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Would you like to inspect the original subtitles? These are the user uploaded subtitles that are being translated: 1 00:00:20,210 --> 00:00:24,390 I have a great deal of interest in history. I don't think that everyday 2 00:00:24,390 --> 00:00:25,470 Americans can 3 00:00:26,380 --> 00:00:30,240 even begin to understand our contemporary issues without putting them 4 00:00:30,240 --> 00:00:31,240 historical context. 5 00:00:33,580 --> 00:00:38,100 A lot of people have this notion that Indians live in teepee, and there were 6 00:00:38,100 --> 00:00:41,340 feathers, and all of them were buffalo robes. 7 00:00:42,040 --> 00:00:46,820 Everything that seemed to portray Indians, that's not true of our people. 8 00:00:52,220 --> 00:00:55,480 There's no such thing as dancing with wolves in the southeast. 9 00:00:56,330 --> 00:00:58,230 Dancing with Dobermans or whatever else. 10 00:00:58,430 --> 00:01:02,290 Now, the metaphor dancing with alligators doesn't work in the 11 00:01:05,450 --> 00:01:10,850 Dancing with wolves is only a recreation of last of the Mohicans. The same 12 00:01:10,850 --> 00:01:13,030 savage and noble savage are present there. 13 00:01:14,130 --> 00:01:20,770 You know, to a large extent, the concept of the savage is used to justify the 14 00:01:20,770 --> 00:01:21,770 taking of the land. 15 00:01:25,290 --> 00:01:32,070 From the Plains Indian Wars, you get spectacles of Indians, and that was 16 00:01:32,070 --> 00:01:37,130 what became part of American consciousness about Indians. 17 00:01:40,910 --> 00:01:47,290 The experiences of the five tribes in the Southeast were not part of that 18 00:01:47,290 --> 00:01:48,330 history at all. 19 00:02:02,730 --> 00:02:09,669 A lot of history about tribes has been written by soldiers or by ministers or 20 00:02:09,669 --> 00:02:14,750 people external to the communities, and so you don't get the other side. 21 00:02:16,330 --> 00:02:21,810 We must begin to develop our own material or even our own 22 00:02:21,810 --> 00:02:27,270 movies, our own videos, whatever is necessary to educate our people. 23 00:02:46,220 --> 00:02:50,500 We are the Choctaw, the Muskogee Creek, 24 00:02:51,000 --> 00:02:56,860 the Seminole, the Chickasaw, 25 00:02:57,120 --> 00:02:59,800 and the Cherokee. 26 00:03:00,900 --> 00:03:05,600 We are the children of the mound builders and heirs to a civilization 27 00:03:05,600 --> 00:03:10,500 followed a drifting river trade route from the Gulf of Mexico all the way to 28 00:03:10,500 --> 00:03:11,500 Canada. 29 00:03:12,040 --> 00:03:15,280 The town of Tahlequah in northeastern Oklahoma. 30 00:03:15,960 --> 00:03:18,040 has only a recent place in our history. 31 00:03:18,860 --> 00:03:23,960 Born from the Cherokee Trail of Tears, but it is a symbol of our survival. 32 00:03:24,560 --> 00:03:29,980 Today it is the capital of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, a fitting place for 33 00:03:29,980 --> 00:03:34,460 representatives of our tribes to come together to discuss our histories and 34 00:03:34,460 --> 00:03:35,460 future. 35 00:03:35,600 --> 00:03:40,060 I'd like to talk about contemporary issues because I don't want to have 36 00:03:40,060 --> 00:03:42,720 think we're frozen in time 200 years ago. 37 00:03:43,310 --> 00:03:47,270 And I don't like that image. People can deal with us if we're in museums, but 38 00:03:47,270 --> 00:03:48,950 they can't deal with us today. 39 00:03:49,690 --> 00:03:52,770 Wilma Mankiller is the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation. 40 00:03:53,810 --> 00:03:59,050 It's always been my opinion that the true history of American Indians has 41 00:03:59,050 --> 00:04:00,050 been told. 42 00:04:01,010 --> 00:04:03,970 One reason I believe is the dynamic, it changes. 43 00:04:04,670 --> 00:04:09,490 Our people have always been adaptive to change, and through this process it's 44 00:04:09,490 --> 00:04:11,310 very difficult to capture. 45 00:04:12,880 --> 00:04:14,380 The true history of our people. 46 00:04:14,780 --> 00:04:18,560 Ken York lives on Choctaw tribal land in Philadelphia, Mississippi. 47 00:04:18,940 --> 00:04:22,300 He teaches the Choctaw language at Mississippi State University. 48 00:04:23,260 --> 00:04:27,960 I think histories, if they are to be representative, have to develop. It's a 49 00:04:27,960 --> 00:04:32,560 record of people who didn't go away, that were still there and living 50 00:04:32,560 --> 00:04:38,080 to values and traditions that have always been there forever. 51 00:04:38,960 --> 00:04:39,960 Alan Cook. 52 00:04:40,390 --> 00:04:43,150 is a Muscogee Creek historian from Holdenville, Oklahoma. 53 00:04:43,530 --> 00:04:49,470 I think that if you wed a living historical account to a living culture, 54 00:04:49,690 --> 00:04:55,910 then you're producing a narrative that makes sense to Indian people. 55 00:04:56,450 --> 00:05:00,630 Gary Whitedear is a Choctaw artist and historian from Ada, Oklahoma. 56 00:05:02,700 --> 00:05:05,000 In a sense, we're all consumers of history. 57 00:05:05,240 --> 00:05:11,760 And we go to the history store and we buy a dozen eggs of history. 58 00:05:11,920 --> 00:05:16,940 But when we get home and we open that carton, we find that there are only ten 59 00:05:16,940 --> 00:05:23,580 eggs in there. And what happened to the story of the Cherokees, of other Indian 60 00:05:23,580 --> 00:05:27,600 people? What happened to the stories of women? Where are those voices? 61 00:05:28,080 --> 00:05:30,360 Sarah Parker is Cherokee Narragansett. 62 00:05:30,760 --> 00:05:34,960 She is a professor of American Studies at the University of California at Santa 63 00:05:34,960 --> 00:05:35,960 Cruz. 64 00:05:36,860 --> 00:05:42,340 One of the things that we come up against so frequently is the idea that 65 00:05:42,340 --> 00:05:45,080 Indian tribes, including peoples in the Southeast... 66 00:05:45,720 --> 00:05:48,900 were nomadic, that they moved from place to place. 67 00:05:49,220 --> 00:05:55,080 If you look at the history of southern Appalachia and Cherokee residency there, 68 00:05:55,200 --> 00:06:00,360 there's records of people inhabiting that region back at least 10 ,000 years. 69 00:06:06,560 --> 00:06:09,320 Imagine the deep cool of a primal forest. 70 00:06:09,720 --> 00:06:10,800 We were there. 71 00:06:12,460 --> 00:06:15,180 Imagine the wild rapids of a spring flood. 72 00:06:15,540 --> 00:06:16,600 We were there. 73 00:06:17,640 --> 00:06:22,360 Imagine a flock of a million passenger pigeons so large that it blackened the 74 00:06:22,360 --> 00:06:24,200 sky. We were there. 75 00:06:25,500 --> 00:06:27,360 Know this about the land. 76 00:06:27,880 --> 00:06:31,900 It was not India, and it was definitely not empty. 77 00:06:34,880 --> 00:06:39,580 We welcome the great floods of the Mississippi River to restore and deepen 78 00:06:39,580 --> 00:06:41,300 agricultural lands each summer. 79 00:06:42,300 --> 00:06:47,200 And with the wealth that nature provided, we built large cities, like 80 00:06:47,380 --> 00:06:53,320 near modern -day St. Louis, a planned city of 10 ,000 built around 100 81 00:06:53,320 --> 00:06:55,280 ceremonial and burial mounds. 82 00:06:59,380 --> 00:07:06,340 All the Southeastern tribes, our old customs were to bury our people 83 00:07:06,340 --> 00:07:10,220 in mounds, great mounds, and to also... 84 00:07:10,720 --> 00:07:11,940 bury things with them. 85 00:07:14,280 --> 00:07:20,480 We all go back to where we started. And our tradition tells us that we spend our 86 00:07:20,480 --> 00:07:24,960 life starting on Mother Earth. We're born on Mother Earth. We pass on and 87 00:07:24,960 --> 00:07:26,700 our bones are reinterred in Mother Earth. 88 00:07:26,940 --> 00:07:30,480 And so this cycle of life is really like the cycle of the human spirit. 89 00:07:31,220 --> 00:07:36,760 The mounds and relationship to the study of astronomy was such that the entrance 90 00:07:36,760 --> 00:07:38,820 of the buildings would always face the east. 91 00:07:39,400 --> 00:07:43,980 We call that Hashi Akucha, which is where the sun rises. And the rays, of 92 00:07:43,980 --> 00:07:44,980 course, bring warmth. 93 00:07:45,120 --> 00:07:51,540 The warmth of the rays hits Mother Earth, and plants, animals, and even 94 00:07:51,540 --> 00:07:56,420 beings begin to grow. There are people in the South today, many of them wealthy 95 00:07:56,420 --> 00:08:02,060 folks, doctors and lawyers and even politicians, who are in the dirty 96 00:08:02,060 --> 00:08:05,080 of digging up our Indian people. 97 00:08:05,640 --> 00:08:08,880 And the reason they're digging up our Indian people is because of the things 98 00:08:08,880 --> 00:08:15,380 they were buried with, pots and projectile points, spear points, and so 99 00:08:15,660 --> 00:08:20,480 There seems to be a growing black market for these items, so they are dug up and 100 00:08:20,480 --> 00:08:21,480 they're being sold. 101 00:08:35,600 --> 00:08:41,179 We believe that the Earth is our mother. And in order to recognize that, certain 102 00:08:41,179 --> 00:08:43,220 people built mounds. 103 00:08:44,120 --> 00:08:47,100 And they do this to recognize the mother. 104 00:08:47,520 --> 00:08:51,880 During pregnancy, you see the mother change. 105 00:08:52,780 --> 00:08:58,840 So in recognizing what we call Tik 'in Hashi, the Women's Month, 106 00:08:59,140 --> 00:09:02,980 there were times when they built mounds, and they were small mounds. 107 00:09:03,960 --> 00:09:08,760 It was more of a recognition of the female rather than burial or ceremonial. 108 00:09:12,040 --> 00:09:17,000 For hundreds of years, scientists refused to believe that these great 109 00:09:17,000 --> 00:09:18,360 could have been built by Indians. 110 00:09:19,060 --> 00:09:24,040 They attributed the mounds to Viking explorers, to the lost tribes of Israel, 111 00:09:24,220 --> 00:09:28,540 even to the notion that our country had once been populated by a race of 112 00:09:28,540 --> 00:09:32,760 supermen. white men who built the mounds before they founded the great 113 00:09:32,760 --> 00:09:34,140 civilizations of Mexico. 114 00:09:36,220 --> 00:09:39,900 Scientists finally decided that the mounds had been engineered by Native 115 00:09:39,900 --> 00:09:44,540 Americans, but that the Mississippian culture had collapsed and disappeared in 116 00:09:44,540 --> 00:09:45,560 the 1500s. 117 00:09:45,980 --> 00:09:48,740 But we have always known that these were our relations. 118 00:09:49,240 --> 00:09:52,980 Our oral histories tie us to the mound builders and beyond. 119 00:09:54,000 --> 00:09:56,940 The migration to where we are now. 120 00:09:57,390 --> 00:09:59,390 perhaps to thousands of years, I'm not sure. 121 00:09:59,610 --> 00:10:03,270 But it took a long time for our people to get here. 122 00:10:04,510 --> 00:10:09,790 Every time they would make a stop, they would put the sacred pole in the ground. 123 00:10:09,970 --> 00:10:15,050 But the next day, as an example, this pole would lean towards the direction 124 00:10:15,050 --> 00:10:20,210 people are supposed to go. The pole would give them direction, and the 125 00:10:20,210 --> 00:10:21,210 would march again. 126 00:10:21,800 --> 00:10:26,060 And people brought everything with them, including the bones of their ancestors. 127 00:10:26,700 --> 00:10:32,300 And the feeling, the understanding that I get from that is that they would never 128 00:10:32,300 --> 00:10:38,140 return to their place of origin as far as the migration is concerned. 129 00:10:39,440 --> 00:10:44,340 When they reached what we now know as the River, they planted a pole in the 130 00:10:44,340 --> 00:10:45,340 ground. 131 00:10:46,020 --> 00:10:50,760 It's our understanding that a thorn came, a biblical proportion. 132 00:10:51,860 --> 00:10:55,300 And yet, the next day, this pole stood straight up. 133 00:10:55,680 --> 00:11:01,920 And since that time, we've always been where we are today, our ancestral home 134 00:11:01,920 --> 00:11:02,920 land in Mississippi. 135 00:11:12,880 --> 00:11:18,740 Our people, when they built the mound, they put the sacred pole down and the 136 00:11:18,740 --> 00:11:22,940 spirit gave them the song. And as long as they sing the song, the sacred pole 137 00:11:22,940 --> 00:11:24,820 would always stand straight towards the heaven. 138 00:11:30,660 --> 00:11:34,460 The Native Americans will continue on TBS. 139 00:11:36,180 --> 00:11:39,280 TBS presents the Environmental Media Award. 140 00:11:39,930 --> 00:11:44,370 Join Maya Angelou, Mikhail Gorbachev, and your favorite celebrities for an 141 00:11:44,370 --> 00:11:46,070 extraordinary evening in Hollywood. 142 00:11:46,950 --> 00:11:50,270 Celebrating the entertainment industry's concern for our planet. 143 00:11:50,470 --> 00:11:53,310 There's so many things you can do. I'm concerned about it all. 144 00:11:53,590 --> 00:11:54,610 I think we can do better. 145 00:11:55,150 --> 00:11:57,130 The Environmental Media Award. 146 00:11:57,570 --> 00:11:59,510 Televised for the first time ever. 147 00:11:59,950 --> 00:12:01,630 Sunday night, 11 Eastern. 148 00:12:02,510 --> 00:12:03,630 Exclusively on CBS. 149 00:12:07,050 --> 00:12:09,770 Now back to the Native Americans on TVF. 150 00:12:36,650 --> 00:12:41,870 We tattooed our bodies and etched our art into copper and seashell ornaments. 151 00:12:42,610 --> 00:12:47,210 We celebrated the relationship of our clans to native animals in beautifully 152 00:12:47,210 --> 00:12:48,690 carved domes. 153 00:12:54,250 --> 00:12:59,310 We played a spectacular game of stickball on huge fields near our 154 00:12:59,310 --> 00:13:01,850 grounds, the first American baseball. 155 00:13:07,400 --> 00:13:13,000 On the eve of European exploration, we lived in stable villages, in cane and 156 00:13:13,000 --> 00:13:14,700 plaster or log homes. 157 00:13:16,160 --> 00:13:17,760 We had peace communities. 158 00:13:30,180 --> 00:13:35,140 We held a wide expanse of land in common with many tribes for hunting and 159 00:13:35,140 --> 00:13:36,089 fishing. 160 00:13:36,090 --> 00:13:38,250 And this the Europeans never understood. 161 00:13:43,570 --> 00:13:49,290 From the beginning, they could not see what was here and did not understand 162 00:13:49,290 --> 00:13:51,970 our sense of place did not end at our porch steps. 163 00:13:52,210 --> 00:13:58,190 They brought their God and their belief in property and their dog of war. 164 00:14:13,970 --> 00:14:18,730 Bartolome de las Casas kept a diary when Hernando de Soto's expedition passed 165 00:14:18,730 --> 00:14:20,790 through the southeast in 1539. 166 00:14:22,190 --> 00:14:27,030 The Christians, with their horses, swords, and spikes, began to carry out 167 00:14:27,030 --> 00:14:30,350 massacres and strange cruelties against the Indians. 168 00:14:30,630 --> 00:14:35,970 They attacked towns and spared neither children, the aged, nor pregnant women. 169 00:14:36,810 --> 00:14:41,430 The people were fed to dogs, skewered, and burned alive. 170 00:14:42,640 --> 00:14:45,140 All this is my own eye's witness. 171 00:14:46,080 --> 00:14:50,740 The cries of so much spilled blood reach all the way to heaven. 172 00:14:54,340 --> 00:14:59,920 The people who are descendants of the group that lived around Oritna Mobile 173 00:14:59,920 --> 00:15:03,840 that they were treated very harshly by the Spaniards, almost immediately. 174 00:15:04,100 --> 00:15:05,280 They were very demanding. 175 00:15:06,140 --> 00:15:11,800 They wanted not only food and shelter and clothing, but also the women. 176 00:15:12,330 --> 00:15:17,890 And, of course, did not go very well with the leadership at the time. 177 00:15:18,110 --> 00:15:22,770 And you have to understand, one of the leaders in one of the villages was also 178 00:15:22,770 --> 00:15:23,770 woman leader. 179 00:15:27,570 --> 00:15:31,930 One of the chiefs that was mentioned in the chronicles and was highly respected 180 00:15:31,930 --> 00:15:33,910 was Tuscaloosa, a black warrior. 181 00:15:34,250 --> 00:15:39,290 He somehow knew that De Soto was here not in cause of friendship and peace. 182 00:15:39,870 --> 00:15:41,590 He would send runners. 183 00:15:42,510 --> 00:15:44,670 to other villages that they were going to visit. 184 00:15:44,890 --> 00:15:48,830 And they prepared an attack, a surprise attack, on Hernando de Soto's 185 00:15:48,830 --> 00:15:49,830 expedition. 186 00:15:52,170 --> 00:15:57,390 The Choctaws did some damage. They injured a lot of Spaniards. Of course, 187 00:15:57,390 --> 00:15:58,770 were a lot of Choctaws that died. 188 00:16:00,190 --> 00:16:04,910 Afterwards, the Chickasaws took care of Hernando de Soto. 189 00:16:08,170 --> 00:16:12,690 War stories often hide the more ruthless but less documented threats to our 190 00:16:12,690 --> 00:16:13,690 survival. 191 00:16:15,670 --> 00:16:21,230 The seduction of trade and the intermarriage of Indian women and white 192 00:16:21,230 --> 00:16:26,430 turned our world upside down long before settlers stole our land. 193 00:16:28,010 --> 00:16:34,010 The women, especially after about 1760, were 194 00:16:34,010 --> 00:16:37,090 squawks. They were denied. 195 00:16:37,960 --> 00:16:43,440 the position and the power and the autonomy that they held within their own 196 00:16:43,440 --> 00:16:50,100 nations by these incoming whites who simply did not understand 197 00:16:50,100 --> 00:16:53,440 a balance between male and female. 198 00:16:54,300 --> 00:16:59,200 There were many women who struggled to retain their traditional power, even 199 00:16:59,200 --> 00:17:01,060 after they moved into the white world. 200 00:17:01,460 --> 00:17:04,839 But their lives have become a mix of myth and tragedy. 201 00:17:05,930 --> 00:17:10,470 For generations, American schoolchildren have read the romanticized tale of 202 00:17:10,470 --> 00:17:15,650 Pocahontas, daughter of a powerful chief of the Powhatan Confederacy, who 203 00:17:15,650 --> 00:17:19,490 supposedly threw herself in front of the execution of English colonist John 204 00:17:19,490 --> 00:17:23,010 Smith and pleaded with her father to spare his life. 205 00:17:23,490 --> 00:17:28,930 John Smith wrote and rewrote his story many times, but no native account was 206 00:17:28,930 --> 00:17:29,930 ever reported. 207 00:17:30,630 --> 00:17:35,010 Almost no attention is paid to the role of Pocahontas as a diplomat. 208 00:17:35,530 --> 00:17:38,550 who married the Virginia tobacco planter John Rolfe. 209 00:17:39,490 --> 00:17:44,390 They traveled to England with a message of peace and cooperation on behalf of 210 00:17:44,390 --> 00:17:45,390 her father. 211 00:17:45,770 --> 00:17:50,330 She dressed like an English aristocrat and was embraced by the royal courts of 212 00:17:50,330 --> 00:17:54,810 Europe, but she was not seduced by the wealth or glamour. She had every 213 00:17:54,810 --> 00:17:59,330 intention of returning to the rolling hills of the Potomac with her husband 214 00:17:59,330 --> 00:18:00,330 infant son. 215 00:18:00,490 --> 00:18:05,110 But Pocahontas died of smallpox on the day she set sail for home. 216 00:18:05,610 --> 00:18:07,190 She was only 22. 217 00:18:11,290 --> 00:18:16,810 No one life is crisscrossed with the conflicting experiences of being an 218 00:18:16,810 --> 00:18:23,450 woman in the colonial era like that of the Cherokee legend, Nanyayha, who we 219 00:18:23,450 --> 00:18:24,670 know as Nancy Ward. 220 00:18:25,370 --> 00:18:32,210 In the Cherokees' battle against the Creeks at Talawa in 1755, her husband 221 00:18:32,210 --> 00:18:37,690 slain during that battle, and Ward picked up his gun and fought in his 222 00:18:37,690 --> 00:18:40,450 apparently spurred the Cherokees on to victory. 223 00:18:40,690 --> 00:18:45,530 Years later, she married a white settler, and when the Revolutionary War 224 00:18:45,530 --> 00:18:50,530 out, she played an important role as peacekeeper between the colonists, the 225 00:18:50,530 --> 00:18:51,910 British, and the Cherokee. 226 00:18:54,440 --> 00:19:00,860 During a bitter cold winter, 1780 -1781, Ward fed and 227 00:19:00,860 --> 00:19:06,800 clothed General Washington's troops who had gotten lost over yonder in the 228 00:19:06,800 --> 00:19:13,280 forest. She had provided an awful lot of corn and other food to the settlers 229 00:19:13,280 --> 00:19:19,460 over the years and was repaid for her kindnesses by having her 230 00:19:19,460 --> 00:19:22,780 home and her town burned to the ground. 231 00:19:24,910 --> 00:19:30,050 Like many Cherokee of her generation, Nancy Ward was trapped between two 232 00:19:30,050 --> 00:19:33,110 cultures and often chose European ways. 233 00:19:33,790 --> 00:19:38,790 She built a large corn and cotton plantation and was among the first of 234 00:19:38,790 --> 00:19:41,830 successful Cherokee planters to own African slaves. 235 00:19:43,430 --> 00:19:48,850 Ever since our contact with DeSoto, I think there's been a battle, a struggle 236 00:19:48,850 --> 00:19:53,670 within the Cherokee Nation, the Cherokee people, over whether we should totally 237 00:19:53,670 --> 00:19:57,980 assimilate. and whether that was the best route for our people, or whether we 238 00:19:57,980 --> 00:20:02,160 should partially assimilate, or whether we should retain our culture and sense 239 00:20:02,160 --> 00:20:03,160 of who we are. 240 00:20:08,000 --> 00:20:13,060 Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, a handful of families in each tribe 241 00:20:13,060 --> 00:20:15,460 intermarried and traded comfortably with Europeans. 242 00:20:16,400 --> 00:20:20,840 They abandoned tradition and were more comfortable speaking English than their 243 00:20:20,840 --> 00:20:21,840 native languages. 244 00:20:22,300 --> 00:20:26,800 They owned plantations and slaves and sent their children to school in Paris, 245 00:20:27,060 --> 00:20:28,560 London, or Charleston. 246 00:20:29,020 --> 00:20:34,340 In the upside -down history of the time, they emerged as leaders of our tribes 247 00:20:34,340 --> 00:20:38,660 because they could speak English and were comfortable in the halls of 248 00:20:39,420 --> 00:20:45,870 But in 1812, with tribal lands overrun by settlers, A movement for the defense 249 00:20:45,870 --> 00:20:50,670 of land and culture caught fire among the thousands of Muskogee Creek who had 250 00:20:50,670 --> 00:20:52,670 continued to live traditional lives. 251 00:20:53,550 --> 00:20:58,750 Led by Red Eagle and Manawi, the movement came to be known as the Red 252 00:20:58,750 --> 00:21:01,530 because of the crimson paint on their war clubs. 253 00:21:02,070 --> 00:21:06,590 The Red Sticks banned the use of guns for hunting because the commercial 254 00:21:06,590 --> 00:21:09,050 in Deer Heights had destroyed the native hunting grounds. 255 00:21:09,870 --> 00:21:14,170 They also opposed slavery and sheltered runaway slaves from plantations 256 00:21:14,170 --> 00:21:15,170 throughout the South. 257 00:21:16,170 --> 00:21:18,450 They waged war on frontier settlements. 258 00:21:18,850 --> 00:21:24,170 In the spring of 1814, General Andrew Jackson led an army against them at 259 00:21:24,170 --> 00:21:26,710 Horseshoe Bend on the Tallapoosa River in Alabama. 260 00:21:31,810 --> 00:21:36,510 Using clubs and bows and arrows against Jackson's well -armed troops, they were 261 00:21:36,510 --> 00:21:37,510 wiped out. 262 00:21:38,480 --> 00:21:43,840 To count the dead Creeks, Jackson soldiers cut off their noses, collecting 263 00:21:43,840 --> 00:21:45,760 pile of 557. 264 00:21:46,840 --> 00:21:49,240 The Red Stick movement had been crushed. 265 00:21:49,580 --> 00:21:54,800 The Muscogee Creek Nation was forced to open the last of its ancestral lands to 266 00:21:54,800 --> 00:21:55,800 white settlement. 267 00:21:57,100 --> 00:22:02,140 Over and over during the decades after the Revolution, our people moved west, 268 00:22:02,320 --> 00:22:05,400 away from their oldest towns in search of peace. 269 00:22:06,040 --> 00:22:11,060 Even though the leaders of the new United States repeatedly assured us that 270 00:22:11,060 --> 00:22:15,480 homes were safe and that we had a sovereign claim to the land of our 271 00:22:16,780 --> 00:22:21,400 Both Congress and the Supreme Court described the tribes of the Southeast as 272 00:22:21,400 --> 00:22:24,500 distinct, independent political communities. 273 00:22:24,980 --> 00:22:30,200 It may be regarded as certain that not a foot of land will ever be taken from 274 00:22:30,200 --> 00:22:32,260 the Indians without their consent. 275 00:22:33,290 --> 00:22:37,110 The sacredness of their rights is felt by all thinking persons in America. 276 00:22:37,870 --> 00:22:38,970 Thomas Jefferson. 277 00:22:40,050 --> 00:22:46,030 The Indians, wrote Secretary of War Henry Knox, being the prior occupants, 278 00:22:46,030 --> 00:22:47,350 possess the right of soil. 279 00:22:47,870 --> 00:22:52,830 It cannot be taken from them unless by their free consent or by right of 280 00:22:52,830 --> 00:22:54,970 conquest in case of a just war. 281 00:23:02,540 --> 00:23:07,440 But along the western edges of American settlement, a very different reality was 282 00:23:07,440 --> 00:23:08,440 in the making. 283 00:23:12,220 --> 00:23:18,200 As the Revolutionary War progressed, the Continental Army had no money. They 284 00:23:18,200 --> 00:23:20,380 were absolutely flat broke. 285 00:23:20,600 --> 00:23:22,720 They had no way to pay their soldiers. 286 00:23:23,020 --> 00:23:28,840 So they promised recruits in the Continental Army portions of land. 287 00:23:32,240 --> 00:23:36,760 Neither the new settlers nor the newly formed states cared for the lofty words 288 00:23:36,760 --> 00:23:37,760 of the founding fathers. 289 00:23:38,320 --> 00:23:42,860 They became a battering ram in our forests and inflamed the divisions 290 00:23:42,860 --> 00:23:43,860 our people. 291 00:23:44,580 --> 00:23:51,500 Into this world of turmoil, a great leader emerged, a fiery red star, 292 00:23:51,640 --> 00:23:57,040 a Shawnee warrior born in the Ohio Valley, but comfortable in the 293 00:23:57,040 --> 00:23:58,040 the Great Lakes. 294 00:23:58,140 --> 00:24:02,480 Cherokee councils in Tennessee, or the Muskogee camps of the Red Sticks. 295 00:24:03,740 --> 00:24:08,580 Tecumseh and his brother, known as the Prophet, traveled throughout our nations 296 00:24:08,580 --> 00:24:13,340 at the beginning of the 19th century, arguing that the great forests and river 297 00:24:13,340 --> 00:24:18,660 valleys were the common estate of all Native Americans, not any single tribe. 298 00:24:20,380 --> 00:24:25,220 The way, the only way to stop this evil is for all red men to unite. 299 00:24:25,660 --> 00:24:30,640 in claiming a common and equal right in the land, as it was at first and should 300 00:24:30,640 --> 00:24:31,379 be now. 301 00:24:31,380 --> 00:24:34,820 For it was never divided, but belongs to all. 302 00:24:35,340 --> 00:24:41,280 No tribe has the right to sell, even to each other, much less to strangers, who 303 00:24:41,280 --> 00:24:43,020 demand all and will take no less. 304 00:24:43,720 --> 00:24:44,800 Sell a country. 305 00:24:45,100 --> 00:24:50,080 Why not sell the air, the clouds, the great sea, as well as the earth? 306 00:24:51,460 --> 00:24:52,460 Tecumseh. 307 00:24:55,950 --> 00:25:01,570 The last hope of a unified Indian nation collapsed when Tecumseh died in battle, 308 00:25:01,750 --> 00:25:04,970 fighting the United States in the War of 1812. 309 00:25:06,550 --> 00:25:12,050 Each of our tribes was left to face an expanding America alone. 310 00:25:13,750 --> 00:25:20,210 One of my very favorite stories in Cherokee history is the time in 1811, 311 00:25:20,390 --> 00:25:21,950 1812, around that time. 312 00:25:22,670 --> 00:25:28,770 when a prophet supposedly came to the Cherokees and told the Cherokees that if 313 00:25:28,770 --> 00:25:35,530 they didn't give up white ways and go back to the old Cherokee ways, that 314 00:25:35,530 --> 00:25:37,850 they would die. 315 00:25:38,810 --> 00:25:42,970 And of course, no one died. 316 00:25:43,450 --> 00:25:48,210 And so that the people began to think that the prophet... 317 00:25:48,680 --> 00:25:53,920 uh was you know not truthful he lost lost favor with the tribe what they 318 00:25:53,920 --> 00:25:57,660 realize and i think what we realized from this distance is he was talking 319 00:25:57,660 --> 00:26:00,600 death of the spirit rather than physical death 320 00:26:28,720 --> 00:26:31,300 The Native Americans will continue on TBL. 321 00:26:34,380 --> 00:26:37,180 Now back to the Native Americans on TBL. 322 00:26:42,140 --> 00:26:48,460 This house was probably a very, very bad place to be on the morning of May 323 00:26:48,460 --> 00:26:50,000 24th of 1838. 324 00:26:50,320 --> 00:26:56,180 On that day, there was a knock at the front door, and as... The people who 325 00:26:56,180 --> 00:27:01,320 in this home opened the door. They saw U .S. soldiers standing outside the front 326 00:27:01,320 --> 00:27:07,240 door with guns pointed at them, saying, out, you, walk to a stockade, which had 327 00:27:07,240 --> 00:27:08,680 been built just over the hill here. 328 00:27:09,380 --> 00:27:13,540 And so with no time to take any of their possessions, any of their blankets, any 329 00:27:13,540 --> 00:27:18,300 food, any of their personal mementos with them, they were marched out with 330 00:27:18,300 --> 00:27:22,900 whatever they happened to have on at that moment and walked several miles to 331 00:27:22,900 --> 00:27:26,300 stockade. Something you would put pigs in, cows in. 332 00:27:27,000 --> 00:27:31,840 Jess Bushyhead's great -great -great -grandfather was one of those routed 333 00:27:31,840 --> 00:27:33,720 day. The U .S. 334 00:27:34,440 --> 00:27:39,900 Army commander gave specific orders that if the troops were to arrive at a home 335 00:27:39,900 --> 00:27:44,720 like this and the children were home but the parents were out in the fields, to 336 00:27:44,720 --> 00:27:48,220 take the children, kidnap the children, and that way they would force the 337 00:27:48,220 --> 00:27:49,220 parents to come in. 338 00:27:49,610 --> 00:27:54,790 The idea of forcing us from our homeland and removing us west of the Mississippi 339 00:27:54,790 --> 00:27:57,210 River was not a new idea. 340 00:27:57,890 --> 00:28:00,610 It had been simmering since before the Revolution. 341 00:28:01,410 --> 00:28:03,150 But it was our land. 342 00:28:03,830 --> 00:28:07,410 And we were, they told us, the civilized tribe. 343 00:28:17,900 --> 00:28:23,200 The principal chief of the Cherokee Nation in the early 1830s and later was 344 00:28:23,200 --> 00:28:24,340 man named John Roth. 345 00:28:24,580 --> 00:28:27,460 He was 1 -8 Cherokee. He had blue eyes. 346 00:28:27,700 --> 00:28:32,700 He was obviously very fluent in English. He owned a large plantation just south 347 00:28:32,700 --> 00:28:38,000 of Chattanooga. John Roth very firmly believed in the American judicial 348 00:28:38,100 --> 00:28:44,500 He looked at the founding documents and believed that the U .S. actually would, 349 00:28:44,580 --> 00:28:45,580 you know... 350 00:28:45,800 --> 00:28:48,060 pay attention to ideas about justice. 351 00:28:49,640 --> 00:28:56,020 But Georgia also strongly opposed having the Cherokee Nation a sovereign 352 00:28:56,020 --> 00:29:00,300 nation within the boundaries of what became the state of Georgia, which is 353 00:29:00,300 --> 00:29:05,500 interesting because these states grew up around the Cherokee Nation and the 354 00:29:05,500 --> 00:29:09,860 other southeastern tribes, and then they bitterly resented having a separate 355 00:29:09,860 --> 00:29:11,820 sovereign entity within the state. 356 00:29:13,680 --> 00:29:18,180 The southern states hated the fact that Indian nations had become a refuge for 357 00:29:18,180 --> 00:29:23,140 runaway slaves, but at the root of their hostility was a lust for land. 358 00:29:24,960 --> 00:29:29,860 The place where we're standing is the hilltop overlooking Rattlesnake Springs. 359 00:29:30,300 --> 00:29:34,600 This is where, in the summer of 1838, the United States Army and the Georgia 360 00:29:34,600 --> 00:29:37,200 troops involved in the Roundup collected... 361 00:29:37,740 --> 00:29:42,200 what at one point amounted to almost 13 ,000 Cherokee. They were living out here 362 00:29:42,200 --> 00:29:46,040 without any shelter, without any regular supplies of food. 363 00:29:46,280 --> 00:29:49,760 There were horses, cows, dogs, chickens. It was just a big mess. 364 00:29:50,540 --> 00:29:52,180 It was a concentration camp. 365 00:29:53,000 --> 00:29:59,160 In and out of court for five years, John Roth and our lawyers were convinced 366 00:29:59,160 --> 00:30:03,700 that our sovereignty would be upheld and a way would be found to stall the 367 00:30:03,700 --> 00:30:04,700 removal policy. 368 00:30:06,030 --> 00:30:11,190 Part of our tribal people, I think, sort of felt very strongly that we should 369 00:30:11,190 --> 00:30:16,430 stay in the southeast and fight to the death for the right to remain in the 370 00:30:16,430 --> 00:30:21,010 southeast. And part of our people felt that we should participate in removal 371 00:30:21,010 --> 00:30:24,090 accept a removal policy and move on to Indian Territory. 372 00:30:25,550 --> 00:30:29,690 The Cherokee leadership in Washington was sending letters and messages back, 373 00:30:29,910 --> 00:30:33,990 don't worry, we're going to be able to stop this, we have friends in Congress, 374 00:30:34,250 --> 00:30:37,370 we have friends in the U .S. Senate, we're going to be able to overturn this, 375 00:30:37,450 --> 00:30:41,030 we'll be able to stop it and prevent the soldiers from doing it. 376 00:30:41,270 --> 00:30:47,870 And then as dawn broke on May 24th of 1838, they found out the reality was 377 00:30:48,010 --> 00:30:49,010 very, very different. 378 00:30:50,760 --> 00:30:55,460 The Supreme Court finally ruled that we could not be forced from our lands. 379 00:30:55,900 --> 00:31:00,320 But President Andrew Jackson simply turned his back on the court. 380 00:31:00,540 --> 00:31:05,340 He had built his reputation as an Indian fighter and an advocate of forced 381 00:31:05,340 --> 00:31:08,080 removal. He did not hesitate. 382 00:31:10,360 --> 00:31:17,100 This is Blythe's Ferry in 1838. This is the way the Cherokees got across 383 00:31:17,100 --> 00:31:18,640 the Tennessee River. 384 00:31:19,230 --> 00:31:23,010 My great -great -great -grandfather was one of the conductors. There were 13 385 00:31:23,010 --> 00:31:27,410 conductors, each one responsible for keeping alive 1 ,000 Cherokees. 386 00:31:28,010 --> 00:31:33,050 In 1838, it was a wooden boat, steam -powered most probably. It was a little 387 00:31:33,050 --> 00:31:38,070 smaller then, and they were able to cross in small groups, family by family, 388 00:31:38,070 --> 00:31:43,010 person by person, wagon by wagon, horse by horse, sometimes almost sinking the 389 00:31:43,010 --> 00:31:46,130 ferry with the weight of the oxes and the horses. 390 00:31:48,590 --> 00:31:52,070 Their spirits were also sinking, too, because as they're crossing the river, 391 00:31:52,150 --> 00:31:58,550 they're realizing that that is the Cherokee Nation, and they're leaving it 392 00:31:58,550 --> 00:31:59,550 the last time. 393 00:31:59,830 --> 00:32:03,950 They'll never see the homeland that they were born in again. They'll never see 394 00:32:03,950 --> 00:32:05,570 the land where their fathers were buried. 395 00:32:06,070 --> 00:32:12,610 And all they have to look forward ahead of them is an 800 -mile trek over 396 00:32:12,610 --> 00:32:15,970 land to the Indian Territory. 397 00:32:16,440 --> 00:32:22,720 this trip became known as the Trail of Tears. And so this ferry is the actual 398 00:32:22,720 --> 00:32:24,820 beginning of the Trail of Tears. 399 00:32:36,910 --> 00:32:41,770 By the time the last contingent of Cherokees arrived in Indian Territory in 400 00:32:41,770 --> 00:32:48,330 1839, April of 1839, only one -fourth of our entire tribe had died, either while 401 00:32:48,330 --> 00:32:51,710 being held on the stockades or during the removal itself. 402 00:32:52,170 --> 00:32:56,170 And the net effect is that we ended up in Indian Territory, what is now 403 00:32:56,170 --> 00:33:01,790 Oklahoma, with many people dead, with the tribes bitterly divided politically 404 00:33:01,790 --> 00:33:03,330 over the issue of removal. 405 00:33:04,170 --> 00:33:10,330 of all of our economic system, our social system, our cultural system, 406 00:33:10,490 --> 00:33:12,350 everything we'd ever known had been left behind. 407 00:33:12,790 --> 00:33:15,190 And so our people were devastated. 408 00:33:23,690 --> 00:33:29,170 What has always amazed me, however, is how our people dealt with that, rather 409 00:33:29,170 --> 00:33:32,490 than sitting around and wringing our hands over our situation. 410 00:33:33,930 --> 00:33:39,790 By the mid -1840s, we began to rebuild again and rebuild our families, rebuild 411 00:33:39,790 --> 00:33:44,470 our community, and rebuild a tribe and rebuild a nation here in Indian 412 00:33:44,470 --> 00:33:45,470 Territory. 413 00:33:59,950 --> 00:34:02,990 The Native Americans will continue on TBL. 414 00:34:05,770 --> 00:34:08,370 Now back to the Native Americans on TBS. 415 00:34:47,270 --> 00:34:50,070 Thank you. 416 00:35:04,910 --> 00:35:06,930 We built the first towns in Oklahoma. 417 00:35:09,190 --> 00:35:11,690 We revived our schools and newspapers. 418 00:35:19,090 --> 00:35:22,030 We built new farms and began to thrive. 419 00:35:24,370 --> 00:35:29,270 These were not our ancestral lands, but Andrew Jackson had promised. 420 00:35:29,720 --> 00:35:34,660 that finally this land would be forever secured and guaranteed to us. 421 00:35:35,340 --> 00:35:40,260 No political communities can be formed in that extensive region except those 422 00:35:40,260 --> 00:35:42,640 which are established by the Indians themselves. 423 00:35:43,220 --> 00:35:48,140 A barrier has thus been raised for their protection against the encroachment of 424 00:35:48,140 --> 00:35:49,140 our citizens. 425 00:35:49,580 --> 00:35:50,760 Andrew Jackson. 426 00:35:53,620 --> 00:35:58,700 People are shocked that in the 1840s that most of these tribes were running 427 00:35:58,700 --> 00:36:03,140 own school systems, not only for men, but school systems for the education of 428 00:36:03,140 --> 00:36:04,140 women. 429 00:36:04,160 --> 00:36:08,440 And we were printing our own newspapers in Cherokee and in English. 430 00:36:09,220 --> 00:36:14,480 And in the 1840s, there were still people in this country debating the 431 00:36:14,480 --> 00:36:16,620 whether we had souls or whether we were human. 432 00:36:28,750 --> 00:36:31,890 We should have known that there was no security on the prairie. 433 00:36:32,590 --> 00:36:34,930 Eventually, the settlers caught up with us. 434 00:36:35,190 --> 00:36:41,450 In 1887, just 50 years after the Trail of Tears, the most well -meaning 435 00:36:41,450 --> 00:36:47,850 humanitarians and the most crass land speculators created an unholy alliance 436 00:36:47,850 --> 00:36:52,810 steal our new nations and destroy, once and for all, our tribal identities. 437 00:36:53,570 --> 00:36:56,710 It came to be known as the Allotment Act. 438 00:36:59,920 --> 00:37:01,840 The idea was painfully simple. 439 00:37:02,860 --> 00:37:09,140 Subdivide our tribal lands into small parcels of 40 to 160 acres and assign 440 00:37:09,140 --> 00:37:10,300 parcel to each family. 441 00:37:10,720 --> 00:37:16,640 Put the rest of the lands, tens of millions of acres which we held in 442 00:37:16,640 --> 00:37:19,520 the market and open them up for white settlement. 443 00:37:20,020 --> 00:37:22,300 The Oklahoma land rush was on. 444 00:37:23,880 --> 00:37:30,350 In one brief, blinding flash, tribes throughout the United States lost their 445 00:37:30,350 --> 00:37:31,350 land. 446 00:37:33,670 --> 00:37:38,870 The Indian must be imbued with the exalting egotism of American 447 00:37:38,870 --> 00:37:44,090 that he will say I instead of we, and this is mine instead of this is ours. 448 00:37:44,810 --> 00:37:47,450 J .D .C. Atkins, Commissioner of Indian Affairs. 449 00:37:53,110 --> 00:37:56,410 What happened to us at the turn of the century and the loss of land? 450 00:37:57,180 --> 00:38:02,380 when our land was divided out and individual allotments had a profound, 451 00:38:02,580 --> 00:38:09,020 irreversible effect on our people, more profound than the closing of schools or 452 00:38:09,020 --> 00:38:15,060 courthouses or anything. When we stopped viewing land ownership in common and 453 00:38:15,060 --> 00:38:20,200 viewing ourselves in relation to owning the land in common, it profoundly 454 00:38:20,200 --> 00:38:22,900 altered our sense of community. 455 00:38:23,630 --> 00:38:29,150 and our social structure, and so that had a tremendous impact on our people, 456 00:38:29,150 --> 00:38:30,150 we can never go back. 457 00:38:33,270 --> 00:38:38,650 The central component of the traditional order, the ceremonial ground, was not 458 00:38:38,650 --> 00:38:43,590 protected from the allotment process, so that today you have probably at least 459 00:38:43,590 --> 00:38:49,010 30 ceremonial grounds that are out there on private land generally. 460 00:38:53,600 --> 00:38:59,000 Alone and spread out on the land, without citizenship or the protection of 461 00:38:59,000 --> 00:39:02,140 treaties, we had almost no chance of survival. 462 00:39:02,760 --> 00:39:08,820 In fact, the whole idea was to strip away our tribal identities and remold us 463 00:39:08,820 --> 00:39:10,380 into small family farmers. 464 00:39:11,240 --> 00:39:15,980 I remember my grandfather saying one time that the Indians wanted to maintain 465 00:39:15,980 --> 00:39:19,980 the tribal domain, but to his perception, it was all lost anyway. It 466 00:39:19,980 --> 00:39:22,580 have done any good. They were corrupted by a mentality. 467 00:39:23,360 --> 00:39:27,400 that the white people finally, or the federal policies and the white social 468 00:39:27,400 --> 00:39:32,640 pressures and so on, finally created in them that they took away this regard 469 00:39:32,640 --> 00:39:37,680 that the Skokie people had for the group, and they were on the road to 470 00:39:37,680 --> 00:39:38,700 individualists. 471 00:39:39,800 --> 00:39:46,460 It must have been the case, even in our classic late Mississippian periods, 472 00:39:46,620 --> 00:39:51,860 when we were all running around with copper air spools, supposedly, that 473 00:39:51,860 --> 00:39:57,920 was... Probably only about 10%, a core group anyway, that you would call or 474 00:39:57,920 --> 00:40:04,540 to call culture bearers, folks that really had the spirit of that 475 00:40:04,540 --> 00:40:06,220 mindset that I'm talking about. 476 00:40:06,520 --> 00:40:11,200 And the other 90%, I happen to believe, in varying ways, waiting for fast food 477 00:40:11,200 --> 00:40:13,240 industry to hit America. 478 00:40:14,960 --> 00:40:20,880 Today, when our elders die, we lose precious links to our past which can 479 00:40:20,880 --> 00:40:21,880 be regained. 480 00:40:22,320 --> 00:40:26,740 But we have a strong will to survive, and there are flickers of revival. 481 00:40:27,580 --> 00:40:34,300 The landscape has been transformed, but it still lives in the memory of the 482 00:40:34,300 --> 00:40:41,100 people, and it still inhabits our minds and I think our hearts, too. And 483 00:40:41,100 --> 00:40:47,820 it's so important to understand how place resonates 484 00:40:47,820 --> 00:40:50,920 in Native American cultures. 485 00:40:53,900 --> 00:40:58,500 This is my grandfather's allotted land, and there's a lot of history here. I can 486 00:40:58,500 --> 00:41:04,020 go sit on the porch and look across the road there and see flowers that bloomed 487 00:41:04,020 --> 00:41:05,220 in my grandfather's yard. 488 00:41:05,620 --> 00:41:11,340 And so history is not something distant from me. It's a part of who I am and a 489 00:41:11,340 --> 00:41:16,740 part of my everyday life. Many of the great events in Cherokee history happen 490 00:41:16,740 --> 00:41:17,740 not far from here. 491 00:41:18,270 --> 00:41:23,810 And I can walk to the spring any day when I'm a little bit troubled by some 492 00:41:23,810 --> 00:41:29,330 major event or problem. I can walk to the spring where my grandfather walked 493 00:41:29,330 --> 00:41:33,490 to make turkey medicine or where I walked to when I was a child to gather 494 00:41:33,490 --> 00:41:35,250 for household use. 495 00:41:35,470 --> 00:41:40,570 And so there's a lot of history about this place. I'm very tied to this land 496 00:41:40,570 --> 00:41:43,770 to this place. It's very much who I am. 497 00:41:44,810 --> 00:41:50,230 All the songs and dances in Oklahoma that had been put to sleep in my general 498 00:41:50,230 --> 00:41:54,330 area, called put to sleep, for 30 or 35 years started coming back. 499 00:41:55,030 --> 00:42:00,270 The Choctaw songs and Chickasaw songs and so forth, for a long time they had 500 00:42:00,270 --> 00:42:04,950 gone away or gone underground because of religious persecution. 501 00:42:06,170 --> 00:42:12,230 So we started hearing these songs again and seeing these dances again as they 502 00:42:12,230 --> 00:42:13,270 started coming out. 503 00:42:23,920 --> 00:42:29,160 I kept an ear out for these things and got to a point to where now people rely 504 00:42:29,160 --> 00:42:32,280 on me to an extent to know those songs and know those dances. 505 00:42:53,180 --> 00:42:59,040 What they call, I guess in English, like a chanter to an extent that I'm able to 506 00:42:59,040 --> 00:43:01,060 help carry these things on. 507 00:43:03,820 --> 00:43:07,460 A lot of our Southeastern dances, too, you will notice. 508 00:43:07,820 --> 00:43:12,020 There's a locking of arms and elbows, a holding of hands. 509 00:43:12,320 --> 00:43:14,640 Our people dance as a group together. 510 00:43:15,780 --> 00:43:22,760 That community of spirit, that communalism, that desire to be part of a 511 00:43:22,760 --> 00:43:28,320 whole, taking your identity and cues from your traditional 512 00:43:28,320 --> 00:43:30,040 community. 513 00:43:31,440 --> 00:43:36,480 that's very much in evidence in our songs and dances, and even in our 514 00:43:39,860 --> 00:43:44,920 There's been a recent interest in revival of our stickball games. 515 00:43:46,400 --> 00:43:52,340 The settlers, when they first came, thought that the game was too brutal, 516 00:43:52,340 --> 00:43:57,820 course people died in those games, so the missionaries especially tried to... 517 00:43:58,830 --> 00:44:02,450 Get the Choctaws from playing the game. This is an Indian form of baseball. 518 00:44:02,710 --> 00:44:03,710 This thing right here. 519 00:44:04,490 --> 00:44:06,410 This is our form of baseball. 520 00:44:06,630 --> 00:44:11,150 You know, they say baseball is an American sport. This is our form. 521 00:44:11,150 --> 00:44:13,830 lot of other tribes still playing this game. 522 00:44:14,030 --> 00:44:16,790 In the southeast, all these tribes have this game. 523 00:44:17,610 --> 00:44:22,410 And Cherokee people and Chickasaw people and Creek and Seminole and Choctaw, we 524 00:44:22,410 --> 00:44:23,850 all have this in common. 525 00:44:24,150 --> 00:44:27,810 Once you play it one time, you get hooked on it. I mean, I love this game. 526 00:44:46,460 --> 00:44:48,480 Thank you. 527 00:45:23,530 --> 00:45:29,030 I am absolutely convinced that we've survived because we've managed to hang 528 00:45:29,030 --> 00:45:32,970 to language and we've managed to hang on to ceremonies that we've had since the 529 00:45:32,970 --> 00:45:33,970 beginning of time. 530 00:45:43,890 --> 00:45:50,010 What we need to do to affirm ourselves as Native people is to take some of the 531 00:45:50,010 --> 00:45:52,370 values, the values of interdependence. 532 00:45:52,810 --> 00:45:57,890 caring for other people, even though it's hard to do that in a society that 533 00:45:57,890 --> 00:45:58,970 just care about yourself. 534 00:45:59,270 --> 00:46:04,030 Take care of yourself, build your own house, and don't worry about anybody 535 00:46:04,170 --> 00:46:08,890 Take the old value of interdependence or the values of making sure that 536 00:46:08,890 --> 00:46:14,430 spirituality and the truest sense of the word is incorporated into every aspect 537 00:46:14,430 --> 00:46:15,430 of your life. 538 00:46:17,190 --> 00:46:21,650 And I think it's that spirit that the only thing we really have to rely on has 539 00:46:21,650 --> 00:46:27,610 been handed to us like a live and precious coal that each generation has 540 00:46:27,610 --> 00:46:31,270 that decision. Do they want to blow on that coal and keep it alive, or do they 541 00:46:31,270 --> 00:46:32,270 want to throw it away? 542 00:46:32,330 --> 00:46:37,330 To me, and it's not just the Southeast, but all Indian culture, but maybe using 543 00:46:37,330 --> 00:46:41,650 that metaphor for the Southeast as a fire, our cultures, our languages, our 544 00:46:41,650 --> 00:46:45,610 histories. It's like a big ceremonial fire that was kicked and stomped and 545 00:46:45,610 --> 00:46:46,610 scattered. 546 00:46:46,960 --> 00:46:50,960 And then this 200, 300 year night followed that. But out in the darkness, 547 00:46:50,960 --> 00:46:52,080 see these coals glowing. 548 00:46:52,780 --> 00:46:56,680 And I think our role in our generation, whether it's in tribal government or 549 00:46:56,680 --> 00:47:02,180 wherever we find ourselves, and Chickasaw people, Cherokee people, Creek 550 00:47:02,380 --> 00:47:08,580 Seminole people, Choctaw people, is to be coal gatherers, to gather those coals 551 00:47:08,580 --> 00:47:11,960 back up together and assemble them again at one point. 552 00:47:12,620 --> 00:47:18,140 And breathe on them again that we might be able to spark a flame around which we 553 00:47:18,140 --> 00:47:19,140 might warm ourselves. 554 00:47:52,620 --> 00:47:55,320 The Native Americans will continue on TBS. 50693

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