← Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
How Julian Brave NoiseCat Changed His Mind About Climate Politics
00:52:47
Rob talks with the author and activist about his new book, ‘We Survived the Night.’
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- [00:03]
A
You are listening to Shift Key and on this week's show we're talking to the author and filmmaker Julian Brave Noisecat about his new book, We Survived the Night. It's about his family, it's about Native life in America, and we're talking about what four years of reporting taught him about climate politics and activism. It's all coming up on Shift Key heatmaps podcast about decarbonization and the shift away from fossil fuels after this. America's future depends on reliable power provided where and when it's needed. It depends, in other words, on long duration energy storage. Hydrostor's advanced compressed air energy storage technology is helping build the grid of tomorrow with secure, reliable power and thousands of American jobs. With bipartisan support and a flexible supply chain, long duration energy storage is the missing puzzle piece to scale energy independ. Learn more about Hydrostor's Willow Rock project and the future of energy storage@hydrostor ca this episode of Shifty is brought to you by Shocked. So I want to tell you about a new podcast called Shocked from my friends at the University of Chicago's Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth. Each episode you'll hear journalist Amy Harder and economist Michael Greenstone share new ways of thinking about climate change and cutting edge solutions to do things like win the battery race, reduce the risks of greenhouse gases that have already been released, and use artificial intelligence to predict polluters and the weather. To listen to Shocked, search for Shocked in your podcast app. That's Shocked. Hello, I'm Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heat Map News, and you are listening to Shift Key Heatmap's weekly podcast about decarbonization and the shift away from fossil fuels. Jesse Jenkins, my co host, is off this week. On this week's show, we're talking about Native nations, environmental politics, and how the two interact in myth and reality. The author, Julian Brave Noisecat has written a new book called We Survive the Night. It's really three books in one. It's a memoir of his father's life and his family's history. It's a series of reported stories on Native people in the US And Canada, and it's a literary study of tales about Coyote, a figure in the myth of Western North America. It doesn't sound like it should work, I will add, but it does. It's a really cool book. I recommend it. Julian, though he's more than just a writer. This year he was nominated for an Academy Award for directing with Emily Cassie the documentary film Sugarcane. And I know Julian from an earlier chapter in his life because he was previously a professional climate and environmental activist in Washington D.C. he worked at the Climate Group 350. Org. That's around when we met. And then the think tank and polling firm Data for Progress. And I got to know him as a talented political strategist and canny thinker, someone who thinks it approaches climate change in a real and long term way. So of course I had to have him on Shift Key to chat about his new book about Native stories and politics in North America and how he's thinking about environmental and climate politics today. Julian Brave neistcat Welcome to Shift Key.
- [03:21]
B
Rob, it's so good to be in conversation with you, man. It's been a minute.
- [03:24]
A
It's so good to have you on the show. Can you just start? This is going to be so broad, but can you just start by telling us a little bit about the book, what it is, how it works.
- [03:34]
B
So We Survived the Night is a story about Indigenous life in North America today, United States and Canada. And it begins with a personal and family story and kind of expands outwards from there into a portrait of Indigenous survival love resurgence. At the same time as you encounter figures like my father and my grandfather, you encounter like the first Native American cabinet secretary, Deb Haaland, the first ever Indigenous Governor General of Canada, Mary Simon, and all sorts of activists and other interesting characters along the way.
- [04:07]
A
Can you tell us a little bit about what the title means?
- [04:10]
B
So We Survived the Night is actually derived from my people's traditional way of giving the morning greetings. So actually I should say Chokhuinuch Rob, because we are recording this in the morning. Yes, and interestingly, chokwinook means you survived the night. Actually, that's what it literally translates to. It does not translate to good morning. And I Learned that about 12, 13 years ago when I was living on my family's reservation in British Columbia, the Ken Lake Indian Reserve and learning Sequit machine, our language from my my grandmother, who is now one of the last two remaining fluent speakers on our res. And I've often thought about what it was for my ancestors to say Chokwinnoch in The winter of 1863, for example, when about two thirds of our nation died of smallpox. I often wonder what it was for my ancestors to say chokwinook to one another on the mornings after the Indian agent had taken the kids to the Indian residential schools on cattle trucks. And then I also think about the way that, like my Kia uses chochwinook in this kind of tongue in cheek, witty kind of humor kind of way. So, like, I'll walk into her house in the morning and I'll say, you know, good morning, Grandma. And she'll say, oh, don't remind me. You know, like, don't remind me that I survived the night. And I just think that there's so much poetry and social commentary and tragic comic humor in that word from our language, which has barely survived.
- [05:38]
A
It seems like one of the other meanings of the title. And I invite you to disagree with this, but it would be too simplistic to say something like the worst is over. But that part of the process it feels like you're undergoing in the book is trying to understand the process that's played out on your people and also try to make sense of it in a deeper way than just having to respond to it in a moment by moment level.
- [06:07]
B
Yeah, I like that reading. You know, I think that it is a book about survival and about the resurgence of Indigenous peoples in the wake of what Canada has described as a cultural genocide, and that at many points in human history was also genocidal. I would also say that it's trying to tell a story about Indigenous peoples that gets at what it is to be Native at the same time as it illuminates broader questions of what it is to live on this continent of North America that illuminate different parts of, you know, our shared social story of race, of mythology, of colonization, but also of, you know, like, fight against climate change and other contemporary issues that engage in questions of survival and cultural tradition and all that sort of stuff as well. Because I do feel that in the very overlooked stories of the first peoples of this land, you actually can come to understand not just us, but this society, this continent, our shared story better as well.
- [07:12]
A
Let's talk about this because I think, you know, we know each other from when you were a climate and environmental activist in Washington, D.C. and the book is full of climate and environmental stories. And I want to ask about a few of them. But just to start out, what were lessons that you took away from the writing of the book or from the reporting of the book that changed how you thought about climate or the environment in some way that, you know, maybe wasn't the case when you work, when you were working on these issues full time?
- [07:45]
B
I would say that while I was working on climate issues, I was actually myself really changing a lot in terms of my thoughts on how politics worked and did not work. You know, I think I came into my sort of period of my life as a Climate activist, really believing in the power of direct action and protest. And if you get enough people in the streets and you get enough politicians on your side, like, you eventually can change the laws. And I think that there is some truth to that view. But I think being in D.C. for four years, being really involved in the sort of movement conversation, however you want to put that around the Green New Deal, around eventually a Biden administration and how that would be shaped, around how they might go about actually taking on climate change for the first time in US History in a significant way, really transformed my understanding of how change happens. I got a greater appreciation, for example, for the. The importance of persuading people to your view, particularly elites in decision making positions. And I also started to understand a little bit more of the true gamesmanship, I think, of politics, that there is a bit of tricks and trickery and all kinds of other things that are going on in our political system that are really fundamental to how it all works. And I bring that last piece up because while I was writing the book, I was also thinking really purposefully about my own people's narrative traditions and how they get at transformations and how they happen in the world. And it just so happens that probably the most significant oral historical tradition of my own people is a kind of story called a Coyote story, which is about a trickster figure who makes change in the world through cunning and subterfuge and tricks, and also who gets tricked himself a fair amount. And I think that in that worldview, I actually found a lot of resonance with my own observations on how political change happened when I was in Washington D.C. and so that insight did really deeply shape the book.
- [09:56]
A
Can you say a little bit more about that? Because this aspect of the book is one of the coolest things about it, which is the book is this interlaced set of memoir and your reportage and then almost a literary study or an anthology of these Coyote stories from not only your people, but the set of Western North American nations that like all have this shared figure. Can you talk a little bit about why you chose that structure of the book? And what of the Coyote is there.
- [10:23]
B
In D.C. yeah, so. Well, you know, it was a really organic sort of turn in the writing of the book. I did have this very, like, vague notion that I was going to look into mythology, that I had this sense that maybe that could be like a nice little ornamentation on the narrative in certain spots. But what ended up happening is I decided to move in with my dad, who's a sort of key Figure in the book. The backstory with my dad is that he left myself and my mom when I was about 6 years old. So we've had a very complicated relationship. So after, you know, having this whole career in D.C. and New York before that on the East Coast, I made the pretty unusual decision as a 28 year old bachelor to move in to the same house as the guy who still owed me the money I loaned him so that he'd come to my own high school graduation. We were suddenly living across the hallway from one another. And he's an artist, so he'd spend his days out in the garage carving and making his art. And I'd spend my day trying to figure out how the heck to write a book and how to make a movie, which I directed a documentary at the same time. It is with Emily Cassie. It's called Sugar Cane. And while I was doing the research for the book, I was thinking really purposefully about, because the documentary I directed is about the system of schools that nearly annihilated my people's culture, I was thinking more purposefully about what elements of that culture I had a responsibility to try to reclaim and bring back to life on the page. And I was reading these 100 plus year old ethnographic texts that had some of our old oral histories recorded in them. And probably the greatest body of oral histories that I was reading was the Coyote stories, because these are a kind of trickster narrative that spans the entire western half of North America. Essentially, people tell stories about Coyote from Central America all the way up to Western Canada, where my people are from. And I was hanging out with my dad, who is himself a little bit of a trickster figure. And I felt first that there was a lot of similarities, striking similarities between our trickster ancestor, as he was represented on the page of these ethnographies, and my old man. And so that was kind of the first place where I was like, oh, wow, these trickster narratives, they are nonfiction in a sense. They are getting at how we saw in part the men in our lives. And then I was looking into more about how they resonated with different parts of ancient history, of environmental history, of cultural transformation. And that was really striking to me. And then ultimately I also was like thinking about the account of change in the Coyote stories and the way that tricks and tricksters are seen as playing a leading role in driving that change. And it really did resonate with my impression of the broader political scene, wherein I would just say that we are right now living through an area that is an era that is very much dominated by tricksters and their tricks.
- [13:16]
A
There's this cool moment where you basically connect what was happening geographically and geologically in Canada at the end of the last ice age, where there were these huge floods as glacial lakes began to fall, with this set of stories in the coyote stories that are about these huge floods and how Coyote dealt with them. Was that a connection that was already well understood by the time that you were writing the book, or is that something you found?
- [13:42]
B
It was something I found in the work of this guy named Ron Ignace and his wife, Marianne Ignace. Ron is a Sequetmoc chief, and he got a PhD in oral history and anthropology type stuff. And his wife is a linguist. And he's the one who's done a lot of very interesting research into the parallels between our oral histories and actual archaeologically verifiable historical fact. And so that was where I derived that one from. But it's a much more academic text, and so it hasn't really traveled beyond that sort of area. And there is a really striking similarity between one of our stories about how coyote breaks this dam and leads the first salmon up the river and the place where the experts will tell you about 11,000 years ago, there was, in fact, an ice dam across a series of glacial lakes across the interior of what is now British Columbia that did, in fact, break and form the present course of the Fraser River. And there's all sorts of different evidence for this and also led to the colonization of that river by salmon. And I think that it's really striking that an event that occurred on this continent 11,000 years ago was remembered in our oral history in the same place that that event actually occurred, that it was handed down over that amount of time. And I think that as someone who also has been thinking a lot about the transformation of our climate and our environment right now, I found a lot of import of the coyote stories, which are themselves often grappling with the same kinds of transformations. They're grappling with huge environmental and cultural transformations in the deep past and.
- [15:23]
A
Exactly. And huge moments of. I mean, the end of the last ice age is the last climate change. It was surprising to see, as you were saying, not only the awareness of this, but the individual detail captured about, say, the salmon or the Fraser River. I think of it as, like, one of the last chapters I remember in your DC and politically active life, was that you were instrumental in getting Deb Haaland nominated and then confirmed to be the first indigenous Interior secretary. I Want to talk more about that, but can you just tell the story of how that happened and what it meant for her to take on that role?
- [16:01]
B
Yeah, I mean it was a series of surprising turns and tricks, to be honest with you. It began because my sort of last place of employment, at least in D.C. was at a think tank that's still going called Data for Progress. I was the first employee. And at Data for Progress we did a sort of fantasy football style pick a progressive cabinet type document before Joe Biden was elected. And just to give you a sense of the flavor of people, we were putting on this progressive cabinet pick sort of document. We had like Barbara Lee for Defense Secretary because she's the only member of Congress to have voted against the authorization for the use of military force after 9 11. We had Keith Ellison for Attorney General because that would piss off all the right people. And we also might as well have put like the Lorax for EPA Secretary because he like speaks for the trees or whatever. But on that document I did put Deb Haaland for Interior Secretary because the Interior Department manages vast swaths of land that were taken from Native nations as well as the nation to nation relationship with the more than 570 federally recognized tribes across the continent. And you know, I thought why not give this a shot in the dark and see if that idea sticks. And very surprisingly, I did not expect it to. The idea actually did pick up some steam and momentum in the ways that ideas once in a very long while can in, in politics. And because of my sort of position as a kind of advocate but also writer, I became somewhat of a journalist making the case for Holland's appointment. And that is a story with a little bit more twists and turns. But essentially it involved because she was the outside candidate. The guy who he wanted to pick was Udall. It involved in convincing Biden, involved convincing Pelosi to let her leave the House. And then eventually when she was actually nominated, it involved convincing some senators, including some Republicans, to vote for a progressive Native American. And herein I think is one of the most interesting turns in the whole story is why, for example, the Republican senator from Alaska, Lisa Murkowski, voted for her confirmation. And ultimately it comes down to the fact that 20% of Alaskans are Alaska Native, that Lisa Murkowski won one of the only 22 write in campaigns for United States Senate in U.S. history with the support of Alaska Natives who tend to be Democratic, but who supported her write in campaign because she was way better than the Tea Party alternative and because most Interestingly to me, she's actually an adopted member of the Deschiton clan of the Tlingit. So you could really make the case that this historic appointment of Deb Haaland, which hinged on Lisa Murkowski's vote, was in part made possible because of the enduring influence of a clan system, an indigenous clan system in American politics, which is a political story that I think is really unexpected and also I think revealing of the way that Native people who are often not seen as influential, actually still wield some power in our political system.
- [19:14]
A
This episode of Shift Key is brought to you by Hydro Store. The US economy is growing fast and so is its demand for reliable energy. But generation alone isn't enough. Long duration energy storage is the key to building a resilient, secure grid that can meet tomorrow's needs. Hydrostor's advanced compressed air energy storage technology stores clean energy for hours at a time and then delivers baseload power when it's needed most. Hydrostor's order Willow Rock Energy Storage center in California will provide 500 megawatts of storage, enough to power a city of half a million people for more than eight hours and employ over 6,500 people during construction. Backed by bipartisan support at all levels of government, Hydrostor is leading the charge in utility scale storage. With projects underway across America, we're helping communities unlock economic growth and achieve energy independence. Learn more about Hydrostor's unique technology and how it's powering America's future@hydrostore.ca It seems like one of your insights into how Native people survive politically in the US at least, is that they basically maintain like a bipartisan consensus not quite in your favor or in their favor. I not sure of the pronoun to use but like in which tribes can go or nations can go to Democrats when they need a better social service or they need more funding for their social service and they can go to Republicans when they need like the government off their backs. And it just struck me that this carefully maintained set of bipartisan relationships is so different from how partially by necessity, like climate policy has worked, but to some degree how we like tackle environmental policy as well as.
- [21:04]
B
Yeah, you know, I, I think that there are all sorts of unusual little stories if you look at the way that our political system interacts with Indian country that are really revealing of an alternative approach to politics. I'm not saying that that approach necessarily needs to be copied and pasted across our entire political system. I'm just saying that there are interesting stories here that are potentially Revealing. And just to double down real quickly on the significance of the Murkowski story, you know, Murkowski comes from a state where they give out an oil dividend to everybody who's a Alaska resident when you register to vote. Like, the other side of the opposition to Holland's nomination was the fossil fuel industry of the side of the Republican Party. So I think that for that reason, I think it's a really interesting story for climate activists to study. You know, how did this. How did Deb Haaland, who went to Standing Rock, no Dapple, et cetera, cooked green chili, stew and tortillas for the water protectors? How did she become our Interior, the secretary? It feels like such a bygone era of politics, even just like a year later. But the thing that you bring up here is another piece of this that I've thought very purposefully about, which is there is this broad phenomenon of Native people being invisible in American society and politics. And mostly that is to our own detriment. You know, like, if you look at all the statistical measurements of misery, Native people fall to the bottom of them. And the fact that we are not visible in American society probably enables that to a certain extent. On the other hand, there are in certain ways, perhaps some benefits to not being fully visible in an intensely polarized media environment wherein visibility means that you end up being implicated in the ceaselessly expanding culture war and the different sides that the political parties have to take on it. And I think that the fact that Native tribes are often located in conservative rural parts of the country has meant that tribal leaders have had to learn how to work with congressional representatives and senators who come from the Republican Party at the same time as Native voters have, at least historically, tended to lean more Democratic. And I think that that has created a dynamic wherein, as you sort of teed up in the question, tribes and tribal leaders will go to Democrats when they need more spending on essential social services that we really do need. And then we'll go to Republicans when they want a little bit more freedom from Uncle Sam. Because the view that the government is a colonizer is not actually that operationally different from the view that the government is trying to, like, take away your Bible and your guns as part of.
- [23:39]
A
The reporting for the book. You went to Western Canada where there's a tribe that's maintaining part of the rainforest. Can you just talk about how that system works and how does that kind of fit into how we should be thinking about climate and environmental politics and even climate and environmental, like, remediation you.
- [23:54]
B
Know, I think that there's some really interesting stories in the way that Native people have been aiding in the fight against climate change that perhaps bend sort of our assumptions of what the fight against climate change is going to look like. I think that often we think about climate solutions as being like windmills and electric vehicles and better transmission lines and all those sorts of things. And that is definitely true. Those things are definitely needed. But in certain parts of the world, it's going to look a bit different. And on the west coast of Canada, which is a very, very sparsely populated part of Canada where Native people are still in the majority, what it's going to look like is preserving these vast rainforests that are playing essential roles in our climate system as carbon sinks. And the way that that is now presently happening is that all of these nations are employing these guys as guardian watchmen to watch over the land to make sure that no illegal hunting or logging or any of these things are happening. And at the same time as they're doing that, some of them are also bringing back to life some of their ancestral forms of governance that were laid low by colonization. And so you have, for example, the return of these hereditary chieftainships that have been sort of died in these family lines, but that now are now being brought back through cultural protocols like feasts and dances and songs and all these sorts of different things, and then actually now being put into place as significant decision making roles in different parts of their land where those chieftain ships originally hailed from. And so you have, I think, this really unusual meeting of traditions that go back many, many centuries with the need to fight climate change, which is often seen as like a techno futurist kind of thing.
- [25:43]
A
One of the themes in the book is this resistance to, let's say, like seeing Native practices solely through the lens of authenticity or solely through the lens of kind of an unbroken transmission down. I mean, you talk about powwows as being this thing that honestly many tribes do it now and it was not in their historical practice, but is as much a part of their modern day Native practices any other practice that they do. And it seems like part of what you're arguing for is to not understand what a tribe might do or what a people might do or not do as solely something that they either received through totally intact transmission from pre Columbian contact or like something that is totally inauthentic.
- [26:34]
B
Yeah, that's definitely true. And I would say that part of what Native people face as a sort of strange cultural bias against us is that we are expected to have our culture be in sort of a freeze frame at the moment of contact or colonization. And that is supposed to be what our culture looks like and remains as for all time. And to be clear, there are absolutely reasons that we want to preserve elements of our culture, like our language and some of our ceremonies and all these sorts of things. And we try to, like, keep those things as close to our understanding of the true form of the tradition as we possibly, possibly can. At the same time, I think that there is a way that that ossifying expectation of outsiders has precluded the ability for Native people to express what our life, what our indigeneity might look like in a contemporary way that continues to transform while remaining Native with the world around us.
- [27:32]
A
Can you talk a little bit about your reporting on the Lumbee tribe? Because they are this fascinating version of exactly the dynamic that I think you're describing.
- [27:40]
B
Yeah. So the Lumbee tribe is the largest tribe east of the Mississippi. They're located now in Robeson County, North Carolina. And they're fascinating for a number of reasons. I'll start in sort of a chronological order. So the Lumbee tribe trace their ancestry in part to the Lost Colony of Roanoke. Just to jog your listeners historical memories. The Lost Colony of Roanoke was the first English settlement in North America. It was established in, like, the late 1500s, but it kind of disappeared in this. What was once considered a historical mystery, like where did they go, what happened? And most historians now agree with this take, is that they probably assimilated into the surrounding Algonquian society, which would be the logical thing to do if you were struggling to survive in your little foothold of North America. But nonetheless, they are considered lost because that form of assimilation of non Native into Native flew in the face of ideas of whiteness and race. And what assimilation was supposed to be in the 1800s, when the lost Colony of Roanoke sort of mythology really took off. At the same time as ideas about whiteness and race and assimilation were similarly taking off in American society. They became a very important symbol for those things. Now, that story is also interesting and revealing and relevant because today the Lumbee tribe, which again traces part of its ancestry to the Lost Colony of Roanoke, is not a fully federally recognized tribe, in part because the way that the laws are written about who does and does not count as an American Indian tribe precludes the possibility that non Native people would assimilate into Native society. The story of the Lumbee is of a Native people of various tribal backgrounds. Who over time assimilated into one community, who assimilated white people into that community, who assimilated black people into their community, and yet who chose over many centuries in the swamps of North Carolina to be Native, which is something that is not legible for whatever reason to the state and the way that it legislates Native American identity and race. Now that there is an even more interesting dimension to their story to me, which is that the Lumbee, at the same time as they are this not federally recognized tribe, as they trace their ancestor to the lost colony of Roanoke, they also have played kind of both sides of Southern and broader American politics in kind of contrarian but interestingly effective ways over a long period of time in the era of Reconstruction. There was a Lumbee figure named Henry Barry Lowry who was like, he could be a figure in a Quentin Tarantino film. Like, he was like a true guerrilla fighting gunslinger of this multiracial group of bandits who were taken on the white power structure in Robeson County. So this is like the Lumbee hero. If you ask any Lumbee today, who's the most significant Lumbee hero in LUMBEE history, like, 90% of them would probably say this guy Henry Barry Lauer. Fast forward to the end of Reconstruction. The Lumbee make a deal with the Dixiecrats because they want to have a separate tribal school and their own separate tribal institutions, that they're going to go along with segregation, despite the fact that they are mixed with black people, because they, again, want to be. They want to be their own tribe in their own way. And so they sort of switch their loyalties from the Republicans to the Democrats and in part play a role in brokering the onset of Jim Crow in the South. Fast forward to the present era. They help elect Barack Obama, and then Trump comes along and promises them federal recognition, something they've been seeking for over 100 years. And since 2016, they have played a really significant role in helping Trump carry Trump and Republicans carrying North Carolina. So here are these people who, at the same time as they revere this guy who was literally shooting up racists in the 1800s, are voting largely for Donald Trump as part of their strategy to finally get what they want, which is federal recognition. And just to sort of close the story, Trump has directed the Interior Department to figure out a way to recognize these people. So it is very possible that this, this long sort of gambit that they've had with white society in America and in the south might actually pay off.
- [32:29]
A
One of your insights and it's an incredible story, and I want to ask about where we are with the Lumbee now, but one of the insights in your description of how federal Indian law legislates tribal structure or tribal membership is that because it is dependent on, literally blood quantum, it totally. Number one, it cannot perceive a tribe that is largely or partially composed of people who are indigenous by choice, which is obviously its own complicated question. But with the Lumbee is much more a part of the practice of the community. Number one, it just can't see people like that. But number two, once you have a federal racial system that's codified to look strictly at blood quanta, just demographically, what that entails is you have a federal Indian law system that's going to gradually legislate these tribes out of existence, or gradually narrow and narrow and narrow the number of people who could qualify for tribal membership and who can see themselves as members of the tribe under the law.
- [33:36]
B
Yeah. And I think that it's worth pointing out that that has been the goal of United States policy for since the beginning towards Native people. They've always wanted to make fewer Indians. And I think people might be a little bit surprised that the legal system is still essentially set up towards that end.
- [33:57]
A
Earlier in the show, I mentioned a new podcast I'm excited to listen to. It's called Shocked, and it's from my friends at the University of Chicago's Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth. Shocked is about facing the reality that a warmer world is here. So now what it's about. Questions like, is using less energy really the answer? What will it cost to adapt? Republicans invented cap and trade, so why is it controversial? The idea of Shocked is sometimes we need to start by re examining things we thought we knew. Each episode, you'll hear journalist Amy Harder and economist Michael Greenstone do just that. Shocked is fun and insightful for those of us who work in climate and energy. And it's the perfect primer for the climate Curious. It's a podcast you could share with your boss and your mom to listen to Shocked. Search for Shocked in your podcast app. That's Shocked from the University of Chicago's Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth. Why have the Lumbee not been recognized as a tribe yet? But this is another, like, important aspect, another even dimension.
- [35:00]
B
Another interesting dimension. Yeah. So if you look at it glancingly, the reason is that the Congress never passes the acts that have been rolled into many different forms of legislation over the decades that would give the Lumbee federal recognition. But if you look just one layer deeper. The people who are lobbying the hardest against the Lumbee getting federal recognition are actually other federally recognized tribes. In particular, another tribe in North Carolina, the Eastern Band of Cherokee, who a reading of this would probably be they don't want to be competing with a very populous tribe east of the Mississippi for federal funding and who also operate a lucrative casino. And if the Lumbee were to get, get federal recognition, get the right to build their own casino, which is one of the dominant ways of, for tribes to economically develop in the United States, the Eastern Band of Cherokee would probably stand to lose if that were to happen. And so they are vociferous opponents, constantly lobbying against the Lumbee being recognized as a tribe. And so what's really interesting about the story as well is that it's not even necessarily the primary actors in the story, both on the side of the Lumbee and on the side of them not getting recognition, are actually Native, which is another look into American politics that you rarely get where the like people who are driving the story and the reason why the thing that is the core political outcome at its center is not happening are actually indigenous on both sides.
- [36:36]
A
Well, I think as I thought about the book, I mean it seems like this is going to be controversial maybe, but I was like, is this, it's not a post woke book. I think it might be a post post woke book, but it is written against these simplistic and I would imagine frustrating narratives that white Americans, or kind of, well to do liberal Americans tell about Native people is that to be indigenous is to lack moral agency over your own life, but also to kind of exist in this beautiful conflict free zone that was going, that was going great and that there were no disagreements like until colonization came along and then it was horrible and obviously colonization was horrible. But like, it seems like part of what you're trying to do in this book is like assert a whole personhood and a whole nationhood for indigenous and native tribes and in the modern world. Which means they will disagree, which means that there will be political conflicts between tribes that, and that's fine. We don't need to like brush over them. And also we can look at them and they'll tell us something that we didn't know.
- [37:51]
B
Yeah, you know, I guess in general, I think that there are these sets of myths that have often dominated the way that we look at Native life and Native people up to the present. I think the environmental movement is just as guilty as conservatives are of this. And I think that there is actually a very rich and full story. And I'm trying to, I guess, find that story which is so often obscured by those myths. You know, for example, this is one that I don't talk about in the book, but one that was often very present when I was in D.C. there was a ongoing fight around what's going to happen in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the way that the story was often told on the environmentalist.
- [38:30]
A
Exactly the story in my head, actually. And I. Yeah.
- [38:34]
B
So, you know, what's really interesting is it's usually told on the environmentalist side of things. Firstly, I think just. I'll give my personal politics. I would prefer we did not drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Let me just put that on the table. And yet the dynamics of this particular issue are much more complicated than people are willing to admit. The truth of the matter is that there are actually two native groups on opposite sides of whether there should be drilling in anwr, as it's called in DC Speak. On one side, there are the Inupiaq, who have found some economic opportunities from fossil fuel drilling in this very, very rural part of the northernmost part of North America. And on the other side, there's the Gwich', in, people who rely still upon the caribou herds that go through the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and who understand that oil drilling in that area is going to disrupt their traditional cultural lifestyle. And the way that that story is often told in DC is simply of oil drilling disrupting the Gwich' in traditional lifestyle and kind of erases, in a weird way, the Inupiaq who are in favor of this development, which I think is a very interesting and revealing story, just as another aside, because actually, there's a way that you could tell that story of actually the Gwich' in and the Nubiat being the primary sort of actors in a conflict that goes way back before oil. Because those two groups, the Inuit and Athabaskan speaking peoples, have had tense relations going way back before the arrival of white people. And I guess part of the reason why I'm really interested in the truth of these stories is because I just don't believe that you can figure out how to enact real change, real progressive change. If you're beginning from a simulation of what's going on out there, that is pretty far from truth. I still consider myself a very left wing person, but that was generally my feeling about the progressive movement when I was in dc, that there were these sort of myths that we told ourselves that didn't really, necessarily stand up to scrutiny once the facts were laid bare.
- [40:46]
A
Well, that was a experience I had reporting on ANWR too. It's funny you should bring that up, that story, because that was in some ways exactly the story in my head, which is that I started reporting it. I just called up Gwichin. That was the story that I heard that I saw in political communications and rhetoric around the ANWR question. And I called them up, I talked to them, and then as I kept looking, I realized there was this dispute that it seemed like nobody wanted to talk about between two tribes that made it more interesting and also took this out of being a question of the evil American government and Republican Party doing something that was complete, that once again completely forced itself on Native people into a story that was, well, no, you know, Republicans were working on one behalf of one tribe that had one tribe's interests in their heads. Democrats had kind of adopted, or at least environmentalists had adopted, that some of the interests of another tribe. Although part of what was made the conflict interesting was that that tribe was based. Most of its members live in Canada and the caribou herd migrates into Alaska. And so part of the issue was this question of transnationalism. But it made it a way more interesting story and also made this dispute seem like a way more full featured aspect of today's world. It's not one that I heard from environmental activists, at least at first, present company accepted. I just. It's a way that I think the environmental movement can kind of flatten sometimes these stories. As you were saying, can I ask. I mean, there's often a push among environmentalists, among climate activists to say, well, if only we kind of fixed land rights, if only we put Indigenous people back in charge of their land, we would solve climate change, we would solve whatever the current lamented environmental issue is. And I have no doubt that in many cases the stewardship of these things could be going better. But when you hear people say things like that, do you think that that's true or do you think, well, there'll still be conflict over these resources?
- [43:04]
B
You know, I think that there is a large degree of truth to that. Like, I think it's directionally correct on a number of different environmental issues. And I think that. That it comes from an observation that is true, which is that over thousands of years, Indigenous peoples developed ways of stewarding and governing the environment that did prove to be very effective. And when the first Europeans showed up in North America, they often remarked on the incredible natural wealth of this continent, which they Assumed was sort of a virgin quality of the landscape, but was actually something that was purposefully engineered, in a sense, by the Native people who had maintained vast fish stocks and created the right conditions for game in the forests, et cetera, et cetera. At the same time, I think that it would be a significant overstatement of that observation to say that we can therefore solve all of our present environmental and climate challenges simply by returning the land to Native people. I do think that it is an interesting and often useful approach in the broader sort of policy toolkit, and one that has also, hopefully, obvious justice implications. But it's not going to solve the problem of, like, electrifying everything. And actually, more to the point, it will also come with potential conflicts over other parts of the things that we do need to be doing, like building transmission lines across the continent, which will, in many areas, probably come into conflict with tribes who don't want these developments in their. In the places where they are. You know, earlier this year, for example, I was on Martha's Vineyard doing some research, and the Aquinnah Wampanoag tribe there is probably the number one opponent of the big wind development out there. And, you know, I think that those kinds of conflicts are going to continue as there are more and more pressures on how we're going to use this land in the event that we still do it. Of a clean energy transition.
- [45:06]
A
You describe a conflict among Easter Band of Cree where there's a blackrock mine going in that was striking. Many of these same themes in my.
- [45:17]
B
Head as I was reading. Yeah. So that one is a really interesting story. Again, like, I guess I'm just trying to get at, like, the truth of the situation in a way that is not necessarily what anybody wants to hear, but the truth of the situation is that there's a. A group In Quebec, the OJ Bocamoucrie, who were treated absolutely horribly throughout the 20th century and were basically booted from one spot on their land to another as different mining developments and things came through and said, you know, we want this land, you got to move. We want this land, we've got to move. And it happened a number of times throughout the 20th century. They eventually succeeded at getting their own Indian reserve, which they now have. And it's actually really beautiful spot, except that some of their people still live a more traditional lifestyle where they're, like, hunting moose and out on the land trapping and that sort of stuff, and one of those big families and. And by family, I mean, like, 150 people live in a spot that is now potentially going to be developed into a big iron, vanadium. And there's one other mineral in there, titanium, I think. Titanium. Yeah. And basically what that's going to entail is once again another branch of this people being booted off their land potentially so that this mountain can be turned into a big hole in the ground, so that the minerals in it can be wrought into different kinds of implements that might be used in part for clean energy technologies, which also might be able to be shipped to China more easily, because the Northwest Passage across the top of the world is now actually becoming a real possibility with climate change. And so, you know, I think that this is the kind of conflict, one that, that has obvious pain for indigenous peoples and that also has sometimes potentially credible environmental benefits in the fight, fight against climate change. That is going to be and will continue to be the reality of a transition to clean energy wherein we don't get to finally lay aside all these thorny questions of justice and equity.
- [47:23]
A
It's funny that you should say that, you know, the stories you're telling or the reporting you're doing, that you're focusing on just what's happening and you're trying to lay aside myths, but that it may not be what people want to hear, because this is actually one of the most remarkable. Like this is what makes the book so good, in my view, is that it is not a single slogan or a single set of ideas that you can go onto a podcast and talk about or that you can can turn into a 1200 word excerpt and talk about. It's just a set of stories about people living across North America. And from that set of stories you get an incredible depth into what modern day Native experience is like. But that experience can't be flattened into kind of a set of truisms or a set of political ideas. It's just, this is what it's like in 2025. And it makes for a very engaging book in a way that actually political books are often not quite. Not as engaging.
- [48:22]
B
I really appreciate you saying that. Yeah. You know, I see my people as being caught up in the messy thorniness of the whole world. And we are often sort of seen as anything but that, as like people who've been just flattened out and killed off by the messy thorniness of the whole world, who are like, living in some sort of Garden of Eden or whatever. While I think that those sort of pictures of us sometimes are well meaning, I think that they really do a disservice to the richness and the complexity and the contradictions in Native life. And I think, very interestingly. If you actually go back. To our own oral histories and traditions. They tend to be quite expansive and capacious. In their understanding. Of the contradictions of the world of human nature. Of the ways in which change happens. Which are both good and bad. And I just think that I'm trying to help restore that. To a people. Who are denied that level of depth and complexity. In the way that we're often told and written.
- [49:22]
A
At the same time, I think you reach a description of colonization. And an idea of what it means to be colonized. Which understands it partially as a denial of that complexity. But also understands it that as a deprivation. Of these kind of basic emotional aspects of a human life. That the process of colonization rips away. That the flattening itself is part of the colonization. And the dead emotional affect. Or the kind of artificial emotional affect. That white people or the system Kind of encourages people to take around Native Americans. Is part of the colonization itself.
- [50:01]
B
I would say that on the one hand, there is this awful history. That we have been laid very low by. Again, we suffer with the most awful social statistics. On all of these different measures of misery. That our families have really, truly, often been broken. By a government effort to deprive Native children of their parents. And of Native parents of the right to parent their children. And these are just like some of the most awful chapters. In the history. Of this continent. And of human history more broadly. This entire place was stolen from its first peoples. And that was done through a lot of really bad stuff. Just really bad actions. And those actions reverberate in our present today. At the same time, I think that the complexity of our lives. In part because of those actions. The fact that sometimes we internalized that colonization. As other scholars of colonization often write about. And became vectors of it. Within our own communities and families. People who were abandoned. Turn around like my father. And abandoned his own kids. People who were abused at some of these schools. Turned around. And unfortunately became abusers themselves. I think that there is a broader way in which. If you look at the story. And all of its awfulness. But also all of its love and wonderfulness and complexity. I think that there are insights that become potentially universal. To what it is to have the human condition, in a sense. And what is interesting about being Native. Is that we're often seen as the exception to the universal. We rarely ever get to be included in that broad human picture. As something that can be looked at to understand the rest of humanity. And I guess what I am trying to suggest implicitly in the text is that, you know, maybe, maybe we can not just understand Native people, but people more broadly. If we look at these stories and consider what they say about what it is to be on this land.
- [52:02]
A
Well, I think we'll have to leave it there. But it's a beautiful book and I'm so excited that it's out. You've been working on it for. For so long and you pulled it up.
- [52:11]
B
Four years. Yeah. Thanks, man. Yeah.
- [52:14]
A
We Survived the Night was published on Tuesday, October 14th by Knopf. You can find me on X@obinsonmeyer or on Bluesky or LinkedIn under my name. If you enjoyed Shift Key, please leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. My co host Jesse Jenkins will be back next week. Shift Key is a production, as always, of Heat Map News. Our editors are Gillian Goodman and Nicolorcella. Multimedia editing and audio engineering is by Jacob Lambert and by Nick Woodbury. Our music is by Adam Kramolow. Thank you so much for listening and see you next week.