"I went many times down to Red Rock, and Kamanche, many, many of the big reservations in the Western states I went to when I was a kid. The Mohawk reservation, in upstate New York, which was a very important group for my father. Two weeks before he died, he spent the day at Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, which is the poorest county in America, year after year.
And my father saw a Sioux family living in the burned out hulk of an automobile. And he cried. And it was one of the only times that people had actually seen him cry. And the word spread throughout the Sioux reservation. He spent about 6 or 7 hours there, I don't know exactly how long, but he was keeping a group of white people... 20,000 people were waiting for him in Rapid City. And he kept them waiting all day and his aides were panicking and saying, "We gotta leave here, Indians don't vote anyway." And he said, "You don't know your candidate if you think that's a good argument."
And on the last day of his life, he won South Dakota. Which nobody had expected. And he won South Dakota because the Sioux came out and voted, in unprecedented numbers. And he got almost 100% of the vote, I think there were 2 votes against him on the entire reservation. And every time I go back there, people still say to me, "We're still looking for those guys."
As you can see in this picture below, RFK has been supporting American Indians long before he decided to run for President!
RFK Jr and his son Conor with the water protectors at Standing Rock Encampment 2016.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Joins Pipeline Protest
It deeply bothered RFK Sr. that the Native Americans had been victimized, and he felt a strong duty to do what he could, to make things right. He actually cried one day when he saw Native Americans living in a burned-out car. You can hear RFK Jr. talking about this in this podcast, below. It sounds like Robert Kennedy Jr's father made a very lasting impact on him, and taught him to deeply care about Americans who've been the victims of corporate polluters.
I can't think of any presidential candidate who has shown even a quarter as much of a commitment to human rights, as RFK Jr. He's spent 20% of his time over his 40-year span as an environmental advocate, often working on Native American issues.
RFK Jr. Podcast: Native American Leadership
You can also listen to the above interview on Spotify...
The video below is from the KENNEDY24 Website.
Here's a clip of RFK Sr. speaking on behalf of Native Americans...
Robert F. Kennedy at National Congress of American Indians Meeting
RFK Jr. has a long background in working with Native Americans. His father and uncle recognized the genocide of Native Americans as the Original Sin of American Democracy.
Transcribed from this interview, in which he speaks about his father and Uncle, President John F. Kennedy, RFK Jr. says:
"(They) believed strongly in American Democracy, but believed they could never live up to our potential as the world's exemplary democracy if they didn't go back and make amends and reconcile in one way or another with the people who had made the ultimate sacrifice that laid the groundwork, or the rise of our political culture in this country.
And my uncle during his presidency, entertained a long line of tribal leaders. They often came to my house. And my father, whenever we were growing up, whenever we went on a vacation together, a wilderness vacation, whether we went skiing or whitewater kayaking or mountain climbing, which... my father wanted us to see the whole country, the first thing we would do when we landed at the airport is to go visit Native reservations. And I visited Choctaw, I visited Cherokee, I visited Hoopa, Apache reservation, all the Sioux reservations at Standing Rock, Pine Ridge, Rosebud and the Navajo reservations.
"I went many times down to Red Rock, and Kamanche, many, many of the big reservations in the Western states I went to when I was a kid. The Mohawk reservation, in upstate New York, which was a very important group for my father. Two weeks before he died, he spent the day at Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, which is the poorest county in America, year after year. And my father saw a Sioux family living in the burned out hulk of an automobile. And he cried. And it was one of the only times that people had actually seen him cry. And the word spread throughout the Sioux reservation. He spent about 6 or 7 hours there, I don't know exactly how long, but he was keeping a group of white people... 20,000 people were waiting for him in Rapid City. And he kept them waiting all day and his aides were panicking and saying, "We gotta leave here, Indians don't vote anyway." And he said, "You don't know your candidate if you think that's a good argument."
And the last day of his life, he won South Dakota. Which nobody had expected. And he won South Dakota because the Sioux came out and voted, in unprecedented numbers. And he got almost 100% of the vote, I think there were 2 votes against him on the entire reservation. And every time I go back there, people still say to me, "We're still looking for those guys."
I became friends... at that point, I was only 14 years old, I became friends with Tim Cuyhago, and I later on served with him in founding Lakota Times, which is now called Indian Country today. I was a founding editor of that publication, which is the biggest newspaper in Indian country. And then around 1993, Matthew Cuncron came down to New York, asked for my help with stopping the James Bay Project. We ended up blocking that project. I played a key role in there by talking Mario Cuomo, who was then my sister;s father in law, into canceling the 16 billion dollar contract with Hydra-Quebec, and that killed the project.
We had brought about 20 New York legislatures to go camping and do a whitewater trip with the cree, way up on one of these rivers that was going to be dammed, the great whale river, which is what was called Whatmagushi (?), and they fell in love with it, they fell in love with the cree people, and in the end we were able to block that project. After I did that, I was asked by 5 tribes on Vancouver Island, the Nulchal Nouth, the Heshquith, Housin, and several other tribes, to come out there and represent them, and the litigation against (Mung Migmillett Bodell), the biggest logging company in Canada that was fighting to log Clackwith Sound, they owned Clackwith Sound, they never again signed a treaty or fought a war.
The treaty negotiations had been going on for a century. And meanwhile, McMillan Blodell was logging, that was basically robbing all their wealth. Some of the trees, these are 2,000 year old Cedar Citcus Spruce... some of them have a value on the stump of $20,000. And McMillan Bodell was stripmining em, and then sending them over to Osaka with the bark still on em. It was insane. And making hundreds of millions of dollars. So, the people who owned those trees sat by and watched. And we were able to win that litigation. And then, I assisted in the treaty negotiations that ultimately gave the right to that tribe to the timber that was on their land. And it put McMillan Bodell out of business.
Again, you can listen to the rest of the full podcast by clicking HERE!
Deep Commitment of RFK Jr's Dad
“These kinds of conditions can not be permitted to exist in the United States.” Robert F Kennedy after seeing the impoverished living conditions on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Alfred Pilsmore, an 84-year-old Oglala Sioux Indian, discussing Indian needs with Robert F. Kennedy at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota on April 16, 1968. Credit: Associated Press
Robert F Kennedy Jr inherited from his father a deep commitment to improving the lives of Native Americans. Like his father, he sees the poverty and suffering in Indian Country as our country’s greatest shame and he believes that the federal government’s unfair dealings and broken treaties with the tribal nations are our nation’s original sin.
After accompanying his father on campaign trips to reservations around the country, RFK Jr was inspired to focus a significant amount of his own career on representing the interests of indigenous Americans in the United States, Canada and Latin America. He has advocated for these first Americans in courtrooms and in treaty negotiations; he has fought for them against mining, timber, hydroelectric, and oil-industry forces endeavoring to steal their resources and destroy their lands and tribal culture. RFK Jr has been on the front lines of recent battles in Indian country: he joined the water protectors at Standing Rock and he and his son Conor were arrested protesting the Keystone XL pipeline was arrested protesting the Keystone XL pipeline.
Under a Kennedy administration, historic wrongs done to Native Americans will be addressed and made right. The spirit as well as the letter of treaties must be honored as the highest law of the land: documents made between sovereign nations. Cultural renewal will be supported and religious practices and sacred sites will be defended. Tribal sovereignty and the right of self determination will be respected. The need for restoration of illegally taken lands and resources, compensation for broken treaties, protection and enhancement of natural resources in Indian Country, will be elevated to matters of national interest and examination. Tribes will have a friend and ally in the White House.
While we know some of the problems in Indian Country, we will work in partnership with Native American leaders to learn more and to find the solutions. It is the duty of the federal government to do all that it can to create a better life for all Americans—especially those who have been reprehensibly neglected. We will seek to restore trust between Native Americans and the federal government and we will work hard to deserve it. We believe it is not enough to apologize for—or even attempt to rectify—past injustices; we need to prevent current and future injustices from occurring.
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