God Is Red: Atlantis and the American Founders with Taylor Keen, Episode 7

In this 8th installment of the God is Red series, Taylor Keen (Omaha / Cherokee) takes us deep into his book, Rediscovering Turtle Island. We discuss the idea of an Indigenous Atlantis, diving into the sacred and ancient migration myths about "an Island in the east," and finish the dialogue on a study of the American Founding Fathers.

Learn more about Taylor's work HERE.

Purchase Rediscovering Turtle Island HERE.

Learn more about Daniel's work HERE.

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting the Stage: Hardest Episode Yet
• 5:30 Civilization, Stasis, and Settler Logic
• 11:30 Jefferson, Railroads, and Quiet Orders
• 18:30 Blessing and a Call for Forgiveness
• 23:30 Dispossession and Today’s “Green” Logic
• 29:00 Chapter Two: Indigenous Atlantis
• 36:00 Cherokee Origins and Seven Clans
• 44:00 Serpent Mounds: Ohio to Scotland
• 51:30 Serpents, Medicine, and Misread Scripture
• 58:30 Shared Symbols, One Tree of Life
• 1:05:30 From Kinship to Global Ego
• 1:09:30 Founder’s Dilemma: Taking America
• 1:15:00 Doctrine of Discovery to Law
• 1:21:00 Jefferson’s Pivot: Debt and Land Cessions
• 1:26:30 Manifest Destiny and “We Are the Saints”
• 1:31:30 Smallpox and Collapse of Nations

Transcript

Daniel: 0:00

Hello. Welcome to the podcast. Welcome back to another episode of God is Red, where Taylor Keene, my dear friend, my brother, my mentor, and I are diving into the second and I think third chapter of this book, Rediscovering Turtle Island. This subseries within the general series of God is Red within this Unchad podcast. We'll be releasing episodes walking through Taylor's book, Rediscovering Turtle Island. Over the past couple of months, Taylor and I have brought up this book over and over again. And uh the next 10 or so episodes here, we'll be walking through chapter by chapter this book so that we can go through it together. And so this is your point, this is your moment. If you want to have this personalized uh book club, if you will, uh, with Taylor and I walking through this monumental, this magnanimous book, uh, please pick up a copy. Link is in the show notes. Uh find it locally, call your library, call your local bookstore, uh, do whatever you need to do to get a hold of this book, and uh and we can read it together. These uh conversations, I think, have been the highlight for me. We've recorded a number of them, we're slowly editing and getting them out. And the depth that Taylor and I are able to go into uh using the framework of his book, his words, and the chapters that allow us to be really focused has, I think, produced what I believe to be some of the greatest conversations and really intimate yarns that this podcast has ever seen. And so um I just am so honored, so blessed, absolutely privileged to be in the place, uh, to be releasing these uh to our community, our listeners, you guys, if you're new, follow along. If you're old, thank you. Thank you for being here. This conversation, today's conversation, um, is a difficult one. I I I personally think today's episode, this one here, is the most intimate, the most hard, the most deep. We cover unbelievable philosophical, spiritual, and political, sociocultural, even as well, um, realities and books uh all about this idea of anothering, the differentiation between uh settler colonial culture and Western European Enlightenment philosophies and mores and the uh counterposed indigenous worldview, this concentric worldview, if you will. We go really deep into it. And so I think uh if you put the time in, if you listen to the whole episode, it's about an over an hour. Um, I think you'll be quite rewarded whether or not you agree with Taylor's words uh or not. I think the exposure to them can only be beneficial to you. And so with that, let's jump into today's episode with my dear brother, Taylor Keene. I always feel like after our conversations, it's good that we're only doing this once a week or once every other week sometimes, because I need some time to digest and really think about what we just what we just walk through. Especially um, it's so interesting. I don't think you and I have really had this conversation, but every time we publish an episode, we lose it's it's different. It spans maybe 20 to 30, sometimes 35, 40 subscribers, just like unsubscribe from the podcast, they're just out, and then we get like 15 new ones. So like we lose 30, we get 15. We lose 30, we get 15. And I was telling Morgan the other day, it feels like we're we're cleaning house. Like all of the people that shouldn't be here are just leaving, and all the people that should be here are are gravitating, they're finding us. So that means it's a cool experience.

Taylor: 4:12

I mean to that they're listening and being bothered by it.

Daniel: 4:21

Which I think is very healthy. I am bothered by it. I think I think um these conversations have stretched me, especially some recent ones, and in very good ways, um, like the sinew or the stitching of my being is being pulled a little bit. I think that's very healthy. Especially like the the especially concerning or following the last episode, you and I were talking about civilization, if you remember. And I was thinking something we didn't get to discuss, which I don't want to uh pull him back into the conversation and fear that he takes over again. But Alexis Dictokville uh defines civilization as only that which can erupt from a stable stasis, right, of people being in place for long periods of time in particular ways that really live against the land. Like you can't take De Tocqueville's definition of civilization and then make it a land-loving people or a landed people or an earthling-like people or a concentric or kinship-based people. It's people that can only have stewardship and never be stewards, stewarded by by the mother by earth, and how different that is in uh, or at least how different it is from the way that you talk about civilization, especially here in the Western hemisphere. Um, and then as we progress into chapter two in the book, which is all about Atlantis, which I cannot wait to dive into you with. Um, and then as we jump into the founder's dilemma too, which is chapter three, um, I don't know. I think that idea of civilization being so much more living than the Western concept of civilization being stasis, which is, I think, a very scientific way of looking at it. Is it interesting polarity between these two worlds that is God has read and and otherwise?

Taylor: 6:11

I'm just trying to remember what I uh because I know that when we get into uh Thomas Jefferson and the founding fathers, we're gonna piss a lot of people off. Yeah, there's some really great quotes that I might read in here. Thomas Jefferson's language alone. I don't know if I told you this, but uh at a certain point when I was doing the research and doing presentations and beginning to write. Um there was a friend of mine who was a fellow board member of um, I can't remember even which nonprofit we were on the board together with. Um and she became intrigued. We were at a board lunch and began to talk about it. And then, of course, we had to go to our board meeting. So she um invited me over for lunch. And then she um the last minute she sent me a note and said, Hey, do you mind if I invite some people? And I was inside, I was like, uh oh, who are you gonna invite? And it turned out it was the um recent chair emeritus of my university's history department. And I was like, he's not gonna like what I have to say. And she's oh no, he's not like that. He's very intrigued with your research. So we start going through the presentation, and I see him boiling. I knew he was gonna pop at some point. And I was uh discussing what I had found um at the Union Pacific Railroad uh museum, and um they were in the process of changing some of it out, but they had this old school interactive map with just like old incandescent little lights. So you push one button and it would show the railroad, you push another button, there was the lakes and the rivers, and then um another button. Well, in it was laid out all of the um Indian reservations, which I thought was interesting that they were in there in the first place. And so I was playing around with the little buttons, and I was looking at the reservations and then looking at how the railroad got laid out, and realized that there was no coincidence in between where the rail was going and where the reservations were. And I talked to the uh director at the museum and said, Hey, can we do a do some research? And she said yes. And eventually um, and I I I couldn't find it again, but in one of my resources, there was private letters in between uh Jefferson and um Meriwether Lewis, who had been uh he had been a military secretary. I can't remember what the title is. And Judah Dunt, something like that, anyways, um had had worked for uh Thomas Jefferson. So they had a previous uh relationship. And uh I had found these letters that were the public ones that he sent to both Lewis and Clark, and had all this flowery language about you tell the Indians that the great white father is gonna shepherd over them and protect them and lead them to good Christian lives, so on and so forth. And then he would send another letter, a private letter, to uh Lewis, and tell him the real marching orders is that I want you to detail how many chiefs, warriors, and braves they have, and if they don't go along with this, um, you know, there's gonna be hell to pay. And in it, the letter he was um telling them that if they didn't uh get along with his wishes, then he was gonna um point the future plans for the expansion of the West to go right through all the reservations, which is basically what happened. And I was discussing that letter, that's when he popped, and he went into a rage uh screaming at me, Thomas Jefferson had nothing to do with the railroad. And I'm like, you know, he's the signer of the Louisiana Purchase in full discretion. You know, his whole secret plan for Lewis and Clark, yes, it was to find a waterway to the West, but he was documenting this new territory and finding out the level of hostilities and making very broad um threats if we didn't go along. And he eventually calmed down. And I made sure not to react because I saw it coming, fortunately, and finished up the presentation, and you know, everyone was back to being nice again. Although our mutual friend was appalled at her friend's actions. She was shocked whenever she saw it. That's the part of the academy I can't stand is the ego part of it. And when I finished basically what he said was something along the lines of, well, that was a quaint presentation. And uh I said, well, thank you. And he said, um, your colleagues in anthropology must be very proud of you. And I said, I'm not an anthropologist, I'm a business guy. And long past due is the days that old white guys in ivory towers can tell us what our history is. We own our own history. But that's how I knew. I'm gonna piss people off with all this stuff, telling them the the truth. That's the founder's dilemma of America is that rewriting of history and glossing over all the ugly things and the whole doctrine of discovery. But I am uh remiss if not uh for offering a blessing, and since we asked you to do it last time, I it's my turn. Aho daddyho wakunda, wakanda Wakanda Gahega, Wakanda Wa Yi Omate Uda, Welkishna, Dailwadaga, Uvidar Wanga they creator spirit, we come to you at this at this time to give thanks for the day, for our lives, for our families, for those that depend upon us, count upon us, need us in their lives. May we all forgive one another. May we all be forgiven so that we can be free. Creator Spirit, as we look forward to the bountiful harvest, um we ask for gentle rains and easy wind that we can enjoy the bountiful harvest. Prepare for fall and the winter and the sleeping of the world. Greater spirit, may we all love Mother Earth. May we all try to get along, try to be kind to one another, be respectful of one another, be helpful. These are the teachings that you gave to us long ago. Oh.

Daniel: 14:45

Well, thank you, Taylor. You are a uh a deep well of these stories. I didn't ever every conversation we have, you offer some riveting tale from your life and experiences. It just I don't know, I think the more, as we were talking earlier, I think the more I dive into this work with you, this sacred blessing, I think, to many people, to myself, hopefully to yourself. The the more I realize how bereft the American landscape is. And while you and I run in them all day, to some degree, it's our lives, how so many other people don't. It's so surprising. Like I sent you that message that that I got from one of our listeners recently, just talking about the power uh of people coming together and remembering these ancient ways, these ancient pathways to much more beautiful and sacred life. And uh I count myself blessed, especially as we get to walk through your book. Um, last week's conversation uh about civilization and Alexis de Togville and all of that worthlessness uh was riveting. And I can't not see a connection between your view uh of the American founders and how you write about them in your book, Rediscovering Turtle Island, which I know we'll talk about here in a minute, and so much of the green movement today. We've talked about this on earlier episodes. Um, but in your book, you write about how the beginning of this founder's dilemma, this imperial colonialism, it's both imperial and colonial, uh, this American political experiment, if you will, necessitates the dispossession. There's a word you use, dispossession quite often in this chapter. And uh I think so much of the green movement is also dependent, it's predicated upon that same dispossession. That is to say, that you know, we have to steward life in order for it to be healthy. That is to say, we have to dispossess or depossess the own self-directing and self-autonomous nature of Mother Earth and all of her creations and assert that power, that control over them for them to be healthy or for them to enact health upon the landscape. Um, and while I have no interest in talking about regenerative agriculture in the moment, uh, I don't want to let the moment pass without at least equating the idea that to many degrees, I think it's that same dispossession that is still ruling the dominant class today. And so to me, this isn't just historical work. This seems to be like a historical analysis of maybe an old problem, but maybe also, or I would argue definitely also, the current analysis of the very current problem that I think there's hope for, but only hope because of conversations like this. So again, thanks for joining us again.

Taylor: 17:50

Thanks for having me.

Daniel: 17:52

I'll uh I'll present this to you. Um, it seems like you and I are both itching to get to chapter three, the founder's dilemma, but I I would be remiss to just hop and skip over the chapter two uh in your book, An Island in the East, a comparative analysis of indigenous Atlantis. Um I don't know if you want to talk about it or how you want to talk through it. I think it is absolutely interesting as you dive into the Iroquoian and Algonquian myths and how they relate to the European and Greek understanding of an island in the East, what that means, what that might look like, how that might connect us, things like this.

Taylor: 18:27

As I uh recount in the book, um I was very struck by the Cherokee Genesis story, which um I first heard uh recounted uh out at the Red Smith stomp dance ceremonial grounds um outside of uh Telequah, what is now Oklahoma. Um pronunciation in Cherokee is uh Daw Leequa. And it means uh two is good enough, and it had to do with our arrival into Indian territory uh in the eighteen thirties, uh after the Treleteers and they sent out three different sentries to uh look for a new capital. And uh we don't know what happened to the third one, but two of them met and picked the spot that is now Talquah. And uh the Cherokee said two of the centuries is good enough, and uh that's where the name comes from. And I always heard this story, and it was just constantly beautiful because you know it's cataclysmic uh in its origins that a long time ago we came from an island in the east, meaning the Atlantic Ocean. And um it was said to have um volcanoes and large turtles on the island. Um makes me think of uh Galapagos and uh eventually there was an eruption, um which my guess was uh triggered something on the fault default line and caused a tsunami. Um it depends on how far back we're talking about. Um those who are familiar with Graham Hancock's work in um ancient apocalypse gives an another theory that there was uh interstellar object at the atmosphere and broke up into smaller pieces uh at the end of the younger dryas, uh after the last glacial maximum period and uh it struck in multiple different different places, some of which were on the uh glacial sheet uh with enough power and heat to um cause the flood narratives. If something hid in the water, then they just cause tidal waves, tsunamis. Uh so we somewhere in between all of that is yeah, whatever the cause of it. We had to flee the island and a lot of people were lost, and only seven uh survived. If anyone has the opportunity to go to the Turkey Nation History Museum there in Talquaw, uh you'll see in the stairwell painted on the walls, it's a artistic depiction of those original seven, and they became our seven clans. And uh the story says that we went inland into what is now South America, and eventually began to work our way north. Jerkeys are the only um indigenous peoples in in North America that used uh guns. We still use those in a ceremonial fashion in the first war. Um and we're the only tribe that has double-walled basketry, both of the attributes uh that I mentioned uh are typically reserved for South American tribes. And as the story continues, it says that we came to the great old man or the Mississippi and crossed over it and kept going north. Cherokees are a um Iroquois-speaking dialect. Um it was only later um that we began to move south. Uh, our closest related tribe are the Seneca. And Cherokee is the only surviving southern dialect of Iroquoian. Um when we made our way down to what was our homeland at the time of uh European contact, we were surrounded by Muscogian-speaking peoples, uh Chickasaw, Choctaw, Greek, and they're all related to one another. That that story is always haunted by thoughts and memory um thinking about something so that would alter the course of our history and then future. And I was always taken with that story, so um eventually I was doing my my uh research because there's um one of the earths and work mounds, and I detailed this in the book, and it's based on exactly what they call that one mound, but it's a it's a serpent mound, and it's very similar to one over in Europe. Um and on on the one in Europe, there's a different terminus or tail to the serpent. But uh in the one here in North America, there's a very uh interesting terminus, and uh the image itself is on page twenty three of the book. It's the uh Portsmouth group, and it's got a series of descending in size concentric circles with a circular mound at the middle. And as I began to where where is this located?

Daniel: 25:30

Yeah, I see the Ohio River is close.

Taylor: 25:33

Yeah, most of the mounds are in Ohio. Um I I I'm trying to recall how how much of it's left. My guess is the Portsmouth group, a lot of them are probably now houses or parking lots or something, but you know, we've got the record back from the 1800s from Squire and Davis.

Daniel: 25:52

Um at this period, do you know and and correct my information because it could be very well wrong. At this time, was the Ohio River Valley a hunting ground or was it habitated? Like what did did people live in this region?

Taylor: 26:05

Yes. And I you know, it depends on how far back we're we're talking about, but you've got the uh Adina and Hopewell periods followed by the Mississippi. And I I I never uh can remember what the what the dates are for those different time periods because their anthropological has to do with who who discovered it. So I I just speak about the ancestors. But um we know that there was a pretty serious drought in that area. Uh I want to say somewhere around uh 1200. So you saw people exiting out of there. Um that might have been happening over a period of time, and probably one of the reasons that my Sian ancestors left that area and made their way to what is now Picture Cave and Cohukia. But uh you saw a lot of migrations out of the east. And um that image just stuck with me, and I kept thinking I've seen that somewhere, and eventually I figured out where I where it was. And in the uh Timeeus and the Critias books, um, it gives a description of Atlantis or the home of uh Poseidon. And if I recall, um the Atlantic Ocean comes from the same base root of Atlantis. So I I thought that was interesting as well. I I will say this, um by bringing up Atlantis and bringing up Plato, uh, that's been some of the um only criticisms that I've gotten from the book from indigenous peoples. Um and the criticism, of course, is that I'm you know trying to weave ancient Native America into European tales. And that's not what I'm doing in the work. I start with our creation stories. So as an indigenous Cherokee, um those are the most important things that we have stories. And I found comparisons. So if you look at it in the ancient apocalypse perspective, perhaps that's whatever was there beforehand. We as human beings like to think that we're only getting smarter and evolving, but we're the same hominids that we were 300,000 years ago, anatomically speaking. And who knows what we had created in the long lost past. So, but that connection, knowing that there were these two serpent mounds, um one in northern Europe and one in North America, made me wonder um where does that come from? I just love the whole notion of Atlantis. I love the whole theosophical movement from the early 1900s, and one of my anthro anthropology mentors uh tried to talk me out of putting it into the book because he felt it was sensationalism. Um I'm really glad I left it in because I love to talk about these things. It makes me wonder how we're all connected together. So you've got the earthen earthenworks of North America. But we also have earthen works in northern Europe. Um some in Ireland, I assume there's some in Scotland too. Um Sweden and other places have all these earthenworks and they're in the same shapes and observing solstice and equinoxes and I assume to the stars as well. When we get to go to Ireland, brother, that's what that's what we're gonna figure out.

Daniel: 30:31

That's right. That's right. Yeah, both anthro anthropologically and spiritually. This connection that excites me. I I think there's a uh this this I think the idea of a global earth, a shared Atlantis between the Cherokee and the enlightened West, if I can generalize a group of people into such a term, there's this uh inevitability of demise that's securing. I I've heard this said in many different ways, but sayings like uh if the indigenous of North America would have been subjected to the you know the Great Khan Empire or the you know Mongol invasions or the blank or the blank or the Norman conquests, they would have responded in the same way we did. There's a there's a distancing there that to a lot of degrees is is securing to many people. And that is to say the isolation of, let's say, the Cherokee in another hemisphere uh produced a different people that is not necessarily special, just they weren't, you know, subjected to the same ills, to the same pressures. And so there's an inevitable demise that is securing, that we were inevitably going to participate in this demise because of what we are, that is to say, we, as in the Western world, Greece, all the way through modern-day Ireland and everywhere in between, uh, that is securing, that is a safety net, if you will. And I think the connection of all people, the idea that we are all related, and that maybe we even share this idea of Atlantis, whatever that might mean, the physical sense, or in the emotional, spiritual sense, or maybe both, um, to some degree, I think denudes that. It reduces that because what you have is the Cherokee came from the same beginnings, the same hearthstone, but then arrived in a very different place. And so if what you're writing is correct, or at least if the questions you are asking are worth asking, regardless of the answers, I think it necessitates the idea that actions produce consequences, and that, you know, so does creator, but actions have a large part in these consequences, that the Cherokee decisions were different than the Greek decisions or the Roman decisions.

Taylor: 32:51

I'm trying to remember the name of the corresponding one in Europe. I'm just looking for that part of me. It's actually in Scotland, it's the Lochnell Serpent Mound. And it looks nearly identical except for the fact that it has a different terminus on it.

Daniel: 33:10

How do you spell that, Lochnell?

Taylor: 33:14

L-O-C-H-N-E-L-L. Got it. There's there's one, and there's another one too. The Lochnell is kind of um seem to be made of stone near the lake there. It's got a spiraling hell. And there is another one, and I thought that was in what is now England.

Daniel: 33:48

Yeah, I've never seen this before.

Taylor: 33:52

So cause then you're getting into just the whole, you know, what is the meaning of the serpent? Um take a biblical perspective. You're gonna say that it was the serpent that wooed Eve into original sin. But it's the origin of wisdom. Um I'm I'm trying to think of uh symbol for um medicine pronounced Caduceus, also a symbol of Hermes. And then when you have the two snakes intertwine, I'm trying to remember what that one's called.

Daniel: 34:35

I I don't know, but it it it is interesting you bring it this up because the the serpent in the book of Genesis, in the first book of the Torah for the Hebrew Hebrew people, it it's interesting because for so many thousands of years that term was not translated as serpent. It's a very modern translation. And you know, the tradition and generally like the general Judeo slash heavily capitalized Christian traditions carry it as a serpent because it's easy in many pagan cultures, many indigenous cultures, many hearth-based or heathen cultures revere the serpent. And so it's very easy, like we were just talking about easy this distancing the forcing of the othering is very simple when your own creation story in the book of Genesis blames the snake for it all. But as Nakush and in in the word, it could be when it's translated through Greek and all of these things mean snake or serpent. Um, but really in the original context, it means like the enchanter, the shiner, the divinator. It's a whole different context. It has nothing to do with a slithering serpent. And so I think it's again, it's really interesting that the older we go back, the snake has nothing to do with evil. But as we progress more into the enlightenment, into this idea of the founder's dilemma, which I know we're playing with and flirting with as we progress through this through this conversation, this yarn, you see it evolve into that idea, that ent that uh that identity of a serpent being the evil one, the evil caster, the fallen, the tempter, the temptress. And so it it's so it doesn't surprise me that all the way from Atlantis to the Cherokee to Lochnell, uh, to this one in England to many other places, that the idea and reverence for the serpent is so bastardized and made shameful and placed to the side in that barbaric heathen pagan culture.

Taylor: 36:24

So, yes, I was just looking at my notes here, and the uh caduceus is the two um serpents intertwined around a rod, a staff, and uh it comes from um Hermes uh after he ended a fight between two snakes, they wrapped themselves around his staff, forming the symbol. Um the rod with the single serpent is the rod of Asclepius. The uh symbolism of the Caduceus represents balance, duality, harmony, and commerce. Duality and balance between opposing forces, spiritual transformation and energy, peace and diplomacy, commerce and negotiation. How far we've gotten away from the original meanings. But I know it's got um symbolism in uh in the Hindu uh traditions um in terms of kundalini energy. It was in the Sumerian cultures, and I don't know much about it. I don't know if you do. If what's the role in druidic traditions about the serpent?

Daniel: 37:46

Yeah, that's a it's an interesting one. When it comes down to snakes in Irish mythology and history, there's a weird relationship there because St. Patrick, the good old boy St. Patrick, is known to have driven the snakes out of Ireland. Um, but we know ecologically speaking from an evolutionary perspective. So Ireland and the entire eastern, I'm sorry, the western peninsula of Europe can generally be called Dogerland. And Dogerland is a massive structure, a low plateau in the sea under the underneath the Atlantic Ocean today, that uh maybe 8,000 years ago, 8,500 years ago, maybe my date is a little bit off, could be nine or 10,000 years ago. So about 8,000 BC was dry land, a massive peninsula. The entire subcontinent of the Europe, Europe land was was still above seawater. And at that time, Scotland, England, you know, the Isle of Man, Ireland, places like this were really just mountaintops. Livable, of course, but just mountaintops. And then as a sea level rose, Dogoland went under the water, and we are left with the British Isles popularly so-called. Ireland was the first to become an island, island in the truest sense. Um, England, maybe five and a half thousand years ago, so 4,000 BC, right to the start of the building of the pyramids, was still a peninsula onto the mainland Europe. So Britain, from an evolutionary uh mammalian migratory and amphibian migratory pathway, is much newer as an island, as an oasis, as a harbor in and of its own way than Ireland, Ireland. Um, right when Dogaland was rising, the Irish Sea and between Ireland and Britain or Wales or Scotland, however, you want to see that. Um, separated island kicked Ireland off much earlier. And so, from an ecological perspective, Ireland is a very unique place, not as unique as something like Madagascar. Madagascar is obviously very unique ecologically, but Ireland is similar to Madagascar in the sense that it has been an island in that region for longer than the rest of the other regions or land bases in that general ecotone. And so it's actually pretty uh unclear. Um, but general ecologists today, anthropological ecologists, botanists, things to this, uh to the scientific nomenclature, uh, have pretty well concluded that, or at least concluded well enough, that snakes are not, as you would say, native to Ireland, um, not in the in the old way. And so the idea of St. Patrick coming in the whatever, I don't even know when he came, 600 AD, 700 AD, something like this. And he banished all the snakes. The snakes never actually were there. They had left with the ice age, and Ireland became an island separated from the rest of the mainland Europe, um, ecologically speaking, migr migration uh speaking, um, much earlier than that. But it is interesting, that said, that there is a memory of the weave, right? So in a lot of Irish symbolism, ancient Irish symbolism, especially dealing with the Duitic practices, you have these weaves. So, like at Newgrange, let's say, Newgrange is a passage portal, a passage tomb. And so on the winter solstice, if you were in that passage tomb in the very heart of it, in the center of it, and you were to turn around and look to the sun beaming perfectly, the megalithic architecture is just perfect. Let's the winter solstice sun, right at the rising come right in the main portal entrance door. But if you were at the heart of New Grange at that moment, you turned around, you look through the portal door, the sun, the dawn sun is shining right upon you, you would see what is today called Triskelion, which is triskelos, the Greek for three legs. You would see these curved architecture of shapes and symbols that weave in and out of each other like snakes. And there are some anthropologists that I know, some historians, some mythologists or symbologists, whatever they want to call themselves, that argue that uh this is an ancient memory of a creative deity, deity, the deity of death and rebirth, that we today don't have knit language for due to colonization and forgetting and genocides of our own way thousands of years ago, um, either from the Romans or from the Brits or from the Normans, etc. Um, but there's this ancient memory of snakes in Ireland, um, long before it was an island. So we're talking 10,000 BC. Um that is the extent of my knowledge, though. But it is interesting, though, that Scotland has the Lochnell snake or serpent mound, um, because Scotland is exponentially newer, uh, exponentially newer from an ecological perspective, much more recent as an island, that is to say, connected to the British Isles, than Ireland would be. Um, so there there would have been a more modern practice of serpent worship or shirt serpent you know reverence in Scotland than there would be in Ireland, according to my understanding.

Taylor: 42:26

What I always wonder is um was there just one Atlantis? I use that broad term um specifically, uh if indeed we are all related. What if we all have ancestors on the same island? Unless we get back to our conversation about a Principia Theologia. Nearly all cultures have a tree of life, roll of serpents is peace and balance. I'm trying to recall the name of the Great Serpent in the Norse traditions. When I was writing the book doing the research, these were some of the epiphanies that I came across, and I remember because um I started with uh the great tree of life, and um now I know it's in many more cultures, but I've got a colored drawing of uh what the tree of life represents from an indigenous perspective. It's uh it's an Axis Mundi, and uh and its branches are the upper realm, which is ruled by the Thunderbeans or Thunderers, and their messengers, the thunderbirds, and and its roots is the lower watery realm, uh inhabited by water spirits. Chief amongst them is the great serpent itself. And then I found the meaning behind all of the Norse traditions and uh plotted all those as an overlay for what I had for the indigenous model, and and then I um looked to uh mystic Judaism, um Kabbalistic tree of life, the etch Chaim. And uh they all lined up. That was a big epiphany for me. One of my favorite biblical sites is King Og's circle. And it's uh stoneworks with a giant megalithic center, but it looks just like the circle of uh Poseidon's temple. So it's everywhere. I believe King Odd was uh a descendant of Cain.

Daniel: 45:16

Wow. Yeah, it's it's it's conversations like this that to me it just asks now what we can put you know, arc archaeologists and anthropologists they can pontificate all they like. I always think about Vindeloria in his book Custer Die for Your Sins when he writes about anthropologists. Just seems that's like what they do. And they have a place, of course. And uh No, no. But it just it just I don't I don't as we progress through the the early appetizer of this founder's dilemma, your next chapter, it just it just begs the question if we are indeed all related, if we all worship and celebrate and have great reverence and thankfulness for the same symbology, then what? Now what? What does this all mean? Because, like to some degree, what I'm asking is it I see this circle where let's pretend that all of these suppositions are correct, that we all came from the same Atlantis, or maybe we came from a network of Atlantises that all had their own problems in different eras, or whatever that might mean. And indeed, we are all related. We then dispersed and we did what we did. Life happened, history unfurled, and now we're back together. Like there's a sense of globalism again, a centralness. That is to say, you are in Nebraska, I am in Eastern Virginia, we have conversations we can discuss. Like the world is uniting in a very strange way. Not always good, of course, globalism isn't always necessarily a perfect wonder. But to some degree we are coming back together. And it's thoughts like these that I feel like are the appetizers to a much more sumptuous meal.

Taylor: 47:04

Pondering such thoughts makes us realize that we're all not that different from one another. And that we indeed created the same God. It's only our human ego that gets in between that notion. I think that's why I'm so attracted to a notion that we might have a well of course we have a common beginnings. We're all human beings.

Daniel: 47:32

Yeah, and I think I think there could be an impetus in some to thereby take these thoughts and erase the local permutations of the story's evolution. But to me, I I feel like the opposite is most holy. It's like a couple conversations ago, you were describing the many different uh names associated with the figures and stories and spirits represented in Thunder or in Thunder Cave and Picture Cave. Um and I can't remember even a quarter of them, but you said this this nation, this tribe calls this the man with human heads or something like this. And it seems like that, just like different peoples call different aspects of these stories by different words because of this and that, it seems that it's also true that our differences are described as localized permutations of the same truth. And it seems like we missed that. And by missing that, we created problem that permutated into problem that permutated into problems that feel unsolvable today. I think for many people they feel unsolvable. Whereas if you just see them as localized permutations of the same intrinsic truth, the same created or creator web laced or strung or slithered between us all, that it's very easy to grab onto that, like to hook your tether into that central weight lace, that central web, that central string, and and come together. Um but but you're right. The human ego, I think, is the untethering of people from that that singular strand, which is why we lose so many followers when we post these podcasts, by the way. Thank you. Because people get so mad, you know, they get so mad that their ego is in the way. And and maybe they see it or maybe they don't. And I'm not saying that everybody leaves us because of that. Maybe they just don't care for these things. But I think that's also their ego working.

Taylor: 49:37

Speaking of pissing people off, I guess we're ready to talk about the founder's dilemma of America.

Daniel: 49:47

Yes. Yeah, let's do it. Where where do you want to start?

Taylor: 49:54

Let's start with mine.

Daniel: 49:59

That's the best. That's the best place.

Taylor: 50:03

So I want to start by um reading the sort of forward to the third chapter. Subtitle is The First People's Historical Perspective of America. And um this was published in a um Mormon um newspaper called The Evening in the Morning Star, June of 1832. And I'm quoting from what was published in the newspaper. The following is found in an ancient history of Connecticut. Soon after the settlement of New Haven, several persons went over to what is now the town of Milford, were finding the soil very good, they were desirous to effect a settlement. But the premises were in the peaceable possession of the Indians, and some conscientious scruples arose as to the propriety of deposing and expelling them. To test the case, a church meeting was called, and the matter determined by the solemn vote of that sacred body. After several speeches had been made in relation to the subject, they proceeded to pass votes. The first was the following voted, that the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. This passed in the affirmative, and next voted that the earth is given to the saints. This was also determined like the former, the third voted that we are the saints, which passed without a dissenting voice. The title was considered indisputable, and the Indians were soon compelled to evacuate the place and relinquished the the possession to the rightful owners in 1832. That's the s that's the story of the taking of America. I found that passage to show the pompousness and the ego of we are the saints, and so in saint-like behavior, we're just gonna take it because we're the rightful owners. So what you can't get around is the notion of the doctrine of uh discovery. And most of this goes back to several papal edicts. The first was in 1455, the papal bull Romanus pontificus, Pope Nicholas V, to King Alfonso V of Portugal that approved Portugal's expansion into lands that they wanted to claim along the west coast of Africa. Then following uh Christopher Columbus's exploits in the West Indies, the 1493 papal bull intercara, issued by Pope Alexander VI, ratified the right to the New World expansionism. It was after the fact, by granting to the Catholic Majesties Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile discovery rights to all the lands west and south of the Meridian Line, 100 leagues east and south of any of the islands of the Azores. 1792, United States Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson cited the Papal Bulls as the international precedent to justify the U.S. taking of Native American land. And the doctrine of discovery wasn't embodied into U.S. legal code until uh Chief Justice John Marshall's majority opinion in Johnson versus Macintosh, which transferred the ownership of British lands in the Americas to the United States. And I'm quoting on the discovery of this immense continent, the great nations of Europe were eager to appropriate to themselves so much of it as they can respectively acquire. As they were all in pursuit of nearly the same object, it was necessary to avoid conflicting settlements and consequent war with each other, to establish a principle that all should acknowledge as the law by which the right of acquisition, which they all asserted, should be regulated as between themselves. The history of America from its discovery to the present day proves we think the universal recognition of its principles. I um followed through notions of slavery of indigenous peoples back to the Pequot Wars, King Philip's War of 1675, and in the subchapter titled The Architect of Dispossession. So in the beginning in 1786, he had a very uh benign approach to federal Indian policy. It may be regarded as certain that not a foot of land will ever be taken from the Indians without their own consent. The sacredness of their rights is felt by all thinking persons in America, as in Europe. But before this policy could begin, Jefferson left for France to be the United States minister. Jefferson led an effort with Congress to craft these land acquisition policies, which were enacted in the form of the land ordinances of 1784 and 1785, and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. The land ordinance of 1785 began with good intentions. I'm quoting, the utmost good faith shall always be observed towards the Indians. Their lands and property shall never be taken from them without their consent, and in their property rights and liberty. They shall never be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and lawful wars authorized by Congress. But laws founded in justice and humanity shall from time to time be made for preventing wrongs being done to them and for preserving peace and friendship with them. By 1803. Let me ask. Go ahead.

Daniel: 56:46

Let me stop you just for one second and ask. What I can't figure out is, you know, in 1785 and in the land ordinance, the Northwest Territory, the thing you're quoting from, the spirit in that language seems to look at the Indian as a future, not as a past, if that makes sense. So he he's writing in in Washington at this point, right? The Revolutionary War ended in 1781, I believe. Um we didn't have a constitution, I think, until 1789, could have that off just a little bit. Um 1783 or 84 uh was the Articles of Confederation. So this is an acting government post-war of independence, looking at the quote, Indian problem and the status of the Indians and our quote, you know, peace and friendship with them as a future thing, right? We should always be observed towards the Indians. But that's to some degree standing on top of an East already conquered. Do you do you think when Jefferson was writing, he was thinking of Indians as those further west, like over the Appalachian Mountains, over that first frontier, if you will? Or do you think he was writing respectively or retroactively, looking back and saying, so in this region in 1708, when John Smith came up the James River from the Jamestown settlement and looked at the monikins and history unfurled from there? I mean, that's obviously almost 200 years previous to this point. And I don't think anybody in this region, indigenous or otherwise, would think that the uh preserving of peace and friendship happened. So again, the question is, do you think when Jefferson was writing that he was looking toward the quote, Indians of the future? Or do you think he was thinking retroactively thinking about the Indians of the past of the Virginia territory that he lived in, which is 45 minutes north of me, by the way?

Taylor: 58:37

Powerful question. I don't know the answer to it, but I do know that his policy perspective begins to change. He was president uh from 1801 to 1809, so um the next quote I won't I want to share with your listeners is uh when he was president. This was in uh 1803 in a uh private letter to the governor of Indiana Territory, William Henry Harrison. But this letter being unofficial and private, I may with safety give you a more extensive view of our policy respecting Indians. Be glad to see the good and influential individuals among them run in debt, because we observe that these debts get beyond what the individuals can pay. They become willing to lock them off by a cession of lands. Should any tribe be foolhardy enough to take up the hatchet at any time, the seizing of the whole country of that tribe and driving them across the Mississippi show only condition of peace, would be an example to others and a furtherance of our final consolidation. Whatever, um, now that he's uh the president of the United States, it's a very different tone. One last quote. Um, this was after the Civil War. The only thing left between manifest destiny and an exploration of the Great West were the Indians. Samuel Bowles, the New England newspaper editor, details his views on Indians. And I'm quoting, we know the Indians are not our equals. We know that our right to the soil as a race capable of its superior improvement is above theirs. And let us act openly and directly our faith. Quote, the earth is the Lord's. It is given by him to the saints for its improvement and development, and we Anglos are the saints. Let us say to him, You are our ward, our child, the victim of our destiny, ours to displace, ours also to protect. We want your hunting grounds to dig gold from, to raise grain on, and you must move on. But so long as we choose, this is your home, your prison, your playground. I know hearing these things is uh troubling for many. But the truth shall set you free. I always bring this up, but uh the other thing that you can't get around besides Federal Indian policy and the United States breaking every single treaty that it ever made with any of the tribes. Not one of them was held up, is the is the role of smallpox and other European um epidemics. Native Americans were extremely susceptible to smallpox and Spanish flu, it depends on the area. Um that I always discussed is what happened in uh what is now Nebraska. Um there were at least three documented waves, eighteen hundred, eighteen thirty, and eighteen sixty, roughly. And in be in between the three of them, you saw death rates, decimation rates of eighty-five to ninety-five percent of the population. So this is a part of the founders' dilemma of America. Um probably many Americans want to believe that, you know, we're um conquered nations. What's there to conquer if there's five to fifteen out of a hundred gone? The um documented uh Dr. Wishert um Emeritus uh historian out of uh University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Uh he wrote a um unsettling work called um The Dispossession of the Nebraska Indians. The main title is an unspeakable sadness. And he was documenting how many before and how many were left. The Pawnees are estimated to have between 14,000 and 21,000 members of their tribe. After smallpox, there were fourteen hundred. The Omaha's numbered around three thousand or down to three hundred, the Poncas 2,000 down to 200. And I what I always encourage people to try to imagine is imagine 100 of your closest family and friends, and then randomly have to get rid of 85 or 95 of them. So what's left after that is there's not much resistance left. I go through in the book different um population estimates. That's also a part of the founder's dilemma. There seems to be a bias towards limiting the number of how many indigenous peoples were here, as well as limiting the antiquity of how long we've been here. I think if there were fewer numbers of us, and if we weren't weren't here very long, then the guilt is less. But some of those estimates put populations in North America, which was less populous than Mesoamerica, um at around 10 million. Now with LIDAR, we're finding all sorts of new sites, especially in Mesoamerica and South America. There's a fascinating movie called um The Lost City of Z or Z in the British vernacular about uh the Irish cartographer who goes down to the Amazon and uh discovers the remains of a great ancient uh indigenous population and city, and he goes back to the to the Royal Geographic Society and proceeds to tell them of what he's discovered, and he's basically booed booed down as there's no way these savages could have had all what you're talking about. Then it goes back to different uh perspectives, documentation of what the conquistadors saw on their first travels down there. And in many cases, they couldn't even make it to the shore, or how many spears and arrows were being shot at them. Um many of them left and came back however many years later to find that those cities were gone. Um, smallpox again. So that is the backdrop. Um it goes back to the whole um Burning Strait theory, which I I talk about, um, why that was so conclusive and so ingrained within the disciplines of anthropology. And that goes back to um the first founding uh director of the Smithsonian and the Bureau of Ethnology, John Wesley Powell. And uh in it in the chapter there I detail the quotes from his first paper, which like um legal precedence kind of sets the case precedence for everything that was to follow after that. The paper is entitled on limitations to the use of some anthropological data. In the monuments of antiquity found throughout North America in camp and village sites, graves, mounds, ruins, and scattered works of art, the origin and development of art in savage and barbaric life may be satisfactorily studied. Incidentally, too, hints of customs may be discovered, but outside of this, the discoveries made have often been illegitimately used, especially for the purposes of connecting the tribes of North America with the people or so-called race of antiquities in other portions of the world. Ultimately, what he's saying in that paper is that there will be no what he referred to as extralimital origins. John Wesley Powell was um a true adherent to the let me just find this. He was a true adherent of the uh eugenics movement, which was very prominent, uh especially among ethnologist work at Harvard University, which basically says that Europeans are superior peoples and it uh had a vast drastic impact on federal Indian policy. That's why Native Americans are the only uh U.S. citizens which have blood quantums within the structures of our membership. And going on from um I always mention a Vine Deloria, uh, this is from God who's read, and uh he's taking from the words of the Lakota chief Lair, which I believe is in the 1920s. The white man does not understand America. He is too far removed from its formative processes. The roots of the tree of his life have not yet drasped the rock and the soil. The white man is still troubled by primitive fears. He still has in his consciousness the perils of this frontier continent, some of its vastness not yet having yielded to his questing footsteps and inquiring eyes. He shudders still with the memory of the loss of his forefathers, forefathers upon its scorching deserts and forbidding mountaintops. The man from Europe is still a foreigner and an alien, and he still hates the man who questioned his path across the continent. But in the Indian, the spirit of the land is still vested. It will be until other men are able to divide and meet its rhythm. Men must be born and reborn to belong. Their bones must be fortified of the dust of their forefathers' bones.

Daniel: 1:11:04

This this conversation reminds me have you studied the work of Samuel George Morton? He was a scientific skull mortician in the 1830s and 40s.

Taylor: 1:11:17

I have not.

Daniel: 1:11:20

You shouldn't. It should go as far as this conversation. But uh Samuel George Morton, uh, he was a Philadelphia patrician, uh, multiple medical degrees, um, dedicated scientist at the time. Um, but in the 1830s and 40s, he he pushed forward this idea of craniology. Um, that is to say, the study of the human skull, the study of the human cranium equating to race.

Taylor: 1:11:44

That's all part of the eugenics movement.

Daniel: 1:11:48

Right. Yep, exactly right. Yeah, his uh his approach triggered to some very large degree this new wave of scientific research. That is to say, that human skulls um actually equate or human skull brain size equates to race. And uh I have it here just from some notes I I took from uh for another reason, but uh let me see. Morton believed that his skull samples proved that Caucasians were the superior race, the Tutans and the Anglo-Saxons at top, the Jews in the middle, and the Hindus at the bottom. The Chinese he called a monkey race the black uh hut not hutton tots. I don't know who those that that culture is, the black hutton tots. Um, but the uh he classified them as the lowest and and the lowest animals, each even lower than the animals. Um so you again you see the beginning of eugenics and everything else, just looking at like cranial size and the idea that the Caucasian race has the most circular or spherically perfect skulls, in his opinion, and ergo perfection, the perfect race, etc. You have the beginning of eugenics. But then he writes, and and this is generally of particular interest, I think. He says the Indian brain is so deficient that the race would be impossible to civilize. It's he says, he writes that the uh the structure of the Indian appears to be different from that of the white man and all other races, nor can the two harmonize in their social relationships except on the most limited of scales. That was in a speech in uh 1842 to the Boston Society of Natural History. Um his work is titled Crania Americana. Um called the Indians Savage People with a peculiar and eccentric moral constitution, all derived from their small minds. That is to say, physically, scientifically studiable small minds.

Taylor: 1:13:43

If your listeners want to explore this topic further, um there's a really good uh PBS uh American experience documentary entitled uh the Eugenics Crusade, and it details how all of this happened and then it's an eventual collapse amongst the scientific communities. A lesson to be learned in history.

Daniel: 1:14:09

In his uh in his book, uh David Hurst Thomas um Vindaloria wrote the uh foreword to the book, Skull Wars. I have it here in front of me. There's an interesting conclusion derived from uh he calls it the Jeffersonian Dilemma. Um the same subject that you've been talking about, but he says uh the American school of anthropology, which Vindaloria so loved and honored, it's a joke, by the way, gave pre-Civil War America a way to cope with the Jeffersonian dilemma, whereas the Declaration of Independence proclaimed that all men were created equal. Black slaves needed to be considered equal only if, or were to be considered equal, only if they were the product of the very same creation with the capital C creation that gave rise to the Caucasian race. You know, and I think you write about this. I'm just simply seizing it with my own perspective. But you have both a political and a scientific impetus to this idea of manifest, manifest destiny. And I think the scientific is implicit in Jefferson's earliest thoughts. I think the political is absolutely and obviously implicit in his later writings that you read us uh from your own book, um, Rediscovering Turtle Island, to this idea that the discovery of an open, wanting, and savage-minded continent was ours for the taking, ours as in the Caucasian race. Um I was in conversation recently with a dear friend of mine, and we were talking about uh the episode um that you and I shared where I brought up the idea of um Laura Ingalls Wilder and the Little House in the Prairie books. And uh, you know, they were pushing back a little bit on some of the thoughts that I presented, and I defended what I said. I believed it every word. But I said in a similar way that, well, I'll leave that aside. I said in a in a way that I think you can recognize that shares commonality in your own life, I asked, even if the little house in the prairie presents interesting tales of a particular experience of a little pioneer girl, if you will, you can't neglect the fact that that experience only can exist in an empty land, in a forcibly empty land. Right? And that that seems to me to be this breaking point. The Jeffersonian doctrine of a West, of a um Northwest passage, of a land settle settlable and defendable, defendable, you know, against a British Empire. That uh, like in the Treaty of Paris in 1880, I'm sorry, in 1783, I believe is the date, maybe it's 1781, where at the end of the American War of Independence, the Revolutionary War was signed, it's very clear many American historians agree on the fact that the end of the American Revolutionary War, the Treaty of Paris, England did not see that as the terminable end, more of a cessation of war. That is to say, that Jefferson at this time, when he's purchasing the Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon, who basically stole it from the Spanish and everything else, he is trying to set up a defensible land base to continually defend, that is to say, to substantiate the defensive network against the imposing powers of the European continent. So that's political expediency and is not uninteresting from that way. But the thing that I get so often in reading your book or reading David Hurst Thomas book, Six Gaul War Wars, or reading Vindaloria, is lacing this political expediency, which is wrong outright from beginning to end, it still has that wrong vein through it. It is still only laceable, it is still only coverable from a blankets perspective, it still only has the ability to do what it does because of this inherent racism. Can I ask you a question, Taylor? I mean and you may not know or you may not want to answer, so know that I know that. But I don't think anybody today would stand up and say that because of the economic expediency and necessity of the American race-based chattel slavery system in the in the general South, that the slavery should have continued. That is to say, because the economy of the burgeoning United States of America so depended upon the black man's hands to pick cotton, that it should have continued. I mean, there's obviously racists playing racists today that would say that, but generally that's not the theme of American history. That the economic expediency of slavery should have necessitated slavery's continuance till today. But I don't hear many people making that same argument for the indigenous relations, for the spread, the colonization, the imperial rule, the genocide of American politics. That is to say, most people are arguing that I know, the historians that I know, that I learned from in college, my history professors, if you will, would claim that the virtue and value of the American political system overpowers the genocide that was required to produce it. Why do you think that these two things are counterposed? Why can we argue that slavery needs to end regardless of economics? But the Indian problem is just the Indian problem and it's implicit to the American historical system.

Taylor: 1:20:05

That's a tough question. I think with slavery, truly a southern agricultural complex. But it was uh grave enough of a system that the righteous abolitionists could get behind it. But when it comes to indigenous populations, everybody wanted their land. Everybody was there in the pursuit of the American dream. So psychologically speaking, I think this is still part of the founder's dilemma of America. At a certain point, they were met with that philosophical impediment that it was easy to overlook because what you could gain for your family and freedom, economic self-reliance was greater than the injustice of what was left after smallpox. And in many cases, they just wanted them out. So many states in the Midwest their Indian problem down to Indian territory to become Oklahoma. And even within Indian territory, it was supposed to become its own state. The state of Sequoia, and that wasn't enough, and thus came the state of Oklahoma. You have the the uh Curtis Act and all these other things that basically said it was illegal for the tribes to govern themselves. That's what happened to the five tribes after our golden age, after nearly slaughtering ourselves in the Civil War. The reason that uh the five civilized tribes of Oklahoma have that name is because they mirrored the southern plantation economic model. And in my lineage on the Cherokee side, there's both uh old settlers, meaning those that came before the trail of tears, there were incentive treaties in the eighteen teens, I believe eighteen seventeen and eighteen nineteen, to incentivize Cherokees to leave Carolina and and Georgia to come out to that point. Most of them were going into northwest Arkansas. Um eventually got moved into what was becoming Indian territory. But it's because we mirrored the southern plantation economies that we were called civilized. Um all the five tribes signed some degree of siding with the Confederacy, primarily because of Albert Pike, who had been the Indian agent for the United States, and then became the Indian agent for the Confederacy. And um helped woo the tribes into relationship with the Confederacy because he knew the pitfalls of previous treaties with the United States, so made very grand promises to the tribes if they sided with the Confederacy, and many of them did. Um notwithstanding the fact that you know I'm sure within all the tribes, the citizen base of the tribal nations were pulled both directions, and in many cases we just slaughtered ourselves for it. But after that, since we had severed our relationship with the United States, um it was a reconciliation treaty of the treaty of eighteen sixty-six, which brought back the federal relationship. Um also took more of the five tribes land uh away from them to re-establish it. After that, the five tribes built back up their economies, known in the golden age of Cherokee development. We had the male and female seminaries, the uh arguably the best institutions of higher learning west of the Mississippi. Uh we had systems of schools and the legal structure. Uh we had signed a new constitution in 1825, which uh really infuriated the state of Georgia, started them to pass the Georgia terrorism laws, which was just a precursor to President Jackson's Indian Removal Act. So that whole backdrop was, you know, we're not destroying them, we're just moving them.

Daniel: 1:25:46

Do you know the story of uh I think his modern name is Unaluska? Unaluska was a Cherokee man, I think he was a chief of the Eastern Band. I feel like my words are somewhere falling short there, but Unaluska, he saved uh uh Andrew Jackson before he was a president in the uh 1814 Creek War, the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. I think he even took a bullet for him. And uh Junaluska. Yeah, Junuluska. There it is.

Taylor: 1:26:19

And uh I don't I don't know what type of leader he was, I should know that, but yeah, they he helped uh you know the Battle of Horseshoe Bend.

Daniel: 1:26:28

Yeah, there's this famous quote where in the uh Indian Removal Act it's signed, Unaluska gains presence with the president Andrew Jackson, his old friend. And he walks into the over off Oval Office and he says something to the regard of if I would have known that you were this kind of man, I would have shot you myself. I would have shot you myself. I love that quote. I don't know where that's documented. I think um, to be honest with you, John Quincy Adams, John Adams, the American founder's son, who was, I think, a senator at the time, uh, who wrote a scathing leather against the uh Indian Removal Act. Not that that matters really necessarily, but I think uh John Adams, Sir John Quincy Adams, a senator, I think he records that. Uh somehow he gained access to that information and records it for history.

Taylor: 1:27:15

Yes, his quote was if I had known that Jackson would drive us from our homes, I would have killed him that day at the horseshoe.

Daniel: 1:27:23

I think in conversations like these, the history is complex. Human relationship is so intimate and so nuanced. But the thing that stands out to me is the same thing that stood out to me the first time you and I ever had a conversation a year ago now, where you just said it's not honorable, it's not kind. I think if we were to look at American history, um, Ned Ned Blackhawk, I believe, The Rediscovery of America, I mean, there's so many books. Your book, Rediscovering Turtle Island, your book that's coming out, part two of Rediscovering Turtle Island. I think if you look at these books and you allow the history to truly unfurl in a much more honest way, it's also a much more honorable way. And there's a point, like you were saying, I think it was in one of these conversations. It might have been in our original one a year ago, that original podcast we did together. But it's by meeting and talking and acknowledging this. That seems to be a very healthy first step, not a final step, not a conclusive step, but a first step. And I think that's what so many people, like the people that I know that listen to these podcasts, get mad and run away, or they read your book and they don't like it, or they get upset that you critique Jefferson or whoever else we've talked about in this podcast. I I think that's the part that is missing. There's nothing you and I could do to change the past. But there's a listening component that's just not happening today. That seems, at least for me, to be that introductory first step into changing and creating a much more beautiful world, moving forward together. But it has to begin in that acknowledgement. I think so many people want to just progress into that more beautiful world without acknowledging the past and what the past looked like, and acknowledging the pain that still exists in the present from the past and all of its nuances there.

Taylor: 1:29:13

No, just the observation about the churn in your podcast. I feel bad about that. I'm probably the reason for the churn. But the churn on the podcast just proves to me that the work that we're doing is important. And that if we're making people uncomfortable and they don't want to hear it, even more so the reason the truth needs to be shared. I'm not embellishing any of the facts in my work. I just had the courage to look in a world that. Deemed us noble savages at best. I believe it's in the Constitution. We're called merciless savages. We got a long ways to go if we're gonna see eye to eye as human beings. It's gonna be a lot of difficult conversations to get there. I remember I was at a meeting one time for the Nebraska State Historical Society, now just called History Nebraska. And um I was out in western Nebraska for a meeting in McCook, I believe. And I remember at one of those meetings um somehow in the introductions, someone started uh sharing how long their family had been here, usually done in numbers of generations. Umbody claimed to be a fifth generation Nebraskan, and they beamed with pride, and everybody clapped and got to me, and I guess they were not expecting what I was gonna say. And I said, My family's only been here for 700 years, but that pells in comparison to the 3,000 years that the ancestors of the Pawnees and the Rickera were here until the good citizens of Kantus and Nebraska territories decided that they needed to be expelled from their homelands. You could have heard a pin drop in that room.

Daniel: 1:31:50

One of my life goals, Taylor, is to like be in these rooms with you. Just one time. I want to be there. I want to be there.

Taylor: 1:32:00

Bound to happen again.

Daniel: 1:32:03

Yeah.

Taylor: 1:32:03

Well, it's just that that bias is so pervasive still. I try to have as much patience as I can, but sometimes, you know, like up until recently in the city of Omaha, Nebraska, which is named after my mom's tribe, people that move against the current Omaha and Nibethuska, our work for the Platte River, it means flat water. Um, there was no mention of the Omaha Indians anywhere in the city of Omaha officially, uh, up until recently, when uh the statue was erected of my fifth great grandfather, Chief Big Elk. If we are churning um people from your podcast um because they think that our politics are too liberal, let me make it clear. I am not a liberal, just a factual indigenous person who's had the courage to look at the truth. And if somebody doesn't know the truth, then I'm glad to share what I've learned. If I were speaking in the same about the United States, I would be considered a patriot. All I'm doing is speaking as a patriot of my tribal ancestry. So not about politics, it's about the truth.

Daniel: 1:33:29

Well, I'm thankful for you. I'm grateful for these conversations. Yeah, let the people go. As I told my wife, there's a great turning, a churning of of the waters, but it's making it more clear, in my opinion.