00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is Me Eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, folk bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything. Presented by First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer. Everybody joined today by very special guest Taylor Keen. Oh Maha, Cherokee correct correct Part den is open, which we'll get into. I am I have part early homing it and then uh and then as all of us are. But you ever hear den is open? It's different, right, yeah, because you know you talk about folks like me wind up, Folks like me wind up throwing a little bit of Neanderthal. I've got Western Europeans. Oh you got a little of that too. Okay, we'll get to that. I've been a lot of people don't know what I'm not really clear what adnis open is other than I know it's another homedin. Like I did a fair better research last night because I really didn't know what it was. And I'm not saying I'm the expert now, but I had the same question just like if you were a dear today, if you were a dear today winding around, like let's say your white tailed deer and you wander around and like, oh, there's another kind of deer. It's a meal deer. He there's another kind of deer. It's a blacktail deer. Um. Once, by the time you could have been a homed in walking around, you have been Oh hey, it's another kind of homedy. We'll get to that. Um, Clay, you were on Rogan's podcast. Was that fun? Yeah? Well that's for sure, really unique experience. I listen to a little bit of it. I didn't quick because I got bored, mind you just I just haven't gotten through it yet. Oh you didn't quit. I thought you said you did quit because you got bored. I was like, well, okay, if if that was true, that was true, and it's not, I wouldn't have told you that. Yeah, let me give me a break. I have said something like, um, I just said something like good job, Clay. Yeah, I said that was a great job, Clay. Yeah. No, I I don't know. I thought it was good. We enjoy hanging out with him. Oh yeah, and and and I didn't get to spend a lot of time with Joe aside from just in the podcast. But unique experience going down there. I mean, you know, just being on his podcast was probably the it was. It was less It was less intimidating than I thought it would be. And I won't lie. I was slightly intimidated, but and and and just in a normal kind of way. But once once you got in there, Joe's a great guy to talk to, a great interviewer. He's very he's very generous and gracious. I did not know what he knew about me, so I didn't know what we were going to be talking about. You know. The conversation flowed along a pretty standard like Clay knew him talking point, you know, other than if there were a few there were a few curveballs which were fun, but no, Yeah, but Joe's like he's very I feel like he's as an interviewer, he's very sensitive to things. It's almost like he picks up things floating through the air. Like I feel like I could show him your thumb print and he'd be he'd tell you a bunch of like he tell you a bunch about the persons, you know what I'm saying. Like I feel like you could listen to episodes of bevery Grease podcast, listen to like two episodes of Grease podcast and kind of really like understand what to talk about what to ask. It's very sensitive that way. Sure, I can't tell what's there's a good there's good news and bad news. I want to talk about drought and heat, but I also want to talk about the t RCP land Access Appreciation thing. Here's the deal. Uh, this is gonna sound Montana centric, but understanding that it's it's not Montana centric. In the state of Montana, there's a program called the Block Management Access Program. And how it works is this. They take revenue drawn from people buying hunting licenses, okay, and they take this revenue and they enlist private landowners, ranchers, farmers, other private landowners. They enlist private landowners into the black Manager program. Once private land is in the Black Management program, you hunt it for free. So nonresident resident I mean everything we're talking about, everything from elk turkeys live on these places and you come and hunt Black management. And I think a lot of like a lot of things that are cool, such as national forests and other stuff. A lot of people kind of think that it must have like one day fallen from outer space and there it is, and they don't realize that's sort of like effort that goes into it. The landowners do get paid to enrolling black manage, but it trusts me, it is not enough to offset the inconvenience and in hassling risk. It's just like like, no one is going into black management, uh, licking their lips about how rich they're gonna yet it just doesn't work that way. It's an act of generosity to put your land in black management. Um. We got this idea from my brother who was involved in another carent incarnation. Where do you say carnation that's like a kind of condensed milk? What do you say like because it's not a reincarnation, which we got to talk about because that thing about weasels being doomed so well that some other days stay tuned for that. That's feel I'm gonna Phil get my interest meter out. When I talked about Phil hates that interest me. Um, what was I saying? Oh, so we're doing a thing called the t RCP Montana Farm and Ranch Hunter Access Appreciation Sweepsteaks finally crafted title Mind you Again, Montana. I think I came up with that was it was like, this is why happens on three people try to come up with the title together. It's called the Montana Farm and Ranch Hunter Access Appreciation sweep steaks. We have gone what what what? What are you smirking about over there? Phil, I'm just a mouthful of a name. Yeah, it's a great name. I like it because it lays it all out. You don't need a subtitle with a name like that, right. Uh, it's a sweepstakes donations. So we got all kinds of crazy things. You could win tons of things, and you buy tickets, and then what we're gonna do is we're gonna take all the money that we get from this, every last penny. We're doing this in conjunction with t RCP. Theodore rolls about conservation partnership in conjunctu with t RCP. You buy these tickets and you win a bunch of stuff, and then we're gonna take all the money and buy things to thank people who enroll their land in black management. We're not talking about sending them like coffee mugs and whatnot, like buying them farm and ranch equipment, gate mechanisms for you know, like uh, automatic gates, calf shelters, stuff people need, help them get stuff they actually need. That's going on right now up to when Kran entered by August one at midnight Eastern standard. Five dollars gets you one entry. Between ten and twenty four entries you can get for four bucks. If you buy more than twenty five entries, you get them for three bucks apiece. You can only do five hundred entries per person. Do this list like when I try to chain saws, meat grinders, meet craft knives full first like kit byan o'harness kit, Javelin, pro hunt, bipod, when I try to load all the things, like smoke comes out of my computer. That's how many things are available. We gotta tell him the link. That's a good idea. Tell him, uh, it's support dot t r CP dot org, forward slash b M A yeah. So if you hunt Montana and you use BLM, and if you live here, you're guaran almost guarant damn t you do, or you visit and use block management, jump in and start one of these in your own state to reward and thank people who open their lands up. Can now on to the bad stuff. Holy cow, the heat wave, an extreme drought. It's so bad they're air dropping air dropping water to keep big horn sheep alive in Nevada Nevada Department of Wildlife replenishing desert big horn sheep's only source of water for miles. Without intervention, animal populations will decline. Ecosystem viability is threatened. Nevada is experiencing intense drought for the second year in a row. Last year, I didn't know this. Las Vegas went two forty days without measurable rainfall. This year of the state is in what's called exceptional drought, which is the highest level of drought according to National Weather Service. Elk to Lee elk in California. There's a population of to the elk in California. They're dying from lack of water, dying of dehydration. They had a historic water source they would use at this point Rees National Seashore. How how does that pronounce raise rees? What is that? There's been an ongoing issue where the elk are using water and feed that was meant for cattle. So they put a fence up, but only some of these elk can get at this fence. About a third about a third of the population died of dehydration because they don't have any water source on their on their ground, they can't get around. Defense not to defense but around to get skate of the you know, food and water. This is a tricky one. I feel like, get into it. Well, one you have like a cattle lease, which is you know, the reason the fence went up because the elk are competing with these cattle, and so you got to start to think about whether, you know, what's more important, you know, these animals that we all own or someone's private cattle. You know, and again we don't know the nuances. They have a grazing lease. They have a grazing lease. But most places, I mean here, where you have grazing leases on public land, you don't fence out wildlife. Yeah. Um, so that's interesting. So it was for sure public land. It's National Park Service land. Mm hmm. They're being sued mhm. So the historic the historic water on their side of the fence usually would have been enough, but it wasn't. This. Yeah, yeah, one of the you know, I gather it's like this like highly fenced area, and I also gather that it's like a pretty managed herd, but they're yeah, they're not able to get to water. Listen, man, I've tried this a lot. I've tried sitting around and telling myself about all, you know, the insane heat everywhere. I've tried sitting around being like there's no such thing as climate change, those such thing as climate change. It's just hot. But son of a bitch man. After a while, you can hide, you can hide. It's it's it's like getting hot. It's gonna be bad for wildlife. It's just yeah, you can say that. I don't think you can sit around saying it's not. You can say like, I don't care. You can argue about what's causing it. You can argue about the cause, but it's not if you like to hunt and fit. Change is coming. Yeah, yeah, dude. Another interesting thing this is this is a crazy one. Kevin Murphy sent this to me this morning. So San Jose, San Jose, California passed a gun like a really weird gun control measure that it's very puzzling to me. Basically that if you own guns, you pay a tax, and the tax is supposed to offset what it costs the city to address gun related phone call gun related crime. So you can imagine someone who's got like a pistol they bought on the corner, tucked down to the back shed and they're planning on, you know, doing armed robbery, and they're like, dah, I forgot to send him my tax money. Let me come on, we're supposed to get liability insurance. I think if you want to find a parallel San Jose, California at that struggle for a parallel thought of this would be like if you you could one could make the argument, they could say the First Amendment rights cost taxpayers money. Okay, let's say there's a there's there's there's a protest, there's a protest of Um, there's a massive protest to protest. Uh, well, give me something people. Let's say there's a massive protest to protest the outcome of the presidential election. And there's a massive counter protest to protest people protesting the outcome of the presidential election. So you have all these people with mixed ideologies exercising First Amendment rights. Okay, there's a police president, there's a police presence. They there's cost of business because business is closed. There's cost the police because police come out they monitor it. There's there's community meetings that are set aside to plan like safe protest spaces, to cordin people off. It's very expensive. So someone could say, if you want to exercise First Amendment rights, you need to pay at tax because it costs us money to have First Amendment rights. And someone would say, like, but the peaceful people aren't committing crimes and burning down buildings, why should they be paid tax to pay attacks, to which I would say, wonderful point. Yeah, it's absurd, It is absurd. Yeah, it seems like just a punishment, a punishments legal gun owners. It's just grasp and it's so well. Kevin Murphy made the point that it's it's like a path towards only that the rich and privilege have weapons. Mhmm, those that can afford shot and the Appalachians. Wait till the next podcast, Claire, can you give us the update on Brunal the Bear? So, first tell us about you told us before about Brunal the Bear. So, Bruno the Bear what I did a report on him on this podcast. He came from Wisconsin and traveled all the way down to Arkansas, and he gained national attention going through crop fields. Did you see that, Taylor? Do you remember that from He gained national attention like this black bear walking through corn fields and stuff, and and he was extremely uh, un unalarmed by people, so people would be masses of people would be following him and he just kind of mind his own business and he never got into any significant nuisance trouble. And like a thousand mile journey or however long it was, tell him the theory, tell him the theory about how he did. So there was there's lots of theories about why this bear made this journey, and you know, the biologists chimed in or like you know, bears only travel that far if they're looking for new home ranges, new mates, or food. There was theories that so he was heading from the north to Arkansas. We have a bear population in Arkansas, and he walked across all this country that did not have resident bear populations. So there was a theory that he climbed on a boat on the Mississippi River, a grain barge and was my garbage can last night. I'll believe that. Yeah, there was a theory that he climbed into a grain barge and traveled up north and got off the barge, which is bizarre, you know, probably and then he was just coming home. He was coming home the corridor. Yeah, homing instinct is really strong, like when they trapped bears like that. Bears very rarely don't come back to where they came from. That's like a good plot for a kid's movie. Yeah yeah, but we'll make it a pet dog that gets lost on vacation. It's already been done. So this bear, he wintered in northern Arkansas, as I understand it, This is where you left off last time, right, Yeah, he was just in northern Arkas and people were My mom was texting me and Clay, please don't kill Bruno because I'm in Arkansas. Un because people people were very worried about Bruno showing up in Arkansas because there's the he could have gone into a hunt. Yeah, that's right. And and so now this I don't have all the details on, but he was basically trapped as I understand it, in Arkansas. Potentially in Missouri. He may have gone back over the line of the Missouri He was trapped by gaming fish and relocated to northern Louisiana. Because basically, the bears out of Arkansas are spreading in like all directions, southern Missouri, northern Louisiana, East Texas, south eastern Oklahoma, and for whatever reason, they chose to release him in Louisiana. Sad story. Boys, he got hit by a car in Louisiana on Tuesday and they had to euthanize him. Yep, so Bruno's dead. I'm sorry the things he's seen, man, Yeah, no doubt there was. There was the theory that he was that he was a tame bear because of how unusual he was with his uh, how he interact with people. I mean tam like, not like habituated, but tame, like a circus bear. Yeah, like somewhat like it was a bear that had been like rest or something. But I don't buy that either, just zero fear of humans. Tame bear probably wouldn't have survived. No, and a tame bear would have gone and tried to get in somebody's refrigerator in their house. What was so amazing He traveled that far and never got in trouble, and so they were trying to do him a favor by taking him to Louisiana. So long live beast. They were trying to It's not common for bears to go north and south in their migrations, right, just not then far, just not that far. I mean they might travel. You know, there's documentation in Missouri and Arkansas Bears traveling like a hundred and fifty miles, but a thousand miles is very It's just not heard of. Maybe he wasn't an involved Bear. He was kind of an emissary or an ambassador for for the Bears. Perhaps, Yeah, he's a scout. He might have been a scout. Yeah, he was something like, if I don't come back, don't go south. Uh yeah, I need tell about that mountainin you're telling me about m oh that last week I was with our buddy Bart George and we're filming his mountainlin hazing studying that he's doing over in North Spokane, Washington. Would you ought to explain real quick? Oh? Yeah, I remember we talked to me. Yeah, you know what. After being there and hang out with his whole crew for a week a couple of times, now I feel like we should go and do a podcast with the whole crew and ship chat with him because he's got Bruce Duncan as you know, is you know, a real wonder of this world. I found out the other day Bart thinks that he is the man living that has treated the most cats in this country right now, at roughly cats because all that research and government and just yeah, and all the outfitting has done and the fact he's been doing it for over fifty years. Um, yeah, pretty interest. Two names I'm not gonna say their names, we'll talk like but he shown does he win the cat Lady Trophy? I don't know about that. Uh. And then Jeff Blood who's the wildlife specialist for the county's up there. Very interesting guy, been trapping and doing stuff his whole life. But does Bart still with Yeah, the Callisbelt Tribe and so the Callisbelt Tribe is doing they're the ones that are funding the study, doing the study. But he's working um inca hoots with Washington Department of Game and Fish. And then like I said, the Stevens and uh, I can't remember the name of the other county now, but the Sheriff's office. Um, a lot of people are kind of chipping in to help on the study. But what he's trying to do is because they're having just they've got a real uptick in depredations and human mountain lion conflict and interactions, and so he came up with a study to see if hazing might help just kind of heap the mountain lions like away from humans a little bit. And so how he's doing it is they catch a lion, they put a collar on it, they come back a week later, they know exactly where the line is. They walk towards the lion with a speaker on Bart's chest on just hanging off his backpack. That's playing the meat eater pots. So he still plays the podcast to the lions. Yeah that's great. Yeah, no, I got it. While the problem is the lions are gonna hang out because they're so interested. You gotta give those lions interest film on top on the collar. Put an interest meter dial on on that. While while Sam was explaining the lobster uh debate that was recently on, we got to within I think eleven yards of the mountain. Yeah, I mean at eleven yards because you see it yet, No, because she's like in like you know, three or four furs that were all bushy, you know around the bottom. They were not that close. Yeah, because we're looking at the GPS like thirty three faiter, what's not any of the three lines that we did that too, that we walked up to the other one was like fifty and then one ran at like seventy yards and not kidding me, it's strippy. This one the closest one eleven yards and it left. Yeah, and then that one literally has been living in this area that if you walk down the hill five minutes, you're on like a it's a rural highway. But right on the other side that road is basically like this little community on like it's like a lake community with all these little houses and condos and stuff. And there's a trail system where this cat's been hanging out. So that cat sits there in the trees and listens to dogs and humans and stuff going by her and cars all the time and like totally just you know, that's her home. Yeah, it was wild. So anyways, so what he's on to see if hazing works. So when he comes back, now he's got this cat on a GPS collar, so he walks towards it. Playing the podcast at eighty decibles, which is quite a loud mind you. I mean it's like my voice projected like if I'm excited, it's probably equal to roughly eighty decibles. And doesn't it feel like distinctly sort of post modern that that they will in the future be listening to you talking about them listening to this show. It's like staring into a mirror and there's a mirror behind you. It's getting deep deep um, God, he's totally lost. I'm just trying to stay on track with how so that everybody understand how this problem question that won't throw us off this particular cat had he been in trouble before, she had not been. So we're hazing a cat that's not been in trouble though. Okay, no, because you in in these parts are those parts where I was, if they've been in actual trouble, like, if there's been a depredation, they're dead. Kind of let me interject with the thing that Bruce told me, the Bruce you're talking about after that, when when you know, Washington had two summers ago had the first fatality from a mountalin first human fatality from mounta lion in state history. And then then shortly after, like a month or two later, Oregon had its first human fatality from a mountain lion in years. I mean, it just doesn't happen, right, but then it happens twice in one summer and to states you know, and then you're like, wow, what's going on? So you want to draw conclusions from this, but maybe there's nothing to be drawn. And when I put it to Bruce, I was like, what do you think about that? You know, on one hand, he's like, it's freak right. We'll go another hundred years and no one will get killed by mountainlin. But if there is something there, what he he put out is this like in his whole career of doing work on lion control for the state. In the early days of his career, if someone saw a line, you came out and killed it. People didn't want them around, and he'd be like, you see one on your porch, it's a deadline. It doesn't matter if it did anything wrong. Kill the dog, it's just dead. And he said, as tolerance has increased, and now you know you don't just like kill every single line that crosses the street in front of a car. Um he says, it's probably gonna be that there's just gonna be more interactions because our tolerance is shifted, and we don't just dust off every single thing we can dust off because someone's scared. And there's a lot more lines, there's a lot more people, there's a lot more people going into wild places, So yeahs wild because of you know, us moving into them and living in them. I'll tell you a podcast guest and I can't say his name, but I know the guy that tracked down that mountline and kills him and being serious, I know the trackdown what the lion. And I don't know if it was the fatality in Washington or Oregon. If it's if it's Washington we're talking about, we know the same person. Well, I think I think this was the Oregan lion. And I know the guy that went to that scene, track that line down, I mean went to the you know, the site where the person was killed. He said it was it was a wild story. Yeah, and he it was a was that the two mountain bikers? No, that was Washington. This was a lady, this was this was a woman. Yes, yes, anyway, we'll tell you. Yeah, you want to do one upsmanship on podcast? No? No, no, no bringing up, keep going. Yeah. We gotta hurry out because I think we have a great one sitting right here across us. More ut of time here. Um. So they walked towards him playing this podcast, and Bart's watching the GPS. And once the cat leaves its bed or wherever it's sitting or sleeping at the moment, he marks that distance from him to the cat. Then he watches the cat and the GPS and see how far it goes, how far it flees, which he's taking other um like environmental data points as well, and basically is trying to figure out how much energy is the cat willing to expend once it's been bumped, and then consequently, after it's been hazed multiple times, is it willing to expend more energy because it doesn't want to go through the hazing again. So once he picks up those two data points, uh, they cut the dogs loose, which usually come from however far behind, however far he had to walk to get to the lion. They track him to the where the fresh mountain lion track is. Then they run the lion. It's usually over pretty quickly. They jump the line into a tree. The hazing. The first hazing actually is via paintball, so they'll sit there and as many times the cattle take it. The dogs are gone at this point and as soon as the cat climbs and jumps out of the tree and runs, that's it. They that's the hazing. Then they repeat that with minus the paintballs three more times and see you know, they're again collecting those data points of how close did they get and how far did the cat run before it stopped and chilled out, you know, after it heard the meter podcast at eighty decibels, in order to determine if there is a problem line. Could is it possible to get it to change its behavior without euthanizing. Yeah, and again, it's probably never gonna happen with problem lins. It'll probably just happen with lions that like, like you were saying, across the street in a place where there's a bunch of little kids living around, or there's a lion that's been seen a couple of times near a boy scout camp or whatever. But like I said, as soon as they call them to help them not become problem lines. Yeah, right now, they're north of Spokane. There's a very very low tolerance for cat and public perception is down, like is negative right now with cats, unfortunately, and they aren't happy. A lot of them aren't happy with the way that the Washington Department Efficient Game has been handling it. And so there, you know, that's why Jeff Flood like it gets Yeah, it's it's socially, you know, complicated, but so yeah, probably it'll just happen with cats that are like in areas amongst people, they're seen and hopefully they can hate them a little bit and keep them alive. Talking about the super line, all right, So one, it has been tried in the past of relocating lions that were problem lines. And again there's so little research done onlines and known about lines that people just we just don't know enough yet, right, So a lot of times they thought, oh, it's like one lion causing the problem, you know, but they shoot the line and then you know, three two weeks later, you know, in the same zone, another sheep gets killed, right, so it wasn't the same line. Anyways, they tried relocating something one I forget the exact number, but it was up there. It was like miles. They moved it and it took the cat literally like two days, and it was back at the same farm and killed another sheep and it had been ear tagged or marked somehow, so they knew that it was the same cat. But what was interesting is that it's from that journey it's pads were just worn off, like there was almost no pad left on his palm m man. They know they wow. Yeah, I don't know if I could pull that off if you blindfolded me and dropped me off from about just the mechanism that works inside of an animal to have that homing instinct, because it's got it's picking up data from somewhere. I mean it's not I mean they're they're picking up they have some there's something happening. I'd like to know the mechanics. And yeah, we had a pet pitches Is one time, and they the neighbor people were complaining about him shoot in everybody's house and whatnot. And my brother had to go to a work meeting. He went quite a way his way, I can't remember what it was, but almost a hundred miles away. You had to go to an overnight work meeting. So he took the pigeons up there and caught him loose. When he got home, they were already home. They beat him home. But they're famous for that. HM. A new paper published in the journal Nature details the release of new DNA evidence extracted from sediment in Dennis Over Cave. Oh that's where the Dennis Open name comes from, right, The vice versa versa it's a cave in Siberia. Oh it is. But did did did the cave get named that because of what's there? Or did the did the did the humans humans get named about? Help me out. Damans are named after the place because we don't really know what they were called. Okay, So that's so it wasn't that we knew. We named it somewhere else. There was a man, there was a modern man that lived in the cave that was somehow had a name that started with with the D as I understood it. So they called it that kind of cave. This is my understanding of it. And then they went in and found the stuff and they called the people that name of the cave. Is that what you remember? Yeah? I slept in the cave um no a southern to cave and Wyoming. They had been slept in. I slept into cave and Wyoming. They had been slept in by some cowboy that went crazy and ate some people, and they named it after him. I slept in that cave. You haven't eaten anybody yet, but you're still young. Okay. Let me back up. New DNA evidence extracted from sediment in Denisova Cave in Russian Siberia. Previous analysis of ancient DNA extracted from fossils found in Denisova Cave have revealed that it was inhabited by Neanderthals, which sometimes I think they're back to Thal, but for a while it's tall Neanderthal Neanderthals, falls, dennis Ovans, and a hybrid of the two. But few fossilized few fossilized remains have been found in the cave, so it's unclear when different groups visited and in what order. Mhm. But what's the time periods? To you? It's a long time ago. Now. This study provides a timeline of occupation with over seven hundred sentiments samples dated from three hundred thousand to twenty thousand years ago, so the cave could have sat there for quite a long time between visits comin. It's three hundred thousand years ago. That's interesting, right. I think part of the reasons that I have Dennisovan DNA because we don't know the story of how indigenous people's came to the America's truly do we. There's theories about the barn straight theory, but when you find DNA going that far back in Siberia in Siberia means that we're different in some sense, but we don't really know when indigenous people's came here. But to have that antiquity of DNA that flows into me today is fascinating. Right, tell me, tell me what you mean by that. I mean, like, are you saying that there was another You're saying they didn't. There's other theories of well, I know, there's other theories other than the Barren Land Bridge. You know, water access through the Northwest. Forbid that indigenous people's got on boats at some point. Figure that out. But we can get into anthropology and John Wesley Powell and the Powell doctrine later on, but it just bankes the whole question of how indigenous people's got here. Yeah, do you do you? Um, that's a good question or not a good question, but it's an interesting point. Do you do you contest or do you like if you look at sort of the academic consensus. Okay, the academic consensus being like some point in time, probably less than thirty thousand years ago, sometime around thirty to twenty years ago, the first Americans entered, you know, the New World, Okay, entered what's now North American South America via some sort of land bridge that connected Alaska with Siberia. Like when you hear it, like do you do you look? Is your viewpoint? I don't know is your viewpoint? That sounds right, that sounds wrong, It sounds right. But I think there's more to the story because now we found all sorts of anthropological evidence that indigenous peoples were here thirty two thirty five thousand years ago and beyond. So that goes beyond the Younger Drives event and makes you question how indigenous people's got here so so long ago? Where is that? Because I'm familiar with Cooper's ferry, which would have put things back to like seventeen thousand years ago, But thirty thousand years ago, where where is that? Thirty two thousand plus down and the tip of the Tierra del Fuego. I'll have to look at my nose to see exactly who was the researchers doing that. But the main fact that points to me is the actual multiplicity of tribal languages in the Americas as a function of mathematical time, ten thousand years was not enough to have the diversity of languages. Um, yeah, that's an interesting point. Man explained that a little bit just going to that, just the variation. There's six or seven main tribal language families in the Americas, but to have them diversify into such distinct dialects and different language families would take a lot more than ten thousand years to do it. If you're assuming that the Foundation Group, if you have this assumption that the Foundation Group was some single wave of individuals who were that's not enough. Yeah, I got you. But if there's multiple waves of it. But the questions for me is why is it so inherent that we can only look at the bearing straight language theory? Oh? Man, I feel like people looked at a lot of theories. You ever hear the Salutrian theory, which was dismissed on like I think like dismissed on. Well, let me it's real quick if you if I get it wrong. But there was this idea that if you looked at paleolithic, well use the word paleolithic. We're talking about your when you look at like paleolithic stone technology thirty thousand years ago, forty years ago was remarkable, similar to stone technology of Indigenous Americans from four years ago. So someone rather than being that different groups of people came up kinda with the same idea independently. There was this idea that ah ha, they had to have been influenced but Western Europeans or vice versus Dave or vice versa, and we don't know that. But that makes an interesting question of was there some type of knowledge that was inherent to both and then it came from somewhere else. Certainly there was a lot of Europeans here earlier on than Columbus. But again, that becomes one of those questions, why is the Columbus discovery doctrine such a big part of Western American thought? Do you have a theory on why it is? I've often wondered that, like why is it John Wesley Pale? First? Well, but because yeah, because like clubs never hit, he was never even he never hit that, he never hit what became the US? Like he landed in the West Indies? How how did it become to be that that that school children feel that Columbus it's a great marketing job. But what are they what were they marketing? How how Europeans discovered America and civilized it versus looking at the actual history of how many people were here in Americas and what they were doing prior to that. Um, we got a lot of balls in the air right now. But I want let's do this. I want let's talk about this one. We got into the we got into the question of how Indigenous Americans arrived and when they arrived the question mark. But let's talk for a second. If you could explain how many people were here? I was hoping we were going to get to that. Yeah, I mean, we're like out of you know, we're out of or I don't know for a we're not out of order. Whatever, how many people were here? A lot of different estimates, Um, A bunch of different camps from anthropology historically have gone over it. But it's been a matter of political debate. Though. To me, the question is why there seems to be an influence in anthropology, especially in amateur anthropology, to diminish the number of people that were here, and that gets to to make the crime not as severe. Right, So what's being ignored entirely regardless of how many estimates have gone up to over a hundred million, with the bulk of those being in in meso America, So the heartland of the food explosion in the America is whether it's Peru or or a Central America. That's a high extreme number. That is high extreme number, but that was for the most part, that number is in in Meso America. The numbers in North America the most liberal or around sixteen million, sixteen million people. Now this would have been at the at the peak pre European pre disease. Pre disease is the big point. So that's one of the things that most people don't understand when understanding the history of America is looking at what actually happened here before. So we have accounts from the Spanish counkyst doors of these advanced societies and vast numbers of people and then when they got their butts kicked and then came back upset that nobody was there. So one thing one of the things that anthropology has been able to uncover now national geographics doing a lot with this, but use of technology of light, art, etcetera. To find all these ancient villages, whether they're in Central America or in South America. Um, but a smallpox for the most part, you can throw in some plague, whatever else you want. There's been traces of it found. But whether it was Canada now the United States, Central America, South America. Nolan was immune to the impact of smallpox, and for the most part, those extremes go between eighty five and decimation. Rights of the population died. So when we're talking about and impact on these societies, um, if you know which five percent has left? Were they the most wise probably not. Are they the oldest story keepers? Probably not? But what was left out of the five percent leaves us with a cultural amnesia. Oh, like coming out of a pandemic, it sort of gives you and we're upset about what what actual percentage of people died from the pandemic and we were terrified, what's up? One match in the world of everyone you knew and cared and loved about was gone. But that's why I think that I'm not trying to draw a pair of Please don't think I was trying to draw a parallel between smallpox epidemic and COVID nineteen. But I was saying, like, for a year we were invited to imagine, right, we learned the sort of lexicon of pandemics. You know, a new generation learned to like think and talk about contagion and pandemics. Point being. If you imagine that of Americans were carried off by COVID nineteen, some amount of time elapsed and then someone showed up and wanted to sort of categorize and describe us culturally, you would probably want to say, oh, no, no, oh, there's a big misunderstanding. Um, we all just died, you see, and we're in the you know, we're in a period of tremendous turmoil right now. Mhmm. You know it would be similar to it because I think that you, I don't know if you have feelings about if you read he talks in there. I like Charles Mann's work a lot. He compares in their accounts of people traveling down the Mississippi side, um post smallpox, they can't find anybody, right, but they encounter like city or towns and cities and they're like all every but left was the idea well packed up a win somewhere was the best they could come up with. Or unfortunately that those best cities or trading networks were not made by them. So that's you have early anthropology trying to understand what happened, and they found all these this evidence of these mound builders or the Mississippian societies, and the first bit of evidence they did was to go to the local tribes and say, hey, what do you know about these and there we don't know. But when you put in to the equation that people died, there're gonna have culture amnesia of nearly everything, perhaps safe stories, cosmology, the remnants of agricultural life ways. If this all would have started happening in the fifteen hundreds pretty much when when pretty much Europeans started coming here and bringing smallpox. So what you're alluding to is that so that's when the decimation would have started. But then, like Cahokia, you're saying that even at that time, there were remnants of ancient civilizations that the natives that were alive knew nothing about. So there was some other, potentially some other catastrophic event that happened pre European arrival. Is that what we're is that what we're saying could be or could just be a major change in an urban experiment. So you see the rise of the Mississippian culture, uh somewhere around and then around one thousand, ten fifty fifty four was the big year. It was a big supernova in the sky. If we would see a star that hung there ten times brighter than than Venus for two or three months, and then hung out for another couple of years. Stars in the sky seemed to be a very important thing to human beings, influenced this religion, et cetera. And so you have at some of these places. First and foremost was Hokia. Of course we don't know what the name was, but that was a local name that they that they found from it, but began the rise of an urban population and a massive trading network, which goes back to the question of where did they get that model from. Was that an impact of Phoenicians, European societies coming Did it come from us and went over there? Very very fascinating, but regardless places like a Hokey in the Rise of the Mississippian cultures, um dispels the myth that America was untapped wilderness. That's what I love about Charles Man's work, especially he's talking about the impact of the Colombian exchange. Flora and faun are going over one direction, and flora and faun are coming back. How did the potato get to Ireland? How did baby corn get to China? Why was their corn found in the ark Ark of the Covenant. These are interesting mysteries. What happened to a lot of the copper in the Great Lakes that was mind out because it probably wasn't mind by indigenous people because there's no record of that being in in vast cases. So the mysteries of America go well beyond what our understanding is today. But hopefully between anthropology and history and conversations like this, you know, eventually we're going to figure it out. Can you explain Kahokia a little bit, but like just a little more detailed massive trading network. It was an empire for sure. There were boundaries, there were markers, there's all sorts of stuff we have in the anthropological record. You have in the Mississippian cultures. The urban center that was Cahokia, and it's at the confluence of the Missouri Mississippi and the Ohio Rivers, which effectively give you north, southeast, east, and west water passage to bring things there. It was a massive trading network for sure because of the rivers. I didn't I didn't realize that. And it's just across from modern day St. Louis and Illinois. Yeah, yep. And it was it was a trading empire, and with it came boundaries um East coast marine shells, um arguably precious stones from the southwest Obsidian, many many, many things being being traded. But back to the what was happening there was these grand stories being told. Ultimately, the primary story, or arguably the oldest story in North America was about the first humans. So we have first Father and first Mother. Oftentimes she's known as Mother Corn or Earth's Mother, and they had a number of progeny depending on the tribes, and ultimately there were ten sons and two daughters. And that was in the time of giants, and the giants were competing with us as well, and we have evidence of this through the anspological record. Ancestors of my mother tribe um the Omaha, at a place called Picture Cave, about a hundred miles outside of the urban center of of Kahokia. It's one of these places that has been so desecrated that they won't tell you exactly where it is, but there's all these pictographs of all these stories battles between the giants and First Father, and within that tree of life, the first humans of a course, were from above, so they were part of the upper realm, and first Father he also carried the name of White Plume. But ultimately he became interested and understanding the powers of the lower realm. But probably that notion of Yen and Young, that there's a sacred balance and harmony. And he said, um a spirit wolf down to the lower realm to explore. But that was taboo, and so one of the water spirits ate it. First Father became upset with that and made his own journey from the upper realm down to the lower watery realm. And some of our stories he gambled, and some of the stories they dueled. But the water spirit, it was a beaver spirit. Ah won the battle, tuck his life and kept his head and his body, send it back up soulless without it. And thus enters the stories of one of the sons called Red Horn and his two sons, the twins. I'm referred to it as the Red Horn trilogy. But he was the one that you find all of these wonderful flint clay card figurines out of spy row in the outskirts of Kahokia. But tell the story of him. He had a clan name. It was probably along the lines of He who was hit with deer lungs, probably had to do with the clan taboo, probably a dear clan type of name. But think things that you can't touch, things that you have the rights to do, and things you can't do, and that's probably had to refer to that. And eventually he became a very very powerful character in this Mississippi cosmology and history, and ultimately the giants became agitated with the humans, and these battles occurred back and forth and contests. In one there was a race and the giants, being bigger, we're gonna win, except for the youngest one. He who was hit with deer lungs, turned himself into an arrow and won the race. Then they had a great stickball match, whether you look at the ball courts of meso America or the variations today amongst stickball of the Cherokee, we called it the little brother of warum versions of shinny, which is probably influenced a lot of field hockey and of course lacrosse. Little brother of war. Stick games were preparation for future yes or brutal I played when I was young brutal America there played to the death weren't there, and they did in this case too, and that's what happened was he who was hit with deer lungs became the most valuable player and they beat the Giants and VP and all of all of the Giants team we were killed except for one woman. And she was a red haired Giantist and she was said to have been very beautiful. The tribes of different names for her of what she wore, etcetera. And she said, you may kill me or I will take one of you as my husband. And so ultimately that's that union between her and the figure that was to become Red Horn. They had the thunder twins. Ultimately, in a scene of domestic bliss um, he who was hit with deer lungs was then married to the Giantists. And depending on the tribe, the stories changed a little bit, but ultimately she was teasing him as she was cleaning the deer and was going to take the lungs that was going to throw them at him, and he says, no, don't do that, and all the brothers said, oh, don't do that. We were just teasing, and he explains to everyone, no, you really shouldn't tease me because I'm not really your brother. I'm from the Upper Realm, and I was sent by Earthmaker. So he had a series of four trickster heroes that came here, and he was the fifth in the final to help Um Bringer of knowledge to humanity. And ultimately after that he explained his true form, and he spit into his hands and covered his big long braid, and it became the color of red ochre. Thus all things sacred back to the impact of the Neanderthal's Neanderthals, Dennis Ovans, all of these things about ritual and art, etcetera. That was our vision here. Ultimately, after becoming Um Red Horn, then he also became his star visage as well, became the Morning Star. And there's many many stories and all the Plains tribe and the Suing tribes about what that role was. But then became the ultimate Battles as his son's the thunder Twins went down and fought the water Spirit and defeated it and brought back the head of First Father, and so that his body became unified once again and became the great ascension story of North America. So all great spiritual destined reverse become the focus of cosmology and and religion for that matter, whether it's Jesus or Mohammed or First Father. In this case, this was the story that was celebrated at Khokia, was the spiritual ascension of First Father back to the Upper Realm. So our stories are Abraham and many sons said Father Abraham. I mean, I just think it's just so interesting that. I mean, it's something, it's something so big and giant, which because you're saying it's it possibly was the largest city ever on this continent or the earliest. At the time it was the third largest city in the world. Yeah, you know, I've never heard of it. You ever heard of it, Steve, No, I only heard of you know what you would describe as like the Mississippian culture, the mound builders. But no, I don't, I don't. I'm not familiar. Can we get into the mounds a little bit? She's even reading your chapter of the book. I'm not a like sure, Like what were the mounds all about? And why are they associated with these people? You know, I visited that Serpent Mound. Yeah, I can tell you a lot about that one too. It's absolutely fascinating with its links to Rko astronomy, as above, so below UM, so many of the mounds as as we're we're finding, especially through k astronomy, that it was very much looking to the stars and trying to take those stories and to plant them here, make a connection between the two. And you had the rise of places like Cochia. You see the role of corn and ben as squash coming to North America, and we're that those modes of agriculture were than population exploded of indigenous peoples. Tied that with the religion of the stories of First Father and the ascension, and then you have this this this recipe for civilization. Let's where food and their marriage came together to form civilization. At the confluence of those two is where you find civilization here. But it became a massive trading network and empire, and those stories were shared trading. For the most part. At the city center, you had fifteen to two people at the actual um epicenter of all those mounds there, and there were hundreds of them, and we've lost many of them um due to the can struction and progress of the St. Louis, etcetera. But ultimately you had this Grand Plaza and the Grand Mound itself now known as Monks mound. But all of those were built in fairly rapid succession. You see, the reign of Khokia from around ten fifty too, began to wane around twelve. And we're not exactly these mounds. Just to give perspective, Oh, I want to say that Monks Mount. I have to look at my notes. Um. I mean, they're they're big. They're big, maybe fifty feet in elevation. I'm just guessing off higher than that, probably a hundred fifties two hundred stairs up those and there. The question is how did they get built? You know, they're right well right, but like how did they or you know, one of the questions is how did they move that much earth? A lot of people, I know, the Serpent Mound, they didn't know it was there until air travel. It was recognized from the air. They thought it was like just a natural but from the air you could realize it was his hundreds of yards long serpent with the head and a tongue. Oh, I see, no one knew the people that the people who are living there didn't know it was there until someone's like, holy cow, it's huge, and we've got all there's all kinds of stuff about its orientation which is in this A lot of that comes from my dear friend Dr William Remain. He's probably the leading r Q astronomy expert and he's done work all around, but started in the eighties with Serpent Mound that the undulations of the curve on one side are are tied to movements of the Sun, on the other side movements of the Moon. But what he discovered even more importantly after that, along with others, was that its orientation is pointing towards stellar North, so the head and the tail lineup perfectly. But it also helps measure um what is at the center? What is the poll star? What is it today? What was it five thousand years ago? And regardless of the wobble or procession of the Earth, it's still different. Radiants could point to the same thing. But the story itself, you'll find within most of the tribes of Cherokees, we have a story about that, and it's about how the Serpent ain't the Sun, but it's a constellation that you see at sunrise on summer solstice, that that constellation would would move towards the rising Sun, and it appears that it was eating the Sun. But we still have those stories today, and that's there's some aspect of that in the Serpent mound too, or somewhere, or at least I think it was eating an egg or some mound effigy I thought was eating an egg. Then someone say's probably a sun. Yeah, yeah, it's it's hard to say. But then you also have had parallels between what does the egg mean metaphorically? Is it knowledge Sophia? And then you get these comparables to the rest of Europe as well. You know, what is the sacred feminine, what is the sacred masculine? And perhaps that mound work is a is a combination of both. At the very least, it was the rise of civilization in the Americas well before we knew about the same type of civilization from Europeans. So typically we define civilization as mass, food and religion coming together. So the rise of the three sister agricultural life ways probably came up from from meso America. In terms of cosmologies, that are, they're all very similar. But you had explained the term cosmology cosmology, you know just where we come from. Um, all of our stories are indigenous stories, so most part are are very well tied together. But our original stories talk about that originally our homelands were in the Seven Sisters constellation of ple eight s, and that we came here on what most of the tribes called journey of the souls, and and our and my mother's tribal cosmology. Um the story talks about that in the beginning, our souls were like stars in the sky, thought but no form. And eventually one of those souls, one of those stars, asked the question of itself, who am I? And that question burned within that soul, that star. So that star went to its mother, the moon, And that's part of the cosmology that all things sacred feminine come come from the moon, and said mother, who am I? Oh, my child, she said, I was afraid you were going to ask that question. Hurry before you forget, go ask your father. So he goes to his father, the son the sacred masculine father, who am I? And he immediately chastised him and says, my child, be very very careful with that question who am I? For that is the most important question we have as a soul. But that star, that soul was like us today, and gossipy can't keep a secret. And soon there were four of them that asked the same question, and that signals the beginning of the journey of the souls through the dark rift of the Milky Way to hear our. Stories say that were guided by Venus, the Morning Star to get here, the planet next to us. And when those souls landed, it was an all watery planet, and they took the form of four animals, and this story is basically referred to as the Earth Diver. Meth and his variations almost crossed all the tribes and they took the form of four animals and depending on the tribe, but ultimately one of them dives down into the deep waters and brings back up the clay in the earth, and Turtle was the first one that asked that question. The soul said, who am I? I felt so bad that gotten the other ones into this new mess, this new conundrum that asked to put the clay on its back, and then that became Turtle Island. And that's the story of this continent and us coming to this world and the first humans that came out of the water. After that, that's the beginnings of the cosmology, the beginning before the beginning. That's the story that's in the braiding sweet grass. Yes, because we all have different variations. As you told that story, I was, I was, I thought that's where you were going. But Robbins tribe, the Potawatoms, there have a variation of woman who fell from the sky sky woman. So is it fair to say and just just so unclear that then cosmology could be like an indig this religion based absolute stars. Absolutely, okay, And so we have all those variations, which is another function of time. Those stories. That story in his origin comes out of Siberia, so there are there's similar there's a similar narrative or that that's from people there. Yes, and then you can measure the variations of the story based over time to try to get an understanding of the antiquity of that story. Huh. From an an indigenous perspective, stories or everything the watery planet. Um, that's very common, right, and even in even even in like the Judeo Christian tradition, it's common. There's there's an element of it with the with the notions of the great flood like a watery planet. Huh. There were a lot of parallels that I saw in so the book. We discussed this earlier. Taylor and I did about this Brady sweet Grass brook uh Robin, how do you say your last name? Yeah, but I saw a lot of parallels between. I mean, you didn't have to stretch it very far to see parallels between that story at some point, and you know the Book of Genesis, I mean there was a tree that had that people were punished for for eating the fruit of and different things. But just yeah, it was it was two different trees, the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of life. So back to the cosmology, the tree of life is what's at the centerpiece of an understanding of a of a physical attribute of that. So we have the great Tree of Life, and it is the axis moondy of the universe. And in its branches is the upper realm, ruled by the thunderbans, the thunderers, and there and their messengers, the thunderbirds. And then the roots of the Tree of life is the lower watery realm, which is inhabited by water spirits. Chief amongst them is the underwater panther or the underwater serpent Cherokees we call her Uktana, but parallels to stories from esso America for sure. Kukl Khan quite uniquotal etcetera. But these are the things, Steve, that I get immersed in. The stories and storytelling captivating to most people, children and adults alike. I've discovered if you, when you look at your history, the history of your people, Um, is it puzzling to you that that people like us, like Western Europeans. Is it puzzling to you that, uh, we're probably that were more drawn to those questions as well, like more drawn to the history, the deep history of of this continent, then we are to the deep history of our own continent, where our where our ancestors came from. Like, I really have no desire, you know, I don't have I don't wonder about Western Europe. I don't wonder about Paleolt. I mean a little bit, but I don't like pay attention to the Paleolithic tradition there. But I'm very interested in the deep history here. But I could, but I could see that you would view it as you might are, you might view it as like not my history at all, But but somehow I feel like it is. Is that is that troubling to you that I feel that way? Now, It's not troubling at all, because I think that's so important Um. One of the reasons that I want to come and share on podcasts like this and to learn from others is to have a deeper understanding of what is the provenance of this land. It's fascinating all those stories that I've just shared. I mean, yeah, truths is greater than any fiction. The stories that happened at these places, the stories that were told about the the giants and the thunder beings and all these different aspects of indigenous cosmology. It gives a provenance to this country that most people don't realize is there, but it belongs to us all a greater understanding what was happening here. There's lessons in history, things to be gleaned and to be learned. Um. Perhaps even with with Kahki and some of the others, there are forebodings of what happens with large urban experiments. Can you can you talk the giant people? I have heard, um Bigfoot enthusiasts here. We talked about this before this ship. Bigfoot enthusiasts like that story, and they will sometimes say, oh, you can find evidence of Bigfoot in the mythologies of Native Americans, because they talked about a race of giants. Has to have been Bigfoot's um Do you do you know I'm voicing I'm voicing, you know, a fringe gentleman of you know, I'm voicing the perspective of a fringe element of big Foot enthusiasts. Only two. I'm only doing that to invite you as a way of inviting you to um offer any insights. Is it a metaphor? Like? Is it a metaphor for something? What was the rate like in the mythology or in the cosmology? What was the race of giants? Do I mean? Does it refer to a specific thing? Um? You find these stories throughout a lot of the tribes um back home in Nebraska. But we say niska, that's the Omaha word for the Platte River means flat water. But niska, that's a that's a beautiful word. Yeah, and uh, I think it was called the plant or the Missouri River, which we call ni shuta, which you means smoke on the water and what and all the all the Plains tribes give it the same name in their language. But what it refers to is before that river was damned up and they had this powerful, you know, kinetic motion, especially in the winter back when winters used to be really cold. Then you would see this frozen fog bank that would go above the water. And that's what it means, smoke on the water. And uh, we have lots of stories around around that. I want to I want to get I gotta interrupt. So there's two questions. There's gonna be three in a second. Well, I want to hear him talking about Bigfoot, but also want him to answer your question about where the giants came from. Yeah, but I want him to say to say a whole sentence in in your native language. I don't care what the hell you could say something bad about me. I just want to hear because I like hearing the river names. Well, I would be truly remiss if I didn't introduce myself properly. There you go, who abe that wannga They we weat the Bugisha hunger shanu in case of a long la uma habbedy. So that's our standard introduction that we would say in our tribe about the name that we carry. So aw that wanda. That means that we're all related. So whether it's white man in Indian or from whatever part of the world you're from, you would mean this is meeting a new person. So you could say we're all one. Say it again, um abe that wanga they you're not off the hook on big Foot. We're gonna, We're gonna okay. So that's so that's the beginning of the greeting. And so that that translation. I carry the name of Bison Maine of the earth and Bison clan of the people that move against the current. That's what Omaha is. The corruption of um Maha means the people that move against the current. What it had to do with are brother and sister tribes within our language family, and at a certain point we separated from each other, probably in the diaspora coming out of the Great Lakes region. Um those movements probably referred to our separation along the Mississippi or the Great Old Man people to move against current because they because this is a group of people that traveled up river. We went up upstream is another yeah Oumaha. And then you have um no ship that's pretty good. Clapha um down from your neck of the woods. We say Gogapa. It means the downstream people. And then you have the o sage means children of the middle waters. So all of those I think Kore and I were talking abous about this before, but so many American place names are indigenous. Now we have we transliterated into English and say, oh sage and quapol. I like the word you used corruption, it's powerful. My kids are I was like, why is that play's name that? And I's doing like I'll probably some guy's name. Yeah, I mean like go through them. I mean it's like it's just the states, cities, every states, the cities Dakota, Missouri Highway, Kansas, Oklahoma. Cancer is interpretation of what we say conz A, which means the wind people. They were a clan of a larger group of of our of our language family. But it goes on and on and on. I assume Michigan, Wisconsin. It is kind of interesting though, that there was some sort of uh, you know, want or interest in not completely just renaming it and calling the next next state Steve. And then the after that well they well they did that up in the northeast. Sure certainly did. But it's right. I mean, some of some of those names would have been more European, like New York. But then the further they got, these territories were more wild and I know Arkansas is a is a native name, and I've heard the name translates into downstream people. I don't know if you have heard that before, but anyway, I'm just guessing. Uh, I grew up in Moskegon County. That's for sure indigenous, right, My my understanding. There's a huge swamp there and it's it's like the Moskegan River delta, but it's the Moskegan River flowing in the delta that the Moskegan River makes as it flows into Lake Michigan. So my understanding. Um, and you know the way everybody explains it, it's a it's a big swamp. Okay, look, swamp area whatever. But just to kind of give you this is I'm not gonna tell you anything new. Here's a joke that would be tray affect when I was a kid. It would be that, oh, uh, an Indian was water skiing and his ski broke here and he said mosquegone. Mhm right. No, it'd be like no, I'm just I'm like Taylor's laughing, yeah, but I'm not. I'm not telling them. I don't think he's going to be shocked that people tell Indian jokes that are derogatory. I mean, I didn't make damn thing up. I'm just saying it's like a thing people. It's like a stupid ass thing people say. And why is that do you think? I don't know. Wow, why do people like the blittle things? Maybe they don't know what the real history is? Yeah? Why why do you? Yeah? Why do you like to I can't explain why people like the bluttle stuff. I don't know why you want to? Like? Why would you want to diminish something? I don't know. That's that's why I wrote the chapter in my book manuscript called the Under's Dilemma of America. Why do we have to create stories like Thanksgiving when in reality, the majority of what we think about is Thanksgiving is a lie and definitely belittles Indian slave trade in in New England, the Mohegan Pequot Wars. There's so much history that we just don't know about. But it's much more convenient, much more easy to say, oh, well, there's the pilgrims and they were saved by the local Native Americans. A hell of a party, had a hell of a party. The only time Thanksgiving was used was the Governor Winthrop I believe was his name after he sent a military party to slaughter over a hundred different tribal warriors, and when they came back, that's when they had to Thanksgiving. So when you juxtapose reality versus the myths that we come up with. But this is also part of the myth of in Columbus selled the ocean blue. I don't know if they still teach that to children, but most of us know that right. As a parent who's raising kids in America, UM, I don't know how. I don't know how helpful it is to them to I'm not really interested in bringing them up in an atmosphere of self loathing, do you know what I mean? Like, I don't know that it's doing them, that it's setting them up in a good path. So I think that there are complexities there. There are astounding complexities to history. But I think that the way we communicate with kids is parable, sure, right, And if if you find there's if there's like there's a value in love of your place, there's value in love of your country, there's value and love of your fellow man. I think that it's it's like, but there's a pretty good argument to be made for giving them when they're young, somewhat of an optimistic vision, right. I think that that's probably that this is not like the Moskegan stupid ship like that, just communicating to them there's something here that you should that you probably want to take care of, right. But I mean they could be equally enthralled with the story of total saving this planet. I don't know this story other than Sturgil Simpson mentions it and turtles all the way down, but you know it now I've shared it with you. I'm gonna read off. I'm gonna read up on it. I don't get the detail wrong, Listen, I'd love to telling that story. What I think you're saying, it's just that we we've distill down, We're distilled down our history into very simple, like you know, just flash points that are easy to communicate. So I mean, like, yeah, humans want to live in the now and sometimes want to look back the past and just see it as this like thing that could be subbed up in one sentence. And for whatever reason, Columbus was able to market the world marketed that Columbus found this place. So that's what we still teach. I mean, I think what you're I hear what you're saying. It's like it's easy to simplify things like really small and those things then become wrong. I mean because you can't tell complex stories with very simple things that you can't sit them all down and be like, you know, there's an arguments be made that, Um, there's no free will, right that everything's spelled out already. You're either gonna be the way you are or not. Nothing you can do about it. Um, people are horrible, good luck. That's I don't think that's not a good way of going about it. Why is it one or the other? And also what does it say to our collective consciousness if we exist on myth and continue to be okay with that? I don't know. Well, I think I think the thing is is that now because of the world we live, and we can find the accuracy and stories so here and you talk about Thanksgiving helps you know, and I've heard this before, but like that that helps us understand probably the way that we've been marketed well for sure been marketed to and so we can bring out more truth inside of the way that we exist from here on out, just because we know and I think you can find more separation between the optimism that you're talking about, Stephen, Like these bastardizations that are harmful and have implications today just stuff we tell our kids, and the truce shall set them free. Right Yeah, yeah, no, I told you. Listen, what I'm saying is like, what I'm saying is probably like I'm not doing a good job of articulating it. I'm just trying to um. I'm expressing the idea that there are certain sort of legends and mythologies that are that are told because they're effective. Sure, and I don't think people sit around weighing out weighing them out too thoroughly. I guess that. Okay, It's it's much easier to have history tied up in a pretty little bus, right. It's like the blitz Creek hypothesis, Right, It's much easier to believe that there was one event that killed all the all the megafauna, right. Yeah, you know, m I was surprised to see that Wikipedia still is is really hangs onto the blitz Creek hypothesis. Academia has moved on. Wikipedia's doubled down. It's like the burying straight theory. That's and there's a lot of work been done. Graham Hancock did a wonderful job and America BC no America before. But he goes into this whole understanding of what you have an American anthropology around around the Clovis First people's and how anthropology just held onto that held onto that. Academics careers were destroyed whenever they found something counter to that, and so you have this whole um uncovered history, this provenance of America that may go back a lot, a lot longer than what most people are comfortable with. When I started, when I first started dabbling in anthropology, just like reading academic works, there was it was right around when the Clovis First idea was falling apart, and there were still people that held onto it, you know. But that was kind of like that. That was a debate that was half ring back then. But to get back to we're supposed to get you, is there is there a metaphor to be found in the Giant people? Like what do you think that that meant? And I think that they were giants, um they were a competing race from our stories that Earthmaker made before us, and they became they lacked humility and they were too pompous and then ultimately depending upon the stories, but there's an incredible place right outside of Omaha. The Skeety people to Panties and the rickers. Then it changes a little bit based on the dialect, but Paul Hook is what it's called, and it was the origin place for the Skiti people, and there was a number of the Council of the Animals. Out of the five sacred sites, only one of them is left, and that's Paw Hook. And from it it was said that back in the time of giants and sacrifice, that was a very important place. And ultimately that's where Earthmaker Creator decided to flood the earth to get rid of the giants, and he bade all of the human beings and the smaller animals to go underneath into the Council of the Animals, and therefore they wrote out the flood, and then they were led by yellow buffalo woman and they came back at and emerged there. So that became a very central place for a lot of the Plains people. They survived the flood, survived the flood by going underneath the ground. And you have a lot of those types of stories. Kaya was half those stories. There's biblical reference. The giants to the Anach and Genesis. Yeah, so that that's a theme, but not the kind of giant that Goliath was. Glass is the huge dude, wasn't he He was a giant? Yeah? He am and I they weren't all big he Yeah, he was a little bit of a of a phenomen amongst its people. But I mean, I don't think they were all giants where they mean, but that that was the land of Canaan. Yeah. Is there any do you think there's any chance that um, that there could be cultural memory of um they would survive, like how many Neanderthal and years cultural memory that could survive long enough to recollect interaction with Neanderthals. It's an excellent question. But we find that legacy in our art, the use of red ochre can be tied back to the Neanderthals. And one of the hypotheses is who were the Denisovans? Were they some remnant of this giant race? We don't know, because that's different within my DNA than everyone else here. So what was that? I do know that there are some anthropological markers that make indigenous people's different, one of which is our teeth. And that's why I was so important about what was found in those caves in Siberia. But we have different types of teeth. The main thing is we have shovel shaped incisors, which is the only dominant genetic trait. But on the back side of front teeth or scooped um, we have the moo Mongolian spot that comes out of Asia, and I brought all my DNA stuffs the Mongolian spot. It's a little blue spot on the behind of babies and sometimes on the back or the stomach, and it's just a genetic marker we don't know and it fades and its m But we do have different DNA. We have different mitochondrial DNA as well. So the stuff that I when I originally got into the DNA stuff, when I was doing all my all my research for the book, was really trying to understand are we different and national geographic who seems to be a central player and all this. Have done an incredible job of trying to understand some of this ancient past and from the DNA perspective. They started this project called genomic which was trying to isolate the fact that we have different haplo groups for our mitochondrial DNA, So I have some of those markers that would be the dominant European ones. But then we have this motochondrial DNA that's very very different from others. What when you did so when you did a DNA test or what? What? What? What are the services have you done? I did the genomic project and then more recently, I think I did the ancestry one. So the genomic project was you were actually involved in research project? Yeah? I mean my my DNA was a part of that study. That's why I signed up for it. I see, So what can you What did it tell you about you? Um? One, that I had similar part of Neanderthal, which is probably my Irish heritage. Maybe some of the French or German I have in there as well. Um. But it also shows that I've got I've got to pointe of Neanderthal and one point seven DENI SOBN but probably most evidence through teeth and other other common amongst Native Americans and s is jealous? Are the percentages again two point three? You think that you have more Neanderthal? Remember told me I was a little light on Neanderthal man, But it goes back to your lighter average. I mean these. I guess it's natural within human beings to feel like one type of hominid is superior to the others. But I think it goes back to that core value that we have a indigenous people that were all related. So whether it's Homo sapien, Homo sapien, or Neanderthal or Dennis Ovan, all part of humanity as we now know it. But when you okay, has there is there enough information out there that you can get into Like my understanding when they do these projects is it kind of depends on how many samples are taken. So there's some spots on the planet that there just hasn't been enough people. They haven't done their genomes, haven't done their genetics, and so some spots are hazy. Some spots like what like Western Europe um a lot of participants, a lot of people have done it. You start getting these really detailed pictures, but you talk to people who um whose ancestors came from Asia, and it's like not as satisfying when you when you do it there because it's not filled in in a detailed sense, and you'll be told like, oh, you're kind of generally asian um. When you what with yours. Are they like, where is that at now? Are they able to talk about region within what's now the United States? I don't think it's going to ever be able to get that granular, because tribe is a fluid thing, you know. But I was really surprised. I mean, I know that I'm majority Native American, but the formal test, both of them came out around the same percentage um. But what I was surprised at was based off one of the tests that there was a lot more Peruvian bloodlines, and in both tests was consistent percentage of descendency from the I knew of Japan, the indigenous people's Japan, Chinese for sure, Peruvian. And the other one that was a big curveball was the nearly quarter percent that said I was Russian and then I was related to toll story. Can you track back? Can you track back? You're encouraging as a writer, so that's where I got there. You track back in your history where some of the stuff comes from. I mean, like, could you say, like my great grandfather was like a Caucasian guy. I mean, I I finally found people who know more a lot, but like your mother and father were members of the tribe. I mean, I mean, I can go back, you know, fourteen seventeen generations on almost both sides, but you're and there's nothing along those lines. But what when I finally did talk to somebody who knew what they were talking about a lot more than I did. Was probably had to do with this mixing of Siberian and Eurasian bloodlines. And I went back and forth for a time before they came over to Siberian. Arguably some of them maybe even came back. And oh so you don't think that was that was anything recent, like in the last couple of years. Yeah stuff, Yeah, oh wow, Okay, can I make a correction real quick? I said, anac in Genesis is Nephilim. Nephilim where the Yeah, yeah, irrelevant, But I just had to clear that uppilum. And I've been fascinated with all of you know, the understanding of what happened in Messo America, what happened in South America. I've been really enjoy reading about those British explorers who finally went down to South American and tried to find the Lost City of z Colonel Faucett. It's a fascinating story, but behalfs of the Royal Geographic Society. He went down in the early dred and began to explore in his hypothesis was there was the lost city of Zad, which was a complex society in South America. Charles Man in his book he talks a lot about um terra Pretta and some of the agricultural practices and involving the use of biochar and how to take very alkaline soils and turn them into you know, productive things. And these are ancient but much many years after pots disappearance into the Amazon, no one knows every what happened to him. That many people try to go and find out through the use of technology. We've we're finding all these ancient cities now and more and more evidence that population numbers were a lot bigger. But that's the first point in having any of these conversations about ancient America is how many people, how many bison, etcetera. All tho has become really interesting topics. But what happened to them? Why did they leave or disappear? What was the role of disease in genocide? How much of it was purposeful? I think all those things are important for people that understand so that the very least we don't repeat those bad portions of history. Tribal people's have them a prophecy. It's primarily in the plains, but it's all around. That has to do with the seventh generation prophecy. And ultimately you can look to sad symbolic events in history, such as the original Battle of Wounded Knee, which was putting down of very powerful um the Ghost Dance religion and in its profit well voca up around up around Pine Ridge there and I believe it's in the eighteen seventies, but it is such a horrific event that many viewed it as the breaking of the great sacred hoop of the Suian people's And at that point it was said that that was the beginning of very tough time for indigenous peoples, that for six generations we would suffer greatly, and Lord knows we've suffered, and that with the markings then, um, I think you wrote about this something too, stories about white buff low calf woman, that that she would return, and so we had those markings and actuality in the physical man manifestation of white buffalo calfs. So we had the first one in two thousand one, and by two thousand and seven there were four of them, and that means that that was the time for the return of the seventh generation. I had actually been right in a scholarly paper with a legal scholar who also happened to be a the coach to spiritualist, and she's the one who explained it to me at the time. But with the coming of the fourth White Buffalo Calftain, all of the children born after that would be of the seventh generation. So for those tribal people's that generation would be the ones that would lead them to those nations to stand tall again and be and be proud. For all those children that are non Indigenous that were born after that time, ram they're there also part of the seven generation, and as non Indigenous, they're going to be the population that's finally ready for our knowledge. And it was pointed out to me that I was a part of the sixth generation, that I was supposed to be a teacher and then I didn't know all my stories and she was right. So that began that joint that journey for me from going from um general person in Corporate America trying to find out who am I where do I come from, so then when it comes time, I can tell these stories and the hopes that it's gonna make the world a better place. Can you explain to people the uh, the Goal's dancers, because there there was two. There was kind of like two occurrences where someone tried to unite UM. What was the one like related to the you know he was he was from Indiana, right, clumsy, Right, there's yeah, there's two two separate stories. He well, like a person a sort of profit that wanted to unite people that would try to like patch up and inform an allegiance of confederacy to to fight. And then the ghost dance profit or teacher or whatever profit he was similar to he was trying to he was he was trying to communicate with the like with a bunch of historical enemies to bring to buying them together. It was derivation out of the potawatam Um Dreaming Dance Society and UM. Ultimately he had these visions where UM the followers could, through dance and song, could put themselves into a mental state where they could see the other side. And it was their hope that Um, despite what had happened with the loss of the bison and our and our traditional life ways, that the old world would come back, and that's what they were they were seeking. Of course, it was seen by the United States Militarius insurrection and they were summarily attacked and killed up at Wounded Knee and the prophet was killed at that point. What was the second Like, when did the second Wounded Knee massacre? That was the eighteen nineties, right, No, that was in in the nineteen seventies. That had to do with the Red Power movement and the American Indian Movement. Oh no, no, okay, almost, I know. I thought that there was like two Wounded Knee things in close proximity, not that I'm aware of. The first one was pretty brutal and tribes didn't respond back from that till many many years later, and then wounded He became a became a focal point in the seventies, Yes, of the American Indian Movement. That's after they became militant, for sure. One other questions, Oh yeah, no, no, we covered off a big foot. No we didn't. You hadn't heard him talk about bigfoot yet. I don't think he's a big foot enthusiast, a big foot. No, he has something to say. I'll tell you nasty, because Bigfoot is not an American icon. It's a tribal icon. All the tribes we have Bigfoot, the omahas um Hinska Bay. It means the hairy race of people. Really all the tribes, many of the tribes, especially up in the Pacific Northwest. I mean it's it is a spiritual part of their formation. Um. They some of the clans up there are even responsible for protecting the anonymity and the sacredness of them. That has become something out of American popular lore. But that's what, that's what. That's what he said. That helped because we were walking up here, he said, what do you think about Bigfoot? And and he told me, he said, Bigfoot is not doesn't belong to America. I mean, you know America as in like white European culture that dominates America. He said, it belongs to the tribes. And then he I don't want to take your I don't want to tell what you're going to say about that he's a spirit being. But I just did. Many of our of our stories say that there's a relationship between them and the sky people, and so Um, perhaps they can move between different planes of existence. I mean, who were we to say what is real and what's not, what's happening in the spirit world and what's happening here. Many say that they move in between those those those realms. That's been adopted. That attribute has been also adopted by bigfoot researchers to explain why you cannot catch them on a trail camera because they they they like, move out of they move into the ethereal realm and can't be photographed. Do you believe Steve No, Mitch Edward, the comedian mit Chedward, thinks they're just blurry and it's not the photographer's fault. I think it's a barrel two legs. See what I what what I don't? I don't know to me what what he told me gave me. I mean, it just gave me another perspective that that explains this. And I knew that that bigfoot would have been connected to Indigenous Americans, but I guess I didn't know realized that it was something sacred and that it was something that's really valued. You know, that's kind of been you know, hijacked in a way because I told him, I said, no, I don't believe. Well, this is before a story. I said, No, I don't believe in bigfoot. I think people are seeing bipedal bears that have had wounded front feet and are walking on their back legs, which we know for a fact happens. That happens, for sure happens. But no, it just expanded this idea because I mean, the bigfoot or the the hairy hominid like bipedal lore goes so deep. I mean, it's bizarre how deep it goes. I mean, we were talking about the co Yukon. The co Yukon have a very distinct bigfoot like character that is up in Alaska. Every tribe does. Yeah, and we're all complex and deep and rich. So I know in southeast Alaska some of the groups have a there's an otterman, which Hida and Simpscian people have mentioned to me. M. The co Yukon have the woodsman. They call him woodsman, kind of a wilding, right, yeah, and it's not exactly a bigfoot, but that's kind of how they treated it. And they said they were supernatural. They could move in and out of you know, being able to be seen and whatnot. But they were almost like a feral human that was real, Harry. And then of course you have the counterpart to the giants. We all have stories of little people as well, and there very powerful race and they move in and out of this existence. The story that I always like to tell about it I'm I'm I'm a descendant of Baptist Dorian. That's the French part of my Omaha bloodlines. And he was an interpreter for Lewis and Clark. And whenever Lewis and Clark met with the Iway and the Otto at what is now Council Bluffs, Iowa, which is where I live, h the Omahas were not present because they were on bison hunt. But eventually some of the translators and explorers went along, and my ancestra was a part of it. And they got up near Vermillion, South Dakota, and Lewis and Clark wanted to dispatch all of the all of the tribal representatives to go and to explore um. This um they basically a rock mounted spirit lake, and the Omahas dug in their heels and said, uh, we ain't going. And they asked him why, and they said, because we have a story. Uh. There were a number of our warriors. There were three hundred of them that were on a horse rating trip, which was not honorable, and on their return going past uh the rock edifice they're at Spirit Lake, that the little people came out and attacked them and killed over half of them. And so our stories about giants and little people. All the tribes have stories like that. I only know the ones that I've been told, but they go so far back into our history that there has to be something to them. But I mean, there's there's there's parallels with the Gaelic cultures and little people, etcetera. The mound builders. You find very strong similarities between the carnes and rock mounds of northern Europe and what you see in the Mississippian plane as well. So for me, it's just a lot of questions back to that whole tenant of we're all related, but how did all these things rise around the same time and then and then collapse? You know? I think when I when I hear you talk this kind of a broad general statement about here and you talk, is that we so bad want to be able to explain everything that we know, and in science, science is by very essence only able to discern, to understand what is physically observable. I mean, that's the definition of science. Like science does not delve into, you know, things that are metaphysical. And and what I like about hearing some of these, like ancient deep time stories of indigenous people is that we really like to think that we know everything and we just don't. I mean, I did an interview with one of the top wildlife biologists in the country that deals with with white oak trees and acorns, and he when I started drilling down questions about white oak trees, like he was like, Clay, you don't have to dig very far to you realize science does not know all the answers, even about something so simple and not that seemingly important. And just as I hear you talk about even qualms about how long humans have been in North America, and you know, are are the archaeology we know? You know, says X, you know we've been here this long. But and that's just the best that we've got. But your stories say that it goes way back further than that. And uh, and I just feel like we really don't know, and it's okay for us to say we don't know, and it's okay for us to say that the measurements of science do have limitations. Just back to the field of anthropology and its separation from folklore, because that was the scientific part of anthropology, which says we have to have physical evidence for everything, and it ignored folklore and it was only until the last ten years or so. That was one of the works that really inspired me to start my book was reading Tim poc Tat's work on on kah Kia, and he was the first mainstream anthropologist to bust out of the mold and say, hey, we need to we need to look at that tribal stories here to help figure out and that's that's how we come up with the stories of ostracizing people that have spoken against it. You can look back a thousand years and find that, right. So ye, stories for everything. Still, let me ask you how something. We've had this debate on and off over the years, and I just like to get perspective on it. Many of the earth mounds have been ransacked, Okay, Like you have a term like pot hunters, right, so people that would just go dig up caves, dig up um. It starts with arrowheads. Yeah, Well that's why I'm going so people would dig up caves, people would dig up effigy mounds, people dig up cities, haul off the stuff that they thought was a value and and and destroy it from an archaeological perspective, and then desecrated from religious perspective. Say, uh, let's put that at it an extreme, Okay. At the other end is you're out till in the field and up pops a broken arrowhead. Okay, and you put that arrowhead in your pocket because you're thinking until this field all the time. I just kicked it up my field. Yeah. So two questions for you, Um, what's your take on that, on that impulse? And then I want you to judge that impulse. Well, there's two different kinds of people in the world, right, There's people who want to lump everybody into two groups right right. The the the analogy that I thought was interesting at this at this point was, Um, if we all walked up and found a wallet and there was money in it, half of us are going to take it and give it to someone to of it back, right. The other half's gonna take take the money pocketed and to the wallet. Yeah, that's probably all right. So I think I think the same thing, right, But it goes to how we think about objects that we don't understand. Arrowheads would be one of those. On the one end of the extreme is you know people loved to collect arrowheads, Um, my dad did. I've got his collection and at home, your father did that. My dad did, and he loved it, and he like he actively hunted arrowheads. He did, and he gave them, gave them to me. And so I understand that. At the same time, I know that what is in that act? Why is that so important? Philosophically? When you're average American is walking somewhere and sees this arrowhead, what is it that compels them to want to pick it up and to take it for their own. Some may admire the beauty and the history as it is and was and says that's pretty powerful. And maybe if we leave it in the ground, maybe this was an important place. Maybe that arrowhead told the story of how these people lived. Maybe it explains the time period of when that was made. Maybe it's tied to an animal that was ancient that this arrow head went into. There's so much that could be there. And then there's the other perspective, is my land I found it, it's mine and perhaps or something will happen to it. Okay, been there a long time by itself. That's good point. But I think you can't discount the rarity of it. And that's what I mean compels a lot of people to not leave it because I don't know, I mean, did they want it's magic for themselves? Yeah, exactly. I was with some I was with some anthropologists who were doing work in the npr A, so the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska. What they were doing is the head of oil exploration, which is probably inevitable. They were trying to make a map of cultural sites. Um, because when they do, you know, e s a process and all the other processes to go on to extract oil. There needs to be an accounting of what might be destroyed, and it would and the finding of cultural sites would impact where you would build roads, put in wellheads, whatnot. Um, you're in a place that you can't even it's so far out you can't get a helicopter there on a tank of gas. You gotta like take a plane and kick out barrels of gas and then hop scotch from barrel to barrel in a helicopter that's how like remote you are. But anyways, there's just stuff laying out. Man, it's been sitting there thousands of years, like there's no one around to pick it up. Hasn't been And I'm telling you, those guys would photograph the actile points and they would draw the projectile points and they would stick them back in the moss. It was painful for me, painful. I would have visions of coming back out and getting them. I wanted him so bad. I don't know, man, it's just like, because it's so cool, I'd be like, oh, like every part of me. I mean, I would go and revisit, Like I remember one time at camp, leaving camp, walking down, not to take it, but leaving camp, walking down, getting it back out of the moss, looking at it for a long time, sticking it back in the moss, and just like yeah. They'd be like if I don't know, man, Like if you put a boxing nerds out on the ground and my kids found it, they'd be like, now, I'll tell you what I can do with those nerds. It's very I can't explain it. Although there are a lot of things in the natural world that do connect us to you know, way back history. There's very few things that are that physical that you can just look at and hold and it takes you like, well, way back. It's not such a new go ahead. Actually, I want to this one thing. It's a lot of things I don't understand. I can tell you what it's not. It's not meant as an act of disrespect for the person to own that thing. For some and I want to get the opposite. I think it's a it's a it's a thing of like deep reverence curiosity about fascination with the person that made that thing. Sure, but if one takes that, you lose the context of where it was and whatever science might be able to tell us about it. I want to bring that's a good point. I want to bring up to serious things on this topic. So that's on one end of the of the extreme. And then you have in the wake of the passing of the legislation to protect um try remains and funerary Objects known as the Native American Engraves Repatriation Act in the ninety nineties, and prior to that, you have the Archaeological Resource Protection Act, and you have aberrations of this benign mindset about things like arrowheads. And on this other extreme, you have this event that happened with the National Park Service at Effigy Mounds in Iowa and as the rise of Nagpra and State of Iowa also passed an early law saying that you know, if if there are skeletal remains or funerary objects, and ultimately what became the language of Native American Graves and Repatriation Act is anything that is sacred needs to be returned back to the people. And what happened there was they had a number of skeletal remains and the superintendent of the site believe his name is Tom Munson, he was so frustrated with the potential that these objects would be out of their collection. And I believe it was combination of twenty four different human remains from different individuals that were on display, that were on display at different points, and as this the potential risk of this law taking them away from the anthropological archaeological collection, he stole them and tucked him to his house and then lied about it for years and ultimately there had to be an accounting of it. But we're talking about skeletal remains. What do you think what was going on in his head, Um, I have to take this so we don't have to give them back to the Indians, and eventually everyone's going to forget and then we can have them back. So you have this unhealthy relationship between objects that have a tribal provenance and what we would like to see happen to them, any skeletal remains. There's an exception in the America's because of archaeology and anthropology that science came in and says it's okay to take Indian bones. There's been numerous examples of cemeteries and that were damaged during construction, etcetera. They find the white people bones and they bury them properly, and the Indian bones go to the state archaeological societies. Ultimately, it took enforcement of Nagpra to come in and to convict him first keeping and stealing all those all those remains. The tribes were very upset about that and there was no accountability of it. Even further and more political goes to archaeological rich sites like um down in uh outside of Blanding, Utah, and there was a raid that there was twenty four individuals that were ultimately indicted and in between them they had forty thousand objects that they had illegally taken out of the ground, some of which had provenance to six thousand BC pottery shards, human remains, funerary sandals, etcetera. And foremost of those was a doctor by the name of James red And Uh. It was certainly viewed as an over zealous overreach of the FBI and the Bureau of Land Management, but the facts of the case are still the same. There was over forty thousand objects that were gotten in that sting. The economics of it is what is mind boggling to me, because this is the serious part about erahads, etcetera. Was of the two d forty objects that they found there, they used an informant um to try to lure these individuals who are illegally trading them and fuelling the black market and Native American objects. UM. I think they've spen around three thirty thousand, which averaged around forty dollars per object for those two fifty. So if we use that as a proxy and run the numbers, then that collection which they hauled away from those twenty four individuals, UH collection of forty thou would be over fifty three million dollars. So this is one subset of what happens with the black market trade around Native American objects, which have been fetishized beyond the object and the provenance into a horrible black market. So why would the individual who finds the arrowhead or the pottery shard? I can get a hundred bucks for this, And then it goes on and on and on, Doctor Red and the informant sadly committed suicide rather than face the charges. But one of the end the informant killed himself. He did a year a year later. And if you look at stories on this, you're gonna find more stories about the overreach of the federal government. But it certainly doesn't take away from the fact that this was an illustration of the huge black market around Native American objects, especially things that are sacred, human remains, funerary objects, things that should be sacred and left alone. So there's a serious side to hunting objects. Oh, I get the serious side for sure. And I think that you if you went and talk to people, um just like pulled people who are hobbyists you know about, they don't think they're doing anything wrong. Well, you I think you'd find if you said like, hey, you found human skeleton. What you do? I think, you know, the fast majority of people would would recognize it, they wouldn't take it, or they would tell someone or whatever, you know. But I think people sort of spread it out and a view the arrowhead isn't of significance or it was. It wasn't purposefully placed. It was perhaps lost, it was broken. It was just it was discarded and it wasn't like someone putting something somewhere the same way we might look at our own like we might look at a cemetery. Um, Like I might look at the cemetery that my ancestors were buried in and have a very different feeling about it than I would if I found, uh, like an old rusty pistol laying out in the woods, I'd be like, yeah, I can dig up the graveyard, but I just found old rusty pistol out in the woods. I'm gonna take a home with me, you know. I mean, like we we sort of hold these two like we distinct these things, and we we we separate these things out in our head. Um. I can't tell where the line falls for everybody, but I think a lot of people view their being some lines somewhere. It's the bone bone of a human leave it alone. Well, I think I think I really want some clarity from you, just your personal opinion. Like, so obviously there are some legal ramific I mean there there's legal boundaries that guide us, Like obviously we can't mess with human bones. You can't take any kind of artifacts off public land. So let's go to private land. Um, if I'm on my land and see an airhead, should should I pick that up? Should Clay nucom pick it up? If you found a wallet with bucks, would you pick it up or give it back? I would, I would pick it up and give it back. But but I don't. I just I'm I'm just being totally honest with you. I'm struggling to find the the complete Apples to Apple connection there. And because I mean, what am I supposed to if I find an airhead on my land? Am I supposed to call the you know, the the o s Age, the chucktaws that would have been there? And I'm would be interesting for you to do that though, for you as a landowner. And then that's one of the serious parts that I'm hoping comes out of That's a good point talks with people like me, is is that there's so much more to the provenance of this land. You've said that word. Can you tell me what that word means? Yeah, I mean that there's a history. It's like in artwork or in wine or whatever. It's it's the ownership history. Ownership history, got it? Like you know, like some painting comes up, you know, the provence. People are very interested in its flow through times. So I'm Steve, you nailed that one. According to Marriam Webster. Number one because I had to Marriam Webster while we've been talking because he's used it so many times. And the the first definition is just straight origin or source. But then number two is the history of ownership of a valued object or work of art or literature. The reason it's really important in paintings and antiquities is the more solid the provenance is, the less worried you are that that it came that it emerged out of somewhere as a phony. Yeah, Like all you know is like it just came out of the period, out of nowhere in Okay, let me ask you this, Like, so I'm from western Arkansas, close to where you're from originally, and there's a lot of airheads, you know, at laddle points, spear points, a lot of stone points everywhere. I mean, I'm convinced that they are distributed across the landscape everywhere, everywhere. And so think about this or this is just a thought pattern that I would have, Like we have destroyed so much of the earth surface through civilization, covered it with concrete, moved it crops crops like we've we so and I'm okay driving on a road that has destroyed Native American eraheads. Um, But in my mule pasture where my mules tear up the ground and they have trails of dirt that have exposed the ground, I find some stone points. And that's why I would ask you in it just a totally heartfelt question. Is like when I when I pick up a stone point that can out came off my place, which I have I have seen many, I call my kids and usually I'll call them out before I pick it up if they're home, and say look at that. I'll say, the last human to touch that was planning to cook his dinner over a fire with an animal that he killed with that point. I mean, we it's a moment, man, I mean it's just like, oh, look at this, does that count for for some value? Like what should I do with those? Well, I mean, what would you do with them? That's a good question. The example that I would point to was Steve's example of finding a bison skull. You go on a journey and you find out the two the true provenance of that animal in its histories, and I reported it and you reported it, but it's in my mouth. Yeah, after learning all that I've learned, I would want to leave it there, and at a certain point would want to introduce science into it to see what we could understand about what that piece was, Like, what period was it from, what were they hunting, who was doing the hunting, Just a lot of questions and hopefully layering into the history as we know it from the object that's looking at it on the ground, coupled with science and then a layer of indigenous history or provenance into it, can only add to the value of the history of the object. And that's my whole point with all of this, is that wherever you look across America, there's all these objects, there's all this history. It's there for all of us to understand and to help enhance our own experience as Americans speaking of history. Now that we haven't speaking about anything besides history, can you explain to everybody, UM, about the Sacred Seeds Project. Absolutely. When I began to write the book, became pretty apparent after doing a lot of research that the rise of the Mississippian mound builder culture had a lot to do with the food that they were eating. And around this the same time frame, actually a little bit earlier, Um, one of my mentors in life, Dr Dward Walker, is the chair emeritus of Anthropology see you Boulder. He began to watch some of the trends that was happening with some of the big seed companies like Monsanto cin Genta, and what they were doing in other countries like the country of India, and ultimately I mean like trademarking seeds and yes in intellectual property protection, but was also displacing them of their indigenous seeds and getting them their own contract bound genetically modified organism seeds and which is basically what the American farmer does, um loose seeds the corn that we see in fields as clones and it's uh one small variation of corn compared to the thousands of types of corn that were here before, and so I began to study the Mississippian record, and basically, where there was corn in abundance, there were people in abundance, and where there was corn, there were people, there was life. And so from a cosmological perspective, that was the gift of old woman who gave us seeds, and she gave us corn. And all the tribes have different stories, but it's so integral to our life ways and cosmology and survival that you can't get around it. And so I began my own journey of trying to find some of these ancient seeds and what it meant. Um. We were talking about about this before the podcast Johnny, about what happens when of your ancestors are gone at some point. Did it all happen at once, No, it was very devastating. The examples in Nebraska was because of our proximity to the middle of the country, the tribes there, we weren't hit until the late seventeen hundreds and early eighteen hundreds. It was a wave in late seventeen hundred, eighteen thirty, eighteen sixty, and perhaps more waves, but the cumulative effect was ninety present decimation rates. So it just may have happened in one place and eight hundreds in the other, but the net effect was not loss of knowledge for sure, and so whatever we can do to find our way back to that. What I found was starting with basically thirty seeds from the Cherokee Nation Seed Saving Project and planting those in the ground. There was something about understanding that history, understanding how we planted, when we planted, why, what shape, what seeds? How did you plant them? And began to piece together this companion planting agricultural life ways that was at the center center of how people survived on this continent for at least two thousand years ago and probably much beyond that. And by putting my hands in the soil, by understanding the rhythms, talking with elder is piecing together these things back I began to find all these little tidbits, um we're supposed to plant on the New Moon in May. There's a flower that grows, the first one that that flowers, that's when you plant other parts of the crop. When we left them, they were dropped resistant seeds. And all of these things began to impact how I felt, and I truly felt by doing these acts by having a good heart, by doing them for the right reasons, not for money. Back to the whole notion of Robin's work around sacred economies and sacred reciprocity, that it began to change me in a way. I'm very familiar with inter generational trauma and the impact of what colonization has had on indigenous peoples. And it's it's rough, it's really hard. But on the converse side, perhaps it has to do with epigenetic But by getting my hands and the soil, by growing these plants, by learning from them, that is healing me, and that it can heal others. And we have a notion of blood memory that somehow the ancestors through our DNA will help us understand how to put this all back together. How can we live better again? Um I look at the landscape and I see things differently, after doing all this work, after studying to be a teacher of the sixth generation. I look across this landscape and I see the lands, the land that once was. I see the land that could be again. I see bison herds massive where everyone could hunt them again. The food that they eat is back again, switch grass, the bison grass, it's buffalo commons um bing or action of all these things that we're begin to see again things that were important to tribal peoples, that are part of our clan systems. The role of wolf and elk and bison, and how these this is what the land here was meant two produced to sustain people. But I look and see every tillable acre planted. I see invasive species of cows everywhere. When those resources are scant, who wins who has priority? The private landholder and the cow, the elk, the natural order of things. These are the things that I ponder. But ultimately that's what Sacred Seat is about, is exploring those journeys going backwards in time, but also in the age of monocrop cultures, potential failures of those. Hopefully, someday people are going to be glad that people like me find all these diverse seeds, all these different types of corn um, that we have this multiplicity of seeds, so that someday we're gonna be glad that we have it, and not to mention just the richness and the beauty that comes from all these different type of seeds. Do you have somewhere of facility or you know, how are you storing these things and sort of codifying, you know, whatever knowledge is there. I brought some men. This is um. There's corn bean and squashing here, and this is um an ancient variety actually in my studies to find all this stuff. Ultimately we found these older collections and one of the things that I was so curious to find was an Omaha rainbow flint, which I couldn't find anywhere, and ultimately in the collections of Carl Barnes, the Cherokee individual who, over the course of his eighty five years here he collected over different types of seeds across Holiday America's and some of them are still viable when you're looking at some right here m hm. So yeah, he has a I mean it's like a jet black, deep purple, is red red, and those seeds corn it's about like the size of like what what you sort of considered to be a real big carrot. They can be a lot bigger than that. That was one of the smaller years. That's the only one that wasn't shelled. But that is a ruby flint, blood blood, blood red. What does it taste like? Uh, probably the difference between commercial white rice and wild rice that you'd find up around the Great Lakes just has a much deeper, richy, earthy taste to them. Uh. You know, sweet is one variety. Um, there's flower, there's flint, there's popping corn, and there's sweet corn. And uh, I've never had much luck with growing the sweet varieties because it's sugar and all things in nature like sugar. So bugs, raccoons, they love it. So you you these these seeds would have been, um, you don't think they would have been hybridized with modern varieties. I mean, as much as we can tell. I mean, they were all turned into hybrids to you know, grow well locally, which is basically what I'm attempting to do too. So the the version that I originally had was a rainbow flint. And some of these seeds are more sacred to others. So we were talking earlier about clan taboos, etcetera. So amongst my mother's tribe, the Omaha um my clan is responsible for keeping the sacred red corn. And now I'm glad to say that we have our own varieties of our sacred red back. One of the clan taboos is that who is better to keep the red corn than those that can't even touch it, which is why it was in the bag and why I didn't touch it because my clan is not allowed to touch that's one of the clan taboos. What do you do with it? I'm the protector of it. I mean, wouldn't eat that. I can't touch it. I can't eat it. So your clan would have grown it, and then what would they have done with it? Shared it with the rest of the tribe and every clan. So your clan is inside of your tribe. That's okay, so it's a bigger tribe. But your particular clan had this job. So that's like that idea, that too. Better to keep it than the one that can't touch it. A lot of people have trouble with that. It's good man, get him he can't eat it, right, It will be there when you come looking for it will be So what would they have used this corn for? Would they have grounded up? Could you boil that and eat it like corn on the cob? Like you could, but that's not the best way to make it healthy. Historically, as one of the things that we found from the anthropological record was that in its raw form or ground and flint's have a thicker I'd like to see that passing around. And there's also beans there that are from the Cherokee side. The trailer tear beans would literally sustained us. And those are indigenous squash seeds there. So the three grown together. It's very important. Corn takes a lot of nitrogen out of the soil. Beans put it back. Um. Squash keeps a lot of things out of their deer raccoon raccoons love corn, and so when you plant them all together, um, you have a whole different perspective of growing that is more sustainable, so to speak. Um, because when you look at the differences between Euro American agg methodologies, one is put them in rows and then switch out the fields, whereas ours rarely moved, um except for like a tenure time period. So I'm a little more sustainable from that perspective. But it's just been my journey with these seeds too. To educate. Going back to Robin's work on braiding sweet grass, she had a dream after visiting I believe it was a trading market in South America, and in her dream she went and money was no good, only the sacred currency of other things that you could trade, and my students caught caught that for sure. And when I began Sacred Sy, we looked at being a seed bank for money taken on U. S. D A grants millions of dollars and they finally said no, let's just leave it as it is, and that's how it got the name. So rather than trying to exploit the plant nation for corn here um, I just utilize it to to share and to educate and show people the beauty because this is not what we think of a corner. This whole plant is red purple. That's why I brought this in broken because you can see the cob is red and the stock is red. Stock starts green and then turned a deep purple red and usually we'll make it about three quarters away before the seeds are ready. So is there like this seed with the organization, would there be a way for I mean, are you distributing seed in any way to tribes or people? I do um. When we first started, it was really a matter of you know, I had just a handful of different type of seeds and I've got so many different stories of how seeds came to us. It was one fun story. There was a guy that was um descendant of the original homesteader. I want to say it was fifth grade grandfather. I don't know what it was, but he was a nice man and he had been digging on his land and found a noble corn grist stone, and he did the right thing, and he contacted did his research and found out the tribe that it came from, the Pawnees, and he contacted them and they told him it sounds like one of ours. Why don't you come on down and we'll talk about it. So he did. Mind you, that's a trip from western Nebraska down to Oklahoma. And when they got there there tribal historic preservation officer pulled out one similar and says, yep, that looks like one of ours. And in a true sacred reciprocity trading agreement, they said, you know what, we're gonna We're gonna take this, but we're gonna give you these being seeds here. And uh, I can't I never remember if it's spotted like a horse or painted like a horse beans, but they're absolutely gorgeous and it's a bush bean and it's what the Pawnees used, and uh I love it. I knew the story is for real. When he told me all these things, one they made him go down there. You know, there's no put it in a mail package and let's talk about it later. They're like, bring it down on this talk. Once they got there, Once they gave him the seeds, they said, no white man's ever had these before. Well, he was afraid to plant them. So when he heard one of my podcasts or stories, he contacted me and says, I'm I'm afraid to screw this up. And of course he's I said, well, wy don't you put him in the mail And he'sa no, why don't you come get him? I had to go get him. That's great. So there's all sorts of stories with this project. This has been really beautiful. It's an educational content to explain to people and ultimately, you know, keep finding all these different hybrids that ultimately should be helpful to us as human beings. Someday. Um I asked one question, got one. It's not an Ottle baby question, but I'm wondering because we talked about it while we're having our snacks before the podcast, and we're talking about this the problem of smallpox that really decimated population and thus decimated the oral history that was there, So knowing that that's sort of like a chink in the armor of this history cultural amnesia perhaps sure, and maybe that's just a part of it, and that's and then and then your people just accept that as a part of being people that do oral history. But now you as someone as in a historian, that you're gaining all these stories and you're learning more and more. Are you just going oral history or are you now writing it down and trying to preserve it in another way to prevent what's happened in the past. I think it's important to look at a combination of both someone who has written a book manuscript as Steve no It's just got to be the hardest thing I've ever tried to do and one of the coolest because that opens up so many doors. But hopefully it's gonna be a combination of both that I can in this research and in these teachings that I can help others understand things that we've missed. Just the understanding that there's a reason why we forgot so many things, the impact of colonization, impact of being acculturated into the American society, and there's a ton of history there and federal policies and a lot of us really sad. But regardless of that, you can still own your own history. You can find the seeds that you your people once eight and you can find them. Um a quick nod to the land back topic. I know that's originally how I was thought of m and coming onto here. But one of the richest examples that I can say not to do with public lands. It has to do with private lands. And one of the best examples I can point to was the author Roger Welsh, who's a long time in front of the Pawnee, and in the process of the anniversary of Lewis and clark Um, he gave the Pawnee Nation some of his private land out near Carney, Nebraska and asked them properly what they wanted to do with it. It was a really powerful moment. They said two things. They're traditional bands of chief. One was we want to plant our corn, which they've done and it's an incredible project, alcoholic and what she's done there is amazing. And two they said they wanted to dance. But ultimately that goes back to the call to arms. Um, what can people do who are interested in this topic and want to learn more at the very least, wherever your family lands might be, UM, your provenance is important. Perhaps your family has been there since homesteaders, maybe they've been there for seven generations in clearing Ugal western Arkansas. But if you go and look, you're going to find a provenance so much deeper. And if you have it within your heart to find those people that used to live there welcome them back with open arms, then only incredible treasures can await you and any American who wants to explore the provenance of this land in history, and it's only going to help us get along better and to have a richer history of the lands that we share. How do people find you specifically, if they're curious about your book that you've worked on, if they're curious about Sacred Seeds, if it's other tribal members who want to connect with you and share notes, share seeds absolutely UM. Sacredcy dot Org is the website for the project, and that's really what I'm wanting to support doing podcasts like this. But you can find me on Instagram. Taylor Keene seven put up a lot of images of the corn and plan that right now, so Taylor Keene is a full time instructor at Creighton AM I saying that right, That's right, Creton University's College of Business also the Founder's Sacred Seeds. So if you want to find out more, I'm sure you can dig in and that route. Can you repeat your Instagram handle? Oh? Yeah, I hit us with that? Is it? Taylor Keene seven? Taylor Keene seven t A Y l O R K double e N the number seven. All right, man, thanks so much for joining us. You gotta clay. I've got one last thing here that I wanted to share, big old arrowhead. Oh look at that. This is an ancient type of war club, and it was adorned by a member of my tribe. Those are objects that are used during our war dance for younger men than myself. But I'm wanted to share that with you, Steve. Oh it's beautiful man. Thanks for inviting me on the show. Like we get to have that in our studio, you do. Was this war club made of wood? It was always made out of wood, like a barrel typically, But it's origins go back to a symbol of power in ancient Native America, the symbol of the mace. What kind of feathers. Are these all kinds of different things in there. There's some pheasants, there's some um southern birds that are in there, some pretty colorful ones. Those are cockatoos or I can straighten those out a little bit. I just sneak it into my bag there. But it's beautiful. Man, that's cool, very cool. Thank you. Because we're as our wall works around, we're gonna that's gonna we're gonna find a good spot for that one. So would this be o Maha or Cherokee? That would have been just probably goes back to the Mississippian period because that symbol of the mace of power. When we talk about it in the future, what what would we say? How would we describe this when a podcast guest goes, what's that? That's a war mace? A war mace from the the planes traditions, Oh Maha, O sage. All of us would have used those, but you wouldn't want to get punked on the head with that. Then, all right, Taylor Keen, thanks very much for joining us, man, I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Thank you, thank you.

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