Redefining Independence: Native American Perspectives on the 4th of July

[00:00:00] Never Again, Never Again, Never Again, Never Again, Never Again, Never Again. Join Dr. Pius Kamau and the Coalition Against Global Genocide as we journey across the globe, taking a deep look at past, present, and impending genocides and mass atrocities. Listen to experts who discuss not only the history,

[00:00:25] but also the resiliency and mental health of people who are recovering from these heinous acts. Learn how we can move from bystander to active involvement, calling out genocidal acts where you are. Redefining Independence, Native American Perspectives on the 4th of July. Good afternoon everybody. My name is Pius Kamau, Dr. Kamau.

[00:00:52] I am a surgeon. I am a writer. My book, Running with the Lions, is coming out next month on the 14th of July. So we are here to record a podcast for the Coalition Against Global Genocide, which is headed by and was started by Rose Duman.

[00:01:17] I have two wonderful guests, Karen Wilde and Linda Baker. Now, I don't want to mangle your life stories and the things that you do in your life. I know you're both Native Americans, but will you kindly tell us, tell the audience what it is, who you are. Linda, first of all. Good afternoon or good evening, wherever you may be. Good morning.

[00:01:48] My name is Linda Baker. And first off, I would like to acknowledge Karen because she was a mentor of mine at the Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs. So I want to say that first off. I'm half Southern Ute and I'm half Navajo. I'm enrolled in a Southern Ute tribe. And my background includes education and historic preservation in the sense of museum and archives, as well as gallery exhibits.

[00:02:13] And I do, I guess, beadwork at a juried show level. And currently I am on tribal council, my second term. Okay. Okay, Karen, about yourself, please. Good day, everyone, wherever you may be. This is Karen Wilde. I'm a citizen of the Muscogee Creek Nation of Oklahoma. And I also have a Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma heritage through my father.

[00:02:38] I'm currently on the board of the coalition, have been on there for, I don't know, I think it's about five years. Try to help guide the coalition and provide advice about the Native American aspect of genocide. I am currently employed at Boulder County part time as their Native American Indian relations manager. I've been doing that for a year. But on the other, that's kind of like part time, half time.

[00:03:05] But so the other side of me is I'm retired, but I'm actually still working. So, yeah, I think that's about it, Pius. I do have a lot of work in the arena of working with tribes, tribal governments and civil servant. Like in this case, I'm working for Boulder County, worked for the state. That's where I met Linda. Linda and she came to work with me as an intern and was very effective. And now she's tribal council for Southern Union. I'm just so proud of that for her.

[00:03:35] And I think that's about it. Thank you. Yeah, you're very welcome. The issue that we'd like to talk about is about the 4th of July. This amazing celebration that the nation is gearing up for.

[00:03:51] But Linda and Karen, and I'm sure millions of people who are not of European origin, don't quite celebrate the way that the majority of Americans do. Am I right? Am I right in stating that? I would agree with you.

[00:04:12] I think for the 4th of July, we recognize it as a national holiday, but we recognize it as a time for us to gather at different events that we've created for ourselves. So I think that's a big difference. Yeah. Yeah. How about you, Karen? As an American citizen, I do see it as a national holiday and along with Christmas and some of the other national holidays, Thanksgiving. But the point is just, we look at it differently.

[00:04:43] We may be out there doing the celebratory things of at least buying fireworks and shooting them off because that's always fun. But on the other hand, the realistic point of view is that it was the signing of the Declaration of Independence from Britain. That's not us. We were here before that. And there's no real declaration of independence from us because we were conquered. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:05:07] So the question is, let's imagine for a moment that you are able to dictate what July the 4th should be like. How would you visualize it? How would you like to convert it to? I think... If anything.

[00:05:27] I think what would have to happen first is we would have to define it through true experiences and history of the people who were here first. It would have to be defined in that way first.

[00:05:44] What happened to us, for example, with manifest destiny and the treatment of and separation of our families from one another and how that has impacted our cultural survival. I think that needs to occur first. And then even at that point, what would you celebrate? Yes.

[00:06:08] So if there was an actual, accurate, historic sense of education and portrayal for all the different tribes and all the different impacts that each of them had, I think that would create a different story for the 4th of July. Do you have anything to add, Karen?

[00:06:28] I agree with Linda. Prior to the signing in 1776, there was a lot of conquering movement of taking the land, whereas property ownership was not part of the historic background of tribes. Yes, we did cover certain territories and we had certain traditions and cultures that were in the various corners of the United States.

[00:06:57] But a lot of it was forced upon us to move and therefore adapt versus getting to stay in place where we were at and how we knew to till the land and survive and be and have communal living. It would be a whole different story, I think, from the Native American, American Indian point of view. What I would like us to try and do is maybe begin at the beginning, when the white man came to this land.

[00:07:28] And then I would like towards the end of our discussion to go to a place where now things are what they are. What can we do? What should we do? So let's begin at the beginning now. First of all, who occupied this continent, North America? How would you describe yourselves or the people that your progenitors?

[00:07:57] People who came before you? Do you want to start, Karen? That's a really big question. Either of you. That's a really big question, because obviously we're only here because of our ancestors. And to know what they went through is.

[00:08:21] Is only things we've read and probably oral history, too, that has come down because there was we didn't. A lot of us didn't have any written idea of what was going on. And a lot of it came from the archives of the United States and what the different presidents did. But I would guess that for my tribe, the Muscogee Creek, they were in the southeast area of the United States, mainly Georgia and Alabama area.

[00:08:50] And through President Jackson, they were forced moved, forcibly removed. Basically, I would want to say that what if someone came?

[00:09:02] What if a military person came to your door, knocked on your door and basically said, grab what you can because you're leaving right now and you're not back or going to move you from southern United States or southern area where you're living right now to the middle of the United States, which we didn't know was the middle of the United States at that time. But that's where they were taking us. And you weren't given a mode of transportation.

[00:09:31] You just walked. The older walk. Yeah. And along the way, you have your own. We, I should say the Native Americans, Creek Indians had their own way of dealing with their dead. They had their cultural ways of dealing with it. So if someone, an elder, or even if a child or somebody else got sick, we believe that they should not be left alone. There was always somebody staying around behind them with them.

[00:09:59] So that individual either had to make their way on their own. And once that person passed on, or maybe they decided to stay where they're at and live that lifestyle wherever they were at. But it did cause, you know, when you move homes right now, modern day, that you have to adapt to the community that you're in. Where's the grocery store? Where's the gas station? Who's my neighbors? Yeah. We went through that.

[00:10:27] However, we were moved as a group of people across the United States and then took our, a few things with us that we could. And then because it was a large group of a thousand, I can't remember what the thousands was. I think it was 14,000 that we settled in communities also. So now we're in the Northeast or we're in Oklahoma. That's where a lot of us rolled up.

[00:10:50] Because I believe, I don't know that it's true, but I believe they tried to make Oklahoma because the originally it was called Indian territory. And I think they had ideas of moving all the tribes there when they didn't realize they were, we were all west of the Mississippi also. So there were the tribes on the East Coast and the east side of the Mississippi, and then all the tribes on the west side of the Mississippi. I don't believe they had explored that far. Anyway, that's my thought about Indian territory, which is now called Oklahoma.

[00:11:19] So I'm enrolled in Southern Ute. And I learned that culture from my grandmother, my culture. And then so my dad and my grandma on that side are Southern Ute. And my mother is Navajo. So I think one thing about now that wasn't true back then was what tribe you were recognized from. So right now you can only enroll in one tribe.

[00:11:46] My parents had to decide whether I would be Navajo or Southern Ute. So I was enrolled in Southern Ute along with my siblings. But I think that's something, too, that is different from back then. If you said go back to the beginning. We as Native people, we did different things, too. We raided one another. We were friends with one another. We had traditional allies.

[00:12:08] And we took in other people from other tribes, whether that was through a formal adoption or even through raids and things like that. But those people, and we didn't quantify who they were through blood quantum. And so they lived with us. And that has moved forward with us until we became tribes and had to define blood quantum for ourselves. And that just happened early 19th century.

[00:12:38] So all that changed for us. Your blood quantum was recognized, and that's what made you Indian for a certain tribe, according to the federal government. But before that, we weren't like that. And for me, my family had runners. They were like newspaper carriers.

[00:12:58] And so my grandmother shared stories that were passed down from them about leaving here, Southwest Colorado, and going up to South Dakota and carrying the news. There's a fire here. There's a drought here. There's a flood here. The weather's like this. It's over to us. We were about to see the different tribes that were in search of food or plants, anything like that, subsistence.

[00:13:26] And so those stories, that's how we existed. But not everyone did that. It took for us a runner to go up there and then come back down and share the news with us. So that's how, in a way, we had a perspective of what was going on with the rest of the nation. just in that little strip right there that you travel. But for us, as Zoot people, our creation story is centered in the Rocky Mountains here in Colorado.

[00:13:53] So we feel like we've never moved from our area, from where the creator put us and gave us our language and the way we dress, our bear dance, and special things that are important to us. Because that is how it was back then, according to what was explained to me by my grandmother. This is not written down. But now everything is documented.

[00:14:21] What makes us Indian in the eyes of the U.S. government is quantified. And there's a real struggle right now with tribes because some people feel like we have to have a certain blood quantum and it becomes diluted. Do we cease to exist? That's going to end up being the question in the future. And that's the question that tribes face right now, all of us.

[00:14:50] I would like you to say something about the creator. Just a little bit about the creator. Who was he? Was he a he or a she? Was it a thing? Was it the weather? Was the sun, the moon? What was the creator? Yeah. The creator is, in a way, in everything. We have stories that the creator is, his messages are delivered through animals, such as the wolf,

[00:15:20] who was carrying the bag of sticks, which formed into different tribes. And the coyote opened that bag and everyone scattered, but the youths ended up in the mountains. That's that story generally. We also have a recognition of certain things such as the sun and the earth. And all the animals play a role. Every animal has a role in what they teach us.

[00:15:47] From the small birds, there's stories about the birds where they change the seasons. And there's so many different stories. The porcupine and how he dealt with the coyote. And it just goes on and on. And then we, well, I think of it more as the creator or that idea as someone that we all want to have as a,

[00:16:14] someone, something that gives us spiritual support can comfort us. And we can find that in everything. If we, there's even stories about the rock, the power of the rock in our lives and what that can do for us, protect us and make us more aware if we only paid attention. But those stories, that's part of that oral tradition that shared among us.

[00:16:43] But for me, the creator is someone that I earnestly look to, to be thankful of, first off, be thankful that I am here the way I am because the creator has chosen that for me. And with all your faults, with all your physical capacities, everything like that with your family, that's what was gifted to you from the creator.

[00:17:12] And that's something we should be very thankful for. When somebody dies or somebody is no longer alive, death, does the creator take you back? Does it take the person back to themselves, to the creator? For me... In other words, is there a heaven or is there a hell, as we have in the European sense of religion?

[00:17:41] For me, the way it was explained to me by my grandmother, there's not really a heaven and a hell. We came here from the stars and we will return to the stars. And all of that is not really referred to as heaven. My dad defined it as the land above. Another level, like some creation, native creation stories, we came from below the crust of the earth.

[00:18:11] That's not to say we're in darkness or anything, but it's just to say that there may be different levels of existence. And so for us, we came from the stars and we will return to the stars. And so sometimes we look up at night, I tell my grandchildren, those are all your relatives up there and they're looking down on you. So that's the way death was explained to me. And it's nothing to fear either.

[00:18:39] But I'm only asking that because the tribe I come from in Kenya, the Kikuyu, we had a God and his God was Ngai. And he lived on Mount Kenya. And he gave us the land around Mount Kenya, which was the tribal land. And of course, when the white man came to Kenya, he told us Ngai was a primitive thing, the primitive bad thing to believe in.

[00:19:08] So we had to believe in Jesus Christ. So anyway, but that's another story. Yeah. You mentioned, you said the word American Indian. Is that a proper designation of American natives? According to you. I don't know. No, I'm not saying that because I don't want to use the term.

[00:19:37] I think sometimes it's used interchangeably with like American Indian, Native American, indigenous. And I think all those words really have different meanings, really get down to the root of it. But I think our Native people ourselves, really a traditional introduction would be if you were with your own tribal people. These are my grandparents. These are my parents. And then this is me.

[00:20:05] So every generation forms a connection to you. And then if you're, I've noticed this among Native people ourselves, sometimes if we don't know each other already, we'll say our name and then we'll say what tribe we're from. Because we know that we are all different from one another. And then when you define that, when you say what tribe you are, there's that level of respect for who those people, where they really came from. Yeah.

[00:20:31] Karen, anything to add regarding names and nomenclature and God? Yes. So I didn't, well, I grew up traditionally in the Oklahoma Indian Methodist Conference. At that time, the Methodists had come in and given us our marching orders that any other type of worship we had, because our traditional dances were stomp dances, which is fire during the night and you dance around it.

[00:21:01] I did not grow up in that tradition. I still think it's just as valid and just as honorable and spiritual as Christianity the way I grew up. But also I have spent 35 years in Colorado for myself and has learned many different tribal traditions, which I respect and honor. And I'm grateful that it's given me this sort of broad view of Native American, American Indian spirituality, including my own.

[00:21:31] They do what I had back home, because we do sing in our own language. We have hymnals that were created in our own language. It's not these, not the traditional hymnals like Amazing Grace, although we can sing it in our own language. Those kinds that you would hear in church. We also had different things like we only worshiped. We had one preacher because that's the way it was back then. And he went around a circuit of four churches.

[00:21:58] So we had church every fourth Sunday in the particular church I was involved in. But the other churches would happen the next Sunday or the next Sunday, but they were always called fourth Sunday. So the preacher went to each fourth Sunday. And then the other parishioners were invited to go to those others. It was an all-day affair. We had sunrise service. We had breakfast. We had the morning worship. We had lunch served.

[00:22:25] People, the women cooked outside on fire with big black kettles until we got more electricity and those kinds of things. We didn't have running water. We had a well. It has evolved since then. But back the way I grew up with outhouses and no running water, no electricity and that kind of thing. The really special occasions we would have all weekend or all night service. That's where they did preach all night. I was a kid.

[00:22:55] I wasn't allowed to stay in there all night. But a lot of times kids were just out running around because parents were inside church. And we just had a good time getting to know each other as kids. But eventually we were forced to go to bed or at least lay down in the car or in the camp house. Usually these churches were in the center of a camp house where there's four or five different houses around where the cooking was done, the washing of the dishes, the setting of the table. It was set family style.

[00:23:24] We would feed whoever came in. They could visit each other's camps. It was rather unique, in my opinion, of a tradition because I've not seen it or felt it anywhere else. Although there are, like Linda's Bear Dance, they have camps. But the powwows that you go to, they have camps. So we had structures that we stayed in if we wanted to where it was just basically two rooms.

[00:23:52] One was the kitchen and the stove area cooking. And the other side was the seating area. Or sometimes people spent the night there. So there might be a cot or bed there. So anyway, it was a different type of tradition in my way. But everybody spoke Creek. The language for the preacher was in Creek. Again, the hymnals were in Creek. We did come together with a morning worship.

[00:24:17] But when we dismissed, we would go with a handshake, a goodbye handshake, so that we would gather, circle outside the church, and would shake hands to everybody all the way around. So the traditions and things that I've learned up here being in the Colorado-Denver area, I see that happening or I affiliate it with what I did back home. So it's, wow, I didn't realize it was some of these traditions are universal. Okay.

[00:24:44] And getting back to just different ways of doing it, but it's universal. And getting back to whether you use American Indian, Native American, Indigenous, I have a master's degree in jurisprudence of Indian law. I'm a bureaucrat. I've worked for all kinds of governments. For me, those three terms at least have a little different connotation. I think Indigenous goes along with the people from the land, and it could be anywhere on any continent.

[00:25:11] And it's the same for Native American, but I want people to understand that Indigenous is a broader term, but Native American Indian goes back to the legal and political relationship that we as tribes have with the U.S. government.

[00:25:32] We, these mentioned in the Constitution, there's a whole discipline of law, the United States Code, Title 25 is just entitled Indians. I'm not offended by the term Indians, mainly because it was, we are mentioned in the Constitution as Indians. Back in the day, everybody, all the government officials called us Indians.

[00:25:58] There wasn't any other terminology over the years through civil rights movements and other things. They found there are those more activist people that feel like Indians is a misnomer because Columbus was supposed to come find India, and he didn't find it in any way. He named us Indians. I feel like that no matter what we are named, that we are Native to this land, and we have a political and legal status with the United States.

[00:26:28] I'm trying to get that message out, but I'm just one small voice. And I do think that working with the County of Boulder, that I want at least the employees of Boulder to understand that's my point of view, and that they use the terminology appropriately as needed. I'm not saying it's all wrong. I think they're all related. I think they overlap. But the term indigenous is well used amongst even our own people.

[00:26:55] An interesting issue of religion and the Western religion by Western European Christian. So you, Karen, you are a Methodist, which is essentially a Christian. How do you navigate from one to the other, the spiritual, the creator, and Jesus Christ? Do you relate those two or not?

[00:27:25] That's it. And I'm not sure. I don't know whether Linda is Christian or not. Maybe she should. But go ahead. Okay. So I, Methodist to me is definitely a religion within the context of religions like Catholic and Lutheran and Protestant and all that. But I say I'm an American, I'm sorry, I'm an Indian Methodist, which I feel there's a difference.

[00:27:53] Like I said, our tribal tradition was incorporated or maybe the Methodist allowed us to use some of our traditional aspects. Like I said, the hymnals in traditional language, the preaching in traditional language, the dismissal.

[00:28:13] We actually had, back in the day, families move into the camps to host people to come in when they came in to worship or to pray or to be with us. So, again, being outside of that system for a number of years, I see where it's all overlapping. I would never try to convince anybody to be a Christian.

[00:28:42] I don't know that I'm a Christian. I do know that I have spirituality. I do know that there's a higher being than myself. The one who created us, the one who has more, quote unquote, powers than we do. And I do not go back home and preach that because I think that it would be misunderstood by those who have never left that community. And that's okay with me.

[00:29:06] I have learned because I've left the area and spent so much time away from home, but I go home and respect them. And I come out here to Colorado or wherever I'm at and I respect whatever tradition or way of life that goes on. I participated in sweat lodges. I've been in the Native American church, been with the Chinooka.

[00:29:33] I have made myself more educated in the spirituality of Native people simply because that's who I work on behalf of. I'm not just working on behalf of my Creek tribe or my Pawnee tribe. It's, for me, my work, my professional life has been working on behalf of all Native people in, more than likely, a non-Native world, more than likely.

[00:30:02] So I've learned to, for myself, walk that fine line and just want to learn. I've always had this thirst for knowledge as well as travel. Linda knows I'd go over the place, in the car, on the airplane. I've just had this thirst for more learning. But I'm not willing to go across the waters. I'm not interested in going to London or Spain or Mexico, even Africa for this matter.

[00:30:29] I would much rather go to all the Native reservations or communities and see what it's like for them at their community level, not just their elected official level. Although I respect all the elected officials, I would love to see how their community operates with the bear dance and the things that they do down in the Ute country. Yeah. How about you, Linda? Do you have anything to add to what Karen says? No.

[00:30:57] Well, you know how I was taught again, though. First off, there are a lot of tribal members down here that are Catholic. And there's some that I went to school here in Ignatio High School. And there was a beautiful family. And they were Baptists. And they were so kind. And so there's different people that have been here that, you know, with the religions, they are sharing with us, the formal religions.

[00:31:24] And so, but I would say what I was taught again by my grandmother and my father and to my mother to some extent. My mother wanted us to become Christians in a church because she was raised in the boarding school. And her boarding school experience wasn't like the ones we hear about now that were just terrible. And I'm just thankful that she didn't have to go through that. We had a few tribal members that were matrons in our, in the dormitories when she was there.

[00:31:53] But she was Presbyterian. But from my father's side and my paternal grandmother, we were taught no religion is better than the other in a way. What it is that if you want to be Baptist or Catholic or Presbyterian, that's fine. But what you need to recognize is all the other religions in the world. What everyone is teaching is to be the best person you can be.

[00:32:23] To have empathy, honesty, love for humankind, love for your earth, love for the animals. And actually, love is a new word, too. It's really meant, my father said, deep caring. There were different words for different types of deep caring. But that's what it was, to be the best person that you can be and to respect everyone else's path that they were involved to be the best person they can be. Yeah.

[00:32:53] That's an interesting concept with the word you just mentioned there, the phrase of love. That doesn't exist in the native tongues, the concept of love? Love, it's really the way I was taught. It was called deep caring. There's the deep caring for your tribe and then for your camp, your relatives, I guess you could say.

[00:33:21] And then your family, your immediate family. And then the one that you care for specifically. Yeah. And the way my dad explained it was like, it's what would you sacrifice for each in your personal? Yes. So that's how. And so the caring is at different levels. So, yeah. So imagine for a moment, boy and girl.

[00:33:47] So the boy, what would he have to feel to sacrifice his life for his love or his mate? Was that such a concept at all in the tribal thinking? I don't know about back then. I only know about now.

[00:34:10] But to me, I think the concept is that say among tribes, sometimes people were kidnapped, women and children. Would you try and rescue those people? If you could. Who knows what could have happened? Like maybe you couldn't. But it's that sense of what you would do for that person. How you would protect them if you could.

[00:34:39] And that's nothing. Those are things we don't have to worry about. As Native people, I would hope not. What Karen said earlier about someone just coming and knocking at your door. That's a scary thought. And for some people, that has been the reality with the way our government is today. And I can't imagine anything like that happening. But it's happening.

[00:35:02] And so really, those experiences, I have a sense of empathy for families being separated. Kids, people, their children taken away, their parents going someplace else. I can't even imagine. But I know people, my ancestors have had to face that before. And it's terrible that it has to happen again. So there's another story, Karen. Go ahead, Karen.

[00:35:30] I would like to go back real quick to the Declaration of Independence. Because as we went about talking here, I recall, I think, a history lesson for the United States. The reason they left European is that it was based on religion. So that, to me, is okay that they did declare themselves independent from that.

[00:35:56] On the other hand, as we were going through the religious part of our discussion earlier, I'm like, they tried to take our particular way of spirituality slash religion away from us and make us Christian or have us believe that there was this Jesus Christ that walked the earth and God. And I'm not faulting any of my people for wanting to believe that way or that's how they believe. But it was a Southern Ute man, a historian, Alden Naranjo,

[00:36:26] that told me that there was never, I say never, there was not ever in his way of thinking and from his people that there was ever a man that walked the earth in the form of God. So it, to me, as a thinker, I'm like, that's interesting. I'm not saying I don't believe in Jesus Christ. I haven't explored that option very much. But I do believe in an all-powerful being, be that God, the creator, master of the universe, whatever you want to call him.

[00:36:55] But my point is, going back to July 4th, is that the reason everybody came over here was to escape religious persecution because the Catholic Pope, he was like the one that, he was the one that ruled the people over there in the UK and all of that. So if you had religious status, you had basically, in a sense, political status. You had power. Power.

[00:37:25] So then they come over here and they try to teach us all to be Christian, Methodist, Lutheran, whatever, Catholic, whatever it was. And a lot of the boarding schools were religious run, Catholic run, whatever group it was. But I just wanted to bring that back because of why we were, why they signed the Declaration of Independence. Yeah. We won't go into that. It's another big story as to why they did that.

[00:37:52] So one last, one more question. In terms of the different tribes, I think Karen, or I think it's you, Linda, you said there's more than 500 native tribes in America, in the US. Is that true? There's 576 tribes. What they call federally recognized tribes, which means the federal government has recognized them.

[00:38:22] Therefore, we, the tribe that's been federally recognized, gets the benefits of the United States government through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, through Indian health service, through Indian education, those kinds of things. And there's also state-recognized tribes. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So the bigger question that I have is these 570 tribes, do they interact? Do they work together?

[00:38:51] Do they work together like a federal, a federation of the Indian tribes at all? I'll let Linda answer that because she's a tribal elected official. I have my own opinion not being a tribal elected official, but I will let Linda take the lead. Yeah, Linda. Yeah. What do you think? Or what do you know? I would say, oh, yes, they do. Earlier on, I had mentioned that tribes recognize each other,

[00:39:21] including traditional allies. And even though if a person of another tribe, two tribes are together, we're not going to start a little war at the powwow ground or something like that because two of us were not traditional allies. But we recognize our history with one another. And we do work with each other on common causes. One common cause right now that is just right up there on, it doesn't matter who you are, it's water. Right, right.

[00:39:49] And the tribes are working with one another or having discussions with one another or trying to understand one another and their roles with each other. Mostly, I believe, to try and support each other. But in a way, how to protect what was originally ours through water compacts and things like that and really address other needs you could say downstream.

[00:40:15] Now, is downstream going to recognize that, especially the people that are not from tribes? That's a question. And the other thing is we do have organizations. Karen has already mentioned some like education. We have the National Indian Education Association. We work to try and promote education among the tribes. There's the National Congress of American Indians, which was actually started in Denver, Colorado, I believe, in 1944.

[00:40:43] And that was created as a united front to protect our land. And there were a number of different tribes from across the United States that came to that, meaning to express their concern and to say that they understood we needed to be a united front to address not only land issues but a number of other issues, and so that we could protect those. And even other groups like AIM, the American Indian Movement,

[00:41:09] they occupied Alcatraz and that brought forward information and it highlighted what was the native population was suffering at that time. So each group in their own way helped with other tribal members, people from other tribes. They all worked together to try and present issues that were impacting native people at that time. And it still is going forward today because the issues have not ended.

[00:41:39] And if anything, they've become more complicated. Yeah. Yeah. So the question that I have, of course, is that American natives, I think, need to somehow be understood better. I think it seems to me that the information that we all get is either very small, a tiny sprinkling of the information. There isn't like a flood of information.

[00:42:06] Like the Jews, for example, the Jewish community really does flood us with the information about the Holocaust, etc., etc. Is this something, I wonder, that you, Linda and Karen, think about, plan, wish it could happen? My question is stupid.

[00:42:33] Are you talking about more knowledge out there, more awareness out there? More information. I think a lot of people in America, in fact, don't quite know. When we talk about Native Americans, the one thing, for example, people say, the Redskins, for example, they have silly things like that. Or the Redskins, or this or that, whatever. But not the real knowledge of the tribes or the Indian nations.

[00:43:02] The philosophy, we're just talking about religion now, the philosophy of the Native people. It's something I would, I yearn to understand. Something I really would like to know. Okay. I love that question.

[00:43:19] As someone who's worked with various tribes over the years, as well as increased my knowledge of the different regions of how tribes do their tradition, their culture, their spirituality, their gatherings, their tribal dress. All of that stuff I find just extremely fascinating.

[00:43:40] First of all, I'd like to say that because the U.S. does a census every 10 years, if you really want to look at the data, we are only less than 2% of the total population of the United States. So, therefore, we do in our Indian community, in our Indian world, we kind of keep track of each other, like what's going on. As we were talking earlier, we have these national organizations. We have our own media.

[00:44:10] We have our social media. We have newspapers, of course. But you kind of had to be, and I'm not saying this is exclusive. I just think that an individual has to know where to go to get that information. You could probably these days Google it, research it, find, of course, the National Conference for American Indians, National Indian Education. There's a higher ed, what is it called, Linda? American Indian Higher Ed Education. Socialism, yeah. There's just all kinds of organizations out there.

[00:44:40] No matter what you're interested in, or if you're interested in all of it, there's the general information that's out there. We have radio stations. Linda, I don't know if you do, but I know that Mount Newt has their own, and so does Shine A Rappel have their own internal television programs or visioning. Linda has their, Southern Newt has their own radio station.

[00:45:02] There are ways, if you pay attention to the Native world, that you can find this information and what's out there, as well as legislatively, U.S. legislation, state legislation that's going on. The other thing, and so we're a small population, but amongst ourselves, we know how to keep up on information within so that we can stay on top of it and our more radical activist individuals can get involved in that part.

[00:45:31] I was surprised that Standing Rock made such national news back when it did, and that was about stopping the pipeline from going underneath the water there at that reservation. So that was fabulous to me, but we all pulled together and made sure that those individuals who were remaining on the land, that they were taken care of. They had food, shelter.

[00:45:55] They had law enforcement protection from tribal, either tribal activists or tribal police. You just have to kind of pay attention to that kind of stuff if you want to know. And I like being on all these distribution lists where I can find out what's going on. The other thing I want to say is if you look at the invasion of the United States, when it started back in the, after Columbus was here, it of course started on the East Coast.

[00:46:24] And then throughout history, we had the Civil War and all these other conflicts. But as invasion moved westward and then again got past the borders of the Mississippi River and moved further westward, all of those tribes, most of the tribes that were on the East Coast were decimated. They no longer exist. That's where it all started. That's where it all started.

[00:46:49] But I will say, as not only a former National Park Service employee, but also as a Native person, that every piece of this land that is designated as the United States has a Native story. Absolutely. And people don't look at that, in my opinion. They're like, oh, we're at Washington, D.C. Yay, we're in Washington, D.C. We get to go see the Capitol.

[00:47:14] We get to go see the Martin Luther King statue, Washington monument, those kinds of things. And they don't think about what was there before. Probably nothing. It was bare land, but it was also the communal property of whatever tribe was there at that particular time back in the 16th, 1700s, back when Columbus discovered America, that kind of thing. And I don't think people look at it that way.

[00:47:40] We're so modernized that we don't think of what was here before. There was a time that went through my head that I was in a highway or I was on a roadway or I was in a country road. And I'm like, this might have been an Indian trail at one time. This might have been the way they traveled. And it's true. It does happen that way. And then they become these major highways or what have you. The trails do. But yeah, you don't think people don't think that way. They're just living in the moment.

[00:48:09] They're living in the day and time that it is. So go ahead, Linda. I was just going to say, as a tribal council person, we have to speak at certain events. We just had a growth fund employee appreciation day. And one of the things I try to do at these events is share a story about the Ute people, whether that's it's an animal story or a historic event, something like that. Because I feel it's important for the people that work for our tribe.

[00:48:39] And we're the largest employer in La Plata County. I feel it's important that our employees have a deeper sense of just saying, I work for the Southern Indian tribe. They need to know they have some cultural information given to them. And it doesn't have to be long. It's not a lecture or anything. It's just short. But I would also like to say that two other things. A lot of tribes have museums now. So you can go to a tribe, you can look up a reservation, and you can find their museum and go through that.

[00:49:09] And they're all very interesting. And even if you made it to just a couple of them, just those two, you would see the differences between the two tribes. And so getting a sense of appreciation on the diversity of the different tribes is important. And then I would like to say that our tribe works hard at having a relationship with the state government, the state of Colorado at different levels. And one of them is the Colorado Department of Education.

[00:49:37] And through the Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs, which Karen used to be the director of, we did have a meeting recently in Toyok. And some of the students, they had some students come that either had graduated or were seniors. And this was Fountain Fort Carson High School. And they ended up using the curriculum that is generally provided for fourth graders. They picked that and expanded on it at the high school level.

[00:50:06] And they provided testimony to everyone at the Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs meeting. And they all said they thought this class should be provided to high school students. It should be part of the regular curriculum. Because it taught them about who used to stand on the land that they are standing on now. And what they did, how they lived, how to say their names, the things they make, and how that has carried on into the future.

[00:50:35] So each of them now have a sense of what that area is like. And of course, Garden of the Gods is right there next door in Colorado Springs. Learn the history of the people that once lived there. And that doesn't just mean you. It means the other people that passed through that land. They learned that. And they said it had an impact on them. And so I think even if we as adults can only explore it on a limited level,

[00:51:02] I think teaching the young people to have a sense of appreciation about the space and the property that they occupy is so important. And I think that is something that should happen for all children to learn whose land they're standing on, who once occupied that. And I think one more thing that could possibly be done is to have youth ambassadors.

[00:51:29] Youth ambassadors to come to different school districts in the quote-unquote white and also black and Hispanic schools to talk to their counterparts. So having youth talk to youth, I think that would be particularly important. Two last things that I would like to talk about. One of them is the quantum issue.

[00:51:55] I would like you, I think, Linda, you sounded very proficient about it. Maybe you can talk about it for a minute. All the different tribes in the United States that are finally recognized are recognized because the federal government looks at what they have adopted for enrollment. The three youth tribes, even though we're all youth,

[00:52:21] Southern youth, youth mountain and the youth tribe, the Uinta or Ray tribe in Utah. We may be all youth, but we have different blood quantum percentages in order to be enrolled in each tribe. And all tribes are like that. So what has happened is some tribes now have reached the point where they have lowered their blood quantum, say from one fourth to one eighth.

[00:52:49] And that has been done recently so that the tribe still has a population of federally recognized individuals. And those individuals quantify for certain benefits, as Chair Benson earlier, about like health and education. And so, but tribes, some areas, there is no economic resource there.

[00:53:12] There's no jobs, there's no casino to employ people, although people think tribes all have casinos and we're rich. We're not. We get taxed just like everyone else. We don't have anything more in some places. And these people need to be able to have these benefits in order to help them. And it's a very, it's complicated. You can't just have a blanket statement for all tribes to cover some topic.

[00:53:42] Every tribe is different. And I think what makes it more complicated is you have to look at the tribe you're talking about and really dissect the information that you want to get to learn about them. And that includes their status as a tribe. And it includes what they receive as a tribe, whether that's from the federal government or if it's something that their own tribe can provide to them.

[00:54:08] And along the same line, there are like higher ed institutions and other pieces that, or organization, I should say, that mean, and they want to give like scholarships or other types of support to Native students, Native people. But the only group, only tribes can determine who their members are.

[00:54:35] Why I'm saying that is because if you go and apply for a scholarship as a Native student, they can't say we're only giving it to Southern youths or we're only giving it to Pawnees. And then you have to be one quarter Pawnee or one fourth suit. Nobody else can do that but the tribes. Anybody that wants to help out a tribal person, whether it be with food or scholarships or health benefits,

[00:55:03] all they can say is this is being offered to a Native or American Indian or an Indigenous person. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that you just can't go up to someone and say, oh, you're Southern youth? Let me see your card. Or how can you prove to me that you're a citizen or member of that tribe? The other thing is when I first learned my tribal heritage and had to document back when I was 18 years old,

[00:55:29] as a Creek citizen, there was only about maybe 15,000 of us. And today we are over 100,000 because they've lowered the blood quantum. 1,000 tribal citizens is Muskogee Creek Nation. And the majority of them are probably, I'm just guessing, one quarter. But with Linda and I aging up, as we always will, we'll be elders.

[00:55:54] Our younger people, our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are becoming inter-tribal individuals. They have enough blood. They have enough blood to be Indian, to be called Indian, but they may not have enough blood quantum to be a Creek or a Pawnee or Southern youth or whatever. And that's kind of detrimental too. And again, as we talked about this at another time, but another form of genocide that we've been put under.

[00:56:23] Yeah. Actually, there was a very interesting story from Montana where there's the eviction of American bison. I don't know if you heard that or not. Eviction? There's eviction of the American bison. They're saying they cannot graze in their lands there because they don't, they have to move them away. There's a story today. Yeah. But it's kind of interesting.

[00:56:52] I mean, because I think the killing of bison, I think, at the beginning of the last century was a way of genocide against American Indians. Yeah. Yeah. So question now. Now that the 4th of July is coming, what is it that, and because we know the way things are now, what should we do?

[00:57:21] What should we go about doing with the 4th of July? From an Indian point of view and then from a non-Indian citizen, American citizen? There has been a change in a holiday state level, and that would be Columbus Day. Okay. So some states recognize it as like Native American Day. And some schools do that.

[00:57:50] And for us, like at the beginning of the conversation, for me, my grandchildren and I, what we usually do is we go to the 4th of July, how I'll in Fort Deschene, Utah. Yeah. And I think Natives have found a different way to celebrate something. To me, it only has the name 4th of July because that's the holiday weekend it is.

[00:58:18] But we all have celebrations that we can go to that focus on us, us gathering and talking with our friends and relatives, visiting, having that strong sense of camaraderie about who we are as Native people. Who we are, our relatives, everything. What binds us? It's not about 4th of July.

[00:58:44] It's about what binds us together and why we are there together. And it really is a great feeling. And so that's something that we do for ourselves. And it's a very good thing. It's a very healing thing. It's a very spiritual thing. And that's what feeds us. That's what helps us survive things. Ask Karen if you have something to say. Just the same as Linda.

[00:59:12] For me and my family, being removed as we were, and then my grandparents had altogether nine kids. And so now it's just, there's just two of those siblings left. And then all of us first cousins.

[00:59:27] And as first cousins grew up together in this church setting with the weekends, being together at the camp houses, occasional all night service, being in church, drawing from the well, lighting lanterns at night. We, outhouses. To us, that was kind of like the way of life.

[00:59:49] Yes, we may have lived in the suburbs or the urban area of a city, but yet we had our time together. So any chance, at least for us first cousins now, any chance we can get together, we will. So the fourth eye for us is spending the day together. And I have one particular cousin that loves to cook. She does all the traditional cooking. Her adult daughters help her. And it's just, oh, just a breaking of bread that is unknown.

[01:00:19] In fact, there's fundraisers using her food. And a lot of the native people will come around and buy her food for whatever reason. The fundraiser is going on because they know she's got this traditional way of cooking. And so that's what we do on the 4th of July. It's not necessarily about celebrating the day. And it's just another holiday for us to get together as family and to enjoy each other because we just don't do that enough.

[01:00:48] We have our own activities within our family, meaning like Linda going to the Grand Killed Kids baseball games and, excuse me, whatever it is that's going on within our lives as the immediate family. But the extended family doesn't get together that much, but we want to be together because that's the way we grew up. Some of our even younger kids are venturing off on their own because they've moved away. We're not all together anymore. But as much as we get together, we will.

[01:01:17] And Thanksgiving is the same way. It's not that we're doing the Thanksgiving dinner and thanking the pilgrims for bringing us all together or anything like that. It's just another chance to learn from each other, share our lives with each other, that kind of thing. So that's how we see it. I have a few words to say before we leave, which is I coming from Kenya, from Africa.

[01:01:43] I'm here because of education, because I got, and my memoir really is about education, how it is important to struggle for education. I would have wanted us to talk more and more about Indian education and how that can be improved, how that can be pushed forward. But we can't do that because it takes another hour. Yeah.

[01:02:12] But I do want to thank Karen for introducing Lena to us and your words of wisdom. I appreciate it. And something with you, Karen. Thank you so very much. And we thank Rose Duman for starting this amazing organization. So thank you so very much. And may I say, happy 4th of July. Be safe. Yes, be safe. Be safe.

[01:02:41] Thank you so much. Thank you.