Episode 33: Dr. David Edmunds

John Twork  0:10  
Welcome to Redbird Buzz. I'm John Twork from University Marketing and Communications. Our guest today is Dr. David Edmunds, a well known and trusted expert in Native American ethno history. Originally from Blue Mound about 15 miles southwest of Decatur, Dr. Edmunds earned a master's degree from Illinois State University in 1966, while teaching at Bloomington High School, he later earned an honorary degree from Illinois State in 2002 and a Distinguished Alumni Award in 2012. Throughout the past 50 years, Dr. Edmonds has held professorships at the University of Wyoming, TCU, California, Berkeley, UCLA, Indiana University, and the University of Texas at Dallas, and he's published 10 scholarly books and more than 100 academic articles. He's also contributed to Native American Docu series projects for PBS and the History Channel. Dr. Edmonds is featured in this fall's issue of STATE magazine, and he joins me now to discuss his role as a Native American scholar and advocate.

And it's my pleasure to welcome Dr. David Edmunds to Redbird Buzz. What's the word red bird? You're an authority on Native American history and culture with more than 50 years of teaching and scholarship experience? You're a part of that history your family is of Cherokee descent? How and why have you devoted your life to Native American history?

Dr. David Edmunds  1:43  
Well, I'm one of the very few people John that I've been able to spend my life doing and being paid for it is in a profession on something I would probably have done as an avocation or a hobby. Otherwise, as you probably know, I started out as a chemistry major, pre law actually, it was thought about going into something called patent law, which you deal with medicines, but as an undergraduate at Millikin and as a graduate student at ISU, whenever I had an opportunity to write a paper in a on a cultural subject or on a in the history subject, I usually chose a Native American topic because of my family's background. And because I've always been very, very interested in it. And so since that time, I, I have been able then to channel that into a profession. I'll be very honest with you, when I first started my master's degree at ISU, I was teaching at Bloomington High School and I thought, gee, those, those college professors are only in, in class, I don't know 12 or 15 hours a week at that time. And I'm teaching all this time, maybe I should try to do that I'll have more time to play golf. Well, ironically, I got I got into it and really begin to study Native American history. I haven't played around a golf since --literally since I started graduate school. And I don't I don't miss it. And, but I've been able to, to spend my life doing something that I really, really enjoy. And I'm still going I'm teaching a workshop, right, this semester, on traveling off and on to Nebraska to present material to public school teachers. So that they can include more about Native American history or culture to students in their class. So yeah, I have no regrets. And it's been sometimes it's been up and down. And sometimes we've had some, some, some bad times, but same time. I have enjoyed it. And I hope to continue to do that as long as I can.

John Twork  4:04  
Now, you're involved in parallel efforts to preserve history and also to secure a better future for Native Americans. So let's start talking about Native American history. While you're working toward your undergraduate degree here at Illinois State, you wrote a thesis on the history of the Kickapoos, which were an important tribe in Illinois history. Can you talk about some of the rich Native American history that surrounds us right here in central Illinois?

Dr. David Edmunds  4:31  
Well, yes, I'd be glad to because that's, that's one of the reasons I became interested in Native American history in the first place. My goodness McClean County, although some people don't realize it has an extremely rich background in Native American in a Native American history by Downs in between downs and Leroy, there was a speaking of the Kickapoo the, there was a thing called the Grand Kickapoo Village. of the prairie and it's just sort of on a glacial moraine there overlooking the prairie about halfway between, I suppose, Bloomington and, and Champaign Urbana. But it was the largest Kickapoo village in during the War of 1812. And it was a village from which Native Americans who were raiding the American frontier, who were who were against the United States in the War of 1812, organized raids swept south across the prairies, down towards St. Louis. And there was a major road that stretch from Vincennes, Indiana, into the Edwardsville St. Louis region, and they just created havoc along that road. And they also then crossed the Mississippi, ironically, and struck at areas in in Missouri. And in response, the government tried to retaliate. In fact, it had tried to, to attack that village previously, but it never was very successful. It was pretty isolated. And it became a focal point sort of Native American resistance. One can go out there today, and I think there was a plaque commemorating it. But maybe even more important in an era in an era about 100 years almost previous to that time, there was a fantastic military encounter that took place between the Fox Indians and the Meskwaki and it's an almost the same location near near modern Aerosmith. The Fox Indians were living in northern in Northern Illinois and Wisconsin, they had been at war with the French and they felt they were becoming they were losing and so they decided they would migrate across northern Central Illinois, cut across to the Wabash Valley and and join the Iroquois which were a pro British Confederacy in New York. And so in 1730, they, the summer they crossed the Illinois River on foot, a large number of them and stopped to hunt bison on the prairies, somewhere north of McLean County, probably on the northern part of McLean County, and there were encountered by French allied Indians who spread the word. And the French sent troops from Detroit from Vincennes from an area which would be now about where Lafayette Indiana occurred, allied with French allied Indians and they surrounded them. And in the on the prairie then the Meskwakis found a grove of trees with a with a stream going by it, and they fortified it. And they bought for a month. And the French and their allies finally over--ran them out of ammunition, etc. And they tried to make a break for it. And they were run down then on the prairie and many of them were slaughtered. But this was a major kind of military confrontation with French troops--fighting here against Native people in in Illinois. And it's after that, that the the the rest of the Foxes the ones that survived, many of them joined with the Salk and Fox tribe, which was a tribe then becomes a combined tribe up in Northern Illinois and as part of their part of the the Black Hawk war, tradition, etc. But these are just two events. There were villages along the Mackinaw there were villages south of McLean County, certainly along the Sangamon River, the Salt Fork of the Sangamon River, and considerably number of Native American Potawatomi Kickapoo villages over along the around Lake Peoria on the Illinois River. So this area that in which you living is was an area that had a lot of game. It was an area where there were still bison in the 1730s, you could hunt buffalo in the region. And it attracted quite a few Indian people. Incredible

John Twork  9:13  
History. And as an as a historian yourself, part of your work involves dispelling misguided notions about Native Americans. Can you talk about some facts that need to be set straight, frankly?

Dr. David Edmunds  9:28  
Well, I think that there's something to consider is the is that tribal people, Native American people, sometimes we use the term indigenous. I personally prefer Native American, that we're all and I do not I am not an enrolled member of a tribe, but I sometimes identify with people is that Native people are no longer vanishing Americans. The issue is that that oh my goodness, all Indian people, all Native American people live on on reservation communities, somewhere in the west or southwest, and that the number is declining, that nothing could be nothing could be further from the truth. Native population of the United States in the, in the 2000, or 2020 census self identified anyway, was almost 9.7 million people. Now, not all of those people are very, you know, less than half of them are what we would call full Bloods. But they were people of Indian ancestry. Today, they're 575, approximately recognized tribal groups recognized by the federal government. And that means that there they are, under the aegis of the Department of the Interior, the Office of Indian Affairs, etc. And goodness sakes, large numbers of people of native descent who are still here. The other irony thing is that, ironically, is that 15% of tribal people, only 15% of tribal people live on reservations, about 60% of all Native American people now live in urban areas. But people don't, don't recognize that. Because most obviously, most tribal people today don't fit the stereotype that you see on TV or in old movies. So no longer a vanishing American a group that is it's the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States. That isn't getting any new immigration.

John Twork  11:43  
Wow. Yeah, that's incredible. Something that you mentioned in the state article, during your interview, reflecting on on on history, and, and maybe some less commonly known facts from history. One thing that really struck me was was the magnitude of some of the cities. You mentioned, Cahokia, can you talk a little bit about that Native American settlement, and I'd be

Dr. David Edmunds  12:13  
i'd be glad to talk about that. In fact, that has been I've been teaching that in American, just general American history classes for 35 years, and I just gone up to Nebraska. And we've talked about that at some length. In 1100, approximately, during the Dark Ages in Europe, there was a Native American community, a city, for lack of a better term, opposite St. Louis, on in on the Illinois side of the Mississippi, and it was called Cahokia. And it had a population of about 30, to 35,000. When you look at the city, and its scope of outlying areas, which was larger than London, it was larger than any city in Germany at the time. In other words, these were these were a city by any standard. And I think the thing that's important to point out about this is, we many of us have the mistaken thought the mistaken idea that when the Europeans arrived in, in the new world when they arrived in into North and South or Central America, but North America specifically, there were very few people living here, which wasn't the case. And that they'll people who living here, were basically running around the forest shooting bows and arrows at rabbits or something. And that's a, that's a misnomer as well. And then what occurred here in the new world, is that the same thing that had occurred in the old world, there had been the rise and the fall of some sophisticated cultures. It just so happened that when in what is now the United States, when the Europeans arrived, it was more or less a North American Dark Age. They arrived at a time when these cultures, some of these cultures were in decline. But my goodness, city, a Cahokia, for example, had a series of mounds that had a wall, it had a wall around the entire city. It had an trade network that stretched from the Great Lakes down to the Gulf of Mexico and from the Rockies, on the west into the Appalachians on the east. They had artisans, who created really beautiful objects of art that were traded. There were open air markets, it was a it had an organized religious situation. So civilization per se, kind of waxes and wanes across the across the world. North America was certainly part of a worldwide pattern rather than some backwater, that is sometimes portrayed and I I think that's very important. I think this question I sometimes I use when I ask people is, what do you suppose uh E.T. if he had come to come to the world and had landed in Europe at the, at the height of the Roman Empire in Italy, he would have had a much different impression. And if he would have landed in Germany at that time where there you, you had a very less sophisticated society. So the point is, the new world here was certainly in the, in the in the mainstream and my goodness, we're not even talking about Mexico at the time the Spaniards entered Mexico, Mexico City and its surrounding area had about a third of a million people. Madrid had maybe 30,000. So you're talking about things that we we've completely sort of ignored. And I think that that's a thing that needs to be included, because American history does not start in 1492. It starts many centuries prior to that. And we've just chosen to ignore it. Hopefully, we're going to make some changes about that.

John Twork  16:03  
Jumping back to obviously, you

Dr. David Edmunds  16:04  
obviously, you struck a something I'm quite interested in there, but pardon me I'll let you go ahead.

John Twork  16:12  
No, absolutely. Jumping back to present day. In addition to being a historian and preserving history, you're also working to help secure a better future for Native Americans. You've been working recently as a consultant for tribal people and land and water disputes. Just can you tell me what that work entails? And what are some of the cases that you've been involved with?

Dr. David Edmunds  16:37  
Well, what it entails is that the many of the reservation communities which were established in the 19th century, were areas set aside, quite frankly, a by the federal government on in areas, and they were places where tribal people would live until they were, quote, ready to join the mainstream unquote, or because or they but they were areas which mainstream Americans felt that they probably didn't want. And we can and tribal reservations are very, very dear to the hearts of tribal people. But in other words, the Navajo reservation is, you know, it's beautiful, when you drive across it, etc. But the reason the Navajo has Navajos were given such a large area and large draws reservation up there was that most non Indians felt that well, there wasn't going to be good for much else. And that's a good place to put them. What we're finding here in the 21st century, and in the late 20th century, as well, is that many of these reservations have valuable resources. And so there has been a an upswing on the part of outside outside forces, to now let's open up those reservations. Let's get at those resources. And many tribal governments have said, No, that's our land. And we intend to keep it and we gave up a big area in let's say, Wisconsin, so that and have this small area. But we're not about to get give up our reservation unless you want to give us the rest of Wisconsin back. And so I have been involved in supporting tribal governments, in legal cases, which are, had been very, it's very, very interesting for me, because you go back and you look at the machinations involved in treaty making, which are kind of interesting under the present circumstances in the government, you now understand that we we have, obviously some issues in our government. And now, it's pretty obvious we had some back then. But the point is, we've been pretty been pretty successful. So far in defending the reservation land, the argument has often been, well, the tribes aren't using that the way they think they should. So let's just basically declare that part of the reservation non-reservation, and we've been able to make some very strong and when that know that you can't do that. I mean, you really can't do that. That's illegal. And sure, you know, the Omaha's, for example, will give you a back part of their reservation, if you want to give them back about the eastern half of Nebraska. There's a there's an interesting case in point at which is under some, it has been in the courts off and on and it kind of comes and goes on a big piece of land in Eastern Illinois. Incidentally, it's the Wabash watershed in the eastern part of Illinois, it contains the entire campus at the University of Illinois, the city of Danville sits on it, etc. And it was once given to by the federal government to the Miamis because the federal government assumed that they would they would buy Back and no Miami should live there. So the government said, Okay, a few sell us your land in Indiana, we'll say that you do own that land in Illinois. And the Miami said, Well, okay, so they did. So they gave up their claim. And then they began to buy bits and pieces of land in Indiana. And then they forgot about it. So today, the tribes, the Miami tribe still has a great claim to the little piece of Oh, it's a second of land, it's a significant amount of land in Illinois. And I don't think they're going to try and take anybody's farm away. That's not the issue. But but they do have a claim there. And then I've worked for the Saginaw Chippewas in Michigan, I've worked for the Omaha, the Oneidas, in Wisconsin, for the Omaha's in Nebraska, for several tribes in Oklahoma, and it goes and goes on and on. And it's always quite interesting to me to do it. Because you see how political pressure and hook and crook kind of causes treaties to be passed or lands to be established. And then the government are I'm not so sure. It's the government, quite frankly, it's local forces who are trying to get it at assets on tribal and are trying to get at it. And so far, I think we've been we've been pretty successful in defending them. I'm, it's, but it's an uphill battle. I mean, it's the big fight that's coming. I'll be very honest with you. The big fights coming in questionably is to fight for water in the West. By the time the the Colorado river reaches the Gulf of Colorado, and it has almost no water in it. And it is used to support Phoenix and agriculture in California and other places. But their water comes off the reservation, Navajo Reservation, some Ute lands etc. They have the right to take more water than they've ever taken them rally not probably going to drain the river. They're not the real problem. But it's an interesting, it's an interesting issue there. And I'm sure that we'll see that I'm sitting here in Dallas, and we're running out of water as well. And we're looking greedily now, not me, but other people at the water rights in Oklahoma because a lot of the Red River drains parts of Oklahoma, Oklahoma has phenomenal water resources. Most people don't realize it has almost as much shoreline as Minnesota, which is, think of Oklahoma you think of Dustbowl, but there are great big reservoirs across eastern Oklahoma. So those are the kinds of things that we are facing and along with them, oh, other issues. And we, we it's, it's kind of like weeds you just keep chopping away at them. And they keep coming back. You keep chopping away at it. But anyway, it's it certainly keeps me busy.

John Twork  22:54  
Well, let's talk about some of those other issues and your view as a historian and as an advocate, what progress if any, has been made to create that better future for Native Americans that you're hoping to help foster? And what work remains to be done?

Dr. David Edmunds  23:12  
Well, I think the progress is certainly has been made. We education on the Indian on Indian communities has has certainly improved. And I remember when I started when I graduated University of Oklahoma with a PhD and started teaching college, university, I knew almost every other person of Native American descent in higher education, except for the people that were in the education department who were working as the, as the coordinator of, let's say, Lakota studies in South Dakota. Now, we have we have trained a cadre of young educated people who are then going out and they are in and improving things on the reservations. The other major, big interesting thing when I went to Wyoming I taught at the University of Wyoming and I did a lot of town and gown talks around the state. And people would ask me the same question that you're asking me. They said they would said what what what what should what should we expect? What do you think tribal people need? And I said, you know, we, we really need, we really need about 1000 good young Native American attorneys. Well, we don't have 1000, but we've got a lot of good ones. And there's something called the Native American Rights Fund, who stepped in to sort of champion tribal causes. And that's good. Another interesting thing which is a kind of a chickens coming home to roost as well as if you will know, tribal lands are not subject to certain kinds of state and local taxes. And that means that you can put certain kinds of economic enterprises on those lands that perhaps are not available in surrounding regions. One of those, for example is gaming. And gaming is like any other kind of real estate, it depends upon Location, location, location, but some of the some of the casinos have done well some have not depends if you're you know, if you're in rural North Carolina, pardon me, North Dakota, there's just not an awful lot of people there to to gain access to come to your casino, where I sit here in Texas in Dallas. The Chickasaws have a casino called Windstar, which is just across the the Red River in southern Oklahoma, which is the largest casino not in the United States, but in the world. And so some of the casinos have done really very well. And the they have been taking the funds from that and have used invested it in a wide range of economic opportunities diversified, made opportunities for people within the tribal community, set up daycare centers, finance their own health services, a wide range of things. The Citizen band Potawatomi is our classic example. Their Illinois tribe events, incidentally, are up at Shawnee, they now own their own bank, they are the largest employer in Shawnee County, Oklahoma. They basically are the top the the dominant economic force in that entire county. So think these kinds of these are our opportunities. This isn't true of all communities, some communities still remain rural, isolated, and are have not shared in this. But there is there's light at the end of the tunnel. And the question, of course, is how much of this outside influence, can you do you integrate into your community? And how much do you reject? Because you want to keep what makes you traditionally or, as you understand it, part of the tribal community? And that's an issue that people have to deal with. I think probably the biggest question in coming this coming century is how one defines Native American identity. In other words, who really is Indian as some of these, some of these things ventures have profited? Boy, many of the tribes have had people trying to jump, it's like they laugh and say they're trying to jump on the buckskin bandwagon. Everybody thinks that if you can get on a tribal roll, you're gonna get rich, and the tribal rules of sitting there, every not everybody has all kinds of any proof that you are of native origin. And it's an interesting kind of a of a situation that that caused some difficulties. But there are things have there have been some some good changes, other things still need to be done. Some of the some of the the very rural areas in the in the West, particularly, still need more economic development. And the question is how much development on a in the community do you want? And I think the real issue there is that the tribal communities on those reservations, want to control that reservation that development themselves. They I don't think they want an awful lot of other people coming in and say, Well, you do this, you do that you do that, as Vine Deloria, who was a Lakota spokeswoman leaning in and lactose used to talk about the BIA the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and he said, You know what the BIA means it needs boss Indians around. And we don't need any. We don't need any more of that. But it's an it's an interesting. I've had an interesting life doing this. And I hope to continue doing it for a little while longer. And I'm sitting here today just had another book published. I'm going to give my commercial here. It's a book called Voices in the Drum and it's written for a general audience. And it talks about the response of tribal people. What it was like to be a woman on the Trail of Tears as the Cherokees were removed, what it was like to be enrolled in a boarding school, where you were taken away from your parents, what it was like to be a tribal tribal person in in California, when the Gold Rush comes in and your area is flooded with miners. What it was like to be on the Great Plains When horses are introduced and your and my goodness, your life changes wonderfully. So it's a series of things. Book that anyway, people might be interested in reading it and I'm I have another book Beyond that it's impressed. But that's another one. That's another whole story. But anyway, I've enjoyed doing that. And I've enjoyed working with the History Channel and PBS and other people of that sorts to produce things that make the the experiences of tribal people more accessible to non Indian to a non Indian audience.

John Twork  30:24  
Well, before I let you go, I wanted to touch just a little bit more on voices in the drum you before this publication, and congratulations on it, by the way, you've produced 10 scholarly books, but this was your first foray into historical fiction. What made you decide to write a historical fiction? And what do you hope the readers take away from this book? 

Dr. David Edmunds  30:46  
Well, it's interesting, the reason that this, this book emerged from a series of lectures I've given across the country, actually in Europe, sort of at some Town and Gown lectures, and I was, I was asked to give a lecture, oh, gosh, 20 years ago, or longer now, maybe, in Sun Valley, Idaho, on what happens, what was what happened to tribal people in the 1950s, and 1950s, the government tried to do away with reservations, and move tribal people into the cities. And it was called relocation. And it didn't work very well, because most people at that time had not lived in the cities. And they were just kind of cut loose. And what happens in other words, you take a person from Jesus, almost like the male, and I won't use that example. You're, you're cutting people who have no experience riding an L finding a street. And I had a paper that I started to deliver in Sun Valley, at this conference, and I wrote it. And I thought, this is just a bunch of statistics, who, when, where, why, and how boring, and I threw it away, I thought, what I really want to do is to show what it would have been like, for a man or a family off of a Lakota Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, to be just turned loose in Denver, when you've never ridden the bus, when you'd never ever had to, you know, do these things. And so I wrote a paper called about the summer Hawk family, which were fictitious family, summer hawks, and concrete canyons, and I gave it and the response was, it has had an emotional impact. Other words, my gosh, yeah, I understand now. And afterwards, I had a lot of tribal people in the in the audience. And they came up and said, Oh, this is really good. This, we really, really liked that. And so I've used that format before. A woman thinking back on the Great Plains, how the introduction of horses on the plains changed her life, how it made, we always think of changing the life of men, but really changes the lives of women more, because before that, they had to carry everything. And there's a whole series and I golly, I've done nine essays like that. And I've used them, different places, different audiences, a couple of them are new written for the book. I've used them in my classes, students really liked them. And so I thought, well, this is this, this makes it personal. And and history sometimes is seen as a boring stream of, of facts and figures and whole. But this once again, lets people identify with something. What is it like if you're a woman on the Trail of Tears, a Cherokee woman in route from Georgia to Oklahoma, and it's so bad, and it's so cold, and the food is so bad that you lose your daughter? And you have to bury her along the side of the trail and go on? What would it have been like? And so we are tempted to show why that why that journey? Cherokee people call it the Trail of Tears, for damn good reasons. And I think that's, that's why people are people, regardless of their their race or ethnicity. And I think good people of good heart can understand what it's like what it's like the for the triumphs, what it's like for a young Native American girl to get into college, what it's like for a man once again, to achieve some success. And I this is what those those vignettes do. And I hope that people enjoy them, and we'll find we'll find out I guess.

John Twork  34:38  
The book is Voices in the Drum: Narratives from the Native American past. Right? And so we encourage our listeners to take a look at that, and I will as well. Dr. Edmunds, I won't take up any more of your time, but so do appreciate you taking some time to share your expertise and wish you the best As you continue, you're technically retired but it sure doesn't sound like retirement to me, but you're doing something you're passionate about, and such a very important cause. Well,

Dr. David Edmunds  35:11  
thank you for asking me to participate. And I will say this in terms of teaching and learning how to prepare lessons, etc. I probably learned more in five or six years at Bloomington High School on how to do that I ever did in any college or university I ever taught in that if you can, that was a very good experience for me. So I have fond memories of of Bloomington and ISU and Central Illinois.

John Twork  35:43  
Dr. Edmunds, thank you so much. You bet. Bye bye.

That was Native American scholar and advocate Dr. David Edmunds. You can read more about Dr. Edmonds in this fall's issue of STATE magazine. Thanks for listening to Redbird Buzz and be sure to tune in next time for more stories from beyond the quad

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