We're talking about these issues in this country
that we've never had to research before.
My ICT producer, when we were planning for your interview,
she pulled out the Constitution.
She's like, I don't leave the house without my Constitution
now that she keeps it in her pocket.
And she's like, all right, let's go.
So we've got it.
Some people keep it right here.
Yeah, we've got to do what we have to do.
Have you heard at this point of ICE stopping
any whole chunk members?
We have, through social media, heard folks that have reported
that they have either identified or seen ICE in the area.
Some have indicated that they have been questioned
by ICE officials to date.
We don't have any confirmation, nor would this nation
go out and seek confirmation of that.
These are fairly civil matters.
And so we're not going to be there when
you get a speeding ticket, or hit a deer,
but for the most part, if folks feel like they
have encountered ICE officials, a lot of times people
will post that on social media.
And it goes like wildfire.
So if they're trying to do anything in cognito,
good luck, the state age, that doesn't happen.
We will put signs all around you and see.
But there has been a couple of posted messages
on social media that indicated that they either were questioned
by ICE officials or have seen them.
Are people in the whole chunk nation
telling you that they are fearful right now?
Yes, yes.
Overall, it's fair.
When you have to be strong for a family,
but you send your brown kids out the door
and you don't have control over their environment,
and this is something that is endemic to a lot of tribal
communities that we worry about at kids every day for ICE.
We didn't need ICE to scare us and make us feel uneasy as
parents.
So yeah, there is that uneasiness.
What helps to provide assurances is our schools
and local businesses and things that provide
shorties that we aren't here for ICE.
We're not reporting people.
We are here for your comfort and we are our community.
We're your friends, your family, your neighbors,
your blood relatives, in a lot of cases.
So having those communities that are very alert,
that things are going on, even some of the law
enforcement that I spoke with who have given me
comfort to tell me we've spoken with our field agents,
our field officers that are out there,
and let them know that, hey, just so you know when people
pull you over, they might not even
know that you're a county officer or a city cop
or a state police trooper.
They might just think of you as ICE right off the bat.
So be alert that they may be on alert as well.
So try to be as gracious as possible and clear
and polite and kind.
I read your executive order on Facebook
and you're offering the tribal ID card for free
and also passport reimbursement for free.
Why offer it for free for whole chunk tribal members
and how is it being funded?
So first of all, the why the United States passport
is probably what I feel is the most legitimate form
and universally accepted form of identification.
And so the scrutiny for securing your passport
is pretty significant.
They're not cheap.
They are definitely not cheap.
And I almost think it's an interesting business
because most of the folks that want a passport
that normally wouldn't get one usually
want it to go on a trip.
Sometimes between the time that they
need to get a passport and they're
going to leave for that trip is a window of time that probably
does not accommodate the passport processing.
So these add-on fees start coming up
for either expedited or urgent special delivery,
next day delivery.
And so these passports that can retail from $165
could jump up to $500 if you need that
in a very short period of time as well.
They may provide an option for a card.
And maybe you want to get an ID card.
I feel as important as just to get the passport.
We are not in an emergency.
Some may look at as an opportunity.
Yeah, get a passport.
The president's making it really easy for you.
You might even have to worry about going anywhere.
It's just an opportunity that folks have.
As well, I had placed out there because of bloodlines
and lineage and blood quantum.
I tried to do my best to articulate
that the passport will be available to tribal members
and their children, whether or not they are enrolled
and rollable or not enrolled.
And so I want to have something available for them to do that.
The funding for this is a part of our annual budget.
And I'm able to move funding around
from unexpended funds into a coffer with a designation
that that will be used.
Most oftentimes, we could use it in any emergency.
We already know that just like our home,
no matter how stringent we are to a budget,
we do and see unanticipated costs that come up.
And this is where this would fall into.
My last question on tribal IDs.
Your order came out Monday and it's Wednesday.
What's the reaction, Ben?
Hopefully, I never know.
The processing for tribal identification cards
or any identification cards should be protected
by the tribal member and the enrollment division,
the tribal member, even the tribal member
in the United States passport.
We don't stick our nose into their business.
All we need is a receipt.
We don't even need to know how many people got their tribal
IDs or their CDIBAs.
We also have a responsibility to protect our tribal members
from rampant abuse of information gathering, fraud, misuse,
waste, and providing those security features,
making sure that those processing,
even within the enrollment division,
they don't even share information among themselves.
So I may not know that number and I don't want to,
but I'm guessing that because we've opened this up
to mail order as well and through links on our homepage,
we probably see a lot more people utilizing the application.
We still have the same requirements.
We're not going to print off IDs,
throw them in the envelope and send them out the door.
We are going to make sure that we can verify
those individuals who are requesting.
Before I go into our last topic of the UW-Madison program,
I want to ask you as a leader, so much on social media
and so much, there's a lot happening in a short amount of time,
how do you calm the community's fears?
Some of my colleagues will always tell me
that if your leaders look nervous,
your people will look nervous and if your leaders look strong,
they'll look strong.
So you do things like you would if you were a parent.
You smile, you be kind, you be calm,
you don't manufacture a bunch of paper dragons
and start running around from them.
When I say as a parent, we have stresses.
We have bills.
We have things that we want that we're not able to get for our children.
But we don't convey that on them.
We don't put that on them.
We want them to feel empowered and feel safe.
And so there's no way I can do that if I run around,
like we just had an emergency in the sky falling.
I love these people.
I'm not going to do that to them.
Thank you for that.
Now into something positive, which we'll intersect with Treaty.
But UW-Madison, about a year, a year and a half ago now,
they launched a new program to offer free tuition, room and board
to all native students in Wisconsin
who are accepted to UW-Madison specifically to go to school.
I interviewed their tribal director Carla.
And she says hello.
She says now they have about, in their first year,
about 80 students at the bachelor's level,
including also graduate medical students and law
students using the program.
So how do you feel about that?
I think it's a great start.
I think Wisconsin Promise is a very old promise
that is finally getting kept, at least at the UW level,
at least at the college level.
Education has always been one of the highest
and hardest struggles for communities,
whether they're communities of color in racial groups
or communities that had suffered through economic deprivation
for generations.
Education is also the cure for poverty
and the cure for racism, the cure for a lot of social epidemics
that we go through.
If you were to take a regressive analysis of communities
that aren't dealing with opioid addiction, poverty,
domestic abuse, elder abuse, you will find, in most cases,
you will find affluent communities who aren't just
old money and generationally rich,
but communities that are sophisticated and educated
to have opportunities for professional development.
And we haven't had that for a long time.
So UW Madison is really sourcing the cure
and making it really hard to not go to college and develop
some sort of personal value, academic value,
academic capital for a community to build on.
So I do believe it's a promise all belated,
but I promise kept.
There's wellness services for Native students on campus.
There is an indigenous student house
that I'm going to visit on campus, which
are great initiatives and great programs
to support Native students.
But we know UW Madison is on whole chunk land.
Can you take us back and tell me
about the treaty of the 1800s, I think 1837,
that brought us to where we are in modern education
with the University on whole chunk land?
Well, the 1837 treaty wasn't a revered treaty at all.
These are forced agreements to seed our land,
such as that particular treaty, move west of the Mississippi,
and relinquish our ownership of our historic homes.
And we did so under conditions that were not of our making.
We had eight months to vacate, but then we didn't.
And in the coldest parts of the winter,
they shipped us in rail cars across to the neutral ground.
And we suffered a lot for that.
But we always had this mantra among our people
that we would, in our many returns of our at least seven
returns, so that we would rather die on our land
and live somewhere else.
And the treaty history is pretty profound.
And on the face of it, it not only
provides historical markers for engagement,
but it also validates and verifies our nation's status
as a sovereign that we have always been looked upon
as that these treaties eventually become
the vehicles for early shared governance
between tribal groups.
And these are before the tribal nations
have really consolidated into one government,
because that's not how we were organized.
Nobody was really organized that way.
It wasn't until 1934 with the Indian Reorganization Act
that the federal government forced consolidated governance
on tribes by creating models for government
and selling the idea or concept so that they could move forward
on Ilka, which wasn't even a law back then,
the Indian Land Consolidation Initiative,
so that we had one owner rather than a number of heirs.
And so the treaties gave way to a lot
and substantiated our abilities to negotiate
not only with local governments, but also later on
with these other little governments that were starting up
with the education campuses with the UW.
So it played a significant role.
But again, I don't think there was anywhere
at that particular time that any representatives
of authority could walk away from one of those agreements
and say they were the beneficiary of something,
even if they were given money as they were in 1837,
even if they were given goods and food and horses
and some of the means, I can't believe
that they would feel that they've walked away
with an advantage.
So I think in retrospect, we see the saliency
of those treaties that benefited us to evolve our relationship
with the UW, Dane County eventually,
and the state of Wisconsin.
Tell me about the values of Ho-Chunk people, not just then,
but even still now.
Yeah, absolutely.
The Ho-Chunk rides on a couple of principles.
And sometimes, because of a lot of westernization,
the spectrum changes a little bit.
For the traditionals, we talk about Wokihate,
which means a love for one another.
Or, Why-Chunk is a general and accepted respect
for each other that we keep amongst us,
which means that we are not combative amongst ourselves.
Now, don't get me wrong, we are a warrior tribe.
This is where we come from.
And each one of our traditional way of life
is built around our warriors, not simply
a political podium speech about their love for veterans.
We are a warrior tribe, and we are here because of that.
But we also are a loving tribe, and we embrace our friends
and neighbors and family, and we work for the greater good.
That hasn't changed over hundreds of years.
We do struggle with westernization.
And this are inadvertent outcomes of how we're
raised in modern society.
And it could be today.
It could be in the 90s.
In our own models of learning, we always
talk about the Western education.
We want to be right or wrong with answers that are up, down,
true, false, 1, 2, a, b.
And there's no alternative to that.
In our whole chunk culture, however, we're not so objective.
We come from an oral tradition, thousands of years.
Which means that you could take a group of friends
to a movie, and every one of you would
have a different interpretation of what that movie was about.
But none of those would be wrong.
And it's OK to have it that way.
Unfortunately, that model of education,
the Western education, now on people
that have for thousands of years done things this way,
really was a hindrance.
Advancing beyond that, we try the newest way is the old way.
And a lot of this stuff to go forward
is to go backwards to learn our language,
to learn our kinship, to learn our clan system,
and our clan responsibilities, to learn our history.
Which is really important because we're
at a day and age where the agenda of the White House
is to erase that history, is to make it go away,
because it doesn't make us look good.
Cultures change.
Futures can change.
But history doesn't change.
History can be written from different perspectives,
but it doesn't change.
And I fear the future of my grandchild not
being able to learn the things that have happened,
not only in her cultural history, but also in American history.
And we need to know these things.
I would never want my airplane mechanic
to forget the principles that he or she
learned back in aviation school, because they were wrong,
or they were different.
We as a society don't do that, or shouldn't do it.
So those are some of the items that the fundamental principles
that we have, that we retain, and why we retain them,
or how we do, and I do emphasize struggle.
Because we're not just competing with the Western culture.
We're competing in our own homes with our children
who learn math a different way, or no longer
can be right cursive.
So as parents, we're in a struggle of our lives right now.
Yeah, and it's complicated.
It's complicated.
Now, and with this, earlier this month,
I spent time in Menominee Nation.
I went to the language school.
They're a beautiful campus school.
And I was telling them about this UW program,
I'm working on this story.
And many students there said they never heard about this
opportunity.
They're living on res life, and they never
heard that they can apply to this program,
and that they can tell other friends,
and different nations, and different tribes
that they can apply for this program.
They're going to watch this one girl said,
I'm waiting for it.
I'm waiting for you to send it to me.
What would you say to native youth right now?
About the present culture, and about their education,
and the future, and that are feeling all kinds of questions?
What would you say to the indigenous youth right now?
If you were ever fortunate to hear an elder,
tell you what you're going to need to survive,
the skills that you're going to have to have,
you will know now that they are needed more than ever,
the things that you were taught, the things
that you lament, that you may not have been paying attention
for, are now more important than ever
to feed your families, to educate yourself,
to bring food on the table, to pay your bills.
Everything that you were taught, all those old principles,
all the new principles, are now more important than ever.
Your tribal nation needs you.
You are important.
You are valued.
Go out.
Learn their ways.
Build yourself.
Make yourself strong.
Come back to the communities that need you.
Oh, yeah.
Thank you.
That is really powerful.
Thank you so much.
This is great.
Thank you.
Do you have anything else?
I think that's we got a lot of ground.
I hope we had a record, because that's something I
wouldn't have done.
Thank you.