book "type rope." >> people born in the small towns around america, people are walking on a tight rope. one miss and they fall. there is no safety net. >> over the last 50 years we with thise obsessed personal responsibility narrative, blaming the people who fall off the tight rope for the catastrophes that follow. quach watch -- >> watch the authors this weekend on book tv. on c-span two. lived in these lands and sacred places for thousands of years. part of theriginal cultural heritage of every person hearing these words today. .hether you are native or not we have felt the cruel and

destructive edge of colonialism that followed contact and that lasted for hundreds of years. but in our mind and in our history we are not its victims. [applause] as the mohawk have canceled us, it is hard to see the future with tears in your eyes. , and from aived cultural standpoint have even triumphed against great odds. , 40re here right now million indigenous people throughout the americas, and in hundreds of distinct cultural communities. we will insist that we remain a part of the cultural future of the americas. [applause] in the different journey through history together that the eloquence of chief joseph

commands, and that the national museum of the american indian so powerfully demands, i offer in conclusion, and with this hope these words in cheyenne. [speaking foreign language] in english, the great mystery. walks beside you and walks beside your work and touches all of the good that you attempt. thank you. >> more than 15 years since that opening day in 2004. we are live now from the national museum of the american indian. we are joined by museum director

kevin gover. explain the exhibit you are sitting in and the story it tells about how native american in -- imagery is portrayed in popular culture. you and good morning. welcome to the national museum of the american indian. i am in a gallery for the exhibition we call "americans." about nativert americans, but also about americans generally and american culture. we have become intrigued by how native american imagery is used broadly in the american culture. so, on the walls in this gallery you will see many depictions of native american people, native american designs. we literally use it as wallpaper to make the point that at the same time indians are everywhere in the popular culture, but

remain unknown to most people here in the united states. >> you think the average american has a sense of how often we see these images in our everyday lives, in the products that are purchased at the store and the services and companies that are out there? >> i don't think they do. because it as wallpaper, it is background. if you are native, you do notice it. you see it everywhere. we know what is real as a phenomenon, we also know most people don't experience it that way. >> but at the images of native americans generally meant to portray and show when they are used in these products, in companies advertising their services? >> that is a good question. obviously, if someone is trying to sell their product and they used an image of a native person some native design, they think

of it as a positive thing to be associated with native americans. it is different things for different kinds of undertakings. but most of them are actually quite weird. for example, you would see citrus companies were very fond of using native imageries and native names to sell their products. know is that at least in north america, native americans did not grow citrus products. same with apples. same with baking soda. so, but, the point is that they associated with something positive because they are trying to sell us their products. we are intrigued by that. >> i want to focus on the headdress. the native american headdress that is so often seen, whether it is in products or used so

often, that was specific to the ins indians, correct? why has that become a symbol for all native americans? >> it was mostly confined, at least the feather headdress we most often think about when we see native imagery, was confined to the plains tribes. there were a few tens of andsands of plains indians there were many millions of other kinds of indians that inhabited all of the americas for thousands of years. and yet, that is the image we chose. that is the image that continues to be used. that is the one of the things we explore in this exhibit is the battle of little big horn, and we pose the

question, why does the country really hang onto this story and keep telling the story and apparently like the story so much, when it was a crushing defeat of american arms? we invite the visitor to explore how that battle has been interpreted and how the indians who fought that battle sort of became national symbols of courage and defiance, bravery over time so that that is the dominant image of native americans, even though, again, it was only a very small percentage of the native population at any given time. host: kevin gover is our guest, the director of the national museum of the american indian. phone lines are open for you to join the conversation. if you have questions about the museum, if you want to talk about native american culture. it is --

-- we certainly invite you to join the conversation. kevin gover, joining the millions of native americans throughout americas the centuries -- how many tribes are we talking about, and how many tribes in history do you stage youlore on the have there at the national mall? believe there are something around 2000 separate inive cultural communities the western hemisphere there are 573 indian tribes recognized by the united states as eligible for a government to government relationship with the united states. there are several hundred in canada and in central and south america, the descendents of many

of the great civilizations that we all know about still exist and still live in some ways, in very much the same way they were living at the time of contact. how many are representative in a given moment? a handful. a limitedy present number in the space we have and with the resources we have, so i think it is fair to say we will never be finished in presenting the variety of native american peoples that exist in the western hemisphere. host: what is your guiding principle in how you tell that story? is it a story that may never be finished with so many different stories to tell? guest: i think the guiding principle that set this museum apart is that we rely on people themselves for information on who they are, what they are, what their history is, and what their culture is today.

for a very long time, that privilege was reserved to the so-called experts who worked in museums, who were not themselves native american, and they took it upon themselves to go out and study native people and then come back and speak to the public in their museums as though they were the leading thinker about these cultures. , butems obvious now obviously the leading thinkers on american history and culture are the native american people who inherited it and who practice that culture today. host: how often are those people on the ground there at the museum on the national mall doing that on a daily basis at the museum? guest: we receive a lot of native visitors, and a lot of native people have business in washington. we like the idea that when they come to washington they come

over here to spend some time and maybe to have lunch. the real research work takes place at our cultural resources center in suitland, maryland, the home of our collections. we have something north of 800,000 items in our collection, groups whoive tribal come in to look at what we have that originated in their community, and it is a wonderful exchange because we can show them what we have, and they can tell us what it is because all too often, when the experts were out there collecting from native communities, they were not sure what it was they got, and so we have many of our collections to mislabelede still because the original collector did not really know what it was. and so they will come to us and tell us, no, this is what that is and this is how it was used.

so it enriches our knowledge of the collections. and in return, we have a project of sending as much of our collections back to these communities as we can buy lending to their tribal museums and by working with their tribal museum staff on the interpretation of their cultural objects. so it is a rich, two-way experience. host: we will be exploring throughout this hour just a faction of those collections and try to show them as much as we can to our viewers, as we are joined by kevin gover, the director of the museum. before we get too far into the segment, is there a preference between native american and american indian? that: we get asked to question more often than you could possibly imagine. i think perhaps every native person has their preference as to what they wish to be called.

or which of those terms they prefer. to us they are interchangeable. as a good friend of mine, one of the founders of the museum said, once told me, they are equally inaccurate, so you could use them interchangeably. what he meant by that, is that native people do not identify first and foremost as being native, native american, indigenous. we identify first as citizens of our tribal nation, and so if you ask me what i am, depending on the context, i probably would not say i am native american, i would probably say i am p awnee. but they're sort of needed to be a term to be used to refer to us, all these different tribes collectively, so american indians was first, then native americans. now we use native and indigenous , and we use them interchangeably. host: we will let you chat with

a few colors. clifton is waiting out of harrington, delaware. caller: good morning. my question is that my family can go all the way back to the dough chi indians. name whod the english took us in under the king and queen of england. been disenfranchised from the native americans, and now they are telling us that we do not exist, and we do exist here. on the eastern shore. that is not uncommon. i am not familiar with the particular culture that you are know, afterbut, you contact and after the confrontation quite often with the colonies or with the states, native communities scattered and

went underground. and so there are a great many out there even to this day who are saying we are native, we are a tribe, and are petitioning the united states to be -- and we are petitioning the united states to be acknowledged as such. host: good morning. caller: good morning, thank you for taking my call. [speaking it of language] the daughter of the choctaw are here. i would like to say a few words if i may. host: go ahead, mary. lot to do witha the way we teach an native american history. i was an educator at historical sites in ohio, dating back 15,000 years. our history is gone, but current memory is short.

we need more native american people teaching native american history because we understand the culture so much better. for one thing, when you talk about the long feathered headdress, the beautiful headdress of the plains indians, and then people take that as a symbol for all native americans. i am from the woodland people, thick, deep forests. you try wearing one of those headdresses in the forest, you are going to be caught up with almost nothing to eat. some of these things are just very practical that we are not expressing, and some of these things are much deeper in terms of identification. book, "therote a ones who got away: the tall tray of tears," describing how some

people were not involved in the registration rolls that oklahoma -- oklahoma, by the way, is a choctaw word. people, homa means red. symbol of honesty. we need to give them lessons to learn, and i appreciate that we now have a smithsonian museum that is dedicated to doing that, and i thank you very, very much. host: thank you. mr. gover? guest: yes, i agree with all of that. you know, americans get their information about native people from only two primary sources. one is the formal education system, and the other is the popular culture. and we show in this gallery that i am sitting in that the popular

culture creates a lot of wildly misleading and, frankly, very the nativeas, about americans of the past and the present. but the one that is even more is thattic in some ways the information being passed on in our tools is at best incomplete, and all too often simply inaccurate. so children are learning a version of history that actually more reflects the stereotypes we see in popular culture then reflect reality. one of the things our museum is trying to do about that is a project we call native knowledge 360, and we are creating materials for use by teachers in the classroom. it is available online and it is free. because teachers are out there

and are quite often required by the school district or their state to teach native american history and culture. but they don't have any background in it. so they are left to rely either on terribly outdated textbooks or to sort of search broadly on the internet, and the internet is just another version of the popular culture where you will find a great, great many things that are untrue. reforming -- really not so much reforming, but helping teachers by putting good information in their hands is a primary need, in my opinion, and one that the museum, over many years, is going to try to fill. host: more of the items that you have in that gallery you are sitting in is a tomahawk cruise missile. i want to talk about the use of native american imagery, the relationship between the u.s. military and native americans,

not only the tomahawk cruise missile, the apache helicopter, the black hawk helicopter. can you talk about why it is so prevalent in military terms? it is a little mysterious, right, because the apaches and black hawk and the various other tribes for whom different weapons systems have been named fault the united states army. it is obviously quite unusual that you would name a modern weapons system for an old enemy, and yet that is what they do. i should add very quickly that the tribes really like that. you will see in the case of these helicopters that the army will hold a special ceremony with the leadership of that present many and

miniature models and plaques acknowledging that the army is borrowing their tribal name for a particular weapons system. the patcheslook at of many units in the military, they will select native american imagery as their insignia. obviously they are thinking in terms of indians have a reputation for being gallant, for beingbrave, ferocious in many cases. ,ut ultimately for strength that the military would adopt these images and these names is a show of respect that i think to beative americans find respectful, if perhaps just a

understand in the first instance. , is: brooklyn, maryland next. this is kat. good morning. caller: good morning, sir. i love your museum. i have been there many, many, many times. kiowa descendent of the in oklahoma. i kind of wonder -- we do not hear too much about too many tribes anymore, and i was wondering how they fared in this modern age still, in the oak llama territory there. host: mr. gover? guest: as it happens, i am from oklahoma. i grew up around many kiowa people, actually. i have comanche relatives. to see what has happened in the in the 45klahoma

years since i lived there is really quite remarkable. so when i was there, i was fully aware that there were a lot of native american people there, and that there were a lot of tribes, and i learned how they all came to be in oklahoma from the various parts of the country. lifeut in the political and civic life in the economic life of the state, indians were invisible. that is not the case anymore. now we see many of the tribes are thriving economically. they are among the largest employers in the state of oklahoma, and many of them are the largest service providers to all people, not just indians. in their respective jurisdictions, with education projects, health projects, roads, all sorts of different things. so they are no longer invisible, and they are very much in the

economic mainstream of the state of oklahoma, and it makes me feel really good to see how well they are doing. portland, is in oregon. good morning, you are next. good morning. this is bill ray. i have been to both newseum's in new york -- both museums in new york, ndc, and you talked about sharing resources with classrooms and online. about the museum with a veteran population, both natives and others? iny play an active part making society today, and historically. host: mr. gover? guest: yeah, i'm glad you asked me that. so it would surprise most people to know in the first instance that native americans have

served in the american armed forces in every conflict since the revolution, that they are currently serving in all branches of the american military. and it is an article of faith, even though it is hard to prove from dod records, it is an article of faith in most native american communities that natives serve at a higher rate per capita than any other group of people in the united states. we have done the occasional program on veterans. we have a couple of exhibitions going around, one on the code talkers and one that we call patriot nations, which sort of recites this history. but the really good news is that in 2013, congress passed legislation that allows us to build a national native american veterans memorial on our grounds here in washington. and --

host: we are showing our viewers what that memorial looks like. guest: and i am happy to say that it is underway, construction is actually happening on our grounds as we speak. result -- it is the result of an international design competition, which, as it happens, produced a winning design by a cheyenne piece chief. harvey pratt. marine, ahimself a vietnam veteran, and has a career in law enforcement. he is a working artist, sort of our version of a renaissance man. and he just came out with this incredible -- this incredibly beautiful and moving design that is intended to honor not just all native american veterans, but all veterans. as you know, in tribal

communities, veterans hold a special place. the honor that we offer to veterans is not confined to native veterans. all veterans hold a special place and status in native american p immunities. so it is our honor to have the opportunity to honor their service through making this memorial available to the people who visit washington. host: and when is it expected to be finished? guest: we will open the memorial on veterans day 2020, so the november -- so november 11 of this year, we will be dedicating the memorial. we are hoping that we will have several thousand native americans, native american veterans attend the opening, but we invite all veterans to come here and allow us to celebrate and honor their service. host: we have about a half-hour left in this segment. part of our weeklong museum week

series on "the washington journal," joining with her on american history tv, ofhave director kevin gover, the national museum of the american indian. we have a special line set aside for native americans. jackie's next out of verona beach, new york. good morning. [speaking native language] first i would like to express gratitude to you, kevin, and all the others who have been stewarding and promoting this remarkable legacy for native americans. but i am wondering if you can speak about the relationship of the national museum of the american indian narrative for nonindigenous people compared to that for native americans. guest: well, thank you, first of all.

that is a complicated question, of course. many in theose native american community who should take a very historyw of american and make the museum almost into a native american holocaust museum, where we recite all of the different tragedies that communitiesn native in the 500-some years since contact. that has ared that place in our museum. but, as you heard in the opening, where richard west was talking about this, we refuse to accept the narrative that native americans are victims. because we are not. because we persist.

because, in a very real sense, we prevailed against astronomical odds. in the year 1900 or so, there were only 250,000 native americans in the united states. their population had been reduced from who knows how many -- the historians guess anywhere 5 million to 15 million to 20 million people who once resided in what is now with the united states. so the continued existence of native america was very much in doubt. add to that that the policy of the united states quite oferally was the eradication tribal existence, that the only way for indians to remain in the modern world was to abandon their tribal ways and give up their identity as the people of their particular tribe.

that is a lot of force being brought to bear against only a very few people, and yet look at us now. and look at how our communities are recovering, how our communities are beginning to economic and political power. most importantly, how our communities are expressing their culture and their right to be different in certain respects, and to believe in the old things and the old ways. still bearing important lessons for how we are going to live in the world today. when it comes to communication, that is a pretty complicated set of thoughts to get across to an audience in a museum. we have data that says that the typical museum visitor spends an

hour, may an hour and a half in the typical museum. they might spend 20 minutes in one of our expert -- in one of our exhibitions. so we have to find a way to connect with them very quickly, communicate with them, and give them something that they latch onto and hopefully give them something that they lead with that we never thought about -- that they never thought about before. so the matter of tone is paramount. we could sit there and shake a finger at everybody and say look what your country did to us, but nobody wants to hear that. so instead, we are trying to say, look, this history that we share belongs to all of us. we are going to be truthful with ,ou about what that history is try to giveoing to you a new way to think about this history, but without being accusatory and without trying to

on contemporary americans. they did not do any of these things to our people in the past, and i think it is a terrible mistake to lecture them as though they are somehow responsible for what happened. i would rather that they choose to be responsible for what happens next, and that is where i think we can be effective in saying these things that happened in the past, yeah, they were bad, but there are contemporary conflicts that you should know about and that you have the opportunity to have an impact on. if we can do that, then we feel pretty good about how americans are going to deal with those issues. representsisual that what you were talking about, , showing the slate extent of indian homelands in

blue, and reservations in red, and how that changed just over the course of the 100 years between 1800 and 1900. you can see the shrinking blue on that map and the shrinking red as well. are about 200 50,000 native americans in the united states in 1900. where does the population stand today? somewhere between 3 million and 5 million, and it depends on how you count them. if you choose only those of us who are citizens, one of the state or federal recognized tribes in the united states, then the numbers are north of 3 million. if you add to that all of the people who identify themselves as native or part native, the number goes up, according to the last census, over 5 million. however you count it, there are a lot more of us than there were

in 1900. host: to high rock, north carolina, this is flyer on the line for native americans. good morning. are you with us? flora in seattle, washington. good morning. caller: this is flora. host: go ahead, flora. you are on with kevin gover. the tribes, we have in seattle that landed here -- i call it our plymouth rock as opposed to the east coast. they were supposedly recognized by clinton. unrecognizednd he -- how can you unrecognize a tribe? please enlighten me. thank you. i am: well, i should say not a neutral on this question. in a prior life, i was the assistant secretary for indian

affairs at the department of the interior. and one of the matters that came ofore me was the petition the dual amish for federal recognition. through a variety of circumstances, it was only in the closing days of the clinton administration that both the chinook tribe and the other tribe finally were granted federal recognition through the administrative process. appealed,sions were and while george w. bush was president. thehe course of the appeal, administrative law judges determined that we should not have granted recognition to chinook. so that is the process. it is not an easy one.

i think in many respects it is a tremendously unfair process. but that is what happened to them. host: who did not want that to happen? who led the appeal? guest: you know, i don't recall. don't recall who did the appeal. host: up next on the line for native americans, sterling, virginia. philip, good morning. youer: i was wondering if could speak to the cherokee indians, namely their roots in islam. hasword cherokee actually those roots, meaning that who face to the east. i believe they were called cherokee indians because they faced east toward mecca. i was wondering if that is in your knowledge or if you could speak to that at all. thank you.

guest: i cannot speak to that specifically. that is the first i have heard of that. i can relate to a couple of things you said. remember that the word cherokee is not what they call themselves. that is what europeans came to call that group of people. themselvesnot call -- they did not, at least, in the first instance, refer to themselves as cherokee. is one facing the east of the most common things in all native american cultures, virtually all of them. if you look at traditional native american homes, you would see that their front door always faces the east. tribes, there is ritual associated each day with greeting the rising sun. so i think in those cases, it is not so much they are looking

east to face mecca, but rather to greet the rising sun. are cherokee days ?ere in washington, d.c. guest: thank you for mentioning that. the eastern band of american indians in north carolina and another band of cherokee indians come to our museum in april and they have a cultural festival where they will have demonstrations and arts and tofts and songs and dancing greet our visitors and invite our visitors to come in and explore cherokee history and culture. so they will be here again this year, look at our website and the date in april, and as always we are anxious to greet the cherokees and turn our museum over to them. int: your museum opened 2004. from california, bringing up a

question on twitter about how the smithsonian institution has dealt with native americans over its long lifetime. they asked, do you remember where the smithsonian had eskimo skeletons we high in glass until somebody wanted the bones returned to their ancestors? i recallcannot say that specifically, but i do that theom my youth national museum of natural history had a series of dioramas with manikins of indians doing different kinds of things, usually rather dramatic things, usually dressed in different materials, from the collections of the national museum of natural history. that was the state of native american musicology at the 10 -- museum ologies at the time. it is part of the reason congress chose to establish a national museum of the american

indian, to give a much stronger voice to not only native american experts themselves and native american political and also to leaders, but have a museum whose first interest wasn't having native american people themselves tell their story -- was in having native american people themselves tell their story. theould hasten to add, by way, that the national museum of natural history would not put on such an exhibition today, and that the entirety of the museum field has made a dramatic move forward in dealing with native american material, and so we are all struggling with sort of how to take these different narratives that native people have or african-american people have more white people have come a white people from a certain region, from a certain country,

and figure out how do we weave all these things together? because they are really not separate? from the point of contact, they are not separate at all. and to put all those strands together and turn it into a cohesive story about all of us is really very difficult to do with the limited space that we have in any of these museums. so i think what you will see going forward, though, is all of the smithsonian museums certainly, but all museums across the country, try to figure out how do we do this, how do we be broad and inclusive in our storytelling? because there really is no story in american history that could not be told through native eyes. there are those stories in need of history that cannot be told through african or african-american eyes. natives and

african-american perspectives have largely been erased in history, history text, the textbooks, and popular culture. and we are working to put them back in, but not to erase anybody else's story. going tothat that is make for a much richer story. you know, there are stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, in the united states and in every other culture. in those stories, the americans tend to be the heroes. sometimes to get to that version of the story, you have to leave and a lot of things out, a lot a very terrible things. and we are saying, as great and as terrible as american history can be, it all belongs to all of us, and so learning how to tell those stories, these complex

stories, in a way that is really accessible for our visitors, is one of the great challenges all museums face in this century. host: i should note we will be at the national museum of african-american history and culture tomorrow, and what will be our last stop on this weeklong series focusing on d.c. area museums, looking at the american story. that is tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. eastern. about 15 minutes left in the segment with kevin gover at the national museum of the american indian. knoxville,in tennessee come on the line for america -- for native americans. good morning. caller: good morning. i'm cherokee. we had our dna checked into thousand five, and it shows that we are -- checked in 2005. inshows that we are 45% iceland and norway, 6% in panama,and mexico, 91%,

83 to 98%. greenland, 80%. host: that is a lot of percentage. that is a lot of percentages there. caller: yes, and it makes sense because we did not come to this the 16til, i don't know, o's or 1700s. the design of the museum is beautiful. do you have a history? i went with a group of people so i did not get to see everything. do you have a basic history of the doctrine of discovery and all that inu have your museum? guest: no, we do not. in to someging pretty complicated and

sophisticated territory there. discovery was a european invention that rationalized that the indigenous people, not just of native america but throughout the world , did not actually own the land that they lived on and occupied for many, many generations. and that therefore any christian country was free to come in and take it. because they did not own it. concept attartling any stage in history, but it was particularly startling then. on theh of american law right that native american nations and their people have are rooted in that doctrine of discovery, which itself was rules in a series of

that the spanish discoverers and explorers enforced throughout the world. jenny is calling from honolulu this morning. good morning. good morning, john and kevin. i was teaching at a college in st. louis, a proprietary school. july, i askedof my class if they could name tribes of native americans. and it was pathetic. in a room full of adults, young adults, that they could not come up with more than a few names of tribes. i do not know how many nations there are, but i have a particularly strong desire to learn about hopi, because my father took me to see hopi as a child.

the hawaii culture, you can see many things that remind you of native american experience. but they don't have the writers yet here that i have found. such brilliant writers among native americans on the mainland . i hope it comes here. strength ins have their renaissance by the 1970's, which i think was strengthened by the peace movement of the 1960's, and i think that is true of native americans on the mainland. thank you for this program. i have been very excited to see what you have shown. host: thank you for watching mr. gover? guest: one thing you should know is that as part of our responsibilities at the national museum of the american indian, congress told us that we were to present material about native hawaiian history and culture as well. so we have had a couple of

exhibitions about native annualns, and we have an iawaiian festival at the nma each may. look at our website, and you will find the date for our hawaiian festal, which will come out -- our hawaiian festival, which will come out in may. i'm glad you mentioned the is just aecause there flowering now of native american literature. there are so many brilliant writers doing remarkable work. i should certainly note that the poet laureate of the united states is a citizen of the muskogee nation in oklahoma. there are other writers, sherman , axi, louise urge ridge young man named tommy orange, who just wrote a brilliant book scott mamare there

day -- there there." their contribution to the arts of the united states is quite remarkable. that's one of the things we tried to get across at this museum with her and without programming. at once know, they are distinctly native, but at the same time they are very american, and that is the point, that native americans are americans, and that americans cannot escape the indigenous contributions to this country. are from ohio brings up a topic that is very much in the cultural discussion. from clark county, ohio, saying the mascot at school here are ridiculously in error -- a chief in full headrest is called a warrior. represented as red, white, and blue figures.

it is a flagrant disregard of cultural differences. there are four schools in this county with the same clipart images as warrior, chief, and braves. the education regarding these figures is absent from curriculum. insult to injury. what would you say? guest: i totally agree with all of that. it is insulting, it is quite often racist. concluded that non-natives cannot be trusted with native american imagery. the football fans in this city tell us we are honoring native americans, and then they dress up with feathers and behave like fools and tell us that they are honoring us. well, they are not. they are engaging in racist conduct. we are offended, we are insulted, and we ask you to stop that. host: next out of oregon, good morning.

caller: good morning. i am comanche and my husband is northern cheyenne. i would like you to speak to the sterilization that has happened to a lot of the northern cheyenne. my husband is a direct descendent of little wolf. host: go ahead. know a lot about the specific situation at northern cheyenne, but what i can say is that in the 1970's, it was revealed that the indian health service upon which many, most reservation indians relied was engaged in a program of , orluntary sterilization uninformed sterilization, and that happened to a great many women and families, probably over the course of some decades. well in somes

african-american communities, where people thought rather than be poor and have a tough life, it was better to see that these children were not born at all. grotesque, and it is genocidal. not enough is known about it. it should be a story that is more commonly known to all americans because i am certain that they would not approve. host: stephen is in gaithersburg, maryland. good morning. caller: good morning. thanks for taking my call. nativeed a lot about americans in the iwo jima segment, too, so thank you. i was hoping you could expand a little bit more on your mention centralenous people in and south america. foractice immigration law about 15 years, and i met a lot

of indigenous folks who did not even speak spanish and such. a lot of them are able to claim asylum because they have been persecuted on account of that. what the immigration bars are not looking into at all is, is there a connection between some recognized tribes and indigenous folks? can they be subject to immigration laws? can we seek to remove them if they are being welcomed into a trouble connection? host: thanks, david. are almoste certainly connections going way back. we know that there was a lot of trade between north and south. there is no other way to account for, for example, parrot feathers in native american design than that they were trading far south, and we find material from the north that is in wide use in the central and

south american region. i am a lawyer, by the way, by training. i think it would be pretty tough to maintain that because these people are indigenous and have whatever ancestral connections to contemporary north american tribes that that would excuse them from the immigration laws. but there are a couple of exceptions. one is that all along the southern border, maybe not all along, but certainly in new mexico, arizona, and california, there are tribal communities that were split by the border itself. for many, many years, they did not know that there was a border and they did not acknowledge border because they were one community or one set of communities, and that is still the case. in many cases, as i understand,

the authorities, the american immigration authorities have found accommodations that allow the free movement of those tribal people back and forth across the border, but there is no doubt that it becomes more complicated as the enforcement of immigration laws becomes more aggressive. many of the that people coming to our southern borders and seeking asylum or seeking to emigrate our indigenous. -- are indigenous. they are direct descendents of the indigenous people of the past, and many of them do not speak spanish, they only speak a native language. complicates any efforts to try to ensure that their rights are respected under american immigration laws. host: time for maybe one more call this money. edwardsville, illinois.

you are next. caller: what i want to ask about is my understanding is that our system of government is based on american system -- that it has legislative, executive, and judicial basically. i wanted you to talk about that and talk about the museum and how it addresses that. host: thank you, sally. guest: i don't know that we have anything on display at the moment that makes that connection. but certainly there is a well-established theory that the wrote thethe men who united states constitution and -- whought the idea fought the idea of independence relied very much on the ideas of native american governance. in particular, that of the iroquois people. really a firm

separation of power system, where authority, governmental authority was distributed over several different bodies and in several different ways. americans, when the early americans were trying to develop a form of government, that they borrowed this idea of the separation of powers from what they observed. i think also it would be hard to escape the conclusion that the very idea of freedom, to be truly free and to not have government telling you what to do and limiting government, government authority over you, must have been something that the early colonists observed in native american communities, which were, if nothing else, very free societies. -- andy egal a terrien -- very gala terrien

egalitarian. mr. gover, a final question for you from one of those folks who treated in their question. steve in nebraska -- "what one thing would be the most beneficial action taken to advance native americans? guest: well -- genuine range of possibilities, i would say that encouraging, if not requiring all americans to learn more about the history of native people and their engagement with the colonists and with americans would go far because one of the things people have a hard time understanding it

these indians get to live by their own laws on the reservations? why do they have reservations anyway? why do they get to have casino? all of those are fair questions to ask, but those answers are not being taught in our schools right now. peoplebenefit native enormously if people just knew more about basic history and civics. of native america in the united states itself. gover, thank >> president trump holds a campaign rally in colorado springs, colorado this evening. watch live coverage at 7:00 eastern this evening.

one of our neighbors was a priest. we used to come by once a week to ask my father for a donation to the church and also some terry products for some of his constituents. years, my father never once refused such a request. of 1942, thevember same preshow to. an armed police officer into armed cards -- guards. we did not know why that happens this time. we went to find out what was going on. the priest was looking at the police officer and pointing to us and saying, these are jews. we were turned into the authorities by a priest. entirecan watch this

hearing on combating hate crimes tonight at 9:00 eastern. this house oversight committee was held to mark 75 days -- years since the liberation of auschwitz. our c-span 2020 bus team is traveling across the country, asking voters what issue should presidential candidates address? issue fort important me is civil rights and civil liberties. voting rights, reproductive rights, criminal justice reform, and reproductive freedom. these rights are more important now than ever because we are seeing them be violated left and right. our veterans do not have housing. is onepshire, since it state, should do better for veterans.

right now they have to leave and go to vermont or massachusetts in order to get the services that they need. i don't think that is appropriate. these people made a sacrifice for our country and they should be able to have the services when they come home. i want the candidates to focus on actionable environmental policies. renewables.ions and >> the most important thing is the truth. we need to work on gun violence, health-care care, public education. when the senate votes openly and against the truth in a partisan manner, it is time for us to return to our roots, listen to witnesses, face facts, it is just time to face the truth and move forward and we cannot do that if we do not open our eyes and paid attention. education is important,

including the cost of education for postgraduate and graduate work. the concerning legislation that has been coming out of the trump administration concerning secondary ed. as a teacher, i have seen it. voices from the road. earlier today, the u.s. special representative for around -- iran made an announcement about sanctions on five iranian officials.