0:07

Hello and welcome to the Mapping the Doctrine of Discovery podcast.

0:10

The producers of this podcast would like to acknowledge with respect the Onondaga Nation firekeepers of the Haudenosaunee, the indigenous peoples on whose ancestral lands Syracuse University now stands, and now introducing your hosts, phil Arnold and Sandy Bigtree.

0:32

Welcome back everyone to Mapping the Doctrine of Discovery.

0:35

My name is Phil Arnold.

0:38

I'm faculty in the Religion Department at Syracuse University, poor faculty in Native American Indigenous Studies and the founding director of the Scano Great Law Peace Center.

0:49

And I'm Sandy Bigtree, a citizen of the Mohawk Nation at Akwesasne.

0:53

I'm on the collaborative of the Indigenous Values Initiative and the Scano Great Law Peace Center.

1:02

And we're brought to you today by the Henry Luce Foundation, who are supporting these podcasts and this work in the Doctrine of Discovery.

1:11

Really appreciate the Henry Luce Foundation.

1:14

Today we're blessed really to have an old friend with us, old friend with us, professor Tink Tinker, who has been a stalwart in Native American issues for decades and decades and one of the primary features of his work has always been on the excesses of Christianity among Native American peoples.

1:44

So, tink, thanks for coming and I'll let you introduce yourself to our audience.

1:52

Always good to be with both of you, sandy and Phil Bindi.

1:56

W'jaju tsele gwamato wonton.

1:58

I'm a citizen of the Osage Nation and belong to the Eagle Clan.

2:05

That's why I position myself whenever I speak, and people need to know who I am in order to put what I have to say in context.

2:18

I'm also the emeritus professor of American Indian Studies at Isle of School of Theology, a Christian institution with interreligious interests, of course, a fairly liberal school.

2:36

But even as a liberal school, they had to figure out whether to hang on to me when I renounced Christianity after I wrote Missionary Conquest, american Indians and the genocide of the gospel.

2:59

And that was about 30 years ago, something like that.

3:02

Exactly 31 years ago. Wow, great book, that was about 30 years ago. Something like that Exactly 31 years ago yeah.

3:06

Wow, great book 1993.

3:08

But once I wrote that book I knew I could no longer profess that Christian myth.

3:18

It no longer hung together for me.

3:21

Together for me, there were so many worldview differences pulling Indians and white Christians in different directions.

3:33

Christianity is first and foremost, at least if you believe Martin Luther, about the salvation of the individual soul, justification by faith, right, right For American Indian people.

3:50

It's never about me, it's always about the community, about the whole, and that's the first big tension that you have to move beyond in order to make that Christian confession that the colonizer and all the missionariesaries I talk about, four of them in missionary conquest, all of them really good at what they did, and what they did more than anything else was function to destroy American Indians' grasp on their own worldview and replace it with a Christian worldview.

4:50

As one commissioner of American Indian affairs said in the middle of the 19th century, we must teach Indians to say mine instead of ours, wow, me instead of us, I instead of we.

5:13

That says it all in a nutshell.

5:19

So that's who I am.

5:23

Wonderful. So that's who I am Wonderful, and you know, of course, when we talk about the community, talking about all the natural world, right, all of the non other than human beings as well as human beings in our community, yes and no my caveat would be we have no word for nature in Iyawashaji.

5:55

That's one of those nominal abstractions that works for white people like that but has no meaning in an Indian world, Because all people are related to me.

6:04

All people has to be inclusive of, as you said, other than just human beings.

6:10

It was amazing with how little time it took the Jesuits and the early missionaries to change the orientation of Native people and the way they were thinking, and they used such brutal force to accomplish that.

6:26

And so they knew what would be effective and, because it must have played out in Europe, they must have been doing this to all the Indigenous people in Europe as well, because everyone has Indigenous ancestors at some point.

6:40

But when they came here, they knew exactly what they were doing and exactly whom to target.

6:48

I suspect that's right, Sandy. We don't know, of course, because the Christians did such a great job of erasing indigenous people in Europe.

6:58

I mean, they're still there, Sammy's in the way north, and we have pockets of people trying to reclaim their pagan selves in the rest of Europe especially in England say they have such an interest in Native American history and being indigenous that they hold powwows all over Europe, you know, and they want to reclaim, in Germany and Lithuania and Russia even, and they've lost their own connection to their own heritage.

7:43

And they've lost their own connection to their own heritage and they're just, you know, having this need to try to reclaim something in their DNA.

7:50

I think yeah, we went to something like that.

7:54

In Carl My's hometown there was a big Native American festival.

8:00

We had to check it out. You know, it was really the strangest experience.

8:05

It was so strange. I've been there, have you, isn't that something?

8:13

It's an enthusiasm that I don't know really what to make of it.

8:17

You know it's an enthusiasm for dressing up as Native people, but then they also have.

8:24

They bring Native people over.

8:26

We know some Haudenosaunee dancers that had come over there.

8:31

Yeah, but they're managed In previous years. They're managed.

8:34

They can only perform, you know, in a certain location, but the main show is reserved for the Germans who dress up Right Like Plains Indians.

8:44

It's just the most bizarre thing I took lots of pictures.

8:49

One of my mentors was Joe Eagle Elk.

8:53

She chanted Lakota from Rosebud.

8:56

Joe went over to a tree in southwest Germany where there was a group of Indian hobbyists who were doing exactly that, and they have a village there that they occupy in the summer and all of these German families take their summer vacation and if they don't come to the US to visit reservations, they go to this Indian village and they spend their one month of vacation living like Plains Indians.

9:37

Isn't that?

9:37

something Joanne had him do some talking about his people when he was there and he came back he said Tink, they do better beadwork than we do.

9:54

You know academics will write about. You know the histories of Native Americans and many times there will be a critique like you shouldn't romanticize about these ancient cultures.

10:07

And it would always kind of be offensive to me because, being Haudenosaunee, I know these ancient traditions are still alive today and they have great influence.

10:15

The way we are being human beings in the world to Europe and saw what they're doing over there and pretending to be Indian, then it opened up a whole new understanding.

10:27

This romanticization of Native Americans really is that Reclaiming them.

10:39

But of course that interdiction don't romanticize yourself is another way of erasing us.

10:46

It's to tell us you don't really believe that, do you?

10:51

That's gone now.

10:54

Just let it go, because erasure is still part and parcel of the agenda of the colonizer discovery crowd.

11:08

Yeah, absolutely.

11:10

I mean I hadn't really thought I'd ask you about this, but we've been through the Hollywood award season and one of the major films that's been out there deals with your folks Killers of the Flower Moon and I've never asked you about it, but I mean I have different feelings about it.

11:35

I guess I'd like to get your take on it.

11:41

I mean, I thought it was a good film in many ways.

11:46

We've talked to other people who who thought the book was better, actually because it pointed out a kind of structural racism rather than a kind of interpersonal problem of, you know, a racist issue within a family.

12:00

But but that story is now out there, which is something I guess.

12:06

But you know, I'd like to get your take on that film.

12:14

First of all, I was not a fan of the book.

12:18

Why is that?

12:19

I was a harsh critic of the book. Neither the book nor the movie is really about the Osage.

12:25

The book was an FBI thriller.

12:29

It's about Tom White, the FBI agent who is heroized in the book, and Osages are bit players in the drama that unfolds in the book.

12:50

Also the film.

12:52

I thought that Scorsese did a better job in that he reduced the role of Tom White.

13:00

Yeah, he made him a minor character, but important character.

13:08

But the movie is about your two main stars, dicaprio and De Niro right and not about the old sages right people were talking up Lily Gladstone's role as Molly and I thought she was magnificent, but they could have done so much more with Molly.

13:24

Yeah, role as Molly, and I thought she was magnificent, but they could have done so much more with Molly.

13:28

Yeah, the last half of the film she's comatose in most of the scenes she's in.

13:36

Yeah, yeah, true enough.

13:39

And while Burkhart was trying to kill her, he was poisoning her.

13:43

You Burkhardt was trying to kill her, he was poisoning her.

13:47

You still could have done much more than Scorsese did with that.

13:50

And in order let's be honest, in order for Hollywood to produce a film about Osages that's going to be about Osages, you've got to have an Osage make the movie, and there's no money for that.

14:07

Yeah, no, it's got to have star power.

14:10

Wow, and I think I don't know, I don't know that world at all, but I do think that, given that she did not win the Academy Award for Best Actress, and you know, my feeling was that, you know, america still can't deal with its history, you know it still can't.

14:37

I mean, that film was completely sort of shut out of the Oscar serum.

14:43

Yeah.

14:43

You know, and it's like, yeah, we'll celebrate these fantastical films and you know things like that, but that one was a little too real for people.

14:56

Yeah, it wasn't make-believe enough.

14:58

Right.

15:01

Right.

15:02

Yeah, yeah Well.

15:04

I think that's true, right, yeah, I think that's true, and I think Vine hit it half a century ago when he said it's about the land, and white Americans cannot let go of the fact that their possession of Indian land is still questionable.

15:26

At best. I mean, it's clear from all the legal cases that we've been studying in this project that we live on unceded land from coast to coast and it's a dilemma that we'll say it's just a dilemma, it's just like something that Americans just cannot grapple with and it's really the heart of the doctrine of discovery issue that we're trying to.

15:58

Let's not remind people of that, they just would rather sweep it under the carpet.

16:05

Exactly, exactly. Not just the United States, of course.

16:09

We're talking about lots of colonial outposts around the world.

16:13

Australia, new, zealand, canada. Those are the big four, along with the US.

16:21

Yeah, I just don't think so.

16:23

I don't know. So I don't know. I don't know if that film marks some kind of a small awakening.

16:30

There are more native filmmakers now.

16:35

We know some of those people. They're making inroads.

16:39

There are other stories that are emerging.

16:44

So I don't know if it marks a change or if it's just a fad at the moment.

16:48

Let me say this much about Martin Scorsese.

16:51

Scorsese really tried.

16:55

Yeah.

16:56

And DiCaprio and De Niro. They spent time with Osages on the Osage Reservation, trying to learn as much as they could about the people.

17:07

They did do that.

17:09

Yeah.

17:12

So I really need to give them credit for that, even as I criticize the film for its short form.

17:20

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think there's a lot to consider, but it just happens.

17:27

So, just trying to figure it out, say in the Denver area, colorado, that whole Native community out there I wonder if you could just kind of give us a sense of your work over the years.

17:55

I know this could go on for a long time if we wanted to, but you know, I've just been so impressed we both have been so impressed with what you've been able to accomplish there in Denver, from, you know, creating community organizations and institutes and things to commemorating the Sand Hill Massacre, the Sand Hill Massacre.

18:23

So you know there's a lot of things that you've been involved with and I wonder if you could just introduce some of our listeners to that history.

18:35

Yeah, I guess I would have to say that being an American Indian academic is challenging in different ways from being an ordinary white academic.

18:45

My white colleagues, or as I prefer to call them, euro-christian colleagues, never had to be active outside of their university post.

19:00

They were free to go home and watch TV or write a book and get a big jump in their salary.

19:06

While Indian academics have a tendency to feel the need to be active in the community itself and from the very beginning of my time here in Denver in 1985, I was active in the community.

19:26

I knew all the key players of the key agencies back then.

19:31

I'm not as public now I'm getting old so I don't circulate as much but I'm still recognized when I walk in the Indian Center.

19:42

No, we've seen that.

19:44

But back in about 1989, 1990, I guess I took over this organization it was called back then Living Waters Indian Episcopal Mission and we lost our Lakota Episcopal mission and we lost our Lakota Episcopal priest and it wasn't clear that they had money to bring someone in and it just fell to me to take it over and to take it over without an honorarium, without pay.

20:25

So I ran it for 25 years and it was shortly after I took it over that the people renamed it Four Winds instead of Living Waters, to give it an Indian name, indian name and convinced me right at the point where I renounced Christianity that we need to do away with that Sunday worship service mentality and replace it with ceremony.

20:58

When I first moved into taking it over, we brought a drum in for the first time and one of our singers thought sure he's going to be struck dead by lightning.

21:14

He had never sung one of those drum songs in a church.

21:20

Wow.

21:24

I said, well, god don't own this place, and we started referring to it as the place formally called church, and the young crew that have taken it over now call it a liberated zone.

21:44

Ah, wow.

21:47

And they're doing good.

21:49

You'd think when the conquistadores came in all over Mexico, they would level all the pyramids and sacred sites and use the very rubble to construct the churches, to build their own churches.

22:00

Yeah, in this way you're kind of deconstructing the structure of a church, that's right.

22:06

It's in reverse and we're building our ceremonial site on top of their sacred space Right.

22:16

Which was your sacred space, probably.

22:19

Originally. We've always known that it's grandmother.

22:24

Right, we've always known that it's grandmother right and we feel that when we're there, because for the past 30 plus years now 35 years yeah, we buried people there, married people there, celebrated sobriety anniversaries, everything for the community right there.

22:46

Well, people need to gather in a city, they do, you know, there's power in that.

22:52

We need one another.

22:53

We gave a different place than the Indian Center?

22:55

Yeah, a place where they could just come and sit and talk.

23:00

Yeah, a place where they could just come and sit and talk.

23:03

And the ceremony that emerged, that we forged began to involve, from 1990 on, everybody in the circle having a say.

23:19

So we would actually go around that circle and give everyone there the opportunity to say what was on their mind so needed.

23:31

Cities are so isolating.

23:34

It seems like a lot of churches are closing.

23:37

Maybe you know there could be more of these places.

23:43

Yeah, so that you would get calls from people, because I buried hundreds of people over the years and I get a call from a family.

23:54

We're members at Four Winds and our grandmother died.

23:59

We have the funeral there and I have no idea who they were.

24:05

Maybe they came once ten years ago.

24:10

I couldn't remember.

24:12

We don't have membership.

24:15

Right.

24:17

There's no membership. Well, if you're Indian, yep, you belong, this is your place, and we never turned anyone away.

24:30

Wow Meaningful.

24:32

Yeah, more on the kind of doctrine of discovery side of your work.

24:45

I know you were involved with commemorating that, that black event, the Sand Creek Massacre, and that that that now has also.

24:56

I see it here, we see it in the east.

25:01

It's much more part of our cultural geography than it was 30 years ago when you were working on it, so maybe you could tell our audience a little bit about that as well.

25:17

Well, sand Creek is here in Colorado. That's why it's important to us here. Well, well, sand Creek is here in Colorado.

25:19

That's why it's important to us here. It's important to shine in Arapaho peoples in Oklahoma and Montana and Wyoming.

25:28

They haven't forgotten and they keep coming back.

25:33

In fact, 30 years ago they began having this Sand Creek healing run.

25:39

25 years ago. Maybe it was having this Sand Creek Healing Run 25 years ago, maybe it was.

25:42

And when they first did that, we were their contact at Four Winds and we would feed people at Four Winds at the end of it.

25:51

Eventually it became too big for Four Winds.

25:55

By the way, four Winds always, from the very beginning, housed Colorado American Indian Movement and you know Glenn Morris, russ Means that particular crew Right.

26:12

As far as I know, I'm still on the Elders Council of AIM.

26:16

Wow.

26:17

That's like being a member at Four Winds.

26:20

I don't think I ever get off of that.

26:22

No, retiring from that position, even though it doesn't give you any money.

26:27

Right, no, 4wins cost me $2,000 a year just to run it.

26:33

I think because we had such a low budget.

26:36

Right.

26:38

So from that point on I was involved in Sand Creek.

26:42

I've been out to the site multiple times.

26:46

I've been out with contingents of the American Indian Movement or contingents from Four Winds.

26:53

We've had pipe ceremonies out there.

26:57

But what happened at Sand Creek you know, the murder of some 300 Cheyennes and Arapahos and maybe a handful of Lakotas and Kiowas is what happened across the continent.

27:16

It wasn't a solo event.

27:19

Right, what happened in Connecticut on the Mystic River in 1637 was the same sort of event.

27:31

Yeah.

27:32

A Christian army attacking an undefended village at Mystic, of women, children and old people, slaughtering 700 peacocks.

27:45

All the peacocks are out in the field waiting for the English army to advance to meet them in fair, honest warfare.

27:55

So from that point on until Sand Creek, and even beyond that Wounded Knee, these massacres are just a part of the genocide and it's accretional.

28:12

The more it happens, the more it happens and the more effective it becomes effective it becomes, and there are different forms of genocide, of course, but these overt killings were perpetrated by Christians, and was it?

28:31

Is it Chivington who is the minister, a general or something colonel?

28:36

A general or something colonel?

28:43

He was the commanding officer of the Colorado First and the Colorado Third, which are US Army units, and quite often I just read an online site where his units were called volunteer militia.

28:56

No, no, no, no, they were US Army Ch, they were US Army.

29:03

Chittenden had a US Army commission and the Colorado First volunteers were a unit like the Ohio volunteers or whatever that were put together in order to fight during the Civil War.

29:19

And the Colorado First did fight a Civil War battle in New Mexico the year before Sand Creek.

29:34

Yeah, and wasn't there a monument to him in Denver that you were the last time we visited?

29:40

You were telling us about this statue or monument.

29:45

Was it to Chivington? I might be getting this wrong.

29:47

It was a Civil War statue which, on its plaque, commemorated Sand Creek as one of the Civil War in Colorado.

30:00

Wow, wow.

30:03

Wow.

30:06

What civil war is that? And of course it wasn't a battle, it was just a massacre Right A sleeping village who thought they'd signed a peace treaty with the US.

30:18

Right.

30:18

Done everything they were told to do to behave themselves according to the colonizers' interdiction.

30:25

Woke up one morning to an advancing army.

30:31

Well, in Haudenosaunee country, you know, the Loyani are speaking with the founding fathers on how to establish a better union of peacemaking and then Washington, you know, uses Joseph Brandt as a catalyst for declaring war on the Haudenosaunee.

30:52

When Joseph Brandt, a Mohawk man, was raised in British schools, his sister married the first British superintendent of Indian affairs and he was groomed to be an infiltrator of the Haudenosaunee.

31:06

He was not a loyani of the Haudenosaunee, he was, in the British eyes, a war chief and he was used as a war chief to dismantle the Confederacy.

31:17

So after Washington has that scorched earth campaign and removes most of the Haudenosaunee from their territories, he just deviates up all the land to pay his soldiers.

31:28

So did this happen also in Colorado?

31:31

Did the soldiers end up with the land? Was it a way of exterminating bodies so they could inhabit the space?

31:41

It didn't work the same way in 1864 as it did in the 1770s, 1780s.

31:50

Yeah.

31:53

By then the United States was much more established.

31:57

Yeah.

31:57

And what you have going on in Colorado is the Homestead Act.

32:03

Oh, they just named it something else shifted it the legalities worked out differently.

32:17

Right along the Platte River is one person who's a cowboy, whose people are cattle barren, whose people go out and homestead all the waterholes.

32:34

Wow, See, in the land here it's only useful if you have access to the water holes.

32:43

Yeah.

32:45

Well, they homesteaded the water holes and eventually sold to himself so that he owned all.

32:57

He didn't own, all of that part of Colorado, from Denver north and east up to the Nebraska line.

33:07

He owned all the waterholes.

33:09

So it didn't matter if other people homesteaded land, they couldn't make a living there.

33:15

Hence it was just open cattle land and he could run his cattle through the whole territory, just making sure that he protected his properties, the water holes, so that only his cattle had access to water.

33:29

His name, by the way, was John Wesley Eiliff.

33:38

Do you?

33:38

need help catching up on today's topic, or do you want to?

33:41

learn more about the resources mentioned. If so, please check our website at podcastdoctorofdiscoveryorg for more information.

33:48

Well, maybe we can dig deeper into this story now, Because of the work you had done on what is it?

33:54

Christian history.

33:55

And now back to the conversation. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about how you've been pushing against your own institution here.

34:03

When you talk about the insignificance of an indigenous human body.

34:08

Maybe you could tell the story about this history being encapsulated in a text.

34:16

Next month we have five Lenape flying into Denver to consult with ILIF.

34:23

This will be their third trip to ILIF and they come from all over Turtle Island, including Pat Noah who comes down from Ontario, from Lenape Reserve in Ontario, from Oklahoma, from Wisconsin, and one lone Lenape from San Diego, steve somebody.

34:59

Yeah, I think I might know that guy, you might yeah, yeah, I think I might know that guy.

35:03

You might, yeah, yeah, nukem, the world's foremost authority, in my opinion, on the doctrine of discovery.

35:11

What happened was in 1779, a Euro-Christian squatter In 1779, a Euro-Christian squatter, by the way, a Quaker, nonviolent, pacifist, right yeah had squatted on the Monongahela River in what's now West Virginia.

35:33

It was opening up that part of Indian land to a Euro-Christian frontier, so they were the first settlers in that region.

35:49

And David Morgan, on that, about the 1st of May 1779, saw an Indian man on his what he called his farm, that's, his squatted home, and Morgan was known as a good shot, famous for its accuracy, and he thought this is an easy kill.

36:14

So he drew a bead with his musket and killed the man on sight, only to discover there was a second Indian with him.

36:21

And he ends up in a hand-to-hand duel with this other Indian and it's all mere luck that he's able to kill that second Lenape.

36:33

They're Lenape, both of them with a knife.

36:40

Morgan's comrades down at the fort they built this is Fort Pickett and it's not a military fort, it's civilian which the squatters built in order to protect their stolen land, right their property Come out to help him finish the deed and skin both Indians and tan their skin and turn their skin into trophy trinket.

37:19

You know little trophy trinkets shot bags, powder pouches and the cover for a book.

37:28

And since books are in short supply, it had to be one that they had with them.

37:36

And evidently David Morgan had this unbound copy of the history of Christianity written in Latin Historia Christiana, written by a German theologian.

37:54

He's so proud of his book that he gives it as a gift to a guy named Bill Barnes, a young man around 1800, who's decided to become a Methodist minister.

38:14

Now, only a couple of years before David Morgan the Quaker converted to the Methodist Church as well, kind of like John Evans, the governor of Colorado, born to a strong Quaker family, who later in his life told an interviewer wife told an interviewer in retrospect I'm really happy having converted to Methodism because I would not have been able to respond to Indian atrocities if I'd stayed a Quaker.

38:49

Stop, david Morgan.

38:54

Right.

38:56

And of course, indian atrocities are any attempt to defend their homes Declared illegal on the face of it, because we want your land.

39:10

So anyway, david Barnes well, I'm sorry.

39:17

William Barnes took this history of Christianity with him to Ohio where he continued his Methodist ministry Right after the Ohio Territory became a state, you know, after they pushed away, the Confederacy there built around the Senecas in the north, and his son, rosen Monroe Barnes.

39:50

Rm Barnes gets the book, inherits it, becomes a Methodist minister.

39:56

And in the old Methodist system, remember, ministers are moved every year by the bishop in this so-called itinerant system so that they would not have many belongings to move from one place to another.

40:15

They've all got to fit inside one wagon, one buckboard, right, yeah, this book is so important that he has it with him every time he moves.

40:27

Wow, oh my goodness.

40:31

And in 1890, he moves to the Colorado Methodist Conference, colorado Methodist Conference.

40:38

And in 1893, when this new theology school opens its doors, he gives this gift of this important treasure, the skin of a murdered Indian mocking.

40:55

Our theft of the land to Isle of School of Theology, and they kept it on display in their library, a case under glass, for 80 years, oh my goodness, so that white people could come in and enjoy themselves and enjoy the romance.

41:17

Because here's the real romance, Sandy, the romance of Christian conquest.

41:21

Of the real romance, sandy Right.

41:23

The romance of Christian conquest of that's right, oh my goodness, that's sort of a so horrific, as Sandy was saying, it sort of epitomizes the entirety of the doctrine of discovery.

41:36

The doctrine of Christian discovery, really.

41:38

That's right, that's right. Well, the doctrine of Christian discovery?

41:41

Really, that's right, that's right. Well, the doctrine of discovery is a romance, I mean, just as John Marshall articulates it in Johnson v McIntosh Wow, it's a romance, and he knows it is.

41:53

It's a fantasy, it's entirely made up.

41:57

Right.

41:58

And he says clearly in the case in the majority opinion, the unanimous opinion as long as people believe it, it becomes effective.

42:10

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, diabolical 83 years.

42:15

you said that was examined. 80 years, 80 years.

42:19

Oh my goodness, until 1973. What a trophy.

42:21

Oh my goodness, until 1973. What a trophy. My math is right.

42:24

How old were you then? I was 74.

42:26

74. When the American Indian movement forced Iliff to surrender the cover of the book.

42:36

So where is the book now?

42:39

Iliff still has the book without its cover.

42:42

Oh really, what happened to the cover?

42:48

A young AIM guy by the name of Wesley Martell took it up north to his Arapaho Sundance spiritual leaders and they took it out somewhere on that Wind River Reservation and buried that person.

43:14

My goodness, wow, what a story.

43:21

What I love to understand is and this is what Indian people keep telling them that man was attached to that book from 1779 to 1974.

43:35

Yeah, yeah Is Monarchy.

43:39

His energy is still attached to that book.

43:45

Got the cover off but that didn't release that man from being with that book.

43:55

Wow. And now we've got to do something.

43:59

And people have always had these stories about Iliff is haunted.

44:06

I had a colleague who was sure that there was somebody haunting her office at Iliff and I never disabused her of that or told her what I thought, but that man was there.

44:24

Yeah.

44:24

Yeah, he was there, I still am.

44:28

You know we get that too at the Scano Center because it was the previous site of the Jesuit fort.

44:37

Horrific things happened there and we're always.

44:42

You know people are always coming out from the Onondaga Nation smoking the place or things.

44:50

You know I mean it's. You know it's still that energy is present in these places.

45:00

Right where the Great Maw of Peace was founded, right where the peacemaker landed it's sacred land.

45:07

And then all the history with this fort, and it was a failed mission.

45:12

The Onondaga had them leave within 20 months, 18 months actually, from 1656 to 1658.

45:25

And yet I grew up with people celebrating that fort and the Christianization of the Onondaga, which clearly was not true, never happened.

45:32

Onondaga which clearly was not true, never happened, yeah, but the fact that you're having this meeting, you know, in the next month or so.

45:39

Just hold on until the helicopter goes over.

45:44

When I found out about the book and I didn't know about it.

45:47

When I came to Ireland and in 1986, probably in the middle of winter one of my colleagues pulled me aside and told me none of my other colleagues would admit they knew anything about it.

46:03

This is 11, 12 years after the AIM repatriation of their cover.

46:15

But the first thing I did was to go back over to the school on a Sunday morning because they're Christian.

46:21

I knew it would be completely empty. Everybody would be in church and I walked from the basement to the top and every nook and cranny I could reach I smoked with sage, you know, pushing negative energies away, not to get rid of that man, but to get rid of negative energies and to enable me to at least talk to that man clear the air for clear thinking.

46:55

Tell him who I was anyway, right.

46:59

And so I suspect that you're going to be talking about what to do.

47:03

I mean, what with these Lenape visitors?

47:07

Right, how do you dispose of the book?

47:11

How best to treat that book?

47:16

I mean, in English, we really just don't have any way of talking about the living presence in the objects, right, but how does ILIF?

47:33

Are they on board with this?

47:35

Are they helping you out?

47:40

so far, the board at least, and the administration have affirmed what the Lenape have asked them to do.

47:48

Unfortunately, the faculty are not in step yet, left behind by our previous president, and the new president is trying to get them on board.

48:03

I think they will eventually, but the Lenape have asked for four things before.

48:10

The Lenape have said we'll take the book, but they're heavy duty.

48:15

There's no easy out for this institution having made this mistake.

48:22

Shouldn't be.

48:23

No. So they've got to now.

48:27

They've committed themselves to raising enough money to endow a Native activist professorship To develop an interpretive center for American Indian concerns, including the book and including Sand Creek on campus, to making that some part of that a traveling exhibit that can go to other institutions and churches and, fourth Lane, to build a memorial to these two murdered Lenape.

49:14

That is a permanent, visible reminder to.

49:20

I left now and a hundred years from now literal flesh of an indigenous person from the book is pretty much what Americans have done through the ages create this genocide and then not talk about it and put it aside, and they think their churches are still going to stand.

49:44

Well, they're not. They're suffering and you can't remove the flesh from all these indigenous people from this narrative.

49:55

So that's part of the story.

49:57

I mean, how do we come together as human beings and move forward?

50:02

Certainly not by brushing any of that under the table.

50:07

I mean yeah, so you let us know, We'll definitely take that traveling exhibit.

50:12

We're also. We're a sister.

50:14

So Syracuse University, for one thing, is another former Methodist institution.

50:21

But also I'd love to see that at the Scano Center Because, as Tata Daho says, you know, the Scano Center part of our function is as a Holocaust memorial essentially.

50:35

Yeah, and maybe we can figure out a way that this center at ILOF can work together with the Scano Center Exactly Something more than a loose connection with one another.

50:50

Exactly, I think we have to be working together more.

50:55

Definitely. Syracuse University is the University of Denver.

50:59

I, the bishop here in Colorado, still sits on the board of trustees of the University of Denver, so it's sort of nominally still Methodist, even though nobody comes to the Methodist school.

51:12

So it's sort of nominally still Methodist, even though nobody considered Methodist school.

51:17

Right, right, that's pretty much us too.

51:20

But in 1892-93, when ILIF was formed, it was actually formed as the religion department of the University of Denver.

51:30

It became a separate institution only a decade later, a stand-alone institution.

51:41

Wow. Well, this has been a wonderful conversation.

51:46

There was so much more we could be talking about and working together on.

51:52

I want to thank you so much for all your work.

51:55

Stepping into the world of academia is a grueling, almost impossible task.

52:01

Even good people are beyond comprehension of the level of disconnection there is in the world and how the past of history has really fractured everybody living on Turtle Island.

52:18

It's never easy, it's a grueling life and it's very difficult.

52:24

We thank you for taking that step and being involved right where the problem lies Education.

52:31

Always honor you, Tink. Problem lies Exactly Education Always honor you, Tink.

52:33

It's always good to see both of you and to visit with you.

52:36

Appreciate you both.

52:39

And the truth is, white academics can retire and their career is a wrap.

52:46

It doesn't work that way for Indians, no it doesn't.

52:53

It's never done. Way for Indians.

52:56

No, it doesn't, it's never done. It doesn't work that way for non-native academics who get involved in this work either.

53:00

I mean, I don't see our work ever separating, even after retirement.

53:04

Once you're in it, you're committed because it's going to make a change.

53:09

That's where it needs to lie. It's very difficult, but it's very rare that non-native academics even begin to understand the depth.

53:20

Well, my colleagues basically don't have a clue.

53:25

Yeah.

53:25

They've been my colleagues for nearly 40 years now and to this day they really don't have a clue.

53:33

That's just sad.

53:34

Yeah, tragic, I mean internationally.

53:46

I've got colleagues like Phil that get it. There are a handful of you, phil, who do that, but I don't have one at ILO.

53:53

That's really terrible.

53:54

I was going to say that it's a handful, pretty much they're very kind people at ILO that I was more or less collegial with, but by the time I retired, I have to say almost all of them were glad to see me go well, well, you know to say, almost all of them were glad to see me go.

54:15

Yeah, Wow, Well, you know it's you know, I find that students, however, are really connecting to this history and legacy in a way that you know maybe our older colleagues are not, because I think we're in an urgent moment and they're looking for something you know.

54:40

You know, I reflect on the sixties and seventies, and that was more.

54:44

That was more kind of I don't know, just kind of jolly time, I guess.

54:51

Well, it was hopeful too. It was hopeful too, without understanding.

54:54

And I think now students are getting the memo that this is a real urgent moment for all of us.

55:05

I have to say, my students at Iowa I really appreciated.

55:10

They did take this seriously Good, they did pay this seriously Good, they did pay attention and I did change the way they see the world time and time again.

55:26

So you know well.

55:29

But my colleagues in the classroom. I know, yeah, I know, yeah, I know.

55:38

Well, I will finish with this, because when you resigned from the American Academy of Religion very publicly, because you could not function in a racist Christian organization any longer and I'm thinking that was probably 30 years ago now too- 1993, I think 94.

56:01

Okay, 30 years Just about, and that was an impressive you know.

56:07

It certainly had an impact on me Of course I'm still a member of the AAR certainly had an impact on me.

56:14

Of course I'm still a member of the AAR and we've still tried to, you know, hold events there and give papers that have been, I hope, a little transformative for our grad students.

56:28

But that, you know, that single act, tink, was transformative for a lot of people and I don't know if you've heard about it, but you know it's something that had an impact.

56:38

I never looked back.

56:40

I know, I know, but it's it had, it's, you know, you rose to the moment.

56:47

Let's put that, put it that way, Colleagues at ILIF who were deeply involved in AAR Del Brown, Sheila Devaney, who assured me I had destroyed my career.

56:59

Oh wow, my career doesn't depend on the white people at AAR.

57:08

Oh, right, wow, Wow.

57:10

Wow, and looking back on it, I think I've done okay yeah.

57:16

Yeah, you know, but yeah.

57:20

Yeah, clueless.

57:21

Yeah.

57:22

Clueless is the word.

57:24

Del Brown Wow, okay.

57:27

Well, great to see you, tink, if you're ever through Syracuse Onondaga Nation territory.

57:34

Let us know.

57:35

Will you please let us know.

57:37

I'd love to come up that way. All right, I don't travel as much as I used to, especially discretionary travel.

57:46

Yeah, discretionary travel is back to the Osage, yeah Right.

57:50

Yeah, yeah, I understand you the Osage, yeah, right.

57:53

Yeah, yeah, I understand.

57:55

You all be well.

57:57

Okay.

57:57

You be well, too. Jolay wahoy.

58:02

The producers of this podcast were Adam DJ Brett and Jordan Lawn Cologne.

58:05

Our intro and outro is social dancing music by Oris Edwards and Regis Cook.

58:10

This podcast is funded in collaboration with the Henry Luce Foundation, syracuse University and Hendrix Chapel and the Indigenous Values Initiative.