[Music] welcome to visions of America all stories all people and all places in anticipation of the 250th anniversary of America's Independence PBS books in The Institute of Museum and Library Services have partnered to bring lesser known stories to the Forefront as we explore the stories people and places that have shaped our great nation and now it is my pleasure to hand the conversation over to the director of The Institute of Museum and Library services and our host Crosby keer enjoy hello and welcome to visions of America all stories all people all places voices from the herd Museum in Phoenix stories of first Americans I am your host Crosby keer and I am here at the herd museum with its spectacular Native American collection today we'll explore indigenous stories highlighting Arts culture and sports Native American citizenship and tribal sovereignty and the changing and important place of Native Americans in our history we'll begin the conversation with David roach the director and chief executive officer of the herd Museum we'll learn about its founding its Mission and its important work today so David it's great to be here with you in this magnificent Courtyard of the herd Museum can you tell us a little bit about the origins of the herd how did how did this great museum come about welcome to the her Museum we're delighted to have you the her Museum was founded in 19 19 29 by a woman named May Bartlett bird who moved to Phoenix from Chicago the Bartlet family was a distinguished uh family of collectors they funded the first modern art Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago who were responsible for acquiring theard Go's bedroom oh no kidding wow so when may moved to Phoenix she thought there was a need for a museum and uh as was her way when she saw a need she did something about it so she founded a museum in 1929 uh on December 26 that was not a particularly auspicious year to be opening up a museum yeah Great Depression started and most people don't know that we weren't founded specifically as a museum dedicated to Native American American so how did that come about how did you become the great location for Native American art maybe her wanted to celebrate creativity and so like a lot of people for t she traveled the world um and she was interested in the creative expression of different cultures from along the globe uh and so originally the her Museum was exploring creativity from a Global Perspective uh given the vocation of the museum she became particularly interested in local indigenous cultures um specifically Arizona but also throughout the southwest and we're we're we're actually on what is originally Native American land that's right we're on the ancestral and unseed lands of the aamel AUM who are uh Partners in everything the her Museum does well that's wonderful and and the museum has a reputation for for for being engaged with the Native American community in your exhibits in your collection um talk a little bit about that yeah the herd has truly an extraordinary history in terms of how it has uh worked with indigenous people um really from early on at a time when most museums and galleries weren't representing Native American uh uh artists at all going back to the 1950s we began solo exhibitions for indigenous artists we were having group shows and bials things that other museums were not doing and Native Americans were largely left out at the conversations around Modern Art Contemporary Art but I think one of the most important things that we that we pioneered was the use of the first person voice which focused on letting Native American Artist um Scholars and knowledge Keepers to speak directly to our audience removing the institutional voice and and the the notion of specifically indigenous knowledge knowledge of the land knowledge of the Spirit uh is is very strong in your your exhibits uh you have an exhibit today on the origin stories uh which uh which speaks to both the natural en worlded and the creative world spectacular way well one of the things that the her Museum Embraces that knowledge takes many different forms and we feel as though the visitor experience is enriched by including different perspectives and different points of view substance of stars is an exhibition that looks at the origin dories of four different tribes the nabo the AKO AUM the hard Shani and the yek and we work closely with indigenous artists knowledge holders um videographers put this exhibition together telling these stories from their perspective um we also wanted to explore how these orro how this knowledge inspires artistic production um and creative production so for example with the huani uh we focus on the skyw woman origin story uh and they're works of art that reference that story in the exhibition that date to about 1650 right but there's also contemporary worth by L Watt who's a mky artist a temporary artist you see more than 400 years of continuity this same story that's still inspiring living artists today and that's something at the herb Museum that we're mindful of we frequently as shocking as it is to those of us who are committed to um to advancing American Indian art um we get feedback from visitors who say I didn't know that American Indians still existed right so we tried to turn up the volume that not only do they exist but they are contributing to society and art specifically in very important spectacular ways and and how say and you as an example you're talking about New England tribes and Alaskan tribes it's not just the local The Fabulous Arizona tribes uh but you're you're collecting and displaying the entire Spectrum which is an extraordinary Spectrum that's right the mission of the her museum is to connect the world to indigenous creativity so while the majority of our collection is rooted in the southwest as you might expect we are committed to telling the entirety of indigenous North American um uh stories and uh we certainly have found that our audiences responded well to that um then you have an interational audience uh a local audience and a Native American audience for what that's right we very diverse audience Phoenix is now the fifth largest city in the United States I know uh it's exciting um and the herd is right in the heart of the city um and one of the oldest museums of the state of Arizonia and our collection is truly 100 years old now we're coming up on your 100th anniversary that's right we'll be turning 100 in uh in 2029 uh and we're excited to start working toward what will be a very big celebration so David I I I've vend to the museum uh a number of times and I know how fabulous it is but to tell someone else to bring someone in from out of town what would you tell them about the first stum here oh well we have hundreds of thousands of visitors that come every year and I think that they come to experience the beauty the art in our collection they come to experience our programs such as hoop dance and the Indian market which is one of the largest Gatherings of indigenous artists in the world uh but I think that uh what what they take away after they come to the FD is a real sense of how American Indians have contributed to the American narrative and how they are alive and well and doing thring work um and challenging us to think differently about what people think they know about American Medan art history and culture well it's wonderful to be here with you at the herd Museum and wonderful to see This Magnificent space will be magnificent works thank you so much lady thank you for being here in a moment I'm stepping into a conversation with Walter echohawk of the pon Nation Native American attorney tribal judge writer activist and law professor he's written numerous books non-fiction and fiction he's the founding chairman of the association of tribal archives libraries and museums and a champion for Native American rights the author of in the light of Justice the rise of human rights in Native America we'll be discussing indigenous knowledge and traditions tribal engagement and the unique relationship of Native American tribes to our history Walter it's good good to see you yes and thank you uh it's good to see you crossby we're going to talk about your career and and and Native rights Native American rights but I want to I want to talk about your background first so you you you've been engaged in uh the assertion of Native American rights really since the beginning of the uh of the the Contemporary era sometimes since 1970 say uh why did it happen over the last 50 years what what was the origin of this I think the origin of the U modern era of federal Indian law and policy in the United States began in 1970 when President Nixon um handed down the Indian self-determination policy and that polic y um uh was the result of a couple decades of indigenous advocacy to move our country away from more destructive policies of uh termination and uh forceable assimilation and so with the Advent of this self-determination policy the challenge back then uh was to implement uh this policy it was simply a policy without any teeth in it and and so um uh my generation set about uh trying to implement that policy across the tribes throughout the country and that be began the work of a couple generations of uh lawyers and tribal leaders and all of Native America uh striding uh towards uh uh uh uh the principle of self-determination um our as spiration in this social movement was to achieve um recognition of of a vibrant tribal governments um and and to find a safe space in our society here in the United States you know for our tribal Nations and um so that was the quest and and uh it entailed um a lot of work by many many uh leaders along the way and and part of what we're doing doing with our series here is to talk about the the relationship of the the history of Native Americans and other groups to our national history and one would think with the Bill of Rights the Declaration of Independence which we'll be celebrating in a couple of years um that that these rights would have been guaranteed to Native Americans uh and yet they weren't you talk in your book uh uh the courts of the conquerors about the 10 worst uh uh uh legal decisions Supreme Court decisions mostly um why why did we we need what the explain courts of the Conqueror too that where does that come from it well it comes to us from the uh it's a legal fiction uh adopted by the Supreme Court in Johnson versus McIntosh in 18 the 18 and it basically holds that uh when the sailors off the coast most of North America First looked upon the land or discovered it uh that act of Discovery did two things uh one it operated to transfer legal title to all of the land to the uh to the Conqueror to the to the sailors and the country that they represented and it also operated to conquer all of the Indian tribes now of course these are legal fictions definite fiction yeah but uh that that was imported into Federal uh federal law and so John Marshall described the American judicial system as the courts of the Conqueror and makes you wonder how native people are going to fare in the courts of the Conqueror I guess we know how how they fared and your your career is has has essentially been about setting it to rights yes you and I got to know each other because of the work you've done as chairman of atom the association of tribal archives libraries and museums and the IAS The Institute of Museum and library servic is a big supporter of atom and you and I were at the uh at the last conference uh together and to me it's an extraordinary group of people who've come together who are building the tribal libraries the tribal cultural centers uh tribal archives building these tremendous Archives of uh tribal Traditions preserving the language the many Lang languages of Native America and and it's exuberant uh and and and bright and blossoming uh work in the in the world can you talk about the that and and and how you got involved in in that yes uh I um uh uh was the founding uh chair board chair of that organization uh just happened to be at the right place at the right time I guess when the at Tom organization was founded and uh have been associated with it ever since and it's it's been my uh philosophy that that every tribal Nation needs to have its own museums libraries and and archives for as as a cult indigenous cultural institution to uh uh pass our cultures from one generation to the next you know we have many ways of doing that but um the atom organization uh works with u 2 80 tribal museums across the country U about that many libraries and I think about 82 tribal archives as well to support the work of these indigenous cultural institutions you know uh uh uh as part of the overall cultural Renaissance that's going on throughout Indian country country you know we we have U many ways of preserving our uh uh histories and our cultures our cosmologies our indigenous religious practices um uh that were handed down to us uh through oral Traditions you know by our ancestors including u a lot of indigenous knowledge indigenous ecological knowledge that is uh in great demand these days to fight this climate change crisis that the world is facing there's a phrase in uh in your book I think it's in courts of the conquerors in which you talk about uh the growth of indigenous uh knowledge um and uh and and at the same time the growth of non-indigenous people and having knowledge uh of indigenous people in other words the white Americans and other Americans uh of all colors coming to an indigenous knowledge that's like that of the actual indigenous people at the same time indigenous people are becoming uh Americans uh in in a modern contemporary way is there is there a sort of meeting of of the cultures a meeting of the knowledge it's a very it's a very interesting uh question that you pose here on the one hand our native people are striding to be part of our society uh to find a safe place for our tribal Nations and I think we've achieved that in large measure to be uh uh both Americans as well as citizens of our tribal uh Nations having a having a dual citizenship uh often living in Two Worlds the white white men's World and the native World um and that's been our striding towards uh that position in our soci society and uh on the other hand the the non-indians are wanting to become more indigenous to the place where they live and uh I know that um I know that there Comes A Time in every uh Colony or former colony where the uh uh settlers or the conquerors or colonists or what uh that they want to uh become more native to the place where they live and I think I see that in many American people uh here in the United States folks that live out on the land and and U uh wanting to become more indigenous to the place where they live you know and it's a healthy sign of a mature a maturing society that maybe wants to discard some of the rapacious uh Colonial mindset you know and um it's good that our native people are still here today Walter thank you so much for the first American story still a great American story an ongoing American story one of resilience and survival thank you thank you so we've uh finished a conversation with David roach uh the director of The Herd Museum here in the herd Museum and and with Walter echohawk and now I'm privileged to be able to talk to Philip deloria professor of history at at Harvard uh a member of the Dakota Sue also a member of the uh president's committee on the Arts and Humanities and he's the author of some great books editor of the Blackwell uh companion to Native American history author of playing Indian and a book we'll particularly be talking about Indians in unexpected places so Philip delore Phil thank you very much for uh for joining us today to uh to talk about Native American history and and and some of the unique things about it it is my great pleasure to be with you it's great yeah thanks growing up because you have you have a fascinating family background one of your ancestors is Thomas Sully the Great American painter from the early part of the 19th century but the Native American part of your your heritage versus the other parts of your heritage how how much were you aware of that how how important was that your sense of yourself as Native American uh to to your growing up and then ultimately becoming a historian well you know we always emphasize the Native American part of that of that story um Thomas Sully was and Alfred Sully his son um the person who sort of intersects with our family line was always a a sort of afterthought really uh you know a curiosity a footnote you know for us um you know I I think my grandfather had a had a real felt a real sense of Mission to you know take his grandchildren and and sort of give them as much l go to call culture as he possibly could storytelling songs um you know these kinds of things and of course growing up with my dad and watching his political activity you know all of that was sort of right there front and center you know uh for us thinking a bit about the other branches of the family I mean one of the things that's I think cool about our family is it is in some ways a very quintessential American family you know so there's been this long engagement in our family across these sort of cultural social political you know Kinds of Kinds of Minds um and that family history was always very present for us well that's a a really rich history and so you know one of the things that you I've talked briefly about and that I I I find fascinating in your book Indians in unexpected places you you talk you're talking about there's this seems to be a particular moment sometime between 1905 and 1915 if you will um when all of a sudden Native Americans are playing an enormous role in American culture but your grandfather played a role in that uh American Sports became uh significantly uh engaged in by Native Americans at very high levels can you tell his story at St St Stevens and elsewhere sure you know he grew up uh you know at Standing Rock reservation but when his mother died um he was sent to a boarding school in Nebraska where he sort of was able to translate you know his physicality you know he's a very strong muscular athletic person you know and if he'd been back 50 years you know he would have been a classic Plains Warrior um in the moment where he grew up he was a an Indian Cowboy um and when he went to this sporting School in Nebraska he he became an athlete you know four four sport athlete um was recruited then to go to St Stevens College which is now Bard College in New York um you know where he was a four sport athlete as well and an honorable mention All-American uh football player in 1922 so much of his identity was really wrapped up in being you know being an athlete he became an Episcopal clergyman um but his love for his entire life was you know was Sports um I started talking to him you know um in some of his last days and his memories went back to thinking about his life as a as an athlete and right around the same time I started running into obituaries for other native folks um you know kind of of the same period Who and the obituaries would say interesting things like you know he was a Rancher outside of Juan ble South Dakota for most of his life but played two years of Semi-Pro baseball in Phoenix and you know in any other moment that would have kind of just gone by but in that moment I started to think wait a minute you know how did that guy end up playing Semi-Pro baseball in Phoenix oh he this other guy played on the suit Travelers basketball team which used to play against the Harlem Globe Trotters what was that all about you know and the question kind of exploded in my mind you know was there in fact more to the story than just my grandfather as a kind of exceptional sort of one-off or Jim Thorp as a kind of one-off everybody can name one famous Native athlete Jim Thorp and you know what I discovered was hundreds and hundreds of native folks who were able to jump into sports all kinds of different sports at all different kinds of levels you know and fully participate in a moment when sort of racial discrimination against African-Americans you know and other racialized uh you know minorities uh within the United States so Indians for some reason were touched a cultural cord at that moment you know as athletes that enabled them to do these right and and the the the notion that that 20 years after Wounded Knee uh some of these folks might still have had uh a notion of using this as a as a way of rede redemption Pop Warner you tell the story of Pop Warner the great football coach who's the car football coach who yeah yeah absolutely I mean I think you know the histori and Fred hawy has said look this was sort of an Indian equivalent of the greatest Generation right if you think about the folks who were coming out of the late 19th century many of them are raised you know in in moments of intense conflict um oftentimes they're raised in traditional cultures and languages they find themselves in this incredibly disorienting experience of boarding schools or of sort of Cosmopolitan uh you know uh America and and indeed the the world when we think about some of the traveling native folks in the you know Wild shows and things like that and they are able to survive thrive find ways to advance the collective good right in the middle of this intense transition that white Americans are struggling with mightily and I think it's one of the things that I I really wanted to argue in this book is that that line of modernity that so many white Americans feel so much anxiety about you know on the one hand is visible and perceptive to Native people who see it and respond to it when they're talking to White audiences about their own history but for whom in the sort of living of daily life that line of the crisis of modernity and modernism didn't really matter that much to them right they were figuring out their own lives and their own contexts right exactly and I talked with uh with Walter okk a little bit about this too there's a famous statement by uh WV de boys and Souls of Black Folk about the double consciousness of being black in America that you're you're you're black and you're American but it's hard to be a black American and I brought that up with Walter and he said it's a little bit different and the Native American part of it is separate is is very separate from uh because of the land and and and the history and the sovereignty question of tribal sovereignty what's what's your view of that yeah I mean I think both things are true in part right I mean it's you know I wrote at one point a little essay about my grandfather which I actually used the Deo kind of framing their you know two Souls striving in one dark body um you know I mean so there's an element of Truth to that right my grandfather who you know was going to a white educational institution was sort of bringing value to the institution as a football player but who couldn't try on a suit you know when he went into town right because he was native and so the experience of prejudice and um and all of these kinds of things is part of it so there is a doubled Consciousness I think that's right but I think Walter's larger point is actually the more correct point which is you know native people have always seen themselves as native in relation to their land in relation to the continuous struggles over that which never went away right native people never gave up on trying to recapture um and think about their land and this the arena shifted from military combat to you know kind of the courtroom um but it's never gone away and it's always been a fundamental part um you know of that community and the sense of community that people have you know around land so so I think Native nationhood um which has taken on different kinds of forms and been framed in different ways over the past couple hundred years um you know has really been Central to it I mean for me I always go to the three-fifth Clause of the Constitution right which frames enslaved African-American people you know in one particular way a way that all my students know um and my students don't pay much attention to um the Clause that says Indians not taxt right where Native people are written into the American Constitution in order to be written out of the American Constitution because they are separate political entities politic Nations and so when you think about double Consciousness I think you have to always think about it in terms of that right which puts the larger part of the double Consciousness around you know around being being native and and so at the same time uh that there is this double Consciousness a sense of Separation there is the flourishing of uh Native culture Native American culture and uh and and a more welcoming unified response to that it seems to me in America American culture as as a whole what's your view of the of the status of where are Native Americans today in American culture you know one of the things my dad said back in 1969 was or maybe it was later right is that there are sort of 20e Cycles right in which Native people kind of come up and become very popular and then sort of shrink back down and are you know subject to various kinds of you know unpleasantness and oppression um and then they come back up again so the question for the moment now is right is this just one more cycle or is it different this time around right is it the case that native people have now kind of risen in a different sort of moment where we actually can talk about multiculturalism you know and multiracialism and in fact the United States being not just a multicultural and multi-racial Country but a multinational country when we think seriously about what tribal governance looks like right within the framework of the United States right federal state local tribal right so you know um it is enti irely possible to imagine that we are entering into and we're in a new moment and that native visibility native cultural production will continue on an upward trajectory rather than being part of a kind of cycle that is my hope well it's a great hope and and and I share it and and I think I think we are I think things are flourishing today so I want to thank you very much Phil for this conversation uh it's been a great conversation and for your work which is great work thank you well I want to thank you for the opportunity to talk about it um and to talk about Native America in in a larger context thanks so much thank you again to our amazing guests David Ro Walter echohawk and Philip deloria for sharing their time and their insights and a huge thank you to Crosby keer the director of The Institute of Museum and Library Serv services for hosting this extraordinary conversation as always I'd like to thank all of you out there for joining us if you've enjoyed this conversation visit visions of america.org to discover more on Native American history to learn about the future of tribal sovereignty and to hear more under told stories about Native American contributions plus you can browse our extensive visions of America library of other topics and conversations until next time I'm Heather Marie montia and happy [Music] reading