The Native American Roots of the US Constitution

The Takeaway

WNYC and PRX

Politics, Wnyc, Daily News, Radio, Takeaway, National, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 716 Ratings

🗓️ 11 April 2023

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Many of the Founding Fathers who signed the Constitution had a deep familiarity with Native nations, some having negotiated treaties or engaged in diplomatic relations with them. We spoke to Robert J Miller, Professor of Law at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at ASU, who enlightened us about the Native origins of the US Constitution

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Latif from Radio Lab. Our goal with each episode is to make you think,
0:06.1	how did I live this long and not know that? Radio Lab, Adventures on the Edge of What We Think We Know.
0:13.0	Listen, wherever you get podcasts.
0:17.7	It's the takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry.
0:20.6	Listen, if all the kind of mean-spirited debates about public school curriculum have got you feeling down,
0:26.7	just travel on back with me to a simpler time, where it felt like you could pick up all the crucial facts of American history
0:33.5	with just a little afternoon schoolhouse rock.
0:38.3	Hey, do you know about the USA?
0:42.1	Do you know about the government?
0:44.5	Can you tell me about the Constitution?
0:47.4	Oh yeah, back in those times when we thought we knew what we knew,
0:51.1	and there was no doubt about it.
0:56.0	The USA was just starting out a whole brand new country.
1:03.0	And so our people spelled it out the things that we should be.
1:10.6	Except... Except what?
1:12.5	Well, it turns out that, well...
1:15.8	Come on, don't ruin Schoolhouse rock for us, okay?
1:18.8	No, no, no, I promise.
1:19.9	Schoolhouse is still rocking.
1:22.2	But it turns out that this version of our constitutional roots is maybe incomplete.
1:29.2	My name is Robert J. Miller. I'm a professor at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona
1:35.1	State University. I serve as a tribal judge, and I'm a citizen of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma.
	...

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