way to describe it what the navy seals, the u.s. army rangers and delta do is kind of the osama bin laden raid or the raid that took out al baghdadi and serious the leader, isis, those guys and now gals are the best the world find fix and then finish our enemies. in the case of osama laden, you know, and the depths pakistan in the middle of the night, president of the united states over, our intelligence feeds get in there. two bullets on the forehead and get out that type of highly specialized raid direct action raid is again the best of the world at it we can do that as well as green berets, but we have a very different a much broader mission set in our training. we have to learn multiple languages. we have to in we have to

specialize certain parts of the world, south central africa, the middle east. and you'll take just a few us no more than 12 and embed us a tribe with a warlord with freedom fighters in guerrilla warfare. that's that's fighting against an oppressive regime or even a partnered ally. military and we operate by, with and through so short for short way i say it is, you know, the seals and rangers find enemies and they do bad things. the bad guys. we find our friends and we'd rather have them do it for us. and case in point, in my second tour and i, i talk about this quite a bit in the book, there were of us, me a communique and sergeants and a medical sergeant three partnered with a force of 90 arab soldiers from the uae and a few from jordan partnered with 180 afghans out in the mountains of afghanistan. it's it's the closest ever get

to lawrence of arabia. if i never eat goat again i'll be just fine truly living off the land slaughtering sheep slaughtering goats living amongst the afghans in their village and but we were often very alone, very autonomous, very afraid with. some of these warlords, they would assume, turn us and and kill us as they would the taliban and al qaida, if we crossed them. and and, you know, kind of historically speaking, the liberation of afghanistan, where just had three or four of these teams. right after 911 go in and sometimes even on. and now the famous horse soldiers and working with the resistance to the taliban, the government eject it al qaida and then you the afghanistan war kind of drifted from there but that initial push was kind of our classic green beret mission and how we're different than any other special operations in the

world. yeah, for sure. i mean, i've had the opportunity over my career to embed with regular infantry units in iraq, the georgia national guard, afghanistan, which was a different animal, rather, the soldiers a little bit older, you know, as you said before, they have civilian jobs. so they could do things that understand things. i think understand the people, maybe a way that a 19 year old in the 25th infantry division couldn't, nothing against a 19. right. but they're different. yeah. and very briefly, i was with green berets in syria training the kurdish forces, which is also very and sometimes they call us kind of teachers with guns. right. i mean, if we can. six green berets train a kurdish battalion of 600, you know think about that in terms of return on investment, how small our footprint is, the fact that we have our you know who far understand the local culture situation and dynamic far better than we, you know, and

eventually we try to work ourselves out of a job right. and i talk about that in the book as well. and for this green beret mission, is this by, with and through, how important do you think this is, particularly in the indo-pacific, where trying to build these relationships that we have somewhat and a lot of those nations that are very army centric as general charlie flynn was saying just this week at the at the army conference in washington, d.c., you know, getting out there with philippine forces, indonesian forces, whoever it may be. how important do you think that is to make those forge those relationships, especially for young officers? right, major? the major who then become? lieutenant colonel, colonel. general. and they'll know each other throughout their careers. right? right. yeah. no, that's absolutely right i mean, even today, 15 years later, some of the uae then captains and sergeants now running their military, i still have those relationships. the green berets that i work with forge those relationships all over the world in the

indo-pacific. look if if xi champagne ever decides to military fully take taiwan it will green berets behind enemy lines. the foxhole and it's not necessarily we're matching, you know, soldier to soldier or pulling triggers. it's we're facilitating the air support, the communications, perhaps even the medical evacuation, those critical enablers that that often are lacking in lesser trained armies, they're often very good at pulling triggers and blowing things. it's kind of pulling it all together from a command and control standpoint where our green berets can really have strategic value and. they can help kick in doors, too, if be another classic mission in colombia in 1990s and plan colombia, just again, a few dozen working by within through the colombian military not only

helped train them but help them in their targeting and their strategy and their tactics and defeated the farc socialist narco insurgency also took down medellin cartel at that time was threatening to turn colombia into a narco state. those were kind of the classic green beret missions. and actually, i know it's controversial, but i think we should apply a number of those concepts when it comes to the mexican cartel that are literally right now armed to the teeth fighting the mexican, not the police but the army to a standstill, shooting down aircraft denying the mexican government up to 30% of mexican territory. and of course killing hundreds of thousands of americans a year. with that, no drugs human trafficking and destabilize raising our southern border. i'm not you know as the media sometimes kind of portrays it, advocating for putting the marines, mexico city, but with just a small footprint, you can

bring in offensive. you can start kind of up their communications, their cash, them on their back, but disrupting their operations, that's type of unconventional thinking and warfare that i talk about in the book. and takes kind of a different mindset, a different way of thinking and leading and one chapter, i call it bottoms leadership and to what i think face the unconventional threats and the hybrid warfare that we're seeing. all the world. yeah, and so would you. are you pushing for this kind special special forces green beret presence in mexico to further, you know, to help advise the mexican military? yeah. well, look, the initial pushback, obviously, is hey, the mexican government isn't on board. the colombian government is if you really look at the history of it, the pastrana government, colombia was not initially president clinton and then bush said, look, going to do this one

way or another, we'd prefer you work with us. i think we need to take approach with the mexican given the destabilized nation that's happening on our southern border, the migrant flows, the again the fentanyl deaths and others, but even if we took a standoff approach and apply space asset, cyber assets, better intelligence to support law enforcement. i think that would be a a far better more bold approach to dealing with these cartels that again, are paramilitary organization is armed to the teeth with billions at their disposal and who do not mean well. so i think there's obviously negotiation room should be with what you have on the ground or what you don't but it's applying those critical military assets we should be doing an end to stick with afghanistan for a minute. in the book, you quite a bit about an nco that you work with

afghan sumar who was killed. yeah seemed a hard charger he got it you know he looked out for his soldiers in a way that not every afghan and seal officer did. how how how much of the fall? the afghan army. i guess what i'm trying ask here. so obviously they fought, right? taliban ended up winning. how difficult was it to try to train the afghan forces in order to be not the american military? that's not going to happen but to be a competent military that could stand its own. and how much did it hurt? lose guys like that who wanted that right. they wanted a better life? yeah. they wanted to fight and they're willing to do it and understand how it understood how to do it. so sumar was an afghan sergeant major was a great leader, always putting his men first? i about him in the servant leadership chapter and really it wasn't about it was always about

his men he servant leadership he exemplified what makes the american military the best the world and that we have that strong nco noncommissioned sergeant or in between our officers and our privates that are really the backbone of the modern military. he was a great step forward for the afghans and was killed in an ambush. the failure of the afghan leadership was really are the afghan was a failure of their leadership and a failure of their horribly corrupt government soldiers. afghans like sumar wanted to fight the taliban. they knew that they the taliban was not their future. sumar actually was a teacher and was and his father was teacher, and he was motivated to fight the taliban and because his daughters couldn't educated. that's you know he knew that where girls are educated and

where are empowered that their society would be much better. i also talk about sumar, the sense of, you know, when i found out that his kids were going to get sent off to madrassas these are the extreme religious schools most often in pakistan where they nothing but the koran. from age six on are segregated boys and girls and often used recruitment centers for suicide bombers. i became to have a small part in changing that. i've been supporting that family personally, matching his salary that they lost. you know, when you lose an afghan soldier, it's not like their wife can just go to work and that society. so they lost their breadwinner. and i'm proud to say all of these kids were were educated and schools and learn trades and. you know, it's it's weighting that one family, that one

village at a time. and still supporting them. so to this day but it also i think you know it demonstrates a number of other things in terms of why so many veterans in my particularly green berets that were so embedded with the afghans and forged those relationships were so devastated by the afghanistan withdrawal. still this day. i mean, i just talked to a a veteran that is exhausted. his savings and his kids. 529 plans their college keeping his afghan partners alive. that are being hunted down by the taliban as we speak. he just can't hang his phone and them that bond is so strong and it transcends national loyalty. i also talk about the loyalty chapter. one of my interpreters, spartacus, who i mean, the kid

learned english rap music and watching movies. he would string together a series of customer ids that were just completely incoherent. right. but he was willing to die for our flag right alongside? us and for our values. and that bond and trust was was it was incredible. you have to have it when you just a few of us embedded in there in their units on the taliban and caught them one day trying to visit his family by himself on you know and dragged him off a bus, took him back to his village, beheaded him in front his entire family to send a message. working with americans. contrast that in my chapter in loyalty with the america and soldier bowe bergdahl. if you remember that was the one that deserted his unit deserted his base and and defected to the taliban. later president obama traded the

five most senior taliban in guantanamo bay for him. my first ever kind of national appearance. i was the first to go on fox news and time out america, not a hero should not be being celebrated in the rose garden as was with obama and susan and his parents. and this was a traitor. he betrayed his unit. and oh, by the way, the taliban, one of the taliban commanders that were traded for him is now the military commander of of the taliban. so contrast saying that betrayal, despite the fact that he a fellow american with a loyalty shown by some of our afghans. i just wanted to strongly make the point it's about values, not nationality. and with your experience kind of being at the pointy end of the spear there in and being in the dirt, living that life and

seeing the war from that perspective, and then coming back to and know secretary rumsfeld, secretary gates in a new job there, how did that influence your work at dod and your willingness? you mentioned in the book several times to kind of speak up about about the mrap issue and the issues in meetings. well, so for example, i saw, you know, what the which was the mine resistant vehicle v hold that when an ied came underneath it it the blast it the soldiers inside were were usually injured pretty badly but it saved their lives. and so i thought it was incredibly well-intended. i thought secretary gates, a fantastic secretary of defense, but he was essentially the use of this vehicle again was, well, to save lives. well, i tell a stories about, you know, whole areas of afghanistan that we couldn't go. we couldn't engage the populace we couldn't get after the

taliban because this heavy 20 ton mrap would literally collapse. the roads and the bridges, these remote villages. but yet it was this kind of dictum from on high. and as i talk about bottoms up leadership, you have to listen to those closest to the issue whether it's the sale in a business or the villages and understanding the road networks wouldn't support these vehicles out in afghanistan in another case you know i'm sitting back in washington in the white house briefing as one of my tours, and i see, you know, the general in charge of training the afghan soldiers out there. and he comes up on the screen. and he kind of smacks the table. mr. president, we're going to have the afghan army ready to fight, on its own in 18 months. and here's my plan to get it there and i'm shaking my head, you know, i'm kind of a backbencher. you know, the afghan was was 60 to 70% illiterate. we had trouble helping them by

our artillery because they literally couldn't count. i knew that this was to take decades of engagement that. doesn't mean we have 200,000 troops on the ground. but again, back to the kind of green beret method, you can have a few hundred. and by with through then, but it takes time. and by the way, this was back in 2007 when this general was saying would be done in 18 months. and it also with his term in command, darn it, he was going to he was going to show success. so you know, when i'm talking to the vice president, president afterwards, i said, you know, boss, that is that is just completely unrealistic. they didn't to hear it wasn't a popular thing to say i wasn't invited to a few after that but that's the speaking truth to power then historically, just very quickly, because i think it was one of those seminal moments in history where george c

marshall in 1938, franklin delano roosevelt was determined to cut defense budget. they were trying to come out of the recession. he had, as know, you know, all of this programs that he was that he was pushing out of country and trying to pay for. he fdr was had a hot temper. he was known to fire and people on the spot. and george c as the as the chief of staff of the army stood up to. he didn't think it was going to go so well but actually fdr invited him back the next day and they had a long talk, not only not cut the defense budget, he put in an for it very controversial at the time but i think set the stage for us to be successful in in world war two. so that was truth to power moments or you to be ready for them when they come and you have to have i think the the moral

fortitude and the frankly lack of concern for how it goes through your career to to to speak truth to power. yeah, i was in many of those pentagon briefings and press conferences, and i think there a succession of generals who would say the next six months are critical and we can get the afghan forces where we need them to be. and there's every couple of months they come out and say the same thing. right. and it's but in contrast. right. say, well, you know, that is just that's an impossible i point out that we have had troops working alongside south korean army for the better part of 70 years. and in the 1950s, south korea, no military, no police. i mean, they were literally devastated to no government to speak of by japanese occupation. they had to hire illiteracy rate, then the afghans did. and through sustained over time. look, i'm not talking nation building or anything along those lines, but small levels of payoff engagement. and that's that green beret

mindset. i mean, you know, we've been engaged with the colombians 40 years, with the filipinos for 100. and so, you know, american leadership around the world does not mean we have to have ten divisions sitting on ground. right. and so how are experiences in dod and in afghanistan helping to try to build this force, then seeing the policy side on the other side, how is it influence how you're looking at ukraine? right. i mean, we're training ukrainians in germany. and holland falls and graf and vera and things like that, not in ukraine. we're supplying them, obviously. i know you've supported the the aid for for ukraine, but you've also said we have a this can't be a blank check forever. right. so what's the path here, do you think, for us policy in supporting the ukrainians? well, you know, i'll point out and i don't mean this to sound as partizan, it probably will. but but it's just a fact that the obama administration did not provide lethal aid. president trump did and it was green berets that working with the ukrainian arms after the

first invasion in 2014 all the way up 2020 to and and thankfully they have those javelins and at least a few stingers and the green berets they were training them and actually the florida national guard right before the invasion. i write about my visit to them in the book look. i think that's been a series policy failures. if you're going to engage you do it to wit and. you know i talk about how i was there the month before the invasion and in engaging with the embassy. they were so because the ukrainians saying, please arm us now and we can deter this from happening, put the sanctions, russia in place now and maybe think twice. but, you know, the kind of tone and tenor from the biden administration was. no. if we give stingers, if we give harpoon anti-ship missiles. and if we give more and more javelins, that will be too provocative to putin.

that would be too escalatory. we're trying to de-escalate that will give him the excuse that he's looking for to and i think the opposite has been proven to be true that that kind of passivity was actually attracted his aggression because he thought he could get away with it and then you know there's been you know whether it was lifting the the sanctions on nord stream two whether it was comments like mine are incursions. i'm not sure how respond and i think the withdrawal afghanistan and that debacle putin thought he could get away with it he did 2014 under obama biden a lot of the same people are in charge in the administration and thought he could get away with it again. it in terms of how it's really influenced my approach, it's actually the years afghanistan and policy drift that happened i mean year year it was well we've got to keep investing because

the alternative is so bad and we're already seeing that argument now of, well, you know, it settled into a stalemate. yes we wish we had provided, you know, lethal aid sooner and faster and have handcuffs on it. but you know we're finding ourselves the better. the alternative so bad we just have to keep pouring more and in without a clearly defined strategy for what success looks like. and if we stay kind of well, eventually we're going to end up in a diplomatic some type of negotiation, probably because expelling every single russian from every inch of ukraine, including crimea, is probably not realistic then let's articulate that now at least behind closed doors. my frustration in has has been there's been an absolute refusal to do that. it's just signed over a blank check. you're somehow pro-russian and. that is that's just a ridiculous false choice. and do you see there's about 5.2

billion left, i think in the presidential drawdown authority for four for ukraine. that's going to run out in a few months after election. officially, i everybody i talked about in the beginning of the year, i said if we don't use leverage, we have and leverage we have in congress is the power of the purse to force the administration to articulate what is success in line with our interests here and long. i mean i go to my town halls and, they're like, wait a minute, you're paying ukrainian and first responders. and i've got my first responders asking me the hell, right? that's, you know, the fact that president biden waited two years to have an oval office to say why this was in our interest. look, you know, i'm glad you pointed that out. i told them, you know, earlier year they're going to run out by the end of this year. and we're going to be having, darn it the same the same debate. you know billions of dollars later. it's been enormously frustrating

for me. and you asked to kind of how my time on the ground and, afghanistan and africa, is affecting my thinking. i also write in the book on yes, we absolutely were thankful for our nato allies to be on the ground in afghanistan. the soldiers were great, but their equipment was often terrible. it was incompatible. it was in the maintenance on. it was was not good at all. and their hands were tied by their, if you remember the debate back then you followed this long enough the national national caveats where we would get in a firefight and ask for german helicopters to come help us they weren't allowed by by berlin. they you know, they had to take a passive approach to any type of operations the french special forces. even then i embedded with you know they would we had to get really creative on how to get them engaged they could only take a defense kind of shoot if shot at a type of approach and

in many ways that moved the effort backwards and so that i found enormously frustrating when i look now where you've got the largest land war since world two literally on their doorstep and you have some allies stepping like in afghanis dam where they went to where the fighting was in the south but others refused where you had the poles and the baltics, romanians and the british and others really contributing. but you have, the large economies like germany, italy france, spain still not living up to their bare 2% commitment, which they which they contributed or they pledged to do a year ago. i find completely it's a good deal for their they don't have to make the tough choices but to say that are i think the burden sharing should actually be disproportionate should it in their on their side of the

ledger not the other way around and until we force those conversations to happen you know as as somebody in my one of my local groups said look if you've got all got members of a club and only a third of them are paying their full dues, what are the rest going to do? they're going to keep getting away it and i just don't think that's fair to the united and it's not it's not acceptable in terms of collective security. yeah you have poland who's pushing 5% gdp on defense and then canada who's about 1.2 i think. and they have some vague plans to france and has an economy for france has an economy four times the size of poland and yet is contributing a fourth or even if you really want to get into the weeds on this some the things they are contributing named reuters an article on a tranche german tanks that the germans provided the ukrainians and as desperate the ukrainians are they gave them back they said these things are in such bad shape it'll cost us more to fix them than to use them.

yet they value those at the value, the replacement value, the clunker value. so i've questioned even the numbers that we're hearing in the pentagon confirmed in a hearing. yeah we just take the numbers they give us however they value it. then the pentagon had some some they reported in some of the numbers and came up with more money. so. right. yeah. and a bigger in ukraine we've seen reports that north koreans have now troops on the ground in russia, in kursk fighting the ukrainians who've who've astoundingly invaded russia a few months ago. right. you have iran. you have china supplying russia. i mean, there's a real alliance there between those. that they've been alone for a while. but this is the most overt we've seen it. right. and the most active i mean, how do you how does the us and its allies respond to to this kind of new coalition of of.

well, i think that is a we'll have to do another hour. i think that's a long complicated issue. it gets to what i think have been unenforced sanctions on iran that is now flush with cash flush with foreign currency reserves. its currency itself is completely rebounded. the main provider of that cash is china buying 90% of iran's illicit oil. the house has passed secondary on chinese buyers and refiners. refiners and shippers. the senate has not taken that up in the last year. and under the trump, he says it in his own way. he said, look, china, if you're going to keep buying iranian and gas, you can't buy, which was a threat of secondary sanctions. right. and and and iran financial i think it's indisputable was absolutely on its back foot to the point where we had reporting

from hezbollah and hamas the houthis complaining they were out of cash to pay their fighters that that that payments and the shipments that they were getting from iran had dried up even to the point. and this is where i talk about in the book and hard truths too, where had internal uprisings within iran. so, you know, one of the things we do should do, number one go back to pressure drive the cash. a key part that is actually our own lng ban. i remember biden also canceled the keystone xl pipeline. if we flood the global market with cleaner american oil and gas, you drive down prices and a number of analysts have confirmed to me that once you get around $50 a barrel, it is very difficult for both russia and iran to produce. now, your drying up their war

chest coffers. and you're putting their entire economy on their back foot right. russia is is essentially a gas station with nukes, you know, the old adage. so, you know, i think there is a lot more we could do financially, economically, diplomatically to put both russia and on their back foot get china of the oil buying business for countries and you know rather than just throwing billions of our defense dollars at the problem in ukraine. i hope that made sense. i kind of walked around number of things, but i find it enormously frustrating. you remember president biden promised the mother of all sanctions, but yet they've allowed so many loopholes with banks that are involved in the russian oil and gas sector. we're still buying our uranium for our nuclear industry from

russia, including a number of other critical minerals, rather than wrestling with environmental permitting, reform and opening up more mines here or buying from canada. we're still buying from russia. you talk to the koreans and the japanese, they want to buy from the united states. there's not a single natural gas terminal allowed on the west coast, california, washington or oregon because of state environmental laws. canada finally building one to go out of vancouver. so what are they left to do? what are those countries left to do? they can't power their economies on wind and solar. they're buying russian gas. there's there is a much more a much strategic approach. we could take rather than every six months pounding the table and of more weapons that you know. yes, we want to prevent putin from taking ukraine. but i think there are a lot of other ways to do it.

the thank you for that. and to get back the to the book a bit. oh, i'm sorry. can i take one more point of the book? because this is of the green beret mindset. yeah. we'll get back to it. i got on a little bit of a, you know, little bit of a frustrated soliloquy there. you know, i asked again, we specialize in unconventional warfare, unconventional thinking. i once asked the senior official at the air force was coming to the committee for more stealth bombers, said, look, i absolutely support pre-positioning more guam or other locations back to the indo-pacific. i said, but what gets beijing's thinking more what gets their decision loop more a more stealth bombers or, another hong kong or even the potential of a weaker uprising or, you know, it started kind of going that list because the thing whether it's the atoll was in iran or, in

beijing, the thing they fear most of their own people. and if we have them looking internally or even considering it, i'm not for, you know, everybody watching, calling for regime change or anything along, those lines. but when you have people like masa amini, the little, the girl who was murdered by ayatollahs, bart, you police for not wearing a hijab, a head covering. and it sparked a national uprising. these people are begging for even some of rhetorical support from the united states, much less like encrypted apps, starlink or other things iran, has lot less energy to around abroad if they're looking internally at their own folks and. we, from a moral standpoint, should be supporting these people. we did it in the cold war, those dissidents, whether it's the solidarity movement or inside the soviet union, were household

names that we absolutely supported. and why aren't we taking that more unconventional approach now? i also a story about an afghan elder that i had been working with the better part of a year. like my teeth were brown drinking so much tea. what this and he kept going on and on he commanded a pretty large i was trying to win over to our side about his weapons. oh commander my secret weapons this is how we're going to defeat the extremists. this how we're going to win this war. this is the long term approach. eventually, i kind of had to call him to the carpet because i didn't know if he had stinger missiles or. what? and he said he says, okay, okay, commander mike, i'll bring out my secret weapons. he sent somebody the back and i hear a bunch of rustling. know what he's going to bring out. you know it, walked out his two daughters and of the most conservative taliban parts of afghanistan. i never seen a woman outside of

a burka completely uncovered in their late teens. early twenties, he was smuggling them over back and forth to india to. get educated as doctors and lawyers and you know he said i'll take a battalion of them this guy was completely illiterate by the way. i mean, he was a he was a boss. he said that this is how you undermine al qaida icis in the town. and then when women like them are this country when they're marching in in islamabad and in tehran and in kabul. that's how, you know, when the extremists are defeated. and it just it's that war ideas, right. that i thought was so powerful. but you know, that our default in washington is to throw more money, more tanks, planes and ships of it or divisions at a problem. and that's the kind of thinking i i try to get to. and hard truths they can lead like a green beret to think

about these problems differently. and so thinking about these problems, i mean, obviously an election and you're on the short list names for secretary of defense. if if i if almost everyone i'm talking to and so at least i mean you know you're you've close to the former president. you spoke at the rnc you know, obviously in the book you mentioned that you had multiple meetings with them and you shared your advice with them and you took some of your advice and listened to you. so under a trump administration, if you're in the administration or not, what would you say? what would be the some of the major shifts that you do? you don't go all the way around the world. but what would be some of the big things that you suggest or push for that could get at some of this move, public diplomacy, as you said, like starlink's in iran, things like that. what could the united states do in the near term? well, number one, i'll just tell you, in the engagement him, you know, there's this narrative out that, you know, he's he's and obstinate and you always kind of

that the right answer his way or the highway it's all of my experiences would have been complete opposite constantly questions constantly seeking input. what do you think about this what do you think about that the frustration you talk to some in his administration. they think he's made up his mind and then he talks to somebody else again and and and and and changes it. so he really does kind of espouse one of the attributes i talk about that bottoms up leadership and constantly input and ideas and and but then you know in terms of what difference i think you'll see again which we've seen far too little of, particularly with such debacles as the afghanistan withdrawal, not a single person fired, not even like laterally transferred fact. some are being promoted that were in charge. and i tell the story you know his instincts are often so right and then he leaves it to others for the details and his instinct was hey we can't be number one

on earth if we're number two in space. and once he was really briefed on what the chinese and russians doing up there to militarize space, to be able to take out our entire economy which is dependent on space, much less military's ability to operate around world gps, global communications and what have you. he said well we need our own force to defend the space force. everybody made fun. everybody mocked it. you the netflix series with adam carolla and and what have you look there were people that were resistant even as our own air force secretary. she was fired a lot of people said that was really mean but you know the generals got on board real fast they got the message and think now even just a few years in hindsight we see that actually that was very prescient how well they're working with the private sector and commercial and how critical that new space force is because that absolutely is the future

and we can't continue to dominate or be a leader economically or militarily if we don't if we don't control space assets. so that's kind of you know, i think approach oftentimes that is that is needed and in order to move quickly i tell a story that know where i called him. i found it phenomenally ridiculous and dangerous that the military spoil when they plan the thrift savings plan actually, the 41k plan for the entire federal government, 800 billion in assets is investing international fund into beijing. and so literally companies chinese companies like bo hai shipyards that just launched two new ballistic missile submarines are being financed with our money and with our sailors who think they're just saving for

retirement and i called them on a sunday night walked him through it he that's absolute --. what do we do about we walked through it the day i got a call from his chief of staff by thursday there was a cease and desist to the board overseeing that one k plan from peter navarro and robert o'brien. and there were two new nominees for the board. a later that decisive and moving quickly the accessibility to be able to bring these things to him were are one of the reasons i been so supportive and i think our defense acquisition you know what do you want to call it ecosystem's sclerotic bureaucracy needs to disruption of a commander in chief that you may be unconventional but also how to bring in new technology that may not be with some of the four or five big defense. and then finally there will be a focus on the border.

we already talk kind of the cartels and and disruption that's going on that's affecting inner cities that effect from chicago to denver to new york. there will be which is appropriated i'm sure it'll be controversial national guard support for that. and then finally on our industrial base, i've talked to them a lot about shipbuilding and the fact amongst our many industries like pharmaceuticals or critical minerals or chips, our shipbuilding industry has completely offshored to the point that it's dangerous to our national security. i'm introducing a bicameral bipartisanship act working with senator mark from arizona actually went in the merchant academy. and it's not just on our navy. what the chinese have done has built a navy larger ours on the backs of a massive investment. and they're a commercial shipbuilding to the that they now have 7000 ships under

chinese flag they received 1500 orders for new ships just last year. we have less than 200 under american flag. and you know how many we receive for new orders? five. so they have a 200 to 1 advantage. now in building commercial shipping tankers cargo and others container ships. they could cut off our economy tomorrow if they told those ships to stop going to u.s. ports and they provide that scale steel, aluminum work orders, welders, yard that you need and you know if if you ordered a reagan style kind of naval increase you know in when he if he comes in then we don't have the industrial to do it and we've talked a lot about how to reinvest in that going forward. yeah, that was my next question. i actually about the bill that you've with you're working on

with senator kelly. i said bipartisan and you mentioned that quite a bit in the book that when you invited veterans from both parties to to go to the vietnam memorial and watch the wall and jumping at d-day and things like that, how, you know, i think the country has this view of in washington is obviously very partizan it's been really bad and pretty vicious over the past several. but there's still this core of bipartisanship. people do work together. how important is it for you to keep those ties, particularly other veterans in congress. yeah yeah and i co founded a bipartisan caucus called the for country caucus it's veterans on both sides of the aisle mostly 911 but we still have some from from vietnam that are with us and it's like the premises if just a few years ago we on a tank plane ship together, you know, i was never on a black helicopter in the middle of the night going after al qaeda. what political party you belong

to or, even for that matter, are you hispanic, asian, black? right. nobody cares. you're just all americans. and so we were all to die together a few years ago. we may disagree on all kinds of issues, but we can roll up our sleeves, find common ground and move forward. and that's why i'm so passionate about getting more veterans into politics, not just in congress, but, you know, city council, state legislatures, wherever. because of that ethos of of, you know, discipline, followership, teamwork mission, focus and and i'm also an advocate and i talk about it. national service. that's not a draft. that is not i think we can incentivize it through educational benefits. that's not uniform. there's all kinds of ways to serve an inner city tutoring, national parks, elderly, fema, volunteer corps. but getting young people into that serving one another again and a cause bigger than themselves again and then maybe

you get some debt relief or you get, you know a trade or community or what have you. i call it the national service. gi bill introduced it with houlihan, pennsylvania, democrat. but i think that kind of forcing function is needed is often overlooked. and it came home to me, i tell the story and in hard truths as well about a korean war veteran up to me after one of my talks in jackson florida. and he said, you know, was telling me how he grew up in the segregated south, never really had a relationship of a person with color. and then in 19 years old, he's his first ship in the navy. and his bunkmate is black, and they became lifelong friends. so that forcing of service with people who may not look or think like you is also needed, a very fragmented society on social media and how we consume our news. so not only in our politics and

society as well and to to stick with that that that shipbuilding we were talking a few minutes ago. i think one of the big problems is workforce, right. it's hard to find workers because the shipbuilders are competing with amazon and etc., etc., working, working congress. do there you think to try incentivize? i know the navy just came out with a plan. they wanted several billion dollars to try to for cost of living increases inflation and things like that. and they essentially were told no by by omb and but so how do we get there? i mean, it's going to cost more money and then this gets into how high does the defense budget get? well, we don't have well, our air bubbles. look, i think it'll more money, but i think a number of these companies can also in themselves, if you look at the investments space access made for example off of its own books that didn't come to congress and say you have to give me a multibillion dollar plug. in fact, the rockets it's

building. and i think that's know you said how are things different if you look at for example what andrew palmer lockheed the company his company is doing how space x approach things you know they built great products that you know here's and we want to sell them to you rather than you pay me develop a product to a required over the next ten years very incentives right and it's kind of the old adage from ford, he said, look, if i had into an engineer in 1904 and said, make me a better horse and buggy carriage, they would have made the what the carriage lighter and the horse is stronger somehow. right. rather than that next step pollution and that next leap. so again are process has to be what's the capability we're trying to achieve not a thing that we're trying to tweak and then let industry build to that. in terms of workforce, i think

that's good. it's a broader societal issue. it's, you know to be considered successful in your family. i don't think it means having a four year. i've, you know, ivy league degree that probably doesn't prepare you necessarily the workforce and really get taking a hard look at european style apprenticeships investing in i mean i had a major defense contractor that was looking for some help on some things i said but i'd like to see or at my stem elementary school and you know start identifying these kids in this workforce early inspire them. i had astronauts going there have the leader of the space force going there and it's now turned into a feeder to. aeronautical university, which a space incubator for new companies. i mean, it's all the way through that kind of human value chain from elementary school where

they were building robots in the second grade to. a space incubator where looking at putting additive 3d manufacturing in space, that kind of solves your physics problem of having to launch all your gear up there right? and so i congress's role, i like to look at incentives, rather than throwing money at a problem, because incentives, different behaviors, then you a big bucket of money for companies dip into and do i mean in order to do this we had a federal budget for which we don't have the c.r. every year we have a c.r. we what's the way out of this? i mean, are you going to beat me up for a seahawks. yeah, i it's it's frustrating as hell i'm pounding the table. you know, i look i get beat up politically, vote against them because they're so bad for the but then there's always something there that, you know, i'll get get beat up by the other side. i can't believe you voted against that or to shut down the government or what have you. i think until we toe the line on

this and force everybody to do their job, it's it's it's been a huge frustration to and whenever i get asked in groups what are some of your bigger frustrations? congress. that's one of them. yeah, right. but i think that's going to, you know, that's really going to be a leadership issue to say enough is enough. and i'm certainly doing what i can with my voting card. okay. and then we have to wrap in a few minutes, but i wanted to get to one contentious issue before we end here. and bob woodward's new book, he quotes mark, former joint chairman of the joint chiefs, calling donald trump a fascist. and then woodward, when on tv, i think yesterday and said that mattis agrees yeah. so. does one of your your response to those comments a from a retired four star general which is unprecedented. i mean, since maybe someone like eisenhower. right in the in fifties. so just the response and and are you concerned about the

political politicalization of the of the military? yeah, i am. and i don't think mark milley comments are helping the situation because he was not elected. trump was. and if someone who puts name on the ballot goes through that vetting other year essentially what you're doing is calling the million 80 million people that voted for him. you know, somehow they got duped or they're stupid, rather than looking at, you know, he is a more of a symptom of some things we have seen over the years in terms of wages that have been flat forgotten, middle class in middle america and places like ohio, where manufacturing left and the void was filled with opioids and fentanyl, whole areas of appalachia. i think vance really talks this and in a very artful way people who don't understand like i was

saying because it hasn't been explained very well. wait a minute. you know, i am horribly underpaid as a teacher, a first responder, yet i'm seeing billions go to pay for teachers or first responders or a homeless veteran who comes to me and says wait a minute, why am i seeing a hotel, the street full of illegal immigrants when i was willing to fight and die for my country? so these are those are all kinds of issues that trump has spoken to or is trying to address, trying to disrupt. and when i look at what he actually got done, set the rhetoric aside, whether it was justice reform that democrats been asking for for decades via, reform the va mission act, veterans choice that veterans have been asking for for decades none of those got done once in a generation. tax reform, securing our border dealing with the same mexican government that was there, that biden was dealing with in terms of remain in mexico and getting their national guard on their southern border. the abraham accords.

you know, we had isis largely defeated. iran broke peace deals on the white house law and the pivot to china, which he undeniably was the first to do and on and so when i think about and i already talked about the space force, other things that were disruptive and in my mind know the the of the false narrative that was tested this most recent republican primary is well we like these america first we like these policies u.s. see a new name to all of these deals that he got done or even minority opportunity that he also got done. but we don't like the leader. well, that's you know, in my mind like saying okay we want space x but we don't like elon, we like apple and everything that they did, but we like steve jobs. well, oftentimes disruptors aren't the nicest of guys and and and i think you you get

someone who is willing and a businessman has the capability to disrupt the same old same old in washington dc that a lot of americans feel like is not serving them. representative mike waltz and by the way, can i just speak more thing to general? i deeply respect his service, but i will tell you, i will never vote for a general as a former general, as secretary of defense before and now lloyd austin hadn't done it in many decades, going back to world two and george c marshall and you know, i just don't think we need another general overseeing other generals and it's not necessarily criticism of them. it's just the skill sets that they bring. we need someone from civil society from business from law, you know the essence of civilian oversight of the military are those broader skills or from industry that can look at our

acquisition and process and really reform it, change it or what have you. so appreciate general mattis's service, but i just obviously for all the reasons i just listed and then that just kind of approach i think we need a different type of leadership in the pentagon. representative mike was author of the new book hard truths coming up right before the the big election. thank you so much for doing it was it was i enjoyed reading the book kind of trace tying together your time as a green beret ceo of a company. and then in government was was was a very journey to go on in the book so thank you for for well thank and if i can throw one more thing out there now none of the royalties are coming to me they're going to the matthew pitino foundation and the foundation for one of my green berets that i lost and their family and to the green beret foundation. so all the veterans charities and thank you so much to everybody who who buy it and

take a look. it's great, guys.

rebecca nagle is an award winning reporter, writer citizen of the cherokee nation, a creator and host of crooked media's chart topping podcast, this land. her work has been featured in the atlantic the washington post, the guardian, usa and many other publications and by the

fire carry rebecca tell the story of the long fight for tribal land and sovereignty in eastern oklahoma, in a rave review from author to miles, she says in a fiery, as chilling as a legal thriller lays bare centuries of in oklahoma in the southeastern, from which the american government exiled ancestors and thousands of other peoples by the fire we carry is a clear and courageous call for justice. please join me in welcoming rebecca nagle. oco the god. hi everyone. so excited and to be here. thank you for coming out on a hot tuesday boston or what it's friday. sorry, it's been a long week. don't know into the week. it is. thanks for coming out on a friday to hear about my work. i'm so so what we're going to do

tonight i'm going to do reading and then we'll open it up to q and a's does. that sounds good. okay, so the book goes into a supreme court case called mcgirt, oklahoma, which resulted in the largest restoration of tribal land, u.s. history. but the book also talks about the history of our tribe being removed from our homelands in the southeast, two west of the mississippi. and so i'm going to read an excerpt from that chunk of the book served there. and then we'll i'll explain the second excerpt. so what's happening so far in this part of the book and this is kind of in the middle of the book, the state of georgia georgia has come up with this policy of harassing cherokee nation and harassing cherokee citizens to try and force us leave. but the supreme court ruled that that was illegal and georgia had to stop.

but then president andrew jackson to ignore the supreme court and john ridge is my great, great great grandfather and major ridges to his dad. and they have been trying to find a political solution to the crisis facing cherokee nation. and now they're deciding that there may not be one. all right. we'll get started. from its education and years of diplomacy, john could see what was politically arguably more than most of his fellow cherokees. john began thinking about the previously unthinkable, signing away the land of their ancestors in exchange for land at west. it's a heartbreak many oppressed people have known, but one we don't like to talk about because it shatters our notions of. the heartbreak. giving up on justice. because. know it's not possible. what had changed was not john's desire for cherokee nation to

remain in their homeland. it his hope in their private even andrew jackson. since the emotional reversal taking place inside the cherokee leader in a letter to an old war buddy. jackson called it despair. major ridge. john ridge and elias boudinot. what's the next three years? writing petitions, making speeches and trying convince their fellow cherokees to support a removal treaty removal to was the only option in which cherokees as a people and a nation would survive. did act in such emergencies as these for our private comfort. they wrote one letter. we choose to die here and bury our bones in the land of our fathers, where white people might desecrate our with the plowshare of the farmer. but when we think of our children, they pleaded, we will at all hazards, seek freedom in far regions of the west.

on december 29th, 1835, the met in the home of elias, though an elected or appointed by the cherokee people, they signed their names to the of new a chota. unable to read or write in english, major ridge signed his name with an ax. he told the others. i have signed my death warrant. it is thing to choose a death of honor. it is another to choose a death of. disgrace. the riches forfeited their lives for the cherokee, knowing they would be remembered not for their sacrifice, but for their treason. the treaty was wholly under chronic and illegal. the cherokee people had voted down the removal treaty through their elected representative and public meetings. multiple times by circumventing democracy. the treaty denied cherokees the right to think for themselves.

the parties justification for their illegal act was the immense suffering the cherokee people. but shouldn't the cherokee people, as they argued at the time, decide best how to relieve their own suffering and under the treaty, their suffering would get immeasurably worse. historians still debate whether or not the united states committed genocide against peoples. the crime has never been acknowledged by our government. at the time, the term did not exist. the word genocide combines the greek prefix hemos, meaning race or tribe and latin suffix si de meaning. in 1948, the crime was defined the united nations as the intent to destroy in whole in part, a national ethnic or racial or religious group by one or more

acts of physical violence. the cherokee for our removal is dictator less than the e. it literally means when drove us. it's the same word we use to talk about hurting animals to. prepare the army, split logs, drove them into the ground lengthwise and built 25 open air stockades. the majority of cherokee people believe, the treaty was still being renegotiated that if successful, they would stay. earlier that they had planted their fields of corn. looking towards the fall harvest. but on may 23rd. 1838. 7000 us soldiers and militiamen went out into the hills and valleys of cherokee nation to round them all up. cherokee, startled by bayonets in their gardens or kitchens, weren't allowed to collect any possessions for the journey or find missing loved ones at gunpoint. the militia, a woman in labor

from remote valley town to the main concentration camp. even after she gave birth. they would not let her rest. finally, on a riverbank, the stockade she laid down and died. the army the army was woefully unprepared. feed and house. its thousands of captives. the open air stockade provided no shelter or sanitation by fall cherokees had buried 2000 of their fellow citizens. as a newspaper reported the time. that is one eighth of the whole number in less than four months. when cherokees marched west that winter, death followed, people walked over a thousand miles. their footsteps left a trench in the earth. although the exact number is unknown, one missionary estimated 4000 people died between camps and removal.

that was a quarter of the total population and people blamed the ridges. on the morning of june 22nd, 1839, john ridge and his family awoke to a loud noise. a group, armed men kicked in their front door. they dragged john from his bed into the front yard. two men held. two men held john's body while others held out. two men held. john's arms while the others held his. they stabbed him 29 times. they threw john's body up into the air and stomped on his chest until. it caved in. then its quickly, as they had appeared. they left. john was still alive when his wife sarah was finally to reach him. he tried to speak to her. but all that out of his mouth was blood. sarah center. sarah center runner to major ridge of the danger.

but the runner returned with the news. major ridge was also dead by my grandmother. i was raised to believe the assassins were vengeful and wrong as an adult, however, i do not agree. for what they did, i think ridges had to die. the ridges are still considered traitors by a majority of cherokees. a fate i think they accepted before their deaths. if what they had been trying to save was their own legacies, they would have never signed that treaty. what i believe they truly cared about, however, did come true. cherokees as, a nation and a people are still here. thank you. if you guys to join us there are a couple extra seats over here we just asked you put a facemask on if you can. i think there's some face masks over there. oh, they're right there. yeah, there's a couple of seats

here. don't know if there's any other open seats along the. don't want to make you stand the whole time. okay. so then i'm to do read another little excerpt. so the supreme court case. mcgirt v oklahoma was about whether or not the muskogee nation still had a reservation that was sort of the central question at the supreme court. muskogee nation argued only congress can get rid of a reservation. and there was no act of congress that disestablished the reservation. oklahoma. well, no one's recognized that reservation in over century so it'd be crazy to say that it still exists, which isn't how the law works, but was what oklahoma was hoping would happen. and so this is the part of the book that talks about the ultimate supreme court decision in that case. and we'll start we'll start that. on the far end of the trail of

tears was a promise. the opinion began. forced to leave their ancestral lands in georgia and alabama, creek nation received assurances that their new lands in the west would be secure forever. today we are asked whether the lands these treaties set aside remain american indian reservation, the purposes of federal criminal law because congress has not said otherwise. we hold the government to its word. the first month of summer in oklahoma was hot and dry for weeks was nowhere in sight. the lush weeds, wildflowers, grass turned brown and crisp. their edges. even the trees. tired. that morning, sky cracked open. it poured a hard pelting rain that pooled in the dirt. it was as if earth knew. you can deny a what is rightfully theirs for only so long.

eventually, something must give that day across oklahoma, tribal citizens. the decision with joy and abundance. but it was a joy that also cut hard and. our blood and our bones knew how much had been lost to reach this one act of justice. according chief justice roberts, who authored the dissent. it was improbable that, unbeknownst anyone for the past century, a huge swath of oklahoma was actually a creek indian reservation. but for cheyenne and muskogee, advocate elder and writer suzanne harjo, in that century lies, a lesson. tribes have keep asserting their sovereignty. there has to be native people who are saying, this is who we are. this is what we do. this is what we have responsibility for. these are rights that we have. says no matter what kind of

trickery, there has been to try convince us otherwise. for harjo the mcgirt decision is why native people cannot be deterred by the losses that we face even when it a century of loss. because we're on a longer timeline anyways, says harjo. we're just not on the same timeline as other peoples are in this country. we are in a much longer. one backward. and forwards. and a lot of things are going to be straightened out along the way because. they are to blame blatant to stand the history of tribal land in the united states has moved for the most part. in direction prior to july 9th, 2020. american reservations made up only 2% of all land in the united states, or about 56 million acres. to put that in perspective. nearly hundred million acres is reserved. national forests in the

expansion of this great nation. our government set aside more for trees than for indigenous people. the mcgirt resulted in the large restoration of tribal land in u.s. history. taken together, the five tribes reservation cover. 19 million acres, about half the land in oklahoma and most of the city of tulsa. it is an area larger than west virginia and nine other u.s. states. the historic status of mcgirt is ironic when. you understand what happened legally. the supreme court didn't overturn anything, strike anything down, or change its own precedent. all it did was follow the law. but still, that was. most often when or non when it comes to tribal sovereignty. the us government is spineless.

most often when states non-native people want something that belongs to a tribe. whether it's gold, oil or power. they get it. even when the law clearly protects the tribe, greed, not justice, has governed more of our history than we are willing to admit. the lesson of mcgirt is that when the law is on our side and, we fight really hard justice prevails. the lesson is that although justice for indigenous nations is rare in our it is possible. there is an easy mistake to make in telling the story this case, which is to say the reservation was given back to the tribe. this would be despite oklahoma's position in this case, despite everything that was taken from our tribes, our reserve nations were never abolished. and you can't give back what already to someone.

and one of the darkest chapters of american history, this land, was promised to us for as long as the grows or water runs in eastern oklahoma. the grass is still growing. the water still running, our fire still. and we are still here. and despite the grave injustice of history, our legal right to our land never ended. thank you. we've got think we've got one more chair right here. if looking for a place to sit. okay. come on down here. okay, so we've got a couple more chairs if anyone's looking for a place to stay. oh, we got three more chairs. so anybody who doesn't want to stand if your legs a break or your feet need a break. come. feel to come. join us. all right, we're going to open it up. questions.

does anybody have a question they would like to ask? don't be shy. yes. so wanted to know a little bit about the relationship between governor stitt and and the tribe, specifically in the context, the mcgirt decision, like, how has that how has that relationship been navigated in terms of like the of the state and the interests of the interests of the tribe, especially when governor is that is is a member. yeah. yeah. so that was a question about our our very interesting in oklahoma, man named kevin stitt, who is a citizen of cherokee nation and, the question was kind of like how, has the mcgirt decision impacted the relationship between the tribe and oklahoma? so we'll just we'll talk a little for some background. so in the 1880s, so a very long

time ago, but not that long ago, but long time ago, in the 1880s, there were a group of brothers with the last name of dawson and they decided that they wanted to try and be a citizen of one of the tribes in what was then indian territory, because they thought that that would give them access to free land and they to cherokee nation. but they had some pretty flimsy evidence and it didn't really look like their citizenship case was going to go through. and then they hired a lawyer that later time in jail for mail fraud and he bribed a court clerk that was part of the cherokee nation court. so our tribe at the time and through bribe what it appears happened is they were able to bribe their way into citizenship many years later. one of the decision of the dawson brothers ran governor of oklahoma and won and campaigned on the idea that he knows how

best to deal with tribes in the state because he himself is a citizen of one and then he took office the the relationship the tribes in the state really broke down. so you know his administration and he had a huge fight with tribes over how much of our gaming revenues we paid to the state. even just like small petty. you know, i talked to tribal leaders who wanted to work with the department of transportation to help fund a bridge project in a rural community or like by a state that was kind of falling apart. the tribe was going to invest in it and those things under state fell down. so when there was a supreme court decision in that about 40% of the land in oklahoma, 43% was now going to be under the jurisdiction of tribes, not the state senate. and some leaders some close leaders around him really kind

of flipped out and did not like that. and so they took extraordinary step of asking the supreme court to the decision. 50 times and didn't succeed in getting the to be completely overturned. what they did get the supreme court to do was to chip away at it and to give states more power on reservations to prosecute certain crimes, more more power than states had. and that that supreme court decision came down in 2022 and it's called the castro. where does oklahoma castro? where do. and so and i would say our tribes are still kind of living that backlash. so like there, are municipalities that like don't like if get a traffic ticket, the traffic ticket has to go tribal court rather than going through like a city or county court.

but those cities and counties are still trying to just give tickets to citizens even though they don't have the authority to do that. so are sort of all of these things where, every little inch of what the. mcgirt decision means, we're having to fight for. and so the backlash has been very intense. yes, so good question. thank you. i think i saw a question over here or. oh my right here. i'm curious about titles. land were affected the mcgirt decision. so the question is how were titles land affected. and so the short answer is not at all. and so reservation status doesn't affect just of like same, you know, think of like a city expanding, right? like a city annex in an area and saying, okay, like now this part of boston, that expansion of

that city government changes like who collects there, like who prosecutes crimes there? you know, who your mayor is. but it doesn't affect like private property ownership. and so none of the private property ownership was changed because of reservation status. and so there wasn't any impact to that. and the book goes into this a little bit but that had actually changed in the early 1900s. so we had our originally our tribes had originally owned all of our land communally. and then through this policy called. that land was broken up and assigned to individual tribal citizens. and that was the time. and then quickly a lot of it was changed hands from tribally owned from tribal citizens to white hands because of swindle and theft and grafting and just sort of a level criminality that is hard to and even like you

can't exaggerate how bad it was. and so that's kind of how oklahoma became a state. so since statehood, there's been that sort of layer of like private property ownership on the reservations, if that makes sense. great question, though. yeah. over there i think through your talk i was curious how like if in the long history that you're exploring in book, if you talk about like the moral act or like how like land universities are like factoring into the like, oh, york state. yeah, i, i didn't get into land grant universities, but to just speak to that a little bit. so there are a lot of universal cities that have had lands to help sort of funds like raise part of their like really important early funding. and a lot of times that land came indigenous land seizures. and so it's one of the many ways

that free stolen indigenous land built intergenerational wealth built, also institutions in us. and so that is an important topic, but know the book the book doesn't touch on that specific but good question. okay. yeah. right here in the distance podcast, you talk a little bit about how law schools don't teach about like native rights and land law. i'm now a student at the public policy school here. i was wondering if you could speak like government electives about state or federal level. what do you think elected don't know about kind of native lands? yeah, that's a really good question. so in one of the chapters of the book oh, let me see if i can actually find it. share some really like choice from some supreme court justices as of yonder oh here they are. so so one time sandra day

o'connor asked if all the white people living on oneida land would be evicted if the tribe's land rights were acknowledged. chief justice roberts and 2013 asked a series of questions about how citizenship works kind of betraying the fact that, like he clearly doesn't know, including if people just like feel that they're cherokee and think culturally they're cherokee. if they can be a citizen of a cherokee tribe. during oral arguments in the same case that was about who can adopt native children. stephen breyer who was a liberal justice asked if the law would native men to rape non native women and keep the baby and then as recently as 2020, justice alito asked statement that before the arrival of europeans that indigenous nations were all at war with each other, as if the arrival of europeans, is what brought peace to this.

so think that the ignorance is pretty alive and well and you know, it goes on and on like you brought up season two in that case and during oral arguments of the circuit one of the chief judge of the fifth circuit or she was then the chief judge made a comment about she's trying to find like a hypothetical. and she was talking about native people in dui as native people getting a lot of dui. so is the stereotype about native people drinking. there's a person running for senate in montana who has some really racist comments recently about native people and drinking. and so, you know, the way i think about it is that i think one of the ways that anti-indigenous functions in the united states today is through erasure. and so when you look at like k through 12 education, when you look at law school, when you look at college, but also when you look at like the and pop

culture and our media environment, there's just almost no information about native people. and then what publicly known, whether it's like pocahontas, thanksgiving, it's wrong. you know. and i think that that is one of the really big barriers that we have towards having better policy in this country. there's this tulalip sociologist named dr. stephanie, and she's done a lot of really great. and what she's shown in her research is that sort of like people not having like seen contemporary native creates this kind of stubborn stereotype in a lot of people's minds that native people are less like real like the almost like that we're not like we're not still alive or. we're like, not fully human, something like that. it's kind of hard. explain. but yeah. and so i think i personally think that until we've i think

we have to do both. i think, you know, getting better curriculum in law schools, especially like top law schools where like those people are going go on to be like our senators and supreme court justices. i think that kind of targeted stuff is really important. but i think we really also need to focus on the culture at large because i think until we have a public that understands the issues better, i think, our leaders are going to reflect the ignorance of the people who put them in power. if that makes sense. and so i think that but yeah, i think that, that, that education piece is really important. so thank you. great question. okay. in the back, if you could, into sort of describing the cherokee nation after they decided to assimilate in georgia and set up a established news show to and such, and how they they listened people who told them, if only

they were more liked, the white people around them they'd be fine. yeah, that's a really interesting. yeah. so the question was, do i talk about assimilation within cherokee nation in this period of the 1820s, 1830s, the answer is yes. the ridges were actually like really big part of that. and so early on us presidents had told indigenous nations that if they could live more like people, they could stay on there land. and so it's kind of i like we don't have this understanding, but at the time it was kind of presented as a choice. it was like, okay, well if you want to continue with the traditional lifestyle, you need to move west. but if you want to stay here or you have to assimilate. and cherokee nation, you know, sent young people to like white missionary schools cause there are all these reports think a

lot of the reports are kind of inflate it like i think the average cherokee person was not living as close to white society as some people like the ridges like john ross. but i think they would try to present themselves and it was also just kind of trying to prove this point that indigenous people aren't in heavenly, inferior, but that they can be just as smart and just as productive as white people. and it's really this active of the debate around removal like southern lawmakers are saying, oh like they're not really doing any of these things cherokee nation. there's just white people who are doing it for them. so there's like this active debate of like what indigenous people are even like capable of, but nation like remakes also a lot of the pressure to assimilate. it was also very practical so like one thing was that like our town is used to operate autonomously even like the decision to go to war would made on a community level but. then the united states started manipulating that to get smaller

land sessions from individual tribes. we came together under a centralized government and so the pressure of colonization made us change our government hunting unsustainable because of us know we used to have one of the reasons we had so much land because a lot of it wasn't necessarily for living but was for hunting. and a lot of times hunting land was the land that we lost first because it was really easy for illegal squatters to move onto that land. it was it is much harder us to protect. and so there wasn't enough land and there wasn't enough wild game to hunt. and so some of these changes were for practical reasons then some of it was for political reasons. and i think it's also in the book goes into this too. it's really important to talk about the mistakes that we made while we were assimilating to white society. and one of those places where we we a lot of harm was we adopted

chattel slavery from the us south and so by the late 1700s you see in dividual cherokees enslaving people of african descent and then but black cherokees have a clan who have a cherokee clan either through adoption or through birth, are still fully cherokee, and then in the 1820s, that policy kind splits. and we pass a law where you're black, you can't be cherokee and you can't have citizenship. and so we had the institution of chattel slavery in our laws from the 1820s through the end of the civil. we fought on the side of the confederacy, the civil war, and then the descendants of the people that we enslaved have had fight for citizenship in modern government and only achieved that citizenship in 2017. so like very recently. and so i think that that's one of the legacies of this period of assimilation is anti-black

racism and how that became a part of our tribe and. i think i personally think that, you know, i'm i'm glad that finally that freedmen descendants have citizenship in cherokee nation. but i think citizenship is also just like kind of one step on that path to repair and that we still have a lot of work do but that's a great question. it's complicated and the book gets into it like i talk about like john ridge going to white missionary schools and sort of and it's just this very complicated thing where they're learning these tools of white society and sometimes they're using them quite effectively, you know, like you think about the cherokee phenix and what an advocacy that was at that time or how you know what skilled diplomats like people like john ridge and john ross became. but then there are these aspects white supremacy that we also incorporated that i think i think hurts our tribe still, you know so yeah, that was a good

question. okay. i yeah. do you want to asking the question? yeah. so to what extent do you think justice gorsuch wrote the mcgirt decision because he's from colorado and know something about the west? yeah, i think that so the question was about justice gorsuch, who authored the decision. so what's interesting about gorsuch is like he he was appointed in cji, came out very publicly in favor of him. and so people had looked at his record on the 10th circuit and said, hey, like, think he's going to be good for tribes? they were very correct. and so you know a lot of people are kind of surprised that because he's a trump appointee, he's a conservative justice. but tribal sovereignty doesn't easily fit into these buckets of conservative and liberal it it

works differently than a lot of other kind ways. you know, we think about like civil liberties or things that we fight for, for marginalized groups. the rights are held collectively, the tribe and are also very different. you know, we're talking about like land and natural resources and water versus other things. and so yeah, so i think that there can be that disconnect. gorsuch, i think, has a very strong view, and this is really the way he almost wrote the. mcgirt was rebuke of what a lot of justices do is when the law okay, this is what belongs to the tribe but that's in can for a state or for a large number of non-native people. the court will kind of bend or break the rules.

and gorsuch, in his mcgirt decision, really wrote about how that's wrong. and one of the things he says is, he says, wouldn't allow this in any other area of the law. so why do we allow it here? and another really good line he has is he said that's would be the rule of the strong, the rule of the law to basically oklahoma for acting as there wasn't a reservation for a hundred years. by then after century saying, you know what, you're right. like it would be crazy to say there's a reservation now. so that's gorsuch's legacy far on the supreme court. so we'll see how. that works out. but i think it did have a lot to do with him having. more experience with tribes like he got on to the bench, but i think also his i think has a very clear view of if the law says the tribe has this right. we we follow the law and it's not our place is the court to rewrite the law which not every justice. i think i saw a question up

here. oh well i felt colorado. i remember having seen some articles regarding a a trail called the cherokee trace that was named after people who were from the cherokee tribe who when most of the tribal talk oklahoma had passed to it in georgia and for prosper hunting in colorado. oh, i haven't heard i've heard of people. there was a group of people that broke off and went to what is now texas or like then mexico. i've heard about that. and then there's the eastern band where, the descendents of people who stayed. but i don't i don't know about people in colorado but there's we're a big tribe so people people said it was a relatively small group of pioneers and creating a trail. oh cool. oh cool. i'll have to look that up. thank you for sharing that. yeah. up here here, nations are in a similar state going through the

legal system now that we've been following cherokee nations in this particular case. yeah. and so and so the mcgirt decision was specifically about muskogee nation. so another tribe in oklahoma. so the mcgirt decision was about or not the muskogee nation a reservation and there was a thinking before the decision came out that it would likely apply to all the tribes in eastern oklahoma because the the question was did congress ever get rid of the muskogee reservation? and there are laws that are different, but a lot of the laws that applied to muskogee nation when oklahoma was kind of created on top of their treaty territory also applied to what's the five tribes. so it's muskogee nation my tribe cherokee and then also the chickasaw choctaws and seminoles. and so we all originally were the southeast and were removed to what is now oklahoma and then

went through some of the same, the same process of allotment when oklahoma was created. and so the answer is yes. so the supreme court decision came on july nine for 2020, and then about a year later in the spring of 2021, lower courts, oklahoma affirmed the reservations of those four other tribes and then actually there are some smaller tribes with some treaty territories in the north northeastern corner of oklahoma. and there's a number of those reservations that have been affirmed and a more that are still under litigation. but in terms of the direct application of mcgirt so far, it's just in oklahoma because in the court decision they didn't like change the rules for whether like how courts are supposed to decide side whether or not a reservation exists. they just like follow the rules. so it's not like, oh, here's a

new test of a reservation. this they just like use the existing test. it was just like, what radical was that? they didn't make up a rule to get rid of the reservation because that's like literally what the courts do when they don't like what where the rules them. but good question, hayley. i'm not sure if you touch on this in the book, but was wondering if you could speak a little bit to like our right to a congressional delegate kind of fits into the broader political landscape and like how maybe seeding county he would move us forward with our relationship with the federal government. yeah, absolutely. so my cousin hailey asked the question was about our right to delegate in congress so there are two treaties with cherokee nation that promise tribe a delegate in congress, the treaty of new chota which is the one my ancestors signed, and then also

the treaty of and is a treaty promise that's actually been fulfilled by the us government and under our current principle chief and administration they're starting to assert that treaty rights. we have a congressional that has been appointed. she has not been seated in congress. and so there was a big push get her seated when. democrats controlled the house but didn't happen. and so, yeah, i think it's one of those it's one of the many examples of it's very clear that this is what the treaty says this is like no getting around it. and according to our constitution, even if we put something in a treaty supposed to fulfill it. so it's like one of the many examples of treaty obligations that are not being being. yeah. in the back. the name of representative, as

you mentioned. oh yeah. her name is, kim tee. yeah. yes, right there. rebecca, can you talk about maybe something that you felt was most surprising to in the researching and writing of this book and perhaps something like something that was that was the biggest challenge. oh, okay. so the question was in the research, what the most surprising? um, i, you know, it's hard to pick one thing, but one thing that i think i, i feel like we don't have a cultural was, was how much resistance there was to at the time what was removal what we would now call the trail of tears. so when the policy was introduced in congress, there was a protest movement. it was the largest petition drive in u.s. history. it was kind of one of the first big political petition drives.

like before that, petitions to congress about things like postal routes and like the placement of like a new lighthouse. and it was actually the first political public action taken by women. so women petitions at a time where it was kind of like seen that women weren't supposed to do things like that and the bill kind of barely got through congress and a lot of people argued and i think accurately that most of the people were opposed to it and it getting through congress had a lot to do. the, um, the uneven representation that south had because of the 3/5 clause, because the south was where there were still a lot of indigenous land, those states really wanted people gone. so yeah, i think that we think of the treatment of indigenous people as inevitable or people will say things like, oh, we can't judge history by today's standards. but when you look at, you know, the opposition and it was really kind of people in places like boston but like northern ern

christian were the sort of white northern christians that created this huge movement to try and stop it. and i think it's this chapter of u.s. history that is really forgotten and a lot of those people then became abolitionist. and so and it's not that the abolition obviously the movement existed, but wasn't at what we think of it. yeah. and so a lot of those people became part of that movement once it got bigger. yeah, that was that something i didn't know. okay. in the back right there in the middle of my question is, you mentioned that when the bill was in congress, it was debated and someone also like upon the unawareness that, a large swath of people have with respect to this issue. could you just point out like a few points that the adversaries who are not you know, who are sort of not in favor of this bill getting passed in the congress and just to like

address like what form of unawareness do people have who like, you know, oppose this bill? yeah. so so the name of the bill was the indian act and it passed. in 1830. it was president andrew signature policy. and basically it didn't it gave the administration the power to treat with tribes, but it basically like laid the groundwork for all nations that were what were what was then the united states, which was a different map than what we have now for those indigenous nations to be pushed west of the mississippi. and the people who opposed it had strong arguments. so at the time. it was a very like religious. and so i mean, people just felt like it was sinful to treat indigenous nations poorly. like they just felt like it was a sin. and so.

there was this one passage where like somebody talking about seeing one of them, i think was john, but seeing indigenous people like feel sad when they were in halls of congress when the bill passed and that person that this like christian person is like writing to the newspaper and talking about how like we've taught them to be christian and they pray to our god and they're going to pray to our god for justice. and in this situation where, the oppressor. and there was a lot of language about how god would punish the united states for sin of removal. and so were very harsh in how they saw it. there are other of the bill was that the majority of us citizens opposed and that it was basically getting like shoved through. and so the other argument was well, you know because this is like the us is kind of still in its adolescence and there's still all these conversations

about like what kind of country, what kind of democracy will we be? and so they make these arguments that that this like harm the fabric of our democracy and for two reasons. one is that treaties are the supreme law of the land according to the constitution. so if like were this young republic and we're not even following our own, like, what the hell kind of country are we to be like? how is our democracy supposed to? and then this point is that because majority of people in the us oppose this, if it gets put through, we're no longer a government that governs according to the will of the people and they had some like really big and. they did not use like like quiet. i mean all very like 19th century where like sometimes you have to like read it twice to understand what the person saying because like even though they had a right, everything hand they like said everything with like 15 more words than is necessary. i don't know if anybody else is

like spent time with those like early 1800s documents are like and then you wrote this by hand and somebody else had to like copy it by hand. you all are copy with my hand. you don't shorten this up just like, well, well well, it's. but then so they say in this very like petty language. but what they're saying is like very -- in how they think that it will. one of the quotes that is the book is that somebody after the bill passes, somebody says that will place a stain. our country that can never be washed can't the the case make it more difficult to achieve justice for native victims of sexual violence? i know that the native american woman experience sexual crimes like a disproportionate levels. yeah, that's a great question. so the question is, does the castro where it the case, impact violence against women? so the castro court case, the cookie that the supreme gave

oklahoma because it cried around about mcgirt basically and that cookie was the ability for states to prosecute crimes if perpetrator is non-native but the victim is native. so before that case states couldn't prosecute crimes of either the perpetrator or victim was native. and now they got like a piece of that back. and if you're like, that sounds really complicated i'm like, welcome to criminal jurisdiction on tribal lands. it's endlessly complicated. and then the supreme made it more complicated. and so their thinking was that this would help victims because now if you're a native victim of crime on, a reservation, the state can prosecute the perpetrator, the tribe can prosecute the perpetrator and the feds can prosecute the perpetrator. so like your case is really going to get parts executed and what actually happens that everyone just kind of passes the

buck? and so there's been a lot of studies and i don't know that we have castro where it specific data but there were already states that shared that had kind of overlapping criminal jurisdiction of an older law called play to 80 again very complicated. but that that that those have seen where states share that jurisdiction reservoir nations get less law enforcement resources so they get like less actual real dollars because. everyone is strapped for resources when they're like, oh well the state will take care of that. the feds are like, oh, you know, or state thinks, oh, the feds will take care of that. and there has been some other surveys where people who live on reservations with that kind of overlapping jurisdiction less safe. so for this crisis of violence facing native women, i think that it'll make worse. you know, and i think there's a lot of evidence to back that up.

all right. let just check the time. okay. so we probably have time for a couple. questions to got 5 minutes left. yeah, they're in the back. so what's ahead for you is there a book coming? and then beyond that, what issues are you researching now? oh, that's a good question i'm just trying to make it mostly, but no, i the next thing i really want to write about is allotment. so that policy that privatized our lands, i think we're just starting to talk about kind of the osage murders and the tulsa race massacre. i and this what happened to the five tribes was also extremely it was about 20 years before, those things. and i think it hasn't i think it hasn't been fully document and it hasn't been talked about

enough. and so that's one thing i would really like to do so we know that you know, it didn't work well for tribal citizens but i think that there's like a level of criminal guilty of what happened to citizens. i talk about one woman who she's a muskogee woman named molly hakki, who when she was a little baby was assigned very valuable oil land and was assigned a guardian. and then right before 18th birthday, she was kidnaped and actually kind of held hostage by an oil prospector to try and get her to sign over her land. and that was actually not the end of her saga because when she finally was free from her. she was declared legally incompetent and assigned a legal guardian, which was also extremely common in oklahoma. if you a native and you held valuable land and.

so she had a guardian intel died in 1996 and so i think there's a i think what i really want to do is go look, people like molly know who had valuable oil because the same thing like at the same time that happened oil was discovered. and so the most literally most productive oil fields the world were by citizens of the five tribes and yeah, a lot crimes happen to those people that i feel like. we haven't really delved into enough. yes, up here. um, i'm curious about the the the original language and the, the quick adoption of english by the the cherokee, which is a story in itself. but but i, but i'm wondering was was that also true in the case of the five tribes. yeah. and did that affect your research like the ability to

read documents written yet from the period. yeah, that's a good question. so the question is about like, ah, like us adopting english and how cherokee. yeah. writing in cherokee and how that documents from the and so yeah it's what's really cool like starting in about the 1820s you can really read things from cherokee voices which is so great because so much of the historical is white people in very blatantly racist terms. writing about native people. that's like the documentation that we have. and so what's very cool about things like the phenix, you know, like the ross, all the petitions and all the letters that cherokee sent to congress, all these records that we have you can really hear things in. cherokee voices are. we also created a writing system, the 1820s, a guy named

sequoyah. and so what's really cool is we had the first tribally run newspaper in, the country, the cherokee phenix, an uncle a great uncle of mine, helped run it. a guy named, elias, good or not. and it was bilingual wasn't cherokee and an english. and i cite in there a work of a scholar named constance owl and she with tom bell and oh, i think wiggins black fox another cherokee translator. and what they did is they went back the old papers and what they found was, it's not like a translation. it's like there's the english and then the cherokee version is the same. they're like, hold articles that don't appear in english. and so cherokees are doing this very sophisticated ad thing where they have this paper where the that elias is putting there in the phenix getting reprinted in like white papers. it's kind of almost like a blog like people are taking what cherokees are saying and reprinting them across the country and white people to the paper they mail it across the country it becomes kind of like a mouthpiece. but then they're also once we

our writing system, cherokees become literate very quickly. and so they're having conversation in cherokee, like amongst themselves through the paper, which is really some the documents. one of the documents that i spent a lot of time with that was really cool with nation and looking at the words of muskogee leaders was right. the treaty of indian springs 1825. and what's cool about documents is that my john ridge for a period of time worked as a diplomat and as a translator for muskogee. so there are these letters from leaders like to the government that my ancestor actually like translated for them and is writing for them. and that's in hancock 98. but the series of documents kind of as after congress asked for an investigation around some of the stuff, the treaty of indian springs.

so yeah, i think that that's a really great question and one of the things i really liked in primary sources in doing the research because so often i think and you can read a lot i read a lot of history books were like you're learning about like the army captain and you're learning about like the general and their perspective. this bureaucrat in washington. and then when i would get into the primary sources, i'm like, i understand how historians are telling it from these perspectives because these are the perspectives that you're reading in the documents. but i think it's so important to try to tell things from an indigenous. and that's what's cool about. some of those documents is that you can do that and you do that in a way that's not guessing. you can it in a way that is genuine and based on the research. so okay, i think we can squeeze in one last question. i'm trying. and enforcement jurisdiction in their investigations.

yeah. yeah. so the question is, is the goal of full jurisdiction. yes. so for folks who don't know tribes have limited criminal jurisdiction on our reservations. so we can't prosecute non-native people on our land for most crimes, there are some exceptions because of the violence against women act specifically to help the crisis of violence against native women. you can basically you can go on to a reservation in and you can like punch someone the face or like steal a pack of gum and the tribe can't prosecute you. and that of course, has led to a lot of problems. yeah, i think lot of a lot of people have called for the full restoration of criminal jurisdiction on tribal land as a solution to that. well, i think we have to end it. there thank you, everyone, so much for coming.

good evening, everyone. good evening. we are about to start. so my name is arsen and with the boulder bookstore, i'm event host tonight. thank you for being here