Cool Media.

Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff.

You're twice a week reminder that Margaret still doesn't know how to introduce her show.

I am your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and this is a rerun episode, and we are rerunning Lakota Resistance to the American Empire because people have some incorrect ideas about what this country was built on and is still doing.

And we need to remember that even as this country gets into a new version of worse and we have to fight against the new version of worse, we can't romanticize the past of this country, and instead we have to romanticize people who rebel and resist things like it.

So here's the rerun.

Hello, and welcome to Cool People, Did Cool Stuff, your weekly reminder that people can do good things as well as bad things.

Sometimes I do the bad thing good good things because bad things have happened.

I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy and with me as my guest is Miriam.

Hi, I'm Miriam.

Miriam is one of our favorite guests.

We don't have favorites, but you're my favorite podcast to come on.

Oh and your favorite podcast to come On is produced by none other than Sophie Lichterman.

Oh yeah, that's me Hi.

And it is audio engineered by Ian Hi Ian Hian.

We remember to do it this time.

It's important to say hi to Ian.

We almost forgot last time, and then last episode had so much genocide in it.

Yep.

Our theme music was written for us by Unwoman, and you can now find the theme song in full to only about a minute and a half long, on on women's band camp.

So good, I know.

I was like, and people are like every now and then people ask like, what's the deal with the theme music?

And I was like, I wanted something that sounded really funny when contrasted to the shit I'm gonna be talking about.

Can I tell you a true story about Unwoman that makes me super happy?

Yes.

A while ago, I was I was working in a museum that incorporated a lot of like historical building, and some ghost hunters came to like film a TV show or something, and they were like skulking around the historical building hunting ghosts.

It was a it was a whole thing.

But I was musing on like my social media about how fun it would be to prank them, and this ended up with Unwoman recording a ghostly like a ghostly old timey version of Rick Astley's Never Going to Give You Up, with the idea being that I would conceal a small speaker somewhere to like draw the ghost hunters to this like eerie music that when they got very close they wit realize was Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up, which I did not end up doing because I think that ghost hunters were like out of the building by the time this idea had been hatched and this recording had been made.

But Unwoman is a fucking delight.

Yeah.

One of the first times I saw I I have not on a woman for a while, but during the Oakland General Strike of twenty eleven, there was un Woman with a cello performing for the people like locked to a bank.

It was so good.

Got the fucking best.

Yeah.

So this is part two of our four part on Lakota resistance to the American Empire.

And this first week we're talking mostly about the nineteenth century.

Next week we're gonna talk about the twentieth century.

Mostly.

There's a whole there's so many centuries that happened in the past.

Do you know that there's many twenty of them?

Century takes about a week in my experience.

Yeah, that's true.

God, i'd be so far into the past anyway.

Sometimes I think about, like how i haven't even been doing the show for two years, but I'm like, it's so much stuff.

Yeah, really, like you've covered a lot.

Yeah, and you're not going to run out.

No, that's the other thing.

I'm not worried.

But what if you talk about all the cool people who have ever happened, We'll just have to make some more.

Well.

It's like even like like one of the reasons you know, I've been I've been intending to do this episode for a long time because I specifically want to talk about the American Indian Movement because I've done so many things about radical late sixties early seventies social movements in the United States, and I'm like, I've gone through so many and there's still so many more in the American Indian Movement.

I knew I wanted to like really take my time and like dig into.

Yeah, I don't think I don't think I've heard you touch on it in any of your other episodes, not.

As much so, But that's not what we're talking about this week, where we're talking about that was a teaser.

Yeah, we are talking about how the Black Hills is about to be invaded by Custer and some other motherfuckers because there's gold in it, and what a treatyse matter when there's gold and people.

I love how people talk about this like that's like a human condition, you know.

But like all of the indigenous voices at the time are like, what the fuck is wrong with these people?

Do they not know what an agreement is?

We had an agreement?

Does that is that like a Do they just not know what that word means?

Like it's their word, it's in English.

Right, this this whole treaty signing thing was something like.

Yeah, not that people were like wildly perfect and peaceful and whatever, you know, strange romanticization.

People want to make it right.

We're not like you don't need to like make this into an imaginary utopia to be like, it's pretty fucked up to sign a treaty and then six years later to be like, oh, we've just new information has come to light which makes our promises trash.

Yeah, totally turns out we were white.

Therefore we were white people.

The whole toxes are actually trash.

It's really on you for not recognizing that.

Oh god.

Uh So there are two kinds of officers in the US Army at this time.

There's guys like Custer who are just rotten to their fucking core, right, and then there are these like high minded noble guys who have complicated feelings about it all and want to be gentlemanly, improper and polite and even want to respect the treaties.

But orders are orders.

The guy in charge of this campaign, General George Crook, he's in the latter camp.

This is not better.

Yeah.

I was gonna say, if the end result is massacres, I don't really care how bad the person doing it feels about it.

Doing what you know to be wrong, is it better than doing wrong because you think it's right.

It might be wor parguably worse.

Yeah.

Yeah, And like, look there's scales of that, right, Like, we all participate in capitalism and we know it's bad, you know, And so I think everyone knowing that it's bad is a good step, right, But when you're talking about the kinds of crimes that this man is going to directly oversee, like now, fuck him.

So he gave this famous answer.

He was asked Basically, he's like, is it hard for you to gear up to go to another Indian war?

And his quote is, yes, it is hard, but sir, the hardest thing is to go and fight those whom you know are in the right.

Oh if only there were an alternative.

Yeah, that's the military.

That's that's lawful neutral right there.

You know, which is the same as lawful evil.

Because lawful evil.

You, I believe you have an essay called lawful Ain't Good, which I quote at at times in gaming circles.

Yeah, my theory is that there's only eight eight alignments because lawful good is a contradiction.

It makes me really popular.

And yeah, you can tell we had cool childhoods.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

We didn't meet at a steampunk convention.

We didn't.

We met in the parking lot of a steampunk convention.

That's right where Miriam was dressed up as steampunk im a goldman giving a pretty good labor speech.

Thank you.

Uh did you know that I got in trouble with the operator of that steampunk convention because I got people riled up about the fact that he was holding conventions at non union hotels.

Hell yeah, hell yeah, good, which is a say no matter what culture or subculture you're in, you can do fun things with it.

Hey, you can function up anywhere.

People won't stop you.

That's not true.

People will try to stop you.

Yeah, but you can function up anywhere.

Yeah, you know, crime is legal.

You can just do anything you want.

Sort of all right, So neither of us are lawyers.

Yeah, that's right, but we are your lawyer anyway.

In the Black Hills, all sorts of bands and tribes and folks are gathering forces to unite against this invasion that they know is coming.

White historians call it the largest gathering of Native American people in history up to that point.

Indigenous scholars are like, no, we've had bigger.

You just weren't around people were gathering.

Yeah.

Sitting Bowl had a vision of blue jacketed soldiers falling from the sky into his camp.

Sometimes I see it phrased as like like grasshoppers, and so he's like, this is coming.

So the indigenous rebels they attack.

Which the light grasshoppers.

That's like a image of like and of like a devastation, right, because these those like grasshoppers swamps that would fall out of the sky would like eat everything.

Yeah, no, that makes sense.

Leave bare ground in their wake.

Yeah, which is pretty fucking accurate.

What happens.

So the indigenous rebels attack the invaders, and there are several successful battles.

Uh.

The one that's in the history books is called the Battle of Greasy Grass, only it's not under in history books.

Under that name, there's a river that the Lakota called Greasy Grass, the Americans call Little Big Horn.

This is the battle on Yeah, this is the single greatest victory in the Indian Wars for the good guy side.

Urman Custer is in charge of the seventh Cavalry and he sees this huge indigenous village and he's like, fuck yeah, let's go kidnap everyone there.

Let's just like like fuck it up.

You know, we'll like we're like going to kidnap everyone and then we'll take all the non combat and hostages and force their warriors to surrender.

And also he's a mass rapist and I'll talk about that more later, and this would have been a massacre.

He's like, let's go massacre this village basically, and the rest of the army was like, hey, Custer, you should like wait for everyone else.

And Custer's like whatever, man, I got this shit.

Fuck you dad.

You know.

Awesome, I mean not awesome what he wanted to do, but like awesome that he didn't wait for backup.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

It's the same fucking thing that Fetterman did a fun like, yeah, he had a bunch of orders like don't leave the group and don't whatever you do, don't go over this hill.

And he's just like, put their butts I can see there.

Buts I mean, and I mean Fetterman even more so, was like I only need like eighty guys, like, don't even send me more guys.

And the American Army in this case is like, customer, you're literally sending you more guys.

And he's like, but I want to do murder now.

Yeah, like it's getting dark.

I don't know what time of day it was.

He had crow scouts with him, and the crow were on the US side during most of this because two generations prior to the Lakota kicked them out of where they were living, so they're kind of mad, you know.

And one of his crow scouts is a guy named half yellow Face who was like, yo, Custer as a bad call.

You shouldn't do that.

Specifically, he said you and I are going home today by a road we do not know.

And that is a very very cool way to try to advise your shitty boss not to do this shitty thing.

We're gonna die if we do that.

Yeah, maybe that was the problem.

Maybe he was a little too a little too flowery in his language.

I know, it was the nineteenth century, you know, but maybe Cosler wasn't quite literate enough for that metaphor and he needed a like, yeah, you're gonna die real hard.

Yeah, he would not have listened, he was no, he absolute would not have listened.

And so they just wildly underestimated the numbers and the prowess of indigenous warriors, and the seventh Cavalry was wiped out.

Custer had his last stand, and he did what he should have done way earlier, which is die.

Yeah.

No one knows exactly how his day went.

There's lots of stories around it, but no one knows exactly because all of his buddies also.

Died, right because he The thing about getting all your buddies killed is there's no one left on your side to tell you the story of how cool you looked when you died, And it's yeah, and everyone's just going to be like, yeah, probably pissed his pants.

Yeah, that guy he got shot in the chest.

He also had a bullet and his skull.

That was probably after he died.

That was probably a like, let's just fucking make this is Custer.

We should work at me.

You want to make sure.

Yeah, so died the man that Vine Deloria Junior called the Eichmen of the Plains because he was following a policy of genocide from his higher ups.

General Sherman wrote, quote, we must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination men, women, and children.

During an assault.

The soldiers cannot pause to distinguish between male and female, or even to discriminate against age.

Sounds about right.

Yeah.

Custer was also a serial rapist of indigenous women, by all accounts, including the accounts of his own men.

They didn't phrase it that way, but they described it, so it makes it extra nice that the Cheyenne account of the battle.

Yeah, I was one thing, you promised me three wounds.

I've heard about two.

I would like to hear about the other way Custer died.

Please.

Cheyenne account of the battle says that it was a woman named Buffalo caff Road woman who knocked him off his horse before he died.

Fu.

Yeah, and she absolutely was present in the battle.

You know, she fought as alongside her.

Her husband Black Coyote, fought alongside her in that battle.

Also, they brought war journalists with them while they were like let's go massacre these people, like like like an associated Press guy was just with them, just.

Like to to let everyone know how how well this was going.

Yeah, he died too.

I a thing that I heard and this is something I like learned very recently.

I don't know if you if you also learned this in your research, was that the women present at the Battle of Little Big Horn stab custers through like once he had been killed, stabbed him, I think, like through the ear drums with their needles, saying like like you will like basically next time you'll listen good something like that, or you like you will listen, you'll like you will hear us.

Basically I could be totally butchering that story.

No, I mean good, And like you know, there's a lot of accounts of the battle, but I have no reason to no particular reason to doubt the Shian versions or other versions of it, like and there's like all these things that people tried to be like he died nobly, but he didn't.

He just wrote off to go get murdered, and he got him murdered.

Just losing real hard sometimes gets romanticized as dying nobly, like you know, have like that like that poem where the guys on horses ride against tanks in the Crimean War whatever, and it's like it's not necessarily heroic to lose real heart, Like sometimes you're just sometimes you're just custom and you just suck and you die real hard.

Yeah, die like he lived shitty.

Another guy who fought in that battle is a man named Black who's most famous these days for his book Black Elk Speaks, which was hugely influential on me when I was like a baby anarchist, and he's gonna he's sort of a background guy through a lot of this, no good deed goes unpunished, and the reprisals from the destruction of a serial rapist genocider continue to this day.

America has not gotten over the fact that some lady fucking killed a rapist who didn't consider her human.

A rapist who didn't consider her human who nobody on the American side particularly liked anyway.

Yeah, Like everybody was like, man, that guy's a real piece of shit, and then some Indigenous people kill him and were like, hey, that was our piece of shit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Basically, so the US more or less declares the eighteen sixty eight treaty, which they've already broken the shit out of, invalid, and they were like, but we want to do it sort of paperworky.

So they demand that the reservation give up the Black Hills and a ton of other land, all with like right of way through everything for roads and shit.

Anyone who doesn't agree can fucking starve.

Red Cloud was forced to sign, as were the other chiefs who weren't at war, and twenty two point eight million acres were seated, which is a third of the total, but the best third of this particular reservation, and the remaining folks are forced to live in like clearcut areas and places that have already been resource extracted.

There's absolutely no way that this could be legal.

Three quarters of the men could not have signed this agreement because they didn't show up because they were at.

War, right because they were actively fighting to defend that land.

Right, and the signatures that do appear were coerced at gunpoint.

But law is only a cudgel in the hands of the powerful and has never been anything but that.

Sitting Bowl and some other war chiefs and their warriors retreated north into Canada, while Crazy Horse, Heat Dog, Little big Man, Iron Crow and a few of the other war chiefs.

In the end, they decided surrender.

Basically, they were like, like, I suspect it wasn't like I'm a die if I don't surrender.

It was like all my people are going to die.

The people that I'm responsible for.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

And they were promised that they could live like on good hunting reservations and shit if they would just surrender.

And we've definitely got reason to trust those promises at this point.

As soon as they show up to surrender in Nebraska, the US pretended like they had never made the offer.

Of course.

I mean, and I can understand, like why you would, I mean, that's like that was the only thing on the table, right.

Absolutely, yeah, because again it wasn't just for them, it was for the people that they're responsible for.

And Crazy Horse spent four months living in like sort of captivity on a reservation and then he was arrested.

He tried to resist, and he was stabbed to death with bayonet.

There's a lot of versions of how he died.

I don't have a specific really reason to believe any of them.

Is a lot of arguing about it, So I'm just gonna go with he tried to resist and he was stabbed at death bayonnuts.

I mean, even whatever, whatever the particular account of his death is, he tried to resist and was murdered by the US Army seems to sum it up.

Yeah, Spotted Tail one of the war leaders who'd signed away the Black Hills.

He's living large.

He has a three story house, and he starts demanding well, he's been demanding tribut because it's chief, but he starts demanding tribute that of his subordinates.

That is like, as far as I can tell, new and not part of tradition.

He starts demanding women, sometimes including I believe married women, but I'm not certain.

But so his cousin crow Dog, was like, you know what, I'm gonna fucking kill you, and then killed him.

Okay, Yeah, that is one of the three motives that has been presented for crow Dogs.

Killing of Spotted Tail.

Another is an argument over like a specific one of the women who has taken a tribute, which might have been Crowdog's family.

Another is that crow Dog was like doing the US's dirty work to break up the power of the chiefs by killing Spotted Tail.

I find the first argument most convincing, and the historians that I've read, who, Yeah, I find it most convincing that it was like you have fucking you're a cellar piece of shit.

You gotta fucking go.

It doesn't.

I mean one one of the one of the many terrible things about state repression is that it turns any internal conflict into like somebody doing the dirty work of the state, right, like totally and like which you know, it's it's that what you made a convincing case that this that crow Doog had a legitimate grievance and reason to.

Kill this guy.

Yeah, and without the US government being ye behind that?

Yeah, but you know what the US government also is behind isn't behind our ads?

Some of them government no government not only make it better?

Are the ones that we personally approve.

Ye, Well, did you know that we're an ad supported podcast?

Unless you have cooler zone media, in which case you just get to hear us talk about ads all the time and hopefully it's entertaining for you.

I don't know what I would do if we didn't have ads, because I like doing my weird transitions.

You're so good at it now, Yeah, you can just do the weird transitions and then not play any ads.

I mean, that's also kind of what we're doing sitting here, since it's it's not your job to actually put the ads in there.

That's right.

Do you ever feel tempted to do that in conversation if there's an awkward pause?

Because if you, if you do, you've been podcasting too much and you should take a break.

Know what I do is I do transitions while I'm like in meetings, I'm like speaking of and then like.

Robert Evans, Robert Evans does this in real life.

Oh, it's social, especially under the influence.

Yeah, listen, If Robert Evans is getting sponsored while just hanging out under the influence, more power to him.

I know, if people want to, I'll shout out fucking ship in the middle of a conversation.

I'll just I'll product place.

Yeah, totally, Gray, here's some ads and we're back, and so there's this whole big thing.

There's a hole to do about this murder, because I mean, it is a murder.

Whatever whether or not it's justified, it's not really going punished.

And so the federal government is like, what, why can't we punish it?

And they're like, because it's indigenous sovereignty.

And there's none of your fucking business.

So then the federal government is like, what if it becomes our business by when we passed the Major Crimes Act.

No, And so this gives them jurisdiction over like fifteen specific major crimes that happen on reservations and it's just all part of stripping away.

And so this is the like it does kind of like fuck spotted tail, but like whatever, the government was going to do bad shit no matter what.

So right, and the government having a federal jurisdiction over major crimes on Indian land will surely they will care about all of those major crimes and there will not later be an epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women that the federal government doesn't give a shit about.

Hooray, sorry, no, no, I just that's something I'll shout out earnestly.

There's a ways to there's like groups that you can follow that talk about the missing and murdered Indigenous women, and it is a yeah, the bad stuff continues.

Yeah, spoiler alert, none of this goes none of this ends in the United States being great.

Well, that's because we're not done yet.

Well in the United States, get a little done Margaret.

No, no, no, But the space that the US currently occupies, I still have a lot of hope for Oh yeah, no, me too.

The blackails are stolen at this point gold mines open.

The eighteen eighty Congressional record reads, I'm talking about this quote.

An idle and thriftless race of savages cannot be permitted to stand guard at the treasure vaults of the nation, which hold our gold and silver.

The prospector and minor may enter, and, by enriching himself, enrich the nation and bless the world by the results of his toil.

Oh, shut the fuck up.

I know what, bro, You're just reading a quote.

I'm not talking to you.

No, no, no, I know.

But it means that this is Protestant work ethic genocide.

Right, And it's also like I love how it's like these people aren't even greedy.

Oh that's going to be It's like more the criticism that has It's like, you know, when you're like so racist that like you take the flaws of your own society that like are recognized as flaws, right, Like greed is a concept that people like have in the Unite in like white among white people in the United States, So like, don't be greedy.

That's a bad thing.

And then they're like, man, fuck these people, they're not even greedy.

We should kill them?

About it?

You in two paragraphs.

So this isn't enough.

Of course stealing you know this, this par doesn't work ethic genocide.

The government has to wipe out the buffalo too, because they don't want anyone to be able to hunt them.

Basically, they don't want indigenous people to continue to live as indigenous people or like in traditional ways.

You know, when you're so racist, you you wipe out an entire environmental biome.

Yeah, yeah, already scarce.

By eighteen eighty three, the last herd of the northern bison is wiped out by the government, and in eighteen eighty one, the sun dance is forbidden, which is a plain's traditional ritual of self sacrifice the very important part of a lot of different traditions, and the hatred of plains people was also anti communism in name decades before the first Red Scare.

One senator said that it was the indigenous people's communism and holding lands in common that was holding them back and said, quote, there is no selfishness, which is at the bottom of civilization.

Oh my god.

Yeah, I okay.

First of all, like I am, I'm like struggling to construct some kind of like hipster joke about like, oh, yeah, I was anti communist before Karl Marx even wrote the Communist Manifesto.

Yeah, or I guess Carl Marks had written the Communist Manifesto.

Well, but they certainly were already doing that thing.

Yeah.

But there's also Yeah, it's like you're just taking things that are normally regarded as flaws and vices and you're like, they don't even do selfishness.

They're not even greedy, like what just like pick anything you would normally say to be like insulting about another person.

You're like, they don't even cheat on their wives like what.

Like it's just like like you're just saying flaws as like a total lack of lack of flaws as reasons.

Not that I'm saying like anybody is flawless, but you know what I mean, Like they're they're pointing out like a shitty thing to be like greedy or selfish and being like, well, they're not greedy, you're selfish.

Guess we better kill them and take their shit.

And to be clear, I agree that selfishness is at the bottom of civilization, but that's a distinct my own negative feelings about civilization.

You do live in the woods with your dog.

Yeah, well, and again it's definitions of things.

And I also want to point out that it would be generally dangerous to specifically take Western European concepts and apply them wholeheartedly to different indigenous groups.

It is absolutely true about things like being held in common and them not being capitalist.

Absolutely it would be a I don't want to apply.

To totally, Like I'm not trying to like put.

No none of us, like giving them a hammer and sicks.

I'm one hundred percent sure that there were, you know, people that there have been people in every civilization, every culture, every community, every house, like every every group of people bigger than one person who is like you've got somebody there who's the selfish piece of piece of shit.

You know, you don't put them in charge of everything, and you try not.

To put them in charge of everything and give them a lots of guns and eighty guys.

But like, it's it's just so fascinating to me that like, in this racist conception of indigenous people that like white Americans are coming up with, they are saying things that would normally be how you would say somebody is cool, Like oh yeah, real selfless guy would be normally a thing you'd say about a great person.

Yeah.

Not in the Protestant worth ethic land.

Yeah, not if they're doing it, and not if they're doing it on land that we want, right.

Yeah, Okay, And while we're talking about communism or while it's the.

Are you gonna work the industrial workers of the world into this story?

Yes, but it wasn't on purpose.

But what I'm going to say is, right.

Now, who's got the bingo cards?

So we're into the eighteen eighties and labor movement in the US is starting to pick up and starting to kick ass.

You want to know what the eighteen eighties radicals had to say about indigenous resistance?

I beg that it was bad.

Nothing.

I can't find anything.

Woh, that's bad.

Actually that is bad.

That's what I'm saying bad Now.

I'm certain it exists.

I have not read every piece of eighteen eighties thing I but I talked to my like signal chat of history nerds, and I like, the fuck.

Am I not doing any signal chat of history nerds.

We'll talk about this later.

That's the most unkind thing you've ever said to me.

We'll about this later.

And what I do know is that in Mexico, we've talked about this before on the show, indigenous folks and anarchists are already working together like ten years, twenty years before this to resist the state and doing all this like amazing shit.

In Mexico, you have the black indigenous anarchist Lucy Park, who's doing stuff in Chicago, but this is not This is not tied into her indigenousity, and she is mostly tied into the labor movement of European immigrants.

A couple decades later, the Industrial Workers of the World, Thank You, are founded in part by Lucy Poling.

I knew it would fight for anti racist unionism with all sorts of folks and this will include doing a lot of like organizing in the mines in the Southwest with a lot of indigenous people and indigenous miners.

But it is that is decades later.

By and large, the thing that European radicals were doing in the US was colonizing.

They were settling.

And this was the era of utopian politics, the idea that anarchists and socialists and communists and shit would find quote empty areas and set up utopian societies.

A bunch of these happened every now, and the people ask her, like, when am I going to cover this or that one on the show?

And I'm like, never been quite sure because I'm kind of like, I think they're bad, Like I think that it's cool people doing bad things, you know.

Yeah, And more or less all of these fail.

A couple weeks earlier, I should this out.

At the end of the last episode on it could happen here.

Mia Wong covered really well how the colonized and oppressed so quickly become the colonizers and oppressors.

Like how Irish Americans, Eh, I told you I'd bring in Irish Americans in told Irish Americans were so fucking shitty.

On colonization and race issues in the United States right and continue to be unfortunately, even while the Irish who stayed in Ireland are consistently the only large population of white people who aren't wildly fucking embarrassing right now.

It's true.

And in short, you've got a ton of communities that sometimes rule, like the Quakers and the anarchists and shit out there grabbing land like everyone else.

Yeah.

Once indigenous people got more caught up into the capitalist system, they were more involved in the anti racist unions and in the modern political climate, there's a great deal of overlap between indigenous environmentalists and leftist and anarchist communities.

Is Land back and decolonization and become more and more central to leftist anti authoritarian analysis.

But it's often just lip service, though I know it's something that I see a lot of.

Yeah, it's true.

I mean, I'm not trying to be to be like too overly critical, but I see a lot of verbal attention paid to the idea of like doing land acknowledgments versus you know, material change being pushed for.

I'm speaking mostly with my experiences in kind of a direct action environmental movement which has become more and more indigenous lad and more and more like working hard to adopt a decolonial framework, and I and just to continue to do that.

Yeah, No, it's totally out there.

That's the culture that I'm more steeped in direct action wise.

But I think you're right.

No, And if you're talking if we're talking about people who are actually like doing the direct action, then like, yeah, I think that's true.

Yeah, not talking about my uh my favorite people to organize with.

When I talk about the people who love to do land acknowledgements and don't love to do anything of material help.

Yeah, Yeah, there's a lot of complicated conversations about around the politics of land acknowledgments.

And I'll just point that out without weighing in.

I just try and kind of keep on top of what's happening with it.

But it's so back to the nineteenth century, too early to insert a plug for going to landback dot org and giving them some money.

No, you're never too ever ever to Yeah.

If you've ever done a land acknowledgment, go to land back dot or some money.

And it's not inherently bad, it's just like it's complicated.

No, No, it's a good thing to do land acknowledgments.

It should be accompanied by action, and in this that's an action you can do while you listen to this podcast.

Yeah, I mean you can do a lot of actions while you listen to this podcast.

I'm not your dad.

I'm not going to tell you not to you know, do anything else.

But you've heard it here first, Miriam, is your dad?

Like I said, I'm not your dad, but you know I can't check.

I'm not going to verify that.

So yeah, yeah, I won't do a paternity test for everyone in the country, like I keep trying to get you to do.

Not until we're on live TV.

All right, fine, all right.

In eighteen eighty seven, Congress passed the DAWs Act, designed to destroy indigenous methods of land allocation by giving every male one hundred and sixty acres, with all the surplus going to the government to be distributed among white settlers.

The surplus is most of the land.

The Lakota refused the allotment Act successfully until I think about nineteen sixteen to World War One.

By eighteen eighty nine, the government is like, can we please have no.

Well, hang a note a note about those allotments that I think is really important.

The acreage given to people is not always or even I think usually contiguous.

Oh shit, really, so like when you have one hundred and sixty acres, it could be like you have ten acres over here and like four over there, and like it's very far away, and like you can't work with that, right, it's not practical or even really possible to like use that land if it's spread out like that, And so that makes it easy for that land to be gradually sold off to white people, because that's really the one of the only ways to like survive off of it in a lot of contexts.

No, that makes sense, and yeah, there's a lot of it.

This weird thing where like, oh, we're going to force you all to be farmers, but you also can't be farmers.

We actually just wanted to starve to death.

We're going to force you to be farmers on shitty, non arable land that is non contiguous.

Yeah, not where you live.

Yeah.

By eighteen eighty nine, the government was like, can we please have nine million of your remaining acres?

And Red Cloud and Sitting Bowl are like, what each shit fuck you?

But since you asked so nicely.

Yeah, to quote sitting bowl directly, who said a little bit more eloquently than the words I just put in his mouth.

When the white people invaded our Black Hills country, our treaty agreements were still in force, but the Great Father, the President of the United States, ignored it.

Therefore, I do not wish to consider any proposition to seed any portion of our tribal holdings to the Great Father.

My friends and relatives.

Let us stand as one family as we did before the white people let us astray, and so the land didn't sell.

So the US was like, uh fine, Yeah.

They were like, okay, we respect, we respect your No.

If there's one thing we know how to do here in the United States, it's take no for an answer.

Yeah, So they just took it instead.

Once again, they ignored the eighteen sixty eight treaty and President Harrison divide up the reservation into seven smaller reservations with like with lots of land that's no longer in it at all.

The Oglalla people were forced onto the Pine Ridge Reservation, which is going to be central to the more of the story next week, and everyone is forced to abandon their language in old ways and send their kids to boarding schools and it's just more fucking genocide.

Fewer and I'm sure most people listening no, but like boarding schools in this context is like oh yeah, yeah, child sized concentration camps.

Yeah.

And it's specifically this is the this is the era of what it's always been the are This is the era of kill the Indian to save the man.

This is the era of like, we will strip away your culture, we will send you, will make sure you never learn your language.

What what organization better to trust your children with?

The Catholic Church?

Yeah, Fewer and fewer folks are able to remain traditionalists aka still doing shit the way that they've always done it.

It's also this division of their land.

It's about American fucking politics.

I like, the Republicans were losing control over the government and they were like, well, what if we made some new states, like a couple of Dakota's like named after the people were getting rid of, like we could hold on the power for a little bit longer.

And over I hadn't even you know that, I know.

I like this one came out of left field when I when I learned this because I'm like, over all the Republicans in the nineteenth century are like usually the the better side, right, Like they're on like better has.

Anyone who's ever argued with an idiot Republican knows, Yeah, yeah, exactly.

But they were also the party of big business and monopolies and like anti populist, and they were the most aggressive against indigenous people because you can't win with an American political party.

Yeah they're bad American political parties.

They're yeah yeah.

Any any that are good kind of fizzle out around the attempting to get somebody elected to local office.

Yeah, yeah, point.

But you know what is good unreservedly and wholeheartedly, I can say products.

Yeah, the concept of stuff, love a product.

The accumulation of stuff pretty.

Never steered us wrong before.

I see no reason why it would.

Now here you go and we're back.

So things are looking real bad for folks out west.

The new reservations aren't big enough to support a nomatic hunting lifestyle.

The land is really shit for crops.

The government isn't giving them nearly as much food and food and tools as they promised.

They're just trying to kill them, all right, They're just trying to fucking and people are really fucking down and out when a great shaman stepped onto the scene out West further West with a new religious practice designed to unite the indigenous people, stopping their intertribal and inter nation war, designed to usher in a golden era of peace and reunite people with their dead loved ones.

The Ghost Dance and the Ghost Dance is complicated and interesting.

It is almost certainly a product of syncretism, the fusing of Christian especially Catholic beliefs with local practices.

The thing that comes up constantly on the show probably deserves a Bingos Square right next to the industrial workers of the world.

It's, at the same time entirely indigenous.

It does not tie into the larger church ructure from Europe at all, and it is developed out of traditional practices, but it takes theological concepts from Christianity.

There's this Northern Paiute guy named Wovoka or Jack Wilson when he's dealing with white people, and he was schooled in Christian theology as a kid, but he is at his heart a traditionalist.

He's also renowned for his supernatural powers.

Specifically, he can control the weather during a solar eclipse.

He has a vision and as a vision of the resurrection of the dead and the departure of white people from North America.

All folks had to do was live right peacefully, by and large, and perform a new dance, the Ghost Dance.

There's more to it than that.

About like, in the sort of theological framework that is built out of this, half the country would belong to indigenous folks under Wovoka, the other half would belong to white people under the president out yeast Jesus is mentioned.

But like all religious stuff, sounds silly when you take out of context.

And I believe very strongly in judging religions not on their stated set of beliefs, but rather what their institutions do and what their practitioners do.

And the Ghost Dance was a traditionalist revival that united various tribes and nations in the hope of reversing colonization.

So fuck you.

Yeah.

It spread across the country, and it helped unify groups of groups of people and helped people cope with just the incredible amount of trauma that they've been living through.

And it came to the Lakota people and a lot of them were into it, especially traditionalists.

This was not like universal there are people who are like some traditionalists are like, now we're not into this, you know, like because it is well, it syncratic and it has like all of these other.

Did you already say what what group the originator of this was?

You did?

See?

Yeah, roughly was now northern California.

I believe the US freaks the fuck out over Ghost Dance.

This is like Satanic panic times a million.

Yeah, and the thing that they're freaked out by is a almost completely pacifist, heavily Christian influenced movement.

You think that the US government would be like, oh, this is what we want, but they hated it because it threatened to reverse genocide and cultural erasure, because it was traditionalist and it united all the indigenous people.

You know.

Also, and there's like some stuff that people talk about how like people say that wearing the ghost shirt from the dance makes you immune to bullets, and so like that belief or the like gets to the white people and they're like, oh, fuck, they're gonna attack us, you know.

And there's some talk about this leading to armed resistance against the Americans, but most of that talk is coming from the aforementioned Americans.

Oh that's interesting, Yeah, it is a resistance movement, but it is a peaceful resistance movement, and it is about let's live, right, you know.

Thousands of troops are mobilized and sent to like the Lakota specifically, just.

Yeah, cartoonishly evil the United States again.

Yeah, and there's like all of these there's even some like ID ended up writing them into the script.

But there's like occasional like I remember it's the Bureau of Indian Affairs at this point, but there's like occasional like government people who are part of this and like priests and shit who are like no, it's fine, they're not just leave them alone.

It's fine, you know.

And these are not the voices that get listened to, right, the US is like, we never do that.

Yeah, no, totally.

They go to arrest sitting bowl basically because he's a traditionalist and he's associated with ghost dancing.

So they're like, sorry, but we got take you to jail just just to you know, just we're gonna show up with like a fuck ton of guys and some machine guns just to take you to jail, just to jail.

Don't worry.

That's the normal way people get arrested, right.

Yeah, I think so, I'm like thinking about the times I got arrested.

There were a lot of cops when I got arrested, but I've.

Been arrested a few times and there were no machine guns in any of them.

Yeah, yeah, totally, and so oh god, they might have been cannon with grape shot.

I don't want to like get my.

Machine anywhere arrest or sitting bulls.

No no, I sitting bulls.

Yeah no.

If they had cannon and grape shot at my arrest, I hop back into my time machine and to be all.

Say, I'm surprised I haven't heard that story before.

Yeah.

No, I haven't come out of the time traveler yet.

Oh no, wait, I was trying to convince everyone I'm a vampire has been around for a long time.

I'm gonna keep my story straight.

I'm gonna convince anyone of any bullshit plausible.

All of those those tin type photographs you have of yourself should uh yeah, should help with that.

Exactly very few people who are born it is, say one believe.

Yeah, so unbelievably credible.

I threw the bomb at Haymarket.

That's the rumor I've been trying to spread.

I like it that's a good one.

I mean you, I mean and this is this is more a function of your having been a cool a cool punk for like a lot of your life.

But like you have enough stories, then it's like a little plausible that like, wait a second, is she telling me like three hundred years worth of stories of just trying to make it sound like she had a super wild teens to twenties?

Yeah, totally, yeah, like it's nineteen eighties eight, not seventeen eighties.

Don't worry, I got it.

I got accused of being a vampire in high school.

But that's because Twilight was popular and I was pale.

Hell yeah, and Sparkle was that person hitting on you?

Because I think that's what was happening with Twilight.

Who knows could certainly not me as a teenager would not have known if someone was hitting on name.

That's that's exactly my point.

I was, like, who knows, I barely tell if somebody's hitting on me right now?

Now enough, all right?

So they show up to arrest sitting bowl, and these are Indian bureau cops, which is they are other Indigenous folks who are now working for the US government, which is like one of the things actually that we have talked about, for example, is that one of the reasons, like the British Empire, you know, conquered half the fucking world, and they had like a smaller standing army than like anyone else because they got the indigenous people various places to become their cops, right, right, And so when they first just show up to arrest Sitting Bowl.

There's a bunch of different versions of the story, but the one that I find most you know, the one I'm telling and the one that feels the most accurate to me.

They show up to arrest him, and he's like fine, like fuck it, I'm like fifty six or whatever, I'm not looking for trouble.

I'll come with you.

And his son is like what, no, fuck that.

And then the other version is he's like stalling.

He's like, oh, let me get my things, which is fine too.

Like, don't get me wrong, he could resist arrest as much as he wants.

I don't care.

Like I'm pro him, you know.

Yeah, I'm pro sitting Bull, and I'm pro resisting arrest.

If that's a decision you're willing to make for yourself.

Your dad has now told you the listener to resist arrest because we are a lawyer, but we are your lawyer.

We're not yours, and we're not a lawyer.

But hell, I am your dad, the lawyer, and I'm here to say yeah.

So a bunch of his supporters surround the hundred plus troops which showed up to arrest Sitting Bul, and there's like maybe the sun shoots like blah blah blah blah blah.

A firefight breaks out.

Sitting Bull is shot by a soldier, supposedly by accident, and he dies.

In the ensuing battle, eight cops and eight resistors, including Sitting Bull, die And just because there's no other good place to shoe in, shoehorn in this quote by Sitting Bull that I like, I'm going to do it here.

Every time you've stopped to read a quote, the quote has been fucking incredible.

So yeah, I'm here for it.

What treaty that the whites have kept has the Red man broken?

Not one?

What treaty that the white man ever made with us?

Have they kept?

Not one?

When I was a boy, the Sioux owned the world, the sun rose and said on their land, and they sent ten thousand men to battle.

Where are the warriors today?

Who slew them?

Where are our lands?

Who owns them?

What white man can say I ever stole his land or a penny of his money?

Yet they say I am a thief.

What white woman, however, lonely, was ever captive or insulted by me?

Yet they say I am a bad Indian?

What white man has ever seen me drunk?

Who has ever come to me hungry and unfed?

Left unfed?

Who has ever seen me beat my wives or abuse my children?

What law have I broken?

Is it wrong for me to love my own?

Is it wicked for me because my skin is red because I am Lakota, because I was born where my father died, because I would die for my people in my country.

And yeah, yeah, he didn't steal shit.

So ghost dancers wildly impoverished Lakota folks trying to figure out how to fucking survive.

They have some guns because they hunt.

It's the nineteenth century.

Everybody has a gun.

Yeah, well you know how gun control really exists in this country only for marginalized folks.

Yes, the US was like, oh shit, we can't let have these, We can't let these people who rely on hunting have guns.

We can't let these people were trying to kill have guns.

Yeah, exactly.

So there's a camp of people on the Wounded Knee River.

It's December twenty ninth, nineteen eighty.

It's about three hundred people.

They're mostly Mini Kanju Lakota with some fugitives from the Hunk Papa Lakota, which is Sitting Both people who fled after his murderers show up and are like, give up your guns, you ghost dancers, you evil scary ghost dancers, and best again a million versions of what's about to happen.

They go around and they're like and some people are like, yeah, we've got some guns here, just like some guns.

And they're like, all right, we're searching your shit.

And then they like search and they find some more guns, and they're like mostly just old like shitty hunting rifles and stuff, right, And so most of the people end up disarmed.

And there's one man.

His name is Black Coyote, and there are a couple accounts of who he was.

He was definitely young, he was probably deaf.

He might have been the deaf mute son of Sitting Bull, but I don't believe that that's the case.

I believe he was a mute.

Sorry, I believe he was deaf, but not mute.

And I don't believe he was the son of sitting Bowl, just out of Most of the versions of the story do not present him that way.

But he doesn't know what the fuck is happening, and he doesn't speak English as far as I canna understand either, and so he's like, what the fuck is happening, and he's like waving his gun around.

He's like, you can't have this gun.

It costs me a lot of fucking money, right, But he's not saying in English, and the soldiers probably wouldn't have cared anyway, and they're like, he's like, you gotta give me money for this gun.

You can't just fucking have it.

You know.

There is a struggle where they try to take the gun.

The gun goes off.

I don't believe it hits anyone.

Full support if he just also was like fuck you and shot them again, whatever, But all accounts say that this was an accidental discharge, if it was him who fired the first round at all.

However, it's started, the army opened fire.

Sometimes it's called a battle, sometimes it's not, And basically.

One side is being disarmed, like in the process of being disarmed.

Battle seems like a right, real that's a real choice to call out a battle.

The only reason that I sometimes like I have some sympathy for it it is to be like to not just present people as victims.

Totally and like people can fight back, yeah, you know, and but like still like calling it a battle like that both sides came equally armed.

Yeah, And so this gets framed as the deadliest mass shooting in US history, and I think that that is a reasonable thing to say about it, because it is a mass shooting and is the largest one in US history.

Yeah, and it's a massacre.

I've read one hundred and fifty three and I've heard three hundred Indigenous people were killed.

Twenty five US soldiers got got.

Most versions agree that most either all over, most of the soldiers died from friendly fire because they didn't like start off in battle lines.

They just were like shooting, you know, and they were like, ah, whatever, and they're just like shooting in the crowd and there's like cannons of rape shot and shit on the fucking hills, like shooting into it all and like and then even after the initial whatever, they are chasing people down and murdering non combatants and infants and shit in the snows.

It's you know, at the end of December, like for miles around, they just do.

It's bad, really bad.

Is this a twenty of the soldiers we're given the medal of Honor.

Jesus fucking Christ.

Yeah, I think that is a fact that I knew at some point.

It's just this isn't like a real piece of shit country.

We got a real piece of shit nation.

I don't want to say country because I feel like that could mean like the space, but nation, the political entity, real piece of shit, and I don't I don't think it's as good.

No, not not into it.

I'm not excited whenever people are like, yeah, but you wouldn't be here one for them, Like, okay.

Yeah, I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for a lot of things, like.

Or maybe I would and I just would be fine, or maybe I wouldn't.

I don't fucking care whatever, Like.

That's a that's a weird argument that brings into question a lot of things about causality that you, as a time traveler, are much better rept to speak on than me.

Yeah, Black Elk was also at this and a bullet grazed his head, but he survived.

There's no justice for it, of course.

Yeah.

When when twenty people are being given the medal of honor, I doubt that the other people they are being prosecuted for their crimes.

Yeah.

I think later eventually the government like apologized or like one hundred years later, but they still didn't rescind medals of honor.

You know, folks suffered.

Badly, and I'm sure there's like elementary schools named after those guys or some shit.

Probably, I don't know.

Oh, it's also it was the seventh Cavalry.

It was the same unit that like got more or less wiped out in Custer's Last Stand and h and so it was like, this is part of why they're like fucking revenging and shit, you know, gotcha.

Yeah, we have to take revenge for that time we charged headlong into a thing no everybody told us not to do and got our asses handed to us.

We must take revenge, yeah, for our mistake.

Yeah, someone killed a serial rapist and now we have to go murder entire villages of people to prove that we're the good guys.

It's a real, real, strong sense of justice at work.

Obviously, folks suffered badly.

People died of tuberculosis, cooped up into towns with no amenities, They were forbidden from sweat, lodges, bead work, rituals.

Of all kinds.

Their children were stolen into boarding schools.

It took until nineteen twenty four for Indigenous Americans to get American citizenship.

This is of course, also a trap to steal all the remaining land.

In nineteen twenty seven, Mount Rushmore was announced by President Coolidge.

In nineteen thirty four, the Indian Reorganization Act with pass that gave people the right to live in worship traditionally and give the reservations a certain amount of self governance.

This supposedly nice thing also sucked.

It was done for bad reasons.

To quote the book In the Spirit of Crazy Horse by Peter Matheson quote.

The traditional forms of tribal government were replaced by Indian chartered corporations, complete with constitutions set up for their benefit under the auspices of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and an intensely democratic people was subjected to the und democratic decisions of so called tribal councils that mostly reflected the wishes of the white man's church and state.

While some tribal councils were and are strong and constructive in forwarding the best interests of their people, too many others became tame puppet governments.

For the BIA and the Black Hills is now watched over by four great white heads carved into a holy mountain.

Those mountains are in turn watched.

Like a fucking like bullshit like novelty roadside attraction is basically what Mount Rushmore is like.

That was a not only like a vandalism of a sacred site on land stolen through genocide, but just real bad art.

Y also no just gaudy and it's and yeah, truly fuck it.

And those foreheads are in turn watched over by a fuck ton of security less people determined that maybe the mountain will look better without them there.

Yeah, maybe maybe a big guillotine.

They're on the lookout for big guillotines over there.

John fire Lame Dear said what Mount Rushmore means is quote, it means that these big white faces are telling us, first, we gave you Indians a treaty that you could keep these black hills forever, as long as the sun would shine, in exchange for all the Dakotas, Wyoming and Montana.

Then we found the gold and took this last piece of land because we were stronger, and there were more of us and than there were of you, and because we had cannons and gatling guns while you hadn't even progressed far enough to make a steel knife.

And when you didn't want to leave, we wiped you out.

And those of you who survived we put on reservations.

And then we took the gold out a billion bucks, and we aren't through yet.

And because we like the tourist dollars too, we have major sacred Black Hills into one vast Disneyland.

And after we did all this, we carved up this mountain, the dwelling place of your spirits, and put our four gleaming white faces here.

We are the conquerors.

So completely unrelated to that, you see the clip of the Israeli media of settlers there saying that they should level the Gaza strip and turn it into an amusement park.

What an unrelated and gas story and yeah, random story.

Yeah, it's almost like history is important to learn from.

Yayh well that's part two.

You're not yeah that that's part two.

Yep, Okay, you're gonna you're gonna make me wait a week.

Make Usually usually when we like do a cliffhanger at the end of an episode, it's fake, it's fiction.

Yeah, but Martyred is genuinely gonna leave me hanging until next week.

I know, I know that the listeners are always in that position, but like in this case, it affects me.

I know, you were supposed to be the privileged one and here you are.

I'm so sorry, Miriam.

And if you want a spoiler for it, dear dear listener, you can go read about a Peltier and the support campaign and the campaign to get him freed.

He's been in prison for almost fifty years and he shouldn't be and there's a lot of stuff that's happening now that also, I think that people should pay attention to and remember that it.

Yeah, this is I don't know, I don't have a good rousing conclusion.

Yeah, well, I think like it whether it sounds kind of like you're going is to say, like, I don't know, maybe I'm putting words in your mouth where I thought you were going, is like the one of the biggest lies of American history about colonization is that like we did it and it's done, and like we did do it, and it is and it has been done.

Like those crimes happened and those people are dead and those atrocities were committed.

But like, colonization is not a static fact.

It is it is something that can be undone, which I think we talked about at the end of the episode last week because it's kind of the only thing you can say at the end of something like this totally.

And then you know, it's also worth looking at the world at where so it's also happening and look to see what you can do to talk about it, to support people who are fighting it, and to fight it because that's just bad.

Yeah, well we're we're taking a bold anti genocide stance over here.

You would think that wouldn't be a bold stance, like fucking non controversial, right, You would think, what a.

Weird fighting And yet I I mean, clearly I'm the party most affected by all of this, but it's really weird to just suddenly be like, wait, I'm used to having like kind of wild beliefs that most of the people around me don't support.

But there's some I thought we agreed on, you know, like no genocide, collective punishment bad.

I thought we all knew that.

I thought we were against bombing hospitals as like a species Yeah, yeah, totally.

That is what felt like a species wide thing.

It should be the ex exception the people who are like, that's good anyway whatever.

Yeah, those people we shouldn't hang out with.

Yeah, anyway, go to m ap dot or dot slash, dot slash.

You can't ad a fuck saying a URL is hard medical aid for Palestinians.

Go there, give them money.

Yeah, fuck, and support people who are.

If you're not doing some of the direct action that's happening where you live, support the people who are doing it.

Boost voices, and don't let people make this into what it's not about.

Don't let people either claim that it's anti semitic to fight on behalf of Palestinian people, and also don't let actual anti Semitic ideas creep into the people around you.

Both of those.

But you know, if anybody says you're being anti semitic for saying that it's not good to bomb hospitals, tell him your dad, Miriam, who is also your lawyer, said that they were wrong.

Yeah, all right, we'll see you all the area.

Miriam is dead dy.

Yeah, it's true.

You're gonna have You're so glad you're not on social You're gonna be so glad you're not you're not on Twitter because you just said that you didn't know when people are gonna hit on you.

It's so many people would hit on you based on this.

Miriam is daddy.

It is known.

Yeah, it made a terrible mistake, not the first, won't be the last.

All right, see everyone next week.

Bye bye.

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