Sacred Promises: Truth and Treaty

Good afternoon relatives, Khassala Hill. Welcome back to another episode of All My Relations. My name is Matika Wilbur and I'm from the Swinamish and to Layla Peoples. I'm a photographer, a storyteller, a mom, wife, the founder of Tide Lands where we're recording this podcast and I'm really, really grateful to be back for another episode of All My Relations. Me too. It's a beautiful time to be in Dijonis. It's a good day to be in Dijonis. Hi everyone. Timris Lane here. I'm from Lamy Nation. Galitia is my Lamy name. I'm also a mama and a communication strategist. I retired professional soccer player and sports broadcaster and I'm so happy to be speaking with you all today alongside my lovely co-host Matika Wilbur. We're going to be talking and celebrating a very special day today. It's Treaty Day. Today, January 22nd is Treaty Day here in Washington State and it's a really important day for us as tribal nations. It marks the anniversary for us of the Treaty of Point Elliott which was signed back in 1855 at what is now known as Michael Teo and this treaty was a big deal. It was an agreement between the U.S. government and several local tribes including the Suquamish, Swinamish, Tulalip, Lamy and other tribes and when our tribal nations agreed to see large quantities of land, we put protections in place to protect and preserve certain rights like fishing and hunting and schooling and health care and education to reserve those specific rights for our people in exchange for specific lands and you know my mom always say treaties are the supreme law of the land. They come before U.S. constitutions and it's really important to acknowledge you know our treaties and honor our treaties. We're going to hear from Dr. Robert Williams today who speaks about his perspective and from a lumpy perspective but also a legal perspective on how sacred these treaties really are. Sacred, sacred treaties. Not just for Native communities but for all U.S. citizens and he goes beyond to say international from an international perspective how these treaties should be treated as such because we are our oral people and so our word, our commitment, our obligation upholds the sacredness of these treaties and how we you know preserve our community, our culture, our land, our relationships with each other and so today for Native people, for Native communities it's a day to reflect on that history both the promises made and those that have yet to be fulfilled. It's not just a piece of history it's something that still shapes tribal sovereignty and self-determination and land rights to this day. All my relations so let's just begin by introducing Professor Robert Williams Jr who's from the Lumbee tribe of North Carolina. He's a regents professor and E. Thomas Sullivan professor of law and faculty co-chair of the University of Arizona's indigenous peoples law and policy program. He has degrees from Loyola College and Harvard Law School. Professor Williams has dedicated his career to advancing indigenous rights and reshaping the discourse around law and justice. Professor Williams is a prolific author. His books include The American Indian in Western Legal Thought which earned the Gustavus Meyers Human Rights Center Award, Savage Anxiety's The Invention of Western Civilization and I think this is your personal favorite Matika like a loaded weapon, the runquist court, Indian rights and the legal history of racism in America. He also is the co-author of federal Indian law cases and materials. His scholarship critically examines the intersection of law, history and racism particularly as they impact indigenous communities here in the United States and globally. Professor Williams has been a trailblazer, receiving accolades like the Lawrence Arbaca Lifetime Achievement Award in federal Indian law and the Gerald G. Swanson Prize for Teaching Excellence. His influence extends globally representing indigenous groups before the U.S. Supreme Court in the American Court of Human Rights and the United Nations. As a former chief justice of the Pascua-Yaki Court of Appeals and a justice for the Tahono-Autumn Nation, he brings first hand judicial experience to his work. Recognized by outlets like The New York Times, and Bill Moyer's Professor Williams career, bridges scholarly impact, and real-world change, making him a leading voice in indigenous law and policy. Yay! Welcome to the show! Dear New Professor Williams. We're so happy to have you here. That is an incredible resume biography. I would love to hear from you your own personal introduction. Well, thank you and welcome from Arizona, Indian Country. We're a couple miles away from the Pascua-Yaki tribe and the Tahono-Autumn Nation and many, many native nations have been here, have lived here, have traded here, have married into kinship relationships here. It's just a richly wonderful place to do Indian law and indigenous peoples' rights. A proud member of the Lombi Indian tribe of North Carolina grew up in Baltimore, was educated by such as a charity and I had a Jesuit education for eight years. Then went on to Harvard Law School where I was the only native in my first year class of 500. In fact, no professor I talked to could remember the last Indian that had gone there. In fact, it was Lawrence Ibaka who I was so proud and honored to receive that award that you mentioned. To me, my most important work is teaching students. When I came to the University of Arizona we could countless and a half a dozen native attorneys that we had graduated since the founding of law school. We've now graduated over 200 native indigenous attorneys from around the world and they're all over the world doing great work in Africa, for the Messiah, in Asia, India, for the out of Ozzy, in Canada for First Nations and British Columbia throughout the United States. I talk to my students all the time. They talk to me about the cases they're bringing the issues that they are concerned about and have spent their life dedicated their life to working on. So to me, it's just I've been blessed by creator to be able to put all that together with a lot of linked arms, helping me do all that good work. I want to continue doing it for quite a while. So that's my addendum to that biography. Thank you very much. Well, thank you so much for being here. I'm a little star struck. I've read all your books. You were the reason I wanted to go to law school. And then, you know, over the years I've followed your career and never really had a chance to connect with you in real life. I don't know if you know this about me, but I spent nearly 10 years traveling around Indian country visiting over 500 tribes in what is now known as the United States. And, you know, so as a result, I think I've I've met with many native attorneys who I've discussed and interviewed, you know, I think I interviewed about 1,400 people in my time on the road visiting all of the tribes. And, you know, that's how I know people like Dr. Dezi and Anna Hohe, and, you know, people that we discuss that we know in common. But, you know, I think I had reached out to you at one point when we were in Tucson. And you were out of town, so I didn't get to photograph you then for the book. But getting to have you on the podcast is really exciting for me, especially around this topic. So thank you so much for being here. It means so much to me. And thank you to our relative Gabe for making this possible. A shout out to Gabe, Gabe has been on this podcast when we talked about Blood Quantum on this series Gabe was on the show. So, you know, I always like to think about Indian country like there's just a few points of inner connectivity, you know, like if the world is just five points away, I think Indian countries wanted to. Let me say this. I've had, as I said, 200 native students. And I mean this with all sincerity Gabe is the goat. He is the greatest of all time. That's amazing. And I mean that. I love the guy, and so proud of the work, the trailblazing work that he's doing. Yeah, he does really important work, especially in communities here in the Pacific Northwest. Well, let's jump in. Let's talk about treaty day. Let's just start here. I think you emphasize in your books, you know, the role of colonial doctrines like the doctrine of discovery in the legal system you say in the case of Johnson versus Macintosh. Macintosh. It's continued to be cited today by the Supreme Court. The Court never questions it. What would a truly decolonized legal framework look like in the context of native sovereignty and self governance? And how can contemporary law grapple with the past that remains embedded in its foundations? And how does that relate, you know, to treaty day and the treaties that we're trying to, you know, can I use that as my final exam question for my Let's first, we have to place the treaties in historical context. And you say the treaty of poignoli. And I've looked at that. Look at the actual historical document. This is a story that my mentor, Vine Deloria, Jr. told me, Vine recruited me to the University of Arizona. I can't hear because Vine was here. I mean, he did the leading blurb on my first book. I mean, and we would we would be, you know, once a week in his office over in the social studies building, we could still smoke and we go over there every Friday and all the native faculty would be there. And I'd come home and my wife said, were you in a bar? You smell like cigarette smoke? Said, no, I was talking into law with Vine and the guys and and the women faculty. We've had some incredible faculty in that program. But he used to tell me this story. He said, Williams, you know, you're looking at any of those treaties. It's the same damn guy signing it again and again. I go, what do you mean fine? Look, just look at the treaties. It's the same guy. And it's every treaty. You know, what his name is? X. So when you think about federal Indian law and the way the treaties were first interpreted by the US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall who wrote that Johnson v Macintosh opinion lays out these canons of construction. And so when you read a treaty, you got to read it from the perspective of how the Indians would have understood it. Your treaty was negotiated in Chinook. You know, that was a missionary trading language. The idea that our ancestors were able to secure the rights they did when you think, and I teach contracts, think about the inequality of bargaining power. The great father, they don't understand he should have been the great uncle. That's who had real authority. But the great father comes to you, you know, with a with a medal. And you're looking around and you see the Calvary and, you know, you know, the forts and you know the history. And you're made promises because you believe that a promise is sacred in every treaty. You have to understand indigenous peoples. And this is true wherever I go, wherever there's treaties. A treaty was a sacred text. You spoke the pipe of peace. You traded the Wampum beads. You did the Kalimets ceremony. You talked about white buffalo calf woman and the message of peace she brought in DeGande Veda and the message of peace he brought. A treaty is a sacred covenant. And you know, when you think about that mindset, for Europeans, a treaty was meant to divide people. You had Protestants on one side, Catholics on the other, a Flemish speakers on one side, German speakers on the other, for indigenous peoples. And particularly in North America, from what we know from the documented history from 1600 to 1800, I'll plug my book, "Linking Arms Together," Native American visions of law in peace, 1600 to 1800. Go back to those treaties, to read them. They're all sign decks, but they have some incredibly important promises. Think about the wisdom of our elders in that weak bargaining position to secure those promises because you believed in them. You know, whereas, you know, the white men said, well, we'll promise you, you know, everything for as long as the grass grows in river flows, but we know you're doomed as a savage race. You won't survive the onslaught of a civilized, you know, capitalist society. Well, they were wrong. The treaties are still here. And that's the canons of construction. When Marshall outlines that position in the first cases to interpret Indian treaties, the Cherokee treaties of Hopewell, 1785, it has this clause in Article 9. If you look it up, it says, "And Congress shall manage all their affairs." And so the red states, the southern states that had to deal with the Cherokees and were trying to get them removed, they interpreted that treaty clause as saying, "Well, Congress can do whatever it wants." And Chief Justice Marshall gets a majority of the court four to two at that time, six members. He gets a majority of the court to say, "Hey, the Indians were stupid. They were formidable allies. They were formidable enemies in war. We, you know, the second best-selling book in North America was published by Ben Franklin. And that was a collection of Pennsylvania's treaties with the Pennsylvania colonies. The intellectual elite of the colonies understood treaties. Jefferson talks about their eloquence, about their wisdom, about their skill in negotiating. And so when you think about that inequality of bargaining power, that's why the treaties are so important today. And I really get irritated. And, you know, I've taught in Wisconsin, and we heard, and we had treaty fights there. I've heard this discourse, you know, I had dinner with Billy Frank. I got to meet him and talk to him quite a bit. You hear this discourse? Well, these are old promises. You know, why are we bound by them? Because for the reason Indians insist that these treaties still have meaning today is, first of all, the treaty was a sacred text. You pledged to the creator that you would buy, buy it. Secondly, if you look at all the treaties, they're essentially a web of relations. In most of the early treaty negotiations that, you know, the Washington general, Mount Com in France, the Canadian colony in the United States, they're literally adopted into the tribal clan system. You know, you have, you have my back. I have yours. You have clan relations. And then treaties were also regarded by Native American tribes as constitutions. You know, that's why Ben Franklin, the founders looked to the example of the Erichoy nation, the Haudenosaunee. And you know, he made the argument, if five savage tribes combine together, you combine those five arrows into one batch of arrows that cannot be broken. Why can't our 13 colonies get that act together? So that treaty's tradition was an inspiration for the founders. They understood the significance of those treaties. And it was Justice Marshall, who remember, was a lieutenant, I believe, at Valley Forge, with George Washington when he was stuck there because Congress wouldn't appropriate the money. Justice Marshall was a founder. He understood that founding vision of respect for the treaties and expected those treaties to be respected in the same manner that Indians do. The problem is that the federal government sometimes doesn't understand that. A lot of times the Supreme Court doesn't understand that. And that's what we find ourselves today. I mean, I really appreciate the understanding from your perspective, an indigenous perspective of sacred texts, relational, and then regarding them as the constitutional law and the treaty tradition. I'm curious about how that applies to treaty day. And for our particular treaty tree on January 22nd, Matika was sharing her lifetime of January 22nd. For me, it only really came into my consciousness much later, like a decade ago. I'd say I started to be aware of treaty day and my community. And Matika saying, "Everybody should celebrate this day. Everybody should be aware of what's happening on how this treaty not only applies to our communities, but to the citizens of Washington state and beyond, right?" Yeah, and then it applies, of course, in the UN declaration the rights of indigenous peoples. There's a specific article which says that these are international documents and should be given the respect that all internationally legally binding documents have in international and domestic law. Addressing, you know, both the points, you talked about how treaty should be understood today and what we should do about it on treaty day. There's this wonderful speech made by, I believe it's in the mid-18th century. The indigenous peoples of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland visited the colonial governor of Maryland and signed a treaty. The English always uniformly signed treaties. That's where the founders picked up the practice. And the chief's name is Stumpy and he makes a speech to the governor of Maryland. And he says, "We've been making treaties with you for many years and we believe it is important to renew those treaties by teaching them to our youngsters and having them memorize them and speak them because these are peoples of our tradition. These are peoples of the word." And so I think the most important thing you can do is teach your children, teach your nephews, teach your nieces the treaties, have them memorize. I mean, I remember having to memorize the Gettysburg address in grade school. Why are the Catholic neds teaching me, a lumbia, to memorize and recite the Gettysburg address? And what Stumpy makes the point is that if our children remember these treaties, they will keep the promises strong into future generations. And I think making those texts, those sacred texts, and taking them to heart, there was a West Virginia senator who used to carry around a copy of the Constitution. When people said nonsense about the Constitution, he could pull it out. Well, think about pulling out your treaty and think about pulling out the United Nations Declaration and the rights of Indigenous peoples. The Society of Friends has a wonderful little book you can order for about two bucks. I give it to all my workshops to tribal leaders. So our tribal leaders should teach those treaties. They should learn those treaties. They should teach those treaties to tribal youth. It should be part of our curriculum. It should be taught in our federal Indian law courses. Spread the word. If you don't keep them alive, and I think Indigenous peoples faith in the word and oral tradition passing it down to seven generations is the most important aspect of our native knowledge. What's our native knowledge? If it isn't our oral traditions that are handed down, that are alive and kept alive to each future generation. So I tell my students, it's your responsibility. I'm sorry if you don't like it, but yeah, that's what you are. If you are a native person, if you're an Indigenous person and you have a treaty, creator has blessed you. Let me take off on another point here. We do work all over the world. Our program is privileged and honor. We've supported. We have hosted the mandate of the highest ranking UN official with a brief for Indigenous peoples, the UN Special Rapid Tour on the rights of Indigenous peoples. Francisco Cali-Zai, who just served in that position and stepped down after four years, his office was right down the hall for me. We get every communication from an Indigenous tribe, Indigenous village, and NGO representing Indigenous peoples come through IPLP when we host that mandate. Our clinic and our students from all over the world do the research, help draft the memorandum, have draft the communications, draft the report. Let me tell you what it's like not to have treaties. You're like the Indigenous Messiah in Africa where the government can pick up 100,000 of them and relocate them 285 miles. If they won't move, the government cuts off educational funding, health funding. We have situations in Tanzania where the government enforce the Messiah from the Nangoran-Gurro Conservation Area with the famous Safari tourism destination. The world's largest and active volcano called Dera, the Nangoran-Gurro crater. The government of Tanzania because the Messiah wouldn't move refused to give permits for the Messiah schoolgirl children to have their latrine moved. And so what you start getting is just an incredible increase in incidents of infections for those young girls now have to carry water miles to get the class so that it looks like the Messiah voluntarily relocating when they say go 285 miles south from places you've never seen. What's it look like not to have treaties? It looks like a lot of the Indigenous peoples who are being assaulted by cartels and paramilitary violence in Latin America where they cannot call on the government to honor its obligation of duty and protection that's in every single U.S. treaty and in Canadian treaties as well. We are blessed to have treaties that we were in a situation where our ancestors and our grandmothers and our grandfathers could insist on getting it down on paper and memorizing it. And so to have treaties to celebrate those to keep those alive I think is a heavy responsibility for our children for all of us but it's one that we have to teach like we teach all the other important oral traditions. I love what you said about Stumpy. I also have an Uncle Stumpy but I also you know my family has always been really big on knowing our lineage to the Treaty of Point Elliott so everybody in my family has that big picture of all the people that were there that day that signed the treaty and then my Aunt Lona will give you a printout of your lineage that will show you which one of your aunties or uncles or who in your family was present and circled the photo for you and then and also related to your Indian name you know like to have to know your own personal history to the treaty right like in which way you're directly connected to that historical moment is I think really important for all of us you know like like Tahu was talking about it last week on data sovereignty she was like you know know your your know your lineage know who your ancestors are and trace that back to the treaty you know who who in your family was that were signers of the treaty yeah yeah that's your search history you know it's our all tradition search history right there and it has to be kept alive and that's native knowledge I mean that's a incredibly valuable you know incapable replicating form of native knowledge when it's brought to heart. I do a lot of work with in New Zealand I've had a number of New Zealand and students of course they have the Treaty of Waitangi and you know what's interesting about that treaty it's the only really you know treaty we have where you have an English language version and you have the Maori language version and guess what they say two totally different things. And you know and when I was in New Zealand I went there probably you know maybe late 80s early 90s everybody was telling me that the Maori language was dying out that there wouldn't be any speakers and a couple generations I go back there you know 25 years later and I turn on the TV and there's this Maori rap station and there's a there's a Maori news channel and I had to do the the Auckland law school one of the most prestigious law schools their moot court they gave me headphones I go right need headphones well the argument is going to be in Maori and and they're they're you know they're their highest court you know it's it's up until this horrible election of a very conservative government you may have seen the Haka that was being done in the Maori parliament to protest what's going on there now and in fact it was that resurgence of Maori and the resurgence of the language and the use of the Treaty of Waitangi Tribunal which has now threatened a large number of people very much as we see here in the US and Canada you know indigenous resilience it used to be indigenous resistance caused fear amongst you know the dominant colonial population is now indigenous resilience okay that's what scares people because what would that mean what would that mean from America for the exactly for you I mean we do a lot of work on climate change and you know the typical model that's used by World Wildlife Foundation that's used by USAID it's called fortress conservation and again because in African Asia where you have these huge safari tourism parks and national parks that are set aside Tanzania basically leased out an entire district of the Norengoro crater crater area lowlyando to the Sultan of Dubai to the Dubai rural family to use as a hunting preserve and have removed all of the Messiah and shut down their cattle grazing rights okay so climate change and we have what are called the climate cowboys right we're coming in with these carbon credit schemes which essentially you know the government gets millions of dollars and they relocate the indigenous people so that nobody can utilize these lands as they've traditionally used them you know so and so this is what happens when you don't have treaties and and yet the research shows that in every instance indigenous peoples manage biodiversity manage climate resilience better than their governments do or the world wildlife fund or anybody and so and what you know we've attended we've worked IPLP as as work with the special repertoire we also send teams and represent it is we we represent a number of NGOs and indigenous communities and the climate talks and the in the IUC and discussions union for the conservation of nature and you know gradually the world is coming to understand that we shouldn't regard indigenous peoples as as enemies of conservation but rather as stewards as the best stewards and we're seeing that in the US and again why because indigenous peoples here have the legal title they have the land they have the ability to sit at the table and negotiate MOUs on co-management of national forest of monuments of sacred lands they have that ability to do that and that's all built on the foundation of treaties there's probably not one thing your tribal government does that I can't trace back to some treaty obligation that your ancestors secure right well we know that the treaties you know are about these solemn agreements between our tribes in the US government but many of these treaties have been undermined or outright violated by subsequently well frameworks which of course we have to talk about right like the ongoing tension between native nations rights and the states need for control so can you talk about how you know even when these treaties were extensively recognized these legal doctrines grounded in racist ideologies remain at play which continue to allow the US government to sidestep its obligations yeah so great question why are the treaties still here it's because Indians remembered they had signed them and the promises made when they're getting screwed over they they can't do that let's go find a lawyer and Brad let's go you know send a delegation to DC let's tell the Indian agent hey this is a violation of our treaty and luckily there were groups there really were groups you know like the the Quakers and other groups church groups that helped a fund a lot of this litigation that tribes were able to bring to keep those promises alive and so again there's a history you know the Supreme Court litigates a far greater number of Indian cases than the number of Indians and reservations would justify it's because these are important federal issues they bring up issues of federal state jurisdictional conflict and you're absolutely right again my teacher mentor Vindaloria did this wonderful collection of 400 I think over 400 US Indian treaties and he analyzed each one and each one has been violated yet I think it's that faith and the power of the word and the fact that these are sacred texts you know a lot of times I'll be asked well how come you know at powwow's it's always these these Indians in uniform that come out you know front and center with the flags and I said well you know if you research that tradition it starts with the treaties because all the treaties the early treaties pledge that the Indian tribes that sign them will come to the military aid of the United States should they be invaded or threatened by far in powers and so again why is it that natives have signed up at higher degree at higher rates than any other minority group at times of war in the US it's it's grounded in that treaty obligation that that there's a commitment to serve that as badly as our government treats us we honor that promise and by honoring that promise we strengthen that promise and show that it's still alive and has to be responded to hmm I've never heard it is anybody say that mean either it's the first time I've heard that likewise and we know we've known that we have the highest enlistment rate and probably right in our communities across Indian country and and we value that service and we honor that service it's foundational it's found it's found it's found rooted in the treaties that just makes so much sense to all in singular to these the present show concrete whereas a treaty was made including a buckle teal my galleon in the territory of Washington that 22nd day of January 1855 by icing I see the governor in superintendent you author the book with Charles Wilkinson right did you oh yeah oh yes now you're going to get me really emotional I remember you know Charles so you know I learned Indian law at Harvard Law School in a six week you know a three week mini course because that's they had to bring in nobody in the faculty knew anything about it so they had to hire Harry Saxi who had litigated the Sue Nation cases the great the black Hills cases and it was a great course he was telling you know he's a litigator he's telling war stories is one of the reasons I wanted to go into Indian law but the book was Getshees and Wilkinson on federal Indian law and when I first taught federal Indian laws of fellow at Boston College my first year out of law school I used Getshees and Wilkinson federal Indian law and then you know when I became a professor at Rutgers and and had like six guys in my Indian law class saying yo professor of this book is so expensive it was kind of like I taught Getshees and Wilkinson so one day I get a call and it's from my idol Charles Wilkinson I'd never met him before he says Rob I've been reading your stuff we need a new edition we need somebody who's up on stuff we need a native we need that a native voice we would would you want to you know be our co-author I thought they wanted me to be a research assistant that's how astounded I was and so you know for the next four editions it was Getshees Wilkinson and Williams and again it's one of the proudest collaborations you learn a lot when you hang around smart white lawyers okay who are committed and allies in the best sense of the word so yeah again I start getting emotional you know losing Charles losing David losing Vine you know and and it makes it weighs heavy on you the responsibility you have to that next generation and and you know whenever my students say oh thank you so much professor what can I do for you I said you know pass it on one day you'll be in a position where you can be a mentor and that's all I ask well you bring up a really good point about your mentors but not just Vine but your white mentors that care so deeply about Indian law I would love to hear from you what your thoughts on how these treaties are important to all US citizens not just to tribal nations not just to indigenous communities but these treaties are American citizen treaties and I don't think people understand that yeah so one of the points I make in my linking arts book is that Indians were the first multi-culties okay they were the first multi-culturalists they believed that there was strength in diversity so yeah you you know the the Haudenosaunee I have a war you know with the Canadian tribes and they're killing each other off and they realize this is crazy we ought to share our hunting grounds together we ought to intermarry with our clans we ought to make a treaty and commit ourselves to every time there's a death rather than taking out revenge you know we bring gifts of mourning we engage in a mourning M.O.U.R.N.I.G a mourning ceremony so you know again it's this basic idea of treaties and one of the greatest compliments I ever got I get a call you know 20 years ago after I published linking arms and I get a call from this African-American professor who's you know working with gangs his his class and his clinic are working with gangs in Los Angeles and he says I have them read linking arms I use that book because it shows how people can come together despite incredible differences and despite breeding hatreds and thoughts of revenge over you know years of of mistreatment but you know the the condolence ceremony of the of the Haudenosaunee is so wonderful because like many tribes the Haudenosaunee believed you didn't avenge the death of a relative they would haunt you and and it's true I mean it haunt you in your dreams it haunts you into the front of your mind that's what that means and so because Cyton this Haudenosaunee chief travels to the Algonquin so it'd been killing each other over beaver first and he's and he stands up in his canoe a safe arrow shot away and he holds up Wampembeats and he has 15 collars of Wampembeats so these are currencies okay if you shoot me I sink and you may not get the beads so I come with a message of peace and as he lands on the shore and he's greeted by the Canadian officials and then the Algonquin chiefs he's speaking the language of what I call forest diplomacy you know it's bunch like Chinook and he hands out the first collar he says I give this to you so that you will wipe your mouth of saying any bad words and I wipe my mouth with these beads as well and the second Wampembe collar I wipe my ears so that I won't hear any bad things about you anymore and you won't hear it and so we both do that and then the third Wampembe collar is I wipe my eyes so I forget all those horrible things and then you proceed he gives out 14 collars you know and but last two are we agree to eat out of the same bowl together that we will share our hunting grounds rather than fight over I think that's an incredible message of humanity of a shared humanity of a record you know I tell my students Indian diplomacy was brilliant because if you read any sort of international law theory about what's diplomacy okay diplomacy is the art of finding what we have in common and building on that and indigenous diplomacy recognize that we all have two things in common we're born and we die okay and if you can use that fundamental human knowledge to build a relationship because it's better to have children than to lose children okay it's better to live than to die I think that sends a powerful message of hope that idea that you know we can use indigenous people's human rights as a way to build communities within these nations which have oppressed indigenous peoples in a way that is imagined by the great law of peace you know by the the two row Wampembe by the Calamette peace pipe you know we know people of symbols you know and if we could teach those symbols in a respectful way to allies and to constituencies we do that all the time when when we build alliances with NGOs with human rights groups with other tribes with tribal organizations we use those principles in our own work here at the University of Arizona that we do with indigenous tribes and they work they really do work I've had the opportunity to be at a few condolence ceremonies when they're bringing in new chiefs or new clan mothers and you know the wiping of the tears and the cleaning of the ears and I mean it just brings me to tears every time I've ever seen it and the first time I went to a long house out in Hone and Shone Country they're very different than here right like the men line up on one side the women on the other and the way that they come in and there's like a culinary response you know like like yeah hey I love like their songs but I grew up my whole life like listening to Joanne Shannon Doha right and like like hearing these songs but to see it in real life and and also having like read about condolence ceremonies my whole life to see it in real life was so moving for me you know the foundations of the way that we think about the country are legal doctrines and how it has affected me it was really really moving but of course it's so far away from me in here in Washington state to go all the way out there and have that experience was an important part I think of my coming of age I also had the opportunity to go to coming of age ceremonies with clan mother Louise Bear and and watched the way that they do those those condolence ceremonies with kids and it was so moving for me I think again if you look to history before white people started persecuting in the in the in ceremonies and indigenous ceremonies they were shared you will be invited all comers it was open it was you know it was a religious event at Pascayaki you didn't disturb the peace you know during the most sacred ceremony the dear dance ceremony but it was the oppression and suppression of those ceremonies that have made a number of indigenous peoples you know reluctant to share and I think you know coming out of that shell is important but it has to be a cautious process you know but I think the fundamental values that we teach through these ceremonies I think they're important for all human beings one of the things that I hold close is the humanity that we have collectively and taking care of our dead so when you're telling the stories of the condolences ceremonies and really this act of actually wiping away the tears or the practice of forgiveness in so many different ways and really the humanity comes from term humanda which means burial or burying of the dead so it's like how we care for our dead and then on the other side of these ceremonies these life ceremonies how they're all connected the wedding ceremony the naming ceremony the coming of age ceremonies how a lot of the work is the same yeah where it shows up in similar ways within communities and just thinking about how that humanity can connect us or we can link arms and I think that's actually part of America's sickness you did mention the international law yeah and the work that you've been doing in those spaces yes yes I would love to just dive into that a little bit oh I'd love to talk about it because it's what I'm doing now the point I make about international law and this is so important is if you want to have a case before the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights if you want to have a case your Swami from Sweden you want to have a case against the Europe against Finland in the European unions human rights body in the African body you have to exhaust your domestic remedies you know the system is there as a last resort and so it's not that international law has failed it's because your domestic legal system has failed that you have to jimin eye and eye along with fine we're fortunate in that we're able to open the world's first indigenous peoples long policy program that offered not just the JD but the LLM the masters of law and the SJD the doctorate of law and we've been able to recruit indigenous lawyers human rights lawyers from all over the world I have two Messiah in our class I have an indigenous woman from Taiwan I have an enoroi tribal person from Africa we have a Maori woman from New Zealand we have a North America a Native American lawyer we bring together this incredible group and and we work on actual international human rights cases we've done a significant work with the UN Special Rapid Tour on the rights of indigenous peoples we work within the OAS we bring active litigation with the support of our clinic our students come here to learn from the best attorneys in the world how to do this work and bring it back and so to me the frontiers of indigenous human rights law are intimately connected to climate crisis that we did not create but we're the only ones that can solve it and this crisis is going to affect the indigenous peoples in North America it's already affecting them in Alaska in the Arctic in the in the Pacific Ocean Islands 80 percent of the world's biodiversity is said to be in lands in which indigenous peoples live and sustain themselves and so if we're going to solve the climate crisis by creating these carbon credit schemes by setting aside large conservation areas we have to find a way to work with indigenous peoples on a global level and that's where Undrip comes in the UN Declaration I was so fortunate as I said to see that process my students say well isn't this the product of a Western imperialist international legal system as you weren't there you didn't hear the interventions by hundreds of indigenous peoples from around the world who got five minutes to tell those five independent UN experts this is what we need we need land rights we need cultural rights we need respect for our dead we need respect for our self-government embedded in a united nations declaration which can be the foundation of a treaty a UN covenant you know after you get your declaration which is aspirational just you know even though even though it only committed nations to say we aspire to recognize self-determination property rights the US Canada New Zealand Australia couldn't sign it could not vote yes that declaration was the result of the voices and the stories of indigenous peoples you would sit there and in five minutes an indigenous person and you'd hear it through interpreters would have you crying with what they were experiencing and so to have a declaration come out of that and give indigenous peoples and and this is its importance why should it be used why should you carry it around in your hip pocket because the 46 articles of that declaration are the I call it so the the dream vision right of you know what's your vision of what indigenous I always tell my students what would Indian law look like if you use the 46 articles of the UN declaration as opposed to the martial trilogy okay can you dream of what that would look like and that's the dream that the key component of international legal practice is to incorporate these international doctrines and rules into domestic law that's why you have to exhaust the domestic remedies because your domestic system to respect and protect your human rights and so now we're we have a reporting system at UN served a committee elimination racial discrimination we have seed all and offer women we have all these mechanisms and all these special procedures that indigenous peoples can now tap into because of the declaration and have an authoritative legal source the the very I please go if you're listening read the declaration just go on drip and it comes right up okay it's not a biggie it's not a big carry and read the opening words okay the the opening words say that all doctrines founded on on the ethnic or religious or social or cultural characteristics of any human being or indigenous peoples are racist and have no legal authority you cannot cite the doctrine of discovery at international litigation okay states can't cite it has no authority it's racist right but it does have authority here and that's the problem and so I've got so you mentioned sovereignty I don't let my students use the S word because it's used way way too irresponsible there's this wonderful and so people say why do I cite Kronschmit he was a Nazi anti-Semite you know legal scholar in Germany who worked with Hitler well he studied the rise of totalitarian dictatorships so he was at a unique position and his writings have had a profound impact and he came up with this wonderful little aphorism that I use all the time sovereign is he who has the power of exception sovereign is he who has the power of exception so who accepts Indians out of the constitution and they can't vote until 1924 who submits Indians to the doctrinal discovery who submits Indians to plenary power how come only Indians don't have their religions protected where did all those exceptions come from they came from the power of exception that the sovereign holds by fear by law by fear and until you're and so again what would your tribe look like what would your reservation look like if you had the power of exception that you're the one who could determine who you would prosecute for reaping your women beating up your children your girlfriend your boyfriends who come off the reservation who bring liquor onto the reservation who traffic in missing and murdered indigenous women and children what would your reservation look like if you had the power of exception rather than some U.S. attorney who can do a declination of prosecution on a rear charge against a white guy in Gallup what would that look like and so in two and and and so we listen we have we have a vision quest Indians who had the tradition of the vision quest you know that's what R and Lions told to me at the beginning of my career and I came up to him after he had given a talk and I said you know I'm beginning my career you know what advice can you give me and I want to protect Indian people's human rights and he says you know nephew it's a it's a gift from the creator to have a cause to live and fight for it's a gift from the creator okay and so you know I think that's you know my takeaway that I try to give my students I tell them you're gonna go mad at here and whether it's an international forums or legal forums you know okay you're trying to find words you're trying to find principles you're gonna lose many more times than you're gonna win okay that's just the way it is you know we're faded that way um but do you want to do anything else if I if I told you I could read the future so we have we are peoples of visions we need a great vision and we need our young people to adopt that great vision of of making the two row wampum okay against with two rows of purple wampum against a white bed of peace and the two rows represent separate rivers and the English will row there will sail their man of war down one river and the Indian will sell will sail his birch bark can do another and the two rows will never get interference with each other but they're on the same bed of peace and so the problem with us Indian law with Canadian law with Australian law with New Zealand law is they've adopted the doctrine of discovery and that seeds the power of exception to the superior sovereign so we're not quite sovereign yet in fact we're very little sovereign but and this is gonna upset people in your audience but I'm gonna tell you something I tell my students Indians indigenous peoples have no right to sovereignty under international law sorry ain't there not gonna get it but you do have a right to self-determination and that's much more important self-determination that's a human right it's not the power of exception and the and the state has an obligation to protect those human rights and so that's why I looked to international law why you know our vision for IPLP was students would graduate knowing three things they'd know the domestic law of their country federal Indian law they'd know tribal law and they would know international human rights law and our students are educated to to integrate all three into a powerful mode of indigenous human rights advocacy is what we believe here I'm interested in the ethical dilemma of the modern legal process for an indigenous person I heard some people tell me like I went to the I went to law school I passed the bar but I couldn't I couldn't put my hand on the Bible and swear myself and into the value system you know how do we how do we like indigenous legal professionals ethically operate in this existing system another of my great mentors Derek Bell who founded created critical race theory and he would tell this wonderful story it's in one of his books so when Derek is you know comes out of law school he is a lawyer for the NAACP but he's young and so his job is to bail out all the African American protesters from the southern jails after Martin would come in and rile everybody up and so that's what he did 30 years later he goes back and may have been Selma it may have been Birmingham and he's doing the same thing you know it was a voting rights march and he goes down to the jail and sees his grandmother there this black African American grandmother and behind the bars and he looks at her she looks at him says do I know you that's right sonny you you bailed me out of the same jail 35 years ago and he's and and Derek was a racial realist okay he realized that racism was American is apple pie it wasn't going anywhere you weren't going to argue it away he says a grandmother why do we bother he said you don't understand sonny I live to harass white folks what a humanizing story isn't that awesome isn't that awesome and and and and it and it teaches there is dignity in the struggle there's dignity in the struggle you have no choice you know if you're going to be a native you're going to call yourself indigenous if you're going to call yourself Lumbee if you're going to call yourself Lumbee you're that's your responsibility is to keep pushing that rock up the hill and one day believe with that great vision of what the other side of that hill looks like you know your book the salvage anxieties the invention of western civilization I really am interested in hearing you talk about this you know outside of the book because you trace the concept of the word savage back to ancient western philosophy and I'm really interested in how these ideas manifest in the treaties between indigenous nations and colonial powers as it's related to our conversation today yeah I talk about the history of the idea of the savage and you know Justice Marshall in the Cherokee cases and Johnson McIntosh particularly Johnson V McIntosh which essentially locks in the doctrine of discovery is the foundational principle pre-constitutional principle of federal Indian law will never get away from it just describe the doctrine of discovery for the list yeah so so these these white lands speculators in the middle of the revolutionary war cross the Appalachian Mountains and they get some Illinois Indians to seed their lands you know for for money or whatever and then the U.S. wins the revolution and they try to get their legal rights that they acquired from the Indians recognized by a U.S. court or by Congress and they fail in Congress and they eventually at 1823 the case they bring their speculators bring their case before the Supreme Court and their argument is that Indians have the right to sell their land to whom so ever they please and Justice Marshall says oh no that ignores 400 years of you know colonial history going back to the spandards and even the crusades a land discovered by a civilized people belongs to the first discover so long as they can cement their rights by occupation and that's called the doctor's discovery Spain accepted it England accepted it Holland accepted it Russia accepted it was the first international law of of Europe yeah I tell my students there wasn't an international law before colonization European countries needed an international law to regulate their colonial conquest and at the foundation of it was the doctrine of discovery as Justice Marshall articulates and at the very opening paragraphs of Johnson v Macintosh I can almost quote it from heart the great nations of Europe were eager to appropriate to themselves so much of the continent as they could respectively acquire but the character and inhabits of the people who inhabited that continent provided an excuse for justifying taking the rights away and he then goes on in the Cherokee cases where he says that the Cherokee treaties are not international documents they are not documents between one foreign nation or another so the issue in Cherokee nation was whether the Cherokee could sue the sovereign state of Georgia in the US Supreme Court and the courts jurisdiction allowed it to hear cases between a foreign nation and a state and so the Cherokee's had a very good lawyer Thomas Jefferson's former attorney general William work and Georgia didn't even show up so you'd think this argument was a lock and his argument was that you know that the Cherokee's had every right to be considered a foreign nation because the US had signed treaties with them and you only signed treaties with foreign nations and Marshall in the Cherokee case citing Johnson v Macintosh that argument ignores the doctrine of discovery because the US has superior title over savages and in fact at the time the constitution was written Indians are singled out they're not considered foreign nations and so this whole idea of the idea of the savage and then Marshall says I was there when the constitution was ratified I was responsible for getting all of the votes of Virginia to support the constitution I was there and so let me tell you what the founders meant when they negotiated Indian treaties with Indian tribes they did not think of the Indian nations as far and they were under our jurisdiction and protection under the doctrine of discovery and he says they were more like and you know this term if you took Indian studies 101 they were domestic dependent nations he made that up it's brilliant now every legal scholar's tried to find out where he got that for he just made it up he says their status is sui generous they're not foreign and they're not states they're in between and therefore Congress has plenary power under the doctrine of discovery to do whatever it wants with them so they can negotiate a treaty and break a treaty they can recognize Alaska natives or they can fail to recognize Alaska natives they can create the Indian gaming regulatory act or not they can create the Indian child well for act so you know this is what we call the two edge sword of the doctrine of discovery's plenary power doctrine because it's been used in the past for horrible things you know it's plenary power that justified reservation schools you know that that justified involuntary sterilization of Indian women in i.h.s hospitals you know was that plenary power that unquestioned political power but in the modern era at least you know before this court came into business you had plenary power congress passing statutes incredibly beneficial to tribes the Indian gaming regulatory act iqwa Indian self-determination education assistance act and so yeah Congress can use that sword to benefit tribes or to destroy tribes and that's exactly what international human rights law and the undripped says you can't do you have a duty of protection of indigenous people's cultural survival cultural rights and cultural autonomy and identity you have a duty of protection that you can't attack that dude you can't deny that duty or you're in violation of their human rights and last year the pope disavowed or repudiated the doctrine of discovery but fell short what was the conversation in your classroom about that gesture oh no listen i am very proud one of several my students helped spearhead that movement i don't know if that's appropriate to use in the Indian school colonial language but listen it was Michelle cook you know just incredible Navajo proud SJD grad i supervised her dissertation i love Michelle she does great work she got into the pope's face she gets an audience you know before the Vatican and and the pope you know in the middle of St. Peter's and she starts shoving the doctor of discovery in his face the papal bull and what are you going to do about it and then later because that was able to get a meeting with the papal curia you know her and a number of other indigenous activists have really been pushing on that feeling that particularly in countries with large Roman Catholic populations it would have moral force moral and religious force um you know if i was a Vatican lawyer i'd be careful as well about you know telling the pope to accept all you know responsibility have you ever been to the Vatican have you ever seen all that wealth amassed all the stuff all the gold all the silver uh in the Vatican you know where that came from that so spain for example the Spanish fleet would you know go off to Peru and the gold mines in Mexico and they'd bring back golden silver and then they had to go through um they had to get to severe uh the enterprise was where the enterprise the indies was all that gold was then valued and so when they brought the golden silver in their ships upriver at that point the golden silver were valued one tenth went to the Spanish crown one tenth went to the church that's how all those great cathedrals were built from golden silver rob and so admitting full responsibility you know may well you know open yourself up the not just land back claims uh but that nice golden crucifix or that alter we get that back too because that was made we didn't get very far with other popes i think he was at least willing to take that step up you know you're talking about without question the most conservative institution in the history of the western world it's conservative because it goes back further than any other institution it's 2000 years old you you don't get 2000 years old by going undergoing radical change that upsets people you know you just you're there just trying to you know steer the waters you know take what you can get and build upon it use it as an advocate would use it it's not perfect no cases perfect no precedent is perfect so on that note how do you see indigenous legal systems contributing to a broader redefinition of justice both within treaty frameworks and beyond yeah i think um we do a lot of work with the native nation's institute here on tribal constitutions um and i think one of the great um harmful legacies of the Indian Reorganization Act which is federal legislation which most tribes continue to be organized under uh is the lack of independence of a tribal judiciary um you know let's face it if on your reservation if you look at the payroll my guess is that tribal judges tribal clerks people in that system you know are are at least middle income if not higher income on those reservations those jobs are very valuable if particularly if you live on the reservation you want to stay in that job and so you're going to be subject to a lot of tribal council interference i think one of the most important things that we can do for tribes is to have independent judiciary look at the the Navajo Nation now you know has an independent judiciary it's made all the difference in the world and the confidence uh and that's why you have an independent judiciary it's not so simple it just builds confidence and it doesn't matter who's my family or who's my uncle or who i worked for i'm gonna get a fair break if i use this system and the Navajo Nation now uses Navajo common law again one of my great mentors is is justice ray austin uh retired for the Navajo Supreme Court i've been working with as a ray you're a young guy what are you gonna do i'm gonna round up horses i don't know you're not you're gonna come down to Arizona and you're gonna get an aisphd and you're gonna write down everything you know in your thesis about Navajo common law so we have that and you're the only person we can trust and we can use that to teach in our tribal courts courses and so you know that ability then and and now the Navajo legal system uses first of all a very you know sparse interpretation of federal supremacy okay so yeah what do we have to follow well our goal is to come up with an argument on why we don't have to follow it and then we can use Navajo common law to decide this case and that is really and and we speak Navajo in our in our courts you know we use Navajo that's our language and so you see these judicial institutions reinforcing that great tradition of wisdom givers you know you go to the holy person you go to the grandmother you go to the grandfather people of wisdom people of experience you know people have you know in the western world we call them credentials you know a JD or whatever um but you know the Navajo's have a dual requirement you have to be a JD a law school graduate from a US school but you also have to speak Navajo you know that's a brilliant approach because now non-indians as well as Indians commercial suppliers a family law you know mixed families can go to that court system and realize they're going to get a fair shake and instead of turning to the white man's law which is culturally alien and totally contrary to most of the values that Indian people have about how things should be decided well let's wrap up with this question Robert what can individuals and governments do on treaty day to actively address the legacies of conquest and broken agreements and what can individuals do to honor treaties renew the treaties you know and so yeah listen get your mayor out there you know get your congressional representative and it's his or her responsibility these are treaties made with the United States and so as individual citizens no matter what race or color or gender you are as a citizen you can reconfirm to commit to the treaties and tell that official you know tell that body tell that organization whoever you're speaking to everybody in the audience you know make the treaties not just Indians responsibilities to keep alive but everybody's responsibility it has to be a national responsibility um and so the first step you know toward freedom is knowledge you know one of my you know uh sort of scholarly heroes I never met him before uh but you know it was pedagogy of the oppress right you know that that whole idea of people have to understand the sorts of their oppression before they can move on to be free and they have to understand also that they may be the source of their oppression you know it may be the reason that you live in some of the poorest horrible communities the reason we have so many missing and murdered women and children is unresponsible and I'm not I'm not responsible in a moral basis unresponsible because I'm a citizen the United States of my my government has pledged to you that it will protect you from these types of harms that will provide that education Indian health I mean of all the important treaty promises the pro Indians are smart enough to get that promise you know and so we have iHS is badly as poorly funded it is and constantly fighting for more funding and losing at the Supreme Court on some funding bill but it's there it's a treaty based institution the reservation is a treaty based institution our goal is just is for all Americans don't want to strengthen these these institutions and live up to that multicultural promise that that yes two peoples can live together on a bed of peace and a relationship of peace without steering each other's boats but learning from each other wonderful we want to thank professor Robert Williams for being on the show today as we celebrate treaty day here in Washington state our treaty the 1855 treaty of point Elliott is so important and foundational not only to our communities but to all citizens of the United States and really anybody who benefits from the land here the water the the animals the relatives and so we're so grateful for him sharing his insights stories his knowledge and his perspectives and expertise on why treaties are so foundational to our life here in the United States as native people or otherwise I really like what professor William said you know like take time even if you're not from the Pacific Northwest take time to learn what is the treaty that applies to the land that you live upon read it know it recite it teach it to your children you know if encourage your officials or illegal officials to renew those treaties to honor those treaties you know it's important to take time out of our lives to remember the way that the treaties created precedence for us to live where we live now without those none of us would be here the way that we are and to remember that we do have power our ancestors had the foresight to know that these treaties would have great impact on how we're living today you know this podcast is primarily funded through patreon like we're able to do this podcast because of all of you that contribute through patreon and to those of you who come and support our events in real life you know this is this podcast doesn't have any advertisements as of yet you know we're grassroots effort we're a small team you know we have us and teo and poncho working lovingly on this on this podcast you know but we are dedicated to indigenous storytelling we're dedicated to shifting our minds towards recognizing relationality as a fundamental value system and providing discourse or a conversation for our relatives in indian country and so we really are grateful to be doing this work to be in community with you and it's made possible because of you our communities so thank you for continuing to share these stories you know leave us a review on iTunes share it on your Instagram they seem like little things but it's really the organic spread of knowledge that makes it possible for us to continue doing this one yeah and I just want to shout out the team again and Matika your leadership like this is takes a lot of effort because we want to put out quality stories and and so the team spends just hours editing and putting out content that you can share that you can make accessible to your family friends and so you know your support is what we need and to keep this high quality podcast coming into your earways now that note we send our love and our prayers and our good blessings and our good medicine out to each and every one of you wherever you may be and until next week bye my relations