US law and international human rights law have radically diverged in the past years in terms of the recognition of indigenous people's rights. International human rights law now looks at not whether or not the tribes have formal ownership or legal title in a Western legal conception might have it, but rather they look at the tribe's historical connection to that land.

Savagery was a word that Westerners used to, again, to consciously differentiate them from non-Westerners, to assert that superiority, that cultural superiority. It goes back to the British Empire, and again, you know, what was the purpose of the British Empire? To bring civilization to the savage no matter where they were, whether it was India or Asia or Australia or whatever. It's that civilizing mission that characterizes so much of the history of Western colonialism.

Today what we see is tribes moving into the 21st century and facing real 21st century problems of globalization, of multi-national, national resource development, of jobs, tribes have elected leaderships. They're elected to do a lot of things.

Many of the situations that we've talked about whether it's the San Carlos, whether it's the Navajo fighting for their land rights or fighting to develop their land to try and provide decent jobs on the reservation. The backdrop to all that, the reason that we have those battles is that history of dispossession. The story isn't over for American-Indians. ... You know, how could any tribal member think about giving away something that means so much to the tribe?

The Navajo, for example, regard their traditional lands as within the four sacred peaks. One of those sacred peaks is the San Francisco Peaks where the ski resort, one of the holiest, sacred mountains in Navajo cosmology. I mean, it's considered a horrible desecration. I mean, you know, put it into another cultural context and you wouldn't be able to think of that being, with any other racial group. But for Indians because, you know, we think they really don't care about land or they have primitive ideas or they don't have ownership, we completely disrespect that.

What I tried to show is that this idea of this fundamental conflict between savagery and civilization goes back to the very beginnings of Western history. I go back to the Greeks, I go back to the Romans. You can read Homer. And of course Homer has his great heroes involved in this myth, this wonderful mythic contest with savage tribal peoples, half-human monsters on distant parts of the world.

In fact, George Washington had been an Indian fighter since the French and Indian War. And a lot of folks, particularly in the red states, the Southern states that had suffered a number of Indian depredations wanted to remove all the Indians to Canada. Let them go with the English. And Washington said, well, you can try , but better, he said, more expedient to negotiate treaties with them because, and again this is what the founders believed to a man, Indians are a vanquished race. They won't be here two to three generations.