(dramatic music) - Welcome to "At Issue" I'm H Wayne Wilson.

Thank you as always for joining us for a conversation.

This time about native Americans and their history.

It is exactly 400 years ago that Thanksgiving occurred.

I also decided to do this show at this point in time because it is Native American Heritage Month, but to the Thanksgiving question, 400 years ago, and we don't know exactly what happened in Thanksgiving.

We know the pilgrims and the Wampanoags did get together under what circumstances who invited whom is not clear, but there was a Thanksgiving.

And so as we celebrate Thanksgiving, I invited three individuals with history about native Americans.

Let me first introduce to you, Dr. Libby Tronnes.

Dr. Tronnes is a professor at Bradley University in the history department, but she also is at Special Collections at Cullom-Davis Library at Bradley University.

Thank you for being with us.

- Thank you for having me.

- [Host] Also with us Jo Lakota.

Jo Lakota is a native American storyteller and she's a native American, that's why she's the storyteller.

And her son Jimmy is with us also, Jimmy Lakota Edwards.

Thank you to both of you for being with us on "At Issue."

- Thanks for having us.

- And let me start with you Libby first, because I think that we have overlooked native American history in our educational system.

At least when I went through school my knowledge of native Americans was minimal.

Is that changing?

And how should it change?

- Oh, it is absolutely changing.

I am from Wisconsin and in Wisconsin, we have something called Act 31.

It's basically refers to statutes that require public school educators to teach about tribal sovereignty.

What it means to be a native American.

It is very Wisconsin focused those courses, but I'm a product of that.

I went through elementary, middle, and high school, learning about the Pottawatomie, the Ho-Chunk, the Ojibwa of people of Wisconsin, and specifically the meaning of things like sovereignty, treaty rights, but things like Act 31 don't exist across the US.

There are other states that mandate similar education requirements.

Illinois is not one of them.

And I think that that is something that needs to be pushed for to make sure that the education is there in public schools.

Act 31 of Wisconsin came out of some pretty awful encounters in the 1980s and 90s over spear fishing in Northern Wisconsin.

It's national news so I'm sure some of the viewers will remember, but the response by the Wisconsin government was basically, "We need to make sure that people understand why Ojibwa people can spear fish in these lakes."

And so that was the start of mandating educational requirements about native sovereignty, but that's just one state, it needs to be much broader.

- And Jo, we identify you as a native American storyteller- - [Jo] Mmh hmm.

- But it's nuts, I mean, storyteller like you.

Well, she's telling a tale.

- Mmh.

What kind of education should we have in Illinois?

- Well, I'm a retired teacher of 30 some years.

And what education, maybe the truth.

And when I taught a US history here, in the area in high schools, people would say, "Oh, you taught at Indian school and what are you gonna teach them when you teach history?"

And I just said, "I'm gonna teach there are many sides to every story, and that includes the native American perspective," which was of course our focus at Indian schools.

But yeah, basically that it wasn't that long ago.

If your grandpa owns a big farm who was there before?

If you are residing in a certain place who was there before?

So two lifetimes ago, the Indians were living here right here in Illinois, and in their own way.

And of course, they're still living here now.

We don't have land here, but as a people, but to educate them about that we were not just the savages that were attacking unprovoked, that were just mean people.

And that we're not gone, we're not a gone people.

- Well, in reflecting back on my education Jimmy, as we were talking earlier before we taped the show, I remembered the Black Hawk War.

I remember Custer's last stand, things of that nature.

- All right.

- When I came out of high school, I really didn't understand native American culture.

I knew battles.

I knew wars- - [Jimmy] All right.

- And that certainly is not only misrepresentative, but Custer's last stand did take place, but it's just such a small, small, just a moment in native American history.

- Right right.

Yeah, my experience with native American people, first nation people is their kindness and their peaceful ways.

So when in school, when you just talk about the wars, I mean, just think of any culture, any people, if that's all you talk about, then that's how people are gonna perceive them.

Native people are the kindest people I've ever met.

I mean, they've literally given me the shirt off of their back, their last meal when I was on the road, traveling, dancing, and singing, just because I was able to perform their traditions with them.

They had such gratitude towards me that they would literally give me, and these are poor people who have nothing.

So this is the kindness, the peaceful way, that's what you see now with these fires that are protesting different things in the native communities.

They do them now with fires, with prayers, peaceful warriors.

The strongest thing you can do is be kind, even in battles.

- And just to jump in, I think one of the ways to rethink how we tell stories about the past is to tell true stories about things we call wars.

And the Black Hawk War would be an example of that.

- [Jimmy] Two sides, right?

- Many sides.

- Tell us a little bit of history so that we understand because the viewer may say, "Well, the Black Hawk War 1832, if they remember that year.

- Right.

And Abraham Lincoln was in that war.

- Yeah, for like 10 days, probably didn't fire his gun.

- [Jimmy] He had no action.

- But I bring this up because that was a conflict.

It was a crisis, hundreds of hungry, terrified indigenous people died in that conflict.

But it was the return of a multi-ethnic band, which Black Hawk, Sauk leader was a part of, but they were invited back to live with the Rock River Ho-Chunk who were in Illinois, in what is now Wisconsin.

But it was never intended to bring about a war.

But what ended up happening was a well-armed Illinois militia and federal troops pursued, hunted and tracked these families.

And so if we continue to talk about stories like that as if it was really a war, instead of what it was, I think that that just, it does violence to the histories of the indigenous people involved and their descendants.

So the Ho-Chuck, the Souk- - And you mentioned Ho-Chunk, and quite often the original name, and that is an original name for a tribe?

- [Dr. Libby] Mmh hmm.

- But we don't know them in English as the Ho-Chunks.

- Sure.

Are you referring to the former name Winnebago?

- Yeah, the Winnebagos- - Yeah, your language.

- When I heard of the group it's the Winnebagos, no, it's the Ho-Chunks.

And it's just recently that we started calling them Ho-Chunks.

At least my experience.

- Yeah, you know there's a Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin.

And then there's the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska.

They are the same people, but the fact that they exist in these two distinct, federally recognized statuses as nations is as a result of forced removals well over half a century.

But the Ho-Chunk of Wisconsin changed their name officially in the 90s.

And I think the Winnebago of Nebraska are in the process of doing so.

So they are the same people.

- And many of the tribes Jimmy, they were assigned Spanish names.

- Mmh hmm, yeah, sure.

Like Comanche is a Spanish word.

They're known as Nermernuh, people- - [Jo] The Navajo- - The Navajo, with the silent J, that's Dine, is what they would call themselves in their own language.

Again, meaning the people.

Most tribes names break down to simply human beings, the people.

- And mentioning these names, there was a bad historical period in America, where we institutionalized young people.

They were the first, as I understand, it was in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, an army general started this.

And Jo- - Pratt.

Tell us a little bit about what was done in those camps.

- Well, if you have a child or grandchild, imagining the military coming in and taking your child from you, tearing them from you and taking them, and you may never see them again or hear of what became of them.

So that happened thousands of times.

Often children were hidden and they went to these schools where the motto was to kill the Indian and save the man or save the person, the soul.

And so these children were mixed up like African slaves were where they had variety of languages.

If they could find someone who spoke the same language, if you can imagine a five-year-old going into a institution where no one spoke their language.

Come to call our Afghan young people.

But they were beaten for speaking their language.

Their hair was cut, which was cultural connections.

They were scrubbed down and clothed properly and beaten for singing, praying in their own language, speaking their own language.

These are just small children, some were taken as older children, and somehow they were educated and supposedly prepared for a productive place in the prevailing society.

But often there was such thing as maybe a annual visit by the parents, if they could come the distance and if they knew where their child was.

There were kids who tried to run home, but it's heartbreaking.

And there are the survivors.

We were talking earlier, the survivors, they had this post-traumatic thing.

A lot of them wouldn't even ever talk about it.

And I've been around people who are in those schools.

And we have a relative who was in the school as a young child, and he was beaten every time he spoke, he was hit on the high side of the head and he's been deaf all of his life in that side of his head from those beatings.

And he became an alcoholic very early because he found out where the priest kept the wine and he was hungry.

And some of this sadness, and some will say, "Well, I got some training and I learned how to do this or that so I could get a job."

But mostly it was horrific.

And we have to be careful that we're not continuing that legacy with native American children and other children.

- It wasn't the only school that was started in 1879 by an army brigadier-general Richard Henry Pratt.

But there was one in Nebraska, the Genoa Indian School.

And it right now, there is a digital reconciliation project going on Libby, they have found evidence through digital work of somewhere around 102 deaths that were not natural.

And so the interior department is looking into these as they define it, these horrific events.

How important is it that the interior secretary, Deb Holland, who is a native American, is a native American, and is looking into these things?

- Oh, I think it's essential.

You know the United States government has had high ranking people who are indigenous in important positions, but never as the Secretary of the Interior, which oversees the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

But also has a direct line to the Justice Department.

And then Deb Holland, her own family has connections to the boarding school experience.

And so for her it's a family issue, but it's also she's a native woman who is much more in tune with the generational traumas that are associated, or that live on from people who survived boarding schools or didn't who have you left families behind siblings, parents.

And so it takes a certain kind of person to understand the importance of digging into the past for that truth in that reconciliation.

Maybe we're taking a cue from Canada, and just trying to open up about these very dark spaces in US history that we don't talk a lot about.

And we certainly, yeah, I think...

This is not gonna be the first or the last, I should say, boarding school, where these sorts of things are being discovered.

And so I think people are kind of bracing themselves for some pretty horrific stories to come out of these hundreds of boarding schools that lasted well over a century.

- Many were church run, but they were all government funded.

- And just recently there was a Tribal Nation Summit.

It was held virtually, but it was a Tribal Nations Summit that President Biden called.

And he is calling for improvements in justice, improvements in public safety for native Americans.

Do you take that as a positive or are you a little hesitant about what that may mean?

- Well, we'll see how that plays out, but anytime that people acknowledge that we still exist, people are stunned by the number of nations that are recognized in these United States and that we are promised some sovereignty and some ability to function as a nation and as a government.

A lot of people don't know that the Lakota Nation, formerly seceded from the United States, and is recognized by the United Nations formally is as a separate nation.

But that would give us the right to say, if one of our young women is murdered or molested by someone who is in a pipeline situation, that we could call them on that and take them to our tribal courts.

And rather than the whole thing being ignored, because it was out of jurisdiction, so a lot of those crimes are un-prosecuted because of our lack of sovereignty and ability to conduct our own business.

- And Jimmy, your thoughts on that.

- Just to add on what my mother said, just the awareness that these things happened and they are continuing to happen.

Just for that to be said publicly is a huge, it's just a huge win for I think for the people just to let the rest of the world know what's going on in these little areas when they have these giant employment opportunities, such as pipelines and things, where do all these workers live, where do they reside?

What are they doing to the local community?

Now there's more of a spotlight on that.

And we can take legal action instead of saying, "We believe this child was murdered.

We believe this child was kidnapped.

We believe this child was abused."

And they say, "Well, you're a sovereign nation.

So our police department, or our government, doesn't have anything to do with that" and walk away from it.

Now they cannot it's on their desk, it's on the table.

It has to be looked at.

It has to be investigated.

So we've come a long way.

I believe it's a very positive thing moving forward.

- Can I just say that another reason that this is important is because now we have a voice because people are seeing what's happening to the earth and the indigenous people of the world know the rules for living on this earth- - [Man] For thousands of years.

- Yeah.

And we've managed to do that.

And all of a sudden, the last couple of hundred years, everything's fallen apart by excesses and by greed.

And we know the rules for living on this earth and we can help heal this earth.

And I think people are ready to hear what we have to say.

- The tribal people who live in every region of our world have lived there for thousands of years, and they have the instruction on how to survive.

We're not gonna make it the way we're going.

Our water, our air, our animals, our plants, everything's being polluted and lost here.

And we need to listen to those instructions, they're right there, instructions of proper life, how to live in harmony with everything that dwells on the mother earth.

- Well, let me Libby, tackle this issue of... Jo mentioned that there's recognition for the Lakota, but they don't have a... You succeeded, but do you have a land?

I mean, people don't say, "Oh, I know where the French are, and I know where the Germans are, and I know where the Thais are, but where are the Lakota?"

But they're all over the place.

Chicago, has a wealth of indigenous people.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

There's definitely Lakota in Chicago.

And I think somebody probably the American Indian Center is sort of like trying to track how many different indigenous nations are represented in that city.

And I think they're still counting, but it's well over a hundred.

And it's the sixth largest urban native American population in the US and part of that is native peoples going there on their own.

But of course the other part of that is it's a product of federal Indian policy, much like boarding schools is a federal Indian policy and sort of shifted native youth all over.

There were these assimilationist programs in the 1950s and 60s where the federal government wanted to remove young native adults from reservations and young families, give them vocational training, and send them to cities, take them from Pine Ridge, and send them to Minneapolis.

Take them from, the Bad River Reservation up in Wisconsin, and send them to Chicago.

So the start a new life, right?

Because it didn't feel in the kind of post-World War II era, very quote American to just have people isolated on these reservations around the US, but also it's true that the government just wanted out of the native American business, right?

They just wanted to stop having to funnel money to fulfill these promises that they made to hold these lands and trust.

But yeah, Chicago is one product of that.

It was one of the major cities for this relocation program and indigenous peoples have thrived and helped build that city for well long before federal Indian policy, (laughs) but they've just continued to do so.

- Is it disappointing that you know what the native Americans have contributed, and we'll use the Chicago as the example here, but that they've contributed so much, and yet the recognition for that contribution is almost nil?

- Well, corporate names and slave owners, and so forth, (laughs) have overtaken of course, the original sources of things.

But the foods and medicines and so forth, we had our own religion so forth.

Yeah, who's talking about thank you to the native American people for this or that.

Or even for the, the black inventors, and that's just historical that people are not acknowledged.

But yeah, we were here for 10,000 plus years, and the early people survived because of us.

- And within our cultures, the leaders, the people who are leaders, and who do great things, they don't look for recognition.

- [Jo] Yeah.

- They don't put a bunch of money into promoting themselves because they feel that is their duty to be good to the earth and other people and to do good things.

That's what we're here for.

- But sometimes the recognition comes in terms of a derogatory word, quite often, mascots or nicknames for sports teams.

- [Jimmy] Sure.

- [Host] And that's changing.

Is that encouraging to you, Jimmy?

- Yes, it is.

I have a lot of friends and I've watched sports and played sports and have friends who are in that world.

And some people even have those mascots at their schools and come to me, "We really like this.

We really honor this.

And we look forward to the dance or to the whatever."

And a lot of schools have paid to have their mascot scent.

And a native American people actually show them some things and make outfits for them in the past.

But in every culture, there's people who kind of sell their culture.

- So Bradley has dropped its mascot, but not its name, still the Braves.

- [Jimmy] Mmh hmm.

- The University of Illinois dropped its mascot, but still the Fighting Illini.

How do you feel about that?

- Well, me personally, just the fighting, or the Raiders or the, it just shows aggression and a mean nature, which I've only seen when provoked or pushed into a corner.

And a lot of the native elders who I've spoke to the problem, isn't always with the name, but there's a huge problem with one item, the head dress.

So the head dress is very offensive for someone to wear who is not...

It would be the same as if me, if I didn't serve in the military and I wear a military uniform and I was out asking for money on the street or something.

I mean, it's just not done.

- And with that we have run out of our half hour of time, but I wanna thank all three of you.

Dr. Libby Tronnes of Bradley university.

And Jo Lakota.

And by the way, the son of Jo Lakota is Jimmy Lakota Edwards.

Thank you all three for joining us on "At Issue."

And for more information, you can go to nativeamericanheritagemonth.gov.

nativeamericanheritagemonth.gov.

We'll be back next time with another edition of "At Issue."

Please join us for that conversation.

(upbeat music)