>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington DC.
>>: Hello everyone.
I've got to ask everyone
so start taking your seats,
and we will begin the program.
I know we've got a jam-packed
program this evening,
but first of all, good evening.
I'm Betsy Peterson.
I'm the Director of the American
Folklife Center here at the Library
of Congress, and I'd
like to be the first
to welcome you here this evening,
and I want to extend a
special welcome to members
of the Association of Tribal
Archives, Libraries, and Museums,
as you kick off the annual 2015
conference here in Washington DC.
Welcome. I also want to say
happy birthday to Susan Feller.
So just get it out there.
[ Applause ]
And embarrass her.
[ Applause ]
For those of you unfamiliar with
the American Folklife Center,
just a couple of words.
The AFC was established in 1976 by
an act of Congress with a mandate
to document, preserve, and present,
the diverse cultural traditions
found in the United States.
The archive of the American Folklife
Center, however, been in existence
since 1928, and as you can imagine,
it's grown quite a bit over time,
and is now the nation's largest
repository of sound recordings,
photographs, motion
pictures, and other materials
that a document the richness and
diversity of traditional culture,
all traditional culture in
the United States and beyond.
This evening is the
culminating program
and the library's Public Program
Series entitled many Paths
to Freedom: (It must have
a colon) Looking Back,
Looking Ahead at the Long
Civil Rights Movement.
We at the National Library here
are especially looking forward this
evening to hearing Native American
perspectives on the crucial topics
of civil rights, equality,
and justice.
While I know there's a
full menu of activities
for all ATAL members scheduled
for the next few days.
I do hope you will find time to
come back to the library and take
in the wonderful exhibition upstairs
on its Civil Rights Act of 1965.
The exhibition features treasures
from many different library
divisions, including a number
of oral history interviewing
from the National Civil
Rights History Project,
which the American Folklife
Center has been jointly carrying
out with the National Museum
of African American History
and Culture at the Smithsonian.
So please come back if you can,
and if not this time,
please come back again.
I also want to acknowledge I have a
number of people and organizations
who have come together to
produce this evening's event
for the ATALM Conference, and of
course, thanks to the staff here
at the center and across the library
for making the many events
this afternoon happen
and for making this evening happen.
We also want to acknowledge our
co-sponsors within the library,
including the Law Library, the
Interpretive Programs Office,
and the Educational Outreach
Program, and finally,
we also want to thank our external
sponsors, the Institute for Museum
and Library Services, the Ak-Chin
Community Council in Ak-Chin,
Arizona, and Yocha Dehe Wintun
Nation in Brooks, California,
and with that, I would
simply like to turn things
over to the Deputy
Librarian of the Library
of Congress, David Mao, and welcome.
[ Applause ]
>> David: Good evening, everyone,
and as you just heard Betsy say,
my name is David Moa, and I'm
the Deputy Librarian of Congress.
At that great privilege
of serving in that role.
So on behalf of the Librarian of
Congress, Dr. James H. Billington,
and my colleagues here at the
Library of Congress, welcome to all
of you to this magnificent building,
the Thomas Jefferson Building
of the Library of Congress.
Betsy just mentioned, I think,
that this evening's program is
entitled Civil Rights Identity
and Sovereignty.
And yes, there's a colon,
Native American Perspectives
on History, Law, and the Path Ahead.
It's a very long title, but
it's also very, very important.
We here at the library are
very, very honored to be a host
to this evening's program,
and because,
especially since it's the beginning
of the 2015 International Conference
of Indigenous Archive Libraries
and Museums, and I think that most
of you know that the program, or
this conference, is hosted annually
by an association, our partner in
this event tonight, the Association
of Tribal Archives Libraries and
Museums, and I also understand
that for over a decade, the
Association has brought together,
through these conferences, hundreds
of dedicated library, museums
and archival practitioners like
you, across United States and even
from around the world, and to do so,
to share experiences and to learn
from each other on how
to preserve, protect,
and sustain the cultural
knowledge and heritage
of indigenous peoples
across the globe.
So again, like I said, the Library
of Congress is very delighted
to be a part of this
ongoing program and effort,
and so I really just
want to say thank you,
and also commend not only
you, the people that are part
of this program, but the
association, and most particularly,
the President and CEO, Susan.
Where are you Susan?
Oh, there you are.
Happy birthday, and I heard somebody
start singing happy birthday.
So maybe we should
stop and do that now.
Can we sing happy birthday to you?
Who started it before, please.
[ All Singing Happy Birthday ]
[ Applause ]
Thank you.
So I just to finish up by
saying a couple of things.
That many of you have the
opportunity to attend some workshops
and conferences here at the
library, and so you met many
of my colleagues, my wonderful
and knowledgeable colleagues here
at the Library of Congress,
and for those of you,
my colleagues that are
sitting in the audience,
thank you for being a part of this
collaborative process and working
with the members of ATALM.
I know this is very, very important
work, and I know they appreciate it,
and we appreciate it very
much, because we also learn
from this collaboration,
and finally,
if you didn't notice
the display that's
in the lobby of this auditorium.
Betsy had mentioned that
one of the partner groups
within the library
is the law library,
of which is very close to my heart.
I'm technically still the acting
Law Librarian of Congress,
and the collection up there
is from the law collection.
Indigenous materials, and so
it's just an example of many
of the things that we have here at
the Library of Congress, and indeed,
that we have at institutions across
the Washington Metropolitan Area,
that we hope that you will be
able to share and make use of,
because we're all committed
to helping you to uncover
and make use of these materials.
To go about sharing them and
teaching and learning from them,
as we reach out across the world.
So, with that, I want
to invite you to join me
in welcoming Letitia Chambers,
chairman of the association's board.
She's the moderator for
this evening's program.
She will then introduce this
evening's distinguished speakers
and also be joining them on stage
to help guide the discussion.
So again, thank you very
much and enjoy the evening.
[ Applause ]
>> Letitia: Good evening.
It's a pleasure to
be here this evening.
I've come from Santa Fe, New
Mexico, where I live now,
but I see some familiar
faces in the audience,
and that's because I spent 35 years
of my career here in Washington DC,
so, to you old friends,
I'm happy to see you.
As I said, I was here for 35
years, first as a Staff Director
of the U.S. Senate Committee
on Labor and Human Resources.
Later appointed by President
Clinton to be Ambassador
to the United Nations
General Assembly.
I started a consulting business,
which I ran for 20 years here before
I went back out the to the field
to be the head of the System of
Higher Education in the State
of New Mexico and then CEO of
Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona.
And it was while at the Heard
Museum that I joined with a group
of people, including Susan Feller,
whom you have this song happy
birthday, and Mary-Alice Ball,
who is with the Institute of
Museum and Library Services
and another few, it was a small
group of people, to found ATALM.
The Association of Tribal
Libraries and Museums,
and our organization works
with tribes on issues related
to cultural preservation.
It is ATALM's great privilege
to join with the Library
of Congress this evening, to
be a part of this program,
and to be a part of this
Civil Rights Series.
You know, most people think of
civil rights is an issue related
to black Americans, but it's
also an American Indian issue,
and while many of the issues
that relate to the rights
of peoples are the same, American
Indians have issues that are unique
to them, because of the sovereignty
of the tribal nations in the U.S.,
and so our first speaker this
evening is Walter Echo Hawk,
and he's going to talk
about both the particulars
of the Civil Rights Movement that
relate really just to Indian people
and also how the civil rights of
American Indians and other peoples
of color in the U.S.
are intertwined.
Walter had a very distinguished
career.
He's a Pawnee Indian from Oklahoma.
He took his law degree at
the University of New Mexico.
He spent 35 years at the Native
American Rights Fund trying cases.
He's admitted to practice
before the U.S. Supreme Court,
the Supreme Courts of
Oklahoma and Colorado,
many of the federal district
courts, and the Courts of Appeals.
He's tried some of the most
significant cases Indian country.
He's retired from NARF at this
point but is now of counsel
to Crowe & Dunlevy, the
largest law firm in Oklahoma,
and he serves as the Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court
of the Kickapoo Nation of Oklahoma.
He's recently written
a couple of books,
and he'll be doing a book signing
this evening after the session
on a book that has my favorite
title, which In The Courts
of The Conqueror, The 10 worst
Indian Cases Ever Decided.
So without further ado, Walter?
[ Applause ]
>> Walter: Wow, thank you, Letitia.
Where'd she go?
For that very kind and
generous introduction,
and good evening everyone.
I want to, of course, thank Letitia,
and each of you for
coming this evening.
I want to, before I begin,
make a few acknowledgments.
First to say happy birthday to
Susan, to join the well wishes.
My wife is here, Pauline.
My cousin Sherry is here, and
I'd like to acknowledge you,
and I'd like to pay
my special respects
to LaDonna Harris here
in the front row.
I'm very pleased that
she is with us tonight.
[ Applause ]
I really admired her for many years.
She's been an inspiration.
She one of the grandmothers
and first ladies
of the tribal sovereignty
movement, and we've been,
you know, by you over the years.
So I'm pleased to serve
with you this evening.
I have to say that I am
very honored to participate
with such distinguished
speakers on such important topics
in such a prestigious setting before
such a distinguished audience,
and I have come this evening
to honor two great
American social movements.
The first is America's Civil Rights
Movement, and by that I am referring
to the efforts of black
America beginning in 1896
to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson,
the Supreme Court decision
that embedded the law of racial
segregation into American law,
and that led to a 58-year
struggle to overturn that decision
in Brown v. Board of
Education in 1954.
The best Supreme Court
decision in the 21st century,
that changed the legal
framework for black America
from enforcing the state segregation
to equality under the law,
and it placed our nation
on a brand-new path
over its next 60 years to implement
that decision into American law
and policy, and so that
American Civil Rights Movement,
about 120 years long so far.
Second great American social
movement I'd like to talk
about this evening and honor
that is the companion American
Indian Tribal Sovereignty Movement,
and I want to focus
here on the stride
of Native America towards
determination
and tribal sovereignty,
which are the centerpieces
of the indigenous aspirations
here in America.
And at the outset, I do want
to honor the larger
Civil Rights Movement.
All of America is greatly
indebted to the leaders
and to the foot soldiers in
the Civil Rights Movement.
That movement uplifted
America out of the throes
of racial discrimination and
racism and redeemed our soul.
It seems to me, as a nation that is
devoted to higher value and ideals,
and committed to human rights,
as some of our foundational
organizational principles
of our people here, and this
movement also brought hope
and inspiration to Indian country.
I think it opened our eyes the
possibility of emancipation
from the bonds of colonialism,
and sparked, I think,
in large measure our stride towards
achieving indigenous aspirations,
you know, towards self-determination
and cultural and political autonomy
in the American setting that, in
a couple of generations has led
to the rise of our
modern Indian nations,
and I know that in my younger
days, I was very honored
to be a small part of
the Civil Rights Movement
and the Poor People's Campaign.
I had the privilege of doing some
work around Marlon, Oklahoma,
for Martha grass, who was one
of the indigenous spokespersons
in the Poor People's Campaign.
Later, over the years, is
a native rights attorney,
I had the great honor
and privilege of working
with the late Mrs. Coretta
Scott-King to do some work with her,
as well as participated
in a couple of marches
with Reverend Jesse Jackson,
including one White House visit
with him, and I was always
inspired by their leadership,
and I wished that our
Native American community
and the black civil rights community
had worked closer together,
because we do share a lot in common,
but tonight, my purpose is to talk
about the American Indian civil
rights experience, and I want to try
to focus on distinguishing
the goals and aspirations
of the tribal sovereignty most
from the better-known goals
of the larger Civil Rights Movement.
Both of these great American social
movements are related in many ways.
Both of these movements have learned
and can learn much from each other,
but both have different goals
and I think it's important
to understand the differences in the
goals between these two movements.
So tonight, I want to focus on
the long Native American Struggle
to protect Native American
aspirations in our country.
It's a long struggle that began in
1776, all the way through to 1890.
A 100-year war, and in which the
United States government fought
over 40 wars against the
Indian nations of our country,
covering many, many
battlefields that dot our land
in which our warriors shed
their blood on battlefields
to protect their land and their
families and their ways of life,
and we have a legacy of many
patriots from the 100-year war.
It could be recounted,
you know, these efforts
and countless treaty negotiation
between our tribal nations
and the United States
that have resulted
in over 300 treaties ratified by
the Senate and signed into the law
by the President that now form
the supreme law of the land,
where forebearers attempted
to use peaceful methods,
avenues to another negotiate their
place in America, only to see most
of these treaties broken, the
promises betrayed, you know,
again and again by government.
This story could also recount how
our forebearers coped with life,
coped with tribal life
under colonial rule,
with its destructive
policies, soul-killing policies
of enforced assimilation.
Notions of plentiary
power in a democracy.
Notions of unfettered guardianship.
Efforts of cultural and religious
suppression, and even termination
of the political relationship
between the United States
and India nations established
by treaties.
Those were difficult times
when the cultural survival
and the political survival of
our Indian nations were at stake
and hanging in the balance.
But I don't want to dwell
on that so much tonight
as to touch on three areas with you.
First to look at Native American
aspirations, focus in the modern era
in the 20th and 21st century.
Secondly, I'd like to touch on the
Indian self-determination policy
or the self-determination era
of federal Indian law and policy
from 1970 down to the current day,
and then finally, I'd like to,
thirdly and finally, look into my
crystal ball a bit to the future.
What is the future of the
tribal sovereignty movement?
My crystal ball sees a brand-new
rea of federal Indian law,
perhaps writing the final chapter
in the American Indian civil rights
experience, and that is the advent
of the human rights era
of federal Indian law.
Something that I think that we stand
at the very dawn of think new era,
and it will be the challenge of our
generation to re-formulate the way
that we look at Native
American rights
as being inherent human rights.
So with that, am I out of time?
Begin with my first task
anyway Native American civil
rights aspirations.
They do differ from the get to
of the Civil Rights Movement.
Which sought quality under the law.
Yes, it's true.
That's what Native Americans
sought, but in addition to that,
given our unique place here as
indigenous peoples, the centerpiece
of the tribal sovereignty
movement at its heart
and in its core is the notion
of a sovereignty moment
to cast off the yoke of colonialism
and strive towards this
notion of self-determination.
Self-determination as a human rights
matter, which is broadly defined
under moderate international
human rights law
as the right to make decisions.
To determine your own destiny.
This is a norm in customary
international law that the rest
of humanity already enjoys
and takes for granted.
In includes the right
of self-government.
The right of indigenous
institutions.
The right to enjoy a
political integrity.
The right to own lands.
All as tribal nations
in the American setting.
This is not a Native
American quirk, but rather,
a common aspiration shared by
indigenous peoples worldwide,
by some 350 native people around
the world who seek its simply right
of the power to determine
their own destinies.
So that aspiration
for self-determination is what
separates the American Indian tribal
sovereignty movement from the
larger civil rights movement.
Secondly, I'd like to talk a little
bit about the self-determination era
in federal Indian law and policy,
which is the legal framework
for Native Americans and
our Indian nations from 1970
to the present date and go back
a little bit to the 1950s and 60s
when our nation's Indian
policy was one of termination.
It was the low point in Native
affairs where the government
and acts of Congress sought to
terminate the political relationship
between our Indian nations and
the United States government,
sell off our lands, turn us
over to state jurisdiction,
assimilate us away into mainstream
society to make us disappear.
A very dark era, and in that period,
in the 50s and 60s, our forebearers
at that time, our tribal leaders
faced these destructive policies
of termination, and their goal at
that time was to avoid wholesale
and immediate termination, and they
fought to coax the government away
from these destructive policies
towards a more enlightened Indian
policy of self-determination.
That was culminated in
1970 by President Nixon
who made a dramatic
announcement in a special message
to Congress Indian
self-determination,
to repudiate these destructive
and failed policies of the past,
and work towards empowering
the tribes to make decision
and run programs that
determine their own destiny.
That has been our nation policy of
all presidents, of all congresses
since that date down
to the present time.
Many Supreme Court decisions
have embraced the concept
of Indian self-determination,
and at the goal, at the very dawn
of this era in 1970, it was the
challenge of that generation
to implement self-determination
for each and every tribe
across the country, and that has
become the work of two generations.
Many of our tribal leaders
at that time and that era
and foot soldiers are
no longer with us.
It impacted all three branches
of the federal government
through Supreme Court
decisions, acts of Congress,
and resulted in the rise of
our modern Indian nations
that we can see today, and many
historians see this movement,
this tribal sovereignty movement,
which was the vehicle here,
as one of America's great social
movements seen in American history.
And, of course, there were
dramatic victories along the way.
Supreme Court decisions, landmark
legislation, significant changes
in federal agency policies,
but there's limitations
to that legal framework,
because it also has a dark side.
The various legal doctrines from
the law of colonialism implanted
in that framework by the Supreme
Court during the John Marshall era,
notions of race and racism, notions
of unfettered plentiary power,
absolute power over Indian
people, vested in the Congress
in a democracy that have
rendered our victories vulnerable
and have led to a retreat by the
Supreme Court where we've lost
over 80% of our cases
before the Supreme Court
on a trend towards trimming back
on our rights, hard-won rights.
And so I think, and I would
submit as I wind down here
that Native America, perhaps,
has come as far as it can go now
in its aspirations under
the current legal regime.
That to go any further in our
aspirations, we have to turn
and confront that legal regime
and create a new legal framework,
I think, based on human rights
to go further in our aspirations.
To seek a more just foundation, a
stronger foundation, for our rights
as indigenous peoples as inalienable
and inherent human rights,
and we are living now
in a historic time
because we do have
this human rights era.
What are human rights?
Our Founding Fathers
were familiar with them.
They understood that these are
rights and fundamental freedoms
that all human being enjoy in
the societies that they lived in,
and these kinds of rights were
written into the Declaration
of Independence and used
as the organizational
principle to found our nation.
The human rights precepts
were on the lips of our people
at every historic juncture of
American history, during the rise
of our democracy, but
they're all absent
in the body federal Indian law.
It's totally bereft of
those principles, but today,
the winds of change are blowing,
and the UN in the year 2007 passed,
after 30 years of deliberation,
the UN Declaration
on The Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
That was endorsed
[ Applause ]
by the United States in the year
2010 of the Obama Administration
at a meeting with tribal
leaders in the White House.
150 nations around the world have
also endorsed this landmark human
rights declaration, making
it the new order of the day,
and I think that it's our challenge
now to march from this framework
of self-determination with its
dark side of the law of colonialism
to enter into the realm of
human rights, where our rights
of self-determination are seen
there as inherent human rights.
Our right to culture is
an inherent human right.
These are the kind of rights
that are larger than a nation.
The kind of rights that
no nation can take away.
Inalienable rights.
They're not subject to termination
by the Supreme Court or a Congress,
because they're in that category
of very sacred rights of humanity,
and that's where we are today.
So I think you very
much, and take my seat.
[ Applause ]
>> Letitia: Thank you, Walter,
for that wonderful presentation.
Our next speaker is
Malinda Maynor Lowery.
Malinda is Lumbee Indian
from North Carolina.
She is an historian, and she's
an Associate Professor of History
at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill.
She has written a book, which she'll
be signing this evening called
Lumbee Indians in the Jim
Crowe South, Race, Identity,
and The Making of a Nation.
And she's also a documentary
filmmaker, but for educational
and general audiences and
has done several films
that have been very well received.
So we're delighted to ask Malinda
to join us on stage this evening,
and to give you her
presentation, which will draw
on her own Lumbee History.
[ Applause ]
>> Malinda: Good evening everyone.
I want to say thank you, first,
to the Piscataway Indian Nation
on whose land we sit, and those
indigenous nations of Virginia,
who are also represented
here tonight.
Thank you to all of those tribal
citizens who have worked so hard
to keep their cultures alive and
keep those communities in our hearts
and minds here in Washington DC.
I also want to say thank
you and give a shout
out to alums in the audience.
So, Mr. Jimmy Lockleer.
[laughter] Mr. Jimmy
Locklear basically holds
down the National Museum
of the American Indian.
If you all don't know Jimmy, "just
roll up to the museum and blow",
as he says, and he will
treat you like royalty.
Thank you for coming.
My cousin, Jody Cummings,
who is an attorney
with the Interior Department, woo!
And his wife, Tina,
are here tonight.
Thank you guys for being here.
My partner Grace Lincreach
is here, thank you.
My other fictive kin,
Ashley Minor, is here.
She's in Baltimore.
Grew up, born, and
raised in Baltimore.
If there's any other alums in the
audience that I missed, then hey.
And thank you all for being here.
I am a historian, and if you're
not familiar with Lumbee history,
I'm going to give you just a, like,
quick three pointer introduction.
The Lumbees are the largest
tribe east of the Mississippi,
and our ancestral territory, our
ancestors come from the territory
between the James River in Virginia
and the PD River in South Carolina.
Today, we are centered around the
Southeastern North Carolina section.
If you drive down I-95, and you
hit that tourist trap called South
of the Border, you've gone too far.
Turn around.
Go to Fuller's Barbecue.
It ends at 22, and you will be
in the heart of Lumbee territory.
Well, not really, but you'll get
some really good Lumbee food there
at exit 22.
Not too far from here, about
a good, five-hour drive.
So check it out when you get time.
We have a fascinating history,
and I really appreciate Walter's
introduction to the framework
for our discussion tonight, because
I'm going to talk a little bit more
about how the Lumbee's have seen
these same themes over time.
So picture in your minds.
June 1956, it's the middle
of the Montgomery bus boycott
after the point where white
Alabamians began bombing churches
in retaliation for
blacks' resistance.
In June of that year,
Congress passed the Lumbee Act,
and that act recognize us as
Indians, as an Indian tribe
but refused to afford us the
benefits or services "because
of their status as
Indians," as the law quoted.
This is sort of a common
slight misconception,
the idea that were not
federally recognized.
In fact, we are federally
recognized.
Congress told us, "Oh,
you're Indians.
We're, like, thanks.
We knew that already.
They also said, "We're not going
to give you any of the preparations
that are due to you or to your
ancestors for all that was taken
from you and the lives
that were lost."
So this was a very unique act
which granted us recognition
and terminated us at the same time.
The Lumbee Act reinforced the
Bureau of Indian Affairs desire
to see Indians a separate themselves
from their sovereign communities
and integrate themselves in
American society as individuals.
This act also put Lumbee's in a
particular kind of dilemma that is
at the heart of our story as a
people, as the Lumbee people,
and also the American
story as a whole.
The act raises some
complex questions.
How does an indigenous group
assert its sovereignty,
while at the same time its
citizens can pursue their rights
in the United States as individual?
How in America be the land
of liberty if the government,
which exists to protect
Americans rights,
continually undermines the self
determination of indigenous people?
In the case of the Lumbees, that
self-determination is expressed
in our desire to be fully
acknowledged as a sovereign entity
that predates the existence of
the United States, and that act,
in 1956, and in many respects,
Congress and the courts' failures
to uphold native peoples' civil
rights and self-determination,
is evidence that America itself
cannot reconcile its own status
as a land of liberty
without eviscerating and even
and even erasing native people and
the government's responsibilities
to those nations that
predate its existence.
Nevertheless, in June 1956, Lumbee
people gathered in the streets
of our hometown of Pembroke, North
Carolina, to celebrate the act,
because at least the federal
government had affirmed our
existence as Indian people.
It had acknowledged that
the South where we live,
where we're proud Southerners,
and in the middle
of its most recent civil rights
revolution, was more complicated
than the black and white society
that most Americans are aware of.
Soon after this 1956 act,
Lumbees had another opportunity
to challenge this biracial norm.
About 6 months later, in
the winter of 1957 to 58,
the Ku Klux Klan burn two crosses
on the lawns of Indian families,
one of an Indian family who had
moved into a white neighborhood,
who had integrated a
white neighborhood.
Another on the lawn of an Indian
woman who was dating a white man.
This Ku Klux Klan chapter
organization, klavern,
was headed by a man
named Catfish Cole,
catfish being the bottom feeders.
He was from South Carolina.
He's from South Carolina.
Not to disparage South Carolina
but that's where he was from,
and he has spent the weeks prior
to these cross burning attacking
Indians in the media, particularly,
especially Indian women for their
loose morals, which white men seemed
to enjoy quite a bit at the time,
and we weren't particularly
offended,
because that has actually
nothing to do with female power
in Lumbee society, but
Catfish Cole called for a rally
to "Put Indians in their place.
To end race mixing."
And even the sheriff of Robinson
County tried to dissuade Cole
from holding a rally, saying
that he would not protect him.
That Indians have threatened to
kill him, but Cole found a location
for the event, and that
night, about 50 Klan members,
along with their families,
women and children,
showed up at this field
outside the town of Maxton.
Whereas 500 Indian man and
about 50 Indian women showed
up at the same time.
They were ambushed.
Kind of a classic Custer seem.
A veteran named Sanford
Locklear shot out a light
that Catfish Cole had set
up alongside a generator,
and he remembered Klan rallies
that had been held in the county
from about 20 years earlier
when he was a small child.
So the Klan was not a new
thing in Robinson County,
but Sanford Locklear
stood up that night,
shot out the light, and
then mayhem erupted.
Guns were fired everywhere.
People fell on the ground.
Once the smoke cleared,
folks assumed there were 40
or 50 dead people in that field.
Catfish Cole leaps up,
runs into the swamp,
doesn't come out for three days.
His wife Carolyn runs her car
into a ditch, and Lumbee men have
to help her out of the ditch.
Now miraculously, these
50 people that were laying
on the ground were
actually not injured.
There were no serious injuries
that night and no one was killed,
but in the light of the Lumbee Act,
we can see how this particular act
of resistance against white
supremacy was less of a culmination
in our struggle against white
supremacy and more of a warning shot
in a new era of defining
what it meant to be Lumbee,
to be southern, and to be American.
Of course, this wasn't the first
time that Lumbee's had come together
to violently resist white supremacy,
but it sent a definite message
to whites who felt that they
were in charge of race relations
and could determine
the racial hierarchy.
African-Americans, of course,
were busy doing this too,
and so while the message wasn't new,
the message hit home in a new way.
White supremacy wouldn't give
up without a fight, however,
and the Lumbees have since pursued
sovereignty and self-determination
in a variety of creative ways,
but also in ways that run counter
to the expectations of the
Civil Rights Movement narrative.
The most prominent of these is the
fact full federal acknowledgment
still remains elusive
for the Lumbee people.
Now it's in the hands of Congress,
and what it shows us is while
grassroots and legal efforts
to shape Indians' fortunes in
self-determining can be successful,
as they were against the
Klan that night in 1958.
The standard of the federal
government ensuring rights
against the abuses of states is not
working in the case of the Lumbee's.
As I understand it, it's
not necessarily working
in Oklahoma that well.
It's not working in
California that well.
It's not just us.
So thank you very much.
I look forward to being to
elaborate further in a few minutes.
[ Applause ]
>> Letitia: Thank you, Malinda.
It's now my great privilege
to introduce to you someone
who really doesn't need an
introduction in Washington DC,
because she spent many years here.
She's a Comanche from Oklahoma,
and she first came to DC
with her husband, then
Senator Fred Harris,
and she was the first Senate wife to
testify before a Senate committee,
thus ushering in the era of
the Senate wife as activist,
and political wives have
been active ever sense.
But LaDonna was the first.
[ Applause ]
LaDonna is the founder of
Americans for Indian Opportunity,
which is a wonderful organization
that has many interesting
and effective programs, but the
one that I think she's best known
for is a program that works
with young Indian leaders,
and now people all over Indian
country, tribal leaders,
people who are active in
their local governments.
And federal government agencies,
people who are in all walks of life,
many of them who have gone on to do
wonderful things in their careers,
got their inspiration by
being a part Americans
for Indian Opportunity Ambassadors
Program, and I see some ambassadors
in the audience tonight
that were a part
of that young leadership program.
LaDonna not only founded AIO, but
she was instrumental in working
with others to found the
American Indian Housing Council,
the Council of Energy
Resource Tribes, or CERT,
and several other organizations, and
she was appointed by four Presidents
to presidential commissions,
and those presidents were
Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter.
So it's kind of amazing to think
that one person would nominated
by four Presidents,
two different parties,
but it really indicates
the great esteem
with which LaDonna Harris is
held, and we're very honored
to have LaDonna with us tonight
to share some of her experiences,
not only as an Indian
activist but as a feminist,
and environmental activist,
and someone who's been involved
in world peace movements.
LaDonna?
[ Applause ]
>> LaDonna: Thank you.
Might as well acknowledge my
ambassadors that are here,
would you all please stand
up and let me show you off?
[ Applause ]
I'm known has Momma LaDonna
to 250 Native American leaders
across the country, and now
we have a sister organization
in New Zealand, and so I have 200
more where I am Momma LaDonna.
So that's my proudest moment.
What you just saw is my blessing.
And I really want to thank Walter
because he kind of set the tone
for me because I'm going to tell
you how it felt going through some
of those things that he mentioned.
I forgot involved in civil rights
movement, which was kind of strange,
in Lawton, Oklahoma, but Oklahoma
was pretty progressive then.
Sorry. And they have passed,
trying to get from settlement
on integration of schools, and
the governor at that time, said,
well, separate but equal.
And it didn't make sense to me that
Indian children could go to schools,
although my parents and grandparents
to go to Indian boarding schools,
that the separate but equal,
and particularly when Fred was
in law school, and the law
school, when the law was passed
through legislation, there
was a rope down the center
of the classroom, like this
auditorium where they taught,
and we had one young
African-American who wanted to go
to law school, and he had to sit
on this other side of this rope,
and everybody else sat on the side.
It was so gross.
I mean, the idea, and of course,
Comanches, we're collective.
We're a communal society,
and to leave someone
out is just the most horrible
thing you could do to someone.
And so when we want back.
Fred graduated.
I always said we went to college,
because I worked so we could go
to college, but women did that
at that time, and going back
and integrating Lawton was
a very interesting process,
and we were successful at it,
because we weren't
structured most organizations.
We just said, we called it The
Group, and we would say, okay,
who knows that restaurant owner, and
someone would say, "Well know them."
Well, go talk to them
and see if they would,
because the mayor had a committee,
which Fred served on integration
of restaurants, and they just
weren't getting anywhere.
So we get Anglo people, Indians, and
black all together, and we'd have,
like, for instance,
have dinner at my house,
and then the next one we would
have across the railroad tracks,
would have a dinner in an
African-American home, and then,
of course, Kevin Cover's
parents were my big allies,
and we were very much involved in
it, and we integrated the town just
on restaurants and just kept
doing it on a one by one basis,
and there was one woman, who
was a hold out, and she said,
"I just can't understand why
they want to eat with us,
when we don't want
to eat with them."
That was her rationale,
and Fort Sill is right next
to Lawton, Oklahoma.
It's a military installation, and so
we talked to the officials and made
that restaurant off base, and
it was an all-night restaurant,
so that soldiers could go there.
She quickly changed her mind,
and we integrated the town.
And then the schools
were integrated,
and it made me think about,
well, what about our children?
And I got some information that 75%
of our Indian children were dropping
out of school in Western Oklahoma,
and oh, my goodness, why is that?
Well, I remember because
I was dyslexic.
Well, I am dyslexic period.
And going to school, I was
really looking forward to it,
and I lived with my grandparents,
my Comanche grandparents,
because it was right after
the Great Depression,
and my Irish father went off
with the Okies to California,
and my mother worked
in Indian health
where you had to live
at the hospital.
And so it was most
wonderful thing living there,
and Comanche was our language,
first language, at home.
Papa couldn't speak English as
well, but he could curse in English,
and I grew up thinking
that Hoover's name,
this is after the Great Depression,
was that his first name
was "That Goddamn."
He was very loyal to Roosevelt
and he would go and vote.
I mean, you have to
imagine him with his --
they still wore traditional Comanche
clothes, his braids and earrings,
and he put yarn in his hair to
make it fuller and prettier,
but that cultural background
that they gave me has really --
the emphasis of helping me look
at people in a different way.
My grandmother was a Christian,
and Poppa was a peyote man,
in Eagle medicine, but there wasn't
any argument at home who was right.
There was no truth that you
didn't, and I asked Papa,
because the preachers, the ministers
would come and preach against people
like Papa, and I said, well,
that first made me start
questioning people in authority.
Why would a good person
like Papa be going to hell?
That's what they told us, and
so I asked him how did he feel,
make him feel?
And he said, "Oh, granddaughter,"
and he's talking to me and Comanche.
He said, "You should never take
anybody's religion away from them
because you will hurt them, but more
importantly, you'll hurt yourself."
So I grew up with that
appreciation off differences
and appreciated everybody's
points of view,
and I figured there isn't one truth.
There's a truth for me, and there's
a truth for you, and there's a truth
for everybody, has
different points of --
come to their truths
in a different way.
You know, the Comanches believed
that we were related to all things.
We knew before the scientists did
that we had had stardust in our DNA.
We were related to the
plants and animals,
and so our world view was inclusive.
We did feel bad that we had
to occasionally make raids
and capture people and
increase our population.
[ Laughter ]
But that just made a
stronger, you know?
We believed in integration.
[ Laughter ]
But I want to tell.
Fred was in the states, and I
used to go and watch states,
and now that was really a
lesson, and I got the University
of Oklahoma involved, and then they
were intellectuals in Oklahoma,
and so we were talking about black
problem/issues of civil rights
and labor unions, and I
said, "What about Indians?"
And they said, "Oh,
there's no Indian problem.
The Bureau of Indian affairs
is taking care of it."
And I burst into tears.
Burst into tears and
embarrassed myself
because I wasn't --
Fred was the voice.
I was not that articulate, but
to find out that the University
of Oklahoma, those outstanding
professors who are working
on human rights, didn't
know about Native Americans.
That was the first a-ha moment I
think I had, and it accompanied me
to this town, that the same thing
would happen here when you talk
to members of the Congress,
people in the cabinets,
and so we didn't studied
American history.
We studied Europeans coming to
the Americas, and so we found
out that nobody knew about us.
They didn't understand us
nor understand why/how we fit
into American society.
Most of them thought
that we were dead.
That John Wayne killed us
across from the Mississippi,
and it was always so shocking.
So I became a great
admirer of Lyndon Johnson,
who started the War on Poverty.
Well, first of all, he was the
first president to put language
in his presidential
address to Congress,
and then he was the
first one, imagine this,
to appoint an Indian head of
Indian affairs, Bob Bennett,
and I was there at the
ceremony, and he said, "Bob,
I want you to go to
the Smithsonian."
If you remember Lyndon Johnson's
a Texas vocabulary, and said,
"Go over to the Smithsonian get one
of those Indian clubs and come over
and knock all of the deadwood out
of the Department of Interior."
So I took him seriously.
[ Laughter ]
And so the War on Poverty,
the people we came
to know nationwide were products
of the War on Poverty Program
that Lyndon Johnson put out.
We were all community activists
like Ada Deere, Philip Martin,
Peterson Zom, Peter McDonald.
All those people came out of
the War on Poverty Program,
and it brought a whole other
form of leadership that came
out of the Indian country.
So that affected us, and so we kind
of gathered together and we tried
to help each other,
and then I served on,
Lyndon Johnson appointed this
fabulous thing that nobody
in the world had ever thought
of before, an Indian committee
of Chairmen of tribes to come and
sit with members of the cabinet.
He called it National
Indian Opportunity Counsel,
and they would sit with the
cabinet members and we would work
out what the problems were.
Well, he also appointed me
because I, at that time,
was concerned about urban Indian
issues, because was a major issue
that was part of relocating us.
And so there I am again and the Vice
President, Humphry, was our chair.
That was great.
And then, of course, the war
came along, and Nixon was then --
then we lost in the Vice-President.
He had to take some time
in jail I think it was.
[ Laughter ]
And so that wonderful
idea just disappeared,
and one of the things I
learned out of that was you have
to institutionalize the changes
we make the they were really
hard changes.
The Tawas Blue Lake
legislation came up.
Where the Tawas People of New
Mexico, Lance had been taken away
from them 80 years ago, and they
were up here fighting or trying
to get help for them, and
the little old White House,
what were they called?
The people that were
in the White House?
Interns. And so they came, and
Fred and I would have buffet dinner
for them or something because we
thought they were interesting.
Fred was well radical and I was
an Indian, and we were interesting
and they wanted to come see us.
[ Laughter ]
And so this young woman said,
just took a liking to me,
and I did to her, and as
we, in Indian country,
when you have that relation,
and she was my daughter,
and so she became Bobby
Greene-Kilbert,
who then got appointed to Nixon
White House, and she said,
"You should come to the
White House and tell them
about the Tawas Blue Lake,"
because she had worked on the Navajo
as an intern, and she
learned about Indians
and self-determination
and all those things.
I totally give her credit
for Nixon's self-determination
policy, Bobby Green-Kilbert.
She's here in Virginia,
not still a Republican,
but she wonderful person.
She still my daughter,
so I have to --
I just saw her in New
Mexico recently,
and she still calls me mom.
It's a beautiful relationship.
So we got Nixon to agree
to join with Fred Harris.
That's what was the big remarkable
thing, to fight for the --
and our sitting senator, Anderson,
was against giving the land back,
and so the senate protocol wouldn't
allow you to cross the senator,
because you'd want that
same protocol back to you.
So anyway, it turns out
we were able to work,
and we couldn't get
it out of committee.
Anderson was in control
of the committee.
This is how you learn how
Washington really works,
and we knew we had the
boats on the floor,
particularly with a White
House recommendation.
I remember they told us what
Republican senator to go to
and tell them that he
was to work with Fred,
and this young staffer said,
"My gosh, I just shook hands
with LaDonna Harris, and here
I am sitting with Fred Harris,
and I'm a Republican trying
to get something done."
But it made it nonpartisan, and
they passed the legislation.
There was a great celebration,
and that one success led
to two other major successes.
One was the Menominee termination.
Those were the whole thing
that Walter talked about,
what assimilation was the
national policy of the Indians.
Now remember the word assimilation.
Not integration but
assimilation because we need
to get rid of the Indian problem.
Fred used to say he
married his Indian problem.
But that whole idea was that
we would no longer exist.
They put blood [inaudible]
as a criteria.
They removed so many from
the East Coast to Oklahoma.
Indian boarding schools,
missionaries, The Allotment Act.
You know, in Oklahoma we
don't have reservations,
we were given 160 acres
to each family.
The Allotment Act was again reasoned
because that reservations
weren't working
because you can still get
together in a communal society
and work together and
work on solutions.
So Oklahoma was supposed to
be the Land of the Red Man,
and it was going to be totally an
Indian state, and they were going
to have elected officials come
to Washington until we found oil
on Indian land, and they decided
that they had open up Oklahoma.
So that kind of Allotment Act,
the Relocation Act was done
under the Eisenhower administration.
I don't think it was his policy, but
it's recommended again to take us
from our reservation life or
the allotments and take to work
in the auto parts or industry,
they just put truckloads
of us and dumped us in LA.
It was the largest, and still is,
I think, the largest settlement
of Indians, and this is
all in the 50s, I guess.
In my right in the date?
And that happened so that
Ada Deere came to town.
Wonderful Ada Deere, a Menominee
woman whose tribe had been
terminated, and she
didn't have any money.
They didn't have any
money, particularly to fight
for their cause, and so many
times, she would stay at our house
or with her other friends,
but we would have receptions
in the Senate building for the
Menominee people when they came
to town, and I feel like almost
single-handedly she walked
through the halls of Congress,
and when she would ask me
about termination that I didn't
really think we could stop
termination, or reestablish
Menominees.
I didn't think could do that.
I didn't think Congress would have
voted that way, but well, you know,
I was supporting of her and said to
her, "If you try, I'll be with you."
So she worked the halls of Congress,
and not only did Menominees
get reinstated as a tribe.
They made them into a county,
and they lost their hospital,
and they lost so many things by
that act, but they got reinstated
as a federally -- back to their
treaty status, and so they said
that they wouldn't have tried that,
had the house people hadn't won.
And then the Alaskan
claims came along.
Oil was discovered in Alaska,
and they hadn't decided,
after the United States
bought Alaska,
had decided what part
did the natives own.
The discovered oil and they
were about to develop it,
and one little Eskimo
came down and said,
and he even had a speech impediment,
and he said, "Well, you know,
they're going to pay us money
rather than giving us land."
He said, "We live off
the land still."
Well, you can't run to the grocery
store in Alaska and buy something.
You have to go out and hunt to feed
your family and to clothe yourself.
So Fred and I got involved with
that, and each of these cases, too,
because of the Civil Rights
Movement was so on everybody's mind,
we made it a civil rights
issue, not just an Indian issue.
A civil rights issue, a moral issue.
We got churches involved in helping
and again, Nixon signed the bill,
and I think they were about to
decide to have 10 million acres
and a whole bunch of money,
and we weren't paying attention
to the senators from Alaska were
doing, but with the turnout was,
that Fred was working
on getting more land.
So he introduced legislation for
60 million acres instead of the 10
that they were proposing,
and they got 40 million.
And so that was a great success.
They got 40 million acres
and some money, as well,
but we weren't watching
the Alaska delegation,
and they made corporations
out of them.
Remember now they've got these
corporations, and I really felt,
well, you know, they'll bumble
it up and we can buy them
out in a few minutes,
and now the majority
of those corporations
are doing really well.
There's one or 2 that
got in trouble,
but it's that personal thing I
just want to in some way share
with you what assimilation did
to us, and that whole thing
of Walter saying that
colonialization
of our minds was the worst
process that happens.
All we could do is react.
We'd have to react.
Everything in our lives
were controlled
by the Department of Interior.
Where we went to school, where
we lived, just everything.
You had to go to anything,
your health,
have to go through the
Department of Interior.
So after a while, we
became reactors,
because whatever policy came
down, we would react to it,
and unfortunately, many times
we'd make these speeches
and we'd call it Back
to the Buffalo Speeches.
You know, how brave we were
when we were out on the plains.
But then nothing would ever
happen because we were reacting
to what was proposed to us, so that
the hardest work that we have had
in the two major problems, the
first is the lack of knowledge
in the general public
about Native Americans,
and this is why this
is so important.
You just can't imagine.
We created a program called Indian
101, and still, today we use it
with members of the Congress,
with cabinet members,
with people who are going to
go work on the reservation,
is because they have not
been exposed to any history.
The Oklahoma history book
that I read it said, "Well,
there's five civilized tribes and
then there's those plains tribes."
That was actually the part
in the listing in the book,
but so it was getting out of
that colonial mindset has been the
hardest transition, and then having
to work with people because you have
to spend all your time educating
who it is you're working with,
and many times I fell into tears
because my grandmother said,
"Don't let them make you mad
because they'll defeat you.
Don't get mad."
She told me in Comanche, and she
said, "Well, just look at them
and say, "Well, bless their hearts.
They just don't know."
So that's what I've had to
do so many times is just look
at those professors at OU or look
at the members of the Congress.
Oh, you're gonna make
me get off the stage.
[ Laughter ]
I think I've overrun my time.
Hopefully you'll come
back and we'll have --
>> Letitia: It's all been so
interesting that everybody wants
to keep hearing, but
we do need to move on.
>> LaDonna: So I hope
you'll come back afterwords
and we can have some
more discussion.
Thank you very much.
[ Applause ]
>> Letitia: LaDonna is
always so fascinating,
and her stories make you
feel like you're there
when things are happening.
She's just wonderful, and we
could listen to her all day long.
[ Applause ]
Our next speaker is Tim Tingle.
Tim is in Oklahoma Choctaw.
He actually grew up, part of his
life, in Texas, but we won't hold
that against him, and he, as a
young man, went back to Oklahoma
and began collecting Choctaw
stories, and he was inspired
by his great-great grandfather, who
had walked to the Trail of Tears
and wanted to know more
about his tribe heritage,
and he has done some
historical research.
He took a master's in English
literature at the University
of Oklahoma, and he has written
several books, for adults
and for children, and he's
won a Children's Book Award,
and one of his children's books was
a New York Times Editorial Pick,
and he's best known,
though, as a story teller.
The oral tradition of Indian country
is something that Tim excels.
So he both writes and gives us
oral history, and he's going
to talk today partially about his
latest book, House of Purple Cedar,
and he'll be signing it later.
So Tim.
[ Applause ]
>> Tim: Thank you.
It is an incredible honor to be here
with these distinguished speakers.
Let's give Donna Harris
another round of applause.
Every one of us could have
listened to her all evening long.
[ Applause ]
My friend and I, Greg Rogers,
who is my closest writing buddy,
and those of you who
are writers know
that every rider needs
a writing buddy.
Someone who sees what you write
before it goes to anyone else.
Someone who's part of the culture.
He was also an Oklahoma Choctaw.
Someone who will fuss at you, cuss
at you, slam the phone down at you,
and you recognize that
telling the truth.
So in a couple of moments I want
to sing amazing grace and Choctaw
as a way of honoring Greg Rogers,
who is here with us today in spirit.
A few days before Christmas,
walked to the other side.
But LaDonna opened the door
with a little bit of humor.
Choctaws are very serious people,
but we started a Choctaw tradition
at the book festival, the National
Book Festival this past year,
and the tradition is whenever
a Choctaw speaks at the Library
of Congress, he will always put on
a ceremonial Choctaw headdress given
to him by the chief beforehand, and
since it's Susan Feller's birthday,
she will later receive
the ceremonial headdress
that I have kept here for
you by the Choctaw chief.
[ Laughter and Applause ]
It's an element of humor, but
there's another level to it.
We are a modern people.
We have survived, and when you
speak of the misrepresentation,
I was raised in the
Texas Gulf Coast,
and I knew from the
time before the time
that I even attended him entry
school that I would be a writer.
I didn't know there was such a
thing as a storytelling profession,
although when I worked with my dad
on a pipeline in Virginia in 1969,
before going to Woodstock,
my dad told me
after working 7 days
a week 10 hours a day,
at the end of his forebearing,
me in Ahee, he said, "Son,
you better figure out a way
to make a living talking,
because that's all
you know how to do."
[ Laughter ]
It was decades later
before I recognized
that was my father's Choctaw
blessing for me as a storyteller.
What could I do?
[ Singing 'Amazing
Grace' in Choctaw ]
It is our national song,
our national anthem
of the Choctaw people, and
it was sung by John Corns,
which is the name we know him.
I'm sure he had another Choctaw
name before he began his walk
with the family on the
Trail of Tears in 1830.
I knew from having heard the story
of his surviving the Trail of Tears
and carrying his mother's
bones to be buried
in Oklahoma, The Land
of the Red Man.
I had heard that story
from early on.
I had also heard the story in the
backyard of my grandmother's house
and Strawberry Road
in Pasadena, Texas,
how she level with my Scot-Irish
grandfather, and part of the reason
of her leaving was fear for her
safety in Oklahoma at the time.
It was late in the 1920s before
it was finally legal in Oklahoma
for an American Indian
to testify or speak
out in any legal proceeding what
so ever, against a white man,
which made it very, very dangerous,
and if discovering oil was a
dangerous thing for Indian people,
so was the railroad
when it came through.
My grandmother was so excited,
and as the family story goes,
when she first arrived in
the home on Strawberry Lane
in Pasadena, they had 50 acres.
They had livestock.
They had cattle.
They were to plant strawberries, and
she stepped out her first morning
on the front porch of the new
home, and just as she had done
at Goodland Academy, they said
she would wander down to the tiny,
little lake on Goodland
Academy and greet the sun
and sing the song I just sang
for you and help the sun arise.
She stepped out as the sun
was rising over the elm trees
across the road and began to
sing Amazing Grace in Choctaw
when she was pelted with
rocks by neighborhood kids
who didn't want an Indian.
Their parents had told them
an Indian was coming to live
in a neighborhood, and they pelted
her with rocks and cut her face,
and she stumbled back
inside the house.
It was 50 years before she would
ever step out that front door again
for a family photograph when people
realized she would not be with us
that much longer, but two
years before her death,
she was blind for half a
century, she had never seen any
of her grandkids, but two
years before her death,
she received a cornea
transplant, and for the first time,
she was able to see
42 grandchildren.
We were lined up on the door.
The door of the long corridor of
hospital, and my Aunt Bobby said,
as she walked inside, "She wants
you to go in one at a time,
but she wants to try to guess who
you are, but be sure to tip-toe.
If you don't, she'll know who you
are by the sound of your footsteps."
[ Laughter ]
She'll know who you are by
the sound of your footsteps.
So I knew I had two stories I wanted
to tell, I wanted to write about.
So I began to travel
where Choctaws were,
and I began to interview
Choctaws, and I discovered Spiro,
and I discovered the
town that used to be
which is now our Choctaw
National Cemetery.
There's almost no building there,
and I began to research,
and I began to write.
And I found out that the
railroad leaving St. Louis
to travel to the West Coast.
The first railroad cutting
through Oklahoma had announced
that it would stop at Skullyville,
which was boom town at the time.
It was a little over 100 years ago.
Boom town is the top
tale word meaning money.
Skullyville.
Money town.
There were Main Street,
hardware stores.
There were grocery stores.
There were businesses
clothing stores.
It's Skullyville!
Money town.
But there were illegal immigrants
in the nearby town of Spiro.
There were white people who had
no legal status being there.
But the Choctaws tolerated them,
but when they heard of the decision
to stop the railroad at Skullyville,
they wanted the railroad.
They began to hire people
and burn Choctaw homes down,
and burn Choctaw businesses
down, and intimidate Choctaw,
and threaten Choctaws,
until finally,
it came down to New Year's Eve
1896, when all the little girls
at a school called New Hope Academy.
Now New Hope is a beautiful,
beautiful graveyard.
New Hope Academy, all
the little girls came,
and they all brought special
gift that they had made
for their boyfriends from a nearby
male Indian boarding school,
and they would all gather on New
Year's Eve and have all day parties,
which meant that all the
girls would be there.
It was burned to the
ground by arsonists
who wanted the Choctaws gone,
and 20 girls lost their lives,
and the Choctaw saw that this
level of evil would be brought
down upon us, the Choctaw left and
let them have it, and to this day,
if you walk down Main
Street in Spiro,
where I'll be this time next
week leading a tour of teachers
who are teaching House of Purple
Cedar, and I'll be leaving a tour
of people to the places
where the stories happened.
If you walk down the three
city blocks of Main Street,
at the end of it, it still stops.
It's still there, and when
we talk about the path ahead,
one of the themes of our gathering
tonight, let me encourage you,
every, every, every one of you,
every one of your, every one of us,
we have stories we have kept hidden.
Too many ghosts still
linger in the graveyards.
It's time we speak of Skullyville.
The path ahead is the path of truth.
You first open the door
and shine the light
and allow the truth to be seen.
We are here.
We have always been here.
We are people of the earth,
of the rivers, of the tress,
of the foliage, of the corn.
We have always been here.
Let them see us.
Let them know you, and open the
door and share your stories to those
who come after [native
language spoken].
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Letitia: Thank you,
Tim, for that moving story,
and thank you to all
of our speakers.
Each giving us both illumination
and reason to reflect and pause
and think about the civil rights
in the American Indian communities.
We're going to take a break now.
>> Speaker 1: We are getting ready
to the second half of this program,
which is a roundtable discussion
featuring our four panelists
and our able moderator
Latisha Chambers.
So we're going to spend
roughly 30 minutes, 35 minutes,
after which time the folks
whose books you bought,
and I assume you've all bought
several copies, will be available
for signing out in the lobby.
So thank you again for coming
and listening, and I'll turn it
over to Letitia Chambers right now.
Thank you, Letitia.
>> Letitia: Well, we're delighted
that so many of you came back
for the question and answer
session of the program.
We thought that we would give you a
chance to ask questions as opposed
to our asking questions
of each other,
which we hope you have some thoughts
and questions you'd like to share
with us, and does anybody
want to begin the effort?
If not, oh, yes, right --
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
>> Audience Speaker: To
assist in this going forward.
You've done so much work
in the legal [inaudible].
>> Walter: Yes, that's
a good question.
It was what can we do to help
usher in the human rights era
of federal Indian law, and I
think that this ACLAM organization
as a collection of our tribal
archives, libraries, and museums,
through all of the
cultural institutions,
indigenous cultural
institutions that are represented
in that wonderful organization
holds in their hands, you know,
the treasures of cultural heritage
and treasures of Native America,
and I do believe that it's going
to take all sectors of society
to move forward into
this human rights era,
and I think there's a role for
museums and archives and libraries
at all cultural institutions.
Tribally operated institutions as
well as non-tribal institutions,
as well, to educate themselves.
To educate the public, you know,
about the parlance of human rights
and up in Canada, for
example, the First Nations
and their leaders are very
conversant in the language
of human rights, and there's already
been some 19 or 20 cases brought
in by First Nations
into the Canadian courts
that raised this UN declaration on
the rights of indigenous peoples
and a broad array of treaty rights
and all kinds of sovereignty rights
and Indian child welfare rights,
inmate rights, the whole array,
beginning a judicial discourse
in the language of human rights
for Canadian aboriginal law, and
we here, in the United States,
are a couple of steps behind them
in charting that new territory.
But I think that our institutions
are a bridge between cultures,
and we have an education task at
hand, you know, in the language
of human rights and how that
we need to begin I dialogue,
a national dialogue about the
nature and content of human rights
for Native Americans, and
our country has never had
such a dialogue in the same way
that our society looked at questions
of slavery and discrimination
against black America and took
that on as a serious
national discussion,
and I think we need now this
UN declaration opens the door
for a dialogue of that nature,
and so that we can bring
to the fore the nature and
content of indigenous human rights
that I think are the new order
of the day, and certainly,
every institution
that is represented here tonight
would have a good, important role
in that education process,
as we move towards
that new legal framework, you know?
>> Letitia: Thank you,
Walter, and I think that's
such an important question,
and I'm going to ask Tim
to also respond to it.
>> Tim: That was a
wonderful question,
and in terms of moving ahead,
if we truly want the battles
to continue generations, it
really starts in the home.
I spent the last week at our
Choctaw Labor Day Celebration.
It's our national holiday that
really begins several days before.
I had a booth and was doing some
signing, visiting with people back
and forth, and I had a little boy
come up, and he was dressed well,
and he spoke intelligently,
and he picked up one
of my books, and said, "Is it free?"
And I said, "You know,
well, let me see."
And I was visiting with some
people, and I walked him around,
and I was going to give him the
book, and I opened the book,
and it's a K through first/early
childhood read-aloud book,
and I said, "Just read
the first sentence."
And I was going to let him
read the first sentence.
Then I was going to sign
it and give him the book,
and I said, "What grade are you in?"
He said, "I'm in the second grade."
And I said, "Here open it and
just read the first sentence."
He took the book, and the way
he opened the book let me know
that he was unfamiliar
with opening books.
He opened it this way, and
he kind of turned it around,
and he twisted it, and
I opened and I put it
in his hand the way you
hold the book, and I said,
"Just read the first sentence."
and he looked at it, and he looked
at me, and he put the book down,
and he started running off and he
stopped and he said, "I can't read."
And he ran away.
And he was an intelligent young boy.
We have to make sure
our children can read.
When Walter and I spoke
earlier during an interview,
one of the things we had in common
is our families all had reading.
We could all read before
we ever attended school.
The fight begins in the home,
and it begins with reading.
Okay.
>> Letitia: Okay, anybody else on
the panel want to comment on this?
>> LaDonna: The one who
failed the first grade.
[ Laughter ]
All of these learned men.
[ Laughter ]
Well, it was a traumatic experience
similar to this young man.
I'm very dyslexic.
Terribly dyslexic, but nobody knew
the term when I was going to school,
but I was going to school and
very happy to go to school,
and I was living with my
grandparents, my sister and I,
my aunts and uncles and my
cousins lived down the road.
You know, there was always
a house full of kids,
relatives, and so it just was that.
Our house was always alive with
activity, and I went to school,
and met Dick and Jane whose
first book was Dick and Jane.
Remember Dick and Jane?
Well, that was what
America looked like.
That's what we were taught, and that
wasn't the way my home looked like,
and I said, "Oh, my gosh."
And it really broke my
heart, and I went and worried
about it and worried about it.
I went in the cellar and cried.
You know, I wasn't living
with my mother and dad.
You know, we had cats and
dogs but we didn't have --
it was just the whole idea that
something was wrong with me.
That's what I got out
of Dick and Jane.
Something was wrong with me because
we weren't living the American way.
That kind of startled me and
made me uncomfortable, and also,
with my dyslexia, I'd have to
figure out, we had flash cards
in those days, and I would figure
out, remember what the specks
on the flash cards so I
could remember the letter.
And so I really, literally,
had to educate myself.
I would always make
friends with the teacher,
let them know that I learned
what they were teaching me,
but I couldn't spell enough to
pass a test, or well enough,
but it gave me, it
was a disadvantage
but it also gave me an advantage
to you are stoic and, you know,
you don't show feelings, and that
was the way we were portrayed,
but it was really reading you to see
if you were going to be kind or not,
or if you would be treated
properly or treated fairly.
So that was kind of one
of the things I learned,
and so became very valuable
to Fred's political activity,
because I would read
people while he was talking,
and then he would ask my
opinion about what did I think
of this person or that person, and
it became a very valuable tool now
with the new innovation
of electronics,
I'm losing my medicine very fast
because everybody's
not looking at me.
They're looking at -- picking out
something, but just, at one time,
Oklahomans for Indian
Opportunity, which we organized,
we had the teachers
act as Indian children,
and the Indian children act like
teachers, leave the teachers place,
role change, and so that the
Indian kids made its teachers cry.
The teachers didn't realize
what they were saying was cruel.
Actually, the child perceived it
to be cruel and made them unhappy.
They didn't realize that, and
they felt really uncomfortable,
and we had to stop the play acting,
but the children were just
repeating how they felt,
how the teacher was talking to
them, and so we started at looking
at what causes that again,
and all of our grandparents
and parents all went to
Indian boarding schools,
which was forcing us, again
a form of assimilation,
literally marshals taking us
out of the arms of our parents.
I didn't have that experience, but
my grandparents and mother did,
and putting them in boarding schools
200, 300 miles from their homes.
Papa ran away from boarding schools.
Grandmother wanted to go to
school, but her aunt got sick,
and she had to go help her.
But it's that kind of, you
know, it's not on purpose.
It's not on purpose, but some way,
if you think you're right all
the time, you're probably not.
You know, just if you think you know
the answers to everything or how
to read people debates, I think
that's such a Euro-American attitude
that the way we look at things is
the right way, and it's so hard
to overcome, and for
us, it's painful.
I'm getting bogged down.
Say something.
[ Laughter ]
>> Audience Speaker:
Well, just real quickly,
the only real quick thing I
would add is what I've learned
by listening to these three folks
is if you're in an institution
like a library, an
archive, or a museum,
go do a little oral history project.
Like even if it's just five
interviews, and listen.
Oral history is not
really about asking clever
or important-sounding questions,
it's about listening to elders
in particular, and that's I think
the really concrete thing people
can do.
>> Betsy: Thank you, we had a
question out here, right here,
and we'll come to you next.
>> Audience Speaker:
Hi, thank you so much.
So I'm really interested
in self-care and, like,
staying healthy, and especially
with the activism that we do,
it can get really tiring.
So I kind of have a
more practical question.
Like for whoever it speaks to,
but what do you do in your life,
little things that are practical
that help you stay
healthy and happy?
>> Walter: Wander.
>> LaDonna: Well, that's
an interesting question.
I'm interested in how Walter
keeps his lean figure.
[ Audience Laughter ]
>> Walter: That's a good question.
I never thought I would
live to be this old.
I've outlived my father and all
of my uncles, you know, before me,
and I would have to get better care
of myself had I known I would live
to be a white-headed,
old man, you know.
But I think that, even though I'm
not a leading, cutting-edge person
on that, but I hold to our food
sovereignty, eating healthy,
indigenous foods, and that kind
of thing, I think is very healthy.
The foods that we eat,
the foods that we grow,
rather than being dependent
on other sources of food
of different qualities
from different cultures.
I was recently in the last
year or so in The Middle East
at [inaudible], country of Qatar,
right next to Saudi Arabia,
and the tribes there, three
tribes, are all very wealthy,
and they run that kingdom, and they
all live in really fancy haciendas
and drive luxury cars and coming
up from goat herders,
I guess, from 1970.
But the odd thing about this.
Ultra-modern state is
they're completely dependent
on other nations for their food
supply, and not hardly a blade
of grass grows there, and they
have a very short water supply
and almost 100% dependent on food
from other nations, and so I think
that we're blessed with a land base.
We're blessed with a relationship
to the animals and plants, you know,
and our cultures that have
sprung from the soil in this part
of Mother Earth, and we do have our
food sovereignty and/or land base,
and I think we should grow our own
and be healthy in that fashion.
>> Tim: My Choctaw mom offered me
something last year that's been
very valuable.
She told me that I really
needed to be watching my weight.
So I had my glasses fixed, and
I can see it so much better now.
[ Laughter ]
>> Letitia: I want to take a segue
before we go to the next question
that changes the topic a little bit.
One of the things that we did
at ATALM just today was we had an
Institute on language preservation,
and one of the, you
know, LaDonna was talking
about when she started school,
there were a lot of Indian kids
who didn't speak English, who grew
up speaking their native language,
and so they went to school and
they were at a disadvantage
because they didn't know
English as well as their peers.
Now a lot of native
kids start school,
and they don't know
their native language,
and their parents no longer speak.
Their grandparents may
speak the native language,
and so much of culture is
expressed through your words,
through your language, that many
people are now very concerned
about cultural preservation
of the tribes and the cultures
of the tribes, because
language is disappearing.
So it was an advantage not
to speak the native language
for those first graders who weren't
given any help when they went school
and were, in fact,
discriminated against in school,
and so children were, their
parents didn't want them to speak,
in some cases, because they wanted
their kids to be able to do well.
Walter, you spoke recently about
the last living Pawnee speaker.
What do you think is going
to happen in Indian country
if we lose a majority of languages.
>> Walter: Well, I think it
would be a devastating loss
to our human diversity
to see America's indigenous
languages disappear, and it is,
in my view, a human rights crisis.
The government worked long and
hard for many decades to stamp
out our indigenous languages,
and after having worked
to eradicate them while we have
many tribal languages that now lie
on their deathbed, and the
government now has come
out with the natives languages
legislation espousing a national
policy to rush in and rescue and
preserve these endangered languages
but the government hasn't put enough
money into it to allow every tribe
that wants to restore their language
to his formal proficiency, to do so,
and my tribe being an
example of not getting a dime
from these language programs
to save our language,
and we had our last fluent speaker
passed away just a few months ago,
but the UN declaration on the
rights of indigenous people
that I mentioned earlier
addresses the inherent human right
of indigenous peoples to speak their
language and to have an education
in their own cultures and
in their own language.
So this is basically a human rights
era issue, and we need to look
at this whole language crisis
through the lens of human rights
and respond to the rescue of
these endangered languages,
created by the federal government as
a human rights matter and look at it
and understand it through the lens
of that human rights perspective.
>> LaDonna: I'd like to add to
that because maybe you don't know
that in those Indian boarding
schools that you were punished.
You couldn't -- they didn't speak
establish, but they were punished
if they spoke their own language,
and my little grandmother who wanted
to learn, she couldn't remember
our yes or no was the answer.
So she got a whipping
physically whipped,
and then the older children took
them down in the Covian at night,
and would teach them in Comanche
to recite the next day in English.
So what was the right answer,
and so that it a horrible damage
to a generation of people, and
those people then didn't want their
children to be punished.
They remember being punished
in the Indian boarding schools,
and they didn't want
their kids to be punished.
So they didn't encourage them
in their language, and again,
it was that part of assimilation
not to speak, and it just hurt me
to hear somebody criticize Jeb Bush,
because he could speak Spanish.
He's married to a Hispanic,
and they criticize him,
saying "You're supposed
to speak English."
Can you just imagine,
what we thinking
about when we want
just have one language,
and there is an organization that
goes around the country saying
that we should have English first.
Well, English is first.
But it's a loss jewel to lose any
language, our peoples' culture.
But I'm sure that I'm
talking to the --
>> Betsy: The converted already.
>> Letitia: To the choir.
That's yours.
I've got one.
Okay, we're going to go out
here to this young woman here.
>> Audience Speaker: Thank you.
>> Letitia: You're next.
>>Audience Speaker: I had
a question in response
to Walter Echo Hawk's mentioning
of Canada, and that we need to kind
of look to Canada as the example.
Canada's legal system is,
by nature, very comparative.
They take other nations and they
recognize what they do as unique,
and they appreciate it, and the
United States, unfortunately,
is not as comparative by nature.
We tend to look to ourselves for
our own legal precedence, and so,
do you think that we can get to
that point where we are comparative
and where we are more appreciative
of Native Americans, and if so,
what do you think it will
take in order to get there?
1.
>> Walter: In Canada?
It seems to me the grass
always looks greener
on the other side of the pasture.
I was up in Canada a few years back,
and the nation's capital, Ottawa,
and all on the mainstream
media, you know,
was First Nations this,
First Nations that.
You know, and very well
publicized in the public media,
and I thought to myself, you
know, we're totally ignored
and invisible here in the
US, and I've recently been
up to British Columbia, where
a pitched legal battles going
on over indigenous
rights, in that province,
and I think that there's a lot of
very vigorous First Nation legal
and social justice
activity going on here.
Whereas down here in the
U.S. we're more concerned
with playing video games and going
to the local casino, I guess,
of social justice movements.
You know, and we've
benefited greatly here
from the Idle No More movement,
and leadership from Canada.
Leadership of the first nations
on embracing and being able
to articulate indigenous human
rights, and I think that we need
to learn from our relatives up
north about all of the above,
you know, and collaborate more.
I think the world is
getting smaller,
and you may think we're
more advanced down here,
but I think the First Nation
tribes are more active
than we are down here.
I feel that I would like to
see us not be complacent.
Not take our native rights for
granted, and continue to strive
to improve our lives
here in our own country.
You know, but I don't know if that
answers your question, you know,
but there was a young women here.
I don't know if she's here this
evening, that, for example, said,
"We don't NAGPRA statute in Canada,
and we really need one," she said.
And she said, "You guys
got that back in 1990."
And wanted to visit me about
something like that in Canada,
and I think that cross-mortar
collaboration is healthy, you know,
because I would hope that every
nation that has colonial collections
of native cultural property have
a NAGPRA sort of a social policy
with regard to those collection.
>> Letitia: Okay, back here.
>> Audience Speaker: First
of all, I just wanted to say
that I'm from San Francisco.
It's not where I'm originally
from, but it's where I came
to as an adult, and in San Francisco
we have the International Indian
Tree Council office where I was
able to interview a lot of people
on a radio show in San
Francisco called KPOO,
and it's been on the year for
43 years, and I want to say
that every single one of you sitting
up there has been so inspiring,
and I wanted to just thank you
all for all the information
and all your hard work through all
these years, because we wouldn't be
where we are today without the
work, the humor, the laughter,
the inspiration, the writings,
the readings, and the just being
so inspiring to all of us
who are listening tonight.
Maybe not knowing you for the first
time, I'm lucky enough to at least
that all three of the four of you.
Malinda, we're meeting tonight.
So I've been doing shows on
Roberson County for a long time.
So, you know, even though we
personally haven't met, we're still.
All right, thank you very much.
>> LaDonna: Thank you.
>> Walter: Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Betsy: Well-deserved
words for our panelists.
Thank you so much for saying them.
Over here.
Right here.
>> Audience Speaker: Walter,
I was kind of wondering if,
I had saw on Facebook at one point
where the indigenous people
were fighting for the pipeline.
You know, blocking the pipeline of
the oil through indigenous land.
Now can those Native Americans
go to the United Nations and say,
"We need help defending
our property.
We need help to support
our human rights,
because that is our homeland.
That is our spiritual
sacred grounds.
Those are means of survival."
Is that a part of the new
ruling with the United Nations
and the indigenous culture?
>> Walter: I think that the
UN declaration on the rights
of indigenous peoples, what it
does is it goes to the modern body
of international human rights
law and pulls from that body
of law the norms and
customary international law,
and it pulls the human rights treaty
provisions out of that larger body
of law, and sticks all of that in
this UN declaration on the rights
of indigenous peoples,
so that the human rights
of indigenous peoples will be
recognized on the same basis
as the rest of humanity already has
under international
human rights law.
The legal status of that
is that it's a declaration,
and international law is not
legally binding documents
that federal courts must
enforce, but rather,
a statement of principles, trends, I
guess, UN encourages member nations
to embrace, and it directs
the government to sit
down with indigenous peoples to
fully implement each and every one
of those minimum human
rights standards
in collaboration with native people.
The ball is in native peoples' court
to come forward to the government,
to sit down with the government,
to say you've endorsed this.
We need to work on a national
plan to implement this.
In the meantime, litigators
that file lawsuits
in federal court can look to
these norms because a norm
in international law
automatically becomes a part
of the federal common law,
and a federal court can force
that to the same degree that it
can enforce federal common law.
Most of our legal principles in
federal Indian law are nothing more
than federal common law, and also,
by embracing these standards,
we're simply effectuating giving
effect existing United States treaty
obligations under UN treaties
that our country is signatory to.
If that were part of, and today,
litigators and advocates can point
to this human rights
document, and these standards
in issues such as the pipeline.
If that pipeline is going to destroy
indigenous habitat, property,
indigenous cultural areas, holy
places, all of that is addressed
in this document as inherent
indigenous human rights,
and advocates can add that to their
arsenal of arguments, you know,
to oppose intrusive and
destructive environmental insults,
you know, such as that pipeline.
>> Betsy: Okay, another question.
Right here.
>> Audience Speaker:
Yeah, I'm just following
up the idea of the video games.
In some European cultures,
especially, say, Catalonia,
video games in the native language
that you're pushing and trying
to preserve have been very
helpful, because it engages,
the obsessive compulsiveness
of kids.
I'm not saying that to be humorous.
It can work, because not everybody
is in the position of the Hopis
where they have enough fluid the
grandparents to drop the babies off
when they go to work,
which is the ideal.
>> Tim: It's happening.
There's the beginning of native
language that's being taught
in this country through video games.
It is on the birthing stages.
>> LaDonna: And I would
like to comment
that this year, AOI
went international.
Half of their class is
U.S. Native indigenous.
We had to learn to say indigenous,
and then half of our class is
from other indigenous people
I knew from Japan, from Samoa.
Not American Somoa, but Somoa,
the Miry, Bolivia and Peru,
and our trip, our international
trip, was to go to Ecuador
where Ecuador has been fighting
these internationals oil companies
that have polluted their waterways,
and these are the Ecuadorians
who are in Amazon area, and
so that that oil has gotten
into the water supply, killing
their plants and their animals,
the fish, everything is dying.
A delegation of our group went
and saw that the trees were
in leaching oil out of the sap was
oil, and they won the battle going
through the UN courts, won 15 times,
but Chevron just kept coming back,
but they finally beat them again,
and hopefully, that's the last time,
so that they won the case against --
they didn't come and clean
up the mess that they made.
So that it's happening
all over the language
of the Miry people of New Zealand.
They started the cottages, started
from home, and then enlarged,
and now they have a university.
The classes are taught in Miry,
and that has inspired them all to,
they have parliament government,
and they could have send Miry
in the parliament, but now they
have 27 people in the parliament.
Their language, with
our ambassadors program,
we've found when they
embrace their tribal culture,
they have so much more
confidence and capability.
You know, we were told, "Well,
we live in two different worlds."
And I said, "No, we don't.
We live in one world.
Two worlds will make you
schizophrenic for one thing."
You can't just be Indian and go on
the reservation or in your homeland
and cross the street, the road,
and if you don't take your culture
with you than what are you?
And so that's the whole movement.
In Bolivia we now have, there's an
indigenous resident that's changing,
and the how he got into office
was the fight over water.
That they were going to
privatize water in Bolivia,
and just imagine any
indigenous person thinking
that somebody could own water,
and there was an uprising
with the people, and
that's how he got elected.
So that's why we need to
talk to each other, too,
is that how do we not
only help ourselves
but help the world
environmentally and collectively?
What's a new road?
If we look around us, and so sad.
Sometimes I feel like I'm crying
every day when I'm watching the news
about what's happening,
and then you think
about those colonial governments
who are now having those people
that they colonialized come and
want to be in the towns that are
in the countries that colonial lies
to them, because their countries are
so poor after they've taken much
of the wealth from it to Europe.
Now they're coming to Europe.
And so, we as Americans, we
need to think about that.
What does that mean?
What's going on?
It's happening worldwide,
and there's so much chaos,
and what is our judgment about that?
And then embracing diversity
this is a wonderful thing.
We think we're smart.
You know, we're American Indians,
and we're going to be smarter
than those in Bolivia, and then
we come back, and we learn so much
from them and feel so enriched
by their continuous following
of their own cultural beliefs.
So I just encourage you
all to think about that
when you're listening to the news.
You know, just go and listen
to these other tribal
classes in the languages.
I just got a doctor's degree
from Sinte Gleska College,
which is a Bible College of the
Rosebud, and just the ceremony
in the language and culture
was the most important part.
And it just makes everybody
feel good.
They were proud students.
They were going places, going
to do things, and the whole idea
of revitalizing our cultures would
really be helpful to the U.S.,
and so everybody should
be hoping to do it,
because that's what the world is.
It's like we're everyplace
in the world.
So, I don't know.
I'm getting preachy
now, so I better quit.
>> Letitia: So we have
another question back here.
[ Native Language Spoken ]
>> Audience Speaker: I apologize,
my elders were speaking before you,
but I want to ask the question.
How do we for this agenda?
I work in a tribal college.
I hopefully empower students
with language and culture.
My lodge sister today was
fighting in Minnesota Supreme Court
for our right to harvest wild rice.
We do water walks with
Grandmother Josephine
around the lakes and
down the rivers.
My family gets up our
weekends to do this work.
We're very busy Indians, and all of
us can the same truth in this room.
We are very busy people.
How can we further this
agenda to make sure
that our grandchildren
can speak the language?
That we can share the good ways that
we know how to live with this land
with the people who might
not be as willing to listen
as we would like them to be?
Is there some advice that you could
possibly share with us please?
>> Letitia: This is going
to be our last question
because our time is now
up, and so I'm going to ask
which of our panelists would
like to take this question
and give an answer.
>> Walter: I'll take a stab.
I think you're talking about, in my
view the writing the last chapter
on the Civil Rights Movement
through the work of our generation
and maybe the next to bring
Native America within the ambit
of human rights, our human rights
heritage in this nation, you know,
that we can all work together
as Americans of good will,
so that we can rectify, say,
misdeeds of our ancestors during
the growth of this nation.
Confronting our inner demons
and coming to a reconciliation
and hopefully implementing these
human rights or extending them
to the First Peoples of
the county, you know,
so that all of us can stand
together in the light of justice.
>> LaDonna: I'd like to make one
other point along those lines,
because, well, the Comanches
didn't think too much of the Crows.
They were way up north,
but the Crows,
bless their hearts,
those Crow people.
No, I'm praising them.
I'm praising them.
They adopted President
Obama, and by gosh,
the given the Indian
[inaudible] better than I can,
but they adopted them and they
took it seriously, and they,
the Obama Administration
has appointed more Indians
in the federal system, and some of
those that you saw are part of that,
then all other presidents of
the United States put together.
I just think of that one deed.
Of all the presidents
of the United States,
Obama has appointed more Indians,
and I think it's that relationship
that the Crows gave, that
kinship that they gave him,
they have visited the reservations
and they have done more.
They're doing more for our children.
It's just a beautiful action.
So we need to institutionalize what
he has started and have it thought
through as the next
administration came.
That's one of the things
that we found
out that we think we
got something fixed,
and the next administration
come, it's all gone.
So we did that with Clinton.
We talked to Clinton and he agreed
with us to recognize tribes,
to put them as part
of the inner-governmental
affairs in the White House.
And our point was that
we are governments.
We are not, like, its women's groups
or different other social groups.
We are governments.
So we need to be in the White
House, and he said, "Okay."
And he agreed to it,
and he appointed this lovely
African-American women in charge
of it, and I mean, at least we could
go over to the White House and talk
to her, and then she quit.
Then he appointed this wonderful
lawyer, but again, what I'm saying,
and then so when the
Obama Administration came,
people that made that appointment,
they didn't think it was important.
Oh, well, first of all,
I rang up Clinton's staff
and said, "What have you done?
You know, here we have fought
so hard to be recognized
by the White House that
we are governments,
and then you all have
given it away."
So we need to think about, how do
we institutionalize these changes
that these civil rights movements?
Because the next ministration
will come along.
Even George W. Bush had
somebody in that office.
>> Letitia: It's a really
good point that I get the call
to action for the future.
[ Laughter ]
We are going to end here, but
I've promised Tim the last word.
>> Tim: No, not the last words.
I just want 14 seconds that's all.
So begin to count.
>> Letitia: Okay.
>> Tim: Just a little seed dropping.
If we truly want non-Indian
community to understand anything,
truthfully, about what we are,
consider putting together
delegations of people
that can communicate easily
with people across the line.
Send them out to public schools.
Let them know.
And I'm not say November
is the right month,
but it is the right month, according
to the public schools in America.
That's when they want -- put
together delegations of people
and here's -- don't send people
all in traditional clothing,
because if you do, you're feeding
them the same stereotypes they see
in the picture books.
Maybe someone in traditional
clothing
but someone dressed
like Walter Echo Hawk.
No, I'm serious.
I'm not kidding.
I'm not kidding.
Sent delegations out
across the lines,
outside of our national
reservation communities today.
Let them know we're here.
We're alive.
Bless you all, yeah.
>> Letitia: Okay.
[ Applause ]
>> David: Can we have a hand
for our panelists please?
Keep it going, thank you.
And you'll get a chance to talk to
them a bit more out in the lobby
in the central area where they
will be signing their books.
So if you haven't already major
purchases, which I've been talking
about over and over again, please
do so, and thank you very much.
See you all at the conference.
Thank you for coming to the
National Library of Congress.
>> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at LOC.gov.