Well I think non-native people know that treaties were signed. That might be it. A treaty is fundamentally an agreement between two nations. Treaties are only made between sovereign governments. In fact, the U.S. has made more than 300 treaties with American Indian Nations. The United States' existence when it first won the war against Great Britain was very precarious, and many countries around the world did not recognize the United States' sovereignty. So the U.S., as a way to assert that it was a sovereign, it made agreements with Native Nations to sort of say to Europe, to Britain, "Hey, we're sovereign too. We can make these agreements." The idea that treaties somehow gave status, or standing, or land to indigenous nations is probably the main fallacy that exists. I think that many people view treaties as “special rights” for Indians. They're not rights given to native nations, they're native nations by and large giving rights to the United States. I think a lot of people lack an understanding that that wherever they live, there's probably a treaty that gives them the right to live there granted to them by native nations. A nation relinquished its the majority of its land rights, its land holdings, its resource holdings, for the right to preserve its way of life. The rights that are reserved are more easily defined by the U.S. courts as property rights, but better defined by our our traditional and cultural understandings as being relationship rights to the land, the water, and all of the beings that we hunt and fish and share that world with. It's through treaties that I think we've been able to hold off a lot of forces that would like to see us erased from the continent. I'm trying to think of one treaty, that from the perspective of the indigenous nation, has been fully upheld and implemented. Lot of people disregard our treaties and say they're a thing of the past, they've been broken, let's forget about them. They've been broken. Let's forget about them. They would like to wipe away the treaty history of the United States, but that's simply not how it works. Our United States Constitution recognizes that once a treaty is signed and ratified by the Senate it becomes the quote "supreme law of the land." What that means is, is that a treaty is as much alive as the U.S. Constitution is. Are they living documents? Do they exist and they do they transcend generations? The answer is absolutely yes. When people question the relevance of treaties and say “I don't think treaties are relevant.” My responses is, “Then just give us the land back.” We're not talking about past history we're talking about today. And the best example of that is the Dakota Access Pipeline. I think we saw, before the world community, the violation of the 1868 and 1851 treaties of the United States with the Lakota Nation in Standing Rock. It brought the violation of treaty rights to today. Even though tribes have been experiencing those violations time after time after time. Treaties go both ways. This was a two-way street, that it was a shared, shared history. It's about mutual respect. Non-native peoples are treaty partners, the descendants of the treaty signers, you could say, on the United States side. I think that the way that we bring everybody into the conversation is we have curriculum that accurately reflects the reality of what an Indian Treaty is. That's something we do for the United States Constitution, and the three branches of government. Why don't we have a tribal component to that education? The ancestors who negotiated the treaties, they were doing their best to protect us to protect our culture and to protect our way of life. And to me, that's a responsibility and a way in which I should live my life every day to remember to honor those ancestors that fought so I could be here today. Treaties are living documents because tribes continue to breathe life into them. We continue to speak their terms. We continue to remember the promises.
