unconsciously is a the most important, how we relate to people, how do we understand situations, perceive the world. these other fundamental factors a mother we will have a successful or unsuccessful -- successful, filling more and the filling. the second is that emotions are not the enemy of thinking. emotions are at the center of banking. people have strokes and legions and can process a motion properly are not super smart, they're super down. with the russians do is assigned value to things come to you what you want, what you value, but you don't value. if you don't have that valuation device you cannot make rational decisions. emotions are not separate, they are the foundation of reason. i'm a middle-aged guy not talk comfortable talking about a motion. one of the scientific experiments iran is they took a bunch of middle-aged guys, put them in smr brain scan machines

and have them watch a horror movie and then had them describe there feelings for their wives. the brain scans or the same in both circumstances. it's just sheer terror. i know what that is like. it's not a natural thing. yet emotions really are the center of how we perceive the world, about you the world. they're the center of our brain organizes itself. >> you can watch this and other programs online at book tv -- booktv.org. >> what are you reading this summer? book tv wants to know. ♪ tell us what you're reading this

summer. send us a tweet at book tv. >> next on book tv alison owings talks about her vote -- book "indian voices: listening to native americans," which documents how native americans view their lives, history, and the world around them. modor it's about 45 minutes. >> thank you very much. i'm gary johnson, president of the chicago history museum. o with us today is our guest author, alison owings. her latest book is c-span2. in her book we meet all wideeet array of native people, and we hear them discussing their own lives. so, please begin the>>nk y conversation. >> thank you very much, and thank you to the chicago. i am happy to be year. i think that i wrote this book initially because i was so appalled by the ignorance of non native people about native people, including myself.ding

and i therefore set out to find what i could to help the stereotype what i find is a vera bad problem for centuries andeen continues today.and in initially my idea was, well,t i will just talk to a few native people and find out what they had to say about their own whatt lives. then the book became stronger and stronger and far reaching. i ended up interviewing the lasa chapter is a whole whyter. enchanter. my object at the time west saido the stereotypes people's thinking that this would be tnkn helpful because native americans in my opinion are still harmed d the stereotypes about them. but of the other hand the book also became sort of an extended

family reunion for native people who sometimes my live in onenne part of the country like here it chicago and maybe not knownar about native people in another part of the country.y. that was kind of a trick t actually in the riding, to writw for people who knew nothing about native people and then to write for native people whoady a already certainly about themselves.ut >> you talk about differentvi individuals. we want to hear from those individuals. why don't we start with someonet who lives right here in chicago worse as the car is american theian center. >> okay. the reason i isonterviewed her s that in my early research, ande nice their research lose -- loosely. i was reading anything andco could. i learned that about three-quarters of native people, two-thirds to three-quarters lie live off reservation, includingi

a group of people generally and ed urban indians. and so that quest talked to an urban indian let me to the tthe chicago american indian center and to this really wonderful guy who is a cultural coordinator, a volunteer at this point. and i'm going to read you a you little bit about what he said to some second graders that he wast introducing to native culture because they didn't knowid kno anything about native people either. he says, once your teacher toldu you will come here to thengo american indian center how many of you expected to see an oldd w man with long hair? probably braided with a big headdress wearing a leather outfit in saying how. how many expected to see that?? be truthful.ands a few hands are slowly. han for those who raise their hands and the ones that haven't comens are you disappointed in seeing

it away and now? no child moved.the reas the reason i ask is, this is toe we are.wee we are ordinary people. where ordinary clothing. we're not the people you see in oort cartoons and movies. what you might read about and what people might say about us.o we're not these people.. indians, go to school, work. you might have meant a teacher in your school, have ayou principle, not know what cub, c church, a lawyer.thatho this is it we are into we want to be. ret to satisfy himself, he picked up his hand drum and began beating it and stopped. what is the deep remind them of? and a chilonded immediately, heart beat. one place you hear drums is that at powwow. he as to knew what a poway's an. told everyone they had a really good guesses but answer thethe question himself. a celebration where some of us i

ang and danced. we also make new friends andshi. renewals from ships.p made up of four circles, theee very first is the drum rep representing a heartbeat. the heart beat of mother earth,r also the heart beat of oureart children which is all of us in this room and outside this room. without this heartbeat there will be no power of. >> there we are right away, an individual that lives in this who as you saw in the street, it may not occur to you that you're seeing in the american, but when you scratchsh the surface ande talk to that individual as you learn about his own culture. so we are not in the world of either war. this book is not about your. but with regard to answer all, let me ask you about somethingml else. my understanding is one of theis reasons why he wore ordinary clothing in the museum center

setting was because of individuals who came here might have a secret. >> that is part of it. ne he never said, and somebodymigh might be a native child or indian child. t he never said that because hes was the only native child and is as cool, and he was discriminated against a lot.ade kids make fun of him. of this is the story of many native people who live in a non native setting. so he tried very hard to not put any children on the spot in case there were indian and may bean d wanted to come up to him want privately aftered word.ds. and that happened often. but he said that also the reason he wore ordinary clothing was just toy show that this is howds people dress. this is our native people just generally. legislative bodyer else. i made a joke in the book. i said, i don't usually where

fathers, especially not on casual fridays. [laughter] >> love, we are laughing now.ow i have to say that one of the most striking points in the book is made to beginning with the cover. when you look at the cover of ys "indian voices: listening to native americans" you see a group of people with some of the biggest miles you will ever see. it may not be a stereotype to think of native americans as nai laughing and scamiling, but the fact is that humor is something that is shot right throughghhroh almost every chapter of the book.uhuh. >> i didn't realize when i wi started this book how funny native people are and how many jokes to make an themselves in the the people. a string of books of jokes, e thuding, for instance, what are the ten things you say when you need a white person.

the last one is, may i touch your hair.r] [laughter] so they're very, very funny. he himself is pretty funny. i met him in november, which is native american awareness monthi and so averse to it as written in the month.month. [laughter] >> and he calls himself a rented indian. >> who was it who referred to the definition of a native american family? >> oh, it's an old joke -- it's an old native joke, how many people are there in a typical native american family. the answer is, five, a father, a mother, two children and an anthropologist. [laughter] >> so there's a lot of humor, a lot of it is unexpected but when you stand back and you ask, why am i surprised there's so much humor, the reason why someone

who's not part of that culture might ask is, you don't think of it on the outside as a culture that has much to laugh about. we focus on the difficulties that native americans have. so is this humor in spite of those difficulties or is it woven into the culture itself? >> i think it's both. i think native americans are not the only people to have gallows humor about the situation. part of it is gallows humor. a part of it -- i could be way off here, but native americans are americans-americans, too. america in general, i think, is a humorous country often. i mean, that's what people say -- that's the reputation of americans in other countries. that we're funny. so why wouldn't native americans be funny, too? but some are just hysterical. this one woman in yakima, she's so funny.

i tell her a joke she's heard it. and i said have you lived on the reservation your whole life and she will say, not yet. [laughter] >> just a take off on other jokes but in generally, i found that native people laugh at each other, certainly at nonnative people and at some of these assumptions and sometimes they just get absolutely outraged at the rudeness of nonnative people towards them and they make that into a joke. for instance, i interviewed an osage woman, a lawyer, who's very sophisticated. she works in washington, d.c.. she has her own law firm there. she goes home and she calls it oklahoma to the reservation. but she says sometimes people come up to her and they say, you don't look like a real indian. and her mother's nonnative. and she said, well, you don't look rude, but you are.

[laughter] >> so there's lots and lots of comebacks. there was wonderful surprises in the 10 years to write this book that -- that i laughed so much. >> wait a minute, pause there. 10 years to write the book. >> yeah >> when you read the book, chapter to chapter, it has a freshness and a very contemporary feeling. it doesn't seem like the product of 10 years, but what were those 10 years like for you? >> well, i'm really slow. [laughter] >> that's part of the reason. and also i'm a freelance editor so i was also doing some work on the side to help fund this. i'm a terrible fundraiser. i refer to myself as de facto nonprofit. [laughter] >> and -- but i also started from zero. i mean, i really knew very, very little. when i began this book i knew

all the indian cliches. but i also knew these are human beings, individual human beings and i wanted to help destereotype them. but i knew so little, i really had to read and read and read. so i just read nonstop. i read a lot of tony hillerman. i read everything i could. and then i started doing the interviews and then finding the people to be interviewed was a whole process itself. virtually everybody was very willing, more willing than i expected although it was a hard nut to crack to get under the -- some of the nations, the seneca in upstate new york, because one woman told me, we don't trust white journalists and they get everything wrong and my background is journalism. so it took me, i guess, four

years that i'm an okay person and i made a lot of compromises along the way. but by then i knew a lot more, too. and i always tried to say more or less, i'm just an empathetic ear, you know, just say what you want. and i'll listen. and virtually everyone talked and talked and talked. and i have to say it was i ronn -- ironic is that they have a great oral history and to be in a way to the oral historian to some people was kind of strange. it was also -- i felt very honored that they would talk to me. >> well, you mentioned the shawnee in new york. that struck me as a very interesting story of a tribe because this is a transcribe that's very -- you know, it's big east coast population centers, but they work very hard sort of staying off the grid

when it comes to official involvement with the united states government and administration. maybe you'd like to tell us a little about that. >> sure. >> well, and i think it was 1934. there was an act essentially -- the federal government in 34 there was an accident. the federal government took over tribes to say this is how you can run your government and the idea was meant to be helpful but it wasn't in all cases. included tribal chairman -- or chairwoman to vote and have a council so that literally when someone from washington said take me to your leader they said this is the leader and this is not how native people worked at all. they had different leaders for different functions and different tribal nations had different systems in place and they worked for them. this is another overlay of the federal government saying we want you to do it this way. this will be better for you.

many nations did this. we like to brag and seiche on me because it is a cooler word. they took up the tribal chairman system and some didn't. among those who didn't are the seneca outside buffalo and they have nothing to do with the united states government. they don't use u.s. passports. they don't vote. they don't let census workers on their land. this is where i did my interviews. they consider themselves a separate country. one that predated the united states and canada. >> which is correct. >> they are the same way and two

or three others are the same way. they are simply self supporting. some people have food stamps individually. some go to traditional long houses. this is their decision. they won't vote, they don't take federal money for anything. these other controversial people who sell cigarettes. the leaders -- none of them smoke. but they get their money from

cigarettes. >> another surprising group. the largest a recognized tribe, these tribes are reaching out in a different direction. >> they are so unknown to most people not in north carolina. there are 56,000 indians and have state recognition but don't have federal recognition. the reason they don't have federal recognition is the eastern band of cherokee is don't want them to because they don't want to split the federal par for funding. they are thought to be the descendants of the lost colony of roanoke.

they are interesting because there are part native and part african-american. we see the strands in this group when you meet them. they are very christian. they don't have any native religion left because that was lost with their language. they are very enthusiastic southern baptists and methodists and trying to get recognition but they don't have it yet. i live in california and nobody has heard -- 56,000 people have seen these. >> when we talk about tribes there is a word that is the operative word for legal and other purposes which is enrollment in tribes and that becomes a choice. i don't and role as a norwegian

american who lives in chicago who is this or that. st. patrick's day the whole city and rolls in irish but there's nothing formal about it. here is the sovereign word that has legal significance. >> it does and it varies tribe to tribe to tribe. it is almost impossible to say anything in general about native americans because there are so many differences in tribal nations. there are 565 tribal nations, federal recognized tribal nations. this excludes the lumbys. each tribe gets to say how they manage their affairs and who can be enrolled and who cannot. the advantages of being an rolled have to do with basic

rights late collecting firewood on reservation land or sometimes it gets to be more financially important especially if the tribe has a casino and people might get casinos per-capita and vote in tribal elections. but every tribe -- every tribal nation has its own distinctions and it is very controversial when people to several members if there are questions whether they should or should not be in the tribe. it is controversial across-the-board within the tribes themselves. some native people are very upset that other tribes are doing that and this has to do with money. >> in terms of another

stereotype, americans understand there are many native americans outside the reservation. i understand the word used in communities is the res, not the reservation. they are not 100% enrolled members in a particular tribe. there is more diversity than people expect. >> that is true. i never say res because i am non native. there is a native word to use. i always say reservation even though it is more syllables. >> i will follow you. >> what happens sometime too is i didn't realize so many non

native people live on reservations. mostly non native white people because they bought their property in the homestead act and other federal policies that decimated native lands or their could be situations where a non-white person -- non native person of any ethnic background mary's a native person and they live together and have children so you have a non native person on the land. things are more complex i could say in roughly every aspect of native american life. that is one of many things i didn't know. >> let's get back to particular individuals. let me start with barrel of new will --daryl newell. he manages the blueberry harvest

but it isn't necessarily an organic harvest. >> i was so disappointed. i had the stereotype of these ceremonies and the tribal chairman would pick the first blueberry and there would be prayers and maybe a drum circle and he said we basically pick them when we are right. that is it. and he said -- and they are organic because these are native people. that is completely wrong. they are commercial. probably go into pillsbury blueberry cake mix. that was an early interview and a very interesting -- this was a man like many people i interviewed who were sort of amused by these questions of the outsider who had this view they have to be organic and close to

nature. that is ridiculous. >> he also as i understand it had difficulties he needed to overcome in his life with abandonment in his family. this is a theme that runs through many american families but especially for the native american families. >> he had a horrible time. his mother not exactly abandoned him but gave him to her parents to raise up. in to me a very poignant moment he was trying to find out who his father was because his mother was an alcoholic and she didn't know who the father was so he did dna testing and went to one man and he said you could be my dad. you were with my mom when of -- before i was born.

and the guys said cheryl did dna testing. if it is positive are will take you fishing. it wasn't positive. so he never did find out who his father was. but the abandonment issue is part of a larger story and part of that story is the efforts by the federal government to send native children to boarding schools when they were young. sometimes thousands of miles away and sometimes for years with the idea to civilize them and make them non native people. this is where the expression came from to kill the indian to save the man. these children would come back home and they could no longer speak the language of their families. there was a huge disruption. an awful program.

it is one of these things that the federal government didn't necessarily mean to do something awful. it is called cultural genocide but it wasn't concentration camps and gas chambers, but a lot of people did die. the whole culture came apart at the seams. >> when you hear that history is a generality is one of thing but when you read the stories of individuals and how it plays out in their lives, it is shocking and you see how over time it continues to play out in individual lines. but a surprise, you find another

trait shot for the native american community is a kind of superpatriotism and dedication for example to military service and you ask yourself with all the things that have been done to those communities by the official government of the united states how does this happen? >> it is often talked about. it startles me to some extent low i have heard many explanations. what gary is referring to in part is there's a larger percentage of native enrollment in the military than in any other ethnic groups. i think this is true. this is what i have been told. then the question is why do you want to support this country that has messed up your own so much? there are many given explanations and the main one is

native people are very patriotic about their own country. this is now their country and they're fighting to defend it. all kinds of ironies come in to play. native men fought in world war i and were not allowed to vote until they came back from world war i. native people were not allowed to vote until 1924. >> certain states even longer. >> in maine native people could vote in state elections until the 1960s. it is staggering. sometimes people say native people join the military because this is the last chance to be a warrior. i don't know if that is true or not. i talked to one woman who runs a woman's shelter on pine ridge reservation and she said something that will be very controversial in the book and

that is she thinks native people joining the military in such numbers is an aspect of the stockholm syndrome. you identify with your oppressor. that is psychologically demanding but that is what she thinks it is. >> another story that comes up in different places and maybe you could talk about one of them is struggling against the abuse women suffer in certain settings. >> there is a statistic that i think is true that one in 3 native women will be abused in her lifetime. sexually abused, physically abused. the women i interviewed thinks it is a lot higher than one in three. maybe two in three and some alaskan native villages is thought to be 100%. i did an interview in alaska

with a woman and much later asked after i have been hearing about this 100% to your husband abuse you? she said yes. that could be true. often it is linked to alcohol. sometimes math --meth. i think it is linked to what makes men and abuse women in other societies too. it is despair, rage, alcoholism. whatever the reasons are, it seems to be intransigent in some native communities. in pine ridge, for instance, unemployment is at least 75% and alcoholism is 85%. alcohol is not allowed on a reservation but there are some crummy places in nebraska that sell it and all kinds of

attempts to monitor it and get it -- nobody seems to be able to do that and another problem besides alcohol and meth is gains. there's a lot of gang activity on reservations. i should say i sometimes think of native america as being at a fulcrum, all these awful things that are happening are happening, displacement, despair, all kinds of problems. poverty is awful. many places don't have running water or electricity. on the other hand some people feel this is a renaissance what is going on in native america today. because people now are able to

-- reservations and tribal governments are able to buy new fire engines and new health centers and help people and have language immersion problems trying to bring back the languages that were basically stripped from people decades and decades ago. some people think it is an extremely exciting time. if you go on the web, powwows.com they list hundreds and hundreds. there's a cultural renaissance on the one hand but i never know quite which side is winning. the problems are so intractable. a woman i met in minnesota told me that she thinks 2-1/2 generations of people have been lost through federal policy such as boarding school. >> there are a number of very

successful role models -- a surge of women. there is a lawyer in washington who you mentioned before. i would like to bring up another one who goes under the name of the former president in one of your chapter titles. this is someone who actually suffered an impeachment in her job. why don't you tell us about her? >> her name is claudia vijimu e vijimuni vijimunies. this was in northern new mexico. she was very troubled, very intense and difficult to interview. i could never find out what she was impeached for. i met her at a women's gathering, empowering women of indian nations is the group. this woman was very upset and said you can't say all women are

great because women kicked me out of my job and she was very upset. i went to see her years later and she said what happened? what she said was -- she spoke in generalities and would not say what was the matter. finally i had to go to the albuquerque journal web site to find the whole story. i guess she thought i knew. the story is the tribal police on the reservation were raping inmates and they were raping them frequently and this was a big problem. it was reported to her. she tried to get help for it. she wrote to vicepresident cheney to say we need help and

tried to get the fbi in and the reaction was pretty much what happens in other communities when your home is attacked. they attack back. she got a public service officer to testified. this was going on. instead of solving the problem they got rid of her. that is why she was impeached. she is very bitter. and oddly enough, maybe not so oddly but when you live on the reservation and this is your place of identity there's nowhere else to go unless you are going to make a clean break. she has to live with these people to impeach her. it is kerri difficult. she is an unhappy person. this was one of those tribal governments that the federal government put in place in the 20th century and had it been another century they wouldn't have the same government they

have now that allow all this. it is an unhappy story. that is for sure. >> before we begin to take questions why don't i asked about one other individual, a medicine man in two senses of the word. a traditional medicine man as well as someone who i believe is involved in the health-care industry in a wider sense. >> this is a man who is navajo. many navajos are saying -- that is the original word. he lives in phoenix. he is a systems operator for indian health service. one of the sad parts of this job is he has to widen doorways in this hospital so that more and more obese people get through

with bigger and whiter wheelchairs'. this is a big problem in indian country with poverty and diabetes and people who are horribly obese. but he is typical of other people i met in that he was in different religions for a while. he was trying -- he was a mormon for a little while and sent to a mormon school for some training and he was back and forth. many people back and forth with different religions and so they come back to their own, their native religion and he learned to be a medicine man through a woman which is pretty unusual and he is very sought after. he never advertises. medicine people do not advertise what they do.

they are not supposed to, he said. people come to him and he invited me to a three day blessing ceremony which was one of the high points of this last decade and i was the only person who did not speak navajo and i found out what was so wonderful about it in part was it was so casual. everyone speaking navajo. very specific steps that he took to help a young man who was emotionally troubled and at the same time people say can you hand me a coke over there, that kind of thing. it is part of life. it was terrific. i asked the young man whether or not he felt any different than he did. he said he felt more grounded. he really enjoyed the ceremony. one other thing about that

ceremony at didn't know this about him until i read the patients myspace page or facebook page and found out he is homosexual. he likes hanging out with friends and dating men. this was such a non concern to the navajo people. mostly in my experience to virtually every tribe homosexuality is not a big deal. what does happen is sometimes the people are honored. i know a woman who said she had a lesbian friend who goes back to her home preservation. new mothers want her to hold the baby for block. that is pretty unusual in these societies. >> are there any questions? we have time for one or two. if you go to the microphone right there. so that we can pick it up for

the television audience. >> you said you didn't have any problems interviewing people but i am wondering your being not indian, if that was a problem at all getting published. obviously in the business maybe you didn't have any problems but if you were native american do you think you would have an easier time with the interviewing process and getting the book accepted? >> that is a really good question. i always have trouble getting published so i don't know. i think maybe had i been native, maybe i would have had a slightly easier time because maybe people would have thought that i had more of an inside track. i hadn't really thought of that. not being native i have fought what if, what if, but i had an

advantage not being native because i would ask stupid questions. i was always very respectful and i think people picked up on that. i wasn't trying to be dumb or talk about myself, but i found that sometimes the very fact that i was not native asks questions about the blueberry festival or the blueberry harvest. also, there seems to be quite a propensity among native people to explain things to a non native person and in some groups this is called indians 101 because they are so sick of talking to federal officials and other officials and so forth in explaining this happened and this happened and this one woman said we have to start 1492 and

bring them up to speed and as they are used to doing that but in my case they may have told me more because they were assuming correctly that there was so much i didn't know. >> another question if you could go to the microphone? >> with there being so many different indian tribes how did you go about deciding which tribes you wanted to interview people at? >> i decided to try to find the greatest variety i could in terms of many criteria. i wanted to go to maine because these are called people of the don. it took me a while to find this event i wanted to go to. i went mostly to see the person. i wanted to represent the country as much as