#1442 - Shannon O'Loughlin

Joe Rogan (0:02)

All right, here we go. Hello, Shannon. What's happening?

Shannon O'Loughlin (0:04)

I'm doing well. How are you?

Joe Rogan (0:06)

Appreciate it.

Shannon O'Loughlin (0:07)

This is an incredible opportunity. I'm glad you're interested in the subject of American Indian history and I'm glad to be here to talk about it.

Joe Rogan (0:16)

Yeah, I'm glad you were willing to come here. Yeah, I became fascinated when I, well, I've always been sort of peripherally interested, but never really delved into it until I read Empire of the Summer Moon.

And then, you know, have you read that?

SG Gwen's book about the Comanches and about the Texas Rangers. And it's such a crazy story that I just became obsessed. And then I read Son of the Morning Star and then I read Black Elk. The Black Elk one was particularly fascinating to me because it details life before, like before they killed Custer, to living on reservations, to the desperation. Why don't you, before we get started, tell people what you are, who you are and what you do.

Shannon O'Loughlin (1:03)

So my name is Shannon O'Loughlin. I'm a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. I've been a practicing attorney since about 2001

And I'm currently the executive director and attorney for the Association on American Indian Affairs, we're the oldest non-profit serving Indian country. We've been around since 1922

Joe Rogan (1:23)

All right. And we should tell people, if you ever listen to this in the future, this is all going on right now when the United States is going through one of the craziest times ever in terms of dealing with the virus. We're on sort of on lockdown. All gyms are closed.

All comedy shows are closed. All concerts are closed. Clubs, bars, everything's closed.

And some places are restricting travel. And it's interesting to me that this is all going on, and we've never had to experience this before. But it makes me think of what happened when the Europeans first came to North America and encountered the Native Americans. And they didn't have any immunity to all these diseases that the Europeans were bringing over. And in some cases, wiped out as much as 90% of the people that were living here.

Shannon O'Loughlin (2:21)

But we're still here. Yeah, we would have only shut the borders about 550 years ago.

Joe Rogan (2:28)

Yeah, if you had a Trump Indian back then wanting to build walls around everywhere.

Shannon O'Loughlin (2:34)

Let's not get there.

Joe Rogan (2:35)

Yeah, let's not.

I mean, it's one of the biggest times in human history where if you talk about the Europeans coming to North America and what happened to the Native Americans just from diseases, I mean, it's one of the biggest genocides in history. Now, when you talk about 90% of a population wiped out by disease, I mean, that's almost impossible.

Shannon O'Loughlin (3:05)

But the genocide didn't happen because of the disease. The disease did what the diseases did.

But the genocide happened through colonization. The genocide happened through US. Indian policy that continues today. The genocide is ongoing.

So this is not something from the past. This is something that continues today that we still are working to fight against. That's why my organization is here.

Joe Rogan (3:31)

Right. That's absolutely true. I just was getting into the whole disease part of it. How crazy it is. No, it's fine. I want you to talk about everything you want to talk about.

So let's go to that then. Since this is...

The United States has a very strange situation with Native Americans, where Native Americans have reservations, and on those reservations they have sovereignty. They have different rules. They can do what they want. It's very strange. It's like there's nations inside of our nation. How do you feel about that?

Shannon O'Loughlin (4:06)

So it's a system that's been imposed by... Maybe the best way to start is kind of start with the beginning. Like, how did we get to where we are today?

There's a lot of information. And so you've got to stop me if I start getting too carried away, all right?

Joe Rogan (4:28)

No, we have plenty of time and a lot of interest, so don't worry about that.

Shannon O'Loughlin (4:32)

So there are three Supreme Court cases that happened in the 1800s. And there was a justice named John Marshall, who was actually buying Indian land from the US government through US grants. And so he was an interested party. But he was making decisions that set forward the kind of watershed principles that continue to affect who Native Americans and Indian Nation governments are today. And so those three cases, the first one was called Johnson v. McIntosh, and it was in 1823 And it didn't involve any Indians. It was non-Indians coming to court to try to determine who owned a piece of land in Indiana. And there was one guy, Johnson, who was a plaintiff, who had purchased the land directly from the Pianca Shaw Indians, who are related to the Miami tribe today.