have. i think there was another question. yes. i first thank you for speaking with us. wanted to ask you about something you said about this being that the last quarter, the death penalty and do you see that being because of it seems go on the voyage or the close to legislatures of the federal government actually eliminating it for going to become so impractical? that's just no longer feasible. it still be on the books. we have the death penalty. we're just not going to execute anyone anymore. that's a really good and i should probably stop that because i don't know why i'm out here making predictions, but i but it's a good point. and i think, i think you're right. i think it's probably both. i mean, right now there are i, i, i would get the number wrong, but there are a number of states who have abolish the death penalty. but to your point, there are also a number of states who have the death penalty and they just

don't use it, you know, and so i think it's seems very possible we could get to that kind of place. mean there's an important distinction between state death penalties and the federal death penalty, which as many of you probably know, under the under the trump there was a streak of executions and, the federal level and so that's kind of a whole different ballgame. but i do think it's it's very likely that over the next, you know, whatever it is, ten, 20 years, a combination, those things happen. then you have some states who abolish death penalty for a number of reasons, whether it's, you know, in a state like in a red state who are saying this, the financial of this doesn't make any sense to spend five years litigating a case just so that a person can die of causes in prison anyway. you know, there's a lot of arguments against coming from that way. i think there are other states who are abolishing it for maybe

reasons. the other side of the political spectrum. and then yeah, there are other states who may just find that it's not practical to keep keep doing this. so i think of it a combination of is what seems possible to me. one question, of course. that's going to work out. yeah yeah. i was wondering how it is that you can witness and write about executions and also you spoke about how some of the death individuals had a memorial after one of their own was killed and you could speak about how they prepare to deal with the execution of one of their own. yeah when you say how it is you mean you mean just just. how why am i not crying right now or is it. yeah, that's a fair question. i will say that for me, the fact that it was a job to do is was

helpful just in like a very practical sense going into the prison and sitting there and and knowing you're about to watch this happen, but also knowing like, okay, i have to you know i have it. when you go into witness an execution, the you're not allowed to bring anything in with you. they give you a big legal pad and a pencil and so you know okay i'm going to take these notes on what's happening. and in a way thankfully i think that does kind of take you out of it too. it a degree that i found i was grateful for because i had a job to do and i had to focus that and i couldn't necessarily in the moment think about what i if you had just dropped me in that situation without that, maybe i would have been more it would have been harder to get through. it was helpful to have other there too. you know, we all had a job to do to kind of together and that that was helpful but yeah, it was it was awful. i mean, you know, don't want to downplay it in any way and i certainly in the book tried not

to that and i do think writing about it was there was a sort of catharsis in writing about it for me so i'm grateful for that but but yeah you know is it the weird thing about the death is that there are a lot of ways in which we've as a society kind of tried to make it in the name of making it more humane, have tried to make it look less, killing a person and and it still looks that way in my experience. so so that didn't know. it was very difficult as far as the men on the on the row and kind of how they prepare for it. i actually love for you to talk the kind of service they had for billy, but just one thing to mention. i mean, it's very much a process of kind of i don't know it's really hard to fathom, but, you know, there they have this date on the calendar for quite a long time. when when a date set. so they sort of know this is coming and guys who have an execution date will start giving

their stuff away. you know, i mean, they'll start saying going to someone and saying, hey, you know, here my paint brushes, here, my boots, you know, they just start giving their things away. in preparation for that. there's a story i tell in the book. gorsky was executed. who's the second executioner read about in the book? he everyone's familiar with the idea of the sort of the last meal that that the offered and nagorski turned down and it turned out that was because a few days before the all men on death row had kind of pooled their their food and made pizzas and had like a pizza, like a like a sort of last supper with him of sort of homemade pizza. so there's stuff like that but but alvaro was at a, a kind of service at the prison for billy after his execution. we went home. yeah. yeah. so just short of because everything was running on time, but really i after billy's execution. i got a letter from from one of

billy's friends from inside. and basically they were they were inviting me to come over for his memorial service, the prison. so i had to make this application that was a very complex process of getting in there for that specific service. but you know what? and they went there and to a place that i had not access before in the prison, because usually you at the visitation gallery, but then this service happened inside they where their cells are. so we we sat in a circle and very much just just everybody started talking about memories from from billy and what they had known him in the prison and i was there with one of other billy's visitors, his right now. but we we just shared really stories about our experiences. billy, throughout the time that we have known him, i think you write in the book, there's a really powerful piece where it says that that billy's lawyer mentioned about him never, ever having a very happy moment in

his life and. i think that was really powerful because because i think he did have a good moment at some point, the friends that he had inside, which is this new life that he was living within, you know, within that. but it was a very beautiful walk. and i think to me after this day is one of the most powerful moments my life has been sitting there surrounded with all this gentleman who were hit their fate was to be executed some point. they were all sharing some some testimony of a friend who had died recently. so i do think that there's a that goes on within them. of course, they know the fate, but it became it became really real when william is executed. they get a few more minutes. there's a yes. so one call that can you wait for the hand out reading case? because all of the appeals of death penalty cases include the psr, the pre-sentence report.

and you know, i think the general public, if you read the the psr, you would have to say to yourself what did we expect of this trial, where did we place this child and not intervene? so that's a no brainer that people could begin with. you know, you can the adage is you can educate them or you can in castle write them. and we are choosing to incarcerate. so those are good ways to intervene. perhaps they're not right at death row, but might be preventative because a lot of prevention that go on with young children that is not yeah i think you're absolutely right that was a an incredible experience it's very difficult reading you know, to read through these stories of of these guys childhoods. it was powerful timing for me because at the time that i

started these executions, i had. i had just had we had two young women, still two young children, and they were younger, you know, they were three and a baby. i would read these stories of these kids and i look at my kids and i'm by no means a perfect parent. but, you know, we have the flaws of our house, don't have holes in it. we are lucky enough not to live in deep poverty the way a lot of these guys had. i you know, me, my wife have good jobs. we have health care. like just go down the list of stuff. by the way, i don't feel like i can take any credit for, which is the other point. i think, you know, i it's because of my parents and because of their you know, i was just born in in this situation and these guys were just born the situation you're describing and i would just yeah, i think i think you're right when you say what do we expect of of them? it's like, you know, you read

the that these guys in many ended up committing and think of them as a two year old and you go that two year old is not wanting to be you know there there are. i don't know. we're going to get into like a deeper like freewill conversation or something, but i think it's worth really reflecting on, you know, like what you know, what do we mean when, say, this person did a thing and we're holding them responsible for it alone and we're going to put them to death as opposed to starting to ask questions like what kind of society produces so many people who do things like this, which makes so absolutely know why not do this efficient time or even such representation that communication? absolutely. and for people who can hear, as mentioned mitigation hearings where basically people on the defense team will go and

research a person's background, their childhood all about their life and present that to a judge in a jury when it comes time for sentencing to say okay, this person may be guilty, but here are these mitigating factors you should consider before send them to death row and there's a lot of that work that's done now, the cases of the people that i write about in the book and a lot of the guys on tennessee's death row that been there since the eighties and stuff wasn't done then and a lot of it has been done on their behalf since, which is incredible. i mean, you know, the going going to find people who who are still alive that knew this guys and their kids, but the juries that them to death never heard any of that. you know, they didn't know any other mental health background. they didn't know about the childhood physical and sexual abuse suffered, you know, they didn't know any of that stuff. and so so yeah, that makes a big difference for sure well, we are out of time, so please join me in thanking steven hale thank you.

hello everyone. welcome to bookmarks tonight. i'm beth seufer buss, the program director and. it is my pleasure to welcome you to bookmarks. anybody's first time here. welcome. you may not know bookmarks is a literary arts nonprofit and our mission is to cultivate community by bringing of all ages together with books and authors who educate, inspire, challenge and entertain. we're so excited you're here with us tonight. and it's my pleasure to hand tonight's event over to laura schober, bookmarks administrator who's going to moderate event and introduce our featured

author. pretty good evening and everybody hear me okay? okay. awesome. i am here to introduce our wonderful author here this evening, kathleen duval she is a professor of history at the university of north carolina at chapel, where she teaches early american and american indian history. her previous work includes independence lost, which was a finalist for the washington prize and native ground indians and colonists in the heart of the continent. she is coauthor of give me liberty and coeditor of interpreting a continent voices from colonial america. you would welcome kathleen here tonight. i am very excited to moderate this event, a brilliant book. i'm going to sort of just dive in because you're here to hear from kathleen and not me. there will be a question answer at the end of our conversation. so, kathleen, if you summarize,

just to begin the scope of the book and share us your goals for writing native nations. right. thank you, larry. it's such a pleasure. be here. i think the main reason i wanted to write this book is that i sort of think that a lot of americans nominate americans. they see native americans, we see native americans in all kinds of places these days in movies and tvs and in big supreme court cases, art museums, a big show at the north carolina museum of art right now. and i it can be hard for a lot of people who aren't native american themselves to square that realization that a lot is going on with native americans today with what what we may have been taught about native american history, native american history. i think the way a lot of us learned it was was in the past, you know, far in the past, there

were native americans here in 1492. but maybe pretty quickly decline for various reasons because of their with europeans, maybe we sort of hear about them again in classes when we get to indian removal and then maybe not that much more after that. and so what i really wanted do is for readers kind of bridge that gap to say, you know, native americans are still here today and not as descendants, but as nations. there are almost 1600 native nations today in the united states, and that's just counting federally recognized nations in the united states, not counting mexico, canada not counting state recognized tribes. there are the survival of native nations is a long and important history that i think that i think all should know. and so the u.s. but the scope of the book what i try to do here is really tell a millennium of

native american history kind of all between two covers starting in the in about the year 1000. so quite a while before any europeans people from other continents came. so some of the ways that native americans lived in north america before the coming of europeans and then goes the book goes slowly through the centuries after 1492. i think one of the things that we tend to do move too quickly from the arrival of europeans to the united states spreading across the continent, which really doesn't happen till after the civil war many centuries after 1492. so book goes through centuries, i think, at a pace that i think is more reasonable for that sort of seeing eras in which native americans were the majority of the population and of the continent of north america and held most of the land and the power on the continent really into, well, the 19th century and

then the book also it goes sort of the sort of the worst times for native americans, the hardest times for retaining their nations in the 19th century, 20th century, and to and so today is part of the story and sort of the renaissance that's going on in native america. these days. this is how i sort of close the book and then to build on that in each chapter, you're focusing on a specific nation. so how did you make those choices and what did you consider? yeah, what i what i when i realized i wanted write a millennium of history, i thought i better just choose a few nations to highlight and not not try to cover everybody. so i have so, you know, most of the chapters introduce one native nation in one particular place and time. and so the book goes chronologically forward time but introduces native nations along the way and and then as we get toward the end into the late

19th and 20th and 21st century sort of braids them together, but i chose them in part, i wanted there's been a huge amount of scholarship by historians on native nations, and so i wanted that that historians have have written about that i can sort of compare to each other. there was a rich body of scholarship could i could use for that and i wanted i chose them sort of for particular times when they were had a lot of influence in their region. so for example, i talk about the mohawk set in the 1600s when they were trading with the dutch and having huge influences on other native nations as and then the sort of final thing i sort of used for choosing did i know people today of that nation do i know scholars within those tribes or of those tribes who who are you know in academia that i could, you know, sort of lean and learn and maybe had or in some cases had already

learned a lot from, but who could introduce me to people, introduce me to sources i might not know otherwise. and and also read those chapters and make sure i wasn't making any big mistakes and misrepresenting their history and that leads to my next question. in the foreword you states, i have tried to live up to the call of shawnee tribe chief benjamin jay barnes for scholars to work with and not on indigenous communities. so what steps did you take in the research for book to meet those calls, sort of building on what you're saying? yeah, this is know been a real a real turn in in sort of the way academic scholars have have written about have worked with native nations and i think you sort of you know that has happened in anthropology, in archeology history and some other disciplines. and so it was yeah, it is really important to me to, to, to not follow that sort of old model of just looking at documents, just, just thinking i could know

something about native nations without knowing how they see their own history. and so what i did with, with all of the other nations i focus on is is that i really tried to see what they say today about their history. and sometimes that was to talking to tribal scholars, seeing what's going on in their nations today and every chapter i talk about the present as well and sort of try to remind the reader this nation is still around has survived all centuries and and also just many of them have have centers, have their own museums where they have a sort of full picture of how they understand their history, the things they about their history. and so i try to incorporate those as well. thank you. there are many parts of this book that i feel are very important and i'm a one person. so you all have question and answer periods. you ask other things, but i my following question is going to sort of pull out the things i

thought through the book were emphasizing his or her points made and i want to begin with this idea of the value of reciprocity and could you discuss the nations value of reciprocity? this value shaped their lives? well, one of the reasons i start a millennium ago, i don't know how many of you know, but there was there were there were cities. there were large civilizations across north america in, you know, in the around around a thousand years ago, cahokia and other mississippian societies, large, large civilizations in the southwest, based on a huge irrigation projects. and so one of the things i talk about in the early chapters of the book is, is first, those cities those urban civilizations and then the fall those that that with the coming of the little ice age around 1200s, those societies those sort of very centralized societies fell in north america.

and often that's been told as a sort of a story of decline that. there was a great know this golden era and something worse came later. and but really oral histories of of the descendants nations of those old urban civilizations talk about it as as as an improvement. and so i trace some those changes that came about. and one of those was the really reciprocity becomes a value a value in in but also in economics politics. and so the many, many histories and that sort of archeology this up and when i know and the way that polities native polities have ever since oral histories really talk about this this extreme rejection of hierarchy a very powerful religious political leaders that existed in some societies at the time, urbanization and the replacing