Land, Not Liberty | Episode 5

Summary

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First America: "Land, Not Liberty" | Episode 5

Podcast: First America
Host: Rebecca Nagle (Pushkin Industries)
Date: July 20, 2026

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Overview:

This episode of First America reframes the origins of U.S. real estate, property rights, and the ongoing housing crisis. Host Rebecca Nagle, joined by Native historians and legal experts, exposes how the American dream of land ownership was built atop systemic dispossession of Indigenous nations. Rather than an aside, land and Indian affairs—not just taxation or representation—were central to the founding conflicts and wealth-building strategies of the U.S. The corruption, speculation, and violence of early land deals carry profound implications through today’s real estate markets and economic inequalities.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Founding Dream—and Its Deviation (01:50–07:24)

• Thomas Jefferson’s Vision:
  Jefferson idealized independent citizens owning their own land, believing this secured both economic and political independence.

  "Jefferson wanted every American to own their own land and be their own boss... That dream... we might call it the American Dream." – Rebecca Nagle (01:50)

• Modern Reality:
  The image of secure homeownership devolved into today’s crisis of unaffordability, foreclosures, and speculative profit.

• Firsthand Scenes:
  Brooklyn courthouse auctions reveal foreclosures evicting families from generational homes due to skyrocketing prices.

  "Some of these homes have been in families for generations… they're sold out from under them." – Rebecca Nagle (03:13)

2. The National Debt Crisis & “Solution” of Land Sales (07:24–09:52)

• Financial Ruin Post-Revolution:
  With no power to tax, Congress faced unpayable war debts, leading to rampant inflation and ubiquitous IOUs.

  “At the end of the Revolutionary War, the United States was in a financial disaster.” – Michael Blakeman (08:33)

• Turn to Land as Currency:
  The government planned to sell western lands, largely inhabited and governed by Indigenous nations, to pay debts—viewing these lands as assets ripe for speculation despite being occupied and unceded.

3. Doctrine of Discovery: Legalizing Dispossession (12:25–15:24)

• Colonial Claims on Native Land:
  U.S. lawmakers perceived land “out west” as theirs for the taking due to the "doctrine of discovery."

  "...Anyone who was not Christian was cast out as savage... Therefore, they had no property rights." – Nick Estes (14:04)

• International and Federal Law Origins:
  Non-Christians, including Indigenous people, were denied property rights; their land was by default “discoverable,” opening the door to legal theft.

• Ongoing Impact:
  The doctrine was upheld in U.S. law through an 1823 Supreme Court decision, and reaffirmed as recently as 2005 by Ruth Bader Ginsburg (15:19).

4. Land Speculation, Corruption, and the Birth of American Real Estate (16:36–24:14)

• First Big Real Estate Scheme: The Ohio Company (16:36–20:58)

  • 18th-century businessmen plot to profit from Indigenous land by buying huge tracts from Congress and reselling.
  • Minister Manasseh Cutler and finance operative William Duer orchestrate bribes, secret deals, and exploit Congressional connections.
  • Bribery and political influence result in the government selling off massive parcels to speculators, not small farmers.

  “With the help of Dewar’s political connections, they buy 20% of the land that is now Ohio.” – Rebecca Nagle (20:58)

• The Aftermath: Systemic Corruption

  • Shares in these land grabs offered to lawmakers as bribes. Almost every legislature involved profited:

    "All but one lawmaker who voted for the sale took a bribe." – Michael Blakeman (22:01)

  • Land speculation replaced Jefferson’s vision of widespread, independent land ownership, entrenching oligarchic patterns.

5. Origins and Expansion of the Mortgage & Foreclosure System (26:46–31:56)

• Speculative Land Market Grows:
  After land speculation crashes and public land runs out, financial markets invent new ways to keep profiting—standardized mortgages and foreclosure.

• Foreclosure as a Colonial Tool:
  Initially, English law protected families from permanent loss of land over debt. In colonial America, foreclosure was invented to take Indigenous land and soon used against anyone with property.

  “It’s almost like they do it to Native people first and then they allow it to be done to other people.” – Rebecca Nagle & K. Soo Park (29:53–29:58)

• Modernization and Acceleration:
  By the 20th century, mortgages and foreclosure timelines shortened dramatically, building today’s high-risk, high-profit real estate economy.

  “Now it’s three months... And as the mortgage market grew, it got more hostile.” – K. Soo Park (30:44)

• Why It Matters:
  The commodification, dispossession, and speculative profit at the system’s core, built on Indigenous land, underlie the struggles of today’s renters, homeowners, and communities.

  “This history determines how everyone is able to live today... everybody thinks real estate prices can just go up forever, but... people can’t afford that. And eventually everybody’s homeless.” – K. Soo Park (31:08)

6. Generational Impact: Wealth, Loss, and Native Experience (32:27–37:56)

• Private Property and White Wealth:
  Over half of early American wealth came from land, and a quarter of white families today descend from settlers who got land directly from these government dispossessions.

  “Everyone has benefited from the dispossession of Indigenous land... you inherit the system that they created, and you also inherit the wealth they acquired.” – Nick Estes (32:50)

• Native Displacement Example: The Missouri River Dam
  Nick Estes recounts his great-grandparents’ forced relocation and the multi-generational devastation caused when the government built a dam, prioritizing white settlements and economies over Native communities.

  “Every Dakota and Lakota reservation along the Missouri river was affected... The entire Lower Brule town was flooded and destroyed." – Nick Estes (34:44)

• Social Consequences:
  Loss of land, livelihood and social structures forced children into boarding schools and left families in poverty for generations:

  “...they’re literally like living in a tar paper shack because their home was destroyed... My grandparents, for a variety of reasons, were economically, socially devastated..." – Nick Estes (35:56)

• Enduring Structural Violence:
  The system’s cruelty, designed to consume Native land, was later applied to all property owners, explaining today’s housing insecurity.

  “When the market feels inhumane... that's not the system run off the rails or out of control. That's the system doing exactly what it was created to do.” – Rebecca Nagle (37:51)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the American Dream:

  “Owning a home, having enough money to take care of yourself and your family, isn’t that what we’re all still striving for?”
  – Rebecca Nagle (01:50)

• On Early American Financial Crisis:

  “At the end of the Revolutionary War, the United States was in a financial disaster.”
  – Michael Blakeman (08:33)

• Doctrine of Discovery Explained:

  “That is still the law in the United States today.”
  – Nick Estes (15:19)

• On Bribery and Corruption:

  “They are offering shares of the scheme to like influential members of the Massachusetts state legislature.”
  – Michael Blakeman (21:54)

• On Real Estate as Oligarchy:

  “The corrupting power of money is part of the foundation of our political system.”
  – Rebecca Nagle (24:14)

• On Mortgage and Foreclosure as Tools of Dispossession:

  “It becomes a really lucrative way of running a market... once you give that kind of option to lenders to take land and kick people off forever...”
  – K. Soo Park (28:50)

• On Generational Poverty in Indian Country:

  “There’s always this thing of, like, why are Native people so poor?... Because we were made poor.”
  – Rebecca Nagle (36:56)

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Key Timestamps for Reference

• Jefferson’s Vision & Modern Auction: 01:50–05:30
• Explaining Foreclosures Today: 05:30–07:24
• Debt Crisis of the Founders: 07:24–09:52
• Doctrine of Discovery & Legal Theft: 12:25–15:24
• The Ohio Company Heist: 16:36–21:54
• Bribery, Corruption and Land Sales: 22:01–24:14
• Origin of the Modern Mortgage Market: 26:46–31:56
• Generational Consequences for Native Families: 32:27–37:51

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Tone and Language

The tone is direct, clear, and steeped in narrative storytelling. The voices of Native experts and activists are foregrounded, using accessible language but not shying away from historical specifics or economic jargon when required. Memorable quotes are sharp and sometimes sardonic, as the episode balances scholarly insight with personal reflection and a sense of urgency.

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Conclusion

"Land, Not Liberty" reframes the story of American land as one of systemic dispossession, corruption, and speculative profit—foundations that shape today's real estate crisis and enduring inequalities. The episode draws a clear line from 18th-century land grabs and legal doctrines to modern foreclosures and the erosion of the American dream, emphasizing that today’s economic injustices are rooted in the country’s unchanged historical structures.

Transcript

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[Rebecca Nagle]

We don't hear about it a lot, but founding father Thomas Jefferson had a lot to say about the US Economy and what it should look like. He didn't want Americans working in factories or hourly jobs. He didn't want Americans living in cities renting apartments. Jefferson thought that if you had a boss or a landlord, you weren't economically independent and therefore you couldn't be politically independent. Jefferson wanted every American to own their own land and be their own boss. He envisioned a country of small family farms. He wrote that farmers were closer to God, and he thought those kinds of citizens could hold a fragile democracy together. That dream Jefferson laid out, I think it's still with us today. We might call it the American Dream. I mean, we didn't keep the farm part, but owning a home, having enough money to take care of yourself and your family, isn't that what we're all still striving for? Somewhere along the way, that dream got off track.

[Tony Ayo]

I have a specified bid of $1,493,313.30. Do I have any bids above that?

[Rebecca Nagle]

Every Thursday at the Kings County Supreme Court in Brooklyn, there's an auction. 1,000,494 foreclosed homes are sold to the highest bidder. Some of these homes have been in families for generations. Going once and just like that, going twice. They're sold out from under them.

[Michael Blakeman]

Sold.

[Rebecca Nagle]

A foreclosure happens when a homeowner gets behind on their mortgage payments. Eventually the bank takes the house back and they can auction it off. HSBC bank versus Property address is Gates Avenue. Parties, approach with your thirds, please. The next property caused a bit of commotion.

[Michael Blakeman]

Straight across, folks.

[Tony Ayo]

Let's go.

[Michael Blakeman]

You know the rules.

[Rebecca Nagle]

So many people got up to bid, the judge had to do a little crowd control.

[Tony Ayo]

Come on, fill in my spots.

[Michael Blakeman]

Do my sputter.

[Tony Ayo]

Let's move it down. Okay, once again, we're hoping at the 576,655. 30. I heard 1.31.

[Rebecca Nagle]

This house is in Bed Stuy, a historically black neighborhood in Brooklyn where home prices have gone through the roof.

[Tony Ayo]

1,000,550 kC. 1.6 kC. Next B.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The astronomical increase in home prices there means some families are suddenly sitting on multimillion dollar properties. It can be a vulnerable position.

[Tony Ayo]

Anyone else? 1,650,000 to Casey. 1,000,650. Going once, twice, three times.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The home on Gates Avenue sold for $1.6 million.

[Tony Ayo]

The Gates is worth $4 million. They paid 16 for it.

[Rebecca Nagle]

In the crowd outside the courtroom, we met a housing activist who comes to these auctions weekly just to observe. She says her home is also facing foreclosure.

[Housing Activist]

They got loans on my house that I don't owe the money to. The loans weren't done by me. It was the lawyers. Two lawyers I hired. One of them threw me into some loans and the other one said, I found a modification and I didn't.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Some people will do anything to get their hands on valuable real estate, including tricks and scams.

[Housing Activist]

I have another court date and I'm fighting alone. I'm fighting it.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The housing crisis is particularly bad in New York City, but it's bad everywhere. I live in rural Oklahoma, and even here, rent and home prices keep going up and up. In the last few decades, the average cost of a new home in the US has more than tripled. According to one analysis, people with average incomes can't afford most houses on the market. Younger generations are giving up on the dream of home ownership altogether. And folks who do own their homes are having A harder time keeping them. How did we get here? From a founding vision that property ownership was for everyone to a modern real estate market where that dream turned into a nightmare. You're listening to first America, the true story of how the United States came to be and how our current political moment is 250 years in the making. From Pushkin Industries and Critical frequency, I'm your host, Rebecca Nagle. Gohin Tawadon Jalakayetli Que en la citizen of Cherokee Nation. Last episode we Talked about the 15 year war between Myaamiya Nation and the United States. But why was that war fought in the first place? Why was the US So hellbent on building a fort in Kika Yonge? To answer that question, we've gotta follow the money. And for our founding fathers, money was a bit of a sore subject because the country they were building, well, it was broke.

[Michael Blakeman]

The United States had fought its war for independence on a wing and a prayer.

[Rebecca Nagle]

This is Michael Blakeman.

[Michael Blakeman]

I'm an associate professor of early American history at Princeton University.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The new government didn't have enough money to pay for the Revolutionary war. The government tried just printing more money, but that led to runaway inflation.

[Michael Blakeman]

There's like jokes in the newspapers about people walking around with wheelbarrows of Continental dollars because they're going to use them to wallpaper their rooms.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The government tried this other way to pay for things.

[Michael Blakeman]

You know, imagine the continental army and they pass by a farm and there's three delicious looking cows in the field.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The army's not going to pay for those cows in cash or silver.

[Michael Blakeman]

Instead, they're going to write up a little IOU and say the continental army or the Continental Congress promises to pay in the Future.

[Rebecca Nagle]

These little IOUs were everywhere. The US also paid for the revolutionary war with loans from countries like Spain and France. But then it couldn't make the payments.

[Michael Blakeman]

Oh, man. At the end of the Revolutionary War, the United States was in a financial disaster.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The constitution hadn't been written yet. That wouldn't come for a few more years, which means the federal government doesn't have the power to tax people. The US Is drowning in debt and has no clear way out. There's widespread fear that this great experiment in democracy will fail. How did our founders plan to pay that debt?

[Michael Blakeman]

I mean, land really was essential to how they thought they were going to address this fiscal crisis. You know, members of the Continental congress, state legislators, state governors, look west and they see what they believe to be a vast expanse of land that, like more than is theirs for the taking that they have already taken. As patriots are looking westward, they're thinking about trying to solve their financial problems by selling off what is in reality other people's land.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The plan to fund the federal government Sell indigenous land how they Got Away with It after the break

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[Rebecca Nagle]

When the US won the Revolutionary War in 1783, most Americans still lived on a small strip of land hugging the east Coast. But they claimed their new country went all the way out to the Mississippi River. In reality, most of that land was controlled, governed, and occupied by indigenous nations. So why did Americans think it was theirs?

[Nick Estes]

If you go back and read Thomas Jefferson's writings, he thought that there were still woolly mammoths or other sort of magical beings out here.

[Rebecca Nagle]

This is Nick Estes again, history professor at University of Minnesota and citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux tribe.

[Nick Estes]

It's like kind of like one of those, like, old maps of the world with a kraken emerging from the sea. Like, they just didn't know.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Yeah, I mean, I feel like that just kind of brings home the fact that, like, even though the US Signed this treaty with England, it's even legislating the future of how this land will become a US State. It's all in their heads. Yeah, it's confusing when you think about it. It would be like New York claiming all the land in Connecticut because New York wants it. But the people of Connecticut still live in Connecticut, are still governed by Connecticut. New York's claim is just that, a claim. How does that work legally? How could you encounter a continent that is already occupied by hundreds of indigenous nations and say, this belongs to me. It belongs to me, England. And then later, like me, the United States.

[Nick Estes]

That's the foundation of international law. Actually, anyone who was not Christian was cast out as savage. And so indigenous nations were seen as savage. You know, black and African people were seen as savage. Therefore, they had no property rights.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The thing Nick is talking about is called the doctrine of discovery. It comes from a series of decrees issued by popes in the 15th century that declared any land treasure. And even people belonging to non Christian nations were free for the taking. Like, so if indigenous people don't have property rights, what rights do we have?

[Nick Estes]

We had occupancy rights.

[Rebecca Nagle]

So almost like we're like the renter in the United States as our landlord.

[Nick Estes]

Well, we're the future renter. We were just waiting for a master. We didn't have civilization, so therefore we couldn't own the land.

[Rebecca Nagle]

So insulting. Under early versions of international law, indigenous people didn't have property rights because we weren't Christian, because we weren't civilized. From those original papal decrees, the concept was adopted by England and then later the United States. And is that still the law in the United States today?

[Nick Estes]

That is still the law in the United States today.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The doctrine of discovery was adopted by the Supreme Court in 1823. It was cited by the court as recently as 2005 in a case that undermined the treaty and land rights of Oneida Indian Nation. Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote that opinion. The doctrine of discovery is still part of federal Indian law, but it's also the foundation of something else. Property law. Saying that Native people couldn't own land, saying that we were racially inferior and didn't have the same property rights as white people. That was actually the first step in creating private property in the United States. What happened next in the young broke United States is the story of a heist. It involves 18th century finance bros, expensive oyster lunches, congressional bribery and a drunk minister. But it's an important story because it begins to explain what happened to the American dream. It starts with a group of businessmen who want to make money in real estate.

[Michael Blakeman]

They get together in a tavern in Boston called the Bunch of Grapes.

[Rebecca Nagle]

This is Michael Blakeman again and hatch

[Michael Blakeman]

this scheme to try and buy land from the Continental Congress.

[Rebecca Nagle]

They name their business the Ohio Company because their eyes are set on the Ohio country, the hot new frontier. This is the land Myaamiya Nation and the Chihuahua CPWA alliance were fighting to protect last episode. And the Ohio Company has a pretty good business idea. They want to buy land from the federal government for cheap and sell it to settlers for a profit. That land of course, comes with a hitch.

[Michael Blakeman]

The majority of this land was still squarely owned and unceded by Native nations.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The Ohio Company's thinking was this. The US Government would eventually force those indigenous people off their land and and then the company could sell it for more money to white settlers. This business model was called land speculation. It's the same thing we talked about George Washington doing in episode one. But first, the Ohio Company needs a land grant from Congress. In short, they need Congress to agree to a real estate sale.

[Michael Blakeman]

They send a guy of kind of a stodgy, I think of him as kind of stodgy minister and schoolmaster named Manasseh Cutler.

[Rebecca Nagle]

And so Minister Manasseh heads to New York City where Congress meets.

[Michael Blakeman]

At the time they have a pitch to make they say, you know, this scheme will a enable the Continental Congress to retire a bunch of its debt and will help bring in their mind security and order and stability and social institutions like schools and churches.

[Rebecca Nagle]

So kind of like a modern day developer might say, hey, city council, if you cut me a deal, I'll turn this industrial zone into a ritzy neighborhood. Minister Manasseh told Congress, if you cut us a deal, we'll turn indigenous land into white settlement. But he runs into a problem. Congress is in the middle of a moral debate and that debate has nothing to do with indigenous people. They're fine selling off our land, but they're debating who they should sell our land to.

[Michael Blakeman]

Congress was opposed to selling land to speculators. Congress was still attached to the idea of selling land directly to ordinary farmers,

[Rebecca Nagle]

those hard working farmers Thomas Jefferson imagined would hold the country together. That's who Congress wanted to sell the land to. And so after Minister Manasseh makes his pitch to Congress, it falls flat. The deal stalls.

[Michael Blakeman]

And here's the truly corrupt part.

[Rebecca Nagle]

This is when a guy named William Dewar enters the scene who I think

[Michael Blakeman]

of as like the late 18th century version of a finance brother.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Dewar is a former member of the Continental Congress. He even works for a while as the Assistant Secretary of the treasury and

[Michael Blakeman]

then leaves because he says, I can do better for myself. That's actually, that's a direct quote to do better, basically to free up some more time for land speculation.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Duer wants to sell the land he buys from Congress to foreign investors, basically rich people in Europe. But that pitch is so far from Thomas Jefferson's vision, it can't be public. Duer wants to secretly buy land through the Ohio Company. They'd be like his cover. Duer starts talking to Minister Manasseh.

[Michael Blakeman]

They're having oyster lunches in Brooklyn where they're not going to be overheard by, you know, people who might write about this in the newspapers.

[Rebecca Nagle]

At one dinner, Minister Manasseh drinks 15 different kinds of wine. Can you imagine the hangover? Dewar has some powerful people bought into his scheme, including at least one member of Congress.

[Michael Blakeman]

He says it has to be kept a profound secret. I can bring my group, which he describes as including a number of principal characters in the city. It's a nice vague, a nice vague descriptor. We'll join in and we'll expand the size of your purchase. Just keep our involvement a secret. The scheme works and as a result, Congress authorizes a sale that was eventually much bigger than what the Ohio Company had come asking for with the help

[Rebecca Nagle]

of Dewar's political connections, they buy 20% of the land that is now Ohio. On the other side of the scheme was the war we talked about last episode. On the other side of oyster lunches and 18th century finance bros. Was extreme violence, ethnic cleansing and eventually genocide. All that so these men could make more money. The Ohio company sale was like a fork in the road. Congress needed to decide between selling land to small farmers or big business. Congress chose big business and that decision stuck. The deals for land speculators kept coming and so did the bribes.

[Michael Blakeman]

I mean, they are offering shares of the scheme to like influential members of the Massachusetts state legislature.

[Rebecca Nagle]

When land companies wanted to buy over half the land in present day Alabama and Mississippi, they offered bribes to members of the Georgia state legislature. All but one lawmaker who voted for the sale took a bribe.

[Michael Blakeman]

Oh, the land market is awash with corruption and fraud.

[Rebecca Nagle]

So that dream of selling small parcels of land to individual farmers, it died on the vine. Through an orgy of corruption and greed, 18th century finance bros. Bought almost 100 million acres of land from the government.

[Michael Blakeman]

We're talking about basically half of present day Ohio, the western third of present day New York, the western third or so of Pennsylvania, pretty much all of Kentucky and Tennessee and big chunks of Alabama and Mississippi, not to mention Georgia itself and my gosh, all of West Virginia and a huge extent of Maine.

[Rebecca Nagle]

If you live in the eastern half of the United States, there's a fair chance you live on land that was caught up in this scheme. When I first heard this story, it reminded me a lot of what's happening today. I feel like our government still bends to the whims of Finance Bros. Billionaires are cozy with the President. Meanwhile, Trump is getting richer off the office. After Elon Musk laid off a bunch of federal workers, he became the world first trillionaire. And so many people still struggle to pay for basic things like housing. Some experts say we live in an oligarchy. And I think I agree. The problem of money in politics feels so modern, so present day, but what I learned is that it's all always been there. The corrupting power of money is part of the foundation of our political system.

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[Jonathan Goldstein]

This is Jonathan Goldstein from Heavyweight if your finance team spends more time finding data than using it. If there's one entity here and one here and one here and one here. If scaling your business feels like starting over, you need the Intuit ERP. Intuit Enterprise Suite is the AI native ERP solution that's powerful, painless, and proven. Learn more at intuit.com erp this is

[Tony Ayo]

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[Rebecca Nagle]

Land speculators in the late 1700s bought so much land so quickly it created a bubble. And then the bubble burst. Some of the most prominent land speculators, including Dewar, wound up in debtors prison, the land market falling short Also meant it didn't pay off the federal debt. That's part of why we have taxes. So you might think that land speculation as a business model ended, but no, the opposite happened. It grew with the Louisiana Purchase, Indian Removal and westward expansion. Speculation continued and it became a cornerstone of the American real estate market. As the US expanded from sea to shining sea, it ran out of indigenous land to take.

[K. Soo Park]

The frontier formally closes in 1890. And there's a real question on the table, like how are we going to keep making tons of money? We're running out of land.

[Rebecca Nagle]

This is K. Soo park, she's a law professor at ucla.

[K. Soo Park]

You know, it's not very long before they revamp that entire property market through the production of a standardized mortgage.

[Rebecca Nagle]

The mortgage market really starts in the early 1900s as a way for financial institutions to keep making money off land.

[K. Soo Park]

Almost every one of those little parcels on the ground then has a mortgage attached to it and then that becomes a huge market in mortgage backed securities. And now there's like markets on top of that.

[Rebecca Nagle]

So it was almost like once the United States ran out of space to expand, it kept building wealth through land, but through like mortgages by like just piling more money into real estate through these other economic ways.

[K. Soo Park]

Exactly, yeah.

[Rebecca Nagle]

And that whole financial system that's built on the debt and credit and land and loans and bundling mortgages and selling them, it would not exist without foreclosure.

[K. Soo Park]

It becomes a really lucrative way of running a market because once you give that kind of option to lenders to take land and kick people off forever, more people are willing to lend.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Casu says foreclosure, it wasn't always a thing.

[K. Soo Park]

In England, it had really been very hard to take a family's land from them forever for non payment of even a secured debt, There were just other kinds of remedies. So if somebody owed you money and you couldn't pay them back, they could not take the land from you forever.

[Rebecca Nagle]

But when settlers got to North America, taking people's land suddenly got a lot easier. CAESU looked into it and the first instances of foreclosure are in colonial America. And it's invented as a way to take native people's land.

[K. Soo Park]

There's all of these stories of saying, well, we'll take your lands to settle these debts.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Ok, so it's almost like they do it to native people first and then they allow it to be done to other people.

[K. Soo Park]

Exactly.

[Rebecca Nagle]

So the idea of kicking someone out of their house or off their land because they can't pay a debt starts in the American colonies as a way to kick native people off their land. And eventually foreclosure was not just happening to native people, but anyone with property and an unpaid debt.

[K. Soo Park]

They accounted for every inch of land and measured it. They made a market out of that land. They brought easy foreclosure, and they were able to build this modern speculative real estate market on top of those basic tools, which were also all tools for taking indigenous lands in the first place.

[Rebecca Nagle]

From its creation in the 1920s and 30s, the mortgage market kept growing.

[K. Soo Park]

Even in the 1950s, you would have maybe three years if you went into default, if you fell behind on your loan, and now it's three months.

[Housing Activist]

Oh, wow.

[Rebecca Nagle]

And as the mortgage market grew, it got more hostile. Like, if I'm just a person where I'm, like, really frustrated with the price of groceries or rent, why should I care about this history? What does it have to do with my life?

[K. Soo Park]

I mean, like it or not, this history determines how everyone is able to live today. It determines the logic of our economy, how much you're paying in rent, you know, whether you can buy a house or not. And that, I think, is a super important story for us to realize, because it's so naturalized today, right? Like, everyone talks about real estate, and everybody thinks that real estate prices can just go up forever, but it's, like, insane because that's literally where people have to live. And it can't go up forever because people can't afford that. And eventually everybody's homeless.

[Rebecca Nagle]

We built our economy on stolen indigenous land. And after our country had taken most of what it could, the real estate market still needed to grow. It couldn't grow out anymore. So it started growing up, which meant property just got more and more expensive. And that same system that left a lot of people struggling made other people rich.

[Nick Estes]

I think of private property in the United States as a cornerstone for not just American wealth or US wealth, but also for the familial and generational wealth of white families.

[Rebecca Nagle]

This is Nick Estes again at the founding. Over half of all wealth that Americans owned was land.

[Nick Estes]

I mean, everyone has benefited from the dispossession of indigenous land. And I think oftentimes we think, like, well, I'm not responsible for the sins or the crimes of my ancestors, but you inherit the system that they created, and you also inherit the wealth that they acquired.

[Rebecca Nagle]

A quarter of white families in the US Descend from settlers who got free indigenous land from the government. This is true for the white side of my family. And While settlers were building all that wealth with Native land, Native people were collateral damage.

[Nick Estes]

So our family became cattle ranchers. Actually, my greatest grandfather, Reuben was called Tongue because he would take the tongue of a cow and it was considered the most prized item. And he would give it to families as sort of like a goodwill gesture, a way to kind of give back to the community.

[Rebecca Nagle]

When private property came to Nick's reservation, the government assigned land to every citizen. His great grandfather got land next to

[Nick Estes]

the river, along the Missouri river bottomlands. We ran our cattle there, and it was prime, like real estate, so to speak. It was like riverfront property.

[Rebecca Nagle]

But then the government wanted that land too. Why did the states. And why did local white residents want a dam there?

[Nick Estes]

To protect white settlement downriver. And in places like St. Louis, they decided to sacrifice native lands. When they came up with their plans in the, in the 30s, they didn't even put reservations on the map. And so my great grandfather and my great grandmother had found out about this and actually wrote the congressperson at the time and said, we oppose this.

[Rebecca Nagle]

How many families were flooded out?

[Nick Estes]

Every Dakota and Lakota reservation along the Missouri river was affected. This resulted in the relocation. The forced relocation of 30% of reservation populations on some reservations like ours was actually like close to half, if not more, if you think about it in terms of capitals. So, like, our capital city is the Lower Brule town. The entire Lower Brule town was flooded and destroyed. Imagine, you know, flooding Albany, New York. It would probably cause a lot of political, economic turmoil. And that's actually what happened to us at that, at that time.

[Rebecca Nagle]

What happened to your family after your land was flooded?

[Nick Estes]

Personally, we lost our cattle herd to that because the land we were relocated on was just not suitable. It's gumbo. If anyone knows our area, gumbo is just kind of this, like, hard clay. When it gets wet, it just sticks onto your shoes, onto your vehicles. It's unusable. Grass doesn't really grow on it. You know, you can't grow crops on it.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Yeah. And was that your grandparents generation?

[Nick Estes]

My great grandparents generation, my grandparents generation and my dad's generation. So it was three generations impacted. And I remember seeing photos of my great grandparents after the relocation. And they're literally like living in a tar paper shack because their home was destroyed. And they were all smiling. I mean, they like, happy as can be. But I'm. I know it's impacted them. I mean, my grandparents, perhaps for a variety of reasons, were economically, socially devastated by it to the point where they couldn't even take care of their own children. And so a lot of them were taken to boarding school. So every one of my aunts and uncles went to boarding school for at least until the 8th grade. My dad went to boarding school until he was a graduate of high school. He was the youngest.

[Rebecca Nagle]

Because they just couldn't provide for them.

[Nick Estes]

Yeah, they couldn't provide for them. And the churches prayed on that, too. They knew that people couldn't take care of their own kids.

[Rebecca Nagle]

One thing I think about a lot, like, there's always this thing of, like, why are native people so poor? Like, how do we solve poverty in Indian country? And it's like, because we were made poor.

[Nick Estes]

And this wasn't a 19th century phenomenon. This was a. An act that happened in the 20th century.

[Rebecca Nagle]

How do you think your life would have been different if the dam had never been built?

[Nick Estes]

I don't know. I don't really do counterfactuals that much. But I do think that the boarding school, the Catholic Indian boarding school, would have had less of an impact and influence on the absolute horror that it inflicted on my family and my aunts and uncles. But I don't want to speculate, like, if some of them would be alive today, but perhaps they would.

[Rebecca Nagle]

We created a cruel system to consume native land. And I think for a long time in our country, most Americans thought it would only affect those people, those indigenous people that didn't really have property rights. But that cruel system, it's the same real estate market we have today. So when the market feels inhumane, when families get kicked out of their homes, when rent goes up and up until everyone is struggling to find a place to live, that's not the system run off the rails or out of control. That's the system doing exactly what it was created to do. How the history we've been talking about explains the chaos we're seeing today.

[Michael Blakeman]

Another ICE agent climbed into the backseat and put his arm around my neck and headrest and used his other hand to click my seatbelt, to take my seatbelt off.

[Rebecca Nagle]

It's like, it's.

[HeroBread Advertiser]

It's not.

[Rebecca Nagle]

It's not a new thing. This is what we've done. We're good at this. Next time on First America. If you like what you're hearing, please leave a review. It's one of the best ways to help listeners find this show. You can also support First America by subscribing or sharing episodes with your friends. First America was made possible by the generous support of the Henry Luce foundation and the NYU Yale American Indian Sovereignty project. Additional support came from Indian Collective, First Nations Development Institute, Yahavia Tom of San Manuel Nation Borealis Philanthropy and Black Liberation Indigenous Sovereignty Collective. Our fiscal sponsor is Red Media. I dreamed this project into the world in collaboration with an amazing group of Indigenous scholars, including Maggie Blackhawk, Fond du Lac Ojibwe Ned Blackhawk, citizen of the Timok tribe of Western Shoshone, Phil Deloria, descendant of the Standing Rock and Yankton Sioux tribes and Nick Estes, citizen of the Lower Borough Sioux Tribe. I, Rebecca Nagle, citizen of Cherokee Nation, also reported, wrote, hosted and executive produced the show. First America is produced by Critical Frequency and distributed by Pushkin Industries. Our managing producer is Amy Westervelt. Senior producer and sound designer is Brendan Baker. Our story editor is Audrey Quinn. Our producers are Jules Bradley, Sarah Ventri, Kim Netter, V. Petersa and Jordan Goss Perrett. Our editorial consultant is Connie Walker, citizen of the Okanese First Nation. Fact checking by Naomi Barr. Our partnerships director is Lindsey Crowder. Our development consultant is Ginny Lawton. Our theme song is by Raven Chukan, who is Danae. Scoring by Laura Ortman, citizen of the White Mountain Apache Tribe and Raven Chacon. Artwork by Kelly Gonzalez, citizen of Cherokee Nation. The team at Pushkin is Greta Cohn, CEO Eric Sandler, Chief Strategy Officer Grace Ross, VP of Business Development, Morgan Ratner, Director of Marketing Owen Miller, Content Delivery Associate Kira Posey, Creative partnerships manager Jordan McMillan, social media manager Brian Strabanek, Senior Analytics Manager and Jake Flanagan, Production Counsel. Special thanks this episode to Martin Case, Jodi Bird, Emily Connolly, David Correa and Jason Moore.

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[Domino's Advertiser]

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[Rebecca Nagle]

Any pizza, any toppings?

[Michael Blakeman]

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[Domino's Advertiser]

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[Tony Ayo]

Only 9.99.

[Michael Blakeman]

Yeah, that sounds like the move.

[Rebecca Nagle]

I'm heading straight to Dom.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

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[Nick Estes]

Menno's.

[Domino's Advertiser]

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[HeroBread Advertiser]

Wasn't that delicious?

[Housing Activist]

So good.

[Nick Estes]

Your bill, ladies.

[Rebecca Nagle]

I got it. No, I got it. Seriously, I insist. I insisted first. Don't be silly. You don't be silly.

[Michael Blakeman]

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[Housing Activist]

Okay.

[HeroBread Advertiser]

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[Michael Blakeman]

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