Rethinking history through an Indigenous lens

Every November, Native American Heritage Month provides a national platform for indigenous people to shed light on their communities. In this episode, we will learn about the complex cultures and traditions of Indigenous communities and the often-overlooked history that continues to shape the inequities they experience today. Speakers include Jacob McArthur, member of White Earth Ojibwe Nation, Tori McConnell, member of the Yurok tribe, and Dina Horwedel, director of public education at the American Indian College Fund, joined by our hosts John Iino and Iveliz Crespo.

For more information, please visit Reed Smith's Diversity & Inclusion page.

Transcript:

Intro: Hi, I'm John Iino and I'm Iveliz Crespo. Welcome to the Reed Smith podcast Inclusivity Included: Powerful Personal Stories. In each episode of this podcast, our guests will share their personal stories, passions and challenges, past and present, all with the goal of bringing people together and learning more about others. You might be surprised by what we all have in common, inclusivity included. 

John: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. Hey, Iveliz. 

Iveliz: Hey, John. 

John: Every November is Native American Heritage Month in the US. And we are really thrilled to have a great panel of guests here today. First, let me introduce Dina Horwedel who is the Director of Public Education for the American Indian College Fund. 

Dina: Hello, thank you for having me. 

John: We also have two amazing Native American students. Tori McConnell is a member of the tribe and is a student at UC Davis in California. Hi, Tori. 

Tori: Hi, John. 

John: And we also have Jacob McArthur and Jacob is a member of the White Earth Ojibwe Nation and a student at Bemidji State University and a graduate of the White Earth Tribal College. Hi, Jacob. 

Jacob: Hello, John. Uh thanks for having me. 

John: Absolutely. Great to have you. 

Iveliz: So thank you all for joining us. We're really excited to highlight you uh and to shine light on your respective communities. In the spirit of Native American Heritage Month, we want to use this platform to educate others and to inspire others to learn more about your respective cultures. So for Tori and Jacob, how has your culture shaped who you are today? And what do you want the greater public to know about your respective communities? 

Tori: I can go ahead and answer that real quick. So for me growing up, uh as with many Native American youth during the present day, there are aspects of my culture that I was very close to growing up and then certain aspects that I wasn't close to due to trauma and, and things like that. So growing up, I was always very close to the land and our traditional practices of um gathering and fishing and, and everything like that. But I was separated from the spiritual aspect of my culture. But the good part of that was that I am from a, well, all tribes are from a place where our spirituality is based in the land. So when I got a little bit older, I did have that framework that really close relationship to start learning from. And for me that's really shaped like my development as I kind of moved out of a more like colonized spirituality, a more Western Christian way of living. And I kind of realized where I, where I come from and like who I am and why I have a close relationship with the land and why my family has taught me the things that they did. And so for me, that's really kind of helped me think about like what I want in my future and it just comforts me day to day thinking about my home and remaining close to it and it really gives me something to look forward to, especially when I'm in college. Thinking about like what I'm gonna do afterwards. I just think about how I'm going to go back and be involved with my homelands and my home community and make it, help make it better and help continue this healing journey, not only for myself, but hopefully for other people as well. 

Iveliz: Thank you, Tori. Jacob, would you like to answer that question? 

Jacob: Sure. Like Tori, I grew up connecting to the land hunting and fishing and I, I was really into that aspect of our culture. But I, I too was also disconnected from the spiritual side. It wasn't until I was until I was older that I, I started to connect with my spiritual side, getting into the language, living my life based on our, our tribe seven teachings and doing my part to revitalize our culture in our community. You set a good example for my son and try to pass that down to him. And uh one of one of the great things about my tribal college was it made it really easy to, to jump into those things and, and reconnect as, as part of my education. That's something that's gonna be part of my, my path going forward is trying to spread that revitalization aspect and try to get others into it as well. 

John: I love that, Jacob. I'm curious, what are the seven cultural teachings of your nation? 

Jacob: Our seven cultural teachings are respect, love, courage, honesty, wisdom, humility and truth. I do my best to live my life by those teachings, especially the wisdom. It's more pertaining to the attainment of wisdom and sharing of wisdom. And I think that's part of my education is teaching others and try to help them along the along the path that I've been following, trying to use what I've learned to, you know, help others along. 

John: That's so inspiring. Jacob. Really appreciate you sharing that with us. So what are some misconceptions, Jacob that people have about tribal communities? 

Jacob: Well, I think the biggest misconception that I encounter and definitely the most common misconception is that um our community members are, you know, we don't work that we're all on government assistance. We get, you know, these big government checks, you know, the free money that everybody talks about free school, all all this other free stuff. And when I really couldn't be further from the truth and this, this misconception is particularly troubling because a lot of outsiders, they they grow resentful and, you know, bitter and even hateful towards us because they, you know, they think we get all these free things. They think it's government funded or, or that it comes out of tax money, when really that's not true. I know there are some tribes that do give their members some very generous per capita payments, but those types of payments come from the tribe themselves, whether it's from their profitable casinos or profitable um tribal enterprises or, you know, mineral mineral rights, things such as that. But, you know, personally, I've, I've never received any free money and, and school certainly is not free. And I just would like people to know that, you know, in our tribal communities, we work very hard, we work very hard to support our families and to create better lives for ourselves. Um Not only do we not enjoy all these free benefits, but our communities, we lack a lot of the basic amenities that non tribal communities enjoy and you know, take advantage of. So not, not only do we not have it really easy, it's, it's also very challenging living here. 

Iveliz: Thank you, Jacob and thank you for sharing that and talking about the, the various challenges that your communities face that segues nicely into our next question. This question is for Tori. Uh what are some of the unique challenges native people continue to face today? And how has those challenges been shaped by history? 

Tori: That is a really good question and one that I love to talk about, especially with my personal life experience today, native people, you know, as Jacob mentioned, we still face or today we face issues with not having access to a lot of things that other people do. Just because all of a sudden if you frame it in a historical context, you have us living here for thousands and thousands of years building up this certain way of life where we have what we need and we have our support in our communities. We have our, our food and just all the basic human needs and just within the last few 100 years, which is very, very short on a scale of human history. We have to live this other way, boarding schools, assimilation, all of that comes in genocide, massacres, all of it. And so I'll go back to my personal life experience as an example. I said that I grew up without all my spiritual teachings, although I grew up in my ancestral lands. And there's a reason for that. That is part of the historical trauma where it was illegal for native people to practice our religions for many, many years until 1978 when the United States passed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act. So we have this misconception that the United States is built on freedom of religion, right? But it wasn't because the original peoples of this land weren't even allowed to practice our religions until 1978. That's both my parents were born by that time. They were, they were adults by then and they didn't grow up being able to do that kind of stuff. And so you look at that and you see why there are a lot of native people who are just now really learning about their spiritual traditions. Um And there were, of course, there are many who carried on an unbroken line of that knowledge uh in communities. And so there, there's still that they still practice no matter what. But there were many who were prosecuted and many who were even killed over it. And so personally, like in my life, I grew up in a Christian church where they told me your religion and your, your culture is evil. It's pagan. It had, it's bad. So you shouldn't practice it. And so as a little kid, I was like, oh OK, like, yeah, you know, I'm not gonna argue with the preacher or the Sunday school teacher and question it as a little kid because, you know, I didn't have that critical thinking capacity just quite yet. And so I grew up that way, but I didn't, you know, forsake the other parts of my culture that I was taught very strongly. So you see that in native communities and there's a lot of trauma for that reason. And then um something that, like I personally haven't experienced, but there's a lot of struggles with people who were, who were removed from their ancestral lands. A lot of urban Indians, I have a lot of friends who are urban native people because a long time ago, well, actually not a long time ago, but, but in the recent past, people were removed from their reservations in an effort to assimilate them into American culture. So they were taken from their ancestral land and brought to a city or their reservation was not even in their ancestral land. Like the government relocated their tribe to a different place that happened to my tribe as well. They relocated us to the Hoopa Valley which was close to our ancestral land, but it wasn't our land. And then you see some people who just never got any land at all. So each tribe has a very unique story and I encourage anyone who I talked to, to learn the story of the tribe that's on their land where they're living at because it's just there's so much to cover and you can't really generalize anything to one specific tribe. So that's why I gave a couple of examples from my own life. But there's a lot more to learn than that over the expanse of the United States. 

John: Wow, that's so tragic. But so enlightening for our listeners, really thank you for sharing that Tori. Jacob, and I guess in your opinion, what is the biggest barrier that you face as an indigenous youth or indigenous person. 

Jacob: I think the biggest barrier that I faced was lack of guidance, uh lack of role models. I really didn't have anyone to uh rely on, to ask for advice on how to, how to do certain things, how to go to college. I'm a first generation scholar and, you know, my, my mom, she did a wonderful job of keeping me on a good path. But as far as, you know, entering adulthood and, you know, going to college, she really, she didn't have any experience to draw off of. So I kind of had to find my own way. It took a while for me to, you know, get, get into school and get going. So I think that's, I think that's something a lot of native youth deal with is just a lot of us are first generation scholars, uh first generation, this first generation that we like role models and people that we can ask, ask for advice on how to do things. So, I mean, we, we kind of have to forge our own way at times and that's, that's a pretty big challenge. 

Iveliz: I can, I can definitely imagine that that's a difficult challenge. And, and I, you know, as someone who grew up in a very urban, low income area, I, I definitely can relate to that. And that's part of the reason why we ask these questions right, along with our differences, there are also points of similarity. And so for me, I think I get so much joy out of having guests, like you folks on just hearing about, you know, the amazing work that you folks are doing to, to stay connected to your communities and to help your communities advance. You know, when we spoke with the American Indian College Fund on one of our past episodes, they really highlighted the importance of quality and competent education. And so Tori, from your experience, I just want to touch a little bit about on what is quality competent education look like, particularly at white higher ed institutions for indigenous folks and what changes if any can be made to curriculums to make them more inclusive? 

Tori: Thank you. That's a really good question and a really important one, especially in California as we have controversies around different educational priorities. So I think I'll start from the beginning is, is once again, framing it in a historical context because the education that we have in America is a new system of education in this land. So once again, I said for thousands of years, we lived a certain way and we continue to try to promote this way of life for ourselves. But then all of a sudden, you have the past couple 100 years where we have to learn in this factory setting. And then we're not only learning in this really strange way, but we're also learning, not about ourselves. We're learning about American history and we're learning about Western Science and all that. We're not learning any traditional things at all. That's just not in the standards. So at my university, um I'm actually, I serve on an advisory committee to the Chancellor for native people. And we've actually brought it up having native studies as a requirement to graduate because native studies, so it's not just an ethnic studies requirement in the United States. Like this is the history of the land that we live on yet, people aren't learning it. People come to college and they learn their first intro to native studies class and their minds are just totally blown. They're, they're just like, wow, I never knew any of this. I never learned this in, in middle school or high school or anything like that. And, and so you see that really affects the way that native students are viewed on campus because all of a sudden now people know about us, they know kind of where we're coming from. Whereas before a lot of people don't even know that we still exist. I mean, imagine going to a college campus and you have people who are like, wow, like you're, you're still here or they maybe like tokenize you because you're the only native student there. But that happens all the time or they ask really not ok questions, really uncomfortable questions or rude questions or they make insensitive remarks and that just really makes native students feel alienated and unimportant and like we don't want to be there and there's no representation either. So we're learning a whole bunch about the United States and about all these other things, but we're not learning about our own rights as native people in our own history. So um I think that putting native studies as a requirement for graduation in college in the United States and all public Universities  is an absolutely necessary step that the Department of Education needs to take and also integrating it in high school and middle school and elementary school all before that because kids are not learning about where they're from, they're learning about all this other stuff that's like, you know, it's ok, they have to learn, they have to learn the presidents and, or whatever. But, but they're not learning the very basic, they're not learning the beginnings and the true history and the true meaning of where they're at and where they came from and why they're here. If it's a native student, they're, they're in school and they're getting the information like, oh, my history is unimportant because I'm not learning about it and it just is really degrading. So anyway, I can really go on about that for a long time, but I'm really passionate about it. So anyway, I think that that's how universities can make it more inclusive, also hiring native staff and faculty. That's also something that we've been pushing for at my school. That hasn't happened yet. And having those faculty, not just in Native American and studies positions, but they need to be in the sciences and the humanities because there are so many native scholars that are really great in these areas and these native students have to have that. It's all about having professors that understand where you come from. There are a lot of native students in the sciences at my university. I'm a native student in the science is, and I've never had a single native American professor. I've had all kinds of other professors from other backgrounds, but never a native professor in the sciences. And there's only one in electrical engineering as far as I know out of this huge, huge research major university, one of the top universities in the entire world that has barely any native professors. And so that's another thing that's absolutely necessary to change. But, yeah, sorry, I kind of went on for a little while there, but there's just a lot to talk about, especially with the work that I do on my campus. And like, what I'm involved in, it's just constantly finding out these inequities and it's hard to change them. It's really hard and the change really needs to come from the top. There's so many things that I run into that I've been told by the higher ups in the administration that like, oh, you would have to talk to someone higher up to change that, whether that's in financial aid or just in education or anything at all, it's really hard to make change. And so that's why stuff like this is important. People need to know what's going on. 

John: Absolutely Tori. And just for our listeners, a little bit of background, California, um, earlier this year, the governor signed a bill requiring that all California State universities have the undergraduates take ethnic studies as part of their core curriculum. But more recently, that was trying to be extended to high schools, the high school curriculum to require ethnic studies. But the governor vetoed that bill want a little bit more clarity around it around it. But at least at the college level uh trying to move towards a more um more ethnic study and education. Dina, I know that the American Indian College Fund has been very active in this space as well. Can you talk a little bit about what the fund is doing specifically? 

Dina: Sure. Well, the American Indian College Fund is advocating that higher education institutions across the, across the United States understand um the native experience and incorporate that into their curriculum. While also we believe that the colleges and universities across the country have the duty to recognize and acknowledge the college campuses reside on the original homelands of indigenous peoples. So in addition to acknowledging that that land is the original homelands of native peoples that needs to be coupled with action and that action needs to be incorporating indigenous knowledge into curriculum as Tori said, not just for native students by the way, but for all students. Because without any kind of knowledge about uh the history and cultures of the people that lived here before colonization, we can't start to heal. And that also includes, you know, acknowledging the past in terms of slavery and how the slave practice actually funded the construction of many colleges and universities across the country. And then the lands that were taken to construct those colleges and universities came from the Moral Land Grant Act. So we believe that as well. And then we also believe that native students have the right to a place of their own on college campuses that fosters their sense of belonging and their importance in their campus community in order for them to thrive. And we also believe that colleges and universities have the duty to make visible or advocate for native students and empower their degree attainment. Tori mentioned representation in terms of faculty and staff, definitely colleges and universities have a duty to recruit faculty and staff that are natives, especially from surrounding lands when they're in those land, you know, on native land. And then we also believe that the colleges and universities have the duty to to cultivate an ethic of care in supporting native peoples by listening to them, learning from them and engaging with students, staff and faculty rather than saying you need to speak to somebody higher up. I think in Tori's case. So what what we would advocate is that the senior leadership at higher education institutions must make a commitment to do system level work that benefits native students, college degree attainment, as well as their sense of belonging on that campus. And that actually benefits everybody at the college and university, not just native students. And then finally, we believe that the colleges and universities have the responsibility to uphold tribal sovereignty. And one way they can do that is by generating meaningful government to government relationships with tribal nations. For example, incorporating uh tribal nation leaders into committees, wards that uh interact with the colleges and university advisory committees on curriculum that teach and incorporate native knowledge about science, uh cultures, languages, spiritual traditions. For example, I know when I was a college student as an undergrad, I took a comparative religion class as Tori mentions in 1978, it was only then that their uh native religious practice was uh permitted nationwide, but we never discussed uh native spiritual practices as part of that comparative religion class. It was all Western religions, right? So incorporating those kinds of uh knowledges and beliefs is really integral to not just instructing native students at the university level, but also all students and without knowledge and without understanding of what has happened before, we can't really start the healing process as a nation. 

John: Thanks Dina. you mentioned that all the various nations and communities working together, some of our listeners may be surprised to hear that not all the tribal communities are recognized by the US government. So what are some of the impacts on the tribal communities that are not federally recognized by the government? 

Dina: So to understand the federal uh recognition, one needs to know that native tribes are sovereign nations, they're domestic sovereign nations. And under article one, section eight of the US Constitution Congress had the right and so has the right to make treaties with the tribal nations. Those treaties established today's tribal lands basically in exchange for most of the land I would say in the United States today, tribes ceded their, their traditional territories and their rights to those territories to live on the federal lands that are now held in trust for their tribal people. So they are considered to be domestic sovereign nations and they deal government to government with the federal government. The way that works is the tribal governments have the right to establish tribal governments and uh they have tribal courts and they can create tribal enterprises. As Jacob mentioned, uh they also can lease their, they can lease their lands for mining, timbering, ranching purposes, that kind of thing. They can establish tribal enterprises such as casinos or other businesses on their lands to support their people. So when the federal government terminates tribal recognition, what happens is that land that the tribe that has been held in trust by the federal government for the benefit of the tribal peoples, there goes away, it can be sold, it can be subdivided, that kind of thing. It has economic ramifications for sure. But in addition, it has deep uh I would say identity ramifications because as Jacob and Tori both mentioned when they were talking about their cultural practices, their spirit, spirituality and how that's tied to the land. And I'm just saying this as a person who's non native and has learned through 13 years working with the college and with many of my native colleagues for non natives, land is not a commodity or a possession for our students and for native people and their families, it's their identity. They, they are taught to the land and they don't, I guess believe in Dominion of the land, but rather that they are part of that land. So in addition to taking away a tribal person's way of basically earning a living by termination, you're also in a way saying they don't exist by taking that land. So it's, it has some serious ramifications. And in addition, I would say from the education standpoint, our students wouldn't be able to say that they were American Indian to apply for scholarships as American Indians any longer. Once the federal government no longer recognize, recognizes their tribal identity. 

John: Wow. 

Iveliz: So Tori, Jacob, as leaders, what is an ideal future look like for yourselves and your communities and what can allies do those allies listening in today uh to support this future? 

Jacob: Uh My ideal future for my community is one where we've invested in education and built our, built our workforce. And we now have a educated, diversely skilled and agile workforce that is able to take advantage of any opportunities that come our way as well as create our own opportunities for ourselves. In this way, we, we take control of our own economy. We're ending uh generational poverty and all the negative effects that come with that and replacing it with the opportunity to become upwardly mobile, mobile and building a generational wealth. With the ultimate goal of creating a brighter future for our, for our youth. Our youth are really up against it. They suffer from a lot of mental health issues. There's a drug and alcohol abuse, abuses of all kinds they suffer from and a lot of our indigenous youth, they, they lose hope and the future doesn't look so bright. And you can see that in our alarmingly high and tragically high youth suicide rates. Ultimately, what I want us want us to be doing is building a brighter future for our, for our youth. 

Tori: I uh relate to Jacob on a lot of those points. So thank you for that Jacob. Kind of healing that intergenerational and historical trauma that we've experienced in recent times and rebuilding uh what we have. So for my tribe, specifically, the ideal future looks like a river with no dams on it at all. So my tribe comes from the Klamath River in far northern California. It's the second largest river in the state and it has dams on it or the most notorious being the Iron Gate Dam. Um But these are, these have been used for hydroelectricity as well as irrigation for farmers. And they were first, the first one was put there in the early 18 hundreds and all of this was part of the US. S uh when President Roosevelt was in office, was part of the US S endeavor to further settle the West. So in doing that, they effectively harmed my people and cut us off from our traditional life ways by blocking the salmon from going up river with these dams, making the river unhealthy and and are a central part of our culture. So that was detrimental to us. And then not only that when the gold rush happened, the California issued a state sanctioned genocide and spent a million dollars, which is roughly equivalent to $33 million in today's currency to hunt and kill native people. And then not only that you had the homesteading, when they created the reservation, they opened it up to homesteading for non natives to go and, and claim land. So they had uh people claiming land on our own reservation. So all of these things really harm to the people of my tribe and disconnected us from certain areas and harmed our fish harmed our waters and in return, harmed our people. So we have high diabetes and then the high drug and alcohol abuse and high suicide rates due to the fact that we are, the fabric of our society was, was detrimentally disrupted to a point where it was almost destroyed. My ideal future for us, and I believe that the Iraq tribe um agrees with this as well. It's a huge proponent for unam the climate completely. And the good news is just earlier last week, Governor Gavin Newsom and the governor of Oregon and then the chairman of my tribe and then the chairman of the Kudu tribe, which I'm also a descendant of as well, met with like Pacific Corp, made an agreement with Pacific Corp, Warren Buffett and all the people who are in charge of the Iron Gate Dam and made an agreement to start deconstruction in 2023. So we are moving towards that ideal future. This is real life and it's happening and it's really great. And personally, not only would do I want the river to be undammed as well and to finally be healthy and restored to its great ecological balance. But I also want a future for my tribal people where we are housed where we, we don't have to worry about our housing. We don't have to worry about those things because we didn't have to worry about them for thousands of years before, you know. So that's part of uh my goal and, and having language revitalization, having people speaking our native language once again with each other. Because as I mentioned before, the trauma of the government and boarding schools punishing people for speaking the language. And so those are all things that I really look forward to. And there's a lot more um that I could go deeper into, but that's the basics of it, the land, the language and the people all being healthy and being able to thrive and all coexist together in an unbroken, unthreatened way for the future and for the Children and the ones who come after them as well. 

John: So what a beautiful picture you paint for the future, Tori and Tori Jacob and Dina. Thank you for sharing and raising awareness for all of us and sharing your experiences and wisdom with our audience. We really appreciate you coming in today. Iveliz: Absolutely. Thank you all. 

Dina: Thank you. 

Tori: Thanks for having us. Yes. 

Jacob: Thank you for having me. And it was a pleasure to speak with you. 

Outro: Inclusivity Included is a Reed Smith production. Our producer is Ali McCardell. This podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, PodBean, and reedsmith.com. 

Disclaimer: This podcast is provided for educational purposes. It does not constitute legal advice and is not intended to establish an attorney-client relationship, nor is it intended to suggest or establish standards of care applicable to particular lawyers in any given situation. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. 

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