
[01:16:03.688]that their attitudes would change.
[01:16:09.724]No.
[01:16:11.956]I mean it's not that I haven't touched anybody's life.
[01:16:18.727]So it took me a really long time to figure out
[01:16:23.016]how to use being an academic in the way
[01:16:26.954]that I always kind of wanted to when I was much younger.
[01:16:32.597]And of course I had to become sort of safe
[01:16:36.511]at my institution and I had to know how to get money,
[01:16:42.281]which I never really got, you know how you got money
[01:16:45.604]from people.
[01:16:47.489]All these hidden rules that other people
[01:16:49.511]didn't seem to know, I promise you, we don't know them.
[01:16:54.419]Or it took us forever to learn them and figure them out.
[01:16:58.758]It's amazing to have a really successful grant writer,
[01:17:02.807]native grant writer.
[01:17:06.147]That's just not something that you take for granted.
[01:17:12.707]So finally, I get it all together, right?
[01:17:17.607]And I had done the work in Mississippi and then I got
[01:17:20.979]sidetracked into transforming myself
[01:17:25.991]out of a very I think conventional scholar,
[01:17:30.048]historian, to embracing something that
[01:17:33.990]is called the Public Humanities.
[01:17:38.636]It was a radical change in my thinking.
[01:17:42.469]I don't believe in outreach anymore.
[01:17:46.311]When I was at the Smithsonian Institution,
[01:17:48.513]I was in charge of outreach, but even looking back on myself
[01:17:52.332]I can see I didn't practice outreach as outreach.
[01:17:56.288]I practiced it as collaboration.
[01:17:59.210]When I was doing those meetings with all these
[01:18:01.123]native communities all over the United States,
[01:18:03.812]I wasn't just dialing people up and saying
[01:18:06.508]give me a meeting room and have some people show up.
[01:18:09.433]I was contacting people I knew in those areas
[01:18:13.555]and saying can you help me organize the meeting,
[01:18:16.099]like native people.
[01:18:18.433]Can you help me get my meeting together of the right people
[01:18:21.470]who need to be in a meeting with the NMAI people
[01:18:25.056]and their architects?
[01:18:27.109]And it would take a gazillion phone calls and lots of time.
[01:18:31.321]So now it seems like I've come around to this again,
[01:18:35.865]but I had to do this sidetrack thing with the history thing.
[01:18:40.581]And so for example, this is what
[01:18:43.216]I encourage colleagues to do
[01:18:50.880]in this whole public humanities business.
[01:18:55.603]Public Humanities means that, in the truest sense
[01:18:58.516]of the word, the collaboration doesn't begin
[01:19:02.482]when your thing is done and you want some Indians
[01:19:05.505]to give it to.
[01:19:08.737]It starts when you're all sitting around the table
[01:19:11.740]conceptualizing it, right?
[01:19:16.152]That's a really different thing.
[01:19:18.407]And that's when their priorities are on the table
[01:19:21.440]equal to your priorities.
[01:19:26.415]And that's how the digital project came about,
[01:19:29.838]working with the Meskwaki and some other people.
[01:19:32.603]And hopefully more tribes in time if I live long enough.
[01:19:37.050]And sitting down and saying what are your priorities?
[01:19:41.458]What do you want with this project that you say
[01:19:45.674]you're interested in?
[01:19:47.704]And the Meskwakis are very specific.
[01:19:50.165]They wanna talk back to the archeologists.
[01:19:55.266]The archeologists have narrated their history,
[01:19:58.322]and they wanna talk back to that.
[01:20:00.485]And so in our project they will.
[01:20:05.481]Not cuz I give them permission,
[01:20:07.054]but because they're partners.
[01:20:11.166]We put a lot of the labor in because we're the people
[01:20:13.637]with resources.
[01:20:15.103]So when it comes to children,
[01:20:18.130]to get to your point,
[01:20:21.301]when I had for example, Bunky Echo-Hawk
[01:20:24.687]and Brenda Child come to campus,
[01:20:28.695]I had simultaneously been having a big argument
[01:20:32.494]with the provost of my university
[01:20:35.478]and the new president of the university,
[01:20:38.653]because we had 49 Native students at the University of Iowa,
[01:20:44.489]and I had made a very public confrontation
[01:20:47.700]with the new president at a very public meeting,
[01:20:51.390]so then he had the provost call me and tell me
[01:20:55.272]that they're gonna fix it, but they're not really,
[01:20:58.191]and so Bunky and Brenda were coming and I said
[01:21:02.332]hey I'm taking Bunky Echo-Hawk and Brenda Child
[01:21:06.989]to Meskwaki to talk to high school people
[01:21:11.240]and their parents about education and college,
[01:21:17.806]why don't you come with me?
[01:21:20.400]And he had to say yes.
[01:21:22.257](panel laughs)
[01:21:23.616]I mean, nothing ever came of it.
[01:21:25.436]These people are completely ...
[01:21:32.389]They don't care.
[01:21:34.202]But he had to go to Meskwaki and bring his
[01:21:37.359]diversity person with him,
[01:21:39.292]and it was beautiful, Meskwaki has a beautiful school.
[01:21:46.435]One of their teachers is an alum of Iowa
[01:21:49.342]and she was a student of mine and she will make you cry
[01:21:53.864]with her removal lesson.
[01:21:56.451]She will make you cry.
[01:21:59.199]She teaches this amazing removal lesson
[01:22:01.699]that she invented herself.
[01:22:05.351]So Bunky got up, and it was a beautiful thing
[01:22:09.033]because it was the children and their parents,
[01:22:12.299]and they just knew that we were coming to hang out with them
[01:22:14.990]and we had gotten some high B food,
[01:22:18.147]so there was a little bit of food,
[01:22:20.387]and Bunky got up there and the first thing he said was
[01:22:25.896]well you know your first education is in your community.
[01:22:31.190]And he just went on this riff about education
[01:22:35.654]and starting with the community,
[01:22:37.575]and then talking about going out into the world
[01:22:39.931]and going to a place like a university
[01:22:42.613]and then he talked about his own life
[01:22:44.984]and how he became an artist.
[01:22:46.919]He wasn't a really strong student.
[01:22:49.278]His father's Walter Echo-Hawk so that was a bit of a drag.
[01:22:52.747](audience chuckles)
[01:22:54.386]But he's an amazing artist.
[01:22:57.527]And then he started pulling prints out of his bag
[01:23:00.329]and he said who wants this print?
[01:23:03.186]And the whole room went still and nobody would go
[01:23:06.216]for the print and he said you're kidding me.
[01:23:08.426]Nobody's gonna take my print?
[01:23:10.155]And he ends up giving away all these prints
[01:23:12.573]to these students and then Brenda got up
[01:23:15.700]and she talked about being from Red Lake
[01:23:18.659]and all the stuff that she did in going to college.
[01:23:24.332]So even someone who's in the academy,
[01:23:32.480]of course this is not the fast track to full professor.
[01:23:38.362]So if you care about the full professor thing,
[01:23:40.830]then maybe you should do something else.
[01:23:43.165]But I don't really care if I'm never a full professor,
[01:23:46.364]cuz I've gotten so much further than I ever was
[01:23:48.910]supposed to get in the first place.
[01:23:55.034]You can hear wherever we sit, we try to think of ways to,
[01:24:00.871]and I even wanna say don't model yourself after me
[01:24:03.792]for God's sake, but to show that you can be in places
[01:24:09.193]where really they don't think you belong.
[01:24:14.507]And if you want to be a professor,
[01:24:16.200]I wouldn't recommend it necessarily,
[01:24:17.754]but if you wanna be a professor, you can be a professor.
[01:24:20.904]If you wanna be a judge, you can be a judge.
[01:24:23.485]If you wanna work for your tribe as a lawyer,
[01:24:25.835]you can do that.
[01:24:27.559]If you wanna make films, you can do that.
[01:24:30.483]None of us should be here.
[01:24:33.219]And that's why when we speak, we speak with authenticity
[01:24:37.485]and authority.
[01:24:40.672]So we all have these capacities to come at it,
[01:24:46.367]but I honestly believe that the days of
[01:24:52.355]handing what you think is correct to an Indian child
[01:24:56.787]or an Indian person, those days have got to end.
[01:25:03.069](audience applauds)
[01:25:08.748]Okay we have time for one last question.
[01:25:12.238]Yeah.
[01:25:13.964][Female Audience Member] Being the evil archeologist
[01:25:18.379]and having worked in half a dozen states
[01:25:21.933]over the last 25 years, in different tribal communities,
[01:25:27.979]I guess it would be most appropriate to ask Justice White
[01:25:34.197]a very nuts and bolts problem.
[01:25:38.465]I have real issues with a course called Indian Education.
[01:25:45.610]I have no idea what that is.
[01:25:49.432]And I took it in law school, and I guess everybody takes it,
[01:25:55.179]but I don't understand how it prepares you in any way
[01:26:00.171]whatsoever to encounter tribal communities.
[01:26:05.140]And so I'm wondering in your experience on the bench,
[01:26:09.868]are you seeing any kind of regional or national concern
[01:26:16.854]at all about the kind of training that lawyers
[01:26:23.399]and archeologists and people who work in tribal communities
[01:26:28.829]are getting to better help them be productive,
[01:26:34.898]rather than destructive?
[01:26:38.535]Do you see any change or concern in how
[01:26:44.089]outsiders basically to tribal communities
[01:26:47.228]are being educated?
[01:26:50.360]I think there's a lot of concern with regards to
[01:26:52.861]the education that's occurring for
[01:26:57.455]for one people in academia I think it's getting
[01:26:59.763]a little bit better in some places
[01:27:02.046]depending on, for one, authenticity of who
[01:27:06.147]they have teaching and what it is they're trying
[01:27:10.304]to focus on.
[01:27:11.932]In terms of coming out of law school,
[01:27:15.448]I know we weren't prepared to go into tribal communities
[01:27:18.240]and do work.
[01:27:20.171]I was probably a little bit better prepared than
[01:27:22.440]some of my counterparts because we had
[01:27:24.738]an Indian legal clinic where we were actually doing work
[01:27:27.434]with tribes and doing more practical things.
[01:27:31.289]I don't know how many of you may be law students, if any,
[01:27:34.543]basically when you're in law school,
[01:27:35.877]unless you're in a clinic, you're just learning about
[01:27:39.204]the basics of law and how to study and how to apply it
[01:27:43.036]and interpret it and do all those things
[01:27:45.575]that lawyers are supposed to be able to do.
[01:27:48.189]But in terms of getting out and practicing it,
[01:27:50.796]you're absolutely not prepared,
[01:27:53.059]and so I think if you have the opportunity
[01:27:56.159]through clinics to do work with tribes,
[01:28:00.179]certainly engage.
[01:28:01.813]A number of universities have Indian law clinics
[01:28:05.689]and so you can do training with them.
[01:28:08.148]Sometimes they even offer LLMs in many universities
[01:28:14.061]to learn more about tribal law.
[01:28:16.207]If you're just learning about law in general,
[01:28:19.541]when you go into a tribal jurisdiction,
[01:28:21.942]don't go in arguing state law, go in arguing tribal law.
[01:28:26.797]I get that all the time in terms of my court.
[01:28:28.963]Where I have people who are admitted to our tribal bar
[01:28:31.531]to practice in tribal court, but they'll file a brief
[01:28:34.884]ahead of time citing a bunch of state law
[01:28:37.590]that has no applicability in my court
[01:28:40.730]and my court's like hey you've got this
[01:28:42.375]what do you want to do with it?
[01:28:43.376]We're like well if that's what they wanna file,
[01:28:44.953]let it sit and we'll deal with it in court,
[01:28:47.690]but I'm quick to remind them that that has no place
[01:28:50.301]or application many time in tribal court,
[01:28:53.017]especially if we have our own law on point
[01:28:56.164]and we might even have our own annotated codes
[01:29:00.065]for them to refer to with regards to decisions
[01:29:03.126]that have been held in our court prior to,
[01:29:05.136]as opposed to citing state law.
[01:29:07.845]So in terms of whatever field it is, if it's archeological
[01:29:11.161]or if it's law itself, there are opportunities.
[01:29:14.537]But mostly you have to be self-reliant and diligent
[01:29:18.100]in terms of what it is you're learning
[01:29:20.017]and who you're learning from, because I think
[01:29:21.639]a lot of people are trying to teach more,
[01:29:24.289]but not including enough tribal people
[01:29:27.076]or tribal practitioners to actually get
[01:29:30.231]the practicality behind what it is they're doing.
[01:29:36.497]And so they come in with theory,
[01:29:38.031]they come in with this conceptualized view
[01:29:40.755]of how things are going to be and that's just not practical.
[01:29:46.631]Okay, thank you.
[01:29:47.464]Sadly we are out of time.
[01:29:49.662]So let's say thanks again to our panel.
[01:29:52.201](audience applauds)
[01:29:59.830]Thank you all for coming and taking the time
[01:30:01.616]to be here tonight.

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Native Women's Justice Forum

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