 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host Krista Burns here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Commission's weekly online event where we cover anything that may give interest to librarians across the state and across the country. We do these sessions every Wednesday morning live at 10 a.m. Central Time. They last about an hour on average but they are all recorded so if you're not able to join us on Wednesday mornings that's fine you can go and watch all of our recorded sessions from as long as we've been doing this show. We do a mixture of things here. We do presentations, many training sessions, book reviews, anything as I said if it has to do with libraries we'll put it on the show. This morning we have as you can see we're doing a session about this year's one book one Nebraska selection and I'm actually going to hand over to it's Mary Jo you'll start. Mary Jo Ryan here at the Library Commission and she's here with me and she's going to introduce what we're doing today and what's going to be going on. So I will just pass the mic to her and take it away. Mary Jo. Thank you Krista. Well as Krista said welcome everyone we are so pleased to have this opportunity to talk about the one book one Nebraska. It's I am a man she's standing there's journey for justice by Jo's Dorita and it's our pleasure today to have sort of a group discussion and this this is some this is the format that I really like for Encompass Live because it reminds me of a of a great old talk radio show that I used to do so here we are just pretend like it's the olden days and we have top radio and I'll tell you who's here to discuss this book with us we are most fortunate to have the author with us today Jo's Dorita. Hi Jo. Hi how are you? Really good. Good to have you. And now we have two other people who will be. The camera's good. We were just trying to decide whether you want to see who we are or not. Okay Joe you want to give away hi and with us today also to my left to my left to your right is Rod Wagner the director of the Nebraska Library Commission. Good morning everyone. Rod's been involved with one book one Nebraska since it started about eight or nine years ago. That's right. And it's been a great project through the Nebraska Center for the Book where we've encouraged people all across the state to read the same book and talk about it with each other. Molly Fisher's over here to my right. Molly Fisher was formerly with the Nebraska Humanities Council and she's now a commissioner at the Nebraska Library Commission. So welcome Molly. It's nice to be here. Molly's also on the Nebraska Center for the Book Board and I asked her to join us because she did an interview with Joe's to read it. Oh several months ago when we first started this year's one book one Nebraska and they thought it was fun. So we thought we kind of re-freezed it here. So Joe is there anything you'd like to tell us to get us kind of starting about the book and then we'll just kind of hop in with questions and we'd love to have you do a reading when that's good. Well I guess I would just say that it's been a really it's been a really it's been a really great experience. I've traveled all over the state of Nebraska in the last year and what it's it's shown me a couple of things. One is that books still have a place in people's lives that not all stories can be told in 140 characters and that people are still in their crazy 24 seven busy lives. They're still carving out the time to go to a bookstore to buy a book to go to a library to check out a book to go home to read the book and then to turn up at this endless consolation of events that you all have been so gracious and organizing and asking good questions and thoughtful questions and that's been true just as much in Neely as it has been in Columbus as it has been in Norfolk as it has been last week in Chattanooga. So I'm just really impressed with the reaction to this story by Nebraskans and to the sincerity of their questions and how diligent they've been in making sure that this has become a little part of their life for however long. Yeah that's pretty neat. Tell us a little bit about this story for folks that may not have actually read the book yet although if there's an Nebraskan left that hasn't read this book this year they still got a couple months to do it again. True. Well the narrative arc of the book, some people collect dolls, some people collect butterflies, some people collect model cars. I collect stories and good stories and this is one that got on my radar a number of years ago and the more I found out about it the more fascinating it became. It has everything you could possibly want. If you're a storyteller you collect stories and you're looking to spend a couple of years of your life holed up and going over treaties and testimony and letters this is this is manifold. So this is the story of an American Indian. This is the story of a middle-aged father. This is the story of the chief of a small obscure tribe located in a remote corner of the Northern Great Plains who fought the United States government took on the United States Army and brought the United States Army brought the United States government to its knees. Not using a Winchester 77, not using a bow and arrow, not using a scalping knife, but using of all things a writ of habeas corpus and that battle was fought on the second floor of the federal courthouse at Omaha in the spring of 1879 and when the dust had cleared the judge a grizzled frontiersman who much preferred to be out hunting grizzly bears he was so struck he was so struck by the humanity of this man and the humanity of his story that he did something that had never been done in the 103 year history of the United States which is he declared an American Indian to be a person within the meaning of the law for the first time in our nation's history a person who simply wanted to bury his son his people the Ponca 750 strong were forcibly removed from reservations along the Niagara River northeast Nebraska that not one US treaty said they legally occupied but two US treaties never the less the government wanted their land they kicked them out they put bayonets to their back they withheld food they withheld water they crushed their spirits when they were weak enough they gave they gave in and Indian people don't do that Indian people do not lead their debt they had spent 200 years on this beautiful reservation excuse me hugging the lush Niagara River Valley and they had seven sacred hills where they had buried their debt they knew everything there was to know about how to survive on this land they say many white people when they first built across the Mississippi after the Civil War showing them how to grow wheat squash pumpkins getting them through the winners and then suddenly they're told we don't care if it's your land we want you to move to Oklahoma and they broke their resistance through the means I said they moved to Oklahoma is a horrific journey nine people died on the way down and within one year one third of the tribe had died mostly from malaria there were no preparations made a people who had a rich vibrant life in this cold northern climate were forcibly removed 550 miles south through this very rocky humid malaria infested land and they were given no oxen no plows no food no lodging no clothing they basically were just unceremoniously dumped on the land and said survive but in the first year they were there one third of the tribe died and in Christmas week of 1878 standing bears only son a 16 year old boy by the name of bear shield now he lay dying on the floor of this cheap army canvas tent in Christmas week of 1878 but before bear shields eyes closed in death he extracted a solemn promise from his father the chief and that promise was very simple fathered when I died bring my body back and bury it in our beloved homeland not in this hated Indian territory where all of our people are dying and so on January 7 1879 standing bear wrapped the body bear shield in his best clothes he wrapped him in a buffalo robe he gently put him in the back of the wicket buck or wagon and standing there in 29 others of the tribe including 11 children and seven women they began walking with very little clothing very little food very little money they began this almost biblical walk from Oklahoma back to the South Dakota border on a day with this hellacious blizzard was blowing in from Canada and the air temperature on the road above that day was 19 below zero and here were the small straggling band of pocket who were trying to fulfill a promise to the chief and made his own son and this is a book that is just one of the things I love about the book is it's just one irony on top of another it's one irony stacked on top and other irony number one January 2nd 1879 the body of standing where his only son is bouncing along the back of this rickety wagon as they are trying to protect themselves against this fierce blizzard coming in from Canada they have virtually no winter clothes no food no clothing but what they did have what they did have was this promise that standing bear had made his son to return his remains to their sacred home and on January 2nd 1879 the United States by then the United States government had made 371 treaties with the American Indians and by January 1879 the American government had broken all 371 treaties they were all for 371 but standing bear this savage this heathen this man who was not considered a person by the United States government he was not going to break his promise to his son even if that meant walking 550 miles with no food no clothing no money the dead of winter into this raging blizzard blowing out of Canada that this savage this non-person was going to honor that pledge no matter what it took and that's one of the great irons in the book one of them it's an extremely powerful story in an amazingly written book it sounds really depressing but it is very uplifting it's like the rest of the story is extremely right yes and that's that's one of the great irons it starts off as this very dark we've been here done that before the white man screwing over the Indian the government with its boot jack on the juggler but one of the things that is really powerful about this book is that if you stick with it clouds begin to part at a certain time and the sun comes out in a way that it never had on this whole Indian white continuum that we call the 19th century 1800s in America that intersection where the force of manifest destiny collided with standing there and his people was never a very pretty one if you happen to be an American Indian but what is unique and one of the things that propels you out of bed at 3 o'clock in the morning and allows you to indulge all of your obsessions is that this was a story in which that didn't happen it didn't stay dark and stormy the entire time this is a story in which I think because of just how human just how human this story is it pulled at the heartstrings of a variety of Americans who had never in their lives dreamed of stepping out of the shadows stepping out of the back alleys coming out of the woodwork to rally around the flag of an American Indian but there's something about a father this devoted to his son there's something about a people who love their country and love their homeland as much as standing for dinner once that story began to get out it created momentum they just forced the government to do the right thing even when the government didn't want to do the right thing so it's a very uplifting story in the end because it pulls in this constellation of white heroes from all strata of American society and it gets them all marching in the same direction with the same object you give this man his day in court are you kidding me he's walking 550 miles in a blizzard with no money no food no clothing to vary his son on land that he legally owned and you're trying to screw with him you don't know there's something fundamentally wrong about that and if we are to consider ourselves to be the Americans that we want to be then we have to face a certain reality either we are going to help this man out and be able to look ourselves in the mirror or we're going to keep sweeping these kinds of stories under the carpet letting them fester in the corners and we are going to morph into something that we don't want to become and standing bare and his story had the power to alter how Americans viewed themselves and that's a pretty rare feat that's pretty rare feat particularly when there wasn't any Facebook or website unlike what we have for him to go on yeah in the spring of 1879 to tell his story communication Molly did you have a question Joe have you found as you've gone all over the state a reaction this is I love the book and I am so touched by it but what keeps getting me is the fact that I knew about the Omaha's the Winnebago's the Odum, Missouri the Sanity Sioux all these other tribes I just didn't know much about the Polka and it wasn't until I had read the book and actually did some investigating I found that the Polka tribe was they lost them their whole well I don't know what you would call it their tribal status with federal government right they were terminated they were terminated which is a good word when well that's the government's word yeah we're terminating you you've been a tribe for thousands of years but we're going to just sign a document today and pretend that you no longer exist and they were terminated the southern Polka were not right but they weren't reconstituted until the 1990s yeah and I was around in the 1990s and I never even knew about it have you found that kind of well I would say ignorance on my part but the response that nobody knows that much about the Polka yeah yeah no I mean it's one of the it was not certainly not the main motivation but it was a motivation for doing this book is as I found out more about the story I found out how few people knew about this story and what was most appalling was really how few Nebraska's really knew about the story and it's just a great story it's it's not just a great Nebraska story it's a great American story I mean this man and his story and his people embody every value that we hold true and that we believe in and we wrap around our arms around as Americans I mean this is a story about a devoted father this is a story about love of family this is a story about love of homeland this is a story about honor integrity perseverance courage it has every universal theme that we like to see reflected in the dominant majority and it comes to almost an apotheosis in this story because it's so extreme I mean when I drive I was in Scott's bluff Friday and I had to drive from Scott's bluff to Lincoln and I thought that's stref between York and Lincoln I was going to go insane and I was driving I was driving 80 miles an hour because you know you you're just exhausted you're exhausted after 400 miles and these are people who routinely walk 400 miles it's a whole different world and you know you have to stop and think you're complaining about being in this air conditioned round car going 80 miles an hour stopping whatever you want for a snack you just can't comprehend the the levels of physical endurance that they were able to apply to to get something done I mean to think about walking 550 miles to keep a promise and the dead of winter without any of the clothing and medicine and all of those things so so the the sheer humanity this story I think is unbelievably compelling and I was held that to try and weave together all of the all of the yarn and all of the narrative yarn I could find and to braid this into a quilt that Nebraskans could could hold in their hands and read and appreciate the power of one of their own and what he did and what he accomplished at a time when it seemed to me so relatively few people really knew this story was in their own backyard Joe the travels throughout Nebraska and beyond has that been an opportunity to help with some of the other projects you're involved in related to this you got a scholarship program native daughter's projects I assume that's an opportunity to talk about those things too as resulted in some contribution for yes this has this meaning so many trips all over Nebraska talking about from Gretna I don't know how many times just at Omaha alone all of these trips all over Nebraska to talk about this book that is the one that won Nebraska selection of course very happy about very proud of them has been a feat of multitasking yes there is objective number one I feel like I'm one of those old itinerant preachers from the 1800s village to village in the beginning there was I feel this is my Bible I'm preacher Joe I'm coming into Neely I'm coming into Columbus I'm coming into Gretna I'm coming into Shadrin I'm coming in Norfolk etc etc and I'm bringing the good book with me and I'm spreading the word that's one of the objectives of these trips the only tasking part is look and I'm very serious about this and there's obvious reasons why one of the really wonderful things that is sprung out of my itinerant travels along dusty back roads in Nebraska spreading the word is that about 14 months ago I established a scholarship the chief standing bear journey for justice scholarship and this is a scholarship that's going to be awarded every spring and it's going to go to native Nebraska high school graduates native American high school graduates of Nebraska and it will be used to further their education whether that that could be anything some kind of education that will lead to a job that could be auto mechanic school that can be hair styling that could be the med center to be law school could be could be library school that's right it doesn't whatever it is but this is scholarship targeted specifically for Nebraska native American high school graduates to help them get to the next stage of their life which is some post high school educational endeavor that will hopefully lead to a job so everywhere I've been and every talk that I give I make sure that people in the audience know that and I usually have books with me and I let them know that every book that I sell I get it's a paperback I get $3 and it's a hardcover I get $5 and every penny of my cut of the book sale plus the royalties I get from the publisher in New York everything I get from this book goes into this scholarship and my goal is a hundred thousand dollars and I've got forty thousand now anybody out there who wants to help me get to that goal it's a good it's a novel effort on your part because it's it's tax deductible you're helping expand the pool of educated Nebraskans and you're giving back to people who kind of got robbed so it works on every level there's also a third element to excuse me to these adventures and that is this very complex project that we are undertaking at the University of Nebraska College of Journalism and it's called Native Daughters and it's a three semester project in which we are cherry picking the best and brightest students we have and we are enrolling them in this hand-picked class and we have a very generous private donor who is bankrolled in this and we are going to train our journalism firepower on a single-minded project which is to showcase the vital role in this case the vital role that Native American women from Oklahoma the most nutrient dense tribal community in America we have four federally recognized tribes in Nebraska they have 39 so we are taking 12 of our best students enrolling them in a three semester class with a great deal of private donor money and they are going to burrow in and reconstruct and show people the vital role that Native American women women have played in sustaining and enriching Native culture throughout the millennium and so I talk about that as we go and that that's a whole separate what's happened with that is just unbelievable I mean if you you look across the literary landscape and there's a gaping hole about magazines books videos anything that have to do with Native American women and we eventually we were very competitive getting the first grant from Carnegie night because there were 125 journalism schools who were buying for $125,000 they were only going to give five and so we told them the day before they were to make the decision they were the board was meeting in New York hey why don't you do this during the lunch hour fan out across New York pick ten strangers at random and ask them to name three days and if they can we will withdraw our application if they can't you owe us a hundred twenty five thousand dollars well they couldn't we could we got the money and here we go here we go and the response to this from Native American women has just been beyond anything that we've ever experienced and so now we're we've done 180 dollars magazine and now we're doing a second focusing just on the Native American women of Oklahoma and we leave for Oklahoma a week from tomorrow we leave for Oklahoma on Thursday October 11th and we will take all of the students in the class all 15 of us and we'll spend six days on the ground we're interviewing that's what they're doing now they're setting up really amazing interviews with the husband of Wilma Mann killer for example she's deceased but she's the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation the largest tribe in Nebraska a very powerful powerful person a very close friend of Gloria Steinem's Gloria Steinem set with Wilma Mann killer in her room the last week of her life and held her hand until she died she's going to provide an essay for us about her relationship with Wilma Mann killer we're going to be talking to artists and poets and teachers and doctors and we're going to put all of this in a beautiful 150 page full-color magazine we're gonna have a our documentary we're gonna have a major website and we are going to try and use this as a primary educational vehicle into as many classrooms as possible so that that 16-year-old girl who's on the cusp who has a fork in the road and can turn left and become a gruesome statistic in the paper or turn right and become the next Wilma Mann killer we want to do everything we can to nudge her to take that right turn and not the left turn and that will be the overarching goal of this magazine so glorious role models oh incredible role models you don't just spend much time on reservations to know that that's one of the most serious problems that exists on American Indian reservation is the lack of role models so since they can all go to Oklahoma and chat with a Joy Harjo or a Dr. Henrietta Mann or Wilma Mann killer's husband we're going to take all of their stories and we're going to bring them to the reservation student in Walla Walla Washington or in Southern California or in northern Wisconsin or Western Nebraska wherever they may be so when preacher Joe goes from town to town he's he's got three main objectives to spread the word on the standing very good book to let people know that there's a way they can help send Nebraska Native American high school graduates on to further education and then also there is this magnificent effort on the part of Nebraska public high school graduates to do something lasting and motivational and inspirational for native students all over the United States wow it's fabulous well it's it's a lot of fun I think students are you know they're changing with each week there we're making them do a blog every week and talking about how when they first started this class they were clueless really American women were all about now we discovered that one of the students in the class actually has native blood and she got so excited about the class and she started talking to her parents and her father had always heard that there might be native blood somewhere so he started going on ancestry.com because of his daughter's enthusiasm now they discovered that they think that they're pretty sure they have some chock-chock blood that some of their family came from parts of Mississippi and Georgia so you know what's not to like. For our listeners that are out there on this webinar live please do feel free to ask questions if you want to ask questions using a microphone just click on the raise your hand icon or type in a note in the chat box and Crystal will catch it and make sure we get your question going if you don't want to use a microphone you just want to type a question in the chat box please feel free to do that too. I'm sitting here thinking you're such a good storyteller and you've got all this going on how are you still writing yourself are you still able to do this for all this activity well what I am still doing and not as much as I I should be doing or would like to be doing but you know you can only spread yourself so thin and stay off of psychotropic medicine and what I am working on is another book project that is to me is every those exciting is standing where it's kind of the other side of the gender highway it's another story about a courageous Nebraska it's another story about a Nebraska Native American it's another story that has all of these universal themes to it and again if I can apply enough time to doing this right it should be another really magnificent story not because I'm writing it because this person lived it it's a story about a woman that may resonate with many people her name is Dr. Susan LaFlesh Dr. Susan LaFlesh Peacock and Susan LaFlesh Peacock was born in an animal skin teepee on July 17th 1865 the waning weeks of the Civil War in a remote corner of Northeast Nebraska not far from where this man was living and she was born in a buffalo high teepee in 1865 and 24 years later she graduated from the Philadelphia School of Medicine and became the first female Native American doctor in the history of the United States so tracking how does somebody born in a Buffalo high teepee in rural Nebraska in 1865 how did they become a doctor 24 years later competing against the daughters of all the Braumans on the East Coast and I'm guessing that one of Makers daughter in Philadelphia had a better high school chemistry class than Susan did and yet Susan she graduated number one in her class she didn't just graduate she graduated as the valedictorian of her class how is that possible how is that possible I mean and that's what the book is going to explain and she became the darling of all of the people on the East Coast who you know thought she was the greatest and they were thrilled and proud to have her as their friend and they begged her to stay on East Coast where she could have had a very cushy posh life living in a beautiful Victorian home having all of the trappings of civilization and she didn't consider it for a second the reason she wanted to become a doctor was to get back to her people as soon as she could and spend the rest of her life taking care of healing their injuries sewing their wounds delivering their babies comforting them on their deathbed and that's what she did she spent the rest of her life she bought a house in Wald Hill Nebraska that still is there it's occupied by a really wonderful friend by a stabler when Dr. Susan lived there in the 1890s and early 1900s it was on a high hill in Wald Hill it's a three-story woodhouse and she would hang a yellow lantern outside the house so that in fierce blizzards or summer thunderstorms anybody in need of medical help would be able to find her house and the last years of her life she had horrendous bone cancer and if you read her letters if you read the accounts of how debilitating and painful this was and she still would not allow herself to lay in bed day after that she would force herself to get in the buggy go over these bouncing rolling hills to deliver and she was able to organize the Omaha people politically she was able to give them an economic backbone and she treated them as a doctor all the while often with this horrible disease so it's another one of those stories that has a great inspirational kick to it that you you can overcome all kinds of obstacles you have an obligation to your family to your country to your people and that comes before physical pleasure so she's just another great role model and I look forward to the day when I'll have more time to devote to telling that story we tell during your career you've covered lots of big stories you have a earlier book yes what was it that drew your interest to what my virtue of growing up in Nebraska is that's the lead don't I mean I think that nobody really knows what clicks in a person I mean I don't know you all have hobbies you all have passions where did that come from do you can you definitively say the only thing I can say an answer to your question about what triggered this interest was it began at a very early age there's this huge native footprint that's been left in Nebraska I mean wherever you go there's some remnant of the people who preceded our ancestors and the impact they had here just from the from the word Nebraska all of the Indian names that you see you can't really escape it and for whatever reason it's something that clicked at a very early age for me and it's never stopped clicking it was easy to fantasize I mean when you're eight or nine or ten years old I remember we were going to the Black Hills and going through the Pine Ridge Reservation somewhere around eight or nine and you know I wanted to be just left there I just wanted my parents told me just leave me here in coming pick me up in a week or something I want to go see the old Black Hills it seemed like the best possible life for a nine-year-old boy you got to sleep in a tent you got to shoot a gun you got to shoot a bow and arrow you got to go swimming you got to ride a horse you get to set start fires without anybody calling the police right I mean what could be better than that you know I was furious at my parents for not being Indians but you know I in recent years I've forgiven them for that you know they can get a little more sophisticated and you start reading you start reading crazy or strange man this photo olives or black elk speaks or you know hundreds and hundreds of son of the morning star endless books on this topic you know by and by you you know one of your passions is history Native Americans and writing so they luckily have all merged and produced two books and I probably got 75 percent of the research the doctor Susan so just by virtue of growing up in the West place like you get introduced to that and it started clicking at an early age and it's time to stop what led you to your interest in writing is there a teacher is a particular author yeah I don't really know the answer to that I've just always liked to write I've always loved words I don't know where that came from I have no idea wasn't a specific teacher it's it's just again something that clicked at a very early age and I like the sound of words I like the way you could arrange words in a sentence and I the more you you immerse yourself in words and writing and language the more interesting it becomes and my students don't know this yet but towards the end of the semester there's a tremendous connection between good writing and good music and we're gonna spend a whole four-hour block just really burrowing into that whole notion you know that the the writer has many of the same tools as a composer does they have quarter notes and eight notes and full notes and they can control the flow of the sound you know sometimes it speeds up sometimes music slows down sometimes it comes to a crescendo and then it's it's softer it rises it falls you can do all of the same things with writing and the writer has tools he has dashes semicolons colons periods commas short sentences long sentences and if you use those right you can create music on the page in a very similar way that composers create a musical score and I want to show them different writers Hemingway's music is totally different than Fock's and they both were great musicians on the page and there's a way to really stop that in its tracks and and show the difference between one man's music and another man's I got an email oh I don't know sometime in the last year from a reader of the book in Portland and he sent me an email saying how much you liked the book and he said oddly enough what I really liked particularly about the book was the first paragraph and you know that is a really sophisticated observation and I wrote it back and I said well I'm really I'm really glad to hear that because it took me two days to write the first paragraph and I could go on for an hour just explain I mean what's what I was trying to do with that paragraph and it has a lot to do with what I just said there is a certain mood or a certain feeling that you can convey in that opening paragraph and every single word leads towards the feeling that you want to give the reader and the feeling that I wanted to give the reader was hey go pour another cup of hot chocolate go through another log in the fire go pour another you know shot a whiskey or whatever but it's this is a story and I want you to sit down and sit by the fire and have your toddy and just get ready to ease into to a story to a story and there's a way to convey that and you have to spend a lot of time feeling the words before you can actually write them and for this book before I wrote I went up and I found a nice spot of the Niagara River and I sat there for two or two and a half hours and I did nothing but just listen to the sound of the Niagara River and it was that sound that sound that very steady current and that's what the Niagara River is about I mean it's it because of all it's a really unique ecological free show in a way because it has this very sustained current all year around summer winter spring and fall and that's because it draws on a lot of underground water supplies and all of these network of tributaries but it has this very constant flow and so I just sat there for two two and a half hours and I just wanted the flow and sound of that to be stamped on my brain so when I went home the next day or the day after that and clicked on the computer for the first time to start writing the book that that feeling and that sensation of the the sound that that water made would be very fresh and I could somehow capture that sound and get it on this electronic computer that would eventually get onto this page that would eventually lead someone to say what I really like was your first paragraph so it's a very kind of interesting process so Joe would you read that first paragraph for us or I guess any paragraph you want but now you've got me intrigued you know there's a lot going on in that first paragraph at least the goal was there's a lot going on in this first paragraph without you necessarily knowing that you're feeling sometimes it's important that the reader feels more than they understand and that sometimes cadence and rhythm can be more important than content and in fact sometimes cadence and rhythm are the content are the content that's that would take me a while to explain but yeah yeah the chapter one is entitled on the banks of the running water and the running water was the Indian translation of the Indian name the Ponca word for the nine of red translated the swift running water so chapter one is entitled excuse me on the banks of the running water somewhere along the flanks of the great river not far from the valley once fleshed with buffalo beaver bald eagles and yellow shafted flickers where two centuries ago the captain explores looked out and saw both America's past and future somewhere near these rugged chalk bluffs like the bums of a father and son and there's a lot going on in that paragraph and it's foreshadowing it's foreshadowing a lot of different things it's foreshadowing the rhythm and the cadence of the sentence it's foreshadowing the place that sense of place is a powerful character in this book it's foreshadowing that history has a place in this story and it has a little whiff of mystery to it lie the bones of the father and son what is that all about what does that mean so I don't know whether or not it means that I to spend two days on that I don't know what that says but I can just I can say that hey it took two days to write that no problem yeah no problem with that concept in the writing of this I mean I think the first paragraph kind of answers it some people would say well the book could actually end after the trial after it happens but you can come back to where the bones of the father and son are very then it just seems to me what were your considerations were you trying to finish out his story yes I mean you're trying to be a full life a full life and that life didn't end on the second floor of a monolithic limestone courthouse on the corner of 15th and Dodge Street so that may have been the high point from our viewpoint from an American viewpoint if you were to thread the story into like an EKG and you can monitor the peaks and valleys that's where it peaks from a literary standpoint this dramatic moment when standing there addresses the courtroom as the last speaker of the trial but if you're trying to develop a full life his story doesn't end there his life doesn't end there and what happened after it is very important too and what happened after it was he and this magnificent there are so many people you couldn't make these people up I mean you couldn't make up this this this constellation of characters orbiting standing there each one of those you could you could have picked off and you still could pick off and do you could do a biography of George Crook that would be sensational you could do a biography of bright eyes the Omaha Indian poet interpreter be spectacular you could do a biography of Thomas Henry Timmels this kind of wild man crusading journalist you could do a biography of the judge younger Dundee you can do a book of Andrew Jackson Popples and the lawyer you could do legitimate biographies on each of those people who were swirling about so what was interesting after this verdict in May of 1879 was the East Coast speaking to you know that standing bearer Thomas Henry Timmels bright eyes and bright eyes brother Francis also known as wood worker the four of them and their travels up and down the East Coast before these huge crowds of white Americans it was kind of the first it was kind of manifest destiny and reverse you know instead of all the white people going west to bring civilization to the continent to the Indian it was the Indian going east to kind of bring civilization to all the white people you know look we are we are people I am a man and it was kind of an interesting again an interesting irony of the story instead of white people going west for for reasons that involve Indians Indians were going east to educate white people and so that part of the book is as important that part of the story is important because interesting things happened and it's all part of American history it's all a part of our our it's all a part of our narrative it's all a part of our narrative of what happened when standing there and bright eyes and Timmels all went to the East Coast and had dinner with some of the wealthy elite of the East Coast that's all an important part of our narrative and it's what allows us to see by studying the past it allows us to see it helps us to see who we are today if we know who we were yesterday it helps explain who we are today and it helps foreshadow who we're going to be tomorrow and so this this has a very in America another reason why this story needed to continue beyond just the climactic problem in the trial is that it's my observation that American justice does not come in blinding St. Paul on the road to Damascus lightning bolts just because Rosa Parks didn't give up her chair in December her seat on the bus in December of 1955 it didn't mean that the next week there was a major civil rights legislation that wiped out segregation in the South you know that American justice is kind of delivered in fits and starts and verse and two steps forward and one step backward and standing bearer started it he was the lead domino for legal and social justice for Native Americans this decision occurred in May of 1879 did that mean that Indians overnight were also granted the same constitutional protections that the more fortunate white race was in the judges words no did it mean they got the right to vote a mirror five years later no but it's took that first step on this kind of long torturous highway that has been our history you look at what's happening now I mean there's all kinds of attempts to change of voting patterns in various states that you need to have a certain kind of ID because there's so much voter fraud which is all alive it's all alive there is no massive there's nobody who can prove that there is a massive voter fraud going on out there and yet the laws are trying to be tweaked there was a time during the earlier this the decade of the 2000s where there was some attempt to deprive certain prisoners of having the ability to have a run of habeas corpus and this story has many things to teach us one of which is it's a great strength of our country that we allow almost anybody to have access to our courts and to have their day in court and if we start closing the doors to certain people because we don't like them this door could have been this door was closed to dread Scott just 20 years earlier this is this is dread Scott only it's an American Indian anyone but 20 years earlier it was a black man who tried to get his freedom from a federal court and the Chief Justice of the United States ruling against dread Scott said that a Negro has no rights that a white man is bound to respect that's a direct quote well 20 years later an American Indian comes into the same federal court system and he is declared one the government has no legal right to hold him he's a free man he is now to be regarded as a person within the law and he is also to be given the same 14th Amendment protection as all Americans so it took 20 years and we have to be very careful about making sure that we understand how powerful of value it is and how it undergirds this notion that we are a world leader because we do allow all manner of people to have a sense of justice a sense of justice so when people in Pennsylvania are trying to gin gin up the game of voting to disqualify a certain strata of American society from the most basic of all rights then you you need to get out of your barcode lounge or do something about it and and and mercifully from my standpoint a judge in Pennsylvania did that yesterday struck down the whole crackpot notion that you have to jump through 18 hoops in order to vote no you don't know you don't so that's I think of the message is the access to court the access to dealing like you have you're a stakeholder in your own country and I think that's one of the powerful messages of this book is the whole issue of justice I mean it is standing bears journey for justice and I think it's a great book I hope that all of you there listening to this I've either read it and enjoyed it or planning to read it before the end of the year or you know if you don't get to it for the end of the year you can still read it talking about it this year I'd be remiss if I didn't mention and I know there's not much time left but I do want to mention that November 3rd is the Nebraska Center for the books celebration of Nebraska books it's there to help the website yes if you yeah you've got the yeah this is the I am a man one book one Nebraska website wait pausing on screen sharing okay I should shut up while it doesn't know it's okay I just need to do the right thing okay here we are this is the one book one Nebraska website please join us there for more information including some of the things that are going on and you're getting involved there's a calendar of events and then if you want to click me through to the Nebraska Center book and click on that little oops have to wait a minute the celebration of Nebraska books is set for November 3rd 2012 it's the annual event by the Nebraska Center for the book where we hold our annual meeting at 230 and then at 330 we party and celebrate all the great books in Nebraska and part of what'll happen is Joe's to read it will be there again to talk some more about his experiences with one book one Nebraska and this and this great story that we've been all reading we'll also have folks that won the Nebraska book awards some of the writers some of the editors some of the illustrators and publishers that were to be celebrating and it'll be a great time they'll read a little bit from their books and it's a it's a nice afternoon event on a fall afternoon and I believe the game is out of town so we won't be fighting that's important yes if you want to stay up on what's going on you can go to our one book one Nebraska Facebook page there's always information about where Joe is and who he's talking to and other fun things as well as let's see what does it say here I think well that's about the the governor's lecture on humanity you might also mention that on Monday October 15th Christine Leyshaw who is a terrific documentary a documentarian works for any T she is going to have the national release of her documentary on standing bear really standing bears footsteps is going to be released nationally on Monday October 15th and there's a little blurb on right here y'all see that shows I'm not up on the Facebook page I believe it's eight o'clock central time but it's a powerful powerful documentary she's done an incredible job spent three years of her life putting this together and it will air nationally on Monday October 15th and I'm pretty sure it's eight o'clock central time meet I wanted to just open the lines just one more time to see we have any questions from any of our audience because we are out of time yeah we sell people on didn't know they don't always leave well with us till the end thanks for sticking with us we really appreciate your being here today Joe pleasure it's been wonderful it's been a great conversation as all these are what do we got coming up on and come on next week actually Marty McGee I think that right yes you're right yeah next week something completely different yes totally gonna change gears so yes thank you everyone Molly Joe Mary Joe and Rod for being here and sharing this with us I hope people are still reading the book and we'll read it whenever they watch this recording too next week we have actually Marty McGee who's from the Nebraska coordinator for the National Network Libraries of Medicine and Terry Hartman who's from the McGuggan Library of Medicine at University of Nebraska Medical Center they're gonna both be joining us to talk about Cheers on online database consumer health information research resource service to get the acronym right and the National Library of Medicine databases that librarians can use to get resources and information to any of the users and patrons and this is it related to the beat up yeah you know our library brought then builds Nebraska communities grant is in its third year and now we've got those public computer centers all over the state and we've got program partners like the McGuggan Library of Medicine and the National Network Library of Medicine staff who are going around and doing training for customers consumers in libraries but also for librarians and Marty and Terry and a couple of other people from those organizations have been out on road quite a lot sort of like Joe and they've been visiting libraries and they've been telling the story of how much there is to learn from very well respected vetted sites on the web for all of us to be more knowledgeable about our health care and about health information so there that's gonna be a great session that will be our show for next week and also Encompass live does also have a Facebook page so you can follow us on our website or you can go to our Facebook page and you'll get notifications of any new sessions that are scheduled when recordings are ready accidentally unshared my screen so yeah so you can go here and you'll get announcements and know when we're doing everything via Encompass live and so keep an eye on us there if you do use Facebook it's a great place to follow us I announced that just this morning join us right now so you can always log in on the fly to you don't have to register ahead of time you just come anytime you want you to see our recordings your show so that is it for today doesn't look like any last minute questions have come in and that's cool we did a good job recording this I think will be all good for when the recording goes up so thank you very much for attending this week and as I said it's recorded later today maybe tomorrow okay later than that we had some technical issues today I do apologize for any of that that you had to go and you know you guys are great product solvers you made it work we improvised and you know I think with a duct tape and whatnot we're doing okay here so thank you very much for joining us and hopefully we'll see you next week bye bye thank you all