They Were Just in the Way | Indian Removal

Well, it’s that time of year again, the kids are back in school and are  learning about Columbus, the Pilgrims, and the founding of our nation. Growing up in the United States and then  becoming a high school history teacher, I’ve both learned and taught that story at least  a dozen times over the course of three decades. A few months ago I started calling it the  Standard American History Myth and I’ve   been slowly dismantling that story ever since. While researching my previous video on Neoslavery, I realized that I had been fed  a false narrative growing up, which I then unknowingly passed on  to the next generation of students. I had a very different  experience working on this video. When it comes to Native Americans, I wasn’t fed a false story,  I just… wasn’t fed at all. The Standard American History Myth throws a few  breadcrumbs at you and then quickly moves on. And pretty much anytime  Indigenous people are mentioned, they’re regarded as an obstacle  or environmental hazard. These were people living in isolated   cabins at the edge of the frontier with all sorts  of threats to them. You had Native Americans, buffalo in the late part of the 18th  century. You had panthers there still. Black bear were everywhere.  Wolves were everywhere. A few weeks back I was reading  a book in my backyard and my   elderly neighbor asked me what I was up to. After explaining Youtube to an 86 year old, I told him I was working on a  video about American Indians…   And his response unintentionally  became the focus of this video. Oh yeah, It’s a shame what happened to them…  but you know… they were just in the way. As cringey as that sounds,   it’s not all that surprising to hear  from someone who was born in 1936. But what really stood out to me was… that’s still   how it’s basically taught in school  and even when you become an adult, the culture at large continuously  reinforces that message. It was this huge real speculative real  estate event and in order to make the   land available you had to push people  out who were there, the Native Americans. I think it’s fair to say that most Americans  share the same sentiment as my neighbor – that   what happened to the Indians was just  part of the inevitable march of progress. [Intro music] This video was brought to you  by CuriosityStream and Nebula. I suppose I should start by clarifying  what this video is and what it is not. Doing a comprehensive history of  Native peoples would be impossible;   there are hundreds of nations spread  out across thousands of miles, all with their own unique histories and cultures. Imagine trying to make a video  covering the entire history of   every country in Europe. So instead of doing that, we’re just going to be focusing on   the centuries-long process of  geographically, politically, and culturally erasing an entire  group of people from the continent. We’re, of course, going to talk  about the breadcrumbs you know, like the Trail of Tears and Wounded Knee. But I’ll also be filling in the  story in between those events. We tend to talk about these things as if  they were completely separate and unrelated, but as you’ve probably  guessed, they’re all connected. I’ll also explain how reservations, treaty rights, and Indian casinos work, along with a take on team mascots you might not  have heard before. Perhaps most importantly, I hope to dispel several misconceptions – both  positive and negative – that books, movies, and even the government have convinced us of. In short, we’re going to be learning about the  many forms of Indian Removal in the United States. From the beginning to the present day. Our long journey begins when Columbus  landed on Hispaniola on October 12, 1492 believing he had found an  island off the coast of Japan. He named the native people he encountered Indios. Later explorers would use  words like Indien, Indianer, and even peaux-rouges meaning “skin red.” Thus began the long debate over what to  call these people - Indians, Natives, Indigenous peoples, Native Americans, American Indians, it’s all so confusing, right? I’ve made a short companion  video explaining the difference, and I’ll specifically address American Indian  versus Native American later on here. But for now, I’m going to be using all of these  terms somewhat interchangeably, mostly so that I don’t sound like a broken record. Just know that none of them are  considered to be disrespectful and   you’d probably be fine using any of  them… Except for maybe peaux-rouges, you should probably leave that one alone. Shortly after Columbus’ arrival, European diseases were introduced to  the New World. Between 1492 and 1600, it’s estimated that 90% of the native population   of the Americas was wiped out through  accidental transmission between nations. This was well before smallpox blankets, most of the people who died had  never even seen a white person. This is probably the only part of the story  that I’d be willing to describe as inevitable, since any prolonged contact between the two   hemispheres was going to result in  the unintentional spread of disease. But that in no way forgives  everything that happens next. Now, given what I just said  about this time of year, you’re probably expecting me  to begin this story by talking   about the Pilgrims and a harvest  feast involving corn and turkey. We’ll come back to that in a bit, but that’s actually not how America  started. In the spring of 1607, Jamestown was founded by the Virginia  Company of London. That’s right, this is another video about Jamestown. Actually it’s the video about Jamestown. Finally! This was the second attempt  by the British to set up a   colony in North America, the first being Roanoke, which disappeared over a decade  earlier. And for the first few years, it looked like Jamestown  would suffer the same fate. They established themselves on land  that had been deemed worthless for   agriculture by the local Powhatan  tribe and this just happened to   be in the middle of the worst drought to  hit the area in almost a thousand years. Two-thirds of the colonists died before the  first resupply ships arrived a year later. John Smith was one of those original colonists, he was set to be executed for mutiny upon arrival, but sealed orders from the Virginia Company named   him as a leader and quite literally  saved his neck. Despite the famine, Smith kept the colony running by declaring  that anyone who does not work, shall not eat. Then Smith was burned by an accidental  gunpowder explosion and was shipped back   to England in October 1609, never to return. What? Were you expecting me to say more? That’s literally the end of his involvement here. The following winter was referred to as  “The Starving Time,” since the colony   was left practically leaderless and the  population dropped from 500 to just sixty. The new governor arrived in 1610 and almost  immediately began a war against the Powhatan. This is also when John Rolfe showed up in town   with a shipment of tobacco seeds  he smuggled from the Caribbean. He exported his first successful crop in 1612. Having failed to find gold or  anything else of value in the area, almost every other colonist began growing it too. As the First Anglo-Powhatan War raged on, the English captured Pocahontas,  the daughter of the chief, and held her captive for over a year, which eventually forced a ceasefire. She converted to Christianity and in March 1614, she helped broker a peace between  the colonists and the Powhatan. Then she sealed the deal by  marrying John Rolfe a month later. He was 29 years old and she was 18, both of them had been previously married. What? Does that not line up with the story you remember? A few years later, John Rolfe and Pocahontas  went on a public relations tour of England to   drum up support for the colony and show off  how easy it is to Christianize the Natives. Just before their return journey, Pocahontas died of an unknown  illness. She was buried in England, where she remains to this day. John Rolfe died in Virginia in  March 1622, and shortly afterwards, the Powhatans launched a surprise attack in the  hopes of kicking the English out of their lands, killing about 350 colonists and  beginning the Second Anglo-Powhatan war. John Smith didn't start telling that story  about Pocahontas saving his life until 1624, his previous written accounts never mentioned it. It’s very unlikely it actually happened. Jamestown survived and became the first  permanent British colony in North America. It was founded as a company  town and tobacco plantation, which began 250 years of slavery and 400  years of conflict with native peoples. If this isn’t a perfect microcosm  of America, I don’t know what is. The true history of Jamestown really  sets the tone for the future United   States much more accurately than that fairy  tale we tell ourselves about Plymouth Rock. But it isn’t as nice of a story, so we simply don’t teach it in school. As a result, most of what white Americans know  about the Indians comes from movies and TV. I’m willing to bet that the only version  of the Jamestown story you were familiar   with before clicking on this video  came from that terrible Disney movie. In the movie, they seemed to have  bought John Smith’s version of events   at face value and even managed  to turn it into a love story. If this were to happen in reality, Pocahontas would have been 9 years old. So I suppose it’s a good thing  Disney decided to age her up. We’ll get into this more later on, but this movie is incredibly problematic, not only because it tells  a false version of history, but it reinforces the native  princess and noble savage tropes. I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but the direct to video sequel is  actually much more historically accurate, telling the story of John Rolfe  and Pocahontas’ trip to England. Even small details like Chief  Powhatan telling one of his men   to carve a notch into a stick for every  white person he saw actually happened. How do they build their huts so  tall, can this be all one tribe? Though, this movie heavily relies  on the fish out of water trope. And, spoiler alert, in the Disney timeline, Pocahontas doesn’t die at the end. The Mayflower didn’t land  at Plymouth Rock until 1620, almost a decade after Jamestown. I actually have a video explaining this… [TV Static] What the… It was working just a second  ago! [Static] Well that’s a bummer…. I guess the Pilgrims will still  be a story for another time. Hopefully I’m able to get that  working soon… like… by next month. The future-United States didn't get involved in  Indian Removal until the French and Indian War. It’s called the French and Indian War because it  was fought by the British colonists in America   against the French and Indians… almost all  of the Indians. Compared to the British, the French were much friendlier  neighbors and trading partners, so nearly every nation sided with the French. The French had actually been in America  for a few years longer than the British, their first permanent colony at St. Croix had been established in 1604. They were more inclined to view the native people  as equals and form military and trade alliances. The war began because the British colonists  wanted to expand westward into the Ohio Valley, which was technically French territory and was  occupied by tens of thousands of Native Americans…   which will be a recurring theme going forward. This was the spark that ignited the Seven  Years’ War in Europe a few years later. If you remember back to your  elementary school history class, this is also why the British imposed taxes on  the American colonists for things like tea... To pay for the war they started. The Last of the Mohicans, both the book  and the movie, takes place during this war. While it’s historical fiction  and the characters are made up, the Siege of Fort William Henry is pretty  accurately depicted and– wait a second! So, Hollywood movies are fine, but videos  I made myself are just too much to ask for? Do you want to get copyright claimed? Because that’s how you get copy– [Beep] Glad to see my TV still has an attitude, ha ha… The British eventually  won the French and Indian War, which is why Canada still has the Queen  on their money, at least… well, you know.. I’m primarily going to focus on  the United States in this video, but a lot of what I’m going to talk about is also   applicable up north and I’ll  occasionally draw parallels. After only a few months under British rule, an alliance of Great Lakes nations which  included the Ojibwe and Shawnee decided   to attack a series of forts  in the Northwest Territory. This is known as Pontiac’s  War and is rather infamous   for its use of subversive and shady tactics. Nearly 500 Ojibwe gathered outside of Fort  Michilimackinac to watch a lacrosse game. The ball “accidentally” flew over the  wall and when they ran in after it, they proceeded to slaughter every  British soldier they could find. On the British side of things,   this was the first documented example  of smallpox blankets being used. During the Siege of Fort Pitt, the fort commander wrote numerous  letters back and forth with the   Commander-in-Chief of the British Army in  North America regarding their predicament. Could it not be contrived to send the Small Pox   among those disaffected Tribes of  Indians? We must, on this occasion, use every stratagem in our power to reduce them. I will try to inoculate the Indians by means  of Blankets that may fall in their hands, taking care however not to get the disease myself. You will do well to try to inoculate  the Indians by means of blankets, as well as to try every other method that  can serve to extirpate this execrable race. The materials needed to pull off that extirpation   were transferred to the fort,  we have the literal receipts. But we don’t know if they were actually  used or how effective they were. Smallpox doesn’t survive outside  of the body for very long, so it’s unlikely that putting it on  a blanket would spread the disease. But they still planned it and  procured the means to carry it out. In any court of law, that is still a crime. The war ended with a British victory, and as a way to appease the Indians, the King issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which restructured trade and social  relations to be more similar to the French. It also declared that everything  west of the Appalachians was to be   considered Indian land and forbade  American colonists from entering. It further stated that while all  Indian nationals were British subjects, they were also independent and  possessed limited sovereignty. So dealings with them had to  be conducted through treaty. This became the basis for how the future   American and Canadian governments  would regard Indigenous peoples. In December 1773, the Sons of  Liberty, dressed as Mohawk warriors, sneaked onto a ship in Boston harbor  and threw over 300 crates of tea into   the ocean to protest those aforementioned taxes. Beginning a long American tradition  of Native cultural appropriation. When the war officially kicked  off in 1776, most native nations, including the Shawnee and  Cherokee, sided with the British, because compared to the Americans, the British were much friendlier  neighbors and trading partners. So… if ranked choice voting were a thing  back then, it would go French, British, and then Americans. Let that sink in. In an attempt to get more Indians  to join the American cause, the US signed a treaty which declared  the Lenape to be a sovereign nation   who are allowed to conduct their own affairs. The Lenape agreed to allow travel  across their lands, forts to be built, and to provide soldiers for the army. In return, the United States offered the  Lenape and any other friendly   Indians who cared to join them statehood  at the successful conclusion of the war. This is why Indiana is named Indiana. That’s obviously not how it played out though, and that offer would never be extended  during treaty negotiations ever again. At the end of the Revolutionary War, the British ceded all lands west of  the Appalachians to the new American   government without regard to the  Native peoples who were living there. They weren’t even mentioned  in the Treaty of Paris, despite fighting on both sides. After just a few years under American rule, an alliance of Great Lakes nations  known as the Northwest Confederacy, led primarily by the Shawnee  and supported by the British, decided to fight back against  westward expansion… again. The war ended with the Treaty of Greenville, which forced the Northwest Confederacy to cede  most of modern-day Ohio to the United States. Because of their defeat, the Great Lakes nations  were left with a two to one ratio of women to men, which made hunting and providing food  difficult. Due to these conditions, disease and alcoholism become  rampant in their villages. It’s during this time that  Tecumseh rose to prominence   with the hope of creating a  permanent Indian homeland. In 1805, his brother Lalawethika, who often struggled with binge-drinking, had a near-death experience and came out  of it a completely reformed individual, urging others to reject alcohol  and white influence in general. He changed his name to  Tenskwatawa, became a prophet, and helped his brother rebuild  the Northwest Confederacy. At this point, assimilation was still the   preferred American strategy  for dealing with the Indians. The more Christian and  western they were, the better. To quote Thomas Jefferson from a  letter he sent to several tribes… You will unite yourselves with us, join in our great Councils and form one  people with us and we shall all be Americans. You will mix with us by marriage, your blood will run in our veins, and will spread with us  over this great [continent.] Well that sounds nice doesn’t? People throw this  quote around all the time like Jefferson was   unusually progressive and wanted America to become  a multi-racial society. But at the same time, he was writing letters to his  white territorial governors saying… Our settlements will gradually  circumscribe and approach the Indians, and they will in time either incorporate  with us as citizens of the United States, or remove beyond the Mississippi. The former is certainly the termination of  their history most happy for themselves. Basically, assimilation was the good ending  to their history, while removal was not. You’ve seen the title of this video so, you already know which one we went with. Jefferson was also instrumental in  beginning the Factory System under   the recently established Office of Indian Trade. We shall push our trading houses, and be glad to see the good and influential  individuals among them run in debt, because we observe that when these debts  get beyond what the individuals can pay, they become willing to [pay  them off] by a cession of lands. These were government trading  posts that would sell everyday   household items like food, clothing, and tools. They didn’t charge outlandish prices, but the Indians would almost always fall into  debt and since they didn’t have any money, the only thing they had to trade was their land. These policies were designed to gradually chip  away at tribal territory and native culture. By 1810, Tecumseh and his brother had gathered  over a thousand soldiers at their stronghold   known as Prophetstown and declared all land to  be held in common by the Northwest Confederacy, unable to be sold without unanimous consent. The US had been buying land from individual   tribes and families for years using the  Factory System and obviously disagreed. They sent the territorial governor  and a thousand troops to march on   Prophetstown while Tecumseh was  away recruiting in the South. Tenskwatawa decided to launch  a preemptive strike and lost. Their stronghold was looted and burned, and their soldiers were scattered to the wind. Tecumseh denounced his brother and  never again heeded his prophetic wisdom. In June 1812, the US declared war on Britain  over the disputed Northwest Frontier and   their ongoing support for the rebelling  Great Lakes Indian nations. Growing up, I was always taught that the  War of 1812 began because the   British were impressing American sailors, forcing them to serve the crown.  And while that was happening, it was a relatively minor issue at the time. This war was fought over westward expansion, which is significantly less  righteous. If you’re keeping track, this is the fourth time we’ve  fought over this same area. Tecumseh joined the side of the British, who promised to create an Indian  buffer state in the Great Lakes region. The Northwest Confederacy helped  to defend the Canadian line, but Tecumseh himself was killed during the  Battle of the Thames on October 5, 1813. The dream of an Indian homeland east  of the Mississippi died with him. During his recruiting mission, Tecumseh inspired  a Creek faction in the south to join the fight   against the United States and they received  help from both the British and the Spanish. Andrew Jackson led US troops during this campaign   and earned a reputation as  a seasoned Indian fighter. He defeated the Creeks, the  British, and the Spanish, which is why Florida is part  of the United States today. He then went on to rather  famously defend New Orleans. The War of 1812 ended in a technical draw, but the United States survived and got everything   it wanted from the Treaty of  Ghent so… you decide, I guess. With the conclusion of the  second war of independence, the US had defeated both the British and  the Northwest Confederacy and its western   border was firmly established  at the Mississippi River. Now, I know what you’re going to say, “didn’t the Louisiana Purchase  happen in 1803?” And yes, it did, but the United States viewed  the Mississippi as a natural   defensive barrier against whatever laid beyond. Even after the Lewis and Clark expedition, there weren’t any real plans to settle the area. Further expeditions only reinforced that  unwillingness. A year after Lewis and Clark, Zebulon Pike described the  area as the American Sahara, deeming it worthless for agriculture, but perfect for Native peoples since there was  plenty of game for hunting. Over a decade later, Steven Long agreed that the area  was uninhabitable for farming and   created a map titled The Great American Desert. Taking inspiration from the  repatriation of freed slaves to Liberia, a former Baptist missionary  named Isaac McCoy began to   lobby Washington for the creation of a  permanent Indian portion of the country. This area would be named Aboriginia and all  Native peoples would make up one body politic, with each nation making up  its own county or district. Where would Aboriginia be located? Why, the Great American Desert, of course. An area that was so unmapped it might  as well say “here be dragons.” And   this lack of geographical knowledge  allowed McCoy to convince everyone   that it was perfectly fine country –  without ever having visited himself. Army surveyors were sent and again deemed  it to be a barren waste, but at that point, the gears were already turning. The southern states in particular wanted the  Indians gone and began complaining that their   militias were always on high alert and their  natural resources were left untapped because they   didn’t possess their “vacant territory.” Vacant  territory that was inhabited by tens of thousands   of Native Americans who held that land since  time immemorial and was guaranteed by treaty. The presidential election of 1828 was the  first time non-land-owning white men were   allowed to vote and they went with  the populist war hero Andrew Jackson. During his first State of the Union address, he began advocating for the removal of  American Indians beyond the Mississippi River. The Last of the Mohicans was just  published and it was widely assumed   by white Americans that Indians were  suffering a rapid, inevitable decline. The only way they could  survive was if they moved west. Like they’re the elves from  Lord of the Rings or something. The American Board of Commissioners  for Foreign Missions came out against   the Indian Removal Act and several  benevolent ladies’ associations began   the first women’s petition drive  in history to prevent its passage. Congress dismissed these efforts saying they  were nothing in comparison to the millions   who are silent and satisfied – what they  referred to as the “contented majority.” It was voted on in the Senate five  months later and passed 28 to 19. It didn’t look like it was going  to pass in the House until three   representatives from Pennsylvania  changed their mind at the last minute, adopting it by a vote of 102 to 97. Every southerner voted  unanimously in favor of the act, all they needed was a few  northerners with business   interests in the South to flip –  and that’s exactly what they got. It’s also important to note that with  the 3/5ths Compromise still in effect, the South had 21 more seats  in the House than they should   have since they were representing  enslaved people who could not vote. Andrew Jackson signed the  act into law on May 28, 1830, giving him the power to grant lands west of the   Mississippi to Indian tribes in  exchange for their current lands. This is what their current  lands looked like in 1830. The Choctaw and Chickasaw  held half of Mississippi, the Creek Nation owned 20% of Alabama, the Creek and Cherokee owned 12% of Georgia, and the Seminole had 10% of Florida. These are the “Five Civilized Tribes” and these  territories are basically the same size as states. The Cherokee even enacted their  own written constitution in 1827, with a democratically elected national council, three branches of government, legalized slavery, and most importantly – defined borders. Georgia was not fond of this because the  Cherokee held prime cotton growing land   and gold was discovered in their  territory the very next year. This will be a recurring theme going forward. Within months, over a thousand miners had   illegally entered Cherokee lands and  the government refused to intervene. After the Indian Removal Act was signed, Georgia nullified all Cherokee laws and customs, making them subject to state law, and eventually forbidding their national  council to even meet. Shortly afterwards, they began surveying Cherokee lands for the  eventual redistribution to white settlers. The Cherokee Nation sued the state of Georgia, arguing that state laws cannot apply in their  territory and the Supreme Court refused to rule   on the merits of the case because the Cherokee  had no standing. Do you remember Dred Scott? Because this is exactly like Dred Scott. The Cherokee were not a state  or even a foreign country, instead they were described as a  “domestic dependent nation,” and as such, they had no right to sue in federal court. This effectively made them  wards of the United States   rather than citizens or even foreign nationals. But then Georgia messed up by  arresting eleven missionaries   living in Cherokee territory for not  taking an oath of allegiance to the   state and sentenced them to four years  of hard labor. Realizing his mistake, the governor offered pardons to the  missionaries and all but two accepted. Now, these two white citizens of  the United States could sue   and make the same argument as the Cherokee, that Georgia law does not apply  within their borders. Worcester v. Georgia made it to the Supreme Court  and was decided on March 3, 1832. The Indian nations had always  been considered as distinct, independent, political communities, retaining their original natural rights, as the undisputed possessors of the soil, from time immemorial. … The Cherokee nation, then, is a distinct community,  occupying its own territory, with boundaries accurately described, in which the laws of Georgia can have no force, and which the citizens of  Georgia have no right to enter, but with the assent of the Cherokees themselves. Boom, complete legal victory for the Cherokee  Nation… This should be the end of the video, the Supreme Court said they are  distinct and independent and   state laws have no force in their  borders… But Georgia was furious, they saw this as federal overreach  and refused to recognize the decision, even beginning to use the word secession. I know I’ve said this a few times already, but this will be a recurring theme for America, not just this video – anytime the South  doesn’t get exactly what they want, they threaten to take their ball and go home. You know, like petulant children. The Cherokee Nation was in a hopeless position, they had used the courts like  they were supposed to and won, but Andrew Jackson refused to lift  a finger to enforce the ruling. If they wanted to stay in their homeland, their only real option would be to fight –  and I really wouldn’t blame them if they did. Now, obviously the Cherokee were not  the only nation subject to removal, some of the Choctaws, Seminoles, and several Great Lakes nations had already been   relocated and at this point in  the story, mostly voluntarily. They saw the writing on the wall, if they didn’t leave, they would be exterminated. And the assignment of land west of the  Mississippi was first come-first served. If you wanted the best pieces  of the Great American Desert, it didn’t hurt to get in early. But those first groups suffered losses  as high as 20% within their first year, which discouraged others  from voluntarily relocating. So the southern states began to use their  own violence against Native Americans to   justify their forced expulsion –  you know, for their own safety. They started to promote removal  as a humanitarian effort. You know how some religions force women  to cover up most of their bodies because   it’s just too tempting for men to see  ankles or hair? This is very similar, the tribes need to move because Americans just  can’t restrain themselves from murdering Indians. Think about what that says about us as a country. With the dream of a peaceful,  voluntary relocation dead and gone, removal operations were placed under  the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or BIA, an agency formed under the  command of the military. Forced migrations have taken place all  throughout history, but this one was unique. 66,000 people had to be moved  over a thousand miles away, the logistics alone were a nightmare. Food and supplies had to arrive at the next   fort along the trail before the  “deportees.” So the military, which only had 12,000 servicemembers, kept extremely detailed records of  literally everything. Prior to this, mass expulsions were carried out under  threat of force at the end of a bayonet. But this one was executed through  paperwork and a government bureaucracy. The fact that it was more civilized  doesn’t make it any better, in fact, it makes it more cold and calculated. Now, I need to go off on the first of many  tangents that will seem unrelated at first, but I promise there’s a point to this. Nice, it’s like we’re living in the future. Cholera first arrived in North America  in the spring of 1832, likely in Quebec, and quickly spread across the Northeast. Cholera is a bacterial disease which is  transmitted through contaminated food and water, with symptoms including watery vomit   and “voluminous and distinctive  rice-water diarrhea.” Voluminous, there’s a word I don’t use very often. Someone with the disease would puke or poop in the   river and then someone else  downstream would drink it. Before the advent of antibiotics, it had a mortality rate of about 50% and some  people died within hours of the onset of symptoms. Now in April 1832, the Sauk  Nation crossed back over the   Mississippi to try and retake the  homes they were forced to leave. This began the Black Hawk War and the military was  ordered to drive them back into the West with the   help of over 4500 Illinois volunteers – including  a young Abraham Lincoln. Facing strong resistance, General Henry Atkinson requested  reinforcements in mid-June. Two ships were dispatched  from New York to Chicago. The Henry Clay carried 370 troops  while the Sheldon Thompson carried 190…   and both ships were infected with cholera. The Henry Clay’s detachment was reduced  to just 68, while the Thompson lost half. They threw the bodies overboard into the Great   Lakes which then washed up in  Chicago, and congratulations, cholera is now in the West and began  spreading down the Mississippi. Here’s the kicker… the Black  Hawk War ended before those   sickly reinforcements arrived  in Illinois. With the war over, all of those infected troops and Indian  prisoners of war were released to   unknowingly carry the disease back home  and spread it in their own communities. The second wave of Choctaw removal began  in October 1832 as a race against cholera. The 2200 deportees arrived in Memphis, Tennessee just as the disease struck the city  causing them to shelter in place for far too long. They arrived in the West on December 8th, which was way too late in the season to clear  fields and plant crops. In the coming spring, the Choctaw ran out of food and resorted to  scavenging carrion and eating six-year-old   condemned pork which the military had  deemed unfit for human consumption. 20% of them died by the end of  summer. Washington refused to help, saying that they needed to learn self-reliance  rather than dependence on the government. Those who were not cultivating  crops would be left to starve. Where have we heard that one before? In the hopes of convincing more Native  nations to voluntarily relocate, Congress passed the Indian Trade  and Intercourse Act of 1834, declaring all land west of the Mississippi, but not part of any current state or territory, to be Indian Country with total sovereignty. Too many white settlers had moved into  the area before the law could take effect, so the boundary was shifted to the  95th Meridian. For those keeping track, this is the third time the border of “Indian  country” has moved since America was founded. First it was the Appalachians,  then the Mississippi, and now it’s an imaginary line on a map. The government likewise funded the construction of   a string of forts to form a wall  of defense down the Mississippi, to permanently separate whites and Indians. The nations remaining in the East didn’t  believe that promise, for good reason, and continued to resist expulsion. Both the Creek and Seminole began  a war to hold onto their lands. The Cherokee on the other hand split  into factions, some wanted to stay, while others wanted to secure the best  possible terms for their removal. As such, a Treaty Party of twenty Cherokee leaders  negotiated the Treaty of New Echota, ceding all their lands in the  southeast in exchange for a $5   million payout and funds to relocate west  and build schools, churches, and homes. This was a self-appointed  group of unelected officials, they had no authority to sign such a treaty. Not that that mattered to the US government. The treaty signatories thought they  were doing what was best for the nation, but also knew that they would  be branded as traitors since   they had violated their own constitution. So they, along with 2000 others, voluntarily relocated to  Indian Territory immediately. The rest of the Cherokee were given two  years to relocate themselves peacefully, otherwise the Army would do it by force. Troops were dispatched to Cherokee  territory in preparation for that outcome. The military had just marched 1200 Creek Indians   in chains and forced them to  sleep on the ground at night. They weren’t playing around anymore. The Cherokee tried to wait out  Andrew Jackson’s presidency, in the hope that the next president would   be more sympathetic and suspend the  removal order, allowing them to stay. Martin Van Buren took office in 1837…  he was Andrew Jackson’s vice president. All hope was basically lost at that point. On May 26, 1838, three days after  the voluntary removal deadline, 3500 soldiers were ordered to arrest all   16,000 remaining Cherokee and deliver them  under guard to the nearest fort for deportation. No time was given for them  to collect their belongings   and anything left behind was considered abandoned. White people moved in immediately and  were cooking in Cherokee kitchens and   sleeping in Cherokee beds before they had  even gone cold. Following the arrests, General Winfield Scott declared that “Georgia  has been entirely cleared of red population.”   A small band of Cherokee managed to escape  and hid in the mountains of North Carolina, the Army was unable to apprehend them and they   eventually gained recognition as the  Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. A few weeks after the mass arrest, the Army deported 3000 Cherokee by steamboat, resulting in a 10% loss of life. Steamboats were incredibly  dangerous back in the day, often exploding without warning. So the Cherokee Nation negotiated  a delay in removal until fall, at which point they’d travel by foot. Until then, they remained in what can only be  described as concentration camps. Hundreds died from starvation and exposure. Beginning in October 1838, 11,000 Cherokee  and their 1600 slaves began the four month   journey west in eleven separate detachments  that all took slightly different routes. This is known as the Trail of Tears, one of the few things taught in school –  though usually stripped of all context. Of the total 15,354 Cherokee that were  removed over the course of the decade, 986 of them died as a direct  result of deportation. I told you the Army kept meticulous records. When you consider starvation, exposure, disease, and all the other causes, the death toll is significantly higher. Almost certainly in the thousands,  but also heavily disputed. Upon the main group’s arrival in Indian Territory, they assassinated the key members of the Treaty  Party for selling out the rest of the nation. It would take decades for the various  factions to settle their differences. The Cherokee were paid $1.68 million for their   land and $416,000 for their stolen  property. But at the same time, since they didn’t voluntarily relocate, they were charged $1.35 million for the expenses  involved in their own deportation. In the end, each family only received $125 in compensation. The Chickasaw were likewise billed for their  own removal, but were left with nothing. The Second Seminole War lasted until 1842, a few hundred managed to hold their ground  in Florida and were eventually recognized   as the Seminole Tribe of Florida and the  Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida. Over the course of the Indian Removal Act, the native population in the east was  reduced from 100,000 to just 15,000. The United States spent 40% of  its federal budget on Indian   Removal in the 1830s for a total of $75 million. That’s over a trillion in today’s money. If this were to happen in the present-day, it would cost $12.5 million for each  individual Indian shipped to the West. But they also made $80 million dollars by   selling the now-vacant land to  white settlers. So in the end, the government made a slight profit  expelling Native Americans from their homes. Almost immediately, northern anti-slavery  societies recognized the expulsion for what   it was – a chance for southern plantation owners  to expand slavery and grow their political power. If you remember the Constitution, untaxed Indians were not counted  for representation in Congress, but 3/5ths of the African slaves were. By the time of the civil war  hundreds of thousands of white   farmers and plantation owners, their workers, and their slaves had moved into the  former Indian territories… so when   you hear people from the South say things like… The average Confederate soldier  wasn’t fighting for slavery, he was just defending his traditional way of  life and repelling invaders from his family home. Keep in mind that if they  lived in any of these areas, they’d only been there for about 25 years. I don’t know how long it takes for  a place to become a “family home”, but I’m pretty sure it’s longer than that. And that idea isn’t true anyway, the Confederacy had territorial ambitions. Secession wasn’t their only goal. The South was actually planning to expand  slavery around the entire Caribbean to   establish an American version of  Slaver’s Bay from Game of Thrones. Though they called it the Golden  Circle, which isn’t any better. This was one of the primary  motivations for the Mexican   American War - they wanted to take all of it. When the federal government declared that all  land west of the Mississippi was Indian Country, the United States looked like this. But after the Mexican American  War, it looked like this. I mean, we’re not seriously going to give them  half of the country are we? Of course not. So in 1851, Congress passed  the Indian Appropriations Act, giving them the power to set aside land, money, and supplies for the establishment of permanent   reservations to be managed by  the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Which had just been moved from the  military to the newly established   Department of the Interior,  making it a civilian agency. This opened the door to all kinds of corruption  issues and marked a shift in federal policy   away from removal beyond the Mississippi  and towards containment on small parcels. What followed was a spree of treaties as  nations wanted to ensure their continued   existence on their own land with  as much autonomy as possible. Reservations were not gifts or  consolation prizes for past mistreatment. The United States did not give  Native Americans any land – they   gave us land and reserved a  small portion for themselves. Remember, from their perspective, we were the foreign invaders  that they were trying to appease. The most notable treaty for our purposes was the  1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie, signed by the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow, Assiniboine, Arikara, Mandan, and Hidatsa Nations. It set aside this enormous piece of land  as permanent Indian territory in exchange   for allowing wagon trains to pass through. The gold rush had just begun in  California and tens of thousands   of white settlers were crossing the Great Plains, wanting assurances of safe passage. The United States had deemed the  plains useless for agriculture and   were more than happy to let the  various plains tribes keep it. In order to properly claim all of that land  that was ceded by Mexico following the war, the US had to populate it with Americans and  the best way to do that was to give away land. So in 1862, the Homestead Act was passed, selling 160-acre plots out  west for just $1.25 an acre, which was so cheap it might  as well have been free. But this also meant that white Americans wouldn’t  just be passing through Indian territory, they’d be moving in next door. The Homestead Act was the biggest government  land settling project in American history. Free land was offered to settlers so that   the Plains could be colonized and  the Native Americans driven away. The Homestead Act was not free. It’s funny that he said “free land was offered  to settlers” while showing broadsheet stating   “farms for sale” “a few dollars now means a farm  for your old age.” But that’s beside the point. Even at these prices thousands of  people took up the government's offer. So while the US was distracted by the Civil War, the Santee Sioux decided it was  time to try and kick the whites out. Chief Little Crow led an attack against  several forts and settlements in Minnesota. They looted the agencies on their reservation  and took hundreds of white prisoners. The governor of Minnesota declared that  the “Indians must be exterminated or   driven forever beyond the borders of the state.” They wasted no time, the war ended  five weeks later and resulted in   the largest mass execution in American history, when 38 Santee Sioux were hanged  simultaneously. A few months later, the remaining Santee who surrendered were  deported from Minnesota to Dakota territory. Chief Little Crow actually  managed to escape the noose, but was killed by a random deer hunter looking  to score the $25 bounty on Indian scalps. His scalp and bones were put  on display in the Minnesota   state capitol building in St. Paul until 1915. While we don’t usually pay  too much attention to it, the Civil War was also fought in the southwest. Confederate troops from Texas were  pushing into New Mexico by 1862. The Navajo had been raiding American  settlements for a decade at this point, but quickly split into factions  supporting either side. Once General James Carleton  and the California Column   had successfully repelled the Confederate advance, he declared open season on any  hostile Indians in the territory. The US ordered all of the Navajo to  return to their reservation by July 20, 1863 – but none of them arrived. Kit Carson and the New Mexico Volunteers were sent  into the mountains on a scorched earth campaign;   they destroyed crops and killed livestock  in the hope of starving them out. It worked, the 3000 Navajo camped in the  canyons surrendered in March 1864. Along with all of the peaceful Navajo, they were forced to march  300 miles from Fort Canby, Arizona to their new reservation  near Fort Sumner, New Mexico, an event now known as the Long Walk of the Navajo. This is just as important an event to the  Navajo as the Trail of Tears is to the Cherokee. And the path they took is now  part of the famous Route 66. They were only given the bare  essentials to eat, like flour and lard, which they used to make fry bread, the quintessential Native American meal  which is ubiquitous on every reservation   and across every nation. Throw some meat, cheese, and vegetables on there and you’ve got  yourself an Indian taco. They’re delicious. Even if their origin story is a little dark  and they’re incredibly unhealthy for you. Several hundred died along the way, but General Carleton declared  the removal a success. Even admiring the way the Navajo  eventually submitted in the end. They have fought us gallantly for years and  years; they have defended their mountains   and their stupendous canyons with a heroism  which any people might be proud to emulate;   but when … they found it was their destiny  … as it had been that of their brethren … to   give way to the insatiable progress of  our race, they threw down their arms. If you read between the lines there, he’s talking about Manifest Destiny. The sense that God had ordained that the  American people should fulfill their boundaries, basically Manifest Destiny, you know, that it was America’s obligation as the  shining city on the hill to claim this land. This is a big part of the  Standard American History Myth, where Native Americans are presented  as an obstacle to westward expansion. When you learn about the Oregon Trail  and the American West in school, Indians are nothing more than  a hazard to the pioneers, on the same list of worries as  rattlesnakes and thunderstorms. In 1858, the Pike’s Peak gold rush began   in Colorado and Denver City  was founded soon afterwards. The territorial governor signed a  treaty with the Utes granting them   everything west of the Continental Divide  and $20,000 a year in goods and provisions. The Utes agreed to relinquish the mineral rights   to their land and not trouble any of  the white miners in their territory. The Cheyenne and Arapaho controlled the  eastern half of Colorado until the gold rush, at which point they ceded most of their territory, but were still allowed to roam and  hunt on the plains as they pleased. The Dog Soldiers were a militaristic band of   Indians from several different nations  that weren’t happy about that treaty. They began raiding settlements and attacking wagon   trains and stagecoaches in retaliation  and all of these incidents were blamed   on the relatively peaceful Cheyenne  and Arapaho. For their own safety, the governor ordered all Indians  onto the reservation near Fort   Lyon by the end of the next month  or they would be declared hostile. The Cheyenne and Arapaho were scattered across the  plains for their summer hunt and two months simply   wasn’t enough time for them to receive the order  and pack up to move – even if they wanted to. In September, a Cheyenne chief named Black  Kettle rode to Denver to secure peace, but the governor wasn’t having any of it. The US Army was busy with the Civil War, so Colorado had just raised  a new regiment of soldiers   using federal funds specifically to fight Indians, so they had to be used for that purpose. The men who volunteered to join that unit  wanted to fight poorly armed Natives, not well-trained Confederates. It was kind of like joining the Air  National Guard to avoid going to Vietnam. Black Kettle and the Cheyenne  relented and rode to Fort Lyon, where the commander told  them to set up camp outside, stating that they would still  be under the fort’s protection. Once they set up camp at Sand Creek, the fort commander allowed the  Cheyenne men to go on a buffalo hunt. He then sent a message to Colonel  Chivington informing him that   there was a looming Indian threat  nearby and he needed reinforcements. The Colorado Regiment arrived shortly afterwards. In the middle of the night on November 28th, 700 troops surrounded the Cheyenne camp, which hadn’t set up any defenses because they  were assured protection. The next morning, Black Kettle raised a US flag over his  tent to show that they were peaceful,   but that didn’t matter. Chivington ordered his troops to  open fire on the 600 Cheyenne, two-thirds of which were women and children  since the men were away. To their credit, two companies refused to take part in the battle, calling it a well-planned massacre and  “murder in every sense of the word.” The Cheyenne raised a white flag of surrender, they laid down their arms, and refused to fight, but none of that stopped the  indiscriminate, brutal killing. 105 women and children were killed compared  to only 28 men. The Americans only lost nine. The American soldiers mutilated and  desecrated the corpses of their victims. They decorated their uniforms with  scalps and even cut out male and   female genitalia to wear them on their hats. This must be part of that “insatiable progress  of our race” we’ve been hearing about. This was the Sand Creek Massacre and if you  learned about this breadcrumb in school, it was probably framed as if  it were a random weather event. Oh yeah, it was some sort of misunderstanding. The troops misinterpreted  something as hostile and, you know, these things happen. It’s unfortunate, but we can’t undo the past. Nothing about the Sand Creek Massacre  was accidental or unfortunate. It was planned weeks in advance. The governor of Colorado created a  unit specifically to fight Indians   and ordered the Cheyenne onto a  reservation. When they arrived, the military told them to wait outside. That special unit then surrounded and killed them   for no other reason than to do  it. To quote Colonel Chivington… I have come to kill Indians, and believe it is   right and honorable to use any means  under God's heaven to kill Indians. Pretty understandably, the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and several other Plains nations were  no longer interested in calls for peace   by the Americans and began raiding wagon trains, cutting telegraph wires,  and scalping settlers. Yes, I just said I understand  why they scalped settlers. How could you not? Why is it that when we do it, it’s an honest misunderstanding caused  by a few bad apples. But when they do it, they’re uncivilized, bloodthirsty savages. We were the ones killing women and children and   making hats out of their body  parts. Wouldn’t you retaliate? The Cheyenne and Arapaho were driven from  Colorado that summer and on October 14, 1865, they signed a treaty agreeing to a perpetual   peace and relinquishing all claims  and rights within the territory. Black Kettle then took his band into Oklahoma and   Kansas to join up with the Kiowa and  Comanche. A little over a year later, these nations banded together  in a war to save the buffalo, which were being exterminated for their hides… [TV Static] Oh c’mon, that one had a Starship  Troopers reference and everything, it would have connected– fine! Another  video to look forward to, I guess. In 1877, the governor of Colorado began  a propaganda campaign declaring that   the “Utes Must Go!” Despite being  allowed to mine in their territory, white settlers wanted more and more land, buying the San Juan mountains for  a $25,000 annual payment, forever. So the governor manufactured crimes, claiming the Utes were intimidating  settlers and starting wildfires in the area. Then there was another staged  conflict between Indians and   the military known as the Meeker Massacre, where the Utes put up much more of a  fight and took several white prisoners. This gave the US justification to  confiscate their land and the Utes   were forced onto a tiny reservation  in the southwest corner of the state. This is how Manifest Destiny actually played out. Is there still any part of this that  still strikes you as inevitable? With the Civil War over,   westward migration increased by an order  of magnitude. In addition to railroads, the United States began constructing trails and  forts along the various routes to make travel   easier and started renegotiating  treaties to ensure safe passage. Talks with the Sioux and Cheyenne nations of  the Black Hills region broke down in 1866. An Oglala chief named Red Cloud accused  the Americans of treating in bad faith, as they had already started construction of the  Bozeman Trail before negotiations had even begun. A few months later, they attacked Fort Phil Kearny   by luring the soldiers out into  the open and slaughtering all them. This was the worst defeat for the US  Army during the Indian Wars and only   the second time they were left with no survivors, having lost all eighty-one garrisoned  troops. This began Red Cloud’s War, which lasted two years and  resulted in a Sioux victory. The 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie was a  concession on the part of the United States. They abandoned the forts they built in  the area and declared the western half   of South Dakota to be the Great Sioux Reservation. Surveyors had deemed the Black Hills worthless, so they were given exclusively  to the Sioux forever. This actually annoyed surrounding  nations like the Cheyenne and Crow, who also viewed the Black Hills as a sacred, ancestral area with deep spiritual  significance. It’s kind of like Jerusalem, everyone has some sort of claim to it. So, why were they given to the Sioux, who are actually the newest kids on the block? Tangent Time! Five hundred  years before Columbus’ arrival, the Ojibwe were located on the east coast. They received a religious prophecy  which told them to start moving west   until they found a land where food grew on water. They found wild rice in the Great  Lakes region and settled there just   in time to fight against the British  during the French and Indian War. Following the various wars and removal acts, they had firmly established themselves as the   dominant nation in what would  become Wisconsin and Minnesota, having displaced the previous  power in the area – the Sioux. The Ojibwe and the Sioux became longtime rivals, even harboring some resentment to this day. Hopefully that dispels the myth that Native  Americans were peaceful before Europeans arrived. They went to war with each other, they invaded each others’ territory, took slaves, all the things that every other nation does. American Indians throughout history  are people just like everyone else. And now that I’ve said Sioux a dozen times, I know I’m going to get a bunch of “well  actuallies” if I don’t address this – and   I’m willing to bet most of the comments about  this have it wrong anyway, so here goes. The Ojibwe called their rivals Nadowessi, which the French pluralized to Nadowessioux, later shortened to just Sioux.  This makes Sioux an exonym. They of course have a name for  themselves in their own language, but in all of their legal dealings  and in everyday conversation, they use Sioux as their name. The Great Sioux Nation share  a common culture and language, split into three distinct subgroups. There are the Nakota in the north, the Dakota in the east,  and the Lakota in the west. It’s that first letter that makes  each language dialect unique. These terms are not synonymous. The Lakota are to the Sioux what  Californians are to America. They’re by far the largest group within the Sioux, but not the only. Within the Lakota nation, there are seven individual tribes, including the Hunkpapa, Miniconjou, Brule, and the one you’re most likely  familiar with, the Oglala. Each of these terms are acceptable identifiers  with differing degrees of specificity. Most every Indian tribe in the country  has a similar naming structure. If you’re ever confused as  to what to call someone, just ask… that’s actually good  advice across the board, really. The Sioux were defeated by the Ojibwe  and settled in the Black Hills only a   few decades before the United States declared them   its sole possessors with that 1868  treaty. And given that known history, the federal government never really took the  Sioux’s ancestral claim too seriously. Now, the argument could be made that maybe the Black  Hills shouldn’t belong exclusively to the Sioux, but rather all of the plains nations  collectively… But there’s really no   case where the United States could make a claim. They had relinquished all of their rights  to that land under two separate treaties   and forbade their citizens from entering the area. Congress signed the Indian  Appropriations Act in 1871, which put an end to treaty making with  the Indian tribes. Between 1777 and 1868, they had signed 368 different treaties. You would think that the end of the treaty period   would mean that there wouldn’t  be any more changes to the map, but… we’re not even halfway through the video. In 1874, the US Army sent General George  Armstrong Custer into the Black Hills, in flagrant violation of the treaty, to investigate rumors of gold  being discovered in the area. Ore deposits were found, roads were cut, and here we are again! I told you this will  be a recurring theme. Within six months, over a thousand miners had illegally  entered Cherokee lands and the go– Oh, sorry, got the wrong line here… [Beep] Within months, over a thousand miners had  illegally flooded the Black Hills and the   government began negotiating for the purchase  of those lands. Which, under the 1868 treaty, would require the assent of  3/4ths of all male Sioux. The Oglala under Crazy Horse and the  Hunkpapa under Sitting Bull refused   to attend the treaty council,  causing the deal to collapse. The American representatives recommended to  Congress that the Indians be ignored and that   a sum fixed “as fair value of the [Black] hills”  be appropriated to complete a forced purchase. In a familiar move, the Indian  Bureau informed the Sioux that   anyone not on the reservation by January 31, 1876 would be declared hostile.  Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, along with bands from the Brule, Miniconjou, Cheyenne, Blackfeet, and numerous other Black Hills nations resisted, beginning the Great Sioux  War in March 1876. By June, they had 10,000 people at their  camp, including 3000-4000 soldiers. Which was perhaps the single largest  gathering of Indians ever at that point. Scouts from the 7th Cavalry stumbled upon  their pony herd on the Little Bighorn   River and were unable to determine  the size of the Indian village, but were sure of its position. General Custer arrived the next  day with his 700 cavalrymen and   prepared for the assault. The Civil War was over. Most of the Indian tribes had surrendered  and were living on reservations. This was the only place in the country  where any fighting was happening…   and George Armstrong Custer  wanted to be President. He saw this war as his last chance to  earn medals and gain national recognition. So, working with incomplete information and seeing   this as his opportunity to capture  the last two great Indian warchiefs, he ordered his regiment to attack…  in broad daylight. Custer was killed, along with 268 members of the  7th Cavalry, with 55 wounded. The Sioux only lost a few dozen. The United States viewed the battle as a massacre, rather than a military blunder, and collectively punished every  Indian nation in the west, whether they were hostile or not. Congress decided that by going to war, the Sioux violated the Treaty of Fort Laramie  and demanded they give up the Black Hills. While Crazy Horse was the warchief of the Oglala, the principal chief was still Red  Cloud. Along with Spotted Tail, the principal chief of the Brule, they signed a peace agreement with the government. This shifted the western boundary of  their reservation to the 103rd Meridian, ceding a significant portion of the  Black Hills to the United States. I’m getting a bit ahead of myself, but the Sioux Nation eventually sued  the government for compensation and   interest for the land that was  illegally ceded by this Agreement, since 3/4ths of all male Sioux  had not voted in favor. In 1980, the Supreme Court finally agreed and  awarded them $105 million dollars, which was the exact amount they asked for. The Sioux have not accepted that money, because that would end their  claim on the Black Hills. The problem with that argument is that they  didn’t sue for the return of their land, they were asking for just compensation.  So, in the eyes of the law, winning was the end of that discussion. That money has since grown to over a billion  dollars and remains unclaimed in a BIA account. The two chiefs convinced Crazy  Horse to surrender and upon   seeing his fellow Sioux signing up  as scouts to fight the Nez Perces, he was disgusted and attempted  to leave the reservation. During the arrest that followed, he was stabbed by a bayonet and  died of his wounds later that night. Sitting Bull and his followers  managed to escape to Canada. While the Canadians didn't force him to leave, they viewed him as an American Indian that would  only cause trouble for them the longer he stayed. Since he wasn’t a British subject, they refused to give him food, clothing, medical attention, or a reserve to live on. A year earlier, Canada passed the Indian Act, which plagiarized the way the US  was handling Indigenous people. Instead of reservations, they have reserves. Instead of Indian Agents,  they have superintendents. Sitting Bull’s band survived three  years on the Canadian plains before   starvation and a harsh winter forced  them to surrender to the United States. A month later, Spotted Tail,  the chief of the Brule, was assassinated by Crow Dog for  following the white man’s path   and selling out the rest of the  tribe by ceding the Black Hills. Basically everything that was  happening to the Cherokee in   the 1820s and 30s was happening  to the Sioux fifty years later. Crow Dog was arrested and tried by the Brule, who ordered him to support Spotted Tail’s widow  and heirs for the rest of his life and banished   him and his descendants from living in the  community for the next four generations. This punishment was acceptable to  the tribe and Spotted Tail’s family,   but not to the US government, who had just lost a key ally. They arrested Crow Dog, tried him in  territorial court, and sentenced him to death. His lawyers appealed the  ruling up to the Supreme Court, who rendered their decision in December 1883. Crow Dog’s conviction was overturned and he lived   out the rest of his days in exile on  the reservation. Citing Worcester v. Georgia and the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, the court ruled that the government  had no jurisdiction on any Indian   land and federal laws cannot be  enforced within their boundaries. The United States was not  happy with this decision, since it threatened the legal integrity  of the entire reservation system. So, within a year, Congress  passed the Major Crimes Act, giving the federal government jurisdiction over   seven of the most severe offenses  if they occur on a reservation. That’s literally all they had  to do to get around that ruling. Write a law giving themselves permission. The BIA enacted the Code  of Indian Offenses in 1883, outlawing certain rituals and  practices that were seen as   interfering with the assimilation program –  which included the Christian missionary work. This banned things like  plural marriage, intoxication, leaving the reservation without  permission, and various dances. Most notably for the plains nations,  this outlawed the Sun Dance, which was an annual event where  people made sacrifices to their   creator to earn good fortune  for their tribe and ancestors. Kind of like buying indulgences to get  your family members out of Purgatory. They did this by piercing their own skin  with hooks that were attached to a central   pole… and then they would dance until they had  freed themselves… by rending their own flesh. This might sound brutal to you and me, but it’s really no different than the   self-flagellation practiced by  other religions at that time. And I know what you’re thinking, “how did this get around the First Amendment, which allows for the free practice of religion? And to that I say… Ha! Silly rabbit, constitutional protections are for  kids… and by kids I mean US citizens. And according to the Supreme Court, American Indians were not US citizens, since they were born into an “alien nation.” Soon afterwards, the federal government sent a  commission to negotiate for the breakup of the   Great Sioux Reservation into smaller reservations  for each individual tribe. Which if you remember, would still require 3/4ths of  all male Sioux to sign onto. Sitting Bull interrupted one of the meetings, claimed to be the chief of all Sioux and left, which immediately evaporated any hope  for the commission’s plan to pass. The government began to fear that the  Sioux were uniting behind a strongman   leader and what he might do with that power. Sitting Bull wasn’t just popular among  his own people, but Americans too. He was invited to give a speech at the golden  spike ceremony for the Northern Pacific Railroad, which he delivered in his own language. He insulted them and called them thieves and liars  to their own faces but… they didn’t know that. They cheered and clapped anyway. In the summer of 1885 he started touring  with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show, where people paid for an autograph  from the man who killed Custer. He worked with a show horse that  would dance to the sound of a gunshot, which he eventually got to take home. The United States had big plans for the Great  Sioux Reservation because at this point, there were only like 16,000 Sioux  living in this enormous area. I mean, they don’t need all that space, right? So, they wanted to carve up small portions for the   individual tribes and then open up the  rest of the area for white settlement. Sitting Bull returned from his Wild West  tour in time to hear the government’s   offer of fifty cents an acre for all  of the land they would be giving up. He advised against the deal,  shutting it down yet again. And again the commission recommended that Congress  ignore their wishes and force the sale anyway. In the Summer of 1889, they sent a new commission  to offer $1.50 an acre and a new strategy: to speak to each tribe individually, starting with the Brule and Oglala and ending with  Sitting Bull’s Hunkpapa. Their strategy worked, 3/4ths agreed and the Great Sioux  Reservation was broken up into five   smaller ones which continue to exist to this day. The Oglala are on the Pine Ridge Reservation, the Brule on the Rosebud Reservation, and the Hunkpapa are at Standing Rock, which you may remember from the  2016 NoDAPL protests. At this point, the Sioux had been completely defeated in every  sense of the word – militarily, politically, geographically, and spiritually. In January 1889, a Paiute named  Wovoka declared himself a prophet, promised an end to American expansion, and preached a rejection of alcohol  and white influence in general. Uh oh… we’ve heard this story before. I wish I could tell you this  one has a happy ending but no, it’s pretty much the worst ending. Wovoka stated that since Jesus wasn’t treated so  well by white people the last time he was alive, he would be reincarnated as an Indian in 1892, when he would renew everything as it used to be. The herds of buffalo and wild horses would be   restored and allowed to roam free  on the plains. At that moment, any Indian who was dancing a  specific dance would be lifted up, while all the white men were  buried under a new layer of soil. The dancers would then be set down among the  ghosts of their ancestors on a renewed Earth. The dance which would allow you to live among   the ghosts of your ancestors  was called the Ghost Dance. Wovoka received this dance in a vision  and taught that the more you did it, the sooner Jesus would return. The dance was a five-day event  with a very specific schedule and   a specific buckskin attire known as a Ghost Shirt. These shirts would protect  the dancers from all harm, including white men’s bullets. I was always under the impression that the Ghost  Dance was some ancient, traditional practice but, nope… it was created in 1889 and  by the end of the next year it had   spread to nearly every reservation in  the West. If this were to happen today, we would call it what it is… a doomsday cult. A Christian doomsday cult, actually. That’s not to belittle their religion or anything, there were plenty of Christian doomsday  cults starting around that time. I’ve made videos about several of them and  I’m sure you’ve noticed some parallels. This is basically a Native American  reskin of the Mormon church, right down to the magic underwear. The Ghost Dance had become so prevalent among the   Sioux reservations that all other  work stopped. There was no school, no farming, and no trading. Just dance. [Lady Gaga beat] Since this religion  preached the destruction of all white people, government officials, Indian agents, and settlers in the area were terrified  that it might escalate to armed rebellion. Because… that’s what happened  multiple times before. If Wovoka is the prophetic  figure in this situation, the obvious military leader for any  potential uprising would be Sitting Bull. Geronimo had already been arrested and  shipped off to a prison in Florida. And he didn’t believe in the Ghost  Dance anyway, he had his own prophet. [TV Static] I somehow knew that wasn’t going to work… I think   I’m going to do something special with  this one though. On December 15, 1890, the government arrested Sitting Bull for  violating the Code of Indian Offenses   by helping or at least allowing the  spread of the Ghost Dance religion. Several Sioux tried to intervene and  Sitting Bull was shot in the scuffle…   with his old show horse dancing in the background. That’s not a joke – that actually happened Two days after Sitting Bull’s death, several hundred Hunkpapa fled the Standing Rock  Reservation and set out towards Pine Ridge, where they joined up with a band of Miniconjou. The cavalry caught up to them  at Wounded Knee and surrounded   them with their latest weapon, the Hotchkiss gun, which was basically an automatic  grenade launcher. The next morning, the officer in charge ordered the Lakota to  surrender their arms and a man named Black   Coyote refused to give up the brand new  Winchester that he paid good money for. Did I mention that the unit surrounding them was   the newly reconstituted 7th Cavalry – the  one from Little Bighorn? A scuffle ensued, shots were fired and what followed  was an indiscriminate killing so   infamous it can only be described as a massacre. Of the 350 Lakota at Wounded Knee, only fifty-one are known to have survived. Contrary to popular belief, the  Ghost Dance was never outlawed, it just sort of faded away after Wounded  Knee and the non-return of Christ. But another religion started around the same  time by Quanah Parker did manage to stick around. Officially known as the Native American Church, but more commonly, the Peyote Religion. Peyote is a cactus containing  mescaline that had long been   used by the native people of Mexico  for spiritual and medicinal purposes. This is another one of those things that’s always  talked about like it’s an ancient practice, but it wasn’t introduced  to America until the 1890s. Even the Navajo weren’t using it until then. Possession of peyote was eventually  made illegal in the 1930s, at the same time that all of the  other drugs were criminalized. I finally get to start talking  to you about some modern issues   and I get to reveal to you that as  part of my research for this video, I spent a few days on the Pine  Ridge and Rosebud reservations. Both of which have unemployment rates over 80%, making them the poorest and second  poorest reservations in the country. I started with Wounded Knee, which  really only consists of this sign now. It used to say Battle of Wounded Knee, so that was an appropriate change in my opinion. Up the hill from there you’ll find the mass grave   where all of the bodies that  could be found were buried. As I was driving through the reservation, all I saw was untamed grassland which  every so often gave way to a town that   consisted of little more than a gas  station and few boarded up buildings, the familiar signs of poverty. The further east I traveled on my way to Rosebud, the prairie gradually gave way to huge commercial   farms and towns that had actual  businesses and grocery stores. This was kind of shocking to me given what  I knew about reservations at that point. [Matrix music build] What if  I told you that right now, more white people live on Indian  reservations than Indians? [Music cuts] Because it’s true. Ahead of the breakup of the  Great Sioux Reservation, Congress passed the General Allotment Act in 1887, more commonly known as the Dawes Act, which fundamentally destroyed the  entire purpose of reservations. Even after carving their lands down to this, there were only 5000 Oglala on Pine  Ridge and 5000 Brule on Rosebud…   They don’t need all that space, right? Man, I’m getting some serious deja vu over here. Every Indian head of household would be  assigned 320 acres if the land was only   suitable for grazing and 160 acres  if it could be used for agriculture. Single individuals were put on  80 acre plots and all children   were assigned 40 acres for when they  come of age. This was a one-time deal, Native Americans had four years to select  their desired plots or they would be assigned. After that, the window was closed. So whatever land they chose would  be divided among their descendants, they wouldn’t get their own new plots. 320 acres quickly became 160, then 40, and today there are single plots with divided  ownership among a dozen different relatives. Some of you just had a lightbulb  go off because this sounds an   awful lot like reparations with its  40 acres and a mule. But remember, we weren’t giving the Indians any  land, they were giving us land. Anything left over would be  taken by the government and   sold on the open market to white farmers. This is a map of the Pine Ridge and Rosebud  Reservations, here are the borders of each. And this is how much land still belongs  in the hands of their respective tribes. Those towns with grocery stores, banks, and Subway franchises that I saw? Those are in the white-controlled  areas of the reservation, or in towns which are located just outside of  the reservation boundary. As you likely noticed, there is a grocery store in the town of Mission, the only one that can be found on  Indian land within the reservation. It was built just a few years ago  and labels everything in the store   in both English and Lakota, which is a nice touch. But it is 12 miles away from  the nearest reservation town   and if it’s closed or out of whatever you need, the next closest grocery  store is about an hour away. Which is why reservations are often used as  the prime examples of food and bank deserts. So why aren’t Subway and Mcdonald’s  franchises in towns like Rosebud? … Not that they should want any, but still. The Dawes Act only granted ownership of   those individual plots to individual  families. Tribal land, communal land, and anything not scooped up by white  settlers were held by the government. The main purpose of this Act was to  eventually dissolve reservations entirely. So ownership was not transferred to the tribe. As a result, modern reservations are a  patchwork of land owned by individual Indians, land owned by non-Indians  and commercial interests, and land held in trust by the  federal or tribal governments. And even that is a gross oversimplification, since the land can be leased and tribes  can own property off the reservation. Those plots being in a trust means  that nobody has the title to them, so nobody can take out a  mortgage to build houses on them. And no business in their right mind  would set up shop on land they can’t own. That land is basically frozen in  time forever… Still. To this day. The government’s reasoning for holding  onto that land is entirely paternalistic. The Indians just can’t be trusted to  manage their own territory - or worse, they might be taken advantage of and  sell it for way under its market value. And do you not see how that’s like…  a racist argument? It’s their land, let them do what they want with it, even if that means selling it. This is the case for just about  every reservation in the country, from the Ojibwe in Minnesota,  to the Sioux in South Dakota, all the way down to the Navajo in Arizona. Most of the land reserved for the Indians   in perpetuity by treaty… is  not in the hands of Indians. With that being the case,  at the turn of the century, the only place for American  Indians to buy supplies and   dry goods was at the government trading post, located at the central agency on each reservation  The Bureau of Indian Affairs assigned an Indian   Agent to administer the reservation’s affairs and  make sure the assimilation program ran smoothly. Their most important job, and therefore  the source of most of their power, was the distribution of food rations  to individual families. Again, these are not consolation prizes  because we feel sorry for them. Rations were just part of the deal  when reservations were established, since the United States didn’t want  Indians roaming the plains for buffalo. And it’s not like they’re getting  T-bone steaks and champagne, rations were the basic necessities,  things like sugar, flour, and coffee; usually nearing  or past their expiration date   since they were being given away for free. Rations were a standard offer in the treaty  process and actually continue to this day, though they’re referred to as “commodities” now. The Indian agent was also responsible  for dispensing annuity payments, another thing negotiated for by  the tribe and agreed to by the   government in whatever treaty  put them on the reservation. These are annual or quarterly  cash payments paid directly by   the federal government to  individual tribal members. Very few tribes were able to get these. Certainly not the ones on Pine Ridge and Rosebud. This is usually what people point to as the main   cause of poverty among American  Indians who live on reservations… Those welfare checks are creating a  culture of dependency within those tribes. We’re paying them for doing nothing more than   being a racial minority that was  persecuted over a century ago. How are they ever going to lift themselves up if  they never learn the value of an hard day’s work? That’s the actual argument Naomi Shafer Riley   makes in her libertarian screed  titled The New Trail of Tears, which she thankfully summed up in a  video from our favorite Youtube channel… The billions of dollars that  the federal government spends on   Indians every year hasn't made  their lives better. In fact, by most measures of economic and social health, the lives of American Indians are only  getting worse. Aside from issues of culture, the only way out of this  morass is economic growth, but the reservation system  makes this almost impossible. Did you catch the racist dogwhistle there? Along with government handouts, she blames the worsening economic situation on  “issues of culture.” The main misunderstanding   here is that these annuities are not welfare  or unemployment. They’re also not gifts. These are payments from the government mandated  by the purchase agreement for the land. Oh, you want possession of our mountains? Well, we want $25,000 a year forever. If you recall, that was the deal the Utes made for  the San Juan Mountains in Colorado. You might think it’s unfair,  but the United States didn’t, and they signed a treaty  agreeing to make those payments. Following a series of treaties and laws  over many decades - some well intentioned, some not - the federal government decided  to hold Indian land “in trust” in order   to prevent non-Indians from ever buying that land. Is it really any wonder that this community  is mired in poverty? So, what can be done? For starters, end the trust system. Let Indians do what they  want with the land they own. This is pretty rare, but I actually find myself in   agreement with PragerU – at least when  it comes to their proposed solution. Though they aren’t advocating for  it because they want individual   families to build generational wealth or for  reservations to attract businesses like Walmart. You have to keep in mind that PragerU  is funded by the fossil fuel industry. The other effect of this absurdity is that Indians  can't develop this land that they don't own. Indian reservations contain almost 30 percent of   the nation's coal reserves  west of the Mississippi, 50 percent of potential uranium reserves, and 20 percent of known oil and gas reserves. In October 1879, Richard Pratt opened  the Carlisle Indian Industrial School   in Pennsylvania specifically to take  children to “kill the Indian in him, and save the man.” It was so successful  that the federal government funded the   construction of twenty-six more boarding  schools modeled after Carlisle. By 1902, 6000 students had been taken from their  homes and passed through those schools. There would eventually be 408 of them handling  hundreds of thousands of Native American children. Strangely enough, attendance at these  boarding schools was not mandatory. Compulsory education wasn’t even  a thing for white people yet. But Indian agents were corrupt political  appointees who were rewarded based on performance. So they often bullied parents and threatened to   withhold rations to compel them  to send their kids to school. Where they would be stripped of their culture, Christianized, and assimilated. Physical and sexual abuse were  prevalent in these schools, but what really set them apart from other boarding   schools was the targeted destruction  and erasure of Indigenous cultures. Students had their hair cut and were punished for   speaking in their native language  or wearing traditional clothing. They were kept at the school  for years, rarely visiting home, specifically so that they wouldn’t pick up any   cultural knowledge or participate  in any traditional ceremonies. This made Indian Boarding Schools wildly  successful at their mission. To this day, most Native Americans are some flavor of Christian   and most American Indian languages and  cultures have completely disappeared. The few that survived did  so because they had enough   people to keep it going through this period, like the Navajo, Ojibwe, and Sioux. [Announcer speaking] [Drums and singing] I was on the Rosebud Reservation  for their annual fair and I was   able to attend the powwow – which was  a several days’ long dance competition. Here you’ll see traditional clothing along  with more contemporary fabrics and neon colors, these two clothing styles  compete in different categories. But even among the more traditional outfits, you’ll notice things that didn’t become popular  until these nations were already on reservations. This elaborate beadwork on her leggings? That wasn’t a thing until the 1850s, when glass beads were made available. [Jingles loud] These Jingle  Dresses… – THESE JINGLE DRESSES, okay… [Mute/Volume] These Jingle Dresses  worn by women weren’t a thing until 1918. Those metal cones are made out of  rolled up chewing tobacco lids. This was an Ojibwe invention that the Sioux  and other plains nations eventually adopted. [Jingles loud] By the turn of the century,  the traditions of the various   individual nations blended together  to create a more Pan-Indian culture. The Brule Lakota Sioux weren’t the only  tribe represented at the Rosebud Fair, there were participants from all of the  plains communities stretching up to Canada. [Drums and singing end] The assimilation program carried out by the  boarding schools and the allotment policy put in   place by the Dawes Act were part of a two-pronged  approach to terminate reservations altogether. It was widely assumed by most  Americans that within a few decades, the Indians wouldn’t exist anymore, lost to the insatiable progress of our race. This was such a concern that when Thomas  Edison invented the kinetoscope in 1891, one of the first things he  filmed was the Sioux Ghost Dance, a twenty second reel designed  to “capture the Indian before   he disappeared.” Hollywood became  obsessed with Native Americans, featuring them extensively  during the silent film era. In 1930, The Silent Enemy was released, telling an Ojibwe story about famine  that feels a lot like Disney’s Aladdin. They even have a handsome hunter  competing against an evil medicine   man for the affections of the chief’s daughter. But the most memorable part of  this film is the introduction, the only non-silent part of the movie, where Chief Chauncey Yellow Robe  delivers an opening monologue. Soon we will be gone. Your  civilization will have destroyed us, but by your magic, we will live forever. We thank the white men who  helped us to make this picture. Fun fact, Chauncey Yellow Robe was  neither a chief, nor an Ojibwe. He was a Lakota Sioux from  the Rosebud Reservation. Things finally changed for the  American Indian on June 18, 1934, when FDR signed the Indian Reorganization Act, otherwise known as the Indian  New Deal. More than any other, this act had the most influence over the political   status of Native Americans and remains  in effect to this day. Most importantly, this ended the policy of allotment, reservation land could no  longer be sold to non-natives. If you already owned some, you could keep it, but you couldn’t buy any more. American Indians collectively  controlled 130 million acres   when the Dawes Act was signed. By 1933, they only had 49 million acres. An area the size of California had  been taken and sold without a treaty. Since FDR was also pushing to end child labor  and make public education compulsory nationwide, this act also provided funds to the states so  they could build schools on the reservations. Christian boarding schools still existed, but at least now they had a secular  second option. Yay school choice! This Indian New Deal introduced constitutional  democracy to the Indigenous nations, who could now deal with federal, state, and local governments on an equal  government-to-government footing. Which significantly reduced the role of the BIA  and stripped power away from the Indian agents. Nations were finally allowed to elect  their own leaders and give themselves   an official name… If you still think  Sioux isn’t the proper terminology, you should really tell that  to the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. The new tribal governments were allowed  to establish their own police forces   and set up tribal courts to  prosecute their own crimes. When writing their individual constitutions, the nations were allowed to dictate  their own membership criteria. Which is where blood quantum enters  the mix… heh, enters the mix… [Beep] Blood quantum is the fraction or  percentage of your ancestry that   comes from Native Americans.  Contrary to popular belief, this policy was not imposed  on tribes by the government. Nations were given free reign to decide for  themselves who was allowed to enroll as a member, they could be as inclusive  or exclusive as they saw fit. Some of them went with the most restrictive  option that was feasible - one half. That means that if your full-blood  parent marries an outsider, you will still be a tribal member. But if you want any of your  kids to also be members, you have to get with someone  who is also at least half. The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux in Minnesota went  this route and they currently have 779 members. That is a very small dating pool. Setting the bar that high seems like a sure-fire  way to breed yourselves out of existence, so most nations only require a  blood quantum of one-quarter, which is one grandparent, or one-eighth, which is one great-grandparent. Smaller fractions are more rare, but some nations don’t use this system at all. The Five Civilized Tribes that were  relocated to Oklahoma during the Indian   Removal Act do not determine membership by what  percentage of Native American blood you carry. So no… that Ancestry.com test does  not make you an Indian and you   probably aren’t the descendant  of a Cherokee princess either. The reason so many people claim Cherokee  ancestry in particular is because one,   they used to be in the South, where some mixing happened, and two, they are the largest nation in the  country and the easiest one to get into. All you have to do is prove direct lineage to  someone listed on the Dawes Rolls from the 1890s. While the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma  was being broken up into allotments, they compiled a list of everyone that  was to receive an individual plot, known as “the Dawes Rolls” This was  the first accurate census for most   Indigenous nations and doubled as the earliest  written record of every tribal member’s name. Funny enough, this is also how  blood quantum is calculated   since DNA tests didn’t exist in the 1930s. The Rolls listed every member as either full or   mixed and only gave the blood fraction if  it was known. To figure out your quantum, you have to trace your lineage back to this  list and do the math. As you can imagine, a lot of mistakes and assumptions  were made in the 1890s. People who weren’t actually  full-blood declared themselves   to be and people who were half-Lakota and  half-Cheyenne were only listed as half. Any nation with a blood quantum  requirement is just using the   Dawes Rolls by proxy and has to  accept these errors at face value. Because of all that, the Cherokee  Nation has decided that as long   as you can prove ancestry to anyone on  that list, you can enroll as a member. Unless you’re the descendant  of one of their black slaves, in which case you can kick rocks. The Cherokee brought slaves  with them on the Trail of Tears, they had about 2500 of them  by the time of the Civil War, during which they fought on the side  of the Confederacy. When they lost, they were forced to give up their slaves and make  the freedmen full citizens of the Cherokee Nation The Cherokee were never happy about  that and over a hundred years later, they voted to disenroll the 2800  descendants of Cherokee Freedmen. Which was less than 1% of their total  enrollment… talk about a grudge. And there’s nothing the Supreme Court  or federal government can do about it, because nations get to decide  their own membership criteria. Despite that controversy, the  Indian Reorganization Act had   an obviously positive impact on American Indians, who were finally able to enjoy the same right  to self-government as any other American. They were even made citizens  of the United States in 1924, though they still couldn’t vote. But as we’ve seen throughout American history, whenever a racial minority gains  more civil rights or political power, there’s an immediate backlash  from the white community. Hollywood’s sympathetic portrayals  of Native Americans gave way to   stereotypically negative depictions. John Ford’s 1939 film Stagecoach starring  John Wayne ushered in the era of the Western, when Indians were relegated to the background and   treated as an environmental hazard  akin to a tornado or mountain lion. Audiences expected to see savage Indians attacking   towns and wagon trains and began to  automatically fear names like Geronimo. He says they’re being stirred  up by Geronimo. Geronimo? How do we know he isn’t  lying? Nah, he’s a Cheyenne. They hate Apaches worse than we do. Okay, you can’t keep teasing Geronimo if you  won’t show the vid– Actually, you know what? I’m going to put that video  up on Nebula, details later. Even cartoons like Popeye got in on the  action with the 1938 short Big Chief   Ugh-Amugh-Ugh… just, wow. This is when Tonto-speak became a thing. Me make-um squaw beautiful! Oh jewelry. Did the chief at the beginning of The  Silent Enemy talk like that? Of course not. No mug hang around here ‘til he  prove himself brave and bow warrior! The episode is full of racial stereotypes  and caricatures for Popeye to battle, and in the end, he saves his girlfriend. I licked 'im, and how-wow! There'll be no more  Pow-wow! With Popeye The Sailor Man! [Toot toot] Now, you might be thinking, “who cares? This came out forever ago” – and you’re right. But keep in mind… My neighbor  was alive when this came out. You think this didn’t influence his  opinion on Indians? Followup question, do you think this ended with Popeye? These stereotypes weren’t just  being pushed on film. In 1926, the University of Illinois introduced  its new mascot, Chief Illiniwek, representing the Fighting Illini. The Illini were wiped out by a  neighboring Indian nation in the 1760s. Chief Illiniwek was not a real person. His costume is based on a  Plains Indian and despite   the team billing his performance as  an authentic Native American dance, it was actually made up by whichever  student was playing him at the time. In 1932, the Boston Braves  football team was established. Apparently dissatisfied that their  name wasn’t already offensive enough, they changed it to the Redskins the next year, and the team moved to Washington DC  in 1937, where it remains to this day. That’s the first and only time  I will be saying that name, just so there’s no confusion over  what team I’m talking about later. Sports in general were a fairly new concept, so as more high schools, colleges, and professional teams were  established in the 30s and 40s, thousands of them went with  a Native American theme. And almost all of them were  based on the stereotypes and   caricatures depicted in westerns and cartoons. The Cleveland Indians baseball team  had been using that name since 1915, but they didn’t introduce Chief  Wahoo as their mascot until 1946. They switched to the more familiar,  red skinned version in 1951. Americans had kind of had it with Indians, who they had come to view as a  burdensome, historical relic. So, the federal government began to look for  ways to politically erase them. In 1953, President Truman signed Public Law 280, or PL280, which was almost as destructive as the Dawes Act. This gave states the option to take over criminal   jurisdiction over Indians and  non-Indians on Indian land. This meant that reservations had to deal with   state law enforcement rather than  federal. Fifteen states opted in, basically all the ones with significant  populations of Native Americans. So, depending on which reservation you’re on, what race you are, and what crime you commit, you might have to deal with the tribal  police, BIA police, county sheriffs, state police, or even the FBI. This created a needlessly complicated  system of overlapping jurisdictions   that is so confusing most  cops don’t understand it. Reservations have sky-high unsolved murder rates. The fact that they’re so sparsely populated and   people are so spread out is  a major contributing factor. By the time a victim is discovered,  the perpetrator is long gone. But then they have to decide who has  jurisdiction over the investigation, which mostly depends on the race of the suspect. If it was an Indian on Indian crime, the case goes to the tribal  police. If it was white on Indian, it either gets referred to the county sheriff or   state police if they’re in  a PL280 state, or if not, it goes to the BIA police if it’s a  misdemeanor and the FBI if it’s a felony. The Supreme Court ruled that even if a  white person lives on the reservation, they are not subject to tribal law. The case has to be referred to state or federal  authorities. Did you follow all of that? Once the jurisdictional mess is figured out, the agency has to actually  investigate, and more often than not, the crime goes unsolved and unpunished. Now take everything I just said  and apply that to sexual assault, which is an even bigger problem on reservations. Indigenous women are raped at  2.5 times the national average. One out of every four girls and one out of every  six boys are molested before the age of eighteen. Child abuse is also a huge problem, occurring on reservations at  twice the national average. PL280 was designed to make reservations unlivable  and began the new federal policy of termination, when the government hoped to wash its  hands of the Indians once and for all. Five reservations were wiped off the  map and 112 tribes lost their federal   recognition when the law  went into effect. In 1956, the Indian Relocation Act was signed  to encourage Native Americans to   move off of the reservations and into  the cities, promising housing, work, and educational opportunities. Those promises were rarely kept and over a hundred   thousand people moved to the  cities during this period, creating what were called “Urban Indians.” The most outrageous part of  termination came in 1958, when the Bureau of Indian Affairs  created the Indian Adoption project, which was administered by the  Child Welfare League of America. Canada and Australia were doing the  exact same thing at the exact same time. County nurses and social workers  would declare a parent unfit, usually because they were too poor  and lived in a tar paper shack, and their kids would be taken to live  with a non-Native family in another state. This program lasted almost a decade, during which time 25% of all Indians  kids were adopted away to white families. So not only were American Indians being  stripped of their land and political status, but their adults were moving  away to the cities and their   children were being adopted and assimilated. What else could they possibly lose? It’s time for another  tangent, this is a weird one, but I promise it’s related, just stick with me. In 1882, for the first time ever, the United States decided to close  off all immigration for an entire   racial group with the Chinese Exclusion Act. I realize that China isn’t  the only country in Asia, but to an American in the 1800s, it was all China. They eventually allowed extremely limited  immigration through strict quotas,   but for almost eighty years, there were basically no Asian  people moving to the United States. That changed with the Immigration and  Naturalization Act of 1965. Suddenly, Asian people could legally immigrate. This is why right-wing think tank graphs of Asian  immigration don’t start until the 1960s and graphs   of total immigration by race dating back to the  Civil War look like this. Up until this point, anyone from the Far East was referred to as an  Oriental – My parents used to use that word, that’s how recently we’re talking. But with the Civil Rights movement going on, there was a push to use more inclusive  language when talking about minorities   and people began to ditch those old words for  more accurate, less racially charged terms. Negro and Colored became African-American. Oriental became Asian-American. And since not everyone from Asia  is the same and people from this   country were finally allowed  to move here too… well… I mean, these people are indisputably  Indian, right? Indian-American? We already have American Indians, that would be confusing as  hell. But you know what? The more I think about it… it was always a mistake  to call them that in the first place, right? So… how about… Native American? That phrase had always been around, but it was just a descriptor,  not an ethnic identity. It didn’t take on that meaning until the  1960s and 70s. Here’s the thing, though. Many American Indians had come  to self-identify as Indians. When the tribes were allowed  to pick their official names, many of them used the word “Indian.” Most saw  “Native American” as yet another attempt by white   people to erase their identity and explicitly  rejected the term. On top of everything else, we tried to take the name of their ethnicity too. “Native American” has gained  more acceptance over the years, especially among younger  generations, but to this day, American Indian is still the preferred  term. Either one is fine, though. You really won’t get in trouble, regardless of which one you use.  There’s one caveat, however. If you’re talking about a  particular individual or nation, you should refer to them as Lakota, or Cherokee, or Navajo – whatever the case may be. In case there is any lingering  doubt in your mind… In July 1968, a group of Urban Indians living in Minneapolis  founded the American Indian Movement, or AIM. They were a militant civil rights group fighting  against police brutality, poverty, discrimination, and the destruction of their culture. They were basically the Indian version of the   Black Panthers and they were  treated as such by the FBI. AIM staged a number of high-profile  protests in the early 70s. They started by helping to occupy  Alcatraz for 19 months. On Thanksgiving, they buried Plymouth Rock under sand and briefly   took over the Mayflower II  replica ship. After that, several hundred of them stormed  the BIA offices in Washington DC, demanding to have their issues be heard, and held the building for a week. An unintended consequence of the  Indian Reorganization Act is that   it established elected tribal  governments with no regard to   the traditional hereditary  leadership that came before. Meaning there was now a tribal  president and elected council, rather than a principal chief and his sub-chiefs. According to AIM member Mary Crow  Dog in her book Lakota Woman, this created a class of mixed-blood  political bureaucrats who were mostly   interested in maintaining their own power. Though, this may be a somewhat biased take… Does that  last name sound familiar to you? It should. I know this is a long video, but c’mon. In 1972, the tribal chairman of  the Pine Ridge Reservation was a   man named Dick Wilson. He was incredibly corrupt, giving government jobs to his  family and stealing tribal money. He often withheld rations or  distributed them unevenly, favoring certain communities over others. He showed an obvious preference for assimilated, mixed-race families and ruled with an  iron fist. If you got on his bad side, he would send his goon squad to murder you. They were literally called  the goon squad – Guardians   of the Oglala Nation. G. O. O. N. I mean, why don’t you just call them  “the bad guys” at that point? The hereditary chiefs formed a civil  rights commission to protect their   people and attempted to have Dick  Wilson impeached for corruption, but that effort fell through.  In their desperation, the Oglala turned to a group  they did fully understand, actually – The American Indian  Movement. On February 27, 1973, two hundred AIM activists and  local Oglala stormed and looted   the trading post at Wounded Knee and then  occupied the church, preparing for a siege. Their leaders included Russell  Means, Mary Brave Bird, and her future husband, Leonard Crow Dog, great-grandson of the Crow Dog. Who was still banned from living in the community. When the FBI arrived, the  AIM protesters opened fire. Random gunshots and nightly firefights would  continue throughout the rest of the occupation. The American Indian Movement wanted: the immediate removal of Dick Wilson, a federal investigation into  corruption on reservations, and a Senate hearing on broken  treaties with Indigenous nations. But outside of this direct situation, they wanted to bring attention to the continuing  destruction of their culture and way of life. The United States couldn’t  really do anything about   Dick Wilson without violating tribal sovereignty. They have just as much authority to do  that as they would in France or Germany. The White House was also busy  handling the Watergate Scandal, so this minor protest in South Dakota  wasn’t high on their list of priorities. Two weeks into the occupation,  Wounded Knee declared itself   to be an independent country and  tried to send a representative to   the UN to argue their case but were  refused. Because obviously, right? Nobody’s going to take that seriously. The FBI certainly didn’t and began issuing  ultimatums for the protesters to leave, eventually cutting water and  electricity to the church. All of the reporters which were providing  much needed publicity and a certain degree   of protection were ordered out of the area…  and everyone began to fear the worst. Until… Hello, my name is Sacheen Littlefeather. I’m representing Marlon Brando this evening, and he has asked me to tell you that he very  regretfully cannot accept this very generous award   and the reasons for this being are the  treatment of American Indians today by   the film industry… [Crowd mumbles and  boos] Excuse me. [Crowd boos and claps] In August 2022, the Academy officially  apologized for this reaction, just two months before her death in October. And on television, in movie reruns, and also with recent happenings at Wounded Knee. Marlon Brando refused the Oscar for Best Actor  in The Godfather to bring attention to the   occupation at Wounded Knee and to protest the way  American Indians were being depicted on screen, which was still pretty negative. Even after all these years, if you  saw Native Americans on screen, odds are they were robbing a  stagecoach. In the movie Little Big Man, a white guy is adopted by the  Cheyenne, sees them get massacred, and then goes on a Forrest Gump-like adventure  in the late 1800s. Believe it or not, this is generally considered to be one of the  more positive depictions of American Indians. Come out and fight! It is a good day to die. Huh, do any of you play Starcraft? It is a good day to die. That’s an actual Cheyenne saying, that’s where they got that from. It’s around this time that the Hollywood  Western started to give way to Science Fiction. Many tropes like the Native Princess and Noble   Savage were simply recycled  with a futuristic veneer. In this episode of Star Trek, they  simply put Native Americans in space. They weren’t even trying to hide it. Why, they look like… I’d swear  they’re American Indians. They are, Doctor. A mixture of Navajo, Mohican, and Delaware, I believe. Kirk is stranded and loses his memory, is immediately treated like a god, falls in love with the tribal priestess, and has to duke it out against  a jealous medicine man. All of these characters are played  by white actors in red-face. It’s all very familiar at this point. Things weren’t any better on the  Saturday morning cartoon front either. [Arrows being shot] [Gunshots]  One little, two little, three little Injuns… [Gunshots] Four little, five little, six little Injuns… This is the stuff Baby Boomers like my dad  grew up watching. Aside from it being in color, it’s virtually indistinguishable from  the stuff that came out in the 30s. So, you know what? Good on you, Marlon Brando, this is a problem worth talking about. He had actually been helping American Indians  fight for their hunting and fishing rights and   him bringing so much attention to Wounded  Knee on national television was a big deal. It was about to be summer and Nixon  was worried that the area would be   flooded with college students doing  some protest tourism. On April 26th, a heavy gun battle took place and an Oglala man  named Buddy Lamont was killed, soon afterwards, the Sioux chiefs ordered an end to the siege, despite AIM wanting to continue.  They surrendered on May 8th, having occupied Wounded Knee for seventy-one days. The American Indian Movement reluctantly disarmed  and submitted to arrest, over the next few years, there would be over 500 indictments filed against   its members which caused the  group to eventually fall apart. Thankfully, their message wasn’t lost on people. Numerous laws were introduced to  right the various wrongs of the past. As part of his War on Poverty, President Johnson created the  Department of Housing and Urban   Development and set it to the task of  building actual homes on reservations. I wasn’t kidding when I said Native American  families were living in tar paper shacks, that was standard lodging at this point. So the government got to work building  what are known as HUD housing tracts, little cul-de-sac communities  dotted around the reservation. The idea was to construct mini neighborhoods, just like the ones you would  find in white suburbia. These were built on trust land, so families do not own their homes, rather, they are assigned them when they’re available  without regard to family ties, rivalries, or tribal factions. For many people, this was the first time they had electricity, running water, and a dedicated bathroom. Almost 60 years into the program, 90,000 Native American families  are still waiting for HUD housing. Many people living on reservations  don’t even have physical addresses yet. Which makes things like voting and even calling  911 incredibly difficult. So pick up the pace HUD. In 1975, the Indian Self-Determination  and Education Assistance Act was passed, which provided federal funds to the  reservations for law enforcement, environmental protection,  child care, and education. This gave tribal governments control over their   own schools and education – finally  ending the boarding school program. These schools still physically exist, they’ve just been converted into Indian schools  run by the tribal governments, not churches. State-run public schools also  still exist on reservations, giving students a few different  options. For contrast, the last residential school in  Canada didn’t close until 1996. Shortly afterwards, the Tribally Controlled   College and Universities  Assistance Act created TCUs, which are the Native American version of  Historically Black Colleges and Universities. This helped to fund Sinte Gleska  University on the Rosebud Reservation, which currently has about a thousand students. The Indian Child Welfare Act was passed in 1978 to   stop the wholesale removal of Native  American children from their homes, by giving the tribal government a  voice in child custody disputes. Its stated goal is to keep  Indian kids in Indian families, which, yeah, given all of history, that seems like it was needed. That same year, they passed the American  Indian Religious Freedom Act, which finally lifted restrictions on the Sun Dance  and Peyote Religion. Don’t get excited though, peyote is only legal for members of the Native  American Church during sanctioned ceremonies. This series of laws ushered in a period of  self-determination unlike anything they had   seen previously and it all began  with the Indian Civil Rights Act, which extended the Bill of Rights over  Native Americans living on reservations. Now, check out the timeline  here, because this is crazy. President Johnson signed the Indian  Civil Rights Act on April 11, 1968. Then he signed the Uniform Monday  Holiday Act on June 28, 1968. This is the law that made Columbus  Day a federal holiday. As I said, anytime a racial minority  makes a political advancement, there’s a white cultural backlash. The American Indian Movement  was founded a month later. Columbus Day wasn’t one of  their listed grievances, but man… it probably should have been. I know what you’re going to say, Columbus Day isn’t about mocking Native Americans…  and that might have been true in the beginning. The first Columbus Day in the United  States occurred in 1892 as a one-time   celebration in response to the murder of  eleven Italian immigrants in New Orleans. It also happened to be the 400th anniversary  of Columbus’ arrival, so fine, right? I get it. Then there were no Columbus Days, at least not officially. If anything, it was treated as a local folk holiday, it certainly wasn’t celebrated nationally. But then FDR declared it a national  holiday starting on October 12, 1934. He had just signed the Indian  Reorganization Act on June 28, 1934. You remember that one, right? The one that established  self-government, tribal courts, and ended the sale of allotments? That one? Are you noticing a pattern  yet? But even at that point, it was just a regular holiday on the calendar. Kind of like Father’s Day or Halloween. You still had to go to work until  the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. Despite that law being signed in 1968, the first Columbus Day as a federal  holiday didn’t occur until 1971. I guess they needed time to get the  merchandise ready and prepare employers   for the fact that the entire country was  going to have a simultaneous day off. So how is Columbus Day actually celebrated? If you look up videos about  Columbus Day on Youtube, all you’re going to see are people telling  you that Native Americans were bad, actually. Lest you think that Columbus  stumbled on the Garden of Eden, the islands were also inhabited by the Caribs, a tribe of cannibals for whom, according to Pulitzer Prize-winning historian  Samuel Eliot Morison, babies were a delicacy. Take Wounded Knee (although  hundreds of years later, I only bring it up because I  know that if I don’t, you will). I just want to point out that  Steven is about to rant about   Wounded Knee in a video titled “Goodbye Columbus.” It’s become ubiquitous with the idea  of Native American genocide. After all, there were 150-350 Aboriginals  killed or wounded. That’s terrible, but there were also 25 American soldiers  killed and 39 wounded. That’s not genocide, that’s a one sided beat down  with Old Glory wielding a hammer. There's another term for a one-sided beatdown  that might be more appropriate… a massacre. And most of those American casualties were  caused by friendly fire – those aforementioned   Hotchkiss guns were fired blindly into the camp  while everyone was fighting in close quarters. Turns out that Old Glory’s hammer has  a hard time telling friend from foe. Even if you’re not a racist, Columbus Day is your   annual reminder that we wiped out  the Native Americans. Every October, we retell this story in school, almost like we want to convince ourselves  that the Indians have disappeared, rather than being a people who are still  very much alive. If you’re an adult, the controversy surrounding the holiday is brought  up in the news every year. You never outgrow it. And any time you suggest  that we get rid of the day, you’re reminded that Columbus Day is actually  about celebrating Italian immigrants. But, if that were true, why isn’t St. Patrick’s Day a federal holiday? Does the plight of Irish  immigrants not matter as much? Or is Columbus Day actually about something else? Keep that question in the back of your mind. One of my goals with this video is to  humanize American Indians for people   who have likely never encountered one and whose   knowledge about them is limited to what  they heard in school or see in movies. That includes dispelling stereotypes, whether they are negative or positive –  like the one that Native Americans are   naturally gifted caretakers of the environment. That association started to develop  when the environmentalist hippies of   the 1960s began dressing like  the Indians they saw on TV. No tribe anywhere wore headbands like that. Hollywood invented them to keep the wigs on the  white actors who were pretending to be Indians. But the stereotype wasn’t firmly  established for Native Americans   themselves until the “Crying Indian” commercial  which aired on the first Earth Day in 1971. Some people have a deep abiding  respect for the natural beauty   that was once this country. And some people don’t. This is Iron Eyes Cody, who starred  in over 200 movies playing various   Native American roles and was arguably  the most recognizable Indian on TV. His real name was Oscar de Corti, he was Italian. Because of that, he is often referred to as a Pretendian – a  white person who falsely claims to be indigenous, usually for financial gain or social  clout. While filming this video, Sacheen Littlefeather was also accused of this, but I’m not really interested  in exploring those claims. Iron Eyes Cody is a much more interesting case, because by all accounts, he wasn’t lying, he was delusional. Even in private, he truly believed that he was a Native  American until his dying breath. But that doesn’t excuse the damage he caused. When you dress up like an Indian for Halloween, you aren’t paying homage to any actual  Native Americans, past or present. You’re dressing up like this guy – an Italian  actor portraying a TV caricature of an Indian. It’s really no different  than putting on black face, it’s just another way for white people  to reinforce a racial stereotype. Do you really want to walk around looking like   the TV Indian from that fake commercial  pushing an environmentalist stereotype? American Indians throughout history  are people just like everyone else. When times are plenty, they over indulge, when resources are scarce, they cut back. They are no better or worse at managing  the environment than anyone else. For example, modern horses didn’t  exist in North America until the 1500s, when the Spanish conquistadors  left them behind. Even then, it took a century for them to  make it up to the Great Plains. So, before the Cheyenne, Kiowa, or Comanche were hunting buffalo on  horseback, how were they killing them? With a spear? Would you spear a buffalo? You shouldn’t, because you’d lose! Instead, they used what were called  Buffalo Runs or Buffalo Jumps, where they’d drive a herd of  buffalo off the side of a cliff, killing dozens, if not hundreds at a time. We’ve all played Oregon Trail and  shot every bison we came across, you should know what happens next. American Indians could only  take back what they could carry. The idea that they used every part of the animal  or only killed what they needed is just not true. Most of those animals were left to rot. And how would they make this massive herd  of tanks on hooves leap to their own death? By lighting the prairie on fire, which sometimes got out of control. Again, I’m not trying to make the Native  Americans look wasteful or incompetent. They’re just not any better  at it than the rest of us. We cause environmental disasters all  the time – on a much larger scale. Hell, we’re the ones that nearly drove the  buffalo to extinction in the 1800s. In 1868, General Sherman wrote  to General Sheridan saying… As long as Buffalo are up on the Republican  [River], the Indians will go there. I think it would be wise to invite  all the sportsmen of England and   America there this fall for a Grand Buffalo hunt, and make one grand sweep of them all. That’s exactly what they did, the military  regularly sponsored buffalo hunts on the Plains. Hunters would take the hides  and various bits and pieces, but left the majority to rot. By 1884, there were only 325 buffalo remaining. Thankfully in the last few decades, there has been a concerted  effort to restore the herds, which you can learn more about by going  to curiositystream.com/knowingbetter. CuriosityStream is a subscription streaming  service that offers thousands of documentaries   and non-fiction titles which you can  access across multiple platforms. In Return of the Buffalo - Restoring  the Great American Prairie, you’ll see how modern methods have been used to   domesticate the buffalo and grow their  population to over half a million today. I’ve always been a dreamer and, you know, I kind of feel cheated, actually, not being able to see 50 million  buffalo out here on the landscape. Because that’s what this  country needs. And so, you know, I’ve pretty much dedicated my life trying to  get as close back to that number as I could. If you need to brush up on the Standard  American History Myth and Manifest Destiny, you can check out Pioneering  the American Frontier, which you’ve already seen a few  clips from earlier in this video. And they gave the land in 100-acre  parcels to anybody willing to move   to the far edge of it because they were  the buffer zone against Indian attacks. If documentaries aren’t your thing, I’m not sure how you’ve made  it this far into the video, but by signing up for CuriosityStream, you’ll also get access to Nebula. The streaming service built  by fellow creators seeking   refuge from the aggressive expansion of Youtube. Every Knowing Better video  is hosted there ad-free, and if you want to see that special  video I made about Geronimo, the quintessential American Indian, you’ll only be able to see it on Nebula. Learn about his tragic backstory, his multiple escapes from custody, and why he joined the circus as  “the worst Indian who ever lived.” Bruh… you can’t keep surrendering and escaping   like that! You’re making things  so much worse for yourself! Check it out by heading over to  CuriosityStream.com/knowingbetter, where we’ve worked out a deal where you can   get both CuriosityStream and  Nebula for only $14.79 a year. You’ll also be supporting the channel when you do. In 1997, the Ojibwe overfished the  walleye pike in Red Lake, Minnesota, which caused the population to  collapse. Almost immediately, Minnesotans claimed that the tribe  couldn’t be trusted to manage the   lake and it should be taken  from them. Commercial, sport, and even subsistence fishing were  closed while the Red Lake Ojibwe   and the State of Minnesota worked  together to rebuild the population. After dumping 105.2 million  walleye fry into the lake, they were breeding on their own by 2004, so it all worked out in the end. Two years later, there was a disputed  tribal election on the Red Lake Reservation, which again made local white people  call for the abolition of reservations, fearing further mismanagement of the lake. Could you imagine if other  countries said that about us   during our numerous environmental  disasters or electoral mishaps? The story of how they got to fish on that  lake in the first place is important. In 1974, the Tribble brothers went spear-fishing  on Chief Lake in Wisconsin, hoping to create a case to test  their treaty rights in federal court. This happens literally all the time, both Rosa Parks and Homer Plessy were  intentionally arrested for that reason. The Wisconsin Department of Natural   Resources apprehended them and their case  bounced around the courts until 1985, when the Court of Appeals reaffirmed the Ojibwe’s   right to hunt and fish on all of their  ceded territory – even on private land. This pissed off the people of Wisconsin  in a way you wouldn’t believe. Assuming the Ojibwe would cause  another ecological disaster, they started protesting on reservations by  carrying signs that said “Save a Walleye, Spear an Indian.” Don’t let the black and  white picture fool you, this was 1987. I was alive at this point. Now, the reason this makes white people so  angry is that for American Indians, hunting and fishing is a right. But for everyone else, it’s a privilege. You have to apply for a permit  or tag, pay fees, observe limits, wait for seasons and  everything – how is that fair? Fine, if they get these special rights because  of a hundred and fifty year-old treaty, they should only get to use canoes and spears. Not commercial boats and nets. Okay, then the United States only  gets to use horses and trains. Since when do treaties lock you into  the technology in use at the time? And these aren’t special rights that  the government granted them to make   up for centuries of mistreatment or anything. These are rights that they already had   when the United States started  drawing lines around them. Oh, you want 75% of our land? Well, we still want to be able to  hunt and fish on that land. The United States agreed to those terms, which is why you’re allowed to  live there in the first place. And you should really think about what  would happen if they abolished that treaty. You would have to move and they would  still get to hunt and fish on that lake. Treaty rights are probably the most misunderstood  aspect of American Indian politics today. These aren’t special rights granted to them   because we felt sorry for what  we did. These were independent, sovereign nations who could only  be dealt with through treaty, just like any other country in the world. They made deals with the United States  on a government-to-government basis,   usually giving away land, maybe in exchange for food  rations or annual payments. They made concession after concession until   they finally reserved a tiny bit of  land for themselves – a reservation. Under almost all of those treaties, American Indians maintained their  rights to hunt and fish on that land,   which we call treaty rights. They were never given to them  and they were never taken away. They also held onto their sovereignty, which basically means that within their territory, they have the same independent  right to self-determination as   any other nation. Put another way, with few exceptions like the  Major Crimes Act and PL280, federal and state laws do not necessarily  apply within the borders of a reservation. They have their own laws which are enforced  by their own police and their own courts. That doesn’t make them banana  republics with kangaroo courts. It’s best to think of  reservations like mini states. Minnesota laws don’t apply in Wisconsin, because they are both sovereign. In 1971, Helen Bryan was living  on the Leech Lake Reservation   in Minnesota and received a property  tax bill from the county for $29.85. She ignored it because she believed  that due to tribal sovereignty, reservation land couldn’t be taxed by the state. Imagine getting a tax bill from Puerto Rico. You’d throw it in the trash,  right? But the next year, they added another $118.10 to the bill, bringing the total to $147.95. Believe it or not, the dispute over that tiny  amount made it all the way   up to the Supreme Court in 1976 and  they ruled in favor of the Ojibwe. States cannot tax anything on reservations… [Door  open sound] Did anyone else hear a door open? Almost immediately, tribal governments  across the country realized that they   could capitalize on America’s addiction  to cigarettes by selling them tax-free. Kind of like those duty-free shops in the airport. This is sometimes referred to as a  loophole economy and some nations   were making up to $4000 a day through these sales. The Cabazon Band of Mission Indians  in California was one of them. They even opened a mail-order cigarette business, which finally caught the attention of the state. Governments don’t really like missing  out on tax revenue. So in 1980, the courts ruled that any cigarettes  sold to non-Natives were subject to tax, which created such an accounting nightmare that  most nations abandoned the industry altogether. The Cabazon Band decided to open up  their first poker room that year and   it was raided by the FBI just two weeks later. Their case made it to the Supreme Court in 1987, which ruled that tribal sovereignty  extended over civil regulatory   issues like gambling – even if the  reservation is in a PL280 state. The Seminole Tribe of Florida  won a similar case regarding   their high-stakes bingo hall around the same time. These two cases are what finally allowed  Indian casinos to become a thing. I was always under the impression that  they’ve basically always existed, but nope. Most of them opened in the 90s. The government quickly realized that they couldn’t  stop this industry from existing. So in 1988, they passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which stated that gambling on reservations  was only allowed if it was legal in the state, or if they entered into an agreement with  the state, which usually included taxes. Indian casinos still fall under  federal jurisdiction though, so gambling crimes go to the FBI rather than  state or local police. Before the pandemic, Indian casinos brought in $34.6  billion dollars in revenue, while all the gaming in Las Vegas  only generated a measly $12 billion. And I think it’s hilarious that they were only   able to get into this business  because of a $147.95 tax bill. If you think it’s unfair that  reservations get to have these, remember that we were the foreign  country that surrounded them. How are Indian reservations any different from  those tiny single-city casino countries in Europe? A lot of the animosity surrounding  this comes from jealousy. There’s a pervasive myth that Indian  casinos generate huge payouts that are   dispersed to individuals. During the 80s and 90s, there was a sudden influx of people trying  to claim tribal membership for that reason. But that’s actually a rare occurrence, 12% of the casinos generate 65% of the revenue. Some reservations are just luckier than others. Remember the Shakopee Mdewakanton  Sioux Community I mentioned earlier? The one that restricts membership to only people  that can prove a blood quantum of one-half?   This is why. Every enrolled member receives a payment  of $84,000 a month thanks to their casinos. That’s a million dollars a year. Soon after they opened their first casino, 20,000 people who “rediscovered their roots” tried  to sue the nation in federal court for membership, but were rejected because nations are  allowed to dictate their own criteria. If those people were allowed in, those per capita payments would  have dropped to just $1000 a month. The Seminole Tribe of Florida generated so   much revenue through gaming that they  were able to buy the Hard Rock Cafe, with its 180 restaurants,  24 hotels, and 11 casinos. But of the 574 federally recognized  tribes in the United States, only one-third of them operate casinos  and most of them do not bring in millions. They make just enough money to provide a  few dozen jobs to people on the reservation   and generate funds to maintain the  schools and roads. But despite that, the link between Indians and casinos has become  permanent in the minds of most Americans. Welcome to the blackjack table. May luck run through you like  the spirit of the buffalo. And now we’re up to the media of my  generation – which hasn’t gotten any better. Ha ha-ha-ha! Ha ha-ha-ha! Ha ha-ha-ha!  Continuing the trend from Popeye and Bugs Bunny, South Park has made several  episodes about Native Americans, perhaps more than any other racial group. I think I even saw Native American. Gross. And pretty much every time American  Indians are depicted in the show, they’re reinforcing some  sort of negative stereotype. Do they really want to build a super highway  through the town and infect people with SARS? No. But when you think of Indians do  you still think of casinos? Yes. Ha ha-ha-ha! Ha ha-ha-ha! Ha ha-ha-ha! Throughout the 90s and 2000s, portrayals of  Native Americans became much more sympathetic, but still relied on common tropes  that had been around for decades. In Dances with Wolves, Kevin Costner plays  a white military officer who finds himself   alone on the Plains and stumbles across  a hapless native woman. In this case, she’s a white woman who was adopted  by the chief as a little girl, making her a… white Native Princess? In the film adaptation of Last of the Mohicans, Daniel Day Lewis plays a white man  adopted into a tribe of Mohicans. Then he sees them get massacred,  which spurs him into action. He isn’t the last Mohican though, it’s this guy, played by Russell Means. You remember Russell Means, right? The AIM activist that was  arrested at Wounded Knee in 1973? I know this is a long video but c’mon. He actually went on to voice Chief Powhatan  in Disney’s Pocahontas a few years later. Daughter. Wingapo, father.  Seeing you brings me great joy. A movie we talked about earlier which  reinforced the Native Princess and   Noble Savage tropes. Just a few years ago, Disney tried to bring back the Western, even casting a white man  in red-face to play Tonto. It is a good day to die. That movie failed for a lot of reasons, not least of which is that most  Americans have grown tired of   Westerns and now recognize them as  being somewhat racially insensitive. Which is why Hollywood has continued the trend of   taking all of these stories  and putting them in space. I’m sure you’re all familiar with Avatar, when a disabled soldier puts on  blue-face and falls in love with   a Native princess and dukes  it out with her noble fiance. He’s eventually adopted into the tribe. But even more recently, Disney’s Star Wars got  in on the action with the Book of Boba Fett. Where he finds himself alone in the desert, is adopted by a native tribe of Tuskens, learns their ways – even going on a vision  quest – and then sees them get massacred,   which spurs him into action. It’s the same two or three stories told over  and over again, and every time you see it, it alters your perception of Indigenous  people, even if you don’t realize it. They’re a group of natives who are  useful to the white main character   until the plot calls for their destruction. Maybe he falls in love with  the daughter of the chief, learns how to fight using primitive weapons, or becomes more in-tune with nature, but the message is always that  these people are expendable. And this isn’t just limited  to movies and television, you see it in video games too. Every time you clear a barbarian camp  or take a goodie hut in Civilization 6, you are unconsciously reinforcing  the idea that these tribal villages   are just in the way of your  inevitable march of progress. The developers are aware of that criticism  though and rather than remove it, they introduced a game mechanic where you  can trade and form alliances with them. You can eventually turn them into a puppet  city-state, which is still exploitative, but somewhat more historically accurate, I guess. Civ isn’t the only culprit though, every time you clear adds  from an expansion in Warcraft, you’re getting the same message that the  natives need to be cleared out. Hell, even seeing this screen in Fallout makes it  seem like Indians are a historical relic, since it references a real  test pattern invented in 1939. I’m not saying you need to  quit playing these games, I love them and still play them all the time. Being aware of that unconscious  influence is all it takes to disarm it. And let’s not forget sports and team mascots, which even South Park had to weigh in on. Look, don’t you see that when you call your   organization the “Washington Redskins,”  it’s offensive to us? How is it offensive? How is it offensive?! Jesus– We are a  proud team, Mr. Cartman. Guys, guys, we have total respect for you! When we  named our company “Washington Redskins,”   it was out of deep appreciation  for your team and your people. In 1992, protesters gathered outside  of the Metrodome in Minneapolis, Minnesota to bring attention  to offensive Native American   mascots during the Superbowl between the  Buffalo Bills and Washington… Peaux-rouges. It’s around this time that  students and faculty across   the country began to speak up about  the mascots at their schools as well. In 2005, the National College Athletic  Association concluded that American   Indian mascots were hostile and  abusive and announced it would   penalize the eighteen member  schools which still had them. The University of Illinois’ Fighting Illini  and Chief Illiniwek were on that list. When initial protests against  the mascot began in 1989, the University’s Board of Trustees voted to make  Chief Illiniwek the official symbol of the school. I can’t imagine that the chief, who deports himself – whomever serves as the  chief – deports himself with such dignity   and such solemnity, I can’t imagine that can be  perceived as a racial insult   or as a slur on the Native American  community. To me it’s a compliment. This is the dignity and  solemnity she was talking about. This is not an authentic dance, it’s a caricature. Just like Eric Cartman, she seems to think this is a  sign of respect and appreciation. The only difference is she  wasn’t joking when she said that. I don’t consider Chief Illiniwek to be a mascot. I consider the chief to be a part of the  heritage and the tradition of this institution. [Record Scratch] Okay hold up. Why is it that “heritage and  tradition” only seem to come up   as arguments when it’s time to defend  something that’s so obviously racist? Your tradition sucks. Get a new one. The University of Illinois appealed  the NCAA’s declaration twice and lost. They finally retired Chief Illiniwek in 2007. Do you know who their mascot is now? Nobody. They’re still the Fighting Illini, they’ve yet to think of a  new mascot… 15 years later. The University of North Dakota’s Fighting  Sioux were also on the NCAA’s list, they defended their name so hard that in 2011, the state legislature wrote a law  requiring the school to keep it. The lengths some people will go to to defend  their racist heritage and tradition, I swear. The NCAA threatened sanctions  against the University, so the law was repealed and the  name was put to a statewide vote. Thankfully 67% of North Dakotans  decided to ditch the mascot. In 2015, they became the Fighting Hawks, though to maintain the trademark, they still sell Fighting Sioux merch. At the same time as the NCAA controversy, there was a lawsuit against the Washington  football team filed with the US Patent and   Trademark Office on the grounds that the  name was disparaging to Native Americans. The USPTO agreed and pulled  the trademark on June 18, 2014. This only meant that the team couldn’t stop  others from using the name and logo though, which is what allowed that South  Park episode to become a thing. They continued to use it themselves and  their fans rallied to their defense. I don’t think they should change the name, um, because of the fact that it’s  not doing anybody any harm. It was never intended to be racist. Twenty years ago you didn’t  hear about any of this. I am not a Native American. You don’t say?! So  I don’t know how those people feel about that, so I wouldn’t be qualified to comment. But from a fan perspective,  it is innocent, harmless fun. And it is intended not to be anything  remotely disrespectful at all. That’s rich coming from a guy who wants to  dress up like it’s Halloween every weekend. It was all in honor. I think it’s a good thing. The name is not intended to be derogatory  in any n– in any way. It’s a thing of pride, an idea of pride that we have in the team. Actually it should be a- uh, an honor, because they are honoring the  American Indian name and it’s   not anything derogatory against red-  I mean, against the American Indians. The Redskins are– used to be a good thing. Why is it always the same argument? It’s all in good fun, actually, it’s an honor, you should feel pride when  you hear that racial slur. And it is a racial slur –  it was never a good thing. Even if you ignore the obvious  connection to scalping, in 1898, Merriam-Webster defined the word as “a  North American Indian – so called for the   color of their skin – often contemptuous.”  Contemptuous means “manifesting, feeling, or expressing deep hatred or disapproval.”  What part of that is supposed to be an honor? Once the trademark was removed, news outlets like ESPN and the Washington Post   stated that they would no  longer be using the name, instead referring to it as  the Washington Football Team. Then the NoDAPL protests on the  Standing Rock reservation brought   more attention to the issue in the summer of 2016. Which was flooded by a bunch of college  students doing some protest tourism. But it wasn’t until the George Floyd protests of   2020 that the team finally  relented, retired the name, and officially became the Washington  Football Team, with no mascot. They announced their rebrand as the Washington  Commanders with the start of 2022 season. I agree with that change, not only  because it was an obvious racial slur, but I don’t think we should be using  American Indians as mascots at all. Think about the sorts of things we usually turn   into a team name or mascot,  are there any commonalities? I’ve found that, with few exceptions, you can fit most any mascot into one of  six categories. First, the weather events. This is where teams like the  Hurricanes, Tornadoes, and Heat fit. Next we have the inanimate  objects, like the Nuggets, Jazz, Rockets, Jets, stuff like that. Then we have Animals, the Sharks, Bears, Dolphins, I’m sure you can name hundreds  more. Somewhat related, are the Mythical Creatures, like Unicorns, Dragons, Angels, and Leprechauns. The fourth category is made  up of Historical Figures, which includes things like Gladiators, Trojans, 49ers, and even Patriots. And finally we have the real-world professions, the Packers, Brewers, Mariners, Steelers, occupations that people still have  to this day. So looking at this list, which category do American Indians fit into? The only possible answer is Historical Figures. But do you really want to put Native Americans  next to a bunch of people who no longer exist, like the Vikings and Buccaneers?  By having those teams, you’re reinforcing the message that all of  the Indians have long since disappeared, rather than being a people  who are very much still alive. Speaking of… The Cleveland Indians ditched their   Chief Wahoo mascot in 2018 and rebranded  as the Cleveland Guardians in 2022. Along with the Kansas City  Chiefs and Atlanta Braves, there are still over 2000 teams in the  country using Native American mascots, with the vast majority of them  being at high schools and colleges. Many of them use the same names and mascots  as the professional teams that abandoned them, which is somewhat counterintuitively  more harmful than the pros. An adult can choose to ignore televised sports, but a child can’t escape the  fact that they’re attending   Marquette Senior High School in  Michigan, home of the Redmen. Or that next week they’ll be playing against  the Savannah High School Savages from Missouri. Think of how it would feel to be  constantly surrounded by imagery   that has reduced you to a bloodthirsty caricature, held in the same regard as  talking animals and pirates. Like most people, the only time I hear  about today's American Indians is when   people are outraged about sports mascots or  team names, like the Washington Redskins. But sports teams' names are  the least of Indians' problems. Sure, team mascots are a minor  issue in the grand scheme of things. But it’s also an incredibly easy fix. People fight to keep team names and Columbus Day   for the same reason they fight to  keep Confederate flags and statues. They’re obvious symbols of white supremacy   that can easily be defended using  claims of heritage and tradition. If you don’t celebrate Columbus Day, you must hate America and western civilization! Columbus is not the issue here, and never was. This whole “Indigenous Peoples Day”  charade is about teaching your children   to despise Western civilization  and anybody who dare defend it. When we celebrate Columbus,   we celebrate the arrival of Western  Civilization to the Western Hemisphere. And if you can’t celebrate that, it says much more about your moral compass  than about history’s greatest explorer. This tactic works like a charm. Even non-white supremacists care  about things like tradition and   have a generally favorable  view of western civilization. So they defend team mascots and Columbus Day  because if they ever relent on those points, the entire house of cards  collapses and the Standard   American History Myth is no longer defensible. Nothing about what we did to the  American Indians was inevitable, that is a very deterministic view of history. It assumes that the current state of  society was always the intended end goal. So everything leading up to this  point was just bound to happen, just part of the divinely-inspired  process of civilization. But as you’ve heard throughout this  video, along every step of the way, America willingly chose to do the wrong thing. Whether they were pushing  the Cherokee to move west, forcing the Sioux onto reservations, breaking up Ojibwe land into allotments, or simply terminating the status of tribes, we created this self-fulfilling  prophecy. Nowadays, when you picture an Indian in your mind, you invariably imagine something  Hollywood came up with, rather than anything resembling reality. The way I see it, the biggest problem   facing Native Americans today  is not a culture of dependency, as Republicans and Libertarians would have  you believe – it’s a culture of hopelessness. The people living on reservations really  have no way to improve their situation. Since most of the land is held in trust, they cannot own their homes,  they can’t take out loans, and they can’t open up businesses. For that same reason, there are no McDonald’s, Starbucks, or Walmarts on reservations. This severely limits what food and groceries  they can buy, but more importantly, it means that there are no jobs  for the people living there. As a result, the largest employer on every  single reservation in the country is the tribal   government itself and those jobs often go to the  friends and family members of elected officials. You could call that nepotism if you  want… because that’s what it is. And since tribal governments receive  funding from the federal government, anytime Congress fails to raise the  debt ceiling and there’s a shutdown, most everyone on the reservation is out of work. Which is to say nothing about the 80%  of people who were unemployed already. With no way to earn money and  nothing to spend it on anyway, many people living on reservations turn  to drugs, alcohol, gangs, and crime. And a lot of adults have spent time in jail, which means a lot of children are raised  by their grandparents or extended family. Many of these children aren’t allowed  outside to play with their friends or   hang out at the trading post because of the  fear of drugs, violence, and car accidents. Random deaths are just an accepted  fact of living on a reservation. The life expectancy on Pine Ridge  is only 48 for men and 52 for women. School attendance on Indian  reservations is abysmal. High school graduation rates hover between 40-50%. The kids don’t see any  point in going because… why? It’s not like there are any jobs to prepare for   and most of them have no desire to  go to college. I hate to say this, but tribal colleges and universities are  more of an ends, rather than a means. Only 20% of students earn a degree and those  who do often stay and end up getting multiple. Their primary purpose is to preserve  their culture through education, not prepare students to leave the reservation. From talking to people, it seems like  the number one piece of advice given   to Native Americans who want to succeed  in life is to get off the reservation. Which is actually significantly more  difficult than you might imagine. First of all, there are cultural issues. Anyone who expresses a desire to  leave is often labeled as thinking   they’re better than everyone else  and possibly shunned if they do. It’s kind of the Indian  version of being an Uncle Tom, you’re abandoning your people  to follow the white man’s path. This is why we have the phrase “going off the  reservation,” meaning to break with one’s group. Even if you’re willing to leave all of  your friends and family behind and you   magically have the financial means to  afford moving several hundred miles, there are still huge  obstacles for you to overcome. Are you starting completely fresh in a brand  new city where you have no connections? How are you going to find a place to rent  when you have no references or credit history? How are you going to get a job  when you have no experience and, statistically, no high school diploma? Are you starting to understand why so many  people just give up and don’t even bother? Their situation can only be described as hopeless. Are they dependent on the  food rations or commodities   given out at the reservation agency every month? Yes. But do they want to be? No. The United States government forced them into   this position by preventing them  from building generational wealth, stripping them of their culture, and confining them to patches of land they  themselves deemed to be a barren waste. This isn’t something that  happened to them 150 years ago, it’s something we are still  doing to them right now. Solving this situation will be an incredibly  complex task that will take decades to parse. Each individual nation has their own treaty with  the United States with its own unique conditions. We can’t just blanket abolish all reservations in   one fell swoop – and I’m not even  sure that’s the answer anyway. We need to drop this paternalistic  idea that they need to be protected   from themselves and give them the ability to  do whatever they want with their own land. We need to encourage businesses to move in, which will improve infrastructure  and services across the board. And we really need to solve the  jurisdictional nightmare that makes   Indigenous women an easy target for white  outsiders to do whatever they want with, knowing they will get away with it. More controversially, the government probably   needs to buy back all of those allotments  and return them to their rightful owners. It really kind of blows a hole in the whole Indian   Giver myth when you realize that  in the vast majority of cases, they didn’t really give us  anything. We just took it. We obviously can’t give all of it back, but we can at least make sure they have  what was promised to them by treaty. If all of that sounds like an  overly difficult, monumental task, I can suggest a really easy place  for you to start – change your   team mascot and get rid of that stupid  holiday. Because now, you know better. Congratulations if you made it through  this video in one sitting! Be on the   lookout for the several follow-up videos  related to this topic that will be coming   in the next few weeks – including  the Nebula exclusive on Geronimo. I’d like to give a shoutout to my newest  Golden Fork patrons, Alex, Patrick and Zimm. If you’d like to become an enrolled  member of the Knowing Better band, head on over to patreon.com/knowingbetter, or, for a one-time donation, paypal.me/knowingbetter. Don’t forget to colonize that subscribe button, or the join button if you  want to fully assimilate. Check out the merch at knowingbetter.tv, follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and join us on the subreddit!

Channel: Knowing Better

Views: 1,320,487

Keywords: knowing better

Id: A5P6vJs1jmY

Length: 146min 39sec (8799 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 06 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/thecursedgba]

Woke up sick today, but at least there’s a new KB video!

[u/lansingricky]

A 2 hour video kb is back🔥🔥🔥

[u/TahaymTheBigBrain]

Just finished watching the video…

Wow, this is just incredibly well done. Congratu-fucking-lations KB!

I learned so much I never even imagined, it’s so sad and insane what we’ve done to these people.

One thing that I experienced watching this video, is an odd sort of lack of personal attachment to the Natives. Black history, for all the wrongs we’ve done to the black population, is still at the forefront of American consciousness. American Indians are barely an afterthought in everyone’s lives here that I know of. When I think of them I still don’t think of them as “Americans” (undeniably a fault of my own) and my subconscious interest in them is hindered as such. I’m curious if you found yourself with the same attitude while researching this video, KB?

[u/ATOMICSHINEY]

Time for this meme again

[u/DirtyHandshake]

NEW Video! This is not a drill!

[u/masterhitman935]

Still not available on nebula :(

[u/Chevy_jay4]

I'm sick AF. This is the best news I've had in a while

[u/BigManMane]

Not watched it yet, but long time coming and probably your most important video to date (together with the slavery video imo). Bravo KB!

[u/New_World_Era]

Wow I'm NOT the only one sick today lol. Aside from helping me ignore my congestion, this video had so much info and made me think a lot more about how American Indians ended up in the situation they are today. It also made me think of parallels to other indigenous communities in Latin America and the calls for decolonization and land back. I'm gonna have to watch it again, it's really informative

Edit: I accidentally a word