Indian Country Diaries; A Seat at the Drum

or eighty eight for o o d girl growing up on an indian reservation navajo reservation i use that word only indians in the world because i really never really gone and the resignation ellie state movement i sing songs to myself i can do and i used to i watch movies langfitt learned the road raced in place at us in some of those signs like i'm far far away from home there's a sign in there and i say did not someday i'm relieved this reservation i'm relieved this nest and go out there and then fly away there's got to be something out there i see cars going by and where they go you know and how is

one to just jump on one of those images we will retain the journey of terror plots as the epic adventure of native american in our own version of the office it's the story of thousands of american indian families who've made their way from reservations to cities in the last half of the twentieth century is also my story my name is marc anthony roll my mother kareem was a full blown ojibwe from the bad river band in northern wisconsin he caught a bus to milwaukee or two looking for a job that my father donald powell was the son of french and irish farmers' his own life was a struggle and he turned alcohol my quiet mother was always tired but rarely

complaint with nine brothers and a sister i grew up a half breed on the south side of more walking in the nineteen sixties playing football in the shadow of collision we were the first generation of true urban indians in our working class neighborhood we were the poorest family on the block the bad river reservation was not a part of our lives i never learned to speak my mother's language or participate in ojibwe ceremonies eritrea into the dream world of television and found a new paradise i imagined living in los angeles a place for my family could escape from the poverty and sorrow of our daily lives maybe one day to be thirty years after my childhood dreams faded i

finally made my way to a sad i came as a journalist in search of the largest native american community in the nation over two hundred thousand according to the census bureau i thought i knew what i would fly but it turned into a bigger adventure than i could ever imagine a sadness is like walking or rapid city or phoenix which have strong ties to nearby reservations there's no fan of the indian community in the us and even the old indian bars on skid row on the nineteen seventies mostly of people prefer the shad it's easier to shrug your shoulders and someone speaks to inspect one of the you know more questions there are glitzy casinos in the suburbs known buys more than california needs and i can find the shadows the ancient cancellations along freeways like ninety percent of the indians in los angeles are immigrants from the center of the nation they are invisible

where are they have the last hundred years the gateway to indian life in southern california has been the sprawling campus of sherman indian school in riverside one of the last recordings created hero of indian affairs at the end of their years and using those voters know a lot of people call and the foreclosure animal and in this census offices listeners you're

going to see it again by generations of indians from tribal reservations as far away as new mexico montana and north dakota have passed through sherman on their journey into white college boys cut their brains and joined the authorities see girls learned to sew and cook students were forbidden to speak their tribal languages their religion's were banned and they were forced to pray to a christian god children came to sherman as novel or the court or creek but they graduated as americans many resisted some dropped out and return to their reservations but many state against the odds and passed through the gateway to new lives in the city and number one human cancers when

i tell him i say i'm going to college and he said to me you'll never met him so why a cajun that's not enough i say yes i know i can't do it you know i say why don't you go to work at our school be a nurse be something else you know just go to two year training and then you'll be back on the recipe ever want to do that so i decide to go to passive fullerton and that's where i ended up ten students from sherman and by the end of the op for sheer i was the only one laughed at us care as i don't know or something in me they just kept going i said i can do i can prove that i kept looking at that i kept the mud that was what he said to me you'll never make it of course half said we're happy that our show over a decade she's taught navajo language and native american history at sherman like many members of her generation she paid a heavy price for her decision to leave the tribe for the city she is haunted by

the decision not to teach her own children how to speak navajo or participate novel ceremony that is my fault i think there's some gonna make back i'm back in my head when i was doing here when i was fourteen years old we were not taught we were told are not to speak navajo in fact i got a demerit or you know punished for that so sorry my head it seemed to me don't teach your son the language how these days german itself has changed this old relic from an age of repression and assimilation now struggles to find itself as a college prep high school were indians from one hundred private their native identity right right

i don't know ah why there's that native americans in nice now britain's like a way that's aidan iaea lies lies for all the criticism of the boarding schools i'm drawn to the simple grace of indians among indians that's a reality i never had growing up i never sat at the drama i never learned the songs of the ojibwe why did my mother passed them to me here at sherman surprise for the nba feel the young

endeavour that the drum three months this boy this is the largest gathering of indians in southern california each year perhaps the only time we've had two thousand two hundred thousand people claiming the heritage will get together what would become the presence of german high school is everywhere there's henry hill at the drama is novel and his wife lucille matriarch of the policy of popular indian couples as they're sharing

graduates whether we're ready i you know coming around the corners and deliberately war isn't and my head my co existence who wasn't her husband was that the iaea relocation product officer filippo there may be beyond me and when i got there is going to be better than this should be hanging around with all those white nose at know and you need to go somewhere in the air change your lifestyle says nih of the seven cities that you have the tools to go to on today's notice he scrambled aboard a

train and clinton oklahoma with his wife and infant daughter and rolled west to los angeles it was nineteen fifty four train ride and we have a rescue chicken that was cooked up for it by family and and so woman like to cut so yeah i was calm and kfc is today you know them a bit lard the people in the chicken the movie is rooted in you know former heavenly the bill at the height of the relocation program two hundred people we rolled into union station so now the tallest building in town and just about that down one by city hall says that's it right there so that was the tallest building in los angeles will be usable

paula start of the trial the relocation great granddaughter of the southern giant publicity like it will barely escaped the sand creek massacre in eating sixty four in the nineteen sixties all moved to los angeles with their parents' jobs jobs it immediately had a glimmer of adventure whoa shame because it was a new way of life and this was a mecca area i mean is this just was the happening the whole idea of relocation was to mainstream into dominant society and to get and geographically put this all over the place it's designing the amount given away from the tribal homeland that hopefully destroy that troubling their intent was to assimilate this into the mainstream of society and that's how they did that with separating speeches away from each other

although there were allowed an instrument and we were put into any particular community and that still issue today you can't find in los angeles or san diego services essential community like the asians and african americans will have that kind of environment many immigrants fell hard to the city too many drink themselves to death row bars known as india now if they were lucky they find their way to the night shift this one that family the night chased they opened up the garage in the city of staten and asked are distributing food and that's the big fitness and actually evolved to where he is going to spark a problem and so they began to find each other after a basketball game at sherman a picnic at ford parked at the silver saddles saloon in pico rivera indians from different tribes and different traditions and began to

gather at the drouth and we had discovered a place called helix dread appear word understated reason that's where we used to come in and the drive in our cars carr everbach survey was a plastic trash can around we use over grumman would say are forty nine songs dr faust coming after the power of synthetic under house and party before denying lila drumming and singing some neighbors delighted that i used to it and i still remember this day my mom had a green billion flowing in the kitchen and in yemen and saying that they were white males invitations in the florida of the nineteen fifty six made the first follow our creation minister

today are well it's a small world version of this book but there was no vendors or what they say bears that nobody really is the maoists weren't allowed to do that like in the forties or the fifties government says noriega goes to war left a few other colleges have promoted the idea of the tal law culture could be the embryo of a new urban indian tribe english speaking with its own ceremonies dances and social relations but i wonder how many reservation indians with their own the travel routes were dismissed the idea as an example of how far are indian culture has been assimilated and drifted apart from the trial

when scientists i do i have many tribes have lost their old traditions of that lost their own then says the three most lost their language school in order to retain your indian this

you borrow from another tribe to keep that ended this morning the younger generation has picked up on that and you see now you see so navajos dancing the northern tribes trouble weighs you see the southern india's that's in northern trouble weighs the northern tribes that's in the southern trouble is southwestern end and california means all involved in the powwow well you know in the olden days when the news came this time than there was more trouble sense of identity well yeah you could clearly see what tribe people came from he could tell by their moccasins and they're making their outfits oh that's a comanche you look at the market since you wouldn't even have to you know get that close you could just tell nowadays it's kind of hard for the distinguished rich person is because of all the rhinestones the neon colored you know on my bouquet away we have you know

patty's dancing we have senators dancing drugs that never had exactly is that the casino tracks your health we had you know they had their own we have bird songs and other things that we've adapted into privately we've adapted the plane's culture because it it's a spectacular find its eye catching fire it's ok because that dream is calling your spirit but i've never felt comfortable in the area i'm not a dancer and i'm out of step with the values of competition and prize money and the boost that sell water buffalo horns from asia and all the effort to make tribal culture accessible to the white community in our attempt to reach out to have we traded the depth and uniqueness of tribal identity or pan indian stereotypes have policy views all indian identity to a snapshot of plains indian culture from the

nineteenth century i don't fit in at the big urban policies but i think i'm at a pharmacy that the drug among the small lonely down the relocation pioneers on elections as indians have deep spiritual traditions should come as no surprise that even as christian missionaries were participating in the cultural genocide trials individual indian families were drawn to the faith in christianity has been a very effective tool of assimilation in the city's zeal in this church or i wear our listener most colleges and journalist and

offended they've of relocation bell gardens it was called the arrests it was one of the few communities scattered across southern california where indians and indian bars are concentrated when the government failed to help indian suggest a citywide evangelical churches like the indian revival center reached out the cigars and arthur stone came who came here in the night tim fifties and he basically by calling was a missionary evangelist a name was become literate in the community and he would go they go into the bars there was a little frame building they started having church in here and in the nineteen sixties which was kind of the height of the growth of this church they would have over three other maybe for people at times but i've got good news for you today that is jesus has gained an interest in you know nato's you with a light that never fails can use and praise the lord for them amen amen jesus was immense immense growing up i had a stronger

connection to jesus than i did to my ojibwe culture i grew up catholic after my mother passed on i became a born again christian just before i turned thirty i was returning home from a visit to new york city i sat next to an old german woman on a greyhound bus it was a first trip to the us and she told me she had come here to meet real indians i was her first one when she asked if she could touch my face i remember feeling that she had somehow exposed me i looked indian but i didn't feel it from that moment on i knew i was not going to return to the church i realized i was starting a new journey in search of my ojibwe identity ironically that search has brought me right back into the church he's be

like thousands of relocation prime years duty to two found her way to the indian revival center i came in january nineteen from oklahoma we came in the relocation plan my mom and david ten children and we came on the train i couldn't believe how one hilarious daily fantasy and i just loved it putin met her husband marvin at a basketball game at sherman high school but she could never find a balance with his alcoholism in despair she turned to the church the missionaries why he's trying to play the piano in real beautiful and then they say singing in terms in the senate i came to loathing in the

night his wife is too it was like that you get a saturday morning and i've been invited to the men's prayer breakfast one after another these men share the stories that brought them to jesus and it was my minor like greuel president voices or detroit and i'm thinking that i needed to hear that i think about it like to get through the smog in my brain to another voice say everybody i'm going crazy for him to run away so there's that and i know what a church can induce needed advances in or so which is that

he says the only people for twenty years as parade for you or you have to have a hateful thing out hallelujah so help me on this one i at at uc at the barricades you tried to round table pastor preston barry and ken taylor candace green is a former basketball coach and principal of sherman is active and preclusion politics he has been a leader of the church for over thirty years and he is the glue that holds his group together

men cry at this time we want to go and have a time of laughter so we're going to go into that portion of our program are our activity are we have only humor dates so we asked a man to bring a job the war us open about their life they can share with us that we can laugh with them okay normally i will start it off and then the new guys gay guys in that minute they go along i think it's sweet sixteen year think you're like velcro and they saw these three charity guys hitchhiking and they're talkin he chose his charity has arrived in seattle skimmer idea of their charity so they stopped him and they asked charity eyes he has water it seattle one rider so right you're tommy's will jump in a batter so they jumped in the back of a pickup and prepares to golf drive along the entire lake and they went around the corner

to fast in a pickup turned over lebanon the like with a great guys got out went to the top and swam to the shore and i looked around and they didn't say that a charity guys the way way in prison are again worried so that we better go back in and dr fine but that time three heads up the top two on the shore of the great guy says hey what's happening as were white with a dozen happening as richard diaz says we couldn't get the tailgate down the members of the port make great light of the tribal courts but these jokes are really tribal at all part of what's been lost in the city these could just as easily be a polish jokes or iris i wonder how much of a drift away from tribal identity

has to do with living in the city and how much has to do with being christian or on fire all union but is co owner of my life for my life so all things first i'm an american a person who is enamored by in indian culture most things about indian culture and in our careful like indian summer and inside the round in his eyes don't like some of the cultural things that that and i don't have any predisposition toward lifting of ancient indian

culture and incentives inside the use of fire of power and decide is this spirit has impressed him so i see that as i personally see that is destructive in our message here that you're to my message that poses is a jesus that he was the way the truth and the life moment isn't the father but by him and find that indian city except i don't believe that in coming the worse love the indian but hate the culture you know it's not so different from the promise of a century ago that the boarding schools would kill the indian and save the man he'll always made the distinction between traditionalists and christianity will always you'll always have and in the la area you'll find probably more traditionalist than those that believe in christ you can go to for park which is really hear when they have the palace and you'll see that they're parking lot is full and the street so

there's no place to park the pastor said the christian churches like half will get that money sunday morning part of the problem for the church's feast a romantic interest of young people in the revival of traditional tribal culture but the bigger problem is the retirement of elderly relocation pioneers back to the reservation even though they have embraced christianity the last name of a last resort for generations it's a warm sunday afternoon at four park just a few miles from the church choir ago when it started ken taylor is presiding over the

second quarter the picnic of the muskogee creek community in southern california fifty sixty people lots of food lots of kids and lots of questions about just what it means to be a member of an indian nation whose ancient homeland is in alabama and use modern capital is in oklahoma they'll remember that this creates they were born here and that probably never have been back to oklahoma there's also people around here that have heard they were greeks for years and they had no way to prove it it really is i guess

it is a certificate during an indian blank foreign and if you were and they're there and why they try to achieve this seminal treatise charities chopped back at it with a minute all for insisting on every you know and seek a thought in my car serviced and i'm all right this whole blood thing is that sounds in ancient days there just wasn't a tradition of defining tribal identity by blood was language land ceremony and family that gave a person traveling vanity around the beginning of the twentieth century the federal government force tribes to start using blood quantum an old with census counts to define tribal membership over the decades like quantum replace tribal culture as a way of

identifying who was in india many trials began to issue membership cards with federal id numbers that the government gives to real indians it's a curious form of branding my numbers for three zero zero zero two to four nine marc anthony rumble member of the ojibwe nation since nineteen sixty two fifty years ago the worse thing you could call an indian i was a happy birthday a person with chief among the creek it's almost like royalty ft at alice's here because he

wants to include american citizens in tribal affairs but he's also here because he's running for the job of principal chief and they know that in past elections that the citizens at this election now that we were all taught yet neither the great nation that supported these days by six casinos and with citizenship comes the opportunity for different job neel programs for senior citizens cheap car license tags better how that burial expenses and of great importance to the people gathered at four park college scholarships for young people we'll have that

we are enrolled members and they use our membership as part of their budget to give monies to run to try and yet we're not in the state of oklahoma or in the jurisdiction of the creek nation and so which of those people are in the jurisdiction act they have the benefits of can intel service housing a number of things and we outside of that district we don't have a benefit chief elysees a very different tribe in fifty years his vision is more about economic development and cultural preservation the tribal be english speaking spread out across the nation and the economy of the tribal follow its members but second she'd offer burial worries that two classes of citizenship are now emerging they pulled some are no fun of their ancestors of greek descent

and all there was the tags they want free medicine from our healthcare and there are warning housing and then those kind of people who are real quick of them are more aggressive than are more formal and staff had more and they get all those services belford berryhill is part of another movement within the creek nation but you have to go back in the woods outside old moldy oklahoma to find new day it's a special saturday at the burial methodist church that morning good that isn't going to be uniform is the witches welcome you all this morning and they were also this morning

we have come to are one of us in our community a lot of very you know who's celebrating her birthday and it's one of only three remaining creek who holds her original land allotments from the early nineteen hundreds her nephew alfred is second change is a devout christian deacon of the local church and leader of the movement to restore traditional korean culture singing christian hymns and creak and participating in the ancient corn ceremony yet colter is the great churches and their protests in a n and that's the songs that we sang originated from the ceremony around through search for their world of an evolution of fierce yo ho ho ho three

for three it's a pleasure the benefit of the police even with the crime in the city is they enter mary assembly their blood quantum declines their connection to language and family they become creepy by genealogy so slow motion collision seems inevitable between urban creeks and then blood interested in services and economic advantage and traditional troops most of whom still live in rural oklahoma and are desperately trying to hold on to traditional culture

and just so you know i just found out i gave you know my mom says i wanted my benefits are really get my land or how much money that like in the check out where do i sign up to be indian i'll always trying to us why don't know any of those kind of things happen but that's okay there's solution one of the most popular pamphlets distributed by the southern california in the incentives that helps people trace their native family roots and register with the government and jason blood quantum has a complicated problem even for paul thorn she's irish mothers and forty years in los angeles within the family in the old days before contact pre contact you know people in america at the time you know

and said oh your children are in this have this mess no in china where the coup and you know whatever they tried maybe you just got absorbed into it so now our children and great and grandchildren are getting i guess they were sliced up i mean i know full blooded indian people are children younger people who are one eighth one eight when they had their full blooded but yet they can't be involved with that one particular try and i just think that's such a a hardship because i have a daughter who's not full cheyenne the three four different tribes now my grandson is even more fees cheyenne's that was could turn and mexican yet when you look at blood quantum he's more and in the end the rescue myself

or indian yes but not more cheyenne it's a trap created by a century of policy designed to wipe out the tribes before the european genocide a child adopted into a tribe would learn the language and the customs of the ceremonies of that tried no one has survived by just being an indian without tribal identity the first time a defense against assimilation and the city has always been the southern california indian centers created in the nineteen fifties by relocation pioneers to help the poorest of the poor make the transition to city life mozart concert like we mentioned co authored provisions and their hourly wages not as good as it is maturing elsewhere our some southern make minimum wage or even the cinnamon than minimum wage and then it's four

this is morning edition so what do you carry says the boom time of the nineteen seventies and eighties paul as budget at the indian centers has been striking each year and alcohol which is a major fund raiser isn't enough to sustain its drought the year we had to close down or medical program we couldn't find it ourselves yet there's a trend mendez the queenie pie for fighting in clinics throughout la county to service our community are legal project we were running low on on those firms ahmed el b roll out front with you i'm we i developed a community development corporation specifically to get housing for community members are geographically dispersant into pockets all over five thousand square mile square miles it's been so hard for people to hear what our needs to

anaheim the city of anaheim bluntly told us we don't want your crying here we don't want the drugs we don't want that drug users that was really hard to take to keep second and third generation urban indians connected to their travel roots the indian centers offer drama dance classes language instruction and had support groups their approach has created an act that women like that i think and that's just one of a lot of from a small reservation in southern arizona her mother came the sherman indian school in the nineteen fifties and state and that corrupt city girl she's a single mother of four boys a heart is amazing for boys sing along it's pretty tough especially when the end it had

separated now is really tough kids and knowing extra income was coming in i was barely above the poverty level where you know i couldn't get services the kids you know my parents kept the school offers or they're going to be involved with that stuff that the union center has just been another huge hit with so like a lot of boys you know that they know what they're doing or how to carry themselves i was at the short hair long hair mr wade yeah he can only really had struggles when the school with his long have you know i just my pastor and he told them something that where he preyed on and twenty fives

oral history tells them something that just keeps on going and that balances the chaos of city life better than anyone i have met so far she respects the economic and educational opportunities that this city but she has insisted that the boy stay connected to their travel roots in arizona we go maybe like three times a year we'd like to go more by is how costly and then taking the time to go so that's different but we go there go visit family and were involved in a traditional singers and dancers group it's because i really want the kids to you know i'm raising them so it's more like they're down there and my ways and they would marry

somebody who knew mike from it i mean i was mainly i guess the size of the person is native american indian that level be stronger don't want them losing their blood down the line i think i think what nato is it because it's that i was coming to la one thing i want to do is spend thanksgiving with an indian family today and that has invited me to her home in pasadena it's pretty contagious and on this thanksgiving day the dallas cowboys are hosting the washington redskins the redskins the redskins is about you the name that you have to risk and now

you think it's like it was not a very nice turn of that red skin you it's clear that the boys would much rather play football they pulled me on to buy the things they were out on a lot find out oh

yeah and that's extended family lives from the reservation in arizona or to them came on a greyhound bus it was a forty eight hour cab ride from downtown la to pasadena terrorists and i said well there's nothing about that i always when we do a prayer like when people gather it will also make a played for for the spirits that benefits and this is like for our ancestors that have gone before and we always put a little something for them this is bizarre

what do you do more will be too little midget who like to get moved a little right to grow you have to wonder why a free press about the woods or not they must ultimately do you do that banking committee's bill this

is beans it's been a while please rise point married to a mexican raised by her grandparents in the hold on sleepy and sheep skins on a tour for cooking outside as a teenager she

enrolled in a foster program through the mormon church and like so many pioneers before her rode the train to los angeles your foster family picture with the church building and what they do it for sort of just hug me think i had then hides and i wrote about before i mean my grandmother was their announcement that she taught me and i know that you know she coming from a higher but catching and hygiene wasn't something that i was used to i saute stapling know more spanish than regular oil because mostly we go to mexico and eric darr light teaches us the spanish man whom were mostly stuck on the spanish language so by moshe check

out the snow too they say they had a salesman or political or one thousand years the novel is a dozen languages the language of red rock canyons pinion pine as well as on the edges of small streams it's a language of flash floods and scorching summer heat it's a language of place and the sadness at losing it is that we lose real knowledge about the desert southwest that is thousands of years old but it goes deeper than that these lessons of all that still a half telling her daughter's novel called and left with this sad feeling that these girls may never be more novels and they are accessible it bothers me that i don't speak the ojibwe language and for the

first time in my life i wanna sit in some elders kitchen and bad river and justice but on the twentieth she ensures use of alcohol and then on the twenty fourth seed mixture fifth check in the their freshman teachers as chairman high school and this is the weekly meeting a troublesome problem with students or to get out of control or any he's depressed do you or you know i could read it to further their you're right she's with john ashley tellis have had down that but she's smart new shoes she can go to work the lead she passed my class but i'm not excusing her iv part of it would be cultural i think i was like that people often ask what's wrong with you indians why can't you simulate like the rest of

us i never know quite how to answer that question but i think it's something to do with an indian spirit that simply refuses to die no matter how life i pretended to be i was still in the air i feel my algebra spirit most strongly when i'm around birch trees and great lakes places where my mother grew up what if you're surrounded by concrete freeways can steal a thousand miles you travel home for all the great things chairman is trying to do the bitter fact is chairman students are cut off from their families and their crimes at least a third will drop out or be sent home before the school year is still in here and in this suddenly intense and depression it's higher than any other ethnic group

dr carrie johnson is what the team decoded on our first day at sherman is a mental health counselor she found over twenty students and suicide these days she works for native american children in the los angeles county foster care for our children that we've seen for example and you not only one trauma that often multiple traumas of my content is that penalty generation has had to flee and how its intentions in my opinion are all where people are at risk for something whether the substance abuse suicides poverty they're all at risk and here in california we have a sixty percent dropout rate of our high school students are indian youth are propping up twice as much as the indian youth across the country that's at

thirty point four percent we have the highest suicide rate we have a fifty six percent non graduate rate we have forty percent plus poverty rate of just our indian youth in la county alone that means almost half of families are in poverty do any way that we can resolve what is is really going on is really getting in touch with our culture our spirituality a lot of things that were alive when you look at the battle in these holes because not just your prayers that are going to go and there's going to be your

ancestors and a bigger children that is that they didn't have a hand on to your children so that they don't come to these places in iraq the abandoned corner of the state prison at chino jamaica still and his friends are trying to do just what the psychologists recommend use native spirituality and culture to give you hope to a lost generation are churches in traditional native americans would like it's built in california style after lunch and until we have this concept that when they walk through those gates to the sale was that they were walking out of the institution and on to sacred grounds yes many of these young

men are california indians but most growth in a fog of last identity often as mexicans with no real contacts with traditional tribal culture there are no illusions that this was not these are dope dealers and rapists roberts and even murderers some have been in the system at nine and yours and his role was to today's my elders as well as the institution have told me you know don't get too close to the sun and it's really difficult and i believe that by giving their quarterback to members are chosen will contribute to the healing i mean i'm only known as a peaceful person sounds like people looking like it changed a lot in a system like that

kind of feeling is there for me roberta luna has been in the system for nine years this is a special ceremony for him he'll be paroled and we are just going to loot it as you know a church of the catholic church a protestant church and saw that wasn't for me i didn't feel like that was meant for me this native willows made me and i feel it i can eat one and that's where like goosebumps the disney like more energy is like manning more excited the crowd and richard is a

pope is being created is business beanie babies became if businesses big races

as bolt is billy crystal i believe it's one of the unique than themselves in the midst of something that conflicts that we need in the new tooling and we want them to you know get your relatives says

he's seen a poll all three of us to you know you can be abrasive and i'm going to sit and cigarette design yeah i think the other big thing is going to get him until

they are in a woman who don't we walk up those gates and i were to take a moment to feel what feels like this as you want another winter to forget that feeling feeling of liberation when you walk around your neck excuse me indians can't gulf spill it up there were about one point five three and i've been invited to play in an indian coal terminal but the new corona tribal report my hose history to stand kerry democrat won in new hampshire as an

indian chamber of commerce being built with a profit made from indian gaming act i'm hoping that tracy would lead me to mark the current chairman of one of southern california's richest casino tribe at the chance to try ms bening you know organizers of the american indian but they're facing serious challenges throughout the nineteen

sixties and seventies you could count on one hand the number of indian owned businesses in southern california but since the federal government started a minority ownership incentive programs everyone and their mother was starting a business and claiming to be indian people say they have indian ancestry and i when i get offended by is there some folks in the community they are native and they're not and they've been proven and they're destroying go after what the perceived advantages are and i just jazz chat for

chris calories in each day with our world where we're at the rattle as a call in good spirits a bow and set of the leadership and running and that's what we look for an american an individual warrior award winners of the london can complain about the bottom line the union will open in about who the nest in a lot of the art would not be about meth just walk into all of you know new people people and i know people that i'm quin it within and relations marked a crop grew up in court in california thirty miles up the freeway from the bench on the reservation just a regular teenage kids and co owner bob i think the difference though was myself and my siblings we grew up

always knowing that we were the chinese indians one of the qualities that says macarthur park is that i'm like honey or almost anyone i know in my generation he taught himself to speak his native language a person is look at what language does for understanding one's culture it's really a key to the soul of the culture to think thoughts to express ideas in your native language is something that skinner would be very difficult to ever get to get our in the way that it existed before on i think out of all the various the senate bands on my own estimate is that there are probably seven or eight the same unions none of more on the suspicion who can actually do that they can think and expressed thoughts and also from our our native tongue was their first language for a

hundred years to try to sell barely afloat by selling sand for construction and hate to local ranchers during the dark years tribal members dispersed up the role of the cold south of san diego even as far away as vermont and then came gamble gambling change everything before the casinos that the child had done a small struggling tried once the gaming profits during the four year long lost cousins though what began to happen then in nineteen ninety five was our moment and it's piped sixty and file one year spike to accept a hundred and sixty nine the year after that richard lee was nineteen ninety seven out over four hundred and thirty submitted applications with significant there is that in july nineteen ninety five our tribe opened the casino and so we're wrestling right now with this idea of a third of us hadn't been out there the

deadly or perhaps but what we open a casino they showed up and i think this frustrates a lot of the existing tribal members does is long and tedious an ongoing discussion about how best to deal with these days mr carle finds himself consumed not just with the issues of who's but china and who is not but how to shape the relationship between the bataan death and the vast majority of urban indians who remain poor and hidden in the shadows of the city my tribe and many tribes in southern california have been consumed politics fraud the way the political world works is based on mining and money dries the way the system worked and top i think it's nothing to that i really shied away from now as tries to

develop economically they generate this capital is tribal nations to end in our area in particular in the game capital is generating the challenge is going to be how do we get this capital into other segments of the ingenuity it's an enormous challenge perhaps the real question is this do successful tribes like the bataan really have a responsibility to reach out to a larger indian community the way the compact is designed in sign for the casino tribe here in california they must take care of their own their local community their reservation their tribal people they they they made an argument very very good job of redoing the housing education medical the roads you know how you name it they're doing really well in those services and then they have need to take care of their surroundings local community and here in los angeles and orange counties we don't have a federally recognized tribe we

have to state recognized tribes with no land base and as a result there's no money my tribe operates a modestly profitable casino on the southern shores of lake superior but it hasn't made us rich i confess that i do get envious of rich indians if i could get away with it i would claim to be a pitcher but i don't think my mother would appreciate me switching tribes if she were standing in that steam filled kitchens back in milwaukee right now she would roll our eyes and tell me to stop being an op ed indian don't ever forget she used to say it as one generation away from the bush in every revelation has its memories of the

genocide sand creek for the cheyenne wounded knee for the lakota them arise river for the black but in california the genocide started hundreds of years before we did before the names of the tribes or even known to the american public and it was a brutal massacre of genocide with the fishes it was done in the name of the church and in the name of salvation that first footstep of father serra for a lot of vocal group of it in the face of symptoms is the beginning of the end with all the villages would be destroyed and the government on the war all parts of the workforce the great slave system that was born on the southern california many people not only flared into married outside of the la basin river consists of foreign media began to say and i didn't have

anything else there was a time when the entire los angeles basin from santa monica to the san gabriel mission was the home of the congo and then every five americans sixty years it was all destroyed indian tradition my grandfather never had the church that that address the persistent feeling that i've carried over from the lake did you convert into the early nineteen hundreds that at any time someone might come and take things away at your house your children still there so this it was kind of spooky part the background only the girls were left mission cemeteries and ancient burial grounds occasionally unearthed mother bulldozers of progress but when i

began to find out more from my father cared for and some of the builders in the big terrible council of those groups that just hit one hundred percent where it was like well here's a whole side of me that is so exciting and wonderful and he pulled out the abalone show and i just looked at it and filled with sage and it is so important these days market collapse as a member of the tongue the tribal councils a tireless advocate for federal recognition and finally at peace with itself through twitter everything we

hear richardson sr to get you he says there is a belief among some tribes that the lives and stories and words that each generation hang in the air exactly where they have an r and it's the main reason that drives consider certain places sacred each corner of the world has a story that is both the odds are that the patient if they drove and the small group of tonga and the harsher than indians led by the role that sisters are talking with the growth of san juan capistrano one of the most outspoken opponent is their mother affectionately remembered among native activists as graeme of lillian ross that's

the last i would say it can take twelve years of her life she devoted to preserving ticket as she was called the ads that you and i should be sleeping at night the ancestors came in talked to her should hear clicking inner ears you know that she was called she didn't have a choice you know she had a choice ignored in that scene was told this is what you're getting and you know this is your job and she took it seriously there is something uniquely california about this demonstration pressed between a busy road and a chain link fence at the school construction site what they do in the process is the instability and thats great is to say we need to try to get them to understand what's sacred land means that it's like arlington cemetery were setting up to say you know these

are sacred sites is or burial grounds east of things can never be replaced yet our ancestors they deserve respect you know you can't put a mining town and you can hear like it's not appropriate to build a half million dollar house all over southern california the descendants of congo and other ancient tribes have decided to make theirs there and build a modern identity for defending sacred places songs and one way to do it is to bring back to the land to sing the songs of the land to sing songs in a private california traditions and that was something that we are directed by a mother to do while she was still here and she strongly encouraged encouraged us to say to saying the songs on the land this society you know that we live in a society that really doesn't value passed that really

isn't and you know is going so fast that you know they they don't if they don't they're nuts they're not seeing you know like what fifty years or a hundred years or five hundred years ahead that we as a group have to say you know the you know no more you know this house to stop they won't when police they won't stop the bulldozers this is less than successful push of modernization is ruthless different voices that hey maybe the developers have lawyers and money to spread around the road the sisters have only their faith and they refuse to get the word out and you know what how to pitch and not a developer wants to build on the site that you know is a cemetery but we don't take that antagonism approach you know we

take the approach oak where righteously indignant but somehow we have to get them to see at first of all the court's opinion like that evolved over the last year the campaign this ad to burial grounds resonates mostly my mother is buried along in a small cemetery in northern minnesota i recently told my brother something that's been in my heart for a long time but maybe it's time for us to bring our call tibet river i have been in los angeles for almost a year and the final lesson of my journey is the most simple perhaps it's time for me to go home to his

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