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05 Wolakota Project Video Transcripts and URLs.docx · WP-0173. Imported source record; individual Elder status and tribal affiliation are not inferred.
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Interview transcript
The exciting thing that is still retained about the treaties is that they were unilateral agreements between two sovereigns, meaning that it was indigenous Dakota Native people here and the U.S. government, and it was equal. And so that's still, we still retain that. The other way that it's supported and retained, even though the U.S. government refuses sometimes to recognize that, and maybe these younger people that are listening to this can change this because this is about healing, it's about forgiving, is to recognize that. Do you know what the sixth article of the U.S. Constitution is? That treaties are the supreme law of the land. It actually says that in the U.S. Constitution. Treaties are the supreme law of the land. And so that somehow was able to be preserved in the U.S. Constitution. And then the other element, of course, and this could be exciting research for the classes that hear this, is to research how the U.S. Constitution was based on the Iroquois, and that Ben Franklin and other historians or politicians studied Native people and how we governed. And so many of the ways of the Constitution were based on how we lived as a people, as aboriginal indigenous people.