CZM Rewind: Indigenous Peoples Day  ## Metadata - Author: [[It Could Happen Here]] - Full Title: CZM Rewind: Indigenous Peoples Day - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/3c0f455c-a1bd-4429-b5b9-c23e7943c9cf ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Why Indigenous Peoples Day Matters** - Indigenous Peoples Day replaces Columbus Day to recognize Indigenous histories and atrocities committed by Columbus. - The doctrine of discovery underpins settler claims by declaring indigenous peoples "incompetent" to hold legal title to land. Transcript: Mia Wong I guess first thing I wanted to talk about is a little bit is about what Indigenous Peoples Day is and why it is that and not the other thing. Daliyah Killsback Yeah, so Indigenous Peoples Day, as many people know, is replacing, I'm going to say it, Christopher Columbus Day. That is still like a federal holiday, but multiple cities and states have opted to use Indigenous Peoples Day instead. And the reasoning for that is acknowledging the atrocities that were committed by Christopher Columbus, who, first of all, did not discover America, but continue to not only use slavery, But commit different forms of genocide, rape, et cetera, all of these terrible atrocities. And so rather than celebrating somebody like that, Indigenous Peoples Day has been implemented in order to recognize the people who are actually here first and indigenous peoples Across the Americas, their histories, cultures, and contributions. Mia Wong Yeah, Columbus, real piece of shit. Where's Christopher? Like, yeah, it really cannot be overstated how bad that guy was even you know even people in that era who had committed their own genocides like isabel and ferdinand who you know expelled The jews from spain where it's like you know if once you've reached the sentence expelled the jews from x like you're already you're already in the the the the shit list of the worst people In human history and even they saw what Columbus was doing, it was like, what on earth? Bad, bad guy, bad name. Things are going to continue to go badly. And, yeah, that was another thing that I wanted to talk about, which is federal Indian policy. And, you know, this is an incredibly broad area spanning 300 years. We're not going to be able to go into an enormous amount of depth in it, but I think it's important that people have an understanding of what the U.S. Did and how everyone else has tried to deal with it. And then also the fact that this is something that changes over time and has looked different. It's been bad in different ways. Daliyah Killsback Yeah. And so when talking about federal Indian policy, I always like to contextualize it within a larger sort of like Euro American like teleology of colonial conquest and then moving on To settler colonialism and where we are with federal Indian policy currently. So how do we connect Christopher Columbus to where we are currently. And this is the history of federal Indian policy and Western legal discourse and how European powers throughout history have defined what it means to be an Indian person in relationship To Indigenous peoples' rights to their own land and to self-governance. So when we're looking at the different periods of federal Indian policy, prior to there being the United States government, we have the colonial period, which is 1492 to 1776. This is how federal Indian policy legal scholars divide that. And it's really important to kind of give the difference between what is a colonial state versus a settler colonial state when you're talking about not just the United States government, But also the Canadian government and different governments globally. But I want to talk just a little bit about what I mean by the difference between a colonial government and a settler colonial government, because they're tied together. So by a settler colonial government, I mean, what I mean is that it is defined by the de-territorialization of indigenous populations. And so rather than in a colonial government, as you had with Christopher Columbus and the Spanish and with the English, et cetera, is rather than a state and sovereignty being conceived As all these resources are going back to the metropole all these resources are going back to england or to spain etc and colonial occupation is in is um conceptualized within this way In settler colonial governments. The colonists come to these lands and stay, and what they define as sovereignty is within this land that they define now as their own. So, and in order for that process to happen, there needs to be different forms of genocide of the indigenous populations. And so that's what we saw with Christopher Columbus and throughout history was just the depletion of a lot of our indigenous populace. And so when I mean about the United States being a settler colonial state, I mean that this is current and ongoing. And so when we talk about federal Indian policy, federal Indian policy is always in this conversation with what started with Christopher Columbus as the doctrine of discovery. ([Time 0:03:39](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a77849ae-b5d2-4b44-b374-ed41681188a9)) - **Settler Colonialism Versus Colonialism** - Settler colonialism differs from colonialism by aiming to replace Indigenous peoples and stay on the land. - It requires de-territorialization and often genocidal strategies to establish settler sovereignty. Transcript: Mia Wong And, you know, this is an incredibly broad area spanning 300 years. We're not going to be able to go into an enormous amount of depth in it, but I think it's important that people have an understanding of what the U.S. Did and how everyone else has tried to deal with it. And then also the fact that this is something that changes over time and has looked different. It's been bad in different ways. Daliyah Killsback Yeah. And so when talking about federal Indian policy, I always like to contextualize it within a larger sort of like Euro American like teleology of colonial conquest and then moving on To settler colonialism and where we are with federal Indian policy currently. So how do we connect Christopher Columbus to where we are currently. And this is the history of federal Indian policy and Western legal discourse and how European powers throughout history have defined what it means to be an Indian person in relationship To Indigenous peoples' rights to their own land and to self-governance. So when we're looking at the different periods of federal Indian policy, prior to there being the United States government, we have the colonial period, which is 1492 to 1776. This is how federal Indian policy legal scholars divide that. And it's really important to kind of give the difference between what is a colonial state versus a settler colonial state when you're talking about not just the United States government, But also the Canadian government and different governments globally. But I want to talk just a little bit about what I mean by the difference between a colonial government and a settler colonial government, because they're tied together. So by a settler colonial government, I mean, what I mean is that it is defined by the de-territorialization of indigenous populations. And so rather than in a colonial government, as you had with Christopher Columbus and the Spanish and with the English, et cetera, is rather than a state and sovereignty being conceived As all these resources are going back to the metropole all these resources are going back to england or to spain etc and colonial occupation is in is um conceptualized within this way In settler colonial governments. The colonists come to these lands and stay, and what they define as sovereignty is within this land that they define now as their own. So, and in order for that process to happen, there needs to be different forms of genocide of the indigenous populations. And so that's what we saw with Christopher Columbus and throughout history was just the depletion of a lot of our indigenous populace. And so when I mean about the United States being a settler colonial state, I mean that this is current and ongoing. ([Time 0:05:43](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ae49c8ba-4264-4bf5-8877-26fc97045c29)) - **Doctrine Of Discovery Explained** - The doctrine of discovery legally gave European nations title over American soil and later to the U.S. - It framed Native nations as occupants lacking full property rights and requiring a federal "guardian." Transcript: Daliyah Killsback So legally it's the discovery of a quote-unquote newfound land by European colonial forces. Unable to govern themselves and they did not know how to utilize their land up to the definition of what the European powers thought land use was. Indigenous peoples didn't have the same concept of property and same with their relationship with resources and resource extraction. So when Christopher Columbus and all of these other colonizers, conquistadors, came to the quote-unquote new land, they saw all of this rich, plentiful resource and thought to themselves, Well, obviously these people don't know what they're doing because there's just so much, they have not done anything with it. And we're going to take this back to ours because obviously they're inferior beings and don't know what property is. So legally, the doctrine of discovery conveyed legal title to and ownership of American soil to European nations, a title that devolved to the United States. Implies that Native nations have a right to lands as occupants or possessors, but they are incompetent to manage those lands and need a quote-unquote benevolent guardian, such as A federal government who holds legal title. And so when we're talking about this legal title, it devolves to the United States later on in history after the American Revolution. ([Time 0:10:01](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c81a0e95-c8e2-4526-a4aa-3b9948d6b5bc)) - **Constitutional Shift On Tribal Sovereignty** - After the Constitution the federal government took exclusive power to make treaties and regulate relations with tribes. - That move placed Indian nations inside U.S. boundaries as domestic matters, reshaping sovereignty. Transcript: Daliyah Killsback After the formation of the United States, so we have this period, the American Revolution, which I'll not really dive that into, is 1776 to 1789, and it's called the Confederation Period. From 1789 to 1835. And so this is defined with the United States Constitution and Congress's exclusive right to regulate trade relations and make land secessions and enter into treaties with tribes. So this is a treaty making era with the tribes that only the United States federal government is able to. And there's a distinction there because there had been a lot of contestation between states and the federal government as to who is going to now deal with these nations that are within Our own colonial borders. So whose job is that to solve this issue? So within the United States Constitution, there are three clauses that define the United States' legal relationship to American Indians. And so these are the treaty-making clause, the commerce clause, and the property clause. So this movement from just relying on the doctrine of discovery and treaty making processes between different European powers now is between the United States federal government And tribes. And so what this does is now tribes are located within the United States territory. And this places Indians within the boundaries and jurisdiction of the United States, and now they're a matter of domestic interest. Mia Wong Something that leads into one of the sort of complicated questions that changes to this whole era, which is about what does sovereignty mean for these tribes, and to what extent do they Even continue to possess it? And how does that even sort of, how does that work when you have this new state that sort of just has clean control here? Daliyah Killsback Well, later on when we have, sorry, jumping ahead of myself, when we have the extermination of the treaty making process and this completely removes seeing tribes as independent sovereign Nations. So I think that we'll kind of get more into that later. But the thing with federal Indian policy is that it's sort of self-prophesizing. So as settlers are moving across America, the United States government also has to create these policies in order to legalize these land cessations and movements. ([Time 0:13:01](https://share.snipd.com/snip/354d8407-cbb4-4566-babf-3e27ef993c4c)) - **Removal Era And Legal Hypocrisy** - The Removal Era extinguished Indian titles in the east and forced tribes west via laws like the Removal Act. - Supreme Court rulings cited racist precedents and the doctrine of discovery while federal policy still nullified protections. Transcript: Daliyah Killsback So this is the removal period and what a lot of people may have heard of. So it's from 1835 to 1861. And what we have is the extinguishment of Indian title to eastern lands and the removal of Indian tribes westward. So one of the most notable acts is the Removal Act, which was authorized by President Andrew Jackson, which moved Indians from the east to the west of the Mississippi River into what Was called Indian Territory. And what brought about this federal act was a series of three foundational statutes within federal Indian policy dictated by Chief Justice John Marshall. So first we have Johnson v. McIntosh, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, and Worchester v. Georgia. And I won't go into too much detail, but what these essentially did and legally defined tribes as being domestic dependent nations. And so it clarified more that, again, tribal nations are underneath the federal government's overview, not the states. So yeah, it placed tribes above state jurisdiction. And what this was trying to do was solve some issues that tribes such as the Cherokee Nation had with different states when it came to land and jurisdiction over subland um but that is Kind of the basis of a lot of federal Indian policy and still remains true today and what is notable um in each one of these statutes um I believe particularly in Worcester v. Georgia, although it seems that it was supporting tribal sovereignty in that they were above state jurisdiction, a lot of these statutes cited racist president and the doctrine of Discovery. So what you see for federal Indian policy is that a lot of the foundation for federal Indian policy based on precedent is the doctrine of discovery, which is reliant on the idea that American Indians were savages and needed federal benevolence and paternalism in order to regulate their own affairs. Mia Wong Yeah, and I think that's, well, okay, we should probably not just immediately get to allotment, but yeah, because there's also, yeah, this is also the period we used, yeah, the thing You were talking about earlier, the thing you probably know about, which is, okay, it's not true to say this is when this starts this is indian removal act trail of tears territory and You know one thing that you know i think one of the sort of running themes of this is that you know the the the law in this context is just sort of it becomes a sort of retroactive excuse to Do whatever like needs to be done from the perspective quote-unquote of the sort of of the settler state to just take all of this land yeah and i think maybe like one of the keystones of This is andrew jackson just straight up telling the court to fuck off so that he can do so he can do a trail of tears yeah um so the removal act um happened after all of these statutes that Daliyah Killsback You already had that supported um federal indian sovereignty and so the cherokees in georgia were one of the tribes that were removed. And so you kind of see what you talked about, the retrograde kind of justifications for said removal, despite the statutes that are there. So although that, like Marshall in Worchester v. Georgia determined that the state of Georgia did not have jurisdiction over territory, although this territory was in the state's borders. Later on, you see with the Removal Act that although these statutes are still precedent in federal Indian policy, those were null in order for um there to be more um expansion of settlers Within these areas so when it was decided that oh wait we do need this land and we don't actually want these indians here let's put them to the side over past the mississippi so that they're Out of sight out of mind right so we see more of this justification for settler expansion. And so again, we bring it back to these themes of like settler colonialism in order to kind of gain more of this land. And a lot of these statutes are still cited, the doctrine of discovery in them. ([Time 0:21:56](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a07181bd-2b6e-4bf1-80e4-f14260940de9)) - **Personal Account Of Reservation Era** - Daliyah describes Plains tribes' forced removals, battles like Little Bighorn, and reservation relocations. - She notes her own Northern Cheyenne tribe was pushed and partly relocated, creating Northern and Southern Cheyenne communities. Transcript: Daliyah Killsback You also have the creation of Indian reservations and resulting Indian wars. So during this era, what you see a lot of are different types of attempts at assimilation and a lot of warfare. So you have a lot of the Plains tribes, my tribe, for instance, that are going through all of these battles, forced removal onto reservations. One of the most famous ones was the Battle of Recygrass or the Little Bighorn, where General Custer was killed by Sioux, Cheyennes, and Arapahos and different instances of battles Such as those and also where a lot of tribes were forcibly removed to areas that they weren't originally from. So like how the Cheripees were moved to Oklahoma, there was attempts of my tribe, for instance, Northern Cheyenne to being moved down to Oklahoma as well. And that's why there's some Southern Cheyennes in Oklahoma and then my tribe, the Northern Cheyennes in Montana. Another thing that is happening during this period are boarding schools, the boarding school era. So this attempt at assimilation through education. And assimilation is also within the settler colonial kind of structure. It's defined as a process where Indigenous people end up conforming to different constructed notions of settler norms. So if they're not absorbed within the state completely, then their attempt to be assimilated culturally, through education, through languages, in terms of economics. So now you have a bunch of different sort of bureaucratic structures on these reservations trying to make tribal governments appear to be or constructed as settler colonial governments Are. So maybe it's the three branches in ways that aren't just compatible with different tribes culturally. And you also have attempted eradication of different kind of spiritual and cultural practices. And a lot of Christianity being forced onto different people. ([Time 0:30:15](https://share.snipd.com/snip/860a4812-b6a0-41d4-aa6c-594be08d6c21)) - **Allotment's Land Theft Mechanism** - The Dawes allotment split tribal lands into individual parcels and declared any surplus 'excess' for settlers. - About nine million acres were taken from reservations during allotment to benefit non-Indians. Transcript: Daliyah Killsback Yes, allotment period and forced assimilation. So this is like 1871 to 1934. And so this is the end of the treaty making process. Tribes onto reservations and sign these treaties were to again take land and make sure that the united states has more land and all the land etc that they could possibly have um so at this End of treaty making um and federal allotment of indian lands also happened in the Dawes Act. And so what this was, was an attempt to further shrink the reservation lands that tribes were already guaranteed within treaties. Um, so during this period, I think somewhere like 9 million acres were, um, taken from tribal reservations during the allotment process. So the, what the allotment process did was it counted each and every individual Indian, um, that was eligible. I think there were adults, um yeah adults that were eligible um and each one of them were given a certain parcel of land a certain number of acreage um and once all of this land was calculated What you had was an excess of land quote-unquote excess of land that the tribes obviously didn't need because they had still too many people. And so what the excess of land was utilized for is for pioneers and for settlers. ([Time 0:38:11](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b6922ccc-4a46-4a57-9943-8792aa750007)) - **From Reorganization To Termination** - The Indian Reorganization Act briefly ended allotment and promoted tribal constitutions, but change was short-lived. - The termination era then sought to dissolve federal obligations and strip tribes of recognition and services. Transcript: Daliyah Killsback Yeah, a very short phase. Yeah, so the next phase is the Indian Reorganization Act. And so this only lasted six years from 1934 to 1940. So this is when allotment ended. As you said, the United States government was like, wait, this isn't working. What else can we do? The Indians aren't dying off. They're not assimilating. They're not acculturating. We don't know what to do with them. So maybe we'll we'll have them adopt these constitutions and a lot of them were just templates so regardless of whether or not they were um i think compatible with tribal different tribes Way of life. They were like, you have these constitutions now, now you're a tribe, and this is what each tribe has to look like in order for us, the federal government, to recognize you as a legitimate Entity. And then so you have the establishment of these tribal governments that consist of tribal councils and business committees, etc. However, this period is fleeting, very fleeting. And next, you have the termination era. The federal government essentially even more so wants to just get rid of the quote-unquote Indian problem which is the existence of indigenous peoples that are reminders to the government Essentially that they are a settler colonial force and they don't know what to do with us because they tried to commit genocide they tried cetera, et cetera. It's still not working. They decided that our tribal governments aren't legitimate and they just decide, well, it's too much to try to keep up with our treaties and what we promised them when it comes to health Care, education, housing, et cetera, et cetera. How about we terminate our federal responsibility, our trust responsibility that are delineated in federal union policy and in our treaties and give them off to this to the states To decide what to do with. You see sort of the federal dissolution of some tribes, such as the monogamy and other ones as well. So this is another dark time. The dark times just keep on coming. And what federal union policy scholars have characterized federal Indian policy as a pendulum. ([Time 0:42:04](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a913afcb-af33-426a-80aa-a1f37b7d4175)) - **What 'Land Back' Means Today** - 'Land Back' has many meanings but centrally asserts Indigenous prior claim and treaty obligations. - In practice it ranges from buying land back for tribes to reframing Euro-American identity about settler gain. Transcript: Daliyah Killsback Nowadays, a lot of movement has been towards land back, what this means, what is this process. And I think it means a lot of different things for different people, indigenous people. Because again, there's 574 federally recognized tribes. And so it's not one monolith of ideas, a monolith of beliefs. But just by saying land back, that's like recognition that this was our land first and you're not keeping your side of the deal and never have been. Garrison Davis Could you maybe go a bit more into land back as a topic? Because specifically the past five years, it has really gained a lot more popularity as like a slogan um but i think for a lot of a lot of people who like chanted and hear it don't always Really know exactly what it means there's a lot of like mixed opinions on what it means um of course on like the more like reactionary side it's like people be like what you're gonna like Kick white people out of these areas like that's kind of that's what a lot of like the reactionary takes on land back is and I'm sure most people who are listening to this podcast that's Not what they think but they may not really know exactly what it means either they may think it sounds like a good idea but they're not quite sure what it is. Do you mind kind of talking about how Land Back has developed as an idea and what you mean by it personally, at least? Daliyah Killsback Yeah, I think I could talk more about what I mean by it personally and what I've understood it to mean to other people. Because I think land back itself, it means like a lot of different things. And I don't think that there has been a concrete kind of idea of what it means. But I think a lot of the movement, I want to like contextualize it within a lot of the sort of activism that we've seen in the recent years. So for instance, NoDAPL, the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016. And kind of, I think that's one of the more recent events that have really illustrated on a wide scale, like globally, about Indigenous movements um sovereign movements and especially When it comes to environmental justice but what you saw there was encroachment on tribal treaty land within um when it had to do with the dakota access pipeline um so although it didn't Cross some of the current reservation borders, it was in treaty land. Garrison Davis You know, that kind of thing. Same thing with stop line three, how it encroached on like the hunting land and the farmland that was not technically in the like residential, like not in like the reservation area where People live, but it's in the surrounding area that is for hunting that is specified in the treaty. So people are trying to use these loopholes to get the pipelines through. Daliyah Killsback Right, right. And so I think what you see is a lot of solidarity across tribes because this is not new. This has never been new. And a lot of tribes can relate to that. And what you've seen and what I hope that I've highlighted throughout this kind of very brief overview of federal policy is the different ways that indigenous rights to land and sovereignty Has been attacked in different forms by settler and colonial governments and I think that the day and age that we live in now has allowed for sort of more widespread solidarity, especially Over social media. And so when we say land back, for me, how I interpret it as what people mean when they're saying it is recognition of our tribal sovereignty of our right to this land that has not been respected And then I also think that it means well if these treaties aren't being respected then how is this treaty still um valid right how come we aren't getting our land back because you're not Upholding your end of the deal? While some people also might mean and recognize that this whole United States government is a settler state, right? Based on the doctrine of discovery, which is based on denying tribes and American Indians of their rights to this land. So some people might take it to this whole other context of, yeah, well, maybe this is all of our land, et cetera, et cetera. But in practice, what does this look like? And I think in practice, a lot of people are seeing it with reparations or people buying land back for tribes and giving it back to tribes. ([Time 0:49:25](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b77cd29f-26ce-4525-8790-0dfc84b3b2dc))