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The Ramblings of a Lakota Anthropologist on American Indians and Anthropology and Tribal Relations - Ep 75
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On today’s episode, Jessica hosts Dr. Richard Meyers (Oglala Lakota), Tribal Relations Specialist at the Black Hills National Forest and the former Director of Graduate Studies and Associate Professor at Oglala Lakota College. Richie joined as part of the panel on Episode 73: Exploring the Ethics in Experimental Archaeology and I knew we needed to have him back to do a one on one episode. We talk about various aspects of identity, as well as the challenges and benefits of working in a variety of types of positions across the field of Anthropology, academia, and federal service. Richie also talks about his current work as a Tribal Relations Specialist and provides important advice for anyone wanting to go into Tribal Relations specifically, but really any form of Anthropology more generally.
Transcripts
For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/heritagevoices/75
Links
- Heritage Voices on the APN
- Who Gets To Be An Indian | Richie Meyers | TEDxBrookings
- Native Anthropology, to be a Native Scholar, or a Scholar that is Native: Reviving Ethnography in Indian Country
- What Rez Dogs Mean to the Lakota
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
You're
Introduction and Acknowledgements
00:00:01
Speaker
listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. Welcome to Heritage Voices, Episode 75. I'm Jessica Equinto, and I'm your host. And today we are talking about the ramblings of a Lakota anthropologist on American Indians and anthropology and tribal relations.
00:00:22
Speaker
Before we begin, I'd like to honor and acknowledge that the lands I'm recording on today are part of the Nooch or Ute People's Treaty Lands, the Diné Ta, and the ancestral Puebloan homeland. And today we have Dr. Richard Myers on the show. Richie is the tribal relations specialist at the Black Hills National Forest and the former director of graduate studies and associate professor at Oglala Lakota College.
Guest Introduction: Dr. Richard Myers
00:00:45
Speaker
He holds a PhD degree in anthropology from Arizona State University.
00:00:50
Speaker
At South Dakota State University, he served as Director of Tribal Outreach to the President. Myers has also served as a writer for the Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs under both the Bush and Obama administrations, and was a Fellow in the Anthropology Department at the Smithsonian. He's the President-elect of the Association of Indigenous Anthropologists. And he was also on recent episode, Episode 73 of Heritage Voices,
00:01:18
Speaker
exploring the ethics in experimental archaeology. And he was so great and we didn't get enough time with him during that episode. So I am really excited to have you back on and learn more about all of the cultural anthropology work that you've done or your background, because obviously that's my neck of the woods and I don't get to talk about it enough.
Dr. Myers' Heritage and Cultural Influences
00:01:40
Speaker
So very excited. Welcome back to the show, Richie. Thank you.
00:01:46
Speaker
All right, okay, so let's dive in. And can you tell us a little bit about what got you into this type of work? Jeez, it's kind of, I guess, coincides with my life in general. My dad's family are, I guess, from Ireland who came to Chicago and
00:02:13
Speaker
in strict kind of rules. His dad's side with the name Myers are German names that went to Ireland at some point and the maternal side are
00:02:25
Speaker
more, I guess, Irish known names and towards County Mayo and County Cork are where his relatives hail from. But his grandparents were butchers in Hyde Park in Chicago and whatnot. And long story short, he and his
00:02:46
Speaker
siblings all moved after World War II to the East Coast near Boston, Massachusetts and they had all, I guess, achieved higher education by way of sports and sports scholarships and his led him into football and after finishing his football eligibility he
00:03:07
Speaker
Took off to the Rosebud Reservation and in the 70s there that was an interesting time for the American Indian Movement and other such things going on nationally.
Pursuing Anthropology: Education and Identity
00:03:18
Speaker
My mom hails from the Heisel community on the Pine Ridge Reservation here where I'm
00:03:25
Speaker
speaking to you from the town of Wambly. The long and the short of it is my mom and dad, I guess, got together and I was their offspring. I guess I got a lot of anthro gobbledygook in my mouth if I start babbling. But out of that kind of union, I
00:03:48
Speaker
as I progressed in life in school and so on and so forth. I came into anthropology with a hungry thirst for finding more and more words within the discipline that explained things that I had grown up watching and seeing between my mom's luck with the first language speaking family and my dad's, I guess you could say Irish Catholic New England type upbringing. So I ended up spending significant time
00:04:19
Speaker
in all different types of cultural pockets, from immigrants to the reservation, to my father's second marriage, to an indigenous woman from the mountains of Michoacán, Mexico, and my mom is back to the Denver region. So I have in total
00:04:41
Speaker
you could say seven sisters that popped up in that reality from cousins being adopted to half sisters in the technicalities of all that, but it's just easier to say I had seven sisters with my oldest sister being highly influential on me. And yeah, I got to attend
00:05:02
Speaker
fancy school in New England called Amherst College, which at the time was the Lord Jeffs and the whole attribution of Lord Jeffrey Amherst to being the first kind of smallpox blanket guy to, you know, inflict biological warfare on Native people. So,
00:05:22
Speaker
Yeah, from all of those different experiences. I went to grad school in Arizona and Vermont at the same time for different programs and everything just kind of made sense to pursue anthropology for the reasons of culture and language and
00:05:45
Speaker
Yeah, I ended up focusing on Native identity and its articulations in English when people are trying to, you know, articulate what it means to be an American Indian at a Pan-Indian level versus a tribal level, urban versus reservation, all different distinctions.
Academic Path and Identity Exploration
00:06:06
Speaker
I examined that in a discourse of
00:06:09
Speaker
anthropology as it relates to American Indians and the notion that anthropology is built off of the back of American Indians in this hemisphere as opposed to social anthropology in Britain, but both coming from that kind of philosophical understanding of the other and self and other as interesting beginnings to a discipline and
00:06:33
Speaker
What does that mean for pre-industrialized societies and cultures and communities that are now completely encapsulated by modern global capitalism? So yeah, anthropology just made sense. I'm still stuck on the fact that you got two graduate degrees at the same time. One was hard enough. Oh, yeah.
00:06:59
Speaker
The one was in English at Middlebury College and the other was in anthropology at Arizona State University and the idea of wedding the two together in terms of sociolinguistics and so on and so forth, which later led to becoming a ghostwriter and other things where I used to tease and say I'm a textual ventriloquist. But yeah, there's different
00:07:28
Speaker
different things. The program at Middlebury was allowing me to do the degrees in the summer. So I do the two semesters of the fall and spring and then attend the other program in the summer and chipped away at them both at the same time. I dug up a good amount of debt, that's for sure. I can only imagine. Yeah, so
00:07:53
Speaker
After grad school, what did you want to do with all of that? I believe I was thinking on a career in academia, but not quite sure. My life kind of bouncing between different types of institutions. There was that idea of, okay, if I teach at an elite liberal arts college, I can
00:08:19
Speaker
revel in all sorts of fancy cutting edge theory and ideas. But the tokenism of being the only native person in programs or on faculty was a bit, I guess, difficult to handle at that age. And actually, I think at any age. But I entered into the federal government at the time that I was somewhat searching for academic positions and
00:08:47
Speaker
just somewhat exhausted from finishing and completing the dissertation. And where my dissertation was examining a lot of native PhDs and what that means to claim that identity in academe, I thought, jeez, I had a lot of indicting interviews with people who weren't native and who had postured as such and kind of a lot of notions of what is today called ethnic fraud and pretend Indianism.
00:09:16
Speaker
I didn't want to be noted as the guide to police identity. I thought it was fascinating the way that people frame out things and try to authenticate and that ultimately human beings aggregate around language communities. So if you're all into saving the whales or into hiking and eating gluten-free or whatever the kind of identifiers are for coming together and
00:09:45
Speaker
trying to be an identity not the mainstream but how marginalized and what does that mean and almost a competition for who's the most minoritized or marginalized and how does that work and when that gets applied to Indian country you know there's there's what people sometimes call ground zero and
00:10:08
Speaker
when they spout out statistics about indigenous Native North America or Native people in North America above the border region where there's federal recognition.
Stereotypes and Cultural Heritage Awareness
00:10:20
Speaker
The idea that the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation or
00:10:23
Speaker
Perhaps the San Carlos Indian Reservation shares some of the most dismal statistics with poverty. You'll find people in Indian country at large often will say say things like, you know, the average lifespan of a native man on the Pine Ridge Reservation is in his 50s.
00:10:42
Speaker
you know, according to that, I don't have much longer to live, but hopefully I need attention to some things and maybe I'll make it longer. But yeah, there's a lot of interesting things when people want to, you know, especially during November as Native American Heritage Month, and that month in particular becomes an interesting time. Like,
00:11:05
Speaker
I believe February, what is it, we're in Black History Month and whether you get appropriated by Sprite commercials or Target or whoever. Yeah, that is something that I guess it's not as prevalent in Indian country to the point that it has hit other minoritized things and that's that distinction between
00:11:25
Speaker
Native people versus minorities, but there's for sure just a lot of things to I guess dive into when you're dealing with quote-unquote Indian country proper and then urban Indian identity and what does it all mean at the end of the day and
00:11:44
Speaker
Yeah, when I went from the Smithsonian one day for lunch, I ended up not knowing that I was in an interview for a government position at the Department of Interior as a writer and an editor. And so that came upon my lap and I dove into that spot and I figured I owed so much for school that I might as well just consider myself property of the federal government.
00:12:13
Speaker
yeah, I was going to stay there for a few years and go back to academic work. And ultimately, I did that. But it
Tribal Education and University Experiences
00:12:22
Speaker
was something where the time period started to scare me. What was three years turned into five. And then I wasn't sure if I would be stuck in DC for
00:12:34
Speaker
and that was not the place I'd ever envisioned on being. DC is the Hollywood for ugly people. I wasn't Hollywood material and I never had aspirations of being there, but I always wanted to come back and I promised my grandparents out here.
00:12:57
Speaker
so forth that I would come back to Ombly and do what I could with whatever education I got. And so eventually I had an opportunity to leave the government and go to the east side of South Dakota to South Dakota State University to build an American Indian Studies program and to work as the, I guess, the
00:13:19
Speaker
the liaison to the president at the time they were trying to do some things because I believe they got dinged real bad on the diversity and
00:13:30
Speaker
other components that showed how racist the school was. When I got there, there was a bunch of farmer kids driving around with their rifles because everybody in South Dakota has probably a gun in their car, it's safe to say. Not necessarily an automatic assault rifle, but when you live in rural reality, it's just normal. But to point those guns at the kids from the city or minority kids walking or Indian kids,
00:13:58
Speaker
those things definitely don't do good for an environment like SDSU. So they really revamped and have made a 180 degree turn, you know, and in terms of image, I don't know necessarily, as far as gathering and gaining a whole bunch of Native students to go there, both USD and SDSU.
00:14:19
Speaker
remind me of ASU and U of A down in Arizona. There's those rivalries and so forth. But when you're a native person, I don't know that those are necessarily too much on your radar because the biggest achievement is getting through high school.
00:14:37
Speaker
Yeah, those things are interesting. I get the ability as the alumni to Arizona State to see that they've hired a lot of the people I was in school with to really build under President Michael Crow. And they've moved in a huge direction trying to woo a lot of native people to their programs. But I know University of Arizona has the same. And when you take that same model and you apply it to South Dakota,
00:15:06
Speaker
There's so many similarities where you have a super conservative state surrounding native populations which usually don't fall in the category of super conservative and so there's some interesting parallels to where I went to grad school in the southwest and
00:15:23
Speaker
I guess the irony is I was trained on yakis and I worked a lot with the Kokopo tribe and I finished my work in the southwest only to come back to South Dakota and the assumption is I'm a Plains Indian specialist.
00:15:40
Speaker
And I wasn't trained in that area but I jumped into it without having to worry much because I guess just growing up and so forth with my family and angles from that privilege of not having to
00:15:56
Speaker
I guess, you know, I didn't have to study things to know things that I had already known. Or as I said to one of my advisors in ASU, what took you 30 years to figure out as a brilliant discovery is something that a kid whose grandparents are speaking their language while they're watching, you know, and playing Nintendo. It's something that's just common day-to-day life.
00:16:23
Speaker
So being in a hybrid position like that, it's different. And then that kind of falls towards the whole notion of native anthropology. And what does that mean? And, you know, to be native skateboarder, studying skateboarders, because you are a skateboarder versus you're a native person, whatever that might mean. Studying a topic originally in the discipline that was frowned upon and
00:16:49
Speaker
that was right around the late 90s that that turn in methodology started to happen so that that idea of autoethnography and self-reflexivity were really taking hold. It's interesting to watch that stuff and I guess situate myself within it. So I
00:17:12
Speaker
was able to bring a major in American Indian Studies to what had previously been simply a minor in American Indian Studies at South Dakota State University.
Cultural Dynamics in Academic Settings
00:17:22
Speaker
I spent from 2008 to 2012, the end of it in D.C., walked away to South Dakota State University in 2012.
00:17:35
Speaker
did what I guess I could in the border regions of South Dakota, which ultimately are kind of underneath the jurisdiction of Kristi Noem and the governor and a very conservative slant.
00:17:49
Speaker
So doing what you can in terms of trying to, I don't know if I'd say enlighten, but I used to tease in some of my classes with predominantly non-native students and say, I just want you to be nice to Indians whenever you come into contact with them. And it was somewhat of a joke, but sort of a sad truth.
00:18:11
Speaker
What does that mean? What are the perceptions? Yeah, some of my colleagues, one from the economics department while I was at SDSU said, Rich, he brought me up to the little microbrewery and on his second pint said, so I got to ask you, what's your opinion on the Indian problem?
00:18:33
Speaker
And I was just like, uh, so what are you going to say? Yeah. And he said, you know, the Indian problem, what's your perspective on it? And I guess it depends on.
00:18:46
Speaker
what you mean by that, I said, and who's, who is it that you're asking? I said, if you ask my family who are Native, it's not the Indian problem. It's the white people problem. They all came and never left. And that's the problem. And he wasn't sure what to do. But that idea of how do you, how do you frame out, you know, what is celebrated as pioneer success and rugged individualism?
00:19:11
Speaker
in a space of reclaiming, you know, lands and sovereignty and the Supreme Court case of the Black Hills indicating that, you know, the lands were taken illegally. You're still on technically native lands that were defined in a treaty. So those are the current realities of
00:19:32
Speaker
always dealing with different things. But in the South Dakota context, leaving the east side of the state, there's a big divide in South Dakota. It's not horrible, but it's real and tangible. It's called East River versus West River. I met my wife. She's Sistan Wapton up there in the Dakota Reservation.
00:19:55
Speaker
My kids, we came back here and we left the town of Brookings on the east side of the state. And I decided to come back to the tribal college at that point. And like I said, I'd always told my grandma I would be back, but I wasn't sure when that would be. And we came back to the western side of the Pine Ridge Reservation.
00:20:19
Speaker
And we moved into the current, well, vice president of the tribe's house. She was away and we kind of rented from her in the town of Porcupine. And I worked for the college and so did my wife for a year or so. She subsequently went into working for the tribal schools and works at the Crazy Horse School where I sit on the board currently.
00:20:44
Speaker
And I was trying to just keep my head low and teach what started to acquire a different type of tokenism on the reservation, which is I had a PhD and I was native versus in the mainstream institution, I had a PhD and I was native, but it was inverted. So I was the token physically in those other places and spaces. Whereas at the tribal college, I was in terms of credentials,
00:21:14
Speaker
the one with the token reality of having a PhD, but at the same time being a native person with ties to the community. So those things made it an inverted tokenism. So that's always an interesting one to deal with. But yeah, so in 2017, I moved back to the reservation.
00:21:38
Speaker
And at the tribal college, moving from the sociology and anthropology and all sorts of jack of all trades, geography, philosophy, psychology, and the humanities department, I ended up having to teach graduate classes and ultimately moving into the graduate program and department and heading that up for a few years before I made the decision to go back to federal service and
00:22:08
Speaker
work predominantly with tribes directly on different initiatives. So that's the long and the short of it as far as different things. But I guess being a community member to my town and having a job, I guess that's always if I was to grab large data sets to indicate again what I sort of alluded to earlier.
00:22:33
Speaker
If you're to think about the United States of America and 10% unemployment is probably considered super high and people start freaking out is sort of what I kind of gather. But when you're in a community where
00:22:49
Speaker
you know, between 80 to 90% are constantly unemployed and the rough 10 to 15% who are employed are the inverse of mainstream
Economic Challenges on Reservations
00:23:01
Speaker
America. So the reality of joblessness and economic deprivation is, you know, I think that's hard for someone in America to fathom our awful reservation to understand.
00:23:19
Speaker
What's also a big challenge, I think, is the concept of immigrants. Immigrants left their homelands for economic reasons, oftentimes are, you know, other obviously serious or life-threatening.
00:23:35
Speaker
moments, but at the same time, that's what just, you know, is distinguishing between indigenous people and immigrants as immigrants leave. And the people who, you know, ended up on these spaces, this isn't somewhere you'd leave, it's your home. So why would you leave? That's always something that shocks people, I think. And it's interesting to see that both at a detached institutional level or on the ground.
00:24:05
Speaker
Some of those things play out in all sorts of ways, and I guess my anthropology is somewhat of applied anthropology at all moments. And so that initial question of how did I end up in anthropology, it just makes sense that in English, that's what I'd call it. And as far as being a Lakota person, when you're dealing with the world, every day is somewhat of an anthropological journey.
00:24:36
Speaker
If you're engaged with people in the English language, it's going to be anthropology 101. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay, so I'm going to stop you right there because we're at our first break point, but we will just jump right back in when we get back.
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Speaker
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Role in the Forest Service and Tribal Relations
00:26:33
Speaker
Okay, we are back.
00:26:36
Speaker
I have all the questions going through my brain right now, but I guess let's talk a little bit more about what you do in your current job right now with the Forest Service. Sure. In my current job, I began September 1st and I teased and
00:26:52
Speaker
still saying it that I'm going to remain the new guy for the next five years because the most, you know, I guess abundant reality that's confirmed on the daily for me is I never worked in USDA, never mind the Forest Service. And being that there's many people who have, you know, they're going on long-term careers and they started by fighting fires and climbing the ranks within the organization.
00:27:22
Speaker
completely coming as an outsider, but I'm coming into a position and all these positions are with this new administration under Biden that were chopped under the previous administration. So the ebbs and flows of funding and non-funding for tribal relations are an interesting thing. I saw the job advertisement and
00:27:46
Speaker
The appeal was there simply because it seemed like, again, a way to bridge anthropological connectivity to work with the tribes, the expectations of the trust obligations and the treaty and the relationship of the federal government to the tribes affiliated with the federal lands of the forest. The description of the job to me was everything that I've always done.
00:28:12
Speaker
I could have an actual full-time job completely devoted to that and maybe I'll have time on the side to do my own anthropological projects and writings, which ironically at the tribal college I was teaching six to seven classes on top of running
00:28:29
Speaker
the department on top of running grants and on top of running the IRB and being a gatekeeper to other research. So there was a lot of just too many hats to wear and to try to, I guess, do that job effectively and try to get to my own academic interests. I think it was en route to a heart attack. So
00:28:55
Speaker
I made that decision to shift for a quality of life and I'm still highly involved in the community and education on our reservation from different boards and
00:29:10
Speaker
and whatnot. But yeah, the shift to the forest has been interesting because I had previously worked at the Department of Interior. And within that, Indian Affairs at the Department of Interior is a fascinating history. Obviously, the notion of the Department of Defense and the BIA were the same entity until they built the Pentagon. But the idea of the BIA comes out in 1824. And
00:29:40
Speaker
The way that the United States expanded was obviously taking lands from Native tribes across the country. And in whatever capacity that entailed, you have the Department of Interior evolving in the US federal government in 1849.
00:29:56
Speaker
the Department of Everything Else, as it was called. And you have the flora, the fauna, fish and wildlife, Bureau of Land Management, national parks, and there you got the Indians, which no one was really sure, you know, or wanted to say, it's kind of awkward, you keep the flora and fauna and native people in that category.
00:30:18
Speaker
But yeah, that one was one of the job things back when I took that job was to try to clean up the appearance of BIA and that I had a higher education. I wasn't just Indian preference hired. I was brought in on an honors program that dissolved due to the politics of it was started under Bush and the Obama administration had, you know, far more appealing
00:30:45
Speaker
reactions and respect towards Native people, but that particular program that brought me in was dissolved because it had started under Bush. So I don't believe there's an honors program for BIA or for Indian Affairs. And so there's a reputation that is there and people, again, I don't work for them. I don't really feel bad for kind of exposing it, but a lot of people in BIA don't have formal educations.
00:31:14
Speaker
And there was a lot of people, and it was exposed while I was working there, who were pulling in hefty salaries with maybe an associate's degree at a GS14 level. And it was like, wow, what do you do? And so there was a lot of interesting relationships there that I observed while at the Department of Interior.
00:31:37
Speaker
Now, being in the forestry, it's underneath USDA, but congressionally, forestry and so forth is, I think, congressionally appropriated from the same Department of Interior funds. So they're close, and then to the tribes, often because forestry wears green and so does the Park Service.
00:31:56
Speaker
Sometimes the tribes aren't too sure what's the difference. The federal government's all the same. And so, as your whole podcast I'm sure is somewhat centered on the idea of the world of heritage and heritage programs and tribal relations falls under heritage programs. And it used to fall on heritage program directors. And then when you hire a tribal relations specialist, what is their role?
00:32:24
Speaker
It's just a really fascinating interface. And so with the anthropology background and
00:32:31
Speaker
Yeah, different experience. There's this interesting space that I guess I would say I don't mind it. I knew what I was getting into, but I live in the town of Wombly on the Pine Ridge Reservation and I work in the town of Custer of all places. It's a bit of a hike to get to Custer and yet I can telework.
Balancing Federal Work with Community Ties
00:32:55
Speaker
And so, you know, that makes it a little bit better.
00:32:58
Speaker
the distance at least. It's about two and a half to three hours drive. I stay in Custer's part of the week and then I'm afforded the option and ability to telework on a few days so I can be back in my community and keep my connections and connectivity here.
00:33:17
Speaker
But yeah, working in a non-native town that's not only non-native but named after George Armstrong Custer is, I find it funny. It's a little bit amusing, maybe too much to me.
00:33:36
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's my current reality as a tribal relations person is trying to do my best to facilitate the involvement of both sides of stakeholders on the tribal side to the federal government side and
00:33:52
Speaker
The policies currently under the Biden administration are moving towards co-stewardship, and that's admirable. And what that means ultimately is it's a first step in perhaps giving back lands that could go back to the tribes and control of the tribes if they get the infrastructure to do it. There's that opportunity.
00:34:17
Speaker
It's an interesting time to be in the government for sure. It could, sadly, the pendulum could switch and whoever gets in, if they redo or undo the understanding of the trust relationship to tribes, they could dissolve a lot of things. And again, the pendulum could go the other way. So that's, I guess, the nature of working in the federal government with tribes in that regard, I guess.
00:34:47
Speaker
Yeah. All right. We are at our second break point, but hold on. We'll be right back here in a second.
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Speaker
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00:35:25
Speaker
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00:35:55
Speaker
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00:36:23
Speaker
Talking about tribal relations, I feel like when I talk to people that are in tribal relations type positions, one of the things that seems to come up
00:36:35
Speaker
is, you know, like basically like a lot of people that are in those roles get into those roles because they want to, you know, support the communities that they're working with, in this case, the tribes that they're working with. And it's kind of tricky once they're in that role, because they kind of realize that their job is not really, I mean, to some extent it is to represent the tribes to the agency, but in larger part,
00:37:05
Speaker
Their job is, is to represent the agency to the tribe.
Identity and Representation in Governmental Roles
00:37:10
Speaker
Is that a challenge that you faced? Um, or, I don't know, it played out differently in your current role. For sure. That's, uh, I have some colleagues who are non-native and that their articulations of being a tribal relations specialist are.
00:37:29
Speaker
Yes, I would say vastly different than mine. One of them felt comfortable enough in front of me to say, I know you're not gonna jump all over me for this, but I feel that because of Deb Haaland, that there's reverse racism towards us non-native tribal relations people. And I just said, oh, okay, I thought it was funny, just in terms of the whole argument when people say reverse racism, and what does that entail? And
00:37:57
Speaker
the structure of reality and so on and so forth. But that colleague is an interesting fellow and just sometimes he'd probably be better in a laboratory than dealing with people. And yeah, it's just the unique situations that I think people encounter for sure. I guess when I worked at the Department of Interior back in those days, one of my
00:38:25
Speaker
relatives who was deciding on whatever particular reason to try to give me crap for being a BIA Indian, tried to say that I'm a sellout by working for the feds. And I think to that I said, well, cool, hit up your aim, Daddy, and leave me alone then. And she took back what she said pretty fast, because I hope
00:38:52
Speaker
subsidized things were. But having a job is something that, again, what does that mean in modern society? The distinction between you work for corporate America or you're a civil servant, you work for a nonprofit versus you work for a profit.
00:39:09
Speaker
There are different discourses that, you know, circulate. And I think at the position I'm in, I did get asked by some of the folks at work, do I receive any flack for working for the forest unit? Because oftentimes when they're in their meetings, and it's obviously all non-Native people on one side of the table, so to speak, and then the Native folks, often the tippos or the tribal leaders,
00:39:39
Speaker
they receive the full, I guess, binary treatment of the you or the other and you or the other, depending on which side you're sitting on. So the idea of me taking the position was to bridge that. And from what I gathered, people who work on different tribal advocacy forums were saying, you know, we're so happy you're in this. But
00:40:05
Speaker
That doesn't mean there aren't people who are going, ah, just another Indian scout working for the feds. That's probably always ongoing, depending on how you rub people, and some people rub people wrong. That sounds rough to use the rub metaphor, but the long and the short of some of that is there are other arguments in the communities of grassroots Indians aren't IRA government Indians.
00:40:28
Speaker
So when someone says they work for the tribe, the money comes from BIA anyways, it's appropriated from Congress. So you're already a sellout when you work for the IRA governments. So there's in all of the tribes that have the, I don't know if I would say privilege, but still have connectivity to pre-colonial governments in a traditional like the Haudenosaunee versus the
00:40:54
Speaker
the formal tribal recognition of St. Regis Mohawk or Oneida Nation. There's still a traditional Haudenosaunee council out here. There's still a treaty council. Who are the grassroots people? And if you work for the tribe, you're already considered to sell out because you're really a fed because all that money is federal dollars anyways. So there's numerous, I guess, moments where people can undermine someone for whatever their reason might be.
00:41:27
Speaker
versus tangible issues you're dealing with. But personally, I haven't dealt with any of those. I think due to living still in my community here and doing the best I can to get along with everybody, I don't
00:41:45
Speaker
at least to my face, haven't encountered anybody giving me crap. But again, I'm so new that I'm going to use that for the next couple of decades. So if somebody was coming out of college or whatever, and they were thinking that they wanted to go into this kind of position,
00:42:09
Speaker
what advice would you give them on how to how to do the best they can in a tribal relations kind of role? I think here's a like circuitous way to approach the topic. I spoke to a colleague he's sort of well known named Nick Estes and we were discussing you know and I guess it's a private conversation but what I'm revealing isn't top secret or private discourse in any way but he said he's working in an Indian studies department
00:42:39
Speaker
and this is the first time he's experienced the job and his identity are enmeshed together, whereas before he was in an American Studies department and it just so happened that he was Native. The job being about
00:42:55
Speaker
what you are essentially identified as creates a blurring or a hazing of the lines of your professional identity. Are you a professional Indian? Are you a professional person who happens to be Indian? And Indian obviously native of whatever. I don't, I'm not, yeah, the Native American thing is a interesting one. The long and the short of some of that is
00:43:23
Speaker
If being the job versus doing a job and then is it a career or a job and, you know, is working as a till person for 7-11, a career choice, or is it a job, is, you know, what you do and who you are, something that do somewhat combined together, that's a whole fascinating anthropological discussion.
00:43:50
Speaker
if you live in a community where there aren't any jobs, it's who's your family. So your identity predates your profession and your career. But if you're a native kid or a non-native kid, ultimately, I would think that it comes down to your identity as a human being and where you're at in your identity, meaning
00:44:13
Speaker
Are you fine with being transparent to the identity you're in? Or are you trying to pose as something that you're kind of overcompensating for something?
Cultural Identity in Professional Contexts
00:44:25
Speaker
And if you're sort of wishy-washy or you're trying to be something, you might get eaten up in positions that are requiring just something stable. So if you're like my one friend there, he's not trying to be
00:44:43
Speaker
Native, he's interesting because he perhaps is trying to be more Chicano, which is more of a stretch. And he battles with other people in his category, as you're not Chicano enough, you're a white guy. And I found that fascinating. And I don't really point that out to him, but he's in a different category altogether. So if you're working with a different tribe, that's something to consider as well.
00:45:09
Speaker
I did spend grad school down with the Southwestern tribes, and I could generically just be ethnic and not worry, and people didn't know if I was Navajo or one of those tribes or whatever, because there was a different reality down there.
00:45:29
Speaker
observing things and watching things. And if someone's coming out of college, it's helpful to have quote unquote the gift of gab. But at the same time, it's helpful to be respectful and listen. And, you know, you operate accordingly. And if you're assured as to who you are, and you're not
00:45:53
Speaker
not quite sure what you do and why you do it to the fullest. No one I don't think really is fully enmeshed in an academic discourse on who they are fully. But yeah, in certain positions in life where people want things and communication done, if someone is trying to
00:46:15
Speaker
play both sides, but trying to play one, it becomes apparent. And I've seen that in all the meetings I'm in. There are some who, you know, do you operate in a tribal community? At what level are your families still living in that community? Be like an Irish Catholic person from South Boston,
00:46:36
Speaker
saying, I'm Irish. And then my grandpa was in the IRA, and he blew up that post office in that movie Michael Collins, blah, blah, blah. And we smuggled guns with Whitey Bulger, and so on and so forth. And then you meet someone in Iowa who says, I'm Irish. And then
00:46:54
Speaker
say, well, when did your family come over? Do you keep contact? What village? What community? The Germans have bought out most of the land. You know, there's all sorts of things of if you're claiming heritage, that's a different identity construct, then you're still tethered to that space in the politics of the everyday drama. And so on a continuum scale,
00:47:17
Speaker
someone coming in and being like that silly movie and I only say silly cuz there's Hollywood silly but that Thunder heart with Val Kilmer back in the day and there's this white-looking fella saying he's Indian and he comes back and no one knows who he is but the elders know who his lineage is and what is that all about he has a vision and he's never even been to the reservation before and
00:47:42
Speaker
Meanwhile, someone who's been there their whole life didn't have a vision, so somehow there's this spiritual value to Val Kilmer that Graham Greene's character didn't have. Obviously, I'm jumping into a cinema reference, so if no one's seen that movie, what I'm saying doesn't make too much sense. But ultimately, when people come out of college, was it a tribal college? Because then people know you and you didn't leave the tribal community. If you went to a mainstream or state school,
00:48:12
Speaker
does your community know you and then what if you weren't raised there like jumping to the southwest context what if you grew up in Flagstaff or Phoenix you know does that make you less of a native from where or just own your identity from where you are and you could be related to people but
00:48:33
Speaker
Do you live there now? And so, that overstepping and speaking for the collective because you're something is a dangerous spot that I've watched people do. And I don't think I don't overstep at this point in life. I may have when I was younger, who knows? But I do think those are things that I've watched when I watched Discourse in a Room between Natives and Non-Natives and someone tries to speak for Native people and it's like,
00:49:03
Speaker
all 574 tribes, or all the Lakota bands, or all the Canadians. Who are you? Your whole tribe listens to you? I mean, that kind of mistake, I think, happens a lot in terms of being intermediary in different situations.
00:49:25
Speaker
even watching attorneys represent clients. So yeah, I don't know if that somewhat speaks to it a little bit, but I do think, you know, their great experience can be gathered pretty fast on the ground.
Tribal Engagement in Forest Management
00:49:40
Speaker
Whether you want it or not, you're going to dive into the deep end if you're a travel relations person. Yeah. Yeah. Is there anything that you're working on right now that you're like, I'm really excited about this.
00:49:55
Speaker
I am, I guess, in a larger sense and obviously more acute ways with particular spaces and projects, but in a general sense, a lot of the projects I'm trying to facilitate involve getting the tribes on board the existing programs and what it means to have a forest space of land and the upkeep and the kind of
00:50:22
Speaker
I don't know how to feel what and when I say I don't know how to feel. I mean, the usage of the term preservation and conservation, preservation makes me think of formaldehyde and you're preserving something like Ishi's brain in a paperweight or something. But the idea of continuous
00:50:44
Speaker
Stewardship is the word that they're using, but basically, whether it's the rainforest or any of the forests, it's not like it's an untouched thing that nobody ever came about. Everything has often been, you know, interfaced and intermingled with human beings. And if human beings can learn to try to
00:51:08
Speaker
balance their engagement and try to keep things in the ecological niche going as opposed to screwing it up. That's really important. And so when people say natives and the environment and all of that,
00:51:24
Speaker
at just purely a level of generalized statement. It's also how do you know that there was more trees in the Black Hills now than there ever were when Custer was first going through? There's some really cool pictures and the different types of trees. It's almost like a tree farm reminds me of a chia pit, honestly. But in order to have that reality in that space, it requires upkeep and
00:51:54
Speaker
There's the terms I've been learning about forest treatments and so what happens every summer with burns and natural disasters and to try to prevent huge ones versus controlled burns and how traditional understandings of Native tribes from the
00:52:12
Speaker
you know, from the Pacific Northwest all the way through to the East Coast, tribes understood you have to burn things to recycle at times and doesn't mean destroy. It means to, again, I guess, steward the land. Steward the land is different than
00:52:31
Speaker
complete total control. People like to use colonized, but I think of some kind of song lyric where it says, they paved paradise to put up a parking lot. And in that regard, if you're wanting to have lands that are still
00:52:49
Speaker
existing in a natural state for animals that you don't want dead and things to keep going from plants to animals, you gotta think about sustainability as opposed to concrete and urbanization. So those are really interesting concepts but
00:53:06
Speaker
the projects I'm working on are about trying to give tribes a seat at the table to access and form. You know, if they don't want to do something, they have the ability, if they have a seat at the table, to say, hey, we don't agree with this. I mean,
00:53:22
Speaker
There's all sorts of mechanisms within the system from NEPA to just environmental impact statements to treaty rights to all sorts of ways that tribes can get more involved at this juncture. So there's plenty of projects that can lead to employment. And so for me,
00:53:43
Speaker
If I can facilitate some projects that get some work crews to be able to work in the summer and maybe perhaps throughout the year, that's bringing income to families who again with 80 to 90% unemployment for sure could use some help.
00:54:02
Speaker
So those are some of the things, but also we are working on a cultural interpretive center. And if the tribes start to, you know, in a phased in project, start to get a sustainable way to then reclaim the narrative of the Black Hills as to what, what do Native people think? Why are these sacred? What's going on? And then how was this, you know, relationship not right? And why did the Supreme Court acknowledge that?
00:54:32
Speaker
Where are we at now and how are we moving forward? And again, you have to be honest with history as opposed to cover it up. So there's those kind of larger issues that are in the works right now. And for sure, under the Biden administration, those are goals of co- stewardship. I think what's the one bears ears?
00:54:58
Speaker
something in the Southwest, exemplified as, yeah, yeah. So you're well aware of the kind of, I think it had a tumultuous time under Trump and it's back to a positive role again. And so
00:55:14
Speaker
So yeah, it's an opportune time to try to really get the tribes at the table, so to speak. But you have two-year rollovers in leadership and consistency and infrastructure challenges.
00:55:29
Speaker
Yeah, those are all things that I guess it's ethically a fun feeling, if I was to put it that way, knowing that if I can try to help reinforce and support tribal sovereignty and the rights of tribes to partake in the lands that were obviously theirs, and arguably still are according to the Supreme Court, how do you do that in a way or the best way possible?
Career Opportunities in Anthropology
00:55:59
Speaker
and move forward with all of America too. So yeah those are those I guess are the things I'm working on and that's a vague way to say it but if I was to say on different meetings with nonprofits and different stakeholders to try to get wood for that community so when we experience the blizzards that just happened and people died we don't have that happen because there'll be a backup wood supply which means establishing a relationship like
00:56:28
Speaker
a sustainable one where people have at least a couple months of wood reserves for people who rely on wood to heat themselves and cook. So those are some of the tangible projects that are on my plate right now. Yeah, it's important stuff. We're right at the end of our time and I...
00:56:47
Speaker
I have so many more questions, especially about the early stuff, which we didn't really get to dive into. But I guess just on a last note to wrap up on, if you had like one soapbox thing, like one thing that if you could scream it from the rooftops and, you know, have everybody hear you, what would it be? Sadly, and I'm just gonna say it, because I
00:57:13
Speaker
Diet Pepsi here. And I was thinking of an Eddie Murphy movie and the barbershop scene. Don't bet on the white guy. It's a boxing match. But when you're saying, if you could say something and scream off the roof, if you don't trust the white man, no. It's an interesting, I mean,
00:57:31
Speaker
thing, what would my screaming off the roof? I'd be thinking, I wonder how long till someone shoots me if I was screaming on my roof, or if people would ignore me in town. So I just had a few, few rapid thoughts go through my head when you were saying that. I would think, you know, that that the spaces of what someone can do with anthropology degrees are endless, whether
00:58:01
Speaker
someone goes more specific into archaeology or linguistics or whatever that specialization might be, you'll find more narrow job paths, but ultimately learning, going to college and
00:58:17
Speaker
then beginning, quote unquote, a career by doing different jobs. You can kind of come about something. I know my wife teaches a careers class at the local school and that whole debate of what's a job and what's a career. And when they say do what you love,
00:58:38
Speaker
all those different kinds of idioms. It seems to me that in the heritage field and in the anthropological world, there are opportunities, whether in the private sector or the federal government or towns or whatever space you're going to end up in.
00:58:57
Speaker
that there's plenty of work to do to try to connect people. And having those connections, it's a positive thing. If people are driven by financial interests and income, maybe not. But as far as ethically feeling decent about the work you do, you know, for sure,
00:59:21
Speaker
that often people say, that's not an area to major in. What are you going to get for your jobs in life with that? There's plenty, plenty of things to do with it. So yeah, I don't know if I'd scream it, but I just wish a lot of younger people understood things like that.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:59:41
Speaker
Become a lawyer or a doctor so you can pull in big bucks. Unless you want to feel, how did you word that?
00:59:51
Speaker
uh you said like ethically uh what was it cleansed oh jeez i'm not even sure i feel ethically okay as good as i can get ethically all right yeah ethically okay that's about as good as it's gonna be oh god
01:00:16
Speaker
Well, on that note, I think I think we are done here today. But thank you so much for coming on again. I really, really appreciate you taking the time twice now. Yeah, someday we'll have to have you back on and talk more about all of the earlier stuff and what you're doing at that point. And be great. So, yeah, long story short. Thank you again for coming on. You're welcome.
01:00:46
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Heritage Voices podcast. You can find show notes at www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com slash Heritage Voices. Please subscribe to the show on iTunes, Stitcher, or the Google Play Music Store. Also, please share with your friends or write us a review. Sharing and reviewing helps more people find the show and gets the perspectives of Heritage Voices amazing guests out there into the world.
01:01:09
Speaker
Don't we just need more of that in anthropology and land management? If you have any more questions, comments, or show suggestions, please reach out to me at Jessica at livingheritageanthropology.org. If you'd like to volunteer to be on the show as a guest or even a co-host, reach out to me as well, Jessica at livingheritageanthropology.org.
01:01:27
Speaker
You can also follow more of what I'm doing on Facebook at Living Heritage Anthropology and the non-profit Living Heritage Research Council or on Twitter at LivingHeritageA. As always, huge thank you to Liable Enqua and Jason Nez for their collaboration on our incredible logo.
01:01:52
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, Dig Tech LLC, Culturo Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.