Episode 9: Chase Iron Eyes

On this episode of Not Invisible: Native Peoples on the Frontlines we chat with lawyer, activist and storyteller, Chase Iron Eyes. We discuss his time at Standing Rock, the activations at Line 3, and his own podcast and video cast, Cut to the Chase.

Produced by: Spirit Buffalo
Produced by: Ashley 'Cinders' Robinson
Edited by: Kim Acheson
Mixed and edited by: Abbey Franz
Song: 'Another Side' 
Song Produced by: Ben Reno, Eli Lev, & Megan Leigh

Transcript

LeAndra Nephin  0:00  
That was Chase Iron Eyes activist, lawyer and creator of cut to the chase a hard hitting news and storytelling podcast from an indigenous perspective. Chase joins me to discuss his time at Standing Rock and most recently his work with the water protectors at line three. Welcome to not invisible native peoples on the frontlines. I'm your host Leandra nefyn. Okay, next one. Okay. This has been not invisible native peoples on the front lines the house on fire production. Our producers are spirit Buffalo and Ashley Robinson. Our editor is Abby friends. The song for this episode is another side by wild whispers produced by Ben Reno, Eli love and Megan Lee. I'm your host Leandra nefyn Until next time.

Hello, my name is Leandro nefyn. I am the social impact advisor with Red House series and a pretty strong house on fire productions. Today we have the pleasure to speak with Chase Iron Eyes, he's going to join us on our virtual couch Chase. How are you doing? How is your heart and how is your spirit?

Chase Iron Eyes  1:40  
How Murdock Yapi cola you, you teach up? My name is Chase Iron Eyes. I greet you all as friends. I am a Lakota national, indigenous person of the Western Hemisphere. I am an attorney, a father, a husband and an agent of change in our time. die I won't be the guy he below law is I'm very, very pleased to be here. And it's very, very good to see all of you Redhouse to connect with you and to try to build storytelling capacity for indigenous nations indigenous peoples in the sacred lands of not just the last quarter, but many tribal nations that have been here who might have originated here in the Black Hills. So I'm glad to join you today.

LeAndra Nephin  2:39  
Yes, I'm so pleased we actually got a chance to have you with us today. Can you give us an introduction to who you are? What's your background? And where do you come from for those listeners that may not know who you are?

Chase Iron Eyes  2:51  
Absolutely. Thank you for that. As a citizen of the Oh chatty szolkowy confederacy or the Great Sioux Nation. I was raised with the Lakota people that l speaking people. I was born in the Black Hills and raised on the Standing Rock nation or Standing Rock Reservation home and host to the 2016 2017 then with Standing Rock or no dapple struggle against the Dakota Access Pipeline, actually against the financial extractive complex that committed many atrocities during those times, and now I live on the Pine Ridge Reservation, the home of the Oglala band of the Lakota Nation. That's where my wife grew up. It's also where my father is from. So it's been very interesting because I had to switch identities or tribal memberships. That was a very interesting experience, but most people know me from facing six years in prison for my peaceful stance during a chatty camp during no dapple. During Standing Rock, I was charged with inciting a riot, which is a Class C felony or five years maximum in prison, I was also charged with criminal trespass. And I mean before that, my life path might have indicated an expression of what would be termed activism. I was raised by a mother by a single mother, who instilled in me the value of knowledge of self knowledge beyond self pursuing the attainment of whatever the Western educational institution or maybe even civilization had to offer the human species. And my mom also taught me about my inherent rights as a you know, a divine flesh and blood indigenous person originating from and formed of the actual land that is now called the Americas or the Western Hemisphere. I was raised with that not necessarily, like indoctrinated or proselytized or inculcated, but just, that's how she taught me she did not try to steer me in any one direction. And so I kind of had to navigate those systems of genocide, really those institutional forces which are designed to assassinate the spirit, assassinate the original character of the true civilizations of what is now called the Western Hemisphere. I was raised on Standing Rock. And then, you know, my career I was introduced to activism agency, I was introduced to the concept of representation and agency. At 19 years old, the University of North Dakota had a mascot, you know, in practice of Indian mascot tree, it was called the fighting suit. And I remember being in a class and being the only non European American person in there. And because the fighting to mascot, the Indian mascot and made the news as it does, I mean, pop culture kind of touches indigeneity in during Halloween, somebody will dress up as a Native American person on Halloween, which is a huge, huge No, no. Every time there's a football game, where there's a Native American mascot involved, somebody will show up in a fake headdress in fake war paint, most of the times plastered drunk. Every time the Cleveland Indians or the Atlanta Braves make the playoffs or happen to make the World Series I mean, then, then that's where global pop culture kind of touches indigeneity. And then certain people are kind of hauled in front of these mainstream places to speak on behalf of the Indians. And so I got my start there with Vernon Belcourt. And Clyde Bellecourt, I remember being 19 years old meeting, these guys are legends, these guys are the reason why I can wear my hair long today or I can participate or conduct a participate in or conduct a sweat lodge, or partake openly in the Sundance or the vision quest, or any number of ceremonies that were that had been outlawed. Since 1883. Our people were carrying these ways underground, illegally. And fortunately, they kept them alive. And through the power of our adaptive abilities, our evolutionary capabilities, were able to kind of transcend those institutions that were designed to create a wholly foreign system, system of metaphysics system of knowing one that wholly and completely tried to denigrate us and cause us to denigrate ourselves. So my work has kind of been informed first from there as an adolescent really coming into pre adulthood. And then going forward, you know, I made some mistakes, I went off the beaten path, and ended up being incarcerated. At a young age, I think I was 23. And I did a little bit of time in prison. And this was after college after I earned a bachelor's degree in political science, and also kind of incidentally, in Native American studies, because I was a double major in that I was just kind of interested in, what the heck were they doing? What

were they gonna study in Indian Studies, or Native American studies? I like I'm here, you know what I mean, y'all can study me,

you know what I mean? Anyhow, I ended up going to law school, after my contact with the criminal justice system, the carceral system, where I studied federal Indian law, where I was introduced to the doctrine of discovery. And so from a legal perspective, I began to kind of formulate my analyses about contact with these institutions that were still very much coming from reservation left, I could see you know, very viscerally how the systems of genocide were continuing to be executed against us to this day, but just the mainstream doesn't talk about it. We don't learn about it anywhere really, in in our schools or in our halls of government or in the media in Hollywood. Like wherever you go, there's they're not telling the truth. So you got to kind of dig a little deeper. You might find somebody like red house or somebody like last real Indians or you might find different personalities that you might gravitate toward to but I got my start there. And that's a very quick way of telling you kind of where I came from you Where I come from in how I was labeled an activist by the media, I never ever thought of myself as an activist I was, I'm always just trying to achieve a measure of equity, a measure of justice, at first from the indigenous perspective, because I was born Lakota. But the more you kind of continue on this path, you recognize that you're fighting for the human species, that we all we represent those of us who were kind of, on this conscious path, and really trying to move our bodies into action in our prayers in action really, that we represent something that is redeemable about the human species, and taking a look at what the English speaking universe has kind of accomplished, or what they were able to do. In terms of Western civilization, our work is quite necessary at this point in time, a lot of my work is building bridges. It's translating some of these perspectives. Some of these worldviews to other places, usually English speaking places, mostly in Italy, only been in Copenhagen in Denmark one time, but I was well received at those places, anytime you go outside the United States, where there's not an active effort to erase and subjugate and create perpetual servitude for indigenous nations. This is the stated goal of the doctrine of discovery. And we could spend some time talking about that, but fast forward, you know, 500 years. And it's a miracle, that we are still here that indigenous nations, comprised of all their original inherent authorities and sovereign attributes, are still here, seeking a liberation in this touches, all of these different paths that we might take all around the world, wherever we might go, this continent here will call out to us, which is my experience. That's why I really I love where I'm at right now, you know, these are the Black Hills, these are the place of our origin. And it's important that we recognize this is what we're trying to protect, we're trying to protect the human species ability to have a relationship with the sacred or with Mother Earth, or even to recognize that we're 75% water, you know, many we Choni, which was the battle cry, or the spirit cry of Standing Rock, that applies to every single living being, every being that moves above the earth in a sacred manner, for sure. And including that includes, according to our worldview, the human species or the two legged being So anyhow, I'll say about that much, it's been quite a whirlwind, almost going to prison again, then being able to come out of that, keep my law license in the United States of America, according to the BA er to the bar system occurred in the state of South Dakota, and then been a very quick four years later. And now I'm present at line three, you know, we've got relationships with people who were at Standing Rock who are at line three, right now, and they're on the same mission. So long way of expressing something from the indigenous worldview, that our sacrifice is a form of ceremony, we have these ancient practices, these ancient protocols that sustain us to this very day, the one of the basic tenets of these ceremonies is that you've got a sacrifice of your own. And when these people at line three, or at Standing Rock or Bayou bridge, or Byhalia, wherever human beings are kind of confronting that colonial extractive mentality, it's happening in Europe as well. But wherever they're confronting that they're offering their bodies, they're offering their peace of mind. They're offering their earning potential, their reputations, their professions, and they're sacrificing for Mother Earth for the water for the sacred and that is a form of ceremony at Standing Rock, it happened 10s of 1000s of people coalescing in one place, so that the blessing and the responsibility that comes from that sort of ceremony is now being inherited by those who might have identified as white American or who might have labeled themselves as a colonizer at one time. You know, colonization is a state of mind, whether or not you're a colonizer, or you're colonized, is a state of mind got nothing to do with our phenotype. So I'll see about that much. And just pause for a second.

LeAndra Nephin  14:51  
You've brought up some really well, several important points. And I guess for me, I really like how you make that distinction. between having a colonized mind and, and how it offers kind of this collaborative effort between people, because at the minute, there seems to be a lot of kind of polarization that happens, particularly when you talk about kind of different races and stuff. How do you see that moving forward in the future in terms of working together collaboratively for the same end goal? What does that look like for you?

Chase Iron Eyes  15:27  
Yes, that's a very good question. For me, it is truly bridge building or in our worldview, luck with a worldview. Whoa, Doc, we, we have a certain ceremony called the Hong Kong ceremony, a making of relatives ceremony, probably how your people that might people became relatives back in the day, among other indigenous nations. There's a whole pre contact history that is just not available. Anywhere written in a literary sense, you got to talk to people. So building bridges for me has involved me, traveling involved me talking to people, creating relationships with people, and people of any nationality or any assigned kind of classification like race, will actually invented and assigned classification like race, or maybe religion, and exploring the origins of the colonization process because it started in Europe, for Europeans landed on our hemisphere, with Columbus and, you know, DeSoto and Cortes and whoever else was coming over here before they landed here, they were subjected to the same kind of colonization of the Spirit in the mind, a separation, an abstraction, separated the spirit from the mind. This was during the time of the Enlightenment, what they call the enlightenment, there was a new cultural mythology, a new order, God was dead, Nietzche killed God, for these people, for the European people, the Enlightenment hit him, it blindsided him. And then add to that this scientific supremacy and even technological, not just technological supremacy but technology as a means to salvation as a means to live your life, devoting your consciousness of your spiritual cultural mythology, tells the world and tells people who come from these English speaking universes where this journey has taken us and how it has gotten us completely off course Yes, Wi Fi is a good thing. indoor plumbing is a good thing. But we've this civilization has and it's both foreign to indigenous peoples and digitus is very, very foreign. It has brought us to the brink of species extinction. It has brought us to think of an extinction level event and has caused us to behave like a virus all over the globe. So I my personal insight or intuition is that it doesn't matter if people are descended from those former colonizers. For indigenous people, the European Americans were the colonizers when they landed here, and because of the institutions and the systems that they put in place, but we dug a little deeper and understood that it started way back there with the Roman colonisation with the killing of all the white people Indians, you know what I mean? The European indigenous peoples who were tuned into Mother Earth tune into the forces of the sacred, understood, you know, that the sunrise and the sunset, and the seasons, and the 28 days of the moon, they paid attention to the stars. They were scientists and philosophers in nature, and they were colonized. They were wiped out. They were called pagan, Saracen, barbarian heathen, just like indigenous nations. And now it took us to make all of these mistakes and to put human species in, in a sense of impending peril for people to wake up and say, Wait a minute, maybe the indigenous nations had their own isms, in apologies, before we got here in created a way to other eyes them to view them I mean, it goes even deeper into I guess the West systems kind of unspoken system of metaphysics of the self, of the ego of consciousness for indigenous nations, who became an indigenous language first.

That is like an unfathomable separation to say that you are separate from in the known universe, that you are separate from your relatives, because we certainly have a way of knowing or centering our quote unquote selves, in the universe in the known sacred universe, that those teachings are, we don't know how old they are, but they've lived through many incarnations of our flesh and blood. And they'll live beyond the expiration of the current flesh and blood that we, that we get to occupy. For the time being. There are other traditions that are ancient, and who recognize that that the human species, this, this body, in this flesh, and this blood has lived for millions of years for the last quarter, it's a little over 2 million years, according to one of our teachers, his name is Pete catches, and you hear our people expounding on the way that they understood themselves and the world, and how those were all connected. There's another level of exploration in learning our indigenous languages, but for me, building bridges is most important because people are in a space where quote, unquote, space and time because of because of human caused climate collapse, because of a global pandemic, we are searching for direction, and we're asking ourselves questions. And we are, it's like our imaginations open. Like we're children, we have curiosity in that be to be ready for whatever that direction is. And that's where I see where I can be most effective in life. In duty, duty, where the action is required. The human being that's been most effective is trying to build those bridges and raise people's consciousness but be part of that collective raised consciousness that's been my experience understanding and it's been my experience ever been able to train with this. This has been Chase Iron Eyes. In our language, there's no word for goodbye. So I've got to say doke SHA RK watchI until Until we meet again.

LeAndra Nephin  23:01  
This has been not invisible native peoples on the front lines, a house on fire production. Our producers are spirit Buffalo and Ashley Robinson. Our editor is Avi friends. The song for this episode is another side by wild whispers produced by Ben Marino, Eli love and Megan Lee. I'm your host Leandra nefyn. Until next time,

Transcribed by https://otter.ai