Don Wildman

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I mean, when we talk about homelands, we're talking about places where people have lived generations upon generations in an increasingly ordered and sophisticated society.

That is frequently misunderstood by people today.

You know, as white settlers confront these nations out west, you know, the idea of civilizing them and all that sort of thing, completely wrongheaded because it had already been civilized on their terms.

Right.

I mean, and this is central to the whole story, of course, of this tragedy, because like all indigenous people, I would say, the Choctaw can't be separated from their ancestral lands because their entire system of life is deeply entrenched in that natural connection.

History, language, culture, all of that is tied up with the homeland.

And that is what we're going to be talking about being destroyed.

I want to back up just a little bit more.

The creation story is based on this as well.

Can you explain that idea that these people come from the land in this story?

It's the kind of story you can find these creation stories in other societies, the Polynesians, coming from the oceans.

It is this direct connection to the land.

That is continuous through the civilization, whereas European societies with this industrialization that was happening at the same period were kind of broken away from the land and thinking of how they were going to build societies.

And that's kind of in the most general sense.

That's the opposition that's happening here as European settlers move west and into this world.

People are of this land connected to the land and are about to be wrenched from their lands.

When Europeans begin to arrive, what kind of relationships with the Choctaw did they have?

I mean, this begins slowly, obviously.