Phone a Friend: John Kane of Let’s Talk Native

Hey Unf*ckers. Welcome to a very special edition of Phone a Friend, where we reach out to experts, authors and intellectuals who know way more shit about certain subjects than I will ever know. Now, this one is a real home game and should prove to be both informative and a lot of fun. He is a Mohawk broadcaster hiding out on Seneca territory in Western New York. John Kane has been the face and voice of resistance and advocacy for decades. He's the host of a podcast called Let's Talk Native, which we've covered before, and Resistance Radio on WBAI and WPFW in Washington.

Now, we've collaborated with John a handful of times over the years, and I actually got to hang with him at BAI, and back in the day when he presented at Left Forum. He's a man of great principle who calls truth to power not only in the United States, but to power structures within Native territories as well. He's always primed and ready for a scuffle and to correct my white ass if I get something wrong. And when he's not calling out the establishment, he's bragging about his grandkids on social media ad nauseam. Good lord.

So there are a few things that I wanted to cover with John today, including some rather big news here in New York that directly involves him. And Unf*ckers have heard some of his commentary before, but let me warn you that that was scripted. And unscripted John is a force of nature. So hang on. And without further ado, I am absolutely thrilled to invite my friend and mentor in all things Native, John Kane to the radio show.

Kane

Well, I want to thank you for having me; it's always fun, because you and I do have a good exchange. And we do go back a ways. You know, actually you were on my—it was a blog originally before the podcast thing. So we go back quite a ways.

Max

That's right. And we have a mutual friend in Harry Wallace on the Poospatuck reservation. And Harry thinks that you hang the moon, he loves you dearly. And even though I criticized him for that, he wasn't gonna give me an inch on it. It's nice to see that there are long term collaborations and friendships in this space, and I really, truly do respect the work that you do because you are indefatigable, my friend. And every time that there's a major issue that's burning in Native territories—and I'm going to ask you a question here within my presentation, within “Indian country,” I know that you are always going to be the first honest go to, to reconcile the information that's being put out into the ether. And that's what we're going to do today.

So, my first question to you is, recall that you had actually corrected me in one of my very first episodes called Culture Cancel on the use of the terminology “Indian.” But then, we also had a brief discussion offline about the use of Indian country. And Indian Country Today, how the administration still refers to it kind of colloquially as Indian country. Even our agencies still refer to it as Indian country.

Just so we can level set on some language to begin with, can you talk about your feelings towards that type of description towards the broader Native landscape?

Kane

Sure, I basically use the word Native in place of the word Indian on almost all occasions; I refer to Native people, Native territories, that kind of thing. I understand that that word becomes embedded because of things like the Bureau of Indian Affairs because of institutions like Indian Country Today and these things. But, you know what, the United Negro Fund still exists too. The NAACP still exists and we don't use “colored people,” we don't use “negro.” So we understand that those words exist, and we don't condemn the lack of a name change in those instances.

But for me, Native people and the word Native is more benign because we know where the word Indian comes from. But I'm also not crazy about Native American. And I even have to sometimes take a little pause with the overuse of indigenous because—well, I don't really condemn the word. I think there's some international definitions that always tie the word indigenous to being somehow descendants of a people, not still being those people. And that's where I find a lot of this problematic, the way Native people are presented and represented in every place but our own.

But I understand a lot of Native people—that word Indian sometimes is embedded in the name of their Native tribe, which is also a word I don't like to use [laughing]. But I think there's a lot of words that have—you know, again, talk about tribes. When we hear pundits on the news or whatever else use words like tribe and tribal and tribalism, it's never meant in a positive way. But somehow, we're supposed to say, ‘Oh, it doesn't mean anything negative when it applies to us.’ Well, by the very definition of those words, if it's somewhat derogatory, if it's always associated with being primitive, or unsophisticated or uncivilized. Yeah, just because you're hanging it on us doesn't mean that it stops being that.

Max

That's fair. And you know I learned through the process, you know—so we've done some work, talking about down under, we've talked about Canadian politics and the overlap with American politics with respect to Native issues. And understanding that indigenous carries more weight in Canada than perhaps Native does, that Native is used more in American territories; like in Mohawk Territory where Akwesasne and St. Regis border the U.S. and Canada. There's no absolutes in this. Using the term Aboriginal is something that we don't use in North America, but it's still kind of colloquially used down under, and getting the language right to me is super important. So I always like to kind of start with that to level-set to make sure that people know that we're conscious of that. And even if I make missteps, that I can be corrected along the way and it comes from kind of a different place.

Kane

Sure, sure.

Max

So, before we get into the breaking news part—which I have some personal anecdotal stuff to share that I think you're gonna love. Before we get into what's happening in New York, the White House Council on Native American Affairs was reinstituted because it was something that went away under Trump. So this was sort of a, I think at best we can call it a performative gathering and summit that used to happen with the White House. It would kind of happen with leaders throughout Native country, maybe once a year, there was a lot of platitudes, there was a lot of asking for certain things, and, and then everything would die off until the next one.

But Biden did some things, and made some claims during his speech at the summit. And I wanted to kind of go through them one by one with you—because I think it's really helpful to discern between the establishment statements, the things that we're just supposed to accept as fact, and then what's actually happening on the ground—to see if you can provide any color to them.

So, if it's alright with you, John, I'm going to list off a handful of claims that were made directly by the President during that speech with leaders in the audience, pretty much applauding the entire way.

So, you can't see him, but John's already smiling.

Kane

In the interest of full disclosure, I have not heard any of these. So I'm going to hear them from you for the first time. So, pardon my gasping or lack of applause [laughing].

Max

[Laughing] No problem. Okay, so here's a handful, and then we'll go back and we'll tackle them one by one. $32 billion in the American Rescue Plan, the largest one time ever direct investment in Indian Country in American history. The biggest investment in Indian Country infrastructure—again, I'm quoting here—ever in history, with more than $13 billion in rebuilding infrastructure. In South Dakota, $29 million of infrastructure funding to help us repair two old dams built in the ‘40s, and another, the first in the ‘40s, the other in the ‘60s, on Pine Ridge Reservation.

Confronting and adapting to the climate crisis, signing a law that made the biggest investment in history, that includes $700 million exclusively for Native communities. $9.1 billion for the Indian Health Services, asking Congress for the first time ever to make that mandatory, which would be a mandatory part of the federal budget. And an executive order to improve public safety and criminal justice for Native Americans to respond more effectively to the epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous people.

Those were the high points, those are verbatim from the President's speech. And I know you're blown away and that you automatically understand I think, in hearing these things, that whatever issues, John, that you might have had, with the colonial force of the United States of America are all now fixed, right?

Kane

Yeah, sure. [Laughing]

Max

Okay. Let's go back and take them one by one, because the first one is a big pronouncement. These are big dollars we're talking about and dollars that actually were sorely needed because we can see it. In the American rescue plan, there was a lot of money that was being spent and some of it is going to really, really good places that were long overdue. This claim is that it's the largest one time ever direct investment into “Indian country” in American history. How does that actually show up? Because we're talking about just roughly, John, how many Native nations are there within, let's just call it the continental United States?

Kane

Well, the Bureau of Indian Affairs recognizes, I think, it's 475 that are “federally recognized tribes.” So there's that. And then, of course, there's a bunch of Native entities, Native peoples that are not federally recognized that are either state recognized or haven't even reached that level. So there's a lot of territories. And I've got to flat out say, when they talk about this direct investment, will we see it? I mean, are we talking about the highways that run through our territories that are your responsibility anyway? I mean, are we talking about the bridges that are your highways that you happen to cut through our territories? I mean, we have a toll road [laughing] that goes through Seneca territory in the New York State Thruway that we're expected to pay tolls on, that cuts through our territory, and we can't get New York State Thruway Authority to pony up for the portion of the Thruway that goes through our territory.

So we gotta take the stuff in context. And, and one of the things that I can't ignore is that there was this lawsuit called the Cobell [v. Salazar] suit that, by some estimates, was $100 billion worth of Native assets lost. This isn't about them doing infrastructure investment. And even the Bush administration was talking somewhere around $40 billion dollars in terms of what would be required to settle that because, frankly, when auditors came in and looked at this, and they saw what a debacle the Bureau of Indian Affairs had made of the of record keeping—

Max

What is the Cobell suit, just for context, John?

Kane

The Elouise Cobell suit is the—Elouise's was the woman who brought the suit—and it's a class action suit against the Interior Department in general, for the mismanagement of Native assets. It included the investments that they lost, the assets they lost. And it includes a lot of what they couldn't even account for, in terms of whose land was whose and that kind of stuff, because the Bureau of Indian Affairs was managing so many of these oil leases and grazing leases and other infrastructure. So, by many accounts, it was somewhere between $40 billion and $100 billion worth of lost assets.

Max

What era was this, John?

Kane

Well, when it got settled, and it got settled during the Biden/Obama administration, they basically settled it with pennies on the dollar, $4 billion. And the crazy part about it is, we didn't even get that, because some of that $4 billion out of what was probably at least $40 billion worth of loss, went to reacquiring lands that they, that got sold off to white people. So, white people essentially got paid for land that they illegally purchased.

So, out of that $4 billion, some people got checks for like $1,500, or something like that. It was not the life changing settlement that should have come on this really, almost criminal abuse of Native assets that spanned a lot of time. But the Bureau of Indian Affairs actually even destroyed records. It wasn't just that they did poor accounting, they actually hid and destroyed. And they were held in contempt of court several times, you know, not that anybody gets locked up when an agency is held in contempt of court.

Max

So let me ask you this, John, just in terms of direct funding, so that $4 billion that gets appropriated that which, which could have been obviously a lot more—any monies for that matter, that get appropriated, and then this next $32 billion—the U.S. Federal Government has been testing different methods of payment directly to the citizens, directly to small businesses, as we saw with the Paycheck Protection Plan, directly into we'll say, intermediaries that will earmark certain money for specific projects to make sure that it goes directly there and doesn't get washed through any other funds.

What is the mechanism through which Native territories—we're talking about 400 some odd federally recognized territories—actually take receipt of this money? How does that happen? What does it look like? Is there a central banking authority on each separate territory that then receives this money and has to distribute it to the territory? Does it come to people directly? Like we never think about this stuff, because $32 billion, that sounds like an impressive number, but how does it get through? What does that look like?

Kane

Well, and it varies from territory to territory. Where I live, and in many of the Native communities that are within the geographical region of New York, we don't get hardly anything from the federal government. We actually have a very limited relationship with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. And that's historically, it's always been that way. We don't have Indian agents within our territories and that kind of stuff. So we don't get a whole lot. Nor do we ask for a whole lot, you know, from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which is essentially the mechanism by which most funds, federal funds come through; either through the Bureau of Indian Affairs directly or its Indian Health Services arm or there's a Bureau of Indian Education, I think also, which is a bit separate from the BIA. It's all under the Interior Department, except for possibly the Indian Health Services, that may be under the bigger Health and Human Services Agency.

But no, there is no, again, there's not even uniformity, because some places are really wrapped up with the Bureau of Indian Affairs in terms of everything from their, their tribal police to some of those schools—I mean the Bureau of Indian Affairs still manages, I think, either four or five Indian boarding schools. And again, I use the word because that's what they're called. So what we oftentimes see with a lot of these monies, including the entire budget for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, is it gets lost in bureaucracy. So the direct benefits that we receive, again, out of that Cobell suit, there is this thing called the Individual Indian Money account, or something like that. And those people who would receive some—and these usually are tied to oil leases, or racing leases of some sort or something like that, they got a check out of the settlement for, like I said, between $1200 and $1500, or something like that, and might have been less for some.

When you spread that over a large population of people, and even though our population is small by comparison to Americans, to spread any kind of settlement like that—or even this distribution, because I don't know $32 billion, we're talking about, not every state in the United States, but many states in the United States—you're talking about we have interstates that go through our territories, we have U.S. Highways, we have state highways. The road that gets access to my house has a road closed sign on it, even though it's not closed, because the township does not want to either plow or sand it or something.

And that infrastructure is not ours, but it goes through our territories. And part of it is because they wanted to run roads through our territories because they want access from town to town, and we sometimes stand in between them. So, the bridges that go through our territories, maybe a culvert or two are our responsibility, but the bridges that go through our territories are usually state or federal responsibilities.

Max

So, when he talks about like, for example, the $13 billion and rebuilding “infrastructure in Indian country,” that could technically mean our infrastructure that runs through it. And it's kind of like, ‘you're welcome!’ But it is better than it falling apart on their watch, right? But they need it because it moves our commerce and our tourism, so.

Kane

There is an irony in the battles that we have over things like “our” commerce because “their” commerce runs absolutely unimpeded. And look, we've got the New York State Thruway that goes through Seneca territory, we've got CSX rail that runs through Seneca territory, we've got power lines and natural gas lines that run through our territory that many of us don't have access to.

Max

And then again there are times—I know this because you and I've spoken about this before where maybe Seneca is little fed up with everybody coming through the territory and they just fucking block it off [laughing].

Kane

Well, we have closed the thruway—

Max

[Laughing]

Kane

—and maybe downed power lines, in fact, during the period of time when fiber optic cables were being run, the powers that be who control those things said, ‘Nah we’re not going through Seneca territory.’ So guess who were the last people to get high speed internet? [Laughing]

They ran the Sprint lines and the other lines at great expense all the way around our territories, and so we don't have cable TV. We don't have high speed internet. Only recently have we gotten some through another program, they ran some fiber optic cables through the territories, but not everybody has it yet.

Max

Wow. So, let me jump down to something else that [Biden] said which should be on the minds of every single person living today. And that is the epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous people, right? So when he says that, “I signed an executive order to improve public safety and criminal justice for Native Americans to respond more effectively to this epidemic,” can you help me draw a straight line?

Because, first of all, an executive order to improve—that, that's nothing. That's literally saying, ‘I'm doing nothing except acknowledging this with the stroke of a pen, hey, everybody do better.’ But can you draw a straight line to the recent Supreme Court decision that talked about who actually has providence over certain criminal issues on territories and how these issues relate? Whether there's going to be something positive that comes out to it, or if this really is one of the death knells to the concept of sovereignty?

Kane

Well look, any attention given to a problem like missing and murdered indigenous women is a good thing. So, I don't want to dismiss it out of hand completely. But you have to get to understanding what the problem is, and it's everything from the clusterfuck of jurisdictional reach and who has jurisdiction, whether it's county, state or federal. And, in the rare occasions where the federal government has pushed the state governments to recognize our tribal courts, or our tribal police, they oftentimes get superseded by everybody else, too. So. And then there's the remoteness of our territories, which are part of the problem in of itself, because they're not going to dispatch a state police officer that's gotta drive two hours to get to our locations, and, and the FBI doesn't have a very strong presence on our territories. And frankly, we're somewhat wary of them having a strong presence in these situations. So it is tough.

We don't get the attention—who was that, Gabby Petito? She turned up missing from Wyoming I think, originally. And at the same time, there were dozens of Native women who were missing at the same time, and nobody knew, nobody cared. So that's not just jurisdiction, that's the media. But a pretty white blonde girl who's a podcaster on places to go, she commanded all kinds of attention. And look, it's a tragedy what happened to that woman, and I'm not begrudging the attention she got. You just can't get away without mentioning the disparity in that attention.

So when we talk about the problem of missing and murdered indigenous women, we have to understand where the problems lie. So making an executive order or something—Obama had executive orders too that said that no policy that impacts Native people will be authorized without consultation. Well, we didn't have consultation on half the stuff that was signed into law that had directly impacted us. It's nice to say all that stuff, but at the end of the day, it's like you said, it ends up being just fluff.

Max

So, in terms of jurisdiction—I should have been more on the ball in bringing up the case name—I know that Gorsuch was vehemently opposed to the majority decision that was written by his conservative colleagues. And it had to do with who actually has authority in criminal justice cases that happen on tribal lands, but I think involve something that breaks a federal statute, right?

Can you kind of elucidate who reigns supreme in those type of cases now on tribal lands? Did that case make it more clear and perhaps better? Or did it open up a can of worms that could possibly impact the concept of sovereignty in the long run?

Kane

The case you're talking about comes on the heels of the Supreme Court acknowledging that large portions of Oklahoma were still considered Native lands. And so there was that. And that actually spurred this challenge, which was a guy who was sitting in jail—who was not Native—he was sitting in jail for a crime that he committed. And the question was, was it the proper jurisdiction that convicted him? So, that's what the case was really all about. And no, it doesn't straighten any of this stuff. Because one of the biggest problems that we have is that we are not recognized as having the authority, real authority over our own lands, especially when it comes to things like jurisdiction, criminal jurisdiction, even civil jurisdiction. So that, in of itself, is a big problem.

Whether we have the infrastructure, again, with courts and police and that kind of stuff—whether we have it or not, it's not acknowledged. I mean, when they passed the [Violence Against Women Act, VAWA] I think it was called—they did a couple of test cases where police forces and courts that they felt they could give full faith and credit to, they would recognize their jurisdiction, but only in this pilot program. But it still doesn't—if they don't recognize our sovereignty, if they just say, ‘Okay, we're gonna allow those police departments to do certain things, or have criminal jurisdiction,’ it still doesn't come from the right place. You know what I'm saying? Because what you have is, you could have a non-Native person, a white guy who commits a crime who gets arrested, gets locked up and gets imprisoned by a tribal court. And he could actually cry foul that his constitutional rights were impacted, because he wasn't protected by the United States. See, they're not going to say that he left the jurisdiction of the United States when he enters a Native territory, and so that's on him; they're just saying, ‘We're going to give certain authorities outside of our jurisdiction to another jurisdiction.’ This ends up being really confusing for a lot of people.

I'll even go back because there's a case that's being heard now about the Indian Child Welfare Act, where this white couple is saying that they're being discriminated against, because they're white, and they're not being allowed to adopt Native children. So the effort is to say that we are merely just a race of Americans. So any special consideration to us is racist, because it's providing one race some sort of special attention or special privileges or whatever else. And in this case, the Indian Child Welfare Act doesn't recognize our authority to pull a child out of a home and place it in another home. This federal law just put some guardrails up for the already existing child protective services that are state agencies to say, ‘Okay, if you're gonna pull a child from a Native home, you have to place them or give preference to a relative, somebody else within that Native organization, or even another Native peoples altogether.’ And that's what's being challenged.

So, I mean, if we get reduced to just a race of Americans, I think the whole existence of the Bureau of Indian Affairs becomes questionable. Or the fact that the Bureau of Indian Affairs is manned—I just had an author, Valerie Lambert, who wrote a book called Native Agency about how over 90% of the personnel in the Bureau of Indian Affairs are Native. Well, if that gets called out and say, ‘Well, that's not right, they shouldn't be able to have a racial preference,’ so this is how confusing all of this stuff gets.

At the end of the day, the biggest problem is the federal government, through years of policy, including the residential schools, has diminished our autonomy and our distinction, and has tried to suggest that our sovereignty—you know, they always take the word tribal in front of it, which I guess it means not sovereign when they say tribal sovereignty, they mean, not sovereignty—they just don't want to recognize that we should have agency over our children, over our territories, or over the crimes that are committed on our territories.

Max

I found it interesting when I spent time in Akwesasne, how mature the infrastructure for law enforcement was, health and human services, even courts. We have this idea in the rest of the country that Native territories are just a series of single wide and double wide trailers, no running water, no electricity, no mature infrastructure, or a casino. And there's really no middle ground. What was surprising to me was an area like that, that has kind of robust trade that sits with waterways and has mature institutions, has its own governance, has its own councils, really has a sense of agency in the sovereignty discussion that New York almost has to respect. They don't have to like it, they can still treat them like shit, but they almost have to respect it. Because when you walk onto the territory, you recognize instantly I'm in another country. This is not the United States of America, this is another place.

Whereas, I don't think that a lot of people really feel that, recognize that, because what you said before, most of these territories are so remote that we only have what's been inculcated in us through media depictions and mostly bad news on news outlets and programs, right?

Kane

Hollywood.

Max

So, I find that the most difficult concept to convey to non-Native audiences is this idea of sovereignty. Because it almost seems unfathomable that an independent nation—let alone 400 some odd independent nations, and actually a lot more—would be within the geographical territory of the United States, and also that they have complete autonomy, but not in all things. Complete autonomy, agency, decision making ability, but there's by necessity, so much collaboration that's required, just because these are embedded nations within a larger nation. You can't get around the geographic reality that we're here together, man.

So it's not like saying, you know, here's your territory, this is our territory. Na'er the two shall meet, we can put up a wall between them, this is Canada, that's Mexico, this is the United States. These pockets of territories that live within the greater territory, and we have to figure out a different way. So, when we talk about sovereignty, there's an absolute notion in our minds as to what sovereignty is, that is an impossible thing to reconcile with the geographic reality of these territories. Does that make sense?

Kane

Yeah, I don't know that it's that impossible. I just think that there's just not a desire to do so. And I do have to call you back on a few things [smiling].

Max

Good!

Kane

First off, what people consider sophisticated infrastructure oftentimes means it looks just like the white people have. We have police just like the white people have, and those police in places like Akwesasne—the St. Regis Tribal Police—are deputized New York State Sheriffs. So our ability to create our own agencies that operate within something that's more culturally appropriate, still, even in places where you're gonna see these so-called tribal courts, or these so-called tribal police; most of those things are just Brown skinned people in those uniforms. The uniforms are the same. The batons and the police cars, all that stuff are the same. So I don't know that that's necessarily evidence of what I would consider, you know, sovereignty, especially since most of them are somehow connected to big brother on the outside anyway. But no, I don't think it's impossible—

Max

God, I love talking to you!

Kane

That our territories can, can operate with distinction regardless of where we are. Look, there's trade and commerce that happens on our territory. Non-Native people come on our territories and they buy tobacco products, or they buy coffee, or they gamble or whatever else. But there are lots of places in the world that people leave a jurisdiction and enter into another jurisdiction. I do have to say, not all Native territories, or Native peoples, are at a place where they could manage something like criminal enforcement and that kind of stuff.

Max

Or a hospital, right?

Kane

We have like clinics, and we have some of that infrastructure. I live in a place that manages pretty well. But we still have cops that go through it, we have our own fire department, we have a lot of those kinds of infrastructure issues on our territory. But no, I think our autonomy could coexist. But there's a desire not to have that happen.

Look, the United States has been trying to eliminate that distinction. I mean, you go all the way back to when the Doctrine of Christian Discovery gets codified in law by the Supreme Court in like 1823, or something like that, where Justice John Marshall basically says in his legal dicta that our sovereignty was necessarily diminished upon discovery. Really? You mean that the very act of white people laying their eyes on us made us less sovereign? I mean, and then he talks about the pretension.

Max

You know, we're very powerful that way.

Kane

Even when you weren't that powerful! They would make these kinds of statements that somehow we were just like the flora and the fauna. We only had a mere right of occupancy— which even that isn’t necessarily recognized [laughing]—and that because we viewed land and land ownership and our relationship with place different than white folks; so we can just take title to the land, because it is somehow a god given thing and, and this becomes codified in law. Ruth Bader Ginsburg cited this in 2005 in our Oneida case. The liberal darling of the Supreme Court, a Jewish woman, cites the Doctrine of Christian Discovery to basically make a ruling against the Oneidas reclaiming lost lands.

It's really kind of bizarre when you consider the real history and where we are still at. And I gotta tell you, the word sovereignty wouldn't really even roll off the lips of people if it wasn't for some of the people that I've been associated with in the last 40 or 50 years that have stood up against the state and stood up against the federal government. Because the words—when you put the words ‘tribal sovereignty’ together, it oftentimes becomes something relatively meaningless.

Max

Interesting. All right, I want to move to the thing that you did. You did a thing. I was trying to explain it to somebody—I'll give you a personal anecdote. But before that, I was trying to explain it to somebody and I said, ‘You know, I'm really anxious to talk to John about this,’ because I feel like this was the end-around equivalent of getting Capone on taxes. The way that you went about making the thing that you did happen, I did not understand what you were doing. I didn't understand how you were going about it, and how it would ultimately come to fruition. And that is, the Department of Education within New York State rescinding the ability for any public school district to have a Native mascot. If you have any funding from the state government, which all these public school districts do, they are no longer allowed to get that funding if they use Native American imagery.

I'm gonna let you explain it more eloquently shortly and talk about it, but one of the things that amazed me is how many people that I know that in person, or on social media, went fucking bananas over this ruling. People lost their goddamn minds over this. And people I never even expected—I mean people that I considered fairly liberal people, fairly open to ideas and discourse were like, ‘That's my mascot! I went to that school 40 years ago, that was our mascot then, it will be our mascot forever. I have a lot of pride. We are lifting up Native people by having them on our shirts and in the middle of our football fields. How dare they tell us that we can't honor them in that way?’

It's like they couldn't even hear themselves saying it, and I was so fucking amused in each one of these conversations. But I couldn't wait to talk to you about it. How did you do this?

Kane

Well, I didn't do it completely alone. So first, let me let me say that.

Max

Oh, just take the fucking credit for it already, would you?!

Kane

I began this, I've been involved in this mascot issue for many, many years. And I've stepped up with many schools, including schools in New York; but almost every occasion, I was asked. A school board or a school board member, or maybe a student group, somebody would ask and little by little, my name kind of got thrown out there with some of the other iconic names across the United States that represent Native activism. So more and more, I was being called upon.

But my old school never called me up. I graduated way back in 1978, from Cambridge, New York, and they were the Cambridge Indians. I was probably the second student—only because my sister is two years older than me. We're probably the first two to graduate from the school that were actually Native. But you know, when I graduated, the mascot thing was out there. But it wasn't omnipresent. It wasn't in your face. It was painted on the gym floor, some of the uniforms might have said “Indians” on them. But you didn't have the fanaticism that you see at a pro football game with these creepy people doing tomahawk chops like they're saying Heil Hitler or something like that. Really you didn't have people going in red face and headdresses to high school football games, and that kind of stuff. The way you see the fanaticism that's tied to some of the professional sports and college sports as well. But that's what kind of built up.

So, again, the phone never rang. I figured it was time. It was time for me to go to my old high school. And you know, I went to a class reunion a couple of years ago and I floated the idea around that I was probably going to piss off a bunch of people in the village of Cambridge. And I did.

First I did a change.org petition that got like 4000 or 5000 people to sign it. Then I did a more direct petition for people who actually went to school there, alumni and people who had kids in school. And I got, you know, a couple hundred people to sign that thing as well. [I] turned that all into the Cambridge School Board. I reached out to them in November of 2020, and I asked if I could be put on the agenda. They hemmed and hawed and they said, ‘Well, we're not exactly sure if this request may have come too late,’ and it didn't. But they said, ‘You know, we have a public comment period, you wanna come in and offer a public comment? It's five minutes, and we can let you go up twice. But we're not sure that we can get you on the agenda for the November meeting.’ I went anyway. I basically asked them to retire the mascot. And I did it, I thought, politely. I kind of laid out the case that all Native organizations are opposed to this. Every Native territory has issued some sort of resolution along the way—not directly about Cambridge, but about the issue in general.

The Washington football team had just done away with its name after claiming it wouldn't. Cleveland baseball hadn't done away with the name, but they'd done away with the logo. And the other thing is that 20 years prior, the Commissioner of the New York State Department of Education told schools to get rid of them. They said, ‘You need to get rid of these things. The whole idea that whatever belief anybody has that this honors Native people, well, that's not the way Native people experience it. And that's not the way they see it.’ So that argument doesn't hold anymore. And that was 20 years ago, Commissioner Mills, Richard Mills, issued this memorandum. And he said, ‘You need to remove it in a time that was practical.’ But then, the New York State Department of Education kind of went silent for like 20 years. I mean, not completely silent, because there are certain things that happened at the state level; they passed a law called the Dignity for all Students Act, which is specifically a law that is passed to prevent discrimination, racism and bullying. And you almost can't have that law exist, or coexist, with a school that is using a stereotype or promoting a stereotype of a specific living, breathing people. Whether any of us went to that school or not.

The other thing that can't coexist is this push that many schools—especially through the Board of Regents in New York State—has undergone this idea of adopting a diversity, equity & inclusion program. Of course, it's not just schools, we know that this exists in the workplace, and everything else. So you have this push, as a result of some of the social justice movements to say, ‘Look, we need to be a little bit more comprehensive on how we deal with discrimination and again, equity and diversity.’ And when you talk about things like that, and inclusion as well, how could you have a whole school of predominantly white people—in Cambridge, my school was like 95% white, and 99%, non-Native. How could you have that school talking about inclusion, if you're still kind of mocking—whether it's ill intended or not—you are creating the situation.

Because when you were giving that explanation earlier, you forgot that it's not just people who got outraged about losing their mascots, they actually took the identity to themselves. ‘I'm an Indian, and I'm always gonna be an Indian. I went to school and my school [was] the Indians. I graduated Indian, and I'm an Indian for life.’ And they're whiter than the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man [laughing]. So I mean, it's like, come on, you're not really a Native person.

Max

I want to throw out some of the defensive tropes that people use that you can actually combat in real time which I think will be fun. But before we do that, what actually led to this decision? And why didn't people at the school district level see it coming, or did they have an idea that it was gonna happen?

Kane 

So here's what happened. I go there in the fall of 2020, I actually went back in December again, and then they did put me on the schedule. And we discussed it, and I got a pretty good sense that the school board at the time—they had a five person board. Four of the five, I really got the sense, and I was told later on, were in support of changing the dropping the mascot and the imagery. But there was a real concern about the backlash. And I went there with the idea that it could be compelling enough to these school board members that they would go back to the community and say, ‘Look, we don't really have a choice here. We were asked to do this 20 years ago, the evidence is clear. You know, this guy comes in with all this stuff from the American Psychological Association and all of these organizations, and the evidence is pretty damn clear. We don't really have a choice’. But they were still so concerned about the backlash.

So they said they would review all information that was sent to them and make a decision or they would put it up for a vote in March. Well, as March rolled around, this was really starting to stir up a lot of hate and vitriol in Cambridge. In fact, one of the school board members quit. So now, they only had a four member board. And we still had this three to one majority, I guess, wanting to do this. But they were concerned about backlash.

So they actually spent like $50,000 to bring in an organization that was supposed to be conflict resolution experts—

Max

Oh my god.

Kane

And they got healing circles so the people who were feeling bad about their mascot being threatened could express their feelings. And of course, that went real bad [laughing]. Forums for people to threaten others and that kind of stuff, it got real ugly. They didn't vote in March, they said, ‘We're gonna put the vote off until—’

Max

[Jokingly] John, please don't downplay conservative victimhood. It's a real thing, and we have to feel bad for them. When you are the oppressor for centuries and centuries, and suddenly, somebody makes a motion to take something away from you, that's going to inflict some psychological damage. And I'd ask you to be a little more sensitive.

Kane

Uh, No. I won't [laughing].

Max

[Laughing]

Kane

But thanks for that [laughing]. Look, I never went aggressively at Cambridge. I never said ‘your community is overtly racist.’ I graduated from this school, and I knew this town. I liked it, I had a great experience going to school there. I never said anybody abused me or bullied me because of being Native. I got the standard label being called chief or, Squanto, or Wahoo. Or if somebody really wanted to be a smartass, they’d call me Pocahontas or something like that. But you know what? I don't think that had anything to do with the mascot. It had to do with the fact that none of these white folks have ever seen a Native person before. But I dealt with that. As bold as I am now, I was this way when I was in high school. So nobody was gonna get over on me. But you know, my sister's experience was different, she was not as dominant an extrovert as I was. Her experience was different. You know, she felt uncomfortable because of the way she was treated as a Native person, almost regardless of the mascot issue.

That having been said, the problem with pushing this thing after June, is their school board elections are in like May. So now they’ve got a vacancy on [the] school board, and one of the school board members isn't going to run again. So they have two board seats that are going to be vacant. So of course, two guys run solely on the mascot issue with no background in education—

Max

Wow.

Kane

Or even really community, they just ran solely on this mascot issue. And they got elected overwhelmingly. One of those guys got seated immediately at the school board meeting after that election, which was this June meeting, where they were going to vote on this thing. And the other one would be seated as the term expired for the other board member in July. So, in June, they once again had a five member board.

So, on June 10, the president of the school board read the resolution to retire the mascot based on all of the evidence that they collected. He read it out loud, and he included the American Psychological Association, he included what the Mohawks had said and what the Onondagas had said, what the Haudenosaunee in general had said, what the Mohicans had said. All of the evidence—he submitted all of it. And of course, a lot of the stuff that I had provided in my two appearances before the board. And the only counter to it was people saying, ‘Yeah, but we like it, and we want to keep it.’ There was no compelling reason to keep it.

Of course, you had Richard Mills, Washington had done it, and by now Cleveland had dumped its name—the same name, Indians. So it was obvious what was going to happen here. But they didn't vote on it. He read the resolution, and again, going back to those healing circles [laughing], the last one had just happened like, a couple of weeks before this thing. And a couple of board members really got rattled and got threatened. So the school board president, after he read this thing aloud, was a little concerned that it wouldn't go through. He got cold feet, and of course the crowd at the board meeting are losing their minds.

And so they said, ‘Well, maybe we'll draft a compromise resolution,’ which would have had them keeping the name Indians and then changing their stereotypical, relic of an image of a basic general woodlands Indian, I guess. And, likely they would have done something like taking their Cambridge ‘C’ and dangled feathers off the back of it for a logo or something like that, but kept the name.

They said we're going to have the lawyers draft up—they didn’t even do it themselves, they're gonna have their lawyer draft up a compromise resolution and come back a week later and vote on it. Now that week was kind of tough because the board president, who I actually had a chance to talk to, was sick. I mean, he was vomiting. He was so upset with not only himself, but how this thing had degraded so much. But also, you had a Washington Post article, you had the valedictorian that was graduating in June basically issued an open letter to the school board condemning the use of mascots and that kind of stuff. And a report from the New York Association of School Psychologists had gone public in that same week. And they were actually recommending a statewide ban.

So they meet on June 17, the week after the first meeting, and they put the compromise resolution up to vote and it fails. It fails by three to two. Three were against it. And one of these—the new board member who was seated who ran on the mascot issue and the one board member who was always pro mascot, they voted for this compromise resolution; which would have had them, by the way, changing all their logos and all those expenses that would have gone with it too. But it failed. So the board president read the original resolution to retire the mascot, and it passed three to two. So, in June, this board had voted to retire the mascot. But in July, when the new board member got seated [laughing], and the board president got voted out, they rescinded that resolution. No explanation, just rescinded it without any cause.

So what happens then, is five of the families that had actually stood with me as I was pushing this issue all along—look, and I'm writing letters to the editor, I'm in the news media all the time out there in the Capitol District area, which is where Cambridge is close to—five of those families, and it had to be somebody who had children of school age that lived in the district, they filed a petition with Dr. Betty Rosa, the Commissioner of the New York State Department of Education, arguing that this board had acted arbitrarily and capriciously, and had abused their discretionary authority by rescinding a well thought out resolution for no reason.

And it took until fall of the next year before Rosa finally ruled and said she agreed. She agreed that they had acted arbitrarily and capriciously, and now was saying that they had to reject the resolution rescinding the retirement resolution. So they had to readopt the retirement resolution.

Max

Department of Ed, is that correct?

Kane

The New York State Education Department is what it's called.

Max

So NYSED, views this almost in the way a court would where this was the precedent that they needed to make this official throughout the state? I mean, what authority did they do this under, in their estimation?

Kane

NYSED does have authority over public schools, and the enforcement mechanism they have is things like you suggested—funding, and they could remove officers, they could remove the superintendent or the principal or board members, they could do that. But they actually did treat this like a court case. They took in legal briefs, even amicus briefs. The lawyer for the Cambridge School Board had submitted his arguments, and she made this ruling in much the same way that a court would.

Max

Are you prepared for the legal backlash?

Kane

She had precedent, though. There are examples in New York State history where NYSED asserting certain authority over board resolutions was backed up. And they had gone into court and they were backed up. So she already had precedent that established the authority for NYSED to make these kinds of rulings.

Max

My bigger question, John, is, are you prepared for the free speech lawsuit that will come from some person within a school district that will inevitably make it through the New York court system and then beyond?

Kane

Yes, I am. And I think others are, because the story doesn't end there. So, the Cambridge School Board sues Dr. Rosa in New York State Supreme Court [and] this ruling that she made. And it goes through the court system, and then judge McGinty, Sara McGinty, she rules that Dr. Rosa was proper, and that she had the authority to do this. So a court ruling comes out to to affirm what she had done. And then Cambridge decides it's going to file a notice of appeal for that court ruling.

But in the meantime, from the day that Doctor Rosa issued her order, I started writing. I started writing letters to the editor, I started writing to NYSED directly. And what I was basically saying is, look, if you have the authority to tell one school, you have the authority to tell all of them. And you have things today that Richard Mills didn't have 20 years ago. You have the Dignity for All Students Act. You have other court cases that have come since that 20 years. And shame on you for being silent for 20 years. But here you are facing, again, what should be the final chapter of what Richard Mills had—in fact, his order, by the way, was challenged as well in court, and it stood, it held.

So you know, she made a ruling, and she said it wasn't even close. She said Cambridge failed to provide any evidence that there was any reason other than their arbitrary decision based on school board members running on a platform of pro mascot. She said, ‘They gave me nothing.’ And the courts held that. So I kept pressing her, and I gotta tell you, the folks in Cambridge that I became associated with, they didn't believe that NYSED would ever do this. And they kept saying, ‘Well Biaggi from the state legislature, she's got a bill that she's proposing.’ And I said, ‘You know what? You guys go ahead and push that idea of a new law. My relationship with the Governor ain't so hot.’

Max

[Laughing]

Kane

‘And my relationship with the New York State legislature is equally not so hot. So you guys go ahead and push that issue. I'm going after NYSED.’ And I kept the pressure on. So while Cambridge is perfecting their appeal on this court ruling—which, by the way, one of their main arguments is that they're being picked on. That the Department of Education isn't calling all the other schools to do this, they're only telling them they had to. Of course, they're only responding to a petition filed against Cambridge. So that's the reason they singled them out. So that's what they're preparing.

And then, lo and behold, finally, the Department of Education through their Deputy Commissioner Jim Baldwin, comes with this memo. And he says flat out, ‘You’ve got to get rid of them by the end of the school year. And if you don't comply, you could be facing funding shortages, we will withhold funds, and we could definitely remove officers.’ And people were saying, ‘Why are they threatening like that?’ Well, they're just really telling you what the authority is, what their enforcement mechanism is—it’s funding and the possible removal of officers. So that comes. And of course, Cambridge is still saying they're going to appeal even though they just lost half their “picking on me” argument. And, as you said, not just down in your neck of the woods, but throughout the state people are losing their goddamn minds over this thing [laughing].

Max

It was amazing.

Kane

And you know, you've heard some of the arguments, and we can shoot through some of their defenses.

Max

Yeah, well before we close, let me hit you rapid fire with them, because you know, I did my level best in an episode to try and disabuse people of some of the ideas and the tropes that are out there. But nothing better than going directly to the source. So here's a few that I heard, oh, quite recently. ‘It's a way to honor people because of the warrior instinct like we do with the Minnesota Vikings.’ Go.

Kane

Well, there aren't Vikings anymore. We're still here [laughing]. The bottom line is we're still here. And you are essentially erasing us with your mascots, because you're creating what you believe are the characteristics, that you want to say that are your attributes. So you want to do the fierce, violent, muscular, brave, and again, aggressive warrior. That's what you want. No, and no matter what you use, whether your name is the Chiefs or the Warriors or the Indians, it's always that big, fierce Native look that you have that you're trying to associate. And look, these schools make analogies to their football teams on the battlefield. They make all these direct analogies. But here's the thing, It doesn't honor us. You didn't consider us when you adopted the name in the first place. It was all about you.

And I have to say this but, at the same time that the all these little white kids are beating on their oatmeal cans and smearing their mom's makeup on their face because they're Cambridge Indians, Native kids are ripped from their homes and communities and sent to these prison camps called Indian boarding schools where the policy was kill the Indian, save the man. And kill they did. Native children died by the thousands in these schools. They were sexually abused. They were physically abused. They were mentally abused. They had their hair cut and their language forbidden. Anything that they had that was even remotely associated with Native identity was stripped from them. So the idea that white people saying, ‘Oh no, we're honoring you.’ You didn't honor us. Cambridge, couldn't even say what Indians they were claiming to be. Was it Mohawk? Was it Mohicans? Were they Huron? What Indians are you claiming to be? ‘Uh... We don't know.’

I mean, there’s one school up near Rotterdam that’s called Mohonasen. And it's supposed to be Mohawk jammed together with Onondaga and Seneca. Mohanasen, that's what they call themselves.

Max

Oh my god.

Kane

They create this word by somehow jamming three Native territories—which they're only in what would have been Mohawk territory, they're not in Onondaga or Seneca territory. And then of course they're the—I don't know if they're the Indians or the Warriors or whatever they are.

Max

Okay, so let me ask you this. Why are you so sensitive to it? I mean, it's not like the Irish have a problem with the Fighting Irish.

Kane

Well, there probably are some Irish that have problems with it. But, it's not even about being sensitive. It's about being empowered enough for us to raise this issue. Look, we didn't change the Washington football team's name. We've been arguing about that for 50 years, them using a racial slur. It wasn't until they murdered George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and the Black Lives Matter movement kind of raised the stakes on social justice, and Columbus statues came down right alongside Confederate heroes. And it wasn't until then that Target and Amazon and FedEx and Walmart—it was their influence over Washington and said, ‘Nah, we're not going to sell your merchandise with a racial slur on it.’

So, we know that our voice was a bit silenced on this issue. And look, I'm not sensitive. I feel empowered with this argument. But, again, the notion that we were honored by this, I ask one simple question—and I don't mean to always make the same analogy—but if a school wanted to honor black people, how would you do that? I mean, what would your name be? And somebody says, ‘Yeah, but we got about a million schools called MLK.’ For one thing, the fact that you exaggerated up to a million kind of shows you a little bit about who you are. But MLK is not their mascot, it's the name of the school. I mean, I'm not saying change the name. I'm not even saying change the name of Mohonasen or whatever the hell they call themselves. I'm not saying change the name of your school, I'm just saying change the mascot.

But how would you honor black people? What would you call that team? What would be the team name, and what would your logo be?

Max

Let's not even wonder aloud.

Kane

We know that blackface is bad. But somehow redface is still okay? And if you want to keep the name Warriors, would you change your mascot to a Zulu warrior? Of course you wouldn't! And if you can't do that, then you can't do this. It's that simple. You didn't honor us when you adopted the name, and you're not honoring us now, as you try to make a pitiful excuse for keeping it.

Max

John Kane, I love talking to you. I really do. I appreciate you, and always I appreciate your friendship, your collaboration, and your truth and your honesty. And I hope you keep calling into us and sending us your—I like your voice memos. I like when you send us the voice memos, because I can really get the agitation when you think that I've really gone off the rails on something which I love.

Before we break here, just tell everybody where they can find the podcast, how they can even find the Resistance Radio, and just a little bit about how maybe people can get in touch with you if they have questions or if they themselves want to—we have listeners all over the country, so if they have an idea about how they can go about this process, maybe how they can get in touch with you to work on the Native mascot issue.

Kane

Well, even if they want to argue with me, I'm up for that. Look, I'm all over Facebook. I have a Facebook page for my radio show, which is Resistance Radio with John Kane. And I have a Facebook page for Let's Talk Native. Resistance Radio airs in New York City on WBAI at 3:00 on Thursdays. It airs in Washington DC on WPFW at 2:00 on Fridays. So, you can find those in the radio archives. But I also take that show and I put it up as a podcast. So, if you search Resistance Radio with John Kane, you can find the podcast. If you tell your smart speaker to play Resistance Radio with John Kane, it'll find me. If you tell your smart speaker to play Let's Talk Native with John Kane, it will find me.

And like I said, I post some of these things up on YouTube. I have a YouTube channel, which is called Let's Talk Native TV. And I also have some short videos on there about everything from the mascots to Columbus to all that stuff. And again, even on Facebook, I stream some of these shows so you can see the ugly faces I make when I'm saying some of these things. You can watch it on Facebook Live as well.

And I do engage people. When people say, ‘Well, why do you argue with people so much on social media?’ Well, there's a reason. I'm not trying to change that person's mind. But there are witnesses to some of this stuff. So all these people will say this ridiculous thing and try to justify, you know, why they want to keep calling themselves Indians, and they're in their 50s—for crying out loud, grow up. I want people to experience just the absurdity of the arguments, and while I know I'm never going to change the mind of somebody who's dug in, we won this fight.

And the thing that I do have to say before we close here is that I didn't ask for sanction from anybody. I didn't get permission from somebody. The Seneca Nation didn't sponsor me. The Mohawk nation didn't sponsor me. I didn't have sponsors. And I didn't hire lawyers, or lobbyists or consultants, I didn't make political contributions. I just went to my old school, and a few people stood with me. And those people did what they could do with the system that is in place, but we didn't follow the normal path.

I wasn't interested at all in trying to get a law passed. Maybe the legislature will act now, but I didn't think it was gonna happen. And one of the things I was told was, ‘Well, Rosa is going to wait for the law to be passed before she's going to talk about a ban.’ I said, I don't think so. I think we got her, we got her backed up a little bit here. Because if she's arguing that the only reason she heard this Cambridge case, and made this Cambridge ruling, was because of the petition—do you want 60 or 100 schools having their residence file petitions with you? Do you want to have that many hearings, and you want to see that many communities thrown into this level of conflict and turmoil? I said, you're gonna save a bunch of school boards a lot of heartache by doing this ban. This is a relief for a lot. Now you're gonna have some schools that are still going to try to dig in or find out whether there's ways around it. And there is an exception, by the way. If a recognized tribe gives a school permission to keep their Native mascot, they can keep it. But you know what? Good luck with that [laughing]. Good luck with that.

Max

Good luck indeed. John, thanks as always, man. And I appreciate you for doing this and coming on and hope you enjoy the rest of the holidays. And we will definitely connect in the new year with a number of new episodes. And if you ever have any information that you want to convey directly to the Unf*ckers, just let us know, and we'll get it out there.

Kane

There's plenty of absurdity to talk about, so I think a lot of the Native issues really fit well within what you're doing with it with this podcast. And so I appreciate the invite, and I always appreciate the opportunity.

Max

Good stuff. Thank you John Kane. Unf*ckers, we'll be back with you shortly, I think we have a Show Notes to close out the year. That was John Kane from Let's Talk Native, and as always, Unf*cking The Republic is engineered by the great Manny Faces. It is produced by the all powerful 99 and I am your host Max. Visit us at UNFTR.com to find out all the ways to support the show, and we'll catch you next time. Thanks so much.