This episode is supported by the FX original series Reservation Dogs.

From Sterling Harjo and Taiko ITT, Reservation Dogs is a half-hour comedy that follows the

adventures of four indigenous teens in rural Oklahoma. Reservation Dogs, now streaming exclusively

FX on Hulu. Just a note before we get started. The stories we're sharing this season touch on

different kinds of trauma. Please take care of yourself while you listen. Think back to the

beginning of the pandemic. Not the first time you heard about a new potentially serious virus

or the first case in the United States, but those couple of weeks in March when the reality of

coronavirus hit all at once. So this was like the day in Massachusetts at least the day before like

everything completely shut down. Like everybody's on the in panic because this is when COVID just

happened in March and nobody knows what the hell is happening but that everyone has to disinfect

their hands and stay away from each other and all this stuff. This is Talia Landry, citizen of the

Mashpee Wampanoag tribe. In those chaotic weeks of March 2020 her tribe was waiting on word from

the federal government. We're literally sitting here waiting for the phone call to say hey you have

funding like you can supply these you know disinfectants and all these things to your tribal

members so they can be clean and try and stay safe during this pandemic and then they call us

and are like no actually you're not going to have your reservation land anymore. We'll be

disestablishing your reservation lands due to the decision that was made in this first district court

Bazaibla. I think everyone was looking at each other like what the hell just happened.

To Talia, their land was how the Mashpee survived four centuries of colonization and now it was

being taken away and at a time where we can't even get together we can't even meet to console each

other. It literally seemed like it was a tactic to wipe us out completely. The call came from the

department of the interior under drum. The backstory is complicated but basically a court case had

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