2:00

of Hoover's dirty tricks. Nowhere

2:02

was this more evident than in

2:04

their interactions with the American Indian

2:07

Movement, or AIM, as well

2:09

as the greater Native American community. To

2:12

help us understand how Coentell Pro's

2:14

legacy unfortunately endured in this way,

2:17

we're honored to be speaking to Nick

2:19

Estes. Nick is an

2:21

assistant professor of American Indian Studies

2:23

at the University of Minnesota and

2:26

hosts the Red Nation podcast. To

2:34

start out, I would love for you to introduce

2:36

yourself, tell us a little bit about your background

2:38

and what it is you do. My

2:41

name is Nick Estes. I am

2:43

a member of the Lower Broll

2:45

Sioux Tribe. I was born and

2:47

raised in South Dakota. I'm currently

2:49

an American Indian Studies Assistant Professor

2:51

at the University of Minnesota. I'm

2:54

currently working on a book about the

2:56

history of the American Indian Movement. What

2:59

led you down this path? Two

3:01

of my grandfathers were writers.

3:04

One published the first history

3:06

of the Lower Broll Sioux Tribe in 1963, and

3:08

the other published another history in 1972. In

3:10

some ways, it's kind of a family tradition.

3:16

But also, I was an anti-war

3:19

protestor back when the United States

3:21

invaded Iraq for the second time,

3:23

and I kind of just stayed

3:25

in school after that. Went

3:28

on to get a PhD. Right

3:30

on. Well, as you know, this

3:32

season of snafu goes into considerable

3:34

depth about the status of J.

3:37

Edgar Hoover's FBI in the 1970s,

3:39

and many of the

3:41

ways that it was overtly

3:43

nefarious, oftentimes operating fully outside

3:46

of the law. This, of

3:48

course, exemplified by Co-Intel Pro

3:50

or the Counterintelligence Program, the

3:52

FBI surveillance program in the 60s

3:54

and 70s that targeted various political

3:57

groups such as the Black Panthers,

3:59

anti-Vietnam, and the Black Panthers. non-protesters,

4:01

civil rights demonstrators, etc. But

4:04

I'm really excited to talk with

4:06

you today about how the Native

4:08

American community experienced the FBI at

4:10

that time and really throughout the

4:12

20th century, which is quite

4:15

fascinating and complex. Let's

4:18

start at the beginning. The FBI's origin

4:20

story actually dovetails with a major incident

4:22

in 20th century Native American history, the

4:25

Osage murders throughout the 1910s, 20s, and

4:27

30s. Now

4:31

a lot of people will be familiar

4:33

with this story from the recent Martin

4:35

Scorsese movie, Killers of the Flower

4:37

Moon. So tell us

4:39

a little bit about the early interactions

4:41

between the Bureau and Native Americans

4:44

and also what

4:46

did the film get right and or

4:48

wrong? Many people have probably

4:51

seen this film. I started watching it, but

4:53

I couldn't watch it. I couldn't. It's

4:55

hard for me to watch the

4:58

killing, rape, and torture of Native women

5:00

over and over again on screen. It's

5:02

not something I find very entertaining. But

5:05

I do think that the movie itself

5:07

kind of gets to this, or at least is

5:09

trying to get to this history of

5:12

murder missing Indigenous women. I think what's

5:14

missing in that film, at least

5:17

from my perspective, is the

5:19

advocacy of people like Zinkala

5:21

Shah, who was born

5:23

as Gertrude Bonin. She was from

5:25

the Yankton Sioux Reservation. She

5:28

was an advocate, a Native woman who

5:30

worked in Congress, who was a lobbyist,

5:32

who was an activist, who

5:34

actually interviewed some of the

5:37

Osage women who had been

5:40

targeted by these men and really

5:42

brought attention to this issue. And that's not in

5:44

the film. It's also kind of propaganda

5:46

for the FBI because the FBI sees

5:49

itself as sort of this crime fighting

5:51

unit. It has a particular history with

5:54

Indigenous activists, but also the

5:56

FBI, according to its own

5:59

people. going

10:00

to change their lives. And so

10:02

they went into Minneapolis. At that

10:04

time, there was a lot

10:06

of Native people who were part of the

10:08

union movement, like the Teamsters. There was the

10:10

Teamsters Rebellion in Minneapolis in the 1930s. Native people

10:13

were part of that. Native people are part

10:15

of unions. They're part of working class history.

10:17

And so there was also

10:19

a lot of community organizations that were

10:21

centered around the family. And

10:23

so when these men arrived on

10:25

the scene, there already sort of existed

10:27

an infrastructure and a

10:29

complaint, so to speak, or an injury

10:32

that Native people felt in

10:34

Minneapolis because Minneapolis turned

10:37

what is known as the

10:39

East Phillips neighborhood into

10:41

a sort of slum. Things are

10:43

being shifted around. Termination is

10:45

happening at the same time where

10:48

the federal government is trying to

10:50

end its federal responsibilities with Native

10:52

people. They're enticing Native people to

10:54

leave their reservations on a relocation

10:56

program. They found themselves

10:58

in low-income slum housing. They found

11:01

themselves being targeted by these police

11:04

raids that were happening on the weekends

11:06

where a paddy wagon would literally just

11:08

pull up to an Indian bar on

11:10

Franklin Avenue and just start

11:12

loading people in once the bar closed. People

11:15

were getting beat. People were getting discriminated

11:17

against. Native children were

11:19

being taken from their families and

11:22

put into white foster care systems

11:24

or into white homes. One

11:26

study that came out in like the 1970s found that

11:28

between 25 to 35 percent of Native children had

11:33

been taken from or removed from

11:36

their families and placed into non-Native

11:38

homes. That's quite a bit, you

11:40

know. So it was

11:42

three things. It was child removal,

11:44

police violence, and urban poverty that

11:46

led to the foundations of

11:49

the American Indian movement. And it wasn't

11:51

just about confrontation politics, even though that's

11:53

kind of what one aimed the headlines

11:55

at the time when they began to

11:57

confront police and began filming them. and

12:01

following them around as they patrolled the

12:03

Indian bars on the weekends. But

12:05

they also began to form what were called survival schools,

12:08

which was literally just native

12:10

families pooling together what

12:13

small resources they had and

12:15

setting up a formal school system because

12:18

it was at public schools that native

12:20

children came under the surveillance

12:22

of state officials, whether it was through

12:24

the Department of Social Services. And

12:27

that was the place where they began

12:29

these child removal processes. So

12:32

it aim is known through the

12:34

media and its representation by the

12:36

FBI as a confrontational

12:38

sort of militant social movement.

12:42

But that sort of overshadows

12:44

the community work that it

12:46

was doing on the ground and what

12:48

won it a lot of respect by

12:50

community members themselves. I mean,

12:53

you spoke in some depth about some of

12:55

their initiatives. Is there an

12:57

overarching sort of mission of

12:59

the American Indian movement? And

13:01

does that also have some misconceptions

13:04

in the public discourse? So

13:06

in 1972, the American Indian movement, as

13:11

well as a coalition of various grassroots

13:13

native organizations, some of them even from

13:15

Canada, like the Canadian Indian Brotherhood participated

13:18

in it. They

13:20

drafted a 20-point policy framework

13:22

called the Trail of Broken

13:24

Treaties. And it sort

13:27

of lays out point by point what

13:29

was being advocated for. Number one priority

13:31

was abolishing the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

13:34

At that time period, the Bureau of Indian Affairs

13:36

was largely responsible for

13:39

plundering native lands and implementing

13:41

this termination system, assimilation, et cetera.

13:44

We saw the outcome of the 2011 Colbel

13:47

lawsuit that showed that the Bureau

13:49

of Indian Affairs had been mismanaging.

13:52

I think it was over $175

13:54

billion of what they could count

13:56

on paper of native assets. There

14:00

was also the program of

14:02

reestablishing a treaty relationship with

14:04

the United States government, sort

14:06

of ending every act, or

14:08

going back to 1871 when treaty making was

14:11

formally abolished with Native

14:13

nations. That sort of treaty commission, so

14:15

to speak, would replace the Bureau of

14:17

Indian Affairs. Native people would elect their

14:19

own leaders. Today we

14:21

have the Secretary of Interior, who

14:24

happens to be Native herself, Deb

14:26

Haaland, but that's not somebody we

14:28

elect, but nonetheless still to this

14:30

day has arbitrary authority over the

14:33

livelihoods and resources of Native people.

14:35

We're in the same department as

14:37

wildlife, right? Still

14:39

to this day. Those

14:41

were sort of the broader sort of

14:43

policy frameworks that they were pushing, but

14:46

also at a grassroots level, they

14:48

really wanted self-determination and

14:51

community control. Those

14:53

are sort of like the broad brushstrokes of

14:55

what they were trying to accomplish. For

15:01

decades, the mafia had New York

15:03

City in a stranglehold, with law

15:05

enforcement seemingly powerless to intervene. It

15:08

uses terror to extort

15:10

people. However, one murder

15:12

of a crime boss sparked a

15:15

chain of events that would ultimately

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dismantle the mob. That

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sent the message that we

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can prosecute these people. Discover

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how law enforcement and prosecutors took

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on the mafia, and together brought

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them down. These bosses

15:31

on the commission had no idea what

15:33

was coming their way from the federal

15:35

government. From Wolf Entertainment

15:37

and I Heart Radio, this is

15:39

Law and Order Criminal Justice System.

15:41

The first two episodes drop on

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