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KEVIN MCKIERNAN: We first came into the kitchen. Everyone sat down to eat. It was a very hard run in there, and everyone was tired and hungry. And immediately someone came up to me and said, you come with me. And I was taken to one of the leaders, one of the Menominee Warrior Society spokesmen. And his first question was, what do you want of us? And then I said, well, I'd like to know why 40 guys would throw away their futures.

And his response was, do you think that we've thrown away our future? And I said, I don't know. I'm here to find out. And he said, the problem with your being here is that you will be a divisive factor because of the color of your skin. Many of my people hate the White man. The White man has oppressed our people so much that no matter what kind of a person you are, it'll be very difficult for you and it'll be difficult for our people. And so you're going to have to leave.

SPEAKER 1: Well, how did you win him over? How did you win the group over then?

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: Well, I don't know that I won anyone over. I was taken under those conditions to another room, and someone then came in with four or five other people and they sat down, and I was allowed to do a tape under conditions which were not really ideal. And people were very, very suspicious of me.

And I completed the tape, and in fact, I completed two tapes, and they were then taken from me. And as I later found out, parts were erased, were deleted. The tape was censored. But the parts that were censored were those which spoke, or went to, related to issues of security around the monastery, which they felt might be compromised.

SPEAKER 1: What assurances were you able to give the people on the inside that the story you would present would not be hacked up, would not be a distortion of their views as they felt they should be expressed.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: Well, first of all, it was demanded of me as a condition precedent to doing any interview that everything that was said would be broadcast. And so I had a tape at the end, one tape, I should mention, was not allowed out at all. But I had a tape, one other tape, that was about 80 minutes at the end of it all. And I was told that that entire tape would have to be played without stopping, without cutting. And I said, I don't think I can make that assurance.

So I made a counteroffer. I said, I will talk to the people at National Public Radio, and I think that I can assure you that, assuming they accept, we will put on five, 5-minute segments, on five consecutive days. And these will be excerpts from the overall tape which are representative. Amount of time passed and they accepted that counteroffer, along with the understanding that the entire tape would be played on Minnesota Public Radio in its entirety, without cutting.

SPEAKER 1: And the only thing that you have cut in this tape are the points where they have said, please delete the following. And you hear a blank space, and some tape recorder clicking noises and things like that.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: Things like that. There are some cosmetic cuts and that sort of thing, where some doors are slamming, and people aren't in the room or something like that. But the substance of what people said, Melvin Chevalier Jr, a Menominee Warrior Society spokesman, and some people who wish not to be identified, that substance is there.

SPEAKER 1: Here then is Kevin McKiernan's interview with the Menominee Warrior Society.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: This is the 21-day of the occupation. The Alexian Brothers Novitiate in Gresham, Wisconsin. A lot of people around the country have some different ideas about why you people are here. There's been a lot of criticism. There are a lot of people who are probably supportive of what you're doing, don't quite understand it.

The issues, for the most part, in my understanding, in my reading, have been limited to confrontation, the chess game, which piece has been moved, the Alexian brothers, the white citizens of Shawano County, the sheriff, the National Guard, people out here. What I'd like to do is try to get it on a little bit as far as what would be inside you to come out here and do an act that's going to have a lot of consequences in your life, and could have a lot of consequences in a lot of other people's lives.

And I'd like to ask some questions that may seem to be some critical questions, but I'll say them to you up front rather than writing about it later when I'm not in a situation that I don't control. Did you come out here to have a good time, and have a party, have a whole building to yourself?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: No, I think this was a tactic that we used that was the last resort. We tried to, [COUGHS] our whole thing was to get our tribe back together because we have been divided into so many different factions. And we recognize this to be the divide and conquer tactic of the United States government. We tried all peaceful means. We tried running in elections. We tried general councils. We tried informing the people with documented evidence on a lot of these issues here at hand.

This was the last resort, and time grew too short, and we had to utilize this tactic of taking over this in order that we would afford ourselves an opportunity to bring our treaties before a court of law with the eyes of the people of the United States watching so that the dual system of justice wasn't dealt with as usual.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: What steps did you take before the seizure of the building? You indicate that you tried to work within the system, what did you do?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Well, a group of young people, along with older people, middle class people, people from all stages of acculturation, some young people with semi-traditional thoughts, but because of their lack of knowing their exact tradition, some previous tribal leaders who were manipulated by the United States government.

But the tribal people didn't understand this, and they blamed them for corruption and whatnot. And then we just had some more or less conservative acculturated people who didn't understand the importance of our religion and culture, that just the issues at hand were to maintain a democracy, this was their only thing.

And through doing this, we ran for seats on what they call the voting trust, which was then the governing body of our tribe. It was something created out of termination back in 1961, it was created by some of our people who were concerned with keeping the Menominee people together as a tribe, even though we weren't recognized by the federal government as a tribe.

So the only means to keep the people in a tight unit was to develop this corporation structure, and to utilize a voting trust, which gave 11 people the voice of decision for anything that had to do with our tribe-- 11 people rather than the 3,500 Menominees. We tried to run for seats on this board of trust in order that we would persuade the rest of them on the board that we would dissolve this voting trust and return the voice and the power back to the Menominee people so they could make the decisions, not just 11 people.

The reason we did that was because it went from a real concern, people that had real true feelings of, of maintaining a tribe and keeping them together as a unit. It went from those people in a power struggle, I think started in 1971 or '72 around there with the drums movement, and they advocated good things. They talked about our culture and our religion.

But just as any organization that once they gain power, the very power that oppressed them before, it seems in every case that it actually corrupts them once they attain it. And in this case, this is what happened when the DRUMS got the power. One of the platforms they run on for getting control of this government structure that they had set up here, was to dissolve it and return it to the people. Well, they didn't do this.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: What does DRUMS stand for?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Determination of Rights of Unified Menominee Stockholders or Shareholders, something to that effect. Yeah, Unity of Menominee Shareholders. They were a grassroots organization, and when they started and they talked about returning us back to our traditional ways and everything.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: This is the group that has evolved now into the Menominee Restoration Committee, headed by Ada Deer?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Right. Ada Deer was then just a member of this organization, but through her education in the University of Wisconsin political system, and we know what kind of political system it is, she was also educated in a Rockefeller funded foundation. And we know what they teach. And we try to get at this woman from understanding what we felt. We talked to her many times.

And we try to persuade her that gearing our people to the standards of those in America, non-Indian people wasn't our way. It didn't work for us. It's the reason why we've lived with all these frustrations for so long because we don't understand that way of life. We try to compete with our brothers and that's not Indian. It's not a way. You can't love your brother and compete against him at the same time. And it was a hard thing to figure out for our people.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: Would you say that it would be fair to characterize her program as that of assimilation?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Definitely. For example, the Restoration Act, which Ada Deer lobbied for, as a matter of fact, what DRUMS lobbied for, the original act that was submitted was submitted by DRUMS, and Harold Froehlich rewrote the bill with the help of Joe [? Polaznik, ?] who is an exploiter from way back.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: Who is Harold Froehlich?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: He was the then eighth district Congressman who was defeated in the last election. But his reason for rewriting it and everything that we later came to know is, he has land within the boundaries of our reservation, and he was looking out for his own assets as well as corporate heads that live out there and other money elite people.

He rewrote the Restoration Act, submitted it without bringing it before the Menominee people for review and approval. And consequently, it was passed by Congress with a record breaking vote of any one issue. I think it was something like 403 to 5 opposed. It was a most unanimous vote ever given by Congress.

But what it actually contained, it was disguised, with the very name Menominee Restoration Act. It didn't restore our culture. It didn't restore our religion. As a matter of fact, it fostered the White structure. For example, the government structure that they were to devise. We wanted our own Constitution and bylaws incorporated, we wanted our own tribal government incorporated.

And what did Ada Deer came up with, a city manager form of government that's ran on a tax municipality. that we'd have to tax our very own people to live on their own land. That we had to maintain money in order to function as a government. And it was their system out there that they were using.

All the funds that were to come down through HEW or whatever program it was, they were all state mandated or federal mandated. And they kept telling the media out there, the people from all over the other tribes-- the White people, the Black people, they were telling them Menominee self-determination, on one hand. And on the other hand, they were making all the decisions. They were setting all the guidelines and policy, and Ada was incorporating them and enforcing them.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: Why was it called the Restoration Act? What was restored?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Well, actually the Restoration Act alluded people to believe that we were to be restored as a reservation. Under all conditions, as a reservation, it means tribal sovereignty, it means tribal government. It means running our own affairs. It means being able to do on our land what we want to do, what we want to do. Well, the Restoration Act doesn't do any of this.

It maintains what they had during the corporate structure. The corporate assets were then turned, with the transfer of assets plan, the wording was changed from corporate assets to tribal assets. They still maintained the County boundaries. The County is still existent. As a matter of fact, I can't understand how they can have a reservation within the boundaries of a county and still, maintain two government structures within one. And it just confuses the Menominees more so than they've been.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: As things exist now, which of those has predominant jurisdiction?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Well, the Restoration Committee has total control of everything on this reservation, everything. There's no exception. She controls the enterprise, the mill that is, that supports our people here. They control all the federal programs, and do all the hiring and firing and they impose stringent laws on our people who are not, whether we have lost our culture on the outside or not, we still possess genetic inheritances that cause us to rebel against laws that people look at us and they say, well, they're not responsible people, they're irresponsible.

And it's not the case. It's just that we have a freedom of individuality. And if we don't feel like going to work for eight hours or 40 hours a week, we feel that it's wrong. But everyone else looks at us and they say, well, they're lazy, they're lazy people. It's not that we're lazy. We don't like being made to do things at a certain time. It's our way. We're Indians. We're not White people. We're not Black people. We're not Chicanos. We're Indians.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: What feeling do you have being out here after three weeks? Do you have a feeling of, that's not constrained? Do you have a feeling of being free?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Right now, I have a pretty bad feeling of just being cooped up in this place here. But for the result that it has shown us so far with getting our people unified, I couldn't believe, I wouldn't be able to say in words what it has meant to me to see our Menominee people come together as they have had as a result of this. And we didn't intend this to happen.

We only wanted, and my personal want to come out of this, was that we would be given an opportunity to bring our treaties forward so that we could prove to our acculturated people, as well as the White people in the United States government, that we are a sovereignty, and we do govern ourselves. And we have the protection of the United States Constitution that guarantees this, that recognized treaties as sovereign documents between two nations, not between a County, and a state, and the United States government, but nations. We are a Menominee Nation

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: What do you do, for example, with the federal court ruling that came down only a week or two ago in Lincoln, Nebraska, which came out of all the Wounded Knee cases where a federal judge said Indian tribes are not sovereign.

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Well, that's one man's opinion. I don't know how a federal judge can make a decision like that, when under, I believe it is under the 14th Amendment, our section 14 or 10 in the United States Constitution. I can't remember it verbatim, but it states in there that no laws shall supersede treaties. That state legislators do not have the authority to supersede these treaties. That the Indians do govern themselves.

This judge out there, this may be his opinion, and it may not be his opinion, it may be a forced thing to say because he's a federal judge. And we understand our enemy is not the White man. Our enemy is not common people. It's the United States government. They're the oppressors, and it's recognized by all third world powers.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: Do you believe that this is a third world seizure, these are third world issues? Or do you believe that they are strictly Indian issues, and you plan to make no coalitions with other Brown, or Black or Yellow people?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: That's a broad question to ask. First of all, we are a Menominee people. We are concerned with our Menominee people. We are concerned with Indian people all over this country. We are concerned with White people. We're concerned with Black people. We're concerned with all people. But primarily, right now, we're concerned with Menominee Indians in our land.

But if these third world powers should ask that we stand behind them or should they stand behind us, we accept help from anyone and everyone. It's not an individual fight. It's not a fight between Indians. Indians have been oppressed for so long that they know who their enemy is.

The common citizen of the United States does not know that the government is oppressing them. They do not know that all of these federal programs that come down in the guise of helping them are actually controlling them. They don't understand it. They're too busy. They're too busy keeping up with the Joneses. They're too busy dealing with their frustrations and problems and getting drunk. They're too busy to stop and sit down and take a good look and say, the United States government is guilty of all of this.

And we, who have been oppressed for so long, know this, though. The third world powers of this world know this. The two largest oppressors, in a statement from [INAUDIBLE], says that it's the United States and Russia. So we know who our enemies are, and they're a powerful enemy. But now that the oppressed have become the oppressors, we don't have no fear of speaking out against the government. We don't have no fear of fearing them at all.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: What do you mean by that, the oppressed have become the oppressors?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Well, just like in the United States, when we try to use the legal methods to right the wrongs that they have done to us, they stand up there with their prosecutors and they fight us. But yet we're using the very laws that they provided for us. In San Francisco, many years ago when they started the United Nations, they in the USSR controlled the United Nations.

There was about 45 countries involved, and they were the majority then. Now there's 153 or 183 or something like this. And all of these little countries that have been oppressed and dominated by these two big superpowers, they have become so many now that they become the majority. And they are following the very guidelines that the United States and Russia put down in the formulation in the Constitution and bylaws of the United Nations. They're only following those things.

And the United States is talking about, you're making a war. They're the ones making a war. People know that, third world powers know it. All the Indians sure know it. It's just a matter of time before the White man wakes up and says, Holy Christ, he's doing the same thing to us, because he is doing it to him. There's 500,000 or 600,000 people getting laid off in the auto industry. Gasoline shortages, it's all fronted stuff.

It's mobilizing them to an all controlled dependency. When you get laid off, where do you go? You go to the welfare, you go to the federal government with all their programs. And they look like they're helping these people who ain't got money or jobs. All they're doing is controlling them. They're making them dependent on them. When the government says do this, or you don't get your check, they're going to do it because they don't have farms in the city, they don't have food in the cities that they plant their self. They're dependent. They're totally dependent, and they're trying to do it to Indians.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: But isn't the Menominee drive for retribalization going to foster that dependence again?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Well, like I said, Ada Deer only knows what she's been taught from her childhood up until now. And everything she's been taught has been taught by White people. And she knows nothing of Indian culture and tradition. She may know what she reads, but she doesn't feel it inside. She doesn't want to fight that way. She doesn't want to gear us to our own heritage.

She wants to utilize this method. And she keeps demanding that we get higher education and we prosper, and we develop our assets, and all of this other bullshit. This is her way of thinking. And right up until this day, even with the Menominees uniting as they have and recognizing that we are, we are not a matriarchy people, that women don't run our tribe. And this is one of the demands we made of our people that the men take over. And a lot of the news media, construe this to be a power play.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: I think a lot of people construed it to be a very surprising thing, especially in the light of women's lib, and things which have happened in the last few years with respect to women's movements, and to equality between the sexes.

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Oh, and this is very definite. That's a very good observation, because here you'll see the Indian culture and the White culture. You'll see who is the dominant culture here. The women here Indian women have no feelings of, well, I'm not equal to you, even though they walk behind their men. They do anything that their men tell them to do. But to show you a point here, that we have come to so much acculturation to that American culture, we've become Americanized, that it's no longer the male role and the female role in Indian culture. It's either male chauvinism or women's liberation.

And these women totally believe in it. Like I said, the only thing they've ever known is what they've been taught. They haven't been taught their Indian culture, so they don't know it. They don't know that they have a place, and that men have a place. All they know is that they're equal to men according to the standards that they've been taught.

And when you put it in a sense, in a context of male chauvinism and women's liberation, you can't justify one or the other, but you still have the conflicts between them. And with our people waking up the way they did, they still have a lot of learning of their culture, because now, the women of this reservation, they say we want male dominance in our tribe. The males run this tribe.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: Are you saying that if the males run the tribe, it does not mean that they are more equal and the women are less equal.

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: No, no, that's unfortunately how a lot of our women take it. And I keep telling you, it's because of their White traits or characteristics or whatever that they inherited.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: Well, let's go back to, like, traditional values, traditional 19th Century values. Was Chief Oshkosh's wife equal to him?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: We are equal as human beings. No one is better. A man isn't better than a woman, and vice versa. But they have roles to play. The woman is a woman. She has her things to do, her womanly things to do. She does the cooking. She does all the sewing. She does all of this stuff. The man has a role. He determines what's good for his tribe. And he's not questioned by the woman.

The woman before the White man came, didn't ever say, hey, I want to know what the hell's going on because I'm equal to you, because they were always treated equal, but they were treated within their roles. And when the White man brought his education here, and done away with our culture, well, they didn't have this feeling anymore. All they knew was, well, I want to be equal to you. I want to, have the same rights you do and everything else.

And it's not being traditional. Now that our people are unified and they're grasping some of this tradition and culture that they've lost, they're recognizing it, but it'll never come about totally in this generation I don't feel, because it's going to be hard to convince women that, you're not to be in bars, or you're not to be up there, arguing with men or debating.

It's hard to tell people like that who believe that. This is all they know. This is all they've been taught. And they've been brainwashed, man, from Grade 1 to Grade 12 or however far they went, a systematic teaching. Everyone universally in this country gets taught the same way, so they all think the same way.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: Is it pretty hard to be an Indian in 1975?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Well, I personally don't find it hard to be an Indian. I have come to understand a lot of things. I would say in the last year that I finally realized I was an Indian and what it means to be an Indian. What our religion means. Our religion was taken away from us a long time ago, and the Catholic religion was thrown upon us. Oh man, I remember when I was little, went to the Catholic school. We got beat up because we didn't go to church. We got beat up that anything had to do with Indianism, we got beat up.

Those people up in Zorra are traditional people who were exiled from their very brothers and sisters because they wouldn't give up this way of life, their religion. They were exiled by the United States government at the point of a gun. And when any time we associated with those people, we were punished for it, and they those are pagans. Our way is the right way. Their way is paganism.

And finally, after all of these years, we didn't believe in either one of the religions because, first of all, we didn't get our Indian religion to understand it enough. And the understanding we got from the Catholic religion has been compromised year after year, after year, after year, and it holds no credibility. It gives us no consolence in it. So as a result, we have a lot of alcoholics, and a lot of broken marriages, a lot of broken homes. All of this stuff is a result of taking away our religion. And we can recognize this now.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: Is some of this channeled, some of this understanding, perhaps some of this hatred, is some of that channeled toward the Alexian brothers who own the building that we're sitting in?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Well, I'd like to clear one thing up that we don't hate anyone. Like I mentioned to you before, there are some of our brothers who are at certain levels of awareness. Some of them are still back in that stage where they are totally frustrated and they hate all White people, and they mistrust all White people. But once they come to understand their religion totally, they will know that White people are our brothers, as well as Indians, Blacks.

We're all brothers, and we all have one creator. The methods in which we honor our creator and worship him are very essential to various cultures. An Indian can't practice a White man's method of practicing a religion and effectively find anything in it. A Vietnamese couldn't practice Catholicism and find any comfort in it or anything, and vice versa and all the way around. But they took this away from us.

And they never could take it totally away. And now we see a mass movement towards us. And just collaboration between visions of a lot of our old ones, and a lot of philosophy, and a lot of the prophecy in the old Bible before it was revised and, compromised and everything.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: Menominees were terminated as a tribe by an act of Congress about 20 years ago. What did that mean? What was terminated?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Well, this is going a little behind the scene. But what actually happened there was, just prior to termination, we sued the federal government for $10 million for mismanagement of our forests, which is our way of life here.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: Are you part of the Northeast Wisconsin, lumbering, area?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Well, let me just go back a little bit here. About two months ago, or three months ago, there was a picture in the paper taken from a satellite from 700 miles up in the air, and it showed the Upper Peninsula and the Northeastern part of Wisconsin. And the very outline of our reservation boundaries that is shown on the map to show County lines and everything. You could see it from 700 miles up that we were totally blanketed with forest and all the surrounding areas around us were barren.

And it just shows the Indian's love for his land, and that he doesn't go and strip mine it, and tear everything down in the name of mass producing for money and prosperity and everything else. And it shows, from 700 miles up, you can see a clear outline of our reservation. And quite a few years ago, the BIA, who handled everything, they clear cut it. They permitted clear cutting. And we sued them for $10 million.

And, they weren't going to let us get by with that. So I don't know if it was along with that, but Senator Samuel V. Watkins from Utah, who is a Mormon, and if you get into any Mormon religion, that Indians are the chosen people, according to their religion. He come up here and he tried to convert us to that religion. And the Catholics, boy, they saw that right away and they had us burn their bibles and everything.

So Mr. Watkins, he didn't like that. He was the one who addressed Congress and pressed for termination. The way they did it was really sneaky. A lot of our people weren't educated. They didn't understand English. They didn't understand a lot of stuff. And when we won that $10 million suit, they broke it down. After they got done, it was about $7 million. They divided it up into $1,500 payments. And Watkins told the Menominee people--

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: $1,500 payments for each Menominee?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Right. That was on the rolls. Mr. Watkins told the Menominee people that they wouldn't get one cent of that money unless they voted for termination. When the people did vote, they thought they were voting for this $1,500 payment. And by no means was it anywhere near 2/3 of the required vote. There was something like 97 people who voted for this.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: Out of how many who could vote?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Oh, I would say around 3,500. And the whole thing, when he addressed Congress after he came back said, yeah, Menominees wanted to be terminated and all of this. But the way he put it to the Menominees was, listen, the BIA is a thorn in your side, man. They're calling all the shots. You can call your own shots now.

You have $10 million in the bank. You just pay for your own school. This is what we were doing before termination. We paid for our own school. We paid for our own hospital. We even paid the agent's salary, the federal agents salary that was on this reservation. We paid his salary.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: That's the Indian agent, right?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: We paid all of these things and still had money in the bank. And we were a very prosperous tribe in that respect. When Watkins told the Menominee people, he said, listen, you won't no longer have the BIA standing over your shoulder saying this is right, and this is wrong, and do this and do that. You'll be able to do it on your own. So they buttered the people up and cajoled them into termination.

When he addressed Congress, it was always, the policy of the United States government say they wanted to civilize Indians. They wanted to educate them. And this was supposed to be helping them, according to their thoughts. They actually knew what they were doing. But the American people thought this was great, that they were going to educate these heathens. But that isn't what the government had in mind, and that isn't what was accomplished.

He told the Congress that the Menominee Indians were 3/5, I think, 3/5 acculturated to the White man's society by 1930. And if that was so, I shudder to think at what point we are now somewhere above a 1 and 1/2. So he really talked it up good, and he got it passed. And it was all because we didn't want to be a part of his religion. And we didn't really have any say so over it. It was the Catholics who said, hey, get out of here. This is my moneymaker here.

And that's exactly what we were to them. For other parishes who didn't have a lucrative reason for people giving, like, the priest in this area, he took two trips around the world a year. He had constituents in every country, in every part of the state here begging in the name of poverty stricken Menominee Indians. And all this money was sent to him and re-channeled to the Green Bay diocese, to various parishes who couldn't afford the upkeep of their church and everything.

So they exploited the hell out of our people in the name of God. This is why we have such bitter feelings for the Catholic Church. We don't actually hate anyone. I just like to make that clear. We don't hate people because some of them don't understand what we want. Some of them don't understand what they're doing. And we must just have patience that maybe one day they'll wake up and they'll stop doing this.

But these people who run the United States government, President Ford, he doesn't know what the hell he's doing. He doesn't know that he's working for the money elite people, the Rockefellers, the Carnegies, the JP Morgans. All of these people who control almost every part of the world. The exploitation that happened in South America, the overthrow of that Chilean government, all of this. It's all done with money. [BLEEP] Wonder what the hell is going on out there.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: What happened?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Somebody's shooting. So, that's what that's all about, man.

SPEAKER 2: What that is?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Yeah. Why don't you check it out, Paul. Let us know what it is, man.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: Is there a lot of shooting lately?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: No, not lately. We've been more or less in a status quo status. The negotiations, we hope they'll be resumed Thursday. But we're definitely playing a game of chess with these people.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: That's automatic, isn't it?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Well, they got automatic weapons.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: M16s, the guardsmen, you mean?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Yeah, right.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: That was definitely from the guard?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: I don't know. He just went to check it out, maybe it was. The Sheriff's department, they really violated a lot of their agreements, their own ceasefire agreements, and a lot of their promises. They wouldn't tighten the code. And the other day, we noticed the National Guard unloading troops right up here in the West of our position in the tree line. We went out there and had a confrontation with them, a little sporadic firefight.

And they lied about it to the media and they said, no, it wasn't us. But they try to blame it on the vigilantes, but we know the vigilantes don't run around with 25 radios and M16s with starlight scopes and little green uniforms, jumping out of [INAUDIBLE]. So we know what kind of enemy that the government is.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: When the Sheriff's Department had a couple of hundred deputies surrounding this estate, were they using automatic weapons?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: I couldn't definitely say yes, because when they would fire, like from our direct front, they had about 40 people up there, 40 cops. And when they all set at the same time, you couldn't tell whether it was automatic or semi-automatic or what it was, it was just a barrage of lead flying in here.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: Are there people here who are Vietnam veterans who could compare the intensity of firing here with some of the action they saw in Vietnam?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: It's a totally different situation. I was in Vietnam for a year with the first main division. And I was in the infantry, so I had a lot of experience with combat. And we're dealing with an entirely different situation here. It didn't take me long after I was in Vietnam to figure out what was actually going on there. It was just another exploitation of some innocent people. And it didn't take me long to understand what it was. But in this case here, what we're fighting here, I couldn't relate to anything to how it was in Vietnam as to what's going on here. We're fighting establishment here.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: Why do you call it, a chess game?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: We're supposed to be dealing directly with the Alexian brothers. We don't want to deal with the Sheriff. We don't want to deal with the government. We don't want to deal with the state. We don't want to deal with the County. We want to deal with the Alexian brothers. And--

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: That's about 30 rounds?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Yeah. We want to deal with the Alexian brothers. The government has been intervening. We know that the CIA is out there and the FBI, and supposedly they're giving those people information or, advice how to handle a thing. And they're actually calling the shots. Like the Alexian brothers, I'm sure all the pressure they're getting from the church and everything.

And if they are what they profess to be, they wouldn't allow for any bloodshed, and they wouldn't allow for something that they got for nothing, especially when it's our property. They would give it to us without question. But because of the government intervention here, first they tried the waiting out tactic, and starve them, and, that kind of thing. So all we have to do is be strong and hold our position.

One thing that we have that they don't have is they dangled this thing, death over our heads. Death doesn't mean to us what it means to them. Death is the climax of life. It's when we meet the one who created us. The one who created all of this, the Earth. We meet him then. And if we die fighting for our people to recognize this, to have the communication with the creator that we had before the White man came, before they took it away from us.

If we have to die to restore this, it's not a sacrifice on our behalf. It's a commitment. It's our responsibility. And we're not hurting ourselves to die this way. A lot of people say, well, them guys are dying for a building, a worthless building, there's no reason for it. It's not the building we're dying for. It's our people and our religion, our way of life, that is so important.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: Are there any terms under which you would come out of this building?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Yeah, that they guarantee us the title to this property for our Menominee people. Like I said before, when we first come in here, it was my intention to come in here to provide an opportunity to get our treaties into court, to get them recognized. When they bring charges on us for this, we can use this as our defense. And with the eyes of the nation upon them, we expect the United States government to honor the very laws that they wrote.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: How long has it been since there was a gunfire exchange like the one going on outside right now?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: A couple of weeks. No, I take that back. Other than the other confrontation with the National Guard last weekend-- just a minute. Yeah! Who's shooting?

SPEAKER 3: [INAUDIBLE] out there.

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Probably them vigilantes.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: How often have the vigilantes been around here?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: They came around twice. We fired a warning shot at them I think a week and a half ago there. We fired a warning shot at them and they left. And they came back the next night. And they stood outside and they said, called us dog eaters and stuff, and said, come on out. We're coming to get you. All the while during the daylight, we were down in Sarno talking to all the other people talking about we can go over there and get them savages.

SPEAKER 4: What is there?

[INDISTINCT VOICES]

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Once closed on, that window there. Is this window here face the woodline right back there. You're still unplugged, man.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: Ah, true. Just about out on one side. Can you wait.

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: You got to plug me in. [COUGHS]

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: This [? Limoges ?] is fine. Yeah. Got fucking spill coming down the steps. [COUGHS] So I reckon, how many shots was there?

Please delete all after this. Please delete all after this. Please delete all after this. Please delete all after this. Please delete all after this. Please delete all after this.

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: We can see there about maybe a quarter mile at our closest point.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: In other words, without a field glass, you can see the shape of people, right?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: No. But we know where their check points are. Well, if you stood out there and watched them change the guard, right toward it. Matter of fact, I take that back, to our direct front, about maybe 700, 800. There is a farmhouse up there that they maintain a checkpoint. Checkpoint six.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: You guys have anything to add at this point?

SPEAKER 4: Local vigilantes. Man

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: Right there. Can I get you over here, so I can pick it up and plugged in because this thing has gone out.

SPEAKER 4: Vigilantes, man, if they want to come in, why don't they come in instead of, staying out there and harassing us and that. They talk a lot of talk out there, but why don't they just come in and get it over with.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: You seem pretty confident if they did come in.

SPEAKER 4: Well, I have faith in protector. That's why I know they ain't going to come in. They just talk.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: Who are these people? Is it a special group that's been set up?

SPEAKER 4: Bunch of farmers and all the people around here, that I guess, it's just the word vigilante. You're the people that know the word. That's just what they are. What do you say, take the law into their own hands? Well, that's what they are. That's what you just asked me.

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: They're the citizenry of the United States, that create the laws, and make the laws, and back the laws. But when they're the ones who are the object of, or who think they're the object of what the cause is here, right away their guilt, catches up with them and they, like they contend that. Well, once the Indians get done out there, they're going to want this. They're going to want my land.

And I don't know how you could be more hypocritical than to say something like that. I think they gathered there was about 200 of them people. And they are all so infuriated and mad about not many Indians taken over a monastery that we want for a hospital for our people that hasn't been in use since 1968. And they get all hostile over something like that. I wish they could only feel what we felt. The burden of things we felt for the last 200 years.

And doing this that I told you that we have people at various points of awareness here. Some of them still hate the White man, every White man, for what they've done to us. They don't have their religious concept yet that that's going to clear this up. And I just don't know what the people out there think.

There's Indians in here with 200 years of oppression on their shoulders, and they are just hankering to get at somebody to take it out on. And if you take 10 of those Indians and put them out in the woods with 1,000 White people, you're going to have 1,000 dead White people. That's how strongly they believe.

SPEAKER 4: Being outnumbered is nothing new.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: All right. I'd like to ask, a couple of questions again, about termination. I don't think that a lot of people understand what that means. It's a big question mark. Let me start it from this point. It seems to some people who know a little bit about American Indians, that everyone would like termination.

That the Bureau of Indian Affairs has been a paternalistic monster, which has absorbed 9/10 of the budget intended for American Indians and administrative costs, largely by people who are White who are employed there, although there's some reformist change going on now. Most people who know a little bit about American Indians would say, why do you want the BIA? Why do you want retribalization? Isn't termination a good thing?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: 100 years ago, this would have been the thing to do, to terminate all tribes and leave them alone. But that is when they completely dominated them. Now, they've got us completely dependent on them for supportive reasons. Every program, or every way of living up here is with federal programs.

They made us totally dependent on them until we can get back to living back to nature and be self-sustaining and self-sufficient. We're going to have to depend on that government, to keep us alive, to keep us fed. They've made us, dependent upon them, now. If they would have came along 100 years ago and said, we're going to terminate you. That's what the Indians wanted 100 years ago.

And now they changed their mind and said, well, we're not going to terminate you now. Or rather, now we're going to terminate you, and now we say, no, we don't want to be terminated. So what actually happened when they terminated us was, all they did was terminate-- what actually happened with termination was they caused our assets, our lands, to become taxable.

This was something like $800,000 a year, depleted 75% of the profits from our enterprise, didn't even leave money to pay wages. And it left us in a red, $250,000 a year. According, to them, we didn't have enough tax base, the enterprise didn't support enough tax base. So they come to us with this big plan of selling some of our land to non-Indians in order that they can pay the taxes. They develop three lakes out there. They plowed up some--

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: Let me interrupt you and try to get that clear. After termination, non-taxable reservation land became taxable. Is that right?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Right.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: In order to pay the taxes, some Menominees sold their land?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: No, no, no, no. Getting back to this 11 Man Committee who was controlling our assets, they decided that--

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: You're talking about 20 years ago?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: No, I'm talking about, five years ago. When did they start selling land on Legend Lake? 66. OK. They started to run so much in the red every year, and we're losing money every year as we progressed into this society because of all the administration and all this other bullshit, that we started losing. We didn't have the money to pay for our taxes, so they said, well, listen, we're going to lose the entire thing if we don't take this part of the land and sell it and develop it in order to pay the taxes.

They did. The developer came in, and he plowed up our traditional burial grounds, another religious area out here that was a perpetual fire that was maintained for people traveling from one part of the country to another. And it was a very meaningful thing to Menominees. But as time progressed and their culture was taken away, they didn't miss it that much.

They plowed up and developed this land and cleaned it out. And they, made it look like the typical resort. And then they sold it to all these non-Indian people. The outcome of it was that we made, I think the Menominees benefited somewhere around the neighborhood of $2 million from this. And NE Isaacson, the one who developed it, made somewhere in the neighborhood of $8.5 million. So it was just another capitalistic exploitation on their behalf, whereas they put it to you and says, listen, you guys don't pay this money You're going to lose all of your land, so.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: What will happen with retribalization? This is Menominee County now, it's called. What will change?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: If we follow the Restoration Act, there would be nothing changed except that we wouldn't have to pay taxes on our lands, that is to say, tribal lands. And that's about I don't know. With this Restoration Act, we've ceded a good portion of our reservation by maintaining that as County area. And, let me clear this up. The only assets that are tax exempt are tribal assets.

Now, tribal assets came about with the transfer of assets from corporate assets to tribal assets. In other words, all the woods, and all the rivers, and all the lakes, were corporate assets because they were our form of business. But the roads, the two municipalities, are County governed. They're governed by, the town of Menominee, and they're kept going through taxes.

So these would have to be maintained. And so actually, with restoration, we're not changing anything but the tax exemption of those of tribal lands and for the cost, what is our price to pay is another cession of that land which remains County land. The people who live on Legend Lake, they all have the right to vote in this County. And what you have is non-Indian people running Indians business.

And it would keep on maintaining that way. Hopefully, what we started here, it has awakened all our people up. Not all of them, but it has wakened them up to a point greater than anyone could explain. But what we still need to do is get behind our treaties, and see that they're enforced-- that we have total sovereignty over our land.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: You said that was one of the reasons you came out here to begin with, to get the treaties into court, to air that, to make people understand. If you go into the American court, how, at the same time, can you talk about sovereignty?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Well, you see right now, the State has jurisdiction here with Public Law 280. The Shawano County District Attorney, Shawano County Sheriff's Department, and then along with all the other federal guidelines and regulations that come with their funding. We're a totally regimented people by the state government, the United States government, and the County government of Shawano County. So could you repeat that question again?

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: Yeah. How can you talk about sovereignty, tribal sovereignty, in the same breath as bringing Indian treaties into the White man's court?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: OK, obviously with termination, termination is illegal. Let's establish that. According to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Wisconsin, treaties are the law of the land, which the treaties, in reference to. Indians. Govern Indians-- that's what the treaties say. OK now, the Termination Act was an act of Congress.

It legally and morally and everything else wise, it cannot supersede that treaty and everything that it represents. It cannot supersede the sovereignty or the will of our people. Yet it did. And we can attribute that to our acculturation, again. We got used to working with White people, and their society, and speaking their language and understanding. And we also felt the same when we were taxed at, we begin to feel no different than anyone else.

So they took away our treaty rights without our knowledge of it. A lot of us don't even know that we have all of these treaty rights, but they took that away. In order to have them restored, we have to go through their court system and say, listen, you don't have jurisdiction over us with Public Law 280, that's a State law.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: But aren't you sitting out here right now saying, to the United States government, you don't have jurisdiction over me, I am sovereign.

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: We've said this in press releases, yet the press does not release this to the public, that this is our contention.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: All right. I want to get down to some hard questions. Are you sovereign right now as we sit here in the Alexian Brothers Monastery, in January 1975? Or are you saying you will be sovereign after that's established in court?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Well, we feel that we have always been sovereign. Yet because of the disunity in our people, we haven't had, the togetherness to go, the law is only the law if it's followed. By the same token, our sovereignty is only our sovereignty if we utilize it as such, just accepting what they throw at us and say, well, the law is the law, they made determinations, we got to accept it.

Instead of going along with that attitude, you can just imagine the frustrations in people who went along all these years maintaining we are sovereign. Yet, all of these acts of Congress took that away. Now, I would like to say from here, that we are sovereign. But it's not true yet. We have our people getting together. We have a nine-man committee that's negotiating between us and the people.

And they're beginning to see, and there's extensive research being done on our treaty. And hopefully, if we get this thing resolved and we get it in the courts, we're still going with the guidelines of your judicial system. Because the judicial system will work if they honor it. And like a reporter asked, why didn't you take this into court before you took this action?

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: Why didn't you take it into court before you took the building over?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Well, because we would have been shown that same prejudicial dual system of justice that's been shown to us every day for the last 200 years.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: What makes you expect any different if you have to go to court for this?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Well, because now, there's not just 60 people. There's not just 50 people, or just one people, or 10 people that are saying it. You have the entire Menominee Nation saying it now. Because this thing we didn't foresee it, brought all of our people together out there in support of us 100%.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: And yet today in the Milwaukee Journal, the headline was, "Menominee Tribe Splits: Tribal Factionalism."

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Well, you know how the media likes to distort things. And just like the two press releases we gave, they never said anything nearly close for our reasoning behind this. I read a press release on the first press conference we gave. They released the last paragraph of that, that entire thing through the newspaper, through the radio, and through the television. They never once did I see it in its entirety.

Now, the statement released wouldn't explain anything unless it was read in its entirety. Of what they did, they read just a little bit here, and a little bit there, and the only little bit they read was the last paragraph. It did no good as far as all people understanding what we were doing here. So we know how the media is controlled and, there's nothing we can do about it. That's why we're taking a chance on you. That if you get this story to the people.

SPEAKER 5: When they say it's split, now you're talking about the people organizing, and you're talking about a governing body. In any governing body, you're always going to have political people that believe in the mainstream of the society, which would be the United States government. And in the United States government today, you got supremists, like Ford and. Nixon, they do unto others as they, do unto you.

And it's the same with our tribal government. Our tribal government operated the same, where the people lost control of their governing body. Where they were a separate entity holding key positions as far as the economic situation of the tribe goes, because they controlled all the federal funding for programs to employ people.

They controlled the Enterprises Inc., which employs about 60%, 70% of the tribe. So this is the split. Now, you're hearing it from the top level and now you're hearing it from us. And when you talk about a nine-man committee, the people's committee, you're hearing it from the people. And there is where the split comes.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: All right, one of the questions that was asked in the National Guard bus today over, and over, and over again, is that Nine Man People's Committee had just come out from the monastery and said that they were authorized to speak for you. And one question put to them over and over again is, how can 100 people say in a Menominee tribe which numbers a couple of thousand, how can they say that they are the true representatives?

SPEAKER 5: Are you referring to us?

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: No. In other words, the reporter constantly asked Ted Boyd, who was the Chairman of the People's Committee, how can you say with 100 people who elected you and you set up your name as the People's Committee, that you really represent those couple of thousand Menominees? Didn't they overwhelmingly vote for Ada Deer and the official government?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: No, no. Hell no. It was a proxy vote. All the way through Ada Deer's regime, Oliver Moves, and all of the people placed in power, they were all they were all done so with proxy campaigns. At one point we found two dead people's names on proxies. This is the underhanded stuff that she used to get the position where she has. And every time we said, answer this question Ada, answer this, and she'd say, I can't answer that. And say, well, all right, you're not serving our people.

The people put you where you are, and the people can take you out. You're not serving our people, Ada. She says, well, the majority of the people put me in here. I got 21% of the votes or something like that. And now we have, through all of this research that's being done, all of these lawyers out there working on this, we've got probable cause in evidence to indict Ada Deer for whatever, extortion, for anti-campaign practices, whatever law you want to use.

And we have very credible people, man, that are just saying, well, I'm tired of saying yes, sir to this woman. I'm tired of having my job jeopardized because of what I have to say. And they're saying, all right, I'm laying my job on line, I'm laying my life on the line, I'm laying my future on the line. I'm going to tell on that woman because I'm tired of her dictatorial ways. And that's what waking up is done out there, those 100 people. That's more than the restoration committee, ever seen at any one meeting. And it's all different walks of life, man. It was just those people who were there that day.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: Where are the couple of thousand Menominees? They're all over the--

SPEAKER 5: OK, you must understand. Through tribal tradition, as the tribe kept being split by different factions in the United States government, the true tribal way was to hold general councils where it was held openly to everybody, and everybody had their input, just as the people's committee was elected. But this came down from the federal government's way of elections, the White man's way of elections.

And this is why that we feel, and I imagine that a lot of other Menominees feel, this is a correct way of doing things, is to hold open meetings where these people, they don't do things in a tribal, traditional manner, and they just do their own thing. The way the government comes down now. As far as the negotiating part on the restoration committee, they were against our position here in the beginning.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: In fact, Ada Deer, who is apparently the elected leader, the official leader, said that the building had been taken over by anarchists and malcontents, political malcontents-- people who did not get elected during the election in which she ran.

SPEAKER 5: And these elections that she ran, like I said, are part of control. They control enterprises. They control all these government programs, and they solicited a proxy campaign where the people that came to these shareholders meetings, they had maybe 45 active voters that actually was present to put down their vote. But yet they went to all of these different the enterprises, and they went and solicited proxies door to door, and almost, not saying they threatened people.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: Is that an alarm or something?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: No. Are you going to stay down here? I'd like to finish this interview with him. Somebody go check that out. See what's going on up here. OK, why don't you just continue. Let me try to clarify some sensitive issue here as sovereignty and termination. Well at termination, we were then subjected to the exploitive system, which at the time, our community was zoned residential.

Paying taxes on our homes and also taxes to supporting MEI enterprise corporation, a sawmill and a neopit, which then drained us of all our funds, where we went broke and poverty where and then termination caused the federal government did not recognize us as American Indians. So we weren't Indians anymore. They didn't consider us Indians.

And then I think at this stage, this is where our Menominee men, see they fell into a social apathy because they lost their culture, and they were stripped of their, culture and their tradition. Well, I guess this is where the women came in, after they realized that there was this land exploitation. They were being ripped off. So then Ada Deer lobbied in Madison, in Washington, for the Restoration Act.

At that point, the people were behind her with full support because they knew, like termination itself while we were ripped off and conned into termination, and actually forced into termination, well, anyway, at restoration, when she was lobbying for restoration, she was with full support of Menominee people, Menominee people believing that her intentions were for the benefit of the people.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: All right. I don't want to get off on this male dominated thing too much because I think it could be a red herring. But I want to say, I want to ask a question about it. In your demand that the tribe be returned to a male dominated tradition, personally, for you, is that a sexual thing? Is it tied up with a sexual thing?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: No, not at all. Let me just say this one thing. If we are to return to our culture, and to our religion, and to our heritage, there can be no compromises. If we were to let women continue calling for what we want, that would be a compromise right there. The women would not be able to take their traditional place in our culture then. So everything has to be, the Catholic churches have to get off our reservation and get out of here, so we can take our religion and teach it to our young kids. Teach it to our children, teach it to the people who are willing to learn it.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: Can I ask it a different way. When you look at what's happened to you, when you look at the stuff that's come down on you from the government. When you look at the fact that you've been forced to do things that you didn't want to do. When you look around and see a lot of your brothers who are alcoholics. When you look around and see that the people are not taken care of in terms of health services.

When you look around and you see the fact that there's a dual system in Shawano County, in the state, that Indians are treated one way, and White people are treated the other way. You look and you see all those things and you say, what can I do? And your children, or your people, or your parents, or people who would look to you for help say, are you a man? Are you doing it? Are you standing up against that? That's what I mean. Is there a sexual thing attached to it? Where are you man enough to do this?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: I don't like the term sexual. If you would probably term that, genetical species or something. The male species of the Indian people. Sure there's a lot of discontented women running around the reservation saying, where in the hell are our men? Where are our Warriors? Where are our Chiefs? When are you people going to wake up? That's the same thing we're talking about.

But it's nothing to do with male chauvinism or women's liberation. Not by a long shot. We want to take away all of these feelings. I'd like to also say that before the White man came, we never knew anything of jealousy, of greed, of envy, of shame. We never knew any of that.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: I'm not making myself clear somehow. I want to ask it again is, are all the frustrations that you talked about, and that you experienced, and what came down from generations, and with termination and restoration and all the things that are going on now--

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Not because of the male--

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: Did you feel that it was, your inability to do anything, was a frustration upon your masculinity?

SPEAKER 5: I mean, there was no prejudices or differences in sexes. It was the fact that, the Restoration Act itself, was designed to restore us back to reservation status. But after the reservation act was passed, we were in the same situation, maybe title of the book changed but the contents were the same. We're stuck in a corporate system, see.

And the Restoration Act, we were supposed to be restored back to reservation status, giving us our constitutional bylaws, which were actually drafted by our forefathers, our Menominee people. That's our culture, that's our heritage. And now they're devising a system from a--

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Three city form of government.

SPEAKER 5: From three different Indian reservations that don't apply to us because of their environmental conditions and--

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Economy, structure, and everything else.

SPEAKER 5: And it's completely foreign to us because we're Menominee people. And our constitutional bylaws were drafted by our Menominee people and that's our culture. And this woman is selling us on the river.

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Just like they say, like I told you of our total forest. That's our economic structure, our forest, where farmers were tree farmers. The Navajo people deal in silverware and stuff like this, and coal. The Blackfoot people deal this way. However which way their environment dictates, their tribal government is set up to conform with it, to work within it.

And it would be totally wrong, it would be just as wrong for us to, to maintain this American type structure, this Americanized type structure of, of government. It would be just as wrong for us to use that as it would be to use the Navajos government, or to use the Blackfoot government.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: I don't want to get off on that anymore, OK. Because I can't say what I mean.

SPEAKER 5: I think this is very important, though. I think that just recognizing this fact itself, see, they're taking away our constitutional bylaws. That's the same thing as they'd be taking away, the United States Constitution away from you. And that's how we feel. We're governed under our people. We're a sovereignty. This is how sovereignty comes.

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: It's the same way as if they said, OK, the president has declared that, the Constitution of the United States is hereby void, and everything will be handled according to executive orders. How the hell do you think the United States would act? How would the people act out there? It's the same way we react. Only you people out there should look at us as an example of what's going on with you.

I've always told White people, I said, listen, your only way of controlling your government is by, your only your only valve of expressing yourself is through your Congressman. And I would say 90% of the people do not use this way. As a result of it, executive power has dominated the structure of this country here. Since the late 1950s, it's been executive power rather than congressional power. And the people of the United States, somehow they fail to see it. And it's going to be too late when it finally drops on them like a hammer because it's dropping now.

It's damn near to the ground now. It's going to be, within a year, you're going to have revolution in this country. It's not that I'm advocating this, or I'm scheming this. This is what's foreseen. What has been foreseen by our people 150 years ago. What's foreseen by repetitions of civilizations, the Roman Empire, and the Proverbs of the Bible. This is from all different races and cultures that predict this.

Not only in this country, but the world. The United States and Russia, I don't know what motivates these people, these money elite people, their need to control human lives. I don't know what they teach their kids to [INAUDIBLE] pass this on. I don't know what motivates them people other than the greed of power and controlling people's lives.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: What do your medicine men tell you?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: In respect to what?

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: With respect to revolution in this country.

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Well, first of all, let me say this. Reason why I can take up a gun and say don't oppress my people anymore or you'll have to kill me. The reason I can say this is because I'm not totally into my religion. Because our Indian religion, the religion of our old ones, does not say they can impose their way onto no one, no matter if it's their brother. If he doesn't want to believe that way, they don't have the right to impose and say this is right, this is my way. It's right way. They do not believe in violence.

That's why, man, that's why this whole country was lost from our people. Because they said, I can't understand why you'd want to own this land, because you can't own your mother. And this is what it is to us, this is our Mother Earth. So I'll give you this, rather than have you come shoot up my people, I'll give you this. You can go ahead and fence it off, and you might as well take the air and fence that off, too and all the animals. We don't understand how you can do it, but leave us alone. This is our reservation here. We want to live this way.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: What do you feel like then, when you pick up that gun?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Well I personally, myself feel that if the vigilantes or the National Guard or whoever is going to come in here, I'm going to shoot. I'm going to fight. And because I'm not going to just sit here and be shot at. But there are people in here who feel that they don't not only want to protect themselves, they want to aggress, they want to kill that man out there. Because like I say, we've come to awareness of what they've done to our people, and we bear the burden.

We bear the weight of those 200 years of oppression and inequity suffered our old ones who, because of their religion, didn't fight back. We feel the weight of all of that. And man, I just couldn't say how so many people, if our religion is that strong that it had taken this bitterness to kill these people out of me, and the only reason I would kill now is to save my own, if I have a chance to preserve myself.

There's a thing that's called destiny. Whether it's manifested destiny by these people are those people. We have a destiny that's manifested by our creator. When I die, I'm going to die anyway that time. I mean, my creator has a time for me to go. He has a time for my brother here to go. He has a time for you to go. And you're not going to stop it or speed it up or anything. It's going to come and it's going to come. And there's nothing you can do about it.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: But you guys don't seem like you're rushing up to the turrets and your guns are lying here. You don't seem as if there's a need to go out there.

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Like I said, you have 10 Indian people in the woods, and you have 1,000 non-Indian people that are, supposedly protecting what's theirs. And I showed you the difference between total determination, and total belief, rather than just fly by night stuff. I mean, I fought the Viet Cong.

And the Viet Cong were the baddest people in the world to fight. I mean, because of their sincerity, and their belief, and their religion, and their people. You're dealing with a wounded animal. When you deal with a wounded animal, You're dealing with a very dangerous thing. And that's what you're dealing with here.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: You wear a medicine bag around your neck. It's encased in rawhide. Can you tell me about that?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Well, there are all forms of medicine that these things contain. And to understand, Indian religion is, I have a belief of my own. We have this thing called individuality. We have these visions where something might represent something to me that's totally different from what it represents to one of my other brothers. But it all represents something good. And it gives meaning to when we think when we're down, and we're oppressed, and we're feeling bad.

We see these things that have come to us during dreams. Your people call them dreams, they're visions, they tell us something. If you see a squirrel in your vision, your whole vision, all you could remember maybe is a squirrel. So you go take the skin of that squirrel and you carry it with you in your medicine bag. And any time maybe it might relate to something.

People carry medicine bags and they have maybe one, maybe five, maybe six, all different things. And they have certain medicines for certain things, and it works for them. Whether you can evaluate this as the power of psychology or, you want it to happen so much that it does happen, however, which way you put it. There's one thing for sure. There is a Supreme being. This is our creator. He causes all of this in human lives.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: What would this monastery ceasure, which is now going into its fourth week, be without Indian religion?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: We, as an organized group, would fall to the detriments that all organizations follow when they're not guided by spiritualism or religion. The power would eventually corrupt those who are ahead of it. And eventually it would deteriorate within itself. Religion, as a matter of fact, not only our religion, religion is the most important thing in the lives of all men, no matter what culture.

Without your religion, there's no way that you can survive as a people, as a country, as an organization. Without that religion, look, people kill each other in Ireland over religion. The Christian wars of the early times, all of these, it's all deals with religion. Religion is the most important part of people's lives. And what the American people have done with it, has turned it into the religion in this country.

It's not Christianity. It's not Catholicism. It's not Lutheran. It's capitalism. Hand in hand, the government has worked right into Christianity the concept of money, the need of money. Like upstairs here, there's all of these little proverbs on the windows around in the church here it says, clothe the naked, and feed the starving, and all that stuff like that. And it butters everybody up to think, well, that's all good, that's all good. And right here, there's this last one that says, ransom the poor, or ransom the imprisoned. I don't know how it goes, but it's ransom.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: The captive.

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: Ransom the captive, right. And here is where they fit in with Christianity money. And, religion is big business, as their bank accounts will show. Catholic religion is the biggest money making, or rather money circulating organization in the world. The Roman Catholic religion.

KEVIN MCKIERNAN: Are there's some people here that it would be fair to say are on a death trip?

MEL CHEVALIER, JR: No. You mean to say they want to die? Something like this? No, I don't think no one wants to die. The only reason why we wouldn't want to die. Why I wouldn't want to die is because I enjoy the companionship with my brothers of this world here. I enjoy my companionship with my mother and father and my wife and children.

I enjoy that companionship with them, and I get a lot of joy out of seeing my people come together like they've done. Yet I know that when I do die, there's going to be something far better and far greater. But yet I still make the best of what I have here. And I still enjoy my people. They give me the will to stay alive.