First America – The Origin of American Authoritarianism | Episode 6
OPEN
Ryan Ecklund [Ek-land] had just dropped his kid off at school outside Minneapolis last winter when he saw an unmarked vehicle full of ICE agents. He started following them. Then the ICE vehicle suddenly stopped.
Ryan: And at that point, about five different ICE agents approached my, uh, driver’s side door and one of the ICE agents opened my door. Another ICE agent climbed into the back seat and put his arm around my neck and headrest and used his other hand to click my seatbelt to take my seatbelt off.
Ryan had his phone out.
Ryan: We are on a public road. Get your hands off of me We allowed you I’m a US citizen. Get your hands You understand that Off of me
[ambi of Ryan getting pulled from car]
Tamara: I started texting him, you know, “Hey, can you let me know you’re okay? Hey, I’m trying not to freak out here.” And no response
This is Tamara [TAM-uh-rah}, Ryan’s wife. He called her when he’d first started following the ICE SUV. So she was tracking his location.
his pin wasn’t moving anymore.
Um, and so I came downstairs, and I made myself something to eat, uh, because I hadn’t eaten anything, and I thought, “If I’m gonna be out of the house for a while, I’m gonna need something to eat.” So I ate and, uh, and then I said, “Okay, you haven’t answered, and I’m freaking out, so I’m gonna come and find you.”
Like, this is days after Renee Good lost her life.
And I followed the map to his pin, and I found his abandoned vehicle and his phone on the front seat. Um-
And I immediately, uh, looked in the snow for blood
ICE agents detained Ryan and took him to the Whipple building — ICE headquarters in Minneapolis. It’s right next to the historic fort and former concentration camp I visited in our first episode. You may remember when I was there, I saw a bald eagle.
NICK: Look at him. He’s coming right towards us. I told you we were going to see one.
They nest near the river.
Ryan: And as we were getting on the freeway to go to the federal building, a bald eagle flew over the overpass and the ICE agent in the passenger van said to the driver, “Hey, look, see that?
It’s a bald eagle.” And he said, “Do you know what that means?” And the driver responded and said, “God is on our side.” And what that said to me was that not only do they feel, um, allowed to act with impunity and do what they’re doing, but they almost feel as though it’s some sort of righteous calling.
and that really made me more scared than anything else,
Rebecca: What happened after you got to the Whipple Building?
Ryan: I was brought into a large, loading dock area. as I walked in, uh, were a number of tables that were set up along the left-hand side of the wall.
And, uh, on a piece of cardboard, uh, was written with like black marker, like the way that you would make a garage sale sign. It said USC, one eleven And what I realize now is that 18 U.S.C. 111 is the code that a lot of ICE agents will use when they feel as though they, uh, have somebody who is impeding an investigation.
That table with the cardboard sign was set up to process the US citizens ICE was detaining.
After processing him, agents took Ryan to a holding cell.
I was in detention for approximately nine hours, that room had filled up with eight other individuals, all of whom were US citizens, all of whom had been detained by ICE.
One of the people in the cell with Ryan said he had been detained by ICE for cussing and refusing to shake an officer’s hand. Another person had been delivering groceries to an immigrant family.
Rebecca: Were you surprised to be detained as a US citizen?
Ryan: Yeah. Yeah, very much so. Um, mostly because what I was doing, uh, according to myself and a number of other legal authorities, was well within the bounds of my constitutional rights. At no point in time was I impeding their way.
Rebecca: And do you have any legal recourse? Like, can you file a lawsuit? Um, h- has– what’s the follow-up been?
Ryan: There is not really a good mechanism, a good legal mechanism for an individual who has had their, uh, their constitutional rights violated by a law enforcement officer, specifically a federal officer.
During the ICE surge in Minneapolis, the Trump administration claimed it was targeting undocumented immigrants.
Ryan is a U.S. citizen. He’s white. He lives in the suburbs. He sells real estate. He is one of the last people you think ICE would round up–but they did.
What ICE did to Ryan feels like it should be illegal. Detaining a U.S. citizen, shoving him to the ground… all because he followed and filmed a federal officer on a public street? Isn’t that the type of thing the constitution is supposed to protect us all against?
But there’s this other part of our constitution. One a lot of people don’t know about. It explains why ICE could do what they did to Ryan. Why he still has no legal recourse. And why the Trump administration keeps getting away with it.
BILLBOARD
You’re listening to First America–the true story of how the United States came to be. And how our current political moment is 250 years in the making. From Pushkin Industries and Critical Frequency, I’m your host Rebecca Nagle. Gohini daqwadoa. Tsalagi Ayetli gela. Citizen of Cherokee Nation.
[music transition]
As I’ve talked about before, I was in Minneapolis during the ICE surge. It was only a few days, but it was surreal.
TAPE: Pepper spray, they have pepper spray! Watch out!
Kim: We might get teargassed. We have to be really careful right now.
[protestor “I got gassed!,” coughing, whistles]
I saw border patrol tear gas protesters, military planes flying overhead.
[ambi, planes overhead]
I saw Renee Good’s blood in the snow…
Rebecca: Oh, I think that’s debris from the car…
…and pieces of her broken car.
Rebecca: People are gathering under the lightpole, leaving flowers.
Rebecca: Can I ask you a few questions?
Woman: Sure. My name is Stacey Sorrow, St. Croix Objibwe Nation.
Rebecca: Can you explain why you put tobacco down?
Woman: Just for a prayer. Prayer for her family. Because a lady lost her life and that’s what we do in our culture. It’s a sad day for Minneapolis today.
I started this season with one big question. How is this happening? How is this happening in the United States? I think I figured it out.
Everything we’ve covered so far.. the building of the military, the theft of Native land, the real reasons for the American Revolution, genocide… These weren’t isolated events. They weren’t one off bugs. Together they built a system.
So when people look at current events and say, “The Constitution doesn’t allow this,” the reality is more complicated. In many ways, it does—and today I am going to explain how.
[music cue]
The constitution we live under now is actually not what the U.S. started off with.
Our first constitution, ratified in 1781, was called the Articles of Confederation. Under it, there was not a Supreme Court. There wasn’t even a President.
Mary Bilder: Technically there’s a person who gets called President, but they’re the chairperson of the committee of Congress and it rotates. So there’s no strong execute power under the Articles of Confederation.
This is Mary Sarah Bilder
Mary Bilder: I teach at Boston College Law School, and I’m the founder’s professor.
States had a lot of power and the federal government was weak. Often not enough Congressional members showed up for the body to even have a quorum. It was a hot mess.
and so, people who want a stronger government, decide that the articles of Confederation needs to be rewritten
And so in 1787, about a decade into this great experiment called the United States, Congress called for a constitutional convention.
Rebecca: for the people who gathered to write the convention, what was their charge like? What did they gather in Philadelphia to do?
Mary Bilder: Yeah. They were supposed to, um, take what was called the old federal constitution and, um, uh, in fancy words, render it sufficient for the exigencies, basically make it work, uh, and, uh, fix, fix all sorts of things that people complained about.
The constitutional convention took place in hot and muggy Philadelphia.
they begin in May. they have to wait around for a while ’cause nobody shows up when they’re supposed to. Everybody’s late.
There’s then a committee to kind of, write a first draft. They debate that plan and all through August.
[music cue]
So in the summer of 1787 our founders are in the state house, now known as Independence Hall, hashing it all out. They’re debating how to structure the Senate and the Supreme Court. They debate how much power little states should get. vs big ones. And they’re building the government we all still live under.
And then in the middle of this historic, monumental summer a surprising thing happens.
A bunch of people leave.
In July, basically members of the convention who are also congressional members, go to New York.
At the time, Congress met in New York. The constitutional convention is in Philadelphia. Most people assume Congress is gonna take the summer off. But lawmakers have important business to attend to.
And the major piece of business that, that Congress does is it passes the Northwest Ordinance.
And the Northwest Ordinance creates a sort of blueprint for imagining the lands to the Mississippi as white states.
Congress was desperate to pass this bill because the United States needed more land. As we’ve talked about before, that need was driven by money.
This land is the same land the Myaamia and the Tuwawa Siipiwe Alliance were fighting to protect. It’s also the land speculators, like the Ohio Company, were buying up. For that land to be valuable and profitable–there needed to be a road map for how the US would govern it. Otherwise, who would want to move there? And so this bill is that road map. Unsurprisingly, members of the Ohio Company had a hand in drafting it.
Here is how that map worked:
The new territory would be governed differently than the original 13 states.
Maggie: So the United States was founded and then it set up, um, uh, it set the Northwest Territory under the exact same system that it had for British colonies.
This is Maggie Blackhawk again. She’s a law professor at NYU and Fond De Lac Ojibwe.
Maggie: The Northwest Territory, was called explicitly by the founders, “America’s first colony.”// And that colony would be governed by a unitary governor.
That governor, a secretary and a few judges ruled the whole thing. Those folks were all appointed. (Most ended up being land speculators).
Maggie: oh yeah, no, no voting, no elections,
The territory didn’t even have a representative in Congress.
Maggie: Until there was enough settlement by mostly white male settlers to be able to petition for more forms of representation in the central United States government.
Once enough free, white men moved there — then the territory could become a state and they could have elections and representation.
Our founding fathers decided an area of the United States wouldn’t have the most basic features of democracy. Instead they looked at the Northwest Territory and thought….
Maggie: aha, what we need to do is to break down and move and fight and go to war with and massacre this other group of people because we don’t wanna understand them. We don’t wanna build a government that could govern them too.
And so these two things were written at the exact same time. The US Constitution, and the Northwest Ordinance.
The blueprint for US democracy. And The blueprint for US colonialism.
That summer in 1787, when our founders were writing the Constitution and the Northwest Ordinance, they made a fatal error. One we almost never talk about. They thought they could have both. They thought they could build a constitutional republic and an empire at the same time. They thought they could have democracy over here and colonialism over there. Two centuries later, it turns out they were wrong.
The constitution we all know, that blueprint for democracy, had some flaws of course. But through the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, the civil rights movement, the gay rights movement and more it got better. While still far from equal, we got closer to the founding ideals of this country.
The opposite happened with the blueprint for colonialism. It grew. After the Louisiana Purchase, that territory got the same kind of top-down, no-elections government. As the US expanded from sea to shining sea more land was controlled that way. Then, the blueprint for colonialism got applied to places like Hawaii, Guam and Puerto Rico. A generation of US lawmakers liked the top-down way they governed those places. It was so much more efficient than democracy. And so they applied the blueprint for colonialism to immigration. It even got applied to things you wouldn’t think of, like social security. At the same time generations of Americans fought for US democracy, they also built and expanded US colonialism.
Rebecca: Could you actually just define what authoritarianism is?
Maggie: I think the word authoritarianism is sort of the shorthand word that we use for government that isn’t representative, that’s top-down, that, that is not responsive to the groups that it, um, that it exercises its power over.
They often govern through force, through violence, but they definitely don’t govern through consent. I prefer the term colonialism and colonial government in the US context because it taps us into the history.
What we’re seeing today is that the colonial system our founders created is taking over the democracy.
Rebecca Nagle: I’m gonna name things that are part of our current politics and I want you to tell me yes or no. If they tie back to federal Indian law,
Rebecca: Separating migrant families at the border.
Maggie: Yes.
Rebecca: Detaining migrants in detention camps. So,
Maggie: Yes.
even the practices of detention, how to detain families, these are things in which the US government has had deep experience
Rebecca: Bombing boats in the Caribbean Sea.
Maggie: Yes. we just don’t have the same kinds of limits in these areas.
Why do we not have the same kinds of limits? Because we didn’t. Want limits. In the 19th century, we wanted a machine that would build and expand and dispossess
Rebecca : The challenge to birthright citizenship.
Maggie: Yes.
The knee-jerk reaction to that executive order was, “This is unconstitutional. It’s un-American.
the Trump administration came back very quickly and accurately with the exception from constitutional birthright citizenship that applied to Native people.
But at the time that the Fourteenth Amendment was drafted- The US did not have control of the center of North America
And they explicitly discussed the idea that if we extended birthright citizenship to Native people, then Colorado would have more Native citizen voters than it would non-Native
Rebecca: Threatening to annex Greenland. Panama. Gaza and Canada.
Maggie: I mean, yes. It’s like, it’s it’s not, it’s not a new thing. We’re, this is what we’ve done.
We’re good at this.
Rebecca: a president having unchecked or unbridled power in certain arenas.
Maggie: Yes.
Rebecca: Deploying the National Guard in US cities.
Maggie: And the military. Yeah. Yes.
Maggie has an explanation for why authoritarianism is taking over the US right now. It goes like this: Imagine a boomerang. When you throw it away from you, it comes back. Colonialism works the same way.
Maggie: The boomerang of Empire is when, um, you develop a way of governing these other people that you then, because of habit, because you think it’s a good idea,
You want to continue to do it when you get home. And so you’re going to bring the violence home with you. You’re going to bring the authoritarianism home with you.
The boomerang of empire is actually how a lot of experts explain where authoritarianism comes from in the first place. It’s just colonial governments taking what they did to the people they colonized and applying it to their own citizens.
Maggie: If you have a government that is authoritarian, that is colonial to people over there, it can always do it to other people.
Maggie says once those authoritarian systems are in place, they don’t stay limited to certain groups of people.
Maggie: They could be applied to your neighbor. They could be applied to your university. They could be applied to your newspaper, and frankly, they could be applied to you.
Rebecca: Something I’ve been wondering about is like, where does that understanding get us? What, how, how does it help us?
Maggie: So, the inevitable question I get asked as a scholar of constitutional law is, well, how do we even uphold a constitution that was capable of this?
no one wants to, especially when the house is on fire. To take the house apart and build it back together again. ’cause you’re afraid if you take it apart, it’s never going to come back together again. And I think that’s the, the deep irony of, of what one would have growing up in America as a native person, you have more belief in America than Americans do.
Because you’ve known that it’s flawed all along and you’ve still fought for it and still wanted to be part of it.
Rebecca: I feel like as a native person, our history is often treated as niche, as this tragic, distant thing that happened in the past. And the assumption is that it’s not relevant, to the American present.
Maggie Blackhawk: The relationship between the US and Native Nations and native peoples has shaped not only the lives and experiences, uh, and governments of native peoples, but has shaped fundamentally the lives, experience and governments of everyone else in North America as well. We just don’t think about it and don’t talk about it, but it’s part of who we are. It’s always been part of who we are, and that’s not a condemnatory statement.
It really is a scholar’s plea of, if you want to understand the truth of what America is and the best way to solve the problems that America faces, you have to look at truly what the government has done,
Rebecca: I think if nothing else, if nothing else, I hope what people take from this podcast is the idea that what our government did to Native Americans affects them.
Maggie: Of course. It’s their government. It’s our government. Of course. It’s not like it was really something about Native people that made Native people subject to violence
But the reality is that if you just think, “Oh, you know, poor Indian country. Ah, those, those Native people, I wish we hadn’t dispossessed them,” and we move on, um, feel a little guilt and move on from that, that’s the opposite of what you should do in response to this information.
The hope is that you really let it settle in, not out of guilt, but out of complete pure reason, the idea of reality, because the moment that happens, the moment we are all better equipped and better positioned to deal with the government that we actually can control if we understand it.
Uh, but if we don’t understand it, we will never control it.
A lot of what the Trump administration is doing feels like it should be unconstitutional. The problem is that for a long time we’ve let US Presidents do such things… to Indigenous people, to people in Puerto Rico, to immigrants. What is new about what Trump’s doing, is that he’s taking the blueprint for colonialism and trying to apply it to every one.
–——————MIDROLL————————
There’s a part of the constitutional convention I haven’t told you about yet. It’s something most historians don’t talk about. But that summer in Philadelphia, Native people were there.
Mary Bilder: But, the Choctaw Nation, the Chickasaw Nation and the Cherokee Nation all send a member of the nation and the job of that person is to go to Philadelphia and show up and basically try and talk to people. And what’s important about this is that showing up and talking, I believe mattered enormously.
This was a thing people did at the time–try to influence the Convention from the outside.
And it’s, it’s just like it is today. we know perfectly well that everything that happens in Congress isn’t just because the people inside the room are just sitting around by themselves thinking of things.
They’re always reflecting pressures and concerns that are brought to them by people outside of the room.
The representatives from Native Nations had a specific goal.
So their demands most importantly, is to stop white encroachment, to have their territorial boundaries,, respected.
Illegal and often violent white squatters were invading tribal land. Tribes wanted the US government to hold those squatters back. Recent treaties outlined the boundaries of Chickasaw, Choctaw and Cherokee Nations. But Georgia and North Carolina didn’t want to follow those treaties.
Mary Bilder: They actually just believed they were, they were void.
Rebecca: So basically Georgia and North Carolina were saying. We don’t have to respect what the general government agreed to with the Cherokees or the choctaws. We can do whatever we want.
Mary Bilder: Right? Not only can we do whatever we want, but we can take all the land. We don’t have to respect the boundaries, we don’t have to respect any agreements.
So Native leaders show up to Philadelphia to try and make the federal government enforce their treaty rights against those rebellious southern states. And they’re not just fighting for those few treaties. They want to structure the U.S. government so states can’t violate any treaties.
The Delegate from Cherokee Nation is a man named Sgonadoya. He’s young, but he’s the son of an important political leader–the tribe’s beloved woman.
Mary Bilder: The White Press around Stoya is really fascinating because. Because they, they describe him in exceptionally positive ways, but using you know, sort of very racist imagery. So they say he’s civilized in these kinds of ways that imply, you know, surprise, kind of thing.
After Sgonadoya arrived in Philadelphia he went to Independence Hall, where the constitutional convention was meeting.
And and so Scon Toya arrives and then you know, very importantly goes to the State House, which is where the delegates are meeting and meets with George Washington. And he meets with George Washington in a very public manner. And it’s not quite clear whether they’re inside Independence Hall or outside, perhaps outside.
But in any case he. He, the whole meeting with George Washington is written about in the paper and then spreads across the United States, kind of goes viral.
George Washington says he’s, he’s glad to see him and he hopes he’s, well, he asks What’s his business? And Stoya says are my business is, I’m here about white people encroaching on our lands.
And so it’s very explicit what the problem is. And then George Washington takes him by the hand — shakes his hand, wishes him success in his venture. So basically in stopping white encroachment wishes him well on his return wishes, his people well, on, on his return.
But in any case he. He, the whole meeting with George Washington is written about in the paper and then spreads across the United States, kind of goes viral.
Washington has a reason to give Sgonadoya what he wants.
This is a time when the US government would lose to Native Nation military force. So they’re also buying themselves time in a way that I think it’s is in retrospect, very discomforting. They know if they fight right now, they’re gonna lose.
The young United States is very worried that Indigenous nations might band together to fight back. That 15-year war with the Taawaawa Siipiiwi Alliance has already started and US leaders are worried more tribes might join.
So it’s not from pure altruism but the founders see that they’re going to need to negotiate with Indigenous nations. And that’s because Indigenous nations are powerful.
What everybody at the time understood was that native Nations were sovereign, that they had, they were to be dealt with as sovereign nations. And, and that’s this moment where Washington shakes hands with Scontoya really, really embodies that space.
One of the committees drafting the constitution…
And that’s why just a small, fascinating thing is one of the last things the Committee of Style does. It creates a list of things that states are prohibited from doing, and it moves to the very top of the list. States are prohibited from basically signing treaties or interfering with treaties,
And what eventually happens is that the drafters write the supremacy clause of the US constitution.
Mary Bilder: The Constitution describes. Three different kinds of law. It describes law, basically what we think of as statutes. It describes the constitution as law, and then it describes treaties as law.
This is incredibly important in the supremacy clause where the supremacy
clause says that state judges have to observe not just federal statutes, not just the US Constitution, but they also have to observe treaties.
The supremacy clause says that federal law, the constitution itself, and treaties are the supreme law of the land. This clause is still cited in treaty rights cases.
Today, people are rightfully worried about threats to voting, free and fair elections, the rule of law, even our courts. At a time when Native people didn’t have access to any of that–when we weren’t even citizens of the United States, our ancestors helped shape the US constitution.
What’s been erased from the story of America is not just what the US government did to us, but how we pushed back. How our resistance shaped this democracy.
The constitution is the first chapter in a long history of Indigenous resistance. Sometimes that resistance looked like warfare, sometimes diplomacy, other times it was simply taking care of our tribes and communities. We didn’t win every battle or stop every stage of violence. But in the shadows of empire, we have kept safe our languages, our children, our governments, and our ways of life. We know how American authoritarianism was built. And we know how to survive it.
–——————MIDROLL————————
I’ve said before that if we want to understand authoritarianism, we don’t need to look abroad. It’s right here, in our own history. The same is true for how to resist.
While doing this reporting, I wanted to see the birth of the United States from the perspective of my Cherokee ancestors. And so I went to the place they lived in the summer of 1776. The same summer our founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence.
Rebecca Nagle: It’s 22 minutes. Start in car play.
I know where my family lived because of this short biography about one of my ancestors, named Ganvdatlegi. As a kid, he lived in a place called Hiawassee. A few years ago an archaeologist gave me the GPS coordinates of where Hiawassee once sat.
Jordan Gass-Poore: So what town are we going to?
Rebecca Nagle: We’re not going to a town.
Jordan Gass-Poore: Okay.
We’re going to a tree farm.
Jordan Gass-Poore: A tree farm. All right.
Today, it is a nursery in far eastern Tennessee. I drove there with my producer, Jordan.
Recreational users please park outside of the gate at all times.
Done. Okay. We are recreational users.
Rebecca Nagle: So we’re here and then the site of the Hiawassee old town is here.
Should we cut across the field, maybe?
Jordan Gass-Poore: You can try it.
Rebecca Nagle: Woo. It’s really cold.
We’re walking over little plants. Sorry, little plants.
Little pink pines. Little piney branches. Okay. Okay. Yeah, we can just walk around it.
Jordan Gass-Poore:
Rebecca Nagle: So, We are in a tree nursery between planted rows of what looked like very, very, very tiny pine trees. And uh, it’s nighttime. There’s a full moon, so it’s bright. Uh, you can hear bugs and cars, you can’t hear the river, but we’re close to a really big and powerful river. And where we are is flat. We’re in a floodplain of the river. But when you look to the east, you can see this gorgeous ridge line that’s the Appalachian Mountains.
From where I was standing, I could see the ridge line of the Appalachian crest in the light of the moon. It was dramatic. It dipped where three mountains met, one set further back. It was like they were calling to me, inviting me to come through this sweet gully they made together. I imagined my ancestors standing in the same place and looking at the same mountains. That’s what they would have seen every day.
It’s gorgeous. Like it’s just breathtaking, like the way that you can see the ridge line of the mountains and you can hear the river
Jordan Gass-Poore: like what would it have looked like?
Rebecca Nagle: There would’ve been, um, like a central field of corn that people, um farmed and harvested together. And those existed, so like nobody would go hungry or be without food. And then, um, there would be houses would kind of found fan out from there and then families had like smaller individual plots. Um, and so there would be like a stickball pole and like, um, a council house and some other, um, like central, you know, I guess like community buildings.
and you can just imagine what it would’ve been like to live here. It would’ve been idyllic.
During the Revolutionary War, colonial militias burned Hiawassee to the ground. The fire was so hot that glass beads fused together. Ganvdatlegi and his family escaped in a dugout canoe.
When most people think about the birth of the United States, they think about the Declaration of Independence. I think about my ancestor Ganvdatlegi. He was about seven years old then, and fleeing for his life.
Standing in the place he once stood, I felt what the birth of the United States must have meant to him. The view of the mountains is such a small scrap of what my family had before the US expanded. But seeing just that scrap filled me with a deep sadness. We lost so much.
For Ganvdatlegi, the United States was not some great democracy. Or even a flawed democracy. It was an invading army. And that government– that burned Cherokee villages to the ground so we would starve…is still our government today.
While I was writing this, Trump gave a speech about American history. In it, he said that people who teach our children that America was built on stolen land are attacking our country’s future. I agree with him on one point. The fight over how we, the American public, understand our past is a fight about our future. It’s a fight over what kind of country we will become.
As Americans, we’ve done a lot in the last 250 years. We added more states, conquered the west, fought a Civil War, defeated Hitler, put a man on the moon. But one thing we’ve never done is reckon with this history. We’ve never told a version of the American story that includes one of the most basic things about our government. What it did to Native nations.
We are not just haunted by this history. We are stuck in it. And until we confront the truth of America’s past, we will keep living the same American nightmare.
After walking around Hiawassee, we found our way back to the car.
Rebecca Nagle: Yeah. Yeah. I think the cars are like, do you wanna walk across the field?
Jordan Gass-Poore: Yeah, let’s do it.
Rebecca Nagle: Yeah. Here we are. Wow. Yeah. The trees are, or the stars are really pretty. The moon is amazing.
The mountains were a few shades darker than the night sky. But my eyes had adjusted. And I could see them clearly.
Music cue
There’s a Cheyenne and Muscogee elder named Suzan Harjo. She told me this thing that I’ve never forgotten. Indigenous people in this country operate on a longer timeline. And that timeline is longer going backwards. But it’s also longer going forwards. And even when things feel impossible, that’s why you never give up.
As Indigenous people, I think we know this instinctively. I think if our ancestors had not understood this—if they had fought for themselves instead of future generations, I don’t think we would be here.
The moment we’re living through feels urgent. It is urgent. The stakes are so high. But also, this moment was centuries in the making. It didn’t come from one election or one leader or one new technology. It took a long time for us to get here. And it will take a long time for us to find our way out.
music cue
I’ve been talking to Indigenous scholars like Maggie and Nick about our nation’s past. But as we look to what’s next, I also wanted to hear from Indigenous youth… about their ideas for the future. In Tulsa, we hosted a writing workshop. And some young people wrote short stories imagining Indigenous people 250 years from now.
And so for one last story, here’s Daksi 7-TC by A.J. LeBeau.
~cue~
I sneak through the depths of the docking bay, into forgotten corners where broken ships lie dormant and in disarray. I’m searching on a hunch, fueled by a pressing need to get to Earth. Finally, I find the last ship that remains intact, Daksi 7-TC. It looks like a sleeping turtle shell turned into a spaceship.
How did Noisey tell me to wake this ship up again? Noisey was the last elder from my tribe. She was a part of the Tribal Space Council fleet. They flew these ships in their prime, back when Tribes worked with the founders of The Colony. Back before the colony was taken over by a board of scientists. The scientists were driven by their fear of death. They were so scared of Earth they forbid Tribes from returning to land, they said there wasn’t any left. They were afraid of a lot of things. They destroyed anything that was a threat to their existence. Over time people in the colony became naturally apathetic, and they forgot how to feel.
Noisey, our last elder, had started acting unusual before she died. Asking if she could feel the sun on her skin or the grass beneath her feet. I held her hand, and saw her chest rise and fall for the last time, then it released her whole life in one pure breath. I knew then what I had to do.
Addisyn: I don’t care to look back, only forward, and step foot onto the spacecraft. I feel its weight drop gently, like a paper boat floating in water. I get to my seat in one step and prepare to take off. I soon notice there are scriptures written on her interior ceiling:
I am your guide.
I use my finger to write an old phrase that Noisey told me she used to say:
Daksi, time to sunbathe.
I have been waiting my whole life for this. Soon we’re buoyant in the air. As Daksi shifts into hyperspeed, I see The Colony disappear. I feel things now…which is something I’m not accustomed to. I can’t help but feel connected. “Daski, I feel alive,” I say.
ᎬᏃᏓ… alive.
The words appear across her interior dome and keep fizzling in and out.
“Daksi… are you alive?”
ᎬᏃᏓ… alive
It’s like I’m inside a turtle, inside a riverbed, and the animal is echoing things throughout its shell to my skin. I wonder who made Daksi, what they were like. Maybe it was Noisey; she would be capable of such a thing. She was supposed to be here with me; we were supposed to find land together.
In floating letters next to the controls, the dashboard lights up.
Approaching Earth
Is this the end of the universe? No, this must be where it first began. This is where you get sent to feel everything. I’m overcome with an overwhelming sense of clarity, something that’s been disconnected for centuries.
As the clouds form around me, Loud claps in the sky startle my attention towards my dashboard. Sensors pinging, I’m given an electrical storm warning. I’m trying to get a hold of my ship. Rains drill into the glass, and sirens cry in my head.
Sharp light penetrates the cabin, then shoots out of view. Like a camera flash, I smile for the picture. The cabin swelters in thick, hot air. I look through the shattered windshield, shapes form beneath me. All this time, I knew Noisey was right.
There is land in abundance. Approaching, I no longer have to put up a fight. My throat begins to swell from the pressure of the heat. I’m overcome with a multitude of feelings. They couldn’t explain this up in The Colony if they tried. I swear I can hear singing, and I’m sure it’s Noisey calling out to me. I see her now, as she extends out a hand. I feel the weight of the world pressing against my chest, bound by gravity; I manage to lift my arm as my hand connects to her palm, in my final attempts to grasp this world, something comes over me, and the pressure is gone.
I’ve died, but death is not what they said it would be. Hand in hand with Noisy, who acted as my guide, we finally made it to land. Just like she asked, we get to feel the grass beneath our feet, and a breeze that whispers with sweet winds.
~cue~
[CREDITS]
AJ Lebeau wrote this story as part of an Indigenous Future Writing workshop led by Kashona Notah who is an Iñupiaq tribal citizen.
All the stories from this workshop — including AJ’s! — are in a new book called From the Heart of Our Nations. If you want to read more stories like hers, there’s a link to buy a copy in the show notes.
There will also be a live reading of the stories THIS Friday July 31st. You can join in person in Tulsa or virtually from anywhere. That link is also in the show notes.
If you like what you’ve heard, please leave a review. It’s one of the best ways to help more listeners find this show. You can also support First America by subscribing or sharing episodes with your friends.
First America was made possible by the generous support of the Henry Luce Foundation and nyu-yale american indian sovereignty project. Additional support came from NDN Collective, First Nations Development Institute, Yuhaaviatam (yv-HAA-vi-v-thum) of San Manuel (man-well) Nation, Borealis Philanthropy, Black Liberation Indigenous Sovereignty Collective, and the Tulsa Artist Fellowship. Our fiscal sponsor is Red Media.
I dreamed this project into the world in collaboration with an amazing group of Indigenous scholars including Maggie Blackhawk, Fond du Lac Ojibwe, Ned Blackhawk, citizen of the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone, Phil Deloria, descendant of the Standing Rock and Yankton Sioux tribes, and Nick Estes, citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe.
I, Rebecca Nagle, citizen of Cherokee Nation also reported, wrote, hosted and executive produced the show.
First America is produced by Critical Frequency and distributed by Pushkin Industries. Our managing producer is Amy Westervelt, senior producer and sound designer is Brendan Baker. Our story editor is Audrey Quinn.
Our producers are Jules Bradley, Sarah Ventre, Kim Nederveen Pieterse [Nedervee Petersuh] and Jordan Gahhhs-Pooray [Gass-Pooré].
Our editorial consultant is Connie Walker, citizen of the Okanese [okineese] First Nation. Fact-checking by Naomi Barr. Our partnerships director is Lindsay Crowder. Our development consultant is Jenny Lawton.
Our theme song is by Raven Chacon, who is Diné. Scoring by Laura Ortman, citizen of the White Mountain Apache tribe and Raven Chacon. Artwork by Keli Gonzales, citizen of Cherokee Nation.
Special thanks this episode to James Anthony Owen, Constance Owl (citizen of Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians), Barnes Powell, citizen of Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and Sarah Hopkins for tracking down the pronunciation of Sconadoya.
The team at Pushkin is Gretta Cohn, CEO; Eric Sandler, Chief Strategy Officer; Grace Ross, VP of Business Development; Morgan Ratner, Director of Marketing; Owen Miller, Content Delivery Associate; Kyra Posey, Creative Partnerships Manager; Jordyn McMillin, Social Media Manager; Brian Srebrenik [Tsreb-bren-ik], Senior Analytics Manager; and Jake Flanigan, Production Counsel.