 Hello from the National Archives Public Programs and Education Team. My name is Missy McNat and I'm an Education Specialist in Washington, D.C. The National Archives in Washington, D.C. is on the land of the Nantatchetank people. And I am transmitting from the land of the Patuxent people who were once part of the Piscataway Tribal Nation. Welcome to our Young Learners Program today. You can find information about our future programs on the National Archives website, archives.gov, under attend an event, and on the National Archives Facebook page. Today, we meet with Dr. Adrienne Keane, a member of the Cherokee Nation. And Dr. Keane is an author, an educator, a scholar, a podcaster, a blogger, and an activist. Dr. Keane earned her B.A. from Stanford University in cultural anthropology and Native American studies. And she earned her doctorate from the Harvard School of Education in community culture and education. She is also currently on sabbatical from her professorship at Brown University. So we are with Dr. Keane today to talk about her recently published book, Notable Native People, 50 Indigenous Leaders, Dreamers, and Changemakers from the Past and the Present. So welcome, Dr. Keane, to the National Archives Young Learners Program. Yo, and the God. Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to talking with you today. Well, thank you for joining us. And I'm just going to go over how we're going to work our program today. So Dr. Keane is going to share with us three of those notable Native people who have connections to our records at the National Archives. And she will talk about them. And then I will come back and share records in the Holdings of the National Archives related to the three people, as well as a DocsTeach activity. And at the end of the presentation of all three notable Native people, we will have a question and answer session with Dr. Keane. So please write your questions in the YouTube chat box. We have a National Archives staff member who is monitoring it. And let us know where you're watching from today. So today's program is brought to you by the National Archives Public Programs and Education Team, the National Archives and the National Archives Foundation. And now I will turn it over to Dr. Keane. Wonderful. Wadomisi, thank you. So to start today, we're going to talk first about one of my personal heroes who is Sequoia. And Sequoia comes from my tribal community. He was Cherokee. And so he was born sometime in the 1770s in the boundaries of the Cherokee Nation in what is currently known as North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, that kind of area. He was a silversmith, a blacksmith, a trader. And he created the Cherokee syllabary, which is the written language that allows for us to communicate in a written way in the Cherokee language. So while Sequoia did not speak or write English, he understood the value of what he called talking leaves, which were how the English communicated in letters, documents, pamphlets, and books. And in the early 1800s, he set out to create a Cherokee system of talking leaves. And it was a very long and arduous journey because his community didn't really know what he was up to. They kind of distrusted his whole process. And they really dismissed what he was doing, didn't really think it was important. But he continued for 12 years working on trying to create this method of writing for the Cherokee language. And so he listened really closely and analyzed how Cherokee was spoken. And he eventually realized that there were 85 distinct syllables used throughout the language. So he assigned each syllable to a different symbol, which allowed Cherokee speakers to easily transition from writing to reading. So he taught his daughter, whose name was Ayopie, to use the syllabary at a really young age. And her literacy was used to prove that his system worked. The tribe was really distrustful of what was going on with the language. They thought maybe it was bad magic that was allowing him to communicate with his daughter. And so they accused him actually of witchcraft and put him on trial. And that when he was on trial, he was able to show that he could communicate with his daughter and that it wasn't bad magic and that it was something that could be really useful for the Cherokee people. So in 1825, the Cherokee Nation officially adopted the syllabary and the population became overwhelmingly literate, meaning that they could read and write, which was a lot higher than the local non-native population. And during this time, the Cherokee Nation was going through a lot of dealings with the U.S. government around what became known as the Trail of Tears, an Indian removal. So the taking of Cherokee people from our homelands in North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, moving us to Indian territory in Oklahoma. And so being able to communicate and write and have a newspaper became really important for the Cherokee Nation during that time. And despite the best efforts of the tribe fighting back against this removal, our people were removed to Indian territory in starting in 1831. But Sequoia moved to Indian territory in 1829 prior to being forced to on the Trail of Tears. And later in his life, he really wanted to see the Cherokee Nation all united again and not split up between the Eastern Cherokee and the Cherokee in Oklahoma. And he had heard that a group of Cherokee had traveled to Mexico during the time of removal. So he traveled to Mexico to try and find those Cherokees and bring them back to be with the rest of the community. And while he was in Mexico, he passed away. And we don't actually know where his actual grave site is or where in Mexico it was or if he even ever found the Cherokee people in Mexico. But his legacy of the language is something that continues to today. And the syllabary is still in use by the three Cherokee tribes. And it's used on computers, it's used in classrooms, it's used on iPhones, and is how many Cherokee people still communicate today. So Sequoia is really a personal hero of mine because he was instrumental in making sure that our Cherokee language was still alive today. Wow. Thank you. And so if we look at the next slide, this is actually the cover to a letter that was sent to the Native, the Indian, the Commission of Indian Affairs. And it was actually about looking for, trying to find Sequoia or confirm that he had in fact died just as Dr. Keane had mentioned. And so if we turn, look at the next slide, the letter is actually written in the syllabary, which I obviously couldn't begin to read. But in our holdings, there is a translation of the letter. But that's to give you an idea of what that syllabary looks like, you know, the syllables for each of the sounds in the Cherokee nation. And as Dr. Keane said, the letter confirms that he died in Mexico and also that they cannot find his burial and I assume have never been able to find his burial even since then. And on the next slide is the, one of the pages of a petition that was sent to the Senate. And this was against the Treaty of Neuachota. And again, as Dr. Keane was talking about, this was a process, you know, the Indian removal, very sad time in our nation's history and the Trail of Tears, it all happened over a period of time. And the Treaty of Neuachota was a treaty that was signed by a group of people, a small group of Cherokee who believed that they would never be able to stay. And they signed it without the backing of the majority and of John Ross, who was in fact the leader. And so it was signed and it had gone to the Senate for approval. And the Cherokee wrote this petition to try to stop it, very, very sadly. And unfortunately, they were not able to do so. But this page is one of the pages of the signers of the petition petition. And again, I found it very interesting because they signed it using the syllabary. So you can see the huge number of people who were literate. And there were literally thousands and thousands of signatures on this page. And then on the next slide, we have the featured activity that goes along with this. This is Analyzing the Petition Against the Treaty of Neuachota and brings in a great deal of this history that we've been very difficult and sad history that we've been talking about. And in the Trail of Tiers, I believe, and Dr. Keene, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe over a quarter of the people died in this forcing them to move to what became known as Oklahoma or Indian Territory at the time. So we will move on to the next one. And then if you have any questions about this, write them in the chat box for us. Thank you, Missy Waddell. So next, we're going to talk about Queen Liliukulani. And first, can we take a moment to appreciate this gorgeous art on the screen by Sierra Sana, who is the illustrator for my book. She is Chamorro, which is the indigenous people from Guam. And she did the beautiful illustrations for the book. So Queen Liliukulani was the last sovereign monarch of the Hawaiian kingdom before the United States illegally overthrew the monarchy and subsequently annexed Hawaii. She was born to a high status Hawaiian family and her mother was an advisor to King Kamehameha III. She rose and thrown after the death of her brother, King David Ka'ua, and took her royal name of Liliukulani and became the first woman to rule the United Hawaiian kingdom. In 1887, an armed militia forced King Kaleakua to sign a new constitution that reduced the power of the kingdom and the monarchy. And when Liliukulani took the throne, she wanted to restore many of those powers. So in response in 1893, a group of outsiders of American and European plantation owners and businessmen in Hawaii initiated a coup where they overthrew the monarchy of Hawaii, which was operating as its own sovereign kingdom. This outside group came in, they overthrew the monarchy and took away all of its remaining authority. They installed their own government and made their own leaders and allies and charged Liliukulani with treason and imprisoned her in her own home for over two years. And in 1895, she was forced to give up the throne, to abdicate the throne and was released. And she traveled to Washington, D.C. to fight for the sovereignty of the Hawaiian kingdom. Although she was ultimately unsuccessful in getting justice for her people, Liliukulani was a leader in what became known as the Stand Firm Movement and fought for three years to prevent the U.S. annexation of Hawaii. So the U.S. took Hawaii and made it part of our nation. Unfortunately, the United States moved forward with annexation in 1898, despite the fact that the U.S. Congress never passed a treaty to make this legal. Liliukulani withdrew from public life after that, but she never gave up her love of her Hawaiian nation. And she said, quote, the cause of Hawaii and independence is larger and dearer than than the life of any man connected with it. Love of country is deep-seated in the breast of every Hawaiian, whatever his station. And in addition to her role as Monarch and her political work, she was a prolific musician and composer. You can see all those music notes in the background that Sierra put there. She composed over 160 different chants or Oli and songs, including the really famous song Aloha Tei. And she passed away in 1917 at the age of 79. And for Kanaka Maui, Indigenous Hawaiian people, she is a hero, is a leader, is someone that they really look to throughout their history to remember the power of the sovereignty of Hawaii and how it was illegally taken and made part of the United States. So she was a really amazing leader. Well, thank you, Dr. Keene. And again, we have records from the National Archives. So on the next slide, it's a letter from Queen Lily Lukolani to the House of Representatives, you know, protesting the annexation of Hawaii. And, you know, it's a very well written letter. And I love the fact that it has her signature on that. I think that's, you know, it's just the letter in itself is fabulous. But I just think it's really neat to see someone's signature to think of them writing that at that time. So and then the next slide, we have the activity connected with this. And again, it's a petition against the annexation of Hawaii. And there were, again, thousands and thousands of Hawaiians who signed it and it actually did stop. But, you know, as Dr. Keene noted, it's the the annexation still happened. But the petition stopped the Senate from at that point, at that point in time from annexing Hawaii. So it had an impact. But then the Spanish American War came along and there was the sense that, oh, gee, we need those islands for refueling. And so there was a real push. And as Dr. Keene said, you know, against the wishes of everyone who the native people who were involved, Hawaii was annexed. So this is, you know, I encourage you to check out these activities, these documents, these records from the National Archives. You can get them all on docsteach, it's docsteach.org. OK, I'll turn it back to you. Thank you. And as you can see with both Sequoia and Liliu Kalani, they were both fighting the loss of sovereignty for their people. And with Sequoia was about fighting the the force relocation on the Trail of Tears. Liliu Kalani was about remaining on having sovereign control over the kingdom of Hawaii and both during that same sort of time period in a lot of ways. So for the last profile, we're going to talk about Jim Thorpe, who is really considered one of the best, the most talented athletes in the world. He defied odds. He set records and he really broke barriers for indigenous athletes. He was born in 1888 in Indian Territory, what is now called Oklahoma. He was raised in his Sac and Fox community and his Sac and Fox name translates to Bright Path. He attended the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, which is a government run, which was a government run boarding school for native children. And the point of those schools was to assimilate them into mainstream society and sever their connection to their native identity and community. So when they were sent to these schools, they were not allowed to speak their languages. They were not allowed to go home to their families. They were not allowed to wear their indigenous clothes. Everything was about making them become part of mainstream white society. Well, he was a student at Carlisle. He watched the upper he was an underclassman. He watched the upper class in practicing the high jump. And he thought he would give it a try, even though he was wearing overalls instead of athletic clothes. He managed to clear a bar taller than he was, which was a early indicator of his natural athletic ability. He played football and ran track and field for Carlisle and then for the Haskell Indian Nations University. And eventually the famed football coach, Pop Warner, took notice of his talent and became his coach and mentor in 1911. In 1912, he competed for the US track and field team at the Summer Olympics in Stockholm, where he won medals in many of his events. Shortly before his 1500 meter run for the Decathlon, his shoes went missing. Presumably they were stolen by someone, another participant trying to sabotage him. But Pop Warner, who came as a supporter and coach, found him a replacement pair of shoes, but they were mismatched and they didn't totally fit him. So they were two different shoes, didn't totally fit, but he even went on to win the Decathlon with those mismatched shoes. He took home two Olympic gold medals for the Decathlon and the Pentathlon, making him the first American to do so and the first native athlete to win an Olympic gold medal. His performance was so impressive that many of his records weren't beaten until many years later. However, in 1913, the amateur athletic union took away his medals after an investigation, which discovered that he had played semi-professional baseball in 1909 and 1910, which disqualified him from Olympic competition. Many athletes, fans and community members felt this was very unjust. And after decades of pressure, the International Olympic Committee presented his family with replica medals in 1982, but the official Olympic record has never been corrected. In anticipation of a movie about his life that's supposed to be coming out soon, there are renewed efforts to restore his medals properly, not just these replica ones, not just end to correct the record. So following the Olympics, he went on to play professional football, basketball and baseball. And in 1950, a group of sportswriters selected him as the greatest American athlete of the first half of the 20th century. Oh, just an amazing story about Jim Thorpe. So again, we have quite a few records related to Jim Thorpe. And the next one is a photograph showing him at the Carlisle Indian School in his football uniform. And then the next one shows him, you know, running track, and that was a little bit later. And the next one we see his student information card and for Jim Thorpe at the Carlisle Indian School. And it talks about the fact that he was a member of the Sac and the Fox tribe and, you know, who his parents were. So, you know, that's some some great information that you can learn about him. And then the picture underneath of it is a photograph of him being you know, shaking hands with people, his admirers. And this was after a little bit later after the Olympics. So we have, you know, a number of records connected to him. And, you know, again, you know, very sad that those medals were taken away. And we hope that that is rectified in the near future. And then on the next slide, we have the featured activity. And this is a little bit it's connected with Jim Thorpe, but really through the Carlisle Indian School. And this is one of my absolute favorite activities. It's a compare and contrast. It is one that, you know, first graders could do as they look at these two pictures. And both of the photographs are not on this slide showing the Docs Teach activity. But when you get into the activity, you can see both of them. And one shows it's a group of Apache and it shows them when they arrived in their traditional dress and traditional hair. And then the one that you see up now on the slide shows them what they look like after, you know, being at the Carlisle Indian School and how, as Dr. Keene said, the whole focus was assimilate, assimilate, assimilate and, you know, make them like every other American. And again, another very difficult and sad time because languages were lost, culture was lost, you know, beliefs were lost because of this. And the children attending the school were actually, you know, punished if they spoke their native language. So, you know, it certainly and that was just one of the issues with these Indian schools, but they actually existed for quite some time. So again, this docsteachdocsteach.org, I encourage you to check it out and check out our documents, you know, on docsteach and all the ones that I shared we can show today. So, Dr. Keene, thank you so much. And we do have some questions. So you want to come back on and we'll just chat a little bit. Sure, sounds good. OK, so first of all, there is a question. I don't know how I'm not sure quite how we can do this, but there are people who want the spellings of the names of Sequoia and Liliu Kalani. But I think they may have been on the slides. I believe they were on the slides. And so this will be it's being recorded will be on YouTube. And so you can go back and watch it or, you know, do that Google search that I often do. So, yeah, so just and then if you go into docsteach and do a search, hopefully you'll be able to find them. But yeah, I don't know. I mean, do you think that Dr. Keene, it would be helpful to spell them out with that that for them? I could. I also think if you search like creator of the Cherokee syllabary, it will come up. But Sequoia's name is just S-E-Q-U-O-Y-A-H. It's phonetic. And then Liliu Kalani is a lot longer. But if you search like last sovereign monarch of Hawaii or something like that, she will pop up very easily. OK. And just, you know, I ask people where they're watching from. We've got some folks from the Auburn Public Library in Auburn, Alabama. We've got Maryland, Washington, DC, South Dakota, Home of the World Series champions, Atlanta, Georgia, the DeKalb Public Library System, Michigan. So wonderful, lots of folks from all over. Let's see. There's this is a question asking about some differences between the Sac and the Fox and the Ms. Ms. Kalki, I know I'm mispronouncing it. Oh, it's probably Ms. Kalki. And Ms. Kalki, yes, that's exactly right. Yes. Yeah, I mean, those are not my communities, so I don't want to speak on behalf of them. A lot of times when you see these tribes that are put together like there's the three affiliated tribes in what is currently known as North Dakota, which is Mandan, Hidatsa, Rikara, Sac and Fox, like there's a lot of communities that were put together because of the federal government and relocations and making of different reservation communities. Oftentimes they would sometimes put tribes that were enemies together, hoping that they would like eradicate each other or very different tribal groups that then became part of the same community. So there's a lot of times that there are different communities that were put together and became a united tribal community because of colonization. Okay, thank you. Okay, so another question. What inspired you to write Notable Native People? That is a great question. And so we talked about three historic people today, but the book has majority actually contemporary people, folks who are still living, still around, still doing amazing work. And in my work that I do, I spend a lot of time breaking down stereotypes of indigenous people, of critiquing media representations, of talking about misrepresentations, things like that, World Series winning baseball team and mascots and things like that. And I realized through all of my work that as I was critiquing all of these stereotypes and misrepresentations, that there was so little representation of real, living, diverse, contemporary indigenous people for folks to replace those misrepresentations with. So I wanted to write this book to expose people to just a small subsection of the complexity and diversity and joy of indigenous communities. Because as you heard from these three historic stories, there is a lot of suffering and pain and incredibly awful things that have happened to indigenous communities because of colonization. But we also are still here and we will always be here. And so I wanted to celebrate a lot of that too, of the resilience to get through those incredibly difficult things to retain our languages, to revitalize our cultures, to fight against climate change and environmental destruction, to celebrate native fashion, like all kinds of different things that are just a lot more celebratory and joyful and can show the public who is not native, all the incredible things from our communities, but then also show native young people all of the possibilities for their future because we don't get a lot of those representations. So for me, this book is just a love letter to indigenous communities to talk about all of the incredible folks that come from our communities. And this is really just a tiny subsection. There's only 50 profiles and there are millions of indigenous people alive today and millions more who have passed. So this book could have been, thousands and thousands and thousands of pages. Yeah, well, and I did, when I was looking at the book, I was reading all these people and I would love to have included more. And we really had to stick with the records we had with the National Archives. So that's why we couldn't include people from more recent times, more modern times. And I wish I could have. And they are, I highly recommend the book. So definitely, we do have it at the National Archives Gift Shop. And there's a slide on that towards the end and hopefully people will be able to order it. So, and that kind of leads to the next question. How did you choose? Because as you said, there are so many people you could have chosen. How did you choose the 50 that you included in the book? It was so hard. That was the hardest part of writing this book was trying to narrow it down and pick a really curated group of people. And I wanted, there were so many factors that I took into account. I had color-coded spreadsheets. I had post-its all over my walls trying to make sure there was a balance across like geographic region, historic versus contemporary, gender identity. I wanted to make sure that there were two-spirit and queer people included. I wanted to make sure that there were Black-native perspectives included, that there were lots of women included, like all of these sort of underrepresented groups. So that took it into account. And then with most of the profiles, what I tried to do was have each person be able to tell a secondary story with, it was their life, but it also told a broader story about something either going on currently in Indian country or historically. So Sequoia, in addition to talking about his amazing invention of the syllabary, I also got to talk about Indian removal and what that meant in the Trail of Tears for someone like Jordan Marie Daniel, who is a professional runner. I also got to talk about the missing and murdered indigenous relatives, epidemic and movement because that's something that a lot of her running and advocacy focuses on. Or talking about Sergey Sovroff, a Sovroff who is a Alliute, kayak, model kayak maker. I got to tell the story of the Alliute internment during World War II, which folks don't really know about at all. So with each of these people, I tried to bring in not just their story, which is obviously incredibly important, but a slightly broader story as well. So it took a long time and lots of back and forth, lots of trying to figure out what would be a good balance and truly could have written this book 20 times over with how many amazing people there are out there doing such important work. Yeah, well that, and there's a question here. I don't know if you can pick one, but did you have a particular, a favorite hero as you were writing this book, was there? I definitely, the joke with my friends is that this book is actually just like a journey through people that I personally, like that Adrian King finds incredible and important and inspirational. So each of them, I feel like I have a personal connection to in some way and have really impacted my life. The last profile in the book is Suzanne Harjo who is just amazing advocate on so many levels of US policy and things like the American Indian Religious Freedom Act and things like NAGPRA, the Native American Graves Protection Repatriation Act has been personally responsible for helping millions of acres of land be returned to tribes. But for me as someone who works in the world of representations, Suzanne's work around Indian mascots of ending Indian mascots of pushing for better representations was really what brought me into this space. So writing that profile was definitely special for me because I felt like she was the one who welcomed me into this world of writing about representations, about fighting for representations. So I wanted her to be the last profile in the book that folks walk away with that in their mind. But I could also tell a story like that of almost everyone in the book. They're all just amazing. They're inspiring, all inspiring. So here's a really kind of specific history question. Can you comment on the Dawes commission and the $5 Indians and how it may have affected history? And I have to admit, I'm not sure. I don't know the answer to that question. So I thought- I mean, I know. Yeah, so there was a, so after removal when all of the tribes ended up in Indian territory forcibly, then later on came something called the Dawes commission and allotment where the tribal members were forced to enroll on these tribal based roles and based on the enrollment were allotted specific acreage of land. And what it served to do was to divide up collectively held indigenous land into individual privately owned parcels. And so what it meant was once all the parcels were divvied up then anything that was left was declared excess and therefore was open to white settlement. So it was actually the largest loss of indigenous held lands in a single sort of time period throughout history. And what happened during that time is that there were a fair number of non-native families that were living in Indian territory that attempted to either bribe their ways way onto the roles or attempted to falsify documents to enroll in tribal communities. And there are for every person who was enrolled during the time of the Dawes commission there is a packet of information about them with their all of the forms and their testimonies and things if it was a contested case and things like that. So Cherokee people in particular are very well documented because of this time period. So for my family, I can go in and I can see my great grandma and my great-great grandparents enrollment information. I can see their signatures. It's really amazing. But there were people who attempted to buy their way onto the roles and we, I'm not an expert in the phenomenon. So I don't know how many people if any were successful but I do know that there were lots of folks who tried to falsify their way onto the roles. And so the term that some people use and it's often used kind of pejoratively and not a positive term to accuse people of being fake native folks is this term $5 Indian that they bought their way onto the roles. But I do know that that was a phenomenon of people trying but it was a very, very, very small minority of folks who ended up on the roles if at all. But interestingly right now I'm actually working on a project to I'm beating these are allotment maps. I don't know if folks can actually see but I found a historic records of the allotment maps in Oklahoma and found my family's land and I'm doing a beating project where I'm beating out what that allotment map looked like to kind of have a connection to that land that I've been displaced from. Oh, that's fantastic. And working at the National Archives I feel like I should know the answer to this question but those enrollment, those are federal records. Yes, they're there. Yeah, yeah. And so did I just a question that did you access them? You said you access them in Oklahoma. Was it at a, having actually, I found them online. So they're available through US government records as well as like a couple of third party websites like Family Search, I think it is. Okay. It's incredible if you have like a ancestor's name or their dog's enrollment number, all of the stuff will pop up and it was, it's really powerful to be able to see all of the interactions of your ancestors and family with the US government just being all documented right there. Yeah, right. And I know we have quite a few records sometimes not always easy to navigate but they are in downtown and they're also in our field facilities across the country. So that's one of the things people, if they're not digitized, they may need to figure out where they need to go to do the research. So we are running out of time and try to keep this to if I have a classroom period. So we have one last question for you and what advice do you have for young people today? What do you as Dr. Adrienne Keane want to say to our young people? Oh my gosh, I think we are in a time where the world is rapidly changing and it means that we have unlimited possibilities of what our futures could look like. And part of what was so powerful for me with this process was learning how much indigenous knowledge really impacts us today and could make really important changes for the future. So I encourage all young people to look into their own sort of family backgrounds, their own ancestors and to see what knowledges are there that they can bring into the future and to imagine all kinds of possible futures for themselves and think really big and really broad and to also write those stories too. I think that is something that I would love to see more of is young people writing their own experiences or writing their dreams for the future, whatever it is, because writing is really powerful too. So look for your ancestors and learn from them. Think about how that brought you into where you are today and then start to write and dream those futures for all of us. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Keen. We really, I mean, you just shared so much information with us and I just loved talking with you today. And you're so inspiring, truly, truly are. So I'm sure you have some great things going on during your year of sabbatical and we wish you the very best of luck in everything that you're doing and so happy that you were able to join us. So thank you. And again, I encourage you to try to find this book if you are able to come to the National Archives Museum in downtown, please stop by the gift store and you can get a copy there or you can order it online. So please do. And then, yeah, so keep that in mind. And then lastly, I hope that you can join us next Wednesday at 10 o'clock for a program that's honoring the 100th anniversary of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. So we will be talking with author Jeff Gottfeld and the author of the 21 Steps Guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and we will also have a tomb guard who will talk about the experience of being a tomb guard. So I hope you can join us next week and I thank you all for joining us and I wish you all a wonderful day. Widow, thank you. Thank you.