Taking Children, Taking the Land with Nick Estes and Rebecca Nagle

hello everyone i'm rebecca nagle i'm a journalist and a citizen of cherokee nation and i just want to say thank you all so much for joining us this evening i'm honored and humbled to host this conversation with writer historian and activist nick estes nick estes is a citizen of the lower brule sue tribe his book our history is the future standing rock versus the dakota access pipeline and the long tradition of indigenous resistance is an important contribution to the national dialogue and historical record the book gives the fight over the the dakota access pipeline its full context by tracing the centuries-long history of lakota dakota and nakota resistance to colonization estes also co-edited standing rock standing with standing rock both voices from the no dapple movement with just kieran dylan in 2014 nick estes co-founded the red nation a hub for indigenous activism and resistance too often indigenous voices and issues are left out of social justice movements and progressive policies through media and organizing red nation is changing that nick co-host their podcast the red nation podcast and also co-authored their book from border town violence to native liberation with melanie k yazzie jennifer danette dale and david korea his writing has appeared in the guardian the intercept jacobin indian country today high country news and many other publications until very recently he was the assistant professor in american studies department at the university of new mexico and after recently moving to minneapolis he will join the faculty of the university of minnesota department of american indian studies in 2022. but when that adds to our national understanding of indigenous history and current politics is much bigger than this list it is greater than the sum of its parts nick is helping create an analysis of both history and a vision of politics that is often missing from our national discourse what left and progressive politics look like for indigenous nations and citizens today nick and i are talking about a topic that unfortunately is very timely how generations of native children have been the tip of the spear in the attack on indigenous nations and indigenous rights for centuries the u.s government has taken native children from native families in order to take native land from native nations after the discovery of mass graves last summer in canada at former residential schools our country is re-examining one chapter of this history the so-called the so-called boarding school era and today at the same time we're reliving that history because a federal lawsuit is on its way to the u.s supreme court that threatens the legal structure that defends native rights in this country and that lawsuit all started when a group of non-native foster parents wanted to adopt native children so to get us started on this conversation i am so excited and honored to introduce nick estes uh hamidtakiapi not be chuzapi chante wash day um it's good to be here i greet every one of you who is listening from home uh with a good heart and a handshake uh i'm so honored to be joined by the esteemed cherokee journalist uh rebecca nagle um as she said and at the end of her introduction you know you should all check out her podcast series this land podcast especially season two uh this talk that i'm going to be giving tonight really picks up on that and some of the themes and kind of gives some historical texture to the issues that she's she's addressing in that particular series and also check out season one as well especially if you're a legal nerd i also want to just say thank you to landon and haymarket for hosting tonight's talk and without further ado i will just get right into it if you want to bring up the slide john so this picture is a picture from the bluff overlooking a town that i was born and raised in called chamberlain south dakota and i constantly return to this place not just in my traveling and because i'm from there but in my mind and and how i think through a lot of the issues that are confronting uh not just indigenous people but this uh this country the united states um it's called the gateway to the west uh and it has played a very prominent role in history i mean if you've seen the movie the revenant with our boy leonardo dicaprio who gets mauled by a bear and crawls his way to an oscar this is where this it's based off of a real historical narrative of hugh glass um but this is where he ends up at the end of the movie in a place that's called fort kiowa which is actually across the river from here and fort fort kai was an actually interesting place because it was one of the first fort fur trade forts that was built in the area and if you watch the movie there's a lot of historical fiction in the movie but there's also i think a fair degree of accuracy in terms of the kind of violence that was perpetrated by the fur traders these were armed men in in many instances these were the first so-called man camps that arrived in this area and accompanied the extractive industry of the fur trade and in one of the kind of more gruesome scenes there's this depiction of a french fur trader um raping a native woman right and this is also important to remember that this is the introduction along with capitalist penetration into this area this is also the introduction of the sex trade in in this uh this particular region um so one of the things that i always find interesting is there's kind of an aphasia that happens when we see something in front of us but we can't quite make the connections that this is a real historical place with a real historical people and something that's playing out in the present especially the lakota and dakota name for what is now chamberlain was makatipi which actually my uncle jokes means cave dwellers and it has two kinds of meanings one is um comes from the history that uh dakota scholar elizabeth cook lynn told me is that when the columns of vengeance that were exterminating the survivors of the u.s dakota war in 1862 arrived in this area in 1863 looking for the refugees of that war the survivors hid in the gumbo cliffs and could actually see the faces of the calvary that was that was chasing them and that's one name uh meaning earth dwellers the other name comes from the settlers themselves who arrived in this area and had no real relationship to the land and didn't know you know um didn't know how to live with the environment itself and so they essentially created sod houses um which are made out of mud and dirt that were soon destroyed by south dakota weather uh great plains weather um so it has these these two kind of meanings um but there's also another darker history for me personally and something that i never really wanted to write about to be honest and that is the history of the saint joe's boarding school if you could go to the next slide um and this was a boarding school that actually the the site of which started off as a federal mandate or federal boarding school called the chamberlain boarding indian boarding school it later be was moved to rapid city to facilitate uh you know the the introduction of students from the western more further west uh tribes um but nonetheless it was taken over by the catholic church itself and became a boarding school that served the surrounding um nations such as my own liberal success sioux tribe as well as the cheyenne river sioux tribe and this was actually land that was gifted gifted quote unquote to the catholic church itself and um it still remains within the kind of federal boundaries of our treaty and reservation territory but nonetheless it's it's church land um and you know this the the photo that i have here is actually of the school uh museum um and when as rebecca had pointed out at the beginning of this conversation when the news came out about the canadian residential schools and the discovery i think people knew i think the relatives knew that these children were gone but the discovery and the headlines that kind of came out around the mass burials and the and the graves that were found this really sent you know shockwaves through not just indian country but through both canada and the united states um and it really sent a message that there's so much mourning that native people have yet to do and the full magnitude of native suffering has yet to be entirely understood especially when it comes to the nightmarish like legacies of american indian boarding schools and while commentators frequently describe these schools as projects of civilization i i would like to actually think think about them in an entirely different way but boarding schools serve to provide access to native land by fundamentally attacking native families and attacking the tribal structure itself to and holding children hostage so that their nations would eventually see territory and of course one of the primary benefactors of the boarding school system was the catholic church which today is the world's largest non-governmental land owner with roughly 177 million acres of property throughout the globe and part of which you know the part of the evidence of exactly how the church acquired its wealth in north america is literally being on earth with the discovery of these these graves but what's different about a school like you know st joseph indian school is not so much the the people who didn't leave the school or who had died there but those who actually survived many of whom were my family uh and in the course of a public records um search you can go to the next slide i had uncovered about 23 complaints and testimonies filed by former students at the school specifically relating to the uh the um the rape and molestation of them while they were at the school itself and this this ranged uh between the years of the 1960s and 1970s going into the 1980s and in fact when i published um sort of the the findings of this uh interview that i had done with one of my relatives in the guardian um some of the survivors of the school who attended the school in ninth in the 90s also relayed their own testimony about what they had experienced there as well the school itself has done an amazing job of a pr campaign in in sort of silencing the voices of these survivors and not just the school itself but the um the catholic church that's backing it and i think fundamentally you know it's not just a question of whether or not these stories um are put in into the public record but it's whether or not they can be put into the public record because the state of south dakota under a republican governor passed a law that essentially raised that created a statute of limitations that disallowed or barred or effectively barred survivors from the this specific school from bringing a civil suit against the church or the church and the diocese itself and so this really is where my kind of entry into this conversation began and if you want to go to the next slide this slide is a picture of um some of the items that were recovered they're called artifacts in this exhibit school museum exhibit many of them are religious items some of them are actually spiritual items i can um i can't really disclose which ones are but looking at this really evoked an image of my mind i went to the holocaust museum in washington dc and one of the things that always sticks out in my mind is seeing like the piles of clothes the piles of shoes the things that they stripped um people who were put into concentration camps during nazi germany the things that they they took from them if you can go to the next slide this is an image of the rosaries that have been taken from migrants crossing the border many of whom are indigenous so i think of the the sort of evidence that exists that you know the the profound kind of material impact that that has of just seeing the visuals of these kinds of things because fundamentally the removal of children from their families and the placing of them into another group is the legal definition under international law of genocide and that's what we're really talking about here and if you go to the next slide this is a picture of the school administrators many of whom are catholic priests one of them isn't but in the course of the kind of back and forth that i had with my editors at the guardian one of the the public relations people the media people from the school themselves actually reached out and challenged the narrative that had put forward saying that there had never been any kind of documentation or testimony about abuse by priests and actually i found three of those school administrators were named in the complaints filed by former you know the boarding school survivors that attended saint joe's um and so in some ways you know there's this kind of culture of this uh culture or conspiracy of silence that surrounds um uh boarding school and the violence right and i think you know i think of the case of of george floyd and how george foley was murdered here in the city by a police officer but what if he had not been murdered you know would the the amount of violence being a survivor of police violence as a black man in america had have the same effect and have the same impact right and so i think while and on one hand we can we can measure you know canada is like literally counting do you even you know ask yourself this question we saw the headlines this summer but do you even know what the number is at right now right it's it's i think it's around uh 10 000 uh children that they found in canada and they're likely to find more and more but i think the other aspect of it that i'm more concerned about is the lasting impact that they have not just on my own family i'm one of you know um tens of thousands of native families across this country who are one generation removed uh from the boarding school experience we're not talking about a 19th century policy or 19th century program we're talking about something that is relevant to the present and that doesn't even open you know the question of indian child removal as a practice that continues uh on through as you know rebecca has documented in her her her work through the foster care system and the adoption system and the attacks on the indian child welfare act which was passed in 1978 to reverse uh the trend of native child removal and also this summer we saw the announcement by the first uh indigenous woman who's the secretary of interior deb holland that her department in response to the the graves that were being uncovered in in canada um that her department would lead an investigation into quote the loss of human life life and lasting consequences of federal indian boarding schools um and it's not quite clear whether or not you know the scope of the investigation will include uh catholic church archives because um the catholic church through various you know reasons because it's a church run a faith-based institution is not subject to things like the native american graves and repatriation act they're not subject to certain disclosures publicly and in fact many of the priests files are are closed until 50 years after their death and the catholic church you know as what has been revealed by many of these cases specifically involving non-indigenous children is that the catholic church keeps meticulous records on the behavior and the confessions of their priests and some of which came out during the saint francis investigation which is on the rosebud uh indians or indian reservation where some of these you know catholic priests were actually themselves john's they would they considered themselves john's they would go around and pray specifically on young native girls and admitted to these things in confession right and so the the catholic church has this kind of weird legal protection much like attorney-client privilege where the church doesn't have to disclose these kinds of confessions so it's a looming question and i think that's uh something that we have to address and we have to be honest about when we're confronting the magnitude of this specific issue and why is it that a theocratic institution holds so much power and sway over how we tell our histories and how we understand what we're going through in the present if you can go to the next slide please um and before you know i go further i just want to highlight that many of the things that i'm talking about have been talked about by people who are better better serving to this issue and i just want to name them one is sandy whitehawk who actually lives here in minnesota she herself was adopted out to a white family when she was a very young person actually 35 years after the carlisle indian school closed down denise lagimadir and her book stringing rosaries she's she's one of that really opened the door for me she's documented at least three testimonies from survivors of the saint joe's indian school as well as about a dozen or so survivors from various catholic run boarding schools amy lontree whose work looks specifically at indian child removal in the present and looking at the formation of the red power movement as a response to the relocation programs that put native children in public schools and as the boarding schools off-reservation boarding school system began to wane in support and policy this the states began to be the arbiters of native child removal and through the foster care system and the adoption programs as well as marionette pember christine mcleave who's the director of the native american healing native american boarding school healing project and as well as tribal historic preservation officers such as ben rod so this picture that we see in front of us is actually a picture of the carlisle uh indian cemetery and in fact this is actually the back of the military base because where the carlisle boarding school exists today the remnants of it are on an active military base and in fact the carlisle barracks is one of the oldest military installations in the united states and had existed prior to the revolutionary war and in fact it was where george washington led campaigns of punishment against the iroquois confederacy and thus earning the name town destroyer because he destroyed he waged total warfare campaigns and every sitting president since then the iroquois hudnoshone confederacy called town destroyer so it has this really kind of deep uh history and it's also important to point out that you know as biden has recently said and withdrawing troops from afghanistan that the united states has ended america's so-called longest war that if you just look at the battle streamers on the the u.s army flag there are 14 battle streamers that commemorate the indian wars 14 different campaigns beginning in 1790 and ending in 1891 with the so-called pine ridge campaign which you know we all know ended in the massacre of wounded knee so in many ways the the history of the off reservation boarding school in its heyday um really began as a military project and i think it's important to recognize it as such i think it does a disservice to take the policy makers on their word when they say things like this is a civilization project or even assimilation project because assimilation itself fundamentally as it was practiced against not just indigenous people but other people such as af people who were taken from africa and elsewhere is one of genocide so if you can go to the next slide um i you know i always like um i don't know some of this stuff is really difficult to deal with and i don't really try to go into the stories of the children themselves because i feel like sometimes there's this tendency to focus only on the trauma itself and not really understand the structures that continue to live on because as you know us historians we're taught to periodize history we're taught to say that there was the boarding school era and now we're in a different era right but if it's like walking into the middle of a movie you know and only watching a part of it and saying like you can you know and then saying what the rest of the movie is about that's that's absurd and so as a historian and thinking about these issues i look at it in a longer kind of context and thinking about indian child removal but also u.s imperialism because fundamentally the boarding school project was at a time when the united states had shifted as you know uh colonel as pratt richard pratt the main architect of the off reservation boarding school uh and founder of carlow uh you know embodied in his uh or epitomized in the title of his memoir from battle school or from battlefield to uh classroom um this was a project about land theft and it was a project about subduing indigenous nations who are seen as always in the way of westward expansion and so weakened by the civil war the united states you know capitulated uh to my nation the lakotas in the aftermath of red cloud's war in 1868 or 1866 to 68 um which had expelled white settlers and military forts from uh our territory and you know in the the powder river base or powder river country in present-day montana and wyoming and this of course resulted in the signing of the fort laramie treaty setting aside a permanent home of about 35 million acres for the lakotas and effectively just three years after the signing of this historic treaty in 1871 congress abolished treaty making with native nations altogether and so the opening of of the carla indian school marked a radical change not just for um lakota people but also to indian policy in the aims of u.s imperialism and during the the late 19th century plains indian wars um uh the boarding the indian boarding school found a primary purchase the buddy bloody cons excuse me the bloody consequences of two bedrock u.s institutions african slavery and indian killing inspired uh carlisle's founder richard pratt a military man to embark on a bold experiment to solve the so-called indian question of the west once outright extermination was no longer palatable and like many of his peers pratt was a civil war veteran turned indian fighter fighter and he became he came to regard indian killing as he had the institution of chattel slavery as unsustainable a radical solution was needed and in his autobiography as i pointed out earlier pratt transposed the indian wars from the frontier of the west to the boarding school in the east and by removing uh hundreds of native children and then and then thousands of the uh from their families he thought he could break the resistance of intransigent native nations such as minish in the lakota nation which became the first class of carlisle so between 1879 and 1900 the bureau of indian affairs opened 24 off-reservation boarding schools and by 1900 three-quarters of all native children had been enrolled in boarding schools with a third of this number in off-reservation schools like carlisle and pratt had turned general philip sheridan's murderous expression the only good indian is a dead indian into a new motto kill the indian save the man only the military and according to his thinking could achieve that kind of goal and pratt first came to the idea of the boarding school while commanding mixed units of freed african american and indian scouts in the punitive campaigns against kiowas and comanches in the southern plains of what is today texas he believed the u.s military as a civilizing influence and could could do uh what past policies couldn't do because it had forged in his thinking and his observations a sense of duty and loyalty and conquered peoples and pratt observed how the army of the west had successfully brought together poor whites blacks and indians by turning them into indian fighters and indian killers so under white leadership of course the military had the greatest civilizing influence on the frontier and although he he was a progressive of his era rejecting biological notions of white racial superiority he subscribed to a social evolutionary theory which regarded white europeans as the most civilized at the apotheosis of human society and he placed black people above native people in terms of social development and readiness for american citizenship he believes slavery was quote a more humane and real civilizer than the reservation system slavery he thought was the ultimate quote-unquote americanizer forcing negroes to live among us and becoming producers as opposed to the indian system that through its policy of tribally segregating indians on reservation in other words forced alienation starting at birth the ripping of an entire group of people from their homeland language family and culture and enslavement with intimate oversight by white oval overlords had prepared black people for assimilation according to his view so this is kind of a you know something that i don't see a lot in the boarding school literature is looking at how pratt himself was trying to enable or reenact what um uh you know black studies scholars call natal alienation you know which itself is a form of genocide we can't talk about african slavery without that term genocide because that's fundamentally what it is and we should shift our thinking away from this idea that genocide is this war of attrition that fundamentally means the wiping out of an entire you know group of people but it's about destroying in whole or in part as the as the genocide convention reads a group of people it's the intent behind it right and i think that's what's important here on one hand to enslave to enforce a labor regime and on the other to take land uh it's also important to point out that the first off reservation or the first experiment for the boarding school uh happened in in 1874 when um uh pratt kind of commandeered a military tribunal that had convicted uh leaders of of plains tribes um and had essentially con you know sentenced them to prison um and in in 1975 or excuse me in 1875 pratt became the jailer of 72 indigenous leaders at fort mary in florida florida and he said quote a few good a few of the good of the chiefs were sent as hostages for the good behavior of their people um and so this is important to remember that this is his thinking you know early on like that the architect of the off reservation boarding school was saying that we could take hostage leadership um to force their people to essentially acquiesce to whatever the united states government um and you know land hungry corporations or whatever it is um want to you know get out of of native nations um and he he also observed that they learned these prisoners learned by heart life's first lesson which is to obey so this this small experiment eventually became the basis for the the carlisle indian school um and so the success of fort marion convinced indian reformers to authorize uh the indian bureau in part in a weird partnership with the us military to to begin this process of assimilation of taking children and putting them into um off reservation boarding schools and they targeted specifically the rosebud agency as well as the pine ridge agency which were considered two hostile bands of lakota people right you had cynthia spotted tale as well as mahpiya luta or red cloud essentially unwilling to negotiate any more land sessions to the united states because of what had happened with the abolition of treaty making as well as the theft of the black hills um and so it was also a way to essentially attract these this leadership um to washington dc to force them into any kind of negotiation with with the congress um to essentially adopt things um later you know the 1889 um sue agreement which broke us up into the the nine modern day or the the reservations that we have today because on the way to washington c dc by rail one would go through carlisle right and so it was an incentive to many of these leadership to see their children right who they didn't hear from who they didn't know what was going on but i think it's also important to point out that the that this was not a this was not an educational institution many of these boarding schools were not educational institutions and you know available data suggests that most many of the students succumb to illnesses and some and those who are fortunate to be sent home if they got sick often died in transit or died shortly there upon returning um and the unsanitary conditions in this in these in carlyle specifically um essentially became a um the reason why many of the you know contagious diseases were spread but also the reason why many people um many children died there if you could go to the the next slide um this slide is actually taken or this picture is actually taken from um inside of the brig or the the military prison or the military jail that was also used um to house intransigent uh native children um so you had the transference of you know the last people the last people to be held in the jail were essentially the the british soldiers that were captured during the revolutionary war and placed into that jail and then you know pratt and his crew essentially repurposed it as a child jail right and so these were essentially cultural institutions i don't think we can really talk about them in any other any other way so if you can go to the next slide um this is a picture there was a lot of not just at carlisle but many of these boarding school institutions there was a lot of kind of before and after photos that were taken to show the native children in their savage state and then in their civilized state but what i think is most revealing and important about this particular picture is the military uniforms that were essentially hand-me-downs or leftover surplus army uniforms from the civil war itself and that these children were inculcated not only with american patriotism but also with military discipline and as such as the children themselves or as the carla indian school began to close its doors those children had essentially received basic training to enter the armed services and so as the united states closed the off reservation or carlow indian school it was beginning to enter the war in europe and so many of these children joined the army not as citizens not as you know not as as children not even you know they weren't even citizens and so but they had that training that had that military discipline and so i also think it the carla indian school in the hof reservation boarding school points to uh helps us locate where the united states army specifically has exploited what they call a warrior tradition in indigenous communities and why we see a lot of military service in indigenous communities it actually stems from the boarding school system if you can go to the next slide um uh i'm gonna transition into a a different part a different period but i want to just highlight the work that the the native american national native american boarding school healing coalition has done um they're one of the the you know the i when i spoke with um denise legemeder she told me that they started off with a budget of five thousand dollars um and have you know through blood sweat and tears been tracking and counting the number of boarding schools in the united states because simply the government has refused to do so or hasn't kept the records right and i think this is a larger problem in how we understand american history and it's not to reduce the experience of indigenous people to numbers and quantification but one thing i always ask my students when i teach them is like how many indian massacres you know were there in the united states can you name them how many can you count off you know off the top of your head if you you know and you ask anyone and you know even experts historians they can't answer that question and if you ask how many boarding schools how many native children went through those boarding schools how many died there the government and the the institutions that were meant to take care of these children can't actually tell you um and this is something that you know we kind of see in in the archival record um so if you can go to the next slide um in two studies from 1969 uh to 1974 the association on american indian affairs found that 25 to 35 percent of all native children had been separated from families and placed into foster homes or adopted homes or institutions ninety percent ninety percent were placed in non-indian homes and so if we think about this in terms of um you know uh the the effect that it had on this generation this is considered you know the end of the off reservation boarding school system um and but nonetheless child removal kind of continues almost unabated uh within this era and this era in between 1969 and 1973 is also known as you know the height of the red power movement when uh you know you had mass relocation programs uh the the matriculation of native people from reservation locations to urban locations you also had the the founding of you know what we now know as the red power movement which began at a place called alcatraz um and alcatraz is uh interesting uh for a variety of reasons um you know um because the prison island was also the site where four modak people were hanged in resistance you know during the the california indian genocide and where paiute and apache prisoners of war and other western nations were imprisoned in the late 19th century for resisting the invasion invasion by the united states and in 1894 uh the military imprisoned 19 hopi men at alcatraz as punishment for refusing to send their children to government and church-run boarding schools the indigenous prisoners of alcatraz had faced similar conditions that red power activists had faced a harsh landscape purposely isolated from the rest of the world quote unquote uninhabitable abandoned and in disrepair much like indian reservations from which they had come so this became kind of a symbolic uh more than a symbolic kind of location because the activists you know indians of all tribes had actually proposed building an all-indian university where language where culture would be taught once again if you can go to the next slide you know alcatraz catalyzed an indigenous movement that kicked off occupations of federal lands and buildings across the continent the height of which occurred during the 71 day siege at wounded knee in 1973 where indigenous activists of the american indian movement took over the small town and pine ridge indian reservation and demanded the ouster of a corrupt tribal government and declared independence from the united states so um this picture is a picture of madonna thunderhawk who has been an interlocutor of mine for quite some time um and she helped you know she was at the wounded knee occupation i've done several um oral histories with her about that experience but one thing i think often gets overshadowed in this you know era of braids and shades is not only the role of women but also the alternatives that the american indian movement and the red power movement were actually putting forward and in in 19 uh after the flood of 1972 in rapid city you know madonna thunderhack as well as a group of children um kind of took over this house that was abandoned uh in in rapid city south dakota and she says there's nothing wrong with it so they let us use it and so we had that's where we had our first school she told me and we didn't call it a school the the kids eventually named it she says we will remember survival school because they said we'll remember everything that happened wounded knee 1890 wounded knee 73 you know all the other things we'll remember the different things that happened how they put everybody in boarding schools how they stole the law land all that kind of stuff so they said we will remember and so the formation of the red power movement the founding of the the american indian movement and the city that i'm currently located in in minneapolis was fundamentally founded yes as a community patrol but also as you know clyde belcourt one of the founders told amy loantree in an interview it was founded to end indian child removal that was one of the primary planks because because of relocation native children were put into public schools and thus became under the surveillance of teachers and social workers right and this is where you begin to see the the removal of children from families for things such as quote unquote neglect right and so this was this was kind of a profound insight because oftentimes we look at this era for its militancy but we don't look at this era for the alternative that it was actually proposing and why you know the american indian movement was founded in an urban center and why it had such resonance not just in urban locations but in reservation locations as you know the we will remember survival school moved to pine ridge agency and stayed there uh for at least um six or seven more years after its founding so um can you go to the next slide and then this is just a pamphlet from the we will remember survival school and then the next slide after that um so the the the camp that the camps that were founded at standing rock really carried this tradition uh carried on this tradition of radical land-based education in response to child removal you know madonna thunderhawk works for lakota people law project they brought multiple lawsuits against the state of south dakota for you know the removal of native children uh from their families so when we say like oh the heyday of the red power movement was only between 1969 and 1974 we often forget the quiet work that continues on that many of these that many of these activists especially the women continued doing the work against indian child removal well into you know the present day right and so the camps at standing rock you know um were us were an unprecedented concentration of indigenous knowledge keepers standing rock lakota language specialist elena eagle shield saw this she went to every camp asking if they could share their knowledge with the children and families brought with them from there eagle shield recalled i was told that we need a school and a place for children to be so she founded the mini choni nakiji yawa i don't know if i said that mythical is really bad i apologize but that translates to the defenders of the water school a name chosen by the students themselves much like the we will remember school education center treaties language culture and land and land and water defense you can go to the next slide i just want to kind of conclude uh this this talk by thinking about um not just the long history of indian child removal but also how it had spawned and fomented resistance and alternatives because it's not that native people themselves are against education right it's how that education is uh thrust upon us and the reasons for it right um america often is reduced to two things winners and losers we're told and by that standards indians are the constant losers of history and for that matter so too is anyone who doesn't immediately buy into what america is selling the narrative we're sold is that indigenous resistance is a string of failures in 2016 water protectors quote unquote lost at standing rock because the dakota access pipeline was built later the watsoden lost because the unestoten camp had been raided by police and the land occupied by coastal gaslin pipeline workers and more you know and after that the lost at mauna kea because mainstream media was obsessed with the science versus culture debate not indigenous land rights and the kanaka mali relinquished needed to relinquish according to this view superstition and accept progress as inevitable by having a 3.4 billion telescope built next to their 20 to next to 22 other telescopes on a sacred mountain and more recently we're told that the water protectors at line three lost because the enbridge corporation finished the project with much help not only from obama and trump but much help from the abide the biden administration as well um and so while indigenous peoples are told to quit living in the past settlers are urged to make america great again under trump or more recently under by biden america is back by invoking the country's mythic halcyon days that's the story america likes to tell itself the story of winning the future of this land by winning its past but the truth is quite opposite america fears the past reduced to its basic components the history of colonization boils down to three things god gold and glory natives had all the gold or land settlers brought god now natives have god and the bible and the settlers have all the gold and the wealth the story goes but glory is the most precarious elements of this formula is there honor and invasion slavery genocide and theft the answer to that question changes throughout time but we don't have to journey too far into history to the res to see that the response by indigenous standards is clearly no if anything paradoxically glory belongs to history's losers and so while a captivated public only saw the spectacle of militancy during the red power movement james baldwin who we all may know saw something else what americans mean by history is something they can forget he said reflecting on this period of indigenous uprisings they don't know they have to pay for their history because the indians have paid for it every inch and every hour that's why they were at wounded knee and that's why they took alcatraz he said perhaps because they have paid such a heavy price for this history natives have a capacious no capacious notions of freedom and belonging at alcatraz and standing rock at line three indigenous peoples turned to those seen as different and made them into familiars into allies they made relations this is quite dif this is a the quiet strength the victory of indigenous movements over time the power of love and humanity that doesn't make headlines it's what made motivated the ghost dancers of bigfoot's band who were gunned down at wounded knee in 1890 the water protectors at standing rock in 2016 and line 3 this summer and i just want to end with this quote by dakota anthropologist ella deloria who recorded the following description of the ghost dance from the viewpoint of an unnamed lakota man who participated in the dance at the pine ridge agency as a young runaway from the boarding school or as a young runaway from boarding school he says the rumor got about the dead are to return the buffalo are to return the dakota people will get their own way of life back the white people will soon go away and that will mean happier times for us once more that part about the dead returning was what appealed to me waking up to absorb waking up to the drab and wretched present after such a glowing vision of the ghost dance it was little wonder that they walked as if their poor hearts would break into two with disillusionment but at least they had seen they pervert they preferred that to the rest or they preferred that to rest or food or sleep and i suppose the authorities did think they were crazy but they weren't they were only terribly unhappy thank you wow thank you so much for that talk nick that was so um that was so powerful um what i wanted to do is build on some of the history that nick shared about the systemic removal of native children and bring us up to the present day um because unfortunately it hasn't stopped so um today native children are still removed um now it's by child welfare systems at alarming rates uh from their families and so just a few statistics um you know in the state of minnesota um you know where nick was talking about how um you know aim really started with the um with wanting to prevent child removal in minneapolis um in the state of minnesota one in three native children will enter foster care before they turn 18 um and one in ten native babies will actually be removed from their families before their first birthday nationally the rate for white babies is one in a hundred in hennepin county which is the county where minneapolis is native children are 34 times more likely to be removed from their families than white children and some folks might think you know and you hear different versions of this it's like oh well there were just more problems in native families you know and things like that um but when you look at actual the data on the reasons for removal white children are actually more likely to be removed for allegations of physical or sexual abuse and native children are more likely to be removed for the much more nebulous um category of um neglect and poverty um oftentimes um is what constitutes neglect you know i was talking to a parent advocate at a really amazing organization in minneapolis the equal law center and she was talking about how some of the homeless families that she's working with so families who are homeless um we're actually dealing with um uh they were being their children would be taking for educational neglect because their children weren't being taken to school but it was at a time you know the basic need of the family was housing um and so you know miss a couple of these cases where native children were removed from their families and placed with non-native foster um parents have become these high-profile equity cases where you know the legacy of the indian child welfare act is under attack and um nick what i wanted to ask you about is you know how these cases are talked about in the media which is that the indian child welfare act which was created to keep native children with native families is sort of is framed as ripping native children away from white homes and that's the tragedy you know that's that's the wrong whereas the trauma of the separation that's happening with these native families is rarely recognized and i was wondering if you could put that into context for us how does this rhetoric of what's you know best for native children parallel the rhetoric of the boarding school era and the indian adoption project yeah that's a that's a really good question and of course i couldn't be as comprehensive as i i would like and i you know first of all i've learned a lot from your work rebecca on on this particular issue because when you talk to those families when you're interviewing those families it's it's quite clear it's like they're you know that often goes unrecognized within the record itself like what it means to actually tear these these families apart and one thing that i always i i can't imagine and i've tried to imagine this but imagine being taken from your home and then you know you have this experience you have this memory of your family and then returning to that family and not being able to communicate with your mother and not being able to literally speak the same language right not even being able to describe to them the traumas that you may have endured while be being taken from your you know your home and put into a reservation boarding school or imagine in some it was as was the case in many instances that your family thought this was best for you you know um i think the the the call that goes out by or the the counter argument that uh saint joe's often puts out as a catholic run boarding school is that these families looked to us right to um educate their children we were providing a necessary service and you have to ask yourself was like why would you know what circumstances existed so that native families native parents were like i need to actually give up my child i can't feed them i can't house them i can't close clothe them and but then why is it that the catholic church you know steps in to kind of fill those needs and then and then you know what happens in that situation and what happens you know in the situation like even from where i'm from the people who are carrying out who work for the school often position themselves as as victims you know of of being like this angry native man is you know he's coming after us or whatever and he's not recognizing the good that happened at these schools and it's like yeah like children didn't stop being human when they went to these schools like why is that a profound thing to point out like of course they laughed of course they cried of course they had normal human reactions like why do we have to prove that native children are human in environments that you know may not you know may be violent or maybe you know not in their best interest right i'm sure that native children adopted out to non-native families love those parents and those adopted parents but that's not the question that i'm asking i don't i mean it's important i care about it but at the same time it's the reason why this school exists the reason why child removal policies exist is is much more of an interesting question to me to understand than whether or not white white white parents can love a native child you know that's a moot point of course you know like we're human beings we're not you know removed from humanity where that's that's the case but i think the more important question as you as you point out in in your podcast and that always really concerns me is the question of the indian child welfare act and i see this tendency not happening just in the legal realm but i also see it happening in the academy where native and tribal identity get reduced to race because it it that was the point you know that was the point of of these so-called assimilation policies from the get-go was to reduce uh this to some kind of biological racial difference right and of course we you know we live in this you know there's like the i call it like the woke crowd but then there's like that what crowd exists on on the right too where it's like well if racism a social construct then why are we you know why are we having race-based legislation like the indian child welfare act like we're just we're just doing you know we're doing a civil service to you all we're giving you civil rights like because you're being held back by this indian system that was the same argument to put native children on in boarding schools that was the same argument for termination um and it's fundamentally you know paternalistic on one hand but it also completely erases the question of membership of citizenship and the fact that oftentimes i mean you know tribal citizenship and enrollment is a whole other question but it reduces our belonging to a tribe to racial like biology right and so by the mere fact of you know imposing what they see as a color-blind policy they're actually reinforcing a biological essentialism you know and so that's kind of i mean i would like to hear your thoughts on this because yeah yeah absolutely absolutely and i think um yeah and to give people a little bit more background the case the case that's heading to the supreme court right now is rakeem v holland and it's arguing basically on two grounds that this law the indian child welfare act um is unconstitutional so one of the grounds that they're arguing is that it violates states rights basically it's this anti-commandeering doctrine but then kind of the biggest thrust of these anti-iq cases is that they're using the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment which was created at the um end of the civil war and when our country was trying to um create a system of racial equity but it was almost immediately um abandoned by the courts you know there's actually a a civil rights act um from the late 1800s that um the supreme court said violated the 14th amendment because it recognized differences in race and so people have really used the 14th amendment as a weapon to attack you know everything from affirmative action now to iqa and what's really unique about them using this area and the in the area federal indian law is that under the law tribes and tribal citizens are a political category not a racial category right and so just like i'm a citizen of the united states and a resident of oklahoma so certain laws apply to me and other ones don't um because i'm a citizen of cherokee nation certain laws apply to me and it's like any other kind of nation or political status and that's actually how iqba works it actually only applies to children who are either enrolled in a tribe or eligible for enrollment um and so i think what's scary you know for me as somebody who's you know interested in tribal sovereignty and digital rights and why i think everyone should be paying attention to this case is that what is scary is that if iqua is based on race well then what about the hospital where i get my health care like how can that hospital treat tribal citizens but refuse services to other people what about our land and treaty rights what other quote like racial group has a land base or a court system or a police force or a tribal government you know in all of the or its own school system right and so um i think that that's what the fear is with this attack on iqa is that it's kind of like the first thread on a sweater and that if people pull it then the rest of um the sweater um falls apart basically yeah and i think just to kind of pick up on that thread no pun intended um like you you know you've been an outspoken critic of like somebody like you know elizabeth warren who claims to be you know or claimed to be cherokee and i think there's this tendency to reduce native identity to a category of race or dna without understanding what you're exactly what you're talking about and to kind of put that into context you know like if we just talk about adoption right the majority of like international adoptees come from or to the united states come from china russia guatemala south korea and ethiopia and all of these countries have increased restrictions on foreign adoption laws you know and it's been in decline you know and and so it really does is like it's actually responding to you know like what many of these sovereign nations you know whether we agree with them politically or not are imp implementing to prevent the taking of their children and you know and putting you know adopting them out so what equals really empowering tribes to do is that same scenario we're just protecting our citizens you know it's a political it's a it's a political and legal issue for us it's not about race you know we have the right and the sovereignty to decide who belongs to our tribe and you know fundamentally i i think there's just a moral argument here too that you've you've pointed out in the podcast where it's just like we you know why do we why do we need a law in in 1978 um to legalize our religion right why do we need a law uh in 1978 again to uh you know legalize the native family and to say that this has you know sanctity and native children you know the tribe should should determine you know what happens to it its members like i don't think that is a radical proposal in many ways and as you've pointed out since the passage of iqa in some instances you know the removal of native children has increased you know absolutely yeah and i think i think the point you brought up about international adoption really goes to that issue because i think one thing we have a difficult time admitting about adoption is that for the most part it's the transfer of a child from a family with less resources to a family that has more resources and that was definitely the case within international adoption and that imbalance and power led to things you know as extreme as kidnapping children you know and that's why many of those countries you know ethiopia guatemala do not allow american families to adopt their children anymore and that pressure what it has created is a situation where there are less adoptable children than people who are looking to adopt and now folks are actually turning to the foster care system um which i think raises a lot of ethical concerns because the foster care systems isn't created to help people find adoptable children it's created to support children and their families in a moment of crisis and so yeah there's definitely a lot of interlocking issues there i wanted to talk about a couple bigger picture um questions around you know the politics that you talked about and like i mentioned in the intro i think a lot of the work that you do is creating a vision for and language for around progressive indigenous led politics and what i wanted to ask you is kind of twofold um which is why do you think that organizations on the left and social justice movements often leave indigenous issues out of their work and and what can change or what needs to change so that our issues are included i think um you know just like again to bring it back to this conversation about you know boarding schools i remember i had a fellowship at harvard and uh i was amongst you know the elite of the elite so to speak it's like where the ruling crap classes literally reproduced and these were historians like they were like you know history um and they were like what is you know i was i was talking a little bit and i was like you know harvard was sort of a boarding school it was founded as a boarding school for native families and it was part of this treaty and they were like they're like what do you mean in boarding school like you mean because in their minds they were like yeah i went to a boarding school like and so it was just funny because it like it goes back to that instance of like you know in chamberlain south dakota okay you may be like as the liberal mind might be able to dismiss like rural kind of backwards-ness which i don't agree with i don't think these people are backwards it's just the education that they've received um that they can be so like ignorant of this kind of genocidal institution that many people are currently employed at that has this legacy i should say i don't think it's a genocidal institution today but it has this like legacy as one right but at harvard you know like you know liberal blue whatever you know like that's where elizabeth warren worked but it like there's there's also that ignorance as well like it's not so it's like we it's it's easy to say like oh well this only exists on the right and it's like but at the same time it's like well there's no language there's no conceptual basis for average americans in this country to even begin to grasp this history and so i don't i don't blame the ignorant you know uh i blame the system itself for not allowing us to even have a conversation it's like where do you think all this land com came from you know like you stole laborers you you know you brought like you may have brought the wealth but land didn't just fall from the sky you know and so it's it's this harder it's this harder question and then you know the there's also a tendency to promote you know on the right you know we have the kind of great replacement thesis that you know the white uh you know the so-called white genocide that white genocide is happening and you know like you know that becomes the fear-mongering on the right but i think there's a tendency on the left to also like not allow for like indigenous nationhood you know as if there can only be one country and the real nation is the united states because indigenous nations are just ethno-states we i mean we we can laugh about that but that's i've heard that from like very you know smart people on the left um without even understanding that like liberal democracy fundamentally is based on individual rights of of people of citizens this was this is the legal basis at which they're attacking tribal sovereignty because they're fundamentally and are antagonistic to collective communal rights that we that we have as as indigenous people yeah but it's also to say that that's not the only alternative that's not the only game in town so to speak you know uh and other nations have experimented with you know plurinationalism to recognize and to integrate many different groups of people versus privileging the the individual citizen as kind of the arbiter of all you know rights and i think you know this is what bindeloria talked about in his peoplehood thesis and and custer died for your sins like in 1969 he was he was you know strongly identifying with black nationalism in kwame toure to say you know this the experience of indigenous people is similar to african-american people and is also similar to what we now know as you know mexican-american people because we became citizens not as individuals we became citizens through fiat as groups of people right um whether it was the you know the abolition of slavery and the granting of citizenship whether it was you know the the annexation through imperialist wars of a third of mexico in 1848 or whether it was through the the so-called indian citizenship of 1924 we all became citizens of this country as entire groups of people that's fundamentally different than immigrants who who came from europe they became citizens as individuals and so there's something to be said about that and i think if you look at the the movements that are really pushing the agenda i didn't get i actually had this in my talk but i couldn't get to it but thinking about line three thinking about the dakota access pipeline protests what happened in watson una stotten camp is that indigenous movements are challenging about a quarter of the carbon emissions from the united states and canada according to a a report by the indigenous environmental network so no wonder they you know this is this is a broad array of tactics that the indigenous movements are are utilizing whether it's through the courts whether it's through congress whether it's through direct action you know uh all the it's a it's an array of tactics that they've that they're challenging a quarter of carbon emissions and yet what can what movement in the united states beyond that can we say has had that kind of impact challenging the fossil fuel industry so it's no wonder they want to use a back door like the indian child uh welfare act whether you're the cato institute the goal the goldwater institute or whatever um to attack tribal sovereignty because there are there are vested interests here you know this is like these are powerful people yeah and it it still it still comes down to resource extraction you know from the gold rush to now um that actually leads into almost perfectly into another question i wanted to ask you um which is about you know cop26 this week world leaders are finishing climate talks and negotiations in glasgow and their indeed indigenous leaders from the us and the globe are pushing for climate solutions that include um indigenous people and as a member of red nation you've advocated for that with the red new deal and what i wanted to ask you um is how is the sovereignty of indigenous nations tied to the health and future of our planet can can we solve the climate crisis without putting indigenous sovereignty first since you asked a yes or no question i'll just say no [Laughter] no i mean it's a really great question but it's also i just want to like take a step back too because we actually have to see you know oftentimes it's like to understand what indigenous sovereignty is it's not just a buzzword you know i think when we talk about you know biden's you know green jobs proposal or whatever it is um we have to remember that indigenous caretakers and land offenders are doing green jobs right um that like here in in minnesota you know had the the pleasure and opportunity of talking to many anishinabe relatives about the importance of manomen and it's you know wild rice and it's centrality not just to this kind of esoteric cultural knowledge or or whatever that i think often you know when you start talking about indigenous spirituality like flute music plays in people's ears and you hear like a drum beat but what i was told you know we went to a rice bed that was you know at it was a historic drought here in in the state and we went to this rice bed and you know the woman we were with she was like yeah we you know normally we haul out like maybe 80 pounds a day of wild rice and she's like this is all we got and it was like less than a half a cup and she's like this isn't just like you know devastating on the sense of like you know me growing up and having this relationship with this land she's like this directly impacts you know are our jobs because people have seasonal income you know that depends on on racing right and the tribe itself you know has made has turned a profit on this this is like their economy to protect these rice beds right and if we talk about how you know just in the short time span of the united states uh in its existence of less than you know 250 years it has played an outsized role in not only carbon emissions but environmental degradation right and it's not to glorify indigenous you know ways of being that we're prior to you know capitalism and colonialism but it's also to recognize that not all societies tend towards destroying their own planet or their own you know their own territory because we've lived since time immemorial on this land without confronting you know global climate catastrophe or chaos and so why is that like these are questions we should really be asking ourselves you know and and saying that it's not just about this kind of romantic idea of like you know we're somehow like you know avatar or the navi or whatever it's this is these are real people these are people's real lives like this is this is something that exists indigenous economies do exist i wouldn't say that they're entirely anti-capitalist in many ways but they're definitely non-capitalists and the cultural values that we've inherited over generations they may have destroyed our non-capitalist like mode of living or economies but nonetheless the the culture the knowledge the language the spirituality that we've inherited the remnants of which that survived boarding school systems that survived the civilization regulations that survived all these periods of genocide in onslaught still retain the values of trying to be in good relation with you know what you know what the western world calls the natural environment we don't see a separation you know this isn't a wild phenomenon but i think when people hear that they're you know like again the flute music plays but it's it's being practiced and it's it's being experimented on in in different countries the rights of nature movement which the white earth reservation has invoked and its defense of manomen because it's in their treaty uh began in the global south you know at the you know we can point to the the 2010 kojobambo accords in bolivia where they spelled out specifically the rights of nature um but it was part of this broader kind of anti-imperialist you know climate agenda that was very much ahead of its time like okay we have the green new deal whatever but this is talking about not only the rights of nature but it's also talking about climate debt why is it that a country like bolivia that doesn't have you know near the emissions impact of like countries like the united states and historically why are they they they can't develop the same way that the united states did by producing that amount of carbon why are they denied not only the the ability to develop and emit carbon but then they're also denied the technology to you know have sustainable energy whether it's you know through you know solar panels or whatever and so these are like questions that we have to like wrestle with and it's indigenous movements that are that have really wrestled with those questions and i also just want to say that this isn't a particular kind of essentialist ethnic project but it's def it's fundamentally universal because it's like y'all breathe the same air as we do you drink the same water you know we have a knowledge that exists prior to the united states and will exist much longer after the united states but that doesn't make us any less human than you are right and so i think the the kind of the profundity of the water protector is that it was a universal label it was a universal identity anyone who walked through the gates of standing rock became a water protector anyone who was at the line three camps here you know trying to stop the line three the last tar sands pipeline was a water protector and so i think that you know in many ways really shows the the impact of of indigenous movements in this particular moment yeah we are leaders but we can't be the only solution it requires you know a broader way a broader array of forces and for us to be taken seriously you know yeah absolutely absolutely um a few questions that we have gotten in the chat are around education um you know so we've got a question from canada and a question uh from uh maine around um going back to boarding schools around how can we work towards um both uh the truth and the education and people being more aware of this issue but also reconciliation and and one thing i always think about and that you really that i think you pointed out into your talk is that we are so early in the process we don't even have a full account of the damage that was done we don't even know the names and how many and where they're buried you know the children who were killed in these institutions so as a historian you know what what do you think needs to happen for this important era of history to be more well documented and to be shared and for you know the united states to have the reckoning that it needs to have with it that's a really good question and um i would point listeners and people were viewing this to the work of denise lagimadeer you know one of the founders of the native american boarding school healing project because it's something this is something that they've articulated and spelled out you know and had have convinced have partially convinced me on some of the stuff about because you know like even with the faults of the truth and reconciliation commission that happened in canada nonetheless there's a common discourse among everyday canadians that residential schools happened that this affected generations of indigenous people it happened right in this country and in this society we sound like conspiratorial like we like we can't even acknowledge it you know like there is no common vocabulary that we have right we don't even know there isn't even there isn't a lot of even like um psychological you know studies that we can turn to to help people cope with that kind of thing right and those are important questions and i'm not an expert in that in that field but what i would say though is that the you know the truth and reconciliation process we should look to canada for the the way that it has changed the discourse but has fundamentally not changed the colonial relation canada is still building pipelines not only in first nation lands but in our lands as well as we could see with enbridge like the the continual plunder of indigenous communities has not stopped so i don't think that we can even begin to the conversation of reconciliation first of all reconciliation you know the root root is conciliation and reconciliation means that at some point in time we had good relations i'm not quite sure when that point in time is if you can tell me you know please point it out but i would prefer the term justice because what does justice look like justice looks like a plan of action that is made by the victims of a crime not saying that you know we just had some misunderstandings class of cultures you know this kind of thing that we you know you know they're bad things happen on both sides um but fundamentally we need to think about what justice looks like according to indigenous values and traditions because often what happens if we can if we can point to precedent in this country we should point to treaty rights right yeah yeah absolutely oh sorry we should point to treaty rights because treaty rights are often interpreted by only one side and that's the united states and we go through the court system and we often seed our interpretation and so i think we should look at like how indigenous ways of knowing and experiences should also be at the foreground of talking about justice first and foremost um that doesn't even begin the quant the conversation about how do we document the magnitude of these atrocities i think that that's a perfect transition to the last question i wanted to ask you which is that there's this hashtag or slogan it's on t-shirts and murals um of land back that's become uh popularized first by indigenous youth and now has become a catchphrase i think a lot of different folks from activists organizers are using um for folks who've never heard of it what is what is the vision and the values that that that tagline or that phrase evokes for you yeah that's a good question um you know i think like fundamentally the southern colonial project has always been about land you know that's what the founding of this country is on that's where wealth is derived and so when we talk about land and i i always like to push that push the conversation beyond just what the federal government did and thinking about the the corporate and private interests that are involved right the checker the white checker at walmart in rapid city does not have anything in common with ted turner who owns 200 000 acres of lakota treaty territory in west river south dakota they have nothing in common so when we say something like land back oftentimes you know it's like the average you know white person or non-native person might think that they're just kind of a temporarily embarrassed mass land owner but they're not you know most people are not owners in this society we're talking about vested interests like ted turner who also owns the world's largest privately owned buffalo herd you know like he's not you know he's he's he's like one of many people right and so fundamentally like if you even read i think indian collective has spelled this out as well as other organizations like we've talked about it in the red deal if you work the land and you produce value from that land you should have a say in how that how like what happens with that land itself black people have worked the land but they've been categorically denied ownership of the land that's one of the ways that they've been racialized as a population as a group of people 95 percent of of la of agricultural landowners in the united states are white like why is that you know this is obviously like you know if we think about uh apartheid south africa um alfred connors owned white afrikaners owned about 70 of the land right and they made up like three percent of the population in the united states it's 95 of the agricultural land right and so and a lot of these uh people a lot of these interests are large you know corporate industrial agricultural conglomerates it's we're not talking about taking somebody's apartment or taking somebody's own home but we have to fundamentally have a different relationship to the land itself and that doesn't just mean this isn't just an indigenous problem this is everybody's problem because we all live on the land and so for land back that's what it really means it's like who works the land who who takes care of the land yeah white people can take care of the land like going back to the the identity of a water protector right but it's fundamentally challenging the relations because property private property is fundamentally about relations that have supplanted indigenous relations right and into a kind of exclusive for-profit enterprise and one that benefits a small sector of society land back in the way that i understand it looks not only to federal lands and says why is it that this is held in you know the common interest um but as often you know as we can see with like the bureau of land management often in the benefit of private interest right or why is it that you know the majority of agricultural land of where we get our food how we eat is controlled and owned by a handful of people and i think land back is about land back to indigenous nations not not just people or individuals but nations because this goes back to the question of justice but it's also fundamentally challenging us to consider why is it that people who are denied citizenship or incorporation into this society the ones who work the land the ones who produce the food that we eat also categorically denied from being in relation in correct relation with that land itself so it's not a kind of self-serving indigenous project but we have conceived of it as a kind of a broader kind of social justice framework absolutely i think that that's a great point to end on um for tonight um we're out of time but i just want to say thank you nick i always just i so appreciate having time to be in conversation with you i really appreciate your writing and your thoughts on these really important issues um thank you to the landon foundation and hey market books um for sponsoring this and um lastly for people who are interested in your work who want to follow more of your writing where can they find you so i'm on twitter at nick n-i-c-k-w-e-s-t and yeah just go there i guess and also check out the red nation podcast and your podcast by the way which is really wonderful yeah yeah definitely some resources um to learn more thank you everyone so much for joining us tonight and i hope everyone has a good night thank you

Channel: Lannan Foundation

Views: 419

Keywords: indigenous children, indigenous land

Id: MEP65b0UVak

Length: 85min 25sec (5125 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 23 2021